Hey, it's Sean before we get to our episode. I want to tell you about a podcast, you might like it's called business Made Simple. It's hosted by Donald Miller on the HubSpot podcast Network. So Donald Miller. If you don't know, he's the guy behind story brand which is an awesome framework for how to describe your company. And he's got this podcast that's teaching you about practical skills and business coaching and discussions with industry experts. So, you know, he's got episodes like how to escape a villain mindset or is word-of-mouth marketing dead or the framework that makes marketing easy. So, check it out. I think you'll like it.
All skills that can help you. It's called business Made Simple, get it wherever you. Get your podcasts. And now it's time for my first million. Like first, it's exhilarating running an agency is awesome. When you're starting out, you get a seat at the table and all these places. You don't deserve to be right. I was like a 22 year, old pipsqueak, and I was meeting the founders of Pinterest and slack and they're asking me for my opinion, right? It was, it was crazy. I feel like I can rule the world. I know why I could be what I want to.
Any like a Days on the
Road? Less Traveled. Never looking back? All right. We got Andrew Wilkinson on the Pod today. We just talked about Sam got hacked and situation where Andrew got hacked and how crazy the hacking situation is. We talked about this two hundred thousand dollar and a pi Bond, whether that was dumb or a good idea. We talked about how Andrew is functioning during World War Three going on her, you know, the craziness of the world, how he's dealing with that. What else we talked about Sam?
So we
talked about how when he thinks it's time to hire first employees, which sounds like a basic concept, but we actually, I actually thought it was really
cool. There's a gym in there called hire one to hire 10. He talks about this this little nugget. I wrote that down during the Pod as like, oh shit. I've been making this mistake for a long time. He's totally right. We talked about why bad guys usually win for fraudsters con artist. We talked about his newsletter business and the cart of copywriting and some of the we took one of his private kind of email.
We start talking about some of the genius things that he did in the copywriting of
that. Sean. You're awfully quiet this episode and I was too because I was like, just listening and learning. Is that what you were doing?
I was listening and learning and then also, our connection. Our internet connection is not super great. So I didn't know when you were going to talk first, when I was even talk. So I was just decided to be paused, a lot of times,
but it was good. I always like having them on.
All right. Cool. Enjoy this episode.
All right, Andrew Wilkinson's here. What's up, dude?
Hey, man, how you doing? We're supposed to do this in person, but I got
covid. Yeah. I know, we had like, 200 people coming to see you and I talked and we canceled it like 3 days in advance
so crappy. We got to, we got to do it, but covid-19 Lon uses. So, it wasn't too bad. I was one of the lucky ones, unlike Sean. That's a good one.
Excellent. One-liner.
Can I? All right. Look, I tell you guys what happened to me this weekend. I had a long weekend. So Sean I called Sean urgently because he was the first person to come on mine because I thought he would know someone at Twitter, but basically I got hacked and let me explain to you how I got got because I got got good. So basically I was sitting in my bath. Yeah. I was sitting in a bath at 1 p.m. And I get this text from a number and it says in a
A really nice text. I actually I sent you a picture. Sean. It says you we've noticed a suspicious activity on Twitter from some City and India and it said the name of the city and it was this real official-looking text and it's a we just sent you a confirmation code. And another text. Can you copy that code and paste it to us? So we know that this is you
it's you
and I get this other text right at the same time and it's from Twitter and it's eight numbers and I
It. And I put it in the other texts. I hit send and then immediately, I was like, wait a minute. That was I shouldn't have done that. And what it was was it was the the text from Twitter that was actually someone hitting reset password and they sent me a text and I sent it to those people.
And so the captain
how did you you you realize right Vineyard been hacked. Not like once you saw something suspicious. You didn't go back and think how did they get me?
Right then? I was like I sent the text and I was like it's at for 10 seconds or 20 seconds and I was like, wait a minute. That doesn't seem right? Because I was like playing on my phone. I was like sitting in the bath watching YouTube, it played on my phone and I wasn't paying attention to. This was automated. I was just like in an automated mode and this happens and I send it and that I go. Wait, that's weird. So
Log into Twitter and I can't log in and I type my password and it's not working and I click reset password and it's that we've sent an email to and it's an email. I don't recognize and I was like, oh my gosh, I got got. And then they tweeted out thing that says I partnered up with HubSpot to give away a bunch of PlayStations and we're going to give the money to st. Jude. Here's a picture of the PlayStations. DM me and I'll sell you the PlayStation 4 500.
Dollars, all money goes to st. Jude's. And they, but they I think they only collected like $2500. But here's the kicker, one of the guys who gave money, he gave money $500, and he goes also because I'm such a fan because I like you so much. I'm gonna give you another 500. So he sent them 1,000 dollars. And So eventually Twitter helped me and I got back but it may, You
Gotta Give You Gotta Give these guys marks for creativity like so often you get those spear phishing emails and stuff, and they're written in like ESL. They don't really make any sense though.
Those guys, some pretty good.
It was a good one and I actually called them and I talked to them and I was even texting them and they were like trying to sound like me. It was, it was pretty wild. They got me. Have you guys ever had that
happened? I actually had. I've been I think I've been hacked before it was really weird. I don't, I'm really talked about it actually, but about two years ago. When you remember the Jamal khashoggi killing where you know, Saudi Arabia basically beheaded a political dissident and
I tweeted about it and said, I don't remember something like this is horrible and an atrocity or something. And at the time we were raising our fund and like a week later, I get a DM from a shake and he's got this legit looking account. He's got that, you know, the headdress and I go to his website and it looks like this legit, you know, financial institution or whatever and he says, I really want to invest in your fund and so I get on the phone with him and unlike any other investor pitch. He doesn't ask me anything about the fund, he
It's grilling me and he starts saying to do, you know, in Qatar. Is there anyone in Qatar, you know, and I'm like, oh that's weird. Like, you know, have a chat with him for 30 minutes. Hang up, don't hear anything from and then 24 hours later. I got a video message from him on WhatsApp and it's just fireworks and it says happy New Year. And I'm like, well, that's a weird like what? A weird guy. I don't think anything of it. And then for the next week, my phone is constantly rebooting and
around this time. It clicks for me and I'm like, oh my God, I probably was identified as somebody. The Saudis wanted to like check out and they probably did one of these zero days on me. So I ended up like, basically redoing my phone. Sending it away. I never figured it out, but it's like it's freaking terrifying. This is like I watched a video and these guys probably had root access to my
phone. What's a zero-day?
A zero-day is a attack. That uses a flaw within the operating system that nobody knows.
About right. So it's like, you know, they've they can send you a link in Safari and it could somehow get root access to your iPhone and Apple doesn't know about it yet. So they can't prevent it.
Wow. Have you had that Sean? I would have thought the Bitcoin Bros. What? It kind of
thank God. I never been zero day now, that's I mean, that's where at least as far as I know, but that's do this. So scary. Like that's a that's like, why would when the UN meets they have to like put their phone in a radioactive say, for whatever leaves in the game.
You know, you were else, you know, like with with Obama. He had a special toilet. They would bring with him so he couldn't poo anywhere, except for the special toilet and it would incinerate his feces because they don't want anyone to get his DNA right? Like, that's how intense they are. No way and like cops. Yeah, if you like drinks from a cop, they like Secret Service. Takes it, they like destroy it.
We all have a mutual friend. I'm not going to name now, but they told me that they work for this famous company and when they go to well, I could say it because I think Facebook
As a to but like some I heard stories from Folks at the injuries and Horowitz that when they go to China, they don't they're not allowed to bring their normal laptop and they have to bring a different laptop that doesn't have anything on it yet. And I think a lot of Facebook employees have to do that too, but they like don't want certain laptops going
there. No. Yeah like Russia China. I mean you got to be so paranoid. I mean ideally were the crazy thing you realize is that like I was talking
I'm a friend of mine. This guy. Matt Holland who's got a cyber security company called Field Effect. And he's former CE SE, which is like the Canadian hacking offensive cyber Commander, whatever.
It's like the kindergarten version of
CIA. Exactly, exactly. It's like the crappy Canadian version, but he worked with like he worked with the CIA like tailored access and all that stuff. So anyway, I was having dinner with him and I was like, dude, like I use to factor like, you know, I don't get text messages. I follow all the procedures like you couldn't hack me. Could you?
And he's like, dude, like two hours like give me a budget and as long as I've got budget, I can afford to go by cyber weapons. So like these cyber weapons 30 days. They cost like 123 million dollars. But if you have the money you can get anyone you want. You literally just send them a text. They don't even have to click a button and you got them. It's absolutely terrifying. The guys, like, you just hope we're not on the radar of some huge country. Like the, why would they care about us? He's like, you thought that was shrimp. Tempura. You were just eating, bro. I
got straight into your phone from that appetizer during this wheel, right? I heard I heard somebody go on likes Friedman's podcast and they said they're talking about this market for zero-day exploits. And there were like, you know, used to be iPhone. Exploits were like, let's do the creme de La Creme. That was the caviar of like, you know, cyber, you know, a malama that you could go by and now Android exploits are higher ranking because they're just affect more people and and I think maybe some governments
Switched off of iPhone or something like that. I'm not sure entirely. But like yeah, these things run like seven figures to buy, you know, these these exploits are these like rooted devices. Basically, that I almost, I almost started a business. I bought a domain hack, my company.com and the thing that's interesting is that all the Enterprise businesses. So a government organizations companies over 100 people, they have it. They think about this stuff, but nobody in the small and medium-sized really consider cyber and it's
Just it's something no one thinks about and like we've dialed it in over the last couple years, but I really had to drag everyone along like nobody thinks about it, but it really is a total loss. You don't
think you don't think about it until you get got. You know what I mean? And you know, it's one of those things where it's not a big deal until it's a big deal. And anyone who's experienced a little bit of it. They're like, oh, okay. I understand why. But what Screwed Up is in America, we have experienced. You know, what experience is Andrew. It's like a one of the three credit bureaus. They
Lost like that. I think they had like almost every American's credit score and information. They lost all of our information and it was hacked and like we didn't most Americans don't care, but then when I get like something that like this weekend happened to be, now, I'm paranoid now. I'm like really nervous. Oh, yeah,
so it's crazy. Is like if someone really wanted to get you and they didn't have a budget. Let's say like some hacker just wants to get you. They can literally just go outside your house in a van. They can get a Pringles can antenna. They can point it at your house and they can broadcast this.
Same whatever your Wi-Fi network is, let's call it say, it's called Sam's Wi-Fi. I just recreate Sam's Wi-Fi. I pointed at you, you go on your laptop and you're like, what the fuck like I can't log in and you try your password. Once you try your password. They know the password to your Wi-Fi, they get into a security camera on your property or whatever and then they're in your network and it's just insane. Fuck. And now that we're talking about that. We're all the target this time. He, maybe we should edit. We should edit this out. This is scary. There was this is like talking about how you
To stay full of jewels in your house. There's three things that I was going to say and I was like, there is no value in me saying this on the Pod. Because what what? Good does it tell you to say? This thing? I discovered of that somebody could do to me. Nope, not going to say it. Then the measures I took against it. Nope. Not gonna say it. Like, what do I want to say to this? Basically, this stuff freaks me out. Like, I'm Sam knows. I'm very chill about almost all things. This is one that really does freaked me out because these like
These attacks, they could just come. They could come at you and it feels like you could just get you know, you could just get robbed silly, you know, whether it's personal information. Like, you know, if I'm in the shower and my phone, is there a point it away. I'm like, I don't know who's got access camera. I'm not trying to have my dudes out there right now. Like literally, I think about that every time, I shower every time I log in
and is that a thing though? Like, I see people with with think so, you guys have a little bit more experience than I do. I think. Are you maybe know people who work at these companies. I do.
I think fate, like, do you actually think that Facebook is listening to what I'm saying? Or the biggest,
right? I don't think Facebook is, but I think, well, I think they have programs that record random samples and then people, listen them, but I don't think it's like a quoit baracy, say that again, not that. That's a thing that's a thing. So if you go on Alexa settings, like they're like you can opt in to being like Oh help us make Alexa better and they'll listen to random recordings of you saying, stuff, right on the flip side. I don't think you need to worry about that.
That I don't think that's like a massive conspiracy and they're going to use that against you. What I would be worried about is someone getting into your phone and having access to your camera when you don't realize and that's a real. That's a very real thing for sure. Yeah, like, you know, I and, you know, these are the things that were you seem paranoid, but there's enough at stake for somebody to be able to, like, let's just take Tick-Tock. For example, Tick-Tock is downloaded on like over a billion phones right now, and it's
Chinese company and it has access to your camera, your camera. Roll your face at all times. Plus it has the feed which can like feed you any information you want. All right. So, this is like pretty much root access to your life in your brain. And, and so, you know, I'm not saying they're doing anything but like, could they, of course, they could write. Like, looks like that, you know, that face app app where you can like, make yourself fat or whatever. They are. Like Russian. Do everyone's used its own by the Russian government, probably, right. And now they
Have scans of everyone's faces. Yeah, exactly. And so it like you've ever been on your phone and then you like kind of you do that thing where you swipe up to like close apps and then you see like this app that you forgot you had open four days ago and it's on and it's like on the camera screen. It's like, whoa, this app. Just has my camera open right now. Like I didn't even realize my camera was open, but clearly it is because like if I click to that app, but cameras on right now like are like I can see it even in the preview that it's on. So there's all kinds of crazy stuff that that's out there with Sam when you're thinking
And I did another round of like kind of like my shitty version of like Drilling in bolts into like that the walls of my stuff. But you know, I just know that anybody who's sufficiently talented and motivated can kick my ass in this area. I just, you know, I actually just hope that they don't give a shit about me. That's that would be the only big thing is that you want to air gap yourself, right? So it's like you don't want to be the one who sends the wires for payment. You want to have a whole process and
a series of things that have to happen before any money gets sent or any access. It's like, you don't want, you don't want access to GitHub. You don't want to access the S3. You got to have like many many layers of that but um, but yeah, it's freaking terrifying. This
stuff. Well, thanks for sharing fun. I called you first and it worked. Someone a Twitter employee. Saw it and hollered at me on Facebook.
Yeah. And by the way, when he did I was like is this really a Twitter employee? I went and I went and stuck the shit out of this guy is like, oh, yeah. He's just a liar tuner. It looks legit.
Like fronted on my Facebook and like, saw, if he was married, I'm like, all right, who's your wife? It's not like, I was, I was nervous. And then I've had people DME saying they were scammed and I'm like, should I give them money? But then I'm like, I don't know if they're real. So like my whole braid is kind of screwed
up Twitter, the Twitter guys, like just give me your login for Instagram and I'll get this all sorted out. I'll take care of
all before you. So anyway, I'm messed up. But thank you. It worked
out, by the way. You need to just buy P. They were
People with a PS5 thing, right? You just need to buy a PS5 for for the guy that helped you out that that's I think the only family you had to close the Karmaloop. Only somehow I'm
willing to do that. I think what I'm going to do is make them like FaceTime me
though or or just actually give it to Saint Jude, right? They were basically saying, oh, this is for st. Jude. It's for the kids. Okay, you can't trust any of these people online, but they were trying to give to st. Jude. You should just give the st. Jude. And then that will, again close the karmic Loop for you.
All right, I'll do it. I'll do some. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do something. I'm gonna holler at these guys. I'm going to make them FaceTime me.
Me. I'm gonna actually I'm gonna be all right. And go to your computer login to PayPal, show me that you send a money. Alright, cool. I got you up. I'll make it right. So I because I'm the zombie
cannabis.
I had a thing that I was going to talk about on the milk Road. It was like super relevant. So basically, I don't know if you guys saw there was some news where the number basically, the number two nft project. Now number one, and number two. They've essentially merged number two kind of bought number one and which sounds a little crazy. But that's what happens. So like these two projects that have had like a combined. I don't know. Three billion in nft sales. They merged board a Piat club and cooked it but our club bought.
Krypto punks. You wrote about it. You said it's as if chocolate, but vanilla if Harry Potter, but Mickey Mouse.
Yeah, exactly. It sounds like this, this strange kind of like merger at the top. It's like if Beanie Babies bought pug, they all right, that's one. So so basically this went down yesterday and when the news was breaking I was like, okay, this is going to cause a spike in one of these projects either board. Apes are going to go up or Punk's are going to go up. I don't know which one. I like I've been on the fence.
It's about buying one of these. I'm going to buy one. So I texted Ben I was like, all right, April Punk. He's like hold on putting the baby to sleep. I'll call you in 20, I go been April punk. I'm an Impulse is now 20 minutes from now. I'm gonna chicken out. Like, I've done 20 times already in the past, six months about these things. I'm buying one of these right now and I made a bet that the punk would go up. Guess what? Guys, back completely wrong Punk State punks are punks down, you know, a little bit of 5% or so that nothing bad, but Apes shot up. I would have made it that since I seventy thousand dollars in
Four hours had I had I just pick the other one. You know, I picked wrong on which one I thought would go up. But in doing so I was gonna share with the community on the mill. Girls can be like, hey, here's the punk. I bought. Here's the process that, you know, just like share the story basically along with the news of this happened. So I thought one of these would go up. I picked this one. I was wrong, the other one went up, but you know, anyways, here's the punk I got and and then I was like, I don't want to share this. I don't like I was like, first, I need to go through all the measures to like put this into Cold Storage.
Like get this off the fucking internet so that nobody comes in and steals my two hundred thousand dollar and ft that I just bought.
Well, you paid 200 grand for it. Yeah. Oh my God. Are you
my previous out of the most expensive piece of art would have been added a zero dollars to twenty dollars. I like t-shirt. Yeah, the Jersey Shore or something. Yeah. Family reunions shirt. I can't believe. You know, it's crazy as you could you could have like I've bought some art of the last couple years and like
Integrand. You can buy like a very significant piece of art. You could have this beautiful thing in your house that, you know, act in a real Art Market that we know has existed last hundred years. Like I'll be super curious to see how this goes.
Wait, Andrew. You've bought two hundred thousand dollar pieces of
art, no, not 200,000, but like, you know, I've bought expensive art for my house and office and that kind of stuff. And you know, for 200 Grand you can buy a pretty, you can buy a nice piece of art, you think about like a Lamborghini, baby.
I used Lamborghini use lamb before that about. So definitely had some buyers remorse as soon as I hit the button because I was like what the hell did I just do but you know, that's the game. I the one thing I'm doing this whole year is I'm playing in all parts of crypto and I'm actually using all the different protocols in the tools and getting to know. And I know like, you know a couple of the projects I go in there, you know, it's going to be a scam, are going to get rug pulled the projects are going to go up like crazy some project. I'm going to realize. Yeah, that thing
I thought you know, like was kind of stupid was actually really stupid. And so this is you know, one of them is like if you're think we're going to be in the space. You gotta play the whole space. I think it's the right way to do it. I mean, I actually have a hole in the notes. I had a whole thing about this but you got to do it wrong before you do it. Right? Right. And if you know, you directionally want to go into and I've teased in crypto. You just kind of have to throw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and you got to lose a lot of money and, you know, this might make money might lose money, but just starting, I think is way more important. So, I don't think it's a
Bad mood necessarily.
Let me ask a question that Sean wrote on here, which is actually really good. So, we've got a ton of topics. Andrea has a ton of stuff. I'd done a lot of I did a lot of research and draw on your topics, but Shawn's got this great question, which is what is, what are people's take on how you're functioning during World War 3. So basically, with the markets, the way they are with people dying, a war, Andrew and Sean. What are you guys doing? And where's your head
at?
So I from a business perspective. I've spent so much time trying to wrestle with current events, right? Like think about Trump and all the unpredictability reading the New York Times every day. At the end of the day. I'm resigned to the fact that I don't control the global economy or if this turns into world war three or something. The way that I'm operating is very similar to the way I always operate which is I try and have amazing businesses. That generate a lot of cash flow and I try and keep as much money as I can on the
Ends. And by businesses that will be fine. Even if valuations are down. There's no Venture Capital. There's no banking. There's no market. So I'm kind of going as I usually am. And this time, I don't know. I think I'm less less into it and I what I mean is psychologically. I'm a little more distance from it than I usually would be because of the last five years. Like I kind of over exhausted myself with news and
stuff. What do you think of money on the sidelines? What's that mean?
Well, then I have liquidity. I have you no money in the bank waiting
to. Yeah, but you see, you have it literally in savings or bonds, or do you have it in
equities? I have it in like us treasury bills or gics. Usually,
because having things in equities like I have right now, I'm hurting.
Well, here's the thing. I mean, I talked to so many friends about this like Warren Buffett has this great line where he says, if you owned a farm and you know, your farm to you is worth like a million bucks. Right? Let's say makes a hundred thousand dollars a year of profit just because some jackass rolls up one day and says, hey, can I buy your farm for 50 Grand? You just say, fuck off. Know I, you know, I'm not selling for 50 Grand. It doesn't mean you think your farm is worth 50 Grand now, right? And the stock market goes up and down.
And you get all these bids, you just don't have to sell. So unless you sell your stock at this valuation. It doesn't affect you in any way.
Yeah, well, the only difference is I think I like that mentality a lot. It's more like you're in a neighborhood and you're like my home is worth a million dollars and then your neighbor cells their home for like two hundred thousand dollars you like. Whoa. Hey what's going on here? And then the other neighbor to your left so their home for 450 thousand dollars and every day you're hearing about another home sale in your neighborhood for like so much less and you're like, look, I'm I'm not moving. I'm holding on but damn I really do, you know, like it's hard to steal feel like your house is worth a million dollars when all
Neighbors have just sold their when, you know, you know, the whole mr. Market thing,
right? And also by strong also was irrational. Yeah, but that's, I understand that. But what to add a point to Sean's analogy is and you've taken a loan against that house at that billion dollar
valuation, totally that, you know, complete the funny thing is about the loans. I don't know how his in the States but in Canada if your house gets valued at 10 million dollars, let's say and you go and you take a two million dollar loan. There is no market for your house.
It's right. The bank doesn't revalue your house every year and so they don't call it. It's not like a margin call where if it's a stock at 10 million and it drops to 3, you're getting margin called day of real estate that like I wouldn't worry about that too much. Yeah, except I think real estate equities. Yes. Oh, yeah dude, margin calls. That's like driving with a knife on the steering wheel. You have to be incredibly careful. You don't take any deadly. Yeah. I mean
II, the market has to drop by another hundred percent for me, too.
My loans to pay back. Maybe I'll drop a lot. So I take great little or something there. It's sorry, not 100. It's got a half. It's got a half. Yeah,
I do but it's in kind of non-core stocks that I hold outside of my business and I don't anything, that's volatile. I don't use margin and if I do use margin I'm using like five or ten percent typically or I have other cash on the sidelines to pay off that debt if I need to but I live in fear.
Of debt, I think it's like, it's the number one way. You can lose. You know, you can already be rich and then lose everything. So only way, basically,
Do you think tiny would have been possible if it weren't for metal?
AB, I think like at the end of the day, whatever the you need, you need a business that generates cash flow. I think the structure certainly can exist. You know, anyone can recreate the structure. The question is, do you need partners and investors now outside capital in my case, you know, I had an original business that generated cash flow. I use that to start, you know, five more businesses, a couple of them.
Worked and then we can make a group. But yeah, you kind of need something to work in the first place. If you want to own the whole
thing.
Yeah, who would have thought it would have been an agency though. I never would have predicted
that what agencies are. They're a great way to make money, a lot of money quickly, right? They just they're linear businesses and you kind of have to accept
that and something that you wanted to talk about today, was whether it's better to own one, hundred percent of something, and bootstrap, it or to give up equity for two partners. Whether that's for a Sweat Equity or money, or money, but you, we're talking about that. And I ask my audience companies that were bootstrap.
In quite big and there's a few that are doing billions a year in revenue and I notice to commonalities one. A lot of the things that were bootstrap to be really big. They were things that were easy to take bake loans against so it's a lot of restaurants stuff. So maybe they took like loans against some equipment or they took loans against a building. They owned things like that. The second thing was I've noticed that there's a lot of agencies that were bootstrapped and became pretty substantial size agencies or
Agencies or service-based businesses. So like recruiting companies, IT services, things like that where it's basically, you, Bill out people's time for $100 and you charge $300 or something like that. Well,
think about it. You don't need, especially if you're a young person and you can cut you got enough money to live for a year. You can go in certain agency because at the end of the day, it's you go and sell, you win a contract. As soon as you in the contract, you go and find a developer or you do the work yourself and then before you know it your cash.
Lying. And you're always able to hire people just in time for the work. And so, at the end of the day, there's really no burn and it's very Capital efficient and you don't need, you don't even need an office anymore. And we almost never had an office. And, you know, I over time we had, you know, a couple, small ones or whatever, but the big fuck up. A lot of these big agencies make, is they start starting like these fancy humongous, five million dollar offices in New York and San Francisco and Spain. And, you know, whatever.
They're they're great businesses if you run them,
right and how many people work at metal lab now.
I think it's about 170.
How often do you say to yourself? I'm not sure if the the headache is the headache of having 170 employees is always worth it. Well,
it's very abstracted for me. Right? I haven't been in the business for five or six years and the way we run tiny now is that we meet with the CEO once a year and otherwise, they check in whenever they need help with anything. And so when I was running it, like first, it's exhilarating running, an agency is awesome. When you're starting
Out, you get a seat at the table and all these places. You don't deserve to be, right. I was like a 22 year, old pipsqueak and I was meeting the founders of Pinterest and slack and you know, all these amazing places and they're asking me for my opinion, right? It was it was crazy. But at a certain point you get so exhausted. You're making a good amount of money. You don't want to get on a plane to San Francisco every second day to go and sell. And at that point, you know, it starts to become a much more intensive business. And for me personally, I don't enjoy
Running businesses after about 15 or 20 people. And so once I hit that point, I knew I needed to transition to a
CEO.
So when we're in the document, you say the pros and cons of bootstrapping and only one hundred percent. What do you have under
those?
Well, I mean, I think that I've changed my opinion a lot on this. Like, when I first started, I was like a Jason, free, David Hunt, admire Hanson. Acolyte like 100% Every business should be bootstrapped. I now think that's crazy, and stupid, and I think there's certain businesses where it's insane, not to raise money. Right? Like if you have an opportunity to grow your business. It's like the analogy always uses if you own a bakery and there's a line out the door and you have a single oven, and you need to
Three more ovens, but you don't have the money and in order to service the people in the line, you need to buy two more ovens. It's crazy not to raise money or go get Dad or something. I just was never in that position. And I think, you know, owning 100 percent or owning majority in your business. It's like a dictatorship and dictatorships can be very good. Like Lee Kuan Yew from Singapore or they can go terribly like, Kim Jong Hoon, right? And the question is, what's your personality? And what's going to work for you? I mean you can move insanely fast. There's no board.
There's no committee. You don't owe anyone, anything. You don't have an outcome, you know, you don't have to IPO. You don't have to sell and you have total Integrity like when Chris. And I buy a business, we can look people in the eye and be like, we're cutting a check. Like, this is us, right? That's very different. On the cons. I mean, you're on an island. You don't have anyone to really who's aligned and cares and can tell you, you're being an idiot. And so you can really drive your business off the rails. And then you also think in a limited way. I mean, I know so many entrepreneurs who
10x their business, but they're so addicted to their dividends or they're conservative. And so they don't. So what objector a place like, I'm
I raise money for our podcasting software company. Super cast. I'm going to raise money for our news business. Like there are situations where it's
logical. What about that? Conversation of employees employees saying they want equity.
And you don't give up. It
just there's certain businesses. There are certain businesses where we do and they're certain ones where we don't write. And the big question is what I always say. To a, to an employer's equal risk equals reward. And if the business is going to sell at some point, or we think you can IPO, great love, talk about Equity, but there's a cost to it. But if you want to make 300 Grand a year, and you don't want to give up any of that 300 Grand in order to get stock options, or by Equity, then,
Matter, so I loved I love giving people the option and saying look, you can either give up some of your comp or upside or whatever and we'll give you stock options or you can get the big salary and prioritize cash. And a lot of people, prioritize comfort and cash. I find at least, you know, not outside of the bay area. By the way, Andrew, you mentioned the guy from Singapore. Same. Do you know this guy? Lee Kuan, Yew,
I know a little bit about them. I didn't realize he was a dictator. I thought they call them like the CEO or
something.
Now he's literally a dictator. So like a good the good dictator and you can you give us like the two minutes, two minutes kind of summary of who this guy is and why he's awesome. So effectively, he took over, Singapore is like an island Tropical Island state in Asia. And at the time it was like rice patties poverty, like a bog and he literally took it over, you know how to not talk or see had total control and he basically thought like a business person.
I was like, okay, how do we make this the most business-friendly place? How do we optimize taxes? How do we ensure we have hyper competent government? How do we pay government? Really? Really? Well, how do we incentivize the whole world to manufacture and Export, you know, their products from here and basically built it into Asia's, kind of outside of Hong Kong. I think it's like the Central Banking and finance Hub in Asia. So it's a pretty incredible story and I think he his background is
He's like a math and computer science guy. Right? Like he doesn't come from kind of this like, you know, political background. Like he came from a different sort of background and I think that's why you got different ideas from from a leader in charge. Totally. I was going to say you had one thing. You tweeted out this related to how you run the business at tiny, which is this Higher One hired 10 framework. What, what is that? I because that that sounded interesting to me. And I think that that's like from what I understood. It was a pretty useful concept. So explain that. Yes. Oh,
Our CEOs, get super annoyed because I say this all the time. It's probably the number one thing I say and is probably the biggest hack that enabled us to build tiny over the last eight years. So, I mean, think about it like this. So if you had an army General who is commanding a thousand troops, but he's still telling individual soldiers what to do and he's personally restocking their ammunition and he's shuffling people around, you'd be like, what the hell is this guy doing? Right, but I think a lot of people operate their business like this. I mean, I certainly did in the early days.
I would swoop and poop. And you know, instead of hiring a VP marketing, I would go and I'd hire a whole bunch of marketing people and just kind of become the VP of marketing and or I bypassed people and tell people what to do. And what I realized is, you should never ever hire the ten people. You should always focus on hiring the one person so that could be a CEO who will, then go out and hire all the executives or could be hiring an executive who will hire an entire team, but it just it's such a hack, right? It's like,
20. How do I do 20% of the work for 80% of the result? And yeah, I mean, it took me ages to figure this out. I feel like I've only crack this last like five years and I still Crystal. Still catch me in this. He'll be like, how are you know, Hard One to hire 10, then get when you hire that one mistake all the time.
And when you hired that one person how much. So, let's say your business is doing let's say 1 million in Revenue. It small know. Let's say a little while. Let's say 10 million in Revenue to million and
Unlike actual cash flow. You have, you had that one person, you pay him a lot of money. Two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Do you only hire that two and fifty thousand dollar person? When you know, for a fact, you've got budget for like two more people.
Yeah. That's I mean, that's my Approach. That's why I've shifted to is like I hire, you know, here's an example, is like we hired the CEO of Aeropress, and he asked me questions. Oh, you know, what do you think about this higher that higher? And I just said, that's your, you know, that's your higher. You know, I
You I trust you 100%. You make those hires, right? And so it's complete delegation of, you know, when I buy a business I make two decisions who runs it and how are they incentivized? And unless they do something dirty or horrible or the business goes to shit. You know, I just leave them to it. What's the trick on the? How are they incentive? I so so. What's the, how do you think about that when you buy a business? You say? Alright, business today is here and I think naturally it's going to get to there and I'm bringing on this person to get it to be some.
Inflection above that. And I also know that things go wrong. So, how do you think about that incentive structure? Is it is it Case by case? You're coming up with very unique patterns are very unique, you know packages or do you have kind of one base that you that you go off of? It's so different. I mean, like everyone's incentivized differently. There's there's certain people were, for example, they need to be able to say they're a partner and they have Equity. There's other people who don't care about that and they want just targets to hit. I mean we've done everything from saying, okay, let's say that.
This makes a hundred million dollars and it's growing at 15% you anything. You do over 15% growth, you get 5% of right that's in its simplest. We've also done things where it's like, you know, hey when the stock price hits acts, you get a payment. And I remember I got to have dinner with Charlie Munger like two years ago, and I was like, what's the perfect, you know, incentive structure and he just said, I've done hundreds and everyone is different and I still don't know what works. I think it's really an art, not a science because you know, different people.
You are just so differently, motivated, and you actually like steak. So you start one more Sam when it's usually usually when it's like, ah, depends. There's that much. They what they usually means is the winning formula is different a lot. But there's usually a common losing formula. So what is the common losing formula for incentives? The common losing formula is them not being aligned on risk? So for example, if they're able to use my money and I can keep injecting money into the business, but it in no way her
Stem. So for example, they don't get diluted or they don't have to pay a high interest rate or you know, if it goes bankrupt, they don't lose anything. That's a huge problem and I've learned that over the last five years. And so now what I try and do is if somebody wants Equity, I always make them write a check right or I loan them money and it's literally a personal loan guaranteed by their house or something, right? And it's got it doesn't. I don't want it to be so much money. It's going to ruin them or be a problem, but I
If someone wants Equity, I'm like, okay, you gotta put up something because if the business fails or goes down, you got to have a sense of loss, people feel a lot that people feel lost more than they feel gay. I just imagine the Wilkinson moving truck coming in front of the house to like no honey. It's all gone wrong. You have to come and get your own Furniture, your own art on the walls, they get to live there, but they have to know that it's your house now and they truly have fucked. We have done it. We obviously, you know, I never want to do that and so I structured in a way where it's not, you know, we're not going to take
Car or something, but I just want, I want to feeling of like, there's got to be some downside. You know, Sam is gonna take this like, way too far. He's gonna take their car and it's like, a punch or punch. You just because of money. I'm gonna punch you.
Yeah. I love this game. You are you also speaking of that, of risk. You also hire people really early. You told me, I don't know if you talked about those, but you were tinkering around, with this baked, you want to talk about the bait. Can you mention the bakery or
no?
Yeah, well the bakery's kind of
sad. So sorry, not the bakery of the the ghost
kitchen ghost kitchen.
You tinkered with this thing where you hired a baker and you were making stuff to sell on doordash and ubereats. And I don't know if it was entirely legal so we don't care about it. But the point I'm bringing up is that?
Oh, no, I can't, I can't I can't
L will tell the story and then let me ask my question.
Sure. So basically, you know, I'm pretty interested in health and stuff and I was trying to get off sugar.
And so I went to a baker friend and I was like, look, can you try and make like, like sugar-free cookies, using modern, you know, there's all these like, crazy, modern Shooters. Like, you guys are hurting logic spin. Yeah. Yeah, like magic, spoon uses a yellow sand, Stevia and monk fruit and stuff. So he started making these. And I was like, okay, these are like not as good as a chocolate chip cookie, but they're like 90% there and I bet you a lot of people would be into this as, like a replacement. Like, think about Halo top. It doesn't taste as good as ice cream.
Mmmmm, you can eat a fuckload of it and it's not bad for you in the same way. So I basically made that we started making all these treats. We're cooking it out of our office, which is not technically legal. And what happened was, I got a call from Island Health, which is like the local health authority, and they just said, hey, you're using an ingredient, that's not approved in Canada. And unfortunately, valueless has not improved in Canada. And so you just legally, can't serve food with it, even though it's generally regarded as safe and everything. So, I'm
Still going to do it at some point, I think. But I just legally, can't it sucks? And I've never. It's insane to me. You can hit up against these regulatory issues like imagine being a real estate developer and like you have this amazing vision and then city council is just like, nope. Yeah, like that is insane to me as an internet
entrepreneur and that's what's gonna ask. So you like hired a baker to do it. But then also with your newsletter business, your local news business, you high. I forget the guys name, but he's, I've talked a bit. He's a nice guy. You've hired him to be the CEO and
So you, you hire people pretty yes. And you you hire people pretty early on and hiring someone to do something. To me, is a huge risk, because, in my head, I'm like, man. If this guy's got a kid, like, I'm like his kids now. Kind of my kid too. You know, like it's like a big risk. If he's quitting it. That's how I felt. When might we might one of my first employees, got married. I was like, oh, I've got a family now because I was like some of the decisions I make are going to impact this entire family and that's really stressful and it's also a huge conversation to
One who's in their 30s, 40s or whatever, and they're even in their late 20s to leave their fancy gig at Salesforce to bail and come to my company that I'm gonna pay him. Forty five thousand dollars. That's a huge thing. I go. When I go to bed at night, I'm that stresses me out, but you seem like you overcome that pretty easily you hire people relatively early and you're like, yeah, it's no big deal. I'm just gonna hire this person. What's that? Like like, what are you thinking? When you
do that?
Well, I've lost, I've messed that up a lot. And I think you guys know my whole story about losing 10 million dollars, building project management software. Like that was a perfect example where I got ahead of myself. The business didn't make sense, and I threw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and none of its stock. And I had to let a whole bunch of people go and it was really horrible and sad and, you know, it was like a tenure, slow death, right? So I've been through that. So now it's more with the amount of scar tissue. I have I've enough I have enough signal where I can.
Like okay. I'm going to try this. And with the bakery. I was just Contracting a friend,
right? That was that was the best example.
I said, this is an experiment with the news business. I actually ran it for three years before I partner with far hand and he took over as CEO. And by that point there's enough signal. It was slapping me in the face. I was like, this is a big
opportunity. And is that the case with all with all the things that you start?
We take that long. Usually like if I, if I go and I hire a CEO, I'm pretty high conviction that there's something there, or there's already a business that supports has cash flow. What I would never do is be like, hey, there's you know, I have an idea for this. I'll just go hire a CEO like I would never do that Andrew, Phil, you've reached this point and I used to be like, how did these motherfuckers do this? Where I remember, I was doing a start-up and it was so hard to get my one thing to work, and then I would meet
People who are like. Oh, yeah. So I have that past success. Then I have my current success and then here's my three sides successes that I had this idea that we just started doing it and then guess what? The lines out the door and then this other one, it's like kind of cool. We just started it, you know, like I accidentally, you know, my hand just fell on my keyboard and I accidentally wrote this app. It was amazing. It went viral and there's other things. I just tweeted about and then this all coming together nicely. And I'm just wondering, like, what do they know something? I don't know. Is there just like extreme luck component?
And I felt that way for many years, five, six years straight. When I was pushing the boulder up the hill with my startup, and then I now have experienced exactly what the thing. I was most jealous of and I have no idea what switched in between. We're like the last five things. I've tried have all worked and all worked pretty much immediately and that doesn't matter how big or small like, you know, whether it's like the podcast or the course or, you know, my e-commerce business or my the new milk Road newsletter business, like each of these
Has just worked straight away in a bigger way than anything I've ever done before.
With less work and less stress than like the old stuff I used to do and I have no idea what changed. I have a kind of an inkling, but I don't really know Sam reviewer thought about this or you know what I'm talking about. And what do you
think? Knowing I know exactly what you're talking about. And I completely agree. You're on a roll right now. And what's your inkling? I have a feeling. My answer is kind of like a shitty. It's like a mindset like abundance, attitude and being own. I'll be on offense versus defense. But what's your what's your, what's your inkling? So
my inkling is
That I switched up my situation. So like I was in one situation for a very long time like it was a nice situation was very nice situation, but it was like we're I was going to this office every day working with these people in this hierarchy with this boundary box of like what project or projects we can work on and like what success might look like and as soon as I got out of that I was just me. I was like, oh, okay. So now that it's just me that I have to look out for. I guess I could just do
A podcast and didn't have to have like this big Venture billion-dollar outcome. I didn't have 20 Engineers to go. Tell what to do. I had no Engineers. So I just did what I could do with no Engineers, which was like, I'll do a podcast. I'll do a course. I'll do. I'll just try to get big on Twitter. Let's see what happens and I hope you know like five tweets go viral and boom. Got 200,000 followers. It's like there's this things that I just wasn't doing before because I think before I had a really set thing of like, here's what I need to do, like here's the only way to win and
I'd like almost too much ammo. I had like, too many people at my disposal to much funding, too much everything and because of that, I had a very narrow window of what could work. And so I was just trying to come up with ideas that might work versus. I'll let me just try this because I'm just kinda want to try it. And then once I got into, I just kind of want to try it and I didn't have it. I didn't have to worry about what other people thought, or I didn't have to come in and manage anybody in the that day and tell him what to do. I didn't have, like investors to go pitch to. I just did the
thing and then all of a sudden I feel like, you know, sort of like all the talents that in skills that had been building up over the past 10 years. Like, finally got to just do them. Yeah. I think it's like dating or something though where it's like, you know, you date a couple crazy girls and it's really exhilarating and then over time you're like, wow, that was horrible and there's pattern matching. You're like, okay. When I go to a restaurant and a girl's rude to the waiter, that's a no right? And in the same way, with business, you go. Okay, like I used to think I wanted to build all these kinds of
Is but those were 10 foot hurdles. I don't want to jump 10-foot hurdles. I want to jump one foot hurdles. And so, if you think about it all the stuff you're doing there in your, you know, circle of competence, and they're relatively simple to execute. They don't require a lot of people they don't require funding. I think learning that is like a 15-year overnight success. Kind of thing. We're just clicks suddenly, right and I'll catch myself, occasionally getting pulled down rabbit Trails of like, oh what if I did this crazy, you know drone a I start up whatever.
Then I always go back to base
hits and I, and there's this third component of of confidence. And so, I think that because of like my work. I've been more confident. And I understand like, well if I invest a dollar here, I think I can make at least $3 the next two years. So like just understanding how machines like money-making machines, work Investments. But then also I think Shawn because the we get to hang out with, we hang out each other. We hang out with Andrew hang out. With our circle of friends to hang out with all the people we've had speak at our events. We hang out with our podcast guests.
It becomes more normal, like succeeding has become far more normal than not succeeding actually and not succeeding is just like oh, yeah, it's got to happen. But then you just move on and do the next thing and it's like and then inevitably it works. So it's not if it's not when it's if and I think that confidence has actually helped a ton. We're so, for example, now if someone wants to like real, estates in an easy one because it's so predictable, but with real estate, you're like, oh man, putting 100,000 dollars down on this house, has a lot of money. That's a, you know, that's
Acres. It's like well, dude, but it's gonna make 12% like, well, I don't know that and I'm like, yeah, I know, but it's going to do that. So you actually want to invest more. So like that confidence of just knowing the motions and knowing the routine and process is actually helped a lot,
totally. Yeah. The other thing I was going to say is which is what you guys both just said, but frame differently is I was taking a shit load of Market risk before. And now I basically take almost no Market risk. I just take execution risk and before, even if I felt like, executed great, which I
Did I feel like I did and a couple of the projects that we had done and during my like, kind of like the previous startup, the market risk was too high. Like there was just no it was like, inventing a new fucking like new science, you know, on a new land and it was just the market risk was way too high. Now, I'm just doing things that are like, oh, I know I just know that this works and I just need to do it. Well, so it's like e-commerce is nothing. There's no fancy science to it. And I had buddies who did it and I just use their
DeLand. I just did my own In My Own Lane of their model milk road, is the Hustle, but in the crypto Lane, which is the Crypt Elaine. I like, right. It's like I just took your blueprint for the hustle and it just copy pasted over here. Little innocent situation risk from there. I know, dude, I saw that you literally copy and pasted the
Twitter handle. It was hilarious. Your Twitter description is literally copy pit. I sent you some old resources from the hustle and we called ourselves the, you're smart. Good-looking, Fred, or something, who tells you everything you need to know about.
You
just copy that and replant. Instead of business attack. You just put like delete crypto or something like
that. And actually the thing is it wasn't even, you know, why it did that. I remember seven years ago or eight years ago when you first said that to me and the very first like, you know, like you kind of sat me down here, like look people are not people our age. Like we don't watch MSNBC and, like, CNN, and this stuff for our information. That's not the brand we trust, and you, you said it, you're like, I just want to be like, they're smart and they remember, you said it wasn't really your
Art, no bullshit friend who just explain and tells you what's going on. And I was like, I like it clicked with me eight years ago. And so when it came time to do this, I was like, that's the exact description. The smart. No bullshit friend. I
think one more thing. Andrew, is that I look at. I used to you kind of said that Andrew and in terms of like financial success, which is a big. But not only measure of success. Andrew. You're like a Grand Slam at the moment, you know, your
Imagine you're incredibly wealthy and you've built businesses that are incredibly large. So by that measure of success. You are like way out there and for a while, I think I like MIT, you're like mystical to me, where I'm like, how does he doing this? Now? It's changed to where I think I acknowledge that, you definitely have talent. That makes you special. You for sure have skills that make you special, but really A lot of it is also, I don't know what percentage of is each, but let's just say a third, a third, a third, a third of it is well, he just did.
I'm doing it for like 15 years now or a certain amount of time and he just like, took the risk of raising or building the business and then he raised the money a little bit for the fun. And so it's not a matter of like, how is he doing is doing this. It's just like well if I want that life, like I probably could do it. I just have to dedicate 15 or 20 years and go through the same motions that he does and that may or may not fit the one. It what? I like the
interesting thing is I don't know if you know this but Warren Buffett made like 97 percent of his wealth after the age of 55.
Um, is so it all happens very slowly. He started in his 20s or whatever, and he wasn't really well known until the 90s. And the same thing happened with us where we didn't really talk about what we did, people would meet us and they'd be like, oh, you're some schmoes from Victoria. Who owns some digital agency, you seem to own all these really boring businesses, you know, whatever. And so it requires being kind of underestimated and dismissed and playing a very boring game while watching everyone else go and make you know, tens of millions billions of
Dollars taking risk in startups. Meanwhile. We're just going how do we take, you know, a hundred grand and make ten fifteen twenty, Kay a year on that money and just keep compounding. And so, basically, the mud mental model was take 70% of our profits and constantly reinvest take the other 30% live, a nice life and that number went down over time. And yeah you do that for 17 years and it turns into a, you know, a big number. Ironically, I still feel just as a
Skin terrified as I did 15 years ago, that's real and I think it's the classic thing
of you're not you're not actually yeah, dude, are you? Because I have liquidity now and I'm I'm scared. But I'm like am I as scared as when I only had twenty thousand dollars in my bank account. I can't
decide. Don't know, but it's maybe it's different for me because, you know, I have a nun for. If you told me 10 years ago, how much, you know, cash, we have, or what our cash flow is. It would blow my mind and I'd say, how could you ever feel at risk?
The problem is that the stakes are bigger, you know, we have almost 1,000 employees now, right? So there's a lot more, you know, there's the stuff that can go wrong. Do I feel that? I've built out a castle with a whole bunch of modes and stuff. Yeah. Absolutely. And I'm better Diversified that I was 10 years ago, but there's still that kind of dust bowl farmer mentality, right? It's actually something I want to talk about like just we all kind of have this feeling of like the way I'd put it as I started chopping wood.
Just because I was anxious right like 15 years ago in my backyard and my neighbor, pokes his head over the fence and he's like, hey, can you chop some wood for me for my fire? I'll give you 20 bucks and I'm like, okay amazing. I didn't know this was a business and then before I know it I've hired three or four buddies. We're all chopping wood in the backyard where a merry band. We're selling to the whole neighborhood. It's awesome. I love it. And then one day, 15 years later, I wake up and I'm in a sawmill and I own 15 sawmills.
And all I do all day is file papers, but there's still this part of me that beats myself up for not chopping wood. I still have this mindset. Even though all the machines do all the labor. There's still this part of me that's constantly saying you need to chop wood. You need to chop wood. And so I think you're going to you know, you guys have this for sure. Like doesn't matter how much you have, how Diversified whatever it is. You have a need to do labor and there's an anxiety that you're harnessing to
perform.
As a good ass
analogy.
I'm not going to lie the first 30 seconds. All your spine is I thought you legitimately took up wood chopping as a hobby and I was like, oh that's cool. It must be cathartic. And then I realized I was inside of a Charlie, Munger Warren Buffett analogy like Parable. You have this thing on here. That's that's pretty cool. Bad guys, usually win as a bad guy, myself. I would love to hear.
Yes.
What you mean by this? Oh, man. Okay. So your thing.
Bad, guys, I've got a story. I don't think you're a bad guy. We go ahead. I think a bad guy is a fawn. Con artist, who lies? I call myself a bag is achieved rather than calling myself a good guy. And having all the comments on YouTube, tell me I'm a bad guy. It's easier. Just to call myself a bad guy and have people tell me the opposite are
bad. Meaning not bad, meaning bad, but bad, meaning good. That's how it is.
So I think I'm sure you guys have had this experience. Not kind of anonymize this story and this case it's a bad girl bad girls usually win. But so this this happened to me like almost ten years ago. I was really overwhelmed as running like five businesses. I got introduced this older woman and she had just sold her business for 20 million bucks, super successful. And she kind of says, hey, I'll Mentor you, I'll help you out. And so she comes over to my office. We start whiteboarding and I'm just like, holy crap. This person is a genius. She
Helped me so much. And so first, she's an advisor and mentor and then eventually she's like, hey, how about I come in? And I'll help you with marketing and sales. And so I inject her into the business. She starts killing it, like, business takes off everything going great, but I did 0 diligence, right? She'd legitimised herself by being the super successful person and because she was so successful. I was just grateful to have her, she's like a miracle and made all these problems.
Go away for me and then suddenly the cracks started appearing. So people started saying she was lying. She was spending money in weird ways there, you know, her expenses were out of control, you know, staying in Crazy hotels, all sorts of stuff and it turned out that she was lying and like, falsifying documents. She hadn't sold her business. She wasn't rich or successful. And when I called a bunch of people that she worked with in the past, like a bunch of them. Had terrible experiences, right? So we fired her, we move.
On and I'm in this very odd spot. Where ethically, you know, I want to be like, okay, this is a bad person. I want to shoot up a flare and I want to be like everybody watch out. Right? And I'm thinking like, okay, you know, people diligence her, they'll call me, you know, she won't be able to keep, you know, pulling this off but legally, I don't know what it's like in the US but in Canada, when someone calls you for a reference call, you're quite limited. You can basically just say, you know, I wouldn't work with them again and do your diligence and so on.
I usually,
yeah. And what I like, I'm not a lot of talk about it.
And they get the hint right? That's smart. I
I said a bunch of stuff like that. Like, you know, I would never work with this person against one of the worst professional experiences in my life, whatever. But almost always, those people go on to work with them and you realize these people are just incredibly charming and they always assume you're the bitter ex-girlfriend, right? Because they've obviously buttered you up and told some story and so this woman, you know, see her on LinkedIn and she's still succeeding and going every year. She's somewhere new and
Do people like this? They don't get super rich, they're so short term and if they only knew how much money you could make by not being a crook, they would probably be ethical. But it just, it was so sad to me and I wanted my sense of justice was like, I got to put a stop to this and you just realize like, no, like you just have to let go Never Wrestle a pig, you both get dirty, but the pig will enjoy it. And so, you know, these people are out there and they continue to succeed and unless they're Elizabeth Holmes and they got, you know, in the Wall Street.
All they're fine.
I want to know who the person is.
I will never say
you had another example of a guy at a famous company who, you know, you had some fraud or you had some issues of people, not being honest as well. Remember, you told me that about about that one folk. I don't know. I don't know which one that
is. I mean look at like you guys talked about now having Jane on a podcast, maybe like ten episodes ago. And I mean like there's a perfect example, right?
Is this guy who basically did a pump and dump, that's my understanding alleged alleged pump and dump. But these people go on right unless they're criminally indicted and even you know, people who are criminally indicted. Look at Michael Milken. Michael Milken was literally front running his own investors committing tons of like outright fraud that if you were his investor, you would hate went to jail for 10 years. And now he is lauded as a philanthropist. I mean, our, how about I am? Always win. I
mean, you know, the guys and you guys
Is no, girl. I think his name is prakash. He's G is what people would call him. He's, I think he's Indian and Indian guy indian-american, and he started a thing called gravity something. What was it called? Got gravity before gravity for, and then he started other one called, like, radium blue radium. Is that what it was? And right, here we radium one and he got arrested. He was on Oprah as ass like, you know, 150 million dollar man, under 30, or something like that. Like the best Bachelor, most available batch.
All this stuff. He's good looking guy. He got in trouble, three, two, or three different times, both times. He basically locked his girlfriend in their apartment and it was, there's a camera there. I don't know what he was thinking, and he was hitting her and just being in a time. He's just a horrible guy. Got arrested spent time in in jail months, got out raise money again for starting the same company. Now, he's overseas because he's kind of burned all of his Bridges here and San Francisco in America. He's overseas. I think he's raised money again for another.
Other AD tech
company, this is the hard part is if someone is a, I mean, typically someone who does bad things, like truly unethical things. They're either a psychopath or a narcissist, and they're very, very Charming. They're very compelling. They're fun to hang out with their fascinating, the great to listen to it's hard, not to like them. I mean, 11 actually, he rustic after having that experience, is actually a company that I looked at investing in, and I liked the CEO so much. And he was so compelling that, I didn't invest because it made me.
Suspicious right or wrong? I was just like I left the meeting, and I was like, I would buy anything from this guy, and I just want to give him all my money right now, and I stopped myself. And I was like, this, is that feeling don't invest, right? The, I probably made a mistake, but maybe I'm too concerned, but it's crazy. Same on the same way and I'm willing to throw out the good with the bad just to steer clear of the bed because I know how intoxicating that type of grifter is. And you know, I've actually put in some like you talk about air gap.
In for like, you know, security purposes. I've done that on decision, making for some Investments as well. Like, so Andrew, you sent out an email to us. Let me say a couple others about a business that you're raising money for, and it's a really great email. Like, it's a truly great email. I had to give you a lot of credit actually wanted to ask you Sam. Sam help me with that email like that and they're the master copyright had a secret weapon, okay.
I barely touched it. I barely touched it.
I read actually great
and it wasn't it wasn't like. Oh the writing of the wow, this sentence structure was so fantastic, right? Obviously that helps, but it was the thinking it was the way of framing the business and opportunities telling how you stumbled into the opportunity. What time do you know, like your analogy to complete this? We want your to Chipotle. Like you really did a good job of framing this business and it was so good. In fact, that I said, I am not going to reply to this for like, at least 48 hours because if
The same. I'm going to say, give this person, my money instantly. I regret it was almost like, whatever out of 10, the business opportunity, was, it was a 10/10 like pitch. And I actually, when I look back at businesses that I invest in that, I that go on to do. Well, it's usually actually a nine out of ten business opportunity with a, you know, sort of 5 out of 10 pitch. And in fact, it's only Midway through the conversation with this person that I'm like, oh wait, so you basically have X and they're like, yeah, I'm like
Well, why didn't you just say that? And they're like, well, we did kind of right. And I was like, oh dude, you have no idea how to pitch her own business, but that to me, once that happens. I know. Wow. I'm actually like I, underweighted the opportunity, because the pitch was so bad versus overweighting, a business opportunity because the picture is so good and that's become like a standard practice that yours was just one example, but that's become a standard practice for me of like, Beware of the 10 out of 10 pitch, Beware of the tenderly, 10 charm person that you want to hire.
Or that's Oral-B with your business. The biggest one that I've seen is you get this, Uber Charming pitch and then you say, okay, what could go wrong? And they say nothing, right? And you're just like, no, this is insane. This is terrifying. I've had like five or six different pitches, where that was the one signal and it went to zero or bankrupt or
criminal. How's the news? Business going?
It's good. It's really good. Actually. We just hit a profit in my hometown in Victoria, our first Market.
It and we're now in eight different cities and I'm super stoked about it as you can witness based on that, email, that email, how, how quickly because you might have a knack for just understanding and framing businesses. That's probably a superpower of yours. I think he has that quickly. Did that come together for you?
How quickly did I write it? Well, I mean, it's something I've been thinking about and kind of talking about a little bit publicly for two or three years now. So I had all the analogies and stuff formed, but I mean, I wrote that in like an hour or two and then Sam just help me touch it up. And then my typical writing structure is all right. Something it first draft and then I'll sit with it for two weeks or something like that. So I sat with it for a week and then finally, I sent it out, but it's crazy. Like I don't know if you guys get this.
Thing that drives me insane is I get all these emails from people who are raising money and it's literally just a template, like, it almost looks like they're sending it out with Salesforce or something. The formatting is wrong. It's generic. It's not properly addressed to me and I always think like what I was trying to do with that email is I wanted the first sentence to hook you. And so I think the first sentence in that email was in 2019, I was pissed off, right? And then day, you know, line one. You're like, what's you pissed off? But what's going
on, right? There's a bit of a hook. Nobody knows how to use those copywriting tools to pitch in written form. I think a lot of people are very good at pitching, you know, in actual pitch setting or whatever. But yeah, it's been, it's been a great tool to build a. Do those tweets dorms and emails and stuff,
the most important sentence of anything. You're right. It's the first sentence. This is
something I love that one. What's the line that you said? Let me be very clear. Right? And you're just like, oh shit, like this person means business.
What's going on here? Yeah, Sam is fucking good at this. And in fact, I made the criminal mistake. When I asked you this question, which is, if you go to Michael Jordan and you say, Mike, how do you jump? So high, you'll, if he's being nice, he'll try to answer something something, but it's not going to actually tell you in the same thing. How do you know Steph Steph Curry? How how do you shoot you jump shot to be in? How do you how do you shoot better than anybody else? People who are truly great at something. They have very low awareness.
To the actual. Like how why, and what is making it? So great. And there is, there is a way to ask questions about greatness, but it's not, how do you do the thing you're great at because people will sort of fumble around and they'll try to tell you something, but it's it really has nothing to do with with how they do the great thing. Like, for example, what you did, great in that email was first, you decided to not make it a template that decision probably comes from you. Some view your some way that you view the world and like
That you know, observation you had about pitches that we're coming to you that most people just don't have. The second thing was you when you frame the business, you need to use the analogy of like these local franchises. That was because you had studied other other great businesses just for fun. You probably studied the business of Chipotle and McDonald's and other businesses. Not that you were ever going to start a restaurant but you stored that somewhere in the recesses of your mind. And so when you saw something else that was a local franchise, you knew how to like apply that. And and so like, you know, it was very hard.
Hard to actually describe what goes into the art of making that happen, right? Well, not only that, but being able to communicate a moat, you know, why is this have a competitive advantage? And in this email, I kind of go through the history of the news business, local news. Why local news is so much more wide has a better moat, right? And you think about it, you go. Why would that be interesting, you know, 50,000 people to 300,000 persons cities, that seems like a small Market, but in reality, it's the stuff. Nobody wants your fish.
Where the fish are off
the beaten but you and you
can dominate a local
market. You've always done this. So, I actually read your email when I was. When you send it to me in Google Drive and I was like, oh this is really good. I'm gonna because I was put together this course where I just like aggregate, good writing and I sent it to people and I was like, I gotta I'm going to use some more of a stuff. Let's see what's out there and I went and read all your stuff on medium and I think there's like 10 or 12 things or something and thanks all the same format over and over again, which
You it's, you clearly are influenced by Warren Buffett and your influence by like traditional storytelling techniques. But if you go to your medium, you're actually pitching your business on medium constantly, you're just not. Actually, there's just no call to action, so you don't actually care if it seals the deal, but there's like things for your cat. Your you have a headline called, so you didn't mean to do this, but you could have done this so it could have been. We're raising a million dollars for our company, but instead you made the headline. Were you
You the headline was Joe Rogan could be the world's first podcasting billionaire. Is that what it was? That was that it?
No, it was. He got worse until Rogan first, is Joe Rogan got ripped off, which is funny because he just signed 120 million dollars. Yeah, that's what away nice counter.
So that was, it was a good ass headline. And then you explain, so it did that, the emotion they were shocked, which always does really well. So your shot like what the hell, you're saying that he got low-balled $100 is so much money in your like, no, you see, it's nonsense. You see. Howard Stern, does this row?
Okin could have done this. It just so happens that we have a company that does that? That's how I know about it. And then like, if you wanted a call to action. So you have your attention, interest desire already there. If you want your action to make this a full eight of formula, you could have been like PS4 rate. Of course, you can't do this. It's illegal, but you notice the PS4, raising money for our company. And
see this is, this is like you've always said, like the most valuable skill is called a doubt. I think both you guys have said that like a hundred percent I truck up. The only reason metal AB worked was because we would pick
Fights with right these controversial articles and we knew how to like, we I think there's one thing I'm good at is just like taking taking a boring topic and just finding a wedge and getting people going on it and that always results in people knowing of you and passing your name around and you become a topic of conversation and it led in our case to lots of client work and other stuff. So if I think everyone needs to read the book made to stick, that was the book that like, really clicked for me. I don't know if you guys
are
Damn Chip. He, that Stanford is all talk about
this. Totally. And it's that one that first line. The first line just has to hit you the best thing you do. So I think if I was going to break it down, the middle of your writing is like inspired by our influence by, you know, some ways Warren Buffett, but you're his stuff is very dry, right? Warren Buffett, grew up without the clickbait generation. He doesn't need to do that. But like 37signals so like DHHR Jason free like to me, you're writing is so
Motor to there's that. I can tell you that was like a, you know, pretty major influence on it. And one thing that they do amazingly well is they they will basically pick a fight while simultaneously, taking the moral High Ground And I think you do that amazingly. Well to what I mean by that is you'll say like, you know, Joe Rogan got ripped off, but you're not, you're not criticizing Joe Rogan. You're actually saying, you know, Joe you sold yourself short and it is an artist in a Creator like you should not sell yourself.
A short for someone to some company who's going to take advantage of you here. And so you're taking the moral High Ground while picking, you know going against the grain and like sort of doing a call-out which is amazing. Most call-outs just basically it's somebody, you know, slingshotting from the crowd and you know, there's sort of a sniper that's like, you know, angry at them. And so I've never been able to do this but I've noticed that you do this and 37signals does, it's amazing the world. They say Facebook is overvalued and they'll talk about why Facebook is overvalued and then they'll talk about, you know, like
We're sorry. We're just the kind of guys that like businesses have actual revenues and profits, but oh, you know, call us crazy. And so they're taking the moral High ground and they're saying that this Facebook valued it, at the time member who was famously, like, boy bands of dollars, I would argue, I would argue those guys would not be where they are today without copyright. I doubt. And I think that's like the sawdust from their Sawmill, right? It's like, hey, we got fucked on the App Store, What would most people do? Okay, we'll just go in with apple. They use that as the biggest marketing opportunity ever. They were on every talk show.
They were their names were everywhere that mean they also got kind of canceled as well. So there's a cost to that but they've done an amazing people and that's 100% where I learned it. I worship those guys for years. I
call it like the Malcolm Gladwell effect. So with Malcolm Gladwell, you read his books and you have to remember that a lot of what he's saying is just Theory. There's no there's some proof that it's real but it's not proven and but he's such a good Storyteller that you think like, oh what you're saying is just a fact like this. Have you heard a story about David and Goliath. It's wonderful, and he
He he's like, actually David and Goliath wasn't that hard of a contest because turns out Goliath was like, mentally challenged or like had some issues where he like and he's also blind could see he like he had this thing where he was so big that it ruined it hit like gigantism, or something like that. And so, and then also, like, David was a shepherd and they're actually so good at throwing these rocks that they could take a bird out of the sky. So it's really like this. Basically taking a big dumb blind, Giant and shooting him in the head with a gun. That's not hard. And like that's his argument about he's like David Goliath. It's nonsense.
It's and is he right? I don't there's no proof of those is David Icke life even real, we don't even know that, but you like hear this story that changes you but the problem that I have with Basecamp, another good riders in, this is something that you have to be really careful of II work on all the time. Like I can be such a good Storyteller that I can get you to think that something's real, even though, like, I'll tell you, but there's no proof. But like I'm gonna write it in such a way and base camp. Does this all the time where they say? Well, write something and I'm like, oh, this is the truth. This is how the world is. And it's like, well no, let's forget. Let's not forget.
Is an opinion, right?
Totally. And there's lots of nuance and going back to what we're talking about with bootstrapping. I read all their stuff. I drank the Kool-Aid and I you know, I love those guys. They built an amazing business, but you can't just have that perspective. It's very nuanced. There's there's, you know, like I said, there's so many situations where it is logical to raise money. And if you talk to dhh 10 years ago, he'd say Salesforce and Facebook will be bankrupt in 10 years, and this doesn't make sense. And again, I love these guys.
Eyes, and I know them both. They're awesome guys. Huge fan wouldn't have built my business without them. But I do think they present everything in a very black-and-white way, which I think benefits them in a because it makes a more compelling. No one wants to hear Nuance,
has been a good pod. What do you think, Sean?
Yeah, it's good. There's I mean there's a couple others we wanted to do but we're way over so we should we should wrap it and do another one soon.
I know we didn't click.
Yeah, I think we got like we have like we have like 20 topics to do. So with others just looks like here's the five pillars of happiness. I do. I want to be happy. I should probably ask about that one. Like I would like to be happy
and the Jamie Dyson thing. There was the whole you wanted to come on because you're like I read this book about Dyson. I want to come talk about it. We even talk about
it. Oh man. I'm so excited to talk about him. He's incredible. Well, let's do it. Let's do another one iron.
Not sure, I have time. I don't know. We could we keep going if you want but otherwise, it's let's do another one and I will do Dyson and it's Mother's. Yeah, I gotta I gotta roll. I got a luncheon, 12 minutes. All right, man. Good to eat it. Okay. So you guys, those punch. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all into it like a day's travel never looking back.
