The 2023 Milly Awards: Part 1

This is the most popular episode we do every year. It takes weeks of planning. I'm out fifty bucks because I got this new jacket on. We're all dressed up. And why? Because it is the Millie Awards. It is our end of year episode where we go through About fifteen categories, right? actors, they got the Oscars, and musicians, they have the Grammys. Well what do business people have? They got the Millie Awards. And this is where we share

A bunch of different Categories like our best and worst investments of the year. You know, where do we take a big L on an investment? What do we win on? Or we'll do a category like person we would most bet it all on. Who would we if we have to invest our whole net worth on somebody Who will we bet it on? Uh, we got me, Sam, and Andrew Wilkinson. We're all here. We've been doing this for three years now. These episodes are always the favorites. This one went long. We're gonna do it as a two parter. So in part one, we have categories like

Billy of the year. Uh, best business that we think somebody else should go do. Our favorite moment from uh from the podcast this year, and the biggest change that we are making personally in our game. In twenty tw for twenty twenty four. And in part two, we have a whole bunch of categories like our favorite unsexy business and uh wild predictions for next year. So enjoy the Millie Awards.

twenty twenty three. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'm putting my all in it like my days off. On the road, let's travel. Okay, what's up, guys? It's my favorite episode of the year. Andrew Wilkinson is here. Sam is here. Sam, you looking dapper. Andrew you looking dapper. Sam, I gotta say the whole dressing well thing. I'm bought in now. I see it.

You don't look like a science teacher. You don't look like you're from a different era. You just look sharp, my friend. Yeah, I couldn't find my cufflinks. I thought I was gonna look like a farmer on this thing. Thank God I found them right before we started. Do you guys remember how uh Trump had like the Clemson football team into the White House and they used like the Lincoln gravy bowls for like barbecue sauce? That's how I feel right now with this person who bought me Tiffany Crystal for my wedding. This is the first time they're being used and we're they're being used for

Whole Foods brand LaCroix, so shout out to that person. Um Andrew You feeling good? You ready to do this thing? Feeling great. Yeah, I'm uh this is the best I've dressed in years. We're happy that you did it here. All right, so this is the Millie Awards. We've done this. This is now, Sean, four years running we've done this. Or is it three? I think four.

Maybe three. I think it's three. And we've got We've got eleven or twelve or thirteen categories. We're gonna do favorite M FM guest, we're gonna do Billy of the Year, biggest change we're making for twenty four. uh the person we bet it all on. We're gonna do a bunch of different stuff. And we're gonna try and go somewhat fast for each category, but I'm sure we're gonna have interesting stories for each one. Sean, you wanna kick it off? Where do you want to go? Yeah, category one. This is the Millie Award for our favorite MFM.

Episode or guest of the year. Sam, start us off. Who you got? All right, this was a tie. No, it's not a tie. We're not gonna have ties, but I'm gonna say the top two that I had was Scott Galloway. So by the way, we have a clip that's gone viral on On YouTube, where it's a clip from the Scott Galloway pod where he's talking about how much he made. I'm talking about how much I made, and people are just ragging on us both so hard because they say that we sound so depressed. But I'm gonna give it number one to Kevin Ryan. Kevin Ryan's the founder of Guilt Business Insider, MongoDB. I think Kevin Ryan was the best episode. I think he was the most wise person and well balanced person we've had who's had Crazy success.

You know what else he did that I liked? At the end of the episode, he was like Here's how I set up my company to maximize Um like kind of the gain I get out of these companies and pay the least taxes. And I'll tell you what.

No rich guy ever says that. No Risky ever tells you this is the structure I use. And he said it on air. He's like, here's what it does. It lets me live in a high cost state, and I'm effectively only paying 14%. And my kids are only paying 0% on what they're getting out of our capital gains due to QSPS. So he owns the share. He's like, I only work on projects that are QSBS eligible c and long term capital gains. I'm not looking for uh cash flow or income'cause he's like, I got to a point where I I have that like, you know, day to day needs s uh settled to so you have to get to there. But once you're there.

He's like you um You ha take your QSPS, you live in a high cost state. You then Uh gift. uh your stock to your kids' trusts. So you set up kids' trust, you gift your stock to them before you raise a financing.

So you're taking only like let's say a hundred K out of your Uh lifetime gift tax. And your kids now own QSPS eligible stock when you sell You're gonna end up paying only the state tax. So you'll pay fourteen percent California or New York. You'll pay no federal

Um, and then your kids will pay zero percent wherever you know, likely whenever they they get it out of the trust, uh at their at their given point in time. And you're getting QSPS. Yeah, the ten million dollars tax free. For you times each of your kids. I can get to fifty million tax free if I got, you know three or four kids or whatever. And I was like, I don't think they've got

I don't think they have Q SPS in Canada land, do they? No, we don't have we have there's all sorts of other stuff and benefits and stuff, but um There's a great saying on this stuff. Um Whales only harpoon whales only get harpooned when they surface. Right? He just surfaced in a really obvious way. And you know there's just some anal retentive IRS guy listening to the stroking his gears right now. Strike that all from the record.

Uh my favorite was Sarah Moore. So Sarah Moore Uh she's Crazy story. She um had a really troubled childhood, basically got adopted by this wealthy family. They ended up putting her through Harvard business school. And she went out and she bought this business called eggcartons.com.

And this story was just incredible. I feel like um So many people hear these Wild stories about tech bro billionaires, you know, raising a bunch of money and hitting it big. making trillions of dollars. And I think

Her story is much more realistic for a normal person, you know, anyone She really kind of Uh is a testament to the fact that anybody can Teach themselves business. and can go buy a business that is really not rocket science. And I loved how

simple and tactical all of her stuff was. Uh she saw that. I'm trying to stay low-key and under the radar, and I think it's been our one of our most downloaded and viewed episodes with like five thousand lessons to that episode. Well so The smartest thing she did is she like she did the um the Michael Jordan like I'm retiring. This is the last thing like you know, I'm never going out again. And now if she it it immediately as soon as you said that in the intro, I was like I have to listen. Right. There's definitely episodes I kind of check out of or don't do. Yeah, it was a great one. That made me lean in. I I I I think that's a great one.

The uh by the way, there's a quick follow up to that,'cause that store that uh that story, the Sarah Moore story was falls in the category of kind of like Too good to be true. So, you know. Look at all the elements. It's basically like Here's this

Super hot woman. Who grew up, you know, super poor, couldn't even get into college. Somehow ends up in Harvard Business School. There must have been something happening there. A family like adopted her along the way. That's like the plot of the movie Blind Side. Then it was buys a business, but has no money, remember, because she grew up super poor. So bought the business with zero dollars cash down. How she found the business was she hi you know hired fifty interns off of Craigslist and like

snuck them into the Harvard uh business school like library to work with her on this. And and he applies this business edcartons.com for millions, you know, it's a million multi million dollar business, super successful. There's no pictures of her on the internet. There's no interviews of her on the internet. Right. We're like the only guys who've like Done it. So there was a lot there that like

I came out big thinking. Did I just get Elizabeth Holmes? Does I I might have Oh God, this I might be part of the documentary here. All right. Let me uh let me at least make sure I look good if this is gonna end up on Netflix one day. And

She flew out after the episode. She's like, I gotta meet you. So okay, why? Uh and she's like I just I need to know who I'm dealing with here. And so she flies out. We go get lunch here in the Burbs, uh in California. She flies all the way from Boston. And

Everything checked out. It was uh if she is Elizabeth Holmes, she's the greatest Elizabeth Holmes you've ever seen. Uh you know, she looks like what she sa shows like she told the story, she showed me the old photos, like you know, she Everything. And she's like, I'm so glad you know people have been pretty respectful because I said on the episode, please don't bother me. Um and we we did a form instead of her like email address, like here s put type your questions in this form and then we'll we'll answer the form.

How many d how many messages did she get? A lot. She had said after the first appearance on it, she got like Like t the Netflix Bravo, like other people had reached out to be like, Can I do uh we wanna do a show on you or a movie on you. Wow. All right. Well kudos to Sarah Moore. What is what's yours, Sean?

All right, my MFM guest here that's gonna surprise you guys is Connor Price. And Connor Price is a was a guy who was working in a warehouse. He was stacking boxes in our friend's warehouse in Ramon's warehouse. And

He was like a wannabe rapper, white guy. And you know, like that's kinda cliche. But he actually made it. And he made it in a very interesting way. He figured out how to go viral on TikTok. And he was not a social media guy. He refused to even post on social media. He was too shy.

His wife was like You gotta do this. It's a great way to get the word out. And let's just have some fun with it. She kinda became his like m his manager and They now have racked up I don't know, like a billion TikTok.

Going viral. And the reason I say Connor Price is not just because that's an inspiring story. But I took away one big lesson of like the It's like I realize that the puck has moved.

And I'll give you guys the short version of it. I think Era one of marketing was sort of like uh Let me interrupt. V your programming In order to tell you about my product.

Right. That's commercials. That's like radio ads. That's how things used to work. Era two became Um Hey, let me send this to an influencer. They'll kind of hold up the product and make a post about the product. So now I'm not interrupting your programming. I'm kind of using this trusted influencer. Um, but it's clearly, you know, still an ad. The content is.

Buy this product, it's great. And what Connor Price is doing is a little bit different. He tell he creates a little skit. And in the middle of the the payoff of the skit, the hero of the skit, the one that saves the day. Is this dope song?

And the fifteen seconds of the dub song and that gets people to go and actually want to go find the product. And now I see this Everywhere. This is how Mr. B sells chocolate, too. He doesn't hold up his candy bar and say, This is a delicious candy bar. You should go buy it. He says I recreated Willie Walker's chocolate factory and inside this factory as he makes Like the product is baked into the content. The content is entertainment around the product.

And now that I see that, I can't unsee it. I see it everywhere. And it's part of my kind of core business strategy now. We changed like that. Instead of saying We're gonna stop. We're gonna tell you about this thing. We created a segment called The Thrill of the Shill. We t we teach a lesson or an entertaining story. And then we tell you about the product in that story. And uh that's how I think marketing goes down. Just a total shark in the best possible way.

Yeah, she was hardcore. Um All right, you wanna move to the next one? Billy of the year. How do we describe this one? Just

A billionaire who's fascinating. This is someone who's balling out of control. You don't even have to be a billionaire. You just have to have that that billionaire strut, the ability to to walk with Subswagger and play the game a little differently. So it's somebody who is Super successful, but in a way that we really respect. Let's go with Andrew first. Who you got? So mine is very obvious. It's um

You still have a landline? Dude, you go public and you have to install a landline? The gate. The gate of my house is like the super old school system. So I have a landline just for that. You only you better only be talking to presidents on that thing. It's red. It's red, like the bad phone. Um Mine is pretty obvious. It's Charlie Munger. I think we all know who he is. Uh for those of you that don't

He's Warren Buffett's longtime business partner. He just died last week. I think he was Fifteen days or something. Short of his hundredth birthday.

He was ninety nine. And the guy was completely sharp to the end, I think a week before He did an interview with Jesse qu or um what's her name? Becky Quick. Um from C N B C And

I just want to tell you a story about this guy. This is how sharp this guy was. So Chris and I were having dinner with him one night. And all of a sudden this guy bursts into the room. And he's like Charlie

I got I'm doing a deal right now. I need to know uh an answer to something. And this guy walks in He's like Thirty years old. And he just starts rattling off a bunch of questions. He's like

Okay. Um we need to Do it at uh five point six percent interest for this many doors. And Charlie just asked a couple questions and I says Okay, good.

Cool. And then the guy just like says bye to us and leaves. And Charlie explains that it's this neighborhood kid Who he is a Acidic Jew. tried to convert him to Judaism twenty years ago, going door to door with a Bible uh with with uh Bibles.

And They ended up becoming friends. He mentored him. They he started buying apartments. Charlie backed him on this. And now they own a billion dollar real estate portfolio of Los Angeles apartments.

And he's just this neighborhood kid Uh his name is Avi. And uh and they built this huge business together and Charlie started doing this when he was like ninety years old. His ninety year old side hustle is a billion dollar real estate portfolio? God damn it. Andrew, is this gonna be like a a couple that's been married for eighty years and they both die at the same time? Is is Warren gonna like is he uh distraught, you think, in the same way a marriage? Would be. I don't know. I mean, yeah, Buffett's really old too. And I think um

If you think about the actuarial tables, they really don't have much or Buffett wouldn't have much time left, but uh hopefully he keeps going for a few more years. He named his uh or he said he has a successor and everything lined up. And I wasn't sure if it's gonna be like a marriage where like he he's gonna go like next week, but I guess we'll see. funny is they've had successors since they were like sixty. Everyone's been saying they'll die at any time. So they've gone they've gone a lot longer than everyone thought. Um, all right, mine's Palmer Lucky, the CEO of Andrel. So we had Palmer Lucky on, I think two years ago now. It was an amazing episode, but here's why I like Palmer Lucky. He says what you want to say if you were a billionaire, but you'd be too afraid to say it.

And so he has got a lot of really good quotes of him. He's kind of a loose canon in a in a few ways, like him and Jason Calcanis have gotten into it. But frankly. I love it. So he's got this great thing that he did. He spoke at a conference recently and he goes, Do you guys know what the number one profession that children want to be? It's social media influencer. The next is professional gamer. The next is a YouTuber. And the problem is that you can't tell kids to follow their dreams when their dreams suck. Uh, which is like a great line. And he goes, Do you know what the number one dream for kids in nineteen seventy one in nineteen seventy one was? It was an astronaut.

We had just gone to the moon. These guys were fighter pilots, PhD mathematicians, supermen, who all were also really good, good looking and well spoken. It was the ultimate American hero ideal. For a kid to see that and say, That's what I want to be, okay. Then I say yes, you we should tell kids to follow their dream. But when it's social media influencers, I should tell we should tell them their their dreams suck and don't follow their dreams. So he's got these really like articulated, wonderful points that I appreciate. He dresses silly, he's got a mullet. I'm a big Palmer lucky fan. Yeah, I like that one. Uh, that's now two years in a row. Andrew gave him the nod last year for Billy of the Year, and now Sam comes in again with Palmer. I love it. He's uh we gotta get him back on, man. He was he was really good.

On the pot. Super interesting ideas and also, like you said, speaks his mind. He says that he flies commercial and that he prefers to see to sit by the bathroom. He goes,'Cause that'cause my my grand he goes, My grandpa was a pilot and I just love being around everyone. I don't truly believe that, but he cons continually c claims that's true. What's yours, Sean? Um all right. My Billy of the Year is gonna be an entrepreneur who I think has a

I don't know how close they are to the Billy number. I think they're probably close when you include Their wife? That's a little hint for you. I wrote down a couple of bullet points on why

This person is a badass. And you know you're a badass when you're a couple bullet points. goes to the Roman numeral thirteen. Let me just read these off in rapid succession. Okay. This person

Has been a rapper. An entrepreneur, an investor, an author, they are a motivational speaker. They have a Badass wife who's even more successful than them. They somehow married up, even though they're super successful themselves. Four kids. And when I called this person to prep for the podcast. They were on their way, you know, they're taking care of the kids, uh, taking them to their soccer game, yelling at them, where's your shoes? Where'd you put your shoes yesterday? And that just told me they're p they're plugged in as a dad versus uh, you know

four other people are raising their kids. Um, they own an NBA team. They're part owner of an NBA team. They built a coconut water brand, a private jet company. They discovered David Goggins before he was David Goggins. They they actually invited David Goggins to live in their house and train them. Every single day for thirty days. Uh, they like running, so they created a running festival. They like pickles, they're creating a pickle brand. They created a fake Mount Everest, because he's like, I can't go uh climb Everest, but I'll take this mountain, I'll climb it 14 times and it's the same height as Everest. Um

He came on the pod and had one of the all time classic lines about some other competitor. Uh of his here he goes. Keep the money warm! Thank you, thank you for keeping the money warm for me. I'm coming. And keep the money warm has just It warms my soul. Uh he is just having fun out here. He's got great life uh uh philosophies that about having adventures multiple times a year to fr to have a life well lived. He also got angry at me for asking him what his monthly burn was. Yeah, he called Sam out for uh badgering him. We had to cut it out of the episode because it got so badger.

I did badger. I I said I'll ask whatever I want and I respect your respect seven different ways until you finally wilt. He didn't wilt. He was like that's personal shit, Sam. You're pissing me off. And uh he He is Jesse Itzler. That is my Billy of the Year. That's a good one. Yeah. I uh I had him on my list. I thought you were gonna pick him, so I I backed off. I think Jesse's an amazing person. He also has this calendar. I keep getting Facebook ads for it and I'm gonna buy one. Where he like to set what did he say? He goes, I'm fifty years old, I only have thirty summers left. I'm planning exactly how I'm gonna spend'em.

It's I think it was called big ass calendar. Um All right. Category number three. What is the biggest change you're making for twenty twenty four? But before we do it, we have to say what we said. Last year, Andrew, you said Being better at responding to iMessage. You were like I've I've gotten my email system under wrap, but you know, you're like

I have so many text messages, I'm bad at replying. It makes me feel like a bad person and a bad friend. Uh Sam, you said I'm gonna be less of a dictator. Uh you said, I'm gonna lead this company without being a dictator and being less metrics obsessed. I'm gonna be more vibe driven, more calm. I nailed it, by the way, just for the record. Yeah, I was gonna say, and I said, um

I know I'm I don't know why I s I think I said something else, but I think I said knowing when to use my impulsiveness and when to ignore it. Um That so those were our three Sam, you wanna go first? So you said you nailed it.

I nailed it. I've I've been way less metric focused. I try not to talk about sales or anything like that. You're a vibe CEO? I'm a vibe CEO. You know, I'm not the CEO, but my CEO is metrics driven, but I'm not as much. So I I I calm down and I think I'm very easy to be around at this moment. But next year, so I'm making a few changes. One, I'm gonna move eventually. I think I'm gonna do the most tuxedo guy. tuxedo thing ever. I think I'm moving to like Greenwich, Connecticut. That's not a joke.

That's serious. So that's gonna be a big change. But you know what I'm gonna do in two thousand twenty four is I'm gonna get I'm trying gray s grayscale. You know you guys know what grayscale is? It's when you there's like a If you go to just Google it and you'll see the directions on how to do it. But if you type in on your phone like color, you should see it where you can switch your iPhone to only be black or white. So I'm doing that right now because I've been using my phone to read books to my daughter and I hate having that bright With all those colors because she stares at him. But the bigger switch I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get a dumb phone. Have you guys seen dumb phones? It's like a Nokia or a light phone.

I cannot stand phone addiction. It's really bothering me. I'm totally addicted. And I'm afraid to set a bad example for my children. So this year I'm gonna move to a dumb phone, which is similar, I guess, to what you're saying, Andrew. You're breaking up with email. So two well, two thoughts on that before you jump to that. So one, um the bright light you get at night, you wanna actually Peter Atia recommends switching your phone so that it's a red screen instead of grayscale. Uh I can teach you how to do that. You tap your Oh uh power button twice.

And you can make it a shortcut to make your screen red and red light doesn't affect your night vision. So that's what I do. Um I that said, there's been studies on um color and if you decolize your phone, if you make a grayscale

It's less stimulating. You're less likely to click into stuff. Uh what I've done is actually installed something called Freedom. And freedom plus screen time basically block everything. I've been doing that, but with Opal. You know, Opal. I think it's the same thing.

Yeah, similar. So it's like I basically have no ability to get through it. Like there's I I I I have not been able to figure it out. And so I've no email on my phone. Um I've blocked a lot of texting. I've blocked every basic basically every fun app. Uh and I feel like an addict. Like I I feel like really irritable. I'm going through withdrawal right now. Um, but the change I'm trying to make. So I I nailed texting last year. I got this amazing app called Text.com.

Which is basically like superhuman for text. Dude, you've been t you've been tweeting out like lakes. You're like I you like refer five people and you get a T shirt or something. I love it. I love I absolutely love it. But the problem with that is that I've now gotten so responsive with text. I'm so good with text that I'm getting more text. So you know, you send more emails, you get more emails. I'm now getting too many texts and because I built my email system last year.

Um, I don't respond on email as fast. And so I'm getting more and more texts. So I have that problem. The big thing I'm trying to do this year is I'm trying to break up with email fully. So what I've been doing for the last two weeks is

I can access my email. And my assistant sends me screenshots literally of Any important email that she thinks I need to respond to And I just tell her what to do with it. And what's interesting about that is When you're in a flow state, when you're working or writing or doing something

you'll often have the thought, Oh shit, I have to remember to send that email. And so you jump over to superhuman You send the email. And then You know, you might see ten other Subject lines.

And before I know it, I'm like down a rabbit trail. reading like a Packie McCormick newsletter or responding to a problem or something like that. And so What I'm what I'm hoping is that This new system will only be the things that I absolutely need to respond to. And there's no additional distraction. So we'll we'll see how it works.

Let me just tell you two wonderful rich guy things that Andrew just did that are true rich guy things, not these fake ass Not these wanna be rich guy things. First thing is He said, You know what Peter recommends? Which is great,'cause he didn't say You know what my doctor, um Peter Artia, recommends? He recommended it to me. Recommends to me when I see him because again, he's my doctor. So that was the first great thing you did. You didn't brag when you could have bragged. The it's the words not said. It's the dogs that didn't bark, right? You really gave yourself away as being uh uh truly comfortable with yourself. Secure person and I appreciate that.

The second thing. You're Basically at the stage of Trump and others that are just like I just get my email printed out and put on my desk. And I just quickly mark with a pen and then somebody goes, I don't what is email, actually? I actually don't understand how the system works. It just shows up on my desk. You're basically at

Printed email. And printed email is like You got L Louis Vuitton, you got like you know Birkenbags, you got At the very top of the luxury pyramid is printed email. And you're basically there.

You know what's crazy though, it's really not it's not an inaccessible thing, like Um, so I have an assistant in the Philippines And it's like a thousand dollars a month. And she does it. I

So it's like it is something that a lot of people could not that it's an expensive It takes a certain level of confidence in your lifestyle that you're not missing stuff. Right. You you are not lacking something. And so you're able to do this s type of system. So it what's interesting though is I've done this I've been in this cycle for

15 years, right, of getting overwhelmed. Usually once a year I get overwhelmed and I dial everything back. And Sam, I've actually had a flip phone, I've tried the dumb phone. At the end of the day, you need to order door door dash and Uber and do basic things. So it didn't work for me. But I had this moment where I was going through one of these cycles and this was in twenty ten.

And My friend asked me out for sushi. So I I live in Victoria. Uh Canada. And I And uh Vancouver is about

I don't know, a thirty five minute flight away or a two hour ferry away. And so I go for a sushi with my buddy. And I'm in this mode where I put my phone in my car and I don't look at it. So I

Um Go have sushi. We have a great time. We're catching up. At the end of the uh sushi, I get in my car and I look at my phone. And I've received an email from Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg at the time was

Famous, but not Famous, famous, not like he is today. And I had emailed him because I heard he was coming to Vancouver. And he didn't respond for two days. And then it

Eight eight o'clock at night or seven o'clock at night. I got this email that said, Hey, do you want to go for a drink? From him, from Zach. And There is and I checked this email at eight thirty or nine, and there's literally no way to get to Vancouver.

After Nine PM. The ferry leaves at nine PM. There's no flights, et cetera. And so I missed my opportunity to go up for a drink with Mark Zuckerberg one on one. While he's out of his element in my hometown. And so I always think about that story. Whenever I block my email and do all these things, I still always think about that. That's insane. That's so funny. Imagine somebody who's like, Yeah, I really want to make this lifestyle shift. It'll be good. I'm gonna get off my phone.

But you know, what if Mark Zuckerberg just email me and I happen to be at Sushi and I missed the one time he's in my hometown in my neighborhood. You know, and then like Jessica Beele was there after is that she wanted to hang out, but then I just didn't have my phone on me. But it actually. That's incredible. It's a very sad story. It's very difficult. Have you tried to like Catch up with them and be like, Mark, um Hey, uh Yeah, I was doing a dump phone thing, you know how it is. I'm walking around Menlo Park until I see you. Uh

You have to do the uh Andrew, what I want you to give up next year, at least when you're around me, maybe Sean as well. Is that stupid thing you all you and Chris always do where you make everyone put their credit cards in at the end of a dinner. You did that with me, Sean, and I'll well I won't name the other person. But The dinner that one time it was probably six hundred dollars. And I don't know this personal this person's finances, but I I know they aren't where you are.

And this guy outta paid for like a six hundred dollar meal and I don't want to be a bitch and be like We were at sushi and this person doesn't eat fish. They pay for the meal. It's born so w basically the story is uh we were all out for dinner. And Chris and I said, Hey, we're instead of fighting over the bill, let's just all put our credit cards in. We'll let the w the waiter choose the card. I went to you.

We didn't have to fight. There's this weird dynamic that happens where When the bill comes If you pay the bill you're showing off or you're implying they can't afford it.

And if you don't pay the bill You're an asshole'cause you can afford to. And so that's why we do that. Well so Canadian of you. Yeah. Well, Sean, what's yours? Um what am I on? Biggest change?

Okay, biggest change I'm making. This is something I started to do, but I'm doubling down on it. So This year I Turned off. Two Profit streams that I think combined

We're making like one point two to one point five million a year of profit. I just turned them off. Nothing was wrong with them. Just turn'em off. I lied actually. There was something wrong with them.

They were just okay. Uh, they were just okay. Meaning it wasn't something I really loved to do. Wasn't something I hated to do. It was making good money, but it wasn't making Amazing money. Can you say what those are? Yeah, one of them was um my course. So I I was teaching this like power writing course.

And uh Yeah, I was only teaching it. basically two to three weeks out of the years, you know, roughly ten days on average a year. But it would generate, you know, whatever, million bucks a year of profit. And um

But I didn't like being a course sales guy. Like I like Teaching, but I'd rather just kinda like maybe just do it for free on the pot or something like that. Do it do like a master class episode instead. Um So I I just decided I'm not doing it. And I was like, Okay, that's just like

Bless coming in this year. All right. Then that matters to me. Uh so I'm like But I'm willing to do that. And I also just announced that I'm shutting down my rolling fund. So I'll only be investing personally now. I'm not taking any more outside money. Um Just because it was like kind of another thing to manage. Like here's a group of investors, gotta write these updates, I gotta keep it like

you know, I gotta keep it organized. Oh, should I do this deal or should I not do this deal? I just decided I'm just gonna invest my own money. I don't I don't need to do this anymore. And with that comes like a study stream of fees and carry that would come with a fund. I turned it off. Again.

didn't have to turn off, just chose it to turn off. And I the reason why was I realized I was talking to somebody that was And one day, like, you know, uh what's that like a Christmas Carol movie where like he gets visited by the ghosts uh and they're like they kind of tell him the story like I talked to one friend who's in a bad relationship. And they're not getting out.

And I'm like, dude, this is not what you want. They're like, Yeah, but it's not terrible. I'm like, but not terrible isn't your goal. And they're like, Yeah, but like you know I don't know who else is out there. When if I meet somebody else, then maybe You know, I'll I'll feel and I'm like

You're just not going to meet somebody else because you're dating this person. And then I met another person who was in a job they didn't like. Same thing. It wasn't a terrible job, so they didn't quit. And they would they'd be open to a better job, but they weren't seeing a better job because they were so occupied with the one that they had. And so I just kind of realized If you want something great, you gotta make space for great. You can't just wait till

Your current thing gets so bad that you have to end it. Or that this new amazing thing shows up at your doorstep and it'll be obvious to switch. And you gotta just say no to some sh some things that are just okay in order to literally create space so that a better thing can come and land in your lap and and be there. You have the time, you have the mind share, you have the availability to take the meeting and something better lands. And that's exactly what's happened this year. better things have landed because I've done that. And so now I'm like, next year.

What else is there that's like kind of in that middle tier It's good, not great. bucket that I should just I should just get out. What's it gonna be?

Um I'm thinking about what that what that might look like. I I don't want to say just yet, but yeah, there's there's maybe some other things I could do to free up more time or create some space. What do you think about that? Well I um Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that. So

one of the problems with having a fund or raising money is that you owe people things, right? There's people that have given you millions of dollars. And I actually had a moment yesterday where I had a really busy day and I woke up And I actually felt really excited and creative.

And I made this big list of all these things I wanted to dig into that I was excited to learn about and work on. And then um There's a really wonderful guy who invested in uh a fund that we raised. And he gave us I think five million bucks or something. And he wanted to get on the phone and understand what was going on with an investment that we made.

And so Me and Chris had to stop everything we're doing and talk to him and we had a you know, we had a really nice chat with him. But it interrupted my flow state. It interrupted what I really wanted to be doing in my day. And the problem with raising money is that at the end of the day there's people who can call you and you

Oh wait, to answer the phone. And they can interrupt you at any given time and especially in a rolling fund. There's like fifty of those people. And so I feel the same way. I really think that um When you give your time to something like that, you're taking away from something else.

But that's We're gonna get to best investment. Or maybe we can go right there. But some of the things that you're doing contradict that. And same with me. Totally.

Yeah, like I'm doing the Twitter subscribers, for example. But the thing about it is that I actually enjoy A I don't Nobody can email me and say, I'm a Twitter subscriber, I demand your time. I've made it very clear that I'm only doing an AMA once a month.

I don't respond to tweets. necessarily don't guarantee any response. And so Most months I spend an hour doing an AMA that I find really fun anyway. So for now I'm gonna continue doing that. But um but I've certainly considered that.

Oh by the way, I I have an up I have an update on my biggest change from last year that I'd said where I was gonna be less I was gonna learn when to use my impulsiveness and when not to. Totally failed at that. Um we there was a business idea that we had that we were like, Oh, maybe we should do this business. And I was like, here's the reasons why. I'm super excited about it, but I was like

You know what? Old Sean would have just started it now. New shot. Here's what I'm gonna do. This business isn't going anywhere. I'm gonna give myself A two week cooldown period.

where I I've I've done all the meetings, I'm kind of like I know what's there, I have the information I need. But I still have to decide is this a business because you you know, you don't date a business, you kinda marry a business for like at least a couple of years. And so I said, Let me give myself a two week cooldown period to get off the impulsiveness. And I made it two days into the impulsiveness period before I had my first customer and I was running and it was so good. And I was like, Oh, I definitely didn't do the thing. that I would have advised me to do, which is to say if you still want to do this in two weeks

Then you know. This is a great business for you. And uh I I kinda failed at that, I gotta admit. So still working on that one. I I'm gonna keep that one on the list for this year. And impulsively shut down your rolling phone um Let's do person you'd bet it all on. Uh so mine was between

Two of our guests actually, Jason Yanowitz and Austin Reef. Jason Yanowitz started Blockworks, it's a crypto media company. I don't even like crypto, but I love Jason and I love his media company. He's scaled it to I don't know, tens of millions in revenue. And then Austin Reef. started Morning Brew, who was my competitor. Now I've gotten really close to him'cause he's in my core group at Hampton. But I'm gonna give it to Austin because he's already sold most of his business, Morning Brew. I think he was twenty six when he sold it at a seventy five million dollar valuation. The company now is doing

high eight figures in revenue. I think whatever Austin Reef does, I would I would blindly put money in. I I would I would invest in him. Blindly. Wow, that's not who I thought you would pick. Austin's amazing, but uh That's it. Well you've come full circle. You're you your former competitor now turned Dare I say it, hero?

Well, look, I love these people that have the perfect balance of optimism and pessimism. You know, like they're like optimistically pesti pess pessimists, like where they think something amazing is gonna is gonna happen, but they're fairly conservative and they plan for the downside. So uh he's interesting to me. Cool, who you got, Andrew, who would you bet it all on? So I mine's not really a business person necessarily. Um I you know I've been thinking a lot about like AI disruption. And I think that if I had to bet it all on

One business. That would be incredibly hard because I think in AI there's so many second order and third order consequences and levels of disruption. So My thought was actually If I could just

be an investor in a podcaster, someone with a personal monopoly. And my idea was Andrew Huberman. So I think he's got a Incredible brand. Uh and he's doing the thing that he loves and is kind of made for.

He's insanely likable. He loves talking about to all these interesting people about all these interesting things. People have this a cr incredible affinity for him. And they will basically do Anything that he says, if people advertise with him or he talks about a product.

Everyone will buy it, which means that His ads, like we tried to buy an ad for Aeropress a year ago. We just got an ad for Aero Press, literally yesterday. Uh, and I think we paid some you know, very high number because his audience is huge. Did you see results from it yet?

Uh I don't know yet. I can report back. Um but anyway. He his business I'm like that is a completely undisruptible business unless he gets Hit by a bus or something.

The best line was from R Rob Deirdick. We asked him how much it costs to advertise Momentus uh on the pod on h on Huberman's pod, and he goes I don't remember how much it was, but I could tell you whatever it was, it probably wasn't enough. 'Cause he moved the needle for us that much. Yeah, that's amazing. All right. My uh person, I bet it all Same, are you sitting down?

Yeah. It's you, bro. It'd be you. It'd be you. And let me tell you why. Let me tell you why. Not just for the reasons that you think you're talented, but there's a lot of talented people. You're smart, but there's a lot of smart people out there. I this year have really come to appreciate more than ever. And I think it's because I've moved out of the I'm gonna be CEO and operator role to more like I'm gonna be investor.

uh and other um trust other people to operate uh you know these businesses that we own. Um You n the underrated trait that I had been Severely underweighting. And my little mental model was

Like are is this person gonna be focused? Are they gonna get distracted? Is this person gonna be loyal and are they gonna take this seriously? And when it comes to that, like we have a lot of friends that are Yeah.

They're talented and they're successful. But they have shiny object syndrome. I'm one of'em. Uh, we have a lot of people that will Uh, if they if they do something, they kinda know they got 10 more shots on goal and they're just gonna keep trying different stuff until they figure out the little thing that works. Every time you talk to them, if you catch up with them every quarter, they're gonna have a new narrative.

You're not like that. And I've now learned that. People like that. They just win. And the peop the people uh the people who are steady And solid and I and I feel like to have a certain level of seriousness about them.

uh when it comes to doing something. Like I don't really care what it is. Like when you were writing Your blog posts. for the hustle early on, even before the newsletter just like Yeah, we're gonna write a blog post that needs to get a bunch of people to um subscribe and follow us. And you took it incredibly seriously. And when you were hosting events, you took it incredibly seriously. And when you're doing Hampton, you take it incredibly seriously. You do one thing.

You take it very, very seriously. And if I'm gonna bet it all on somebody, that's really what I want is a certain level of seriousness. It's something I it's a trait I've come to admire. Like we hired a CMO into our e-commerce business. And uh This guy Chris and he's amazing. Uh, not because he's the most talented marketer. And like if you go on Twitter every day, there's these like e com guys. I don't know if you guys see this, or it's just my feed. of guys just bragging about this like campaign they did and this new ad technique they did and

He's not like that. He's just blocking and tackling every day with a certain level of seriousness. And the beautiful thing is, I know this guy's gonna stay focused and only work on this. He doesn't have three side hustles. He doesn't have his own podcast and rolling fun. He's just gonna stay focused on this. For the next four years. And when he does that. And he takes it seriously and he's gonna like do all the obvious things.

He's gonna win bigger than the kind of like Talented person who's all over the place. And I know that's a big contrast to me because I'm more of the talented person who's all over the place, but I've seen the value on the other side now, and I'm like, that's who I need to surround myself with'cause those people win. Well, I appreciate you. I love the love and I love you for saying that. That's very kind. I um Why we had a M we like we did these M FM meetups recently. Um and I called in one to to one last night, Sean.

And apparently the thing is is they put on their badge who they like more. You or me? And never tear us apart, bro. I don't even want to know the results. They'll never tear us apart. Obviously, every brown person, every Indian person had shot. But I was shocked. Maybe I shouldn't have been shocked. You were a you were a fan favorite. So by you liking me and them liking you, they are now my fans too, maybe I hope. Um but uh I appreciate that. Thank you very much. I think that um

Focus will change your game, Sean. And if you want You know, like this is a little crude, but you know how you're supposed to like rub one out before you have before you like do something bad with your with someone that you're not supposed to. If you want to love you you could do that to me. I will help you. I'll be your hand I'll keep you focused. I don't know what that offer was, but that was kind, I think. I just offered my hand to you. Yeah, I I got you. All right. Um all right, what's the next one? Best business for someone else to go into.

Yeah, what uh what's a great business idea that someone else should go do. Do you know what we said last year? I think mine was a washer and uh a washer and dryer that's two in one. Uh Andrew said empty empty leg flights. And then Sean said school for starving artists, like turn art into commercial things, for example, photographers. Yeah. All right. So uh I don't think anybody did any of those three. So uh what do we got this year, boys? We gotta we gotta step it up. All right. Sam, what's yours? I've got a pretty I think it's practical. So Since the beginning of this pod, Sean, I've said that I think privacy is gonna be more important and it's gonna that's is a mega trend. I said that uh things like duck duck go are gonna get a lot bigger.

I think they have gotten huge, but not as big as I thought because it hasn't been easier than it's been more like um a vitamin, not necessarily a painkiller. I still think s uh It's gonna get big, the that space. And I think in particular what you're gonna see is companies who are tailored for

It's gonna start with first like executives and people like us who uh are have audiences. And it's gonna be something like where they protect your information online. So I've gotten like I've signed up for a few of these services and I'm alerted if one of my uh passwords get hacked. Or they'll say like hey, um We know where you live because we saw you post a picture of your car, then we did

Google Maps and we see your car in front of the house and we just predicted where you live and we and And so I'm using a bunch of these. I'm testing a lot of them out. I think these are gonna be really popular. So for example, Cyberhealth.co. I've not used these guys yet. But I like like the premise that they provide. But I think what's gonna happen is there's gonna be it's gonna start with like five or ten thousand dollar a year services that are a little bit more towards executives, and then it's gonna trail down. And I think Gen Z is gonna be all about privacy in the next Ten years. So that's what I'm interested in. That's a great one. I like that one a lot. I I totally agree with you. This feels a little semi-gluti, like uh

Hey wait, is Sam onto something here? I think you I think you might be on to something. Uh Andrew, what you got? What's the best business for someone else to go do? So I love this one. I think I would do this if um if I was gonna start a business and uh My idea is AI Tinder. So imagine you go on Tinder. And so so the what gummy thing about this is Um

Dolly and all these image generation tools can now create photorealistic images. And I don't know if you guys have seen them, but there's now Instagram influencers Um, who are beautiful men and women who make ten thousand dollars a month on Instagram. Dude, I just kept getting this. I kept getting this lady come up with my Twitter and I'm like

This lady's very attractive. What's her story? Like why do I keep getting the same person going on in my story? And it They don't say she was fake, but I'm like this is Definitely fake. This person's not real. Then I had to Google it and it and she was fake. Yeah, I mean and and they they can I mean it basically You can look at the image and almost not know.

So my here's my idea. So you basically generate Um like thousands and thousands and thousands of Fake digital men and women. And then you have Tinder and you basically

Um, you make it like a casino, right? So you're swa you're swiping and let's say you match with a A really hot digital girl. And then you have to text with her. And there's some sort of algorithm where you have to win her over. to exchange photos and start talking or whatever. And I just think

If you gamify dating, right? I mean it's kind of It's something that like, you know, people in relationships can even do this, right? It's just kind of like scratching an itch. I think that's something that would just absolutely blow up. But you're saying They know it's fake, right? You're saying the game is to it's almost like you know flirting as a getting and like people might see this as like creepy and it's like no, these bots can train

people how to not be creepy, right?'Cause you're never gonna get another photo if you're creepy. We've talked about replica. Do you remember replica? It was like a very good digital girlfriend or a boyfriend. And they like changed part of their algorithm or something about like what they allowed people to talk about. And one of the one of the guys killed himself. Like one of the customers killed himself. Like these people fell in love with these women, these fake women.

So it's pretty wild. Yeah, that's crazy. All right. Uh best business for someone else to go do. Okay, I had a couple ideas. I think Anything in the guns and ammo space, I think is a great one. Um but I didn't want to pick that one. I think distress venture capital, Andrew, I think you guys are on top of this, which is a bunch of Companies that are good products.

Have revenues. But they are not gonna be able to raise their next round and they're gonna go Die and creating a business around that is good. But the one I picked is TikTok shops.

So I don't know if you guys are paying attention to this. The number one book in the world right now, do you know what it is? The Shadow Work Journal. Number one book in the world.

What is the shadow work journal, you ask? Well this is Goddamn book that you can't s you know is just going crazy on TikTok. It's basically Well and what it is is uh TikTok not just launched the ability to shop They launched the ability for anybody to be an affiliate of any product without having a relationship with the company.

So created this Giant like you know, a network sales thing. It's like almost like an MLM. Uh TikTok has turned into a giant M L M. So basically You can as a creator just find a product in the shop that's eligible for commission. You make a video about it.

And you get a commission every time they go buy it. That's why this this journal is the number one product in the world. It sold over Half a million copies of this journal. Yeah, it's sold. TikTok tells you how many it's sold. Half a million. This is crazy. And that's that's through the TikTok shop. Then you have Amazon. It's the number one book on Amazon too.

So you add another half a million on that, right? That that's e easily a million copies of sold of this of this one journal. And this is like in a two and a half, three month span. That's not very long. And um you know, I'm the type of person where I meet people like I meet Moys. And uh, you know, he's like, Yeah, I did Facebook uh ads for native deodorant. I was like, Okay, well, what worked? It's like yeah, back then, you know, the clicks were just super cheap. There weren't very many people advertising on Facebook.

Especially a product like this. It was just mobile games or something. And you're like, damn, man, that was the the glory era of Facebook ads. Now it's all so expensive. Now it's so competitive. But you know, if I was doing this in twenty twelve, that was the time. And you know, oh I wish I bought Bitcoin back in twenty eleven or twenty twelve when my friend first mentioned it, but back when it was, you know, a hundred and thirty dollars. That was the time. I always wish I was there back in the time.

Well guess what? There's a golden arrow that's happening right now, and it's TikTok shops, right? TikTok shops is currently in that like It's very cheap. It's not that saturated. And TikTok is very motivated to promote these things. And TikTok customers are not like

fully acclimated to the fact that now a bunch of the tic tac they see are selling products. And so the conversion rate's gonna be higher. And these windows don't last for very long, but They do last. Yeah, and when you you can go make hay during these periods and so I think if I was uh, you know, twenty three years old There's nothing else I would rather be doing than trying to create something that's gonna sell through the TikTok shop platform. TikTok is even paying

for like they'll subsidize your product. So if you have a sixty dollar product It'll be for sale for thirty dollars, but you're still getting sixty because TikTok is subsidizing products that they want to promote. And uh and giving you the full value of them. So you're getting TikTok to pay for half the half the product sometimes or or thirty percent of the product sometimes. It's pretty insane. Yeah, this is wild. And I see that guy Isaac from Mini Katan or whatever what's it called? Katana, yeah. Mini Katana like sharing all of his TikTok shop details and it's wild.

It's pretty crazy. Kinda like when the iPhone came out. People start making apps for the app store, but you could see the charts. You could see what's getting downloaded. And same thing with shops. You can go see what's selling well and how many units it's sold. And you can kind of either use that to either create a competitor or Like

Just sort of like abstract away and be like, Oh, it's this type of product that's doing well at this price price point that's doing well on TikTok. Let me go let me go after that. All right, that is part one. I gotta go take a pee break, get some water, take a rest, but we got so many trophies still on the table that have to be given out for the Millie Awards. We got six or seven of my favorite categories. We saved the best stuff for last. So after this, go listen to part two. Of the two thousand twenty three million. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my law in it like my days off On the road less travel, never looking back

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