Andrew Wilkinson joins Sam to profile Brazilian billionaire Jorge Paulo Lemann — the secretive architect behind 3G Capital’s acquisition of Burger King, Budweiser, Heinz, and Tim Hortons. They explore Lemann’s playbook of buying underperforming legacy businesses with debt and radical cost discipline, then pivot to Andrew’s own ventures: Overstory Media (local news), a maternal health startup idea, a medical advocacy concept, and a candid conversation about what “enough money” actually means and why successful people are just anxiety disorders harnessed for productivity.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host, co-founder of The Hustle), Shaan Puri (host), Andrew Wilkinson (guest, founder of MetaLab / Tiny Capital)
Introduction and Guest Bio [00:00:00]
Sam: All right everyone, we have a special episode with Andrew Wilkinson. Andrew Wilkinson started this company called MetaLab, which grew to make tens of millions of dollars. Using the profits from his agency, MetaLab, he eventually bought dozens of more companies. Collectively his companies do hundreds of millions of dollars a year in sales and have created over a billion dollars worth of value. He’s seen a lot of interesting stuff.
In today’s episode we talk about an incredibly successful business person that he looks up to — it’s our segment called Billy of the Week. Then we talk about some of the ideas he has for starting and growing companies. He currently launched a local news business, so it’s kind of like my company The Hustle but for different cities. It’s very fascinating — I’m asking him if I can join as an advisor. He’s started a few more things and wants to start more, and he’s even said that if you’re starting some of these companies to holler at him because he wants to invest. Give it a listen.
Andrew Checks In [00:02:20]
Sam: Andrew, what’s going on, dude?
Andrew: Hey man, how you doing? I got a really bad cold. I spent all day yesterday with Kleenex up my nose, so if my voice sounds a little froggy, that’s why.
Sam: It only sounds froggy because you said it sounded froggy. I think you’re okay.
So Andrew Wilkinson — good friend of mine, good friend of the pod. Is this description I used three or four weeks ago the same description? Are you wearing that same personality, that same life? Or have you done something new and amazing — because you’re always pulling something out of your sleeve.
Andrew: Yeah, I’ve launched a couple of businesses since then, actually. But no, the description’s still accurate.
Sam: So we’re going to talk about a couple things. The first thing we’re going to talk about — you got a bunch of ideas here, I’m excited for the ideas — but I want to talk about Billy of the Week. Because we talked about two people last time you were here, and that was right next to the biology episode as the most-listened episode ever.
Andrew: Really? No way. Which episode was that?
Sam: The one where we did the two Billies. Something like almost 50,000 people listened to it, which is a lot for an hour-long thing.
Andrew: That’s crazy.
Sam: And then the third most-listened thing was the one we did after that. So you know, it could just be you — move aside, Shaan.
Andrew: It’s like biology is whatever it is, and you’re within a thousand of it, and then you’re the next two.
Sam: So that’s why I figure we’ll start with that. You sent me — yesterday I asked you to tell me an interesting person and I’m going to do a ton of research on them. I did, and I have a feeling you already know a lot about this person. What’s this person’s name?
Billy of the Week: Jorge Paulo Lemann [00:05:10]
Andrew: So his name — I don’t know how to say it exactly — I think it’s Jorge Paulo Lemann. He’s Brazilian.
Sam: Oh, there you go. Okay. Can you say his name? And every time we need to say his name we’ll just use his first name.
Andrew: His last name is German, so I don’t know if there’s a right way of saying it. His first name — Joshua is what he considers his first name as well, because in a lot of the articles I read about him they call him that. Jorge may be his middle name or a double first name, I’m not sure. But this guy is totally mysterious. He doesn’t like to talk about what he does. There are only a few interviews with him online.
But basically, if you think about the businesses he owns, you would know them: Burger King, Budweiser, Tim Hortons, Kraft Foods, Popeyes, Heinz ketchup. He goes out, finds these amazing multi-generational businesses that have been around for 50-plus years, does something very very simple that’s just going to grow over time, raises a ton of debt, and goes and buys them. He’s been doing this for 40 years or something, starting in Brazil.
Sam: Let’s give a little bit of background on him. He’s about 75 years old, right?
Andrew: Yeah. He’s based out of Brazil — a Brazilian guy. When he started, I don’t think there were many of these Brazilian tycoons. Every article I read about him said he was one of the first folks in Brazil to become one of these private equity or Warren Buffett-like people. And like you said, very little is known about him. He doesn’t give interviews, and in a lot of the articles they said they tried to talk to a bunch of his friends and nearly all of them said, “Thank you for reaching out, but he’s politely asked us not to speak about him in interviews.”
Sam: So how did his career start?
Andrew: In 1931, at the age of 32, he had some jobs beforehand as a banker, but he started this one bank — I think it’s called Garantia? It was described as like the Goldman of Brazil. He was 32 when he launched it.
What made it famous was he had a very particular culture. He didn’t look at resumes. He looked for what he described as PSD — Poor, Smart, and Deep desire to get rich. That’s what he looked for. He would hire these folks. Previously at other companies you would automatically get a bonus if you were a partner, but they created a system based as much on merit as possible, so a lot of different people could get bonuses. And you could choose — do you want more stock or more cash? It was a great way to incentivize people, and it created this iconic culture they’re famous for.
It grew to be quite huge — something like a billion dollars in profit in one year. But he said they got cocky, they screwed up, overbought some stuff, and it eventually went south. It sold for $650 million, which is still a ton of money, but I think it was minuscule compared to how big it got.
Sam: So then after he sold it for $650 million, he started buying Gillette stock, and with his older founding partners he started 3G — a play on their names, three partners. They ended up buying Burger King, Tim Hortons, all those companies. At this point he’s worth something like $25 billion. One of the richest people in the world.
I have questions about this guy. The first one: how on earth, when people say they’re starting a bank — what’s that process like? It sounds so ambiguous.
Andrew: I think people hear “bank” and think of like a big pile of money, like Wells Fargo or something. But “banker” really means like a real estate agent for businesses — for bonds, equities, whatever. It’s a person you go to who will figure out problems and facilitate transactions. Let’s say you, Sam, go: I need to raise $100 million of debt for The Hustle because I need to expand. A banker will go to all the wealthy people and corporations they know and say, “Hey, here’s this great guy, you should lend him money.” Then they take a fee in between.
In a lot of ways it’s the world’s best business — you’re a middleman on huge transactions, multi-billion dollar transactions, taking two-and-a-half to five percent on everything you do. With 50 to 100 people you can do crazy amounts of money.
Sam: What skill set would he have needed to make this happen?
Andrew: It’s heavy on two things: sales and financial acumen. You’d have a bunch of people in the office who are hardcore spreadsheet junkies who can figure out how to structure a deal, and then people who can do the very high-level sales — smooth-talking, calling, selling, positioning everything to facilitate deals.
Sam: Do you consider yourself a banker?
Andrew: No, I actually generally really hate dealing with bankers. I think it’s kind of like real estate agents — I’m very skeptical of real estate agents. A lot of the time a real estate agent just puts up a listing online, opens the door for a few people, and takes a huge fee. There’s one in a hundred that’s amazing and will sell your property for more. But the same thing is kind of true with bankers. I think if you’ve got a great business and want to raise money, you should just go call a bunch of wealthy people and raise the money yourself.
Sam: How much money have you raised?
Andrew: Well, it depends how you think about it. In the neighborhood of $200 to $250 million, if you include our IPO or reverse takeover we just did.
Sam: Not including that — what’s the number?
Andrew: Maybe $100 to $200 million.
Sam: And you didn’t use a banker for any of that?
Andrew: No, we just called people we knew. I bumbled into this world — even six years ago I didn’t know the difference between a banker and a bank teller. Because of that, we just kept meeting interesting business people, and they kept saying “Are you guys raising money? I’d love to invest.” So when we had big enough deals and wanted partners, I just called those people.
3G’s Strategy: Buying Boring Businesses [00:14:30]
Sam: Back to this guy. You like him because — I imagine — you want to steal some of his life. You want to emulate some parts of what he’s done.
Andrew: Yeah, I think we’re probably similar in that we’re both attracted to really simple businesses. Selling beer or razors. We both come from this weird tech world where we do knowledge work — you write an email newsletter, I do design — and two years later it might not exist. I like the longevity and the simplicity of more traditional businesses. The idea of buying these super safe, boring, steady-eddy businesses that do something simple in the world and just making them better actually sounds like a lot of fun.
The key thing about what he does is they generally have one key insight. Like when they bought Budweiser — it was the third generation running it, they’d gotten super rich. The first generation built it, the second generation grew it, the third generation took over and got sloppy. They didn’t really care about growth. Fancy offices, private jets. So when 3G bought it, they just looked at it and said, “It’s been run in a sloppy way, they’ve lost their discipline. We can buy it with a lot of debt, make it way better, pay off the debt, and now we own Budweiser.” That’s this crazy coup for guys from Brazil — starting basically from zero to owning Budweiser.
Sam: And when I read about him, it sounded like he was the young guy of a three-person partnership.
Andrew: He’s actually the old guy. There are two younger guys who go in and run the businesses. One of them, I believe, runs QSR, which owns Tim Hortons and all that stuff.
3G’s Frugality: Cutting Costs Like Fingernails [00:18:00]
Sam: Let’s talk about this guy’s strategy at 3G. Throughout his whole life he’s done the same thing — he’s incredibly frugal. He has these phrases: “Costs are like fingernails, you have to cut them constantly.” When they bought Burger King, they banned color copies. Black and white only. They also forced people to print double-sided.
Andrew: And the first thing they always do when they buy a business is sell all the private jets immediately. Most Fortune 500 companies have between one and ten private jets, and they just say: we don’t need those. They sell them. It’s a statement. From that point on, the CEO and all the executives have to fly economy and stay in motels. I love that — it sets the tone from the top in a really interesting way. These are people where the CEO of AB InBev is probably worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and he’s staying at like a Quality Inn.
Sam: I think there’s something to demonstrating that from the top if you want your lower-level employees to care too. I actually think the economy thing is stupid, though. I get staying at cheap hotels — staying at a Marriott Courtyard for like $50 a night, I’m on board. But whenever these people say they fly economy, I’m like — if I’m flying overnight I need to be comfortable so I can be ready to go. You don’t want your athlete running off two hours of sleep.
Andrew: Do you actually believe that people do that?
Sam: I think they do. Or maybe it’s just lore. I mean, I know Walmart has a big corporate jet fleet and they actually have a good argument for it — they’re constantly visiting stores, flying between small towns. If they flew commercial it would take ten days to do two days of work. I think there’s a good argument there. But I can’t imagine the CEO of AB InBev needs to be flying all over the world constantly. If he’s flying once or twice a month, it’s not a big deal to be on a commercial plane. I think it’s a neat thing to do philosophically, but personally I’d worry about getting the worst CEO because they want their perks.
Andrew: The kind of people they hire though — when they took over Burger King they hired a 35-year-old as CFO. Maybe even 30.
Sam: Yeah, I wrote about it — they hired a 32-year-old who was part of their management company. He took it over and kicked ass. A few things he did: at the time Burger King was advertising predominantly toward young men. He said no, we’re going to advertise to everyone. He also got rid of The King mascot — said it was creepy. And the third thing: at the time Burger King employed about 28,000 people, meaning they owned most of their restaurants. He switched to a franchise model and helped franchise owners line up loans to make their places nice. That was the big switch. Now Burger King crushes it.
Andrew: And we’ve seen this in our own investing — often having one thesis. The thesis could be: margins are really shitty, they’re five percent, they should be fifteen, and we can do that via simple improvements. Or something like this Burger King deal where they went into big debt and paid a high price, but the insight was: as soon as we take over, we’re going to spin out all the corporately owned locations and franchise them, and by doing that we’ll raise all the money to pay off our debt. They did that, then took it public with Ackman. Did insanely well.
Sam: Oh that’s interesting. And there’s a funny story — when they bought Burger King, he had never eaten at Burger King. It was a multi-billion dollar deal and he didn’t eat it until they bought the company. When he finally ate it, he was like, “Ah, this is too big.” He’s known for basically only drinking water and eating very healthy.
Andrew: I think it rubs me the wrong way. That’s exactly the sort of thing I wouldn’t want out in public. It sounds a little lame.
The Three Pillars: Capital, People, and Leadership [00:23:00]
Sam: So this type of business — when I was reading all about him, would you say it boils down to three things? One: you have to be good at fundraising. Two: you have to recruit really talented people — the kind who are highly recruited elsewhere, who could start their own thing. Three, and probably most important: you have to be really good at inspiring and leading them. A leader of leaders. Am I missing anything?
Andrew: You nailed it. And it’s really really hard. The hardest part is recruiting the amazing people. Our biggest challenge isn’t doing deals — we could do a deal every month. It’s: how can we find enough amazing people to run all these businesses, and how can we validate that they’re going to be able to do what we need from them?
That 32-year-old who ran Burger King — he was probably working in head office for ten years and they saw all his stuff. But it’s a huge chance to hand that to him. Could have gone really really poorly.
I think that’s the Warren Buffett playbook — how do you be a leader of leaders? How do you give positive coaching without getting too involved in the day-to-day?
Sam: And the fundraising honestly seems like the easiest part?
Andrew: Honestly, yeah. When we did our fund — we raised it during COVID because we thought we were going to get mobbed with deals — doing the money raising wasn’t actually that hard. Running an agency for 15 years and doing sales for a long time, like that’s easy. You have a fun conversation, walk them through a deck, point to your track record. That was totally fine.
The hard part is really the execution of the deals and hiring the right people. And I’d argue — strictly from reading — executing deals isn’t even that hard. The people part is the hard part. We just did our biggest deal ever, over $100 million, and it was no more work or complexity than doing a one-million dollar deal. In fact it was simpler, because it’s a better business with a better team in place and more momentum.
Robert Greene, Leadership, and the Machiavellian Question [00:28:00]
Sam: When I was reading this, I’m in the middle of reading The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene. Have you heard of it?
Andrew: I’ve been reading that too!
Sam: No way. It’s amazing, isn’t it?
Andrew: It’s so good. Everything he does is great.
Sam: I already read it and now I’m rereading it again, studying it — I’m taking like a semester of Robert Greene. The reason I’m reading it is: when I got into business, I thought all that mattered was business stuff. Selling things, making the product good. In my business it was like, just write words people like. But what I’ve learned is it’s far more important to understand and motivate human beings. And to do that you have to have a little bit of a Machiavellian thing — people love you, yet they’re a little bit fearful. You’re a little mysterious. You attract these people and they want to be around you, yet they think you’re formidable. Like: if I don’t join this person they’re going to crush it, and I need to live up to their expectations.
Andrew: What do you mean exactly?
Sam: Some people have this thing where you just always want to raise the bar. They say “This is what I expect from you,” but in a very flattering way — “You’re really smart, you work really hard, I’m so impressed, I know you can achieve this.” They set a crazy bar and you just naturally want to live up to it.
I’ve struggled with that. With employees and stuff, I’ve always had this habit of wanting to be liked. But I want to be firm and have boundaries — because in the past, wanting to be liked, I’ve excused someone failing. Said “it’s okay, don’t worry about it” — and then quietly just stopped using them for that type of task. Whereas I think it’s actually important to say: “Hey, it’s okay, you messed up, but you let me down, and here’s why, and here’s how this impacted everything.”
Andrew: It’s crazy — Elon Musk has it, Bill Ackman has it, this guy we’re talking about definitely has it. Travis Kalanick kind of has it. You’re afraid of them in a way — they inspire you, but you also know they can crush whatever they set their mind to. Regardless of whether you agree with their ethics.
There’s a great story about Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook. Someone gave a presentation, and Sheryl walked up to them afterwards and said: “During your presentation — it was great — but you kept saying ‘like.’ Only stupid people say ‘like,’ and you’re not stupid.” Then she walked away. You can look at that and think, “Oh my god, that’s so mean.” But the way the person told it, it was a kind of backhanded compliment that told her something embarrassing. It’s like, “Hey, you have lettuce in your teeth.” You don’t want to hear it, but it’s helpful. I’ve been very bad at that kind of thing.
Sam: That would be a story from Radical Candor. But as I was reading about this guy — in order to attract people and do deals at the scale of Heinz — basically, this guy and the folks we talk about, and maybe you too, Andrew, are uncommon amongst the uncommon. You have to lead killers. You’ve got to be the killer amongst killers.
That’s a fascinating thing to think about, because when I got into business I thought it was all about creative ideas. But no — I just have to be a leader of men and women, and that’s really hard. So I’ve been studying how to do that. Studying war leaders, studying who’s really good at it, studying celebrities like Marilyn Monroe. It’s basically a kind of seduction — how do you get people under your spell?
Andrew: I think it sounds stressful, though. The idea of: I’m going to be a killer, I’m going to do all this Machiavellian stuff. What’s been more instructive for me is just reading psychology. Robert Cialdini and figuring out incentives. One thing I’ve learned: if somebody is incentivized to not work as hard as you, they won’t. People do whatever the financial or day-to-day lifestyle incentive is. Where they can take the path of least resistance, they will, and then they’ll create their own narrative for why. “I’m not working hard because I don’t like my work environment” — but often it’s actually them thinking: why would I work harder? I don’t make more money.
So I think a lot of this stuff is just an incentives problem. That’s pervasive through everything — going back to realtors. They have an incentive to sell your house for the lowest price to get it done and lock in their fee.
Sam: I agree that’s part of it. But I think you’re totally full of it when you say you don’t care about this — because you do. Your public image is: cool guy, dresses nice, slicked-back hair, good-looking, nice glasses, designer. Brother, look at the website — Tiny Capital — the imagery, the brand. A brand is exactly this Machiavellian thing of manipulating the field — manipulating people to feel a certain way.
Andrew: Oh absolutely. But it’s like copywriting. Knowing how to write good copy — what you’re really doing is taking people along for an emotional journey using various words. One way to look at it: it’s manipulative. The other way: you’re trying to communicate and you’re an effective communicator. We definitely play up the softness of what we do, but it comes from dealing with Wall Street bankers, people trying to acquire companies who were shitty. So this is me saying: I hated that. How can I market to people who have the same hatred? Yes, there’s definitely a lot of public image stuff we think about.
Billy of the Week Wrap-Up: Key Takeaways [00:36:00]
Sam: We’ll wrap up the Billy of the Week segment — but what’s your main takeaway from this guy? There’s a book about him, called something like Dream Big. It’s on Amazon.
Andrew: Yeah, Dream Big. It’s quite good. I read it maybe four or five years ago.
Sam: What can I learn from him? And what should I avoid?
Andrew: The biggest thing: you don’t need to do something innovative and crazy. You don’t need to be the next Elon Musk or start some crazy technology. You can just choose a traditional business that’s very poorly run and run it better. Even better if it’s a business that’s low-risk, growing, and kind of successful despite bad management or a bloated cost structure.
And something you wrote in here — different from how I perceived you doing it — you need to be comfortable taking on outside capital. For this exact structure, they raise a lot of debt. That lets them have a lot of control — the debt is silent, not involved in operations — and that gives them the ability to just overrule and take over. You’ve got to raise a lot of money. If you’re going to buy Heinz ketchup, you’re not going to get a crazy deal. You’re going to have to pay the highest market price.
Sam: Compared to what we do — we’re not buying the Heinz ketchup, we’re buying the random local ketchup brand that’s been successful in a small niche. Those deals you can find.
Andrew: Exactly.
Sam: One more question before we move on. You’re a few years older than me, and in terms of career success you’re a fair bit ahead. You’re friends with guys like Bill Ackman, people worth billions of dollars. Along this spectrum — it starts with a scrappy internet nerd in their bedroom, like you and I were, then you get a little bit of success, then you’re starting to move things — even you said you’re still a pipsqueak compared to Ackman or whatever. How does this transition work, from someone who’s interesting to a mover and shaker at a global scale? Does that feel crazy to you?
Andrew: I just look up and see how far we have to go. I still feel really really small. You know — when you’re running your company and you tell people “we do a million dollars a year in profit” and that feels like a crazy amount. And then you realize there are businesses out there that do $30 million, $100 million, a billion dollars of profit every year. I just find as we get bigger, I start talking to people who have businesses way bigger. You mentioned Ackman — I don’t know what he’s worth, maybe $4-5 billion. But this Jorge Paulo guy is worth $25 billion. So everyone’s looking up at someone.
It’s kind of like an athlete analogy. You start out as a casual high school athlete, you end up in the Olympics, and you just keep rising up. Eventually you look around and go: holy crap, I made it to the Olympics. But I don’t necessarily think it buys you any happiness or a better life. And there’s a real decision of: do you want to be a mover and shaker? Is it worth all the downsides?
Sam: No kidding. I agree. All right, let’s talk about some ideas.
Capital Daily and Overstory Media [00:42:00]
Sam: I want to talk about Capital Daily because I’ve seen this from the beginning and I’m getting updates — this latest update sounds pretty amazing.
Andrew: So basically — let me zoom out. I read the newspaper every day. I’d read the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, read all this incredible investigative reporting. Then I’d pick up my local paper — the Times Colonist here in Victoria, Canada — and it was just nothing. No journalists, they’d laid everyone off, all just AP wire service. International news. And I was like: how do I figure out what’s going on in my own city?
I realized there were a few people doing local reporting but there was a gap. So I thought: if I want this, I’m sure other people do. I looked at buying the local paper, but they wanted a crazy amount of money — printing presses, unionized employees, it’s like a cruise ship, not a speedboat.
So I went to a friend who was a stay-at-home mom with some writing experience and said: why don’t we start a Mailchimp account, come up with a brand, call it Capital Daily, and send out a daily newsletter summarizing like three or four things happening in town?
We started doing this, and I had a friend who runs a PPC agency. I got him to just go buy ads, and I realized I can buy ads for almost nothing — no one’s advertising for local news.
Sam: Break that down — you had a friend buy advertising to get email subscribers?
Andrew: Yeah, I was like: how do I scale this as quickly as possible? I saw an opportunity, and I realized in local news there’s usually one winner — historically one big newspaper. So how do I get this as big as possible as fast as possible? I had money, I could afford to do it. So I spent somewhere around $200,000 on ads and very quickly got to about 25,000 subscribers. Started hiring journalists, built out a team.
It was crazy — I’d be in a cafe and people would stop me and say, “Hey, are you the Capital Daily guy? Thank you so much, it’s amazing. First thing I do when I wake up and drink my coffee is read your newsletter.” I’ve got all these other businesses that are big and I’ve never felt that sense of community and doing something important.
But we started hiring a lot of people and realized: this is hard. The advertisers don’t understand it. People who buy newspaper ads are stuck in their ways — mostly boomers. So we were having a really hard time selling ads, burning money, and I was freaking out going: have I got myself into some trouble?
About a year ago, I partnered with this guy Farhan. He had scaled the biggest local news site in Vancouver. He took over as CEO, monetized it, and I think we’re going to break even very soon on the local stuff in Victoria. We’ve started selling out ads, and on a unit-economic basis, Victoria is now profitable — and can be very profitable if our membership model works. We’ve started expanding. We now have six or seven different newsletters in different areas, mostly here in Canada.
Sam: Is that Overstory Media Group?
Andrew: Yeah — we got cute. We chose the name Overstory and then noticed Overstory Media Group is OMG, and that looks cool as a logo. But then everyone calls it “Overstory Media Group” and I hate that name. I really like “Overstory.”
Sam: Dude, it looks like you have 50 people working there.
Andrew: Yeah, we’ve scaled a lot. These are almost all full-time.
Sam: How much did you invest to start this business?
Andrew: I think at this point I’ve spent just over $2 million. But you have to remember probably the first $700K was me not monetizing it soon enough, just building the audience first. Probably $200-250K in ads and then we burned an unnecessary $500K hiring the wrong people and experimenting. So really, we have the biggest news in my city for probably $750K to a million, and I think that business can probably do $500K to a million in profit at scale.
So I feel pretty good about it. Now we’re taking this bigger bet that we can basically roll out local news across Canada.
Sam: And Farhan is your co-founder?
Andrew: Yeah. I said, look — I’ve already got this thing, I’ve proven the model. He was looking for his next thing. When you meet someone and you just go: I want to do business with this person. He had spent five to ten years doing exactly what I needed. Total no-brainer.
Sam: Dude, I feel like this is a much bigger deal than you’re making it seem.
Andrew: It’s pretty crazy what it’s become. I’ve actually spent less than a week of time on this business. The key leverage point has just been bringing Farhan on board.
When Farhan joined it was just a single newsletter with three employees. Now he’s basically said: Axios down in the States is aggressively expanding local and I think that’s because it’s going to work and can be profitable. Let’s go do the same thing in Canada.
Sam: How’s the story gonna end?
Andrew: I don’t know. I think if it’s true in Victoria it’s probably true in a lot of other places. The interesting thing is figuring out what topics people really want to hear, and whether those vary city by city. Like we expanded into Langford, which is a more working-class suburb — so figuring out what those people want to hear versus Victoria or Vancouver.
Sam: What’s your subscription going to be?
Andrew: We haven’t announced it yet, but we’re thinking somewhere between $100 and $200 a year. Local discounts, access to events, maybe a member-only newsletter, extra content. One thing I really want to do is start hosting in-person events — as you know, it’s one thing to have a million subscribers as a number, but when you meet up with people in person it’s crazy.
Sam: Me and Shaan are going to Miami — we just posted about it and got like 300 people signed up.
Andrew: Wow. So this is amazing. I can’t believe you didn’t ask me to be part of this.
Sam: Dude, so frustrated!
Andrew: Maybe I will. It’s all just my own money at this point, so if I decide to go big I’ll definitely hit you up.
Sam: I’m very interested. You gotta make me an advisor. I think this is going to be sick.
Business Idea: Maternal Health (Roman for Pregnancy) [00:54:00]
Sam: All right, you want to talk about another idea? Let’s do the pregnancy stuff.
Andrew: This is like a business in a box. One of those things I would do if I had time but I don’t. I think it’s a really good idea.
People love to spend money on their kids — making their kids better, smarter, feeling like good parents. There’s all sorts of baby products and health things people do for their kids, but nobody really thinks about health during pregnancy. I think it’s something really important that’s totally overlooked.
My son was born early — three weeks early and low birth weight. He’s fine, no health issues, but any parent who’s gone through that knows it’s absolutely terrifying. I started researching it and realized there are all sorts of things you can proactively do to ensure a healthy pregnancy and optimize your child’s development. Your kid is growing a brain and a body — they get to do that once. This is the foundation.
I talked to my friend Dr. Rhonda Patrick and basically realized there are all these studies showing that kids and mothers who have fish oil, DHA supplements, B vitamins, make sure they’re not anemic — it minimizes pregnancy risk and also maximizes IQ, general flourishing, ADHD outcomes, all this stuff.
In marketing, the most important thing is to have a hook. The hook can be fear — how do you avoid this terrible outcome? And one of the problems with doctors is they just don’t want to scare your wife during pregnancy, so they say “take vitamin D, do this thing” without explaining why. I think explaining to mothers — here’s why, here’s all the potential bad things you can avoid, and hey, you can make your kid smarter in the process — there’s a huge opportunity to do Roman or Hims but for maternal health. Blood work, supplements delivered on a schedule, building a super baby.
Every three months I’m like, why hasn’t anyone done this yet?
Sam: Well, there is a reason why you shouldn’t invest in this, which you’ve written here.
Andrew: Yeah, I think it’s a great business for someone who’s never done a business before — a good launchpad. It can be big, but there’s no competitive barrier. You go out and do this, then a bunch of people copy you. You can probably make a good living on it. I don’t think it has a moat, except maybe a brand that mothers share.
Sam: Have you heard of the thing about Ben and Jerry’s versus Amazon? Someone said there are two types of businesses — Ben and Jerry businesses and Amazon businesses. Ben and Jerry’s is a unique brand, interesting, and everyone can survive. The only thing that separates them is slightly different product but there’s enough for everyone. You can grow it slowly for 100 years, it’ll probably last forever, probably won’t go away easily. But there’s Amazon — you really are only going to subscribe to one Amazon Prime. Once you give Amazon your credit card, you’re probably just going to keep using it.
So with a Ben and Jerry business, it’s okay to go slow. You don’t have to raise a lot of money. But if it’s an Amazon business — which this maternal health thing could be — you’ve got to get huge really fast because everyone can copy you.
Andrew: It’s like Hims — there were like five copycats right away because someone saw it and thought, hurry up, copy it, you can spin this up in three weeks. The only moat is size. The original Hims website was just a well-designed site with some hip stock images of pill bottles, their logo slapped on, a form you fill out, and a doctor rubber-stamps the prescription. There’s no lock-in other than: I happen to subscribe with them. You basically compete down to whatever the cost per acquisition is.
But I think for a year or two you could make a lot of money.
Business Idea: Medical Advocacy [01:02:00]
Sam: What’s this burping story?
Andrew: So my whole life I could never burp. My brother would burp in my face and I’d be like, how do you do that? I just couldn’t. I’d drink Coke and feel bloated, but it wasn’t a big deal.
Then when I was about 23 or 24 I started getting this weird acid reflux — this shitty feeling of pressure and then acid reflux, day after day after day. It started driving me absolutely crazy. For about seven or eight years I researched it. Tried drugs, supplements, procedures, cameras down my throat, a wire put down my throat to check stomach acid, acupuncture. Everything. Nothing worked.
Finally, after seven years, I was on Google and I thought about this burping thing. I found this Reddit community called No Burp — this huge community of people who also can’t burp. And someone there said: there’s this doctor in Chicago who injects Botox into the cricopharyngeal muscle in your throat and it allows you to burp. Basically the reason people can’t burp is they have this weird muscle that’s too tight.
So I flew to Chicago about six months ago and got this injection. Now I can burp and I don’t get acid reflux anymore. My life is literally 25% better.
Sam: What was your first burp like?
Andrew: I put it on Twitter, I’ll find it for the show notes. There’s a video of me burping. It sounds insane. I’m very emotional about it — like one of those videos where the dog gets home after four years and sees its owner. Now I can burp like a normal person.
Sam: Do you have 35 years of gas built up?
Andrew: Dude, literally — I didn’t know what it was like to just feel release. I always had this pressure.
Anyway, the point is: I would have spent a lot of money to figure this out. I tried everything. The problem is the medical industry is very fractured. Everyone does one very specific thing and there’s no one who brings it all together. Most GPs are primary physicians — they can help you but they’re not going to go deep on an issue.
So I think there’s an interesting business opportunity: a medical advocate. Basically a project manager for your medical problem. You say: I have diabetes, I have a rare condition, I have this symptom — and they go to every doctor’s appointment, get you into the best specialists, push the doctors to do testing, look at all the outcomes and data, read all the papers.
This is the sort of thing that wealthy people specifically would pay a lot of money for. Especially if you could make it outcome-based: “If I cure this for you, what’s it worth to you?”
Sam: Have you heard of a concierge doctor?
Andrew: Yes, I have one. I pay an annual fee — $25,000 — and basically text my doctor and say, “Hey, my Achilles really hurts, can you schedule an MRI?” And he’s like, “Yeah, I think an MRI would be good, I’ll hook it up.” Would that not be this?
Sam: I think it’s very driven by whatever you want. You text and say you want an MRI. But if you say “my back is hurting” — is he going to have time to spend four hours a day researching your back specifically? Is he going to go to all the doctor’s appointments, interact with all the specialists, negotiate with them? That’s what I’m looking for. Someone in the room solving problems. Because a lot of people — a loved one gets cancer and they’re like: how do I navigate this? What’s the optimal treatment? What am I missing? Am I talking to the wrong doctor?
Andrew: Kind of like a health manager — specifically around an issue. I recently heard about a business where all they did was negotiate hospital bills. A very small number of people, made an absolute killing. That kind of turned me on to these niche medical areas.
Sam: Did you look into the Mayo Clinic Executive Health Program? You pay like $10,000 and you go there for two or three days and they look at everything — try to diagnose anything.
Andrew: I looked into it. What I realized is they were just going to recommend the same stuff I already looked at. A doctor told me I’d probably have to have this surgery on my throat to close it off from acid. Thank God I didn’t do that — it has a million knock-on effects.
Sam: Why wouldn’t this medical advocacy business work?
Andrew: The hard part: is it insured? Maybe not, so you’re paying out of pocket. How many people really want this — is this something only rich people want? And just how much can you charge? I think it could be a great business for one person, maybe ten people. Can it scale? I’m not sure. I personally like the pregnancy health one more. But the medical advocacy one is something that’s genuinely needed, especially if you specialized in something like cancer — when your dad gets diagnosed, there’s a clear impartial advisor to call.
Sam: I’m sometimes partial to these rich-people ideas, you know? Like, it’s cool, but I don’t know if I want to do that.
Andrew: It goes back to having a warped view of things. The interesting theme I see with people who make good amounts of money is they just make themselves uncomfortable again by obsessing over all the stuff that can go wrong — health issues, car accidents, how can it all get taken away.
What Is Enough Money [01:12:00]
Sam: Let’s talk about that. You wrote something that immediately caught my eye — “What Is Enough Money.” You and I talked about this recently. Basically I told you: when I started The Hustle, my goal by around age 30 was to make enough money that my nut would very passively spit off $50,000 a month in perpetuity. So $50K or the equivalent including inflation every single month, forever. To do that you need roughly two to three percent of your portfolio. But that was my goal. And I did it.
And you started talking to me about what is enough money. What were you going to say?
Andrew: I loved that you came back to me and said: to me, enough money is $25 to $50K a month in perpetuity with very little effort.
Sam: I said $50K specifically. I spend way less than that, but I wanted to be incredibly conservative.
Andrew: Yeah, so you’d go on vacation and not worry about it. I think that’s the right way to think about it. The problem is a lot of people say “I want to be a billionaire” — but what do you really want? You really just want to be able to do whatever you want every month. And let’s be honest, $50K a month — even $25K a month — is enough to do whatever you want for the rest of your life.
So people will ask me: what do you aspire to? Who do you admire most? Money — I use the athlete analogy. Billionaires are like Olympic athletes. But Olympic athletes many times have no personal life because all they do is train. They destroy their bodies. The people I’m actually jealous of are people who have $10 to $25 million in a conservative passive investment, have paid off their house, and are just set, with a great balanced lifestyle. I love that kind of stuff.
I don’t know if I can do it though — I think I’m too much of a maniac. I’m too anxious. I always want to do more and more. I have a lot of fun with it. But those are the people I’m jealous of.
Sam: If you’re jealous, why don’t you just do that?
Andrew: That’s a good question. I just don’t think my personality is really suited for it. As soon as I have freedom I fill myself up again. I’m trying to crack that right now — what’s driving that? Is it fear? Is it anxiety? Is it just that I love doing this?
Sam: Same thing. It’s insecurity. It’s all rooted in fear of “am I good enough?” And it’s ego too — I have to prove I’m better than Bill Ackman or whoever it is.
Andrew: I don’t have that, honestly. What I feel is more like — new things are fun. What I’ve realized during COVID is I hated just working, because all it was was the work. What I actually love is meeting new people. All this work and all this “more stuff” is meaningless to me if I’m not hanging out with cool interesting people, learning new things, making new friends. That’s all I care about.
Starting the news business was an opportunity to say: who are journalists? I get to meet journalists who live in this whole other world outside of business, who care about totally different things. I get to nerd out on a new topic and make a whole group of new friends.
Sam: What would happen if you just turned off your phone, changed your number, never opened your computer for a year — then came back to Tiny?
Andrew: I think I’d be fine. We just changed things at Tiny — we don’t even get monthly reports from CEOs anymore. There are businesses where I haven’t talked to the CEO for three or four months. I don’t even know their numbers. What we’ve realized is that when you leave people alone and trust them, usually good things happen. The more involved we get, the worse the businesses do.
Sam: You have a cool quote here: “Most successful people are just walking anxiety disorders harnessed for productivity.”
Andrew: I completely agree. A friend was telling me about this book, and basically the idea is that a lot of great leaders we look up to have horrible personality flaws. JFK was addicted to painkillers. Lincoln tried to kill himself a couple times — horrible depression. Theodore Roosevelt’s wife and his newborn daughter died on the same day. But these types of personalities are really effective in certain modes — like a dog that has to chase a car. They feel comfortable in that mode.
So when I see myself saying I have to do the next thing, and successful people are walking anxiety disorders — I also say to myself: why would I feel bad about chasing things all the time? I’m just a guy built to do this because of how my brain is wired. I will not feel guilty for that.
Sam: You’re like a golden retriever who likes to chase balls. Nothing is going to change that in your brain unless you take some drug or something.
Andrew: Yeah. I don’t know if it’s bad. I envy the people who can slow down, but I don’t necessarily know that I want that. My ideal day is meeting a whole bunch of people, looking at a bunch of problems and different businesses — plus family, friends, and exercise. If you take away the work part, I don’t do very well. I kind of need three or four hours of work every single day.
So there’s this natural yin and yang — I get overwhelmed, scale down, have white space, then immediately scale back up because I’m like: oh, I have white space, I can do more stuff.
The Passport Photo Booth Parable [01:22:00]
Sam: What about this photo booth business?
Andrew: This is just genius. I met this guy probably five or six years ago — really interesting local serial entrepreneur. He has this business: a passport photo booth. In Victoria there’s a passport office in the mall — only one of them. He has the passport photo place right outside the Canadian passport office. As people walk in and go “oh crap, I need a passport photo” — he’s got the booth right there.
That is a freaking amazing business. It just spits out a great income for him. And this guy — he mountain bikes and surfs all the time, does whatever he wants. He’s always giving me a hard time: “Dude, come surfing with me. Why aren’t you enjoying life?”
It’s an example of the kind of people I look at and think: you’ve hacked it. You’ve got enough. You’re always doing enough interesting stuff to stay active, but you find time to do whatever the hell you want for three or four hours a day.
Personal Scorecard [01:25:00]
Sam: So why do you have a personal scorecard? What is this?
Andrew: Chris and I — COVID hit us super hard. We took a company public, it was an exhausting year. So we created this personal scorecard we try to do once a month. We sit down and ask ourselves these questions, and if enough of them are negative we say: okay, we need to change something.
Some of the questions are: When you’re with your kids, are you present? Are you taking your kids out one-on-one at least twice a month? Have you had any calls in the last week you just didn’t want to do? Have you had more than two hours of scheduled calendar time per day? Are you reading interesting books? Are you proud of your body? Just basic stuff that encompasses your life. It’s been really interesting and useful to force yourself to ask those questions, because so often the answers are no.
Wrapping Up and What’s Next [01:29:00]
Sam: Whenever you come on, you send me this huge document. This document I contributed a little bit to, but a lot of it’s yours. It’s 2,000 words.
Andrew: It’s actually 18 or 19 pages.
Sam: Jesus, did you write this?
Andrew: Yeah. Well, I didn’t write the Billy of the Week research, but I wrote the rest.
Sam: That’s crazy. So we’re going to save this and come back and talk about it all — we asked people on Twitter, got a bunch of questions about MetaLab, building MetaLab in India, tons of newsletter questions, tax questions, and the always-asked question: what would you do if you started now?
Andrew: We’ll answer them next time. Hopefully we can record on Tuesday.
Sam: When your episodes are some of the most popular — this month we’re going to cross 600,000 downloads, and you’re a big part of that. Thank you. This is fun.
Andrew: I always love coming on because it’s such a unique format and it’s so awesome to see you guys actually getting huge. I remember listening to you guys like two years ago — you were basically my only podcast subscription. It’s awesome to see you getting so big.
Sam: Last week we were ranked #14. The goal by the end of the year was top 10. I think we’re cracking the code. There’s a world where when you think of business podcasts it’ll be Jocko, Tim Ferriss, Guy Raz — and then us, very soon. And you’re part of it.
Andrew: I love doing these. It’s so fun.
Sam: Let’s do an AMA next week. We’ll get Shaan on. We’re in Austin June 3rd and Miami June 4th — do you want to come and travel and do some stuff?
Andrew: I just did the Canadian border — mandatory 14-day quarantine. But once they reopen I’d love to do it live.
Sam: Great. We already have it all lined up. All right, thank you Andrew, this was awesome.