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My First Million
Sahil Bloom: Left Private Equity To Make Millions As A Content Creator And 3 Profitable Businesses To Start Now
Sahil Bloom:  Left Private Equity To Make Millions As A Content Creator And 3 Profitable Businesses To Start Now

Sahil Bloom: Left Private Equity To Make Millions As A Content Creator And 3 Profitable Businesses To Start Now

My First MillionGo to Podcast Page

Sahil Bloom, Shaan Puri, Sam Parr
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38 Clips
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Nov 10, 2022
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Episode Transcript
0:00
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HubSpot.com. I'm just going to say this. Now, this was awesome to do when it wasn't figured out now that it's figured out, this is certified official, small boy stuff, and I do not recommend this to anybody else, but if you are interested in this lame ass shit
0:50
Styles guy.
0:54
I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to
1:00
Days on the Road, Less Traveled. Never looking back.
1:04
What's going on? Who's the guest shot on? You want to give the
1:07
intro. We got sahil here. The man who answers the question? What would happen if Sean was better-looking? Smarter harder working, something is here, definitely, not smarter, but don't dispute. Those other two. I'm
1:23
just screwing with you. What's up, guys? Happy to be here.
1:25
How often do you get your hair cut? Let's start with the most important question, you know.
1:30
Every other week at this point. Now,
1:31
my wife is making fun of me for this because like it used to be that I'd go once a month, wasn't a big deal. And now I'm going like every other week because I like to keep it tight and she keeps giving me shit because we have a little newborn at home and I'm like, oh, I gotta go Gotta Go. So yeah, it's becoming an
1:45
issue. As long as you don't call it a hair appointment, that's the only thing you can't do. If you say, I got a hair appointment, then you're out as a guy. The place just can't be called a salon. That's always been
1:54
my rule. It's easy Harbor. She seemed like, she seemed like a song guy, though. Dude, look at you, man. You're wearing like
2:00
You got like a word or sweater on. You look like you're getting ready for Christmas. It's like it's 85 degrees in Austin, Texas today.
2:05
Yeah. So, are we at your like book reading for your birth right now? Stan, what are you doing? It actually does look
2:11
like you should have a fireplace in the background and you're gonna be like reading us and I stories and a soothing voice. I'm definitely drinking tea right now. A so basically like your bio is pretty easy. You were a nobody private Equity guy, the pandemic, hit the pandemic hit and you're like, I'm gonna be somebody and I'm
2:30
I have two
2:30
ears, you got famous on Twitter. What do we what do we have nine or 800,000 followers? So you got famous on Twitter and basically transformed your life. All because of Twitter and covid, is that right?
2:41
I mean, nobody private Equity.
2:44
Got, designation is not unreasonable. I think that's totally fair. I mean there's a lot of nobody like Finance guys. That are making bank out there though, right? Like
2:52
that would have stung but now you're like famous and stuff. So now it's okay to laugh at it. I mean I don't know. Like do you think it's things like the if you're making pretty
2:59
good money doing?
3:00
And something like that. I mean, VPS and private Equity. At this point, if you're doing well like, you're making seven figures as a VP in private Equity name. Four of them.
3:08
Yeah. What about
3:10
dude I hung out with some P guys. The other day and I didn't know them well enough. But obviously, I just am back of my head. How rich are you? And that's actually what I wanted to keep asking our. If you own a PE shop, is it safe to assume that you're just wealthy? And how much do they actually earn? Yeah, I mean, if you are, if you are a GP so like one of the
3:30
Of all owners of a private Equity Fund, and you've been doing it like across multiple funds that have performed. Well, over a period of time, it's pretty safe to assume that you've got a net worth north of 50 million dollars because I mean you just like simple math on it. Right? Most of those funds are taking like one and a half to two percent management fees on, you know if you're running a big fund, 500 million plus a billion. Plus if it's like a real substantial fund. So there's you know, 20 million plus coming in a year on a billion dollar fund and realistically most of them don't have that.
4:00
Many employees so they're not having to actually pay out a ton of that in terms of like you know operating costs and then you have Carrie and they're taking you know, 15 20 25 percent of profits above their hurdle rate, whatever that is eight percent. So you're like you know you're talking about if they double the funds there's two hundred million dollars plus of carry to go around and so the principal owners of those are taking the Lion's Share of that, you know, that carry, which is how much. I mean, if there's 200 million in their principal owner, owns twenty, thirty percent that it's a shit ton of money and
4:30
I can't decide if it's jealousy because I'm like, you guys are making a lot of money for what feels like, not a lot of work or if it's actually I dislike them because I feel as though they're just like Excel sheet monkeys and they're like not actually creating value what where's the reality? No. I mean they weren't crazy hard man. I don't I don't know anyone that is a long time GP and private Equity that doesn't work. You know, 70 plus hours a week of like stressful work. I mean it's the type of thing. Sean would absolutely hate. Like you think about like people that care about leverage on their time it's like pretty.
5:00
A Spore leverage and its high stress work because you're putting a bunch of debt on these companies typically and, you know, during a downturn like, right now, right? It's hugely stressful because you're constantly dealing with like breaking covenants on the debt, and having to restructure and, you know, like, basically what ends up happening is you spend 80% of your time on the, like, a couple of losers in the portfolio and the winners you just like kind of get to set in forget it because they're growing their, you know you're getting like a leopard upside on them because you put, you know, seventy percent leverage, to buy the company, 60 percent leverage, to buy the company.
5:30
Just like eating off those couple of winters but you're dealing constantly with the ones that are losers. So Sean and I have our hand in this world where like we've definitely sell and have sold courses information stuff. We also have a podcast and so that that's like this, like personality world but then we also have built nice sized companies. And we will continue to build very likely, much bigger companies. And so, we have our foot in that world for you. You have your foot in like the PE world as well as the thing that we're in this information thing. Do you think that the information
6:00
World or whatever we call this thing is actually a, is it an equal revenue or net worth driver as like some of the traditional company building or PE stuff? Yeah, I mean, like, I think you have to think about it in terms of like you're, you know, profit potential X like the freedom and time Freedom, that comes with it, right till I get to like kind of an adjusted profit that you can generate from something doing it in p and like making fifty million dollars in P from a time adjusted standpoint is a is it pretty grind? E, way to go do it. It's like high certainty. If you're just
6:30
If you're at a good fund and you're rolling with a good fund and you're like going to be a partner there and you're going to get more and more carry across, you know, bigger and bigger funds. It's a pretty low beta way to go and generate that type of, you know, that type of net worth but you're going to be working your ass off until you're like 60 years old. Doing it versus you know, you go in the information side and do the information economy and you're like do a newsletter doing podcast courses, stuff that you guys are doing where you're like, you know, Sean might do his course in a week, make 300K and then be able to chill for you know,
7:00
Two, three months if he wants to because who cares, right? It's like it's just a totally different time leverage. So I don't know, it's sort of depends on like what you want to do in that regard. Dude. What's your, what's your job now? I mean I kind of do like 10 different things, I've got the fund, you know. Like so I ended up raising the find. Do the rolling fun Dick Shawn but I've got a 10 million dollar Venture fund that I raised from you know a handful of Institutions and a bunch of like the GPS at Big funds invested in it and basically like kind of shared deal flow. I've got the newsletter
7:30
Which, you know, monetizes like, but we can talk about it but like, you know, with newsletter sponsors now it's 125 isch thousand subs and, you know, it makes anywhere from like three and a half to six thousand dollars per send right now. And I send it, you know, 8 to 10 times a month so you know pretty nice just like business that scales to your point on like time leverage. I write the same to newsletters a week and it's pretty nice business and then I had this agency business that frankly like started just because it was something that I saw you know, as an Arbitrage opportunity, early in life.
7:59
20 21. And it ended up scaling order magnitude probably like close to six figures a month, gross revenue, business with super high margins and so I kind of just kept doing it and kept walking into different areas with
8:10
it. And I don't know if you guys talked about this already but you had come to us or you were kind of talking in our group chat about like, the fork in the road moment. You had you were like we said before, no name, private Equity, guy making good money, and you had started tweeting out stuff like pretty regularly. I would say, I don't know, six months or year before that and you is clear. You had
8:30
And it was clear, you were good at that. You're getting followers, maybe had 100,000 or 200,000 followers may be at that time, I'm just rounding around, but it wasn't, you didn't have all these other things like this. Clear. Like I have a fund, I have a new so that makes money have an agency that makes money. So you didn't know exactly what was on the other side of that hill and you were debating. What should I do? Should I write, you know, the fork in there? A lot of people have, should I stay in my job? That's a good cushy job or should I take this leap of faith into the unknown? Unknown give us like the two minutes story of like, you know, how did you think about that and how do you decide and
8:59
That the right way to think about it.
9:01
Yeah. I mean I like a lot of people had the, like covid moment of what the fuck am I doing with my life? And, you know, am I happy doing it? Like, you know, all of a sudden for the first time in my life, after I guess, it had been six years working in in private equity. Which at the time, you know, there's like 80 to 100 hour weeks, right? So you don't really have time to look up. You don't think about shit because you just working and you're, you know, you're making more and more money into your like pat yourself on the back things, you're good, you're you know, you're Indian. Sean like Indian mother thinks it sounds impressive. You know, things are good. She probably wants you to go get an MRI.
9:30
D, but it sounds pretty good. Is that what your mother wanted you to do
9:34
Sean? My mom. Yeah, she's yeah, that all those things she she definitely was like, don't leave a good paying job. That was just like a general rule or general rule of
9:43
thumb. I mean, my mom to this day. Still asks me why I didn't go to medical school or why I didn't get a PhD in all seriousness? Like the Indian mother thing is sort of a meme, but it's also very real, the like, you know, you should go work for McKinsey if you're going to work in and Professional Services, that's the only
9:59
Place that is that's respectable. But yeah, man. I mean, I was doing that covid. Hit all of a sudden. I was like, what am I doing with my life? Had time on my hands to actually, like, think about other stuff for the first time in my professional life. And so I started, I mean, the Twitter thing I just like I started writing and I didn't ever think of it as a potential way to like go make money or get another job or do something else. But as it started to grow and has started to spiral, you know we were in this like group chat together, right? And I started seeing friends from the tech world, how they were leveraging, you know, platforms.
10:30
Our excetera to make money. I was like, huh? I wonder whether there is a way that I can actually, you know, build like a little side hustle with this, whether it was courses or whether it was an agency business or like whatever was I never really thought about the funder investing side at the time and then candidly like I had a conversation with you. Sean that I remember being really impactful where I was like at a real Crossroads and I thought I was going to join another type of investing firm and we're going to move back to the east coast to be closer family. I was going to do that and I remember you saying to me like it sounds like you're just going to go do the thing that
10:59
Kind of sounds like it sucks. Instead of doing the thing that you actually get a lot of energy from, which is all this new stuff and that feels scalable and that you're, you know, you're fired up about. So why are you making that decision? And until someone just reframed it for me like that, I had never thought about it. I was just gonna like Insight in you down the path that felt safe and it was like a stupid conversation frankly but had a pretty big
11:19
impact you had described it. You were like I'm thinking about path, a or path B, but the way you described it like that they sounded like shit like sounded super hard and not that much fun and path be
11:29
Sounded like a lot of fun, just like, you know, some unknowns but like definitely good was gonna come of it. I was like, how is this even a decision? Like it sounds like you're saying I'm choosing between a bad option and a good option. Go with the good one.
11:40
Funny story about path a so that at the time that path a this is real was to join like a crossover hedge fund like a hedge fund that also does investments in private tech companies and my final interview my final interview. I had to pitch a stock and the stock they gave me to pitch was Stitch fix and I had to decide like I had a week and I had to
11:59
Decide whether it was a by, you know, or a short like, it was a long or a short. And I did like a week of research like made this long deck, like, did all this work. I mean, it was miserable did all this thing. It was trading at the time at like forty six dollars and it had come off, you know, it had gone up to like 100 in the whole like our K goes, you know, Bill Huang was like, pumping up. Stocks by do it, like buying the swabs pumped all the way up and then it came down to 46, and I pitched it as a by got rejected, because my pitch was shitty and now that stock is Trading,
12:29
Three dollars and fifty six sets. So I would have taken path a and I would have gotten fired within six months for
12:35
sure. So,
12:37
something that's interesting is like I get asked, maybe five times a week. If someone can like, write tweets for me or like, cut videos for me and all this stuff and it's pretty crazy. I don't know if it only happens, like what the popularity level is, where you have to where you start getting those in bounds. But I get, it's so often that I get this and you like, it's, there's like this weird. I get people asking me all the time, too.
12:59
Go. Are you in sahil or are you in this person or you in that person to sahil friends with this person because there's this like weird circle jerk of a Twitter world and feel as though that like you are connected to like many many many tens of millions of followers and reach and like there's those like weird behind-the-scenes thing going on with your agency it's the dark underground. Cabal that runs Twitter now. No I mean Sean you actually remember this, right? Didn't like some kid hit you up and say that.
13:29
Ghostwrote tweets for me. And then you just texted me and were like, does this dude ghost right for you? And I was like, no, I've never heard of this kid in my life, he was just lying. And then I hit him up saying, like, yo, why are you lying this person? And he completely panicked. But yeah, man, I mean the like the world of ghost writing tweets has now become again like it's become a meme because I was like, Business, Insider wrote an article about VCS getting ghost writers to write tweets for them. That wasn't at all. How my agency things started, it started in like late 2020.
13:59
Because I had started to figure out that threads were the way that people were growing on Twitter. And keep in mind, you know, Shawn, you were around the group chat at the time, but that was like, before threads had become the, like, thread boy, meme that they are today. And so there was like, legitimate Arbitrage in writing quality threads. And I had all these startups that I had invested in the founders of which were like, wow, we see a ton of value and having a platform at a brand, can you help us think through how to do this because you done it. Like I had at that point gotten 275 thousand followers or so and so I was like yeah let me yeah I basically like
14:29
Started an LLC like an advisory business basically. And I started giving like strategic support to these startups on how to think about content. How much, how much would you charge them? I was charging five grand a month to a start-up for basically like you know, it was like texting and then maybe like one call every other week and it was like so low because it was so low on time from what they needed for me because it was mostly like the founders didn't want to actually spend a ton of time on it. They just wanted to be able to like kind of understand it and then they would have people on there and that just
14:59
Like went off and did things with
15:01
it and what was the high level like one, two, three bullet points that you would tell these Founders so that they could just be better at this. It was basically, like, you need
15:10
your two or three pillars of content that you're going to be able to talk about consistently that are like valuable for you as a start-up or as a Founder. So if you're a Founder, I mean at the time it was talked about, you know, building companies and things you're learning along the way which now is like Ultra saturated on Twitter, right? There's like a million people that aren't necessarily credible, right?
15:29
About that. At the time. There weren't that many Founders doing it. Like, I don't know if you guys have seen the like copy a, I found her. I forget his name Paul. You know. Be an investor Sean. You know that business Sam is not me. I am. Yeah. And he was like, the first one sort of that was like really building in public, quote, unquote, Mike, sharing about their journey and the things that we're learning. So I was basically telling Founders you have to establish like what are your two or three pillars that you can be writing about? Maybe it's, you know, building in public maybe it's the industry you're in, you know, maybe it's like sharing Elle's along the way and
15:59
Like vulnerability because people find that endearing, it's like it's called the pratfall effect. Have you ever heard of that? It's when people who you perceive to be perfect show, like, chinks in their armor. We find it as humans very endearing. And we had actually makes this like them more. And so you like, you know, playing on that you like sharing your Ells on the way. But I was basically telling them versions of that on a regular basis and like helping, you know, kind of craft and advise them on the content, they were putting out and it was like five grand a month probably had like five or so clients. I think they were all like
16:30
Startups. I either like the founders, I knew, or I've invested in the companies, and so I was kind of around and it was, you know, beneficial to me to like see them continue to grow and do that. You like invest in the companies and they give you that money right back. I like that our time on today's episode is brought to you by imperfect action hosted by Steph Taylor. It's a podcast on HUB. Spots podcast, Network the audio destination for business professionals. Imperfect action is a bite-sized online. Marketing podcast for business owners. So join stuff. Taylor, she answers all your business.
16:59
Any questions that deep dives into the nitty-gritty of online, marketing content, marketing, social media, marketing, and marketing for strategy. For business owners, a few recent episodes, include some of the biggest mistakes you can make with your launch. Another one is why growing your audience feel so hard in 2022. And another one is five ways to make content creation less consuming. So check it out. It's called imperfect action. You can look it up wherever you get your podcast. Yeah. It was a good way to hedge that. I mean, this is personal Investments at the time, so this was like, you know, I might invest like 25,
17:29
A company. If I was making that back in five months, that was a pretty good cash on cash return on the original
17:34
investment. But then like, you know, the
17:37
ghostwriting thing was interesting because basically early mid 20 21, I had a few of those clients come and say, you know, the biggest struggle for us is that we don't have people that can write this content. Like we don't want to build out of content team when we're focused on product and engineering and all that stuff, like, do you have people that can write and write at that time, I had done the course with Julian Shapiro. Our friend. We did a maven course on
17:59
Unlike how to build your audience and it was mainly how to build your audience on Twitter and so half that course was about like, how to write good threads and how to write for Twitter. And so, I had this pool of like 400 students who had gone through the course, learn the principles of it knew, how to do it. That then I was just able to sort of be a connector between like freelance, you know, writing talent to then support these startups. And, you know, the kind of fundamental to any agency business. For anyone that starting one is effectively that you're like creating price Arbitrage where you're like charging,
18:29
I attend grand for some 45 Grand for something that maybe cost you to and like you know the reality for most these people was you can pay a thousand to twenty five hundred bucks a month, maybe depending on the output and you can easily charge, you know, a start-up or brand 54 that or you can charge like, you know, a Founder an entrepreneur who's doing really well and spend a bunch of money 54. Just like the fact that you're the connector between the two points. So that was when it like I would say like really started to scale but it was never for VCS for me like I've never I mean I've never had a client that was a
18:59
See, it's all been Founders and it's all been, like had like half Tech, Founders and half, just like nuts and bolts, like meat and potato type Founders, like Sam's
19:08
guys, what your guys
19:14
wait am I a meat and potato guy or, you know, you're a mean potato, Sean's, my tech guy, you're my meat and
19:21
potatoes and if something's a cool or interesting that it's kind of more of my thing and it's something really boring and like you know generally correlate with like obesity, it's yours.
19:29
Guys, I want to ask you about about like kind of your your big Vision because you're going to be president someday. I don't know if people do this is a future president sitting with us. But before we do that, people always tell us, they're like, yo, you got to do ideas with the guests, meaning they want to hear, okay, your Sawhill you see a bunch of different things, you see it a bunch of different worlds. What opportunities do you see that? You think some people somebody should be doing or cool? Startup idea, cool business idea, Niche opportunities, something, maybe you're not doing.
19:59
Doing or whatever. Do you have any kind of ideas on your cheat sheet? Yeah, I've got three for you
20:05
guys. Okay, go for it. Let's go through them. So, so first on the agency side, just because I think there are two really obvious ones that like, honestly, anyone that's listening could probably go action on this. If they wanted, one is linked in growth agency stuff. Massive opportunity here. I mean, like, you guys know a couple of our friends me and a couple friends are starting a spin-off agency, that's just going to focus on LinkedIn because it's a massive Arbitrage opportunity right now. Audience growth Twitter.
20:29
Become a lot more saturated because of the like thread boy thing and how many people are going and doing it LinkedIn. I mean you can go post a few things and immediately be like getting to 10K plus and four Founders and like business Builders. There's so much business on those platforms. It's huge for recruiting. So basically if you were to go start this the way I would do it, go to someone who has a Twitter presence and you can go create like tweet Pik Pik is the like web service that I use for it and you can basically just turn
20:59
Tweets that are like proven with social proof into these, like carousels on LinkedIn that are the big growth hack on LinkedIn. And if you go do that for them, and just say, like, look, I'll take over your entire LinkedIn presence. You never have to open LinkedIn because people hate opening LinkedIn, and you just go and create carousels for them off of proven tweets. And then go post it for them like two, three times a week off of their Suites off their tweets, or off of like other writing that exists, that they've put out like, say they've written blogs. Like, I don't know. I mean, if you hadn't found,
21:29
You know, say it's like Ryan holiday and he's written a ton of blogs that are all over the place but doesn't have a massive LinkedIn presence. You can go like, turn his blogs and to just shorter form writing that you put into posts on LinkedIn and say, hey, I'm going to I'll post for you three times a week. You never have to login, don't even worry about it and we'll grow you to like 50 k by the end of this year, either pay as like, you know, charge as like a success fee. Like, for you get to this level, you pay me this or you just say, like, pay me five grand a month and I'll do this for you two and a half Grand a month, and I'll do this for you. The amount of time it would take, you is literally, like
21:59
Like, I mean you could probably do like an hour a week to cover a single person so like you know, call it four hours a month and make five grand. It's like an awesome, awesome Arbitrage opportunity, so that's one. Like any thoughts on that Sam? I think it's awesome. Yeah I'm writing it this down,
22:14
I've been doing a similar thing so I hired this guy as a content remixer for me and basically it was take content from the Pod or or Twitter and remix it into content on other platforms. And I focused on link, I focusing on LinkedIn because I thought but the thing
22:29
Said, I had kind of a hypothesis that that's true. And I'm now at 38 thousand followers on LinkedIn, and I haven't opened LinkedIn once. So if you see something on LinkedIn, stop me. Writing it. It's me of having the thought but it's not me writing that
22:44
but hold on son. So you got 30,000 let's say that you post a by the way, this is
22:48
like in two months or something like
22:50
that. Let's say you post a product that cost or your power running thing, let's say it's a thousand dollars and you sell thousand dollar thing to your 38 thousand followers.
22:59
How much revenue will you make from
23:00
that? I don't know. Haven't tested. It's not how you might know better, but I also haven't been doing it for long enough. I wouldn't expect to be able to get value because I don't think I've given enough yet like the Twitter same thing, you know? Like people see. Oh man you guys just you can sell a course, you can just like, say you're doing this new thing, you get a bunch of signups like yeah, but the doing this podcast for three years, do you know 300 episodes, you know, that hundreds of hours of content that somebody's listen to so, yeah, they trust you and they know they've come to a decision whether
23:29
Are
23:29
smart and interesting or whether you're full of shit and they've used. They've done. They've made that. They've done all that work and I've done all that work beforehand. So then would you make an offer? It's just a simple. Yes, or no. It doesn't fit their life because they think it'll drive value. They already trust that you can do it on LinkedIn. I wouldn't bet that that would happen yet because it's just been so
23:48
recent. Yeah, I think you have to get I mean there's like a there's a bar that I think you have to get over from a follower count standpoint. If you use that as a proxy before you can like conceivably Harvest value, you gotta like, you know, plant enough seeds over a period of
23:59
Time to Sean's point. I think like, 100 K is probably the point at which you can start harvesting value from LinkedIn. Justin Welsh is this guy that you might have seen on Twitter or LinkedIn. He was like kind of like, Godfather LinkedIn influencer and I think that dude now is making like a hundred K Plus on not even cohort based courses just like Auto courses that he generally just promotes through Linkedin. He like he has a newsletter now that he's built through Linkedin, like built on the back of LinkedIn and now he's bigger on Twitter because he's managed to like cross across all of those.
24:29
But he's doing over 100k a month in sales revenue on his on his courses which are just like you know they're just they're not cohort-based. So he's like putting in. No, no time. Now that he's a good it up. This is interesting. Sean have you seen what sahil has been doing on Instagram
24:44
on Instagram? Now, I barely open this room. Your boys blowing
24:47
up the solicitor this. So, around the city just Dad
24:50
content. No, listen. It was
24:52
just hair. It's just mostly hair and shirt and there's traps, but around the same time, so saw home
24:59
And I both around the same time. Like, all right, let's take Instagram seriously. So I started doing it and I was beating him nicely, adding a thousand people today. I think I started with 5,000 people and I got to like 48 or 50 thousand in a very short amount of time and he was doing his thing. I was like you need to post twice a day, I think, and he starts doing that and then he just kind of like has rocketed past me now. He's got two sixty, two thousand followers in a very short amount of time. Adding water to thousand people a day and he's doing this exact same thing where he's taking his tweets that do well. It just posting them on
25:28
his Instagram
25:29
and like,
25:29
So two points here, one there's a world where this is just total, vanity nonsense and a complete distraction from people who have like their main thing. On the other hand. What I'm curious about is how much revenue can this drive to people. If they are goal is not to be a famous person, their goal is just to sell more shit or whatever their own they own already. And so I'm curious he'll is of you if well, this does this actually drive revenue for things other than yeah, I'm good right now.
25:59
Right now, it's generating about a so Instagram, this past month, I think generated 1,000 newsletter subs for me, just through the link in my bio and that's like, you know, on average I probably had 35 thousand followers during the month and it generated that many so conceivably as it continues to scale a little drive. You know well north of that as it as it moves and if you think a newsletter subscriber for me is worth you know just off of my sponsor Revenue probably like three to four dollars per sub and then if you take
26:29
Account my book, that's going to come where it's like extremely valuable to me. If they buy a book. I mean, it's a bunch of money, a month that's coming off, this that scales over time, right? And that's just instagramming you think about LinkedIn. That's another Big Driver, you know, all these platforms and like, their do. I mean, there are ghost writing agencies. There are people selling products mostly on Instagram without ever posting like their face. These guys are literally, like, making carousels of images and stuff and they're doing 50 to 100K of Revenue through it.
26:56
It's crazy. What's an example of that, there's this guy.
26:59
Dakota, Robertson like wrongs to, right? I think it says like Twitter handle, and maybe that's his Instagram handle too. And he's got like, I don't know, 250,000 followers. Now on on Instagram and like, blew up real fast there, just from posting his viral tweets, over to over to Instagram. Like almost never shows his face. And dude is has a thriving ghostwriting business through this.
27:19
Gotcha. I'm torn because on one hand you are like perfect execution of a strategy that I now hate. And so I'm like, respect to you.
27:29
But I'm like I don't even want to talk about this because I know what's going to happen is there's now going to be nine thousand new people who go this progress. Get a breed 9,000 new people that are going to go be like this is my thing. I'm going to do this. He said I can make, you know, x amount of money per month and their execution is going to be nowhere near yours. And in general this is like a, it's like a pathway that definitely works. But soul-sucking, this soul-sucking, the window of opportunity is closing and it provides, I think the window color company is closing.
27:59
It's an important point. I
28:00
do think, like, look, I mean, when I started writing the threats, I mean Shawn you were the same way, right? Like any thread you wrote would blow the hell up early on because there just weren't that many of them. And so it was like, it's like Market. It wasn't saturated. Now, it's pretty hard to get a thread to, like, really take off unless you're doing the, like, 10 YouTube channels that will change your life for free and let some extension, which is the things though. It's like getting fit through Power. Walking is power. Walking going to burn calories? Yeah, yeah for sure. Are you probably not going to get injuries? Yeah.
28:29
Like you have to look like a doofus doing it as a process. Everyone in the neighborhood is going to know you is that we're do. Power walking.
28:35
Like I, you know what I mean? And I'm guilty of this too, right? Like I did this strategy as well. Of being like, Oh, I'm going to create content for for fun initially this podcast Twitter, that sort of thing and then oh shit, okay? If I kind of sell five percent of my soul or 10% of my soul to the algorithm, I think I can get this bigger. Okay, I started doing that and then it's like oh I can make good money doing this and I, you know, make some money doing that and that feels funny.
28:59
Fun. But like I just want to say as a public service announcement there's some people going to go do this, but let's say, you're somebody who's awesome? I'm just going to say this down. This was awesome to do when it wasn't figured out now that it's figured out, this is certified official small boy stuff and I do not recommend this to anybody else and I myself have stop doing this to Ivan post, a thread. And but if you are interested in this lame ass shit Styles,
29:23
guys. I'm sitting in this house because of it, it's a lie.
29:29
Only house. It's a lovely house. No, I mean look you have to figure out what the, what the area is where you're going to do it. That's not crazy saturated and cringe. And, and to your point, like you got to figure out what percent cringe are you willing to be, like, by the way of writing, a thread is 10% cringe, like what level above that just natural based on General? Are you going to figure that out? Are you
29:50
talking? But
29:53
I'm willing to accept that already like 10% of people just immediately see it and you're like oh this is super
29:59
Cringe. And then you just have to decide like what level you willing to go above that. If a hundred percent is like 10 Chrome extensions, that will change your life, and 50% is like, you know, here, like the TED Talks, that changed my life. What's like, 20% is it? Some of the stuff I post, probably. And like, if that helps a few people out there and like, a bunch of people, get pissed and think that it's not for them. I don't really give a shit personally, like, if I helped one person and you know, someone hits me up and says like, hey, that changed my perspective on X Y or Z. That's what Gary, these been
30:29
Thing for decades man that guy's a legend of putting out content that's like listicles and like you know like motivational stuff Tony Robbins like Grant Cardone. These guys
30:37
like they get hate
30:39
because it freaking works and it helps people, right?
30:41
So, the thing I think I would say like, have you ever been to a Tony Robbins event? Yeah, and I'm sure if you went to like, you went to what I can Unleash the Power Within or something. Yeah, great. I went to loved it. Thought it was amazing. I don't know if you liked it, you can give you a quick reaction but I have a different point. Yeah,
30:56
I love it. I mean I love Tony Robbins stuff me
30:58
too and he
30:59
Gets on stage and he's doing all the things that you could criticize somebody for. He's he's clapping he's saying get up and jump. He's saying he's going to ask a very basic question and the only answer is yes but the whole crowd says yes. Like a cult. If you like oh he's doing all the things but he's doing it at like an A plus. Plus plus level. He is really probably in my opinion. The best public speaker I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot like still like Obama. Yeah he is he I think he's even more powerful than Obama because Obama is smooth but Obama doesn't get people.
31:29
Tony Robbins to get you to walk across coals and like shout your greatest fear. Not lad. I've never seen Obama control the crowd for 12 straight hours. I told her I was doing an event but here's what happens, you look around in the crowd and you're like, there's a whole spectrum of people at the one I was in it was like they were celebrities there. You know, the guy from 300 what's named Gerald Butler he was there. He was like two rows down from me. I was like wow this is interesting, there's some interesting people here and then in the hallways I would meet a bunch of people that thought they were the next Tony Robbins and they were life coaches and
31:59
They still speakers and they were, you know, change consultants and every cringe name, you can think of and then you go look at their stuff and it's the same concept, but not executed at that level because they didn't have the hard-won life experiences that, that guy had to actually like, create this content. They didn't have 40 Years of sharpening, their craft to becoming the best, they didn't have the natural talents and Charisma and, you know, Larger than Life presence. And so you can you can look at the best you can look at the gear Eevee's and the Tony Robbins, you can look at you on Twitter and say
32:29
Say that's dope. You know, I could do that and some people a very small amount of our people can do that. For most people, they will fall into the pit of cringe because they're not going to execute it at that same level. They didn't have those hard-won lessons of actually knowing what they're talking about and they're going to end up in this, like, weird middle ground. And yeah, I think that'd be scary part.
32:47
I mean, that's kind of like, that's like any Market though, right? Like, you know, someone starts a company and it's the a plus version of something like a restaurant chain. Someone starts the restaurant chain, that's like the A+ of that thing. And then a bunch of people come in to try to mimic
32:59
It and it's like, the B plus version. And, you know, like, whatever like say in and out, as they plus Burger version and someone cut tries to come in and start the like, five, guys, or whatever. Next, I'm probably gonna get hate for saying in and outs better than five guys, but you know, whatever, like you kind of have the diluted versions. And the question is like a, do you care that you're the diluted version of Tony Robbins, if you're making money, doing it and taking care of your family? Because like, I know a lot of people that are just like I don't give a shit like, you know. I grew my audience super cringe stuff and I'm making 25 Grand a month. I was
33:29
Going five, doing my prior job or 10, doing a job on making this sitting at home and I get spend time with my kids. What do I give a shit? If a bunch of tech? People think that I'm cringe, like, I'm making money, it is what it is. And so I kind of I appreciate that too. The other thing I would say is like, what game are you playing? Like what is the long-term game you're playing? And for me I was always thinking about like, what is the thing? I'm trying to build long-term, like I wasn't trying to be, you know, a Twitter thread like the thread guy. Like that's not my long-term vision of what it was. It vaulted me from being
33:59
Nobody private Equity guys? You said to like I signed a book deal last month, like a big book deal last month, you know? Like, I raise the fund. I never would have been able to raise a fund as like this, nobody VP in private equity. And so to me, it's like, what are you actually parlaying that shit into as you continue to go? If you're able to find the thing that you think you're a plus at even if it's for a short period of time like how are you using that to Vault yourself into that next level where you're like I'm not even in the same class as these other guys that are doing the thing I was doing previously because I moved into whatever that next you know that like upper
34:29
Lan is dude. Are you worried about Ilan? Screwing it up for you, not really, you know, it's funny. Well, did you see what it really quick? He like said something and then Steph my old co-worker said, like, does this mean that like the thread boys are gonna go away and actually forget his reply, what did he say? But it sounded like he was saying you did like a crying Emoji. I mean yeah. Like I think it was something about he said you know, you could basically put a long form text onto a tweet so you don't have to like people were used to take a screenshot of like their Notes app on their phone to post a long-form thing. I think all that stuff.
34:59
Good. I mean, like, look, I've already benefited from being early to a market. I grew to a big level. I built a brand that now extended into things that I own. Like, the newsletter, you know, that's gotten quite large and it's growing faster like the funder, like the book, whatever it is. I would be more worried. If I was like, just starting out and any one of these things and had dedicated all this time, you know, if you've rewound me a year and I was like, just starting to get all these things going. I'd probably be a little more worried
35:24
but the reality is it's
35:25
like eat or be man if you're if you're not like figuring out the new way to
35:29
To be on the front of something and be building in these other areas you're in, for a tough time, no matter what. Let's talk about this newsletter thing. You said you had three ideas, newsletters, number two, newsletter growth agency. So this is a second idea. Biggest issue I have with my newsletter is I want to write it, like, I love writing. That's my number one thing that gives me a lot of energy, I freaking hate thinking about and dealing with any of the like business or growth side of the newsletter. The business side is very easy to Outsource, there's like, I mean, you know, there's there's ad agencies.
35:59
Convertkit has an ad Network where they'll manage the whole back, end of your newsletter, they'll bring in sponsors for it. They'll send you, the money, it's like super, super easy, it's amazing, Nathan crushed. It getting that thing out there, but the like, growth side of newsletters is completely untouched. There's no one out there that I've been able to find that is like a full Suite growth service for your newsletter. And when I say grow sweet, I literally mean like, I want someone thinking about my landing pages and optimizing that I want someone thinking about referral networks newsletter swabs. I want
36:29
Someone thinking about paid ads, you know, SEO for my website, to drive Subs, how to optimize it across my different social channels, literally just someone that's sitting around thinking about growth for the newsletter, so that I can just focus on writing and I'd literally be willing to pay. I mean, my willingness to pay at the size of newsletter that I'm at now and given, what newsletter Subs are worth to me is very high. Like, I would easily pay 10 grand a month to someone, that could figure that out and do it in one place. On top of whatever I would spend on paid ads, Etc, do you think that thing work week is going to do that? No dude. I mean like I don't know how much you guys
36:59
No about where. I don't know a whole ton about work week. But from what I can tell, it's mostly back-end Services of newsletters. And there's another one called Smooth Ops that I think spun out from morning, Brew didn't work week, spun out of the hustle, didn't it? Not spun out. They worked for the guy was there. Yes. It's same thing with the morning Brew smooth Ops like my understanding of all those is that they're much more focused on like helping you monetize and you know managing your like business that you can focus on writing. I literally just want someone that just all they think about all day like a
37:29
An absolute killer that just all they think about is growth. I mean, Sean, did you have someone? I'm always been like that at milk Road. My guy was right, Sean.
37:37
No Ben, Ben was the guy who woke up every day. Just said, how do we get more subscribers? And like, you know, that's that was his mission, and that's what he did. But, you know, we needed, it's like that that was like, more of a company whereas like, you know, most people's personal things are not like you're at a size where there's just not that many newsletters that are at your size that can afford to pay for something like that. You know how?
37:59
People, how many people could afford to pay 10K per month to try to drive growth?
38:04
Well, so I think a lot so I tweeted this and a bunch of people were like replying saying they would pay for it in different ways. My hypothesis is that there is a ton of like successful Founders and entrepreneurs that want to build a newsletter and own list or like an essay type thing, like what Sam Altman or Paul Graham have where they have you know, SEO and newsletter, you know like emails that are coming to them and they're willing to pay a lot because they actually
38:29
I've been successful and just have a bunch of money. They don't need it to be revenue-generating outs at the outset. And I think you, I mean, I bet if you developed some sort of core competency and basically like partner, say someone partnered with me and proved it out over like, two three months had drove this. And then we're able to use me as a case study, maybe I own a percentage of it, you know, on the upside. And so I'm incented to like bring them new referrals. I bet you could grow a pretty big business there quickly.
38:53
Mmm. Yeah, you only need like 20 clients basically to make this like, you know, worth your
38:57
while. Yeah, I mean, if it's a personal matter,
38:59
Unless you don't even need 20 clients, I mean, get 10 at 5:00 a month or 10 at 10 a month and you have like, you know, it's 80 80 plus percent margin, probably business if you're just running it simple, but are you having the headache of having service business? Yeah, he's definitely not product. I was like, I thought
39:16
about starting an agency, like maybe 20 times of my life and then literally five minutes later every single time I'm like, don't go in the service business, don't go in the surface business. Now I we have several friends that have done it right? Like you know, Andrew consented it with metal, a barber.
39:29
See Greg just done a great job with it with late check-out you're doing it now with your thing. So you know, maybe I have the wrong bias here, what do you think? I mean what you
39:37
have to do is hire a great operator if you want to be the like owner of some percentage of it, not have the headaches, you gotta just recruit a killer operator. Who's going to run all of it? I mean, that's what we're doing with the spin-out agency that we're doing now. Around LinkedIn stuff is like just gonna hire someone exceptional and give them like 15% of the ups and just say, like you're a hustler, you're a killer, you can get a whole time.
39:59
It's white man. That's my finance
40:01
Levin. Never heard that helps us really. That's the, that's the that's the no-name PE
40:05
guy coming out of me right there. Do you give him a
40:07
bath on a PE guy? Was a guy who likes Lena dodgeball and recess. Like that's a p is to me earlier. He was talking about Beta And I was like, you don't mind nerds, I don't understand
40:17
what the fuck, what the hell's beta?
40:19
It is a good thing. Yeah,
40:22
I'm a beta is like a good thing. I was like I don't understand what that
40:24
mean. You're kind of a low Bator guy. Actually Sam,
40:28
I think about it.
40:29
I Ki kind of your kind of like even Keel like I feel like I know within a band. What I'm going to get out of you. Any any given day? I think you're complimenting me but I don't understand why you like you show up. You tweeted about that recently you hate when people say they're gonna do something and then not do it like you. So you take pride in being low beta, like people know what they can expect from you want to give him death
40:47
by the way what a what a stupid thing to tweet. Yeah. Like I like long walks on the beach and movies, like, who likes somebody who says they're gonna do something, it doesn't do it. What? Obvious tweet. Yeah, first of all,
41:00
Give me the clout that I deserve like it. Don't hate what it when it's Silas. I don't hate number two. I'm not saying it's like people who say, they're afraid of heights. I get everyone's afraid of heights, but like, you just like some people that just like, I, you know, it's like what's high on your list. I don't think that, I don't know. Like, like there's a lot of things that are no, you shown that don't annoy me and vice versa like what's, what's one thing that annoys you Sean that you don't think annoyed, Sam. I don't think anything annoys
41:25
him. Nothing annoys me.
41:29
It? That's the beauty of it.
41:30
Wait really you don't think anything bothers you? Not think yeah. Now I want to dig into father father's.
41:35
Yeah. I guess what bothers me is only usually things with myself. So like if I find myself in a bad mood or like getting annoyed with something or getting bothered by something and getting impatient with something that's actually the thing that bothers me, I'm like, oh man, I let this get to me like, for like that second. That's the thing that gets to me, right? So usually, it's not something that frustrates me or annoys me. It's usually either impatience or boredom or
41:59
Or feeling cranky or tired or something like that, you know? Like and I'm like, oh no, I don't want to be that way. That, that bothers me.
42:05
So for years, I used to say that Shawn. I was like, I was like, I think I'm going to have a pretty steady path to wealth creation and Sean you either gonna like it's not going to be as extreme. I think we joked around with mr. B's were like, you know, six out of ten times. If you were reborn, you would be a degenerate like Gambler or drug addict and like, four out of ten times. You'd be successful with Sean. It's not that bad. But it's like, you know, you're gonna you're the type of guy who can roast it.
42:29
And like you might actually hit it big. There's a good chance or you might like, just be only, okay, for a long time and now so I'm basically saying yeah, your likelihood. I think of being a billionaire is actually higher than mine, but your likelihood of being like a degenerate is probably also higher. Yeah. High
42:43
beta. Yeah, but here's the
42:45
problem with Sean, I've just realized over the past handful of months. He is too emotionally healthy to probably be incredibly successful. He has this problem that few people have, which is he's just happy.
42:59
You know what I mean? He's got this. It's just this man depends on your definition of success, man. I would argue that Shawn is the most successful then man, if he's like super happy. Yeah, you define success with these superficial things like happiness and well-being and all that
43:12
bullshit, stupid stuff. Yeah, I do I will say that Sean
43:16
has had more High highs and low lows this year, at least for my, like perceived view of Shawn through our group text and like, and he's totally unfazed, like, Sean. I mean flashback to like, you know, of
43:29
Like crypto crash, right? I'm like yo Sean's down bad I'm texting Sam I'm like is Shawn okay like Sean's texting the group chat, totally fun. I'm like yo Shawn broke like is Shonda a margin called right now I have no idea what's going on and then Sean's like yeah I sold all my
43:42
stock and I was like, holy shit, Sean sold, the bottom, Sean sold the bottom like markets roaring in June and then the
43:49
market crashes again and Sean's a genius traitor that like sold the top of the market or something. Dude, is just like does that stuff bother you at all Sean like first of all, what perspire?
43:59
ER, to selling a business recently, but what was your network down? Just a significant
44:03
amount? Yeah, probably, I mean, it's hard to calculate that sort of thing. So but let's say liquid of the liquid stuff so not counting equity and companies, you know, it's probably down 50% or something like that. I mean, most of the Investments that I didn't keep much cash. This is my investment strategy pre 2022, right? So might this very point to is Cash is trash and you know fist bumps all around to my boys who thought the cash is trash then. Oh dude.
44:29
Is there a safer investment than Amazon Bliss? Blue chipper, right? Like that's my version of of safety as yeah, I'm gonna put in some boring tech companies, you know the Amazons Google's Facebook's of the world, what could go wrong and then lastly, you know, then you know huge amount of startups that were, you know getting marked up like crazy fist, bumps all around, get my UPS because my office was going ups and then the last thing was crypto and I was like oh well see your boys a genius and moved a huge percentage of his net worth in to you know becoming an
44:59
Cerium and 0 and then this Luna shit that's popping. I'm doing great. So you know that's that was me before. So basically every single thing I had invested as gone. You know what about you know, sad thing like my terrible horrible. No good, very bad day. Like I was basically having that for this year, in terms of Investments but, you know, whatever it bother you. Well, I don't like losing money but like, you know, did I let it bother me? No, like, you know, I basically lose his lips. No, I took steps. I was like, okay well what matters here like? Okay, let me just first get perspective, you know?
45:29
Any kind of hardship? Is my family doing for now? They're good. They're fine, right? Secondly. What should I actually do? Do I need to make some adjustments? Was I wrong about certain things? Or should I do some things to give myself more comfort? So why did I sell my soul? I basically margin called myself. I was like you know what, I think things are gonna go lower and I don't want to sweat this all the time so I'm going to sell this amount here so that I don't have to worry about anything. I'm gonna move more into cash and I'm going to book this loss because I think that'll that'll offset against some gains that I have this year. And you know, then I won't have to think about this stuff for a little while. I will
45:59
Focus on these other things that I want to be focusing on because I'm not a traitor. I'm not a like investment genius. So that's not going to be my goal and then I don't know that. I never got my happiness from when it was going up. So why would I get my sadness for when it's going down? Didn't make sense to me, you must have
46:13
felt good when Luna. Like, I think you you originally plugged Luna in milk Road at like 40 and I like, I bought some, I was like, you know, sounds pretty smart. He knows the script. Oh shit, hands down and so I like I bought a bag like I, you know, I'm not like, I'm not really a degenerate critical, but I like bought a bag of Luna.
46:29
Shit went up to like 118 and I was like, yo, Shawn is my God. Like Sean, what other what other ideas do you have? And then I we were supposed to interview on our old pod. We were supposed to interview, do Quan like I'd hit him up on Twitter, he supposed to come on, the pod on like a Thursday and on that Sunday. Like Luna had been wavering, like it had come down to like 80 or something and I get an email from his assistant that just says, unfortunately do we'll have to reschedule the interview for this Thursday and I'm sitting in bed and I'm like I got a little bit of the heebie-jeebies.
46:59
Phoebe's like, I don't know what this is. So I go downstairs and I sell my entire bag at. Like, I don't know, a small gain, like not, not good. I saw the whole thing
47:07
next morning, I wake up in that shit that like five like the whole, the whole
47:11
thing, unravels overnight and then I get an email from his assistant saying, like, he's gonna have to cancel the interview and I'm like, yeah, well this dude has a red notice out for him. No, shit. He's not coming on our podcast at this
47:19
point. Yeah that was that was a bad day. I was on vacation I was in Hawaii with my family and I'm watching my time and I'm like I don't even have my I'm not even at my computer like I can't even
47:29
Get to my crypto like it's not like on my laptop or whatever so I'm like well couldn't couldn't make a move if I wanted to. So I guess I'll just like you do lose all this money here and you know just enjoy this vacation is nothing else. I could do at this point
47:42
you were remarkably cool about it. I remember texting with you that day the framework you've talked about in the past that I love around. This stuff is your local verse tourist thing. I think that's so good of like tourists freak out when the seasons change and Just Bounce. Yeah, and locals are aware that there are seasons and that you
47:59
You know they it comes in swings and they're aware of the environment so they can stick it out and be fine through it. I've always just thought there's a third one which is the like stubborn local like the dude that lives in the Coastal Village and is like oh global warming is not real and then he's fucking underwater and like drowning and he's like, a global warming is not real. Is he drowns? And so I'm always just like how do you make sure that you don't go from being the like the local and you're proud of being a local to the stubborn local that just sits there until you
48:25
die. Yeah that's the hardest thing and I remember with startups this was always the
48:29
I should because you'll hear a story like Pinterest had no traction for over a year, then finally started to work because he walked into an Apple store and like started putting Pinterest as a default homepage on these. He hospital, he was determined and it's like, oh, okay, got it. So determination just keep going. Even when all the data is telling you that this ain't working and then there's like the exact other advice which is like you know, you got to be super data-driven feedback oriented. You got to listen to the market, all that matters is, are you making something people want? And if you have no users, you got to like, you know, make adjustments. You got to Pivot
48:59
And so, the hardest question as a Founder is to know, am I being the right? Kind of stubborn, right? So am I being stubborn? Because I'm right and I need to, you know, just tweaked just make small adjustments and just stay at it. Be determined to be persistent or am I banging my head against the wall? And I need to listen to the to the signals. And I need to be changing my mind, and nobody can give the generic advice about when to do what it's super like, super context-dependent, super circumstance dependent same thing with investing, right? Like, you know, am
49:30
About should, I should, I should, I still believe in something, even, you know, do I believe in Facebook stock. Now that it's getting crushed, right? For me, I went and bought more recently cuz I was like, you know, do what do I believe about this company, and has that changed. So, the tourists first local right is, you got to ask yourself, like, does the thing I believed about this has that changed? Who I have new information, that makes me update. My thinking here, do I am I, you know, am I holding on to this position? Just so that I don't feel like I'm wrong, right? Like, you know, my my willing to upset except being wrong yet. Ashes of all these questions and be able to be
49:59
This with
49:59
yourself has that changed with
50:01
crypto know, Mike my opinions and my conviction has stayed the same but that's about crypto as a whole, right then on each specific, maybe project or coin, you might have like a slightly different
50:10
opinion. Well, what's what's one thing that you think is bullshit? Now that you didn't think was bullshit a year and a half ago?
50:16
So I'll give you an example where that's not sure. They'll give example where that's true. So the not true one is like let's take Luda, for example, the the bet on Luna was always knowing that there's this the way it was architected was this thing is going to rock it up because
50:29
As the sort of the what they call the ponds. And I'll mix. Right? Like, the game theory incentive. Yeah. But people don't understand like the basically, it's like, economic a series of economic incentives. And so the incentives were worse aligned such that. This thing should go up during the during you know when certain participants behave a certain way. And from the beginning there was always these blog posts out there about what is the death cycle? Look like. So what if this reversed course would this not because Lunas the collateral? Would it? Not cause it to collapse really fast?
50:59
And the question was like, will that happen won't happen. So even when you invest in at the beginning, we wrote Our Little investment memo to ourselves about like here's our one-pager why we think this is a good idea and why we think this could go horribly wrong when it crashed. It wasn't like something we never had never thought of it was. Oh yeah, that downside scenario, we talked about as exactly what happened, right? Like basically, there was a giant, you know, cell pressure that crew, that card, cause that cascading down cycle. Yep. That we always thought that could happen. We had hoped, it wouldn't happen. We had thought that maybe there was a, you know, there would be a way to put by
51:29
Your back against it but nope, it wasn't going to work. And so this is very fast example of basically, just because it turned out, bad doesn't mean I changed my position because actually at the beginning we said well here's why I'm not putting my entire net worth into this, right. I put two and fifty K into it that's not like a massive bet for me that's a solid size BET, right? So it's like, you know, I put a proprietary size because I thought I had upside and I thought there was some, some key risks with it. The thing that I would say, I've changed my opinion most on is I thought, man, if people start to worry,
51:59
About inflation and they look at man you know I have the same hundred K my bank but it just doesn't buy me the same amount it used to write. They'll realize like people will become more aware that the money they have is diminishing, the cash. They have the u.s. dollars, they have is diminishing and value that they will probably look to go to a monetary system that doesn't have that problem. And so the idea that Bitcoin will do well if people start to, if inflation becomes something that people are more worried about what the US dollar,
52:29
And that hasn't happened. Inflation. Got as bad as it's ever been, but people's response was more conservative than aggressive. People did not make a change to the Bitcoin monetary system, which would not have that problem. They sort of, you know, so stuck with it and actually the US Dollars gain strength rip because other currencies got crushed even worse and so the dollars gain strength. So that was one that I had thought that this was, this is what would happen. It makes me reassess, was my logic incorrect or something else. You know, what, did I get wrong about this idea that
52:59
In a high inflation, environment Bitcoin should be something that people start moving more into. I mean, the
53:03
Bitcoin one is actually pretty interesting, Sean because I thought about that a lot to of is there is there something just like in the segmentation of how the price went up? That is impacting that because I still think, basically, my assumption of why that didn't happen like why that you know, scenario of high inflation and people flood into this is that most of the price increase was actually just driven by this, like number go up, you know, crazy, you know,
53:29
Monetary policy people just pump into speculative, you know, high risk assets and that it wasn't really driven by, like Believers like you who underlying we're like, oh there's really good fundamentals to technology. Really make sense. Driving it up. It was mostly just like my random friends who were like, ha ha Bitcoin number go up, this is great. And then they freaked out when I went the other direction and pulled out you know interest rates, rise me, pull out. I wonder whether like if you segmented it somehow of like the true underlying technology Believers. My guess would be that. The picture would look different like people that
53:59
That really are like thinking about the technology and thinking about the underlying monetary policy that exists on the network. My guess would be those people think that this is a great time to be accumulating in
54:08
buying. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. But basically, it's just my mind. It was like a very simple picture. It was like you're playing one game and the rules of this game are that the bank gives you some money. It's my game of Monopoly with a bank, gives you some money, but every year, your money becomes worth a little bit, less by Design. They're trying to make it two or three percent worse per year, but sometimes it gets 10.
54:29
It was per year, right or 9% worse per year, right? That's the game is set up that way and hey, oh, you know, there's this other new edition of Monopoly that came out or that doesn't happen to your money by assumption was like, oh people will just start to move to the new edition because they're not going to like with their money becomes less valuable over time, but I don't think that's the message that's got across. It was basically Bitcoins, how you get rich or Bitcoins, how you lose your money and that's the narrative that actually like played out because it was more, it was more aggressive but Bitcoin will make you rich was an easier sell to
54:59
Two people. Yeah, and it was also the reason why they'll start to sell their Bitcoin. When they realize when they feel like, oh, the coin thrashing,
55:04
by the way, I've got one more non-agency. Business idea for you, it isn't on Services, bam, maybe it's slightly, so not that much Services more product, mobile podcast and video Studio. Yeah man dude it's such a pain in the butt dude. Huge pain in the ass by like a few Vans kicked them out with like a pretty fire set up just in the back of like a normal-size fan doesn't even have to be an RV for like two to three people could fit deck it out.
55:29
Like a few good DSLR cameras that can do the recording like dual camera setup. So you have like a few mics hanging off the sides and basically, go and post it up in a couple of major cities like one van in each major city. It has like dope backgrounds. Cool lighting like you know, whatever do the neon signs and shit in there and rent it out for like 500 bucks for two hours to do podcast recordings or like you know a couple hundred bucks to do like people going in and filming Instagram short, stick talks, shit like that. Like if you put one in LA and you put one in New York City, I bet you could kill it on a cash.
55:59
I'm an attorney. I just joined this gym called the collective and Austin and it's like this like fancy whatever I like and everyone there looks like an Instagram model and they have Keiko working there as well. But they also have three Studios for podcasts and picture-taking. Like they just they just really don't know their audience and I went there and everyone looks like they're the type of person who is like, if you follow a shirtless ripped guy on Instagram, and they live in Austin, there probably a member here. And I mean, if you catch them on bad lighting, they don't even look that good. But I'd like some
56:29
In that lighting, you'd look, unreal. I think you're making fun of me. I don't know what. I think makes a huge difference with that, with these like Instagram models, right? So I can just get good Lighting on one of those things. I bet you could kill it. I do think these like mobile Studio, though you could
56:44
crush I'm looking at these U-Haul box trucks. So how much do these cost to buy? So it looks like you could buy a used one of these for like 25 Grand, right? So 25 Grand and let's sit and you
56:57
only have to put five
56:58
down
56:59
Oh yeah, you put five down. You probably going to need to put another 5 into the kit like to make the thing work. And you probably need a dude operating the thing. But maybe maybe you could get rid of that, probably not probably have to have an operator on site. So I think that's the, that's the tricky part. Where you got to sell it as a membership? Basically, it's got to be a gym membership, so it's like you can use this studio. You could just book it when it's free but you got to be like a monthly member. If you're you know if you're doing five hundred dollars a month or whatever and you have a studio on
57:24
demand, that's a genius idea to do it as a membership actually, because do the thing,
57:29
Me think of this is like in New York. Now, there is these couple of Studios where people are doing all, like, in person podcasts. Like there's like, what the fuck media is? One of them. Yeah, I go to the stream and they're like, they're solid, they're not great. But they're having to pay New York City rent till like to do this. And so I can't imagine that economics or that great. If you got a truck and you just bought it, you could go post this thing up in a parking lot and every two hours just move to a different parking lot and like you never have to pay rent, you're paying money, you know like carrying cost of the of the truck and you're paying the whatever 5 to 10 grand it.
57:59
Takes you to action. We're gonna get the truck. I'm gonna call it. Mu D 0 the mobile Studio. Moody. Oh, The Moody, boys. That's what am I going to branding agency to work on the name. But yeah,
58:09
take our are deafening silence as feedback on your name
58:16
but it's hot. I'll let me ask you a question. So Sean and I are trying to get popular on YouTube right now with this with this thing and one thing that's kind of the elephant in the room when everyone talks to you, I mean, I know Sean.
58:29
About this constantly is that you are just ridiculously good-looking. Do you do you think that this stick of yours of having good hair and being good looking is that image working for you? And what aesthetic stick should Sean and I have first off calling it a shtick is pretty hilarious to me. No this chick you have this like a facial hot chick. Yeah, whatever you got in between your ears like that stick like let's talk about it.
58:59
The platforms that are visual it obviously helps to like when people are scrolling through things for like people to stop and say, oh the person is like attractive right like it just when you're scrolling through you agree on can you see attractive girls saying your head helps
59:15
us you agree?
59:16
Was that a Mean Girls right this time. Do you stop them being girls the millennial through it through the fact that I knew that it was a Mean Girls reference is just as telling our big girl. No look I mean for you guys.
59:29
You're both good-looking dudes. My going to sell your shorts, Sam. You got like a little look with the like fake glasses. I don't think those have a prescription on them, so it's
59:36
like little bit. They're definitely fake dude. And then
59:41
Sean Sean's got the like you know, my favorite line that Sean ever had is you know if you're not going to be good-looking be interesting looking and I tell that to like everyone that I give advice to a light shines on interesting, like
59:54
interesting-looking man. Look at this beard. He's got the salt duties, rig 30, like he looks like, literally
59:59
We every single
59:59
person who shops at like a generic grocery store in the suburbs,
1:00:04
what's wrong with something that's a little bit of a vibe that, but that's not
1:00:09
interesting. I don't know, man. I mean, I think you guys can play up the whole like your stick of these two guys that look, completely different. That are like somehow friends like you guys are like
1:00:18
cat dog, man. You remember that show back in the day Capital, we're going for. We're going for, like, why are these guys famous? That's what we would do if we just get over the hump so exposed.
1:00:29
Like this these guys that there's nothing special about them. But that's our thing though, that there's nothing special. I don't think you have to be that good looking
1:00:38
on YouTube, by the way, like you guys don't need to be like, models on YouTube.
1:00:43
If you like, look at the people that have
1:00:44
crushed on YouTube, it's not like hot dudes, and hot chicks on YouTube necessary, not that you guys aren't hot. I don't want you to come away. I don't want Sam to text me later being like hey man, what you said, that
1:00:54
wasn't represented because I know I'm going to get that
1:00:56
text later tonight from Sam wait. But
1:01:00
Do better on YouTube. I don't think they do better. I don't think that's right, but I'm not on YouTube yet. I'm gonna get on YouTube here soon and I'll let you know whether we think that's true. So you're saying, you think you're hot? Yeah, you're right. You got this real burden. You're carrying my friend. Well, I like Alex foremost. He's got the thing where he wears like those stupid cutoff jeans now and these just like
1:01:22
joked, that knows, no strip and like the no strippers, no choice level of being big muscular.
1:01:29
That's perfect example of you have to be great-looking got to be interesting looking.
1:01:33
Yeah, dude. He's peacocking hardcore and it's purchased. Oh,
1:01:36
look. It's a look man. And like it each of
1:01:39
you guys has a look. And if you can just stick to a consistent look, it's like Chris sacca with his Cowboy
1:01:43
shirts. Like you need your thing. I've been actually, I've been thinking about this for a long time. I've been needing a uniform. I tweeted this out, I go, yeah, I'm looking for a uniform. I want to look the same every time I'm on this podcast. So I need something that from here up, like a robe. This is gotta be. Yeah, it may be.
1:01:59
It's got to be signature and I'm in the market so I'm taking suggest I'm going to put a bounty on this actually. I'm going to give a thousand dollar bounty to anybody who can help me develop my the chest up. Look, that's what I'm looking for.
1:02:13
I kind of want to see you do like traditional Indian attire for it. Like, it could be kind of fire if you're wearing like a dope like kurta or like, you know, some sort of like Indian, you know, up top. I think I'll be kind of fire, Sean Puri, it could be part of your whole like angle with the name and
1:02:27
stuff. That's great dick.
1:02:29
You're eligible for the Bounty that right now, you know, where I might, I might throw into it. I also
1:02:34
might match it just because I think it's going to be funny to see. Okay, were you never take your tracing it? So I'm grandbaby
1:02:39
the throwing a thousand. Although
1:02:41
in a thousand on top of it, sounds like
1:02:43
she's before. He's on the hook for 1,000. Yeah. No, I'm not. I don't, I don't give it a peer pressure. You're breaking up.
1:02:50
This is the stupidest thing ever. I'm not gonna give someone a thousand dollars they can. So, tell Shawn what t-shirt to wear,
1:02:57
you have
1:02:57
a signature look already.
1:02:59
D. So it's easier for you to say, Yeah, well, my muscles, Damien the like know you've got like, the little, like, the pretty boy thing going with the like
1:03:05
non-prescription, grandfather, whose sweater not a grandfather to everything. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, you are
1:03:11
going to be like, you're gonna be a quintessential, father. You're gonna have a lot of stern talks with your child already knows, it's coming. I don't know what to say to this. Thank you.
1:03:19
Yeah, yeah. We're I want to hear this before you go. What is the grand plan? What is the Grand Vision for yourself? So you went from No Name PE guy that as we established
1:03:29
Two two legendary thread boy to now CNBC contributor book. Deal guy author. I think you're going to be president is that I joke about that a lot, but I genuinely believe you could become the president some day. If you wanted to do, you have a grand plan for yourself? What's the vision? I
1:03:47
could see that being in the cards long-term running for public office? I don't know if president is crazy role that you necessarily want. I think it's like probably one of the hardest and worst jobs in the world. Don't go Nikita on us. Obama.
1:03:59
Went in looking young and then he'll eat, you know, leaves all gray like looking, you know, looking rough. It's like the highest stress job in the world running for governor would be. I don't know. That could be pretty funny to be a governor of a state. Do you know anything about politics? I've never known you to be. I did, I did my masters in public policy, dude? Yeah, so that was always like what I wanted to do, Matt second-class. I'm basket weaving like that. Doesn't like what? Like, you know what I mean? You think the people that are serving in public office today? Know a lot about politics, it's like what is pot? It's sort of like, the novel thing of like you don't read a business book to no business.
1:04:29
There's no such thing as politics. It's like, you know, are you a reasonable thinker? Do you have the ability to change your mind? Which right now politicians, do not and can you inspire people and get people to move on things? Which party would you be? I don't even know how many independent man. So, I mean, I voted Democrat. I voted Republican and prior election. So I actually, I actually don't know what party are bad problem. I'm hoping that a third party Rises over the next 20 years before I actually go do this because I hate the direction that you know like polar politics has gone, you know?
1:04:59
Like the loudest minority on each side, could see you being a good politician because you pretty much never take a stand on anything. Kind of like, what you just did, you're like, I always call it. I'm like your PC, like the rock, man. You'd never say anything inappropriate. Like you, you are
1:05:12
like beloved like the
1:05:14
rock? Well, yes, but it's a hill. He never takes a stand on anything. He's always, he Hedges. Everything he says you could be beautiful for a politician. All right. Well, I'm counting on your fundraising which
1:05:24
supports him. I'll even introduce you as my hot
1:05:27
friend said, when you come up to
1:05:29
Speech at my my future campaign event. How about that? You already do it for me. Then you're already lying. You're already lying a good politician. Well, thanks for coming on. Where what do you want to do? Want to promote something. Is that a thing? You have some to promote. I don't know, man. People kind of know where to find. I'm at Tahoe Bloom on every everything and my newsletter is at my website so I hope boom.com. Well, I'm happy we finally got you on. We'll have to do it again. We're gonna get another. I'm going to ask Austin Reef to come on. They'll be another group chat guy. We've asked Nikita to come on a few times but he's, you know, weird.
1:05:58
Nikita's busy right now, busy like basking in the glory of his gas app thing. You know, he's just thinks it's cool to tell me. No, I think coming to Kita, Nikita has been that guy that's like, oh my God, guys, I hate running this app. This is so tough. And then like, you'll see, like, on his Instagram him, like, having a photo shoot is his house. Like posing out like looking like this lady is girlfriend in the behind. The seat says, oh my God, this looks like an album cover. He does live in his best life, man more props to him because that dude had called his shot and has
1:06:29
Gone and done it so we'll get him out. It will get Austin on, we gotta go through a few more. We've had Huber on, but I do thanks for coming and doing this. We appreciate it. Yeah, thank you guys.
1:06:36
I feel like I can rule the world. I know, I could be what I want to travel. Never looking back.
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