The Exchanges

Q uh, when you kind of introduce yourself? Cause you have A newsletter. That's pretty cool. You know, uh, this country and cashflow newsletter, you have an investment fund and business there. You have built and owned businesses. I think majority share in some businesses. So like, what do you, how do you describe this Jack of all trades? So hi, I'm Cody. Here's what I do. What do you say?

A Well, I think if I'm on an airplane sitting next to somebody, I usually tell them I'm a salesperson, so I don't have to talk too much. Uh, but in, in a conversation where I was trying to impress somebody, you know, I, I'd probably say I'm an investor. I, I'm a private equity investor. I run a fund that's about a couple hundred million bucks focused on cannabis. Before that, I did emerging markets, a couple billion dollars raised there. And, uh, and now I write about all the things I wish I knew when I was first figuring out anything to do with this green language of money. Um, and I do that at Contrary and Thinking and I mailed the two, but I think these days that's not that weird. There's a ton of VCs, not so many PE investors out there probably that Write about investing and share their ideas. And I kind of think that's probably the future and why it's going, going forward.

AI assessment note: “in a conversation where I was trying to impress somebody... I'd probably say I'm an investor”

Q a, um, A behavioral observation. So just a behavioral phenomenon. You notice people doing something, or you notice the pendulum swinging, or people used to feel one way, or the popular sentiment is one thing, but you notice people starting to gravitate towards the other end of that, uh, of that spectrum. That's usually where there's like a real, real opportunity. So what's, what's an observation here that you have?

A Yeah, so, so if people don't know the Trad Wife movement, I find it fascinating, and basically how I came across it, as one does, As I was on Instagram, scrolling my life away, and I saw this, like, beautiful woman, flowy dress, no shoes, running through, like, what I could only describe as a field that was her house. And, um, and overlaid on top of it, she had, like, her little child in front of her, and it was like, girl boss, question mark, I want to be a hobbit mama. And I was just, like, giggling kind of ridiculously at this, and then I thought, ah, I kind of, I kind of feel that. Like, I feel like, We, we know from COVID everybody like wanted to go be a gentleman farmer, right? I think you guys talked about that, but this is like the two point O version. And so what happened from this one video I saw is that Instagram realized I watched it longer than I guess I do other things. So I got served up all this stuff. And boy, before you fucking know it, uh, Sean, I buy some white pumpkins, some flowers to press onto them. And I'm fucking gluing pansies on a pumpkin. Now you actually know me. They're like, I don't have hobbies. Like all I do is work. We run a bunch of businesses. I'm like, not that fun. And I'm, I'm sitting in front of the TV gluing pumpkins, and that's when I realized, I think this is gonna be huge. So I looked up the TikTok views for this search of Trad Wife,…

AI assessment note: “if people don't know the Trad Wife movement, I find it fascinating”

Q Okay. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. Now the math works. So thousand boxes, average, 15 dollars a month of renting out the PO boxes. And how do you get customers to like, what does she do to get, what does your friend Lisa do to get customers? How does she acquire these PO box tenants?

A The smartest way, what I talked to her when you're doing, she built the first one that took a year and a half to become profitable because she had to do what you were just talking about. It's not really that complex of a business. It's ads. So PPC, It's dropping actual hard mailings in the surrounding neighborhood. It's things like she does like a book set up out front, little, um, pop-ups for the neighborhood where you can like, you know, free packing. If you ship this day, all that kind of stuff, those squiggly arm things, you know, that you put outside of a new unit, all that stuff. And then, uh, she, uh, but, but the second store I told her to buy. And so what she did is went Out and bought an already an existing store that had customers and then just upsold them. And that's a much easier way to do it. And so you buy the store for about two to three X profit. Her second store she got for about 1.5 X retiring, uh, owner. And then she was able to take that business and sort of double the revenue for that one.

AI assessment note: “It's ads. So PPC, It's dropping actual hard mailings in the surrounding neighborhood.”

Q Um, okay. We'll start. We'll end on these last two. Um, you wrote, uh, how to collect cool people. I don't know what collect means in this case, but is that a typo or did you really mean how to collect cool people?

A I did mean that. Well, actually I wish Sam was here cause he would laugh at this one. But, um, so one of the things that I think is important for investors or VCs or anybody, um, I guess really who wants to be in the startup game is like, how do you make a connection with a human like you, right? So You know, we get to know each other on Twitter. I kind of retweet you a few times, but before the social media game was there, um, how I actually met Sam originally, I liked one of his articles that he wrote in the hustle years ago. And, um, and I just did some research on Sam and was like, you know, I just think he's gonna, he's gonna do some stuff. I don't know what the hustle was small at the time. Uh, but I, I think I want to know him and I want him in my Rolodex in some way so I could bother him about things. And, um, And so I found out what his favorite candy was, which is Butterfingers. I don't know if it still is now. And so I shipped him this ludicrous sized box of Butterfingers, right? Just like a shit ton of Butterfingers to the point where like, he didn't have a lot of choices except to like call me back and say like, you know what? Thanks. Um, and you know, Sam really well. I mean, he's not always like, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so anyway, so, and then I did that with another good friend of both of ours, Noah Kagan, except it was something about tacos. At the time, be…

AI assessment note: “I did mean that.”

Q So, you, you have the content business, and then you have your buying businesses stuff. Is there a third part of what you do, like, just passive investing or anything like that, or are those the two things that you do? Yeah.

A Well, I guess we have sort of three different businesses now. So one is the content business, which is the one that's super public. Um, and we kind of stumbled into that, I think only two years ago. So that would be like the latter part of twenty-twenty is when, ah, we started creating a business around content, and I was in private equity at the time when I started that. And then, um, that today is comprised of like newsletter, we have a community, We have, uh, a bunch of different media channels, and now I guess a couple newsletters. Uh, we have a course on buying businesses, and we do a little bit of ad sponsorship stuff, but I don't, I don't really love that. I think we're gonna change the model to only talk about the products of the businesses we own and our own products, so I'm kind of messing around with that, looking at, like, how the Daily Wire does it, for instance. Um, and then the second business we have is what was the family office, what's now Main Street Holding Company, and that is, like, The small businesses that I talk about. So we've owned everything from podcast production businesses, to, um, graphic design agencies, to laundromats, to car washes, to HVAC.

AI assessment note: “Well, I guess we have sort of three different businesses now.”