My First Million: #174 with Andrew Wilkinson - How to Network with Billionaires, Andrew and Sam's Recent Investments, & A Better Investor Than Buffett

Hubspot Podcast Network Hubspot Podcast Network 4/23/21 - 9m - PDF Transcript

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now, HubSpot

just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell, and they break down why these pitches were

winners or losers, and each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find another bite on whatever podcast app

you listen to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

Hey, everyone.

We have a special episode with Andrew Wilkinson.

I'm going to tell you about him in a second.

I think you're going to like this episode, but I have a huge favor.

So look, Sean and I, we spend a ton of time preparing for this podcast, like hours, tens

of hours a week, 20, 30 hours a week, preparing just for these two episodes.

And I know it sounds like we're kind of shooting the shit in a way we are, but we actually

work so hard at it.

And I need a favor from you.

I'm begging you, please leave us a review in iTunes.

So if you're listening to this on Spotify, just click, click your podcast app or whatever

it's called in Android and go to the iTunes store and just leave us a review.

Click five stars and just click, like, I really like it or leave one star and be like, Hey,

Sam, you suck, whatever.

But we need reviews.

And the reason why we need reviews is we go higher up in the charts and the higher up

in the charts we go, the more listeners we get and the more listeners we get, the more

ad revenue or HubSpot money we can make, which we can then put back into the show and do

more stuff.

If you've noticed, we've hired a team to create videos.

We've done that because we've been getting more reviews and we're able to invest more

into this podcast.

And we want to do more stuff.

We actually want to go on a live tour this summer and we want to come to you.

We'll do it for free.

But we need to get more listeners and the easiest way to do that is just to leave a

review.

I know you hear a lot of podcasts saying do this and most of you are just like, kind of

skip this part, but for real, do it.

In fact, if you do do it and you send me an email, Sam at theHussell.co, or I prefer you

do this, you tweet at me, the Sam Parr and take a screenshot of your review and make

sure I see it.

And I'm going to call all of you out.

Anyone who leaves a review, I'm going to call you out.

I'll either do it on Twitter or I'll do this on the podcast, but I'm going to recognize

you for doing it.

So please make that happen.

I have a feeling that this podcast is going to get listened by a lot of people.

And so get that in sooner rather than later so I don't miss it.

But go ahead and do that.

And it'll be a really big deal for us.

So leave a review, please.

Now, let's talk about today's episode.

So today we have Andrew Wilkinson.

Andrew Wilkinson is a good friend of ours, he's really interesting because he does everything.

So basically Andrew started with this design agency called MetaLab.

He grew MetaLab to like $50 million in revenue out of, based out of Canada.

And it was very profitable, something like $20, $30 million of profit on like $50 million

in sales, something like that.

And using that profit, he went and bought a variety of companies.

And at this point, they own like 20 different companies ranging from a bakery up to different

types of software.

So he just bought this company called Girl Boss.

He bought a few others.

And on this podcast, we're going to talk about what companies he's buying and why he's

buying them.

He's also done a few interesting things like, you ever read about how someone bought a lunch

with Warren Buffett?

Well, he did that with a bunch of different investors and that's really fascinating.

So give the episode a listen.

Look up Andrew Wilkinson and he's on Twitter.

He's very active.

If you tweet at him, he'll reply.

If you tweet at me, thus, Sam Parr, I'll reply as well.

Sean did not make this episode because Sean has a four-week-year-old baby.

So that's why we're doing some of these extra episodes about him.

But please leave us a review.

Let me know what you think.

I'll berate you.

How did you rate this episode?

I forget what you gave it.

I think this was definitely in the A's.

We covered a lot of ground, a bunch of stuff.

Andrew brought the heat as always, a bunch of opportunities.

I think everyone's going to like it.

A's.

Today's episode is an A.

That's good.

I'll take it.

What was your favorite part?

He had a ton of stuff on how he grows his network.

Andrew's super smart.

He has like a bunch of billionaire friends and kind of lays out his strategy of meeting

all these people.

And I think that's applicable to just about anybody listening.

All right.

Well, everyone, give it a listen.

Please, please, please give us a review.

I'm telling you, I'll owe you a big time and it actually makes a huge difference.

And me and Sean, we read every review and we actually talk about all of them.

We'll say, is this person right?

Should we keep doing this?

Or this guy teased us for doing X, Y and Z.

Should we actually stop doing that?

What should we do?

So we read all of them, leave us a review, listen up, see ya.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like no days off on a road.

Let's travel never looking back.

All right.

What's going on?

Not too much, man.

Beautiful day here in Victoria.

What about you?

Nothing.

Well, I've been spending all my time on this podcast trying to make it huge.

We've got some really cool stuff planned and I'm excited to see it work out.

Yeah, I feel like you guys are really ramping up.

There's a new episode in my inbox like every single day.

Well, what's, yes, it's going really well and we did the math and we're like, if it

grows, if the last 16 months repeats itself, it'll be, we'll be at a million downloads

a month by like a December ish, which is fine, which is great.

But figuring out how to like hack this has been really hard.

And so we're just trying to figure out how to make it huge.

Well, what's HubSpot?

What's their goal?

Their goal.

So the HubSpot has a bunch of cool stuff that they're launching basically like a bunch

of content initiatives, including podcasts.

And their goal is to reach a certain number.

Like I don't remember the exact number, but they say like, how do we get to a hundred

million monthly, newsletter reads, podcast listens, things like that.

So a hundred million monthly audience.

And they've just done the math on, you know, if 5% of those people convert into HubSpot

customers, then it makes, it pays back the acquisition or something.

Well, no, that's across that hundred million, that hundred million is across all their content.

Not just the hustle and the hustle right now, the hustle we have close to two million monthly

or two million subscribers of which like 50, 60% open rate.

So that's adds to the hundred million.

And so this podcast accounts for right now, 400, 500,000, eventually it'll be a million

a month.

And then if they have other podcasts, that's another, let's say 10 million.

So then we're at 50 million, and then where's the other 50 million going to come from?

And so that's kind of how they're doing the math.

But how does it change for you going from like staring at your P and L every month, looking

at the bank account, freaking out about invoices, not getting paid to suddenly going, Oh, I

don't have to do that.

I just have to focus on growing the audience.

Yeah.

So it's pretty great.

Like a lot of people, HubSpot never said this, but a lot of people were like, man, you're

only going to work there for like a few months or a year, and then you're going to want to

bail.

And frankly, I'm having a great time.

Like I think I'm meant to start a company again.

And I, this is my first job I've ever had, but it's been really great.

And I can see myself doing this for a little while because it's awesome.

Like, I'm like, let's like talk about the obvious, which is like, I made money for myself

so like I can relax a little bit.

I, uh, it's not as hard, like I'm working a long, long hours, but it's not as hard because

if I fail or screw up, like I'm not going to like cost people their jobs.

Do you know what I mean?

Like if I make it wrong decision, I'm not necessarily going to lose a lot of significant

amount of money or someone's going to have to be fired because I can't make payroll.

So that the lack of stress is so good.

Have you ever, have you noticed, have you noticed like your cortisol levels are dropping?

And you're just more chill.

Interesting.

Dude, I never, I've never felt that.

I've never felt that because I've always had, there's always been so many different businesses

that anytime we've sold one, I've been neglecting another one for a year and then that blows

up and I get all stressed out.

So it's been, I've been thinking about this a lot, but I've been going from stress to

stress for like seven or eight years probably since we sold our, our, one of our first company.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.

Sam (@theSamParr) is joined by Andrew (@awilkinson) to catch up. They spend the first half of the episode talking about the investments they've each made in 2021. Andrew then dives into a more obscure investment he made: a bakery! He explains it's more for fun than profit. Andrew also drops some great hacks: how he saves time on email and how he networks with billionaires.
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Show notes:
* (4:24) The entrepreneur lifestyle and the stress that comes with it
* (12:45) Sam and Andrew talk about their recent investments
* (45:20) Andrew bought a bakery. Here's what he's doing with it
* (53:10) How to make your hometown cool
* (55:52) Henry Singleton: better than Warren Buffett
* (1:02:28) Andrew's email hack and how he donates
* (1:11:25) Why Andrew is the king of networking