I was making a small amount of money for something Ihated, and then I started making a large amount of money for something I would have doneanyway.
Forfree.Yeah. Like it wasfun.
Allright, what'sup? We got our friend of thehouse, Andrew Wilkinsonhere.
Andrew famously is the co-founder ofTiny.
He started off as abarista, ended up creating a design agency that wassuper, supersuccessful, designed Slack and a bunch of other popular Silicon Valley products that you may haveused.
Started buyingbusinesses, right about WarrenBuffett, right about CharlieMunger, started buying businesses nowowns,like, and I don'tknow, portfolio of 30 pluscompanies, Ithink.
And recently took the company public and then step down toCEO.
And Andrew is here on his vacation tour after stepping down to CEOAndrew.
Good to seeyou,man. Your skin looksgreat.
The glow looksgood. You seemhappy.
You got that non-operatorglow.
Allright, let's take a quickbreak.
I got to tellyou, you've ever seen those Coachella posters where it's got all theartists'names.
And you'relike, oh mygod,wow, theygot, youknow, friend again andSkrillex.
And that's what the HubSpot inbound conference lookslike.
Just listen to the speaker list that theyhave.
I don't know how they pull thisoff, butlook, listen tothis.
RyanReynolds, SerenaWilliams, CaraSwisher, MattWolff,Darmesh.
They got BrianHalleague.
They got tons of good speakers at HubSpotsinbound.
It's comingup. It's September 18th to the20th.
It's live inBoston. And it's where you go if you want to learn marketingsales, AItrends.
You want to know where the puck is going so that you can be there before everybodyelse.
Tons of great talks on stage where you're going to learn salesstrategies, improving marketingtactics, but also the networking where you get to meet other people and understand what are other people in the industrydoing.
How are other people gettingahead?
So check itout. Go to inbound.com to see the lineup and grab your ticketstoday.
Enough about talking about how much of a baby youare.
Allright, soAndrew, I sent you a voicenote.
You started off as a barista at a coffee shop and you've done very well inbusiness.
And Isaid, I want to know what were the differentjumps, like income jumps that actually made adifference.
And you said there was fourlevels.
Yeah,totally.Well, I think the best money that I ever made was jumping from being a barista to making like 60 bucks anhour.
Well, so you go frombarista, you start designingwebsites.
So you go from $6.50 to $60 anhour.
And it sounds like that might have been some of what happenedstance.
Didyou, was that intentional to make that shift or just kind of you got anopportunity?
A lucky balance came yourway.
What made that shifthappen?
So I wasworking, making coffees every day for all the people that comein.
And there's these two guys that would come in every singleday.
They'd rollin, looking like they just got out of bed at 10 in themorning.
They're probably like five years older thanme.
So like24,25. And they would just come in and they would sit on their laptops all day just drinking espresso afterespresso.
And one day I askedthem, what do you guysdo?
Like, don't you havejobs?
And theygo,oh, we're webdesigners.
We just walk into randombusinesses.
We ask them if they have awebsite.
And then wesay, we'll make one for 500bucks.
And so thatday, I waslike,well, forgetthis.
Like, I don't want to make theespresso.
I want to be drinking theespresso.
I want to be theseguys. And so I went and I bought a book on webdesign.
And a couple dayslater, I walked into a place and sold the guy awebsite.
And within a coupleweeks, I'd quit myjob.
Wait, did you know anything aboutdesign?
Yeah, I did actually because when I was ateenager, I had a tech newswebsite.
And I knew how to use like dreamweaver, like really basic web design andstuff.
So it wasn't rocket science tome.
Like, I knew these guys weresmart, but theyweren't, youknow, they didn't have any crazyqualifications.
It was nothing I couldn'tlearn.
And so I just kind of dove in and gotlucky.
Do you remember who you approached that firstone?
Yeah, it was a pulled pork barbecuejoint.
And it was this place called Pig herelocally.
Andyeah, it waslike, I think I got like 500 bucks and some free pulled porksandwiches.
Youknow, I basically got unlimited sandwiches for awhile.
That's prettyawesome.
I was making a small amount of money for something Ihated.
And then I started making a large amount of money for something I would have doneanyway.
Like it wasfun, it was fun designing websites and codingwebsites.
The first money I really evermade, that's out of like a college job what I was in school was I actually want to business plan pitchcompetition.
And we won $25,000 ofcash.
And they made someNBA, business school student work for us for5K.
It's everyone $30,000 of totalcomp.
And me and my two co-founders lived for one year togetheron $25,000.
But it wasawesome. Like we didn't really know how much money a businesstakes.
We didn't know how much money it takes to live because we had just been in college the wholetime.
So to us that waslike,oh, that'll last us a longtime.
And we lived off of it for oneyear.
But it was the best money at thattime.
It was a big jump because we didn't have to get ajob.
So it wasfreedom. It'slike,oh, we don't even have to think about money or a job because we got the lump sum cash upfront.
And we got to go dothe, go try the thing we wanted to try youknow,together, Iswear.
So that was probably the firstlevel.
And like Andrew'ssaying, the early dollars create a lot more freedom than the laterdollars.
I think is the way that you're explainingit.
And those early dollars and early freedom matter a lot more than the later dollars because you only get so much incrementalfreedom.
Infact, you might actually get less freedom if you start buying a bunch of shit that now you are a slaveto.
My first level was almost the same asyours,Sean.
Itwas $24,000. I think I was 23 or maybe24.
I had a small website that Isold.
But I still had to workthere.
It was basically anaquahire.
But after taxes and everything was said anddone, I think Ihad $24,000.
At thetime, I was spending $2,000 a month in livingexpenses.
And Isaid, I have ayear.
I have a year of expenses savedup.
And I felt like I waslike, let's go toAustralia.
It'slike, let'slive.Like, let's go take atrip.
Let's go toThailand.Like,having $24,000, I felt incrediblywealthy.
By theway, that's a powerful thing to do is change the denomination into time instead ofmoney.
So if you have $24,000, $36,000or $90,000, it's kind of like ChuckE.
Cheesemoney. It's tokens that you don't really understand what this does foryou.
And what most people do is they just sort of keep workingblindly.
They'll put it in the bank and then they don't really know how to useit, what to do withit.
A more important questionis, how do I get myself a year offreedom?
Or 18 months of freedom where I could either just go and join myself purely or go take a shot at creating a new life formyself, a newchapter, a new path formyself.
And earlyon, it doesn't take much to get ayear.
Like, both of us basically did iton $25,000, which I think issurprising.
It's surprising even for me to hear it right now because my current life burn rates a lothigher,right?
But, youknow, were you slapped on airmattresses?
It'slike,well, why do weneed, youknow, and then we got to mattress and headboard moneyeventually.
But atfirst, it doesn't reallymatter.
But a year of freedom or 18 months offreedom, 24 months of freedom is a good way to dominate things when you don't have a huge sum ofmoney.
I use thisapp. I didn't useMint.
I use this one app where every time I spentanything, I typed it in how much money I'd spent forthat.
So if I went and gotcoffee, it was250.
I wrote 250 inthere. And then I had this spreadsheet where I took the average of the trailing sixmonths.
And Isaid, that is my monthlyburn.
And then here's how much money I'vesaved.
Get to 12months. And so I use anapp.
Allright,guys, reallyquick.
So back when I was running thehustle, we had this premium newsletter calledTrends.
The way it worked was we hired a ton of analysts and we created this sort of playbook for researching different companies and ideas and emerging trends to help you make money and buildbusinesses.
Well, HubSpot did something kind ofcool.
So they took this playbook that we developed and we gave to ouranalysts.
And they turned it into an actionable guide and a resource that anyone candownload.
And it breaks down all the different methods that we use for spotting upcomingtrends, for spotting different companies that are going to explode and grow reallyquickly.
So if you want to stay ahead of the game and you want to find cool business ideas or different niches that most people have no idea theyexist, this is the ultimateguide.
So if you want to check itout, you can see the link down below in thedescription.
Now back to theshow. Allright, so you've made it to leveltwo.
Now the next level yousaid, I went from self-employed toboss.
So what does thatmean? What I over time discovered was that there was all these online job boards and there was companies in San Francisco posting looking for freelance designers and developers andstuff.
So I was doing these little $500 local websites and I found these Silicon Valley startups posting and this was like what you would call today like product designer interfacedesign.
And so I got this project designing an interface for an ad manager for some startup and I did a really goodjob.
The guy really liked it and it was like $2,000 for basically nowork.
This is the project I mentionedbefore.
So it was like maybe five days of work for two grand which ended up being $2,600Canadian.
So it was very sweet and the guygoes,hey, this is prettygood.
Can you docoding? Like can you do some JavaScriptwork?
And I just say yes and I don't know anything aboutJavaScript.
I'm likewhatever, I can figure itout.
So I frantically try and learn JavaScript and Ican't.
And so I go to my friend who's literally just my girlfriend's best friend's boyfriend who's in computerscience.
And Isay,hey, how much would you charge me to do this JavaScriptwork?
And hegoes, I'll do itfor $500.
And so I think I'm going to get negotiated down by thisclient.
And so I go to the client and Isay, it'll be a thousandbucks.
And theysay,okay, soundsgood.
And so in thatmoment, I waslike, oh mygod, I just made $500 and I did absolutely nowork.
So that's that crazy transition of going from being a self-employed person selling your time to being someone who can sell other people'stime, which to me is like the big leveragepoint.
That'sgreat. So you have thatrealization, did you start devouring any books or how did you learn how to do that betterthan, youknow, than being an absolute rookie atit?
It was mostly trial and error in thebeginning.
And it was reallystressful,honestly, because I think when you start delegating to otherpeople, they always do a worst job than youdo.
And so you are kind of panicking andyou, there'sno, there's no like process or system oranything.
And around thattime, I read this book called TheE-Mith.
It's kind ofcheesy. It's by MichaelGerber.
But I recommend it toeveryone.
And he really talks about this idea of trying to think of your business as amachine,right?
And I think forme, that wasthe, that was a bigbreakthrough, that mental model of my business as amachine.
And I'm theengineer. And all the different people are widgets within themachine.
And if one doesn't work or something issqueaky, you can swap out thepeople.
But at the end of theday, you have aprocess, you have astrategy, and you have people on thebus.
And if you have the right people on the rightbus, the right strategy and the rightvision, things will gowell.
And that was when things really tookoff.
That was when I startedhiring.
I had like a dozenpeople.
I was making over a million dollars ayear,personally.
I got aBMW. I started dressingnice.
Andreally, that was like the kind ofsloppy, the first phase waslike,okay, I can do all the stuff I wanted to do incollege.
I can buybeer. I can go for a nice dinner andstuff.
Wait, how old were you when you made yourfirst, is that millionprofit?
Yeah, I think I was20, 22 or23.
That'shuge. That'shuge.
Oh,yeah, it wasamazing.
You didn't go tocollege,right?
Or you droppedout? I dropped out ofcollege.
I went to journalism school for like two or threemonths.
So you did a million in profit two years into being anagency?
I started when I was 19 yearsold.
And so probably four yearsin, something likethat.
Three or four yearsin. That'smassive.
It wascrazy. Imean, it feltlike, it felt like an absolutefortune.
Andfrankly, itwas. And at thatpoint, that was when I waslike,oh, I'll just buy whatever Iwant.
I would walk into Best Buy and just buy a crazyTV.
I would buy the best speakers money couldbuy.
I would buy videogames.
Like whatever anidiot, 23 year old wants to spend moneyon.
I would spend money onthat.
And all throughthis, that was like 800dollars.
You'relike,okay,well, thatwas.
My taste don't even match my income rightnow.
Yeah, it was veryempty.
Andhedonistic. Have you ever reached that portad,Andrew?
Yeah. He hasthat,uh, Sanrio Red thatbook.
He's gotthat.No, a fraudulentthing.
Do you know aboutthat?Yeah.
People hate on thatguy.
I'm not surewhy, butwhat, what aboutit?
Well, Imean,any,uh, any business guy who becomespopular, and start sellinganything.
I think he sells a lot ofshit.
He sells likegold. He sells like real estatecourses.
He sells a lot ofstuff. ButAndrew, you basically just described histhing.
I remember reading thisbook.
And I had this mental model then of what you're supposed to do in yourcareer.
So basically he'slike, he has this four quadrantgrid.
And it's basically E is the firstone.
You're anemployee. You have ajob.
And he'slike, for mostpeople, this is what your parents tellyou.
Go to go to a good school so you can get a goodjob.
And they kind of make it sound like getting a good job is the endpoint.
That is thelike, that's the end of therainbow.
That's the pot ofgold. And whenhe's, he pointsout, he'slike, youknow, basically you start as aE, then you go to the bottom quadrantS, whereself-employed.
So you go from employee toself-employed.
That's what youdescribe.
Berista to solo freelance webdesigner.
Then you go to be businessowner.
That's when you own youragency.
And the last one isI. He'slike, thegoal, the goal for everybody is to get toI, where you're aninvestor.
Your money works for yourmoney.
And you do whatever the hell youwant.
And soyou,eventually, with time that you becameI, you became aninvestor.
But like this path going from ESPI is one that forme, I didn't evenreally, I didn't understand how the board game was laidout.
I didn't know where you're supposed togo.
Right? It's like playing a videogame, but not understanding you need to save the princess from thecastle.
It'slike,oh, and once I knowthat, now I can start to move in thatdirection.
But until I even knewthat, I didn't really even understand what the hell I was supposed to bedoing.
This one diagram was very useful forme.
And that was in level two for you was betweenwhat, a million dollars a year and what was your upperlimit?
Yeah, Imean, I was paying myself 500 do a million ayear.
And I was profiting more thanthat.
And I started incubatingbusinesses.
And so I had that classic thing where I hadoverconfidence.
The way I would put it is that my first business was a very easybusiness.
So I did the equivalent of walking into thegym.
And I gotlucky. I picked up really light weights and it built myconfidence.
And then for the nextfive, 10years, I would walk into the gym and try and deadlift 300pounds, but I didn't know that washard.
Right? And so I started an e-commercebusiness.
I started arestaurant.
I started multiple software businesses that I bootstrapped and lost in one case to over 10 milliondollars.
But it was really fun because I would just be in the shower and I wouldthink, ohman, that's a great businessidea.
I'll start that right nowtoday.
I had no filterwhatsoever.
And it was reallyexciting,frankly.
Like I wasjust, I was constantly starting newstuff.
Starting a restaurant is an awesome way to lose moneythough.
Ohyeah, and Ilost. I think I lost a million bucks doingthat.
You sawit? Catfurniture,restaurants, skincream, SaaScompany, you did the full decathlon of businessideas.
We had ablog, we had a viralblog, we tried to write a book forit.
We had a conciergeservice.
What was the viralblog?
We had clients fromhell.
It was like really big on Tumblr for awhile.
Do you knowit?No, I don'tknow.
Webasically, we would have all theselike, we would go to conferences and meet other designers andstuff.
And everyone would bitch about their crazy clients and share screenshots of like insane emails they would received and stuff where it's just like the guy asking for them to make the logo bigger over and overagain.
And so we started sharing those and it just went crazyviral.
And so we ended up making abook.
We need to bring backTumblr.
Tumblr wasgreat. I love theTumblr.
I loveTumblr. I love the Tumblrdays.
I still go back and I'll read all people'sTumblr.
It'sawesome. I loveit.
Imean, Twitter kind of is thatnow, but I felt Tumblr had a better environment and it was more friendly and bettercontent.
I made so many friends from Tumblr and I still meet people like at conferences that know me from Tumblr back in theday.
What age were you when level three ended or level twoended?
I ended that probably like27.
I think that was when I sold my firstbusiness.
What did you sell for and what wasit?
So I sold it for $7 million and it was the one business I started in leveltwo.
So I started all these differentcompanies.
So I had my original web designcompany, MetalLab.
It wasprofitable. I would live off part of that profit and then the rest of it went to starting all those otherbusinesses.
I talked about the one business that worked was I met Toby from Shopify and Harley aswell.
In 2010 at a conference and at the time Shopify was pretty small and theysaid,Hey, we really love your designwork.
Would you make sometemplates, some themes forShopify?
And I waslike,oh, youknow, I guess we could do these guys afavor.
They seemednice. I tried to get them to pay me and they actuallysaid,no,no,no, this is going to be like astore.
Right. The iPhone appstore.
And I waslike,oh,like,okay, I guessso.
And so we didit. I literally thought we were doing them afavor.
And we put up a bunch of themes in their store and we started making like $10, $20,000 amonth, like basicallyimmediately.
And what year wasthat? 2011probably.
2011. 20102011. Allright.
2011 you're doing 20 or 30 grand amonth.
Is this called pixelunion?
It's called pixelunion.
And so I had the original designagency.
I had pixel union and that started making quite a bit ofmoney.
And then I had all these chaotic otherbusinesses.
And basically what happened was I decided that I wanted to have like a nestegg.
I wanted to have enough money in the bank that I didn't have to worry about moneyanymore.
And because what I had had is cashflow.
I had a ton of cashflow, but I never kept much money in thebank.
I'd spend whatever I neededpersonally.
Everything else would getinvested, even though I didn't really understand investing in these businesses I wasincubating.
And so I ended up getting an offer to sell that business for $7million.
And it was $3 millionupfront, one and a half earnout, and then the rest in stock in the newbusiness.
And I remember I went to the ATM on the day itclosed.
And I checked mybalance.
I was in like a stripmall.
And I saw $3million. It was like $3 million, $100,000 or something like that on thechip.
And I waslike, I'mdone.
Like I'mrich. I'm goodforever.
And that was a big mindsetshift.
Suddenly I had more money than I could use to incubatebusinesses.
I'd also incubated a lot ofbusinesses.
And I realized that starting companies is reallyhard.
If you think about my failurerate, I probably started 10 different projects orcompanies.
And one of those worked reallywell.
And so there was a lot ofpain.
And I had to lay a lot of people off and go through a lot of hard times to dothat.
Andfrankly, I felt pretty burntout.
Around that time I waslike, guess I've got to learn how toinvest.
But tome, investing was something that guys and suitsdid.
It was superboring. I had no interest in real estate orstocks.
But I'd always heard about WarrenBuffett.
And whenever I had about WarrenBuffett, that changed everything forme.
What I ended up doing is I had all the incubatedbusinesses.
I actually shut almost all of themdown.
And I'd sold that business for $3million.
I had another one and a halfcoming.
And I also got dividends out of that business because I still am20% ofit.
Andthen,Metalab, by thispoint, was making $3 or $4 million of profit ayear.
And so I went from burning a lot of cash and living a nice lifestyle to suddenly having a pile of cash and a lot of unencumbered cash flow coming in that just kept pilingup.
So by thatpoint, if you think about if you're making $4 or $5 million ayear, at thispoint, I buy a really nicehouse.
Not ascrazy. I could have gonecrazy, but I bought a responsible nicehouse.
I bought a nicecar, bought myself aPorsche.
And I had aTesla, which at the time was supercrazy.
And I started getting into investing at thispoint.
What was this20% rule youhad?
Sobasically, I will spend up to20% of my cash flowpersonally, and the other80% has to go back toinvesting.
And so I knew that on20% of $5million, I could live a pretty damn good life spending a million dollars ayear.
I wouldn't go out of my way to spend thatmuch.
Post-tax arepre-tax. So I would basically live it up as much aspossible.
But then I also knew I'd always be compounding therest.
And that model actually worked really well forme, because I didn't have this mindset that so many entrepreneurs have where they'relike,shit, I got to live like apopper, and then I got to become aprince.
I got to sell my company for some huge amount ofmoney.
I was just able to live on cash flows the entiretime.
Sam, can we talk about some of yourpopper?
Yeah, what the fuck is apopper?
Popper tendencies youhad.
Isaid, I'm chugged a doctor pepper while you were talking tome.
SoSam, what were you doing when you were building thehustle?
How did youlive? Were there any cheapskate?
Oh,yeah. My wife worked at Facebook at thetime.
So dinner waslike, I gave her top-wearcontainers, and she would bring home prosciutto andcheese, because they always hadlike, shank foodreports.
So Iwas... Dinner was sponsored byMatt.
Yeah, sowe, I was on a prosciuttodiet, because I didn't get oldfast.
The secondthing, I'm ashamed to say I didthis, but listen tothis.
So do you guys remember when Uber eats and DoorDash and what were the otherones?
Acaviar, so these meal delivery services all came out at the sametime, and you would get $20 for free for your firstorder.
So I built an iPhone emulator on our computer where we created thisring, where we were constantly referring each other to these likenew...
So I basically had like $5,000 of freecaviar.
So I wouldbasically...
People would belike, it's your startupfunded.
I waslike,no, but we arefuel.
We're fueled byVC, but we're notfunded.
And so I did that for a longtime.
I also would sneak on the bus and notpay, and I would get caught all thetime.
But the thingis, is if they ask for yourID, you just say you don't have anID.
And so thatwas... It's not illegal not to have anID.
So I got away with like two grand with the bustickets.
Yeah, there's nobody checks on SanFrancisco.
Theydid. I used to get trouble all thetime, but they wouldsay, youknow, do you have yourID?
I'mlike... I don't have anID.
So I'll tellyou, youknow, butyeah, so hopefully there's a statutory limitations on thesethings.
Because I definitely broke the law a littlebit.
I was also on a whole food scholarship aswell.
Let's just say that the hot bar was right next to theexit.
So,Andrew, when you were spending20%pre-tax, that's like you're spending40% of your post-taxmoney.
That's a lot to be spending during thattime.
And then you shiftedit.
You once you startedinvesting, you made achange.
You werelike,no, no more20%rule.
You changed it to some otherrule,right?
What did you shiftto?Yeah, just kept dropping that percent overtime.
As the numbers gotbigger, I just kept dropping it and dropping it and droppingit.
Not because you're spendingless.
No, notnecessarily. In somecases, I was spendingmore.
The numbers just gotbigger.
So, around thistime, so I'll talk about some of the things I starteddoing.
So, I started angelinvesting.
So, youknow, I'd meet a friend or some interesting entrepreneur and I'd invest 25 grain in theircompany.
And if I lookback, like I probably should have bought stocks in realestate.
Like, I didn't understand the lack of liquidity andthat.
And just how high risk it is andcrazy.
So, I have a whole bunch of investments from thatera.
I have no idea what's going to happen withthem.
Butmostly, a lot of that time was actually spent having this breakthrough moment of realizing that I don't need to be theCEO.
That I don't need to run my owncompanies.
Andso, at thattime, every singlecompany, I was the CEO ofthat.
So, as me andChris, I'm theCEO, he's theCFO.
And we're just jumping around like chickens with our heads cut off between all the differentbusinesses.
And when I read about WarrenBuffett, I was justlike, oh mygod, this guy has abstracted business to the craziestdegree.
To the point where he doesn't actually do anything except for a read and buy like one business ayear.
And the idea that you could just hire a CEO to run your company was kind ofcrazy.
I think a lot of people have this feelingaround, why would someone come and work forme?
I felt like that all thetime.
I feltlike,yeah, you'relike, what are youdoing?
Yeah, it'slike,why? Don't you know themath?
This doesn't make anysense.
Butthen, overtime, you realize people wantstability, and they wantsurety, and they want to have healthbenefits, and all this stuff you don'tget.
Andso, I realized there's this whole other class of people where they want to run a company for somebodyelse.
They want to be aCEO. They want to be able to make millions ofdollars, but they don't necessarily need to make like a billiondollars.
And that was crazy for me when I started hiringCEOs, because before I knewit, all the businesses started likedoubling.
And the reason they doubled was because I was only giving20% of my time to all thecompanies.
Andfrankly, I didn't know what I wasdoing.
And I started hiring better and better people to run mycompanies.
And there was this crazy inflection point where we started spinning out the companies hiring CEOs and then buying new businesses and just putting CEOs in to run thosebusinesses.
And when we started doingthat, the numbers scaledreally, reallyquickly.
So you did a lot of angel investing in thisperiod.
And I'll talk about the rest of thestage, but have you seen a good return from thoseinvestments?
Because that was a goodera.
Yeah, Imean, I don'tknow, to behonest.
The problem with angel investing islike, I juststill, I sloweddown, but I mostly just do it ongut.
And so I think I have like $25 or $30 million ofventure.
And it's just been this death by a thousand paper cutsthing.
So I think if you take thatcohort, I hadone, my friendStewart, who we used to share an officewith, I put 75 grand into hisbusiness, and then he sold it to workday.
And I 10x my moneythere.
And I think that between that and a few otherinvestments, I think I've definitely got my money back from thatcohort.
Maybe made agood, youknow, a reasonablereturn.
But the problem is I've just keptgoing.
And I don't really trackit.
Like it's all in one big Excel spreadsheetsomewhere.
And I don't make amarket.
$25 million of angelinvestments?
That's a set theton. Maybe even30.
That's a insane amount of angelinvesting.
What? That's basicallyirresponsible, myfriend.
Iknow. Iknow. That's the problem with angelinvesting.
Stewart, 10x is not going to return all thatmoney.
Why do you think you've returned $30million?
I don't thinkthat's...
No,no,no, I'm not saying I've returned $30million.
I've literally put $30 million inventure.
Iknow, but you say you've maybe brokeneven,right?
You think you've droppedit?
No,no,no,no,no,no, to beclear, I'm not going to return $30 millionback.
I'msaying, you're telling me you don't have a spreadsheet that justlike, if I have30...
No, myfriend.No, it didn'tmatter.
I'm abillionaire. If you are many billions oftheirs, you track $30million.
That's not a couch money regardless of who youare.
No, so I actuallyhave...
When I say areturn, Imean, from thatcohort.
So maybe I invested $23 million over thatperiod.
And I'm saying I might have got that moneyback.
But therest, so much of it was done over the last 10 years in bursts that I don't evenknow...
I don't know where we're at in terms ofpayback.
Ihonestly, I don't track it because it's such a pan they ask to get marked to markets and I don't trustthem.
And so I'm literally just going either they sell or we get liquidity or wedon't.
And so forme, it's all marked at book valueuntil...
I think it soundscrazy, but that is actually more par for thecourse, Ithink, for the way Angel investingworks.
Because I think if you're listening tothis, you don't angel ofus, it soundsinsane.
And there is a bit of it that'sinsane.
That's a very big number of fold to put it toit.
But these are like 10-yearaudices.
People stop sendingupdates.
Even when they raise it uparound, you don't fullybelieve.
You don't fully know ifthat's...
You can't really take that and count that until it's fullyrealized.
And so it is very easy to lose track of the portfolio and where it's at because you don't really know where it'sat.
That's kind ofreality.
A company will raisemoney.
It's some huge valuation and then a yearlater, it's going out ofbusiness.
And so I've invested a lot of money in Angel aswell.
And I track which company and which year I investedin.
But half of them don't sendupdates.
The otherhalf, they havemarkups.
And I'll put it inthere, but I don't count it as real networth.
And then anotherportion, when theysell, you don't know they're going to sell until when the deal'sdone.
A large part of thetime.
I count it as my networth, by theway, as the principal Iinvested, buthalf.
Totally.100%. That's how I think aboutit,too.
I think of it asroulette.
And I think like this period that we're talking about was about me learning how to playpoker.
Right? Poker has way better odds thanroulette.
If you're good atpoker, you can actuallywin.
You'vegot, youknow,60%odds.
When you playroulette, you've got50%odds.
It's a terriblegame. And Angel investingis,frankly, a roulettetable.
You're just having fun and it's fun to be able tosay, youknow,oh, I gave this entrepreneur who ended up building this greatcompany, 25 grand longaway.
But I've realized it's a lot more kind of soulless than playingpoker.
It's morefun. You feel smart playingpoker.
You feel dumb playingroulette.
Also, the narratives we tellourselves, it's just like roulette where you'relike, I knewit.
I thought 11 was coming because I sawit, 11 flash up overthere.
And then that'swhy. And if you talked a lot of angelinvestors, it'slike, you bet on twoguys, when they had a differentidea.
And then itturned, youknow, you bet on Stewart Butterfield who's building a game and then it turns intoSlack.
And, youknow, did youknow, you might have known that Stewart wasgood, but did you reallyknow?
And I think a lot of people attribute skills where there was luck or not the other wayaround.
And it sucks that you're making yourmoney, you're making your money right at the beginning of the greatest bull market in Americanhistory.
And so starting in 2010 orso,you're, you know what the average returns are for the last 15years.
So that's a P500 beforeinflation.
I think it's14%, which basically means you double your money every fiveyears.
So what would thatbe? One million become two million become fourmillion.
So you would have four X yourmoney, just doing that boringshit, but that's way moreboring.
Yeah, that's thething.
I think one of my regrets looking back is I wish that I had bought apartment buildings or something really boring just as a diversification thing and stocks and just been really disciplinedthere.
Andinstead, youknow, Iwas,maybe, I was justshoveling, you know, $100,000 a month out to all these differentstartups.
And then that number went up and up and up over time as I had more free cash todeploy.
Andagain, like I have winners inthere, like I invested inSpaceX, I've invested in some greatfunds, there's some awesome companies inthere.
But to Sean'spoint,like, unless you're reporting the LPs and making upnumbers,frankly, withuproams, like you just have towait.
Yeah. Allright.Well, thank you for sharing all those levels because it'sinteresting.
It'dbe, you don't haveto.
And most people do not prop Steve for being transparent aboutit.
Andalso, the takeaway I have islike, it takes a lot of wandering and you go through theseareas, you go through thesephases.
It's kind of the same way you were talking aboutTumblr.
And it'slike,yeah, I had my teen emophase.
It'slike,yeah, you go and experiment over there and then you kind oflearn, you have somefun, but you kind oflearn, that's notit.
That's not the right path forme.
And it sounds like you had a bunch of those and I'm glad you sharedit.
I want to askyou, you have a question onhere.
Do you really need to be abillionaire?
What are your thoughts onthat?
We forgot onelevel. We forgot onelevel.
What's the lastlevel? So last level is when I took my company public and I had tens of millions of dollars in the bank both in my companies andpersonally.
And what's weirdis, I'd reach theend,right?
I think that's the goal that so many entrepreneurs think theywant.
And what I realized is eventhen, with all that money in thebank, I was stillanxious.
I still fought with mypartner.
I still got irritated with day-to-day lifeproblems.
Like,ultimately, it's kind of liketravel.
We all think we want to go toBali.
If only I moved toBali, then I'd behappy.
The problem with moving to Bali is your brain comes withyou.
And it turned out my brain is just reallyanxious.
Before I hadanything, I would want to pump my own chest all the time because I felt like I haven't lived it to mypotential.
Once I got lucky and things kind of workedout, I waslike, I'm going to not talk about the shit anymore because there's more to lifenow.
And this burden does feelweird.
I don't even want to bring itup.
So I'm just going to be kind of a little more private aboutthis.
Why not just ask likethat?
Because I wish somebody had toldme.
It's kind oflike,oh, money didn't make youhappy.
Kind of figuredthat.Meaning, you made a bunch of money and it didn't fundamentally change your overall level ofhappiness.
Or these materialistic things didn't make youhappy.
I think you're probably smart enough to have not been totally surprised bythat.
What did surpriseyou?Well, I think what surprised me was the weight of themoney.
So I wrote in this in the prepdoc, but this question oflike, do you really need to be a billionaire or do you want to be abillionaire?
But you wanted tobe. I wanted tobe.
I always wanted tobe. Because I didn't have enough money growingup.
Money was a four-letter word in ourhouse,right?
My parents fought about money all thetime.
And so in myweird, little anxious childbrain, Isaid,OK, I want as much money aspossible.
If I have a lot ofmoney, then everyone will stopfighting.
And I think what was counterintuitive is that it didn't causethat.
So it actually caused familialdiscord.
It didn't get mefriends.
It isolated me from other people because I wasunrelated.
What's the thing you wish somebody toldyou?
So you wish somebody toldyou,hey, these things are not going to fundamentally make youhappy.
The anxiety you'recarrying, you're going to carry it over heretoo.
What do you wish that they told youinstead?
The questionis, what's the actual amount of money you want to spend each year that makes youhappy?
And just working in reverse fromthere, and then figuringout,OK, what is my life's work afterthat?
I think overshooting is a mistake that a lot of people make myselfincluded.
And I think theythink,OK, I need to be a billionaire or be worth hundreds of millions ofdollars.
When inreality, that is overdoingit.
It'slike,look, you have abelly, and you can only eat so muchfood.
Why do you need 100x that amount offood?
If you have 100x the amount of food youneed,well, it's actually kind ofstressful.
Because,hey, it'swasteful.
You don't want the food to gobad.
And you got to do something with thefood.
And so thebook,frankly, islike, it's kind of like a letter to myself 10 years ago tosay,hey, you don't need to gothere.
Like, just good things are not where you think theyare.
Ifmoney, so you're in a weird position where your jobis, as aninvestor, your job is you're doing a good job based on yourreturn.
So you're doing a good job based on how much money your clients or yourself-make.
But if money wasn't part ofit, would you still beinvesting?
Did you just get into that to makemoney?
Or is this how you'd spend your timeregardless?
I really likerelationships.
And I think business is a great way to buildrelationships.
That sounds kind ofcheesy.
But business is a shared languagewhere, if Imeet, even a guy who owns a plumbingcompany, I know I'll be able to get along withhim.
Because we speak the samelanguage.
We can get into interestingconversations.
And throughthat, I can makefriends.
And I've found that forme, my zone of genius is building relationships withpeople.
And so if I can build relationships with people and invest in their businesses or buy theirbusinesses, that I'm really happy doingthat.
I love doingthat. SoAndrew, if you were going to goback, and yousaid, you should calculate how much you want to spend every year and then kind of work backwards fromthat.
So let's do themath. What would you get to go in a timemachine?
You go back to 25 year old you and you get to have thisconversation.
What would you write down on the pen and paper to figure thatout?
Well, I think what you want to figure out is you want tosay, what do I want to spend every year and then times it by20?
What do you think you would want to spend everyyear?
Backthen, I think amillion, Imean,okay.
So let me put it thisway.
So a milliondollars, you can live an incredible life and have one house going on incrediblevacations.
Like you can live an amazinglife.
If you want to flyprivate, add another milliondollars.
So that's two milliondollars.
And then you want tobuffer, so call itthree.
And that allowsyou, youknow, you basically go and you get into hobbies and toys and you collect cars or do whatever youwant,right?
So call it three millionbucks.
So what's three times20?
So 60 milliondollars, I think 60 milliondollars.
If you've got aliquid,that's, youknow, you can live an incredible life and spend three to four million dollars ayear.
And it'sawesome. So that's yourtarget.
That's yourtarget. Then you'd work backwards fromthat.
And you also had these like three steps that you textedus.
I don't know exactly what theymean, but you said launch pad enough and life'swork.
What does thatmean?Yeah, so I think theseare, these really are the kind of goals that everyone shouldhave.
So launch pad islike, how do you make 250K ayear,right?
And ideallypassive. And if you can make 250K a yearpassive, then you don't need a job and you have the freedom to be generative and start the things that youwant.
Pass that enough islike, what's the amountyou, what's thenumber?
What's that number we were just talking about that you want to spend every year and how do you work backwards fromthere?
So phase one might be you start abusiness.
Let's say some onlinebusiness.
It makes you 250K a yearpassive.
Great. That's your launchpad.
Then for the next five or 10years, you try and build up to that net worth number that you really want to getto.
Call it20,30, 40 milliondollars, whatever thatis.
And then you've got completefreedom.
And then this is where the hard part comesin, which is discovering your life'swork.
It'slike, what is that thing that you're just intrinsically drawn to that createsmeaning.
Andalso, how do you take the byproduct of yourmachine?
You've now built a moneymachine,right?
All your investments and all yourbusinesses.
And the byproduct of that ismoney.
And how do you make meaning out of thatmoney?
For somepeople, it's compounding it in morebusinesses.
For otherpeople, it's giving it away and doingphilanthropy.
Forothers, it's doing art projects or whatever itis.
And I think that's the hard part is figuring out that second mountain they callit.
Sean, have you done themath?
Like have you thought about that foryou?
Yeah, whatyours?Yeah, I did a long timeago.
Before I sold my firstbusiness, I did thismath.
My assumption was that I would spend $300,000 ayear.
And then I tried to do the4% or5% assuming that that's4% or5% of yourtotal.
I remember getting to 6million.
AndI, so what is thatmath?
That's,yeah,300, that's exactlyit.
So 300,000 a year ofspending.
I thought 6million, that's thetarget.
And I drilled that into mybrain.
Isaid, financial freedom is at 6million.
6 million means I could spend whatever Iwant.
And I made it like part ofmy, like all of my passwords when I would login, I had the number 6 init.
And I did all thesethings.
I just kept at thattime.
I was like really focused onit.
And I think it actually was like theright, it was the right way to think aboutit.
Today, I probably spend a little bit more thanthat.
So it's not likeit's, it's not like I was way off in myestimate.
But I think round number 10 million is financial freedom for almosteverybody.
And 10 million is not that hard to getto.
If you own abusiness, you should be able to getto, youknow, let's call it one to two million ayear, profit ayear, and sell that thingfor, youknow, somewhere between five and 10 Xmultiple, depending on what industry you'rein.
That's not a hard way to get to 10million.
It'shard, but it'ssimple.
Yeah, I guess like what I mean islike, most people will never get to true financial independence with theirlike,yes, I've madeit.
I don't have to worry about money everagain,right?
That's a very lucky fewpeople, a few percentage of thepopulation.
I'll tell youthis, I do this thing the othernight, which I'm not really proudof.
I went on LinkedIn and I searched my collegeclass.
So it'slike,okay, let me go look at Duke2010.
Dude, that's my Friday nightroutine.
I do it every Fridaynight.
I don't want to goout. I literally do this on a Fridaynight.
I got a reminder of mycalendar, at one o'clocka.m.
Fridaynight, I got alike, youjoke, this is literally what Idid.
My kids went tobed, my wife went tobed, and I waslike, allright, digin,baby.
Let's dothis. I'd never done itbefore, but I waslike, let's dothis.
And I knew at the time I'm doing this for kind of a effed upreason, which is I just wanted to feel good aboutmyself.
I waslike, I kind of knew I waslike, I think I've done well relative to the people in myclass, but Iknew, maybe skill or intelligence or talent wise or even work ethicwise, that was definitely average to maybe below average in myclass.
And so I was throwing throughit, I was looking and it wasamazing.
And these people who I know thesepeople, these people were smarter thanme, harder working thanme, more talented thanme.
They're doing like just kind of randomjobs.
And I texted my college roommate and I waslike,man, it's crazy that like thisperson, this one girl Iremember, I waslike, she literally could have beenpresident.
Like she waspolished, she was a phenomenalspeaker, superhardworking, just knew everything abouteverything.
And I waslike, today she was likerunning, she was like an e-commerce manager at some e-com brand that sells like some food productonline.
And nothing wrong withthat, that's not like a badthing.
But I definitely feellike, the potential was there for a lot more if somebody had kind of sat us down andsaid,look, here's ablueprint, here's a path that could get you to complete financialindependence.
Like if somebody or senior had come andsaid,look, how much do you even know how much money you want andneed?
I'mlike, none of us would haveknown.
It'slike, do themath, you sort of getthere, youthink,okay, maybe you get to five million or 10 millionbucks.
And Isaid, do you know how do you getthere?
And I would havebeen, me as a senior would havesaid, I have no clue how you getthere.
Is that like salary and saveup?
Like what am I supposed todo?
And if somebody hadsaid,no,no, here's what you could start abusiness.
I guess you'rethis, you sell for thismultiple.
That whole thing might take you five to sevenyears, maybe 10 yearstotal.
And by the time you're31, you might bethere,right?
Like if somebody had sat medown, I would have really felt like thankful and beenlike,wow, I don't have to go dothat.
But I'm glad I know what Ican, I'm glad I even know what that looks like because I didn't know that my parents didn't dothat.
So they didn't teach methat.
That's not something theyknew,right?
Like I saw this greatquote, you can't ask somebody for directions to a place that they've neverbeen.
And I guess like growingup, I was asking people for directions to a place that they had neverbeen.
And so therefore they were just giving me all kinds of screwed up directions to places that I didn't want togo.
And soyeah, I guess like this along with the way ofsaying, I think when I looked at that classthing, I guess likethe, I went into it trying to feel good aboutmyself.
And actually I ended up feelingbad.
I waslike,man, I feel like there was a lot of potential on the table and most people took basically safety andprestige.
Like they had a good job at a greatcompany.
And I'd rather have no job at mycompany,right?
That's the shift that I wishlike, at least25% of those people could have done that and been in a totally differentposition.
Yeah, I see so many people do this too with startups where theygo, youknow, my goal is financial freedom and then they go and start a venture backstartup.
And it goes back to that roulette versus poker where it'slike,look, if you just started a boringbusiness, like a trash hauling business or window cleaning business or whatever itis, you get it to one or two million dollars of cashflow, sell it or holdit, your set forlife.
And instead they go off and they raise all this money and they don't realize that they really have a1%, youknow, call it a one to five percent chance of success and maybe a10% chance of like an okay outcome where they basically just make whatever they would have made over 10 years in apayout, youknow, if they had just done that orsomething.
I feel like so many people are trapped in that way ofthinking.
And I think there's this other great book that really inspired me withmine, which is called How to GetRich.
That's the bestbook. Imean, that's by far one of the best business books of theworld.
I'd bered, because I'm a part ofit.
I read like a third ofit.
Thebook, Imean, thereal, the real takeawayis, it's similar to mine book in someways,right?
Where it'slike, at the end of theday, the money likeruined, the money like ruinedhim,right?
He became like addicted to money and he basically in itgoes,look, all mylife, I wanted to be apoet.
And instead I got obsessed with money and addicted todrugs.
And I wish that I just quit at35.
Hesaid, hegoes, I was a punch drunkboxer, but instead ofboxing, it was makingmoney.
And I ended up spending $100 million on crack and whores because he actuallybecame, he was a crackaddict.
And he died with a partner and that was aprostitute.
Like his then girlfriend was aprostitute, hemet.
But the book has like 10 or 15 chapters and each is a differentlesson.
But the main takeaway is that he's a really wealthy guy and he keeps itreal, beautifulwriting.
And he talks abouthow,yeah, he got drunk onit.
And he talksabout, Imean, this kind of thing we've been doing in thisepisode, where we talk about thelevels,right?
What are all the different levels of wealth and what do theymean?
And I remember reading it when my net worth was like 500 grand and he'ssaying,oh, youknow, if you want to bereally, if you might think like 50 million is alot, but that's actuallynothing.
Youknow, here's what you got at 250million.
It's got like abillion.
Comfortablypoor. Comfortablyrich.
Yeah, and he's got a very differentlevel.
And all the levels are quitehigh.
You readthat, you get veryhumbled.
Are you looking up the levels rightnow?
Yeah, but he has two ofthem.
He has levels of non-liquid money and then he has levels of liquidmoney.
And so hesays, wealth measured in cash in hand or quickly realizableassets.
So kind of like liquid-ishassets.
And what he says is 100 to 400K, that's the comfortablypoor.
400 to 1million, the comfortablyoff, 1 to 2million, the comfortablywealthy.
And then itgoes, the lesserrich, the comfortablyrich, therich, the seriouslyrich, that's 70 to 100million.
What does rich startat?
100 to200, the trulyrich, and then over 200million, the filthy and superrich.
Yeah, it's a great chart that hemade.
I love thatchart.Yeah, and by theway, I guess for what it'sworth, even though I just went on this rant about how you can kind of reverse engineer financialindependence, I got a disagree with one thing that you said inAndrews.
So I think you havea, Ithink, am I characterized in thisright?
I think you have abelief, which islike, you should kind of like focus on theseincrements.
Like get to the250K, get a few million in thebank, and then likestart, then you start kind of finding your life's work as yougo,right?
You can decide how much money you reallywant.
Get to your enough number and then figure out your life'swork.
Is thatcorrect?Yeah, but I think that if you overshoot that it causes a lot ofstress.
Right. I had a meetingonce, I want to tell you guys aboutit.
My company got acquired byTwitch, and Twitch hires this newguy.
The guy who's currently the CEO of Twitch has got DanClancy.
And I go into Dan'soffice, and he's my newboss, and he'slike, allright,yeah, I want to do a one onone.
You're one ofit, he has like five directreports.
I'm one of his directreports.
And he'slike, youknow, I always withmy, I want to have a goodrelationship, I want to understand where you're trying togo, and then I can help you getthere.
Solike, youknow, what's the dream foryou?
You're like aL, I was like a L7 at thetime.
He'slike, you want to get toL8?
Like, youknow, the like the little ladder they create inside thecompany.
And I think L10 is like theCEO, and there's nonine.
It's like some weird system where you get toeight, then you get to 10 or you don't getthere.
Likegoing, going clear inScientology.
Yeah,exactly. I think Bezos is a 12 or 13 or something likethat.
And like that's the toplevel.
So he'slike, what's thegoal?
And I waslike, I in myhead, I waslike, do I tell thisguy, I don't really give a fuck about being at thiscompany, or do I have tolie?
And pretend I want to behere.
And I'm really just vesting out for like the nextyear.
I waslike, allright, let's go with thetruth.
So Igo,honestly, like I did thesteal.
That's how I gothere. That amount of money kind of matters tome.
I want to vest thatout. I want to have fun while I'mhere.
I want to do good work while I'mhere.
I want to meet coolpeople.
Buthonestly, like not looking for a long term fithere.
Youknow, this is not a one nightstand.
It's like a one year stand forme.
And I tell him this and hesaid,okay,great.
He doesn'tflinch. And I'mlike,okay, I respect thisguy.
Hegoes, I don't want to waste my time then trying to figure outlike, youknow, your pathhere.
But he'slike, I also don't want to check out onyou.
And I waslike,oh, thankyou.
I waslike, that's myhesitation.
I didn't want to tell you that because I didn't want you to totally write me off as like a guy you don't want to spend any time with for the next year because I'm not a part of the longterm.
He'slike,no,no,no. And hegoes, so tellme, what is the planthen?
Outside ofhere. And Igo, youknow, and this is where I went tolike, this is how I used to think at thetime.
I had this insecurity which may be want to say something veryambitious.
Ithought, youknow, I live in Silicon Valley and youknow, inHollywood, you're measured on your beauty and your IMDB in SiliconValley.
It's how ambitious is yourstory.
What are you trying to change and disrupt and all thisstuff?
So Isaid, I really want to start a school like auniversity.
So I go to the speech and I tell him thisthing.
And I don't know if you guys have ever donethis, but you have your material as anentrepreneur, you're saying it to youremployees, your investors all thetime.
You have these speeches that you kind of know the reaction that youget.
And if you always get likenodding,like,oh,wow, that soundsgreat.
It sounds really well thoughtthrough.
That's a great framework forthat.
You start to get used tothat.
So I give them myframework.
I say to dothis, you need threethings.
You needskills, you needcapital, and you needconnections.
And what I'm doing right now is the next threeyears, I'm building those threeup.
I'm building my capital by beinghere.
I'm building my skills by doingthis.
I'm building my connections by doingthis.
And that's what I need to do thething.
I give them this whole speech and I'm so used to people beinglike,oh, that sounds really well thoughtthrough.
I'm going to be like Mark Wahlberg in the department and be likeHawthorne.
Like, comeon,man.Yeah.
Get rid ofthat. And the literally what he did tome, hegoes,yeah, I don't buy allthat.
And then hejust, he would tell mewhat?
I'm justlike,OK,well, that's all Igot.
So what do you want me tosay?
Hegoes, I don't believe in the deferred lifeplan.
Hegoes, anytimeI, he'slike, I'm older andwiser.
He'slike, youknow, Ijust, if I ever hear somebody who wants to dosomething, and then they give me a bunch of reasons why they're not just going to do it rightnow, it tends to be a bad decision to not go do the thing you want todo.
He'slike, it's OK if you don't know what you want todo, then sure you go wanderaround, you try to figure itout.
But if youknow, he'slike, you're anentrepreneur.
If somebody told you they wanted to start abusiness, would you tell them first go to businessschool, read these 10 booksfirst, then gostart, youknow, go do a practice session doingthis, go hire acoach.
No, you tell themlike, start thebusiness, and you'll figure it out as yougo.
That's howyou, how you get good at business by doingbusiness.
There is no real substitute to getting good at thething.
Besides doing thething.
And hegoes, if you want to dothat, you should go doit.
I don't believe in the deferred lifeplan.
And ever since he said that tome, youknow, there's something good about getting just like served likethat, just getting owned to yourface, and you'relike,huh, thankyou.
That was like a real gift that you gave me because you could have just like everybody else just nodded along andsaid, allright, soundsgood, goodluck.
Andinstead, he kind of shook me up a little bit and changed my frame onthat.
And so that's the only one thing I wouldsay,Andrew, islike, you have this thing oflike, go figure out your life'swork, whichis, I don'tknow, maybe a better plan is to like start bysaying, what are I really lovedoing?
Are you love designingwebsites, designingproducts?
And you want to just been happier doingthat.
And you might have made as much money if you had just gone for thatversus, I think the way that maybe you dothings, but definitely the way I didthings, which wasfirst, I'm going to go make themoney, then I'm going to do the things Iwant.
Andactually, as I look backnow, and if I was going to give advice to myselfnow, I wouldsay, I don't think you need to do it thatway.
Thatwork, set is one way to work to make itwork, but you might be better off just going and trying to do the thing if you know what the thingis.
Do you know thatparable, the fisherman and thebusinessman?
You know thatone?Yeah, love thatone.
Sogood. You cantell.OK, so there's this wall streetguy, and he's on vacation on a small tropicalisland.
And he sees this man who's fishing down by thewater.
And he walks up and hesays,hey, what are you upto?
And hesays, I'm fishing for themorning, and I'm going to get afish, and I'm going to feed myfamily.
And the guygoes,oh, will you ever think of turning that into abusiness?
And hegoes,well, how would thatwork?
And hesays,well, first you get a couple otherbuddies, and you fishmore, you get morefish, and then you sell them at themarket.
Well, thenwhat?Well, and then you would buy aboat, and you'd be even moreefficient, and you could freezethem, and you could ship them all over theworld, and you'd have a greatbusiness.
And then hegoes,well, thenwhat?
And then hesays,well, you didn't get a fleet ofships.
Well, and then what afterthat?
Well, and then you take the companypublic, and thenwhat?
Well, and then you couldretire, and you could just fish allday.
And so the jokeis, the guy is already doing the thing heloves.
Why would he go and build this bigbusiness?
And I think it'slike,look, do you want a chop wood in yourbackyard, or do you want to own asawmill?
Do you want to be Jiro from Jiro James ofSushi, or SteveL.
is fromChipotle? I think that is the ultimate questionof, what is your happyplace, and how can you optimize your life around being inthat?
Yeah, Imean, I remember one time I told thatstory, and I waslike,wait, what's thepunchline?
Do you remember thatSean?
I waslike, I told thatstory, I'mlike, I'm not really sure what thetakeaways, butlike, should I go and likefish?
Or I don'tknow. Do you rememberthat?
No, it's a goodstory,though.
ButAndrew, when's the book officially comeout?
July9th. It's actually a greatbook.
Like, I have a lot of friends that have come out withbooks, and never enough is actually one that I sat down and read the entirething, not because I was trying to be yourfriend, but because I thought it wasawesome.
The writing'sgood. What are you lookingat,Sean?
I'm looking at thebook.
Well, I have the samereaction.
I would have said it's a good bookanyways, because I'm yourfriend, but it actually is a goodbook.
I read it in like threenights,basically.
I read it on it when it was still aPDF.
There's three good stories I remember fromAndrew.
So there's the Charlie Mungerstory.
So it's basically the crazy way that you actually ended up meeting your hero and kind of almost doing a business deal withhim.
There's the Pixel Union sale and then buybackstory.
I thought that was a great one of kind of like your first big win in terms of anexit, and you shared thenumbers, and you talked about how it wentdown, and then how it went slightlywrong.
I liked thatstory. And then the lastone, I won't give away theending, but the ending isdope.
And the ending was sogood.
I waslike, did he just do this for thebook?
Like, did he just make this endingso, like he needed a good ending for the book so he just did this thing in reallife?
Or was thatreal? But it was a very good way to end thebook.
I likedit. It was allreal.
Dude, thanks for doing thisagain, and neverenough.
What's the best place to buy a website orAmazon?
Does itmatter? You just go toneverinough.com.
There's all the linksthere, or you can just go on Amazon and buy itthere.
