#581 Shaan Puri on The Solo-capitalist Starter Pack

Shaan Puri is the Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming & Emerging Markets at Twitch. He previously built Bebo, before ultimately selling the business to Twitch. Shaan is also the host of My First Million, one of the fastest growing business podcasts. In this conversation, we discuss solo-capitalists, copypreneurs, pros/cons of social reach, podcasts, newsletters, rolling funds, Howard Stern, Kanye West, Joe Rogan, Kardashians, and Mr Beast. ======================= Remote makes it easy for companies of all sizes to employ global teams. We take care of international payroll, benefits, taxes, and local compliance, so you can focus on growing your business. Sign up for Remote today and receive 50% off your first employee for the first three months. Check out remote.com/pomp and enter promo code POMP to get started. ======================= Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp =======================

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Sean Perry is the Senior Director of Product for Mobile Gaming and Emerging Markets at Twitch. He previously built Bebo, which ultimately sold the business to Twitch. Sean is also the host of My First Million, one of the fastest growing business podcasts. In this conversation, we discuss solo capitalists, copypreneurs, pros and cons of social reach, podcasts, newsletters, rolling funds, and people like Howard Stern, Kanye West, Joe Rogan, the Kardashians, and Mr. Beast. I really enjoyed this conversation with Sean, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into the episode, though, I want to quickly

• 0:46Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:28Anthony Pompliano?

  employee for the first three months. Check out remote.com/pomp and enter promo code Pomp to get started. Again, remote.com/pomp and enter promo code Pomp to get started. If you're hiring people, you should be using Remote. It's a no-brainer. Next up is BlockFi. BlockFi provides financial products for crypto investors. Those products include a high-yield interest account where you deposit crypto and earn up to 8.6% APY. They have a US dollar loan product where you deposit crypto and they give you dollar loans against your crypto collateral. And they have a crypto exchange with no fees that you can buy and sell cryptocurrencies. BlockFi is also coming out with a Bitcoin Rewards credit card. It's a normal credit card. When you swipe it, you get Bitcoin back rather than cash.

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Back or airline miles. Go to blockfi.com/pomp today to sign up and get on the credit card waitlist. Blockfi.com/pomp. I'm an investor. I'm a very happy user and I think you will be too. So head on over to blockfi.com/pomp today. Last but not least are my friends at Choice. Choice is rebuilding the way you approach retirement, which starts with making it simple to include Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in your savings. More than 20,000 Bitcoiners, myself included, have already signed up to start investing. Whether we are talking about crypto or stocks, Choice lets you trade real Bitcoin and Amazon in the same place, all without paying a dime in capital gains taxes. And if you want to hold your own keys all the way to the moon, you can do that, too. Either way, Choice is on a mission to give you full control over your

• 2:54Anthony Pompliano?

  retirement savings. So head on over to retirewithchoice.com/pomp. Again, that's retirewithchoice.com/pomp and sign up for an account today. And one more thing, you know how I feel about this, but if you have a pro that manages your money, don't take any BS. Choice has tools for them, too. If you want to take back control, put Bitcoin in your retirement account and hold the private keys as well, go to retirewithchoice.com/pomp. It's a no brainer in my opinion. Retirewithchoice.com/pomp. All right, let's get into this episode with Sean. Hope you enjoy this one.

• 3:27Speaker 01

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

• 3:55Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. We've got Sean here. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

• 3:59Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, we're in Miami. You're here for a couple of days. Let's just start with, what do you think about Miami?

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Miami's sweet. I mean, I'm sweating 24/7. So that's not so great. I, I don't know if you've seen these, but hold on, where's the, I don't know if the cameras can see these, but I went into a mall, went into a mall right when I got to Miami. If you're listening to the audio, I just showed my fire, short, short cheetah pants. And I just said, I need the most Miami thing you got. And she showed me something nice. And I was like, no, no, I need too much. I want to look like, you know, the Grand Theft Auto cover. And she's like, oh, okay, come over here. And she gave me these things because we were doing a live show and I wanted to look goofy. But Miami's cool. The energy's great. I mean, it's, it feels like when you go from a corporate office to a startup office and you're like, oh, y'all got snacks? Like, oh, okay, like, this guy's just sleeping here? It's like, yeah, he sleeps there.

• 4:48Anthony Pompliano?

  You don't have to wear a student tie? Like you wear jeans?

• 4:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, that's cool. There's a dog in the office. And so that's what Miami feels like coming from San Francisco. And I hate that because I'm, I'm still living in San Francisco, but it's truly what it feels like. It's like

• 5:00Anthony Pompliano?

  That may be the best description I've heard of Miami so far.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Of like Miami is the startup office and San Francisco is

• 5:07Speaker 02

  You know what I mean, right?

• 5:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  When you go from one to the other.

• 5:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. But I also think there's other elements of truth to that, which is, I continue to tell people that folks who have moved to Miami, one, they're serious. There's nobody who like is here because they want to go to like the YC party, right? Or like get into the latest like product hunt party. It's like, no, they're here and they have a company. They invest like they're, they're real movers in, in terms of what they're doing. The second thing is they have a chip on their shoulder, which is exactly what a startup has, right? Of just like, okay, cool. You guys think this is hype? Like, we're going to make it.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Underdog story. Yeah.

• 5:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And then the third one of my favorite is somebody said to me, Miami will be successful if Keith Roy moved there and doesn't try to retire. Like, either he moved to retire or he moved to work. And obviously he's working, right? So like, if he moved to work, then like Miami will be successful.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  Because there is some gravity in Florida to just like, you know, get you to just chill. So, you know, if you can resist the gravity, it's going to be great. I don't, you know, there, the startup scene here, I feel like there is the great filter because For to pick up and move is no joke, right? Even if you're, you know, 23 years old and you're young and you're single, you still gotta move like it's still

• 6:12Anthony Pompliano?

  So to find a place?

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Still has to find a place. It's a decision. It's not an easy thing to just sort of, it's not, it's not an easy two-way door. It's more of a one-way door. And so I think that filter is a awesome thing if you can get enough momentum and like, you know, through whatever forces, you know, whether it's the mayor or Keith Rabois or a bunch of other people, enough momentum got started, but the casuals weren't going to come because it's too inconvenient to just pick up and move your whole life. So the only people who came are people who are like, all right, I'm down for the cause. You know, like I'm, I'll do this. And so was it a hard decision for you? You moved here.

• 6:45Anthony Pompliano?

  No.

• 6:47Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, look, it was basically, I came, I on a vacation, right? For a couple of days, liked it, came back like a week later. This time I was like, wait, maybe we should actually do this. And then we were here within like four weeks and we just said, let's figure it out.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  And are you going to this Bitcoin, Bitcoin conference is going on right now?

• 7:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  I haven't been to it yet. Have you, do you attend any of it?

• 7:08Anthony Pompliano?

  I went. It's absolute madness.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  So had you gone before to the previous years? So tell me, what's the progression?

• 7:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Think of, uh, in prior years, it was low, single-digit thousands. It's now 10 to 20,000 people. Like big step up.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Some things get ruined when it gets to that, like, right? Sometimes things lose the, the initial core group and it gets too big, too commercial. Is that what's happening or no?

• 7:32Anthony Pompliano?

  I forget who said it last night, but somebody was like, this will be bigger than South by Southwest by next year. And I think that's true.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  I believe that.

• 7:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And it has a lot of the same feelings of kind of early South by Southwest of like, if you didn't go, you kind of have a little bit of FOMO and you knew there was a lot of value, but like the fringe was a little bit of bullshit.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And then like kind of over time, it became more commercialized, whatever. I think that we're not quite there yet, but like you can feel, you know, it's getting closer and closer to that, just law of large numbers. But the quality of the actual like content and the speakers and all this, you gotta remember that if Bitcoin, I think it's at $180,000 Bitcoin price, 50% of the Forbes 400 is gonna come from the Bitcoin and crypto industry.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  At 180K.

• 8:19Anthony Pompliano?

  About, right? I mean, it's hard to tell exactly, whatever, but like about 50% of the 400 richest people in the world are gonna come from one industry, maybe later this year.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Right. And that's gonna be a very different group of wealthy people, right? Like, they're different, that's a different sort of folk, right?

• 8:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, they're, they're anti-establishment by nature, right?

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Some are deep technologists, some are deep like anarchists, and then some are madmen, who just like went all in.

• 8:44Anthony Pompliano?

  And then some actually are just very intelligent macroeconomic thinkers or investors or whatever. So like you get like this very different group of people, but I do think it's interesting when you have that kind of wealth transfer, because also you have to remember that who front ran the whole thing, it's all retail, right? And so it's like, this wasn't a thing where, oh, rich people are just gonna get richer, because that's usually what happens, where you get the concentration wealth and the quality gap. Instead, what we have, this is, none of these people on the list before, right? So it's like, it literally is a wealth transfer in that sense.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Right. This wasn't old and rich get richer, this was the smart, brave and young, crazy, you know, got richer, you know, for the most part. And so I think that that's, that's interesting, that's what, that has all these different knock-on effects. Okay, so what do they like to buy? Maybe they're not as into cars, maybe they'll spend, you know, a million dollars on an NFT and it'll feel very natural to them, or, you know, so on and so on, different types of philanthropy. So I think that's, it's very, I love the grand experiment of what if we took the snow globe and we just shake it up? And now, now some, some different things are happening, and we're gonna see like the second order, third order consequences of a whole new class of wealthy people.

• 9:55Anthony Pompliano?

  I also think there's a much more long-term thinking that goes on here, just given the nature of the asset, right? When you live in a world where the underlying currency gets depreciated, it's obviously financially incentivized for short-term, when you have this idea of Bitcoin and kind of an appreciating purchasing power. If it works, right, which still is an if, but but most likely will. It just makes you think much more long term. And so like, how does that change what people do with their wealth? How does that change philanthropy? How does that change the way they build companies? Like, it's very interesting dynamic that I don't think we've seen yet. And so, you know, so far, so good, but it's different.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Right. You know, the other thing I was thinking about with when you were talking about the Bitcoin conference. So I went here and like, you could see the energy. There's a lot of people here, a lot of excitement, crazy billboards right now for different things. Somebody was walking by and they go, oh, that's that scammy guy from YouTube. There's some guy has like a bus, a bus ad he's doing and he's like, you know.

• 10:49Anthony Pompliano?

  I know exactly who you're talking about.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  So I thought that was, and then somebody else, I think your guy Jordy was saying, he's like, I was backstage at the thing. He's like, dude, this is like my YouTube suggested feed, walking around, you know, talking to each other, which I think is just cool in general. But I had these ideas of like, I think that somebody, so you said this can be bigger than South by Southwest?

• 11:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Bigger. And there's a couple of different ways you can measure that, right? I don't know how big South by Southwest is in terms of attendees.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:16Anthony Pompliano?

  But I think bigger from like an influence standpoint, right?

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Cultural relevance.

• 11:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  So so let's just say, I don't know, Ben, you can check on this, but South by Southwest might be like 70,000, 80,000 people. I don't know, ballpark. I agree with you. It's going to get bigger. I also think there's an opportunity right now. I will, I want these to exist, but I'm not going to like organize these because I hate events. I would never do events. But I've always thought there's a big opportunity to do novel events. So my investor had, in my previous company, he had like this huge like land in wine country in Sonoma. And I was trying to convince him to do North by Northwest and just do the like, some people are tired, Southwest, Southwest too saturated. Cool. Let's just restart with North by Northwest. Let's just do a new one. Or like, I think if the crypto community decided to like fork Burning Man

• 12:04Speaker 02

  and just created like a new version of Burning Man. And instead of, you know, burning the man at the end, it's like, you know, something else Fiat, you know? I think that there's a lot of energy around getting this group of people together that share some beliefs. But in these contexts that are, you know, these like, you know, escapes, right? It's like Burning Man. Like a version of Vegas or Mardi Gras where it's like a place where you can go and it's normal to behave totally differently than you can do day to day. I think society likes that. And I think crypto is just like a very unique. It is a subculture and I'm surprised that there are not more interesting events like a conference is a conference, right? Like you can go and you can sit on the panel, but like we we're all on YouTube every day.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  We all watch the same guys, you know, like if I wanted Michael Saylor to tell me that, you know, Bitcoin is a bank in cyberspace, like I could just click that on YouTube. I don't need to go to a panel to see that. But if somebody created like a more of a life experience like Burning Man, I think that would do well.

• 13:00Anthony Pompliano?

  So, uh, without saying too much, there are things like that. They're super private.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  I see.

• 13:06Anthony Pompliano?

  So people

• 13:07Speaker 02

  I'm just not invited.

• 13:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, well, and even most people in like the crypto Bitcoin world aren't invited. And, uh, the types of people that go are very interesting, right? Like I know of one or two where some of them are like the largest hedge fund managers in the world mixed with like, you know, some Bitcoin billionaire who literally 10 years ago like had no money.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And, and you start to like, look at this and it's like a very interesting dynamic. Uh, the other thing that's, uh, very unique about this space is, uh, let's say that you and I go to a, uh, Wall Street event. I pretty much know who's rich in the room.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 13:41Anthony Pompliano?

  And I probably know how much money they have, right? Right? Cause either the media's covered it or you know who started what firms, you know how much AUM they have. Like, like you can do back of the napkin math and, and, uh, whatever. Tech started to kind of break that up a little bit because like the kid in the hoodie could have built a company that was worth

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Can't underestimate anyone.

• 13:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but like, but still, we know who the founder of, uh, Facebook was. We knew who the founder of Twitter was. Like there was still this like hierarchical structure to it a little bit, but if you weren't in the industry, then you kind of had to be careful.

• 14:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Bitcoin crypto like anybody.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Like literally, you could walk up to somebody and you don't know if they have a couple hundred million dollars of Bitcoin, or like they just bought their first Bitcoin.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:24Anthony Pompliano?

  And the smart people don't tell you, right? And so like, there's this very empowering aspect to that because now all of a sudden it's not about who the person is in terms of like the wealth that they have. It really is more of a who has the best ideas.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Who's the most interesting? And so that'll probably go away, which is unfortunate because over time, people just kind of figure it out. Uh, but right now, like, I think that's one of the most enjoyable parts is like, you just don't know.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. And you can't, uh, and because it didn't take a lot of money to get there. Early is what get, what really gets you there for the most part. And so anybody could have been early and there is a sort of a layer of anonymity around it that if you're, like you said, if you're smart, you choose to do.

• 15:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I have a theory. I don't even know how we would go and figure this out, but, uh, majority of the people who were in what I call wave one or phase one, uh, they actually are not that wealthy.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 15:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Because they bought at, you know, $2, it went to 10, I'm a genius, sell it.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  Right. Five X my money.

• 15:27Anthony Pompliano?

  You fools think this is actually going to work? I'm out. Right? Um, there are a couple of folks who, uh, have held the entire time and done very, very well. But for the most part, I think most people kind of along the way just naturally would sell. Uh, the phase two is actually where I think most of the wealth got generated.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  What are you calling phase two? Like what price points are you thinking there? Is that like a hundred or a thousand? What are you thinking?

• 15:47Anthony Pompliano?

  No, I, I think that there's like, we're now in phase four. So like, think of it as like, you know, I don't know. Sub a hundred dollars, like then there was kind of like a hundred dollars, then a thousand and maybe like now like 10,000 plus, right? Uh, and so like around the, you know, maybe a hundred to a thousand dollar price point. Those are people who are coming in with much more money.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 16:07Anthony Pompliano?

  They were much more sophisticated for the most part. Uh, there's more infrastructure in place, uh, the ability to secure the assets. Like, like it was just a little bit different. Phase three was when like, okay, now like mega wealthy exception were coming in. But that phase two, I think is where you get most of like the crypto. And that type, right?

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's right.

• 16:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, all right. We weren't supposed to talk about any of this.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's talk about what we're actually here to talk about. So there's this rise of individuals and we see individuals versus like corporations, organizations across society. Everything from the media to investing, to building companies, all this stuff. I want to talk about this like confluence or combination of what you and I are interested in, which is basically like, I'm interested in technology and business. I'm interested in investing and I'm interested in content.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:55Anthony Pompliano?

  And when I put all these things together, it falls under this like solo capitalist slash solopreneur.

• 17:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, idea. I don't know if there's a term yet that like, okay, this is the one we're going with.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:07Anthony Pompliano?

  But like, when you say those two terms, I think people know what we're talking about.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Yes, I think people know, some people know what that means now. And what I think is going to be interesting is the more people who do this, the more I guess like of a, of a light is going to be, so there's going to be more innovation. People could be trying different things. The second thing is people are going to start to realize they're going to see it for what it is. For example, it's called solo capitalist. You have four people here. I got, Ben came with me, like we, we have small teams actually with us. So it's not, nobody who says they're solo is ever truly solo. Very rarely will you meet somebody who's truly solo. But it is this mindset of like, do I want to go start a startup? Do I want to start a company or am I the company, right? Or can we just like sort of have like this one, uh, can we like either work?

• 17:54Speaker 02

  We start with a, we start with investing and then we go into either building and making content. Or we start with content and then we go and we say, oh, great. We have this audience. Maybe we should start leveraging that through building businesses and launching products or, um, investing in businesses. And that seems to work. And I think that that's.

• 18:11Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you think about it? Like, is it content first or is it the investing slash like products first?

• 18:17Speaker 02

  So I think it's, uh, neither. I think there's a, so I drew this like diagram. And in the center of it is basically the like, what I call the secret sauce. It's basically, what is it that you bring to the table that you know? Your unique combination of like prior experience, knowledge, passion and interest, whatever. So for you, it's like, you worked at tech companies, you worked at Facebook, or at Snap, wherever. And so you have the like tech growth, kind of like knowledge, network effect businesses, uh, knowledge. And then you had, uh, an interest or a passion in, let's say crypto. And then you had a skill at being able to, you had the gift of gab, right? So you can actually like create content.

• 18:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Bullshit with the best of them.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  Exactly, professional bullshitter. Okay, great. So, um, so you know, there's a lot of people who work in tech, not all of them are passionate about crypto. And we're like brave enough to sort of like be out there in the forefront before it was cool. And then also like of those, how many can actually create consistently entertaining content? Very few. So you end up competing in these like N of one, like arenas where it's like, well, there's not that many people I'm even competing with. Usually, uh, like single digits of serious players. So that's the secret sauce. Then from there, you just pick one of the directions to start. I like to start with content because I think that, uh, assets are the most valuable thing. I think audience is a great asset. So, you know, it is like, we launched a course, uh, a few days ago.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  I tweeted out one tweet that said, hey, I'm going to do this course on power writing. I was basically just like, you know, like some people write to express themselves. Some people write to impress other people. I write to get a result. Like if I write something, I'm trying to go viral. I'm trying to get somebody to reply to my email. I'm trying to get somebody to buy on my website. And so like, that's why I write, I want to write to get a result. And I've learned a bunch of tips on that. One tweet has generated a course that's going to do over six, you know, it's going to do six figures off of one tweet. How do you do that? Well, because I have this audience asset, which is like a group of people who like, listen and trust me. And so I think that that's the, for me, I'm like, that's the asset you want to keep pumping into through content usually.

• 20:16Anthony Pompliano?

  So basically.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Use that for everything else.

• 20:18Anthony Pompliano?

  You've basically gone out and you've found the customers, right? And I put customers kind of in air quotes of like, the audience is subscribing to you, to your philosophy, to your ideas. And they want more Sean. What you're doing is you're figuring out, okay, what are all the different ways that I can interact with them from building software products to a course to hey, just come meet up and like, let's hang out and have fun. Whatever the the interactions are, the touchpoints, having the audience is actually the kind of key first step to be able to do everything else.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  So like in physics, you have potential energy and you turn that into kinetic energy, right? A ball at the top of the ramp, it's only potential energy, zero kinetic. As soon as it starts to roll, all that potential becomes kinetic. That's how I think about audience. Audience is the potential energy. And one thing I would just kind of, my edit to what you just said is it's not that they want more Sean. They want more of something in their life. So like, let's say they want more money in their life. And so they might decide to co-invest with me through my rolling fund into startups. Or they want more, they want to be a better writer. They want to themselves go viral or get more results or, you know, like have emails that people actually reply to, cold emails or whatnot.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Okay, well, so they want certain results. They want more certainty on what to do in life. So that's why they listen to, you know, the podcast, try to get some ideas or get some advice on things. So I think people have these, the customer has some needs. And I just, I go and I pre-build a trust and rapport with that audience by just giving them free value, free content. And if they like it, they stick around. And then when they have a need, I basically build a product for it. So it's like, I built a Chrome extension. That's just like a to-do list of one thing, because that's how I run my day. I have one, one big thing I do every day. And so I built a Chrome extension for that, and that helps people who wanted that. I'll do a paid newsletter, I'll do a rolling fund, I'll do, you know, so I'll create all these different products to try to see, can I, can I give the same batch of customers like more value?

• 22:14Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, let's talk about the content first, and then we'll get into some of the other stuff. From a content perspective, how do you think about the different platforms and like where you focus your time versus not even spending a single second, right? There's so many platforms to choose from. Where do you focus and like, why did you choose those platforms?

• 22:29Speaker 02

  So I learned this from you, actually. I asked you, I think, early, or the first podcast we did. I was like, so how did you, how did you build this pomp character? You know, like, how'd you build this guy? And you were, you were like, well, like, you know, it's obviously organically evolved, but like, I did have a few things that I identified. You were like,

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Twitter. I'm gonna go for Twitter because Twitter has this retweet button. So if I want my message to spread like this platform has that has a spread button like built in. And so that's pretty powerful. So let me like, let me use that to like grow the top of the top of the funnel. And then, you know, so and it's like, well, should I do 10 platforms at once? Like, well, no, probably not. You should probably like build one platform first focus and then transfer. So I basically just did the same thing. So when I think after after that podcast, I was like, all right, I'm gonna build my Twitter up. I think I might have had 20,000 followers at that time.

• 23:24Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you have today?

• 23:25Speaker 02

  140, 150.

• 23:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  So I added like 100,000 followers in four months. And so I was like, in the next three, four months, I'm gonna add 100,000 followers. And I did it. And so, so I was like, let me go, if I go all in on this, can I get to that top of the funnel? So that's the first thing I did. And that helped grow the podcast. So then I was able to like transfer that that energy and say, all right, now I'm gonna build this podcast up. And so the podcast is, I think, better because it's a much more trusted relationship.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  You know, when I sold my last company, I thought about, all right, what's like, do I just do this again? Like, I got off the roller coaster. All right. Do I just like wait in line and go again? Like, that seems weird. Or do I like, is there other other rides at this amusement park? That that seemed fun. And the one I thought seemed the most fun was, I don't know about you, but like, I had always had these books and podcasts that like had really like shifted me, like shaped my life, like really shaped my thinking. Or like just kept me entertained when I was bored every day on my commute or whatever. And so I thought, man, if I could just be in, you know, in a million people's ears every morning, that would be something. And so I just made that my goal. How do I get into a million people's ears every morning?

• 24:34Speaker 02

  And then like, you know, started with zero and then it's built up. And so like now, I think we're at like, we'll do like 650,000 downloads a month right now. And so it's like, and it's grown like 30, 30%, 30 to 40% a month. And so, so I think we'll get to, you know, like, it'll take time, but like, I think I'll get to that million people a day that that listen, that's ambitious, but like, Give me, give me five, 10 years and I'll get there.

• 24:59Anthony Pompliano?

  There's something very intimate, uh, and I don't have it fully fleshed out yet, but like somebody puts headphones in and you're speaking into their ear. Like that is a very intimate experience, right? If you, if I was to like walk up to you in the middle of the sidewalk, yeah, that'd be weird, right? Like you'd be like, ah dude, stay away from me, right?

• 25:15Speaker 02

  I like you, but we're not like that, you know?

• 25:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so like, if you think about, uh, kind of what else does that happen, right? Somebody's telling you a secret, uh, it's at a bar or a club where it's loud, it's very intimate. Like i- i- it's this unique thing.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Next best thing to kissing, right?

• 25:29Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, kind of.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  What's the only thing more intimate than that?

• 25:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Right.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  Just giving you one on the lips.

• 25:33Anthony Pompliano?

  And in society, from a society's perspective, this is like acceptable, right? You can, you can do it to a million people a day and no one gets, no one gets weirded out. And then, so I, I do think that there's this element of podcast that, uh, one is passive listening, right? In terms of, I don't have to do anything. Uh, two is, um, I don't want to say who it is, but, uh, somebody told me that clubhouse for them, uh, just in terms of audio. So it wasn't necessarily a clubhouse specific, but, but audio, uh, was really helpful for them because they just had a child.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 26:00Anthony Pompliano?

  And so they were taking care of the child. It was a hands-free experience, right? Um, and so they were able to just kind of listen, participate, whatever. And so I do think podcasts are a very unique thing. What's hard about podcasts is, uh, you can definitely convince people, hey, uh, there's a product or go here or do whatever. But the actual action of doing it's very different than anywhere else on the internet. On Twitter, you put out a tweet, I can just click the link, right? I'm already in the mode of, I got my hands on a keyboard, right? Like, okay, I can go ahead and tap. Podcasts, I have to stop listening.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:32Anthony Pompliano?

  I have to go somewhere and take an action. It's a much, much different, uh, experience. And also the, uh, the, the action of listening is different, right? In terms of YouTube feeds me the video, right? It says, hey, recommendation, uh, if you send me an email, you feed it into my inbox. With a podcast, I basically have to go to your podcast feed, I have to click play. And that intentional action is a much higher bar, I think, to get people coming back over and over and over again than any other platform.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  It's not easy to share. If I share with somebody a podcast, it's like, hey, man, got, got an hour to listen? Like Scotty, you know, like that's a, what kind of friend am I? And so I think that's why podcasts are really, really hard to grow, but it's also quite defensible. When you have a big audience, it's good. If I could go back, I would have skipped podcasting, gone straight to YouTube. I think you're, you're more YouTube centric, um, and email centric, I think than, than, than we are, but. I would say YouTube is better because videos even more trust building than audio. You get the audio anyways and you get their face and people's faces is like, you know, the next kind of more familiar, most familiar thing that you get used to. So I think, I think video would have been better and I think a lot of people use YouTube sometimes like, sometimes I'm watching, sometimes it's in the background, sometimes it's on the screen,

• 27:44Speaker 02

  second screen that I'm not paying attention to. And so I was talking to, I was talking to Emmett, who's the CEO of Twitch where they acquired my company. And he, we were like, kind of like writing the like annual strategy letter. Or I was reading the annual strategy, kind of like memo in the company. And one thing I wrote was like, I just left a note, I said, I think the data shows that a lot of people use Twitch as like a second screen experience. And at first team was like, oh no, is this bad? If we're not the four, if we're not the tab that they're staring at the whole time, it's like, well, no, they actually wanted to like pop in, pop out, listen in the background while they're doing something else. Like it's like why Friends or The Office is so popular on Netflix is because it's, it's mindless. I don't even have to watch it.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  I'm so, I've already seen it. I was already so familiar that I can just have it on. I can have noise in the house while I'm doing other things. And so I said, every investor cares about TAM, the total addressable market. I said, the TAM of partial attention is bigger than the TAM of full attention. And actually like, there's a whole group of products that should be going after partial attention because it's actually a bigger market. There's more available sites and there's like less good options for it. And I think Clubhouse, one of the reasons it rose to its initial hype was it was a partial attention social network. You didn't have to like be looking at the screen and using your hand to like navigate. You could just be doing other things.

• 29:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Rich from Lightspeed, which he's a Tim T analyst and basically spends all day thinking about this stuff. He once told me this, and I think it's probably the best way to think about all of the different platforms. He said, most people think of like the streaming wars, right? It's Spotify versus iTunes versus whoever. They think of the video platforms. It's Netflix versus Hulu versus, you know, whatever. They think of the social networks. It's Facebook and Instagram versus Twitter. And when you start to think about that, like, okay, those are like vertically related. But he was like, that's the wrong framework. The right framework is it's a war of attention.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And Spotify is actually competing with Netflix, which is competing with Twitter, right?

• 29:53Speaker 02

  And Fortnite.

• 29:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, in a game. And I mean, you can go through it like literally, there's probably hundreds of platforms. And the way to think about it now, I think, is I just look at like, how much time do I spend on my phone?

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 30:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? I'm scared of my computer time spent, but on my phone, I know I spend anywhere given the week between four to five hours a day on my phone. And that's phone calls, that's text message, platforms, all this stuff. So let's just say that every person-

• 30:18Speaker 02

  Four to five hours is pretty good. That's, that's, that's low.

• 30:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that low?

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's low.

• 30:20Anthony Pompliano?

  That's why I don't want to look at my computer. I try to get off my, off my phone. But when you look at that, and by the way, we should make sure that we cut this clip and we're going to send it to Polina so that she thinks that I don't spend that much time on my phone.

• 30:34Anthony Pompliano?

  But no, when you think of it, so let's say the average person spends five hours. I'm making this up. If you have an hour podcast, you're asking for 20% of someone's time a day. And maybe that person is a sophisticated podcast listener, so they're going to put on two XP. So now you have 30 minutes, right? Like, that is a huge ask to get them to do that. And then if you're doing it two or three times a week, like, you know, nearly impossible.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 30:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And so I think that like, when you look at all the platforms, you start to then actually want to almost prioritize, what are the passive consumption platforms, right? Like, if I can get you to listen to me in the background while you're at work, that's a way bigger advantage for me.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  We're double using that hour.

• 31:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes, then like, okay, you have to sit down and read this 20 minute email.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 31:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, good luck, right?

• 31:19Speaker 02

  So the, the best, there's two analogies I've heard about this. One is from the Chinese social networks. They talked about their product, I think it was the, I think it was the parent company of TikTok, ByteDance, maybe it was like the WeChat company or whatever. But they basically just said, uh, somebody had come into a, a meeting and they'd presented a, um, like a competitor, like landscape, like you were talking about, like, oh, you know, they could use us or they could use, you know, this other, this other product at the same time. We both do video. And they were, you know, they were like, no, this is not the way to think about it. They just mapped out a customer's day. So, okay, if a person wakes up at 7:00 AM. What do they use? What technology do they use between seven to seven fifteen? How do we build a product that's going to fill the while you're brushing your teeth time?

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Okay, then how do we get to the next? And so they just mapped out every hour of the every waking hour of someone's day? And it sounds like kind of like big evil tech, but hey, look, this is what they do. They're making slot machines. They're trying to like get you to keep pulling the lever. Is how do we, how do we fill up every hour, you know, for every minute of your day, you're waiting in line at Starbucks? Well, what should be a product that you should use during that time versus when you're on your commute versus when you're at work versus whatever? And then they wanted to build products along that because they're like this time is the scarce asset. It's the, you know, that's the unchanging thing. We all have the, you know, just the same amount of time in a day. So that's one thing I'd heard. The second was from Sarah Tavel from Benchmark. She said, she put this blog post, I was like, imagine a jar and you're going to fill the jar.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  And so you have these like big rocks you put in first and the big rocks are things like, you know, like maybe the time you're spending on email or Facebook or whatever. And then, and then you kind of have like, oh, well, that, you know, that's a Netflix. It's like an hour experience. Then you have like, I'm in line and I'm going to just, you know, send a quick text message. So then you fill in kind of like, you know, the, the smaller pebbles and you put those in and then you have the sand and that's like the passive experience and stuff you could just, it'll fill in all the gaps. So if you want to fill the jar, you got to know which type of product are you building? Is it a big rock, a small pebble, or is it sand? And then that's, that's the way a consumer will sort of like fill up their time.

• 33:22Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about that from the content platform, you said Twitter first podcast. Is there another platform or is that just YouTube and that and you would have skipped the podcast and gone to YouTube?

• 33:34Speaker 02

  So we dabble. So, so I would go to YouTube now, but I think that now that I've worked inside of these big companies, I'm like, oh, this is how this works. Somebody at the top's like, hey, Tik Tok's big. We need TikTok inside YouTube. We'll call it shorts, you know? Okay, yeah, we're gonna build it. TikTok keeps growing. TikTok keeps growing. They reported a new number. Oh, my God. The analyst says it's eating YouTube's lunch. Hey, guys, where's that shorts product? Get that shorts product out there. They get it out there. Okay, numbers look okay. Cool. Put it in the feed. Put it bigger in the middle of the feed. Every time you scroll three times, show it again. And like, there's product managers that are trying to get shorts views up, right? Or stories. Snapchat's rising. Hey, Instagram, Facebook, we need stories.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Put stories in. Okay, cool. It's good. Put it at the top, you know, like, send a notification about it.

• 34:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Make it blink.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  Make it blink. Exactly. Put a red flashing thing around it. And so, you know, like, I think, so as a content creator, you're like, all right, if that's the game, what's your new thing? All right, I'm gonna make some optimized content for that.

• 34:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, and, and to be clear, they're boosting the distribution early on because they're trying to tell the creators, you get reach here. Yeah, they're, they're.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  There's a market.

• 34:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Incentivizing you.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Right? Surge pricing, and I'm an Uber driver, and they're saying if you go over here, you're gonna get double rates. All right, I'll go over there. And then that changes, and you're like, oh, shit. The double rate thing ended. I gotta go back over where I wanted to be anyways. But for a moment in time, there's like this, like, it's the money ball. There, there's an extra point you can get by using these platforms. So I've been dabbling with that right now, which is, what are the things where I take the same amount of effort, or maybe even sometimes less effort, making some content, and get double or triple exposure, either because the platform's juicing it, or a topic is just like, dude, every time I talk about Bitcoin, it just gets bigger. Or like, if I say some conservative thing, you know, it goes bigger. And like, you don't want to totally sell out, but it's interesting to observe which of the things you talk about get much more play than the other thing you're equally interested in.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  That just like, seems like the market is not as interested in.

• 35:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you use that to inform the content? Like, do you actively sit down and you're like, okay, every day I needed to have one tweet about Bitcoin because that's what works and seems to get the most kind of distribution? Or is it more so just something that kind of you have a feel for, and it's less data-driven?

• 35:50Speaker 02

  It's more like, it's more, you observe it, you're like, okay, there's a truth, I accept it. I'm not, I don't have to act on it. I know a lot of people, I have good friends that are like, dude, Twitter threads work. I'm gonna do, I'm gonna publish four a week. I've noticed that any more than fours is not optimal. And I'm gonna publish them all at 9:00 AM. So now I wake up at 7:00 and I do the thing. And I'm like, That's cool, but that would suck the fun out of this for me. So maybe I'm leaving stuff on the table by not doing that, not optimizing it, using all the tools at my disposal. But I need this to be fun because if it's not fun, I'm not going to keep doing it. And I know that like in the long run, the only thing that really works is if I stick with this for a certain amount of time.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  And so I think that's like a pretty important like realization, which is like, most people burn out doing this. Who are the people that don't burn out? They're the people that they talk about what's interesting to them. They're not trying to just guess what the audience wants. And then secondly, they do it in a schedule that like is is sustainable for them. And like, it depends on your level of discipline. You're like, you know, you're an army guy. You have discipline. I know you wake up every morning and you write the newsletter. And that's hard. Like, I could not do what you do, because I'm like a lazy bastard who like, you know, just.

• 37:01Anthony Pompliano?

  But you're also on the West Coast. It's harder.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  It is harder, but like.

• 37:04Anthony Pompliano?

  I do. I think about this a lot. I do think that Ben Thompson is in Asia, right? Yeah. So like, I do think there's something about either living in the eastern part of the world.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Move to Greenland or something.

• 37:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And you basically get a write during the day and then you your night is the morning, East Coast. Or you gotta be on the East Coast. I think it'd be very, very difficult to write daily and publish morning time, West Coast and still get the same results. I don't know why I think that, but like that for some reason feels right.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  Right. I had a paid newsletter. That was a daily newsletter that was.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  It was. It was an interesting premise. It wasn't publishing like analysis or information. I basically had just said, hey, this is called All Access. Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do these three projects. I'm gonna launch a fund from zero. I'm gonna raise some money. If you want to learn how raising money works, you can follow along. I'm gonna build an e-commerce project. If you want to see how you come up with that, how you get to a hundred thousand in monthly sales for that, I'm gonna show you that. I said, I'm not gonna teach you because like, I don't know if you, I'm not gonna like turn this into content. Like, I'm not gonna turn this into like a you can do it. I'm just gonna show you how I do it. So it's like you're getting to sit next to me at my desk. I'm just gonna tell you what I did that day. And then if you learn from that, or you think you could do it, great. And that thing got to $50,000 a month of paid kind of like revenue, which is.

• 38:24Anthony Pompliano?

  How much was it a month?

• 38:25Speaker 02

  Two, what was it? $200 a month?

• 38:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Pretty high.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Hundred fifty to $200 a month. Yeah, because it was like, you know. You're gonna learn things that like, if you did that, if you implemented them would would be high business value for you was the was the idea. And, um, and so I was doing it, but I was only able to last like three months doing it. And then I was like, okay, like, you know, I turned off a 50,000 a month income stream from this paid newsletter, which my mom and anybody else was like, just sit down and write it. It's just writing. That's easy. It's free. You know, like,

• 38:55Anthony Pompliano?

  You write it, mom.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And she was like, tell me what to say. No, but that was, you know, I learned that wasn't sustainable for me.

• 39:03Anthony Pompliano?

  In that situation, why not just hire one person and basically just get on a call with them for 20 minutes, tell what you did that day, then they write it.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I could have done that. The problem with the main problem with that one is actually that it wasn't just the writing. That was like my, my big mistake. Uh, I was committing to starting these three things. So I had to like, in addition to my existing set of businesses I have, because they didn't want to hear about those. Cause it's like, well, it's already working. I want to, I'm at the starting line. So show me at the starting line how you do things. So I committed to starting three new things on top of maintaining the set I already do. That was just too much for me. Uh, but if it was more like, hey, what did I do today? Well, you know, I could do that, but that content might not have been, you know, worth the, the price tag, I guess.

• 39:44Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So, uh, we're starting to get into like, let's call it the solo capitalist, like starter pack, right? You ever seen the meme of like, you know, the Miami starter pack or whatever. So

• 39:52Speaker 02

  What is in the Miami starter pack, by the way? It's a

• 39:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, pretty much everything you would expect.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  Camp membership.

• 39:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Barry's Boot Camp. You gotta go to Carbone, you know, 11 shout out to those guys, right? Uh, you gotta have some sort of like slides.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  11 thing real quick. My friend was telling me about this. He goes, dude, there's like,

• 40:10Anthony Pompliano?

  They're gonna be so happy we're talking about this on the podcast.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Sponsor me. I, um, I, I wanna, but I've never been, but my friend was telling me, he goes, he goes, dude, it's genius. He goes, there's basically a strip club, but it's not seen as a strip club. He's like, the guys who started this are like geniuses. And he's like, I don't know how they did it, but it's like, it's kind of like a restaurant you go to, and I've never been. So tell me where I'm wrong. But he's like, it's a restaurant you go to, and it's kind of got like elements of a restaurant and a strip club and a bar, but it's not, he's like, the perception is not like, you're going to a strip club. It's not like a seedy thing. Is that true? Is that an accurate description?

• 40:42Anthony Pompliano?

  So I've never

• 40:43Speaker 02

  From personal experience?

• 40:44Anthony Pompliano?

  I've never gone.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 40:45Anthony Pompliano?

  I do know one of the guys who owns the place. He is an incredible human in terms of very forward thinking, a great entrepreneur. Actually started from a real estate standpoint. And I think that that's the big difference is most people that own strip clubs, certain type of person, right? Like, like if you wake up in the morning, you're like, I'm gonna start a strip club today.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Show me a picture and I'd be like, that's the kind of guy.

• 41:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Right. Originalization, I'm sure there's some nice ones too, but like, you know, you get the point. Most people who own clubs, also a specific type of person.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? When you come at it from a business and entrepreneurship and like, hey, I'm a real estate developer. And oh, by the way, there's happens to be this big warehouse or this like old club that was here. Like, we should do something. I think that you just come at it from a very different, like mindset. You, you, you think of it more of as a business. And so you get out of some of the, maybe the potholes of like those other industries. And you start to think about it from a pure like revenue generation standpoint. And I'm serving a customer and that customer is coming for a certain type of experience, all that stuff. So with all that said.

• 41:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, sorry.

• 41:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I direction, well, I directionally know, or I've heard some of the numbers and stuff like that. I think it's one of the highest grossing clubs in the world.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  That's what I heard. Yeah.

• 42:04Anthony Pompliano?

  And so you just have to one respect, like building anything is hard. Building in that kind of cutthroat industry is even harder.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think they last on average two years, a club does, and then it like turns over.

• 42:18Anthony Pompliano?

  I've heard that the average club life is shorter than the average NFL players career. Right? Like, think about that for a second. Like, we all know that NFL players don't last that long, right? So clubs last even shorter than that. And so I think that like, you just have to look at like, what is the mentality of the person who started something like that? Right. And it's just pure business, right? And so I think like, that's a very unique thing and that's why it's been so successful. But going back to

• 42:48Speaker 02

  Well, there is a segue, which is

• 42:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  There is a, we were talking about the solo capitalist sort of starter pack or solo capitalist playbook. And I think there's, what we were talking about before the pod started rolling and like most podcasts, the best conversation happens right before and right after. We were talking about, was there an established playbook? Are we kind of in the formation creation phase? And then like, to what extent do you, like, the people who are having success, are they having success because they actually came from a unique background? So their point of view was like, I was giving, I'll give you this example. We'll jump to the, to this point and then we can go back to wherever the starting point. Most people who were in the like content creation phase, let's say 10, 15 years ago, take somebody like Tim Ferriss. Love Tim Ferriss, loved his books, met him, great guy.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  He wrote books. That was like the playbook. You are like, you have, you know, you have a bunch of knowledge, insight, wisdom. He started a blog and like used it basically, he started a blog like I think only nine months before his book came out. It was like to promote the book. And like ironically, a blog is a much better business than a book. But like at the time, the like, the sort of like-

• 43:54Anthony Pompliano?

  The buffet of opportunity to monetize an audience was not that-

• 43:58Speaker 02

  It was a three course meal, right? And now it is more like a buffet where, you know, it's like a Vegas buffet where we have all these options. You could do a Substack paid newsletter, you could do, you know, like Patreon, you could do all these, raise a fund, whatever. Like Tim Ferriss invested, but he just invested, I think his own capital and did well, but like he could have had, you know, a-

• 44:16Anthony Pompliano?

  He did well because he had what I'll call insider access, right? He was in this circle in Silicon Valley, he was able to get in the best deals.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Hey, you should invest in Uber, you know?

• 44:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Very good call to get, right? But he was able to build this fantastic platform and then ultimately able to monetize it. But outlier, not kind of what every one of that era did. Now it's becoming much more, uh, kind of simple and much more understood in order how to do this.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  And so I guess what I'm seeing now is that people from different backgrounds are coming in. And then because they came from such a different background, whether they're an athlete who starts creating a bunch of content, uh, right? Like Pat McAfee show or something like that, or they're, you know, a business person. Like for most business people to go from like, I know for me, it felt weird to be like, oh, I'm the CEO of a company. We raised, you know, $16 million and we built this team with this office. Hey, I'm gonna go do a podcast. Like, it sounds like, oh, wow, like, you know, step down much and like, but when you go into that, you're gonna come in with this totally different mindset. First, like, different level of ambition, different like set of skills and knowledge that like, hey, why don't we,

• 45:30Speaker 02

  why don't we raise a fund off this audience rather than just charging them for tickets to a event that we throw or $9 for my book. Like, so for example, we had a podcast and we were doing, I think, at that time, we had made like 75K in ad revenue over like the nine months or something. Not like, nothing to write home about, but it was cool. Paid for, you know, some fun stuff. So if I made 75K off that, in that same time, audience didn't change size, but I launched my rolling fund. Rolling fund is now a $4 million a year pool of capital for me to deploy into startups. And the only reason it stopped at four is because there's a cap of how many investors you can take and we hit the cap like right away. You could take only like 99 accredited investors. And so that was,

• 46:12Speaker 02

  for me, a very interesting thing to see. Oh, man, if I just used the traditional playbook every other podcast you're using, which is, I like to read ads out loud, then I was only going to be capped at 75K of total, you know, potential value. And then just by bringing in a different perspective, because, you know, my previous background of angel investing, I was able to generate 4 million of annual, you know, investment commitments. That was way better than the ad model, right? So I guess that's like an example of like, my version of 11, right? Coming in from a different point of view and therefore getting a very different result.

• 46:45Anthony Pompliano?

  I also think most of the musicians, athletes and content creators of the past, take out the outliers, but most of them were athletes, musicians and content creators. They did not have the business acumen. And so therefore, there was a lot of managers, business folks, they kind of had to surround themselves with the right people because that just wasn't their skill set. And also, I don't think they enjoyed it, right? I think they really, really wanted to spend their time on their craft, whatever the thing was they were interested in. Business was a second thing. I think what all these platforms have empowered is the exact opposite now. Now you have business people showing up being like, wait, I can have, I can have an audience.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:25Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't need a business manager. I am the manager, right? And oh, by the way, I have the audience. I have this, whatever. And so you, you start to see some really, really unique things that are happening where it's just again, almost an outsider to the content creation world is coming in, but they have the skillset of business.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Chamath is like a billionaire with a podcast now, right? Every Friday he's, you know, you couldn't get a meeting with this guy, but now every Friday he's going to go sit down. He's going to record a podcast. He's having fun, but also he's like, oh, it's good. I can have my own audience. I don't have to go do a CNBC appearance to get my message out there, right? I could just, we, we get a bigger audience than the CNBC nightly like show would get. So now I own this, we can like, they, they don't, they don't run ads on it. But for them, it's like a, an asset that they, they would have. You wouldn't normally have had a billionaire blogger, right? Like, you know, I guess Mark Cuban was kind of like an outlier doing that. But there, for the most part, that wasn't part of, that wasn't the background of who came into content creation. It was like, more like those who can't do the other shit, make content. And now everybody's in this game.

• 48:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Well, in, in this point, is it a necessity? Do you have to do it?

• 48:29Speaker 02

  I don't think you have to do it. Um, you know, we both probably have a bunch of friends that have Twitter egg profiles. And they're like some of the most successful investors or whatever. They don't want to play that game, but I think what it did was it created new paths to win. So it's, you know, it created, you know, the map now has like other routes you can take to get to the same end outcomes. You didn't have to have, be an insider because you create an audience. Now people come to you, you know? So, so you get different options.

• 48:56Anthony Pompliano?

  What other kind of solo capitalist starter pack items are you interested in, right? So you got the content, uh, check to the newsletter, check about podcasts, check about YouTube. What else in that, uh, are you kind of spending time thinking about?

• 49:09Speaker 02

  So I think you go, I think you, you start with that secret sauce. What am I interested in? Then you create content on one of the many platforms, whichever one works for you. If your voice is annoying to listen to, don't do podcasts, right?

• 49:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Nobody likes their own voice.

• 49:20Speaker 02

  I hate my own voice.

• 49:21Anthony Pompliano?

  It, it's a scientific fact.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  There's something about listening to it, right?

• 49:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. There, there's, I, I forget exactly what it is. There's been studies. If you hear your own voice, you're like, that is a weird voice.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I feel that for sure.

• 49:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, do you think Morgan Freeman thinks that?

• 49:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 49:38Speaker 02

  He's like, can we hire a professional here? Do you listen to this? That's a great idea. That's a great one. So you you picked the platform. Great. Now what? So I would say like, you go through the options. So I'll I'll give you kind of like what I see as pretty interesting ways that a solo capitalist can go from what used to be like, you do it for free because it's just like you like creating content as a hobby to like, wow, I'm making like, I made, I replaced my job income. I can make a hundred thousand dollars doing this. And then it gets to like, I'm a millionaire, right? Like Ben Thompson, he's got a paid newsletter, he's making a few million dollars a year, just writing his paid newsletter. And now I think the the size of the prize is going up. I think you're going to see, you know, billionaire content creators.

• 50:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Because they're billionaires and they go into content creation or because they're content creators who become billionaires?

• 50:29Speaker 02

  And so like, I think it's hard. I don't, I wouldn't say it's the easiest way to become a billionaire in the same way that like, you know, for athletes, there's

• 50:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Who's the closest, do we think?

• 50:38Speaker 02

  So let's run through some possibilities.

• 50:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  I think that the people who you would think like a Mr. Beast, who's like, you know, one of the largest YouTubers and seems to be making moves here and there. I don't think it's going to be them. Why not? Why not them?

• 50:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  I don't think so, because I think that it depends, it's not just about size of audience. And so you have YouTube where there's a different king every, you know, sort of like few years. Same thing happens on Twitch. Ninja is the best. And then Tifu is the best. And then now there's like new people who are the best. So there's this like rotation that happens as far as like, as far as that goes. The second thing is, who has the ambition to do it? So I know that those guys, you know, through Knight Media, they're investing, they're doing different things. That's good. But I think they have to have the playbook. And so I think Joe Rogan either will get there or could get there. So single person.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  You know, sold the media rights to the podcast for reported, you know, a hundred million dollars. I don't know if that's a year or that was a lump sum.

• 51:40Anthony Pompliano?

  I think they didn't say on purpose.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Cause they want us all guessing.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. But I would believe that he can get a hundred million dollars per year doing that right now.

• 51:48Anthony Pompliano?

  He was doing 30 million in ad sales the year before, so.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:51Anthony Pompliano?

  You, you assume that, you know, a hundred million is probably close.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  Then what else did he do? So he created, or he's like, you know, a partner or co-founder of Onnit. I don't know what, what percent he owns. But now he's gone into like a, a supplement. Supplements can be a very, very big business, right? So like, you know, uh, the rock releasing protein powder is gonna work to a degree that like other stuff won't. So these influencers are realizing, why should I shout out these random brands for, you know, cash? When I can either create my own brand or own equity in, I'll demand equity. So LeBron did this, right? LeBron was sponsored by McDonald's and he's like, hey, first of all, like, I don't eat McDonald's. So this is like kind of bullshit. Uh, but secondly, like, I could invest in Blaze Pizza.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  It's like a chain that's growing and like, I can own a significant share of this just by being LeBron. Like, I want to be on the equity side of the game rather than being kind of a cash, you know, a cash guy. And so I think you have to shift the business model. So I think what we're gonna see is somebody who creates, they get a big enough audience. Then they parlay it through the higher value, uh, possibilities. So here's some higher value possibilities. Buying businesses, I think there are plenty of, uh, like, for example, fintech companies that

• 53:09Speaker 02

  build a product, they build a neo bank, they build a credit card, a debit card. And they don't quite make it, so they don't quite get the escape velocity because they're trying to pay for ads on Facebook to get customers. They don't get all the way there. Now, what if you're, what if you're, uh, Mr. Beast and you decide to pick up that company? So you buy out that company, you own, you know, you buy it a hundred percent essentially. You buy the investors out for 10 cents on the dollar because they're, you know, they're going under. So you take that same technology, but you have the distribution where you're going to get an unfair distribution advantage and you're going to get a million people using this debit card, just the way that debit cards work debit card, you're going to be able to take like a 1% fee on transactions. So you get a million people spending a hundred dollars a month on, on this, you're going to be making tens of millions of dollars just off that and you're

• 53:51Speaker 02

  going to be valued at, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars as a, with a fintech product. And so I think people who basically launch financial products, people who buy out businesses that are already doing good and take them to the next level using their fame, or they go into categories like supplements, you know, chips, like water, you know, like these like large consumer plays, because if I have a big loyal audience and they want, you know, whatever CBD, whatever these like kind of products are, CBD is a great one because CBD you can't advertise on Facebook and Google. So you can't run ads, but you can be an influencer talking about CBD. And so today they all do cash deals, but the ones who launch branded, you know, like fully owned

• 54:34Speaker 02

  products and take that seriously, they're going to build a big business in the same way that like, you know, whatever 50 cent made more off his vitamin water, you know, proceeds than he ever did as a rapper. And I think you're just going to see more and more of that. So guys who go into crypto and things like that.

• 54:47Anthony Pompliano?

  So I agree with some of this and I disagree with some of this on the people.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 54:52Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm going to give you a couple of examples of people who I pretty sure are built, some of we know for sure billionaires, some aren't, that are content creators. Kanye West, billionaire, content creator.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 55:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Different type of content.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 55:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Music.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  More traditional, yeah.

• 55:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Kardashians. I don't know how many of them are billionaires at this point, but they're

• 55:08Speaker 02

  At least two.

• 55:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, there's just keep being reports and they're like Pomp Brothers, right? Like they just keep like more of them keep showing up. Then somebody that everyone always forgets about is Howard Stern.

• 55:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 55:22Anthony Pompliano?

  He reportedly gets paid almost a hundred million dollars a year. And he's been doing it now for 20 years, right? Like the guy's got to have over a billion dollars, right? Unless, unless literally he pissed it all away doing like ridiculous things. He's got to have a billion dollars. So those are like three that I think are, are pretty simple.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  So the only caveat, so totally agree. The only caveat I would say is, In my lens that I'm thinking through is digital native. So, so somebody who's essentially born and built their following.

• 55:50Anthony Pompliano?

  So those all get disqualified because they're more traditional.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  There, yeah. So like Kanye, you know, he's got like, he had like a label and like, you know, this is like, he is a content creator, but I think when most people think content creator, they don't think professional musician. I think they think more like YouTuber or TikToker or whatever.

• 56:04Anthony Pompliano?

  So next is Rogan. I don't think he ever becomes a billionaire because I think he's missing the one thing that you mentioned, which is the ambition to be a billionaire.

• 56:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 56:14Speaker 02

  He's smart and wise enough to realize it doesn't matter. He's got enough.

• 56:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Exactly. And I think that the Spotify deal, whether it will ever be said publicly or not, was kind of a cash out. And I'm 50 plus years old. I think he's 53, 54 years old.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 56:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I want to spend time with my family. I'm going to move to Austin. I'm, I'm out of the like rat race. Yeah. Sure. You want to give me a hundred million dollars? Like, you know, fools, right? Give me a hundred million dollars. By the way, I'll keep producing the content. Like I enjoy meeting and talking to my friends, whatever. It's cool. But I definitely think like that was a signal of the level of ambition.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 56:50Anthony Pompliano?

  And that might make him the smartest one out of everybody, like the ability to say, I don't need to go try to be a billionaire.

• 56:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 56:58Anthony Pompliano?

  And then Mr. Beast, I actually think he will be a billionaire. I think he has the ambition to do it, but I think that what drives him is very different, right? It's kind of like a Sam Bankman-Fried. I don't know how much you know about him from FTX, but like Jimmy doesn't want to be a billionaire because he thinks it's going to be cool to be a billionaire.

• 57:17Speaker 02

  Right. He's not looking for a yacht.

• 57:18Anthony Pompliano?

  He wants to just give it all away, right? He wants to help people. He genuinely enjoys doing that. And so like the passion comes through and like there's a financial goal because that will help empower the passion.

• 57:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so I think that like, that's like a very unique driver of, I want to acquire a lot of financial assets and then like go along and give it away. I don't know how much money he's giving away, but like it's gotta be tens of millions of dollars at this point.

• 57:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Like pretty incredible for a kid who's like 25.

• 57:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, like that's not a thing that 25 year olds think about.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Most people talk about how much they've made. And he's like, I've given away more than you've ever made.

• 57:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. It's like, it's very, very unique. Now, when you bring it to kind of like people that we don't yet know of.

• 58:02Anthony Pompliano?

  I actually think most of the business, it sounds like you're saying this is like you built the audience and then you build a company.

• 58:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 58:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, yes, you are a content creator, but like really you're an entrepreneur.

• 58:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 58:11Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think it brings this whole conversation full circle of like, all this is, is just they're entrepreneurs. Right. And the content creators, whether you're a YouTuber, a Twitch streamer, you tweet, whatever, like they're entrepreneurs. The tools have changed a little bit, the mechanisms have changed, the monetization pathways have changed. But really like the sole capitalist is an entrepreneur.

• 58:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:29Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you start to think about that, like it all makes sense.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 58:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Right. And it's the more things change, the more this is.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  Exactly. And I would say the only nuance of like, what, well then what is different? It does feel like something's different, but you're totally right that like, hey, 80, 90% of it is the same. I would say is there's this disintegration of the firm.

• 58:50Speaker 02

  People are less interested in firms, companies. It used to be the firms had the prestige. And now, and you see this in sports, I don't know if you're like a big basketball fan or whatever, but people used to really, really support the teams. You it's like, I'm a, I grew up, I love the Lakers, I love the Celtics, I love the whatever. And now it's shifted in the NBA. It's like, I'm a LeBron stan, right? I, you know, oh my God, I love Kyrie, I love whatever. And, oh, LeBron switched teams? Cool. I guess like, go Lakers. Cause LeBron's on the Lakers now. Right? And so people have switched from team loyalty to individual loyalty. It's the same trend I see everywhere, which is this disintegration of the firm. People don't want to be tied to the one firm for very long. And the fans also value and want to, you know, follow individuals more than the firm.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  You see this with Elon. Elon's personal brand now has so much weight that Elon can just, you know, he says a thing, market moves. He starts a new company, you know, the boring company, Neuralink, whatever. All of a sudden engineers want to go start working on it. Investors want to give them capital, that sort of thing. Cause. Elon is bigger than the firm. And I think that that's what I see happening with content creators. They start with, I am the firm, right? And so for better or for worse, you know, I am the firm. And so I think that that's the only difference is like, they are the firm and they're starting with what you said, which is you go customer, you go audience first, customer first, business second. Whereas most things, you build a product and a business and then you go try to get customers and grow a customer base.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  These guys are taking a huge customers base and saying, great, how do I now build products and companies that are going to serve these customers?

• 1:00:24Anthony Pompliano?

  So another corollary to this that people probably haven't explored enough yet and probably over time, more and more stories will come out is really it's a brand building exercise first. So everyone talks about like audience building, right? Because really it's a brand building because once you have the brand.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  No brand, no audience.

• 1:00:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And then like, what do Oprah, you know, go down the line, there's a whole bunch of them. And I've been looking into like, what have some of these people done? They basically.

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  What'd you find?

• 1:00:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Built a brand because of, again, some secret sauce, whether it was, you know, Oprah with the talk show and all that.

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  By the way, what made Oprah great? I don't even really know. What, what, why is Oprah Oprah?

• 1:01:00Anthony Pompliano?

  There's, um, there's an episode, uh, I hope I don't mess this up, acquired, uh, the podcast, right? And they do a whole deep dive on it. And my main takeaway was like, there's like three or four things, right? One was, uh, who she was in terms of, uh, her life experience, her willingness to like, just like talk about certain things, whatever. Two was there was a very specific time where she kind of rose up. Uh, she was an African, African American woman. She was not the, um, kind of body type and like all these things that everyone like thought you had to be, to be on television, like all this stuff. And they like really go into like the psyche of, uh, there was a person who ran like the local TV station or like a certain outlet of a TV network.

• 1:01:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Who decided like, oh, we're going to put Oprah on over like some, you know, old white guy, basically. And they talk a lot about like the dynamics and the pushback that he got and all stuff, but it ended up being obviously a genius decision. And then the third thing, and probably the most important thing was she early on understood like, own equity, own the network, like buy people out, like, like really be the person. Um, and I've even heard that Oprah owns equity or upside or revenue share of like Dr. Oz, right? Cause basically it was like, hey, I'm going to like make you famous, right? And like, you're gonna build this whole business. Like, I want a piece of that.

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 1:02:20Anthony Pompliano?

  And so like, that's like a very early understanding.

• 1:02:24Speaker 02

  Do you own a piece of Will? Will the analyst?

• 1:02:25Anthony Pompliano?

  No, no, no, no, no. I'm not quite Oprah. But so I think of like that type of person. Then I think of, uh, you know, there's a whole bunch of other ones, but like they become great because of something. They built this brand and they take that brand.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  I have a funny story on that. You know, um, I did this, you know, Michael Buffer?

• 1:02:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes.

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  The, the let's get ready to rumble guy before every boxing match. Do you know what he's worth?

• 1:02:51Anthony Pompliano?

  He's worth hundreds of millions of dollars because he licensed it to the video games, right?

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  He, so actually the funny thing is he didn't even realize it. His, um, his brother Bruce Buffer, who is the guy who does the same thing in the UFC, um, they were half brothers that didn't know they were brothers. This is crazy. Have you heard this story?

• 1:03:09Anthony Pompliano?

  No.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  Bruce Buffer, uh, he's watching a boxing match and he sees Michael Buffer go, let's get ready to rumble. And then he's like, oh, that's cool. His last name Buffer. My like, I've never met another Buffer. And so he like looked up in the phone, but he's like, are there other Buffers? Couldn't find one. And he's like driving and he's like, tells his dad, he's like, yeah, dad, uh, this, that guy, Michael Buffer, he grew up actually like, you know, three blocks away from us or whatever, like two miles away from us. And his dad's like, yeah, I think he might be your half brother. And he's like, what? He's like, yeah, like before I met your mom, I was married, you know, like that could be your brother. And so they went, he found, they found out at like age 40 or something like that, they're brothers.

• 1:03:47Anthony Pompliano?

  What?

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  Bruce, at the time goes to Michael and he goes, Michael, you know, what you've done is amazing. You've kind of like carved out this personal brand. You have a monopoly on this. Like you're the guy before every big match and they're training the audience before Tyson, you see this guy. That's how we get hyped up. Get your popcorn, go sit down. And he goes, you gotta like trademark your shtick. And so they trademarked, let's get ready to rumble. They started licensing it out. He's worth $400 million and. He also became sort of like irreplaceable because of that, right? And so his half brother, who he didn't know, ended up helping him build that like equity side.

• 1:04:21Anthony Pompliano?

  And then he started doing in the UFC.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  And then his, and then Michael got him into the UFC, like kind of like, you should do commentator, you should do this, like, I don't even know what to call it, announcing too. Um, and got him into the UFC. And now he has his, it's like, it's time. That's what he says. And so before every UFC fight, he's, he does that. And he's made tens of millions of dollars doing, doing that.

• 1:04:40Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, incredible, right? Like just, but, but the idea of like, you take this thing and then you license it, right? And, and it's IP. And so ultimately what, that's what I think a lot of these folks are doing when they're building these audiences is they're basically building a brand and that brand, if done correctly, is licensable and, and all this kind of stuff. So, uh, I, I don't know exactly how it plays out. I, I don't even know if anyone was doing it well yet, but it feels like there's just this entire generation of people. They did it really well. Uh, they didn't have the internet and, you know, a lot of the stuff and the playbooks and like all this. The folks today, they don't have the playbooks either, but I do think that like eventually they'll figure it out. And my guess is 10, 20 years from now, we're going to look back and we're like, oh my God, like that was the playbook. Like if you did A, B and C,

• 1:05:19Anthony Pompliano?

  and you did it A, then B, then C, like you won, right? And so like, it's kind of cool to see everyone trying to do different things.

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  Do you like, where do you put yourself? Do you feel like you have that ambition? Is that something you want to do?

• 1:05:31Anthony Pompliano?

  No.

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  You don't want to follow these playbooks? What, where are you at?

• 1:05:34Anthony Pompliano?

  I just want to be happy. Like, like that, like that is literally, I think about it a lot, right? Of, uh,

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  Are you default happy?

• 1:05:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, I'm probably way happier than like most of my friends.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:05:45Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, some of it's probably like, there's freedom elements of like my life. Uh, but also I think some of it's just like happiness is like very much a mindset, right? Uh, I think it's, um, I think it's Will Smith. Uh, he's got this video that went viral once and he's talking about his wife. You know, or talk about happiness and your wife is already like, you know, be careful, Will. But he basically is like, look, uh, I sat down with my wife one time and I said, it is not my job to make you happy. Like happiness is like an inside job. I think it's like the line he uses. And it's just like, like you're in control of it. And it's like, no matter what happens around you, like you can still make yourself happy. And that's, plenty of people will disagree, whatever, but like, that was like his perspective.

• 1:06:23Speaker 02

  On my, on my part, yes.

• 1:06:24Anthony Pompliano?

  The same, right? Uh, and so like, when you see somebody who is unhappy, right? You're just like, hey man, like, you know, work on it, right?

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:06:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, and so I think that like,

• 1:06:33Anthony Pompliano?

  There's this element of if that's what you're driving towards like you realize like all the other stuff is like nonsense. Right. And uh, I don't think I've actually ever said this, but like one of the things that's like very unique about uh myself and like my brothers have got very similar of like if you gave me the option to like go hang out with a bunch of billionaires. Or like go to dinner with like my brothers and my wife, I'll take my brothers and my wife like all the time. Yeah. And like, mind you, I'm not perfect. Like there are definitely times where like I get like an invite somewhere and I'll go. Right. Cause I'm like, oh my God, like I like, like you like get into like the whole thing and then you're there and you're just like, man, like, look, like I, like you guys are nice people, whatever, but like, no, I don't want to go to dinner again tomorrow night.

• 1:07:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Right. Like, like, I enjoy a certain type of lifestyle. And so I think that like, that's uh, very unique because what most people do is they measure everything from a monetary standpoint. And like it, it's a very fortunate position when like, you're like, oh, I don't need to worry about that stuff. Right. So like, understand that's important, but also I think there's this element of uh, a lot of people are just doing the next step because they think that's what they're supposed to do, but they're like, what are you optimizing for? Right. And it gets into this world of uh, the downside of a lot of this, right? Like you stopped doing the newsletter because you're like, Taking away happiness.

• 1:07:51Anthony Pompliano?

  I can't write every day. Like this is, this is unsustainable. And so the last thing I want to talk about, uh, if we're going to call people the solo perneur uh, or the solo capitalist, there's what I'll call copypreneurs. Yes. Which is, okay, I just saw Sean do something. That looks awesome. I'm going to do it as well. Now, what's the saying? Uh, great artists steal. Yes. Right. Or whatever that saying is. Uh, so it's not that like, oh, don't copy anybody else. Like do everything yourself. But there's definitely people out there who just like, okay, I saw this person do it. Now I do it next. Then I do it next. I do it next. And what I always wonder is like, how long can they do that? Because like, there's no passion.

• 1:08:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, they have no like kind of understanding of how this all fits together. It doesn't feel very authentic and it almost feels like they're just going to run off a cliff and then do it all over again, run off another cliff and then like again and again. And so like, I don't even know if there's a solution. It just feels like that's a thing that happens. And like those people just have to learn over time by like running off the cliff a couple of times.

• 1:08:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that, well, the hard part is it kind of works. And kind of works is like an addictive thing, right? It's like something like a job being kind of good. And it's like, well, you're gonna probably stay there. If it really sucked, you'd leave. If it was really amazing, you wouldn't even, you know.

• 1:08:59Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like not bad, right?

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  Not bad, right?

• 1:09:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Not bad is a not bad job.

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  Not bad is the worst, right? So because not bad will keep you stuck in it for a very long time, wasting your most valuable asset. So the same thing happens for the copypreneur, right? The copypreneur does the thing and gets half the result. And they, you know, they're always sort of wondering like, how come it just doesn't work better for me? Well, it's like, because there's like that diagram of an iceberg. And it's like, you know, what you see, it's like what went into it. And it's like, they just, they can only copy the what you see. They only copy what it is if they don't have the understanding of why this worked, why this worked in this context, what might come next, that sort of thing. And so, uh, you know, you see this all the time. You see this with like, this happened with NFTs. It was like this rush. Oh, this guy made this image and sold for this much. I'm gonna make an image and sell for this much.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  But like, the, as the copiers came in, everybody started to lose more and more and more. And it was only somebody who's doing something unique and novel who said, oh, that's cool. I'm gonna do something like that. It might be even 80% like that. But the 20% I change is gonna make all the difference in the result that I get. And so that's kind of the way I see it is like, I'm constantly stealing ideas, looking for inspiration. It's like, oh, that's really cool. You know, props. Rarely do I ever just wholesale say, oh, I'm gonna do the same thing. It's always like, let me look at that. Did it work? Why did it work? And then how could I put my spin on it? How can I make it better for me? Uh, how can I take it to the next level? Because we're all kind of creatives.

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  We're not competing against each other. We're sort of building this stack, this cascade where you did a thing, then I did a cool different thing. And then you did a thing and together we build this tower of cool shit on the internet. And so that's, that's the way I sort of see that the copypreneur doesn't quite go all the way there. And, you know, you want to be, you want to be taking 80% and innovating your 20.

• 1:10:52Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the best piece of advice you have for people who want to get started? And then what's your greatest warning for people who want to get started?

• 1:11:01Speaker 02

  So I'll give you kind of a. This is actually a perfect copypreneur thing. I hope I don't throw this guy under the bus too much. So I had this guy who kind of became my like apprentice, quote unquote, sort of like, "Hey, I need some help, you know, with this content thing is taken off. I need some more horsepower.

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  Come in and help me with that and then I'll sort of like show you how I do what I do and then you want to do that someday. So you'll learn about it." He's a college student. And so what I said was like, great. Like I'm in this niche of like, I'm a business person, entrepreneur. So I kind of write about that stuff and, um, and I write about things that I know or I've experienced or I've like learned the hard way. So if I'm giving somebody advice because I like did the thing. Um, and then there's other times where I'm a total novice in something. I say, "Hey, I'm a noob. I'm trying to learn this." And if you're a noob trying to learn it too, like I'll just share what I'm learning as I go. I think that totally works as well. And, um, so the guy who came in, he was helping me out. He's great. And his audience, his Twitter audience at the time, I think was like one or 2,000 followers.

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  And in just a few months, it's now 40,000 followers. And how did he get there? He started writing Twitter threads. He started writing the same threads that me and like five other people were doing to try to grow our audience and it works. He's, he's doing the copypreneur thing. And I sent him a message because he would like, he would send me the thread and be like, "Hey, can you share this?" I'm like, dude, I would love to share your stuff, but like, I feel like you're just regurgitating the same thing. And also like, that's not your, that's not your experiences really. Like, um, if he, if what he was doing was like, so what, what would I think would be a better path? So the advice I gave him or would give anybody else is instead of looking at the people who have, are doing something successful and just copying it.

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  Like he was looking at people who would, you know, investors or business people 10, 15 years older than him that had done certain things. And he was just trying to like, kind of like distill those and repackage them and, and put them out as life advice. I said, your best, your best content is when you talk about the fact that you're a college senior figuring stuff out. Because that's what you do and you know that we don't know. If I wrote something from the, about what's going on in college, how kids are thinking, what, you know, how you're navigating this thing, I would never be able to write that content. So you're today, you're competing, you know, you're bringing sort of a spoon to a knife fight here. And instead, like what you should be doing is you should be owning your niche of like the thing you are, which is 21 years old, hungry, you're learning everything from, you know, all these places and you're, you're trying to make it and you know, the new world better than

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  us old guys do. And so that'd be my kind of, my, my advice is like, do interesting things, do, do unique things first. Don't try to build an audience first. Share the unique and interesting things you're doing. So just like work in public and that'll automatically build you an audience passively as you go. And don't just, like, don't look at what's already worked and just like, like identify the 80% that you want to copy, but make sure you're really clear on the 20% that's you that you're bringing into this. Otherwise, long run, it's not going to work. You might build followers, but you will never build affinity. You'll never build love and you can't do the successful playbook if you don't have that trust and love from your audience. And that's only going to come if you actually are bringing something unique to the table and it's authentic to you.

• 1:14:14Anthony Pompliano?

  I think there's this element of authenticity that the internet is the greatest like bullshit filter. And if you're not being authentic, eventually it does chew you up and spit you out and you're like, this wasn't real.

• 1:14:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:14:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, if you're authentic, it's the greatest moat possible on the internet.

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:14:33Anthony Pompliano?

  And authentic for each person is literally different, right? And so like, maybe you're the smart nerdy, you know, super technical person. And then maybe you're a shit poster, right? Like, and by the way, neither one of those are

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  Good or bad.

• 1:14:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Bad. Like who, who's the one kid, uh, uh, what is his Twitter handle? Trung?

• 1:14:52Speaker 02

  Trung.

• 1:14:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, like,

• 1:14:54Speaker 02

  Trung's amazing.

• 1:14:54Anthony Pompliano?

  He's smart, but he's a shit poster. And by the way, if he had a shirt where he could wear a badge that said like, I'm a shit poster, he would wear it and be like, super proud. And like, that is what makes it so unique. And guess what? Now he's on CNBC.

• 1:15:08Speaker 02

  Cause he's everyone's favorite shit poster.

• 1:15:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes. And like, that's what I think the beauty of the internet provides, right? Is that like, you can literally do whatever you want. And there is an audience to find you if you're good at it.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And what's that phrase about the stock market where it's like, you know, in the short term, it's a popularity contest. In the long term, it's like a weighing machine or whatever. I think there's the same thing for the internet, which is like, in the short term, it's more of a reaction contest. Who said the most reactionary thing? And in the long term, it's an authenticity contest.

• 1:15:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Completely agree.

• 1:15:38Speaker 02

  I hate the word authenticity because it's like a bullshit word that gets overused. So like, whatever. We need to find another word, but it, that really is what, that really is what matters on that front. So, you know, if you're trying to do the, the kind of solo capitalist, solo, solo media playbook, I would say like, to me, there's the, you know, I kind of share my thoughts on what order to go in, but also like, don't get that one thing wrong. Uh, like, don't chase what you think will work. Be like, what's really me? And then how do I push me from like the inside out? I want to put me out to the world because what that does is it attracts other people who genuinely like you. That it will, your audience will find you. The audience might start small, doesn't matter.

• 1:16:19Speaker 02

  Uh, it might like, you know, end up medium sized. Like, there's a bunch of things I could do to try to get a bigger audience, but it wouldn't really be what I care about or what I'm interested in, what I'm good at. So, long-term, that's not a good move for me, you know? So I would say like, the goal is to take, what, take you and put it on blast and not like, uh, you know, just sort of copy other people or fake the funk.

• 1:16:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Three questions to end. You could ask me one at the end. Uh, first is, what's the most important book you've ever read?

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  I read this book called Storyworthy and it's a book that I don't know if it's the most important. It was the most important one in the last few years. Storyworthy is a book on telling stories. It's this guy who's a third, I think he's like a third grade teacher or fifth grade teacher, Matthew Dix, and he, uh, he goes to these like little storytelling events. Uh, like, it's like a rap, like a rap battle, but it's a story battle and he's like won it 20 times or something like that. And he's just a master at telling personal stories. And I think that that is one of the most valuable tools at your disposal that they don't teach you in school. And so when I read it, I was like, oh, I get why the people I like, I like. I get why the movies that work, work. And he just breaks it down so simply.

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  These little, uh, these little things, he's like, watch, uh, if the beginning of the movie is, uh, if the beginning of the movie is a, a high-powered lawyer who she's fiercely independent. She doesn't need no man and you know, um, she's, you know, super successful in her professional career. Watch by the end, she's going to be in a loving relationship and she's going to be a baker doing what she loves. Right? Like, it's like the, it's a story is basically a change. It's like a personal, is a change. And the best way to like, start a story is to take the change that happened in the end and just find the opposite. And so he talks about how to write a story, but then he, then when you, you can't go back and watch, you know, he does a great one on Jurassic Park. You go watch Jurassic Park and like, you can't unsee the underlying storytelling mechanics that are in it.

• 1:18:18Speaker 02

  And once you know those, it makes you a more interesting person, uh, when you do what you do. So I would say Storyworthy is probably like most impactful book I read last few years.

• 1:18:27Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. I haven't read that. I'm going to have to go read that now. That was a pretty good description. Uh, second question is sleep schedule. Uh, our friends over at Eight Sleep have me sleeping on this thermo-regulated bed now.

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:40Anthony Pompliano?

  I liked it so much that I literally begged them to invest in the company. Right. It's like the best, like, that's like basically the answer.

• 1:18:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:18:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I sleep super cold, like eight, nine hours now. And I used to sleep five or six.

• 1:18:52Speaker 02

  On the cold?

• 1:18:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Don't go all the way to 10, but I definitely go like pretty cold, like five or six.

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:18:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, what is your sleep schedule now? And like, how's that evolved over the years?

• 1:19:02Speaker 02

  Well, I have two little babies, so my sleep schedule is, and my wife does most of the like the night stuff. So I'm, I get off easy, but um, it doesn't matter what time I sleep. The kid's still waking up at 7:00 AM or 6:30 in the morning. And that's my, that's daddy time. So like, I wake up now, I used to be like sleep until nine. I used to sleep until 10, roll into the office at 10:30. Like, that's kind of how I, I used to go. And now it's like, I'm up at 6:30 or 7:00 every day. But I don't sleep on, I, I try not to be super scheduled, so I'll sleep at, I would say on average midnight. But like last night, 3:00 in the morning, you know, like does, does, does matter.

• 1:19:40Anthony Pompliano?

  We're at the Bitcoin conference, you know.

• 1:19:41Speaker 02

  Well, I, I was do, I wasn't doing cool shit. I wasn't at a party. I was just on the internet being like, this is awesome. The internet is so, every night I'm like, the internet is awesome.

• 1:19:50Anthony Pompliano?

  But that was midnight, west coast time.

• 1:19:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Right. So yeah, okay. That makes sense. All right. Uh, last question, aliens, believer or non-believer?

• 1:19:56Speaker 02

  Well, I feel like the news broke. I feel like there's, they found some aliens or something. I don't know what's going on. Uh, I think that, no, I, I don't believe, uh, that there are aliens. I think that it's more likely. I think the simulation stuff is more likely than aliens. So I, I'm more on that front.

• 1:20:11Anthony Pompliano?

  So the reason, I asked you this last time.

• 1:20:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:13Anthony Pompliano?

  And I want to see if your answer changed.

• 1:20:15Speaker 02

  I think it might have.

• 1:20:16Anthony Pompliano?

  UFO, uh.

• 1:20:17Speaker 02

  I think it might have because, uh, I actually do like go down these rabbit holes again. The internet is awesome. I go down these rabbit holes and I'll change my perspective based on like, you know, basically fake videos on YouTube is what, as best I can describe them.

• 1:20:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Everything we're fed is fake. The videos are fake. The news is fake. Literally people's opinion is fake. Like the internet has, uh, completely exposed just like this narrative driven world is like so hard to figure out what's real.

• 1:20:43Speaker 02

  Right. Well, like, you know, if you just go try to find like, what should I eat? What's good nutrition? You'll see that like, some people say eat only meat and some people say meat gives you cancer and like, you're going to die if you eat red meat. And so like, well, which one is it guys? Like I need to, like, shouldn't, shouldn't we have come to some kind of consensus here?

• 1:21:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe we should eat a little bit of meat, you know, some other like vegetables. Like, that's a good idea.

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  That's the worst. Never do moderation, right? Like just only go to these extremes and that, that will work.

• 1:21:09Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. What a question you have for me to finish up.

• 1:21:12Speaker 02

  Uh, okay. What's a good one? You talked about happiness and um, I did this exercise once. I wanted to hear your answer. I did an exercise where I was like, what is uh, what is an amazing Tuesday, a normal Tuesday? So I basically said, my happiness is not going to be from these extreme events. It's going to be from my normal day. My normal day is awesome. I win.

• 1:21:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 1:21:34Speaker 02

  So what's like a normal day that I think would be awesome? And I sort of wrote down, I was like, for example, uh, just to help you kind of understand what this weird question means is like, I love to shower. Showering is like, I have, I have a blast in the shower. And I'm just like, I feel great. A shower is like a massage. It's like, you know, a shower is just like an incredible thing. I get my best ideas. I'm listening to music or I listen to podcasts, like I, nobody bothers me.

• 1:22:01Anthony Pompliano?

  You listen to podcasts in the shower?

• 1:22:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Somebody came up to me last night and literally said, hey man, this is kind of weird, but like I listen to podcasts in the shower. And I was like, that's not that weird. I guess he goes, no, but I wanted to preface that when I tell you I listened to you in the shower.

• 1:22:11Speaker 02

  Right, right, right. I listened to you and Dan Held in the shower this morning. Yeah. So, so, so yeah, I do that. For example, I was like, man, every, my great day, I want to have a shower every day. I love shower. And so I had like four or five things. I'm just like, you were talking about hanging out with your brothers or whatever. So I want to know what's a, what's a, what's a perfect, perfectly average Tuesday for you?

• 1:22:33Anthony Pompliano?

  I grew up in a really big family and I, and I've thought about this a little bit more lately. Uh, so I've got four brothers, five of us total. Uh, and my parents basically had this like mentality with us of like, you guys are all boys. You're going to be absolute animals with each other in the house. Like let's prevent or mitigate collateral damage. No playing sports in the house, like you know, like all like the, the normal family rules. But we also know that we have five boys and like you guys can be crazy. So like go outside and do it. Or like go in this one room and do it, right? And so like naturally we like didn't have tons and tons of friends growing up because like we just had each other all the time, right? And so it wasn't like, uh, people weren't like coming to our house or like all the stuff. Like it's just like, no, like I have my brother here.

• 1:23:16Speaker 02

  It's built in.

• 1:23:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And then like, you know, And outside or whatever. And so I think that like that dynamic for like my entire life, we just like replicated now. So like the perfect day is literally like my brothers and I all meet up, right? Like some of them have girlfriends, some of them have wives, whatever. And like we all just like hang out and hanging out has become like very weird as we've gotten older because it still involves the same verbal activities, but the physical activities have changed. And what I mean by that is like, we just talk shit to each other all day long. And it's not like malicious stuff, but it's just like, hey, man, like fix your hair, right? Like, you know, like, or like,

• 1:23:57Anthony Pompliano?

  hey, dude, uh, you know, uh, I don't know. Um, I saw that you tripped as you were walking in like that would be like the really like simple stuff. And then some of it's like, you know, we know each other's like insecurities and stuff and I can really hammer on each other. But it's all in good fun. And like, we joke all the time that like, for whatever reason, like when you're in that environment, the level of trust is so high that the brutalness and the honesty comes out. And it's fun. Like, we just genuinely enjoy doing it. And so I think like, that's it. It's it's less about like, the activity you're doing. And it's more about like, the people that you're with. And when you then like, put that into like, application, it's just like, it doesn't matter what we do. Like, we could literally go like, I don't know, go to the beach, we could, you know,

• 1:24:42Anthony Pompliano?

  come here to the office or like, whatever. But like, when we're all together, I think we just like, laugh. Right. And when you're laughing and like, you're happy, it doesn't really matter what you're doing. It's just the people.

• 1:24:51Speaker 02

  Right. Hard to be upset and laugh at the same time.

• 1:24:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, like, yeah. And if you are like, you're probably like a psychopath.

• 1:24:58Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Where can we send people to find you on the internet? And then let's plug the podcast? Where should they go download that?

• 1:25:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. So podcast, go to My First Million is the name of the podcast. So we hit top 10 this week, which is great. So My First Million is a business podcast where we just shoot the shit about business ideas. And then if you want to find me, get my newsletter and all that good stuff, it's all free. Just seanpurie.com. So S H A A N P U R I dot com.

• 1:25:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 1:25:26Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me, man.

• 1:25:27Anthony Pompliano?

  In the future.

• 1:25:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. Enjoy Miami.