3 Paths To Getting Rich By 40

Sam Parr

And we did it! He tweeted it out and he went from 20,000 followers to, I think, close to 100,000 followers in just 24 hours. Andrew, what's going on?

Shaan Puri

The return of Andrew! We promised that you would come back. Sometimes that's just something we say, like, "Oh, we gotta do this again sometime," but this was a real one. So we're like, "Alright, when do you want to do it?"

Andrew Wilkinson

I feel like we we had like what like 20 things to get through we got through like 4

Shaan Puri

So, what do you guys say we also **bullshit** around this time and not address half of the topics again? Let's set it up for a **third** part.

Sam Parr

I want to bullshit one thing, and this kind of relates to you, Andrew. You'll know a little bit about this. But listen, let me tell you guys a story really quick. Andrew, do you know a guy named Chris Pronger? No? He is a hockey player. He played in the NHL for like 20 years or something. He is from Canada, I think Ontario, and he played for the St. Louis Blues. He's like the 5th, 6th, or 7th highest-paid player of all time. So, for some reason, he reached out to me on Twitter, and I started talking to him. Then we went and got dinner. He wanted to know, "Hey, tell me how this Twitter thing works. It looks cool. Should I try this?" I was like, "Yeah, dude, here's what we're gonna do. Tomorrow, call me on Zoom, and the day before you call me, send me 5 titles of what you think a tweet could be. We'll just sit, and I'll just kind of write while you talk. I'll just find the interesting stuff that you're saying, and we'll go from there." And we did it! He tweeted it out, and he went from 20,000 followers to, I think, close to 100,000 followers.

Sam Parr

In 24 hours, the tweet was read by 10,000,000 people and received over 31,000 likes. This is the fifth time I've done this. I did this with my friend Ramon, and he got featured in all this. He appeared on the "How I Built This" podcast and in various business publications because of that. I also did it with my friend Val, who had a similar experience. Additionally, I helped my friend Anthony, who talked about living in Africa and eating only meat with the tribe he was staying with. Anyway, this is crazy! If you just take interesting people... it's not like I did any of the work. They were just sharing their stories, and I helped them write it. It's pretty wild how this game works.

Andrew Wilkinson

and what were the stories what did what did you share

Sam Parr

chris' was easy it was just let

Shaan Puri

Let me tell you one because it got picked up by Bro Bible. So, the Bro Bible headline did...

Sam Parr

it really

Shaan Puri

Ex-NHL star Chris Pronger shares traps that pro athletes fall into, including spending $1,000,000 at a strip club. "So why do you... how did it get so much traffic right away?" "I think because the story got picked up by bigger outlets like Bro Bible too, so that adds a lot of fuel to the fire."

Sam Parr

It's hilarious. Yeah, and I retweeted it early on, but I think it's just like... he's already somewhat famous and cool. And I think sometimes they... I'm not trying to say this to brag because the reality is, it's not that hard because the guy is already like a big deal and has an interesting life. And who... if you earned $100 million...

Shaan Puri

Dude, he's not that big of a deal. Like, why do not that many people know Chris Pronger?

Sam Parr

But what I mean is, if you earn $100,000,000 as a professional athlete, you have... like, there's only 1,000... there's only 100 people who have that insight that you have. So, the insights that are over there...

Andrew Wilkinson

Like, if you think about the value of what you did for him, that's insane. If you went to someone and said: > "Hey, I'm gonna get you 10,000,000 impressions on a tweet or I'm gonna get you 100,000 followers" What's that worth? People pay... that's honestly... I'd say it's like a $1,000,000 tweet or something that you gave him.

Sam Parr

Well, yeah, but you can't guarantee that, right? So it's like a hard service to sell. Oh, dude, you should...

Andrew Wilkinson

Do it right here, right now. You should say, "I will write tweets for you, but depending on the outcome and the number of followers, you have to pay me a certain amount." So it's totally variable. Yeah, that would actually be worth your time.

Sam Parr

andrew I

Andrew Wilkinson

I had a right before

Shaan Puri

I was on a Twitter Spaces with Logan Paul. I was talking to Logan Paul.

Andrew Wilkinson

morning

Shaan Puri

so you're only the second most famous person I've talked to this morning

Andrew Wilkinson

yeah only a little bit more famous holy crap that's crazy what's he doing these days

Shaan Puri

He just launched a marketplace, like a fractional ownership NFT thing. He basically created this platform called **Liquid Marketplace**, where, I don't know if you've seen, but he's really into Pokémon cards, like Charizard cards and stuff like that. That's been his thing over the last few years—these collectibles, either sports cards or Pokémon cards. So, what he did today was launch a fractional, like a Rally Road-style marketplace. He would put up, you know, his Charizard card, and you could buy a share of it rather than him just owning the whole thing. He bought the card for $2,000,000, and you could buy a piece of the pie there. That's what he launched today, and that's why he was kind of doing a promotional thing. I was like, "Alright, I'll just shoot my shot." So, I just raised my hand or whatever and went and talked to him.

Sam Parr

when was that

Andrew Wilkinson

It's crazy the power of the moat of a personal brand and a following, right? Like those guys, they can build a hundred businesses off of their following. That Chris Pronger guy, the reason that's so valuable is he can now start his own business doing whatever he wants—selling shirts, selling NFTs, starting a consulting business, managing money for other hockey players, you know, whatever—off of that 100,000 people. The optionality of it is insane. Obviously, the downside of it is if you're Logan Paul, you're Logan Paul, and you've ultimately got to be the face.

Sam Parr

did you did you just say

Shaan Puri

sean that you I was I was telling him

Sam Parr

go ahead

Shaan Puri

Sorry, we got a little delay. Yeah, I was just telling Andrew I talked to Little Paul this morning. That's the...

Sam Parr

on the phone or in front of people

Shaan Puri

at the door in in front of people on a twitter spaces just randomly

Sam Parr

I saw that I was listening, but I didn't catch his name. On Twitter, I think it had a nickname, so I couldn't tell if it was Logan. Was he cool?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he was cool. I mean, he was promoting his thing, which is... you know, that's why he was on there. He launched a new Rally Road competitor, basically. And so I was just joking around with him, basically.

Sam Parr

I know you guys covered it

Shaan Puri

In the middle of the road... couple different things. But the personal brand thing, Andrew, you kind of got that early on because you built your personal brand back, I think, before a lot of people were doing it. Because you kind of built it, I would say, pre-Twitter even. Was that right? Did you kind of have a blog following before Twitter, or was it all on Twitter?

Andrew Wilkinson

Yeah, I had a blog and stuff, but honestly, we were pretty quiet until COVID. During COVID, I was bored and lonely and wanted to talk to people. So, going on podcasts was a way to socialize. Then I realized the power of it. Once I started getting 30,000 to 40,000 Twitter followers, I realized that when I talked about a business I was incubating, I had our first 1,000 customers in a split second. From my perspective, I talked last time about having the "Dust Bowl farmer mindset." What if you lose everything? There's such power in that. You could literally go bankrupt, lose all your businesses, and reboot in two days with a business idea if you have a Twitter following. No one can take your Twitter following away, obviously.

Sam Parr

dude you were not low key for twitter

Shaan Puri

you were famous before that yeah yeah thank you yeah exactly well no no

Andrew Wilkinson

No, I'm saying like... I wasn't on a single major podcast, and I was well-known. Like when I went to South by Southwest, there'd be people all the time recognizing me from Twitter. But that was a very small, nerdy community or whatever. So I would say I was well-known within the design community, but that was it.

Shaan Puri

Alright, well, whatever you say. I feel like before COVID, we had you on the podcast, and it was already one of the more popular podcasts because you were on it. People already knew your story. So, I don't know, I feel like the timeline in your head might be a little bit different than, at least, the way I perceived it, which was you were famous. You were famous when we started the podcast, and we started the podcast before COVID. So that's...

Andrew Wilkinson

so weird yeah my perception is like all of it has just been the last 3 years or whatever

Sam Parr

can I give you guys

Shaan Puri

A saying is true that your personal brand does kind of give you... it's a door that opens more doors. But the downside is you have to say to yourself, "I'm building my personal brand," which is one of the lamest statements you could say. So, you know, if you can live with that, if you can sleep with that at night, then it works out for you. I know that it's hard for me and Sam to do that.

Sam Parr

can we give you a

Andrew Wilkinson

Way to go! I haven't started my own podcast or consistently tweeted or anything. Alright, I... to be honest, I'm kind of hacking your audience, right? I'll come on here once in a while when I have things to say, but I don't want to have to always come on and always tweet. When I was tweeting consistently, I was driving myself crazy because I was constantly going, "Okay, what's my big tweet today?"

Sam Parr

Can we... Let me give you guys an update on the pod. I don't know if I told you this, Sean, or you, Andrew. So, and then we'll get into Andrew's stuff. When we first started, I think I told Sean, or he told me, I was like, "Let's just get to 100,000 downloads an episode, and I bet we can do that." So, Sean, we are now... not consistently for all episodes, but they just told me that a lot of our episodes, or a couple of our episodes, are now getting over 100,000 downloads, which is... it's pretty good.

Shaan Puri

Wow, that's been the goal for a while. I feel like that's been the north star of what it would mean to kind of "make it" in podcasting. It was like, if we could do it where we get 100,000 downloads per episode. Because everybody else bullshits... and we do this too. We say we get this many million downloads a month, but it's like, yeah, you just pump out volume. Great! The only test that really matters for a podcast is how many listens per episode you get. That's the best metric you can have. I remember we were saying the 100,000 number back when we had slightly under 10,000 per episode at that time. That's when I first kind of put that out there. Then it's just been climbing since then. It's kind of crazy that it even happened without us. It's like when I looked away from it and stopped paying attention to it, sure enough, compounding just worked, and it got there without me really having to stress about it.

Sam Parr

In December... no, January, one of the last couple of months, we crossed 2,000,000 downloads per month. That year prior, at the same time, I think it was 500,000. So my prediction is, I think we can hit 3,000,000 by December. I've got no math or anything behind that, but I think that seems like it could happen. So anyway, just wanted to get that out there.

Andrew Wilkinson

What's the format of Tim Ferriss's podcast? Do you know how he structures each episode?

Sam Parr

I have to imagine he's in the 500,000 to 1,000,000 range

Shaan Puri

I think he's probably even a little bit higher than that. I know that Bill Simmons or Joe Rogan - I forgot which one it was I was looking at at the time - they're two of the biggest. I remember they were getting like 3 or 4 million downloads per episode. I think it was Bill Simmons at the time. 3 or 4 million downloads per episode is what he was getting, and he was consistently in the top 5 podcasts.

Andrew Wilkinson

You should track though. Think about it like this: **Tim Ferriss** has been podcasting for what, 8 or 9 years or whatever, and that's how long it took him to get to that scale. You guys might actually be growing faster than Tim Ferriss if you chart it out.

Shaan Puri

Well, I'm already over 6 feet tall, so I outgrew him a while back. Gosh, you are...

Andrew Wilkinson

a you're a dad you're a dad alright

Shaan Puri

Let's do one of the... Let's do some of these topics. You got a bunch on here. I'm just gonna say them out loud, and I got it. I have no idea what these mean, but I'll just pick the ones that sound most interesting to me and then...

Andrew Wilkinson

We were having a text thread. We were kind of texting about the idea of getting rich fast versus getting rich slow... taking a big swing versus doing something boring.

Sam Parr

dude I forgot slow I thought that was on the podcast

Andrew Wilkinson

that because

Shaan Puri

No, that was a text message. We should do that. Andrew, can you frame it? Because I think you had a good take, and I'm also going to give you the advantage of framing the debate a little bit. As to like, what is the debate here?

Andrew Wilkinson

So, I think anyone who's in the tech world generally reads headlines about people who swung big and won big, like Jeff Bezos. I always say, for every Jeff Bezos, there are a hundred others who tried and failed. They didn't raise the convertible debt in 1999 that allowed Amazon to survive, or they timed it slightly wrong, or they were in the wrong market, or whatever it is. If you think about it, on one hand, startups are like a house. Would you buy a house that had an 80% chance of being worth $0, a 10% chance of making your money back, and a 10% chance of making you rich? Then, let's say there's another house. In that case, there's an 80% chance of giving you a pretty solid return, a 10% chance of $0, and a 10% chance of a poor return. Which of those houses are you going to buy? When you start a business, you're really saying, "I'm going to put 5 to 15 years of my time into this." So, I have certainly chosen the boring house: the 80% chance of a solid return, a 10% chance of $0, and a 10% chance of a poor return. I'd be curious to know how you guys think about it.

Shaan Puri

sam you wanna go first

Sam Parr

So, I think your numbers are... I think your idea is right. The problem that I had when we talked about this was that I think your numbers are wrong, like the whole 80% and 10%. Now, I'm going to let you talk about any numbers that you want to discuss regarding your life. If you don't want to talk about anything, then don't even bring it up. But let's just say that everything I'm saying right now is just made up. Let's say that you want a business that makes $10,000,000 a year. Or, no, let's say that you want to get a net worth of $50,000,000 by the time you're 50. How much do you think that you would need to make in profit to achieve a $50,000,000 liquid net worth? How much profit do you think you would need if you started that business at 30? I would think that you would need a profit...

Andrew Wilkinson

So I actually did the math on this before and I wrote it down. If you have $1,000,000 at age 30 and you can produce profits of maybe $300,000 to $500,000 a year at between 10% to 12%, you can have $100,000,000 by age 60 with compounding.

Shaan Puri

so okay so break that down again $1,000,000,000 net worth is your

Andrew Wilkinson

Let's say you have $1,000,000 at age 30 and you start a business. That business produces $500K a year, and you just take that $500K a year and reinvest it. You manage to reinvest it at about 10%, which is a little above historical market returns. Let's say that you're a good investor... you're a Nick Huber. You're going to just put it in steady Eddie real estate that outperforms a little bit or something.

Sam Parr

but there's

Andrew Wilkinson

a flaw $100,000,000 by 60

Sam Parr

yeah but there's a flaw here which is do you have you're assuming that you have zero living expenses

Andrew Wilkinson

sure yeah I'm not talking I'm not really addressing that for sure

Sam Parr

so you're just talking about

Andrew Wilkinson

I guess the question is: Is $300,000 the number you need to start with? It doesn't need to be that big. A small number can compound into something staggering if you have a long enough time horizon, especially if you're outperforming 10%. I think 10% is quite low compared to what you can earn with skills.

Shaan Puri

So let's go backwards. You said $100,000,000 by 60, and I think the trick with most compounding is it all kind of comes to you at the end. The last 2-3 cycles is where you make all the money. So, let's backtrack. What do you have at 50, 40 in that world?

Andrew Wilkinson

oh no we don't do public math

Shaan Puri

I just did the headline well like with your calculator

Andrew Wilkinson

you can you can kinda

Sam Parr

You can kind of guess if you're at a 100. At 60, you're probably in the range of 50.

Shaan Puri

So, yeah, well, you know, you basically double every 7 years, right? At that pace, so...

Andrew Wilkinson

you're at

Sam Parr

7% doubles every 10 years. $50,000,000, which is sick. That's right, that's sick. Okay, well.

Andrew Wilkinson

Here's the question. You know, everyone loves to criticize people who are sitting on massive paper gains. Let's say that Sam started a startup and VCs invested at a $5 billion valuation. In reality, that doesn't mean Sam is a billionaire on paper. He won't realize that until the company IPOs. Maybe he takes a small secondary, and perhaps he has a $10 million to $20 million liquid net worth. But he's really not a liquid billionaire until that company IPOs or sells to someone. Typically, the timeline, even in a tech startup, is about 15 years. My argument is that you can take a big swing with a venture bet, but statistically, you can argue all you want—most venture businesses fail. There's at least an 80% failure rate, and maybe 5% at most go on to be something at scale and large. So, I think what I advocate isn't to go uber conservative and get a salary or buy a dry cleaner to work there for the rest of your life. It's more about what's in the middle—what's the third door? I like to look at someone like Nick Huber, who found a niche. He said, "Look, I'm going to go buy a bunch of self-storage businesses." These are businesses that have been around for 100 years. He has a very specific view on how to make them more profitable, and he knows he can earn between 15% to 40% by buying a bunch of those. If he just does that for the next 10 years, he's going to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Shaan Puri

yeah I I'm actually with you I think I I did this rant on the podcast that nobody liked which was that you're an idiot if you go for the olympics like going for the olympics is a trap that you know society has tricked you into giving up your entire life to like turn yourself into a human tool that can just you know bobsled bobsled at 1 tenth of a second faster than anybody else and you know people didn't like that because everybody likes the olympics and we're supposed to honor our athletes and blah blah blah but basically venture like venture backed startups is the same thing it's the olympics of business where you're basically saying okay I am going to swing for this $1,000,000,000 prize which only. 1% of the the startups are gonna be able to you know like to achieve this type of outcome and if I miss I get essentially 0 that's kind of changed nowadays because you get to maybe take secondaries along the way if you if you make progress but like a lot of times I would say the average you know the the median result is essentially 0 or you know you've underpaid yourself by 50 to 75% of market salary during those you know 7 years that you 7 to 10 years you spent trying to do it and you worked way harder and you had a worse lifestyle the whole time so you know like the venture the venture thing is like the olympics thing you sacrifice your your lifestyle for this very rare and often like you know like at least in the olympics case sort of a trivial you know here's a here's a piece of metal you know at least at least with startups if you hit if you hit big you do become a billionaire so so that that that does pay off but I'm I kind of think that the venture path is that and you really only do it for ego is my like my current understanding of it which is like either you do it because it's your calling meaning you stumbled into a business opportunity or a problem you tried to solve it just so happens to be that the way this looks is gonna be like a winner take all massive massive business if you do it right or you are like I wanna play the egolympics and I want to prove that I am the toughest smartest you know entrepreneur in the world and so I'm gonna go down this path and like everybody will cheer you on the media will cheer you on because hey what's it to them you sacrifice yourself for their their pleasure the investors will all cheer you on and call you a hero because it to them they get to go home every day at 4 pm and you know to their house in atherton they don't they don't care you know how how many hours it takes you for your like low probability of success they have a portfolio you know so really it's the entrepreneur who in some ways I feel gets tricked into it I say that as somebody who who in in many ways was tricked into it not by anybody's evil just by the way that the game is set up and now I've come to the realization that like more nimble small lightweight businesses that provide like a lot of cash flow or businesses that you just buy instead of trying to start a new genius idea from scratch is definitely the way to go from a logical rational perspective you can still choose to do the other one because you want to do it it's more fun to you but the logic and reasoning is so far on the side of going for a cash flow you know cash flow business that promotes like you know gives you an awesome lifestyle from essentially year 1 or buying a business that's already working and just using your intelligence to grow it is like a far better path on paper than than the venture path and I say that as somebody who kind of my natural inkling is to go towards that venture path because it's so sexy

Andrew Wilkinson

Well, and also, I mean, it can all go away on the venture path. It can all go away so fast, right? I think the reason why it's not done as often is that people are attracted to get rich quick. Nobody wants to get rich slow. Like Sean said, the only way to get rich right now is if someone is in crypto, and they're liquid and they have a massive gain. But those stories are so few and far between. If you want to get rich by building a business, even if on paper you're a billionaire in year two, my argument is you're not liquid until 10 years, 15 years anyway, right? It's very rare that you start a business in year one and by year five you're a liquid billionaire. To me, ultimately, liquidity is what matters so often in these things, right? Either you have cash flow, or you can sell your stock, or you can use it in some way.

Shaan Puri

have you met michael acton smith

Andrew Wilkinson

I've heard his name

Shaan Puri

He's the co-founder of Calm, but before that, he had a brand called Moshi Monsters. I think that's the name. It's either Minnow or Moshi Monsters, but I believe it's Moshi Monsters. So, he was in the UK and he created essentially a Pokémon-type phenomenon. Moshi was in the UK; it was this children's brand with characters. You would go into this online little world and play games or something like that. That brand turned into many things. They slapped those characters on shampoo and started selling it over there. He dreamed of having a theme park. You know, he's a really big dreamer, a big thinker type of guy—super creative. You wouldn't have created that in the first place if you weren't. It's like a phenomenon, like Pokémon or Digimon, or these brands that just catch fire. I think at one...

Shaan Puri

Like 1 in 3 kids in the UK were playing it, so it was just an insane cultural phenomenon. It was valued at over $1,000,000,000, and he was the **man**. He looks like Russell Brand; if you see him, he's just this kind of good-looking guy. You might think, "Wait, does this guy have sex in public?" He seems like a guy who has that kind of free love energy. If you meet him, you're like, "Yeah, exactly." He's got scars, and he has his collared shirt buttoned up at most two buttons. So, you know, the guy's walking around with two buttons undone, just living his best life. He had the persona and the movement to back it up. It seemed like this was the type of guy who is a **Walt Disney** type, creating this kind of phenomenon. You know, Richard Branson loves it; everybody loves it. Then, sure enough, they kind of got ahead of their skis. All of a sudden, when third grade came around for those second graders, they were like, "You know what? I don't care about Motion Monsters anymore. I've moved on to the next thing." It was like overnight the business started losing relevancy. The characters started losing relevancy, and nobody was buying the plush toys. The TV show didn't want to get made anymore. They started to unwind, and it was very hard for them to reverse that cycle. As fast as you can climb as a fad phenomenon, that's as fast as it can unwind. I don't know exactly what his net worth was, but he was the main guy. The company was worth over $1,000,000,000, so I'm sure he was worth hundreds of millions of dollars on paper but never got to realize it. Then, he basically had to start back over from scratch as just a guy who went through this roller coaster but didn't have the money to show for it. This makes it even more amazing that he went and helped co-found **Comm** and then joined **Comm** to help grow it into a multibillion-dollar brand. So, he's kind of done it again, and I just think that's amazing.

Andrew Wilkinson

I had the original agency, and in the early days, the agency barely made any money. It was only a couple hundred thousand dollars. I read about the Basecamp guys, you know, doing these SaaS products and stuff, and I was like, "Man, I wanna make money when I sleep. That sounds amazing." So I started just taking most of my profits and starting, you know, SaaS software companies.

Shaan Puri

By the way, you set up 90/10, right? You put 90% back into the business, into new stuff or whatever, and 10% you lived on.

Andrew Wilkinson

In the early days, it was probably 80-20. But then, over time, I ramped it up. So basically, I was taking the majority of the profits. Anything I didn't need to live on was almost all going into incubating businesses. I incubated a bunch, and you know, some of those businesses ended up being worth... I sold one for $7,000,000 and it was producing $600,000 to $700,000 a year in profit or something like that. So, I made a lot of bets with that money, and it ended up compounding into something significant. But then, I continued to take that money and just do the 80-20, 90-10 strategy of always investing. I really started making a lot more money when I went from starting businesses to buying businesses and investing, which I started about 7 years ago.

Shaan Puri

hold on those numbers don't make sense yeah 10 you said 10,000,000 in revenue

Andrew Wilkinson

20,000,000 in revenue 200% net income

Shaan Puri

yeah

Andrew Wilkinson

Well, no, I mean, no, no, no, no. So, it's like, you know, let's say Metalab's revenue is $1,000,000. We made $500,000 of profit, and so that's what's left over at the end after we pay taxes and stuff. I take 80% of that $500,000 and I use it to start more businesses, right? I would just do this on a monthly basis. Whatever was left over in the bank account that I didn't need to run the business, I would go and use it to start yet another business. And, you know, I've been doing that for 15 years now, and I think all of our businesses together are worth over $1,000,000,000.

Shaan Puri

Did you know how much you were compounding? For example, you took the money and either started a business or bought a controlling share in an existing business versus just saying, "I'm going to put this into real estate or the stock market or angel invest," or whatever. How much additional lift do you think you've got? So, meaning, at what percentage were you compounding by doing the extra work of identifying and buying businesses and owning them versus if you had done a more hands-off strategy? I think somebody like you could have gotten 10 to 15% consistently.

Andrew Wilkinson

I think I could have, if I was passive, I could have gotten 8 to 12% by putting it in real estate, stocks, that kind of stuff, by buying businesses. You know, there's a lot of advantage in that. We could use a little bit of debt because we controlled the whole business, right? So, you can get the bank to give you 20 or 30% of it, which adds a lot of lift to your return. Then, we were buying these businesses anywhere from 3 to 10 times earnings. Usually, within the first 2 years, we would find ways to double the business. So, you start to think about it and you go, "Okay, well that's a kind of 2 to 5 year payback," depending on what's happening. That's based on cash, and then the actual value of the business as you grow their earnings increases over time, right? So, the numbers start getting very big, very quickly, especially when you've done that, you know, 20 times.

Shaan Puri

So, what do you think was the compounded rate? Well, I...

Andrew Wilkinson

I don't know how long they'll last, but it goes back to... at the end of the day, you know, when I started, I was making $200K, $100K a year. And today, our businesses make over $50 million of profit across everything.

Shaan Puri

So, what rate do you think you were able to generate? Do you think you were compounding at like 40%?

Andrew Wilkinson

I think probably in the end, it's something... We did the math a couple of years ago because we raised a fund, and I think it was like 40, 40-some percent. Now, keep in mind, you know, that was at a time when not that many people were doing what we were doing. So, you know, it's gotten more competitive over time. Those were small deals. It's really easy to compound at high rates when you're doing small deals. As you do bigger ones, I think we'll probably slow down on that. But it's not a number I think about. I never was like, "I want to compound at 44%." I was like, "I just want to make my money back in a reasonably safe way. I want to buy great businesses, and I want to feel good about what I do."

Shaan Puri

That's crazy to me because you're Andy Munger. You know the whole Buffett-Munger philosophy is based on compounding over a long period of time. The number one variable, I guess, is time - how long you're going to do it for - and what's the rate, right? Those are like the two totally key things. But even if you don't [know] the rate...

Andrew Wilkinson

You know, oh okay, let's drop the rate down to 15% or 10%. It's still 100 of 1,000,000 dollars, right? That's what's crazy about compounding. You don't need to outperform massively, you just need to do, you know, a little better than everybody else. And if you do as well as everyone else, you're still good.

Sam Parr

Alright, let me just ask this question, which was two things: 1. Of your businesses, how many of them do you actually think can last 20, 30, 40 years? 2. If you can buy any company right now, internet-related business, what are a handful that you like? You know, just to give an example to me and Sean, the listener, of like things that you would look for. Not actually something you can buy, but something that's like, "This is what I want." And name a very specific one.

Andrew Wilkinson

Yeah, so you know, think about Accenture, right? Accenture, I forget, was part of one of the big five consultancies and then it got spun out. But basically, they help people with consulting, strategy, digital transformation, that kind of stuff. That business will definitely exist for the next 30 years. You know, I don't know why it wouldn't. In the same vein, I think like Metalab and our agency services businesses, you know, we're really early in every business turning into a tech company. Over the next 20 years, more and more companies will have to build software and go digital. I think there's only so much talent, so I think those are tremendous businesses for the next 20 years. I don't know how to predict over very long times. Aeropress is a business I think will exist in 50 years. You know, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't. Will it have the same competitive advantage as it does today? Will it get a bunch of copycats? Probably. But, you know, Kleenex still exists, and it's 100 years later, right? So, I don't know. I mean, we also own, I own like a bunch of restaurants and a bakery. If people still like their food as they have for the last 30 years, those will probably exist in 30 years. But we do own businesses that are, you know, platform dependent or technology dependent, where the seas can change, and there's no way to predict how long they can go. But I've been surprised how long some of our businesses have persisted and grown. It just goes back to like, you know, not underestimating anything.

Shaan Puri

And Andrew, I'm going to give you the devil's advocate perspective on the "don't go for the big home run" strategy, which is something else I believe is true. I believe it's true that both a lifestyle business and a moonshot business will basically take up all of your time. So, you might as well go big. That's another way of looking at it, right? For example, I've run a restaurant and started a tech company. In both cases, it was on my mind all the time. I was working on it, you know, 5 to 6 days a week, at a minimum, as many hours as I could. I was trying to make it successful. A restaurant was going to be able to generate about $150,000 to $200,000 in profit from that location. Meanwhile, a tech company could be worth $100,000,000 in 2 years. So, those are just different sizes of the prize for the same level of effort. As for the probability of success, I would say you can do better. A restaurant's not a great example because they fail a lot, but...

Andrew Wilkinson

you can't clinic or something yeah

Shaan Puri

yeah if you went

Andrew Wilkinson

to a dental clinic you'd probably do great but you'd have a

Shaan Puri

Paycheck or whatever... yeah, so probably that's different. But also, with a bigger, more ambitious project, you get to be more excited about it every day. You get to recruit better people because great talent is really excited about it. Versus, like, I know, for example, my online course business. I know I could do better if I hire people, but not everybody wants to come work on that project. You know, and then I'm going to get somebody who wants just that, who is willing to accept a salary that I can afford. And that's usually not the A+ person I like to work with. So, you know, you get stuck in that middle zone.

Andrew Wilkinson

Oh yeah, I don't... I'm not advocating for some Tim Ferriss lifestyle, like the "4-Hour Work Week" kind of thing. I think, you know, Warren Buffett is not a lifestyle. He doesn't have a lifestyle business; he has a business he loves to run, and he does exactly what he wants to do. But personally, you know, I like incubating businesses, starting new businesses, and getting excited about stuff. I just do that off the side of my desk, right? So that's 20% to 30% of my time. I also like buying great businesses, letting them run, and choosing CEOs—doing the Buffett thing. But I need excitement and, you know, all the other stuff. But I'm in no way saying it's any less challenging. I'm just saying your odds of success are higher. And let's be real: if you go to the gym and you try to lift, you know, £800 on your bench on day one, you probably will fail. That doesn't feel very good. But if I give you an £80 bench and you lift it, you're going to feel really good about yourself, right? So I just want to jump over the one-foot hurdles. I want to feel the sense of success. I think when people start out in tech and they do a startup and they fail, it's brutal. A lot of those people turn around and say, "Well, I'm never doing that again," when they might have been great entrepreneurs in some other format. I just think it's the hardest lift; it's the Olympics, as you said.

Shaan Puri

Let's do one of these other topics. Alright, so I'm just gonna name it and you give us your riff on it. **So, doing it wrong before you do it right... what's that?**

Andrew Wilkinson

I finally put my finger on this because people always criticize me for hiring the wrong person. I'm a big advocate of moving forward with an idea. If I have an idea, I will just go and hire whoever is in front of me and say, "Hey, let's go do this." That approach does not work that well, obviously, but what it does do is force you to make it real. For example, I've always loved food and restaurants. I always dreamed of starting my own restaurant. I did—I started my own restaurant. I went and signed a lease I shouldn't have, hired the wrong manager, and lost $800. It was a total learning experience. Here's what it did, though: it forced me into that industry. It made me learn and make a lot of mistakes, and then I found the good people through that. Because I was in that restaurant that failed, I met the guy next door who ran a very successful restaurant. When his partner wanted to sell the steakhouse, I ended up buying it. Now I own this wonderful restaurant, and I know it's good because I've owned a bad restaurant. I think people are way too precious with their hiring. They just need to do it and then let people go when it doesn't work out. Too many people think they're measuring twice but cutting once, and they just never cut—they just measure forever.

Sam Parr

so but do you just have to fire people all the time

Andrew Wilkinson

No, not all the time. I mean, I've gotten really lucky with lots of these. It's like 50/50, right? The pattern that I've seen is that the best thing to do when you're going into a new industry is look for somebody who's actually succeeded within it. The problem is that when you're the rube at the table, when you're the newbie to the industry, even a moron looks like a genius. So that's the hard part, right? And I've certainly... I've certainly made that mistake before.

Sam Parr

and you've got this new business called mailman right mailman the gmail plugin

Andrew Wilkinson

I've had that for a couple of years. But yeah, basically, it makes it so that you only get email a couple of times a day. So you're not getting your inbox all day.

Sam Parr

It's picking up steam, it feels like right now. And you met a guy on Twitter who you got to run it, right? Like, that's an example of you just... yeah, whatever. You're an engineer, you seem like you might be able to do this. Just do it.

Andrew Wilkinson

I’m 100% sure I’ll do this all the time. So, I literally did it twice that same year. I tweeted out, "Hey, I've got this idea for a Gmail plug-in. I need someone to build it. Who wants to build it?" This guy, Mohit, in India messaged me. He sent me a great email and said, "Tell me what you want to do, and I'll have it to you in 48 hours." And he did! Over and over again, he just kept delivering. There was another business idea I had where I went to a different guy and did the exact same thing, but he just didn't make any progress. So, I said, "Hey, after three months, it's not working out," and I went in a different direction. But you know, 50% of the time it works really well. Now, we not only have Mailman, but we actually started a holding company in India. We're looking at acquisitions, and we've got him managing some of our businesses. So, it's been awesome.

Sam Parr

that's crazy

Andrew Wilkinson

and this kinda like it feeds into this idea like I wrote it down here but taking chances on people which is the most satisfying thing like I don't know for you guys like when I was like 15 I always had this feeling of like someone just needs to give me a chance like I'm a dog to a bone I just need the opportunity and no one ever gave me that chance no one ever saw that in me so I had to start my own business and I had I've had this experience a few times where I've taken a crazy chance on someone like have I told you guys about how I met my business partner chris no so maybe like 2 years into business I am a bank balance accountant so like you sean I don't do bookkeeping I don't understand what's going on I don't know how to pay taxes I would just look at the bank count and if the bank count was bigger on day 30 than it was on day 1 I thought I was winning and one day I go into the bank and I'm trying to get a corporate credit card and the teller says oh you need to go talk to mister sparling he'll fill out all the forms for you and so I go into the back of the bank and I get welcomed into this nice office and mister sparling looks like the son of mister sparling he's like this little skinny 23 year old and we start chatting and immediately just hit it off with this guy we're joking around and talking about our days and our lives and stuff and after I was done doing this I go like hey what's your deal like what you know do you want to stay at the bank like what what are you doing and he goes well I'm thinking about getting my accounting designation or something like that I don't really know and I just blurred out do you wanna be my cfo and he's kinda taken aback and he's like hey like let's you know let's go get a coffee tomorrow we'll talk about it and I convince him to come and be my cfo he has almost no accounting experience he worked at a bank on paper he's like the wrong guy to be a cfo of a business and at the time we're doing over $1,000,000 I think and he just shows up on day 1 and I trust him I give him my social security number all my information banking wires everything and chris is now my business partner of 12 years he is responsible for a significant amount of everything good that's happened in my career and he's an incredible person now for every story like that I have you know someone who is terrible and incompetent ranging from that to fraudulent but when you do take a chance on someone 1 in 10 times it pays off big and so what I've struggled with is not knowing you know obviously I don't wanna take that level of risk still but I gotta figure out a way to give people chances

Shaan Puri

I have a do you think

Sam Parr

that a large

Shaan Puri

a great story on that I gotta kinda tell the story of same thing same thing that just happened I'll give you a good and a bad because they both hit yesterday and so I'll give you the bad one first so the bad one took a chance on a person who honestly I still think this guy is a good guy I like this guy he was a I met him work working out so he was a he trained with my trainer he's like a workout partner basically he came over to our house and worked out with us one day randomly nice guy young guy and he was like an apprentice plumber at the time so he's a plumber in training and with and like we had a issue with our 3pl for our ecommerce business which was like we had a theft issue at our at the warehouse that we were working with and then the owner was kind of like yeah I don't know he he can't prove that we stole it I'm like dude you have the goods and now they're gone like who else who else stole it except for someone at the warehouse he's like oh let's check the cameras oh don't keep the footage sorry and so I just got so pissed I was like we're leaving like fucking tomorrow and so I was like alright we're we're not using this 3 pm anymore we're gonna just do our own warehousing I didn't know the first thing about warehousing but I was like okay whatever I don't know we'll figure it out so we I I hastily signed a lease of this like 8,000 square foot warehouse near us and I was like alright I definitely don't wanna run this warehouse but it's like the stuff is coming tomorrow so we need to find somebody so I I'm working out that day and I'm like hey you wanna you wanna run a warehouse he's like what and I was like you know you're kind of like a hardworking blue collar guy like you wanna try this well I've never really done anything like this I was like don't worry like I'll take a shot on you and like you're gonna make a bunch of mistakes that's okay I understand because you've never done this before I've also never done it before let's figure it out together and like you know you'll learn from this and who knows like this might lead to a future you want we had talked about what he might want in the future like he wanted to one day own real estate own his own business I go you know this could become that like if we open up a second warehouse like we'll buy that one and you know you could be a part owner in it you could run a basic our our own in house 3 p l like you could fulfill not just our brand but other brands too so I had kinda laid out this vision he was super excited about it and in my head I'm already I do this thing all the time sam you'll appreciate this I always imagine the hustle con talk this is like a phrase I use all the time I go alright imagine 2 years from now you're on stage talking about how we growth hacked our way to success what are the stories we're gonna tell or like how we survived chaos and like absolute like you know disasters but still made it so I always work backwards from like I imagine telling the story on stage and it just gets me more excited about the current moment and like so I was already imagining like this plumber this like apprentice plumber that we hired that now is this amazing guy and I'm like imagining all these great things and it started off good it was going good but then like you know here we are you know a year later 9 months later something like that and you know all of a sudden balls being dropped on a couple things and not really growing at the rate we wanna grow in terms of his growth as a leader of that part of the business but I'm still holding out hope and then I find out he's kinda like scamming us like trying to like start his own thing he like sees us growing and like trying to start his own version of it and like you know what like it's okay to be wanna be an entrepreneur and start your own thing but like if you do it above board I'm cool with it if you're kind of our on company time company dime like trying to steal our idea like that's not cool to me so so anyways had this like kind of that all came to a head yesterday and I was like look this is not working I guess you know like my bet was wrong here this like my hope that we can help this plumber guy become like this like star like throw that hustle kind of talk away that's not happening and I'm feeling kinda bad and then the afternoon I get a call from this guy johnny and johnny is a kid who I hired at I think age 13 or 14 he called me one day at the office and he goes hey is this sean I was like yeah how'd you get this number who is this he goes my name is johnny I met pete who works at your office at the at the dog park I go okay and he is everything okay with pete he's like yeah yeah yeah he said that you know I'm in 8th grade I'm a programmer and he goes and I don't know any other programmers it's some it's about to be summer and like I just wanna hang out around other programmers I've never met one can I come hang out at your office this summer and I was like how can I

Sam Parr

say that winner

Shaan Puri

so I'm like that's

Sam Parr

an obvious winner

Shaan Puri

I'm like, okay, this cold call is a yes. So he shows up, and the idea was that he would just be over there in the corner. He just wanted to shadow the environment or whatever. On the first day, we were in a meeting, and I thought, "You know what we should do? We should create this viral little quiz." We didn't have enough people to do it, so I said, "Hey Johnny, get in here! Can you build a website?" He was like, "Yeah," even though he didn't really know how to, but he was just like, "Yeah, I think I could." I said, "Alright, build this today." He literally stayed there until midnight that day and had a version of it working by that night. He was probably under such an immense amount of pressure. Now that I look back at it, poor guy probably aged five years. So anyway, he joined us full-time as an eighth grader. By tenth grade, it was clear that Johnny needed to be here full-time. Johnny's the man! He's hanging out with a bunch of old neckbeards like us, and he said, "I want to drop out of high school and just do this." His mom was so worried about him dropping out, so I went and met with her. I told her, "Man, he's not dropping out; he's going pro." It was like when LeBron James skipped college because he was going pro—he was just that advanced. She was like, "Okay, if you put it that way, that sounds good. I don't feel bad about my kid anymore." So then he became the youngest Amazon employee during the acquisition. Now he's starting his own thing. I think he's about 19 or something like that, and he's... what's...

Sam Parr

the kid's name give him

Shaan Puri

Give me his name: Bryce Johnny Dallas. I don't know, I'll pull up his info. Awesome! So, he has his own startup now. He just called me yesterday and said, "Yeah, it's going pretty good. We just got a term sheet from... you know, I guess I probably shouldn't say the firm, but it's like the best VC firm." So, he's like, "The best VC firm just gave us a term sheet: $38,000,000 post valuation." I was like, "Johnny, have you had puberty yet? What's going on, dude? This is crazy to me!" But that was it. I told him, "Dude, thanks for just making the time." I go, "Bro, you don't understand. This is the best feeling I can get. It's like I feel like I bet on you. You were my personal angel investment, and we became friends. Then you're actually doing the thing! You actually did the thing that I always hope somebody does, which is take the opportunity and just run with it and become a superstar." And when it happens, it's so worth it. You're like, "Alright, I'll do this 10 more times, even if I whiff 9 more times. If there's another Johnny in there, this is gold for me."

Andrew Wilkinson

Totally. There's nothing better than when it does work, but it's so painful when it doesn't because you're just going like, "Dude, don't you see this?" Right? Like that guy you gave the opportunity to... he could've owned the business with you and done the real estate and all the other stuff. One question: What were the warning signs that that guy wasn't going to be *the* guy? Because Chris has this thing about... he calls it "gumption." It's like, yeah, if you say to them, "Hey, ball's in your court," do they follow up within 24 hours? Do they move the ball forward? Do they have pace?

Shaan Puri

If you, before you even gave me that example, you asked, "What were the red flags or the bad signs?" It was exactly this: during one of the workouts, after we brought him on board, we were still working out together. I said, "Dude, here's my vision for you. What's the dream?" He gave me this idea: "I want to own real estate." I said, "Dude, at the moment, you have no pathway to real estate. You're just making enough to live, let alone anything else, and you don't know anything about real estate." So, he didn't really know his path. I told him, "Here's the plan. We're going to open up another warehouse. I want to own real estate. Let's buy it. I'll give you a piece, and you run it. We can turn this into a business where you actually are running your own business inside that real estate as our own 3PL. I know this: e-commerce is booming, so it's a good idea." I didn't hear from him. In the moment, he was like, "Oh wow, that's awesome! Yeah, that's great!" But then there was no follow-up for three months. When I met up with him again, he was in a different boat. He said, "Yeah, I wanted to talk more about that, but I didn't hear from you." I was like, "You didn't hear from me?" He said, "You know, I thought maybe you would... I've really been excited about that. I've been thinking about it. I was researching; I was Googling some places." I said, "Bro, if that was me and somebody gives me a window into a life I want, I'm like, 'Knock, knock, knock! Hey, about that thing you said...'"

Andrew Wilkinson

here's what exactly

Shaan Puri

"What I'm planning to do to move the ball forward: - Here's a couple links - I put together a spreadsheet - I'm making a checklist of like 'we can do this if I hit these goals'" And you've got to do the work at that point. So the biggest red flag was that he didn't follow up on that opportunity. It's not that he didn't want to; he just didn't know that's what you're supposed to do. It wasn't his natural inclination to do that. I noticed that with Johnny, it's the opposite. It's like, tell Johnny something and he'll... if you give him an inch, he'll take a mile. [He's] that type of guy.

Andrew Wilkinson

They'll... he'll text you at 9 o'clock at night and say, "Hey, check this out! Check out the website I'm working on." This guy that I gave the other opportunity to... obviously I won't share any details about it, but he... I emailed him and I said, "Dude, I haven't heard from you in 2 months. What's going on?" And he goes, "Yeah, I've redesigned the website. Take a look." I was like, "You should've sent me this on day 1 when you had a design! Show me there's momentum!" Instead, we've lost all this momentum. Yeah, it's crazy, but there's no better high.

Shaan Puri

there's a I just found another guy like this and I'll tell you the signs that I I I will bet right now this guy's gonna be a winner so this guy's I didn't know this until I hired him he's just graduated from college he's got like a dotedu email address and and but he had emailed me being like hey heard you on the pod talk about something like you know you wanna give you wanna be doing some philanthropy he goes here's a better idea let's create a micro grant where you give out like whatever it is some amount of money that that's you're cool with and like write a grant for people who who do something I know you're all about action and making shit happen so like give it away to people who are gonna make shit happen that's better than charity it'll feel better for you so the guy like knows me he reached out intelligently he says he's doing the same he doesn't pitch his company which by the way is meant to be he was trying to start like a micro like angellist for grants instead of like startups it's like a way to quickly spin up like a grant program and I was like you got my attention but you know I I was like yeah I'm interested that sounds like a great idea let's what up whatever and then he followed up like 10 times in the next like 12 days he was like hey here's 3 ideas for what your grant could be tell me which of those 3 you like just send back the number 1 2 or 3 then he's like hey I saw your tweet about this other thing remember the grant thing you should do this instead of that right and he just kept following up intelligently each time so I was like already like this guy's a winner and I told him I go hey dude I don't have a ton of time for this grant thing but like you're awesome if you ever wanna like do something like and he was like no no no I wanna try this grant thing anyways long story short like 6 months goes by he ends up graduating he takes a job at like a I don't wanna say which place but like takes a job at like kind of like a a hot start up that we know of and then I get an email out of the blue 3 days ago subject line I've made an irreversible decision so another great sign is like his copywriting is good for like a 21 year old he knows how to like frame it he goes I made a decision I quit my job yesterday even though it was a great job and they they they offered me whatever because I've decided that I wanna come work for you and make x y z happen he goes he goes you know I have a couple other ideas of what I might do but you're the top of the list and he goes he makes you feel good does the flattery thing says exactly what he would do he goes I have 2 ideas for how I would make the milk road better let me know if you're down to hear them and I'll send them over alright so he baits me I'm like yeah of course send the ideas he sends the ideas and I just reply I go I didn't honestly I didn't care about your ideas I just wanna hire you and now he's working with me and he's already awesome and so we're on day 3 so I'm I could tell you this guy his name is safwan safwan is gonna be a winner and I bet you like 6 months from now I'm gonna be talking about how amazing this guy is

Andrew Wilkinson

dude the problem that's awesome

Sam Parr

My problem with all this, though, is all three of us get so much inbound, and I'm like, "I don't want to... I'm not in the mood to figure out who's legit and who's not." And also, I don't want to have to train someone. I don't want to have to manage someone at the moment. So, are you guys getting exhausted managing people? Are you getting worn out like having to talk to people all the time and tell them what to do or to give them feedback?

Andrew Wilkinson

Sean, Sean, I would love to know how you do this. You've kind of alluded to it a few times that you have a team helping you manage channels, or at least looking at opportunities and stuff. How does that work? Because I have that same problem where people email me ideas all the time, and there's nowhere for it to go. There's no one to help.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, no, that's okay. That's by design. It's meant to be a bottomless pit of like no reply. But then we cherry-pick interesting things and just pull them out of that well, dripping wet, and we're like, "Oh, you know, maybe we should reply to this." But basically, my version of Chris, right? Your business partner is Chris; mine is Ben. And basically, Ben has the keys. He has my email and he has my Twitter, and those are the two biggest forms of inbound. Basically, he's the wall. If you can climb the Ben wall, then you've made it. Ben knows what's interesting and what's not. One of his main things is that he gets energy from that, whereas I kind of lose energy doing it. Like you, Sam, I don't enjoy doing it. Whereas he's like, "Oh yeah, this guy sent me this thing, so I checked it out and then I chatted with him." I'm like, "Dude, I would never check it out or chat with him." He's like, "Yeah, that's what I like. I like checking things out. Then if it's cool, I like to chat with him." I'm like, "Yeah, you make it sound normal, but dude, I hate doing that." And then he just replies, basically asks me to them, and he sets up the call. Half the time, I don't show up on the call. They're like, "Is Sean coming?" And then it's like Ben's like, "No, it's just me." It's a good thought too because if they're offended by that or whatever, it's probably not gonna work. I don't have enough time to dedicate to each individual person. If you're just gonna meet me, that's one thing. Versus if you're trying to advance your cause, your mission, your project, or whatever, then you'll take help from Ben or anybody, right? You shouldn't be on your high horse about it. So to me, the answer, the secret answer, is basically Ben. Ben knows the tight filter of what's interesting and what's not because we are so in sync with each other. We talk all the time about little nuggets or hooks that are interesting, and if he finds something, he'll hang it on that hook.

Andrew Wilkinson

sam have you ever explored delegating your email

Sam Parr

Yeah, yeah... I've explored it. For some reason, I've not pounced on it like I should, but I probably should do that, shouldn't I? I mean, I miss so many emails that I just don't read.

Andrew Wilkinson

Chris and I did it about six months ago. We started using Front, and our assistant actually reads all the emails. It goes into her inbox first, and then she chooses what we need to respond to. So it's like, "Oh, here's a DocuSign that goes to the general counsel. Here's a venture deal that goes to the rolling fund." Yep, so I don't actually see any of it, and it's really reduced my email. Even though the volume's the same, for me, it's reduced it by 70%. Because at the end of every single email you have to even archive is like mentally taxing.

Sam Parr

My thing is that once I sold the business, I didn't have a business. So I was like, "I don't want to justify this." I couldn't justify having someone doing stuff. I didn't want to have a higher burn just for personal reasons. Now that I do have some things brewing, maybe I can actually have cash flow coming in from a business. Then I think, yeah, it's worth justifying it. Which is crazy because I don't understand, Sean, how you set all your stuff up. It seems like you have a lot of different things coming in, so your accounting must be horrendous. I mean, it must be a huge headache.

Shaan Puri

huge mess yeah you gotta

Andrew Wilkinson

go to the bank and find your cfo

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but by the way, that little thing you said is so true. I always say this: **hire your favorite vendors and your favorite salespeople**. So, like, anytime you have an amazing experience with an account manager or a banker... I had this one woman who helped me with my mortgage, and I was like, "Hey, if you ever want to switch careers, you're amazing!" It's the same thing with my trainer or different people. I'm like, "Yo, you have this great way with people." Or like the guy who manages our rolling fund. He works at AngelList, but this guy handles such a shitstorm. We'll send him a message saying, "Hey, we're doing this deal. We don't know half the terms, and we have to sign now and wire the money in three months."

Andrew Wilkinson

is it connor yeah connor he's amazing he's amazing

Sam Parr

dude I know

Andrew Wilkinson

he's amazing

Shaan Puri

I don't know

Andrew Wilkinson

I don't know how he tracks all this. Yeah, we have the same thing. We'll be like $100K into this, and then he handles everything. I'm just like, this is insane.

Shaan Puri

Connor's an absolute magician, and it's so funny that you have the same guy because he's so on top of it. I'm just like, "Connor, you are..." I need to basically... as soon as I have enough operational stuff to deal with, I'm like, "Connor's the first call." Because this guy handles the messiest, most disorganized thing, and he's just like, "Yep, got it." Never makes me feel bad about it. He just solves the problem, and if he needs something, he tells me, and then I give it to him. It's so nice when you find somebody *ultra-competent* like that.

Andrew Wilkinson

It's Four Seasons service, right? I don't know if you guys have gone to the... You go to a Four Seasons and you say something fussy like, "Oh, I want a thinner blanket." At some hotels, they grumble, but there they just say, "Oh yes, we would love to, sir." And I feel like... they'll never complain or anything. I feel like Connor is one of those people, and my assistant is one of those people. Those people are just... they're amazing. When you find one, you just gotta [hold onto them].

Shaan Puri

I'll tell you one more signal: somebody who thinks bigger than you, especially if they aren't the one in charge of the company. This is super rare. It just happened. Safwan did this. I brought him in to work on the Milk Road NFT project. We're going to launch an NFT as part of Milk Road. We're brainstorming what it could be, and we don't want to just do some bullshit thing. We want it to be really great. It was like his first or second day, and he just goes, "You know, just a thought. Right now, we kind of think of this as like some sub little project, like a cool add-on to the Milk Road. But there's no reason this shouldn't be as big as Bored Ape Yacht Club or anything else. This could be one of the biggest, best NFT projects around. I just want to say that out loud because I don't want to limit it." I was just like, "You know, if you can make me feel like a little bitch, then you are my favorite employee." Right? Because I'm like, "Oh yeah, if I'm not thinking sufficiently large enough or aggressive enough about either a timeline or the size of the prize, that's my favorite type of person to work with." It's somebody who pushes my thinking on, "Couldn't we do this faster?" or "Couldn't we do this bigger?" Because normally, people will just accept whatever the leader sets as the frame. They'll just set that as these invisible walls around how good, how big, or how fast something can be. Somebody who breaks those walls is like a winner.

Sam Parr

Dude, Sean, how much more hyped are you around Milk Road than some of your other things? It seems like this is the most hyped you've been. It feels good! So, you're 33. It's taken you 33 years to finally find the thing where it's like, "This is what I should be doing." It's, you know, *ikigai*—it's like what you're good at, what the world wants, what the world's willing to pay for, and what you're passionate about. Right in the middle, you've found that. Whereas before, you found things that made money but were kind of interesting. Then you found things that you were passionate about but didn't really make money. Now you've got it; you're in the center.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think that's true. Maybe the podcast is also a good example of that. But, on that note, you have this thing called the "5 Pillars of Happiness."

Sam Parr

what are the

Andrew Wilkinson

oh yeah what are

Shaan Puri

the 5 pillars chris is funny

Andrew Wilkinson

So, Chris has all these... ticks and stuff, but one of them is **Sparling's 5 Pillars of Happiness**. It's very simple, but I think it's really apt.

Shaan Puri

so these at the back

Andrew Wilkinson

And he counts them out for you. So he'll say, "See family every day." Right? Obviously, see friends and loved ones multiple times a week. Be in nature once a week. New and novel experiences once a month. Then, feel like a man or a woman. Go with your buddies, go hunting, sports, whatever makes you feel tough and gritty. This ticks that box for your caveman brain once a quarter. It's like this very simple model. We built this little circle where you can rank yourself on it. I feel like more people should use this system.

Shaan Puri

sam does it in the reverse he sees his family once a quarter and every day he does his caveman shit

Sam Parr

he does

Andrew Wilkinson

he's doing it really

Shaan Puri

I do

Sam Parr

think I do think that that that that's it's kind of interesting sean do you do any caveman stuff

Shaan Puri

Yeah, for sure. The workout is that I play sports. I'll play basketball, I compete. I think that's kind of like the version of that. And then sometimes I'll just do like manual labor. I'll just be like, "Okay, I'm gonna fucking assemble this thing that's been sitting here." It's not the most manly thing, but it's... right?

Sam Parr

you know

Shaan Puri

Something I don't really need to do, and I'm just going to put my full focus into using my hands. I'm trying to make something, build something, or do something that's more rare.

Andrew Wilkinson

It's so weird. I have a trainer, and I do powerlifting as well. It's so funny; you're basically paying someone to come to your house to simulate doing labor, doing real work. Yeah, and it's amazing. I always feel my happiest in the hour after my workout or whatever. You just go, "Oh, even that, that's caveman brain," right? You would have been building a log cabin or doing something manly. Now we're so pathetic that we have to pay other men to simulate that for us in our houses, right? But yeah, it's doing great stuff too.

Shaan Puri

so you do boxing sam right

Sam Parr

I got an option does that

Shaan Puri

for me bjj if you ever done jiu jitsu it's like

Andrew Wilkinson

yeah

Shaan Puri

wrestling they're like so primal and like such a good feeling when you're done

Sam Parr

Boxing has been awesome! I love fighting; I think it's incredible. It's in a controlled environment, it's badass, and that's awesome. Now, I'm at this ranch, and I have been so happy. I'm trying to figure out how to build a fence. I'm not literally going to build a fence, but I'm having to move stuff around and do a little bit of work to figure out how this is going to work. For example, where are we going to put a pool? Just stuff like that. I have found this to be so much more rewarding than internet stuff. The problem is that internet stuff is still awesome and makes so much more money with so little effort compared to this. But I think Sean is cool at both.

Andrew Wilkinson

I feel like you're similar to me in that you're looking for shortcuts. You want to delegate everything. You know, everything's DoorDash assistance.

Shaan Puri

yeah of course

Andrew Wilkinson

Chef, you know all that stuff, right? I'm the exact same way, and I did this thing where I had a psychologist do a 360 on me. I heard about this from one of my favorite investors, this guy Mohnish Pabrai. He did this thing where he hired a psychologist to basically write an operating manual and say: > "Here's what you're missing in your life. Here's the brutal feedback your friends and family have about you. Here's how you need to improve." And so I heard this on a podcast...

Shaan Puri

and I

Andrew Wilkinson

Was driving... I think it was $10. He spent like 4 hours interviewing me. We did a whole bunch of testing, and then he talked to like my 6 friends and family members, and 3 people I work with. I got it back, and it was absolutely one of the most brutal experiences of my entire life. Our brains are not designed to know what our friends say about us and stuff. But one of the key things he said to me is, "It's almost like all of your friends have come to you and said, 'Andrew, on Saturday, let's mow the lawn together. And then afterwards, we're gonna celebrate and have a cold beer. So we're all gonna sit in a circle and, you know, be all sweaty and pop a Corona or whatever.' And I just say, 'Nah, it's cool. I just got a guy on TaskRabbit, and he's gonna do that.'" So I never get the sense of satisfaction of doing the work, and I never get the connection of doing it with anyone. And you're right, you're right. It is doing real labor. I know, but that was the feedback, and I was like, "Holy shit, that's so true." And Sean, I feel like you're probably similar.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, except it's my wife telling me at all times to go fucking do the work instead of, like, hiring a man to come hang... you know, to literally like hang a poster on my wall. Which, by the way, I do have done.

Andrew Wilkinson

Me and my wife, one of our biggest fights over the last couple of years was I didn't like wheeling the garbage out to the street. We would always be like 10 o'clock at night, I'd be in my boxers, you know? And finally I was like, "Oh, there's a private garbage service! They'll take all of our recycling. This is awesome!" My wife looked at me like I just... you know, she... I didn't defend her in a physical fight or something. It was like I lost all respect. My wife wouldn't have sex with me for weeks. It's not good.

Sam Parr

she gave me that jada that jada smith look

Andrew Wilkinson

exactly yeah except I didn't slap anyone I just cowered

Shaan Puri

That's why Will did it. Will's like, "Oh, fuck! This is the moment. I can get out of the doghouse about the trash right now."

Andrew Wilkinson

exactly but the worst pain

Sam Parr

It's when you hire a cleaning lady or something, and I see her try to move the trash can down the thing and it's heavy. I'm like, "Oh fuck, I can't... Come on, come on, just move!" I got it, it's all good. Like, you gotta feel that guilt.

Andrew Wilkinson

It's so fascinating to think about how we do so little labor compared to someone 75 years ago. There's a value in that. If you grew up in a farming family, your parents would think you're pathetic if you don't grow your own vegetables, right? So, where do you draw the line? What's the right amount of labor and what's the wrong amount? I also know people who are wealthy, yet they spend all their time doing miserable tasks they hate, like cleaning the cat's litter box or taking out the garbage. I'm like, "Hey, just delegate this! Hire someone!" But they hate it. They're fighting with their wife over it, and it's just miserable. So, I think there's a balance.

Shaan Puri

Dude, you didn't need to spend the $10,000. You could have just asked your cleaning lady. Nobody knows you better than your cleaning lady or your nanny, or somebody like that. They know better than anybody.

Andrew Wilkinson

My cleaning lady doesn't speak English. I actually have to text her in Spanish, so she doesn't know anything. At least, that's what I think. Maybe she's actually a...

Shaan Puri

fire show she knows where you leave

Andrew Wilkinson

your underwear on the floor and

Shaan Puri

She knows. She knows how long that couple sits on your desk before you finally take it to the sink. She knows everything.

Sam Parr

alright bros I gotta bounce I have someone here but you guys gonna keep talking

Shaan Puri

No, we can wrap it. It's cool. Yeah, that was fun. It won't be the same without you. Alright, let's wrap it up. Ben, what did you think?

Ben Wilson

Making me come on camera here on my sick day, but great stuff! Always a great episode from Andrew. I anticipate this is going to be one of our top downloaded ones; it usually is.

Sam Parr

Did we? Awesome! Sweet! Ben, I said that we crossed $100K per episode. That was like only for a handful. What... do you know what the numbers are? They just measure it?

Shaan Puri

actual average like what's our actual average is it

Sam Parr

I don't know the actual 60, but it depends on what window you're looking at. I think most people measure it by a 60-day window.

Shaan Puri

yeah I think whatever 30 60 is fine

Ben Wilson

alright let me just let me just pull up the stats

Sam Parr

for you

Andrew Wilkinson

have you guys considered like building in public and having a graph or something or with that

Sam Parr

kinda do I tweet it out

Andrew Wilkinson

starts going down

Shaan Puri

it starts going down

Sam Parr

Our March numbers... I tweeted it out. It was 1.5 million, 1.6 million, whatever the number was. Something like that. That includes YouTube though. That includes only people who watch full YouTube videos as opposed to just the clips. If you add in the clips, yesterday Sean, your video about LaVar Ball (I don't even know anything, they made fun of me in all the comments because I don't know who these people are) it got 400,000 views in like 24 hours or something like that.

Shaan Puri

which one on what

Sam Parr

Dude, you realize one of your videos right now on YouTube Shorts has like millions and millions of views? "What?" Yeah, bro. It's got like thousands of comments of people just roasting me and a little bit of you. It literally is... it's the "Problem with Tens" [video].

Ben Wilson

of millions of views

Shaan Puri

getting fans on tiktok youtube sucks

Sam Parr

does it really have tens of millions of views yeah

Shaan Puri

you just get bullied by like 14 year olds if you yeah

Sam Parr

and they're all way better looking they all wear vans

Shaan Puri

It's like I got super excited about our TikTok videos. I was like, "Oh sick, a million views! They're probably saying how useful and helpful this content was," right? Could you open up the comments? It's just like, you know, there's nothing good in the comments for us, right? Like, you know, "I'm hairy, ugly, and dumb." And you're like, you know, "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what they say about you." I was just too focused on me.

Sam Parr

what alright you you wanna know

Ben Wilson

The numbers... So, I think what you were talking about the other day is that for the first time we have YouTube videos with over 200,000 views, which is good. And these are not like the short TikTok-style videos, but actual videos with a couple hundred thousand views. In terms of just the podcast, our top downloaded episode is at 70,000. But for what date, right?

Sam Parr

all time just all time but

Ben Wilson

if you throw on youtube it crosses a 100,000

Andrew Wilkinson

So, how much of your growth has come from doing all that TikTok stuff? Where you're like, "Oh, we'll give out..." I forget, you're giving out money or something like that for the person who takes stuff viral?

Sam Parr

I don't know

Ben Wilson

It's hard to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just like, I mean, that definitely worked, but we were doing other stuff at the same time. So, it's hard to say how much of that came from that.

Andrew Wilkinson

oh hey when are you guys doing this summit what's the deal with that

Sam Parr

I

Shaan Puri

I don't know, but if I read you the top 3 or top 5 comments on that video that has 3,000,000 views on YouTube, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Alright, here's comment number 1: "This is what people say when they just read the headlines." That comment has 6,000 likes. Number 2: "There's a guy in the NBA that alone told us everything. He has no clue what he's talking about." Okay, fair enough. I know a lot about the NBA. This guy reminds me of myself in college when I was giving a talk about a topic the professor taught, and I'd only skimmed reading 10 minutes before the class. That comment has 2,000 likes. "Please stop covering sports. All of this information is either wrong or in the wrong series of events."

Sam Parr

damn alright alright I gotta go I'll talk to y'all soon