Hello again, Squad.

The Really Rich Journal

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The Weekly Tone

When I first starting posting videos on social media a wee bit more than a year ago (heck of a ride so far, huh, kids?) I didn't pick a target. Not a number, not a person, not a level of influence. Not, a "when I get to Drake's house" moment.

In terms of role models, I didn't have a creator in mind either. The whole thing was so damn experimental in the beginning, so why waste my time lusting after thy neighbor's internet real estate? I was too ignorant to know who to copy.

Oh, and I didn't use social media much in the first place. I didn't grow up with a favorite YouTuber, like those of a younger generation. I worshiped indie rock musicians who soldered their own analog pedalboards. The bands I listen to barely have an Instagram.

However, starting out, I knew I would be able to make interesting, short videos which were rapidly becoming all the rage in late 2021. So, I went on my merry way oblivious.

As the "Rich vs Really Rich" series began to pick up steam and a few bucks began rolling in, naturally I started looking for an edge. I remembered from the HBO special "The Last Dance" that Michael Jordon would pick imagined rivals and create micro-grudges on purpose for every game to add some extra fire under his ass.

Many think it was his secret weapon for flipping on the afterburners and turning the tides on games that didn't look so good for the Bulls. It was his reason.

With that in mind, I started to flip through my FYP on TikTok to check out who else was in my lane. There weren't many. As it turns out, financial humor is a pretty niche crowd (welcome to the party, everyone!).

However, after some time I came across @richtrosales who sported about 700,000 followers to my puny 100,000 at the time. That bastard. Thinking I'd "be like Mike" for a few games - I pinned my target (metaphorically) on Rosales. I officially had someone to chase.

However, I harbored a dark secret deep in the recesses of my mind: I actually liked this guy's skits. That was why I suppose I could effectively hate someone I didn't know - jealousy if a funny thing.

Nevertheless, every day I woke up thinking, "How many more weeks until I catch him?" If I pull X followers a week, maybe it'll take a year. When I didn't feel like making a video, I imagined this internet stranger waking up earlier and fresher than me chugging a strong-ass cup of coffee ready to steal my bacon-and-egg breakfast. Sure enough, I got to work pretty fast after that.

There are a handful of mathematical things humans are pretty bad about wrapping their heads' around. One of them is exponential growth. In a few months of a self-enforced, completely insane content schedule (five unique skits delivered every week for six months, thank you very much), I had approached Rosales's numbers. I'd pass him well before the end of the month. Soon, I "won".

I enjoyed a hollow victory dance.

Now, as the guy on the internet that makes skits about practicing open-mindedness and lauding creativity above cutthroat competition, eventually you catch yourself doing some stupid, hypocritical things. I'm a human, not one of my characters, after all.

Determining that I hated this random dude on the internet, turned me into a wild animal who wanted nothing more than a number on a screen to tick higher than his. A meaningless goal and a heck of a waste of energy. When I achieved it, I felt a serious sense of disappointment. Dopamine crash.

Soon, a feeling of embarrassment washed over me. What's going on here?

Have you ever noticed that often times, directly next to a Coca-Cola vending machine, there's a freaking Pepsi vending machine? Ever wonder why the heck would Coke want to live next door to their mortal enemy?

Well, as it turns out, with neighboring machines, the choice for a consumer changes from "do I want a soda?" to "do I want a Coke or Pepsi?". This has been studied many times, the "competition" actually generates more sales for BOTH Coke and Pepsi. In fact, when both players win it is not called competition anymore - it's collaboration.

Enlightening, professor! But, back to Jordan.

Basketball isn't soda. Michael Jordan played a zero-sum game on the court: both teams can never win at the same time like Coke and Pepsi. Off the court (where you and I live), it's rarely zero sum.

And not to complicate things, but I can't help myself, but Michael Jordan off the court isn't playing zero-sum either, he indirectly raised everyone's lifetime pay in basketball by raising the profile of the game as a whole.

So, here I was thinking that Rosales was "stealing" my lunch, when we're both missing the lobster buffet with caviar topper right around the corner. We're both soda machines, so to speak.

Luckily, in painful scenarios, I've been able to train my mind and body to open the possibility to the opposite way of thinking. This has taken years of practice. Maybe you're in pain because you've been dead wrong on your approach? I'm able to reflect after a few deep breaths.

So, I picked up my phone and typed out a DM.

"Hey man, I love what you're doing. Would be cool to connect on a call and trade some tips. Best of luck either way."

Send.

And I meant it. It wasn't a trick, ploy, or "keep your enemies closer", or "California nice" play - we were both making funny videos online. I'm incapable of delivering a false compliment. Wouldn't you want to know everyone in your little world?

Maybe over time, people would think "what kind of financial humor do I want to watch today?" rather than "do I want to watch financial humor" like the famous soda example.

A few days later, Richie responded and was pumped to connect. We hopped on a call and shared priceless tips on growth, engagement, content planning, and what brands to work with. In fact, we both go so much value out of it, we decided to do a Friday download call where we could share highlights from the week.

We became fast buddies, and why not? We were doing the exact same thing every day that a very small portion of the general population is doing. We were in the social media trenches day in and day out. We learned more from each other than we could from 100 social media courses.

Right now as I type, I'm on a flight out to LA to celebrate Richie's birthday with the rest of the TikTok Mafia. I won't name the rest of the names, otherwise you'll accuse me of being in the internet illuminati.

And how great is this? As fallible humans we can change, turn on a dime, into something, someone more powerful and capable. We can kick open the doors to a place where everyone can win bigger together.

So, who's your Pepsi?

Suggestion: Don't mistake competition for an opportunity to collaborate and win big.

This week, I’m taking meetings from Miami, FL

Global Markets: FTX & SBF Boondoggle

I'm not going to approach this news story like you think I am. Let's go deeper than the actual facts and my knee-jerk reaction (you can read those elsewhere) and I'll do my best to explain the fundamentals of what's really happening, underneath the surface, so you can spot the signs of a high risk environment next time.

First, we shouldn't be shocked about the FTX blowup if we actually understand risk. Let me explain.

Standard deviations (the normal curve) mean something in organic nature (stuff that contains carbon). Humans, birds, trees, bacteria.

Normal distribution or the "bell curve" is an acceptable model in most of the animal kingdom - height, weight, number of digits etc. Most people fall between a banded threshold. There are no 20 foot tall men to steal all the ladies on Tinder. As humans, we mistakenly think the bell curve is the only distribution game in town.

But, what about in silicon and zeroes and ones?

Simply, in financial markets, we're outside the world of normal distribution. Financial prices don't follow a normal curve, and when you think you do, you leave yourself open to insane amounts of risk.

For those who still believe in a normal curve, this is called "fat tails distribution" (if you're stupid enough to believe in using normal curves), referring to the extremes outside the center "bell".

However, options traders and mathematicians, refer to price action in financial markets as Mandelbrotian (who discovered this phenomenon) or fractal distribution, where the extremes are more likely than you think and don't cluster "normally".

Fractals: income, stock returns, corporate marketshare...

So, in things unbounded by a natural governing mechanism - like DNA - we're in another ballpark. Financial assets can move about wildly, crashing "up" (fixed income) or "down" (risk assets) in unpredictable manners that fall far outside normal distributions, so much so that it's pointless to even use those curves as risk models. Things blow up more often than they "should" if you're using a dusty bell curve.

NB: Many think 2008 was a result of using normal curve overlays on financial risk models.

In the world of fractals, simply, the unpredictable is more extreme than you can imagine.

Expect the unpredictable!

Here's where it gets even more interesting. The more safe we think something is in the world of fractals, the more dangerous it is because of your lack of preparation or sound risk management tools. You're totally unprepared and don't even know it.

You've built your home on a hidden fault line.

To throw in an additional factor, the government is inclined to "prop up" traditional financial institutions that support the orderly flow of commerce backed by fiat currency.

However, in crypto, which challenges the autonomy of a government's power by creating disconnected computerized assets - there's not a backstop. So total ruin for these large machines are seen as advantageous to governments. There's incentive for them to blow up.

In other words, there's no "too big to fail" in crypto.

Combining fractals and the misalignment of incentives means that crypto is a double "black swan" environment - crypto can crash and it can be abandoned by regulators when it blows up. There ain't no FDIC for bitcoin.

To make matters worse, fallible humans are at the helm of these crypto firms (not saints, as many believed SBF to be), and their personal integrity can make or break an entire market.

SBF's (CEO of FTX) horrific risk management and now fugitive status undermines the entire crypto market as a whole, where contagion will spread and will be allowed to blow up - as the government enjoys renewed strength under crypto's weakness and public distrust.

However, because we're playing in an environment that's (a) fractal and (b) misaligned with government incentives, we should have "known" that something like this was entirely possible at the outset.

We shouldn't be shocked.

I believe there will be several additional mainstream exchange failures before this is over.

*This isn't investment advice.

Mindset: It's not about what you want, it's about what you can give.

I have the privilege (or curse, depending on the day) of receiving thousands of unsolicited messages. If something goes particularly viral, that may mean a few hundred in one day. Now, I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I read the vast majority of them. Why? Because one out of every thousands is a legitimate opportunity or valuable relationship.

I've actually made real world friends and strategic partnerships from cold DMs.

We all want to grow our startups, agencies, productized services, and meet more people. There's a right and wrong way to go about it. I've seen the spectrum.

Now, the reality is, at the volume I see, I'm probably still missing dozens of pretty amazing offers, people, partnerships, whatever, but their messages were so ineffectively written I'd never (and will never) know.

In fact, so many people "shoot their [business] shot" with awfully self-centered, valueless offerings, it's worth a Journal post about the topic. I want you to succeed and reach that person you need to reach.

So I'll tell you how to do it the right way.

Every person I've ever connected with from cold outreach follows a pattern:

• Personalize, personalize, personalize - if you know I like cars, mention it

• Offer extreme, personalized (!) value - I don't want to drink beer with a stranger for no reason; I do want to hear about your strategy for helping me grow or a free helping hand for something that's costly for me (but cheap for you) to perform - and I'll magically help you in return

• Be cool either way and say it - if I respond or not, you're not going to freak out because you're a reasonable person and I'm not Brittney Spears in her heyday

If you can't do this at scale (you're an entrepreneur, agency owner, salesperson), I recommend using AI outreach tools like FastOutreach.ai (I built the company to solve this exact problem) which eliminates the possibility of sending a generic message.

Here's a few awesome DMs I've received (and my reactions):

• Offer of free specialized education: Hey man - I see you're in Istanbul - I don't know if you drink whiskey (I don't) but if you'd like I can bring a great bottle or we can just have coffee (much better). I can teach you about blockchain top to bottom in an hour and I bet you'll find a way to make money from it (I learned more from this hour than reading dozens of articles)

• Offer of free promotion: I saw your new launch - I have a sales company that could greatly benefit from using it - would you be up for a quick coffee (quick coffee is the best)? Either way I'm happy to promote it (we're friends now)

• Offer of cool experiences: I have an exotic car import/export business and will be in Miami over the weekend - let me know if you'd like to connect - I want to learn about how to grow an audience and in exchange you can come by and play with some of the cool cars (I got to learn about car collecting and buying/selling rare cars; free for him, valuable for me)

If you offer extreme, personalized value to someone (or groups of people) you want to meet, over the long run you can't help but win.

🤝 How I can help you:

1. The Entrepreneur’s Field Guide (Book) - learn the rules for entrepreneurship and how to blaze your own path.

2. The Guided Journey (Course) - I’ll be your personal guide on your path to success in my comprehensive digital lecture course

3. The Really Rich Podcast (Free) - a weekly deep dive into business, finance, and wealth mindset.