Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - From Sky High Dreams to Stock Market Realities with Eisa Emami

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Join us in our new episode with special guest Eisa Emami as we explore the journey of entrepreneurship, stock trading, and the pursuit of success. From childhood scarcity to soaring ambitions, we discuss overcoming obstacles and embracing an abundance mindset. Dive into an insightful conversation and discover the keys to charting your own course toward greatness.Highlights:"For every boss that I've ever had... I was a miserable employee. It's just part of the DNA of who I am." "Most people don't have that vision... very limited in what they think they can accomplish." "I didn't learn any way other than just doing it... This is my path to freedom."Timestamps:01:26 - A Diverse Journey02:51 - Overcoming Scarcity and Resilience08:35 - Skyward Bound13:13 - Entrepreneurial Drive17:36 - Financial Frontiers21:42 - Overcoming Limiting Beliefs24:30 - Surrounding Oneself with Varied Perspectives25:55 - Navigating Losses and Unpopular Choices41:04 - Hormonal Health Journey 45:03 - Pushing Through Discouragement to Success💬 Did you enjoy this podcast episode? Tell us all about it in the comment section below! ☑️  If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford using this Link! ⤵️     / johngafford.  .💯 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 500 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. The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages.✅ Follow John Gafford on social media:Instagram ▶️ / thejohngaffordFacebook ▶️ / gafford2🎧 Stream The Escaping The Drift Podcast with John Gafford Episode here:Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80g...Listen On Apple:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... *************#EscapingTheDrift

You know, I think there's a saying that goes to this, the secret to really any sort of monetary success, specifically when we're talking money here, you're either first or you're cheating or you're lucky. 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, to another episode of Escaping the Drift. And like I said in the overture, man, this is the... Is it the overture? Beginning? I don't know. Whatever it was. This is the show that, man, gets you from where you are to where you want to be. And a huge part of that, I think, in any given aspect, is your mindset, is believing you

can get from where you are to where you want to be. And today in the studio, man, I got a special guest. I got a guy that flew in just for this today. That's how much he thinks of the show, which I take as a great compliment. And this is a guy that's done so much cool stuff. I don't want to spoil what it is, but I think in his story and hearing kind of how he does what he does and how he's gotten to where he is, hopefully you're going to find a little bit of secret sauce for you today too.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the program today, Mr. Issa Amami. Issa. John. What's up, brother? How you what's up brother how are you dude good how you doing first of all thanks for flying in today man i appreciate you that's awesome that's good and and dude you are i mean you still have like a day job because you love it but you have become an expert in stock trading you become an expert at taking companies public you have some passions that are cool. Give me the elevator pitch.

If I meet you, dude, let's try to sum it up. Like, Bing, floor seven, we're going to the lobby. I look at you, and not a weird kind of creepy, like I'm hitting on you way. Which, I mean, dude, you're a handsome man. I'm not taking away from that. But I'm just saying, in a non-creepy way, I hit you with, what do you do, dude? What's the answer? I chase too many cats. That's what I do. Yeah, okay. So youcreepy way, I hit you with, what do you do, dude? What's the answer? I chase too many cats.

That's what I do. Yeah, okay. So you chase too many. That's not helping me. What do you do, Isa? Yeah, man. In summary, dude, flyer plans, play drums around the world, take companies public, trade the stock market, and teach what I do.

So you can see how connected all of those things are. If you're wondering, the reason that I asked him that question straight up was because when I read the bio for this, I'm like, wow, this is a lot of interesting stuff that does not connect the dots at all. So I figured one of the things that I love to do on this show is connect dots with stories and have quality segues. And I'm looking this almost like a Rubik's cube. Like this will be the ultimate podcast if I can somehow tie all this shit together in a way that makes sense and good stories so first of all dude let's hear about because obviously i always start the show pretty

much the same way which is one of my greatest fears in life is raising worthless kids so i try to take away from kids childhoods anything i can to instill successful adulthood into them so as a kid like what was the what was the upbringing for you that instilled this never quit, never say die attitude that you have? What was it? Um, scarcity, man. It was a lot of scarcity. Okay.

So start out, um, not having much to our name, man. Like we're like, I was saying earlier, like refugees in Sweden, Europe. Like, I mean, we started out from absolute nothing. My dad was cutting trees, right? Like, um, our couch had holes in it. Like, I mean, we're living like in a compound with refugees everybody's a foreigner like you're not part of society so you moved from originally your family was from in iran in iran yes and then i'm guessing during the revolution it was right after revolution my dad served in the war in africa he realized what that they had brought into the country he's

like fuck this i'm out of here we gotta go yeah go. Yeah. And then, so you went to Sweden. Yeah. Did you have to learn Swedish as a kid? Yeah. I was six months old. So I grew up in the system. So you grew up speaking Swedish. I grew up speaking Swedish. So when I say, uh, that's where the handsome looks. When I say, when I say, when I say I'm going to try to remember the old, I dated a Swedish girl a million years ago. Right. It looked like this. I'm sure. Hey, do I was, I remember they would say that. Hey, do you still, do you still say that? Hey, do I was what you would always say like goodbye hello hey do i hey do i yeah it was okay and then i remember saying do our snoog fleek in which i think means you're a good looking girly is that accurate that's correct close enough okay cool see we're learning all kinds of useless

things already let's do some tangible so you're you're a refugee in sweden doing that you grow up that had to be a little bit different because i'm guessing one of these things is not like the other at that point in uh in sweden you looked a little different from everybody else very different i mean i remember i mean there was around a time where there was a lot of sort of rebellion happening in sweden and there was and rightfully so like the patriot approach was we can't just bring refugees in because we're not taking care of our own right so there was a time where like you kind of have to watch yourself if you're foreign like i remember i put like in the wintertime black

toques underneath my eyebrows so that the black wouldn't show it was kind of weird man there was times that where you were realized yeah i'm not from here i gotta watch my back can i ask a question because of that experience not to get political this is okay because of that experience where do you stand with what's going on in this country right now um well it's a lot of who i am right that's a good question okay fuck being politically correct dude okay i'm just gonna say no no no it's good no no i'm trying to get canceled i've been trying to get canceled for months i can't do it i'm all about listen you start with you start with a handout but then you gotta fucking finish it with. You cannot just give handouts because it doesn't end anywhere. It just keeps ending and someone needing you over and over.

So I think we have a lot of people locally who have done good for our country that need handouts first. And then they need information so they don't need to rely on us anymore. Can I change your verbiage a little bit? Go ahead. Change it. I hate handouts. Okay. I so appreciate a hand up. Love ahead. Change it. I hate handouts. Okay. I so appreciate a hand up.

Love that. Better verb. I like that. I think there's a lot of people looking for a handout, but there's also a tremendous amount of people looking for a hand up. I think that's the better word. Hand up. I'm actually using that, dude.

There you go. Hand up. Let me give you a hand up. That's it. I love that. Cool. I just was curious. So back to the story.

Anyway. So a lot of, as a kid didn't have a lot i'm guessing no dad was cutting trees yeah what was your first hustle as a kid i don't have one what come on every kid's got a hustle somewhere no i don't have one so what was it so what'd you do to make money if the family wasn't making how did you how did you get how did you get the the bubble gum that you wanted but what'd you pull out together? You know what, man? Do you mean chores and stuff? No, I mean, how'd you make money?

Because there was got to be, look, everybody I know from humble beginnings has a way to hustle and make money. My dad had a rule. It was a really interesting, nobody's ever asked me this question. It's a really good question. My dad had a rule.

For every chapter you finish on the books that I assign, this is money, right? I love that. And it's, you know, know yeah that was what it was was knowledge that's a hustle i love i guess yeah i love that dude i that is a uh i know a lot of people who do i see recently that does that they have like they'll take like everything their kids want they'll just go buy it they'll put it in a box up on the shelf and they'll be like okay like ps5 that's like 12 books right right you gotta grind

through like 12 books i tell you and that's awesome yeah it's smart i don't know it's a smart way to motivate as a kid what was your favorite book that you read like that that dude my my most favorite book believe it or not is i would be interested in fucking atlas in the atlas atlas learning about the world and where shit is where they are what the histories of that places are etc etc etc that's my big game is learn fucking the world yeah that was one of my favorite moments of that that presidential debate when it was like can you even tell me when uh vivic ramswami was like can you even tell me where these countries are yeah that was the big silence across the stage yeah my my big thing was like just i was fascinated by the atlas it was kind of weird

man is that is that what drove you to become a pilot i don't know maybe i mean i was interested in like connecting dots and shutting map like okay where is this how would you get from here to here like you know would you drive would you fly a boat like just basic you're talking seven eight year old here yeah um yeah i was just curious about the world and how it's connected so what what drove you to become a pilot did you go to i mean you go to college what what happened yeah so my dad had the passion for flying so there was a little bit of that probably like trying to get some sort of approval deep down blah blah right we're talking about consciousness here right um but he died when i was 13 therapy's cheaper than way fucking way cheaper right but no man like the thing was you know he died when i was 13 okay so when he passed away i was kind of like

you know what what do i care about that's me that's me that i feel like maybe some somehow has a bond with him still right and yeah flying was it man flying was always in my blood since i was five years old and so your dad had a passion for it he had a passion for it and he went to become an air force pilot but he had something in how his ears would not pressurize properly or depressurize properly he couldn't pass the medical for it so he always talked about it and always was fascinated by it would take me to the airport show me airplanes and this is this is this is that and that's how it got started that's so funny when i was a kid my dad had cessna when i was really little okay and so i grew up

also i mean i can i can remember one of my earliest memories of my father was landing and being so upset that I couldn't find the cars, the little cars that I saw on the air. Cause I just thought when we landed, like I was going to grab all the little matchbox cars all over the place. And they were gone. I remember being very upset by that,

but I also, one of my father's dreams for me was also to go to the air force Academy. And when I crossed, I think six one, I think that ended that dream for him. I guess. Yeah. It's kind of tall. Yeah. Cause I got, I got taller than that. Yeah. Which crossed, I think, 6'1", I think that ended that dream for him. I guess, yeah. It's kind of tall. Yeah, because I got taller than that.

Yeah. Which, yes, I'm tall. You're tall. You're tall. I didn't realize that. I was expecting shorter, honestly. Were you expecting shorter? I don't know. It's the mustache.

It makes me look shorter, I guess. That's it. So flying airplanes, I'm sorry, did you go to college? Did we talk about that? No, I went to flight school when I was 15 when you were 15 yeah where what country lets you do this so basically the way it works in canada from canada right so in canada you can fly an airplane as long as your arms and legs reach the controls really yeah so that's the irony you can't drive till you're 16 but you can fly an airplane younger you can't get licensed but you can start flying

you went to flight school at 15 correct okay yeah and then you how so you just started flying i'm guessing small private aircraft and then working your way up correct working way up how long before you got in the big stuff because you can fly a 737 right yeah i'm a 37 fly a 330 as well now the airbus both boeing and airbus same same concept right um yeah mean, dude, I started flying when I was 15, got fully licensed by my 18th birthday. Wow. To fly big jets? To fly planes. Yeah.

So the way you get the big jets, the next strands that are after, you got to start bigger, start flying bigger stuff, you know, nine seaters, 30 seaters, and then you work your way up after that. So who are you flying for now? What company? I don't fly for anyone right now. Okay. You're a contractor.

Contractor. Contractor. Yes. So you're flying private 737s? So, no. right now okay you're a contractor contract yes so you're flying private 737s so no how it works is i work with lessors and banks to move airplanes in between airlines okay yeah so okay i'll give an example so you're an airline i'm a lessor you need an airplane because you need to go on fly is this your business part of it okay part of it right but yeah there's more you know angles to the

business but the flying component john is just, dude, you're an airline. I'm a lessor. You need an airplane. I got to get the aircraft to you. Well, you're not going to make your pilots come fly this airplane for you because your pilots are busy flying. You're still right now, right? You need someone to come and operate that leg or those legs to get the aircraft to where your airline is. And that's where I come in.

And so you own part of that company or you work for that company? Yeah, so I have my own company, right? is and that's where i come in and so is you own part of that company or you work yeah so i so i have my own company right and i do work with other banks and lessors and providers that move airplanes so when did you start that did you just see that as a whole in the market were there other companies that were doing that no man so that all came about through my networks in the aviation business i was working full-time as a pilot before right but i made the right connections the right vps and the right companies to get into the right places to build you that's a very niche job you know a lot of pods they want to do this kind of work but they don't have access to it so networking ultimately is what did it yeah aviation

is such a tough business um yeah we got into it two years ago and i spent literally 16 months in the aviation business so we bought a falcon to salt 50 and for the sole purpose right it was never like oh look at me i have private jet there and we'd have influencer day when everybody comes that was not the point it was a business right on the ground too yeah it was a it was a business like i think i only flew in that plane i think in the 16 months we owned it i think i personally flew in it six times that was it um but the goal obviously was to charter and make money and what we found was if you had four pilots it was a great business right if you could hold four pilots but as soon as one pilot left you down to three

yeah you don't go to 75 of your charter business you had 50 of your charter business it was like osha those people can only work so much and it was just so hard and it was so competitive to find pilots yeah that we just couldn't do it so we ended up you know we we did good on the deal because we bought the plane and sold a business okay which is really essential too because smart a lot of people don't realize i think you know it's not like a car where you go buy a new car and you drive it off the lot you're like like you buy an airplane there's a lot especially a jet there's a lot of stuff that has to happen before that thing leaves the ground yeah um but yeah it was it was a it wound up being a decent investment that you know obviously the tax ramifications of it were great and and but as

a business it was just really hard to hold pilots yeah so because probably most of the pilots left to go do what you're doing i don't know no they're probably going for the airlines honestly man that's for the money and the lifestyle and the security again i always call perceived security exists yeah well okay but here's the thing so again so you can have a job where i mean are you as an entrepreneur because i know that's part of a big part of what you do yeah do you find yourself like i do chronically unemployable yeah it's i think it's because it just it doesn't fit in right if you are i don't know where it does as an entrepreneur you're always looking to solve issues right and when you're in someone else's playground

they might not want to hear about their issues because a lot of people and i'm sure you know there's a lot of people in business they need to go through the growth of like recognizing that they also don't know what the hell they're doing sometimes and they got to be open to feedback but some people want to save face they're not willing to do that and something And it's something like aviation. It's a lot about saving face, a lot of pride in that game. I just found, I found it's very difficult for me to take orders from other people. It's tough.

Just, it's really hard. I was, I look for every boss. I'm going to look right at the camera for every boss that I've ever had, whichever cameras on there now. I'm sorry for being your employee. Cause I know I was a miserable employee.

I was terrible. It's just part of the DNA of who I am. I just, I just was never meant to, to follow very much as, as I think I am. I am to lead. Um, I find a lot of people have that same DNA that do build companies and do build things. Yeah, I agree with that. It's, it's, it can be tough to, to follow orders. I think, wait, tell me about a time you got fired. My first job? Yeah. What'd you get fired for?

I got fired because I didn't want to do what I was hired to do. Which was what? That was my first job. I was hired to fuel airplanes and fly when it's convenient for the company. Got it. And that's a way of paying your dues. But me being the young, intelligent little prick that's got this mind that wants to go and do greater things like fuck the fueling. I'm not feeling this shit.

That's not, again, that's not what I signed up for. I signed up to fly airplanes, not to be basically, you know, doing a job that I don't really want to do. Right.

Entitled kid. I will tell you that I'll start being a little bit entitled, but I think that kind of came from the mentality of fuck. I worked really hard to be here. Why am I doing this? Right. Yeah. Two weeks into it, I guess not a good fit. See you later. I think that kind of came from the mentality of, fuck, I worked really hard to be here. Why am I doing this? Right? Yeah, two weeks into it, I guess, not a good fit. See you later.

I think I've been fired a lot, but my favorite firing I ever had was I was working for the Ramada Inn on North Monroe in Tallahassee, Florida. I was probably 18 at the time, and I was working in the restaurant there. And at night, we had a hundred item soup salad and potato bar hundred hours and these old people come down they sit in my section when and this this old man it's like goes up and like right when he goes up we run out of something we ran out of something i don't know i remember what it was we just know we know something and the whole time this dude drank like 12 cups of coffee and his wife drank like 10 cups of tea and all this stuff.

And I was like, so I was all over the table. So it's not like I was neglecting, but every time I went back to the table, this guy was like, Oh, I can't believe you guys advertise like a hundred items, you know,

thing. And there's really only like 99 or 98 items up there. Cause you run out. And he's just every time, same shit, right? Same shit. Until finally I take him the bill and I go pick it up and the dude left me like a penny awesome because he's pissed off that they ran a potato salad or some shit so i did you know i chased

him into the parking lot and i said uh hey man you know listen i'm really really sorry that the other 99 items i think they had a coupon too. It was like a triple whammy. I'm like, I'm sorry. The other 99 items on our salad bar weren't enough to satisfy your needs. But you know what? If you're going to leave me a penny, don't come back. Cause I'm a college kid. I can't afford to wait on you. I like flung the penny at him. I got fired for that as well as I should have. But good for you for standing up for yourself, man. But that's what makes me good at business. That's what makes me good at business that's what makes me good at business terrible ramada and waiter uh great business person i love that story is the clutch so in doing all of these gigs you know let's talk about see here's a segue this is where

i'm gonna put my rubik's cube in this podcast together we're putting it together do it so you started trading stocks at a pretty young age yes yes walk me through that well the rebel that i was talking you know that's inside of me that doesn't want to put up with shit aviation's a lot of shit especially when you start i mean you're a fucking nobody that's that's anything anybody who flies airplanes will tell you that you start out as a complete nobody and work your way up right i hated being an old buddy really young i fucking hated that feeling i was like you know what again i think there was part of that mentality i want to work really hard to be where i'm at why am i doing janitorial shit to fly an airplane why am i doing this to fly there's a lot of why am i doing this associated

with flying airplanes right so so fuck this like obviously if my outspoken mentality is going to come to the table and be who i am i probably won't get to where i want to go like someone will be offended along the way someone won't give me that reference i need something's gonna happen where i'll probably end up you know sabotaging my career if i just stay the way i am right um and yeah training for me was the way out of that because i understood that most elite hang out in real estate and stock markets but to get into real estate oftentimes need a lot of capital unless you find some funding thing that you can do right so so fucking try the stock market try it a naive but try it see where it goes okay yeah so how so what age was this you started doing 19 at 19 you're trading stocks yeah you guys seeing the u.s stock exchange yeah yeah

canadian they just trade like syrup and and no no no hockey bucks and what is the maple syrup tim horton's donuts. There's an index for what Tim Horton's curlers are going to go for. I had a lot of Tim Horton's donuts when I was fucking losing money, but no, I didn't trade those stocks. Fair, fair, fair. So how did you learn how to trade stocks? How'd you learn?

I didn't learn. I fucked up a lot. No, that's how you learn. That's the story of how you learn? I didn't learn. I fucked up a lot. No, that's how you learn. That's the story of how you learn. Yeah, I didn't really learn any way other than just doing it. I just jumped into it. And with a naive point of view, this is my path to freedom is what I thought. Very naively at the time because I thought it was just about the standard bullshit rhetoric of,

oh, you just got to fucking draw some lines here and look at where it comes down to. Buy it on the sale. Sell for a a hype and what you do is you buy low and then you sell high or buy high buy high sell low yeah a lot of a lot of that but you know what the the whole trading thing it brought out um it brought on my psychology man holy shit was i um i was a basically hype seeker is what it was that's what i found out about myself very much like oh my god i was gonna go right you believe your own bullshit for lack of better terms right it really outed that about me and when i started seeing that

most of the success in the bullshit that i was losing money through came from when i really didn't find excitement that kind of flipped the whole thing on its head so wait wait wait wait don't let's not run past that okay all right there's a lot there's a lesson in there yeah there is so when you said you were a hype agent are you talking about you were you were feeding your ego through the admiration of doing well in the stock market or you were looking for stocks that were hyped up like both of them i think both of them i mean but more so the second one it's more about like chasing hype in the markets chasing hype in the markets so it was

almost like a dopamine hit that yes okay yeah it's almost like you're seeking like the pleasure of i made money from this hype and you know i you know i'm special because i'm trading yeah did you find that um that's i i don't find that to be rare or unique i mean if you look at the if you look at gamestop or amc those trades that's exactly what happened yeah exactly self-fulfilling prophecies meeting an intense amount of greed and corporate fraud no but i'm gonna say more i'm gonna say more than that yeah i'm gonna say that you know know, AMC reached those GameStop, those stocks did what they did simply through general ignorance.

I mean, you just had, you know, frat boys that would normally be playing online poker are now trading AMC and GameStop. Correct. Talking about, you know, what is it?

Apes and diamond hands. HODL. Yeah. Hold on for dear life. Don't sell it. Which I mean, look, I'd be bullshit if I said I didn't make some money on AMC. Yeah, huddle. Huddle, yeah. Hold on for dear life. Don't sell it. Which, I mean, look, I'd be bullshit if I said I didn't make some money on AMC.

I did. Everybody did. I didn't make greedy, stupid money, but I made, I got it and got out. Yeah. That'd be my thing. What do you think

is the thing that keeps people from taking, you know, most people in this country, you know, live in this, in this bubble. I've talked about it before in the show that, that people just get in this hamster wheel of life where they just

continue to do. I mean, the purpose of this show is to escape, you know, drifting on the currents of life and start swimming, start taking control of your life. And what do you think prevents people from, from taking those risks? I think there's two things. Number one, if you made really bad decisions and now you're in a really bad spot, that can be one thing, right? Like chasing through things in life, committing to things too early, maybe you're too young, you made some mistakes.

It can put you in a spot where it makes it much more difficult to escape, right? I think that's one thing, circumstantial. But I think even in that, the bigger play for everybody that concerns everyone regards to the circumstances is what they think is actually possible right like i think if you if you have a vision of what you know you can do you might actually try it but i think most people don't have that they think it's impossible the thing that they want is is some other escape of the mountain or something. You know, like they're very limited in what they think they can accomplish.

Well, it's funny. I was watching a clip today. I can't believe he fell for it. It just shows that something you think everybody knows, like people don't know. But there was a clip of Tony Robbins on Theo Vaughn's podcast. And Tony Robbins did the close your eyes. Real quick, look around for everything in the room that's brown. And he says, now close your eyes. Tell me everything that's red yeah it's like i can't think of anything first of all i can't believe theo had never seen that because i promise

you if i ever got tony in this studio he pulled out on me i would know to look at everything yeah and as soon as he said that just to be a dick i'd probably rattle sure no i'm just kidding tony i would never do anything but the point being is you get out of life what you look for and you only look for things that you believe are possible. So you came from a place that was, I'm not going to call it abject poverty, but we'll call it not the best. It sucked, dude. It sucked. We'll just call it not exactly the best upbringing.

What did you do? What do you think was in you that allowed you to see bigger than you had? Well, I was the only foreign kid going to school with a bunch of swedish rich kids and i don't know if you know much about sweden but a lot of their money comes generationally because it's hard to grow in socialism it's very hard to financially grow right so you're talking generational wealth that's been just accumulating from time but you know like we're pulling up in our in our shitty volkswagen jetta and like they're showing up in the most newest volvo right it's like i saw that okay i'm not them obviously by looks newest Volvo, right? It's like, I saw that, okay, I'm not them,

obviously by looks, but also by circumstance, right? It's like, fuck, what is it they've got figured out that for some reason, me, my ancestors or whatever haven't figured out yet that I need to learn. I think the general curiosity is what it was. And that curiosity led me to start learning, oh, there's this way, there's that way, there's that way too.

So I'm going to say this, at the time, it seemed like a curse, but that was actually a blessing for you i look back at my time in sweden as a refugee as the catalyst for this man no because so it is because here's the thing you know so many people again comfort brings comfort is a one-way ticket to being in the drift as i call it but when you surround yourself with people that are just like you that are in the same echo, you know, economic situation, you are that have the same outlook on life that have the same goals in life. You know,

you're going to be those people, but when you are forced to be around other people that live in a completely different way, it now opens your eyes to, okay, maybe there is something different out there. Yeah. I think that's huge.

And I think it's, I guess for me, it was, it was almost unintentional discomfort. It was just kind of like, those are my circumstance that I've got to see other people like that. But I would say for sure, for somebody who is like in the game of not being around successful people or the people they want to be like, like, really be careful who you listen to. Like, if you listen to the person who doesn't have or isn't the person you want to be, fuck man, you're doomed already. Well, I think it's more than that. I think, I think it's, I think you've got to take stock and audit your circle as, as often as you can. You have to, you've got to look at people that you're around. Like, is this person helping me get to where I want to be or are they holding me back and keeping me further away from where, which is why trading ruins a lot of people. And you might be like, what the fuck are you talking about? I'll tell you what I mean. No, it's happening.

Yeah, so one of the biggest games in success in the stock market when you're trading is cutting losses. Well, most people suck at losses, period. They want to lose things. They don't want to lose anything. They don't want to be in the process of going through the grief of loss, right? So they can't cut that stock just like they can't cut that asshole out of their life, just like they can't cut that toxic wife or husband out of their life. It's the same thing.

It's the same part of your brain that they're not willing to go into and do things that serve them in the end. That's the issue with a lot of people in the markets. So how do you train that muscle? Jesus, man, you need to have a really big desire for triumph, success, monetary, whatever that is, has got to be so fucking big that you're willing to do the unnatural and that's do the cutting of that loss, cutting of that relationship, cutting of whatever that you got to do to not help you anymore. I think it's, I think relationships are definitely much harder. I think a business, I think you see people chasing, chasing stuff to the bottom, which is, especially in my business in real estate, it's hard. You know, when the market shifted on us as far as interest rates and shifted hard and fast, anybody that's flipping houses was holding cards. You know, it's like

playing poker, right? You play and the table's good, but eventually the cards are going to go cold on you and you're kind of holding them. And you got two choices of what you can do. You can try to play those cards out and just kind of hold them and hold them and hold them and figure it out. Or you can just cut it and run. And I've been through a couple of different cycles where the market has changed on us when we were holding cards. And this last one, I mean, we probably took seven figure loss on the houses we were holding just to get off of them. Because if we would have tried to ride it out by the time you, you know, you're refining into these new rates and then the carrying costs and

everything else. Well, now you're losing 1.6, 1.7 million, not just a million. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's going to come down to get worse because you're trying to chase it.

And no, no, no, it's going to turn around. It's like, like you said, sometimes it's better just to say, man,

this ain't gonna, I gotta get out of this. Yeah. You know, I think there's a saying that goes better just to say, man, this ain't going to, I got to get out of this. Yeah. You know, I think there's a saying that goes to this. The secret to really any sort of monetary success, specifically when we're talking money here, you're either first or you're cheating or you're lucky. So what I mean by that is let's say you're supposed to cut a loss, right? Well, if you're the first one to do that, you're going to be the first one to come out of the recovery, right?

If you got to cut a loss and you're holding something on the books for too long, well, maybe if you got some friends in the bank or something that can help you cheat, that's one way to get around it. Right. And the other one is you got lucky because the market turns around when you didn't expect it. And something out of your control gives you a tailwind and off you go to success.

Yeah. I tend to be the guy that everybody calls me and says, thanks for taking the arrows out front. and something out of your control gives you a tailwind and off you go to success yeah i tend to be the guy that everybody calls me and says thanks for taking the arrows out front thanks break through the wall thanks for doing that i got that call the other strategy well but the point is one of my favorite quotes from willie nelson is the early bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese yeah that's that's true and so sometimes i'm the early worm and the early bird getting the worm but a lot of times I've been that first mouse. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But man, it's scary. I think it's scary to do something that nobody else is doing because now that's what you have to get used to. And I think as an entrepreneur, the one that succeeds versus the one that doesn't, it comes down to can you make that unpopular decision that most people can't make?

Yeah. Right? Yeah. Now, I know when you were talking about, we were talking about, we're talking about you know you learning to trade stocks and getting really good at it being very proficient what you do and you educate you educate people how to trade stocks but you do it a different way yeah that i thought was interesting like like right now dude i don't i'm sure you're watching it but it's

everywhere and if you're not watching it like do you watch the baller busters thing no i don't understand what's going on holy shit yeah what's happening baller busters out there doing the lord's work okay i'm just gonna say and essentially what baller busters is doing is outing gurus good online insta gurus thank you yeah right finally they're outing they're outing them and some of the stuff like okay so we'll talk about baller busters for a minute because I'm not going to end up on it. Cause I don't sell any courses. You can't come get me. I don't sell courses.

Okay, good. But, um, the one thing that they, they hit some people and they've hit some people that, that they should have. And I,

and I like what they've done. The one thing I saw in the comments of one of their comments that I, that I will say, which was, they said, why have somebody, if they're so good at what they do, why are they selling programs? I love that question. Why are they doing this? But I actually

had a good answer for it because I know some folks out there, like guys like Cody Sperber, who's a friend and Cody's a baller too. They, they are rolling. I mean, my buddy, you know, Kent Clothier, he's baller. That's awesome. These guys are just monsters in the real estate game. Pace Morby's a monster. Yeah. These guys are giants, right? But why do they sell their coaching? Why?

And as somebody that here in the real estate space, right, within my brokerage, I've had coaching programs. I've had like individual, let's do a quick like 40-day jumpstart. Let's do this quick like go thing. I have a program I call The Climb that I do just for our agents here at simply Vegas. Right. And I've done it both ways where I've said, okay, because you work here, I'm going to put you through this program for free. And then I had this group over here where I said, because you work here, I'm going to put you through this program, but you got to pay a hundred bucks, which is nothing, right? $100 is nothing. The ones that paid the $100 far outperformed the ones that got it for free because people only value what they pay for. So when it says there's

no, you know, why would somebody do this? It's because they do really want to help people. Like Pace, Jameel, Cody. Iody i mean these guys you know kent they they love helping people they love seeing people get better through real estate but i think they also understand that if i give this to you there's no value to it and you're not going to value it yeah so that's the answer for why they do it now granted again go check it out i'm not gonna talk about but you see some of the stuff that went on on there. It's wild. And some of these guys that are gurus, whatever, are furious about it. It's about time. Yeah, that's good.

It's about time it's happening. But I liked a little bit of what I heard about how you do things. Yeah. Because it's different. It's different. It's actually different from pretty much anything I've ever heard anybody do. Yeah, it's very different. Talk about what you do.

Yeah. So listen, man. I was busy trading stocks, making money, and I'm doing well. And a lot of that money I made is now on passive income. And, dude, I'm doing really well. And you're looking at it on camera because the longest thing I had to deal with was like, okay, I don't have any purpose anymore besides just trading and flying and all that stuff. Eat a lot of food and work out.

You just become lazy, okay? You're looking at what happens when you vegetate, okay? I'm working on it by the way it's being fixed can i get okay can i give you tell me tell me no no help you yeah okay all right well i'm down tell me no keep doing keep going your thought no i'll come all right we'll come back to that okay cool so what i realized was fuck i want to like i want to show more people who are in a place in life or fuck like you know they just need someone to believe in like

this because I came from nothing. So how am I here crushing it? And I wanted to show that there was a way out of this, but the, the big sort of issue with that is there's so much bullshit out there already in the space that I was going to come into, right? Like there's so much nonsense, so many promises, false claims, most of them, thank you, FTC, you're killing them because they've got to shut them down. They're full of shit, right you, FTC, you're killing them because they've got to shut them down. They're full of shit, right? What I didn't want to do is come out and be just one of these gurus that's all show the stock market, but not really help people. What I wanted to create, and this is why people buy from me now, is there's almost a bit of a selfish angle to it,

which I'm honest about, but that almost sells because people trust you now because they realize that your motivation, yeah, it's to help, but it's also self-serving a little bit. Sure. Dude, if I can train you and a hundred other people, my brain, that's a really easy way to scale my wealth, isn't it? Right? Because now I can basically go to you and be like, okay, what are you looking at? What's in the markets? Oh, this, this, this is what I'm looking at.

Perfect. I'm taking option two, which I trained you for the last year or two to look for. And I don't have to look for shit anymore because people will feed me info. When they feed me info, I become richer as well. Right? So what I created was I created a program where, listen, I'm going to teach you how my head works. I'm not going to teach you strategies, but I'll teach you how my head works. Here's what I look for in the markets. Here's where people fall apart and here's where people succeed. Let's start tracking your performance in the markets. Can you grow an account the answer is yes you graduate through the programs with me eventually to my highest level mastermind where you feed me stock trades stock ideas and i apply it to my

personal big fat account and if i make money off of that i'm going to give you a 20 commission off of it basically what i'm saying is i'm not telling you what to trade is that okay tell me my first question is is that is that legal yes and i'll tell you why it's legal so i've worked through this with all my lawyers and canada might be a little bit different than the u.s right but we're a canadian entity right so how this works is i'm just taking on the risk i can choose not to listen to you who's giving me ideas no but i mean can they give you stock advice and take a commission without having a Series 7? No, so it's not, so here's what it is.

They're not telling me buy or sell the stock. They're saying, I'm looking at this, and this is what the price I want to buy at, this is the price I would sell at. So what do you think? Mm-hmm. Okay. Hey, I like it.

That's my brain. But that's putting your, okay, so that's putting your money where your mouth is when it comes to what you're teaching these people, which I dig. I mean, and honestly, that's kind of, I've never heard anybody do that with trading. That's kind of the idea behind, again, what Cody Pace, all the big guys that I know that I'm friends with in real estate do, because if they trade an army of people that know what they're doing, they'll

source them deals, which they do everywhere. Correct. And I don't know, I guarantee you that outside of their education, neither one of those guys have had a prospect for a deal for years. Makes sense. Outside of their students and their base, which is cool. So your high-level, let's call it your high-level mastermind people, and again, this is not an income representation. I'm just curious.

I'm just asking. Not an infomercial. I'm just curious. So how many of those trades that you get from those people are winners and how many are losers? If you had to put it. Yeah, that's a good number, Matt. So usually around 80% of them at this point, they are winners. 80% are winning.

Yeah. Wow. But the big thing is out of those winners, there's a magnitude range of how big those wins are. Listen, if you're putting a million bucks up, right, and You make 10% on it, it's 100K payout. It's good for most people, right? And you pay a 20% commission off of that for the idea itself, right? That's a pretty good payday, right?

You can have something that gives you 200% return. That's a beautiful payday as well, right? So what this creates is because there's such a volatility in the amount of payouts that are available in this game, right, you need the right person in there who has been trained the right way. I can't just put anybody into this fucking mastermind say let's go and do this i need to know that i've trained you and it's my brain that's basically feeding back info to me wow that's awesome and you know what can i say something else yeah no dude can i say

something i'm gonna be really weird in a boring podcast no but like it's i just want to make sure we're not like i know you got stuff you want to get through. What it is, is the highest form of calling your own bullshit in a market full of fakes is putting your own capital up. That's it. That was the big thing I wanted to break. I want to break the skepticism of all these guys. We all teach

you what to do, but if you have the balls, sorry for that word, but the balls to fucking take your own students that have learned from you and and take that as a source of growing your own wealth that means your shit works that's it that's that simple and that's why this sells because it's listen there's a self-serving angle here this is going to grow my wealth and it continues growing my wealth but it also makes them the people in the process that can start trust that holy shit i just gave isa an idea he's made 200k on that what the fuck that was me that gave him that wow i have what it takes to play a bigger game ah so it's not just it's not just about the commission it's about helping them

change their thank you that's what the game is i want them to break of this idea that there's limit you know limited money available no there isn't the smarter you get the more you know the deeper you get into the subject the more you can become out of it there isn't the smarter you get the more you know the deeper you get into the subject the more you can become out of it okay that's the game all right let's say it's day one for isa right now okay like myself for you yeah you still get your brain you still you get all you get all your trials and tribulations you get everything that you've known you just but uh unfortunately uh you know a genie popped out of a lamp and sucked all your money out of your bank account.

It sounds good. Here's $500. You're starting over today. Okay. What are you doing? Day one, 500 bucks. What are you doing? Man, that's a good question.

I think the first thing, dude, is I would, I would call up, I would call up a friend of mine. Do I have my friends or not? Yeah, you can phone a friend okay so i can say judges yes we'll allow it yes we'll allow it yeah i would i would call up a friend of mine um well it's kind of convenient he's taking his company public and it's gonna do well so there's 500 bucks okay no friends no friends no bullshit no friends you got 500 bucks. Okay. No friends. No friends. No bullshit. No friends. You got $500. No friends. It's not an advantage,

this question. Yeah. No, no. No friends. From scratch, man. Because you know what it is? Because all your people only liked you because you had money

and now the money's gone and now they all love you. Okay. Okay. So I'm on my own. Literally on my own. No, no. You are on your own, my friend.

Fuck, man. 500 bucks. Yep. The parents have just put you out on a stoop. You're 18 years old. Yeah. Figured out here's 500 bucks.

Okay. 500 bucks, dude. That's not going to do much for me in terms of getting ads online or anything so you know what i would take the every single dollar of mine i would do whatever i could for advertising material like you know it could be campaigns could be poster heads whatever the hell i can 500 bucks you know and i would do a mass public campaign of me running around and say i'm holding a fucking stock trading workshop come and join for free i'm going to show you for free that this shit works.

And once you believe me, you're going to pay me top dollar to teach you this for real. So you're going to take a skill set that you have, and you're going to figure out how to market it in mass rather than trying to go get a job. See, that's a lesson right there. That is entrepreneur thing. That is abundance thinking versus scarcity thinking right there.

So it's because a lot of people would be like 500 bucks. I can go find a job. Right. Like, no, I'm going to spend every last nickel gambling this. It's funny. Douglas James, who was on the show a couple of weeks ago, talks about how he got his start, which was, you know, just basically finding a limo service that wasn't doing very well, created a landing page, started running ads to that page,

and then forwarding it into that guy's phone number, and then called him after four days and said, how's business? The guy was like, man, we've been busy as hell. Yeah, that's because of me, dude. Let's chat. Exactly. Let's chat. Exactly. So taking whatever, again, that's another thing I think a lot of people don't do is they don't take honest assessment of your skills. I think if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, you know, what if that happened to me? My first thing is you need to assess your skills now, because I think too many people don't have, like you kind of could figure that out within one second because you have a deep understanding of your skill sets. Yeah. A lot of people don't. Right. A lot of people have not taken an inventory of what they

have. And if you're listening to this and you take it, you take an inventory of your skill sets and you don't have any, guess what? You better time. Start working on it. Yeah. And lucky for you, the greatest university in the history of universities is available at your

fingertips in every one of your pockets. Yeah. Cause there's, I don't think there's anything else planet. You can't learn to not do maybe, maybe give a boob job. I don't know if you can learn that on youtube but maybe like i'll donate mine no like home job oh yeah we forgot to talk about your

man so listen so i'm gonna tell you i'm gonna i literally was was walking but right before you walked in today i was walking around because i just kind of hit a weird deal man i don't know what happened my hormones change hard and i i went to a i won't name them because it was not the best experience but a very well known take this blood test figure out your hormones everything else that experience was not good uh not my business to thrash their business whatever but i found my guy locally that is walking me through getting me on like peptides and all the hormones and all the balance and all the shit i need need to balance myself out. Right. But part of that again is I got away from, because I think this kind of goes to what we were talking about before,

because I stopped seeing improvement all of a sudden, even though I was eating the same eating, right. Working out, I gained like 12, 15 pounds out of nowhere. And again, that was,

had nothing really to do with anything I was doing. It was just nature happening to me. So seeing that happen was very discouraging to me. It's like, why am I doing this if this is going the wrong way? And so I kind of got away from my routines a little bit. Now, two years ago, I did something that was great. It was very effective. I'm going to give you the same idea, right?

So here's what you do. Get a group of friends. It doesn't matter. Anybody wants to better better shape between now and pick a date whatever it is go 90 days because let's face it i any of you guys doing 75 hard i'll let you i celebrate you it's great um i have a program that's not that right it's just it's not that i appreciate that um primarily because dude if i want to have a glass of wine at dinner, I'm also, I understand that the average male dies at 78. I'm 52. I got less than 10,000 days on this planet left. If I choose to have a glass of wine within one of those 75 days, I'm a, I'm a, um, but still, but I, but I want to get back to where I was as far as, as far as health. So could get a group

of people and start what I call the 50 fit club here's how it works right it's the best gym you will ever join okay because the deal is this every you started you started chat a joint can't do with android people because the great you're not an android person on my phone yeah the green the green bubble sorry green bubbles i can't deal with you because your mmss don't work right not my fault yours all right so find you a bunch of blue bubbles to go with okay we'll be elitist on this all right and then what you do is you say from now until this date 90 days 60 days whatever it is yes we're gonna work out every day okay every day and every day you've got to

text yourself you got to text a video of you working out to that group every day okay it doesn't have to necessarily be heavy lifting but it's got it can't just be walking on the it's got to be something something you got to be moving on the bike on the treadmill something a jog pickleball basketball whatever something it's got to be something every day and you got to train every single day and every day if you miss a day you got a venmo 50 to whoever's running the group i like that every time you miss is 50 bucks and then at the end of those of that period 60 days 60 days, nine days, whatever it is, you all go out to celebrate and the money in the Venmo pile pays for the meal. Okay. Cause here's the thing.

You're going to fuck it. You're going to miss a day. Some shit's going to happen. Yeah. You're going to have, you're going to have oral surgery because you didn't know you were going to have to have, and you're going to miss a day. Okay. But you still owe 50 bucks.

Yeah. Right. Um, we, last time we did this, we wound up with like $400 in the pot. It wasn't a lot but it was so fun and it was cool and you're talking to everybody every day and you see everybody working out and it keeps you moving yeah because i find accountability partners to be incredibly yeah incredibly valuable yeah i agree with that man i think so get yourself a 50 of our fit club he's come on man oh yeah if you want to get any if you want to get east's $50 club you're gonna

just dm him right on instagram he's gonna give Fit Club, you're going to just DM him right on Instagram. He's going to give his hand to later. You can do it with him. That's how you do it. The problem is they're going to ask for $1,000, not $50. I know. Yeah. If you're really good at trading stocks,

you'll have a $1,000 Fit Club. That's right. Yeah, it's not enough to hurt. No, no, no. I love it. It can't be painful. It's got to be annoying. Yeah.

You know? You are in great shape at 50, man. I got to say. Dude, I'm in terrible shape right now. Well, I great no no dude i trust me you okay okay you come back in six months okay and then you take then you judge okay yeah i will be i will be rolling about 19 pounds lighter the right way and telling you just you hit a wall dude hit like the clooney wall yeah remember like george clooney was all super handsome stuff. And then like all of a sudden it's like, bam,

his ears got really big and weird. You're like, what happened to George Clooney? Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I'm hitting the Clooney wall, dude. I'm hitting it.

All right, man. Six months, six months, six months. That's it. I love it. Yeah.

I'll be back in that time. So yeah, it's a, yeah, that's how it is. But anyway, but again, I don't even think I made my point when I was talking about what you were

saying. Yeah, I did. Cause I was talking about point when I was talking about what you were saying. Yeah, I did, because I was talking about getting discouraged because nature was happening to you. Right. And so often, man, people just get discouraged because of outside forces affecting them. And you've got to work your way through that. You've got to find a solution to those things. Yeah. I mean, yeah. But what do you...

The other thing, the issue is people don't know what to do. Right? I think that's oftentimes what it is. Maybe I should reword that. No. No, no, no. I think people listen to what to do from people who have no clue or haven't done it. Maybe that's what it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. People who are not... Yeah, their audience. They're listening to the wrong... Yeah, look, for example, dude, I just gave you fitness advice after telling you that I'm currently not in the best shape. I should have listened to that, right? No, I mean, no.

Look, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Isn't it funny how broke people always have financial advice? Single people always have relationship advice. It's like, why am I taking this from you? Yeah, nothing. Yeah, fair enough. No. This is funny, man.

I love it. What were you saying, discouragement? I don't know what I'm talking about now. Kind of getting off the rails a little bit. We were talking about why we think people don't look for solutions when they get discouraged. I don't really believe in the outcome, man. That's the issue at the end of the day. They just don't believe it.

You got to have that firm belief and always know where you're going. You know, I think people are shamed for crazy ideas. I mean, think of like anyone who's done anything great. Their idea was shat on by everyone around them. Yeah. Typically, right? So like, I think the biggest thing is like change who you're pitching your ideas to. Like, I always say this.

You're never. So if an 18-year-old comes to me and says, Isa, I'm going to be a millionaire by 20. I'll be like, yeah, what are you going to do? I'm not going to say, no, that's not going to happen for you. Like I'm not going into that conversation ready to, you know,

shut them down. Yeah. But that's because I'm in that spot. I know it's possible. So like, who are you talking to? Is it the people around you going back to what you were saying earlier? Well,

I think also you're hanging out with, well, if you could go back in time and look at some of the biggest businesses around right now, and imagine you were in that early. Okay, Todd Graves from Raising Cane's. Okay. All right.

Day one, no Raising Cane's exists. This theory does not exist. He walks into the bank. So here's what we're going to do. All right. I'm going to sell one thing. Yeah. Just chicken fingers.

Literally. Chicken fingers, coleslaw, bread, and french fries. That's it. That's all we got. So are we going to add more memory eyes? Nope. You got dessert? Nope. What about drinks? Maybe we'll serve them lemonade fries that's it that's all we got so we're gonna add remember guys nope you have dessert nope what about drinks maybe we'll serve lemonade that's it you think it's gonna fly i think i'll be worth eight billion dollars one day dude there's no way that happens

no but it did happen yeah he is worth eight billion dollars because he owns 90 of all of the raising canes locations crazy which is wild yeah Yeah. So it's just a matter of, yeah, you can't be scared of a good, of a good idea. I don't know who said this, but I, whoever it is credit to you.

Um, but I'm going to go and take credit forward. Um, but what, what it is is you almost have to, you have to give yourself the permission to let the people that you're trying to get, um, this allowance or permission from to do what you want to do.

You got to let their idea of you also die with it because you, because a lot of people, they don't want to do things because they don't want to look stupid. They don't want to, you know, embarrass themselves in front of the people they love and care for. Right. And,

and they don't want to be that crazy cynical person who isn't going to make it in the end because you know what I mean? Like it's like, if i do this a lot i think one of the worst things that happens to people is is that moment in adolescence when you decide everybody's thinking about you for example yeah i'll give you a case in point yeah when my son when we were little we took the kids on a cruise and we're on a real crimson cruise and they would go to the kids club during the whatever and then they said we're having a talent show right my son was probably eight at this time seven or eight years

old and uh we're at this talent show and there's probably 400 parents in the audience and all the kids are up there and out comes my little daughter who was probably four or whatever and she's a butterfly and with all their little butterflies and then like big groups of kids doing things right yeah and then they bust out with okay ladies and gentlemen put your hands together coming to the stage now with a dance is hayden gafford and me and my wife are like i'm sorry what what just happened and here comes my son and some other one other kid and start they start dancing to upa gangnam style and he's like dude just clapping over here and doing like the

fuel pumper and like it's just jumping around and me and my wife are dying laughing i have a video this is one of my favorite videos and at the end of it i say to him and i go uh hey how did that happen yeah and he goes well they said you may have a talent i just raised my hand and said i could dance good for him and here's my thing he could carry less same kid same exact kid fast forward to sunday night we just went sunday night um sunday night my son who one of the magical things about kids is when they adopt your musical tastes i love that um so my son plays guitar and we went uh vip to see tool so we got the vip experience and one portion of that is you meet the band and then there's a section where all of their they have like all of their instruments backups

that are sitting there and you can pick them up you can play them you can do whatever you want and my son because there were some dudes that were playing like adam jones's guitars and there's some dudes that could play right and my son's just starting out not that versed in it but he was so embarrassed that what people might think if he couldn't play he wouldn't let me take a picture of him holding the guitar because he wouldn't pick it up right and i was like bro where's my oil pumper like that didn't give a rat shit because i promise you you're gonna regret you're gonna be like i can't believe i was standing there with adam jones's guitar and i could hold it and get a picture and i didn't right he's going to regret that and i think that moment when you start thinking that everybody's thinking about you or worry about what people think yeah is what screws everything up and in truth be told

nobody's thinking about you because they're too busy thinking about themselves exactly right i barely remember you were here i've just been talking like this all the time i'm just kidding you so i'm just kidding just kidding i agree with that but you know what but you know what's funny about that what were we just talking about before that no right now what i just finished talking about the guitar you're the guitar which is what the it's a musical instrument so let me turn the last wheel of the rubik's cube all right connect the trifecta and get into this music see how that works man i that. That is a hard segue. I love this.

Bam, dude. That is a solid segue. So now we can talk about you also and all this other stuff. We're just talking about passion now. We're going to segue out of some business. We segued out of some struggle. Let's talk about some passion

because this is something I think people make a mistake of is they always think that like, oh, whatever I do for a living, I have to be passionate about it. That's bullshit, right? You don't have to be as long as you can maintain your passion through another channel.

Correct. And you are a professional drummer. Yeah. So tell me real quick about that. Started drumming at four. It was a way of expression. Again, young refugee kid.

Fuck else do you do? Yeah. Really fit in anywhere. So that for me was music and drumming on pots and plates and all that sort of shit. Right. Yeah. Kept up with the skill. Went into all the music bands at school and everything.

Learned how to read charts, notes, everything. Picked up piano and keyboards to learn more musical elements of music as well. Not just be like a rhythm keeper. Yeah. 18, I came into the workforce. There was no flying jobs available. And I was like, well, I got drumming as a skill um craigslist ad this band is looking for a drummer to go touring with them i don't know anything about who they were sent the email out they brought me for an audition got the part

rest is history who was it kill more place nobody knows who they are yet no yet yet any minute kids yeah any minute it's been 25 years but no what i'm getting at is nobody knows who they are yet there's you know the reason i say that is i uh i dreamt i dreamt for them for about you know a year a year and a half for the flying thing opened up again it was a financial crisis with nobody hiring. Yeah. So anyway, so we became the opening band for Headley in 2009, the drenched fest, a big thing they had in Calgary, Canada there. And,

and that was the coolest thing I've ever done. Sponsored by Tim Hortons. I don't know if it was Tim Hortons. Of course it was. Somewhere. Somewhere. Somewhere it was. Yeah,

there must've been. One of my best friends is Canadians. He's Canadian. And I can't talk to him more than five sentences without mentioning Tim Hortons. Tim Hortons. Oh, yes. Yeah. No, no must have been. One of my best friends is Canadian, and I can't talk to him more than five sentences without mentioning Tim Hortz. No, no, fair enough. But yeah, man, that was the coolest thing I got to do because it's like you're basically in this massive production, right?

Made some really cool networks and connections from there, and then those friends stayed forever, and it got me involved in the market as a whole. So I became what's called a session player now. So I'm not with any specific band anymore, but I fill in on specific tours. I fill in on specific projects, recording projects, you know, drumming projects around the world

if there's a tour going on. So the biggest market I'm in, which I'm going to, for most of your audience, probably doesn't mean much, right? But like, I'm being honest, but like i'm involved right now we're huge in calgary i cannot walk down the dance no i'm full okay yeah what do you know yeah yeah okay i will be after this yeah you will be calgary's favorite son right here of course we're gonna make this happen um yeah so anyway so i'm i'm involved a lot in the

international music scene specifically in the persian market now a lot of pop music a lot of r&b style music it's very much like weekend ask it's just got persian lyrics very cool um and yeah so i'm actually after this in march i'm going touring in europe with a new up-and-coming girl who uh you know it's gonna be cool what's the what's the band that we're in Egypt and Egypt. Yeah. I went to Egypt tears. There's a band called El Wati. Does that make sense to you?

How do you wrap? It's like a wrap. What's that? The Arab, like Arab. Yeah. Yeah. They're Arab.

It was like very scandalous. Cause it would wrap about like, we're getting married. Yeah. The lyrics to this were like, we're getting married. Yeah. The lyrics to this were like, we're getting married and there's fried chicken or something. I remember this. Let me try to find this real quick.

It'd be worth $8 billion too, right? Yeah. No, my, let me see if I can find it. My, um,

our guide was all about this. Okay. I don't know what it was anymore. I, I bought a lot to see now. Oh, I don't know what it was anymore. I bought El Huatusi. Now, I can't find it anyway. But yeah, it was just funny because our guide was like, this is very scandalous with the older crew.

And you're like listening to it, and they're talking about getting Kentucky Fried Chicken. And it was like, why is this scandalous? This is not scandalous. No, this is like very, very good, which is funny. Well, that's awesome, dude. You get to do that. Yeah. One of my lessons I always teach my kids, it's cool that you kept those relationships because one of the lessons, me being in the bar business, as long as I was years and years and years ago, I made so many friends through my bars that were like, for example, like Zach Brown or the Zach Brown band. I used to pay that dude a hundred bucks a night to play guitar on my front patio in Atlanta. Uh, John

Hopkins, who's his bass player is one of my dearest friends from Florida state. Uh, I met my wife through the guys in better than Ezra. I mean, I had John Mayer play on that stage. I had, I just, it just, but just by being cool, all of those people, I held those relationships. And so many of them went on to just become super famous, which was awesome. And you know, one of my lessons to my kids is always be nice to every musician that you meet as you're coming up, because one of my greatest joys in life has been getting to hang out with the band. You know, when you can say I'm with the band and you've got that legit laminate, not, not the jank one.

I'm talking about the one that's on the carabiner. Yeah. That laminate. Yeah. Yeah, dude, that, that,

that's, that's such a great joy. And it was, it was such a big part of my, my youth being able to do that and going on tour with those guys and just have fun. It was awesome. It's a great lesson.

So yeah, I love that part of life and it's, it's, it's awesome. You get to chase your passion that way. Yeah. yeah yeah it basically brings everything around full circle man yeah it does rubik's cube complete in 57 minutes and 22 seconds that's how we do it here so if they want to find you if you want to connect with you about your training stuff they want to follow you social media how do they find you look right at the camera tell them how they find you all right at

the real isa mami e-i-s-a-e-m-A-M-I, or Facebook.com slash ESAmami. That's it. That's it. Ladies and gentlemen, ESAmami, thanks for coming in today, bro. And remember, if you are somebody that's out there just drifting along with life, can't find a way out, can't find your passion, don't know your skills, start today, dude. Stop drifting. Start standing up.

Start swimming against the current. You only get one life, man. Do it. Till next time. 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 escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list, but do me a favor. If you wouldn to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.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.