Digital Social Hour - The UGLY Reality: How U.S. Division Stalls Innovation | Jason Wong DSH #612

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

🌟 The UGLY Reality of U.S. Division: How It's Stalling Innovation 🚫💡   In this eye-opening episode of the Digital Social Hour, Sean Kelly sits down with the incredible Jason Wong to uncover the stark differences in societal progress between China and the U.S. 🇺🇸🇨🇳 Jason delves into how China's unity has propelled its rapid advancements, while America's internal divisions are holding it back. From high-speed rails to seamless payment systems, discover what the U.S. could learn from its global counterparts. 🌍✨   But that's not all! Jason shares his personal journey from making $50k a month at 14 to building successful e-commerce ventures and manufacturing businesses. 🛍️📈 Get inspired by his relentless hustle, the challenges he faced, and the pivotal moments that shaped his entrepreneurial path.   Tune in now to gain valuable insights, and don't miss out on this captivating conversation! 🔥 Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀   Join the conversation and let us know your thoughts in the comments below! 👇💬   #Innovation #AffiliateMarketing #NetworkingEvents #GrindingMentalityInBusiness #NewYorkHustle   CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:42 - Catching up with Jason Wong 02:12 - Jason’s New Business, Packaging Duck 06:38 - How Jason Got His Start in Business 09:19 - Making $50,000 a Month at 14 12:35 - Creating the Meme Bible 15:35 - Learning E-Commerce the Hard Way 16:51 - Kids Today Are Hustling More Than Ever 21:50 - Why China is Moving Faster Than the US 23:38 - The Power of Distraction 24:10 - Moving to New York 25:44 - Why You Want to Move to New York 29:10 - Dating an Asian Girl Experience 32:55 - Impact of Being Chronically Online on Social Skills 33:57 - The Crutch of Follower Counts 34:56 - Closing Thoughts   APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail]   GUEST: Jason Wong https://www.instagram.com/pug   SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly   LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In China, we're always taught that our common enemy, our common goal is this and our common enemy is this, not with each other. We went through thousands of years where we were fighting internally. We had a lot of civil wars. So we had that in our history. And now we're like, you know what, for us to progress as a society, we have to move very fast together in unity. But when you look at America, we're taught to fight each other. Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe. It helps a lot with the algorithm. It helps us get bigger and better guests

and it helps us grow the team. Truly means a lot. Thank you guys for supporting. And here's the episode. All right, guys, today I have with me someone I've known for a long time, Jason Wong. Thanks for coming on, man. Thanks for i have with me someone i've known for a long time jason wong thanks for coming on man thanks for having me yeah i've known you for eight years or something yeah close to a decade that is crazy because we're both pretty young so yeah i think

like because of our age we just stuck to each other when we first met i think i met you at like a networking event yeah someone intro me was like you got me this guy named sean he was i think he was doing jersey champs yeah i was doing ecom time. Yeah. And I wasn't doing anything with apparel. So we're like, yo, we're tight. I'll send you some stuff. You send me some stuff.

Yeah. That was sick. That's funny, dude. And the Asian, you know? Yes. The Asian bond.

And the height. I was like, wait, that guy stands out. That's funny. But here you are now still in the e-comm space. Yeah. I mean,

I don't know. I feel like I can never really get out of it as much as I do want to get out of it. So it's always been very impressive how you pivoted into something that you really want to own. The media side stuff. Yeah. Maybe I'll get out.

I've had a few pivots. I tried crypto. I tried B2B. But this podcast thing is probably my favorite pivot. Yeah, you look happier here. I'm a lot happier. Ecom is fun, but it's just the margins were too thin for me, man.

Yeah. And there's a lot of headaches. You're fighting. You're fighting every single day for attention me, man. Yeah. And there's a lot of headaches. You're fighting. You're fighting every single day for attention. For real. Yeah. And I think for this one, it's just so natural for you. You've always been really good socially.

Yeah. Yeah. I've prided myself on that just because I used to not be good. Did you just like start podcasting, get out of that space? Or were you like, yeah, I feel ready. You started podcasting, started going to networking events, conferences. I was mad uncomfortable at first because I'm a huge introvert. Yeah, me too.

Yeah, but there's growth in being uncomfortable. I'll check that out. Yeah. But I'd love to dive into what you're up to, man, because I know you've got a few brands, right? Yeah, I mean, I've always been an e-commerce since I was a teenager. Started off in media marketing. Then I got into e-com. And then recently I'm in the manufacturing side.

Past couple years, I realized that that was really what I wanted to do. Kind of similar to what you're saying. The e-com side, the margins are too low. I had to pivot. So I started pivoting and say, you know what? What can I do to service everyone else? Instead of just me trying to sell to 10,000 people. I just got to sell to five.

And so now I started a packaging manufacturing business called Packing Duck. I don't know. I just got set at five. And so now I started a packaging manufacturing business called Packing Duck. I don't know. I think that's my calling. That's the thing where I'm really, really passionate about. Nice. What a name too. Packing Duck. It's one of those like shower thoughts. I think that name really, really fucks. I love that name, dude. I love me some duck. That's a top five dish, bro. Packing Duck. Yeah. And it's also brandable, right? There's emojis there's like a whole visual motif where people kind of remember it when i look at manufacturing and you look at other manufacturers they're typically in their 40s 50s they're old their name sounds like abc holdings dot there there's not that much appeal to it so i kind of bring

this modern twist to the branding side but combining it to manufacturing and it's a lot more approachable yeah it feels like you're talking to someone and i think i bring my background to merchant and say hey you know sean you do e-com um i used to do e-com i understand where you're coming from here's how i can make it better for you yeah whereas when you go talk to someone in china you're doing it on whatsapp you're worried about communication issues you're worrying about them screwing you over so we fix a lot of that trust and that relatability yeah you can relate because you came from the e-comm space rather than these guys have no idea what they're dealing with yeah there's a lot of problems in e-comm so that makes sense it sounds expensive to start something like this uh i had a little cheat code to it yeah so i

basically went back to china to the factories that i was working with for many many years and i asked them this question i was like hey how much business do you do with the u.s and they're like not that much we do a lot of domestic businesses we do a lot of asia businesses but in the u.s it's just tough because one you have to find the clients and then two you have to be able to speak to them so you need a whole separate sales team just to work with the western world right um and i think i got pretty lucky during this time because when you look at the chinese economy they're taking a little bit of a hit the real estate's taking a hit too there's this meme about like how nvidia's market cap is larger than the entire chinese economy which is crazy it's a country that's four or five times bigger than us right so around this time because the factories were so used to

domestic businesses and because domestically the business aren't doing that well they're kind of struggling so i went to them and I was like, hey, let me bring you guys to the US. Let me buy a piece of a factory at this price. And if I can get in, I promise you I'll get you this amount of clients. And they're like, yeah, I mean, if you can get me this amount of clients,

we'll lock in at this rate and you can buy in. Are you interested in coming on the Digital Social Hour podcast as a guest? We'll click the application link below in the description of this video. We are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to about business and life. Click the application link below. And here's the episode, guys. And that's what I did.

I went to the U.S. and just grinded my butt off and try to get all these big brands, DDC brands, to start using us. Brilliant. And that's how I bought in as an owner without paying millions of dollars for these equipments. Because each of these machines are a million, two million bucks from Germany. The Germany printing press. These apparel machines? Not just apparel. We do boxes.

We do glass. We do metal tins. But these machines are so expensive that I would realistically never be able to start it. And then also managing employees, managing the entire facility. So I basically got a little cheat code to go in be a part of it without the exposure of millions of dollars i love that and you just had to land five clients you said earlier right i'm saying like for reference for me to make a million dollars in e-com i gotta sell to thousands of people for

me to make a million dollars as a manufacturer i just gotta find five five clients wow but my deal with the factory was more than five, of course. Yeah. You know, just a lot of these peels are what, 10, 50 K and they're recurring, right? If you need bags for your jerseys,

you're going to use me for, until you find someone better or until the lifetime of your company. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. If you're doing the packaging for each product, I mean, fashion Nova is probably sending out thousands of stuff a day.

Oh, tens of thousands a day. And it's recurring. It's an afterthought too like when you change your product you don't really change your packaging um so we're pretty safe in that space i found a little niche where i feel like it's not that competitive uh everyone needs it and there's good enough margins for us to take all the boxes for what i want to do i love that so you're probably going to china a lot then because that's where your business every other

month but it's good like my family's back there So I take it as like a little vacation. I go there for a week and see my dad and then I fly back to the factories. I got to figure it out. Like finally a system where it's dialed. That's cool. So your family's been there the whole time or they? Yeah, I was born in Hong Kong. My dad's there. My grandparents are there. And then when I was eight, I moved to America with my mom. Just figure shit out. We got basically got airdropped into New York City, Chinatown. I like to call it, I basically just got airdropped into a new country. Didn't speak a lick of English. Yeah.

And just figure it out. Wow. And I found that like, you know, being a minority and being an immigrant in a whole new country is very, very challenging. Because you just don't know what's going on. I didn't plan to come to America. My mom one day was like, yo, we're going on um i didn't plan to come to america my mom one day was like yo we're coming we're going to america we're gonna start something new um but i found that humor was the best thing to connect with people so i was like you know i'm just gonna

watch a bunch of funny movies in english and learn how to make jokes and that's how i got by in school wow you were that kid that pulled out the memes in class had to and then it eventually became one of my businesses when we first met. I had the meme bible. Yeah, I remember that. That was in Walmart and stuff, right? Yeah, we were in different retailers. Nothing too big.

We were mostly DDC. Okay. But even at that time, I didn't really know how to blow it up. Like I was talking to retailers. I was doing all this stuff. But I didn't really know. No one taught me. Back then, there was no e-com courses.

Think about like eight years ago. There were no courses. I had to figure it out. you killed it man that shit was on every single instagram meme page yeah this was early days a lot of media accounts that are doing those meme pages i was like their first client yeah to really blow up and then and then they started taking other like the supplements the only fans ads that's what's everything the heyday though man yeah i remember in college so much easier oh Oh my gosh. I could buy any, shout out any sports page and my jerseys would fly. I know.

Missed those days. Yeah, I missed those days. Now I don't even know if it works. Yeah. Really tough. Dude, there's… Back then, we can own an entire market with a few thousand dollars. Now you get a little blimp.

Yeah. Right? Yeah, for real. Their prices all went up. Worldstar is like 5k now just to get on there yeah crazy some pages charge like thousands and it's like damn they're they're making hell of money they're making a million a year just well you see that like daquan page got so i mean of course with the whole company but like that kind of put a market cap yeah to

what theme pages are worth everyone thought they were hot shit after that i mean i don't like that the prices went up yeah they sold for what like nine figures something crazy yeah it's like 80 some mil dude when i saw that i was like damn they must have been selling five million year in shout outs at least a lot of music companies use them yeah yeah a lot of labels 16 pages yeah those labels got money that makes sense um so at 14 years old you were making 50 $50,000 a month? For a few months. I wasn't for like an entire year. But for like those, I would say like from March to August, those were the best months.

And then it went down to $20,000. Because there was an offer that I was running. So to give you guys some context, I used to run a lot of theme accounts myself too. But not on Instagram. It was on Tumblr. And this is before Yahoo bought it. The good days of Tumblr. And the great thing about Tumblr is that it was a multimedia platform.

Meaning that you can do music. You can do text. You can do videos. You can do pictures. Whereas back down on Instagram, there's only pictures. And because we have so many more type of media mediums, we're able to run a lot of different ads. So I had about 32 million followers in that network. Damn.

And I was just running any type of offer that I i could it started off with just like simple apparel stuff which didn't really make me too much money and the biggest client i had at that point was sheen which back then they were kind of small yeah but 10 years later they're one of the largest ones but the money that i made the most was on affiliates because i realized that affiliates are all link based and instagram didn't allow links back then. Now you could. So Tumblr was the only platform outside of Twitter where you can put links in. So I was just running any type of affiliate offers I could find when I was 14. And that was honestly the most money I've ever made because we came from a family where my mom was a single mom working a job.

So 50K a month was insane to me. And yeah, I did that for a few months save enough money gave some to my parents and then i moved out to la a few years later back wow 50k a month at 14 is like the meaning of life is just oh that was what i thought i was gonna make in a year yeah you know as a kid like the concept of money just didn't really exist i know at that age what are you even gonna buy you can't buy a car good i bought more uh of other blogs so the way that i made it was i got into this whole ecosystem by buying my first account for 800 my best friend naman in high school was like yo get in this buy a blog and start doing adsense this is 20 2012 2013 i was in florida at the time it was like yo come in buy buy this account just

do clicks you know put banner ads on your blogs, make some money here and there. And there was another platform called MyLike where you can get paid for sending people through those galleries. You know, when they're like, oh, top 10 facts that you didn't know. And every single click is an ad. I used to see those all the time. Yeah, so we were running those offers. And so I bought that blog for $800 and I started making $100 a day. Because a lot of those people didn't know the value of it.

Back then, there was no hashtag ad. ad you know that was a few years later so people didn't really know the value of their blog it was just it was just for content you know people just want to run these blogs for content so the people that owned them didn't really know how much they could be worth so I bought my first one for 800 bucks then I bought the next one for a thousand I just keep rolling in because I was using them to run affiliate ads and the click ads. And so all the money that I made, I just went back to buying more because that was my arbitrage. People just didn't know the value of it. That's insane.

So you've always been like kind of early with everything. Yeah, for better or worse. You know, I think sometimes it's good to be early. There are sometimes where it's like you're early. You make a lot of mistakes and you just get wiped out by someone who's like you know what they're doing it wrong right you see everything they do wrong we're gonna do it faster better with more money um thankfully we've always been like the first one but you know first first mover advantage isn't always that good right i notice people in the meme culture are actually very early on things yeah i think the memes kind of dictate

the timeline of everything yeah i mean it's like a language right right? We're speaking the language many, many years before. And so through those blogs, because I was posting a lot on memes, they were getting cross-posted onto Instagram. And so I made a book called The Meme Bible when I was, let me see, I was around, yeah, I was 18 when I made The Meme Bible. So it was four years after the whole Tumblr thing. I still have that book. Yeah.

That's crazy. I have it framed. That was like the first taste of, oh,'s real legendary yeah yeah you made two of them right five i had five years yeah and then we had like a board game we had a bath bomb collection with a candle collection holy crap yeah and um yeah that was really fun but it was so seasonal because the the concept of the mean bible was we take everything that happened for the year from January up to November and we put it into a coloring book or an activity book. So there's hangman, there's crossword puzzles, there's word search, there's color in the blanks. My first one was 2016 during the presidential election.

So I made like a maze out of a Trump head. So he can go through from his mouth all the way to the top of his hair in a maze. So that was the concept of the book. And people really liked that because it was the first time where we put that meme medium outside of just t-shirts. A lot of people were just selling t-shirts. And eventually there's a card game like, what do you mean? But before that, we were the first one to put it outside of a different medium in a coloring book format.

And people loved it. Yeah, that's cool. Flying off the shelf. That's really unique. Yeah, I had that game. What do you mean? Also, is that yours too? No, that was from this company called Fuck Jerryerry they own a bunch of those oh yeah yeah um

but that was the first time where i was like wait a minute i can actually turn the media side of things to push a physical product that is relevant to my audience um but the first copy i launched uh i told a few people this but the first copy i launched i actually launched it without having any physical copies because it was actually kind of a launched, I actually launched it without having any physical copies. Because it was actually kind of a joke at first. I launched it. I was like, oh, maybe it'll work. So I Photoshopped a picture of what the book would look like.

And the insides of it, render it on Photoshop. And I put it on a website, put it on my accounts. And the first day, I did four grand. And I didn't even have a single copy on hand. It was just an idea of it. And then it just kept going. Because once it blows up, it keeps going. Second day, the 6K.

Third day, the 8K. By the end of the week, we did a quarter million. Holy crap. And I still didn't have the book. I was like freaking out. This is December 3rd. December 3rd was my first day selling. I remember that day very vividly. I was sitting in class.

This was finals week. So you were in high school still? First year of community college. Oh, yeah. Couldn't make it into the big colleges. So i'm just trying to get get my g's done um but yeah that day finals week shit blew up and i didn't have a book i was i was freaking out because this is close to christmas so there's a cutoff time oh yeah so i went to the nearest print shop i could find i was like do you i'm like please just help me get all this printed so i could fulfill it usps cutoff

time was what, December 14? You know, around that time for Christmas delivery. I basically have a few days to fulfill every single order. But I think that taught me so much of the lessons. Wow. I can relate during those times. If you don't get it out by the 14th, charge back. Done.

5% and then you lose the processor. Yep. And it goes. But the thing is, I didn't even know about all that stuff. That was so far ahead from where I was. I was just trying to launch a product. charge back done five percent and then you lose the processor yep and it goes but the things i didn't even know about all that stuff that was so far ahead from where i was i was just trying to launch a product yeah because before that i was just doing affiliate stuff i don't care if they don't fulfill i just have to sell it right so you had to manually order them and ship them yourself i have pictures of me in my room just literally fulfilling um books um and driving it to the

post office but dude that one week talked me most about e-commerce than anything else. That was basically my course. Yeah. That's where you learn it, man. You won't learn that shit in school. It sounds like you didn't care about school. No, I didn't. Cause you know, the reason why I didn't make it to the big colleges was because my grades were bad and I could kind of turn that back to, I was just so deep in building my media side of companies. I was up 16 hours a day in school. I am on my phone, you know, scheduling my posts, making new content. At night, I have a little Facebook group of other people in the same space. We're just sharing each other's content.

So I was a teenager just grinding that out. I didn't pay attention in school. They banned phones in my school. Really? Yeah, you couldn't use them. I'll find a way yeah yeah i was really bored man class was so boring i mean i it's like torture almost i was talking to uh to a friend about this last night i feel like kids today are doing what we're doing but at a

much better efficiency much faster pace we know when i was 16 i was you know myself i was probably one of the few kids doing it right but now everyone's hustling i see 14 15 year olds making millions off crypto yep you know they're grinding they're getting into all the whitelists the pre-sales and they're making their own coins dude 10 years ago we didn't have that no and so kids are getting way smarter they're going way further than we ever did and a generation before that that's such a crazy concept to think about what's next yeah i can't fathom that be millionaires before they're 10 years old coming up i mean we see some youtubers who are under 10 making millions yeah the toy channels yeah yeah the crypto thing's nuts dude

i mean i see on my twitter every day a teenage millionaire from crypto from solana altcoins or something like that yeah and it's gonna get faster and faster like teenagers are now opening their own stores they know how to run theme page ads. They just have so much time and so much curiosity that I feel like as we get older, we're in our late 20s now. We just don't have that spark of curiosity that teenagers have. Nah, I don't anymore. And that's a huge push. burnout from working 18 hours a day for five years straight yeah me too and it wasn't efficient like you're saying like my first five years were not efficient because we didn't have the mentorship we didn't have certain things in our life but now these kids coming in at 13 making solid money because there's content about it now right like 10 years ago there was no youtube videos teaching us how to do xyz now there's a tiktok video every single day saying hey this is how you're gonna

make 10k a week and like you know some of them are are bs but half of them are actually pretty good details yeah um we just never had that the the spread of information got so fast and so efficient that people are so much smarter today than where we ever were agreed yeah i'd love to see it tiktok might get banned though right yeah rip i don't know this one's the closest one it's been right because it's been a few times where it's like nah that's not happening but this time it's actually like wait

some bill just passed what's going on here yeah I think they're pending a sale actually like they both passed I wonder who's gonna buy it I don't know I don't know

I just feel like it's a distraction it's never gonna be to fix their problem you like you think the US companies aren't spying on us yeah they definitely are I mean you saw what happened

with Tucker Carlson they were spying on all his messages when he went to Russia yes like come on like you think they definitely are. I mean, you saw what happened with Tucker Carlson. They were spying on all his messages when he went to Russia. Yes. Like, come on. Like, you think of that and you're like, yeah, you know what? Our enemy is China. Yeah.

I went back to China recently and it was so crazy how far advanced they are. Yeah. My friend and I go through a grocery store. We bought the item. We checked out just by walking out because the camera recognized his face. No. Just paid. Just paid just like that.

What? No card, no nothing. no nothing membership all safe like you think about web3 of how web3 is supposed to connect everything together because it's so seamless yeah china did it without web3 everyone had their face safe there's a system saying you're a membership of ralph's here's your credit card info um and then here's your purchase history it's all saved damn um you pay people it takes two three seconds there's no wire transfer there's no nada it's so fast um wait they don't use wires there i mean there's like big accounts you need wires but like me sending you five grand so fast oh really it's a second um it's a high speed rail we can go to one country to another not country one city to

another city super fast and i was talking to to my friend about this last night and i and he was like why does it happen so much faster in china um than in the u.s and i was like you know i think there's a few reasons for this is because in china we're always taught that our common enemy our common goal is this and our common enemy is this not with each other right because we went through thousands of years where we were fighting internally we had a lot of civil wars destroy a population we had like five different emperors trying to like just fight for power so we had that in our history and now we're like you know what for us to progress a society we have to move very fast together and unity and that's why communism has to work in that space

but when when you look at america we're taught to fight each other. We were ingrained to fight each other because we come from a sports team. Hey, I am with the 49ers. I hate the Chiefs. And no matter what, I'm backing this team. You are always my enemy. It's always got to be butthead. So we were taught about sports.

And then we're like, you know what? In politics, I'm X color. You're X color. We're going to clash. Even if I don't fully agree with the I'm X color, you're X color. We're going to clash. Even if I don't fully agree with the ideologies of this, it doesn't matter. I'm on team red. You're on team blue.

We have to fight. And so this country is always fighting. And therefore, nothing really moves, right? You want a high-speed rail from Vegas to California? It will save so much problems. Got denied many times. Right? We're just constantly fighting. There's a lot of lobbyists because they don't want trains to go up because cars make a lot of money.

Right? They don't want payment processors to work better because payment processors make a lot of money. Right. And that was like a hot moment for me. I was like, dude, there's something wrong. And there's so many other countries that just do it so much better. You can hate on communism for what it's worth. I think there's a lot of stuff that i don't fully agree with but you have to recognize that there

are certain systems and that work with certain countries that move them a lot faster yeah and i feel like we're kind of going backwards that is fascinating yeah i never looked at it that way what do chinese people think of americans oh we love them um but you know i think to a certain extent there's a lot of media from both countries just saying, hey, you know what? We're always doing the bad stuff because the bad stuff gets the clickbaits. And that's what media is. The good stuff really gets the attention. The things that gets people upset, riled up is what gets the attention. So almost always we're pushing things that gets the most clicks.

And almost always there's kind of like a bad image for the other facts. You never see a good media segment about China. But then once you go back and you visit it, you're like, wait, it's actually pretty sick. kind of like a bad image for the other facts. You never see a good media segment about China. No, but then once you go back and you visit it, you're like, wait, it's actually pretty sick. Like you don't have to agree with everything, but you have to recognize that there is something good that came out of it. You don't think we're tracking everyone's faces here already?

You go through, what's it called? You go to the airport. If you have like a Nexus, you can just walk right through. They don't even check customs anymore. Your face is saving the system. Yeah, you have right you have clear you've got it yeah you have your face yeah why can't you pay with that why do i still have to pull out my credit card and swipe they're trying at m at uh whole foods with the wrist i don't know what that's about yeah but dude we had that in china for years yeah just things progress so much slower here damn for for

reasons where there's more money to be made making things more complex yeah we got to step it up because i feel like we were the fastest growing country at one point and we've definitely taken 10 steps back there's countries really catching up and that's in everything that's in sports business tech ai every single thing you know yeah it's pretty crazy we're losing our uh our number one title seems yeah and and you know i love this country i came to this country i became an american recently oh yeah i have a passport i love this country i just want to see it do well i just feel like we're fighting each other we're we're fighting over the wrong things because it's distracting and distraction is good yeah for the people in higher power that's what

they want yeah they want us to fight each other i wonder when people will wake up and not do that i mean there's so much more conversations even like the ones here where we're talking about it because we're like wait pause there's something more we need to talk about it yeah I would never fight someone just for their political beliefs or sports teams I have friends across the entire spectrum I love them equally you know we might not agree

on certain things but you also have to think about it the way that we were raised the circumstances that we were at leads to how we think about certain things it's not that they're a bad person it's just how they were raised yeah right absolutely so you're in la right now i'm in orange county right by the airport okay um but i actually think about moving to new york yeah yeah um just somewhere else i feel like i got too comfortable in orange county like things are too good and you know i think about my teenage years, like what was it that made me hustle so hard? It was because I was in a very difficult situation.

Like I grew up living in a garage. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't have an extra room. And, you know, I came to this country. I had to figure out who to live with because my mom and I couldn't afford our own house.

So we just live with relatives. I was working in a Chinese restaurant since I was eight. Like there's pictures of me working in a restaurant in the back chopping up vegetables. And because we didn't have a room, we just slept in a garage. It was just me,

my cousins. And that situation pushed me to work so hard because I'm like, dude, whatever it takes, I have to get out of this. And now I feel like I got to a level

where I'm pretty comfortable and I lost that spark to hustle. And I'm seeing that effect in my personal and my professional growth. So I'm like, you know what? I'm going to move myself to a whole new city where I'm pretty comfortable and I lost that spark to hustle and I'm seeing that effect in my personal and my professional growth so I'm like you know what I'm gonna move myself to a whole new city where I have a good network um but it's completely different than where I'm used to and I think that's gonna motivate me to work hard because everyone else there has to hustle like if you're not hustling in New York and you don't have a trust fund you can't afford to live there like you have to hustle um um and i feel like in orange county

that the pace of life is a lot slower because people made it they have money right they can go slower yeah it's more like retired people out there older crowd and i don't like la that much so new york's a nice spot i wouldn't live in la it's good to visit for a day yeah two days but i'm out after that exactly you know get caught up in that social media scene but yeah that makes sense i mean when i grew up it was definitely more hustling because i was grinding out of my mom's basement and i've definitely lost that touch for sure because you reach a certain financial point you're like oh i don't need to work as hard yeah you see that with a lot of people yeah and i'm seeing that with myself i'm like dude i'm not where i want to be i'm comfortable i can i can

honestly just not work but that's not where i want to be yeah and'm comfortable. I can honestly just not work. But that's not where I want to be. And I'm not in a place where I'm pushing myself to be where I want to be. That was the decision. This was like last night. Last night or like the night before. I was like, you know what? I'm moving to New York. Because I met some New York people.

And I love their conversation. I love the hustle and mentality. And that was just like a normal day for them. When I sat into those circles, I was like, I don't have that in OC. I don't have that in oc i don't have that in la the intelligence the ambitions and like the even the substance of it because i know they're not talking just bs i feel like in la there's a lot of just talks yeah but i know these people made it i know these guys personally and the conversation that they have with each other is what pushes them

so hard they're more direct i miss that i love that about new york yeah i grew up in jersey so i can relate it's more direct more fast-paced and they don't care as much about like social media clout and all that stuff exactly yeah i think you'd fit in well there i hope so i mean i'm just gonna do like half a year there and then winter time leave somewhere else i don't want to do new york winter yeah no one's up there hell no that's what ty lopez does yeah lives at three spots a year yeah that might be a good setup. The other thing is that I want to move around while I'm still young. I don't have a family.

I don't have a mortgage. I can move around. And I can just basically get as much as I can from each city, like the best of the best. And then eventually find a place where I can settle down with networks I've built around. I can only do that for a few more years before I find a partner, settle down. And we're not living in New York as a married couple. We've got to live in something closer. Maybe like Utah, Arizona, Vegas.

Those are the things I would think about. That's what I'm doing too. Yeah, but when I'm young, I need to drop myself into a hustle and bustling city. Yeah, 100%. That's what I'm doing before I have kids because you only get kind of a few year window, maybe five, to do that yeah i think like you and i were in this position like you're in vegas i'm in osis because we start really young so we got kind of tired we got burnt

out yeah and we just went to like a place where it's a little slower but then i'm like wait i meet my friends who are 40s who are in their you knowirties, like thirties who are very successful. They're like, you know what? You still got so many more years to go. Like, what are you doing here? Being so comfortable.

Like you don't deserve to be that comfortable. And I'm like, you're right. I don't deserve this right now. Like I need to go grind. But there's also an aspect of like, not the hustle porn that I want to go for. I think balance health and family is very important.

I'm right now. I'm in like max comfort. I want to go for. I think balance health and family is very important. I'm right now, I'm in like max comfort. I need to be in the middle. I don't want to be like too grindy where I'm working 19 hours, hours a day. I want to be very productive, prioritize health, go to the gym,

connect with friends and family, but still be hustling. Right now I'm like the far left of, I'm way too comfortable. You know, I wake up whenever I want, you know, team's all taken care of, money's's taken care of i can't have that in my 20s i would say i'm a little comfortable i'm probably not as much as you but i do want to grind more yeah yeah it's good that you realize

that yeah because i used to work seven days a week right now i'm working five which is decent yeah take weekends off and feel guilty about it yeah same that's the thing my girl's like oh i'll take the whole weekend off and i want to spend more time with her but just something comes up all the time you know how's it like you know balancing having a fiance and work yeah that's that's the main reason i take the weekends off honestly um and then i take i used to not take weekday nights off either so now i take those off pretty much that's good yeah but it's it's needed man because i was i had gray hairs at 21 dude yeah it's not i have a couple that's why i'm wearing a hat today dude it's nuts that stress is a killer yeah so i like it i mean gets your mind off things but at the same time sometimes we'll be watching a movie and i'm like oh i need to work

yeah you know what i mean yeah it's not hunger you need a girl that can support you through that because the way that i always tell my significant others is what I'm working on right now is for us. You know, if you see us long term together, if you just let me go out and work, that's for us. That's an extra dollar in our bank account for whatever we want to do. Because, you know, if we're together, we're together. I'm not dating around. So hopefully you find someone that is supportive of you, that's understanding and be like, you know what this is for us. You're not doing this for selfish reasons.

Especially, you know, you have a ring on it now. Like it's official. Yeah. They should know that. I love that. You date Asian girls? Yeah. Just grew up around Asians.

But when I first came to America, I lived in Buffalo. Moved up to Buffalo upstate. You've been all over, man. Yeah. Dude, I lived in all over the country. I lived in Florida. I lived in Oklahoma. I lived in Connecticut. I i lived in connecticut i live in even live in jersey for a little bit nice like a few months but then i lived in buffalo for elementary for like a year before i moved to

california and in that school i was the only asian kid everyone was just like blonde hair blue eyes and i was like you know what i think this is an American dream like I have to bag a blonde hair blue eyed girl and in third grade this is like third grade is before they learn racism like this is before

like they understand there's a difference so when I got to that school everyone loved it they're like oh my god new Asian kid just got airdropped

into a school like I love this one and I was just making all these friends I loved it it was such a good environment that it was it was honestly

a good first impression of America for me. Because in that little town, everyone was so inclusive. They're so welcoming. And then I moved to Richmond, Indiana, where things were a little bit different. Richmond, Indiana is very, very separated. I think it was like one of the most racist cities in America at one point. Indiana? Yeah, Indiana.

I didn't know that. And then I moved to Garden Grove in California. My uncle just opened up a restaurant next to South Coast Plaza. And so we had a buffet there. So I went there and the school was like 99% Latinos. There's like three Asian kids there. It was like me and like another Vietnamese kid and like another Vietnamese girl. So that school didn't do too well for me.

That was fourth grade. Fourth grade is when you're like, oh, yeah, there's something different. They start getting grouped up. So definitely got a lot more bullying

in that school compared to upstate New York. Yeah. Fourth, fifth grade is when they start forming the cliques. Yeah. The first three grades,

everyone's unified and it's great. It's wholesome. And then, yeah, it goes downhill from there. My mom used to beg me to date Asians, bro. Really? She always wanted me to date asians but now she's cool right yeah she's cool with it but yeah i wasn't into them in high school because they mature kind of late yeah so

they're not at their peak attractiveness until college no that's very true yeah that's so true um but yeah i didn't really date until late teenagers year because i was just working so much online. And here's the thing. I think being chronically online at a young age kind of screwed me over because it gave me a different perception of like how to talk to people. Because I was online all the time, I only knew how to talk to people online. So going to talk to people in person was so challenging. I can relate.

I basically became socially inept for a moment. Yeah. And just like you, I threw myself into networking events. I put myself out there and I learned how to talk to people. But man, that was very tough. Same. Getting out of like offline to online. And also I think having a lot of followers as a young teenager really screwed me over too.

Because it gave me this idea that you know what i have a lot of followers i'll just talk to whoever i want and everyone's gonna talk back to me and that was that was true when you had a lot of audience but as i got out of that i was like wait i just don't know how to make friends anymore i don't know like i i feel like i need something in order for them to talk to me because Because back then, I had a lot of followers. I know that they'll talk to me because I had a certain amount of audience. I was a teenager. It's a stupid thought, by the way, if anyone want to clip this.

It's a stupid thought. But now, getting into society again, I was like, what do I have to offer for them to be friends with me? That was constantly in the back of my head. Obviously, the truth is that you just have to be a good person. You can't be an asshole. You have to beada yada yada but for many many years of my life after i got out of that circle it was always on top of my head like how do i make them like me if i don't have anything and that really screwed with me dude that follower game is a deadly crutch i used to pull up to restaurants flex my instagram it's so cringe looking back on it yeah you think you're

hot shit just from having like 100K on IG and stuff. But we're kids. Listen, like we're kids. We look back at kids today, the TikTok kids, right? Like they do the same exact thing. It's a repeat of a pattern. And I understand it. Like at least I understand it.

I might not like it, but I also wouldn't have liked it if I saw myself 10 years ago. But that's growth. That's maturity. If you weren't doing something cringy, you know, know as a young kid you probably didn't grow that much either like knowing that you grew out of that is a huge progression yeah let me look at bryce hall he's blowing up right now because he's owned up to the cringe tiktok dancing videos he used to make and now people love him again yeah that personal image switch was huge yeah same with like the paul brothers i like i think they really grew out of it hate Hate them or love them.

Like they are marketing geniuses. Oh yeah. Especially, I mean, Logan's killing it with prime, but I love Jake's transformation. Yeah. I mean,

he was like the menace. He really was. Now he's like someone you look up to. Yeah. It's awesome. Dude, it's been fun. Anything you want to promote or close off with?

No, no. I just want to hop on because we've been talking about this for a year. Yeah. So I really want to just come on, have this this conversation we just always see each other in like networking events that we never really got talking about each other we're all over the place it was good getting a new uh sit down with you on a moment likewise absolutely yeah thanks for coming on and uh see you guys next time