He Bought a Local Newspaper… Now He Makes $600K/YR

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/afd2eeeecda97cc1

So the article tells a story of uh multiple eighty something year old guys who own publications
That are making
There are fine businesses, maybe they make six figures a year in profit, but they can't find anyone to take it over, so they're literally just shutting it down.
I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to
I put my all in it like my day's off. On the road, less travel, never looking at it.
The street.
It's media gazer, which I guess some media
Publication commentary on media companies. It says small town newspapers are shutting down due to lack of a succession plan.
Not financial issues.
In nearly a dozen US states, this is a growing problem.
Okay.
And so the article tells a story of uh multiple eighty something year old guys who own publications
That are making
There are fine businesses, maybe they make six figures a year in profit, but they can't find anyone to take it over. So they're literally just shutting it down.
And here we have a tweet from Matthew Prince, I think his name is Matthew is worth, I think
something like four or five billion dollars. He's the CEO of Cloudflare. Uh do you wanna just kinda read what he says? Yeah. So he says, actually this is a recipe
For a really rewarding life.
If you're a recent college grad and not sure what to do, find a small town you could love with a local newspaper whose owners are ready to retire.
Raise the capital to buy it, run it with the community's interest at heart.
You'll not get too rich, but you'll do well.
More importantly, you'll be a hero to the community and have influence e even early in your career.
You'll meet the love of your life at some point at some event you otherwise wouldn't get invited to. You'll have kids who will proudly call you their parents.
And make this corner of the world meaningfully better. If anyone wants to seriously follow this recipe and just lacks the capital.
Happy to talk.
So I think that's a amazing insight, but the true insight. So someone chirps at him and they say something like um go ahead, what do they say? I can't read it all. So so the literally the guy's name who's replying is some guy. So I'm not not even disparaging this guy. Some guy tweets at him and says
This is the sort of un unwittingly funny stuff that wealthy people say.
That a hundred thirty IQ guys should be content with
An imaginary small town life lived in anonymity near
I I don't even know what this word is.
Um
Being a hundred eighty degrees from their own choices.
Which deliver untold wealth and influence.
I don't what is this guy saying? I don't even understand the speech. He's basically saying like
This is something that that wealthy dudes that's s so funny'cause it's so wrong that a guy would be happy doing this. And here's why I like Twitter.
So Map Matt Prince, I don't
He's not high profile. He's not like a average uh like the average person has no idea who this is, but he's worth five billion dollars.
And it's so interesting to get his insight. So this is this is the tweet that I really care about. And I just the rest was for context. Read this uh next one. All right. So he says I have he just replies to some guy. He goes
I have untold financial wealth.
And I own a local newspaper. So I have some perspective. Like Warren Buffett likes to say
Surprisingly little changes when you move from upper upper middle class to truly rich.
Houses are houses, cars are cars, and watches are stupid. What's more important is meaning.
I feel lucky to have achieved financial wealth while chasing meaning. That is super rare and I feel incredibly to have gotten both.
But if you're early in your career and decide I'd rather optimize for meaning than financial wealth.
I think this is a better path than most would consider.
Example, volunteer for the Peace Corps.
It will actually make you a good leaving and you'll have incredible influence and meaning within your community. And if you later decide to go for untold financial wealth, always remember Ruper Murdoch's empire began with the Adelaide advertiser, which he bought when he was twenty one.
How fantastic is that?
This is really great. Although
You know, not to be a reply guy, but like
Cloudfair's not the Peace Corps or owning a small town newspaper in a
Community? So like w is he saying that Cloudflare was his meaning thing or he did something before that, do you know? That's his meaningful thing.
But the point is
I for one he has another one. So he's like, um, some guy goes, How is one supposed to make a good living from a small town newspaper? Do you have a model a new model for profitability? Blah, blah, blah. I want to s hear a breakdown.
Um and he said Matthew Prince says
The local paper we bought cash flowed around six hundred thousand when we bought it. We wanted to run it as a nonprofit, so we plowed that all back into the into expanding coverage. But it is not the case that these are bad businesses. They're just not big businesses.
So the takeaways are multiple multiple things. One
Newspapers are dying. Local newspapers, we're talking towns that have um five thousand people, ten thousand people, thirty thousand people.
They are not dying.
And if you read the replies, you'll see people who are saying
Um I own a local newspaper that does five hundred thousand dollars in Ibita.
Like there's there there are replies here, and Matthew Matt just said one of those replies where he explains the numbers.
But two.
Um
It's just so fascinating.
To hear this guy's perspective who has so much.
And I actually agree with them, and I also think
That b there is a big opportunity to buy
A bunch of these, but you can just start with one.
And I don't think local newspapers
are gonna go away any time soon, to be honest. I think that they have a very
Stable subscriber base and l
What Matt says in there.
He said something like
Hospitals.
and other like local businesses, they are dying to advertise in local newspapers and that bus business, while small
Is doing great and is very subst uh i it it's a monopoly.
Okay, I love this one. Ten out of ten, fine. Good job. I gave a talk at Berkeley that was about
starter businesses or call white belt businesses.
Uh a few months ago.
Wait, let's reflect on that. That's pretty cool.
What, given a talk?
At Berkeley. I don't know. That sounds cool to me. Uh like I never got to be go to fancy news. It was hilarious. So I I'm like, I'm gonna give this talk. And I I've I think I've told this story before, but my entire life shifted.
Because I was in a random class at Duke.
Plan I planned to be a doctor, I had taken the MCATs, all of it, and then
I took this one class by this amazing woman, Lisa Keister.
And she had she was she herself had graduated ten years earlier and gotten gotten wealthy, lived an interesting life and came back to teach.
And she decided like what class did the kids actually need.
And the class was called Getting Rich. It's kinda like this podcast, My First Millions, like sort of a a a pretty
Uh
Crude title.
Her class was called Getting Rich. And actually it was two things. It was personal finance. So you'd learn about like mortgages and savings and how that all worked, compounding, shit like that.
And then secondly, she would invite speakers in.
Just so that we would get exposed to other ideas of what a life could be besides doctor, lawyer, consultant, banker, which was like
You know
At a school like Duke, that's where
Ninety percent of the students are devoting their energy.
And a guy came in and he gave a talk and it literally changed my life. It's not even something he said. I just kind of was like, This guy seems like he's having fun.
He's
Doesn't seem like he's that much smarter than me. Like, you know, maybe smarter now, but it he's you know, he's saying at the beginning he didn't know shit about shit.
And that's where I am today. And like
W why don't I just do what what this guy's doing? And the last thing he had said was like
He's like, look.
If you go try to do something entrepreneurial or interesting
And it doesn't work out. This is America, that maybe like the story is is a currency for you.
And
Look, I hire kids like you, and guess what? You all have the same top three fourths of the resume.
You go to school, you got a three point something GPA, you have some stupid extracurricular activities, you got an internship at some big corporation where you didn't really make an impact.
The only thing that differentiates any of you guys is the other section at the bottom of your resume. Like have you done anything? Have you gone on any interesting quests?
And so he's like, Go on an interesting quest, you have nothing to lose right now. You don't have kids, you don't have a mortgage, just go try some shit. And if you fail if it works, fantastic. If it fails, don't worry, it creates a great story that guys like me like to hear.
So that like really shifted my life. And so I get I get invited to go give this talk at Berkeley.
And I'm like, I'm gonna do this, man. I'm gonna change someone's life.
Oh, be gonna be a life changer today. And I prepped my ass off. Like I really tried. I like I like thought about it. I spent two days really like full like just ten hours a day.
Just working on this one talk.
Two days doesn't sound like a lot, but like
I show up to these podcasts.
pretty cold. Like I can wing it with the best of them. So for me to really put 20 hours into one talk I'm gonna give to fifty kids
That didn't yeah, that that was
Unusual for me. You sound like the Kenny Powers of giving a talk, man.
You're like get ready, kids. I'm I'm gonna make you piss tears.

So I go in.
And guess what?
These kids really just don't give a fuck. Within two minutes of the talk and again
I'm trying to fire on all cylinders. It's interactive. I'm cracking jokes. I got a story. I'm doing
I have a big promise at the beginning.
And I look around and I just remembered vividly in that moment I was like
Oh, I remember being nineteen.
You're not even out of school yet. Like the whole the real world is
It it's
A distant land far away at this point.
You're just trying to f you're like, okay, I have to be here till five, and then I'm gonna go eat, and then uh have that paper to write.
Three years out of your target demo too. Like they're Indian.
They go to Berkeley and you're like they could like, all right, perfect. This is my demo. And then you're like, Shit, they're still nineteen. I need to wait till they're twenty one until they have heard of me.
Exactly. So honestly it was a kind of a giant waste of time. I don't think I shifted anyone's life. I d I think I changed exactly zero lives.
But I really tried. And one of the principles in there was like
When you get out of Berkeley
Instead of getting a job like
Consider it as doing a company, but for most of you
You don't have the next Facebook. You don't have the next big idea and maybe you're not even
Talented enough to handle that's like kinda like if
If you know, Jessica Alba walked through that door and she's like, You
It's like, dude, you couldn't handle Jessica Alba right now anyways. Don't worry about it. That's not your problem.
Like you need to go, you know.
Put your hand under Mindy's shirt in the back behind the bleachers over there. Like that's the level you're at right now. And so
I basically was like, You need a starter business, a white belt business. And I was giving him ideas for what simple starter businesses are. But
But this is your analogy?
Did you just No, I just did that one just now. I thought I thought you were pretty good. Yeah. Well, see, the funny thing is I have you and I'm like, Sam's gonna love this. He's gonna love hate this.
And then R I'm like, Ari's just gonna hate this. And sure enough, as I'm saying it, that's what I got. I got Sam laughing but face bombing.
And Ari just looking off into the distance wondering.
How did I end up here? Why do I have this job? Oh my god, no. That's a that's a fantastic analogy. Because it's very true. Everyone dreams of like the Jessica Alba Alba doing that and you're like
Wait, what do I do? What do I do with my hands? You know what I mean? It's perfect. Exactly. You are not prepared for Jessica Alba yet. And that's okay. You just need some reps.
Um, and so what's what's the point of this? What are you gonna show me?
Oh I I guess the tie to that was I think owning a local newspaper is a fantastic version of the style business to run.

Was that not obvious? So crystal clear to me, the connection.
Show me this, um
The story about Steve Almer and then also I want to see the Gary Vee one.
Okay, two great choices. Excellent choices off the menu.
All right. This is from I believe Steve Ballmer goes on the acquired podcast. It was really good. It was so good.
I agree. I didn't watch it, but I agree. And uh the clips have been good. And so
He's telling the story and they they go, Do you guys know the story of Key Lu at Microsoft? He was one of the most pivotal things at Microsoft.
And then the hosts go, Why why I mean, I knew he was important, but please tell the story.
And Steve goes, he was pivotal in a way that you won't even know.
So he goes, First of all, he's a brilliant guy, great guy.
He's at Yahoo.
And he went to grad school with the head of Microsoft Research.
Harry.
And so the the the the the c the setup here is that
Satya N Nadella.
who's now the CEO of Microsoft was running Bing at the time. Bing is trying to compete with Google.
And Harry runs the research program there and Harry comes and he goes
Look, this guy Key is a genius. We have to hire Key.
I don't know if Key wants to work for us.
We gotta learn from this guy, we gotta hire this guy. So he's like
Satanadella.
Steve Ballmer and Harry all fly down to California to meet with this guy Key Lu.
And they talk to Key and they're like, dude, you're right. This guy's brilliant. And we're learning about him. And then at one point, Key walks away, leaves the room, goes to the restroom or something.
And he goes, Satya throws out this idea, he goes
We should hire Key and I should work for him.
Yeah, so Harry who's all in'cause he worked with them.
Harry works for Satya.
Um and Satya's like
We should not only hire this guy
I should work for him. I should report to him. Like gives up power, basically.
So they they call'em and they're like, T, listen.
You know, he was thinking about taking a job somewhere else, but he ends up joining
And he goes, and then the host goes, So what m what did Key do at Microsoft?
He goes.
What I just told you.
He told me about Satya.
He goes, I love Satya and we were giving him more and more responsibilities anyways.
But when I saw that this guy would do the right thing for the company, he would give up power to bring in a more a talented person and agree to work for him.
Uh he didn't have ego that got in the way.
I knew that Satya was the guy.
And now Satya has become the C of Microsoft and led Microsoft on this incredible run.
That's so good. That's a great story. It's up a thousand percent.
And for a company as big as Microsoft to go up a thousand percent and now is a three trillion dollar company.
uh all you know under Satya's kind of regime.
I thought that was just a badass story, right? And later on in the podcast, Steve Ballmer talks about philanthropy.
And he I've I don't know how rich he is, but I think a hundred billion or plus.
And he was like,
uh the acquired guys were like your wealth is growing
I think twenty percent a year, you know, twenty billion dollars, whatever. He goes, Yeah, I'm trying to give it all away.
And he goes, You're forgetting about something and and the host go, What? He goes,
You know, Microsoft pays a dividend.
So just my dividends are making me one billion dollars a year.
And he's like,
I'm trying to give it all away and I can't find p enough people who can accept the money.
Well Steve
We would
Love to help you with this problem.
We're a helpful bunch over here.
Yeah, he was talking about how um
He's like I don I don't I forget the capital appreciation, uh of of this or the stock appreciation. Uh lately it's been what, fifteen percent a year. I I forget. It's something like
Magnificent, where he's earning tens of billions of dollars from that. And yeah, he corrected the guys when they said how wealthy he is. He goes, You're forgetting about our dividend.
Which paid me one billion.
You know he's just been sitting on that, by the way.
You know he's like
B
These motherfu out here don't know. They don't know how I'm bald. It was a really great podcast. It was like three hours long and it was fantastic. And he gets made fun of or Ballmar gets
made fun of a bunch for that one video where he just looks goofy.
But he um
He he's the pr a great salesman and he's way more technical than people realize. Bomber's a genius.
That's cool. I mean you gotta
You gotta be special. I mean th the
There's luck is involved, but I think it's
It's so easy to write people off. And and he's a great example of
Uh
Enthusiasm as a skill. I've talked about this in a bunch of other podcasts, but
Enthusiasm is a actual skill. And that video that people make fun of the developers, developers, developers, developers.
To me that's like watching uh you know
Vince Carter dunk or something like that. Right. It's like
Uh, this is a guy who probably brought a shit ton of energy and enthusiasm and belief and
Um
to the team in an unwavering way and at an unusual level.
And yeah, that was obviously funny to laugh at. I get it. Uh I thought it was funny as shit too.
But
Enthusiasm is a skill and I love it because people don't even think of it as a skill, but we all
know it when we see it. Like if you've ever worked with somebody who's really enthusiastic and is a believer in what you're doing and brings good energy every day and doesn't get like doesn't get worn down and doesn't get uh buckled by adversity.
Do you love that person? That person's clearly valuable to the team. You would hate if that person left your team.
Yeah.
Nobody talks about enthusiasm as a skill or something you could practice or develop or at least even celebrate that you have. It's something that you know.
Seems like something sort of for dumb people.
What's um what's the scary view one?
This is very funny.
Does it Gary I love Gary Vee. Gary, I love you.
This is also hilarious. So she they're playing a game called Bullish and Bearish.
Where the host is gonna tell him a company name and he has to decide is he a bull or a bear on it. Watch this.
Meta.
Bullish.
Read it.
Bullish.
Bullish.
Way much. I'm not educated enough to give an answer on that, to be honest. I feel like if I spend ten hours educating myself, I'm like okay, this is not sustainable to be this crazy.
Disney? Very bullish. I think intellectual property.
is one of the most underrated businesses of the future, BR and everything. I don't think people understand how big owning IP is gonna be.

Bullish. Microsoft.
Very bullish. I'm bullish. Amazon. Very bullish. Bullish.

Bush.
TikTok's kind of bullish. Even though it might be banned.
Bullish. Bitch, I'm bullish, okay Don't even before that word gets out of your mouth, I'm bull.
Bullish.
What am I gonna do? I'm bullish.
Um funny is this?
I
I love Gary. I mean it sucks because she picked like
Uh
Honestly, I can't hate. I'm also pretty bullish on all the all the tech companies that the all the best companies in the world. Amazon and chat GBT. Uh so funny. He um dude, people forget.
Uh
I think Varner Media.
I track it'cause um
I like Gary and I think that it's easy to dismiss him as like a a a guru, but I you know, Vanner Binia is doing something like three hundred million dollars a year right now.
I did not know that. What you say you track it? Where where are you getting this information from?
So I I actually um
Do you remember how I told you I had this document where I track companies and I like
I
I I I track people.
where I will make a timeline of their life.
And like at different ages, they do different things. I track it with a variety of companies as well.
And Vyner Media, I was curious about their trajectory.
And he was growing the company like at a really good clip. Like it was doubling for a couple of years and it was still growing at like fifty percent for a couple years. And so I just wanted to check in and add to my document. And over the last three or four years, he's grown it to something like two hundred and fifty million a year in revenue. And if you Google Vader Media Revenue, he actually is fairly public about it lately.
of where it's at. But it's in the two hundred, three hundred range.
Two hundred to three hundred million a year.
Yeah.
And uh what do they do now? Is it just marketing services or what what's going on?
So Vayner X, which is now the holding company.
In two thousand and twenty four was on track to do three hundred million in revenue, and this was written in December of twenty four.
So
Uh yeah, you could assume that they're in the three hundred million range. Yeah, it does they do social media it's the same shit.
Just the
Manage people's social media stuff.
I mean, it's gotta be more of that. Manage people's social media stuff's gotta be more of that.
I think that's the bulk of it. They do social media advertising and campaigns. So like if you're Samsung and you wanna run ads on Facebook and you wanna make the really good ads, I believe they're
Let's ignore Gate Van Media on board. What is the most interesting thing that's come out of your tracking people manually?
Year by year.
borderline creepy stalker thing that you're doing.
Uh
What's interesting to me, uh, is a few things. One, the ability to grow
It's it it it gets harder and harder, but like the people who are like really big animals, they just figure out how to do it. And that's really fascinating to me.
But
occasionally, even companies that are growing quickly, they'll have two or three years of no or little growth. And the reason why I like to do this research is it helps me understand
I think that it's the same way when you talk to your rich friends and you talk about money with them, you start to normalize money. And that's why I do this stuff where it like It sounds like it's like a almost like an emotional regulation because entrepreneurship is this
Long.
Longer than you want.
More up and down.
thing than you want. And
Seeing that the people, the things you admire today.
Either A took a long time or had, you know
Multiple flat ears.
It makes you not feel like shit when you're in one of those, you know.
Periods.
That is it.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Because I think I showed you
The revenue chart or no the
So I've I've shown you charts before of Business Insider, which is a company I also used to do this for
And they've grown like crazy, but there was like three years where every single month they actually didn't grow. And I was like, This chart looks great because we've zoomed out to fifteen years.
But zoom in on those three years and imagine feeling that way for nearly uh a thousand days. That doesn't feel good.
It doesn't feel good at all. The whole life of the company right now is three years. Imagine this whole time.
Just flat, you know. Or I'll give you another example.
Repplet.
Yeah, you know, we've had Omjad on the podcast and that it was one of our biggest ones.
They just announced the other day that they hit a hundred million in revenue. That's huge, right?
Well what he kind of said like in a small comment
Like in a reply is that um
I believe last year or the year before, they're at ten million in revenue. So they went from ten million to a hundred million.
And
record time, like one year or two years, something like that.
But what he told us on the podcast is that he started the company eight years ago.
Which means from z years zero to eight, he got to ten million in revenue.
Which is not impressive. That's not that's that's neat. That's not impressive.
And what's in that's just insane to me that he kept at it for eight years and then and and tell me if I'm getting my numbers wrong, but he kept at it for that long.
And then success was like in two years.
Yes and no. I think uh y you're you're you're right.
But it's not like it was just failing that whole time'cause if you look at the
User growth.
Mm.
Uh and I think I
tweeted this out with it. I'll I'll I'll find it. But like
Basically they grew they were growing exponentially in number of users who were developers.
Um
So that was you know, that was also happening.
At that same time. And so it's not as
It's not as like, oh man, you know, it's just
You know, suddenly it starts to work. Like I mean, look at this.
This is Paul Graham tweeting about
uh replit before
Before they even turned on monetization. This is back in twenty twenty. But like
What years that go to?
This is twenty fifteen.
to twenty twenty, like midway through twenty twenty.
Like
Or end of twenty twenty. It's basically twenty twenty one.
And so they had five million
developers, programmers using their thing. And he Paul Paul
He says, This graph is impressive.
Not just for its perfect exponential shape, but the numbers. Five million users is a lot when those users are programmers.
Imagine how many users their users will have of their apps.
And um I think the crazy thing about Replit is that basically they
pivoted the entire company when they're at a billion dollar valuation.
I invested in Replit, I think at a eight hundred million ish valuation, eight eight or nine hundred million valuation.
I invested in the fund and I invested personally'cause I was like such a big believer.
In this.
And they had pretty much no revenue at the time, but it was this type of growth. And I love the product and I loved Amjad. I was like, this guy's a savage.
And
They have a
They've built an incredible product that I think will have a network effect over time.
And
Then they pivoted the entire business to say
Uh, it's not about like young programmer'cause I thought, Oh, they're getting young programmers to start coding on Replit and maybe those people will never leave. They'll c code their whole career on Replit.
And then when AI happened
They pivoted basically the entire company to now it's not even for programmers. It's for people who don't
Code typically.
to make things, right? It's for non non engineers to to suddenly be able to be engineers, to be able to to to write create software for software creators.
And
Now that's ramped to a hundred million at ten X ten X the revenue in one year.
So now I look like a genius.
Investing in this thing, but I really
didn't even invest in this'cause they pivoted they like basically shifted the entire
User who is the user and what is the use case.
Uh, you know, afterwards.
Yeah, I mean, this is just insane.
I I use Replit.
Um
Probably three or four times a week.
It's really fun.
I just asked Chat GPT to make this. This is Sam stocking all these businesses. Dude, I do this like crazy. I'm gonna have to share this doc. I just I like tracking numbers.
You were like
I took every billionaire.
And I try to figure out what they were doing at age thirty.
And as it were.
And you were like, Jack Dorsey, you know at age thirty, his net worth was only what And I was like, How do you know this? And why do you know this? What are you doing? And you're like, By the time I'm thirty, my goal is to have X.
I think we were well we probably met when we were twenty four, twenty five years old, something like that. Two five, yeah.
And you were like
When I'm thirty, I wanna have twenty million dollars in the bank.
That was your number.
And you were like, look at this. I'm
I'll be
Ahead of Jeff Bezos and Jack Dorsey of these guys. I was like, Yeah, this guy's a sicko, but I like it. It was the I should call like if I teach a class, it's gonna be called like how to become an economic animal.
Uh unfortunately, like there's way levels. There's there's many levels to this, and I'm uh there's many people who are way above me and I didn't understand like how exponential growth works.
Uh but hey, uh you know, I think I got in the arena of what I was aiming for. All right, we gotta talk about
The new mayor.
Not because it's a politics podcast. I don't know. Actually I didn't even know this guy existed until three days ago, to be honest with you.
But you're moving to New York.
And you seem to know about this guy, and I am following him only
From uh
Business and marketing perspective. I have a business and marketing take on this guy, but can you first set the context?
For people like me.
who are not following who this New York City
He's the mayor, right? That's what he's just become. He's gonna be the democrat who's running for mayor. So it was uh the democrats were uh I don't even know the right terms, but nomination.
Um and he won.
Um, so basically uh it was him and Cuomo.
democratic he's most likely to win. Is that why people are freaking out?'Cause normally if he's just a candidate.
Yeah. More likely than not, the the issue is here the issue has a a bunch of issues. Basically every politician is corrupt. So mayor Cuomo or the Cuomo is running for mayor. He was previously the governor. He got in trouble for like asking his co workers to have sex with him. Uh
And he was the guy running against this guy. Uh the current mayor, a mayor Adams, he has accepted bribes. He is gonna be running as an independent versus this guy. And so we're kind of like stuck with like a bunch of like paper scissors. Yeah, it's like you know, a South Park, uh they it's like a douche or a turd sandwich, who do you gonna vote for? That's kinda like what we're working with here.
Uh the the gist of this guy is that um he's incredibly charismatic. He's thirty two years old.
Uh he uh believes in a lot of crazy things. That's my opinion, crazy, but basically a lot of socialist things. So for example, he wants to freeze rent, meaning you can't raise rent on uh
On
on I think something like two million different apartments, right, rate different rent stabilized apartments. He also wants to create government owned grocery stores and a handful of things like that that are very controversial to people who don't like socialism, but amongst young people who are very angry about a lot of
things that they should be angry about, like housing costing a lot of money versus the wage growth.
Uh
But
He's super charismatic and so he won over young people's votes.
And so okay, great, great summary.
Now
Again, I don't care about the politics of this and I don't live in New York, but
I'm fascinated by this guy.
Like I literally had never heard of this guy and then I watched this video.
I'll kill this tweet.
He killed it.
So this tweet right here has three point seven million views. So that's just the Twitter part of this. Forget Instagram, TikTok, anywhere else that I'm sure he's posting this type of content.
Uh but first of all
The branding?
So like
That was the first thing that stood out to me, like the literally the branding of this guy, like the the font, et cetera.
So what is this video? It starts like he's a
TikTok content creator. And he goes, it says, New York is suffering from a crisis.
And it's called halalflation. And then he talks about how
halal from like the like food trucks.
Uh, you know, chicken and rice halal uh from like a halal food truck.
now cost ten dollars.
But it used to cost eight.
And he's basically goes and he's interviewing them. He's like, You know how how much do you sell for? Ten dollars, ten dollars, ten dollars.
And it's called halalflation.
Did I?
We're gonna get to the bottom of this.
How much does a plate of halal cost right now from this truck? Ten dollars. Ten dollar. Chicken of a Royce, Lamovarois, ten dollar.
Ten dollars? Yeah.
When you're a street vendor.
You have to pay for the food.
The blades.
How much do you have to pay for your permit?
Before it was twenty two K. Twenty uh seventeen uh thousand. How much does a license cost if you get it from the city? I think uh four hundred. Who are you paying?
That bear with Honor.
You're not paying the city.
You pay the permit owner twenty two thousand dollars just so you can sell this food. Yes.
And who is this?
Random guy.
Have you ever applied for a permit? Yeah, I uh uh I'm applying and uh no come or anything. It's long wait. Um number 3800 something
After two years, you're number 3800. Yes.
These are the four bills that are sitting in the city council right now, which would give these vendors their own permits and make your halal more affordable. But Eric Adams hasn't said a single word about them. If you own the permit, then how much would you charge for the plate?
$7.$8. Would you rather pay$10 for a plate of halal or$1?$8.$8. I think$8 is the way to go. If I was the mayor, I'd be working with City Council from day one to make halal eight bucks again. Oh, how would you pay?
Tastes like 10 bucks for the ship V8.
So I was blown away because I have never really seen a politician
doing this type of like
I wanna call it like
kind of natural influencer content. I don't know what what do you what do you even call this, but this is not what politicians typically did. He's making like a vice documentary, but in two minutes. It's very good.
Uh he can't do G C content. Okay, that I think that's the way I would put it. So the same thing happened in um in in business, especially e commerce.
So
Sam, I don't know if you remember like in the earlier days of e com, right? Like let's say
twenty twelve, twenty fourteen.
You know, you mostly did just static images.
Okay, there was not really a lot of video on let's say Facebook or Google at the time.
Um
So you would do static images for your ads.
Yeah, but those images you
pay a professional designer to make and they would make it look slick, and then that's what people would click. And then when video came out, people tried to do the same thing. They would basically film
professional looking videos. You'd hire a uh videographer, you'd have somebody holding the camera and then you would
You'd have a good background, good lighting, and you would say your thing.
But it turns out
That
commercials didn't really work as well on the internet as
Me picking up my phone and just making something that looks very raw, like I'm doing my
You know, it'd be a girl doing her makeup while talking about a different product.
Right. And it just feels like it's a get ready with me video.
Or it's uh you know, a mom who's in a rush.
who's just being like, Y'all, I gotta tell you, this is a life saver. Like my husband
My husband can't believe how much of a uh how much how how much happier I am since I got this thing.
And then they tr ruffle in their bag and grab something out. And it's ads that don't look like ads.
And they call this UGC user generated content.
And that's the new style that works best in ads for the last, I would say, five years, that's dominated most of e commerce advertising.
This is the first time I've seen a politician do this. So like if you compare
I don't know, like Kamala.
Uh and how
P perfectly manicured everything was. Like
Her image, her p her, you know, pant suit, her like
professional photography, her like
fake phone call with somebody, but then you see that the phone wasn't even on and it's she's just chuckling to nobody. Like
It was all super super fake and polished.
And this guy's doing like man on the street interviews.
Holding the microphone, you can literally hear like the you know, it it kinda rubbing against his jacket sometimes accidentally. Like it's like
It's Wabi Sabi, dude. It's it the perfection in the imperfection.
Typically go full circle there.
This kind of blew me away. I'm I don't know if I'm just like overly nerding out about this, but
From from the topic.
Like
Halal chicken and rice is ten bucks, it should only be eight.
to the style of the video.
I immediately was like, I get why this guy won.
And the on Saturday, uh the election was taking place uh yesterday, he was so he spent the whole day walking around New York and like
doing like these uh very raw looking videos talking to people
And I think that it this is just proof, which we already have had this proof, that charisma matters.
More than ideas and reality.
And this is not like uh
takeaway that like this is a very obvious takeaway, but this is just another example because he his charisma is off the charts and he has just been
Like
Killing it.
Uh w when his ideas in my opinion are just
Absolutely insane.
But
Because of the style marketing, it's it's done wonderful. Young people react react to this stuff.
And by the way, this is what we need. Like Mayor Qu or Governor Cuomo, the guy who was running for him.
He's an old guy. He's in his sixties, maybe seventies.
And he would never in a million years grab his cell phone and just start talking to it. But that's what you need. I think my friend, um, our friend Austin Reef.
uh tweeted something out and he said, um
the next politicians and the next presidents are going to be podcasters and sub stackers. And that sounds like a ridiculous statement. People who write newsletters and people who have podcasts, that sounds ridiculous.
It's not ridiculous and I I totally buy into it.
I yeah, I definitely th there's gonna be a podcaster president. Why? Because they're gonna have
A built a following before they run.
So they're gonna build the audience.
Before they go run.
Two, they're gonna be trained with ten thousand hours of storytelling, communication, of um, you know, how to make a point.
So y you know, that's that's gonna be one archetype, the other one is gonna be short form video creators, I think.
Roberto, our friend, said this thing, he goes, Whether this guy's agenda is good or bad for New York is irrelevant. He told the best story. This is why Steve Jobs said that the storyteller is the most powerful person in the world.
A lie told as a good story can never s ne
Can never beat the truth trapped in a bad story.
Yeah.
I think it can always be the truth. Trapped in a bad story.
And then I had because I had tweeted this thing. So when I saw this, so I I saw the second video. I don't know if you've seen this one, but
Um can you hear this?
Dude, you know what's funny is I don't have to hear what he's saying.
And I could sense the charisma.
Well so okay, so he's speaking Hindi in this video.
And I think he does actually speak Hindi, but I
It made me realise
Oh, dude, eleven labs is gonna make like a billion dollars election cycle.
Because every politician is gonna translate everything they're saying into all languages using AI.
Instantaneously. Like you know, why would you not? You're just gonna pick up free views. Like we did this
We started doing this with our M FM episodes.
Ben uh was like hey, I think I can get
more views if we dub our episodes into another language. So now
If you're on YouTube and you click the settings wheel and you click like audio track, you could select Spanish.
Or Hindi on
Uh uh on uh on some of the episodes and it's gonna be all the episodes soon.
Because we went to eleven labs and like hey dudes, will you guys help us like translate this?
And immediately
We now get tens of thousands of views a month.
that we weren't getting before in Spanish and in Hindi. There's probably people in Mexico right now that think we just speak Spanish. That we're their favorite Spanish podcast. And if they meet us,
They'll be sorely disappointed.
That's a really good insight. I didn't I have not seen this video of him. Is he
Is this video dubbed?
Is this a fake video? Or he kinda looks like he might speak in there, or maybe it's not I can't tell exactly, but
I guess that's the point. I wouldn't know. AI tools have gotten so good that I would never know. And I I actually tweeted this out. I said, I could a thousand percent create an AI politician.
That could win over
Uh you know, a city election. Now of course you can't actually run if you're not a human being, but whatever.
And I said here's how I would do it. You know, I would make a likable sort of guy next door character.
Like this guy.
Um
I would create a hundred X more video content than than than my opponent because
Andrew Cromo is not gonna be able to keep up.
with my AI engine. I don't know if you've seen people who do this. They basically
They create an AI workflow that's an agent that scrapes like
Uh it comes up. It's br there's one agent that's just brainstorming topics. It's like looking at Reddit, it's looking at TikTok trends.
et cetera, and it's brainstorming topic. Then they have a scriptor agent that writes the sc writes a one minute TikTok script.
Then they have an a video uh generation agent that creates a video that does that that has your your
AI avatar speaking it like Hey Jan or or Eleven Labs. Who's doing this?
There's people that are doing this they run what they call facel channels. They run channels on Instagram and TikTok that get millions of views. Like with B roll a narration.
But it doesn't have to be B roll anymore because now they use an AI avatar. So they just put a person there. And they're like, Cool, I don't want to be an influencer. I don't want to wake up and get ready and have a nice house and all this, but I'll just tell the I'll just make an AI character that does this.
And you can just create an AA character that does exactly this. And then but the w the cool thing is
They automated the entire workflow from coming up with the idea, scripting it.
Recording it.
And then actually like scheduling it, posting it, analyzing the data, and feeding that back into the engine.
Who what's an example of it? And it's almost like dude, if you guys applied your talents to something useful, this you'd be incredible. I but
But it's amazing that you can even do this.
I'm reading um uh a book called A Promise Land. It's
Obama's biography or s autobiography. He wrote it, but it's it's it's old. It's ten years old, but I was at the airport and it looked cool.
I'm at the point in the book where he was like, I was getting my ass beat.
in the election.
Because I was too long winded.
And my campaign uh manager criticized one of my debates and he's like, Dude, you're answering the question.
Um he's and he's like, Yeah, they asked me a question, I'm giving them an answer and like it's kind of nuanced and it's long and like a narrow answer. Yeah, I'm giving like a good answer. And he goes
Yeah, that's bullshit. That's not how you win a debate and that's not how you win votes. You don't give an answer. You're not answering the question. The question is irrelevant. All people want to know is can they trust you with their vote? And like, do are you a brand that they want to get behind? Stop answering the question and tell a story that lets them know that they can get behind you. And he was like
He he goes, um
That rubs me the wrong way, but that's the game and I will play that game. And there's like a distinct difference in like uh you know, we know him now. Obama is regarded as a a fairly charismatic good storyteller. He was like
That was the change.
Yeah, exactly. Uh do you know Lulu?
No.
Uh, she's uh she's really cool. She very interesting person to follow on Twitter and whatnot. So
Lulu, I think she was the head of comms at like
Palantir or something like that. I don't know, or Andril, I think it was.
But she does a good job. What she po posts regularly is
Basically com's advice, communication advice. PR slash how executives should communicate. And I think Anderel was always an interesting one'cause like
Instructors trying to conform.
As this like boring government contractor, you know, they let their freak flag
Uh fly.
So she she tweeted this out. She goes, It sounds so basic
But he is too likable to lose.
Friendly demeanor, smiles with his eyes, seems earnest.
Being liked outweighs policies, experience, and nonsensical plans.
Quote
I just have a good feeling about that person can override almost anything and then Harley
This year Shop uh Shopfive said.
Vibes.
It's like oh man, we're we're sort of vibe voting now. And it it's like actually we're kind of always We've always been doing that, man. We've always been doing that. You know, JFK was one of the most um JFK had like a seventy percent approval rating when he was murdered.
Um, and he was well loved. He was our princess Diana or whatever for that generation. Like he he was well loved, and he was well loved because he was incredibly likable.
That's like a l his policies were fine, but it was because he looked great.
He had a a beautiful wife who was poised. He had a lovely family with really white teeth. Like that is why he won,'cause he was very likable and he good and good looking.
So
I'm likable might not even be the word'cause you might look at Trump and be like, Well
Is he would you say he's likable? Like he's funny.
Yeah.
The time where
So I had this friend.
Who's like a
Billionaire.
Successful tech guy.
And he sends me a Google Doc one day called The President.
And I'm like, Okay, what's this? And I open it up and I have no idea what to expect. I think he might be running for president. I don't know what this is.
And it was basically a pitch for a television show. And he laid out a case and he basically said
If you look at the last I forgot what it was, like, but I'm just gonna make up some numbers. If you look at the last ten elections, you you would look for a pattern. You'd say, Is it always Democrats? Is it always Republicans? Is it does it always switch between Democrat and Republican? Is it based on the economy? Is it based on
uh the person's height. Like if you tried to look for a correlation, where would you find it? And he goes, the highest correlation you could find is that the more charismatic candidate
wins.
And um he goes ever since the advent of radio and television when
Our primary way of
Getting messages out scaled up like crazy.
Um
The more charismatic
Whether this was
Clinton or
Reagan wasn't Reagan like an actor or something like this. Yeah. He was good looking. He's going through history. And basically twenty twenty was kind of the only exception.
Where Biden won and I would say Biden was the less charismatic candidate than Trump.
That seems to be like the outlier.
But the guy's case was basically he's like
I think in his case he didn't he didn't want Trump to win and he's like
Problem is Trump is incredibly charismatic.
Um, he g he's able to capture people's attention.
He says things that are very memorable. He says things that excite certain people and inflame certain people, but it's all attention that he gets free earned media.
So he had this idea to create a television show.
And he's like
This sounds a little bit silly.
But he's like, I think for the Democratic Party, which is the party he was a part of, he's like
I think we need to start nominating more charismatic candidates. And if you look at the last few, they they have not been the most charismatic. He's like, We're sort it's a captured party.
And we lack
putting forward charismatic candidates since Obama.
Obama was the the w one of the most charismatic candidates.
And he said, uh
Here's what I think we should do.
Just like, you know, American Idol or The Voice or whatever, there's the uh the apprentice even.
There's been proven shows where you can have like let's say an eight to twelve week period where you start with ten people and then they get eliminated and in the end you have a winner.
Um, he's like, What if we did this for presidential candidates? So you would take tw twelve candidates, not random people off the street, but people that genuinely are
thinking that they want to run.
And so you'd get pre Pete Butter J and others in in this batch.
He's like week by week, you know, let's say they go they go to a small town in Pittsburgh and they're gonna actually
Meet with the the the car manufacturers there, whatever, like you know, some some like
presidential type of shit that they do.
And they have to present a plan and then it's actually like
And the judges for that week will be the the car man car
uh manufacture people and then they'll sort of pick which candidate they felt best understood them and was able to to address their needs.
And week by week you sort of eliminate candidates. He's like, by the end of this twelve week thing
Will have captured so much attention and hopefully found a candidate that's like won the hearts of people. People will know their backstory.
They'll know what they're all about. They'll have seen them in a more human light.
And we will have filtered out the less charismatic candidates for the more charismatic candidates.
He's like, I'm not saying char charisma is the end all be all. Like ideally at the beginning you try to screen
people that you think are worthy.
you know, candidates to lead.
But amongst that worthy pool.
Give a boost to the most charismatic candidate.
I thought this was fascinating and I really wanted him to do it. And he had a he was friends with Mark Burnett, the guy who created um
Survivor and uh a bunch maybe Bachelor or whatever, like a bunch of other major, major reality shows. And he's like, I'm gonna talk to Mark.
I think we're gonna do this. And I hit him up
Uh recently and I was like, whatever happened to that idea. And he's like, I just decided I didn't want
I didn't want
th an avalanche of problems in my life for creating this and I decided it wasn't worth
I have a great life and it really wasn't worth the you know
What it was gonna do. And but and Biden won in twenty twenty. And so he felt like uh maybe maybe I was wrong. Maybe there's not as much of a need for this. But isn't that interesting, dude?
Yeah, that's pretty fascinating. I um I wish I wish he would have done that.
I feel like that would work too. Like it sounds like an it's an idea that I think is easy to make fun of.
It's also an idea that I think would be effective at the the state admission. It's easy to make fun of because we don't want it to be true.
But it is true.
Like um
You know who's a really good example of this is Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Yep.
he was just he's just he was such a charismatic, interesting person. He was good to look at. Like he wanted to look like he looked like even the people who aren't
pres even the people who are become our leaders who aren't really good looking, they're still sort of interesting to look at. Like Donald Trump is intriguing to look at. He looks like
remarkable in a weird way, you know what I'm saying?
Uh Arnold Schwarzenegger is a perfect example of this.
Can I show you one uh last thing which I think is funny.
So I found this and I don't I I think I've talked to this guy Brian and he was cool. So I don't wanna shit on him.
But I'm more so shitting on people who
This line of thinking, maybe.
This line of thinking.
And
Okay, so it is.
He says I asked
Quote
What company is worth less than 10 billion today that you could be worth five hundred billion plus in a few decades? I received seven hundred and ten answers.
Here's the top twenty picks that have fifty X potential.
And this tweet has eighteen thousand likes. You know, probably I don't know how many views, but like
What year was this? Over a million.
This is in twenty twenty one, July of twenty twenty one.
When times were good, when everybody's making a ton of money in the stock market.
And he lists uh
twenty companies. Um
And uh and these are ones that this guy who
I think he has a whole YouTube channel towards picking socks.
And I don't know if these were his picks necessarily, or if they were uh his
Uh his audience's picks.
But and this guy has six hundred thousand followers.
His bio says I teach investors how to analyze businesses. Stock fundamentals and valuation teacher. DM Buffett for premium courses, free ebook in my description. Okay, that's that's this guy.
So
This was in two thousand twenty one.
And I just was curious, like
How?
It was he right? Like what's his deal?
I'm almost positive.
That
Not only did none
None of'em fifty X.
I am pretty sure
that most of them
Hard.
Down from ac from down even from this tweet.
But he hand selected.
Somebody somebody says.
This has to go down in history as the best case of stupidity of the crowds. Here's where we're at three years later.
So three years later.
Only one company is up.
And it's up six percent.
The average company is down seventy percent on this list with several of them. Minus ninety five percent, minus ninety five percent, minus ninety eight percent, minus ninety percent, minus ninety seven, minus eighty-six, minus ninety nine, and of course
Ozon, which was an e commerce platform in Russia, which is delisted. And I think Open Door is now and so this tweet that you're looking at, that was even six months ago.
I'm almost positive that open door
uh is delisted and Virgin is down even more.
I think lemonade is delisted or out of business.
Uh context logic, I think, is out of business.
Which is wish.
All right, we should post an update here.
And now we're at five years later. Here's how the uh stupidity of the crow has done.
And my point in bringing this up isn't the actual results. The results are not good. That's the summary.
the results are actually really bad. Um
But it's just
Crazy.
How hard it is to pick winners.
It's very challenging.
Uh this guy
has six hundred thousand followers. I assume that he does this all the time for his job.
And you still can't nail it.
It's just so challenging.
Is it though?
Ha ha.
Ha ha.
Yeah.
Okay, I'm gonna tell what I did.
Back in
Twenty
I graduated in two thousand ten.
And I started my stock portfolio.
I think right around like senior year of college.
And I um
I bought
I believe six stocks. And my dad was telling me just buy the index.
But I'm like dead.
I got this.
Right. I had uh the Dunning Kruger effect. I thought I knew a lot more than I knew.
And I think I bought
Five or six stocks.
How much money?
Ver I mean, I didn't have any but I had twenty five thousand dollars. Uh I had probably sixty thousand dollars total.
That's a lot of money.
Well, i I guess what I'm saying is
Even though the results were great.
It did didn't you know, on a very small
That doesn't doesn't do a whole lot for you.
I bought
Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Tesla.
What years? These were it was basically twenty ten, twenty eleven. Uh when I God.
Oh, those talks.
So I did the thing you're not supposed to do. I picked.
I didn't pick with any sort of brilliance. I was like these are like obviously
Just seemed like the the good companies of the world to me at the time.
And uh you know, I did make a mistake because I sold Tesla earlier. I sold it probably twenty fourteen or something like that.
Um so that wo and that would have been a a much bigger return. So yeah, I I think I still
I still am out in the case study of like
It's really freaking hard to do. Even if you buy right, you'll sell wrong and shit like that. Like I bought Bitcoin early and sold some early and then
Bought it back again and bought sold it again, bought it back again.
Yeah, I'm not saying I'm smart, I do dumb things.
But I guess what I'm saying is sometimes it's actually kind of obvious. I think one of the reasons that what this guy did was so hard was he was looking for a fifty X.
He's like, Well company small today that's gonna be massive tomorrow. Which of course, if you knew, that'd be fantastic.
But there is a simple way of looking at things. Like right now, for example
I put my money into what my own little AI index.
And I didn't spend much time on this and I'm gonna go back and
Do a little more research. But basically it's very obvious, I think, at this moment in time in the world.
That AI is
Going to be a very big deal.
Uh that
The biggest winners over the next five to ten years are gonna be ones that are benefiting from AI in some way. Whether they're NVIDIA, they're selling chips.
Whether they're
uh companies like Google or Facebook that are able to use AI in order to make all their services better and slash
Tens of thousands of employees.
That they don't need.
Um shit like that. Right. Like I think it's pretty obvious that AI's a big deal. And I think if you put in the time to just think about like
Instead of buying the generic
S P five hundred.
Like what's the equivalent of the AI fifty or the AI twenty?
And it's like twenty companies that I believe are
Well positioned. It's hard for them to lose
given the AI tailwind.
And
Again, it's a little bit naive because you might say, Well, NVIDIA today they have ninety percent gross margins and that they're gonna get competed away and blah, blah, blah. I'm not saying it's like easy, but I'm just saying I think an index of AI
of AI focused um
Companies. That doesn't mean companies that are like
You know, all
Chipmakers or whatever. I'm just saying companies that are gonna
disproportionately benefit from AI and are gonna adopt AI and get the benefits of it.
I just feel like that's an obvious thing today.
Yeah. Being like, I don't know, me and all my friends use the internet like crazy. I think I should just like own the the big internet companies. That seems like a good idea.
The the issue is not can you pick winners? Because I think that like
And we
When we saw Facebook was valued at when it was hit a low, I think
A year and a half ago.
everyone who has ever bought any Facebook ads was like, Yeah, this is undervalued. This is a great company.
The issue is the amount of times that you have lost using that same logic.
Um
Like and so if you were to take a lump supp of money and you would
buy and sell uh like occasionally or rather often
Versus just letting it sit and ignoring like
If you
Average. I'm actually gonna go back and just back test this for me, me specifically.
And I'll publish my results. I'll bring up I'll bring it to the next episode.'Cause I I I'm curious. I
And I would say
I think there's a more likely chance that I
Buying and selling has uh buying and selling and picking has underperformed. I would I would assume that to be true.
I think there's a chance it's not been for me, but um
I'm I really want to go get the exact answer.
Because uh it I'll include
I think I should include crypto because I think that was kind of like buying and selling picking.
And I wanna see the returns of if I had just
Uh
Injust the same amount of money
In the same times in just the index versus my picking.
I just want to see for myself what I've done and give it honest
Be able to look reality in the face of like, you know, how's this working for me? So let me tell you this
Let me tell you this crazy stat that Ankard uh told me.
So Jerry Buss, the guy who um owned the Lakers, the you know, they they recently just sold the Lakers for ten billion dollars.
So he bought the Lakers for sixty seven million dollars in nineteen seventy nine.
And he sold it.
uh for a hundred and fifty times his money at ten billion dollars in two thousand and twenty five.
And yeah.
Had he taken that sixty million dollars and instead just invested it in the S P five hundred
He would have been able to have had thirteen
billion dollars.
Uh so we would have had more money now. That's stupid. That's stupid. That's not stupid. But listen.

Think of all it's not incorrect. I mean it it's just a f it's just math. It's is acting like he didn't take money every year in gains from the business.
He could have liked cash flow every year.
Do they?
Do most winning teams do not make a profit.
Most winning teams.
They should want paper. They could show paper losses. I I know team owners. I talk I talked to them about this. I I was like, is this true? Do you guys actually lose money on this thing?
And they're like
No, most years we're making money.
Occasionally if we're way over the luxury tax, we get it we get a huge penalty, then yes, we can lose money in that one year, but no, we're not idiots. We're not burning hundreds of like people say like, Oh, they lost two hundred million dollars this year. He's like, I'm not losing two hundred million dollars every year.
Some the top comment was like
Yeah, but are you adding into the P L all the women that he was able to get because of he because of him owning the Lakers? Which is already
Congratulations, you own the S P five hundred.
Uh versus you own the Lakers. Forgetting that.
The Lakers are a business.
That has
been generating cash.
And so all he's taking into account is just the exit price.
And none of the thirty years of cash flow.
Well
I don't really look at the facts when whenever I'm making a statement. But I think it it did make for a good headline. Uh and it is kinda stunning what
I don't know, eleven percent compounding over forty years actually does. It's pretty crazy.
I like doing this. Alright, that's it. That's a 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 my day song On the road less travel never looking back