The Annual Milly Awards: The Winners, The Losers And Everything In Between - With Andrew Wilkinson

All right, so this is the third time we're doing this. It's the best part of the year, the season finale. It is called the Millie Awards. It's our annual awards show. We did it the first time, I think, improv, uh, or like pretty, pretty close to it. We did it just like kind of on a whim. People loved it, so we brought it back, and now we're bringing it back again. And it's basically It's our awards. So we do categories like Billy of the Year, breakout company or person, uh, our favorite unsexy business, uh, our own best investments and our own worst investments, things like that. Um, so I'm excited. I already got the, uh, sort of season finale vibes and, uh, I'm, I'm excited for this. You wanna say anything, Sam?

You look, you, you look like you drive a white G-Wagon right now. I can't believe how fast. You've gone from Indian to Persian.

I look like my mistress drives a white G-Wagon.

You went from nerdy Indian to alpha Persian with just one jacket, and that's kind of amazing how that's happened.

I have never sold a rug, but I feel like I could right now.

Yeah.

And, uh, did you guys— you guys, let's see, you, Sam, you didn't get the memo about dressing up. Andrew, are you, uh, your mic is live?

He's wearing a blazer.

Yeah, you're blazered up.

Did you guys bring—

I'm wearing a cardigan, bro.

Oh, you always wear a cardigan. You always have like, you know, modern grandma style.

But I'm, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm at a guest place, you know, I'm, I'm on an Airbnb. I got to do what I got to do. I didn't bring up— I didn't bring my Persian apparel. I'm sorry.

All right, well guys, cheers to a great year, uh, a crazy year. I have— I don't know what, what's in everybody's cup here. So Sam, you're, you're a classic Midwestern cola kind of guy. You probably say cola, don't you?

No, but I am drinking a Coke.

There's that great map where it's like some people say pop, some people say cola, some people say, you know, soda or something like that. I feel like you might be a pop guy. Uh, Andrew, what you got in the cup?

I've got an AeroPress, uh, coffee in a tiny mug.

Bro, you just brought to you by— you just sponsored this whole pod just now. That was slick. Um, I have a, uh, very frigid cold water with fresh lemon juice inside. Maybe I'm starting to cleanse. I saw a great tweet. He goes, I don't cleanse, I clog. And I thought, that's pretty, that's pretty good. You're on a juice cleanse. I'm on a cheese clog.

Um, all right.

So cheers to you guys. Uh, 20 million downloads this year for the podcast, which is, I think, 6 times bigger than last year by, or maybe 4 or 5. 5 times. I might have my math wrong there, but I think YouTube's up 6x and the pod is up 4x or something like that. Um, big year, big year for us, which is, which is fun. And Andrew, you were the most frequent guest. You're the most favorite guest. And so it is only right to have you here. All right. So without further ado, should we jump in to the categories? We're going to go, uh, I'll announce the category, I think. And then we go kind of round robin. Um, last year we did it where we kind of picked who had the best answer after each one. I don't know if you guys want to do that or, uh, any, any adjustments to the, to the format here.

Well, I think, by the way, your order was a little off. So for example, if we're going to start with Billy of the Year, then that has the next person, because it's also a— the, the next category should be Craziest Person of the Year as well.

Okay. Okay. Well, let's do it this way. Um, we'll take turns, uh, me and you, Sam, of just picking categories, and then, uh, you can go whatever order you want. So Okay, let's start. Let's start with Billy of the Year. So for those who don't know, we do the segment called Billy of the Week, where we typically will feature a billionaire or somebody who maybe is not actually technically a billionaire, but they carry themselves with that billionaire energy and somebody who's just doing life in an interesting way. So, Sam, who is your Billy of the Year?

Oh, mine's so boring. So I— my boring answer is Zuck because he's proven that like he's actually pretty good. All these— everyone else this year that's been in his category has gone fucking insane. Bezos got a divorce. Elon's crazy. All Zuck does is box. That's like his version of crazy. Like, he's turned out to be okay. So I would say he's probably like robot of the year.

Emotionally stable, huh?

That's a great one. Andrew, who you got? Billy of the year.

So mine is actually an MFM guest, Palmer Luckey. Um, I feel like, you know, it's a little obvious, but I feel like, um, you see so many of these billionaires who they make all this money and then they get very focused on PR and they're very safe. And they won't put their money where their mouth is. And what I loved about him is that, A, he's actually taking his own capital and investing it in Anduril and doing something that is actually important in the world, or what he deems important. And he actually just like calls people out. Like, he's honest. He's not a politician. And I think most of these billionaires you talk to, they are very political. They have a PR team. He obviously does not. I thought that was so awesome when he went to the, uh, what is it, the All In conference and just roasted Calacanis for like an hour. Um, so yeah, mad respect. I think he's awesome. And I thought that was one of the best interviews of the year.

That's a great one. Um, I love, love that one. I thought I considered Palmer lucky as well. I decided to go with somebody a little more under the radar, not a Billy, not a billionaire, but somebody who lives like I think a billionaire should. So it's this guy who came to Camp MFM. Which was our kind of like private retreat of 20 or 30 badass people that we did. Who, Al? No, Saeed. Saeed. So Saeed is a guy I didn't know much about. You had mentioned him before. I didn't, I never met him.

He might be a billionaire.

He's also very, very, uh, giving too. He, he gives away a lot of money too.

Yeah, amazing guy. So, so he's mine. That's all right. So those are the Billies of the Year. I, I'll just put it out there. I think Palmer was the right answer. What do you think, Sam? I agree Palmer was the right answer. You're— if you haven't seen the clip of him going to Jason Calacanis's conference, like going to someone's birthday party and roasting them, that was epic.

Andrew, did you hear on our pod when we asked Palmer if he could kick Jason's ass?

Yeah.

When he was talking about his scale, his like how tall he was, he goes, Yeah, he was like, well, you know, if you look at the physics of this, I forget exactly how he explained it, but he was like a very engineer. He goes like, bear beat him up. 6'1". Yeah, he said something like that. Like, it was pretty funny.

All right, let's go to the next category. Sam, you can pick one.

Um, let's talk about the biggest L we each took this year. Okay, Andrew, you go first.

Andrew, by the way, this category, the biggest L, so it's the biggest loss you took, but it can be It doesn't have to be like a big serious thing. It's just, it's just a loss that you put in the, in the loss column, however big or small it was in your life. Yeah.

He says, uh, he goes, don't worry about $3 problems. Worry about, worry about $30,000 problems.

That'll do it.

Uh, Sam, what you got?

That's a great one. This year I met a guy who had an app called Intro. It's a great app, and I agreed to do it because he was like, hey, come try this. And I did. And it was one of the big, bigger mistakes of the year that I made. So basically, I'm on this app called Intro where for a little while people—

you were bragging about how you were crushing it on Intro. How is this the L?

That's such a weak move on my part to do it. So this app I got on there 'cause I was like, oh, you know, and honestly it's fun. It is quite fun to use. It's fun to like meet new people, but people pay me for my time and it's quite addicting because it's really, you can make a substantial amount of money doing that. But if I'm supposed to be such a big swinging dick, if I'm supposed to be a hotshot like I wanna be, I shouldn't be selling my time, or at least I shouldn't be selling my time and keeping the money. I should just give it away. And it was, that was a big, that was a weak move on my part to, uh, be selling my time and I regret doing that.

That's a, that's a great one. I was making fun of you for that. And, uh, and then I was also kind of like, wait, should I be doing that? That is a lot of money. And I was like, no, no, no, don't sell your time. Don't sell your time.

It's such short-term thinking. And you know who really changed my opinion of it? Who actually could be Billy of the Year. What's the guy? Brian Johnson. Brian Johnson from, um, uh, Braintreat. He like kind of like didn't mean to do it, but he like was razzing me on using it. And I was like, you're right.

What did he say?

That wasn't— he was telling us— well, he told a story. He didn't— he wasn't directing it towards me, but he told a story about how he was like, instead of like getting this job, like I should just put more effort into my company. So then in 3 years, this won't even be a problem. Instead of right now, I could just make this money that could temporarily fix this. No, I should go for the long-term fix and make it so like I don't even have to budget ever again.

You know, I see a lot of— so I think like all 3 of us kind of probably grew up not having a ton of money, um, and really, really valuing like every dollar. Right. So like, I remember, um, you know, $1,000 was like a crazy amount of money to me because I could buy an iMac. And if I bought an iMac, then I could have one of my staff do all this work and I could make like $20,000 from it. And so I feel like I still, if I am not careful, I think in those terms. And when someone comes along and offers you $1,000 an hour. It's like completely insane as an opportunity.

Or like 3 grand an hour or 4 grand an hour.

It is crazy. It's amazing. But you get— and I know all these people that are like, I know guys that are worth $50 million and they still manage their own Airbnb bookings. And they'll be like, oh sweet, I tweaked this. I made an extra $300 in cleaning fees or whatever. And I always think like, you know, you guys used a quote before, but it's like, You're playing, you're playing a pennies or so. You're saving pennies in a dollars game. Like, it's just ridiculous.

Yeah, that's— yeah. But some people enjoy that. Like Nathan Barry. Nathan Barry owns ConvertKit. He's probably worth $200+ million based off the valuation of ConvertKit. And he's still— I'll be with him and I'll pull out his phone and he's like messaging Airbnb guests. I'm like, why are you doing this? He goes, I love it. And so in that case, I'm like, all right, cool. I don't like taking intro calls necessarily. Sometimes I do. But, uh, yeah.

And like, but the other, the other, the dangerous thing about that logic. So Ryan Holiday has this great Daily Stoic podcast and recently he had, um, uh, excerpt from Steven Pressfield's book. He's got all these books about kind of discovering your thing and your mastery and art. And all this kind of stuff. And he talks about how people get addicted to patterns. So people can be addicted to love, they can be addicted to money, they could be addicted to, you know, any, almost anything. And the question I always ask myself is, I might love designing the website, or I might love going into the Shopify stats and seeing the sales or doing the Airbnb management. But is that just me addicted to those dopamine hits to distracting myself from my greater purpose, right? From doing something where I have mastery that's new. Am I just going back to the same thing? Right? Like you guys know the joy, there's this amazing confirmation bias joy of reading a book and hearing something you already know confirmed over and over and over again. I'll do this with like a value investing books. Right. And I'll go, oh, I already know that I do that. I feel good. Right. That's actually a waste of time. And so that's the flip side of it.

The, the other one is, uh, my buddy told me this when I, when I'd been working on my startup for 6 or 7 years. And he was like, he's like, he told me, he's like, you know, I just don't get what you're doing. I was like, well, what do you mean? I can explain it. And he's like, no, not the logic of it. He's like, I just feel like, let me ask you a question. If this all went away, is this what you would sign up to go do? Like, would you basically like, like take the example of the guy I was talking to. If you got, if you weren't doing this job, Is it, would you just apply for this job here? No, you would go do something completely different. Like you're here because you got acquired and then you're here and now fast forward 3 or 4 years later, you're still here doing the same job. But if I took this job away, you would never go to a job posting and apply for this job. And he's, and so he was explaining that. He's like, you know, inertia is just a bitch. He's like, whatever you're, an object in motion will stay in motion. Whatever you're doing, you're probably, most likely you're doing it because you were already doing it. Not because you think it's the thing you actually should do in most cases. And so you got to be really aware of that. All right.

Um, so what's yours?

Oh, okay. So, uh, wait, what is the category even? What are we in? Your biggest L. Oh, my biggest L. Okay. I have one that's sort of like yours. I was chasing pennies in a dollar game. So I recently moved and, uh, your boy rents. I'm a renter. And so I moved from one rental to another, uh, new house. And I was like, oh, I love this. I could just like move whenever I want. Don't have to worry about anything. Just called the movers. I broke my lease. I just moved. But, um, my landlord came in and, uh, first, you know, did a walkthrough of the place when I was there. You know, we talked about his, his, you know, his, his family, his history in this house, shook hands in the garage, said, you know, it's been nice having you. All right, see you later. You know, don't worry about all this stuff. Everything looks fine. 3 weeks later, he hits me with like a $20,000 or $30,000 bill. And, um, Makes $20,000. He gives me with the extra $20,000 bill on the move-out for like, you know, scratches and like, you know, stuff like—

was he right?

No, he was not right. It was— and he had— he's a lawyer, so he had baked into the lease that like, hey, anything that's associated with the move-out is your cost. Like, for example, if I fly to California to observe the move-out, you have to pay for my flights, my hotels, my food, my this, my— like, there's just shit in there that was like not like I didn't damage the property. It was just like extra stuff. But he had put it in the lease. I had signed the lease because like, you know, like Andrew, I don't really— I don't really read it. Or if I read it, I'm not going to read it.

What are words?

Dude, I think it's worth fighting those things, by the way.

No, no, it's 100%. Dude, you're just going to war for the sake of war is worth it.

I had the Sam on my shoulder and I had the Andrew on my shoulder and I listened to the Sam and I should have never listened to the Sam. I wasted 4 weeks of my life.

That's like, you're, you're like a bull in a china shop and there's this tiny little fly buzzing on you and you just have to ignore it. There's a great quote on this that someone said to me once when I was going through something similar. And the guy said, never wrestle a pig. You'll both get dirty, but the pig will enjoy it.

Yeah, there's no point. There's no point.

I'm the pig here. I'm the pig here. Well, I had Sean, I had the, you know, my situation. I had something like this go on this year too. And I texted Andrew, I go, what do I do? And he said the same thing. He goes, don't wrestle with pigs or whatever this fucking biblical shit. And I bought into it and it eats me. It eats me every night that someone, that someone got someone.

Sam, you got rats in your granary, bro.

Yeah.

All right, let's do the—

let's do the stupid. Let's go to the next one.

Okay, cool. Um, all right, let's go to the next category. Let's do— we're going to do breakout company, which is sort of the sexy one, and then let's do the unsexy business of the year. So we'll do, we'll do both. First, let's do the, uh, the breakout company of the year. Andrew, you want to go first?

Yeah.

I mean, this is so obvious, but I, and I, I came up with a few others, but I just feel like we're both going to say the same obvious thing where everyone's going to say the same thing. OpenAI, OpenAI, GPT-3 is shocking. I think this is like a watershed moment. And, uh, I, there's nothing else. I haven't seen anything like this in probably 10 years.

I have two words for you guys that, that will change your opinion. Yeah. Liver King. What? This guy called his shot, man. That's the true break— you're gonna tell me that, that, dude, when you have Elon Musk and Sam Altman and $10 billion, that's not a breakout company. That, that's not a breakout. That's just, that's a company that they are who we thought they were. They did exactly what we thought they were gonna do. That, that doesn't count as a breakout.

You're saying you expected, you expected, like when I, I remember a friend of mine called me about a month before they released the chat. And was like, oh my God, it's amazing. And I kind of rolled my eyes. You know, I didn't— wasn't super excited about it, but I have not seen anything this crazy in a very long time. I mean, obviously DALL-E and stuff is insane too, but the Chat, it's just nuts. I've actually stopped using Google a lot of the time and started using the Chat.

Well, look, you took the nerdiest of nerds, the smartest guys on Earth, and you gave them $10 billion and you locked them in a room for 6 years.

Yeah, but like, if you—

if I was like, if it was— If it was 1945 and you're like, what's the breakout project of the year? And I'm like, it's the Manhattan Project. And you're like, oh, well, they got billions of dollars and whatever. It's still fucking crazy. They made a nuclear bomb. It's crazy. This is like a nuclear bomb moment.

It's just like my expectations. They met my expectations. Like, if this were— if this were like— if this was like a second grade report card, it would definitely be like met expectations. There would not be, there would not be like, yeah, this is not an exceed.

They met my expectations. I kind of felt like it was a goofy project. I was like, oh, you know, Google, Apple, all these other people, they're going to do this for, you know, they have a huge incentive, profit incentive. These guys are going like nonprofit when they first started. And it's kind of like all about openness and whatever. It's morphed into something that I didn't expect. And I certainly didn't expect it to do as well as it did given all the star power. I think often think about like supergroups. Supergroups are usually not that good. It was like a supergroup. Yeah.

I mean, the Avengers worked out, but yeah, I feel you.

I feel like in music.

So Sam, your, your, your breakout person or company is Liver King.

Not— call this shot.

Not AI.

I mean, yeah. Or Andrew Tate. But yeah, one of those guys. You want to know how to call this shot? We did an episode.

Where we detailed the leaked emails from the Liver King where he's like, yo, I'm going to take a bunch of steroids. I'm going to build this brand and then I'm going to sell like $100 million worth of products. That's what I'm going to do. And then he did it.

So that's so much more dope.

And he goes, I was told I shouldn't mention who at the time, by the way, was 22, I think, right?

Yeah, exactly. At the time, he's probably 21 or 22 years old.

And he was wearing double pop neon collars with Steve Jobs.

Exactly.

Very embarrassing.

Put up a photo of him doing this announcement at the Apple conference where he's wearing a double polo neon popped collar. Uh, it's, it's really incredible. You wouldn't think that that guy's gonna rule the world, but he, but, but Paul Graham knew that he would. So he's, here's what he wrote about Sam Altman back in 2009. He goes, I shouldn't mention a YC founder. Um, but Sam Altman cannot be stopped by flimsy rules. If he wants to be on this list, he is going to be. Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I'm advising startups. On question of design, I ask, what would Steve do? But on a question of strategy or ambition, I ask, what would Samma do? Uh, what, when, what I learned meeting Samma is that the doctrine applies, the doctrine of the elect applies to startup. It applies in a way that, that it applies way less than most people think. Startup investing is not about picking winners you think might win a horse race because there are a few people with such force of will that they are going to get whatever they want. And now you fast forward 13 years. Yeah. The guy, you know, basically creates this, you know, what's gonna be a, a mult— probably a multi-hundred billion dollar company, OpenAI, and brings, you know, one of the most magical technical, like magical technology experiences, which is if you're, if you're using DALL-E or GPT-3, he created it.

And he wasn't even that successful back then, by the way. I don't think he had, I think he, I think he had sold a company, but he sold it, I think for less than they raised.

I don't think he sold it even at that point. So let me see when it was called Loop.

Yeah, it was Loop.

Um, and I think they made, they sold it for about $43 million. He sold it 3 years later. So this was, He was at the beginning of Looted. He sold it for $43 million. And, uh, and I think, and I remember reading about the sale. There was some, there's some interesting stuff about how he, uh, like they sold it for less than it, than it was funded for, right? Which is like, you know, considered an L. Uh, but he, but he sold it in a way that he was able to pocket a few million bucks. He then invested in Airbnb right away and was the first seed investor in Airbnb. He's got this like, you know, he went on kind of an epic run post that. Um, yeah, he's a crazy guy.

Yeah, I think that's, uh, that's gotta be the breakout is I agree. Maybe Sam Altman this time can beat the Liver King, but it's close.

We can all agree, you know, tomato, tomato.

The most impressive thing about Liver King is he's not a good looking dude. Like so many of these guys you see and they're influencers and they're like super jacked and handsome. He's not a good looking guy.

He's my example when I say, I told Sahil Bloom this because Sahil Bloom is like the good looking version of me. I was like, hey, if I can't be good looking, I'm going to be interesting looking. And that's what the Liver King did. He's not good looking, but he decided to be really fucking interesting looking. And that works just as well.

I then will have to go with Sam Altman gets it this time.

All right, let's do unsexy business.

I'll do it. I didn't even know what you meant by that. You go first.

An unsexy business is like when we do our blue collar, blue collar Billy of the Week. What do we call that shit? The blue collar side hustle., it's like a, a business that's not artificial intelligence or flying cars or whatever. It's just like a boring, unsexy business. How are you confused by this? This is like the premise of our podcast, but I don't know.

All right. Well, what podcast? Uh, so what's yours?

All right. I'm gonna go with, um, I could go with, uh, egg cartons, but I think I've kind of beat that one to death. Theeggcartons.com. If you haven't heard me rant about that, go, go look up that episode. That is, Honestly, that is the most remarkable one, this woman Sarah Moore. But if not that, I'm going to go with one we haven't talked about that much on here. It's called Ant Flow. Have you heard of this business? No.

So what, are you saying the word ant? I like ant.

I'm saying the word flow. Yeah, Ant Flow.

Okay. All right. You could say it your way.

Sorry.

I just wanted to make sure that it's the word that we're using.

Okay. Yeah.

So Ant Flow is a business that is basically, um, it's period products. I don't know how I'm supposed to say this, but for, uh, it's period products. So basically you go to a public restroom inside of any university, a stadium, whatever. In the women's restroom, they, uh, should have— and now in many states they're mandating that you have to have, you know, tampons, pads, products for women. And so, um, normally these were coming in a dusty, raggedy container, uh, with like really poor hygiene. You gotta like open the thing and everyone's like trying to use toilet paper to like touch the thing to open it. And it's like really gross. I mean, this is like, you know, there's like literally like blood on these products. So it's not like a very— it's not something that you want to touch. It's not a sexy experience. And what she did was she brought a sexy experience to a very unsexy industry. So if you go look at their dispensers, They basically made like the Tesla of, of dispensers, and they install it on the wall. It's got this great brand. She's this great founder, and they are just cleaning up. So they are getting contracts with universities, with what— and these are multi-year contracts. It's installed on the wall. This thing is never going to get changed. There's going to be no churn, is my prediction. And it's sort of like they, they install the dispenser, and then they— you have to buy the products as they, as they're used or as they've run out. And, um, and she calls herself the CEO, the chief estrogen officer. She's just gone all in on like building this company as a woman-led company that's like making this one kind of crappy experience better. And I asked her, I was like, did you invest in this?

Yeah.

I was like, I've never been in a woman's restroom before. Uh, what's the current, like, who's the incumbent? Who, who are you competing against? And she's like, literally it's a guy named like a brand called Bob and Rick. And like Bob and Rick's dispensers are like the thing. And you know, it's this terrible experience and we're making it better. And so they're at like, you know, they're definitely, you know, sort of like high 7 figures, uh, uh, run rate where they have all these great contracts and they, you know, they're, they're the official dispenser for all the Apple stores and for like, you know, the whole state of, uh, you know, I don't know, Utah or whatever, some state that's like mandated this can happen. And I think once one state does it, all these states are gonna do it. So I think they're very well positioned to take a very boring niche and build a pretty badass business.

And she's a Thiel Fellow, only 25 years old. Yeah. Claire Coder, I think her name is. That's right. That's a good one. Do you have one, Andrew?

Yeah. Okay. So, um, hotels are constantly trying to save money, especially chains. And I don't know if you've ever gone to like a hotel chain, you'll notice that on the wall, if it's like a cheaper one, they'll have like dispensers for shampoo and soap and it's all refillable. Right. So the idea is like, You used to go to a hotel and there'd be a bar of soap in a box and you open the bar of soap and you use it to clean your ass and then they have to throw it away. Right. So, um, it's a huge waste. They're constantly throwing money away. And so hotels have moved to these refillable things, but one thing that, um, they can't do is toilet paper. So when you go and there's a full roll of toilet paper and you use some of it, you know, no one wants to go into a hotel and be like, oh, what the heck? There's like a little bit of toilet paper left. There's obviously. Someone just here who used it. And so there's someone— I just heard about this business. It hasn't launched yet, but I thought it was fascinating. Basically, it's a dispenser for toilet paper. So it's on— it actually embeds in the wall and you basically pull out almost like you would Kleenex, perfectly portioned toilet paper. And I don't think this would necessarily work at like a Four Seasons or a high-end place, but certainly for like a Marriott or Hilton, I think they could save tons of money. So I thought that was just incredibly boring and, quite interesting.

That's a great one.

All right. That's a good one.

There was one that got big doing that with, uh, with the shampoo bottles back in the day. They would take the once used shampoo bottle and they would recycle it basically. And they, they were just like, hey, hotel, we'll pay you nothing for it, but we'll come collect it for you. We'll just take it off your hands because you're just, this is just trash for you. And they created a business out of that.

So have you guys invested in any boring businesses? Like I, you know, I gave Nick Huber a little bit of money. I think you did. I've done Huber.

Yeah.

What else? What other boring stuff have you guys done?

Uh, I mean, Enduring, so they buy, you know, a lot of kind of boring businesses, but that's kind of tech.

I mean, like, I mean, like brick and mortar, uh, development of real estate, like townhomes.

I feel like we— it's weird because I feel like half of what we talk about on this podcast is like these boring brick and mortar businesses, and yet we like— and we like fetishize them. We don't own that many of them.

Like, do you own any of them?

Look, yeah, I own an air ambulance business. I, you know, I own a deli and bakery, bunch of kind of restaurants and that kind of stuff.

Wait, what? But I want to get an ambulance. Oh, like helicopter?

Air ambulance. So if you're like in Mexico and you need to be brought home and you've, you've had a surgery or something, we facilitate that. It's a very good business, but I really want more of those things. Have you guys ever thought about like starting like a fund around that or something? Because I feel like Seems like a lot of work. Made money. It's kind of like third world countries. Yeah.

I like to visit. I don't want to live there.

You don't have to operate. You don't have to operate. It's just invest in all these cash flowing, boring businesses.

Whenever people talk about that, I'm like, where do you find that? Like, like do you go on eBay? Like, where do you, like, where do you find this air ambulance thing? You know what I mean?

Yeah. It was like, we had to, we met someone through a friend of a friend. It's always like someone's dad. Right. It's like, oh, You know, his, his dad wants to retire and the kids don't want the business or something like that. Or these things happen at the golf course.

Yeah. I don't know.

Yeah. I should never be doing that. I think I got like really tech brainwashed because I basically, I started a sushi restaurant, then I moved to Australia and did like a biotech thing, but then I moved to Silicon Valley when I was 24. And I was like, basically I just got like really deep in the Silicon Valley kind of ethos and game. And that was my, that's my network. And that's my, my skills were around internet companies. And so I think it was kind of the right move to go deep there and try to like win in that world. Um, cause I think you don't have to win in all games. So like, you know, I have a fund to do startup investing. Like if I do good with, if I do great with startup investing, I'll do great. I don't really need to also do great with a very different style of investing. So I think I'm curious about it, but, um, you know, do I want to like sort of restart the learning curve in a new way?

One, you know, you guys have this crazy advantage of, you know, I think your, your rolling fund does well because of the podcast, right? So if you guys go on and you say, hey, who has a granddad or a father or a mother who owns this family business that wants to sell? I feel like you'd get mobbed. There's, there's something there.

All right. Sean@seanpuri.com.

All those leads can go to me then if you guys don't want them.

Let's, let's see what comes in. I'll share all the interesting, I'll filter all the interesting ones for you, Andrew. So sean@seanpuri.com, email me. Your, your dad, your granddad, your uncle's business that we could either take like a minority stake or maybe he's looking to retire and sell. Let's see, let's see what we got. Um, okay. So those are the— wait, I gotta, I gotta say mine.

Um, dude, you know, I, I did a, I, I was reading about Coffeezilla going deep on Andrew Tate's thing. Do you guys know how Andrew Tate makes money?

I do, but go ahead.

He basically, he has this, well, Okay, fine. You got that smug look on your face.

Well, isn't it a sexy business? It's like a camgirl's business, right? Like, it's the definition of a sexy business.

And, uh, I considered saying him for breakout person, but I, you know, he's obviously pretty controversial. So I didn't want to like, I'm— the breakout is I've never seen somebody go from nobody to everywhere, all the time, in your face, the way this guy has. Like, he built a brand crazy in like 7 months or something like that. Like, had you ever heard this word before, Andrew Tate, last year?

Like, no, no.

I think he was the most Googled person on Earth this year.

That's crazy to me. Is that crazy?

And he says it when he, and he does his interviews, he goes, he goes, MrBeast has to spend $5 million and blow up, blow up a bus in order to get 10 million views.

I said, I just talk.

Yeah. And it's true. It's true. The guy's way of speaking and the things he says are so compelling. And then he built this viral engine where his, all Hustlers University is, is basically, yo, post cut, cut up clips of Tate. Everywhere and then go comment and basically in the comments revere me. And that's how, you know, and then everybody who signs up for the university, you're going to make money doing that. Like that's basically the core job is like, go promote me.

Um, it's crazy, man. It is crazy.

It's a multi-level marketing scheme, just promoting him. He is the product.

It's wild. All right. So what's, uh, do we vote on that one or just move to a different topic?

Uh, Yeah. Vote.

I forget the—

I don't remember.

Let's just move on.

Andrew's toilet paper thing. Let's say. Okay, let's do best investment. So the best investment you made, and then we're going to do worst investment also. So let's start with best investment. Let's go, Sam. What was the best investment you made in 2022?

Financially? Fucking none. This year was, in terms of money, this was horrible. The two best investments I made were getting fitness coaches. So nutritionist and a lifting coach, a fitness coach. And then also this pod, this is like the first time, Sean, this year where like, and this is actually one of my most proud moments where I've been walking around and I get noticed maybe 1 to 3 times a day. And this is the first time that I'm like, oh wow, Sean, the work that you and I have done over 400 or 500 episodes, it's like properly paid off. Yeah. So, uh, that's this pod is this, this year it felt different.

Has it ever, has it ever been annoying or weird?

Yeah. One time, like, It's— there's been multiple times where Sarah and I are having like a serious conversation or we're arguing or we're having like a contentious conversation and someone pops up and like, you got to like, be like, oh, hey.

Yeah.

Hi.

Hi.

You got to like turn it on. And that kind of sucks. It's like, you know, like when you and your wife get in a fight, but then you got to get in the car together to go to like your friend's house for dinner and you got to put on like the performance of the century. That's kind of like how it feels sometimes.

There's a— there's a— what's her name from The Hunger Games?

Jennifer Lawrence. Her name.

Laurence, she talked about how she can be nice to 1,000 people, but if one time she's fighting with her boyfriend and she's kind of a bitch to somebody, they'll go on Reddit and post about it. And she feels like you basically always have to be that person, and it's only a matter of time until you snap. Knowing you, it's only a matter of time.

One time we were at, um, you know, we're exploring the pregnancy thing this year, and one time we were at the baby, baby doctor's, and someone in the waiting room said something to me, and, uh, I was, I was, I didn't, I was rude.

I'll take your, I accept your apology there. Um, all right. I'll do a quick one. Okay. So best financial investment. I invested in this company called Triple Whale. That's basically like a, uh, it's a tool for Shopify store owners. So it helps you like see your dashboard and, uh, make sure your ads are working well. And they have like a bunch of different features. Uh, I invested in this thing cause I, I was like, oh, I like this. I want to use this for my e-com store. Maybe I should just invest in it. Really didn't think this was going to be— I thought if, if you— and I did this, by the way, I took my portfolio and I ranked like, what do I think are going to be the breakouts and what do I think are least likely to be the breakouts? Because I, I suspected I might be surprised. I was very surprised. So I think our $75,000 investment in Triple Whale is currently worth $3.3 million. And so, uh, that's been the, the biggest breakout from the fund so far. And it's would have been one of the 5 that I did not guess would be this explosive rocket ship. Cause like, that's just not how I thought about it back then. Like when I saw it, it looked like this cool analytics tool for e-com, you know, Shopify stores. I don't know how big that is. I don't know how fast it'll grow. It's been insane. So that's my financial one. And then I'll also say, um, we did Camp MFM and that was an amazing investment. I'll tell you a little, little story about it. So we did this camp. 20, 30 people. We go to North Carolina and we fly in this NBA trainer. So we pay for his kind of him and his buddy, like their, their, uh, flights and hotels or whatever. We rent these Airbnbs, we do the camp. It's great. Everybody chipped in, I think like, uh, $1,000 or $1,500, $2,000 or something. Yeah. I thought, I thought that would cover the cost. Didn't quite cover it. I think we're in the hole like $15,000 or something like that. No problem. Uh, amazing experience just for the basketball, the fun, meeting people, all that good stuff. But something kind of crazy happened. Um, we tweeted out that we were hanging with MrBeast or something like that, or that, uh, that maybe the pod we have, we recorded with MrBeast. And a guy saw that and started following Ben Levy. Ben Levy then checks out this guy's profile. Um, oh, this guy's in the crypto space, DMs him. Oh, let's talk. You know, maybe they'll advertise with us. We end up getting an acquisition offer from this person. That's not the deal we ended up going with, but it gave us the leverage in the deal we did end up going with., and like opened this door into acquisition. And it's all like, if we hadn't tweeted out that thing that we were doing with MrBeast, I don't think this person would've followed. And then I don't think that conversation would've happened. And so the world works in these really funny ways where this like kind of amazing acquisition we had this year, I don't know, they could have just as easily not happened or been for a lot less had we not like just done this totally unrelated thing.

That's good.

Good things happen.

It's great.

All right, Andrew, what you got?

That's crazy.

Yeah, that's really cool.

I like those.

And I think there's going to be a bunch of those venture businesses that fail. That's another one. If you're a venture business and you're not going to be able to raise the next round because the whole market has turned or whatever, uh, it's not over. And there's like a way to structure these deals. I think most founders just throw in the towel, don't know what to do with that asset.

But, uh, again, there's a lot, there's a lot of these businesses where you, let's say a business gets to $5 or $10 million of revenue and they're burning, you know, $1 million, $2 million a month because they're like venture-backed or whatever. To the founder, you know, they're just like, okay, well, this is worth nothing. You know, let's go sell to Facebook and we'll take an acquihire. And they actually will throw out their existing business. That business has value. And people like us and Enduring will buy it and turn it around and make You know, make it into something that'll actually make them proud. Um, so yeah, I mean, it's, it all is not lost.

Enduring did that with Up Council. That's what, that was the example.

Totally.

Can we, um, we gotta do worst. Let me pitch my worst one is, uh, personal real estate. Like I bought real estate over the last 2 years and I'm in, I'm, I've made money on, on all of it so far. And like, technically speaking, like it's all like gonna beat the stock market. Well, that's easy because the stock market sucks. But like some of my investments, like my Airbnb, it's still like an 8% return or something like that, but it's just a fucking headache, dude. I regret buying real estate. I wish I didn't own any real estate and I wish I just invested in other people's funds. Yeah, that's my worst investment. It just, it's caused me a disproportional amount of headache.

Yeah, that's a good one. Uh, all right, mine is, uh, mine's really hard to choose. So many losers to choose from this year. So Uh, so people know my portfolio is essentially tech stocks and crypto. Um, tech stocks down somewhere between 40 and 85% this year, crypto down 75% this year, or sometimes 100% in certain cases. Uh, I think Luna has to be my pick because it went to zero. Um, and so that was just like, you know, a 100% loss that happened in like 3 days.

So last year, this episode last year. Here's, here's Sean's company to watch: Terra/Luna. That was his answer. I said company to watch.

And it sure did give you some entertainment.

Yeah, you want— you watched it go down. And then his prediction was that the Winklevoss twins, the Winklevoss twins, are going to be richer than Zuckerberg. So not in one year.

Like, that is a long-term prediction.

But you, you bet on Luna.

So you're going to double down. This is the question. Are you going to double down on your Winklevii prediction and what's the timeline and what's the punishment if you lose?

No, no, these are wild, crazy predictions. These are not supposed to be things I think are going to happen. They're sort of like far-fetched predictions. No, I don't. I don't want to double down on that. I would say that's looking way less likely now than it did then. But, you know, it's basically like Facebook stock got crushed a little bit this year, too. I had calculated that— I think I forgot what it is now, but I think Bitcoin would have needed to be at— if Bitcoin got to $2 million a coin, then the Winklevoss and Facebook had like, you know, uh, you know, kept its value or something like that based on how much Bitcoin they owned. I thought, okay, at that point they'll have surpassed, uh, Zuck, assume. But the hedge was always if Zuck owns any Bitcoin, then they can really never pass him. Um, you know, if he, if he put a minority stake in, but I don't think Zuck cares if the Winklevii are rich or not. I don't think that's a concern of his.

So what's yours, Andrew?

Um, so mine is really just venture in general. So we, I've been doing angel investing for 10+ years and I think I've done well. Um, on a cash basis, I've got a lot of money back, but I haven't actually, like, if I think about it, Um, even if I've made 15 to 30% a year, I haven't had access to that cash the entire time. Whereas in my main business, when I buy a business and I make, you know, make 20 or 30% return, I'm actually getting that cash and I'm compounding it. And then I'm investing it and doing more and more and more. And I think psychologically there's a big difference between owning a whole bunch of businesses and doing $50 million in EBITDA. Versus owning a bunch of stakes that are illiquid in a bunch of venture businesses where maybe you'll get your money in 10 to 15 years. And so I don't think that it's necessarily saying I don't want to invest in venture going forward, but it's just been— I think it's been a bad— if I think of it as if my goal is to maximize my capital and feel rich, it's not the best way to do that. I think that I'm much better off incubating businesses and buying businesses because it's a very steady 15 to 30% cash return. And I feel it, I feel the win in a much bigger way. And I think that like anyone over the last 2 years, there's some businesses where I look at the valuation I invested at and I knew it at the time. I sucked it up and was like, fuck, you know, this is just the world we're in. But there's some businesses with like now maybe like $4 million of revenue and they raised it like $100 million valuation. And I'm just like, okay, that's just gone.

Yeah. Well, that sucks. I don't know. We all just, we all just said horrible things that we did this year.

I don't know. It's hard to remember. Just bask in the, uh, in the, in the L. Look at, you know, you're going to let— you can't, you can't have a non-error rate, you know, like you can't be an investor and not have a portfolio of bad investments, of bad decisions. Right? Like that is, There's not really a thing if you're going to do this, uh, and you're going to take, you know, the appropriate amount of risk that would get a reward. You can't have a 0% error rate. And so I don't think it's anything to be shy of. Also, you know, I think a lot of people, you know, have portfolios that are down this year just by the nature of like what's going on in the market.

There's that, uh, there's that logic brain coming in to save you.

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned.

No outta sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot.

Grow better.

Um, Sam, what topic do you want to go to? Which category?

Dude, I want to combine book of the year and favorite podcast or newsletter or person you subscribe to. So I want to like, we'll do a few actionable things, like best things that we, um, like best bits of content. Mine, well, for favorite person, I started, favorite person is, it's two. You already named one of them, Paul Graham. Dude, Paul Graham is such a beautiful writer. I started reading all of his work again this year. He's such an awesome writer. He talks about money, living, happiness, raising a family. He's a really good writer. I love reading him. The other one is Cultural Tutor. Do you guys know who Cultural Tutor is on Twitter?

Never heard of it.

So it's this person who— I don't think they're crazy popular, but I'm going to give you an example of a thing that they tweeted. So it's called, it's called the Cultural Tutor: A Beautiful Education. That's their thing. And so they'll do like posts about like, um, uh, I'll, I'll, I'll, let me find a good one. But it's all about culture. So basically right now, uh, minimalism is a thing. So if you look at like a lot of new building, minimalism is a thing. And the Cultural Tutor will do this thread saying, uh, this is actually pretty lame about this architecture. It's pretty boring. Here's the ornate stuff that we used to do and here's why we used to do it and here's why we do minimalism now., and it makes you like question, uh, certain things that we're doing. Or another one could be, um, um, here's like a famous, uh, piece of art and it was actually revolutionary. Uh, and here's, or here's why Mona Lisa, here's why it looks like her eyes are following you. And this doesn't seem interesting now, but it was interesting because back then here's how they used to do things and here's what was actually revolutionary about that painting. Things like that. I love the Cultural Tutor. It's a really good follow.

That's a good one. You said you were going to combine that with Book of the Year.

Book of the Year, Blitz. Have you ever read Blitz, Andrew? It's about the story of drug use during World War II. Frame-breaking book.

Read it. But it's— I mean, you've got meth and you've got Hitler. I mean, what could go wrong?

It's a frame-breaking book. Basically, the whole hypothesis was that during World War II, you know how like they gave soldiers like pieces of chocolate and cigarettes to keep them happy? Well, in Nazi Germany era, they gave them meth. And one of the, one of the reasons it says Hitler was being crazy and making a lot of the decisions that he did, not only was he like a hateful, crazy person, but they're saying it was also because he was on meth the whole time and he was going nutty. And one of the reasons why he killed himself was he basically ran out of drugs in the last 2 weeks in his bunker. What do you got there, Sean? Is that Blitz right there?

No, this is not Blitz. I'm looking at the book I think I'm going to choose. But Andrew, go next.

And so I read that book, The Patriarch. Yeah.

It's so good. It's fat. It's— I read about a quarter of it. It was great. But, but, um, he, he'll do like the 1, 1.5 hour summary. And so A, it's a great way to remind yourself. Like I read Titan a couple of years ago about John D. Rockefeller and I re-listened to it. It reminded me of a lot of the lessons and then B, it'll actually tell me, do I want to read this book? Is this person actually interesting or just give me a cursory understanding of that person? Um, so I absolutely love that one. Um, in terms of books, um, the one that I loved over the last year is The Operator, which is about David Geffen. The guy is an absolute lunatic. It's fascinating. Like the picture of him, you know, why is he the way he is? Deep dive on David Geffen.

Started— he started Geffen Records.

And records. I mean, this guy, this guy was like, he's touched so many industries, you know, huge musicians.

But he's a movie guy too at this point.

Like, yeah, I mean, yeah, fascinating career, but also an incredible investor., and capital allocator and stuff. But what a fascinating book. And it's one of those ones where it's very unflattering, but it's incredible.

Okay.

That's good. He's worth like $5 or $10 billion at this point. I mean, he's like a big deal.

All right. I'll do, um, book. I'm going to have, I got two, two picks that I thought were good. Uh, I only read probably 3 or 4 books this year, but, uh, this one. So Think on These Things by Krishnamurti. That's like a, uh, life philosophy book that, uh, bro, I love.

You said that was your favorite book one time and I asked you how far into the book you've read and you said you're on the first 3 pages.

Yeah, actually, uh, I'm only about 30 pages in now. Uh, so I've gone from 3 to 30 in a year. I think this might've been my pick last year too. Um, this book is so heavy, man. It's got like, uh, let me see how far I am.

Dude, it's not. It's like 250 pages.

I'm 110 pages in. Um, so, so I'm 110 pages in and, uh, it's, it's a, it's an amazing book. The second one is, uh, Andrew, you probably read this, Richer, Wiser, Happier.

It's a, it's a great book for anybody who likes investing.

Um, and basically, yeah, it's a great book for anybody who likes investing. I think it's a, it's a, it's a fun read. So, uh, those are my two favorite books that I read this year. And then podcast, newsletter, or person, I'm going to give 2 kind of shoutouts. A person one that's a little under the radar is called 10K Diver. Do you follow this guy on Twitter? So yeah, they're good. 10K Diver, the bio just, it's the, literally it's the number 10, then K diver. Uh, it says, I help people understand the fundamentals of finance and investing. And, um, I think it's called 10K Diver because it's like the Form 10-K, like the, the, the, that's like the the name of the forum or whatever. So, uh, he just gives really great threads about like very basic fundamentals of finance. And I find myself reading these and thinking, oh, surely I know, you know, about whatever topic it is. Certainly I know about stock-based compensation. Certainly I know, you know, whatever, cash flow. And then you read it and you're like, I always learn something from it. And I think he's a great writer. He's very clear. He's very helpful. Um, I just think it's a great Great one to follow. It's like, you know, there's a lot of junk food on Twitter and I would say that 10K Diver is not junk food. I even took his like Maven course. Um, but did you really? I only attended like half of the sessions just cause like, you know, it's hard to make that much time. Um, super interesting dude. And, uh, and I, you know, I, I don't know, the course wasn't like mind-breaking for me, but, um, I don't know. It's, it's all good stuff. It's all good stuff. And so I really, I really liked, uh, I really liked the way this guy thinks. Um, okay, so that's the, the person one. And okay, book. So I did book. All right, we're good, we're good on those. We all, all three did ours. Yeah. All right, cool. Yeah. What, uh, what topic you want to do next?

Wild predictions.

Okay, what you got?

Mine's easy.

I think, by the way, you want me to read your wild predictions from last year? Should I read our predictions?

Yeah.

All right, our predictions from last year.

Sam's was Um, San Francisco is going to be cool again.

I think San Francisco will be cool again. You think you hit that or no?

No, but I don't think I'm, I, I, I'm, I early, not off my prediction, but I'm, but I'm, yeah, I'm a little early. It's going to come back, man. San Francisco, I went back there. It is awesome. San Francisco is awesome.

Yeah. You said something about the YouTuber Meet Kevin and that, uh, he will be like, you know, his company's going to break out or something like that. I don't know what that prediction was.

Oh yeah. I totally was wrong.

Uh, totally at-home diagnostics, you said was the industry to watch.

Yeah. Nothing happened there.

And then you said overrated the, uh, creator economy slash Web3. Nailed it.

Yeah, I nailed that one.

Um, Andrew, your predictions were that high, high salary inflation is not here to stay. Companies are going to outsource and offshore, um, talent. What do you think about that one?

I still think it's right. I think that it just took— I think we're just seeing it now, basically, as these tech layoffs happen.

I think they're going to go global, right? Um, and then you said overrated, you said NFTs. Um, I think we, I think we structured this differently last time. We did like companies to watch, overrated, thing to watch. I said overrated was SPACs. I think that was right. Um, I said company to watch Terra Luna. That was way wrong. And my crazy prediction was that the Wicklevi will end up richer than Zuck, which which is, you know, early, like we already talked about. Okay, so this year, what do you got for a prediction or predictions for 2023?

So we structured it differently, but let me say mine too because they're fast. One, Elon Musk either dies or he— or he gets canceled, or he gets canceled in an incredibly, like, serious way, and Tesla stock completely tanks. The second thing is So OpenAI, OpenAI, something involving regulation is going to happen because like there's already been little bits and pieces. Like if you Google or if you use OpenAI and you ask them about coal, they say like, you know, we think that climate change is wrong, yada, yada, yada. Or if you ask them about race, they say something like, you know, race is a social and cultural construct and we don't, we don't want to give our opinion on this. Like they kind of like, but they actually do insert their opinion. And I think that there's going to be some weird shit going on where, like, right now, like, like, for example, they'll like say like, hey, we'll give you $100,000 for 10% of your company if you build on top of our platform. And there should be all these new tools, but it's all going to be underlined with this like potential massive bias that OpenAI has. And I think there's got to be some type of regulation around it. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. Andrew, what you got? Predictions. And by the way, these are supposed to be— we said, we said wild predictions. So again, we're not saying We're sure these are going to happen. These are like sort of interesting predictions.

Yes. You remember like 5 years ago everyone was saying Apple doesn't innovate anymore, they can't do AI. And what was happening is that Google, at least historically, has innovated in public. So they're constantly, constantly releasing new features and showing off these kind of half-baked ideas that are in their R&D labs, whereas Apple has always been very opaque. They'll work on something for 7 years, they won't share it, and then all of a sudden they'll release it. And I think that same thing is happening with GPT-3 and AI. I do believe that while right now I can say I'm using GPT-3 instead of Google, I think Google has probably been working on something similar for years and years and years and is probably very far ahead, maybe not ahead of GPT-3 necessarily, but that they have their own offering. And so I just think it's those— there's going to be a lot of, a lot of other players in that space coming out over the next probably 3 to 6 months. Um, and that it will be— there's going to be an ecosystem of offerings similar to AWS and Azure and Google Cloud. I think it'll be the same thing with GPT-3. Google, uh, maybe Microsoft. I don't know who else.

Cool. Um, Sam, I agree with your Elon one. That's one of my predictions. I think he gets canceled in a big way or one of his companies goes broke. I think that is a, uh, a good wild prediction. Um, but I'm actually not going to predict.

I think that, yeah, he, he, he's going to get me too'd. I think.

Yeah.

I feel like he already has and somehow in the already, I mean, he already did. I mean, he, yeah, kind of, I think he's uncancelable kind of given all this stuff.

I think people think that and then it's going to get the number of fans still going to happen. I think he's going to can't, they're going to cancel the uncancelable. Um, but I'm not really going to predict anything that's like the macro cause A, who the hell knows? And B, who the hell cares? I'm actually going to take a page out of, out of the book of, of something we respect highly here on MFM, calling your own shot. So my predictions are about myself. So here's my, here's my predictions about myself. I predict that this is the year that I get ripped. I predict that I turn the corner and, and then not like, oh, I get back in shape. No, Your boy's never been in this kind of shape. So I'm gonna get ripped for the first time. And, uh, I also believe that I'm going to start a company that is, um, special. I don't want, I don't want to put a dollar amount because these special things take time. So it's not going to happen in one year, but I'm going to do, I'm going to start the thing that will be my kind of like, um, the thing I'm known for, for a very long time, the legacy thing, or the thing that, you know, builds the, the, the big, the big wealth, the big empire. I think it's gonna happen this year. So those are my predictions, uh, for myself for 2023.

Well, I'm happy you called your shot. I actually agree with you. I think you're gonna do that too. I don't, I think you're, you're more than likely gonna create that company than you are get ripped.

But, uh, you're just giving me that fuel. Thank you for the fuel.

Are you willing to take drugs to get ripped?

No, I'm all natural.

You're unwilling to take drugs?

Not like the Liver King.

Okay, well then, yeah, then I think that you're— well, dude, getting ripped is hard, man. I'm pretty ripped right now and everyone keeps asking me what I did. And you know what I did? I just didn't eat. And it's really, really a pain in the butt. I don't really like doing it. And so I don't know, like, I don't think you need to be that ripped. What's your definition of ripped, I guess?

Visible abs.

Yeah, you got to get to, what is it, 12% body fat?

12% is not— you can be— you can live a good life and be at 12%, but below 10, where I am trying to get, it, it sucks. I'm just hungry and cold.

Yeah, I'm not going to do that, but it'll be, it'll be visible. All right, um, let's do another one. Uh, coolest moment of the year for you. What was the coolest moment of the year? Uh, Personally that you had?

Dude, mine is like, it kind of felt like we crossed a chasm for like, kind of like this podcast being well known. And like, that's a little, I didn't want to do a selfish one. Honestly, I almost said you selling. Yeah. Uh, I almost, I wanted to say you selling the Milk Road. I actually did think that was cool. Um, uh, the, the seeing you do that, I got a lot of joy out of and a lot of like even though I wasn't involved, it was like I felt a sense of pride of like we came together.

The advisor, so you know, you were involved.

Yeah, so feel free to send me some money. But, uh, uh, no, I think like us getting popular this year, like it really felt like this is the first time it happened.

I agree. Uh, something has changed. Andrew, what about you? Coolest moment of the year for you?

So I've talked about this before, but I feel like what I actually, if I really am honest, what I like about business aside from making money and that making my life easier is meeting interesting people. And, uh, you know, I, I got to know, uh, Andrew Huberman this year and we ended up partnering. So basically like I've got a foundation, I've been giving a bunch of money away to science. And so I met Huberman maybe—

is that who you wrote the check to?

A year or two ago?

You wrote the check to science?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Just science. But, but, um, I met Huberman like a year or two ago. And basically we did this thing where when people subscribe to his premium podcast, a bunch of the money goes to, um, basically funding science and research that he wants to fund. And I basically said, look, I'll double, I'll double every single dollar that you donate. And so we've got this partnership and I just love that kind of stuff where I can work with someone who I respect and do something that I think is good.

So that's a cool moment. You're, you've become a benefactor.

What's, what's, what do you mean? Like a patron of science?

You get to use one of these words that's like from the 1800s when you do things like that.

Yeah. It feels good.

It's fun, dude. And plus you have an excuse now to hang out with the dreamiest guy on earth, Andrew Huberman.

Yeah, totally.

Make Sam jealous anytime you want.

Um, for sure.

All right. My coolest moment of the year was you were there for this, Sam, when we were at Camp MFM. And we got to go do a tour of Duke's basketball stadium and we're in there and then we were sitting down, they gave us the talk. It was a good experience at that point, but there was a moment that made it a good experience to a keystone memory, which was when I bet MrBeast $10,000 that I could hit a shot from half court and I hit it.

And the whole thing— On number 5 or something.

Yeah, like the third attempt hit. I was like, I'll again hit this before you. The third attempt I hit it. Don Cabrio, it was, it was an amazing fun moment. It made that, that trip a little bit more, more special and memorable. Did he ever pay you? This is where it comes, this is where it gets interesting. It's also actually my biggest L of the year because he didn't pay me, and then I had to follow up, and I followed up 2 times, 3 times, and now I'm basically begging for the money by the third time. You go from like first time you kind of crack it, you're busting balls a little bit, like, hey bitch, pay me. And then the second time you're like, hey man, uh, didn't pay. By the time it's the third one, now this awesome dope moment has turned into an L because now I'm having to go.

Yeah, I think, I think, I think you need to take him to small claims court.

Exactly. That's how I'm doing that via iMessage. And I was like, We have it on video.

This is— we have the bet up. We have—

we—

dude, we have the bet on video.

I know, I know. And so this, this, this baller moment of confidence of being like, hey, bet you 10 grand I can hit this shot, and then actually hitting it, uh, with, you know, everybody there in the center of, you know, Cameron Stadium, Cameron Indoor Stadium, turned into a bit of a small boy moment of being like, hey, hey, um, hey, did you have a chance to— hey, just, I know you're busy, just, uh, You think he can? I'll send the details again. Maybe it's on my end.

Dude, is he lying about every other donation he's ever done?

CoffeeZilla, get on it. Are there thousands of victims like me?

That's crazy. I can't believe he didn't pay you. He doesn't seem like someone who would do that.

He blamed his assistant. He's like, ah, fuck, sorry, my assistant did. I'm going to have to yell at him. Yeah, right. Okay.

Let's do, um, let's do the craziest, most delusional person of the year that we met. This one's for, for us, it's probably easy. It's Billy McFarland. Did you hear that?

Oh yeah.

Did you hear that interview, Sean or Andrew?

No, I did. I didn't hear it. I don't like when you guys interview people like that. Cause I know, I know it's like interesting and stuff, but I feel like if you, if even if only 5% of people hear that and go, hey, he actually sounds like a good guy. I just think like he's going to go and fuck more people over. I don't know. What do you guys think? I didn't—

and Sean punishes us when we do those bad things. He goes and listens to All In instead. He doesn't listen to the episode. He goes on strike.

Sean wholeheartedly disagrees with you, I think.

Yeah, I totally disagree. I think, you know, this podcast is our vehicle to have conversations with interesting people and everybody's an adult. They should judge for themselves whether they think this person's full of shit or deserves a second chance or whatever. On the pod itself. He told us what he was doing. And literally with one pause, I just go, that's a horrible idea. And I actually felt bad that I was that brutal about it. But it really was, I thought, a horrible idea. And I felt the need to just like say it. So I think it's one thing if you invite them on and they just like, like I see this sometimes, people just like suck up to people. And the other is to be like, dude, what the hell were you thinking? Or they're like, oh, you know, I just thought this. Like, are you serious? Like, really? You like, are you going to look at me with a straight face and say that this was all just an honest mistake? Like you had to have known. Right. So I think as long as you are real with your questions, uh, then it's all good. But that's my, you know, it's my opinion.

I just think, I just think it's like, um, it's giving airtime to people that are bad. Right. Like I would say Billy McFarland is probably a psychopath, right?

The Bernie Madoff documentary on Netflix coming out in 3 days. Are you going to watch that?

Bernie Madoff is dead.

So what?

There's been— Bernie Madoff is— if I— if you had— if you had Bernie Madoff on your podcast and you were like, hey, so like what happened? Tell us your story. And even if you kind of call him out, if he's like a bully, like a real psychopath is like pretty charming and like believable. And you listen to them and there's going to be a percentage of people that hear that. And the difference with Madoff is he's in jail, right?

The—

then like Billy McFarland, I don't get it. I have no idea. You know, he served his time, sure. But like, he's probably going to go on and do more sketchy shit or I don't know, any of these people who have a pattern of behavior of doing psychopathic fraudulent stuff, I just don't think they should get any airtime, frankly.

Yeah. Okay, fair enough. I think there's a lot of people who would agree with you.

I don't personally, but most, most probably do. But I actually— I'm partially on Sean's side. I am mostly on Sean's side, but I do feel guilt sometimes. Like, there's another person who Sean wants to have on that I think there's not a chance we should.

But so imagine here's, here's how I would tell you to think about this. Like, imagine that you— so, you know, Sam, you've told me stories of guys who— I remember you told me there was some advertiser who is fucking you over and not paying you, and you felt very cheated. And Sean, I mean, that guy that you sued who you felt like was chiseling you, the landlord or whatever. Now let's say I have a podcast and I say, well, there's two sides to every story and he's fascinating. I'm going to go have that guy on my podcast as the victim. You'd be like, what the fuck?

But I would want you to ask that question. I would say ask that question.

As long as you actually ask the questions and you're not just giving them like a chance to lie or say BS in a way that's like, it's obviously BS, but you let them skate on it. Um, like, that's what happened with like Sam Bankman-Fried.

Yeah, but look at, look at Tai Lopez. Look at Tai Lopez. Tai Lopez got legitimized by being on MFM. A lot of people heard him and went, you know what, he's not a bad guy, and you know, Sam kind of likes him and whatever. And like, what has he been doing over the last—

wait, wait, wait, what did I do?

I didn't do anything.

You said you're, you were like, yeah, I met him, I met him in a hotel and he was actually a really nice a guy, right? And it's like, of course he is, he's a psycho and he's charming.

I like everyone.

I like everyone. Respect the audience, and meaning I believe that you should have the opportunity to hear it and make your own decision. I don't pretend that I'm your parent and I'm legitimizing them, or I'm telling you they're good or bad or whatever. I'm just letting you see them. And if you see them and you decide that they're great, great. If you decide that we didn't ask tough questions and you can't make a decision, but Andrew You promote, uh, you promote Bill Ackman.

Sure.

Like I absolutely do. He is my business partner.

And I'm not saying, I actually don't know all the details.

How could you put him in the same category?

Well, a lot of, I'm not saying I do, but a lot of people do, don't they, Andrew? Like that's objective. You could actually, and you could at least say that like a lot of people do think that he's, uh, what did Bill Ackman do that's on, on considered controversial?

Well, yeah. What did he do exactly that would be like fraudulent or something like that? I mean, what, what Bill, Bill has made some investments that have turned out badly, but he's never, I don't think he's he's predatory in any way. I think Bill is a great investor.

I've seen this person, you know, legitimate is when he went on—

what's the MLM?

And he was like, I, uh, the market, whole market's— he basically was like, hell is coming, blah blah blah, but didn't disclose that he had basically a giant short position. Yeah, maybe caused a panic, maybe didn't.

No, but he, he had already— if you actually look, he wrote a letter about this. He'd already sold almost his entire position. He had like 1 or 2% left. And I spoke to Bill 2 weeks before that, and he was freaking the fuck out. Like, similar to that, he didn't disclose that he was—

he was freaking out greatly if people started selling, right? He had a giant—

no, no, he wasn't.

He made a bunch of money.

He wasn't. No, no, no, no. That— I think it's a big misunderstanding. If you actually look at the timeline, he'd already sold out of that position when he went on CNBC.

What about, uh, Herbalife?

He was— he was betting— he was calling Herbalife.

I mean, Herb Herbalife, he went out and he said, this is a multilevel marketing scheme. And what ended up happening is the FTC investigated it and they gave them a $200 million fine. And they got up to the point of saying, hey, is this an MLM? They settled with them for like $200 million. It was the largest FTC fine ever. And Herbalife, the FTC commissioner was asked, is Herbalife a multilevel marketing pyramid scheme? And she said, It's not, not one, right? Because she was legally bound by not calling it that. So basically, Bill was right. And that was an instance where he lost a shitload of money trying to fight a bad guy.

Did that really happen?

Look, I got to find out.

By the way, I'm not saying Bill Ackman sucks. I think I'm— I like Bill.

But you're not—

you know him. No, that's not— that's not what I'm implying. I'm saying that some people maybe think that he's full of it, right?

I think, yes, absolutely. There's people that are critical. I think there's a great quote on this.

I'm not saying he is the tallest.

The tallest blade of grass is the first to get cut. And I think Bill is very loud and he is always confident and he's usually right, but not always. And so someone like that, I think when they're not right, everyone loves to shit all over them.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm not saying I don't think he's in the category where he's got like, you know, I don't know of any accusations about stuff like that. I think some people are just like, he's not as good. He loses money. He's not as good of an investor as he says, or his, his fame would lead you to believe. That's a criticism, but that's like any, that's like merit. That's like criticizing someone's skill. LeBron James is not as good as Michael Jordan or whatever. Right?

Like that's different than saying somebody is, you know, it's like fixating on Warren Buffett buying Dexter Shoe and it not working out and then saying, or, you know, Warren Buffett did some deals in his early career where he bought a business and he ended up having to lay a lot of people off. Right now, you could build a narrative that, well, Warren Buffett— everyone says Warren Buffett's so great, but what about this? And what about this? But if you look at it and there's 100 investments and 10 of them didn't go well, you know, you can fixate on the 10, but you can look at the long-term performance. Bill's compounded at 20-plus percent, I think 25% or something crazy. Uh, maybe not quite that, but something exceptional. So again, like, He's my business partner. Obviously I'll defend him.

I'm not, by the way. Yeah, I want to be clear.

He's anywhere near those guys.

I'm not saying crazy. I'm not saying I think he sucks. I actually like him a lot from what I read about him. I'm just saying my point being is a lot of people, a lot of awesome people have haters. And just because you have a lot of haters doesn't necessarily mean I don't think you should— we shouldn't have you on. That's my whole point.

But imagine, okay, you guys have a newspaper, right? Effectively, you guys own the New York Times of tech startup bros, right? Like that's what, that's what MFM is. You guys have this huge audience. Would it be ethical for the editor, editor of the New York Times to put an op-ed from Bernie Madoff on the front cover?

Right. It was not an op-ed. It's an interview. It's a big, big difference.

Again, I hear, I totally, I totally agree. I hear you guys. I know you want to like stir the pot and it's good, good listening. I just, for me, like, I just hate when these weasels get airtime.

Okay. Let's get back.

Yeah, let's, let's move on.

All right, Andrew, who's the most delusional person you met this year?

So, okay, so it's a delusional person who I think is amazing. Um, you guys probably will say the same person. It's Brian Johnson. Uh, I met Brian almost a year ago and I remember sitting down with him and looking, just looking at him. He's like a translucent glowing Twilight vampire. Like he just looks, if you cut his arm off, there's circuits under there. I, I, And he's so incredibly well-spoken and like, like you, Sam, I think you said he's like the, the Elon, but like behind the scenes and quiet, right? So I think he's amazing. Uh, I think he's like, he's like dedicating his life to basically being a test, uh, you know, a test case for the rest of us. So I really admire him. Uh, and I think he's really interesting.

How did he look in person? Did he look, uh, on our pod, he almost looked He almost looked a little ill. Like, he was so skinny.

Yeah, he was so pale that there was no pigment in his skin. Like, literally, like, literally looked like, um, what's that movie, uh, with the— fuck, what is it? Uh, Powder, the robot guy. Alien, Alien with the robot guy. Like, just totally pale humanoid.

That's, uh, that's my pick too, uh, Brian Johnson, for the, for the exact same reason. So we'll, we'll move to the next one. Uh, he was, he was, you're right, crazy and delusional in the best way possible. Um, yeah, as a compliment, I mean that as a compliment. Um, okay. Did you guys have another category that you really like your answer for? Does anybody like think they got something good? Cause we can just go to those.

The relationship hacks and the, um, let's do relationship hack.

What you got?

So, um, they always say like the best first date is an adrenaline kind of event, right? So like you want to go on a hike, you want to get your heart pounding. Maybe you go and do like a ropes, you know, those, uh, what are they called? They're like rope swings through the forest, whatever, like something that gets your heart pounding. Because when someone associates you with a peak experience, like a physical feeling of peak experience, that's very positive and it bonds you. And the same thing is true with alcohol. So I kind of stopped drinking Um, maybe like 7 or 8 years ago. And I've kind of mourned the ability to go and, you know, down a pint with someone because they always end up telling you everything. They tell you about their business and the problems they're having and, you know, what's going on with their wife. It's like hanging out once drunk is like hanging out 10 times sober. And so what I've been doing is I've been inviting people that I would otherwise have like a meeting with over to my house and we'll do a really long sauna and a cold plunge. And I've been finding like, I just feel so incredibly bonded to people. Because I'm having my, my body is pumped full of all these endogenous drugs. Uh, and it's been really good. It's been kind of like drinking with someone.

Dude, can I tell you what mine was? Here's, I'm gonna read, let me word, read, read it word for word. Invite people, have them come over for dinner and cook for them. And we take ice baths together after dinner, before dinner.

What are you doing before? Do you tell them like bring some trunks or how do you prepare?

You just spray it on them or, or sometimes Sometimes I just spray it on them and I have a towel already and I have shorts. And it's so funny that that's exactly what mine is. Another relationship hack that I have is I bring my wife to almost everything. So, so it feels like a family gathering. And also she's like, well, like hot and like, well, like well-read and like can have a discussion. So it automatically makes me seem better.

Yeah. Oh, you're the guy with the hot, book-smart wife. Oh yeah.

And then, uh, uh, yeah. So Andrew, we, I had the same thing. Another thing that I, that I typically don't do, and I, and I think this is the worst way to hang out, is while exercising. I hate when people say, let's go get a workout together. I'm like, I don't want to. I never wanna do that ever. I will never do a workout and hang out.

Yeah. I want silence.

Nothing like getting punched in the face. I was, I think I told you that.

You did tell me that. And the other experience I had like this was I went skydiving once in the morning and the rest of the day you couldn't stress me out if you tried. I was, I was completely immune to stress. And so I think there's something to this, like having a very exhilarating or adrenaline kick in the morning. It just makes the rest of the day completely non-stressful. That doesn't mean you don't do anything. It just means you don't stress while you do it.

We were talking about the cold plunges and, um, I was just listening to a Huberman Lab and he was talking about this exact thing. So when you're in cold, it obviously stresses your body. You get a huge dopamine spike and you get, uh, adrenaline, norepinephrine, all that kind of stuff. And he was saying that if you do stressful things, while you're in the cold plunge, it adapts you to dealing with stress better. So you should definitely get a cold plunge and then argue with your wife while you're in it or something.

Sounds smart. Uh, so that's best relationship hack. What's the, what was the other one you said? Uh, oh, favorite tool or product under what it's favorite, uh, tool or product under $1,000. What you guys got?

So I always have this problem. Um, I'll travel to a city. And I'll try and think of, you know, I'll be like, okay, I'm going to New York on this day. Who do I know in New York? And it'll be whoever's top of mind, whoever I've just been texting with or something. And I'll go and I'll have a couple meetings and then I'll leave. And then I'll remember, you know, it's like when you leave the grocery store and you realize there's like 3 or 4 important things you forgot. I always realize, oh shit, I forgot to meet all these people I really wanted to see. And so, um, I've tried a couple different tools for this, but I found one I really liked. It's this one called Clay. It's a personal CRM, which we all hate. I know it's like a horrible business, but, um, they do a really good job of basically tapping into your Twitter, your LinkedIn, your iMessage, all the pla— your email, all the places where you contact people.

And this is, uh, building a huge— clay.earth.

Yeah. And so basically it's a huge database of all the people, you know? And so what I do now is I go in Clay and I'll just be like, I'll type in New York and it'll show me everyone in New York. And then I don't miss people. Uh, and that's been huge.

This is a beautiful website.

Yeah, I downloaded the app.

I tried it.

I churned right away because I was just like, uh, same problem with all CRMs for me where like you get out what you put in and I was just not willing to put it, put in enough.

But there's no, I don't use it. Like I don't use, I don't update it. It's just when I go traveling, it's just a database of people I know and where they live.

Can I, uh, mine is My Body Tutor. And I don't know if Sean, that, if that's yours as well, but have you heard about My Body Tutor, Andrew?

No.

That's a good one. That's all it is. I, um, so I'm a pretty disorganized guy. So my favorite tools or products have been the one that helped me get organized. And I got two that kind of saved my ass this year. Um, I don't know, Sam, did you, when you were at The Hustle, did you ever have like a bookkeeper? Yes. And do you remember life before a bookkeeper and a life after bookkeeper?

Before, it's stressful. And like now I know that like, I didn't know what the difference between revenue and cash flow was. And I didn't like understand like that, like you take expenses and you like amortize them. I didn't understand all of that stuff. So it was as if I was driving at nighttime. Without headlights on.

That's the perfect way to describe it. That's how I've been my whole life. And I would always wonder, man, how do these other people have their shit together? How is it, you know, tax season comes around, I'm just like scrambling and it's like the worst version of cramming for a test. And so this year I basically totally revamped my financial, like hygiene game with a bookkeeper and a tax person that I love, and I'm gonna shout them both out because they're amazing. Uh, they were, they were so amazing. I did invest in both of the companies because I was like, I have to, like, you know, I, I believe in this, uh, you know, because they saved my ass. So one is called Kick. So I think it's kick.co is the URL, and it's basically, if you go to the website, I like their tagline, it says self-driving bookkeeping. So basically what they do is they just say connect your bank, you your credit cards and it's like everything. It's like your Amazon. You just click connect, connect, connect, connect, connect. Boom. It's all your books. And then they have a bookkeeper and she calls me and she's like, here's how you're doing. Like, here's how you're pacing. Here's what, you know, here's some things you should be thinking about. Here's how we can save you money. Um, you know, blah, blah, blah. And not like, not like spend less, but more like tax-wise, like here's some things that you could do. And so bookkeeping was the first one.

Uh, and then how much is this?

All my books are together. Super cheap. It's like, I don't know, it's like $99 or $100, $199 a month or something like that. It's like, if anybody, if you're a creator, like the one big thing is they, they do this for like, kind of like small, small businesses, like sort of like LLC types, S corps, or, um, creators. So like if you're a YouTuber or Twitch creator or podcaster, uh, most of them have, don't treat their creator business like a business. And you totally should. It is a business. And I think also the law has now changed. So starting next year, I think they have to do like the quarterly estimated taxes and things like that. Like, dude, 99% of the creators have no idea what this stuff is or how to do it. And so, um, so I love this thing. This has been like kind of, uh, a game changer for me on having my, my P&L, my cash flow, my balance sheet, all of it just like very clean. And then, then that gets handed to the other service, Gelt. And so what Gelt does is kind of amazing. I don't know how much of this I'm, I'm supposed to say or allowed to say it. I don't even think they want me shouting it out.

It's like, dude, I just signed up. Waitlist only. I just signed up. I just signed up with Gelt.

Uh, are you on the waitlist or you, you actually started using it?

Uh, I DM'd him and I have a call set up with the guy.

So the guy, Tal, is this incredible guy. He's an entrepreneur. So, but for the best thing, so I've, I've met many, I've had many like kind of accountants and tax strategy people. And I literally walked in and I felt like I was walking into a meeting, like, you know, with CIA or something like that with IRS. It's like, and, and Nick Huber said this, right? He goes, yeah, dude, 95% of accountants and tax strategy people, they're like, they act like government agents. And he's like, you can't even— he's like, you're just asking questions like, how should I structure this differently in order to—

they can't answer it.

It's like, they won't.

It depends.

They're like, they're not creative, first of all. So they're not even giving you ideas. It's like, if you have the idea, they can say yes or no. But it's like, dude, where am I supposed to come up with all these ideas from? Uh, so like, they don't give you ideas, first of all. And secondly, They're like, well, did you spend more than 22 hours doing this? It's like, dude, I don't know. I wasn't keeping track of that. But like, if I say yes, what happens? If I say no, what happens? I need to understand, like, could you just disarm this? It's not even like, help me cheat. It's like, literally just don't make this stressful has been my big problem with this. And so Gelt is kind of amazing because Tal's an— he's a founder. He's an entrepreneur. He sold his last company. And he's like, dude, I just like— he's like, personally, I just hated taxes. And so I decided to create like the tax firm I wish existed. And they're amazing. So the same thing, they take your books and then what they do is they're more like, yo, have you thought about structuring your corporations in this way? Because then you can get the advantage of QSBS while still maintaining this advantage. And like they, they do everything clean. They do everything by the book, but they are, they feel more like your friend helping you do this than the other way. And so these guys probably saved me, I don't know, I don't know how much to say to me, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was 7 figures of what I've saved using this thing. Um, and it's the first time I've been not stressed on the subject of finance, like bookkeeping and taxes. And so like, that has been like a very nice feeling for me to have versus like this scramble and always feeling like there was some adult class that I missed, I slept through, and now here's the test. Like, that's how, that's how taxes always felt for me was I slept through the class. And everybody else took it. Everybody else is prepared and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. And now finally I feel like, okay, I have my notes to take this test.

Dude, I just feel like it's one of the, one of those things that's shocking how many business people just don't know how to read a balance sheet and a P&L and cash flow statement. And it's, if you want to learn, Khan Academy has an amazing introductory course, takes about an hour and you'll learn everything you need to know.

Did you guys hear this? The IRS hired like some, like some absurd number of new auditors.

Was it like 18,000 or something?

It's either like 80,000 or, or more. I don't know. Like IRS hiring new agents. I think they hired 80,000, um, 87,000 new hires. And so I think there's going to be a shitload of audits, which is why I wanted to be like super buttoned up with everything. Um, just because, oh man, that's another time suck if you get audited of like dealing with all that crap. So, uh, you know, I don't think they hired these people to do nothing. It's $80 billion, $80 billion in new funding and 87,000 tax agents. Isn't that insane?

That's fucking crazy. They're going to have a lot of work to cut out for them. Um, I think we should almost wrap up. We have, we want to do one, one or two more.

Let's do one or two more.

What are your favorite ones?

Yeah, let's do, let's do one. What's a really good one? What about biggest change adjustment you're making in 2023?

I have one.

Go, go, Sam. So, um, for— I have a new thing that I'll launch that it's live, but I'll announce it later. Um, I'm hiring a CEO for it. I've already like done that and I've never done that early on. I also am doing close to like, I'm being less of a dictator and I'm also being less metrics driven. This sounds like the freaking douchiest thing ever, but I'll say it, but more like vibe and energy driven. Uh, basically with The Hustle and like my last company, I was like by the book where it was like, all right, I wanna see projections, we're gonna nail it. We're gonna like, the, the metrics say this, therefore like—

I can see you putting a metric on the vibe too. You'd be like, we're an 87 on vibe this week, guys.

Well, like on my last, like, uh, for all my companies, I'm like, look, you gotta do this many outbound calls. Like we're gonna like, whatever the AB metric is, this is what it is. Uh, like we're going with A, that A1, and I just filed the data and I was like, I don't care. And then it was very much a dictatorship where I said my rule or my way or the highway. And I'm trying to be a little bit calmer for my next thing. And I think I'll make way more money that way.

That's a great one. Great adjustment. Uh, Andrew, what you got? Biggest change or adjustment you're making in your business life 2023?

So last year, um, I don't know if I said this, but my big goal was conquering email. Like I just, I was overwhelmed by it. It was stressing me out. And so now I've built a system, I've fully delegated it. I've got someone dedicated to managing my email. And so I really only get 10 or 15 emails that I have to respond to and everything else is triaged and responded to and dealt with. So I've conquered email. The problem is now I get a lot of iMessages, like texts and stuff, and I'm going, I don't know how to conquer that other than changing my number, which seems fucked up. Um, I'm trying to figure that out. If anyone has any ideas, please tweet at me because Um, there's, it seems like there's no way if someone has your number, they're going to get to you. And I have a really hard time not responding to texts. I feel kind of guilty. Um, so I'd love to hear your experience there.

You're just getting like cold texts from strangers. Is that the problem?

Dude, I get so many of those.

Not that it's just, there's, I mean, I get cold texts for sure, but it's more just like, there's so many people I've given my number out to. And if someone doesn't get an email response to me, sometimes they'll try and go there. I think like some people have found my number online. Like it's just, it's just, becoming too much. And I'll be like, with email, you can kind of turn it off. I'll be putting my kids down for bed and like reading a Kindle book on my phone and I'll be getting hit up with texts. And it's just the ability to break into your consciousness.

Uh, would you just get a new number?

Sucks.

Yeah, I was thinking about it, but I've had my number since I was like 15. It feels messed up to do.

I know, but I've thought about doing that as well.

Sam. Uh, okay. So you did yours, Andrew, you did yours. My biggest adjustment. Um, you knowing when to use my impulsiveness. So I am an extremely impulsive person. Um, and that works in like 8 out of 10 situations. One of the situations it doesn't work in is I'm very impulsive with picking businesses to start. And I will just like start a business like instantaneously and I will go and I'll start making it happen. And it's really fun. And that wave and that thrill is so addictive. And then 11 months later, I'm like, okay, now I have this business. Um, was this the business that I wanted to have? Was it? Cause like, I can't do that many of these at the same time. Uh, so is this the right thing?

Are you happy you started your e-com thing?

Um, no. If I could go back and just pick a different project, I would. Um, same thing with the Milk Road. Part of the reason I sold it was I was like, I don't think this was the project that I wanna work on every year. Um, you know, for the next 3 years. And so if I don't wanna work on it for the next 3 years, I should just sell it now. And like, you know, uh, if I have a good offer, like take it. Um, but that's kind of a shitty feeling. Like there's a celebration in selling, but there's also a bit of a failure. It's like, I've been saying this for a while. I wanna work on a project that I don't wanna sell, like this podcast. Time has flown by. We're— this is the third year we're doing the Milly Awards. That means this podcast is at least 3 years old. Um, I can keep going. I would do this for free. I was doing this for free. I, I was gonna do this at a loss. So this is the right type of project for me to do. It's one that I would literally do if there was no money involved. I don't count the days or the hours. I'm not stressed about the metrics. I know it's gonna keep going up cuz we'll just keep trying to do a better and better job. I have fun doing it and it's not a, not a drag on my lifestyle, right? Like, Perfect project. This has been the only pro— project I've selected correctly on. I would argue every single business I've started since the age of 21 was the wrong pick, and it was always just the impulsive pick. It was, someone should do this, dude, I bet I could do that, dude. I would just do this, this, and this. All right, let me just do it. And I would just do it. And then, you know, sure enough, I'm look— looking for the exit later because it wasn't really the right project. So I'm trying to find— the big change is I'm gonna find the project that's in my zone of genius. That is the perfect project for me. It's one I enjoy doing. And I'm not building it for some future payoff. I'm building it. I'm doing it because I like doing it, that it is the project that's, you know, I'm most interested in. And if that changes later, okay, that's fine. I'm not saying I have to do it till I'm 99 years old, but I'm not doing it just kind of like on a whim. So I'm going to be patient and select the project properly.

That's good. It's about time. I've been telling you that for 10 years.

The best lessons are the ones that take you, that you have to relearn 10 times over.

So the other one was best business idea you wish someone would start. Yeah. Do you guys want to do that? Yeah, let's end on that.

Tell me why your washer and your dryer are two different machines. This is the craziest thing ever. Why do I have to get out of bed and remember to put my wet clothes into the dryer? It's ridiculous. This needs to be one.

That's honestly, that is one of the smartest things you've said.

That's actually a really good point.

It's just crazy to me. It's crazy to me that it's two different things.

That actually exists. In Europe. You're in one washer dryer.

I'm just looking at the sign. Yeah, but they kind of—

No, it's in Best Buy, Home Depot.

They're not that great yet.

This is a thing, right?

They're not that great yet. Like I use them in Europe and they're only okay, but they need to be the norm. This needs to be the norm.

Yeah.

Yeah. If you're working on AI or crypto or, uh, self-driving cars, quit and figure this one out. Like, we gotta put, we gotta have our priorities in order. You know how many people are wasting time on laundry?

Look at, look at dude, like, it's like, look at James Dyson.

Look at James Dyson. He is worth $18 billion and he just was like, vacuums are terrible. I'm gonna rethink those. Imagine he could have been working on AI, but no, he chose something.

Do a dish dryer machine next to our dishwasher machine.

Thank you. I agree, dude. Like some of the, or like, uh, or like, have you ever noticed how the inside of a refrigerator, no matter how rich you are, it always looks like shit. Like we need like a better organizer or something for like, so some of these like day-to-day problems I think need to be improved. Particularly we'll start with the washer and dryer. It needs to be one machine.

Okay. I like that one. Andrew, what you got?

Um, so mine, I tweeted about this. Um, so There's all these private jets out there flying around all over the world. And tell me about it. Um, people, people will, people will fly somewhere and they don't need a return flight, or they're going to go there for 2 weeks or 3 weeks or whatever. And so the plane actually flies back empty, just with the pilots on it. Right. And I think this is truly insane. This is like billions of dollars getting lit on fire every month of just jet fuel and empty planes and stuff. I don't know what the solution is. I know there's people that have tried this. Um, but it seems like an incredibly inefficient, disjointed, uh, world. And someone needs to crack this and create a central database of basically every plane that's available. Because let's think about who owns private jets. It's very, very rich people. Very rich people are usually business people and are logical. Do they care about having someone else fly back if it pays for all the fuel and stuff? Probably not.

Maybe I'm wrong. But is it kind of like Gucci where it's like, well, I don't want to like sell my unsold Gucci clothes. I'd rather just burn them to keep the value up.

Sure.

Yeah.

I don't know. Maybe. But anyway, I do think there's a lot of people who would certainly want to get compensated for that if it was easy. And I think someone needs to crack this.

Well, what are you going to call it? You got to have some cute-ass name.

Don't have it yet. That's the only hold. That's the only holdup. I'm not going to, I'm not going to start until I have the perfect name. You know me.

Do we, uh, Andrew, I, you look like you just got your first communion. Uh, you just like, you have, you have an angelic face and an angelic look. It doesn't matter how rich and successful you become. You, uh, you still look like this little perfect communion boy.

Oh, thank you. I'm working on becoming a Twilight vampire like Brian. That's my other goal this year. I got it. What's the thing he eats every morning?

The figgy pudding or whatever. It's like nut pudding.

Put it on that whole thing. Yeah. Nutty pudding.

That's it.

Your face looks more trim.

Oh, thank you. I feel like you say that every time I come on.

Andrew, have you ever gotten just like a crazy tan? Have you just ever come back looking Puerto Rican? Mm.

My, my problem is I, I tan really, really well on my arms and face, but I'm like, I cannot tan on my body. So I have a very disfarctan—

Have you ever done a face tan? Have you tried taking off your shirt? Uh, no, this is— yeah, sure. I should do that.

I want you to come on next time and I want you to look like, you know, Ricky Martin. So, you know, just like you need to come back at least like a third Colombian in your tan next year, next time.

Okay. Here's, here's the deal. Here's the deal.

Okay.

You, and I'm serious, you get to, uh, 8% body fat. I will go to a tanning salon. I will go in one of those standup tanners and I will, uh, I will get really tanned and come on.

You got a deal.

Okay.

Well, no, no, no.

12, 12, 12 is like, 12 is like soft abs. I want like crazy shredded.

He will, he'll look shredded because he's dark. He'll look shredded if he gets to 12.

Like 12 minutes. I'm going to have to like sacrifice my life to do this. I think 12 is a more than fair deal.

Okay. This is a deal. What's the, what's the timeline? Is this within the year?

Whenever I do it, there's a lifelong bet.

If I ever get there, If I ever said you, oh, Sam, we should, we got to talk about that meetup we're doing in Vancouver.

I will, we'll do a shout out next time at the beginning, but we'll also do it now. So we're doing a meetup. Sean, obviously you're invited, but I doubt you'll ever show up.

You guys know me so well that you didn't even invite me. That's, I appreciate that. You know me that well.

Yeah. We're doing a meetup. We have to pick a date, but it's going to be mid-February in Vancouver. Right. How many people, how many people signed up or like gave interest?

I think it's, we already have, we already have 600 people. So it's gonna be a big event.

We gotta figure that out. Yeah. We have to pick a venue. We just put it, Andrew put a Typeform. He didn't even ask me. He put a Typeform and he said, uh, Sam and I are doing a meetup sometime in February, TBD on all the details. Sign up here.

That's pretty cool. I'll go.

I'll do it. We got people. There's people on it. You wanna come? Yeah, come, it'd be awesome. I think Sahil said he would come too, and I just followed up with him on Twitter. I don't know if he's responded, but we gotta get Sahil out too.

Well, we, I've got some doctor's appointments in February that I gotta work around, so let me figure out what, when those are, and then we'll pick a date.

All right guys. Well, another successful Millie Awards in the books. Thank you. And we will see you next year.