July 31, 2022
Entrepreneurial Insights | Andrew Wilkinson on The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish
Check Out the Episode Page and Show Notes
Key Takeaways
- Mimetic desire: whatever the people you surround yourself with want, you end up wanting as well, i.e. being subconsciously driven to achieve external validation rather than intrinsic validation
- The constant desire to want to improve parts of your life or business turns your weaknesses into strengths
- “Most successful people are just an anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity” – Andrew Wilkinson
- Andrew focuses on building businesses that do not compete with venture capital and whose success can be predicted with reasonable certainty
- Andrew applies the “80/20 rule” to learning about health; spend an hour a month reading all of the scientific summaries and then don’t think about it again
- On raising kids with wealth: “At the end of the day, your kids just need to know that you’re there and you love them, and I hope that’s enough.” – Andrew Wilkinson
- The Concept of Self-Binding: create an environment where you can’t do the things you don’t want to do, such as eating ice cream, by removing the stimulus from your environment completely
- The unconscious mind is far more powerful than the conscious mind
Intro
- Andrew Wilkinson (@awilkinson) is the co-founder of Tiny Capital, a holding company that owns over 40 companies across a variety of industries. He is also the co-founder and chairman of WeCommerce, a publicly-traded company that starts, buys, and invests in the leading Shopify businesses
- In this conversation with Shane Parrish, Andrew shares the lessons he’s learned from owning and operating +40 businesses, how he’s reoriented his life following bouts of unhappiness, various habits, and self-improvement hacks to achieve success, and much more.
- Check out these Podcast Notes from Andrew’s appearance on My First Million
- Host: Shane Parrish (@ShaneAParrish)
Books Referenced
- Wanting by Luke Burgis
- A book about mimetic desire and how humans want to believe they can think on their own, but in fact are all creatures of imitation
- Invention: A Life by James Dyson
- Pleased But Not Satisfied by David Sokol
- A book describing how conservative economic analysis and disciplined management practices consistently deliver high-quality business results
- Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke
Andrew’s Dopamine Addiction
- He hit a wall where he didn’t want to get out of bed and didn’t get pleasure from the things that typically brought him pleasure
- Andrew put his phone away for a month and went to his lakehouse; no social media, email, podcasts, etc.
- Initially, he felt like a drug addict going through withdrawal, but after a few days he was able to more fully experience life
- The dopamine fast allowed him to reset his benchmark for various stimuli and reboot his brain
- Here is Andrew’s Twitter thread explaining his dopamine addiction and detox in greater detail
On Mimetic Desire
- Whatever the people you surround yourself with want, you end up wanting as well
- You might not even intrinsically want the thing or want to achieve some professional milestone, but others have modeled it as a desirable thing so you subconsciously pursue it
- Mimetic desire at its worst is envy and people not appreciating what they have, no matter how much they have
- Andrew noticed that even the most successful people at the top of their fields would incessantly compare themselves to even more “successful” people; nothing was ever enough for many of them
What Andrew Wants
- Andrew wants safety and security, and earning money contributes to achieving it
- Resolve the struggle between choosing to wake up and enjoy the day or to make something of the day
- “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” – E.B. White
- Every entrepreneur has an inherent drive to achieve their goals
Your Strengths = Your Weaknesses
- “I am perpetually 20% dissatisfied with everything.” – James Dyson
- The constant desire to want to improve parts of your life or business turns your weaknesses into strengths
- This is the curse and the blessing of the entrepreneur
- “Most successful people are just an anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity” – Andrew Wilkinson
Advantages of Being in Canada
- The lack of access to capital forced Andrew to run his first business with discipline and to focus on profitability
- Example of turning a weakness into a strength
- Canada is separated from the mimetic-desire-silos of LA, New York, etc.
How Andrew Runs His Company
- Companies in the venture capital space can out-spend and out-market their competition to win, sometimes even with an inferior product
- Andrew focuses on building businesses that do not compete with venture capital and whose success can be predicted with reasonable certainty
- This steers him away from areas that require massive amounts of risk and capital, such as artificial intelligence and drones, for example
- Fish where the fish are; there are riches in niches
- This approach results in Andrew building what some people might think of as “boring businesses”
Lessons Learned From Hiring Hundreds of CEOs
- There are three profiles of CEOs: founders, scalers, and steady-states
- Hiring the right CEO for a company depends on the stage of growth that the company is in
- The first thing Andrew looks for in a CEO is their ethical foundation
- Would you let this person babysit your kids?
- Would you be okay getting stuck on a cruise ship with this person for three days?
- Are you “nodding along” with what they have to say and their vision
How Andrew Uses His Wealth to Live a Meaningful Life
- Buying a plane, yacht, fancy car, etc. is not fulfilling to Andrew, but having money allows him to meet interesting people around the world and bring fascinating people to his town
- He wants to make a big impact in his small pond of Victoria
- He owns a local news company, several restaurants, and is building a hotel
- Andrew created an entrepreneur group in his local community where founders and business owners gather to answer and discuss deep questions about life
Health, Exercise, & Biology
- Many scientific discoveries made in laboratories do not proliferate into businesses, so Andrew has self-funded several biological studies and projects that are interesting to him
- He monitors all of his health metrics from sleep to blood glucose, for example
- Andrew applies the “80/20 rule” to learning about health
- Spend an hour a month reading all of the scientific summaries and then don’t think about it again
How to Raise Kids With Wealth
- He’s still learning how to instill the drive and hustle into his kids
- “At the end of the day, your kids just need to know that you’re there and you love them, and I hope that’s enough.” – Andrew Wilkinson
- Children that come from wealth can pursue careers that they’re actually interested in versus pursuing careers for the sole intention of making money
Public Market Investing
- Warren Buffett’s way of doing business inspired Andrew to start Tiny Capital and begin acquiring businesses in the private market
- Investing in Bill Ackman’s fund, Pershing Square Holdings (PSHZF), was the first time Andrew got into public market investing
- He paid for a $60K charity lunch to meet Bill Ackman and essentially do due diligence on him and his fund
- Pershing Square Holdings is Andrew’s only public holding and he views it as a backup retirement fund
Running a Public Company
- Doing something for the first time is incredibly stressful
- Allocating capital well and finding great businesses is the foundation of the running of public company
- The hardest business negotiations are ones that involve nefarious, manipulative people
Andrew’s Habits for Success & Self-Improvement Hacks
- Have a crazy sense of pace
- Broadcast your intentions to your friends and make it known to them that you’re starting (X) to create “public shame” if you go back on your word
- Hire the wrong person first and just start whatever it is you’re thinking about starting
- Some people adopt the carpenter’s phrase of measure twice and cut once, but they just end up perpetually measuring
- Self-Bind: create an environment where you can’t do the things you don’t want to do, such as eating ice cream, by removing the stimulus from your environment completely
- This strategy is influenced by Dr. Anna Lembke’s work on addiction and dopamine
- The unconscious mind is far more powerful than the conscious mind
Dealing With Stress
- Insufficient rest can cause you to turn a molehill into a mountain
- Physiology drive all; humans are just bags of chemicals, and you’re not going to feel well if your chemicals are wrong
What Does Success Look Like?
- Early in his career, he wanted the mansion, Ferrari, and his name on a billboard, but he quickly realized those things wouldn’t satisfy him in any way
- Andrew just wants his kids to love him
