Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - The Rapper Who Made $400K Reading the Market

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

He's the guy behind "Betty (Get Money)" and a fur coat two-step that took over TikTok, but before Yung Gravy was flexing platinum plaques, he was studying finance and marketing in college. Today on Money Rehab, we sit down with the rapper who lives a double life: viral hitmaker by night, options trader by day. Gravy walks us through the trade that made him $400K, a bet on 1-800-Flowers stock at the start of COVID, built on a grim but accurate read that funeral orders were about to spike. It's the kind of call institutional investors make quietly all the time; Gravy just said the quiet part out loud, and the internet has been arguing about the ethics of it ever since. We get into how a music-industry paycheck, unpredictable, front-loaded, gone as fast as the trend that made it, pushed him to actually learn the market instead of just spending like a rapper. What it's like sitting in a room with a finance background while everyone assumes you can't do math because you rap about money instead of manage it. Where the rap flex ends and the real portfolio begins. And whether the same instincts that write a viral hook are the same instincts that spot an undervalued stock before anyone else does. Private Wealth Collective Nicole's boutique wealth management practice for people who want more than a robo-advisor and less than a hedge fund minimum. Real strategy, real relationship. The Money School Nicole's $149 investing course that actually breaks down stocks, ETFs, crypto, and building a real portfolio, no jargon, no judgment, lifetime access. Start investing investing at SoFi.com/MNN ----------------------- Find other exclusive content at— Instagram: @moneynews TikTok: @moneynewsnetwork Website: https://moneynewsnetwork.com

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Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. So how much have you made overall on trading? Okay, we're on the flux right now. Can I say? Yeah. 1.568 mill.

And you see the growth on there? 653%. Young Gravy is a beloved rapper. We have known him through his music until he dropped the mic on a crazy financial trade. That video went viral and I had to know more. Today, Gravy tells me about the options trade that created a major, major payday for him. During COVID, I want to say I put in like 30K. came out of like four.

That shit was popping. What he's investing in now. My strategy is investing in now. strategy is investing in the infrastructure of the newest thing. So like AI, computer chips, all that. And how musicians are actually making money right now? A lot of processes here, you know. There's writers. There's producers. There's mixers. A lot of people that go into the process of making it. Once you put out the music, there's a ton of other things that come along with it. Touring, then you sell your meet and greets, your merch. There's a lot

of different things. So here's the big question. Have you made more money from your trading or from music. I think overall. And Nicole Lappen, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Young gravy. Welcome to money rehab. Thank you, Nicole. I'm happy to be here. So what do I call you? Your rep calls you gravy. Matt or gravy? Matt or gravy? Yeah. What do you prefer? Call me Matt. Yeah, cool. Love that. So people know you as young gravy. They know you for your music and rapping, but you kind of outed yourself as a very savvy trader. And I don't even know where this was.

It was like a red carpet event of some sort. Oh, yeah. Where you said that you did really well on some call options for 1,800 flowers. Tell me how that went down. The actual video happening. Yeah, it was a guy had a red carpet random. And they were like asking about what do you invest in? And most people tried to be like, oh, I invested myself.

It was like, yeah, what's your craziest investment move? And I was like, oh, I have the exact one right here. And I was like, maybe people, once I filmed it, I was like, oh, that might be kind of dark. But, you know, it worked out. And, you know, a lot of people hit me up after that video for investment stuff. The way that the actual trade and the options happened, I was, um, during COVID when it was getting pretty bad, I moved back to Minnesota. And I was like, I don't know, just pent up in this house. like every day making music and needed something to focus on. So I started getting like back into my investment stuff. You know, I was on Wall Street bets all the above. And I kept seeing all these like meme stocks going crazy. And I was like, I need to find my own version of this.

And I just sat there and thought for a while. Like, what's something out of the box? You know, what's something off a beaten path here? And I thought, hey, people are dying. People don't want to be together in person. right now. How do they, you know, how are they going to get flowers to each other? One, 800 flowers, you know, someone delivers it. There's no human contact. I thought this is probably going to go up over the next couple of years. So I think it was like March, late March,

2020. And I just did like one year and two year call options for, I want to say I put in like 30K and it came out like 400. 30k to 400. And call options are an advanced investing strategy. So you had done this before, I assume, or was this the first time you were playing with options? I had done it before and learned about it in college, kind of went deep in like Reddit and however you learned stuff before chat TBT. And I had taken a lot of L's trying it because you've got to be pretty specific about things. And I learned the hard way, like how to do a safer call, which was like long term, not quite as risky, but you know, you could do the short term ones is what everyone would hype up and that was like one day.

Yeah, like one day and I'd have no luck with those. So I learned from a few of those and then it was just good timing. I obviously also did like puts on airlines and cruise ships and all that. Jess. Okay, so just as like options 101, the way I remember it when I took all of my financial tests, I was like, call up, put down. I feel like there's a song in here or something. Yeah.

So like call, you think something's going to go, if you're going to buy. calls, do you think it's going to go up and puts, as you just mentioned, it's going to go down. Okay, really, really, really quick PSA on options. An option is not a stock. When you buy a stock, the worst case scenario is that the company tanks, you lose all the money you put in. But options can get even scarier. There are some strategies where you can lose more than what you put in. So when somebody tells me that options are the way they're going to get rich quick, I say the same thing. Options are how a lot of people get poor quick. So I love, love, love. I'm obsessed with the fact that you have have had all of these big wins with options,

but I also think that they should generally come with a warning. So you thought all of the like transportation type stuff, nobody was going to be traveling. So you bought puts. Yes. How did those do? So you buy puts and you're betting against it, someone who thinks it's going to go up, basically.

It was a pretty good explanation. Call up, put down. I like that. I feel like there's a wrap in there. It could be. Yeah. Call it up, put it down.

I don't know how I remembered. I had some other strategy, but I like yours better. Thank you. So you said you had some big Ls. What were those? I guess it's not big. I was I was just testing it out and I feel like I can't learn something. This might be a good tip. I feel like I can't really remember something if I don't put real money into it because then I'll remember it way better if I lose it. So I mean it would be even if it's just a hundred bucks I'd put that into like a call, I put any kind of option and just watch it go from a hundred to like one dollar or

it could go way up, you know, if you're right. So I think that is a good way to learn as long as you're not putting in like your whole net worth. How did you even get interested in investing, much less getting into options? I'm assuming you did just straight trading before you started doing options. So I went to school for marketing and finance at University of Wisconsin. But when my music really started taking off, it was going so fast that I had to, I dropped finance as a major and graduated in three and a half years, which is marketing.

So I had, you know, I didn't get to like the final finance classes, but I had enough education and finance that I could, you know, do my thing. And also I think if you're learning finance in school, you should be also trading at the same time. Yeah, because it's so theoretical it was so, yeah, textbooks. The first finance class I took, I didn't invest besides like Bitcoin and stuff and it's just so much harder to learn and actually care about things if you're not doing it for real when did you invest in bitcoin 2015 at what price i don't remember but i know when i sold it and like have gone back and forth with other you know buying and selling bitcoin but that was a big come up i think it was like 20 000 off of like four or something i don't know what it was but it was a big

big one so you mentioned wall street that's that you were like on Reddit looking through stuff. Do you have your own type of Wall Street Betts group chat? Oh, like a group chat. You know, I had like two or three friends that were in a group chat. I didn't even know who some of the guys were. I just like had one homie who was interested in it and he added in his friends. And they would all send like crazy recommendations like day of.

And especially in that like 2020 to 2022 era, I was trying a lot of those. And I think there was like a golden era of like two years where everything was going to shit, but Donald Trump was also trying to make the economy look great. So there was this crazy way down, way up thing going on, like every day. And you could kind of actually predict what's going to happen, which has not happened before or since in my experience. So there was this window of time where like you'd hear some news and then you could put an investment in quick before it really affected the market. I would assume other people have caught on to that, but when I first invested in it, the bond, volume was pretty low.

It was the craziest thing to come out of the group chat. And does it still exist? And can I join? Hmm. I'm trying to think of a good one. There's like, what's that like aerospace company? It starts with an A. Archer.

Archer Aviation. I think it's called. That was a good one. The Flowers Play. And you didn't do any of the meme stocks. Like the, you didn't. get into GameStop. So that was another thing that I really like would spend time on was I would watch the conversations

in Wall Street bets and watch those stocks and then put options against them. So like as it's going up crazy, I would put a put on it, which is kind of obvious, but it worked really well when they're like boosting GameStop to the moon or Virgin or anything like that. Because I would just virgin aerospace that is the space one. Which has gone basically to zero. It was like every day, it would go way up, way down. And you could just time an option and it was, it's free money. So like how many open options orders do you have now?

Now I'm not really messing with that as much. I don't have the time like sit there and like really lock it in. I've tried some and now what I usually do is find a company that's pretty early on and is growing fast and just get in early. So what are you investing in now? On the way here, I look through my portfolio and try to find like a good overall description. And I think it's, that's the way to describe my strategy is investing in like the infrastructure of the newest thing. So like AI computer chips, all that. Like I was investing and still am in all the things that like support that growth.

Infrastructure, yeah, picks and troubles. So Celestica is one. Nebius group, you know these? Some of the ones I'm invested in, I'm like, I'll think anyone's going to know it. And then I'll just throw out there. I'm like, what the hell is that? So I know both those support all this new AI technology, Carpenter technology.

I saw that one on there. That shit was popping. It's a like rare metals company. I'd like to think it's not for like the military, but it might, I don't know. think it's mostly just for good things. So how much research are you doing on those stuff? I'll, if I find one. How much are you putting in?

Usually like 100K or like 50. If I really think something's going to go well. But, you know, if you throw like six 50Ks at different things and wait a year, usually one of them, if three of them don't go well and three go well at that stage, it's a big one. So how much have you made overall on trading? Okay, we're in a flux right now. I like to look up my like all time on here.

Which app are you using? Robin Hood. Since the job, I use Robin Hood, I switched to E-trader for a little bit. I just like how this looks more. And like, I just think overall you can do better on here. Here. There's not all the time. I think I invested a total of like 200,000.

Can I say? Yeah. 1.568 mil. And you see the growth? on there. 650. Let me just make sure it's in the mic. 653% growth of all time.

That's crazy. So what was your basis here? 30K? This is in the way beginning. I think way early on like 2015 I put in like 30K and then I kept adding little bits but most of the money invested is just the gains reinvested. That's wild. I mean you start like back in 2014. 2014, maybe 2015.

16, you were at 200. Now you're at almost 1.6. I think the numbers on there, the 200 is I didn't have 200k in 2015. I think if you add more cash to it, it just kind of adds it to like the all-time things. It doesn't show it as growth. So I think overall I've added in like around 200K of actual cash and then the, the rest is just growth. It's kind of nice. I mean, that's one way to look at it.

It's sick. Are you long-term investing or only trading? Like, do you have long-term positions? Do you have regular index funds or ETFs? Boring stuff. Yeah, I work with three different, actually, no, now it's two, two different managers. One's at Northwestern ones that, I don't know.

They're like friends of mine who are good at what they do. He's at Charles Schwab. And that guy does private investments. He's Brian Clay. He's private investments as well, which I, like, didn't have a good person for before. So I did get in on the SpaceX IPO. Nice.

But yeah, outside of my like fun Robin Hood stuff, I have a similar amount invested with two different guys. So long term, what are you bullish? And like, do you have VO or some basic investments that would try? What's VOL? Like the S&P 500 overall market. Oh, I asked them to go a little riskier than that, but there's safe stuff in there as well.

I know at one point they were doing this, some sort of life insurance investment. Do you know about that? Not my favorite. Yeah, I remember that was one interesting thing we tried. And I was like, let's subscribe that. So you didn't do like an IUL or? Probably.

Whole life insurance policy. Yeah, it was something where I was like, we did it for a while and it seemed like kind of weird and slimy. So I just got out of that. Okay. Otherwise, it's a lot of ETFs and just groups of stocks that are mostly like tech. And it's a little bit, you know, diversified with general other things. I think a lot of like the infrastructure and industrial, I guess is a good way to put it. There's a lot of those in there because those kind of won't go away.

And what's your exposure to crypto now? So you got in super early. Sounds like you made some money. Yes. Early on Bitcoin and Ethereum. And then I don't really like it anymore. Too many people got into it and made it corny. And now like there's NFTs everywhere.

And I bought a Pudgy Penguin at one point, tweeted about it. the price went up, I was like, that's pretty cool. But then I just feel like if there's no real basis behind the business, no actual reason for it to go up or down besides other people, I don't really see the value. So where's the Pedgy Penguin? I still got them. Yeah. How much? I think I lost enough money where I'm just going to keep it and not, you know, sell it unless something happens.

So what did you buy it for? Do you remember? It was like like 70,000 or something. 70,000? Yes. Or just like a digital? Yes. Because they were going up, you know, and going around.

And then I kind of forgot about it. And I want to say now it's worth like 30. I mean, anything is really worth what someone else will pay for it. Yeah. And with NFTs, there's a weird like, you know, I could say this is my Pudgy Penguins. Since I have the, you know, social media audience where I could like, oh, who wants to buy my Pudgy Penguin? And maybe there's somebody out there. there, but that also feels a little, you know, that's like a more desperate play.

My hot take on the NFTs was that it was just a big money laundering scheme. It kind of feels like that. You could just hide a bunch of money in like the new valuations that kept, kept going up. Yeah, and I felt like in my experience before NFTs, crypto was always used for sketchy things. And that was the long reason you'd have crypto was to like buy drugs or like do something. something like put a hit on somebody so then I'm like I don't know I just still have this weird taste of my mouth when it comes to you're out so I have I have Ethereum but not a lot and I you know what I had fun one time I downloaded like the whatever the main app is for like shit coins

and I literally invested in like feet coin just to try it out you know but like 100 bucks and feet coin and got like I watched it go to 3,000 from like 100 or like 100 or whatever it was in two hours. And then I tried a bunch more. And it's like you have to stare at your phone and just, I don't know. But I guess there is value that way if you have the time for it. So are you still invested in feed coin? No, no, no, no.

You know what? I think you can't like sell them those coins at a certain point because they lose all their value. So I think I do own like a fraction of a cent of a bunch of like shit coins now that are just probably there forever. So here's the big question. Have you made more money from your trading or from music? For music.

There's probably been years, though, 2020, for example, where I made more from trading. But I think overall, you know, I forget like a yearly income statement, maybe like a fifth is investing, which I think is like, you know, more than most artists could say. To me, that's kind of significant.

So I'm curious, has investing in the market changed the way you think about investing in your career? I guess the first place where I really learned about diversifying was a finance class, you know? And I have diversified very strongly in my music career. Besides just touring, putting out music, I also have done like voice acting, acting, acting. sync songs. I mean, do a lot of sync music, open a restaurant. Oh, there go. It's all right. It's a nice place. It's pretty good, I guess I would say. It's in Atlanta.

But yeah, I've diversified pretty heavily on the music side as well. And I think that's been pretty effective. Restaurants are tough, man. Yeah. I wanted to try it out and see what it was all about. I think it's breaking even. But it's like, it's interesting to go there and see how big. busy it is and how pop and it is and then find out that it's breaking even and like I know restaurants are hard and they always say that but like what's the hot take from actually investing

in it and seeing that that you've learned I feel bad for the managers you know it seems like a really stressful job and complicated hot take is uh don't invest in a restaurant unless you really like food maybe maybe don't invest in it unless it's near your house and you can go there because I've only been in my place like four times. Was it a friend? Like a friend who asked you to invest? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. A friend and we put together a few friends to all invest in it. Walk a flock of flame is one of the investors. He'd be cool to have on this. Okay. Yeah. And have you gotten into trouble with friends and money? Like have people asked you to invest in stuff and it's gone sideways or has a friend asked you to borrow money and it's gotten weird. I think when I've when I've had to

borrow someone money or help them out I find a way for them to pay it off with like work. So like hired somebody as a temporary assistant to pay off a bunch of money I loan them. That worked pretty well. I had a friend who needed a place to stay in some money and now I just bring him to every recording session because he's talented. I think that's a good way to handle a friend who needs money is find a way that you can both benefit. I agree. I've actually done that.

And it actually creates, I feel, like some more integrity or dignity on the other person's side because it's a very vulnerable position when you have to ask a friend for money or to borrow money if you're in a bad spot. Yeah. But I love helping out my friends. It's a close friend of mine. I'll make sure they're good. Okay.

So pretend like I am from. another planet. Explain the music industry to me. Basically the best thing we have on our our planet earth is music. Everybody uses it. Everybody likes it and we have a full array of options for you, you know, any kind you want and it's been around forever. We uh, I'm going a little bit too, to alien for you right now. So a lot of processes here, you know, music. it gets made, there's writers, there's producers, there's mixers, masters, there's a lot of people that go into the process of making it. Then there's all these different things that come out of it. There's the master, the publishing, and multiple different kinds of IPs, which are all

assets in themselves. So, you know, when you when you write and record a song, you create the IP of the publishing, which is like the actual chords and lyrics and everything. Then there's the master, which is the actual recording itself. So someone uses anything from your actual song. That's one clearance. And then the writing is another one. Outside of that, once you put out the music, there's a ton of other things that come along with it.

Touring, for example, which is my favorite way to make. money touring you invest portion of money in a tour bus and a team and a full production set up go on the road 12 guys in a bus all sleeping together and you go to like 30 to 60 cities in every show you kind of guess how much you're going to sell ticket wise if you get over that It's even more of a benefit. If you're under it, you don't profit. And then you sell your meet and greets and your merch, which are another big bag on top of that.

There's a lot of different things. Oh, and when you do taxes on your tour, you have to pay taxes in every state that you want to, which is kind of fun to sign all off. It's very nice to have a business manager if you're in music. Then if you sell out your tour, you do really well. Now the business model, it sounds like, is touring and licensing. That's where the money really is because you're not really making money from people

downloading yourself. You can. All of my independent catalog that I put out before I was signed is released through TuneCore or STEM, which are, you know, like independent distributors. They take a little percentage, but all that money just comes straight to me for streams. I think it's around, I don't know if it's different now, but around like $5,000 per million streams. So that can be a lot. If you've got a big song. But if you're signed to a label, they take that money

and you get a percentage. But they also have distribution deals at labels, which I have, where a label supports my music, puts it out, gives me a few tools to work with, and then they take 10%. That's how I prefer doing it, but for certain genres,

I'm still kind of talking to you like an alien. For certain genres, like pop, it might be better to have a full label like pushing it everywhere if you don't have your own brand and social media, support. So like give me a range of what you're getting from the streams, what you're getting from touring. How do I think about that? I remember a good like year. We go with 2022. It's probably

my biggest year. This is not the average year in music. But I think I went on, I wanted two tours, almost three, which ended up being 108 shows in one year. And those, let's say, I guess a good example is a college show where it's just a straight up, straight up like flat payment. And you just go and do it and keep it pushing. Those, especially during that year, I'd say we're like anywhere from 80,000 to 100,000 a pop. And a normal tour show, if it's sold out, everything goes well. It's probably like 50 to 60,000. And then you do a bunch in a row.

So it adds up. Obviously, you subtract the costs of the tour bus, everyone that's on tour with you and all their expenses. I think that year, my netted around $7 million on touring. And then I did a few brand deals

and the streaming income from my other catalogs probably ended up being around $4 million on top of that. Let's say maybe $1 million from investing. Because I remember the total was like around 12. And then you got your taxes and your management commissions. So touring. So half of that.

Yeah, about half of that. So if you go hard on touring, I think that's the best income stream. But brands, if you work with big brands that have money to throw around, you can really make some bread that way. So when you net $6 million, are you taking 20% and putting it into investing?

Is there a formula or is an automatic transfer? I put the majority in investments, usually. I also bought a house the next year, other things, other investments. But I try to not have any money sitting in the bank, always invested in something. If it's not like my own personal investment, it's with one of those two money managers and one guy does it pretty safe. So like if I have extra money, I just throw it to him.

Smart. How did you learn that? Learn like where I wanted to put the money. Or just like to not have it sitting in a checking account because I think that's what a lot of people. I think that was like the first thing I gathered when I was taking, like you learning anything about finance was like, oh, any money you have can be gaining. can be literally gaining capital any time. Even if it's something really safe, you know, S&P, you're still going to make something small.

So like my girlfriend, for example, when we started dating, she had a bunch of money sitting in the bank. Instantly it was like, all, let's figure us out, connected her with good managers and they got it all invested. So I think anyone, if you have money sitting around, you should put it somewhere. I could not agree more. You started in college with business and marketing.

How did music come into that? It was always a big fan of rap music, always a big fan of soul music. Dream job of mine probably would have been being a rapper or some type of musician, but it didn't really cross my mind as being possible coming from Minnesota. Like two years into college, maybe one and a half.

I was working at a startup accelerator, helping them brand these small businesses and was doing pretty well at that and started like really getting into my bag with the brand stuff. So I thought, why can't I just do this for myself? And I saw artists on SoundCloud using that platform to pop off, just because they were very unique.

And I just thought to myself, I'm going to do this. I'm going to keep it. I'm a low. So I didn't show my face or anything in my first year and a half of music. I wanted it so bad that I just used all my free time to make music, release music, promote music. And then within like a year and a half, Just because of SoundCloud, YouTube, maybe a little bit of like Instagram too,

but we didn't have TikTok or reels or anything. You just had to use those sources. And within a year and a half, I took off. And then I was like, okay, this is what I want to do. I can make this work well. I didn't think it would come this far, but it was basically just my dream. And it had to happen. Is there more pressure now to make music that could be used in TikTok videos?

Yeah, I think every artist pretty much when they're making music now keeps that in mind. I've been in sessions where people literally are making a song. The first thing they do is trying to make a for TikTok. What I do is usually, I haven't actually, the album I'm making right now, I haven't really thought about it. But in the past, I would add a little something into a song that I think could go well on TikTok. For example, on the song, Oops, I did like a talking. Little moment before the beat dropped where I said, are you talking about Tracy? Tracy with the ass.

Tracy with the Honda, something like that. And that really took off. When you think it's going to pop or resonate on TikTok, does it? And when you don't think it will? Well, the second one. When you don't think it's going to pop, it's going to pop. At that time. Ended up popping.

There's too much popping. Yeah, yeah. So let me clarify. So earlier, on you could just kind of you could guess that it was going to pop and do the right thing and make it work but then everyone started doing it everyone like started paying people to make videos with their with their music that's a big thing they got popular people just paid creators I think let me think that was probably 2020 and I'd had a few songs blow up on there just for no reason just because someone used it like you didn't pay people to I have since then and everybody seems to do that now but up until like 20, or maybe you could just, you know, it was just natural. And I think still it is just that you can't really pay for it to work.

You can pay for like people to make it and it might become a little trend. But if it like really blow up, it always ends up being something random that people just like. Because they can kind of tell, like, I think anywhere people can kind of tell if something's in genuine. So has something hit that you like had no idea would become a TikTok thing? Yeah. I mean, the first few songs I had blow up on there I made before TikTok existed. I just, you know, I didn't expect those specific ones to blow up.

Magic, forget me thoughts. Cheryl, are three of my songs that just were up. And they actually were so popping that TikTok hit me up to, they're like, please make an account. And at the time I thought it was corny. I don't anymore, but I got them to agree to like pay me a little bit of money so I could post and say, well, I'm just doing this they paid me. That was like a little ego thing I had going on. And then since then I had things

completely changed. But my first post on TikTok was, I'm just doing this because they paid me. What year? And then it blew up. 2020 probably. 20, not 2020. I think. Like what was a minimum guarantee that they were giving back then? TikTok? Yeah. I don't think they paid anybody. I just convinced them to do it once. It was like 200 bucks. But I just wanted to say that they did that because I thought it looked cool. I was a little bit more particular about my brand at the time. And I don't think they did it for anybody else. But I just, they liked me a lot. Since then, in the recent years,

everybody's trying to get a popping song on TikTok. So like people have no reason to really use a sound unless they're getting paid or it's already popular. So I think it's, there's not really that market anymore to like just make a sound that's going to blow up. It's kind of random. Yeah.

I mean like flea. would Mac pop right out of the blue so yeah classic songs that are just inherently good i think they always pop off on there well i do like about tick talk is there's been like three songs that i had found deep in the internet somewhere that i never thought people would hear but i just really like them years later they blow up on tech talk like young lean has the song jinseng strip that was like my alarm is like my favorite song in college what i mean it was popular among deep internet people but it wasn't popping blew up on TikTok way later if it pops on TikTok are you seeing money from that yeah how your streams will go up a lot on that particular song and if one of your songs starts

going up then their algorithm on Spotify is going to recommend more of your music I randomly had my song Betty it blew up in 2023 on TikTok like not long after I dropped it has become my biggest song of all time. And there was a trend less than a year ago that kind of brought it back where it was like this guy, I think it's an Australian dude doing a quiz on like what flag something was. And he said the wrong one. He's like, he's a guessing. He says China and the song drops for some reason that blew up.

And I watched the streams on the song like go up for a couple months and everything went up following it just because the trend was so big. If you could wave a magic wand and change something. thing about the music industry? What would it be? Probably TikTok, like basically controlling whether a song succeeds or not. I liked it more when I was SoundCloud YouTube and just people valued something being unique and interesting.

And, you know, they're going to go listen to a full album and not just a single. Is that dying or still going strong? Like, what's the next TikTok arbiter of what's going to pop? I try not to look at social media that much. It kind of stresses me out. But it seems like a lot of older songs blow up on there now, which is cool, you know. Songs that I, like I mentioned,

songs that I liked before are blowing up. And, you know, maybe another catalog song of mine will go up. But I think there'll be another new app soon or a new, you know, music streaming platform. Do you ration your, or, put boundaries around your social media time? I actually, it's kind of the opposite. I never like looking at social media

because it like kind of stresses me out. I don't want to like scroll or look at anything. So I make myself go on it every day at some point, like check messages and like not TikTok. I don't go on that more than like once a week. Do you give yourself a time limit? Well, I give like the opposite. Like I'll force myself to go on for 20 minutes

because I just don't like doing it. So 20 minutes, I guess. on Instagram to like do whatever. Do you feel like it's bad for mental health? I'm not a good example because I have, it's been so much of my career and business has been around, has revolved around using social media. And now I'm just sick of it.

So I don't like scrolling and I'm, I think I have the opposite of a lot of people that get addicted to scrolling. And it seems like that is bad. I've seen people just on their phone for hours. but I shouldn't really be the authority on that because I'm the opposite. Has that come up in your relationship? You mentioned helping your girlfriend with her finances.

Is she like that with? No, she's similar to me where she doesn't like it. She makes yourself do it every day. And she's very helpful and makes it better for me because she'll just help me make videos for her socials and, you know, promoting my songs. So like every day she's going, we'll wake up. She'll go home. She always does everything early.

She'll go make like three videos for her socials every day. And then, you know, if I have time, we'll link up and she'll help me make a couple. That's like once a week. So it's pretty helpful and not stressful. And she, I think anyone who's been an influencer is probably not addicted to scrolling because they're sick of it. Yeah. That makes sense. But it sounds like you guys have come up with.

good system. Some co-creation happening. Love that for you. Yeah, it's really nice. We can just make videos together because she's a following. When you started talking about like, oh, damn, all of your money is in your checking account, is that weird to talk about finances in a relationship? No, because we're pretty another, this is another case where it's probably different for other people, but her and I are pretty much on the same page with everything. And very, very, very, very, very, very strong trust and pretty it's just it's just fully agreed upon we're going to get married we're going to have everything together so me helping her with money her helping her social media it's all like we just do everything together it's one unit I love that had finances ever been a

cause or an issue cause of fights in relationships and now it feels healthier and better yeah I think my other serious relationships the girls didn't have any money and I think it didn't cause problems because I you know they're not anyone anyone in that position is not going to really ask for too much at least in my experience and I would give them nice gifts and it was fine. So this feels more equal. This feels yeah it's it's actually much better less arguments some people say don't date in the same industry as you. And we're not in the same exact one, but like both have a following.

And it's working very well. So you're going to get married. Congrats. Thank you. Are you going to get a pre-up? I don't think so. No. Why not?

I don't know enough about pre-ups. I know that there's a way, isn't there a way to get a pre-up where it kind of just is all good stuff and it's not like, you know, like agreed upon things? Or is it always a bad, Actually, I had an argument with an ex where her dad was a divorce lawyer.

Divorce lawyer. And she was telling me that this is a better conversation topic here. She was, we talked about getting married. She told me that her dad swears by not getting a pre-up. And I was like, he's a divorce lawyer. He makes pre-nups for people. Why would he not want us to get a pre-up? I never really got an answer on that.

That's so interesting because we just have. had a really big divorce attorney on the show who said anecdotally that if you had a pre-up in place, you were less likely to get divorced. And the reason for that is that you're more willing to have open and honest financial conversations and get on the same page when things are good. Got it. Okay. So then am I right in thinking that you could make a pre-up that has a lot of good things?

and it's not just a like, oh, we're going to split off and. I think it's all a good thing. It's all, you get to decide what. We're like there isn't any inclination of divorce coming and being selfish. I think there's a way to do that. Then I would for sure do it. Everybody has a pre-up, first of all. It's what the state decides.

And so if you want to make the rules different for you, then it's just about having that open, honest conversation, especially if you're coming in with assets of your own, which it sounds like you're, your girlfriend has, you just want to understand what that looks like in case something happens. And it's not, you know, divorce planning. It's not a way that you're living. But it's having that, you know, adult conversation before you have to get to and lawyers and you don't want to judge to decide what ends up happening to not only your assets, but how you think about kids and if

somebody stops working and what that all looks like. I think it's just, healthy to it hadn't you know crossed my mind because I don't see it ever a divorce ever happening but yeah it sounds pretty I don't think it would be her it wouldn't be a problem at all to put that together with the ex I still wonder why she promised that her dad didn't like prenups as a divorce lawyer yeah I think I have a little more clarity now that you said that I'm glad and I'll get a pre-nup okay I love that it's it's a conversation that you should have going in with everybody's expectations and like getting on the same page. Finances, we do this because it's the last taboo, I think we have in society.

You know, we'll talk about a lot before we end up talking openly and honestly about money. Yeah, I think in most cases that's exactly the case. But it's true. And a lot of relationships end in divorce because of money, because of money, stress and financial infidelity. You know, if somebody's hiding something, I'm not saying that this is the case, right? You just want to say, like, here's, here's what it is, here's what I have, here's, you know, the ownership. And also a lot of people that run companies or have equity stakes, sometimes their board requires them to have it. So that position in the company is protected or whatever that is. You get to decide what the goals are. Otherwise,

California decides. If my partner was someone who was really financially illiterate and, like, did her own investments and stuff, I could see that why that would be, you know, there'd be some budding of heads. But in her case, you know, she's pretty hands off. And I just came in and helped her put it all together. But, you know, if someone was, you know,

there's not ever really a right way to invest. There's like so many options. And I think. Your own risk tolerance, your own goals. But it sounds like you guys coming together, you want to have joint? accounts like yours mine and hours we have our own separate ones but whenever we like you know buy something going on a trip we just both evenly split everything don't really worry about it

and we have the same business manager same business managers so that kind of makes it easy to just like all right yo for your japan trip how do you guys want to do this i'll just put it and then they'll kind of do that in the back end do you make similar amounts yeah it's It's surprisingly close. We both do brand deals around the same size. I'd say looking back, at least the years that I remember seeing, there was like three years where I made more and one year where she made more. But it's always very close.

Yeah, I mean, sometimes I just talk to couples about the idea of weighting what they contribute. So like if you're the same, then splitting makes sense potentially. But like if one person makes sense. a million dollars and one person makes a hundred grand, then you want to do something that's, or think about doing something that's weighted. So it feels fair to both people. It feels like the same amount.

She owns two houses, both like around three or four million. One of them she just bought near my house in Germantowx. I was wondering, think about refinancing it and investing that money. Have you, do you have any experience with that? Refinancing now, like what was her interest rate?

before. I don't know. Okay. Maybe check on that. Okay. So she has a sweet like 2%, 3% interest rate right now. We're 7, 8%? Yeah, I don't know if it's that low, but I think it was a good one. I just didn't even know about- It's a good one. You might want to keep it. But that's what ends up happening. Everybody, you know, is sort of locked in because they have these low interest rates. So the market's not moving as much. But model it out and see, you know, real estate's getting 4 to 5% over. over time, the market is going to yield you 8 to 10% over time. Can you explain like I'm five how refinancing works? I think I understand it, but I figured most people might not. Okay, refinancing a mortgage like your five. Basically, you're taking out a brand new loan to pay off your old loan because the new loan has better terms, usually a lower interest rate.

And that's it? In her case, like a home equity line of credit. Yeah, so she paid in cash and we want to like get that money back to invest it. Like basically like mortgaging it after buying it. Yeah. Which I think is refinancing or a form of it. A form of it. I would say like a he lock, like which is just a line of credit from your house.

He lock. That lets you borrow against the value of your home, the part that you've already paid off. It's kind of like a credit card, but your house is collateral. So you get approved for a maximum full amount. You only though borrow what you need when you need it from that line of credit. and you only pay interest on the part that you actually use. But remember that your home, your literal home, is the collateral here. So if you can't pay back that line of credit, the bank can come for your house.

All right. Cool. Or basically you're borrowing against the asset. Might do that. Thanks for the education. I got you. You know, it all is obviously asterisk, asterisk, you know, case dependent, location dependent and all of that stuff. But there's ways to take money out of something that's. already purchased. You just want to make sure that you know that you have to give that money back to.

It's interesting how many. Or you buy borrow, die, which is another strategy. Buy borrow die. That the rich use. What is that? So you buy like a piece of land. Oh, buy borrow die. Okay, I get it. Yeah. And it appreciates. So you buy it for a hundred grand. And it appreciates to a million bucks. If you sell it for a million bucks, you're going to pay capital gains on that 900 grand. But instead, if you borrow against it and you use that for whatever you need the liquidity for, you're paying off that loan and you're not paying capital gains taxes. And when you die, it goes to your errors at a million bucks, not a hundred grand. So it steps up in basis.

So it resets. So if you pass that on to your kids, now they have a million dollar asset and they don't pay that capital gains appreciation. So that's why it's like borrow, borrow against it and then die and then pass it on. and then they get that step-up and basis. I didn't know about that last part where it goes down, where it gets passed on. So could I do that with my house right now? Like borrow against it if it's a mortgage? I guess I kind of am doing that.

That's cool. Yeah. I mean, or you can borrow against your portfolio, which you probably already have some margin loans. I don't know. I do margin on there. Okay. It's always,

I forget that because the numbers it shows are your actual cash in there. And then I'll like randomly see the margin number pop up. pop up, which is double. It's like, holy shit, there's three million. I mean, to be clear, margin loans, super, super risky, you know, borrowing against assets. You want to make sure that the biggest trick is that the percent that you're going to gain is higher than the percent that you're borrowing at, right? So you're capturing that arbitrage or the delta of in between. So if you're borrowing, you know, at five percent, you want to make 10 percent on the money that you're borrowing with, then you're going to, you know, capture that five percent delta. I believe. I believe.

I believe on Robin Hood, if I'm not mistaken, for gold, which they have, which is like their margin system, I believe you just pay a monthly rate and they let you borrow double. That's where it gets really risky because you can also get margin called, which is what happened during the 2008 crisis, of course. And so when you get margin called, then you have to sell your securities at whatever that price is. and it could be a crappy price, and you could lose a lot. We just had Bill Ackman on the show last week. Great legendary hedge fund investor warning against margin. Got it. Loans and all that stuff.

I'll just give my two cents that if you're really confident in something and you margin, you do make double. But you also lose double. You also lose double. Yes. That's right. I think overall, not a good idea unless you're pretty financially literate. Agreed. Yeah, maybe we should do some sort of collab.

I feel like gravy, money. Yeah. Money, rehab, financial literacy. Making it cool. Yeah. Getting it out in the world. What are we doing? A restaurant or a book?

Definitely not a restaurant. Yeah, not a restaurant. Maybe a theme song. Okay. We might need a new theme song. Have you talked about how books work already? Can you give me like a real quick? Yeah, totally.

How the money works with books. Yeah. With a traditional publisher, you get in advance. And then you have to make out that advance. Okay. So it's like how music works. Yeah. Where you have to, what's the word?

Pay off the investment first. Yeah. Totally. Before you earn anything additional. And after you pass that, what's like the average that the author would get? With a traditional publisher, a hardcover gets you roughly 10 to 15% of the cover price. Paperbacks are lower. I think it's like 7 to 8% of the cover price.

Ebooks are really, really, really cheap. for the publisher to create, almost nothing to make. You don't have to print anything. It's just a digital copy. So you'd make more there, usually about 25% of what they net. So maybe a couple of bucks per copy. Self-publishing really flips all of this on its head. You have to pay for everything.

So you have to pay for your own editing, your own cover, your own marketing, all of it. But you keep the lion's share of your sale. So on Amazon, you can make up to 70% on an e-book. And that's 70% versus 25%. You know, the tradeoff is that you're going to have to sell the books yourself. You're going to have to get the word out there without the publisher machine behind you. But you keep more money in your pocket if you do. So it's pretty similar to like a label.

It's really hard to make back, I'll just say money from books. Books and to market it, most people put back all of the advance and then some to actually make it successful and to use it as a platform. So you're spending like two years making a really long purpose? song and then putting it out and hoping that those publishers do their thing right. Yeah, they usually don't. That's what I figured. They usually don't.

Well, Matt, so great chatting with you. We end all of our episodes by asking our guests for one final tip that listeners can take straight to the bank. I don't think of something applicable to everybody. Buy low, sell high. I don't think of something more intricate. Fame and success. are depreciating assets.

Ownership is an appreciating asset. I'm going to take that to the bank. Got you. I love that. So you'd rather be rich than famous. While you're famous, the clock's ticking. So you've got to invest in things and make things happen. That will go up while you go down.

So it's like this. Yeah. Yes. Fame and fame. Thank you.