The 2023 Milly Awards: Part 1

0:00This is the most popular episode we do every year. it takes weeks of planning I'm out 50 bucks because I got this new jacket on we're all dressed up and why? because it is the Millie Awards it is our end of year episode where we go through about 15 categories right? actors they got the Oscars and musicians they have the Grammys well what do business people have? they got the Millie Awards and this is where we share a bunch of different categories like our best and worst investments of the year you know where do we take a big L on an investment what do we win on or we'll do a category like person we would most bet it all on Who would we, if we have to invest our whole net worth on somebody, who would we bet it on?

0:37We got me, Sam, and Andrew Wilkinson. We're all here. We've been doing this for three years now. These episodes are always the favorites. This one went long. We're going to do it as a two-parter. So in part one, we have categories like Billy of the Year, Best Business That We Think Somebody Else Should Go Do, Our Favorite Moment from the Podcast This Year, and The Biggest Change That We Are Making Personally in Our Game for 2024. And in part two, we have a whole bunch of categories like our favorite unsexy business and wild predictions for next year. So enjoy the Millie Awards 2023.

1:19Okay, what's up, guys? It's my favorite episode of the year. Andrew Wilkinson is here. Sam is here. Sam, you're looking dapper. Andrew, you're looking dapper. Sam, I got to say the whole dressing well thing. I'm bought in now. I see it. You don't look like a science teacher. You don't look like you're from a different era. You just look sharp, my friend. Yeah, I couldn't find my cufflinks. I thought I was going to look like a farmer on this thing. Thank God I found them right before we started. Do you guys remember how Trump had like the Clemson football team into the White House and they use like the Lincoln gravy bowls for like barbecue sauce?

1:55that's how I feel right now with this person who bought me Tiffany Crystal for my wedding this is the first time they're being used and they're being used for Whole Foods brand LaCroix so shout out to that person um Andrew you feeling good you ready to do this thing feeling great yeah I'm uh this is the best I've dressed in years we're happy that you did it here all right so this is the Millie Awards we've done this this is now Sean four years running we've done this or is it three I think four maybe three I think it's three and we've got we've got 11 or 12 or 13 categories. We're going to do favorite MFM guest.

2:28We're going to do Billy of the Year, Biggest Change we're making for 24, the person we bet it all on. We're going to do a bunch of different stuff. We're going to try and go somewhat fast for each category, but I'm sure we're going to have interesting stories for each one. Sean, you want to kick it off? Where do you want to go? Category one. This is the Millie Award for our favorite MFM episode or guest of the year. Sam, start us off. Who you got? This was a tie. It's not a tie. We're not going to have ties, but I'm going to say the top two that I had was Scott Galloway. So by the way, we have a clip that's gone viral on YouTube where it's a clip from the Scott Galloway pod where he's talking about how much he made.

3:03I'm talking about how much I made. And people are just bragging on us both so hard because they say that we sound so depressed. But I'm going to give it number one to Kevin Ryan. Kevin Ryan's the founder of Guilt, Business Insider, MongoDB. I think Kevin Ryan was the best episode. I think he was the most wise person and well-balanced person we've had who's had crazy success. You know what else he did that I liked at the end of the episode? He was like, here's how I set up my company to maximize, um, like kind of the gain I get out of these companies and pay the least taxes. And I'll tell you what, no rich guy ever says that no risk.

3:35I ever tells you this is the structure I use. And he said it on, on air. He's like, here's what it does. It lets me live in a high cost state and I'm effectively only paying 14%. And my kids are only paying 0 % on what they're getting out of our capital gains due to QSPS. So he owns the share. He's like, I only work on projects that are QSPS eligible and long-term capital gains. I'm not looking for cash flow or income because he's like, I got to a point where I have that day-to-day needs settled. So you have to get to there. He's like, but once you're there, he's like, you take your QSPS, you live in a high-cost state, you then gift your stock to your kid's trust.

4:13So you set up kids trust, you gift your stock to them before you raise a financing round. So you're taking only like, let's say, 100K out of your lifetime gift tax and your kids now own QSBS eligible stock. When you sell, you're going to end up paying only the state tax. So you'll pay 14 % California or New York. You'll pay no federal. And then your kids will pay 0 % wherever, you know, likely whenever they get it out of the trust at their given point in time. you're getting qsbs you know the 10 million dollars tax-free for you times each of your kids i can get to 50 million tax-free if i got you know three or four kids or whatever and i was like i don't think they've got i don't think they have qsbs in canada land do they no we don't have we have there's all sorts of other stuff and benefits and stuff but um there's a great saying on this stuff um whales only harpoon whales only get harpooned when they surface right and he just surfaced in a really obvious way and you know there's just some anal retentive irs guy listening into the stroking right now strike that all from the record what uh what's yours andrew uh my favorite was sarah moore so sarah moore uh she's a crazy story she um had a really troubled childhood basically got adopted by this wealthy family they ended up putting her through harvard business school and she went out and she bought this business called egg cartons.com and this story was just incredible.

5:35I feel like so many people hear these wild stories about tech bro billionaires, you know, raising a bunch of money and hitting it big, making trillions of dollars. And I think her story is much more realistic for a normal person. You know, anyone, she really kind of is a testament to the fact that anybody can teach themselves business and can go buy a business that is really not rocket science. And I loved how simple and tactical all of her stuff was. She's so honest. said on the pod she goes I'm trying to stay low key and under the radar and I think it's been one of our most downloaded and viewed episodes with like 500 ,000 listens to that episode well it's so the smartest thing she did is she like she did the Michael Jordan like I'm retiring this is the last thing like you know I'm never going out again and now it immediately as soon as you said that in the intro I was like I have to listen right there's definitely episodes I kind of check out of or don't do.

6:32Yeah, it was a great one. That made me lean in. I think that's a great one. By the way, there's a quick follow-up to that because that story, the Sarah Moore story falls in the category of kind of like too good to be true. So, you know, look at all the elements. It's basically like, here's this super hot woman who grew up, you know, super poor, couldn't even get into college, somehow ends up at Harvard Business School. There must have been something happening there. a family had adopted her along the way that's like the plot of the movie Blindside then it was buys a business but has no money remember because she grew up super poor so bought the business with zero dollars cash down how she found the business was she you know hired 50 interns off of Craigslist and like snuck them into the Harvard Business School like library to work with her on this and you know buys this business egg cartons.com for millions it's a million multi-million dollar business super successful there's no pictures of her on the internet.

7:27There's no interviews of her on the internet. We're like the only guys who have done this. So there was a lot there that I came out thinking, did I just get Elizabeth Holmes? I might have, oh God, I might be part of the documentary here. Alright, let me at least make sure I look good if this is going to end up on Netflix one day. And she flew out after the episode. She's like, I got to meet you. I said, okay, why? And she's like, I need to know who I'm dealing with here. And so she flies out. We go get lunch here in the burbs in California. She flies all the way from Boston and everything checked out.

8:04If she is Elizabeth Holmes, she's the greatest Elizabeth Holmes you've ever seen. She looks like what she shows like. She told the story. She showed me the old photos. Everything. And she's like, I'm so glad. People have been pretty respectful because I said on the episode, please don't bother me. And we did a form instead of her email address. Type your questions in this form. And then we'll answer the form. How many messages did she get? A lot. She had said after the first appearance on it, she got like the Netflix Bravo. Like other people had reached out to be like, can I do, we want to do a show on you or a movie on you.

8:41Wow. All right. Well, kudos to Sarah Moore. What's yours, Sean? All right. My MFM guest here that's going to surprise you guys is Connor Price. And Connor Price was a guy who was working in a warehouse. He was stacking boxes in our friend's warehouse, in Ramon's warehouse. And he was like a wannabe rapper, white guy. And that's kind of cliche. But he actually made it. And he made it in a very interesting way. He figured out how to go viral on TikTok. And he was not a social media guy. He refused to even post on social media. He was too shy. His wife was like, you got to do this. It's a great way to get the word out.

9:18And let's just have some fun with it. She kind of became his manager. and they now have racked up, I don't know, like a billion views on TikTok going viral. And the reason I say counterpriced is not just because that's an inspiring story, but I took away one big lesson. It's like I realized that the puck has moved and I'll give you guys the short version of it. I think era one of marketing was sort of like, let me interrupt your programming in order to tell you about my product, right? That's commercials. That's like radio ads. That's how things used to work. Era 2 became, hey, let me send this to an influencer.

9:57They'll kind of hold up the product and make a post about the product. So now I'm not interrupting your programming. I'm kind of using this trusted influencer. But it's clearly still an ad. The content is buy this product. It's great. And what Connor Price is doing is a little bit different. He creates a little skit. And in the middle of the payoff of the skit, the hero of the skit, the one that saves the day, is this dope song. and the 15 seconds of the dope song, and that gets people to go and actually want to go find the product. And now I see this everywhere. This is how Mr. Beast sells chocolate too.

10:29He doesn't hold up his candy bar and say, this is a delicious candy bar. You should go buy it. He says, I recreated Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. And inside this factory is he makes, like the product is baked into the content. The content is entertainment around the product. And now that I see that, I can't unsee it. I see it everywhere. And it's part of my kind of core business strategy now. Even our own ads, we changed like that. Instead of saying, we're going to stop, we're going to tell you about this thing, we created a segment called The Thrill of the Shill, we teach a lesson or an entertaining story, and then we tell you about the product in that story.

11:00And that's how I think marketing goes down. Conor Price. Got to give a shout out to his wife too, just a total shark in the best possible way. Yeah, she was hardcore. All right, you want to move to the next one? Billy of the year. How do we describe this one? Just a billionaire who's fascinating? it's just someone who's balling out of control you don't even have to be a billionaire you just have to have that that billionaire strut the ability to walk with some swagger and play the game a little differently so it's somebody who is super successful but in a way that we really respect let's go with andrew first who you got so mine is very obvious it's um sorry a landline over there you still have a landline dude you go public and you have to install a landline the gate the gate the gate of my house is like the super old school system so i have a landline just for that.

11:47You better only be talking to presidents on that thing. It's red. It's red, like the bad phone. So mine is pretty obvious. It's Charlie Munger. I think we all know who he is. For those of you that don't, he's Warren Buffett's longtime business partner. He just died last week. I think he was 15 days or something short of his 100th birthday. He was 99. And the guy was completely sharp to the end. I think a week before he did an interview with Becky Quick from CNBC. And I just want to tell you a story about this guy. This is how sharp this guy was. So Chris and I were having dinner with him one night.

12:25And all of a sudden, this guy bursts into the room. And he's like, Charlie, I'm doing a deal right now. I need to know an answer to something. And this guy walks in. He's like 30 years old. And he just starts rattling off a bunch of questions. He's like, okay, we need to do it at 5.6 % interest for this many doors. And Charlie just asks a couple of questions and he says, okay, good, cool. And then the guy just says bye to us and leaves. And Charlie explains that it's this neighborhood kid who he is a Hasidic Jew, tried to convert him to Judaism 20 years ago, going door to door with Bibles. And they ended up becoming friends.

13:09He mentored him. He started buying apartments. Charlie backed him on this. And now they own a billion-dollar real estate portfolio of Los Angeles apartments. And he's just this neighborhood kid. His name is Avi. And they built this huge business together. And Charlie started doing this when he was like 90 years old. His 90-year-old side hustle is a billion-dollar real estate portfolio? God damn it. Andrew is this going to be like a couple that's been married for 80 years and they both die at the same time is is Warren gonna like is he uh distraught you think in the same way a marriage would be I don't know I mean yeah Buffett's really old too and I think um if you think about the actuarial tables they really don't have much or Buffett wouldn't have much time left but uh hopefully he keeps going for yeah he named to or he said he has a successor and everything lined up but I wasn't sure if it was going to be like a marriage where like he's going to go like next week but I guess we'll see.

14:04It's funny is they've had successors since they were like 60. Everyone's been saying they'll die at any time. So they've gone they've cut a lot longer than everyone thought. All right mine's Palmer Lucky the CEO of Andrel. So we had Palmer Lucky on I think two years ago now. It was an amazing episode but here's why I like Palmer Lucky. He says what you want to say if you were a billionaire but you'd be too afraid to say it. And so he has got a lot of really good quotes of him. He's kind of a loose cannon in a few ways. Him and Jason Calcanis have gotten into it. But frankly, I love it. So he's got this great thing that he did.

14:37He spoke at a conference recently and he goes, Do you guys know what the number one profession that children want to be? It's social media influencer. The next is professional gamer. The next is a YouTuber. And the problem is that you can't tell kids to follow their dreams when their dreams suck. Which is like a great line. And he goes, Do you know what the number one dream for kids in 1971 was? It was an astronaut. We had just gone to the moon. These guys were fighter pilots, PhD, mathematicians, supermen, who all were also really good-looking and well-spoken. It was the ultimate American hero ideal.

15:08For a kid to see that and say, that's what I want to be, okay. Then I say, yes, we should tell kids to follow their dream. But when it's social media influencers, we should tell them their dreams suck and don't follow their dreams. So he's got these really articulated, wonderful points that I appreciate. He dresses silly. He's got a mullet. I'm a big Palmer Lucky fan. Yeah, I like that one. That's now two years in a row. Andrew gave him the nod last year for Billy of the Year. And now Sam comes in again with Palmer. I love it. He's we got to get him back on, man. He was he was really good on the pot.

15:39He had super interesting ideas. And also, like you said, speaks his mind. He says that he flies commercial and that he prefers to see to sit by the bathroom. He goes, because that because my my grandpa, he goes, my grandpa was a pilot and I just love being around everyone. I don't truly believe that, but he can continually claim that's true. What's yours, Sean? All right. My Billy of the year is going to be an entrepreneur who I think has a, I don't know how close they are to the Billy number. I think they're probably close when you include their wife. That's a little hint for you. I wrote down a couple of bullet points on why this person is a badass.

16:17And you know, you're a badass when your couple bullet points goes to the Roman numeral 13. Let me just read these off in rapid succession. Okay. this person has been a rapper, an entrepreneur, an investor, an author. They are a motivational speaker. They have a badass wife who's even more successful than them. They somehow married up, even though they're super successful themselves. Four kids. And when I called this person to prep for the podcast, they were on their way, you know, taking care of the kids, taking them to their soccer game, yelling at them, where's your shoes? Where'd you put your shoes yesterday?

16:51and that just told me they're plugged in as a dad versus four other people are raising their kids. They own an NBA team. They're part owner of an NBA team. They built a coconut water brand, a private jet company. They discovered David Goggins before he was David Goggins. They actually invited David Goggins to live in their house and train them every single day for 30 days. They like running, so they created a running festival. They like pickles. They're creating a pickle brand. They created a fake Mount Everest because he's like, I can't go climb Everest, but I'll take this mountain, I'll climb it 14 times and it's the same height as Everest.

17:25He came on the pod and had one of the all-time classic lines about some other competitor of his. He goes, keep the money warm. Thank you for keeping the money warm for me. I'm coming. And keep the money warm has just it warms my soul. He is just having fun out here. He's got great life philosophies about having adventures multiple times a year to have a life well lived. He also got angry at me for asking him what his monthly burn was. Yeah, he called Sam out for badgering him. We had to cut it out of the episode because he got so awkward. I didn't badger him. I said, I'll ask whatever I want and I respect you to say no.

18:04I'll ask you the same question seven different ways until you finally wilt. He didn't wilt. He was like, that's personal shit, Sam. You're pissing me off. He is Jesse Itzler. That is my Billy of the Year. That's a good one. Yeah, I had him on my list. I thought you were going to pick him, so I backed off. I think Jesse's an amazing person. He also has this calendar. I keep getting Facebook ads for it, and I'm going to buy one. What did he say? He goes, I'm 50 years old. I only have 30 summers left. I'm planning exactly how I'm going to spend them. It was good. I think it was called Big Ass Calendar.

18:41All right, category number three. What is the biggest change you're making for 2024? But before we do it, we have to say what we said last year. Andrew, you said being better at responding to iMessage. You were like, I've gotten my email system underwrapped, but you're like, I have so many text messages. I'm bad at replying. It makes me feel like a bad person and a bad friend. Sam, you said, I'm going to be less of a dictator. You said, I'm going to lead this company without being a dictator and being less metrics obsessed. I'm going to be more vibe driven, more calm. I nailed it, by the way, just for the record.

19:17Yeah, I was going to say, and I said, I don't know why. I think I said something else, but I think I said, knowing when to use my impulsiveness and when to ignore it. So those were our three. Sam, you want to go first? So you said you nailed it. I nailed it. I've been way less metric focused. I try not to talk about sales or anything like that. You're a vibe CEO? I'm a vibe CEO. I'm not the CEO, but my CEO is metrics driven, but I'm not as much. So I calm down and I think I'm very easy to be around at this moment. But next year, so I'm making a few changes. One, I'm going to move eventually. I think I'm going to do the most tuxedo guy, tuxedo thing ever.

19:58I think I'm moving to like Greenwich, Connecticut. That's not a joke. That's serious. So that's going to be a big change. But you know what I'm going to do in 2024 is I'm going to get, I'm trying grayscale. You guys know what grayscale is? It's when you, there's like a, if you go to, just Google it and you'll see the directions on how to do it. But if you type in on your phone, like color, you should see it where you can switch your iPhone to only be black or white. So I'm doing that right now because I've been using my phone to read books to my daughter and I hate having that bright, all those colors because she stares at them.

20:29But the bigger switch I'm going to do is I'm going to get a dumb phone. Have you guys seen dumb phones? It's like a Nokia or a light phone. I cannot stand phone addiction. It's really bothering me. I'm totally addicted. And I'm afraid to set a bad example for my children. so this year I'm going to move to a dumb phone which is similar I guess to what you're saying Andrew you're breaking up with email so two thoughts on that before you jump to that so one the bright light you get at night you want to actually Peter Atiyah recommends switching your phone so that it's a red screen instead of grayscale I can teach you how to do that you tap your power button twice and you can make it a shortcut to make your screen red and red light doesn't affect your night vision so that's what I do that said there's been studies on color.

21:13And if you decolorize your phone, if you make a grayscale, it's less stimulating. You're less likely to click into stuff. What I've done is actually installed something called Freedom. And Freedom plus screen time basically block everything. I've been doing that, but with Opal. You know, Opal, I think it's the same thing. Yeah, similar. So it's like, I basically have no ability to get through it. Like there's, I have not been able to figure it out. And so I have no email on my phone. I've blocked a lot of texting. I've blocked every basically every fun app. And I feel like an addict. I feel really irritable.

21:48I'm going through withdrawal right now. But the change I'm trying to make... So I nailed texting last year. I got this amazing app called text.com, which is basically like superhuman for texts. Dude, you've been tweeting out links. You refer five people and you get a t-shirt or something. I love it. I absolutely love it. But the problem with that is that I've now gotten so responsive with texts. I'm so good with texts that I'm getting more texts. So, you know, you send more emails, you get more emails. I'm now getting too many texts. And because I built my email system last year, I don't respond on email as fast.

22:24And so I'm getting more and more texts. So I have that problem. The big thing I'm trying to do this year is I'm trying to break up with email fully. So what I've been doing for the last two weeks is I can't access my email and my assistant sends me screenshots literally of any important email that she thinks I need to respond to. And I just tell her what to do with it. And what's interesting about that is when you're in a flow state, when you're working or writing or doing something, you'll often have the thought, oh shit, I have to remember to send that email. And so you jump over to superhuman, you send the email, and then you might see 10 other subject lines.

23:00And before I know it, I'm like down a rabbit trail reading like a Paki McCormick newsletter or responding to a problem or something like that. And so what I'm what I'm hoping is that this new system will only be the things that I absolutely need to respond to. And there's no additional distraction. So we'll see how it works. Let me just tell you two wonderful rich guy things that Andrew just did that are true rich guy things, not these fake ass, not these wannabe rich guy things. First thing is, he said, you know what Peter Rettia recommends? Which is great because he didn't say, you know what my doctor, Peter Rettia recommends?

23:35He recommended it to me. Yeah, he recommends to me when I see him because again, he's my doctor. So that was the first great thing you did. You didn't brag when you could have bragged. It's the words not said. It's the dogs that didn't bark, right? You really gave yourself away as being a truly comfortable with yourself, secure person and I appreciate that. The second thing you're basically at the stage of Trump and others that are just like, I just get my email printed out and put on my desk and I just quickly mark with a pen and then somebody goes, what is email actually? I actually don't understand how the system works.

24:07It just shows up on my desk. You're basically at printed email and printed email is like, you got Louis Vuitton, you got like Birkin bags, you got at the very top of the luxury pyramid is printed email and you're basically there. You know, it's crazy though it's really not it's not an inaccessible thing like um so i have an assistant in the philippines and it's like a thousand dollars a month and she does it right so it's like it is something that a lot of people could be doing it's not that it's inexpensive it takes a certain level of confidence in your lifestyle that you're not missing stuff right you you are not lacking something and so you're able to do this type of system so what's interesting though is i've done this cycle for 15 years of getting overwhelmed.

24:52Usually once a year, I get overwhelmed and I dial everything back. And Sam, I've actually had a flip phone. I've tried the dumb phone. At the end of the day, you need to order DoorDash and Uber and do basic things. So it didn't work for me. But I had this moment where I was going through one of these cycles, and this was in 2010. And my friend asked me out for sushi. So I live in Victoria, Canada and I and Vancouver is about I don't know a 35 minute flight away or a two hour ferry away and so I go for sushi with my buddy and I'm in this mode where I put my phone in my car and I don't look at it so I go have sushi we have a great time we're catching up at the end of the sushi I get in my car and I look at my phone and I've received an email from Mark Zuckerberg Mark Zuckerberg at the time was famous, but not famous, famous, not like he is today.

25:45And I emailed him because I heard he was coming to Vancouver. And he didn't respond for two days. And then at eight, eight o 'clock at night or seven o 'clock at night, I got this email that said, hey, do you want to go for a drink from him, from Zach? And there is, and I checked this email at 830 or nine, and there's literally no way to get to Vancouver after 9pm. The ferry leaves at 9pm. There's no flights, et cetera. And so I missed my opportunity to go out for a drink with Mark Zuckerberg one-on-one while he's out of his element in my hometown. And so I always think about that story. Whenever I block my email and do all these things, I still always think about that.