The Next Billion

How Messi’s Genius $1.5B Deal Could Make You Rich

Sharran Srivatsaa — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:21:06 GMT

Lionel Messi has just played in his 6th World Cup. And he holds the record for the most World Cup matches ever played.

But the world only talks about what he does on the field. So they missed this hidden deal when he signed with Inter Miami in 2023.

And to discover all the secrets behind Lionel Messi’s deal, I break them all down in episode 1 of my new show, Billion Dollar Deals.

I’m taking everything I’ve learned from my career at Goldman Sachs and building two billion dollar businesses to analyze exactly how the biggest deals on the planet are made.

In every episode, I’ll be breaking down the hidden strategies and risks behind deals that changed industries and built empires.

All while giving you the tactics to try them for yourself in your own life or business:

Here are the secrets behind his deal that you can use to build your own wealth…

It was the summer of 2022. The MLS was still a league where some of the best European players went to hang up their cleats.

But the MLS wanted to change that. So in June 2022, they made their biggest bet to date:

A ten-year, $2.5B broadcasting deal with Apple TV.

This meant all MLS games would finally be on one platform around the world. But this wasn’t a typical broadcast deal.

The MLS had committed to one platform in an all-or-nothing deal. And nobody else in soccer history had ever done this before.

But here’s the thing:

The deal only made sense if enough people paid for Apple TV in order to justify the $2.5B bet.

This is why the MLS needed the world’s attention to make the deal with Apple worth it. But Apple wasn’t the only one placing bets on the MLS…

Adidas had just renewed its $830 million MLS kit deal for the next 6 years. Adidas was now the league’s apparel partner until the end of the decade.

And this meant they’d get a percentage of every jersey and piece of merchandise sold.

But they’d also need a name big enough to sell millions of jerseys...

So now the MLS, Inter Miami, Apple, and Adidas needed someone big enough to make people want to watch American soccer.

A player with the kind of magnetic pull that would have people paying a monthly subscription just to watch him play.

The kind of player who would have soccer fans from around the world buying his jersey…

They needed Lionel Messi.

In June 2023, Messi became a free agent, and he was free to sign with any club without a transfer fee. This was only the second time in his career that he would be a free agent.

Now the entire soccer world was glued to their phones, waiting to see where he would go next...

In January 2023, Saudi club Al Nassr signed Cristiano Ronaldo on a reported $200M-per-year deal. And now two other Saudi clubs wanted Messi in the league as well.

Why?

Because they wanted to use Messi and Ronaldo to clean up their global image and make a World Cup bid. So two Saudi clubs made an offer to Messi:

$400M per year from Al Hilal
Or $1.5B in total from Al-Ittihad.

But Jorge Mas, the managing owner of MLS soccer team Inter Miami, had one of the only things that could make Messi turn down a $1.5B deal…

He could offer Messi equity.

Messi had spent twenty years as the most valuable “employee” in soccer. But he never had an ownership stake.

That’s why the only right choice for Messi was Inter Miami. So on July 15, 2023, Messi officially signed with Inter Miami.

And in just 3 years, Inter Miami’s valuation more than doubled to $1.4 billion. They had added over $800 million in value and proved that the Messi effect was real.

And this is where the real financial genius of Lionel Messi is shown. The price is what the headlines talk about.

But the terms are the hidden layers of the deal they don’t talk about. And in this deal, we have 3 layers:

Layer 1 is salary, which we know is $20.4M

Layer 2 is revenue share. This is the percentage of what you’re paid every time the business makes money.

And finally, layer 3 is equity.

This is what Jorge Mas used to beat the $1.5 billion Saudi offer. It was ownership in a growing, potential billion-dollar team.

And this is what completed Messi’s deal. It’s what I like to call…

The Founder’s Contract.

Messi was willing to take a 96% reduction in base salary and a 10-year horizon to build his ownership. You can do this with deals that can make you rich too, just like Lionel Messi.

But in order to do this, you should do these 3 things:

1. Get high-income skills that can get you a higher salary base.

This could be building AI systems and automations for companies today that save them money and make them more efficient.

2. Be willing to trade skills for performance-based comp.

Meaning lower guaranteed salary, but more bonus if you do well. This could be negotiating a share or a cut of the money you save the company.

Let me give you an example:

Let’s say you cut $500,000 in costs and 2% of that comes back to you… that’s already $10,000.

3. The biggest bet you can make is like what Messi did: You deeply discount your compensation of today and trade it for long-term value that you help create.

This might be taking a salary that, on paper, barely covers your living expenses.

Instead, you take 2% equity in a startup you believe in. A few years later, the company sells for $40 million… your 2% just became $800,000.

And this is why ownership in place of a guaranteed salary is the ultimate sign of betting on yourself.

It’s the same trade Messi is making with the founder’s contract to make him even wealthier in the long run.

His bet on himself to create value for the MLS, Apple, Adidas, and Inter Miami was a big risk and a lesson in what choosing ownership over salary really means.

And his deal proves the most valuable asset on Earth isn’t being paid for the work you do…

It’s being compensated for the value you help to create.

So when you create this value, becoming rich will be almost guaranteed.

Because the truth is…

If you do more than you’re paid for, you will get paid for more than you do.

I made a show that could make you wealthy…

Sharran Srivatsaa — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 16:15:30 GMT

5 whole months in the making…

My team and I spent 5 whole months making my first fully produced show.

Why?

Because the world is changing faster than ever before…

You see, I’ve spent years seeing how the world’s biggest deals were made when I worked at Goldman Sachs and as I built two billion-dollar businesses.

And it was at Goldman that I learned the exact strategies behind the world’s biggest deals.

But I also knew there was a problem:

The strategies are locked in private boardrooms where most people will never see how they work.

And so I knew I had to find a way to share them with you.

That’s why I’m taking everything I’ve learned from my career to analyze exactly how the biggest deals on the planet are made in my new show:

Billion Dollar Deals.

The first episode premieres Monday, July 20th, exclusively on YouTube…

I couldn’t be more excited to share this with you all…

Your main man,

Sharran

Why Finance Advice Goes Viral When It's Wrong (And Gets Ignored When It's Right)

Sharran Srivatsaa — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 17:30:17 GMT

Did you know that 50% of Gen Z learns about money primarily from TikTok?

While that may not surprise you, let me tell you why this is a problem:

FINRA reviewed over 1,000 social media finance posts in 2024:

70% percent failed basic compliance standards.
55% percent hid the fact they were paid advertisements.
38% percent never disclosed the actual risks

The data tells us that the loudest advice about money is usually the worst advice about money.

Normally, I am not qualified to talk about anything. But just this time I am mildly qualified to comment on this topic because:

I have built two billion dollar companies (one of which was publicly traded on the Nasdaq), and invested in 100+ deals.
I also have an MBA with Honors in Finance (which doesn’t mean much, I am aware)
I was a private banker at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse.
I have advised some of the biggest influencers in the world (ironic, I know) and multiple billionaires.
I also have held Series 66, Series 6, Series 63, and Series 3 securities licenses.

Finance influencers do not optimize for your wealth… they optimize for views, and the algorithm pays them to do it. Meaning, this is not a content problem. This is actually an incentive problem.

I want to show you why that happens and how to protect yourself from it.

The Algorithm Economics Problem

TikTok’s (Instagram, YouTube etc.) algorithm does not care about accuracy.

It cares about watch time.
It cares about engagement.
It cares about shares.

A 30-second clip promising “3 stocks that will explode this month” beats a 10-minute explanation of diversification every single time.

The math is brutally simple… because confidence sells and nuance does not.

When a creator posts “leverage is the fastest way to wealth,” the video goes viral. When they post “leverage can destroy your account in 48 hours,” the video dies. Sixty-five percent of viral finance videos imply guaranteed results because nobody wants to hear “this might work if conditions hold and you manage risk properly.”

Nobody wants hard things.
They want to hear “do this and get rich.”
They want the easy button for everything.

The platform trains creators to skip the boring (yet foundational) parts… and the boring parts usually keep you solvent.

The Hidden Business Model

Finance influencers do not make money from investing.

Check this out:

Between January 2020 and April 2023, one firm paid influencers a flat fee for every new account opened using their referral link.
More than 39,400 accounts were opened through approximately 1,700 influencers.
Meaning, they often earn massive commissions from you opening accounts, clicking affiliate links, buying courses, and joining paid communities.

Their income has nothing to do with whether you make money. Their income has everything to do with whether you take action.

This creates a brutal mismatch.

If an influencer says “invest in index funds and wait 30 years,” you do not click anything. You do not open an account. You do not buy the course. The creator earns nothing. If they say “buy this stock now before it explodes,” you click, you open, you buy. The influencer gets paid today.

Sadly, you find out if the advice works in six months.

What Good Finance Content Actually Looks Like

Independent research tells us that only about 20% of finance TikToks offer genuine educational value.

The content that actually helps has three characteristics.

First, it explains compounding and time horizons… not sexy or viral, but it works.
Second, it discloses the risks. When influencers promoted margin lending without explaining margin calls or forced liquidations, FINRA fined the firm $850,000. Real advice always starts (or at least outlines ends) with what could go wrong.
Third, it teaches principles, not hot picks. While Stock tips expire, understanding how to evaluate risk lasts forever.

The problem is simple: principles do not go viral, FOMO-centric tips do.

Three Rules for Consuming Finance Content

If you learn about money on social media, I recommend following these three rules.

Rule 1: If it sounds guaranteed, its probably not true. Any video that promises “this stock will double” or “leverage is free money” is either ignorant or dishonest. Markets involve probabilities, not certainties. Real investors talk about expected value and risk-adjusted returns. A tell-tale sign of a fake-guru is talking about guaranteed wins.

Rule 2: Ask yourself who benefits from this advice. 55% percent of influencer finance posts failed to disclose they were paid advertisements. Before you follow any advice, ask: Does this person make money if I do what they say? If yes, its safe to assume the advice is insanely biased.

Rule 3: Verify with boring sources. If you see an interesting strategy on TikTok, go look it up somewhere slow and boring. Read the Vanguard white paper. Check the academic research. Talk to your financial advisor who is legally required to act in your best interest.

Social media is good for discovering ideas, unfortunately it is terrible for making decisions.

Remember this:
Finance influencers are not the problem. They are the magic mirror that shows you what you want to hear. Not what you need to know.

If you liked this post, you’ll like this one too:

The 5 True Money Milestones

Sharran Srivatsaa — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 17:06:15 GMT

Most people hear about money milestones and think one of two things:

I should have a house, a retirement account, and a family car at this age
I’m so behind where I should be in life compared to everyone else

But here’s the thing:

These aren’t money milestones… these are just expectations created by society.

That’s why I’m going to give you the 5 real money milestones to focus on. And these milestones have nothing to do with what you should own at every stage of life.

They’re goals and systems to aim for that help you create wealth that lasts.

Starting with…

Milestone 1: Active Income Beats Monthly Expenses

This milestone has two parts:

Reduce your lifestyle expenses so they don’t increase every time your income does
Find the single most valuable skill you can develop

The skill you develop can do a few things, but you either use this skill to sell into new services or products to your customers, or you stack the new skill on top of your existing ones so that you can increase your base earning income.

Doing these two things will create separation from your lifestyle expenses and help you get your active income greater than your monthly expenses.

So once your active income is higher than your monthly expenses… you need somewhere to put it.

And this doesn’t mean running your life out of a checking account.

Instead, you use money milestone 2…

Milestone 2: Build a Money Distribution System

This means you run all your money through a quarterback account.

Its only job is to distribute cash.

Money comes in, hits the quarterback, and gets sent where it’s supposed to go.

From here, it splits automatically into four buckets:

Expenses for monthly needs
Taxes if you’re a business owner (skip this if you’re W-2, it’s already withheld)
Giving because generosity is a muscle you train now (even $25 a month)
And Surplus, which takes the rest so you can watch it grow and decide where it goes next.

The quarterback doesn’t hold money, just like its job isn’t to keep the ball. It decides where it goes.

But the quarterback still won’t help you if you’re sending the money into accounts that are getting taxed to death…

And this is when you need milestone 3…

Milestone 3: Get Strategic About Asset Location

This is where you start to decide which accounts you use strategically.

Asset location matters because not all accounts are created equal.

Some give you tax breaks today. Some give you tax-free growth later. Some give you access anytime. And some lock your money up for retirement.

The goal is to place your money where it can do its job best.

So let me give you some examples:

Max your 401(k) if there’s an employer match. This is literally free money. If you’re a business owner? Look at a SEP IRA or a pension plan (individuals look at a Roth IRA)

Now the HSA is a triple threat because it’s very rare to get tax benefits three separate times:

You don’t pay tax on money going in.
It grows without being taxed.
And you don’t pay tax when you pull it out either (as long as it’s for medical costs.)

Finally, a taxable brokerage account. This is a normal investment account with no special tax perks, but it has no restrictions either. The reason you want this is liquidity. It gives you access to money anytime without penalties, unlike a retirement account that locks up funds until you’re older.

But without milestone 4, your money could be sitting in the right accounts but it might be locked up until retirement…

Milestone 4: Manage Your Cash Like It Has a Job

Every dollar that sits in your checking account is an employee you’re paying to sit in a chair scrolling TikTok.

It needs a job.

And the truth is, a high-yield savings account is the bare minimum.

But there are other options out there to manage your money and have access to cash.

First, certificate of deposit ladders. This locks up your money for a set period of time in exchange for a better interest rate than a savings account.

The ladder part means splitting your money across CDs with different end dates, for example, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year.

Why does this matter?

Because now you don’t lock it all up at once. So money is available, and you still capture the higher rates.

A second option is whole life insurance as a cash tool. Most people think of life insurance as just a payout when you die.

But what they don’t know is that whole life policies build up cash value over time that you can borrow against or access while you’re alive.

And so when it’s used with a strategy, whole life insurance becomes another place to get access to cash.

Finally, you could use a cash portfolio of ETFs.

This could be SCHD, SCHO, TIPS, and SGOV.

So instead of leaving all short-term money in a checking account, someone might use these ETFs to earn yield while keeping the money relatively accessible.

But here’s the thing:

Once every dollar has a job, you still have one more money milestone to reach…

Milestone 5: Your Money Starts Working For You

This is the milestone everyone wants to get to first.

Investing.
Real estate.
Passive income.

But this milestone only works when the first four are already in place.

In America there are only 2 ways that create wealth. Owning a business and owning real estate.

I call them the Golden Stairways…

These are two of the most powerful paths to wealth because they give you ownership. And ownership is where your money starts to work for you.

If you own a business, your money can work through systems, products, people, and customers. You are no longer just earning from your own effort. You are building something that can produce income, grow in value, and create opportunities beyond your personal time.

If you own real estate, your money can work through rental income, appreciation, equity, and leverage. The asset can pay you while you own it, grow while you hold it, and become more valuable over time when bought wisely.

Now, if you don’t own a business or real estate, that’s totally fine. You can still use the Golden Stairways, it just looks a little different.
It looks like TIGA:
Tiny Income Generating Assets. These are smaller assets that produce cash flow and teach you the habit of ownership.

For example, Dividend paying ETFs, which give you a simple way to own a diversified group of investments that pay you dividends are a great way to start making your money work for you…

The 5 money milestones are how you make sure time is turning your money into wealth.

But these money milestones only work if you know how to avoid the 4 money monsters…

Because these money monsters are eating most people’s wealth before it’s created.

And I covered exactly what they are and how to defend against them in this post:

The 4 “Money Monsters” Eating Your Wealth

Sharran Srivatsaa — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 21:50:31 GMT

Most people believe their money has one enemy: a down market.

But here’s the thing:

A down market is the least of our worries.

Because there are 4 money monsters stealing our wealth, whether it’s an up market or a down market…

And it wasn’t until one night, when I was staring at a spreadsheet, that I saw the damage these 4 monsters were doing to my wealth…

I’d known what they were for 25 years, but not how much they’d taken from me.

And now I’m going to help you defend against them, so you don’t make the same mistakes as me to protect your wealth.

Starting with the monster you can see but can’t stop…

Monster 1: Inflation

Inflation runs at whatever rate the economy sets.

Now, let’s say you put $100,000 in a savings account that earns 1.5%.

But if you run 4% inflation against this same account for 20 years…

The statement shows a balance of $134,600. But what the money buys has shrunk by $84,400.

Because inflation at 4% for 20 years means prices roughly double. So you need around $219,000 in the future to buy what $100,000 buys today.

This is why every dollar that earns below the inflation rate pays a silent tax.

And this silent tax doesn’t show up on your bank statement...

But the good news is that you have three moves to beat inflation:

List every account you own this week and write the real return next to each one: your rate minus your local inflation rate

Any negative number is a confirmed loss you’ve been calling safe.

Stop benchmarking against nominal return and start benchmarking against real return.

Here’s what this actually means:

The number on the screen is not your return… what it buys is your return.

Put every dollar you won’t need for five years or more into assets with a long-run return above inflation

This could be the S&P 500. It’s returned about 10% nominally and 6% in real terms over 100 years.

But beating inflation still won’t protect you against monster 2…

This is the enemy nobody teaches you about…

Monster 2: Taxes

Taxes are the monster the mainstream financial advice keeps quiet about….

Why?

Because even they don’t understand how they actually work.

And most importantly:

They have no idea how to defend against them.

Now for most high earners, taxes are the most expensive of the four monsters.

An employee making $500,000 in W-2 income keeps roughly $315,000 after federal tax.

But an investor realizing $500,000 in long-term capital gains keeps $400,000.

It’s the same income on paper, but an $85,000 gap every year. So here are the three moves you can make to beat taxes:

First, max every tax-advantaged account you have before you put a dollar into a taxable brokerage: 401(k), IRA, HSA, Roth.
Hold every appreciating asset longer than 12 months before you sell.

Short-term gains get taxed as ordinary income up to 37%, but long-term gains get taxed at 20%.

When you need cash, borrow against an appreciating asset instead of selling it.

It could be using a securities-backed line, a margin loan, or a home equity line. These loans aren’t taxable events.

But this next money monster pays a heavy tax from inside your head.

And the truth is, no tax strategy or inflation hedge can touch it…

Monster 3: Behavioral interruption

The DALBAR has tracked investor behavior for 30 years.

And over those 30 years ending in 2015, the S&P 500 returned 10.35% a year.

But the average equity investor in the exact same market… over the exact same years… earned 3.66%.

Crazy, right?

Because if that was $100,000 over 30 years at 10.35%, it becomes $1.92 million.

But at 3.66%, it becomes $293,000.

This is a $1.63 million difference, and not one dollar of it came from a bad market or a bad pick.

Instead, it came from one thing… Behavior.

The behavior could be:

Panic selling
Lifestyle creep that’s funded by liquidating assets
Or moving money on the back of a headline

Now let’s talk about how you can beat behavioral interruption:

Separate your long-horizon accounts from any money you can reach emotionally

This should be a different institution from your checking account, like an app off your phone to create friction between the money and your hands.

Write a one-page investment policy statement before the next downturn.

Here’s how to do it, ask yourself:

What is this money for?

What’s the time horizon?

What’s the target allocation?

And under what specific conditions will I change it?

Because every money goal needs a money plan, and this includes playing on the defence sometimes.

Check long-horizon portfolios once a quarter, not once a day.

The more often you see red in your portfolio, the more loss aversion you feel and the more likely you are to act on it.

So just let it grow…

But this final money monster stops your money from growing before you’ve even been paid.

It’s the worst money monster on this list because it’s the only one that happens before it reaches you…

Monster 4: Fees

Good markets or bad, fees come off before a single dollar reaches you.

Let me give you an example:

Imagine you have two options to invest a million dollars for 20 years:

A) The S&P 500

B) Or a portfolio manager

The average long-term S&P 500 return is about 10%. So after 20 years, your $1M becomes roughly $6.73 million.

Now the portfolio manager gets the exact same 10% return over those 20 years, but with one difference: a 1% annual fee.

That 1% fee doesn’t sound like a lot today, but over those 20 years?

It’s roughly $1.13 million.

This is the real cost of fees that nobody is talking about.

So what can you do about it?

Here’s three things to beat the fees:

Convert every fee from a percentage into a 20-year dollar cost.

Run it once because I can almost guarantee the number creates a different decision than seeing the percentage would.

Replace any actively managed fund with an equivalent index fund wherever the fee difference clears 0.5%, like the S&P 500
Ask your advisor in writing how they’re compensated on each recommendation, including trail commissions and fund revenue sharing.

A fee-only fiduciary charges you directly and is legally bound to act in your interest.

But a commission-based advisor is paid by the products they sell you.

This one question costs nothing, but could save you millions…

So how can you protect yourself against the 4 money monsters today?

Before you go to sleep tonight, pull up your accounts, and look for one of the four monsters eating your wealth.

Finally, make one move against it this week from the 3 tips I gave you for each one.

Because sometimes it’s not about what you make, it’s about what you keep.

And if you liked this post, I talk about the 7 biggest business and life lessons I’ve learned over the last 46 years in this one:

I’m 46. If You’re In Your 20s or 30s, Read This.

Sharran Srivatsaa — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 18:15:59 GMT

The other week, it was my 46th birthday.

So I thought I’d share my 7 biggest life and business lessons from building 2 billion dollar businesses, working at Goldman Sachs, and most importantly:

Having a beautiful family with my wife and two kids…

1. The world will give you whatever you want. You just have to ask it intelligently.

One of the questions I constantly ask myself and my team is, “What would need to be true for this to happen?” The answer to this is exactly what you need to do to get it.

2. Not giving up is the most heroic thing you can do.

When I first came to America from India, I was 17 and had next to no money. At one point, I was eating out of a dumpster on my college campus just to survive.

But two decades later, I came back to the college as the commencement speaker.

And glued to that same dumpster was a sticker of Aquaman with the quote “Not giving up is the most heroic thing you can do.” I still live by this quote today.

3. You only have to get rich once.

I’ve watched the smartest people get rich, lose everything, and spend years rebuilding from zero again. But the fact is, the skill that gets you rich doesn’t disappear even if the money does.

Because if you can learn it, it’s a skill. If it’s a skill, you can teach it.

4. Everything in life has a playbook. You just have to learn it.

When something sounds technical, I get excited. Because the more technical something is, there’s nearly always a playbook for you to follow and learn it.

5. It’s not about the exit. It’s about the options.

Most founders start their business without ever considering an exit. And it’s understandable.

They built their business for themselves, and maybe they don’t ever want to sell.

But here’s the thing: building your business for an exit isn’t about the exit itself. It’s the options it gives you, should you ever want to sell.

At the end of the day, nobody knows how they will feel in 10 years’ time.

6. Small companies get small multiples. Big companies get big multiples.

Smaller companies look fragile to investors. So the bigger you build, the more you buy, the bigger the empire and the more value you’ll get from potential buyers.

This is why you want to build big if you’re going for the exit.

7. Moat = Massive effort on the front end. Money = an elegant business model on the backend.

This isn’t some secret strategy… it’s just doing the work. Massive effort on the front end is the Moat because most people will never make the effort.

So on the backend, now the business becomes elegant and simple to run.

Let me give you an example:

Your Moat on the front end could be creating 3 pieces of content every day across all social platforms. And your backend could simply be your email list, where you sell your products.

I’m not sure what these 7 lessons will look like in 20 years time. But if there’s only one lesson I’d ask you to take away, it’s this:

“Not giving up is the most heroic thing you can do.”

Whenever I get stuck, I just remind myself of it.

And every single time, it’s given me a breakthrough.

If you liked this post, I talk about the number one way to actually master wealth creation in this next one:

Why I Love Lazy Entrepreneurs

Sharran Srivatsaa — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 16:30:56 GMT

The founders who worry me the most aren’t the scrappy ones…

Not the bootstrappers, first-timers, or the ones figuring it out on the fly.

No.

The ones who worry me the most are the smart, hard-working, capable founders.

Because here’s the thing:

Capable people build complex businesses.

Not deliberately, but because they can.

And somewhere along the way, “I can do this” becomes their reason for doing everything.

I call this the Curse of Capability.

And almost every talented founder I know suffers from the Curse of Capability.

It’s also the reason why I love investing in “lazy” entrepreneurs.

They don’t suffer from it.

The best founders I’ve ever backed have a quality that looks like they’re not trying hard enough.

But in reality, what they’re actually doing is finding the simplest path to a lot of money and walking along it.

This quality is…

Knowing how to find the easiest possible way.

That’s it.

This is their entire plan.

But when I step into complex businesses, the ones run by the hustling founders, the first thing I nearly always have to do is cut the complexity.

I remove as much as possible to simplify things.

Because I believe that to do great things, we must do fewer things.

So I’m going to give you my favorite framework that helps you simplify a business… the 1-1-1 framework.

I even broke it down on a recent podcast:

The 1-1-1 framework means:

One traffic source
One conversion method
One delivery channel

Let me give you an example:

Maybe you get leads through paid ads.

They convert on a one-on-one call.

And they deliver the work inside a community group.

But most people don’t have a 1-1-1 framework in their business.

They have something closer to a 4-3-5.

With four traffic sources they’re mediocre at, three conversion methods they’ve never actually measured, and five delivery channels no one fully understands.

So when something breaks, they have no idea where to look… they just start guessing.

They burn more ad spend, have more failed calls, and more churned clients.

Nobody wins…

But now, when something is breaking down, you go back to the 1-1-1 framework.

It helps you to find the problems fast and fix them.

This is why you want growth by subtraction, not multiplication.

And it’s why I love investing in “lazy” entrepreneurs so much.

They’ve already done the subtraction.

Now if you liked this post, then you’ll like this one too:

You Can't Master Money Until You Master This

Sharran Srivatsaa — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 22:30:35 GMT

It was September 2008, and Warren Buffett had just invested $5 billion into Goldman Sachs.

I was still working at Goldman Sachs when he made the investment.

Everyone around me in the office was panicking. The front pages were filled with news about the financial collapse.

And everywhere you looked, the numbers on each screen were an angry shade of red.

But at a time when the world was panicking, Warren Buffett did something that would change how I would think about investing forever:

He published an op-ed in The New York Times telling the entire world he was buying.

Even with the financial markets crashing all around him…

And with investors scrambling to save what they had left…

He was still investing.

This moment reframed everything I thought I knew about investing.

Because there was clearly a gap between what the 2008 market was screaming about and what Warren Buffett was doing.

And this gap has a name…

The Patience Equation: Wealth = Quality Asset × Uninterrupted Time.

I made a full video on this. But before you watch it, here’s how the patience equation works.

DALBAR tracked investor behavior over 20 years, and what they found exposes the gap perfectly:

The S&P 500 returned 8.19% per year.

But the average investor earned only 4.67%.

This was the same market and stocks, but with a completely different outcome.

Why?

Because this gap isn’t created by the stocks people picked… it’s behavior.

Behavior that breaks down into three silent leaks that drain any long-term compounding.

Starting with…

Leak 1: Movement

Ronald Read was a janitor from Vermont. He drove a used car and clipped coupons.

He died in 2014 with an $8 million estate.

90% of this was probably created after age 70. The first 50 years were just building momentum.

And he’s not alone…

Warren Buffett had 99% of his net worth built after age 56. He started at 11.

This is why the market rewards time in the market, not constant movement.

It’s the dying art of patience.

But this movement isn’t always a physical action of pulling out stocks… it’s something much deeper.

And that leads us to…

Leak 2: Interruption

Compounding only works if you never stop it. You need to leave the investment alone.

In fact, Charlie Munger said, “The first $100,000 is the hardest.”

But here’s the thing:

This interruption isn’t always financial.

Because when a deal goes sideways, the instinct is to shut everything down, pull back, and protect what you’ve made.

But this emotional interruption can be just as expensive as lifestyle inflation.

If you interrupt the money machine every time you take a hit, you never get the long-term wealth creation that compounding gives you.

Which leads us to our final leak that’s possibly the most dangerous…

Leak 3: Extraction

Extraction is dangerous because, on paper, it sounds like a smart move.

Daniel Kahneman documented this across decades of research.

Loss aversion means the fear of losing hits roughly twice as hard as the satisfaction of a gain.

This is why extraction is emotional relief disguised as strategic thinking.

It reminds me of the Stanford marshmallow study in 1972.

Kids were offered one marshmallow now, or two if they waited.

Most of them grabbed the first one.

But the ones who waited had measurably better outcomes across every dimension of their life, decades later.

Investing is the exact same test.

It’s all about your relationship with time.

Mastering the ability to sit still long enough for time to do the work is the entire game.

This is why money loves speed, wealth loves time.

And if you liked this post, I talk about the 4 biggest mistakes first-time investors make in this next one:

I Spent a Day Trying to Buy Spirit Airlines. Here's What I Found.

Sharran Srivatsaa — Sun, 31 May 2026 15:25:27 GMT

When I saw Spirit Airlines had shut down, I called my investment banker.

Then I sent this slack to my partners Alex and Leila.

My team and I spent the better part of a day building the model, walking the repayment waterfall, and asking the one question that matters in any distressed deal: is the business broken, or is just the balance sheet broken? Two very different problems. Also, two very different price tags.

I made a full video on this. Before you watch it, here is the one number that reframed everything for me.

44 million people flew Spirit in 2024.

That’s insane.

Spirit was an airline that everyone publicly hated.

The airline had already filed for bankruptcy twice
An airline that had the worst fee optics

And 44 million people still flew it.

That told me that it just needed an updated business model.

But the big question is… how do you value a deal like this?

The Deal Anatomy Framework

I run every deal I analyze through 6 buckets of my deal anatomy framework.

Here is how Spirit looks through each one.

1. Thesis Conceptually…you are not buying an airline.

You are buying infrastructure: gates, routes, FAA certifications, reservation systems, and 34 years of operational knowledge. That takes a decade to build from scratch.

2. Catalyst The window was 30 days.

After that:

Gates get reassigned to other carriers
Pilots accept jobs at Delta, United, and Southwest and are gone for years
The FAA operating certificate has to be reapplied for if planes stop flying long enough

The asset was depreciating in real time.

3. Price and Terms The opening bid is $533 million.

That gets you the assets. It does not get you an airline that is actually operational. Restarting operations, rehiring staff, rebuilding fleet leases, and renegotiating gate access is a completely separate budget on top of the purchase price.

Meaning: “Winning the auction gets what’s left of the business. The restart budget actually gets the planes in the air.”

4. Capital Stack The repayment waterfall flows like this:

Aircraft lessors get paid first
Senior bondholders come next
Other creditors follow
Equity shareholders are wiped out completely

Hunter Peterson’s crowdfunding campaign raised $130 million in pledges. His Reg A structure caps at $75 million in actual capital. Against a $533 million opening bid, that is still a $450 million gap, before the restart budget.

5. Risk The risk nobody is talking about enough: even if the auction closes, getting a new FAA operating certificate and putting planes back in the air takes 12 to 24 months. Every day in that window costs money without generating a dollar of revenue.

6. X-Factor Every airline in history has treated passengers as customers.

Spirit 2.0, if structured right, could treat them as owners.

Passengers who own the airline tend to approach things differently. They tell their friends, and tolerate things they would otherwise complain about online. Think of it as a marketing budget built into the cap table.

I kept thinking:

“If 44 million people flew an airline nobody loved, what happens when people actually have a reason to root for it?”

If you liked this post, then you’ll like this one too:

5 Rules For Meetings

Sharran Srivatsaa — Mon, 25 May 2026 01:50:48 GMT

I sit on the board of a publicly traded company.

We run a tight board process, and as I reflect on it alongside what I see inside most organizations, I want to share 5 things that will make every meeting you run more effective.

Rule 1: Treat every meeting like a board meeting.

Send pre-reads, run a tight agenda, require prepared remarks from speakers, and leave with clear decisions and clear actions. Do this for every meeting, not just the ones that feel important.

Rule 2: Meetings without an agenda are disrespectful, and that includes your 1:1s.

If you show up without one, you are saying that you did not think the other person’s time was worth preparing for.

Do better.

Rule 3: If you have a slot on the agenda, prepare to deliver it like you are being graded.

That means clear framing, tight talking points, and a document or slide ready to share and discuss. If you would not show up to a board meeting unprepared, you should not show up to any meeting unprepared.

Rule 4: Here is how you know your presentation missed the mark.

People start asking you basic questions about what you just covered, or questions come from every direction with no throughline. When that happens, stop and say: “Let me rewrite this memo and we can discuss tomorrow.”

It happens to the best of us, so do not let it drag on, because private Slack conversations about what just happened are already forming while you are bombing your portion of the meeting.

Rule 5: Pulling up a document during a meeting that nobody has seen before is bad form.

If you could have sent it beforehand, you should have.

Send pre-reads.

Here is a simple way to think about this:

How you prepare shows just how much you care.

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How To Raise Millionaire Kids

Sharran Srivatsaa — Sun, 17 May 2026 15:36:49 GMT

Most of our kids are not going to be rich.

Why?

3 Reasons:

School does a fine job preparing kids for employment and a poor job teaching them how to build wealth
Most parents were never taught about money either, so they end up winging it just like their own parents did.
The financial rules our parents followed like save consistently, stay loyal to one company, or count on a pension, do not apply anymore.

Just to be clear, being rich is not the goal of life.

Come on.

I recognize the importance of being a good person and cultivating qualities like work ethic, kindness, respect, and generosity.

In fact, I am not even a “money motivated” person.

But that does not mean we completely avoid helping our children have a financial advantage.

And I am not talking about making so much money yourself, that you can make them a trust fund baby.

Come onnnnnn.

I am talking about implementing a plan for yourself and for them that:

Teaches them good money skills
Gives them a legit head start
Makes them a contributing member of society

This is actually less about raising rich kids and more about raising decent kids.

I made this video to break down what I am doing for my children, and I break down the Millionaire Kids Flywheel for you.

Check it out. Watch it on 2x speed.

If you liked this post, then you’ll like this one too:

The Progress Loop: The One Email That Helps Founders Work With Advisors

Sharran Srivatsaa — Mon, 11 May 2026 03:29:57 GMT

When I became an advisor for the first time, I told the founder to call me whenever he needed anything.

He took me literally.

For the first 6 months I heard nothing. Then one Sunday night my phone rang at 10pm. He was in a cash crisis and needed a connection to a lender by morning. I helped him, but I kept thinking: I could have seen this coming 3 weeks ago if I had known what was actually happening.

That is when I understood how most founders think about their advisors. They only reach out when they need something. And the rest of the time they do not want anyone to see how stressed they actually are. Projecting calm is part of the job, but it means your advisors are flying blind, and the moments they could have helped you avoid become the Sunday night phone calls instead.

The fix is something I now call the Progress Loop.

It is a short update email you send every 2 weeks to your advisors, your investors, or anyone who is genuinely in your corner. Write it weekly for yourself. Send it every other week to them.

Write it weekly because the business moves fast and the reflection keeps you sharp. Send it every other week because unless your advisors have a meaningful equity stake, weekly starts to feel like a chore for everyone.

The Progress Loop does 3 things a quarterly Zoom call never will:

It creates a paper trail of your own thinking over time.
It shows your advisors you are doing the work, not just reporting on it.
It forces you to get honest with yourself before you have to get honest with anyone else.

The Structure of the Progress Loop

I have worked and reworked this format for 10+ years. Here is exactly how it works. (You can feed this into Ai and it will just do it for you)

1. Activities

Write down what you actually did, not what was on your roadmap.

If you spent 3 weeks in enterprise sales conversations and your stated strategy is product-led growth, a good advisor will spot that gap. You probably will not, because you are living inside it.

2. Wins

Show your progress.

Wins give advisors something to reference in future conversations and build an archive you will want when you are fundraising and someone asks what you have built.

3. Learnings

Your job as a CEO is to systematically reduce risk in your business.

The format that works:

We used to think X was true.
By doing Y, we found out X was wrong.
What is actually true for our business is Z.

For example: We used to think that getting a meeting with the VP of Sales meant we were close to a deal. By running 12 of those calls, we found out the VP almost never owns budget in companies under $50M. The actual decision maker is the CFO, and we had never spoken to one.

4. Stuck

Stuck does not mean things are hard.

Most founders skip this section because writing it feels like admitting they are failing. As an advisor, this is the first section I read, because helping remove 1 real blocker is worth more than 10 strategy conversations.

Write it as questions you are trying to answer:

How do we hire the VP of Sales we actually want when we cannot afford his base comp?
How do we produce quality content without building a full media team?
How do we find out if the new product roadmap is something clients will actually pay for?

Specific questions get specific help.

5. Focus for the Next 2 Weeks

Write down what needs to be true for you to have a good 2 weeks. Meaning, what are you going to get done before the next update?

When people you respect know what you have committed to, you organize your week differently. You do not want to show up to the next Progress Loop and explain why you did not do what you said you would.

6. Help Us With

Every Progress Loop is a small sales pitch.

Your ask has to connect directly to something already in the update. If what you are asking for has nothing to do with what you have been working on, what you learned, or what you are stuck on, it is probably not your real priority right now.

The full Progress Loop format:

Activities: what you actually worked on
Wins: proof of progress
Learnings: what changed about how you see the business
Stuck: the constraint
Focus: what needs to be true in the next 2 weeks
Help us with: a specific ask that connects to the above 5

Here is how to start:

Write the Progress Loop this week.
Send it every other week.
State the facts. Tell the truth.

If you know a founder, business owner, or entrepreneur send this to them. They will thank you for it.

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Why I told my friend not to take $67 million in cash.

Sharran Srivatsaa — Sun, 03 May 2026 16:05:49 GMT

A friend of mine is selling his company to a public company right now, and he almost handed the government $25 million of his $67 million payout without realizing it.

The investment bankers gave him two choices:

Cash + Earn out
Stock (of the fancy public company that’s buying him)

Of course he wanted to the cash.

He just had a dream of seeing 8 figures in his bank account.

When he called me about it, I explained to him why he should consider the stock choice as well.

First, there are taxes

When you take cash from a sale like this, the IRS treats it as a taxable event on the spot. My friend lives in California, which makes this particularly painful. Here is what the tax stack looks like on a $67 million cash payout in California:

Federal long-term capital gains tax: 20%
Net Investment Income Tax: 3.8%
California state tax (California taxes capital gains as ordinary income): 13.3%
Total effective rate: roughly 37.1%
Dollar amount lost on day one: approximately $24.8 million

He walks away from the closing table with about $42 million instead of $67 million, before he spends a single dollar.

But wait, there’s more:

Every time that $42 million earns interest or gets reinvested, California and the IRS tax those earnings again.
And when he eventually passes that money to his kids, anything above the $15 million federal estate tax exemption gets hit with another 40% federal estate tax rate.

Let’s be real for a second… its $42 million and it is life changing money as long as your last name is not Musk, Gates, Rockefeller, or Bezos. But it is also important to know that the the cash option is not always a clean win. In fact, it is a long series of tax events, one after another, for the rest of his life.

Let’s consider the all-stock choice

I am not a CPA or a tax attorney, I just read the tax code a lot. A section of the tax code called Section 368 may just give my friend the unfair advantage here.

Here is how it works:

Under this rule, when you trade your shares in your company for shares in the company buying you, the IRS does not count it as a sale.
You are exchanging, not selling. No tax is due at closing. Your original cost basis, meaning what you originally paid for your shares, carries over into the new stock.
The gain from all those years of building sits there waiting, but it does not get taxed until you actually sell the new shares.

My friend now has $67 million in stock in a (fancy) publicly traded company and a $0 tax bill on closing day.

That feels like a win… now what?

The Three-Part Architecture I asked him to consider

Once you have this stock, you gotta get it to work for you.

Part 1: Take 100% stock at closing. If the deal is 100% stock, 100% of the gain defers. If you take any cash alongside the stock, the IRS taxes that cash portion immediately. That cash component is called “boot.” You could negotiate for all stock and avoid the boot entirely if you can.

Part 2: Borrow against the stock instead of selling it. Most stock deals have restrictions on the shares or lockup periods. Once the lock-up period ends, you pledge your stock as collateral at a private bank or brokerage and pull out a line of credit against it.

On $67 million of public company stock, most private banks will lend 50 to 70% of the position’s value, which works out to roughly $33 to $47 million in accessible cash.
You pay interest on what you borrow, but you never sell a share.
The IRS only taxes sales. A loan against stock you still own is not a sale, so no tax is triggered. You live off the borrowed money while the stock keeps growing in the background.
Oh, and based on a few minor technicalities the interest you owe on borrowing against your stock is an expense, and therefore tax deductible.

Part 3: Collar the position to protect against a big drop. This is just a fancy way of saying… you do some financial engineering to protect your stock from going down.

A collar means you buy a put option and sell a call option at the same time.
A put option is a contract that pays you if the stock price falls sharply below a set level.
A call option is a contract where you agree to cap your upside above a certain price, and selling it generates income that offsets the cost of the put.
Together they create a price floor and a price ceiling around your stock position, which lets you hold the stock without worrying that it could collapse in value.

Just to be super clear… this is a very common thing in situations like this and a simple chat with your favorite LLM will draw out how you should do this.

The Technicality

Someone is going to hate on me, so here is the technicality.

The IRS watches collars carefully under a rule called the constructive sale rule, Section 1259.
If the collar is too tight, meaning the floor and ceiling are too close to the current stock price, the IRS decides you have essentially sold the stock without actually selling it and taxes you immediately as if you did.
To stay outside that ruling, the floor typically needs to be set at least 20 to 30 percent below the current stock price.
When this is done correctly, you hold the stock, maintain your borrowing capacity, and have real protection if the market turns against you.

There haters, feel better?

What Happens to the Tax Bill When You Die?

This is kinda the entire flex in all of this…

If my friend holds this stock and passes it to his kids, the IRS resets the cost basis to whatever the stock is worth on the day he dies.
His kids inherit the shares at current market value. The decades of deferred gain simply disappear. They can sell the shares right after inheriting them and owe almost nothing in capital gains tax.
The estate uses the borrowed money to repay the loans, and the kids keep everything else.

Compare that to the cash path:

Day one: $24.8 million in taxes
Every year after: ordinary income tax on all earnings
At death: 40% federal estate tax on everything above $15 million
What the kids actually receive: a fraction of what the stock path would have left them

The 4 Things That Can Go Wrong

Of course there are risks, and I am sure many that I am not seeing here but lets start with these…

1. The lock-up period. Most public company acquisitions require founders to hold their new shares for 6-12 months before selling, pledging, or hedging them. During that window, you cannot borrow against the stock or set up the collar. If the stock drops 40% while you are locked up, the plan starts from a much weaker position. You need to believe in the quality of the stock you are receiving before committing to this path.

2. The collar width. If the put and call strikes are too close together, you trigger the constructive sale rule and owe the tax you were trying to defer. If they are too far apart, the protection is weaker than you need. Finding the right range requires a derivatives specialist and a tax attorney working on this for you.

3. The interest carry. Carrying $35 to $45 million in loans at current rates costs roughly $1.75 to $2.25 million per year in interest. That is real money. You need to model that cost honestly against the tax savings over your expected hold period before deciding the math works for your situation.

4. Advisors who do not talk to each other. This strategy requires a tax attorney, a derivatives desk at a private bank, and an estate planning attorney. Most business owners do not have that team coordinated before the deal closes, and that crushes them.

So what did my friend end up doing afterall?

He spent a week thinking about it
He pulled a small team of experts together
And realized that he would be leaving too much on the table if he took all the cash

So he negotiated 1m off the purchase price and got the board to give him permission to pledge his stock. Meaning, he took $66m of stock instead of $67m, agreed not to sell it and only pledge it so that he could borrow against it.

Remember, it’s not what you make its what you keep.

This is not legal or financial advice. If any part of this applies to your situation, talk to a tax attorney and a private wealth advisor before doing anything. The strategy is real and used regularly by sophisticated founders. The execution details are everything.

If you liked this post, you’ll like this one too:

Understanding Negative CAC

Sharran Srivatsaa — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 15:31:05 GMT

Every dollar you spend on ads is a penalty for being unknown.

Let me explain:

I was looking at the numbers for one of our portfolio companies a few years ago.

They were running paid ads to cold traffic. It cost them $85 per lead and they were closing at 7%. Most businesses don’t even know these numbers.

Let’s do the math:

14.3 (100/7) leads needed to close one customer
14.3 × $85 = $1,214 to acquire one customer

Not bad, if the math works.

Then they tried something different.

They started running 2-day, in-person workshops 4-times a year for a $2,000 ticket.

Here is what the economics looked like per attendee:

Ticket price: $2,000
Ads to fill the room: $250
Sales commission on ticket: $200
Venue, food, AV, materials: $300
Staff and delivery: $150
Total cost per attendee: $900
Net per attendee: $1,100

Before anyone became a customer, the business made $1,100 per person just for showing up.

Bruh.

So they went from spending $1,214 to acquire a customer on cold ads…to making $1,100 on every single person who walked through the door, whether they bought anything or not.

Now here is where it gets interesting.

About 30% of attendees became paying customers afterward. So for every customer acquired:

1 divided by 30% = 3.3 attendees needed to produce one customer
3.3 attendees × $1,100 net per attendee = $3,630 made before anyone signed up

They made $3,630 before a single customer bought anything.

They went from spending $1,214 to acquire a customer… to making $3,630 before that customer signed up. A $4,844 swing per customer acquired.
That is negative CAC.

And its a beautiful thing. And most business owners don’t believe it is real until they see the numbers.

Now, why does that matter to you?

Here are 5 learnings that could help you:

Learning #1: The math flips completely. This is not a small improvement. It is a completely different business model. One charges you to find customers. The other pays you before they become one.
Learning #2: The customer who pays to find you is a different customer. Cold traffic closes at 7% and needs a bunch of sales ninja convincing. But someone who paid $2,000 to spend two days with you closes at 30% and arrives pre-interested and pre-motivated to doing business with you.
Learning #3: The event pays for itself. Every dollar of ad spend, commission, venue and logistics is covered by the ticket price and then some. The business is not gambling on conversion. It already won before the sales conversation started.
Learning #4: You own the relationship. Cold traffic disappears the moment you stop paying for it. The 200 people who came through your workshop last year still remember you. That does not go away when Meta changes its algorithm next Tuesday.
Learning #5: The quality of the pipeline changes everything. A calendar full of workshop conversations is a completely different energy than grinding through cold leads at 7%. The team performs better, the customers stick around longer, and the whole business operates differently.

Ok, so why do most business owners not think about negative CAC as a real option?

Because we are taught to minimize CAC and as a cost to get it as close to zero as possible.

But negative CAC is a different game entirely. You are not minimizing a cost. You are turning acquisition into a profit center.

As I see it, we have two choices:

Keep optimizing paid channels and accept that the cost goes up every year. (I agree that paid works btw, the workshop attendees came from paid ads. It’s not about paid ads, its about how you utilize them)
Build a model where finding customers generates revenue before they buy anything. (This is just a choice)

Option 2 takes longer. It took this company about 18 months before the workshop model was running smoothly and the cash flow made sense.

But once that happened, it changed the P&L completely.

So what’s the takeaway?

Pick one channel… A workshop, a newsletter, a podcast, a community. One thing, built consistently, and resist the urge to pivot. The obsession is the way!

Best case: your acquisition cost goes negative and customers pay you to find them. Beautiful.
Worst case: you build an audience that makes every future offer cheaper to sell. Beautiful.

So I say again: Every dollar you spend on ads is a penalty for being unknown.

BTW - I break down exactly how Acquisition.com’s business model work on the negative CAC model.

The Weekly Offer System

Sharran Srivatsaa — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 18:30:55 GMT

Within the first 90 days, I received documented proof that this idea generated over $100 million in sales.

I just stopped keeping track after that.

While I came up with this idea about 10 years ago when I was in real estate, it has since then been used in various industries.
This is a weekly offer system that every single business should consider putting in place and I am going to explain to you how to do it.

It is called the Deal of the Week.

A pizza store would call it the pizza of the week
My friend is a watch broker - he called it the watch of the week
A friend who is a coach - called it the client of the week

In essence, it’s [something] of the week.

Here are the 4 reasons why:

Permission: When its a weekly thing, you have given yourself permission to make an offer and sell… without it being sleazy. For example, the pizza store could hammer you with specials every day or could just make sure the pizza of the week was awesome… and nobody would unsubscribe from that text message.
Sales: Instead of worrying about what marketing strategy to run next, you always know that you can do this 50+ times a year and it will continuously bring in customers.
Positive Associations: When you are constantly sharing special offers with someone, they have a positive association with your brand.
Brand: Talking about brand, it’s free brand recognition every single week.

In fact, Crumbl Cookies did exactly this and blew up their brand.
Crumbl was just another neighborhood cookie store franchise. Most franchise owners made no money, unless a soccer team or birthday party ordered 100+ cookies that month. All this changed when Crumbl put the weekly offer in place.

Every Friday, Crumbl corporate would do a mass push of its flavors of the week. It was the only 6 flavors they would be selling during the upcoming week.
All the franchisees organized themselves to bake and deliver on the demand of just those 6 cookie flavors. This made production easy, as they knew exactly what they needed from raw materials to ingredients.
Crumbl went hard on this campaign. While it started with text message and email, it soon evolved to video and social media pushes. Today, each of their weekly videos get millions of views and tens of thousands of shares.

The weekly offer built Crumbl’s entire business.

While not all of us have a neighborhood cookie store, there is still a way to clearly use this strategy and have this be the foundational piece of communication that to send to your database on a weekly basis.

I break down this strategy step-by-step, along with live sample messages in this video:

Here are the 3 big lessons that I learned deploying this across industries:

Name your thing: Deal of the Week or Smoothie of the Week
Send it at the same day/time every week
Force a click or reply. Meaning, have them click to redeem a coupon or reply to get more information.

Bonus: If you offer a professional service like real estate, mortgage, interior design, law, chiropractic, agency etc. then always hold something back in the email and force the reply.

For example:

In real estate, I recommend never putting the price of the “deal” of the week.
In mortgage, you could offer to cover closing costs if the refinance was done by x date, but I don’t add all the details
In chiropractic, you could offer a free “Computer Sitting Spine Alignment” worth $400 for just booking a consultation that week.

The magic words I use at the end of the email are:
If you are interested, just reply and I will get you all the details.

If you did nothing else in the next 90 days, put this strategy in place and you will see it bring a steady stream of revenue while also building your brand.

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10 Truths About Failure Nobody Taught You

Sharran Srivatsaa — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 20:15:42 GMT

Lessons in life will be repeated until they are learned. If the same thing keeps happening, that means there is a lesson in there you have not learned yet. I often ask myself, “What would need to be true for this to not happen again”.
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes. The goal is to walk away from every mistake with a heuristic (a thinking shortcut) like a rule, a framework, or a checklist.
Confidence is the memory of success. One bad outcome can mess with you more than ten good ones if you let it.
The best math you can learn is how to calculate the future cost of your current decisions. I try and play out 3 chess moves. Meaning, I ask myself “If I did this, what would be a reasonable outcome.” Then I do it two more times and see if I like where it lands.
Risk is often better than regret. The things I did not do haunt me more than the things I tried and failed. All your failures are the greatest stories you live to tell.
People only see the decisions you make, not the choices you had. Most people cheer for you until they start seeing you as more successful than them. Kinda messed up, but generally true.
Figure out how to guarantee defeat. Then do the opposite. This is the classic AAR (After Action Report) I learned from the Navy. I ask myself four questions after anything goes wrong: what was supposed to happen, what actually happened, why was there a gap, and what will I change.
The degree to which you can grow is directly proportional to the amount of truth you can accept about yourself without running away. My biggest wins and best relationships have come from me taking massive responsibility for my actions, sometimes even when taking said responsibility was the irresponsible thing to do.
Your worst battle is between what you know and what you feel. As my business partner and bestie Leila Hormozi says: “Fugg your mood, follow the plan”
A winner is a loser who tried one more time. Never give up. Never quit.

I made this video that breaks down the three types of fear that cause people to fail and the tools I use to beat each one. If this list helped, you will like the video too.

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We hit 100,000 subscribers on YouTube in 63 days.

Sharran Srivatsaa — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 23:15:40 GMT

We posted 5 videos in 63 days and hit 100K YouTube subs.

That was one video about every 2 to 3 weeks.

Here’s what the portfolio looks like:

Video 1: Everything I learned from being around the Top 0.01% (442K views)
Video 2: Everything I learned at Goldman Sachs in 17 mins (236K views)
Video 3: Once you understand investing, you understand money (300K views)
Video 4: 7 Rules of Money (1.3M views)
Video 5: How to create generational wealth (200K views)

And here are 5 lessons I learned during the process.

1. Make 1/0 Content

1/0 content means content only you can make.

This is about your unique experiences, accomplishments, stories, and circumstances. You are not trying to have crazy stories. You are trying to make clear points and use your stories as proof.

Example: If I wanted to explain the importance of consistency, I would talk about how I have run the 5am Club for 15+ years, waking up at 5am every single day. That is proof I can point to. Nobody else can tell that story.

2. Keep Your Videos Connected

YouTube is a labyrinth of videos. It is a portfolio of your work.

Making videos on random topics makes everything harder on the algorithm. It makes it harder on viewers because after they finish one video, there is no natural next step.

You want your videos to be non-sequential chapters in the same book. That way, people know you better, stay with your content, and go deeper in the rabbit hole.

3. Respond to Comments

I could probably do a better job at this, but every time I had a minute, I would respond to comments.

I tried to respond to the thoughtful comments first, the ones where someone clearly put in effort. Then I would come back for the others. It gets hard when there are hundreds, but it should never be hard when there are just a few.

People do not even stop to like a video anymore. If they take the time to write a comment, the least you can do is respond.

4. Build a Visual Identity

If every video is edited differently, shot in a different location, and has a different visual identity, it confuses the audience.

You want it to feel like you the moment someone presses play. The edit, the visuals, the approach, the cuts, the fonts and colors should all be consistent.

I am getting better at this as we do more videos. We set up a new studio and locked in a consistent approach to shooting, editing, graphics, and overall feel.

The easiest way to do this when you are starting out: tell your team to follow a key creator’s approach that you like. That gives you a baseline of consistency before you develop your own.

5. Team

It would have been impossible to do this without a team.

There is concept research, packaging, scripting the framework, thinking about visuals, iterating with me on stories and viewpoints. That process takes time.

I am just one piece of it. I am the talent. Maybe 10% of the work. The rest of the team produces the media asset.

For every hour we shoot, we probably spend 15 to 20 hours in prep.

If you want to see all of this in action, check out the YouTube channel.

And if you like what you see, share it.

If you liked this post, then you’ll like this one too:

The RN35: The Simplest Way to Beat Procrastination

Sharran Srivatsaa — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 15:31:09 GMT

Procrastination is normal and everyone does it.

Some of us procrastinate more than others, and I was one of the worst. Tasks would sit on my to-do list for weeks, and I just kept moving them from Monday to Tuesday to Wednesday until I would start researching a new to-do list app.

Back in the days of Trello, I would just move the card from column to column.

I was terrible.

I read the fancy books and tried eating the frog, but I could never get inspired by that advice because who wants to eat a frog? I tried time blocking, priority matrices, and color-coded calendars, but none of it stuck. I am also color-blind, lol.

Then I had a random thought. If beating procrastination is easy for some people and hard for others, maybe those people know something I don’t. That means it can be learned, and if it can be learned, it can be taught, which makes it a skill.

That gives me hope!!!

In fact, this hit me when I was dealing with my taxes.

Just to be totally honest: I don’t even do my taxes anymore because I just collect my documents and ship them off to my family office, so I have it pretty good. But I still couldn’t bring myself to start, and the task sat in my Asana for 3 weeks straight.

I knew something was broken, so I sat down and wrote out every project I had been elegantly avoiding. There were eleven, and I forced myself to answer one question for each: Why am I actually avoiding this?

As you might imagine… the answer was the same for almost all of them.

I didn’t have a game plan, therefore I didn’t know where to start… so, clearly, I did nothing.

Our smart friends who do research about this stuff at Harvard’s Academic Resource Center found that not knowing where to start is one of the strongest predictors of procrastination. A lack of clear next steps causes more procrastination than laziness ever did.

When you say it that way… of course that makes sense.

So instead of trying to come up with a game plan for every project, I came up with a system that creates the game plan for me. I call it the RN35.

RN35 stands for Right Next 3 things that take 5 minutes each.

When you face a project you keep avoiding, ask yourself one question: What are the next 3 things I can do, where none of them takes more than 5 minutes?

Here’s how I used it on my taxes.

Instead of looking at “prepare taxes” as one task, I wrote down 3 small steps:

Open last year’s return folder and skim the first page (3 minutes)
Text my CPA to ask when he needs everything by (1 minute)
Create a new folder on my desktop called “2025 Taxes” (1 minute)

I did all 3 in under 5 minutes… and even kept going.

I pulled up my bank statements, then my brokerage statements, then my donation receipts. About 15mins later, I had everything packaged and ready to send.

A project that had been on my list for 3 weeks took under 15 mins once I had a game plan.

A few things that have helped me that may also help you:

Keep each task under 5 minutes, and if it takes longer, you picked the wrong task and need to break it down further.
Make each task something you can physically do. “Think about the trip” is not a task, but “open the Google Doc and write the first bullet point” is one that you will get done!
Write the 3 tasks down instead of trying to remember them.
Do all 3 in one sitting because if you do one and walk away, you lose the progress.

When I feel stuck now, I ask one question: What’s my RN35?

If you liked this post, then you’ll like this one too:

The Single Most Powerful Habit That Helped Me Build 2 Billion Dollar Companies

Sharran Srivatsaa — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:30:20 GMT

The Single Most Powerful Habit That Helped Me Build 2 Billion Dollar Companies… is waking up at 4:45am.

Over the last 14 years, I’ve woken up at 4:45am every single day. I’ve tested every alarm clock, sleep tracker, and productivity hack I could find. I’ve helped over 100 entrepreneurs build their own morning routines.

I always come back to these 5 steps.

1. Your evening routine matters more than your morning routine.

I’ll be honest. I don’t go to bed at the same time every night. My schedule changes. Life happens.

But the best advice I ever got was the 3-2-1 rule:

Stop eating 3 hours before bed
Stop working 2 hours before bed
Turn off screens 1 hour before bed

I do this sometimes. Other times I don’t. But the nights I follow it, I have a good morning the next day. The nights I skip it, I can feel the difference.

2. Wake up to something you actually like.

It’s hard enough to wake up early when you’re building a new habit.

But think about a time when you were excited to wake up. I think about my kids. On school days, they drag themselves out of bed. But when we’re going to Disneyland, they’re up at 4:45am with no problem.

That made me wonder: what if I woke up to something I actually liked? What if the first thing I did in the morning was easy and enjoyable?

Maybe it’s a warm shower. Maybe it’s sitting by the fireplace with a book and dozing off a little. I figured out that if I made 5am feel like a treat instead of a chore, it got a lot easier.

So I made a list of things I would be excited to do when I woke up. Then I started doing them.

Most people load up their mornings with stuff they hate. Cold plunges, breathing exercises, 300 pushups, hot water with cayenne pepper. That’s a lot of pain before sunrise.

The best thing you can do is think about what you actually love and do that first. You don’t have to wake up and do 100 pushups. Just wake up to something you enjoy.

3. Remove every obstacle the night before.

This one I do every single night without fail.

Before I go to sleep, I set out everything I need for the morning. Water bottle, clothes, headphones, wallet. Everything is ready and waiting.

Then I close my eyes for about 10 seconds and picture tomorrow morning. I see myself wake up, turn off the alarm, put on my clothes, and walk downstairs. I run the whole thing in my head like a short movie.

When the alarm goes off the next morning, I just do what I already pictured. The morning feels easier because I already kinda rehearsed it.

4. Wake your body up fast.

For a while, I struggled with that groggy feeling where you’re awake but your body hasn’t caught up yet. I would hit snooze or sit on the edge of the bed for ten minutes.

So I tried something small. For one year, I did one pushup the moment I got out of bed. Just one. It sounds silly, but it was enough to get my blood moving.

Now I drink a full bottle of water as soon as my feet hit the floor. That works for me.

The idea is to find something that wakes your body up quickly. It doesn’t have to be intense. It just has to get you from groggy to awake. A glass of cold water, a quick stretch, a walk to the kitchen. Find what works for you and do it right away.

5. Find something bigger than yourself.

This is the one that changed everything for me.

14 years ago, I was not feeling well. I was working hard, our business was growing fast, and my body was starting to give out. My doctor ran tests for a week and noticed my numbers got better. He asked me what I did differently. The only thing I changed was waking up earlier to get to his office.

He told me to keep doing it.

So I texted three friends. I asked them to wake up with me at 5am for two weeks. I set up a phone call. I would log in, share something quick, and we would all start our day together.

The first morning, I heard three dings on the line. (The dings = like when someone joins a call it chimes, that’s what I am referring to here).

My 3 friends showed up.

The second morning, I heard four dings. They had invited someone else. Huh.

The third morning, seven dings. More weird people.

That phone call became the 5am Club. Today, over 10,000+ people have joined. We have CEOs, founders, a billionaire, a head of state, and members of Congress who call in. I have missed only 3 calls in 14 years.

Every morning, thousands of people count on me to show up on time. That’s way more powerful than an alarm clock.

When other people are waiting for you, you get out of bed.

If you want to join, go to 5amclub.net.

However you slice it, greatness is a choice.

If you liked this post, then you’ll like this one too:

Three Partners, Three Roles, One Multi-Billion Dollar Bet

Sharran Srivatsaa — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 17:10:29 GMT

We are rebuilding the leadership structure of Acquisition.com to build a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

This is a managing partner-led model where Alex, Leila, and I are each going deeper on specialized areas to create a bigger and better future.

Here is what that looks like:

I am stepping in as CEO to execute on our plan to build the private equity business model of the future.
Leila is stepping into Executive Chair with her focus on building a world-class media machine and deploying capital into strategic investments.
Alex is leading the charge on our “money machine” by building the operating money models across our entire portfolio.

These strategic changes will allow Alex, Leila, and me to do more, work harder, and pull the future forward.

Here are 5 things we are working on that might be interesting to you:

1. Real estate: We are building a billion dollar real estate portfolio in 3 years. We are already at over $300 million of assets and actively growing. Take a look at the ACQ Real Estate website as we are thinking about inviting our network to co-invest with us.

2. AI first: Instead of focusing on getting more people to use AI, we are going hard to level up every single person in our business (and operating function) to become AI first. If you have experience doing this for companies, hit me up.

3. Leila’s book: Leila is writing a brilliant book on all the leadership lessons learned building the business. The whole point of the book is to train leaders inside Acquisition.com and our portfolio companies. Of course, you will have it in your hands to build and lead your teams. It is going to blow your mind.

4. House of brands: We brought on a new Chief Media Officer (you’ll hear about him soon, he’s badass) to help us build the media company of the future. You are going to see some insane approaches to content and show formats from Alex, Leila, and me, plus some new surprises. We can all agree that the world needs more than carousels and reels.

5. Category Kings: We made a big commitment to building the next batch of category kings. We are going to buy, build, or partner to create the dominant company in each market that we enter. We obviously can’t do a hundred of these, but we have our eyes on a few and we are going to point the entire media and operational infrastructure of Acquisition.com at them. If you want to become one, watch for our next announcement on how to apply.

I am sharing all of this because I told you I’m going to build in public.

I built two billion-dollar companies and missed documenting the journey as I went along. All the lessons are just in my head. That was my biggest regret. It’s why I started this Substack and called the “The Next Billion”.

When you get to watch the day-to-day decisions and see the leadership transitions, you can start to understand why we make them. It gives you a window into implementing something like that for your life and your business.

Remember this: The bigger the vision, the more you need focused people in their zone of genius to make it come to life.

I hope seeing this unfold in real time is helpful to you.

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