Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - How I lost $125 Million (Jersey Shore Deal Gone Wrong)

Episode Date: May 12, 2024

How I lost $125 Million (Jersey Shore Deal Gone Wrong)

There was an opportunity to partner with someone off the Jersey Shortcast to launch a supplement company. And we were kind of printing money faster than we could spend it. When you get to $10 million, $25 million, $50 million, there's no one that you can go to for advice. Right. They would front like they wanted to help you, but they had no interest in helping you at all. They wanted to steal what you had as your secret sauce. For me, it was always about figuring out what my next hustle was going to be when I had a chance to start hustle. and figure out what I was going to get to to the point where I would eventually be a millionaire,

because that was the dream. I eventually kind of had my slumdog millionaire moment where I landed in an opportunity of a hundred different failures leading to my one success, which was kind of creating social media influencers. Okay. How did that come about? In 2011, there was an opportunity to partner with someone off the Jersey Shorthast to launch a supplement company, and Instagram had just kind of gotten in its nascent stages of it blowing up

and everyone getting, you know, really interested in how Instagram works. And so one thing led to the next. Do we know? Can we say who the Jersey Shore guy is? Oh, yeah, yeah. His name is Arvin, Arvin Law. And he was best friends with Mike's situation. Do you, are you familiar with the cast? I mean, I've seen it once or twice.

It was hard to watch because it was so stupid. Okay. But, you know, I was surrounded. I was in an environment that was pretty stupid to begin with. So, but I have seen them. Like, I know who the situation is. Yeah. I knew some of the guy.

There was a big guy, right? There was like the big guy, the muscle guy. Ronnie. and then there was the one they called like the meatball or something or they were a couple meatballs the two the girls okay I don't know who the meatballs were and they call them meatballs Colby doesn't know um so anyway yeah yeah so I know I probably would recognize them when I saw if I saw them long story short six characters living their life and you know cameras following them and all the kind of stuff they have with reality TV and everything right there's a six

episode arc hugely hugely I mean 15 16 seasons spinoff shows all all sorts of stuff right but there was an arc in the first couple seasons where one of Mike's best friends kind of started coming around the crew and ended up breaking up the big couple on the show because, you know, there was these rumors that they cheated, that the girl cheated with Mike's best friend and so on and so forth. So I mean, I don't know the real story of that cheating scandal, whatever it was, but Arvin had a six episode like stint on the show now. He has 15 seconds of fame and he had this aspiration to start a supplement company. I think it's 15 minutes. I will go to 15 seconds, but that's not shots fired or anything.

But he wanted to start a supplement company. And so he was reaching out to different people in his world. And at this time, I was running a marketing agency and helping out my best friend who ran a nightclub and a restaurant and all that in New Jersey. And one of the managers was a fraternity brother of Arvin. So that guy was like, you have to meet Anker. Anker is the guy to go talk to you for graphic design,

labels, logos, websites, anything you could think of. And so Arvin met me. He drew this logo. a napkin. It was like one of those scenes out of a movie, right? He's like, hey, can you bring this to life? And I'm like, say less, hold my beer. I got this. The next day, I shoot him a message, like, here's the logo I came up with, and he was just like, holy cow, like, this is exactly what I had envisioned. I can't believe you brought it to life. And then the infamous question was like, what else can you do? And I kind of just chuckled at him. I'm

like, I can do everything. What do you need me to do? So, I mean, in theory, I guess I was the first contractor that he worked with that this time. And we slowly started with a label. And I didn't know anything about supplements. I had to, like, said, like, I drove over to a GNC. I studied different labels of different products. I went on websites. And, like, this is, I mean, Amazon was kind of, like, a big thing at this point, but it wasn't as big as it is today.

Right. So, you don't go to Amazon to study labels or, like, other products or anything like that. But I, like, makeshifted my own supplement facts. I made a fake UPC code because I didn't know UPC codes were real. I did not, I had no idea what they were. I just, like, drew some lines and, like, went with it. But we made a label for his product. And I happened to know a really awesome printer because I was in the nightlife scene doing DJing and parties.

And I'm sure you remember party flyers and things like that that people used to make rain out in the streets. I asked him if you could do labels. And he said he could. And so I think it took us four months to get the first batch of product labeled and made. And it was a fat burner that he called Shreds, S-H-R-E-D-Z. And the idea of the fat burner was that we were taking a formula that. that we kind of benchmarked from another successful company. And it was a guy that used to work at a different company

that kind of gave Arvin some background with ingredients, things like that. And the company at this time was called Beyond Genetic Supplements because the whole idea was like human biohacking and trying to improve our life and like all that great stuff. This is all bullshit. Like it's all, it was some sugar and something mixed up together. Ironically, you don't really know what it was. Ironically, the supplement actually did work.

The ingredients that were in there are not banned. Right. And so you know how it works with your- If you drank this and you stopped eating, the formula was you cut your calorie intake and half and you drink this and you will lose weight. I mean, we're not going to lie, right? Nutrition is the way that weight loss happens, right?

But supplements added to a healthy nutrition plan can actually help. But what's interesting is every time the ingredient... It doesn't sound like your guy knew that. Like, your guy sounds like he was like, I've got some fame. People kind of know who I am. I get to say I was on Jersey Shore. I know a guy who knows a guy.

Let's run with this. Yeah, I mean, we can go with that story. I mean, or maybe he was super bright and he and the other guy got in the lab and they mixed it up and they gave it to a bunch of mice. Like, maybe I get it. It's fine. I don't know if there were mice, but there's definitely some gym rats and people that tried the product and liked it and everything that went with it. Perfect. But, I mean, one thing that we can talk about further is that anytime something actually

works, the FDA is going to ban that ingredient in supplements, and they want to turn into a pharmaceutical drug. And there's a whole process to make something a pharmaceutical drug, and there's a whole process that just have supplements that over-the-counter. And, yeah, a lot of supplements over-the-counter are kind of just whatever pills that don't really matter. Right. And your body can't even absorb, like, a thousand milligrams of vitamin C.

It's kind of crazy that that's what the marketing standard is for vitamin C supplement. But the point is, is that I created a really awesome label. And then the next thing led to websites. And this is before Shopify existed or WooCommerce as a platform. The platforms are around at this point were really in their early stages of like PayPal buttons and like real basic stuff. Right. So we built a website. And I think in our first year, we did three grand in sales.

It was nothing special by any means. But the reason the sales were trash was because we were in an industry where you could only sell product if you were in the retail stores. So I think I wrote like a code to scrub the internet for every single G&C, vitamin shop, total nutrition. Like every single pop mom-and-pop supplement store

we could find. Right. I think it was over 3,000, but like a little under 4,000 number of stores. So Arv and I would just call the stores every single day. And you're just trying to get your product into the store. We're just trying to get the product into the store. And we're like, hey, man, we represent this new supplement company.

It's called Shreds. People would be like shreds, ha, ha, ha, click. They had no interest in talking to us. So I think we got 12 or 13 stores to pick us up. And they were like local Jersey stores that knew about Arvin and being on the show. And they're like, yeah, let's bring it in and see what can happen. What year was this? This is 2011.

Okay. 2011, 2012 is when we did the wholesale push. So, I mean, I knew this wasn't going to go into anything. And, you know, Arvin can't really pay a contractor a lot of money when he's not making money himself. And so, like, for me, this isn't painting out to be anything I want it to be. Right. But Black Friday is rolling around. And Black Friday is, like, turning into, like, a huge deal for online shopping around this time.

And, you know, I came up with this structure of, like, hey, let's create multiple landing pages and let's drive all this traffic to different pages and do some really cool stuff over here. And he kind of gave me the runway to try and try to do it my way. What was awesome is I had only really done marketing services. At this point, I had like an agency because I could say I was helping my friend with his nightclub and I was helping other local businesses. But I had only done professional services. So like a restaurant or like a dentist office or like a realtor and you only make money when they're open. Right. So you make like a deal where you're getting 10% of their revenue or whatever.

Like I'm not making money when I'm sleeping. This is the first time where before I went to bed, there were five figures in the bank account. And then when I woke up, the five figures had doubled. And I was like, this is amazing. I need to go, I need to go double down, triple down. quadrupled down into this platform because I just, like, figured out something, which is like a hack and how we're going to go about doing this. We didn't break 100 grand in 2012, but we knew we had something. Right. And so in 20, by the time 2012 ended, I came out, I want to be a partner. I want to

double down in this. And I want to just be full time and make this look my thing. So he gave me 15% ownership of the company. And I'm like, all right, well, I have full control. I could turn off his website whenever I want to. If this guy disagrees with me, we can figure it out later. But he's, but he's, he's, He's open enough to give me some equity. Let me, and let me try and figure out what this is going to be. Because I didn't pay anything to make this happen. He was the one confronting all the cash and taking all the risk. So 2013 rolls around.

And at this point, social media influencers was a term that we started coining because we were creating all these fitness influencers on social media. What do you mean by that? Are you contacting these guys that are doing like YouTube channels or? No, so Instagram had just kind of like, gotten its wings. And if you're doing fitness, showing people in perfect shape and photos of them in perfect shape, it's like this aspirational idea that, hey, if you do everything that I do, you could potentially look like me. And every single person that we were working with,

we created what's called a custom user experience. The really exciting thing about this and kind of my secret sauce is that I figured out that if you're someone who likes a CrossFit type genre of content, you should only see CrossFit content throughout the entire process of buying anything online. Or if you're into yoga, you shouldn't see hardcore dudes with veins popping out of their necks in like the next graphic. You should see a soft girl in yoga lagging pants and whatever else throughout your whole customer experience. So we made thousands of landing pages. I mean thousands upon thousands of PayPal Buy Now buttons for every type of concept you can imagine. So each one of these influencers, they push the product and when you

click on their link, it goes to a page specifically designed for yoga or for hardcore guys or for... Yeah, even more so, if you saw a guy named Joey Swoll on his social media, that was his staging. You would then go to a landing page and it would be all about Joey Swole. These are the supplements Joey Swole takes. There's images of Joey Swole. And then when you buy and you check out, you actually get an email from Joey Swole talking,

like, you know, thanks for joining the family. Here's how you dose the supplements. Here's what you take. If you have any questions, hit me up and you had like Joyce Will's contact information. Right. And this whole level of customer customization for their experience,

no one had done before us. Okay. But the real stride happened when I looked at the data. The data is what would kind of surprise me because we were marketing to men. And, I mean, you know, men love to be vascular and aesthetic

and have six packs and so forth. But we had a fat burner product and that was our main product. It was women. women buying our product, not men, because women wanted to lose weight and be skinny and be fit and all that stuff, way more than men. So I remember sitting down with Arvin and I'm like, yo, let's slap a pink label on this and see what happens. And so we slapped a pink label on it and our sales. Especially designed for women.

Special design for women. Throw that in there. Especially designed for women. But we didn't reformulate yet. No, I never thought you did. I just thought you were. The specially designed part means it's pink. It's got a pink label.

Well, we just said, we actually didn't change, like, the name or anything. It wasn't like shreds for men, transfer men, transfer women just to it. Right. But, I mean, authenticity was really important to me back to my design and my design work. I know it's kind of funny to think about now because you hear all these horror stories about other supplement companies, how it's just sugar and stuff, but it sales skyrocketed. And so then we went to the manufacturers and we formulated for women. We took out some of the caffeine. We added some other ingredients that are better for women and what they're doing with their whole weight loss.

any, there's just process of lipolisus when you burn fat, like all the toxins are left in your body because like fat has to turn into something else and you have to then detox that out of your system. So it's just different for men and women and how you take a fat burner pill or something like that. Okay. So we started selling female fat burners like 30 to one compared to male fat burners because in the market, there really wasn't a major female fat burner pill.

I mean, there had been stuff that came out with Jack 3D and like weird products there at, you know, no longer around at G&C or VivenSharp or things that you might have heard of over the years. I think there's one thing called like LipoMax 6 and like all these other weird names over the years. But no one had like openly had a beautiful label catered to women with pink, you know, concepts or anything like that. And we were kind of the first to do it. And so, I mean, 2013 rolls around and I mean, we broke three million in sales, direct to consumer. And we knew that we had something. And we were kind of printing money faster than we could spend it, which as a kid from Jersey, that's a big thing to say out loud, right?

Right. We got our acquisition cost so low that it was insanely impressive. I mean, we were getting a new customer for like 35 cents, which is like unheard of when you talk to anyone who has an online business that's selling products. Right. But it's just because people were following any one of these influencers that we were supporting, whether it was through an affiliate commission, Like a guy like Joey, we would pay $15 a bottle, and a bottle was $45. So we're literally profit sharing as if he's a partner, giving him a third of the revenue. And, I mean, sales just like, they just skyrocketed.

And he's got to be thrilled. Like the more money he makes, the more he wants to push it. There were months he was making well into the six figures with us. And, I mean, for the rest of the athletes, I mean, there were athletes that were making five figures. They were athletes making six figures. I think at our peak, at some point, we had over 2,000. different influencers on our payroll in some way, shape, or form of an endorsement or a direct affiliate commission or whatever it was that we were going with.

So, yeah, I mean, when I go back to saying, like, hey, we kind of coined social media influencers and created this little movement. There were people that were just literally copying us left and right with everything that we were doing. And I remember there was, like, people that would tell me these jokes, like, they would go to a meeting and, like, a board meeting of the entire company for competitors. And they would just pull up our Instagram page and be like, what does it do this week? copy it. And I was like, go for it. Try and copy me. I'm just going to innovate faster than

you can copy me. And we were always 10 steps ahead of everyone else. Yeah, because even if they see it, then they have to redesign their website to catch up with it by the time they're catching up with it two months later. You've changed it again, right? Yeah. And I mean, it was definitely a grind, right? Some people will say like, oh, you guys got lucky. You guys found Joey and he posted it or whatever it was. Like, people don't know. I was doing six or seven day sprints where I wasn't sleeping. I was just coding and working and doing whatever I had to do. And then I would just like totally die for two days. I would go

missing. I would just be sleeping and like, you know, getting sick and trying to feel better and get back up and do it again. But I mean, you know, it certainly wasn't overnight, but once the grind started and we figured out how to win, we just kept it going. Okay.

What are we doing? Are we eating? Is that food? Is there, yeah. How long have we been going? 40 minutes. 40 minutes? Yeah, we barely even scratch the surface. It's crazy. Do you want to eat?

What do you want to do? It doesn't matter to me. Do you want to eat real quick? Yeah. Okay, let's eat. So what are the next thing we're going to talk about? Just curious. Well, I mean, so as entrepreneurs, we weren't paying ourselves up in this point.

We were just reinvesting every single dollar. How are you living? Well, the company would pay for our rent because we decided to, we actually did something really cool. Let me tell you about this. So writing an office in New Jersey was astronomical, and we were in Jersey City, or that's where we wanted to be, because New York just didn't make any sense. And we both had these, like, delusional visions that we would be Iron Man, and we would have, like, the Stark building, but with the Shredd's logo in Manhattan and the skyline and everything. But we found a complex called the Beacon, and the Beacon used to be the old Jersey City Medical Center. So it was like an entire campus of buildings that they turned into luxury apartments.

and so we found out that they had a unit that was like an annex roof penthouse it was like the fourth floor of like a side building attached to one of the campus buildings we thought we were like big dogs and like the penthouse right we get there we realize this this little tiny thing and like no one cares that we're in this annex penthouse then there was like real penthouses there like the 23rd 24th floors but uh... i moved in together and so the first floor was our office and the second floor was our bedrooms, and we just worked nonstop. And that was all throughout 2013. And at some point, it was time to upgrade, because now we started hiring people and growing the business and everything that we were doing. So we ended up getting the actual penthouses at the beacon, and we

illegally turned them into our offices, because there was no way we were doing it the right way. But it was so much cheaper to just get these $4,000-month penthouses that were like 2,000 square feet. We could literally squeeze 24 desks in there. right and we then just gave every member of our team an apartment and we paid for all their rent okay so like a fringe benefit to get them to come work for us because i mean we were working people as aggressive as they wanted to work because everyone could make as much money as they wanted especially in that that uphill stage where we were just printing money faster than we could spend it so they're but they can do that by what set just through sales yeah through sales right through

affiliate sales and if you're hiring a secretary she's got a set salary yeah and and those people always always had set salaries, but most of the team, I'd say maybe 70% of the team was all sales based up until that point. And there's a couple of tech guys, but they all had profit sharing and rev share opportunities and things like that. But it's 2013, we're printing money faster than we can spend it. We have these penthouse apartments that are theoretically both are living places because they also had bedrooms associated with them, and Arvin lived in one, I lived in the other.

But eventually we then move down to different units and then that entire unit became our office. But it was time to expand the business. So we ended up opening up an office in Santa Ana, California. And then eventually we opened up an office in Beverjeck in Netherlands, because there was the easiest entry point into the European Union to go through Netherlands, like Amsterdam. They don't care about supplements. They care about other drugs. Right. And then Melbourne, Australia. And so, I mean, out of peak, I was just flying around from office to office, dealing with employees and all these different locations, contractors, and the like. What yours is? So this is 2013 to So 2017. It was a couple of fun years.

All right. So how is it, is it, I mean, how about, like, are you making a lot more money at this point? I mean, it's obviously you're. Yeah. Combined, I mean, we were well over 125 million. Okay. In sales all throughout that course of the company history. And eventually, we had spinoff companies where we created a T-line, a seasoning company and a bunch of other stuff that we can get into. Surprisingly, when you have 100 billion followers across all your social media accounts, it legitimately is over 100 million. million followers across all the different accounts. Not everyone by supplements. Right. And you're like, well, we're pitching lifestyle changes and weight loss and everything that happens with that world. But everyone eats food. So seasonings and coffee and tea, and like all that kind of stuff just kind of made sense. And we found opportunities where we could create one of those product lines. And so one of the early product lines was a company called Flavor God. We found a guy at the farmer's markets just making house blends of

seasonings, and they were delicious. And so we commercialized them. He was kind of making them out of his garage, and it just wasn't going to go to that next level. And we had the cash reserves to actually do manufacturing for this. And I mean, I'm sure you've heard of McCormack and the big players and spices. No one has disrupted that industry for decades. Right. And so you'd go to a spice manufacturer, and you'd be like, hey, I'd love to make, you know, this custom blend for what I want. they would just laugh at you. They'd be like, you're not competing with McCormick and the other guys. And they would tell us that to place an actual purchase order with their manufacturing

facility, we'd have to order like 100,000 bottles, which is absurd, right? That's just, there's so much like inventory, you wouldn't even know how to push that type of inventory, especially if it's just direct-to-consumer. The average product that you're buying, like these guys that are launching Shopify stores and all these other things, like, you know, the spinners and whatever else on TikTok, they're buying 500 units. Right. And so these guys wanted us to buy 100,000.

But we had the cash and we believed in ourselves, so we said, cool, make it for us. And so we came out with four flavors at first. That led to, I think, over 40 flavors before I left the companies. And, I mean, that became a whole behemoth company on its own, earning well into the eight figures of revenue. And so the really honest, exciting stuff that happened in our journey was figuring out how to grow the business and treating social media kind of like the stock market. where we would see swings whenever we wanted to create, like influence and clout into whatever it is that we have, like whether it's a product launch,

whether it's a new influencer, whether it's a show that we're creating. And we knew we won because you would go to these shows and we'd have 10,000 people waiting in line for us to come to our booth at one of these expos. I mean, it was crazy. Did you ever have a moment when you had money where you were like, I made it?

I mean like one defining moment where you're like this is surreal I mean yeah I had several several like that but yeah

yeah so I remember I'm at Newark Airport we're about to fly to Miami to have a meeting with I think someone in J.Lo's team because Jalo wanted us to make her own supplement line

and everything and so we get to the airport and a TSA guy screams our names and it's me and Arvin and he just like waves us down and we're two Indian men with beards right we were joking about it earlier legitimately i get you know that random screening

every single time the dude literally just waved us and walked us through tsa right and like he's like have a good day you guys don't need to wait in line like the rest of these guys i just looked at it i'm like we bought economy plus tickets or like economy basic tickets or whatever like we didn't even buy like first class like nothing just let us walk right through i just remember thinking wow i think we made it in life that like we're getting recognized like that and you'd be walking around Newark Airport, and you'd just see shreds shirts shirts everywhere. And then you'd fly to Miami, and you'd see shreds shirts in Miami. You'd fly to L.A. You'd see people just

walking around with apparel with our logo on it. It was definitely surreal for a long time. And so I think when you have that moment where you're like, hey, cool, I made it. Like, this is awesome. You start having the fear of what happens when you're going to lose it. And like, I think that's where the story gets real crazy with the types of things that we went through from 2013 through 2017, until the point in which I left because kind of had enough of some of the stuff that was happening towards a later

portion of the company okay like what like so when you have a company that's making millions of dollars you have a target on your back right so you could just imagine there's some ambulance chasers where there's like different rules and laws that they go after uh so there's this thing called prop 65 have you've heard of this i've heard of prop 65 i don't know exactly so back in the 80s like some people were getting sick like getting cancer in california And so they realized that, I guess, back in the day, companies were dumping, like, chemicals into, like, the water into, like, lakes and, like, they made movies about this stuff over the years. And so they determined that the ground- Pesky EPA people. Yeah, those Pesky EPA people.

Those people, so they determined the ground had enough minerals of, like, certain types of metals that could cause cancer if you eat anything that's growing in California. Mind you, California is, like, the least farm state out of all the states that we have in this country. So, like, if you've ever had California tomatoes, California garlic, California onion, it's the most delicious version of that fruit or vegetable compared to anywhere else in this country. But it will kill you. They felt like it had enough of it that it could cause cancer because they needed to find an explanation for why these people. Yeah. We're talking about half a fistful of spinach.

Right. They're saying you can't have that because it's going to cause cancer. People have been eating spinach for 70 years of their lives. in California without getting cancer. It's the levels of this metal that they say is in the ground is so low that this is kind of a joke now in the industry. But this is how you even know it's a further joke. The state put out this rule that if you have more than this in any one of your products, you have to put this warning that says that this product has been found that could cause cancer from these metals.

And it's not like a thing you can hide on your label. There's a big yellow, like, diamond, like warning symbol that you have to put next to it. Right. And you see it on everything. You see it on a Starbucks coffee cup. You see it anywhere you go shopping in California. Yeah, everywhere in California. I mean, why Starbucks coffee cup didn't come out of?

Someone ate the coffee cup and complained in the Prop 65 ambulance chasers went after them that the coffee cup didn't have the warning on it. And so the thing is, you know this is all BS because the state itself doesn't even police it. They actually put out a whole thing saying that we're going to let the community police this for us because we don't have the manpower to do it. So there are these nonprofit attorney organizations that will just send out warning letters and like, hey, we tested your product and it tested over for this thing. So pay us. Otherwise, we're going to take you to court.

So, I mean, when the problem starts with Prop 65 things, you can quickly and easily beat it if you read the rules. There's like these weird loopholes. If you have less than 10 employees, you don't have to have the warning on your product. How does that make any sense? Right. So, yeah, this product could cause cancer. But if you only have nine employees, you don't have to warn your customers about it. it makes no sense at all, right? This whole rule should be thrown out. But we started getting

these issues, whether it was customer complaints, whether it was a bad batch of a manufacturer, whether it was like some weird labor law dispute that came out because there was a disgruntled employee who like wanted to raise and, you know, we're like, we're already paying you more than anyone else in the industry. We can't do another raise and like they came after us. We beat every one of the lawsuits every single time because we didn't. just had all of our documentation or ducks in a row. And I mean, stuff that I didn't even think was like a real scenario. We had 12 law firms on retainer. That's too many law firms. Yeah. But you had to because the amount of stuff that was coming in, you couldn't even fight. Did you know

that like if you own a hotel, you're going to get lawsuits at least twice a month because they found one beer bottle on your lawn? It's the, it's the craziest thing in the world. Just the way that the rules are written in this country for different types of business owners. they want to just find anything and everything that they can find you or do whatever that they can to come after you. And this is just in California or just in general? No, now it's in general.

Okay. Issues all across the board. The Prop 65 thing is just California. But when you think about a company and selling products, what are you going to do, just make California only labels? Right.

That's almost impossible. So you end up putting in all your labels. And now you get a customer from Colorado being like, your product causes cancer. I've never seen this before. I don't want to order your product, give me and my money back. Right.

And you have to decide, do you educate that customer? Chances are they don't care anymore, right? They just want their money back. Right. And so there's just all these issues that would... For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio.

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Come up. And then the truth is, because we had the attorneys and everything else figured out, we were able to kind of overcome the different problems that that. we were getting faced with. But, I mean, the truth is, when you're in your 20s, making that kind of money, it's easy for partners to start having issues with each other, right? Whether it's jealousy, whether it's disagreements, whether it's personal lifestyle choices, whatever it's going to be.

And, I mean, the truth is, it got the better of my team of friends and I. And it got to a point where in 2015, I just didn't see eye to eye anymore. with Arvin. And it got to a point where he and I stopped talking for a period of years because of a couple disagreements that we had that were so serious. And you're working together, but you guys just don't talk. Yeah, it was tough, man. There was like a team Arvin and there was a team honker and it was like really toxic for everyone in the office. I remember there was a day where like I was coming back from a trip and like my best friend was working with us at the time. He got a bunch of team AKG shirts and like anyone who was team anchor was wearing the team AKG shirts. And it was like

an eighth grade dance you just see like team AKG on the right side of the wall and then team Marvin on the left side of wall doing their thing and I'm like walking through the office I'm like what is going on I didn't even I was so deep in like problem solving and dealing with macro level problems I didn't realize what was happening in the corporate culture of the company throughout this time frame right and I mean you can just beat so many things like we had this one ingredient in our product called dendrobium and jadrobium was this like a phenomenal ingredient that was based off a, it was a natural version of a different ingredient that got banned in the past that was synthetic. And it was working. People were experiencing

weight loss at an incredible rate. I mean, we had over 100,000 testimonials of people who successfully lost weight on our product. That's insane. Right. And so I remember when someone asked me, like, at what point of, like, customer data, do you feel like you're successful? I mean, I had 100,000 documented testimonials. That's, like, amazing. And I, we had all of it on, like, online and public facing like forums and all that kind of stuff then we were showcasing it but the point that i'm trying to bring up is so the fda8 bans dendrobium and so now we have to change our formula and we have to figure out what else we're going to do to you know all of a sudden one of our magic ingredients doesn't work fortunately we found another ingredient that had why did they

ban it well uh i don't know if you remember of fedra and some of the other ingredients back in the day and so there were some people that you know were dying based on their diets and other things that were happening and so like yeah it wasn't working out but it was a very specific group of people um and there was like issues with like you say that pretty casually yeah i mean we're not talking about you know how easily people could talk about fraud and everything else either right i mean there's certain things that roll off the tongue we never had a fedra in any of our products right i'm just trying to give an example of a scenario where um i don't think dendrobium killed anyone but there were people having what's called an adverse effect right where like their hearts were

racing and they were like they thought they were having a heart attack right i mean like dude you're 68 you probably shouldn't be taking a fat burner product right like that's the problem i'm not saying you're 60 i'm saying what the guy yeah yeah complaint was i still don't know how old you are but um we're just going to assume that you're like 45 that's what we're going to go with let's go with that yeah so what i'm 54 no way i'm about to be 55 in a couple one oh man you take incredible care of yourself well it's the prison oh it's the prison workout that kept everything on it it preserves you man my wife is probably like son knocker to prison he needs to lose some weight uh so the formula changes some small random things that happen on

social media like so on like these uh these issues only compounded as the money grew so when you're making half a million to a million there's still like the rich uncle or the college professor that you can go to for advice right when you get from a million to five million, that pool of people that you can go to advice shrinks in so many ways, especially when you're not like someone who's got a large community here or anything like that. When you get to 10 million, 25 million, 50 million, there's no one that you can go to for advice. Right. So I started going to the 500 millionaires or the billionaires and trying to get advice because they were within our circles of people that we had kind of met at this point. The worst part about those

conversations was they would front like they wanted to help you, but they had no. interest in helping you at all they wanted to steal what you had as your secret sauce and like merge into one of their companies or they wanted to buy you for pennies on the dollar and they had no interest in helping you whatsoever it was probably the most like vultuous thing i'd ever seen in a conversation whenever i were trying to negotiate with these guys or go to these guys for help they wouldn't help me at all which is why i had 12 attorneys right 12 firms on retainer because i didn't know how else to fight these battles unless i had attorneys giving me advice right but it was tough

So I think we're at the part of the story where I'm explaining that the problems compounded, you know, exponentially. So when you make a mistake at $50 million, it costs you a couple million dollars. Right. And sometimes that's hard to overcome in scenarios where, like, you're relying on your credit cards for cash flow and you're relying on certain cash flow management things that allow you to, like, place an order for $5 million a product, get sales to come in so you can pay for that order. but then sometimes a problem makes so you can no longer pay for that order and that compounds into a bigger problem and it's a snowball effect of crazy proportions. I think if we jump ahead to the point of which I left, I mean, those problems I was able to beat. I wasn't able to beat the problem of the toxic environment between me and my partner.

And I mean, you go from being a guy that we got an offer in the high eight figures. to buy the company from another supplement company. And I was begging my partners to take this deal. Why? Because you were, you're part of it and just start over some world. Like get out of this? 100%.

I mean, I wasn't even talking to my partner anymore. Right. To be honest, I think he hated me. And I just wanted out at this point with whatever I needed to happen. And I think his thing was like, I just wouldn't comply. It wouldn't be a yes man the way he wanted it to be.

I remember in 2013, there was an article that came out in Forbes that said, like I was the miracle man behind the whole company in the movement and like he lost his mind when that happened. Um, magically, like I think 10 days later, the article disappeared. I wonder how that happened. Uh, but more importantly, the, the, the toxicity between him and I and getting this offer of high eight figures, he just said no.

And the one thing that this dude did that I can talk about at this point, that, I didn't realize was a problem, was that in the 11th hour, when I went from 15% ownership, up to being 42 or 43% owner, he made me add a clause to the contract, to the operating agreement, that he had veto rights. Because at this point, I mean, I should have saw a red flag that this guy, I was bringing all my friends to come work for us. He was worried that me and my friends would overpower him in a boat. And then on his end, you know, he didn't have anyone to back him. And technically me and my friends, because I gave the CTO and the CFO and everyone else a little bit of equity to help us build this company. So this dude took that veto right

to heart. And so he vetoed the deal. He was like, if it's nine figures or otherwise we're not selling. Man, that would have been generational wealth. Right. Like I would have walked away with 30, 40 million. Like my grandkids wouldn't, my great grandkids wouldn't have had to work. Right. Man. But I had to. I had to kind of keep, like, figuring out how he was going to keep the company going. Me and him were having issues. There were algorithm changes and, like, pivots and things we had to do. I went from being in charge of certain departments to other departments because I just

would try to be the janitor, go from wholesale and fix wholesale and make wholesale profitable. Then I would launch an app where we would get all the personal trainers in the country to sell our products, made that profitable, moved on to the next problem. I just kept going. And then it just got to a point where, you know, I'm worth eight, nine figures easily when we're selling this company with, like, how we're evaluating everything. And I just saw that we weren't taking care of the people that need to be taken care of, which was like the staff, the employees, each other. And it got to a point where I needed to leave. Like there were just enough changes in the company that was no longer the company that I created.

or that I was happy to say that I'm like essentially a co-founder, even though I was the first employee that then turned into a partner. And so my freedom day of like leaving that whole mess was April 1st of 2017. That was my day of freedom where I came back from a week vacation in Hawaii. And, you know, the day I came back, I just resigned. I sent the guys, the partners, a letter saying, hey, I'm given notice. What year was it? 2017 okay it's okay I'm given notice I just want you guys to pay off the the credit cards

that I opened under my name and I want you guys pay off the mortgage that I took you know remorgeted my parents home to help with cash flow problems and whatever else and you know unfortunately these guys accepted my resignation but they didn't pay me out for a long time and I had to get attorneys involved in other people you own like 40-something percent of the company but someone had veto rights so if there's every going to be a good deal in my favor, guess what happened? It got vetoed. Right.

Right. And so I had no power because I signed the agreement. I'd let him have the veto rights back then because we were like brothers. Right. Right. Like nothing was going to affect us because there was literally no scenario. I mean, he was literally sitting the way you and I are sitting working with me 20 hours a day every single day. Yeah.

But so like every time I've ever been involved, like, you know, you really don't know what someone's like until money's involved, you know? I mean, you can have your, you are not kidding. You have your best friend, your whole life. In the moment, you know, your money becomes evolved. Suddenly, they just, they turn, they'll turn on you or it's amazing. And I've given the excuse, or sorry, the example of, I've had guys come to me and, you know, plead with me to help, like, get them into a house and, you know, and it's like, hey,

because, like, let's say I helped you out one time. and you bought a house for $200,000, and we pulled at closing. Like, you don't have to bring anything to closing, or maybe you have to bring $20,000 to closing, but you get back like $50. So you just made $30,000. And so for a guy who's in his 20s, right, that's a bunch of money. It's like, I'm going to get $30,000 and I buy this house. And all I have to do is rent out the house.

Yeah. And I'd be like, yeah, but you have to rent out the house and collect rent. And if somebody doesn't pay, you understand. And keep in mind, to get the $30,000, they're going, yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem, no problem, no problem. And you're like, okay, well, no, no, I got that, bro. If I got like 30 grand, okay, well, you know, do you understand if someone doesn't pay? You have to evict them. You have to get somebody else in. You have to get somebody in to be, if you want, I got a property management company. I can have, you know, it was actually at this point. This is actually

a scenario, my ex-wife. She can get somebody a qualified buyer in there. No, no, no, no, I know a guy. He's actually his rents coming up. He's a buddy of mine. It's like, yeah, you probably shouldn't put a buddy in there. No, no, no, no, he's good. He's good. So you buy the house, he gets his 30 grand, his buddy moves in, he pays two months, he stops paying. And then he didn't even tell you for another couple months. Then you get the guy comes in. So, man, this fucking jackass is a guy that got moved in and he's not paying. You're like, okay, well, when was, when's your, well, this is the 15.

So he didn't pay. Oh, no, no, he didn't pay in two months. What? They didn't pay in two months. You know what I'm saying? And it's like, oh, okay, well, are you going to hire an attorney? Well, I got what, I got to fork out money. I've been paying the mortgage.

going to fork out money, and you're like, yeah, why did you let him go so far? I told you not to even let that guy move in. You know, well, I can get my ex-wife. She'll get rid of them. That takes another month or so, you know, and then the whole thing is, like, literally, you'll find out, like, the guy is walking around talking bad about you. Or he'll even tell you to your face, like, you really fuck me on that deal. How did I fuck you, bro? You begged me to buy this property. Like, I didn't make any money on the deal. It's helping you out. You know, but the 30,000 is gone, you know, and now they're stuck with this property. And it's like, you knew that going in. And the property may go up, it's going up in value. You can sell it in a few years.

But yeah, you're going to have to, you know, you've made, all the bad mistakes have been made by you. And I've had that happen over and over and over. And I get to a point where somebody would be like, hey, man, you know, the thing you did was so-and-so. And, you know, she made like 60 grand. I'm like, Amber, I'm not helping you, man. And then you're a dick for not helping him. Well, you helped her. And I was dating that chick at the time, and that's coming back on me so fucking hard. Matt, you got to stop being a dick to everyone. I know. You're better off being a dick for me a dick. Just start giving money away for free. Just be like, give me your cash app. I'll send it over it. I don't help nobody. I help nobody. That's what

you guys. It's really heavy. Because these people, they turn on you, they plead for your help, and the moment you help them, and they have to provide, they have to do something. And they can't do it. You become this piece of garbage. Listen, I've even had a guy. I had a guy one time where he came back same scenario came back walked in yeah this in all these things were going wrong i was like look you know what i'll just uh you know what listen just quit claim quit claim d the property over me and i'll make the payments from now i'll take over the place i'll rent it out the whole thing and they're like yeah you're just going to take it over yeah yeah i'll just take it over you don't have to worry about it just give me the payment booklet i'll pay we'll get it you know i'll buy it

subject to the mortgage, and I'll make the payments. And they're like, oh, all right, cool, cool. Yeah. Yeah, I'll do that. Great. So just, we'll schedule the closing. You show up with 30,000, and I'll just take it off your hands. What do you mean the 30,000? The 30,000 you made. Would you want me to give you a 30,000? Well, you made 30,000. You said the problem is the hassle of having to pay the rent and collect the rent. Like, well, did you think that I was going to just pay the rent your house and let you keep 30,000? Wow. Like, you're a piece of shit, bro.

You were actually going to let me do that. But people will. They don't even think that that's fucked up of them. Like, you were actually going to be like, okay, cool. Like, I made three payments. And I fucked it up. My buddy moved in. He fucked me over.

I had to make a couple payments. I'm now willing to fuck you over, give you the house. And I'm going to keep the $30,000. Like, yeah, that's a good deal for me. like you're a psycho bro like that was a I mean listen I had people multiple times do that where I that was always the thing I'd go look you know what I'll I'll just take it over it they go okay just give me the 40,000 or the 60,000 or the 20,000 you made oh I don't want to do that oh oh okay you you were going to do it when it was I was basically basically I just given you

40 grand listen people are scumbags scumbags I don't know. I have this conversation with one of my best friends all the time where he brings in partners for his businesses. And then these partners just never deliver their portion of the work. And he always just gets frustrated. I make this like probably terrible analogy of like, you know, building your lion pack. But you keep trying to make a sheep into a lion just because you feel bad for the sheep because the sheep's all out by themselves. If you don't add lions in your lion pack, they're always going to screw things over for you. And then it's even worse when you brings a snake in.

to his line pack because the snake will screw things over right i mean i don't know i hate that you're at that point now where you know you kind of don't trust these people by any means but i don't blame you from your life experience i think i've had well i mean this is a long time i don't have the i don't have the luxury of helping anybody now now my now it is is i'm trying to fix the i'm trying to fix the the fucked up situation i got myself in i can't fix that fix yours too yeah that was 30 years ago, 20 years ago. Like now it's, now if somebody's like, hey, man, can you help me, bro? You're on your own, bro.

Like, I don't have another fuck up in me. So I can't help nobody. Not at 54. No, 54. It's over. It's all downhill. Well, I mean, I was heartbroken every time I got a attorney letter from an employee. For something, I was just like, what is going on with the entitlement here?

We're in like, you know, I probably paid you a half million dollars at this point over three, four years. And you feel like I'm doing you. dirty right now. Like, I might be struggling with something, but like, what are you, like, what are you talking about? Like, this doesn't make any sense. I think there's just this scenario where sometimes we feel bad for the other person and we want to pick up the slack, but we're doing them a disservice. And so I think as a manager after 2017, when I finally put myself back, I found that within me to be a better manager and to identify people in the certain buckets. But it took me a long time to figure that out, man.

hopefully gladly it wasn't 54 I'm only 38 and I got here now but I still make mistakes with trust I just had a guy quit on me that was with me for three months that to be honest like didn't know enough to have the position that he had and at the end of three months now he's like hounding me and kind of like essentially saying like hey like you didn't treat me right as an employee and I'm like dude you didn't even deserve the position to begin with right you were loyal and you did work and I was you know giving you the shirt off my back to make this work because you needed help but well I as an employee, go somewhere else.

Go somewhere else. You got nothing invested in this and your time that, oh, no, I got time, I paid for your time. I paid for your time the exact amount that you agreed to be paid. You wanted to make, you know, whatever it was, $1,500 a week. Yeah. I paid you $1,500 a week. You're a salaried position. You're not happy with that pay.

Go somewhere else. Or ask me for more. Can I get more? No. So work for this or go somewhere else. Like, you have nothing invested. And the little time you do have. was paid for. I'm not not paying you the 1500. I'm paying you the 1500. That's the beauty of being

an employee. People are always like, I want to own my business. Owning your own business sucks. You're working 80 hours a week. Everything falls on you. Everybody thinks you have money and everybody hates your guts and everything is your responsibility and anything that goes wrong is you and then your employees, they all think that they're owed something and you are. You're owed your salary, which you agreed to. And I can agree to pay you more if you're worth more or I can agree to keep you the same

and you have the luxury of having nothing invested in this company and you can go somewhere else. So I don't get it. I can feel the pain in your heart as you talk about it. I can't stand people.

Yeah, Matt, how do I get you to ask more questions? Look, do you have any idea how, listen, you know how you'll walk, do you read the comments, right? Yeah. Three people in a row, bro, I love the interaction between you and this guy. It's so great. You're such a great host.

You've really good proved. You're amazing. And then the next two will be like, bro, because you ever fucking shut up and let your guests talk? Like, nobody wants, nobody wants to hear you fucking talk. I'm trying to listen to this guy. Like, there's no winning. So, I mean, if you don't mind, I have my own definition of entrepreneurship. That is a little more hopeful.

I would love to hear your definition of entrepreneurship. In the comments right now, everyone just like, Matt earnestly wants to know what you have to say. So here's the thing, right? Like being an entrepreneur is really tough. I know that that's the case. But I feel like entrepreneurs feel like there's a better way to do something and have convinced themselves to go out there and have the audacity to convince others that their way is better with their wallets.

I mean, doesn't that sound like what an entrepreneur does? Yes. So. Sure. Thank you for telling you. I thought I didn't want to say, sure. Sure. So, I mean, it's just one of those things where it's like, why is Harvard Business Review putting

out the statistic the 90% of these entrepreneurs are failing in their first year? I think it's actually the first 18 months, not that six months makes a difference. But it's like, these are the people that are changing the world. They're making the world better because they have a way to make our lives more efficient or making a better product or making a cheaper product or whatever it is. And no one is supporting them. We're letting Prop 65 attorneys take those companies and brands down. We're letting ambulance chasers and increasing minimum wage and doing whatever we have to do to make it harder for these people to grow their business. And so my North Star and my mission where I am today in 2024 is that if I could just change that percentage from 90 down to 89 or

88, I'll feel like I'll have accomplished like the greatest success of my life, helping those guys grow their businesses and what they're doing. Does that give you some inspiration? Awesome. Yes, I love it. Super cool. This is a different side of you. What is in this coffee? I haven't seen you smile this much at all in the podcast.

You gave you such a riving about eye contact. I've never had a guest tell me. Listen, you're making a sick. Your eye contact sucked, okay? It had to be called out. Well, I feel, but I'm better now. You were using a lot of big words. I mean, you should have said something.

I could have brought it down the layman terms. So, but I hear you. I made a lot of money selling products that make you lose weight. And then I walked away from it all. So I think, I mean, do you want to hear more about the story? Well, I want to know you got some, some, obviously you got some lawyers to try and get some kind of a payout. You eventually got something. Yeah.

So, you know, the reality is during those last couple of years, cash flow became a big problem. And they didn't have the money to give me. what I would really want. And I just said, hey, give me what I put in, and that's it, and I'll walk away. To two years, going back and forth with attorneys and disagreements on what that number is that I'm owed based on what I put in. And we eventually came down to a number, and it was, for lack of a better analogy, like pennies compared to what I would have cashed out on if they just took that big eight-figure offer that we had a couple years prior. And the kicker, was that I was only going to get small payments

for the next three to four years and then I was going to get big payments after a year five. And so, I mean, it's certainly nothing to retire off of. Right. And you can only imagine in a moment of vulnerability,

I'm going to open up, Matt, and I'm going to tell you how I felt as a man. I just remortgaged my parents' home, right? With their knowledge? Yeah, of course. I'm sorry. Without it.

I mean, I guess, hey, mom, dad, sign this paper for me real quick. I don't know. You don't do that. You just sign the paper. Oh, for them? Okay. So granted, I do know my dad's signature by heart, but more importantly, you can just imagine

how heartbroken they are that I failed, right? They believed in their son. They gave me all this power of attorney and everything I needed to do to, like, try and save the business. And so I've essentially lost my parents' trust and faith. I'm with a girl that I've been with for about two years at this point. I'm about to propose, but she's just ragging on me every single day. you're a failure.

You should have fought harder. Can't believe that you lost everything. We have nothing now. Oh, you got to go. Well, yeah. But, you know, I didn't have much else in my life. So I hung on. I clung on to that, right?

But, you know, surprise, surprise, that didn't last. All my friends are no longer my friends because they're not work at the company that I left. And they're on team. Well, I mean, they did, they had their reasons to stay. And, like, we're just going to not go down that road. But I had all these people that were with me when I was on my come up and when I had the cash and all of a sudden when I had nothing, I had burned every favor, every relationship, whatever I could, and I was all alone. I was a shell of the man that I was when I was in Alpha Anker Guard mode, right? I wasn't AKG anymore.

I was this guy who didn't believe in himself and I had victim syndrome for sure, right? Like I lost everything because, and I had nothing to do with it. It was the other guys. They're the ones who affected me. So, you know, I did what any successful entrepreneur would do. I went and raised money. And I went and found people that would believe in my previous success. I'd be like, hey, give me a couple hundred grand.

Let me start a new business. Let me figure out what I'm going to do. And, I mean, it's not going to surprise you, but I failed again. No. And why? What do you do? The mentality was off, right? I wanted to turn on the supplement company because it was one of the things I was allowed

to do while I'm fighting this whole. battle for my shares and what they're worth and all that. And, you know, I took the money that I got from the investor and I burned it. I burned it on payroll because I was running an organization that 200 members of the team. And what I needed to do now was run something lean where it was just me and a handful of guys. But I was paying these guys 10K, 20K a month when, because that's what they were getting back then, right? But when you're starting back up in the beginning, I wasn't paying guys 1020. I was paying guys 3 to 5K a month. I needed to go back to normal salaries. Burning through this investor's money was probably a giant regret in this moment for me. And the companies just

couldn't possibly survive past a handful of months. Right. And so I ended up closing all those down. And I gave up on pretty much everything. I moved back in with my parents. I moved into the basement. How old were you? This is 2017. So I was 32. Oh, right? Worst time to ever move back in with your parents. But like, I had nothing, right? I had no money to my name. I was in crazy around a debt at this point. And the crazy man debt compiles, like compounds beyond just my parents' mortgage. I'd max out every credit card. I had also borrowed money from friends. Anyone who would, like, victim mentality, please help me. I can't pay my rent. And like a friend would write me a check and just compound even more and even more. And then on top of all, I was a personal guarantor

on business loans for the company. And so, you know, those guys started calling, where's our money? Because the company, for whatever reason, isn't paying your portion. And like, now you owe that portion. And it just, it added up. I think all in all, I was in debt $1.8 million. And so I got this magic phone call one day, and it was a mentor who was teaching me the ropes, because remember I said there was no one I could call for advice. Along the way, there were some vendors that stepped up and gave me some phenomenal advice along the way.

And this guy is now like one of my best friends, and we've been friends for a long time. I's name is Sean Marzalik, and he was the founder and CEO of SEC Nutrition, which is at a manufacturing facility in Pittsburgh. I was like, yo, I heard you're a free agent. You should come work for me. And I'm like, Sean, there's zero chance I'm ever moving to Pittsburgh. Like, don't, don't you dare try to get me to move to Pittsburgh. It's too cold.

He's like, it's like, it's a same weather's jersey. Just come check it out. I know you know nothing about that life, Matt. But for the rest of us, like, we just assume Pittsburgh is like Canada. Okay. And so, you know, you think the Steelers, you think people playing in snow and stuff with football and whatever else. But he flew me out there.

I hung out with him for a couple days. And he said, hey, man, listen, you can be my chief marketing officer. I can pay you. enough money to get by, to pay rent, and whatever else. But I have all these other brands that I manufacture for, and maybe you can consult for some of them, and you're okay to take on whatever side projects you want, and just get out of Jersey. There's nothing keeping you in Jersey anymore.

So I packed up my car, and I drove over to Pittsburgh, and I stayed in a hotel for the first couple of months because I refused to pretend like I moved to Pittsburgh. Right. But eventually I got an apartment, like a little tiny shoebox apartment, maybe the size of like half of your kitchen, right? And literally it was just like, you know, the toilet in the kitchen were in like the same room. Like it was incredible that I even survived in that place. But I paid off all my debt in six months.

So it was kind of like a prison sale. Yeah. To be honest, it was my repentance in my prison cell. I didn't go out. I didn't party. I like, I ate the same meal every single day. It was like a $3 meal that I was getting from a restaurant because I didn't have time to cook because I was so busy doing everyone's marketing work and whatever I could do. And I did that for six months.

I worked day and night like a dog to pay off all this debt as fast as I possibly could. I think it was like a couple days into like month seven. And I realized all the debt was paid. And now the money that was coming in was my own money. And I was like, what do I do with this money? So I slowed down. And I realized I didn't believe in myself anymore, even though I knew I could do good work. But like, I wasn't holding my head high.

And funny enough, Sean. and I were at a coffee shop and I mean this is another fun story so right at a coffee shop and there's like this hot girl three three like tables over and her and the guy that she's talking to you get into a fight and then he like storms off I'm not talking about like a fight like you and Jess right like it's just like a regular like argument and this dude just like storms off that I just sound like we get into physical fights no you know what I mean I mean like you're not wrestling but we're not like you and Jess mean like cute that you guys kiss at the end right i mean like these guys are going at it right like

yelling at each other in public and the guy domestic violence there's no domestic violence here that's that's uh sorry for painting the wrong picture i meant like you guys are cute you guys when you guys have a little argument it's not a real argument right this is like a real argument right the yelling at each other and everything the guy storms off and she starts crying and so i'm like Sean i got to like go talk to this girl make sure she's okay bring her glass of water so i go over bring a glass of water and I'm like hey like that dude's an asshole don't worry about it like everything will be okay and you know her response was like that's not my man and I'm like what's what's going on that you're like crying there's like this big Pittsburgh nonprofit organization

and it's like 30 under 30 or 40 under 40 something like that like Pittsburgh's best 25 or something like that I can't remember what the name is but people host a charity event and raise money for a disease and whoever raises the most money gets awarded and like all the stuff that happens in Pittsburgh. Her thing was a charity boxing match. And so he was one of the boxers. It was amateur boxers with personal trainers that the personal trainer company was just getting all the amateur boxers trained up for this like amateur match. And so she was like, where am I going to find an extra boxer at this point in time of my life? You said I can box. And I'm like, I can't box, but you could, yeah, I'll do it, right? She's like, there's no way you can be trained in three weeks.

You didn't say that, did you? I did. She's like, there's no way you can be trained in three weeks. And I'm like, listen, I'll do whatever to get you to stop crying right now. And so I pretty much spent the next month in like Rocky to boot camp, you know, like where Rocky was chasing after the chickens and like, well, I did all of that. I was waking up every morning at 3 a.m. doing whatever the trainer told me, I, um, out of like misery and self-doubt, I weighed like 285 when it started. By the end of, so the fight got pushed back two months for reasons I don't remember. I was very lucky. So now I got three months of training. By the end of it, I was down like 215 and I was lean. I was looking good. I lost the match, but I mean, I was terrible.

To be honest, it was rigged. The mat, the mat I tripped on in the middle of the second round, and then they called the fight because they were like, oh, we don't want this big guy to fall. But it jump started this whole, like, confidence thing for me again. And I was able to kind of go out there and start creating content again. I launched my YouTube channel at that time. I started getting a bunch of different subscribers.

What about the girl? So she and I ended up being friends. And I was at, like, some house party, and I introduced her to the guy that she ended marrying, and, like, everything's good there. That's not a great story. I mean, after I got to know, she wasn't my type anyway. And, like, Pittsburgh girls, although, you know, amazing in their own right, were it weren't really my thing, right?

So I spent- Did you tobacco or something? What is, are they aggressive? Like, what's wrong with them? Oh, man, I got to spill the tea on Pittsburgh girls. I mean, so. Are they too aggressive, too? So Pittsburgh was like 92% white, and I would often go to restaurants and be the only person

of melanin in my skin at the restaurants. And it was just weird. Like, I don't know how else to describe it. So I was on the dating apps in Pittsburgh, and, like, I would get dates, but then they wouldn't show up. They would just stand me up. And, like, I don't know whether it was like, hey. Did they not see pictures of you? No, of course they did on the apps.

But, like, I don't know. Maybe I was, like, the closest thing to, like, a black guy. and that was like their dream or whatever the situation was, but like they just got, they wouldn't actually show up for the dates. So I think I only like went on a handful of dates with a handful of girls in Pittsburgh during my entire three years of living there

just because they would never show up. Right. And then there was a couple longer term, you know, girls I dated for like maybe a handful of months when I was out there. But it just wasn't, you know, it wasn't like a Jersey New York girl or an L.A. girl where like they get in your face a little bit.

They were just like so nice. And I just, a girl that, like, talks back to me a little bit sometimes. Well, she's, my wife's taken. Well, I mean, my wife is a solid jersey girl. She knows exactly how to talk to me, and it's awesome. I, listen, on the day, I'll tell you, I had a chick not show up on a dating app. She, we texted back and forth for a few times when I was single, and we texted, this is

recently, I mean, not recently when I'm saying, it's like, I'd been. out of the halfway house a few months. And so we're going back and forth. We're texting back and forth. And because I had been on the dating app, but I was very upfront with girls saying, hey, here's what's going on, just got out of a halfway house. Just did like 12, 13 years in prison. It just got out of the halfway house.

You'd really not put your best foot forward. Wanted to let them be very upfront, right? Be very honest up front. Literally probably had four different girls go, wow. I am so glad that you told me that and that you were so. honest about it up front, that's going to go a long way with me. And then never heard from them again. So I had a friend Stacy, was like, you got to stop doing that. Stop telling them. I'm like, well, they're going to figure it out when they, when they, you know, look me up. She's like, yeah,

but initially, most of them don't know your last name. Most of them don't know anything about you. She's like, so just tell them like what your first name is. And, you know, that's it. She's like, wait till you go on a couple of dates with them. And actually, I think her or one of her friend's advice was wait till you sleep with them. I was like, well, that's even worse because now, like, what if they're definitely not interested in dating guy who's a felon? Now I've slept with them. Like, that's a real dick move. We need to sell this dating story to Netflix. Because this is definitely a TV show. So here's what happens. So this one chick, it works out perfectly. She never asked me nothing. And we schedule we're supposed to go to some restaurant. You know, we actually live not

too far from each other. Great. I drive there and on the way there, she says, hey, let's switch this over to, you know, from the messaging service through the app, which was like match.com or something or I forget, whatever the app. And I was on, you know, two or three of them. So I switch, I go, okay, she goes, here's my number, text me. So I text her my number. I text her, but it obviously hit now she has my number. She definitely Googled it.

Google it, never showed up. And then not just that, I go back. Like, I'm like, so first of all, you didn't show up. I'm sitting here. You didn't show up. Like, have the decency. If you're the decent person and I'm the scoundrel, then do the decent thing and say, listen, I googled you.

Sorry, I'm not interested. But no, I get, not only do I get ghosted, I think, well, maybe something's wrong with the text thing, right? Like, I'm fresh out of prison. I don't really know how these things work. I'm like, maybe she couldn't because of where we are. I don't know. And I was like, maybe the service.

So I thought, well, I know the messaging through the app works. I messaged her through the app. I don't get a response. So after 30 minutes, I drive home. I drive home. I tell the chick that is living in her spare room, like the rooming house that I'm living in. I explained to her and she's like, oh, that's so weird.

And I go, yeah. So I go back on to kind of check again, like maybe an hour later. Like, I wonder if she responded or whatever. I can't get on the app. She got me kicked off the app. I mean, you are a scoundrel, so it makes sense. But she also got me kicked off another app. So I'm now kicked off like two.

I was down to like one app. And I'm like, oh my God. I mean, yeah. So you only got stood up a few times. I got 23. Huh? 23 times in a row. No.

Yeah, I counted. It turned into a game with my boys. We had a little like thread. We were going another one. 23 times. And that's worse than mine. And I would like text the day of the cage is confirming, right? Like, you know, they'd be like, yes, everything's good.

then they just wouldn't show up. Wow. And nothing even close to that craziness comes up when you Google me. It's just like, you know, social media influencer stuff. Oh, yeah, my confidence is at an all-time low. But three years in, I start traveling a little bit with Sean, with some other friends, visiting family all across the country in the world. COVID happens.

Okay. And, you know, we're not sure what direction that company is going to go into. I'm like, hey, I've kind of had my time here where I've done a lot of amazing things. And like, maybe it's time that we part ways, right? And so, myself, you know, at the same time, there was concerned with my parents and how they were handling COVID right there of that age where I'm concerned, you know, if this is going to affect them. I heard that they were like buying groceries, windexing it, leaving it in the garage,

bringing in a day later and then eating it. And I'm like, my parents are going to drink bleach if I don't go home and try and help and, like, do what I can. So I don't know for people at home counting. But, like, this is now the fourth time I have to start over my life. And so I moved back to New Jersey and I moved back in with my parents. At this point, it's 2019, 2020. So now I'm 35 and miserable being back with my parents, COVID, lockdown, whatever is happening.

So an interesting thing happens. And Arvin's original partner in Shredds is, you know, calls me up. And he's like, hey, my wife's working at this biotech company. And she just became in charge of this new division of the company. Can you help her because they need a new website? And I'm like, yeah, bro, I owe you a couple favors over the years for him being like a point of guidance or someone I could talk to whenever there was issues with the companies or whatever else. And so I quickly built a new website.

And I don't know if I explained this, but like I'm a full stack coder. And, you know, Indian, obviously, I don't know how to code, but I can also grab a design and all that other stuff. given you didn't even have to go to class i've self-taught to be honest yeah and i went to school for finance and astronomy remember and i can tell you where all the constellations are um so i built this website and then the owner of the biotech company calls me into his office and it's like hey man tell me what else you can do and i can have one of these like oh i can do anything you want moments and so he brought me onto his marketing team and i helped kind of grow that company i was there during their their uh they went public through a spec merger they uh launched a bunch of

clinical trials on some new pharmaceutical products. I was there for a solid three years of my life. And then unfortunately, for whatever reason, money in biotech dried up. And I wasn't sure what I was going to do anymore, but they ended up firing like 90% of their staff. Were you one of the 90%? No, I was. Okay.

And marketing is always the first group to go in these large companies. But it was the first time I was in corporate America, and it was very different for me. I mean, I never experienced some of the things that people experienced in corporate America, like pedigree prejudice where you know some people are like from Harvard versus some people from Rutgers or whatever it is over there and um just learning the ropes of corporate America and learning how to manage better by reading books and working at nine to five when actually coming home at normal hours very different for me but uh but yeah no in uh in march of twenty twenty three we're skipping ahead a lot of years we they eventually um sent out those

morning letters and fired most of the of the company I uh I'm back to number five of starting my life over. And I promise, this is the last time. It's never going to happen again. Because now I know everything not to do. I see you shaking your head. But the culmination of this story is that I now have like five MBAs in real world practice of all the things that can go wrong in all these different positions

and environments and industries and so on and so forth. But I also have all these success stories of things I know how to build and create and kind of grow in any format that I want to. too. Right. So, I mean, back to the girl portion of the story, I found my wife when I moved back to Jersey on a dating app. Interesting enough, she canceled on the first date, but she did the respectful thing, and she gave me her reasons for canceling, and she's like, maybe I'll come back to you in a couple months. So I was like nine months later, and she came back to me, and she said she was finally ready for that first date, went on that first date, kept asking for more dates,

and now we're married. What was the reason? And she said she wasn't over her ex. Oh, okay. And And so I'm like, okay, you know, if that's what it is, I'll be your friend. And so we were friends for like a month where we were like messaging, following each other on social media. And after a month, I'm like, screw this girl. She's that serious. I'm like, I'm not sitting here and needing a pen pal. Like, I'm good.

But nine months later, she like slides in my DMs and she's like, hey, how about that first date? And so I'm like, let's do it. And it just kind of happened that I was still single at that point in time and we're married now. But my wedding was in July shortly after leaving the biotech company. And so I had to figure out how to start over again, and I did the only thing I know how to do is you'll go back into marketing and consulting. And then I started the marketing agency, which is called AKG Creative.

And I no longer have partners or concern of like, I don't have any veto power. I can protect the employees. I can protect myself. I mean, different partners or clients that I have. And I've just kind of been growing that for the past year of what I'm doing. And I mean, I kind of feel like that's this. crazy story of how I've built this nine-figure business over the years, you know, having made over $125 million, lost at all, and now I'm kind of on this journey of rebuilding this

empire to figuring out where I'm going to go from here. Okay. And it's, it's in Jersey. Yeah. And how many... You're going to say it with a smile on your face. I don't say it with like Jersey. I've been there. Less humidity. Um, uh, no, I actually, um, actually my, but Julian he lives in Hoboken that's in Jersey right yeah you can see New York from there right yeah we went to we went on a walk and he said that's New York and I was like okay um it didn't look any different to me but a lot of buildings wait you didn't have like a wow moment looking at the New York sky I didn't it was dark there was a lot of lights and stuff and you know they're just like it's not you know I mean there's all it's it's it's shocking because

there's so many buildings, you know, but, um, what would impress you as a view? Uh, I like, I like Florida. I'm, um, you know, so gators and swamps. Yeah, that's pretty, no, not really. But I guess, you know what it is, have you ever been to, um, uh, it's in Miami? It's, uh, what is the area in Miami that's super, um, uh, Brickle. Like, Brickle is, you know, there, somebody said it was the, um, um, uh, it's, uh, uh, somebody said it was, the it's the manhattan of the south you know sure all 20 blocks of it but it's all like so new and crisp and clean and there's no trash and there's no like homeless people and there's no so like to me when i we went to new my wife and i went to new york i was interviewed by somebody for

a tv program we were actually both interviewed like there was a lot of homeless and trash and there was a lot of stuff going on and there was, you know, a lot of buildings and they're old and some of them were falling apart and, you know, and there's people yelling at nobody and, you know, just like, you know, mental illness and there's garbage piled up, not even just garbage like that you throw on the ground, although there's lots of that, but there's like garbage, like they bring it out and they just stack up the garbage. Like, I'm like, this is like a week's worth of garbage on the street. Nobody's picking up this garbage. It was, that was, that was, near Times Square.

Am I allowed to request graphics in the edit? I mean, you could probably... Can we put like a little dot on the screen of like 20 blocks, which is the size of brickle and how easy it is to manage brickle? Very nice. Compared to miles upon miles of what New York is. It is. It's outrageous.

It's too many people living together that close. I don't feel good about that. I think they need to be spread out more. Definitely needs to be spread out more. Well, that's what Jersey's for. Jersey there seemed it wasn't it was not nearly as bad as New York okay but there were still a lot of people in a very little you know and I like I think it's cute the way they'll have like a tree that's trapped in like a round metal thing surrounded by concrete and you feel like oh like that's you know look it's it's it's you know landscaping or but it's not it's really this little tree that's sticking out of the ground and it's surrounded by the like there's no dirt like you couldn't even find dirt it's you know it's uh but it's cute and uh you know there's a giant park in the year called central park yes i know i know that's that's that's that's there like

12 little blocks of greenage oh it's not little it's not any means is it as big as brickel it probably is you probably put brickle in yeah maybe that's where they got brickle no they picked up brickle and moved it to miami and that's what was left you know that would be interesting. Right? But we could start that as a conspiracy where people say, that's how we're brickled. And then they cleaned it. But on the journey, they cleaned up Brickle. I'm just saying like the X-Miles theme song. Like, this is where Brickle came from. Yeah. But Brickle is, but, you know, it's nice. And like, there's like, there's clearly a lot of money there. I've stayed at the Conrad in Brickle and I loved it. So like, no shots at Brickle. It is great. But Brickle is what amazes

you. So if you took a walk and you, saw Brickle in the skyline, you'd be like, wow, that's such a nice place. And maybe that's what, like, Manhattan. That's what I think Manhattan is like, but I never didn't go to Manhattan. Okay. You know, and honestly, like on from the airport, you know, it's from our way to the airport to where we went. Like, I'd never seen that many buildings in my, like, you can't see anything. Like, there's no woods or anything. Like, you're looking, like, as we're driving over the bridge, we're looking and we're like, there's, there's buildings as as far as you can see.

And it was like, this is, and Jess and I were like, this is fucking insane that anybody would do this. And yet these people come here and they come there and they live there their whole life. City that never sleeps. They don't have any alligators? There's no alligators. There's alligators.

We can stop at any body of water that we drove here. Any body of water, there's an alligator in it. There are giant rats in the sewers. And this isn't even giant. I think there's like a, there was a rat that was like three feet long. Holy shit. Yeah.

That's not three feet long. It almost looks like a dash hounder, whatever you call those long weaner dogs. It's running through the sewer. Yeah, it's running through the sewers and the subways. Oh, that's nuts. Yeah. I didn't go on the subway either. I probably think that might be cool.

Although all the violent scenes and movies happen, like in the subway in New York. There's always a subway scene where, you know, the gang members get some guy on the subway and they have to, and they fight it out. Like, you saw Joker. Of course. You know, there's always the Joker scene. or the um like the Joaquin phoenix one yes yeah uh but you got the better of those guys oh he those weren't even that wouldn't even a gang those are stockbrokers this is so refreshing

for me someone who doesn't live in new york this is very rare no it was it was i'm glad i went you know i wouldn't say oh i'm but yeah it was like three days later and it was like yeah i'm good i'm good it's time to get out of this place i've lived in over uh seven countries i lived in the big I liked the big TV screens in Times Square that were on the buildings. They were like three, four, five feet tall. They were huge TV screens. That was pretty cool. But they weren't playing anything I liked.

Is it because your face was on one of them? No. Then I would be like, nice. Like, let's live here. So that's all it takes. Yeah, I'm not a simple man. Kobe, it's only five grand for a full 30 seconds to get on a billboard. That is some secret sauce that most marketers don't know.

Nice. So if you've ever seen, like, someone launch a show or TV and they go to Times Square is, like, look, I'm on the billboard. They just paid five grand for 30 seconds. I have a commercial that I did a few years ago, and it's still running. And it was on Fox News, CNN. So my mom had, like, CNN on, right, one day. And I used to go, like, three days a week. I thought you only had three channels.

No, no, this was recently when I got out of press. This was a few years ago. This was before my mom died. and I would go every like three days a week I would go and have breakfast with her and I think in mind I just got out of prison and I would go have breakfast with her and we're sitting there and she's eating breakfast you know she's in a wheelchair and she's like 80 what no she's 90 she was like 93 years old and she's eating and I come on the TV and I'm like oh mom who's that and Newt I'm interviewed by Newt Gingrich so Newt Gingrich comes on and she says it Newt Gingrich. I go, no, no, not him. And then I come on. I go, look, that's me. I'm being interviewed by Newt Gingrich. Look, that's me. And she's like, oh, yeah, what is this? And I go, this is a commercial idea. Remember I told you about the commercial? I mean, this is me. I'm on CNN. I'm on CNN. I'm on CNN. I'm on CNN. I'm not impressed. I could care less. sorry. What about your sister? You should go to dinner with your sister. Oh my God. You know, just not just could care less. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's, I was on TV, kind of like the big screen thing. And she wasn't impressed. I didn't realize that

kind of oppression extended to white people. That was just immigrant families. Oh, no. My mom was devout Catholic. You very disappointed in it. It wouldn't matter how well you were doing. Was there ever a point where she was like, I'm proud of you? Have you ever, so she was Norwegian, and there's a famous saying where it says, there was once a Norwegian man that was so in love with his wife, he almost told her. That's my mom. Okay. That's my mom.

See, you know, you would paint, like I would paint something as 15, 16 years old. I'd come in, I'd be, look, mama, she'd come in, she'd go. The shadows are off. You know, that was it It was like What, No, look, look the picture Yeah, the shadow, look

This is way darker Shadows are off And you can't I don't think that's correct With the, And I'd be like It wouldn't matter No matter what

It was always Tweaking, tweaking, You know, It's always the little I feel like your fans need to get a hashtag Going for you Like Matt needs a hug

And you see what happens With that hashtag I'm happy I came out extremely well-rounded Norwegians need love too It's okay And you have a a six-pack. Don't tell me that you're coming out well-rounded.

I don't have a six-pack, exactly. I'm five or six pounds away from a six-pack. You can see them. There's a supplement I can tell you that could help you get there. So what are you? Are you doing the... You're not doing the supplements anymore, are you? So, I mean, I run

a marketing agency now, and so I probably manage around 2,000 different skews that are sold on Amazon, Walmart, directly consumer spaces like websites, like Shopify and so on and so forth. But, yeah, Yeah, no, I own supplement companies of my own. I do consulting for other supplement companies.

It's what I'm famous for is building supplement brands. So it just kind of lands in my lap pretty often. The beauty of marketing is that it hasn't changed in the actual, like, baseline model of what marketing is. So from day one, it's X. You've got to have a product, which is phenomenal, which you can make jokes about sugar pill or whatever, but a good product is something you have to constantly invest in. That really touched the nerve. then you have to add why, let's call why an audience, people who need that product. So X plus Y equals dollar sign.

Yeah. Well, it's no good if nobody knows about the product. Right. But you need to have access to that audience. Right. So I like to put X plus Y in parentheses and raise it to the Z power. And I call that marketing. So marketing could exponentially grow your sales or could exponentially destroy

yourselves if you don't do it right. Now, that model of marketing hasn't changed in hundreds of years, right? I mean, I dare say thousands of years, marketing has kind of always been the same concept. Yeah, I remember back of the caveman days when you can, when you were born back then,

so it makes sense. When you can see the, on the walls, you could see the X, Y. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if like financial fraud

was a thing back then, right? But like, I'm sure they came up with something. Give me a chance. Give you a chance. So the, the beauty of like,

whether the vehicle is TikTok, right, or it's YouTube or back then, Instagram for me or whether it was like dot com purchasing in the 80s and 90s and figuring out how to do like,

black had SEO, like ads and so on and so forth, like marketing is marketing. And I mean, people tell me that email marketing's dead. I laugh at them. Email marketing is alive. And after the algorithm change with the privacy settings, with Apple and their update that they had, marketers have to go back to being real marketers and not just counting on Facebook ads or, you know, Google ads or whatever to bring them customers. So that's where my skill set comes into play immediately.

Because I'm all about building brand equity, owning your community. owning your audience. And that's what I did back in the day with all that customer experience that I was doing. Let me, let me pick your brain for a couple of fun facts that could turn into some TikToks. So have you ever taken protein? Yes. Well, I mean, like when I was young, when I was like in my teens and early 20s. Okay. So there's this whole concept that you want to get into shape. You start buying protein or the supplements. You get a gym membership. You get some gym gear to go to the gym, so on and so forth. What do you think is the number one reason people don't buy the same supplement in

month two that they bought in month one? I mean, they'll see immediate results, maybe. So this is going to blow your mind. It's because they never opened it. That doesn't seem, that doesn't seem pragmatic. In 2024, people make this decision, I'm going to do a lifestyle change, and they buy it off Amazon or they buy it off a brand website. It shows up two, three, four, five.

days later, go straight into their pantry. And it's because people don't realize that, you know, I need to actually take action to make something happen with this. There's no different from being a real estate landlord or whatever that from your partners in the previous businesses. There's got to be action taken to initiate change, right? And then the consistency and willpower and discipline and so on and so forth. So any brand in 2024 that's trying to grow their business just has to figure out how to get them to open the jar and try it because that's the step to making it happen right it's no difference than me selling a gym membership where someone's like hey just drive at the gym walk around have a glass of water and go back home you got to

build a habit of going right if you want to start showing up every single day and i mean that's that's all i apply to any business that i talk to listen i can't tell you how many times jess and i've gotten up gone to the gym walked in done three exercises and said i can't i'm just i just can't do this let's and left and literally on the way home i'm like listen and least we went like that's a big deal like it is it is showing up 90% of the battle but i i think it's only a big deal when you have three spoons of sugar and you know three tablespoons of butter with a roll at some point of the meal you got to take care yourself man that's all i'm probably going to eat today i got i got i got to lose away i can't i'm i can lose five more five more pounds

i'm like 172 i was down to 169 about a week ago but we had a bad week and you can't you cannot What's a bad week? Like you ordered cake and dessert every meal? Not every meal, but you can't outwork a bad diet. You know what I'm saying? Oh, 100%. Like you can say, oh, no, I work out and I do that. It doesn't matter.

You can still be 50, 60 pounds out overweight. No, I'm running 45 minutes every time and I work out hard. And I understand, but you're eating four hamburgers a day and you're eating cake and ice cream. And you're never going to lose weight. But the diet cook. And the diet cook helps. Right. And if the Diet Coke helps, but you're never going to lose any weight.

Like, you just can't outwork a bad diet. So that's what kills me, like, if my dieting is not the best. It is maybe for three days, maybe four days out of the week. But then it's three days and it's just bad. That's not good enough, Matt. I know. We need you to survive to be 93. Like, you've got a ways to go.

I know. What would it take to get you to fix that diet? What would it take to fix the diet? That's a good question. Because I don't know it's not discipline. You have the discipline that comes to making money. I have very little discipline. I used to be super.

When I got out of prison, I was super disciplined, right? But, you know, I've, I've slacked off on discipline. I'm still, we're still getting up in the morning, still going in the gym. I would, it's definitely, you know what the problem is, is that the accessibility of food. And so we've gotten to the point where we have almost no food in the pantry because I'll just eat it. So just give me nothing, you know? so even bread we can't have bread in the house i love bread you saw what i did with that bread sure it was a half a stick of half a stick of butter on a little tiny baguette i just want to we have

that on camera we can prove that it was half a stick of butter it was it was good it was a lot of butter just delicious but still too much butter too much too much bread and that was a salad like i feel like i ruined that salad that was a good meal but you go to like factor meals or any one of these meal prep companies and fill your fridge up with healthy meals we've talked about that i've told her over she said that's what we're going to do i go do it do it i'll pay for it do it she never does it deep down she doesn't want to do it i don't think she wants to do it okay so it's her fault it's always everything's her fault anything i can shift blame under her of course i do oh man i need to take notes teach me teach me your way sensei no good time she's 18 years younger than me bro

Like the truth is, let's face it, I'm not, I'm not going to outlast this chick. I don't know, man. I kind of a feeling that you would survive, you would survive like a nuclear bombing in this country. I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. I just want to go out in the nuclear. I want to just, you know, I'm going to be gone. So you're the guy where they're like, aliens are landing at this spot in Miami,

and then you drive over there. You're like, go ahead. Give me the rapture. Take me first. Did you ever see that? The Mars attacks? Yeah. They throw the doves.

I don't know if that's going to try it on TikTok, but we could try. I don't feel like these kids know what that movie is. What are, what, Colby doesn't know. What else? That's another hashtag. Like Kobe doesn't know about this. That should be a hashtag. 100%.

Why? What else? What's another topic? That Gen Z kids don't know about? No. Because we could talk about that for a whole podcast episode. I love those videos. It makes me so sad when I watch those videos, and they're like, they can't, they don't know that there's 50 states.

They can't name any of the states. They can't name any of the capitals. They can't name, you know, it makes me so sad. They don't know who the vice president. They don't know who the president. They don't know who the last president is. They don't know who, like, it's, they don't know what continent they're on. I mean, it's tough.

Who do you think is to blame? I mean, I would say it's a combination between the government and their parents. You blame the parents. Yeah, don't you? You think it's because the parents are too busy working to try to survive and earn enough money? Or just maybe they're not interested in their kids the way people used to be interested in their kids. Do you have kids? Me?

I have one kid. He's not interested in me. Okay. So he's like 20. God, what is he? 23, 23 now? Yeah. Man, Norwegian?

I mean, he's half Norwegian. He's half Puerto Rican. I tried to explain to my wife that he's 100% Norwegian. and she was just a vessel. I was like, that's like saying that the guys on the assembly line that put together the car designed the car. They didn't design the car. They put together the car. I'm like, he's Norwegian.

He's 100% Norwegian. She disagrees. She yells and screamed. She's unreasonable. Well, I mean, we could talk about your son more, but I think you probably want to hear more about the juicy details of any of the stuff that I've been through. Are there any other questions that you have for me? I mean, you've told me, you're, what's going on with Tom? I love to know, how's that relationship?

What does that relate, that dynamic about? Are there any Italians in Tampa? He keeps telling me he's Italian, but he's got like blonde hair, fair skin. He doesn't look Italian to me. He keeps telling me he's Italian. So, you know, there's like Sicilian Italians that look a lot more like you. And then there's the other Italians that have all the different ranges of the skin tones and everything else. Okay.

He's most definitely Italian because this man, once he starts talking, it doesn't stop. He's just going to keep going and he has no volume control. I love the guy. He's one of the hardest working sales guys I've ever met and he runs a lean team that just kind of crushes it with the different things that they do. But that man is very Italian. Yeah, well, he has a podcast where he, well, he doesn't anymore, but he used to only like interview and talk about like the mob. But I think now he's doing other stuff. He's trying to branch out.

Aren't you? I mean, out of, I mean, like, I've, like, you don't have a crime story. But I mean, this is more out of desperation, bro. I mean, I, you know, I, I, you know, sometimes you get to that point where you're, you're, you're scared for caught. You're like, oh my God, we don't have anybody lined up. And I'm like, I need somebody. And then Tom was like, well, I know a guy with a story. I was like, I'll take him.

No. Oh, so I'm the desperate guy that you feel the slide. The bar. Listen, sometimes the bar is higher, sometimes it's lower. Listen, may I watch enough episodes, so no, I have to wear the black shirt, right? So, like, I don't know if that's a thing that you put in your rider from now on. I need to start asking people to wear black shirts. I just felt like if the FBI guy did it, I should do it too.

Yeah, yeah, right? Because he knows something. The FBI guy, he's actually pretty interesting. He's got a TikTok follow. I mean, he had not TikTok following. Oh, does he? Yeah, yeah. I think he's bigger on Instagram.

Well, at least I see him more on Instagram, he said. Yeah. That's where you get more leads and sales and things. Yeah. Yeah, he does investigative work. He's got some good stories. I don't know how you meet these people. I made all kinds of that.

I have, I know some of the, this is so cool because I really do, other than just prison, which, of course, you mean all kinds of interesting people, criminals. But, you know, except for everyone's while. Not everyone. Every once in a while. No, there's guards there. And that's just a matter of time before they get picked up. But then you have guys every once in a while, you'll meet some guy who's like, oh, man, it's like, stop it.

You know, but usually six months later, they've dropped that act. They're like, so listen, one time this guy came in and they're telling you some other story, you're like, you know, you don't sound innocent. So, but yeah, but then I got out and then doing this podcast, like I'm constantly, you know, you do meet super interesting. Sometimes you meet crazy people, crazy people. I had a guy one time I met like at a coffee shop that was going to tell me. me this hugely amazing story about police corruption and then like 20 minutes into it you realize like oh you're insane like oh wow like you had me there for a little bit but now i'm understanding you're just nuts have you had crazy fans that like followed you i have some

fans that are semi unhinged you know where they're yeah i have and you know what you when you said the oh wow i've made it moment i didn't really have that it's that it's not like that's the this was a moment but there was a time when I thought this this is turning into something like one time I I went to and this is COVID by the way I had a mask on and this had already happened multiple times where people had recognized me right but you always kind of think well that's a fluke but one time I went to Tampa International Airport so I go there I'm waiting in line during COVID I'm waiting there and I picked up the phone to talk. And I think I spoke on the phone, you know, because I'll do the whole hit the

button and just talk and send it. So I did that. And this guy kind of leans in, looks at me and he goes, you're on YouTube, right? And I was like, yeah. And I'm almost positive this how the conversation went. And I went, yeah, he said, yeah, yeah, I recognize your voice. He's, but I can, I recognize you too. And I was like, like, I got a mask on. And he's like, yeah, I think I heard your voice. And he's like, and I was like, he was like, yeah, yeah, I watched your whole thing. And then his buddy, he's like, who? He looks, and I pulled my face down. He goes, oh, yeah, bro, you're the con man guy, right?

Yeah, I saw you on concrete. So we have this little, I'm like, little chit-chat back and forth. Then I leave there and when I go and I get on the, that's you say that again. That's you, man. No, that's your watch. I don't even. Oh, it was, man. Oh, that's just the FBI listening in this conversation.

Fine. And then when I go and get on the plane, I'm walking down the aisle. And this guy goes, hey, Matt Cox, what's up, man? I sit, like, right across from this guy. It's like, bro, like, I watch your stuff. I watch this. I watch that. I'm, you know.

So I remember thinking, that's pretty cool. But almost every time I go to the airport, and I almost never leave the house anymore. But almost every time I leave the house, if I go anywhere, there's people. Like, I go to the fair, somebody recognized me. I go to the airport. Like, I remember one time I was rushing. to get to another, you know, flight. And as I'm rushing, some guy goes, as I'm, you know, it's the escalator things, right?

And you're going by, as I'm walking, I'm walking fast on the escalator walk, because I'm really thinking I'm going to miss this thing. As I'm walking, the guy goes, he goes, Matt Cox, he says, I love you, bro. And I go, love you, bro. And I just kept walking. And, of course, everybody around me is looking like, what the hell? And just kept walking. And I've had that happen a few times.

And then when Jess and I went, I forget where we went, but we were getting on the plane. As we're getting on the plane, we sat down next to this guy, and we both sat down. And I'm in the middle seat. And the guy looked at me, he goes, oh, man, he said, should I check my wallet? And I went, what? He said, yeah, you're that con man guy, right? I went, oh, my God. And Jess goes, oh, Jesus.

And I just put her. And I was like, I can't believe you recognize me. He's like, yeah, man. I just watched that one of your podcast a couple days. ago. So there have been those, those times are super cool in comparison to the fact that I think, bro, a few years ago, I was laying in a bunk bed in prison worried, how are you going to make a living? You've come a long way, man. I mean, it's that's, so that is, so it's definitely, it may not be a you've made it, but it's definitely a, this is surreal. Like, this is a surreal

moment. Dude, that's, that's awesome. All my stories when it comes to that stuff, I mean, I mean, there's the random, like, hey, Ankara, I love you. Like, from, like, walking down the streets of New York. Right. They always happen in opportunities where I'm talking to someone, and they're always, like, what the F just happened? Because, like, they're, like, surprised that it happened. It never happens when I'm by myself, which is interesting.

But there was one time a fan. How cool is that, though? Especially if somebody's there. Oh, trust me. I love it. I love it because it never happens when I'm alone. There's always someone who, like, will remember that that happened in real life. It's no good if you're alone.

It's no good. Then I have to tell you the story so much better if Jess is standing next to me and somebody, season. I'm like, ah, ah. But there was one time we had such a, like a super fan. We went on tour, we were the six different cities in seven weeks, and like we like took over that city, like a gym and everything like that. And this one fan went to every single city, sneak into our hotel rooms, leave us like gifts. And like we didn't think that the hotels would do this kind of stuff, but they did. And then I remember maybe like six months later, this super fan shows up better office building gets kicked out because we're like we don't know this person you can't send

them up to our office floor and everything waits till the security guards go on break smashes one of the windows open or the side of the building to get access to the stairwell runs up the stairs and tries to get inside our office but we had like a gate in front of like the elevator between the elevator and our door standing there banging on our glass trying to get in our head of HR like ran out to try to block this person and the the They were just like, I just want to meet Arvin and Knocker, like, this whole, like, crazy fanatic routine. We end up calling the cops. The cops show up.

I think she grabbed the gun off the cop's holster. And it was like, you got to let me in to see this person. And so the cops tackled her and, like, took care of it. And, like, we didn't hear from this person again for a long time. But there was definitely. When the restraining order was released. There was definitely a lot. Like, that was probably the craziest fan moment that ever I experienced.

There were times where, like, people at Expos would ask me to. sign weird parts of them and there's someone who has my signature tattooed on them which was very interesting that's interesting and so i mean i mean i've seen like tic-tok's right taylor swift is going to sign someone's arm and then they get a tattoo and stuff like i'm not taylor swift like why would you want my signature of all things but um yeah people get fascinated by you know um different things but it's funny you mentioned the tattoo thing i have a buddy named john bozac who does tattoos he was supposed to tattooed. So Danny Jones runs a channel that's in St. Petersburg called a Concrete.

He switched it. It's now called Danny Jones. But one of his fans was going to come on the show and get Concrete tattooed. And Boziac was supposed to do it, but they never were able. They never ended up arranging it. But I was like, you're really going to let this guy tattoo concrete? And he's like, yeah, of course, of course. Keep in mind, too.

Danny Jones changed it from concrete to Danny Jones. That big guy would be walking around with a concrete tattoos and it's spelled with a K. Like it just doesn't make any sense at all. Just calling old super fans of Matt don't tattoo the logo on yourself because he doesn't approve of that logo going out of things. I don't mind the logo. Not coasters, not tattoos. But those things change. So, yeah, they, we're going to get a tattoo.

We're going to get a shark tattooed on Jess. okay because that's kind of like my thing is that in a wee moment there where you're i'm going to be there okay um i'm going to pay for it so uh as a matter of fact it's funny because if i have make a purchase over five hundred dollars i have to tell my probation officer so can you imagine i put that on the report you know it's like 900 dollars shark tattoo on wife but yeah because my memoir is called shark in the housing pool and so my emblem is kind of like the shark so you know that has to be the easiest out from getting somewhere to like fly down to see you i got to tell my probation officer if i pay for the flight to come

join the podcast yeah i can't i can't do it is how i should start doing that yeah i'm i can't i can't come down i have an ankle monitor on i'm just gonna tell people i'm i don't probation officer and that there's all these new rules what other rules are there i mean nobody really knows what the rules are so you can say anything but i do what's funny is i i do like every time i fly somewhere i have to notify her i have to say hey i'm flying to los angeles here's where i'm staying here's where i'm going They asked for, like, what kind of a vehicle who owns the vehicle? I'm almost, you know, you just put like Uber. This form's got to be 50 years old.

So, you know, you fill it out. You put the address of the hotel, the, you know, then you need the phone numbers. They need the phone. What's the podcast? Where are you going? What's the purpose of? Because she has to approve it. Like, if I said, hey, I'm going to L.A. to hang out with one of my friends for a week.

She'd be like, not on probation, you know, even when I was like, hey, I'm, you know, my wife and I're going to go to on a like a honeymoon and she's like well let me know where you're thinking of going make sure it's not super expensive like she has to approve everything so it's like she's like I really kind of need to know you break down like what they're the cost is because if I were to go to say hey we're spending $5,000 we're going for a week she'd be like no no you're not you're not spending $5,000 on that I'm sorry you'll have to wait and that's part of the reason we never you know what's the reason they don't want you spending money Well, I owe roughly, roughly $6 million, you know, so I have to make restitution payments.

So, you know, I'm good for it. Don't give me that judgment. Look, I'm good for it. No, it's not judgment. It's just like you're very calm for owing that kind of money. Oh, yeah, but no, but, yeah, I'm fine. Like, I'm, it's good. I'm making payments.

And so the problem is that if you're paying, like if you said, hey, I'm paying, you know, hey, I want to buy a car. I can afford it. the payments of $1,200 a month, they'd be like, no, no. Like, because their fear is it may, even though I've never not made a restitution payment. So every month, you get a calculation of how much money you made, what the percentage, like, there's a whole formula that I have to break down. And this is what I made.

Here's where that income came from. And I break it down. I'm like, okay, so based on this, I owe $920. And then you give it to the probation officer, and she's like, okay, and then you cut the check and you send it to the courts and they get it. And it changes. constantly. It may be $500 one month. It might be $1,100 one month. So what their fear is, is like, okay, well, if you're paying $1,200 a month on a car, when you could probably get a car

for $300 a month, you could be paying more in restitution. Or even if it was, let's say it was $600. It was within reason. And they were like, okay, but, you know, we don't want you to get into a position where you're like, yeah, I can't afford all my restitution this month. they'll be like, really, you think it has to do with that $1,200 car payment? Like, that was a mistake. So they don't let you do that. They don't, they don't, yeah, it's, it's an issue. You know, and there's no negotiation.

These are not people that are like, no, I totally get it. You got over your head. It's not scared. What would happen if you missed the payment? I mean, I could be violated. I could be thrown back in prison. Only doing probation. Yes, once you're off probation, it gets shifted to, I think it's a financial,

it's some financial department within the courts that's I was told it was well it becomes a civil judgment right so it's a it's a federal sorry it's a federal judgment but there's like a civil diversion a civil department that is in charge of collecting that but they don't have as much negotiating power because now it's like okay if I just say go fuck yourself like they're going to say okay well you're going to have a federal judgment on you yeah but I have one anyway they'd have more poll if it was like $30,000 because like I I could pay that off. In two years, that could be paid off. But when it's like $6 million, it's like, look, if I spent, if I kept 10% of my income and gave you 90% of my income every

single month, I'll never pay off $6 million. So the incentive for me to really go out of my way to try and get this debt off of me, no, I'm going to give you something. I'm going to make you okay, I do agree I should pay, you know, and I want to pay something, but I'm not going to pay something so, I'm not going to pay so much that I'm destitute, and I'm living in someone's spare room. And that's what people would, and, you know, if you let people out there make that determination, what do you think you should pay? People are cruel. They're like, oh, you should pay every single dollar he has, and he should be sleeping out of a park bench, and he should be like, okay, well, you're delusional. It has to be within reason. And, you know, because I can't pay nothing.

So I'm willing to pay something. I'll pay a few. hundred dollars a month, but I'm not, I'm not gonna not, like, I don't have a car. I don't have health insurance. It's been five years. I don't have health insurance. I've been coughing for six months. What do you do? Are you, it's because you're an entrepreneur and you're like, you know, whatever is you're doing money. It's because how, like, I don't, I, like, if I were to pay all those things, then how do I pay my restitution every month? Do you see what I'm saying? Like, it's, it's that bad. Keep in mind, they're taking the gross. it's the gross it's not the gross less my expenses so you can't say hey i made nine thousand

dollars but i spent four thousand dollars so i have i can pay my restitution based on five they're like no you made nine so it's not like 20 you know you'll say like well 25 percent of what i make goes towards right no it's way more than that it's like 40 50 percent of what you make and you have to pull now what do i do about taxes i have to account for tax you And by the way, at the end of the, at the end of the year, when you got your $4,000 for your tax return or somebody gets $2,500 or I didn't get mine, the government keeps it. They go, eh, you got a judgment. I'm like, yeah, but I'm already paying every month on the judgment. That's my schedule for the court.

And they go, eh, fuck you. You know, when I, when you got your, when you got your COVID relief money, you got your $1,200 check, you got your $14. And you got your eight. There's one for, it was like $1,600 or something. I didn't get mine. The $1,600 check, they're like, oh, if you didn't get the check, claim it on your taxes. I did. And they said, hey, you got your $1,600 check, by the way, for COVID.

Thank you. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Yeah. Man. Yeah. So, you know, not that I want you to feel bad for me, but it's like, you know, like if people, you know, well, you know, why aren't you bawling? Bro. I'm not bawling because I'm paying out the nose.

to, you know, for restitution, but at some point, listen, bawling to me right now is getting to me, I'm excited because in four months from now, I'll be able to cut back enough so that I can get, I can get, um, health insurance. I mean you figure out what's going on with this cough. I gotta go, yeah. And I've gone to the, to the, to the, I've gone a few times to the doctor. And it's like, it's like 175 bucks every time I go. I just recently started realizing like, I've had this cough for how long. But my fear is that I have this cough.

And they're like, oh, you got to go for this. You got to go get blood work. You got to do it. Ah, Jesus. So now I'm, you have $1,000 into this. And then they say, oh, you know, you're a throat cancer. You have to go get this and go get that and go. Well, I can't afford any of that.

I'll just have to die. So. I mean, you did want to go first. Yeah. Yeah. That's not how I want to go, though. How would you want to go? A massive heart attack.

Okay. Why that? Well, I feel like that's final. I don't want to linger. I don't want to be taken care of. I don't want to be in a wheelchair. I don't want anybody feeding me and having to change your diaper. I don't want to do that.

I don't want to be a burden on somebody. I want it to be a massive heart. Or maybe if it's some kind of cancer, but something where it's like you're dead in two months. You know, you get to say goodbye and you get, you know, that kind of cancer where it's like, you know, it's not too, too bad. You know, maybe for a week you're in bed, sleepy. They give you morphine. I want to go out on like morphine or possibly. some kind of like a heavy what else is they got they got that um oxycodone i want to go on maybe

oxycodone and morphine with a drip you know i got a button you know where you're watching tv and people come in and they cry next i don't have a lot of people to cry next to me but just to get somebody's just will get somebody to come in and cry tell you how much i'm into them and you know pretend it's fine and then yeah then uh then i you know and then one day you just you just fall asleep and You just stop breathing, and then that's how I want to go. Okay. I mean. If we could arrange that.

I don't know if I have the powers. I don't know if I have those powers. Do you, are you, you, you're Indian. We have like, we have a thousand of them that we can pray to. So you can give up around. You can go to the next one. You don't kind of look up. You just kind of like it could be.

It's all within me. So I just like talk to myself. That's cool. Isn't God within you two? Do you believe? in God? Yeah. Okay.

You know how, you know, did you see that? Did you see the look at his face? Do you know how many times I get this? People will tell me, like I've had, literally had multiple people when we're talking about something, a God will come up. You don't even believe in God. It's like, I've never said, and I don't mean one or two people. I'm talking about a hundred people over my lifetime who have specifically told me,

you don't believe in God. And I'm like, what gives off that? why do I ooze that lets people think you don't believe in God? I've never said that in my entire life. Sunday, I was at church. The Sunday before that, went to church. Sunday before that, winter. We're going to church this Sunday.

I've never said I don't. Not only do I believe, but I go to church. I don't know. But you just had that look like you don't believe in God. I've watched 40 hours of your podcast. And so I just feel like if I like, gave it to AI, the transcription. It was like, tell me what this man.

Does he believe? It would say, oh, he doesn't. Atheist. Yeah, there's just no way. Why? I don't know. It's just, I, just, the vibe is there that like, you're like, please God help me by any means.

I feel like you're a man that could solve his own problems. No, I don't expect God to do anything for me. I don't think that's, I don't think that's, I don't think that's, I don't know. This podcast took a weird turn towards the end. It did. I mean, I don't expect, a lot of times they do, but I don't expect, you know, it's funny, I wish I'd say this, but have you ever seen those things where it's like the, the guy's talking to God and he's like, God, like, you know, please give me patience. And God says, well, I'm not going

to give you patience. I'm going to place you in a position where you'll learn patience, you know. God, please give me, you know, wealth, you know, I won't give you wealth. I'm going to place you in a spot where you can learn how to gather wealth. You know, I will give you challenges, you know, make me wise. I will give you challenges. And it's up to you, you know, to make yourself wise, to learn from those challenges. And I think that's God. I don't think God ever does.

The whole, the idea of miracles and stuff, I don't really believe in miracle. I think good things happen, but I think a lot of good things. Hey, so what did you want to talk about? Well, I want to tell you about Wagovi. Wagoe? Yeah. What about it? On second thought, I might not be the right person to tell you. Oh, you're not? No, just ask your doctor about Wagovi. Yeah, ask for it by name. Okay. So, why did you bring me to the circus?

Oh, I'm really into lion tamers. You know, with the chair and everything. Ask your doctor for Wagovi by name. Visit wagovi.combe.com for savings. Exclusions may apply. It's happened because you made them happen. You know, you were in that position. to allow yourself to create those things. And I think that God gives you those chances, you know? I feel like after the insane roller coaches in my life, I always think they have that statement that God only puts the obstacles in front of you that you can handle. Right.

Right. And I was like, yo, God, all the gods. Isn't that enough? Like, I don't think I need to handle any more than I've handled already. But you know what's funny about that is that through this whole thing at the very end of this whole thing. This whole little roller coaster journey, making good money, losing it, good relationships, bad relationships, good decisions, bad decisions. At the end of this whole journey, which took how many years? A decade? Yeah, right about. Do you know what you just ended with?

You ended with, I feel like I've made all the bad choices and I'm at a position where I, There's, I've learned so much as a result of all of that, all of those choices. You know, who do you? You are right. I do say that. Yeah. Who did that for you? Like, you have to kind of give that up to God that he put me in these positions so

that I could learn to become the person that I am. That's who you are. And, you know. Thanks, big guy. I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. I think you should always be thankful. Introduce me to Matt so I could jump on the podcast.

Absolutely. It's all good. I almost put you in trouble on the couch. I'm talking about you and your wife fighting, so I apologize. Didn't try to say that there's any of the issues. We do wrestle sometimes, but I stopped wrestling with her because she is super strong. And it's extremely humiliating to have like a 120-pound girl pin you or be so exhausted from fighting with her, wrestling with her, that it's like you just stop fighting. you just lay there and you realize she can do anything right now i can't stop i can't fight back

you know i'm just imagining the memes that would happen right i do i just lay there face that he's making she'll she'll get on me she'll just kind of she'll pop me in the face and i'll just she just huh huh say that again huh and i'm so exhausted i'm just just submit matt just admit let it let it have her way my fear is one day i'm going to wake up. She's going to be on top of me, pin it beyond me. She's got this way of putting her, her bony knees on my arms and pinning me. So it's hurts to even move. And she's going to be holding a pillow over my head, screaming, going to the light, going to the light, you know, that sort of thing. Because the life insurance policy is paid up. I'll tell you that.

That wouldn't get a heart attack. The only thing she ever ever says, she didn't ask any questions like, when does, when is, did you pay the rent? Did you pay the light? The only thing I ever her area is, you know, did you pay state farm the life insurance policy? Like, that makes me wonder. Who would you want to cover your murder mystery? I feel like that's an important question. Nancy Grace? No, what do you mean? She thinks everybody did it. You have like a murder mystery podcast. You talk about these stories. You've done investigating. Who would you want to be the one looking into your murder mystery? We've interviewed some guy. Do I want the FBI guy? Do you mean an actual, you want a detective? Because I've got like 10 of them.

I mean, journalist, detective, whoever. Who would be the person that would get down to the bottom of it? I would say... Jack Reacher? I would say Candice Calderon. Okay. That was the FBI agent on my case. She was relentless.

She hates me. She wouldn't try and catch anybody. She wouldn't try and catch anybody. I don't want Candace. She would let him go. Who would look into my murder? Nobody would know. No.

Is you hear? She just said nobody. would know from the back corner she told me she told me one time she said i will i will kill you and i will feed you to the gators i just drop she said i don't have to cut you up everything i just drop you off she goes i just drop see you know what she'll do and listen don't think that when she told me let's go alligator hunting that that i thought to my don't think that i didn't think we're in the fucking middle of nowhere all they have to do is rock the boat a little bit i'll fall off you'll never get out you never you know first of all you don't even know where you are do you understand

that the weeds in the boat the boat you're sitting up nine feet in the air and the weeds these things the grass is higher than you so if you fell in the water even if you could stand up because you can it's not that someplace even if you could sit up there's so it's nothing about a wall of weeds you don't know where you are i can't navigate from the the stars i'm not a captain of a ship like i don't know i don't have a degree like you do do you know how to find the north star at the very least You couldn't see it. It's straight up. It's a tube.

And as soon as the boat goes over it. Your ancestors came on the Pinta. That was them. And the weeds that are laid down. As soon as you drive on, they go like this. They come back up. It's so terrifying. And then, listen, there's gators everywhere.

And you know, she's telling me, she's like says little things like it's like, you know, it's mating season. And I'm thinking I'm getting lucky. That's not what it means at all. It means that they're all riled up and excited and they get into a feeding frenzy. So does that make you feel like you should let her win in arguments? I feel like I let her win all the time. Okay.

Even though she's always wrong. Always. I'm not going to entertain that topic. You know how I know she's always wrong? How? You know, because I've never done this. No, I think I have one of the time. But only because I thought, I'm tired of arguing.

where she literally, we've gotten into an argument and she's stormed off. And this isn't, I don't mean this hasn't happened once. This has dozens and dozens of times. She knows it. That's why she's laughing. You know what she does? Ten minutes later, she comes down and she walks down and she's like, I'm sorry. I get crazy.

I don't know what I was saying. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I love you. I'm, I don't know how you deal with this. And I'm like, oh, my. God, a minute ago, she's ready to stab me over something. And then she, now she's, now she's totally like telling me she's absolutely wrong. And thank you for putting up with me. It's like, we argued for 45 minutes.

I'm convinced she didn't do it. I'm going to have to tell the murder mystery guy that it wasn't, it wasn't just. It was a crazy fan, for sure. They wouldn't find, find me anyway. They wouldn't. And you know what the worst thing is? She just, it's not like, it's not like she would have to rent a boat. the people that she knows like in Okachobi

she can tell them come get my, come help me move this body and they'll be like absolutely Jeff no problem I'm shocked you had to ask me I'm embarrassed that she had to have they'll go and they'll put me in a freezer for five days and then in the middle of the night

they'll put me on the boat they'll go in the middle of nowhere and they'll drop me off in the middle of Okachobi and the guyager will eat me and they'll never say nothing because they're those kinds of people Oh my God! That was even scarier. That was a scary.

Did you ever see wedding crashers where their old girl goes, I'd find you? Oh, that does kind of remind me that scene. Man. But Matt, thanks for having me on the podcast. It's been fun. Usually I'm trying to wrap it up. He's trying to wrap it up. Any Hollywood stories that you can get into or not?

I mean, what do you want to know? You want to talk about Diddy? What do you want to talk about? There's all sorts of things that we're. we can get into. All I'm going to say is I've been to enough Hollywood parties that I agree with Denzel. Don't stay at a party for more than 30 minutes. Get out of those parties if you're not into weird shit. I just don't know what I can talk about that isn't going to result in me getting pulled into court. Because the level of detail that I know is deep, right? So, I mean,

not participation deep, but like, I witness deep. Go the difference. The difference. There's a great difference in what this stuff is. All I'm going to say is, like, the dark side of Hollywood is 100% crazy. Like, it's wild what stuff people get into and they have that kind of freedom and power and money and you just boredom, right? And I think LaCray has an interview where he talks about these parties and he's like, there's definitely people that are like test how far you go. And if you take a step, they'll take a step with you.

And like, however deep you want to get into the craziness, whether it's, you know, going from one type of drug to a different type of drug or whatever or the other side of stuff. And, I mean, it's just a side of Hollywood and all that that I never enjoyed. I mean, when we were out there for the years that we were there, I mean, I had a lot of fun, but it was clean fun, right? Entry-level drugs, entry-level partying and whatever else. And I was a DJ for a long time, so I was definitely into, you know, jumping from party to party, club to club and all that other stuff. but only this stuff you see on TV, really, right? I never did any of the other crazy stuff that's out there.

Yeah, we basically just kind of start. Like, I mean, but what I, what I'd like to start with is that, you know, just like the beginning, you know, you were born. It was a, it was a rainy day in India, you know, Tuesday, the 25th, 4 p.m. Nice. No, what was it? Was it? I was a month late, apparently. I just wasn't ready for this world, but I came eventually.

and then my parents are like the prince has been born we got it right on the first try they raised him up no more this is it ran out to the villagers and showed them they immediately filled the paperwork

we must bring him to America that's a great scene right like the villagers they race off to get the you must bring him to America I thought he said Indiana no

Indiana Gen Z man I know I can't. I can't. I'll mention any, half the TV shows I mentioned. Colby just, it's just this, the blank look. They have these YouTube channels where people go to the streets of Times Square and they ask people like, can you name five states? Oh, yeah. Oh, no. It's horrific. It's for real. They really cannot name. Oh, I have no doubt. Any of it. Listen, I was in prison. I had guys asking me basic questions. I had to stop. After about six months, I had to stop myself from, my initial answer was like,

really? Like, are you serious? And I realized, no, they are. Can you sell time? No, sorry. Okay. It's right here. It says it's 1150. I have nieces and nephews that cannot tell time. Oh, listen, or what about writing cursive? I mean, they can't. It's just not even something they teach anymore. It blows my mind. Cursev I can't. You can't? I mean, I probably know how to do my name in cursive, but that's probably about it. You're an old soul. You've met the threshold to hang out with us. Congratulations. There we go. What was it? We were driving in the car and we were listening to something on the radio. I think it was like Simple Man or something. And then they came on. Jess was like singing, you know, this kind of like singing along the song a little bit. And then it came on. It was

like, hey, you know, 105 classic rock. And she goes, oh, that's classic. I was like, yeah. They played 2000s music and put up the classic journals now. I'm just like, what? Man. but um like i remember when when uh tracy chapman's fast car came out you know like we'll watch tv shows and how old are you and i'm old and then i'll remember i'm like i saw this she's like have you ever seen this i'm like i saw it in the theater and she's like oh my god did they have color back then yes just barely impressive no there was when i grew up there were three channels and you had to get up to change the channels man it was really four because it was like a local channel.

It was like the major networks and there was a local channel and you had to do the ears with the aluminum foil and everything. Yeah, yeah. We had a VCR that you push the button

really hard and it went you know, it at the top, it shot up, you know, and so you pulled it out and put it back. Those are honestly way cooler

than what they have now, right? It was almost like a car. Just had to like put it in and it was like futuristic. It's pretty cool. They don't have those anymore. Do you know what a VHS is,

Kobe? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to rewind him before you turned back. He's lying. He does not know what a rewind button is. He saw that on like King and Queens. Yeah, he has no idea. There's no way.

Okay, so, so India, India. Yeah. The chosen, the child has been born. I'm the Brown Eddie Murphy. We must bring him to America. So when did you, when did your parents, what's the right term? usually yeah i was going to say sometimes nobody's there it's like the fedex guy and then they bolt yeah i'm okay with that when someone's still standing there i had that initial shock like

fuck what did i do it could have been me this time i don't know you just got here that's the whole point a brown man with the beard flew to tampa something's up i'll give you up like in a heart me, I'll be like, you did here. Wow. He did something. You know, you get pre-check and clear and all these things, and they still randomly select you every time. Not me.

I walk right through. I tell them, they tell him, Mr. Cox, and you take off your shoes. Like, hey, listen, bro. I'm not like these other people, okay? My family came on, they weren't on the Mayflower, but they were on the pinta. Now, fucking run my shit through. I'm going. I just walk right through.

And it beeps, and I go, I'm fine. They go, yes, sir. They let me get my bag and I leave. That's how it is for a white. guy. And you have the record? They don't know. They don't know. It's fraud. They're like, Mr. Cox, you do have a record. Hey, hey, my family came over on the pinta. You understand? The pinta. You understand? And it was fraud. And they're like, oh, my bad. I thought it was drugs. I said, no. What am I supposed to say? Christopher Columbus was looking for my people. You only exist here because he messed out. He made a mistake. And now there's Florida. He's like, I found India. He didn't. Christopher Columbus didn't even find America. He didn't. He literally. It wasn't even. Even close. Was it, was it Puerto Rico or Cuba?

Somewhere out of the Caribbean, yeah. Yeah, yeah, he didn't even, yeah, yeah. There's like somebody, America, Francis, America or something, I forget it was name. No, it was the Vikings, man. No, that was, if you can't count that they didn't have written record. If you don't have a document, it didn't happen. No, I'm telling it was like the, you know, then they didn't colonize it.

Like they landed and said, eh. I don't know, there's some big Native Americans that are really light-skinned. I feel like some Vikings had something to do with that. I mean, maybe. What happened to your people? I'm all, I actually am all Nordic. I'm 100% Nordic. I used to think I had Native American blood in me because I have a slight tint, right?

That's not Florida. No, and this is just like I almost never go out in the sun. So I'm just kind of, you know, if I do, I get super brown. So my always growing up, my father, who also was super dark, much darker than me, would. say, well, yeah, I have Native American Indian in me. And so we got, my wife got me, Ancestry.com, whatever, for Christmas a couple years ago. And we did it. And literally 100% Nordic. It's like 75% Norwegian, which I knew. I knew because my grandfather came over from Norway. So it's like almost all Norwegian, Denmark, Sweden, like that's it, across the board.

and you don't know how to start a fire no i don't need to know how to start a fire your ancestors would not be happy with you i mean that's right that's i'm past all that we've got i mean i've got like a little stick i got a lighter thing i don't even get a lighter like a regular lighter i have the lighter stick so it's got a long thing because i don't want to get in there lighting a candle to burn myself we can't make fun of gen z anymore i mean he doesn't know how light a fire of course he does He calls you. He calls his parents to do it for him. My wife can light a fire.

She can light a fire, kill an alligator, kill hogs, deer, live in the woods. It's impressive. Yeah, I know. But, you know, you don't really need those skills. I feel like that's a waste of. Until you do. Well, I mean, yeah, but like I said, once again, we had this conversation. If the apocalypse comes, I don't think I'm going to.

survive to get to the point she sees her in the walking dead she sees herself as the survivors right like she's a member of the cast and i'm like an extra as a walking dead you know i think if there's a nuclear bomb that hits like i'm wiped out in the first wave she sees herself surviving and restarting civilization no 100 she will be one of the survivors yeah i don't want to do that like i want to be right under the bomb i just like i just listen i almost never go outside i love air conditioning so you're saying if podcast didn't exist anymore, you don't want to live. I mean, I could probably go back to fraud, which would be super cool, but I don't want to do that jail time. We got to wait five months, right? And then maybe? I got four more months

of probation. Listen, this chick's all over the last four months. I haven't seen. There's like a couple years. I didn't see any of these people. I got a phone call like every two months, you know, because of COVID, they like let you kind of loose. And then now they're tightening up the reins. Now she's calling me up, asking me questions about stuff. Like, what is this? What's that? Why didn't I get this space statement? What's going on?

Did you take out a credit card? Is that a credit? I'm like, my God, what do you leave me alone? Like, what happened? Why did you suddenly get interested in me? I'm almost done. The system's tough, man. Once they get, once they get their claws in you, they don't want to let you out.

No, no. We'll see. We'll see what happens. This, besides, this seems like it's working. I'm good. As long as this thing, I'm going to play this out. As long as Colby doesn't. mess up. I feel like he's going to mess up something and they're going to take my whole channel

down. That's what I think. Colby's going to like leave something in there, put a clip in a naked woman or something and boom, they just take everything down. I have a buddy that that happened. We might get like 20 million views on that one clip. It could be worth it for the cloud. No. No, I'm good with a nice little slow. But what are we doing? What are we talking about? You came to America. Let's get back to America. How old were you? Ten months. We have to wait for all the appropriate vaccinations and everything that happens.

And then my dad had an older brother who was already in the country, and so he sponsored my family. And what ends up happening is once you get here, you then have to find work, right? You're going to, at that point in time, say that you have a job or whatever it is that you're doing. Right. But it's very tough for an immigrant. And this is 86 to find work in this country when you don't have an American degree or anything like that. So my parents actually ended up rotating around different family members in the country. And when they eventually settled in Queens, where my dad went back to school to get another degree.

And my mother was just a grocery cashier person, just the pay through school and everything like that. And then his first job was a civilian contractor in the military. Okay. So he ended becoming a computer programmer, Indian guy computer programmer. Of course, that's a given. Right, right into what you'd expect. And as I was a civilian contractor, we moved around like crazy, wherever his contract was, and whatever we had to do. So I actually ended up moving seven different times in five years.

A little kid. How old were you? This is first grade all the way up to sixth grade. I graduated elementary school twice. Why? Just because the first time I moved, elementary school ended at fifth grade and the second time I moved that year, elementary school ended in sixth grade. So I think you go up with the big kids, you have to go right back with the little kids. It was quite entertaining.

I was going to say, like, the biggest employer of Indians is Indians, right? I don't know. White people love us. I don't. I feel like white people employ a lot of Indians because we do like to work. They're still doing about our work ethic. You know, it's funny because, like, there's all these little... enclaves of

suburbs here are like predominantly Indian all back here and they all have big massive houses I mean they're huge there's a ton of Indians like we'll walk around the neighborhood Jess and I will go I'm going to say jogging

you're that intramal walking I think they call it it's walking jogging walking so we'll go around the it's like a one hour oh I mean sorry a one mile lap and we'll go around and I'm telling you And these are the poor ones in this neighborhood. That's right.

This place is, is this like middle class, right? These houses, upper middle class. Like, this is, yeah, these things go for around 450,000. So, but I mean, the multi-million dollar ones, it's, it's all Indian. So they're doing something that's working. I mean, if only it's what we did in the 80s that turned out these families having the homes that they have now, right? I mean, I don't know, I talked to. They built those houses on the backs of your, your parents.

I don't know about my parents, but I know that saving was a big deal for immigrants that came to the country in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. And so there's a bunch of statistics about it, right, where, you know, Asians and other immigrants that come here, they would literally spend maybe an eighth of their paycheck to live. And then, like, three quarters of their paycheck would go into savings. And then the ability of compounding, I mean, you know all about this in finance, right? I mean, they just figured it out before everyone else.

Not me, though. My parents, they were the smart ones. For me, it was always about figuring out what my next hustle was going to be when I had a chance to start hustling and figure out what I was going to get to the point where I would eventually be a millionaire because that was the dream. All of us young immigrant kids were just like, well, I don't want to be a computer programmer. I don't want to go to like the doctor engineering route that my parents were forcing me to get into. And, I mean, for me, it was being a musician. It was where it kind of started. I mean, I sold some weed.

I tutored, and I wanted to, like, talk to girls. So you could imagine as an Indian kid growing up, I skipped a grade, which, you know, just happens with whatever it was in the schooling system. Because my parents started teaching me math at the age of, like, two, right? Like doing like one plus ones and all that kind of stuff. And I ended up getting into, like, high school at the age of, like, like 12 or 13 and figuring out, you know, how to talk to girls at that age when, like, your balls haven't even dropped yet.

Right. It's impossible. They don't want to talk to you, right? But you go to, like, a high school dance and everyone's talking to the DJs. Right. And so I was like, I have to learn how to be cool like these guys. So I go up to these DJs and I came in, would you teach me how to spin? Because like, I know music because I'm, you know, I'm illegally downloading every song I possibly can and burning CDs. I know Kobe doesn't know what a CD is, but this thing that you would put music on. Right. And figuring out. what I was going to do to like... I think they were coming back, actually.

CDs are coming back. There's no way. Yeah, yeah. But for computers. Like, their computer CD because you can... I just saw something the other day on it. I don't know. It was a TikTok.

They were like, no, they were coming back. But it's not for music. It's like a CD that goes in the computers now. And it can hold like tons and tons of data or something. I can be wrong. I've been wrong before. I can be wrong. But anyway, go ahead.

I'm sorry. So you're doing your burning CDs. People don't come to this podcast for tech advice. No. No, no, they don't. Listen, if you're expecting professionalism or accurate information, you need to just move on. So pretty much, these girls aren't giving me the time of day. So I teach myself out of DJ from joining a DJ crew. And it's a bunch of the South Asian DJs. You'd be surprised how big the Bollywood music and party scene was back then. Right. And I mean, this is around the time when Bad Boy was just kind of like growing and blowing up in the New York scene. So a lot of the clubs and, you know, the party opportunities that were happening there. for both the no age and the older 18 plus crowds, they were just blown up. So I taught myself how to sell tickets in the streets and the DJ.

And, I mean, I thought I was going to be Tiesto. I mean, Tiesto wasn't a person back then, but I thought I was going to be the guy who I looked up to was this guy named J. Dobby. And J. Dobby was one of P. Did these DJs in his circuit. And, like, I feel like he kind of made it in life. And we had all these Indian artists like Jashon and Rago that were, like, essentially coming from the U.K. and like from just the South Asian market, but coming into mainstream markets. I mean, J. Sean eventually got signed by Little Wayne's record company.

And so, you know, I thought that was going to be my future. But long behold, DJing wasn't going to be what it was for me. And so I eventually kind of had my slumdog millionaire moment where I landed in an opportunity of a hundred different failures leading to my one success, which was kind of creating social media influencers. Okay. How did that come about? So, I mean, a little backstory here. I went to college, got the degrees and all that kind of stuff, and I went to school for finance, and I got a minor in astrology, astronomy, not astrology, because I had all those AP courses

and stuff. Do you know what AP courses are? No. Okay, so, like, they eventually had, like, these college courses in high school that you can take, and then they'll give you credit once you got to the college space and everything. Right. So I graduated early, and in college, they were like, hey, you could take these extra courses and go down on this other science route. I know that would have made my parents happy, but I was like, screw this.

I want to get out of here as quick as I can to start making money. So, I mean, throughout my career, I had tried everything from tutoring to distribution. In distribution, I'm talking about, like, shipments and, like, picking up packages and stuff like that. Not the kind of distribution that people you know in your circles are talking about. But I eventually became like a mortgage agent, real estate broker, like a whole bunch of different things throughout my career. And I mean, it pushed him to shove. I ended up in the financial world doing an internship at Marilyn Lynch, and I hated it. I was staring at four monitors of Excel, and I was like, I'm going to kill myself.

This is not going to pan out for me. This isn't the life. But as a DJ, long behold, you don't make money unless you're the guy bringing people to the party. So I taught myself out of graphic design, computer geek, Indian guys. surprise surprise surprise you ready okay hey hey no okay sorry thank you that I really hey you guys hey you guys thanks for tuning in this is Ankur the happy guest of the show if you want to learn more about me just follow me I'm going to put all my links in the captions thanks guys okay let me try first I'd like to thank Encore for coming

on. What a great guest. I'm going to laugh at you see that. Sorry. Jesus Christ. Hey, you guys. Really appreciate you guys watching. Do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button.

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