#561: Polina Pompliano on The World’s Most Successful People

Polina Marinova Pompliano is the founder and author at The Profile, which is a community that studies the world's most successful people and companies. She previously was the author of Term Sheet at Fortune Magazine. In this conversation, we take a look at 6 recent profiles and discuss lessons learned from Dolly Parton, Keanu Reeves, Kris Jenner, and more. ======================= Revolut is a finance app in the US and UK, that say they're the simplest way to access crypto. Sign up today at Revolut.com/pomp and make 3 card transactions to get $15, which you can exchange for any tokens Revolut supports. As usual, when you move your money from fiat to crypto your capital is at risk. See T&C's for details. Revolut is a financial technology company. Banking services provided by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, Member FDIC. Cryptocurrency services provided directly by Paxos Trust Company, LLC. ======================= Cosmos is building the Internet of Blockchains, marking a new era of interoperability, scalability, and usability. The free flow of assets and data between blockchains with bridges to Ethereum and Bitcoin will unleash the potential of DeFi, NFTs, and much more. Dive into Cosmos at cosmos.network/pomp ======================= Remote makes it easy for companies of all sizes to employ global full-time employees and contractors. We take care of international payroll, benefits, taxes and local compliance, so you can focus on growing your business. You can get 50% off Remote's full suite of global employment solutions for your first employee for three months. Just visit remote.com/pomp and use promo code "POMP"

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Paulina Maranova Pompliano is the founder and author at The Profile, which is a community that studies the world's most successful people and companies. She previously was the author of Term Sheet at Fortune Magazine and is also making me a very lucky guy as my wife. In this conversation, we discuss a number of the profile dossiers that Paulina has put together over the last few months. I really enjoy these conversations because I learn a ton from some of the world's most successful and smart people. Before we get into this episode, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Revolut. Back

• 0:43Anthony Pompliano?

  to the basics for a second. That's why I've partnered with Revolut. They're a finance app in the United States and the UK that say they're the simplest way to access crypto. They're putting their money where their mouth is, allowing you to sign up and make three card transactions and get 15 free dollars. That's right, 15 bucks for free. What can you do with the 15 dollars? You can exchange it for Bitcoin or any of the other tokens Revolut supports. Yep, they are crypto-enabled. These guys have made it easier to get some skin in the game. And as usual, when you move your money from fiat to crypto, your capital's at risk. So sign up now through revolut.com/pomp to get a 15 dollar reward and put them to the test. Again, revolut.com/pomp to get a 15 dollar reward and put them

• 1:25Anthony Pompliano?

  to the test. They've also asked me to read some ridiculous terms and conditions. So listen up closely and I'll try to make it as fun as possible. You can see the terms and conditions for details. Revolut, yes, Revolut is a financial technology company. Banking service are provided by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, a member of the FDIC. Their cryptocurrency services are provided directly by Paxos Trust Company, LLC. Those are the disclaimers. I read them for Revolut. Because I read them, you should go and check out revolut.com/pomp to say, "Thanks, Pomp. I appreciate you reading all the disclaimers." Revolut.com/pomp. All right, next up is Cosmos. Cosmos is building the internet of blockchains, marking a new era of interoperability.

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  And usability, the free flow of assets and data between blockchains with bridges to Ethereum and Bitcoin will unleash the potential of DeFi, NFTs, and much more. You can dive into Cosmos at cosmos.network/pomp. Again, cosmos.network/pomp. Next up is my friends at Remote. Remote's been supporting the podcast for a while, so make sure you pay attention right here. When you use Remote, you can employ people in other countries legally and easily. They take care of international payroll, employee benefits, tax headaches, and all the paperwork for local compliance. Forget about location and hire the best person for every open role using Remote. Remote's platform is

• 2:50Anthony Pompliano?

  easy to use for full-time employees, contractors, and your HR team. Whether you're a major corporation or a small startup, Remote has the tools and resources to help you at a price you can afford. Even better, listeners get a special deal. Sign up for Remote today and receive 50% off your first employee for the first three months. Check out remote.com/pomp and enter promo code POMP to get started. Remote.com/pomp, enter promo code POMP today. Go check them out. Remote's awesome. You'll love it. I'll love it. Remote.com/pomp. All right, let's get into this episode with Plena. I hope you enjoy this one.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs POMP Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of POMP Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by POMP or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:56Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. Plena's here. She also happens to be my wife, but she is the founder of The Profile. Every single Wednesday, she writes a profile dossier, which is basically a deep dive on a successful person. She goes and scours the internet. She finds all sorts of articles, interviews, videos, podcasts, whatever she can, learns as much as she can about that person, and then writes it all down to save you, me, and all of the other readers' time. I really enjoy reading them, so she's here on the podcast, and we're going to talk about some of the people that she's written recent ones on. What's up?

• 4:30Speaker 02

  What's up?

• 4:31Anthony Pompliano?

  How are you?

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Great.

• 4:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Great. I haven't seen you in, uh, five minutes.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  I know.

• 4:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, let's start with Frank Abagnale. Is that how you say it? Abagnale?

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Frank Abagnale, yes, that is how you say it.

• 4:43Anthony Pompliano?

  This is the guy who, uh, Catch Me If You Can?

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? It was, the movie was created because of him?

• 4:50Speaker 02

  Yes, it was Leonardo DiCaprio was based, his character was based on the real Frank Abagnale.

• 4:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, I've seen a Google Talk by Frank Abagnale. It's very good, highly, highly suggested. But he's got kind of a crazy story. He was basically a criminal and then ended up helping the government?

• 5:08Speaker 02

  He was a con man of all con men. He was an impersonator. So before-

• 5:12Anthony Pompliano?

  He was the king of the con men?

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 5:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  But it was funny because you want to say like, oh yeah, he was like a con man, whatever. He was a 16-year-old kid. He was just really, really smart and he, um, all before he was 21 years old, he impersonated an airline pilot, a doctor, a Bureau of Prisons agent, a sociology professor, and an attorney. And he did it so believably that people were like, oh yeah, that's a doctor.

• 5:41Anthony Pompliano?

  And so what was the purpose for doing this? Was he like stealing money from people? Or was he just literally doing it to see if he could?

• 5:48Speaker 02

  So basically, uh, this all happened after his parents had a devastating divorce and he ran away from home. When you run away from home at age 16, thank you, when you, um, when you run away from home at age 16, you need to figure out how to make money. He figured out quickly that he, stop it.

• 6:10Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm fixing your microphone. Go ahead.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  He, he didn't kind of aim to become one of the most famous imposters ever. But he ended up like, he was forging checks. He was doing little things. And I think his frame of mind was more so, I'm clever, they're not gonna catch me, I'm beating them at their own game. Then it was, you know, uh, I'm, I want to be a criminal. But he basically said like, the deeper he got into it, the harder it was to get out. But he says like, in our society, people judge people, uh, by, you know, you judge a book by its cover. You're judged based on what you wear and how you appear. So he just learned the game. Oh, if I put on a suit and tie, I can enter this fancy party. I can meet some people. I can just observe them.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  He would literally go to the lobby and observe attorneys and see how they acted and then impersonate them.

• 7:04Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you think about studying a criminal, it's not exactly the person I would think that you would go and learn something from. What did you think you learned from him?

• 7:12Speaker 02

  I learned a lot.

• 7:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  And if you've seen the movie Catch Me If You Can, you know that eventually he gets caught by the FBI. He gets caught in France, spends some time in a French prison, comes back to the United States and starts working with the FBI on check forging and trying to like catch cyber criminals as well.

• 7:32Anthony Pompliano?

  So basically he becomes a rat.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  No, he does not become a rat. He didn't rat on anybody. He's helping the FBI find criminals who are really good at what they do.

• 7:40Anthony Pompliano?

  So he switched teams then?

• 7:42Speaker 02

  He switched teams.

• 7:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  But in his mind, he was like, I'm basically trying to repent for what I did and this is my way of paying it off. He was with the FBI for decades.

• 7:52Anthony Pompliano?

  And I'm assuming he caught a lot of people?

• 7:55Speaker 02

  He did, I'm sure. I don't know the extent of it.

• 7:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Um.

• 7:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Did he go to jail?

• 8:01Speaker 02

  He went to jail in France, but I think he was.

• 8:04Anthony Pompliano?

  In the US, they're like, you don't have to go to jail, but you have to switch teams.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow. I don't know how I feel about that.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  Why?

• 8:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, if you were a criminal, even if you're helping the government now, do you just not go to jail at all?

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Again, like he didn't kill people. It's not like he was like a murderer who suddenly is like, oh, I'm gonna help the US government.

• 8:21Anthony Pompliano?

  He didn't deal drugs?

• 8:22Speaker 02

  No, he, I mean, he forged checks and like got people, you know, took their money and stole. It's not good what he did.

• 8:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, he did steal?

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  I think. I don't know. Um, but basically the whole idea is like, okay, well, you're really smart, obviously. He, um, like the ways that he would, um, run away from the cops and the FBI for years is actually incredible.

• 8:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Like what?

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Hold on. Uh, oh no.

• 8:50Anthony Pompliano?

  What is an example of how Frank Abagnale would run away from the police?

• 8:56Speaker 02

  So, um, he.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  I forgot, there was, oh, okay, okay, okay. He managed to escape from police custody twice, once from a taxiing airliner and once from a US federal penitentiary.

• 9:11Anthony Pompliano?

  But how did he do it?

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Oh, a long story, you gotta go read it.

• 9:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, okay. All right, let's move on to the next person, Dolly Parton.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Wait, but you didn't, you didn't get to the lesson I learned from you.

• 9:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, what was the lesson?

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Well, a lot. So, okay, so basically Frank explains that anybody can be really, really good at becoming like, he basically says, observation is a superpower. When he looks at someone on the street who's wearing a suit and tie, he can tell like that guy's a businessman who works at Goldman Sachs and the guy who's dressed exactly like him, I know that he's a drug dealer. And the way he knows is by the little tiny cues that the people give off. Most of us don't pay enough attention to the shoes, to the way they carry themselves to, to know. So actually, you're much, why are you laughing at me?

• 10:01Anthony Pompliano?

  The only drug dealers that wear suits and ties are pharmaceutical representatives.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Anyway, but he, he's able to say like, you're very likely to get scammed and conned because you don't pay enough attention. So if you start paying attention, you might not be the victim of a con.

• 10:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, anything else you learned from him?

• 10:23Speaker 02

  I mean, a lot.

• 10:25Anthony Pompliano?

  That is probably the best one.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:26Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, Dolly Parton time.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Dolly Parton time.

• 10:30Anthony Pompliano?

  So Dolly Parton is just a country singer, I thought.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Not in church.

• 10:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And then you basically broke down her whole life. She's been married forever.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Yup.

• 10:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Nobody knows anything about her husband, really. And she's actually like a savage businesswoman who plays kinda dumb when she's in public.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  She's playing chess when everybody else is playing checkers. She's so good. She's so good.

• 10:57Anthony Pompliano?

  She couldn't beat me in chess, but go ahead.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  She's so good. So first of all, what you need to know about Dolly Parton is she was born in extreme poverty. She was one of 12 kids born in a one-bedroom log cabin in the mountains of Tennessee. And um, and and she grew up without electricity. Think about 12 kids in a one bedroom log cabin in Tennessee.

• 11:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Sounds like they had a lot of fun.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  And when she moved to Nashville, she, by the way, she met her husband the first day she moved to Nashville at a laundromat. And um, basically, she was trying to be this country singer, country star, and they were like, you're very rough around the edges. Cause she came from like a really, really poor place. And I watched this documentary and they were saying like, she would use language that was very crude, that like ladies didn't use. Um, but they liked her because it gave her character. She kind of played dumb.

• 11:50Anthony Pompliano?

  She was honest.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. And um, and they told her, Dolly, she was like, oh, by the way, I'm gonna get married. And they're like, no, you're not. You have this like sex appeal. You're gonna play into this image. Basically, your career is gonna be over if you get married and like men can't like, you know, fantasize like you're single, you have sex appeal, whatever. And she was like, okay. And then she didn't tell anybody. They got secretly married at the courthouse. And a year later, she went back and they were like, oh no, you can't get married, like whatever. And she's like, by the way, I've been married for a year and you didn't know, and I have a great career. So what's your point? She, she does things like that. She um, uh, you know, a lot of people are like,

• 12:33Speaker 02

  they wanna do, use stereotypes and make fun of her. Um, so they're like, oh, well, like if, they wanna make fun of the fact that she has a lot of plastic surgery, or she has like really big fake boobs or whatever. And she, and when they make a joke about it, they'll be like, uh, oh, well, you're fake or whatever. And she'll say, I may be fake, but I'm real in all the like places that matter. And she'll kind of, she's already expecting it and she, she um, like, it tosses it back to them. And the whole point is like, you can only feel shame if you allow them to shame you. She doesn't care.

• 13:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it fair to say that most famous, successful people do not get lucky? And they're actually very, very intelligent and know exactly what they're doing?

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 13:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Like.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  She's.

• 13:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Kanye West is probably much more intelligent than people give him credit for.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  I think some people get lucky, but then it catches up to them and they fall into obscurity because they're not willing to be strategic.

• 13:34Anthony Pompliano?

  How much money do we think Dolly Parton makes? Do we know?

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm not, I'm not sure, but.

• 13:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, do we think that she's worth 100 mil, 10 million, a billion? Probably like closer to 100 million?

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:49Anthony Pompliano?

  If I had to guess.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  She, um, she's actually really philanthropic. Uh, she, because her dad didn't know how to read, um, she started an organization called the Imagination Library in 1995. Today, her program spans five countries, five countries and gifts over 1 million free books each month to kids around the world. And to date, she's donated more than 140 million books.

• 14:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow. 140 million books?

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:17Anthony Pompliano?

  That's wild.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  To kids all around the world.

• 14:18Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. What'd you learn from her?

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Um, I learned a lot.

• 14:23Anthony Pompliano?

  By the way, if you want to read the dossiers, you can go to readtheprofile.com.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Readtheprofile.com. So, okay, so here's a fun one you probably didn't know. I learned that.

• 14:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Try me.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Okay, so she, you know, at the time was kind of building her career. She was still relatively young. And imagine you're Dolly Parton and you have this song that you wrote that you sang called "I Will Always Love You." And, uh, in the seventies, Elvis Presley wanted to record her song, but his manager wanted half the publishing rights. And she said, "No, that's not fair. I wrote it. I sang it. It's my song." And she wouldn't budge on the position, so they couldn't come to terms. And she said, "No." And people were like, "Wow, like, my God, she's a woman. She should be honored that Elvis Presley wants to record her song." And here's what she said. She said, "I never thought of it

• 15:17Speaker 02

  as being about being a man or a woman. I thought of, about it as being an artist and a writer and a person of strong will." So she just like, wasn't willing to budge on this one. Thing and she said it broke my heart to say no, but I was willing to suffer that temporary disappointment and heartache than to live with something that I knew was wrong. Um, so yeah, so then Whitney Houston, as we know, I will always love you, uh, became famous that that became her song. She became famous with that song. Uh, and Dolly says, um, I'm, I'm happy that, you know, she became that with that, uh, people associate that song with her. As long as, um, as long as I'm still making the money.

• 15:56Anthony Pompliano?

  So as long as Dolly Parton's getting paid, she don't get who gets the credit. Yeah. I mean, she's focused on the right thing for the most part.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  Because when you hear that song, you think of, uh, Whitney Houston, not, uh, Dolly Parton.

• 16:04Anthony Pompliano?

  But Dolly Parton, the savage is the one who actually made it. I love it. All right. Next, speaking of, uh, opportunistic person. Kris Jenner, who I actually think is probably one of the most intelligent business people on the planet. Uh, is the mother and manager to like a gazillion Kardashians. I literally don't know how many there are, but like.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  She manages them all.

• 16:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, you showed me the trailer one time for like the original Kardashian show and there was literally like a hundred of them. How many are there?

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. So there's like, I think five kids, if I'm correct. So.

• 16:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, it's like a hundred pop boys. There's like a hundred Kardashian girls.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Kim, Courtney.

• 16:44Anthony Pompliano?

  We, we don't have to do public math.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  I don't know. There's like.

• 16:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Kylie.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Well, so.

• 16:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Never mind. Okay. I'm not going to get into the family dynamics of a family that.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, sorry. Six children. Six children. I ruled it out.

• 16:57Anthony Pompliano?

  What did she do before she became the person that people know now?

• 17:03Speaker 02

  Sorry. What did she do before she, okay. So she has kind of a complicated life. Um. She was 17 years old when she started dating Robert Kardashian.

• 17:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Who was a successful attorney, 11 years older at the time, right?

• 17:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. So, so we got 28 year old hooking up with a 17 year old.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Exactly. So.

• 17:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Not exactly legal in today's world.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Right. So.

• 17:26Anthony Pompliano?

  At the time, I'm not sure, but probably not.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Not legal and, and not, you know, her parents looked down upon it. So.

• 17:31Anthony Pompliano?

  But they were just friends.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  She was 17, so she was like. Thank you for your advances. I cannot pursue this.

• 17:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Sure, she did.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  She turned him down and pursued her career as a flight attendant because she wanted to see the world. They ultimately reunited and she married him at age 22, a very, a much more appropriate age. And then eight years later, she realized she was a housewife with four kids. So she had a little affair with a soccer player. So then her and Robert, after he found out.

• 18:04Anthony Pompliano?

  So Kris Jenner cheated on her husband?

• 18:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  So then her husband, Robert Kardashian, found out and they went through a really ugly public divorce in which he canceled her credit cards and left her broken alone. So suddenly, she went from a rich housewife.

• 18:20Anthony Pompliano?

  He was famous and she wasn't.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Right, right. Okay. So then shortly thereafter, she met then Bruce Jenner on a blind date. And Bruce Jenner at the time was kind of a, like a failed star. I mean, he, like, he was,

• 18:37Anthony Pompliano?

  He was an Olympian?

• 18:38Speaker 02

  He was an Olympian, but his Olympic career was kind of like stalling, like he, he was out of the Olympics, whatever. So she was like,

• 18:45Anthony Pompliano?

  He was kind of like a poor man's, uh, um, Robert Kardashian. Like Robert was a star, he wasn't.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  So, so she ended up becoming, she was bored, right? So she ended up becoming Bruce's agent. Literally putting together like these like press packets and sending them to press and being like, he's an Olympian, like, if you have a speaking gig at your conference, he'll come speak. So she ended up making him a lot of money that way.

• 19:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Were they hooking up then?

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, they, they met on a blind date, got married shortly thereafter.

• 19:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And then she like started helping him?

• 19:17Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. She married him actually a month after her divorce was finalized. Yeah. Um, and she started helping him. So they had two daughters, Kendall and Kylie.

• 19:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Kylie is, yep. Uh, uh, before their family landed the TV show in 2000.

• 19:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Kylie was the, uh, young one.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. So she, she had two kids with Bruce Jenner.

• 19:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, and the other ones were before. Got it. Okay, got it.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  Um, so, so then, okay, so basically,

• 19:43Speaker 02

  long story short, Kris Jenner and her daughters, um, Courtney and Kim, had these like clothing stores in LA. And they really wanted to be like into fashion and they wanted to open up stores in LA, whatever. And, um,

• 19:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's not fool ourselves. Nothing pops off till Kim has a sex tape.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Well, so they get a TV deal and then.

• 20:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, they got the TV deal before the sex tape?

• 20:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Yes. And then the sex tape came out and here's what how one New York Times columnist put it. As a parent, Kris Jenner was concerned for her daughter, but as her manager, she thought, well, hot diggity. So.

• 20:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Do we think that sex tape was real? Like they they did not expect that to come out? Or was that a pre-planned leak to be famous?

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Not, I don't buy into the conspiracy theories, but be my guest.

• 20:42Anthony Pompliano?

  I I didn't even know there was a conspiracy theory. I was just asking a question.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Again, luck or whatever, but now two or three of her children are billionaires. Like you cannot go from sex tape to billionaire as hard as you try. A lot of people try to do that. Is Kris Jenner a billionaire? I don't think so.

• 20:59Anthony Pompliano?

  No.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  She takes 20%?

• 21:01Anthony Pompliano?

  10% I think I heard. I think it was 10%.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Is it 10%?

• 21:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Pretty sure.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's 10%. She takes a 10% cut from each of her children's earnings.

• 21:11Anthony Pompliano?

  10% is not that bad.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. She says the industry average is 20%, which is why I remembered it, but.

• 21:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so she takes 10 because they're her kids. So it's like a family friends discount.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And and if you know anything about Kris Jenner, she works like she does not. One of her famous quotes is, um, if I call you and some and you say no, or if you call somebody and they say no, then you're talking to the wrong person. Like she will find a way to get you there. Um, what I what I learned about her is something that I myself have experienced. You don't need business school to get a business school education. So basically. Even though Kris Jenner was a housewife of this, you know, Robert Kardashian, she found herself at parties, at concerts, at ballets, operas, around these really successful business people. And so she learned from them. She overheard things. She asked questions.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  And she said, I got married to Robert Kardashian when I was 22 years old. Everybody that I was surrounded by for two decades was at the top of their game in the entertainment business. So she literally had a front row seat to someone like the brightest minds in entertainment. Whether you like it or not, you're gonna pick up on things and if you're smart, you're gonna use it.

• 22:22Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. I agree with all that. What's next in our lessons of Kris Jenner? What'd you learn from her?

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Oh, what else? So every year she has an annual check-in with her kids. But I find it really interesting because she, she admits that she herself is a control fool. She admits that she's a control freak and she loves controlling the narrative. But if you know one thing about the Kardashian family is that they've been through some shit, but they have never made themselves the victim, ever. Like, they always kind of, in the most, like, crises of crises. I mean, Kim Kardashian got robbed at gunpoint in France.

• 23:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Sex tape, robberies.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  Of all the things.

• 23:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Conversions of.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  They're never on the side of victim. They're always somehow, and that's like a knock against, you know, Kris Jenner. It's like, oh, it's always a business opportunity, but I don't think so. I think like, she talks about like, I'm a mom first, but then I'm not gonna let my kid just swallow in this and like, you know, lose sight of what's important.

• 23:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Can we ask the important questions?

• 23:23Speaker 02

  What?

• 23:23Anthony Pompliano?

  What is going on with the Kim Kardashian, Kanye West? Why are they messing with my guy Kanye West?

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Okay, we're not gonna get into that right now. This is not that.

• 23:31Anthony Pompliano?

  What happened?

• 23:32Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 23:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, I think Kanye was right. I don't even, are they disagreeing or is this amicable?

• 23:37Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 23:37Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, Kanye was right.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  And that's the other thing. I've been watching the last season of The Kardashians, which after like 20 years, it's finally coming to an end. And they keep, they've always, like, whenever a spouse does not want to participate in the show, they don't make them. For a while Kanye wanted to be in it, then he was like, no, I don't want to be in it anymore. Fine. They don't even talk about him. And when Kim was going through the divorce in this season.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  They kept it out, like they showed her on the phone, they showed her upset, but they never kind of like aired their dirty laundry and even in a family that public to have some privacy, I think is really interesting.

• 24:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Kanye West is still right. I'm sure that they're screwing them somehow. They're colluding, they're colluding. All right, Daniel Ek. Daniel Ek is the Spotify founder and CEO, incredibly intelligent, has built an amazing business in the audio space, now going really heavy into podcasting. Went on an absolute acquisition tear, some may say. What's up with him?

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Okay, so he's fascinating.

• 24:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 24:45Speaker 02

  He's probably one of my favorite CEOs.

• 24:48Anthony Pompliano?

  You could meet a worm on the street and be like, oh, this worm was really fascinating. And you literally could come back with like three things, like, damn, that worm is pretty fascinating. Yeah, go ahead.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  I was gonna say a savage comeback, but I didn't.

• 25:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Go ahead.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  It's why I found you fascinating.

• 25:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, because I was like the worm on the street. Okay.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Just like I can find anybody fascinating. No, you're genuinely fascinating.

• 25:10Anthony Pompliano?

  You're not bothering me whatsoever, whether you think I'm fascinating or not.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  Right now you have very like closed off body language, so I'm just saying. All right, so Daniel Ek.

• 25:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Listen, there's other people in the room right now. Don't make me shut this podcast off and we can.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Open up your body language, like we're here to chat.

• 25:30Anthony Pompliano?

  No, we're not here. We are on a timer. Let's go. You're pontificating on things that don't matter.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  In 2006, Daniel Ek asked himself the question, which is nearly impossible to answer. Do you have an answer for this question? What is better than free?

• 25:46Anthony Pompliano?

  What is better than free? If you do things and get paid for it? Damn, Daniel. Damn, Daniel. Look at that.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 25:55Anthony Pompliano?

  You're gonna ask me easy questions? Bring the hard ones. Where's the SAT questions?

• 25:59Speaker 02

  So here's a fun fact.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  At the time in 2006, online music piracy was at like thriving in Sweden, in Sweden, right? But because it was thriving, it was thriving in Sweden because of government mandated broadband and the country had one of the fastest internet speeds in the world, which allowed people to easily download songs and stuff on the internet in seconds. But Daniel Ek is smart and he realized, wait a second, but that's not, that's not true for the rest of the world. If you're in the US and you want to download some sketchy mus-, or not sketchy music, you want to download music off of a sketchy website that you didn't pay for for free, it would take hours, right? Do you remember?

• 26:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  Because, um, anyway, so he, he decided that the thing that would be better than free is something that could be legal and free and fast. And he realized-

• 26:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Legal, free and fast?

• 26:55Speaker 02

  I'm sorry. Yes, yes. Um, so he said, "I had this idea of the kind of product I wanted to see in the world. What if we can build something that makes it feel like you had all the world's music on your hard drive? And if we can create that feeling, we'll have built something much better than privacy." So, um, anyway, so basically he said that if he could offer something really fast, um, and people would be able to press play and it would play immediately, then people would be willing to pay for it.

• 27:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. What do you think is the biggest lesson you learned from him?

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Ooh, um, okay, so I think the biggest lesson and one that I've actually thought about in my daily life, um, is that he, he's very busy, right? Like he has a massive company now, uh, but he typically starts working around 10 a.m. Because, and not only does he start at 10 a.m., he also limits his calendar to three to four meetings a day. Um, and this is based on what he read of Paul Graham's idea of a maker's schedule versus a manager's schedule. So when you're operating on a manager's schedule, your calendar has all the meetings in the world, you're on other people's time, but if you're a maker, you divide- Vote long chunks of time to work on creative problem.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  And they generally prefer to use time in units of half a day. That allow them to work on longer term meteor initiatives than have them sliced up in little chunks. So that's how he schedules his day and every meeting he walks into, he knows the exact role he is playing. And he knows you, what do you need from me in this meeting? He likes to know that in advance when he goes in, he can make decisions quickly.

• 28:38Anthony Pompliano?

  I like that a lot. I also bet that his meetings are much shorter than most people.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he literally like half the day he'll reserves for strategic thinking because that is the role of him as CEO, right?

• 28:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Do you, are you long Spotify podcasting?

• 28:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Ooh, he is so fascinating now.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  I wanna be. They made a bunch of acquisitions.

• 29:01Anthony Pompliano?

  But do you think it's gonna work?

• 29:05Anthony Pompliano?

  On this podcast, we put our opinions on the line.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Well, but Apple just launched that sleek new.

• 29:12Anthony Pompliano?

  So do you think Spotify?

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Podcasts, no. Music, yes.

• 29:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, I actually have a nuanced answer.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Tell me.

• 29:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Spotify, Spotify will continue to grab more and more of the podcast market share, but they will never be able to unseat Apple.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  Agree.

• 29:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Agree?

• 29:27Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 29:27Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Next, one of my favorite people in the world of business, Mr. Tyler Perry, also known as Madea.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  So when he was little, a teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. And he answered with a one word answer, even though he didn't know any at the time, he said billionaire.

• 29:49Anthony Pompliano?

  What a boss. What a boss.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  And so she told him that he would never make it because he was poor and he was black. And he said, even as a child, there was something in me that said, that's not true. Don't believe that.

• 30:03Anthony Pompliano?

  And what is he now?

• 30:04Speaker 02

  A billionaire.

• 30:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The part that I like about Tyler Perry, though, is that he owns, what was it called? Tyler Perry Enterprises, I think.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  He owns it all.

• 30:14Anthony Pompliano?

  He owns a hundred percent, no investors, all him, billion dollars alone, just through that.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  He has amassed one of the most valuable individually owned libraries in Hollywood.

• 30:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 30:27Speaker 02

  And that happened because a bunch of people, when he was creating these plays and these movies, people would turn him down. And he was like, okay, fine, well, I'll own a hundred percent. Then like he had no choice but to own a hundred percent. And now his motto has become, own your stuff, own your business, own your way. He's really big on ownership and he learned that from Oprah.

• 30:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, Oprah is an absolute animal, too. I love it.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:52Anthony Pompliano?

  So, all right, Tyler Perry owns a hundred percent of everything he does.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 30:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Including, doesn't he own a bunch of real estate in Atlanta?

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 31:01Anthony Pompliano?

  At some point, they like helped him buy.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  In 2019, he opened the largest privately owned motion picture studio in the US. It is a 330 acre former Confederate Army base that now houses 12 sound stages, each of which is named after an iconic African American figure. And he shot.

• 31:19Anthony Pompliano?

  That's awesome.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  The first movie he shot there was Black Panther. It's cool, right?

• 31:23Anthony Pompliano?

  He, he just gets it, right? And you can just tell he's doing things his own way.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:28Anthony Pompliano?

  And it feels like that's why he's so successful.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, so, so I like him because, you know, when people are like, who was your mentor growing up? And like, who did you aspire to be? He was like, I didn't know my mentor. He was like, I would come home from school and I would turn on the television and I would watch the Oprah show. And to him, she was more influential in his life, even though he didn't know her, because she talked, she owned the Oprah show. She owned like the, uh, her own.

• 31:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Partially at the time.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 32:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  Okay, well.

• 32:02Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a great, if anyone wants to learn more about Oprah, they should go to the Acquired FM Podcast. They have an entire episode on Oprah Winfrey, probably one of the best podcast episodes I've ever listened to. They do a really, really good job with it.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  And, and the reason I like that is because that's the whole premise of the profile. You don't actually have to know the people you learn from. You can still learn from their mistakes, their failures and their successes just by studying them.

• 32:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you feel like Tyler Perry would be more successful or less successful if he was starting today, given the internet and digital media?

• 32:37Speaker 02

  A hundred percent more successful.

• 32:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 32:39Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, like, he would, he would hold these plays and the way he would get the word out is through like flyers and like imagine having Facebook or Twitter or like, you could mobilize people.

• 32:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Who's still on Facebook?

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Okay. You could mobilize, I was thinking of Facebook groups.

• 32:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Kidding.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  You could mobilize people on a level that like he never, it was all local then, you know?

• 32:59Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Next person, last person, probably the kindest human on planet Earth, Keanu Reeves.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  Keanu Reeves.

• 33:08Anthony Pompliano?

  And, and by the way, the only thing I know about him before you went and did this was if you've ever seen the movie Hardball, you ever seen it? No? Hardball, he basically is a coach, he goes and he coaches like an inner city baseball team and at one point he literally is in the dugout and he starts singing Big Papa and he starts waving his hands in the air.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  You didn't know him from The Matrix?

• 33:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Nah. I don't watch that stuff.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  I do from The Matrix.

• 33:36Anthony Pompliano?

  You watched The Matrix? You sat down and watched the whole Matrix?

• 33:38Speaker 02

  So, yes, because it was constantly on TBS when we moved to the United States and I had to watch it.

• 33:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  Constantly.

• 33:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, you were red pilled when I met you, so.

• 33:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Exactly.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  Make sure you catch my eye. Okay.

• 33:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I did catch your eye, that's why we're married. Ha, ha.

• 33:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Go ahead, tell me about Keanu Reeves.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Help. Okay, so I didn't know.

• 34:00Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, how lucky is she?

• 34:03Speaker 02

  So, I didn't know anything about Keanu, except for the fact that people had always said he is known for doing these random acts of kindness. So, uh, there's a video on the internet, a viral video of him, uh, seeing a woman with a large bag and he got up from his seat on the subway, which he rides, even though he's worth like $300 million, he gets up, offers her the seat, she sits down, he just like acts like nothing ever happened. Another time, uh, he was caught, uh, for hours hanging out with a homeless man, um, and just like chilling, telling stories, they were eating together. Um, and then, uh, and then another time, uh, he jumped out of a car to autograph a sign he saw on a fan's lawn.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  It's just like he, he, he does these little things.

• 34:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Are these PR moments or are they real?

• 34:52Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no, they're not like the, the, yeah, they're not. So anyway, so he's just always doing random little things. Um, but what a lot of people don't know about Keanu is that he actually, he's really, really big into giving back. Um, and he does much bigger acts of kindness and I believe it's because of all the tragedy that he's been through.

• 35:15Anthony Pompliano?

  What tragedy?

• 35:15Speaker 02

  So when he was not, so first of all, he had dyslexia. He always struggled in school. When he was nine, his dad left the family. He was raised by his mom, um, and, and he grew up with a sister, then his sister got leukemia. Then when he grew up, uh, things were just starting to go his way, like the matrix was doing really well. And then, um, and then he had a long time girlfriend and their baby was born, stillborn at eight months. That was a really big tragedy for him. And then 18 months later, his girlfriend died and tragically in a car accident. So it's like time and time and time again. And then you find out that literally you have to find out that there are no reports on this.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  He does it anonymously, like he tries to keep everything really quiet, but he's like a massive donor to, um, children's, uh, cancer hospitals and research and all that kind of stuff. Um, and, uh, and then he's also known for, for example, um, the matrix series. He gave up a percentage of the profits that he was getting to give them to the costume design team and the special effects team. Cause he's like, they're the ones who made the movie. I didn't make the movie. They deserve to be paid, uh, profits off the, uh, off the series too. He did that. He shaved his salary by a few million dollars for the devil's advocate, just because he wanted to get Al Pacino. So they're like, we can only get it.

• 36:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Why is Al Pacino being so damn greedy? Come on, Al, let's split it a little bit here. I give up a little bit, you give up a little bit.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  And he did the same thing on the replacements to be able to work with Gene Hackman.

• 36:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Gene Hackman, why are you being greedy? Come on, I give up a little bit, you give up a little bit. Jesus.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  So it's just like those things that kind of tell you what type of person he was. And I'll never forget, I read a profile on him and the reporter was like, so why are you like not public about, you know, um, or she, she said something like, are you not public about, uh, the fact that you make donations to children's cancer hospitals, uh, because, uh, you know, you're, I forget what the question was like, because you, you, you want people to find out in like a PR room. He goes, no, I do it because it's private and that's why I don't want to attach my name to it. Like it has nothing to do with PR or publicity or anything like that. It was just such a, I don't know. I just really like him.

• 37:37Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the most surprising fact about him that people won't know?

• 37:43Speaker 02

  Well, I just said a bunch of ones that people don't know.

• 37:46Anthony Pompliano?

  But we know those now because we've been listening.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  Um, okay. Um, okay.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 37:58Anthony Pompliano?

  That was a really weird noise.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Um, all right. So, okay. So his father leaving, his father also got arrested for like heroin and cocaine, spent a bunch of time in prison. Uh, that really affected him. And every time, in every interview, people ask him about it. So, uh, every time he responds, so for example, this, in this profile, they asked about how his father's absence affected him and he said, gosh, in so many ways, I'm not filling that in. I'm not. And he never talks about his childhood. He never talks about his parents. Um, and he makes no apologies for like preserving

• 38:43Speaker 02

  his privacy. And the reporter kept pushing and he said, I just really don't want to tell you. And that was it.

• 38:51Anthony Pompliano?

  I feel like that's fair.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. But you, you know, like, I feel like if you're a celebrity and you're out there promoting a movie, they tell you like, talk about everything. It's good. People like the vulnerable. They like, and he's like, this is not for you to know. Right? I'm here promoting The Matrix, but I'm not going to talk about my father's absence.

• 39:07Anthony Pompliano?

  He should have just pulled out two hands and be like, red pill, blue pill and see what the, the journalist said. All right. What's your favorite part about doing these, uh, profile dossiers?

• 39:18Speaker 02

  My favorite thing is trying to understand people without ever meeting them. And I do that by, um, well, first of all, a lot of observation. You'd be surprised at how much you can learn about someone by watching them. So there's a ton of videos of these people giving interviews, whatever.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  Watching somebody like Keanu, for example, he's always kind of like, he's kind of like, um, again, body language is very closed off. He, he doesn't appear to be like the life of the party. When you look at somebody like Martha Stewart, she is

• 39:54Anthony Pompliano?

  She's posting thirst traps on Instagram.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  She's posting thirst traps on Instagram. It's about how they present themselves and then also it's about what they say. When you hear something over and over and over again, but then they say it, but then their actions don't match their words, you're like, eh, so you're kind of like putting on a show. For him, it's consistently, I will not speak about my private life. And I just really like people.

• 40:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. Read the profile.com?

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 40:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Now that we've been in Miami, I have one.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Wait, what? What's your favorite thing about the profile?

• 40:27Anthony Pompliano?

  I just like learning. I, you do all the work and then I get to take away all the lessons. It's like the best thing ever, literally. And for those that are confused, I'm a paying member of the profile.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Thank you. I appreciate your

• 40:40Anthony Pompliano?

  I was the second

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Support.

• 40:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Paying member ever.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, somebody beat you.

• 40:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Somebody beat me, which is nonsense. But I was the second paying member ever and I've continued to pay. High loyalty, very high retention user right here. But no, I like it that you go and you do all the work. You find all the podcasts, you distill it all down. I just have to read one email, bam, I feel like I got all the value. You did all the work. That is how life works. It's amazing. Read the profile.com.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Leave everyone with one pro and one con of Miami before we go. You have to pick one positive and one negative so far of living in Miami.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  One pro is that I've been pleasantly surprised at the caliber of conversation and people that are in Miami. I've already made so many friends and like real friends, not just, you know, fake friends.

• 41:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  Um, and then, and then con?

• 41:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  I, I sweated today. I was hot.

• 41:41Anthony Pompliano?

  You sweated? That's a con?

• 41:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  It was hot out there.

• 41:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, that's it for today. ReadTheProfile.com. Go follow Paulina at, what's your Twitter account now?

• 41:52Speaker 02

  At Paulina underscore Marinova.

• 41:54Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. We'll do it again sometime.