Happy Friday squad,

A couple weeks ago I locked in a podcast with one of the most searched people on the internet.

Recording was set for 2 p.m. I sat there as 5, 10, then 15 minutes passed.

Nothing. Checked email. Still nothing.

Opened X and saw the post: he couldn’t do it because “the chat said not to.”

Zero offense taken. Clavicular has a job, obligations, and a family. He has to make the best call for himself. I still followed up multiple times. That’s the game. Cancellations and ghosting are normal.

The only thing that slows most people down is ego. Your initial reaction might be “bro, what?” Mine was. But after sitting with it for a minute, I realized it was no different from any other guest dropping on the day of.

Just another day in the office. It wasn’t personal. The world does not revolve around you. Everyone is dealing with their own work, stress, and responsibilities.

QUALITY
over volume.

One of the biggest early mistakes I made, and one that still holds a lot of people back, is this: you have to focus on the quality of the thing before you try to scale it.

Take podcasting.

A lot of people say, “Okay, I need guests,” then generate a generic ChatGPT message and blast it to a hundred people.

Or job applications:

“I’ll just fire off my résumé to fifty openings on Indeed today.”

Then they get zero responses and blame the economy, inflation, or the algorithm.

The problem with leading with volume is that you’re throwing a bunch of dog sh*t at the wall and hoping something sticks.

I’ve done this myself more times than I’d like to admit.

You are far better off sending one high-quality, thoughtful outreach per day, refined over a week to a single company, than blasting fifty generic emails with no substance.

You’re not a special snowflake.

People can smell a copy-paste ChatGPT pitch from a mile away, and they hate getting bombarded by them. Differentiation comes from slowing the f*ck down and putting in real, organic quality.

Here’s another current example from my own life. I’m trying to land my first paid sponsor. I chose Brick.

I went on LinkedIn, connected with several people in their brand sponsorship and marketing teams, and spent serious time writing something authentic about why I love their product.

I refined my metrics, social proof, and authority until the pitch felt sharp.

Only then did I start layering in volume: email, LinkedIn DMs, Instagram DMs, and following up multiple times.

If I still get no response, I’ll take it further and make a short video explaining why Brick is a great fit and why I’d love to work with them.

Either I land the sponsor, or I gain a much clearer understanding of the actual output required to get the result I want.

Most people quit after the third unanswered message because the internal voice says,

“Man, f*ck this.”

Check your ego. Check your quality. Then let it rip. That’s the order that actually works.

Love you squad,

Gabriel |

I had a conversation on my recent podcasts and also with one of my best friends recently about artificial intelligence and where this is headed. It’s very hard for me to understand how this will turn out, and given that it’s in the future, it’s very hard to determine what the actual outcome is. For myself, I’m trying to compartmentalize all the different things that I’m hearing and try to figure out what the future actually looks like, not just repeat whatever take I heard on a podcast this week.

There’s a couple different things I keep hearing. →

The common one, the Elon Musk projection, is that AI creates a kind of utopia. AI gets so efficient that there won’t be a need to work, because everything gets done for us, and there’s effectively a universal high income underneath everyone.

Now for myself, logically, the first time I heard that, it sounded kind of fake. It’s like, how the hell would that be possible? How would I be able to not work? What about the rent for my house? So instead of just accepting it or rejecting it, I wanted to actually build the logic myself from the ground up, using nothing but physics and economics, not vibes, and see where it holds up and where it doesn’t.

price is just a measure of scarcity →

Everything costs money because it’s scarce relative to how badly people want it. Labor costs money because there’s a limited number of hours a human can work. Intelligence has historically cost money because smart, capable thinking has been rare and non-copyable. That’s the entire reason a paycheck exists. No scarcity, no price.

what AI actually attacks →

AI and robotics go after both of those scarcities directly, at the physical level. Once you have enough compute, intelligence stops being rare, it becomes something you can replicate and run 24/7 without sleeping or getting bored. You already see the early version of this: Claude Code, Claude Cowork, OpenClaw, people are building little agents that work autonomously and do tasks or make money on their own. Once you have enough capable robots, physical labor stops being limited by the number of human bodies available to do it.

And both of those things ride the same cost curve every manufactured technology has ridden down before: batteries, solar, chips. Cheap energy plus cheap intelligence means the cost of producing most reproducible goods and services eventually approaches the cost of raw materials, energy, and whatever capital still can’t be automated. Not zero, but close enough that labor stops being the thing standing in the way.

This is the part that actually holds up under physics. If you can copy something infinitely for close to nothing, its price collapses toward that floor. That’s not hope, that’s just what a cost curve does once you remove the constraint. I could see a world where I own a small AI-run manufacturing setup and don’t need to buy things from someone else because I can just make them myself. That part of the utopia story is real.

energy is the actual bottleneck underneath all of it →

Here’s the piece people skip. None of this works unless energy itself gets cheap and abundant too, because intelligence and robotics both run on power. So the real question of utopia isn’t really about AI, it’s about energy. If solar, batteries, and eventually fusion keep compounding down their cost curves, the floor under everything drops with them. If energy production hits a wall, geology, grid capacity, materials constraints, then the whole utopia timeline slows down with it. Thermodynamics doesn’t care how smart the AI gets. Compute still needs power, and power still needs to be generated, transmitted, and stored. That part is not solved by intelligence alone, it’s solved by whether we actually build the energy infrastructure fast enough.

where I get stuck: land doesn’t follow this curve →

Everything I just walked through works for stuff you can manufacture or replicate. It does not work for a specific plot of land in a location people actually want to live. You can build up, you can improve logistics, you can eventually put habitats in orbit, but none of that creates more prime beachfront or more units in the exact neighborhood everyone’s already competing for. Zoning, permitting, and grid capacity bind even harder than the actual physical acreage does.

So here’s the first principles version of the problem: in an abundance economy, the reproducible stuff gets cheap, but the inherently non-reproducible stuff, prime land, unique locations, status goods, originals, genuine human attention, gets relatively more expensive, because more people now have more spending power chasing the same fixed supply. You don’t get one economy. You get two economies running at the same time, one trending toward material abundance, one still governed by old-fashioned scarcity and rank.

this is already happening, quietly →

I was talking to someone this week who’s spearheading a school built to make entrepreneurs, and he pointed out that a version of “opting out” already exists today, section 8 housing, food stamps, Medicaid, these are already a way for people to have their baseline needs covered without working. His read, and I think it’s right, is that this doesn’t require some dramatic revolution to expand. It just quietly gets a little nicer and a little more available over time, because it’s politically easier and financially smarter for the people at the top to keep the bottom comfortable than to squeeze them. A population that’s content with the floor is more stable, and stability protects whatever wealth is being generated at the top. That’s not charity, that’s incentive.

who actually holds the power, and why regulation is the real lever →

Here’s my thesis, and I think this is where physics and politics actually meet. Whoever controls the compute, the energy, and the robots controls the wealth, because they control the assets everything else runs on. I don’t think that’s a huge break from today, power right now is already held by the technology companies, media companies, and government, and all three are tangled together. Anyone who says “the government controls everything” or “a handful of families control everything” is missing the actual current shape of power, which runs through platforms. If a handful of apps control what a few billion people see and consume every day, that’s a form of power that doesn’t need a title or an office, it just needs everyone’s attention.

But here’s the part that gives me some hope: pure technological ownership is a weaker long-term moat than people assume. Once something can be copied or manufactured at scale, keeping it artificially scarce takes law, not physics, patents, regulation, export controls, capital access. History backs this up. Early owners of computing and the internet made an absurd amount of money and pulled way ahead, and then the underlying tech commoditized anyway, because replication eventually beats gatekeeping. Concentration happens hard and early. Permanent monopoly is much harder to sustain without institutions actively protecting it. Which means regulation isn’t a side detail here, it’s the actual variable that decides whether this stays concentrated in a few hands or spreads out the way computing eventually did.

the part that doesn’t get fixed even with abundance →

Say all of this plays out. Manufactured goods, cheap. Energy, cheap. A high income floor under everyone, real. Even then, I don’t think you get a flat, equal utopia, because status isn’t a material good, it’s relative by definition. You can’t manufacture rank. As old constraints lift, people invent new wants and new relative rankings, that’s not a character flaw, that’s just how humans have always operated the second baseline needs stop being the constraint. Universal high income raises what everyone can afford in the abundant economy, but a real share of that new spending power just gets capitalized into the price of whatever’s still scarce, land most of all.

where I land, still not fully resolved →

I don’t think it’s the Black Mirror version where scarcity for the bottom persists forever, and I don’t think it’s the frictionless utopia version either. I think it’s a fork. The stuff we can manufacture and replicate genuinely goes cheap for almost everyone, that part is just cost curves and physics doing what they’ve always done. The stuff that’s fixed or slow to expand, prime land, status, attention, certain resource claims, becomes the new arena where the real competition happens, and the people who captured the early surplus from owning compute and energy are the same people with the spending power to buy up what’s left that’s actually scarce.

Which means the job question mostly answers itself, the way it has every time before, humans keep moving to whatever’s still the bottleneck, judgment, trust, taste, care, relationships, anything where the value is partly just having a human there. The harder question, the one that doesn’t have a clean historical precedent to lean on, is who ends up owning the things this revolution can’t manufacture its way around, and whether we design the rules for that on purpose, taxation on land and resource rents, competition policy, how the transition actually gets handled, or just let it default to whoever got there first with the most capital.

That’s the actual question I think everyone should be asking instead of just arguing about whether robots take your job.

I’m curious what you think. Reply to this email and tell me where you agree or where you think I’ve got the logic wrong. I’ll read every single one, I promise.

And if you want more of this, check out the two episodes we dropped this week, the former teleprompter writer to the president, and the guy building the entrepreneurship school I mentioned above. Learned a ton doing both, highly recommend.

Appreciate you more than you know.

Love you squad,

Gabriel |

new podcast episodes this week→

at any moment you can change your life →

One of the most profound things I’ve heard was from @blakeaburge in a post he said something along the lines…

At any given time in the day, whether it’s 3pm, 5pm, 6pm, or 8pm, 10:35pm, you can still decide to make that day great. There’s something so powerful about that. I’ve seen this play out many times in my life. If it’s 3pm and I feel like I haven’t gotten anything done, I start wanting to throw in the towel.

But the power is in realizing we can make that decision instantly. Right now, instead of just scrolling past this post, I made the decision to share my own two cents in hopes it provides value to someone else. That act alone is what matters, the action.

A lot of people, myself included, have struggled with overthinking, asking chatgpt what to do, going back and forth in our heads.

But the reality is action cures.

Marcus Aurelius revisited →

The Emperor‘s handbook on page 6 it talks about how Marcus Aurelius was given the best private tutors that power and money could buy by Antoninus Pius, which included two of the most famous orators of the age.

He had Herodes Atticus, perhaps the richest man in the eastern empire, as his Greek tutor, and Marcus Cornelius Fronto as his Latin tutor.

We must have proximity to the right people to enable us to grow, and ultimately provide that same value to other people as our obligation as well.

how to generate NEW ideas →

one of the main things that helped me with writer’s block is on page 247 of tools of titans by @jaltucher, where @jaltucher recommends a habit of writing down 10 ideas each morning in a notebook to develop your “idea muscle.” he says if you can’t come up with 10 ideas, aim for 20. you’re putting too much pressure on yourself.

for myself, i struggled with ideas because i wanted to be the absolute singular best, one of one. but ultimately i realized that just led to procrastination. so i started just writing things down, even if they’re absolute terrible ideas, and eventually my brain starts to activate.

the analogy i’d give: rather than trying to jump on the treadmill at speed 20, just put it on an incline, set it to speed 5, get your body warm. eventually you can crank it up.

stop giving a f*ck →

I’m convinced that not giving a f*ck what people think about you is the biggest cheat code to move towards your goals.

People will call you cringe. People will laugh they will critique.

They won’t understand and that’s completely OK. Keep doing the thing.

Keep putting in the work. Try not to ask ChatGPT so much if you’re doing the right thing, use your intuition just get after it.

NFTs revisited →

The podcast you did recently with @garyvee was dope, man. @LoganPaul @impaulsive

I learned a lot, and I genuinely aligned with what you were saying in terms of NFTs and how right now the market seems to be undermining that, even though the volume is there.

@garyvee talked about how that specific collection he mentioned had like $700,000 in volume a day…

Digital collectibles will be huge due to many facets, one particular being the verification of authenticity, where anyone can validate if someone truly owns something unique on the blockchain.

To @garyvee’s point, 99% of the projects are dog, but the ones that will survive, which again, not financial advice, but I believe like the @pudgypenguins, the @veefriends, the @moonbirds of the world, I think they’ll be very relevant.

NEW episode this week→

On Thursday we have Nat Eliason joining the podcast this week. Creating teen millionaires at http://founders.school (part of @alphaschool).

subscribe on Youtube

download this into your brain→

Disclaimer: Not financial advice

emotional blindspots →

@Markmanson has a section in his book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck where he talks about emotional blind spots on page 71.

“It takes years of practice and effort to get good at identifying blind spots in ourselves and then expressing the affected emotions appropriately. But this task is hugely important, and worth the effort.”

In my own life, this applies directly to Instagram.

It provides virtually zero utility in my life, yet I ignored the small negative effects over the years and never deleted it.

The blind spot was actually the question I never asked, wait a minute, why exactly am I using Instagram if my relationship with my actual friends and family doesn’t improve from it. All my results are from X.

why you need a deloading phase →

To add my two cents @tferriss

This really resonates with me. A lot of times we put pressure on ourselves 24/7 to stay on the hamster wheel, and I've experienced burnout/breakdowns at times because of it.

One thing that helped me out was reading on page 583 of Tools of Titans, about why you need a deloading phase in life.

"The idea stuck with me that the biggest ideas come from open, unstructured time, space with no obligation and no compulsive reactivity, just enough room to mess around and do things for no good reason at all."

"It's about creating large, uninterrupted blocks of time where your mind can wander, ponder, and actually find the signal in the noise."

A couple years ago, I went on vacation to Puerto Rico with my wife. At the time I was trying to build up an online business, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to make a sale.

On the second or third day of the trip, I was in full relax mode, laying on the beach, eating fried food from the Luquillo Kiosks, a famous strip of about 60 family-owned food stalls near El Yunque National Forest, just reading Tools of Titans and enjoying the moment, when I had this amazing idea.

Why don't I send a video message to every follower, specifically tailored to them about my service, instead of a generic post on my story?

It immediately worked.

I remember thinking, where the hell did this come from?

I'd been trying to figure this out for a year...

how to rewire your brain →

There are basically two modes your brain can operate in.

The first is called the task positive network. This kicks in when you’re locked in on something, like writing, reading, or solving a problem.

The second is called the default mode network. This is your brain’s idle mode. It turns on when you’re bored, scrolling, daydreaming, or reacting to drama instead of doing something intentional.

These two systems take turns. The more time you spend in default mode, basically numbing out on Instagram, the weaker your task positive network gets.

And the harder it becomes to concentrate when you actually need to.

maniacal urgency →

After reading @EricJorgenson‘s book on @elonmusk, I realized maniacal urgency is a cheat code. We have to constantly question conventional timelines and pace.
@elonmusk said:

“When I was interviewing for a vice president of machining, I explained I was paying for everything at SpaceX out of pocket. I asked him, ‘What’s the cheapest you would work for?’ He haggled, and eventually we agreed. Ten minutes later, I gave him a contract. This was a Saturday at 5:00 p.m. He started working that night.”

new podcast episodes→

receipt→

LFG,

Gabriel |

I decided to compile some of my best replies on X this week and provide it on one email. I hope you enjoy!!!

timelines →

I read this book called endure by cameron hanes, and he has this piece that is so f*cking powerful where he says he ran 22 miles twice a week, bow hunted, and lifted weights every day for decades before anyone gave a shit. there was no social media, no promise of money.

He did it because of autotelic motivation, same as you @davidsenra it is very refreshing in the age of 19 year olds driving bugattis in brickell because they day trade.

everyone’s timeline is different, and social media constantly feeds us financial delusion and a complete misrepresentation of the years it takes to obtain our goals. Some people are Justin Bieber or Ray Kroc but ultimately our timeline is a 1 of 1.

POWER Law revisited→

I recently read Dave Grutman’s book Take It Personal, and it touches on some of these same concepts Jeff Zalaznick spoke about in David Senra’s Founders Podcast interview.

In Chapter 6, he talks about a guy named Burt Rappaport, who’s been in the Miami restaurant business since the 1970s. Burt told him:

“Dave Grutman, you see that restaurant over there? There’s a light out on their sign, one of the letters. They’re going to be out of business in six months.”

Whatever we’re doing in life, we have to analyze everything. Dave Grutman is crushing it for a million reasons that are laid out in his book, but one of the biggest is that no detail gets ignored. Everything is curated to the T.

In my own life, I try to apply this principle, the power law. The difference between 98%, 99%, 100% is the difference between average and “holy f*ck, this is amazing.”

I hope to keep embodying this in my podcast, in what I write, in the amount of time I take to reply to a post.

It may seem unreasonable to most, but I know it’ll ultimately make the body of work stand out, because I actually took the time to write something instead of copy-pasting from chat/claude.

dreams + reality + determination = a successful life.

I feel like this ties to what you say on part 2 of Principles, Ray Dalio, where you talk about embracing reality and dealing with it.

On page 134, you talk about being a hyperrealist, understanding, accepting, and working with reality as both practical and beautiful. "Don't get me wrong, I believe in making dreams happen.

To me there's nothing better in life than doing that. The pursuit of dreams gives life its flavor. My point is that people who create great things aren't idle dreamers, they're totally grounded in reality."

You have this formula that's profound...

dreams + reality + determination = a successful life.

The way I could translate this into my own life is with what I'm currently doing with writing and podcasting. I had to face the reality that this wasn't going to be an overnight thing, I've been doing it for years while still working a full time job. But the dream piece of that equation is knowing maybe it could work out, maybe I could do this.

And I've seen that to be true, where I went from having virtually no connections to interviewing some amazing people. That happened through chasing my dreams when nothing around me was confirming that could be a reality for myself.

NEW podcast episode →

Like and subscribe! 4 subscribers away from 300.

books I’m reading and referencing→

I was talking to the author of the Almanack of Naval Ravikant and the Book of Elon, Eric Jorgenson, and it was honestly a huge surreal moment for me. I’ve been writing this email letter for almost four and a half, five years now, reading his book so many times, doing live streams where I literally had zero to one person watching, and that one person being my mom. So getting to sit down and get insight from him directly was super dope.

One thing in particular that he spoke about that I wanted to write to you all about was the concept of power law. Within power law, he talks about how the difference between 98%, 99%, and 99.9% isn’t a straight line in terms of progress. It’s orders of magnitude in outcome. And when you’re playing a power law game, which is something we’re all playing whether we realize it or not, that tiny gap between pretty good and holy f*ck this is awesome, this is the best thing I’ve ever read, is the whole entire game.

For some reason that hit me hard, because I’ve seen it firsthand with the email letters I write. The ones I actually take hours and hours to review, write, and think about are the ones that consistently get read more. There isn’t some secret variable. It’s literally just, every time I’m intentional and take the time to write it well, good results follow. That’s always a good sign for me.

I’ve seen the same thing play out across X and YouTube and the email letter. With X specifically, I’ve noticed that if I just sit and think on someone’s post for five to ten minutes and then write a real reply, the results are significantly better than me just dropping a fire emoji or a one sentence reply I thought of in ten seconds. The engagement, the reach outs, the podcast requests, all of it improves with that intentionality.

This week was actually insane because of that. Same day I had Eric Jorgenson on the podcast, Tim Ferriss, my favorite author of all time, retweeted one of my posts, which never happens, he basically never reposts anything. And Anthony Pompliano posted a video of me talking about CFO Silvia, on his profile.

None of that happened overnight, but the moral of it is I’ve seen the intention behind the DMs I send, the intention and effort behind replying to people’s posts, actually compound into results.

If you can get fixated on the quality of whatever you’re doing, whether you’re a barber and it’s the haircut, a personal trainer and it’s the workout, a dentist and it’s the treatment or the cleaning, whatever it is, the power law is a constant reminder of what actually separates people in making them singular.

Eric gave me an example using chess. He said if you took every single person on earth and averaged their chess skill, the number would basically be zero, because most people have never even learned the rules.

Once you filter down to the people who actually play, and then filter further to the ones who are deliberate about it, in my case, the ones actually writing email letters like I’m doing right now, that tiny fraction of a percent is the competition.

So it’s a note to self, and a note to all of us. Whether you’re building companies, investing, writing, whatever your game is, the gap between someone who’s actually putting in the reps and everyone else isn’t a little bit. It’s not close.

Love you squad,

Gabriel |

P.S If you enjoyed reading my letter today, you definitely need to check out the two new podcast episodes this week with Eric Jorgenson and Danny Miranda. For context on Danny, since you already know who Eric is, Danny built one of the biggest podcasts in the world, interviewing people such as Chris Williamson, Alex Hormozi, Gary Vee, Robert Greene, and many, many other elite guests. Subscribe on Youtube we are 5 away from hitting 300!

NEW episodes this week→

Questions define direction in your life. The more we are able to ask the best questions possible, I truly believe we can align to where we want to go. From a financial perspective of getting to the goals we want, we must question our spending habits, question our skill set, question the market and where we can make the most with our abilities, question what to invest in. Everything is a series of questions. I just finished reviewing this pdf(find below) by author Tim Ferriss and it really had me thinking deeply about my life. I wanted to share some of the questions with you and my REAL personal answers to myself. Hope this helps.

What if I did the opposite for 48 hours? →

I bricked my phone to be Tom Hanks from castaway and talk to my basketball Wilson and live my life off the grid. Only to then give up cigarettes(IG/Tiktok) for a mango vape pen(X). I tried every which way to get off social media but I’m still on it. Building on social platforms is the equivalent of saying never get high on your own supply.

Current stack →

Wake up, check x for dms, scroll x passively on phone. Check emails for people confirming if they’re cancelling or confirmed to attend the podcast. Check phone screen, see who texted. Check more dms again. Check x. Check email. Download instagram, check engagement, post a story, delete. Open youtube, check views. Open x, check if guest reposted my post. Talk to chat and claude. Crack is wack. Repeat the hamster wheel cycle.

Your day should be writing emails and responding on x posts, but only during a designated block of time, say 30 minutes to an hour on x and only on desktop, at the same time. Reading. Recording. Emailing, two to three max. Calling. Checking your phone once per day at 5pm.

Don’t work on your phone →

So now the question becomes, what if I did the opposite for 48 hours. What is the opposite. What would the opposite be. Well for one, I would never touch my phone through the day. When you think about it, why do you need your phone. It is a tool of mass destruction in your life. “Working on your phone” is the equivalent of eating a burger with a fork and knife. Just use your hands(computer).

What would I do, have, or be if I had $10 million? What’s my real target monthly income?

If I had $10m to my name, what would I actually do. This is a great question. I would mainly want to use the money for experiences. Eat delicious food, drink great coffee, go see places with my beautiful family. If I’m being honest, if I had $10m I think I would want a house in undisclosed location with a lot of shade, where I can take walks with my family, in an area that’s central and optimal for activities. I would like to think I could go off the grid and be more in the real world, what they call analog. In my $10m world I see myself not worrying or constantly brainstorming, just in a place of zen.

being →

A great dad/husband/family/friend, being a great podcaster and writer, making money by myself.

doing →

Visiting europe, x, nba courtside season tickets, training jiu jitsu and kickboxing, eating great food, spending time with my family, friends.

material →

The most materialistic I can think of would be cool to have a house in West New York NJ, Miami, Orlando and Puerto Rico. It would be dope to fly to those places for podcast/business and stay at my own home.

experiences →

If I’m honest, the answer that matters most isn’t the houses or the travel. It’s this. Ask my family questions about there life. Really just having conversations for myself is awesome. As an introvert it seems counterintuitive, but as I get older there is nothing better than learning about someone’s story. A memory of a lifetime puts life into perspective, in that it really is just once, we have one time to make the most of it. If I were to look at my life, I really just hope and pray it was filled with memories and experiences with my family and friends. I hope to live a life true to god, to follow in his steps. I want to bless my family with love, time, conversation, because that is what truly matters.

JUST DO IT →

17 questions that changed my life

TWO NEW PODCAST EPISODES THIS WEEK →

First time on the podcast with two guests at once and this one is ONE OF THEM ONES.

Sat down with founders Riley and Michael Davidson from Darwin Group to talk about why AI isn't magic, it's an accelerant. feed it a bad process and it just makes bad output faster.

Riley line stuck with me, if you hire a great EA and never tell them how your business actually works you can't get mad when they fail. same thing with AI. step one isn't plugging AI into your business, it's actually engineering the business first.

Mike broke down his thesis on data being a language. most people track like five surface level metrics and completely miss every ripple effect underneath. that's basically the whole model behind Darwin Group, mapping the real state of a business before touching anything.

everything is a math equation if you find the right variables. no guessing, no vibes.

Champ went from driving an hour and a half to perform a 30 min show in oklahoma to becoming a multimillionaire in his 20s. in this episode we get into how he actually makes money off youtube (hint: it’s not adsense), why subscriber count barely matters anymore in the algorithm age, and his pivot from crypto influencer to saas founder in prediction markets.

But the realest part of this conversation was faith. champ opens up about total ego death, humbling himself in front of god, and what it means to build a business (and a life) while fully detached from the outcome.

We talk about surrendering to god’s timing, why suffering isn’t a sign you’re doing it wrong, and how social media addiction fights against everything we’re trying to build.

This one covers money, purpose, and letting go all at once. if you’re building something and feel like it’s taking too long, this episode is for you.

LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE!!!

There has never been a greater time to be a degenerate on the internet. People are becoming poorer and poorer in America because the central bank keeps printing money. And when that happens, people get pushed further out on the risk curve.

Anthony Pompliano told me this directly in a conversation I had with him. He said:

“I think anytime that the dollar is being devalued... it forces you to go from a saver to an investor...” - Anthony Pompliano (@APompliano) on the WallStreetPapi Podcast

It’s not just that people are becoming investors. It’s who is becoming investors, and what they’re actually investing in.

People have become much more comfortable with risk. They’re willing to put money into anything with the hope that it goes up in value. You see it with Pokemon cards, with NFTs a couple years ago, with meme stocks. Everyone is on the Titanic looking for a raft.

Out of that same energy, a new wave of asymmetric betting has taken over, and it’s called prediction markets. Add in the legalization of sports gambling through sites like Fanduel and Draftkings, plus big media brands like ESPN pouring money into the space, and you’ve got a whole generation in their twenties and thirties that’s desperate, cracked out on social media, and dopamine maxing, looking for the thing that finally saves them from a life they can’t afford.

And that’s the part that’s actually creepy to me. I’m seeing a generation that can’t buy a home, that’s living paycheck to paycheck, that’s scratching and clawing to get somewhere better financially, start to treat prediction markets like a willy wonka golden ticket out.

Not as a hobby. As a plan.

Before I get into why that’s dangerous, let’s actually understand how these things work, because most people talking about prediction markets have no idea what’s happening under the hood.

prediction markets explained →

Here’s the simplest way to understand what a prediction market actually is. Imagine a jar full of yes and no tickets for anything you can think of. Will it rain tomorrow. Will the Heat beat the Knicks. Will Trump say “huuuuuge” five times in his next speech.

Each ticket costs somewhere between a $.01 and a $1.00, based on how likely people think it is to happen. If you buy the “yes” ticket and the outcome actually happens, your ticket turns into a full dollar. If it doesn’t happen, your ticket turns into $0.

One big difference from a stock. A stock you can hold forever, unless the company goes bankrupt. A prediction market ticket always has an end date. Every single one eventually gets settled on a specific day, either you were right or you were wrong.

Let’s look at a live example. This is a bet you can actually make on Polymarket right now. On polymarket it shows the probability of LeBron going to each team as I write this on July 1st. He has a 19% chance of going to the Miami Heat. You can buy that outcome today, LeBron going to the Heat, for $0.19. Just like a stock, it doesn’t matter if you buy 1 ticket or 100, the price per ticket stays the same, you’re just buying more of them.

And just like a stock, the price moves up and down every day based on what people think is likely to happen. Let’s say tomorrow the news starts pointing more and more toward LeBron actually signing with the Heat, and the probability jumps from 19% all the way up to 50%. My ticket is now worth $0.50 instead of $0.19, because the odds moved in my favor. I can sell it right there and pocket the difference, just like selling a stock that went up.

The opposite is true too. If the news starts pointing away from the Heat and the probability drops to just 5%, that same ticket I paid $0.19 for is now only worth $0.05. I haven’t lost everything yet, since the final answer isn’t in, but my ticket is worth a lot less than what I paid for it.

how to make & lose money in prediction markets→

Once LeBron actually signs with a team, every ticket on that market becomes worth either $0 or $1. Nothing in between. If I put $500 into the Heat at $0.19 a ticket and LeBron actually signs with the Heat, my payout would be $2,351.88.

If LeBron signs with the Golden State Warriors instead, that same $500 goes to $0. I don’t lose some of it, I lose all of it.

That’s the trade off with these long shot payouts. Yes, there’s a real chance to turn $500 into thousands. But there’s also a real chance of losing 100% of it in a single bet, with nothing in between.

final thoughts on prediction markets→

This is exactly the kind of thing Nassim Taleb writes about in The Black Swan. He talks about how a highly improbable event, something you didn’t even think to plan for, can wipe out an entire account in one shot.

The way I think about it, you can win over and over again, feel like a genius, build up a streak, and it only takes one or two bad losses to erase all of it. That’s not a hypothetical with prediction markets. That’s literally how every single contract is built. Win completely or lose completely, every time.

And people are pouring real money into it. The two biggest apps, Kalshi and Polymarket, are now doing tens of billions of dollars a month combined, up from basically nothing a year ago. Robinhood added it straight into their app for their 27 million users. Wall Street is investing billions into these companies too. This isn’t some random internet thing anymore. It’s turning into a real industry, fast.

I myself don’t do any of this. I find the mechanics genuinely fascinating, which is why I wanted to break it down for you. But I don’t think this is a viable path to getting financially well off, and statistically, most people who trade these will confirm that the hard way.

Trump Accounts are now LIVE!

Trump accounts are now live for children born January 1, 2025 through December 31, 2028. They’re offering $1,000, completely free, that can be invested and left to compound over time. I think it’s a no brainer, but again, not financial advice.

Like Einstein said, one of the wonders of the world is compound interest. He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn’t, pays it.

Statistically speaking, if you just leave that $1,000 alone and contribute $250 a year, by the time your kid turns 18 they’d have roughly $19,000, based on historical S&P 500 returns. Factor in inflation, and that’s probably closer to $11,000 in today’s dollars.

And you’re not limited to $250 a year if you want to move faster. Family and friends can contribute up to $5,000 per kid per year into these accounts. If you’re able to hit that full $5,000 a year until they turn 18, I know that’s a lot of money, based on historical your kid would have $271,000. Sheesh.

Once the child turns 18, the money can be pulled out penalty free for qualified expenses like education, a first home, or starting a business. Withdrawals for anything else may come with restrictions and get taxed at ordinary income rates, so it’s worth knowing the rules before you touch it.

Either way, I can’t say I didn’t tell you. Best move is to just search “Trump accounts” and confirm it matches the official site. I won’t attach the actual link for safety, always do your own research and secure yourself and your kids before signing up for anything. (website should look like this below)

NEW podcast episode every week →

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Disclaimer: None of this is financial advice, just me thinking out loud. I'm not a financial advisor, and I'm not telling you to open a prediction market account or a Trump account based on anything you read here.

Prediction markets specifically, I wouldn't recommend to anyone I care about as a path to build wealth, the odds and structure aren't built in your favor.

Trump accounts are a different animal entirely but the specifics of contribution limits, tax treatment, and withdrawal rules are still worth confirming yourself before you act.

Do your own research, talk to an actual advisor if the amounts involved matter to you, and don't take my word as the final word on either one.

coffee with Elon →

Ok I lied. I didn’t have coffee with Elon.

But Eric Jorgenson did something better. He spent years compiling thousands of hours of everything Elon has ever said publicly and turned it into a book with all of his most foundational wisdom.

The best analogy I can give you is this. It felt like I Amazon Primed a Neuralink to my house and it came pre-installed with Elon’s brain.

“I was blind but now I see.”

I understand why we need to go to Mars. I think from first principles. I have a maniacal sense of urgency. I operate on the laws of physics only….

I’m going to give you the 3 minute version using my own stories and analogies but you need to carve out real time to read this book yourself.

One of the most fascinating things about Elon has nothing to do with his intelligence.

It’s his urgency.

boring company origin story →

Elon is stuck in traffic. Gets frustrated. Asks himself why there are no tunnels. Calls an engineer on the spot and tells him to start researching what it would take. Engineer calls back the same day and mentions permits could take weeks or months. Elon says forget that. Go dig a hole in the Tesla parking lot today. I’ll check progress at midnight.

“you’re hired, start working” →

Elon has an interview scheduled at 6pm on a Saturday with a potential CTO for SpaceX. Thirty minutes in he knows enough. He hands the candidate a contract, they sign it, and he says perfect. Start right now.

That is his pace. Constant forward motion. No waiting. No warming up. Just momentum.

When I apply that lens to my own life the question becomes how much time am I spending moving at a pace that just feels safe?

find your limit→

For a long time I was putting out one podcast episode a week. And honestly there is nothing wrong with that. Most people would say that’s impressive. But I realized I was operating well below what I’m actually capable of. I can do two or three in a week. I just hadn’t tested it.

What are you moving on at a pace that’s just conventional?

Elon sets deadlines he only expects to hit fifty percent of the time. The reason is simple. If you’re hitting your deadlines one hundred percent of the time you’re probably not pushing hard enough. You’re leaving capacity on the table.

Now I’m not saying sleep on the floor of your office. But I am asking what is your actual god given limit? The only way to find it is to test it. If I do three episodes in a week and the quality starts slipping I now know where the ceiling is. That’s useful information. I couldn’t have known that sitting at one.

The lesson is this. Stop thinking you need more time. You need to test your limit.

Whether it's a new job, a career change, getting back in the gym or starting a business.

Just go!!!

Love you squad,

Gabriel |

Eric Jorgenson for President →

Eric is kind enough to offer these books as an FREE digital copy and I think you should take full advantage.

Read them, highlight, think and try to apply it in your own life. Keep stacking.

The Book of Elon

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

The Anthology of Balaji

NEW podcast episodes every week →

Squad we are 8 subscribers away from hitting 300 on YouTube. It would mean the world to have you join the army.

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The man trying to make creatine great again. One of the OGs of bro science, @AJA_Cortes, the founder of Athanor, sat down with me and I will be honest I did not expect this conversation to go where it went.

I thought this was going to be a supplement story. Guy wants to sell creatine, makes it in America, cool. Patriotic gym bro content. Got it.

It is not that at all.

the problem nobody is talking about →

Here is what most people do not know. Every single tub of creatine you have ever bought in your life was made in one of two places. China or Germany. That is it.

There is no third option. No American manufacturer. No domestic supply chain. Nothing.

80 to 90% of global creatine supply comes from China. The remaining slice comes from a single German company called Alkim. If those two sources disappeared tomorrow the entire creatine market collapses overnight.

But here is where it gets bigger than supplements. The molecule that makes creatine possible is called cyanamide. Not cyanide. Cyanamide. It is one of the oldest industrial molecules in the world, first created in 1898. It was made in the United States all the way up until the 1970s.

Then we offshored it.

And China went all in on it. Because cyanamide is not just a creatine precursor. It touches defense, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, electronics manufacturing.

When China invested in cyanamide production they were not thinking about protein shakes. They were building an industrial base.

We gave it to them.

the man who is deciding to fix it →

@AJA_Cortes spent his entire adult life in the fitness industry. Ballet dancer turned personal trainer turned writer. Built a real audience on X over a decade by being relentlessly himself, not chasing impressions, not outsourcing his personality to the algorithm.

He said something that stuck with me. He called social media influencers two types of actors. The storytellers who use their platform to genuinely express something. And the ones who want attention for the sake of attention.

He said the second group will hand you their soul and get nothing back for it.

He was comfortable. Good business. Good life. And then he found this problem and he could not let it go.

He put out a call to action to his following. 40 people showed up. 20 stayed in. 10 went all in. No salaries. Pure sweat equity. Some of the top five chemists in their fields in the world. All because he built an audience that actually attracts serious people.

He said it plainly. The smartest people in the world are on X. It is a reading platform. It selects for a certain type of person. And if you show up with real substance for long enough the right people will find you.

His following helped him recruit a world class scientific team to solve an industrial problem. That is the actual ROI of building in public the right way.

what he is actually building →

Athanor. The mission is to bring cyanamide and creatine synthesis back to the United States. He said the process they are developing is more efficient, higher purity, and lower cost than the legacy chemistry.

He has a 20-year time horizon. He said this will require building factories, government contracts, and serious capital. He knows it. He is locked in anyway.

This is not a supplement company with a flag on the label. This is an industrial chemistry startup trying to rebuild a supply chain that took 50 years to dismantle.

what I took from this conversation →

@AJA_Cortes never had a 10-year plan. He wanted to be a ballet dancer. Got injured. Became a trainer. Figured out the internet. Built a real business. And then in his late 30s found a problem large enough to consume the next two decades of his life.

He referenced a model from a mentor that I keep thinking about. You have five categories where you can put your energy. Money, fitness, family, profession, and hobbies. No one maxes all five. Pick your two and go. Everything else gets what is left. The guys who try to optimize everything end up owning nothing.

He also said something about money that I have been chewing on. Money is not zero sum. It is infinite energy looking for an opportunity to multiply. The scarcity mindset is a trap. The game is not to hoard your slice. The game is to put yourself in the flow.

I am still thinking about that.

Go find @AJA_Cortes on X and check out Athanor at https://athanor.inc/

full episode →

Make sure to like and SUBSCRIBE on Youtube for weekly interviews with founders, CEOs, and entrepreneurs. 8 subscribers away from 300!!!

I was reading two books this week, one called Sapiens and Cup of Zen, but both led me to the same conclusion.

The first reminded me that we as homo sapiens, even at a standstill, consume 25% of our energy through our brain.

The second framed our life as an espresso cup. Our thoughts consume fuel.

If your body is the car, your thoughts are a Dodge Charger revving at a red light burning through the tank.

I spend a lot of time overcomplicating my life, almost self-sabotaging, by trying to work through every problem and worry in my head 24/7.

There are nights where I’ll open Claude at 2am asking five million life questions about where I’m headed, pros and cons, what if this, what if that. That is the recipe for running on fumes.

Productive thinking can also be counterproductive if you never give yourself space.

Rick Rubin talks about this a lot, the importance of letting your mind wander, of not forcing it. Creation needs room to breathe.

So how do we fix this in our own lives?

First, stop falling victim to the idea that you need to run 24/7. You are not a machine.

Figure out the few things that actually need to get done and lock in on those. I have a bad habit of checking X and email on a loop all day. It is terrible.

At most I need to check each of them three times a day. Just think about how much brain power comes back when you stop that one habit alone. How much of your espresso cup is suddenly free.

In the age of Goggins and hustle culture, a lot of it really comes down to making your life overly simple.

Give everything a set purpose and a reason. Stop doing a bunch of things just to feel busy. Find the view, then go from there.

Note to self, hope this helps.

LFG.

Gabriel |

I want you to imagine this with me for a second.

It’s early morning. You’re already dressed. Shirt tucked, shoes on, keys in your hand. You have 15 minutes before you have to leave, and you walk over to your daughter.

She’s been awake for barely any time at all. You kiss her. You tell her you love her. And then she grabs your leg and asks, “Daddy, how long will you be gone?”

And you have to tell her the truth. You won’t be back until 30 minutes before her bedtime.

15 minutes in the morning. 30 minutes at night.

That’s it. That’s your day with your kid.

This is the moment Tyler Todt told me about last week on the podcast.

Tyler is an author, speaker, and coach with over 250,000 followers on X and followed by Andrew Huberman, among others.

He was running a Chase branch at the time. 14 people under him. The branch went from the worst performing in the region to one point away from the top bonus tier. By every metric the company used to measure success, Tyler Todt was winning.

And in that moment, holding his daughter’s hand, he realized none of it was actually his.

out the matrix →

He sat his wife down that night. And he said something that I’ve been thinking about all week. He said, “It’s normal to work five days a week. It’s normal to give 49 weeks a year to a job and get three back on vacation. It’s normal to work until you’re 65.” Then he said, “I’m not going to be normal.”

Now before I go any further, I want to be clear about something. Tyler Todt said this too, and I think it’s important. There’s nothing wrong with working a nine-to-five. If you genuinely love what you do, if the balance works, if that life fits you, that’s real. That’s valid. Don’t let anyone make you feel guilty for it.

But if you’re reading this on a Saturday morning and you already know the feeling Tyler Todt was describing? Lock in and keep reading.

social signaling →

The guy made over a million dollars playing online poker in his 20s. Like, professionally. $35,000 in one month. He was 20 years old calling his parents and telling them he made more in 27 days than a PE teacher makes in a year.

And he had nothing to show for it.

A Mercedes he bought for $60,000 and sold five years later for $6,000. A watch. Tables at nightclubs. Status. The whole thing. By the time online poker got shut down, he’d made a million and a half and kept less than a hundred grand of it. He paid taxes on it, so it’s all verifiable. Just evaporated.

He told me something that stuck with me. He said he was obsessed with looking like he had money but never actually had any.

I think most people can relate to some version of that. Maybe not at those dollar amounts, but the instinct is the same. Buy the thing that signals success instead of building the thing that creates it.

cancel doordash →

So when Tyler Todt finally sat down with his wife years later and they decided to change everything, they started with a pen and paper and 90 days of bank statements. They cut the cable subscriptions nobody was watching. They deleted DoorDash. They meal prepped.

freedom dollars →

They opened a brokerage account and started paying themselves first, what Tyler Todt calls “freedom dollars,” before any other bill got touched.

He put roughly half his portfolio in VOO. The S&P 500. Nothing sexy. Just ownership of 500 American companies compounding quietly over time.

And then they made it a game. Every asset they bought got assigned a number. This farmland pays us $30,000 a year. This index fund position pays this much in dividends. Every dollar wasn’t money anymore. It was time they were buying back.

The things you own end up owning you→

It took them seven years. But two months before we recorded this episode, Tyler Todt hit financial independence. His passive income now covers his entire life.

The family vacation that year was four days in Big Bear Mountain. They drove. They brought their own food. They rented a cheap Airbnb. Total cost: $770.

He said you’d walk into his house today and think he just moved in. Kitchen table he built for $20. Couch from Facebook Marketplace. Seven years in the same place and barely any stuff.

You ever see Fight Club? Tyler Todt quoted it.

“The things you own end up owning you.”

I can’t stop thinking about that in the context of everything I’m trying to build right now.

Because here’s the thing. I’ve been on paternity leave with my twins. And every day I look at them and I feel what he said to me.

The goal isn’t to have a massive number in your bank account. The goal is to have time. And the path to time is assets. And the path to assets is deciding, sometimes for years, to live like nobody else will so you can eventually live like nobody else can.

If you haven’t listened to the full episode yet, I’ll drop the link below.

Tyler Todt talks about building an audience, hiring mentors, the 20-to-1 giving rule, writing ebooks, getting rejected by 60 publishers, and making his 222nd YouTube video the one that got 32 million views.

There’s a lot in there. But the through line is simple.

Decide what you actually want. Live like normal is a bad deal. Keep going.

3 NEW PODCAST EPISODES THIS WEEK→

Podcast is available on Spotify and Apple Podcast as well!

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LFG.

Love you squad,

Gabriel |

I am not a financial advisor. This newsletter is for entertainment and educational purposes only and should not be taken as financial advice. Always do your own research or consult a professional before making any financial decisions.

RIP Excel →

The other day I opened my folder on my computer and realized how long it had been since I used Excel. My early 20s were filled with manual calculations, fifty tabs, crunching numbers on my spreadsheet was a pastime. RIP Excel.

AI was the start of the new wave of having fewer spreadsheets, less manual work, and more efficiency. Around five months ago I went on a journey to find AI that could fully integrate with my finances. What I found was the Iron Man suit with Warren Buffett disguised as JARVIS.

But instead of Robert Downey Jr., the man behind the code was an even bigger legend, one who has built and launched products used by thousands of users and previously held engineering roles at NASA, Microsoft, The Boring Company, and multiple startups.

His name is Shane Noor.

What Shane has cooked up, I believe, is the greatest financial innovation of all time.

Back Story →

For a very long time a lot of people have been getting absolutely cooked by so called professionals. Look, before I go on my little rant I’m not sh*tting on financial advisors. I know some who are genuinely really good people and make a difference, but I also know there is a pool of Leonardo DiCaprio Wolf of Wall Street types that are charging people subtle fees for doing things that quite honestly can be done by the person themselves.

It doesn’t take much effort to have someone put $X amount per month into an S&P 500 ETF and ride the wave over the course of market appreciation and currency debasement and improve your financial life.

No more money being blown on fees. CFO Silvia will guide you through literally any possible financial question you have, but on top of that it actually gets a bird’s eye view of your financial life to actually give you world class decision making. Like this is actually insane. The fact that anyone can sign up for FREE and get a service that would cost people thousands of dollars annually over the course of their life is a literal cheat code.

She’s essentially your personal CFO. She ingests your financial life (bank accounts, investments, crypto, all of it) and gives you advice based on YOUR actual situation. Not generic advice. Not “just invest in an index fund.” Personalized, real-time guidance.

Doomsday →

Let’s start with the doomsday type questions. I know a lot of people will read this off the bat and say “wait, hold up. I have to connect my bank accounts? Gabriel, you’re absolutely cooked if you think I would do that.”

Fair. I had the same thought and I think every smart individual would think the same. It is completely valid. But what I can tell you is a big percentage of people would hear “connect my bank accounts” and keep living in their simulation of winging their financial life and investing on vibes and emotion to make the best decisions for their bag, only to end up in shambles applying to be a contestant on Squid Game.

CFO Silvia uses Plaid to get READ-ONLY access to accounts. Plaid is used by Robinhood, Chime, Venmo, Coinbase, Acorns, Betterment, American Express, and Stripe. And on top of that, Shane told me the data in their database is encrypted and anonymized.

Even if someone hacked it, they’d just see random numbers tied to nothing. No names, no emails, nothing.

What Can It Do? →

Let me explain in plain English a very elementary thing CFO Silvia can do. You can literally say “Hey Silvia, what is your take on my technology exposure?” And she will break down each position for you. Tesla makes up X%, Meta makes up X%. Then she gives you her actual take on the risk, the upside, and where your portfolio is sitting relative to the overall market.

But that’s just the surface. You can ask her about buying a house. You can ask her to calculate your future net worth. You can ask her about your credit card spending, cash on hand, literally anything financially related to your entire life and not only will she give you a fire answer, it is catered specifically to YOU. Not some generic template. Not “just max out your 401k.” Your situation. Your numbers. Your life.

That is the biggest cheat code I have ever seen.

Sneak Peek →

And here’s the crazy part. It’s only going to get better.

Shane told me they’re building something called “Radar.” Basically Silvia stops waiting for YOU to ask questions and starts reaching out to YOU. Market news drops that affects your holdings? She tells you. Your credit card spending is trending toward a bad month? She flags it. Time to rebalance? She’s got you.

I’ve been waiting my entire life for something like this. A financial tool that doesn’t just sit there until you remember to check it. One that actually gives a damn about your money. LFG.

The Bigger Picture →

Look, I’ve been teaching a lot of you guys how to get started, things like Roth IRAs, individual brokerages, index funds, the basics. And for a long time, the hardest part wasn’t the investing itself. It was managing everything. Tracking what you have, stress-testing your portfolio, figuring out where your money should actually go next. That part was manual and tedious and honestly kind of overwhelming.

Silvia is changing that.

The long-term vision is for her to become the operating system of your personal finances. Not just tracking, actually making decisions and executing trades on your behalf if you want her to. Creating trusts, filing taxes, all of it. We’re not there yet, but the personal financial statement feature is already live and it’s a taste of what’s coming.

The Bottom Line →

I genuinely believe this is one of those things that in 10 years, everyone’s going to have something like this. The same way everyone eventually got a smartphone and stopped questioning it. AI in your personal finances isn’t a maybe. It’s a when.

And for once, that’s not a scary thing. It’s actually kind of exciting.

Go check out CFO Silvia. Seriously. And if you want the full conversation with Shane, the podcast episode is below.

Love you squad,

Gabriel | wallstreetpapi

Disclaimer: This letter is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice. I'm not a financial advisor, and nothing shared here should be considered a recommendation specific to your situation. Always do your own research. I am not affiliated with CFO Silvia. I just genuinely think it is a really great product that is changing people's lives for the better. :)

in this journey of trying to make money with my WallStreetPapi stuff, a big lesson I’ve learned is this:

don’t focus on or pursue a business that ultimately makes you unhappy. when I tell you I was miserable making TikToks, I was miserable. I hated it. it was always from the place of “it can lead me to bigger things” and in hindsight, maybe it did. sometimes I tell myself maybe I couldn’t have skipped that part, but man did that shit suck.

I have several examples of me doing this over the course of the past 4-5 years, trying to monetize an idea that really wasn’t aligned with me.

I wanted to free myself from the W-2 prison but ended up escorting myself to the insane asylum.

it was always from a place of “I can just do this and make money with it, then do something else after.”

my logic was flawed. I had built a side hustle that in hindsight was 10x more time consuming, 10x more stressful because I literally handled everything A-Z, and made 10x less money than what I was making at work.

in terms of satisfaction, I did relatively enjoy the work, but again it was draining and I didn’t see myself doing it long term. it felt like a quick fix. did I learn a lot from my previous ventures with the Building Wealth Bootcamp? yes, 100%.

I learned how to lock in on a problem and package the solution. I found a way to generate leads. I learned how to sell. I learned how to do virtually everything from that experience. but it wasn’t something I wanted to do long term, and that was the problem.

I thought I could just make money with it but failed to realize I would end up digging a hole, making a job for myself that had way more negatives than positives.

this is something Rick Rubin discusses in his book The Creative Act. he pursued music because it was something he had a burning desire for, regardless of the money. he still would have done it either way.

in practice, it can be very hard to make money off what we love. but it’s more important to pursue things for the love of it and learn to be patient.

I can work a W-2 and keep building what I love, which if I’m being honest, since I started this journey has been writing and recording podcasts.

before you pursue something on your own, think and ask yourself if this is something you would genuinely enjoy. if not, I will tell you from experience, you will build a business that eventually becomes a prison.

Love you squad,

Gabriel |

David Grutman is one of the GOATs in hospitality. The owner of Club LIV built an ecosystem that includes hotels and restaurants, partnered with Bad Bunny and Pharrell, and has worked with brands like Geico. But the biggest lesson I took from his book has nothing to do with the deals.

It is about sweating the small stuff.

Grutman is hyper obsessed with every single detail of his business. The sign outside. The way guests are greeted by first name when they walk in. The timing between appetizers and the main entree. The volume of the music. Nothing is too small to obsess over.

That hit home for me because I think a lot of us, myself included, get so caught up in the dollar signs that we lose sight of the craft. The real edge is in the details most people overlook.

His business philosophy is also worth studying. He did not try to build everything at once. He started with restaurants and asked a simple question.

What else do my guests need?

They need somewhere to party so he built a club. They need somewhere to stay so he built a hotel. Each business grew naturally out of the last one.

That kind of intentional ecosystem building is something any entrepreneur can apply regardless of the industry you are in.

hypocrite →

I think a classic example of this is with this letter I send out. I’m going to be honest. At like 8:57am this morning I had nothing written and I was trying to rush something to put out. I almost sent it and then really started to think, dude, I’m such a hypocrite.

Here I am talking about obsessing over quality like Grutman said and I had almost sent a basic email that took me like 20 minutes to write.

This is the type of stuff I’m talking about where we really need to focus on the quality of what we put out. It shouldn’t lead you to procrastination and not doing anything but just having a standard for your quality of work because it matters.

Something from an interview I did with founder of Polsia, Ben Cera, ties to the book. Lock in on doing something you love because the journey is the only thing that is guaranteed. If you do something you hate the longevity won’t be there. For me I genuinely like writing and doing the podcast.

I have made very little money with those two things but I feel excited every week to do them. I love the process. Everything else is just a distraction.

lock in chat →

Speaking of distractions, I’m more and more convinced that Instagram and TikTok have a net negative effect on my life. I try to justify it by saying I need to post content because everyone does especially in media but it’s also like a sunk cost feeling.

Like if I stop that I quit or whatever which is not true. Things evolve. Stepping stones lead us to different places we didn’t know were possible. When I started making content in 2021 I was only on TikTok talking about educational content related to crypto.

I then went on to talk about mind body fitness stuff then to personal finance and now to having conversations with entrepreneurs, founders and CEOs.

Was this planned? Hell no. Maybe it is the type B in me that does zero planning. Anyways enough of my rant. I hope you got something out of that. And grateful that you are on the journey with me. Really means a lot.

small favor →

I just had two NEW podcast episodes drop this week one with a former top 10 MLB draft pick where we discuss the reality of a the financial side of the big leagues. Also we spoke to the founder of Polsia an AI company with 0 employees that has $8M in revenue this year.

I will drop the links below to the video but please like and SUBSCRIBE on YouTube. We still have 52% of the squad here on the letter not subscribed on YouTube.

Love you squad,

Gabriel |

We graduate high school, we go to a 4 year university, we choose a degree to make our parents happy, and we work a job that we hate for 35+ years. The end. Sad story.

I spoke to Sheel Mohnot who took the most unconventional path in life and ended up building a $450M VC but more importantly a beautiful life.

After speaking to Sheel I had a realization that one of his superpowers is being the type of dude to say yes to virtually anything and I think this is one of his biggest strengths. He is the son of an immigrant family from Rajasthan, India, and as a vegetarian, his only fast food option was Taco Bell.

Decades later he ends up hosting a metaverse wedding sponsored by Taco Bell. He found a co-founder on a train ride in India. And has actually appeared in a Justin Bieber music video.

But what are the lessons in all of this?

Sounds cool but how can we apply this? Well you see the one common thread in all of this is seeking opportunity. Sheel didn’t just sit at his house in Pittsburgh waiting for things to happen. Opportunity was not going to knock on his front door. In order to obtain more opportunities you have to go places.

Scratch that, even simpler, in order to gain opportunities you must not be scared to say hi to someone on a sidewalk. I see this all the time where people are literally terrified to say hi to someone on a sidewalk. Imagine all the other things people are selling themselves short on, conversations, trips. Sheel moved as if life is his canvas, optimize for fun and provide value was the cheat code.

problem solver→

In a rule of first principle thinking, when I listened to Sheel's story, every business that he created started with asking himself how can I solve a problem. When he got one of his first iPods his headphones got caught on his bike and he had a realization, why don't I sell headphones to match the color of these iPods. He went to different universities, paid for some ads, and made net around $80,000.

Same thing with Thistle.

He kept getting frustrated with food options for lunch. He created the solution. His energy is always towards that. How can I provide value to society. I think a lot of people work in reverse and it is fundamentally flawed.

cheat codes to become a successful founder→

He also told me something about investing that I think applies way beyond venture capital. When he bets on a company at the earliest stage, he is not really betting on the product. It is more so the approach of betting on the jockey vs the horse.

He is betting on three things. how fast the founder is moving, whether they have the tenacity to break through walls when things get hard, and whether they can hire people better than themselves. Speed. Tenacity. Talent acquisition. He said almost every company that fails can be traced back to a breakdown in one of those three things.

I think about that for people building anything on the side while working a full time job. How fast are you actually moving? Not just busy, but moving.

This is something that resonated with me. In my own life I think a constant reminder is that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

And the other piece about hiring talent is important too. I often look at everything I am doing like a one man show, I must handle everything. Maybe that is a flaw of mine, but that piece about hiring had me thinking that maybe there is something here I need to change. Even if it is just hiring someone to handle some smaller tasks, I think in order for us to grow we need the help of others as well. That hit.

podcasting blueprint→

I also asked him about podcasting because, well, asking for a friend. He built a media company around a podcast back in 2015, grew it, and eventually it got acquired and then acquired again by Spotify. His honest take was that podcasting alone is a tough standalone business, but it is a great road into something else. That landed for me. The podcast is not the destination. The relationships, the audience, the trust you build over time, that is the asset.

The podcast is just how you earn it.

final thoughts→

Sheel’s version of success after everything he has built, the funds, the companies, the metaverse wedding, is simply having fun and learning with people he enjoys being around. No yacht. No scoreboard. Just good people and interesting problems.

My grandfather sold encyclopedias door to door in a country where he barely spoke the language when he left Cuba. Sheel’s dad did the same thing in the middle of Alabama. They did not have a blueprint. They had a whatever it takes attitude and a door to knock on.

That is enough to get started. It always has been.

LFG.

Love you squad,

Gabriel |

When I first began my journey of making money on the internet I threw a decent amount of money into the hiring abyss where it was a constant hiring and firing. I couldn’t get the message through to the people I hired, jobs were done poorly and I felt frustrated and eventually got to a point where I said f*ck it I will do this myself.

The other day I sat in my room with my brain air fried from the amount of work I’ve been putting on my plate and looked myself in the mirror and said it’s time to hire people. I wanted to be a one man show, the John Wick of internet businesses, but I knew this would be my downfall.

For several months I did research on finding the BEST talent, the LeBron James of linking me with absolute savages that will get the job done. After several months deep on X, several dozen espressos downed, I found someone with a career so impressive it could be played by Matt Damon on the big screen.

An experienced national security professional who traveled on behalf of the US government to places like the Middle East. He also developed and implemented counterterrorism strategies. He has successfully sold three businesses and his current business is locked in on finding high quality overseas talent for people.

His name is Jon Matzner.

What he taught me about hiring completely changed how I think about building a business. If you’ve ever felt stuck doing everything yourself or burned money on bad hires, this one’s for you.

fire yourself from Your business →

Jon told me something that completely changed how I think about what a business actually is. He said “A business is value that gets created separate from the efforts of the owner.”

Read that again.

If it requires YOU to do the work, that’s not a business. That’s a job. That’s a well-paying freelance gig. But it’s not a business. Congratulations, you played yourself.

Your job as an owner is simple. You start by doing everything. And then you fire yourself from a series of jobs that continue to elevate.

Here’s what that actually looks like in practice.

When you start a company, you do everything. You answer the phone, you plunge the toilet, you take the trash out, you run the sales calls. All of it. That’s phase one. You’re the army of one business.

But once you’ve built some revenue, you look at your day and you say “Okay, what is the lowest leverage thing I’m spending time on?” Maybe it’s taking the trash out and mopping the floor at the warehouse. So you hire someone who comes in at night and does that. Boom. You just made your first hire. A janitor. And now you’ve elevated yourself from janitor to everything else.

Then you look again. “I don’t want to answer the phones anymore.” So you hire someone to do that. Now you’ve elevated again. You’re no longer the receptionist.

Building a company is a series of firing yourself from low-leverage tasks so you can focus on higher leverage tasks. And that progression can go all the way up to eventually firing yourself as the CEO of the company. You become chairman of the board and you’re not involved in any part of the operations anymore.

Sounds like the dream, right? You’re basically Bradley Cooper in Limitless at this point.

But here’s the critical part that most people get completely backwards. They try to outsource the things they don’t want to do. The uncomfortable things. The hard things. The revenue-driving things. And they do it before they’ve mastered those things themselves.

don’t outsource revenue-driving activities until you’ve mastered them yourself →

Jon gave me the perfect example using my podcast. Let’s say I wanted to monetize it. The first thing I should fire myself from is reaching out to future guests. I can find someone for $X a month who can do outreach, follow up, coordinate dates and times with guests, all of it. I’ve done this dozens of times and can articulate and teach someone how to do this on my behalf.

But selling podcast ads? That’s different.

In the beginning, I need to be the one going out and selling those ads. Not because I love cold calling, but because I’m the best person to figure out if people will even buy them. I don’t know what works yet. I don’t know what the objections are. I don’t know how to pitch it.

So I go out and do it myself. I make 50 cold calls. I set up 20 conversations. I run 6 demos. And eventually I close one sponsor for $2,000 an episode.

Now I know what good looks like.

Now I know it takes 50 cold calls to set up 20 calls to have 6 demos to close one sponsor for about $2,000 an episode. I have the numbers. I have the process. I know the objections and how to overcome them.

Now I can hand that to a salesperson and they can go run with it.

But if I tried to hire someone to do that before I figured it out myself? I’d be guessing. And Jon said something that stuck with me: “I don’t like guessing in business.”

The mistake most people make is they try to outsource the things they don’t want to do. The uncomfortable things. The hard things. The revenue-driving things. And they do it before they’ve mastered those things themselves.

That’s backwards.

You outsource the things you’ve already mastered and don’t need to do anymore. You keep doing the things you haven’t figured out yet until you have a repeatable process that someone else can follow.

That’s the difference between building a job and building a business.

The goal isn’t to work less. The goal is to work on higher leverage things. Every time you fire yourself from a low-leverage task, you get to elevate to something more impactful. And over time, you build a machine that creates value whether you’re there or not.

That’s a business.

AI Is not the enemy →

Look, I get it. Every other day there’s some headline about AI taking 50% of white collar jobs in the next five years. Everyone’s freaking out. And honestly, some people should be.

But not you. Not if you’re paying attention to what Jon told me.

He broke down this pyramid that made everything click. At the top is the owner. Below that is expensive employees. Below that is lower-cost employees. And at the bottom is technology, AI, automation, all that stuff.

Your job as a business owner or as someone trying to build a career is to push things downward on that pyramid whenever you can. If technology can do it, let technology do it. If a lower-cost employee can do it, hire them. Save the expensive talent and your own time for the things that actually move the needle.

Here’s the part everyone’s missing though.

If you’re a virtual assistant who does data entry for $3 an hour, you’re cooked. AI is going to chew you up first. If you’re someone who just uploads product SKUs to a Shopify store or moves things around in a spreadsheet, you’re in trouble. That work is getting automated out of existence.

But if you’re someone who talks to customers, solves real problems, builds things, writes actual valuable content and not AI slop, you’re stronger than ever. AI isn’t replacing you. It’s elevating you.

Instead of spending three hours categorizing receipts, you spend 10 minutes letting AI do it and then you spend the rest of your time doing actual consultation work with clients. You just became more valuable, not less.

The people who get destroyed by AI are the ones who only know how to do low-skilled work. The people who win are the ones who know how to use AI to do more high-skilled work.

the FUTUREEE →

Jon told me the future isn’t just AI. The future is AI plus industry expertise. The core AI models will be fine, but the real money is going to be made by people who can take AI and apply it to specific industries.

Think about it. If you become known as the guy who can help roofing companies transform their business with AI and automation, that’s a goldmine. Roofing companies have no idea how to use this stuff. But you do. And you also understand their problems deeply because you’ve worked in the industry or studied it.

Same thing with plumbing. Same thing with law firms. Same thing with real estate agencies. Pick an industry, understand the problems growing companies in that space have, and then use AI and automation to solve those problems.

That’s not a job that’s going away. That’s a job that didn’t even exist five years ago and is about to explode.

So no, AI is not the enemy. AI is a tool. And the people who learn how to wield it are going to be the ones who win.

last thing →

Building a business means progressively removing yourself from the work. Start with the lowest leverage stuff. Master the revenue-driving activities before you hand them off. Use AI to elevate yourself, not replace yourself.

If you want to check out Jon’s company for global hiring, it’s called Sean Passport. And if you want the full conversation with Jon, the podcast episode is live on my YouTube channel.

Love you squad,

Gabriel |

Paternity leave is over. Let’s get after it. Make sure to like the video and subscribe helps the channel out more then you know.

$450M deployed into FinTech’s best founders. Two exits. A food business he helped build to $100M in revenue. A domain company that moved half a billion in sales. He met his co-founder on a random train ride in India. He’s lived on a dollar a day. He’s been in a Justin Bieber music video. He got married in the Metaverse Taco Bell sponsored the whole thing.

And somehow, in the middle of all of that, he built one of the most respected pre-seed FinTech funds in the country.

But here’s what actually got me about Sheel it wasn’t the résumé. It was the way he thinks. He doesn’t connect dots forward. He just keeps choosing the most interesting option available to him and trusts that the dots will connect later. That’s a philosophy. And it’s working.

We talked about what he actually looks for before writing a check at pre-seed, why most founders fail, how he built his network in San Francisco from zero, and why the VC market today is a completely different game than it was 15 years ago.

If you’re building something or thinking about it this conversation is going to hit.

Good morning squad,

Last month I got on a podcast with Tim Stoddart. The dude has built multiple seven figure businesses, owns equity in 10 companies, and is one of Alex Hormozi's 150 follows on X. So when he told me he'd beat the f*ck out of his 20 year old self for not just buying the S&P 500, I had to know why.

investing in private companies →

I asked Tim about investing in private companies. For me it felt like this secret society that meets at the Soho House to discuss these type of deals and I wanted to figure out how us on the squad could get involved. When it comes to private companies it’s not as simple as opening a Fidelity or Robinhood account. Every type of investing that I’ve done to this point has been public. Meaning anyone with a strong wifi password and lives in the US can invest in all the things I’ve done at whatever point in time like stocks, ETFs and crypto.

This is what he told me.

“If I were 20 again, I would go back in time, beat the f*ck out of myself, and say don’t do it. Just put all your money into the S&P and don’t be a big stupid dumb idiot.”

lmao.

Tim shared some of his stories of deploying serious capital. $100,000 into a treatment center where the CEO just went belly up on debt. Another $100,000 into a psychedelics retreat in Costa Rica with a founder who was literally part of Live Nation. The guy knows what he’s doing, right? Up in flames. Then $200,000 into another treatment center that he gives about 50/50 odds right now.

Think about that for a second. That’s $400,000 in capital that either evaporated or is sitting on the edge of a cliff. And this isn’t some random dude making bad decisions. This is someone who actually knows business, knows how to vet opportunities, knows the healthcare space inside and out.

the time I got cooked →

I’ve taken many L’s myself with not sticking to that same philosophy. I got lost in the sauce with NFTs at some point. I thought this would surely be my way to financial freedom and have more money than I know what to do with.

I was in my Ready Player One mindset thinking we were all going to be watching the Stranger Things finale in the metaverse. I saw things like Decentraland and Facebook changing their name to Meta. I thought omg I’m about to get so rich off this.

I invested into NFT projects that had virtual casinos, started looking into buying plots of digital land next to Snoop Dogg’s house in the metaverse, I was DEEP. Like a tale as old as time, your boy deep fried his capital and like he said, the losses hurt way more than the wins feel good.

When you see a position winning, it’s almost like this feeling of ok cool but let’s keep going up. MORE GAINS. But when you take a loss, it’s just straight up a loss. You fall flat on your face.

That’s real talk right there. Because we see all these people on social media flexing their private equity wins, their angel investments, their “I got in early on this startup” stories. We see Mark Cuban and Kevin O’Leary on Shark Tank and think this is how I make billions. Nobody shows you the $100,000 that just disappeared. Nobody posts about staring at the ceiling at night thinking f*ck I’m such an idiot why did I do that.

the real cost of losing →

But here’s what Tim taught me that I wish I knew during my NFT phase. It’s not just $100,000 gone. It’s what that $100,000 could have become over 20 years sitting in an index fund doing absolutely nothing. At 10% annual returns which is what the S&P has historically done, that $100,000 turns into $672,000. That’s the real cost. That’s the actual number you need to think about.

Warren Buffett’s rule number one is don’t lose money. And rule number two is don’t forget rule number one.

The reason you don’t lose money isn’t just because you don’t want to lose the money. It’s because that money that isn’t lost is money earned in the future. Every dollar that you lose is a dollar that’s gone. But more importantly, it’s a dollar that is not getting compounded upon.

That hit different for me.

reps matter more than anything →

Look, I’m not Tim. I don’t have seven figure businesses throwing off cash where I can afford to lose $400K and shrug it off. I’m a dude with a 9 to 5, building a newsletter, booking podcast guests, trying to stack some wealth for my family.

So what am I doing after this conversation? Same boring sh*t I’ve been preaching to you. VOO. QQQ. Dollar cost averaging every month. No more plots of digital land next to anyone’s metaverse house. At least for now… :)

But Tim also brought up this Arnold Schwarzenegger philosophy from his book Total Recall. There’s a whole chapter called Reps and Sets. The idea is simple. You want to get bigger, do more reps. You want to get better, do more reps. When in doubt, just do more.

Tim’s success with Sober Nation? He wrote every single day. Not because he had some secret SEO hack. Not because he knew someone at Google. He just showed up and wrote. He read Copy Blogger every day and literally copied their format. If Copy Blogger wrote three ways to write better headlines, he’d write three ways to improve detox symptoms. Same structure, same bullet points, just applied to his niche.

His whole networking strategy is just being relentlessly all over everybody all the time about everything. What do you do? Are you good at it? Can you help me? Can I learn from you? Can we work together? It’s not some elegant system. It’s just volume. It’s just reps.

That’s what I’m doing right now with this podcast. I’m sending cold DMs every single day to potential guests. Most go unanswered. Some people say yes and then ghost. But every once in a while I land someone like Tim or Pompliano and that one conversation makes the 99 rejections worth it.

the t shirt company story →

Tim spent four years building a t shirt company called New Life Clothing. After four years of grinding, he sold it for $10,000. Huge waste of time financially. Some of the most fun he ever had in his life.

He told me this story about going to a pool party in Vegas. None of his friends drink so they had all this Grey Goose vodka that you have to buy to get the table. They’re just sitting there with all this booze and a circle of people formed around them drinking their alcohol. And someone walked up to the table wearing one of his t shirts. Some random person. And Tim said all those four years of wasted time was worth it in a weird way for that one moment.

I loved that story because I had a similar thing happen with my e commerce store in college. I spent two years on this thing selling bucket hats in Australia. Made like $10,000 or $12,000 total. But my first sale was $7 and I remember thinking some random person just bought my hat online. This is the coolest thing ever.

It’s not always about the money. Sometimes it’s about the craft. Sometimes it’s about doing something that you can’t not do even if it doesn’t make financial sense.

moving forward →

So what does all this mean? Tim doesn’t regret the private investments. He had fun. He learned. He’s living his life. But when I asked him straight up what he’d do differently, he was crystal clear. S&P 500 and chill.

That’s the game for me now. More cold DMs for podcast guests. More effort into the newsletters every week. More consistent investing into index funds. Not sexy. Not gonna get me a Shark Tank episode. But it’s what actually works.

The money will follow if I don’t lose it first. And honestly after talking to Tim, I feel even more confident about that decision.

Love you squad,

Gabriel |

P.S. Full podcast with Tim is up on YouTube. We covered his $10K t shirt company, learning sales with a speech impediment, why SEO isn’t dying, and the Copy Blogger merger. Subscribe if you haven’t. Link in bio.

Disclaimer: This letter is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice. I’m not a financial advisor, and nothing shared here should be considered a recommendation specific to your situation. Always do your own research or consult with a licensed financial professional before making any investment decisions.