The 3 Surprising Businesses That Make Kid Rock $30M+/yr

23:20So when they're making a big investment decision, they want to go in with real information versus random theories on their side where they weren't actually an operator in the space. All right, let's do another one. Do you have anything else? I've got a book that I think you should read. So I read this book years ago, and I just recently reread it because it's so good. And I bet you've never heard of this person. I'm going to ask, but I know the answer is no. Kirk Kikorian. That doesn't ring a bell. Kirk Kikorian, does it? That kind of does ring a bell. Who is Kirk Kikorian? All right. So Kirk Kikorian, he's born in the early 1900s, like 1920 or something.

23:54He's an Armenian immigrant or born into an Armenian family where he... He's born in Fresno, California, but spoke Armenian, didn't even speak English. He eventually drops out of eighth grade. So he's not the richest yet, but he's the rags part of the story where he comes from nothing. I think his parents were farmers or something, grew up poor. Learns how to fly a plane because World War II is coming up and he doesn't want to be shooting guns. So he goes into the Air Force and learns how to fly planes. And he spends the war flying planes. After the war, he's able to save up enough money to buy a Cessna, one plane for$5 ,000.

24:29I think he saved up like$2 ,000. He buys a plane. And his first business is flying people from California to Las Vegas. This is in the 50s and 60s. Las Vegas is not really a thing yet, but gambling is legal there. And all these rich Hollywood folks want to go to Vegas for the weekend. He's their guy. He flies them out there. So he flies them out there and he starts getting into gambling while he's there as well. And so through his gambling, as well as his very small business of flying people out there, he starts buying more and more planes. And over the course of 15 years, he has a meaningful business to the point where he's 43 or 44 years old, and he's making the equivalent of$2 million a year in profit.

25:09And so he's got a good business. Well, he sells this airline business for$10 million, which is the equivalent of$90 million today. He sells it in his 40s. And that's really where things start taking off. With that money, he buys a plot of land and he turns it into the Pink Flamingo Hotel, which is one of the first big epic gambling hotels in Las Vegas. Then using the... What's so funny? Just the flamingo. That's hilarious. Yeah, that's his thing. And by the way, while there, one of the waiters who worked for him has a son. And Kirk always treated this waiter really nicely. And so he eventually names his son, Kirk Agassi.

25:49His first name being Andre. So Andre Kirk Agassi, the famous tennis player is named after... Yeah, it's Kirk Krikorian. Because he's known as a good employer. He's a good guy. Takes his small little casino, parlays it, and keeps on growing. And by the time he's in his 50s and 60s, he starts buying other companies. So he buys MGM, which at the time was a production studio, a movie studio. And then after years and years of doing this, He just parlays all of this to eventually he's like 85 years old and he buys 10 % of GM. And then at 88 years old, he tries to buy the entire Chrysler company. And he almost gets it done at like$30 billion.

26:28But what's interesting about this guy, Kirk Akorian, never had formal education. So I guess he's a Wall Street guy who's not actually on Wall Street. He's a banker type. But he buys all these companies with no education. He's very private. So there's like 3 or 4 interviews ever about this guy. and he's got balls of steel. He's a nice guy, but he's a hard negotiator and he just puts his money where his mouth is. And he does this until the age of 94 when he dies. Till the day he dies, he's making deals. And he's really low key, but he dies with a net worth of$15 billion. And if you like... You and I have been into the whole capital allocation type of thing.

27:07This is the guy. And he's done it without any background, no pedigree. Very fascinating guy. I have to apologize to Kid Rock. I thought you were the Billy of the Week. Actually, it's this guy. This guy is the Billy of the Week. Wow, this is an incredible story. The Andre Agassi thing just was the cherry on top for me. I got to say, thank you for adding that one in. It seems almost impossible to me. By the way, I'm clearly wrong, but it seems almost impossible that a guy could just start chartering flights for people. He's like a pilot, pilot turned billionaire. That sounds so... The amount of capital he had to amass to end up owning 10 % of GM, try to buy Chrysler for$5 billion.

27:51How the hell did this guy compound at that rate for that long? That's so insane. The book is called The Gambler. It's a really good book. But basically, he's like, I'm a gambler at heart. I love gambling. He's like, I'm in it for the thrill. But basically, he caught a couple of trends. The first being, obviously, airlines weren't popular. And so his airline was kind of ricky dink. And he just kind of bootstrapped it for like 15 years. And so it's kind of inspiring. He started the airline when he was like 32, right when he got out of the war. It wasn't really a hit until 44. And it wasn't that big of a hit.

28:21It was a good business, but it wasn't like some epic, epic thing. But he sells it for 10 million. And then two years later, he buys it back, runs it for three more years, and then sells it again, this time for 100 million. And the trend that he caught was that airlines just weren't a thing. And so they were kind of bootstrapped things. They didn't have these massive barrier to entries like you would think of today, where you have to have tens of billions of dollars. I mean, starting an airline today seems just insane. It wasn't like that. And then the same thing with Las Vegas, where gambling, it wasn't exactly like that, where it wasn't like that big of a thing.

28:55Las Vegas was... I think the plot of land he paid for, I think it was$800 ,000. And then he spent another couple million dollars to build the Pink Flamingo. And he just got these hits early on where he caught these trends, Vegas, airlines, things like that. And he caught them all early on. But here's the inspirational part, in my opinion. He wasn't really a baller until his mid to upper 40s. And he was in the game for literally 95 years when he died. Yeah. I think that, you know, Monish Prabhai, when I was talking to him, he was like, you know, there's three variables that matter when it comes to wealth.

29:29He's like, it's all about compounding. So he's like, it's either the rate that you're compounding. So the percentage gain every year, it's the length of the runway, or it's the amount you started with. And you could pull any of those three levers. You either start with a huge amount, then you don't have to have a high rate or a long time. If you start with a low amount, which is where most people start, then you need a high rate and a long time. Or you need explosive high rate and not that long time. Those are your variables to play with. And if you look at Buffett, Buffett's thing is that he compounded for the longest time.

29:58So he basically bought his first stock when he was 11 years old. And yes, at 95, now he's... If he hadn't given his money away, he'd be the wealthiest man in the world. Or number one, number two, number three, somewhere up there. And it's because he had an 80-year runway. So it's not that his rate was that absurd. It's that the rate was consistent and it was 80 years. And so it's like one of those things for compounding is like how long of a runway do you get? And for most people, like for Buffett and for others, it's like the bulk of their wealth is always kind of in the last two or three turns of compounding because that's just how compounding works.

30:35If you're doubling every 10 years, then doubling from 70 to 90 is going to be doubling a huge number at that stage. And people say that. And you're right when you say that. But it almost discredits Buffett. If you read his biography or read any of his early reports or his annual letters, man, even when he was like 35 or 38, he had something like$50 million in assets. And people are like, well, he didn't actually make... The billions didn't come until his 50s or 60s. He was killing it for a long time. He started... Both can be true, right? $50 million is still killing it. And$50 million is not the same thing as$90 billion.

31:16Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's for sure. But if you read about him, I think he said when he graduated college, I think he had$100 ,000 of his own portfolio, which in the 40s, that's having$2 million. And he was killing it from a really early age. And then his early compounding was like 30 % to 50 % for like 6 or 8 years in a row. So, I mean, he was kind of the man from the beginning. If you ever read about him... When that episode comes out, you'll like it. Monish is basically like a Buffett historian and a Munger historian. He knows year by year what he was doing, what he was investing in, how much he had.

31:54He has charted it out. He gave me an oral history of Warren Buffett in a way that I've really never seen. And I loved it because I've met a lot of people who are super successful. And then it's like, they're not kind of like students of the game in the same way that I am. where I'm like, oh, did you ever go back and read all the letters and deconstruct them? They're like, no, I was just doing my thing. Or I know Great Invest. I'm like, do you do detailed models? Or do you write memos? Did you go back and review them? Do you track your hit rate? Nerdy stuff that I like to do. And very often, I would say more often than not, the answer is actually no, I don't do any of that shit.

32:30I just focus on what's in front of me and I just do that thing. So it's really nice when I see somebody who wins with the same play style I have, where they kind of are a nerd about it. And they do like to go back and kind of chart things out and break things down and kind of analyze it a little bit themselves and other people and try to use that to kind of reverse engineer, you know, some lessons. So it was pretty cool to see that. All right, let's take a quick break because I got to tell you a story. Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank and you know the type.

32:59It's got a janky interface. It's built like a 2002 tax form and it was open only during business hours. And I hit send and it froze. They flagged the transaction. They locked my account. They put me on hold for 45 minutes. And then they told me I got to visit my local branch. And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. After asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money. I can pay invoices. I can reimburse the team all from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200 ,000 other startup founders.

33:29And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to Mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, column N8, and Evolve Bank and Trust members, FDIC. What was your takeaway after he said that? Like I said, I think it was reassuring in a way. It sounds silly to say, but it's true. Whenever I meet a more successful person than me who does things the way I do them, I feel good inside. I feel a little reassured. Like, oh, that's cool. This person, it reassures me that my method can work.

34:01I already believed it could work. or those why else would I be doing it? But it's even more conviction that this works. I don't need to shift what I'm doing in order to make it work. When you see somebody who's very similar to you, maybe similar demeanor, similar philosophy, similar approach, similar work habits. I like finding people who have a match because it's very hard for me to change my nature or to change my work style or change my habits. So it's actually better for me to double down, make them super strengths and find other people who've won with those same strengths and learn from them and what they did versus try to become some different guy playing some other play style that I'm not familiar with, that I'm not good at, that I haven't done for 15 years already.

34:38Let me wrap up by telling you one last thing. And this one is going to be short because I'm not terribly well-versed on it. You would know this guy better than I would actually. What's his name? Mike Novogratz, the crypto guy. What's his name? Mike Novogratz. Novogratz. So I think he started or helped start Fortress, which is a massive hedge fund, right? Yeah. He's got this new podcast. called Business Untitled. Right now on YouTube, I think it has 3 ,000 subscribers, even though they're like 30 or 15 episodes in. His podcast is so good. It's him. Dude, it's so good. It's him and this other guy named Mike Barry.

35:19Mike Barry, I believe, is a real estate guy. And he owns a chain of hotels or something like that, really high-end hotels. It's sort of like the all-in podcast where it's like billionaires talking about stuff. And that's one of the reasons why exciting. But these guys have like a little like all in is not even remotely. I wouldn't even use the word blue collar at all to describe those guys or what they think of themselves. This podcast, they kind of do have that vibe where they're like born. They weren't born wealthy and they still remember where they came from. And they're talking like they're small business owners, except the numbers are absolutely massive.

35:52It's a beautiful, wonderful podcast. You got to listen to a few episodes. I'm so jealous of this thumbnail style. Oh, man, I see this and I just wish this was our thumbnail style this is like dollar bills it's just fucking awesome dude it's great man it's a really you hadn't said this i wish i could just steal i wish i could have just you could have just shown this to me and i'd be like let's steal this because this is so so damn good of a thumbnail style well they only have like three or four thousand subscribers how many subscribers do they have on their youtube i think it's like 3 800 or something like that yeah so you're saying we can steal it nobody yeah we can steal it it's really good this podcast is so good like and they have amazing guests like they even had they've had snoop dog on recently or they'll have the founder of Equinox or a bunch of really big names.

36:35And they just shoot the shit. And it's wonderful. It's so good. And they tell stories about starting Fortress Capital. And I guess Wes Eden, who started Fortress, I think he eventually bought railroads or something like that. And they tell the stories. But they have this weird blue-collar, down-to-earth kind of style that I've been digging. It's really good. All right. That's a big endorsement. I like that. I got to ask you, what do you think about the fact that so many people have podcasts? It's pretty remarkable. When we started this, it was four years ago, roughly four years ago, I think. And we were not early to the podcasting game.

37:11We were like a decade plus late to the game. Felt late. Felt late at the time. But I would say since we started, it's now incredibly common. If you're anybody... The number of people who start a podcast that are interesting people from other walks of life, like investors, business people, athletes, whatever. It's amazing. One of the content when I was going to talk about was... J.J. Reddick has a new pod with LeBron James. Have you seen this? I saw that. It's awesome, right? It's like LeBron is podcasting. This is amazing. What the hell is going on? I love the athlete ones. A lot of the UFC guys are doing them now too.

37:48too. Kamaru Usman has one. I love them. So what's your take on this? Where does this go? Or what do you think is going to happen with everybody starting a podcast now? A, I love it as a fan. I enjoy listening to them. B, I don't think they're going to last that long. I think it's a lot harder than people realize to do it for a really long time. I think when you first started this, the common thing was, you guys are going to run out of stuff to say. I hadn't really felt like that much. there's some times where I'm like, what else can we talk about? But in general, that's only happened 10 % of the time.

38:24And I don't think they're going to run out of things to say. But I do think that it could be a lot harder work. I mean, you're signing up for something. I'm shocked that Tim Ferris has done it for 10 years. I think that it's a lot harder to do it for many years than people understand. Do you agree with that? Yes and no. I think there's a problem with it. I don't think that's the problem. I'll tell you what it is. But on the running out of things to say, I think most people will choose interview, which is a kind of infinite runway format. It's like, oh, you just bring somebody on, then you talk to them, then you ask them questions, then you bring another person on, ask them.

38:55What we do when we don't have guests on is a lot harder to have longevity with because it's like, how many interesting things are me and Sam going to be able to say of original content versus an interview or reacting to news? So I think reacting to news and interview or reacting to TV shows, that's always going to be a format that has infinite runway. I think most people will do those and they won't run out of content. I think the problem is that how many podcasts on average are you listening to at any given month? Five. And you're a power user of podcasts. That's funny. Yeah. I mean, maybe less, three to five, right?

39:29Not a lot. The shelf space is just really goddamn small. I don't think most people realize this. I think they think... I don't even think it's a discovery problem. I think it's a discovery problem because people cannot consume that many podcasts. So for example, I think what a lot of people do is they're like, oh yeah, I use Twitter. I use Instagram. Oh, TikTok comes out. I'll use TikTok. They kind of think everything's social media. And if your experience before was, well, if I'm just interesting, people will follow me. But it's like, I can follow literally 5 ,000 people on Instagram. I can scroll through in one Instagram sitting and I can see content from 200 people in that 30 minutes.

40:09So the shelf space is huge on every other social media. But the shelf space is tiny on podcasts. People listen to 1, 2, 3 on average in rotation. And so the question is, can you break into enough people's top 1, 2, or 3 podcasts? And you're going up against a habit they might have had with other podcasts for 5 years. The hope would be they expand the market. that new people start listening to podcasts. And I'm sure that's going to happen to some extent. But I think just the supply demand is so off. The demand is so small of the number of podcasts somebody will regularly listen to that it doesn't matter how many new people create a podcast.

40:44It's going to be very hard because the shelf space is too small. But you do realize that it's over 2 times the amount of people listen to radio than podcasts. I mean, if you go to where I'm from, and you talk to some certain people, they're like, what's a podcast like it's still listening to music dude yeah but right it's not like am radio but there's still a lot of market penetration for podcasts particularly amongst like a general population like someone who cares about lebron like i bet uh an athlete will get significantly more new but what i'm saying is i think the best podcasts in every category are going to grow like you're saying.

41:23There's still 10x more headroom for them to grow, let's say. However, it's just that the number of winners is very small in podcasting versus on Instagram. There's so many winners, so many people who have followings, either small, just enough to keep you hooked, enough to keep you engaged. It's very hard to be a winner in any category. Let's say I want to start a true crime podcast or a business podcast or a sports podcast. The ones at the top are going to keep getting more and more and more and more and more downloads because... You have an audience now. So it's easier for you to do it. To do it from scratch when you don't have an audience, I think it's basically impossible.

41:59Yeah. Even people who have an audience. Look at like even people who are successful or have some audience. It's very hard to boot a podcast up. I don't know. I think it's the shelf space problem is my take of like what the limiting factor here is. It's just that there's only so many number of humans who listen to podcasts. That number is growing. But the number that's not growing is how many different podcasts they're going to regularly listen to because they only have so much ear time. that they're going to dedicate to ear entertainment, right? Is it good, the JJ and LeBron one? I would say it's amazing.

42:29And I mean that in the literal definition of the word, not like the content is amazing. It's just like, I am amazed that this is happening. I am amazed that LeBron James is sitting down and explaining to me like the Marcin Gortat screen. It's like, oh, what's the Gortat screen? And he's explaining what this is, how it works, whatever. I think they really need to work on getting the... They need overlay. It's way too X's and O's. They need the overlays where you're going to be able to see an actual clip of what they're talking about because it's so abstract that the average person is not going to be able to follow.

43:04The other thing is I think it's going to be hard for them to resist. So what's happening now already you can see is the clips where it's just LeBron talking about the turning point before winning his first championship. It's a story time with LeBron. story time with LeBron is always going to get 10 to 100x more views than LeBron and JJ Reddick explaining this defensive coverage and how to how to how they make adjustments to it right because it's like one is just a juicy story and the other is like really hard math that you need to learn the basketball basketball equivalent of math and so I think what's gonna be hard is their editors gonna be like all right cool we should just like hey uh ask LeBron like if he thinks he's better than Jordan because that's gonna get 10 million views like it's just so there for them and it's to be interesting to me to see, do they stick to the spirit of what they wanted to start with, which is X's and O's real basketball talk.

43:51No hot takes. No, no. It's not an interview with LeBron James, which would always do well. It's like them talking about spacing on the wing, like random basketball X's and O's tactics. It'll be very interesting to me to see six months from now what's happening. But you know what? Even if it's just a miniseries, even if they just did like 12 of these, still phenomenal. Amazing for JJ Redick. Amazing for LeBron's brand. Because I watch this, I'm like, oh, shit. I get why they say this guy's got crazy basketball IQ. JJ Redick will bring up some play that happened four years ago, and LeBron's like, I don't remember.

44:23And JJ's the man too, right? He's so good. But he'll bring up something, and LeBron will have perfect photographic memory recall of the play four years ago on a Tuesday night in Orlando. And that's just kind of amazing. So for his brand, it's like what the last dance kind of did for Jordan, where it's like, oh, man, Jordan's just amazing. LeBron is also playing the legacy game, where he's building his brand of like, dude, LeBron just knows his shit, man. His basketball IQ was the greatest of all time. He's trying to be the greatest of all time in other ways. And so even if they only do 10 episodes and never do it again, mission accomplished.

44:55Dude, but what I liked about Jordan was that he didn't give a shit. Like he cared, like, you know, if you asked Jordan to come on the podcast, he'd be like, doc, that's beneath me. Like not a chance. And I kind of like that mystique. Podcasts weren't good at the time. He went on Oprah and he's smiling and he's giving away stuff on Oprah. He did the things that were the equivalent of podcasts at the time, right? He was very image conscious. You know the great quote about Jordan? They're like, will you take a stand politically? Who do you support for this election? And he said, Republicans buy shoes too.

45:30And so he's like, I'm not going to comment jack shit about this because I'm here to sell sneakers. And it's like, all right. The guy was very image conscious. I don't give a shit about sports, but anything LeBron is part of. Honestly, I would listen to it. I appreciate the best talking. Exactly. I appreciate greatness. Also, it's just fascinating to see, oh, that's interesting. What would you do if you got the A-list, A++ star still active in their game to sit down and do a podcast with you? What would you do? And how would you do it? How would you set the vibe? Oh, they're popping wine. They're drinking wine because they're both into that, but that gives a different casual feel.

46:06They film it in a certain way. As a content nerd, there's a lot to pull from it. Who's producing it? do they own it uh tommy alter and uh jason gallagher i think is the the producer of it yeah they uh it's like a collab between jj's media company that he does with tommy and lebron's media company uninterrupted and so they came together to create that i mean that's a huge pull for jj right oh dude that's like yeah it's like travis kelsey dating taylor swift or something it's like travis kelsey's great you're one of the great tight ends jj radical is a great basketball player but god damn that's a great pull still yeah that's a good pull um all right is that it is that the pod yeah that's the pod all right that's the pod i feel like i can rule the world i know i could be what i want to i put my all in it like no days off on the road let's travel never looking back

47:05Hey, 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 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.

47:36If 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.