Reflecting on a crazy 2022

0:00hey everyone in this episode I talk about the biggest winners and losers in 2022 and my own personal biggest winners and losers and I just get into it tell some stories here I've never ever told and uh yeah I hope you like it [Music]

0:262023 January 2023 and I kind of just want to go over some of the things I've been thinking about and reflecting upon you know over the last 12 months and share it with you I'm just talking sort of from the heart here I wrote down these questions I'm just gonna sort of yeah tell you what I was thinking so best product that I bought under a hundred dollars um the first is YouTube premium it's 12.99 a month I'm like obsessed with YouTube I Love It I will you know I watch it every single day uh the no ads experience that you get with YouTube premium is just awesome especially if

1:06you're watching like podcasts like this or you know you don't really want to like break up your core experience so um I think it's well worth the time and and all the ideas extra ideas it will give you the second is I actually got this as a gift my brother got this for me this is about I think it was about 50 US dollars or so um if you're on YouTube you can see it but basically if you're listening it's this bus um it's this collectible bus um and it's actually the bus that I used to take to go from school to my home um it's the 161 bus and I keep it on my

1:44desk and it's a reminder of really where I came from and I feel like 2022 was really when I set up my home office and my desk to be like my own space and I think that's really important for people and a part of that was just getting this bus and things that get me excited and put my brain in a really cool spot so I thought that was really cool and I recommend it to everyone um most underrated company in 2022 so I mean this is a big company it's you know multi-billion dollar evaluation but zapier um it basically is a way to automate anything so for example if someone signs

2:25up to your website uh it could you know add it as a sales lead and then all of a sudden that sales will be you know adds it as a sales leading Salesforce and then you can have it set up so that pings a slack bot and then you can have it so um you know someone reaches out to it so it's just a way to like automate across thousands of apps and it really saves a lot of time and why I think it's underrated is because of what's happening with AI so I think the magic with AI of course chat GPT and you know it is magical just

3:01by using it but the real magic is when you automate it so uh AI plus automation is is going to create for example the world's best salesman or sales person um so it really closes the loop so for the example I gave where it's like I got this new lead it adds it to Salesforce um it creates this new deal then it sends it to slack and then someone follows up well what if you know chat GTP was able to create these personalized Outreach emails or even take it a step further imagine if I'm sure you've seen some of the deep fake uh you know you have like Donald Trump

3:41deep fake then he's not really saying something it's like a video of him but he's not it's not really him um or maybe you have Elon Musk saying like I totally regret buying Twitter or something like that and it's not really him well what if you created these uh AI generated fake people that let's say maybe you know a Canadian is a sales lead and he starts talking with you have this fake person essentially that gets generated that he starts talking with you know a Toronto accent and maybe people are more likely to buy from people that sound like that or or that they look like each other

4:23um so I think there's a lot of interesting things that you can do with automation uh Ai and generative Ai and I think that's why despite zapper being a billion dollar plus company I actually think it's underrated all the focus is being put on you know open AI 20 billion dollar plus valuation when I think you have to look around open Ai and ask yourself who's going to benefit from this the most overrated company in 2022 I'm just gonna have to say it's Twitter now I love Twitter I'm on Twitter all the time so but when I say it's overrated I just think that like I mean

5:00how much did we talk about Twitter Elon Musk what he's doing with Twitter I think it just got a a disproportional amount of the Mind chair and I expect you know Twitter to obviously create new products like you know they just launched views uh new features I'm sure Elon Musk has a plan for it but I actually think that a lot of other social networks are going to you know slowly start shipping at the pace if not faster than Twitter so um yeah that's why I think it's overrated um it's just like we've talked about it a lot and and maybe too much uh given its size I mean in the tech World we're

5:45kind of like oh my God Twitter is everything but you know relative to a tick tock uh it's it's actually quite small the best decision that I made uh for late checkout in in 2022 um and this is something I haven't talked about but we actually got an acquisition offer in late 2021 from one of the largest social companies in the world uh and it was an eight-figure uh acquisition offer um when you get an acquisition offer that's life-changing it definitely you're definitely like whoa you know um and and me and my co-founder sat with it for for a day or two we kind of were

6:30like this doesn't feel right because we're just having so much fun doing what we're doing and yeah it was the best decision I made uh okay fine I'll tell you who it was uh hopefully this isn't shared too too publicly but uh Twitter Twitter offered to buy us uh in in 2021 and you know we thought about it in 2022 and I'm happy we didn't because uh we probably would have gotten fired by Elon uh because he fired a lot of people so that was definitely the best decision we made when you you know actually I've started and sold companies before and I know that when you get acquired you lose

7:09control like that's a part of why why the whole point of it why someone's buying you is you have a boss even if they're telling you you're going to be independent whatever like ultimately you have a boss and they tell you what to do um and I'm just glad that uh you know I built something with my team to be really special I'm having the most fun I've ever had and losing that uh what it really sucked my worst decision I made for late checkout and and also just personally has just been not setting enough deadlines so one of the things I learned in in 2022 was

7:46I noticed that like if I told the designer hey like Design This landing page in two weeks they would design the landing page in two weeks and but if I said design the landing page in one week they would design in one week or two days they designed in two days so the interesting thing here is obviously you don't want to put too much pressure on on your teammates and that's not cool at all but I think thinking about how you can just set more deadlines basically um set more deadlines that just make people feel a little bit uncomfortable is kind of where you want to be with

8:20people not too uncomfortable that they're mentally stressed out but not like hey like just get it to me when when you're ready uh when when you think it's right so people do appreciate having some deadline to hit because it just helps them Focus and uh yeah I think that if I would have set more deadlines and in 2022 I think we would have built more products launch more products and this is only something that I really really got more Stern with towards the end of the year um so my favorite YouTube channel of 2022 is probably hodinki it's a actually a media company slash app that is all

9:05about watches and luxury watches uh they have you know a website they have videos um and they've got this show on YouTube called talking watches where they basically sit down with uh well-known people my favorite episode was was with John Mayer so they're sitting down with John Mayer and they just say like hey John like show us your watch collection and you get to hear the stories of you know why they bought this watch what their watch means to them the stories of the watches and these are people that really really care about their watches I'm not a watch collector yet maybe I will be in

9:462023 something I'm thinking about I just yeah I basically can't get my head around like buying such an expensive watch for thousands of dollars but yeah I think like even if you're not a watch Enthusiast just hearing about these stories and learning about the watches and learning about the movements automatic versus chords uh gold versus white gold two-tone learning about bezels and dials and Rarity it's in a lot of ways it's very similar to collecting anything or collecting nfts or some stuff like that so it's very interesting uh ho dinky talking watches and I think it's also just a glimpse into the future of what a

10:28modern Media Company would look like and what a blueprint would look like there so check it out I also really loved a YouTube channel called Sarah clip I think it's a French Channel c-e-r-c-l-e um and it's basically this you know group of people that film these incredible electronic music shows all across the world in the mo in the craziest settings in the world like they'll film stuff like at the top of Mount Everest or um just in these like crazy you know places and it's just so cool to see you know I think what's cool about it also to me is like you know they're getting

11:11the most well-known artist they're putting in the coolest settings in the world and YouTube lends itself so well to watching it on that and it's free um and they invite like a small group of people and it's just like you really feel like you're a part um of the show without having to fly to Mount Everest again like kind of a glimpse also into the future media like how do you do things that are just really pushing the envelope that'll get people to share it um I think seroqua did an incredible job and my last you know I know I'm only supposed to do one but I have to do three here my

11:45last favorite YouTube channel of the year is a channel called passport heavy um it's this YouTuber called uh jabril and he basically goes to cool places near the last place he was in was Belize but he could you know before that I'm just checking his YouTube channel right now he believes Haiti uh Ethiopia Bali but you know also travel around the US Miami San Francisco um and he goes around and he just he tries to live like the one percent basically uh he does it he does it on a budget and he just talks about how to do it how much things cost and yeah you do really feel like you're

12:26going to these places with him um so I think that's just yeah really cool Channel um I've watched him grow from a few thousand subscribers to 350 000 subscribers which is really cool I think like yeah if you're interested in travel and you're interested in uh just like doing what locals would do but also doing like really cool luxury stuff passport heavy is is the vibe all right so moving on to billionaire of the year um so I gotta put it even though he's not currently a billionaire like he doesn't have a billion dollars of cash you know Mr Beast is my billionaire of the year

13:12and he's my billionaire uh of the year for a few reasons but the first is like I think that Mr Beast will be the top 10 wealthiest people in the world by the time he's 45. uh he's he's 24 now he's growing the fastest he's the fastest growing Tick-Tock channels uh he's number one YouTube channel um we've seen that he's been able to incubate products that have gotten a lot of traction in 2022 uh feastables um Mr Beast Burger so you're starting to see that he's able to create real brands from his YouTube presence so I think that it's only a matter of time before he becomes extremely

13:59extremely wealthy uh the only way that he wouldn't be extremely extremely wealthy is if um people get tired of his format so that's the question so in 2023 what we see people get tired of this format um it will he be able to you know or does he want to recruit other people uh and create other channels and and leverage his core channel to diversify um that's what you know I think a lot of people are looking out for and if he's able to do that if he's able to incubate the guy who's going to be one of the wealthiest people in the world so my favorite community of the year

14:37goes to Fat fire and I've I've talked about fat fire in the on the Pod that fire you know stands for fine fire stands for financial Independence retire early it's a community uh all around how do you like let's say save up five hundred thousand dollars and just live off uh the four percent or five percent interest from that lump sum and then fat fire is like a bit is a bigger number it's like more of a fat number and and had a little more of a fat lifestyle based on that and there's a subreddit fat fire and you should check it out it's just you know

15:15even if your goal isn't to uh do that and make millions of dollars and retire and that sort of thing I just find it the most interesting it's such an interesting subreddit hearing what are people's problems and understanding how they're thinking about things is very valuable um I've learned some like tax saving tips from it I've learned some just general personal finance stuff from it so my favorite community and I do contribute to that Community um so that that was my favorite community of 2022 the fat fire subreddit my best investment of 2022 and I'm not just saying it was this podcast late checkout you know our design agency had got has

16:04gotten major clients from this podcast from Fortune 500 companies and it's just incredible what being in people's ears can do um if you've been with me through the start you know that my co-host was a guy named Sarah Bloom who's awesome and he ended up leaving the Pod a couple months ago and I had to sit there and be like do I really want to continue this um I didn't want as many ads uh so I basically just like blew up that piece of the business and I just started funding it myself there's a cost associated with it there's a mind chair associated with it takes time

16:46and it's been the best investment uh not only from like a financial standpoint like in the end because like clients come to us through this but also just like you know even doing this like sitting down and being like okay like what did I learn in 2022 um and then putting this out there and hearing from you all like oh hey like I also love passport heavy and but have you seen this YouTube channel like just having that connection with y'all has been awesome um so best investment and I think that you know more people should start podcasts so hit me up if you are interested in doing that

17:24my worst investment in the year I mean 2022 was obviously a horrible horrible horrible horrible year for investing in equities and crypto I would say my worst investment of the year was like from a percentage change was probably Solana and of course ethereum and Bitcoin but starting with Solana some of my nfts of course have gone down a lot um and then in this in my stock portfolio probably met a I have a big chunk of change in meta when I bought it was basically seven months ago or so or six months ago my my thesis with meta is are people pricing me in how big

18:05WhatsApp is like the world runs on WhatsApp and they barely monetized it and I think there's an opportunity for them to make billions of dollars from WhatsApp and I think Zuck knows this but he hasn't really monetized it to what it could be and I think that's the Ace in in zuck's back pocket as he's figuring out this whole metaverse VR thing WhatsApp really big makes it a valuable investment um I also think that you know Facebook is still a large platform no huge sides but decaying yet um and they can still monetize that as well so the narrative I think is just that like Facebook is dying Instagram is

18:49dying VR metaverse is anything um but I think we often forget that WhatsApp is massive um and I think that uh over the long term I actually think that a lot of these metaverse bets are gonna play uh play in the favor of meta so I haven't given up hope my biggest changed Outlook in 2022 so my answer to that is the concept of retirement so what is retirement retirement to me has always been like okay you get to a certain age um you take up golfing and you hang out on the beach um you've got a lot of gray hair that's like what I think of retirement

19:40um that's what I think about this year I started thinking about retirement differently retirement to me is like if you're doing what you love you're retired if you're spending the time how you're how you want to be spending it you're retired I don't think I'm ever going to be one of those people that are you know just going to play golf every single day um I want to you know I want to tweet forever I want to pod forever it's just fun um I wanna I wanna run my agency I want to run my studio I want to do this forever so to me it feels like I've

20:13achieved retirement and I think we just need to like Rebrand that word and rethink that word because you know Millennials gen z uh think about retirement differently and and I just think that that word needs needs a little bit of a regread so that's been my biggest change Outlook like thinking about okay like this is this is kind of it you know I run this holding company I want to do this forever it's really fun but that was my biggest change Outlook

20:41in 2022. and my last question is for 2023 one of my most excited for on the business side actually let's start with the personal side on the personal side getting good at tennis so where I live there's tennis courts and right nearby so I haven't had this racket I have balls I could use these chords they're free to use that just got to get in the habit and the routine of playing every single day or at least as much as I can four to five times a week it's a routine thing it's finding the people to play with in Miami and it's just setting in a party routine and it's

21:30just every day doing it or five times a week doing it like whatever that Cadence is and when people talk about New Year's resolutions and stuff like that like usually it's a goal with like setting routines um and my goal get good at tennis my routine find people to play with play with them often have fun so that's the personal side and then on the on the business side I'm excited about um growing our design agency you know probably work with one or two new clients in 2020 2023 and and help them build new products um you know our model is that we don't we don't work with a lot of clients we

22:13just work with a few clients but we go deep with them and then incubating new agencies so I'll talk more about that this year but uh we will be incubating new agencies you know we see a lot of opportunity there um and then building products for creators so you know at the core of you know every Creator is a strong community and you know we're excited about what we can build with them uh so more on that soon and I'm really excited about that so that's that's what I'm thinking about 2022 and where I'm going 2023 I hope you enjoyed that uh it was therapeutic talking about

22:53it here um so let me know uh on Twitter what you thought of this pod and and also do you mind subscribing like if you're listening to this and you know you enjoyed it at all uh like if you're on Spotify or apple podcast subscribe to the podcast if you're on YouTube I think I have like 8 000 subscribers it's not very many Please Please Subscribe and you can comment on YouTube I look at every single comment and I respond so uh thank you so much Happy New Year and uh it's gonna be a great year

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