There's a legendary investor named Nick Sleep who at one point held basically 3 stocks (Amazon, Berkshire and Costco). One of his strategies was based on a Jeff Bezos quote: “Advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product or service.” For example, he noticed GM spent $5.3 BILLION on advertising in 2008. They could've paid off a size-able chunk of the company's debt with that amount of cash. And the ads just covered up poor strategy and products. Now, I don’t entirely buy this given GEICO advertises like crazy and Buffett owns it. Coca-Cola too. And Amazon. Great companies CAN be great advertisers. But I do dig the sentiment. Shaan and I talked about this on MFM recently: youtu.be/t3HWIey2lh8?si=Ij2t…

Ok hear me out: i actually love going to the airport. Its like my version of going to the mall. the food court, the stores, the magazines, the xanax. I love being 2 hours early.

Anyone come across any cool AI recreation of historical events that are hyper realistic? Like D Day or the American Revolution battles? I wanna nerd out!

dear nerds. tom hanks has a 20 (!) part series on the history channel on ww2. its the best. eat your heart out. you're welcome, sam

If you didn't panic sell in '08, you'd be worth 10x more today. @Ritholtz manages $8B in assets. He reveals the costliest mistake investors make: Sell a $1M portfolio in the 57% crash, and you walk away with $450K. You stash it in cash and feel smart. Hold instead? That money could be $4.5M today. The part that stings: one in three folks who panic sell never buy stocks again, forever watching the recovery from the sidelines. The fix is almost too simple. Make fewer decisions. Full episode: youtu.be/RP9uwr_WrQY?si=MBmM… @thesamparr @ShaanVP

Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose is one of the best non-business books I’ve read. It's about the Lewis and Clark expedition into the American West from 1804-1806. Some crazy encounters they had that sound made up but aren't: 1. Walked 8,000 miles, from St. Louis to the Pacific and back. They lost 1 man the entire trip (out of like 30). Sergeant Charles Floyd died of a ruptured appendix during a time when the disease wasn't even recognized by doctors at the time. 2. They cataloged 178 plants and 122 animals new to science. grizzly bears, prairie dogs, pronghorn antelopes, and coyotes were all things Americans had never seen. 3. They documented 103 grizzly encounters and killed at least 43 of them. Most in Montana. They called them "white bears" and were terrified. 4. Sacagawea was about 16 when she joined, gave birth on the journey and carried the baby the rest of the way. 2 years. In a leather sack on her chest. Insane. Clark loved that kid so much he raised him after the trip. 5. Congress approved the expedition for just $2,500.

I recently asked 1000 founders inside Hampton (doing $25m/year on average), “Have any of you crossed a big number, like let's say $20m or $50m in revenue, while working only 40 hours a week?” We got a ton of responses. One of the more interesting takeaways was that there have been many examples of highly successful people throughout history who’ve taken a lot of time off. One guy in Hampton named Connor has a running joke with his business partner that every time he leaves the office, the company hits a record day. So he started asking, “do I actually need to be working this hard?”. He did a bunch of research and found: - Bill Gates has had "Think Weeks" since the 1980s where he disappears with a stack of books. - Sara Blakely lives 5 minutes from her office, fakes a commute by driving for hours just to think. - Yvon Chouinard built Patagonia decentralized from Day 1 because he refused to be the bottleneck and would spend seasons surfing in Baja. - Rick Rubin leaves the studio for weeks once an album hits post-production. - Buffett and Munger have said their whole edge is sitting around doing nothing. It’s nuanced and Connor's point is that you can't pull this off Day 1. You need a team before you can just disappear. If you want the whole piece: connors.blog/p/the-art-of-ab… If you want a room full of founders like Connor: joinhampton.com

Tom Freston (who built MTV into a multi-billion dollar empire) came on MFM recently and told me about how he hires. His answer: "Hire aberrant people. They’re a pain in the ass, but they’re going to bring us the most success.” - He once sent a guy named Abby to a random animation festival in Austin. Abby came back with a 5-min clip of two kids hitting a frog with a bat which became the Beavis and Butthead show. - The creator of Spongebob, Stephen Hillenburg, was a marine biologist. - Looking for “aberrant people” was also how Mike found Mike Judge, Matt Stone, and Trey Parker. Watch the full EP on YT: youtu.be/7_65wOSC0Cw?si=_1w8…

Oh boy the Epstein guy is sitting courtside

I own a cool customized Royal Enfield motorcycle office. Rode it daily, but now its art in my office as I live in NYC. The green one is mine. The red one is what it looked like before customzing. I love Royal Enfield motos, in part, because its the world’s oldest motorcycle brand in continuous production. The story behind it: - Royal Enfield was launched in 1901 in England In 2000, the company was bleeding cash, selling only 25,000 bikes a year - Enter 26-year-old CEO Siddhartha Lal, a cool Indian entrepreneur who’s father started a big car co in Indian. He bought the business. - Royal Enfield was a conglomerate stretched thin across 15 different businesses, including tractors, garments, and footwear. Lal realized they were mediocre at everything. - So, he divested 13 of those 15 businesses, putting all his chips on a cool but broken motorcycle brand. - Doubled down on heavy, retro, premium machinery while competitors were building cheap, plastic commuter bikes - Now they sell close to 1 million bikes a year, dominating the global mid-sized market. - I bought mine for like $5k or $6k. They're cheap and high value. (then i spent more customizing) - Like most British vehicles...the mechanic were eh. But now these things are bullet proof. I know I have a lot of Indian followers. These things are everywhere there. Super cool.

I'm having a good time.

I petition @Cloudflare to make @nickgraynews their spokesman! - He knows every product inside and out. - He's personally invested in Cloudflare. - He's constantly onboarding people onto the different Cloudflare services. - He's been a mega Cloudflare fan for years.

I have officially left beehiiv 🤯 After cooking with the most talented team on earth for 4 years, I had to take a bet on myself. The window of opportunity to build any life you can dream of has never been better than it is right now. I joined beehiiv when there were less than 10 of us. We had all-hands every morning. We celebrated $99 Stripe payments like a bunch of hooligans. It was the most electric culture I’ve ever experienced and the journey of a lifetime. I was there for $1M ARR. $2M. $5M. $10M. $30M, and I’m going to be right here on the internet rooting for them when they hit their next milestone. beehiiv has reached escape velocity. Nothing stops it now. The people building it are some of my closest friends in the world, and I will always be grateful to Tyler, Ben, and Jake for giving so much responsibility to me to help them build. As for me, I’m going to be writing everything I know about building businesses that generate money. I’ve done it over and over and over again with emails, courses, podcasts, communities, products, and more. And I’m going to do it again 😏 Subscribe to learn everything I know. danielberk.com/subscribe

THE BAR HAS BEEN SET. This email is from a japanese brand that I love called The Real Mccoys (they make reproductions of cool America clothes from 40s-60s...nerdy stuff...but they make the BEST stuff). Its a very somber sounding email saying: - For years, we've provided repair services for our products - But because it has become too hard to get the perfect materials, it has become difficult to perform repairs that meet the quality standards we require - Therefore...we regret to announce that we will be ending repair acceptance for products manufactured before 2001. 2001. So if you own 20 year old clothes from them, you can't get them prepared. How baller is that? This is why I love Japanese brands. Attention to detail is so high. They're nuts. And they make a huge deal about not being able to fix clothes that they made 20 years ago. The Real Mccoys...they're known for remaking cool American clothes. For example, they have a vintage looking vietnam era military jacket or a sweatshirt from the 50's. A cool niche that i LOVE, but because the details are so amazing it costs more than average. And if they can't perfectly make it like it used to be way back then - they don't do it. God, I love this.