Alright, this is part two of the episode with Jeremy Giffon. He is the first employee at Tiny. He was there from the beginning when they turned $5M of equity into roughly $500M of business value and took the company public just by buying businesses. So last time we asked him, you know, about those early days, about the first business they bought, the mistakes they made, the lessons they learned. This episode is different.
Now we're asking him, if I was doing Tiny today, how would I do it? How can I do the same thing that they did? What businesses would I buy? What trends, what opportunities does he see? And he tells us the single best investment opportunity he sees today and why he's putting his money behind that. So this is a fascinating episode. Part two with Jeremy Giffon. Sure.
I want to ask you about opportunities. So what business opportunities, trends, or ideas do you have that people who are listening can kind of expand their scope, right? I remember when I was trying to be an entrepreneur, one of the big, big problems I had was I only thought the world was this big tiny little circle. And I was only looking for opportunities inside my tiny circle.
And it was only when I listed the podcast and I kind of wish MFM is the podcast I wish existed at the time. But it's like only when I would listen to certain people talk or hang out at a dinner, I would hear some idea that was not something I'd ever consider.
So my circle got bigger and bigger and bigger and then the more that circle got bigger, the more opportunities I saw. So if I sold you, what are the juiciest opportunities that you see right now that somebody could do or that you think a smart person could go for the second most interesting opportunity. What I'd be doing if I wasn't raising a fund to do these these buyouts, it would be finding people with audiences and either buying businesses for them or building businesses for them.
So I think that I think it's like a anomaly like a the businesses in its toddler stage that the way most people with audiences monetize is through ad reads or sponsorships. I think it's kind of like Hollywood when you you know your big star you get paid to hold up a glass of Coca-Cola or something.
And I think every person with an audience will eventually the money that they make from equity in a business that they own will massively dwarf the money that they make from ad rates or sponsorship reads. But the big problem here is like generally if you're a great podcaster or a content creator, the last thing you want to do is buy a business for one like that's risking capital that's hard or even start and run a business.
And so I think there's a big opportunity to basically build a business around someone with an audience and come to them and say look like I will be the CEO of this thing. I think like you know this is the perfect product for you guys to like really organically use and like and talk about for a long time and I will run it and you know we'll split the equity or something like that.
You know Joe Rogan did this on it and sold that company for for a lot of money and there's other examples Doug Demiro with his cars and bids and the people are starting to do this but it's still very early. And I think that like if I was just going to start a business to know, but I would say okay what's who are content creators that I really like and what is the perfect product for them and then just like make it easy you know it's a pretty low risk proposition for you guys for example.
But if you do it right like even if an like an audience of your size you can have nine figure exits you know over four or five years and that'll obviously do or follow the money make for advertising. If anyone wants to do this shot at shopperry.com feel free to hit me up. All right a quick message from our sponsor which is of course HubSpot now look growing a business is tough and it's tough because a lot of times you have to duct tape a ton of software together to make it work.
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So if you're interested it's simple go to HubSpot.com and check it out and see how you can use it to grow your business. By the way this is how tiny is doing this you Matina which is the the drink they're doing with Huberman they bought a your Bermote company and then he's he loves Matay and he's been drinking it for a long time it's a perfect type of product so they did that for him where if Huberman was like and now I'm going to take a break from my science stuff to go.
Become a searcher and go find a business a p deal to do like that be crazy for him but tiny doing it makes sense they also did it with James clear they both the habits app right.
So you know another app versus ad read type of thing so I think they're executing on it well this is also how Congo brands built prime so they they did a lot of new and then they were like okay cool we're going to do prime they went and pitched Logan Paul and KSI and they were like hey you guys are going to be the promotion engine of this you get equity.
You know significant equity in this and we're going to be the operation of back end for this we know we know how to do this we can build a in their case what's probably going to be a $10 billion plus company of that that brand.
Yeah it's it's definitely starting but I think and like the churn group has been very good at it with you know they did Doug Numero and Stephen Rinalt Ronella with the hunting stuff and it's definitely starting to happen but I think like a more you know this is a little bit exaggerated but I think most people in a YCP
Batch could find a podcaster and just say okay you're going to be the audience co founder for this thing and we're going to give you 30% or something and we're going to work with you and it's going to be a product that you can sell very organically.
And because I did the broad thesis is that these audiences are still super underpriced basically but the equity you're giving up is you'll be more than compensated for and I think that'll last for for quite a long time and the long tail is really good too right like you could do it with a very niche YouTuber.
And and still sell a more expensive product or or do it multiple times or whatever and I basically just think everyone with an audience will eventually have some really tightly integrated organic product to sell. Love it. Alright so that's a great opportunity which is go find a content creator who's got a like a great audience high trust and basically buy or build the perfect business for them and have them be your audience co founder.
I think that's a it's basically an unfair distribution advantage you could generate for yourself by doing that. Alright love that what's another one one other trend that I'm just really bullish on is basically the idea that everything in the modern world is like poison and toxic.
I live in New York like the air is making me dumber the water is like ruining my hormones all the food that I eat at any restaurant is like full of seed oils and you know everything that I eat is like some combination of soy corn and wheat and the wheat is all sprayed and glycephate like just everything is really bad for you.
But it's like this huge and I'm kind of a freak about it like I have water filters and air filters and buy all this specific food and stuff but it's a it's a really mentally taxing and I really wish I think you could even just take the form of like the wire cutter but for you know these are products that are not going to kill you and and the thing is it's such a nefarious problem that like it runs the gamut it's like clothes that isn't made out of polyester betting that isn't bad for you cleaning products like you could do every single thing in the house I would love to have a wire cut.
I would love to have a wire cutter kind of thing which is a great business for just like this is the version of this thing that is not going to kill you did check this out so go to live dash oasis dot com I found this website the other day my co workers send it to me and it's a they say do you know what's in your water 90% of the water sources contain toxins micro plastics and other contaminants and then they rank which water as in the cities but also which one is the most important thing is that I'm going to do that.
But also which water bottles have water water no water brand I see one that I used to have it's very bad it says what out of 100 it's a very bad.
Well that's the thing right even you try you think you've done it and then it turned out the thing you bought doesn't even work like it's very complicated well I and I go to this and like I'm scared because I also see the thing that I have it says bad and then you click it and then you pay five dollars and this is definitely a thing that I purchased recently I'm like.
I got to see which water bottle like you click on it's like sad yeah horrible I just want like okay like I need a shampoo what is the one that like Huberman and Attia and run a Patrick all agree on and I'll just buy that one you know yeah and I can I think I can exist for almost every single thing in your house as Sean why he's drinking that water I know why yes we we hosted this event is camp MFM event and it's we do it at Mr. Beast House we're like remote North Carolina
or and we all show up in this billionaire shows up he's got like you know his security guard with him or whatever and I'll just fast it up like how does this guy travel it flew in private is got a security guard but then the thing it boosted out is you have security guard carries this case of waters so we had eG bottles of water which is like it's in a plastic and you probably got that because you thought you're
getting fancy you wanted to make a good impression you so impressed with my choice here a Fiji like I went I went for it and instead he's got his own like aqua Panna glass bottles and he was just you know he's a thing saying anything but I was like hey what are you doing that except except I made the noise when that for you when he's when he's all you chicken out of that you know I switched to aqua Panna for my drinking water for my family I bought an
Athena shower head filter so because the other things like oh you're drinking one thing but then you'll go shower it bathed your naked body in and like the dirtiest tap water with like a 30 year old you know shower head in my house and so if I an a calm I bought the shower head from there like filters that water and so I'm just like one by one replacing different parts of my house to try to try to get rid of some of the bad stuff.
Yeah the traveling with the crate of mineral water that's a good that's a good way to spend money I like that.
All right so two good ones I like I like the wire cutter for Protestant of Killy by the way it's like it's just wire cutters kind of like value based yeah in this case it's health based and I think that's just like a such a simple model that somebody could do it's probably like 10 years of awesome execution and real like love and care like the only the right person should start this business it's not like anybody can do it but I do wish somebody did it.
I mean examine did it really well for supplements like it certainly can be done it's just I would know I would use it every day let's do a couple more. Transit opportunities you talked I asked you a question when we were hanging out yesterday which was what are what's a business type that you really love maybe you guys didn't even make an acquisition in the space but like.
What are categories that you really love and you mentioned I don't know like a regulation compliance type of category can you explain that one yeah for sure so like anytime a government. Anywhere introduces some kind of arcane rule you have to fought like you if you don't follow you go to jail since like the ultimate kind of motivation to buy right and sometimes it can be really difficult so you know we looked at a bunch of examples one one was.
This is great company is half a company in Italy that just did banking regulation for all make sure all the banks are compliant with all these things and that's like an amazing business because first of all you're going long Italian regulation which is probably a great trade in of itself like in the future Italy is going to have more rules than it does today and then
aside from that it's like a bank is not going to rip that out ever and it's you know it hits that golden criteria which is it's relatively cheap but mission critical that's like a really great one and there's a bunch of these there's all these you know for buying a house for for a vetting tenants for k y c and aml
if you start looking for a day to day you see it a lot like I just rented a car and there's like a process there where they check my license against some database and I'm sure that's pizza software like those are great because I love it because it's like a low lift and the downside is super high and you don't really want to mess with it once you've got it working
and the other interesting thing about them is that exists for every country at least every western country and so you can go find the software that does that for you know you're or one specific country or whatever and there's going to be multiple versions of those even can it like can it has different rules in America and so that's either it's you know two for a proper products for two different companies so I love I love those those businesses as well and they're also like fairly a i resilient I think because it's really again it's like medical stuff it's really high down
side so you don't want to like trusted with AI and then it turns out you weren't compliance and you're going to get a huge fine or go to prison or something yeah I made a bet recently in the regular regulatory compliance type of space and I was like you know we have this thing on the pod that we talk about one chart businesses which is like a business that you don't need a full business
plan for you could just put one chart up on the screen and you say that's why I'm doing this and the one in this case was basically that regulation only goes in one direction and only goes up into the right nobody ever rolls back any of these needs it's only getting
done by the police and so if you can become you know maybe they go to provider or like a key spaces software in a space like that is it is just such a bet such a bet you want to make because you know that regulation only goes up you know that like this compliance compliance
requirements they don't just say you know what forget them you don't need all that compliance stuff anymore like this is never going to happen it's only going to go in one direction and like you said you do it or you don't get customers or you get go to jail it's like it's a pretty strong
provider so like you know I think people are going to want to either get customers or avoid jail and it's just like the right type of space to be and it's the type of space that 24 year old me would not have known or appreciated that that's a better business to go into then what I was doing at that time which was like dating app social network like cool new sexy you know thing and now I'm like what sexy now is like a
way skirt like you know show me a compliance business and I'll show you my interests the other big opportunity for someone who who's wanting to start a business is like you can front run these things right you can see what's going to pass you can see what's just passed and you can be the first provider for that and have a huge leg up especially if it's a fairly niche thing you could very well be the only option for a couple of years which is a huge advantage
right why not you start these things instead of just investing in them I don't I don't like operating businesses I'm not I don't think I'm very good at it and it's not what I enjoy doing and so I think everyone should try and do like really stay in their zone of genius as much as they can I think that it's like personally very good and also good for the world of that happens and so I'd rather like be allocate capital to the because I think I'm good at
allocaine capital to the person who maybe needs capital is really excited about building something all right two more things on here the first I actually don't have context on this but I'm very interested just because the title the boy versus the guy yeah so the boy versus the guy so goes you can go a bunch of ways you can go a bunch of ways yeah and there and there are a lot of different readings especially depending on what coach coach your own yeah basically it's it's like it's the idea of
being a lieutenant or being like a protégé effectively would be the the class your way to say it I guess and so you know in generally there's like there's the trusted lieutenant who is you know just the solid number two really important but their whole identity is being like a lieutenant to the number one person
and then there's this other genre which is like on the west coast it takes shape as a chief of staff a lot where it's just you're kind of this like you're this young rising superstar there's this sense of like you're really gunning for number one
and and the idea like the what made me notice originally was especially in the valley every like billionaire has one or two really young smart boys generally who just kind of like flow it around them and there's this kind of task agreement of like you come work for me for two or three years you shadow me you you you're my apprentice and then I will back you and like open doors for you
and it was kind of funny like at some point you know is in like social situations where it's like oh like it's kind of like flying under the flag of a lord or something like everyone is you know the everyone is like you know going on the private jets of these principles or whatever and they themselves are probably broke but like they very much live this lifestyle because they're like under the protection of a lord
and so I think it's like there's another a new kind of piece of information that I figured out about this is it's also an age gap thing so if you're within 20 years of the founder the number one person in the organization you're almost always going to be a guy and if you think of like all the great firms or even you know companies where someone has become the new number one there's almost always at least a 20 year gap between the person just because otherwise you're too close
and so I think that dictates it a lot as well but it's these two different things of the other way to put it would be that like the principle really sees something in this young person and wants to you know can tell they're like on a rocket ship they're not going to be an employee forever whatever but it's like you give me two or three years ago
you give me two or three years and I can really accelerate things for you and I think like that pairs very nicely with the cold email thing which is you know I generally think like if you want to start a company you should just start a company don't go like work somewhere to get experience or whatever
but I think this might be the sole exception which it can really open doors of either investment or vouching or connections or whatever and you know there's lots of examples of this like I know like Ben Casanocia like very wrote very publicly about being read Hoffman's chief of staff you know Blake Masters with Peter teal you know the Sam Altman was this to Paul Graham like there's kind of all these examples of it that I think are really instructive
I just recorded an episode with Joe Lonstale who was this for Peter teal like yeah he was basically Peter Teal's protege and now has started I don't know more billion dollar companies than anyone else in the country and I think you know he's a fastening guy
because when he was 18 19 20 he was an intern at PayPal yeah he then he was at Peter's family office then he started to volunteer with him and then you know then eventually you know went on to do his own thing and Joe's done this for a bunch of people one of my close friends was was his chief one of his chief staffs and it's an amazing launching pad and anyone out there I'm looking for a boy never thought I'd say that but this context I am sure I sure enough
look for a young boy we need to start it is we do the started community will call it lead it we'd end boys you know this but I've had four people who were kind of in this bucket I hired them when they're let's say between the ages of 16 to 20 and that have gone on to either become you know that gone on to become millionaires in some cases millionaires and like successful content creator podcaster type of folks as well and it's happened four times already
so I'm looking for my fair yeah I think apprentice thing is really underrated you know you think about it in the context of being like a blacksmith or carpenter or something but I think for a lot of these things it's the single best way to learn hey I've got a question I noticed that you studied do
study philosophy at Columbia yeah that so I remembered as a kid I saw this crazy stat that I think it was the majority of people who scored really high on not the bar but the test to get into law school they actually most of them the else had most of them were they study
philosophy that was their undergraduate degree and then I saw you study the philosophy and that's kind of an interesting way to go because now you're raising this massive hundred million plus fund did that what did you learn in philosophy that you think it's going to help you make a good business person yeah I don't know it's it's there's a big it's a big club you know leave it to a philosophy major to know every philosophy major but there's tons of names you know read Hoffman Peter teal
Peter Fenn Stewart Butterfield it's like this weirdly over represented thing my favorite stat about philosophy majors is that it's something like in the top 10% of earners they're the highest earning of all people so if you take the top 10% of every major
they're the highest earning in general they're not the highest earning but like there's that kind of like group at the far end I don't know exactly what it is I mean I can speak to my own experience I think it's just like if you're going to spend four years thinking about a set of questions thinking about the most fundamental questions is just really appealing I that's certainly what it was to me I don't think I really learned anything that's super it's it's funny like you know I'm
Canadian I had to get a visa to be in America and a big thing the thing with visas is like is what you studied relevant to what you're working on and you know the answer for philosophy as far as the US government is concerned is no it's not relevant to anything but I'm always like well no it's
not everything it's like how should I live what should I you know what should I hope for what can I know these are relevant to every field and I think maybe the other way maybe the other cut at it is it's just like being interested in the most fundamental and the most abstract versus like learning
you know something more applied it's something about that just kind of draws these very kind of curious I guess like intellectual and I don't really mean that in a complimentary way just like people who think like to think a lot but there's also a big difference between people who study philosophy and undergrad and then move on and people who study philosophy for their whole lives like those people are really people who just like they thought they think like you
know what I actually want to think about like what is a good way to live for the rest of my life and I think that's a little crazy right like at some point you want to go okay I've like explored this now it's time to go go move on I wanted to ask you about hold codes which seem to be the new trend or people buying businesses I think a lot of them take inspiration from tiny what you guys did what's your take on you know the hold code trend or
influencers out there who are like I own 500 businesses you know like what what's your take on all that bragging about how many businesses you own is really weird and probably like a contrast signal how good you are and by the way like anyone who owns a lot of businesses will will
tell you that like I know Andrew would certainly if you know if he could have tiny one business that would be much better and so it's always a weird thing to say like oh I've acquired a hundred businesses or whatever I guess unless you're like a constellation or a short
capital or something where the whole point of it is that you like buy a million businesses because yeah it's always better if you can have the results from one company that would be way better than than having to own a bunch of them and that leads to the point about holding
companies the thing that people don't understand about holding companies there's two like there's two real reasons why you had started holding company versus a fund or some other structure one is because you want to hold everything forever and I think that's
a fairly faulty premise so usually when people think because so people look at generally they're looking at two places when they think about the merits of holding everything forever they look at buffet or they look at venture capital is you know you don't
personally sold Google at the IPO or whatever and and buffeted famously owns everything although that's not actually true buffets sell stuff all the time to your points and about him being a little bit different than his public persona but like okay so both those groups
Buffett is talking about railroads and insurance companies and energy companies these are companies that ostensibly will exist for 50 or 100 years and venture capitalists even more than that they are looking specifically to find the one in a company that will be a 50 year company but most companies are not 50 year companies especially not five million dollar software companies you know like it's it's kind of crazy to buy a chrome plug-in and say like yeah I need to own this thing for
40 years it's like no it's first of all like software is really difficult my kids will inherit this chrome plug-in yeah you're not buying one of two railroads in Canada you know like you're buying chrome plug-in and so first of all just thinking like I need
to hold this forever I think is a bit flawed and then second of all if you get the chance to sell it for a great price like that is probably the way that you maximize returns if you're actually interested in just making the most money and so that's one thing with holding companies the other is that I think when the more investor type start them they really don't appreciate a holding company is part of it is like your holdings the other half is a company like you just run a big
operating business you know I tiny has I can't remember it's like north of 1200 employees across portfolio like that's a big business that you're running and for most investors that is a completely conscious skill like if you're a good investor the last thing you should be doing you like when you meet a great investor you're not thinking oh you'd be great as the CEO of a 1200 person company you know like generally
those are very far apart and so what can end up happening is you spend a ton of your time actually just operating a business and you're not able to invest which is the thing that you're probably the best at and so yeah in general I think they're quite they're quite overrated and you also actually said you're like most Harvard guys who are trying to buy a plumbing business they shouldn't buy a plumbing business they just go and start a
plumbing business yeah this one always cracks me up it's like your resume is you know Harvard Goldman Sachs Harvard Business School Bridgewater and then it's like Ohio plumbing company and you're oh I always think like I get it I you know the math where it can be lucrative whatever but I always think like imagine if you had you know you're this brilliant young person if you just moved to Ohio when you were 18 and started a
plumbing company you probably control all the plumbing in the state you know what I mean like you just wipe the floor with them and it's always weird that people want to go through all these loops I think a lot of it is just to make themselves feel very fancy like oh you know I set up the steel and it's acquisition these investors and stuff but a lot of these businesses I think if you just started them you could really
wipe the floor with with the existing competition you've one more thing that you're known for which is something like the pre and post fall I don't know what this is can you explain this somebody texted me
this they go oh you got to ask about pre and post fall so I define fall it's like a pseudo biblical idea but I really define it is like appearing your life where you've really been brought to your knees by whatever it could be a death or a breakup or you know a health scare or bankruptcy or all
these kinds of things that like really just kind of humble you truly not like how most people say humbled which is like oh I just got on the cover of Forbes I'm so humbled it's like no yeah it's actually the exact opposite but like a truly truly humbled and I really think that that changes
someone for the rest of their life and I think it happens to everyone I think it happens totally at random times it could be early in life it could be late in life but you can just kind of see it of you know the the extreme example of this would be like a better and who's been in a lot of combat
like nothing is really going to shake someone who's been in a bunch of fire fights you know and I think that applies to is if you've been through really hard really dark experiences I think a lot of entrepreneurs they have their fall well they're building their business you know it can get really difficult and hard lonely and yeah the best way to describe it is like after someone someone's post fall you can just
kind of see it in their eyes that they've been through worse and so they're not going to it's just not going to shake them that much versus somebody's pre fall and by the way you can become very successful you can be late in life but nothing bad is ever really happening you and I view that as kind of a liability in some sense of if you're going to partner or work with them of like boy like when something goes off the rails here this might be a really big blow up because of course like you know
if you're a broke kid it's one thing but if you like a high flying person the way in which you can blow up is far more spectacular and and yeah it's really just like have you really been humbled by life in like a true way and and I think when you look at it that way it's quite evident that you know people either have or haven't and I think it makes a big difference. Do you want to talk about the special situations distressed venture stuff or or do you want to to save that?
Yeah we can we can talk about that. Okay tell us what what is the what is the opportunity here?
Yeah so the opportunity is this is like really combines a lot of the factors that I love which is effectively there's this whole class of venture back companies where they raise too much money in especially in 2021 and so you get this like strange phenomenon where you can have a business that's doing $10 million a year revenue and growing 30% a year but maybe it raised $40 or $50 million and such that like the founder is probably not going to make any money because the pref stack is so
high and then the other part is the investor is really not going to make any money not the sense that they want to so venture investor they like they want a good investment to return the fund generally and so it's like this weird thing where you have this great asset you know if if if you guys owned a business that was doing $10 million a year revenue growing 30% a year you'd be very happy with that but if it's owned by a venture investor
and run by a founder who's got this pref stack the founder is not going to make any money the venture investor doesn't really care about it so it's kind of this like in some sense it's actually a worth this asset and so you know I we've done these deals a tiny before and and what I'm really interested in is doing a lot more of them personally and so I've been talking to a lot of founders and talking to a lot of GPs about this and there's just this huge
opportunity and the opportunity is really to take a business that's because of its cap table it's just broken it's not working for anyone and turn into a business that works so like say the founder owns 10% and you know the pref stack is 50 million turn into a business where they own 30% and they can run it profitably and it can be like a great business a question that I always asked founders is what would you do if you just
bootstrap the singer if you own the whole thing and generally that's a different answer than if they were in their current situation and it's a service for the venture investors as well because they you know they have to be responsible for these things they got to go on the board they got to audit them they got to think about them it to a lot of these companies take up a lot of their time and they're not the ones that are going to drive returns
and so it's just this weird kind of vestage of the fact that venture returns have been so high that there's all this waste like there's these 10 20 30 million dollar your companies that are not really making money for anyone and this is a weird situation right because there's nothing wrong with the business but you can get them for cheaper than you would otherwise because there's this like weird second and third order incentive set
normally a distressed business the business is broken yeah exactly here it's that the cap table is broken but the goals of the investors don't line up with the realities of the business is that right exactly exactly is that what you're going to do yeah that's I love special situations I like all different types you know I think when tiny when tiny started bootstrap businesses were kind of a special situation
and now it's way more popular and I view this a special situation is a really nice way to I love a good special situation I mean that's a better way it's totally totally a special situation has a lot nicer that distressed asset yeah yeah yeah for for sure but it's like it's like this idea of oh there's all these people that want different things and if you can just like arrange the bricks so to speak that everyone gets what they want you can like unlock this puzzle
and like with what I'm doing everyone is better off the VCs are happy the founders happy like everyone's better off and I love those I love the situations when you can do them and then it also to go back to our like initial thing
it's a very specific thing so you're going to come to me because you know that's what I do and I'm going to get stuff that other people don't get because I'm doing this very specific thing for my particular form of blaziness I love it when people just know what I offer and then they just come to me
it makes things so much so much easier than having to go to them and convince them to do something you know which I love because I like you for like me but it's also it's also rare you remind me of myself I think that's why I love you yeah you're great because I see part of me in you but it's the opposite of what most people come on the pod cast and say most people come on the pod cast and say you got to work super hard hard work is everything and both me and you were like
we asked a different question which is like how can I be lazy and win the most and we're like yeah I take pride in a certain form of laziness I'm going to be super active in one area but I absolutely reject a certain type of sweat that's how I think about it do you think about it the same way?
yeah totally I another like archetype by half of this is like you can divide the world into the you know the Arnold Schwarzenegger kind of type and then maybe the the Sam Altman type and it's not to say that Sam Altman doesn't work hard and Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't smart
they are both examples of doing both of course but like you know Schwarzenegger it's all literally like in the biography it's about like laying more bricks like lifting more days more hours it's just grinding and when he becomes an actor it's like more auditions more movies more practice versus maybe someone who like Altman who like found this big opportunity and like was really early on it was really clever about how he set it up and everything
and it's more about making these like moves and probably like you Sean like I find there's a certain elegance in doing things with like the least amount of moves and other people aren't like that like Sam I bet you're probably more like people who work really hard grind it out like put in the hours I know you love shackled in I think shackled in's a lot like this like just like out work every time you're acting like you don't like you looked around like I don't know
but you are like that you're like hard equals good because hard means I'm hard whereas I'm like easy equals good because it means that I'm clever right it's like you admire a different attribute no I yeah I mean there's value I think it just sweating sometimes like you know I think that sometimes because a thing is hard therefore it is good for you I definitely believe that but I mean I only work like 40 hours a week I work a normal work week
but yeah I mean I fall a little bit in the middle I do think that like just doing a hard thing for the sake of it being hard there is like some type of like divine goodness within that yeah and you got to do both like there's you know for the lazy person there's periods of really hard work and vice versa but but I think when people say they don't work hard and they still like achieve greatness I think they're full of shit like Sean you say that you are lazy dude
you'll you'll he'll tell text me a paragraph like a book at like 10 p.m. like you're still doing shit you're laying on the couch while your wife is watching TV and you're on your phone you know you're not at a desk I view laziness as not that you don't do anything it's that you don't do things you don't want to do I just do all the things I want to do at full force because that's how I because I like them I want to do them
I just don't do a lot of things that I don't want to do I'm very selective or cheap about how much effort I'm willing to put into things that I don't actually want to do and I'm willing to be lazy on those right it's kind of like the definition of work versus play work is you know work is
how do you define work one way of defining work is it's the stuff that you don't want to do voluntarily and play as the stuff that you do want to do voluntarily and I just opt into a lot more play than I think most people do and I'm I have a lower tolerance for work than I don't want to do than I would say the average successful person and of the reason I like Jeremy coming on is because it's cool to see examples of a different play style
because we've seen a bunch of the other play style because it gets a lot of it sounds amazing the David Goggins the work harder grind more show up early leave late you know like that I get that that's a cool play style it's just not what everybody wants to do so I like hearing other play styles
Yeah I mean Sam you're definitely right like I'm sure I do a bunch of stuff that I'm not even conscious that I'm working a lot harder than I'm working on I'm not just that I'm working a lot harder than other people because it just feels innate but I think like another way to look at is there's certainly a type of person who the way you soothe yourself so like some people will just soothe themselves by putting in way more hours like you know working on that
like diminishing marginal return piece of like off I just put in a few more hours on this and other people I think it's like I just got to figure out the exact right thing to do here like what is the exact right move and you spend all your time thinking about that
you guys want to do a 50 mile race at me in August dude I've been training for this thing and I had to run 10 miles on Sunday and I haven't ran that far and forever and I'm just like depleted so you want to come work hard come come join this race at me
Yeah that's probably a good one everyone who loves like the super endurance stuff is probably a grinder at heart because it's just like about if I do so much of this it'll just be better than everyone else It sucks I just do what we were in Austin last week we were hanging out with
do you know Isaiah photo you know that is Sam no no I don't he is a youtuber who lives in Austin and he's got probably like 10 million YouTube subscribers and if you go look at like what are his popular videos are like what kind of was his break he would do stuff like these challenge videos these are kind of like grind videos counting to a hundred thousand like that he's like how I will look this job breaker as many times it takes till the job breaker disappears
how many licks to take he'll hold a lighter on and he'll be like how long till this lighter just goes out like how much lighter is in this along does that last it's like a hundred million views or whatever people love this shit and it's like you know to his credit he found what people wanted and he gives it to him at the same time I'm like oh man I'd shoot myself if I had to do that because that's not that's not a path that's very appealing to me
but that same personality I'm like oh what do you do for fun outside of YouTube and he was like I love running same thing I'm like oh god what's the deal with you runners he's like oh yeah really want to run I want to start a run club I love running and I'm like if somebody told me you know you got a run today they just said Sean you got a bad day today and I'm not trying to be a runner but there's so many successful people that love running and that there's like a really high correlation there
on the other hand I went and did a podcast with Monish Pabrai Jeremy I assume you know him yes yeah Andrew told me he's like he was my first value investing man crush and the exception is great Monish that's the first time you've done that it was the last time you did that Pabrai now
years ago when I met my wife it sounds like you've got practice yeah exactly and he was like yeah I take a nap every day he's like a good year is I make one or two investments which is like literally clicking a button yeah it's not even like he runs a company he's like buying a public stock
and he's not even buying he's not day trading he's not analyzing everything he's like one or two good investments in a year would be a fantastic year and he reads and he chills and I was like man the both guys I would say are winning they're winning at their craft like to have 10 million YouTube subscribers is phenomenal he's built a wonderful life for himself and the other guy you know as a phenomenal a value investor but the lifestyle and the things that they value are so different
you know one guy maybe has the stomach losing 75 million dollars of net worth of a day and he's got to be cool with that and the other guy's got a stomach waking up tomorrow and being like how do I come up with the next crazy video and it was really remarkable to see that so you know I think Jeremy you were talking about like you know you sort of pick your prison in a way yeah I'm assuming you've seen these different games that people play and decided which one is appealing to you
it's funny guys like Moniche are like I call them the napp room guys like there's a whole set of value investors that have a like a room like this is my napp room yeah I was like this is amazing is that a thing napp room guys yeah there I've met at least like through four different value investors like that who like they have a place to nap I want to ask you about that same idea but in a different way so I'm going to give you my observation and I want you
to I want to know if you have any specific stories that line up with this so my observation we talked about does Andrew grind right he comes on here you act super zen super calm super philosophical he wants to be like Warren Buffett he's playing bridge half the days reading and then once a twice a year he just blesses us with a beautiful investment right but you know one thing I have seen Andrew do is he may not work super super hard but he works very fast
he is incredible at sniffing out opportunities he is incredible at fast follow-ups he moves really quickly when he's excited about something that's the first thing I noticed the second thing I noticed about Andrew is not only does he move really fast when he's excited about an opportunity I'll just keep texting you about or he'll keep prodding until he finds out more information he'll fly to meet you right away but he also will will be persistent so like I think with some of the
things it's like yeah I used to I love that business so I emailed him every month for like five years and then finally one month they were like yeah I am willing to sell the business and I think that was the case for maybe letterbox or dribble where he was just emailing the founder continuously arrow press same thing he was just emailing the guy like hey yeah have you thought about selling this month hey if he's thought about selling this month some version of that question
hanging around the hoop in fact when we sold the milk road same thing happened to the business we walked away from these guys at the last minute and if I'm them I'm like oh hey do you know I hate those guys screw them well let's kill those guys and instead they were super professional about it they were like okay no problem like sounds like you have you want to go different direction they hung around the hoop a month later he says hey I didn't see any announcement like no
deal went through and we were like no you know we decided not to do it for this in this reason he's like well we're still interested and he I was like wow that was so different than how I would I would have done that so we made it a practice for us whenever we're buying businesses it's like a don't get personally offended when it happens and we we schedule the automated reminder a month or three months later let's just follow back up and just make sure that we check in
and say hey is there still an opportunity here we still like the business we like to then we like it more now you know like if there's if there's still an opportunity let us know that that idea of hanging around the hoop are there any other stories either on Andrews moving fast and or being persistent and just following up over and over again that you remember yeah I mean on the fast thing it's annoying but it's true the the most successful people in the
world respond instantly I cannot believe it's kind of infuriating how true it is but when you email the billionaire CEO it's like a 30 second response when you email his vice president it's you know a can be a week or something that is just so true and I I really try and force myself to respond fast I wrote this little script for for Gmail that it archives my email every 24 hours so I like have to respond or just disappears and I feel like it's a really good nudge of
like just send send the simpler text messages like response and Andrew is like super super high-paced really energetic the thing that comes to mind is when you're at you know lunch or whatever with him if he thinks of someone you should meet he will pull out his phone and like send the intro email before you've even like finish the sentence and it's good and bad like sometimes you're like wait like I don't want to meet that person or whatever but but it's also just
this like if you think about it in terms of iterations it's so many more iterations of just making them happen and also like movement especially when you're an operator movement creates information like you learn more by doing more things and so it's a really powerful combo and then yeah in terms of following up I think just being a little Andrew's to call like being Dennis the menist like just after just being a little bit more willing to just kind of like poke your
head in even when it might be a little like you know go show or whatever can be really can really be really powerful it's kind of that just like hey like you still interested in selling you still interested selling you still interested selling that Dennis the men is bit that's a good one yeah and and it and he's willing to be the menace more than most people like he's he is willing to he does men like people do say you're menacing me stop it but it also like
really pays off because just like oh you know it's and if you think about it it's like okay fine like who's that guy who emails me every three months like maybe you had a bad day or you're done with the business or whatever and you're like all right I guess I'll like see what that guy has to say you know and yeah it's it's incredibly it's incredibly powerful and and more people should do it and just generally be less afraid of like I learned this doing a lot of
cold email for sales you know if you send out a thousand cold emails you're going to get one or two responses that are just someone's going ballistic like if you email me again I'll sue you or whatever you know but the other nine hundred ninety eight it's like either positive or no response or neutral and it's just like all upside basically all right so I want to shift gears to what I call the spicy hot take section the semi controversial opinion section if this
was if we were in a club right now this is that part where the DJ starts like the beats about to drop and we all know things are about to get a little little little crazy little fun that's what's about to happen to this podcast okay so here's the first prompt I'm just going to prompt you and then I want you to kind of give us your rant on it first prompt is about Mr. Beast which is that Mr. Beast shouldn't be selling chocolate bars what should Mr. Beast be
doing instead of selling chocolate bars yeah I mean I think it's a testament to how valuable audiences are that all the most valuable businesses that have been created are like the worst businesses chocolate bars supplements merch that kind of stuff like these are really bad businesses and so I always think okay what happens if festivals is the most successful like creator brand what happens when that is you know a really good business a bank or like a great
software tool or something like that explain why is chocolate bars or prime from Logan Paul why are those bad businesses because somebody might say oh they're hundreds of millions of revenue or they're they're going to sell for a billion dollars like but but you're saying bad business as a characteristic like underlying fundamentals of that category so explain that yeah there the reason like you can still be to be clear you can still be very successful selling chocolate bars like Hugh
Kitchen is one of my favorite companies and Jason Carp is like chocolate and I know he's very successful that but it's it's it's kind of that thing of like you know is it a restaurant or is it a you know a SaaS company like there's levels of difficulty basically and so you know there is just businesses like if you can contrast extremes so a chocolate bar low margin not a repeat customer not a like super necessary product or anything like that versus say you know something
really low on the stack like home insurance or property insurance or something or or or visa or master card like something that you need every day like there's just better qualities of businesses and then the other way you can think about is what would be the like enduring enterprise value of the business without the person so festivals is going to have a way harder time without Mr. Beast then you know if he built a bank right if the bank had hundreds of thousands of
customers or whatever ostensibly he could go away from that it might make the business grow slower whatever but it's still like a really great great business and so I actually view it as very like very it's very bullish for the creators it's very bullish for the space it's kind of like you're making it work hard mode and and I wonder what it looks like when it's kind of on easy mode all right next one net worth is a silly metric so why is net worth silly and
what's a better metric instead you told me something about like kind of personal cash flow or something like that is is a better metric yeah yeah I mean so my like my other line on this is billionaires a state of mind because the amount of billionaires first of all it's like it's so bullshit because
it's always unless is either like you have this in cash or it's your shares in a public company it's always a complete matter of taste you know it's like well my company would be worth a billion if it were to sell and and even in public companies it's not even real because most of the time if you
own a ton of the public company if you were to dump it all it massively drop the price and so I really think like it's kind of this thing one it's more like label once you get labeled a billionaire it kind of just sticks and people just refer to it like I see this a lot also people people use it as a way to describe someone who just kind of is in a certain class I actually think it's more of a class market than anything like you know he lives a certain lifestyle he hangs out
with a certain people he's like a billionaire it really has nothing to do with whether or not you actually have a billion dollars or you own something worth a billion dollars and the other the other is yeah like cash like liquidity is so crazy the amount of people the billionaires I've that when you're like okay could you wire me a hundred grand tomorrow the answer is no like it's like I've been shocked by this over and over and over explain that more what do you mean so
people who you have read about it because they don't want to wire you a hundred thousand yeah it's it's it's definitely it's definitely that's definitely can you wire me a hundred no but no like people people don't keep a lot of cash and and it it really is like one way to look at this is in like a party seed round or whatever I'm always shocked by like who doesn't wire the money or you have to chase them down or whatever and or they have to wire it in tranches or
anything like that like and I think it's just that cash flow is so far from net worth and then and so like and you had like you had oh sorry go ahead Sean what we have a funny experience of this we were at a lunch with somebody and you were
asking them you're like what level of money made a difference like what's the next level of unlock and yeah he said 25 this much or like you said a number that was like a net worth number and he's like yeah that was a good number you know when I was doing that every
year then blah blah you're like wait annual link you're like yeah cash flow was that because I'm just kind of saying the whole net worth and he and he was like yeah that's what I was doing an annual cash flow and it was very clear that if you had that much an annual cash flow you essentially had infinite money well it was like a we were like I think 25 is like a good number and he goes yeah I agree having that come in every years awesome and I'm like oh yeah I literally like in the booth
of the restaurant just straight down to the bottom yeah I was under the table and I was just like oh what's down here I mean you and did I read that you tried to create some kind of like equivalent like like a chart of cash flow to net worth yeah yeah I
thought a lot about this so so part of that is as talking about one like weird thing about tiny as I've probably talked to three or four thousand bootstrapped entrepreneurs and the vibes that they give off like I don't know I've met a handful of billion dollar net worth founders and the vibes between them and someone who makes you know 10 million dollars a year from their chrome plug-in or whatever very different and and there's something about like just how free they feel when they have that
cash flow coming in because there's two things one is like maybe the net worth never actually translates into cash a very funny thing is like all the all the silicon valley guys are really when like behind glowsers are really NVS of the New York hedge fund guys because they're so liquid like they might not actually be as rich per se but they're so they make so much cash that it's like it may as well be a whole different thing how much to the hedge fund guys making New York yeah this
is another hot take which is I always when I started getting interested in making money it was like the most common thing you hear is you cannot get rich on a salary like you got own equity you got own a business in New York there are lots of guys lots of guys making 5 10 million there's people making a hundred million I've met one guy to big head show you what like a like a portfolio manager like a bonus yeah there's there's there's at least one guy out there
who like makes a billion dollars in annual compensation but what's normal like let's say you're you're hanging out with your New York finance friends it varies it varies a lot but in a good year like an analyst at a big hedge fund will make three to five million dollars and in a really good year it can be a lot more than that because usually it's a it's a percentage and you know like being being a senior person at a big fund or whatever you make a lot of money and you
kind of take no risk in some very real sense and so I think like that was certainly certainly surprising to me and yeah just to like come back to the cash flow thing I certainly like Andrew was always such a cash flow person and really like in Canada at the time like there was just no funding so you just had to live or die off cash flow and it's it's I think it's more instructive to think about money in terms of in terms of cash flow because the other
thing is when you have a net worth like say you sell your business and you just have a bunch of cash even if like psychologically Sam I know you're big on the like money psychology stuff the idea that you're living off a fixed or finite amount just really changes how you view things even if it's ton of money versus this idea of like I make you know whatever a hundred thousand dollars a month or whatever just the idea that it just comes in it like it's our
me and Sean have this good friend who sold the business and he walked away with sixty million dollars and I go that feels awesome it goes it feels horrible man I go why he goes I'm a brown immigrant I need cash flow if I don't have cash flow I feel broke I need money coming in every month I can't spend this and I was like shocked by that I think we should wrap it up Jeremy where should people find you if they want to get more of you follow you become big
fans of you where should they go Twitter Jeremy Giffon my DMs are open yeah that's the best place awesome thanks for doing it man really cool hanging thank you guys that's the pod yeah I feel like I could rule the world I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like the day is on for the road let's travel never looking back