Digital Social Hour - Buying Businesses for $0, Best/Worst Investments & Public Education System | Codie Sanchez DSH #266

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

Codie Sanchez comes on Digital Social Hour to discuss some of her viral tweets, her thoughts on the public education system and what types of businesses she is looking to buy this year. APPLY TO BE... ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: Jenna@DigitalSocialHour.com SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 up the most google questions for you oh god that's dangerous let's see what what has google got huh what would be your guess for the most google question for your name oh maybe like how much is she worth that was the second most okay so the the first one was do you have a boyfriend that wasn't really yeah i love the internet that's incredible no i'm too old for that i got a husband okay wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe. It helps a lot with the algorithm. It helps us get bigger and better guests and it helps us grow the team. Truly means a lot. Thank you guys for supporting. And here's the episode. All right, guys, we got Cody Sanchez here today. Congrats on hitting a million on YouTube. Thank you. I'm excited about it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:00:43 You going all in on content this year? I think that's the plan. So am I, honestly. It seems like you already have. I was amazed by how fast you've grown. It's awesome, dude. It just leads to so many opportunities. The money's pretty good.
Starting point is 00:00:56 And it's a lot of fun. I think that's the part that most people don't get. Yeah. If people like creating content, people ask me all the time, why don't you just go do more private equity? I'm like, have you ever done private equity? I did it for 15 years. That's awful. Yeah. It's very rare where you find a business where everything's aligned, right? The fun, the money, and just like, I look back at my previous businesses and I did it for money, honestly, if we're being honest. And the fun was there sometimes, but with podcasting,
Starting point is 00:01:20 it's there a lot. Yeah, a hundred percent. It's an incredible flywheel. I think it's still underestimated, even though there's lots more creators today. But it's a big bet we're making for sure. Absolutely. I used AI to look up the most Google questions for you. Oh, God, that's dangerous. Let's see. What has Google got, huh?
Starting point is 00:01:37 What would be your guess for the most Google question for your name? Oh, maybe like how much is she worth? That was the second most. Okay. So the first one was, do you have a boyfriend? That wasn't really? Yeah. I love the internet.
Starting point is 00:01:51 That's incredible. No, I'm too old for that. I got a husband. Okay, nice. Yeah, he's a former Navy SEAL. He's a total badass. He's actually in AI. Nice.
Starting point is 00:02:01 Yeah. I want to talk about AI. So what type of AI is he up to? Well, he co-heads the Department of Defense Commercial Automated Intelligence Unit, which basically means they go out and they find the best AI companies and see how they can apply the technology for the Department of Defense for the U.S. government. That is interesting. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:02:20 I'm pretty, I mean, I love AI. Some people are scared of it, but what's your overall feelings towards it at the moment? You know, I'm a little bit of a Philistine in some ways. You know, I was like just past your generation, right? With being tech native. And so I didn't grow up with the internet in my face and screens all the time. And I found that it's harder for me
Starting point is 00:02:41 to get smart on AI fast. So we have a team of people who are younger than I am who help with a lot of it. I think there's huge opportunities, but man, I definitely don't allocate enough time to it. I feel that. Yeah. I want to talk about money. So I went through your YouTube videos. Did you know like 95% of them have a dollar sign in the title? Oh God, that makes me cringe. I feel like that could be true. Tanner's fired. I mean, if it gets views, it gets views, right? I mean, I do think a lot of the reason why we talk about money is because I have this philosophy that I think all freedom stems from financial freedom in this day and age. But unless you can pay for the rent over your head for your everyday meals and worry about basically flight or fight, you can't think critically. You can't
Starting point is 00:03:25 help other people very well. If you're just barely trying to survive, there's not much else you can do for others. And so I do think I've spent my career with money and more of us should understand what it is, how to get it. And once we do that, we have a lot more freedom. And I think when you have freedom, you make better decisions. I feel that. So it's always had significant importance to you throughout your journey? 100%. I mean, I was like probably a lot of people, I didn't know anything about money. You know, I would bounce my checking account every single week. I came from parents who were, my mom was a 30 year special education teacher. My dad, you know, came from an immigrant background and was an entrepreneur. And so I didn't know
Starting point is 00:03:58 anything about money. But I realized that it does seem to be the cornerstone of all power. Right. So I wanted to understand it. Yeah. Speaking of money, you've got the chance to sit down with some billionaires. Is there anything you've noticed from them and how they live their lives? One of my favorite billionaires told me something that has stuck with me, which was basically when you have billions, everything looks like a nine-figure problem, not a six-figure or a five-figure problem. So what that basically means, in not so many words, is he said, like, we don't pay attention to the small things. You know, we're looking for huge,
Starting point is 00:04:35 what's called a three-standard deviation event, right? So you have, like, the bell curve that we've all seen, right? And in the middle is the average. And then you have standard deviations, which are... Shout- out to today's sponsor nord vpn my personal favorite vpn you can change your virtual location very easily with nord with one click and sometimes even zero click if you want to have on auto connect it's got amazing speed it's probably one of the fastest vpns out there in my experience and you can use one nord account on six devices to make sure the whole fan is taken care of you can also use it to avoid price discrimination.
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Starting point is 00:05:31 They got you taken care of. You can get an exclusive deal at the link in the description, nordvpn.com slash DHS. If you're listening on audio, we will link it in the video. It's risk free with Nord's 30 day-back guarantee. Check it out, guys. ...movements away from the mean, the average. And when you're a billionaire, you don't want anything to do with the average. You want to do with extreme outliers, what's called the tails. And so for them, it's really uninteresting to hear small ideas, which I think is one of the most fascinating things about hanging with a billionaire,
Starting point is 00:06:02 is you need to think really big because the only thing that will make a big impact to a billionaire's life is probably world-changing in a lot of different ways. And so every time I've hung out with one of them, that idea of don't think too small, don't think so small is pervasive. And so if you get to hang out with people who have a lot more zeros, I think it's contagious. Yeah. So that being said, do you think what you're doing right now can lead you to the billionaire status? I have $1 billion idea, I think. Yeah? Yeah. And so this is a company that we're going to invest millions in this year. In the past, I kind of did the safe route. I invested in a lot of little things, bought a lot of businesses, and scaled up small businesses to a big portfolio, right? But this year, you're going to see us do something
Starting point is 00:06:44 different. This year, we're putting a lot of money behind a one big swing. That's exciting. Yeah, we'll see. It'll be announced probably in the next like 90 days. Nice. Yeah, I don't know how you, because you invest in so many different businesses. For me, I like to focus on one, maybe two at a time. Like, how are you even managing all that? Well, there's, I think there's two mindsets. The entrepreneur mindset is Peter Thiel's zero to one and Jay Papasan's the one thing, which is do one thing really well and scale that to your first couple of millions or millions and then maybe you could think beyond it. That's sort of entrepreneurial mindset. I come from finance, which has what I call a satellite mindset, which basically means anytime somebody gets rich in finance and private equity, it's never from one company. It's from many companies combined into a portfolio. And so everybody always says, Cody, you're crazy that you have all these companies. I'm like,
Starting point is 00:07:33 it's not crazy. It's just a different model. You can have one really set area of risk, or you can have a grouping of risk that's deviated and disaggregated. And I tend to not like all my eggs in one basket. And so that's why I went the private equity way. But it's really standard. If you want to run a portfolio of businesses, there's a set hierarchy and a model, just like if you want to run a company, right? At a company, there's a CEO, there's a COO, there's a CFO, there's a set team of leaders. If you want to run a portfolio business, there's the same thing. There's a CEO. There's a CIO, a chief investment officer.
Starting point is 00:08:07 There's usually a CRO, a chief risk officer. There's usually a COO, a chief – I'm sorry, a CCO, chief compliance officer. And then your typical operations and finance. Got it. That makes sense. So both models work. Yeah. And how many businesses have you invested or purchased?
Starting point is 00:08:23 What percentage of them failed? Any of them can't right now? I mean, over the years, a hundred plus businesses I've invested in, bought and sold. I've been doing this for a long time. I'm 37. So I got into finance in 2007. Wow. Been playing the game for a long time. But right now we own about 25 businesses, but we buy and sell them. So the number changes. And how many of them failed? Well, so for private equity, the average numbers of failures are anywhere from 5% to 10% of the portfolio.
Starting point is 00:08:55 It's the opposite of venture capital. Venture capital, you have 10% of your portfolio gives you 90% of the money, right? In private equity, you really don't want a lot of big failures. And so we've had very few that have been total failures. You know, in my career, probably out of a hundred, it's probably right. It's probably something like 10 to 12, something like that. But it also depends on what you mean by failure. Right. It's relative, I guess. Right. I have plenty of companies that are too small and so we sell them. They don't get big enough for but too small for me could be perfect for somebody else it's the you know goldilocks i don't know what
Starting point is 00:09:28 was that it's the uh the three bears you know soup it's maybe a little too hot for me but it's the perfect temperature for somebody else right do you believe certain businesses can be recession proof i like to say recession resistant but maybe that's semantics yeah anything that says proof guarantee fast you know it's a no that's every guarantee, fast, you know, it's a no. That's every course that I get on Facebook ads. It's a no. Recession resistant means that they just like a weed in your garden. If you spray it with some sort of, you know, maybe there are some that are more resistant to it than others.
Starting point is 00:10:02 Right. And I think an economic downturn is a little bit like goes out to your garden garden, it sprays a bunch of things, and there are a few things that survive at the end. And so some businesses are like that. But very few businesses thrive when the world is falling apart. And there are some. I mean, I was in cannabis private equity investing in 2000 and, what was that? That would have been 2019, 2018, 19. And every business was dying.
Starting point is 00:10:30 I mean, all businesses were shut down except the mega chains. And I thought we were going to go under. We owned at that time 20 plus cannabis businesses. We owned a big piece of them. And I thought they were going to all close because they don't run with big cash balances. So we don't have a lot of runway.
Starting point is 00:10:47 If something goes wrong and we run out of cash, the bank won't give you loans. It's a really hard industry. And then somehow we finagled for the government to term them as critically important businesses that would stay open. And so we went from almost going out of business to having a record year in 2020. Crazy.
Starting point is 00:11:09 Yeah, which is pretty wild. Yeah. Cannabis, I felt like, was that gold rush like five years ago. Everyone was trying to get into it. Yeah, it was. Thankfully, we got out right about that time because it's been tough since then. But now they're talking about descheduling it, which would be huge for the industry. And I think probably the right move.
Starting point is 00:11:26 I'm not like a huge cannabis proponent. I think they've gone a little high with the amount of THC that they put in things these days. Oh, my gosh. I can't even smoke it anymore. Yeah. I quit. It's good. I think that's good, honestly.
Starting point is 00:11:36 Yeah. No, I started getting panic attacks. There's too much THC these days. Yeah, it's not the same thing. No. So like anything, especially when it's not hyper-regulated, you actually have worse problems. Yeah, absolutely. I think the next step in this is probably psilocybin mushrooms. Have you looked into that at all? Yeah. Basically, you know, I feel like investments go in waves and it's like a herd of cattle that
Starting point is 00:11:56 follows one another. And so, you know, in technology you saw people go, well, it's crypto. And then it was web three. And then it's AI. And people just start changing their names on their companies to include whatever one of those is the new hotness. So I never really trusted anybody that went from cannabis to psilocybin immediately. To me, that was a signal of like you couldn't cut it here, so you went here pretty quick. I think I like to see people stay in industries for longer. But I think psilocybin is inherently harder at least to increase the potency like they do with cannabis. So we'll see what happens. But I'm so far out of that industry now I wouldn't profess to be an expert anymore.
Starting point is 00:12:36 Yeah, that makes sense. I mean you probably get pitched thousands, hundreds of businesses. Do you have a team deciding before it even hits your table? Yeah, we get anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 companies a year. Damn. It's a lot. Screening all those companies is really, really hard. You know, there's a couple.
Starting point is 00:12:52 If you go to Main Street Holds Co. and you want to sell your business, that's where we take businesses that are looking to sell or get majority investment. And then we have another company called Contrarian Thinking Capital, and that's our venture capital fund where we can invest a small percentage in companies. So we get thousands of businesses at both and have to have a team to be able to review all of those. And do you have minimum revenue requirements? I know Hormozy, he keeps raising it. It used to be a million, now it's three, might even be five now, honestly. Yeah. So on the venture capital side, we invest in what's called infrastructure technology for small businesses. So if you think about it, like invest in what's called infrastructure technology for small businesses. So if you think about it, like we own part of a company that helps auto detailing shops come online into the 21st century. That's called Shop Genie.
Starting point is 00:13:34 And if you think about it, you know how annoying it is when you have a car and you want to go get it fixed. Like you have to actually call them. You can't make an appointment online. They don't text you when it's done. You don't know what it's going to cost you. There's no CRM that will remind you when your oil needs to be changed. And this company changes all of that. And so we invest in companies like that there.
Starting point is 00:13:54 They don't need a revenue requirement. We just need to believe in the team. In the VC stage, all that matters is who, not what. And so the biggest reason why small startups don't succeed is because the founder gives up. That's actually the number one reason. And on the buyout or big investing side of the firm, we're probably wider than that. So we invest in three types of businesses. One is businesses that could be accelerated from our media company. Two is real estate backed businesses. So those are things like mobile home parks, car washes if we own the real estate as well.
Starting point is 00:14:28 And then the third aspect is small businesses. We typically look from anywhere from a million dollars in EBITDA or profit all the way up to 10 to 20 mil. That makes sense. Have you invested in any media or podcasts? Are you interested in coming on the Digital Social Hour podcast as a guest? Well, click the application link below in the description of this video. We are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about business and life. Click the application link below, and here's the episode, guys. I did used to own a podcast production company,
Starting point is 00:14:58 Strikefire Productions. Why'd it stop? Well, I sold it. Oh, you sold it. Okay. Yeah. And it's still running. It's a great company. But it produces podcasts as opposed to is actually the IP of a podcast like yours. And so I like the picks and shovels, the services part of industries. Nice. So a bit of a selfish question for me. Tell me.
Starting point is 00:15:17 So my show does about 2.5 million revenue a year. That's amazing. Yeah, like 60% margin. Incredible. But I look at guys like Rogan who's doing 80 million a year a year. What would your advice be for me to grow this thing into like an eight-figure business? Two ways to grow a business, right? One is sell your current people more things. And two is raise your prices, typically, right? And so I think the game most podcasters play is get bigger and raise your prices for sponsors.
Starting point is 00:15:45 I would guess most of your revenue comes from ads and sponsorships? Sponsors, and we have in-person events, which is unique. Okay, good. So you do sell your people more things. Yeah. I think that's the biggest opportunity area typically with podcasts is I like to steal people's homework, not come up with new models. Right. And so if you look at Rogan, that one's tough, right?
Starting point is 00:16:04 Because he was so big that he could do ads and sponsorships. He was also independently wealthy because he was already a famous comedian and television host. And then he got a hundred million plus Spotify deal, right? So it's not a great model to follow
Starting point is 00:16:17 because it's hard to replicate. It's a business of one. A better model to replicate would be one where somebody is just slightly ahead of you. And I call these the horizon businesses. You want to find your horizon business. And your horizon business might be somebody who has
Starting point is 00:16:31 a similar size to you, but their revenue is a ton higher than you. So you want to look at who's somebody who has I don't know how many podcast listeners you have, but let's say, I don't know, 100,000 podcast listeners an episode. And who's making not two and a half million, but 10. And, I don't know, 100,000 podcast listeners an episode, and who's making not two and a half million, but 10? And how can you reverse engineer their homework? And so it
Starting point is 00:16:50 probably is things like events. It might be things like, you know, merch. It might be things like partnerships. It might be equity in companies as opposed to straight sponsorships. But I would look at what are all the different ways that you could make money from the clients that you currently, the users that you already have. Yeah. I think finding a product or service will help a lot because I'm not pitching anything right now. And I know you had Dan Fleischman on your show who's making 15 million a year on masterminds. So I've been dabbling with that idea, but what's your take on masterminds? Are you part of any of those? Well, I used to think that masterminds were gross, actually. In finance, especially if you were in traditional finance like I was, Goldman Sachs, State Street, Vanguard, we kind of thought
Starting point is 00:17:32 those were weird. And then I joined a few of them and I realized that it's just an opportunity to steal somebody else's 10,000 hours. So I think those, being in a room where other people's, where your dreams is other people's Tuesday is really powerful. And so if you can just sit somewhere where the thing that you want more than anything, they already have times 12, it's amazing what will rub off on you. And so I believe in that in a big, big, big way. I think the thing with groups, communities, institutes, masterminds, whatever you want to call them, is they're more successful if you have exclusivity, scarcity, timeliness, and relevance. And so exclusivity means that the type of people who come in it have some particular components. It's not for everybody because then you're for nobody. And you have some scarcity because it's really hard to change 100,000
Starting point is 00:18:22 people's lives, but it's not that hard to change a room if you only have 100 people in there. Then you have timeliness, some outcome that they can get at some time that's useful. And then relevance, which is what are you uniquely skilled at in the world that nobody else is that you could actually teach to these people or bring humans together in the same vein. So those communities I think are the ones that last. Love that. Now you've read over 200 books on money. Are you still reading a significant volume or have you toned it back a bit? I love reading. I think it's free homework.
Starting point is 00:19:06 So I can just look at, I mean, a perfect example is a common theme would be how can you replicate as opposed to R&D and research and development. And so when I read books, what I'm really looking for is, you know, what's something that I don't totally understand in this sphere that I can take somebody else's 10,000 hours and I can get it in five. And so there's a lot of people these days that are over the, it's almost like we over index, you know, as humans, you have this pendulum swing, right? First it's, we have no morning routines whatsoever. And then we have three hour, you know, crazy entrepreneurial routines. And then because we've gone all the way over here, now people go no routine again. And it's like, well, is there probably a middle ground? Like, would it be nice for you to wake up and not immediately force feed yourself TikTok nonstop? Yeah, it's probably good. Right. And I think it's, it's the same thing with reading books.
Starting point is 00:19:46 We went from, you know, it's not really cool to read to I read 452 books this week alone on 3.5x speed. Well, that's probably not very useful. But somewhere in between is actually useful. 2x speed is useful? Yeah, exactly. I know people that do 4x. I'm like, how are you even – I think I'm comfy at 2x. I've tried 2.5 and it's too fast.
Starting point is 00:20:05 Yeah. I agree. I mean, I'm, I really like, I like letting books die in a graveyard if they're not useful. So I don't believe in having to finish a book if you don't want to, but I do believe that most everything that's been done has been done before. So, you know, unless you are firing rockets off to the moon and trying to land them again, maybe somebody else has already done the thing. So why not learn from them? Right. History repeats itself. I want to talk about your newsletter.
Starting point is 00:20:32 500,000 plus people. That is a huge asset. Those are selling for really good multiples. What's your plan with that? We want to build it up to millions. I do think your email is your best owned audience, right? It's the only thing that Zuckerberg or Musk or whoever can't take from you. You go direct from your inbox to your user's inbox.
Starting point is 00:20:51 It also has the highest conversion rate. So if you're trying to sell something, the best place to do it is typically your newsletter because emails convert better than anything else. So we want to grow it to millions. But the original idea of the newsletter, we have two now. We have one. So I think our total user count is somewhere around 650, 750,000. Wow. But we have one newsletter that's exclusively focused on buying boring businesses or Main Street businesses.
Starting point is 00:21:15 That's called the Boring Business Brief. And then the second newsletter is called Contrarian Thinking. And that one is entirely focused on this idea of what does it mean to make money in a way nobody ever taught us in school? And so it's stories about humans who have done it so that you can replicate it. Because I think it's hard to be what you can't see. Yeah, I love that. Speaking of school and college, specifically businesses, business schools and colleges, do you think those need to really adapt? Because I couldn't even get into business school, actually.
Starting point is 00:21:44 Really? Yeah, my GPA was too low. Isn't that crazy? That is like any school or where did you try? Into Rutgers, but yeah. Which isn't even like a good one to be honest. Yeah. I, yeah. I think the stats these days show that increasingly we want to hire from Twitter and Product Hunt and not from Harvard and Yale. And in fact, nothing to do with Bill Ackman's attack on Harvard and some of these institutions. I think these days we're just, we're not as interested in people
Starting point is 00:22:13 who haven't done the thing as opposed to people who have receipts. You have receipts. How do you know that you're good at business? Because you run one that does $2.5 million. So would I rather do something with you as opposed to somebody who went to Harvard and is going to tell me exactly how to run a business having never done the thing? No thanks. And so I think the best business school is
Starting point is 00:22:34 business. And we're starting to realize that. Elon Musk and Naval Ravikant, who was the founder of AngelList, both talk about this idea that they hire MBAs despite the MBA, not because of the MBA. Because I do think you leave. And I have an MBA from Georgetown. And I remember, I thought I knew a lot of things when I came out of my MBA. And until you actually put things to practice, it's the Mike Tysonism, which is everybody's got a plan until you get punched in the face. And it's the same thing with business. Yep. Paralysis by analysis, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:23:07 You also tweeted out, never send an offer for employment via email. Always call. Oh, that was because I got pissed because one of my employees did that. Oh, yeah? Wait, one of your employees emailed you? One of my employees emailed somebody we wanted to extend an offer to. And I think when you want somebody to come onto your team, you have to realize that for you, that might be a box to check. But for them, that is them dedicating their life, the thing they will spend more time on than anything else, to your dream and to being a part of it. And it's a huge honor. And so when somebody decides they want to become part of your team, I think you should treat
Starting point is 00:23:37 that accordingly. And so it's really important to me that we never would send an email saying, welcome to the team. We would always pick up the phone and call and say, this is a huge decision. We're honored that you chose us. And this is going to be a really cool ride together. And I think we've lost that. In this era where everybody's getting fired by Zoom, by people who have never met them with a bunch of platitudes, I think humans and non-corporate speak is super important. And we just, we don't see enough of that. Absolutely. Yeah. People are ending their relationships over text these days. It's normal. That's interesting. So do you think it matters less for young people? Cause you're younger than I am. That's kind of like, oh, okay. We're broken up via text and it's no big deal.
Starting point is 00:24:18 It's normalized. It's a shame to see. I've been in a relationship for six years, so I never dealt with any of this, but my friends tell me about it. Wow. See, I think that maybe I'm a little old school years, so I never dealt with any of this, but my friends tell me about it. Wow. Yeah. See, I think that maybe I'm a little old school here, but I think what goes around comes around in a lot of ways. For sure. I believe in that. Yeah. Karma. People are going to remember the way that you made them feel.
Starting point is 00:24:34 Yeah. And so, you know, I have a friend that ran for Congress actually here in Vegas. And I was talking to her last night, and she told me when she went to go run for Congress, the opposing party found and called every single one of her ex-boyfriends to try to get beef on her. And the lucky part is she's an incredible human. So all of them had really positive things to say. I was like, God, don't call mine. But that's the reality we live in. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:25:02 And so remembering the way that you treat people is important. And when you're young, it's really easy to forget that. Wow. They did that to Andrew Tate too. Did they? Yeah. They called all his exes trying to find stuff on him. Oh, and all of them were chill?
Starting point is 00:25:15 Pretty much, yes. He got out of it, right? Yeah, he's out of jail, I believe. Yeah, that whole drama was fascinating. I mean, I'm not a – am I not a fan of him? I'm not a fan of a lot of things that he says. Okay. But I also think he does say a lot of positive things too. I'm, I'm not a, am I not a fan of him? I'm not a fan of a lot of things that he says, but I also think he does say a lot of positive things too.
Starting point is 00:25:29 I'm on the same boat. Yeah. Like most humans, you know, I think it's called moral absolutism, right? Where you think because one person did one thing once, they are anathema. They're the worst. And in reality, I think that's not the case. All of us are pretty f***ed up little, you know, apes running around trying to figure it out. Yeah. We all got our traumas, right? I think that's not the case. All of us are pretty f***ed up little apes running around trying to figure it out. Yeah, we all got our traumas, right? I think that's right. Yeah. A couple more tweets of yours I thought were interesting.
Starting point is 00:25:50 Your Twitter's fire, by the way. Thank you. Is that you actually tweeting it? I'm the one doing all the one-off tweets, yeah. Nice. Yeah. I do get help with research on the threads. On the threads?
Starting point is 00:25:59 Yeah. Okay, yeah. Some of those are long. You tweeted out, biggest indicator of success, vitamin D deficiency. I thought that was interesting. Well, sometimes I make myself giggle with Twitter. I think I was looking at that photo of Elon Musk on his yacht when he was all white. And then you see Jeff Bezos plused up, tanned, jacked post-sale. But I do think there are these things that our generation doesn't really want to hear anymore, which is you can have it all,
Starting point is 00:26:26 but not at once. And so, yeah, you're going to have long nights. You're going to have longer days. You're going to miss out. You're going to miss the sun. And you have to decide whether being successful at the peak of your game is worth it one way or another. So the internet didn't like that vitamin D deficiency one, but I thought it was funny. I thought it was funny. So you are not a believer of the four-hour work week? Well, I read that book back in the day. I'm a big fan of Tim Ferriss. I like him as a human too. He's a good dude. But no. I think Tim probably would tell you this these days. A four-hour work week, what are you going to do the rest of the time? There's only so many Mai Tais on beaches that you can go and sit.
Starting point is 00:27:10 Right. And I think at some point it's great to take sabbaticals and it's great to have changes. But I do believe we were put here with a purpose to fulfill. And that it's actually really fun to lose yourself in doing the thing that you were supposed to do. And I'm sure you felt it too. That flow state that happens with work is just as powerful as it is when you're meditating and on a runner's high. It feels incredible. Right. And so I wish that for more people. And I don't wish for people to quiet quit and to hate their job and to spend their life waiting for retirement and then shortly die of a heart attack due to boredom at the end. Wow. That was specific. But no, it makes sense. A lot of people do feel trapped in their nine to
Starting point is 00:27:49 fives and it sucks to see that, but I don't think entrepreneurship is meant for everyone. I agree with that. It is hard. Very. And we were talking about this this morning, but it took me 10 or 12 years to become an entrepreneur. You did it much younger than I did. I went and worked at the biggest companies and made lots of money before I ever went and did it by myself. I was too scared. And so I had to have millions in the bank because I thought that I might lose it all.
Starting point is 00:28:16 Wow. I was a wuss. And that actually worked for me. Do I wish I would have started a little bit earlier? Maybe. But I'm glad that I had 10 plus years of learning on somebody else's dime until I went and actually did the thing myself. Built a safety net. Right. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I don't think we should ever stay at minimum wage.
Starting point is 00:28:33 I think you should up-level your skillset. That's the point. I think working for somebody else to start is really intelligent. I think figuring out what you are actually worth to a company by understanding how much money you bring into the company is a sign of intelligence. And I think where you start won't be where you end. So having some patience in the in-between is important. Yeah, I loved your, I think it was a tweet about how to ask for a raise. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:57 I thought that was brilliant because some people just go about it completely wrong and it's like offensive almost. Right, well, it definitely can. I've done it wrong. Like, I get it. You know, when I was a young idiot, I was a young idiot. And so I think I remember in the beginning, the first time I asked for a raise, you know, I was like, well, I'd like
Starting point is 00:29:11 to make this amount. And they were like, okay, why? I was like, this is a good question. I'd like, I'd like more money. And I think I earned it, you know, no, not the way. But now I don't think, I don't think it has to be that difficult. You just have to understand what a win-win negotiation is, but people don't really teach you this. Like I'm watching these videos of people get fired on Zoom and dying a little bit on the inside because one, those are going to exist forever for those people. And it's never a good look for you to, you're just, it's going to be, you know, I don't know. I would have a hard time hiring somebody that had filmed themselves getting fired and been trying to explain why they
Starting point is 00:29:53 were performing when the company sees that they're not performing. You know, that's just not the greatest look. People are recording that? Oh God, yeah. It's all over the internet right now. Wow. I got to check those out. Yeah. It's not the, it's not the look. Now, do I think that the companies are doing it an awful way? Yes. I don't think you should do mass recordings. I think you should actually level with people about why they're hiring or not. I think it's crazy that you don't have really specific KPIs for if a person's winning or not. So all of that gets lost in big companies, but you cannot, nobody owes you anything ever. And the second people realize that is probably the second they start to make more money. Right. Yeah. I think KPIs are important because once a lot of people get a job,
Starting point is 00:30:28 get a salary and they're chilling, right? Keeping your employees incentivized is a whole nother game. I think that's exactly right. And it's, it's all, there's always this tension, right? You know, I had an employee negotiate with me the other day. They thought that they deserved something more in their pay than they got. So we had set a goal. They didn't hit the goal. That goal came with money. And they said, but I did all of this other stuff. And because of that, I still think I should make this money from this goal. And I said, you know, and they had some valid points.
Starting point is 00:30:55 So I took those into consideration. And I said, here's the thing. When it comes to payment, you should be slightly unhappy with what you get paid if you don't hit your goals. And I should be slightly unhappy with what you get paid if you don't hit your goals, and I should be slightly unhappy with what you get paid if you don't hit your goals. If I set goals up right and you hit them, then it should be amazing for me to pay you. But if you don't hit your goals, you should never get paid for every dollar for not hitting goals. And I think these days people forget that. They think unclear expectations mean that they are owed something that they're not. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:31:25 So you held your ground there? Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty thoughtful with my employees on how we set expectations. And I think almost everybody at our company has some sort of bonus or incentive alignment across almost all companies. And so you earn X, which is the salary that you get for doing the job that you do today. And you earn Y, which is called a bonus if you do bonus things. And so I think a lot of times people confuse bonus with, oh, I should get that. It's like, no, no, no. Inherently, I'm going to need you to Wikipedia the definition of
Starting point is 00:31:54 bonus. And it's you do more and you get more. And if you don't like that, then figure out a way for the company to make more money or achieve its goals. And then you might get paid more too. Love that. You also tweeted out, blaming is the best way to keep yourself exactly where you are, take responsibility for everything. Have you always had that mindset? No, I played victim just like everybody else did at varying points in my life. It's their fault. It's not me. How could they? Why? And then at some point I realized that's not very useful, and I'm not getting anywhere further by blaming somebody else. And wouldn't it be more useful if I thought that I could actually achieve something because of my own ability, not despite somebody else? And so I think once you change that mindset, you become harder to stop. And that's my
Starting point is 00:32:36 biggest problem with victim culture today is that people everywhere want to say why it's somebody else's fault, that that's where they're at. And that might be true. You might've been royally, but does that help you get further? And I think the answer is no. And we know that inherently. Yeah. I used to be such a victim. It was terrible. Interesting. Terribly. I mean, both my parents were very pessimistic, so it kind of rubbed off. Yeah. But yeah, I used to blame every, never my fault, like at all. What changed? I think just getting into business and being around people kind of just changed me being around positive people honestly yeah i think one you know somebody
Starting point is 00:33:11 asked me the other day what was the biggest change in your life and it was the second that i took over a pnl a profit and loss statement because i realized wow my decisions have actions and i'm the only one in charge of this actually and so if i fail it's on me not anybody else and i think that's what happens in business. And it's also why, you know, I like our teams to have budgets because then they feel like they have what I call skin in the game, which is like if you do X, you know, why are some extreme sports so fun?
Starting point is 00:33:37 Because you know if I mess this up, it's going to hurt. You know, if I do this really well, it's going to be awesome because it's hard. And I think that's the game of business. It's a lower non-physical level of immediate risk or reward and then a feeling. It's like haptics on games. Games are a lot more fun if you feel like a little jolt when something happens to you inside of a game. That's the game of business. Absolutely. What's your risk tolerance like these days? I'm assuming it's not as risky as when you were younger. It's a good question. It really depends on what. I do everything humanly possible to de-risk. And so the smart thing I think you do as you get older is you start to be able to actually define risk. Like,
Starting point is 00:34:18 what is risk? When you're 20 years old and you want to go take a shot at starting a business, what do you have to lose? Probably not a lot. As you get older, you have more to lose, but you also have more knowledge and you have more network and usually cash. And how do you de-risk things most easily? By having extra capital to manage it, by having the knowledge of what to do if something goes sideways, and then also by having the network like, hey, this happened to me. Can you help me with this? And so network, cash, and competence or knowledge help you de-risk. And so I try to over-optimize on those three. I agree.
Starting point is 00:34:49 The cool thing is I could lose all my money right now, but I'd make it back. Yeah. How would you? Have you thought about that before? Like no connections, no money. Then it'd be tougher. I'm assuming I still have knowledge and connections. You have the knowledge, but you have no connections.
Starting point is 00:35:03 Like nobody knows who you are. You got to start from scratch, but you know everything you know today. What but you have no connections. Nobody knows who you are. You've got to start from scratch, but you know everything you know today. What would you do? Podcast. Start it again. Yeah, because I didn't really have a big network when I started the show. I just did my friends and worked my way up.
Starting point is 00:35:19 Because once you have on one person, they lead to doors, right? When I had on Keaton, he's the one who introduced me to you. And it's kind of like a snowball effect with podcasting. Yeah. You know what's interesting is I've found that people who are successful typically want to go and do the same thing that got them to where they're at today. So obviously we have confirmation bias. Like this worked in the past, so it'll work again. But also I think it's an interesting sign because it probably means we have a lot less regret. Interesting.
Starting point is 00:35:45 I haven't met a lot of people who have been really successful who say, I would become an opera singer. If I had zero, I'd go to opera singing. It's usually some iteration of the thing that you already have mastery in. So if I think about what does that mean and what does that tell me, that means that we should chase mastery in something because it seems like those who have been successful don't have very many regrets on the things that they did to obtain mastery. I love that. Yeah. I've been thinking about it lately. That's deep.
Starting point is 00:36:13 Yeah. I don't want to die with regrets, honestly. It's something I think about, to be honest. Yeah. I agree. I think leave it all on the table. this incredible quote by this woman by the name of Emma Bombeck. And she says, when I stand before God at the end of my days, I want to be able to say to him, I wrung it all out and I left no drop behind. And I always loved that. I loved that idea. Hemingway also talked about showing up at the pearly gates, beaten bloody and screaming,
Starting point is 00:36:41 that was a hell of a ride. And so I think some mixture between that too, like squeezing out every inch of capacity we have paired with getting a little beaten up and bloody. Like I don't want to come there in perfect form. I want to come there having experienced the full spectrum of life. That's cool. So you're a little history nerd, huh? I do like quotes. I think they're a good reminder of like other people have been there here and done this before. Absolutely. Do you invest in any crypto? I'm big in crypto, but I've never heard you talk about it. So do I have any exposure? I mean, I have some Bitcoin and varying cryptocurrencies, but no, it's not my specialty. I try to stay in lanes where I think I can win. Right. And I think somebody like you and your
Starting point is 00:37:21 generation probably wins more often in crypto. I've won a lot and lost a ton. I'm up overall, but oh man, I made some dumb investments in crypto. From like a speculative currency perspective? Yeah. Anything altcoin related is super risky. Yeah, I don't love that. I'm good friends with a guy by the name of Bology. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:37:39 Who was the CTO of Coinbase. Right. And his actual just mental horsepower is so incredibly impressive that I remember when I met a few individuals like them, I was like, well, I shall, oh, yeah, I need to follow up with him on something.
Starting point is 00:37:57 But I would invest in them, but I wouldn't want to compete with him. And so I try to find the game where I am uniquely suited to win. Yeah. Crypto is fascinating because all the top people in crypto that make a ton of money, they have autism. They're like Asperger's. Have you noticed that? It's crazy. Do I think that, well, I do think that a lot of them are on the spectrum. Exactly. In some way, shape or form. I'll have to ask Bology if he's autistic.
Starting point is 00:38:24 But even in business too, not just crypto. I mean, Elon Musk, I don't know what Bezos is, but there's a lot of top entrepreneurs that are on the spectrum too. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think that's become a new thing people talk about is neurodivergence, right? So what is like a normal neural response and then what are top performers? And when we were younger, I mess up, I don't have a great memory and I get things backwards a lot, numbers and words. So I'll say them inappropriately. And I remember that was a struggle for me when I was younger. And now it seems like that's the norm. You don't find, well, if you think about it, let's think about this. So average. If you want to be average,
Starting point is 00:39:04 it probably makes sense that you're not going to be neurodivergent. You're going to be like everybody else. You're going to fit in. You're going to be normalized. If you want to achieve outsized success, you have to have something slightly different wrong with you, off about you, in order for you to achieve the non-average, right? So it makes sense that those at the top and those probably at the bottom have divergence. Yeah. It does make sense. That's probably why I didn't do well in school, but you did. So props to you. You know, I have a lot of brute force pain tolerance when it comes to work.
Starting point is 00:39:32 So I can work for a very long time on something I don't want to do continuously until I figure out a problem. Wow. So your mental resilience is just – Higher, probably, at least when it comes to work. But, you know, did I love school and was I super intrigued by it? No. I just would brute force the pain to get the outcome that I wanted. Right.
Starting point is 00:39:54 And was it partially parents forcing you as well? Immigrant parents. Like, you know, it was very important to my family, especially my mother, actually. She did me a huge service, which was made reading something that I loved and made learning and achievement something that I treasured. And so it was a gamification of winning. And I think she didn't maybe realize what she was doing at that time, but gamifying the fact that she would say to me, I would come home and I might say something like, that class was so boring. I want to gouge my eyes out. The teacher's an idiot.
Starting point is 00:40:25 We're not learning anything. Why am I even here? Who's going to care about an amoeba in 12 years? And she would say, well, what would you have to do to win? How could you beat the teacher that you don't like and get the outcome that you want so that somebody you don't think is smart, so that somebody who isn't teaching you anything doesn't stand in your way? What would you do?
Starting point is 00:40:49 And she just would flip my perspective on it. So instead of being victim mindset, it would be like, oh, how could I manipulate this situation to get what I want out of it? And so, yeah, we always, we jokingly called her the narc because she just, she knew everything. She has a PhD in psychology and she would always mindf**k us slightly, but it was to our benefit usually. Yeah. Learning should be fun, man. Like I thought I hated learning as a kid because I hated all the topics. But I love learning. And I didn't realize that until like after college. Well, I mean, think about it.
Starting point is 00:41:12 I mean, what was I doing the other day? I was somewhere where I had to sit focused for hours on some slide PowerPoint. It must have been an investment meeting or something. And I had to do it for like five hours straight almost with like a bathroom break or two here or there. And I remember having PTSD of school. Like, don't you remember that feeling of sitting in class and being like, I am so miserable right now. I need to leave immediately. And the exact opposite of like, you know, I'm sure you've also felt when you get in a flow state with work and you're sitting five hours later, you know, somebody walks in on you and you kind of forget you were even doing this right right right and so i do
Starting point is 00:41:48 think we set up kids for complete failure because school is set up for the lowest common denominator aka no child left behind which is the literal american education policy as opposed to optimizing for whatever level you're at right like kids should be moving up and down grade levels depending on what they're good at or not easily yeahily. Yeah. What happened to skipping grades? My dad skipped a ton, but I feel like they stopped doing that. Yeah. It became, well, what about the societal norms of those kids being further along than the others? Who cares? You know, we have to optimize for focus happens when you don't have boredom because you have challenge. And so, you know, boredom is really just massive distraction. And so I do think kids boredom is really just massive distraction. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:42:25 And so I do think kids these days, it's unfair what we do to them from a school perspective. I literally still have nightmares about school. Yeah. It's crazy. It makes sense, right? Because it's sort of a horrible thing to have somebody steal life away from you slowly and continuously due to you being more capable than they are to teach you. Yeah. What a horrible thing.
Starting point is 00:42:44 It's terrible. I noticed a lot of successful people aren't sending their kids to public school. Yeah. It'll be interesting what happens in the future. There's a really interesting school. I believe it's called the Alpha School in Austin, Texas, that was co-designed or created by Elon Musk. And it's fascinating because it's about two hours a day, the school, and you have to progress on subjects. You progress on the subject for however long it takes you. It has AI enablement behind it. Wow. So if you progress, the AI gets more intelligent alongside you
Starting point is 00:43:14 and progresses further your studies. And then for the rest of the day, for whatever period you're supposed to be in school, you're allowed to work on the things you want to work on. That sounds amazing. Yeah. And so I think schools will be like that in the future. I hope so. But it's tough with all the politics behind it. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 00:43:32 That's true. One of the big, we focus a lot on fundraising for local community issues. And one of my biggest ones is school choice, which sounds boring to us because we maybe don't have kids yet. That sounds like something for another generation. But school choice is critical for exactly that reason. If I can't decide where to send my kid because of where I live, how can I change their lives? If instead I could say, wow, Alpha School exists here and, I don't know, normal ISD local school district exists here. ISD gets, I don't know, $10,000 a year per student. Why can't I decide to give the $10,000 per year to Alpha School if I feel like this is a better school? Shouldn't I be able to choose where my kid determines that they learned best? Doesn't that seem like a raw, innate need that a parent would have? Of
Starting point is 00:44:22 course. So why does the government get to choose where you place your kids? But wild how hard that is to get governments to pass because where there's money, there's usually entrenched interests. Yeah. And that's just taxes in general. I wish you could choose where your tax money went to because God knows where it goes. Yeah. I think you're very right. I mean, base level, in my belief, is that anything that the government does is more expensive, less efficient, and slower than what the private market does. We need the government in some ways, for sure. But the government was really supposed to be in a lot of ways, in my opinion, for public safety, and maybe for, you know, broad-based public infrastructure. But beyond that, it's the only, if you think about it,
Starting point is 00:45:13 what if you had a business where if you had a business, at the end of every year you get a budget for that business. And if you don't spend your whole budget in that business, you get your money taken away from you. And if you spend the whole budget for the business, a.k.a. you turn the business into non-profitable, then you grow your budget next year. You get more money. That's what the government is. And so every single department has to spend, I don't know, a million dollars. If they don't spend the million dollars, they get money taken away from them and reallocated somewhere else. So they're disincentivized to spend intelligently. It's the
Starting point is 00:45:44 wildest system in the world. It's the wildest system. It's wild. My friend was in the military and he said they would have so much leftover ammo and grenades. They would go out in the field and shoot it all. Oh, I believe that
Starting point is 00:45:53 because they would then need to re-up again in order to fill the rest of their budget. Yeah. And I just had Dr. Zach Wilshon yesterday. He talked about healthcare,
Starting point is 00:46:01 $5 billion, or was it trillion? Five trillion, something crazy. And that's the country's number one provider of revenue right now. Yeah, I think it is in the hands of especially your generation and the generation to come. What are you guys going to do about it? What are you going to stand for?
Starting point is 00:46:19 And I think this generation, you guys are smart, you're tech enabled, and it's hard to hide. The government these days, there's so much transparency now about what's actually transpiring that I think this generation has a real opportunity to stand up and say, hey, this doesn't make sense. And so how else can we do it? Not from a place of victim, but from a place of capability. I'm glad you're sticking up for millennials because we get a ton of hate. Which I also think is silly. I think the generational play between, you know, baby boomers are awful. Millennials are terrible. Gen Z doesn't know what's going on. It's the age old adage like, oh, you know, kids these days, how long have we been saying kids these days? Forever. And so is it actually kids these days or is this just a natural cycle?
Starting point is 00:47:03 Yeah. And I think it's a natural cycle. Yeah, it's some type of jealousy because you see it with like retired pro athletes even. They say, oh, Lee got softer. You know what I mean? Yeah. I guess it's partially jealousy that we're younger than them or something. Yeah, I think there's that. And I also think there is a portion that's true for all of us, which is can we really say that it's harder right now to be alive than during World
Starting point is 00:47:25 War II, where people were conscripted into the military and went to go die by the millions? Probably not. It's probably a little bit better today. Is your house more expensive? Yes. But are you going to war and are you being conscripted to die? No. And so I do think there's some component of it where it's like, we do want the younger generations to have optimism. But I remember I've become a part of a university called University of Austin, which is run by Joe Lonsdale, creator of Palantir. And his idea was the university system's broken. Let's bring the best ideas and the best people from around the country and let's let real ideas compete in the university. And it's in Austin, Texas. And so I was talking to the dean and his name's Pano.
Starting point is 00:48:06 And I was like, I'm going to do a lecture series there. And I said, well, I talk a lot about money and buying businesses. Like what does the youth need to hear? When you're going into college, you're what? You're like 18, 19. What do they need to hear? And he said, it's not tactics. It's optimism.
Starting point is 00:48:22 They've been told their whole lives that the world is dying because of you and climate change. And because of that, you shouldn't have kids. And oh, by the way, you're lazy and soft. And also, capitalism's terrible, so don't make any money. And oh, by the way, everything's broken. And so it's this generation of people who have been told nothing but negativity. And he's like, so what we actually need is optimism. People saying, hey, we're a little discontent, but we're optimistically discontent. We think that we can actually make the world better. And you guys are capable of doing that. Yeah, that's needed, especially for those kids because they're graduating with debt. It's getting super hard to buy a house these days. I mean, our parents could just buy a house,
Starting point is 00:49:02 but now I feel like you got to wait 10, 15 years to even afford one now. Yeah. I mean, I think that's true. And also I think the world is changing a lot of different ways. One, I think the student debt issue is huge and we have to be really careful about the debt that we are burdening this generation with. And this generation has to wake up to the fact that we need to understand the math of the money that we commit ourselves to. And so, you know, I went to public school where I could get my college paid for by the state if I got a certain grade
Starting point is 00:49:33 because I didn't want student debt and I didn't want my parents to have to go into it. So I went to Arizona State, not a fancy school at all. Yeah, exactly. Harvard of the West, really. I could not picture you there. It was, I had my fun. And so, you know, and I went there. It was. I had my fun. All right.
Starting point is 00:49:45 And so, you know, and I went there. It wasn't the best school, but I didn't want to come out of it with a huge burden. And so I think if I'm this younger generation, I'm thinking a little bit more about that. Like, do I really want to buy into the fact that I'm going to have to spend the next 10 years of my life paying off debt? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Yeah, it doesn't. So you saved up millions from the nine to five, right? Did you ever blow through it all or were you really good about keeping it?
Starting point is 00:50:11 No, I never had that typical entrepreneurial story of I had all this success, then I lost it all. Then I slept on the couch for two years and then I came back. Right. I don't actually think that's necessary. I think it can be what happens and it makes for an incredible hero's journey. And if you're going through something really difficult, use it because it's actually a superpower. Simultaneously, it's not necessary for you to have massive failure in order for you to have upward success. And so I just stacked it. I was talking to one of my team members earlier and we were talking about his first 100K. He's got his first 100K saved up and he's proud of that. And I was
Starting point is 00:50:53 like, okay, what are you going to do with it now? And he's like, well, I'm thinking I might go and put some into this deal and I might do this. I'm like, no, stop it. I'm like, your first 100K? I'm like, you take that first 100K, that's your fund. If you ever hate me as your employer, you go, I have enough money where I'm out, bye. Simultaneously, that first 100K is your safety net. And your safety net, if you allow to invest and compound over 10 years,
Starting point is 00:51:17 becomes big. And Warren Buffett said, when Jeff Bezos asked him, you tell everybody all your secrets about how you invest. Why do you do that? And Warren Buffett said, when Jeff Bezos asked him, you tell everybody all your secrets about how you invest. Why do you do that? And Warren Buffett said, well, because nobody else wants to get rich slowly. So nobody is going to copy me. The most – one of the wealthiest people in the world that we think of as the best investor of our time says, I got rich slowly.
Starting point is 00:51:40 And so I think that's really smart for this generation to think about is slow and steady accumulation of wealth is not something to be frowned upon, actually. Because a weird thing happens. Like your first three, five, seven, eight years, it feels slow and it feels boring. Right. And then at some point it starts to compound with your knowledge. And then you see some sort of yes in front of you. You're like, I have enough knowledge to understand that is a good opportunity now i have money to execute on that opportunity because i didn't yolo into dogecoin because i wanted to get rich fast yeah right that's literally what happened to me six years
Starting point is 00:52:15 no no no not the dogecoin part but i bought some study yeah yeah 50 100k your salary five six years yeah and then it just exploded with like said, the connection started coming into place, the knowledge, and it all just happened. Yeah, I want to think about that a little bit more because I think there's a formula there that we need to talk to the young people about. That it's going to suck in the beginning and you're going to feel like nothing is progressing. But there's this inflection point that happens when you have enough cash saved up and knowledge that allows you to have those big jumps. Right. But if you spent that whole time not saving up and trying to do a bunch of frantic little things, you'll never have that.
Starting point is 00:52:50 Distractions. Yeah. And too many people chase that quick money, that distraction. Right. Exactly. Like a lot of people. Yeah. But I don't have the exact formula nailed down. I want to think through it a little bit more quickly, but I think you're right. Most people die at the altar of too small, too often, too distracted. Yeah. But I like your story because it's super realistic.
Starting point is 00:53:07 You know, get a job, save up some money, and then try some stuff out. Yeah. I think just about anybody can do that. Yeah. Because a lot of people advise the opposite where they're like, just start immediately, get into debt, and see if it works. Yes. I would never get into debt to start a business ever.
Starting point is 00:53:23 In fact, my cousin just texted me that, should I get this loan? And I said, absolutely not. Business has a very high failure rate. And so getting into debt to start your first business that has $0 in income is crazy to me. Now, if it works for you, you should do whatever you want individually, but I don't love that idea. That's why I buy businesses that already cashflow, because I want to have some sort of net on what this business can go down as opposed to only what can happen on the upside. Right. And you see a lot of these tech companies raising money pre-rev, and it's just baffles me at these valuations. Yes. I think if you can get money like that, take it. But I'm thoughtful even in that amount. I think there's a new grouping of tech companies
Starting point is 00:54:09 coming out and they call them the one raise wonders, which basically means companies that raised one time a couple million bucks and never raised again. Like I was listening to Ben Shapiro the other day and he was talking about Daily Wire, his company that does like $200 million in annual revenue right now. Wow. That company raised $4.8 million one time with one investor and has never raised money again. Incredible. And they've been doing hundreds of millions of dollars for years. And so I think that might be a new norm as opposed to a lot of companies that raise tens,
Starting point is 00:54:44 hundreds of millions of dollars, and then they get sort of, they can't get out over this umbrella of debt. Yeah. Do you see independent media like Ben Shapiro, like Patrick, but David overtaking traditional media? Seems like it. I mean, the numbers seem to say that guys like that, people like you and me, we're getting more views than traditional media sources. Now, there's still some sheen to traditional media sources. Like I go on the news every so often because there is something about the credentialing that happens when you're on those channels, but they've lost trust. And so because of that, people do not stay stupid for long.
Starting point is 00:55:23 And I think they've been told a lot of lies and they're tired of listening to it. Yeah. So when you go on these traditional TV outlets, are they giving you a pep talk before of what not to say and stuff? No. Oh, they're not? No. No. They don't do that that I've ever experienced.
Starting point is 00:55:38 I've only been on like three or four of the big channels. But, you know, CNN, CNBC, Fox, all the players. There's none of that. They tell you kind of a topic that, but you know, CNN, CNBC, Fox, all the players. There's none of that. They tell you kind of a topic that they want you to speak about. So like two days ago, two days ago I was on the news with Charles Payne, so a finance focused show. And I was talking about the American dream and they say, Hey, here's an article we think we want to talk about. It's that the American dream might be dead. We want you to give your commentary on it. And then I go on there and say whatever I want to say.
Starting point is 00:56:07 It's alive, right? Yep. That's what I think too. Yeah. Shark Tank. I just had Damon John on the show. I saw that actually. How was he?
Starting point is 00:56:15 He was interesting, man. He was cool. Yeah. It's been a goal of mine. You were on my list, my dream list. We made that happen. And we'll see where this goes.
Starting point is 00:56:22 But thanks so much for everything. Anything you want to close off with or promote? think you i mean if anybody's interested in going to contrarianthinking.co the newsletter it's all free it's about how to make money we're trying to get more humans into financial freedom but this was super fun man yeah thanks so much great episode yeah thanks for watching guys as always and we will see you tomorrow

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