← My First Million
My First Million
3 Stories of Crazy Geniuses: Fenn’s Treasure, Michael Saylor’s Infinite Money Glitch + Ralph Lauren’s Bold Bet
00:56:28
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- [00:00]
A
So I think the theme of this episode is rich guys crazy or genius. We've got the bitcoin guy who's doing the treasure hunt, and he's either crazy or he's a genius. Right? Is he crazy or is he awesome? Ralph Lauren. Crazier. Genius. Looks like he came down on the side of genius. I have another one for you.
- [00:19]
B
I feel like I could rule the world I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off on a road let's travel never.
- [00:28]
A
Dude, have you heard about this guy who's doing the $2 million treasure hunt?
- [00:32]
B
No, I have no idea what you're talking about.
- [00:34]
A
Okay, well, can I interest you in a treasure hunt story?
- [00:38]
B
Yeah. $2 million. That sounds good to me.
- [00:40]
A
There's this guy named John Collins Black, and there's not a lot of info about this guy, but he has basically hidden somewhere between 2 and $3 million across America right now in different treasure chests. So he's got five treasure chests out there, each with a bunch of treasure inside. And specifically, it's not just, like, cash. It's things that are valuable. So he spent the last five years buying valuable kind of artifacts. So one of them has, you know, rare Pokemon cards, a 2002 holographic Charizard card. He's got one with George Washington's jelly glass that he bought out of an auction. There's things from it from old shipwrecks. And in total, the stuff is worth two to three million dollars. He split it between five treasure chests, and he's hidden it in physical locations across America. And then he released a book that was. That's called There's a. Called There's a Treasure or something like that. I buried a treasure.
- [01:34]
B
There's a treasure inside.
- [01:36]
A
And it's basically just clues to find his treasure. And so there's maps and clues, and you can buy this book right now and go find this treasure.
- [01:44]
B
Dude, wait, hold on. It's a. This is. It's even funnier. It's on Amazon. It's a book on Amazon called There's a Treasure Inside. And the book is $35. So he's going to recoup a little bit of his.
- [01:55]
A
A little bit of it. A little bit of it, but probably not as much. So he's got, like, you know, a hidden. A Colombian green emerald and all kinds of stuff inside. And I find this kind of fascinating. So this guy's story is interesting. He was, like, a musician in la. That didn't really work Out. And then he was like, okay. He started creating websites for helping people find jobs. And that started going good. He used that to buy bitcoin earlier. Early ish on. And he. I guess the story is he's a bitcoin multimillionaire who was also fascinated by adventure. And so there's this thing called the Fen Treasure. Have you ever heard of this?
- [02:32]
B
Okay, yeah. Fen Treasure. It's a cache of gold and jewels that Forrest Fen, an art dealer, hid in the Rocky Mountains. Yes, I actually do think I've heard of this. I believe Zach Crockett, Zachary Crockett, who used to work for me at the Hustle, wrote a big article where he spent a week trying to find this treasure.
- [02:53]
A
How did he do.
- [02:54]
B
I don't think anyone has found it. So.
- [02:56]
A
So five people died trying to find this treasure. Because he. It was like, is it up in the mountains? Whatever. So they're climbing. So five confirmed deaths chasing the treasure. Then he announces, somebody found it. I think this was in 2020. Ish. 2022. He says that somebody found it, and then he dies. Months later, it was revealed that former journalist and medical student Jack Stoof found it, and then he auctioned it off for what? For a total of $1.3 million of what he found. And so this guy, John, or whatever Collins Black, was searching for that in 2020. And so he was, like, during COVID he had. He had searched for the treasure. He thought this was really cool. And when he. When we were all in lockdown, he decided, I'm going to do one of two things. He either was, like, going to create a children's book publisher or create a treasure hunt. He did both. So he created this. He started accumulating assets for this treasure hunt.
- [03:59]
B
All right, so when I ran my company, the Hustle, I think we had something like 2 million subscribers, and we made money through advertising. We didn't actually make that much money per person reading the newsletter because advertising in general is kind of a crappy business model. And so I remember sitting down, and I'm like, what are all the different ways that I can make money off the Hustle that aren't advertising? And so to make sure that you don't make this mistake, Sean, me and the HubSpot team, we went and looked at a bunch of different ways to monetize your business? And we put it all together in a really cool document where we lay it all out along with our research. And we call it. Very appropriately, we call it the Business Monetization Playbook. Go to the description of this episode and you're going to see a link to that business monetization playbook. It's completely free. You just click the link and you can see it back to the episode. I have a friend named Chip Forsyth. Chip Forsyth is a crazy person. I've been friends with him for 10 years. His brother is AJ Forsyth, who started Icracked, if you remember. Icracked.
- [05:01]
A
Yeah.
- [05:02]
B
And Chip will go out. He's friends with these guys who raise funding to go find shipwrecks that they think have. Well, I guess some of them are valuable just because they're shipwrecks, but some of them are valuable because they were like ships that had gold or other like valuable stuff in the, in the ship and they raised money to go out and find these shipwrecks. And he tells me all about it. And it's like the type of story where the people who are into this, it's the only drug that fills that need. Do you know what I mean?
- [05:33]
A
Yes.
- [05:33]
B
Like, it's, it's like it is an intoxicating thing to find this. Like, it's romantic.
- [05:38]
A
There's a romantic idea about a treasure hunt, right?
- [05:41]
B
Yeah. Like, it's awesome. And so, like, I understand why it's not my obsession, but I understand why it is other people's obsession.
- [05:47]
A
The other thing I think is interesting is choosing to release a book for this. I feel like there's a missed opportunity. I feel like he should have done something with TikTok or social media where I feel like there was a more viral way to release the clues or to let people unlock the clues or search for this thing together.
- [06:04]
B
Like a weekly or monthly announcement. Yeah.
- [06:07]
A
You know, I don't know if you've seen. There's these things that go really, really viral on Tik Tok. It'll be like some woman, say, telling this 39 part story of how her husband cheated on her. And these things just, it's like a true crime. They amass like tens of millions of followers that are trying to just follow them. They wait for that next piece of the story to drop. And I do think that there was probably a way to do this that somebody could do, which would be to let. Do a bit of a treasure hunt. But use, use social media, use TikTok as a way to uncover the clues as they go. And then people go in the real world using those clues rather than a book. Steve Bartlett, who's the podcast host of what's called Diary of a CEO, before that, he had a Like an ad agency, whatever. Before that, he worked for me back when he was maybe 19, 20 years old, 21 years old, something like that. He was just like a young guy that we had that was like a growth marketer, and his job was to come up with great growth ideas. One of the things that he did at the time that I remember was he grew his Twitter and Instagram accounts like crazy by doing a very simple thing. He was doing these, like, cash drops where he'd put just 200 bucks in an envelope. And he would say, at a college town, I think it was. He'd be like, we've dropped it here. He would post a video of him hiding it, and then there would be videos of people going and trying to search for it. And they'd be. Basically, they would tweet where they hid it in some way, and then they would tweet people going and finding them. But I don't remember if it was him that did this or somebody else that was doing this.
- [07:33]
B
I'm going to start doing.
- [07:33]
A
That's a great idea.
- [07:36]
B
It was a great idea.
- [07:37]
A
And it was like 200 bucks. It wasn't even that much money that they were doing. And they were doing these mystery cash drops as a way to just generate hype. But the genius of it was the content that they created kind of before the drop and then after the drop of people searching. It made it feel like a big deal. And then they would do the next one and the next one. I think it was just an account called, like, Mystery Cash Drop that was doing this, that was working, was getting really big. This was like 10 years ago. So I'm trying to remember.
- [08:03]
B
The guy who ran that account messaged me. He listens to the pod like, it's. You never heard of this guy? Mystery cash drop. He.
- [08:12]
A
This was before we even started the podcast. A long time ago.
- [08:14]
B
No, but he still does it.
- [08:15]
A
Like, oh, yeah, it was at Hidden Cash.
- [08:17]
B
I think that was cash. One of these guys. One of these guys just messaged us. You don't remember this? And for some reason, it came into our world where I forget what happened. Someone tagged us on his Twitter thing, and he was like, I love those guys. And then he DM me and just said, hey, something like that.
- [08:31]
A
So maybe I got this wrong. Maybe Steve wasn't the guy doing it. Maybe Steve showed me this and we were going to, like, copy this strategy. I don't remember the link. Steve definitely put me onto this because it was happening both in San Francisco and also in the uk The Account now is suspended for hidden cash, which I remember happened back then. It got suspended. I'm not 100% sure, but why? But let me just read this article. This was back in 2014. So this is literally 10 years ago. It says an anonymous benefactor has been leaving cash hidden across San Francisco, inviting strangers to find it via a series of clues. They left money under chairs, in public parks and stairways or in public bathrooms. And they basically post a picture of them holding the cash and then like a zoomed in thing of where they put it. Like it's like under a toilet, but you don't know which toilet. And then they. Their quote was, I've made millions of dollars the last few years, more than I could ever imagine. And yet many friends of mine cannot afford to buy a home in the Bay Area. This has caused me quite a bit of reflection, and I'm determined to give away some of the money I make to charity and to do fun, creative things like this and that he or she will leave it once or twice a week. Did somebody should just do this again? This was 10 years ago. It would work today.
- [09:37]
B
I think this is awesome. I think I'm going to start doing this. The other day. The other day.
- [09:42]
A
It's like a hobby. It's like running. We just were jogging. We're talking about. I think I' pick up this hobby.
- [09:49]
B
It's like, I want to play real life Willy Wonka. Like, I just want to, like, start control. I just want to, like, start controlling people's lives $100 at a time. And just seeing, like, if I can, like, make all the monkeys dance, that's kind of like what this is. It's like you're just like, want to be a puppeteer $100 at a time a little bit. But it is, like, kind of fun.
- [10:04]
A
I think one of the problems is, like, you get that initial hit of, like, excitement and attention, and everyone loves it. And then it's going to fade away. And then you're going to keep hiding the cash, but you're not going to get that same hit. So you're going to have to. It's like an addict. You have to do more in order to get there. So then you're like, you know, it'd be a shame if somebody got hurt finding it, but that would make for a whole nother news cycle around this. And then you sort of. You just keep escalating the prizes and.
- [10:27]
B
It becomes weird after a while. It's like, hey, Willy Wonka, why do you have a chocolate river and invite children over all the time. Like, this is just dangerous. Do you know, like, at some point, it's like, hey, could you get. Can we go to dinner? And you not, like, high tutor walking into the restaurant.
- [10:44]
A
The funny thing is, we're so old that, like, everybody who's listening to this that's, like, under the age of 25 is like, yeah, you know, this is how every YouTuber, you know, tries to get famous is doing this exact same thing.
- [10:53]
B
Yeah, they're like, what are you gonna do next? Go give, like, a homeless guy a hundred dollars and film yourself, like, giving him a haircut? Like that exact. Exactly.
- [11:02]
A
I think maybe the takeaway is, you know, what's old is new for some of these things, like what the hidden cash this guy was doing. It's not really all that different than what Mr. Beast does and has done to great effect.
- [11:12]
B
All right, can I tell you a story about a different way to look at adventure, about someone who's, like, obsessed over a little bit? And I think, you know, this person, you know of them. And I think I'll tell you a few facts that kind of, like, shock you, but also, I think you're going to be into this person more than before. So the story is about a guy named Ralph Lifchitz. He was a Jewish kid from New York City, grew up, I believe, in the 30s. And the story is basically that he wanted to be an actor. He grew up poor, but he loved, like, seeing all these movie stars on tv. And he was like, you know, I love that you can dress up and pretend to be another person, and if you pretend hard enough, people kind of start treating you seriously and start treating you like that person. And I love that. I love that. And I also love the idea that you can write a story and make it a movie, and I can live my life through that lens that. The lens of that movie, and it gives me hope. So he was, like, intoxicated by this, but he sucks at acting, and so he's like, I can't go to Hollywood. I can't become an actor. However, what I can do is I can shape these movies and direct these movies not with a camera, but with clothing. And so we get super into clothing.
- [12:24]
A
What kind of leap of faith was that? I can shape these movies not through writing or acting, but through clothing.
- [12:29]
B
Yeah.
- [12:29]
A
So pretty ridiculous statement.
- [12:31]
B
No, it's not. I'll give you an example. So he was like. He's got this quote where he was like, I love how, like, these actors, like, I like, you could Dress up as, like, a military person, and you kind of feel a little bit tougher sometimes. Or I could dress up like a farmer, and, like, I actually want to go outside and, like, get dirty a little bit. I could dress up like a cowboy, and I want to go and, like, do cowboy shit. Like, if you dress up with a suit, people kind of take you seriously. And I think that's cool that you can, like, pretend. But it kind of like, what's the difference between pretending in reality? If you do it long enough, like, it kind of becomes, like, the same thing. And so he was like, I can't really act, but, like, I can dress up, like, these characters, and I kind of, a little bit start actually feeling like these characters. And eventually, Ralph Lipschitz, he got made fun of a lot because his name even, like, the Jewish kids were like, dude, your name has the word shit in it. Like, that's like. Like, you dork. And so he changed his name to Ralph Lauren. And so he starts. That is Ralph Lauren, the clothing company. He starts selling clothes for Brooks Brothers, like, in their store. And then eventually, at the age of 28, he starts his own business. And he's like, my first thing that I'm going to sell is ties. He liked ties. And he goes and he pitches something like Bloomingdale's. And he's like, hey, can you guys sell my ties? And the guy's like, these are great ties. I would love to sell them. But it has this name, Ralph Lauren, on the back of the tie. Like, no one wants that shit, dude. Like, no one knows who you are. I don't give a shit about Ralph Lauren. You gotta take that off there. And he had it kind of a Sylvester Stallone moment where he was like, look, I'm a nobody, but I need my name to be on these ties. Like, this is just a deal breaker. And Bloomingdale's was like, all right, well, no, we're not gonna do this deal. And so eventually, he keeps on hustling, and he gets his ties into, like, Macy's or something like that. In the first year of business, he does, like, half a million dollars in revenue, which is a home run. He did this in the 60s. That's the equivalent of, like three and a half million dollars today. Home run. After year three or four, he starts coming up with different ideas. And he comes up with this idea of polo. So the polo brand, the college shirt that you see everywhere. And he parlays, by the way, what's.
- [14:34]
A
What's the backstory of that what was his inspo, do you know, for the polo shirt?
- [14:38]
B
Like, the inspo was basically, like I said, he grew up as this poor Jewish kid in New York. But what he loved was this idea of like class and old money. This idea of like wasp. Even though he's not a wasp, he like loved the idea of like sophistication. And to him, the sport of polo that like screamed like both utility because it's a sport, but also like sophistication because it's like supposed to be like a rich people who play it. And the collar that polo players wear, they would always wear a collar and in particular they would button down the collar. So an oxford button down cloth shirt that comes from the sport of polo. And so do like certain style boots, certain style pants. And so there was a little bit where it was like already considered like a fashionable sport. And so he says, like, I'm going to name my brand Polo. And so he builds polo and this shit over like the course of a handful of years. It takes off. So now Ralph Lauren, he's worth something like $10 billion. He still owns, I think 80% of the company and he's a great businessman. But that's not what I actually am impressed by him. What I'm impressed by him is two things. The first, he has this idea of like, you are the director of your own life and your life is basically a movie. And he has this idea where he was like, I would wear clothes that would. I almost. I think Tony Robbins said this or you told me that Tony Robbins said this. Where he was like, if I want to act tough or confident, I make my body tough or confident. So what do you call that thing where you like, like flex your power posing, where you like flex your chest when you're not feeling comfortable and you put your body into like a confident position and your brain kind of follows your body. He sort of is saying the same thing, but with clothing where he was like, you know, if I wanted to feel a little bit more sophisticated than I actually felt at the moment, I would dress a certain way and like my brain would follow. And I find that to be like a really cool idea. And the second thing that he did that was really interesting is, I don't know if you remember this because we were kids, but do you remember Ralph Lauren advertisements? Do you remember any of those, like the photos and magazines?
- [16:44]
A
No. What was it?
- [16:45]
B
What was interesting is that what he would do is he would. He had. He used a lot of the same models. And the models oftentimes were not professional models. But what he would do is if he wanted to, like, he would set the stage. So basically he would act like he's filming an entire movie. And so they would rent a home in the Hamptons. Let's say it's like a. The ad is for some type of summer, summer wear for the beach. He would rent a Hamptons house. And he would be like, well, if I'm a, like a wealthy family in the Hamptons who has this like beautiful home, like what would you guys be doing right now? Like, maybe you'd be playing football, maybe you'd all be sitting on in the parents bed in the morning as if like the kids just like woke you up. But he would create these like elaborate sets where he would like make you live like you're in a movie on set. And so he's like, we're gonna all like pretend that this is like real. And they would do this whole elaborate thing just for a handful of photos. But if you look at a lot of the ads, they're really like in depth. And it made me start thinking a lot about like, with startups and what you and I do, we sometimes are just reactive to like, to like, whatever like customers are saying, not more so, like, how do we set the stage for what, what do we want the world to be? And I think Amazon used to do this small thing where they're like, before we launch any product, I want you to write the press release. Like, tell me, what do you want a customer to feel about this? Or how do you want this to be described when it's all said and done? And because the Internet has such a low barrier to entry and it's really easy to adapt and change things, rarely do we sort of think ahead and like, this is like my vision for the world and at least everyone in my small world, how I want them to feel, how I want my customers to think, how I want them to appreciate us. All right, my friends, I have a new podcast for you guys to check out. It's called Content is Profit and it's hosted by Luis and Fonzie Cameo, and it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and Orange Theory Fitness, Luis and Fonzie are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue. In each episode, you're going to hear from top entrepreneurs and creators, and you're going to hear them share their secrets and strategies to turn their content into profit. You can Check out a recent episode called the Secret to Content that converts and they break down. Our buddy Alex Hermos blueprint for effective video production. So you can check out Content is Profit wherever you get your podcasts.
- [19:18]
A
I do think there's something cool about. I'm looking up vintage Ralph Lauren ads and I see what you're saying, which is like a really heavy lean into, like, yeah, like true lifestyle shoots rather than studio or sort of framed. You know, just like, let's go here. Let's get this single shot. You in front of the water. Boom. Yeah, let's turn and burn. It's like, well, this is somebody's house in the Hamptons. Wearing these clothes, doing what they do with all of the little, you know, family photos in the background and whatnot. Like, it's. It looks a lot more authentic. And this is one of those things that's interesting because as a business person, it never pencils out on a spreadsheet to do this right? Like, up, up front. There is no way to sit here and justify this. But then there's things in your gut and there's the people who do. Who actually do make the bet and do pull it off. And then in retrospect, it sounds obvious. You know, I'll give you an example. There was a brand, e commerce brand, and they were talking about influencers. It was like, well, what's the. What's. They're talking about an influencer campaign. They were going to spend a million dollars on an influencer campaign with these Instagram moms. And I said, what's the return on ad spend of that? You put a million dollars in, how much are you going to get back directly? And they're like, it might be, you know, 50%, meaning we might put a dollar, we might get 50 cents back.
- [20:36]
B
That's not the way to do it.
- [20:37]
A
What's your face? What's your Facebook ads return on ad spend? And they're like, ah, it's like, you know, a dollar forty. Put a dollar and get a dollar forty out. Like, why are you spending a million dollars on these influencers? And are you. Are you able to measure the halo effect? I'm like, using all this jargon. And he goes, hey, does your wife, like, does she follow, like, any of these people? And I show my wife. And he's like, yeah, all of these people. He goes, ask him like, a couple of questions about these people. Like, hey, do you know, like, how many kids do they have? What's their names? What products do they use? What's the last product you bought that you heard them mention. And like my wife could just rattle these from memory. And my wife's memory is like I could. You know, we watch all of Game of Thrones. If I asked her today, what's a Lannister? She'd have no idea. She thinks it's part of a staircase. And so I'm like, she's knows exactly what's going on with these influencers. And he goes, that's why we're spending a million dollars with influencers. And I was like, okay. You know, there's these things that if the result is not easy to measure, but it is true.
- [21:35]
B
Right?
- [21:35]
A
It's got to be both. It's got to be actually, actually work and not be easy to measure. Those things are usually pretty mispriced, meaning that not as many people are willing to do them because most of us want the safety and comfort of things that are proven measurable. And I can spreadsheet my way to conviction.
- [21:53]
B
Well, it's basically all rooted in can I justify this if I'm about to get fired?
- [21:59]
A
Yeah. Or just even my own self doubt. Right. Even at like my companies, I'm not always thinking, I'm going to get fired, who's going to fire me? I own the company. But I don't want to be an idiot and I don't want to lose and I don't want to fail and I don't want to lose money. And it takes courage to make bets and courage is easier when you can, when you, when the logic, when you can logic your way there, when you can spreadsheet your way there. Do you do any of these courageous bets that are non spreadsheet? Because I think you, I think part of the reason you idolize these is that you didn't typically do that.
- [22:31]
B
I didn't typically do that and I, and I still struggle with it. But I have to like when I watch some of these things, like we talked about Martha Stewart recently and now we're talking about Ralph Lauren. Like when you talk like and when you talk about some of these like culture changing brands or companies or people are us Internet or startup people. There's like, we think we are above the fold where we're like logical and we are like, well, it's easy. You put this much money in, you get this much money out. Like, why would anyone do anything otherwise? But then there's one step above that, which is it's the right thing. Because it's the right thing. Like, right. You know what I mean? Like it's like, it's like, you know, I can't measure this thing, but, like, I know it's awesome, right?
- [23:12]
A
Do it because it's awesome.
- [23:13]
B
Yeah. And so there's, like. We try to act like we are some, like, savanti Internet nerds, where it's like, the math says X, Y, and Z, but there's always. There's one above that, which is. Yeah, but it's. It just makes sense. And so. And Peter Thiel, who's like, the savantius of savants, has said, like, there's this fifth tent pole of this equation, which is called brand. And he goes, I don't understand brand, though. But, like, I don't exist, but I don't understand it. And that's what we're talking about here, which is, like, it just feels right.
- [23:40]
A
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
- [23:41]
B
So. So, long story short, I don't do this, but I respect it, and I know that's necessary, and I want to do more of it.
- [23:49]
A
Are you doing any of it with Hampton? Like, is there one you could think of that you do?
- [23:53]
B
Yeah. Like, we have. We own this podcast called Money Wise. And, like, it's like, the only way that we think that it returns an ROI is if someone joins. And they said they heard about it through us, but that's not. That's, like, the low end of the totem pole of, like, is it easily trackable? Right. But then, no. Like, I don't do enough, but I do need to do certain things like this. The problem with this is you get caught in the day to day, and you also get caught in the bills. And there's also a lot of stories of Ralph Lauren where, like, he almost lost the company many, many, many times where he, like, just didn't pay attention. And in one hand, you need a visionary who doesn't pay attention to the profit, because sometimes the shit that makes the most profit doesn't make sense right off the bat.
- [24:34]
A
Right? So I think the theme of this episode is rich guys crazy or genius? We've got the bitcoin guy who's doing the treasure hunt, and he's either crazy or he's a genius. Right? Is he crazy or is he awesome? Ralph Lauren. Crazier. Genius. Looks like he came down on the side of genius. I have another one for you.
- [24:53]
B
All right.
- [24:54]
A
And it's Michael Saylor. Have you seen what Michael Saylor is currently doing with the market and bitcoin and his stock?
- [25:01]
B
I don't understand it exactly, but I understand that he's always up to something like. Like, I always. I know that he's like the Barry Bonds of business, where, like, there's always an asterisk next to everything he does.
- [25:17]
A
Yeah, that's a good explanation. Okay, so can I explain what's going on? MicroStrategy is a software company. They sell software. At the time, they're selling software products. And the software business might make like 75 million a year of profit. It was like a small cap stock.
- [25:33]
B
It had been doing great for, like, ever. Like, it was a great. Like, he'd been rich for a long time, right?
- [25:38]
A
Yeah, the business had been. He. I think he's the longest tenured CEO of a public company, meaning he's been the CEO of this company for like 24 plus years or something like that. And. But the stock had been flat. If you look. If you just zoom out on the chart, it looks like a very flat line. And when he came on the podcast, it was because at the time he was doing something very interesting. He had taken his company's cash reserves, like their treasury, which normally you either keep in cash, maybe treasury bills, or you use it to buy back the stock, and instead he used it to buy bitcoin.
- [26:12]
B
So basically, MicroStrategy was a software company. The software company had hundreds of millions of dollars in their bank account, which they're supposed to just hold in case they need it. And his plan was, I'm going to invest that money in bitcoin.
- [26:25]
A
Yeah, we're going to switch our treasury strategy to being Bitcoin. So September 14, 2020, Bitcoin's priced at $10,000 a coin, and he buys $175 million worth of it. And then a month later or so, he buys another $250 million of it.
- [26:42]
B
Which, looking back at it, that sounds Great. Yeah.
- [26:44]
A
At $10,000, $11,000 a coin. And he has since been buying more and more bitcoin. He now holds $37 billion of Bitcoin.
- [26:54]
B
MicroStrategy.
- [26:55]
A
MicroStrategy does. He himself also, I think, personally owns like hundreds of millions, if not a billion dollars of bitcoin.
- [27:01]
B
Wow.
- [27:02]
A
They are up $15 billion on their Bitcoin position in four years. So he's generated for $15 billion of value doing this strategy. So it starts out by saying, I'm going to convert my, you know, step one, convert our company's idle cash into bitcoin. Okay, did that. But now the company doesn't generate. And the idea was every year when we generate more free cash flow, we're going to do the same. We're going to, we make 75 million bucks. We're going to buy more. But over time, he starts doing more aggressive bets. So what he starts doing is he starts issuing these convertible bonds. And now so he goes to the market, he says, hey, here's a corporate bond. You can buy the bond. We're going to take the proceeds from the bond sale and we're going to go buy Bitcoin. And he does that over and over and over again. And on top of that, if you look at MicroStrategy stock today. So when he was last on the.
- [27:50]
B
Podcast, well, let's just actually say this. In March of 20, the stock was $10. In March of 21, the stock was $78. And today it's $410.
- [28:02]
A
Correct. And it is. So it's up in the last five years by 2,600%. Okay, so it's shot up. If you compare it to even Nvidia stock this year, it's outperformed Nvidia, which is pretty insane. And so what is going on here? His company is now worth $80 billion as of today.
- [28:25]
B
And how much revenue and profit does the actual business, the actual software business.
- [28:31]
A
Is declining 10% a year and is something like a couple hundred million in revenue and under a hundred million of net income. So it is a rounding error. It is not. It is no longer relevant to the stock price.
- [28:43]
B
And does he have employees who like work there?
- [28:46]
A
Yeah, they still have employees that just keep running that software business. But the stated strategy is her job is to acquire Bitcoin in the most effective ways possible and hold forever. That's what he wants to do.
- [29:00]
B
That's an inspiring talk. Every Friday at your all heads, right?
- [29:10]
A
Bitcoin prices up. Great job, everybody. We did our job. And to his credit, he's been buying throughout all the dips. So, you know, bitcoin price went up to 60,000, then it goes down to 16,000. And even during that process, you know, Bitcoin, in December 2022, Bitcoin price is 17,000. He buys another 50 million. He buys another 14 million. He buys another 150 million. He has continued to buy throughout the whole process. And bitcoin's at an all time high. And as of today, he just bought another $5.4 billion of Bitcoin at the sort of all time high prices.
- [29:45]
B
How did he have the money to do that again?
- [29:48]
A
He's raising money in these bonds and so there's. Okay, so what's interesting about this, here's what I want to Talk about is genius or crazy. I guess I hesitated to even bring this up because a, this is outside of my zone of competence. Meaning, like, I don't know, corporate bond strategies. I don't know why, I don't know how options traders look at this. I don't know what the bond market is like. That is not something that I've spent 20 years of my career in. I'm a startup guy, okay? So on one hand, unqualified to talk about this. On the other hand, I've been a crypto holder and believer since far before Michael Saylor and have seen throughout each cycle how new players come in with new strategies and build massive profiles and success on the upswing. And I've seen things go very, very badly. Last cycle, there was Sam Bankman fried with ftx, there was Do Kwon, there was Three Arrows Capital. There were several people that for a moment in time looked like absolute geniuses. They were hailed by everybody. They were on the COVID of magazines. You know, Sequoia is investing in FTX and everything looks incredible. And then it all comes crashing down, either due to bad acting or bad risk management.
- [30:58]
B
I don't know anything about crypto. And I can give you an example of a red flag that was on air on our podcast. So I don't remember exactly. I think it was 30 or 45 minutes in, I asked him a question. I go, so, Michael, you're buying all this bitcoin with your company's money. Cool. What are the downsides? Because, like, it appears as though, like one of the downsides could potentially be you're losing focus on your main money making software. But. And I think you think that's worth it, but what are some other downsides? And his answer was there are no downsides. And I was like, well, I mean, like, every decision has a downside. Like, the downside of being healthy is that you have to go to bed early when you want to go and hang out with your friends. Like, but it's worth it. Like, there, there are downsides. And he kept insisting there are no downsides. And in my head I thought, if you can't be honest to me about this, like, pretty straightforward thing, is there anything else that you're being dishonest about?
- [31:50]
A
Yeah, there are no downsides. Said every charlatan ever. Right? That is a. It is, can be a red flag. That doesn't mean it's damning. Now let me.
- [31:57]
B
It does not mean it's damning, but it was a red flag.
- [31:59]
A
Let me give you the generous interpretation of this. So I actually agree with Michael Saylor in one weird way when he said there's no downsides, which is that for him personally, there were really no downsides at the time. At that time. If you go back and you listen carefully to Michael Saylor's interviews, most of the interviews, he just talks about how he had the epiphany and he realized that bitcoin is the way and he started doing it. The true story is that there's one like, precursor to that epiphany, which was that he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He had this software business that was successful, it was profitable, and I think at the time it was even, you know, had shown growth or had been showing growth over the last 10 years. And he was getting zero credit in the stock market for it. And he's like, what am I supposed to do? Like, we're a successful company. We've been operating successfully for, you know, 15 plus years. And the market is basically saying, give us back the cash. We don't. We will not value you for any of the cash you have on hand. You should just give it back to us. We're going to give you no stock credit for how you might invest it, how you might use that cash, how you might grow your business. We're going to give you zero credit for it. And so he had this problem, which was no matter what he did with his company at the time, he couldn't get the stock price to go up. He couldn't increase shareholder value. And so he had in some ways, nothing to lose because he was stuck. And he had been stuck in this plateau for so long. And the market, he had said, he says in some interviews, like, the market was giving me a very clear message. We don't believe that you can invest this cash in any way that's going to grow your business. Well, then he's like, well, screw that. Why don't I just do something else with it? If I can't grow microstrategy with it, maybe I can grow it through investment. And he went and he looked at real estate, he looked at gold, he looked at all the different ways that he could do it. And he basically at that point deduced that bitcoin was his best bet to invest the money to actually grow the stock.
- [33:50]
B
And was he like a crypto guy? So 2020 for a lot of the hardcores, was late in the game for crypto. Was he like.
- [33:57]
A
He was, he was skeptical. He, he did not believe in bitcoin. Somebody had told him about it, he didn't believe.
- [34:01]
B
So he wasn't one of these like early hackers.
- [34:03]
A
He went and watched a bunch of pomps interviews and he started reading about it, he started learning about it. The other thing that was true was that he looked at the amount of inflation and he realized that the kind of stated goal of 2 or 3% inflation was misleading, that it didn't count a bunch of other things. It also didn't take into account the fact that if you were an investor, just put the money in the s and P500, it was growing at 10, 15% a year. And he was like, look, if I can't beat that, there's really no reason to invest in my company if I don't have the ability to beat that rate. And so what he wanted to do was like most bitcoin maximalists, they just, at the end of the day they look at fiat currency and they believe that here you have a weak currency and if you could borrow a weak currency at 0% interest rate and use it to buy a hard currency like bitcoin, that's a good trade. So that's the two things that he wanted to do was he wanted to get out of fiat because he didn't like the direction that fiat was going with inflation. And secondly, he knew his stock was stuck, okay, so that was that part back then. But at that time he wasn't doing this thing where he's borrowing billions of dollars to buy bitcoin. And so let me just kind of walk you through the model of what he's doing now. Okay, so basically microstrategy issues debt. They used that convertible bond, corporate bond. And so that like today they just did a $5 billion whatever corporate bond offer.
- [35:25]
B
Who they raise it from?
- [35:27]
A
Bond buyers, the bond market. So there's trillions of dollars that get invested in bonds. And one of the things, you know, you might say why does, why do, why are people buying a microstrategy bond? Is it because of the underlying business?
- [35:39]
B
And it was versus just buying bitcoin.
- [35:41]
A
Themselves or just buy bitcoin themselves. The arbitrage is that he realized there's you know, a trillion dollar plus market of people who, of people who buy bonds that because of their structure they're not allowed to buy security. So they can't buy stocks, they can't buy real estate, they can't buy bitcoin directly, they can't buy the bitcoin etf. So the bond market cannot access bitcoin unless they access it through a bond.
- [36:07]
B
Got it that's the mandate of those.
- [36:09]
A
Funds is that they can only buy bonds. That's why people gave them the money was you're going to buy bonds. So it's a 0% interest rate, but you can convert the bond into MicroStrategy stock at a certain price at 300, 400, 500, $600 a share higher than the current price of the thing. So it's like a long term call option on MicroStrategy.
- [36:27]
B
Okay, so if you were in the.
- [36:28]
A
Bond market and you wanted access to bitcoin, but your bylaws and your mandate does not allow you to buy Bitcoin directly, then that's a crazy loophole.
- [36:37]
B
That's a crazy loophole.
- [36:38]
A
Supply, demand. So he's the only supply on the market to absorb this, this demand that's there to get access to bitcoin type of yield by issuing these things. Okay, so that's the first part. So then he buys bitcoin and he goes and he tells the whole market, I'm a forever buyer of bitcoin. I will increasingly be buying billions and billions of dollars of bitcoin. I'm doing it at the market price and I will continue doing that. That instills a bunch of confidence in the bitcoin market because bitcoin says, wow, there's this whale who says, I don't give a damn, I'm doing this, I'm deep pocketed and I'm going to keep doing this. And so he takes supply off the market. He signals to the market that I'm a forever holder. And he says, I'm going to keep buying bigger and bigger amounts as we go. So the bitcoin price goes up. So now bitcoin price goes up, which then causes his stock to go up because his stock is based on the fact that they have $30 billion of Bitcoin sitting there. And the stock goes up and then he sells more equity at a premium and he buys even more bitcoin. Now he's selling equity shares to buy Bitcoin. Rinse and repeat.
- [37:38]
B
Is he selling any of his equity in the company?
- [37:42]
A
I don't know, I'm not sure.
- [37:44]
B
And is he liable for any of these convertible bonds or these bonds?
- [37:51]
A
It's not like a personal guarantee. No, it's a corporate bond. If this goes south and this collapses, then his net worth, which is highly based on his holdings of MicroStrategy are going to go down and his reputation and everything else.
- [38:02]
B
And what's his net worth now? How much of microstrategy does he own?
- [38:05]
A
He owns 9.9% of MicroStrategy.
- [38:08]
B
So as of today, just off MicroStrategy, he's worth $8 billion. Okay. In 2020, the company was worth 1.4 billion. So he was worth a measly $140 million. So he's grown from $140 million net worth, assuming that is his only money, which is probably isn't all the way up to close to 10 billion.
- [38:28]
A
So it definitely had asymmetric upside versus downside for him. Right. Like hitching his wagon to the bitcoin rocket ship represented a way for him to go explode up in a good way, in a way that he was never going to be able to do with just MicroStrategy, the declining software business. At the same time, there obviously is reputational risk and there's capital risk now. Okay, so how is it going? They've basically acquired almost 400,000 bitcoin. They've outperformed every company in the s and P500. And last week alone it saw $136 billion of trading volume. Put that in perspective. Even GameStop during the GameStop, GameStop never saw this. So he's basically created, he's intentionally turned him, turned microstrategy into a meme stock, meaning he's detached it from the underlying business in the way that GameStop did and created a product that the option traders want, that the bond traders want, that the bitcoin maximalists want, that the bitcoin skeptics hate and want to go short. Now, what could go wrong? Let's go, let's go to there. And by the way, let's also say the craziness of not only doing this, but then spending the last four years just on tour being a bitcoin evangelist is also like a really extreme step to take. Right? Like there were no half measures in what he did. This is a, you know, sort of Elon Musk style. All in reputationally, all in financially, all in.
- [39:53]
B
And he has that personality. He's got the types of. I don't know him other than the 60 minutes we spent virtually with him, but he seemed like he had the personality where he's super high iq, super low, like emotional, normal human emotions where he's like, right, but it makes sense. The math says this, therefore I do that. Even if that is a ridiculous thing to most people's standards.
- [40:18]
A
High iq, high T count.
- [40:20]
B
Yeah, like, yeah, like he, he ponies up. So I'm obsessed with being transparent about money, particularly with ultra high net worth. People. The reason being is that there's not a lot of information on this demographic. And so because I own Hampton, which is a community for founders, I have access to thousands of young and incredibly high net worth people. We have people worth hundreds of millions and sometimes billions of dollars inside of Hampton. And so every year we do this thing called the Hampton Wealth Report where we survey over a thousand entrepreneurs and we ask them all types of information about their personal finances. We ask them about how they're investing their money, what their portfolio looks like, we ask them about their monthly spend habits, we ask them how they've set up their estate, how much money they're going to leave to charity, how much money they keep in cash, how much money they're paying themselves from their businesses. Basically every question that you want to ask a rich person, we went and we do it for you and we do it with hundreds and hundreds of people. So if you want to check out the report, it's called the Hampton Wealth Report, just go to join Hampton.com, click our menu and you're going to see a section called Reports and you're going to see it all right there. It's very easy. So again, it's called the Hampton Wealth Report. Go To join Hampton.com, click the menu and then click the report button and let me know what you think.
- [41:37]
A
Okay, so now what's the, you know, at the same time, maybe I'm just like a PTSD from past crypto cycles, but like I mentioned, every crypto cycle this happens. Somebody gets uber aggressive, they're seen as a genius, they overextend or they commit malpractice and they come crashing down when the cycle, you know, inevitably these things are all cyclical. When it goes down, last cycle it was FTX, it was Do Kwon, it was 3 hours capital. These were multi billion dollar vehicles that were created very quickly. They, they burned bright and then they fizzled out due to one of those two reasons. So I'm on the lookout right now. Bitcoin's at an all time high. Instead of just jubilation, I'm just keeping an eye out. You know, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me type of thing. So just keeping an eye on what might, what might it be? The cycle on the other side, he's made a couple of genius calls. So back in, I want to say, when was it? 2007 ish timeframe. There's a bunch of interviews with Michael Saylor talking about Apple, maybe 2012. And he basically is Talking about, he's on a thing and he's like, Apple's going to go to $2,000 a share. And he's like, you don't understand what's happening. Apple is inventing the same way that he's talking about Bitcoin, how bitcoin is this the greatest invention ever, how it's going to be millions of dollars a coin. He was talking about Apple the same way. He's like, you have a supercomputer in your pocket. Do you understand what this means? You know, that 4 billion people are going to be carrying this thing around and then Apple's going to be making all the numbers just sounded insane to people at the time. And when he was talking about it and it's all come true. Like his, his entire bet on Apple, he's like, he's like, I don't know why you would own any stock besides Apple. And like if you had listened to Michael Saylor at that time.
- [43:22]
B
So he's always, he's always had this, like, you all are stupid. This is obvious. And he's right sometimes.
- [43:28]
A
Yeah, I mean, I don't know, these are over oversimplifications. But yeah, like, I guess the guy's fascinating. He is a fascinating guy. I think he described him well, which he's extremely high iq, he's extremely high cohones. And when he gets conviction on something, he sounds insane. And so. Okay, you know, I think the main thing is where does this go wrong? So I think the main place it goes wrong, obviously if Bitcoin's price starts to crash, the problem will be if, for whatever reason, MicroStrategy stock, which today trades at like a 2 1/2 times multiple of NAV. NAV is the net asset value, like the underlying asset that it holds. Right. It owns $33 billion of Bitcoin. So the question is, why is it an $83 billion company, which is what.
- [44:08]
B
You think it should be if you.
- [44:10]
A
Own it should be like a $35 billion company.
- [44:12]
B
Yeah, it should be whatever the asset is, plus like the multiple of profit for software.
- [44:18]
A
It's a bitcoin holding an acquisition company. And so maybe you say, okay, here's its holdings. Great. And then on top of that, maybe there's some premium for the fact that it's able to acquire them on leverage. It could do things that a Bitcoin ETF can't. Right. So a Bitcoin ETF can't issue a bond. It is different. But the question is, is 2 1/2 x the right. Multiple.
- [44:35]
B
Yeah. That's crazy.
- [44:36]
A
And the question is, the down spiral looks like this. The unwinding looks like this, which is micro strategy. For whatever reason, either because bitcoin price goes down or the stock market just changes its tune on it, starts to not trade at such a premium to the nav. And now all this money that it's borrowed, These bonds expire 2027, 2028, 2029. If those were to convert, he would be forced into selling bitcoin. And once he becomes a forced seller now, the whole market, the whole bitcoin market will start to crash because it'll say, oh, my God, MicroStrategy is going to have to unwind its entire bitcoin position. That's going to be $35 billion or more of bitcoin hitting the market.
- [45:14]
B
How much is bitcoin worth? Like, what percentage of a player is he.
- [45:19]
A
He owns about 1% of the Bitcoin float today and he's trying to get 2%, basically.
- [45:24]
B
Dude, this guy's intense. Yeah, this guy's.
- [45:28]
A
I guess my short story is I don't know what's going to happen. I. I guess my disclaimer is this. I do not know what's going to happen more than that. I'm a novice when it comes to this. However, I've been in a few crypto cycles before and I've seen in every, every single crypto cycle when crypto goes up, somebody starts being very aggressive, acquiring, buying, buying crypto, using leverage, like he's doing right now. It hasn't ended well in previous cycles. And right now everybody is calling this the infinite money glitch. You go on YouTube, you search MicroStrategy. Infinite money glitch. He's a God. He's the best. And it always makes you wonder, what is the scenario where this unravels and do I believe that that could come true here? There is no strategy that is risk free. There is no free lunch. And I think that right now the entire narrative is about how this is a free lunch, how this is a free money glitch. And I don't believe that. I don't know enough to know the specifics about this, but my spidey sense is tingling.
- [46:25]
B
Who's the most conservative Bitcoin so conservative, being like, they're rational and they could explain the pros and the cons without being overly emotional. Who's that in the bitcoin world?
- [46:40]
A
So it's a good question. Who do I trust the most to have a rational opinion about bitcoin? That's a great question.
- [46:47]
B
Yeah.
- [46:49]
A
So there's this guy like Andreas Antonopoulos who I believe is that, but he's a technologist. So you don't, you listen to him about how bitcoin as a technology has, has great potential. So you know, you read his book, which is called the Internet of Money, and he's extremely rational and he's a good faith actor.
- [47:11]
B
Who's, who's the person that's like, you know, if we all buy into this and if it works, you know, the upset is this, but if we don't, the downside is this and this is. And like, who just says like, like here's all the potential.
- [47:23]
A
I think a lot of people say that. I think a lot of people understand this, right? A lot of people say, like, look, bitcoin has these properties. It could become X, it could become the next gold. Actually most people fall into the bucket of. They don't price that as 100% certainty. Right. They say it's possible and there's a potential for that. That's why I own some of it. But I don't put my entire net worth in it. And that is also possible that it doesn't, doesn't get adopted or that there's a technical flaw or that governments beat it down in these ways or that it becomes unpopular for these reasons. And that's the risk in this. Right. Like there's a bunch of people that.
- [47:55]
B
Feel that, those vocal thought leader rationalists. What do they say about Michael Saylor?
- [48:02]
A
They don't take a position, like right now, even as I'm saying this, I'm thinking to myself, yeah, I'm gonna go cut this in post because why take a position? What's the upside? The upside is.
- [48:14]
B
Well, there is some upside.
- [48:15]
A
I might be right. A few years from now you're going.
- [48:17]
B
To look good by predicting things. And there's also the upside of just doing what's right and telling everyone, don't waste your fucking money on this thing.
- [48:26]
A
Yeah, but I guess it's. You have to be A, smart enough to understand it, B, you have to have the desire to look right by putting your neck on the line with a prediction.
- [48:37]
B
Yeah, the bitcoin community has, doesn't seem like it typically has the, like the moral fiber. No, no, I wasn't gonna say that. I was gonna say they don't mind expressing. They don't. They're very vocal. You know, if someone thinks you're full of information. Yeah.
- [48:51]
A
They're also very wishful about their bags Right, That's. I think that goes back to your question of who could you trust to not speak, just hopefully about their bag? Right. They just, they want it to be true so much that they convince themselves it's true and risk free.
- [49:04]
B
What I'm trying to get at is who's the person who I can trust to find out what the opinion of Michael Saylor is?
- [49:11]
A
I have searched long and hard because before this podcast I did research to say can and I literally tweeted this out. So if you think I'm an idiot, I also think I'm an idiot. My tweet today was, can someone with a better brain than me explain what Saylor is doing? A, no strategies without risk. What are the risk? What is the math? If Bitcoin drops to X dollars, it becomes a problem. And B, why is the stock trading at such a premium to navigate. That post has, you know, maybe a hundred plus replies. I read every single one of them. I read other threads that people have put out about this. If there was one great explanation, I would have just pointed you to it and I would have read it out loud. I have not found one myself. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I have not found one myself that I can read. I could say, oh, in simple terms, I understand why he's doing this, why it's working today, what the risks are, how it would unravel if it unraveled.
- [49:59]
B
I'm only recently at the age where I don't trust everyone. Like, like, like up until recently, like, my logic was constantly like, well, the institutions are buying into this, therefore it must be safe. Or like, you know, like, whoever's raising the money for this guy, like, surely they know what they're talking about. So now I'm, I, I've just two years ago got to the age where it's like, you know, they are flawed humans just like me. And so I don't know who to trust with any with these types of situations because I'm so uneducated on the topic. But I have my spidey senses tingling. I wouldn't, I, with my own money, I wouldn't touch any of this. Yeah, yeah, that's what I would say right now. I have, I have no proof other than it just doesn't feel good. Do you know what the. I think, I think the Supreme Court or someone like that like, defined pornography. Like they said. Like, you know, it's hard to. They're like, it's hard to define, but you know it when you see it. You Know what's the difference between pornography and like a nudity in a National Geographic TV show? You know it when you see it. I don't exactly know it when I see it, this situation with him. But I know that something doesn't feel right and I can't explain why.
- [51:17]
A
Okay, so here's my commitment. I brought this up today, half baked, and I admit that I'm going to go and try to find the smartest people I can to explain this to me until I'm satisfied with a simple explanation of what's going on. And then I'll share that. If I leave this in. I'm saying that as a bookmark to say let's hold opinions till part two. I might just take this whole part out because I'm uncomfortable with the level of half informed speculation that was in this section.
- [51:49]
B
I think it's interesting. I think it's interesting. But you know that like, shockingly, people look to you for like this. Like, you are, like. I asked you that question of like, who's rational that people look to. There are many people who would say.
- [52:05]
A
Sean, I am rational, but you had two criteria, who's rational and intelligent. But a lot of people that I fall a little short on in terms of these things. Right.
- [52:14]
B
And I think, I think that you, like, vocal, like, like, I'm still working through this problem. I think that's actually quite valuable.
- [52:23]
A
Yeah, I guess I'm just like only 10% of the way working through it. And I'm just thinking maybe I should have gone to 50% before coming on the pot and talking about it. But I will say this, a lot of the people have done well with Bitcoin and the people who understand Bitcoin, it is the midwit meme. They look at Bitcoin and they look at all the information and then they reduce it down into a very simple way of looking at things. And you know, the simple way of looking at things, which is either this is. It's a better version of gold. And so it'll be, you know, it's a, it's a tech improvement on gold. There's people who reduce it down and basically just say, would I rather have, would I rather have hard money or soft money? Meaning would I rather save wealth in a, Would I rather store wealth in a currency that can't inflate mathematically or a currency that will inflate? And if you just whittle things down like that to a level of simplicity, you can be right without even knowing all the details. And so I think one of the challenges with your question of who are the smart, intelligent people is that the smartest, most rational people I know about bitcoin, a long time ago, eight years ago, told me a very simple thing, bought it, put it in cold storage, and moved on with their life. And they don't follow all the twists and turns and they don't try to hop on the next wave and the next trend. And they don't do crazy options trading or 100x leverage. They don't do any of those things. And they made a simple opinion based on a very simple assessment. And they've proven to be right and not over complicating. This has been the signal of who's actually intelligent about this versus somebody who's every day on the news has an opinion on every single thing, is trying to outsmart everybody. Those tend to not be the people that I actually, you know, trust their opinion on this stuff.
- [54:04]
B
Have you seen that show Love on the Spectrum?
- [54:08]
A
Yeah, I have actually. About autistic people dating, right?
- [54:12]
B
Yeah. And there's this one episode where these two guys dating this girl and he was like, do you like tacos? And she goes, yeah, I like chicken and cheese. And he was like, I don't have anything else to say, but I want to let you know I'm having a good time and I want to normalize that in both dating and on this podcast, which is. And that's sort of how I feel right now, which is. I don't have anything else to say, but I want to let you know I really enjoy this topic.
- [54:48]
A
That's it.
- [54:49]
B
That's the vibe.
- [54:50]
A
That's the vibe.
- [54:52]
B
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.
- [55:07]
A
Hey, Sean here. Quick break. To tell you an Ev Williams story. He started Twitter and before that he sold a company to Google for $100 million. And somebody asked him, they said, ev, what's the secret, man? How do you create these huge businesses, billion dollar businesses? And he says, well, I think the answer is that you take a human desire, preferably one that's been around for thousands of years, and then you just use modern technology to take out steps, just remove the friction that exists between people getting what they want. And that is what my partner Mercury does. They took one of the most basic needs any entrepreneur has, managing your money and being able to do your financial operations, and they've removed all the friction that has existed for decades. No more clunky interfaces. No more 10 tabs to get something done. No more having to drive to a bank, get out of your car just to send a wire transfer. They made it fast. They made it easy. You can actually just get back to running your business. You don't have to worry about the rest of it. I use it for not one, not two, but six of my companies right now, and it's used by also 200,000 other ambitious founders. So if you want to be like me, head to mercury.com, open an account in minutes. And remember, Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve bank and Trust Members. FDIC all right, back to the episode.