SSS #250: Never Enough 📖

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It'll be called...

Partner of the Week:

I used Somewhere.com to hire a Virtual Assistant.

It was as easy as 1-2-3.

Short (30-min) phone call where I vented about everything I needed help with
They came up with a job description and blasted it to their overseas talent pool
A few interviews later and Voila! - Candidate from Peru hired.

Somewhere finds amazing talent that costs 80% less than a US-based equivalent.

Livin' La Vida Luna y Luca:

Luca is obsessed with Thomas & the Trolley from Daniel Tiger so we took him to the zoo to ride the train. He was so scared to get on. 🤷‍♂️

What's the saying? Never meet your heroes... LOL.

Never Enough 📖

Andrew Wilkinson grew up like so many of us.

Two (younger) brothers, a stay-at-home mom, and a father who fought hard to balance being happy at home and perenially disgruntled at work.

Their family of 5 lived paycheck to paycheck, mainly because his parents weren't willing to compromise on where they lived. They rented in an elite suburb of Vancouver, where the public school system was top-notch.

That hefty rent didn't allow for much else, something Andrew witnessed his parents argue about ad nauseum.

It should be no surprise that Andrew went from having a massive chip on his shoulder to a massive stack of chips on the table.

Here are my notes from reading Never Enough: From Barista to Billionaire

6 Major Takeaways

WWXD? What Would X Do?

Andrew is Stage-5 Clinger obsessed with Charlie Munger and Warren Buffet. To the point where he had Bronze Busts made of the pair's faces and placed them in his office as a way to remind himself when faced with a challenge: What Would Warren & Charlie Do in this situation?

My take: You want to be careful putting people on a pedestal. It is, however, OK, to admire certain aspects of people. For example, I love most of Kanye West's music. Everything else about him is "gonna be a no from me, dog".

I subscribed to the idea of WWXD with my imaginary Board of Directors.

Business: What would GDS do in this situation?
Fatherhood: What would KDT do in this situation?
Friendship: What would DYC do in this situation?

A business, at its core, is solving problems for other people.

The most expensive thing in this world is an unmet need. An entrepreneur's job is to fulfill that need and extract value (typically in the form of money) for doing so.

(Successful) Restauranteurs don't simply make food. They feed hungry people, provide a unique experience, interrupt the pattern of eating at home, etc.

Media companies don't simply publish the news. They entertain, educate, and persuade people who have yet to make up their minds.

The best businesses don't simply provide a product to the market, they provide solutions to a problem (ideally at scale).

Closed Mouths Don't Get Fed.

Andrew ran an Apple Products review website in High School.

He sent a one-line email to Apple's PR team ahead of the Macworld NYC event:

"I'm going to be at Macworld next week and want to interview Steve. Possible?"

The reply:

"Steve's schedule is too hectic, but I can get you in for a group tour of the new Apple Store in Soho?"

Guess who ended up leading the tour? STEVE JOBS!

Andrew ceased his moment, elbowed his way to the front of the crowd, and dominated Steve's time peppering him with as many questions as humanly possible.

Can you imagine a High School student making that type of request to a Fortune 500 company?

It didn't stop there...

Andrew's succinct cold email strategy landed him a majority stake investment in at least 2 companies: Dribbble (a social network for designers) and AeroPress (Coffee Device).

My takeaway: If you don't ask, the answer is always no.

Law of Category

I've seen this too many times not to mention it here.

The law of category is a marketing principle that states that if a company can't be first in its category, it should create a new category instead.

Andrew's first major business to take off is called MetaLab. It's a design agency. They created the design behind Slack and numerous other products.

But when people asked about him and his company, he never said, "We do design." or "We're a design agency". He would instead say, "We're the number 1 interface design firm in North America."

The truth? He made that title/description up. More importantly, his company was likely the ONLY "interface design firm in North America" (at the time).

My takeaway: Instead of being the 1,000th version of x, be the 1st (& only) of y.

Lazy leadership via being Teflon for tasks.

Andrew defines lazy leadership as the idea that a CEO's job is not to do all the work, but more importantly to design the machine and systems. Not a player on the field. Not the coach. But the owner, sitting up in a little box at the top of the arena, passively observing until the next critical fifty-thousand-foot decision had to be made.

He adopted the mantra, "I am Teflon for tasks. Never again will I do something that could otherwise be done by someone else."

Lazy Leadership via Teflon for tasks sounds like the easy way out, but it's quite the opposite. It takes a disproportionate amount of upfront work setting up the systems for a machine to be able to run without your guidance. Then it takes a herculean effort to resist getting in the way of someone about to make a mistake you can foresee from a mile away.

Invert. Always Invert

Charlie Munger said, "Problems are often easiest solved in reverse" and explained that it's much easier to think about what you don't want than what you do want.

Let's say you're trying to craft what you want your ideal life to look like in 5 years. Or maybe you want to find a new job.

It might be easier to start with your non-starters than your wish list.

For example, regarding a new job:

I don't want to be in back-to-back meetings all-day
I don't want to commute more than 45 minutes each way
I don't want to travel more than 2x/yr.

Quotes:

I'm just going to rapid-fire some quotes I underlined in the book.

Munger:

Being in a business with bad economics is like being a shuttlecock in someone else's badminton game.
When you understand how hard a problem is, it's half-solved.
You only have to be right once to become very rich.
Buy high-quality businesses with a moat, an intelligent and ethical management team, and a fair price.
I'd rather buy a great company at a fair price than a fair company at a great price.

Wilkinson:

While my parents were miserly when it came to TV, toys, vacations, and video games, the books were bottomless.
While the location of our home worked wonders for our education, ensuring that my brothers and I got the best schooling the Canadian government had to offer for a fraction of the price, it had disastrous effects on my desire for physical things. It also drastically increased my father's longing to provide them.
Across the board, almost everything I had purchased had made my life worse. Sure, it was nice to have a beautiful waterfront home and drive a fancy car, but I adapted to it so quickly. It was amazing how fast something luxurious just became the ordinary fabric of life.
The things you own end up owning you.

Gates:

I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.

Tolstoy:

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Francis Ford Coppola:

You can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son.

Upton Sinclair:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

Peter Singer:

If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable importance, we ought, morally, to do it.

Final Remarks

I want to thank Andrew for not writing another "How-To" business book.

Reading about his experience from running an Apple Review website in High School to basically running a mini-Berkshire Hathaway at 36 years old is exactly the content I needed right now.

I related to a lot of his story.

I grew up in the less desirable part of a "semi-elite" school district. I was scheming and hustling as early as high school.

He sends cold emails to founders to buy their companies. I send postcards to homeowners to buy their properties.

Fast forward to our first big wins: we both went directly to the Car & Watch dealerships (despite his win having an extra zero behind it).

Quickly realizing the things you own end up owning you and consumerism is a black hole to unhappiness.

I also can relate to the "boredom" he felt after systematizing his cash cow business, MetaLab. He ended up throwing away a metric ton of good money after bad funding new idea after new idea just to manufacture a dopamine hit.

I do the same thing ~twice a year. I get bored and end up throwing money at a problem the way you might throw spaghetti against the wall to see if it'll stick. I'm literally doing that right now with this Affiliate Niche Website project.

Is my next act going to be buying a great business at a fair price? Something with a brand or IP moat, that stood the test of time, and has intelligent people running it willing to stay on?

🤔 Maybe 🤷‍♂️

I just want to be cognizant not to succumb to the feeling of "Never Enough".