#185 with Andrew Wilkinson - The Secretive Billionaire Who Acquired Burger King, Creating Better Babies & How Much Money is Enough?

Sam (@theSamParr) and Andrew (@awilkinson) break down billionaire Jorge Paulo Lemann. Lemann has built his fortune by acquiring consumer businesses and running them profitably by slashing costs. He famously sells all corporate jets when he acquires a company. The guys then get into a brainstorm on Andrew's new media company, how to create healthier babies, and "health managers". --------- * Want to be featured in a future episode? Drop your question/comment/criticism/love here: https://www.mfmpod.com/p/hotline/ * Support the pod by spreading the word, become a referrer here: https://refer.fm/million * Have you joined our private Facebook group yet? Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion and join thousands of other entrepreneurs and founders scheming up ideas. --------- Show notes: * (4:05) Billie of the Week: Jorge Paulo Lemann * (37:25) How Andrew is building a local media business empire * (45:50) How to create a better baby * (51:25) What is a "health manager"? * (59:02) How much money is enough?

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

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  And you said you'd want to invest your own money in this. That's what you said here.

• 0:04Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, I would love if anyone wants to do this, I will 100% invest. So please email me. But this is one of those things where like.

• 0:23Sam Parr?

  All right, everyone, we have a special episode with Andrew Wilkinson. Andrew Wilkinson started this company called MetaLab, which grew to make tens of millions of dollars. And using the profits from his agency, MetaLab, he eventually bought dozens of more companies. So collectively, his companies do hundreds of millions of dollars a year in sales and have created over a billion dollars worth of value. So he's seen a lot of interesting stuff. And in today's episode, we talk about an incredibly successful business person that he looks up to. It's our segment called Billy of the Week. And then we talk about some of the ideas that he has for starting and growing companies. He currently launched a local news business. So it's kind of like my company, The Hustle, but for different cities. It's very fascinating. I'm asking him if I can join as an advisor.

• 1:07Sam Parr?

  And then he started a few more things and or wants to start more stuff. And he's even said that if you are starting some of these companies to holler at him because he wants to invest. So give it a listen. And by the way, if you're in Miami, Sean and I on June 4th are going to be in Miami. We're doing Austin on June 3rd, but that's already sold out. But June 4th, we have room for up to 400 people. I think already 200 people have RSVP'd. It's free.

• 1:30Sam Parr?

  Go to my Twitter handle, @thusampar, and scroll down. You'll see the Eventbrite link. It's totally free. June 4th, it's Friday. Come. And by the way, we've been working our ass off to make content for you, just for you. Can you do me a favor and click subscribe in iTunes and click follow on Spotify? When you do that, we go higher up in the charts, which means more people can see us, which means we get more views. And if we get more views, we can keep doing this more and more and more because we're making some more money from it and we're able to dedicate more time to this. So please, I work my butt off for you. Just click subscribe and click follow on Spotify and subscribe in iTunes. I appreciate it. Hope you enjoy the episode. Andrew, what's going on, dude?

• 2:15Andrew Wilkinson?

  Hey, man. How you doing? I got a really bad, really bad cold. I spent all day yesterday with Kleenex up my nose. So if my voice sounds a little froggy, that's why.

• 2:25Sam Parr?

  It only sounds froggy because you said it sounded froggy. I think you're okay. So Andrew Wilkinson, good friend of mine, good friend of the pod. Is this description that I used three or four weeks ago, the same description? Is that, is that the same thing? Are you wearing that same personality? Is that the same life or have you done something new and amazing? Cause you're always pulling something out of your sleeve.

• 2:45Andrew Wilkinson?

  Uh, yeah, I've got, I think since then I've launched a couple of businesses actually, but no, the description's still accurate.

• 2:52Sam Parr?

  And so we're going to talk about a couple of things. The first thing we're going to talk about is, well, you had a bunch of ideas here. I'm excited for the ideas, but I want to talk about Billy of the week because we talked about two people last time you were here. And that was, uh, it's right next to the biology episode. It's the most listened episode ever.

• 3:11Andrew Wilkinson?

  Really? No way. Which episode was that? The bill, the one where we did the two Billy's of the week?

• 3:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah, something like, I think almost 50,000 people listened to it, which is like, it's an hour long thing. It's a lot of time.

• 3:22Andrew Wilkinson?

  Crazy.

• 3:23Sam Parr?

  Um, and then the third most listened thing was the one we did after that. So, you know, it could just be.

• 3:29Andrew Wilkinson?

  Okay.

• 3:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 3:30Andrew Wilkinson?

  So aside, uh, move aside Sean.

• 3:33Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So it's like biology is like, uh, whatever it is, you're like within hundreds or like a thousand of it. And then you're the next two. And so that's why I figure we'll start off with that one, but you sent me, I, yesterday I asked you to tell me an interesting person and I'm going to go do a ton of research on them and I did. And I have a feeling you already know a lot about this person, but what's this, what's this person's name?

• 3:53Andrew Wilkinson?

  So his name is, uh, I don't know how to say it. I think it's Jorge Paulo. It's a Brazilian name.

• 3:59Sam Parr?

  A Brazilian.

• 4:01Andrew Wilkinson?

  Oh, there you go. Okay. Can you say his name please? And every time we need to say his name, we'll just say Abreu.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  I'll say his first name. His last name is German. So I don't know if there's a right way of saying it, but his first name is Jorge Paulo.

• 4:13Sam Parr?

  And then Paulo is his, considered his first name as well. Cause in a lot of the articles I've read about him, they call them a Jorge, sorry, Jorge Paulo.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  It might be his middle, Paulo might be his middle name, or it might be like a double first name. I'm not sure, but Jorge Paulo Lemon.

• 4:27Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, but anyway, this guy's totally mysterious. He doesn't like to talk about what he does. Uh, there's only a few interviews with him online. Um, but he basically, I mean, if you think about the businesses that he owns, uh, you would know them. So Burger King, uh, Budweiser.

• 4:47Andrew Wilkinson?

  Tim Hortons, Kraft Foods, Popeyes, Heinz Ketchup, right? So he basically goes out, he finds these amazing, you know, multi-generational businesses that have been around for 50-plus years that do something very, very simple. It's just gonna grow over time. He goes out, he usually raises a ton of debt, and then he goes and buys them and takes them over. And he's been doing this for, I don't know, 40 years or something like that, starting in Brazil.

• 5:14Sam Parr?

  Let's give a little bit of background of him. So how old is he? He's about 75 years old, right?

• 5:20Sam Parr?

  And he's based out of Brazil. He's a Brazilian guy. And when he started at the time, I don't think that there were these like Brazilian tycoons. You know, every article that I read about, they said that he was one of the first folks in Brazil to become one of these private equity or Warren Buffett-like people out of Brazil. And like you said, very little is known about him. And he doesn't give interviews. And in a lot of the interviews that I read about him, they said, "We actually tried to talk to a bunch of his friends." And nearly all of his friends said, "You know, thank you for reaching out, but he's politely asked us not to speak about him in interviews." So he prefers to stay behind the scenes. And the way that his career started is in 1931, at the age of 32, he had some jobs beforehand where he was a banker.

• 6:04Sam Parr?

  But he started this one bank, Abreu. You want to help me out here? Here's what it's pronounced, here's how you pronounce it. You see that right there? It's called Guarantia.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  I don't see it. Did you put it in the chat?

• 6:14Andrew Wilkinson?

  It's highlighted.

• 6:16Sam Parr?

  It's highlighted in the doc.

• 6:18Andrew Wilkinson?

  I think it's Guarantia or something like that.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Guarantia.

• 6:21Sam Parr?

  And it was described as like the Goldman of Brazil. I don't know if it was described at the time like that, but he was 32 when he launched it. It was 1971. And what made it kind of famous was he had a very, I wouldn't call it a laid-back culture, but he didn't look at resumes. But instead, he looked for what he described as PSD, which was Poor. Or let me see, what does PSD stand for?

• 6:48Andrew Wilkinson?

  Poor, Smart and Deep Desire to Get Rich.

• 6:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah, Poor, Smart and Deep Desire to Get Rich. That's what he looked for was people who had PSD. And he would hire these folks and it in previously at different companies, you would automatically get a bonus if you were one of the partner, but they created some type of system that was, they tried to make it as based off of merits as much as possible. So a lot of different people could get bonuses. And also the bonuses, you could choose, do you want more stock? Or do you want more cash? And it was a great way to incentivize people. And it kind of created this iconic culture that that seems what they're they're famous for. And it grew to be quite huge. It was something like a billion dollars in profit at one year. But he said that they got cocky and they screwed up. They they overbought some stuff and it eventually went south.

• 7:35Sam Parr?

  And it sold for $650 million, which is still a ton of money. But I think it was miniscule compared to how big it got. So I have a question for you, Andrew. And then we're going to get into this 3G thing. So then after he sold it for 650, he started buying Gillette stock. And with his other older founders of the old company, he started 3G, which was a play on their name. And there was three partners and they ended up buying Burger King, Tim Hortons, all the companies that you said. And at this point, he's worth something like $25 billion and one of the richest people in the world. But I had a ton of questions that about this guy that I think that you might know, or at least you have a better input than I do. The first is how on earth like when people say they're starting a bank like he did,

• 8:20Sam Parr?

  what's that process like? That sounds so ambiguous and so hard to understand.

• 8:25Andrew Wilkinson?

  Well, I think like people hear bank and they think like, oh, a big pile of money like Wells Fargo or something. But bank, the term banker means so many different things. It could be somebody who works at a bank and lends out money or whatever. But a banker is really like a real estate agent for businesses, right? Or for bonds or equities or whatever it is. So it's like a person you go to or a group of people you go to, who will figure out problems for you and facilitate transactions. So let's say you, Sam, go, I need to raise $100 million of debt for the hustle, because I need to expand. A banker will go out and they will go to all the wealthy people they know and all the different corporations and say, hey, here's this great guy. You should lend them money.

• 9:10Andrew Wilkinson?

  And then they take a fee in between. And so in a lot of ways, it's the world's best business. You're a middleman on these huge transactions, multi-billion dollar transactions, and you're taking a 2.5% to 5% fee on everything you do. So with like 50 to 100 people, you can do crazy amounts of money.

• 9:27Sam Parr?

  What skill set? So when this guy started at 31, 32, what skill set would he have needed in order to make this happen?

• 9:35Andrew Wilkinson?

  Well, it's really heavy on two things. One, it's like sales and stuff. And then the other is kind of financial acumen and modeling and all that. So you'd probably get a bunch of people in the office who are like super hardcore spreadsheet junkie Excel types, who can like figure out how to structure a deal. And then you'd also have people who can do the very high level of sales, right? So they're basically smooth talking and calling and selling and positioning everything to facilitate all the deals.

• 10:03Sam Parr?

  Do you consider yourself a banker?

• 10:05Andrew Wilkinson?

  No, I actually generally really hate dealing with bankers. And I think it's kind of like real estate agents, right? Like, I'm very skeptical of real estate agents. I think in the next 50 years, they probably won't exist. A lot of the time, a real estate agent is just a person who puts up a listing online for you, opens the door for a few people, and then takes a huge fee, which seems crazy and out of line, right? And now there's great real estate agents. Let's say you have a weird property that might not sell. They know how to spruce it up. There's one in 100 that's amazing and will sell your property for more. But a lot of the time, they're useless. And the same thing is kind of true with bankers. I think if you've got a great business and you want to raise money, you should just go and call a bunch of wealthy people and try and raise the money yourself.

• 10:49Andrew Wilkinson?

  Because at the end of the day, a lot of the time, what bankers do is build some decks and then breathe on the phone while you talk to other people and then take a huge fee.

• 10:58Sam Parr?

  How much money have you raised?

• 11:01Andrew Wilkinson?

  Uh, we've raised maybe, well, it depends on, it depends on how you think about it. So, um, I would say in the neighborhood of about two, 200, 250 million or something like that, if you include our IPO or our reverse takeover we just did.

• 11:16Sam Parr?

  Not including that, what's it 100?

• 11:19Andrew Wilkinson?

  200, maybe.

• 11:20Sam Parr?

  Oh, so the, the SPAC that you did wasn't a significant amount of.

• 11:23Andrew Wilkinson?

  Not, not including, it was 60 million. That was, that was how much we raised when we took that business public.

• 11:29Sam Parr?

  Wow. So then your funds have well over 100.

• 11:32Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah.

• 11:33Sam Parr?

  And you didn't use a banker for any of that?

• 11:35Andrew Wilkinson?

  No, we just called people we knew. I mean, we had, we bumbled into this world, like I had no idea five years ago, six years ago, even I didn't know what the difference between a banker and a bank teller was. I had no idea. And because of that, we just kind of kept meeting interesting business people. And as we met interesting business people, they'd keep saying, hey, are you guys raising money? Cause I'd love to invest with you. And so eventually when we had big enough deals that were interesting and we wanted partners, I just called those people and we did it ourselves.

• 12:04Sam Parr?

  So back to this guy, he, uh, like when you're starting something like this and, and this is, you like this guy because I imagine like you, you, you kind of wanna, you wanna steal some of his life, right? I mean, you wanna, you want, you, you, you wanna emulate some parts that he's done. Yeah.

• 12:19Andrew Wilkinson?

  Well, I think like, we're probably similar in that like, we're both attracted to these really simple businesses, like selling beer or razors. Like there's, both of us come from like this weird tech world where we do this like knowledge work. You, you write an email newsletter, I do a design and then two years later it doesn't exist, right? I like the longevity and the, the kind of simplicity of more traditional businesses. So I love that. And I think the idea of just buying these super safe, boring, steady eddy businesses that do something simple in the world and just making them better actually sounds like a lot of fun. And I wrote a note below, but the key thing about what he does is,

• 13:01Andrew Wilkinson?

  Generally, they have one key insight, right? So it'll be something as simple as when they bought Budweiser, it was on the third generation. They'd gotten super rich, right? So it was like the first generation built it. The second generation like were amazing. They went to Harvard, they grew it. The third generation took over. They got sloppy, didn't really care about growth. They had fancy offices and private jets and stuff. And so when they bought it, they just look at it and go, oh, it's been run in a kind of a sloppy way and they've lost their discipline. We can buy it with a lot of debt and then we can just make it way better, pay off our debt and then we own Budweiser. And so it's this crazy coup for these guys from Brazil, who, you know, they came from basically, you know, started at zero,

• 13:46Andrew Wilkinson?

  although I think they were, you know, upper middle class in Brazil. But starting there to owning Budweiser is crazy.

• 13:52Sam Parr?

  And I want to ask you about how to get into those deals. And when I read about him, it sounded like he was the young guy of a three-person partnership, which definitely.

• 14:00Andrew Wilkinson?

  I think he's actually the old guy. So there's the two younger guys. The younger guys actually go and they run the businesses. So like one of the partners, I believe, went in and runs, runs, what is it called? QSR, which is like owns Tim Hortons and all that stuff.

• 14:15Sam Parr?

  Sorry, I meant from his first thing. So his first thing got him his big nut. His first thing made him like 650 or they sold for 650. And from what it sounds like, it was like a little bit of an older guy who'd a little bit been there, done that, kind of brought him along. And he was the young guy of that partnership.

• 14:32Andrew Wilkinson?

  Totally, yeah. And then he did the same thing and now he has younger partners.

• 14:35Sam Parr?

  Right. And, um, and so I have, I had a few questions about this, but I wanted to, so let's just talk about this guy's strategy at 3G. And his whole life, it seems he's done the same thing, which is he's a cheapskate. He's frugal. He's incredibly frugal. So he's done a couple of things. He has a few like phrases that they would say, which is like, he's like costs are like fingernails. You have to cut them constantly. And he would do famous things like when they bought Burger King, they banned color copies, meaning when you're using the photo copy machine, he was like just black and white only. You also, what was this thing you said about private jets?

• 15:11Andrew Wilkinson?

  They also forced people to print on both sides. They'd say you, not only can you not print color, but you have to print double sided.

• 15:19Andrew Wilkinson?

  So the first thing they would always do whenever they buy a business is they sell all the private jets immediately, right? And let's be real, most Fortune 500 companies have like between one and 10 private jets and they just say, F that, we don't need those. They sell them and it's kind of a statement. And then from that point on, the new CEO and all the executives, they have to fly economy and they have to stay in motels.

• 15:41Sam Parr?

  Dude, that's great.

• 15:43Andrew Wilkinson?

  They, it's, I love that, right? I think it just sets the tone from the top in a really interesting way. And these are people, I mean, the CEO of AB InBev, he's probably worth like hundreds of millions of dollars and he's staying at like a quality inn. But I think there's something to demonstrating that at the top if you want your lower, lower level employees to care too.

• 16:01Sam Parr?

  I actually think that that's a stupid thing. So I get staying at cheap hotels because staying at like a Marriott Courtyard, which is like an $89 a thing, I'm on board with that. It's probably even cheaper somewhere. It's 50 bucks. I'm cool with that. It's just that you can have a fine, clean, comfortable place. Although I do like having room service because if you get into a place late, you want that. But whenever these people say they fly economy, I'm like, that's kind of stupid. If I'm flying overnight, I need a comfortable, I need to be comfortable so I could like be ready to roll. You know, you're like, you don't want your athlete to like work off two hours sleep. Do you actually believe that people do that?

• 16:36Andrew Wilkinson?

  I think they do. I mean, maybe it's just lore. Maybe these guys are super rich and they pay for it personally or something like that. But I don't know. I mean, I think if you're, I know like Walmart has a big corporate jet fleet and they actually have a really good argument for it, which is they're constantly visiting stores and that's their way of kind of like whipping all the store managers and making sure they do a good job. And so they have all these tiny little jets that fly between small towns. And if they were to fly commercial, it would take 10 days to do two days of work. So I think there's a good argument for it there. But I can't imagine the CEO of AB InBev needs to be flying all over the world constantly. If he's flying once or twice a month, it's not a big deal to be on a commercial plane or whatever. I just think it's kind of a...

• 17:19Andrew Wilkinson?

  I think it's a neat thing to do. I personally like, you know, I, I wouldn't, I would feel bad. Like I would be worried that I'm going to get the worst CEO because they want like their perks or whatever. But the kind of people these guys hire, like these guys, when they took over Burger King, they hired a 35 year old as a CFO, right? Or maybe even a 30 year old.

• 17:39Sam Parr?

  32.

• 17:40Andrew Wilkinson?

  As the CEO. Yeah.

• 17:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I, I wrote about it. They hired a 32 year old who was part of their management company. And he took it over and he kicked ass. A few things that he did was at the time Burger King was, was trying to advertise predominantly towards young men. And he goes, no, we're going to be for everyone. So we're going to advertise for everyone. Another thing that he did was, do you remember the king Burger King, like the king?

• 18:03Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah.

• 18:03Sam Parr?

  He was like, that's kind of creepy. Get rid of that. And then the, the third thing that he did was at the time Burger King employed something like 28,000 people. So they owned most of the restaurants and they would hire the people. He goes, nah, we're going to switch to a franchise and we're going to help all these franchise owners line up loans. You guys can make your own places really nice and we're going to help you make it nice. And that was the big switch that he did. Now Burger King, I believe crushed it.

• 18:25Andrew Wilkinson?

  And this is, we've seen this in our own investing, like often having one thesis, right? So the thesis could be, hey, margins are really shitty. You know, they're, they're 5%, they should be 15% and we can do that via, via very simple improvements or something simple like this Burger King deal where they went into big debt and they actually paid up a really high price to do it. But the insight they had was, well, as soon as we take over, we're just going to spin out all of our corporately owned locations and franchise them. And by doing that, we're going to raise all the money to pay off our debt. Right? And so they did that. And then they ended up taking it public with Ackman, actually, and did insanely well on it.

• 19:05Sam Parr?

  Oh, that's interesting. And when they did it, there, there was a funny story about the guy who we're talking about. I'm going to try and say his name over time. What is it?

• 19:18Sam Parr?

  Shashi Paul. I want to, when I see it, I want to say Jorge. But anyway, he, so there, there's a funny story about him that he had never had Burger King until. They bought the company and it was like a multi-billion dollar deal. He didn't eat it until they bought the company. And when he ate it, he was like, eh, this is too big. And he's known for like really only drinking water and eating really healthy. But he owns, you know, not healthy stuff. What's your take on that? Do you think that, does that rub you the wrong way? Are you like, oh, no?

• 19:48Andrew Wilkinson?

  I think, I think it rubs me the wrong way. I think he sounds like he's really good at kind of being secretive and PR. That's exactly the sort of thing I wouldn't want to give out. I wouldn't want it out in public or whatever. I think it sounds kind of lame.

• 20:01Sam Parr?

  So this type of business that you like, and I enjoy it too. But when I was reading all about them, would you say this? To me, it boils down to you have to be good at fundraising money. You have to be good at getting convincing some type of rich institution or rich people to give you money. The second thing you have to get good at is you have to recruit really, really talented people. Typically people that are highly recruited at other places. Typically people who could start their own thing. Typically people who are probably already wealthy. You have to hire them. And then third, and probably most important, you have to be really good at inspiring and leading them. You have to be a leader of leaders. Is that like the three, three pillars to this? Am I missing anything?

• 20:41Andrew Wilkinson?

  Exactly. You nailed it. It's a really, and it's really, really hard. The hardest part is recruiting the amazing people. Like our biggest challenge isn't doing deals. It's like, we could do a deal every month. It's how can we find enough amazing people to run all these businesses? And then how can we validate that they're going to be able to do what we need from them? And you know, you think about like that 32 year old, he was probably working in head office for 10 years and they saw all this stuff. But it's a huge chance to hand that to him. And that could have gone really, really poorly. But I think that's exactly, that's the Warren Buffett playbook, right? It's like, how do you be a leader of leaders? How do you give them positive coaching without like getting too involved in the day to day?

• 21:22Sam Parr?

  And the fundraising part actually seems like the easiest.

• 21:25Andrew Wilkinson?

  The fundraising, honestly, like it was, so when we did, we have, we have a fund and which we raised during COVID, just because we thought we were going to get mobbed. And it was really weird. We actually, COVID was like, like we thought we were going to have. No, no, we thought we were going to have like overwhelming amounts of deals to do. And we thought it would be a great time to have excess capital. And that didn't happen, right? Everyone was actually weirdly optimistic and government wrote the check and all that stuff. But um, but doing, doing the money raising wasn't actually that hard. Like running an agency for, or owning an agency for 15 years and doing sales for a long time. Like, that's easy. You just have a fun conversation with someone. You walk them through a deck. You point to your track record. That, that was totally fine.

• 22:10Andrew Wilkinson?

  The hard part is really the execution of the actual deals and hiring the right people.

• 22:15Sam Parr?

  And I would argue, I mean, I don't know really what I'm talking about entirely. This is strictly from reading. It seems like executing the deals is hard, but it's not that hard. The hard part is really the people part. It is that.

• 22:31Andrew Wilkinson?

  We, I would, we've done deals. We just did our biggest deal ever. And it was over a hundred million dollars and it was no more work or complexity than doing a one million dollar deal. And in fact, it was simpler than a one million dollar deal because it's just a better business with a better team in place and more momentum.

• 22:49Sam Parr?

  What did you do?

• 22:50Andrew Wilkinson?

  It's always complicated people. Uh, well, in our, in our public company, we bought a company called Stamp, which is one of the top ratings and reviews apps on Shopify.

• 22:58Sam Parr?

  You bought it for a hundred million dollars?

• 23:00Andrew Wilkinson?

  There's a hundred and, 110, I believe, total. Uh, it gets paid out. It's a structure. You'd have to look at the press release for the exact structure, but wow, it's in around there.

• 23:10Sam Parr?

  And when I was reading this, I'm in the middle of reading Human Nature by Robert Greene. And the reason, have you heard of that?

• 23:17Andrew Wilkinson?

  It's an amazing book. I've been reading that too.

• 23:19Sam Parr?

  Have you really? Wow.

• 23:20Andrew Wilkinson?

  It's amazing. Isn't it crazy? It's so good.

• 23:23Sam Parr?

  It's so, everything he does is great.

• 23:25Andrew Wilkinson?

  The laws, the laws of human nature, isn't it called, right?

• 23:27Sam Parr?

  Yeah, the laws of human nature. And I already read it and now I'm rereading it again, but I'm studying it like I wasn't like, I'm taking a semester of Robert Greene. And the reason why I am reading it is because I thought that when I was getting into business, all that would matter is like business. And you're like, well, what's business? It's like, I don't know. Uh, like, I guess, selling stuff, making the product really good. Um, in my business, it was like, I'm just gonna write words that people like. Like, it's really simple. But what I've learned is it's far more important to understand and motivate human beings and have really effective day-to-day interactions with people. And in order to do that, you have to have a little bit of a,

• 24:10Sam Parr?

  I'll call it like a Machiavellian type of thing to you, where like, people love you, yet they're far, a little bit fearful of you. They kind of view you as like, a little bit mysterious. Like, you have to attract these people, and they have to both wanna be around you, yet think that you're formidable, and be a little bit like nervous of like, "Oh, man, if I don't join this person, they're gonna crush me."

• 24:31Andrew Wilkinson?

  Or live up to your expectations.

• 24:33Sam Parr?

  What do you mean?

• 24:34Andrew Wilkinson?

  Well, like, basically, how do you, one of the thing, like, some of the, some people I've worked with have this thing where you just want, you always wanna raise the bar, and you always wanna live up to their expectations. So they say, "This is the bar, this is what I expect from you," but they do it in a very flattering way. Like, "You're really smart, you work really hard, I'm so impressed with you. I know you can achieve this," right? And then they set this crazy bar, and you just naturally wanna live up to the expectations. And I've always struggled with that. Uh, well, just different, different partner, business partners and stuff, I've dealt with over the last couple of years. Um, but, but, uh, like, with employees and stuff, I've always had this habit of wanting to be liked. And I still wanna be liked, but I wanna be firm, and I wanna have boundaries. Because in the past, what I've done is, in wanting to be liked,

• 25:19Andrew Wilkinson?

  I've excused, like, somebody failing. And so like, "It's okay, don't worry about it, it's fine." And then I'd quietly just dismiss them, and then not use them for tasks like that. Whereas I think it's actually really important to be like, "Hey, look, like, it's okay you effed up, but like, you let me down. And here's why you let me down, and here's how this impacted everything. Or here's the bar, and here's how, what I need from you, and whatever it is." And I've always been terrible at that.

• 25:43Sam Parr?

  It's crazy. I mean, Elon Musk has it. Bill Ackman, who you know, has it. This guy who we're talking about, he definitely had it. When I looked at him and I like would see how he would dress and how he held himself. You know, Travis Kalanick kind of has it where they're just like, you're just, you're afraid of them in a way of like, they inspire me, but like, um, they, they can crush it. Like, whatever they, whatever they set their mind to, they're gonna get done. And that's regardless if you agree with their ethics or not. But you definitely could agree that like, these guys are gonna, they're going places.

• 26:14Andrew Wilkinson?

  There's, there's a great story about Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook. I forget who, who told this story, but she goes, I was in a meeting with Sheryl and I, you know, I gave this presentation and then she walked to me outside and she said, during your presentation, it was great, but you kept saying like, only stupid people say like, and you're not stupid. And then she walked away, right? And you can look at that and go, oh my God, I can't believe she did that. That's so mean. But the way she told it was like, it was a kind of a backhanded compliment that told her something that was embarrassing. It's like saying like, hey, you have like, you know, you have lettuce in your teeth or whatever. You don't want to hear it, but like, it's helpful. And I think I've been very bad at that kind of stuff. I think you need to give more firm feedback.

• 26:57Sam Parr?

  That story is from um, radical, uh, candid.

• 27:00Andrew Wilkinson?

  Radical candor or whatever.

• 27:02Sam Parr?

  Yeah, radical candor. It's a good one. But um, as I was reading this guy, I'm like, man, in order to get into some of these deals, like Heinz, um, whatever, in order to attract these, I mean, basically like, um, this guy and the folks who we talk about, and maybe I think you as well, Andrew, that you're like uncommon amongst the uncommon. And you have to lead the killers. So like, you've got to be the killer amongst killers. And that is kind of like a fascinating thing to think about because to bring it back to what I originally said, when I got into business, I thought it was all about coming up with creative ideas. It's like, no, I just gotta be a leader of men and women. And that's really hard. And so I've been studying how to do that. And I've been studying like war leaders and studying,

• 27:44Sam Parr?

  you know, who really is good at this, like celebrities, like Marilyn Monroe. It's like, it's basically kind of seduction a little bit. And how do you just like get people under your spell and hopefully your spell is positive, but.

• 27:55Andrew Wilkinson?

  I don't, yeah, I think like there's a, I think it sounds stressful though, like the idea of like, I'm gonna be a killer and I'm gonna, you know, do all this stuff and be Machiavellian. Like, I really don't, I don't like that feeling of like, feeling like I'm manipulating someone. What I like to think about more, what's been more instructive for me is just reading psychology, like Robert Cialdini and all that stuff, and figuring out incentives. And one of the things I've learned is that if somebody is incentivized to not work as hard as you or not care as much as you, they won't, right? So people do whatever, it's shocking, but they'll do whatever, whatever the financial or day-to-day lifestyle incentive is, where they can take the path of least resistance, they will, and then they'll create their own narrative for why they're doing it, right?

• 28:39Andrew Wilkinson?

  They might say, "I'm not working hard because, you know, I don't like my work environment" or whatever, or "there's a problem with management" or whatever it is. But often, it's actually them just going, "Why would I work harder? I don't make more money, right? I don't get a bonus for working harder. I clock in my time or whatever." So I think a lot of the time, this stuff is just an incentives problem, and that's pervasive through everything. Going back to Realtors, they have an incentive to just sell your house for the lowest price to get it done, to lock in their fee. They have an incentive against you.

• 29:08Sam Parr?

  I agree with you that that is part of the, that is, that is, that is a portion of it. I would say that if there's two portions, those are both them. But I think you're totally full of shit in that you don't care about this, because you do. Your, your, your public image is, and I don't know if you mean to do this or not, but I'm, I'll tell you what your image is, is like, you're like a cool guy. Like, you dress nice, you've got slicked-back hair, you're good-looking, you have these cool glasses, you're a designer. I mean, brother, look at like, the website. What's the URL of Tiny?

• 29:40Andrew Wilkinson?

  Tiny Capital?

• 29:41Sam Parr?

  Tiny Capital. You use the same wonderful imagery, use, like, you have a brand. And a brand is, is exactly this Machiavellian thing that I'm describing of how to manipulate the feeling, emotion.

• 29:53Andrew Wilkinson?

  I don't know.

• 29:54Sam Parr?

  You said the word Machiavellian, but you are manipulating people to feel a certain way.

• 29:58Andrew Wilkinson?

  Oh, absolutely. No, no, no, absolutely. But it's like copyright, like knowing how to write good copy. What you're really doing is you're taking people along for an emotional journey by using various words. Right. And there's two ways to look at it. One is, oh, it's too super manipulative. Or the other is, no, you're trying to communicate and you're an effective communicator. Right. And don't get me wrong, we definitely do like yuck up the kind of the softness of what we do. But it comes from like, you know, we dealt with Wall Street bankers, we dealt with people trying to acquire companies. They were shitty. So this is me going, oh, well, I hated that. How can I market to those people who have the same hatred that I did or whatever? But yes, there's definitely a lot of public, public image stuff that we think about.

• 30:42Sam Parr?

  So we'll wrap up with this Billy of the week segment. But what's your main takeaways from this guy? And there's a book about him. It's called like greatness, I think. I couldn't find, I only saw it in Portuguese. I don't know if there's an English version.

• 30:56Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, it's called, uh, what is it? Dream Big.

• 30:59Sam Parr?

  Dream Big.

• 31:00Andrew Wilkinson?

  It's on Amazon. Yeah, it's quite good. I read it maybe four or five years ago.

• 31:04Sam Parr?

  What's your main takeaways from this guy? Why, why, what can I learn from him and what should I avoid?

• 31:10Andrew Wilkinson?

  I think it's like, you don't need to do something innovative and crazy, right? You don't need to be the next Elon Musk or start some crazy technology. You can just choose a traditional business that's very poorly run and run it better. And I, you know, even better if it's a business that's low risk, growing and kind of successful despite bad management. Or, you know, bloated cost structure or something.

• 31:30Sam Parr?

  And you wrote something in here that was important, which is different than how I perceived you as doing, which was, you need to be comfortable taking on outside capital and having partners.

• 31:44Andrew Wilkinson?

  Well, I think like for this exact structure, right? So what they do, they raise a lot of debt and that allows them to have, you know, a lot of control because they have debt, but it's silent, it's not involved in the operations. And that gives them the ability to just like overrule and take over. And you got to raise a lot of money. I mean, if you're going to go buy Heinz ketchup, like that's not the kind of deal you can get like a crazy deal on. You're going to have to pay the highest market price for. In order to do that, you got to raise a lot of money compared to what we do. Like we're not buying the Heinz ketchup. We're buying the like random local ketchup brand, right? That's like been successful in a small niche, those deals you can find.

• 32:22Sam Parr?

  Oh, and I want to ask one more question before we wrap up, actually. So I actually was thinking about this. So like, you're further along, you're a few years older than me, not only a couple of years older, but in terms of like, career success, you're a fair bit ahead of me in terms of like, you know, we're both going down the same path. And then one path in front of that, you're friends with guys like Bill Ackman, these folks that are worth, you know, billions of dollars and yada, like, they're just doing shit. So like, along this path, let's say, of the spectrum of people doing stuff, it starts with like, a scrappy internet nerd in their bedroom, like you and I were. And then it comes to like, all right, you get a little bit of success like I have. And then it comes like, all right, you're starting to like, move things a little bit.

• 33:07Sam Parr?

  But even you said, you're still a pipsqueak compared to like, you know, an enactment or whatever. What, how does this, this transition from going from like, someone who's kind of interesting to like, a mover and shaker at a global scale? How do you, does that kind of seem like a crazy transition to you? Because it, it, it's kind of like, you're not far from that, it seems.

• 33:31Sam Parr?

  But like, these guys like Bill Ackman, when they say something, they're in the news. When they say, when they like, make a trades every once in a while, it can like, impact millions of people.

• 33:41Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, I mean, I don't, I look, I just look and look up and see how far we have to go. I still feel really, really small. And you start, you know, like, you know, when you like, you're running your company and you're like, you tell people like, oh, we do a million dollars a year in profit. And to you, that's like, a crazy amount of money. And then you realize, oh, my God, there's businesses out there that do 30 million, or 100 million, or a billion dollars of profit every year. And the numbers just keep getting bigger. I just find as we get bigger, I just start talking to people who have businesses that are way bigger. And you know, it's funny, you mentioned Ackman. I mean, Ackman, I don't know what he's worth, probably like, four, five, six billion dollars. But this George A. Paulo guy, he's worth 25, right?

• 34:23Andrew Wilkinson?

  And so everyone's looking up at some, some person that they want to be and someone doing bigger stuff. I think it's kind of like, the analogy I would use is if you're athlete and you start out as just some casual high school athlete and then you end up in the Olympics and you just keep rising up and doing more and more stuff and eventually you look around and go like whoa holy crap I made it to the Olympics this is crazy but I don't necessarily think it buys you any happiness or a better life necessarily and I think there's a really interesting decision of well do you want to be a mover and shaker is it worth all the downsides I think there are quite a few

• 34:59Sam Parr?

  no shit I agree all right let's talk about some ideas what we're going to talk about is not necessarily an idea but something that you're working on right now I want to talk about capital daily because I've seen you I've seen this from the beginning and I'm getting updates and this latest update sounds pretty amazing

• 35:14Andrew Wilkinson?

  yeah so I mean the last two years I'll actually let me zoom out and I'll say talk about what happened so basically I read the newspaper every day I would read the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and read all this incredible investigative reporting and then I would pick up my local paper which is called the Times columnist here in Victoria, Canada and it was just there's nothing it was like they didn't have any journalists they'd laid everyone off and it was all just like AP wire service so it was like international news and I was like how the hell do I figure out what's going on in my own city and I realized there was a few people doing local reporting but there's this gap there and so I thought okay well if I want this I'm sure other people do

• 35:55Andrew Wilkinson?

  and I looked at buying the local paper actually but they wanted like a crazy amount of money they had like printing presses like you know unionized employees it's like a cruise ship not a speedboat it would be a pain in the ass to buy it and so I went to a friend who is a a stay at home mom who had some experience doing a bunch of writing and I said hey why don't we just start a MailChimp account and we'll come up with a brand we called it Capital Daily and we'll send out a daily newsletter and we'll just summarize like hey here's like three or four stories of things that are happening in town so we start doing this and I have a friend who runs a PPC agency and I get him to just go buy ads and I realize I can buy ads for like nothing no one's advertising for local news

• 36:37Sam Parr?

  break that down so you're saying you you had a friend that would buy advertising to get new users and you said hey could you see if you could run some ads to get email subscribers to Capital Daily

• 36:50Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, I was like, how do I get this to scale as quickly as possible? A, I saw an opportunity and B, I realized that in local news, usually there's one winner. Right? So historically, there's usually been one big newspaper. And so I was like, how do I get this as big as possible, as fast as possible? And I was also just impatient. I was like, I have money, I can afford to do it. I'm just gonna spend like 200 grand on ads. And so we spent, I don't know, 100, 200 grand. And very quickly, we got to like 25,000 subscribers. And I just started hiring journalists and built out a team. And it was, it was crazy. Like I would be in a cafe and people would stop me and be like, "Hey, are you the Capital Daily guy? Like, thank you so much. It's amazing."

• 37:31Andrew Wilkinson?

  Like, the first thing I do when I wake up and drink my coffee is read your newsletter. And that was an amazing feeling. Like, I've got all these other businesses that are like big. And I've never, ever, ever felt that sense of community and just like doing something important. And so I was having a lot of fun with it. We started hiring a whole bunch of people and we realized like, hey, this is hard. Like, the advertisers don't understand it. Like, people who buy newspaper ads, they're just stuck in their ways. They're old, they're like all boomers and stuff. And so we were having a really hard time selling ads. I also built this big news team and was like burning all this money. And I was kind of freaking out going like, I don't know if this is, have I got myself into some trouble here?

• 38:12Andrew Wilkinson?

  But a little over six months a year ago, I partnered with this guy Farhan. And he had scaled the biggest local news site in Vancouver. And he took over as CEO and now he's monetized it. And I think we're gonna break even very soon on the local stuff in Victoria. We've started selling out ads. And I think like on a unit economic basis where we look at Victoria, it's now profitable. And it can be very profitable if our membership model works. And we've started expanding. So we've now got six or seven different newsletters in different areas, mostly here in Canada. And we're scaling. I'm super excited about it.

• 38:51Sam Parr?

  So is that Overstory Media Group?

• 38:54Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah.

• 38:55Sam Parr?

  So go ahead.

• 38:57Andrew Wilkinson?

  I it's funny, we like, we chose the name, I like the name Overstory, but we got cute and we were like, oh, Overstory Media Group is OMG and that looks cool as a logo. And so we chose Overstory Media Group, but then now everyone calls it that and I hate that name. But I really like Overstory.

• 39:14Sam Parr?

  Okay, Overstory. So Overstory is the parent company that owns Capital Daily?

• 39:20Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah.

• 39:21Sam Parr?

  Dude, it looks like you have like 50 people working there.

• 39:24Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, we've, we've scaled a lot over the last little bit.

• 39:27Sam Parr?

  Are these all?

• 39:28Andrew Wilkinson?

  It's like a big bet. Yeah, these are all, pretty much all full-time people.

• 39:31Sam Parr?

  How much did you invest to start this business?

• 39:35Andrew Wilkinson?

  Uh, I think at this point, I've probably spent two, just over 2 million bucks. But you have to remember that probably the first 700K was just me, me not monetizing it soon enough and just focusing on building the audience first. So I think we probably spent 200, 250K in ads. And then we probably burned an unnecessary 500K, like hiring the wrong people and kind of like experimenting. So really, like, at this point, we have the biggest news business in my city for probably 750 to a million. And I think that business can probably at scale, probably do 500 to a million in profit.

• 40:19Andrew Wilkinson?

  Once we're actually like going, so I feel pretty good about it. But now we're taking this bigger bet that, you know, we can basically roll out local news across Canada.

• 40:27Sam Parr?

  And Farhan is your co, is he's like the co-founder?

• 40:32Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah.

• 40:32Sam Parr?

  And so you attracted him because you go, I'll put up the money if you run it?

• 40:37Andrew Wilkinson?

  Exactly. Like I said, look, I've already kind of got this thing, I've proven the model out. And, uh, you know, he was looking for his next thing. And it was one of those things, you know, when you just meet someone and you go, oh my God, I want to do business with this person. And they just have the right background, like he'd done, he'd spent like five, 10 years doing the exact thing that I needed. So it was a total no brainer.

• 40:58Sam Parr?

  Dude, I feel like this is a much bigger deal than you're making it seem.

• 41:01Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, it's pretty crazy what it's become and it's, you know, it goes back to I have in total, I spend a lot more time on this business than the others because it's like a passion project and I'm a consumer of it, right? I read it every morning and I give them feedback and I think I annoy Farhan with like daily texts about it, but I've only really spent a few, probably less than a week of time on this and the key leverage point has just been bringing Farhan on board because when Farhan joined, it was just a single newsletter with like three employees. So now, I mean, he's gone out and basically said, look, like Axios down in the States is aggressively expanding their local and I think that's because it's going to work and it can be profitable. Let's go do the exact

• 41:46Andrew Wilkinson?

  same thing in Canada.

• 41:48Sam Parr?

  And so you're gonna hope, well, how's the story gonna end, do you think?

• 41:53Andrew Wilkinson?

  I don't know. I mean, I think that if it's true in Victoria, it's probably true in a lot of other places. The interesting thing is trying to figure out like, you know, what topics people really want to hear and are they really variable city by city, right? So for example, like we expanded into Langford, which is a suburb suburb here and it's more working class. And so it's figuring out, okay, you know, what are those people want to hear versus somebody who lives, you know, in in Victoria or in Vancouver? Do they want different topics? Like, you know, just that kind of stuff, I think is going to be really interesting to figure out.

• 42:32Sam Parr?

  And what's your membership, your subscription gonna be?

• 42:36Andrew Wilkinson?

  We haven't announced it yet, but we're kind of thinking about like somewhere between $100 and $200 a year, getting local discounts, access to events, maybe like a member only newsletter and extra content and stuff. One of the things I really want to do is start hosting events in person because like, as you know, it's one thing to see a number of like, oh, the hustle has a million, million subscribers, but when you meet up with people in person, it's crazy. So I'm really excited to like fill a room with all the subscribers and just see what that feels like.

• 43:06Sam Parr?

  Yeah, me and China are going to Miami. We just posted about it.

• 43:10Sam Parr?

  Like 300 people signed up.

• 43:12Andrew Wilkinson?

  Crazy.

• 43:13Sam Parr?

  So yeah, wow, this is amazing. I can't believe you didn't ask me to be part of this, dude. So frustrated.

• 43:18Andrew Wilkinson?

  Maybe I, maybe I will.

• 43:20Sam Parr?

  I'm, I think.

• 43:21Andrew Wilkinson?

  I have, it's all just my own money at this point. So if I decide I gotta go big, I'll definitely hit you up.

• 43:26Sam Parr?

  I'm very interested. You gotta make me an advisor. I think this is gonna be sick. Um, all right. You wanna talk about another idea? So you, we'll talk about the paper thing in a second. What's this? Um, which one do you wanna move to?

• 43:37Andrew Wilkinson?

  Let's do the pregnancy stuff.

• 43:38Sam Parr?

  Okay, I think that's cool. What you wanna?

• 43:40Andrew Wilkinson?

  So this.

• 43:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah, go.

• 43:42Andrew Wilkinson?

  This is like a business in a box. This is one of those things that I would do if I had time, but I don't. Uh, I think it's a really good idea. So, um, people love to spend money on their kids, making their kids better, smarter, feeling like good parents and stuff. There's all sorts of like, you know, baby Mozart, you know, different, uh, health things people do for their kids. But nobody really thinks about health during pregnancy. And I think this is something that's really important, that's totally overlooked. Uh, my son was born early. He was born like three weeks early and low birth weight. And he's fine, like we haven't had any health issues or anything, but any parent who's gone through that knows it's absolutely terrifying.

• 44:21Andrew Wilkinson?

  And I started researching it a ton and I realized that there's all sorts of things that you can proactively do to ensure that you have a really healthy, a really healthy pregnancy, but then also to, um, like basically optimize your kid. So if you think about it, your kid is growing a brain and a body. They get to do that once, right? Like this is the building, this is the foundation of your kid. And so I started researching all this stuff. I talked to a really smart friend, my friend, Dr. Ana Patrick. And basically I realized there's like all these studies that show that kids and mothers who have like fish and DHA supplements, B vitamins, make sure they're not anemic and stuff.

• 45:03Andrew Wilkinson?

  It minimizes any risk of pregnancy and it also maximizes IQ and general flourishing, ADHD, all this other stuff. So there's this huge, in marketing, the most important thing is to have a hook and the hook can be fear, right? How do you avoid this terrible outcome? And one of the problems. With doctors is when you talk to a doctor, they just don't want to scare your wife during pregnancy. And so they just say, take vitamin D or do this thing. They don't explain why. And so I think explaining to mothers, here's why you want to do this. Here's all the potential bad things you can avoid. And hey, you can make your kids smarter and better in the process. There's a huge opportunity to basically do like Roman or hymns, but for maternal health.

• 45:46Andrew Wilkinson?

  So you do blood work, supplements that get delivered on a schedule and it's about building like a super baby.

• 45:53Sam Parr?

  And you said you'd want to invest your own money in this. That's what you said here.

• 45:57Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, I would love, if anyone wants to do this, I will a hundred percent invest. So please email me. But this is one of those things where like every three months, I'm like, why the hell hasn't anyone done this yet?

• 46:08Sam Parr?

  Well, there is a, but there's a reason why you shouldn't invest in this, which you've written here.

• 46:12Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, I think it's a, this is a great business for someone who's never done a business before. Because it's a good like launchpad business. It's something that can make like, it could be big, but there's no competitive barrier, right? So you're going to go out, you're going to do this, then a bunch of people are going to copy you. And you can probably make a good living on this. I don't think it has like a moat necessarily, except for maybe like a brand that mothers share or something. But I think there's something here.

• 46:37Sam Parr?

  Have you heard of the, there's this guy named, I forget his name, Joel, maybe. Joel on writing is his blog. And he says, there's Ben and Jerry businesses. And then there's Ben and Jerry's versus Amazon is what he says. He goes, but Ben and Jerry, it's like a unique, interesting brand. And a person can go to Istream five days a week and try all types of different stuff and everyone can survive. And the only thing that separates Ben and Jerry is just that it's slightly different, but there's enough for everyone to succeed. Like, you know, there's a, there's enough space, we can all win and you can grow it pretty slowly for a hundred years. And it could probably last for a hundred years and probably won't go away very easily.

• 47:20Sam Parr?

  But then there's like an Amazon, which is you could really only, you really are only going to subscribe to one Amazon Prime. And once you give your credit card to Amazon and save it, you're probably just going to continue to use that. And so. With the Ben and Jerry business, it's okay to go slow. It's no big deal. You don't have to raise a lot of money. You can grow slower so long as you're willing to do it for 20, 30 years. It can get big. You've got to get huge really fast because everyone can copy you. It's kind of like Rome's and him. There's a reason why, like, there was like five right away because someone saw it and they go, oh, hurry up, copy it. You could spin this shit up in three weeks. But him's the only moat here is size.

• 47:54Andrew Wilkinson?

  It's literally a form. If you think about what Hims is, the original website was a well-designed site. They put some like, they find some stock images that are hip of like pill bottles. They add their logo on to it so it looks like it's a special thing. And then they literally have like a form you fill out and then a doctor just goes, yeah, rubber stamp. Okay, I'll do it. I'll send the prescription or whatever. And they've gotten way more sophisticated, but at the end of the day, there's no lock-in other than the fact that I happen to subscribe with them. And so other people just go out and you end up basically competing into whatever the cost of the ads is. If it costs two bucks to convert someone, then you can make five cents per, right? And that's what happens with these businesses. But I think for a year or two, you could probably make a lot of money.

• 48:38Sam Parr?

  We first started this, I said we should break this up into two. I actually think we should break it up and we should keep it as one. And because you have to go at the 10 minutes past, right?

• 48:47Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, something around about 115.

• 48:49Sam Parr?

  So you have this thing called what is enough money? I 100% want to talk about that. So let's talk about one more, one more idea. And then we can come back. Andrew has a huge list of ideas. We'll save these and do it for the next one. But what, which other idea do you want to go to?

• 49:05Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, this one's really, this is a really weird story. But so my whole life I could never burp. So my brother would like burp in my face and I'd be like, what the hell? How do I do that? I just couldn't. It was really, really bizarre. And, you know, I'd drink like pop and I'd feel bloated and crappy and I couldn't burp. But it wasn't a big deal. I didn't think much of it. And And then when I was about 23 or 24, I started getting this weird acid reflux. And I just get this shitty feeling of pressure and then acid reflux. And it started happening day after day after day. And it started driving me absolutely crazy. And so about seven or eight years ago, I started researching it and I knew nothing about health. I knew nothing about diet and I just basically had to figure everything out myself. And I tried everything.

• 49:50Andrew Wilkinson?

  I tried drugs, supplements. I had like, you know, stuff, you know, surgeries where they stick stuff down your throat and put cameras down there. I had a wire put down my throat to check on my stomach acid. I did acupuncture, like everything and nothing worked. And finally, after seven years of researching this, I was on Google and I, I thought about this burping thing. And I was like, I wonder if it's that. And I found this Reddit community called No Burp.

• 50:17Sam Parr?

  Oh my God.

• 50:18Andrew Wilkinson?

  There's this huge community of people who also can't burp. And on that community, there was somebody and they said, look, there's this doctor in Chicago and he injects botox into the cricoferengial muscle in your throat and it allows you to burp. And so basically the reason why people can't burp is they have this weird muscle that's too tight. So I flew down to Chicago about six months ago and I got this injection and now I can burp and I don't get acid reflux anymore. And my life is literally like 25% better. I'm happier. Like this was actually driving me insane.

• 50:51Sam Parr?

  What was your first burp like? Was it like, have you seen how the colorblind people put these glasses on and they could see colors or when babies get caught?

• 50:58Andrew Wilkinson?

  I actually put it on Twitter. I put it on Twitter. I'll find it for you and we can share it in the show notes.

• 51:02Sam Parr?

  You like, did you just burp out?

• 51:05Andrew Wilkinson?

  It sounds insane too, right? Like I just like, yeah, it's like one of those videos where the dog gets home and hasn't seen the owner for four years. Like, I'm just like, I'm very emotional, but it sounds F'd up. Now I can burp like a normal person.

• 51:17Sam Parr?

  Do you have 30, do you have 35 years of gas built up?

• 51:21Andrew Wilkinson?

  Dude, literally, like, I didn't know, I didn't know what it was like to just feel like release, right? I just always had pressure. So, so anyway, so I would have spent a lot of money, a lot of money to figure this out. And I tried all sorts of stuff. I looked at, like, can I go to the Mayo Clinic, like, whatever? And the problem is that the medical industry is just very fractured. So everyone does one very specific thing, and there's no one that brings it all together. And most GPs, you know, they are, or primary physicians, they can help you, but they're not going to go deep on an issue and really spend time on this. And so I think there's an interesting business opportunity. I don't know how big it is, but this idea of a medical advocate, this is basically a project manager

• 52:02Andrew Wilkinson?

  for your problem. So you'd say, like, I have diabetes, or I have a rare condition, or I have this symptom. And they're going to go to every doctor's appointment, they're going to get you into the best specialist, they're going to push the doctors to do testing, they're going to look at all the outcomes, all the data, read all the papers. And I think this is the sort of thing that wealthy people specifically would pay a lot of money. And especially if you could make it outcome based, where you say, if I cure this for you, what's it worth to you? I think this could be actually a pretty big business.

• 52:30Sam Parr?

  So two things. The first, have you heard of a concierge doctor?

• 52:33Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yes.

• 52:34Sam Parr?

  So I have that, basically, I pay, and I have it because someone like got it for me when I was like, really ill, this billionaire lady, it was a crazy story that I'll tell another time. But basically, I have this doctor named Dr. Horowitz, and I just text him, I go, hey, Dr. Horowitz, my Achilles really hurts me, can you schedule an MRI for me, or something like that? And he's like, yeah, I think an MRI would be good, I'll hook it up. So they, you know, and I paid an annual fee for it, $25,000. And would that not be this?

• 53:07Andrew Wilkinson?

  Well, I think that's very, I have that as well, but I think it's very driven by whatever you want, right? So you text them, you say you want an MRI. But if you say, hey, my back is hurting, the question is, is he going to be able to have time to spend four hours a day researching your back specifically and figure that out for you? Is he going to have time to go to all the doctor's appointments and interact with all the specialists and negotiate with them and everything? That's what I'm looking for is like, someone to be in the room to solve problems. Because I think a lot of people have like a loved one gets cancer and they're like, well, how do I navigate this? Like, what's the optimal treatment? What am I missing? Am I talking to the wrong doctor? Like, what advice is bad, etc.?

• 53:50Sam Parr?

  Kind of like a health manager.

• 53:53Andrew Wilkinson?

  Totally. And it's specifically around an issue, or like, you could do it around specific issues. But I think it's, I think it's kind of like a weird niche. I recently heard about a business where all they did was negotiate bills for hospitals. And it was like a very small number of people and this business made an absolute killing. And that kind of turned me on to these niche medical areas.

• 54:17Sam Parr?

  Did you look into the, there's this thing called a Mayo Clinic executive, what's it called? A Mayo Clinic executive? I forget exactly what it's called. But have you seen this where you pay, executive health program, you pay $10,000 and you go to a Mayo Clinic and they have like five of them or six of them. And you basically spend two days, I think, or three days, and they look at everything of your body and try to diagnose anything? I mean, have you seen this?

• 54:43Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, I looked at doing that.

• 54:45Sam Parr?

  And why didn't you?

• 54:47Andrew Wilkinson?

  Well, I started looking into it. And what I realized is that they were just going to recommend the same thing that I already looked at, right? When I talked to, I think I talked to a doctor and he said, oh, yeah, you're probably going to have to have this special surgery, which is like they, they do like a surgery on your throat to close it off from acid. And I'm like, holy crap, thank God I didn't do that. That has like a million knock on effects and all sorts of issues.

• 55:10Sam Parr?

  Why wouldn't this work?

• 55:12Andrew Wilkinson?

  Well, I think the hard part would be, is it insured? Maybe not. So you're paying out of pocket. How many people really want this? Is this just something like some rich people want? Or is this a real opportunity? And then also, like, just how much can you charge for it? I think it could be a great business for one person. It could be a great business for 10 people. Maybe it can scale. I don't know. I like personally, I like the pregnancy health one more. But I think the other one is more just something that's needed, especially around if you specialized in like cancer or something. So it's like, when your dad gets diagnosed with cancer, there's like a clear person to talk to who's like an advisor who's impartial.

• 55:53Sam Parr?

  Can we, I'm just going through this. I think it's interesting. I think that this

• 56:00Sam Parr?

  It's I sometimes I'm partial to these like rich people ideas, aren't you? Like, I'm like, I'm like, it's cool, but I don't know if I want to do that.

• 56:08Andrew Wilkinson?

  I think it's it's one of those things that is probably a business, but it goes back to like, we have a warped view of it. It good and you know, we'll talk about the enough money stuff later, but I think the interesting thing that seems to happen, the theme I see with people who make good amounts of money and become comfortable is they just make themselves uncomfortable again by obsessing over all this stuff that can go wrong. Like getting, you know, health issues, car accidents, you know, how can it, how can it all get taken away exactly?

• 56:37Sam Parr?

  Let's talk about that. So you wrote something here that immediately caught my eye and it's something that I I've been reading over and over again. It's called what is enough money? And we you and I talked about this recently, basically, I told you. The goal when I started the hustle was by around 30. I wanted to make enough money that right up front, like my nut would very passively spit off $50,000 a month in perpetuity. So 50 K or the equivalent with including inflation every single month forever. And to do that, you need like, you want like between two to 3% of your portfolio to be able to do that.

• 57:18Sam Parr?

  So what's I don't know what whatever that do that math, that that's that minimum, but that was my goal. And yeah, I mean, I I did it. And you started talking to me about what is enough money? So what were you going to say here?

• 57:33Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, I mean, I loved you came back to me and you just said, like, to me, enough money is like 25 to 50 K a month in perpetuity with very low.

• 57:42Sam Parr?

  I said 50 and the reason I said 50 is I spend way less than that, but I wanted to be incredibly conservative.

• 57:49Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah. So you go on a vacation and be crazy and not worry about it.

• 57:52Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 57:53Andrew Wilkinson?

  And I think that's the right. That's the right way to think about it. I think the problem is a lot of people go, I want to be a billionaire or whatever. And it's like, well, what do you really want? It's like, well, I really just want to be able to like, do whatever I want every month. And let's be honest, 50K a month, even 25K a month is enough to do whatever you want for the rest of your life. And so people often will ask me like, oh, what do you, you know, what do you aspire to be? Or who do you admire most? And I think like, money is like, I used to ask like, the athlete thing, the example before of like Olympic athletes. I think like billionaires are like Olympic athletes. But let's be real, Olympic athletes, many of them have no personal life because all they do is train and they destroy their bodies by the time they're 45. Right? And so the people I actually really admire,

• 58:37Andrew Wilkinson?

  I admire those, sorry, I admire, I'm impressed by those people. I love their dedication. I love that they do that. But I don't know if I personally want to work that hard or become an Olympian. I think what I aspire to be is to be the casual tennis player who is always challenging themselves, loves playing, plays with friends, all that kind of stuff. And so if you think about it from that perspective, the people I'm jealous of are the people who have 10 to 25 million dollars in a conservative passive investment. They've paid off their house and they're just set and they have a great balanced lifestyle. I love that kind of stuff. And I don't know if I'm, I think I'm too much of a maniac. I think like I'm too anxious

• 59:17Andrew Wilkinson?

  and I always want to do more and more and more. I have a lot of fun with that. But so it's hard for me to stop. But those are the people that I'm jealous of.

• 59:25Sam Parr?

  There's a lot to unpack there. First of all, if you're jealous, why don't you do that?

• 59:28Andrew Wilkinson?

  That's a good question. I just don't think my personality is, is really suited for that. Right? I always, I always want, as soon as I have like freedom, I fill myself up again. Right? And I'm trying to crack that right now of like, what's driving that? Is that fear? Is it anxiety? Is it just that I love doing this? I don't know.

• 59:48Sam Parr?

  I mean, it's easy. I got the same thing. It's insecurity. Like you want to, it's all, it's rooted in a fear of, am I good enough to do like, I want to come, and it's ego as well. I think it's, it's, I have to prove that I'm better than Bill Ackman or whoever it is like you're at this.

• 1:00:04Andrew Wilkinson?

  I don't, I don't have that. No, I don't, I don't feel that. What I feel is like, it's more. It's more fun, new things. And what I've realized about COVID is like, I hated working this year because all it was, was the work. What I actually love is just like, meeting new people, right? It's like, it's just an excuse to like, meet new people and solve fun problems. I know that sounds very kumbaya, but for me, it's very true. Without, all this work and all this more stuff is meaningless to me if I'm not like, hanging out with cool, interesting people and learning new things and making new friends. That's all I care about. And so like, starting the news business even, like, that was an opportunity for me to be like, oh, who are journalists? I get to, you know, get to know journalists who live in this whole other world outside

• 1:00:48Andrew Wilkinson?

  of business, where they care about totally different things. And I can like nerd out on this new topic and make a whole group of new friends.

• 1:00:55Sam Parr?

  What would happen if you just turned off your phone, or changed your phone number, and not opened your computer ever again, and never read your email, for like, a year? What do you think would happen if you did that and you came back to Tiny?

• 1:01:06Andrew Wilkinson?

  I think I'd be fine, right? We just did this at Tiny. We changed. We don't get monthly reports anymore from the CEOs. So like, there's businesses where I don't, I haven't even talked to the CEO for like, three or four months. I don't even know what their numbers are. And what we've realized is that when you leave people alone and trust them, usually, good things happen. And the more involved we get, the worse the businesses do.

• 1:01:26Sam Parr?

  You have a cool quote here. "Most successful people are just walking anxiety disorders harnessed for productivity." I completely agree. I think there's this, I have, a friend was telling me about this book, I'm gonna read, but basically, they said something like, "A lot of great leaders, who we look up to, have horrible personality disorders, you know, or horrible flaws." So for example, JFK was addicted to a painkiller, because he was, he had a lot of issues, and he was addicted to drugs. Abe Lincoln, he tried to kill himself a couple of times, and he was very suicidal, and he had horrible depression. Same with Theodore Roosevelt, horrible depression.

• 1:02:07Sam Parr?

  His wife and his newborn daughter died on the same day. He had a, he was very sad. And, but, these types of personalities are really good during wartime. They're good because it gives them, they're like a dog that has to chase a car. And they feel comfortable in that, in that mode. And when I see you saying that you have to do the next thing, and also that successful people are a walking anxiety disorder. I agree with you. I think that that is true. But then I also say to myself, then why would I feel bad about chasing things all the time? Um, like, why would I say like, well, the most successful people are just have 10 to 20 years sitting and, and I should feel guilty about wanting to do shit all the time.

• 1:02:51Sam Parr?

  I'm like, well, because I'm just a guy and I'm built to go and do this shit because of how my brain is built. And that is just who I am and I will not feel guilty for that.

• 1:03:01Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, you're like a golden retriever and you like to chase balls and nothing is gonna change that in your brain unless maybe you take like some drug or something like that.

• 1:03:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Andrew Wilkinson?

  So it's like, I don't think it's, I don't know if it's bad, but it's more like the, you know, I envy the people who can slow down. But I don't necessarily know that I want that. I don't know if I could deal with that, right? Like, I love, my ideal day is actually like, meeting a whole bunch of people and looking at a bunch of problems and looking at a bunch of different businesses. As well as family and friends and exercise. But if you take away the work part, I don't really do very well. I kind of need three, four hours of work every single day. And, uh, so I think there's just this natural yin and yang of like, you know, I over get overwhelmed. And then I scale down and then I have white space and then I immediately scale back up because I'm like, ooh, I have white space. I can do more stuff.

• 1:03:51Sam Parr?

  What about, um, this photo booth business?

• 1:03:54Andrew Wilkinson?

  So that, I, I was gonna talk about like someone who I really admire and this is just, this is genius. So I met this guy probably five or six years ago, uh, really interesting local serial entrepreneur. And, um, he has this business that's a passport photo booth, right? And in Victoria, there's a passport office. It's in the mall. There's only one of them. He has the passport photo office right outside, or sorry, the passport photo place right outside the Canadian passport thing. So as people walk in and they go, oh shit, I need a passport photo. He's got the booth right there, right? And I was just like, that is a freaking amazing business. It spits out like, I don't know how much, but you know, a good life for him.

• 1:04:38Andrew Wilkinson?

  And it just creates this base for him. And I was like, that's the ultimate. And this guy, he has like three or four businesses. But he also just like mountain bikes and surfs all the time and seems to like do whatever he wants.

• 1:04:50Sam Parr?

  This guy?

• 1:04:51Andrew Wilkinson?

  This guy, and he's always giving me shit, being like, dude, come surfing with me. Like, why aren't you out enjoying life and stuff? And he really, really interesting guy, but it's just an example of like the kind of people who I'm like, oh, you've like, you've hacked it. You've figured it out. You've got enough and you're always doing enough interesting stuff that you're active. But you also find time to do like whatever the hell you want for three, four hours a day.

• 1:05:12Sam Parr?

  So why do you have a personal scorecard? But what is this?

• 1:05:16Andrew Wilkinson?

  So Chris and I like, I would say COVID like hit us super hard over the winter. We were so busy. We took that company public, like it was just an exhausting year. And we were like, we need a personal scorecard to do. We try and do this like once a month or so, where we just sit down and ask ourselves these questions. And if enough of them are negative, then we'll be like, okay, we gotta change something. So some of them are like, um, you know, when you're with your kids, are you present? Are you taking your kids out for one on ones at least twice a month? Have you had any calls in the last week that you would just not want to do? Have you had more than two hours of calendar scheduled time per day? Are you reading interesting books? Are you proud of your body? You know, just like basic stuff that encompasses your life.

• 1:06:00Andrew Wilkinson?

  And it's been really, really interesting and useful to just force yourself to ask those questions. Because so often the answers are no.

• 1:06:09Sam Parr?

  Looking at this, so whenever you come on, you send me this huge document. This document, I contributed a little bit to it, but a lot of it's yours. It's 2000 words. Did you write this?

• 1:06:18Andrew Wilkinson?

  What the hell? Are you serious?

• 1:06:19Sam Parr?

  It's 18, it's 18 or 19.

• 1:06:22Andrew Wilkinson?

  Jesus, that's crazy.

• 1:06:24Sam Parr?

  Did you write this?

• 1:06:25Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, yeah, I didn't write the research on the Billy of the Week, but I wrote the rest. That's crazy.

• 1:06:31Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so we're gonna save this and we're gonna have to come back and talk about it all because we also asked people on Twitter. So we got a bunch of questions about MetaLab, Billy and MetaLab in India. Of course, we got tons of newsletter questions. We got tons of tax questions, which is kind of an interesting one. And then, of course, we get the same question of like, what would you do if you started now? We'll actually answer them next time. So hopefully, we can record on Tuesday. I don't know if you're available, but your episodes are some of the most popular. This month, we're gonna cross 600,000 downloads and you're a big part of that. Thank you. This is fun. I always love having you here because I feel like when we talk, I'm more of a fan than a co-host.

• 1:07:11Andrew Wilkinson?

  Dude, I love, I just love coming on because it's not like, you guys have such a unique format and it's so awesome to see you guys actually like getting huge, right? Like, I feel like, I remember listening to you guys like two years ago and you were like my only podcast subscription, basically. So it's awesome to see you getting so big. It's wicked.

• 1:07:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah, last week, we were ranked 14. The goal by the end of the year was top 10. I think that we're cracking the code. I think there's a world where when you think of like business podcasts, it'll be like, of course, like Jaco, because he's like up there. It'll be Tim Ferriss, because he's been the best for a while. And then there's Guy Raz. He's been the best for a while. But I think there's a world where we're gonna be up there in a very short amount of time and I'm excited for that. And you're a part of it. So like, as we, as our podcast gets bigger, because you're the most popular guest, so are you.

• 1:08:00Andrew Wilkinson?

  Awesome. No, I love doing these. So fun.

• 1:08:03Sam Parr?

  Well, thank you.

• 1:08:04Andrew Wilkinson?

  Awesome, dude. Well, let's do, yeah, next week, let's do an AMA or whatever.

• 1:08:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah, we'll do one next week.

• 1:08:08Andrew Wilkinson?

  We should get Sean on and do, do a full-on AMA.

• 1:08:11Sam Parr?

  We're gonna, I'm gonna ask him, his baby's just now old enough where maybe he's, he's, he isn't having to do-

• 1:08:17Andrew Wilkinson?

  Getting his life back?

• 1:08:18Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's getting his life back. So we're gonna do it. Sean and I are in Austin on June 3, and then Miami, June 4. And then you want to come and travel and do some shit with us.

• 1:08:26Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, I just, the Canadian border, I've got a mandatory 14-day quarantine, but they're gonna reopen soon. So once it's reopened, I'd love to do a live.

• 1:08:34Sam Parr?

  Great. We already have it all lined up and Daddy HubSpot will foot the bill and we're gonna go.

• 1:08:41Andrew Wilkinson?

  Open bar, alright.

• 1:08:43Sam Parr?

  Thank you, Andrew. This is awesome.

• 1:08:50Speaker 03

  I feel like I could rule the world I know I could be what I want to I put my all in it like no days off On the road, let's travel, never looking back