My First Million - You Have 70 Days to Win the Year

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

Episode 640: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk about setting one priority–one sprint–to turn your entire year into a win. It’s time for life or death mode.  — Show Notes:  (0:00) 70 days left to win 2024 (10:27) The prestige hacking of Jamie Beaton (25:32) Billy of the Week: Ken Fisher (and his marketing playbook) (39:25)The shocking economics of public monuments (46:19) Pro tip for founders: Find a banker (54:28) The double standard of VCs — Links: • My Body Tutor - https://www.mybodytutor.com/ • Fisher Investments - https://www.fisherinvestments.com/ • Motley Fool Asset Management - https://fooletfs.com/ • American Colossus - https://americancolossus.org/ • Built To Sell - https://builttosell.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd — 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 The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

All right, it's Q4. So I don't know, whatever day you're going to hear this, there's about 70 days left in the year. 70 days left in year. And everybody makes a big deal about January 1st, New Year's resolutions. But I have a different argument. I have an argument that says there's 70 days left in the year,

just enough time to actually do the thing, whatever the thing is for you, that's going to make this year amazing. 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 the road. Let's travel. Today is a wake up call.

70 days left. It's time for one sprint on one priority to try to make it happen. The one thing you could do, whatever it is, that's going to make your year awesome. So, for example, maybe you're trying to get in great shape. The diet starts this morning. It starts now and we're going hardcore. It's life or death diet mode. If you're trying to, if you really want to quit your job, start the business, put in your notice.

Put in your notice today. Just put it in and see what happens. See how it feels. Just the tip. Whatever you're going to do, you've got to figure out how you're going to use the 70-day sprint. If you're trying to hit your growth goal, if you're trying to raise a round of funding, whatever it is, this is the lock-in time. Because 70 days is about the perfect amount of time where you could totally shift your life. It's enough time to be honest about how long things take to make a change happen.

but it's short enough where you won't lolly gag. And you're either going to make it happen this year or you're not. And this last 70 days is going to be the make or break. As Frank Sleutman, the guy who was CEO, Snowflake and wrote that book, Amped It Up, he goes, priority should be a single word. If somebody tells me their top three priorities, all I ask them is, which one is it? And then they get really flustered, but he goes, I believe priority is a single word. And so I highly suggest figure out the one.

priority. The one thing that if you just did this one thing, the whole year is a win and use the 70 days to do it and wipe everything else off the calendar. What's your thing going to be? My one thing for this year, the one thing that if I just did this thing, I could look back and be like, well, I don't care what else happened that year. That happened and that's all that matters. For me, it's getting in the best shape of my life. And so I've made good progress. I'm down about 15 pounds. I would like to turn the corner, get the last 10 down. by the end of this year. And to do that, I'll need to ratchet up.

And really, it's not necessarily about pounds, but like, I set these habits. I was like, all right, I have these habits that got me this body. If I want that body, I got to have these other habits. And so I've been trying to change, you know, these four or five, four or five of these habits that got me where I'm at, where I want to go. And I've probably changed two of the four. So I have the last 70 days to get the other two done.

What are the other two? So I'll give you the two I did. and I'll give you the two I need to do. So the two I did. The first one is planning, planning my, the health part of my day at the beginning. First thing I wake up.

So we both, I don't know if you still do, but I use my body tutor. So she calls me. It's great, right? It's a great service. It's a great service.

We have no stake. At least I have no stake in this business. It's, you know, I'm just a big fan of it. So she calls me at 8 in the morning and she says, how did yesterday go? What's today?

But the thing that happens is, instead of waking up and just starting my, day with my work and my emails and my Slack and my little computer stuff. No, I start by day with the top priority, the thing I really care about, which is rewiring these habits. And in doing so, I basically stop improvising because the improvising is where I'm just going to make whatever decision happened in the moment. And those decisions are the key thing. Right. So by planning my day, I say, all right, I'm going to eat this, this and this. At these times, I'm going to work out here.

And most importantly, we identify like, what might trip me up? It's like, oh, I have to take kids to the gymnastics thing. That's like an hour away. It's at the time I normally eat dinner. So you plan around the grenade. Yeah, it's like, oh, so what are you going to do? Oh, simple. I'll just bring it with me in the car or I'll, I'm going to eat before I go.

Or you'll look ahead like three days. You're like, all right, on Saturday, I've got a birthday party. I know we're going to have cake. I'm going to splurge on that one piece of cake, which means leading up to it. I got to prepare that I'm going to like, I got to be tight today. So a big part of it was realizing the decision tank, the gas tank of decisions, and good decisions, it's full in the mornings. And by the evening, it's depleted.

And so all my bad decisions happen then. And so I just make all the decisions up front for what I'm going to do. And then I simply just need to stick to them, which of course not perfect. Like the daily one, so basically they call you daily. And the reason why that's good is that's when you're like really getting after it. And then the weekly one is like, I use her as like, I'm happy where I am. They should call it the serious person plan and then the unserious person plan. Like, are you serious about this or are you not so serious?

If you're not so serious, here. do this weekly plan. And what's the fourth? So her first habit, plan all the meals and the workouts up front. First thing in the morning. Make the decision then. Don't make the decisions as you go. Make one decision at the beginning.

The second one is what I call the four point swing. So if you've ever played basketball, you know there's this thing that the announcers will say where let's say you had an open shot, you should have made it. You would have scored two points. But instead, you fumble the ball. The other team takes it and they get an easy shot. And so it was a four point swing. You should have been two.

You should have been up to and they should have zero. Instead, you missed your two and they got to. So four point swing. So I realized, oh, there's one part of my day. That's like the four point swing. It's like, it could have gone in my favor. And instead, it totally wipes me out, which is like, basically for me, it's, I work pretty late.

So after my kids go to bed, then I have kind of like this relaxation and I'll do like more work. So I usually stay up pretty late. If I late night snack there. And so basically it's like, I'm up late. So I sleep late. I sleep late. And therefore, I also.

I also, because I'm up late, I eat late. Dude, I started going to bed early just to avoid that situation. Exactly. It's like, yo, I don't know if I have the willpower to not late night snack, but I can just go upstairs and go to bed. And that's kind of the only thing. And then in the morning of I'm hungry, great. I make good decisions.

Again, the tank is full. So anyways, those are the two that I've been working on and made a lot of progress on. And then I have two more, which is treat the weekends like the weekdays. Because my weekends, I was just become a different person. It was fucking Mardi Gras for me. It was like, wait, wait, well, why did I throw away all those habits that I do during the week that are great and just treat the weekends solely differently? So that's silly. I'm not going to do that anymore.

And then I have one more, which is my sort of like thing that gets me is chips. It's like sort of like a snack. So it's kind of the root why. It's like, well, it's basically the cheapest way to pleasure. It's like super fast. It's right in front of me. It's the fastest way to pleasure. So substituting that with another thing that's a fast, cheap way to get pleasure.

Right. So it's like other things I like to do or other things that feel good in the moment. That's not like some delayed gratification. Instant gratification, just not through a snack, but through whatever. Like, you know, take a shower. There's like this other like a sparkling water drink that I make, whatever, little other things that I can substitute. So doing those substitutes. The weekday and weekend thing is pretty funny. One time Noah Kagan, he's one of my best friends.

And he was like years ago, he goes, you're the only person I know who doesn't drink, but you're still fat. What the hell? I had a friend that's on the same. He goes, I saw my company. He goes, okay, cool. You're rich now. I'm like, yeah, thanks.

And he goes, there's no, you can't be rich and fat. He's like, there's no excuse. If you're poor, he just don't have the time. You can't get the nutritious food and you can't get the gym. Like, okay, understandable. You're rich in fat? That's you. That's all you.

So he was like, you can't be rich of fat. It's just a rule. I was like, oh, okay. I felt like I got into some club and they were like, you need to take his shoes off at the door. It's so funny. By the way,

one thing to finish that food thing, remember when Brian Johnson came on the first time on this podcast, like before Brian Johnson became like, way more famous and like, you know, changed his entire look. So like kind of the before photo Brian Johnson, basically.

When he came on, he said something, he goes, oh yeah, we fired evening Brian. And I thought that was just such a good way of saying it. He's like, yeah,

we had a meeting of the Brian's morning Brian was there work Brian was there and evening Brian was there we just decided evening Brian you're fucking it up for the rest of us so you're fired you no longer get to make decisions we've take that power away from you I just thought that was a great way of saying it he did a really a job of

have you read that book 48 laws of power like one of the laws of power is like change your identity occasionally and like Occasionally that's how it says they're like they're like it's a tool it's like a tool so for example the author he was like Lady Gaga, like, if you look at

early photos of her, she was like a very normal girl, but she always had like a little weird quirky side to her, but she went all in on it and just changed her identity overnight to be like this kind of like strange person. And then nowadays, by the way, if you see Lady Gaga, she's not actually that weird anymore. You remember that era where she like would wear meat as a dress? Now she like has an album with like Tony Bennett,

like a very classic singer and she's like more of a like, you know, whatever she, that would be called like classic beauty versus before she was like artistic. pomp when Bitcoin prices up and pump when Bitcoin prices down. There's two pups. The tale of two pops. And I think Brian Johnson changed his identity. And I thought that

was a really savvy thing to do. I thought it was great. And I think I take inspiration from it. Can I tell you a story that I've been kind of thinking about constantly? Okay. All right. So I have to tell you the story about this guy named Jamie Beaton. So Jamie is a 29-year-old from New Zealand.

He was raised in a single household in New Zealand, but he's kind of like grown to be probably like the best college kid on earth. So listen to this story. So this guy, Jamie, he's raised by single mother in New Zealand. And I guess if I had to cycle analyze him, he probably like has some like rejection type of like, you know, he's not good enough type of vibe that a lot of great, great people who achieve greatness have. And he gets obsessed with school, but particularly with university applications and how to get into like the best university on earth. And so he sets out

with a goal to become the most qualified high school student in all of New Zealand. And he, like, creates this really in-depth strategy. It's like, you know, he's got to be unique. So he goes and starts two different businesses, one being like a newspaper delivery business, one another being like an iPhone repair business. He focuses on being the best. And so he like strategically picks activities that he can excel in. Then he looks to maximize validation, meaning like whatever he's good at, he wants to like enter into a contest and like win. And then really good academic. So he's like, it's straight age. And so he like does this like crazy curriculum that he creates for himself. And by the age of 17, he wants to, like, he wants to. And he's accepted into 25 universities. So he's accepted into Harvard, Yale, Prince and Sanford, Columbia, Cambridge, and a bunch of other stuff. But he ends up going to Harvard. But before he gets into Harvard,

like word spreads in New Zealand that this kid is like a wonder kid and he's like the greatest thing on earth. And so he even like hosts like a 230 person talk in New Zealand where all these parents are like, Jamie, tell us how you did this. Like this is so amazing. So fast forward to today.

He's 29 years old. He's got seven degrees. and one PhD. If you go to his LinkedIn, it literally looks like a fake LinkedIn. Listen to his education. So a bachelor's in applied math from Harvard, a master's in applied math from Harvard,

a PhD in public policy from Oxford, two masters from Stanford, a master's in entrepreneurship from Penn, a master's from Princeton, a law degree from Yale, and a master's in global affairs from a university in China. Is that insane?

This is real. Show 12 educations. I've never even seen that. It looks fake. So now, while this kid, he's 29 now, but while he was a kid, sophomore in college, he was like, this is kind of interesting, what's going on? And so he creates a college tutoring business, which is like kind of like a stereotypical, not stereotypical, but it's like a common story of people who like master the game.

They like start these tutoring businesses. But it actually starts working to the point where by the he's a sophomore in college, it does a million in revenue. And obviously he's interning because that's what great college kids do. But he's interning at Tiger Management, which is like, one of the most prestigious hedge funds in the world. And his boss is like, dude, this is pretty cool. You should like go all in on this.

And so he turns his little side business. I mean, it was a million in revenue by the time he was sophomore. Wasn't that much of a side business. But he turns it into a real business. And it's called Crimson Education. And that's like what the story in the Wall Street Journal was about. So Crimson Education does something like 120 to 150 million in revenue. It's valued around $500 million.

They have something like a thousand employees. and it's like the greatest way, I guess, to get into a highly touted university for your kids. And so these parents are spending crazy amounts of money, something like $200,000 a year for a handful of the product offerings that they have in order to get their kid into an Ivy League school. And it starts way before high school. We're talking like fifth sixth grade.

You're smiling. Is this ridiculous or what? So I'm smiling for a couple of reasons. First, the headline is great. So it says, The guru who says he can get your 11-year-old into Harvard. And there's a picture of him shaking this Asian kid. hand.

Which is just hilarious. First, why an 11-year-old did to Harvard? All right. That's funny thing. One. Two, love the name Crimson Education. As you know, big fan of when you hijack the prestige of another thing in a way that's totally legal, the way that you did with Hampton, the way he's doing with the crimson

color for Harvard. Crimson Education, great name. When I Google the name, the very first thing it says, and by the way, this article came out six days ago, the very first thing in the Google headline is Crimson Education, as seen on the Wall Street Journal. Like, this guy is a fucking prestige hacker. He immediately was like, now it's going to be like as featured on my first million, right? Like, he's just going to keep grabbing badges from schools, from press, from whoever

he can get. So I think that's hilarious. The next thing, the next thing that I find a little bit funny is the premise of this is I will help your kid get into a top university. Is that right? But it's not test prep. No. So they have, first of all, if you go to, are you on their website?

They're offering or like their headline is amazing. 98% acceptance rate to your top college choice. So listen to like the product. So the product is like pretty ridiculous. Basically like you remember how I like outlined it to like stick out, you know, like be unique, whatever. Like he has like these, the Crimson education has these like tenants of what you need. So it's like, get amazing grades.

So he's like, these are bombs. You basically have to have like perfect A's. Then he's like, you need to have strong leadership. And so what Crimson does is they definitely tutor people. So I think they have 50,000 students who get tutoring. But dude, they encourage you to do all types of crazy shit. So they encourage you to start a business podcast or rather start a business or start a podcast or go and publish an academic paper.

And so they have services that help their students get PR or help their students go and publish research. And so they're one example of a kid who started a podcast, and it got so popular that universities started asking to be featured on the podcast. And so that's an example of like things where they try to tell you that you have to have strong leadership. They also say that you have to have a unique profile. And so what he says is, or what Crimson does is they help students find like 10 activities that they're interested in and then helps them be the best at the activities and cut the fat and not be not participate in things that they're not going to be like the best at. it's like pretty ridiculous. So they offer tutoring, but they also offer like for something like $200,000. They do like really hands on like, we need you to do this, this, this, this and this over the course of a handful of years to increase the likelihood.

And by the way, it works. Like there's debate over how much it works. Like there's debate where they're like, you know, these kids are like rich, smart kids anyway. Like their parents are going to like force him to get into all this shit anyway. Like did this actually help? but something like 2% of the students admitted into Brown, Columbia, Harvard, and Penn last year were his clients. And it says, like, this many people get in, as verified by Big Four accounting service. He's like doubting that they've been audited

on their claims of this. This is pretty wild, dude. Because he was bragging to the Wall Street Journal reporter, like crazy, or not bragging. They were asking him questions. And he was like, yeah, like we had 24 people into Yale. This marketing funnel, dude. But listen to me says, he goes, the acceptance letters were certified by Pricewaterhouse Cooper and a list of students admitted.

So, like, he sent Walshry Journal the thing and it had like the Pricewaterhouse Cooper's like seal of like, yeah, it's legit. I hate this. I'm just going to say that out loud. I hate this. But I respect this. Why do you hate it for one? I mean, the respect is easy. Like, it's easy.

It's the same reason I hate the Olympics and I respect people. I respect Olympians, meaning this guy is doing the thing. The thing I said was stupid about the Olympics where somebody dedicates 20, 22 years of their life to becoming the best you know, luge, the luge pusher in the world. And it's like, bro, like, if you had this much talent,

why didn't you just apply it to something that's useful? Dude, what else could you, if you're a lusurer, you just got a big ass and you could like push heavy shit? Like, what else are you going to do? Luge is built for you. You can lay down well. Could have been a famous, you know, person in a rap video.

Many, many options. Only fans. You had better options on the table. No, but seriously, like, the sort of like game, embracing the system so much that you try to game the system for this arbitrary university application thing, it's just,

it's like dialed up to level 20. There's something off-putting about that to me. I don't know. I guess like, I just don't, like I think most college educations and, as I were, a Duke sweatshirt,

most Ivy leagues in the admission process, I think it's all pretty bogus. and I don't think it has a very high correlation to like, it's the wrong game, right? What is the phrase play stupid games with stupid prizes? I think this is playing stupid games to win a stupid prize. However, I get it.

And I respect that this guy has prayed on the fears and the hopes and the dreams of these tiger parents to be like, hey, give me $200,000. I'll make sure your kid gets the right logo on their resume here. I hear you. And a lot of me agrees with you. let me just make the argument against you. First of all, your group of people, the Indians, in part, have thrived in America because of the emphasis

on not just on education, but like being the best. So like there's definitely power to it. But you also went to Duke. I didn't go to Duke. My wife went to an Ivy League school. So I hang out with a lot of these like smart people like you and her. And that type of education, it's on one hand, it's sort of like a rich person telling you rich, it doesn't make you happy to be rich. And you're like, yeah, let me figure it out on my own. Like let me get there and And I'll decide. Yeah. But the second thing is, I actually think that there's

a huge amounts of tangible benefits. The education, that's normal. What does Will from Goodwell Hunting say, like, just I can get that for like 15 bucks in late fees from a library to learn the same shit as you. But, like, your network, partially because,

mostly because of San Francisco, to be honest, but a lot of it, because of Duke and Sarah's network because of Penn, like it was so much more global than mine was at a small Rinky-Dink school in Nashville, Tennessee. Like, you guys thought so much bigger. The people who you're, or with were so much more global, they were so much more prestigious and in a good way.

And so I actually think that playing the game to go to a top 20 university is probably worth it. To play the game to win, to play the game and not go to one of these amazing schools, I actually don't think it's worth it. Yeah, I'm not saying necessarily that going to top schools is not worth it. I guess what I'm saying is the amount of energy and sort of the manufactured nature of this, it's sort of like the way that PR, it's like, I guess it's good to be featured. But like, PR is sort of this, the process to get a bunch of press. is often a very sticky process.

Yeah, you're hating the game. Yeah, exactly. I hate the game. And I think that in this case, like, dedicating your life to manufacturing this perfect resume that's optimized for the Harvard admission system just doesn't seem like the good,

like the right use of talent and time. And so, you know, that same person, if they actually just did what they were interested in and, you know, like followed their actual curiosities and passion.

I think that's just, like, you know, I'll get off my own. high horse. Now let me just let me get a stool so I can get down. Did you see a photo of this guy? He looks like exactly like I want him to look like. He looks like a student still. He had 29. Like he looks, he looks smart, I guess. He looks Ivy League. Did you have a college admission like counselor or anything like that? Yeah, like our high school had a college counselor who I went

in and they go, okay, so where do you want to go to school? I said, I want to go to Duke and they go, you should lower your expectations. And I was like, wow, that's the opposite of what I think somebody's supposed to say in your job. Like, aren't I supposed to dream big? What's going on here? And he's like, yeah, it's pretty tough out there. So, you know, what else we got on the list? Let's go down lower on the list and see what we could do because my grades weren't the best.

And he rubbed it in his face. Did you, but did you have like a tutor? No. But I did take like, you know, GMAT or what not GMET? Like the S-Aa-Ca-Ca-Ca-T-P. Like, I studied. for the SATs. That was what I did. I did not have any of that stuff.

But when I was reading this article, they said roughly 25%. Did you take the SATs? No, I did the ACT. Okay, so you took the ACTs. Did you do a test prep thing? No. I took it one time my junior year. I think, or maybe I took it twice my junior year and I got a combined score.

I think of 28, which is like a combined score. Like a both test? No, I think, I doesn't, maybe I'm wrong, but I thought they take like, like math and verbal or whatever. Yeah, like you get like the best of each try and they like combine it. I think I got a 27 or 28, which is like 85 percentile, I think. Did you do well on it? I did good on it.

I was good. I was a good test taker. I wasn't good in school, like the consistency of everyday. You know me. I'm not good with the everyday stuff. But if it was like, it's time to do the big performance. I could do that part well. What did you get on the SAT?

You have to brag about it. Then if you did good. I think I got the equivalent of like a, because they had changed the scoring system to like the $2,400 or whatever. but I got the equivalent of what now is like a like a 1500 basically. What? I don't know SAT, but let me look it up. It goes up to 16.

1600 is perfect. 1500 is like excellent and like, you know, 1,300 plus. Dude, it says that's in the 98th percentile. Yeah, yeah, it was a really good score.

It's like you missed like a couple questions basically. Did you try? Yeah, yeah, I tried. I took, I basically for like 60 days before the test, I just took two,

two practice tests a day. And this essay is like a six hour test. So I took a six hour test in the morning. I took a six hour test in the morning. I took a, break, I ate, whatever, and then I took another six-hour test, over a five-hour test, whatever it was, in the evening. And I just did that every day for like 30 days during the summer. And then I took the test, then I took the SETs. Well, you should have went and started one of these, like,

companies on how to like master that shit. Because I didn't realize how big that these, I didn't realize how big this was. They said that, um, like 25% of people going to Harvard this year, they had one of these like tutors. And then it goes up even higher that if your parents, if your parents have a household income of at least half a million dollars, half of them use, these types of tutors. And yeah, I didn't realize how much of a game or how you could gain this so, like you could really kick ass at it. If you just like, well, if you have rich parents for one.

And two, if you just like hire coaches. I didn't, I didn't buy into that. But now I do. So you're going to do this type of stuff? I think that if my children show an academic, like if they're, if they're good at academics, then yeah, I would encourage them to do this. If they're only mildly decent at academics, I would say, like, let's consider different alternatives. I think I, dude, I'm like kind of an elitist. I think that like these fancy schools,

like what you went to should be like designed for like the, for like the academic class and like the rest of us like plebs. Like I think I should have gone to like a trade school or or a state school. I think I should have gone to like a like a $15,000 year university, Missouri and like explored versus going into debt of 150 grand to go to like a non top university. I think that's ridiculous. Yeah, I think that's right. All right. I have one and you have a few. What's one you want to do? Let's do a quick one on this Ken Fisher thing. I don't know how much I have to say.

It just kind of fascinated me. So let's see if there's something interesting here. So I was at a breakfast and somebody was talking to me about a business idea that they were doing or that they had done in the past. I was like, man, that sounds like a good idea. Where did you get that idea from? And he goes, oh, it's the Fisher Investments model of what's Fisher investments? And he goes, you don't know Ken Fisher? He's like, you got to look this guy out.

So I go down this rabbit hole and who is Ken Fisher? So basically he's a billionaire money manager. So he's my billy of the week. Big time billionaire. Like 11, 15 billion. Yeah. Exactly. And he basically created a simple firm.

So it's an investment advisor, money manager type of firm called Fisher Investments. And he grew it over the years to where they now manage, you know, upwards of $275 million, a billion dollars assets under management. So $275 billion with a B. They got 3,500 employees. they ended up selling to private equity. So they sold to Advent. They sold up not the full about, but they sold at a $12.5 billion valuation.

And that was the first outside capital raise. So this guy basically bootstrapped his way to a $12 billion company. And the question is, how did he do it? What did he do? And so this guy's story in the, I guess the simple terms is his dad was a finance guy. He actually wrote a book that was kind of popular called, common stocks and uncommon profits, which, by the way, when I went to Monish Pribes house, I asked him to recommend four or five books off his wall. And that might have been

one of them. I remember seeing it in his library. And Warren Buffett called that book a major influence on his career. So that was his dad. What he did was he left, he went out and he started his own firm. And the key is this guy is basically a marketing master. So what he did was instead of trying to, I shouldn't say instead of, but like most people who are great with investments or money management, there's a certain profile of a person. And that person typically doesn't have incredible direct response advertising skills. By the way, it's typically the opposite.

A lot of people who are in this industry are the opposite of extroverted and they kind of want to be in a whole and just not talk to anyone. And they don't advertise at all. And so when they did this deal, some of the numbers came out. And basically these guys are spending $60 million a year on marketing, which sounded like a ton of. to anybody else in the money management space. And to him, he was like, that's nothing.

He goes, I get the question, why do you advertise so much? He goes, because we have no market share. They go, you have over $100 billion in assets under management. He goes, that is nothing. Have you seen the size of this market? We're just the biggest grain of sand in the sandbox, but we're still just a grain of sand. We have 0.1% if that. And so he said, we spend about 6% of our revenue on marketing.

So they spend 60 million, you know, 60 million. year. And so they're doing about a billion dollars a year in revenue. And he basically created this system of this marketing system. And so you can go watch his ads. And I went and watched a bunch of his TV ads. And what he says is like, he's like, well, there's, we broke it down. So he's like, there's six mental profiles of people of how they think of their retirement and their savings and investing. And so they break out the six psychographic profiles. You have, you know, let's say that the grandma who just doesn't want to lose at all. You have the, you have the, you know, the, the guy who's stashed away in his 401K and he's looking for,

he thinks he feels like he should be doing more, but he doesn't know exactly what. And he's pretty distrustful with most people, with people who come to him. And so they have these profiles, and then they start running ads, they do focus groups, and try to figure out which ads are working.

And there's little nuggets along the way that they were like, why do you use, they were like, why do you use your face in the ads? Do you feel like there's some risk with that? Or would it make it harder to sell the business? He goes, because we found that clients want to believe,

the clients want to believe that there's someone who wakes up in the morning and gives a darn, that there's a person, not an institution, who cares? That's why we use my image. Because here's Ken, he's 68 years old, he gets up in the morning and he cares. That's what I need to convince you up. And then he talked about how they're like, you know, what did you learn from your, you know, your advertising? Because they're very scientific about it.

He's like, well, one thing, for example, we learned that men's faces do better women's. Everybody told us we should be using female faces that's going to appeal more. Not in our testing. Our testing shows that men's faces are going to convert better than female face. There's a famous ad where it's an outline. You know how the Wall Street Journal has photos of their authors that are like dots?

It's like a sketch, actually. It's a sketch out of dots, whatever. He buys Outbrain ads and Tabula ads, and they would always see a dotted profile photo where you think it looks like a Wall Street Journal article, and then you click and it goes to Fisher Investments. Right. And so that's how I first learned about them because I'm like, these guys, Fisher Investments, they're following me everywhere on the internet.

So if you click one of those, they're great with headlines. So for example, you click one of those Outbrain ads as to Bula ads. You're going to go to a page that's just a video. There's no navigation. There's no nothing. And the video is called debunkery, seeing through Wall Street's money-killing myths. And it's a 12-minute video that you're going to see where he debunks, you know, Wall Street myths. And, you know, this type of like BuzzFeed headline stuff isn't what you're going to find from most money

managers. Most money managers would cringe at that. They don't know, they don't know how to do those. They don't have the team in place. You've talked about Agora, for example, he's basically agorified, you know, money management by putting out really compelling, juicy content and then advertising it everywhere. So they spend a ton of money on ads. They're on Fox News or on Forbes or on Wall Street Journal. They're on Market Watch. You know, they're basically, they have his profile. They're like, we're looking for somebody who's got a $500,000 retirement portfolio that don't want to get rich quick ad. And then you look at their ads and it'll say, want to retire comfortably? If you have $500,000, download this guide by Forbes columnist and money manager, Ken Fisher's firm.

It's called the definitive guide to retirement income. And then there's a picture of a guy on horseback. Like a dude who's like ready to retire and like get out of the office and be on horseback. Or he'll have an ad. Like I have one here on, I'll put these up on YouTube so you can see the ads. But like his outbreak ad and says, what does your net worth say about when, say about how you'll retire? So it's kind of like a personality. quiz, like, what does your net worth say about how your retirement's going to go? And it's a picture

of a man and a woman on a boat, like Titanic. Dude, this is so good. I'm looking at it now. I mean, like, I want to show you this. Here, just, I'm going to screen share this real quick. It works, by the way, because I have to assume that his product is good, right? Like, I don't know. We'll see. I don't have a strong opinion on that. Look at this landing page, though, designed for conversion. He's got the 15-minute retirement plan as a book, and it's an arrow. And there's a drag and drop like box. It's like, where should you get it? Get it right here.

Get my free quote, right? And then you got Ken Fisher below. Here's a white guy you could trust. And I just thought this guy's marketing is just excellent. I think it's to be studied. I think it's extremely effective, especially with the crowd that he's going for, which is kind of like the 50 and up crowd. So studying this guy's ad library was pretty, pretty insightful.

And it also just brought up an interesting idea, which is a lot of people when they're great at marketing. They go into spaces that them and their friends are already in, which is often like D to C, e-commerce or marketing agencies. You're trying to be a great marketer in a sea of great marketers. I think what the genius of this guy is is he said, how do I be, you know, just, you know, two notches above average at marketing, but go into a space where nobody knows anything about marketing, right? Or everybody is like doing a very rudimentary playbook. And so that's where I think the opportunity is, like, if you go do this in the senior living space, it's like the people who own and operate senior living businesses are not the same sharks that you're going to get

trying to sell, you know, handbags on the internet. Because those people, the people who sell handbags on the internet, they're worth class marketers. That's why they're able to sell, you know, a handbag for, you know, 10x the cogs. And the other thing is that when people see these ads, they think, does this work? I can't believe this works. First of all, yes, it works. It works. It does. It works for everyone. It's not just like old, like you kind of made a comment like only older people are into this. I think this always works. This type of stuff works really well, regardless of the age. But when like a brand advertising guru who lives in Brooklyn, New York, who wears common project shoes, they see this type of shit and they think this is fucking lame. I should

make my website look flashier. When in reality, a plain white website that has just long form copy of like 3,000 words can oftentimes, more often than not, convert better than a flashy website. So let me read you the last few notes I have here. So he's been a Forbes columnist for like 20 plus years. So he was like, he's basically content marketing, right? Like what we do and what we get a lot of credit for, which is like, well, you build an audience, you build a brand and that helps you with distribution.

This guy has been doing that for 30 plus years. He wrote several books. So he wrote super stocks and other ones. He has an army of salespeople that cold call investors. And they talk about this basement, this basement of like cold callers that are just sitting there and people report that like, dude, I signed up for this free guide once. I read it. And then they've just been badgering me for like years ever since. And they keep calling me trying to get me to invest with them. He says that everybody else relies on referrals

from other partners. They don't think about the broader world. How do we get people calling us? That was their goal. And they have estimated about $14,000 cack. So it costs them $14,000 to acquire a customer. They spent, you know, just over $60 million on ads. back in 2019, they're the 12th biggest spender on financial services. They have like, you know, 60 plus thousand individual investors, plus then they manage another $10 billion plus from pensions, state governments, municipalities, etc. They charge about 1% 1.25% in fees.

So, you know, you could do the math on 1.25% of 250 billion. And then it's hard to gauge the performance. They don't have publicly available numbers for everything, but in the past, Fisher funds with publicly available numbers have underperform the market substantially. So they have a Purisma total return fund. It was a mutual fund that had 25% return in 10 years.

The S&P 500 index would have been 1,000% in the same time. Yet still, if some of the quote was, if his firm is not the biggest RIA, it's close. And so to build the biggest investment advisor firm while not necessarily having the best returns, but being the best marketers, the story here. Dude, fuck podcasts. I want to

do that. This sounds awesome, right? Of course, there's a billion reasons why it's a pain in the ass to run just like everything else is, but that sounds great. Dude, I've been watching Better Call Saul. Do you have you watch this show? What? And what do you want to become like an ambulance chaser? Isn't he just a lawyer?

No, well, yeah, he's a lawyer, but like, one of the things they show him doing is, like, him making his commercials and his ads to try to be, you know, to be like Better Call Saul. And it reminded me so much of this Ken Fisher playbook. And the show makes it seem, the show makes also the hustle he does to, like, create these commercials is also very fun. He's nailed

the branding. This is cool. I've seen his ads all over the place and I knew he was big. I didn't know they got acquired, so I wasn't able to ever see any of the numbers, but that's amazing. Well, look at, here's some of the, I think this is his own reporting of his performance. 2007, he says, if you bought, this is not their funds, this is like his

recommendations, but if you bought all of my, all 60 of my recommendations, you would be up 0.9%. and assuming you lost 1% transaction fees, the SP founder is down 0.5%. Okay, so nothing big. 2008, he says, how are my results last year? In line with the market,

which is to say, not good. That's what he said? Yeah, 2009, I made 65 recommendations. If you put it equal some in each, you'd be up 44%. Stock markets up 20.9%. 2010, he says, your return is 18% versus 12%.

But these are like his stock picks, I think, from his Forbes column, which is not the same. That's like his entertainment. Well, if you have an wealth advisor or whatever this stuff's called, if you have an advisor who promises to make you more than the index, they're lying. But then what is the point of the advisor? The point is that as you grow and get older, it's savvy to think,

all right, I need to get less stocks, more bonds. And those mature are sometimes six, 12, 24 months. So it's like the buying of those, if setting up at a state plan, there's a bunch of, there's a bunch of administrative stuff that often, but not always that 1% can kind of pay for itself or like help you. You could also say that they are kind of like a therapist. So when you want to sell stuff,

they're like, dude, don't sell it. Don't be an idiot. But there's a bunch of administrative stuff. But outperforming the market is not the main value. And if you have an advisor who says that they're going to outpick, then they're foolish.

By the way, do you know who else does this? Is Motley Fool. So the Motley Fool, they have a fund. that has well over a billion dollars. And it started as a stock picking newsletter. And now they branched out to having a fun.

And so they actually have a wealth advisory business. That is massive. And it was built up the exact same way as Ken Fisher. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. You said a billion dollars. This guy's over 250 billion. So somehow, Motley Fool, which is like also excellent at online content, and it probably has way more traffic,

does not have anywhere near the same assets under management, which I think is always interesting to look at. you know, when two people pursue the same strategy and one gets a hundred X return, you know, sometimes you point to luck or timing or other things, but often it's, you know, it's a business model choice. It's a strategic choice or it's an executional point that's different. Yeah, this is insane. Mali Full has $1.5 billion. Can I tell you a quick story about related to something that Elad Gill said? Yeah. So he made a comment where we asked him like what he's interested in.

And he said monuments. And so what he met was like an example of a monument is the Statue of Liberty or in some ways like the Eiffel Tower, like things that like exists mostly to bring pride to a country, but then also act as like a tourist destination. And he was saying, you know, why don't we build more of these? What happened to the monuments was sort of the question? Yeah. He was like, look, when we were up and coming, like we loved building monuments and like it gave a sense of pride. And it was like good for like it was like very pro-America. and I got people bought in.

And I had a guy listened to the podcast, and he sent me to deck that he's trying to raise money for a monument that's based in San Francisco on Alcatraz. And so you have to see this. So it's a picture of, first of all, I don't know who this. I've never heard of this person, but you know who Prometheus is? He's like a Greek god. And it's basically like he represents the spirit of innovation and courage for the purpose of building, for manifest destiny, for inborn nobility, which elevates humanity. they want to build a massive statue of him that's 350 feet tall

and it's on where Alcatraz is and it's like if the statue of Liberty had like a hot boyfriend this would be him. Yes and that's exactly what it is. On the other side of the country, he's just holding up a torch just like she is except for he's absolutely ripped and he's from the movie 300.

And he's got like a speedo on. It's basically a speedo. And he's packed up to be honest. So they did not pull any punches as far as the amount of stone and steel is going into this guy. And so first of all, I've got to say the obvious that there will never be a statue that touts manifest destiny and inborn nobility and the spirit of courage that's going to sit in the bay of San Francisco. Like all the, like a shirtless rip dude, none of that I think will ever happen. But the idea is actually interesting. And so what they want to do is they're raising $100 million.

to build the statue on Alcatraz. And so it's 350 feet. But in their deck, they talk about the money or the revenue and profit of other people, of other statues. So listen to this shit. So the Statue of Liberty does $154 million a year in revenue, $70 million a year of net income. And then you can go down to like Pearl Harbor. Really?

Yeah. I mean, does. Okay. So Statue of Liberty. That does say that again. That's mind blowing. Statue of Liberty, you said $70 million of net income, $150 million of revenue. So 50% net profit margins on 4.5 million visitors, each one paying $25 a ticket and $10

of concessions. It's insane. It's insane. And then it goes down to like Mount Rushmore, which is on the smaller end, which does 50 million in sales and 20 million a year in net income. Or Pearl Harbor, same thing, 50 million, 23 million. Dude, I was laughing. Why are we not doing this?

These are amazing businesses. That's my point. And so I went and I saw these numbers. And I'm like, that's absolutely ridiculous. And it's like amazingly good. And of course, with all things related to like investment decks, you know, you paint the best possible story.

And who knows if any of it actually is true. Source cited on this. There's no source. I looked up some of the stats and like the Statue of Liberty numbers. It does, it kind of checks out where it is plausible that those are the numbers. But they're raising a hundred and six. $70 million to build this.

And their goal is to make $100 million a year in profit. That's what they say the numbers are. So you start doing the math. And like I said, this is all just some guy drawing this up. And like, who knows? This is painting the best story ever of a thing that doesn't exist. But the math is somewhat interesting behind like the like how this all works. So you're saying there's a chance.

Yeah. So they're like, if we do this, we're doing $94 million a year net income. And so it's actually pretty interesting Of course, dude, you're not going to be able to build this in San Francisco. They're not going to have any part of it. How much have they raised so far? Do you know?

No. And like when I was Googling it, they have like a substack and they save things like Joe Lonsdale is on board and all these like amazing people are on board and they have a substack documenting what they're talking about. But I don't think I saw that they said how much they've raised. I think it's cool that people are doing this. I guess I have a few thoughts.

I think it's cool that people are doing this. I hope something like this happens. I am stunned at the profitability of these other monuments. That is my golden nugget for the pod. That is amazing. Noted. Okay, noted. There's something here.

This deck, by the way, does not look well made. And I think if you're going to try to pull something like this off, you have to also. Like, if you can't pay for a designer for your deck, then I'm not sure I believe that you're going to do this. Yeah. Yeah. And like this is, I wonder how like, when they're going at bed at night talking to their wives, I wonder if they're like saying like, isn't this hilarious that we're trying this or is it like, when this thing's bill, we're going to be doing.

You got to fully believe that you're doing God's work out here. Yeah. And it could happen. But so it's called, if you want to look it up, I've got no affiliate. I've never talked to these people. It's called the American Colossus Foundation. Kind of funny. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right, though, that location really matters. Like, you have to go somewhere that. both has, you know, can be a tourist destination, but has, you need the approvals, right? You can't just get stuck in limbo in San Francisco, Bay Area is probably one of the harder places to get approval for something like this.

Dude, San Francisco's the antithesis of a ripped, like, a ripped, like, alpha-looking heterosexual male. Like, this is, like, not, like, they, I lived in San Francisco for 10 years. This is not exactly what the culture is about. So I think... Do you remember the art we had on the wall, the giant painting we had on the wall in my office at Monkey Inferno, where it was the reverse of the evolution of man?

You know, evolution of man is like, it's an ape, and then he's like standing half upright, then he's fully upright, then he's walking, and then it's like, you know, that's the Homo sapien today. And the thing we had on the wall was the Homo sapien, and then it's him bending over, looking at his phone, bending over, basically sitting down at a laptop

and then typing, and it was like a coder at the end of it. And it was like, that was the final evolution. That's the opposite. That's what should be the monument in San Francisco. Yeah. She's like a giant neck beard. Yeah, I'm wearing a hoodie. Not a jacked Greek god.

You want to do one more thing? Yeah, I got a few quick hitters. Okay, let's do this one. So talking to bankers, I think this is a good value ad. This is a pro tip. Life pro tip for any founders out there. I didn't know this. When I first started doing startups, I had no idea.

And only the first time I ever came into contact with a banker was when I tried to sell my company. So it was kind of like, I don't know, eight or nine years into doing entrepreneurship. And even then, I didn't know what a banker was. Somebody said, I'll introduce you to a banker. And I thought that's the guy at Wells Fargo that like sits in the back, not in the front. Like I didn't really understand what that meant. Turns out a banker is like an investment banker. There's somebody who can help you sell your company, raise capital, get debt, that sort of thing.

and they come in at a certain level of scale. So usually something like $30 million in up. Really, they try to be like kind of like a $100 million company or so. And I had a friend who was successful entrepreneur and he told me something that really stuck with me. He goes, I was like, oh, when do you think you should talk to these guys? Like, you know, and I was thinking, meaning like when you're ready. Yeah, like when I'm ready like at the very beginning of what I'm ready or do I need to

have all my stuff together? And he goes, the best thing I ever did was I talk to a banker a year before I wanted to sell my business. And I talked to them and I go a year before, what do you mean? And he goes, yeah, because I went to the banker and I said, if I wanted to sell my business today, what would it be worth? Would it be able to sell? How strong would this asset look like in the marketplace right now? And they know all the deals that have gotten done. So bankers are in the process. The bankers are in the middle of selling companies just like yours in your industry. So you go to a banker that's in the industry. They've seen everything that's traded. They know the relative strength. They know the

valuations that they're trading at. They know who the buyers are. They know why that they're buying. And so they can give you a really clear picture. And he goes, I went before I was ready because I wanted them to tell me what would cause this to not sell? What would be the weak points of this business? So that became my roadmap for the next year of what I needed to fix. That became my priority list so that when I did go to market, I actually had those things fixed. And if I hadn't gotten that feedback at that point, I would have just got that same feedback a year later. And it would have punted the way down the road. They're going to tell you that shit, regardless. And so it's nice to know early.

And so I think bankers are actually a pretty big cheat code, not just for selling your. So that was the first thing I learned. Second thing was you could actually talk to bakers before you even go into a space. And I think you've done this before too, which is you go to a banker who's in a space that you're interested in. And you talk to them about the companies that have sold. And you're like, what companies have sold? How were they doing?

What was their, you know, strengths and weaknesses? Who are the buyers? Why do they buy? The question is basically, what's the profile and attribute? of a business in this space that outkicks the rest of the, you know, that performs better than the other ones. So tell me all those attributes and those strengths and weaknesses, and I'm going to just do that. Exactly. You can reverse engineer, meaning you can work backwards from that and find a great business. So I did this with a recent business. We haven't announced yet,

where we first talked to bankers and we learned from that, oh, that validated a lot of things we already liked about the business idea. We had an idea, talk to the bankers. That kind of co-signed stamped that, yes, this is actually an even better idea than we thought, meaning it traded for much higher multiples and the business could be like, we didn't have to do A, B, and C, A and B, we're going to be more than enough to have an outstanding outcome. They also told us, on the other hand, like, so for example, here's my five questions for bankers. I go to bankers and I say, what deals have gotten done recently? So that's the first question. Number two, which ones, like you said, outkick the coverage? So which ones traded at the highest multiple? And why? What was

unique about those, was it just simply timing or was there something that they had in the way that they did it or the cost structure that made them particularly attractive? Then the third question I ask is, what deals didn't get done and why? So meaning what deals couldn't cross the finish line? What were the big red flags that stopped people from buying the business? Because you want to basically know those too. Fourth question, who are the buyers and why are they buying? So basically every buyer has a plan and you want to know are the buyers only strategics or are

their private equity folks? Are there independent sponsors? who are the potential buyers? And then what's their game plan once they buy it? Oh, they're buying things at a $5, $5 million EBITA number for 7X or 10X, and then they're going to, they're rolling up five of those, and they're trying to get to $25 million, and they're trying to trade that at 20x.

And okay, that's their own game plan. Gotcha. And then the last one is, if my business did XYZ, so this is the useful one when you're not ready yet, but I basically say, hey, here's where we're at today. Here's where I think we're going to be in a year. If this is what my business looked like a year from now, what do you think it would trade for and why?

And getting that from four or five different bankers really helps triangulate a space. So I did last week, I spent maybe seven hours on the phone with bankers doing this process. And I feel like I learned more in those seven hours than I would have in seven months of just operating my business. It was so clarifying how to do this. And it just made me realize, man, more people should do this. I'm going to come on the pot and at least say it so that, For the people for whom it's applicable, which is I would say, you're an entrepreneur looking for your next space and you're not just being driven by some passion or calling. You are doing it more analytically, let's say.

This is a tool. Or if you're a business owner and you want to sell someday and you're at a few million dollars or your profit minimum, go have this conversation. I'm so on board. I've done this a bunch of times. And I think it's so smart. I think that there's this idea in Silicon Valley. There was like this trick question when you're raising funding from a VC. And it says, like, what's the outcome here?

Like, what would you sell for? And the answer that everyone pretends. Over my dead body. Yeah, I would never sell. And the answer, like, the answer absolutely can be like, I'm going to sell. But the answer probably should be like, well, I don't know. Maybe we will. Maybe we won't.

But like, if we get to these numbers, we can sell for this or we can IPO. Like the idea of like, I have an exit in mind has been told to us that that's silly. I think that that's silly. It's a very Silicon Valley thing because for two specific reasons. One, all venture capital is predicated on the idea that you're going to drive this to a billion dollars plus. So if you show any weakness, any hint that this guy would sell for less than a billion dollars, like if he got an $80 million offer that would change his life, he'll take it. Well, then this is not a good investment for me because I'm taking all the risk of failure.

but I need to know that if this succeeds, it can be a billion-dollar-plus, and one of the risks of it being a billion-dollar-plus company is not just that the business works, but that this founder will hold on and they will resist temptation. So Silicon Valley investors, because of the fund math, they need that.

That's why they put their values on you and say, well, those are your needs. That's cool for you. That's not my needs necessarily as an entrepreneur. That's the first thing. The second thing is there's an ego, pride. It seems noble in some way to say, this is my life. This is my life company. I'll do this for a hundred years. I think we're going to

dominate the space so much. It just sounds so cool. It sounds so brave. By the way, I think you I think you can do that and also this. So there's this book that I love called Built to Sell. Have you ever seen Built to Sell? No. It's a popular book, but here's the premise, which is like, you build your company to sell because building a sellable business means you may or may not sell it, but you have a company that operates well. And, you know, what does Warren Buffett say? He says, like, build your company. So an idiot can run it because someday an idiot will be running it. That's kind of the premise here with built the cell, which is like, you know, you're going to build your company to operate well. And so I think you should build your company to exit regardless if you're going to exit or not.

I agree fully. I guess what I'm saying is, and that works for us because we don't raise venture capital for our businesses anymore. We just owe them ourselves. But a lot of the advice you get is still from VCs because they're the loud people, they're the people who are famous. So you sort of take their advice even though you're not actually in their game. your own game. And so I think that's a very, very important distinction. The other thing, though, is it does sound cooler to say, I would never, I would never sell this. I sell, sell to Amazon. I'm trying to buy Amazon, right? Why do you love your boy, Brett Adcock? Because Brett Adcock is all bravado. He's all chest, right? He basically will say, we're going to change the world. We're going to build a

trillion dollar company, anything less than that. What's the point? And you're like, oh, my God, it's, it's intoxicating, as Sam Par would say. It is intoxicated to be around some. somebody who is going only for the big shot and is not saying I'm building this to sell or that there's a path here to a $350 million exit, which will, you know, 7x your money. He doesn't talk like that. And because he doesn't talk like that, it is very attractive and it is very admirable because many of us wish that we could be as hardcore and brave and bold is that we're just not. And by the way, I don't think you have to be.

I don't want to play that game. But when you do see something play that game, it's cool. I got to admit it is cool. I agree. I agree. It's cool. I agree. And I like, and I've invested in a couple, like, Brad Adcock, I invested in, and he has this attitude, and I like that. By the way, now that you have friends that are VCs or, I mean, you sort of were one for a minute, isn't it funny how you talk to them about, like, your company and raising capital and you'll say, no, we don't raise capital. And when you're friends with them, it's like, that's the right move. Yeah. Exactly. When you're not, when you're not, when you're not, you're a low five. They'll hit you with a low five Real quick Yeah, they like say

That's the right move Now when you Tell them that And you're a potential client They say like, oh, that's cute Like, you know what I mean? That's a lifestyle business That's good for you

But when you're friends with them They think themselves They'll say like smart The irony of the VC thing is A VC does the opposite Of what they want all the founders to do So they don't go all in on one idea They have a diversified portfolio

They are not you know, sort of only looking at the upside, they make a ton of money in fees, right? So they, you know, they're going to whatever, when somebody raises money. So for example, what's the podcast? Harry Stebbings just raised a $400 million fund. That's amazing. That's incredible, by the way. Harry is going to make $80 million guaranteed in fees.

Just fees. He could be the worst investor in the world. Why? Because he's going to make $80 million. he's going to make 2% a year on 400 million. It's 20% over the life of a 10-year fund. So just do 20%. $80 million in fees guaranteed.

That's his floor. Who cares about the upside from there if you're Harry's timeings, right? All you've got to do is keep the game going and maybe raise another fund. That would be amazing, right? So VCs, while they want you to be all in, and they want you to live on scraps, and they want you to have no diversification and stay super laser focus. And they want you to go ride for the big upside. they themselves have a very different

picture of risk, which, by the way, I think is a smarter picture of risk. But it is just funny that that's true. It's funny that the person giving you that advice is literally doing the exact opposite with their own finances and portfolio. And by the way, they're not wrong because they're saying,

oh, you wanted to play the Mark Zuckerberg game, then that's how you got to play. So they are giving you the right advice for you if you want to be doing that. The $80 million fee thing, I never knew that. I mean, I knew that they get, What is it 2%?

When you do the math, well, 2% is misleading. It's 2% every year off the top. So the same reason why financial value, we talk about Ken Fisher. Oh, 1% that's not much. 1% of your entire net assets every year off the top, regardless of performance,

is like one of the great sort of seven wonders of the world. That's the eighth. It's like the eighth wonder of the world is that a 1% off the top fee every year is actually, it becomes a gargantuan number over 10 years. And so that's the same thing with a venture fund like this. dude god bless him god bless america uh i guess he's not even in america that's the best for

they didn't put a monument of harry stabbing somewhere for raising a 400 million dollar fund and 80 million dollars in fees it's the 80 million dollar monument oh my god that'd be great that fun thing or that monument thing's ridiculous right this monument thing is fascinating we gotta i gotta go look more into this is great great episode 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 off On the road, let's travel, never looking back