Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - #89: Ari Rastegar: Transforming Failure into Fortune.

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

Ever wondered how a self-made real estate mogul found his path to a billion dollar empire? We're set to gain riveting insights into the life journey of Ari Rastegar, author and real estate entrepreneur. Ari rose from a difficult childhood to become a successful businessman. Ari will share the importance of proximity and the 'bartender strategy' he utilized to meet potential investors early in his career.Ari offers his perspective on networking and the impact of being memorable. He'll offer intriguing details about his studies with Paul Ekman, and the art of detecting lies and understanding non-verbal communication.Join us as we explore the power of human connection in a digitally advanced age. Don't miss this insightful conversation with the one and only, Ari Rastegar.Highlights:"I'm a human intelligence company, I am not an artificial intelligence company. I love that I use data to inform a better human decision.""Real integrity is not keeping promises to others. But real integrity is keeping promises to yourself.""If you strike out seven out of 10 times, you're in the fucking Hall of Fame, baseball. And I don't know about you all. But all I've done is failed. More than I've just learned how to fail..."Timestamps: (0:00:00) - Ari Rastegar Introduction(0:11:26) - Proximity and Strategy for Success (0:20:36) - Relationships With Authenticity(0:27:32) - Human Interaction in a Digital Age(0:34:41) - Body Language(0:44:46) - Reflection on Education (0:58:19) - Defining Moment(1:06:01) - Longevity JourneyAbout the Show: ➡️ Learn and burn Entrepreneurship from serial entrepreneur John Gafford On his podcast Escaping the Drift, he discusses all sorts of topics, including what made him successful and some of his core tenants for living life and managing successful businesses.➡️ He is joined by world class guests who share their expertise to help you level up! Escaping the Drift podcast stands to be one of the top sources of knowledge and insights, specifically into real estate and entrepreneurship out there! Not to mention tons of coverage of topical events and insights into our non-commercial lives as well… If that sounds interesting to you, make sure to subscribe.About John Gafford:➡️After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space.➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 600 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales➡️ Clear Title, a 7 figure full service title and escrow company.➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers. *************✅Follow Escaping the Drift with John Gafford on social media:Instagram ▶️https://www.instagram.com/thejohnmgafford Facebook ▶️https://www.facebook.com/gafford2/ 💯

When I meet people, I say, tell me about you. And then when they start, well, I work at this company, this would do this. I go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I get that. What about you, man? Are you married? Do you have kids? Where are you from?

And people are just like, yeah. And it skips a beat for them. And when I really take interest in them, I always tell people in an event like that, I don't have to have the best memory. I have to be the most memorable. And by asking a question that nobody else asks, I'm able to achieve that. And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm Jon Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness.

So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Welcome back, everybody. We've got a good one today. I mean, you know what? I'm going to say we got a great one today. This is one that I was so proud to get, and I was so stoked to get for the show because, man, when it comes to teaching people and elevating stuff, I sit in a lot of rooms and I listen to a lot of people speak. And when I saw this guy talk, I got to tell you, I was blown away to the point where,

you know, very rarely do I walk off a stage and start doing research on somebody. And I immediately did with this cat. So this is a guy that has built a real estate empire worth nearing $8 billion. He did it expeditiously. And I mean, quick, he built it expeditiously, and I mean quick. He built it all on the back of his own accord. His nickname is the Oracle of Austin. He is the author of the book, The Gift of Failure. And today he is our guest. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Ari Rastegar. Ari, what's up, man? My guy, what's up?

How are you, dude? So glad to have you on today. So glad. Living the dream. Man, thank you for having me, dude. As you know, I don't do these very often, but I love what you're doing, man. And I've listened to the stuff.

I enjoy it myself and I'm a fan of what you're doing. So thank you for having me. And I appreciate the kind words. Dude, I appreciate that so much. And I got to tell you, when I saw you speak, there were so many things that jumped off that stage of me that we're going to talk about today. And we're going to talk about the book, which I loved. I thought was great. Hopefully I'm going to ask you, I know you don't do a lot of these. So I'm like, man, I got to ask some thoughtful questions that maybe Ari hasn't been asked before. Like, it's like the deep cuts from the book, if you will.

Like, we're going to go deep on some of these things and figure it out. But I'm going to tell you one of the most interesting things we're going to start out with. And I'm going to ask this, which is, do you believe, and this is going to be a weird question, but I promise it's going somewhere. Do you believe at all in like horoscopes or numerology or any of that stuff? Does that any of that take any thought to you at all? Um, 100%. And, and so, so JP Morgan, they asked, um, they asked, asked him when he was, I believe in his, in his mid thirties and, um, those who haven't watched, um, a docu series called the men who built America. I highly recommend it to everybody. It's spectacular. And, um, those who haven't watched, um, a docu series called the men who built America.

Love it. I highly recommend it to everybody. It's spectacular. And, um, so they asked JP Morgan about astrology and no, no different than the question you asked. And he said, look, um, millionaires don't believe in astrology. Billionaires do. Yeah. Well, the reason I asked that and that, and that dropped, that dropped the mic for me. Well, let me tell you the reason I asked that when I was on the apprentice, I probably didn't know I was on that television show, but when I was on that show, 2 million people tried out for the season that I was on. And three of us had the exact same birth date. Would you care to guess what that is? Would you care to guess what that birthday it is it's april 6th

really and that's your birthday my man is that say that again so you two million people apply to be on the princess and all of them had our same birthday no they chose three of us that had the same birthday that out of the two million but down to three people now now there's now that now there's four of us and now there's four of us on April the 6th. That is exactly. I saw that and I was like, man, that is so weird. That's such a strange coincidence. And, and I got to tell you, we have a lot of other interesting parallels that I'm going to bring up as we go through this interview. But I always like to start this out because, you know, I, I am the father of children as I know

you are too. And one of my biggest terrifying things is raising worthless kids in a house of abundance, we shall call it. So I always like to find out, man, like, like you coming up, man, what did your parents do that made you become Ari? And I asked that for two reasons. A, cause I want to understand you, but B, I want to see if there's clues from what they did to you that I could do to my kids. You know, well, the answer that I'll give, so look, there was clearly, my father was, I grew up, you know, in a divorced household. My mom is German. My dad is Iranian. It was, you know, like a volcano in a tornado meeting, you know. But, but in hindsight, um, I, I didn't have the best childhood, uh, uh, to say the least. And, um, and there was a time that it really took me just being, you know, super transparent about it that were, that were tough. And if you think about the worst

things that could ever happen to a kid, um, in some regards, if you can use your imagination and draw on that checklist, um, that was my childhood in a lot of ways. And, and there was a time that for me, it was very hard to reconcile that. Um, I've been very blessed as I mentioned in the book to have spectacular, you know, life coaches and mentors and, um, you know, uh, through Tony Robbins conferences to working with Lauren Zander directly, who's one of the greatest life coaches in the world, took me a while to create a new meaning because facts aren't as important as meaning because you can take two people and say, Oh, well, I came from a divorced family, so I'm never going to get married. You can take the same fact

and say, Well, I came from a divorced family, I'm never going to get a divorce. So it just means what it means. So the facts are so I had to change the meaning of what some of those actually were. And in hindsight, hearing stories from my father about about the pre-revolution in Iran and my my namesake being equivalent of a five star general in the Iranian army, my grandfather being one of the Shah of Iran's medical doctors, and actually heard about this avant-garde new kind of medical field of study called psychiatry. And so he was actually one of the first licensed psychiatrists in the Middle East, a place like others that might need maybe more of those at the moment. Yeah. But the answer to that question is maybe not

the exact one that either one of us as fathers would wish on our kids but there's something about the cut right there's a moment that all high achievers and i study greatness for a living you know whether it's understanding what kobe thought about jordan what edison thought of tesla um i wrote my thesis in undergrad i was an english major on why mark twain resented the real william shakespeare and and i say that to you only in the sense because i'm very interested in this i mean you study all the greatest achievers in the world um they got cut there was a moment where you go back to where they got kicked in the teeth um got hurt in some way, shape or form, emotionally,

physically, psychologically, something we might see as small, they saw as big, something really big that we, it's so the quantity and the cadence, so to speak of what that cut is. But the point is there's a moment when something hurts and I've come to learn that there's a good hurt. There's a bad hurt. You're pushing weights and you're feeling that burn. You get through one more rep and then there's breaking your arms, you know? So there's a, there's, there's a fine line between them. Um, but the thing is we need to let our children, and I say this from my own opinion. So how do you, how do you say it? So again, real quick, how do you manufacture that with our

kids, with your kids? You set them up to fail. Oh, I love that. Can you give me an example how you do that with your kids? Can you give me an example? Yeah. You, you, you, you put them in a situation like you, my son Kingston, you know, who has started to become really interested in baseball.

You know, I immediately started tossing balls at him before he knew how to swing the bat. And again, I'm not saying that I do this as well. So the difference between the philosophy of what you think is right versus action, I'm a human, you know, just like you and a very flawed human being at that in the sense where a lot of the things I'm telling you, I wish I could tell you that I do all of them. And this is a meticulously planned out way that I'm parenting my kids. But the fact of the matter is an entrepreneur, you know, in the eighth year of my company, starting with a $3,500 loan eight years ago, you know, there's a cost for everything. So I've spent less time with my third child than I have with my other two kids. And I miss a lot

of these precious moments. And, and there's a cost for that, you know, and I believe that the merit of what we're building and the people that we're impacting is absolutely worth it. So that's a different discussion, but a lot of the things we'll talk about, I haven't necessarily always implemented as well as I'd like to. And it's a little, a little, little bit, you know, I say that with a little bit of, of blushing and Twain used to say that man is the only animal that blushes or needs to. And this is one of the instances where I will. But yeah, putting him there and just throwing baseballs one by one and letting him swing and try to figure out how to make a swing. And so now you got to hit one, you got to hit one, you got to hit one, you got to hit one, you got to hit one to where I know for sure he is going to fail. And by that failure, the hope is

to trigger effort. So they did this huge study at Harvard around high performing children. And they took one test group and said, um, they, they basically praise them for, um, being smart or being beautiful and these other traits and they measured performance and they took another group and what they said, they praise them for their effort. And then theyed performance afterwards. And they found that the ones that were praised for effort significantly outperformed those that were praised for some sort of merit. And I've started to think about that more and more of saying, you know, how can I put them in a situation that's going to elicit effort and more importantly, elicit focused effort?

And whatever that means, it might be a conversation or asking them a question about something versus, hey, what did you do in school? Or getting more surgical into, oh, you said you did. Well, you know, three, three times three. Why do you think that is? And something where I know that they can't exactly answer me. So it stretches their intellectuality and stretches their ability to respond, stretches their ability to even find words to use because necessity is the mother of all invention. So if I put them in a position where it's necessary that they answer me, if they don't know the word and I teach them the word, they're going to fucking remember that word because it was a need in that moment. So trying to catalyze and manufacture situations that force them to put effort in that are in a safe place where me as their father, if they feel uncomfortable, I can hug them and love them and tell them that I'm

proud of them and watch almost like a safety net of those inherent failures. Yeah. Again, I think, you know, this show, the focus is really to try to get you to level up. And I think we've talked about it many times on this show that the biggest challenge I think a lot of people have is they have failed themselves into a habit and a pattern recognition of, of lowered effort of, of reduced effort. So, you know, how does somebody, you know, if say somebody on your team is in that situation, now, granted, I doubt anybody could get through the door with you just because of who you are. Dude, I know how high energy you are. Nobody's even going to get through the door, but let's assume Ari is mishired. Okay. Let's say

you got a cousin. Let me just say you got a cousin. Oh, I am mishired. Another thing, like I'm at the point in my life where I'm so sick of hearing. And, you're in the fucking hall of fame in baseball and i don't know about you all but all i've done is failed more but i've just learned how to fail maybe better to where those l's for losses turn into lessons and that's really the the you know the key is knowing that my failure and I learned it from Jocko about talking about, um, finding these situations that are quote unquote bad and finding the good in them and calling them good and figuring out a way to do it. So the attrition that I had as a firm and hiring at the beginning of people coming in, coming out,

one of my big failures was thinking that they could read my mind and not putting the onus on myself to create the right steps for training and then leaving. And once I started to put the onus on myself and saying, look, Ari, they're coming through the door here. Like you got to set the stage for them to learn this, learn that, train them and not immediately expect results, um, was, was a really big learning curve for me. And like, so like I said, so I'm at the place now where if I'm talking on these things, the only thing that I'm going to really talk about mostly or I'm going to try to is what I screwed up because I don't hear any other billionaires out here really advertise. I wrote, I don't know what kind of idiot who manages money

for a living, writes a book called failure. Like how dumb can you possibly be to say, Hey guys, we lost everybody. It's great. There's a gift in it to get that, to get that done. That to me is just the truth. Well, it's, it's funny you say that, man, because I found when we implemented EOS to all of our businesses and I found one of the biggest problems we had at our companies was nobody really understood what it meant to do a good job. They didn't know. And I think that having an objective and a key result, understanding what it means to do a good job and what it meant to do a good job. They didn't know. And I think that having an objective and a key result, an OKR, understanding what it means to do a good job in whatever role you're performing. And I think if you're somebody out there listening, you're stuck and you feel like you're

at a job where you don't know, do you really know what it means to do a good job? Like if you had a conversation with your boss, if you're an entrepreneur having your own company, do you know what your KPIs need to look like? Do you, are you setting solid goals? Are you doing those things? And I think that it's, it's brilliant. Yeah. That's such a, it's such a crucial thing you have to do, but I want to talk about some of the stuff that you said from the stage. And I'm going to talk about two things. One thing you said that absolutely blew me away, two things that I've told these stories in front of other people. I've given you credit every time I've told them, but I've told these stories now from stage several times. And the first one is discussing the

bartender strategy, which I thought, as you said that I want to unpack the bartender strategy a little bit more. I want you to talk about what it is first. And then I want to unpack a little difference in it that I think didn't get relayed when you said it. So what was your strategy in New York for meeting wealthy people in New York? Yeah, so I in some of my first jobs on Wall Street, you know, I was taught, you know, I was charged with going to talk to new capital, whether that was debt relationships or that was equity cash. But learning how to cultivate those relationships and, you know, being a nobody from nowhere, certainly not knowing anyone in New York, I don't even know where to start. And I just kept thinking to myself, like, just common sense being, I guess, not so common. A lot of instances is where rich people going to be, where the people that I either want to emulate as mentors, people I want to talk with about investment opportunities,

like, where the fuck are these people? And the initial thought was, maybe go to nice, expensive restaurants. Let's start with Michelin starred restaurants. initial thought was maybe go to nice, expensive restaurants. Let's start with Michelin starred restaurants and maybe let's go to really expensive hotels that poor people can't even go to. And kind of, so that was the first thought thought process, nothing, no Googling, like just thinking, okay, where can I be? And how can I create proximity? Because I've come to believe over the years that the true covenant is in proximity, who you are around, what you're around, whether the food you have, the gyms you're in, the clothes you're wearing, the proximity you have to things ultimately demystifies your authentic character, whether you like it or not, the way the haircut is, the skincare, the watch, the, they're all those things are telling something of either how you got sold or what you're selling. And more importantly, what you are like, you look at this, you know, these pants, I got sold by Lululemon every day of the week. I got, I got my, my, you know, whatever Nike's on, like they sold me fine. So in that vein, I said, okay,

how can I get proximity? And I'm saying this in a way that sounds a lot more calculated than it was because it certainly was i just told my wife one day it came out it's like i don't know where the hell i'm gonna meet rich people and she was johnny depp's personal assistant um and flight attendant you know for many many years and i was like well what the fuck did y'all do she's like well we went to this expensive place that was oh i can't really afford to go spend the meal and buy the expensive one, but I can buy a drink and I'm not a big drinker. Anybody that knows me, no, you know, I'm not mother Teresa, but I'm not a big, I'm not a big drinker and I'm kind of allergic to it. But I said,

you know what? I'll go up and order a order of tequila or something that's not embarrassing. And those out there that are saving the bar, don't order a kamikaze for the love of god or a cranberry like you know just either order or a man's cocktail i say the same advice to to women that are in business development roles and men equally and those that are you know gender fluid or um what i think it's the same rules if you have when in doubt order a beer yeah okay get a beer fair and any person that sits and grabs a beer and just get a something like get a heineken when all in fail get a heineken and sip the beer if you don't know

otherwise you should be having a if you're having liquor it's tequila vodka a couple on the rocks couple limes nothing else short you know simple same thing with your attire wearing a pinstripe suit with a with a tie with slants in it and curves is a fucking optical illusion like you're taking the attention off of you and giving it to your fucking weird clothes and that has nothing to do with the expensive tie expensive suit we're talking about just the simplicity because clothes and all of these things are about attracting attention to you not to distract your person you're talking with from what you're actually saying so kind of putting all that together i

got my blue suit you know my white shirt and you know my blue tie my brown shoes that probably cost a whopping four hundred dollars at the time and um, you know, a tequila on the rocks with a couple oranges and just sat at the bar. And what I came to find is people came up to striking up conversations with people. It's fucking weird. So how do you make it organic? The person you talk to more than anything, when you're sitting at a bar, certainly one that's a little quieter, a little higher up is the bartender and the bartender of Il Molino, one of the top Italian restaurants in New York. And I love Italian food. I live pretty close. My office was close. The guy that he's named was Elvis. And I went up to the bar and I talked to him, seemed like a funny guy. And I became friends

with him. And the objective came to say, if can become friends with elvis and always be a good be a good tipper and here's the thing about tipping that everybody should take away the root of tipping and we need to know where the root of things come from why things mean things a tip was designed to be given given in anticipation of good service to ensure proper supposed to be given at the end so when you walk up into the bar you give the bartender 20 bucks before you even order a fucking drink yeah oh what's this for just just for you changes the tonality you've already created some sort of empathy you've created a little bit of you know rapport and relationship that opens up the guide to ask authentic questions to build a relationship with that person.

And by doing that over time, they start to tell you, oh, this person's over here. She's the CEO, blah, blah, blah. He's the da, da, da, da, da, da. And they ended up being like the command center for me to meet all the people that are coming into, into these places. And so I mapped out three parts of the city, went to three different areas, one hotel, two expensive restaurants that have the things in them, and became very close with the bartender. Several of them I still know to this day. One of them passed away, actually,

God rest in peace, my astrologer for the past decade. His name was Mitch Lewis. He passed away from cancer about a month ago. I love him very, very dearly. I miss him very much. One of my mentors who, who's still an investor of mine introduced me to him. But all of this was happening in the same instance of me talking to Mitch and saying, Hey, in my late twenties, you know, am I ever going to, you know, pinky in the brain? Like, am I going to take over the world and, you know, be a multi-billionaire? He's like, I got good news and bad news. The good news is your astrology looks pretty good but nothing's going to happen to you after 40 so telling a 28 year old psychopath re that it's

going to take till 40 years old too long been to 200 too long but telling these stories to the bartenders telling these stories you know to the people that I'm meeting with about this, that it's funny, you brought that up, develop something super deep where it's actually become a great strategy and a tactic to be able to meet all the people within that proximity. And all it costs you is maybe the 20 buck tip when you walk in the 20 buck tip, when you leave and a couple of drinks, you're having more than two drinks and you're talking to clients and potential prospects. You shouldn't be doing that anyway. I don't care how big your tolerance is. And it, it allowed me to unravel and peel an onion into more meaningful relationships. Cause once I met two, three, four people there,

they introduced me to two, three, four people. And then it just became a system of maintaining and building and farming those relationships. You said from the stage that you would actually tell these guys when you would meet them that you paid the bartender to introduce you. Is that, did I hear that right? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And that's the part of it. I love deep. I couldn't let the possibility of the people and the potential prospects think that I was doing something nefarious. I didn't want to say, Oh, I'm sitting this. I wasn't trying. I was deliberately trying not to be slick, but I had a great product. We were making people tons of fucking money and I wanted to give it to other people and profits, not a bad word in my lexicon. So when I demystified that and said,

Hey, I paid them, whatever they laughed and these are business people that are rich. So they're respecting the hustle. They're saying, well, that's a good idea. Tell me more. No, no. That was my point. Because see, again, like my real estate company here in Las Vegas, we are the largest luxury boutique firm here in Vegas. And people come to work for us because, well, people come to work here because they want to sell the big stuff. They want to, you know, that's the dream. Nobody gets into real estate and goes, Oh, I just want to sell that a hundred thousand dollar condo. It's not the dream, right? It's not what people do. So they come here and people think that to get in the good graces of very high net worth people, you have to go through this like poser thing where you like,

you pretend like you're somehow at their level. And the point that I loved so much from that story is people that come from a place of abundance would rather hear the story of, man, you're hustling, bro. You're working, like you're grinding to get it. Like they love that shit. They love it. And that's, and that's also your like respect, you know you know like like the note knock the hustle knock the game or whatever the cliches are about like these these are all players in the same game of life that you're playing yeah they're playing it at the highest levels to where when you go in with that level of authenticity and you basically show the hand that you're playing there's so much trust that's built because

these relationships especially with high net worth people they're sold shit every day they know every slick scumbag trick in the in the book they're impressed with effort yeah with hard work with integrity and a focus that's the other people they want to hear that you are focused on selling luxury houses in Las Vegas. And that's what you do. And you're an authority in that space. I'll be at your young. They don't care about that. They want to see your focus. They want to care though, that they can trust you. And when those things happen, potentialities for growth become limitless. It's not about the deal deals come and go, man. And I tell people, you know, money is infinite

deals are not, and they know that. So when you're the one that has the deal, they realize that you're the prize. And instead of trying to be the fucking hero, just guide them to the thing and make them the hero. Cause guess what they are. And most people don't give a shit about you, whether you like it or not, Like, they're thinking about themselves. If you don't make it about them, nothing's ever going to happen. Yeah. You know, we talk about that quite a bit right now, especially in this market with everybody. It's like, is now a good time necessarily to invest, especially in a single family?

No, it's probably not with interest rates the way they are. It just doesn't pencil in most cases. But there are- It depends, right? Well, this is what I'm telling people. We'll agree to disagree on that. Well, hang on. We'll agree to disagree. Well, hang on. But I'm talking about single family stuff here. I'm very

specifically talking about this local market here. It makes it tough, but what I tell people is, you know, that doesn't mean real estate stops. There are a certain amount of people that have to, they have to do something like they're getting divorced. They have to do something. They, they're, they just moved here for a job. They have to do something. So your job is not to be the hero. Your job is to be the lighthouse and guide them through the choppy seas because the seas are choppy as hell right now. They're not smooth, but if you can be that lighthouse and get people where they need to go, you're good. Yeah. And I totally agree. And those that are listening, there's a fantastic book called Story brand okay it was written by a man named

donald miller and all of us because anyways i'm not in sales i think everybody's in fucking sales what everybody is in sales and every either you're being sold or you're selling and i've been saying this for years so whether you got sold by the clothing and all the things we talked about. So individual in this day and age, not learning the fundamentals of sales, whether it's to sell a prospective employer to hire you, you're still selling how you write the resume where you like, this is all sales. So learning these fundamentals is one of the most important. Think about it. No, I'm saying you're going to sell. You want to know how good somebody is fundamentally in sales? Look at their spouse.

That's all you got to say. And I can tell you, you look at my spouse and you're thinking that dude's a whiz because I definitely know. And it's, it's, it's, it's exactly, exactly right. So the, so these like fundamental principles, just like anything in sports are an easy and easy analogy for this stuff. But honing in on those high impact things, figuring out how to build trust, showing empathy. And this book, StoryBrand, has done such a great job of articulating it, clarifying these concepts. So you all that are listening to have your various businesses or ideas, figuring out how to articulate your message, how to use design to push towards messaging and not make something pretty. That's not being effective. Um, it is really important. So in these

dialogues, I highly recommend it. My book is not the great American novel by any stretch of the imagination. Um, but there are prints, there are some principles in there. I kind of joke that it's a cut and paste of cliff notes of 173 self-help books that I read. I basically mished all together and told you all my embarrassing stories or some of them. But between those concepts, you start to find true north and you start to be able to understand that the best stories in the world whether it's a pitch or whether it's a movie have the same content look at mr miyagi right look at rocky look at yoda they are always the same story about a person that meets that authority that's a hero's journey done that hero's journey but it's all the hero's journey. And that is the mistake modern marketing and sales

makes. Me being included in this bundle of not realizing these fundamental stories and these principles of how story is told, how we fall in love with a character, why we fall in love with the characters and become evangelists can all be articulated in our talk tracks, in our websites, in our discussions. But at the end of the day, without authenticity and without a genuine, genuine need and desire to build a true lasting relationship, this all falls through. It's smoke and mirrors. So you genuinely have to love people enough to ask, Oh, you like the answer. I like, oh, you like the cowboy. Oh, I went, my friend went to Bolivia. You went to Bolivia. Oh, my wife

likes Johnny. Oh, you do too. And finding those things that'll inherently link you to create cornerstone memories and then growing on it. You know, that's my biggest networking trick. If one's not a trick, it's just my, it's what I do when I network at places, which is when I'm in a place where I'm shaking hands and everybody's like, Oh, what do you do? What do you do? Everybody has that planned elevator speech. They're just waiting to get out. And when I say, I don't, I never asked, what do you do when I meet people? I say, tell me about you. And then when they start going, well, I work, you know, I work at this company on this, we do this. I go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I get that. What about you, man? Are you married? Do you have kids? Where are you from? And people are just like, uh,

yeah. And it skips a beat for them. And when I really take interest in them, I always tell people in an event like that, I would, I don't have to have the best memory. I have to be the most memorable. And by asking the question that nobody else asks, I'm able to achieve that. I love it. That's excellent. And that goes back to the point I made about wardrobe and stuff too. I'm a big proponent when it comes to to clothes in a professional setting is gray suits, blue suits, black suits, men and women alike, white shirt, blue shirt, solid color ties, brown shoes, black shoes, Oxford style when in doubt. Yeah. And what that does is it keeps you memorable to them, not your fucking tie, right? They remember you, not your shoes. They remember you, not your Rolex or, you know, what your, you know, whatever, whatever your flavor is. And for me, one of my favorite, um, things to do when talking,

um, to, you know, clients, prospective clients or friends, and pretty much, you know, all of my clients and investors are my friends because I spend so much time with them that we become, you know, family. And one of my favorite phrases, whether catching up with them or learning about them is tell me more. Just they start saying, Hey, I'm going to take my kids to the store. Tell me more. Cause I genuinely love the people I want. And I love people people i love human interaction i'm an english major lawyer i study people for a living so i want to know more so just tell me more and they keep talking and as they keep talking i end up hearing something they said that i genuinely

love also a movie a food a store my kid and then by latching into that you start creating this ping pong match that builds into something because I, because I believe with all this data, this technology, I am a human intelligence company. I am not an artificial intelligence company. I love that. I use data to inform a better human decision. Love that. And that is the name of the game for me in this overly noisy ass world. We will take the data, but we are going to not be data driven like you hear as a button, but data informed to make the necessary adjustments to better serve our customers on a human level. And to this point, at least over the next six and a half to seven years, based upon Ray Kurzweil's information technology, J-curve growth,

we have about six or seven more years where human interaction is still the most valuable commodity in the universe. See, I think I'm going to disagree with that. And I'm going to say, this is why I tell my kids all the time. Like I tell my kids all the time, the ability to look another human being in the eyes and communicate with them and connect with them at a deep level is going to be a skill that such a small percentage of your generation has. Cause you guys are all plugged in. You're all plugged into each other. You're all connected, but you're plugged into the matrix. These kids, I mean, I see it coming up. These, these kids are 14, 15, 16 years old. They don't know how

to connect with each other in the real world. And that skill, that skill is going to be, they don't, but I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to push on you a little bit. Cause I'd love to hear your, um, your, your advice and input on this is human interaction and the, everything we're talking about. We fundamentally agree that that is the most valuable, most, whatever you want thousand percent thing. Okay. So what, so our, so we're a little bit remiss in our timing of how important that is. And the reason is the only reason I would agree with you, you know, almost always, other than all this new things I've been learning about artificial intelligence, the machine learning and the growth of them. The other day I got on the phone with a conversational ai bot that blew my fucking mind

i talked to him alexander was his name i remember his name taught or its name or robot's name and the level that it's coming to be able to talk to you cold call for you leave voicemails for you answer text bro it is becoming so unbelievably unfathomably human and the rate of growth that it's changing goes to a point that is terrifying in a lot of ways um but even more to your point as that increases and we become less and less human engaged i actually think that makes the human interaction of looking in the eyes etc as cetera, as you said, even more valuable because there's going to be even less people that do it. That can do it. That can do it.

They weren't because, because I'm stuck in the middle of two generations, bud, like at 41 years old, I'm the, the, the old guy to all the millennials is the oldest millennial, but I'm the young guy to the old guys. So I'm like, had this identity crisis of you know like what like where do i land yeah where do i and it's usually just pace around in circles to have no clue but um but that issue of focusing for anything that we're doing and anybody that's listening to this around learning you know basic cycle i studied with paul ekman who's the really the father of body

language studying. It's what the CIA and the FBI have used to elicit, you know, detecting lies. And I took a bunch of his courses and read all of his books about learning just how body language, because 80% of communication is not verbal. 80, eight, zero, which is a crazy, was a crazy number. And that's why when you walk in the room with somebody sometimes like, I don't, I don't like, I don't like that guy. He didn't fucking say anything. Or someone walks by. I love that guy. What the, he spilled his drink on you. What do you mean love? I love that guy. But it's because of these other pieces that are coming off, learning how to craft those and understand them at a scientific level. I couldn't agree more that dealing with those things could not

be more important than it is today. I love that you talked about body language is one of my go to's is whenever I walk up to somebody in a group, I look right at their feet. If they don't point their toes at me, I'm out. I just I look right, I look right at the toes. And if they don't turn to me, I'm going to love this. So there was a refined study on the exact same thing. Okay. I know exactly what you're talking about. Follow the knees. I go right. The knees, the knees, not the toes, the knees, the knees, not the toes. Cause people are so everted in the way they walk and I'm big into posture management, but because of sitting so much, our pelvises are tucked under to where our feet are inadvertently everted as a general as a society but the knees still tell the story so if you're sitting at a bar talking to someone and

they turn to you and their knees are facing you even if the toes are slightly pointed the other way the knees are going to tell the story okay so i was close i was i was off by about 24 inches but here's the thing about close mark twain used to say the difference between using the right word and almost the right word is the difference between a lightning bolt and a lightning bug. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's true. Painfully true.

Yeah, painfully true. It's like what I saw. I mean, the other said that a colon can completely change the meaning of a sentence. And it said, Mark ate Samantha's sandwich. And then it said, the next one said, Mark ate Samantha's colon. I thought that was like, yeah, I can completely change the meaning of what it was. There you go. But it's interesting.

Earlier, you talked about the hero's journey where you have the old guy. You've got the Yoda, the Mickey from Rocky, that sort of stuff. Now Now I know that you're, and this is another thing that you said from stage, we haven't gotten to the stuff from the book yet, but you said this from stage and you talked about your mentor was the head of credit suites and you would walk him to and from his house to his office every day. I did. So is that something you had planned or you just started showing up to walk in there? How did that, how did that come to be? Two answers. I know it was it was well, first, it was out of it started with a casual because back to

proximity is power is that is that whole point. Right. And also learning that the greatest performers in the world are usually apprentices. Like if you look at the old world, the Michelangelo's, the Da Vinci of all Aristotle you know was Plato's student yeah you know there's this hierarchy that descends within this lost kind of I would say craft art lifestyle whatever word you want to use about apprenticeship yeah okay um you know he said something in passing about, Hey, just meet me in the morning and we'll walk to the office. Cause he lived on park Avenue and 21st and the office that he had moved to Cantor Fitzgerald at the time was up at like 50 something and park 52 or so apart. And so some

days he'd want to walk up there or take, you know, have his driver, bring him up there. But anytime he would walk to certain places or walk to a lunch and i knew he was there we would catch up about some business but i used that as an opportunity just to be with him he used to go visit his kids um out in port arthur i mean uh port uh port port arthur port arthur is my institutional investor here in texas um port arthur fire um port washington uh he lived out there would go back and forth from the city. And I would use it as a way just to ride with him once a week when he'd go out and see his kids and not with any real agenda probing him with all sorts of questions, but just hearing ancillarily what

he was on, what are you working on? What's going here, this, that, or the other, and inevitably just mine for jewels. And I took a lot of them and put them in my pocket and took them home with me. Yeah. Has anybody approached you to do something similar at this point in your career? You feel you're not there yet? No, absolutely.

Oh, no. I mean, well, yes, a lot. I mean, I know how focused you still are on building. But I let someone do it, actually. So when I was at a Tony Robbinsbins conference when i was at a tony robbins conference um i met this um other iranian american guy his name is shia he was actually um you know with me over the weekend um he picked me after knowing i guess that i was in he'll and he'll tell you to tell you the story and now he runs his own real estate company i'm an investor

in his company right so i watched it actually you actually, you know, I'm actually, I think I'm his biggest investor actually of doing fix and flipping houses and wholesaling. And he was a realtor, this, that, and the other, but he, um, he knew from one of the coordinators, um, that I had, you know, done a couple of things in real estate and I was also Iranian. And so to do the firewalk, uh, for Tony Robbins, after I unleashed the power, he said, Hey, you're going to be my partner. I was like, I don't fucking know anybody here. Fine. And, um, he pulled me aside after the three day event and said, what do I have to do to stay in orbit? Yeah. And I was like, well, if I told you what it is, like you wouldn't want to do it. He said, well, try me. I was like, well, travel with me 24 seven, come move in with me and

my family, pack my bags, cook my food, take me to the gym, be my driver and be my personal butler and spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week with me for the next two years. If you do that, you'll be a billionaire inside of 10 years of leaving me. And he literally on the spot goes, okay. And he moved in with my wife and i and my kids the following week i love that some jesse itzler stuff right there yeah you gotta move with me let's go let's make it happen i love that and it's still like it's like my little brother and one of my one of my you know closest friends like i said this he moved out from us back in like 2020 and so this was you know three you know he was like 2017 to like almost 2019 2020 era might be

flubbing a date or so and since then years later he went off and did exactly you know what it is and let's let's say you ask let's say you ask 100 people to do that same thing how many people none none you just don't you just i i think people people want everything to do the work. Here's the thing. They don't know the work, the sheer amount of work, hourly input. Nobody wants to do. If I told you today, not you, let's someone else. I know you would obviously, but somebody else sitting here. I think my wife would frown if I moved in with you or I think she'd be upset. No, I'm saying in the sense where, you know, telling people what it really takes, like the relentless lows, the unrelenting stress that, you know, I want my own hours, but you work every holiday. You miss time with your kids. You don't see your friends. Like your whole life is in this.

And it's one of the loneliest tasks in the world is becoming as being an entrepreneur. Oh, God. Also the most rewarding. Yeah. Also the most rewarding, but the most lonely lonely and people don't want to do it. If I told them you will do this and you will be a billionaire inside of whatever you have to do all these things, all of that. I don't want to do all of that. I'm good with hat. Well, they don't like I give them the blueprint. They don't want to do it. Yeah. Well, it's funny. Cause when people ask me about

like how I got to where I am and what they can do, I give them the three B's of entrepreneurship. That's what I say. I say, you got to have the balls to try it. Okay. Got to have the brains to pull it off. And right now everybody's with me to this point. And then I say the third B is the brawn. They go, what's the brawn for? I go, the brawn is either. Resilience. I said the brawn is either to power through the bullshit or carry the failure. And that is the hardest part.

Carry the failure. I like carry the failure is the, is the hardest part of what we do. And that's where you normally lose people. That's the whole part. Like you look at Jordan and you look at any of these big performing, look at Brady, the thing at this, at this point in my life that has been most impressive about some of those guys and now more more than ever um is the media scrutiny that was happening while they're trying to play basketball or the scrutiny that the president is getting and still trying to govern or vice you know that part of it is what they don't tell you oh you should be a great basketball player no you're in the spotlight you're that you're like the comments the gossip columns the

whatever that the bombardment of those things that happen because once you start winning yeah okay really winning everybody's watching most are criticizing most are hating on you i saw drake the other day wearing a wearing a shirt that said hate survivor i just burst out laughing it was like that's literally, those of us that have, you know, done something, I guess, in our lives in some capacity have survived the, the, you know, the, the hating and the negativity and the relentless criticism that's distracting from the job. It was just the job would be a lot fucking easier, but all that other stuff ends up being the actual career in navigating those

things and having the resiliency and the agility and the flexibility to solve the problems in real time. And then, oh yeah, figure out how to go actually buy, buy a business or, you know, do the other thing that's supposed to be your job. You know, you bring up an interesting point with that, which is entrepreneurs over the last five years have become the new rock stars. I mean, this is, it's gotten to be, you're a rock star. So, you know, my question is, yeah, I get it. So number one, do you buy into it? Is that important to you at all? Cause I know, I know a lot of guys, high level dudes, and some of them, some of them just love the spotlight. It's warm. They love it. I think it's great. No watches. Don't care. Don't care no watches don't care don't care just don't care no that's that that's not

so there is a deep-seated you know deep-seated insecurity as a kid that grows up that grows up poor um that wanted to be that i had a horrible speech impediment um uh super awkward i basically almost failed out of high school i had to go to community college before even getting into Texas A&M. Like there's nothing talented or cool about RE. Like I'm a nobody from nowhere that sat on the back of the class at a stutter and a lisp. Um, I wasn't good at sports. Um, I scored one touchdown in Peewee football and it was for the other team running the other way. Um, and way um and and i say that to

where um no it's not it doesn't work in the way that we think about it um on its face it's always going to be something behind behind that story that reveals what that cut is what that insecurity so that insecurity of wanting to be liked or loved, whatever those things are, forget the psychoanalytics. There is a part of me that wants the recognition. There is a part of me that, you know, wanted to have the dah, dah, dah. But I'm such an introverted person by nature that I can play an extrovert after seven years of speech therapy. I'm in pajamas, my choice. And by myself, I'm very reclusive. I'm a big reader. Um, so being in the crowds as they've started to come and

we have a ton of NFL, NBA rappers, celebrity clients, and inevitably hanging out with them, going this place or that place, it makes me uncomfortable. Like in those crowds and hearing compliments or nice things. I feel just a little bit, I just still feel a little bit uncomfortable by it, even though there is some part of me that, yeah, good job, Ari, way to go, bud. You know, I want, you know, you did awesome. Once I start hearing it or seeing it, I'm like, oh fuck, leave me alone. I'm going to, I'm going to be in my pajamas and hang out with my kids. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. You know, let's talk a little bit about, I want to talk about the book and some stuff that I have on it because I thought the book was great.

And just some different things that I took notes on as I read it. As I read books, I tend to write notes on them. That's what I tend to do. You and me both. So the first one that I thought was interesting was you mentioned in this book when you were very young that you had a Rastegar family creed. It meant courage. I'm a big believer in having a vision statement, a personal mission statement for yourself. So that creed, what exactly, was it just the word courage or was there more to it than that? And how did that affect you? It was, it's a wonderful question. I appreciate it. My father,

you know, being an Iranian American and, you know you know and and just like the plight of many iranian americans that weren't muslim that came over here and you know started over and went through a bunch of stuff you know they had a similar plight of figuring out how to retain iranian heritage and also be american what does that look like having being the first of my family and my dad said to be born in america um and so there was different you know and farsi is a very poetic language i speak farsi fluently um my and my dad wanted to make sure that i at least could speak the language my kids are actually learning the language also and could cook and just had the semblance what the culture was and so farsi is a

very poetic language it's it's in metaphors and similes. And this was a way for him. He would recite poetry to me in Farsi and then translate Rumi or one of the other folks you maybe heard of. But courage was the singular word that my dad just always drilled into my head, no matter what the circumstance was, is to revert to courage as a backbone. When all else fails, do you have courage? Like you have courage. And that could mean to push through when the, you know, with the bully, it could mean having the courage to not say something when you know, you could, you know, and so it just became this singular,

singular kind of word that was used over and over again. That was like the answer. If you don't know what else to do in a moment, just think courage. And maybe that will elucidate a constructive answer. Got it. Next question. So when you were a guy, someone like I have a very bright, I have very, very bright kids. They got the studiousness from their mother, obviously. I always tell people my son is going to go to an elite school and have a wonderful career in a beautiful building, probably owned by my daughter because she got the hustle. My son got my son got the very rule following this for my wife. But as we go through this, my son now talking about an interest in law school because he'd like to be in sports management and that type of a deal. And the first time I heard you speak, the first time I heard you speak, in my opinion of it is this.

I mean, I did not finish college because, of course, at 20 years old, I was a genius. I was in the bar business. I own part of the bar. I was a school for hospital administration. I figured the institution had nothing for me. Those are good years. That's a pretty. It's great.

Better than my thousand student loan. Oh, yeah. Flipping burgers. Oh, yeah and body rockets. That's pretty genius. But I owned a bar when I was 20, so that was fine. But my point of it is, in my opinion, I love that college, number one, should teach you how to think and teach you how to be an adult. I think it's very important. It's very important to both his mother and I that they go to college. But I think the primary thing in this day and age that you get from college is your network. And I thought that- No question. Social conditioning.

Yeah, yeah. And I saw, I was surprised. I assumed, I made an assumption of you from the stage based on $8 billion in assets and everything else. I'm like, oh, this dude's Harvard Law. There's no question. And it's like, no, I went to community college and then Texas A&M and then a small law school and those sorts of things. So now granted, Texas A&M, Texas A&M is a little bit of a wealthier school. There's some donors there, I believe. But, but, but I am teaching at Harvard on October 25th of this, 25th of this month. That's amazing. Didn't go to Harvard, but I'm going to, but I'm going to go teach, teach them how this is done. I'd rather, I'd rather teach than be educated. If I have a choice of one of those two things, that's a, that's a nice resume item, Harvard educator, which is lovely. But my question is if you could go back

and do it, I mean, obviously at the time, do you think it would have affected your trajectory at all by going to what would be perceived? Like if you would have gone to Ivy league schools, would that have changed anything as to where you are right now? So it's a wonderful, I thought about it a lot. I think it would, honestly, I really believe that it would have, um, it would have helped me fortuitously because the way that I was wound up in the work ethic and the focus that I had, and my dad would always say, like, when 18 it all counts yeah so when I was you know goofing off 14 15 16 17 like saying that you turn 18 it all counts it all count and that was just his de facto when I was not making grades or doing whatever so that was ingrained in my brain

so when I turned 18 and started it was on and so I've been on this on this journey um since I was 18 years old I'm 41 haven't taken a day off yet. And the reasoning around that is, I believe that if I was in the situations where there is a higher caliber network of individuals and looking at the relationships that I kept through those years through community college, and obviously Texas A&M now is top 30 university, super involved in the school. The architecture school is number two in the country now, only behind yale i'm doing a ton to support them unbelievable institution it's only gotten better well real quick belen community college are you are you a supporter of their football are you are you supporter of their football program i have a i

have a i have a i have a a sidebar for you so johnny manziel um we're you know very very close with unbelievable like i mean yeah i think the most spectacular collegiate athlete maybe in history um i have never attended a texas a&m sporting event when i walked the stage in 2004 i never went back once i'm going back for the very first time to meet with the chancellor and some other people in the administration to discuss how I'm going to, you know, want to help and support them. But I, I don't really watch sports, play golf. I watch my players. I watch the players that I love just because I look watching them.

I support my clients that are never, but I don't really watch sports, man. I don't really go to sporting events. don't play tennis play golf not your thing i don't do it fair enough fair enough fair enough of course the reason i was asking there's a lot of merits and ways this that would be who has four and a half hours to do anything you have i don't have four and a half hours to do anything go do that go back go back to work yeah i don't have four and a half hours to do anything. Go do that. Go back to work. Yeah, I don't have four and a half hours to do anything, let alone go play golf. And if I do, I want to hang out with my kids. 100%. Now, I love in the book when you talk about building capital A, which was your party event,

it's really your first forte into big business, backing, throwing these large Super Bowl events. Essentially, you started an entertainment company and pulled off these giant events. And the first one, which I thought was amazing, was your ice storm in Dallas. And the reason I thought it was so funny was because when I was 20 years old, my bar in Tallahassee, Florida, that's why I was going to make the crack about Texas A&M. I was going to thank you for taking Jimbo Fisher off of our payroll for your terrible coach. But my bar in Tallahassee, Florida, we decided to have the biggest reggae sun splash event ever. We spent all this money for all these reggae bands

for a four-day event, bought like 300 kegs of beer from Budweiser and just stacked them up everywhere. And it was the first time in 25 years that it snowed in Tallahassee. So totally ruined the entire event. North Florida, it's snowing. What about Legionnaire's disease after an ice storm? Oh, that's, yeah, that was magical at the Playboy Mansion. Yes. When you're,

you're supposed to do your event there and get that done. So my question is about that. Obviously, you know, I don't want to give too much away for the book because I don't want people to read it, but you know, that taught you a lot about getting things done on the fly and just putting your head down and getting them done. How many now in retrospect, again, trying to find, you know, the obstacles away thing, you know, that stoicism where you find solutions in the trouble and the problems that you had, you find lessons. How many relationships did you make from those events that carried into the real estate business? Oh my God. Astounding. So many astounding. I would say it's the impetus to my entire career and it still is everything. I mean, I gave Drake $5,000 in cash when I had no idea who he was at an NBA all-star event that I was the lawyer

for that was trying to put back together being like, why? And I'm a huge hip hop head. I'm like, who the fuck is this guy? Like, why am I giving he's with LeBron? I'm not giving him 5,000. We're paying LeBron 150 grand. I'm not giving LeBron this guy anything. And before that, I had a t-shirt company called redanculous clothing that I wrote a screenplay for. And we, I had Kim Kardashian

wear it when she came to this club, to this, to this nightclub in Dallas that even started before that. So when you start tracing those different pieces and the people that I met off of those relationships, it ended up being the power center that allowed everything else to happen. And several of the celebrities and artists that are in that world that I had met are still my clients to this day. And then their managers and then their friends and then their peers and their, you know, um, it, it completely ballooned because in the capital, in the capital, um, investment business, so much of what you do, like there's, there's the hunting component of going out and finding a prospect, closing money, but I'm a big believer in farming and saying, okay, you've closed this

thing out. How can I build this beautiful relationship where I don't have to even ask for referrals? They're evangelists. They want to talk to people and we're spending so much time together that my network becomes theirs, their network, you know, kind of become, becomes mine. And that's exactly what happened in this in that part of the business the investor relations portion is the entertainment business in a way it's making sure you're hanging out to you're going to a great dinner not expensive but you are finding ways to have entertaining moments to create great memories and experiences with your clients which then hopefully become your fucking friends.

Yeah. Have you ever had a time where we're talking about a time now you've been very, your track record is, is second to none. There's no question. I love that when you say, when people invest with you, your answer is always the same. Thank you. And you're welcome. I love that. Uh, but my question is talk about a time if there has been one, when you've had a massive loss and you've had to make people, you've had to make people whole. Yeah. I mean, um, was there ever, was there ever a time when it was great peril when you were like, Oh man, this is personal.

Capital a my mentor, my, you know, my mentor who is, you know, you're one of my, my mentors and you know, his partner, big real estate guys. And when they had like, you know, a million two million three in this stuff and it went to zero, you know, his partner, big real estate guys. And when they had like, you know, a million, 2 million, 3 and this stuff, and it went to zero, you know, and I, and I, and that day, like I, in the real estate business, I've been very, very fortunate that we've, you know, maybe been a little luckier than we are smart, but we have, um, we have done pretty damn well. So I've never knock on wood, had that problem, um, with investors in my core business. I got all the losing money out of my system, um, early on, but going to zero

to the people that you look at most that trusted you to put faith in you, I'll be at snowstorms, this, that, and the other fine. Um, but the defining moment was like being basically suicidal on, you know, the Sunday morning after the second party, um, when I kind of knew that it wasn't going to come back together. And my wrestling coach that introduced me to, to them was his cousin, you know, came to the room and I was like, I don't like, I'm not getting up and going to LA to do the next party. And you got to go talk to, you know, talk to them, this, whatever.

I was like, I can't do it in the moment. I'll never forget it. He's like, this is the moment, bud. This is what's happening right here. This is it. This is your lifetime reputation right here. This is your moment. Are you going to get up, brush your shoulders on and be a fucking savage and go take the L,

say what happened, this don't blame whatever and get your ass up and go make the L, say what happened, this, don't blame, whatever, and get your ass up and go make it happen again. Or are you going to be like those other fucking losers that say it was too hard, which it was and quit. And everybody will believe why you quit. It was a ice storm. It was an act of God. Of course you couldn't do anything. It's okay. Go home and quit. Yeah. Or get your ass up and change the fucking weather. And that's exactly what I did. Yeah. Or do whatever you can to protect your investors. I, I, I, you know, I've had situations I care about. All I care, all I care about is my investors and I don't do all these typical, you know,

upfront fees and a bunch of like, I make money with my clients. I invest with my clients. And does that make it a guaranteed whatever? No, but it does guarantee that I give a fuck, which I do. And I own a hundred percent of my company, bro. I have zero outside capital at the corporate level. And so like, it's, you know, my name's on the door and I, and this, these are people that are, that I give my life for. Yeah. I would say that for me, you know, I, I had a time when I was a partner to fund and that fund, one of the partners did something, we'll just call it

far less than scrupulous and kind of disappeared in the middle of the night. And I had a seven figure, like write the ship seven figures to make my investors. And I did it. It was, it wasn't fun, but I write it, the ship seven figures. But because of that, because of that one thing, I can ask anybody for anything if I ever needed to. Luckily, I don't need to, but I always could. If I need to raise capital, I can do it very quickly because people know if you give me money, you're going to get it back. And I think that's everything. It's everything.

I'm like you, man, and I'm not like the thing that I think a lot of people get wrong know, get wrong, um, about me until we get to really know each other is, although I've built some stuff and, you know, we, we have a pretty good business. And as you mentioned, you know, once we're built all four or 500 acres, we own and redevelop the properties it's up there in the, in the, in the, in the billions of, of some sort. Um, but, but, but with, with that said, like, I'm not a money worshiper, like money doesn't like dictate my level. Like I, cause I'm not into the fancy, like a nice suit, which is business. I love a great custom suit. My Taylor Martin Greenfield is the greatest Taylor in written history makes suits for every president since Eisenhower. Um, he's in Brooklyn,

not the most expensive. The Tom Ford version of the suit that I buy from him is probably half the price custom Taylor made for me. Aside from that, man, like I don't have, like, I like great food when I'm on my kind of, you know, days of eat whatever the hell I want. But other than that, man, I don't have very like expensive, crazy taste in certain things other than, you know, there's a few things you're there, but like, I'm not, I'm not into that stuff. So if we're not doing something that's meaningful, as cheesy as that now sounds, I guess in this world, if it's not meaningful and it's not going to make a fuck load of money, I'm not doing it. Yeah. And if I don't like you, I'm not letting you invest with me.

Yeah. If it's not with me yeah if it's not hell yet if it's not hell yes it's got to be hell no that's right you got it you have to live with these people man realistically we're not we're not in the if you're a flipper or a day trader of some sort and you're only with people for a short period of time i can see an argument that oh come in it's money they make money you make money because okay they're gone you're gone but in real some marriage like i'm buying this apartment building we might keep it three four five six seven years we talk of course we meet like if we can't have dinner at this point whatever that's the one thing that i'll say you know i've done okay in the sense that now i can tell this guy no i'm not

doing it not i don't want to god bless you i hope you do good. Well, I have money, whatever. Like I. Great. Go buy an index fund. Knock yourself out. One of the things it's funny we're talking about integrity because one of the things you also said that, man, I got to say, I love this. This was I loved this. When you say that real integrity is not keeping promises to others, but real integrity is keeping promises to yourself. Talk about that. Talk about that. Amen. Well, if you, if you take just a simple, simple process, if you take a person and I've given this example before, like we're sitting at a, at going to have lunch together, there's a seat that's missing and so and so is going to sit there and they say i'm going to be there at seven o'clock 7 30 7 45 8 9 whatever no call no text no nothing and then they show up late how are you going to feel about that person and then let's say we'll meet you the next morning again for breakfast and they don't show up at all or ghost you and then that happens three four

times how would you feel about that person no i'm I'm not a trick question. No, you're done. You're done. They're a douche. No, no, no. Just even further than that. They're unreliable. They don't care about you. Yeah.

They're rude. And list of these things. Now take every time you promised yourself you're going to go to the gym at seven o'clock and personify your own thoughts as being that other person. That's how you create the definition of low confidence and not having self-respect and all these other things. Cause you don't respect you because you didn't keep the only promise that fucking matters. And that's the one you make to yourself. Yeah. And you actually, you start that, that starts, you know, momentum is a funny thing. The boulder can roll uphill or downhill pretty quick. Slippery motherfucker too. And if you start

lying to yourself, that becomes a habit and that's and we and we all do it in some in in in some ways because of custom not for nefarious reason necessarily you know because of custom because of medic and oh honey you look great okay hey great to see you fuck i'm gonna talk to this guy again like so there's these things that start to happen where you get comfortable telling them when you say that it's for etiquette, it's for tradition, it's for, you know, but how long do we have to dwell in lies to live in truth? It doesn't make sense. No, it doesn't. And so at the very least, if I'm going to lie to someone at the very least, I should have enough self-respect to not fucking lie to myself.

Amen, brother. Amen. And, you know, it's funny you talked about the gym, too. Amen, brother. Amen. And you know, it's funny. You talked about the gym too. We got it. We, I don't know. I can't do an interview with you and not mentioning this because this is all right. Listen, I know dudes that I know dudes that work out. I know dudes that eat right. I mean, you know, I'm a, there's some guys here in Vegas are lovely guys. The V Shred guys. I don't know if you've ever heard of this goofy ad, this app, right? Just crossed a billion dollars in sales. It's the workout app of like Vince, probably social media,

whatever. But these guys were nice enough to take my son in over the summer as an intern. I love that. So we interned with these guys all summer, but you take fitness, my man, to just the stratosphere of where it goes. And here I am thinking, I'm like, okay, you know, I had, I had, I had a physical problem that happened that put me on the shelf for about five months. I'm hoping it doesn't come back. It's a, I had something called trauma. Talk to me offline. We'll make sure.

Trimogenial neurology. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. It's essentially like getting electrocuted on your, in your face when the wind blows on you. It's bizarre. It's a neurological thing. But anyway, we will, we will, but here I am. Some of the stuff I can't say publicly.

Oh, that's fine. But here I am. I've got, you know, I've got the red light sauna. I've got the EMF mat. I've got the, I've got the oxygen thing doing the high O2 training. And here I am thinking, man, pretty cutting edge. And then I read the GQ article about your regimen and I'm like, you gotta be shitting me.

So real quick, walk us through your physical, what is a day in the life of Ari's fitness look like? It's a, um, well, first of all, it's a moving target. Okay. And because of, because I I'm training for life, I'm not training just to be fit and ripped or just say that I checked off the things and ate, like, I love pizza, love French fries. I don't want to work out most days. Like I'm a normal guy, you know? Um, so what I've done is I've created, you know, in my back house,

um, what I call the dream lab. And my dream lab has vision boards everywhere on every single surface that a graphic designer created that, you know, my wife and him put together. And I got the, you know, the light beds and O2 and all the stuff that you can possibly think of. And it's my way of backing back in the sense of knowing that I'm going to fail, say, okay, if there's 86 things that I want to do, the cryos, the sauna, all the things that I take over 150 vitamins a day that are pharmaceutical grade, that they take my blood every 60 days of full-time age management doctor. It's also my client that calibrates my

blood and creates pharmaceutical grade vitamins for me, aside with some of the other things, food sensitivity tests, et cetera. And so a lot of times, most days, I know I'm not going to do, let's say all of it, all the things that are on this list, but if I can go and do five or six of those modalities, whether that's doing the hyperbaric chamber, whether that's making sure I take all the vitamins, making sure I'm doing posture management, you know, a goski, brio work, whether whatever those things are, I try to put so many in front of me that I know I'm not going to do them all and not going to stick myself to a particular habit, but I build them into, you know, my life. Like, so if I'm watching a show that I like, like billions or suits or one of these, whatever, like I'll put

the PM, uh, PMF, the Halio on top of me, or I'll be in front of the biocharger or I'll wear mirror glasses laying in static back to, you know, realign posture. So I've learned to stack things on top of those. So I end up doing a lot more. But if you take today, I was on the Peloton for 10 minutes with the O2, with the platinum O2 chamber. I did a little rebounding did some inversion inversion therapy some posture management um i sprinted um a mile backwards um yeah there's there's a just simple you'll think about it you walk forward all the time when how

often do you walk backwards and the old cliche of you know don't use it you lose it how often do you walk backwards and the old cliche of, you know, don't use it, you lose it. How often are people walking backwards? So, so much of the, of the, our body stability, those muscles are atrophying for lack of moving in a three, in a 360 degree patterning. So moving backwards actually strengthens. It's like saying I'm going to do the biceps, but not do triceps. Yeah. And so moving in different ways and working on mobility and agility and strengthening more than anything is really what my focus is. And then wearing the synaptic synaptic goggles for, you know, for working on conditioning, cognitive response, time, brain, brain therapy, up, down, left, right, patterning sequences, transcendental meditation. But the point is it's built into who I am and what I do. If I'm in the car, I'm listening to some sort of, you know, positive,

something that that's not pollution. Like to me, bad words or bad sounds or bad car. I, to me, I call it pollution. You're polluting my brain. I don't want to hear it. So finding ways throughout the day to just continue to input around the stuff that i want to effectively brain my brainwash myself into doing um but all the things that you know you hear if i go down to mexico i'm going to colombia um in december to do another stem cell intravenous stem cell um treatment i've been doing them for years i've been doing hyperbaric chambers for you know almost a decade um but i will say that all these other things are really add-ons and in one that has experienced them i have all the funny fun toys and it's my hobby that's what i actually love doing i think it's really fun just take care of yourself but the core tenements that i for me are um

transcendental meditation so those that don't do it, it's not mindfulness. It's not what you think meditation is. Go take a course. Ray Dalio, arguably the greatest investor in history. That's who I learned it from, who told me about it originally. And I ended up talking to him about it afterwards. I walked up on stage in a concert. It was like a conference, like, thank you so much. He was like, it was good, isn't it?

Yeah, my wife, based on you talking about it in your book, my wife is already trying to find somebody here local because she's wanted to do it forever. That's a great compliment. And I think, um, I would argue that is one of the most important things I've ever learned in my life. Very frequently. I go to Fairfield, Iowa, which is the transcendental meditation capital of North America. Um, and I'm trying to be there once at least every couple of months, sometimes once a month.

And I spend two or three days in a little dorm, meditate, work, meditate, work, meditate, work. There's a cascade of things that it's good for. But that, in addition to high quality nutrition based upon food sensitivity tests. So that's the other thing. You know, so I'm eating this. I'm not eating gluten, all these other things you hear. But until you get an ALCOT test, and that's what it's called ALCAT, it's about a thousand bucks. You'll actually see what your sensitivities are. When my wife did it, she found out she was

allergic to lettuce. I mean, so, and so me just never know the idiosyncrasies you don't know until you know, but, um, that high quality nutrition and then posture management, which, you know, those that haven't heard of eat Goscue, which was created by a man named Peter Goscue. You can buy his book. It's called Pain Free or find a Goscue clinic near you. I think one of the most underrated and underutilized system for longevity, health, wellness, brain health, everything is learning how to manage our posture and if you think about it logically if my head is forward in this position the cerebral spinal fluid and just simple capillaries and vessels are crimped no matter how much i eat well how much i go into whatever chamber exercise if i'm here and my capillaries are crushed it's going to cut off something to my brain or if i eat perfectly healthy and I'm slouched over and crushing my intestines, which are basically like a hose. Yeah. How is my

intestines going to work? Right. So these core tenants, I believe, are that Pareto principle, 80, 20 thing of transcendental meditation, posture management, high quality nutrition, and those few things together and everything else is the 1%, 2%, 3%. That is the massive lion's share. And I think people are missing the meditation, transcendental meditation component and the posture management component more than anything. But those two open the ability for everything else to work. Because if I'm not doing the posture management, like I said, I'm eating great. and my intestines are crushed. Doesn't fucking matter.

Yeah. And so those are the things that, um, I have found when I dig and I go through them in the book, pretty detailed that I find to be, you know, kind of the most bang for your buck. So with all of that said, what is Ari? What do you, how, how long do you think you can live? What do you think the number is? You got to think about this with all of this stuff. No, you don't think about it.

I don't think about it at all. I'm going to, I'm going to live as long as i want to it's the it's the journey not it's the journey not the destination no no it is the destination always to me so what do you so what do you think it's what's possible then what do you think is possible i think technology as long as you want to be alive you think you can be here immortal absolutely i love 100 percent and you again i mean there's i love it dude it's it's not even a question i'm gonna live as long as i want to and i think with the way technology is going if ray kurzweil is right which i believe him to be

you should watch transcendent man uh the documentary ray kurzweil is director of engineering engineering for google um he wrote you know most of their algorithms for Serge, for Sergei and for Larry. And he basically tracks the J curve of information technology growing and that we become some sort of hybrid between technology and humanoid. And that alone, you know, when you can download your consciousness into a computer, what is the more, what is the definition of mortality? Does that mean my organic figure goes, but if AI and machine learning can download all of my thoughts, every book I've ever read, every memory I've ever had, and it's in a computer, what's immortality? Does that mean how long my organic body matter is without having some sort

of cyborg tendency? But with all of those things together and altering the state of what we call mortality, I think immortality is absolutely inevitable that's what walter o'brien said almost the same thing on this show he was talking about uh you know i said we were talking about what technology words is going and i said is the matrix going to take us over because i think we'll just be assimilated because i was asking about i was asking about ai i was asking about the you know virtual realities that's about these things he says consciousness will be assimilated into the grid that's what he said so same thing yeah same thing all right well dude fascinating stuff man ari i know you're busy we got to wrap i could i mean we didn't get to like half my questions so maybe we'll do a part two someday but there you go maybe maybe maybe we'll do it in person

yeah anytime brother anytime you anything you need you just gotta you know nothing's more than a phone call away in this town nothing nothing is nothing is. So that's good. So, so the book is the gift of failure. Check it out. You can buy it at Amazon, anywhere. The books are sold. Ari, if they want to follow you on the gram or wherever else, where do they find you? It's just at Rastegar. Just at Rastegar. That's it. So check them out on Instagram. All right, man. Thank you, brother. It was enlightening. It was great. Hang on a second. We're going to play the outro and we're going to chat for a minute. All right. Hang on. Thanks guys. What's up everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of escaping the drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escaping the drift.com. You can join our mailing list,

but do me a favor. If you wouldn't mind, throw up that five star review. Give us a share. Do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.