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The Really Rich Journal

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The Strangeness of Steel and Glass

In Chicago, it’s belly laughs and a fizzy domestic beer-pouring out of a bar into the snow-covered streets, back-slapping a stranger in a Bears jacket. In Miami, your car doors better open up instead of out if you want a seat at the big kids' table. In LA, it’s about your follower count and when your last pilot aired. Choose a flavor.

But, in New York, it’s all about style.

Style like armor, style that will bankrupt you, style that proves you “get it”, or style that ends up getting you killed when it all goes sideways on the wrong block. Perhaps because of the sheer density, it's the only way to feel like an individual in a sea of anonymity.

New York is the land of make-believe where yesterday is meaningless and tomorrow is a runaway subway car spray-painted in question marks. It's far from perfect, but, no other city can match its glamor and gravitas.

It's jam-packed with wealth of the self-made, the raider, the madman painter, rather than the ensconced, wood-paneled wealth of London. You should show up having done something big or at least look like you've done something big. No one has a reason to talk to you otherwise. The analyst dresses like an MD when no one is looking and the MD dresses like he owns the damn company. Even the trust fund kids are working on something halfway decent, you think, as they mumble an elevator pitch to you outside a bodega in Little Italy at 2am.

As a teenager, I had the good fortune of stumbling around New York, tearing the patch off of my school blazer and jumping a train to Penn Station.

We're just a couple of working stiffs, bartender, not high school students! Another round of McSorley's, pweeeeze!

That trick worked 50% of the time (which was plenty) before 9/11 changed the paradigm around falsifying your age and taking pretty much for granted in a world where your parents can disappear forever into a heap of white, smoking rubble before the lunch bell rings.

The Deconstruction

Most visitors are intimidated by New York. And for good reason. New York doesn't need you. There's someone waiting in line right behind you, hungrier, crazier, and more desperate. Whether it's for wealth, notoriety, or sheer cool. It's designed to confuse you and deposit you at a shitty TGI Fridays in Times Square far from the real action if you don't know any better. It’s life on hard mode.

The buildings hide what's really going on like a jungle thicket - conversations, love affairs, midnight violence, and godlike triumph generally take place at ground level. Especially at the big parties in the autumn and winter.

I skillfully played in this circus for a good portion of my life. I wore my mask of cool along with custom made suits and a $100 haircut. I was a high-paid mannequin, retrofitting pieces of things I "borrowed" from someone else that, together, became something that looked like I owned it just enough to pull huge sums of money from in it the form of a paycheck. But, of course, the bank owned it (where I worked at the time), not me. That never sat right.

But don't cry a tear for me yet. There were a few perks.

People live like this?

In New York, as the weather cools down, a certain crowd pops on a tuxedo or black dress for the charity galas in the private clubs lining 44th Street Midtown or the Upper East Side. I was just successful enough to even know these things existed and barely rich enough to buy a ticket. One of these events in particular changed me forever.

When I was young it seemed that everyone in these oil-painting-lined-rooms, turning sideways from champagne and heavy-handed martinis - everyone (or at least I thought) had done something big. There were medals on lapels (!), celebrities, socialites, and young entrepreneurs. It was more than money, although that had something to do with it. I want to be one of those people!

Well, what about me?

Reality: I fought my way into a good school and ensured I was the sharpest kid during campus interviews to ensure I didn't suffer through a split-second of time without income. Driven by fear. Just good enough. Anxious and unsure of his spot.

At these parties, the walls seemed to grab me by my bowtie and threaten, "You better amount to something one day or don’t come back!"

Looking back, I needed that wakeup call from the Ghosts of Parties Past.

This weekend, I was there at the same party that filled me with shock and awe years ago. But, this year was very, very different.

I arrived like a forgotten outlaw kicking in the doors at the old Saloon with golden revolvers and the fastest horse in Colorado. The makeup and diamonds and Patek Philippes were at eye level this time.

You thought I was dead, huh?

Even the room seemed smaller. Like seeing a rollercoaster that once terrified you as a child as what it is: a tiny stack of popsicle sticks.

That’s because after a decade of turmoil, I decided to do things that mattered to me whether I made the money or not. This year I've lived that ethos in its purest form. And I still have work to do, but so far, so good.

Now, I’m not afraid to walk in the door anymore. Actually, I’m not afraid to walk in the door anywhere.

And it’s not about medals or money.

The Reveal

In retrospect, I was missing two things as a younger man: passion and time.

Passion for working only on meaningful things and the necessary time for those things to work out.

If you're not living with passion you're stealing from the universe, going against nature. Passion is critical because it starts to put the pieces in order for you automatically and a plan eventually presents itself. As Toucan Sam says, "follow your nose!"

What are we so afraid of? If you’re pointed in the right direction and you never give up, you’ll get there eventually or die tryin’, right? Lace up and let's get going.

Because you absolutely must be pointed in some direction! Your passion is a gift to me too. I don’t want a dispassionate doctor examining me, just like I don’t want a bored accountant combing through my financials before tax season.

I only want to consume baguettes baked by someone who thinks about bread during sexual intercourse.

Badasses only.

When you focus on stuff that matters a strange side effect presents itself: confidence. Even if what you do is uncommon or downright odd.

Now, the guy covered in medals want to talk to me. I have a viewpoint, I stand for something, I've taken risk and gotten a bloody nose for loving something too much.

Back then, I felt inferior because I wasn’t working on something I cared about. I was going through the motions. I didn’t have a great cocktail story to share to a decked-out fellow reveler. I wasn’t building a life I was proud of.

Who wants to be around someone like that?

The Challenge

Of course, you're witnessing my second act that looks clean and sparkly from a distance. But, I had to get here somehow. It was iterative and full of pitfalls. But here we are. Much closer to the pin (pardon the golf slang) than we were last year.

Today, I build things open, I try to show the values that got me through life alive with more people liking me than hating me. I believe in showing you the things people tried to hide from me my whole like. Interestingly, I've made a few bucks as a side effect.

Now, when I walk into the room, I’m one.

I know I'm fighting for something that I give a shit about. When I tied my bowtie Saturday night, I knew it belonged around my neck--I'm no longer an imposter wrapped in velvet. I’m doing the work of a “human being” to bring in the language of emperor and stoic, Marcus Aurelius.

I live for me and you at the same time. It's ugly and beautiful.

Now, I’d like to ask a question, dear reader, if I may?

When you stroll up to your next big event, neighborhood meetup, reunion, Friday poker night, fishing trip, softball league, Tupperware sale, volleyball camp, pasta-making course, Discord community...

Do you feel passion for what you are building?

Don't let yourself down and don't you dare let me down.

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

Global Markets: Social Media Smackdown

There is an absolute truckload of dynamite rolling quietly through the moonlit streets in the social media landscape. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that TikTok has swiftly gobbled up the attention of the entire world in about three years. Let's face it, TikTok is part of the reason you’re reading this paragraph.

However, what’s truly remarkable is how poorly other platforms have reacted; childlike panic, either copying or doubling down on things people don’t want from them. Their knee-jerk reactions have only made TikTok stronger. There is an attention monopoly right now. And the US government isn't comfortable with it, considering who owns the damn thing.

And the comedy here is that the only way TikTok is going to lose in the US is through legal manipulation.

I'm sure you know, at this point of maximum saturation, there is a very real chance that the magical entertainment machine may be banned from use entirely. And unlike banning alcohol during prohibition combing the streets for liquor stockpiles - in a digital world you only need to flick a switch and poof it’s gone. Instantly.

The attention rush to another digital platform will create a deafening sucking sound. Nobody is going to rush to the bookstore.

So where is everyone going to run?

Google has always been the most friendly towards creators (80% of the reason you're on social media now; 10% friends; 10% cat vids) and is the only platform that has pledged to reward short form creators (like me) with a share of ad revenue in 2023. This makes for an interesting scenario if a few dominoes fall.

Meta (Facebook & Instagram) simply CAN’T invest in creators (even if they wanted to, which they don't) the same way that Google has pledged with their capital commitment to the Metaverse. If TikTok gets shut down, the rush would be to both Meta and YouTube in a disorganized fashion, BUT with talent eventually drifting magnetically to YouTube and leaving their IG profiles up like an abandoned Myspace page when there's no longer growth or financial incentive remaining.

Incentives are real.

In addition, management at Google is quicker to cut losing strategies than Meta.

Meta, in their commitment to VR and AR, abandoned the one thing people are paying for today. The incentives are continually misplaced and the user experience is degrading.

We can already see how "new" platforms like Rumble can scoop up audience by being creator-first, whatever the outlandish viewpoint they're promoting.

Attention ain't loyal.

If you wanted to express this (and unfortunately this trade has already moved a ton with the Meta crash, so a pair trade doesn't make sense right now):

• Simply go long GOOG

• Buy OTM GOOG calls for TikTok event

You could place a pair trade, market cap weighted of long Google/short Meta, but Meta likely benefits short term too from a TikTok ban too - I think this trade may make more sense after a TikTok ban (if it happens at all).

The short form ecosystem (in terms of Google's overall revenue) is small, however, it promotes high-quality real estate to run more ads on in the future which they're turning on Q1 2023 for their YouTube Shorts product. Oh, and they get oodles more data about what holds user attention.

Finally, I believe that there is a very real medium-term scenario in which Meta continues to lose trust from both advertisers and creators, doesn't stick the landing on the Metaverse in time, and slides into a content wasteland, eventually ripping apart in a Lehman-style collapse that "nobody saw coming".

*This isn't investment advice.

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