Live Q&A With My First Million + Andrew Wilkinson (Austin Live Event) (Part 2)

Episode 455: Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) are joined by Andrew Wilkinson (@awilkinson) in Austin, TX for a live MFM event. Here's part 2 of the show... Q&A. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. Check Out Sam's Stuff: * Hampton * Ideation Bootcamp * Copy That Check Out Shaan's Stuff: * Power Writing Course * Daily Newsletter ----- Links: * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. ----- Show Notes: (00:40) - Where will podcasting be in 10 years? (05:25) - What's your best tip for getting better at copywriting? (06:55) - What are the commonalities b/w the top 20% of investments vs. the bottom 20%? (07:50) - Community building in podcasting (11:10) - What can partners do to support founders on their journey? ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

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

• 0:05Speaker 00

  I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off.

• 0:13Sam Parr?

  Nick, at this point, Nick, right?

• 0:15Speaker 02

  Yes, we're ready for questions.

• 0:17Sam Parr?

  Alright, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna do a little Q and A and we'll riff on some of that stuff.

• 0:22Speaker 02

  Fantastic. Let's see, uh, please can I have house lights? And I would like to see hands up for questions for the panelists. I see one here in the center, I see one over here, thank you guys. I'm gonna ask you to raise your hands again and we're gonna try to go through these fast. Please say who your question's for. Uh, my question's for Sam. Uh, where do you think podcasting will be in 10 years, positive or negative?

• 0:47Shaan Puri?

  Questions stress you out.

• 0:48Sam Parr?

  What's man's role in the universe? I don't know, like you wanna have some light discussion? Uh, where will podcasting be? So, when, it was Sean's idea to start our podcast. He came to me and he's like, "I've got this finished episode, will The Hustle publish it? Be our publisher?" And the original version of MFM was not what it is now. It was him interviewing people and it was still good. And then one day, someone didn't show up to studio time that we had already paid for. And he's like, "Oh, just come in and do the thing that we do." And that's kinda how it came to be. And-

• 1:19Shaan Puri?

  By the way, you know that story's not true, right?

• 1:23Sam Parr?

  No.

• 1:23Shaan Puri?

  That's not actually how it came about.

• 1:25Sam Parr?

  I did not know that.

• 1:26Shaan Puri?

  Because I've heard you tell this, I'm like, "Is he telling this?" Because things-

• 1:29Sam Parr?

  I thought a guest bailed.

• 1:30Shaan Puri?

  No, I told you that. What happened was, this is a good time to come clean, right? In front of us and our 500 closest friends. What happened was, The Hustle wasn't promoting the podcast enough. And I was like, "How do I get them to promote it? Maybe I could tell them what's in it for them. Maybe I could make better content. Or maybe I could just invite Sam on the podcast and he will for sure make them promote it." And so, you guys are launching Trends. And I was like, "Hey, come on and let's just bullshit about upcoming trends and startups." I was like, "They have to promote that episode, because it's like, that's their thing." And then I was like, "Let me do that every Friday." And that became the pod.

• 2:09Shaan Puri?

  They call this the prestige.

• 2:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah, you honey potted me. It worked. My point being, when we got into this, I thought it was a, I thought podcasts were stupid. I was like, ah, it's played out. There's too much. And what I've learned, I'm not going to entirely answer your question because the answer is I don't know. But I'm going to try and get around to it. What I've learned is I think it's the most powerful medium that we've ever come across. So like, because when you're, this is, it sounds weird, but when you're in someone's ear, it's like, literally the headphones matter. When you're in someone's ear for like 40 or 50 minutes per session, like three times a week, it's insane how, what people learn about you. It's way better than like an eight minute YouTube video. So where do I think, I don't know, Andrew, where do you think it's going to go? So Andrew owns a podcasting company.

• 2:53Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, I own a company called Supercast and we help like Huberman and other people monetize their podcasts. I was talking to the guy who runs it, actually yesterday, weirdly, and he said that podcasting, there's 62% penetration in the United States. So like 62% of people are aware, but there's only $2 billion in the market. So all podcasting advertising dollars and stuff. And you think about like FM radio and how big that market is, I would just look at FM radio and be like, okay, how big is that? And if every podcast was monetized like FM radio, it's probably that big. So it can probably like 20x, 50x, 100x. I don't know.

• 3:31Sam Parr?

  Would you agree that podcasting is the hardest medium to grow?

• 3:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, for sure. I think that it has the benefit of what you said, that people become really loyal very quickly. But it's the hardest to grow. So you can go on TikTok and you'll get a bunch of followers. But if you said, hey, we're doing a live show in Austin, you're not going to get anybody to show up. In fact, there's funny TikToks of these TikTokers doing meet and greets that no one shows up to because they thought if I have 100,000 followers, for sure, people are going to show up. And so, you know, the, the trust is what matters, not how many fans.

• 4:03Andrew Wilkinson?

  Well, also I'd say it's, I'd argue it's the best medium to have subscribers on because someone will see it in their app and there's no algorithm that's going to get in your way. Whereas on YouTube or something, um, yeah, you've got the same monetization opportunities of doing events and, you know, promotions and ads and all the other stuff. But it's so easy for the algo algo just to go away from you and you forget about the person.

• 4:22Sam Parr?

  The problem with it is unlike blog articles and things like that, you can't fake it. I can fake a blog article and get you to click on it. It's podcasting is very hard for that reason. And I always like joke, but I'm like, the best way to circumvent someone's bullshit detector is to not bullshit. And it's like, the best way to like, get successful in podcasting is to be talented. Or like, be really good. And that's super hard because you don't actually have to be good at a bunch of like blogging and even newsletter writing. You should have to be pretty good, but you can kind of be pretty bad and still succeed. Podcasting is a lot more challenging.

• 4:52Andrew Wilkinson?

  Who else?

• 4:53Speaker 05

  Hey, this question is for Sean and Sam. I'm building a website called AskThePod.com. It's meant to be AI companion for podcasts. So you can listen to the episode and go back, ask questions. What are the books mentioned? What are the links mentioned? So is it okay to add my first million on the platform?

• 5:14Andrew Wilkinson?

  The pitches are later, dude.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  This was your moment.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  Yes, next question. Who's got a question? I want to see one from over here. Hand up, pass the mic down, please.

• 5:23Speaker 06

  Hey, guys. Thanks so much. Love the podcast. My question's for Sam. I'm a copywriter and I'm just wondering what your number one tip is for getting better at writing persuasively and specifically copy.

• 5:32Sam Parr?

  These are some boring questions, guys.

• 5:38Sam Parr?

  So copying word for word other people's work. So what I like to do is I print out like, whether it's a movie script or a great like blog article or a really good piece of copy that I like, and I copy it word for word. And it's almost like learning music. You like play other people's music and you like see the texture of what makes greatness. And then you like steal from a bunch of different places and make your own. And that's what I like to do. Spend six months doing that, one hour every day. You'll get pretty good.

• 6:05Speaker 06

  Awesome. Thanks.

• 6:07Andrew Wilkinson?

  Should we get people to line up, maybe, just so that there's no delay?

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Sure. Yep, I'm open to that. If you have a question, which we would love to hear questions, come and meet me on this side of the stage over here.

• 6:16Andrew Wilkinson?

  I could tell. This guy's got a good question.

• 6:19Speaker 07

  Where have you been all my life, man?

• 6:21Shaan Puri?

  Maryland.

• 6:25Shaan Puri?

  Womp womp.

• 6:28Shaan Puri?

  You're one joke away from getting this next seat on the, on the stage here.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  So, I mean, he said I love the podcast. I hate the podcast. My fault. But, um.

• 6:36Shaan Puri?

  You hate podcasts?

• 6:37Speaker 02

  Huh?

• 6:38Shaan Puri?

  You hate the podcast?

• 6:39Speaker 02

  No, sarcasm.

• 6:40Shaan Puri?

  Oh.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  It's shitty though.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  Can we fuck?

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Hey, excellent question. Come on up. The next one is Austin.

• 6:51Shaan Puri?

  All right. This question's for Andrew. What have you learned? The commonalities of the bottom 20% of investments that you've had versus the top 20%? What differentiates the bottom 20% and top 20%? The biggest that I do.

• 7:04Andrew Wilkinson?

  The biggest, the biggest mistake, I would say over and over and over again, is when I bet on the business, not the jockey, right? So I get really excited about the business and the business model and I go, oh my God, this is a great idea. If I ran this or someone like me ran this, this would be amazing, even if I don't believe in the entrepreneur. And I've realized that betting on the entrepreneur is 100% of the game, right? Because they'll figure it out.

• 7:26Sam Parr?

  But don't you want to have a business that any idiot can run?

• 7:29Andrew Wilkinson?

  Oh, yeah, for sure. But I'm saying like the ones where I've lost, I actually haven't lost that much money in businesses where I'm buying the whole thing. Almost all of those work. It's the ones where I'm doing venture or I'm betting on something or I'm trying to start a business. That's where I lose all my money.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Excellent. Next question.

• 7:47Speaker 08

  Hi, Massey. So I wanted to ask, how do you feel about community building? Obviously, it's become really big for creators. How do you see it in the podcast genre? Sort of that async communication with your fandom and building those super fans?

• 7:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think for podcasts, you don't really want to build a community as such. You want to build a cult. So, so basically you're like, what is it that we believe that not everybody believes? And let's put that on blast. And then a bunch of other people who believe that too are going to be like, finally, someone said it. Or like, finally, they, they do things the way I do things. Like, for most of you here, I would bet, like, hands up if you consider yourself like, I'm a real fan. Like, I truly love the pod. I feel like when you guys are doing the pod, I could be sitting there right with you guys, kind of bullshitting. I bet, like, leave your hands up for a second.

• 8:35Shaan Puri?

  Put your, uh, leave your hand up if the following statement is true.

• 8:40Shaan Puri?

  It's not that you learn that much from us, but it's kind of like you feel like you're hanging out with us, that we are like you and that if we just happened to have met, we would have been friends. So like, most people leave their hand up, right? I kind of confuse them. But it's, that's kind of what you go for. I think most people, when they do content, they're trying to be heavily informational. And they think they're talking down to people. They're educating them and whatnot. What we do is we just talk about stuff we're interested in that we think. And then it just happens to attract a bunch of other people who think the way we do. And that's kind of like, more like a cult than it is, a community of people where we all gather around and serve each other.

• 9:18Andrew Wilkinson?

  Huberman is a great example of that, where like, we were just talking about this backstage, actually. He does these two-hour crazy podcasts on like weird nerdy science stuff. But he makes these subtle little comments about his dog and he seems like a real sweetie and all these things. And people connect with him and he's handsome.

• 9:35Sam Parr?

  What does he look like shirtless?

• 9:36Andrew Wilkinson?

  Ridiculous. Okay, so Huberman invited me over to his house and he goes, "Let's do a sauna and a cold plunge." I've never met him before. And I was traveling with my girlfriend and I was like, "Oh, like Zoe, do you want to come with me and we'll go to Huberman's?" She didn't know who he is and she's like, "No, I'm good." And we get there, he takes his shirt off and he's just shredded. Like you could like shred cheese on his chest, eight-pack, bulging arms, tattoos. And I'm there and I'm just like folding myself into a little ball. And I was like, "Thank God I didn't bring her."

• 10:08Sam Parr?

  We'll do a two or three more, yeah? All right, next question.

• 10:11Speaker 09

  Hey guys, um, my question is, what can partners of founders do to support them on their journey? I see that some of your wives are here, just wondering.

• 10:20Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, let's hand the mic to them. Let's see what they have to say.

• 10:23Sam Parr?

  We don't do it.

• 10:28Sam Parr?

  Everyone, we've gotten the requests where people have like, "Bring your wives on." And we're like, "No, we're not doing that." This is the one thing I have. Don't give it to her. Um, my, uh, I've done a good job of partnering in business and in relationships with people who are very emotionally stable, because I am not. And that, and that has been awesome. And so, basically, like, there's been many, many, many times where I'm laying on the floor, and I say, "Fuck this, I'm out. This sucks, I'm bailing, I'm gonna quit." And she'll just like, sit there and be like, "Okay, okay," and then just like, not really

• 11:10Sam Parr?

  reply, other than like, "All right, you done now?" And that has been like, pretty wonderful, to have someone who's like, emotionally stable, to balance out someone who's pretty neurotic.

• 11:22Shaan Puri?

  For me, I remember when we were gonna, like, I always say, "Oh, we sold Bebo," as if it was like, this easy thing that was for sure gonna happen. What actually happened was, the business wasn't really going the way I wanted, and I was like, "I gotta just do something else," so I said, "I'm gonna try my best to sell this business, but if it doesn't sell, she's gonna shut it down, I don't know what I'm gonna do next, we're gonna just, I'll figure something else out, I just gotta change it up." And I went to my wife, Sonya, who's right here, and I said, "Hey, I'm thinking about doing this," we were pregnant, pregnant with our first, and it was like, "Hey, how do you feel about me either selling this, or more likely, it's just not gonna work out, and we get zero, we have no job, no health insurance, and like, I don't know what I'm gonna do next, but I just kinda failed for five years straight, so that's the track

• 12:05Shaan Puri?

  record I got going here?" And she was like, "Let's go for it," like, no hesitation, was just like, "I believe in you, let's do this," um, like, no, kinda like, go, the go for it, go for the upside, and not worrying about what happens if things go wrong. That really helped me, 'cause I was like, "Oh, cool," like, even if we strike out, I don't have to, I already beat myself up, I'm not gonna get beat up more if things don't go well, and I don't have to keep hedging it's like, "It might not work out."

• 12:31Sam Parr?

  She was like, muttering like, "Broke ass motherfucker."

• 12:38Andrew Wilkinson?

  So I would say, I would say there's three things. So number one, empathy. But empathy without understanding is useless. So like in previous relationships, it would be like, oh my God, you know, this person at work has given me so much trouble and the reason is that they want stock options and that means this or whatever. And the previous partners would glaze over and they'd go, oh babe, that's so hard. But it was like hollow, right? There's no understanding. And so what I found really works is actually not like going into business and like obsessing over it, but just making a bit of an effort to understand the actual problem. And like, you know, for example, like my girlfriend will listen to my first million. Or my girlfriend will read. You mean our girlfriend? Our girlfriend.

• 13:21Andrew Wilkinson?

  Now their girlfriend, exactly. Uh, or so she'll make a bit of effort. Um, and then what was my third thing? Shit, brain fart. I'll remember it later. I'll tell you.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Great. So for those that are in the line, I'm going to walk down. You're very quickly going to say your question. I'll try to do five or 10 real quick. They will not be answering them, but they may give an answer later. First up. What was the reasoning behind going public, taking Tiny public? And what was the biggest lesson learned?

• 13:46Andrew Wilkinson?

  Excellent. Next question.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Question for Andrew. I was curious about your follow-up to your kind of personal episodes about your dip emotionally and what that's been in the last like 12 months, for instance.

• 13:57Andrew Wilkinson?

  Awesome. A few more.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Andrew, how did you start and grow your agency business?

• 14:01Andrew Wilkinson?

  Excellent. Next. Yeah, for the panel, built a few businesses that did millions. Now I find myself complacent, lacking purpose.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, just like to know your answer to that.

• 14:12Andrew Wilkinson?

  Okay. All right. Next one.

• 14:14Speaker 07

  Without turning it into Billy of the week, Andrew's impressions on meeting my boss's boss's boss's boss, Michael Dell this week. The stuff that you didn't put on Twitter already.

• 14:22Andrew Wilkinson?

  Let's pause there.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Yep, we're gonna pause. For those of you that are standing waiting for questions, take a seat and we'll do another round of Q and A soon.

• 14:30Andrew Wilkinson?

  So I think, I think the first one was going public and why. And I would say that going public is, if you're an investor, it represents the greatest opportunity, right? You can raise capital at a great valuation. You can buy it back when it's cheap. You can use your equity to buy businesses. Those are just kind of boring business reasons. To be honest, the reason kind of relates to my dip. So over the last like two or three years, I went through a bit of a funk. And it came from this feeling of like, I don't know why I'm making more money. I don't have a thing, right? So when I started, it was because I was like, okay, I want to wake up whenever I want, and I don't want to have a job. And then it was like, okay, I want to have a sweet house and a car.

• 15:14Andrew Wilkinson?

  And then it was like, okay, I got a sweet house and a car. Now I want to pay off my parents' mortgage. And then after that, and then it was like, okay, I want enough money that I can be fine and stop working. But after that point, which I reached seven or eight years ago, I just didn't know what to do with it. And I tried all these different things, you know, I would go and like, you know, buy wine and fancy cars and go on fancy vacations and all these things. And nothing really made me happy. And so, over the last couple of years, I've been trying to figure that out. And I tweeted about this earlier, and I mentioned this, but I've been really admiring people that do two things. One is, they use money to live life in a very interesting and creative way. So Nick is a great example of that. Nick's a multimillionaire.

• 15:57Andrew Wilkinson?

  He exited his business. He's done very, very well. And he just has an investment portfolio on autopilot. Invested in Tesla really early on, and now he just focuses on meeting interesting people. So that's one piece, and I've done a lot of that, just meeting interesting people. And then two is figuring out how to give it away and actually impact my community. So like I did that local journalism thing I think you guys know about. And going public in Canada, it allows me to actually give my shares to my foundation. So I can actually do that. So it enables that.

• 16:26Sam Parr?

  Andrew did the biggest flex on us when we saw him for dinner the other night. We're like, oh, what have you been doing? And he goes, philanthropy. And we're like, oh, okay. Okay, big guy. And then he didn't pay for dinner.

• 16:41Sam Parr?

  He didn't dedicate, donate to the Sam and Sean Foundation. Yeah, the $500 dinner. And the other question was about Michael Dell. You met Michael Dell this weekend.

• 16:52Andrew Wilkinson?

  Yeah, Michael Dell, he was so... Okay, so like, Michael Dell is like, what you hope capitalism is, right? Like, I met him, and he was the nicest, most down-to-earth, engaged, pleasant guy. And I've met a lot of rich people, I've met billionaires, multi-billionaires. He's worth fifty, so he's worth like, ten x any of the other people. And, he was just really genuine and nice, and I asked him like, "Okay, what are your vices? Like, how are you not like, you have like, a super PAC? Like, some weird libertarian island where you like, hunt and kill people? Are you building like, penis rockets to Mars? Like, what are you doing?" And he just goes, "No, I got a couple nice houses, I've got a jet, I just like to work

• 17:36Andrew Wilkinson?

  and build my business, and I give it all away to my foundation." And I was like, "Okay, that's pretty cool."

• 17:41Shaan Puri?

  He's like the human version of a Dell computer, basically. It's like, the basic computer.

• 17:47Andrew Wilkinson?

  Totally. But like, a nice, a nice computer that works well for you.