How I Live On $25,000/Month In New York City

0:28My wife is like insane about this stuff. quick 10 or 15 minute Q &A session. I asked some of the listeners and some of my Twitter fans what type of questions they had for me and we'll talk about it. Let's get into it. So all right, what's the first question? What do we got? Let's start with one that's really timely. You're about to be a dad. Someone's asking, what is top of mind as you become a dad? So I'm going to have a child, November 1. That's the due date. We'll see a little girl. What? So in preparation of having this baby, I was like freaking out about like just the actual, like the physical, her physical well being of raising her.

1:07And so I read the biography of Lewis and Clark, because I remember that Sacagawea had a kid like on that journey or something like that. And so I wanted to read the book. And so it turns out, she had a three month old that she carried like in a little sack across America for two years and like, you know, in the winter. And And that encouraged me, I'm not going to hurt this baby. So I'm not too worried about that. I would say the biggest thing, though, that I am freaked out about is raising a spoiled kid and raising a kid that's going to be a drug addict. I genuinely have a deep fear in me. And so I've been trying to figure out how do I, in a very healthy way, withhold things from her?

1:49How do I not give her what she wants just in order to instill some types of grit? because the sound's kind of douchey, but I can give her anything she wants in terms of physical stuff. And I'm really freaking out about how do I stay strong and not give her what she wants in order to create grit? And how do I make sure that she's not spoiled and works hard? But my biggest fear is raising a kid who is freaking out over that or who just feels like she doesn't need to work. And so my current thinking, this has not been settled, But my thinking, this is just me, not my family, me, is the only thing that I'll pay for is free tuition and free medical for life.

2:32And beyond that, give her nothing. That's kind of like my current thinking. That's what I had growing up. My parents paid for my school, and I never had to worry about getting braces or anything like that. And that's kind of like where I am now. I read The Titan by John Rockefeller, and he was the richest person in the world. And his wife has this famous quote where she says something like, the biggest joy that I have in life right now is withholding from my children things that they want, because I know it's going to make them stronger. And I'm kind of in that camp at the moment on how to do that.

3:08But I don't feel very confident on the right way that I'm going to do that. But my fear is the outcome of a drug addicted, indulgent child who won't work hard. that that's my biggest fear at the moment and so I'm preparing by like getting my mind right on how to like withhold things from her and not give in because I do give in to a lot of things is that a good answer you have kids in my am I I'm I'm a very withholding mother so I totally get and speaking of you being effing rich this is a next question that I personally am curious about it's what's the biggest difference in your lifestyle now that you're effing rich?

3:48I have nothing to do with picking these questions. I just want to say that I hate talking. I don't like that topic, but I will discuss it. So basically, before I sold my first company, my four years of salary leading up to it was$20 ,000 a year,$20 ,000 a year. I think I paid myself$150 ,000 a year. And then the last year, I think I paid myself$350 ,000 a year. So for the first while, I didn't have a lot of money. I didn't have much. And then all of a sudden, I sold a business and I had enough. At first, I did something that I advise everyone not to do, which is I bought a few things. I bought some real estate.

4:32I think that I bought a fancy car. I think that that brings close to no happiness. and might be one of those things that you have to go through in order to truly appreciate. But I think that if you do have a windfall, you likely shouldn't buy anything crazy fancy for the first year or two and just get used to it. But I've also learned there's this story about the study about these people who have studied amputees. And they found that after six months, the level of happiness went back to where they were when they had both legs. So you get hurt, you lose your leg, you're bummed for a little while.

5:12After six months, you go right back to feeling as good as you did with two legs. That happens when I think when you make some money. But the biggest thing that it did was not what it could purchase you. But the biggest change is my confidence. My confidence went through the roof. I'm incredibly confident in my ability to start something and to see it through to be a success. I don't think that I have the confidence where I think everything I'm going to do is going to be a success. I think I still have paranoia that I'm going to lose everything. And I still have massive fears about going broke.

5:45That is something that my therapist and I are working through still. But it hasn't changed significantly. I think that someone had asked a question about monthly expenses before I sold. I think I was spending anywhere between$10 ,000 and$15 ,000 a month. My apartment at the time was$4 ,000 a month. I thought that was astronomical. I had a girlfriend, my wife and I, we live together. So it was$2 ,000 each. And I was like, that is insane. $2 ,000 in rent. I can, that is just like, that's evil. I thought. Now when I rent the place, it's a bit more, you know,$10 ,000 or$12 ,000 or$13 ,000 sometimes when I go to New York for the summer.

6:27And so I increased my rent price, my home that I live in, in Austin, I paid$900 ,000 for it. So my monthly mortgage and taxes, I think it's$5 ,000 or$6 ,000, somewhere in between that with taxes. And so I think I increased my spend from like$10 ,000 to$15 ,000 a month to like$20 ,000 to$25 ,000 a month, maybe$20 ,000 a month when I'm not in New York. So I don't spend what I think is a significant amount of money. I don't have any car payments. I have two cars, a Tesla and a Mercedes. Those are paid off. I have a cleaning lady who comes once a week. That's$120 a week. I do some health stuff. So I have a fancy gym and I go to fancy doctors.

7:15Collectively, that's$1 ,000 a month. I don't own any jewelry. I'm wearing a fresh clean tee. It's a$10 t-shirt I wear those constantly so I don't buy a lot of fancy things so my burn I think is relatively low when I go out to eat I don't look at prices and when I go to Whole Foods I buy the fanciest stuff and that's basically besides that I budget everything else out and so like I have a my wife is like insane about this stuff she has a drawer full of coupons so we went to Costco this weekend because we had a$20 off or something like that coupon. So we still use coupons or coupons. But it has not changed significantly.

7:58I guess one significant thing, I hate flying. I do not like to fly at all. So typically, if I have to go somewhere, even if it's like 12 hours away, I tend to drive. I do not like to fly. When I fly now, I fly business class. And so that makes a$300 flight$800, something like that. but my increased expenses rent went up um um business class but i don't fly often um and then my home doesn't have fancy furnishing my whole house costs thirty thousand dollars to furnish so it hasn't really changed significantly other than my confidence my confidence has changed significantly the idea of like creating something from nothing that changed significantly how was that did that answer those two questions loved loved every minute of it so now you can get out of the hot seat on your personal life and i'm gonna throw to you the next this was the most liked question so what were your alternative business ideas if you didn't do hampton so i um i'm i think i mentioned this last podcast there's this thing called ikigai that i'm totally bought into.

9:11I'm very fascinated with Japanese culture. Japan has this philosophy where I think I said it last time, it was like a Venn diagram of what the world wants, what the world wants to pay for, what you're good at, what you love doing. I try to find something in the middle. One thing that I'm obsessed about is data and numbers. If you search, if you go to my personal blog, which don't judge, I started when I was 21. And I quit blogging there. But I used to have this document called the CEO document. And I tracked hundreds and hundreds of people. I read lots of biographies. And I tracked when they're born, when they started their apprenticeship, when they found success, and then what the success was.

9:55And I made these in-depth databases. I'm obsessed with databases. I'm obsessed with researching things. So I have hundreds of pages of my Notion document where I deconstruct how different companies work. So I thought about creating a research company or a database company. The reason I didn't start it was because I couldn't find an appropriate problem to solve for. So I have all these databases of information, and I like to analyze them and figure out what they mean. But I couldn't find a good use case, or I couldn't find a reason why people would pay money for it other than it's interesting. but I sought out like for six months like different companies in the space and I couldn't figure out the right like go-to-market strategy so I wanted to start a database company or a research company because I love it I thought about starting a media company I do have a non-compete so I can't start like a business news email for another one year I think um and so I couldn't do that and so I kind fell into Hampton because I thought it was perfect in my little ikigai.

10:58It was like what I'm good at, what the world wants. But I was really obsessed with research businesses. We just had Jason Janowitz on the pod. This episode will go live. But he came the episode before this. And I asked him a lot about research businesses. I think they could be really big. I also think that there's not a lot of young-ish entrepreneurs attacking that space because it's a pretty stodgy old space that hasn't had a significant amount of innovation. But I'm very fascinated by it. So research in database businesses is what I wanted to do. One of my favorite examples is CB Insights. I love CB Insights.

11:30I love PitchBook. I love those companies. And I wanted to build something like that. Okay, this next question I love, although it's painful for me even to ask it because it's really, it cuts deep. This comes from Omar. What was the most painful thing someone told you and how did it change you? Okay, I saw that question. and I was trying to think of a good answer. My answer is boring. My best friend, his name is Neville Medora. I met him because he had a great blog on copywriting. One year in 2013, I think it was, 14, I cold emailed him. I said, Neville, my name is Sam. I'm going to host this conference.

12:11I want you to come speak. I'm going to pay for your flight. I'm going to take care of your accommodation. The conference was really like 15 of my friends hanging out talking. And I bought him a$250 Southwest flight. And he slept on my couch. And we became best friends after that. And when he was there at my in my couch, I gave him a towel to like take a shower. And it was like a moldy towel. And he was like, dude, you are disgusting. You're acting like this bachelor 23 year old, which you are, but like, you need to be a man you need to get your act together. This is disgusting. and I remember that changed my life when he and so I like got together some of my like my uh my domestic skill set I also like I was like I need to act like a man I need to dress better I need to like be more appropriate like I gotta get I gotta get my act together so that helped me a ton he also Neville does this a lot he criticizes me all the time but in a really nice way where he's like I'm gonna tell you this because I love you but I'm gonna give you feedback and another thing was when I met this woman that he was like dating or maybe one of his friends I think it was one of his friends.

13:14He was like, you're asking way too many intense questions. The first time you meet someone, you need to chill and quit talking about work. And that was painful to hear because that was my identity. And so that changed how I had conversations. And so he's done a good job. Neville's six years older than me. So he's done a good job of being my brother a little bit and teaching me how to act like a man. So that was a good thing. I remember when I started my first company, The Hustle, and this CEO of a large multi-billion dollar media startup that everyone knows. I'm not going to call him out. He told me, I go, I'm gonna start this thing called the hustle.

13:51I think it could become a huge thing. He said, this will never make more than a million dollars a year. Just come and join my company. And I was so hurt because I admired this guy so much. And my admiration for him turned to hatred. Not really hatred, but like rage. I was like, I want to like I want to destroy you now and the reason I thought that was because I was so hurt my feelings were so hurt that this guy that I admire just totally shit on me and he was wrong but I believed him for like six months I like doubted everything I was like this is stupid but he told me that he won't even remember saying this this guy by the way he probably made he thought it was like an offhanded comment or that something like that but it hurt my feelings so badly that I remember that uh like terribly and then the last thing was like anytime a girl friend has ever like broken up with me that like that has always like stung me I'll remember that for for decades like I'm still like trying to like prove them wrong so like I'm pretty sensitive to like rejection yeah for sure the most painful moments always come from high school I think everyone can agree with that yeah like high school and college girlfriends where you're still trying to figure out yourself a little bit and they like and you get in and they're right like you're not doing things the right way, but, and they're rejecting you.

15:08It's like, ah, it's the most painful thing ever. Girls are so brutal. Hey, this episode is brought to you by Mercury. They're the fintech of choice for over 200 ,000 companies. I myself use it for eight different companies. The reason why we all choose it is because it has everything you need under one roof. So like my e-commerce company, it's super important for us to be able to easily wire, transfer, pay all our different vendors and suppliers all around the world. And the old way with our more traditional bank that shall now be named. I'd try it online. It would say no. It would freeze my account.

15:39Then I'd have to go in, book an appointment, speak to a specialist who would try to upsell me on something I didn't need. And then finally, after 30 minutes there, then they charged me 50 bucks for the pleasure of that terrible interaction. And now with Mercury, I just go online, push two buttons, and I'm done. It's such a seamless experience. It's very intuitive. Everything's under one place. They basically took all the things any company would need for their financial tech, and they made it super easy to use to put it into one platform. So highly, highly recommend it. If you're not using Mercury, I question your judgment.

16:08So that's it. You've heard it on My First Million. For more information, check out Mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details. Okay, this next question is from Caitlin. What is one trendy business model you think is overhyped? I think the NFT and Web3 stuff is just complete nonsense. I think it's inferior entrepreneurs slapping their Web3 name on crap that no one wants and hoping that it's going to work. But everyone knows that now. I think what's overhyped? I think starting a newsletter is really popular right now. Most people don't realize it is a treadmill.

16:51It is very challenging to create new content, just like this podcast. It's hard. This is a hard job. I like it because I think I'm good at it or I'm decent. But it is very challenging. Any type of content business, very, very, very, very hard to do for like two or three years. And newsletter, the newsletter space, significantly different than when I started. It is way more competitive, way more challenging. So I think that is a bit overhyped. Although I would still start one because I like it. I think that most of the people in the space are not going to work. And it's pretty bad. Their content stinks because it's just a rinse and repeat of what already has existed.

17:28So I think that's quite overhyped. I would say getting popular on the internet can be awesome because you get an audience. But in general, I think that creating businesses based off your... Or getting popular on Twitter and Instagram and things like that. I think it's incredibly empty feeling for most people. and I think it's complete nonsense and your time would be spent building a company or focusing on your family than getting popular on social media. I think it's empty. I think that it's like small boy stuff. I just, and I find it incredibly uninteresting. And there's many days that I regret trying to like become popular on the internet.

18:07Okay, are you up to do one more? We'll do one more. Okay, this one comes from Jared Seidel. He is moving to San Francisco. He's curious about this idea of proximity to power. So he's moving to SF with the clear intention to start a company and surround himself with high achievers. His question is, what did you do when you arrived or what did Sean do when he arrived in SF to start laying the foundation to meet interesting people and business builders? Moving to a big city when you are young and have no family, I think is absolutely awesome. My time, I lived in SF for 8 years. I got angry at the government and I left because it was dangerous.

18:49Otherwise, I would still be there in a heartbeat. I have no problem paying the high taxes in order to live there. I think it's a beautiful place. I would still even go back there today if my wife wanted to maybe. So 100 % worth it. I loved it. What I did when I got there was I went to meetup.com and I went to crazy amounts of meetups. I also did... I started an event. so I created it's so funny Siava Kaczynski so Siava is one of my best friends Siava has a business that does like close to 100 million a year in revenue we've had him on the pod you guys maybe have heard of him um he so I created this book club called the anti-mba and the idea was we're going to read one book per month and we're going to break it up into quarters so week one we're going to read a quarter and discuss it week two the second half or whatever and I would have an expert come in on the book's topic.

19:41And we would just shoot the shit with 30 or 20 people on this book. And I posted ads on Craigslist, on meetup.com. And where else? I think I bought an ad in the newspaper for$200. I just posted these ads. And Siava was one of the people who replied. And after doing that for every week for about a year, I had an email list of 2 ,000 people who were following this book club online because I would write out my notes from the meeting. And doing that book club changed my life. So I just hosted a book club and it was awesome. It was so good. It was such a fun way to meet interesting people. And so that's what I did in order to meet interesting people.

20:22We just read cool books and we brainstormed and talked about them. Most people, by the way, didn't even read the book. They just wanted to talk about it because I wrote notes ahead of time. I wrote a summary on the book. So that changed my life. The way that I met Sean was I had this event called HustleCon. And there was this article in TechCrunch about Monkey Inferno, which was this incubator that Sean ran. And I saw a picture of his office and it was magnificent. And I cold emailed Sean and I said, Hey, man, I'm hosting this event. Can I host the pre-dinner at your office? We'll take care of all the food.

20:57I'll even hire someone to clean it up. But can I just host it at your sick office? And in exchange, you can come to the dinner and meet all these wonderful speakers and attendees. And he said yes. And that's how I met Sean. And so I think what I did, what I think more people should do, is you just reach out to tons of people. And I would say don't even reach out to like ballers or people who are like ahead of you. Find other peers who seem like they got the juice, who got the charisma or who seem like they're going someplace. Like for me, it was Ryan Hoover. Ryan Hoover started this thing called Product Hunt.

21:27We were buddies before he even started it. And I've got lots of friends that are now incredibly successful, where we were just all like losers who were ambitious, but we had nothing. And I did a good job of like cold emailing those types of people. And we hung out a lot. And we just I became wonderful friends with them. And it was through my book club. It was through cold emailing. Twitter wasn't popular. I didn't even have a Twitter back then. So I just cold email tons of people. and I would highly recommend that's what you do is find peers who you think are going to go places and you guys all try to succeed together and you try to be pretty selfless in the sense of like like when I hosted my events they all volunteered to help me out when they needed something I helped them and so just like succeeding together I think was a really big deal now the issue is that takes like 10 years or 15 years but it's worth it and you're not doing it just because someone's going to be successful.

22:19Like I had friends who are artists and like they financially weren't successful. But it was just people who were like, kicking their dent in the universe. And that was addicting to be around that. And we all kind of did it together. And that's what I did. I had a book club, the anti MBA is what it was called, because I was so jealous of the I didn't go to a fancy school. I remember when I moved to San Francisco, I took a bus out or a train out to Stanford, because I was like, I want to see what this shit's about. Like, what's what's so special about this place and I felt like in awe and I was like so jealous that I didn't know what Stanford even was when I was in high school so I was like I need to create my own Stanford because I'm jealous of all these people that went here and so that was kind of the idea it was the anti-MBA it was free and I organized it so I would suggest book clubs meetup.com I don't know is meetup.com still a thing I bet you it is right now when I was in San Francisco I went there like six months ago and And someone recognized me and they go, Sam, I love the pod.

23:14We're hosting an AI meetup and a hackathon right now. Do you want to come? And my wife and I were like, yeah, let's go. And so we just... You got a car here? We were at the farmer's market. And they're like, yeah. I was like, all right, come on. I'm going with you. And so we went to this guy's meetup. And it was magical. I met all these AI people who I knew nothing about. And it was magical to be in those meetups at these places where you have a homogenous group of people working on something that is not mainstream, it felt really magical. So I would say go to those events. All right, awesome.

23:45Book club. Another thing that you and Oprah have in common. I love it. Yes. We have a lot in common, me and Oprah. So there were a lot of other questions we didn't get to, but we'll do another one a little later. Let me know if you guys like this stuff. Peace.

24:09want to. I put my all in it like my days off on the road. Let's travel. Never looking back.

24:19All right. This episode is brought to you by Mercury. They are the finance platform of choice for over 200 ,000 companies. Shouldn't be surprised because I use it myself for not one, not two, but I have eight different Mercury accounts. I have seven for different companies that I'm a part of. And then I have my own personal account because now they have personal banking, which is a really cool feature. I highly, highly recommend it. Like I said, I use it myself. And the reason why is because the way that Mercury works is beautiful. It's very intuitive. And you could tell that it's actually made by a startup founder.

24:46It's an entrepreneur. You could tell it's made by somebody who used other banking products in the past and didn't like all the different rough edges and annoyances and decided to actually fix it himself. And really any type of entrepreneur you are, let's say you're an agency. Well, one of the things every agency has to do is be able to send invoices, easily create them, send them to customers and stay current on your balances with all your customers. Well, you can do that inside Mercury. And so I think that Mercury is great. Highly recommend you check it out. And thank you for sponsoring the show.

25:12For more information, check out Mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details.