The 2023 Milly Awards: Part 1
This is the most popular episode we do every year. It takes weeks of planning. I'm out 50 bucks 'cause I got this new jacket on. We're all dressed up. And why? Because it is the Millie Awards. It is our end of year episode where we go through about 15 categories, right? Actors, they got the Oscars and musicians, they have the Grammys. Well, what do business people have? They got the Millie Awards. And this is where we share a bunch of different categories, like our best and worst investments of the year. You know, where do we take a big L? On an investment, what did we win on? Or we'll do a category like person we would most bet it all on. Who would we, if we had to invest our whole net worth on somebody, who would we bet it on? Uh, we got me, Sam, and Andrew Wilkinson. We're all here. We've been doing this for 3 years now. These episodes are always the favorites. This one went long. We're going to do it as a two-parter. So in part 1, we have categories like Billy of the Year, uh, best business that we think somebody else should go do, our favorite moment from, uh, from the podcast this year. And the biggest change that we are making personally in our game in 2022 for 2024. And in part 2, we have a whole bunch of categories like our favorite unsexy business and wild predictions for next year. So enjoy the Millie Awards 2023. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel. Okay, what's up guys? It's my favorite episode of the year. Andrew Wilkinson is here. Sam is here. Sam, you're looking dapper. Andrew, you're looking dapper. Sam, I gotta say, the whole dressing well thing, I'm bought in now. I see it. You don't look like a science teacher. You don't look like you're from a different era. You just look sharp, my friend.
Yeah, I couldn't find my cufflinks. I thought I was gonna look like a farmer on this thing. Thank God I found them right before we started. Do you guys remember how, uh, Trump had like the Clemson football team into the White House and they used like the Lincoln gravy bowls for like barbecue sauce? That's how I feel right now with this person who bought me Tiffany crystal for my wedding. This is the first time they're being used and they're being used for Whole Foods brand LaCroix. So shout out to that person. Andrew, you feeling good? You ready to do this thing?
Feeling great. Yeah, I'm, uh, this is the best I've dressed in years.
We're happy that you did it here. All right, so this is the Millie Awards. We've done this, this is now, Sean, 4 years running we've done this, or is it 3? I think 4.
Maybe 3.
I think it's 3. And we've got, we've got 11 or 12 or 13 categories. We're going to do favorite MFM guests. We're going to do Billy of the Year, biggest change we're making for '24, uh, the person we bet it all on. We're gonna do a bunch of different stuff and we're gonna try and go somewhat fast for each category, but I'm sure we're gonna have interesting stories for each one. Sean, you want to kick it off? Where do you want to go?
Yeah, category 1. This is the Millie Award for our favorite MFM episode or guest of the year. Sam, start us off. Who you got?
All right. This was a tie. No, it's not a tie. We're not going to have ties, but I'm going to say the top 2 that I had was Scott Galloway. So by the way, we have a clip that's gone viral on, on YouTube where it's a clip from the Scott Galloway pod where he's talking about how much he made. I'm talking about how much I made and people are just ragging on us both so hard because they say that we sound so depressed, but I'm going to give it number 1 to Kevin Ryan. Kevin Ryan's the founder of Gilt, Business Insider, MongoDB. I think Kevin Ryan was the best episode. I think he was the most wise person and well-balanced person we've had who's had crazy success.
You know what else he did that I liked? At the end of the episode, he was like, here's how I set up my company to maximize, um, like kind of the gain I get out of these companies and pay the least taxes. And I'll tell you what, no rich guy ever says that. No rich guy ever tells you this is the structure I use. And he said it on, on air.. He's like, here's what it does. It lets me live in a high-cost state and I'm effectively only paying 14% and my kids are only paying 0% on what they're getting out of our capital gains due to QSBS. So he owns the share. He's like, I only work on projects that are QSBS eligible and long-term capital gains. I'm not looking for cash flow or income because he's like, I got to a point where I have that like, you know, day-to-day needs settled. So you have to get to there. He's like, but once you're there, he's like, you, You take your QSBS, you live in a high-cost state, you then gift your stock to your kids' trust. So you set up kids' trust, you gift your stock to them before you raise a financing round. So you're taking only like, let's say $100K out of your lifetime gift tax and your kids now own QSBS-eligible stock. When you sell, you're going to end up paying only the state tax. So you'll pay 14% California or New York, you'll pay no federal. And then your kids will pay 0% wherever, you know, likely whenever they, they get it out of the trust at their, at their given point in time. You're getting QSBS, you know, the $10 million tax-free for you times each of your kids. I can get to $50 million tax-free if I got, you know, 3 or 4 kids or whatever.
And I was like, I don't think they've got— I don't think they have QSBS in Canada land, do they?
No, we don't have— we have— there's all sorts of other stuff and benefits and stuff. But there's a great saying on this stuff. Whales only harpoon— whales only get harpooned when they surface, right? He just surfaced in a really obvious way. And you know, there's just some anal retentive IRS guy listening to the podcast. Stroking his beard right now.
Actually, strike that all from the record.
What, uh, what's yours, Andrew?
Uh, my favorite was Sarah Moore. So Sarah Moore, uh, she's a crazy story. She, um, had a really troubled childhood, basically got adopted by this wealthy family. They ended up putting her through Harvard Business School, and she went out and she bought this business called eggcartons.com. And this story was just incredible. I feel like, um, so many people hear these wild stories about tech bro billionaires, you know, raising a bunch of money and hitting it big, making trillions of dollars. And I think her story is much more realistic for a normal person, you know, anyone. She really kind of, uh, is a testament to the fact that anybody can teach themselves business and can go buy a business. That is really not rocket science. And I loved how simple and tactical all of her stuff was.
Uh, she's so honest. I'm trying to stay low-key and under the radar, and I think it's been our— one of our most downloaded and viewed episodes with like 500,000 listens to that episode.
Whoops.
Well, so the smartest thing she did is she like— she did the, um, the Michael Jordan, like, I'm retiring, this is the last thing, like You know, I'm never going out again. And now if she— it immediately, as soon as you said that in the intro, I was like, oh, I have to listen, right? There's definitely episodes I kind of check out of or don't do. Yeah, it was a great one. That made me lean in.
I, I, I think that's a great one.
The, uh, by the way, there's a quick follow-up to that because that store— that, uh, that story, the Sarah Moore story, was— falls in the category of kind of like too good to be true. So, you know, look at all the elements. It's basically like, here's this Super hot woman who grew up, you know, super poor, couldn't even get into college, somehow ends up at Harvard Business School. There must have been something happening there. A family had adopted her along the way. That's like the plot of the movie Blind Side. Then it was buys a business but has no money, remember, because she grew up super poor. So bought the business with $0 cash down. How she found the business was she, you know, hired 50 interns off of Craigslist and like snuck them into the Harvard Business School library to work with her on this. And, you know, buys this business, eggcartons.com, for millions. It's a multimillion-dollar business, super successful. There's no pictures of her on the internet. There's no interviews of her on the internet, right? We're like the only guys who have done this. So there was a lot there that like, I came out thinking, did I just get Elizabeth Holmes'd? I might have. Oh God, I might be part of the documentary here. All right, let me, uh, Let me at least make sure I look good if this is going to end up on Netflix one day. And she flew out after the episode. She's like, I got to meet you. I said, okay, why? And she's like, I just, I need to know who I'm dealing with here. And so she flies out, we go get lunch here in the burbs in California. She flies all the way from Boston and everything checked out. It was, if she is Elizabeth Holmes, she's the greatest Elizabeth Holmes you've ever seen. You know, she looks like what she shows like. She told the story. She showed me the old photos. Like, you know, she, everything. And she's like, I'm so glad, you know, people have been pretty respectful because I said on the episode, please don't bother me. Um, and we, we did a form instead of her like email address, like here, type your questions in this form and then we'll, we'll answer the form.
How many, how many messages did she get?
A lot. She had said after the first appearance on it, she got like, like the Netflix, Bravo, like other people had reached out to be like, can I do, uh, we want to do a show on you or a movie on you.
Wow. All right, well, kudos to Sarah Moore. What, what's yours, Sean?
All right, my MFM guest here, this is gonna surprise you guys, is Conor Price. And Conor Price is a, was a guy who was working in a warehouse. He was stacking boxes in our friend's warehouse, in Ramon's warehouse, and he was like a wannabe rapper, white guy. And you know, like that's kind of cliché, but he actually made it and he made it in a very interesting way. He figured out How to go viral on TikTok. And he was not a social media guy. He refused to even post on social media. He was too shy. His wife was like, you gotta do this. It's a great way to get the word out and let's just have some fun with it. She kind of became his like manager and they now have racked up, I don't know, like a billion views on TikTok going viral. And the reason I say Connor Price is not just because that's an inspiring story, but I took away one big lesson of like the, It's like I realize that the puck has moved and I'll give you guys the short version of it. I think era 1 of marketing was sort of like, uh, let me interrupt your programming in order to tell you about my product, right? That's commercials. That's like radio ads. That's how things used to work. Era 2 became, um, hey, let me send this to an influencer. They'll kind of hold up the product and make a post about the product. So now I'm not interrupting your programming. I'm kind of using this trusted influencer. Um, but it's clearly, you know, still an ad. The content is buy this product.
It's great.
And what Connor Price is doing is a little bit different. He, he creates a little skit and in the middle of the payoff of the skit, the hero of the skit, the one that saves the day is this dope song and the 15 seconds of the dope song. And that gets people to go and actually want to go find the product. And now I see this everywhere. This is how MrBeast sells chocolate too. He doesn't hold up his candy bar and say, this is a delicious candy bar. You should go buy it. He says, I recreated Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, and inside this factory is he makes, like, the product is baked into the content. The content is entertainment around the product. And now that I see that, I can't unsee it. I see it everywhere. And it's part of my kind of core business strategy now. Even our own ads, we changed like that. Instead of saying, we're gonna stop, we're gonna tell you about this thing, we created a segment called the Thrill of the Shill. We teach a lesson or an entertaining story, and then we tell you about the product in that story. And that's how I think marketing goes down.
Connor Price. Got to give a shout out to his wife, too. Just a total shark in the best possible way. Yeah, she was hardcore. All right. You want to move to the next one? Billy of the Year. How do we describe this one? Just a billionaire who's fascinating.
It's just someone who's balling out of control. You don't even have to be a billionaire. You just have to have that billionaire strut, the ability to walk with some swagger and play the game a little differently. So it's somebody who is uber successful, but in a way that we really respect. Let's go with Andrew first. Who you got?
So mine is very obvious.
It's, um, sorry, a landline over there.
You still have a landline?
Dude, you go public and you have to install a landline?
The gate, the gate, the gate of my house is like the super old school system. So I have a landline just for that.
Dude, you better only be talking to presidents on that thing.
Yeah, it's red. It's red like the Bat Phone. So mine is pretty obvious. It's Charlie Munger. I think we all know who he is. For those of you that don't, he's Warren Buffett's longtime business partner. He just died last week. I think he was 15 days or something short of his 100th birthday. He was 99, and the guy was completely sharp to the end. I think a week before he did an interview with Jesse, or what's her name, Becky Quick from CNBC. And I just want to tell you a story about this guy. This is how sharp this guy was. So Chris and I were having dinner with him one night, and all of a sudden this guy bursts into the room and he's like, Charlie, I got it. I'm doing a deal right now. I need to know an answer to something. And this guy walks in, he's like 30 years old, and he just starts rattling off a bunch of questions. He's like, okay, we need to do it at 5.6% interest for this many doors. And Charlie just asks a couple of questions and he says, okay, good, cool. And then the guy just like says bye to us and leaves. And Charlie explains that it's this neighborhood kid who, he is a Hasidic Jew, tried to convert him to Judaism 20 years ago, going door to door with a Bible, uh, with, with, uh, Bibles. And they ended up becoming friends. He mentored him. They, he started buying apartments. Charlie backed him on this. And now they own a billion-dollar real estate portfolio of Los Angeles apartments. And he's just this neighborhood kid. Uh, his name is Avi, and, uh, and they built this huge business together. And Charlie started doing this when he was like 90 years old.
His 90-year-old side hustle is a billion-dollar real estate portfolio. God damn it.
Andrew, is this going to be like a couple that's been married for 80 years and they both die at the same time? Is Warren going to like, is he distraught, you think, in the same way a marriage would be.
I don't know. I mean, yeah, Buffett's really old too. And I think if you think about the actuarial tables, they really don't have much, or Buffett wouldn't have much time left, but hopefully he keeps going for a few more years.
Yeah, I think he named his, or he said he has a successor and everything lined up, but I wasn't sure if it was going to be like a marriage where like he's going to go like next week, but I guess we'll see.
It's funny is they've had successors since they were like 60. Everyone's been saying they'll die at any time. So they've gone, they've gone a lot longer than everyone thought.
All right, mine's Palmer Luckey, the CEO of Andral. So we had Palmer Luckey on, I think, 2 years ago now. It was an amazing episode, but here's why I like Palmer Luckey. He says what you want to say if you were a billionaire, but you'd be too afraid to say it. And so he has got a lot of really good quotes of him. He's kind of a loose cannon in a few ways, like him and Jason Kalkanis have gotten into it. But frankly, I love it. So he's got this great thing that he did. He spoke at a conference recently and he goes, do you guys know what the number one profession that children want to be? It's social media influencer. The next is professional gamer. The next is a YouTuber. And the problem is, is that you can't tell kids to follow their dreams when their dreams suck. Uh, which is like a great line. And he goes, do you know what the number one dream for kids in 1971, in 1971 was? It was an astronaut. We had just gone to the moon. These guys were fighter pilots. PhD mathematicians, supermen who all were also really good, good looking and well spoken. It was the ultimate American hero ideal for a kid to see that and say, that's what I want to be. Okay. Then I say, yes, we should tell kids to follow their dream. But when it's social media influencers, I should tell, we should tell them their dreams suck and don't follow their dreams. So he's got these really like articulated, wonderful points that I appreciate. He dresses silly. He's got a mullet. I'm a big Palmer Luckey fan.
Yeah, I like that one. That's now 2 years in a row. Andrew gave him the nod last year for Billy of the Year. And now Sam comes in again with Palmer. I love it. He's, uh, we gotta get him back on, man. He was, he was really good on the pod. He had super interesting ideas and also, like you said, speaks his mind.
He says that he flies commercial and that he prefers to see, to sit by the bathroom. He goes, 'cause that, 'cause my, my grandpa, he goes, 'My grandpa was a pilot and I just love being around everyone.' I don't truly believe that, but he continually claims that's true. What's yours, Sean?
Um, all right. My Billy of the Year is gonna be an entrepreneur who I think has a— I don't know how close they are to the Billy number. I think they're probably close when you include their wife. That's a little hint for you. I wrote down a couple of bullet points on why this person is a badass. And you know you're a badass when your couple bullet points goes to the Roman numeral XIII. Let me just read these off in rapid succession. Okay. This person has been a rapper, an entrepreneur, an investor, an author. They are a motivational speaker. They have a badass wife who's even more successful than they somehow married up, even though they're super successful themselves. 4 kids. And when I called this person to prep for the podcast, they were on their way, you know, like taking care of the kids, taking them to their soccer game, yelling at them, where's your shoes? Where'd you put your shoes yesterday? And that just told me they're plugged in as a dad. Versus, you know, 4 other people are raising their kids. They own an NBA team. They're part owner in an NBA team. They built a coconut water brand, a private jet company. They discovered David Goggins before he was David Goggins. They actually invited David Goggins to live in their house and train them every single day for 30 days. They like running, so they created a running festival. They like pickles. They're creating a pickle brand. They created a fake Mount Everest because he's like, I can't go climb Everest, but I'll take this mountain. I'll climb it 14 times and it's the same height. As Everest. He came on the pod and had one of the all-time classic lines about some other competitor of his. He goes, keep the money warm. Thank you for keeping the money warm for me. I'm coming. And keep the money warm has just, it warms my soul. He is just having fun out here. He's got great life philosophies about having adventures multiple times a year to to have a life well lived.
He also got angry at me for asking him what his monthly burn was.
Yeah, he called Sam out for, uh, badgering him. We had to cut it out of the episode because I didn't badger him.
I didn't badger him. I, I said, I'll ask whatever I want, and I respect your—
I respect you the same question 7 different ways until you finally wilt. He didn't wilt. He was like, that's personal shit, Sam, you're pissing me off. And, uh, he He is Jesse Itzler. That is my Billy of the Year.
That's a good one. Yeah, I, uh, I had him on my list. I thought you were going to pick him, so I backed off. I think Jesse's an amazing person. He also has this calendar. I keep getting Facebook ads for it and I'm going to buy one where he like to say, what did he say? He goes, I'm 50 years old. I only have 30 summers left. I'm planning exactly how I'm going to spend them. It was good.
I think it was called Big Ass Calendar. Um, All right. Category number 3, what is the biggest change you're making for 2024? But before we do it, we have to say what we said last year. Andrew, you said being better at responding to iMessage. You were like, I've, I've gotten my email system under wrap, but you know, you're like, I have so many text messages. I'm bad at replying. It makes me feel like a bad person and a bad friend. Uh, Sam, you said I'm going to be less of a dictator. Uh, you said I'm going to lead this company without being a dictator and being less metrics obsessed. I'm going to be more vibe driven, more calm.
I nailed it, by the way, just for the record.
Yeah, I was going to say, and I said, um, I know I'm— I don't know why I said— I think I said something else, but I think I said knowing when to use my impulsiveness and when to ignore it. Um, that— so those were our three. Sam, you want to go first? So you said you nailed it.
I nailed it. I've, I've been way less metric focused. I try not to talk about sales or anything like that. You're a vibe CEO? I'm a vibe CEO, you know, I'm not the CEO, but my CEO is metrics driven, but I'm not as much. So I calm down and I think I'm very easy to be around at this moment. But next year, so I'm making a few changes. One, I'm going to move eventually. I think I'm going to do the most tuxedo guy, tuxedo thing ever. I think I'm moving to like Greenwich, Connecticut. That's not a joke. That's serious. So that's going to be a big change. But you know what I'm going to do in 2024 is I'm going to get, I'm trying greyscale. You know, you guys know what greyscale is? It's when you, there's like a, if you go to just Google it and you'll see the directions on how to do it. But if you type in on your phone, like color, you should see it where you can switch your iPhone to only be black or white. So I'm doing that right now because I've been using my phone to read books to my daughter. And I hate having that bright, all those colors because she stares at them. But the bigger switch I'm going to do is I'm going to get a dumb phone. Have you guys seen dumb phones? It's like a Nokia or a Light Phone. I cannot stand phone addiction. It's really bothering me. I'm totally addicted and I'm afraid to set a bad example for my children. So this year I'm going to move to a dumb phone, which is similar, I guess, to what you're saying, Andrew. You're breaking up with email.
So two, well, two thoughts on that before you jump to that. So one, the bright light you get at night, you want to actually— Peter Attia recommends switching your phone so that it's a red screen instead of grayscale. I can teach you how to do that. You tap your power button twice and you can make it a shortcut to make your screen red. And red light doesn't affect your night vision, so that's what I do. Um, that said, there's been studies on color, and if you decolorize your phone, if you make it grayscale, it's less stimulating. You're less likely to click into stuff. What I've done is actually installed something called Freedom, and Freedom plus Screen Time basically block everything.
I've been doing that, but with Opal, you know, Opal. I think it's the same thing.
Yeah, similar. So it's like I basically have no ability to get through it. Like, there's— I, I have not been able to figure it out. And so I have no email on my phone. Um, I've blocked a lot of texting. I've blocked every— basically, basically every fun app. Uh, and I feel like an addict. Like, I, I feel like really irritable. I'm going through withdrawal right now. Um, but the change I'm trying to make— so I, I nailed texting last year. I got this amazing app called Text.com, which is basically like superhuman for texts.
Dude, you've been, you've been tweeting out like links. You're like, like you like refer 5 people and you get a t-shirt or something.
I love it. I love, I absolutely love it. But the problem with that is that I've now gotten so responsive with texts. I'm so good with texts that I'm getting more texts. So, you know, you send more emails, you get more emails. I'm now getting too many texts. And because I built my email system last year, Um, I don't respond on email as fast, and so I'm getting more and more texts. So I have that problem. The big thing I'm trying to do this year is I'm trying to break up with email fully. So what I've been doing for the last 2 weeks is I can't access my email and my assistant sends me screenshots literally of any important email that she thinks I need to respond to. And I just tell her what to do with it. And what's interesting about that is when you're in a flow state, when you're working or writing or doing something, you'll often have the thought, oh shit, I have to remember to send that email. And so you jump over to Superhuman, you send the email, and then, you know, you might see 10 other subject lines. And before I know it, I'm like down a rabbit trail reading like a Packy McCormick newsletter or responding to a problem or something like that. And so what I'm, what I'm hoping is that this new system will only be the things that I absolutely need to respond to, and there's no additional distraction. So we'll, we'll see how it works.
Let me just tell you two wonderful rich guy things that Andrew just did that are true rich guy things. Not these fake ass, not these wannabe rich guy things. First thing is he said, you know what Peter Attia recommends? Which is great. 'Cause he didn't say, you know what my doctor Peter Attia recommends?
He recommended it to me.
That, yeah, recommends to me when I see him because again, he's my doctor. So that was the first great thing you did. You didn't brag when you could have bragged. The, it's the words not said. It's the dogs that didn't bark, right? That, that you really gave yourself away as being a, a truly comfortable with yourself, secure person. And I appreciate that. The second thing, you're basically at the stage of Trump and others that are just like, I just get my email printed out and put on my desk and I just quickly mark with a pen. And then somebody goes, I don't, what is email actually? I, I actually don't understand how the system works. It just shows up on my desk. You're basically at printed email. Printed email is like, you got Louis Vuitton, you got like, you know, Birkin bags, you got at the very top of the luxury pyramid is printed email. And you're basically there.
You know, it's crazy though. It's really not, it's not an inaccessible thing. Like, um, so I have an assistant in the Philippines and it's like $1,000 a month and she does it right. So it's like, it is something that a lot of people could do.
It's not that it's inexpensive. It takes a certain level of confidence in your lifestyle that you're not missing stuff. Right? You, you are not lacking something, and so you're able to do this type of system.
So what's interesting though is I've done this, I've been in this cycle for 15 years, right, of getting overwhelmed. Usually once a year I get overwhelmed and I dial everything back. And Sam, I've actually had a flip phone, I've tried the dumb phone. At the end of the day, you need to order DoorDash and Uber and do basic things, so it didn't work for me. But I had this moment where I was going through one of these cycles, and this was in 2010, and my friend asked me out for sushi. So I live in Victoria, uh, Canada, and I— and Vancouver is about, I don't know, a 35-minute flight away or a 2-hour ferry away. And so I go for sushi with my buddy, and I'm in this mode where I put my phone in my car and I don't look at it. So I, um, go have sushi. We have a great time. We're catching up. At the end of the, uh, sushi, I get in my car and I look at my phone.. And I've received an email from Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg at the time was famous, but not famous, famous, not like he is today. And I'd emailed him because I heard he was coming to Vancouver and he didn't respond for 2 days. And then at 8, 8 o'clock at night or 7 o'clock at night, I got this email that said, hey, do you want to go for a drink from him, from Zuck? And there is, and I checked this email at 8:30 or 9, and there's literally no way to get to Vancouver. After 9 PM. The ferry leaves at 9 PM. There's no flights, et cetera. And so I missed my opportunity to go out for a drink with Mark Zuckerberg one-on-one while he's out of his element in my hometown. And so I always think about that story whenever I block my email and do all these things. I still always think about that.
That's insane.
That's so funny. Imagine somebody who's like, yeah, I really want to make this lifestyle shift. It'll be good. I'm going to get off my phone. But you know, what if Mark Zuckerberg just emails me and I happen to be at sushi and I missed the one time he is in my hometown, in my neighborhood, you know? And then like Jessica Biel was there afterwards and she wanted to hang out, but then I just didn't have my phone on me. But it actually happened to you.
That's incredible.
It's a very sad story. It's a very difficult life.
Have you tried to like catch up with him and be like, Mark, um, hey, uh, you know, I was doing a dumb phone thing. You know how it is. Uh, I'm, I'm walking around Menlo Park until I see you.
Uh, You have to do the, uh, Andrew, what I want you to give up next year, at least when you're around me, maybe Sean as well, is that stupid thing you, you and Chris always do where you make everyone put their credit cards in at the end of a dinner. You did that with me, Sean, and I'll, I won't name the other person, but the dinner that one time, it was probably $600. And I don't know this personal, this person's finances, but I, I know they aren't where you are. And this guy had to pay for like a $600 meal. And I didn't want to be a bitch and be like, call everyone out.
The funny thing is we were at sushi and this person doesn't eat fish. So they paid for the meal where they don't even eat seafood.
I think it's such an awkward— it's born— so basically the story is, uh, we were all out for dinner and Chris and I said, hey, you know, instead of fighting over the bill, let's just all put our credit cards in. We'll let the waiter choose the card.
I wouldn't have fought you. We didn't have to fight.
Well, so Canadian of you.
Yeah. Well, all right, Sean, what's yours?
Um, what am I on? Uh, biggest change. Okay. Biggest change I'm making. This is something I started to do, but I'm doubling down on it. So this year I turned off two profit streams that I think combined were making like $1.2 to $1.5 million a year of profit. I just turned them off. Nothing was wrong with them. I just turned them off. I lied, actually. There was something wrong with them. They were just okay. They were just okay. Meaning it wasn't something I really loved to do, wasn't something I hated to do. It was making good money, but it wasn't making amazing money.
Can you say what those are?
Yeah. One of 'em was my course. So I was teaching this like power writing course and, you know, I was only teaching it basically 2 to 3 weeks out of the years, you know, roughly 10 days on average a year. But it would generate, you know, whatever, $1 million a year of profit. And, but I didn't like being a course sales guy. Like, I like teaching, but I'd rather just kind of like maybe just do it for free on the pod or something like that. Do it, do like a masterclass episode instead. So I just decided I'm not doing it. And I was like, okay, that's just like less coming in this year. All right. And that matters to me. So I'm like, but I'm willing to do that. And I also just announced that I'm shutting down my rolling fund. So I'll only be investing personally now. I'm not taking any more outside money. Just because it was like kind of another thing to manage. Like, here's a group of investors, gotta write these updates. I gotta keep it like, you know, I gotta keep it organized. Oh, should I do this deal or should I not do this deal? I just decided I'm just gonna invest my own money. I don't need to do this anymore. And with that comes like a steady stream of fees and carry that would come with a fund. I turned it off again. Didn't have to turn it off, just chose to turn it off. And the reason why was I realized I was talking to somebody that was I had one day, like, you know, uh, what's that like A Christmas Carol movie where like he gets visited by the ghosts, uh, and they're like, they kind of tell him the story. Like I talked to one friend who's in a bad relationship and they're not getting out. And I'm like, dude, this is not what you want. And they're like, yeah, but it's not terrible. I'm like, but not terrible isn't your goal. And they're like, yeah, but like, you know, I don't know who else is out there. When, if I meet somebody else, then maybe, you know, I'll feel, and I'm like, you're just not going to meet somebody else because you're dating this person. And then I met another person who was in a job they did like, same thing. It wasn't a terrible job, so they didn't quit and they would, they'd be open to a better job, but they weren't seeing a better job 'cause they were so occupied with the one that they had. And so I just kind of realized if you want something great, you gotta make space for great. You can't just wait till your current thing gets so bad and you have to end it, or that this new amazing thing shows up at your doorstep and it'll be obvious to switch. And you gotta just say no to some, some things that are just okay in order to literally create space so that a better thing can come and land in your lap and be there. You have the time, you have the mindshare, you have the availability to take the meeting and something better lands. And that's exactly what's happened this year. Better things have landed because I've done that. And so now I'm like, next year, what else is there that's like kind of in that middle tier, it's good, not great bucket that I should just I should just get out.
What's it going to be?
Um, I'm thinking about what that, what that might look like. I don't want to say just yet, but yeah, there's, there's maybe some other things I could do to free up more time or create some space.
What do you think about that?
Well, I, um, yeah, it's funny you mentioned that. So one of the problems with having a fund or raising money is that you owe people things, right? There's people that have given you millions of dollars And I actually had a moment yesterday where I had a really busy day and I woke up and I actually felt really excited and creative. And I made this big list of all these things I wanted to dig into that I was excited to learn about and work on. And then, um, there's a really wonderful guy who invested in a fund that we raised and he gave us, I think, $5 million or something. And he wanted to get on the phone and understand what was going on with an investment that we made. And so me and Chris had to stop everything we're doing and talk to him. And we had a, you know, we had a really nice chat with him, but it interrupted my flow state. It interrupted what I really wanted to be doing in my day. And the problem with raising money is that at the end of the day, there's people who can call you and you owe it to answer the phone and they can interrupt you at any given time. And especially in a rolling fund, there's like 50 of those people. And so I feel the same way. I really think that, um, When you give your time to something like that, you're taking away from something else.
But that's, we're going to get to best investment, or maybe we can go right there, but some of the things that you're doing contradict that. And same with me.
Totally.
Yeah.
Like I'm doing the Twitter subscribers, for example, but the thing about it is that I actually enjoy, A, I don't, nobody can email me and say, I'm a Twitter subscriber. I demand your time. I've made it very clear that I'm only doing an AMA once a month. I don't respond to tweets necessarily. I don't guarantee any response. And so most months I spend an hour doing an AMA that I find really fun anyway. So for now, I'm going to continue doing that. But, um, but I've certainly considered that.
Oh, by the way, I have an update on my biggest change from last year that I'd said where I was going to be less— I was going to learn when to use my impulsiveness and when not to. Totally failed at that. Um, we— there was a business idea that we had that we were like, oh, maybe we should do this business.. And I was like, here's the reasons why I'm super excited about it. But I was like, you know what? Old Sean would've just started it now. New Sean, here's what I'm gonna do. This business isn't going anywhere. I'm gonna give myself a 2-week cooldown period where I, I've, I've done all the meetings. I'm kind of like, I know what's there. I have the information I need, but I still have to decide, is this a business? Because you, you know, you don't date a business, you kind of marry a business for like at least a couple years. And so I said, let me give myself a 2-week cooldown period to get off the impulsiveness. And I made it 2 days into the impulsiveness period before I had my first customer and I was running and it was so good. And I was like, oh, I definitely didn't do the thing that I would've advised me to do, which is to say, if you still want to do this in 2 weeks, then you know this is a great business for you. And I kind of failed at that, I got to admit. So still working on that one. I'm going to keep that one on the list for this year.
Impulsively shut down your rolling fund. Let's do person you'd bet it all on. So mine was between two of our guests, actually, Jason Yanowitz and Austin Reef. Jason Yanowitz started Blockworks. It's a crypto media company. I don't even like crypto, but I love Jason and I love his media company. He scaled it to, I don't know, tens of millions in revenue. And then Austin Reef started Morning Brew, who was my competitor. Now I've gotten really close to him because he's in my core group at Hampton. But I'm going to give it to Austin because he's already sold most of his business, Morning Brew. I think he was 26. When he sold it at a $75 million valuation. The company now is doing high 8 figures in revenue. I think whatever Austin Reef does, I would blindly put money in. I would invest in him blindly.
Wow. That's not who I thought you would pick. Austin's amazing, but, uh, that's it. You've come full circle. You're, you're former competitor now turned, dare I say it, hero.
Well, look, I love these people that have the perfect balance of optimism and pessimism. You know, like they're like optimistically pessimists, like where they think something amazing is going to happen, but they're fairly conservative and they plan for the downside. So he's interesting to me.
Cool. Who you got, Andrew? Who would you bet it all on?
So mine's not really a business person necessarily. You know, I've been thinking a lot about like AI disruption. And I think that if I had to bet it all on one business, that would be incredibly hard because I think in AI there's so many second order and third order consequences and levels of disruption. So my thought was actually if I could just be an investor in a podcaster, someone with a personal monopoly, and my idea was Andrew Huberman. So I think he's got an incredible brand and he's doing the thing that he loves and is kind of made for. He's insanely likable. He loves talking about all these interesting people, about all these interesting things. People have this incredible affinity for him and they will basically do anything that he says. If people advertise with him or he talks about a product, everyone will buy it, which means that his ads— like, we tried to buy an ad for AeroPress a year ago. We just got an ad for AeroPress literally yesterday. Uh, and I think we paid some, you know, very high number because his audience is huge.
Did you see results from it yet?
Uh, I don't know yet. I can report back. Um, but anyway, he, his business, I'm like, that is a completely undisruptible business unless he gets hit by a bus or something.
The best line was from Rob Dyrdek. We asked him how much it costs to advertise Momentus, uh, on the pod, on, on Huberman's pod. And he goes, I don't remember how much it was, but I could tell you whatever it was, it probably wasn't enough because he moved the needle for us that much.
Yeah, that's amazing. All right, my person I'd bet it all— Sam, are you sitting down? Yeah, it's you, bro.
Me?
It'd be you. It'd be you. And let me tell you why. Let me tell you why. Not just for the reasons that you think. You're talented, but there's a lot of talented people. You're smart, but there's a lot of smart people out there. I, this year, have really come to appreciate more than ever, and I think it's because I've moved out of the I'm going to be CEO and operator role to more like I'm going to be investor and other, trust other people to operate, uh, you know, these businesses that we own. Um, you, the underrated trait that I had been severely underweighting in my little mental model was like, are, is this person going to be focused? Are they going to get distracted? Is this person going to be loyal? And are they going to take this seriously? And when it comes to that, like, we have a lot of friends that are, you know, They're talented and they're successful, but they have shiny object syndrome. I'm one of 'em. We have a lot of people that will, if they do something, they kind of know they got 10 more shots on goal and they're just gonna keep trying different stuff until they figure out the little thing that works. Every time you talk to 'em, if you catch up with 'em every quarter, they're gonna have a new narrative. You're not like that. And I've now learned that people like that, they just win. And the people who are steady, and solid, and I feel like to have a certain level of seriousness about them when it comes to doing something, like, I don't really care what it is. Like, when you were writing your blog posts for The Hustle early on, even before the newsletter, just like, yeah, we're going to write a blog post that needs to get a bunch of people to subscribe and follow us. And you took it incredibly seriously. And when you were hosting events, you took it incredibly seriously. And when you're doing Hampton, you take it incredibly seriously. You do one thing. You take it very, very seriously. And if I'm going to bet it all on somebody, that's really what I want is a certain level of seriousness. It's something I, it's a trait I've come to admire. Like we hired a CMO into our e-commerce business and, uh, this guy Chris, and he's amazing. Uh, not because he's the most talented marketer. And like, if you go on Twitter every day, there's these like e-com guys. I don't know if you guys see this or just my feed of guys just bragging about this like campaign they did and this new ad technique they did. And He's not like that. He's just blocking and tackling every day with a certain level of seriousness. And the beautiful thing is, I know this guy's going to stay focused and only work on this. He doesn't have 3 side hustles. He doesn't have his own podcast and rolling fund. He's just going to stay focused on this for the next 4 years. And when he does that, he takes it seriously and he's going to like do all the obvious things. He's going to win bigger than the kind of like talented person who's all over the place. And I know that's a big contrast to me because I'm more of the, talented person who's all over the place, but I've seen the value on the other side now. And I'm like, that's who I need to surround myself with because those people win.
Well, I appreciate you. I love the love and I love you for saying that. That's very kind. I, um, why we had a, like we did these MFM meetups recently. Um, and I called into one to one last night, Sean. And apparently the thing is, is they put on their badge who they like more, you or me.
And they'll never tear us apart, bro.
I don't even want to know the results.
They'll never tear us apart.
Obviously every brown person, every Indian person had Sean, but I was shocked. Maybe I shouldn't have been shocked. You were a fan favorite. So by you liking me and them liking you, they are now my fans too. Maybe I hope, but I appreciate that. Thank you very much. I think that focus will change your game, Sean. And if you want, you know, like this is a little crude, but you know how you're supposed to like rub one out before you have before you like do something bad with someone that you're not supposed to. If he wanted—
I love you.
You could do that to me. I will help you. I'll be your hand. I'll keep you focused.
I don't know what that offer was, but that was kind, I think.
Um, I just offered my hand to you. Yeah, I got you.
All right.
Um, all right, what's the next one? Best business for someone else to go into.
Yeah. What, what's a great business idea that someone else should go do?
Do you know what we said last year? I think mine was a washer and a washer and dryer. That's 2-in-1. Uh, Andrew said empty, empty leg flights. And then Sean said school for starving artists, like turn art into commercial things. For example, photographers.
Yeah.
All right.
So, uh, I don't think anybody did any of those 3. So, uh, what do we got this year, boys? You got it. We got to step it up.
All right. I think I've got a pretty I think it's practical. So since the beginning of this pod, Sean, I've said that I think privacy is going to be more important and it's going to— this is a mega trend. I said that, uh, things like DuckDuckGo are going to get a lot bigger. I think they have gotten huge, but not as big as I thought because it hasn't been easier than— it's been more like a vitamin, not necessarily a painkiller. I still think, uh, it's going to get big, that space. And I think in particular, What you're going to see is companies who are tailored for— it's going to start with first, like executives and people like us who have audiences. And it's going to be something like where they protect your information online. So I've gotten like, I've signed up for a few of these services and I'm alerted if one of my passwords gets hacked, or they'll say like, hey, we know where you live because we saw you post a picture of your car. Then we did Google Maps and we see your car in front of the house and we just predicted where you live. And, and, and so I'm using a bunch of these. I'm testing a lot of them out. I think these are going to be really popular. So for example, cyberhealth.co, I've not used these guys yet, but I like, like the premise that they provide. But I think what's going to happen is there's going to be, it's going to start with like $5,000 or $10,000 a year services that are a little bit more towards executives. And then it's going to trail down. And I think Gen Z is going to be all about privacy in the next 10 years. So that's what I'm interested in.
That's a great one. I like that one a lot. I totally agree with you. This. Feels a little semi-glutidy, like, uh, hey, wait, is Sam onto something here? I think you might be onto something. Uh, Andrew, what you got? What's the best business for someone else to go do?
So I love this one. I think I would do this if, um, if I was going to start a business. And, uh, my idea is AI Tinder. So imagine you go on Tinder, and so, so what got me thinking about this is, um, DALL-E and all these image generation tools can now create photorealistic images and I don't know if you guys have seen them, but there's now Instagram influencers, um, who are beautiful men and women who make $10,000 a month on Instagram.
Dude, I just kept getting this. I kept getting this lady come up on my Twitter and I'm like, this lady's very attractive. What's her story? Like, why do I keep getting the same person going on my story? And it, they didn't say she was fake, but I'm like, this is definitely fake. This person's not real. Then I had to Google it and she was fake.
Yeah. I mean, and, and they, they can, I mean, it basically. You can look at the image and almost not know. So my— here's my idea. So you basically generate, um, like thousands and thousands and thousands of fake digital men and women, and then you have Tinder, and you basically, um, you make it like a casino, right? So you're swiping, and let's say you match with a, a really hot digital girl, and then you have to text with her, and there's some sort of algorithm where you have to win her over to exchange photos and start talking or whatever. And I just think if you gamify dating, right? I mean, it's kind of— it's something that, like, you know, people in relationships can even do this, right? It's just kind of like scratching an itch. I think that's something that would just absolutely blow up.
But you're saying they know it's fake, right? You're saying, you know, it's fake. The game is to— it's almost like, you know, flirting. You're getting better.
And like, people might see this as like creepy, and it's like, no, these bots can train people how to not be creepy, right? Because you're never going to get another photo if you're creepy.
We've talked about Replika. Do you remember Replika? It was like a digital girlfriend or a boyfriend, and they like changed part of their algorithm or something about like what they allowed people to talk about. And one of the, one of the guys killed himself, like one of the customers killed himself. Like these people fell in love with these women, these fake women. So it's pretty wild.
Yeah, that's crazy.
All right.
Uh, best business for someone else to go do. Okay. I had a couple ideas. I think. Anything in the guns and ammo space I think is a great one. Um, but I didn't want to pick that one. I think distressed venture capital, Andrew, I think you guys are on top of this, which is a bunch of companies that are good products, have revenues, but they are not going to be able to raise their next round and they're going to go die. And so, you know, creating a business around that is good. But the one I picked is TikTok Shops. So I don't know if you guys are paying attention to this, but The number one book in the world right now, do you know what it is? It's the Shadow Work Journal. Number one book in the world. What is the Shadow Work Journal, you ask? Well, it's this goddamn book that you can't, you know, it's just going crazy on TikTok. It's basically, and what it is, is TikTok not just launched the ability to shop, they launched the ability for anybody to be an affiliate of any product without having a relationship with the company. So created this giant, like,, you know, network sales thing. It's like almost like an MLM. Uh, TikTok has turned into a giant MLM. So basically you can, as a creator, just find a product in the shop that's eligible for commission. You make a video about it and you get a commission every time they go buy it. That's why this, this journal is the number one product in the world. It's sold over half a million copies of this journal.
Yeah.
It's sold.
And that's, that's through the TikTok shop. Then you have Amazon. It's the number one book on Amazon too. So, you know, add another half a million on that, right? That, that's easily a million copies have sold of this, of this one journal. And this is like in a 2.5, 3 month span. This is not very long. And, um, you know, I'm the type of person where I meet people, like I meet Moise and, uh, you know, he's like, yeah, I did Facebook, uh, ads for Native deodorant. And I was like, okay, well, what worked? It's like, yeah, back then, you know, the clicks were just super cheap. There weren't very many people advertising on Facebook, especially a product like this. It was just mobile games or something. And you're like, damn, man, that was the glory era of Facebook ads. Now it's all so expensive. Now it's so competitive. But, you know, if I was doing this in 2012, that was the time. And, you know, oh, I wish I bought Bitcoin back in 2011 or 2012 when my friend first mentioned it back in those, you know, $130. That was the time. And I always wish I was there back in time. Well, guess what? There's a golden era that's happening right now and it's TikTok Shops, right? TikTok Shops is currently in that like It's very cheap. It's not that saturated. And TikTok is very motivated to promote these things. And TikTok customers are not like fully acclimated to the fact that now a bunch of the TikToks they see are selling products. And so the conversion rate is going to be higher. And these windows don't last for very long, but they do last, you know, and when you can go make hay during these periods. And so I think if I was, uh, you know, 23 years old, there's nothing else I would rather be doing than trying to create something that's going to sell through the TikTok Shop platform. TikTok is even paying for, like, they'll subsidize your product. So if you have a $60 product, it'll be for sale for $30, but you're still getting $60 because TikTok is subsidizing products that they want to promote and, uh, and giving you the full value of them. So you're getting TikTok to pay for half the, half the product sometimes, or 30% of the product sometimes. It's pretty insane.
Katana.
Kind of like when the iPhone came out, people start making apps for the App Store, but you could see the charts, you could see what's getting downloaded. And the same thing with shops, you can go see what's selling well and how many units it's sold. And you can kind of either use that to either create a competitor or like just sort of like abstract away and be like, oh, it's this type of product that's doing well. At this price point that's doing well on TikTok. Let me go, let me go after that. All right, that is part 1. I gotta go take a pee break, get some water, take a rest. But we got so many trophies still on the table that have to be given out for the Milly Awards. We got 6 or 7 of my favorite categories. We saved the best stuff for last. So after this, go listen to part 2 of the 2023 Milly Awards. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.