Michia Rohrssen. This Real-Life James Bond Just Made $110M
Episode - 1
Michia Rohrssen. This Real-Life James Bond Just Made $110M
Please give a warm welcome to today's guest, Michia Rohrssen: a 3x founder, world champion in 3 martial arts, investor, and content creator with a mission to empower a million people to live lives brimming with freedom, wealth, and happiness. In this interview, Michia shares his secrets for crafting his dream post-exit lifestyle, practical investing, and living life with purpose and a happy marriage — all just 2 years after selling his tech business for $110 million at age 34. Michia has lived in New York City and Silicon Valley but now shares his time between London and Taipei.
What We Discussed:
00:00:25: Introduction to Michia Rohrssen
00:01:25: Discussion on Prodigy and why it was started
00:02:46: Michia's backstory and motivation for starting a business
00:04:12: Discussion on how money was a motivator
00:06:02: The dream for the future
00:07:22: On role models and carving out a unique path
00:08:40: Introducing the Youtube channel 'Ask Michia'
00:14:09: Reasons against starting a paid online course
00:18:47: Giving away a billion dollars
00:20:25: The stress over the finish line in Prodigy
00:22:10: Discussion on the formulation of Prodigy's business model
00:22:51: Fundamental Business Principles
00:23:47: Key Gap in Car Dealerships
00:24:26: Unexpected Sale of the Business in
00:29:33: The biggest lessons from the exit
00:32:19: Managing Emotions During the Exit Process
00:33:37: Investment Policy and Saying No
00:35:09: Realizing Your Financial Dreams
00:38:51: Feeling of a lack of purpose
00:40:09: Designing a Fulfilling Lifestyle
00:42:36: Setting Personal, Money, Professional, and Thing Goals
00:43:09: Differentiating between Math Problems and Art Problems
00:44:01: Art vs Math Approach
00:44:34: Investing: Intuition vs Logic
00:47:04: Experience with Investment Advisors
00:47:44: Shift from Silicon Valley to Finance World
00:49:06: Choosing an Advisory Fund
00:50:43: Time Spent on Managing Money
00:52:09: Funding Lifestyle with Portfolio Income
00:56:23: Role of Angel Investments
00:59:11: Travel & Lifestyle
01:02:38: Personal Development & Social Media
01:05:28: No Regrets About Selling Prodigy
01:06:10: Surrounding Yourself with World Class People
01:08:12: Overcoming insecurities and challenges
01:10:21: Successful experience at fundraising
01:11:16: Focus on health and wellbeing
01:12:14: Building own ice bath for health benefits
01:12:40: Discussion on religion and spirituality
01:14:10: Thoughts on leaving a legacy
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Michia Rohrssen: [00:00:00 - 00:00:14]
I'm now sort of my own role model in a sense. I think a lot of that's because I've traveled so much. I don't love employment. You know, everyone wants to ask, what do you do? And what they really mean is, what do you do for work?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:00:14 - 00:00:25]
The answer, I'm retired. One sort of sounds obnoxious and they're like, come on, you're like 34. But I would say my number one identity right now is adventurer.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:00:25 - 00:00:39]
Welcome to the Exit Paradox podcast. Here we meet remarkable exited founders to uncover what comes next after selling a business. Did they sustain success and find fulfillment? Let's learn together. Please subscribe to join our community.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:00:44 - 00:01:16]
My guest today is a postexit rock star. In less than two years after he sold his business, he managed to build a lifestyle of his dream master investing and find his new purpose. I've known Michia Rohrssen for long enough to vouch that it's the real deal. Raised by divorced hippie parents, he once relied on a soup kitchen, but grew up to become a world champion in three martial arts and built and sold the business for $100 million by the age of 34. Michia is here to share his secret of post exit happiness and ongoing success.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:16 - 00:01:19]
Michia, thank you so much for joining me today.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:01:19 - 00:01:20]
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:20 - 00:01:23]
Very flattered and very happy you're here. Thank you.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:01:23 - 00:01:24]
Thank you.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:25 - 00:01:29]
My first question is about Prodigy and why you even started it.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:01:29 - 00:02:34]
I had started this company when I was 17 that basically sold DVDs of software online, selling, teaching, self defense. And I had grown that to like six figures a year and then kind of watched it collapse, left that behind, started a marketing agency, also going to six figures a year, and then sort of watched that collapse. And so Prodigy was me realizing, I know I want to make money, but what I'm doing is not working. And for the first time, rather than just saying, let me just do what seems to be in vogue or online, said, let me just look at how other young people have become successful. Facebook had just acquired Instagram for a billion dollars. And the founders were like super young. It was a team of, like, I think, 16 people. Snapchat turned down 4 billion. WhatsApp gets acquired for 16 billion, all in the span of a couple of months. And I was, at the time, I would have been in South Carolina, and I was like, what am I doing here? Basically broke, running these failed businesses. I just need to move to Silicon Valley and start a software company.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:02:34 - 00:02:45]
So if we dig a bit deeper into your personal reasons to start the business in the first, like, what drove you? Why starting a business rather than getting a job?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:02:46 - 00:04:09]
I've only had jobs my entire life for nine months or less. I don't love employment just because there's something about, like, the upside is just not. I lose interest in it really quickly. Whereas starting a business, it was clear to me that I could ten x, 100 x every year, sort of my income, net worth. And that became really interesting going into my backstory, a little bit, like, growing up poor, not able to afford food, family, declaring bankruptcy, things like that.
My parents divorced when I was four, so when I was with my dad, we would go to the soup kitchen and we'd wait in line for food. So you don't fully recognize the socioeconomic status that you're in, but you recognize it's not normal, it's not what your friends are doing. I think you feel like it's your fault in many ways. And to me, a lot of that shame was associated with not having money and just not being able to afford the things that friends had that normal people in life seem to have. It became clear to me that I do need that ten x or 100 x income growth potential to make it out of the situation that I'm used to. Entrepreneurship was not the only way, but one of the very few ways to do that. It was just where I wanted to be.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:04:09 - 00:04:12]
It sounds like money was the main motivator.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:04:12 - 00:04:16]
Money was a motivator most of my life.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:04:17 - 00:04:23]
Would you say that you were trying to move away from that shame and that pain and that suffering?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:04:23 - 00:06:02]
When I was a kid, I was always trying to achieve things that I would, now, looking in hindsight, say would make me feel worthy enough, justify my existence, feel like I don't have this sort of, like, giant chip on my shoulder. I was competing in the Junior Olympics and judo when I was 13. I was a world champion in karate, kung fu, and taekwondo when I was 16, and then again when I was 17. And so I've always had this sort of chasing external validation to feel worthy enough as just, like, part of my background. Around when I was 17, I started to dream of what could life look like? And I came up with this big vision of, like, I want to own multiple homes around the world. I want to have this amazing wife, I want to travel all the time. I want to be able to earn money without working. And that became sort of this pull. So I had the negative self doubt sort of as this pushing force pushing me forward, and the vision for my life sort of pulling me forward.
And I think the combination of those two things really explains a lot of my 20s where I was just like constantly dreaming and working towards these goals. And now you know me well, so you know that I do have those multiple homes and travel and get to do this stuff. So I actually cannot describe in words how strange it is to be in my own shoes today because every single aspect of my life is literally just what I wrote down in journals in my early 20s saying, this is what I hope life one day looks like.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:06:02 - 00:06:12]
Where do you think you got these ideas that traveling, having a wonderful wife and multiple homes is the dream?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:06:13 - 00:07:22]
I think a lot of it is just society's conditioning and programming. Like, for sure, this is sort of like the James Bond esque lifestyle that I'm living now. But also there was a book that was really influential in my life. Probably one of the most influential books ever was the four hour work week by Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss just had this incredible life. Like he had tango danced in Argentina and I think he actually won the world salsa dancing championship. He was a national kickboxing champion in China. He lived in Taiwan for a while and actually almost opened a gym. So we had all these really amazing experiences and I grew up in South Carolina. Most people in South Carolina basically are born, buy the house next to the house they were born into, live there and die, and maybe one in every ten people gets a passport.
It's not normal to travel and see the world. So I didn't really have any role models and Tim Ferriss kind of became like my role model of what I would love to do.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:07:22 - 00:07:24]
Is he still your role model, you would say?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:07:24 - 00:07:51]
I am so proud of who I've become and I've tried to carve out this uniquely Michia identity where it's not just copy paste Tim Ferriss's life onto my life. I've taken things from Tim Ferriss but also other people that I say like, I like what you're doing in life, but I don't like other aspects so let me take the aspects that I do, like discard the aspects that don't serve me.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:07:51 - 00:07:56]
So you feel you have all the freedom you ever dreamt about right now?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:07:57 - 00:08:40]
Yeah, the paradox of choice is really hard and probably the biggest thing that keeps me up at night now is like, where should our homes be? Where should we travel to now that we have the full freedom and flexibility? It's almost a challenge in a way, but you're in full control of the pen. You get to write exactly what your life looks like and going back to the thing about money, money is ultimately the thing that enables that. I have a complicated relationship with money. I think the pursuit of money beyond freedom is a sort of wasteful pursuit.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:08:40 - 00:09:27]
Yeah. I've met quite a lot of founders who exited their companies and were shocked that freedom is actually a big challenge and that it's so hard to channel your energy anywhere and you procrastinate and just waste time and become very unhappy. But I think you're quite unique in that you found a way to channel your energy. Which brings me to my favorite topic, which is your amazing YouTube channel, ask Michia. Not only I watch it all the time, but as you know, my teenage children are addicted to it. So I would really love us to talk about it. How you came up with the idea, how it affects your lifestyle, why you're doing it, that's the big question.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:09:28 - 00:14:09]
Yeah. First, when I sold the company, everyone online said, when you sell a company, you're going to make a bunch of money and you're going to get depressed. And it's the classic Taylor's oldest time. That's just what happens when you sell the company. So I was very aware that this could happen and I really tried to convince myself I wouldn't be that guy or gal that sells. A company gets depressed. But it happened. You just lose your purpose, you lose your sense of identity. And so for a long time, I was really struggling with what's next. What do I do? Do I start another company? Do I start consulting? Do I start doing advisory or venture like angel investing? And I think about maybe a year into selling the company. After I sold the company, I really sat down one day and I was like, so frazzled and stressed out.
And I said, I'm just going to give myself permission to take time to figure this out. I looked into angel investing, I looked into taking consulting roles or advisory roles, and those things didn't really hook me. They just weren't that interesting to me. And then separately, I have been obsessed with YouTube, basically since it came out. I love film. I love photography. I already film a bunch of our travels. And when me and my wife travel, we travel with multiple cameras, multiple lenses, the drones, the whole nine yards. Like, you would think we're a video company, but we just don't even post a lot of it. We just film it because we love doing it. But I never believed that I could be a YouTuber. I always thought I would sort of be maybe helping YouTubers launch businesses or just meeting cool YouTubers. I wanted to be in that arena. And then when I was in Zurich, I don't know why, but one night something just clicked in my brain, whereas I have, maybe it's going back to the feeling of being unworthy. I felt like selling the business sort of flipped the switch where I was maybe worthy enough to talk about my own experience. So I said, what if I was the YouTuber? And once that seed became planted? And that was when I knew this is what I want to do. So I filmed my first YouTube video in Slovenia, actually, that I never posted, just to be like, let me get in front of the camera and practice it. I was so excited about it. And then became the bigger challenge around, well, how do I actually start this? Because I was still at upstart and I was in my earn out. And the earn out was structured in a way where it was like, it was a three year earn out. The first two years were interesting. They were both low seven figures for me to earn while I was there, and it was just time based. But the third year was 4 million plus, like an extra, call it 600,000 plus salary and bonus. So it was almost probably four point eight, four point nine million dollars to stay that third year. And that became a real challenge because I was like, I really want to be doing this YouTube thing, but I could earn a lot of money that is still meaningful to my net worth today. Like, it's not a trivial amount of money if I stay and just work at upstart. And I met with a bunch of folks in the Tiger 21 community, actually, and basically said, here's my circumstance. And basically everyone said, you would be really dumb if you stayed for the money. Stay if it's your passion and you really feel like you can do something here, but otherwise you have enough money, just leave the money because you may never get these years back and go do your passion. So then I was like, okay, I got to do it, and walked away. Left the full earn out on the table. I didn't get a single dime of that third year and started making YouTube videos this year, basically to try to help other entrepreneurs that want to live the life that I'm living and just teach them the lessons I had to struggle to learn. Like, I had a lot of hardships, but also a lot of chance encounters and luck and great mentors along the way. And I recognize not everyone globally will get those same chances, but they can all globally access my YouTube. So if I can just bring some of that to them, man, I wake up every day and I'm super fulfilled in a way that I never was, even when I was making the money.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:14:09 - 00:14:14]
Why you don't start a paid online course?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:14:14 - 00:18:21]
I think that the make money space, the make money online space to be an entrepreneur space is uniquely crowded with basically fraudsters. These people say, buy my course and you'll get rich. And it turns out they have never actually made any money in business. They've only made money selling courses. Listen, I don't want to be in the category of those people. I don't respect them. I think they're basically taking advantage of poor people, which I think is like one of the lowest things you could do is take someone who spends their last dollar on your course to try to get themselves out of a poverty situation, and then you teach them nothing of value because you haven't actually done it. I'm very against selling courses, but I'm very pro buying courses for myself. I have thousands and thousands of dollars of YouTube courses that I've collected over the last year and they've been amazing. They've really helped me. They've changed my life so much and I go through them and I'm serious about them. And I went through my receipts when I was running prodigy. Between the equity that we gave out and the direct fees that we paid for advising from different mentors, I think I paid close to call it $770,000 in consulting, advising and mentorship fees just for myself. And my co founder also had his mentor, so maybe it's closer to over a million when you add it all up. I always felt secretly when I was running the startup that everyone in the company is sort of on a mental health journey with me. But YouTube and content is such a public thing where it's like everyone here is on the Michia evolving thoughts journey and you can hop off the train whenever you want. But if you're going to follow my content and absorb it, I am still figuring out who I am and what kind of content I want to make. But my guiding principle is I only want to do things that collectively make my audience more money. So if somehow selling a course I felt collectively made them more money than giving a course away for free, then I would feel like I have a moral obligation to sell them a course, if that makes sense. But I haven't landed on that conclusion yet. I think there may be other non scalable things. Like one of the things that people ask for a lot is mentorship. I get like DMs every day of people who want mentorship, and I just don't have in no way in my dream life that I wrote out was it like taking 30 hours of calls a week to mentor people? That just doesn't align with how I want to live my life. But if there was a way to sort of somehow scalably mentor people through some sort of online platform and bringing in other people, I've thought about doing something like that. The more money coming in from my content, the more money I can invest into the content. Because there are certain things that I think would be really cool that I just don't really want to self finance to the degree that I want to. The thing that I'm probably most excited about right now is this sort of scalable mentor model. And I'd love to build a community around that where it's like I'm one of the mentors, but I'm also getting other amazing mentors, potentially even paying them. And to do that, you have to move beyond just me making YouTube videos and having an editing team.
You need like a community manager and an admin to schedule all that. So that is something that I probably couldn't do for free, but I'm in no rush to do it. But it's sort of one of these, like maybe 2024, I'll think about trying to some way scalably mentor people.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:18:21 - 00:18:46]
If you think about more long term, a few years from now, and you absolutely have to choose between the path of building another business or just teaching or doing some form of philanthropy, because you are now also talking about more philanthropic venture with your mentorship program, what would be the path that excites you most?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:18:47 - 00:20:17]
Building a business is absolutely not it. Just to be clear, I think the stress of doing that is not in the cards for me. Again, as far as I guess, like, yeah, creating content, selling stuff, or really philanthropic, I do have this sort of, I've never really told anybody about this, but this dream to, in my head, I call it giving away a billion dollars. But to be fair, it's not my money. I would love to help people collectively, if I'm my audience, sell businesses for over $10 billion and just ask them, like, don't give it to me.
Congrats, you earned it. But could you consider giving 10% to a cause that is meaningful to you? That would make me feel really cool. And I think maybe it's an ego thing, maybe it's a, like, I think a lot of philanthropic adventures on some level are selfish, just in a different way. I can keep moving the needle, but it's for such a healthy purpose that I don't feel stressed out about it.
I'm not relying on putting bread on the table. If we donate a billion or 2 billion, it's just a thing to sort of chase in a lifelong dream and because there's no finish line.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:20:17 - 00:20:25]
So besides the stress caused by the idea of finish line in Prodigy, what else caused you to feel depressed?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:20:25 - 00:22:09]
We talked about earlier about how I didn't like being employed because it was clear to me that my boss was never going to come and be like, that's ten x, your salary, you're doing great. I think it's worse if when you're running a business five years, seven years in, it turns out at the end of it, you took a lower than market salary the whole time. You worked double, triple normal hours. And then it all failed for not kind of. And so I think a lot of the stress was this feeling of I could be wasting my life here, like, this business might never work.
When I left, we had almost 200 employees. And it's like these people believe in me, trust me and rely on me. In the midst of COVID and layoffs and everything else, people are feeding their families with the salaries that I can provide them to this company. And I just think the weight of having to be responsible for the outcomes of so many people, plus knowing that you yourself might have wasted your precious life doing this, really eats at me. And now my goal is to keep any.
I have no full time employees, but I do have full time freelancers that work dedicated for me. But I want to keep that team as small as humanly possible. I think my mental health is pretty solid, but I don't know that it's so solid that I can be a therapist for 200 people.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:22:10 - 00:22:22]
Can we go back to Prodigy? Because I want to understand a bit more how this particular business model and the particular idea was formed and why.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:22:22 - 00:22:51]
Yeah, so Prodigy's sole goal was to start a business with the highest likelihood of a life changing outcome. But it wasn't designed to be a Facebook 500 billion dollar business. That was very clear from the get go. So we said, okay, what are the goals? For me, my goal was $5 million.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:22:51 - 00:23:47]
Personally, I figured I could live off that for the rest of my life if we achieve that. And so based on that, what size exit do you need? And then based on that, what's the right business model? And two things emerged. First is just like what I would consider the three fundamental principles for any business idea that became really clear to us, which is, one, you need a large market for us, a market that generated at least a billion or $2 billion a year in software sales was what we were looking for.
The second thing we looked for was some sort of change that was happening in the market. I often call it a wave, which was what wave of change is happening in the market? That creates an opportunity. If nothing's changing, there's a good chance people have already built software that solves all the needs. And as we dug into car dealerships, we realized people really, for the first time, wanted to buy cars online.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:23:47 - 00:24:21]
And then the third thing you have is the gap. The wave is happening. What gap is being created by that? Well, when we started Prodigy, basically 0% of people actually could buy cars online. So half of the country wants to buy cars online, 0% can, and we know they're spending billions of dollars on software.
I had no experience working in car dealerships, and we had really no passion for building software for car dealerships. And I was very transparent with my team with this. And then that iterated many, many times along the way, but eventually became the business that we sold.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:24:21 - 00:24:26]
Okay, let's talk about that, how your sale went.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:24:26 - 00:29:33]
The sale was very unexpected, actually, because just for a little bit of context, we sold in 2021. And so in the middle of 2020, we were getting low on cash. European car market was down like 98%. So the venture capitalist in the US said, we think what's happening in Europe will happen to the US and you won't have a business. So I pitched, like, 50 VC firms all said no.
So I said, okay, no one's going to invest in the business, even though it's doing really well. We were growing really fast, millions of dollars a year in revenue. So I said, well, let ME go try to sell it. So I went and talked to, I want to say, LIke, 13 bankers. The twelve of them said, no, we won't take on your business.
We think no one will buy your business. And the one that said, yes, we can help you sell your business, for sure someone will pay you a bunch of money for this business. They had never sold a software business before. So I was like, okay, the only people that would take our business just don't know what they're doing. Basically, no one wants to invest in our business, no one wants to buy our business.
And I was so stressed out, I actually just took a week off and I just left the business and said, hey, guys, I told my team, like, I just need to go clear my head, refocus. And I went to bend, Oregon with my wife. And we just, like, no pHones, no EmAils, no tExts, just disconnected. On the way back, I had an idea to really pivot the business and lean more into this financing aspect of our business. So just quick context.
Our business was selling software to car dealerships, but the long term business model was to make money on the financing of the cars. And I was trying to raise a series B to unlock that business model. And I went back to the team after my trip and said, no, let's unlock that business model now. And then we'll be able to raise a series B much easier and we'll do it next year when the markets cool down. So this was around August when we started implementing this financing aspect of our business, and it started really working.
And all of a sudden my opinion about the business went from like, I hate this business, I just want to sell it and no one wants to buy it, to all of a sudden, hey, I think we have a real future here. This business could be really good. And because of that future, and just like the momentum energy in the company, our sales also started really taking off. And it was right around this timing when six years into the business, for the first time, it felt like everything was really taking off. That upstart came to us and said, we'd be interested in buying your business.
So it was really awkward timing because if they had just come like a couple of months before, I probably would have sold it to them for far less. But because we made these changes and with a clear head had built a much better business, they came at a time when it's like, I don't really want to sell at all. And it was January 2021, and I had planned to go out and raise our Series B for the second attempt in probably March, April. So I was like two months out from a fundraise, roughly. And when I met upstart, they were like, listen, we want to buy you because we want to plug your software into our financing business to allow us to lend to auto.
What would it take? Like, we're pretty interested. They looked at all of our competitors and basically narrowed it down to two. And I said, well, we'd probably raise our Series B at market valuations, which would be somewhere between $80 to $100 million. So if you can just match or beat that, we'd be open to taking a conversation.
But if it's going to be way below that, don't waste our time, because we can just go raise the private market and keep running this business. And that was mostly true. But there was probably, like, if they had come in a little under that range. I might have been like, ooh, this is still life changing money, and I'm not taking a big salary, so maybe this is, like, worth considering. But to my surprise, that was on a Monday.
When I met with them Friday, they offered me 110,000,000 for the business, which was 10 million higher than my range. And so they kind of called my bluff and I was like, well, we have to take this now because it's more than I thought we'd get. And it's objectively life changing money for me, for my co founder, and for many of our early employees. Like, this is real money. And I still remember getting the term sheet.
I read it briefly before Janice, my wife, snatched a laptop out of my hand and she actually read the whole thing before I could. And she was crying on our couch, on our $600 couch in our little apartment, because she just knew this was what I'd been dreaming of for all those years and it was finally going to come true. And so that was on a Friday. The offer was on a Friday, the term, she actually came on that Monday, so seven days from the first meeting. And we sold it three months later for the full 110, which was still.
I mean, it's crazy to even say it out loud.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:29:33 - 00:29:36]
What are the biggest lessons you've learned from it?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:29:38 - 00:32:13]
If I had to summarize the biggest lessons from the exit, first and foremost would be really falling in love with your customer, not your product. So that's probably like lesson number one. Lesson number two, and the lesson that cost me the most time to exit, I tried to scale things before I really understood the fundamental principles. So an example would be, we hired, I don't know, four, maybe even five. I'd have to count them all up.
Different VP of sales throughout the company history. And every time it basically failed. When I fired my second to last VP of sales, I said, I'm going to run the sales department myself for like six months and figure out exactly how to sell our product. Then I'm going to hire my VP of sales, and I'll know what kind of VP of sales to hire because I'll know exactly the job that I've been doing. I figured out sales for the first time.
I started working. Then I hired my VP of sales. We basically went from, call it 45 customers to about 900 in three years. And only the CEO can do that because you have more context and more knowledge and more just care than any of your employees. The third thing that I would say was a big lesson and something I've taken away from it is, I prioritized being liked over doing what was best for me.
And I think in hindsight, I actually would have been more liked and maybe had more respect if I had done what was right for me. The biggest example for me was my equity. When we sold the business, I'd been running it for six years. And when we found the company, our equity was set up so that our equity would vest over the course of four years. After four years, the company is going well.
You would ask for an equity refresh because you've been diluted. I had asked for one, and the board was like, I don't know, they make less money if they refresh your equity. I just wanted to be liked by them. And so I did say no. I was like, listen, it's important to me, but okay, let's do it later.
And that very black and white probably cost me three, $4 million. And that's been a very important and powerful lesson for me, and I think I've gotten more out of life that I need as a result of it.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:32:13 - 00:32:19]
So if you met someone today who is about to exit their business, what advice would you give them?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:32:19 - 00:33:37]
I would say manage your emotions during the process. Similarly, manage your emotions on what you sign up for. I think if I had pushed back, I could have gotten a two year earn out. Just very naturally. I would say reduce the earn out.
Also reduce or eliminate any performance goals. I think time based earn outs are fine. Performance based earnouts you should never sign up for because the acquiring company can totally screw up your business and then you don't get paid. So I think it's an easy way to not pay you what you're worth. You will feel this immense sense of pressure to find what's next.
Naturally, if you are driven enough to build a startup to exit, you will now feel that drive saying, what's next, what's next, what's next? Give yourself permission to not know. And then the final thing on just like the, well, two more pieces of advice, actually. One, tax planning should be done before the sale, not during, but also once you have the money, there's no rush to deploy it. I think this is the biggest thing I learned from talking to people that have been down the path.
It's fine to take a year to get your feet on the ground and get settled into a strategy before you start deploying. I don't know how many pieces of advice that is, but those are all like the key lessons that I've learned from it.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:33:37 - 00:33:55]
Yeah, a lot of us, after we sold our companies. We face the problems of saying no to people a lot. Friends who want to investors to invest in their businesses, or relatives who want loans and gifts and whatever. How do you go about it? How do you say no?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:33:55 - 00:34:50]
Family money thing? I think I've been quite fortunate in that no one has really seriously asked, and I've been jealous with some family members. So, like, sort of preemptive there. But on the investment side, it's very clear, black and white for me, because I have an investment policy. Either the investment fits in my thesis or it does not.
A clear example where it does not fit in. My thesis actually was angel investing in people that worked for me. If they were doing businesses that I didn't understand, that would sort of be outside of the thesis. And so I did go back and amend my thesis and say, if I really believe in this person and the life that I'm living today is a result of sacrifice they put in for me, then I will invest in them.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:34:50 - 00:34:55]
But you explain your thesis to people. This is how you say no. You said this is my thesis.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:34:55 - 00:35:00]
Yes. It's because. Listen, it's not because I like conflict. It's just like, I promised myself I wouldn't do this. And I know I have a tendency to do this, therefore I demand this.
Yeah, I think people understand it when you say, I've thought about this a lot, and here's the conclusions that I stick by.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:35:09 - 00:35:17]
How did you feel the moment you realized that your dream is becoming reality, at least financially?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:35:18 - 00:38:08]
There were two moments. I'll say the first moment was when we signed the term sheet. And I had been advised very strongly by friends and advisors that somewhere between 40% to 50% of term sheets don't go through on advisor or on acquisition deals. And I was really paranoid about this because I was like, if I get so excited about this sale and then it falls through, I don't know that I'll be able to mentally pick myself up from this. I was very, very worried about spiraling into a pretty dark place if the sale fell through.
So it was roughly a three month process from signing the term sheet to actually closing the deal. And during that time, every day, I basically battled with this super excited Michia, and this very pessimistic Michia that I was trying to cultivate, saying, remember, there's a 50% chance this thing doesn't go through. And if it doesn't go through, you've still got to run the business and raise a series B. So I really tried to guard my emotions from getting dreaming of what could be the houses, the cars, all that. Let's just heads down, just focus on the process.
When the deal actually closed and the money hit the bank account, that was when I first allowed myself to celebrate, and I think we went out. I think we've still been learning how to spend money. So I think we probably went out for, like, a big spendy dinner, which was probably, like $100 total for the two of us. I'm pretty sure we went out for sushi in San Francisco, and it wasn't even, like, a Michelin style place, but it was like, this is a big deal for us. But the deal was very tied up on earnouts.
It was tied up on earnouts, but also it was 85% stock. So even the stock that I got at close, I couldn't sell for six months. And upstart stock to this day, is one of the most volatile stocks on the planet, really. When we signed the term sheet, the stock was at $60 a share. When we closed it, it was at 120 a share.
Six months later, it was at 406. Months. After that, it was at 30. Today I think it's back to 30. But earlier this year, it was eleven.
So I didn't actually feel very certain of how much money we had even after the deal closed. I think that's been healthy. I've sort of had a slow glide into where I'm at today, where now, because the stock has fallen so low. I still own a bunch of upstart stock, but it represents. Just doing the math on today's numbers, definitely less than 10% of my net worth.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:38:08 - 00:38:10]
How long ago was it?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:38:10 - 00:38:19]
The deal was January 2021. We closed April 2021. So that was two years, six months from today, basically.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:38:19 - 00:38:19]
Okay.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:38:20 - 00:38:20]
Yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:38:20 - 00:38:23]
So you are still in the beginning of the journey.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:38:24 - 00:38:44]
Definitely, because we're effectively retired. I just turned 34. Hopefully I live another 60, 70 years. So I consider myself extremely early in this sort of, like, future wealth money journey. Like, I'm less than 2% down the journey, really.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:38:44 - 00:38:51]
How your feelings changed between that first excitement when the money hit your account?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:38:51 - 00:40:09]
I started to get not depressed the way I was when I was in the low moments of the business. I would say I had a feeling of a lack of purpose. I was actually at church, and one of the pastor described what I was feeling really accurately, not knowing he was speaking to me, but he described it as basically slowly fidgeting around through life until death. And that's kind of what I was feeling. Like, I wake up, I don't really have much to do if I leave upstart, I don't know what I would spend my time doing.
Maybe I'll watch Netflix, maybe I'll play some video games. But what am I really doing? I'm sort of just killing time until I fall asleep every day. I landed as saying, no, give yourself permission. You don't have a lack of purpose.
You just haven't found it yet. And that really gave me comfort. And now that I've found that purpose with YouTube, who knows? Maybe it'll change in five years. Like, I give myself permission for that, too.
And often these days, the hardest thing is convincing myself to get good sleep and not just work on this stuff 24/7 but it's because I like it, not because I have some fear around not being able to afford things or things like that that used to drive my work.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:40:09 - 00:40:15]
You basically had this dream to travel around the world to have homes and all of it before you sold the company.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:40:15 - 00:40:15]
Yes.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:40:15 - 00:40:44]
Then you could do it, you could enjoy it, and you actually started enjoying it. And yet you're now saying that this fulfillment and happiness comes from your YouTube channel. If someone told you, say, two years before you sold the company, that that actually is what will become the most important and fulfilling thing for you, as opposed to the dream you had, would you believe it?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:40:45 - 00:41:19]
No. But I should clarify, actually, I think the thing that really drives my fulfillment is the fact that I get to consciously decide to do YouTube while having multiple homes and traveling the world. It's not that the YouTube is a soul fulfillment. It's this combination of my day, my week, my month, my year is basically exactly how I hope it would be. But I think that's the dream for me, is I just get to do what I want.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:41:19 - 00:41:31]
It sounds like you really designed your lifestyle very deliberately. Can you tell me more about it, how you did it, what the principles behind the design were?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:41:31 - 00:42:36]
The process started with getting in a state of mind. This is something I do every year where I can really dream big. Once a year, me and Janice, my wife, we leave sort of our home because we just don't want to be in the same place, same environment, and we go somewhere really inspiring, really beautiful. So one year we did Mexico, and we were in Tulum and we rented this beautiful beachside villa, essentially, like watching the waves crash in. Let's see, we did Costa Rica in sort of a silly villa in the jungle.
But you always go to these beautiful places. And in that experience, when I'm in a beautiful place and this is what works for me, I kind of feel like the world is mine. Like, I can dream anything. I journal everything that I could possibly dream. And I usually categorize it as, like, personal goals, money, professional goals, and then thing goals.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:42:36 - 00:43:09]
So personal goals might be, I want six pack abs that's been on the list for a while, actually every year, and still haven't really gotten that one. Money goals are usually how much money I want to have in the bank, how much money I want to have be earning, how much net worth, things like that. And then things goals are as they sound like, I want this car. And then based on all my goals, I kind of then go through them and filter out things that I just wrote because I was, like, bored. Like, what do I really want on this list?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:43:09 - 00:44:00]
And then from there, I'll usually just write a paragraph or two describing what does my life actually look like. It's usually about two paragraphs. And over time, I've just tried to basically write out what does my dream life look like? And then backwards map what do I need to do to get to that dream life? This concept that I came across recently is basically math problems versus art problems is the way someone described it.
And in school, you learn how to solve math problems. So one plus one can only equal two, and all of the answers are wrong. Most problems that you're taught to answer in school have one answer, otherwise they wouldn't. It'd be hard to grade questions with multiple answers. Art problems, on the other hand, are like, what color red should we use for this person's lips in this painting?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:44:01 - 00:44:33]
There's no right answer. There's sort of just what fits the artist. A lot of life is actually art problems, but we approach it with a math problem mindset. So even where should I live? In Europe, I initially approached as a math problem.
There's only one right answer on what city I should have as a home base in Europe. And then I lately have said, no, it's more of an art problem. There's multiple right answers, just sort of what fits right for me this moment. And London happens to be that for now.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:44:34 - 00:44:51]
And this is how you also think about sort of more material things and more immaterial things. So, for example, when you approach your decision about business or investing, is it more of a math problem for you or in investing, it's also more about intuition or how you feel.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:44:52 - 00:46:46]
I think using intuition and investing is probably the worst mindset you can have for investing, if I'm being honest by nature, and this is one of the reasons why I have to remind myself. Some things can be our problems. I am an extremely logical, not emotional person, which is actually an amazing temperament for investing. But it can drive some people nuts. By some people I basically mean my wife.
But what I try to do on the money side is I spend a lot of research to where I understand the math behind the conclusions. And then, because I've done so much research, when I reach my own conclusions, which often do match the conclusions I may have been handed by people I trust, it allows me to stick to those conclusions. Because if you actually look at what kills investor returns, it's usually their emotions, not their actual investment thesis. It's that they stray from their investment thesis. I am very willing to buy if my investment policy says I should buy, even when the emotion is screaming don't.
And I don't sell when the emotions feel like you should sell. And that's allowed me even now, to be very disciplined in this very turbulent markets that we're in from 2021, when I sold the company, to today, the amount of volatility in the market is almost unprecedented and bonds and stocks both dropping drastically. I've lost deep seven figures in the market. But I don't freak out because I'm like, this is, I already did the math so I can stick to the principles.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:46:46 - 00:46:47]
Do you invest yourself?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:46:48 - 00:47:04]
My investment portfolio is roughly 60% managed by myself and 40% managed by an advisory firm that essentially specializes in alternative investments.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:47:04 - 00:47:05]
How is this working for you?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:47:06 - 00:47:43]
When I sold the company, I interviewed basically the top 15 investment advisors in the world. You can find them on the Barron's list and things like that. And because I'd sold the company for a bunch of money and the stock was way up, anyone would take my call. So I was like talking to these guys who often manage clients, mostly in the 700 million billion dollar plus range, but they're taking me on because they're like, who knows where this kid's going to end up. So I could talk to almost anyone, had them all build presentations for me, present me portfolios, show me exactly how they would invest my money.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:47:44 - 00:49:06]
I walked away actually extremely discouraged, and I was really surprised at the conclusions that I came to because I felt like when I was in Silicon Valley, most people generally tried to do right by one another. And it's this sort of like warm family sports team spirit. When I went to the finance world with my exit from the Silicon Valley startup, I basically exclusively encountered sharks. It became very clear to me, despite their best efforts to disguise it, that if you actually read through the hundreds of pages of disclosures that they would have to provide you if you asked for them and things like that. They were not acting in your best interest.
You were a secondary interest to their commissions, fees, soft dollars and things like that. So I became very jaded with the idea of using an advisor, particularly a broker. Anyone who's making commission by selling me products and is not legally required to sell me the products that make me the most money, I really have a problem with. And you don't even have to be super intelligent to come to these conclusions. You can just look at the commissions that you're paying, or the fees that you're paying your advisor, and the commissions that they're receiving from other funds.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:49:06 - 00:50:43]
And in most cases, they're receiving more commissions from the funds than you are paying in fees. Therefore, you are not the customer, you're the product that is being sold to the funds. The advisory fund that I landed on, the only reason I work with them is they one, don't take any commissions, any fees. They're only fiduciary advisors and not registered as brokers, so they cannot accept commission. But the way that they invest is they go into alternative funds with deep conviction.
So they'll go into a real estate fund that's say raising a billion dollars, they'll put in 500 million, but say, hey, if we're putting in 500 million, we want half carry and half fees on the investment because we're your anchor LP. And then they pass that discount directly on to me and charge me a management fee for it. So it works out that it's very transparent, it's very above board. I know how they make money because it's how I pay them. I know the benefit I get because I'm getting half the fees that I would normally pay to get in these deals.
And just the above boardness and the conviction that they have and how much money they're investing in these funds made me very comfortable. So I have about 40% of my assets are alternatives with them, and then the public stuff, just because I couldn't find any way to get any advantage in the public markets, whether it's actively managed or hedge funds or anything, it's all very basic, boring global diversified ETFs. And that's kind of how I run my portfolio.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:50:43 - 00:50:46]
So how much of your time you spend on managing money?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:50:46 - 00:52:06]
I rebalance some of the funds quarterly and then some of the funds yearly, 12 hours a year. Like maybe I'm still deploying capital because I didn't take the exit and just drop it onto the market. In 2021, partially because I just was getting money out of the market from my upstart stock over that time period. The math says you should lump sum invest when you have a lot of money. It's always better to invest immediately in the market and not try to time the market.
But the chance for regret is much higher in lump sum investing because you might just accidentally invest at an all time high and the market crashes the next month. My goal is more regret minimization, which is I don't want to have the best outcome, but I want to make sure I also avoid the worst outcome. Just give me an outcome in the sort of like median range, and I'll be happy with that. So I've been slowly investing my money out of very safe assets, which today are just t bills yielding five and a half percent into public equities, alternatives, and things like that. So even today, after this interview, I'm going to go home and move close to seven figures into public equities, because I'm still dollar cost averaging into those as well as some alternative funds.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:52:06 - 00:52:09]
How do you think about funding your lifestyle?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:52:09 - 00:55:36]
So I spent a lot of time studying how to live off a portfolio because everyone talks about like, oh, there's the 4% rule where you can take 4% of your portfolio every year, but it's like, okay, great. How do you actually do that? Do you sell your stocks? Do you invest in real estate funds that yield 6%? And then you just take four?
What do you actually do? And there's basically, I landed on this three ways to do it. One is you sell the principal. Benefit is when you sell the principal, it's mostly capital gains. So it's a low tax way to do it.
But the downside is if you're selling your portfolio to pay for your lifestyle, you have a few risks that emerge. Basically, the biggest is called sequence of return risk, where what if in the first five years of retirement, you have some of the worst years of return? You'll be selling your portfolio to fund your lifestyle in these low years, and it might screw up the rest of your retirement because you sold a bunch at the bottom. Second option is basically building an income stream from your portfolio that funds your lifestyle. Benefit of that is, if you buy, let's say you buy a dividend fund for a million dollars that yields 10%.
That's $100,000 a year. If that fund drops 30%, you are worth less on paper, but you should still get your $100,000 a year so you have a more stable income. Downside is much higher taxes, so that's not fun. And then the third option is you can borrow from your funds benefit. There, you borrowed against your principal, you pay no taxes.
Sounds great. Risk, stock market crashes. You've borrowed more than you're supposed to because the value has fallen. They do a margin call and they take your money. So I said, okay, option three is cut out.
I'm just never getting margin call. That's not happening. Most of my lifestyle is funded by income, so my portfolio on the public side, yields. I don't own dividend funds, I just own global ETFs. But developed and emerging markets yield close to like 3%.
And us markets, I think, are yielding like 1.5% right now. So blended, it's like a 2.8% yield or something. On the alternative side, I have some fixed income that yields closer to 10-12 percent. And then I have some real estate funds that yield like seven, 8%, but those are essentially tax free because of the losses on the K ones. And so all that blends up to pre and public, private and things like that.
I have about three to three and a half percent of my net worth coming in as income automatically every year. I've been living on that, but I do plan to bump that closer to 4% next year will come from selling off a little bit of principal on my portfolio, but it's very little. I would not enjoy selling 4% of my portfolio every year to fund my lifestyle. I just think it's too risky because of the sequence of return risk. So it's like a combination of style one and two, but tilted a little more towards income.
I'm losing money every month on YouTube. So, yes, it's entirely driven by the investment portfolio at this point.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:55:36 - 00:55:43]
It's a form of philanthropy for you. How does angel investing fit into this strategy?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:55:43 - 00:56:22]
Yep. I haven't loved the way the angel and early stage venture market has performed in the last couple of years only because I just think they lost touch with reality. But I'd like to get to seven and a half percent of my net worth in the private venture market. And of that, probably ten to 20% of that seven and a half percent would be in angel investing only because I think with my access and my background, I can get access to deal flow that is differentiated. So angel investing has a place in my portfolio.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:56:23 - 00:57:08]
It's a small sliver. Like, if you do the math, it's like one to one and a half percent of my total net worth. And that, I don't want to call it charitable work, because it's like these people that I'm investing in are working really hard. But it's also, to date, all of my angel investments are people that previously meaningfully made a difference in my life with their work, and I would love to support them. All three are people that either invested in me or two of the three worked for me.
So they supported me with their blood, sweat, tears. And it's very obvious that I feel I should support them with my angel investments. And I hope that they do really well because I trust them.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:57:09 - 00:57:26]
So many people, in my experience, complain after their exit that they really face this fear of losing money and anxiety caused by this idea that they're incompetent in managing money. Did you have that problem?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:57:27 - 00:58:42]
To me, there's only two reasons that you could actually feel that way. You either haven't done the research to understand the fundamental math behind investing, and you're living maybe a lifestyle that requires you to do extremely well. My portfolio doesn't need to do that well to support my lifestyle. It's mostly income based. And as long as the funds grow 3% a year, worst case, real returns.
Worst case, I'll at least be able to live my life. It became very clear to me after I sold the company that if I started another company, I might succeed again. But there's always that chance of failure. The chances of me starting a company that makes me personally a billion dollars is minuscule. But the chances of investing and getting there is actually very high.
As long as I manage my money well, that is almost a guaranteed massive portfolio. And because I'm so young, even though my portfolio is not in the grand scheme of things, massive today, and I continue to say this is the most important money making skill that I can learn now, is how to invest my own capital.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:58:43 - 00:58:49]
So when you think about the geography of where you live, is tax a big part of it?
Michia Rohrssen: [00:58:49 - 00:59:11]
I don't mind paying tax. Actually, I don't love it. And trust me, I have paid a lot because when I sold the company, we lived in California, and then I moved to New York for the earn out two highest income states in the country. So it's not like I was one of those guys that said, like, I'm moving to Puerto Rico or Florida to avoid tax. I paid my dues plenty.
Michia Rohrssen: [00:59:11 - 00:59:58]
I don't want to optimize my life around taxes, but I do want to feel like I'm getting value for my taxes and that I'm not paying more than I should. Right now, we have our London home and our Taipei home. But we're not residents of either. We spend some time here, we spend some time in Taipei. It is likely that next year we'll actually swap our Taipei home for our Tokyo home and we'll make Tokyo sort of our home base from Asia.
In order to do that, I actually have to become a japanese tax paying resident, which means my tax rate will go up. So I'll be making an active decision to raise my tax rate this time next year because I just want to live in Japan.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:59:58 - 01:00:01]
So lifestyle is more important at the end of the day, how you feel.
Michia Rohrssen: [01:00:01 - 01:00:13]
As long as taxes are not impeding lifestyle. If I was going to move to Japan, and my tax rate would go from, like, effective 40% to 90%, then I can't live the lifestyle I want to live. And that's a real problem.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:00:13 - 01:00:13]
Okay.
Michia Rohrssen: [01:00:13 - 01:00:19]
But as long as my lifestyle is funded post tax and whatever jurisdiction I'm in, I'm okay.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:00:19 - 01:00:26]
What are you learning from your travels? Why would you say someone else should go and do it?
Michia Rohrssen: [01:00:26 - 01:01:21]
If I am in the same place too long, I stop becoming me and I start becoming more of my surroundings. Like I mentioned, I'm now sort of my own role model. In a sense. I think a lot of that's because I've traveled so much. Two, you're reminded of how small you are.
You go to these places where cultures are entirely different, and it's just, like, clear that they don't know who you are. You have no impact on their lives, and that's a good thing. We're all just really doing this together. But similarly, amongst the diverseness, you find humanity is quite similar. And then probably the last bit that I take from it is just inspiration.
If I'm just doing my regular routine, I don't have this burst of inspiration to sort of think about life. So it's good for me to get out and travel.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:01:22 - 01:01:27]
What else are big parts of that design of your lifestyle and how much time you spend on.
Michia Rohrssen: [01:01:27 - 01:02:37]
Yeah, but I spend roughly a third of my time on what I would consider self development. Self development is I go to the gym every morning, went this morning, I read my Bible, but I also read literature that I find interesting. I spend a lot more time these days reading history and listening to podcasts on history and things like that. And that's also like learning Mandarin Chinese, and I also need to start learning Japanese for the Japan home and things like that. So that's all sort of like the roughly one third is like this personal development.
One third I would consider is spending time on pursuits that have some sort of social media aspect. So that's mostly YouTube, but it's also Instagram, TikTok, all the different platforms that I'm working on. Outside of that, a lot of it is on travel, where it's following a different part of town where last week we were in Laura Valley, France. So we're just going these different trips either in our home bases or in the regions around them.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:02:38 - 01:02:40]
Let's talk about your amazing wife.
Michia Rohrssen: [01:02:40 - 01:02:41]
Sure.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:02:41 - 01:02:52]
Janice is gorgeous and intelligent and fascinating. How did your exit affect your relationship?
Michia Rohrssen: [01:02:52 - 01:05:25]
One of the things that I really prioritized when I was dating was not trying to find someone who happens to intersect with me in this current moment, but finding someone who's more like on a parallel path with me. I wanted someone who's, if they would describe their dream life in ten years, it matches mine. Early on, it became very clear that Janice and I, while we have different careers, different backgrounds, we have very similar hopes for the future. As a result, even before we sold the company, we knew we wanted to live abroad. We knew we wanted to travel the world.
And in fact, one of the main reasons I'm in Europe, and this is where we differ a little bit, I really want to live in Asia. And Janice said, no, I really want to live in Europe. And I said, well, what if we split the time? And because of the seasons, it actually works out well because you're in this mid seventy s, I guess like mid 25 Celsius year round. So we have like, perfect weather year round.
After the exit, I would say the only real difference in our lives is the things that we both mutually dreamed of, we now just mutually do. For us to have multiple homes around the world, it didn't make sense for Janice to be working. It's just not really logistically possible to live in London and Taipei and work for anyone other than yourself. And she was on a pretty good career path in tech. She was working at Squarespace.
I don't know that she was quite ready to give it up. And so I said, okay, why don't you think about it and really decide? Do you want to leave your career or not? For the first, maybe two months in London, I was a little worried because I had found my purpose, but she had not. So she would come into my office and she'd be like, I'm bored.
And I'd be like, it's not my responsibility to ensure that you are not bored. You need to figure out sort of what you want to do. And luckily, she had started throwing pottery, which has been not a lifelong, but like a couple of years passion of hers. And now that's because when I left today, she was throwing pottery. So she's developed a similar sort of schedule to me, and she's making content.
So now she hired her editor about a month ago. So she's doing short form and soon long form content of her throwing pottery. She runs a travel blog, so she's also moved in this season where she's creating content, working for herself, and fills her life very similar to mine. She's super happy now.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:05:25 - 01:05:26]
She doesn't regret it.
Michia Rohrssen: [01:05:27 - 01:05:28]
No, she doesn't.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:05:28 - 01:05:30]
Did you ever regret selling Prodigy?
Michia Rohrssen: [01:05:30 - 01:06:01]
No. Prodigy was not my passion. My identity was never being CEO. My identity was never being the leader of Prodigy. My identity was really building this business to help achieve this dream life that I have.
I think also it helps that upstart was a great acquirer. They really were so thoughtful and caring about the outcome for our team, for the product. So no regrets.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:06:01 - 01:06:10]
How do you go about surrounding yourself with the right kind of people in this moment in your life?
Michia Rohrssen: [01:06:10 - 01:07:45]
When I wrote all these things that I wanted when I was 22, 23, 24 one of the big components was I wanted to surround myself with what I considered world class people, someone who I would say is successful in whatever endeavor you are pursuing. And that could be. You're an amazing monk and you have no money, but you're really passionate about this thing. So it's not about the money. It's about people who are trying to achieve something great in their life.
Unfortunately, these people don't just orbit into your life by chance. Sometimes mentors or people you want to be friends with, there's a price of admission to the arena that they're in. Whenever I have an opportunity to go to an event where I might encounter people that are really interesting, I'll usually pay the price of admission. And the other thing that I do is I'm very deliberate about. I've started being more shameless about this, actually, since moving to London.
I will just reach out to people completely cold and say, hey, I want to be your friend. And so I probably dm usually on Twitter or Instagram, like a couple people a week these days, mostly YouTubers, because I want to be more friends with YouTubers, and I'll just say, hey, listen, built a business. Sold it for $110,000,000. I see you're sort of building your business on YouTube. I would love to just meet up with you and share some of what I've learned.
Building businesses and also get to know you, because what I think you're doing is really cool.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:07:46 - 01:07:48]
Are you an extrovert or an introvert by nature?
Michia Rohrssen: [01:07:48 - 01:08:11]
I'm a massive introvert. It's not hardwired into me to want to be on the stage, to have all the fame, the power, the glory. And it's very uncomfortable and I'd much rather be the person in the back of the room, but because of, for whatever reason, I was the CEO. Just found myself on stage a lot. It's unnatural, it's weird to put myself out there, but hopefully I meet cool people and that feels really good, so I'll just keep doing it.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:08:12 - 01:08:14]
So you basically enjoy challenging yourself?
Michia Rohrssen: [01:08:14 - 01:09:16]
I do enjoy challenging yourself.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:08:16 - 01:08:19]
So you grow. So talking about your identity. What else is in there?
Michia Rohrssen: [01:08:19 - 01:09:00]
At the moment YouTuber, everyone wants to ask, what do you do? And what they really mean is, what do you do for work? And since I don't do anything for work, I can tell you that the answer, I'm retired. One sort of sounds obnoxious and they're like, come on, you're like 34.
But I would say my number one identity right now is adventurer. I love, love trying new things. I try to be generous, I try to be kind, try to be faithful, honest. If I were to violate one of those, I would feel very out of my own skin.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:09:00 - 01:09:06]
So these are the values you always had or you also deliberately chose them at some point in your life?
Michia Rohrssen: [01:09:06 - 01:09:41]
I think this is more of a nature and nurture thing. I think early trauma, early childhood experiences often become nature. Like, it's sort of a nurture thing, but it's also like it's so early in your life that it's subconscious. And so it is kind of your nature. I think my early childhood experiences or upbringing or nature or something leads me to be that more reserved kind.
And my parents were hippies, so I'm named after a Bob Marley song. So I'm sure there's some nurture and.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:09:41 - 01:10:21]
Nature in there, but it's freight. Had this idea which always inspired me. I came across it when I was maybe 14. And the idea was that when we have some insecurities and then we overcome those insecurities, so much energy is released by doing that that we may become extremely successful in exactly the things we were not actually created to do in a way, or we thought we were really bad. And I see it all the time.
Like, if you look at the public speakers, the most successful ones are natural introverts. So at some point they had to go through this work of overcoming their introvertness.
Michia Rohrssen: [01:10:21 - 01:11:16]
Yeah, I definitely was terrible at public speaking in college and things like that. I think there is the clearest example of this is actually fundraising. When we were raising money for our company, I was so bad at it, but I became obsessed with it, and I started meeting with different mentors that had raised a lot of money and became so good at fundraising that one, we raised $21 million, which back then was decent money. These days, who knows? But also I became the fundraising coach for the accelerator that I actually graduated from.
If you're bad at something and that bothers you, you might become really good at it because it sits deeply and well with you.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:11:16 - 01:11:19]
So talk to me about health and how your view on health changed.
Michia Rohrssen: [01:11:20 - 01:12:14]
Health has always been something on my mind. I want to be, on average, healthier than. Well, certainly healthier than the average American, but I want to be healthy in general. When I sold the business, I was like, this is my for what you're looking for purpose. I was like, health is my next mountain.
So I hired the personal trainer. I got super serious about our nutrition and everything, and I went on the deep rabbit hole, reading all the books, studying all the different things. I don't love health for health's sake. What I really want is the happiness and energy that comes from being fit. And these days, I do prioritize health, but I think it's a privilege and something I don't want to understate.
It's something I can do because I have the time and money to do so.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:12:14 - 01:12:16]
And you built your own ICE bath?
Michia Rohrssen: [01:12:16 - 01:12:17]
Yes.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:12:17 - 01:12:20]
Big inspiration for me.
Michia Rohrssen: [01:12:21 - 01:12:30]
The ICE bath is, for me, one of the biggest game changers on the health and mental health spectrum. It's removing the friction. To do that, I wake up, the ICE bath is there. I jump in it.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:12:30 - 01:12:31]
Every morning?
Michia Rohrssen: [01:12:31 - 01:12:40]
Usually five days a week.
I do give myself some grace, but, yeah, Monday through Friday, I'm usually in it.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:12:40 - 01:12:44]
You mentioned Bible before. Can we talk about that?
Michia Rohrssen: [01:12:44 - 01:13:42]
Yeah, I'm a Christian, so there's this sort of fundamental instruction and wisdom for leading life, and I didn't discover religion, really, at all until I was in high school. I grew up with this, what I would consider, like, giant hole in my life. And you try to fill it with different things. So I tried to fill it with martial arts, with girls, with success, all these different things. And what you find is that the peg just doesn't fit in the hole.
It doesn't actually fill that hole. And to date, the only thing I have found that fits that hole is my relationship with God. So I do try to start the day with spending time with God, reading my Bible as sort of a lens and a filter by which I will go through the rest of the day.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:13:42 - 01:13:44]
And how often do you go to church?
Michia Rohrssen: [01:13:44 - 01:13:47]
I go every Sunday. Yeah. It's a big part of my life, for sure.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:13:47 - 01:13:50]
So when you think about spirituality, it is Christianity for you?
Michia Rohrssen: [01:13:50 - 01:14:09]
Yeah. I would love to say that I've read the Quran and all the other holy books and been like, I did extensive, extensive research and sort of landed on Christianity. I'll be the first to admit I did not do that. But I have had enough of maybe the math in each different one to have settled on Christianity. Yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:14:10 - 01:14:12]
How do you want to be remembered?
Michia Rohrssen: [01:14:14 - 01:15:16]
The reality is most people won't remember me, if I'm being honest. Even like, I think about the great entrepreneurs of the world, like Steve Jobs of Bill Gates. I can't tell you who the Bill Gates of 17 hundreds was, and I'm sure they were incredible. But I think on a smaller level, there will be people whose lives, I hope are completely changed by having come across me in their journey. That's what I really want to be remembered by, is these people that say Michia was generous, kind, and made an impact in my life, and I would also say was a good husband and maybe we'll see a good father one day.
But those would be really important to me that people say he was a good husband and a good father if those things father happened.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:15:17 - 01:15:18]
Okay. Thank you so much.
Michia Rohrssen: [01:15:18 - 01:15:19]
Thank you for having me.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:15:19 - 01:15:22]
Such a fascinating, wonderful conversation.
I am so Grateful. Thank you.
Michia Rohrssen: [01:15:22 - 01:15:24]Thanks for having me. This has been a blast. Thank you.
