Sahil Bloom: Left Private Equity To Make Millions As A Content Creator And 3 Profitable Businesses To Start Now

mobile podcast and video studio. Buy like a few vans, kit them out with like a pretty fire setup just in the back of like a normal-sized van. Doesn't even have to be an RV for like 2 to 3 people could fit. Deck it out with like a few good DSLR cameras that can do the recording, like dual camera setup so that you have like a few mics hanging off the sides and basically go and post it up in a couple of major cities, like one van in each major city and rent it out for like $500 for 2 hours to do podcast recordings or like, you know, a couple hundred bucks to do like people going in and filming Instagram Shorts, TikToks, shit like that. Like if you put one in LA and you put one in New York City, I bet you could kill it.

What's going on? Who's, who's the guest, Sean?

We got Sahil here. The man who answers the question, what would happen if Sean was better looking, smarter, harder working? Sahil Bloom is here.

Definitely not smarter.

Yeah, but don't dispute those other two.

I'm just screwing with you. So what's up, guys?

Happy to be here.

How often do you get your haircut? Let's start with the most important question.

Uh, you know, like every other week at this point. Now my wife is making fun of me for this because, like, it used to be that I'd go once a month, wasn't a big deal. And now I'm going like every other week because I like to keep it tight. And she keeps giving me shit because we have a little newborn at home and I'm like, oh, I got to go, got to go. So yeah, it's become an issue.

You don't call it a hair appointment. That's the only thing you can't do. If you say I got a hair appointment, then you're out as a guy.

The place just can't be called a salon. That's always been my rule. It's got to be a barber shop.

You seem like, you seem like a salon guy though.

Look at you, man. You're wearing like a, you got like a Werther sweater on. You look like you're getting ready for Christmas. It's like, it's 85 degrees in Austin, Texas today.

Yeah.

So are we at your like book reading for your, for your book right now, Sam?

What are you doing? It actually does look like you should have a fireplace in the background and you're going to be like reading us nice stories in a soothing voice.

I'm definitely drinking tea right now. So basically, like, your bio is pretty easy. You were a nobody private equity guy. The pandemic hit, the pandemic hit, and you're like, I'm going to be somebody. In a matter of 2 years, you got famous on Twitter. What do we, what do we have, 900,000 or 800,000 followers? So you got famous on Twitter and basically transformed your life all because of Twitter and COVID. Is that right?

I mean, the nobody private equity guy designation is not unreasonable. I mean, that's like, I think that's totally fair. I mean, there's a lot of nobody, like, finance guys that are making bank out there though, right?

Like, that would have, uh, that would have stung, but now you're like famous and stuff, so now it's okay to laugh at it.

I mean, I don't know, like, do you think it stings? Like, the— if you're making pretty good money doing something like that, I mean, VPs in private equity at this point, if you're doing well, like, you're making 7 figures as a VP in private equity.

Name 4 of them.

Yeah. What about— dude, I hung out with some PE guys the other day and I didn't know them well enough, but obviously I just— in the back of my head, how rich are you? And that's like what I wanted to keep asking. If you own a PE shop, is it safe to assume that you're just wealthy? And how much do they actually earn?

And The, I think that I've always, I can't decide if it's jealousy because I'm like, you guys are making a lot of money for what feels like not a lot of work. Or if it's actually, I dislike them because I feel as though they're just like Excel sheet monkeys and they're like not actually creating value. What, where's the reality?

No, I mean, they work crazy hard, man. I don't, um, I don't know anyone that is a long-time GP, uh, in private equity that doesn't work, you know, 70+ hours a week of like stressful work. I mean, it's the type of thing Sean would absolutely hate. Like, you think about, like, people that care about leverage on their time, it's like pretty piss-poor leverage and it's high-stress work because you're putting a bunch of debt on these companies typically. And, you know, during a downturn like right now, right, it's hugely stressful because you're constantly dealing with like breaking covenants on the debt and having to restructure. And, you know, like basically what ends up happening is you spend 80% of your time on the like couple of losers in the portfolio. And the winners, you just like kind of get to set and forget it because they're growing. They're, you know, you're getting like a levered upside on them because you put, you know, 70% leverage to buy the company, 60% leverage to buy the company, and you're just like eating off those couple of winners, but you're dealing constantly with the ones that are losers.

So Sean and I have our hand in this world where like we have definitely sell and have sold courses and information stuff. We also have a podcast. And so that's like this like personality world. But then we also have built, nice size companies and we will continue to build very likely much bigger companies. And so we have our foot in that world. For you, you have your foot in like the PE world as well as the thing that we're in, this information thing. Where do you think, do you think that one, do you think that the information world or whatever we call this thing is actually a, uh, is it an equal, uh, revenue or net worth driver as like some of the traditional company building or PE stuff?

Yeah, I mean, like, I think you have to think about it in terms of like your, you know, profit potential multiplied by like the freedom and time freedom that comes with it, right? To like get to like kind of an adjusted profit that you can generate from something. Doing it in PE and like making $50 million in PE from a time-adjusted standpoint is a, is a pretty grindy way to go do it. It's like high certainty if you're just on, if you're at a good fund and you're rolling with a good fund and you're like going to be a partner there and you're going to get more and more carry across, you know, bigger and bigger funds. It's a pretty low beta way to go and generate that type of, you know, that type of net worth. But you're going to be working your ass off until you're like 60 years old doing it versus, you know, you go on the information side into the information economy and you're like doing newsletter, doing podcast courses, stuff that you guys are doing where you're like, you know, Sean might do his course and in a week make $300K and then be able to chill for, you know, 2, 3 months if he wants to because who cares, right? It's like it's just a totally different time leverage. So I don't know, it sort of depends on like what you want to do in that regard.

Dude, what's your, what's your job now?

And I don't know if you guys talked about this already, but you had come to us or you were kind of talking in our group chat about like the fork in the road moment you had. You were like we said before, no-name private equity guy, uh, making good money. And you had started tweeting out stuff like pretty regularly, I would say, I don't know, 6 months or a year before that. Um, and you, you, it was clear you had momentum. It was clear you were good at that. Uh, you were getting followers, maybe had 100,000 or 200,000 followers maybe at that time. I'm just rounding around. And, uh, but it wasn't, you didn't have all these other things like this clear, like I have a fund, I have a newsletter that makes money, I have an agency that makes money. So you didn't know exactly what was on the other side of that hill and you were debating, what should I do? Should I, you know, the fork in the road a lot of people have, should I stay in my job? That's a good cushy job. Or should I, uh, take this leap of faith into the unknown? Give us like the 2-minute story of like, you know, how did you think about that and how'd you decide? And was that the right way to think about it?

Yeah. I mean, I, um, like a lot of people had the like COVID moment of what the fuck am I doing with my life? Um, and you know, am I happy doing it? Like, you know, all of a sudden for the first time in my life, after, I guess it had been 6 years working in, in private equity, which at the time, you know, it was like 80 to 100 hour weeks, right? So you don't really have time to look up. You don't think about shit because you're just working and you're, you know, you're making more and more money. And so you're like patting yourself on the back. Things are good. You're, you know, you're Indian, Sean. Like, Indian mother thinks it sounds impressive. You know, things are good. She probably wants you to go get an M.D., but it sounds pretty good.

Is that what your mother wanted you to do, Sean?

My mom? Yeah, she was. Yeah, yeah. All those things. She, She definitely was like, don't leave a good paying job. That was just like a general rule or general rule of thumb.

You had described it. You were like, I'm thinking about path A or path B, but the way you described it, like, path A sounded like shit. Like, it sounded super hard and not that much fun. And path B sounded like a lot of fun with just like, you know, some unknowns, but like, definitely good was going to come of it. And I was like, how is this even a decision? Like, it sounds like you're saying I'm choosing between a bad option and a good option. Go with the good one.

Dude. So something that's interesting is like I get— and I know Sean does too— I get asked maybe 5 times a week if someone can like write tweets for me or like cut videos for me and all this stuff. And it's pretty crazy. I don't know if it only happens like what the popularity level is where you have to— where you start getting those inbounds. But I get it so often that I get this and you like, it's— there's like this weird— I get people asking me all the time, they go, are you and Sahil or are you and this person? Are you and that person? Is Sahil friends with this person? Because there's this like weird circle jerk of a Twitter world and it feels, feels as though that like you are connected to like many, many, many tens of millions of followers and reach. And like, there's this like weird behind-the-scenes thing going on with your agency.

It's the dark underground cabal that runs Twitter now. No, I mean, Sean, you actually remember this, right? Didn't like some kid hit you up and say that he ghostwrote tweets for me? And then you just texted me and were like, does this dude ghostwrite for you? And I was like, no, I've never heard of this kid in my life. He was just lying. And then I hit him up saying like, yo, why are you lying to this person? And he completely panicked. But yeah, man, I mean, the, like, the world of, of ghostwriting tweets has now become again, like, it's become a meme because what was it like Business Insider wrote an article about VCs getting, getting ghostwriters to write tweets for them. That wasn't at all how my agency thing started. It started in like late 2020 because I had started to figure out that threads were the way that people were growing on Twitter. And keep in mind, like, you know, Sean, you were around the group chat at the time, but that was like before threads had become the like thread boy meme that they are today. And so there was like legitimate arbitrage in writing quality threads. And I had all these startups that I had invested in, the founders of which were like, wow, we see a ton of value in having a platform and a brand. Can you help us think through how to do this? Because you'd done it. Like I had at that point gotten to $75,000 or so. And so I was like, yeah, let me, you know, I basically like started an LLC, like an advisory business basically. And I started giving like strategic support to these startups on how to think about content.

And then like, how much would you charge them?

I was charging $5,000 a month to a startup for basically like, you know, it was like texting and then maybe like one call every other week. And it was like so low because it was so low on time from what they needed from me because it was mostly like the founders didn't want to actually spend a ton of time on it. They just wanted to be able to like kind of understand it. And then they would have people on their end that just like went off and did things.

But what was the high level like? 1, 2, 3 bullet points that you would tell these founders so that they could just be better at this?

It was basically like, you need your 2 or 3 pillars of content that you're going to be able to talk about consistently that are like valuable for you as a startup or as a founder. So if you're a founder, I mean, at the time it was like, if you're a founder, talk about, you know, building companies and things you're learning along the way, which now is like ultra saturated on Twitter, right? There's like a million people that aren't necessarily credible writing about that. At the time, there weren't that many founders doing it. Like, I don't know if you guys have seen the, like, copy AI founder. I forget his name. Paul, you might be an investor, Sean, you know that business.

Sam is, not me.

You like invest in the companies and they give you that money right back.

What? Your guys?

Wait, am I a meat and potato guy or a—

you're a meat and potato guy. No, you're a meat and potato guy. Sean's my tech guy, you're my meat and potatoes guy.

You know, if something's like cool or interesting, then it's kind of more of my thing. And if something's like really boring and like, you know, generally correlated with like obesity, it's your thing, right? That's like— so, Sahil, I want to ask you a bunch about like kind of your your big vision, cuz you're gonna be president someday. I don't know if people know this is a future president sitting with us, but before we do that, people always tell us, they're like, yo, you gotta do ideas with the guests. Meaning they want to hear, okay, you're Sahil, you see a bunch of different things, you see a bunch of different worlds. What opportunities do you see that you think some pe— somebody should be doing, or a cool startup idea, a cool business idea, niche opportunity, something maybe you're not doing or whatever. Do you have any kind of ideas on your cheat sheet?

I think it's awesome.

Yeah, I'm writing to do that. Similar thing. So I hired this guy as a content remixer for me. And, um, basically it was take content from the pod or, or Twitter and, uh, remix it into content on other platforms. And I focused on LinkedIn. I focused him on LinkedIn because I thought, thought the thing you just said, I had kind of a hypothesis that that's true. And, uh, I'm now at 38,000 followers on LinkedIn and I haven't opened LinkedIn once. So if you see something on LinkedIn, it's not me writing it. It's me.

I mean, the same thing happened to me, but it's not me writing that.

But hold on, Sean. So you got 38,000. Let's say that you post a—

by the way, this is like in 2 months or something like that.

Let's say you post a product that cost— or your power writing thing, let's say it's $1,000 and you sell a $1,000 thing to your 38,000 followers. How much revenue will you make from that?

I don't know. I haven't tested it. Sahil, you might know better, but I also haven't been doing it for long enough. I wouldn't expect to be able to get value. 'Cause I don't think I've given enough yet.

Yeah.

Like with Twitter, same thing, you know, like people see, oh man, you guys just, you can sell a course, you can just like say you're doing this new thing, you get a bunch of signups. It's like, yeah, but I've been doing this podcast for 3 years, do, you know, 300 episodes, you know, hundreds of hours of content that somebody's listened to. So yeah, they trust you and they know they've come to a decision whether you're smart and interesting or whether you're full of shit. And they've used, they've done, they've made that, that they've done all that work and I've done all that work beforehand. So then when you make an offer, it's just a simple yes or no. Um, it doesn't fit their life and does it, does it, do they think it'll drive value? They already trust that you could do it on LinkedIn. I wouldn't bet that that would happen yet because it's just been so, uh, recent.

Yeah.

This is interesting. Sean, have you seen what Sahil's been doing on Instagram?

On Instagram?

No.

So basically your boy's blowing up.

So listen to this. So around the same time, just dad content. No, listen, it's just hair.

It's just mostly hair and shirt, that type of stuff. And, uh, abs, thirst traps.

But, uh, around the same time, so Sahil and I, uh, both around the same time were like, all right, let's take Instagram seriously. So I started doing it and I was beating him nicely, adding 1,000 people a day. I think I started with 5,000 people and I got to like 48 or 50,000 in a very short amount of time. And he was doing his thing. I was like, you need to post twice a day, I think. And he starts doing that and then he just kind of like has rocketed past me. Now he's got to 60,000 followers in a very short amount of time, adding 1,000 or 2,000 people a day. And he's doing this exact same thing where he's taking his tweets that do well and just posting them on his Instagram. And like, so two points here. One, there's a world where this is just total vanity nonsense and a complete distraction from people who have like their main thing. On the other hand, what I'm curious about is how much revenue can this drive to people if their goal is not to be a famous person? Their goal is just to sell more shit of whatever their own they own already. And so I'm curious, Sahil, is of you, if, well, this, does this actually drive revenue for things other than media?

What's an example of that?

There's this guy, uh, Dakota Robertson, like wrongs to right, I think it's his like Twitter handle and maybe that's his Instagram handle too. Um, and he's got like, I don't know, 250,000 followers now on, on Instagram and like blew up real fast there just from posting his viral tweets over to, over to Instagram, like almost never shows his face. Um, and dude is, has a thriving ghostwriting business through this.

Gotcha. I'm torn because on one hand, uh, you are like perfect execution of a strategy that I now hate. And so I'm like, respect to you, but I'm like, I don't even want to talk about this because I know what's going to happen is there's now going to be 9,000 new people who go this this podcast is gonna breed 9,000 new people that are gonna go be like, this is my thing. I'm gonna do this. He said I can make, you know, X amount of money per month. And their execution is gonna be nowhere near yours. Um, and in general, this is like a, it's like a pathway that definitely works, but it's like, um, like the soul sucking, the soul sucking, the window of opportunity is closing and it provides like, well, I think the window of opportunity is closing.

That's an important point. I do think like, look, I mean, when I started writing threads, I mean, Sean, you were the same way, right? Like any thread you wrote would blow the hell up early on because there just weren't that many of them. And so it was like, it's like a market. It wasn't saturated. Now it's pretty hard to get a thread to like really take off unless you're doing the like 10 YouTube channels that will change your life for free.

Yeah, but that's the point, which is the things that it's like getting fit through power walking. Is power walking going to burn calories? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Are you probably not gonna get injuries? Yeah. But like, you have to look like a doofus doing it in the process. Everyone in the neighborhood's gonna know you as that weirdo power walking.

Like I, you know what I mean?

And I, I'm guilty of this too, right? Like I did this strategy as well of being like, oh, I'm gonna create content for, for, you know, for fun initially, this podcast, Twitter, that sort of thing. And then, oh shit. Okay. If I kind of sell 5% of my soul or 10% of my soul to the algorithm, I think I can get this bigger.

Okay.

I started doing that and then it's like, oh, I can make good money doing this. And I, you know, make some money doing that and that feels fun. But like, I just wanna say as a public service announcement, there's some people who are gonna go do this, but let's say you're somebody who's awesome. I'm just gonna say this now. This was awesome to do when it wasn't figured out. Now that it's figured out, this is certified official small boy stuff and I do not recommend this to anybody else. Uh, and I myself have stopped doing this too.

I haven't posted a thread in, in But if you are interested in this lame-ass shit, Sahil's the guy.

Sahil is perfect execution. That's the difference though. Anything like I, I tweeted this.

I'm sitting in this house because of it.

I tweeted this.

It's a lovely house. I go, it's a lovely house.

I go, I write tweets.

No, I mean, look, you do, you have to figure out what the, what the area is where you're going to do it. That's not crazy saturated and cringe. And, and to your point, like you got to figure out what percent cringe are you willing to be like? If writing a thread is 10% cringe, like what level above that just natural baseline are you going to figure that out?

Are you talking to me?

What? No, I mean, I'm willing to accept that already, like 10% of people just immediately see it and are like, oh, this is super cringe. And then you just have to decide like what level you're willing to go above that. If 100% is like 10 Chrome extensions that'll change your life and 50% is like you know, here are like the TED Talks that changed my life. What's like 20%? Is it some of the stuff I post? Probably. And like, if that helps a few people out there and like a bunch of people get pissed and think that it's not for them, I don't really give a shit personally. Like, if I help one person and, you know, someone hits me up and says like, hey, that changed my perspective on X, Y, or Z, that's what Gary Vee has been doing for decades, man. That guy's a legend of putting out content that's like listicles and, you know, like motivational stuff. Tony Robbins, like, Grant Cardone, these guys, like, they get hate because it freaking works and it helps people, right?

So I don't know, the thing I would say, like, have you ever been to a Tony Robbins event?

Yeah.

And, uh, I'm sure if you went to, like, you went to what, like an Unleash the Power Within or something?

Yeah.

Great. Uh, I went to, loved it, thought it was amazing. I don't know if you liked it. You could give me your quick reaction, but I have a different point. Yeah.

Um, I love it. I mean, I love Tony Robbins stuff.

Me too. And he gets on stage and he's doing all the things that you could criticize somebody for. He's He's clapping. He's saying, get up and jump. He's saying what I say, uh, you know, he's gonna ask a very basic question and the only answer is yes, but the whole crowd says yes like a cult. And you're like, oh, he's doing all the things, but he's doing it at like an A++ level. He is totally, probably in my opinion, the best public speaker I've ever seen. Uh, and I've seen a lot next to like Obama. Yeah. Yeah. He, he is, he, I think he's even more powerful than Obama cuz Obama is smooth. But Obama doesn't get people— Tony Robbins will get you to walk across coals and like shout your greatest fear out loud. I've never seen Obama control a crowd for 12 straight hours like Tony Robbins will do at an event. But here's what happens. You look around in the crowd and you're like, there's a whole spectrum of people. At the one I was in, it was like there were celebrities there. You know, the, the guy from 300, what's his name? Gerard Butler. He was there. He was like right 2 rows down from me. I was like, wow, this is interesting. There's some interesting people here. And then in the hallways, I would meet a bunch of people that thought they were the next Tony Robbins, and they were life coaches and motivational speakers, and they were, you know, change consultants and every cringe name you could think of. And then you go look at their stuff and it's the same concept, but not executed at that level because they didn't have the hard-won life experiences that, that guy had to actually like create this content. They didn't have 40 years of sharpening their craft to becoming the best. They didn't have the natural talents and charisma, you know, larger than life presence. And so you can, you can look at the best, you can look at the Gary Vees and the Tony Robbins. You can look at you on Twitter and say, that's dope. You know, I could do that. And some people, a very small amount of people can do that. But for most people, they will fall into the pit of cringe because they're not gonna execute it at that same level. They didn't have those hard-won lessons of actually knowing what they're talking about. And, uh, and they're gonna end up in this like weird middle ground. And, uh, and I think that's the scary part. I can't find this client info.

Have you heard of HubSpot?

HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application.

Every team can stay aligned.

No out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases.

Grow better. I mean, that's kind of like— that's like any market, though, right? Like, you know, someone starts a company and it's the A+ version of some— like a restaurant chain. Someone starts a restaurant chain that's like the A+ of that thing. And then a bunch of people come in to try to mimic it and it's like the B+ version and, you know, like whatever, like say In-N-Out is the A+ burger version and then someone tries to come in and start the like Five Guys or whatever next. I'm probably going to get hate for saying In-N-Out's better than Five Guys, but, you know, whatever. Like you kind of have the diluted versions. And the question is like, A, do you care that you're the diluted version of Tony Robbins if you're making money doing it and taking care of your family? Because like, I know a lot of people that are just like, I don't give a shit. Like, you know, I grew my audience. Cringe stuff and I'm making $25,000 a month. I was making $5,000 doing my prior job or $10,000 doing my prior job. I'm making this sitting at home and I get to spend time with my kids. What do I give a shit if a bunch of tech people think that I'm cringe? Like, I'm making money. It is what it is. And so I kind of, I appreciate that too. The other thing I would say is like, what game are you playing? Like, what is the long-term game you're playing? And for me, I was always thinking about like, what is the thing I'm trying to build long-term? Like, I wasn't trying to be, you know, a Twitter thread, like a thread guy. Like, that's not my long-term vision of what it was. It vaulted me from being a nobody private equity guy, as you said, to like, I signed a book deal last month, like a big book deal last month, you know, like I raised a fund. I never would have been able to raise a fund as like this nobody VP in private equity. And so to me, it's like, what are you actually parlaying that shit into as you continue to go? If you're able to find the thing that you think you're A+ at, even if it's for a short period of time, like, how are you using that to vault yourself into that next level where you're like, I'm not even in the same class as these other guys that are doing the thing I was doing previously because I moved into whatever that next, you know, that like upper echelon is.

Dude, are you worried about Elon screwing it up for you?

Not really.

You know, it's funny. Well, did you see what he really quick— he like said something and then Steph, my old coworker, said like, does this mean that like the Thread boys are going to go away? And actually forget his reply. What did he say? But it sounded like he was saying—

I think he did like a crying emoji. I mean, yeah, like I think it was something about he said, you know, you could basically like put a long-form text onto a tweet so you don't have to— like people were used to take a screenshot of like their Notes app on their phone to post a long-form thing. I think all that stuff is good. I mean, like, look, I've already benefited from being early to a market. Like I grew to a big level. I built a brand that now extended into things that I own, like the newsletter, you know, that's gotten quite large and is growing faster, like the fund or like the book, whatever it is. I would be more worried if I was like just starting out in any one of these things and like had dedicated all this time. You know, if you rewind me a year and I was like just starting to get all these things going, I'd probably be a little more worried. But the reality is it's like eat or be eaten, man. If you're, if you're not like figuring out the new way to, to, you know, be on the front of something and be building in these other areas, you're in for a tough time no matter what.

Let's talk about this newsletter thing.

Do you think that that thing Workweek is going to do that?

No, dude. I mean, like, I don't know how much you guys know about work. I don't know a whole ton about Workweek, but from what I can tell, it's mostly the like backend services of newsletters. And there's another one called SmoothOps that I think spun out from Morning Brew. Didn't Workweek spun out of The Hustle, didn't it?

Not spun out. They, they worked for the guy was there.

Yes. Same thing with the Morning Brew SmoothOps. Like my understanding of all of those is that they're much more focused on like helping you monetize. And, you know, managing your, like, business that you can focus on writing. I literally just want someone that just all they think about all day, like an absolute killer, that just all they think about is growth. I mean, Sean, did you have someone? I mean, or was Ben like that at Milk Road?

My guy was, right, Sean?

No, Ben. Ben was the guy who woke up every day and just said, how do we get more subscribers? And like, you know, that's, that was his mission and that's what he did. So, you know, that's the— but, you know, we needed It's like, if you don't have a— that was like more of a company. Uh, whereas like, you know, most people's personal things are not like— you're at a size where there's just not that many newsletters that are at your size, um, that can afford to pay for something like that. Um, you know, how many people, how many people could afford to pay $10K per month to try to drive growth?

So I think a lot. So my hypothesis is— so I tweeted this, um, and a bunch of people were like replying saying they would pay for it in different ways. My hypothesis is that there's a ton of like successful founders and entrepreneurs that want to build a newsletter, an owned list, or like an essay type thing like what Sam Altman or Paul Graham have where they have, you know, SEO and newsletter, you know, like emails that are coming to them and they're willing to pay a lot because they actually have been successful and just have a bunch of money. They don't need it to be revenue generating at the outset. And I think you— I mean, I bet if you developed some sort of core competency and basically like partnered— say someone partnered with me and proved it out over like 2, 3 months, had drove this and then were able to use me as a case study. Maybe I own a percentage of it, you know, on the upside. And so I'm incented to like bring them new referrals. I bet you could grow a pretty big business there quickly. Yeah.

And you only need like 20 clients basically to make this like, you know, worth your while.

Yeah. I mean, if it's a personal business, you don't even need 20 clients. I mean, you can get 10 at $5 a month or 10 at $10 a month and you have like, you know, it's 80, 80+ percent margin probably business if you're just running it simple.

But are you having the headache of having a service business?

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, it's definitely not productized.

Like I've thought about starting an agency like maybe 20 times in my life and then literally 5 minutes later every single time I'm like, don't go in the service business. Don't go in the service business. Now I did it. We have several friends that have done it, right? Like, you know, Andrew Wilkinson did it with MetaLab. Our buddy Greg is doing a great job with it with Late Checkout. You're doing it now with your thing. So, you know, maybe I have the wrong bias here. What do you think?

I mean, what you have to do is hire a great operator. If you want to be the, like, owner of some percentage of it and not have the headaches, you got to just recruit a killer operator who's going to run all of it. I mean, that's what we're doing with the spin-out agency that we're doing now around LinkedIn stuff is like just going to hire someone exceptional and give them like 15% of the ups and just say, like, you're a hustler, you're a killer, you can get a whole ton of— what, man? That's my finance team, man.

I've never heard that. That was awesome.

Really? Oh, that's the, that's the, uh, that's the no-name PE guy coming out of me right there.

Um, yeah, I thought an earlier guy was a guy who likes, you know, dodgeball in recess. Like, that's what PE is to me.

Earlier he was talking about beta, and I was like, you're talking about nerds? I don't understand what the hell is beta.

It is a good thing.

Yeah, hold up, you're talking about beta as like a good thing. I was like, I don't understand what that means.

You're kind of a low beta guy, actually, Sam. I think about it like you kind of— you're kind of like even keel. Like, I feel like I know within a band what I'm going to get out of you any given day.

I think you're complimenting me, but I don't understand.

I know you like— you show up. You tweeted about that recently. You hate when people say they're going to do something and then not do it. Like, you take pride in being low beta. Like, people know what they can expect from you on a given day.

By the way, what a— what a stupid thing to tweet. Yeah. Like, I like long walks on the beach and movies. Like, who— who likes somebody who says they're going to do something and doesn't do it? What an obvious tweet.

Yeah, first of all, give me the clout that I deserve. Like, don't hate. What did, what did Cy Hill say? Don't hate. Number 2, I'm not saying— it's like people who say they're afraid of heights, like, yeah, everyone's afraid of heights, but like, you just like— some people that just like, I, you know, it's like, what's high on your list? I don't think that, uh, I don't know, like, like there's a lot of things that annoy you, Sean, that, that don't annoy me and vice versa.

Like, what's, what's one thing that annoys you, Sean, that you don't think annoys Sam?

I don't think anything annoys him.

Nothing annoys me. That's the beauty of it.

Wait, really? You don't think anything bothers you?

Nah, I think so.

Yeah. Now I want to dig into this. What bothers you?

I, uh, I guess what bothers me is only usually things with myself. So like if I find myself in a bad mood or like getting annoyed with something or getting bothered by something or getting impatient with something, that's actually the thing that bothers me. I'm like, oh man, I let this get to me. Like for like that second, that's the thing that gets to me, right? So usually it's not something that frustrates me or annoys me. It's usually either impatience or boredom or, um, feeling cranky or tired or something like that. You know, like, and I'm like, oh no, I, I don't wanna be that way. That, that bothers me.

So for years I used to say that Sean, I was like, I was like, I think I'm gonna have a pretty steady path to wealth creation. And Sean, you either gonna like, it's not gonna be as extreme. I think we, we joked around with MrBeast where like, like, you know, 6 out of 10 times if you were reborn, you would be a degenerate, like gambler or drug addict. And like 4 out of 10 times you'd be successful. With Sean, it's not that bad, but it's like, you know, you're gonna, you're, you're the type of guy who can roll the dice and like you might actually hit it big. There's a good chance, or you might like just be only okay for a long time. And now, uh, so I was basically saying, yeah, your likelihood, I think, of being a billionaire is actually higher than mine. Um, but your likelihood of being like a degenerate is probably also higher.

Yeah, high beta.

Yeah. But here's the problem with Sean. I've just realized over the past handful of months, he is too emotionally healthy to probably be incredibly successful. He has this problem that few people have, which is he's just happy. You know what I mean? He's got this. It's just this man.

Depends on your definition of success, man. I would argue that Sean is the most successful then, man, if he's like super happy.

Yeah. If you define sex by success, by these superficial things like happiness and well-being and all that bullshit.

Stupid stuff.

Yeah, I do. I will say that Sean has had more like high highs and low lows this year, at least from my like perceived view of Sean. And like, and he's totally unfazed. Like Sean, I mean, flashback to like, you know, like crypto crash, right? I'm like, yo, Sean's down bad. I'm texting Sam. I'm like, is Sean okay? Like Sean's texting the group chat totally fine. I'm like, yo, Sean broke. Like, is Sean getting margin called right now? Like, I have no idea what's going on. And then Sean's like, yo, I sold all my stock and I was like, holy shit, Sean sold the bottom. Sean sold the bottom. Like, market's roaring in June and then the market crashes again. And Sean's a genius trader that like sold the top of the market or something. Do you— dude is just like—

does that stuff bother you at all, Sean? Like, first of all, what, prior to selling a business recently, but what was your net worth down just a significant amount?

Yeah, probably. I mean, it's hard to calculate that sort of thing. So but let's say liquid of the liquid stuff. So not counting equity in companies, uh, you know, it's probably down 50% or something like that. I mean, I, I, most of the investments, I, I didn't keep much cash. This was my investment strategy pre-2022, right? So my investment strategy pre-2022 was cash is trash. And, you know, fist bumps all around to my boys who thought cash was trash. Then, um, oh dude, is there a safer investment than Amazon? This blue chipper, right? Like, yeah, that's my version of, of safety is, yeah, I'm gonna put it in some boring tech companies, you know? The Amazons, Googles, Facebooks of the world. What could go wrong? And, um, and then lastly, you know, then, you know, a huge amount of startups that were, uh, that were, you know, getting marked up like crazy, fist bumps all around, getting my ups, getting my ups was going ups. And then the last thing was crypto. And I was like, oh, well, see, your boy's a genius and moved a huge percentage of his net worth into, you know, Bitcoin and Ethereum. And, um, oh, and then this Luna shit that's popping, I'm doing great. So, you know, that's, that was me before. So basically every single thing I had invested in, has gone, you know, what's my, you know, what's that thing? Like my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Like I was basically having that for this year in terms of investments, but you know, whatever.

Did it bother you?

You must have felt good when Luna— like, I think you originally plugged Luna in Milk Road at like $40. And I like, I bought some. I was like, yo, Sean's pretty smart. He knows this crypto shit hands down. And so I like, I bought a bag. Like, I, you know, I'm not like, I'm not really a degenerate crypto guy, but I like bought a bag of Luna and that shit went up to like $118. And I was like, yo, Sean is my God. Like, Sean, what other, what other ideas do you have? And then we were supposed to interview on our old pod. We were supposed to interview Do Kwon. Like, I had hit him up on Twitter. He's supposed to come on the pod on like a Thursday. And on that Sunday, like, Luna had been wavering, like it had come down to like 80 or something. And I get an email from his assistant that just says, unfortunately, Do will have to reschedule the interview for this Thursday. And I'm sitting in bed and I'm like, I got a little bit of the heebie-jeebies. Like, I don't know what this is. So I go downstairs and I sell my entire bag at like, I don't know, a small gain, like not, not good. I sell the whole thing. Next morning I wake up and that shit's at like 5. Like the whole, the whole thing unraveled overnight. And then I get an email from his assistant saying like he's going to have to cancel the interview. And I'm like, yeah, well, this dude has a red notice out for him. No shit. He's not coming on our podcast at this point.

Yeah, that was, that was a bad day. I was on vacation. I was in Hawaii with my family and I'm watching my— and I'm like, I don't even have— I'm not even at my computer. Like, I can't even get to my crypto. Like, it's not like on my laptop or whatever. So I'm like, well, couldn't, couldn't make a move if I wanted to. So I guess I'll just like, you know, lose all this money here and, you know, just enjoy this vacation. There's nothing else I could do at this point.

And has that changed, uh, with crypto?

Has what?

Sorry, has your opinion of crypto changed and your conviction?

Um, no, my, my opinions and my conviction has stayed the same, but that's about crypto as a whole, right? Then on each specific maybe project coin, you might have like a slightly different opinion.

You know, it definitely— well, what's one thing that you think is bullshit now that you didn't think was bullshit a year and a half ago?

So I'll give you an example where that's not true, then I'll give you an example where that's true. So the not true one is like, let's take Luna for example. The, the bet on Luna was always knowing that there's this— the way it was architected was this thing is going to rocket up because the sort of the what they call the Ponzi-nomics, right? Like the game theory incentive Yeah, but people don't understand, like, basically it's just like economic— a series of economic incentives. And so the incentives were aligned such that this thing should go up during the— during, you know, when certain participants behave a certain way. And from the beginning, there was always these blog posts out there about what does the death cycle look like? So what if this reversed course? Would this not— because Luna is the collateral, would it not cause it to collapse really fast? And the question was like, will that happen? Won't that happen? So even when you invest in it at the beginning, we wrote our little investment memo to ourselves about like, here's our one-pager, why we think this is a good idea and why we think this could go horribly wrong. When it crashed, it wasn't like something we had never thought of. It was, oh yeah, that downside scenario we talked about. That's exactly what happened, right? Like basically there was a giant, you know, sell pressure that caused that cascading down cycle. Yep. That we always thought that could happen. We had hoped it wouldn't happen. We had thought that maybe there was a, you know, there would be a way to, to put buy pressure back against it. But nope, it wasn't going to work. And so this is a very fast example of basically just because it turned out bad doesn't mean that the— doesn't mean I changed my position because actually at the beginning we said, well, here's why I'm not putting my entire net worth into this, right? I put $250K into it. That's not like a massive bet for me. It's a solid-sized bet, right? So it's like, you know, I put an appropriately sized bet because I thought it had upside and I I thought there were some key risks with it. The thing that I would say I've changed my opinion most on is I thought, man, if people start to worry about inflation and they look at, man, I have the same $100K in my bank, but it just doesn't buy me the same amount it used to.

Right?

They'll realize, like, people will become more aware that the money they have is diminishing. The cash they have, the US dollars they have is diminishing in value, that they will probably look to go to a monetary system that doesn't have that problem.. And so the idea that Bitcoin will do well if people start to, if inflation becomes something that people are more and more worried about with the US dollar, and that hasn't happened. Inflation got as bad as it's ever been, but people's response was more conservative than aggressive. People did not make a change to the Bitcoin monetary system, which would not have that problem. Um, they sort of, you know, sort of stuck with it and actually the US dollar's gained strength rip because other currencies got crushed even worse. And so the dollar's gained strength. So that was one that I had thought that this was, this is what would happen. And it makes me reassess, was my logic incorrect or, um, or something else? You know, what, what, what did I get wrong about this idea that in a high inflation environment, Bitcoin should be something that people start moving more into?

I mean, the Bitcoin one is actually pretty interesting, Sean, cuz I, I've thought about that a lot too, of is there, is there something just like in the segmentation of how the price went up that is impacting that? Because I still think basically my assumption of why that didn't happen, like why that, you know, scenario of high inflation and people flood into this is that most of the price increase was actually just driven by this like number go up, you know, crazy, you know, loose monetary policy. People just pump into speculative, you know, high-risk assets and that it wasn't really driven by like believers like you who underlying were like, oh, there's really good fundamentals, the technology really makes sense driving it up. It was mostly just like my random friends who were like, haha, Bitcoin number go up, this is great. And then they freaked out when it went the other direction and pulled out, you know, interest rates rise and you pull out. I wonder whether like if you segmented it somehow of like the true underlying technology believers, my guess would be that the picture would look different, like people that really are like thinking about the technology and thinking about the underlying, you know, kind of like monetary policy that exists on the network. My guess would be those people think that this is a great time to be accumulating and buying.

Yeah, I think you're right. Um, I think you're right, but basically it's just, in my mind, it was like a very simple picture. It was like, you're playing one game and the rules of this game are that the bank gives you some money. It's my game of Monopoly where the bank gives you some money, but every year your money becomes worth a little bit less by design. They're trying to make it 2 or 3% worse per year.. But sometimes if it gets 10% worse per year, right? Or 9% worse per year, right? That's the, the game is, is set up that way. And hey, oh yo, there's this other new edition of Monopoly that came out where that doesn't happen to your money. My assumption was like, oh, people will just start to move to the new edition cuz they're not gonna like when their money becomes less valuable over time. Uh, but I, I don't think that's the message that's got across. It was basically Bitcoin's how you get rich or Bitcoin's how you lose your money. And that's the narrative that actually like played out. Because it was more, it was more aggressive. But Bitcoin will make you rich was an easier sell to people.

Yeah.

And it was also the reason why they'll start to sell their Bitcoin when they really, when they feel like, oh, Bitcoin's crashing.

By the way, I've got one more non-agency business idea for you. What is it? Non-services. Maybe it's slightly, not that much services, more product. Mobile podcast and video studio.

Yeah, man. Dude, it's such a pain in the butt.

I just joined this gym called The Collective in Austin and it's like this like fancy whatever, like, and everyone there looks like an Instagram model and they have like coworking there as well. But they also have 3 studios for podcasts and picture taking. Like, they just, they just really don't know their audience. And I went there and everyone looks like they're the type of person who is like— if you follow a shirtless ripped guy on, uh, Instagram and they live in Austin, they're probably a member here.

And I mean, if you catch them on bad lighting, they don't even look that good, but like somehow in that lighting you'd look unreal.

I, I, I, I think you're making fun of me. Uh, I don't know.

The lighting makes a huge difference with, uh, with these like Instagram models, right? So like you just get good lighting on one of those things. I bet you could kill it. I do think these like mobile studio though, you could crush it.

Let me ask you, I'm looking at these, uh, U-Haul box trucks. So how much do these cost to buy? So it looks like you could buy a used one of these for like $25 grand, right? So $25 grand. And let's say, and you only have to put $5,000 down.

Yeah.

You put $5,000 down. You're probably going to need to put another $5,000 into the kit, like to make the thing work. Uh, and you probably need a dude operating the thing, but maybe, maybe you could get rid of that. Probably not. You probably have to have an operator on site. So I think that's the, that's the tricky part where you gotta sell it as a, as a membership basically. It's gotta be a gym membership. Uh, so it's like you can use this studio, you can just book it when it's free. Um, but you gotta be like a monthly member if you're, you know, if you're doing $500 a month or whatever and you have a studio on demand.

Well, that's a genius idea to do it as a membership actually. Cuz dude, the thing that made me think of this is like in New York now there's these couple of studios where people are doing all like in-person podcasts. Like there's —this like What the Fuck Media is one of them. Yeah, they go to a stream and they're like, they're solid, they're not great, but they're having to pay New York City rent to like to do this. And so I can't imagine the economics are that great. And if you got a truck and you just bought it, you could go post this thing up in a parking lot and every 2 hours just move to a different parking lot and like you never have to pay rent. You're paying, you know, like carrying cost of the, of the truck and you're paying the whatever, 5 to 10 grand it takes you to actually get the truck out.

We're going to call it Moodio. The Mobile Studio. Mudio. The Mudio Boys.

That's, we might get a branding agency to work on the name, but yeah.

Wait, let me ask you something about branding.

Deafening silence as feedback on your name.

But it's, let me ask you a question. So Sean and I are trying to get popular on YouTube right now with this, with this thing. And one thing that's kind of the elephant in the room when everyone talks to you, I mean, I know Sean talks about this constantly. Is that you are just ridiculously good looking. Do you think that this shtick of yours of having good hair and being good looking, is that image working for you? And what aesthetic shtick should Sean and I have?

First off, calling it a shtick is pretty hilarious to me.

You know, this shtick you have, it's like, oh, I'm so hot. Yeah, this whole— whatever you got in between your ears, like that shtick, like, let's talk about it.

The platforms that are visual, it obviously helps to like when people are scrolling through things for like people to stop and say, oh, the person is like attractive, right? Like it just, when you're scrolling through TikTok and you see attractive girls, you're saying you're hot.

That helps.

Oh, so you agree. Was that a Mean Girls reference, Tim? Did you just drop a Mean Girls reference on me?

Dude, I'm a millennial through and through.

The fact that I knew that it was a Mean Girls reference is just as telling. You are a mean girl. Um, No, look, I mean, for you guys, you're both good looking dudes. I'm not going to sell you short, Sam. You've got like a little look with the like fake glasses. I don't think those have a prescription on them. So it's like a little bit of your look.

Why does everyone think you're fake?

Dude, he's wearing a Duke hoodie. Like, he looks like literally every single person who shops at like a generic grocery store in the suburbs.

What's wrong with that, man? That's a vibe.

In the tech world, that's a little bit of a vibe. But that's not interesting. I don't know, man. I mean, I think you guys can play up the whole like your shtick of these two guys that look completely different that are like somehow friends. Like, you guys are like CatDog, man. You remember that show back in the day?

You know what we're going for? We're going for like 'Why are these guys famous?' That's what we need to do. If we just get over the hump, so accessible like this, these guys, there's nothing special about them. But that's our thing though, that there's nothing special.

I don't think you have to be that good looking on YouTube, by the way. Like, you guys don't need to be like models on YouTube. Um, if you like look at the people that have crushed on YouTube, it's not like hot dudes and hot chicks on YouTube necessarily. Not that you guys aren't hot. I don't want you to come away. I don't want Sam to text me later being like, hey man, what you said, that wasn't nice. Because I know I'm going to get that text later tonight from Sam. Wait, but you're wrong.

I don't— hot dudes do better on YouTube.

I don't think they do better. I don't think that's right. I mean, I'm not on YouTube yet. I'm going to get on YouTube here soon and I'll let you know whether we think that's true. So you're saying you think you're hot?

Yeah. You got this real burden you're carrying, my friend. Well, like, Alex Hormozi's got the thing where he wears like those stupid cutoff jeans now, and he's just like yoked.

That nose strip and like the nose strip is a choice. Level of being muscular, that's a perfect example of you don't have to be great looking, you got to be interesting looking.

Yeah, dude, he's peacocking hardcore, and it's kind of just a look.

It's a look, man. And like, each of you guys has a look, and if you can just stick to a consistent look— it's like Chris Sacca with his cowboy shirts. Like you need your thing.

Yeah. I, I've been actually, I've been thinking about this for a long time. I've been needing a uniform. I tweeted this out. I go, I'm looking for a uniform. I wanna look the same every time I'm on this podcast. So I need something that from here up, like a robe is, is gotta be, yeah, maybe a robe. It's gotta be signature. And, um, I'm in the market, so I'm taking suggest, I'm gonna put a bounty on this actually. I'm gonna give $1,000 bounty to anybody who can help me develop my the chest up look. That's what I'm looking for.

I kind of want to see you do like traditional Indian attire for it. Like, it could be kind of fire if you were wearing like a dope like kurta or like, you know, some sort of like Indian, you know, up top. I think that'd be kind of fire. Sean Puri, it could be part of your whole like angle with the name and stuff.

That's true. Okay, you're eligible for the bounty right now. I might, I might throw into it.

I also might match watch it just because I think it's gonna be funny to see whatever you heard. I'll throw in a thousand. I'll throw in a thousand on top of it before he's on the hook for a thousand.

Yeah, no, I'm not— I don't, I don't give it a peer pressure. You're breaking out.

What did you guys say?

This is the stupidest thing ever. I'm not gonna give someone $1,000 so they can tell Sean what t-shirt to wear.

You have a signature look already, so it's easier for you to say. Yeah, my muscles, kind No, you've got like the little, like the pretty boy thing going with the like non-prescription grandfather who's like not a grandfather type of thing. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. You are gonna be like, you're gonna be a quintessential father. You're gonna have a lot of stern talks with your child.

I already know it's coming. Uh, I don't know what to say to this. Sahil, uh, thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. Wait, I wanna hear this before you go. What is the grand plan? What is the grand vision for yourself? So you went from no-name PE guy. Guy that, as we established, to, to legendary ThreadBoy, to, uh, now CNBC contributor, book deal guy, author. I think you're going to be president. Is that— I, I joke about that a lot, but I genuinely believe you could become the president someday if you wanted to. Do you have a grand plan for yourself? What's the vision?

I could see that being in the cards long term, running for public office. I don't know if president is crazy, a role that you necessarily want. I think it's like probably one of the hardest and worst jobs in the world. Don't go in like Obama went in looking young and then he leaves all gray, like looking, you know, looking rough. It's like the highest stress job in the world. Running for governor would be— I don't know, that could be pretty fun to be a governor of a state.

Do you know anything about politics? I've never known you to be—

I studied public policy. I did. I did my master's in public policy, dude. Oh yeah. So that was always like what I wanted to do.

I mean, I took a class on basket weaving. Like, that doesn't— like, what? Like, you know what I mean?

You think the people that are serving in public office today know a lot about politics? It's like, what is— it's sort of like the Naval thing of like, you don't read a business book to know business. Like, there's no such thing as politics. It's like, you know, are you a reasonable thinker? Do you have the ability to change your mind, which right now politicians do not? And can you inspire people? Do you— would you get people to move on things?

Which party would you be? I don't even know. I'm an independent, man.

So, I mean, I've voted Democrat, I voted Republican in prior elections. So I actually, I actually don't know what party I'd probably— I'm hoping that a third party rises over the next 20 years before I actually go do this because I hate the direction that, you know, like polar politics has gone. You know, it's just like the loudest minority on each side.

I could see you being a good politician because you pretty much never take a stand on anything. Kind of like what you just did. You're like— I always call it— I'm like, you're PC like The Rock, man. You never say anything inappropriate. Like, you, you, you, you are like The Rock. Well, yes, but Sahil, he never takes a stand on anything. He's always— he hedges everything he says. You could be be beautiful for a politician.

All right. Well, I'm counting on your fundraising support, Sam. I'll even introduce you as my hot friend Sam when you come up to give a speech at my future campaign. You do it for me, then. You're already lying.

You're already lying. Like a good politician. Well, thanks for coming on. Where— what do you want to do? You want to promote something? Is that a thing?

Do you have something to promote? I don't know, man. People kind of know where to find me. I'm at Sahil Bloom on everything, and my newsletter is at my website, sahilbloom.com.

Well, I'm happy we finally got you on. Uh, we'll have to do it again. We're gonna get another guy. I'm gonna ask Austin Reef to come on. That'll be another group chat guy. We've asked Nikita to come on a few times, but he's, you know, weird.

Nikita's, uh, he's busy right now, man. Nikita's busy, like basking in the glory of his Gas App fame.

No, he's just thinks it's cool to tell me no.

I think, uh, I mean, Nikita, Nikita right now, like Nikita's been that guy that's like, oh my God, guys, I hate running this app. This is so tough. And then like you'll see like on his Instagram him like having a photo shoot at his house, like posing out, like looking like this.

Looking like his girlfriend in the behind the scenes says, oh my God, this looks like an album cover.

Nikita's living his best life, man. More props to him cuz that dude had called his shot and has actually gone and done it.

So we'll get him on, we'll get Austin on. We gotta get a few more. We've had Huber on, but, uh, dude, thanks for coming and doing this. We appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you guys, man.