By playing, you agree to uListen's Terms and Privacy Policy and YouTube's Terms of Service.
Summaries, chapters, transcripts, and FAQs on this page are made by uListen, not YouTube.
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
85 min read · 16,710 words- 0:00 – 7:30
Sam helps a famous hockey player go viral
- SPSam Parr
And we did it, and he tweeted it out, and he went from 20,000 followers to I think close to 100,000 followers at this point in 24 hours. [upbeat music] Andrew-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Hey, guys
- SPSam Parr
... what's going on?
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Not too much.
- SPShaan Puri
The return of Andrew.
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
We promised back-
- SPShaan Puri
We promised that you would come back, and, um, th- sometimes that's just something we say where we're like, "Oh, we gotta do this again sometime," but this was a real one. So, uh, we're like, "All right. When, when do you wanna do it?" [laughs]
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Yeah, I feel like we had, we had, like, what, like, 20 things to get through?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
But we got through, like, four. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
So what do you guys say we also bullshit around this time and not, not address half of the topics again-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
... and set it up for a third parter? [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
I, I wanna, I do wanna bullshit one thing, and this kind... Maybe Andrew you'll know a little bit about this. But listen, let me tell you guys a, a story really quick. Andrew, do you know a guy named Chris Pronger?
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
No.
- SPSam Parr
He is a hockey player. He played in the NHL for, like, 20 years or something. He, um, is from Canada, I think Ontario, and, uh, he played at the, in St. Louis Blues. He's, like, the fifth or sixth or seventh highest, highest paid player of all time. So for some reason he reached out to me on Twitter, and I started talking to him. And then we went and got dinner, and he wanted to... He's like, "Hey, tell me how this Twitter thing works. Like, it looks cool. Like, should I try this?" I was like, "Yeah, dude. Here's what we're gonna do. Tomorrow call me on Zoom, and the day before you call me, send me five titles of what you think a tweet could be, and we'll just sit, and I'll just kinda like write while you talk, and I'll just find the interesting stuff, uh, that you, that you're saying, and we'll go from there." And we did it, and he tweeted it out, and he went from 20,000 followers to I think close to 100,000 followers at this point in 24 hours, and the tweet was read by 10 million people and got 30-something thousand likes. And this is the fifth time I've done this. So I did this with my friend Ramon, and he got featured in all this. He got, he got on the how I built this podcast and business started because of that. I did it with my friend Val, who it... Same thing. We did it with, um, I helped do it with my friend Anthony, who talked... Do you guys see the tweet thread about him living in Africa and eating, like, only meat with, like, his, the tribe he was staying with? Anyway, this is-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Yeah
- SPSam Parr
... this is crazy. If you just take interesting people... And it's not like I did any of the work. They were just talking to their stories. I just helped them write it. It, it's pretty wild how, how, like, this game works.
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
And what were the stories? What did, what did you share?
- SPSam Parr
Hi- Chris's was easy. It was just, uh-
- SPShaan Puri
Let, let me, let me, let me tell you one, because... Let me tell, let me tell you one of them, 'cause it got pr- picked up by Bro Bible. So the Bro Bible headline was-
- SPSam Parr
Oh, did it really?
- SPShaan Puri
... ex NHL star Chris Pronger. Ex NHL st- star Chris Pronger shares traps that pro athletes fall into, including spending one million at a strip club.
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
And, um, so wh- why do you... How did it get so many f- like, so much traffic right away? I think 'cause it, the story got picked up by bigger outlets like Bro Bible too. So that adds a lot of fuel to the fire.
- SPSam Parr
It's hilarious, yeah. And, and I retweeted it early on and... But I think it's just, like, A, he's already somewhat famous and cool. And, like, the, the, the... I think sometimes they... Like, I'm not trying to say this to brag, because the reality is, is, like, it's not that hard, because the guy's already, like, a big deal and has an interesting life, and, like, who, who's g- if you earned $100 million-
- SPShaan Puri
But by the way, dude, he's not that big of a deal. Like-
- SPSam Parr
Well, but what, what I mean is-
- SPShaan Puri
Like, not that many people know Chris Pronger
- SPSam Parr
... but what I mean is if you earn $100 million in, as a professional athlete, you have, like, one, you have... There's only a thousand... There's only 100 people who have that insight that you have.
- 7:30 – 12:00
How Andrew built his social media following
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
such power in that. You could literally go bankrupt, you could lose all your businesses. You could reboot in two days with a business idea if you have a Twitter following, and no one can take your Twitter following away, obviously.
- SPSam Parr
Dude, you were-
- SPShaan Puri
Well-
- SPSam Parr
... not low-key before Twitter
- SPShaan Puri
... first of all, you were famous before that.
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Yeah. [laughs] Yeah, thank you.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, exactly. [laughs]
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Well, no, no, no. I'm saying, like, I, I, I, I wasn't, I wasn't, I was never, I wasn't on a single major podcast and I was d- I was well-known... Like, when I went South by Southwest, there'd be people all the time recognizing me, um, from Twitter, but that was a very small, nerdy community or whatever. So I wa- I was well-known within, like, the design community, but that was it.
- SPShaan Puri
All right. Well, whatever you say. I feel like before COVID we had you on the podcast and it was already one of the more popular podcasts 'cause you were on it and people were like, people already knew your story. So I, I don't know. I feel like you might be, uh, the, the timeline in your head might be a little bit different than, than kind of w- at least the way I perceived it-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
... which was y- you were famous, you were famous when we started the podcast-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Yes
- SPShaan Puri
... and we started the podcast before COVID, so. [laughs]
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
That's so weird. Yeah. My perception is, like, all of it has just been the last three years or whatever.
- SPSam Parr
Can I give you guys a-
- SPShaan Puri
The thing you're saying is true, that, like, y- y- you, you, your personal brand does, like, kinda give you a, it's a door that opens more doors. Uh, but the downside is you have to say you're, you have to say to yourself, "I'm building my personal brand," which is one of the lamest statements you could say. So, you know, if you can live with that, if you can sleep with that at night, then it, then it works out for you. I know that it, it's hard for me and Sam to, to do that. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Can we give you-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Well, that's what, that's kinda why I haven't started my own podcast or consistently tweeted or anything, right? I, like, I, to be honest, like, I'm hacking your audience, right? I'll come on here once in a while when I have things to say, but I don't wanna have to always come on and always tweet. And when I was tweeting consistently, I was driving myself crazy 'cause I was constantly going like, "Okay, what's my big tweet today?"
- SPSam Parr
Can we, um... Well, let me give you, well, let me give you guys an update on the pod. I don't know if I told you this, Shaan, or you, Andrew. So, and then we'll get into Andrew's stuff. When we first started, I think I told Shaan or he told me, I was like, "Let's just get to 100,000 downloads an episode and I bet we can do that." So Shaan, we are now, not consistently for all episodes, but they just told me that a lot of, or a couple of our episodes are now getting over 100,000 downloads, which is, like, pretty, that's pretty good.
- SPShaan Puri
Wow. That's dope.
- SPSam Parr
So that's sweet.
- SPShaan Puri
That's been the goal for a l- a, like, a while. Like, I feel like I've been, that's been the north star of what would it mean to, like, kinda make it in podcasting. It was like, if we could do it where 100,000 downloads per episode, 'cause everybody else bullshits, like, and we do this too, like, we get this many million-
- SPSam Parr
Monthly
- SPShaan Puri
... downloads a month. But it's like, yeah, you just pu- pump out volume and, like, you know, great. The only test that really matters for a podcast is how many listens per episode do you get. Uh, that's, like, the best metric you can get. And, uh, I remember we, we were saying the 100,000 number back when we had, like, under, I feel like, uh, slightly under 10,000 per episode at that time. That's when I first kinda put that out there.
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
And then it's just been, like, climbing since then. That's kinda crazy that it even happened without us. Like, it's kinda like when I looked away from it and stopped paying attention to it, like, sure enough, compounding just worked and it, like, got there, you know, without me-
- SPSam Parr
So-
- SPShaan Puri
... even having to stress it
- SPSam Parr
... in December, or no, January, one of the, uh, one of the last couple months, we crossed two million downloads per month. That year prior, that same time, I think was 500,000. And so I, my prediction is I think we can get hit three million by December. I've got no math or anything behind that, but I think that seems like it could happen. So anyway, just wanted to give you an update on that.
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
What's, like, the biggest podcast do? What's, like, a, what's the, what's, like, Tim Ferriss do per episode, do you know?
- 12:00 – 14:15
Podcast downloads update
- SPShaan Puri
I have no idea what these mean, but I'll just pick the ones that sounds most interesting to me-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Well, why don't-
- SPShaan Puri
... and then we'll riff
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
... Sh- we, we were, we were having a text thread. We were kind of, um, tex- texting about the idea of getting rich fast versus getting rich slow, taking a big swing versus doing something boring-
- SPSam Parr
Dude, I forgot
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
... and doing it slowly-
- SPSam Parr
I thought that was on the podcast
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
... and how to think about that 'cause-
- SPShaan Puri
No, that was a text message. We should do that.
- SPSam Parr
Okay.
- SPShaan Puri
Andrew, can you frame it? Uh, uh, 'cause I think you had a, you had a good take, and I'm also gonna give you the advantage of framing the de- frame the debate a little bit, uh, as to like-
- SPSam Parr
Yeah
- SPShaan Puri
... w- what is the debate here?
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
So I think, I think anyone who's in the tech world, um, generally you read headlines about people who swung big and they, they won big, like Jeff Bezos. Um, and I always say, "For every Jeff Bezos, there's 100 Jeff Bozos," right? So the guys that tried, they failed, they, they didn't raise the convertible debt in 1999 that allowed Amazon to survive or, you know, they timed it slightly wrong or they were in the wrong market or whatever it is. Um, and so if you think about it, you know, on one hand, startups, um, are like a house. Like, would you, would you buy a house that had an 80% chance of being worth zero, a 10% chance of making your money back, and had a 10% chance of making you rich, right? And then let's say there's another house, and that house, there's an 80% chance of giving you a pretty solid return, 10% chance of zero, and a 10% chance of a poor return. Which of those houses are you gonna buy? And if you think about it, you know, when you start a business, you're really saying, "I'm gonna put 5 to 15 years of my time into this," right? So I am, I've certainly chosen, um, you know, the boring house, the 80% chance of solid return, 10% chance of zero, 10% chance of poor return. Uh, I'd be curious to know, you know, how you guys think about it.
- SPShaan Puri
Sam, you wanna go first?
- SPSam Parr
So I think your numbers are, are... I think your idea's right. The problem that I had when we talked about this was I think your numbers are wrong. Like, the whole 80%, 10%. Now, I, I'm gonna let you talk about any numbers that you wanna talk about with your life. If you don't wanna talk about anything, then don't even bring it up. But let's just say that... So everything I'm saying right now is just made up. Let's just say that you, you want a business that makes $10 million a year, okay? Or no, let's say that you wanna get a net worth of $50 million by the time you're 50. How
- 14:15 – 57:20
Getting rich quick vs. getting rich slow
- SPSam Parr
much do you think that you would need to make a pro- profit to get a $50 million liquid net worth? How much profit do you think that you would need if you started that business at 30? I would think that you would need a profit-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
So I actually-
- SPSam Parr
Go.
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
I did the math on this actually before and I wrote it down. So if you have a million dollars at age 30 and you can inve- you can produce, uh, profits of maybe 300 to 500K a year at between 10 to 12%, you can have $100 million by 60 with compounding.
- SPSam Parr
Say that-
- SPShaan Puri
So, okay
- SPSam Parr
... yeah, do-
- SPShaan Puri
So break that down
- SPSam Parr
... yeah, do that again
- SPShaan Puri
... million dollars, uh, million dollar net worth is your st- [clicks tongue] million dollar-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
So let's say you have a million dollars, let's say you have a million dollars at age 30 and you start a business and that business produces 500K a year. And you just take that 500K a year and you reinvest it, and you manage to re-in- to invest it at about 10%, which is a little above, uh, historical market returns. Let's say that you're a good investor, you're a Nick Huber, you're gonna just put it in steady Eddie real estate that outperforms a little bit or something.
- SPSam Parr
But th- there's a flaw here
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
... you can get to $100 million by 60.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah, but there's a flaw here, which is do you have a- you're assuming that you have zero living expenses.
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Sure. Yeah, I'm not talking, I'm not really addressing that for sure.
- SPSam Parr
So you're just talking about-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
What I, I guess the point is-
- SPSam Parr
... $300,000-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
... the number you need, the number you need, the number you need to start with does, it's, doesn't need to be that big. Like, a small number can compound into something staggering if you have a long enough time horizon, especially if you're outperforming. 10%, I think is quite low, um, compared to-
- SPSam Parr
So let's-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
... what you can earn with skills.
- SPShaan Puri
So let's go backwards. So you, you said 100 million by 60. And of, uh, I think the trick with most compounding is it all kinda comes to you at the end. [laughs] The last two cycles, three cycles is where you make all the money. So l- so, so backtrack. What are you at, at 50 and 40 in that world?
- SPSam Parr
Or no, w-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
I don't know. We don't do public math.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
I just did the headline.
- SPSam Parr
Well, like you-
- SPShaan Puri
Not the easiest calculator
- SPSam Parr
... you can, you can kinda-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
No. [laughs]
- 57:20 – 1:07:30
How to identify a winner
- SPShaan Puri
anytime you have an amazing account, like, experienced account manager or a banker... Like, I had this one w- woman who helped me with my mortgage, and I was like, "Hey, if you ever wanna, like, switch careers, like, you're amazing." And, like, same thing with, like, you know, my trainer, different people. I'm like, "Yo, you have this, like, great way with people." Or, like, the guy who manages our rolling fund, uh, he's like p- he works at AngelList. But this motherfucker handles, like, such a shit s-... We'll send up, we'll be like, "Hey, we're doing this deal. We don't know, like, half the terms, and it's gonna, uh, we c- we have to sign now and wire the money in three months."
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Is it Connor?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, Connor.
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
He's amazing.
- SPShaan Puri
He's, you know Connor?
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
He, he's amazing.
- SPShaan Puri
He's so good. [laughs]
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
I don't know, I don't know how he tracks all this. Yeah, we, the same thing. We'll be like-
- SPShaan Puri
Dude
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
... "100K into this," and then, like, he handles everything.
- SPShaan Puri
He-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
And I'm just like, "This is insane."
- SPShaan Puri
Connor's a ma- absolute magician.
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
And it's so funny that you have the same guy, 'cause he's, he is so on top of it. And I'm just like, "Connor, you are, like... Like, I need to basically, like..." As soon as I have enough operational shit to deal with, I'm like, Connor's the first call, because this guy-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Oh, yeah
- SPShaan Puri
... handles the messiest, most disorganized thing, and he's just like, "Yep, got it." Never makes me feel bad about it. He just, like, solves the problem, and if he needs something, he tells me, and then I give it to him. Like, it's so nice when you find somebody, like, ultra competent like that.
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
It's Four Seasons service, right? I don't know if you guys have gone to the... You go to a Four Seasons and you, you know, you say, "Oh, like, I really..." You say something fussy like, "Oh, I want, you know, a thinner blanket." And at some hotels they grumble, and there they just say, "Oh, yes. We would l- we would love to, sir."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
And I feel like, and then they'll never complain or anything. And I feel like, um, Connor is one of those people. Uh, and my assistant is one of those people. Those people are just, they're, they're amazing. When you find one you just gotta, uh-
- SPShaan Puri
I, I'll tell you one more signal
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
... build on them.
- SPShaan Puri
Somebody who thinks bigger than you, um, especially if they aren't the one in charge of the company. This is s- this is super rare. It just happened. Safwan did this. So I brought him in to work on the Milk Road NFT projects. Like, we're gonna launch an NFT as part of Milk Road, and we're brainstorming what it could be. And we don't wanna just do some bullshit thing, we want it to be, like, really great. And he was like, it was, like, his first or second day and he just goes, "You know, just a thought. Like, um, right now we kinda think of this as, like, some sub little project, like a, like a cool add-on to the Milk Road." He's like, "But there's no reason this shouldn't be, like, as big as Bored Ape Yacht Club or anything else. Like, this could be one of the biggest, best NFT projects around. I just wanna s- say that out loud because, like-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
... I don't wanna limit the..." And, and I was just like, "You know, if you can make me feel like a little bitch, then, like, you are, are my favorite employee," right? Because I'm like, oh, yeah, I, if I'm not thinking sufficiently large enough or aggressive enough about either a timeline or a s- size of the prize, that's the f- you know, that's my favorite type of person to work with, is somebody who pushes my thinking on, like, couldn't we do this faster, or couldn't we do this bigger? Because that's normally, like, they... N- normally people will just accept whatever the leader sets as the frame. They'll just set that as this invisible walls around how good or how big or how fast something can be. And somebody who breaks those walls is, like, a winner.
- SPSam Parr
Dude, Shaan, how much more hyped are you around Milk Road than some of your other things? It seems like this is the most-
- SPShaan Puri
Way too much
- SPSam Parr
... hyped you...
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Like, you s- it, it feels good. So you're 33. It, it's taken you a- a- 33 years to finally find the thing where it, it's like, "This is, this is what I should be do..." Like, the, the, it's the, you know, ikigai. It's, like, what you're good at, what the world wants, what the world's willing to pay for, and, like, what you're passionate about. Right in the middle. You've, you've seem like you've found that. Whereas before, you found things that made money, but it was like, "Eh, it's kind of interesting." Then you found things that you were passionate, it didn't really make money. Now you've got ... You're, you're in the center.
- 1:07:30 – 1:11:55
The five pillars of happiness
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
to [laughs] I text her in Spanish.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Uh, so she doesn't know anything. [laughs] At least that's what I think. Maybe she's actually a spy or something.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, she, she knows where you leave your underwear on the floor and shit like that.
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Oh, yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
She knows, she knows how long that cup will sit on your desk before you just w- finally take it to the sink. She knows everything.
- SPSpeaker
All right, bros, I gotta bounce. I have someone here, but are you guys gonna keep talking?
- SPShaan Puri
Uh, no, we can wrap it. It's cool.
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Yeah, that was fun.
- SPShaan Puri
It, it won't be the same without you. All right, uh, let, let's, let's wrap it up. Ben, uh, Ben, what'd you think?
- SPSpeaker
Uh, you're making me come on camera here on, on my sick day, but, uh, great stuff. Of ... Al- always a great episode, episode from Andrew. I anticipate this is gonna be one of our top downloaded ones. It usually is.
- SPShaan Puri
I guess it's been awesome.
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Did we, uh-
- SPSpeaker
Sweet
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
... Ben, I said that we crossed 100K per episode. That was, like, only for a handful. Or what, what's, do you know what the numbers are? They just, like, mentioned it to me.
- SPShaan Puri
Well, what's our actual average? Like, what's our actual average? Is it like 70-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
I don't know the actual-
- SPShaan Puri
... 60, 100?
- SPSpeaker
Hmm
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
... but it depends what window you're looking at. If it's like, I think most people measure it by a 60-day window.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, take, whatever, 30, 60 is fine.
- SPSpeaker
All right, let me just, let me just pull up the stats right here.
- SPShaan Puri
Have you guys considered, like, building in public and having a graph or something? Or would that be too embarrassing-
- SPSpeaker
I kind of do. I tweeted out-
- SPShaan Puri
... if it starts going down?
- SPSpeaker
Our March-
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Yeah, I know you talk about it a lot
- SPSpeaker
... our March numbers, I tweeted out. It was 1.5, 1, 1.6 million.
- AWAndrew Wilkinson
Hmm.
- SPSpeaker
Whatever the number, it was something like that.
Episode duration: 1:12:05
In the uListen app, the transcript lights up word by word as you listen. Get uListen
Transcript of episode HuytSzVYEpA
