This is Moneywise, a podcast where host Daniel Berk is joined by high-net-worth guests to explore exclusive insights into personal finance and lifestyle tailored for other high-net-worth people, or those on their way. They'll get radically transparent about the numbers, revealing things like their burn rates, portfolios, and spending habits. This podcast was made for the Hampton community, a private, highly-vetted, peer membership community for founders and CEOs of fast-growing, tech-enabled startups. Check it out at https://joinhampton.com/.
We're still surprised people did this but... 50+ founders worth $10M to $4B reveal their personal finances. Here it is: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wr Why do we do this? Because if you're an aspirational person or someone who runs a business and is making money, it's incredibly challenging to figure out what to do. Information is impossible to find — and that's what we put together: the net worth reveal and why we do this podcast, Moneywise. He turned down $250 million for less than half his company — and admits he'd say yes today. Onyi Odunukwe is the son of two Nigerian immigrant doctors who dropped out of nursing school during finals week and opened a tanning salon at 21. By 30 he had seven locations, sold five to Palm Beach Tan for $2.3 million in a single week, and thought he was rich. Eight years later his net worth is $247 million — roughly $100M in commercial real estate, $194M in business equity across 26 companies, and under $10M in cash — and he recently walked away from a $250 million offer for 49% of Glo Tanning. This episode gets into the exact breakdown of a $247M net worth, why he rejected the biggest check of his life and what changed his mind since, his $75-100K monthly burn (full-time driver, live-in nanny, a ranch on the way), the franchise math behind Blackstone's $8B Jersey Mike's deal, how he plans to keep his kids from being ruined by money — and a confession he's never made publicly before. Also, this podcast is made by Hampton, which is a community for founders doing on average $20 million a year in revenue. We saw a lot of these money conversations happening privately behind closed doors and we thought, "What the heck, let's make it public." If you are a founder, apply here: http://joinhampton.com/mw Sponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com Subscribe to Moneywise: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneywisepodcast Follow Daniel on X: https://x.com/danielcberk Listen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts: [search "Moneywise Hampton"]
We're still surprised people did this but... 50+ founders worth $10M to $4B reveal their personal finances. Here it is: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wr Why do we do this? Because if you're an aspirational person or someone who runs a business and is making money, it's incredibly challenging to figure out what to do. Information is impossible to find — and that's what we put together: the net worth reveal and why we do this podcast, Moneywise. He got his first $5M check and expected to feel superhuman. The next day was one of the most disappointing of his life. Jesse Pujji walked away from a Goldman Sachs job where he made $500K at 25 — with a boss making $3M and a group head making $20M — to bootstrap an ad agency on $33K per partner and a stack of Amex cards. Ampush cracked the Facebook arbitrage before almost anyone: $100K in monthly revenue in June 2010 became $2M a month with $600K in EBITDA fourteen months later. He scaled it to half a billion in annual ad spend and 250 employees without raising a dollar, turned down $25M at 27, sold 20% to Red Ventures in 2015, and sold the whole thing to New Mountain Capital in 2022 for somewhere between $40M and $60M on a 35% stake. He never got the nine-figure number he made up in his head, and he says chasing it was the mistake. This episode gets into the exact allocation of a post-exit portfolio, why Jesse refuses to let his advisors put illiquid startup equity on his balance sheet, what $500K a year of "normal" spending actually buys, and why he asked his financial advisor how people possibly spend more than that. He's honest about the gap between the money he expected to change him and the money that didn't. And we spend real time on the part most founders avoid: three kids who never saw him grind, a Greenlight allowance split into thirds, a $63 JCPenney paycheck at 16 that taught him more than any of it, and the question of whether to leave them anything at all. Also, this podcast is made by Hampton, which is a community for founders doing on average $20 million a year in revenue. We saw a lot of these money conversations happening privately behind closed doors and we thought, "What the heck, let's make it public." If you are a founder, apply here: http://joinhampton.com/mw Timestamps: 00:00 — Jesse's origin story: immigrant household in St. Louis, a snow shoveling business in middle school, and $33K each plus Amex cards to start Ampush 02:00 — The Facebook arbitrage that changed everything: $100K/month in June 2010 to $2M in revenue and $600K in EBITDA fourteen months later 02:49 — "Sandbox entrepreneurship" — Facebook cold-calls them: "Who the hell are you guys? You're one of our top 100 advertisers" 04:24 — Why he left Goldman at 25 making $500K: "I would rather make half of my future expected earnings and do something I feel excited about" 06:18 — The $25M offer two years in, why they said no, and the $3M dividend they took instead — $1M each, which bought his SF house 07:30 — The made-up number that wrecked them: hoping for $150M, getting $60–75M offers, and turning down $190M in Marin stock 09:24 — The Red Ventures deal and $5M after tax: "I thought I would get wings or superhuman strength... nothing changed" 11:16 — 2022: selling to New Mountain and walking away without going with the deal 13:12 — The exit number, on the record: a $40–60M range on a stake "a little bit more than a third" 16:04 — The Zone of Genius framework, and why being a CEO sat in his zone of excellence — good at it, drained by it 17:52 — Gateway X by the numbers 19:06 — Whether the scarcity ever goes away: "nine days out of ten" became "one day out of ten," and the coach question he couldn't answer 20:16 — The Deer Valley condo, and finally understanding why people buy vacation homes 21:08 — Full portfolio breakdown and why he tells his advisors to mark his startup equity at zero 23:24 — Annual spend 26:52 — The schedule that makes it work: Tuesdays and Thursdays he misses bedtime, Monday/Wednesday/Friday he doesn't, and he deletes Slack on vacation 28:16 — The thing that keeps him up: "They've gotten all the fruits of the grind without actually observing the grind" 29:23 — Greenlight, allowance equal to their age, and splitting it into thirds — spend, save, give 30:19 — Running a Starbucks P&L with his 9-year-old daughter in the store 32:30 — The four-bucket framework: spend it, give it to the government, give it to charity, or give it to your kids 34:44 — A Schnucks family board member on generational wealth: "Money doesn't ruin kids. Lack of values does." 35:36 — What Jesse wants said at his funeral Sponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com Subscribe to Moneywise: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneywisepodcast Follow Daniel on X: https://x.com/danielcberk Listen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts: [search "Moneywise Hampton"]
Craig Newmark turned down an $11 billion offer for Craigslist, and he's already given away $570 million of his own money chasing a number even bigger than that. This podcast is made by Hampton, a community for founders doing on average $25 million a year in revenue. We saw a lot of these money conversations happening privately behind closed doors and we thought, "What the heck, let's make it public." If you're a founder, apply here: joinhampton.com/mw Craig founded Craigslist off a mailing list in 1995. He turned down that $11 billion offer, and since then has given away $570 million through his foundation, aiming for a billion before he dies. He funds NYPD bomb squad gear, an NYU cardiologist's AI research, Wikipedia, journalism schools, and pigeon rescue. He's 73, hasn't owned a car in ten years, and just upgraded from $50 Skechers to $80 Skechers. This one gets into what happens once a founder's number stops being the problem, the Sunday school lesson behind his moral compass, why his own headline net worth is wrong, the two causes eating most of his giving budget, and his plan to train an LLM to keep making his philanthropic decisions after he's gone. It closes on Take Nine, his campaign for the nine-second pause that stops most scams. Sponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com Subscribe to Moneywise: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneywisepodcast Follow Daniel on X: https://x.com/danielcberk Listen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts: [search "Moneywise Hampton"]
He had $15 in the bank and a $1M judgment against him. Eight years later, Nestlé bought his company for $1.5B — then shut it down. Also, this podcast is made by Hampton, which is a community for founders doing on average $20 million a year in revenue. We saw a lot of these money conversations happening privately behind closed doors and we thought, "What the heck, let's make it public." If you are a founder, apply here: http://joinhampton.com/mw Michael Wystrach built Freshly out of the wreckage of a failing restaurant, with $15 in the bank and a personally-guaranteed lease that left him with a $1M judgment against him. Six years later he sold the company to Nestlé for $1.5B — then watched it get shut down. He never took time off. He started a veterinary platform with his sister, raised a $75M venture fund, and put almost his entire payout back to work. This episode gets into what really happens to your bank account after a nine-figure exit — secondary sales, earn-out math, his actual living costs, his real estate philosophy at 2% interest rates, and what it felt like to lose the company he built after selling it. He also shares why he believes the first $10M matters more than the hundredth, and why he plans to keep building for the rest of his life. Sponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com Subscribe to Moneywise: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneywisepodcast Follow Daniel on X: https://x.com/danielcberk Listen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts: [search "Moneywise Hampton"]
We did something nuts: we got 50+ founders to reveal their net worth, portfolios, income, expenses. Its free and right here: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wr Why this podcast exists: Hampton is a community for founders. Members do an ave of $20m/year in revenue. Tons of the convos within the community are about money: how to invest, how to spend, how much to pay yourself...all this stuff you can't Google. We thought "Let’s just make these convos public". And thus, this podcast Moneywise came to be. We publish weekly. Click the subscribe button and the goodness will be delivered. Also...we've done 100+ episodes. If you want the aggregate info of all the numbers, meaning the net worth, spending, income of 50+ founders ranging from $10m to $1 billion: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wr Ok, so let's talk David Royce, today's guest: He built the same pest control company four times — $13M, $30M, $135M, $1.5B — and says the first exit was the most life-changing. David Royce sold four pest control companies — Moxie, Eco First, Altera, and Aptiv — each bigger than the last, culminating in a $1.5B sale of Aptiv when it was doing $508M in annual revenue. He kept 100% equity through the first three, gave 25% of the last one to his employees, and personally walked away with hundreds of millions across the run. He's now on an indefinite sabbatical, investing through Iconic (the firm that manages Zuckerberg's and Dorsey's money), with half his net worth in S&P 500 and the rest in private equity, direct deals, and alternatives — including multiple Anthropic investments. This episode covers the exact mechanics of each asset-sale exit, why David kept restarting instead of holding, his full portfolio framework (including the 4-year cash buffer strategy), the "the answer is just a little more" moment that hit every entrepreneur in the room, and the story of flying his dying father on a private jet from a New Orleans hospital to Cedars-Sinai at 2am — made possible only by one call to a CEO WhatsApp chain. Timestamps: 00:01:39 — David's full intro: four companies, four exits, what actually happened with the money 01:55 — First company (Moxie): nearly went bankrupt the first year, how a cash flow crisis taught him "cash was king" 03:14 — The asset-sale strategy: selling customers and technicians to Terminix while keeping the sales operation 04:57 — "Pretty close" — David confirms Forbes' reported $13M and $30M exit figures 05:37 — Why he gave 25% of Aptiv to employees and stepped back as chairman 06:23 — Aptiv was doing $508M in revenue; Daniel and David settle on $1.5B as the sale range 07:13 — What he actually took home: cap gains, California taxes, "hundreds of millions" 08:37 — Net worth today: "do the math backwards and figure it out" 09:09 — Portfolio breakdown: 4-year cash buffer in fixed income, S&P 500 with tax-loss harvesting, alternatives 11:31 — "I just invested in Anthropic — three different times in the last year and a half" via Iconic 14:35 — "The one that was life-changing was the first one" — $13M from nothing hits differently than $1.5B 17:46 — Why pest control? A starving college student, a friend who made $25K in a summer, and zero sales for five days straight 21:16 — His boss's question that changed everything: "What on earth would you go work for somebody else?" 27:31 — Fifth grade through eleventh grade: watching his family nearly lose the house, the fear that built everything 36:35 — Flying his dying father on a private jet from New Orleans to Cedars-Sinai at 2am 39:36 — What he wants to be remembered for: "The sign of a good leader is not how many followers you have, but how many leaders you create" Sponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com Subscribe to Moneywise: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneywisepodcast Follow Daniel on X: https://x.com/danielcberk Listen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts: [search "Moneywise Hampton"]
She sold for $88M, almost bought a lake house she didn't want, and spent $340K on Knicks playoff tickets — then gave two away because it felt better. We're still surprised people did this but... 50+ founders worth $10M to $4B reveal their personal finances. Here it is: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wr Why do we do this? Because if you're an aspirational person or someone who runs a business and is making money, it's incredibly challenging to figure out what to do. Information is impossible to find — and that's what we put together: the net worth reveal and why we do this podcast, Moneywise. Also, this podcast is made by Hampton, which is a community for founders doing on average $20M a year in revenue. We saw a lot of these money conversations happening privately behind closed doors and we thought, "Why not, let's make it public." If you are a founder, apply here: https://joinhampton.com/mw Anne Mahlum built Solid Core from $175,000 of her own savings into an $88M exit. Two years later, her net worth is $115–120M, with $65M in public equities and $15M in a single stock alone. But the numbers are the least interesting thing that's happened since. After the sale, she secretly launched a second fitness company, had panic attacks she's never talked publicly about, shut the whole thing down, and spent two years in legal fallout. Then she had a baby, pulled an accepted lake house offer the morning after making it, and started forcing herself to spend $200K a month just to stop the money from piling up. This episode covers the full portfolio breakdown two years post-exit, why she's done with private investments, the Ambition story she's never told, what a baby did to how she thinks about money and time, and what she actually wants to be remembered for — which has nothing to do with net worth. Sponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com
JOIN HAMPTON: These episodes often come directly out of conversations happening inside Hampton, a private community for founders and CEOs with $3M+ in revenue or $10M+ exits. Members range from $5M net worth to billions. They wrestle with these same questions off the record. Apply at http://joinhampton.com/mw. HOW FOUNDERS ARE BUILDING WEALTH: How much do founders actually make, spend, invest, work, and keep in net worth? Hampton surveyed founders directly and put the answers into one report. Download it for free here: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wr EPISODE DETAILS: Most founders spend years learning how to make money. Almost none of them prepare for what their brain does once they have it. Henrik Cronqvist is a behavioral finance professor who trained under Nobel laureate Richard Thaler and has spent 25 years studying exactly that. His research has been cited over 7,000 times. He has studied 38,000 people to answer one uncomfortable question: how much of the way you save, spend, and invest is actually hardwired into your DNA? The answer will change how you think about every financial decision you make after an exit. This episode covers the science behind why the traits that made you a great founder may work against you as an investor, what actually happens in your brain the day the wire hits, and the one thing Henrik says every founder should do before making a single investment. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 — The traits that made you a great founder will make you a bad investor 01:45 — What is behavioral finance and why should founders care 04:35 — How Henrik got into this research (the Stockholm subway story) 06:39 — The 38,000 twin study: how much of your money behavior is genetic 10:56 — The first thing to do when the wire hits your account 12:49 — Loss aversion, performance chasing, and home bias explained 20:35 — Your personal mortgage predicts how you'll run your company's finances 30:08 — Why your brokerage app is designed to work against you 37:07 — Why founders feel depressed after selling (the science behind post-exit emotions) 47:14 — "I think I'm the exception" — and what the data actually says about that
Please answer our short Moneywise listener survey! (Very, very short): joinhampton.com/moneywisefeedback JOIN HAMPTON: These episodes often come directly out of conversations happening inside Hampton, a private community for founders and CEOs with $3M+ in revenue or $10M+ exits. Members range from $5M net worth to billions. They wrestle with these same questions off the record. Apply at http://joinhampton.com/mw. HOW FOUNDERS ARE BUILDING WEALTH: How much do founders actually make, spend, invest, work, and keep in net worth? Hampton surveyed founders directly and put the answers into one report. Download it for free here: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wr EPISODE DETAILS: Thibault — known online as Tibo — is a French indie hacker who spent six years failing at startups before building Tweet Hunter during Covid lockdown and selling it for $10 million. Except the real number was more complicated than that: $2 million up front, $8 million in earn-out, and 18 months of some of the most stressful building of his life to get there. He walked away with just under $3 million post taxes — and says he regrets the sale entirely. Today, Tibo is doing over $1 million a month in revenue across a portfolio of five software products he's built since that exit. His personal spend is negligible. He has no financial advisor, keeps roughly 50% of his net worth in cash, and puts almost everything investable into index funds. This episode gets into the full deal structure, the psychological cost of the earn-out period, what he calls the "frozen state" that hits founders after a big exit, and why he says he will never sell a company again. Timestamps: 02:12 — Full guest intro: who Thibault is, the Tweet Hunter story, deal structure breakdown, and episode roadmap 08:08 — The $10M deal unpacked: earn-out structure, revenue milestones, and what he actually collected 10:17 — The co-founder split, the 25% influencer equity deal, and whether he'd do it again 14:09 — How the influencer partnership worked and why they replicated it on Tapio 26:17 — "Getting a ton of money up front feels unhealthy" — Thibault on why lump-sum exits are psychologically dangerous 28:14 — The "frozen state": why founders can't ship after a big exit 30:42 — The earn-out burnout period: stress, loss aversion, and the 18 hardest months of his life 34:37 — "It was a bad decision financially" — Thibault's verdict on the sale 38:15 — Nomadic life, the Vietnam hacker residency, and how wealth changes how he travels 42:42 — No financial advisor, no trust in wealth managers — why everything goes into S&P 500 45:29 — Personal spend breakdown: ~$8K/month — rent, food, tech gadgets, and that's basically it 48:27 — What happens to the ~$90K/month delta: cash, S&P 500, and acquiring more products 49:45 — The portfolio strategy: five products, two unannounced, and the 2026 scaling challenge 51:12 — Building a distribution bridge between all his products with an AI agent 53:06 — Raising kids with money: unconditional safety as the foundation for risk-taking
JOIN HAMPTON: This episode came directly out of conversations happening inside Hampton, a private community for founders and CEOs with $3M+ in revenue or $10M+ exits. Members range from $5M net worth to billions. They wrestle with these same questions off the record. Apply at http://joinhampton.com/mw. HOW FOUNDERS ARE BUILDING WEALTH: How much do founders actually make, spend, invest, work, and keep in net worth? Hampton surveyed founders directly and put the answers into one report. Download it for free here: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wr THIS EPISODE OF MONEYWISE: 70% of wealthy families lose all their money by the second generation. 90% lose it by the third. The data is even worse for the kids themselves. Children from households making $200K+ have rates of anxiety, depression, and substance abuse 2 to 3 times the national average. 22% of affluent suburban girls show clinically significant depressive symptoms. So how do you raise a kid in a wealthy household without breaking them? In this episode of MoneyWise, I went back through every conversation we've had on the show about parenting and money. Doctor Becky. Taylor Adams (from a multi-generational billionaire family in LA). Alex Peikoff. Shane. Jane. Hank. Neil Patel. Scott Galloway. The pattern they all kept landing on was uncomfortable. Most parents with real money are accidentally setting their kids up to fail. Not because they're bad parents. Because they're doing exactly what their instincts tell them to do. I'm a dad of two. I'm trying to figure this out in real time. Here's what the research, the experts, and the founders who already screwed it up are telling us. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: - Why "entitlement" is actually a fear of frustration, not a character flaw - The Carol Dweck Columbia study that should change how you talk to your kids - Why your kid is running on your behavior, not your rules - The "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations" trap (and why it's not about money) - How allowance teaches financial trade-offs (and why unlimited Amazon access kills it) - The single biggest regret of founders after a life-changing exit - Why downsizing your house might be the best parenting decision you ever make CHAPTERS: 00:00 The 16-year-old in the airport 02:57 Frustration tolerance is the most important life skill 05:30 Why wealthy kids have 2-3x higher anxiety and depression 08:00 Monkey see, monkey do: the emulation problem 11:00 70% lose it in 2 generations. 90% in 3. 14:00 Praise effort, not traits (the Dweck study) 18:00 Just because you love business doesn't mean your kid will 21:00 Why allowance only works if money is finite 25:00 The Scarsdale busboy who sees $300 sweatshirts as 30 hours of work 28:00 Scott Galloway's moving goalpost 30:17 The presence problem (the hardest one for me) 33:00 The 5 rules I'm taking with me REFERENCED EPISODES: - Taylor Adams: How a multi-generational billionaire family thinks about wealth - Doctor Becky on parenting through money - Hank: Inside a 24,000 sq ft home - Neil Patel on going from 10,800 sq ft to 3,000 sq ft - Alex Peikoff: The Macedonian milk family - Jane: Finding out about a $20M inheritance in her late 30s - Pete: $80M exit, rock bottom after ABOUT MONEYWISE: MoneyWise is the podcast where wealthy founders open up about the real numbers behind their lives. Net worth. Monthly burn. Portfolio allocation. The stuff nobody talks about in public. Hosted by Daniel Berk and produced by Hampton. SPONSORS: Oceans - Hire incredible talent for marketing, ops, sales, and more, and even have them build out all your AI workflows for you. Go to https://www.oceanstalent.com/moneywise now.
MoneyWise is a Hampton podcast. Hampton is a private, vetted community for founders doing $3M or more in revenue. Apply at https://www.joinhampton.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=yt051126. From Minecraft maps to $400k months — but the money isn't the story. Nathan May grew up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Ohio. His mom made $32,000 a year. He never left the state until he was 18. At 15, he was selling custom Minecraft maps to famous YouTubers and making his first $100K. He went to Wharton, joined BCG, quit, and built one of the fastest-growing newsletter agencies in the country before turning 30. But the week he hit his first million dollars, his mom died. And he felt nothing. In this episode, Nathan gets brutally honest about what money actually gave him — and what it didn't. We go deep on the community he's built in New York with a group of founders sharing an office, a monthly revenue leaderboard, and the kind of real talk that doesn't happen anywhere else. He calls it the Media Mafia. He says it's changed his life more than any dollar amount ever has. We also get into: Growing up in poverty and never leaving Ohio until 18 How a Minecraft addiction became his first real business Leaving a six-figure BCG career to bet on himself Building a $1M ARR agency in under a year with 1,000 newsletter subscribers His actual net worth, his $10M target, and why he keeps almost no cash Why he thinks the wealthiest people he knows are often the least happy Timestamps 00:00 - Cold open 00:58 - Introducing Nathan May 01:23 - Small talk / how Nathan starts his day 02:32 - The agency, the numbers, how life has changed 03:24 - Growing up poor in Ohio — never left the state until 18 05:35 - He originally wanted to be an actor 06:04 - The Minecraft business: how a video game addiction made him $100K at 15 09:05 - Wharton, Wall Street culture shock, and the path to BCG 10:36 - What BCG actually changed about his life 12:01 - Building the agency: newsletters, Schwarzenegger, and why it felt like video games again 15:32 - His real relationship with money: checking account, savings, leverage strategy 16:52 - The $10M number: how he used ChatGPT to find his "enough" 18:34 - The Media Mafia: seven founders, one office, a monthly revenue leaderboard 20:31 - Being at the cusp — exciting, terrifying, or both? 23:07 - Why IRL community is the highest-leverage thing a founder can build 26:03 - What Hampton means to him 27:31 - His mom's passing, the $1M milestone, and why none of it felt like anything 29:24 - Can you be successful without community? 31:39 - What's next and closing thoughts MoneyWise is the podcast where high-net-worth founders get radically transparent about how they actually make, spend, invest, and think about money. Hosted by Daniel Berk and presented by Hampton. Sponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com
MoneyWise is a Hampton podcast. Hampton is a private, vetted community for founders doing $2M or more in revenue. Apply at https://www.joinhampton.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=yt050526. MoneyWise | Jonathan Goodman Jon Goodman built a $35M fitness education empire from a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto, never raised a dollar, never sold a company, and never left Canada — even though the government takes 53 cents of every dollar he earns above a certain threshold. In this episode, Jon breaks down exactly where his $14M net worth lives, why he found his "safe number" at $7M, how he spends $22-25K a month across Toronto and six months abroad every year, and why he thinks moving to a tax haven is a rich person's dumbest game. Sponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com Oceans - Hire incredible talent for marketing, ops, sales, and more, and even have them build out all your AI workflows for you. Go to https://www.oceanstalent.com/moneywise now.
Chapter Timestamps 00:00 — Homeless at 26, $100M exit at 32 02:22 — Building Mutesix: one of the first productized Facebook ad agencies 09:39 — The 2019 sale and what Steve actually took home 11:52 — The wire hits — at the Western Wall in Israel 14:46 — "The money didn't change my life": post-exit identity crisis 16:31 — How Steve actually spends: the chef, the donations, the Birkin he never bought 19:55 — Why he's obsessed with insurance (and what he tells founders) 23:18 — Post-exit on a Tuesday: the daily search for meaning 25:07 — Did the $100M exit actually make him happy? 32:03 — Looking back 15 years — and what the next 5 look like At 26, Steve Weiss was homeless in Los Angeles, sleeping in his car in a 24 Hour Fitness parking lot with $200 to his name. Six years later, his Facebook ads agency Mutesix sold for $100 million to Dentsu. The day the money hit his account, he was standing at the Western Wall in Israel — and got a phone call that made him realize money doesn't fix what's broken inside you. In this episode of MoneyWise, host Daniel Berk sits down with Steve Weiss to walk through the parts of a nine-figure exit nobody puts in the press release: how much he personally took home, if the wire made him happy, and what post-exit life actually looks like on a random Tuesday when you've already "won." In this conversation: How Steve built Mutesix from 4 clients in 2013 into one of the first productized Facebook ad agencies — and sold it to Dentsu in 2019 for $100M The emotional moment the wire hit at the Western Wall, and the tragedy that hit the same day His real spending today: a private chef 3–4 days a week, why his wife asks for nonprofit donations instead of Birkin bags, and the cause they're funding Why he over-indexes on life and health insurance — and the advice he gives every founder The post-exit purpose vacuum — what he calls "almost impossible to replicate" — and how he's filling it now with family, angel investing through SGD, his podcast, real estate, and possibly politics What he'd do differently if he could rewind 15 years The honest answer to the question every founder secretly asks: did $100 million actually make him happy? If you've ever wondered whether the exit really fixes anything, this is the episode. MoneyWise is the personal finance podcast for high-net-worth founders. Hosted by Daniel Berk and produced by Hampton — a private, vetted community for founders and CEOs running businesses doing $2M+ in revenue. Apply at joinhampton.com. Sponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com Oceans - Hire incredible talent for marketing, ops, sales, and more, and even have them build out all your AI workflows for you. Go to https://www.oceanstalent.com/moneywise now.
John Arrow bootstrapped Mutual Mobile from a $0.99 iPhone app to a 350-person company — with zero investors — and sold it twice. In this episode of MoneyWise, John breaks down exactly how he built and exited one of Austin's most successful tech companies, what he did with the money, and what his financial life actually looks like today. John gets radically transparent about his net worth (well into 8 figures), his monthly spending ($50–65K/month), his investment strategy, and why he thinks most wealth managers are a waste of money. Plus: the illegal Cuba trip right before signing a life-changing deal, the $500K bet to hack Apple's encryption, how he sued American Express on behalf of a friend and won in 48 hours, and the new AI company he built the morning of this recording. Topics covered: How John made his first $1,000/day at 14 years old Bootstrapping Mutual Mobile to a $70M exit with no outside funding What actually happens the day a wire hits your account Why he sold the company a second time — and for how much His exact portfolio breakdown (stocks, private investments, real estate) Why he never drinks (the real reason) FreedomGPT and the future of uncensored AI How to think about money once you never have to work again Stop making million-dollar decisions alone. Hampton gives you a personal board of eight vetted founders in your city who meet monthly to tackle your hardest problems. Find your group: https://www.joinhampton.com Sponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com Oceans - Hire incredible talent for marketing, ops, sales, and more, and even have them build out all your AI workflows for you. Go to https://www.oceanstalent.com/moneywise now.
Josh Suggs is 23 years old and already running a company generating millions in revenue, completely bootstrapped. But the money story here isn't just about the numbers. It's about a kid who grew up in Westport, CT, one of the wealthiest zip codes in America, feeling like he didn't belong, watching his mom stress about retirement while surrounded by hedge fund dads, and channeling that into an obsession with building things from the age of 13. Daniel and Josh get into the real numbers: what Josh actually takes home, where it sits (mostly cash, barely invested, and he'll tell you why), and what his monthly spend actually looks like living in New York. Spoiler: $3,000/month on Uber because he refuses to take the subway. ABOUT MONEYWISE MoneyWise is a Hampton podcast about what wealthy founders actually do with their money. Not how they made it — what they do after. Real numbers. Real allocation. Real feelings about wealth. Hosted by Daniel Berk. New episodes in production now. ____________ Stop making million-dollar decisions alone. Hampton gives you a personal board of eight vetted founders in your city who meet monthly to tackle your hardest problems. Find your group: https://www.joinhampton.com This episode's sponsor is Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com
This is a highlight episode. Three guests. Three completely different relationships with money. All of them more honest than they probably planned to be. Neil Patel wrote a blog post in 2014 saying he could be happy on $15,000 a month. He meant it. We brought him on to find out how that became $200,000 a month — and where it actually goes. The answer involves $35,000 in bed sheets, four homes in Beverly Hills, and donations that dwarf his actual lifestyle spend. Hank — not his real name — built a $3 billion cell phone distribution company, exited in 1996 for $60 million, and eventually found himself standing inside a 24,000 square foot house wondering how it happened. He paid $10 million. Cash. No mortgage. And runs it like a part-time job. He never says his net worth. He doesn't have to. Taylor Adams grew up in a Los Angeles family with over a billion dollars in assets going back to the 1890s. Got sober at 26. Now helps wealthy families avoid destroying what the first generation built. He has a framework for how that destruction happens. He calls it the Four Horsemen. Every one of them sounds like good advice. Three clips. Three moments worth rewinding. This is MoneyWise. FEATURED GUESTS Neil Patel — Founder, Neil Patel Digital & Crazy Egg Hank — Anonymous. Cell phone distribution. $60M exit. 24,000 sq ft. Taylor Adams — Founder, Belief Partners. Fourth-generation family wealth. ABOUT MONEYWISE MoneyWise is a Hampton podcast about what wealthy founders actually do with their money. Not how they made it — what they do after. Real numbers. Real allocation. Real feelings about wealth. Hosted by Daniel Berk. New episodes in production now. ____________ Stop making million-dollar decisions alone. Hampton gives you a personal board of eight vetted founders in your city who meet monthly to tackle your hardest problems. Find your group: https://www.joinhampton.com This episode's sponsor is Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com
Stop making million-dollar decisions alone. Hampton gives you a personal board of eight vetted founders in your city who meet monthly to tackle your hardest problems. Find your group: https://www.joinhampton.com This episode's sponsor is Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com
Mario Schlosser, co-founder of Oscar Health, has tracked every minute of his life in a spreadsheet since 2012. In this episode, we get into: Building Oscar Health How and why he tracks every minute of his day The framework he took from Ray Dalio at Bridgewater His approach to radical transparency in leadership Cool Links Oscar Health Hampton
Stop making million-dollar decisions alone. Hampton gives you a personal board of eight vetted founders in your city who meet monthly to tackle your hardest problems. Find your group: https://joinhampton.com/ We're testing something new on MoneyWise. Just like we got radically transparent about money, we want to do the same with company building. Let us know what you think. In this episode: Adam White started Front Office Sports as a college project. Now it's worth over $40 million and it's basically the Wall Street Journal of sports. How'd he do it? We break down the branding, hiring, and operations that Adam used to compete with sports industry titans from day one. Cool Links: Hampton - https://joinhampton.com/ Front Office Sports - https://frontofficesports.com/
Stop making million-dollar decisions alone. Hampton gives you a personal board of eight vetted founders in your city who meet monthly to tackle your hardest problems. Find your group: https://joinhampton.com/ Five founders. Five exits. All around $30 million. So why did one walk away with $30M – and another with just $2M? From taxes and co-founders to deal structure and equity rollovers, the factors that shape a founder's final payout are rarely simple. This episode is your crash course in what really happens when a deal closes. Here’s what we talk about: How Eran Galperin took home ~$30M while still keeping ~50% of his company Why Scott Galloway only netted $2–3M from a $33M sale How Alex Hormozi earned more from distributions than the $31M exit itself The ultra-simple, debt-free deal that netted two Canadian brothers $20M each Marshall Haas’ $18M cash payout – and why he held onto equity for peace of mind Why the "headline number" often masks the founder’s true financial outcome The impact of seller notes, taxes, state residency, and post-sale roles What to consider before you sell to avoid regret or burnout The myth of the $1B exit – and how one founder only took home $70M Cool Links: Hampton https://www.joinhampton.com/ Lower Street https://www.lowerstreet.co/ Chapters: (0:42) Five Exits, Five Wildly Different Payouts (1:37) Eran Galperin: The Gym Desk Power Play (4:19) Tax Dodges & Seller Notes: Cash Isn’t Always King (5:22) Scott Galloway: $33M Headline, $3M Reality Check (7:39) Alex Hormozi: Gym Launch – Cash Out, Cash In (8:32) The Sinkinson Brothers: Double or Nothing in Canada (11:56) Marshall Haass: The Art of the Partial Exit (13:17) Why Smart Founders Never Sell It All (15:28) Scoreboard Envy: Don’t Get Played This podcast is a ridiculous concept: high-net-worth people reveal their personal finances. Inspired by real conversations happening in the Hampton community. Your Host: Jackie Lamport Not really the host, but the producer. Wrote this sentence.
Stop making million-dollar decisions alone. Hampton gives you a personal board of eight vetted founders in your city who meet monthly to tackle your hardest problems. Find your group: https://joinhampton.com/ What makes a founder truly successful? It’s not blind risk-taking or pure hustle. After two years of interviews and supporting research, we break down the five core personality traits that show up again and again in top-performing founders – from billion-dollar exits to early-stage wins. If you're building a company, understanding these traits might just be your cheat code. Here’s what we talk about: Why openness and curiosity is the #1 trait in founders (with research to back it up) How a need for achievement often comes from past pain – and how to harness it The powerful drive for agency and autonomy, and why it often makes founders unemployable Why emotional regulation might be the most underrated skill in entrepreneurship Why successful founders don’t love risk – they just know how to manage uncertainty The science behind personality types and founder performance When focus becomes the essential balance to curiosity How therapy, journaling, and self-awareness are now founder-edge tools The myth of the stoic leader – and what really works instead Cool Links: Hampton https://www.joinhampton.com/ Lower Street https://www.lowerstreet.co/ Sponsors: Join 700+ founders hiring A-players in Latin America at hirewithnear.com/moneywise Achieve your dream body with dailybodycoach.com/moneywise Rank higher in AI tools and LLM results with Mentions.so Chapters: (0:46) How Curiosity Drives Founder Success (2:13) Turning Achievement into a Competitive Edge (4:08) Autonomy: The Fuel Behind Entrepreneurial Drive (5:39) Building Emotional Resilience for the Long Haul (6:53) Managing Uncertainty – Not Chasing Reckless Risks (8:17) Grit: The Unseen Force Behind Every Win (13:55) What Happens After the Big Exit? This podcast is a ridiculous concept: high-net-worth people reveal their personal finances. Inspired by real conversations happening in the Hampton community. Your Host: Jackie Lamport Not really the host, but the producer. Wrote this sentence.
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