My First Million - He made $100m betting on the NBA… here’s how
Episode Date: February 7, 2025Get our Business Monetization Playbook: Episode 674: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to the most successful sports better of all time, Haralabos... Voulgaris ( https://x.com/haralabob ). — Show Notes: (0:00) Stumbling into gambling (6:19) Finding your edge (19:23) Alpha (27:28) Casinos are for losers (30:02) Betting 160% on Bitcoin (35:36) Getting paid (37:31) Buying a soccer team (46:11) Investing every dollar into Bitcoin (49:27) Analogue things and biohacking — Links: • https://www.cdcastellon.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies! Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano
Transcript
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This was the biggest, greatest edge in the history of gambling edges, I can promise you.
But I've never uttered this in public to anyone ever before.
You want to nuke it?
Let's nuke it.
I feel like I can rule the world.
I know I could be what I want to.
All right.
So we've got to tell your story because your story is, you basically did what me and probably 50% of other young guys wanted to do in their life.
It's like, oh, what if I could take a few thousand dollars?
find an edge, beat the house in Vegas,
and turn a few thousand dollars into millions of dollars,
tens of millions of dollars,
and ultimately, I believe, over hundreds of millions of dollars,
not by counting cards in blackjack,
first by, you know, sports betting.
And then you get recruited by Mark Cuban
to go work for an NBA team at one point.
You now own your own soccer club.
So you've had this, like, really cool life and career.
You're like a comic book character.
Yeah, you're like, your man cave came to life, you know?
Like, it worked.
So that's dope.
But, you know, of course, no story is perfect.
You know, there's ups and downs, and it's not all, not like you planned it out this way.
But what we like most on this podcast, this podcast is mostly a business podcast.
So somebody comes on and they tell us about their company or their investments or whatever.
And but what we like most is people who play their own game.
What I like about you is you play your own game.
You're pretty independent thinker.
And so I want to kind of walk through the story.
So, you know, what I'll call chapter one is.
stumbling into gambling and figuring out how to have that edge.
Can you tell a little bit about that story?
I think I know a little bit of it, but I know Sam, you don't know any of that story, right?
Like how he first got, and made a name for himself doing this.
No.
Yeah, I mean, I grew up around gambling.
My dad was, I used the term unsuccessful gambler.
Some people might refer to as degenerate.
He was someone who gambled a lot unsuccessfully.
And, you know, had a lot of, it caused a lot of problems in our family.
not the sugar code. It was bad.
But I grew up around the horse racetrack,
and I grew up around watching football, NFL football,
on Sunday, basically trying to help my dad make picks.
What city?
I grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
So I was at the Sinoboi-A-Dowans race track
from, I guess it was every Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday,
for most of my teenage years.
I would say 12 to 16, 17, 18.
And so, yeah, I just kind of was around.
That's how I kind,
And I always thought it was rather interesting.
And I also saw like, first thing I didn't realize
when I was younger was just how it was near impossible
to beat the horses just because of the takeout.
The VIG is so high.
It's like 30 to 36%.
They got to pay for everything.
The stables, the horse purples, all of it.
But I just thought, well, these people don't know what they're doing.
Like they're, you know, like they have no process.
They don't know what's happening.
They're very emotional.
Like I grew up, I'm a Greek family.
So you would hear these people like they just were not
control of their emotions in any way.
They would be upset when they win.
They'd be something they lose.
They would be arguing with each other.
They'd have them.
I'm very low key.
So to me,
it was very different for me.
So that's how I got started.
And then at some point,
after I,
after I graduated from high school,
I went to Vegas with my dad.
He was there.
And I went there for like a month or so.
He was there gambling?
Yeah, my dad was,
it was daylight hours.
And he had money in his pocket.
He was gambling.
What was like?
What was his occupation?
He was a first-generate.
He moved to Canada when he was...
He's got a great...
You should have him on the show.
He was that a great story.
He moved to Canada when he was like 20 years old,
didn't speak a lick of English,
became a dishwasher at Kentucky Fried Chicken,
and just worked his ass off.
And so he moved his way up from dishwasher
to a restaurant to finally getting involved
in real estate somehow, by some way,
owning a commercial...
He had strip malls all over Winnipeg.
So he's an entrepreneur.
Big time entrepreneur. Yes.
And when you go to Vegas, you're not 21, right? You just graduated from high school.
So what do you do with your dad? You're in a casino. You can't really do much.
I parked myself in the sports book and hope that nobody tells me.
Because they don't ID you in the sports book. Yeah, you just sit there.
They're supposed to you, but they don't. Like you're just in the sports book. So you're just sitting there.
And I just watched basketball. I was the first time I really ever watched NBA basketball to that extent.
I was previously, I was watched a lot of hockey and Canadian football.
and yeah my dad would give me a little bit of money not a lot
and I would watch basketball and I would sit there from 4 p.m. Pacific to 10 p.m. 11 p.m. Pacific
and just watch the games on these giant TVs and then I started to really enjoy the
routine of watching the West Coast games so I started to like kind of
pay attention more to the West Coast teams. I was like Chris Weber's rookie year when he played
for Golden State and they had run TMC I think it was before that
And so, yeah, that's what I did.
Were you losing money at first?
What was going on?
When did you start making money?
I didn't really win.
I wasn't losing a lot, though.
I wasn't, I had an okay opinion by the end, but yeah, I was losing, of course.
Like, I was probably flipping coins and paying big.
So I was like probably 50-50 roughly, but needed, you know, I was paying, I needed to win 11 to 10.
I 11 out of every 10.
So it wasn't bad.
It wasn't like I was getting my ass handed to me or anything.
But then I realized I really loved.
like this and I want to get good at it.
And I just thought about what does that mean tail?
What do I have to do to get good at it?
And so I just went to work and just started taping games
to start reading a lot of newspaper articles on the internet.
When you're saying you're learning to get good at it,
how much of it is a human side where you're learning human emotions
of the players and leadership and things like that
and the story versus statistics?
Yeah, back then there was not a lot of good statistics.
There was just something called the box score.
which is just not very, it's not very illustrative of the game.
So it was almost that and a little bit of database work
in terms of like just getting aggregates from teams in certain situations.
I also tried to like really also understand the market more, I think.
In other words, the opening lines would go.
What I got to be really good when I was in Vegas around that time
was seeing the sharps that would line up at the Stardust Casino in the morning.
They had something called the lottery.
So the lines would be posted in the morning.
And then every sharp would be able to get,
make a full limit bet down in the morning,
and they'd have to do a lottery to see who could go first,
and then they'd make a bet,
and then the book would decide to adjust.
So I started just looking to see, like,
who are the actual sharps?
Who are the guys who seem like they're moving money
for other people?
What are they betting?
So you're treating it like a job.
You must have been getting there early, then.
What time is that?
Yeah, I mean, it's not a lot of work.
It's not manual labor.
I'm not like laying bricks or, like,
riding off the back of a brontosaurus,
like Fred Flintstone, breaking rocks.
But, yeah, it would work.
And so did you go ask them to learn
from them, or you're just watching them from afar and figuring it out yourself?
I just wanted to see, like, okay, this guy made a bet the line didn't move. That's interesting.
Then you see them back, like, the next day and the next day, and then you see, by the way,
it wouldn't just be one. You'd see, like, now at 4 o'clock post time, the lines would move even more.
So it's like, okay, this line moved a lot. There wasn't an injury. That guy bet it early.
So it was just like little things. Just pat. I think if I have one skill in life aside from
I'm being not really caring what other people who I don't know think about me, I think,
and just being confident in that.
I think it's maybe like a little bit of pattern recognition.
I think I'm decent at that.
I can see patterns.
And I'm also able to identify, like, oh, was that an actual pattern or was I just fooling
myself with randomness there?
Did you have a role model?
Like, was there, you know, as like an 18 or 19 year old, are you thinking to yourself,
you know, there are other people who have gotten super rich doing this?
I think I can do it.
Or were you like, there's some people who make an okay living doing this.
I think I can do it.
Or you're like, I don't think about next year.
Just this is what I'm enjoying today.
When you're 19, you don't really think like that.
I don't like in terms of like, oh, I want to make a, I'm always been someone who's always like been very confident that I was going to be successful.
I would recite things in my head when I was a kid.
Like I'm going to be a millionaire.
I would just do that.
And so at that age, I think I was just kind of, I wasn't sure how I was going to make it.
I just knew I was going to make it.
Like, I kind of went through life
with this, like, irrational confidence, I think.
Was there a definition of making it?
Was it, like, $10 million by the time I'm 25?
Yeah, I think when I was tree planting,
I was listening to, like, Tony Robbins' books
and reading them, like, listening to him at night
and then reading them in the morning.
And I think, yeah, I had, like, 10 things that I wanted,
and, yeah, I think it was 10 million
before the age of 30, I think.
Back then, that was a lot of money.
Now you can just spin up a meme coin
and you're making it by noon.
the back then it was what was the first profitable pattern you figured out the one that really really
kind of work in football was first profit my first my first bit of money was Canadian football not like
soccer but actual like football three down football um there's a lot of things going on then there
was um they expanded into America at that time and so you had some interest for whatever reason
in Las Vegas to book Canadian Football League games are like offshore markets
And the Canadian teams had to abide by different rules than the American teams.
So that was part of it.
You had to have a certain amount of Canadians on your roster that were starting.
American teams didn't have that.
The Canadian stadiums were all compliant to Canadian Football League rules.
American stadiums did not.
So some of the end zones, like the end zones are 20 yards deep,
but in some stadiums in America, they didn't have that luxury.
So they were like squared off at the back.
those games are lower scoring.
That was a big part of it.
And I just got to be really good at knowing a lot about Canadian football
and which teams were sharp,
we're doing innovative things.
So Canadian football.
So can you give us a sense of the kind of the journey?
So you start with a roughly what bank role?
And then how long did it take you to get to your first million?
And then at one point,
I think you were betting like a million dollars a day
or maybe even more.
Yeah, probably more.
Yeah.
I mean, I was betting.
a lot. I mean, I think like, so it's a long story. So I think the most, it got to be, I was a
skycap at the Winnipeg International Airport. That's when things really took off for me. I don't
think anyone's ever said that before in their life. Oh, what? You were a what? What is the
skycap? The dudes are, I was like the first white skycap hired at the Winnipegare. I was like,
the dudes who sit curbside and carry people's luggage in and check their luggage in. In the U.S.,
they check the luggage in, but in Canada that's not allowed because of transport can't, so you
just carry people's luggage in.
So I would like
carry your luggage in the kids.
We don't like being called bag boys.
Back man.
Yeah, basically. Yeah.
So you're just carrying people's luggage.
Or in Canada,
a big thing in the winter was snowbirds
who are fleeing Winnipeg
to go move to Florida for the winter
and they're in wheelchairs
and you're just like wheeling them through
customs and immigration
and making sure they're bags.
And you're making what per hour, roughly?
I was making a lot.
So I started out as a skycap.
In the summertime, I was printing money.
and I was making, I started out as a skycap.
I realized that the Saturday Sunday ships were very profitable
because we had American fishing travel
that were people would come in on these boats
and they'd have to take a charter plane
to go fishing somewhere in northern Canada.
And those days you were making $400 or $500 in an eight-hour shift,
easy.
Wow.
And so I basically went to the boss of the company.
He's like, hey, I really want to work the Saturday and Sunday shifts.
What do I got to do to make it happen?
He's like, no, we've got to spread those around.
It's not fair.
And the other dudes weren't making any money.
they would make like $80.
So I just started paying them for their Saturday.
I started paying them like $80 to work Saturday Sunday.
And then the owner got wind of that and he got upset.
And so then he started working the Saturdays and Sundays
and couldn't figure out why he wasn't making money that I was.
What were you doing?
You were like complimenting these folks and just getting tipped?
I was just like, you know, I was doing things like getting them limos to go to the strip clubs
when the four hours that they're getting them Cuban cigars because Cuban cigars are illegal
when they land and making sure they had like Cuban cigars and charging them like three times
a value for. There's like little things like
that. Just being attentive.
I was being attentive. I was like a concierge
of the one of the National Airport.
But anyways, I ended up
taking over the company from him. I just undercut his
contracts.
And so there was actually, at the
Figuay International Airport, I was making
so much money. That's an easy leap,
right? Bag boy to taking
it's like, just
walking his office and you're like, hey, guy, move.
No, I was like,
I went to him and I was like,
I've already got North, it was Northwest Airlines, now Delta, I guess, but it was Northwest.
I was like, hey, I've already got them to agree with the contract.
Everyone wants to work for me.
You can just, I can give you some money and you can just move on or I can just undercut you.
The money I'm going to give you, I'm going to say, you know, it's a win-win.
And he was like, nope, don't want to do that, whatever.
So I ended up doing that.
I ended up undercutting him.
How old are you?
I was 22, 23.
time.
There was actually a crazy story.
So I was making so much money
at the Winnipeg International Air Force
of Skycap and gambling
that mostly SkyCap
that at the time
there was actually like a bunch of
there was some cocaine
that I was found in Air Canada.
I had like a past
of wherever it was a skycap
and there was like a situation
where some drugs were found
like big amount of drugs from like
and one of the US customs
and immigration employees
who I became friends with
said like, hey, they think you're, like, we know what you're doing here as a skycap,
and I know you, but you're, like, suspect number one.
Like, just so you know.
Like, they don't understand why you have, like, a brand new Cadillac,
whatever, not brand new, but like, you're driving a Cadillac, like some gangster,
and you're walking around with wads of cash, like, they had lots of cash from the salt tips.
And so I was like, what?
And he's like, yeah, like, they were laughing.
They thought it was funny.
They realized, of course, it had nothing to do with it, but you can Google this.
So it actually happened.
There's, like, some kind of thing that happened.
happened in Winnipeg at the time where they found something.
So what was your income at the age of 22, 23, 24 doing all this?
Like 50 or 60,000 a summer easily.
I was living with my mom and my older brother.
We were like paying my parents rent for a while.
After my dad kind of had like a down slope during the 1987,
whatever, the interest rates went up.
Strip mall business wasn't so good anymore,
especially when you're borrowing money at floating rates to build these strip malls.
So yeah, that was about what I was making at the time.
So you've been rich since you're 23 years old.
Oh, I don't think so because I've been spending, you know, like I wasn't exactly saving.
Like money was going out for dinner every night.
I was like spending the money.
It was taking trips to Vegas.
I was doing stuff.
But yeah, I had to pay for my school also.
I had to pay for my university.
So I was paying for my university.
I was supporting my parents.
So I wasn't rich.
I just worked hard.
also while I was working as a skycap, I also worked as a video store at Rogers Video.
I was working 40 hours a week at Rogers Video in the summer. Skycap in the morning and Rogers Video,
which is like a Canadian blockbuster in the end. So I had work ethic, I guess.
You're more of a hustler than I thought because you, I guess I don't know, the public perception is you're like kind of just a sharp.
It's all mental. You sit in your room, you have your models, and then you made bets and the money comes in.
I didn't know at least some of these stories about you kind of hustling as the skycap
and figuring out how to run your own operation down there. So that's pretty cool.
Winded, like, I don't know, Sam, if you've heard these stories, but I guess a couple of your
famous betting stories are, I guess you went all in at one point on the Lakers to win the championship
at like six to one odds. Yeah, six and a half to one roughly.
How much is all in and what age in the timeline?
It was like 87,000 Canadian, give or take.
And that was all your money?
Yeah. But you could go by
I looked at it like
okay it was all my money now. It's like
October. Fishing
season just ended at Winnipeg International Air
Report. I've already paid
for my tuition at the University of Manitoba
to get my useless philosophy
degree. I'm living
in my brother's basement. Worst case
I lose this bet and I just go back to skycapping
and just make half of that or two-thirds
of that back again.
But yeah, I made the vet. It wasn't a sharp bet
by any stretch, like looking back, it wasn't sharp, but it felt sharp to me at the time.
You don't have a, your risk model hasn't developed, your amygdala or whatever hasn't fully
developed to, you know, that age to really understand if you're making good decisions.
Did he win?
Yeah, he won, yeah.
Sam, have you heard the Bill Burr quote about risk?
No, what's he say?
The comedian.
He has this great line about risk because, you know, being a comedian is like, it's risky
in many levels, right?
You're probably not going to be a successful, famous millionaire traveling touring comedian.
But on top of that, just stepping on the stage as a risk, you're going to get humiliated most of the time when you, you're not that funny.
And he goes, somebody asked him, they were like, you know, how was it taking that risk?
Taking on that risk, taking that leap of faith.
And he goes, I didn't see it as a risk.
He goes, the best thing that ever happened to me is like, I'm kind of dumb.
But, you know, the one smart thing I realized early on was the risk was waking up in a king-sized bed when I'm 40 years old, turning over to a woman that I don't love anymore that I'm married because they thought it was the right.
thing to do, dreading this job I have to go to in six hours. And he's like, that became the risk
in my head was waking up like that. And in comparison, he goes, chasing your dream, there's no risk
at all. He goes, yeah, he goes, there's no risk in chasing your dream because you're doing the thing
you want to do and versus living this life that you don't want to live just to play it safe.
That seemed like a bigger risk. Definitely relate to that. I mean, I don't know if any of you guys
had the pleasure of spending a winter in Winnipeg, but it's not pleasant. So,
One of the other stories then that's pretty sweet is he, I guess at one point, like in Vegas,
you could bet on the full game, which is what most people do.
Like me, I'm a casual, I go in, I just bet on the over, under, maybe on the final score.
And what he realized was like you could also bet on the first half only, which was like not as common of a bet.
But the way that Vegas is doing is it would take the full score, which they're pretty accurate and predicting.
And then for the halftime score, they were just cut in half, divide by two.
Roughly.
I'll make the first have a little bit higher scoring in general.
I could tell you guys my, look, I haven't told this.
I tell this story in a way that makes it so the edge still lives on for the people that are still betting.
But I don't know.
You guys caught me out of, okay.
This is, this will maybe go viral.
I don't know, probably fuck up a lot of people's money.
But I think the, I think most people have figured it out by now.
But I've never uttered this in public to anyone ever before.
True story.
Okay.
The away team gets to choose which basket it wants to shoot on oriented.
So you have teams who play.
Back then, I would say 30 teams in the NDA,
28 of them, 27 of them, when they're on the road,
would always want their offense shooting in front of their own bench,
and they would want their defense shooting in front of their bench in the second half.
Therefore, the first halves are higher scoring,
the second halves are lower scoring.
You've got the bench in front of you.
You can bark out instructions.
And that three coaches, God bless them.
I wouldn't be here without them.
Decided that they wanted to flip it.
And they wanted to have the defense in front of them in the first half.
And the second half, they wanted to randomize the game and make the second half's higher scoring.
So you would literally, like Eddie Jordan, it was Jerry Sloan was the king of this.
He was the first original guy from Utah.
And so this was the biggest, greatest edge in the history of gambling edges, I can promise you.
you would have situations where the total would be higher in the first half,
lower in the second half,
and the team would literally score, on average, 106 points in the first half,
in 87 or something like this, or 90, whatever it was back then in the second half.
You also have the advantage of fouling at the end of games,
which will also make the score in the second half higher scoring,
and overtime, which is a nice little bonus too working in your favor.
So the second half over was like,
you'd have teams playing doing this 41 times a year,
and they would go nine overs in the first half,
30, whatever, 32, 33 with some pushes in the second half.
And you could just print money making this bet.
And that's what I did.
And I figured that out very, very quickly.
I actually didn't figure out that quickly.
To be honest, I'm not as bright as I think I am
because it took me a long time to figure out what the fuck was happening.
I just knew these teams had situations where on the road,
their games were much lower scoring in the first half
than they were when they played at home.
And I thought, well, they're trying to slow the game down,
it's this and that.
But really, it's just you're more efficient
when your offense is in front of your bench
because the other team's defense can't get set
and you can barcode instructions.
But that seems like a clear pattern, right?
Like you'd only need a season of games
to understand that pattern.
You don't know that teams are doing this.
Not like they say, hey, the Mavericks
are shooting in front of their, like,
they're the one team.
Nobody's paying attention to this.
Nobody knows that a team, that back in it was a perfect situation
because it was three to four teams a year.
They were all shit teams.
It was, in my heyday, it was the Utah Jazz, it was a shit team, the Washington Wizards with Eddie Jordan, shit team,
Byron Scott, New Jersey Nets, shit team.
And then you had a few teams like the Minnesota Timberl's did some games, not other games, which is the dream scenario nowadays.
It's probably screwing these gamblers, because when that happens, you've, so, so that was it.
That's how I made a lot of my money.
And you could, if I had a bankroll of, this is not responsible, please don't follow this about.
I had a banker of like 250K because I was betting on credit.
You settled at the end of the week.
I'd have a situation where if I somehow lost all my bets,
I'd be like two or three million dollars in debt.
But it didn't matter because I knew my edge was so big that I was betting.
And I somehow partnered up with some big bookmaker slash alleged mafia guy in Montreal,
which is another story, who was able to get me down for a lot of money.
And he just basically, I gave him the bets.
I told him what I wanted to bet.
He would go bet them for me.
he'd collect, he'd give me the money, I'd win, and that was that. So that's the edge.
That's the whole edge in a nutshell. This is insane. I have so many questions, but it, you know,
I'm a new. I don't know once always. I'll have, like, friends who I've told this to are like,
oh, can you please share that on my podcast with me? I'm like, ah, I feel bad for the people who are still
grinding out of living doing this, but you know what? It's a new day. Terrorists are here.
This is my tariffs of a gambling community. I'm, I'm a, I'm a new fan of yours.
You know, Sean was like, we've got to talk to this guy. So I'm a new fan. So I went and read everything
I could in the past week. Can you give some type of, can you, can you, can you
Can you give me a noob some type of scale as to your winnings?
Are we talking like hundreds of millions of dollars in winnings or whatever you're comfortable with?
Yeah, no.
I mean, look, I made between 10 to $12 million a year gambling for 10 to 15 years minimum.
So we're talking nine figures in winnings.
I spent a lot.
Like I didn't just always, that was like my net win.
I'm not talking about local I won, but I lost.
I mean, like I lived a pretty good life.
Like I compare my parents.
I did other things.
But yeah, I profited a lot gambling on basketball for sure.
Like a bad year for me on the NPA, I think it was like six or seven million.
Average year is probably eight.
And in the early heydays, I made more money than I, yeah, than I.
But I was also, I made some mistakes afterwards.
But yeah, definitely.
In your personal life, are you living a life of a 28-year-old rich guy of like, I mean,
are you spending seven figures a year in personal like, no, no, no, no, okay, not that crazy.
But I did with other business.
I tried like other business things.
I helped out some family.
I bought like a profit in Montreal.
I bought some stuff from my...
So you're not, you're kind of overplayed.
It doesn't seem like you're being irresponsible.
No, I was just like, I just think life is short
and what's the point of how money feeds and spend it?
But I don't spend it on experience.
I spend it on experiences.
Like I'm not a flashy guy.
I don't drive a fancy car.
I don't wear jewelry.
I've never had a watch.
I've never had any expensive.
You know, I'm pretty basic in my clothing.
Just like a lot of NBA players
like end up going broke,
NFL players end up going broke in their later career.
One of the crazy things about, like, I grew up idolizing Phil Ivey and a lot of poker guys, basically.
And once I got into the world of business and investing, it's like, okay, this was kind of like what real wealth looks like.
And I realized that a lot of the guys who were really great poker players, really great gamblers that you thought were really great gamblers.
Like, I don't think they were as successful as I thought.
Like, you know, I don't think they made as much in their peak.
And I think they lost a lot along the way where they had to be.
huge down swing somewhere along the way.
As far as you know,
are you the most, like, did you do the best?
Are you the most successful sports better that you know,
or are people better than you that made more than you?
Billy Walters is very, I mean, Billy Walters had the biggest,
like my edge was, I had to like scrap for my edge because,
but Billy Walters had the first computer program when, like,
they were using giant, like, these old Westinghouse machines to feed the
information on those giant cards for computer programming.
And they had like a computer program when the Vegas odds makers would just sit there and like sit around a tailor.
I think the line should be seven and a half. What do you think, Jack? I think it should be around eight and a half.
And then like Billy Walters computer guy is like, no, it's like 4.3. He's the right price in this game.
So they had like the best edge ever. He made a lot of money. Super successful.
And Billy Walters, he, I think I saw a 60 minute special on him. Is he the, he's a, he's a Southern guy?
Yeah, yeah, I read about him. I, you know, I saw the 60 minutes. And he was exactly.
like I thought he was going to be.
Like he seemed like a fast talking, wheeled and dealing.
No, no, no, no, not a fast talker.
The number one thing Billy Walters had going for him is he's from the South.
And if you're a gambler, one of the greatest things you can have going for in you
is people thinking you're not as intelligent as natural.
I guess I shouldn't have said fast talking.
I guess I mean like charming, charming.
Oh, yes.
Yeah, no.
But he's like, well, I like to bake a bed if I could.
I mean, I like to make a phone game.
But the thing about Billy is, like, people underestimated how Sharpie was early on.
But he's as sharp as they come.
Did you have any, you know, like in the movies where it's like, at some point the casino's like facial recognition,
they're like, don't let this guy bet anymore, you know, take you in the back and bruise you up a little bit?
Like, did you ever run into problems with winning too much?
So the way sports betting works, you're not usually betting in the casino.
You're betting with like, back then when I was at my heyday, you were betting with literal, like, street people.
So that had like corner bookmaking operations.
the casinos are for losers and people who can't win.
And if you win, they'll just not let you bet anymore.
And so you need to find a way to bet on credit through,
like, you need to find someone who's going to play a game of the telephone with you,
who's going to take your bets and then maybe bet more later,
or thinks you're a loser.
Or you find a sock, like my big business.
Like nobody knew who I was.
Nobody knew I was winning money betting because I was never the guy making the bets.
I'd always find what's called a beard who would make my best.
bets for me. And so I've had
numbers of numerous beards throughout
the years who were making my bets for me.
And they were either they were really successful
business people or degenerate gamblers
or like Hollywood people or like
Floyd Mayweather, who's a beard
for like half an afternoon for me.
How did that go?
Yeah, he just wasn't, he wasn't, it was
too, he was too difficult to work with. I mean, he's got so much
money and he's not. Just like impulsive?
No, I've been hit in the head for like most of his life.
Like, you know, how much, how much?
You couldn't have just piggybacked off your bets?
He's a huge bank girl.
Couldn't he have just piggybacked off your bet?
You're telling him to go bet in New York.
I think Floyd was already moving for someone else,
whether it was Billy Walters or someone.
For sure, someone got into Floyd,
and Floyd making those bets.
Nobody posts their bets on Instagram for millions and millions of dollars
unless there's an angle,
whether they're sponsored by the casino or their...
So yeah, I think he was moving money for someone.
But I sat next to him at a Miami Heat playoff game,
and he liked my friend who was sitting next to me,
took a liking to her.
And so they became friends.
And so we somehow had a situation
where for an afternoon,
him and the guy, his business guy and I were talking
and Floyd was going to make the bets,
but it just didn't work.
Like I told him I wanted to bet one game
and they said, no, we like the other side.
And I was like, that's cool,
but can you please go bet this one for me?
And they're like, no, we don't want to do that.
Like, we want to bet the other side.
And I was like, okay, well then just,
we'll just bet against each other.
You bet that side, I'll bet this side.
And they were like, no, but you always win.
We can't do that.
And I was just like, yeah, I'm out.
I can't deal with this anymore.
So that was it.
Is the motivation on all this getting rich, or is it getting a rush?
Is it an intellectual challenge?
What's the motivation?
Not a rush.
No, the rush is like, I'm not a rush guy.
I think it's the intellectual challenge.
Also, I realized as I've gotten older that I take pride and putting myself in really,
really stressful situations.
and seeing how well I perform,
that's probably a weakness of mine
is I'll put myself in these really stressful situations
without knowing it, but I'll do that.
What's an example of that?
Like being all in Bitcoin since 2013,
like for 160 to 170% of your net worth
at various different points in time.
160, so you borrowed?
Yeah.
So betting on sports
and making money was challenging,
and in terms of your winning money,
I was living in Canada at the time.
I was betting all over the world
and having to receive money from people all over the world.
And so my bank accounts were constantly getting closed.
Even in Canada, I was like, I'm a professional gambler.
This is what I do.
I pay my taxes as a professional gambler.
It's one of the few dummies in Canada
who actually, because in Canada,
tax gambling is considered non-taxable.
So I was like one of the few people
who actually paid tax on their gambling winnings in Canada
because I was considered an expert.
But I didn't have to, but I did that.
probably stupid on my part.
But yeah, so just that
and then seeing
how easy it was to move money with Bitcoin
and then the other part of it was later on
in life, I left Canada after I got tired of
paying taxes in
Canada and I moved to Monaco.
And that entire principality
is built on
minimizing your tax exposure.
You're looking at flats that
are like the current places in Monaco now that
just got built are
$85, $90 million for a 3,000 square foot condo.
It's the most expensive real estate in the world.
And the only reason it's that expensive is because there's a limited amount of land
and everyone lives there because a tax is zero.
Zero tax.
And so my point is that that whole, that's like a Swiss bank account.
People are willing to.
But whereas there's a lot of people, whether they're, whereas Bitcoin, you can,
you don't have to invest in Monaco real estate to hedge.
You can have your money in your pocket.
You don't have to worry about a bank.
move money intermediate without any intermediate,
it's like permission. Even the bank accounts
I had, whether they'd be in Monaco or Canada,
they'd always been like, why are you sending this money?
Where is it going? Why do you get it? And now it's
even worse. So that was part of it.
I like the math behind it. It made sense to me as a
math guy.
Yeah, I just, and I'm an independent guy
to begin with. And so I didn't really
click for me until later on. I heard about it maybe five or six times.
Port it finally clicked. It finally clicked because I was betting
with someone in China.
who had a really difficult time in paying me money.
Also, I was living in Vancouver before I moved to,
and my entire apartment building was owned by Chinese expats
who were literally laundering their money in Canadian real estate.
None of them lived in my building.
The entire building was empty except for six people,
but the entire building was sold.
And all of Vancouver, have you ever been to Vancouver, Canada?
It's an entire money laundering operation.
The real estate is all owned by foreign people
trying to escape regimes that are just capital flight.
So Bitcoin just made sense.
Okay, I'm going to go buy a condo in Canada, or I'm going to buy some Bitcoin and put
in my wallet to escape some total, some regime, some capital flight regimes.
So were you taking the 10 million gross earnings and just going straight to Bitcoin?
No, then I was trying to get paid by people who owed me money.
And so the first time I ever acquired Bitcoin, I had a gentleman in fellow that I met playing
poker who got me a bunch of accounts in China to bet on NBA basketball or Asia, let's say.
I don't know where it was exactly, but somewhere. And he was like, it was 2013-ish.
And I was like, hey, like, how are you going to send me money? At some point, we had like an
HSBC account in Hong Kong. And he's like, I can send you Bitcoin. And I was like, Bitcoin, really?
You guys like Bitcoin? I think the price was around $180 at the time. He's like, yeah,
everyone in China loves Bitcoin. And I was just like, well, if everyone in China loves Bitcoin,
and maybe I should love Bitcoin too.
Why do they love it in China?
And he's like explaining to why everyone loves it
and how great it is.
And so that was it.
So I bought it.
Then it very quickly went to 600, then 1,000,
like very after.
And then it slowly went down about 150 after.
I think Bitfinex got hacked after that the next summer.
But that's when I got involved.
And it clicked for me instantly.
When I was all the situations,
moving to Monaco for taxes,
seeing all of the real estate in Canada
being super expensive for Native Canadians,
especially in Vancouver,
because of especially people from Asia buying real estate and just holding it and not doing
anything with it. And I just like, why would you, like Michael Saylor now has a really good
view on it. It's like, why would you ever own real estate? You're at the mercy of the government
who can change the rules and change the taxes or you can just buy Bitcoin. So that was it,
basically. When you're dealing with, you know, I'm not saying that you're shady or you do
ever do anything illegal, but when gambling as an outsider, well, as an outsider when I hear about gambling,
I watched the movie Casino
and I think of
mafia and whatever
when you're owed money
and I had read stories
how you were owed money
and you talked about it
what's up with the gambling
culture
do people actually pay their debts
just on a handshake agreement
yeah I mean
I think I had an advantage
I mean just to be clear
like I lived in Canada
gambling was legal
I paid my taxes
I wasn't doing anything illegal
some of the people
who I'm my customers
are all breaking the law
because they're bookmakers
So I'm not the customer.
I'm the shark.
They're the sucker.
I'm winning the money.
They may think they're there that I'm the customer, but really I'm not.
So for me, the hard part was like, okay, Revenue Canada wants 57% of my money as my partner,
but they're putting all my customers out of business by making it.
So that was part of it.
To answer your question, is it hard to get paid?
Yeah, people lose money.
Because I'm betting through intermediaries for the most part,
I think part of the deal is you have to guarantee the money.
when you're making the bets.
And people would go out of their way to guarantee me,
not because they're afraid of me,
because why would they be?
I'm not, have never, ever done anything to get money
other than be, like, annoying.
But, like, if you knew that I was always going to win,
and if you didn't pay me,
you knew you were not going to get my bets anymore,
you might go out of pocket
to make sure your relationship with me was good,
knowing that eventually you're going to make the money back
if you're smart enough.
If you're smart enough, you'd realize,
why would I step Herolobos?
Rolobos is going to win.
We're going to win it back next year.
I'll go out of pocket.
pocket, we'll figure out a solution. That's generally what happened with me.
That's a good threat though. You look, I'm going to call you like at least five or six
times to get paid. I know, I didn't even, I was pretty bad at it, to be honest. The way to get
paid is to be the most annoying person in that person's life. So I had a famous poker player
who was like a really good dude, but he was for sure degenerate and he owed me money. And not
not like this guy Eric Lindgren and he talked like he, you know, that's what I was referring to.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I would just like, if he won a tournament, I would like get on a plane and just like be there when they paid him. I would just like hand out and just like you just got to, you know, but you also have to be like kind of like understanding that this guy needs to live his life and also have some money. But, you know, he was a guy who who at the time owned a piece of full tilt. So they had all this individual, all this imaginary money that they thought they were all going to be so rich. And so he didn't really worry, you know, you didn't really worry about getting paid because he thought eventually they'd get paid by full tilt poker, but then full tilt.
poker got shut down, so all these guys.
Yeah, anyways, yeah, that's what you do.
Just be annoying.
What inspired you to buy the soccer team?
So, like, where, like, how long did you had that idea before you end up doing it?
I wanted to buy an NBA team, and then I worked, I saw like the sausage was made, and I was like, yeah, the NBA's not for me.
What do you mean, for, for one, the franchise valuations are going up and up and up and up.
It's a very, very, very difficult business to buy because you're competing with the
richest people in the world who want these assets.
So it's very difficult.
And then I just found, I started finding the sport not that interesting anymore
after seeing like how everything was, all the way.
I didn't, I didn't, like, I think the bubble for me kind of ended it because it was
during that time when the league became like, which is cool because the league was
primarily, it became like almost like a social cause versus, and I thought that's good
for society in some ways if you believe that.
But for me, it just became too much.
I just wanted, I just wanted sport.
I just like sport.
So around that time, I didn't want to, you know, I didn't want to, I think people,
I think where the NBA maybe missed things is I think a lot of people wanted to escape
during coronavirus into sport.
I want, okay, forget about other people.
I wanted to escape the shitty, the whatever, the riots, the burn, the whatever.
I wanted to escape all that into sport, and I'm watching the NBA and it's, and maybe the answer
isn't, maybe the answer isn't escape for people who are, I'm not American, but maybe for
Americans who are living through it and they really believe that whatever, that's cool.
But for me, I was just like, yeah, I don't want to watch this.
Like, I just want to, I want to watch a basketball game.
I don't want to have like a message.
So yeah, it just became, it became too much, I think, in some ways.
It became overwhelming.
And then also you're, I was working for the Mavericks at the same time.
And they were in the bubble and I'm hearing the stories from them.
And you have like African American coaches who are like really upset with what's
happening as they should be.
The players are upset.
It just became like really draining emotionally in a way that made me really kind of
sad. And I started watching football more because soccer was the first sport to start up after
COVID. And so I just got really into it. And we already building models to begin with before
then. I just thought, you know what, I want to, this is new, it's exciting. It's more
mathematical in the sense of it's unsolved. It's a lot more. There's a lot. The game tree is
bigger. It's more nuanced. Basketball is pretty simple. You got a top five player. You
You put him on the court.
You surround him with other players,
but he's the guy, like, it's called heliocentrism.
And then you profit.
And then you trade him for Anthony Davis and won first.
Apparently.
I don't know.
But that's it.
You just find a guy like Luca or LeBron or Jokic or whatever.
And off you go.
But it's not that difficult.
You said we.
You said we are building models.
I think Sean and I were talking,
and he was like, this guy's like a lone wolf.
No.
Well, and I don't know the truth, and I want you to tell me the truth.
Do you, I think you don't have a family.
I think you're, and I think that, like, from an outside perspective,
it doesn't seem like you have this massive company.
That's part I'm a lone wolf.
Yeah, okay, now I am a lone wolf.
When you put it that way, yeah, like, I've always been very, yeah.
But I have people who work for me.
I have people who have people who have my mom.
Can you explain that?
What's your, what's the,
organization. What's your team look like?
So I have
now my organization, not kind of the football
team, which is completely separate.
It's like 250 people
or something worked for me. I don't know how many it is. It's a lot.
Maybe less. I don't know. Accounting
Academy players. But no, I just
have, like, I still do my basketball
betting. I spend zero time on it.
It's an automated program. But when I first started
betting on basketball programmatically with
a model, when I decided that
my method
works, but it only works if my mindset
that is good. If I want to have a life and have like emotional relationships with females and
have a partnership, whatever, and I'm upset, I'm making bad decisions when I'm gambling, it's
harder to be like a perfect arbiter of what's right and what's wrong and what's the right
information when you're the input. So I wanted to automate me, basically. And so, so yeah,
I hired a couple different quants unsuccessfully. They weren't great. Keep trying. And then a friend of
mind a poker player by the name of, well, he played poker as guy named Brandon Adams was teaching
at Harvard at the time. And I was playing poker with him, really, really smart guy. And he said,
I have this student that I need you need to talk to. He's a genius. And he'd be perfect.
And I met him. And that was the guy who basically together, we built our simulation models that really
took me to the next level, which was not the little, the halftime thing, which I made a lot of
money on. This was now
full game bets on
sides, totals, everything.
And so him and I together built
and our operation was myself,
this individual.
And then one person
who basically was
two people who were putting the bets in and also making the
lineups.
And then me and my,
the person, we call him the whiz
because he doesn't want to be, nobody wants to know who he is,
but he's out there, what's up.
And we had a,
We had a falling out.
He doesn't, not a following out,
but when I went to go work for the Mavs,
I basically turned over the business to them.
And he ran it for a while, didn't enjoy it.
They didn't do that well.
And he left.
And then when I quit the Mavs,
we started back up again.
And that was it.
So I basically did the gambling, again,
not for myself,
but for the people who worked for me
to allow them to continue to make a lot of money
because I've had guys who worked for me now
for over 12 or 13 years.
with a gap with a gap appeared in the Mavericks.
And so they run everything and they do everything.
Dude, you're basically running it like a small little seed fund, Sean.
You know what I mean?
Like a hedge fund.
Algorithmic hedge fund, like jump minus, you know.
So, you know, those guys, they measure their success on, you know,
IRR or, you know, annual returns.
And if they could get 20%, 30% returns,
what's a good annual return for you?
What's a bad annual return for you?
Where do you land?
I know what multifamily can get you.
I know what private equity can get to,
I know what venture can get you.
It's hard to really quantify
because I'm never able to bet my entire network.
Like, I can't take an outside capital.
And so, like, we're,
I don't look at as work in annual R, ARR,
or it's more of a return investment
on every bet you're making.
And so every bet we make,
a bad year for us was four and a half,
four to four and a half percent
on every bet we're making.
A good year is like in the 80s.
and nines. And now, of course, you want to have as many bets as possible and the most profit
as possible. So you want your ROI to go down a little bit as your bets go up. So it's like you're
threading the needle. But the game has changed so much now that now we've got like two models
that are going at all times. And we use like a mix, two of them. And I say it's automated.
It's completely automated. Like zero, last four or five years since even before I, you know,
even when these guys are running it themselves.
Like, nobody's saying,
I think the model's wrong.
Like, it gets teams wrong, for sure.
And we have a guy who says, like,
yeah, we're really off on these Oklahoma City totals.
Like, we think they should be higher scoring,
but they're not.
We think they're higher scoring, but they're going under.
And I'm just like, cool.
We're not making any changes.
Like, has a model.
And has, you know, now,
like we said this before,
I don't pay attention to just too much of sports.
I think it's fucking insane, though,
that, like, every sport is basically a gambling thing now.
I think it's weird.
Not weird, it's gross.
Yeah, it's messed up.
I think it's wrong.
But does that make you richer then because you have more retail investors?
Yeah, the amount of, I don't even look like last night, like I probably lost more money on fart coin yesterday.
My fart coin holding on paper that I would rate to make in an entire year betting NBA.
So I don't care what we make in the NBA.
I just do it because it's meaningful for the people who work for me,
and they have a massive profit share in it.
So let me just recap a couple things.
You said if every bet, you know, low end, 4 or 5%, good, 9, 10%.
That means you need to bet like $100 million of total betting volume.
Total dollars bet to make $10 million.
Is that right?
Yeah.
You don't need $100 million to do that because you're doing it every day multiple times over.
And so, yeah.
So yeah, like that's exactly right, yeah.
So couldn't you have just applied your brain to like
buying HVAC companies as like private equity and gotten better returns?
Like, you know, like I always think about this was like if I hear somebody's a pro
Blackjack player, I'm like, first of all, I don't even know if that's technically a thing.
I don't know if Blackjack is like a game you can get an edge in anymore.
But secondly, if you're that good and that's smart, like couldn't you just apply it to an easier game and made more money?
Like, don't you think about that for yourself?
Yeah, if my dad was Ray Dahlia, I probably would have went a different path, but I'm
part. My dad was a Greek gambler who spent his time at the racetrack, so this is what I knew.
I don't know what else to say. But you have done it. You have done it, right? You're buying a team.
That seems like it could be a great business move. And you did crypto.
Yeah, the crypto thing is really the part I think that is because I don't have an edge in finance.
These people have bigger, they're smarter. Like maybe I could have honed in on one specific category
that I knew very well. But again, like I try to, like I'm a gambler in the sense that I like
gambling games, but like the number one edge in poker is playing with players who are worse than you.
That's just it. And so I try to apply that also to my businesses. I try to stay away from
people that are smarter than me where there's plenty of them in terms of that I'm competing
against. And so, yeah, I mean, am I going to compete with like, no, I don't think so. I mean,
maybe, but at this point, I think I'm good at what I'm doing. I like my quality of life.
Well, what do you do with your money now? Do you like your income or your investments, do you
Do you do any boring stuff?
I mean, I mostly do boring stuff.
I do super boring stuff.
Every dollar I earn goes directly into Bitcoin.
That's my boring stuff.
So that's still how you roll then.
Correct.
Wow.
Every dollar I make betting sports goes into Bitcoin.
Has forever.
So you've made more money off Bitcoin than you have sports betting.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, for sure.
I've done very well with Bitcoin.
It's done very well.
But what's your end game with Bitcoin?
Is it hold forever?
Is it Bitcoin becomes a global reserve currency?
Where does it, there's no exit with Bitcoin, right for you?
I don't know.
I wish I could do better Michael Saler in personation.
But I don't know, this guy, I like this guy.
I feel like his end game is crazy as this guy is.
I feel like he's kind of, he's a savant.
Like, he's kind of figured, what is your end game?
I don't know, dollars?
What am I going to do with dollars?
Like, sorry, I'm not, they're printing more of it.
It's not, it seems like it works for me.
I remember, like, being in COVID, living in Malibu during COVID and the houses that I've rented
had gone up in value, like triple, like rich people.
stuff was becoming more and more expensive
as more and more money entered the system.
So what's my end game?
I don't know. Protect my wealth, I guess.
Maintain my sovereignty.
That's my end game.
I don't know. Just to be clear, I don't have it in
I like Bitcoin, but it's still, I'm not like the pure
Bitcoin guys, like the guys who are like have their own
seed and they have it memorized in their head.
Like that's not me. My money's in Ibit.
It's in the bank. It's with a third party.
It's not smart. But I like my quality
life. I don't want to have, I don't want to be my own bank. Like being my own bank was cool
before people knew what crypto was. Now being your own bank is not cool. Like for me, just to be
clear, like I love Bitcoin. I love the self-sovereignty of it. That's the ethos. But my money
is custodied with institutions, unfortunately. Do you own anything? Like, do you own any real estate
and cars and like items or do you live light? Yeah. Dude, like you say, I feel like I love
to this guy thinks I'm like some kind of like, I'm like an alien who just dropped into the world.
that has nothing.
Well, you...
I love you to buy's Bitcoin and watching sports all day.
Sean and I actually both rent homes.
And I don't...
I actually don't own a lot of stuff.
I like Living Light.
Sean does too.
And we don't actually own houses.
We like to rent houses.
So recently, I was with you guys.
I didn't own any real...
Like, I bought real estate when I was younger.
Yeah, I didn't...
Before that, I was...
I just thought, like, the better move is Bitcoin.
Like, why am I going to buy this house in Malibu?
But when I can rent and buy Bitcoin.
I sold...
I also sold all of my...
assets during the
2017 dump
I own property
outside of
I own property in Mexico I had some vacation property on some
property in Europe had a plane
sold it all
actually had some friends try to schedule an intervention
for me because they thought I'd lost my mind when I sold
everything to buy more Bitcoin at 3,300
Wow, you
sold all your shit to buy the dip
that's incredible
that's amazing
I got to ask you a different question
what are you into now like we asked you a bunch of
about the past, but what's the future shit you're
really, like somebody said you're into biohacking
or you're, you're into, like,
Sam mentioned something interesting about like owning things
and, and, I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding,
uh, what am I into now, I'm into biohacking.
I'm into, um, yeah, I don't know.
Like, I think like I'm into, it's interesting because I'm,
I'm, I'm, I'm really into like analog things.
Like, records, books.
Oh, I'm, I'm, you know, old games, old, like pinball machines.
Yeah.
Are you like detoxing from phone?
Like a phone goes away for hours a day?
I'm getting this new, oh, I forget what it's called,
but this new thing that's black and white.
I'm trying to.
What's it called?
I'm into that.
I think OBOX is the new one that just came out.
Palma 2, I think, is what it is.
It's supposed to be getting shipped.
But that looks really cool.
We love those things.
I used to brick all the time.
And then there's like daylight, which is like another,
like dumb phones basically.
Daylight's nice.
I've used daylight.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm into that.
I'm into like,
be honest, like, during COVID, I
started getting into like Western life.
Like, this is going to sound crazy, but like,
I want a ranch.
Yeah, Sam bought a ranch. I bought a ranch, my friend.
Do you want to be buddies?
I would love to.
I bought a yacht before.
I was like on the Mediterranean cruising.
And now I'm like, no, I want a ranch.
I want courses.
I want simple life.
So that's what I'm into.
What are you doing for biohacking?
Like what's your kind of like,
what's, I guess maybe what are you finding valuable or
helpful or you're seeing benefits?
The best thing, yeah, I do a lot of peptide stuff. I kind of grew up in like, I spent a lot of time, I should say, in like rich guy LA circles for a minute playing poker and all these guys were on like TRT and HGH and all this other stuff. And they looked great, but they weren't necessarily optimizing for living longer. So HGH is great. You feel awesome on it, but you're definitely not living longer taking it. TRT, I think, can be good for some people. It didn't work for me. I tried it. It made me.
irritable. So I do other things to raise my testosterone. Like I take some
rodacia, whatever, and Fadocia art testes, and I do a lot of squats and kettlebell stuff.
And so I do quite well with that. But what am I taking? I'm taking peptides for the most part.
I think the best thing I've ever done, I do a lot of sauna. Red Light Therapy, I would say the best thing.
That Brian Johnson regimen.
I mean, yeah, I admire what he's doing. I just think, like, what's the, I mean, he's doing it for science, I guess. But for me, it's, yeah, not for
I'm not that bad.
But I do have, you know, I do have to take about 20 supplements a day for sure.
I inject myself with some peptides when I'm diligent about it.
But I think the best thing I've ever done with stem cells.
Are you doing peptides and stem cells for injury recovery or you're doing pepies?
I thought peptides is like for injury recovery.
Do you use it for other stuff?
A peptide is like a protein, yeah?
Or an amino acid, I guess, which is a precursor of protein.
Yeah, it's a precursor.
You can find a peptide.
It's a precursor for whatever you want to solve for.
So like some is for injury recovery, like DPC 157 is really good.
I took that on my Achilles.
It was great.
Yeah.
But it also, by the way, that also helps with your gut, which then your gut connects to your brain, which helps your brain.
There's a lot of benefits to it.
I take cussamorolin, epimoraline, ex-erolin.
Through the doctor, I get tested very regularly.
My blood tested very regularly.
But the best thing I've ever done and the thing I could recommend to anyone who can afford it is, aside from sauna, five times a day.
Or five times a week, excuse me, is stem cells, getting actual stem cells.
getting actual stem cells that are mizanimal,
which is through the umbilical cord.
Do you do that if you have an injury?
Or like, I feel great.
Like, do you, did you, were you in pain?
So you're probably, yeah.
I mean, I, yeah, no, you look great.
Both do you guys look like,
I'm not sure how, but you guys look like
you're doing great stuff for your health.
But I think, yeah, do you do,
people do it for injury?
I did it because I wanted to feel better.
And I found this place in Panama
that I went to Stem Cell Institute.
And they were kind of the,
one of the pioneers behind it.
Dr. Reorgan, I think that's like, I think
Mel Gibson's dad may have talked
about this on the Joe Rogan Shrine. I'd already gone there,
but I think there's like an episode where Mel Gibson
talks about his dad going there to get stem cells.
I've seen similar things. It's unbelievable.
Is this the one where it's like its own sovereign land?
No, I don't know what that is, but this is just Panama.
You're at like, you stay at Hilton. Last time, I don't think it was sovereign.
Oh, I know what you're talking about. I do know what you're talking about.
No, it's nothing like that.
aren't they doing genetic uh they're doing genetic uh chris what's it called were you uh
yeah they're doing that right it's like a peter teal thing no they're doing genome metadine yeah
i don't want none of that i just want i want building blocks into my body to make me young so
if you can give me this stuff that little baby has to grow a fucking actual wait but what are these guys doing
it's like their own little sovereign area and they're like building like the future yow ming super baby or something
you know like the network state stuff right where it's basically like oh if we can get like you know i
invest in
practice.
It's like people
want to create
new land
where they can have
like,
you know,
let's say
more,
they can have different
rules, right,
for themselves.
Yeah,
it's like a land
where like Anne Rand
is the president.
You know,
like it's like libertarian
land.
You got to watch the documentary.
It's hilarious
because Brian goes there.
I think he goes there
for like a full plasma
like swap with his son
and his dad or something like that.
I don't remember exact procedure he did,
but he goes and it's like
the two scientists
who created this institute
and they should,
show the guy. And the guy's clearly like 22 years old. He's so young. But he has this mustache
and he has glasses with like a rope as if like, bro, we can see through the disguise. You're 22 years
old. And the narrator was he standing on another kid's shoulders with a trench coat on?
Exactly. He literally looked like that. And he's like, you know, I think these guys' hearts are
the right place. But, you know, they're not like 20-year PhDs, if you know what I mean.
It's like, yeah, because he's 20. It was so funny. You're going to watch that part.
Yeah, I actually did watch it, and I know what you're talking about now.
And I remember, like, I had my finger, this is where I need my digital, whatever,
but I had my finger on the fast forward the entire time.
Because you can't watch it all the way through.
It's just like, this is not that interesting.
But yeah, I don't like you're talking about now.
Yeah, it's nothing like that.
This is more for you have a rotator tough injury.
Some parents were there with some kids who were autistic and they were doing that therapy.
It was people with MS.
There's a lot of different stuff that they were doing.
and I had the most, I've done it maybe seven times.
The injuries you have will repair permanent.
That's permanent.
The Superman feeling you have for three to four months afterwards is fleeting,
but it feels amazing for that two or three months period.
And there's a lot of physiological effects that you know that you got a good batch.
Sometimes you don't get a good batch or it doesn't take it.
But if you had a good batch, you'll know it.
And it's great.
I haven't done it a while, but it is amazing.
Do you do any drugs or drink alcohol?
Do you get, like, fucked up at all?
No.
So you're sober?
Yeah, I just never, I think the last time I ever got, I mean, I was betting on NFL football
and Canadian football in university and waking up with a hangover.
And I was like, yeah, this doesn't work for me.
So you've been in like this like vice for this world, a world of vice, but not substances.
And like you're like a, you're like a, I'm a control.
I like to be in control of myself.
I like to be control of my emotions.
I like to be making good decisions.
I don't like to be, not unable to think.
think rationally. So alcohol doesn't do it for me.
Dude, this is great. Thanks for, thanks for doing this, man. Where should people follow you?
Is Twitter still the best place or X?
Yeah, I mean, follow the football club. I'm not looking to promote myself, but I would love
for the football club to get more, you know, we were doing some great things this year at the
football club. And then, um, you guys won, right? You won the, like, we were recently promoted
to La Liga, too. We had an amazing first start of the season. And then we had a game.
We had a stretch where we played 22 games in six days. And I failed the culture.
and that I wasn't able to demand that we do things that were proper for rest and health for the players.
And we ran our players into the ground during that period because that was something that the coaches wanted to do.
And then we suffered some injuries.
And we've been basically, we're in the midst of a six-game losing streak right now, which is sad.
And we're paying for it from what we did in November, which was a cultural failure on my part.
Are you able to apply the biohacking shit that you're learning to your sports psychology?
not in the medicine part of it,
but there's lots of studies
on how to optimize health
and your risk of muscle injury goes up
25% if a football player plays
more than one game every six days.
There's plenty of research
that can make you come to good decisions.
But like sleep and recovery.
We're going to do a better job.
When I bought the team,
we didn't even have a training facility.
So we're building a brand new training facility.
We hope to announce the land that we've acquired soon.
And yeah, we'll do stuff
like that.
Did you think that you were going to go from like doing these bets and hanging out with
your dad in Vegas to owning a team and implementing like what you ever you want to implement?
That's pretty wild, right?
That's a good ending so far.
Or it's not the end, but it's a good part of the story.
You did think that.
You thought that.
I did.
I was very delusional in mine.
I was younger.
I was very like, I'm a very, I'm really a big fan of that sort of stuff.
Like speaking things, not speaking into, but just like having the belief.
And why not?
Why not?
I mean, I don't know.
The universe is kind of there if you do it.
like you can craft your own path just keep trying until you get there dude you're insane you're
awesome you're the man thanks for coming on dude you uh yeah you're welcome well thank you man that's it
that's the pod i feel like i can rule the world i know i could be what i want to i put my all in it like
no days off on a road let's travel never looking back like you
