You Have 70 Days to Win the Year

0:00:02 All right, it’s it’s Q4.
0:00:05 So I don’t know what whatever day you’re going to hear this.
0:00:09 There’s about 70 days left in the year, 70 days left in here.
0:00:13 And everybody makes a big deal about January 1st, New Year’s resolutions.
0:00:15 But I have a different argument.
0:00:17 I have an argument that says there’s 70 days left in the year.
0:00:21 Just enough time to actually do the thing.
0:00:25 Whatever the thing is for you, that’s going to make this year amazing.
0:00:27 I feel like I can rule the world.
0:00:33 I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like the days off on the road.
0:00:36 Let’s try today is a wake up call 70 days left.
0:00:42 It’s time for one sprint on one priority to try to make it happen.
0:00:45 The one thing you could do, whatever it is, that’s going to make your year awesome.
0:00:49 So, for example, maybe you’re trying to get in great shape.
0:00:51 The diet starts this morning.
0:00:53 It starts now and we’re going hardcore.
0:00:54 It’s life or death diet mode.
0:00:58 If you really want to quit your job, start the business, put in your notice.
0:01:00 Put in your notice today.
0:01:01 Just put it in and see what happens.
0:01:02 See how it feels.
0:01:02 Just the tip.
0:01:08 Whatever you’re going to do, you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to use the 70
0:01:11 day sprint if you’re trying to hit your growth goal.
0:01:16 If you’re trying to raise around a funding, whatever it is, this is the lock in time.
0:01:22 Because 70 days is about the perfect amount of time where you could totally shift your life.
0:01:27 It’s enough time to be honest about how long things take to make a change happen.
0:01:32 But it’s short enough where you won’t lollygag.
0:01:34 And you’re either going to make it happen this year or you’re not.
0:01:37 And this last 70 days is going to be the make or break.
0:01:41 As Frank Slutman, the guy who was CEO of Snowflake and wrote that book, amped it up,
0:01:44 he goes, “Priority should be a single word.”
0:01:49 If somebody tells me they’re top three priorities, all I ask them is, which one is it?
0:01:51 And then they get really flustered.
0:01:54 But he goes, “I believe priority is a single word.”
0:01:58 And so I highly suggest, figure out the one priority.
0:02:01 The one thing that if you just did this one thing, the whole year is a win.
0:02:04 And they use the 70 days to do it and wipe everything else off the calendar.
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0:02:46 What’s your thing going to be?
0:02:50 My one thing for this year, the one thing that if I just did this thing,
0:02:54 I could look back and be like, well, I don’t care what else happened that year.
0:02:55 That happened.
0:02:56 And that’s all that matters.
0:02:58 For me, it’s getting in the best shape of my life.
0:03:00 And so I’ve made good progress.
0:03:02 I’m down about 15 pounds.
0:03:06 I would like to turn the corner, get the last 10 down by the end of this year.
0:03:08 And to do that, I’ll need to ratchet it up.
0:03:12 And really, it’s not necessarily about pounds, but like I set these habits.
0:03:16 I was like, all right, I have these habits that got me this body.
0:03:20 If I want that body, I got to have these other habits.
0:03:22 And so I’ve been trying to change these four or five habits.
0:03:23 It’s just four or five.
0:03:26 Four or five of these habits that got me where I’m at, where I want to go.
0:03:29 And I’ve probably changed two of the four.
0:03:32 So I have the last 70 days to get the other two done.
0:03:34 What are the other two?
0:03:36 So I’ll give you the two I did, and I’ll give you the two I need to do.
0:03:42 So the two I did, the first one is planning the health part of my day at the beginning.
0:03:43 First thing when I wake up.
0:03:43 Yeah.
0:03:46 We both, I don’t know if you still do, but I use my body tutor.
0:03:48 So she calls me.
0:03:48 It’s great, right?
0:03:50 It’s a great service.
0:03:50 Yes, it’s a great service.
0:03:53 We have no stake, at least I have no stake in this business.
0:03:55 It’s, you know, I’m just a big fan of it.
0:03:59 So she calls me at 8 in the morning and she says, how did you actually go?
0:04:00 What’s today, blah, blah, blah.
0:04:06 But the thing that happens is instead of waking up and just starting my day with my work
0:04:09 and my emails and my Slack and like me little computer stuff.
0:04:13 No, I start my day with the top priority, the thing I really care about,
0:04:15 which is rewiring these habits.
0:04:19 And in doing so, I basically stop improvising because the improvising is where
0:04:23 I’m just going to make whatever decision happened in the moment.
0:04:25 And that those decisions are the key thing, right?
0:04:29 So by planning my day, I say, all right, I’m going to eat this, this and this at these times.
0:04:29 I’m going to work out here.
0:04:33 And most importantly, we identify like, what might trip me up?
0:04:36 It’s like, oh, I have to take my kids to the gymnastics thing.
0:04:37 That’s like an hour away.
0:04:39 It’s at the time I normally eat dinner.
0:04:41 So you plan around the grenade.
0:04:42 Yeah, it’s like, oh, so what are you going to do?
0:04:46 Oh, simple. I’ll just bring it with me in the car or I’m going to eat before I go.
0:04:49 Or you’ll look ahead like three days.
0:04:51 You’re like, all right, on Saturday, I’ve got a birthday party.
0:04:52 I know we’re going to have cake.
0:04:55 I’m going to splurge on that one piece of cake, which means leading up to it.
0:04:59 I got to prepare that I’m going to be tight today.
0:05:03 So a big part of it was realizing the decision tank,
0:05:06 the gas tank of decisions, good decisions is full in the mornings.
0:05:09 And by the evening, it’s depleted.
0:05:11 And so all my bad decisions happened then.
0:05:15 And so I just make all the decisions up front for what I’m going to do.
0:05:18 And then I simply just need to stick to them, which of course, not perfect.
0:05:20 Like the daily ones, basically they call you daily.
0:05:23 And the reason why that’s good is that’s when you’re like really getting after it.
0:05:27 And then the weekly one is like, I use her as like, I’m happy where I am.
0:05:30 They should call it the serious person plan and then the unserious person plan.
0:05:32 Like, are you serious about this or are you not so serious?
0:05:35 If you’re not so serious here, do this weekly plan.
0:05:37 And then what’s the fourth part of the fourth?
0:05:41 So first habit, plan all the meals and the workouts up front.
0:05:42 First thing in the morning, make the decision.
0:05:44 Then don’t make the decisions as you go.
0:05:45 Make one decision at the beginning.
0:05:49 The second one is what I call the four-point swing.
0:05:52 So if you’ve ever played basketball, you know, there’s this thing
0:05:56 that the announcers will say where, let’s say you had an open shot.
0:05:56 You should have made it.
0:06:00 You would have scored two points, but instead you fumbled the ball.
0:06:02 The other team takes it and they get an easy shot.
0:06:04 And so it was a four-point swing.
0:06:06 It should have been two, you know, you should have been up to and they should have zero.
0:06:09 Instead you missed your two and they got two, right?
0:06:09 So four-point swing.
0:06:13 So I realized, oh, there’s one part of my day that’s like the four-point swing.
0:06:17 It’s like, could have gone in my favor and instead it totally wipes me out, which is like,
0:06:19 basically for me, it’s, I work pretty late.
0:06:24 So after my kids go to bed, then I have kind of like this relaxation and I’ll do like more work.
0:06:26 So I usually stay up pretty late.
0:06:29 If I late night snack there and I, so basically it’s like, I’m up late.
0:06:31 So I sleep, I sleep late.
0:06:34 And therefore I also, because I’m up late, I eat late.
0:06:37 And then I started going to bed early just to avoid that situation.
0:06:42 Exactly. It’s like, yo, I don’t know if I have the willpower to not late night snack,
0:06:44 but I can just go upstairs and go to bed.
0:06:45 And that’s kind of the only thing.
0:06:46 And then in the morning of I’m hungry, great.
0:06:47 I make good decisions.
0:06:49 Again, the tank is full.
0:06:54 So anyways, that those are the two that I’ve been working on and made a lot of progress on.
0:06:57 And then I have two more, which is treat the weekends like the weekdays.
0:06:59 Because my weekends, I was just become a different person.
0:07:00 It was fucking Mardi Gras for me.
0:07:04 It was like, wait, wait, well, why, why did I throw away all those habits that I do during
0:07:07 the week that are great and just treat the weekends totally differently?
0:07:08 So that’s silly.
0:07:09 I’m not going to do that anymore.
0:07:16 And then I have one more, which is my sort of thing that gets me is chips.
0:07:18 It’s sort of like a snack.
0:07:19 So it’s kind of the root why.
0:07:21 It’s like, well, it’s basically the cheapest way to pleasure.
0:07:22 It’s like super fast.
0:07:23 It’s right in front of me.
0:07:26 It’s the fastest way to pleasure.
0:07:29 So substituting that with another thing that’s a fast, cheap way to get pleasure.
0:07:34 So it’s like other things I like to do are other things that feel good in the moment.
0:07:36 That’s not like some delayed gratification.
0:07:40 Instant gratification, just not through a snack, but through whatever, like,
0:07:45 you know, take a shower or there’s like this other like a sparkling water drink that I make,
0:07:47 whatever, little other things that I could substitute.
0:07:48 So doing those substitutes.
0:07:50 The weekday weekend thing is pretty funny.
0:07:53 Once I’ve known Kagan, he’s one of my best friends.
0:07:58 And he was like, years ago, he goes, you’re the only person I know who doesn’t drink,
0:07:59 but you’re still fat.
0:08:00 What the hell?
0:08:05 I had a friend that’s of the same.
0:08:06 He goes, I saw my company.
0:08:07 He goes, okay, cool.
0:08:08 You’re rich now.
0:08:09 I’m like, yeah, thanks.
0:08:12 And he goes, there’s no, you can’t be rich and fat.
0:08:13 He’s like, there’s no excuse.
0:08:16 If you’re poor, you just don’t have the time.
0:08:18 You can’t get the nutritious food and you can’t get the gym.
0:08:20 Like, okay, understandable.
0:08:21 You’re rich and fat.
0:08:22 That’s you.
0:08:23 That’s all you.
0:08:25 So he was like, you can’t be rich or fat.
0:08:26 It’s just a rule.
0:08:28 I was like, oh, okay.
0:08:30 Felt like I got into some club and they were like,
0:08:31 you need to take your shoes off at the door.
0:08:33 It’s so funny.
0:08:36 By the way, one thing to finish that food thing.
0:08:38 Remember when Brian Johnson came on the first time
0:08:38 on this podcast?
0:08:42 Like before Brian Johnson became like way more famous
0:08:46 and like, you know, changed his entire look.
0:08:50 So like kind of the before photo, Brian Johnson, basically.
0:08:51 When he came on, he said something.
0:08:54 He goes, oh yeah, we fired evening Brian.
0:08:56 And I thought that was just such a good way of saying it.
0:08:58 He’s like, yeah, we had a meeting of the Brian’s.
0:08:59 Morning Brian was there.
0:09:00 Work Brian was there.
0:09:01 And evening Brian was there.
0:09:02 We just decided evening Brian,
0:09:04 you’re fucking it up for the rest of us.
0:09:04 So you’re fired.
0:09:06 You no longer get to make decisions.
0:09:09 We’ve taken that power away from you.
0:09:10 So that was a great way of saying it.
0:09:12 He did a really good job.
0:09:14 Have you read the book 48 Laws of Power?
0:09:16 Like one of the laws of power is like,
0:09:18 change your identity occasionally.
0:09:24 And like occasionally it’s a tool.
0:09:24 It’s like a tool.
0:09:28 So for example, the author, he was like Lady Gaga.
0:09:30 Like if you look at like early photos of her,
0:09:31 she was like a very normal girl,
0:09:33 but she always had like a little weird quirky side to her.
0:09:35 But she’s like, she went all in on it
0:09:37 and just changed her identity overnight
0:09:39 to be like this kind of like strange person.
0:09:41 And then nowadays, by the way, if you see Lady Gaga,
0:09:42 she’s not actually that weird anymore.
0:09:45 You remember that era where she like would wear meat as a dress?
0:09:48 Now she like has an album with like Tony Bennett,
0:09:50 like a very classic singer.
0:09:53 And she’s like more of a like, you know, whatever she,
0:09:55 that would be called like classic beauty versus before.
0:09:57 She was like artistic.
0:09:58 Pop when Bitcoin prices up
0:10:00 and pop when Bitcoin prices down.
0:10:02 There’s two pops, the tale of two pops.
0:10:04 And I think Brian Johnson changed his identity.
0:10:06 And I thought that that was like a really savvy thing to do.
0:10:07 I thought it was great.
0:10:09 And I think that I take inspiration from it.
0:10:13 Can I tell you a story that I’ve been kind of
0:10:14 thinking about constantly?
0:10:15 Okay.
0:10:15 All right.
0:10:18 So I have to tell you the story about this guy named Jamie Beaton.
0:10:21 So Jamie is a 29 year old from New Zealand.
0:10:24 He was raised in a single household in New Zealand,
0:10:26 but he’s kind of like grown to be
0:10:29 probably like the best college kid on earth.
0:10:30 So listen to the story.
0:10:32 So this guy Jamie, he’s raised by single mother in New Zealand.
0:10:35 And I guess if I had to like cycle analyze him,
0:10:38 he’d probably like has some like rejection type of like,
0:10:40 you know, he’s not good enough type of vibe
0:10:42 that a lot of great, great people with cheap greatness have.
0:10:45 And he gets obsessed with school,
0:10:49 but particularly with university applications
0:10:51 and how to get into like the best university on earth.
0:10:53 And so he sets out with a goal
0:10:56 to become the most qualified high school student
0:10:57 in all of New Zealand.
0:11:00 And he like creates this really in depth strategy.
0:11:01 It’s like, you know, he’s got to be unique.
0:11:03 So he goes and starts two different businesses,
0:11:05 one being like a newspaper delivery business,
0:11:07 one another being like an iPhone repair business.
0:11:09 He focuses on being the best.
0:11:11 And so he like strategically picks activities
0:11:12 that he can excel in.
0:11:15 Then he looks to maximize validation,
0:11:16 meaning like whatever he’s good at,
0:11:18 he wants like enter into a contest and like win.
0:11:21 And then really good academic.
0:11:22 So he’s like, it’s straight A’s.
0:11:25 And so he like does this like crazy curriculum
0:11:26 that he creates for himself.
0:11:27 And by the age of 17,
0:11:29 he’s accepted into 25 universities.
0:11:31 So he’s accepted into Harvard, Yale,
0:11:33 Princeton, Sanford, Columbia, Cambridge,
0:11:34 Duke and a bunch of other stuff.
0:11:38 But he ends up going to Harvard.
0:11:39 But before he gets into Harvard,
0:11:41 like word spreads in New Zealand
0:11:43 that this kid is like a wonder kid.
0:11:45 And he’s like the greatest thing on earth.
0:11:49 And so he even like hosts like a 230 person talk in New Zealand
0:11:50 where all these parents are like,
0:11:51 Jamie, tell us how you did this.
0:11:53 Like this is so amazing.
0:11:55 So fast forward to today.
0:11:56 He’s 29 years old.
0:11:58 He’s got seven degrees and one PhD.
0:12:00 He has a, like if you go to his LinkedIn,
0:12:02 it literally looks like a fake LinkedIn.
0:12:03 Listen to his education.
0:12:05 So a bachelor’s in applied math from Harvard,
0:12:07 a master’s in applied math from Harvard,
0:12:09 a PhD in public policy from Oxford,
0:12:11 two masters from Stanford,
0:12:13 a master’s in entrepreneurship from Penn,
0:12:14 a master’s from Princeton,
0:12:15 a law degree from Yale,
0:12:17 and a master’s in global affairs
0:12:19 from a university in China.
0:12:20 Is that insane?
0:12:23 This is real.
0:12:24 Show 12 educations.
0:12:26 I’ve never even seen that.
0:12:28 It looks fake.
0:12:31 So now while this kid, he’s 29 now,
0:12:33 but while he was a kid at sophomore in college,
0:12:36 he was like, this is kind of interesting what’s going on.
0:12:38 And so he creates a college tutoring business,
0:12:40 which is like kind of like a stereotypical,
0:12:41 not stereotypical,
0:12:43 but it’s like a common story of people who like master the game.
0:12:45 They like start these tutoring businesses,
0:12:47 but it actually starts working to the point
0:12:48 where by the, he’s a sophomore in college,
0:12:50 it does a million in revenue.
0:12:53 And obviously he’s interning
0:12:54 because that’s what great college kids do,
0:12:56 but he’s interning at tiger management,
0:12:57 which is like, you know,
0:12:59 one of the most prestigious like hedge funds in the world.
0:13:02 And his boss is like, dude, this is pretty cool.
0:13:04 You should like go in on, go all in on this.
0:13:06 And so he turns his little side business.
0:13:08 I mean, it was a million in revenue
0:13:09 by the time he was sophomore,
0:13:11 one that wasn’t that much of a side business,
0:13:12 but he turns it into a real business.
0:13:15 And it’s called Crimson Education.
0:13:17 And that’s like what the story in the Wall Street Journal was about.
0:13:22 So Crimson Education does something like 120 to 150 million in revenue.
0:13:24 It’s valued around $500 million.
0:13:26 They have something like a thousand employees.
0:13:28 And it’s like the greatest way, I guess,
0:13:31 to get into a highly touted university for your kids.
0:13:34 And so these parents are spending crazy amounts of money,
0:13:36 something like $200,000 a year
0:13:38 for a handful of the product offerings that they have
0:13:41 in order to get their kid into an Ivy League school.
0:13:42 And it starts way before high school.
0:13:44 We’re talking like fifth, sixth grade.
0:13:46 You’re smiling. Is this ridiculous or what?
0:13:48 So I’m smiling for a couple of reasons.
0:13:49 First, the headline is great.
0:13:54 So it says, “The guru who says he can get your 11-year-old into Harvard.”
0:13:56 And there’s a picture of him shaking this Asian kid’s hand.
0:14:01 First, why an 11-year-old into Harvard?
0:14:03 All right, that’s funny thing, one.
0:14:06 Two, love the name Crimson Education.
0:14:11 As you know, big fan of when you hijack the prestige of another thing
0:14:14 in a way that’s totally legal,
0:14:15 the way that you did with Hampton,
0:14:19 the way he’s doing with the Crimson color for Harvard,
0:14:21 Crimson Education, great name.
0:14:24 When I Google the name, the very first thing it says,
0:14:26 and by the way, this article came out six days ago,
0:14:28 the very first thing in the Google headline is,
0:14:31 Crimson Education as seen on the Wall Street Journal.
0:14:34 I’m like, this guy is a fucking prestige hacker.
0:14:36 Immediately it was like,
0:14:39 now it’s going to be like as featured on My First Million, right?
0:14:43 Like he’s just going to keep grabbing badges from schools,
0:14:46 from press, from whoever you can get.
0:14:47 So I think that’s hilarious.
0:14:52 The next thing that I find a little bit funny is,
0:14:54 the premise of this is,
0:14:58 I will help your kid get into a top university, is that right?
0:14:59 But it’s not test prep.
0:15:03 No, so they have, first of all, if you go to,
0:15:04 are you on their website?
0:15:06 Their offering or like their headline is amazing.
0:15:10 98% acceptance rate to your top college choice.
0:15:11 So listen to like the product.
0:15:14 So the product is like pretty ridiculous.
0:15:16 Basically, like, you remember how I like outlined it,
0:15:19 to like stick out, you know, like be unique, whatever.
0:15:23 The Crimson Education has these like tenants of what you need.
0:15:26 So it’s like, get amazing grades.
0:15:27 So he’s like, these are bombs.
0:15:29 You basically have to have like perfect A’s.
0:15:32 Then he’s like, you need to have strong leadership.
0:15:34 And so what Crimson does is they definitely tutor people.
0:15:37 So I think they have 50,000 students who get tutoring.
0:15:39 But dude, they encourage you to do all types of crazy shit.
0:15:42 So they encourage you to start a business podcast
0:15:44 or rather start a business or start a podcast
0:15:46 or go and publish an academic paper.
0:15:49 And so they have services that help their students get PR
0:15:52 or help their students go and publish research.
0:15:56 And so they’re one example of a kid who started a podcast
0:16:00 and it got so popular that universities started asking
0:16:02 to be featured on the podcast.
0:16:03 And so that’s an example of like things
0:16:06 where they try to tell you that you have to have strong leadership.
0:16:08 They also say that you have to have a unique profile.
0:16:10 And so what he says is or what Crimson does
0:16:13 is they help students find like 10 activities
0:16:15 that they’re interested in and then helps them
0:16:18 be the best at the activities and cut the fat
0:16:20 and not participate in things
0:16:21 that they’re not going to be like the best at.
0:16:23 It’s like pretty ridiculous.
0:16:25 So they offer tutoring, but they also offer
0:16:27 like for something like $200,000.
0:16:31 They do like really hands-on like we need you to do this,
0:16:33 this, this, and this over the course of a handful of years
0:16:34 to increase the likelihood.
0:16:36 And by the way, it works.
0:16:39 Like there’s debate over how much it works.
0:16:40 Like there’s debate where they’re like,
0:16:43 you know, these kids are like rich, smart kids anyway.
0:16:45 Like their parents are going to like force
0:16:46 them to get into all this shit anyway.
0:16:47 Like did this actually help?
0:16:50 But something like 2% of the students admitted
0:16:55 into Brown, Columbia, Harvard, and Penn last year were his clients.
0:16:58 And it says like this many people get in as verified
0:17:00 by big four accounting service.
0:17:04 Like he’s like touting that they’ve been audited
0:17:06 on their claims of this.
0:17:07 This is pretty wild dude.
0:17:09 Cause he’s like bragging, he was bragging
0:17:11 to the Wall Street Journal reporter like crazy,
0:17:13 or not bragging, they’re asking him questions.
0:17:17 And he was like, yeah, like we had 24 people into Yale 34.
0:17:18 Look at this marketing funnel dude.
0:17:19 But listen to what he says.
0:17:21 He goes, the acceptance letters were certified
0:17:22 by Price Waterhouse Cooper.
0:17:24 And a list of students admitted.
0:17:27 So like he, he, he sent Wall Street Journal the thing.
0:17:29 And it had like the Price Waterhouse Cooper’s like seal
0:17:30 of like, yeah, it’s legit.
0:17:32 I hate this, I’m just going to say that out loud.
0:17:35 I hate this, but I respect this.
0:17:38 Why do you hate it for what?
0:17:39 I mean, the respect is easy.
0:17:40 Like it’s easy.
0:17:42 I mean, it’s the same reason I hate the Olympics.
0:17:44 And I respect people, I respect Olympians,
0:17:46 meaning this guy is doing the thing.
0:17:48 And the first thing I said was stupid about the Olympics
0:17:51 where somebody dedicates 20, 20, 22 years of their life
0:17:54 to becoming the best, you know, luge,
0:17:56 the luge pusher in the world.
0:17:58 And it’s like, bro, like if you had this much talent,
0:18:01 why didn’t you just apply it to something that’s useful?
0:18:03 Dude, what else could you, if you’re a loser,
0:18:06 what do you just got a big ass and you could like push heavy shit?
0:18:07 Like, what else are you going to do?
0:18:09 It’s the luge is built for you.
0:18:10 You can lay down well.
0:18:14 It could have been a famous, you know, person in a rap video.
0:18:15 It could have been many, many options.
0:18:17 The only fans, you have better options on the table.
0:18:22 No, but seriously, like the sort of like game,
0:18:25 embracing the system so much that you try to game the system
0:18:28 for this arbitrary university application thing,
0:18:30 it’s just, it’s like dialed up to level 20.
0:18:33 There’s something off-putting about that to me.
0:18:35 I don’t know. I guess like, I just don’t,
0:18:41 like I think most college educations and as I wear a Duke sweatshirt,
0:18:44 most Ivy leagues and the admission process,
0:18:45 I think it’s all pretty bogus.
0:18:47 And I don’t think it has a very high correlation to like,
0:18:49 it’s the wrong game, right?
0:18:52 What does the phrase play stupid games with stupid prizes?
0:18:54 I think this is playing stupid games to win a stupid prize.
0:18:57 However, I get it.
0:19:02 And I respect that this guy has preyed on the fears
0:19:07 and the hopes and the dreams of these tiger parents to be like,
0:19:08 hey, give me $200,000.
0:19:10 I’ll make sure your kid has a,
0:19:12 he gets the right logo on there.
0:19:15 Dude, let me, I hear you and a lot of me agrees with you,
0:19:17 but let me just make the argument against you.
0:19:21 First of all, your group of people, the Indians in part,
0:19:24 have thrived in America because of the emphasis on,
0:19:26 not just on education, but like being the best.
0:19:28 So like, there’s definitely power to it,
0:19:30 but you also went to Duke.
0:19:31 I didn’t go to Duke.
0:19:33 My wife went to an Ivy league school.
0:19:35 So I hang out with a lot of these like smart people,
0:19:36 like you and her.
0:19:38 And that type of education, it’s on one hand,
0:19:41 it’s sort of like a rich person telling you rich,
0:19:42 it doesn’t make you happy to be rich.
0:19:44 And you’re like, yeah, let me, let me figure it out on my own.
0:19:46 Like, let me get there and I’ll decide.
0:19:46 I’ll try.
0:19:47 Yeah.
0:19:50 But the second thing is I actually think that there’s a huge
0:19:51 amounts of tangible benefits.
0:19:52 The education, that’s normal.
0:19:54 What does Will from Goodwill Hunting say?
0:19:57 Like just, I can get that for like 15 bucks in late fees
0:19:59 from the library to learn the same shit as you.
0:20:03 But like your network, partially because,
0:20:04 mostly because of San Francisco, to be honest,
0:20:07 but a lot of it because of Duke and Sarah’s network,
0:20:08 because of Penn.
0:20:10 Like it was so much more global than mine was
0:20:13 at a small Rinky Dink school in Nashville, Tennessee.
0:20:14 Like you guys thought so much bigger.
0:20:16 The people who you’re with were so much more global.
0:20:19 They were so much more prestigious and in a good way.
0:20:21 And so I actually think that playing the game
0:20:24 to go to a top 20 university is probably worth it
0:20:26 to play the game to win,
0:20:28 to play the game and not go to one of these amazing schools.
0:20:29 I actually don’t think it’s worth it.
0:20:36 Hey, let’s take a quick break to talk about another podcast
0:20:37 that you should check out.
0:20:38 It is called the Next Wave.
0:20:40 It’s hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lans
0:20:42 as part of the HubSpot Podcast Network,
0:20:44 which of course is your audio destination
0:20:45 for business professionals like you.
0:20:47 You can catch the next wave with Matt Wolf
0:20:49 and he’s talking about where the puck is going
0:20:51 with AI creators, AI technology,
0:20:53 and how you can apply it to your growing business.
0:20:54 So check it out.
0:20:57 Listen to the Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.
0:21:02 Yeah, I’m not saying necessarily
0:21:04 that going to top school is not worth it.
0:21:06 I guess what I’m saying is the amount of energy
0:21:08 and sort of the manufactured nature of this,
0:21:10 it’s sort of like the way that PR.
0:21:12 It’s like, I guess it’s good to be featured,
0:21:16 but like PR is sort of the process to get a bunch of press
0:21:18 is often a very sticky process.
0:21:20 Yeah, you’re hating the game.
0:21:22 Yeah, exactly. I hate the game.
0:21:23 And I think that in this case,
0:21:27 dedicating your life to manufacturing this perfect resume
0:21:30 that’s optimized for the Harvard admission system
0:21:34 just doesn’t seem like the right use of talent and time.
0:21:36 And so that same person,
0:21:39 if they actually just did what they were interested in
0:21:43 and followed their actual curiosities and passion,
0:21:44 I think that’s just a better way to live.
0:21:47 But I’ll get off my high horse now.
0:21:48 Let me get a stool so I can get down.
0:21:51 Did you see a photo of this guy?
0:21:55 He looks exactly like I want him to look like.
0:21:57 He looks like a student still at 29.
0:22:00 Like he looks smart, I guess.
0:22:02 So he looks Ivy League.
0:22:06 Did you have a college admission counselor
0:22:07 or anything like that?
0:22:09 Yeah, like our high school had a college counselor
0:22:11 who I went in and they go,
0:22:13 “Okay, so where do you want to go to school?”
0:22:14 I said, “I want to go to Duke.”
0:22:18 And they go, “You should lower your expectations.”
0:22:20 And I was like, “Wow, that’s the opposite
0:22:22 of what I think somebody’s supposed to say in your job?
0:22:25 Like, aren’t I supposed to dream big?
0:22:26 What’s going on here?”
0:22:29 And he’s like, “Yeah, it’s pretty tough out there.
0:22:31 So, you know, what else we got on the list?
0:22:33 Let’s go down lower on the list and see what we can do.”
0:22:35 Because my grades weren’t the best.
0:22:36 And then you rubbed it in his face.
0:22:39 But did you have like a tutor?
0:22:40 No.
0:22:41 But I did take like, you know, G-MAT,
0:22:42 or what not G-MAT?
0:22:44 Like the S8 Kaplan test prep.
0:22:46 Like I studied for the SATs.
0:22:47 That was what I did.
0:22:48 I did not have any of that stuff.
0:22:50 But when I was reading this article,
0:22:51 they said roughly 25%.
0:22:53 Did you take the SATs?
0:22:55 No, I did the ACT.
0:22:57 Okay, so you took the ACTs.
0:22:58 Did you do a test prep thing?
0:22:59 No.
0:23:01 I took it one time, my junior year, I think.
0:23:03 Or maybe I took it twice my junior year
0:23:05 and I got a combined score, I think of 28,
0:23:06 which is like 80.
0:23:08 Combined score with both tests?
0:23:11 No, I think, maybe I’m wrong,
0:23:14 but I thought they take like math and verbal or whatever.
0:23:16 Yeah, like you get like the best of each try
0:23:17 and they like combine it.
0:23:19 And I think I got a 27 or 28,
0:23:22 which is like 85% tile, I think.
0:23:22 Did you do well on it?
0:23:24 I did good on it.
0:23:26 I was a good test taker.
0:23:27 I wasn’t good in school,
0:23:28 like the consistency of every day.
0:23:30 So you know me.
0:23:31 I’m not good with the everyday stuff.
0:23:32 But if it was like,
0:23:34 it’s time to do the big performance,
0:23:35 I could do that part well.
0:23:37 What did you get on the SAT?
0:23:39 You have to brag about it then if you did good.
0:23:41 I think I got the equivalent of like a,
0:23:43 because they had changed the scoring system
0:23:44 to like the 2400 or whatever.
0:23:48 But I got the equivalent of what now is like a 1500 basically.
0:23:50 What, I don’t know SAT, but let me look it up.
0:23:51 It goes up to 1600.
0:23:52 1600 is perfect.
0:23:54 1500 is like excellent.
0:23:56 And like, you know, 1300.
0:23:58 Dude, it says that’s in the 98th percentile.
0:24:00 Yeah, it was a really good score.
0:24:02 It’s like you missed like a couple of questions basically.
0:24:02 Did you try?
0:24:04 Yeah, yeah, I tried.
0:24:08 I took, I basically for like 60 days before the test,
0:24:11 I just took two practice tests a day.
0:24:12 And this essay is like a six hour test.
0:24:14 So I took a six hour test in the morning.
0:24:15 I took a break, I ate whatever.
0:24:16 And then I took another six hour test
0:24:19 or a five hour test, whatever it was in the evening.
0:24:21 And I just did that every day for like 30 days during the summer.
0:24:23 And then I took the SATs.
0:24:26 Well, you should have went and started one of these like companies
0:24:31 on how to like master that shit because I didn’t realize how big these,
0:24:32 I didn’t realize how big this was.
0:24:35 They said that like 25% of people going to Harvard this year,
0:24:37 they had one of these like tutors.
0:24:39 And then it goes up even higher that if your parents,
0:24:42 if your parents have a household income of at least half a million dollars,
0:24:45 half of them use these types of tutors.
0:24:49 And yeah, I didn’t realize how much of a game
0:24:50 or how you could gain this.
0:24:53 So like you could really kick ass at it.
0:24:55 If you just like, well, if you average parents for one
0:24:58 and two, if you just like hire coaches, I didn’t, I didn’t buy into that.
0:24:59 But now I do.
0:25:01 So you’re going to do this type of stuff?
0:25:05 I think that if my children show an academic,
0:25:07 like if they’re, if they’re good at academics,
0:25:09 and yeah, I would encourage them to do this.
0:25:12 If they’re only mildly decent at academics,
0:25:14 I would say like, let’s consider different alternatives.
0:25:16 I think I, dude, I’m like kind of an elitist.
0:25:17 I think that like these fancy schools,
0:25:20 like what you went to should be like designed for like the,
0:25:23 for like the academic class and like the rest of us like pleads.
0:25:27 Like I think I should have gone to like a trade school or, or, or, or a state school.
0:25:32 I think I should have gone to like a, like a, like a $15,000 year University of Missouri
0:25:36 and like explored versus going into debt of 150 grand
0:25:39 to go to like a non-top University.
0:25:40 I think that’s ridiculous.
0:25:41 Yeah, I think that’s right.
0:25:43 All right, I have one and you have a few.
0:25:44 Which one do you want to do?
0:25:45 Let’s do a quick one on this Ken Fisher thing.
0:25:46 I don’t know how much I have to say.
0:25:48 It just kind of fascinated me.
0:25:50 So let’s see if there’s something interesting here.
0:25:55 So I was at a breakfast and somebody was talking to me about a business idea
0:25:57 that they were doing or that they had done in the past.
0:25:58 I was like, man, that sounds like a good idea.
0:25:59 Where’d you get that idea from?
0:26:01 And he goes, oh, it’s the Fisher Investments Model
0:26:04 of what’s Fisher Investments.
0:26:06 And he goes, oh, you don’t know Ken Fisher?
0:26:08 Oh, he’s like, you got to look this guy up.
0:26:09 So I go down this rabbit hole and who is Ken Fisher?
0:26:12 So basically he’s a billionaire money manager.
0:26:13 So he’s my billionaire the week.
0:26:17 Big-time billionaire, like 11, 15 billion.
0:26:18 Yeah, exactly.
0:26:22 And he basically created a simple firm.
0:26:27 So it’s an investment advisor, money manager type of firm
0:26:29 called Fisher Investments.
0:26:36 And he grew it over the years to where they now manage upwards of $275 billion
0:26:38 dollars assets under management.
0:26:40 So $275 billion with a B.
0:26:46 They got 3,500 employees and they ended up selling to private equity.
0:26:49 So they sold to Advent.
0:26:54 They sold not the full amount, but they sold at a $12.5 billion valuation.
0:26:56 And that was the first outside capital raise.
0:27:01 So this guy basically bootstrapped his way to a $12 billion company.
0:27:03 And the question is, how did he do it?
0:27:04 What did he do?
0:27:08 And so this guy’s story in the, I guess the simple terms is,
0:27:09 his dad was a finance guy.
0:27:13 He actually wrote a book that was kind of popular called Common Stocks and Uncommon
0:27:16 Profits, which by the way, when I went to Monish Papri’s house,
0:27:20 he, I asked him to recommend four or five books off his wall.
0:27:20 And that might have been one of them.
0:27:23 I remember seeing it in his library.
0:27:26 And Warren Buffett called that book a major influence on his career.
0:27:26 So that was his dad.
0:27:32 What he did was he left, he went out and he started his own firm.
0:27:34 And the key is this guy’s basically a marketing master.
0:27:39 So what he did was instead of trying to, I shouldn’t say instead of,
0:27:43 but like most people who are great with investments or money management,
0:27:45 there’s a certain profile of a person.
0:27:50 And that person typically doesn’t have incredible direct response advertising skills.
0:27:52 By the way, it’s typically the opposite.
0:27:57 A lot of people who are in this industry are the opposite of extroverted
0:28:00 and they kind of like want to be in a hole and just not talk to anyone.
0:28:01 And they don’t advertise at all.
0:28:05 And it’s, so when, when they did this deal, some of the numbers came out
0:28:08 and basically these guys are spending $60 million a year on marketing,
0:28:11 which sounded like a ton to anybody else in the money management space.
0:28:13 And to him, he was like, that’s nothing.
0:28:16 He goes, I get the question, why do you advertise so much?
0:28:18 He goes, because we have no market share.
0:28:21 They go, you have over a hundred billion dollars in assets under management.
0:28:22 He goes, that is nothing.
0:28:25 Have you seen the size of this market?
0:28:27 We’re just the biggest grain of sand in the sandbox,
0:28:29 but we’re still just a grain of sand.
0:28:32 We have 0.1% if that.
0:28:36 And so he said, we spend about 6% of our revenue on marketing.
0:28:37 So that’s still not a lot.
0:28:40 They spend 60 million a year.
0:28:43 And so they’re doing about a billion dollars a year in revenue.
0:28:48 And he basically created this system of this marketing system.
0:28:50 And so you can go watch his ads.
0:28:51 And I went and watched a bunch of his TV ads.
0:28:55 And what he says is like, he’s like, well, there’s, we broke it down.
0:28:59 So he’s like, there’s six mental profiles of people of how they think of
0:29:01 their retirement and their savings and investing.
0:29:04 And so they break out the six psychographic profiles.
0:29:08 You have, let’s say, the grandma who just doesn’t want to lose at all.
0:29:14 You have the guy who’s stashed away and is 401(k) and he’s looking for,
0:29:16 he thinks he should, he feels like he should be doing more,
0:29:17 but he doesn’t know exactly what.
0:29:21 And he’s pretty distrustful with most people, with people who come to him.
0:29:24 And so they have these profiles, and then they started running ads.
0:29:26 And you think focus groups and try to figure out which ads are working.
0:29:28 And there’s little nuggets along the way that they were like,
0:29:31 why do you use, they were like, why do you use your face in the ads?
0:29:33 You know, do you feel like there’s some risk with that?
0:29:35 Or would it make it harder to sell the business?
0:29:39 He goes, because we found that clients want to believe
0:29:42 that there’s someone who wakes up in the morning and gives a darn
0:29:44 that there’s a person, not an institution who cares.
0:29:46 That’s why we use my image because here’s Ken.
0:29:47 He’s 68 years old.
0:29:49 He gets up in the morning and he cares.
0:29:51 That’s what I need to convince you of.
0:29:54 And then he talked about how they’re like, you know,
0:29:56 what did you learn from your, you know, your advertising?
0:29:58 Because they’re very scientific about it.
0:29:59 He’s like, well, one thing, for example,
0:30:01 we learned that men’s faces do better than women’s.
0:30:03 Everybody told us we should be using female faces.
0:30:05 That’s going to appeal more, not in our testing.
0:30:09 Our testing shows that men’s faces are going to convert better than female face.
0:30:12 Ken, there’s a famous ad where it’s an outline.
0:30:14 You know how the Wall Street Journal has photos of their authors
0:30:15 that are like dots.
0:30:17 It’s like a, it’s like a sketch actually.
0:30:19 It’s a, it’s a sketch out of dots or whatever.
0:30:24 He buys outbrained ads and tabula ads.
0:30:26 And they would always see a dotted profile photo
0:30:29 where you think it looks like a Wall Street Journal article
0:30:31 and then you click and it goes to Fisher Investments.
0:30:32 And so that’s how I first learned about them
0:30:34 because I’m like, these guys, Fisher Investments,
0:30:36 they’re following me everywhere on the internet.
0:30:41 So if you click one of those, they’re great with headlines.
0:30:44 So for example, you click one of those outbrained ads as tabula ads,
0:30:46 you’re going to go to a page that’s just a video.
0:30:48 There’s no navigation.
0:30:51 There’s no nothing in the videos called debunkery.
0:30:54 Seeing through Wall Street’s money killing myths.
0:30:56 And it’s a 12 minute video that you’re going to see
0:31:00 where he debunks, you know, Wall Street, Wall Street myths.
0:31:04 And, you know, this type of like Buzzfeed headline stuff
0:31:06 isn’t what you’re going to find from most money managers.
0:31:08 Most money managers would cringe at that.
0:31:10 They don’t know that they don’t know how to do those.
0:31:11 They don’t have the team in place.
0:31:13 Like you’ve talked about Agora, for example,
0:31:16 he’s basically a glorified, you know, money management
0:31:19 by putting out really compelling juicy content
0:31:21 and then advertising it everywhere.
0:31:23 So they spend a ton of money on ads.
0:31:25 They’re on Fox News or on Forbes or on Wall Street Journal.
0:31:26 They’re on MarketWatch.
0:31:29 You know, they’re basically, they have this profile.
0:31:31 They’re like, we’re looking for somebody
0:31:33 who’s got a $500,000 retirement portfolio.
0:31:35 They don’t want to get rich quick ad.
0:31:37 And then you look at their ads and it’ll say,
0:31:39 want to retire comfortably?
0:31:42 If you have $500,000, download this guide by Forbes columnist
0:31:44 and money manager, Ken Fishers-Firm.
0:31:46 It’s called the definitive guide to retirement income.
0:31:48 And then there’s a picture of a guy on horseback.
0:31:51 Like a dude who’s like ready to retire
0:31:53 and like get out of the office and be on horseback.
0:31:55 Or he’ll have an ad.
0:31:57 Like I have one here on, I’ll put these up on YouTube
0:32:00 so you can see the ads, but like his outbreak ad says,
0:32:02 what does your net worth say about when,
0:32:04 say about how you’ll retire?
0:32:05 So it’s kind of like a personality quiz.
0:32:07 It’s like, what does your net worth say
0:32:08 about how your retirement’s going to go?
0:32:11 And it’s a picture of a man and a woman on a boat, like Titanic.
0:32:13 Dude, this is so good.
0:32:14 I’m looking at it now.
0:32:17 I mean, like, I want to show you this.
0:32:19 Here, just I’m going to screen share this real quick.
0:32:22 It works, by the way, because I have to assume
0:32:24 that his product is good, right?
0:32:26 I don’t know.
0:32:26 We’ll see.
0:32:29 I don’t have a strong opinion on that.
0:32:30 Look at this landing page though.
0:32:31 Designed for conversion.
0:32:34 He’s got the 15 minute retirement plan as a book
0:32:37 and it’s an arrow and there’s a drag and drop like box.
0:32:39 It’s like, where should you get it?
0:32:40 Get it right here.
0:32:41 Get my free quote, right?
0:32:42 And then you got Ken Fisher below.
0:32:44 Here’s a white guy you could trust.
0:32:48 And I just thought this guy’s marketing is just excellent.
0:32:49 I think it’s to be studied.
0:32:51 I think it’s extremely effective,
0:32:53 especially with the crowd that he’s going for,
0:32:56 which is kind of like the 50 and up crowd.
0:33:01 So studying this guy’s ad library was pretty insightful.
0:33:03 And it also just brought up an interesting idea,
0:33:06 which is a lot of people, when they’re great at marketing,
0:33:09 they go into spaces that them and their friends are already in,
0:33:14 which is often like D2C, e-commerce, or marketing agencies.
0:33:17 Like you are trying to be a great marketer
0:33:19 in a sea of great marketers.
0:33:21 I think what the genius of this guy is, is he said,
0:33:27 how do I be just two notches above average at marketing,
0:33:30 but go into a space where nobody knows anything about marketing?
0:33:32 Or everybody is like doing a very rudimentary playbook.
0:33:34 And so that’s where I think the opportunity is.
0:33:37 Like if you go do this in the senior living space,
0:33:40 it’s like the people who own and operate senior living businesses
0:33:42 are not the same sharks that you’re going to get
0:33:45 trying to sell handbags on the internet.
0:33:48 Because those people, the people who sell handbags on the internet,
0:33:49 they’re worth class marketers.
0:33:52 That’s why they’re able to sell a handbag for 10x the Cogs.
0:33:55 And the other thing is that when people see these ads,
0:33:56 they think, does this work?
0:33:57 I can’t believe this works.
0:34:00 First of all, yes, it works.
0:34:01 It does.
0:34:02 It works for everyone.
0:34:04 It’s not just like old, like you kind of made a comment,
0:34:05 like only older people are into this.
0:34:07 I think this always works.
0:34:11 This type of stuff works really well, regardless of the age.
0:34:16 But when like a brand advertising guru who lives in Brooklyn, New York,
0:34:19 who wears common project shoes, they see this type of shit
0:34:21 and they think, this is fucking lame.
0:34:23 I should make my website look flashier.
0:34:27 When in reality, a plain white website that has just long form copy
0:34:30 of like 3,000 words can oftentimes, more often than not,
0:34:32 convert better than a flashy website.
0:34:35 So let me read you the last few notes I have here.
0:34:37 So he’s been a Forbes columnist for like 20 plus years.
0:34:40 So he was like, he’s basically content marketing, right?
0:34:44 Like what we do and what we get a lot of credit for, which is like,
0:34:46 well, you build an audience, you build a brand,
0:34:47 and that helps with distribution.
0:34:49 This guy has been doing that for 30 plus years.
0:34:50 He wrote several books.
0:34:52 So he wrote super stocks and other ones.
0:34:55 He has an army of salespeople that cold call investors.
0:34:59 And they talk about this basement, this basement of like cold callers
0:35:01 that are just sitting there and people report that like,
0:35:06 dude, I signed up for this free guide once I read it.
0:35:08 And then they’ve just been badgering me for like years ever since.
0:35:11 And they keep calling me trying to get me to invest with them.
0:35:16 He says that everybody else relies on referrals from other partners.
0:35:17 They don’t think about the broader world.
0:35:19 How do we get people calling us?
0:35:20 That was their goal.
0:35:22 And they have estimated about $14,000 cac.
0:35:25 So it costs them $14,000 to acquire a customer.
0:35:30 They spent, you know, just over $60 million on ads back in 2019.
0:35:32 They’re the 12th biggest spender of financial services.
0:35:37 They have like, you know, 60 plus thousand individual investors,
0:35:41 plus then they manage another $10 billion plus from pensions,
0:35:43 state governments, municipals, et cetera.
0:35:48 They charge about, you know, 1%, 1.25% in fees.
0:35:53 So, you know, you could do the math on 1.25% of $250 billion.
0:35:56 And then it’s hard to gauge the performance.
0:35:58 They don’t have publicly available numbers for everything,
0:36:01 but they, in the past, Fisher funds with publicly available numbers
0:36:04 have underperformed the market substantially.
0:36:06 So they have a Purisma total return fund.
0:36:09 It was a mutual fund that had 25% return in 10 years.
0:36:12 The S&P 500 index would have been 1,000% in the same time.
0:36:15 Yet still, if there’s some of the quote was,
0:36:19 if his firm is not the biggest RIA, it’s close.
0:36:23 And so to build the biggest investment advisor firm
0:36:26 while not necessarily having the best returns
0:36:28 in, you know, but being the best marketer is the story here.
0:36:30 Dude, fuck podcasts.
0:36:32 I want to do that.
0:36:34 This sounds awesome, right?
0:36:38 Of course, there’s a billion reasons why, like,
0:36:40 it’s a pain in the ass to run just like everything else is,
0:36:42 but this sounds great.
0:36:43 Dude, I’ve been watching Better Call Saul.
0:36:44 Do you ever watch this show?
0:36:47 What? And what do you want to become like an ambulance chaser?
0:36:48 Isn’t he just a lawyer?
0:36:50 No. Well, yeah, he’s a lawyer,
0:36:52 but like one of the things they show him doing
0:36:54 is like him making his commercials and his ads to try to be,
0:36:56 you know, to be like Better Call Saul.
0:36:59 And it reminded me so much of this Ken Fisher playbook.
0:37:02 And the show makes it seem, the show makes also,
0:37:04 the hustle he does to like create these commercials
0:37:05 is also very fun.
0:37:06 He’s nailed the branding.
0:37:07 This is cool.
0:37:08 I’ve seen his ads all over the place,
0:37:09 and I knew he was big.
0:37:10 I didn’t know they got acquired,
0:37:12 so I wasn’t able to ever see any of the numbers,
0:37:13 but that’s amazing.
0:37:15 Well, look, here’s some of the,
0:37:17 I think this is his own reporting of his performance.
0:37:19 2007, he says, if you bought,
0:37:21 this is not their funds,
0:37:22 this is like his recommendations,
0:37:24 but if you bought all 60 of my recommendations,
0:37:30 you would be up 0.9% and assuming you lost 1% transaction fees,
0:37:31 the S&P founder is down 0.5%.
0:37:32 Okay, so nothing big.
0:37:35 2008, he says, how are my results last year?
0:37:35 In line with the market,
0:37:37 which is to say, not good.
0:37:39 That’s what he said.
0:37:42 Yeah, 2009, I made 65 recommendations.
0:37:43 If you put an equal sum in each,
0:37:44 you’d be up 44%.
0:37:46 The stock market’s up 20.9%.
0:37:50 2010, he says, your return is 18% versus 12%.
0:37:52 But these are like his stock picks,
0:37:54 I think, from his Forbes column,
0:37:55 which is not the same.
0:37:56 That’s like his entertainment.
0:37:58 Well, if you have an event,
0:38:02 and a wealth advisor or whatever this stuff’s called,
0:38:04 if you have an advisor who promises
0:38:07 to make you more than the index, they’re lying.
0:38:09 But then what is the point of the advisor?
0:38:13 The point is that as you grow and get older,
0:38:15 it’s savvy to think, all right,
0:38:18 I need to get less stocks, more bonds,
0:38:21 and those mature sometimes six, 12, 24 months.
0:38:22 So it’s like the buying of those.
0:38:24 If setting up at a state plan,
0:38:26 there’s a bunch of administrative stuff
0:38:27 that often, but not always,
0:38:30 that 1% can kind of pay for itself or help you.
0:38:33 You could also say that they are kind of like a therapist.
0:38:34 So when you want to sell stuff, they’re like,
0:38:36 “Dude, don’t sell it. Don’t be an idiot.”
0:38:38 But there’s a bunch of administrative stuff,
0:38:42 but outperforming the market is not the main value.
0:38:44 And if you have an advisor who says
0:38:46 that they’re going to out pick, then they’re foolish.
0:38:49 By the way, do you know who else does this?
0:38:50 It’s Motley Fool.
0:38:54 So the Motley Fool, they have a fund
0:38:57 that has well over a billion dollars.
0:38:59 And it started as a stock picking newsletter,
0:39:01 and now they’ve branched out to having a fund.
0:39:04 And so they actually have a wealth advisory business
0:39:05 that is massive.
0:39:07 And it was built up the exact same way as Confisher.
0:39:10 Yeah, it’s pretty crazy that you set a billion dollars.
0:39:12 This guy’s over 250 billion.
0:39:14 So somehow Motley Fool, which is also excellent
0:39:17 at online content and probably has way more traffic,
0:39:20 does not have anywhere near the same assets under management,
0:39:22 which I think is always interesting to look at.
0:39:25 When two people pursue the same strategy
0:39:26 and one gets a hundred X return,
0:39:31 sometimes you point to luck or timing or other things,
0:39:34 but often it’s a business model choice.
0:39:37 It’s a strategic choice, or it’s an execution point
0:39:37 that’s different.
0:39:40 Yeah, this is insane.
0:39:41 Motley Fool has 1.5 billion.
0:39:46 Can I tell you a quick story about related to something
0:39:47 that Elad Gill said?
0:39:48 Yeah.
0:39:52 So he made a comment where we asked him what he’s interested in,
0:39:54 and he said monuments.
0:39:58 And so what he meant was like an example of a monument
0:40:03 is the Statue of Liberty or in some ways the Eiffel Tower,
0:40:07 like things that exist mostly to bring pride to a country,
0:40:09 but then also act as a tourist destination.
0:40:11 And he was saying, why don’t we build more of these?
0:40:13 What happened to the monuments was sort of the question.
0:40:16 Yeah, he was like, look, when we were up and coming,
0:40:19 we loved building monuments and it gave us a sense of pride.
0:40:22 And it was good for, it was very pro-America
0:40:23 and it got people bought in.
0:40:26 And I had a guy listen to the podcast
0:40:29 and he sent me the deck that he’s trying to raise money
0:40:33 for a monument that’s based in San Francisco on Alcatraz.
0:40:35 And so you have to see this.
0:40:36 So it’s a picture of, first of all,
0:40:38 I don’t know who this, I’ve never heard of this person,
0:40:40 but you know who Prometheus is?
0:40:42 He’s like a Greek God.
0:40:43 And it’s basically like,
0:40:45 he represents the spirit of innovation and courage
0:40:48 for the purpose of building, for manifest destiny,
0:40:51 for inborn nobility, which elevates humanity.
0:40:54 They want to build a massive statue of him
0:41:00 that’s 350 feet tall and it’s on where Alcatraz is.
0:41:03 It’s like if the Statue of Liberty had like a hot boyfriend,
0:41:05 this would be him.
0:41:07 Yes, and that’s exactly what it is.
0:41:09 On the other side of the country,
0:41:11 he’s just holding up a torch just like she is,
0:41:13 except for he’s absolutely ripped
0:41:15 and he’s from the movie 300.
0:41:16 And he’s got like a Speedo on.
0:41:19 It’s basically a Speedo.
0:41:23 To be honest, they did not pull any punches
0:41:25 as far as the amount of stone and steel
0:41:26 that’s going into this guy.
0:41:31 So here’s the deal.
0:41:35 I made most of my money from a newsletter business.
0:41:36 It was called The Hustle.
0:41:37 And it was a daily newsletter at scale
0:41:39 to millions of subscribers.
0:41:41 And it was the greatest business on earth.
0:41:45 The problem with it was that I had close to 40 employees
0:41:48 and only three of them were actually doing any writing.
0:41:50 The other employees were growing the newsletter,
0:41:52 building out the tech for the platform and selling ads.
0:41:55 And honestly, it was a huge pain in the butt.
0:41:58 Today’s episode is brought to you by Beehive.
0:42:02 They are a platform that is built exactly for this.
0:42:03 If you want to grow your newsletter,
0:42:04 if you want to monetize the newsletter,
0:42:05 they do all of the stuff
0:42:08 that I had to hire dozens of employees to do.
0:42:10 So check it out. Beehive.com.
0:42:14 That’s B-E-H-I-I-V.com.
0:42:21 And so first of all, I’ve got to say the obvious
0:42:23 that there will never be a statue
0:42:27 that touts manifest destiny and inborn nobility
0:42:28 and the spirit of courage
0:42:31 that’s going to sit in the Bay of San Francisco.
0:42:35 And a shirtless rip, dude.
0:42:37 None of that, I think, will ever happen.
0:42:38 But the idea is actually interesting.
0:42:40 And so what they want to do is they’re
0:42:44 raising $100 million to build this statue on Alcatraz.
0:42:46 And so it’s 350 feet.
0:42:52 And but in their deck, they talk about the money
0:42:54 or the revenue and profit of other people,
0:42:55 of other statues.
0:42:56 So listen to this shit.
0:43:02 So the Statue of Liberty does $154 million a year in revenue,
0:43:04 $70 million a year of net income.
0:43:06 And then you can go down to like Pearl Harbor.
0:43:07 Really?
0:43:08 Yeah, I mean.
0:43:08 Hold on. Where is it?
0:43:10 Okay, so Statue of Liberty.
0:43:11 Let’s say that again.
0:43:12 That’s mind blowing.
0:43:16 So Statue of Liberty, you said $70 million of net income,
0:43:18 $150 million of revenue.
0:43:24 So 50% net profit margins on four and a half million visitors,
0:43:27 each one paying $25 bucks a ticket and $10 of concessions.
0:43:29 It’s insane.
0:43:30 That’s wild.
0:43:30 It’s insane.
0:43:32 And then it goes down to like Mount Rushmore,
0:43:33 which is on the smaller end,
0:43:37 which does $50 million in sales and $20 million a year in net income.
0:43:41 Or Pearl Harbor, same thing, $50 million, $23 million of profits.
0:43:41 Dude, I was laughing.
0:43:42 Why are we not doing this?
0:43:44 These are amazing businesses.
0:43:45 That’s my point.
0:43:48 And so I went and I saw these numbers and I’m like,
0:43:50 that’s absolutely ridiculous.
0:43:52 And it’s like amazingly good.
0:43:55 And of course, with all things related to like investment decks,
0:43:58 you know, you paint the best possible story.
0:43:59 And who knows if any of it actually comes true.
0:44:00 There’s also no source cited on this.
0:44:02 There’s no source.
0:44:05 I looked up some of the stats and like the Statue of Liberty numbers.
0:44:10 It does, it kind of checks out where it is plausible that those are the numbers.
0:44:13 But they’re raising $170 million to build this.
0:44:17 And their goal is to make $100 million a year in profit.
0:44:18 Or like that’s what they say the numbers are.
0:44:20 And so you start doing the math and like I said,
0:44:23 this is all just some guy drawing this up and like, who knows?
0:44:28 This is painting the best story ever of a thing that doesn’t exist.
0:44:33 But the math is somewhat interesting behind like the like how this all works.
0:44:35 So you’re saying there’s a chance.
0:44:37 Yeah. So they’re like, if we do this,
0:44:40 we’ll do $94 million a year net income.
0:44:43 And so it’s actually pretty interesting that like Monument,
0:44:45 of course, dude, you’re not going to like be able to build this in San Francisco.
0:44:47 They’re not going to have any part of it.
0:44:48 How much have they raised so far?
0:44:48 Do you know?
0:44:53 No, in like when I was Googling it, they have like a sub-stack
0:44:56 and they say things like Joe Linesdale is on board.
0:44:59 And like all these like amazing people are on board
0:45:02 and they have a sub-stack documenting what they’re talking about.
0:45:06 But I don’t think I saw that they said how much they’ve raised.
0:45:08 I think it’s cool that people are doing this.
0:45:09 I guess I have a few thoughts.
0:45:10 I think it’s cool people are doing this.
0:45:11 I hope something like this happens.
0:45:16 I am stunned at the profitability of these other monuments.
0:45:20 That is my golden nugget for the pod.
0:45:21 That is amazing.
0:45:22 Noted.
0:45:23 Okay. Noted.
0:45:24 There’s there’s something here.
0:45:27 This deck, by the way, does not look well made.
0:45:29 And I think if you’re going to try to pull something like this off,
0:45:33 you have to also like, if you can’t pay for a designer for your deck,
0:45:36 then I’m not sure I believe that you’re going to do this.
0:45:42 Yeah. Yeah. And like, this is, I wonder how like, I like,
0:45:43 when they’re going to bed at night talking to their wives,
0:45:45 I wonder if they’re like saying like,
0:45:48 “Isn’t this hilarious that we’re trying this?”
0:45:52 Or is it like, when this thing’s built, we’re going to be doing it.
0:45:54 You got to fully believe that you’re doing God’s work out here.
0:45:57 Yeah. And it could happen.
0:45:59 But so it’s called, if you want to look it up, I’ve got no affiliate.
0:46:00 I’ve never talked to these people.
0:46:02 It’s called the American Colossus Foundation.
0:46:03 Kind of funny.
0:46:06 Yeah. Yeah. I think you’re right though that location really matters.
0:46:11 Like you have to go somewhere that both has, you know, can be a tourist destination,
0:46:13 but has, you need the approvals, right?
0:46:18 You can’t just get stuck in Limbo and San Francisco Bay Area is probably
0:46:22 one of the harder places to get approval for something like this.
0:46:26 Dude, San Francisco is the antithesis of a ripped, like,
0:46:31 a ripped like alpha looking heterosexual male.
0:46:34 Like this is like not like, I lived in San Francisco for 10 years.
0:46:38 This is not exactly what the culture is about.
0:46:42 So I think it’s the kind of art we had on the wall, the giant painting we had on the wall
0:46:46 in my office at Monkey Inferno, where it was the reverse of the evolution of man.
0:46:48 You know, evolution of man is like, it’s an ape.
0:46:52 And then he’s like standing half upright, then he’s fully upright, then he’s walking.
0:46:54 And then it’s like, you know, that’s the homo sapien today.
0:46:57 And the thing we had on the wall was the homo sapien.
0:46:59 And then it’s him bending over, looking at his phone,
0:47:02 bending over, sitting, basically sitting down at a laptop and then typing.
0:47:04 And it was like a motor at the end of it.
0:47:05 And it was like, that was the final evolution.
0:47:08 I think the opposite.
0:47:10 That was what, that’s what should be the monument in San Francisco.
0:47:12 Yeah.
0:47:13 It’s like a giant neck beard.
0:47:15 Yeah. Wearing a hoodie.
0:47:18 It’s not, not, not a jacked Greek God.
0:47:18 Yeah.
0:47:20 You want to do one more thing?
0:47:23 Yeah. I got a few quick hitters.
0:47:26 Okay. Let’s do, let’s do this one.
0:47:29 So talking to bankers, I think this is a good value add.
0:47:30 This is a pro tip.
0:47:33 Life pro tip for, for any founders out there.
0:47:38 I didn’t know this when I first started doing startups.
0:47:42 I had no idea and only the first time I ever came into contact with a banker
0:47:45 was when I tried to sell my company.
0:47:49 So it was kind of like eight or nine years into doing entrepreneurship.
0:47:51 And even then I didn’t know what a banker was.
0:47:53 Somebody said, I’ll introduce you to a banker.
0:47:56 And I thought that’s the guy at Wells Fargo that like sits in the back, not in the front.
0:47:58 Like I didn’t, I didn’t really understand what that meant.
0:48:00 Turns out a banker is like an investment banker.
0:48:05 There’s somebody who can help you sell your company, raise capital, get debt, that sort of thing.
0:48:07 And they, they come in at a certain level of scale.
0:48:13 So usually something like $30 million and up, really they try to be like kind of like a $100
0:48:14 million company or so.
0:48:20 And I had a friend who was a successful entrepreneur and he told me something that really stuck with
0:48:23 me. He goes, I was like, Oh, when do you think you should talk to these guys?
0:48:25 Like, you know, and I was thinking, meaning like
0:48:27 When you’re ready.
0:48:29 Yeah. Like when I’m ready, like at the very beginning of what I’m ready,
0:48:31 or do I need to have all my stuff together?
0:48:35 And he goes, I, he goes, the best thing I ever did was I talked to a banker a year
0:48:36 before I wanted to sell my business.
0:48:39 And I talked to them and I go a year before, what do you mean?
0:48:42 And he goes, yeah, because I went to the banker and I said,
0:48:44 if I wanted to sell my business today, what would it be worth?
0:48:46 Would it be able to sell?
0:48:49 How strong would this asset look like in the marketplace right now?
0:48:52 And they know all the deals that have gotten done.
0:48:53 So bankers are in the process.
0:48:56 The bankers are in the middle of selling companies just like yours in your industry.
0:48:59 So you go to a banker that’s in the industry.
0:49:01 They’ve seen everything that’s traded.
0:49:02 They know the relative strength.
0:49:03 They know the valuations that they’re trading at.
0:49:04 They know who the buyers are.
0:49:06 They know why that they’re buying.
0:49:09 And so they can give you a really clear picture.
0:49:12 And he goes, I went before I was ready because I wanted them to tell me
0:49:15 what would cause this to not sell.
0:49:16 What would be the weak points of this business?
0:49:20 So that became my roadmap for the next year of what I needed to fix.
0:49:23 That became my priority list so that when I did go to market,
0:49:24 I actually had those things fixed.
0:49:26 And if I hadn’t gotten that feedback at that point,
0:49:28 I would have just got that same feedback a year later.
0:49:30 And it would have punted the way down the road.
0:49:32 They’re going to tell you that shit regardless.
0:49:34 And so it’s nice to know early.
0:49:37 And so I think bankers are actually a pretty big cheat code,
0:49:38 not just for selling it.
0:49:40 So that was the first thing I learned.
0:49:44 Second thing was you could actually talk to bankers before you even go into a space.
0:49:45 And I think you’ve done this before too,
0:49:48 which is you go to a banker who’s in a space that you’re interested in
0:49:51 and you talk to them about the companies that have sold.
0:49:53 And you’re like, what companies have sold?
0:49:54 How are they doing?
0:49:56 What was their strengths and weaknesses?
0:49:57 Who are the buyers?
0:49:58 Why do they buy?
0:50:04 The question is basically what’s the profile and attributes of a business
0:50:08 in this space that outkicks the rest that performs better than the other ones?
0:50:12 So tell me all those attributes and those strengths and weaknesses.
0:50:14 And I’m going to just do that.
0:50:15 Exactly.
0:50:17 You can reverse engineer.
0:50:19 Meaning you can work backwards from that and find a great business.
0:50:21 So I did this with a recent business we haven’t announced yet
0:50:25 where we first talked to bankers and we learned from that.
0:50:29 Oh, that validated a lot of things we already liked about the business idea.
0:50:31 We had an idea, talked to the bankers.
0:50:33 That kind of cosigned or stamped that, yes,
0:50:35 this is actually an even better idea than we thought,
0:50:38 meaning it traded for much higher multiples.
0:50:42 And the business could be like, we didn’t have to do A, B and C.
0:50:45 A and B were going to be more than enough to have an outstanding outcome.
0:50:48 They also told us, on the other hand, like, so for example,
0:50:49 here’s my five questions for bankers.
0:50:53 I go to bankers and I say, what deals have gotten done recently?
0:50:54 So that’s the first question.
0:50:57 Number two, which ones, like you said, outkicked the coverage.
0:50:59 So which ones traded at the highest multiple and why?
0:51:01 What was the unique about those?
0:51:04 Was it just simply timing or was there something that they had in there,
0:51:08 the way that they did it or the cost structure that made them particularly attractive?
0:51:12 Then the third question I ask is, what deals didn’t get done and why?
0:51:15 So meaning what deals couldn’t cross the finish line?
0:51:17 What were the big red flags that stopped people from buying the business
0:51:19 because you want to basically know those too?
0:51:22 Fourth question, who are the buyers and why are they buying?
0:51:25 So basically, every buyer has a plan and you want to know,
0:51:28 are the buyers only strategics or are there private equity folks?
0:51:29 Are there independent sponsors?
0:51:30 Who are the potential buyers?
0:51:32 And then what’s their game plan once they buy it?
0:51:38 Oh, they’re buying things at a $5 million EBITDA number for 7x or 10x.
0:51:43 And then they’re rolling up five of those and they’re trying to get to $25 million
0:51:45 and they’re trying to trade that at 20x.
0:51:46 And okay, that’s their game plan.
0:51:47 Gotcha.
0:51:51 And then the last one is, if my business did XYZ,
0:51:54 so this is the useful one when you’re not ready yet.
0:51:56 But I basically say, hey, here’s where we’re at today.
0:51:58 Here’s where I think we’re going to be in a year.
0:52:00 If this is what my business looks like a year from now,
0:52:02 what do you think it would trade for and why?
0:52:07 And getting that from four or five different bankers really helps triangulate a space.
0:52:14 So last week, I spent maybe seven hours on the phone with bankers doing this process.
0:52:20 And I feel like I learned more in those seven hours than I would have in seven months
0:52:21 of just operating my business.
0:52:23 It was so clarifying how to do this.
0:52:26 And it just made me realize, man, more people should do this.
0:52:29 I’m going to come on the pod and at least say it so that for the people for whom it’s applicable,
0:52:34 which is, I would say, you’re an entrepreneur looking for your next hit, next space,
0:52:37 and you’re not just being driven by some passion or calling.
0:52:39 You are doing it more analytically, let’s say.
0:52:40 This is a tool.
0:52:43 Or if you’re a business owner and you want to sell someday,
0:52:49 and you’re at a few million dollars or your profit minimum, go have this conversation.
0:52:52 I’m so on board.
0:52:54 I’ve done this a bunch of times and I think it’s so smart.
0:52:57 I think that there’s this idea in Silicon Valley.
0:53:02 There was this trick question when you’re raising funding from a VC and it says,
0:53:04 what’s the outcome here?
0:53:05 Like, what would you sell for?
0:53:08 And the answer that everyone pretends–
0:53:09 Over my dead body.
0:53:10 Yeah, I would never sell.
0:53:16 And the answer, absolutely, could be like, I’m going to sell.
0:53:19 But the answer probably should be like, well, I don’t know.
0:53:19 Maybe we will.
0:53:20 Maybe we won’t.
0:53:24 But if we get to these numbers, we can sell for this or we can IPO.
0:53:30 Like, the idea of I have an exit in mind has been told to us that that’s silly.
0:53:31 I think that that’s silly.
0:53:35 Well, it’s a very Silicon Valley thing because for two specific reasons.
0:53:40 One, all venture capital is predicated on the idea that you’re going to drive this to a billion
0:53:40 dollars plus.
0:53:45 So if you show any weakness, any hint that this guy would sell for less than a billion
0:53:49 dollars, like if he got an 80 million dollar offer that would change his life, he’ll take it.
0:53:53 Well, then this is not a good investment for me because I’m taking all the risk of failure.
0:53:57 But I need to know that if this succeeds, it can be a billion dollar plus.
0:54:00 And one of the risks of it being a billion dollar plus company is not just that the business works,
0:54:04 but that this founder will hold on and they will resist temptation.
0:54:08 So Silicon Valley investors, because of the fund math, they need that.
0:54:12 That’s why they put their values on you and say, well, those are your needs.
0:54:13 That’s cool for you.
0:54:15 That’s not my needs necessarily as an entrepreneur.
0:54:16 That’s the first thing.
0:54:19 The second thing is, there’s an ego pride.
0:54:22 It seems noble in some way to say, this is my life.
0:54:23 This is my life company.
0:54:25 I’ll do this for 100 years.
0:54:27 I think we’re going to dominate the space so much.
0:54:28 It just sounds so cool.
0:54:29 It sounds so great.
0:54:34 By the way, I think you can do that and also this.
0:54:36 So there’s this book that I love called Built to Sell.
0:54:38 Have you ever seen Built to Sell?
0:54:38 No.
0:54:42 It’s a popular book, but here’s the premise, which is you build your company to sell because
0:54:46 building a sellable business means you may or may not sell it, but you have a company that
0:54:47 operates well.
0:54:49 And what does Warren Buffett say?
0:54:54 He says, build your company so an idiot can run it because someday an idiot will be running it.
0:54:58 That’s kind of the premise here with Built to Sell, which is you’re going to build your
0:54:59 company to operate well.
0:55:03 And so I think you should build your company to exit regardless if you’re going to exit or not.
0:55:04 I agree fully.
0:55:09 I guess what I’m saying is, and that works for us because we don’t raise venture capital
0:55:10 for our businesses anymore.
0:55:12 We just own them ourselves.
0:55:17 But a lot of the advice you get is still from VCs because they’re the loud people.
0:55:18 They’re the people who are famous.
0:55:20 So you sort of take their advice even though you’re not actually in their game.
0:55:21 You’re in your own game.
0:55:24 And so I think that’s a very, very important distinction.
0:55:29 The other thing though is it does sound cooler to say I would never sell this.
0:55:32 I sell to Amazon.
0:55:33 I’m trying to buy Amazon.
0:55:36 Why do you love your boy, Brett Adcock?
0:55:37 Because Brett Adcock is all bravado.
0:55:38 He’s all chest.
0:55:41 He basically will say, we’re going to change the world.
0:55:42 We’re going to build a trillion-dollar company.
0:55:44 Anything less than that, what’s the point?
0:55:49 And you’re like, oh, my God, it’s intoxicating as Sam Parr would say.
0:55:54 It is intoxicating to be around somebody who is going only for the big shot and is not
0:55:59 saying I’m building this to sell or that there’s a path here to a $350 million exit,
0:56:02 which will 7x your money.
0:56:03 He doesn’t talk like that.
0:56:07 And because he doesn’t talk like that, it is very attractive.
0:56:12 And it is very admirable because many of us wish that we could be as hardcore and brave
0:56:13 and bold as that.
0:56:14 We’re just not.
0:56:16 And by the way, I don’t think you have to be.
0:56:17 I don’t want to play that game.
0:56:19 But when you do see somebody play that game, it’s cool.
0:56:20 I got to admit, it is cool.
0:56:21 Yeah, I agree.
0:56:22 I agree.
0:56:22 It’s cool.
0:56:23 I agree.
0:56:28 And I’ve invested in a couple, like Brett Adcock I invested in and he has this attitude.
0:56:29 And I like that.
0:56:34 By the way, now that you have friends that are VCs or I mean, you sort of were one for
0:56:39 a minute, isn’t it funny how you talk to them about like your company and raising capital
0:56:41 and you’ll say, no, we don’t raise capital.
0:56:45 And when you’re friends with them, it’s like, that’s the right move.
0:56:45 Yeah.
0:56:46 You know what I mean?
0:56:47 Yeah, exactly.
0:56:48 When you’re not, when you’re not…
0:56:49 To give you a low five.
0:56:53 Then I’m going to hit you with a low five real quick.
0:56:54 Yeah, they like say that’s the right move.
0:56:58 Now, when you tell them that and you’re a potential client, they say like, oh, that’s
0:57:00 cute, like, you know what I mean?
0:57:01 That’s a lifestyle business.
0:57:02 That’s good for you.
0:57:06 But when you’re friends with them, they think to themselves, they’ll say like smart.
0:57:11 The irony of the VC thing is a VC does the opposite of what they want all the founders
0:57:12 to do.
0:57:13 So they don’t go all in on one idea.
0:57:15 They have a diversified portfolio.
0:57:20 They, they are not, you know, sort of only looking at the upside.
0:57:22 They make a ton of money in fees, right?
0:57:25 So they, you know, they’re going to whatever when, when somebody raises money.
0:57:28 So for example, what’s the podcaster?
0:57:32 Harry Stebbings just raised a $400 million fund.
0:57:34 That’s amazing.
0:57:35 That’s incredible, by the way.
0:57:42 Harry is going to make $80 million guaranteed in fees, just fees.
0:57:45 He could be the worst investor in the world.
0:57:46 Why?
0:57:50 Because he’s going to make $80 million because he’s going to make 2% a year on $400 million.
0:57:52 It’s 20% over the life of a 10-year fund.
0:57:53 So just do 20%.
0:57:56 $80 million in fees guaranteed.
0:57:57 That’s his floor.
0:58:01 Who cares about the upside from there if you’re Harry Stebbings, right?
0:58:04 All you got to do is keep the game going and raise, maybe raise another fund.
0:58:05 That would be amazing, right?
0:58:10 So VCs, while they want you to be all in, and they want you to live on scraps,
0:58:14 and they want you to have no, no diversification and stay super laser focused,
0:58:17 and they want you to go ride for the big upside.
0:58:20 They themselves have a very different picture of risk,
0:58:23 which by the way, I think is a smarter picture of risk.
0:58:26 But it is, it is just funny that that’s true.
0:58:30 It’s funny that the person giving you that advice is literally doing the exact opposite
0:58:32 with their own finances and portfolio.
0:58:32 That’s insane.
0:58:34 And by the way, they’re not wrong because they’re saying,
0:58:37 “Oh, you wanted to play the Mark Zuckerberg game, then that’s how you got to play.”
0:58:40 So then they are giving you the right advice for you if you want to be doing that.
0:58:44 The $80 million fee thing, I never knew that.
0:58:47 I mean, I knew that they get, what is it, 2%?
0:58:48 When do you do the math?
0:58:50 Well, 2% is misleading.
0:58:52 It’s 2% every year off the top.
0:58:54 So the same reason why financial vie, we talked about Ken Fisher.
0:58:56 Oh, 1%, that’s not much.
0:58:59 1% of your entire net assets every year off the top,
0:59:05 regardless of performance, is like one of the great sort of seven wonders of the world.
0:59:06 That’s the eighth.
0:59:10 It’s like the eighth wonder of the world is that a 1% off the top fee every year
0:59:13 is actually, it becomes a gargantuan number over 10 years.
0:59:16 And so that’s the same thing with a venture fund like this.
0:59:18 Dude, God bless him.
0:59:19 God bless America.
0:59:21 I guess he’s not even in America.
0:59:23 That’s the best part.
0:59:25 They need to put a monument of Harry Stepping somewhere
0:59:28 for raising a $400 million fund and $80 million in fees.
0:59:30 It’s the $80 million monument.
0:59:32 Oh my God, that’d be great.
0:59:35 That fun thing, or that monument thing is ridiculous, right?
0:59:36 This monument thing is fascinating.
0:59:38 We got to, I got to go look more into this.
0:59:40 This is a great episode.
0:59:40 All right, that’s it.
0:59:41 That’s a pod.
0:59:43 I feel like I can rule the world.
0:59:45 I know I could be what I want to.
0:59:48 I put my all in it like no days off.
0:59:51 On a road let’s travel never looking back.
0:59:53 Right.
0:59:55 You.
0:59:57 You.
0:59:59 You.
1:00:01 You.
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