Why Is Andrew Wilkinson Monetizing His Twitter Followers?

That's like eight hundred thousand dollars of recurring revenue. If I get two and a half percent, that's two million. If I do five percent, that's four million. And if you just think about what would I pay for a business That makes me that much money a year. Like this is like five, ten, fifteen million dollars of value.

And so I'm looking at it and going This is great. I pay for what I'm getting. Yeah. I feel like I can rule the world and no way be what I want to

I put my law in it like my day song on the road All right, what's going on, everyone? We have Andrew Wilkinson on the pilot today. Andrew's one of our great, great friends. He runs this company called Tiny, which is publicly traded in Canada. It's a holding company that owns like forty different companies. I think it's publicly traded at like a eight hundred million dollar market cap, something like that. Does 150 ish in a year in revenue. So he's got really good insight. And we talked to him about a few interesting things. One thing that sounds kind of like not that cool, but actually is cool, is he hung out with a few folks that are worth like ten or twenty billion dollars recently and he like talked about what it's like hanging out with people. uh in that sphere. Uh we talked about Meta Lab, which was his agency that he started, which provided all the profits in order to start Tiny and how it makes something like twenty million dollars a year in profit. And we just said, How the hell does it make so much money? And what did you guys do? So he gives us a breakdown on that.

Uh, we also asked him which agency he would start now. We asked him all about his new Twitter experience. So why would somebody Who is worth all this money, run a Twitter experiment where that makes ten or twenty grand a month in sales. And he gave us the lowdown on how much money his uh that little experiment's making. And then we asked him about when you take dividends from a company, like what do you actually do with the dividends and where do you invest them or how much do you pay yourself? And he got really transparent about that. And so it was really interesting. So check it out.

This is Andrew Wilkinson. It's Sean. And me, Sam. So if you guys like it. Subscribe on YouTube. Subscribe on Yeah. Spotify subscribe on

Wherever podcasts are. And uh let us know if you liked it. See you soon. I was uh before you got on making fun of Andrew. He looks like Kevin McAllister's mom in Home Alone. Mom. The mom is the bird there. He looks like he uh he looked like he's uh Just taking up rollerblading in the n in the nineties. You're saying I look like Catherine O'Hara.

Look at her character uh in Home Alone. She had a massive wave. It was cool. No, I think it's cool. Embrace it, dude. You look like a bully in a movie. I think you look good. I think it's cool. Okay, man, she was hot. Um

Well, welcome back. There's no podcast on earth where you will just be welcomed with open insults like My first million. Yeah, this is great. Like you guys wanna roast me for another ten minutes? Uh Yeah, I w I was

I was supposed to come on what like three weeks ago and then I got strep throat and dude, I haven't been that sick in years. I was like on death's door for a year. I ended up taking like Three different antibiotics. So I'm uh I'm glad to be alive. And you're on a health kick now. You've been lifting weights. Yeah. Yeah. I'm doing a muscle gain competition with a bunch of Friends, so that's been really fun. Sean says he's Sean has like I think forty days left to have abs. How many days do you have left? I I'm just I I say I'm perpetually eight weeks away from having exactly the body I want. The problem is it's uh the clock restarts every time um

DoorDash, you know. Domino's or Taco Bell or something like that. So Have you tried just doing Osempic? 'Cause like I I have so many friends that are taking that and it's just like they're suddenly ripped. Yeah, there's uh it just doesn't ha it doesn't do it for me in the Sean's very anti like

Are you would you are you you're are you a vaccine are you an anti vaccine guy too? No, but I do think that uh The killer vaccine was Not uh A vaccine. I was like, Wait a minute.

So you still get it? You still spread it? All right. Well. Uh that doesn't sound like mixing to me. You're like anti putting stuff in your body, it seems. I don't drink caffeine. I don't uh take like

I guess I take some supplements. Like I'll take uh protein. outer or whatever. But uh yeah, I try not to be dependent on anything. And you know, the weight loss thing for me, I'm already married. I got two kids. I don't really care to lose weight, uh, aside from conquering my mind and doing something that I wanted to do. So if I took Ozempik to do it, it would not uh Be satisfying. In the way that it will be when I just do it myself.

Yeah, I've just always told myself at one point in my life I wanna look like Wolverine. Even if it's like for one week and then it's over and it's unsustainable or whatever, I just want to get there. Wanna have the photo to prove it. Um, so that's my goal for the next year. Well, you should do the um The Jesse Itsler living with a seal thing. I feel like that's uh in play for you. Why why aren't you doing that?

That sounds so freaking miserable. That was the David Goggins thing. Did you read the both him? No, I just remember you guys had him on. You gotta read that book. It's pretty good. It's a fun it's a fun It's called Living Living With and Seal or something. Living with Seal. Uh down.

He writes it almost like a diary, so it's just sort of like, you know It's it's not like a long book with like a bunch of flowery language. It's very simple, um And you know, it's like any David Goggins thing, it gets you motivated, but this is like secondhand Goggins. You don't even realize the guy is David Goggins because he doesn't say it in the book. And you're reading

The perspective not of David Goggins telling you That you're soft and you need to be hard, but like A guy who was kind of soft. getting yelled at by David Goggin, so you're sort of second hand at receiving the info. Have you guys seen the cover of this book? It looks like you know, remember like Ernest Goes to Camp. It looks like the cover of like Ernest goes to very outdated. Well, we and we're having the guy Jesse on the pod soon. He's scheduled

And I was thinking about it, Sean. We've t asked our question of like who's like who has the ideal life. He's up there, man. He's he's kinda nailed it.

Well that's his thing, the life resume. What does he do? So he just like has these experiments or whatever? I know he went and lived with monks. He's done the Navy SEAL thing. Well, before that, he was like I think he like emish initially made a little bit of money by having like I think he had like a rap group and he like made songs for like the New York Knicks and he like that was his career was writing jingles. Try to be a rapper. was like, all right, maybe can't be like rapper rapper, but I could be like commercial jingle rapper. Hit it with that, made a couple million bucks, like sold the company for like four million dollars. Then he created the fractional jet share company, uh Marquee Jets.

Him and his buddy. And then they sold that to NetJets, which Buffett owns, and then Uh he married the Co founder of Spanks. Um the founder of Spanish. She's like a billionaire. Yeah. And then he also created like uh a coconut. What's it called? Ziva bars. He bought

into Z uh uh Coconut water. Is he coconut water? Okay, Zico. Zico Coconut Water. um early on and then help them sell to Coke. So he basically just goes like

Kind of like mission or passion, uh to passion. But he's had like Pretty good results. Like he owns a part of an NBA team. He was like, Oh, I wanna I'm into fitness. So he creates this running club. He actually reminds me a little bit of you in that like

I feel like you experiment Uh like You like to experiment and you'll get into your experiments and the experiments almost start There's almost like oh why is Andrew doing this almost silly thing But it's because there's something in you that's like you identify something and you're like right now, Jesse It's just like

I love pickles. And there's no great pickle company. So he's like scouring the earth to find the best pickle company to buy. He's like, there's a big opportunity of pickles. And that he's like, I can't believe you guys are all sleeping while there's a pickle opportunity like this. And I just find it amazing how he's getting really into these Like

Niche, passion, pursuits. But then kinda pulls them off in an epic way. I think I think it's really cool. I mean, I think um we talked about him before, but Nick Gray Any of these people that build their life around the thing they actually love doing.

Where like, okay, I wanna get rich, I wanna build a big business or whatever. And so you get into doing something, but you don't actually necessarily like a lot of those Tasks you do, where if you can build a business where Your job is like to meet interesting people or be a podcaster and speak to really interesting people all the time, or Do these crazy life experiments. I think that's awesome, but I think it's a double edged sword. I've made that mistake.

where I will get into a hobby or something like that and I'll turn it into a business. And it will take the joy out of it. So I think it's a little it's a little hard to find that that right Uh Uh in between spot.

Well that's why I didn't want to do that Twitter thing, because so you're doing Twitter subscribers. You have like a community now. I think you I don't know if you'll say the revenue or not. But it's like Actually kind of a business. Uh six figures a year in revenue. Are you enjoying that? You you told me you're doing it and I was like, I don't wanna do that. That sounds hard.

Yeah. Yeah. Well let me let me explain. So yeah, so I've about two hundred and forty thousand Twitter followers. I've never monetized it anyway. I just you know, I tweet every day and it's literally like I'm in the shower or I'm on the toilet and I think think of something and I tweet it out. That's always been my life on Twitter. Um, and it's been amazing. Like I've met tons of interesting people from it. But the issue is, and I know both you guys have this problem too. You get endless reach outs from all these people.

Constantly. And for a while I had open DMs. It was just overwhelming. I was getting like a hundred DMs from random people pitching me on like crypto scams and stuff. But every like twenty five people. would be some incredible twenty two year old who has this amazing cash flow business. They wanna sell me or they need money or something like that. And so

I had this incentive. to go through it and I would spend like thirty minutes a day going through all these and triaging them and kind of hating my life. And so When I saw this subscription thing, I was like, Okay

This is actually a filter. So what Twitter lets you do is have Um gated Tweets. So you can say anyone who pays to subscribe to me gets these extra tweets. And so what I did is I was like, okay, if someone will spend twenty nine bucks

Which is the cost to basically buy me lunch. Then they can DM me, then they can message me, then I'll you know, then I'll respond. And so I used it as a filter. But it kinda surprised me as I started doing the math. Um, so basically what I did is I said, Okay, twenty nine bucks. I'll do an AMA once a month, which you know, I enjoy doing anyway. And I or

Just v a video, like a big video group or whatever. And then I made a uh telegram group and that's it. And I said I won't even respond to the telegram group. Um, you know, that's it. You got the AMA and my tweets or whatever. But when you do the math, like it's pretty crazy. I have about five hundred and fifty Um paying subscribers today.

That's growing pretty consistently. Um that's about Sixteen K of MRR. So about two hundred K a year. Uh it's basically pure profit.

I probably spend An hour a month, two hours a month doing the AMA or whatever. And if you look at the math, like a one percent conversion rate on two hundred and um What is it? Two hundred and forty thousand people. That's like eight hundred thousand dollars of recurring revenue. If I get two and a half percent, that's two million. If I do five percent, that's four million.

And if you just think about what would I pay for a business That makes me that much money a year. Like this is like five, ten, fifteen million dollars of value. And so I'm looking at it and going This is great. I pay for what I'm getting.

I'm getting People being filtered out, the dinguses are filtered out. Um, I'm making money. And I'm actually getting deal flow. So I've like hired I've literally hired two or three people from this. I now go to this group and I'm like, hey, I need a CEO for this business or I want to buy a business like this. And so it's been awesome.

Um and yeah, I'm loving it. S do you pay to follow Uh Andrew? No, I will. I mean I can just text them, but I will. I'm a dingus, I guess. You're in the biggest. I'm a paying subscriber. So I I Are you? Of course. All right, I'll do it. Are you gonna do it, Sean? No, I'm never gonna do this. I paid literally to just figure out why the hell is Andrew doing this, and then I my mind started going with conspiracies. I text Andrew, can I share my conspiracy theory as to why so I

Sam, I sent Andrew a voice note, I go Uh th this is my logic. You're way too rich to be doing this. So there's gotta be another reason. So why would why would Andrew start using all the paid features of these new paid features of of X? Um, why would he be doing these paid tri subscriber experiments? And he's speaking so glowingly about

Oh, this is so cool, how he's discovering his true fans, how he's getting all this value out of it. I was like, this just doesn't add up. It's too much work for too little money for this guy. And so then I was like I know what he's doing. I've seen Andrew do cool moves like this in the past where he uses he throws his weight around

In order to To meet the cool people he he likes and admires and wants to hang out with. I said Oh this is the long game. Because

Guess who really wants cool, interesting people like Andrew? Using all the paid Twitter features In order to to uh to to to build a a small business and and it and would love that they're telling the world how great this is. Elon freaking Musk.

And I thought, Oh, this is genius, actually. Andrew is using this feature on blast. He's the most legit guy who's doing this. Um with a unique use case. And He's got a big following. He's gonna be the gold star example.

He's gonna get a follow. He might get a DM. He might get invited to. Might get invited to come out to visit you. Andrew's gonna end up friends with Elon Musk from this whole thing. That's my prediction and so I I

Sent a voice note to Andrew like I cracked the case, like I found You know, whatever. The the shooter for J F K And I was like, Ah, I know what you're doing. You're trying to become friends with Elon. And he's like, No. I just like that. Yeah, right. And I was like, damn, I almost wish if that was the answer, that would have been a better answer.

Is that true? I actually I have no, and I I um I've invested in SpaceX quite a while ago and I have a ton of friends Who are friends with Elon and know him and stuff. I honestly I don't know what I would say to the guy, right? Like

I feel like He's like a super genius engineer, like super kind of Asperger's y guy. I don't there's a lot of people I would love to meet. Elon. I'd love to be at a dinner table with him, but I actually don't I I don't know what I would say to him. It's like meeting Thomas Edison, like

How am I interesting to this guy? Who would you like to be? The most boring businesses. Uh, I really want to meet Larry Ellison. I've been trying to meet Larry Ellison for like Probably two years. And I went to Lanae. And he owns the entire island of Lanae. It's insane. Like everything he owns there, all the businesses, all the hotels. All the real estate.

And while I was there, I was trying to find a mutual connection and he kept driving by me and he orange the guy the guy drives an orange corvette and he just rips round Lanai. And I just couldn't I couldn't meet him. But anyway, he's super fascinating. Dude, it's so funny that From the outside. So we'll do an intro to this'cause we just jumped into it. But so Andrew, you're in your mid

Oh yeah, maybe late thirties now. Thirties now. And very ha very successful. Company. Uh in the ballpark with a billion dollars publicly traded.

And you still can't meet some people. And So good looking. It looks like the mom from Home Alone and we still can't get it done. It's insane. I claim to fame. I wanted to look like Wolverine and instead I look like the mom from Home Alone Sister. I didn't tell this story on the podcast yet, but I went down to LA. And um

I I did a bunch of these like pod interviews that are gonna be coming out, but I did some meetings that were not Podcast just like Really interesting people, but I didn't I it didn't record. I just wanted to go. I went to their house I just wanted to meet'em and see what they're like.

And uh One of the people, so I can't say who, but one of the people they were showing me around their house. This is a famous, successful person in LA. Yeah, just uh Use that general character. And they said something really insightful. They were talking about Trying to um

uh get something they're trying to get their kid into a school. And like this is a person who's Rich and famous. They can kinda get anything they want. But there's you know, these schools in LA these private schools that like

Their they get up their thing is that they're like Harvard for kindergarten. They like reject everybody. And so They got rejected at the school. And he's like he's just saying this, he goes I he goes, I couldn't tell you. That morning, he's like, I felt something that I hadn't felt in seven years.

Rejection. He's like nobody had told me no. In seven years. And uh I was like, wow, that's a That's kind of amazing that uh you know, you you sort of feel rejection. And so anyway, this is my my to your Larry Ellison point. I think it's great. that you have certain things that that didn't didn't work out or you got rejected because

When we were in LA, we may met maybe twenty people during the week that we had meetings with. And I would say a very common thing was So people were out of touch with rejection. Uh, which was either one of two things. They weren't trying enough new things, so they're just in their comfort zone.

Or Everybody around them just said yes, even to their bad ideas, even to like requests that didn't make sense. And um you could see firsthand how That's not a great thing, how you don't want to be in that position. Has I I don't know if you've been single and successful.

But Dan Bazarian has this line. I actually read the Dan Bazarian book, which is shockingly good. And he's like Being famous is so much better for meeting girls than being rich. He's like it's ten times better. To be famous than it is rich.

Have you found being successful has helped you with women or do they mostly not give a shit? Uh well I haven't been I haven't really been like single for a very long period of time. It's definitely helped, um But I mean

I think it ultimately comes down to status in the room you're in. Right. So like if you're in a club You know, the DJ, the guy who's making less than the bartender and is getting paid in drinks. He's the man. He's the guy that all the girls want to sleep with. Right. So I think, you know, whatever room you're in and so

You know, if I was at like a like a business conference and a a bunch of people knew who I was Yeah, maybe that would help me with women. But when it comes to day to day, I mean, yeah, you're way better off being like an Instagram influencer or something like girls actually Um, I think it helps though. I mean it helps to have your

your shit together for sure. Uh how do you play the status game? I had a uh experience recently where Somebody I know. I have to be really really vague about that. Somebody I know went to Someone's house who is A billionaire that's also famous.

And that person Um entertains a bunch of people during the summers and has a bunch of people at their house at the same time. All of those people are also rich and famous. And the person I know was a regular person. Not you know, not not like um somebody would recognize or somebody who's been in people magazine or whatever.

And so they felt very intimidated in that social setting. Uh to the point where they're like well, you know I I I'm just gonna go eat in my room because it's like I don't really wanna I feel like if I go here, I have to engage. I don't really know how to engage. They don't they're not gonna care about me. They're really like talking themselves out of it. And

I think that's a very common situation. I know because I've definitely felt that in a bunch of social settings. I think that's probably more common. than I realized. I thought when it when I experienced it, I thought this was something that was just happening in my head. Then as this person was telling me about it, I realized okay, this probably happens to a lot of people. How do you guys deal with

that like kind of social anxiety where You're in your own head about the status of the people in the room and how you fit in and Where where you fit. I've just realized that Everybody wants to talk about themselves.

And it's the Dale Carnegie thing. Find out what someone likes to talk about. And then talk to them about that and just keep asking questions. And I realized that If they f if I make them feel good, if they get to talk about the thing that they're interested in. They will leave that Experience.

thinking of me as a very positive person regardless of status. Have you read that book, Sean? Do you know what he's talking about? Yeah. I have, yeah. There's like a famous story where this like young guy is hanging out with this like rich guy who has the power and the young guy just asks questions for ninety minutes of the hundred minutes and at the last ten minutes the rich guy finally like asks him just a little bit. And the rich guy leaves the conversation being like, That was the best conversation I've ever had. That person sure is great. And the other, you know, the nobody was like

Dude I barely said anything. That literally happens to Ben And the business partner all the time. He'll Come back from a meeting and I'm like, How do you? Yeah, it's great. The guy, you know, I asked the guy a bunch of questions. Uh you know. He's like

He literally I really didn't tell him anything. I didn't say anything. He didn't really ask me too much. He's like, uh I just asked him so many questions that I was interested in about him. He's like at the end of it, the guy stood up and was like, Man, this is one of the best conversations I've had. I really like you. And I was like, did it again, like he is that he's like the walking version of that book. And you and you leave and you're like you know nothing about me, you didn't ask any questions. And I think

It's great if the person is really fascinating. What the status stuff though, where I get annoyed is um So I remember I was at a conference, uh, probably like Thirteen years ago. And at this point my business is making, you know, couple of million bucks a year. Uh in profit. You know it's

Pretty successful. And I sit down at this table next to this V C And he seems very disinterested and you know, then he says, What is what does your startup do? And I say, Well, I don't have a start up, I have a business and it's profitable. And he literally just goes

Oh, a lifestyle business. He turns his back. He just turn literally just turns his back away from me and just starts talking to the guy next to him. And I remember who it is. I will one day there's gonna be like a come up in this moment, but I always think about that. And then the other thing that happened to me recently. Um So I was on this yacht. I'll tell you guys about that.

Later if you want. Do it now. Okay. So basically um I got I got invited to go on like a hundred million dollar plus Uh yacht.

Which I was actually really, really excited about Um, just always been curious. Like it's this bizarre thing that You know, you really don't get to see very often. Um

And so I thought I'd love it, but I actually found it incredibly odd. Um It's something that I feel like Is very desirable.

Because others desire it and we all have this idea of it. But in reality, I just don't get it. Like You spend this insane amount of money. Isolated in a floating hotel.

Away from all the plebs, basically, right? What was the what was the net worth of the guy in order to have a hundred million dollar, yeah, you're worth like five or ten billion. Twillion plus like very, very wealthy guy. Um Uh I won't I won't say who, but someone who's like a subscriber of yours on Twitter, let's just say. Somebody with the Yeah, that's right, exactly. Not a dingus. Um you know, you know, like you do ever like You ever have that feeling of like Um

You know, you're you're on this You're on this like floating hotel. It's Shaking, rattling It's swaying lately, which is like In my opinion, not not nice.

And then You like Have you ever been like a on a really, really nice R V? Like you go on one of those bus RVs and you're like holy crap, I can't believe this RV has like the shower. I can't believe it has like a king size bed. But at the end of the day, it's an R V king size bed. It's not as nice as being in a hotel.

And I felt like that's the rich person equivalent, right? Like everything on this boat. Is amazing. But it's not as nice as staying in a four seasons, and it's a hundred times the cost, and you've got this thing that costs you Ten to twenty million dollars a year to maintain thirty staff. For ten people.

Literally this whole boat just has ten guests on it. Right. Crazy. But anyway, while I'm on this yacht. Whole bunch of people there. And there's this guy who runs a publicly traded company.

And um, you know, I'm doing my thing. I'm asking questions and chatting with everyone. And he kind of like um he's kind of the serious guy, does he seem very unimpressed by me. And he goes, Oh, so what's your business? And I say, Oh, I've got a You know. Holding company. And he goes, Oh, is it public? And I say, Yes, it's public.

And he goes, How big is it? And I go, uh, I don't know, trading at like eight hundred million today. And he goes Oh. Okay.

And his is like ten billion. He's like oh lifestyle business. He's haunting you. Yeah, exactly. It was like that same feeling, right? And it's like I still get that the same irritating feeling. And I just feel like I'm not gonna play I I'm like opting out. I just can't deal with that. Like Soup's up. That's that's the that's the weird thing with the status game, right? It's like there's no end of it. There's no end. Like The build I remember I was talking to a guy who's a um

Multi-billionaire. And he goes. Oh my God. Um you know, Lorine Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs widow. She's so fucking rich. She's worth like twenty billion. And I look at him and I'm like

What can you not do that she can? And he kind of goes glassy eyed and he's like Super yacht. I can't do a super yacht yet. And it's just like that is the most pathetic insane thing. But you're Y yet you're falling into that trap. As am I, and I'm sure Sean is as well, where You know, I'm not A billionaire, but I'm sure someone looked at what

You know, maybe what I have and they go, Why would you want more? And in my head I'm like Of course I want more, and I'm angry at myself for wanting that. But it's never enough. Yeah, it's like leaving a party and Uh you go to the and then you move to the next room and then they put you back at the kids table and you're like, God

I just want to be at the adults table right now and I just keep g ending up at a kids table no matter what level I get to. We were At an event that was um A basketball related event.

And um I've said this before, Ben has like some facial recognition software or something like that,'cause he's like That guy over there is The minority owner of this NBA team. I'm like, dude, how do you even recognize the minority owners of these teams? Like that I don't even know who these people are. You see him at an event, you're like, That's him. He's standing alone.

Talking to nobody. And um so we walk over, we're like, Oh, let's introduce ourselves. Walk over. And uh introduce ourselves. Hey, what's going on here?

I'm trying to What brings you here, you know, whatever. S something like that. So He tur he uh we kind of approach him from the side. He turns. He's got two AirPods in.

I was like, all right, double air pot. All right, no opening, but that's okay. He'll he'll surely take one out. He looks at us. Say the first line. He kinda just looks at us like are you gonna leave or is there more? Oh, there's more? Okay. I see him. He takes out his phone. And he just slides the volume slider down halfway. And I'm like oh shit. He's still g he didn't even pause. It just um temporarily gave us like some airspace and we

And we we actually know a little again, because Ben knows this guy. He's like oh yeah, he he's really into this and he's his business was doing this. So I'm like asking him about his thing for a second. And you know This guy i if there was a cologne called

Leave me the fuck alone. He would have been spraying it all over us in that moment. It was just so obvious what this this guy did not want to talk to us. So fair enough. Uh, we walk away. Next day, uh, we see a picture of him, like I don't know, on Instagram or something like that. He's smiling and we I texted our friend who approached him with us and I was like, Oh, that somebody snapped a picture of him when we walked away. Like that's him smiling so bright. Uh, you know, as as the that interaction was over, but I feel like it's like um You know, you have to experience these things so that you won't do it to others. Right. And I always wonder, like, what's the moment where

I kind of did that to somebody now. Like I I never want to become that. Show me where I'm going to die so I don't go there. Well then I wanna ask you a qu I wanna ask you a question that's unrelated. I think Sean put this here. It's actually his last question, and I just read it and it's the same question I've I I've had. And we could see this now that Um you guys are public. So Andrew's company is publicly traded.

Tiny dot com, you could slash investors, you can find all the good stuff. I think you guys even did your j annual meeting with is a podcast, which was cool. Sean has this question. How the fuck does Meta Lab make so much money? And that is a similar question that I have.

Um it's astounding. how how your your services part of tiny Does so well. You can clarify, but it's something in the range of tiny making fifty or sixty million dollars a year. Um

with really healthy margins, which is just a very big agency. So yeah, that's the question, Andrew. How the fuck does Metalab make so much money? Yeah, I mean agencies can be incredibly profitable. And um They're incredibly. And I think that when you

Do it for almost twenty years and you have a niche. So for example Um with Metal Lab and we own, you know, the numbers you're seeing are the blended Collection of I think Six or seven different agencies. So we'll just be Metal Lab. What's the public number?

For I don't I don't know. For that division. I don't even I thought it was like sixty or seventy. Yeah, I don't know. I mean this is one of the downsides of being public, right? I don't wanna say some number and have it be wrong and then you know, sit Whatever, but but you anyone can go look at the filings and see. Um but for the group of those agencies Um, you know, they can be incredibly profitable um if you find a really, really good niche.

And the nice thing with Meta Lab is that Um, you know, we basically own product design and building like MVPs for startups and stuff. In two thousand seven, and we worked at it for a really long time. And so When you have that reputation, people will pay up.

to get you, right? And there's really not that many people that do it and do it well and have the capabilities we do. So you can charge a premium. Uh and have really healthy margins. Now That goes up and down depending on what's going on in the market, depending on how much um, you know, how hard it is to hire a designer, developer, that kind of thing. Um and the problem with an agency is that it's the most variable business in the world. So you know, they're wonderful. They produce a lot of cash flow.

But for the last twenty years, we've actually been aggressively diversifying away from agencies and the agencies have just been the little engine that could. They just keep on growing and growing and growing. We didn't ever expect that Metal Lab would get to the scale it's at. And um, you know, it's been like an a amazing surprise. Sean and I were just sitting the exact same way. Yeah, I know I had to stop myself. We're both like little Shirley Temple Right when I saw that, I was like I'll let him go first. But I know that there's so many things here that Well Simple question. Does Metal Lab Get most of it or like how many salespeople does Meta Lab employ or people that like their core thing is to go sell

Metal lab as a service to other people to bring in new accounts, bring in business. Well, so we they don't really do a lot of outbound. Um, so it's mostly mostly inbound demand. And again, that's another reason why the business is The agencies in general have been profitable. Like we've basically focused on reputation and organic, whereas A lot of the big agencies and people that have

Much lower margins. So like a typical agency will have twenty percent margins, fifteen percent margins, even five percent margins if it's poorly run. Often they have to have a whole bunch of people out there cold calling and selling. We don't have that problem to the same degree. People come to us and want to work with us. So I think the sales team is maybe

six or seven people or something like that. Um the whole company is about a hundred and fifty or something. Uh, you have had a bunch of agencies. You've had Meta Lab, which is Product design.

Was that I don't know, that's how I would classify it. Um you've had a no code agency. You have um A content agency. You have like a bunch of different agencies. Metal lab seems to be like the biggest winner by far. Like if it would like there's like a power law, right, inside your portfolio and and uh

And Medalab is bigger, it's been around for longer. Um Is it because you started at the right time? Is it because you were there as the founder sweating it and grew it into something big? Is it because that niche is better? Why is Metal Lab so much bigger? Why have these other agencies not had the same Sort of.

uh scale. that Metal Lab was able to. Well we really only um started Dever uh based so here's what happened. So Metal Lab was the golden goose that provided all the cash flow that we used to build Tiny and buy all the other businesses. And to be honest, we really were kind of saying we don't want more agencies. Um, you know, we're happy to own that one.

Uh we'll hold it forever. Um, but that's not an area we wanna focus on. Is that is that beam? Is that is that division called beam? So here I'll just read it called beam. I'll read here here this is from your two thousand this is from your One of the reports. So founded in two thousand six with zero dollars invested, never raised a cent of equity. In two thousand twenty one, it did sixty two million revenue with earnings of twenty one million twenty. Oh sorry, that was twenty one two thousand twenty two. It did eighty one million with uh about

twenty million. And And operating earnings. So those are the the public numbers. Yeah.

So Um, so anyway, so we had this problem. So Metalab was getting to the point where they could only do projects for like Five hundred thousand dollars. And so we had tons of leads coming. And we had nowhere to send them. We would just say no. Um, and so we went out and we acquired a small agency in Spain.

We spun up eighty twenty. We kind of Basically said, look, we've got um We have a sawmill, we've got all this sawdust coming out of the sawmill, all this demand. We should go form this into wood pellets and sell it. And so We basically created like a whole constellation.

of smaller agencies to service the leads from the big one. And then all of those agencies have kind of moved out of the house now. So they're not reliant on Metal Lab leads anymore to the same degree. Um and We've had some amazing successes. While they're not as big Um most of those we started for

twenty five grand, maybe, or up to up to the biggest one we bought maybe for Five hundred grand. Um, you know, that business today does two or three million dollars of eBa Um, so there we've had some really good Wins but

I have this whole framework of like one plus one equals a hundred. And you guys had Sayed on. Yeah, what'd you think about that? Last week, I guess. I loved it. It was great. And there's so much about the way that he thinks. We've read all the same books. Um, a lot a lot was very similar, and I was nodding my head along. But he what he did with WP beginner, where he goes Hey, I've got this huge source of traffic. I've got all these users that want to be told what plugins to use.

Uh and then he can go and buy these plugins that have a customer acquisition problem. They've built a great product, they're built by a developer. They don't know how to market it. They don't know how to source customers. When you put those two things together You're basically buying this business on historical earnings, but you know you can ten X it tomorrow. Um and to me that kinda reminds me of what we've done in the agency space. We've said look we have

You know. A hundred leads coming in every month that are, you know, things we can't service. We might as well spin up all these agencies to make a bunch of money from those too. Um and I love that model. You told me that the revenue and the profit I mean it's almost twenty years old, that the revenue and the profit in some years it's been very lumpy. Where like

Yeah. went down a significant amount. the next year, right? Oh yeah. It's i i it's a roller co this is the thing is everybody that looks at these businesses goes, wow, these are incredible. I'd love to own an agency.

The reality of an agency though is that it's a Whole bunch of people Their hair is always on fire. They either have Too little work or too much work.

They either overhired or underhired. And the margins can swing around a lot if you're not very disciplined. So These are very hard businesses. They're not um they're not easy. But they can be wonderful businesses from a cash flow perspective. And certainly, I mean, Sayed said it as well, but if I was, you know, if I lost everything. Um and I didn't have my Twitter subscribers.

I would probably go start an agency. Like I think that is the easiest way To make five hundred grand a year very, very simply. Uh, that's changing with AI probably, but what niche agency would you do if you had to start over from scratch would take away all your money and all your all your audience. Well, I would do design, just'cause that's what I know.

But um You know That's that's my world, right? Like that's where I started. Um, but I don't know I don't know how that evolves over time. Sean, are you thinking about doing an agency? Me?

Hell no. Do you know anything about me? I'm looking to get rich the lazy way. I'm not trying to do the hard stuff. But you can do it. This is what this is what drives me crazy is you guys have Look at Nick Huber. Nick Huber has three hundred thousand Twitter followers and he basically said, Okay, um I get five different inquiries. People message me asking for SEO.

They asked me for property appraisal, they asked me for web design. And they asked me for No one asks Nick for web design. Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure. But whatever. Nick is one of my closest friends. He's doing an SEO agency. I'm like, Nick, do people ask you for SEO? Like I didn't he's what he's doing, what he's doing is smart, right? So he's a human router. So he's got all these inquiries. And then he's writing them. And so like what Sean did. So this whole framework of one plus one equals a hundred, like Sean, what you did with Shepard. Right. You have this business.

Yeah. perfectly aligns with you. You know the product. All you have to do is talk about it a bunch. And it will do well. You haven't but that is a fucking hard business. That is an agency.

Right. That's a recruiting agency, which is a brutal, brutal, complicated business. That's just been all abstracted away from you. And you could do that. You could abstract away a digital agency. If you guys want to buy a piece of one of my digital agencies and just promote the fuck out of it, I will happily uh do a deal with you. Okay, I I will do that because you know It's easy for me to tell people that Shepard lets them hire talented people for 10x lower price than in the United States. It's easy for me to tell people that they should go to support Shepherd.com and go do that. That's not hard, right? It's not hard for me to tell people how much insane value there is and how I use that for my businesses. Easy stuff to do. Yeah. And how would the yeah, good plug. Uh and I feel like I feel like you guys are like, uh, you know, when I hear you say this, it's like You're looking at it and being like, Oh, a car wash like I don't wanna get my hands like all wet and like I don't wanna scrub the cars and it's like, dude, you just own the car wash. Yeah, but you have to make sure that the product is good enough that you wanna promote. Which does involve

Brain power. And worry. Before before I ordered the Shepherd, I tested every product that does that on the market. I hired through each of them. I hired multiple people through Shepard, met with Marshall, and was like, Okay, here's a deal that makes a lot of sense and it's a it's at the right scale where it works versus these like agencies from zero. I think are

a lot harder. But I will say the Shepherd experiment has been so great that I can't wait to do the next Shepherd because it is It's the perfect thing, right? Their revenue doubles. My income goes up without the operational load. Customers get a good service that they, you know, that they would they need and they want it anyways. That's a that is like so much easier than for example my econ my econ business is like your agency business. Like you know, yesterday I'm looking at the inventory forecast. Oh, we were way under them, we were way over, and we're just constantly gonna get this wrong. We have s we need so many people to do

All the operations for this'cause it's a physical product and you have to do photo shoots and you have to do everything to make this business work. Um And I'm like, Man, this is hard mode compared to, you know, the easy mode of what what the other side of things were doing. Totally. And that's the that's the thing. I think like to a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail.

So it's like you guys would probably both start newsletters. I'd start an agency. It's whatever you know and is easy. But it's not the forever business. Like I have this whole thing about um You wanna you wanna before you launch your rocket, you need a launch pad. Build the launch pad. This is the launch pad business, right? It just

provides you the ability to go and do the things you're really passionate about. Did you explain the the one plus one equals a hundred? Did you say what that is? Yeah, so well basically it's the idea of if you have an unfair advantage. So i for Syed it was He has WP beginner, the blog. He has tons of people that are asking.

Hey, what WordPress plugins should I use? And then if he buys a WordPress plugin, which he can buy for incredibly cheaply He knows he can boost it. So it's like a guaranteed return. To me it's like um You know, imagine if you own an airport.

And there's like ten thousand people in the lobby every day. You know that you can sell them hot dogs. A hot dog stand is not a good business. But if you put a hot dog Stand in the middle of an airport. I can guarantee you you're gonna sell a lot of hot dogs. There's a story after the side.

Uh thing I I started reading about Warren Buffett, who I had I knew nothing about, and I've been texting Andrew, I'm like Oh, I get why you did this. Like this sounds awesome. You know, of course it sounds awesome when it's from the best person who's ever done it. But there's a story in the late sixties when he was maybe thirty five. And he goes to a movie theater and he goes

Boy, it would be nice to own a little bit of all these ticket sales of all these people coming to this movie. This seems like a wonderful business. And then he goes You know, there's just company called Disney that's doing this. They even have a theme park. Let's go check it out, Charlie. And so they literally go to the theme park.

to like figure out and they talk to like the the the tenants at the attendants at the rides and they're like how many people come to this thing and they're like That's how they're doing their research is they actually went to the theme park and then He ends up buying five percent of Disney. I think he paid four million dollars, so it was worth uh, you know, not a lot of money back then.

and uh knocked out the park. And then there's another story about this guy. He's like, Yeah, War Buffett was supposed to be this Wonderkin investor, and we had all heard about him. But I was in New York and I saw him walking around New York, like pacing, counting his paces, and I asked him what he was doing. He's like, Oh We're gonna invest in some type of real estate deal. And I want to figure out how many paces it made up of this square block so I can guess how many like people are going in. It was like something crazy like that. It was really funny. Where he would actually test these things. He would look at the financials and that was the most important thing. And then he would go like in real life and actually test these things to see like

All right, is this cool? Is this legit? What's this all about? And or he would like There's a story of him literally knocking on the door at Geico. Like Hey, can you gu can someone talk to me about this company and tell me what you guys do?'Cause the financials look great. And like it was pretty funny how he did some of that stuff. He was very hands on.

Yeah, Buffett. I'm so glad that you're Uh deep diving on Buffett now. Cause it is It is the way I think about it is it's business abstracted to the ultimate degree. You think about this guy, he's got Ninety or a hundred companies. He's got three hundred and seventy five

Thousand employees. And he sits on his ass reading in Omaha every single day. And I just look at that and I go, How do I How do I do that? And I don't know that sitting on your ass reading all day is the thing you want to do necessarily, but how do you take enough of Buffett that you have the freedom to

Spend your time. I I always heard people say that, so I was like, Oh, I can read. So I've been reading like thriller novels and stuff like that. I'm like I'm just like Buffett. I'm just like Tom Clancy. And then I read his biography. It's like, oh, he's reading annual reports all day. That I can just sit at home and read. So I've been reading like history books. I'm like, I'm just like Puppet. And then I read the book on him and I'm like Oh, he's written like textbooks. Like that's way different. Yeah, Chris when Chris and I started Tiny uh maybe eight or nine years ago, We were like oh we were reading all the Buffett books and we're like, Okay, this is what we're gonna do. We're just gonna read annual reports all day. We print out all these annual reports. And I think we lasted like four hours doing it. I it's so boring. And it's these guys are like they're they're so

All they wanna do is read, right? Like Charlie Munger, he just reads all day. I think Buffett said Five hundred pages a day that he would read. It's crazy. It's insane. That's a book a day. Five hundred a day. Uh it's so boring. I like I also tried to do that when I went and looked at the annual reports and I'm like

They're using the same words over and over again. I don't even know what these words mean. Uh it it w it's challenging. Uh you have some interesting tops on here. I wanna do them. So um What is the Give me these two cool businesses. So cool business number one, no story lost. What is that? Yeah. So this is really cool. So have you guys heard of the business Story Worth?

Yeah, I'm a big fan of it. Yeah, it's super smart, started by this guy, Nick Baum. He him and I worked out of the same office when he was starting it. So he was he he I was one of his first customers. I love him. Yeah, he's awesome. He's living living it up on I think he's on Maui right now, just living there and living the dream. But basically, um you buy it for like your parents, your grandparents, your siblings, or whatever. Uh, I think it's like ninety-nine bucks. And all it does is it just sends like a drip campaign of questions. And so it'll be like hey, like

Tell me about your childhood. Uh what was a moment where you struggled in a job. Who is your first boss? All these things that you've always been curious to know about your family, and you can choose all the questions or whatever. And then at the end of the year it compiles it into a book that you can then print and share with your family or whatever. And I thought like wow, this is an amazing idea. So I go and I spend two hundred bucks. I buy it for my parents.

And of course My parents fill it out for like three weeks and then they just stop. And I talked to my dad and he's like well It's a lot of writing, you know, it's a lot of time. Uh and so

I I was a little annoyed, but I was like whatever. And then I met this guy actually locally here in Vancouver And he has this business called No Story Lost. And it's like the VIP. version of Story Worth. And so what they do is you just say, Okay, Dad, look, we're going to schedule like three Zooms. You're just going to talk to these people. And they basically have like biographers. They interview your parents or your siblings or whatever. And then they actually write a proper Biography of them. So I'm about to get this book.

um professionally written book about my dad's life. And I'm so excited to read it. And my dad was just so much happier because He didn't he just had to talk. And like my dad loves to talk. So yeah, it's a really neat little business. I think it's like two grand or something versus two hundred. Do you know how big a business is? I don't. I don't think it's very big.

Wait, you met this guy, he has a cool business, and you didn't strap him down and waterboard him until he told you his annual revenue. I actually in I invest I think I invested twenty five K in it. Um, on basically like no questions asked, gave them twenty five K. I think it's doing like maybe A million or something, but I think their big problem is customer acquisition. So one plus one equals a hundred. Here I am. Talk about it. Maybe blow this up. And you don't need that many people to do it. In order for it to do very well.

Their problem is that So Nick makes a shit ton of money, I think, off Story Worth. You think so? Um because Oh, because it's automated, right? You don't need any employees. You basically build it once. And it and then you just market it.

Um whereas this you gotta actually have A writer work with every single person that buys it. So I think it's a much harder business model. Um, but as a customer, I think it's a really awesome idea. I feel like these are the businesses that AI is gonna like Just really help all their margins'cause

You can have an AI b biographer. Like an AI biographer is like a very good use case for these LMs where they can ask questions that they know will poke and prod. They can take your responses and ask follow ups. And they can summarize all the audio that's coming in. and transcribe it for so so that the writer then can come in take the source material and like

You could cut the writer's work down. By something probably like fifty to eighty percent. Did you guys see the book or the business called um It was called Book in a Box, then it was called Scribe. And Sean was a customer of them.

But basically uh my friend Tucker Mack started it and He uh hired a CEO to run it. And basically you would talk to someone for I don't even remember how long, and you pay thirty or forty or fifty grand. The prices have gone up throughout the years. And they write a book for you. And it's mostly business people who want to write a book and eventually like it's paid speaking and consulting gigs.

But I thought it was doing great. And all of a sudden out of nowhere Not only did it go bankrupt. But like there was like petitions from the authors who were who worked for the company as as uh contractors are like revolting and like it's caused a lot of controversy. But they owe you, Sean, a book, right? You paid them like

Tens of thousands of dollars and you just forgot about it or you bailed on it. Yeah, I was like, you know, bought the bo I bought I paid. I was like, Oh yeah, I wanna write a book. Great. These people help you write a book. They'll you know, I'm I'm a guy with more ideas than time. This will save me time. Fantastic. Let's let's try this. And it's the same sort of idea. Like A You have the book idea, the concepts. They hop on the phone with you, they help you flesh it out.

It's like great, I I want a collaborator with that and then as you're flashing out, you're basically you can talk. And they're taking all the notes and then they'll draft in your you know in the voice that you want. You edit, right? And I was like, Oh, that seems like a good idea. But I was so busy, like we

We started the milk road. I was like, Okay, I'm if I'm operating a business, I have to like Do this well. And so I paused it. And not just did I pause it. We have like five friends who all

Plot books? And then paused them for various reasons. Bailed. And no, not bailed in our mind. The door was always open. And uh yeah, the door's still open, I guess. We just have to pay a little more money to get it finished now if we want to. Well, you know, um I think I can say this because they tweeted it, but in During Ventures, uh Xavier and Sieva, they had bought it. Yes, just uh today. I wasn't Is that public? Yeah, he tweeted it.

Like he tweeted it out. I had heard I had heard about that, but I wasn't sure if he was gonna do it or not. I don't know what's going on behind the scenes, but for a company to go bankrupt that quickly without like any type of signs, I wonder if something's going on. Um But I I uh it it seems like it might be a headache, but maybe it won't be. We'll see.

Yeah, I actually did it too. Like years ago I was thinking about I'm I'm working on a book actually right now. I ended up Not doing it with scribe. But um I tried it. And I just found that it's great, I think, if you want to write like a a corporate handbook that you can hand out to like your employees or something like that, like a cheesy

Business book. But if you actually want to write something like really, really serious and legit, I think it's a bit hard. I know David Goggins It's like their their hit. He's their hit, but I think it's just hard again for the reasons we talked about with No story lost. How do you guarantee quality?

When you have that much demand and stuff. Like I think you'd have to move up market quite. I've been waiting for you to mention that you have doing the book thing because I wasn't sure if it was public or not. Sean, you should read his first chapter. I read the whole thing. Normally people ask me to prove stuff and I'm like, I don't want to. And then I started reading his and I was like, Okay, I'm I I'm actually into this. It it's pretty good. It's it's been quite good. Yeah, I can't wait. I think it's gonna be amazing. Oh thanks, dude. How far I'll sh I'll share it with you.

I just sent the publisher my rough draft. It's still I'd say it's still in the phase where like I'm embarrassed by it. Um, but I know that's the important step to Making it amazing. Um, so yeah, I I think it'll come out in twenty twenty four. What's your motivation? Why write a book? Honestly, kinda to like muddle through like A, there's a lot of lessons that I haven't read in other books around um business and stuff that we've learned. So it's kind of the story of building tiny, but also just to kind of muddle through

The exact thing we were talking about before about how Everybody wants more Um, you know, it's never enough. They're always trying to upgrade, they're always trying to get bigger. They're always trying to do the next thing and play the status game or you know, comes from childhood trauma or you know, something else. And so for me it's been about

Pulling that string um for myself. So it's been a bit of kind of personal exploration and stuff. Um, it's been it's been fun. I've really enjoyed it. It's probably the thing I've enjoyed most over the last couple of years. Do you want to talk about some of these other companies? Uh I know you have routines on here. You have I don't even know how to pronounce this one. It looks like a Hawaiian name. Yeah. Let me let me buzz through both. Um So uh routines is really smart. So you know when you listen to a Tim Ferris interview

Um it's like two hours. And sometimes you're just like, look, dude, like look, doctor. You know, gut microbiome doctor. Just tell me what you do. What do you do? What do I take? What do I buy?

Uh and I actually was talking to Tim Ferris about this and I was like, dude, you've gotta add like a little segment at the end where you just say Here's the books, here's the one book recommendation, here's one product recommendation, here's one habit recommendation um from each guest. He never did it. Too bad. Um, but that's the juice. That's the stuff that I ask people when I'm one on one with them. And so my friend Hamza, who I think you know too, Sam. Agency. It's good.

Tamba. Yeah, their agency is called Tamba, T A M B A. Uh they do really good work. But um So He created this site called Routines. So it's routines.club is the URL.

And what it does is it basically runs you through the day of successful people. And so they do like Huberman, Tim Ferris, Peter Atia. Uh they actually just did one on me, which is kinda fun. Yeah. Yeah. And and basically breaks down my entire day from start to finish.

And it's all these things that I wouldn't even think to share. It's like, you know, how do I organize my email? How do I um you know, what supplements do I take in the morning? Sho and skin routine is huge. Right. Shower and skin, all these random things.

What's really funny is he's used He's used um Uh mid journey or whatever to generate images for all the things. So it's this like terrifying. First picture, I mean, this is just A plus. I mean Mid Journey is like, you know, the gr world's greatest wingman here. Second picture, now you're you I feel like this is like

These are two different people. These are not the same person. Uh, but that's you know one of the challenges of mid journey. So you wake up Six to eight AM. All right, big window. Um Drink a well it's depending on if my kids wake me. Drink a big glass of water with electrolytes. If it's sunny, you make air pressed coffee. Nice nice plug. Um

If it's overcast, you use retimer. What's a retimer? It's like these little goggles that you wear and they blast your eyes with uh bright light. They're to help you kind of wake up in the morning, like if it's not sunny out. You know how Huberman is like go outside and see bright light. That's the most important thing. Yeah. So you don't have to go outside. I'm looking at it. If you read through it, it'll take like twenty minutes'cause there's so many freaking things. Dude, do you take You take ten supplements?

Uh yeah, like on and off, depending on what they are. Well, here's you have a good morning routine, by the way. Was it coffee you Snort Coke. Uh yeah, this is good. I shoot up I shoot heroin right between my toes and it actually says where which foot to do it in. Um

But but so here's what's cool about this business is People wanna share this stuff, right? It's like a very infinitely shareable, like listicle of like Here's this person's routine or whatever. Throughout it. If you look at the Huberman one, for example. He recommends AG one, he recommends cold plunges supplements.

It's all affiliate revenue. Yeah. And so it's just like one of these amazing Build the content once, update it occasionally. Focused on SEO, make like thirty thousand dollars a month plus of um affiliate. It's just a perfect, we talked about earlier like the launch pad business. It's not the sexy business, it's the launch pad. This is cool. I like this, uh I like this example. Do the Maui Nui one. What is that?

So this one is really I I thought this was super goofy. Uh when I heard about it And so basically me and my girlfriend, we were Visiting Maui. Um, and Huberman was like, Oh, you should meet this guy

Um Jake. who runs Maui Nui. And so This guy picks me up in this like Ramshackle truck. He looks like a navy SEAL. He's like this super jacked guy. And he starts telling me, he drives us into this huge ranch that they have and he starts telling me about the business.

And basically, um, there's these deer called access deer. And they're from Asia. I have'em on my ranch. Yeah, some Hawaiian royalty brought them to Hawaii to hunt like a hundred and fifty years ago. And because they uh had no natural predators.

They're just an invasive species. They're like rats. They're like everywhere. And it's actually an environmental problem. So they're like a pest. They actually destroy Ecosystem and so The government literally flies helicopters and takes like, you know, machine guns and just guns these things down. That's their current solution to this. And so Jake was like hey, we could

This is great meat. A lot of native Hawaiians. hunt the meat and it's super healthy and delicious. They sell it locally. But the FDA doesn't let you sell meat.

Uh commercially. And so he basically spent the last seven years. getting approval to actually hunt and sell this meat. And it's this like super complex problem. So there's this interesting moat in the business. It's gonna take someone else like seven to ten years to compete. And basically what they do is they have a bunch of professional hunters

go out with sniper rifles and they in the middle of the night they just shoot these deer in the head. Right. And it has to be the FDA is like it has to be in the head. Like so imagine this. You're a deer You get to live this awesome life. You are eating organic food. You're running all over Hawaii. And then one day in your sleep, you just boom, you're dead. Right. And so I was like

Okay, this is really fascinating. Uh so Huberman, Tim Ferris, Atia, they all invested too. Um and here's what's crazy about the meat. So Not only is it like the most ethical meat you could possibly possibly have, because it's like a pest, these deer are like killed super ethically and stuff, but they've tested it and it has crazy micronutrient content. So Uh a piece of salmon is like fourteen percent protein. This is twenty percent protein.

Like beef is like nine percent. It's good for the environment. The animals live natural lives. And then one day, boom, head shot, gone. And so if you're like uh you know, you're not eating meat for ethical reasons or for health reasons. This is like an incredible business. And so these guys sell like I think like ten, twenty million dollars a year.

Of pepperoni sticks and all this stuff. So anyway, go check it out. Maui I'm ordering this stuff. Did you invest in this? I did, yeah. Can you tell? I mean, I'm giving you the full. Your sales pitches are good. Um how Sam, how did you you said you have these all these same deer on your ranch randomly in Texas? He just told the story about like how this Japanese royalty brought it to Hawaii and it's like this whole special thing, you're like, Yeah, I got I got some of them fuckers in my backyard, right? Like what are you talking about? Well, so it's this uh I I don't know anything about animals or hunting. But out in my farm, you can only hunt normal deer, I think

for two or three months out of the year. But we have this thing called Axis Deer. I don't know if Axis Deer is like a category of animal or what. No, I'm looking at it. It looks the same. They're basically deers with spots on'em and sometimes they have like tall ears or Uh, and so they kinda look different, but they're called access deer. They have spots. And they're all over Texas. I don't know if it's like the same thing. Um, or if it's like a category of animal. But yeah, we have'em in Texas. I love how this random guy in Hawaii just

Told fascinating story. I got a guy rats that are everywhere, actually. That's like, you know, totally like they just needed to get this like waste product off their hands or like, you know. It's like I'm buying this. I love this, man. This is great. Yeah, and I'll be like Oh, you need an access deer. I got a guy. You know, like you know like Every everyone like twenty years ago was really into like drinking milk, right? Like dot milk.

And then it was almond milk. Then it was oat milk. You guys are gonna love my next business. It's rat milk. Are you serious? No, I could have I'm gonna order some of this beef. I'm uh so like over the last two weeks, I've gotten a little soft, you know, I had a little injury, so I didn't work out like religiously over the last two weeks and I've been eating a lot of ice cream'cause it's hot. So for the next thirty days, Sean, you should try and join this with me. I'm only gonna eat m meats and uh uh Plants and animals.

I gotta get I gotta get back to basic. Plants and animals. Yeah, that's good. I like the way you branded that. That's nice. Plants and animals. That's for the next thirty days. I gotta get my action together because I've been eating too much ice cream. But I'm gonna order this stuff. Uh I'm gonna order it. This actually looks great. Is this a fun business to run? It looks fun to run, but it might be a headache. You gotta ship this shit all the way from Hawaii.

I think it's super complicated. I think they can charge a premium'cause I think they're the only people that are FDA approved to sell it. Um and you know, they have the story and the brand and the investors and stuff. But uh it's a hard business. For that same reason, right? I mean there's a lot of people

There's a lot of hunters um on the Hawaiian Islands that want the jobs and stuff, but logistically, you know, these guys are basically going on these like uh hikes in the middle of the night to go and do these like You know, s they're sniping deer. And then they have to shoulder carry them back to the truck and then they've got this whole facility there. Isn't the problem

Isn't the problem with this, so I I've got a lot of like I've got a bunch of the funny thing about Austin is it's full of like crazy health people. Like Like you know, you don't even know like are they actually insane or are they being serious? Like, you know, they're afraid of Wi Fi. But every once in a while some of these guys will say something that's like really in interesting and like turns out they're right.

And one of them being is like, do you know Butcher Box? Butcher Box is bootstrap bootstrapped, and I think it does like two or three hundred million dollars in revenue. But my health nut friends hate it. They talk trash about it. They're like this is the worst. You should never consume that meat. Um these guys will also say like Whole Foods. They they don't even touch Whole Foods chicken. They're like you can't it's gotta like if it's not it doesn't look a certain way, I don't touch it. You're hanging out with Justin Maris too much. I didn't want to name names. I don't know if Justin if if if Justin has said that explicitly, but Yeah, they're in the same circle. It just sounds like something that Justin would say. He's probably but that's my thing. It's these guys, I'll be like, All right, but are you being like

A conspiracy or you being like truthful. And they're like, this one's a little closer to conspiracy. But then with like the meat stuff, like this is close to truthful. But the problem with this business, I would think, is the bigger it gets, the worse it gets, right? Well, I think when I talked to him about the scaling and stuff, he was like, Look, there's A lot of Hawaiian Islands, there's a lot of deer. Is there a lot of Hawaii islands? No, no. Well, there's six or seven of them or whatever, right? And they they basically They do this on a tiny amount of land as it is right now, so I think they can really think about this significantly. It's not a business investment.

There might be a business here. This is a Larry Ellison investment. Some of the rich people do, which is As you make money, you start investing just in things that are interesting. You start you start investing in dinner party conversations. It's like I can't have my whole portfolio of like healthcare sass. Like yeah, even if that's where, you know, like

the most money is made. I need to invest in things that are interesting to me, that are cool people that I want to hang out with. That t do businesses that are worth talking about. in life. And there's like an there's like positive EV associated with that that people don't really understand until you you start doing it and then you're like, oh, this is nice.

You've got to keep the check small. And do a bunch of these and so you have a this portfolio of like interestingness. One day. I think I I would say I would say you're wrong. Um so So so imagine like you saying the same thing about athletic greens, right? Okay, so I come to you and I'm like, hey guys, there's like these these Guys, they're like a vitamin. But it's powder and you're like, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

What makes athletic greens amazing is that they spent The last fifteen years building relationships with all the most influential health people in the world. So it's one plus one equals a hundred, right? They have Tim Ferris. They have all these people who not only they buy ads with, but they also have all these people owning equity in the business. So A million different competitors can come out, but if in your brain

the winner is AG one because that's what you've heard and all the people that you respect do. You will do it and you will pay a premium. Right. Yeah, but that's different. Like vitamins were a thing. Uh vitamins were a thing, greens green smoothies, people understood oh I should eat my vegetables. That's been around forever. I don't know how many people like

Oh man, the protein content on my salmon is too low. I need to eat deer. I need to eat this red. It's bigger than you think. It's bigger than you know what? I'm looking for a deer that was shot in the head. That's what I know. But there's a huge there's a huge audience though for people who go, I want ethically sourced. I mean I do that. That's why I don't like buying a lot of beach is because I I don't like how they kill cows. Sean, you actually kinda turned me on to that. Uh about like about the treatment of cows. Well I think it's just very hypocritical. I think you know, anybody who's like Ethically sourced meat. It's like

Yeah, like Yeah. Uh if somebody's like I ethically killed your dog or I ethically killed your your brother, it's like you know that's a big difference to kill something to consumer. Well, it's not necessarily killing, it's raising. I think killing. And then it's like think about it this way. So there's that there's a broad spectrum, right? So You think about like industrialized meat is like concentration camps for animals Right. They're literally in these pens and they're fed this horrible stuff and they've these miserable lives.

I don't feel good about eating that. Do I feel good about eating an animal who lived a great life and then got sniper rifled in the head? Yeah, I feel fine. I actually feel fine about it. Just to be clear though, this is still in the murdering for our pleasure. Uh for our pleasure spectrum. And there's a there's a lot more part of the spectrum that you can go to if you chose to. I am I am uh I'm totally a a bit of a hypocrite on this, as in I do eat meat, so I'm not like I'm not like a vegan telling you this. But at least I don't lie to myself and tell myself that oh man, I'm doing so such a good thing morally here by uh

I can't But killing them the best way, the nice way. You might yeah, you it's like it's like you might drive an electric car. And it's better than driving a gas car, but you're still producing tons of toxic chemicals'cause we made the batteries and stuff. It's just a little bit better. Yeah, that's right. I agree with you though. I do think like in a hundred years we'll look back at eating meat and be a little shocked. Yeah, a hundred percent. Um that's my my my opinion. Sean, would you

Would you if we went somewhere? Would you like, for example, for Thanksgiving Did I tell you for Thanksgiving we killed our own turkey? No, you didn't tell me that. How was that? Uh

Yeah, and so would you do that? No. Wow, okay. Uh not that I wouldn't do it. Uh would I be excited to go am I excited to go do that? No. Uh would I do it if that's the thing we wanted to do? Sure. I'm not like anti the whole experience, but Uh, I'm not like pumped about that, nor would I like see That experience out.

Also Turkey massively overrated. It sucks. Such an issue. By the way, killing it and eating it, it did not taste good at all. The fake shit, like the butterball turkeys taste way better. And turkey is a is a horrible meat. But yeah, I agree. Um w do we wanted to wrap up with one or two more things? Yeah, let's do uh

Well you have a question for Sam. I think that's an interesting one. Why don't you do that one, Andrew? Yeah, I was curious so Sam, like I look at Hampton Hampt is a business we I mean, I've said this to you privately, but Hampton is the business that I've thought about starting for Ten years. So I joined something called entrepreneurs organization.

uh fifteen years ago and I was like, this is a very, very good business. Every member of EO Pays five thousand dollars. And there's all these local chapters, they self organize basically. And these guys just must be making an absolute killing and you have this total lock in.

Because once you like your forum group, you have these like core core groups like you do at Hampton or whatever. People don't want to leave. They're locked in, they pay their five thousand dollars a year or whatever it is, they go to events, et cetera. And so I for years have been like someone needs to start the new EO.

And you have. And so I look at it and I I go. Free. Damn, I wish I owned that business. Um What are the things though

Like just like you guys being like oh my God, like you know, these agencies Andrew owns are the best businesses ever What are the on the flip side, what are the things that we we should know about Hampton that are make it hard to run or surprise you about running? So the thing about Hampton, so Andrew joined And Sean has been like d messaging like maybe I should join and I'm like Andrew wanted to he's like, Yeah, just take my money and just let me join. And I'm like, No, no, no, you have to get interviewed. I just want a little VIP treatment. I just want a little past the line. It's like We've not done it. Go to a friend's restaurant and you just get treated as a normal patron. Uh

Uh that doesn't feel good. It's not the same. That feels a little bad, wouldn't you think? Well, because we have to have we have to indoctrinate people. We have to like get them into the values of the system. We have to like teach them how to be a good community member. So the thing about Hampton is that In terms of like the physics behind it. This is gonna be a massive company, I think.

Uh, like there's I always tell our team there's nothing holding us back. Like there's like very little like outside factors that are gonna ruin it. But the number one thing that sucks about it and that we we one hundred percent can screw it up and it can go to zero. is if you start letting in too many people too quickly. So you cannot scale it. Like crazy fast.

Um, I think you can scale it fast, but I think you can't scale it like you could a software. You're not just throwing bodies into it. And so we have to be super thoughtful about it. About who we let in and why. Another thing is is that the feedback loop is fairly short. So people in Hampton have monthly meetings and then now we have retreats that people go on once a year or twice a year. So we don't get feedback that quickly. And in order to like I can't just like make an assumption or I can't like have like an M VP of a retreat because someone's flying across the country to go to a thing. So it has to be good right away.

And that's very stressful that I can't like just like You know, if I own like a Shopify store, I can't just throw up a product up there and have someone buy it and then just return the money and be like, Sorry, it'll come soon. Or this sucks maybe but it'll improve with tech. Um So that's scary.

about not having MVPs. But you it the the thing about community is once you screw it up, I don't think you can fix it. And so it seems like it's high stakes all the time. And so that's why we're trying to be meticulous about growing slowly. Um I don't know, Andrew, what am I missing?

You've kinda like No, I think you're right. I it's interesting, the thing that made me leave EO Um So The chapter

Um the guy who ran the chapter, super nice guy, like uh amazing. I love the guy. But he let in a couple of people who I really, really didn't like and I found myself dreading going to some of the events and just kind of Just sketchy people, right? Like people that ran a bit dicey businesses and gave me bad vibes and stuff. And that was actually the thing that caused me to leave

EO and do my own forums. So I now have Or Forums that I just manage myself. Um But I I don't think most people are like me. I think most people will stick with it. But you do really have to be thought about who you let in. And I I think

The hardest part, and I've had this experience, I've I've ran a lot of forums over the last fifteen years and been in a lot of forums. If there's someone who's toxic The cancer has to be cut out, but that is an incredibly awkward conversation. Uh, and it can really piss people off, obviously. And we've fired a bunch of we've kicked people out if they like r um talk about confidential stuff publicly. But um

Also another thing about this these businesses The thing about EO, YPO, Vistage, do you guys know Vistage? I think I mentioned them. They sold for like one point five billion recently. They're already doing like half a billion in revenue. Dude, they last so long. So YPO EO and Vista, I think all were either started in the fifties or the sixties.

And so the cool thing about these companies is if you nail it right. you can have it for fifty or a hundred years. And so that's why I'm really fascinated by these types of companies because There's zero technological or there's zero tech. Like tech. Well it everything could change with AI. It it will have zero hope, I think. How does

How how does it feel to be sitting on a winner? Like does it did you feel the same way with the hustle? Does this feel different? Yeah, I I felt like the hustle like With With Hampton, I'm like, Well, there's a clear path to get to a hundred million dollars. You just gotta give it ten years if you want.

uh in revenue. Like I just have to like it's just a time horizon thing. You just gotta sit and wait. And you have to work, but you have to wait. Whereas with the hustle it felt a little bit more like we were making We we are innovating in a very small space where I'm like, I don't know if the math shows that this will work. It might, it might not, but I'm we're still learning. With this business, I'm like, No, it's one hundred percent gonna work. The only thing that screws it up is ourselves. That's why I say there's no like physics allows us to work perfectly. You also have

An unfair advantage, right? I think that if you I mean I guess you launched Hampton privately You didn't promote it, but now that you do so unfair now that you have talked about it. You have like You have free customer acquisition, yes. You you almost have fifty million dollars a year versus uh free marketing by going on podcasts on this podcast and other podcasts you're on.

And just talking about Hampton and then your brand value as a person. being associated with it, it is that one plus one equals a hundred. Yes. And right now I we've had five or six or seven thousand people I I forget apply. And so that makes it like the easiest thing ever. But if you look at on deck on deck had that as well. And they totally fucked it up. They fucked it up because they they treated it like a tech company where they weren't thoughtful enough and they try to just scale. And that is my fear of like Getting greedy and growing too quickly. Well they raised venture. Why would you raise venture? This like this is a business that pays for it. It's got you have negative cash conversion cycle, right? People pre-pay you.

For services delivered over a year. And like it's insane. Yeah. So it's like a great business. I think it's gonna be like I don't think we'll ever sell it. But I think it could be like a Uh uh they can be billion dollar companies, I think. Um so it feels good. Well tiny w if you ever decide to to sell it, tiny will buy it. Or if you ever want to take money off the table. I think I hopefully it'll be big enough that we'll be buying you. I uh I be we I I

No, but in and seriously, when I was looking the reason, Andrew, even though we're friends, I really admire you because when I people have invest and asked to invest and I'm like, no, dude, this is my meta lab, baby. Like this could like This is what I love. I don't ever want to sell it, but it might make a shit ton of profit. And we could just use that profit to buy stuff that kind of, uh Supplements it. Um, and I don't wanna take any money because I don't wanna have to feel guilty about doing that.

We're gonna I'm gonna uh be on a helicopter. And it'll land on Sam's yacht. And then I'll I'll get there and he'll be like oh What's your market cap? And I'll be like, Oh, like five billion and he'll be like oh

Hampton's twenty five billion. That's cute. No, I don't know. I remember when we hit five, those are the old days. I think it's cool, but it it it feels like I haven't talked about it publicly too much. It's because this is the first time where I'm like Shut the fuck up. And just be quiet and just keep on going. Um,'cause it's working nicely. I d I think it's actually quite hard to replicate though. You have to have an audience. It was quite hard to like get the uh

Uh early customers. But yeah, it feels good. Well it's it's You're reading the right book, right? Like reading the Buffett stuff and Motes. 'Cause that I think that's like the ultimate

Like people think investing is numbers. It there's a little bit of that. There's napkin math. But at the end of the day, it's like assessing like what is the moat, what's the competitive advantage. And you just have such a crazy competitive advantage in terms of Customer acquisition and then also customer loss. And Sean, I know that you're exploring this business even before I don't even think you told me. So the big learning it's a logistical nightmare.

So not nightmare, but it's very challenging. Like in like imagine uh let's say we have ten thousand members and we're doing all these retreats. That's basically a retreat a day. You know what I mean? Like yeah um it it it's quite challenging logistically. What we need to do is go and hire a bunch of McKinsey nerds and it's like here's how we do it by hand, automate it. Uh but I don't I don't agree with that. I think um So what EO does is they've outsourced everything. So when you

EO has chapters. There's a Vancouver chapter, for example. Uh all the members pay their dues. And then there's a chapter head. And they are managing that. whole thing and then when they have retreats

They're just told Hey, um, you know, the budget typically is this. You guys all self-organize. One person from the forum is responsible for managing it. Here's the handbook on doing it. And they just kind of do it themselves. So I think Y there maybe there's a better way to do it, but I don't think you have to scale up headcount and logistics. No, I don't think you do either, but you still have thousands of people flying places and you want to make sure that the experience is optimal.

So there is still some quality control. Are you gonna do like a massive conference, like a super conference of all the people in Hampton? With like insane speakers and stuff, or is that just too much logistics? Yeah, we want to. Yeah. I'm just trying to figure out how to do it.

Andrew, what is this uh Profit First Methodology? That's that book that you like? I love this. So yeah, one of the guys, um one of the CEOs, actually the CEO of Beam Um He sent me this book. And

Um, I love the idea. So Basically, um, you know, there's this concept of like if you eat your food on a smaller plate, you're gonna eat less. You guys know about that? Um So Basically what you do it's very simple.

Let's say that you earn a hundred dollars in your business and you want to have a fifty percent profit margin. You just take The day the hundred dollars comes in. You take fifty dollars and you put it in a bank account. That you can't see.

And that's it. You just put it away. And so then you and your team are left with fifty dollars to run the business. And you know, you might have to adjust the number and figure out what's sustainable. But what I learned running um all my digital businesses was that we had businesses with ninety percent

Net profit margins. And If you had looked at that business and said, Okay, well, it's this kind of business, it should have twenty percent profit margins, we easily could have run it that way. But because Chris and I were incentivized, we own the whole business.

We paid a lot of attention to the PL and what was possible. We would try and run it at the maximum profit. And so this basically allows you to achieve the same thing psychologically as the smaller plate. You're just showing you basically budgeting for fifty percent profit. And you're saying figure out.

Issues with your CEO of the company? But we don't do it. This isn't something that we do. This is something that we've sent out to all of our CEOs as like, Hey, this is really interesting. This might be something you might want to do. But I think it works better for small businesses. I know a lot of people who

Um, they talk to me and they're like, Oh, you know, I have an agency too, but We just can't figure out how to make it run at X margins and I'm I kinda go like Rip the band aid. Right. If you want to make thirty percent profit margins, take thirty dollars of every hundred dollars that comes in. You move it to another bank. And that's what you told me to do, and I've not been comfortable with it yet.

Dude, you yeah, don't even get me started. Sam, Sam and I have had like tech screaming matches. Me just being like, dude, you have to dividend your money out. 'Cause my whole thing is um You don't want to leave excess cash.

Burning a hole in the CEO's pockets or making them complacent. So let's say you own a business that has a payroll of Five hundred thousand dollars a month. Um, a lot of people will leave like twenty million dollars in that business. And I think that just lets the CEO feel relaxed.

I like them to basically have a month But you're spending You're spending cash that you haven't earned yet. Well, sometimes, but if if that's the situation and they need more Then they just say, Hey shareholders, uh send me some of that money back. But you say I'm the bank.

So for example, in Tiny Tiny, the holding company above, is the bank. And we basically say look. Keep your money with us. And um if you guys hit a snag and you need a little bit of my extra money for payroll or RD or whatever, we'll send that right down. in you know, twelve hours.

So for prepaid meta customers, which you I don't actually think you do prepaid, but let's say you did. Let's say someone prepaid for a a project that will take a year and it's a hundred grand. And you get that up front, you're happy or you're willing to just spend that hundred grand before the year's up and the service has been fully delivered. Well Not always, but I think if you can model it.

Like so for example, the argument we were having, so someone pays Ten thousand dollars for a year of service in Hampton. And so you guys have all this cash sitting in the bank. The thing is you guys have new members constantly streaming in. So you have ten thousand dollars flowing in X times a day.

Um you have very predictable cash flow. From my perspective, I would basically just say All right, what's your what's your uh expected margin? And I just take that and dividend it out immediately. Um and I and again it's trying to create Uh a feeling of

Always Always paying attention. To the bank account. Always paying attention to the balance sheet and the PL. I just think that

When you have a year of cash just sitting there, I think your CEO Well naturally. be like, Oh, we could do this, you know, we could go to a super conference and spend ten million dollars on it. Or Um, you know what, it's okay we didn't uh do that great this month because you know, we've got all this money in the bank. I think psychologically you want everyone eating from a smaller place. And when you say dividend out, what percentage is Andrew Wilkinson taking home to buy a home and cars and live? versus dividend out to reinvest into your own stuff.

I had like a well, so it's different now that we're public. What I used to do is I would get I owned eighty percent of um Of beam basically. And I would get so I'd get eighty percent of those dividends, those would go to my holding company. I would buy stocks or invest. My general framework for this though is

I wanna spend five percent of what I earn at most. And so whatever that number is, if you're in You know, ten million dollars a year, five hundred grand a year is just Living, doing whatever, and everything else should get invested. So you live on five percent of your

Of your income and the rest goes to tiny or whatever Is the setup for your holding company. Or is Tiny considered your holding company? Tiny is my well, so I have a personal holding company.

Where I have my personal assets, but m you know, ninety plus percent of my net worth isn't tiny. Mm. So And has it always been five percent? So when you're earning a million dollars a year

When you're earning a million dollars a year, were you only spending fifty thousand? No, I was uh well, I wasn't spending a ton. But I was what I was doing is starting a lot of businesses. I would pr I I'd say maybe it was twenty percent or thirty percent. Back then.

But over time it's come down to about five percent or less. And it's been there for Probably ten years. Um But um But yeah, the one of the things I see

that a lot of people do that's really quite stupid is They don't let themselves live it up. So they'll own this amazing cash flowing business. And they don't let themselves, you know, go buy the beautiful house, go by the great car. And so they end up

acting in this way where they go, Well, I've got to sell my company. I've got to have an exit. And I had I have had friends where it's like Dude, the exit was right in your bank account. You know, you could have just dividended the money out to yourself, and then you wouldn't have had this really stressful, horrible experience with private equity and been through all that stuff. Um, so I'm a big advocate of like

Living it up, living a nice life. You know, don't go crazy and buy Faberger eggs, but like buy a nice car and a nice house and whatever. And then just invest everything else. Uh, I don't know, but I don't even think about it like that. Um Is that like is that are you allergic to that or are would you train? I'm not allergic to it, but it's it's like you said, like

You know, uh I would say My income has ten X. And my spending has two X. So as long as that ratio stays about right, that's fine. I don't really look at the percentage versus versus versus earnings so much as like. Yeah, before I I guess like at the beginning when the earnings were were lower, right, like

For a long time I was basically earning like between I don't know Like in my twenties I was making like a hundred twenty to a hundred sixty K a year, roughly. Uh, for a bunch of my twenties. And you know, during that time, I don't know, I was probably s I was living in San Francisco, paying California taxes. Like, you know, I was probably spending uh if you include taxes, you know, I was spending the bulk of my money. I wasn't really saving that much, probably saving

Twenty percent. Of my money, thirty, I don't know, something like that. Um And you know, the uh Tim Ferr said this thing on the podcast I really liked. He goes Um

Unless something's gonna make a shit ton of money, give it away for free. I think that's a great rule in business and content and a great rule for creators like us. I think the uh which is Partly why I don't like your your Twitter experiment, although I understand the reasons why you do it. Um

I think there's the same thing for sort of like, you know, where do you put your mental energy around finances? It's like Either needs to make a lot of money Or save a lot of money, or I'm just gonna like not pay I'm gonna give it zero budget mentally. Um Because otherwise I'm just using my mental budget on too many things. I'm just not gonna think I don't wanna think about things unless it's like a

A large swing. So for most of Most of my twenties, I was just trying to figure out how do you make way more money. Like I'm not trying to go from twenty percent savings rate to thirty percent savings rate. It's like How do I 10x my income? That was like the first, you know, like it's all I was thinking about.

It took me a long time, but like that paid off because once you do that, you don't you're you know, you're still glad you're never worried about the the smaller thing. Yeah, Ramit Sethi has a great book called I Will Teach You to Be Rich. And he talks a lot about that, right? People obsess over like, oh You know, I used to spend six bucks on a frappuccino and now I just buy a black coffee and save three bucks and it's like You're so much better off focusing on the macro

you know, your mortgage, all those sorts of big expenses. And then just focusing on making way more money to the point where it really doesn't matter. He goes, Don't focus on three dollar problems like a cup of coffee, focus on thirty thousand dollar problems like getting a raise. I've noticed this with hiring too. Like you hire somebody and Um, I'm negotiating like a five K or ten K salary difference. And I'm like, Okay, um so you know, you're there's basically like an eight hundred dollar a month Gross.

uh difference. N to them after taxes is gonna be like five hundred dollars uh a month difference. Okay, fair enough. Not saying that that's nothing. But like The percentage of their

concern around that difference versus like The role. Who I am, what they're gonna learn from this. Like How like they they don't really think about how do I Use this opportunity to be able to make

Ten times more money. In the future. What are the terms on their stock options? How are they struck? What's the valuation? Is it reasonable? Yeah, or like, yeah, what's my incentive, what is my incentive if I could do a great job. What does a great job even look like here? And then how much is that worth to you? And can I structure and incentive where

If I really knock it out the park, I can make three times my salary this year versus This kind of like ten K. you know, salary gap. Um But you know, I I I guess I uh obviously not everybody cares that way or is thinks that way, but uh

I don't know. It seems like Of of a hundred percent of the population, it seems like at least twenty percent of the population should be asking themselves those types of questions more often. Um, in the same way that like before I met any business people, I just thought like when oh after college you go get a job. I didn't think there were other options.

And only once I saw that there's other these other options and that man, those people doing business, they seem to be having a lot more fun and making more money, like Okay, I guess I could go do that. Like You just sometimes need to see it. Or hear it. And then it changes the way you think. And that I think more people should see or hear the question of like

How do I make three times more in half the time? How do I make ten times more total? How do I have twice the fun on the same salary? How do I twice the time on the same salary? It's like There are just better questions you can ask yourself. Actually, although I will say one thing that I really Miss. You do you guys remember we started that business called Buyer?

Where it was negotiation as a service. Amazing idea. Amazing guy who ran it, Kimia. Um we ended up selling it to Ramp. Um, I didn't really want to sell it, but for Kimia it was like his first big exit. So so it Made a lot of sense and we're really excited for him. But I really miss that business because that's one thing where

I am just too busy running my business. To negotiate things and You know, when I'm buying like a car or You know, doing a um I don't know, any like a big buy of furniture or like a renovation or anything.

I still want that. So I really just I put this out to the audience. Someone needs to restart that business. Negotiation as a service. That's a Nick Huber. That's a great Nick Huber business. I agree. A are you gonna make money on the A stock of ramp. Ramp does does good, I think. We We didn't we didn't take stock stock, we just took cash.

'Cause we for us, we could just take the money and invest it ourselves, so we knew we could get a good return within tiny. Dude, these are the best podcasts. These are the best podcasts where we're just But we're just hanging out. Uh, I wonder if the listener prefers these where it's uh like the just hangs, but I I like those better personally. Yeah, those super fun, guys. If you like it.

Compliment us in the YouTube comments. You don't like it. Well, you're probably gone by now. And that's a good thing. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'm putting my law in it like my days off On the roadless travel, never looking back

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