Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - John and Chris get cursed in Egypt EP 16

Episode Date: October 13, 2021

Episode 16 Learn and burn Entrepreneurship from serial entrepreneur John Gafford and his band of mayhem makers. From stripper poles to the oval office, business lessons are everywhere. This Week:Unpacking the Egypt adventureRussian gangsters and hookersObese kids in AmericaColt's top five sandwichesWith Chris Connell and Colt Amidan

from the art of the deal to keeping it real live from the simply vegas studios it's the power move with john gafford the power move is back after our short ind Jones type hiatus. We're back. So jealous. Back again. But you should be jealous, Colt. You should be jealous. So if you have the first time tuning in, John Gafford, I am your host.

With me to my left, Colt Amidon. What's going on, guys? And across from us, Chris Connell, Esquire. Chris. How you doing, guys? Man, I'm doing great. Now, I guess is good. Now, I guess it's good. So, you know, I got to start with something.

We'll start out with this. So the first thing I'm going to say is, you guys already know this, but we crossed a pretty good milestone. Pretty decent. We now have 10,000 people plus subscribed listening to this. To this? To this. And not like the Indian ClickBank farm or whatever it is where that's a good thing though that's 10 000 people

squiggly lines that might try to cancel us now i'm getting a little nervous guys you're about to get grewed in the sun yeah and i gotta tell you of the 10 000 people that are listening to us, there's actually some, some decently qualified human beings, including my sister, uh, who has is very successful in not necessarily just this medium, but in, uh, in radio in general, she's one of the top, uh, top female talk radio hosts in the country. She's on I heart in Denver does extremely well. And she called in and the first thing she tells me to congratulate me on, on how good the show is. She just goes,

Colts a star. Oh, I don't know if it's a backhanded compliment by your sister, but you know what she says to me? She goes, um, you say shit that I think, but I'd never say,

is that good? No, I think it's exceptional, but you know, it's, it's funny when we do this and I listened back to some of the episodes and some of them drift into the abyss, but I think, especially if you're just listening to this for the first time, you know, the goal here is to entertain you, obviously make you laugh, but we do drop a lot of actually good business knowledge is going to help you in. If you have a business, if you have a job, if you're in sales, if you're trying to get better. That's the end goal of what we're doing here. You talk about who we are. I own a very large real estate brokerage here in Las Vegas.

We're completely vertically integrated. We own a very large mortgage company, title company, as well as mortgage and title companies across the country. Colt is one of the finest commercial real estate brokers I've ever met. He's been in the business forever. Has forgotten more about that industry than anybody else. I thought you were going to say the best movie. No, that's the bonus we get. The greater critic. That's the bonus we get. And Chris Connell is an exceptional personal injury attorney.

So if you have a personal injury case, call Chris. It's not, call Chris. 702 Connell. 702 Connell. 702 Connell. I like to think less billboard, more lawyer. That should be your, that should, that should totally be your thing. That should be your name. Less billboard, more lawyer. Less billboard, more lawyer.

I like it. If your money is going towards buying billboards, maybe you should think about. Maybe, maybe think about where it's going. But the reason that we're just back today is because obviously we were on a monster hiatus on our, on our Indiana Jones adventure. And man, I gotta tell you, it was, uh, you know, again, if you didn't know what we were doing several months ago, Chris, Chris Connell, for those of you don't know, is, is what we like to call a seeker. I am a seeker, an adventurer. And he goes on all these cool adventures and does all this cool stuff. And at one point I say, man, you know, I want to go do some cool stuff too.

So he goes, all right, bro. Then the next thing that comes up, you can't say no. I'm like, what? All right,

cool. So like a month and a half ago, six weeks ago, he just essentially says, all right, time to go. You can't say no. Like,

where are we going? Just say yes. Like I had to say yes. I think before we actually even agreed as to what we were doing. Yeah. I didn't know where we were going. Smart move. Smart move. Smart move. Strong move. So I was like, yeah, let's go. And it turns what we were doing. Yeah, I didn't know where we were going. Smart move. Yeah. Smart move.

Strong move. So I was like, yeah, let's go. And it turns out we went to Cairo, Egypt, where Chris had somehow worked it out with the Minister of Antiquities to do what, Chris? What did we do? To go on an actual archaeological dig in Saqqara, the tomb of Wahati. The tomb of Wahati. The tomb of Wahati, the recently discovered.

You can see it on Netflix. And we got to actually hang out with the guys on Netflix. Yeah. The dudes that were in the Netflix video was who we were hanging out with. That's who was showing us around Wahati's tomb. Tutankhamun's wet nurse. The nanny, yeah. The nanny.

And then, you know, because hopefully this doesn't go anywhere past this, we actually got to see, you know, freshly discovered. Mummies. Mummies. A tomb. anywhere past this we actually got to see you know freshly discovered um mummies mummies uh a tomb looking for an entrance that you can't find yet yeah and you know john and his supervisory role was there while chris was swinging yeah from the videos i sat there i'm like is john doing anything other than just looking at chris okay okay all right real quick real quick think back to the scene in Indiana Jones when they're about to discover the Well of Souls or wherever it is, right? Okay, there's a bunch of dudes digging.

I see Indy standing around the sunset putting his hat on. He ain't digging. Look, that's the labor. But speaking of Indy, we were dropped into a hole on a rope. Yes. See, and I would have gone. I told John, I'd have gone first. No, no.

You second, because I, what if he'd have loosened up the bolts? I don't even know if there were bolts. This thing, you're telling me in 2000, in 2021, they couldn't get a better rig. You're talking about five dudes on it. Oh, yeah. Lowering you down a 60 foot shaft on a rope with a foot in a basket. It wasn't a bucket. It was a woven basket.

I watched that and I'm like, how did they not spend a thousand dollars and get the metal one? I mean, this thing, honestly, I wish people would go back. Have you ever been to a third world country? No, he hasn't. Just from that one statement alone, why did they not make the investment in something better? I feel like somebody could have donated that. No?

But anyway, it was unreal. It actually surpassed my expectations of what I thought we were going to do. I thought we'd get to maybe throw around some shovels, pick up some pottery, be like, wow, this is 4,500 years old. And it was like, hey, welcome to the site. The guy's dusting off mummies that they've just discovered reading the hieroglyphics in live time. I was jealous that you guys were going, and then I saw your videos, and I was just like, wow.

I don't... It was crazy. I'll tell you this. You know, the Dubai part of it, the in and out Anthony Bourdain power Dubai thing. Yeah. So we get to Dubai. I mean, we told you this, Colt. We get to Dubai.

And literally, it's Anthony Bourdain. We got 16 hours. We're like, let's bang it all out. So we're like just jumping on apps or whatever, trying to find places to go. The first bar we go to, best bar in Dubai, closed. Not open. So then we're like, all right, let's rip over to, you're going to love this part. Then we walk over to Trader Vic's.

We walk up, guess what night it is? Latin night. What? Guess who's not hanging out for Latin night? These two guys. Wait. You got this out on the epic. That probably would have surpassed the mummy. No. So we bail on Latin night, and then we're just like,

okay, here's this bar. The red bar at the Moscow Hotel. Sounds cool. Let's go. Yeah, the red room at the Moscow Hotel. Red room at the Moscow Hotel. We're like, cool, Russian hotel. Let's go. This is going to be great, right?

We get there, walk into a bar. There's 200 people in this bar. First of all, we get met at the door by Igor. Igor. And Igor. And Igor wants to get paid. And John's like, well, I guess we have to tip the doorman. He's like, it'll be $100 each or whatever. Yeah. And okay, so we go to pay him. He's like, no're and i guess we have to like tip the doorman he's like it'll be you know 100 bucks each or whatever yeah and okay so we go to pay him he's like no no pay the door

yeah no no no you thought it was like you pay with credit card we felt like it was a shakedown like you got to tip me to get in here no see i feel like igor's like a cool feeling name i think it's like an arabic igor but i don't know who knows anyway so so we get in and we go in this bar there's 200 people in this bar very quickly we realize the guy to girl ratio is a little off good off good off which is always a sign that you're not probably you're probably not in the right place right so we very quickly realize there's about 80 guys in there yeah probably 60 of which are are uh like like dubai guys like middle eastern guys 20 of which are russian gangsters oh yeah and 120 and 120 women that were all either armenian

or russian prostitutes invariably so out of that go to americans well we've already paid for the so i'm like i'm like this is gonna – so I immediately ascertained a couple of things. Number one, it's kind of like – number one, I figure out – this is what I process in my head very quickly. It's like, number one, it's that weird across-the-room stare you get at strip clubs when they're, like, looking at you. Like, they're going to come over and try to hit you up for a table dance. You're, like, looking at your shoes or your watch the whole time trying to avoid that. And then I very also quickly realized that at some point these Russian gangsters are going to hit us up for a table dance. You're like looking at your shoes or your watch the whole time trying to avoid that. And then I very also quickly realized that at some point,

these Russian gangsters are going to hit us with the, why you come in here? If you come in here to look at your shoes, why are you here? So very quickly, we're pounding these drinks down

as quick as we can, assuming they were what they were supposed to be. John's lesson from that was not only one, now he knows how he would do in a prison shower situation. Yeah, terrible.

Not good. Terrible. Eyes down. No eye contact. Second thing is, read TripAdvisor before you go. Because as soon as we walk out, we pull up TripAdvisor in this bar and it just says a discotheque for

prostitutes. That's hilarious. Do you guys remember before that bar what you guys did? Yeah, we walked out on Latin night. No, you guys called me. Oh, did we call night. No, you guys called me. Oh, did we call you? Yeah, you guys called me. It was like midnight over there.

It's noon. I'm having lunch with the client. And I get a call from these two. And I'm like, oh, shit. Something's bad. It's like midnight, one o'clock. What's going on? They're calling me.

Hey, top five sandwiches, which I think we need to go over that in the second half of this. I forgot if we called asking for the top five sandwiches. I don't even know where that came from, but I love this list. So next, after this first segment, we can get into the list of my top five sandwiches. No, I mean, Colt, why not now? What's your top five sandwiches? Oh, my gosh. Well, number five, just that classic country club club.

You know, that big three-decker. That thing's phenomenal. Can you ever eat a whole one of those? I don't think you can. Number four would just be a classic, like, meatball hoagie. That's number four. Three, a grilled Italian panini. That's number three.

Number two, grilled cheese with a cup of tomato soup. We went over that. You got to hit that. Number one is a chicken parm anything. Bagel Mania has a chicken parm. You'll appreciate this. On top of a pretzel bagel. Oh, that's impressive.

Strong. That's Colt Top Five. That's Bagel Mania. If you want to give me a free drink for that. It's a lot better than your movies. So anyway, if you just tuned in here at Colt's 5 bagel mania if you want to give me a free drink for that it's a lot better than your movies so anyway if you just tuned in to hear Colt's

Top 5 sandwiches you can go and tune out now but back to the Egypt trip Colt if that's okay that's alright I thought that was interesting I thought I thought you guys

were really held hostage and I'm like getting my credit card out like what's going on no you weren't you were planning podcast guests I'm like

hell yeah the power move with colt amadon super nice raincoats so anyway so we leave other than that to buy we just kind of bounced around and in sight saw and we couldn't do anything we wanted to do we went to the top of the birch actually midpoint of birch cleef it was way up there but we did the midpoint of that um we we tried to go shark diving they wouldn't let us do it because we had to fly. And then what else did we try to do? We tried to go skiing at the indoor mall.

Yeah. And it was just we didn't have time. You know, to John's credit, everyone, if you want to travel with somebody that's actually about stuff, call John, go with him. There's a lot of people in this world. You go places. Like, oh, well, can we go in here first?

And John's like, hey, there's a ski hill indoors. We have 35 minutes. How much is it? $200 each? Let's go. Well, we're in here first i gotta and john's like hey there's a ski hill indoors we have 35 minutes how much is it 200 each let's go we're only here once let's probably try to go skiing let's go time we put our like you know booties on you gotta turn around i think from the whole trip the thing that i must have said more than anything else was when we'd be dead tired hadn't slept like jet lag like crazy three hours drinking one percent alcohol beer whatever it was and i'm just like i look at connell i just say connell right here right here this is when our competition quits this is when they quit we're not gonna quit we're gonna push through this is when they would

give up not us oh man what's this was dubai pretty impressive amazing it's impressive it's a first world it's a first world situation with a lot of third world, you know, sort of realities and attitudes. So the dark secret of Dubai is it's basically built on slave wages, slavery, like effective human slavery and trafficking goes through there. A lot of Pakistani and Indian, I think 50% of the people that live there are from the Indian subcontinent. And a lot of things, employers,

there was allegations that they'd go and work and they wouldn't give them their passports until this, that, and the other. It's got a dark history of how it got made, kind of like the pyramids. Yeah. I mean, the building was amazing all lit up. But I will tell you this. We skipped over one of the most important parts, the flight. Oh, yeah.

Look, and we're going to talk about this. You know what? This is going to segue out. We're going to bounce in and out because I do want to talk about something real quick. This is going to jump in, which is crisis management in business. If you're listening to this, we're going to jump into this because this is a good point. Because we flew over to Emirates. We flew there on Emirates.

And man, that business class, I would rather do a 15-hour flight on Emirates business class. And a two-hour on Spirit. And a two-hour on Spirit. And a two-hour on Spirit any day of the week. It was, I mean, there's a bar in the back. You can walk up and just hang around the bar like you're at a bar. Absolutely. It was crazy. The food was amazing.

And it was just, I mean, honestly, and the wine list was amazing. I don't even remember, like, we were pounding wine in the Emirates lounge in LA. Just pounding. That's the other thing, too, right? You get the use of lounges. Yeah. It makes the travel experience. So much better.

How often do you travel in a year, a big trip like that, once? And people, they kind of skimp on maybe that part of the experience. I'd rather have a crappier hotel and a nicer flight. Well, I was going to say, you can't though, because you realize that you were there a little longer than I was. But the time that I was gone, 33% of the time that I was there, I was traveling to either get there or come back over a seven day period. That's a lot of travel. But that brings me to this point about crisis management, because there's a little crisis this weekend

with Southwest and I was directly affected by that. And so if you didn't hear, look, I don't know what it was. I don't know if it was a planned walkout't hear i look i don't know what it was i don't know if it was a planned walkout amongst the amongst the pilots i don't know if it was southwest um doing something internally i don't know what it was it was the weather no it was not the weather but whatever it was it was handled incredibly poorly for i mean thousands of southwest flights got canceled uh this weekend we took our kids back down to Anaheim. Yes, I went to Disneyland again against my better judgment, but it was for a trick or treat thing.

So it was limited people in there and it was actually very, very nice. But when we flew down there, we're on the plane going down there and a lady that was some older lady was sitting next to my wife and she was like, I'm trying to get to Florida. They keep canceling my flights. And the flight attendant was like, yeah, the weather's been very bad. It's been very bad. And the lady looks at my watch and goes, that's fake news. And we immediately thought, this lady's off her rocker.

Fake news about the weather? Turns out it was fake news. Because they were just making this stuff up about everything. So anyway, we go down there so much to Orange County that I just didn't have an immediate drive again. So I'm like, here's what I'm going to start doing. what i start doing fly drive fly drive we'll go back and forth tickets are dirt cheap to get back and forth so we're doing orange county we do our thing last day which is yesterday we're coming back and i'm looking at the flights and it got delayed right i'm like not feeling good about this and then we're there a little bit later got delayed a little later

i said babe this southwest flight's gonna get canceled for sure this is done so i'm like let's let's get ahead of this so we went ahead and we canceled the southwest flight we killed that one and then as soon as we killed that one we turned around and booked against again my better judgment we booked spirit because they had a flight i'm like like, ha-ha, I win. So anyway, Spirit starts pushing our flight just because, I mean, they're just Spirit. That's just what they do. That's not any outages. No, no, no, no.

That's just what they do. So we end up having to rent a car last night at like 10 o'clock to drive back from Orange County because my kid's at school today. But that is probably the best move ever. I sat there. I lost power last night watching these planes seriously moving 100. county because my kids at school today but that is probably the best move ever i sat there i lost power last night watching these planes seriously moving a hundred yards in the air i'm like they were and you would just see them keep circling trying to make that it's a crazy wind it was it was it was humming even driving the rav4 which was we had the four banger just wound out on the way back three and a half hours back from from sn8NA to here, which is pretty good. Um, yeah, but my thing was this like, look, dude, one of two things happen.

Either the pilots knew they were going to do this or Southwest knew this was coming. Sure. Either way, you have got to warn your customer base that there's going to be a problem. You can't be surprised that this happened. I mean, I understand because here's the deal. Now, if it was the pilots, I'm mad at the pilots, but to punish the pilots, because I can no longer count on Southwest because they, they knew this was coming. Either the pilots knew or the company knew they didn't tell me. So now I'm going to take my money elsewhere and hopefully Southwest loses money and puts the pilots out of business anyway. So Southwest is a garbage airline. It is possibly my least favorite airline to fly. My wife loves it. People love it. But there's this thing. They

did such a good job in the beginning of developing a good reputation for customer service that it still lingers because airlines are so traditionally bad at providing customer service, right? It's just, if you're not on an elite, you know, if you're not on an elite you know if you're not on eddie hod or emirates or something that has a reputation to maintain they really couldn't care less yeah right so southwest had developed this lingering reputation you always hear that it takes a moment to ruin a reputation but it doesn't in airlines for some reason i don't know how allegiance still in business okay spirit's still in business because people well if i'm a legion today i am literally chopping it i'm chopping licking my chops today. Yeah, so management of those companies got so lean,

they tried to make everything cost-effective, cost-effective, cost-cutting, cost-cutting. It's a profit-driven center, right? So Southwest was riding on that reputation for a long time, but it's gone now. They failed themselves. Herb Keller had that as one of his driving principles of customer service and the airline back then did it focused on that when's the last time you got on

a spirit airline flight where they actually did any of those things they used to do that were customer service oriented it's been years yeah i can't remember and that's when southwest also the last crash and then the oil crisis and everything, they bought their gas out for so many years. They were able to do $49 flights, which just kept them alive. But, you know, there's no way in hell that it did not get leaked to the upper management that this was going on. There's no way.

People are like they were shocked. There's no way. There's no way. People are like, they were shocked. They didn't know. There's absolutely, out of thousands of pilots, there's going to be that one, hey, just FYI, this is going down. Zero chance. Remember, save me in your grace. That was way too organized of an event for them not to know about it. But to your point, John, it's a great point.

Nobody, when I was waiting for my flight back, because I had a similar thing. I flew back a couple days later than john and spent another night in dubai um but i flew back on a southwest flight from los angeles here and my plane was delayed it was my 21st hour of flying that day and it was delayed and delayed but it was delayed like an hour or something yeah right um but that's it and it's fine i don't care i'm not a fussy flyer and I put up with time delays, but why not communicate? They not a single moment where they ever saying, Hey, um, you know, we're experiencing issues right now.

There are been delays. I'll try to keep you updated, but this is what's happening. This is the information I have at no point. Did they do that? They just let us line up and sit there delayed for an hour. We're standing there waiting to board and everybody's like, what the hell is going on? Well, listen, you know, right now we are in the midst of a global supply chain issue, right? Which is affecting pretty much if you're in any type of a business, somewhere, somehow you're feeling that. You know,

right now I have a situation here at the company. And again, back to how to deal with crisis. Where we have one of our buildings next door, the ACs are just tanked. They're just cooked. Thank God it happened today and not in June when it's there. It's going to take 10 weeks to get the ACs. It's going to cost $20,000 to fix them or to replace them. I've got to spend $20,000 to replace these things in 10 weeks. I don't care about any of that. What I care about is the people that have to work in that building

every day. So I've been walking over there every single day, telling these people, and keep in mind, this is a real estate company. The agents are choosing to work with us. They're not employees. They're independent contractors. They can take their license anywhere they want. They choose to work with us. So I'm over there every day saying, guys, here's where we are. Right. Right. Like here's, here's the bids. Let me show you this. I'm doing everything I personally can to get this done. Literally, if it gets hot again, I will break one of the windows out. We'll put a wall unit. Right. Like, I don't even care. I'm going to do whatever we can to make it done,

but I'm communicating the issue in a way that makes sense back. I'm not throwing my hands up going, sorry guys, COVID it's just taking too long. I'm like, here's a global supply problem. Here's how this works. These come from China. They have to get on a boat. There's a backup at Long Beach that goes all the way down to Newport Beach for the port.

They can't get stuff off the boats. It's a 10-week backup to get the units. This is where we are. So I'm just not, sorry, you're just not doing that. You look at Southwest, I mean, especially on a Sunday, NFL Sunday, people don't realize there are a lot of people that travel for these games. Sure.

And so not only are they pissed because maybe it cost them a couple hundred bucks that they'll get back, but, no, they missed out on selling their tickets for $600, $700 to $1,000. If you had told them 12 hours ago, ago hey this is going to happen okay they could either a find a different airline or b sell their tickets like you're better off of just being upfront and honest i always tell people you will not know if there's a problem unless it's a problem i know it's going to be an issue yeah that can't be fixed and if you know you're having a walkout there's no way in hell you're fixing that in 24 hours then you tell people let's say they didn't know no there's no

way there's no way give them the give suspend disbelief all right suspend disbelief let's say they didn't know don't come up with the weather at the end of the day come up tell me after what's happening why the fuck is this happening yeah even. Even if you didn't know, right? The weather was a pretty piss poor experience. Especially when it was windy. No, it was beautiful weather except for like maybe 0.5% of the country. You cannot blame. You can't blame that one. All your hubs, it's all beautiful.

Not when Delta is showing up and United has come rolling in. Everybody's at 0.2% of flights canceled and you're at what, 30%? Yeah. showing up and yeah it's come rolling in everybody's that point point or two percent of you know flights canceled and you're at what 30 yeah i just you know again moral story is communication is a key to your customers and treat your customers like you might actually lose them and and so many people right now are just not doing that i mean for example i you know and again guys this is not i don't want you to think that our podcast is designed for me to just sit here and just complain about businesses because it's not. Except for you, Chili's.

You, Chili's, Salt Lake City. I will always complain about you and your suck-ass service. But anyway, no, the point, like I go through McDonald's the other day, right? And I have an imaginary blacklist where if you just completely, if you do me wrong, you know, because I learn from my mistakes. If I touch the stove and it's hot, I'm not going to touch it again, right? So the McDonald's is right down here, right down for the business. I'm not a huge McDonald's person, but my kid kicked ass at lacrosse practice the other day. He's like, I want McDonald's.

Buddy, you earned it. Whatever you want, daddy's got you covered. There's a time and a place for McDonald's. Time and a place, right? We're going to get to that, too. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about Disneyland. Anyway, so

We go through McDonald's Drive-Thru. It's one of those ones now. They have a double lane one where you're trapped, right? I got you trapped So now I'm trapped from the time I got in that line to the point where I could knock it out It was 45 minutes showing up my food From the time I ordered my food at the little wit at the little thing to the time I got four cards ahead to pick it up was 17 minutes. So me having history in the restaurant business, I called the manager out and I said, Hey, um, 17 minute ticket times, the drive-thru dude. He goes, yeah, we only got six

people. And I'm like, just don't run out there. Why don't you close one of these lanes where only so many people can get through? So me as a consumer can look at it and go, oh, the line's too long. We're not going to go there. Save 45 minutes of my life rather than trapping me and having me furious and ever wanting to come back. And his response was, they won't let me do that. And I said, who's they? And he goes, they. And I said, okay. Well, you know why? Those are designed to keep you in. To trap you. They're designed to trap you in to trap you they're designed to trap you yeah they have more funnel if you notice why do you need to it's not the parking they

actually had to negotiate that and pay higher in their lease for that yeah right how many parking spots did they have to give up you know when you develop no parking spaces are at a premium in in halls but you but you do that but you look at this way so you go to restaurants though when you see a bunch of tables that are open. You're like, can I get a table before? They're like, it'll be 15 minutes. It's because they don't have the staff to take care of you. Everybody's short-staffed right now.

Everybody is. So if you are in a business, only, again, crisis management. If you're short-staffed, only taking the amount of customers you can actually serve at a high level. Don't bring in a bunch of people, piss them off. It doesn't make any sense to do it that way. If you are having a crisis, a supply chain, you can't get your product. You can't get something people need. You need to be honest with them. You need to tell them what's going on and you need to let them know it's going to be a problem before it's a problem. Because for example, Chris, if you need widgets to run your business and I sell widgets and my widgets happen to be tied up, if I tell you, hey, look, here's the deal.

My widgets are tied up on a thing. I need you to find another widget supplier for the next month. When I come back and I get my widgets, I'm going to give you a great deal and get your business back. Right. I have taken care of you as a customer. I'm risking losing you. Sure. But if you run out of widgets and you can't do your business, I'm guaranteed I'm going to lose you.

Yes. Yep. So that's what I have to say you. So that's what I have to say about widgets. And that's what I say about that. But I will say this as we jump all over the place today. I'm going to save that for episode two. Let's wrap up Egypt. We got about four minutes left for this, but I will say this. All the stuff we saw in Egypt, and there was a lot we saw, is primarily one thing. And here's what I learned. Number one, let's talk about your takeaways. Remember what? Driving was insane. There's 3 million people, four traffic lights, and-

There's 21 million people. Oh, I'm sorry. 21 million people. There's literally four traffic lights. There's a population of New York in a city with no traffic lights. Really? Yes. Think about that.

Survival. You learn to survive. It's spawning upstream sand. Yeah,? Yes. Think about that. Survival. You learn to survive. It's spawning upstream, Sam. Yeah, it is. That's what it looks like. It's like salmon spawning upstream. And at one point, a guy came flying by us on a motorcycle. Heisman.

A straight-up Honda with a probably four-year-old on the front, his wife behind him carrying a baby like the Heisman football driver. Wow. Yeah. And babies hanging out. We saw a kid get hit. We saw a kid get hit. rolled on the front his wife behind him carrying a baby like the heisman football wow yeah and like babies could get hit we saw a kid get hit he was off to the side with the bloody face and all this stuff and people were just like get that get off the road yeah that was your fault we asked our handler guy we said dude you know because all the cars are just banged up everybody's just got bang fenders and bank tents i said do you guys even stop if there's a wreck? He's like, excuse me?

We are not uncivilized. Of course we stop. We stop and we fight. We punch each other. We punch each other. Yeah, and he goes, and then someone that sees it says, no, it was this man's fault. And he goes, and then we decide how much it costs.

And then we pay each other. Pay him right there. Pay him, we're done. Really? So shout out to Hussein, by the way. Shout out to Hussein. Amazing. I'll put a link to him in the bio here for what you want to see.

Hussein, if you want to go to Egypt, that's your guy. I was talking to JJ, the guy that helped us set this trip up, and we can deal with that later about that kind of situation. But he goes, I need a Hussein everywhere. Yeah, no kidding. You need a Hussein sometimes. Everybody needs a Hussein. Our man in Egypt was great.

So the traffic was incredible. The level of abject poverty in that country. Remarkable. Remarkable. And the fact that those people are just living and existing in that level of poverty. I mean, it's bad. And the point being is, when I saw that, I immediately thought, if you are lucky enough to live in this great country that we live in, I don't care if you're dumb enough to put, you know,

you can argue with the politicians all you want. You can, you can hate on, you can do what you want. If you are God lucky enough to live in this country, you have absolutely nothing to complain about. You won't realize that though, until,

until you see how bad it is for the majority of human beings. Yeah. I mean like, you like that. We can chew our eyes, drink our water. until you see how bad it is for the majority of human beings. Yeah. I mean, like... The fact that we can chew our ice, drink our water. Well, that's a whole other thing, but no. But like simple, simplistic, simple stuff. No, no, no. Not having your genitals mutilated if you're a woman.

87.5% of Egyptian women have had their genitals mutilated. I mean, you... It's easy to complain about you know i only have the iphone 11 right it's easy to complain about and that's why i said about travel i've never met a well-traveled racist i've never met somebody who's traveled that doesn't realize well here's the one caveat to that john you go to dubai airport then you go to cairo airport then you land in lax and that piece of shit. You go, where am I? Where am I?

I thought I was just deceiving. Yeah, third world country. But no, Egypt is a remarkable, fascinating place full of treasures from an ancient civilization. Thousands of years ago, they were doing things that were beyond remarkable. It's not aliens. They have, literally you go-

The glyphs, yeah. You see how they did stuff over time. They have the evolution of pyramids there. It wasn't somebody dropping one down. Like that's the dumbest thing you ever heard once you go see it. But to the point about poverty and about appreciating what you do have, there's nothing more you should invest in than a trip to a third world country and really go see it because a lot of those people are very happy anyway.

Yeah. They're living their lives. Oblivious. They they don't need your sympathy they don't need your whatever well it's just like it's you don't realize how little you need yeah yeah you don't need a lot you want a lot yeah well that's what you want my wife grew up super poor super poor like crazy poor for american standards not that right but she goes everybody else was super poor around us like yeah you don't know any better at that point and like i said people confuse wants and needs all the time yeah and in this concept that people like the government should pay for you know all they should pay for my student debt dude be happy you got to go to

school and i'm not talking about college I'm talking about like elementary school. It's just like clean without, you know what I mean? You go to other places too in India, you see people amputated. You see, like there's all of these issues that we don't face, right? You're so cocooned from the reality of how this planet actually works in a lot of ways.

Now there's other countries that do things well, and I'm not saying be complacent, right can always improve you should always want to improve your system but you know the thing i love the most about hussein was we talked about this was hussein believes in his country he loves his country this is a guy that's a little bit short of a phd in egyptology super bright guy and obviously very much care like he hasn't he's had opportunities to go to london and work there and do his thing there and he doesn't want to leave his country he believes in his country um which i love about him so let's take a quick break we're going to pick up more about egypt we're also going

to talk about a couple things including just all kinds of stuff you know i want to talk about parents responsibility in the weight of their children because obviously I was at Disneyland this weekend and yeah let's talk about that hey it's John Gafford if you want to catch up more and see what we're doing you can always go to thejohngafford.com where we'll share any links that we've things we talked about on the show as well as

links to the YouTube where you can watch us live and if you want to catch up with me on instagram you can always follow me at the john gafford i'm here give me a shout back again from the break back again guys did i even do we talk about our subscriber count did i even mention that yeah yeah did i tell you how many we have now? Did I tell you? No, no.

God, you know, it's funny. I started the beginning of the show. I was going to mention that and I forgot to even tell you what it was. We have surpassed 10,000 subscribers. Amazing. 10,000 people.

Thanks, Cole. I know. We're listening to this. 10,000 people are listening to the, are tuning in weekly to listen to the mind of Colt yeah that's what it is like i said he's the dj callit of the podcast it is another one he really is he really is if you want your podcast to blow up you should really just have colton for a while and then there you go you look what happens 45

minutes no but but but here's the thing like i got friends in the podcast in the podcast game if you will like my buddy Travis Chappell. I was talking to him. He's got a really highly rated podcast on Apple. And I said to him, I go, bro, I said, you know, we're just past 10,000 subscribers. How is that? He goes, how many episodes do you have? I'm like, I think we're recording like 14 or 15 now.

He's like, dude, that's amazing. That's great. So, yeah, man, I just, I hope you guys are, I hope you guys are listening. I hope you're entertained. I hope you're picking up some, some, some helpful stuff in life and business and everything else. Cause that really is why we're doing this and what we're doing here. But back to Disneyland, back to Disneyland.

So I got to tell you, man, when I was at, when I was at my mastermind group last time, and one of the guys was up there was talking about mastering mind, spirit, and body and the whole deal. Right. And he said, like, if you go to an airport and you look at like a hundred people, you know, 80 of them will be terrible. And 10 of them will be someone in shape and five of them be really, and then there's like maybe one or two people out of that hundred. They're like, that dude's really in shape. He's like, that's what you want to be. You want to get there. And anyway, so as I'm at Disneyland, I'm sitting there at one point, I'm just like, stare. I just picked a line in the get there. Anyway, so as I'm at Disneyland, I'm sitting there at one point. I'm just like staring.

I just picked a line in the abyss, right? And I said, I bet it crosses. This is going to be the line, right? I just want to see what we're working with here as America. Let's get 100-person samples here. We're doing it. I saw not one super fit person. You are in Disneyland.

Yeah. Well, hang on. Well, let's be defensive. I'm not. I'm not. Dude, I'm not super in shape. I'm not. I'm not.

I'm not. I don't have an eight-pack. I'm not ripped. But I don't super in shape. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I don't have an eight pack. I'm not ripped, but I don't feel that myself. I don't look at myself as obese either. And I'm not based on the BMI scale. I'm not. But as I look at this, like if you're an adult, you want to be super chunky, man, that's your business.

You want to eat Cheetos all day at your business. But here's the, here's my issue. My issue was this. So many of the kids that I saw were i mean you would just consider them obese by any like dangerously pediatric diabetes type of these so my question is my question is twofold i want to talk about this my question is number one what is the parents responsibility in the way to the kids and how much is the current climate of you're beautiful just the way you are love yourself everybody's perfect how much is that actually or is it

damaging kids in the long run so to answer the first part um it is a hundred percent parents responsibility for the weight of their children. We've started to see things like weight in this country as something subjectively problematic. It is an objectively problematic thing. 100%. It's not a matter of you're beautiful, you're this and that. Yeah, you are. You're a great person.

It doesn't mean you're a bad person. But optimize your health. Optimize your body. And then you'll get the apologists that'll say well there can be uh healthy fat people it's like yeah but it's not good for your joints your bones it's like norm mcdonald talking about smoking well what about that one guy uh ned uh heiderson that led to be 85 he smoked every day yeah no it's ridiculous like uh john and i talk about i i'm i'm an athlete i've been a lifetime athlete.

I'm currently on a process of lifting as heavy as I've ever lifted. I'm in the gym three days a week on top of other stuff. So I'm on my program for what I'm trying to accomplish. Now there'll be a point where I'll lean down, but I'm 41. I'm not beholden to anybody. My body shape is something I work on and I figure it. Um, but as children, they're not buying their groceries. They're not the ones doing it is an absolute parental responsibility. Now, John, to your point, I've been to Tokyo Disneyland. Okay. A Tokyo Disneyland. I've been to American Disneyland, obviously several times. And then I went to Tokyo Disneyland. You want to talk about a human experiment? They thought you were a character i'm saying oh it's shrek no they uh they definitely no

something about the japanese i've always really really appreciated they are uh amazing in terms of just how they operate their daily lives i've never felt more welcome i've never felt like i fit in a place better because fast people on the left and slow people on the right. It's just assumed. It's just a hell of people's way. You're considerate of others. They are world-class in being considerate of others. There's no garbage cans in Disney. There's no garbage cans in Japan. People just don't create waste. They just don't. They don't litter. I would eat off the floor of a bathroom in Disneyland Tokyo. It is spotless. It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. You would not understand it. You go and it looks the same as American Disneyland. There's a Tower of Terror. There's all these things. But everybody's standing

in line politely, right? Now, I always use this as an analogy. You get that big fat guy in Disneyland who's stomping and waddling up on a cart who's grotesquely obese and is just taking up more space than usual and unaware of other people. And then you go to Tokyo Disney and it's everybody politely in the line that they should be in. Children waiting patiently or playing nicely with each other. Phenomenal. It is remarkable. So you see those children. Not a single one is obese. not a single one of them so it's pure lifestyle it's pure habits pure how we operate they have

tablets too they're not without technology but i don't know what it is do you know well so i was having dinner with some family in from, I have some family from Lebanon. And we're in the restaurant. It's a quiet restaurant. They're like, everybody here is fat. Yell that loud. And I just sat there. Well, you're a golden corral. No, it was a nice restaurant, right?

And I just sat there. And I looked around, and I'm like, I mean, yeah, I guess they are overweight. And then they called me two days later and they're like, do you know why everybody's fat there? We just went to a grocery store. You guys have like four aisles of nothing but sugar, foods and stuff. They go, you'll never see that. Which was crazy to think of that.

But the whole kid thing is it's a really touchy subject with people because like my kid was a little overweight, right? And so I had to deal with this. And when I would be there at a restaurant or around a group of people and tell my son, hey, you know, that's probably enough. You don't want to overeat. And I'd say it nicely. People would give me the evilest looks like you're being mean to your kid. You're calling it fat.

And I'm like, and I used to pull him aside. I never called him fat. I go, it's an unhealthy way is the word i use i go and the only reason i wanted to say this i don't care about appearances i care about you when you're 30 i care about you when you're 50 you when you're 60 and this goes for me and it took him a while but he's dropped a lot of weight now but in my daughter, you could give her everything she's got, metabolism, but the way people would pull me aside and go, you can't do that to your kid. I go, what, you want me to let him be overweight and have a health issue

and confidence issue? Confidence. My dad would just be like, put the fucking food down, you fat shit. It was very, very direct. But I would. i'd get nasty looks i had multiple people be like can't believe you do that to your kids he's a kid i'm like he's 13 years old he's 15 years old our hormonal changes absolutely well and let's and let's back up like because my kids have undefined short stature of which they get hgh every day i know

people probably like oh my, that's crazy. You're like six feet a million and your wife's 5'10". But, yes, they do. You have to shoot them up with HGH. And it has nothing to do with how tall they are. It has to do with their hearts, their lungs, all that stuff coming together as it is. And when we go to the endocrinologist, you see some very heavy kids there. And some of that is genetic issues with the kids.

So there are exceptions. But the problem is, I think in some cases from what I saw, like I'm watching the parents' diet, watching what they're eating at Disneyland, and they're mirroring it. And it's not even a thought process to what's going on. And I just think it's, I think just like poverty is a generational problem. I think obesity in this country is rapidly also becoming a generational

problem. You learn these habits from, from your parents. And I think, you know, it's just, it's amazing to me. I pride myself in being a pretty good parent,

but some of the lessons that some of these parents are teaching their kids is just nuts. Not even about food. Like, okay. Case in point yesterday, we go to, uh,

what was it? We had some time to kill. Cause obviously our flight got delayed. We had some time to in point yesterday we go to, uh, what was it? We had some time to kill. Cause obviously our flight got delayed. We had some time to kill. So we went to Knott's Berry farm yesterday. Right. And I'm like, okay, we got four hours or whatever we had there. We got to blaze this through. We got to get it done. So have like a fast pass thing, whatever you can buy. And it's not cheap. And God bless. I'm in a situation where I can, you know, I can do that. right? And so we bought the FastPass thing. Like, no, you just go to this side little thing, FastPass. And as we walk up, as we're waiting in line to buy the FastPass thing,

there's a long line at guest services, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. Everybody's going to guest services, and they kept walking away with these blue sheets, sheets of blue paper. I'm like, okay. And as we got in line to go with our FastPass, everybody in front of us had the blue paper, and I very quickly figured out what the blue paper was. ADA.

It was I'm handicapped, and dude, my, when you, okay, listen. If you fake being handicapped for any reason, I'm going to tell you right now, it may sound terrible, I hope you become handicapped in some way. To the point where I told my wife, I said, here's what we need to do. We need to write a horror movie where a bunch of teenage kids go to the fun park during

fright nights, fake to be handicapped so they can get, and then the killer doesn't kill them, maims them all. Mames every last one of them. I mean, it's just such a piece of shit move. And dude, and I'm not talking about like three people you're talking about tons of people we're doing i will be honest with you my wife this is a terrible thing my wife slipped and broke her ankle chasing after a two-year-old yeah and so we've been going to the raiders games with her boot on and it's it's like vip treatment no no no no no that that's okay that's acceptable believe that there is

you know uh the facilities and things like that have but it's okay you haven't you actually have of course yeah you have a reason we were we were at great wolf lodge because that's where we stay because the kids want to say that at the water place i mean you've never been there a school place whatever and my wife is on a is on a raft with my daughter on one of the slides sticks her foot out because my wife is you know she not the not clumsiest person in the world she sticks her foot out to try to stop them and stuck her foot in a grate and ripped two of her toenails completely off oh jesus she did that we went to disney that night and then we went to not sweet farm the next day and she never even thought about saying i need to get like a handicap thing but she's a she's a good human being yeah

yeah because she just it's just yeah if you yeah if you do that if you're ever with a handicapped person though god and so you know how there's people that will park in those white hash lines beside handicapping you can't that's so that doors can open and people can have access in their wheelchairs wheelchair if you've never been john this goes back to people not appreciating stuff yeah if you've never been somewhere where, this goes back to people not appreciating stuff. Yeah, if you've never been somewhere where there's abject poverty, you don't understand what it is. Or you've never experienced having to help somebody

who's been disabled in some way, right? Your able-bodied experience, I know you don't want to wait that extra five minutes to do whatever and you want it now because you're a petulant child. At the end of the day, you may be in a position, like you said, I don't wish anything upon people, but you may be in a position one day where you become legitimately handicapped.

And only then will you truly understand why these things exist, you know, for people that are, are, you know, I, I dated a, uh, a girl at a, at 18 years old and you're at that young punk age still. Right. Um, her dad had major MS, right? And the one thing he sat there, I was like, ah, I'll be a while because he's parking a handicap. And I was pulling up and I go, I'll be a bit. The parking lot's packed. I might have to walk across the damn, you know, street and go park over there. And he goes, just remember, I would love to be able to do that.

And that comment changed my life. Like I great. I, I need to stay in line for four hours. God bless that. I'm able to stand for four hours, right? Like that's like working out too,

though. Instead of I got, I got to work out today. I get to, I get to work. I got to work out. No, I mean,

you know, we were one of my wife's dear friends. Her daughter just went through like the Walker Walker the walker with the kids during the fight. One of my wife's friends from high school, her daughter had that same exact cancer and just got cleared from it a month ago until two days ago. She needed brain surgery. She went through brain surgery yesterday. She's out now. She's stable.

She's fine. But the point being is all day yesterday, it's like anything that's inconvenient. The flight's getting canceled. All of this stuff that did get inconvenient. It's like, dude, at least neither one of my kids is in brain surgery right now. Yeah. It's hard to keep that perspective, though. You know, people, and this goes to business.

This goes to everything. Everybody, the world is relative. Your happiness is relative. Everything's relative to what you have, right? If you take a kid who gets a hundred dollars a month in allowance and a kid who gets a thousand and you cut the kid with a hundred to 50 and the kid with a thousand to 500, they both suffer the same amount of psychological stress. Yeah. So it's, oh, it's not always fair to shit on people either that are overprivileged relative to underprivileged people, right? Because their stress is real.

What's good is to implement those kind of reminders or those experiences that allow you to understand, you know, how it could be. Well, I think, you know, back to, you know, talking about kid raising, whatever. For us, a couple things. It's all about moderation. It's all about everything in moderation.

I mean, well, our kids, like my son in lacrosse, he won a McDonald's. Fine. Am I going to feed it to him every day? Absolutely not. Do they eat a good balanced diet? Yes, they absolutely do. But I think more to the point of that is I tell my kids, like my son is playing lacrosse, my daughter is in cheerleading.

But the point being is, it's like, I don't care what you do, but you're doing something. You got to do something. You got to do something. You can't do nothing. And way too many kids in this country right now are doing nothing but thumbs at a screen. But that's their parents. Yeah. Or their parents will say, oh, well, they play piano. It's like, no, no, no.

It's not just an activity. Your body is connected to your brain. Yeah. When one is out of balance, so is the other. I hear people online all the time. And again, I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm not dealing with people clinically all the time, but I will tell you this. I bet you, and I'll take that $10,000 bet, John. I'll put out my own $10,000 bet. You take everybody

that has a lot of problems with, I'm on SSRIs. I'm on all these things. I'm depressed. I have anxiety and stuff. And I will guarantee you that more than 50% of them don't live a physically healthy lifestyle, right? And weren't actively involved in sports as kids. Yeah. Because something like women that play sports as kids have the lowest rates of teen pregnancy. They have the highest rates of being like straight A students. It's all these things because if you can exhaust your physical body, then at least your brain can, you know what I mean, function in harmony with it.

Yeah. No, I just, I agree. No, I totally agree. I mean, my dad was the same way. You're doing something, right? We play a sport, right? Like, well, no, we did. We would sometimes leave because our football season, if we we made it in playoffs overlapped with basketball i mean we were playing

all the time and you know it kept us the kids that did not go so i'm from utah utah has a huge drug problem people don't realize that utah's the epicenter for you know oxycontin and stuff like that i have that's not that's not against the rules for Mormons. No, no, because you can't smell it on their breath, right? Like you can weed, like you can alcohol. Last count, and this, I'm 38, so how long you been out? 20 years. Okay, so last count was probably a decade ago.

I think I had 21 kids that I knew from my senior class OD'd, right? And out of those 21, 19 to 20 of them were ones that didn't play sports. I'm telling you. Absolutely. You can draw a line. And just like everything, you know, you ever hear that Norm MacDonald smoking thing? It's like, yeah, I can always find you the

outlier of whatever, okay? But think about averages. Look hard enough, yeah. Think about the averages, right? You can always say, well, I know a guy that he quit college and became a millionaire.'s like yeah but most millionaires you know right went to or were in med school which was difficult it's one of those things where you can't bank on the outlier here's the here's the question is it okay to talk to people like is it okay to say like dude you got to get your kid in sports what are you doing like is that is that taboo is that off the table i'm having honest people you know

that are friends of yours if it's your niece your nephew these people is it okay to have a conversation good ways that like and that comes down to psychology how do you how are you persuasive without being off right how to be persuasive and say hey why don't you get your kids playing soccer with mine they really enjoyed it yeah you know because you right. A lot of times these parents go, well, they really haven't said they wanted to play sports. They like to sit in their room and play on their iPod. Yep. Well, I know they do.

Of course, I'd like to sit there and eat ice cream all day too. I think the problem is, you know, our kids are our pride and joy, regardless of, you know, trust me. I mean, everybody can look at people's kids and be like, ah, you got a good kid there or her, you know what's going on there. But everybody thinks their kids are wonderful. Cause you should,

that's the love you feel for your kids. And it's how it is. But I think when it comes to stuff like that, people just, their ego takes over faster than their brain. And they're just like, you don't understand. They've,

they have whatever, or they have this. And it's like, maybe they shouldn't be in kentucky fried chicken four or five times a day right right well yeah you know john that's actually a good point too how many people do you meet where their kids have some ailment and i go have you really had them like do they are they physically exhausted often yeah i think oh he can't because he's got this parents will make up the excuses to protect your

kids and it's not birthday kids it's to protect them being a bad parent that's what it is there's a reason i'm laughing there's a reason i'm laughing it's because i just realized kentucky fried chicken was my go-to unhealthy food and why was kentucky fried chicken my unhealthy food because this is another egypt fun fact kentucky fried chicken why is kentucky fried chicken an absolute delicacy in every part of the world i mean dude have you had the new chicken sandwich but i'm telling you we're listening to this music while we're in egypt right and it's every and i'm not talking about one guy everywhere we went we heard this music and it was like okay we're gonna

play something for you now this is a banger the banger the elders don't like it yeah this is like elvis this was elvis pissing off the old people the elder the elders do not like i almost gotta pull my phone up don't give me start do you guys no no no no no no no no no they're like they're like they're like they're like they're like like, you know, the lyrics are just a little out there. Really? And so here, I'll give you a little. While you go on that. You really like Elvis, Chris?

I thought it was horrible. I'm going to give you a little. All right. Here we go. Big pep. All right. So this is a banger in Egypt right here. That's a banger.

It should be a banger here. We cleared it as cat and bee on my phone. Okay, right. No, to the point where literally in my Uber yesterday in Anaheim, my driver's from Egypt, and I'm like, oh, you're from Egypt. He's like, yeah. And I'm like, oh, do you like Aquati? He's like, oh, Polaroid was phony. He a quad he's like oh pull the right already had it right the lyrics of the song include such massively

offensive things as i'm riding in my car with my orange cat my orange cat beside i just i'm a large guy i just bought him a liver sandwich and a hot dog and he did not take a sip of my pepsi there's that. Then there's- Calm down, John. I know, I know. It's for kids. And then there's, and then now it gets a little racy cold.

Here it comes. You ready? My mind is a hair salon. People come in and out. This is how many times you heard this song. We looked up the words enough to know what the words are. My mind is a hair salon. People come in and out.

I see you. I'm going to make you my mother-in-law and at our wedding kentucky fried chicken for everyone for everyone the best part of it though is he goes i'm only i i only make friends with tough guys even if you have a ferrari yeah wow so now i'm super offensive and now maybe that's going to be they don't want to screw being an olympian i'm going to become a rap war rapper. We made this comment. They did not find it funny.

Well, you've got to remember, it's so funny because this is what we call Chinese math. Here's another business lesson, not to bring it back, but people always think that if this works here, it will work there, right? People don't understand necessarily culture and customs, why it works. So Hussein, love him him but he likes that old classical Egyptian music he says I'm into classical music and I'm thinking like Bach Mozart no it's like not at all they he has old Arabic you know Islamic songs and that's what he listens to he's a he's a 38 year old guy you know he's not listening to bangers no listen to club music

he's listening to old and it's because as a kid that's probably what he heard in his house that's why a lot of times people like country in my estimation yeah and the whole time i grew up with it so they're familiar with it and in the front seat the whole time he's dancing like this he's loving it so if you can't see me you're gonna check that on youtube because that's the thing called chinese if i can get one out of a thousand people here I can have a million customers you look at

Hasselhoff look how big he is in Germany still right have you heard the music it's terrible it's awful that music in Egypt a lot of it is

unlisten toable it's awful music you can't listen to it but for them it's got this so you can't just drop a ludicrous song

in the middle of Egypt and expect it to take off you can't just drop a ludicrous song in the middle of egypt no you can't take off you can't they don't even hear music a lot of although you know what though i think ludicrous sense i think ludicrous talk about a bad performance well on halftime no one talked about it so i was wondering if it was that bad what an effortless but i'll tell you who's a great actor and who gave a great performance was you in egypt and here let me tell you about a story that Chris gave the performance of the year. And here's what happened. So, of course, we found out the beer is like 1%.

They say 4%, but it's probably 1%. No, it's literally like trying to get drunk drinking O'Doul's. We're bounding this stuff. I can't do it. Because it's not haram. And a glass of Jack Daniels in our hotel, which was nice was like 40 bucks american 45 i don't want to drink that bad really i don't want to drink that man so chris gets on whatever app you were on well this guy tells me oh the drinkies remember the guy oh we run into a dude at the casino there that's like

after talking to this guy he's from new york that's a whole story that's a whole thing after talking this guy okay rule of thumb if you produce records for the wu-tang clan lead with that as opposed to yeah don't drop that two hours later i'm here doing sound for an egyptian show that's kind of going to be like the blacklist yeah all the egyptian actors are like cool so we're talking this guy he's like yeah there's this app you can have alcohol delivered to your hotel i'm like oh cool anyway what's your name yeah blah blah his name was billy music and he goes oh yeah i'm like are you you like produce music of other stuff right oh yeah yeah i do all the wu-tangs out i'm like we've been here this whole time and you're not dropping the wu-tang clean oh yeah he's like yeah i did rizzo did yeah. He's like, yeah, I did RZA. I did Method Man. We're like, what?

Ray Kwan's last time. Yeah. And this is like the whitest dude in Egypt, for sure. Really? Yeah. At a casino where they give you, in Egypt, American money to play with. But now I know why. Because it's haram.

It's haram. You cannot gamble with Egyptian money. So they give you American money. Well, that's a currency. Yeah. And it's on the third floor of our hotel. Yeah. It wasn't even a bad little casino.

It wasn't. It was like a cruise ship casino. Cruise ship casino. But we weren't expecting there to be one because there's nothing else to do. We went up there one time. And they had drinks. Does it make it right to use loopholes like that? No, no, no, no, no.

But you cannot go in that casino if you're Egyptian. Yeah, we had to show our passports to get in. We were not Egyptian to even get in the casino. In our hotel. How do you feel about that? About there's religions that. I'm not a free market guy. I believe that you should be able to have sins and vices.

Yeah, do what you want. Harm people. I don't gamble really. I gamble twice a year maybe. I've spent less than 100 bucks a year lifetime gambling for as long as I've lived here when you were doing what I told you you're making you're winning I'd like to point that out in the bank so but it's one of those I cried

I crushed it I crushed it what were you playing I was playing I was playing deuces on a machine and the video poker machines were super rigged for the house like well no no no the low the low pass we get dude like a royal with no deuces paid like 750 instead of 40004,000.

Oh, wow. It was brutal. But anyway, I won like $300. I put in $100. $500. Yeah, I won $100, cashed out $600. And that was a whole thing. He paid for his ski trip.

Yeah, I paid for everything that was there, which was good. But no, but back to the acting job. So he meets the Wu-Tang dude. He tells him, we're getting booze delivered to the room. And I think I'm asleep when he's doing this because, I mean, because literally it was like, just sleep when you can. I mean, I felt, because we were so jet lagged. And you're like, you're sleeping here.

It's four hours there, two hours here, whatever. It all adds up. So I think I'm sleeping. He's like, I'm going to order some booze off this app. I'm like, what are you talking about? What app? He's like, no, no, no, no. I get whiskey.

I get vodka. I'm like, what kind? He goes, it just says whiskey vodka. I'm like, okay. what happened he's like no no no i get whiskey i get vodka like what kind he goes it just says whiskey vodka okay so he orders it it shows up and it's like you know uh controy whatever it was but it was like a decent i mean it was a glass bottle it wasn't plastic it was a nice glass bottle but they were in and it came like pretty quick five minutes yeah it was fast it was fast yeah it was fast delivered to our thing and five, 10 minutes. Yeah.

10 minutes. So did we get it? And then Chris calls down, here's the acting, right? And Chris calls down to the, down, down,

downstairs. And he has, uh, some Cokes and some Sprite sent up. He says, I'll bring me a bucket of ice. Brings the ice in it. I'm sitting there and thinking about it,

thinking about it, thinking about it. I shows up, Coke shows up. I'm looking at this whiskey bottle. I'm like, dude, I don't even know what kind of,

I don't even kind of booze this is like i don't even know what this it just says whiskey on it and some arabic writing i have no idea and uh he's like no no it'll be good it'll be good so he so first of all he starts pouring a drink and i go man i don't know about that ice i don't know about the ice he goes no yeah we were in a nice hotel i go i don't know about the ice so this is the acting job chris does there any he calls down to the front desk and this is all here uh yes uh we just got some drinks and some ice delivered to our room i just want to make sure that the ice is filtered filtered filtered ice ice ice cold water filtered filtered filtered and he hangs up he goes yeah it's filtered

zero chance that dude understand a word he just said he's like no yeah it's filtered it's fine but you guys both look a lot leaner now he said what you guys look no so so anyway this is filtered yes okay yes filtered yes he had no clue what he was saying. Good to go. Okay, so here's the problem with me. Now this goes back onto personal responsibility and life choices. I knew the guy didn't know what he was saying. I knew he was overconfident in the quality of the ice.

So what do I do? I drink the damn drink. Well, I took technically one sip of each because they both tasted like straight gasoline. It was. And like the next day, I'm like, and we ate some roadside duck. Yeah, I'm thinking it was the glasses in Alpha Hume. Didn't really see a lot of hygiene when he was sloshing water around it with his bare hands. It's like vacation can help you with that Kool-Aid.

Please, Vicky, please can help you with that Kool-Aid? Please, Vicky. Please can I help you with that? Note to self, drink out of those paper cups. Don't ask for glasses. Yes. Anyway, so the suspect, it was either the road duck or the ice. I don't know whatever it was. But the next day, I'm kind of like, you know, everything's fine.

You're like, oh, wait a second. Gargle over. Dude. And then, you know, you have upset stomachs. You're like, oh, I'll be fine in a couple of days. It'll be fine. It'll go away, blah, blah. Dude, like, I leave to travel home, and it's still bad the whole way home.

I get home, and I'm five days into it now. Two days later, I'm like, I got to go. I finally do the Now Clinic, and the lady's like, yeah, you need some pretty serious antibiotics. He's like, we're going to hook you up with the double Z-Pak. Get you 500 milligrams a day instead of 250. I'm pounding that. I'm texting him, who's still in Egypt. He's like, man're going to hook you up with a double Z-pack, get you 500 milligrams a day instead of 250. I'm pounding that. I'm texting him, who's still in Egypt. He's like, man, this is brutal.

I'm like, bro, you're not going to get any better. You need to get ahead of this. He does this. Now, first of all, it was totally worth it. But still, it was as bad of an upset stomach as I have ever had. Is the airplane the worst place to get an upset stomach? I feel like it is. No, I'd say Egypt in general.

Probably not a lot of public restrooms. Not a lot of toilet paper going around. You just don't feel great. I mean, that's the thing, right? You're introducing yourself to different environments. You're going to, I mean, wherever it is, you're eating foods with different chemical and bacteria makeups. Yeah.

Even if it's part of the gig. Yeah, part of the gig. Well, to wrap it up again, if you ever get a chance to go to Egypt, our guy Hussein is definitely the guy you want with his union man there. Because here's another thing. And if you're worried about it, we didn't talk about this. And one more thing about it before we jump off. If you're worried about traveling to Egypt at all, don't be. Because some American tourists got killed, I guess,

by the Muslim Brotherhood back in 97, and that's a good thing. And here's why it's a good thing. Not so much for their families. That's a cold comment. No, not so much for their families. But what I mean is, tourism to Egypt died for like three years completely.

Americans stopped going because, brother, they were killing them. So the Egyptian government came back and said, here's what we'll do. As long as you're with a licensed tour guide, we will provide an armed military or police escort everywhere you go. Yeah, we had police with us the whole leg, right,

from where we were to the middle of the Saharan desert, where I would like to mention we did get cell-service somehow, enough that we could play back in black by ACD. Yes, which was awesome. It was an Iron Man moment. I can't get in my freaking office. That was one from Odin to me there,

because it was something very amazing. It was pretty cool. So if you're worried about it, don't be. If you go with a licensed tour group, you'll have a police escort everywhere you go. Also, if you're a Nazi pilot, I would probably stay at a certain place. that's true that's true they found uh they found a body of a nazi pilot um buried in one of the caves in the middle of sahara and he carved

in this iron cross into a rock and his numbers and they shipped his his remains back to back to germany and sort of one of those things i'm like man that would really suck to have your last days be in the saharan desert but maybe don't be a nazi don't be a nazi all right guys if you like what we do make sure you tell a friend and uh have them tune in and subscribe as well if you hate what we do tell two people why is that three people it doesn't matter as long as they keep talking doesn't matter how they're talking as long as they're talking maybe don't do a fucking maybe don't be a fucking if you want to catch up more and see what we're doing

you can always go to thejohngafford.com or we'll share any links things we talked about on the show as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live and if you want to catch up with me on Instagram you can always follow me at thejohngafford I'm here. Give me a shout.