My First Million - #103 with Tai Lopez - Tai Lopez Opens Up About His Past and Addresses Critics

Episode Date: August 21, 2020

Sam Parr (@theSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) bring on Tai Lopez (@tailopez). In today’s episode they chat about: (4:25-22:20) Tai addresses the haters, (22:58-36:44) what businesses are Tai buying and how is he paying for them?, (36:20-42:02) Tai fires shots at Silicon Valley, (42:13-47:14) How did Tai originally make his money? (47:30-52:03) Tai explains the origins of his infamous ad, (56:42-1:08:30) what business would Tai get into right now? This episode is presented by Tempo! Check them out at tempo.fit and use code "TempoHustle" for $100 off. Joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What's up everybody? All right, this episode is going to be a doozy. We had Ty Lopez, the guy who's sort of internet famous for being a marketer. Some people think he's a scam artist. He basically built this super viral YouTube campaign that started off with him in his garage with a Lamborghini that, you know, he said he owned. He said he leased. Some people think he rented it.

You know, there's all kinds of controversy around it. So we brought Ty on and we had a conversation about three things. First, we kind of press him on a little bit of his history and the criticism that he gets and how he responds to it. The second thing we did was we talk about what he's doing now, where he's buying out old brands like Pier 1 and dress barn and turning them from brick and mortar to e-commerce ventures, which I actually think is really smart. But, you know, some of the things that he was saying, you know, we wanted to understand his model. And then at the end, you know, the conversation gets all over the place. we talked about, you know, Sam started asking him if he smokes weed or does LSD and he started quoting a bunch of things from books that he's read and this conversation wandered

a little bit. And at the end, at the very end, if you can make it there, this is a long podcast. But at the very end, he asked us, he's like, what will your listeners think of this? And we said, well, it's going to be a mixed reaction. Some people are going to be mad. We even had you on the podcast. Some people are going to love it and they're going to think it was interesting. And a lot of people were going to say, oh, you guys were too easy on him. You didn't ask him about X. And so he just told us, he said, all right, what's the hardest hitting question you got asked me um and he wanted us to press him and so we we pressed him a little bit on some on some things um and so i think you're going to like it it's a long podcast with

ty lopez all right enjoy i'm here in my garage i got my lamb i got tie lopez on the podcast i had to do it tie and by the way we're going to be respectful for you i mean we're all we're respectful to everyone we're definitely going to like be as i'm my record on for you guys so that in case the backup audio good We don't hold back. And it always comes from a respectful place, though. So we try to be pretty straight shooters here. So yeah, and we're not journalists. Like, you know, I'm not like some researcher or journalist. We're both founders. We're both entrepreneurs. And we just like talking to interesting people. And, you know, today when we tweeted out, hey, we got Ty Lopez coming on the

podcast. I knew that people have like mixed feelings about you or whatever. But man, my Twitter it blew up and it seems like tech slash the Silicon Valley Twitter, which is kind of our audience, at least that's my audience, they don't like you. And a lot of people there were like very, I thought there was two reactions that one I expected, one I didn't expect. The one I expected was sort of like, oh, Ty Lopez, I roll. I've seen the guy's ads. Isn't he kind of like one of those internet marketer dudes, whatever? I thought that would be kind of the reaction. And we've had a bunch of different type of people on this podcast, right? We've had some people that are super successful, entrepreneur's billionaire types. We've had investors. We've had, you know, social impact entrepreneurs,

poker players, whatever. So we've had a wide variety. I didn't think people would really get too hot and bothered. Some people got hot and bothered. Some people were really passionate about it. And so for me, this was an unusual day on Twitter. I try to be controversial, but I can't get this kind of reaction. For you, this has to be like the norm. Is this a normal day on Twitter for you where you get this type of polarized, I love them or I hate them reaction? A lot of that's Silicon Valley. I'm popular. I always say I have a friend. He's from Staten Island and said, Ty, you're popular in the streets. I actually kind of grew up a little bit, ghetto. I grew up in a mobile home and things like that. And so, you know, Silicon Valley, a lot of virtue signaling. There's a lot of people sure that what they're doing is ethical and what I'm doing is in.

That's fine. Look, you know, at the end of the day, people who actually get to know me are always surprised 100% of the time. Every single hater. You know, people, because I think of it this way. One, I'm a big fan of evolutionary psychology. What bothers most people is displays of things. Now, Silicon Valley is all full of people who want to accumulate wealth. But they realize, in their own way, in that bubble, you have to virtue signal that that's not really what you're doing it.

I always say if somebody's wealthy, says they don't care about money, at any point in time, you can write a check to a, homeless person and go from the richest person in the world to, you know, a truly virtuous Gandhi, Mother Teresa, people who truly give. You know, I live with the homage for two and a half years. They're truly non-materialistic. It's against our religion to accumulate a lot of money. Sometimes they do a little bit with land. But Silicon Valley is a place and why I get that reaction is because it's a place that doesn't want to admit that they're more like me than they think.

and so not everybody that's vast generalizations also number two there's a big misunderstanding for example people say tie sells get rich quickseams the biggest thing i ever sold was two different programs one was called the 67 steps it was literally 67 things that a mentor taught me an hour apiece i charge it a dollar each now it was mindset anybody who's ever been through that program I mean, I got, like the first video has about 75,000 positive comments out of about 150,000 people who went through. So it was a pretty good rate. Word of mouth, traffic was massive on that. And it didn't really talk about how to build a business or anything.

It was just what my mentors taught me about, how to think through life. You know, like the first principle of the 67 steps is from Charlie Munger. To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world's not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people. Meaning the mindset Charlie Munger brings with Berkshire is that in general, when you see people successful, they deserved it much more than you think, as opposed to the proverbial this person stole to get what they want. The person had an unfair advantage. This person was just lucky. So that was the first course.

And the second one was called SMMA, social media marketing agency. I told people, you know, you see all kinds of people out there like Gary B. They have a social media marketing agency that does 100 million revenue. And I showed every day ordinary people how to start their own agency. 40,000 people went through that program. It was a four-month certification taught by myself and 20 people who own profitable agencies. The testimonial success rate that, I would put it against any university, anyone. I know a girl going to NYU bachelor degree three years in.

And I said to her, we were talking about, and she's getting a digital marketing degree. I don't know. I just memorize stuff. I have no idea what I'm learning. I said, well, how much you're paying for this? It was 30,000. 30,000. I said, wow, 30,000 and four years of your life, it's a lot of money in time.

She said, no, that's annually. So, $120,000 is a lot of money and much more close to a scam than a program that taught you from legitimate agency owners. I mean, it costs 500 bucks or something like that. How much did that course costs? When it first came out, we had, it was always under a, thousand bucks. We've done promos where it was like 497 and it was between 497 and 997. One time payment, no recurring, nothing like that. So I think what happens is Silicon Valley types, they see ostentatiousness, which is like, okay, a Lamborghini, living in Beverly Hills,

having an enjoyable life. It bothers them because you're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to virtue signal. Even though you're just as ruthless and materialistic. because anybody, there are nobody on the top of the Forbes list. I know five of the top Forbes list people personally. They all love money, love money. They don't like to say it because they realize there's a power and virtue signaling which makes you less of a target for the world, but they love money. From J.D. Rockefeller to Jeff Bezos, people who make money are ruthless. Average person makes $50,000 to $80,000 a year. Silicon Valley is above average. It's full of ruthless people. But like I said, maybe they're smarter than me. Maybe I should virtue

signal more. I can never do it, you know. I got my first nice car, first exotic car in 2006. Now, I didn't put a car on social media until 2014. So I had Ferrari, Maserati, eight years before. So once social media got bit, I'm like, I'm just going to show my life. I was already living in the Hollywood Hills from 2009, didn't post that on social media. And when I posted that at 20, it really in like 2015, it really like evoked a visceral thing like how dare this guy like these things but i think it's a misunderstanding like i own some of the biggest organic farms in america one of them i still farm with horses like i'm not as materialistic as people think but certainly sometimes that came off because those are the videos that did well i can tell you all my videos weren't Lamborghinis and girls and that

but those are the ones that get a lot of views so inherently they become controversial, but nothing was ever fake. The house that I was in, I moved out of California two years ago. Where you at now? Miami, Miami, London, Puerto Rico, New York. Now I kind of live on a jet right now, but doing a lot of deals. But I think, in hindsight, would I do it differently? I mean, I had this.

I don't know if I would. I don't know if I would. Seeing the results from the people who actually went through the program, there's no negativity there. Almost all this negativity comes for people who just got a visceral reaction. Dr. David Buss, an evolutionary psychology professor, one of my mentors, who told me, Ty, men have always been bothered by conspicuous status of other men. It's a classic day.

In Australia, they call it Tall Pappy. In Sweden, they call it Fiomte-Lorven in Scandinavia. You're not supposed to show. Yet Sweden has the most billionaires per capita. Let me ask a quick question, but Ty, what year were you born? Everybody's trying to figure out my age. I've left that as a, I've left that as a controversy for a long time, just because I'm like, it's good.

I don't know. I didn't know your people. I have no idea. I don't know that people are trying to guess that. The reason I'm trying to wonder is because you've lived, you keep telling these stories of like owning farms, living with the Amish. I'm like, that's a full-ass life. Yeah, you got a big old full head of hair.

I mean, like, like what, you've experienced. a whole lot for someone who doesn't look very old. I'm not young and I'm not old. And, you know, I've been an adventure seeker my whole life. There's like three things that have been true from my whole life. One, I like cars from two years old. My grandma just died, sadly. She was 102.

And I was like, grandma, a lot of people talking about my cars. I'm like, did I always like cars? Because I was like, as long as I remember, I was a love of car. She's like, yeah, you always love car. Number two, I love travel. And number three, as soon as I really experienced getting out of a city. I was born kind of in the ghetto, Long Beach, California. My dad was in prison. My mom was a single mom. Right when I saw that, I was like truly connected. Like most of this year, I lived on my

farms. So one of them, I have about 750 acres in Shenandoah Valley, all an organic farm. I live with Joel Salatin for two years. Then I went, who's kind of the pioneer of like grass fed beef and pastor chicken, pastor raised chicken. Then I live with the Amish for two years, actually longer. and I still have one of my main farms that I post on my social media is in the middle of an Amish community. The Amish actually run my farm. Believe it or not, they're the best people I've ever met and I go there a lot and I have a relatively simple life there. I like adventure, you know, so it makes me more controversial. People want to pigeonhole you.

They want to be like, that's the Lambo guy. I'm like, what about the farm with horses guy? I just planted, you know, massive amount of land with horses, no tractor. ultimate, ultimate fuel efficient, ultimate save the world. I can tell that you get the same sort of criticism a lot, and I think you have good counterpoints. Like, for example, hey, look, I sold a $67 course. You can say I'm not providing value or whatever I'm scamming people, but like the hypocrisy of, let's say, the university system where people walk out with $50,000, $100,000 of debt.

And why doesn't the name question the value that they drive? I think you have good points. I'm curious, do you think there's a. fair criticism of you? Like, you know, rather than being on the defensive, you know, something that somebody says, you say, you know what, that's a fair criticism. There's always two sides of story. Everything people say has an element of true. I mean, some things are blatantly wrong. Like people say, I rented a house for a day or a car. Those are factually incorrect. But to the main points, certainly everybody has a point and I see them, you know.

In fact, like going back to Charlie Munger or Warren Buffett, you should not, you know, I believe in their concept of you should never hold a belief unless you can argue both sides better than the other side. So I think I could argue the side against me, which is, you know, look, Ty, if you show a Lamborghini to kids or teenagers or adults, some of them actually think that's the end game that you have. And I think it's not as simple as that. I think if you look at personality types are very fixed. There's greedy people that'll latch on to greedy things no matter what. So I'm not sure that we i'm not sure that i can manipulate people as much as people think they're like oh i was a great marketer and he's manipulative and i see the angle because all good marketing is manipulative

for example apple which i get the biggest kick out of san francisco you know really esteemed steve jobs and apple's largest company in history and makes great products but it's certainly well i mean it's the largest corporation in history that was building built with blood in tears like an empire. It's built with child labor in Asia. And they charged $1,000, $2,000 for a phone that cost them $300. They're one of the most profitable companies. Very ruthless. And so I guess what I'm saying is my thing is, yes, I can argue against myself, but I can rip apart every company. Name somebody. Zuckerberg, ruthless in the monopolistic way. let's take somebody that's not so well known an everyday ordinary person just driving their car to a nine to five job

you know living the while putting their kids into college drinking Coca-Cola giving their six-year-olds Coca-Cola I mean this thing of trying to pick people apart I'm not diminishing people's arguments to me but I'm saying I've never held myself as an angel and I never will and as a saint or anything like that But unethical, no. I don't believe that. I do not, and I'll tell you, again, ethics is a hard one. Some people think Joe Biden is unethical. Some people love them.

Some people that Donald Trump is great. It's many don't. And same Clinton and Obama, and it goes all the way through. When you become well-known, people put their fears and their traumas into you. And often people who are most mad about something, it's because it's an inner reflection of them. The greediest people in the world are those that often say, We'll tell you you're being greedy, but I'll tell you this.

Look at the substance of what I do. No one's gotten more teens to read books than me. What do you think gets a teenager to read a business book? Telling them to read it, put it in front of them as homework, or saying the truth. Hey, guys, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, Peter Drucker, me reading these books took them poor kid, born to a single mom, and they are causative, not correlated, those books. Like Warren Buffett says, the more you learn, the more you earn. If I show a Lamborghini for that and that pisses off some snowflakes or virtual signaling Silicon Valley, it doesn't even bother me. All right.

Today's episode is brought to you by Tempo.com.com.com. Fit is the website. I actually use this. I've used this for a few months now. And it's this machine that has a touchscreen and this 3D sensor. And what it does is they give you weights, like 115 pounds in weights. And it's for strength training. So what it is is it measures your body and it sees how much weight you're lifting. It sees how many reps you're doing and how much effort you're putting in, what your heart rate is. It's pretty amazing. And then you have a coach on screen walking you through what to lift,

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So check it out. I use it. If you look at me up on Twitter, you'll see I'm always filming videos where I'm talking to that company, say I'm trying to crush their employees on the leaderboard, because I actually love this thing and I use it all the time. So check it out. Number two, you know, I have businesses. Farmers cart now in a business doing organic food to the masses. I think that's not so bad of a business. So when a mentor box has 60,000 members, paying members. I built a business with my partner, Alex, and what do we do? We do, we put books and book summaries.

Got hundreds of millions of minutes washed across my platform. I'm actually in the billions. A lot of it's about great books, truck or monger. I mean, these are just like titans. And so I think you should look at the substance of people, because if you try to pick apart people's motivations, I can pick apart any person. Bring me somebody.

Bring me one of my critics. I was looking at some of those tweets. I was looking. I was like, are you important to the world? Are you important to the world? Sure, you built some SaaS stuff. Are you important? I think it's important to make people read.

I think it's important to save the environment. We farm an entirely, I'm growing non-genetically engineered corn and soybeans right now on my farm in Stanton, Virginia, with yields that are approaching genetically engineered corn. And they say you have to use genetic engineering herbicides round up in order to feed the world, and we're disproving it piece by piece. I think that's important. I do think there's entrepreneurs that are important. I think Elon Musk is important in the sense that. you know, you can get rid of fossil fuel and still have a cool car that people won't buy, which you think Elon Musk is always virtuous, you know?

Right. Let's talk about, uh, you're on one, man. Yeah, that tweet, it got out of your skin a little. Which one? There was a lot that we're talking about. Yeah, you know what I mean. My thing, well, I want to come back to that. I want to talk about business right now because you have a lot of cool shit going on.

Look, like, even if people disagree with you, there's something interesting here. So can you give any type of scale as to how big your empire is right now? I don't really want to be. I'm in venture, man. I mean, I own five major American brands. When I say major American brands, the smallest of it did 500 million in revenue. Now, these are before I bought them. I'm just saying the scope of how many customers these businesses have that I'm acquiring.

I'm Pier 1. Last year, $1.5 billion. In revenue, too many stores, too many leases, got them in trouble. But a tremendous amount of cash below, huge customer base, a significant eight-figure customer base. I own peer one. So let me ask you. So we talked a little bit about this on the podcast.

We said, hey, I think this guy, Alex Mayor and Ty Lopez, they've created this thing called Retail. Rev, what is it, retail, something. E-Commerce Ventures. Retail e-commerce ventures. And what they're doing is they're buying up well-known but kind of outdated business models, so brands like Pier 1 or Dress Barn. And it seems like you're not buying the company, but you're buying, you know,

the rights to do e-commerce or what are you actually buying? You're not buying pure one. We get the whole thing. We just don't assume. I try to buy the whole thing. I started buying my bought small business back like 2012, tried to buy American apparel, all of these. In general, if you're buying this dress, you want to buy the intellectual property,

you don't want to do an asset purchase. You don't want to do an entity purchase. You want to do an asset purchase. So in effect, you're getting the whole thing. I can recreate. You own the 500 retail stores of Pier 1? I could do. No, we did not assume leases.

Hell no. That's why they went broke. So I can come right now. In fact, I have a real estate guy that's going out and we're going back to landlords. And we're saying, can we rent on variable leases. You can't do fixed leases anymore. That was the way you got to adapt. So we can put.

here one back to precisely what it used to be. We own the whole thing, all the rights, all the trademark, the whole kit and caboodle. But most likely we'll switch it to an 80-20 model, 80% being econ, 20% being stores. And so who's to run that? I build big organizations. People think I'm not a good business man. I love it. You know, it's funny. My business partner has much more credentials than me. Dr. Alex Mayer. He's just exited last July for $300 million exit for a business. He co-founded at Zeus. It was the second largest dating network in the world after a match group and Tinder. He has a PhD, and we became friends many years ago.

Because the same kind of thing. At first he thought I was this party guy, and then he got to know me and was like, wait a second. This guy's sharp. And not to Tup Mount Horn, but what I was saying, because I hear the surprise in your voice, I haven't responded much to haters. It's just hard. It's just hard. It's just hard to find people to run shit.

That's not you. I'm just like, in general, buying a company and installing operators, that is hard no matter who you are. That's right. I, A, if it was easy, everybody'd be doing it. But we have, you know, so I have pure one,

linens and things I bought. That was sold to Apollo in 2006 for 1.3 billion cash. I own linens and things. And that was a massive. At its peak, it was doing $2.7 billion. Got run down by the last private equity people that had it. I own Franklin Mint. which used to be the largest direct marketing collectibles company.

It was the largest direct marketing company in the world. Wait, you bought Franklin Mint? Yeah, I own Franklin Mint. Google Ty Lopez Franklin Mint. I own... Well, I know the original founders of that are the founders of wonderful brand, right? That wasn't the founder, but that was... They owned it.

The Resnix owned it for many years. It was founded by the guy who started the home shopping network. I forget his name. He started in the, I believe, the 60s. So, Ty, let me ask you a real simple question. You're talking about Pier 1. They did over a billion dollars in revenue. Explain to a listener who's like, wait, how are you buying this business for $31 million?

So what is the hair on the business? Why is a business that's a well-known brand that has all this data that has this IP that has this brand that did a billion dollars in revenue last year? Why is it selling for $31 million? You know how to time to buy stuff. It takes business skill to do the things that we're doing. And some of it's luck and some of its skill and some of it's the hair on it. And some of it's if you can convince the bankers. and some of it, if you can act very quickly, like during COVID.

I mean, it's a skilled game. That's not a convincing answer, right? Like, just the fact that the answer, though. Well, if you're talking about Pier 1 specifically, that one came into a Chapter 11 scenario pre-COVID. I was involved in a pre-COVID. Post-COVID, it collapsed, the auction disappeared, the bankruptcy court in Delaware no longer existed.

All other bidders disappeared. They began to do a liquidation. there was plenty of inventory. The liquidators was Gordon Brothers, was doing well. I came into the banker Guggenheim. I don't know if you know, Gugenheim, whatever, $8 billion fund bank in New York. I negotiated way down from the original price, got it all the way down, was declared, became the stock and horse bidder, negotiated a crafty APA, asset purchase agreement, using a lot.

I mean, you have to have the right lawyers. You have to know how to structure it in your head. I know how to do that. I'm the dealmaker. Alex does other stuff. I'm the deal maker. He's done more on the capital side, raising capital when we use our own money and investors. So what I'm telling you is it's hard.

That one was public, but I bought Franklin and Minens and things directly off market, convinced a publicly traded company to sell it to me. So when I say, it takes skill, I'm serious. Go out and try it. I've got other deals going right now. That's what I sometimes, since you say I'm defensive, I'll be defensive for this. I'll use this podcast as a defensive talk because I rarely am defensive. So I'm like, I should be more defensive.

I was actually talking to my right hand man today. I was like, I think I should be more offensive. I was too, I never cared that much. But order of war, when strong appear weak. I never thought, I never bothered me that Silicon Valley, Valley people thought I was an unintelligent huckster. It's great. In fact, the problem that's beginning to assail me as we speak, talking to a couple investment bankers,

people are pouring in to these deals because they're like, wait a second, I watch Ty Lopez. Some people like me and some people don't. And they want to get in the deal. So I wish I could appear more week. I probably shouldn't be on this podcast. I should probably be like, oh, yeah, it's just luck. And you just kind of go there and you win an auction against Sycamore partners, a $15 billion fund.

It's like super easy, guys. Just go for it, man. I'm just, if Ty Lopez can do it, you can do it. You guys are brilliant Silicon Valley people. I'm a dropout, man. I don't know this. So you've had dozens of companies before this. How much capital have you allocated of your own money to like, before you decided to take this on?

I mean, were you like, I'm going to throw, I mean, I have no idea. Like, are you saying you're going to throw 20 million of your own money at these projects? Did you have like $100 billion safe? I have no idea. Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you this. My lawyer is always like, don't say one time I said something about net worth. I was on Jake Paul's podcast. Somebody more controversial. No, Paul, Logan Paul. And I said something about my net worth and my lawyers afterwards are like, don't talk about that. It just causes trouble. But I will say this. We use, me and Alex use our own money. And in 2015, I saw the writing on the wall. I said, I'm going to build an accredited investor. I started using, 2013, Obama changed the law that you can generally solicit for a credit investor. I was the first guy to use social media. First, people, while I was doing those YouTube ads, I was also running investor ads.

I got my first investors in 2015, literally within a month of the here in my garage video, I was leveraging that into other things. Behind the scenes, much less seen videos targeted at people with high network. Now I've built an investor pool. all these deals I've done, fuck two and 20 funds. Me and Alex own almost all of these deals. Why? Because we build an investor base that trusted us.

That's not institutional. All these guys raising in Silicon Valley, look at the founders of Lyft. These dudes have sub-4% of their business left. So yeah, I mean, maybe Silicon Valley is full of brilliant people, but you also have to maintain equity in what you own. So me and Alex. Yeah, but if you're raising an investor base,

then you're not going to own 100%, right? That's the definition. If they're investors coming on. We use debt and warrants. No, we use debt and warrants. So these are not equity investors. We have just occasionally we do that. We'll do some equity kicker.

No, I like debt better. And then we'll either refine the debt or we'll let people convert, we'll convert into equity at higher valuations. I can tell you this. Like a fund to buy imp here, one, those fund managers are going to work. They're going to have 20% on the kick. They're carry. I told Alex,

fuck that. I'm like the first rule, if you really want to build something, and it's not just about being greedy and wealthy. If you look at companies that do well, the founders maintain a large percentage of the business so they stay motivated. Bill Gates owned about 65% of Microsoft. If you look at Zuckerberg, if you look at Jeff Bezos, if you look at Elon Musk, even, you've got to maintain that. So you have to have foresight. There's the old saying, do what's difficult when it's easy. So I raised capital. I started building a pool in 2015. I would just do little bit. I'd be like, hey, do $200,000 note with me.

I want to build a relationship with you so that when bigger deals come. 2016, I didn't see deals. I saw overpriced deals. 2015, I tried to buy American apparel. It sold for too high of a price at that point. It was about $82 million. Gil Dan bought it. Then Barnes & Noble came up.

$500 million cash. And I thought, Mentor Box, the company me and Alex built, was already doing more econ book-related revenue than all of Barnes & Noble. Noble. We have built it in 18 months. So I said to Alex, we should buy Barnes and Noble. It's too high. You have to buy, you know, sometimes people are like, Ty, memorize this formula and what's this? I'll tell you this. Buy low, sell high will make you rich, my friend. And it's a very unsophisticated strategy that few people fall. Most of Silicon Valley is predicated on the greater pool. I'm going to exit to someone stupider than me. Well, the businesses we're buying, they have real value. Pier 1 is a monster brand. You're talking 30, 40, 40 million

Americans have bought there. That's one-tenth of the largest GDP country in the world. So going back to original question, I could just virtue signal and say, oh, I'm not that smart. It's just luck. And you just show up at auctions, but it's not. It takes foresight years ahead. It takes practice. I tried deals. Like I said, I tried American apparel and I couldn't pull it off. And I took my practice for five years. I got, I practiced my craft a little bit, you know, and there's luck. All of life is luck. We're lucky to be healthy and in America, man. Could be born in North Korea and then you don't have a jam. How big is the fun now?

We don't have a fund. I don't like fun. We may form a fund to do land acquisitions, farmland, two and 20. For anybody listen, who actually admits that they like money, I'll tell you this. If you ever stare at the Forbes list, it will revolutionize your life. Nobody makes money on the top of the Forbes list from real estate. Number one, the first American that shows up on the Forbes list from real estate is number 102. number 102 in fact the most correlated activity with building wealth is brand acquisition or brand

found it but brand acquisition's massive if you look at zuckraber's really been an acquirer and without instagram he would have been WhatsApp Facebook would be worth a third at best and so fund managers are all on the bottom if you want to make money don't fucking start a fund name one guy that's mid to high Forbes list from a fund you don't have enough equity Even Larry Fink, BlackRock, $8 billion fund, these guys are sub-10 billion. And that's great. Let me, like I said, this is for the part of you of your podcast that doesn't virtue signal and will admit that they care about wealth creation.

So I'm a Buffett guy, man. I've been going to Berkshire Hathaway meetings for many, many years. Actually, my mentor when I was a teenager, 19 years old, he's the one who got me on Berkshire. I've been following Berkshire since I was a teen. And no, no fund. It's a holding company, man. It's so anti.

I love Warren Buffett's anti-Silicon Valley. He does nothing. And by the way, he smoked the returns of all the Silicon Valley with less risk, risk-adjusted return and absolute return. He's at 19.5%. Silicon Valley is an underrated, an overrated place. If you allocate enough capital. I don't think you could say that when the, you know,

sort of the most valuable companies in the world are all from Silicon Valley right now. Technology companies are making up the vast majority. If you look at the S&P 500 right now, S&P 500, the top five tech companies, the fang companies essentially, not really Netflix, but if you put Microsoft in there, they generated all of the returns in the past six to eight months where they're like this and the other 495 companies at S&P 500 are below. If you look at the most valuable companies in the world, whether it's Amazon, whether it's Apple, whether it's Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Tesla.

I don't think you can quite say that it doesn't work. Clearly it works, but it's a very different game and it's a very different model. You have to look at capital allocated, my friend. If you allocate enough capital to Raleigh, North Carolina, you will produce. People will move there. Jeff Bezos right now is the greatest capital allocator. Jeff Bezos is not Silicon Valley. Maybe by definition.

It's a technology, but yeah. I mean, well, is Elon Musk Silicon Valley? Is Warren? Look at the top. Of course he is. How is Elon Musk? So what we're saying. I separate that out.

I mean, if you're going to throw anything that's tech related and call that Silicon Valley, then you are. I mean, Tesla raised venture capital, right? And Elon Musk is, you know, he's from PayPal. He's from the PayPal days, right? Like, that's purebred Silicon Valley. But of course, you know, that doesn't mean that's the only way to make money. I just think it just like people would knock you for making money in a different way that they

don't sort of understand or that's not their playbook, I think it would be not right to do it the other way either. So let me ask you a question. What's the returns on Sequoia and these VCs? What's been the actual return for investors? I'd have to look it up. The top percentiles of VCs like the Sequoias. Do you have the numbers at the top of your head?

Last I've seen is 12.5 percent. Bill Warren Buffett is. That's not correct. I've seen that I'm just saying you, Google it. It's not public. There's quite a bit of info. Buffett's done 19 and a half percent from the 60s. Now, you can say it's a different business model and Buffett's is not as important

in Silicon Valley. What I call Silicon Valley to clarify is, would you consider SoftBank Silicon Valley? No, I mean, it's a foreign company, but it is a technology holding company. Yeah. I mean, you know, if we're not going by geography, then I think there's a mindset there. I think you should look at the number. I think, for example, you have a strong feeling, but you should know what the returns are. You're sure they're better than 12%. I'm talking about from an entrepreneurial perspective. I'm not saying start a fund. That's not my.

But I'm saying, are you sure that that model, because we have media bias, we only show the people who succeed, are we sure that that model is producing better than any other given model? I mean, that's a tough question, man. Causation and correlation is one that stumps even the greatest. I'll give you my two cents, which is just that there's a million ways to win. I know rich real estate guys. I know rich private equity guys, you know, rich stock traders. I know rich technologists and I know rich entrepreneurs. I know rich people who own gas stations, right?

There's a million ways to win. I don't think the Forbes list is necessarily the best way to look at it. If you're that, you know, average person trying to figure out what's right for me or what are my goals and whatnot. Because that's usually about an accumulation over time and the internet is 30 years old. So it's not going to stack up against something that's an industry that's 200 years old or wealth that's been compounding for 100, 200 years. So I think there's many ways to win. and I think you're right that you do have to look at the numbers before you sort of just assume that this is a good path. But I think the numbers would back up that technology companies and internet companies do phenomenally well, and including yours.

You are buying big brands. You're buying big brands and you're bringing them online. You're trying to take an old failed business model, brick and mortar, and you're going to do e-commerce. That's internet. That's technology. You may not be using venture capital to fund it, but I think we're on the same page that, hey, the area of opportunity right now. One huge area of opportunity is the internet. Some of this is semantics, but yes, I guess what I'm saying, past the semantics,

is those things that the institutions that get venerated inevitably become the institutions that are outdated. And so as Silicon Valley, everything creates its opposite. I find there's many inefficiencies there. I was bringing up some of them with the structure, some of them with the somewhat of a Ponzi scheme to the reason that we work floats is because you can convince SoftBank to put money in at that valuation. There's certainly there's a tremendous amount of people leaving San Francisco, and there's various reasons why they're leaving that go beyond political. Some of them are structural.

So I think if we say all tech is Silicon Valley, yes, and tech has changed the world. But I guess I had a different definition. Can we talk about what was your cash count to fund all this? Was it Mentor Box? I mean, you said you sold 40,000 courses. is that 500 bucks apiece. I mean, that's $20 million over a couple of years. That had to be incredibly profitable.

But what has been your cash cow? Was it Mentor Box? You know, I've always had multiple streams of income. I actually learned that from the Amish. Every Amish guy is like a farmer. He milks some cows. He does woodwork. He does carpentry on the weekend.

I don't know. I like that because of the adventure. So, yes, certainly courses made money, but I was making big money before I ever posted one video on YouTube. So the name of the podcast is My First Million. and actually the way it started, before we started brainstorming, I would just bring on interesting people. And I would start at the top.

You know, how did you make your first million bucks? Because I remember as a kid, I was a kid and I thought a million dollars was fucking all the dollars. And I was like, man, if I was a millionaire and we used to play what if games, would you cut off your pinky for a million dollars? And so a million dollars was always this mythical thing. And then, you know, so I always thought that was good. I'm sure there's a whole generation of people who still dream like that. And I think it's great.

I'm like you. We get knocked also for being money-minded, even though we talk about a whole bunch of different things, but hey, we love making money. It fuels freedom in our lifestyles. And we enjoy that. So money is freedom to me. The question I asked all the guests was, you know, how did you make your first million? And often it's not their big win that everybody knows them for.

It's like, actually, I did this thing beforehand. I was an affiliate marketer and I did this other thing. So for you, what was your first million? Was it before everybody even knew you? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I started my first business. In 2001, I went to work for, GE Capital, GE Financer.

Didn't have a college degree. Believe it or not, I started on 9-11. I'll always remember the first day I started. I went into the office and it, they're like a plane has crashed. It was literally September 11th, 2001. And I got thrown in like a wealth management company. It was through, I tell this story in 67 steps. I wasn't homeless, but I was sleeping on a couch and a mobile home with nothing.

I mean, I had like no car, no, no bathroom. I just shared a bathroom with other people and I would go to. to sleep on this couch. And I remember what changed my life and started this quest of my first million, my mom, who always liked books, said, you should read this book by Tony Robbins, another controversial person, was the wake in the giant within. I don't remember everything, but I remember one sentence. When you succeed, you party, but when you fail, you ponder and all greatness come from pondering. And so I began to go, wait a second, okay, I'm stuck on a couch, I got nothing.

I had come from living with the Amish. I literally was milking cows by hand. So I had nothing. I had given up my driver's license. It was a great event, greatest time in my life in hindsight. But I'm back on this couch, couldn't get a job because I didn't have a degree.

And my uncle said, Hey, Todd, if you don't have any money, you should go either sell cars or work in finance, like sell insurance or sell investments. So I was like, I don't want to sell cars. So I went in the yellow pages of that mobile home, and I flipped through, and I saw the largest ad.

This is in Raleigh, North Carolina. And I called the guy. I made an appointment with his secretary, and I showed up. His name was Mike Steinbach, and I walked in and I said, hey, you don't know me, but if you teach me, you must be successful. You got this ad in this office. I'd never met somebody who even made $100,000 a year growing up. I said, if you teach me what you know, I'll work for you for free. And I remember he had this big, like Tom Selleck mustache.

And he turned around and he said, I've been looking for somebody like you for 20 years. He said, show up in the morning and I'd give you a job. And he got me in with at that time, GE was the largest company in the world. And they had GE capital and GE Financial. So September 11th, I start from the job. He put me in a little room with file cabinets. And at that time, I was making, I had whatever, less than 50 bucks in my bank account.

And this is going to be a funny store. People don't know this story. I've told a little bit, but I couldn't get any customer. I was super young in a business where the average guy's 50 or 60 years old. Hey, you want to invest wealth with my like I couldn't do that. So I was flipping through an ad, Google. So Google was just starting 2001, 2002. And I see an ad of a picture of a guy laying on a couch on a chair in Hawaii. And he said, I made $28,000. Click here and I'll tell you how I did that laying on the beach in Hawaii. And I clicked in. There was a guy named Quarai. And he said, I made $28,000. And he said, I made $28,000. And he said,

Cory Rudle and he sold courses. He died tragically. I just wanted to thank the guy. He died in like 2008 in a car crash. He had like all these nice cars, like a portion stuff. He died in San Diego. But I bought that course. I remember it was like 300 bucks. So working for this Mike Stainback guy, I got like my first paycheck was like $200. I took all the money that I bought that course and it came in a three ring binder two weeks later. And again, I don't remember much of it, but it said there's this new thing out called Google AdWords, use it for lead generation. And I'll show you how to make a single landing page interstitial. So I was one of the first people to ever make.

I bought a domain name. The simplest thing for me to sell then before I got into investments, which I eventually got into, was life insurance. So I made a website, Life Insurance, 12 Secrets to Buy Life Insurance, something like that. And all of a sudden, Google AdWords, I was buying clicks on the keyword life insurance for 15 cents. and I remember being like, that is so high. Right now those clips are $18.

You've got to get in early, man. I've always been lucky at getting in early. I got in early for Facebook. I was in their beta ads. YouTube, I was one of the first people to use it. And now I'm one of the first people to see the opportunity of buying distressed brands and flipping them and putting them in e-com. So 2001, too, I buy that.

And I went so quickly, my income went to six figures that the CEO of GE Financial, it was divided in four companies. John McGilchrist called me up. And he said, Ty, you don't know me, but I'm the CEO of this division name. I think it was CEO. And he said, Ty, are you doing something illegal? Because you're submitting about $60,000 to $80,000 worth of commissions potential,

not all deals closed per week. And we got guys who've been here 20 years and know everybody that do like 30,000, in the week. And I didn't want to tell them what I was doing because I thought other people would steal it. So I just said, no, I'm not doing anything illegal. I just got a way to get leads. And all my thing did was add value. It was like a book online. It was 28 pages that I copy wrote in 2001. So I got to six figures in under a year. And so that was the beginning of making, whatever you call it, your first million. Then I always liked to do two things at the same time. I had gotten into like becoming a professional salsa dancer. I went to a night. So I was

from the Amish, I went to a nightclub for the first time in my life in my early 20s. Because I had basically checked out of planet Earth for five years. I didn't see one movie. I lived in a 12 by 20. There was no running water and it was an outhouse. I put it on my social media. I went back there two months ago with the Amish. And so I went to a nightclub and I bought a drink.

It was like 15 bucks and I was like, wait a sec. I'm on the wrong side of this bar here. you know, one of my mentors had told me a farm mentor, it said, Ty, if after 20 minutes you're in a room and you don't know who the sucker and the room is, you're the sucker. So I was like, wait a second, I got to get in the nightclub business. And I built a company called Triangle Fiesta. At the same time, I was doing GE and financial stuff.

And so I built two streams of income that were, they weren't seven figure combined, but they were pushing. And I did that for many years. Then I moved back to California, sold those business. businesses to my best friend and the co-founder on the wealth management company. And so by then, I was pretty much you could call a millionaire. I didn't record it as much as I should. I should have been more materialistic and been like, well, why not just release a tax return

from 2005 and just shut everybody up? Nobody ever asked me that. It's not been a controversial thing. What's been controversial is, do you own these cars or lease them? That's been like H3, H3 made this video who we've kind of become friends. And I was like, that was a good ass video. That was a great video. Which one?

The one where he came to my house? Yeah, that was funny. I played with it. People actually thought that I had my lawyers following him around. I'm like, dude, this is Hollywood baby. I know how to hype stuff up? Because I was like, you know what? He had this first video that knocked me a lot.

And I was like, when he comes to the second video, let me make sure it goes by. So I did little funny stuff. People to this day are still like, do you have lawyers following around our house? I'm like, what do you think? Use your brain. But I showed them the title to the cars. Now, I leased them because I don't know anybody who actually buys Lamborghinis and Ferrari.

I had six exotic cars. You lease them so you could turn them in and tax the duck. But that was a big controversy. The world's very illiterate. So they're like, ha-ha, ties a fraud because he leases and not buys where any wealthy person is like, well, who the fuck would buy? a depreciating asset. So I haven't returned my tagged because literally you're first person ever to ask me that question. People are much more fixated on bizarre things. Like, okay, you know.

Let's talk about that ad for a second because that ad's fucking iconic. I think I've seen that ad a bunch of times. People don't know it's the ad where, you know, he starts in his garage with a Lamborghini behind him and they start, but you start talking about books. It's not like you're sitting here saying, get rich, but like I think, you know, whatever, it caught people's attention. So I want to, two things. First, from a marketing point of view, you know, was that ad like very well thought through or did you just grab your phone that day and shoot it and you didn't really realize what you were doing? Or were you calculated and thinking, okay, how am I going to grab people's attention and how am I going to transition this and let's like this room? Tell me about the making of that ad.

Yeah, good question. So in 2012, I was living in the Hollywood Hills. I had a Maserati, I think, at a Ferrari then. And I was like, I'm getting too materialistic. This is the ironic thing. So I sold my cars. And for two years from 2011 or 2012 to 2014, I had no car. That, by the way, is when I realized Uber was a good service because I used to have to walk down my hill because sometimes taxis wouldn't come. So I didn't. Then 2014, dating this girl. And I was like, it's time to get a car.

And so I went and got a Lamborghini for Halloween because she wanted to dress up like Batman, a Batwoman. And I was like, let me get a Black Lambo. It wasn't until six months later that I actually diserring. three months later, sorry, that I was like, wait a sec, this is a great prop. So one of the things marketing people should always realize, you need props in there. And a prop can be anything from a book to a person in the 1984 Steve Jobs commercial. He has like these mannequin, cyborg-looking robot things. And so I had been on the street of Sunset Plaza eating sushi.

I was with two guys. And beautiful women walked by. And at the same time, a Lamborghini had driven by. the only thing that got those guys to not look at the women was the Lamborghini. So fast forward to January 2015 and I was like, prop, I need a prop for this. And I was like, let me shoot a video. I shot a video in December. It's still on my social media.

It didn't do that well. It was my friend Jeremy, we drove around and just talked in the Lamborghini, January 24th, 2015. And I spent like $30,000 and made like $1,000 back on that first December at it. You have to iterate. So to answer your question, our first attempt was not amazing. It did, but I mean, I didn't have any ROI. So I said, let me do some permutations. I went in the garage.

The reason all those books were in my garage is because I own so many books. I was in France for 2014 New Year's. My assistant Nathan Ramos calls me, Ty, you've got a whole bunch of new books in. And where do I put up? There's no more bookshelves space in the entire house. I said, buy bookshelves and put it in the garage. So when I came back in January and thought about this prop, at first it was just about the Lambo, and I forgot that I had those bookshelves in there.

They were just to hold extra books. So I grabbed that, and I shot about four takes, and the fourth one was all took, and it went viral like, I mean, in 24 hours, it was nuts. It was, and back then, if you get in early, you've got to catch things ahead of the turk, cost per impressions on Google on YouTube was insanely low. How much money did you spend on that ad?

That's a good question. Probably not eight figures, but I would say you know, upper seven figures maybe. I would be surprised. I would have thought way more. I would have thought way more. Well, I had other

permutations. I did one with another car and then I moved from the Hollywood Hills down into this house in Beverly Hills. I shot a commercial there. That one got a lot of views. You know, when that, here my garage went viral and like everything, my friend called me, who I think is the best marketer in the world, but he's a super secretive guy. Nobody knows him. He does any kind of business you see where you can't figure out who owns it on the internet. It's this guy. He was making $6 million a month at one point. Anyway, he called me. I think I'm his only friend. He's like

this hermit in New York. He goes, did you do this controversy on purpose? He's like, you did this controversy on purpose, right? I was like, not really. I didn't realize so many people would be butt hurt that I had a Lamborghini. And he's like, whatever you do, stoke the fire of this shit. You're going to become a fucking household name. Two years later, by Google reps, I have Google rep for YouTube. They fly down sometimes for Samsung. They said, Ty, we did a poll for you. We have inner mechanism. And 75% of men in America between 18 and 35, we show your picture. They know your name. And I was like, man, stoking a little controversy.

So that's why, by the way, you see hate because I never really defended it that much. So there was a right away, it was like there was on the keychain, there's plastic and people think that that proves it's a rental. So that was the first controversy for like six months. But the more people posted that on Reddit and stuff, the more people went and watched and intelligent people watch. Right. Watch the four minute video. It's like, this fucking guy's talking. about Warren Buffett, there's actually substance to this. And so it became that 67 step

program in terms of people coming up to me on the street, that in the social media marketing, there's not one place in the world I can go and walk without people being like to change my life. So remember, negativity bias on Twitter and other places. It seems that a lot of people hate me, but I've had at least 10,000 people come up to me in around the world walking around in the last six years. I mean, immense amount. I've never had somebody come up and say, you ruin my life. So I think it's just a small... You rented that Lambo.

You rented some guy's going to come up to you about a rental. No, not that. Just negative, I'm just saying. And maybe the negative people just don't come up to me. So it could be biased. And at this point, like, you had... Okay, so you did a nightclub and financial thing. Then you, there's a gap.

And then you, like, came up with this idea for this book, the 67-step book. And then you promoted the shit out of that. And that kind of was like a pretty big win. before that you were doing like some dating sites yeah but i was also doing i had a consulting business i was doing masterminds that's when i really started testing kind of the educational stuff i started doing more public speaking in 2007 eight i did affiliate stuff i messed around with affiliates for a while i bought a company i bought a dating education company from two partners who were fighting i bought one of the partners had done ayahuasca and decided he didn't care about money anymore and the other partners like

No, I want to make money. And they asked me to mediate and I bought half of it. And, you know, that made, I flipped that thing for seven figures in like eight months. So I became from between, I like to do a lot of stuff. So I was in the dating world, social networking. I was doing a lot of consulting. And I became pretty well known. You know what's funny?

Until 2015, I did a podcast starting like 2011, kind of like what you guys have, like a serious business one. I was super respected. It was pretty funny. And because I didn't show anything, it was kind of like a Tim Ferriss thing. Like, yo, I'm Zen. And Dob, I don't care about money and blah, blah, blah. And it was great. I had a cult following.

I remember at one point, I was like, Tim Ferriss's four-hour work week, blah, blah, blah. And Tim Ferriss was responding to me. And it was just when I was starting out in social. So I dipped my hands in a lot of stuff. I started buying real estate in 2006, so I had passive income from that. I still own the wealth management company. And the nightclub business I still got passive income from that for many years. So, yeah, there was a period of time where it's not like I was doing one thing.

I started really to branch and experiment a lot. And that led into the education side. Right. And so we told you at the beginning what we do on the podcast typically when we bring somebody on, even when a guest comes on, we actually don't usually interview them about their life and litigate it and all that. We just brainstorm about what's cool, what's interesting, what opportunities they're seeing. that's why people like it, right?

Because me and Sam are just idea machines. I think you're probably the same way where you have a little notes app and your phone. It's just full of half-baked ideas. Sam's got his company to run. I have my thing to do already. So we just give away the rest of the ideas for free. And that's why people like the podcast because it gets the wheels turning on. Okay, I already know what I want out of my life, but I don't have that first kind of idea to hook on to.

And I don't have that muscle in my brain to spot opportunities to break down businesses and understand where, oh, wow, this business you never heard of has a ton of value. So I'd love and last fun. And it's fun. You guys don't have a paid version of your program or your podcast? We're working on stuff. We're working on it. Yeah, with Supercast to have like a paid.

I'll just say this. I mean, people, if you bring value, charge money, there's so much stupid stuff. McDonald's makes $25 billion selling diabetes to people and Coca-Cola. So it's like, hey, man, one thing my mentor told me, if you have value, never be afraid to charge. and the people who get, Charlie Munger says if 10% of people don't complain about your prices, you're too cheap. So we have some stuff coming, but I would love for you to try to, you know, become one of us for the last five minutes here.

And I'd love to brainstorm a little bit about what opportunities do you see that you may not be pursuing or you see adjacent to what you're doing. I'd love, I don't know if you've, if you're prepared for this, if you have anything off top of your head, but spit out a couple of half-baked ideas of things, you know, if you're a young entrepreneur, what you would be looking at? What would you be going and doing? 22 year old tie. If I was 22, you go straight service-based to start out if you can.

Now, if you're a tech-wiz, you can build SaaS and things like that. I'm going to talk to everyday ordinary people like what I grew up with. You go service-based business. I think the simplest one is still social media marketing agency. It's obviously a little bit different with COVID. But you can pivot into, for example, e-com agency where you manage people, get help all these restaurants, help all these brands, mom and pop transition to a Shopify store and so on.

You can charge them one to $10,000 a month based on what you do for them. And you have four or five clients and you're in six figures. That's a no-brainer for most people. Again, the Mark Zuckerberg is listening. You can bypass what I'm saying. From there, you always want to move into product base at some point. So, half-bake ideas that I see for myself. I think I look at the tam of things.

You know, what's the tam of verticals? There's about 12 verticals, me and my business partner, Alex, have identified we want to go into. And all of them have to be trillion dollar tamp. So the food, 8.7 billion a trillion in global food consumption, everybody needs it. I think there's a real opportunity for more entrepreneurs, whether it be to start a small urban farm and do a CSA delivering healthy food to people. I think that's a great, that's a badass business. What's that called? Like misfits fruit or ugly fruit?

No, it's vegetables, right? It's produce. It's something produce. Yeah. Imperfect, yeah. I'm not familiar with them, but I like where they're going with that. The whole schick is like shit that wasn't pretty enough to sell the pepper that was not pretty enough because it's misshaped to sell the grocery store. They put in the box.

In reality, it's perfectly good looking. But that's a schick. And there's two of those companies, and I believe they're between 50 to 100 million a year in sales. It's a box that you get with vegetables. I love that business. food is a great vertical. I think another vertical that people neglect a little bit is simple things, like building houses, like construction. I saw you had on your Twitter some roofing company that was worth a building, like a lot of boring things. Don't be afraid. I started with life insurance

my first time out of the, I started with milking cows by hand, which people think is boring. but it builds. There's a lot that happens there. And I think that, so things that people really need, food shelter right now is the place to be. I think because of COVID, all the brands were buying, whether, and I didn't even talk much about this, but Pier 1 and Dress Barn, I bought another company that did $740 million revenue house here, Dress Barn. That's a brand that, you know, women need still clothes at home. I bought Modell sporting goods. people want soccer balls at home.

So you really got to think, if people are trapped in home for prolonged periods of time, what did they want? They want food. They want home improvement. And they want those basics. I would stay away from a lot of the things that people envision. Hospitality business. These are crushed businesses that have a permanent shift on the curve.

And I don't know how they would travel, a lot of stuff that people get into. But you know what? Keep that service business going and put a CEO in place so that it could, continues to run. There's much too much talk about exiting. I'm not an exit guy. Like I said, Buffett says the exact time you should hold a good brand is forever. That's the ideal time. So I would also encourage my 22-year-old self to build things that last. And a great food-based business with a product. The products you can go tangentially are huge. You can come now with like carbonated waters you can come out with.

We launched a beef jerky line with grass-fed beef, and there's so many paleo people. And so, and then you can go vegan. We have a hemp protein line on farmers' cart. So I think you go into these huge tam simple markets that are home-based, and then you can just shoot off for the rest of your life. Can you name the 12? That's a good question. Okay.

So you have, in the U.S. GDP, finance is number one. So finance-related. me and Alex were trying to buy a bank. There's distressed banks. People don't realize there's 100 banks at any given time for sale in America. We almost bought a bank called the Bank of Louisiana and Kentucky. Too much regulations. So finance.

Food, fashion is about one and a half trillion globally. Then construct real estate, obviously. But real estate breaks into multi. So you can have real estate and then you can have construction. I think mining is in there. And then you start getting into the commodity side of things, some of those 12 break out there. The one that I think, and then service base, there is a service based trillion dollar, barely trillion dollars. But it's so fragmented.

I don't like that. So on the 12, which I wish I could remember all 12, I only focus on like the top six because as you move down that stack, it becomes very fragmented. Like I was saying, like, do you really want to, like hospitality. It's harder. It's fine if that's your passion, and you've always wanted to run a hotel, that changes the game. But I tell people start on Maslow's hierarchy at the bottom. Like, what do people really need? And in the top, which is this kind of, you know, enlightenment phase on the Maslow where you release,

that part is what loses money in COVID. All this stuff here. And people aren't going to nightclubs up here because that's where you, like, express your wealth, you know, call Marx would be angry. At the top of the master. In 30 years, where are you going to be? I mean, are you going to be this old gray hair guy who's got all these CEOs reporting to you? Are you going to be running shit?

Are you going to have sold out? And you're just going to be reading and being Amish? What are you going to do? Nothing. Great question, man. You know, it's hard to predict the future. I would say, I think there's four M's the motivation. And I'm M number three.

So I hope I'll be in that money, mating, movement slash freedom, mastery, slash status. That drives most humans one of those four. And I'm strong on the third one. So I hope in 30 years that I'm kind of a mad scientist. And I always tell people, you should reverse engineer your life, what you want on your tombstone. And I hope my tombstone says he was a mad scientist. So you're, you're, you're what to be Howard Hughes. I don't know if I'm, it could be in his category. I hope I'm not peeing in bottles and keeping them next to me or whatever he did weird. You want to be, you want to be a wild guy. I think I already up. You know what? If People can figure you out, I think it's too boring for me. That's what I would say. So I'm hard to figure out and maybe I'll get harder to figure out. I don't know. What do you want to do? That's a good question. What's your 30 years from now, man?

I don't know. You don't have kids, do you? Okay. I would like to maybe have some kids. I want to, you know, similar to you. I think me and Sean are similar to you and that we like to have our hands and lots of different things. I own my own company. now and it's a similar business maybe than what you had we have one and a half million daily users I just want to make cool shit for them and invest in the cool companies and buy cool companies the same thing as you you know in different times of my life the old tap dancing rule do you tap dance out of bed where I'm at right now is fun man it's fun because a lot of it's high level if you look at myricks if you believe in personality types I'm an en tp which they call the visionary whatever I don't know if that I wouldn't necessarily call myself a visionary, but I like high level architecture.

I like cracking the code on, okay, we're buying company brands at the pace of one a month. How do we build a C-suite in 30 days, every 30 days? It's a tough one to do. But, you know, I've built an algorithm that uses actually, I built it with Dr. David Buss, a complex personality algorithm that uses very advanced psychometric testing, things It, they call it like the Hexico score. You look at NPI, you look at the Mach 4, all these little known academic ways of quantifying talent. And then, of course, how do you structure it where you can test people?

There's a good book on this by Laslo Bach called Work Rules. It's how he was the chief hiring officer going through three million applications for Google. So I think there's a – I hope I'll be reading a lot, by the way. That was a good thing you brought up. Man, I get to read now more. I will tell you that if I could talk to my 20-year-old self, it's not just working hard. It's working smart. And I think you should look to the Titans.

There's a lot to learn. Even people that people think are unethical, like Rockefeller and the Ross trials, you read their biographies. And all of a sudden you go, well, there was a method to their madness. They weren't, you know, if it wasn't for Rockefeller, you wouldn't have the modern-day intrastate commerce system. You used to not be able to do businesses across state lines. He retooled the United States into what we benefit. But if you break Rockefeller down, he was a, you know, trust. Not only was he breaking every modern antitrust law, but he called himself.

He believed in the trust like it was God. So I think that for every person listening and from my 22-year-old self, it's like, man, do lots of stuff. If 10% of people ain't mad at what you're doing, you're probably doing something. wrong and what about the opposite what would the 22 year old self tell the 40 whatever you are your old tie lopez if he walked in through the door was like yo this is my life this is what you do okay interesting what would 22 year old you tell you that's a smart question never had someone asked that it's hard to answer this without sounding cliche respect the seasons of life when you're 22 don't just lock yourself in a room your body

strong and young. Get out there. That's what I say. Build a damn construction company. Get sweaty. My mentor on a nation said, also respect the phases. So that's what I think you tell me.

Like in your 20s is when you try a lot of stuff. 30s is when you focus on something. 40s is when you profit. 50s is when you begin to mentor so that 60s you can hand off. So respect the seasons of life. One of the reasons I'd spend so much time on the farm

it gives you a deeper understanding of patterns. And, you know, we're all, I think I'm in the summer of life approaching fall. And it's not just chronological. It's not just like at this age you hit that. Right. Like winter is when you plot and ponder. And spring is when you plant seeds. I think the last five years I've been planting a lot of seeds.

Summer you go to work and the harvest comes in the fall. And I'm kind of on that track. And that's why I said, when strong appear weak. When I'm in the spring, many people saw the spring and they go, oh, this guy's not that talented. Well, in many ways, I'm not talented. I mean, the game of business is so multifaceted that I've never met one person that has full encompassing body of knowledge. But like Tom Watson, the founder of IBM used to say, I'm smart in spots and I like to spend a lot of time in those spots. So I think another thing my 22-year-old self would say, Ty, on certain things, you're a mouan and other things.

things, you have Titan potential. Stick more around the Titan potential type, you know, and I think that's for everybody. What's that damn superpower you have? And it should be very tangible. My superpowers are persuasion. And the reason I got a lot of hate and why you asked me that question of, okay, is this tie guy, do you think any of the accusations against you have merit? Well, yes, when you're highly persuasive, it's a strong tool. It's like a pit bull. I mean, does a pit bull good or bad? Well, it depends. If you're not careful, the pit bull can bite you. So I have to be careful with persuasion that I'm not doing crossing the line. But now my superpower, when I flip it in, I can buy.

I know how to talk people into selling me their brand. If the numbers came out on some of the acquisitions I've done, Harvard would be doing a case study on it right now. I don't say the numbers because I don't give a shit about that. Now, some of them are public. You know, like I said, Pure 1 was $31 million. and it was an auction against Sycamore. I can't, you know, keep that private.

But find your superpower, man. And some people said to me, I don't even have a superpower. Well, maybe your superpower is finding somebody with a superpower, marry somebody with a superpower. You know, that's the same. That's the superpower in and of itself, self-awareness. To be like, yo, I don't know if I'm going to tighten it anything.

It's okay to be an entrepreneur. Not everybody has to be an entrepreneur. Richest guy I've ever had a long conversation in dinner with Steve Ballmer. He just shot up to, like, number of, seven wealthiest guy. And he's an entrepreneur. He didn't drop out of college with Bill Gates. He was more scared or more conservative, he told me.

But, you know, entrepreneur. He respected that superpower that he had to build off somebody else's vision. And I think that's another problem with what I call Silicon Valley is this thought that looks down on simple people starting social media marketing agencies. That that's a scam. Well, what's wrong with that? Businesses, my dentist, sucks at marketing. He's happy to have somebody do his email marketing.

He's 60 years old. He don't want to learn email marketing. So I think Silicon Valley should realize that there's this huge need for everyday ordinary people to be able to tow that entrepreneurial line without thinking they have to build a SaaS product and understand a stack and all this things, you know. Well, look, I appreciate you coming on this Silicon Valley podcast. And you guys got to come on my podcast. I had a podcast.

I got so busy doing these acquisitions that I, like, had them recorded one. a year but will you guys come on it but yeah we'll come we'll do a brainstorm session on your podcast so look this this wasn't a normal episode by the way tip it we have this big ass sheet and like we research like crazy and we come on and we just fucking bang bang bang bang bang we bang we bang it out do it give me my bank give me the things you didn't get me come on this but let's just knock this out because so many people are going to be like what's the hard nose question you want to ask me no we got to my what sam's saying is usually we come on and we have idea idea opportunity, opportunity.

Oh, okay. Oh, here's a business you never heard of. Or, hey, these guys are buying, you know, old school brands and flipping it for e-commerce. That's what we usually do on the podcast. This is more like, you know, hey, look, you know, I wanted to do three things. I wanted to know your perspective on people's opinions about you and what the criticisms are and address, you know, those. I had my own just curiosities of like, yeah, why doesn't he just say this or why doesn't

he do this or how is he doing that? And then the other side was, look, I wanted to talk about what you guys doing with rev because I actually think that's a really good idea. Like there was an investor today in the Twitter thread, this guy named Gary Tan. He's, you know, comes from Y Combinator, which is like our Harvard out here. You know, he's, he's done some interesting things. You know, he built posture, which kind of failed, but he's invested in some good companies. He had his pitchfork out right away and it was like, look, yeah, these guys, you know, this guy's never built anything. I think what the fundamental thing for Silicon Valley is they respect builders. And for all delusions around pretending that they don't want wealth, that's absolutely

true. Totally guilty of that. Virtue signaling, totally guilty of that. But the one thing I think is true is Silicon Valley respects builders who make something. I think the problem is that overlooks people who teach. Like fundamentally, you were teaching. And it's like, oh, he didn't, he didn't, you know, why is he telling other people how to be successful? That's not a valid way to make your money. And it's like, well, first of all, you don't know if he's built anything before this. I didn't know a lot of your background. You shared some of it here. But the second thing is, even if you had done none of those things, but you were teaching the right information to people. You were actually helping people read more books and think about how to build a little business.

Why is that a bad thing? Right? So I think that is a genuine flaw of Silicon Valley. And I think what I replied to Gary was, look, whether you love him or you hate him, he's doing some interesting shit with Rev right now. And you got to acknowledge that. Like, I don't care what you think about the guy. But a good idea is a good idea. There's 25 cognitive biases.

Once humans decide this guy is something wrong. That's why politics. What's people don't like Donald Trump or Joe Biden? Who are you persuading? All the hate on Twitter is just everybody who hates Donald Trump follows each other. And everybody, it's the echo chamber boy. It's like, and people don't like black or white. By the way, can I-

Smart people? Can I do one thing? Yeah, what's up? Okay. So I'm not going to mention anybody's name, but I was like, you know what? I never have done this before. Let me respond. Let me bring up some of the people.

So Andrew Wilkinson was a criticized you. He's a great friend of mine. He's a great friend of Sean. He's a good guy. And I would actually say, and this is like I going to say, by the way, I live in San Francisco. I'm from Missouri. This is where I am now. So like, and I bootstrap my company.

So does Sean. People strike out at those things they subconsciously see in themselves. I have a friend who loves attention. We went to a party. There was a guy, life of the party in the middle of party. My friend, we walk in, two minutes in. he looks and he goes, look at this guy. Fucking wants all the attention himself.

I said, that's you, bitch. You wish you were him. Like me, I don't have to be that guy, so I don't criticize them. People criticize what is some sort of reflection. Pull up, what you want to pull up. So you know, Andrew says the same shit you say. He buys profitable internet company. So he bought like dribble, which is the largest designer website.

It's like a top 1,000 website. But he owns like 20 of these. Is he a builder or a buyer just so I know? Well, listen, here's why it's funnier. He started because he has an agency that does about $50 million in sales, a service business in Canada. His whole group does about $100 million in sales. It's a lot of software, but some agency.

But it's called Meta Lab. They make apps and stuff for people. So he started with a service business. He then bought a bunch of brands that he thought were undervalued and grew them. And then he did it with his own money and didn't use it. He doesn't have no fun backing him. and he owns most of it himself with his one partner. And he sits in Canada and he laughs at a lot of the stupid stuff that Silicon Valley does.

And so it's so funny that you guys are. But it's like Tolstoyer was it Dostoevsky that said, you know, all unhappy families are unhappy. All happy families are happy in the same way. And all unhappy families are unhappy in a million different ways. Meaning to succeed, you all, you're all doing about the same thing. It's like everybody's more similar. To fail, there's infinite permutations on. I wasn't even going to bring up.

I mean, he was going to tweet at Andrew. I think that's what he was going to do. Okay, so here it was. How do you sleep at night? Duping poor people with a get rich quick scheme. So what I would tell him is, how much does his agency make? $30 to $50 million. See, this $30 and $50 million.

I took that money that concentrates in his hands and I showed people how to do it to everyday ordinary man and woman. So don't get on your high horse with me. If you want to talk about what benefits society, is it concentrating 30 to 50 million or helping a whole bunch of business everyday ordinary people across the world have an agency and make $100,000 a year? I got it. Gary V. at one point was banging on me for don't buy crisis. You got $150 million. Let everyday ordinary people, man.

That's why I never get hate from everyday ordinary people. People on the street. People from the ghetto. People from, you know, service bus boys. They're like, hey, man, these other people in this scenario. They call it a get rich quick scheme, but the reality is they're the ones who got rich on something, and I break it down and let other people do. That wasn't even the main one I wanted to talk about. But I'm glad thank you for bringing that up.

Yeah, it's funny. Like, you know, Warren Buffett would shit on, let's say, Bitcoin, which Bitcoin has been, you know, the last 10 years, it would be the absolute best investment you could have made. Better than any Silicon Valley startup. If you had just bought Bitcoin 10 years ago, you would have done better. you know, he doesn't understand it and he kind of knocks it. Elon Musk knocks Warren Buffett. He says, oh, that's kind of boring. He's just a capital alligator.

I'm out here building rockets and, you know, electric cars that are going to clean up the earth. And so he knocks Warren Buffett. And then, you know, the next person comes in and shits on somebody else. And I think there's a sort of really toxic idea of judging other people's businesses in this way. I'm guilty of it too. But it's kind of like you said, if you spot it, you got it. The thing you resent in other people is a part of yourself that you. you don't quite like.

And I don't think most people would agree with that. I think a lot of people listen to this will disagree. But from my life experience, that has turned out to be true. The things that really annoy you and other people, things that really bother you. It's because it's a part of you that is guilty of some of those same things. Maybe it's suppressed. Maybe you don't act on it.

But that's why you're noticing it in that same way. If you want to go down a real rabbit hole that will blow your mind, if you go down the evolutionary psychology route and you understand the dark triads for, So Dark Triad is the three most exploitative traits that humans share. So it's psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism. So I've administered a test across the Internet. It's on my site. I build a separate site.

Life Compass, it's called. It's free. I don't monetize it at all. And I've tested more people in any psychologist than the last two years in history. I tested like 500,000 people just went through this free quiz. I can tell you, entrepreneurs have some of the worst dark triad scores. the fact that they're angry. So Machiavellianism is a complex psychological ailment.

And it's basically, if you were bullied and a kid who always kind of sucked and you didn't get the girl when you finally get a little power and especially with Twitter and YouTube comments, they did a study. Psychology, I think what psychology today, did a study. Most people who leave comments that are negative score extremely high on a dark dyad, worse than the dark triad. sadistic score. There's lots of, that's why I never took it. Real people don't comment, man. So when people go tired of people hate you, I'm like, not the real ones. These are people with actual psychological ailments.

Now, I'm not writing off anybody who criticizes me. I'm telling you the most blatant people who make a living on YouTube, on critiquing other people. If you do their diet scores, these are people you should never have in your life. Exploitative at a level that's unreal. There's a good book on this called The H Factor of Personality by the guy who developed the hexaco score, which is the most accurate personality test, psychometric test by far. So one of the things that I do, do you smoke a lot of wheat? You know what?

I don't have super high anxiety. And anybody that I know that loves of weed has anxiety and I don't have much. So I never. Do you do LSD? Because you're kind of like weird in an interesting way. Like you go, like, that's what we call a Sam compliment. Thank you. LSD, you're weird in an interesting way.

You know what? Well, so I'm completely sober. I'm completely sober. I don't do anything, but I would love to take LSD one day, but I'm a little nervous to do it. But you, like, talk about some weird-ass shit that I find incredibly fascinating, and it seems like it's helpful. But is this coming from a sober place, or do you like to get fucked up sometimes to get inspiration? Last time I got high was in 2014. I remember my brothers smoke a lot.

Two of my brothers have high anxiety. They smoke. They love it. They swear by it. My mom always, she's a hippie. thinks I should smoke more and LSD you know what man I have other ways that I think I stretch my brain I'm not against weed but I do acid or anything no man my dad was like a big drug dealer that went to prison and I guess I just like and he was an alcoholic and all that and he was

like yeah I mean I'll drink when I go out but I don't have addicted to chemical I never was I got that from my mom think I thought I was going to be like my dad my grandma thought I'd be like my dad addicted to everything I think as I told you the videos that I'm known for just the ones that the masses wanted to see so they got the viewed count but the real me that's what i said people used to follow my podcast are like wait a second this dude ain't who i thought he was and it's not because i was projecting false it's just a video with a Lamborghini and girl people gonna you have 50 million views there and a video of me talking about dark dyad and dark triad scores which by the way should be mainstream the educational system so fucked it doesn't teach you how to read people one of my great superpowers not that i was born with but luckily

I bumped into like Dr. David Bus is an active mentor mine. And like it's insane the things that people think are weird that I talk about. Like never go on a date with a girl without sending her to dark triad test. I've saved more dudes from debt. But I have a friend of the Silicon Valley. I said him, watch my 67 steps at the end of the 67 steps if that was worth a sushi dinner, $67. Just ask yourself, see if the value. was there because I developed the 67 steps in 2004 for an operating manual to run companies.

I began to realize I needed to be able to build CEOs. And I said, how do I get everything my mentors have taught me? And I built this manual. Back then it wasn't 67 steps. It was like 14 things. I still have the Word Doc operating manual. So it's important to have frameworks. I can't tell you how I'll give you.

example. How does it make sense? You're going to talk about business that I was the only one going to buy Pier 1. If Sycamore hadn't come in in the last two weeks, I would have pulled that off for $20.5 million. This is a business doing $1.5 billion with 30 million customers. It had 99% brand awareness. Where's all the geniuses in Silicon Valley? And they say, well, we only build. We don't want to be ass. Bullshit. We'll then build it into a better tech staff company. No, people with high IQ. There's a recent study and book that came out. I forget the name. Why intelligent people make more mistakes? It's because they have these cognitive loads on their brain. In San Francisco has the most cognitive loads I've ever seen. I don't think the clear

thinking is always there. There are some outwires. But I think why a lot of people, if you read Tim Ferriss, why did he leave? It's become a toxic mentality. And I could have told him, You stick a whole bunch of dark triad people in one city and give them money and a little clout. This ain't going to be a place you want. This ain't going to end well, my friend. We're going to end up in Austin. And then Austin's not going to end well. Nicest people I've ever met with the lowest dark triad are people who live on a farm and things like that.

But some of that's adverse selection, for example. One to ten, what do you think your followers will think of this podcast? Am I going to be a awesome? Here's what's going to happen. They're going to say that we didn't press you enough. And they're kind of right. Because I don't agree with everything you've ever done. And I think we could have a respectful conversation about that.

But I'm pleasantly, and I bet Sean's the same. I'm pleasantly surprised. And I think that you're a much, you're a much, I think that you are more ethical than I thought. I think that you are more badass than I thought. You're super weird. And I found that to be amazing and cool because I'm weird. I think, so I think what's going to happen is tens of thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands of people are going to listen to this. And they're going to criticize me and Sean for not pushing you hard enough.

but I think in general, everyone's going to like it. And I hope that you will come back on again so we can get into more business stuff. And I want us to come on there. One thing you would push me on so I can make sure that this podcast, you don't get accused. You can say, do you do it in chronological order? Are you going to cut it where you can? No, we usually do it in chronological order. But it's fine.

I don't ever think about this in terms of what are people going to say? Like, if I wanted to do that, I wouldn't even have done the podcast. I did the shit for fun. And I did it because- I need one. Well, let me say that, look, Ty, all great men are also bad men, right? Like, everyone great has done something that people don't like. I think that some of the dating stuff was definitely scammie.

And you, I don't know, maybe like, I don't think that there was necessarily a victim, but there's some blatant, like, fake profile shit. The main knock on you is actually not about the dating stuff. The main knock is this guy was teaching people how to be rich and successful. He was showing a rich and successful life, and he wasn't rich and successful. but he only got that way because of his, I'll teach you to do it, and that's how he got his money. That's the criticism, right? And I think we talked a little bit about, okay, how did you make your first million bucks? Was it that or was it before then?

Now, I don't know if all the shit you said was true. And I'm not even going to try to like go fact check it because to me is irrelevant. But I know for some people, for some people, they're going to really care about this shit. I don't lie. Even if I wanted to lie, people will fact check my stuff. My LLG Financial, which is now called retirement geeks, my business partner John DeWar, he gets calls daily going, did Ty really start this business? Joel Salatin, who's been on Joe Rogan twice, probably the most famous agricultural food guy

that wrote a book Omnibor's Dilemma in great part. Joel Salatin's farm in Swope, Virginia, gets calls where people are like, did Ty really spend two years living with you? Because they respect Joel, and Joel respects me, but they don't, some of them don't like me. So nothing I told you, I mean, if a date was a little bit off, but there's nothing. That's a true story. So the two knocks are going to be, well, some people just can be like, I can't believe you gave this guy y'all's platform. I think that's fucking stupid.

Like, I think, yeah, I would have a way with homes on. That would be a very interesting conversation. Yo, why did you do it? And so my test is if I was sitting next to this person, would I want to strike up a conversation? Do I have questions? Am I curious? Would I want to form my own opinion? Yes, absolutely I would.

So I happen to record it here so other people can benefit from it. But that's, I do this with what conversation I want to have. Right. So the second knock will be, oh, you didn't push them on this one factoid because they've done a bunch of, you know, sort of internet research about, you know, something you said that wasn't true or whatever. But I think we already kind of covered that. The third one, which is actually probably not what any of the audience says, but it's more of my own, what the thing I was most questioning of was, I think you talk about, I bought this brand. I own this company. And there's something that doesn't quite add up there where it's like, you're telling me this is a company that that's, you know, doing $70 million. quarter. You're buying these brands. Month. It's publicly trading. It's publicly trading. You're making his point even further. Right. So I guess my point is business is in some ways like there's laws of physics. And of course there's outliers, but you know, you're doing this repeatedly with brands. And what you're trying in a way, you're telling me that, you know, two plus two equals one,

meaning strong brand with huge revenues or depositing $70 million in the bank account, meaning, you know, actual either, you know, profits or EBIT or whatever. And I'm buying these things for $3, $10, $20, $30 million. Something doesn't add up there, right? And I believe that, you know, you might be one of the few people who are bidding on these things or maybe one deal has this exception. But that's the only part where if I was really sitting down with you, I'd be like, all right, Ty, you know, okay, walk me through this because I know business and I know that there's no free lunch. If a business is really, really healthy, you're not getting it for cheap. And if a business has some hair and you got to do some work, that's why you might get it for cheap.

But I think you were kind of painting things as healthy that you wouldn't get for that price. And that was my, that's my perception. I might be wrong. But, oh, that's a good point. So is there a free lunch? I will say there's one time where there's free lunch. It's where something's inefficient and not everybody sees it yet. So, for example, when I got into Google AdWords in 2001, 2002,

It was 15 to 20 cents a click. A lead cost me, let's call it, you know, whatever. It took 10 clicks. So you got leads for $2. And so it cost me $100. I remember doing the math, $100 to generate a deal that on average my commission was $1,500. So it was 15X. Now, you know, it was back then why I didn't know much about business and I didn't scale it as far.

But there was free lunch there. When I launched with Google AdWords, you'd, two bad words more than a decade later anything i put up not just here in my garage you could sell anything okay let's use the one example you you talked about which was dress barn i think the healthy business that was so so good news forget about the so one question here so um let's say it's inefficient nobody else is fishing where you're fishing you you recognized it you go but the business owner themselves would not sell it for less than what they're making in a month so the business owner they're efficient they know what they're getting in their bank account

Why would they sell their business for this? I'm going to tell you something. And I shouldn't tell you this because it's going to 100,000 people. I'm asking great questions. That's why. Well, no, I'm going to tell you something that I know that very few people, they may understand it, but they don't fully. Long-term leases that brick and mortar companies have have 10-year horizons, five to 10 years. So they signed these leases in 2015, 17, 18.

All of a sudden, Amazon had slowly been eating away plus COVID. It's so all of a sudden, now, the way the U.S. bankruptcy law, which is very sophisticated, the best bankruptcy law in America in the world is the American bankruptcy, really. And it says, no problem, Asena, you're a publicly trading company, you own Dress Barn, Ann Taylor, Law, all these brands. We'll let you can get out of those leases with DressBarn. But you'll have to declare bankruptcy and somebody else gets your brand. America has an outlet. Somebody else gets your brand. Now, that was not a bankrupt situation, but it was similar dynamic.

So the reason you would sell, because what the U.S. bankruptcy court forces you to do. Now, some of them are Chapter 7, Chummer Chapter 11. Even within Chapter 11, you can do what's called a 363 sale, which is what I've done on some deals. But, man, like I said, I always go fish where nobody fishes. And my business partners from Silicon Valley, and he exited for $300 million. and he thought just like you, even eight months ago. And I said, Alex, you'd be surprised, I'm going to put it in Sam's words. You'd be surprised what a weird framework of thought will end up handing to you.

And I'll tell you, on Pier 1, it was such a steal that we were what's called a stalking horse. I don't know if you know what a stocking horse is, but some of your listeners will, which means basically we have protections and also nobody shows up at the option where the automatic winners. and until one week before, everyone was so scared of COVID that only Sycamore came. Even now, 20 more people would show. So the other thing that comes into play is just like Buffett says, when the world is scared, you should be greedy. And when the world's greedy, you should be scared.

You asked me where I accumulated cash and how did I get ready for this? I've been getting ready. While everybody else was continually buying and flipping and selling in what I call a greater fool, expansionary period. I was waiting. And so I think that great things come to people who wait sometimes. And there was never a bad. I'm the only thing I'm pissed out. I mean, I almost bought American Apparel in January. That was $2.5 billion. I'm sorry, Forever 21. Right. Simon ABG beat us, but for a large amount. But man. You should have got American Apparel. You missed that one. I've seen that, that was expansionary.

That was where it wasn't deals. Right now is deals. So I think what happens. And something even my critics realized about me. American Apparel is worth 80. American Apparel's worth 80 now, for sure. Well, I can't tell you. There's something about that.

But I agree. Gildan owns it and realizes it, and they're smart. But I've never been afraid to do stuff that other people thought was weird. And anybody listening, you know, a lot of your listeners already know that. But even weirder than people think. My mentor on the nation said, Ty, if you have a good idea and you tell your neighbor about it and they're not suspicious, it's too late. So the fact you're a smart guy and you're kind of suspicious of dress barn, it's beautiful.

In fact, I'm like, do I convince you? Because now I have 100,000 people that are smart businessmen that I don't know that I want to convince. But I will tell you what I told you about dress porn is extremely accurate. When we bought it and relaunched it, it's e-com. All the metrics are better than we thought, not worse. And I think that the window will close. It may have already closed for the great deals. But luckily, we bought five.

And we did another one in the UK, a smaller company called The Book People. It was like one of the largest book companies in Europe. And I bought that. And so we pulled off six acquisitions in eight months, and I'm not sure the window will be there. More people are starting to show up at auctions on other things that I'm coming to. So be quick, baby. Be quick.

See around corners. Well, Ty, this has been a really good podcast. What's going to happen is it's going to go live. And I think you're going to get a lot of feedback from this. That's my prediction. I hope, if you're listening, go tell me, Sean, and Ty, give us feedback. I think you're going to like this. Ty, I would love for you to come back.

And if you want us to yours, we would love to do that. I'm speaking for Sean, but I imagine I'll say the same thing. this was awesome well I appreciate you guys are great and uh your audience even though I was on Twitter fighting back with them I love I don't I don't mind it

I was like in the doctors and I was like I don't got shit to do I'm gonna reply 50 times we can do another one if you get a whole bunch of response you should have pressed them on dating I mean the whole dating thing we can talk about that that but so we can come back on the show and we can go down the dating thing

and we can go down we want to do that We won't. I mean, who cares? Tweet at us. I'm Sean VP. That's the Sampar and then at Ty Lopez. Tweet us what you think. I'm actually curious about this.

I don't know what people are going to say. I know my opinion. I know people are going to hate us. They're going to say, oh, you guys were light on them or they're just going to be like you were defending them. But honestly, I've just telling you what I think. And I also know this.

Like, I have a poster of Connor McGregor here, you know, behind me. That guy's not fucking perfect. He punched an old guy in a bar. He's been accused of rape. He's also a UFC champion in his share. a lot of great wisdom and also contributed to martial arts in a great way. I actually love Tony Robbins. I've been to his events. People in Silicon Valley think this guy's a, you know, a complete cult leader slash, you know, con artist. I've met the, you know, famous tech

CEOs and I've hung out with them. I've gone to dinners with them. I've been to parties with them. And yeah, they're not as great as you would think. You know, they do a whole lot of shit behind the scenes that just doesn't come out. And, you know, I've just lived my life in a way where I'm curious and when I meet somebody I try to figure out what is this person if you're remarkable enough for me to like take an interest in you that means you know something about something and I'm going to focus on that and not like focus all my fucking energy on the things I dislike about you or the things that you've done poorly or the the flaws of your character and that just helped me a lot because then I don't worship people and think that they're flawless you know Elon Musk has had you know

three wives let's go ask them you know how he is as a guy maybe they don't have the nicest things to say but people totally respect him as a builder because he's fucking an amazing at building. And I just encourage anybody who's like, you know, on on hater mode, like, forget Ty Lopez, but just in general, much better way to live life is just to, you know, look at people and figure out what can I learn from this person? What's the goal that they have? Otherwise, you know, how they even get on your radar and don't put so much energy into, you know, the flaws that they have because everybody's got them. Yeah, it's like Nietzsche said. The mind is an impenetrable fortress. You only learn about yourself through friends and enemies.

I always say, please compliment me on a few things. Like, I don't like that. guy but he's good at marketing so I'm like look well I can buy brands and turn around through marketing you really learn from people who compliment you you know so that's why I never got bothered I the amount of criticism I've got has truly allowed me to hone in on yeah they're like I know a guy that was like I don't like tie but the dude knows a lot about books and I was like well thank you I'll double down and read a little more books and see if I can leverage that into actual accomplishment. So, you know, at the end of the day, dude, I'm a big history fan. They're not one of us. Possibly that will be remembered in a hundred years. In the scope of the blip, in a thousand years,

you won't bring up people, I was out on a date with a girl. And I was like, somehow, I brought up Elvis or something. She was like, who's that? And I was thinking, this is, she wasn't even that Tuesdays in our 20s. I'm going, how quickly we forget the most popular man in the world. It hadn't even been, you know, 40 years or 50 years since the guy's dead. And I'm just like, at the end of the day, I hope it says he was a math scientist. I hope it doesn't say he tried to say he was, you know, virtue man. Mark Twain said, all men are like the moon. They got their dark side. Boy, imagine if you could take everybody's thoughts that are on your podcast and put them up on a projector shit the people we esteemed like they will be stuff running through their

mind maybe they're too pussy to act on that of the most demon-like devilish thing so it's been good i got to run tie this is awesome i appreciate you very much we appreciate you have a good day i appreciate you guys and we'll connect soon thank you man