Andrew Wilkinson's $20,000 to $260,000,000 story

26:11It gives a good win to the person who's selling them. We will buy a minority, which I don't know if you guys always do, but we will also buy a minority of them, minority stake in them. but the thing that's yeah Sam you're absolutely right it's obviously like you have to sort through so many just to find something worth buying and then even when you find something worth buying doesn't mean the deal is going to happen even when you think a deal is going to happen it doesn't mean a deal closes and so you end up with this like tiny tiny funnel and you have to be okay with like hey we might do one deal this year or no deals this year it's so different than like entrepreneurship where it's all about action it's all about features it's all about you know more customers more more more more more and actually less less less is almost the name of the game when it comes to being very selective and picking the right asset.

26:52The hard part, I think, is a lot of people overinvest in building that funnel, and they have a lot of conversations. And what I've done is when someone emails me and they say, hey, I want to sell you my business, I'll say, okay, hey, I want to make sure I don't waste any of your time. And so tell me these three things. So it'll be like, okay, who runs the business? Is that you? Do you want to stay or go? And then what are your earnings? And then after that, once I have that info, I say, okay, we would probably pay about X, right? And if they say, you know, let's talk, then I know I should spend the time and talk.

27:27But I think a lot of people will actually have three or four conversations in like slow roll. And I'm like, I'm like via email, I want to send the first offer. I want them to say, yes, that's interesting. And then I'll spend time on it. And what I used to do is I would spend all this time getting to know people and unboxing the business only to realize that their expectations were insane. And we would waste a ton of time. And just like with bidding on real estate or anything else, we throw out LOIs constantly. I have no qualms about that. They're not binding documents. We'll send someone an offer.

27:58And there's something about, if I write an email and I say, hey, I'll offer you$2 million for your business. I don't think people take it as seriously as when there's a formal document laying it all out. Hey, on April 30th, you will get$2 million in this exact structure. This is what we commit to. People take it seriously. So we send them out all the time. So I've never told this story, I don't think, publicly. But Sean, about four or six years ago, the hustle was two or three years old. I was down in the dumps. I was feeling really bad about myself. I was feeling bad about the business. And I told this person that I was not feeling great.

28:35And they said, you know, have you thought about selling it? I would really be interested in buying it. And this guy, I was like, maybe. He goes, look, let's just hang out and meet. Come up to where I am and fly up here. And I was like, okay, maybe. And he goes, yeah, yeah, I'm going to send the jet. I'm going to send you a jet. And I was like, what do you mean a jet? Like, I'm going to fly private? Like, yeah, I'm sending the jet. So I take all these. This is right when TikTok came out. One of the first TikToks was me on this jet. It was like, I was like, I can't believe this. I go to the private executive airport.

29:07My first time ever doing that. I get on the plane. I'm in my own jet. I have got the Wall Street Journal sitting there and they offer me like champagne and all this stuff. I'm like, this is the craziest thing. I can't believe this. I was in heaven. I meet with the guy and I'm wooed. I'm so floored by this. And I'm like days away from being like, yeah, I'm willing to do something. Then thankfully I snap out of the mood and I'm like, it's okay. I can keep going. But that my friends is how I met Andrew Wilkinson in real life. He was the one who sent me the jet. He sent me a jet and he totally whined and died to me.

29:40I was such a redneck. He goes, I lived in San Francisco. He goes, oh, I'm in Vancouver. I was like, I got to go to New York, though. And I don't want to have to like, I guess I'll fly to New York. And then you could send the jet and we'll just bolt right up. And I was thinking Vancouver was Toronto. I didn't I thought Vancouver was next to New York. I didn't even know where it was. He goes, dude, Vancouver's right by San Francisco. It's only to be two or three hours. But he flew me up there. I don't know if you owned a bakery at the time. You took me to a bakery and you guys totally tried to like wine and dine me.

30:05That's how I met Andrew. I was like head over heels just because he sent this jet. It worked. You know, that's actually the only time I've ever done that. I think it was because you said you're afraid. You are so full of shit. No, I'm serious. 100%. I've picked up friends and we've done that kind of stuff before. Like if we're having an event, we've flown people in. But I've only ever done that for you. That's the one time. And I think it was because you said you were afraid of flying or there's... It totally worked. It totally worked. I'm afraid of flying commercial. If only there was some other option.

30:34At the time, I was thinking a lot about newspapers. And I was like, oh, Sam, you've built like the modern version of the newspaper. You've got something really incredible. I think your deal with HubSpot, though, is better than what we would have paid. Well, and it was like... We got to the numbers and we would have been cheaper than HubSpot. Well, and it was like, I think, a two years difference. I remember I went to... I even... I was supposed to get married on a Friday or Saturday. And you wanted to meet me on a Tuesday. And I was like, Sarah, you think I could swing this? This guy's going to fly me private.

31:02I got to do this. Well, you know, I'll be... I'll miss maybe one of the events. I have to do this. and it was like, so that was in 2020. And so we ended up selling a little bit later. So it worked out for everyone, but that's how I met you. I will say one of the things I've learned from you, Andrew, is you are a master networker. And normally networking is like this, it's like this compliment you don't want to get, you know, but you're actually great at it. And obviously networking is valuable. People would love to have a great network and meet cool people and have excuses to do things together.

31:34and I've seen you kind of throw your weight around in that area and this might be like asking Michael Jordan how do you shoot a jump shot or how do you jump so high they can't really explain, it's not conscious or they don't really know how to explain it but I've seen you do this with like you want to meet somebody who's really interesting and you'll find a good excuse to get connected with them or even how we met, like you listen to the podcast and then you were like, hey I'd love to meet you, let's do a call and you really kind of like took the time to do something that you didn't otherwise have to do.

32:09And that's how we met. We had a great conversation. Then that led to kind of like us hanging out a little bit more. And so I've seen you do this with like pretty influential people. I've seen you bring people up to Canada where you're at, like, you know, the sort of home court advantage type of thing. Like, do you have, if I was to say like, you know, how do you do it? And by the way, I asked the, when I was having a dinner with the CEO of one of your companies the other day, they said the same thing they go nobody's better than andrew when it comes to building an awesome network who'd you meet by the way uh zach he lives oh yeah right on a minute away from nice so so what's your what's your first date routine for meeting all these people and building a network well it totally depends i mean i am so here's an example so in 2016 i was reading um a profile on dan gilbert sean or sam i think you know both you guys know who he is he's the Quicken Loans rocket mortgage guy.

33:01And it was really cool. It was all about how he'd taken his entire fortune and basically was trying to rebuild the city of Detroit. And I thought that was really cool. I thought, you know, you see all these guys who get super rich and then they put their money into like mutual funds, right? I think that's incredibly boring. This guy's trying to rebuild the city. He's buying skyscrapers. He's starting all these businesses. So I just emailed him. I cold emailed him at like one in the morning and I said, hey, you know, here's three bullets about me. And I thought about what is he interested in. And so I mentioned that I own that bakery.

33:32I mentioned I'm passionate about my city. I mentioned I bootstrapped my business, tried to find a few points of similarity and said, I would love to meet you anytime, anywhere. If you're going to be in a random city somewhere in Delaware, I will fly to you. Just tell me when we could meet. And I got an email response back like 20 minutes later saying, sure. And we ended up meeting up in Detroit and he was amazing. We spent an afternoon together, gave me a tour of the city, got to know a whole bunch of people on his team. And it was awesome. So I will shoot shots like that when I see someone that I'm interested in, but there's certain people that are inaccessible.

34:09I wanted to meet Bill Ackman. I'd been reading about him for years, been watching every YouTube video, listening to every interview. And first I was like, okay, he's an investor in Chipotle. Maybe we could redesign. I own all these agencies. Maybe we could redesign the Chipotle website. Maybe we could do an app. And so I email him and I say, hey, I'm a shareholder in your public company. I've got this amazing design agency. I'd love to help in any way I can. And he intros me to one of the board members. So I was like, damn it. I just got handed off. But he replied to the email, though. That was good.

34:46He replied to the email. Yeah, he basically just forwarded it to somebody. But I was like, okay, I know his email. Something will happen here and I just have to wait for it. And then I saw this charity lunch go up. And basically every year he auctions off a lunch. And this year, this was in like 2017, he was having a terrible down year. He got divorced. He had like the Herbalife stuff. He invested in Valiant Pharmaceutical. Everyone was kind of like shitting on him. He was being very quiet. And so there weren't as many bids as usual to do this. and so I ended up bidding$57 ,000 to go have lunch with him and my bet was I had no I had no expectation there'd be any business to do because he's a hedge fund manager I'm a tech investor but um but I knew he'd be like an interesting person to meet and so I went and we ended up connecting and then at the end of the lunch he kind of pulled me aside and he's like hey I like you if you ever want to do a deal together let me know and so years later we ended up buying a business and he invested with us.

35:50Just like slips you a piece of paper and says, do you like me back? Yes or no? Click the box. Step on my foot twice. See, that's what I'm talking about. That's amazing. You did the same thing with Charlie Munger and Buffett, right? You did the charity lunch. You bought the charity lunch. Is that right? No. So that was a friend. That was totally random. That was my friend Andrew Marks. He knew Charlie personally and he said, hey, I'm putting together a dinner. And then through that, I started sending Charlie letters. I knew that Charlie is not someone you communicate verbally with. He likes to talk a lot.

36:23And you can't communicate it with him that way. You got to write him letters. So Chris and I started writing him letters. But yeah, I don't know. I like people. I'm very extroverted. What are you saying in these letters? I would just say like, hey, before the dinner, I said, hey, here's who we are. This is the business. This is what we do. And he, you know, throughout the dinner, knew who we were as a result. And then we started asking for his opinions and talking about different ways we could help them with stuff. I think the fundamental principle is be of value to other people and then also say yes to interesting people.

36:57If someone appears to be interesting, I will have lunch with them. Did he reply to the letters? He would just call us. Then we'd call him. And he would verbally, he'll communicate to you verbally, but you have to write to him if you want him to remember anything. that's amazing uh sounds like a book like uh like my pen pal charlie you know you got to like save all the letters in the back and forth totally i think uh it's great to see you know like i would say there's like two takeaways for me one is like i feel like you check your ego really well like you are humble about wanting to meet these people and you're open about wanting to meet these people and you're not like you're not beyond you're not like above just shooting a shot and saying hey you know i think you're great here's what we do that might be relevant for you and helpful for you would love to connect.

37:46I think the other thing is you're willing to spend money. You're willing to hop on the flight. You're willing to buy the charity thing. You're willing to be a part of their program that they're launching because you know they care about that right now. And I think people are pretty... Everybody sort of understands that having a valuable network is valuable, but very few people are willing to invest because it's not a clear dollars in, dollars out thing. And that's one thing I've picked up from you. You got to be really careful about it though, because so about 12, 13 years ago, I remember when I was first starting my company, I would watch Ted talks back when they were like really early.

38:23And I would always go, oh my God, I want to be in this room. Like, who are these people? It's like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates and all these amazing people. And so probably like 13, 14 years ago, I started going to Ted Global and I started at the kind of baby event, the junior one, the only one I could get into. And then I slowly worked my way into going to the main event because I met Chris Anderson who ran TED and I pitched him on doing a TED app. And so I designed the TED app. I used that to get into the main one. And then I ended up meeting all these interesting people. And so that was an example where I belonged, but I was like the baby.

39:01I was like the kid who's like, you know, people would ruffle my hair. Oh, isn't that cute? This 23 year old with a cracking voice runs a company. But I kind of belong. So I think that's a great strategy sometimes. But this year, I went to the Oscars and I went to the Vanity Fair after party. And that was an example of something where I'm like, I should not be here. And you do not want that experience, right? Tell that story. Tell that story. So yeah, so it's really random. So I was at a conference about a year ago and I sat across from this guy and I asked him about his startup. and usually when you're at these conferences they're like oh i own a b2b software company for doing hr or something and this guy said something that really caught my attention he goes i run a startup that helps people convert money into an interesting life and i was like whoa okay what is this and so he has this company called myria m-y-r-i-a and the idea is basically they deep dive with you on, you know, what do you care about?

40:04What are you excited about? What do you want your life to look like? So they kind of like paint out a blueprint, like in two years, you know, do you want to be, what kind of people do you want to be hanging out with? What do you aspire to get involved with? You know, what are your passions? What do you want to do with your money? And then they help you figure that out. And so I did it. I signed up and they interviewed me and I said, I love movies. And they said, well, do you want to go to the Oscars? And I was like, I've never contemplated that, but I was like, you know what? That sounds like a fun experience.

40:34I think spending money on funny experiences like that is worth it. And so we go, me and my girlfriend go down, they set up like a personal stylist. We buy like ridiculously expensive clothes and tuxedos. And, you know, I get like a$500 haircut, like just silly, silly stuff. And, you know, it's, kind of cool. We're in the actual Oscar event and we keep seeing famous people and it's great people watching and stuff. But after that, we go to the Vanity Fair after party. And I don't know if you guys know, but Vanity Fair after party is this like super exclusive event where literally everybody is famous.

41:13If there's five people there, four of them are B or A list celebrities. And the one that you don't recognize is probably like a super famous director or producer or something. So I'm standing at the bar and like to my right is Jon Hamm chatting it up with Jeff Bezos. You know, I see this guy checking out my girlfriend and I realized it's Andrew Garfield. Like very weird. I can hear like Seth Rogen laughing behind me. Rihanna struts in like, it's just pinch me like the weirdest thing in the world. And then there's me and my girlfriend. And over and over again, every person that walks by us looks us up and down, looks a bit excited, looks us up and down, realizes we're not famous, and then immediately turns on their heel.

41:56And we're just like, this is kind of weird. We don't belong here. And I start making conversation with people. I'm very social. I start trying to chit chat with people. And as soon as I said, oh, I'm not in the film industry, I'm in tech, people would just immediately glaze over and start looking over my shoulder. Like did not care, could not care less, right? And I kind of gave up at a certain point, I just kind of was like, all right, let's just people watch or whatever. But I realized that I'm really used to being in rooms where like, obviously I'm not famous, but I have like respect. Like, you know, if I, even if I'm at a dental conference, I can probably chat with someone and be like, oh, you're the, like, you know, you're the business guy at the dentist, at the dentist, you know, clinic or whatever.

42:43We can talk business. But I realized I had no shared language for these people. And it's just not fun. Like you want to be in a room where you actually have value. And so imagine like I was a web designer and I'm like, I want to be an investor. I want to meet Bill Ackman. If I have no value to him or I'm not interested in him, I should not meet him. You have to wait until you're interesting. And ironically, since I went to the Oscars, we ended up buying Letterboxd, which is a social network. It's like the largest social network for film buffs. Now, if I go back to that same party, I'm sure people would be like oh cool right but it's interesting you had a great phrase you said you said I realized that you want to earn the room that you're in and I thought that was like because I didn't know at first like what was the takeaway of the story is it just like you know I don't know sometimes you go to these parties you feel uncomfortable but you're actually right about that you do want to you don't want to buy your way into a room you want to earn your way into a room and I do think that that's a that's a great takeaway.

43:44Listen to the copy on the Miria. So it's miria.us. It says, Parker, Wayne, Kent, Stark. Why should they have all the fun? Miria memberships gives you and your team special powers to make your life more enjoyable and the world a better place. And they say, say open sesame to the world's top private clubs and make sold out disappear from your vocabulary. Well done. Well, guys, when it comes to banking, The only time I feel truly happy is when I'm using Mercury. And that's today's sponsor for the show. That is the banking product I use for not one, not two, but actually eight of my businesses. I have eight Mercury accounts.

44:20I just went and counted. I use it for every one of my companies. It's an absolute no-brainer. Over 200 ,000 other fast-growing, ambitious companies use Mercury. It's one place you can go where not only you can, of course, have your money there, but you can send invoices, you can pay bills, you can create reimbursements for your team. Pretty much all of your financial needs can be housed under Mercury. And the product is beautiful to use. And the reason why is because it's a product that was not made by finance people. It was made by a founder, Imad. He's been on this podcast before. And he used tons of products as a startup founder.

44:51And this is the one that he wished he had. And I actually reached out to them to become a sponsor for this show because I'm such a big fan of it. So if you need a banking product for your startup, use Mercury. You will not regret it. It's amazing. For more information, check out mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details. This is a very well done site. Is this company going to be something legit and big? They went through Y Combinator. It doesn't seem like a YC. We talked about that a couple episodes ago too. I think it's a really, really cool idea.

45:22And I think the idea, like, do you ever go to a city and you're like, shit, you know, we didn't plan. Like, I remember me and my girlfriend went to Tokyo and we kind of went last minute and we ended up eating bad food. We didn't really like see the best of the city. We just hadn't planned it. And so it was just so wasted. And it's one of those instances where I wish I had something like this. It's like the key to the city where you're like, hey, I'm in Tokyo. I want to go to all the coolest stuff. You know all my tastes. Curate something for me. Or like Chris wanted to go to F1 and he doesn't know anyone at F1.

45:54He doesn't know how it works. He wanted to go last minute. These guys got him like, I think he met Lewis Hamilton. He went in the pit. You know, stuff like that is like pretty cool. But yeah, it would be interesting to see because they raised venture. we actually invested in their angel round immediately because I was like this is such a funny idea. But I don't know if it'll be venture scale. We'll see. They have a competitor that I looked at and I was poking around the website. They say you have to spend$80 ,000 a month in order to make it be worth it. So on average a million dollars a year to make these.

46:28I think it's$25 ,000 and then they take a cut of everything you do. So if you spend $100 ,000 I think they would take a 15 % fee or something on that. There's another service I just got invited to and my friend, so he tells me about it and it's basically last minute, super high-end reservations at any restaurant you want to eat at in New York, London, and Miami. And I'm like, oh, cool, you should invite me. And he's like, no, you don't get it. If you don't use this invite, I lose access and the guy who invited me loses access, which I think is genius. So it's like, forget what it's called but basically you and if i invite sean um you have to use it within 30 days otherwise i lose my access and if sam invited me he loses it too there's some uh little trend i've noticed which is people as they get more successful or notable or whatever the number of times they hear no in their life goes way down and i've actually noticed that like there's a whole business in just the business of no for people that no longer hear no and what this means is twofold.

47:33One is they still run into some things that they don't know how to... They can't... Their powers are useless here. It's like, it's sold out. What do you want me to do? And so these guys with Myria have created a business around, we eliminate the last few no's of your life. And I've noticed other people like this kind of, hey, if you don't use this, I get kicked out. It's like, I don't get kicked out of anything nowadays, right? I'm paying the fees. Why would they kick me out? But there's a whole business around, give people something to lose who never hear no anymore. They never get rejected anymore.

48:02And it's like, give them some rejection, give them some way that they have some, some risk, because it makes them sort of like feel like something matters when everything is an easy mode for them at that point. So I, um, I, I've been on the wait list to go to Peter. Do you guys know who Peter Atiyah is? Super famous doctor. Um, I, I, um, I've been on the wait list there for like three years. His private practice, you mean? Private, private practice, which is like, you know, I think he only has 50 patients. It's like getting, it's like getting Huberman or someone to be your doctor. Yeah. It's super expensive.

48:34And so I pay this absurd amount of money up front. And they do this thing where they psychologically test you before they allow you to become a patient. And so I go through this test and Peter calls me and he goes, Andrew, there was something concerning in your personality test. I'm worried that you won't have good follow through. Will you do what I say? Will you execute on the plan. And I'm like, Peter, no, like you got it all wrong. Like I, I pay attention to my diet. Like I track everything. I wear a glucose monitor. Like you don't have to worry about me. And he goes, okay, cool. And so, you know, I've been working with them and last month I pull him aside and I'm like, Peter, look, be honest with me.

49:17Did I actually have like something in my psychological test? And he goes, you did. I was like, is that even a real test? And he's like, Like, yeah, that is right. So I actually did flag something, but I was thinking, what a great strategy because I'm like the dream patient now. I'm like terrified of getting booted out because of this thing he said. And I think doing something like that, you're right. Pushing someone away creates this desire to be a good customer. Has it been worth it? His, his, him being your doctor? Well, I think, I think it's, so it's a lot of money, obviously it's hundreds of thousands of dollars.

49:51but if think about it this way if you're gaining five years of life or 10 years of life what is that worth and there's been quite a few things I have I have an amazing doctor a primary doctor that I go to who I love and he's amazing but Atiyah they have like a neurologist a cardiologist exercise physiologist who works with you so it's this team of people and they caught a bunch of issues with cholesterol and other stuff that I may not have caught otherwise. So, I mean, I think it's worth it, but for a normal person, is that a good use of money? No, I would say that's a crazy use of money. You went to your primary doctor, you're like, doc, I love you.

50:30It's been a great 20 years. Yeah, we have to talk. I met Angelina Jolie now and we have a thing going too. We're now in an open doctor relationship. It's really, yeah, it's one of those things. I used to think you could only have one lawyer. I had one lawyer, and then I'd feel like I was cheating on my lawyer if I used other lawyers. Then I realized, no, you have lawyers for different things or whatever. But yeah, now I've got a polyamorous doctor relationship. You have this idea of be the barnacle on the whale. What does that mean? Yeah. So if you think about one of the biggest costs in most businesses, it's marketing.

51:11So if you think about it, it's like 15 % to 30 % of most businesses is just getting people to know you exist and getting sales. So if you can own a business that doesn't have to market itself, then you're golden. You can run a super, super profitable business. So let's say that with marketing, you run at 15%. Cut marketing, you could run at 45%, 50%, 60%. So for example, let's say that you're a fitness influencer. So like think about like Derek from More Plates, More Dates. So he sells supplements and energy drinks and he's got this shampoo for hair loss. He's got a great business because he is free marketing.

51:52He just talks about the product on his podcast, his YouTube, his Instagram, and he gets free sales, right? So it would be an, as an e-commerce business, if he was paying to acquire those customers, it'd be a crappy business. but he's got free marketing, right? Now, the problem is most of us don't have access to that. Most of us are not influencers, but anyone can do that in a different way by being a barnacle on a whale. So here's the story of how I kind of stumbled into this. So I was at a conference about 12 years ago. At the time, I met Harley and Toby from Shopify. Shopify was this tiny little startup.

52:28They were bootstrapped. They were like 15 people. And they said, hey, we really like your design work. Would you design some themes for us? But there's a catch. This won't be client work. We're not going to pay you. We want you to list them in our marketplace. So the idea is like when people sign up for Shopify, they wanted people to be able to select a theme and pay like $49 to$250 to do that. And I started making$5 ,000 a month,$10 ,000 a month as these themes sold. And I was like, hey, this is really cool. I'm not having to promote it. I don't have to think about marketing or SEO or anything, you know, people, they, they send all the traffic to their marketplace.

53:08And so we started building more and more themes and we ended up spitting out that business. But what, what I didn't realize was that in the theme marketplace, there was only so many squares and it took time to build the themes and it took time for them to get approved. And so I started owning more and more squares. So let's say that in the early days, if you were to choose a theme, there's a 50 % chance that it was one of ours. So we had like saturation early in this marketplace that was very small when we joined it. But then as Shopify grew, I mean, you guys know what happened. They go public, they start pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into marketing.

53:46I get free marketing. I get to be the little barnacle on the whale and keep growing. And it got to the point where that business was big enough that we ended up taking that public at a$260 million valuation a couple years ago. So it's an incredible strategy. Now, I think Shopify is hard because you're late. You know, the marketplace already exists. It takes a lot of time to get approved. You know, that might not be the place to go. Where you might want to look is like Discord or Adapar or any kind of software ecosystem that's not super saturated. If you can go be a barnacle on a whale, you can make a ton of money.

54:25I totally agree. I have a business that's cooking up that's like this. I'll tell you later offline because I can't announce it yet. But I totally agree with this strategy. I think it's amazing. You invested. So you said it went public at$260 million. How much did you invest to get there? It sounds like it was kind of some free labor to get the themes going. But how much capital did it take for you to get going because you were early? $20 ,000 maybe. So that's incredible. And didn't you sell that business for$15 million? or did you sell it for 10 and bought it back for 15 there's like a story where you sold it and then bought it back right so basically started it for 20k sold it for about 7 million um and then i ended up buying it back from the guys who bought it for 25 million and then about a year later we took a public for 260 million so talk about that like did you sell it like did you regret selling it or what why sell it in the first place was that a mistake and then psychologically how'd you get yourself to buy it back for three times as much?

55:26Yeah, like Sam, I was in this kind of existential crisis. I was super burnt out. I've been running. So I had that business. I had Metalab. I had two SaaS companies. I had an e-commerce business. I was running all of them, kind of running around like a chicken with my head cut off. And finally, I hit a wall, and I was feeling really depressed. Talked to a friend. He said, hey, why don't you sell one? Were you liquid at that point? Were you financially secure? no no i was liquid in that we had a lot of cash flow but the problem was i'd be um borrowing from peter to pay paul right so i have at any given time i'd have a highly profitable business and i have a startup and the startup would burn all the profits so i didn't have a nice house like you know i i was okay but i always felt like i was going to go broke and so getting that cash influx was amazing so i sell the business um suddenly i'm sitting on millions of dollars and feeling very secure.

56:22And the first thing I do is I go, okay, now that I've got all this money, I got to learn how to invest it. And so I pick up a book about Warren Buffett and I start reading about this idea of competitive advantage and moats and what a good business looks like. And as I'm reading, I'm going, oh my God, I just sold the business that has all these qualities. What the hell was I thinking? And I was still on the board. So the nice thing was I helped them choose the CEO, this amazing guy named Ben Moore. And I just kept watching. And eventually, the guys who we sold it to, they were fatigued. They had transitioned to doing something different, so they wanted to sell the business.

57:00And so I just stepped on their foot. I said, hey, if you guys want to sell, we'll do a deal. And so we did. And then we did a bunch of M &A and packaged it up and took it public. That's insane. So the 20K you invested was the initial amount, but then you bought it back for 25 and then you guys bought a bunch of other Shopify plugins and apps, right? Yeah. I think our total amount, if you look at it from that perspective, our total amount of investment was about 36 million. So we took it, started it for 20K, sold it for seven, bought it back for 25, did$10 million or so of M &A, and then took it public.

57:37And we optimized the business and grew it quite a bit over that year. yeah that's awesome that's a that's a that's a good insight i mean i remember seeing like the press release for pixel union and i remember you talking about it but i didn't know that you actually had to buy it back for more than you sold it for yeah it's 5x basically it's insane um sean where do you want to go from here let's do the the life philosophy so you said people always suffer in silence what does this mean yeah it's something chris and i've noticed So we have this real culture of autonomy at Tiny. So we always say that when we hire a CEO, we leave them alone.

58:17And there's certain people who really love that. So for example, often founders who sell their company to us. When a founder sells their company to us and keeps running it, often they sold because they wanted to buy out a co-founder or they wanted to buy out their VCs and they wanted to operate the business profitably. So they're kind of saying, look, I've got this great business. I know what I'm doing. I want an investor who's going to leave me alone. I just want to buy out these guys. I want to buy out a co-founder or something. And so usually those guys, they just want to be left alone. And we say, great, talk to us if you need anything and sail off into the sunset and run your business.

58:55That works fine. But often when we hire a CEO, they're used to having somebody who oversees them. So like a really active board or before they were in some big corporation and there's constantly someone checking in. And so they associate check-ins with everything is okay. And we don't do that. We literally throw people in the pool and we say, okay, go and swim, do whatever you need to do. And so often, and because there's so many companies, there's 40 companies now in tiny, there's always someone we forgot about that we're not checking in on, we're not texting, they've just fallen off our radar or we think they're okay.

59:32And so we look at their numbers and they seem to be good. We assume everything is fine. And so we just say, you know, they're not contacting us. Let's leave them alone. Well, so often we found that people will fester in silence. They will actually assume that, um, here I am, I'm doing this great job for them and they won't even do me the honor of picking up the phone or checking in or, um, you know, whatever it is. And, and it's this, I always, I remember about 10 years ago, I was complaining. I was hurt. I'd sent someone an emotional email and they didn't respond. And my friend says, do you know what Hanlon's razor is?

1:00:09And basically the idea is it's never a tribute to malice what can otherwise be explained by ignorance or stupidity, right? So never assume negative intent, but everybody assumes negative intent. We all know what it's like to send an email that's really important to us and the person doesn't respond for three or four days. You assume that they're going, fuck this person, or I'm going to ice them out. In reality, they're busy. They've got kids. They're doing their email. They're behind, whatever it is. And so I've just observed this fact. I don't know what to do about it, but people will always assume silence equals malice.

1:00:44And then you have this other one that says people don't change. So you first said people always suffer, or people suffer in silence, and people don't change. You're getting a little pessimistic on us. Tough worldview. But I agree with you. There's this author called Robert Greene. He's got, you know, 48 Laws of Power and he has this other book called Human Nature. And he's like, why should you study human nature? Because very rarely do people change. It's the same stuff over and over and over again. And then when you look at their individual habits, whatever they've done in the past, they're going to just assume it's going to happen again and again and again in the future.

1:01:20That's one of the best. That's one of the best books I've ever read, The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene. I just got the audio book and I just keep listening to it every year. It's amazing. I've just seen this over and over again. I find that you rarely hire someone. And let's say, I love to hire people based on scrappiness. Will they figure things out? Will they learn? Do they have high pace? I've never hired someone who doesn't have high pace and then coached them into having high pace, right? People either do or they don't. And the only thing I've seen where people change is it's kind of like addiction.

1:01:55You kind of have to hit rock bottom, right? So if you're kind of an asshole and you talk, you interrupt people all the time and you always talk about yourself, maybe you stop having any friends or you have an intervention. Your friends have an intervention with you. Maybe at that point you hit rock bottom and you go, I need to change. I have a problem. But most people generally continue on their track that they're on. and I don't know I see this all the time with with people I work with and especially people will not change their ideas so if you let's say a CEO comes to me and they say I've got I think the best way for us to grow is SEO and I say oh well let's think about that what about xyz opportunity I think we should focus on PPC marketing or have you thought about changing the product in this way they will actually double down when i challenge their idea they will double down and they will keep they will now defend the idea and as soon as they defend the idea they will commit and they will be consistent what is it called commitment and consistency bias right now they will double down on that so i've just realized like trying to change people is impossible and at the end of the day we're all like um people are like elephants and you're just the rider you know you just kind of go where the elephant's gonna go and hope for the best you see a big a poor guy on the side of the street begging for change, you just say, change comes from within, my brother.

1:03:22Change comes from within.

1:03:29I completely agree with people don't change. I had a thing in my life where at 22 or 24, I forget, it was like, oh, this is rock bottom. And I had like, there was like a distinct moment where I'm like, I'm just going to change that trajectory just a few degrees. And if I just keep going, it's going to make a massive impact. I had But there's really only like, I remember, I think two times in my life where I'm like, oh, that's going to change. And it's happened. But then like everything else, it rarely changes. It's very hard to break any type of habit or human nature characteristic. I think I would disagree with that.

1:04:01The only thing I would disagree with is I would just say, instead of the phrase being people don't change, I would say, assume people don't change as a reminder to myself. Because the problem is you're like, if you assume that people are going to change because you're being hopeful and you're, you're going to make a bunch of bad decisions because you're going to be baking in change when change is quite rare. And so it's not that they don't change. It's that you should not be assuming that they will change is the trap that you want to avoid. It's like when you get married, there's that classic saying like, you know, don't try and change the person that you're with.

1:04:33Um, and I think it's like it be pleasantly surprised. Like it has happened for sure, but it's, it's really a fool's errand to try and go and change a person. and also uh it's sort of like ads people are like oh ads ads don't work on me it's like okay everybody thinks ads don't work on them everybody thinks they're not average i think uh you know the same way it's like i think we think that other people don't change but if i if i separately had asked you you know like hey are you the same guy you were with you know the last 20 years like no i've learned so much i've evolved i've just matured i've i've changed so much and um but we think other people don't change.

1:05:11I guess I'm a little more optimistic about the change. Although my sister has a funny phrase about this. She goes, people say that people don't change. They do. They get worse. And I think that that's more of the how to protect your downside mentality is you assume that people are not going to change or they're going to dig in even further into their current set of patterns. But of course, there's so many outliers that I think you can only make it an assumption, not a rule. um andrew it was awesome being able to catch up with you i'm happy uh things are going well and you um you said a few things here like i i i hope the listener does this but i actually have a notepad here that i take down notes for like everything that we're writing this profit first thing and how much money leaving the bank i like i have a note here i'm like shit all right i actually have to go and actually do that um moise said something a few times ago or uh and sort of Patrick Campbell.

1:06:03We had Patrick Campbell on from ProfitWell on and I still have his notes here and I had a meeting with my company right afterwards. Here's what Patrick Campbell said. I just did a pod with him. We got to do this, this, and this. And this is another one of those episodes where you've actually given me things that I'm actually, I got to go and run and tell my company right now. Everybody loves that CEO who comes in with a whole new life approach every three days because they listen to a podcast. If I was at a company, I'd be like, hey, dude, you're not allowed to listen to podcasts anymore or go to these dinners.

1:06:30Because every time you come back, everything's changing. That is an annoying person. There's a good way to deliver it though. It's amazing how just a lack of awareness can change the results of a business, right? Like as soon as I stopped, I remember I used to obsessively look at my credit card statement. As soon as I stopped looking because I got too busy, I started spending so much on stupid SaaS crap or whatever. And I think just building those processes into your company can make such a big difference. Like it literally is those, Sam, you described that thing of, you know, if you were plane taking off from New York, you changed three degrees.

1:07:06And that was the difference between ending up in Seattle versus Tijuana. I think that same thing is true in a company. Yeah. And I think that this thing might change the trajectory of a bunch of things that I'm doing. Thanks for doing this. And we appreciate it. Thanks for coming on, man. Yeah, that was awesome, guys. All right. That's the pod.

1:07:32Never looking back.

1:07:40Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love. I want to read you. It's that we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. And, you know, as an entrepreneur, if you're using a bank that was built in the 90s, you're operating like you're in the 90s. And trust me, I've been there. Clunky portals, random holds on your money,$50 wire fees, and then being told, please visit your local branch. Well, that's why I switched to a different type of banking solution, Mercury. It turns your financial chores into a smooth workflow. You can do wires, invoices, cards, reimbursements, two clicks, and I'm done.

1:08:10If you're already using Mercury, respect. If you're still using one of the old big banks, I got questions for you. So go visit Mercury.com and give it a test drive. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column 8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members, FDIC.