Andrew Wilkinson On The Secretive Billionaire Who Acquired Burger King | My First Million #185
Healthier Babies, Media Empires, and Enough Money - May 25, 2021 (almost 4 years ago) • 01:09:02
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Sam Parr | And you said you you'd wanna invest your own money in this that's what you said here | |
Andrew Wilkinson | Yeah, I would love it if anyone wants to do this. I will 100% invest, so please email me. But this is one of those things where, like, alright everyone...
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Sam Parr | We have a special episode with Andrew Wilkinson. Andrew Wilkinson started a company called Metalab, which grew to make tens of millions of dollars. Using the profits from his agency, Metalab, he eventually bought dozens of other companies. Collectively, his companies generate over $100 million a year in sales and have created over $1 billion worth of value.
He has seen a lot of interesting stuff, and in today's episode, we talk about an incredibly successful business person that he looks up to. It's our segment called "Billy of the Week." We also discuss some of the ideas he has for starting and growing companies. He recently launched a local news business, which is kind of like my company, The Hustle, but for different cities. It's very fascinating!
I'm asking him if I can join as an adviser. He has started a few more things and wants to start even more. He mentioned that if you are starting some of these companies, you should reach out to him because he wants to invest.
So, give it a listen!
By the way, if you're in Miami, Sean and I will be there on June 4th. We're doing Austin on June 3rd, but that's already sold out. However, on June 4th, we have room for up to 400 people. I think already 200 people have RSVP'd. It's free! Go to my Twitter handle, @thusampar, and scroll down to find the Eventbrite link. It's totally free on June 4th, which is a Friday.
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Andrew, what's going on, dude?
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Andrew Wilkinson | hey man how you doing | |
Sam Parr | I got | |
Andrew Wilkinson | A really bad, really bad cold. I spent all day yesterday with Kleenex up my nose, so if my voice sounds a little froggy, that's why.
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Sam Parr | It only sounds froggy because you said it sounded froggy. I think you're okay.
So, Andrew Wilkinson, a good friend of mine and a good friend of the pod, is this description that I used 3 or 4 weeks ago the same description? Is that the same thing? Are you wearing that same personality? Is that the same life, or have you done something new and amazing? Because you're always pulling something out of your sleeve.
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Andrew Wilkinson | Yeah, I've got... I think since then I've launched a couple of businesses, actually. But no, the description's still accurate.
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Sam Parr | And so, we're going to talk about a couple of things. The first thing we're going to discuss is... well, you have a bunch of ideas here, and I'm excited for those ideas.
But I want to talk about "Billy of the Week" because we discussed two people last time you were here. That episode is right next to the biology episode; it's the most listened to episode ever. | |
Andrew Wilkinson | really no way yeah which episode was that the bill the one where we did the 2 billy's of the week | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, something like **50,000** people listened to it, which is a lot considering it's an hour-long thing. It's a lot of time.
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Andrew Wilkinson | crazy | |
Sam Parr | And then the third most listened to thing was the one we did after that. So, you know, it's just... see it, okay?
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Andrew Wilkinson | yeah so move aside move aside sean | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, so it's like biology is whatever it is you're like within 100 or like 1,000 of it, and then you're the next two. That's why I figured we'll start off with that one.
But you sent me... I asked you yesterday to tell me about an interesting person, and I'm going to do a ton of research on them. I did, and I have a feeling you already know a lot about this person. But what's this person's name?
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Andrew Wilkinson | So, his name is... I don't know how to say it. I think it's Jorge Paulo. It's a Brazilian name. Jorge Paulo is Brazilian.
Oh, there you go! Okay, can you say his name, please? And every time we need to say his name, we'll just say Abreu. I will say his first name. His last name is German, so I don't know if there's a right way of saying it, but his first name is Jorge Paulo.
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Sam Parr | Like, they consider Paulo to be his first name as well. In a lot of the articles I read about him, they call him Jorge. Sorry, Jorge Paulo.
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Andrew Wilkinson | It might be his middle name, Paulo, or it might be like a double first name. I'm not sure, but Jorge Paulo Lemann.
Yeah, but anyway, dude, this guy's totally mysterious. He doesn't like to talk about what he does. There are only a few interviews with him online.
But he basically... I mean, if you think about the businesses that he owns, you would know them. So, Burger King, Budweiser, Tim Hortons, Kraft Foods, Popeyes, Heinz Ketchup, right?
So he basically goes out, finds these amazing, you know, multi-generational businesses that have been around for 50+ years, that do something very, very simple that's just going to grow over time. He goes out, usually raises a ton of debt, and then he goes and buys them and takes them over.
He's been doing this for, I don't know, 40 years or something like that, starting in Brazil.
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Sam Parr | Let's give a little bit of background on him. So, Halodzie, he's about 75 years old, right? He's based out of Brazil; he's a Brazilian guy.
When he started, at the time, I don't think there were many Brazilian tycoons. Every article that I read about him said that he was one of the first folks in Brazil to become one of these private equity or Warren Buffett-like people.
As you mentioned, very little is known about him, and he doesn't give interviews. In a lot of the interviews that I read about him, they said they actually tried to talk to a bunch of his friends. Nearly all of his friends said, "Thank you for reaching out, but he's politely asked us not to speak about him in interviews." So, he prefers to stay behind the scenes.
The way that his career started was in 1931, at the age of 32. He had some jobs where he was a banker, but he started this one bank, Abreu. You want to help me out here? Here's how you pronounce it: you see that right there? It's called Guarantia.
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Andrew Wilkinson | I don't see it did you put it in the chat it's highlighted | |
Sam Parr | it's highlighted in the doc | |
Andrew Wilkinson | okay I think it's guarantia or something like that that and chia okay | |
Sam Parr | And it was described as like the Goldman of Brazil. I don't know if it was described at the time like that, but he was 32 when he launched it. It was in 1971.
What made it kind of famous was he had a very... I wouldn't call it a laid-back culture, but he didn't look at resumes. Instead, he looked for what he described as PSD, which was poor... let me see, what does PSD stand for?
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Andrew Wilkinson | poor smart and deep desire to get rich | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, poor, smart, and deep desire to get rich. That's what he looked for—people who had PSD [passion, skill, and drive]. He would hire these folks.
Previously, at different companies, you would automatically get a bonus if you were one of the partners. But they created some type of system that tried to make it as merit-based as possible, so a lot of different people could get bonuses. Also, with the bonuses, you could choose: do you want more stock or do you want more cash? It was a great way to incentivize people, and it kind of created this iconic culture that seems to be what they're famous for.
It grew to be quite huge; it was something like $1,000,000,000 in profit in one year. But he said that they got cocky and they screwed up. They overbought some stuff, and it eventually went south. It sold for $650,000,000, which is still a ton of money, but I think it was minuscule compared to how big it got.
So, I have a question for you, Andrew, and then we're going to get into this 3G thing. After he sold it for $650,000,000, he started buying Gillette stock. With his other older founders of the old company, he started 3G, which was a play on their name. There are three partners, and they ended up buying Burger King, Tim Hortons, and all the companies that you mentioned.
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Sam Parr | He's worth something like **$25 billion** and is one of the richest people in the world. I had a ton of questions about this guy that I think you might know or at least have better input than I do.
The first is, how on earth, when people say they're starting a bank like he did, what's that process like? That sounds so ambiguous and so hard to understand.
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Andrew Wilkinson | Well, I think people hear "bank" and they think, "Oh, a big pile of money, like Wells Fargo or something." But the term "banker" means so many different things. It could be somebody who works at a bank and lends out money, or whatever.
But a banker is really like a real estate agent for businesses, right? Or for bonds, or equities, or whatever it is. So it's like a person you go to, or a group of people you go to, who will figure out problems for you and facilitate transactions.
So let's say you, Sam, go, "I need to raise $100,000,000 of debt for the hustle because I need to expand." A banker will go out and they will approach all the wealthy people they know and all the different corporations and say, "Hey, here's this great guy; you should lend him money." Then they take a fee in between.
In a lot of ways, it's the world's best business. You're a middleman on these huge transactions—multibillion-dollar transactions—and you're taking a 2.5% to 5% fee on everything you do. So with like 50 to 100 people, you can do crazy amounts of money.
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Sam Parr | What skill set would this guy have needed when he started at 31 or 32 in order to make this happen?
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Andrew Wilkinson | Well, it's really heavy on two things. One, it's like sales and stuff, and then the other is kind of financial acumen and modeling and all that.
So you'd probably get a bunch of people in the office who are like super hardcore spreadsheet junkies, Excel types, who can figure out how to structure a deal. Then you'd also have people who can do the very high-level sales.
They're basically smooth-talking, calling, selling, and positioning everything to facilitate all the deals. | |
Sam Parr | do you consider yourself a banker | |
Andrew Wilkinson | No, I actually generally really hate dealing with bankers. I think it's kind of like real estate agents. I'm very skeptical of real estate agents. I think in the next 50 years, they probably won't exist.
A lot of the time, a real estate agent is just a person who puts up a listing online for you, opens the door for a few people, and then takes a huge fee, which seems crazy and out of line, right?
Now, there are great real estate agents. Let's say you have a weird property that might not sell; they know how to spruce it up. There's one in a hundred that's amazing and will sell your property for more, but a lot of the time, they're useless.
The same thing is kind of true with bankers. I think if you've got a great business and you want to raise money, you should just go and call a bunch of wealthy people and try to raise the money yourself. Because at the end of the day, a lot of the time, what bankers do is build some decks and then breathe on the phone while you talk to other people, and then take a huge fee.
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Sam Parr | how much money have you raised | |
Andrew Wilkinson | We've raised maybe $250 million. Well, it depends on how you think about it. I would say in the neighborhood of about $200 to $250 million, or something like that, if you include our IPO or our reverse takeover we just did.
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Sam Parr | not including that what's it a 100 | |
Andrew Wilkinson | 200 maybe | |
Sam Parr | oh so the the spac that you did wasn't a | |
Andrew Wilkinson | The significant deal included raising **$60,000,000**. That was how much we raised when we took that business public. | |
Sam Parr | Wow, so then your funds have well over $100,000? Yeah, and you didn't use a banker for any of this?
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Andrew Wilkinson | That, no, we just called people we knew. I mean, we had bumbled into this world. Like, I had no idea five years ago, six years ago even. I didn't know what the difference was between a banker and a bank teller. I had no idea.
Because of that, we just kind of kept meeting interesting business people. As we met interesting business people, they'd keep saying, "Hey, are you guys raising money? Because I'd love to invest with you."
So eventually, when we had big enough deals that were interesting and we wanted partners, I just called those people, and we did it ourselves.
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Sam Parr | So, back to this guy. When you're starting something like this, and this is... I imagine you like this guy because you kind of want to steal some of his life, right? I mean, you want to emulate some parts of what he's done.
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Andrew Wilkinson | Yeah, well, I think we're probably similar in that we're both attracted to these really simple businesses, like selling beer or razors. We both come from this weird tech world where we do knowledge work. You write an email newsletter, I do design, and then two years later, it doesn't exist, right?
I like the longevity and the simplicity of more traditional businesses. So, I love that. I think the idea of just buying these super safe, boring, steady-Eddie businesses that do something simple in the world and just making them better actually sounds like a lot of fun.
I wrote a note below, but the key thing about what he does is that they generally have one key insight. It will be something as simple as when they bought Budweiser. It was on the third generation; they had gotten super rich. The first generation built it, the second generation were amazing—they went to Harvard and grew it. The third generation took over, got sloppy, and didn't really care about growth. They had fancy offices and private jets and stuff.
So, when they bought it, they just looked at it and thought, "Oh, it's been running in kind of a sloppy way, and they've lost their discipline." We can buy it with a lot of debt, and then we can just make it way better, pay off our debt, and then we own Budweiser.
It's this crazy coup for these guys from Brazil who, you know, started at zero. Although I think they were upper middle class in Brazil, starting there to owning Budweiser is crazy. | |
Sam Parr | And I want to ask you about how to get into those deals. When I read about him, it sounded like he was the young guy in a three-person partnership, which definitely helped.
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Andrew Wilkinson | Actually, the old guy... so there's the two younger guys. The younger guys actually go and they run the businesses. One of the partners, I believe, went in and runs... what is it called? QSR, which owns Tim Hortons and all that stuff.
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Sam Parr |
Sorry, I meant from his first thing. So his first thing got him his big nut. His first thing... yeah, made him like $650 [million], or they sold for $650 [million]. From what it sounds like, it was a little bit of an older guy who'd been there, done that, kind of brought him along. He was the young guy of that partnership.
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Andrew Wilkinson | totally yeah and then he did the same thing and now he has younger partners | |
Sam Parr | Right, and so I have a few questions about this. But I wanted to... so let's just talk about this guy's strategy at 3G and his whole life. It seems he's done the same thing, which is he's a cheapskate. He's frugal—**incredibly** frugal.
So he's done a couple of things. He has a few phrases that they would say, which is like, "Costs are like fingernails; you have to cut them constantly." He would do famous things like when they bought Burger King, they banned color copies. Meaning, when you're using the photocopy machine, he was like, "Just black and white only."
Also, what was this thing you said about private jets?
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Andrew Wilkinson | They also force people to print on both sides. They'd say, "Not only can you not print in color, but you have to print double-sided."
So, the first thing they would always do whenever they buy a business is sell all the private jets immediately. Let's be real, most Fortune 500 companies have between 1 and 10 private jets, and they just say, "Forget that, we don't need those." They sell them, and it's kind of a statement.
From that point on, the new CEO and all the executives have to fly crazy. I love that! I think it just sets the tone from the top.
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Sam Parr | a really interesting way | |
Andrew Wilkinson | And these are people. I mean, the CEO of AB InBev is probably worth like $100 million, and he's staying at a Quality Inn. But I think there's something to demonstrating that at the top if you want your lower-level employees to care too.
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Sam Parr | I actually think that that's a stupid thing.
I get staying at cheap hotels because staying at a Marriott Courtyard, which is like $89 a night, I'm on board with that. It's probably even cheaper, so if it's $50, I'm cool with that.
It's just that you can have a fine, clean, comfortable place. Although I do like having room service because if you get into a place late, you want that.
But whatever, these people say they fly economy. I'm like, that's kind of stupid. If I'm flying overnight, I need to be comfortable so I can be ready to roll. You know, you don't want your athlete to work off their 2 hours of sleep. Do you actually believe that people do that?
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Andrew Wilkinson | I think they do. I mean, maybe it's just lore. Maybe these guys are super rich and they pay for it personally or something like that. But I don't know.
I mean, I think if you're... I know like Walmart has a big corporate jet fleet, and they actually have a really good argument for it. They're constantly visiting stores, and that's their way of kind of "whipping all the store managers" and making sure they do a good job. So, they have all these tiny little jets that fly between small towns. If they were to fly commercial, it would take 10 days to do 2 days of work.
So, I think there's a good argument for it there. But I can imagine the CEO of AB InBev needs to be flying all over the world constantly. If he's flying once or twice a month, it's not a big deal to be on a commercial plane or whatever.
I just think it's kind of a neat thing to do. Personally, I wouldn't... I would feel bad. I would be worried that I'm going to get a worse CEO because they want their perks or whatever. But the kind of people these guys hire... like when they took over Burger King, they hired a 35-year-old as a CFO, right? Or maybe even a 30-year-old. And the owner... oh, 30... 2 CEO, yeah.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, I wrote about it. They hired a 32-year-old who was part of their management company, and he took it over and he kicked ass.
A few things that he did was, at the time, Burger King was trying to advertise predominantly towards young men. He said, "No, we're going to be for everyone, so we're going to advertise for everyone."
Another thing that he did was... do you remember the King? Burger King, like the King?
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Andrew Wilkinson | yeah | |
Sam Parr | He was like, "That's kinda creepy, get rid of that."
Then the third thing that he did was, at the time, Burger King employed something like 28,000 people. They owned most of their restaurants and would hire the people. He goes, "Nah, we're gonna switch to a franchise, and we're gonna help all these franchise owners line up a loan so you guys can make your own places really nice. We're gonna help you make it nice."
That was the big switch they did. Now, Burger King, I believe, crushed it.
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Andrew Wilkinson | And this is something we've seen in our own investing. Often, having one thesis is key.
So, the thesis could be: "Hey, margins are really low. You know, they're at 5%, but they should be at 15%." We can achieve that through very simple improvements.
Take the Burger King deal, for example. They went into significant debt and actually paid a really high price to do it. But the insight they had was, "Well, as soon as we take over, we're just going to spin out all of our corporately owned locations and franchise them."
By doing that, they were able to raise all the money needed to pay off their debt. They executed this plan and then ended up taking it public with Ackman, actually, and did insanely well with it.
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Sam Parr | Oh, that's interesting. When they did it, there was a funny story about the guy we were talking about. I'm going to try and say his name one more time. What is it? Abreya?
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Andrew Wilkinson | jorge paul | |
Sam Parr | I want to, when I see it, I want to say "Jorge." But anyway, there's a funny story about him. He had never had Burger King until they bought the company, and it was like a multibillion-dollar deal. He didn't eat it until they bought the company, and when he ate it, he was like, "This is too big."
He's known for really only drinking water and eating really healthy, but he owns, you know, non-healthy stuff. What's your take on that? Do you think that rubs you the wrong way, or are you like, "Oh no"?
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Andrew Wilkinson | I think it rubs me the wrong way. He sounds like he's really good at being secretive in PR. That's exactly the sort of thing I wouldn't want to give out. I wouldn't want it out in public or whatever. I think it sounds kind of lame. | |
Sam Parr | So, this type of business that you like—and I enjoy it too—when I was reading all about them, would you say it boils down to this:
1. You have to be good at fundraising money. You need to be able to convince some type of rich institution or wealthy individuals to give you money.
2. The second thing you have to get good at is recruiting really talented people. Typically, these are individuals who are highly sought after by other places, who could start their own ventures, and who are probably already wealthy. You have to hire them.
3. The third and probably most important aspect is that you have to be really good at inspiring and leading them. You need to be a leader of leaders.
Is that like the three pillars to this? Am I missing anything?
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Andrew Wilkinson | You nailed it. It's really, really hard. The hardest part is recruiting amazing people. Our biggest challenge isn't doing deals; it's that we could do a deal every month. The challenge is how we can find enough amazing people to run all these businesses.
Then, how can we validate that they're going to be able to do what we need from them? You know, you think about that 32-year-old. He was probably working in head office for 10 years and saw all this stuff. It's a huge chance to hand that to him, and that could have gone really, really poorly.
But I think that's exactly the Warren Buffett playbook, right? It's about how to be a leader of leaders. How do you give them positive coaching without getting too involved in the day-to-day?
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Sam Parr | and the fundraising part actually seems like the easiest | |
Andrew Wilkinson | The fundraising, honestly, was so... when we did it, we have a fund which we raised during COVID just because we thought we were going to get mobbed. It was really weird. We actually... COVID was like... | |
Sam Parr | like we thought we were gonna have | |
Andrew Wilkinson | No, no. We thought we were going to have overwhelming amounts of deals to do, and we thought it would be a great time to have excess capital. But that didn't happen, right? Everyone was actually weirdly optimistic, and the government wrote the check and all that stuff.
But doing the money raising wasn't actually that hard. Like running an agency for 15 years and doing sales for a long time—that's easy. You just have a fun conversation with someone, you walk them through a deck, you show your track record. That was totally fine.
The hard part is really the execution of the actual deals and hiring the right people. | |
Sam Parr | And I would argue, I mean, I don't really know what I'm talking about entirely. This is strictly from reading. It seems like executing the deals is hard, but it's not that hard. The hard part is really the people part. Is that...? | |
Andrew Wilkinson | We... I would say we've done deals. We just did our biggest deal ever, and it was over $100,000,000. It was no more work or complexity than doing a $1,000,000 deal. In fact, it was simpler than a $1,000,000 deal because it's just a better business with a better team in place and more momentum.
What do you do? There's always complicated people. Well, in our public company, we bought a company called Stamped, which is one of the top ratings and reviews apps on Shopify.
You bought a product line... there are a total of 100 and 110, I believe. It gets paid out; it's a structure you'd have to look at the press release for the details, but it's in or around there. | |
Sam Parr | And when I was reading this, I'm in the middle of reading *Human Nature* by Robert Greene. The reason... have you heard of that?
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Andrew Wilkinson | it's an amazing book I've been reading that too | |
Sam Parr | have you really wow | |
Andrew Wilkinson | wow it's amazing isn't it crazy it's so good | |
Sam Parr | it's so everything he does is great and then he | |
Andrew Wilkinson | the laws the laws of human nature isn't it called right | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, *The Laws of Human Nature*—I already read it, and now I'm rereading it again. But I'm studying it like I'm taking a semester of Robert Greene.
The reason why I am reading it is that I thought when I was getting into business, all that would matter is, like, business. And you're like, "Well, what's business?" It's like, I don't know, I guess selling stuff, making the product really good. In my business, it was like, "I'm just gonna write words that people like." It's really simple.
But what I've learned is that it's far more important to understand and motivate human beings and have really effective day-to-day interactions with people. In order to do that, you have to have a little bit of a—I'll call it like a Machiavellian type of thing to you. Where, like, people love you, yet they're a little bit fearful of you. They kind of view you as a little bit mysterious.
You have to attract these people, and they have to both want to be around you yet think that you're formidable. They should be a little bit nervous, like, "Oh man, if I don't join this person, they're gonna crush me."
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Andrew Wilkinson | or live up to your expectations | |
Sam Parr | what do you mean | |
Andrew Wilkinson | Well, like basically, how do you... One of the things, like some of the people I've worked with have this thing where you just want to always raise the bar. You always want to live up to their expectations.
So they say, "This is the bar. This is what I expect from you," but they do it in a very flattering way. Like, "You're really smart. You work really hard. I'm so impressed with you. I know you can achieve this," right?
Then they set this crazy bar, and you just naturally want to live up to the expectations. I've always struggled with that, with different business partners and stuff I've dealt with over the last couple of years.
But with employees, I've always had this habit of wanting to be liked. I still want to be liked, but I want to be firm and I want to have boundaries. Because in the past, what I've done is, in wanting to be liked, I've excused someone failing.
So I would say, "It's okay, don't worry about it. It's fine," and then I'd quietly just dismiss them and not use them for tasks like that. Whereas I think it's actually really important to be like, "Hey, look, it's okay you messed up, but you let me down, and here's why you let me down. Here's how this impacted everything, or here's the bar, and here's what I need from you."
And whatever it is, I've always been terrible at that.
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Sam Parr | It's crazy. I mean, Elon Musk has it. Bill Ackman, who you know, has it. This guy we're talking about definitely had it when I looked at him. I could see how he would dress and how he held himself.
You know, Travis Kalanick kind of has it too. You're just... you're afraid of them in a way. They inspire me, but they can crush it. Whatever they set their mind to, they're going to get done.
That's regardless of whether you agree with their ethics or not. But you can definitely agree that these guys are going places.
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Andrew Wilkinson | There's a great story about Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook. I forget who told this story, but she goes, "I was in a meeting with Sheryl, and I gave this presentation. Then she walked up to me outside and said, 'During your presentation, it was great, but you kept saying "like." Only stupid people say "like," and you're not stupid.'" Then she walked away.
You can look at that and go, "Oh my god, I can't believe she did that! That's so mean." But the way she told it was like a kind of backhanded compliment that pointed out something embarrassing. It's like saying, "Hey, you have lettuce in your teeth," or whatever. You don't want to hear it, but it's helpful.
I think I've been very bad at that kind of stuff. I think you need to give more firm feedback. | |
Sam Parr | That story is from *Radical Candor* or whatever. Yeah, *Radical Candor*—it's a good one.
As I was reading this guy, I thought, "Man, in order to get into some of these deals, like Heinz or whatever, to attract these people..." I mean, basically, like this guy and the folks that we talk about, and maybe I think you as well, Andrew, that you're like *uncommon amongst the uncommon*.
You have to lead the killers. So, you've got to be the killer amongst killers. That is kind of a fascinating thing to think about.
To bring it back to what I originally said, when I got into business, I thought it was all about coming up with creative ideas. It's like, "No, I just gotta be a leader of men and women," and that's really hard.
So, I've been studying how to do that. I've been studying war leaders, and I've been studying, you know, who really is good at this—like celebrities, like Marilyn Monroe. It's basically kind of seduction a little bit. How do you just get people under your spell? Hopefully, your spell is positive, but...
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Andrew Wilkinson | I don't... yeah, I think there's a... I think it sounds stressful, though. Like the idea of, "I'm gonna be a killer and I'm gonna do all this stuff and be Machiavellian." I really don't like that feeling of manipulating someone.
What I like to think about more, and what's been more instructive for me, is just reading psychology, like Robert Cialdini and all that stuff, and figuring out incentives. One of the things I've learned is that if somebody is incentivized to not work as hard as you or not care as much as you, they won't.
People do whatever... it's shocking, but they'll do whatever the financial or day-to-day lifestyle incentive is. Where they can take the path of least resistance, they will. Then they'll create their own narrative for why they're doing it. They might say, "I'm not working hard because I don't like my work environment," or whatever, or "there's a problem with management," or whatever it is.
But often, it's actually them just going, "Why would I work harder? I don't make more money. I don't get a bonus for working harder. I clock in my time," or whatever. So I think a lot of the time, this stuff is just an incentives problem, and that's pervasive through everything.
Going back to realtors, they have an incentive to just sell your house for the lowest price to get it done, to lock in their fee. They have an incentive against you.
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Sam Parr | I agree with you that that is part of it. I would say that if there are two portions, those are both of them.
But I think you're totally full of shit and that you don't care about this because your public image is... and I don't know if you mean to do this or not, but I'll tell you what your image is. It's like you're a cool guy. You dress nice, you've got slicked-back hair, you're good-looking, and you have these cool glasses. You're a designer.
I mean, brother, look at the website. What's the URL of Tiny?
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Andrew Wilkinson | tiny capital | |
Sam Parr | **Tiny capital.** You use the same wonderful imagery. You have a brand, and a brand is exactly this Machiavellian thing that I'm describing—how to manipulate feelings and emotions.
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Andrew Wilkinson | I don't know | |
Sam Parr | I think the word is *Machiavellian*. You are manipulating people to feel a certain way, and you're really good at it.
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Andrew Wilkinson | At it? No, no, no, absolutely. But it's like copyright. Knowing how to write good copy, what you're really doing is taking people along for an emotional journey by using various words, right?
There are two ways to look at it. One is, "Oh, it's super manipulative," or the other is, "No, you're trying to communicate, and you're an effective communicator."
Don't get me wrong, we definitely do like to soften the kind of work we do, but it comes from, you know, dealing with Wall Street bankers. We dealt with people trying to acquire companies; they were shady.
So this is me going, "Oh, well, I hated that. How can I market to those people who have the same hatred that I did?"
But yes, there's definitely a lot of public image stuff that we think about.
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Sam Parr | So, we'll wrap up with this "Billy of the Week" segment. What's your main takeaway from this guy? There's a book about him; it's called *Greatness*, I think. I couldn't find it; I only saw it in Portuguese. I don't know if there's an English version.
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Andrew Wilkinson | yeah it's called oh what is it dream big | |
Sam Parr | dream big | |
Andrew Wilkinson | it's on amazon yeah it's quite good I read it maybe 4 or 5 years ago | |
Sam Parr | What are your main takeaways from this guy? Why? What is the biggest lesson you can learn from him, and what should you avoid?
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Andrew Wilkinson | I think it's like you don't need to do something innovative and crazy, right? You don't need to be the next Elon Musk or start some crazy technology. You can just choose a traditional business that's very poorly run and run it better.
Even better if it's a business that's low risk, growing, and kind of successful despite bad management or a bloated cost structure or something.
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Sam Parr | And you wrote something in here that was important, which is different from how I perceived you as doing. You need to be comfortable taking on outside capital and having partners.
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Andrew Wilkinson | Well, I think, like, for this exact structure, right? So what they do is raise a lot of debt, and that allows them to have, you know, a lot of control because they have debt, but it's silent. It's not involved in the operations, and that gives them the ability to just overrule and take over.
You gotta raise a lot of money. I mean, if you're going to buy Heinz Ketchup, like, that's not the kind of deal you can get a crazy deal on. You're going to have to pay the highest market price for it. In order to do that, you gotta raise a lot of money.
Compared to what we do, like, we're not buying the Heinz Ketchup. We're buying the random local ketchup brand, right? That's been successful in a small niche. Those deals you can find.
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Sam Parr | Oh, and I want to ask one more question before we wrap up, actually. I was thinking about this. You're further along; you're a few years older than me. Not only a couple of years older, but in terms of career success, you're a fair bit ahead of me.
We're both going down the same path, and then one path in front of that, you're friends with guys like Bill Ackman—these folks that are worth, you know, a lot. You and I were in our bedrooms, and then it comes to, like, alright, you get a little bit of success, like I have, and then it comes to, alright, you're starting to move things a little bit.
But even you said you're still a pipsqueak compared to, like, you know, Ackman or whatever. How does this transition from being someone who's kind of interesting to a mover and shaker on a global scale seem to you? Because it seems like you're not far from that.
These guys, like Bill Ackman, when they say something, they're in the news. When they make a trade, every once in a while, it can impact millions of people.
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Andrew Wilkinson | Yeah, I mean, I don't... I just look up and see how far we have to go. I still feel really, really small.
You start, you know, like when you're running your company and you tell people, "Oh, we do $1,000,000 a year in profit." To you, that's like a crazy amount of money. Then you realize, "Oh my God, there are businesses out there that do $30,000,000 or $100,000,000 or even $1,000,000,000 in profit every year." The numbers just keep getting bigger.
I find that as we get bigger, I start talking to people who have businesses that are way bigger. You know, it's funny you mentioned Ackman. I mean, Ackman, I don't know what he's worth—probably like $4,000,000,000 to $6,000,000,000. But this George A. Paulo guy, he's worth $25,000,000,000, right?
So everyone's looking up at some person that they want to be, someone doing bigger stuff. I think it's kind of like the analogy I would use: if you're an athlete and you start out as just some casual high school athlete, then you end up in the Olympics. You just keep rising up and doing more and more stuff. Eventually, you look around and go, "Whoa, holy crap, I made it to the Olympics! This is crazy!"
But I don't necessarily think it buys you any happiness or a better life, necessarily. I think there's a really interesting decision: well, do you want to be a mover and shaker? Is it worth all the downsides? I think there are quite a few.
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Sam Parr | No shit, I agree. Alright, let's talk about some ideas. What we're going to discuss is not necessarily an idea, but something that you're working on right now. I want to talk about Capital Daily because I've seen this from the beginning. I'm getting updates, and this latest update sounds pretty amazing.
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Andrew Wilkinson | Yeah, so I mean, the last two years... let me just zoom out and talk about what happened.
Basically, I read the newspaper every day. I would read The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and I would come across all this incredible investigative reporting. Then, I would pick up my local paper, which is called the Times Colonist here in Victoria, Canada, and it was just... there was nothing. It was like they didn't have any journalists; they'd laid everyone off. It was all just AP wire service, so it was mostly international news.
I thought, "How the hell do I figure out what's going on in my own city?" I realized there were a few people doing local reporting, but there was this gap. I thought, "Okay, well, if I want this, I'm sure other people do too." I looked into buying the local paper, actually, but they wanted a crazy amount of money. They had printing presses and unionized employees; it was like a cruise ship, not a speedboat. It would be a pain in the ass to buy it.
So, I went to a friend who is a stay-at-home mom and had some experience doing a bunch of writing. I said, "Hey, why don't we just start a Mailchimp account? We'll come up with a brand." We called it Capital Daily, and we decided to send out a daily newsletter summarizing, "Hey, here are three or four stories of things that are happening in town."
We started doing this, and I have a friend who runs a PPC agency. I got him to buy ads, and I realized I could buy ads for like nothing. No one was advertising for local news.
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Sam Parr | Break that down. So, you're saying you had a friend that would buy advertising to get new users. You said, "Hey, could you see if you could run some ads to get email subscribers to Capital Daily?"
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Andrew Wilkinson | yeah I was like how do I get this to scale as quickly as possible a I saw an opportunity and b I realized that in local news usually there's one winner right so historically there's usually been one big newspaper and so I was like how do I get this as big as possible as fast as possible and I was also just impatient I was like I have money I can afford to do it I'm just gonna spend like $200 on ads and so we spent I don't know a 100 $200 and very quickly we got to like 25,000 subscribers and I just started hiring journalists and built out a team and it was it was crazy like I would be in a cafe and people would stop me and be like hey are you the capital daily guy like thank you so much it's amazing like the first thing I do when I wake up and drink my coffee is read your newsletter and that was an amazing feeling like I've got all these other businesses that are like big and I've never ever ever felt that sense of community and just like doing something important and so I was having a lot of fun with it we started hiring a whole bunch of people and we realized like hey this is hard like the advertisers don't understand it like people who buy newspaper ads they're just stuck in their ways they're old they're like all boomers and stuff and so we were having a really hard time selling ads I also built this big news team and was like burning all this money and I was kind of freaking out going like I don't know if this is have I got myself into some trouble here but a little over 6 months a year ago I partnered with this guy farhan and he had scaled the biggest local news site in vancouver and he took over as ceo and now he's monetized it and I think we're gonna break even very soon on the local stuff in victoria we've started selling out ads and I think like on a unit economic basis where we look at victoria it's now profitable and it can be very profitable if our membership model works and we've started expanding so we've now got 6 or 7 different newsletters in different areas mostly here in canada and we're scaling I'm I'm super excited about it | |
Sam Parr | so is that overstory media group | |
Andrew Wilkinson | yeah | |
Sam Parr | so go ahead | |
Andrew Wilkinson | I think it's funny. We chose the name **Overstory**, but we got cute and were like, "Oh, Overstory Media Group is OMG," and that looks cool as a logo. So we chose Overstory Media Group.
But now everyone calls it that, and I hate that name. I really like **Overstory**.
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Sam Parr | Okay, **Overstory** is the parent company that owns **Capital Daily**. Yeah, dude, it looks like you have like 50 people working there.
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Andrew Wilkinson | yeah we've we've scaled a lot over the last little bit | |
Sam Parr | are these all full time | |
Andrew Wilkinson | big bet yeah these are all pretty much all full time people | |
Sam Parr | how much did you invest to start this business | |
Andrew Wilkinson | I think at this point, I've probably spent just over **$2,000,000**. But you have to remember that probably the first **$700,000** was just me not monetizing it soon enough and just focusing on building the audience first.
So, I think we probably spent **$200,000 to $250,000** in ads, and then we probably burned an unnecessary **$500,000** hiring the wrong people and kind of experimenting.
So really, at this point, we have the biggest news business in my city, worth probably **$750,000 to $1,000,000**. I think that business can probably, at scale, do **$500,000 to $1,000,000** in profit once we're actually going.
I feel pretty good about it, but now we're taking this bigger bet that we can basically roll out local news across Canada.
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Sam Parr | And Farhan is your co-founder. Yeah, and so you attracted him because you said, "I'll put up the money if you run it."
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Andrew Wilkinson | Exactly. Like I said, look, I've already kind of got this thing. I've proven the model out, and you know, he was looking for his next thing.
It was one of those moments when you just meet someone and you go, "Oh my God, I want to do business with this person." They just have the right background. He'd spent like 5 to 10 years doing the exact thing that I needed, so it was a total no-brainer.
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Sam Parr | dude I feel like this is a much bigger deal than you're making it seem | |
Andrew Wilkinson | Yeah, it's pretty crazy what it's become. It goes back to the fact that I spend a lot more time on this business than the others because it's like a passion project, and I'm a consumer of it. I read it every morning and give them feedback. I think I know Farhan well, with like daily texts about it.
But I've only really spent probably less than a week of time on this. The key leverage has just been bringing Farhan on board. When Farhan joined, it was just a single newsletter with like three employees.
Now, I mean, he's gone out and basically said, "Look, Axios down in the States is aggressively expanding their local [news coverage], and I think that's because it's going to work and it can be profitable. Let's go do the exact same thing in Canada."
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Sam Parr | and so you're gonna hope well how's the story gonna end do you think | |
Andrew Wilkinson | I don't know. I mean, I think that if it's true in Victoria, it's probably true in a lot of other places.
The interesting thing is trying to figure out, like, you know, what topics people really want to hear. Are they really variable city by city?
For example, we expanded into Langford, which is a suburb here, and it's more working class. So it's figuring out, okay, what do those people want to hear versus somebody who lives, you know, in Victoria or in Vancouver? Do they want different topics? Just that kind of stuff I think is going to be really interesting to figure out.
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Sam Parr | and what's your membership your subscription gonna be | |
Andrew Wilkinson | We haven't announced it yet, but we're kind of thinking about a membership fee somewhere between **$100** and **$200** a year. This would include local discounts, access to events, maybe a member-only newsletter, and extra content.
One of the things I really want to do is start hosting events in person. As you know, it's one thing to see a number like, "Oh, The Hustle has 1,000,000 subscribers," but when you meet up with people in person, it's crazy. I'm really excited to fill a room with all the subscribers and just see what that feels like.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, Sean and I are going to Miami. We just posted about it and we got like 300 people signed up. Crazy!
So, Bob, this is amazing. I can't believe you didn't ask to be part of this, dude. It's so frustrating.
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Andrew Wilkinson | maybe I maybe I will | |
Sam Parr | I I'm I think I | |
Andrew Wilkinson | have it's all just my own money at this. So if I decide I gotta go big I'll definitely hit you up | |
Sam Parr | I'm very interested. Just, you gotta make me an adviser. I think this is gonna be sick.
Alright, you wanna talk about another idea? So, look, we'll talk about the paper thing in a second. Which one do you wanna move to?
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Andrew Wilkinson | let's do the pregnancy stuff | |
Sam Parr | okay I think that's cool what do you wanna move to yeah go | |
Andrew Wilkinson | this is like a business in a box this is one of those things that I would do if I had time but I don't I think it's a really good idea so people love to spend money on their kids making their kids better smarter feeling like good parents and stuff there's all sorts of like you know baby emotes are you know different health things people do for their kids but nobody really thinks about health during pregnancy and I think this is something that's really important that's totally overlooked my son was born early he was born like 3 weeks early and low birth weight and he's fine like we haven't had any health issues or anything but any parent who's gone through that knows it's absolutely terrifying and I started researching it a ton and I realized that there's all sorts of things that you can proactively do to ensure that you have a really healthy a really healthy pregnancy but then also to like basically optimize your kid so if you think about it your kid is growing a brain and a body they get to do that once right like this is the building this is the foundation of your kid and so I started researching all this stuff I talked to a really smart friend my friend doctor rhonda patrick and basically I realized there's like all these studies that show that kids and mothers who have like fish and dha supplements b vitamins make sure they're not anemic and stuff it minimizes any risk of pregnancy and it also maximizes iq and general flourishing adhd all this other stuff so there's this huge in marketing the most important thing is to have a hook and the hook can be fear right how do you avoid this terrible outcome and one of the problems with doctors is when you talk to a doctor they just don't wanna scare your wife during pregnancy and so they just say take vitamin d or do this thing they don't explain why and so I think explaining to mothers here's why you wanna do this here's all the potential bad things you can avoid and hey you can make your kids smarter and better in the process there's a huge opportunity to basically do like roman or hymns but for maternal health so you do blood work supplements that get delivered on a schedule and it's about building like a super baby | |
Sam Parr | and you said you you'd wanna invest your own money in this that's what you said here | |
Andrew Wilkinson | Yeah, I would love it if anyone wants to do this. I will 100% invest, so please email me. But this is one of those things where, like, every three months I'm like, "Why the hell hasn't anyone done this yet?"
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Sam Parr | well there is a but there's a reason why you shouldn't invest in this which you've written here | |
Andrew Wilkinson | Yeah, I think this is a great business for someone who's never done business before. It's a good launchpad business. It's something that can be big, but there's no competitive barrier, right?
So you're going to go out, you're going to do this, then a bunch of people are going to copy you. You can probably make a good living from this. I don't think it has a moat necessarily, except for maybe a brand that mothers share or something. But I think there's something here.
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Sam Parr | Have you heard of this guy named... I forget his name, Joel maybe? Joel on Writing is his blog. He says there are "Ben and Jerry" businesses and then there's "Ben and Jerry's" versus Amazon.
He goes on to explain that Ben and Jerry's is like a unique, interesting brand. A person can go for ice cream five days a week and try all types of different flavors. Everyone can survive in that space. The only thing that separates Ben and Jerry's is that it's slightly different, but there's enough for everyone to succeed.
You know, there's enough space for all of us to win. You can grow it pretty slowly for a hundred years, and it could probably last for a hundred years. It probably won't go away very easily.
But then there's Amazon, which is different. You can really only subscribe to one Amazon Prime. Once you give your credit card to Amazon and save it, you're probably just going to continue to use that service.
So with the Ben and Jerry's business model, it's okay to go slow. It's no big deal. You don't have to raise a lot of money. You can grow slower as long as you're willing to do it for 20 or 30 years. It can get big.
However, with Amazon, you have to get huge really fast because everyone can copy you. It's kind of like Hims. There's a reason why there were like five competitors right away; someone saw it and thought, "Oh great, I can copy this." You could spin this up in three weeks. But with Hims, the only moat here is size.
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Andrew Wilkinson | It's literally a form. If you think about what HIMSS is, the original website was a well-designed site. They found some stock images that are hip, like pill bottles, and added their logo onto it so it looks like it's this special thing.
Then they literally have a form you fill out, and a doctor just goes, "Yeah, rubber stamp, okay, I'll do it. I'll send the prescription," or whatever. They've gotten way more sophisticated, but at the end of the day, there's no lock-in other than the fact that I happen to subscribe with them.
Other people would just go out, and you end up basically competing in whatever the cost of the ads is. If it costs $2 to convert someone, then you can make 5 cents per conversion, right? And that's what happens with these businesses. But I think for a year or two, you could probably make a lot of money.
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Sam Parr | When we first started this, I said we should break this up into two. I actually think we should break it up, but we should keep it as one. Because you have to go at ten minutes past, right?
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Andrew Wilkinson | yeah something around about about 1:15 | |
Sam Parr | So, you have this thing called "What is enough money?" I 100% want to talk about that.
Let's discuss one more idea, and then we can come back. Andrew has a huge list of ideas. We'll save these and do it for the next one.
But which other idea do you want to go to?
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Andrew Wilkinson | Yeah, this one's really... this is a really weird story. So, my whole life, I could never burp. My brother would burp in my face, and I'd be like, "What the hell? How do I do that?" I just couldn't. It was really, really bizarre.
You know, I'd drink like pop, and I'd feel bloated and crappy, but I couldn't burp. It wasn't a big deal; I didn't think much of it. Then, when I was about 23 or 24, I started getting this weird acid reflux. I'd just get this awful feeling of pressure and then acid reflux. It started happening day after day after day, and it began driving me absolutely crazy.
So, about 7 or 8 years ago, I started researching it. I knew nothing about health; I knew nothing about diet. I just basically had to figure everything out myself. I tried everything. I tried drugs, supplements, and I had surgeries where they stuck stuff down my throat and put cameras down there. I had a wire put down my throat to check on my stomach acid. I did acupuncture... like everything, and nothing worked.
Finally, after 7 years of researching this, I was on Google, and I thought about this burping thing. I was like, "Oh, I wonder if it's that." I found this Reddit community called "No Burp." | |
Sam Parr | oh my gosh | |
Andrew Wilkinson | There is a huge community of people who also can't burp. In that community, someone mentioned a doctor in Chicago who injects Botox into the cricopharyngeal muscle in your throat. This procedure allows you to burp.
Basically, the reason why people can't burp is that they have this weird muscle that's too tight. So, I flew down to Chicago about six months ago and got this injection. Now, I can burp, and I don't get acid reflux anymore. My life is literally 25% better. I'm happier; this was actually driving me insane.
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Sam Parr | What was your first burp like? Was it like how colorblind people put these glasses on and they could see colors? Or when babies get caught?
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Andrew Wilkinson | there in the pants I I actually put it on twitter I put it on twitter I'll find it for you and we can share it in the show notes | |
Sam Parr | but there's a video of you burping | |
Andrew Wilkinson | I sounded... it sounds insane too, right? Like, I just... yeah, it's like one of those videos where the dog gets home and hasn't seen the owner for four years. I'm just like, I'm very emotional, but it sounds messed up. Now I can burp like a normal person. Do you have 35? Do...
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Sam Parr | you have 35 years of gas built up | |
Andrew Wilkinson | Dude, literally, I didn't know what it was like to just feel like release. I always had pressure.
So anyway, I would have spent a lot of money—*a lot* of money—to figure this out. I tried all sorts of stuff. I looked at, like, "Can I go to the Mayo Clinic?" The problem is that the medical industry is just very fractured. Everyone does one very specific thing, and there's no one that brings it all together.
Most GPs, you know, or primary physicians, can help you, but they're not going to go deep on an issue and really spend time on it.
I think there's an interesting business opportunity. I don't know how big it is, but this idea of a medical advocate—this is basically a project manager for your problem. You'd say, "I have diabetes," or "I have a rare condition," or "I have this symptom," and they're going to go to every doctor's appointment. They're going to get you into the best specialists. They're going to push the doctors to do testing. They're going to look at all the outcomes, all the data, and read all the papers.
I think this is the sort of thing that wealthy people, specifically, would pay a lot of money for. Especially if you could make it outcome-based, where you say, "If I cure this for you, what's it worth to you?" I think this could be actually a pretty big business.
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Sam Parr | So, two things. The first: have you heard of a concierge doctor?
Yes, I have one. Basically, I pay for it, and I have it because someone got it for me when I was really ill. This billionaire lady... it was a crazy story that I'll tell another time.
But basically, I have this doctor named Dr. Horowitz. I just text him, "Hey, Dr. Horowitz, my Achilles really hurts. Can you schedule an MRI for me or something like that?" And he's like, "Yeah, I think an MRI would be good. I'll hook it up."
So, you know, I paid an annual fee for it: $25,000. Would that not be this?
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Andrew Wilkinson |
Well, I think that's very... I have that as well, but I think it's very driven by whatever you want. So you text them, you say you want an MRI, but if you say, "Hey, my back is hurting," the question is:
- Is he going to be able to have time to spend 4 hours a day researching your back specifically and figure that out for you?
- Is he going to have time to go to all the doctor's appointments and interact with all the specialists and negotiate with them?
And everything... That's what I'm looking for, is like someone to be in the room to solve problems.
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Sam Parr | and | |
Andrew Wilkinson | Because I think a lot of people have a loved one who gets cancer, and they're like, "Well, how do I navigate this? What's the optimal treatment? What am I missing? Am I talking to the wrong doctor? What advice is bad?" Etcetera.
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Sam Parr | kinda like a health a health manager | |
Andrew Wilkinson | Totally. It's specifically around an issue, or you could do it around specific issues. But I think it's kind of like a weird niche.
I recently heard about a business where all they did was negotiate bills for hospitals. It was a very small number of people, and this business made an absolute killing. That kind of turned me on to these niche medical areas.
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Sam Parr | Did you look into the... there's this thing called a Mayo Clinic Executive Health Program? I forget exactly what it's called, but have you seen this?
You pay $10,000 and you go to a Mayo Clinic. They have like 5 or 6 of them, and you basically spend 2 or 3 days there. They look at everything in your body and try to diagnose anything. I mean, have you seen this?
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Andrew Wilkinson | yeah I looked at doing that | |
Sam Parr | and what did you why didn't why didn't you | |
Andrew Wilkinson | Well, I started looking into it, and what I realized is that they were just going to recommend the same thing that I already looked at.
When I talked to a doctor, he said, "Oh yeah, you're probably going to have to have this special surgery," which is like they do a surgery on your throat to close it off from acid. I'm like, "Holy crap, thank God it didn't come to that!" That has like a million knock-on effects and all sorts of issues.
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Sam Parr | why wouldn't this work | |
Andrew Wilkinson | Well, I think the hard part would be: is it insured? Maybe not, so you're paying out of pocket. How many people really want this? Is this just something that some rich people want, or is this a real opportunity?
And then also, how much can you charge for it? I think it could be a great business for one person. It could be a great business for ten people. Maybe it can scale; I don't know. Personally, I like the pregnancy health one more, but I think the other one is more just something that's needed, especially if you specialize in something like cancer.
So, it's like when your dad gets diagnosed with cancer, there's a clear person to talk to who's like an adviser and who's impartial.
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Sam Parr | Can we...? I'm just going through this. I think it's interesting. I sometimes find myself partial to these rich people ideas, aren't you? I'm like, it's cool, but I don't know if I want to do that.
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Andrew Wilkinson | I think it's one of those things that is probably a business, but it goes back to like we have a warped view of it.
And, you know, we'll talk about the "enough money" stuff later, but I think the interesting thing that seems to happen—the theme I see with people who make good amounts of money and become comfortable—is they just make themselves uncomfortable again by obsessing over all the stuff that can go wrong.
Like getting, you know, health issues, car accidents... how can it all get taken away exactly?
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Sam Parr | Let's talk about that. You wrote something here that immediately caught my eye, and it's something that I've been reading over and over again. It's called "What is Enough Money?"
You and I talked about this recently. Basically, I told you the goal when I started the hustle was that by around 30, I wanted to make enough money that right up front, my nut would very passively spit off $50,000 a month in perpetuity. So, $50,000—or the equivalent, including inflation—every single month forever.
To do that, you need like between 2 to 3% of your portfolio to be able to do that. So, I don't know what that is... whatever that is, do that math. That's the minimum, but that was my goal.
And yeah, I mean, I did it. You started talking to me about "What is Enough Money?" So, what were you going to say here?
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Andrew Wilkinson | Yeah, I mean, I loved when you came back to me and you just said, "Enough money is like $25,000 to $50,000 a month in perpetuity with very little..." | |
Sam Parr | I said 50, and the reason I said 50 is that I spend way less than that. But I wanted to be incredibly conservative.
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Andrew Wilkinson | yeah so you'd go on a vacation and be crazy and not worry about it | |
Sam Parr | yeah or and | |
Andrew Wilkinson | I think that's the right way to think about it. The problem is, a lot of people say, "I want to be a billionaire," or whatever. But it's like, well, what do you really want?
It's like, "I really just want to be able to do whatever I want every month." Let's be honest, $50,000 a month, or even $25,000 a month, is enough to do whatever you want for the rest of your life.
People often ask me, "What do you aspire to be?" or "Who do you admire most?" I think money is like... I used the athlete example before, like Olympic athletes. I think billionaires are like Olympic athletes. But let's be real, many Olympic athletes have no personal life because all they do is train, and they destroy their bodies by the time they're 45.
The people I actually really admire... I admire those athletes. I'm impressed by their dedication and love that they do that. But I don't know if I personally want to work that hard or become an Olympian.
What I aspire to be is the casual tennis player who is always challenging themselves, loves playing, and plays with friends. If you think about it from that perspective, the people I'm jealous of are those who have $10 million to $25 million in conservative, passive investments. They've paid off their house, and they're just set with a great balanced lifestyle.
I love that kind of stuff. I think I'm too much of a maniac; I'm too anxious and always want to do more and more. I have a lot of fun with that, but it's hard for me to stop. Those are the people that I'm jealous of.
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Sam Parr | there's a lot to unpack there first of all if you're jealous why don't you do that | |
Andrew Wilkinson | That's a good question. I just don't think my personality is really suited for that. Right? I always want, as soon as I have like freedom, I fill myself up again.
I'm trying to crack that right now. What's driving that? Is it fear? Is it anxiety? Is it just that I love doing this? I don't know.
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Sam Parr | I mean, it's easy. I got the same thing. It's insecurity. Like, you want to... it's all rooted in a fear of, "Am I good enough to do this?" I want to come, and it's ego as well. I think it's... I have to prove that I'm better than Bill Ackman or whoever it is. Like, you're at this.
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Andrew Wilkinson | I don't have that. No, I don't. I don't feel that. What I feel is that it's more fun with new things.
What I've realized about COVID is that I hated working this year because all it was, was the work. What I actually love is just meeting new people. It's like it's just an excuse to meet new people and solve fun problems.
I know that sounds very *kumbaya*, but for me, it's very true. All this work and all this more stuff is meaningless to me if I'm not hanging out with cool, interesting people, learning new things, and making new friends. That's all I care about.
So, starting the news business, even that was an opportunity for me to be like, "Oh, who are journalists?" I get to know journalists who live in this whole other world outside of business, where they care about totally different things. I can nerd out on this new topic and make a whole group of new friends.
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Sam Parr | What would happen if you just turned off your phone or changed your phone number? What if you never opened your computer again and never read your email for like a year? What do you think would happen if you did that and then came back to Tiny?
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Andrew Wilkinson | I think I'd be fine. Right? We just did this at Tiny. We changed; we don't get monthly reports anymore from the CEOs.
So, like, there are businesses where I haven't even talked to the CEO for like 3 or 4 months. I don't even know what their numbers are.
What we've realized is that when you leave people alone and trust them, usually good things happen. The more involved we get, the worse the businesses do.
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Sam Parr | You have a cool quote here: "Most successful people are just walking anxiety disorders harnessed for productivity." I completely agree.
I think there's this... I have a friend who was telling me about this book I'm going to read. Basically, they said something like a lot of great leaders we look up to have horrible personality disorders or flaws.
For example, JFK was addicted to a painkiller because he had a lot of issues and was addicted to drugs. Abe Lincoln tried to kill himself a couple of times; he was very suicidal and suffered from horrible depression. The same goes for Theodore Roosevelt, who also had horrible depression. His wife and newborn daughter died on the same day, and he was very sad.
But these types of personalities are really good during wartime. They're good because it gives them... they're like a dog that has to chase a car, and they feel comfortable in that mode.
When I see you saying that you have to do the next thing, and also that successful people are walking anxiety disorders, I agree with you. I think that is true. But then I also say to myself, why would I feel bad about chasing things all the time? Why would I think, "Well, the most successful people have 10 to 20 years sitting," and then feel guilty about wanting to do things all the time?
I'm just a guy, and I'm built to go and do this because of how my brain is wired. That is just who I am, and I will not feel guilty for that.
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Andrew Wilkinson | You're like a golden retriever. You like to chase balls, and nothing is going to change that in your brain unless maybe you take some drug or something like that.
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Sam Parr | yeah so it's like | |
Andrew Wilkinson | I don't think it's bad, but it's more like, you know, I envy the people who can slow down. However, I don't necessarily know that I want that. I don't know if I could deal with that, right?
My ideal day is actually meeting a whole bunch of people, looking at a bunch of problems, and exploring different businesses, as well as spending time with family and friends and exercising. But if you take away the work part, I don't really do very well. I kind of need 3 to 4 hours of work every single day.
So, I think there's just this natural yin and yang. I get overwhelmed, then I scale down, and then I have white space. Then I immediately scale back up because I'm like, "Oh, I have white space; I can do more stuff."
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Sam Parr | what about this photo booth business | |
Andrew Wilkinson | So, I was going to talk about someone who I really admire. This is just genius. I met this guy probably 5 or 6 years ago. He’s a really interesting local serial entrepreneur, and he has this business that’s a passport photo booth.
In Victoria, there’s a passport office in the mall, and there’s only one of them. He has the passport photo place right outside the Canadian passport office. So, as people walk in and they go, “Oh shit, I need a passport photo,” he’s got the booth right there. I was just like, “That is a freaking amazing business!” It spits out, like, I don’t know how much, but you know, it’s a good life for him, and it just creates this base for him. I was like, “That’s the ultimate!”
This guy has like 3 or 4 businesses, but he also just mountain bikes and surfs all the time. He seems to do whatever he wants. He’s always giving me shit, being like, “Dude, come surfing with me! Why aren’t you out enjoying life?” He’s a really interesting guy.
It’s just an example of the kind of people who I’m like, “Oh, you’ve hacked it! You’ve figured it out. You’ve got enough, and you’re always doing enough interesting stuff that you’re active, but you also find time to do whatever the hell you want for 3 or 4 hours a day.”
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Sam Parr | so why do you have a personal scorecard but what is this | |
Andrew Wilkinson | So, Chris and I... I would say COVID hit us super hard over the winter. We were so busy. We took that company public; it was just an exhausting year. We were like, "We need a personal scorecard."
We try to do this once a month or so, where we just sit down and ask ourselves these questions. If enough of them are negative, then we'll be like, "Okay, we gotta change something."
Some of the questions are like:
- When you're with your kids, are you present?
- Are you taking your kids out for one-on-ones at least twice a month?
- Have you had any calls in the last week that you would just not want to do?
- Have you had more than two hours of calendar-scheduled time per day?
- Are you reading interesting books?
- Are you proud of your body?
You know, just basic stuff that encompasses your life. It's been really, really interesting and useful to just force yourself to ask those questions because so often the answers are "no."
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Sam Parr | Looking at this... so whenever you come on, you send me this huge document. This document, I contributed a little bit to it, but a lot of it's yours. It's 2,000 words. Did you write this?
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Andrew Wilkinson | what the hell are you serious | |
Sam Parr | it's 18 it's 18 or 19 | |
Andrew Wilkinson | jesus that's crazy | |
Sam Parr | did you write this | |
Andrew Wilkinson | Yeah, I didn't write the research on the "Billy of the Week," but I wrote the rest. That's crazy.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, so we're going to save this, and we're going to have to come back and talk about it all. We also asked people on Twitter, so we got a bunch of questions about Metalab, Billy, and Metalab in India. Of course, we got tons of newsletter questions and tons of tax questions, which is kind of an interesting one.
Then, of course, we get the same question of, "What would you do if you started now?" We'll actually answer them next time. So hopefully, we can record on Tuesday. I don't know if you're available, but your episodes are some of the most popular this month. We're going to cross 600,000 downloads, and you're a big part of that.
Thank you! This is fun. I always love having you here because I feel like when we talk, I'm more of a fan than a co-host.
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Andrew Wilkinson | Dude, I love coming on because you guys have such a unique format. It's so awesome to see you actually getting huge, right? I feel like I remember listening to you guys like 2 years ago, and you were my only podcast subscription basically. So, it's awesome to see you getting so big. It's wicked!
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Sam Parr | Yeah, last week we were ranked 14. The goal by the end of the year was to be in the top 10. I think that we're cracking the code.
I think there's a world where, when you think of business podcasts, it'll be like, of course, Jocko, because he's up there. It'll be Tim Ferriss, because he's been the best for a while, and then there's Guy Raz, who's also been the best for a while.
But I think there's a world where we're going to be up there in a very short amount of time, and I'm excited for that. You're a part of it! As our podcast gets bigger, because you're the most popular guest, so are you.
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Andrew Wilkinson | Awesome! No, I love doing these. It's so fun.
Well, thank you! Awesome, dude.
Let's do an AMA or whatever next week, and yeah, we'll do that.
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Sam Parr | we usually get | |
Andrew Wilkinson | sean on and do do a full on ama | |
Sam Parr | We're going to... I'm going to ask him. His baby is just now old enough where maybe he isn't having to...
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Andrew Wilkinson | do back | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, he's getting his life back. So, we're gonna do it. Sean and I are in Austin on June 3rd and then Miami on June 4th. Do you want to come and travel and do some stuff with us? Yeah.
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Andrew Wilkinson | I just crossed the Canadian border. I've got a mandatory 14-day quarantine, but they're going to reopen soon. So once it's reopened, I'd love to do it live.
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Sam Parr | Great! We already have it all lined up, and Daddy HubSpot will foot the bill. We're good to go.
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Andrew Wilkinson | open bar alright | |
Sam Parr | thank you andrew this is awesome |