My First Million - He Bought a Local Newspaper… Now He Makes $600K/YR

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Want to scale your business? Get the Side Hustler's AI Prompt Database: https://clickhubspot.com/kvw Episode 721: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk about a billionaire’s recipe for happiness, Shaan’s stock picks, plus the new mayor of NY. — Show Notes: (0:00) Billionaire recipe for happiness (5:12) Shaan gives a talk at Berkeley (12:01) Steve Ballmer on Acquired (17:02) Gary V is bullish on everything (26:28) The new mayor of NY (35:45) Multilingual politicians (38:43) Vibe voting (41:20) Idea: "The President" (45:58) Businesses w/ 50X potential (49:07) Shaan's first 6 stocks — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies! Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

So that article tells a story of multiple 80-something-year-old guys who own publications that are making, that are fine businesses. Maybe they make six figures a year in profit. But they can't find anyone to take it over. So they're literally just shutting it down. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on a road. Let's travel never looking back.

This tweet. It's Media Gaser, which I guess some media publication. Commentary on media companies. It says small town newspapers are shutting down due to lack of a succession plan, not financial issues. In nearly a dozen U.S. states, this is a growing problem.

Okay? And so the article tells a story of multiple 80-something-year-old guys who own publications that are making, that are fine businesses. Maybe they make six figures a year in profit, but they can't find anyone to take it over,

so they're literally just shutting it down. And here we have a tweet from Matthew Prince, I think it's famous. Matthew is worth, I think, something like $4 or $5 billion. He's the CEO of Cloudflare. Do you want to just kind of read what he says? Yeah.

So he says, actually, this is a recipe for a really rewarding life. If you're a recent college grad and not sure what to do, find a small town you could love with a local newspaper whose owners are ready to retire. Raise the capital to buy it, run it with the community's interests at heart. You'll not get too rich, but you'll do well. More importantly, you'll be a hero to the community and have influence even early in your career. You'll meet the love of your life at some point.

at some event you otherwise wouldn't get invited to. You'll have kids who will proudly call you their parent and make this corner of the world meaningfully better. If anyone wants us seriously follow this recipe and just lacks the capital, happy to talk. So I think that's an amazing insight, but the true insight, so someone chirps at them and they say something like,

go ahead, what do they say? I can't read it all. So literally the guy's name who's replying is some guy. So I'm not even disparaging this guy. Some guy tweets Adam and says, this is the sort of unwittingly funny stuff that wealthy people say that 130 IQ guys should be content with an imaginary small town life lived in anonymity near I don't even know what this word is being 180 degrees from their own choices which deliver untold wealth and influence I don't even what is this guy saying I didn't

understand this tweet he's basically saying like this is something that that wealthy dudes say that's so funny because it's so wrong that a guy would be happy doing this yeah and here's why I like Twitter so much so much Matt Prince, he's not high profile. He's not like an average, like the average person has no idea who this is, but he's worth $5 billion. And it's so interesting to get his insight. So this is the tweet that I really care about. And I just, the rest was for context. Read this next one. All right. So he says, I have, he just replies to some guy. He goes, I have untold financial wealth. And I own a local newspaper. So I have some perspective. Like Warren Buffett likes to say, surprisingly little changes when you move from upper middle class to truly rich. Houses are houses, cars are cars, and watches are stupid. That's so good. What's more important is meaning. I feel lucky to have achieved financial wealth while chasing meaning.

That is super rare, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have gotten both. But if you're early in your career and decide, I'd rather optimize for meaning than financial wealth, I think this is a better path than most would consider. Example, volunteer for the Peace Corps. It will actually make you a good leaving, and you'll have incredible influence and meeting within your community. And if you later decide to go for untold financial wealth, always remember, Rupert Murdoch's empire began with the Adelaide advertiser, which he bought when he was 21.

How fantastic is that? This is really great. Although, you know, not to be a reply guy, but like Cloudfair is not the Peace Corps or owning a small town newspaper in a community. So like, is he saying that Cloudflare was his meaning thing or he did something before that, do you know? That's his meaningful thing. But the point is, for one, he has another one. So he's like, some guy goes, how is one supposed to make a good living from a small town newspaper? Do you have a new model for profitability?

Blah, blah, blah. I want to hear a breakdown. And he said, Matthew Prince says, the local paper we bought cash flowed around $600,000 when we bought it. We wanted to run it as a nonprofit, so we plowed it all back into expanding coverage. But it is not the case that these are bad businesses. They're just not big businesses. So the takeaways of multiple, multiple things. One, newspapers are dying.

Local newspapers, we're talking towns that have 5,000 people, 10,000 people, 30,000 people. They are not dying. and if you read the replies, you'll see people who are saying, I own a local newspaper that does $500,000 in EBITDA. Like there are replies here, and Matthew, Matt, just said one of those replies where he explains the numbers. But two, it's just so fascinating

to hear this guy's perspective who has so much. And I actually agree with him. And I also think that there is a big opportunity to buy a bunch of these, but you can just start with one. And I don't think local newspapers are going to go away anytime soon, to be honest. I think that they have a very stable subscriber base

and what Matt says in there, he says something like hospitals and other like local businesses, they are dying to advertise in local newspapers. And that business, while small, is doing great and it's a monopoly. Okay, I love this one. 10 out of 10, fine, good job.

I gave a talk at Berkeley that was about starter business. businesses are called white belt businesses a few months ago. Wait, let's reflect on that. That's pretty cool. What, given a talk? At Berkeley, I don't know. That sounds cool to me.

Like, I never got to go to fancy colleges. It was hilarious. So I'm like, I'm going to give this talk. And I think I've told this story before. But my entire life shifted because I was in a random class at Duke. I planned to be a doctor. I'd taken the MCATs, all of it. And then I took this one class by this amazing woman, Lisa Keister.

And she had, she was, she had, her son. had graduated 10 years earlier and gotten, gotten wealthy, lived an interesting life, and came back to teach. And she decided, like, what class did the kids actually need? And the class was called Getting Rich. It's kind of like this podcast, my first million, it's like sort of a pretty crude title. Her class was called Getting Rich. And actually, it was two things.

It was personal finance. So you'd learn about like mortgages and savings and how that all worked compounding, shit like that. And then secondly, she would invite speakers in just so that we would get exposed to other ideas of what a life could be besides doctor, lawyer, consultant, banker, which was like, you know, at a school like Duke, that's where 90% of the students are devoting their energy. And a guy came in and he gave a talk and it literally changed my life. It's not even something he said. I just kind of was like, this guy seems like he's having fun.

He doesn't seem like he's that much smarter than me. Like, you know, maybe smarter now, but he's, you know, he's saying at the beginning, he didn't know shit about shit. And that's where I am today. And like, why don't I just do what this guy's doing? And the last thing he had said was like, He's like, look, if you go try to do something entrepreneurial or interesting and it doesn't work out, this is America. That may be like the story is a currency for you. And look, I hire kids like you. And guess what?

You all have the same top three fourths of the resume. You go to school. You got a three point something GPA. You have some stupid extracurricular activities. You got an internship at some big corporation where you didn't really make an impact. The only thing that differentiates any of you guys is the other section at the bottom of your resume. Like, have you done anything?

Have you gone on any interesting quests? And so he's like, go on an interesting quest. You have nothing to lose right now. You don't have kids. You don't have a mortgage. Just go try some shit. And if it works, fantastic. If it fails, don't worry.

It creates a great story that guys like me like to hear. So that like really shifted my life. And so I get invited to go give this talk at Berkeley. And I'm like, I'm going to do this, man. I'm going to change someone's life. Oh, I'll be a life changer today. And I prepped my ass off. Like I really tried.

I like thought about it. I spent two days for live. really like full, like just 10 hours a day, just working on this one talk. Two days doesn't sound like a lot, but like I show up to these podcasts pretty cold. Like I can wing it with the best of them. So for me to really put 20 hours into one talk I'm going to give to 50 kids, that didn't, you know, that was unusual for me. You sound like the Kenny Powers of giving a talk, man. You're like, get ready, kids. I'm going to make you piss tears. Like, Exactly. Hold on to your butts. I'm about to rock your world.

So I go in and guess what? These kids really just don't give a fuck. Within two minutes of the talk and again, I'm trying to fire on all cylinders. It's interactive. I'm crack of jokes. I got a story. I'm doing, I have a big promise at the beginning. And I look around and I just remember. vividly in that moment. I was like, oh, I remember being 19. You're not even out of school yet. Like the whole, the real world is a, it's a distant land far away at this point.

You're just trying to, you're like, okay, I have to be here until five, and then I'm going to go eat, and then I have that paper to write. Three years out of your target demo, too. Like, they're Indian. They go to Berkeley, and you're like,

all right, perfect. This is my demo. And then you're like, shit, they're still 19. I need to wait until they're 21 until they have heard of me. Exactly. So honestly, it was kind of a giant waste of time. I don't think I shifted anyone's life. I think I changed exactly zero lives. But I really tried. And one of the principles in there was like when you get out of Berkeley, instead of getting a job, like consider doing a company. But for most of you, you don't have the next Facebook. You don't have the next big idea. And maybe you're not even talented enough to handle. It's kind of like if, if, you know, Jessica Alba walked through that door and she's like, you. It's like, did you couldn't handle Jessica Alba? right now anyways, don't worry about it.

That's not your problem. Like, you need to go, you know, put your hand under Mindy's shirt and the back behind the bleachers over there. Like, that's the level you're at right now. And so I basically was like, you need a starter business, a white belt business. And I was giving them ideas for what simple starter businesses are. What? Was this your analogy?

Did you just. No, I just did that one just now. I thought you might like that. Yeah. Well, see, the funny thing is I have you and I'm like, Sam's going to love this. He's going to love, hate this. And then I'm like, R, I'm like, R, R, he's just going to hate this. And sure enough, as I'm saying it, that's what I got.

I got Sam laughing but facebalming and Ari just looking off into the distance wondering, how did I end up here? Why do I have this job for these guys? That's a fantastic analogy. Because it's very true. Everyone dreams of like the Jessica Alba doing that and you're like, wait, what do I do? What do I do with my hands? You know what I mean?

It's perfect. Exactly. You are not prepared for Jessica Alba yet. And that's okay. You just need some reps. And so what's the point of this? What are you going to show me? Oh, I guess the tie to that was,

I think owning a local newspaper is a fantastic version of the start of business to run. Was that not obvious? So crystal clear to me, the connection. Show me this story about Steve Ballmer, and then also I want to see the Gary V one. Okay, two great choices. Excellent choices off the menu.

All right. This is from, I believe, Steve Ballmer goes on the It was really good. It was so good. I agree. I didn't watch it, but I agree. And the clips have been good. And so he's telling the story. And they go, do you guys know the story of Kilu at Microsoft? He was one of the most pivotal things at Microsoft. And then the host go, why? I knew he's important, but please tell the story. And Steve goes, he was pivotal in a way that you won't even know. So he goes, first of all, he's a brilliant guy, great guy. He's at Yahoo. And he went to a grad school with the head of Microsoft research, Harry.

And so the setup here is that Satya Nadella, who's now the CEO of Microsoft, was running Bing at the time. Bing is trying to compete with Google. And Harry runs the research program there. And Harry comes and he goes, look, this guy, Key is a genius. We have to hire Key.

I don't know if Key wants to work for us. We've got to learn from this guy. We've got to hire this guy. So he's like, Satya Nadella, Steve Balmer, and Harry, all fly down to California to meet with this guy, Key Liu. and they talk to Key and they're like, dude, you're right. This guy's brilliant. And we're learning about him.

And then at one point, Key walks away, leaves room, goes to the restroom or something. And he goes, Satya throws out this idea. He goes, we should hire Key and I should work for him. He goes, so Harry, who's all in because he worked with him, Harry works for Satya. And Satya's like, we should not only hire this guy, I should work for him. I should report to him, like gives up power, basically. So they call him and they're like, Key, listen. And, you know, he was thinking about taking a job somewhere else, but he ends up joining.

And he goes, and the host goes, so what did he do at Microsoft? He goes, what I just told you? He told me about Satya. He goes, I love Satya. And we were giving him more and more responsibilities anyways. But when I saw that this guy would do the right thing for the company, he would give up power to bring in a more talented person and agree to work for him, he didn't have ego that got in the way.

I knew that Satya was the guy. And now Satya has become the CEO. of Microsoft and led Microsoft on this incredible run. That's so good. That's a great story. It's up 1,000% and for a company as big as Microsoft

to go up 1,000% and now is a $3 trillion company, all, you know, under Satya's kind of regime, I thought that was just a badass story, right? And later on in the podcast, Steve Balmer talks about philanthropy and he,

I don't know how rich he is, but I think $100 billion plus. And he was like, the acquired guys were like, your wealth is growing. I think 20% a year, you know, $20 billion, whatever. He goes, yeah, I'm trying to give it all the way. And he goes, you're forgetting about something.

And the host goes, you know, Microsoft pays a dividend. So just my dividends are making me $1 billion a year. And he's like, he goes, I'm trying to give it all the way. And I can't find enough people who can accept the money. Well, Steve, we would love to help you with this problem. We're a helpful bunch over here. Yeah, he was talking about how he's like, I forget the capital appreciation of the stock appreciation.

Lately it's been, what, 15% of year? I forget. It's something like magnificent where he's earning tens of billions of dollars from that. And yeah, he corrected the guys when they said how wealthy he is. He goes, you're forgetting about our dividend, which pays me $1 billion. You know, he's just been sitting on that, by the way. You know, he's like, these motherfuck out here don't know.

They don't know how on. It was a really great podcast. It was like three hours long and it was fantastic. And he gets made fun or Balmer gets made fun of a bunch for that one video where he just looks goofy. But he, he, he's a great salesman and he's way more technical than people realize. Bomber's a genius. That's cool. I mean, you got to, you got to be special.

I mean, there's, luck is involved, but I think it's so easy to write people off. And he's a great example of enthusiasm as a skill. I've talked about this in a bunch of other podcasts, but enthusiasm is a actual skill. And that video that people make fun of them, the developers, developers, developers, developers, developers. To me, that's like watching, you know, Vince Carter dunk or something like that, right?

It's like, this is a guy who probably brought a shit ton of energy and enthusiasm and belief and to the team in an unwavering way and at an unusual level. And yeah, that was obviously funny to laugh at. I get it. I thought it was funny a shit too. but enthusiasm is a skill and I love it because people don't even think of it as a skill, but we all know it when we see it.

Like if you ever worked with somebody who's really enthusiastic and is a believer in what you're doing and brings good energy every day and doesn't get like doesn't get worn down and doesn't get buckled by adversity, you love that person. That person's clearly valuable to the team. You would hate if that person left your team. Yet nobody talks about enthusiasm as a skill or something you could practice or develop or at least even celebrate that you have. It's something, you know, seems like something sort of for dumb people.

What's, um, what's this Gary V one? This is funny. All right. Does it Gary, I love Gary V. Gary, I love you. This is also hilarious. So they're playing a game called bullish and bearish, where the host is going to tell him a company name and he has to decide. Is he a bull or a bear on it?

Watch this. Meta. Bullish. Reddit. Bullish. Bullish. Wamo. I'm not educated enough to give an answer to be honest.

I feel like if I spent 10 hours educating myself, I'm like, okay, this is not sustainable to be this crazy. Disney? Disney, very bullish. I think intellectual property is one of the most underrated businesses of the future of VR and everything. I don't think people understand how big owning IP is gonna be. Tesla.

Bullish. Microsoft. Very bullish. Open AI. I'm bullish. Amazon. Very bullish. Zoom.

Bullish. Alibaba. Bullish. bite dance. Bitch. Bullish. Even though it might be banned. Bullish.

Bitch, I'm bullish, okay? Before that word gets out of your mouth, I'm bullish. What am I going to do? I'm bullish. How funny is this? I love Gary. It sucks because she picked like...

Honestly, I can't hate. I'm also pretty bullish on all the All the tech companies that are all the best companies in the world. Yeah. Yeah. Amazon and chat, GBT. So funny.

He, dude, people forget. I think VaynerMedia, I track it because, I like Gary. And I think that it's easy to dismiss him as like a guru. But,

you know, Vaynerbenia is doing something like $300 million a year right now. I did not know that. And would you say you track it? Where are you getting this information from? So, I actually, do you remember how I told you I had this document where I track companies and I like, I, I track people where I will make a timeline of their life and like at different ages.

They do different things. I track it with a variety of companies as well. And Vayner Media, I was curious about their trajectory. And he was growing the company like at a really good clip. Like it was doubling for a couple years and it was still growing at like 50% for a couple of years. And so I just wanted to check in and add to my document. And over the last three or four years, he's grown it to something like 250 million a year in revenue. And if you Google VaynerMedia revenue, he actually is fairly public about it lately of where it's at.

But it's in the 200, 300, 300 range. 200 to 300 million a year? Yeah. And what do they do now? Is it just marketing services or what's going on? So Vayner X, which is now the holding company, in 2024, was on track to do 300 million in revenue. And this was written in December of 24. So, yeah, you could assume that in the 300 million range.

Yeah, it does, they do social media. It's the same shit. Just they manage people's social media stuff. I mean, it's got to be more of that. Manage people's social media stuff, it's got to be more than that. I think that's the bulk of it. They do social media advertising and campaigns. So like if you're Samsung and you want to run ads on Facebook and you want to make

really good ads, I believe they. Let's ignore VaynerMedia on board. What is the most interesting thing that's come out of your tracking people, manually year by year borderline creepy stalker thing that you're doing? What's interesting to me is a few things. One, the ability to grow is it gets harder and harder. But the people who are like really big animals, they just figure out how to do it. And that's really fascinating to me.

But occasionally, even companies that are growing quickly, they'll have two or three years of no or little growth. And the reason why I like to do this research is it helps me understand. I think that it's the same way when you talk to your rich friends and you talk about money with them, you start to normalize money. And that's why I do the stuff where like it sounds like it's like a almost like an emotional regulation because entrepreneurship is this long, longer than you want more up and down thing than you want. And seeing that the people, the things you admire today, either A took a long time or had, you know, multiple flat years, it makes you not feel like shit. when you're in one of those, you know, periods. That is that it?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Because I think I showed you the revenue chart or no, I've shown you charts before a business insider, which is a company I also used to do this for. And they've grown like crazy. But there was like three years where every single month they actually didn't grow. And I was like, this chart looks great because we've zoomed out to 15 years. But zoom in on those three years.

And imagine feeling that way for nearly a thousand days. That doesn't feel good. That doesn't feel good at all. The whole life of the company right now is three years. Imagine this whole time just flat, you know. Or I'll give you another example. Repple it. You know, we've had Amjad on the podcast, and that was one of our biggest ones.

They just announced the other day that they hit $100 million in revenue. That's huge, right? Well, what he kind of said, like in a small comment, like in a reply, is that I believe last year or the year before they're at $10 million in revenue. So they went from 10 million to 100 million in record time, like one year or two years, something like that. But what he told us on the podcast is that he started the company eight years ago, which means from years zero to eight, he got to 10 million in revenue, which is not impressive. That's not, that's neat. That's not impressive.

And that's just insane to me that he kept at it for eight years and then, and tell me if I'm getting my numbers wrong. But he kept at it for that long and then success was like in two years. Yes and no. I think you're right, but it's not like it was just failing that whole time, because if you look at the user growth of developers, and I think I tweeted this out with it, I'll find it,

but like basically they grew, they were growing exponentially in number of users who were developers. So that was, you know, that was also happening at that same time. And so it's not as, it's not as like, oh man,

you know, it's just, You know, suddenly it starts to work. Like, I mean, look at this. This is Paul Graham tweeting about replet before, before they even turned on monetizations. This is back in 2020. But like, look at this tweet.

What year does that go to? This is 2015 to 2020, like midway through 2020. Like, or end of 2020. It's basically 2021. And so they had five million developers, programmers using their thing. And he, Paul talks about. He says, this graph is impressive, not just for the perfect exponential shape, but the numbers.

Five million users is a lot when those users are programmers. Imagine how many users their users will have of their apps. And I think the crazy thing about Replit is that basically they pivoted the entire company when they were at a billion dollar valuation. I invested in Replit, I think at an 800 million-ish valuation, eight or 900 million valuation. I invested in the fund and I invested personally because I was like such a big believer in this. And they had pretty much no revenue at the time. time. But it was this type of growth. And I love the product. I loved Amjad. I was like, this guy's a

savage. And they have a, they built an incredible product that I think will have a network effect over time. And then they pivoted the entire business to say, uh, it's not about like young programmer. Because I thought, oh, they're getting young programmers to start coding on replet. And maybe those people will never leave. They'll code their whole career on replet. And then when AI happened, they pivoted basically the entire company to now it's not even for programmers. It's for people who don't code typically to make things, right? It's for non-engineers to suddenly be able to be engineers,

to be able to write, create software for software creators. And now that's ramped to $100 million at 10x. The 10x their revenue in one year. So now I look like a genius investing in this thing, but I really didn't even invest in this because they pivoted. They like basically shifted the entire user. Who is the user and what is the use case? you know, afterwards.

Yeah, I mean, this is just insane. I use Replit, probably three or four times a week. It's really fun. I just asked Chad GPT to make this. This is Sam stocking all these businesses. Dude, I do this like crazy. I'm going to have to share this doc. I just, I like tracking numbers.

You sent it to me when we first met, you were like, I took every billionaire and I tried to figure out what they were doing at age 30. And I was like, what? And you were like, Jack Dorsey, you do at age 30. His net worth was only. And I was like, how do you know this? And why do you know this? What are you doing?

And you were like, by the time I'm 30, my goal is to have X. I think we were, well, we probably met when we were 24, 25 years old, something like that. Yeah. And you were like, when I'm 30, I want to have $20 million in the bank. That was your number. And you were like, look at this. I'll be ahead of Jeff Bezos and Jack Dorsey and these guys. I was like, yo, this guy's a sicko, but I like it.

It was the I should call, like, if I teach a class, it's going to be called, like, how to become an economic animal. Unfortunately, like, there's way levels. There's as many levels to this. And I'm, there's many people who are way above me. And I didn't understand like how exponential growth works. But hey, you know, I think I got in the arena of what I was aiming for. All right. So we got to talk about the new mayor. Not because this is a politics podcast. I don't know. Actually, I didn't even know this guy existed until three days ago, to be honest with you. But you're moving to New York. And you seem to know about. this guy and I am following him only from a business and marketing perspective.

I have a business and marketing take on this guy, but can you first set the context for people like me who are not following who this New York City, he's the mayor, right? That's what he's, that's what he just became. He's going to be the Democrat who's running for mayor. So it was a, the Democrats were, I don't even know the right terms, but nomination. And he won. So basically, it was him and Cuomo. Because New York is very democratic, he's most likely to.

win is that why people are freaking out? Because normally if he's just a candidate, you know, more likely than not. The issue is, the issue has a bunch of issues. Basically, every politician is corrupt. So Mayor Cuomo or the Cuomo is running for mayor. He was previously to the governor. He got in trouble for like asking his coworkers have sex with him. And he was the guy running against this guy. The current mayor, Mayor Adams, he has accepted bribes. He is going to be running as an independent versus this guy. And so we're kind of like stuck with like a lot paper scissors. Yeah, it's like South Park, it's like a douche or a turd sandwich. Who are you going to vote for? That's kind of like what we're working with here. The gist of this guy is that he's incredibly charismatic. He's 32 years

old. He believes in a lot of crazy things. That's my opinion, crazy, but basically a lot of socialist things. So for example, he wants to freeze rent, meaning you can't raise rent on on I think something like two million different apartments, different rent stabilized apartments. He also wants to create government-owned grocery stores and a handful of things like that that are very controversial to people who don't like socialism, but amongst young people

who are very angry about a lot of things that they should be angry about, like housing, costing a lot of money versus the wage growth. But he's super charismatic, and so he won over young people's votes. And so, okay, great, great summary. Now, again, I don't care about the politics of this

and I don't live in New York, but I'm fascinated by this guy. Like, I literally had never heard of this guy And then I watched this video. I saw this tweet. He killed it. So this tweet right here has 3.7 million views. So that's just the Twitter part of this.

Forget Instagram, TikTok, anywhere else that I'm sure he's posting this type of content. But first of all, the branding. So like, that was the first thing that stood out to me. Like literally the branding of this guy, like the font, et cetera. So what is this video? It starts like he's a TikTok content creator. And he goes, it says, New York is suffering from a crisis. and it's called halalflation.

And then he talks about how halal from like the food trucks, you know, chicken and rice, halal from like a halal food truck, now cost $10, but it used to cost $8. And he basically goes and he's interviewing them. He's like, you know, how much do you sell for it? $10, $10, $10, $10, whatever. We'll play the video. The park is suffering from a crisis, and it's called halalflation.

Today, we're going to get to the bottom of this. How much does a plate of halal cost right now from this truck? Ten dollars. Ten dollars? Ten dollars? When you're a street vendor, you have to pay for the food, the plates. How much do you have to pay for your permit? Before it was 22K. Twenty, seventeen thousand.

How much is a license cost if you get it from the city? I think four hundred. And who are you paying? The permit owner. You're not paying the city. No, no. You pay the permit owner $22,000 just so you can sell this food. Yes.

And who is this? A random guy. Have you ever applied for a permit? Yeah, I'm applied and no come anything. It's long wait. I'm number 3,800 something. After two years, you're number 3,800? Yes.

These are the four bills that are sitting in the city council right now, which would give these vendors their own permits and make your halal more affordable. But Eric Adams hasn't said a single word about them. If you own the permit, then how much would you charge for the plate? $7. $8. would you rather pay $10 for a plate of halal or $8?

$8. $8. I think $8 is the way to go. If I was the mayor, I'd be working with city council from day one to make halal $8 $8 again. Oh, how would you pay? It tastes like $10 for the should be $8. So I was blown away because I have never really seen a politician doing this type of like,

I want to call it like kind of natural influencer content. I don't know. What do you even call this? but this is not what politicians typically did. He's making like a vice documentary, but in two minutes. It's very good. He's, well, he's doing UGC content. Okay, I think that's the way I would put it.

So the same thing happened in business, especially e-commerce. So Sam, I don't know if you remember like in the earlier days of e-com, right? Like let's say 2012, 2014, you know, you mostly did just static images. Okay, there was not really a lot of video on, let's say, Facebook or Google at the time. So you would do static images. for your ads. But those images you would pay a professional designer to make, and they would make it look slick,

and then that's what people would click. And then when video came out, people tried to do the same thing. They would basically film professional-looking videos. You'd hire a videographer. You'd have somebody holding the camera, and then you would have a good background, good lighting, and you would say your thing.

But it turns out that commercials didn't really work as well on the internet as me picking up my phone and just making something that looks very raw. Like, I'm doing my, you know, It would be a girl doing her makeup while talking about a different product, right? And it just feels like it's a get ready with me video. Or it's a, you know, a mom who's in a rush who's just being like, y'all, I got to tell you, this is a lifesaver.

Like my husband can't believe how much of a, how much, how much happy I am since I got this thing. And then they ruffle in their bag and grab something out. And it's ads that don't look like ads. And they call this UGZ user-generated content. And that's the new style that works best in. ads for the last, I would say, five years that's dominated most of e-commerce advertising. This is the first time I've seen a politician do this. So like if you compare, I don't know,

like Kamala and how perfectly manicured everything was, like her image, her, you know, pantsuit, her like professional photography, her like fake phone call with somebody, but then you see that the phone wasn't even on and she's just chuckling to nobody. Like it was all super, super fake and polished. And this guy's doing like, man on the street interviews holding the microphone you can literally hear like that you know it kind of rubbing against his jacket sometimes accidentally like it's like it's wabi subby-sabby dude it's it the perfection in the imperfection to go full circle there this kind of blew me away and i don't know if i'm just like overly nerding out about this but from from the topic like halal chicken

and rice is 10 bucks it should only be eight to the style of the video i immediately was like i get why this guy won. And on Saturday, the election was taking place yesterday. He was, he spent the whole day walking around New York and like doing like these very raw looking videos talking to people. And I think that this is just proof, which we already have had this proof, that charisma matters more than ideas in reality. And this is not like a takeaway that like this is a very obvious takeaway, but this is just another example because his charisma is off the charts and he has just been like killing it when his ideas, in my opinion, are just absolutely insane. But because of the style of marketing, it's done wonderful. Young people react to this stuff. And by the way,

this is what we need. Like mayor or governor Cuomo, the guy who was running for him, he's an old guy. He's in his 60s, maybe 70s. And he would never in a million years grab his cell phone and just start talking to it. But that's what you need. I think my friend or our friend, Austin Reef tweeted something out and he said, the next politicians and the next presidents are going to be podcasters and substackers. And that sounds like a ridiculous statement. People who write newsletters and people who have podcasts, that sounds ridiculous. It's not ridiculous.

And I totally buy into it. Yeah, definitely. There's going to be a podcaster president. Why? Because they're going to have, A, built a following before they run. So they're going to build the audience before they go run. Two, they're going to be trained with 10,000 hours. of storytelling, communication, of, you know, how to make a point.

So, you know, I think that's going to be one archetype. The other one is going to be short form video creators. I think Roberto, our friend, said this thing. He goes, whether this guy's agenda is good or bad for New York is irrelevant. He told the best story. This is why Steve Jobs said that the storyteller is the most powerful person in the world. A lie told us a good story can never beat the truth trapped in a bad story. Or I think it's canola's beat the truth, trapped in a bad story.

And then I had, because I had tweeted this thing. So when I saw this, I saw the second video, I don't know if you've seen this one, but can you hear this? Dude, you know what's funny is I don't have to hear what he's saying and I could sense the charisma. Well, so, okay, so he's speaking Hindi in this video. And I think he does actually speak Hindi, but it made me realize, oh, dude, 11 Labs is going to make like a billion dollars next election cycle because every politician is going to translate everything they're saying into all languages using AI. instantaneously. Like, you know, why would you not? You're just going to prick up free views.

Like, we did this. We started doing this with our MFM episodes. Ben was like, hey, I think I can get more views if we dub our episodes into another language. So now, if you're on YouTube and you click the settings wheel and you click like audio track, you could select Spanish or Hindi on, on some of the episodes, and it's going to be all the episodes soon. Because we went to 11 labs.

We're like, hey, dude, will you guys help us, like, translate this? and immediately we now get tens of thousands of views a month that we weren't getting before in Spanish and in Hindi. There's probably people in Mexico right now that think we just speak Spanish, that we're their favorite Spanish podcast. And if they meet us, they'll be sorely disappointed. That's a really good insight.

I have not seen this video of him. Is this video dubbed? Is this a fake video? This I think is real. He kind of looks like he might speak in there. Or maybe it's not. I can't tell exactly. But I guess that's the point.

I wouldn't know. AI tools have gotten so good that I would never know. And I actually tweeted this out. I said, I could a thousand percent create an AI politician that could win over a city election. Of course, you can't actually run if you're not a human being, but whatever. And I said, here's how I would do it. You know, I would make a likable sort of guy next door character like this guy. I would create 100x more video content than my opponent because Andrew Cuomo is not going to be able to keep up with my AI engine.

I don't know if you've seen people who do this. They basically, they create an AI. workflow that's an agent that scrapes like it comes up it's there's one agent that's just brainstorming topics it's like looking at reddit's looking at ticot trends etc and it's brainstorming topics then they have a scripter agent that writes the writes a one minute ticot script then they have a video generation agent that creates a video that does that has your AI avatar speaking it like hey jen or 11 labs who's doing this there's people that are doing this they run what they call faceless channels So they run channels on Instagram and TikTok that get millions of views.

Like with B-roll and narration. But it doesn't have to be B-roll anymore because now they use an AI avatar. So they just put a person there. And they're like, cool, I don't want to be an influencer. I don't want to wake up and get ready and have a nice house all this. But I'll just tell the, I'll just make an AI character that does this. And you can just create an A-A character that does exactly this. And then, but the cool thing is they automated the entire workflow from coming up with the idea,

scripting it, recording it, recording it, and then actually like scheduling it, posting it, analyzing the data and feeding that back into the engine. Who? What's an example of the channel? And it's almost like, dude, if you guys applied your talents to something useful, this would be incredible. But it's amazing that you can even do this. I'm reading a book called A Promise Land. It's Obama's biography or autobiography. He wrote it, but it's old. It's 10 years old, but I was at the airport and it looked cool. I'm at the point in the book where he was like, I was getting my ass beat in the election

because I was too long-winded. And my campaign manager criticized one of my debates. He's like, dude, you're answering the question. And he's like, yeah, they ask me a question. I'm giving them an answer. And, like, it's kind of nuanced and it's long. A thorough answer. Yeah, I'm giving like a good answer. And he goes, yeah, that's bullshit.

That's not how you win a debate and that's not how you win votes. You don't give an answer. You're not answering the question. The question is irrelevant. All people want to know is can they trust you with their vote and like, are you a brand that they want to get behind? Stop answering the question and tell a story that lets them know that they can get behind you. And he was like, he goes, that rubs me the wrong way, but that's the game, and I will play that game.

And there's like a distinct difference in like, you know, we know him now. Obama is regarded as a fairly charismatic good storyteller. He was like, that was the change. Yeah, exactly. Do you know Lulu? No. She's, uh, she's really cool. She's a very interesting person to follow on Twitter and whatnot.

So Lulu, I think she was the head of comms at like Palantir or something like that. I don't know. Or Andrew. I think it was. But she does a good job. What she posts regularly is. basically comms advice, communication advice, PR slash how executives should communicate. And I think Anderrol was always an interesting one because like,

instead of trying to conform as this like boring government contractor, you know, they let their freak flag fly. So she tweeted this out. She goes, it sounds so basic, but he is too likable to lose. Friendly demeanor, smiles with his eyes, seems earnest. Being liked outweighs policies, experience, and nonsensical plans. Quote, I just have a good feeling about that person can override almost anything. And then Harley, the CEO of Shopify said vibes.

It's like, oh, man, we're sort of vibe voting now. And it's like, actually, we're kind of always. We've always been doing that, man. We've always been doing that. You know, JFK was one of the most, JFK had like a 70% approval rating when he was murdered. And he was well loved. He was our Princess Diana or whatever for that generation.

Like, he was well loved and he was well loved because he was incredibly likable. That's like his policies were fine, but it was because he looked great. He had a beautiful wife who was poised. He had a lovely family with really white teeth. Like, that is why he won because he was very likable and good looking. So I'm likable might not even be the word because you might look at Trump and be like, wow. Is he, would you say he's likable? Well, he's funny.

He's funny. He's charismatic. So did I ever tell you about the time where. So I had this friend who's like a billionaire successful tech guy. And he sends me a Google Doc one day called The Press. president. And I'm like, okay, what's this? And I open it up. And I have no idea what to expect. I think he might be running for president. I don't know what this is. And it was basically a pitch for a television show. And he laid out a case. And he basically said, if you look at the last, I forgot what it was. Like, I forgot what I'm just to make up some numbers. If you look at the last 10 elections, you would look for a pattern? You'd say, is it always Democrats? Is it always Republicans? Does it always switch between Democrat and Republican? Is it based on the person's height? Like, if you tried to look for a correlation, where would you find it? And he goes, the highest correlation you could find is that the the more charismatic candidate wins. And he goes,

ever since the advent of radio and television, when our primary way of getting messages out scaled up like crazy, the more charismatic candidate wins, whether this was Clinton or Reagan. It wasn't Reagan like an actor or something like this. Yeah, he was good looking and he dressed great. He was going through history. And basically 2020 was kind of the only exception

where Biden won, and I would say Biden was the less charismatic candidate than Trump. It seems to be like the outlier. but the guy's case was basically he's like, I think in his case he didn't, he didn't want Trump to win. And he's like, the problem is Trump is incredibly charismatic.

He's able to capture people's attention. He says things that are very memorable. He says things that excite certain people and inflame certain people, but it's all attention that he gets free earned media. So he had this idea to create a television show. And he's like, this sounds a little bit silly,

but he's like, I think for the Democratic Party, which is the party he was a part of, he's like, I think we need to start nominating more charismatic candidates. And if you look at the last few, they have not been the most charismatic. He's like, we're sort of, it's a captured party. And we lack putting forward charismatic candidates since Obama. Obama was the, one of the most charismatic candidates.

And he said, here's what I think we should do. Just like, you know, American Idol or the voice or whatever, there's, the apprentice, even, there's been proven shows where you can have like, let's say, an eight to 12 week period where you start with 10 people and then they get eliminated. And in the end, you have a winner. he's like, what if we did this for presidential candidates? So you would take 12 candidates, not random people off the street, but people that genuinely are thinking that they want to run.

And so you'd get Pete Buttigieg and others in this batch. And he's like, week by week, you know, let's say they go to a small town in Pittsburgh and they're going to actually meet with the car manufacturers there, whatever, like, you know, some presidential type of shit that they do. And they have to present a plan. And then it's actually like, and the judges for that week will be the car manufacturer people and then they'll sort of pick which candidate they felt best understood them and was able to to address their needs. And week by week, you sort of eliminate candidates. He's like, by the end of

this 12 week thing, we'll have captured so much attention and hopefully found a candidate that's like won the hearts of people. People will know their backstory. They'll know what they're all about. They'll have seen them in a more human light. And we will have filtered out the less charismatic candidates for the more charismatic candidates. He's like, I'm not saying charisma as the end all be all. like ideally at the beginning you try to screen people that you think are worthy, you know, candidates to lead, but amongst that worthy pool give a boost to the most charismatic candidate. I thought this was fascinating. And I really wanted him to do it.

And he was friends with Mark Burnett, the guy who created Survivor and a bunch of maybe Bachelor or whatever, like a bunch of other major, major reality shows. And he's like, I'm going to talk to Mark. And I think we're going to do this. And I hit him up recently. And I was like, whatever happened to that idea? And he's like, I just decided I didn't want, I didn't want the avalanche of problems in my life for creating this. And I decided it wasn't worth, I have a great life.

And it really wasn't worth the, you know, what it was going to do. And Biden won in 2020. And so he felt like maybe I was wrong. Maybe there's not as a bunch of a need for this. But isn't that interesting, dude? Yeah, that's pretty fascinating. I wish, I wish you would have done that. I feel like that would work too.

Like it sounds like it's an idea that I think is easy to make fun of. it's also an idea that I think would be effective at the stated mission. It's easy to make fun of because we don't want it to be true, but it is true. Like, you know who's a really good example of this? Is Arnold Schwarzenegger? Yep. He was just, he was such a charismatic, interesting person. He was good to look at.

Like, you wanted to look, like, he looked, like, even the people who aren't, even the people who become our leaders who aren't really good looking, they're still sort of interesting to look at. Like, Donald Trump is intriguing to look at. He looks, like, remarkable in a weird way. You know what I'm saying? Arnold Schwarzenegger is a perfect example of this. Can I show you one last thing?

Which one? I think it's funny. So I found this and I don't, I think I've talked to this guy, Brian, and he was cool. So I don't want to shit on him. But I'm more so shitting on people who. This line of thinking, maybe. This line of thinking. And.

All right. Let's explain what it is. Brian, for all he says, he says, I asked, quote, what company is worth less than 10 billion today that you could be worth 500 billion plus. in a few decades. I have received 710 answers. Here's the top 20 picks that have 50x potential. And this tweet has 18,000 likes. You know, it's probably, I don't know how many views, but like, what year was this? Over a million. This is in 2021, July of 2021, when times were good, when everybody's making a ton of money in the stock market. And he lists 20 companies.

And these are ones that this guy who, I think he has a whole YouTube channel, towards picking stocks. And I don't know if these were his picks necessarily or if they were his audience's picks. And this guy has 600,000 followers. His bio says, I teach investors how to analyze businesses, stock fundamentals and valuation teacher,

DM Buffett for premium courses, free ebook in my description. Okay, that's this guy. So this was in 2021. And I just was curious, like, how it, was he right? Like, what's his deal? I'm almost positive that not only did none, none of them, 50X.

I am pretty sure that most of them are down from down, even from this tweet. Of the 20 that he hand selected, somebody says, this has to go down in history as the best case of stupidity of the crowds. Here's where we're at three years later. So three years later, only one company is up. And it's up 6%. The average company is down 70% on this list with several of them, minus 95%, minus 95%, minus 98%, minus 90%, minus 97, minus 86, minus 99. And of course, Ozone, which was an e-commerce platform in Russia, which is delisted. And I think Open Door is now, and so this tweet that you're looking at, that was even six months ago.

I'm almost positive that Open Door is delisted and Virgin is down. even more. I think lemonade is delisted or out of business. Context logic, I think, is out of business, which is Wish. All right. We should post an update here. And now we're at five years later. Here's how the stupidity of the crowd has done. And my point in bringing this up isn't the actual results. The results are not good. That's the summary. The results are actually really bad. But it's just crazy how hard it is to pick winners. It's very challenging. This guy has 600,000 followers. I assume that he does this all the time for his job.

And you still can't nail it. It's just so challenging. Is it, though? Okay, I'm going to tell you what I did. Back in 20, I graduated in 2010. And I started my stock portfolio, I think right around like senior year of college. and I bought, I believe, six stocks. And my dad was telling me just buy the index.

But I'm like, dad, I got this, right? I had the Dunning Kruger effect. I thought I knew a lot more than I knew. And I think I bought five or six stocks. How much money? I mean, I didn't have any, but I had $25,000. I had probably $60,000 total. That's a lot of money.

Well, I guess what I'm saying is, even though the results were great. It didn't, you know, on a very small base that doesn't, doesn't do a whole lot for you. I bought Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Tesla. What years? These were, it was basically 2010, 2011. Oh my God. About those stocks. So I did the thing you're not supposed to do. I picked. I didn't pick with any sort of brilliance. I was like, these are like, obviously just seemed like the good companies of the world to me at the time. And, you know, I did make a mistake because I sold Tesla early. I sold it probably 2014 or something like that.

So that would and that would have been a much bigger return. So, you know, I think I still, I still am in the case study of like, it's really freaking hard to do. Even if you buy right, you'll sell wrong and shit like that. Like I bought Bitcoin early and sold some early and then bought it back again and sold it again, bought it back again. You know, I'm not saying I'm smart. I do dumb things.

But I guess what I'm saying is sometimes it's actually kind of obvious. I think one of the reasons that what this guy did was so hard was he was looking for a 50x. And he's like, what company is small today that's going to be massive. of tomorrow, which of course, if you knew, that'd be fantastic. But there is a simple way of looking at things. Like right now, for example, I put my money into my own little AI index. And I didn't spend much time on this. And I'm going to go back and do a little more research.

But basically, it's very obvious, I think, at this moment and time in the world, that AI is going to be a very big deal, that the biggest winners over the next five to ten years are going to be ones that are benefiting from AI in some way. whether they're Nvidia, they're selling chips, whether they're companies like Google or Facebook that are able to use AI in order to make all their services better and slash tens of thousands of employees that they don't need, shit like that, right? I think it's pretty obvious that AI is a big deal.

And I think if you put in the time to just think about like, instead of buying the generic SMP 500, like what's the equivalent of the AI 50 or the AI 20? And it's like 20 companies that I believe are well positioned. It's hard for them to lose. given the AI tailwind. And again, it's a little bit naive because you might say, well,

Nvidia today they have 90% gross margins and that they're going to get competed away and blah, blah, blah. I'm not saying it's like easy. I'm just saying I think an index of AI of AI focused companies. That doesn't mean companies that are like, you know, all chip makers or whatever.

But companies that are going to disproportionately benefit from AI and are going to adopt AI and get the benefits of it. I just feel like that's an obvious thing today. Yeah. That's the version of me in 2010. being like, I don't know, me and all my friends use the internet like crazy. I think I should just like own the big internet companies. That seems like a good idea.

The issue is not can you pick winners? Because I think that like we when we saw Facebook was valued at when it was hit a low, I think a year and a half ago, everyone who has ever bought any Facebook ads was like, yeah, this is undervalue. This is a great company. The issue is the amount of times that you have lost using that same logic. Like, and so if you were to take a level. up a sum of money and you would buy and sell, uh, like occasionally or rather often,

versus just letting it sit and ignoring. Like if you average, I'm actually going to go back and just back test this for me, me specifically. And I'll publish my results. I'll bring it to the next episode because I, I'm curious. And I would say, I think there's a more likely chance that I, buying and selling has, buying and selling and picking has underperformed. I would, I would assume that to be true.

I think there's a chance it's not been for me, but, um, I really want to go get the exact answer because it'll include, I think I should include crypto because I think that was kind of like buying and selling picking. And I want to see the returns of if I had just invest the same amount of money in the same times in just the index versus my picking. I just want to see for myself what I've done and give it honest, be able to look reality in the face of like, you know, how is this working for me? So let me tell you this, let me tell you this crazy stat that Anker told me. So Jerry Buss, the guy who owned the Lakers, you know, they, they recently just sold the Lakers for $10 billion.

So he bought the Lakers for $67 million in 1979, and he sold it for 150 times his money at $10 billion in 2025. And yet, had he taken that $60 million and instead just invested it in the S&P 500, he would have been able to have had $13 billion. So he would have had more money now. That's stupid. That's stupid. It's not stupid.

But listen, the top comment was, Think of all, it's not incorrect. I mean, it's just math. It's acting like he didn't take money every year in gains from the business. He could have lost money every year. The Lakers spit off cash flow every year. Do they? Do most winning teams do not make a profit?

That's not true. They can show paper losses. I know team owners. I talked to about this. I was like, is this true? Do you guys actually lose money on this thing? And they're like, no, most years are making money. Occasionally, if we're way over the luxury tax, we get a huge penalty.

then yes we could lose money in that one year but no we're not idiots we're not burning hundreds of like people say like oh they lost 200 million dollars a year I'm not losing 200 million dollars every year some the top comment was like yeah but are you adding into the P and out all the women that he was able to get because of he because of him owning the leakers forgetting the joy of owning the lakers which is already congratulations you own the S&P 500 versus you own the lakers forgetting that the Lakers are a business that has been generating cash. And so all he's taking to account is just the exit price and none of the 30 years of cash flow. Well, I don't really look at the facts when whenever I'm making a statement.

But I think it did make for a good headline. And it is kind of stunning what, I don't know, 11% compounding over 40 years actually does. Pretty crazy. I like doing this. All right, that's it. That's a pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days On a road, let's travel, never looking back.