The Iced Coffee Hour - Buying A $1.8 Million Dollar Koi Fish! | Confronting CoralFish12g

Episode Date: July 15, 2021

Lock in your best rate today and get your family covered with Ladder at https://ladderlife.com/icedcoffee Get Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/icedcoffee and enter promo code icedcoffee for 83% discount and 3 extra months for free! This week we are joined by CoralFish12g (George Mavrakis) on the Iced Coffee Hour. George is a YouTube creator with over 900,000 subscribers. His content includes showcasing incredible reef aquariums all over the world and other aquatic animals. CoralFish12g: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXoCSxSbh2d5DAlA5FiyuOQ Add us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w GET YOUR FREE STOCK WORTH UP TO $50 ON PUBLIC & SEE MY STOCK TRADES: http://www.public.com/graham  MY NEW COFFEE IS NOW FOR SALE: http://www.bankrollcoffee.com/ Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w Join the 2x weekly mentorship group: https://tinyurl.com/yaexko4o The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 Audio Equipment Used In Podcast: Rode NT1, Rodecaster Pro The YouTube Creator Academy:   Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF  For Podcast Inquiries, please contact [e-mail] *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Hear that, that's your next obsession. Every coffee, a new world. Every sip, a new taste. This is the new Nespresso. One touch, endless possibilities. Iced, flavored, long, short. Because some days call for that espresso kick.

And sometimes, a smooth, silky latte just wins. It's exceptional but effortless. Like actually effortless. Simply press, brew and explore. Nispresso, what else? Keep exploring at Nespresso.com. Welcome back to the 58th ever episode of the iced coffee art podcast. My name's George, and so far the podcast has made $69,435.

He says 69. That's incredible. That is incredible. I think that was the best one we've ever seen on the podcast. Are you serious, really? I am not joking at all. I felt it. Yeah.

I'm serious. And by the way, we are so close to 69-4-20. No, are we really? 69-4-35. Yeah. Wow. Well done. Congratulations.

Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on, George. Always. Thanks for having me. This has been really exciting because I kid you not, I have watched your channel for, honestly, since you were probably 10,000-ish subscribers. And right now your channel is approaching 900,000 subscribers where you talk about aquarium fish, reef keeping, saltwater aquarium husbandry, and you travel the world just showcasing some of the most exotic expensive fish and coral out there. How did you start doing this? Because I found your channel in a college dorm room and you had like a little nanotank

with a clownfish and an anemone in there, right? Yeah, so this hobby started for me in actually middle school, I believe. So I was 10 years old and I just really wanted a fish tank. And my mom took me to a fish store and she's like, you know, these fish are all freshwater but I think you should do salt water. And that was really interesting because most people

don't even know the difference between freshwater, saltwater aquariums. You know, they just go to their local. Petco or something and pick something up. So we went to a saltwater fish store. I got my first 12 gallon reef tank, which is salt water, which means you get to keep things like corals, much more like exotic fish and different invertebrates. And so then basically what happened was I got really addicted to like keeping the coral. You know, that was sort of what hooked me into the hobby because I just found it so fascinating the way coral grows. If you can grow it, you can cut it and then you can sell it to other hobbyists.

You can actually make a good amount of money doing it, as you saw from, as you've seen now being in the hobby yourself, how much corals go for. So that like really piqued my entrepreneur minded, you know, young George. And that's kind of what got the ball rolling for me to just sort of like dive really deep into the world of aquariums. It's weird that a parent would tell their child, let's go saltwater. It's bizarre. It's like the most, yeah, my mom is, I mean, totally crazy for,

doing that. You know, it's a very expensive hobby. Most parents, you know, they just want to get their kid the quick and easy thing. Yeah, the goldfish. Yeah, the beta fish. My mom was like, we're going to get you like the baller, like best, coolest thing you can possibly do. And it's crazy because if she hadn't done that, like, I always wonder if she had, if I got into freshwater, who knows, maybe I would have just, you know, phased out of it after a few months or gotten bored. Why was that? Was she, is she like a total fanatic for the saltwater aquarium? Maybe she just has a lot of money. Is that the money?

She's like, how do I get rid of it as fast as possible? Oh, here's the salt water. Grant. Let's bring that. No, my dad, what definitely was,

I don't think he quite understood the hobby or what was going on at the time. Yeah, but my mom's just like amazing for that reason. Like, she always just has always encouraged us to do, to just like go all out and go to be the best at whatever we try to do. And I didn't learn this until like many years later. But my mom actually kept saltwater.

aquariums with her dad, my grandpa growing up. Yeah, that was it. So what's interesting, though, is back when she was keeping them, they could only have saltwater fish. Like, the technology wasn't around to keep coral alive. So it was actually kind of a new thing for her too to like walk back into a saltwater aquarium store and be like, wait, you can keep coral now. And so, yeah, I mean, that's, that's really why. So what was your first tank? My first tank was, it was called the 12-gallon nanocube and that's where my name coral fish 12g comes from 12 gallons okay yeah and um it's interesting with aquariums you'd think that the smaller they are the easier the key but it's actually the opposite so the smaller the reef aquarium the harder it is to take care of because the chemicals

um you have less uh room for error right because you only have such a small water volume it's like if you were to take a drop of poison and like put it in there there's no room for like it's going to kill everything. Versus if you were to take a drop of poison, like throw it in the ocean, it won't even notice. Got it. So the bigger of the aquarium, actually, the easier. So it was very challenging.

And I failed in so many different ways. Like I went through all the pests. I went through pretty much every problem you can imagine as a young kid, too. And then after about two years of that, I find, and killing a decent amount of coral. I figured out how to keep coral alive and how to get my tank just to look amazing. And then that's when I took to YouTube to teach other. people how to not make the same mistakes I made it. What made you post YouTube videos? Oh, how old were you? This was freshman years? No, this was middle school even like I think you're

posting YouTube videos in middle school? I was yeah. Really? I've been doing this a long, yes, I started my channel in 2010. I didn't know that. Wow. Yeah, but I think I posted probably my first video in like 2011 or 2012 and at first it was just videos of my fish tank because I just wanted to see what people thought of them and that's sort of what YouTube was back then. It was just like a place where you like put stuff to see like what happened. Then I saw there were like other people teaching about aquariums. And I looked up to them and then that inspired me to like, you know, start giving my advice and my two cents on everything in the hobby. Yeah. I remember when I was in middle school, I had an aquarium and you would think that it's like this nerdy hobby. But anytime someone come over,

it was like, whoa, look at the, look at the fish. And everyone was enamored by. Everyone loved it. Yeah. It was, um, it was sort of interesting for me because I also played basketball. growing up actually into college even so i played college basketball as well and so my whole life this happened was more in high school where i realized i started thinking like hey maybe i should like give up this aquarium thing because i was like the you know starting point guard varsity basketball team supposed to be like this jock right then i had this like weird side hobby of keeping like super nerdy saltwater aquariums and like no one knew about it in high school so didn't share it with people no i didn't Were you embarrassed of it?

Yeah. I mean, like, you guys have to remember. Like YouTube back then was not cool. It was, it just wasn't what it is today. That's true. You know, now everybody wants to be a YouTuber. Like, I think I remember seeing that the number one sought after job by kids is YouTuber. But back then, it was, it was not cool, especially not aquariums, at least.

I didn't think so. And so, I mean, I told, like, a few of my closest friend knew about it, but most people did not know. Did you have a following at that time? I had maybe in high school. So what happened was right around high school, I think I had like a couple thousand subscribers. And I remember thinking like, you know, what if people see this, what's going to happen?

I thought the same thing. If people are going to start making fun of me and stuff. And so I consider stopping it. But then what actually kept me in it was I started receiving checks from YouTube. I was receiving like a couple hundred bucks a month. That's pretty good. For high schooler, that's like, really good. For high schooler.

Yeah. Some YouTube videos. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I was like, hey, well, if anyone makes fun of me for this, I'm just going to tell them to go kick rocks because I'm making money from it. So that was going to be like my way of justifying it. Yeah. And then I also started like companies started reaching out even back like that early. And they were sending me free product. And that was epic for me as a young kid because I again, aquarium is very expensive. And so like receiving free lights and free equipment was really cool. So yeah. Then what happened was I went off to college, kind of a clean slate. I committed to go play basketball at a very small school called Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, which is about three hours north of where I grew up in Chicago.

And I had, I remember I had 10,000 subscribers in my freshman year of college. And my best friends were actually baseball players. And it wasn't until the end of the year that like the way my best friend found out was I had accidentally left one of my business cards. like it just was like laying out in the hallway or something like embarrassing well I don't know I was I didn't know what was going to happen but basically he texted me a photo of the card and he's like what is this and I was like oh man everyone's about to know about this oh my gosh everyone at the college knew that I was you know and how was it was it was it as bad as you thought it was it wasn't actually a lot of people thought it was really cool um and even my best friends were like dude this is epic like why

didn't you tell us about this? Like this is sick. You got 10,000 subscribers? Like, um, so that felt good. But, um, and, you know, encouraged me to keep doing it. I also had, I brought my fish tanks or my fish tank to college. My freshman year, I only had one. By my senior year, I had 15. 15 tanks in my dorm room. Yeah, I had almost 15, I think 13 or 14 fish tanks in my dorm room. And I had like all the most exotic animals. So it was like, you would walk into my dorm room and it was a public. It's like a Yeah, it was like a zoo. You had like seahorses, clownfish, mantis shrimp, like planted tank, just like all sorts of exotic stuff. That's cool. I was the same way. I didn't tell anyone about my YouTube channel at all. It's a scary feeling. Yeah.

It's still on Facebook. I've never posted about the YouTube channel. Oh, I've never told my friends about my YouTube channel. They found out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, over time they found out. But it made me more worried knowing that like my friends were watching. And I would feel like I'd hold. myself back because I knew like, oh, they're watching me. What if I say something bad? Yeah. Everyone's so supportive. At least for me, I mean, if you weren't into aquariums, you might just be like, oh, it's cool. I just kind of brush it off. So I had that advantage. Yours is a little bit more personal, right? So yeah. But when you were making these videos, how many other people were making reef aquarium videos? Were you one of the first ones?

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my channel grew. It actually doubled. So freshman year 10,000, sophomore year 25, junior year 50, and then my senior year, I got to 100. Actually ended up surpassing 100. But yeah, and just basically what happened was like I never, because I was playing college basketball, that was my focus all throughout middle school, high school was like, how do I play college basketball? So I was very, very driven and focused on that first. And then the aquariums and YouTube was sort of like a side hobby. and it was just like some side income. I didn't really start taking it seriously until probably my junior, senior year of college when a lot of companies started noticing

and they started flying me out to aquarium conventions to do marketing. And then it wasn't really until, and I always wanted to do YouTube full time. Like I always thought, like, you know, being a YouTuber would be like the coolest thing. I think I would have even back then as a young kid considered it, my dream job. It's just I never thought that it could be a full-time income, like a full-time job. I think there's a big misconception with a lot of small YouTube creators where they just don't, they don't realize how close they are, how achievable it is to make YouTube a full-time job.

You know, they think like, I remember thinking, oh, those big YouTubers like, you know, the ones with over a million or five million, like somehow they can, you know, they're making a lot of money from it, but I didn't realize at the time that other creators with 50 or even only 100,000 subscribers, even sometimes with like 10, 25,000 subscribers can, you know, through affiliates or through brand deals or through just like dominating their niche, earn a full time living. So it wasn't until my senior year when, like another Aquarium YouTuber actually messaged me a, and this was like so, like this like literally rewired my brain. Yeah. Um, no, I, I can't. But it was, it was, It was an aquarium YouTuber who was making like, I think he sent me a, because I had my first

viral video my senior year. And then I started getting like a lot of attention, a lot of other creators were like bigger creators were reaching out. And, you know, I was, I was starting to like, meet them and talk to them and stuff. He's like, why aren't you doing this full time? I'm like, what do you mean? Like, I can't, I don't, I can't make enough money to do this whole time. I can't even go to my parents and tell, I wouldn't even dare go to my parents to say like, I could do this because it just wouldn't be enough. Because I, because I don't, at that time I was making like, throughout most of college I was making about $1,000 a month.

So I was like $12,000 a year. Like I can't do that. Yeah. But then after my first viral video, it clicked. Like my senior year, my first viral video, which was don't,

don't buy live fish off the dark web. And that got five million views. Why? Why shouldn't you buy fish off the dark web? I don't know. You got to watch, Graham. But you have to explain it

because now we have an entire audience that's going to click out of this video. Go watch that. And thank you for putting this title card right here into the video. No, we don't use it. It's bad for the algorithm. Is it actually?

Yeah, it is. Because very few people ever click out of a title card. Think of it. I mean, if you're watching a video, it's true. Have you ever, when they say, oh yeah,

middle of the video, peak suspense, click the title card, go watch another video. It works against you because that's a click against the out. Like any option that people don't follow through

counts against you, the algorithm. All right, we're throwing the link in the description, everyone. Go check it. You can watch. you could watch later.

Yeah. So the idea was, the idea was, you know, how can I, and this is also what was like a turning point for my channel was how do I get more people interested in aquariums? Like, how do I get the mainstream interested in learning about aquariums, fish or, you know, conservation with marine animals, which that ended up, that's, you know, a later part of what I do. but and I realize, okay, I really need these viral ideas where, so I thought, okay, what's the scariest fish you could possibly unbox? Like, what's the scariest fish you guys could?

The angler. Well, yeah, you're a reef. Yeah. Jack, what about you? What's like the scariest fish? Scary in what regard. What would you not want to be in the water with? A great white shark or a tiger shark?

Or besides sharks. Stingray. Yes, I wouldn't want it. Jellyfish, me. Amazon, think about it, Amazon. Probably. Prana. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. You wouldn't want to be in the water with prana. There's this big misconception of prana because of movies and even sharks too. And I've made a lot of videos about sharks and with the same logic that, you know, the movies, the media make sharks, piranhas, a lot of these animals out to be like villains, very scary. When really like pranhas are so timid and shy. Very, very like. But they're like coyotes. We're like one is timid and shy.

But then when you have a pack of them, they just go crazy. blood in the water. Yeah. I've seen those things. If they're hungry, yes. But if you keep them in your aquariums, like they're more scared of you

than you are them. I've seen some where they put like a fish in a piranha tank, like a little like half-eaten fish and they just rip this thing apart. It's nuts. Yes, but if you put like a whole human hand in the tank, they're very like,

they're more likely to go hide because you're like a bigger animal than they are unless they're in like a massive swarm in the Amazon. But regardless, the video was basically unboxing piranas and teaching people how to take care of them in their aquariums. all about them, the misconceptions.

And they are like, I mean, they're not, not, they are dangerous animals. Like, you wouldn't want to, like you guys said, be in the Amazon river swimming with piranhas. But I've also heard from a lot of people that they've walked like through like piranha infested waters, like no problem. So, I mean, it goes both ways. But, um, yeah,

after my first viral video and I saw how many views I got. I saw how much I got paid for it. How much you get paid for it? I think I got like, at least that first month, they got like five, six thousand dollars. Okay. Which for a college student, you're like, five million views. You're like ready to go to the casino, man. Right.

You're rich. So, um, and I was like, oh, okay, this is what people want to watch. This is why people watch this. And this is how much you make when you nail it, right? When you hit it on the head and you go viral. And so, and then since then, I've just been able to sort of recreate that viral formula. And, um, I've been able to just have lots of viral videos. I graduated college, which was two years ago, and I've been able to turn it into a full-time,

you know, living, which I never thought I could do. What's your formula for a viral video? I'm curious from your perspective, because you've had some videos just go nuts. Yeah, I have. And like, for me, it's all about, um, I think there is a golden rule to going viral. You know, there's a, there's a lot of people who think, I think if you ask the average person, they'd say, oh, viral, you know, I just, you threw a video of your dog up on Facebook and it went viral. Like, no. I think, there's a very like there's a there's a formula to viral i think there's a golden rule and the golden rule is that you need to make people feel an emotion you need to make people people feel like happy scared

anxious something something to the point where they take that piece of content and then they share it because as humans like it's built into our DNA like when you feel something really intense a powerful emotion like what do you want to do you want others to feel that same same way. Like when you watch something funny, you want to share it so that, you know, your friend or your, your husband or wife or whatever, you know, feels that as well. So I think that's just like, um, I think that's what viral is is when you can really get someone's like emotions, uh, to, to change and you can kind of like impact the way that they're, they're feeling, you know, because then they'll share it. And then, um, and so I think it's a very powerful thing.

So for you, what does that look like? Because I've said, but first I want to think our sponsor surf shark. Nowadays, more than ever, we are spending so much time online. For me, I just love to watch YouTube videos, check the price of whatever coin the internet seems to be going on about, and see what Papa Elon is sharing on his Twitter. And trust me, the internet knows a lot about us, and that is exactly why we should care about our online. That's where Surfshark comes in. Surfshark is a VPN that encrypts your data when you're browsing online so that no one else can see your personal information.

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In Singapore. Yeah. That didn't make me. I mean, I was more curious. Explain the plot of the video. You want to explain it? Or you want me to explain it from a viewer's perspective. Yeah, why don't you explain?

You went to this. It looks like this guy's house. And we should throw, by the way, Alex, let's throw some like B-roll over top. We went to this guy's house. We went to. I say this is if I was there. I may as well have been. You filmed first person.

Oh, no, no. Did you film first person? It's so funny you say that because I very intentionally try to make my videos feel like the viewer is there, like taking the tour with me. I use different like angles and different like lenses to give the viewer that feeling like they're walking around and looking at it. Yeah. That's cool. But was there someone that I don't remember.

Yeah, I had my cameraman Asher who's traveled with me to like quite a few countries. So anyway, so it looked like it was first person. But you were walking through this. dude who is so passionate about stingrays. And what's cool about these stingrays is that they were like $5,000 to $3,000 on the low end for like a little stingray all the way up to like $20,000, $30,000 for a stingray. They had like stingrays with different spots on them and like white ones and black ones and cool patterns and one looks like a question mark on it. It's really cool stuff. But every square inch of this guy's spot was a stingray. Like you're walking on the floor over stingrays. The whole

wall is a stingray. There's a stingray like above you. It was nuts. And every single stringer he must have had like a million, two million dollars with a stingrays that he just breathes. And it was one of these things. It's like every moment he says something that's like, what, this is crazy. A million to two million dollars

worth of stingrays? Yeah. Is the value in an expensive stingray because like you can sell it and people can enjoy it or because you can breed it like a horse and you can like... It's both. It's both. It's both. Yeah. Like but it's more, I mean, on the economic side it's definitely because you can breed it and once you have it you know you can

it's like a horse in that sense yeah but um yeah i mean it it's crazy that's just like there's so many different facets to aquariums there's so many different animals and um it's not entirely like i've i've sort of gotten used to it now like where there's a there's a stingray guy there's a flower horn guy which is a different type of fish there's clownfish guys like and they transform their entire homes to be these like insane breeding facilities. And that that's the cool thing about, you know, when you kind of travel overseas is a lot of those people like that's their livelihood, right? And so they are just like doing it out of their homes and like converting. I was once, when I was in Thailand, a guy converted an entire residential apartment building into like a flower

horn fish. It's a type of fish like breeding like place. And you literally, Five floors. And every floor I just was like, do have footage of that? I do. I have a whole video on it. Alex, please. Yeah, yeah.

How much is this guy making? Because the stingray guy, by the way, you go up to this unassuming building. Like, you would have no idea. The gate opens up. There's a brand new BMW I8 just sitting there. And this dude pulls out, shows you the stingrays. Like he's probably making, especially for that area,

making bank. And he ships all over the world. Yeah. Yeah. How much does a flower horn? guy. Explain the flower horn. You know, it's different, like, animal to animal. But what's kind of funny and interesting, the Stingray guy, so what he does as a full-time

job is he actually, like, does car, like, I don't know how to describe it. Modifications on car, like really high-end custom mods. Because in Singapore, I mean, even to own a car in Singapore is like, yeah, just the taxes for like a really cheap Honda Civic. A luxury tax. Yeah, it's insane. It's not, yeah, triple the cost of the car. So he does that full time and I asked him like, well, what do you make more money from?

Like the cars or the stingrays is like the stingrays. And the stingrays is just like a side thing. Why does he do stingray full time? I don't know. I was like, why don't you just like open up like a whole building facility? I'm not sure. But I think maybe he just really likes the stability in the cars. What's some of the craziest stuff that you've seen overseas in terms of the business aspect of this?

Like the stingrays, that's incredible. The flower horns, I would imagine that's, I haven't seen that video, but would be even crazier than that. Like, what else have you seen? I've seen, like, some markets, some, like, wholesale markets where in Asia, like, on certain days of the week, they'll basically, like, the, there was one called the Chachuk market in Thailand in Bangkok, where just, like, hundreds of vendors, like, farmers, like individual breeders, like the stinger guy, clownfish, they'll show up, they'll basically, like, sit on the floor of, like, a parking. a lot and and just like have fish out on display for people to come pick up. But then a lot of those people are like exporters that sometimes export them to the United States or other countries. Sometimes they're just like fish stores. But like I've been in some markets that are like, they go for acres. We're talking about like acres and acres are just like the most exotic fish,

some of which, many of which are even illegal in the United States to keep, which makes it so much more interesting for my American viewers is to see fish like aeronnas, which, um, Are they, why are those, because I used to see those in fish stores. Grandma, I'm surprised you don't have an a marijuana. That's a, that's a fish that I could, It is very cool fish. I would have to have an aeronana tank. Now Macy wants a clownfish tank.

Does she? Yeah. Yeah, clownfish, it's the entry point for a lot of people in the hobby are clownfish. But, um, marijuana, so the arijuana fish is also known as the dragon fish. And in Asia, it's like a sign of wealth and fortune and like prestige. Oh, we got to get one.

It's, dude, they're, I don't, you got to flash a photo of them. They're so cool. And they're big. They're shiny. And they're actually, they became so popular that people, they basically like fished them out of,

to extinction. I didn't know this. And yeah, so they're, they're, I think the reason that they're illegal in the United States, Asian marijuana, is because they're on like the CITES two or three list,

considered endangered. So you're not allowed to have them here. In Canada, you can have them. But, So like seeing those fish and those fish can go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. You know, I've seen ariwanna fish where they're like, yeah, this one's like 50K, 80K, 100K.

So like I was just, my most recent trip was Japan. And there they're crazy over koi. So koi fish, which most people here just go to like their botanical gardens and see swimming and they're like, it's a koi fish. Over in Japan, that fish is like, again, another just. massive symbol of like good luck and so there was a coy fish in 2018 that sold for 1.8 million dollars it was the most expensive fish ever sold um why why was that fish so expensive it was like so they do these coy competitions uh and they do this for every fish um up you know clownfish

flower horn and we um all the different fish they have competitions for them to see you know because the breeders want to know like whose fish are the best and that also will help dictate the on a certain fish. Wow. So, but like coy fish, there's so many different breeders. They enter these competitions.

And this fish, I think, one grand champion, like two or three years in a row. And it was just like massive. It was gargantuan. It was like, I think like,

I think it was like two, three feet. I mean, at that point. So the size. It looks like a little pig. Yeah, it was like the size of like a small pig. So the size,

the body shape, the coloration, the pattern, the colors. because all those things have to do with like the perfect coy. And believe it or not, the guy who bought it, the fish ended up dying. Square knows that in hospitality, efficiency is everything.

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A year, I think a year later. No, why? It just, I don't know. It just, I don't think there's a lot of information on that. I don't know why this is worth someone. That's the fish. It's so beautiful, yeah. So it's just.

That looks good to me, man. Jack's like I want one. I mean, it looks good, but, but I, like, if I saw that, I wouldn't think that's, like, the most expensive. Yeah. I wouldn't think that's the best in show. So the reason that one, uh, there's a,

actually a few different types, but the red and white varieties are are considered the best, uh, the, and worth the most because red and white, it's like the, the colors on the Japanese flag even. Yeah. They're just like, those are the colors that they, they value. Um, wait, so, so when you say it died, you, we're talking about the fish. The fish died. Yeah. All right. For a second, I thought we were talking about the owner, the owner. Um,

you're like, who gets the fish? Wow. I mean, the fish is big. Yeah, it's a massive fish. It's a big fish. Yeah, I mean, it's a good looking coy fish. Like, I've seen Koi fish before, like at the local Chinese restaurant or something like that. That looks like a nice koi fish, but I don't know if I would say that's like a $2 million. To the average person, you know, they wouldn't know. Yeah. You wouldn't. But to so many people who are like dedicated their lives to these subsections of the hobby, it's like everything to them. Now, the fish died. Do you know why the fish? Is it, do they have, do they have

a life. Quoic could live a long time. So, yeah. It was nine years old when it was sold. Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's a lot of information on why exactly it died. I don't know. Maybe the owner didn't want to reveal that or something. I'm not sure. At least to my knowledge, I don't know. But I

will tell you, like, a lot of fish have pretty long lifespans. I mean, coyfish can live like 20 to 30 years on average. There's like, there's legend rumors that there's a coy fish that has lived to be like a few hundred years old. That's not typical. But even like a lot of marine fish, like a lot of the fish you have,

I know Macy was asking yesterday or the other day, and they were really surprised by the lifespan of like a clownfish. I mean, clownfish lived 15 to 20 years. I didn't know that. Yeah, even in your aquarium, I know a lot of different hobbyists who have been able to keep a clownfish for 15, 20 years. So, yeah. Wow.

They have longer lifespans than I think a lot of people think. I think that's because most people get the goldfish that will get sick and die within like a few days or six months or something. But when you buy a 1.8 million, dollar fish, do you buy it with, you must buy it with the intention of breeding it, right? Because otherwise, let's say you buy it 1.8 million. You only got, like, let's say, five to 10 years with the fish. Probably, let's say 10 years, $180,000 a year to own the fish.

Yeah, I think it's just a flex. Like, I think the same way Elon Musk. I had, like, so much money. Yeah, I think the same way Elon Musk will just blow, you know, crazy amount of money on something to fly. I mean, that's just what he did. Have you ever got bit by a fish? Um, and you, like, bled?

no it's funny now you guys are gonna be like i told you so but my dad got bit by one of my piranhas um the one that you say is safe it was an accident right it was probably didn't mean to and that's it just thought his hand was food right and you're actually right that's exactly what it was my dad just the way he feeds them was just like leaving his fingers in there so you're like holding on to the food it's like if you play with fire you're gonna get burned so and then that was that was but uh i personally have never gotten like stung or bitten by anything crazy and I hope not to because yeah but most of the time it's on accident I mean that's that's something else like so when I was in Asia one of the biggest projects that I did was um like a couple videos on sharks and what's happening to sharks right now

because oh each year over a near 100 million sharks are killed 100 million 100 million is that for the fin fin soup for shark fin soup how were you that many sure 100 million How is that possible? And I thought the same thing. I was like, that must just be like grossly inflated. Yeah. When you think about China and their population, it's like, and then you take like a food that we have here in America and you. Like hamburgers.

Right. Yeah. And for them, shark fin soup was just like for the long. It's on the decline now with more awareness and stuff. Right. Still, like it's being sold. Dude, I saw this. Oh, sorry.

Go for it. Well, and yeah, I was just going to say like it's, it's a much bigger issue than a lot of people think. How do you, oh, yeah. I was just going to say, I saw this video. I remember, like, back in middle school where they, like, wrangled a bunch of dolphins. Oh, I can't. What's that? Yeah.

That video was horrific. It was so tragic. Yeah. I feel bad. I've seen some of those fishing videos where, like, they take up the fish. Yeah. It's like, something that gets caught in there. Like, nothing.

It's not necessarily a dolphin, but it's something that, and it's just flopping. It's flopping. It's, like, put it back in the water. It blows. It's just, it's so easy. Just do that. Just do that. Just do that and the fish could live and they just, they just don't care.

Yeah. I mean, for them, it's just considered, I mean, obviously it's their job, those fishermen, and it's food for them. And that was something I learned over in Asia as well as like, you know, I did a whole, basic, a whole video on the shark fishermen who are collecting these sharks and is like, well, they're just literally doing it to provide for their family. It's like, that's all they have. But isn't there, aren't there other foods that you could eat beside shark,

Or is it just like that's easy to catch? Well, they get money for it. Because in China, shark fin soup is like a delicacy. It's a luxury. So they get like a premium for catching a shark versus a fish. So they're like encouraged to kill sharks. It's the same thing for the meat market here. You know, for meat production.

It's like you just like people like eating steak. That's why we keep making it. Yeah, but at least with steak, I mean the cows are and that's a whole other thing. But they're farm raised, right? like they're they're born to be to be consumed oh true like the sharks in the ocean it's not it's not like that and something interesting too is like sharks a lot of different sharks sometimes they won't be ready to have babies like they won't be ready to breed it for 10 15 until they're like 10 15 years old so if you kill too many sharks before they reach that age like you really like I mean they say that

sharks won't be around in 50 years wow yeah just due to the crazy overfishing of of them and There's a lot of marine life like that, though. There really is. What are the other sides of the aquarium world like this that you could tell us that might not, might paint a worse picture, like the sharks are importing illegal fish and coral? Yeah. What could we at least bring awareness to so that now more people know that this is happening? I mean, I'd say first and foremost, some of those like bigger marine species,

like sharks and whales and all sorts of those, those big. marine life because you know they are the top of the food chain and so if you take the apex predator away which is the shark i mean everything underneath just like starts just going um but for me like one of the things with the uh with the hobby is that i've been really excited to see is um aquariums is is an amazing hobby and yeah there are a lot of fish that are imported um from from different places in the world but um there's also like massive effort right now. It's not an effort. It's happening of captive breeding fish for aquariums. So like all throughout the United States and as you saw with the stingray video, people are breeding these animals and

with the purpose of, you know, taking less from the ocean. So that's amazing. And there's also another, I mean, it's, there's a lot of, um, you've seen sort of the rise of a lot of environmentalists, like just coming down and coming in on everything. And I feel like maybe the aquarium hobby has like felt that a little bit. But there's just, there are so many fish now being bred in captivity. So it's a really positive thing. And also coral too.

Yeah. People are farming, you know, plants for their aquariums, coral for the aquariums. And it's a lot better for the fish too because then those fish and those animals are raised under, you know, certain conditions that allow them to live healthier. happier and longer lives in aquariums.

Yeah. That's what I like. Like Andrew, since City corals, shout out, link down below in the description, but he's grown all this stuff in his huge like 600-gallon tank.

Just breaks off a little piece, puts it in my tank, and one day, I could break off a piece for somebody else. Jack, when you set up your reef tank, I'll break off a little piece, I'll give that to you. Thank you.

I'll give you a good price too. So let's go back to your business right now. So you decided to give this a shot full time. How was that transition? for you? Well, it was exciting. You know, it was something that I never thought was going to be possible. Like I said, my junior year of college, even actually up until my senior year of college, I remember sitting in my dorm room thinking, this is never going to work. Like, this would be my dream job, but I'm never going to be able to go to my parents and tell them I want to do this full time.

And then after my viral video, you know, things changed. I was able to immediately like start understanding the whole algorithm how that works you know just the whole business side of it and I picked up on it really fast I think you know it was a combination of me also just maturing as a person like finishing college right and and and you know I've been doing YouTube a long time but I was also like living my life and growing up and like doing all the normal kid things so I wasn't like intensely focused on how do I like crack this algorithm yeah I was just like by sheer like not chance but by coincidence maybe like I was hitting a lot of different like good things for the algorithm and like how to do it like my thumbnails and stuff like we're pretty good and

like sometimes I have videos that would blow up um you know a couple like a couple hundred thousand views but once I was able to like get a bunch of other YouTubers to like show me how much they were making and like why they were making that and for me to realize okay you need a lot of you is like you need volume right to get you know for for all these like the little the money to to add up um that's when you know i i just like put it all together and i was like okay i can do this what did oh wait what did you want to do originally um well my original plan yeah my original plan like from high school is i i mean i really wanted to play professional basketball not in the NBA like overseas so my dad uh is from greece and so like you know a dream of mine was to like go playing greece for

a couple of years and be by like some of my family out there and just like learn the language more and just like just you know enjoy that but college basketball i mean it was it was great it was fun but you know by year four just all sports in general they're very political i got very burnt out of that and just um and i was i accepted the opportunity to youtube very happily you know it was like wow okay this is something very exciting and also it was happening so fast that i didn't want to like miss it. You know, my channel went from like 60,000 to like 160,000 a month or two. And so I, and I think momentum is one of the most important things. So I wanted to capitalize on that momentum. And, you know, basically about a month before I graduated, I hired my first editor, cameraman,

and just, and went, got straight to work, basically. How much more were you making at the time that you graduated college? Um, like, what was my final, like, AdSense? Like, month. month of college. I think I was probably somewhere like in the like six, six thousand, seven thousand dollars a month. So if you're making six to seven thousand dollars a month, I'm sure telling your parents that you wanted to do that full time out of college, it wasn't like a very difficult conversation. No, it wasn't. It was definitely like, you know, they can see the number and say, hey, this is very like. And they knew that that's what I wanted to do. I have just the most supportive parents. Even from, as you know, like my mom going with

the salt water crime from the beginning. Like, They just they knew that's what I wanted to do. And they were just like very happy to see me like doing it and also being able to earn good money doing it. I think my parents would have been okay with me like going out on a limb and trying to, you know, whatever I would want to do in my life. If I made no money from in the beginning, like I have the type of parents that would encourage me to still go for if that's what I was passionate about. So I'm really lucky for that. But also like one thing that I didn't mention was Aquasella. and that start we we started aqua shell a aquarium festival my junior year of college and um you got to explain

what aqua shell is yeah okay so this is an interesting story so basically throughout college i was like getting paid to go to different aquarium conventions to do like their media to do advertising form and i you know after about two or three of them it just sort got like boring to me and i thought hey there's got to be like a better way than like this old traditional convention right so um my friend and i we saw there was there was actually an aquarium event that that year for whatever reason it was like i think it was mismanaged or something decided to leave chicago chicago being mine hometown i thought there's a massive opportunity here right like they've been doing this event for five six years there's they've obviously built up this market i'm not don't know why they're leaving but hey like why don't we capitalize this so um now my business

partner, but my good friend at the time, his name's Sean Hale. So he works as a manufacturer in the industry. And because he had been attending all these events as a manufacturer, you know, buying sponsorships to the events, buying booths to the event, he had that side of the industry on lockdown. He had lots of experience in that world. And he's a lot older than I am, actually. So he's 36. So he just been in business for a long time and had a lot of also a good experience and just all corporate and other fastest business. But we started this event. My junior year, we're like, okay, we need a name. So I was like, we need some really cool name. And Coachella was happening around that time. Naturally, I was like, why don't we do like

Aquachella? Now I get the name. That's a good name. Aquachella. You didn't get it before? So this is what happened. Yeah, but you might not have gotten it because what happened was about a month or two in. I'm thinking cello. Chalo. Like a cello. Like a musical answer. Like a cello.

Oh, I don't know. A month or two in, we actually got a cease and desist from Cochella saying, like, we have a cella trademark. Are you serious? Yeah. And we, but we had like used that first two months of marketing and like blown up because Coachella was happening that time and everyone was like AquaCcella. Like, this is great.

We got like 10,000 people on our Facebook page like right away. So it blew up like from the start. And with the marketing that I'd put behind it. it just like it was pretty close to like an instant success what I do for the marketing yeah no what did you do afterwards it gave you a season did you try to fight it at all or it was like so we pivoted we're like no we're not going to like fight this giant call it something else like isn't there another way to spell chella well we so we pivoted an a with like little you know yeah we pivoted to we pivoted to aqua chella which actually ended up being I think yeah that's actually

yeah yeah so it's sort of a blessing and we had gotten the marketing from aquachella so we changed it to aqua shell and basically for the next eight months i was studying abroad at the time so me and my business partner were on like different time zones like big time so i was staying up to like i was supposed to be studying abroad not playing basketball that was like supposed to be my break like just being with my friends out there like traveling europe instead i sat in my flat in london and just got to work and i just started grinding every day on this event aqua shella and i everything i'd learned up until that point, you know, I just start pouring into the marketing. I was up probably most nights, I'd say like the average, 6 a.m. Then I'd go to bed for like three hours. My classmates

would like wake me up at 9 a.m. to go to class. I did that for like pretty much the entire two and a half month study abroad term. And it was it was difficult, but I knew that I was building something that had like this massive potential. So then my junior year, I finished I finished the study abroad, went back home. That summer I just kept working on it with my business partner for like the next three months all the way up until our first event, which was in September. We did our first event. We had like three, I think it was like 3,500 people come, almost 4,000 people attend the first one in Chicago. We, it was like you guys seen Fire Festival like the documentary?

You've seen it? Did you see it? No, it's a, it's a it's a it's a show man. You got to watch. You got to watch. It just gets crazier and crazier and crazier. Some of these things that they say, for those who are unaware, they sold out this event, claiming to be like the top event in the world.

People were paying like $5,000 to $25,000 per ticket to go to the fire festival that was going to be on Pablo Escobar's Old Island. But it turned out to be a giant scam. They got there and they were like hurricane tents instead of like, you know, luxury campsite. It's like, oh, and what went viral, someone posted on Twitter. It was supposed to be like this hand chef curated meal from like the best chef in the world. And it was his picture of a styrofoam plate with two pieces of bread on it. Yeah. And like a piece of bologna and cheese.

No. So they actually held it. You should be laughing. It shouldn't be laughing at this. But they get there and it's raining. Literally it's raining. Yeah. And it's like all these like all these influencers like for.

you know, that paid exorbitant amounts of money to go there, be in these, like, cabanas, and it's just like a hurricane. And it's like chaos, nothing set up. And, like, basically the whole thing was just, like, being called, yeah, called off. I felt so bad because the locals were really, like, this was big business for them. Because they don't get tourists. Yeah. And so to have, you know, hundreds of really wealthy people flying and they're spending money,

they were paid, like, you know, millions of dollars to set up for this thing. And it turned out that they had worked really hard. They didn't get paid. I mean, it was horrible. Who threw it? What was his name? It was just some guy. It was probably better we not give him exposure.

But anyway, this guy who's had a history of overpromising, under-delivering, taking money, shutting down businesses, getting investors all excited. He basically took all the money, spent it on himself, and then just whatever was left over, tried to make this as best as he could. Yeah. He took like $5 million and then like try to use like $50,000 to put on the advantage. It didn't work. Yeah.

But so that guy, that whole thing. that's exactly like I couldn't relate ever anything more in my life that's how setting up aquashella felt really yes to that degree like how much money you make um you bought the Lamborghini and dude I wish

bought the gold Rolex I wish so I'm kidding it was but it was it was chaotic it was chaotic putting on events of this of that magnitude for thousands of people how many people were involved in it just you and me and Sean we were like really that first event it was just like us yeah it's

You needed like 20 people on that. And we do now. A lot of things you forget like parking. Oh yeah. Security. Food. Like all the little things that you would never even consider. Like who's going to check the tickets in the front?

How many people do you need? Yeah. And so like we almost died. Like just from like exhaustion and and just like stress, I think. I think I must have aged like five years just in those few months. But we put on the event. We like barely. And like the event.

went well like obviously there were the hiccups it's like the first one but we like just barely managed to like get out of it like and be okay and at the end of the day we didn't really walk home with much money like it was we didn't walk home with much money it was like we had a little bit of money left in the bank we had a lot of assets though to like the infrastructure for the facility like the whole set and everything and we had proven out this concept because it was like a very new thing. All the, all the, the, the, the whole industry was like, what is this going to be? It's like, is this a brave or is this an aquarium convention, right?

They, they didn't quite understand it. And so we were able to, like, prove the concept, like, hey, this new way of teaching people about aquariums, getting people interested, you know, and making it an event where, like, anyone could attend and they would just, like, love it. They'd have a great time and just think it was, like, potentially, like, the most fascinating thing. So that was, like, the whole idea behind it. And Aquascella basically is it's an aquarium convention, but it incorporates elements of like a music or art festival.

And there's like this there's a massive art installations, aquatic themed like with like UV paint. So like under black light, everything's glowing. And it's just like it's a way to get a lot of people interested in the hobby. A lot of the industry, they weren't sure about it. But all of the good deeds I had done for companies in the years previous and also my business part, partner with you know same with him it all came back and in that moment we were like cash in on all that good karma a lot of people helped support that first one but we didn't make a lot of money on for the first one so then my business partner was like dude we just worked eight months on this event

unpaid and we still and we didn't really make much like I don't know what you want to do and I was like we now that we have all of the assets we have the whole infrastructure the set and everything All we have to do is take this, pick it up, move it to a different city, and run it there. And we should be, we should make money that this time. And he's like, you're crazy. You're telling me like after eight months. And he works his own full-time job as a manufacturer. He's like, you want to do this again.

That was absolute hell. And you're telling me you want to do it again for another six months. So yeah, let's do it in your hometown. And so he's from Dallas. So we did our second one in Dallas six months later. And that was my senior year of college. Keep in mind, I'm still playing college basketball while I'm working. working on my YouTube channel, Aquashella, and school.

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, my senior year, it was, we actually lined up the dates perfectly so that the event was going to happen over spring break. So I had off from school. And we did our second one in Dallas, and it went, it just went crazy. Like, we were on Good Morning, Texas. We had like 7,000 people show up. Wow.

People were like moms, people were just coming up to me, like, crying, like, begging to get in. We had sold out the fire marshal shut us down because we were like over capacity. Wow. It was just like, it was insane. It was, it was crazy. And we did a whole team that time. And we had grown a little bit more of a team. We had some of the artists. We had like some more staff. We'd actually, it's really interesting. After our first one, we had someone reach out. They wanted to buy a franchise in New Orleans. They're like, we want to do this in New Orleans. Like, well, you sell this one. My business partner was like kind of entertaining. I was like, no. Can you say how much they offered?

Yeah, I think they wanted like, it was like 35K or 40K for it. But it's just the franchise and then you would get to keep a portion of the profits too. Yeah, I think there would have been like a royalty or something. Yeah. But I was like, hey, no, I don't trust anyone else to run this event the way we do. So we actually took that guy and we turned him into our, we brought him onto our team. He's actually one of our show managers now. And so that's been great.

But yeah, we expanded our team. And the Dallas one, I mean, the line was insane. to try to get it. I mean, it went on for so long. And, uh, but we did make money.

And we, we made a good amount of money. And how much? Everyone else. How much? We made like, mm, I'd say the,

that first aquasello we made like, um, like almost 100,000. Wow. Split between you and your, yeah, almost 100,000. And,

and that's, that's, that's including the assets that you? Including the assets, which, and we'd actually built up even more assets. Because we had like built onto this set even more. Um,

So yeah, I mean, I basically, then I went back to college for my last two months of college. And that was a really interesting two months for me because like it was, I went back to college immediately after being like submerged in this like, I think you know how it feels when you can't go back. You can't. Yeah. You're surrounded by like children. Correct. It's like what's going on. This is weird.

Yes. You're like, oh my God. Like the. conversations that a lot of my friends were having. I went out to the bar that weekend and like people are, you know, Susie's like talking about the hockey player that won't give her a look. Yeah. And I'm like, you see what I've left me with Spencer said man?

And you're just like, dude, I got better things to. Right. Yeah, exactly. And I just, it was really hard for me because I really like, I couldn't relate with anyone at college anymore. Like all these kids were doing these, not internships, but like internships or like gearing up for like. And I was just like, in two months, you guys are grad. Yeah. Like, what are you guys doing? Like, get it together, man. Like, you're talking about the hockey player that won't give you that won't look at you like you. Like, you have much more important things to worry about. Like, so, you know, that was that was kind of interesting. And, you know, it was also like I had, um, I was, I was sort of depressed for like a week after that event because, well, I was depressed and I was happy. But, you know, uh, you spent so much time like months and months just focusing on this one day of the year. How was. You know. How was depressed. And I was happy. You know, uh, you spent so much time. Like, like, you know, uh, just focusing on this one day of the year. How

it's going to go and then it just happens and when it's over just like it's over did you miss it or no it's like that you know i this is going to be weird that i'm comparing myself to this or what but you know that feeling they like postpartum when women like get have don't know that no no you don't have you heard of it have you heard of postpartum when like women have their baby yeah and there's like they feel like emotion a flood of hormones and yeah they feel they feel like empty though because like they were carrying something for not months and then it's just not there anymore and like they feel like something's missing. I've actually heard it on a lot of different podcasts like business owners who sell their businesses

for like $20,100 million, whatever. It's like the saddest day of their lives because they're just like, I got nothing to do tomorrow. Yeah. Like I just sold my company. Like so they got a hundred million in their pocket, but like they have no purpose. So like I sort of felt that a little bit. And we actually now have coined it because a lot of it was, it wasn't just me. Like a lot of, of our staff got it and we coined it the aquashella blues we had like grown ass men with like yeah we're like supposed to be doing like uh with power tools like crying after the event because they're like i'm gonna miss you all like this was so crazy and so much fun and like so yeah it's just like it's become a really big team effort and um and and and yeah when when i got back to college and

and that check hit my bank account it was after basically a whole year of working on it um that along with my YouTube channel finally clicking. It was like everything. It just like come together. And I was like, I just remember sitting in my dorm room. And it was like kind of emotional because it just was like, I just figured it out. Yeah. And this whole time I didn't know what I was going to do after school necessarily.

And that was my dream. So how many do you host now? We actually this year have expanded our third one in Orlando. So in besides, if you don't count the pandemic year, in two years, we've grown two, three, one in Chicago, one in Dallas, and one in Orlando. So the one in Orlando is coming up June 12th and 13th, 2021, and it's going to be crazy. And then Dallas, you were telling me, is on Halloween? Yeah, this year we moved Dallas to be on Halloween and we're going to call Aquachal Halloween.

And so it's crazy. I think it, I want to. Dude, it's going to be cool because I think we're going to be able to pull, like, incorporate elements of a haunted house into what is already very, like, has a bit of that. that element to it. So I think we'll be able to pull like a really ridiculous crowd. You should get a clownfish as like the orange and the black and like something like that. Or what is it the Achilles Tang?

Yeah. Achilles tang. Well, we, I don't know if you've seen like some of the promotional like stuff we have. But not for the Halloween. We bought these massive inflatables for like to put outside the event spaces. So we bought this like 30 foot by 30 foot inflatable clownfish. that just like sits outside the event. It's filled with air.

And yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different things like that where my business partner has been like, are you sure you want to spend, you know, that kind of money on something like that? I'm like, yes. Like this is how you get people excited about an event, right? This is how you tell people. Like, and I think that also resonates with people.

I mean, I think it's most of the time when when you see people putting a lot of effort into something, like you're way more willing to. buy into it. So, yeah. You know what George reminds me of, the stradman of reef tanks? Dude, I actually see that. Yeah, I actually see that.

Stradman? You're the Stradman of aquariums. Tell me about Stradman. You don't know the Stradman? Wow. Very positive, very genuine. Yeah. Yeah.

The Stradman has one of the largest car channels. Okay. Out there. I'm not the biggest car guy, really. Okay. So that's why I don't know of them. But yeah, but of the car niche, you have like Doug DeMiro, you have another one, Daily Driven Exotics and a few other ones.

But Stradman's like near the top. And for the Reef Aquarium, I feel like you got the, you're the Stradman of the Reef Aquarium. Watch the Stradman. You're going to see the resemblance. You're very similar. Very similar. The way that you talk and carry yourself. Yeah.

Cool. It's a compliment. Don't worry. It's a, I hope the Stradman is a cool guy. Yeah, he's extremely likable. He is. Yeah. So can you walk us through?

the numbers right now of your business. Of my YouTube business or my... Everything. Yeah. Everything you're comfortable discussing. They want the numbers. Well, I mean... Let's start with YouTube. Let's start with YouTube.

I mean, it's nice because I've built this foundation. My audience is education based, right? Like teaching people how to set up a queer. And so because I've done like everything really... Because I took all... I always took the extra steps to like fact check. everything I was saying and make sure like everything was the proper way to to educate people. A lot of Aquarium brands really respect my channel, which isn't that's not always common with

animal pet channels. So I mean as far as sponsorships go, I've been able to like land some decent like good, good long term sponsorships. It's tough because like Aquarium brands don't always they're not going to like want to pay as much as like a big corporate like big corporate brand would because they just like they're not used to working with influencers right so sometimes you've really got to like I mean that's that's been also part of like what took me I think so long to start generating more money from my channel um was just for them to like realize that or maybe some other bigger companies realize it quicker but I mean what do you want to know just Like, yeah, just give us an estimation.

Yeah, we could see your analytics or just like an estimation. You want to just see it? Yeah, okay. All right. You tell me. Now, it's crazy. Like, aquarium's like it doesn't have the CPM you guys have, which I'm very jealous of because sometimes I feel like I am working very, very hard for like, let's see these

consistent views. Oh, man. Look at that. Are you going to like my yearly? Yeah. Yeah. Consistent. Well, just the last 28th, it's almost, it's like, it's like.

Same views every day. That's really good. Same subscribers every day. The, that's CPM. Yeah, it's just not, it's, it's nowhere near yours.

It's like 25% a quarter. Yeah. You guys, you trust me, you do not know how good you have it because I think most of YouTube has my CPM.

I say like 75% of YouTube is this, what I have. So you guys really are, I don't know if you, like, You just get gross, not grossly overpaid, but like, you just get paid so much more for the same amount of work that I do. Well, this is, this is interesting.

30% of your audiences in the United States. For us, it's like 85%. Yeah. Now, that went down. My U.S. base went down a little bit just because, like, when I went overseas for almost a year, doing different videos. Philippines. That's why your CPM's going to be a lot lower, though. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the CPM, before I was. went and I did all these trips was wasn't too far off though. And I know Aquarium, other Aquarium YouTubers have a very similar CPM to me that don't make like travel content. Yeah, but it's a, it's the audience demographics. So do they have like similar audience demographics? No, I'm saying like, they're probably like 80% USA and they have the same CPM. Like it is the topic. Trust me. I've like triple checked with pretty much every aquarium YouTuber. And I mean, my CPM is, I mean, my CPM is what they make as well. It's not just the international thing. So, but in addition to that,

then you also have sponsorships supplementing that. Yeah. So I have some sponsorships that I have on the yearly side. And again, like some of those, some of those I'll sacrifice on the dollar amount just because there's like a lot of good synergy with like what they can do for me. Right. Like they can provide me with tanks or like, you know, lots of travel costs or just like. Do you want to give a shout out? One of my biggest sponsors is Fritz Aquatics. And that's the company that my business partner for Aquashella, that's the company he works for. Okay, so I got to say you sent me the Fritz turbo start.

Yes. To start my tank. Amazing. Insane. Insane. You sent me an entire gallon that was shipped in like this temperature controlled box. Yes. To keep it cool.

And I dumped in this bacteria that like turbo starts the tank as a cycle. Like it's the bacteria that you'll normally wait weeks to generate that you could start almost within, like a few days. They claim that you can put fish in there the same day as TurboStar. They claim that because the bacteria they culture in their facility in Dallas is like, and they ship it refrigerated overnight. It's like so dense and it's just like so concentrated.

I put this in the tank as a, it's just clouded the tank temporarily. It's all bacteria. It's their most popular product. And it's like a very easy product for me to promote as well because like, Everyone, when they're setting up tanks, like needs TurboStar. You can even throw TurboStar in your existing tank just to, like, add the bacteria levels to, like, bring them up. Which is what you can't, you can never overdose it either.

So, but like Fritz Aquatics is, is my longest one. And the way I met Sean, who is the business partner for Aqua Shell, he, um, it's so funny. So he was a sponsor for like a different aquarium convention. I remember he was like attending it with like as a sponsor with a booth, vendor booth. and that show asked me to interview him since he was a platinum sponsor and I was the one doing the marketing. So we still have this video

which is crazy to watch now like four, I think four years ago like us just sitting on some like frit salt buckets like just talking. I never, you know, we both didn't realize at the time that would turn into a friendship that would then also later turn into now

the biggest aquarium event in North America which is Aquasella. I got to try the salt too. Dude, the salt is amazing. I've been using reef crystals. Yeah, it's a big upgrade from reef crystals. Reef crystals just is, you know, a lot of the salts are very similar, but the bigger difference with fritzic salt is like it'll mix clear, like really quickly.

And there's no residue in the container. It's like very, it's like almost like a powder. Okay. So, yeah. And I've used their salt in my tanks for years. And they've been able to grow their company. What's so interesting is now everyone wants. wants to, like now every manufacturer I think really wants to do marketing and advertising with me.

Fritz Aquatics got in like from the very start because I don't know what he, I mean, Sean saw something in me as like a young college kid when my channel was at like 10,000 subscribers and he was willing to invest. And, um, and, um, you know, so I'm, I'm very thankful and I'm very loyal to that brand for that reason. We've grown together. It's like, uh, it's sort of like David Doberk and seekeke. Like my brand like with, is just, they're synonymous. Cool. So, yeah, it's one of my favorite.

That's my favorite sponsor. So you have the YouTube ad revenue. Yeah, I got my YouTube. Sponsorships. Mm-hmm. Aquashalla. Aquashalla. That's taken place once a year.

Three times a year. Three times a year. Yeah. How would you divide it? If you had like a pie, what percentages would you allocate to different income sources? I'd say like 50% of my revenue is YouTube. A third of my revenue is,

Aquashella and the rest is like merch sponsorships like and like miscellaneous. Cool. You were telling me too that you're diversifying into real estate. Yeah. So that's what I've been doing with all the money that I'm making from YouTube, Aquashella. I've just really, I've been putting it almost exclusively into real estate. Why real estate?

Well, my dad is, he's a real estate investor and he's also just a serial entrepreneur. So he's been in so many different like businesses in his life. I should I should just say he's a investor because he doesn't only invest in real estate. I guess he'll invest in kind of like you. You reminded me a lot of him when you're talking about like, oh, I bought this car because like it was such a good deal. That's exactly how my dad is. Like my dad has bought some just the most random things and gotten into some very interesting business ventures just because they were like very good entry deals. right like he could he he stole them essentially so um yeah i mean i we were we were raised sort of with like a we were to have with that entrepreneur spirit but also i think like with a little bit of like a

mercenary mentality like our dad always pushed us like to make money like you know he's an immigrant from greece he came from nothing and i mean that was obviously very inspiring for all my brothers and i to see you know for him to go if you see like the village that he's from in Greece and the fact that he was like walking around at 10 years old there with like no shoes like I don't even think he he has a story that he didn't try a banana until he was like 15 or something like it's and then for him to come to the America and live the American dream you know he's he's put a lot of that into us and so you know we were born to you know raise with this idea like you know America is an amazing place with so much opportunity go go get it

you know like take advantage of it it's also something I've been able to realize just traveling to as many countries as I've been to because like I think now I'm at 25 different countries and yeah when you really when you go out there and you see different parts of the world you'll come back to realize just how how much opportunity there is here and there's a lot of people that say the American dream is dead I mean it's not what it was maybe for immigrants like 20, 30 years ago, right, with like the doors wide open to certain industries. But like still, America,

so much more opportunities than the majority of other countries. How are you able to manage real estate doing all that at the same time? You own rental properties, flips? Um, it's actually, it's, it's all commercial real estate. So, um, I mean, my younger brother has actually...

Is he? He's here. Where is he? My younger brother? Your younger brother's here? I do have a younger brother, and his name is Yanni. I heard a rumor that if you say Yanni three times in a row, he shows up. Let's try it.

Ready? Yanni, Yanni, Yonnie, Yonnie. Whoa! Yonni! Hey, guys. Welcome. This is my younger brother, Yonnie. This is my younger brother, Yonnie.

He's two years younger than me. But, uh... He has a rope. He's like my... Yeah. What kind of robe is that? It looks like Versace. It looks like Versace, it's not as expensive because of the amount of money I lost at a casino this weekend.

But yeah, it turned out it's my last friend's 21st birthday, so I came to Vegas and it's good timing because I got a real estate guru right here. Cool. That's what we're getting into. I want to hear about the real estate between you see. So what have you bought? So the niche that we found is industrial properties. And basically what we do is tour a lot of them and make. really low offers. So we make really good deals happen somewhere where we can find a single

tenant or an industrial property. So like auto repair shops, car washes, garages, and they're really just low maintenance properties. So it's perfect for him and it's perfect really for anyone. For anyone. It's not like it's exclusive to anyone. One of the reasons we like these like commercial, that niche that Yanni just said is like he said they're very low maintenance so what we found is that if you buy like a commercial piece of real estate with an elevator you are like you are going to constantly be getting phone calls about the elevator not working or like the air conditioning units are like not working like there's as you know there's a lot of different problems that can come up with real estate like and if you can't you can't predict them and sometimes they are

can even be very expensive fixes, right? So we realize that like garages are the type, like, it's an interesting property type because the people who are using garages are mechanics. They're handymen. So if their air conditioning unit goes out or anything isn't working, they don't call you. They'll just fix it themselves. And so it's like one of the lowest, I think it may be the lowest maintenance type of real

estate to buy. And that's why we were so attracted to it. But yeah, like George was talking about earlier, our dad has, he's like involved in almost every business you could possibly imagine. And through 40 years of doing real estate, he's just got so many headaches from so many different things. So finding this niche where you really don't even see your tenant for a year or two after you sign a lease is just worked out perfect for him. because he can put the money in and not really have to manage the properties, which is also some, we have a, there's another niche that we're looking forward to. It's like foreclosure properties where I think a lot of people want to look for like flips,

but something we're thinking about doing, which we can't because of COVID right now. And the courts are closed. We can't get eviction notices to get people out because we're, we want to run them out for Section 8 housing. Yeah. So how many properties do you have now? I have three. So I have three garages.

I have five garages. Five garages. How much, how much you guys making from this? Each garage is about, I think we net about. So they're net leases and the tenant usually pays 5,000 rent is what we look for. And then what's your take home after that after?

Well, I guess you're not paying taxes or anything on that, but do you have to pay insurance? No. So actually the... You pay insurance. Well, they pay the rent and the property taxes. Right.

This is triple net. Yeah. So we basically, I mean, it's about net 5,000 per property a month. To you, to, to you know, but the mortgage? Mortgage is going to be a mortgage. Yeah. We put about 25% down. So what's the cash flow like on these?

Oh, it's very good. You're looking at each year, like, sometimes like 20 to 30% potentially. It's like unbelievable. So on five, you're, walking away with about $2,200 a month net to you in your pocket. I'd say it's closer to like three, I'd say it's closer to like three grand a month per property. Yeah. So three times $9,000 a month from rent and these properties net, the 25% down. So it's a great return because each property, I think mine, mine, the average cost of mine is about between like 175 to like 200.

He's doing like $150 and $300,000 is like the average property cost. And then you take home about $60,000 a year. That's really high ROI. What area is? Well, so we're doing it in Chicago, but these properties exist everywhere, which is really... Wait, how is that? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, so let's say 300 grand. It's renting it $5,000 a month.

Triple net. So five, what is it, 60. So you're getting a 33% of ROI? You have to understand. Yeah, so you have to understand, though, how hard we work for these properties. So there's a lot of people that will go out and they'll buy like, they'll buy like a lot. Well, they'll be very aggressive, right? On like a really nice looking piece of real estate or something that looks really good.

There's always a ton of buyers, even right now with the housing market. Like people are like not overpaying, but giving like 10%, 20% over asking price, right? So it's the same idea with like most real estate. However, what we do is like, we play the waiting game. And so what we'll do is like we'll put in an offer, which is like very, very low, sometimes so low that they'll bad mouth us. They'll get on the phone and just say, you know, piss off, right? But then we'll just kind of hang around. We'll stick around.

And like, six months later, we'll be like, hey, what do you think about our offer still? And they will sometimes still tell us to piss off. Up until like and it can go for like sometimes like 12 months like up to like what's some some of the longest ones like The thing is there are so many of these industrial single tenant properties. I mean if you take your car and you drive around Chicago every single corner is going to have every corner yeah so every week we're sending up meetings to go see I mean he's not doing it so much while I'm sending up meetings to go see these properties and after a day I'll get a list of the equipment and then I'll submit an offer and whatever the asking price is, I do 50%.

So if they're asking $500,000, they just got to double their price. They got to double their price. Then all of a sudden you'll offer it. I remember them asking. Is it a 500 guy? I want a mill. Be like, all right, 500.

So, I mean, it's a waiting game. What ends up happening is like, because Yanni is going out and making so many, like, not so many offers, but just like making a decent amount of these offers on a basically um you know most real estate or people will say like how do you ever buy real estate then because no one will actually accept that offer but like once in a blue moon not even a blue moon like just every once in a while like 12 months like you find like a really motive that's the key that's the

key is you have to find a very motivated uh seller right someone who is like in you know wants the cash right away. Like, I don't know, maybe like their spouse who owned the, the building, like, died and like they don't know what to do with it. They don't even know how to manage it. They just, they don't even, so they just want to get rid of it, liquidate it. So you have to find a very motivated seller. And, you know, but sometimes that, and that typically happens after 12 months of them not

getting their asking price, right? So, and then sometimes they'll, I mean, they'll accept it. And so they'll jump at it. But what happens is if you put in enough of these offers, like, your offer, it's like the deals that you're making are on offers that you started sometimes up to a year ago. So you, you know, it kind of takes some time, right? But eventually, once you are doing it long enough, like you just start getting, you know, the time catches up, right? Yeah.

The risk here is that if you get a tenant, someone moves out finding a replacement tenant for, it could be difficult. Yeah. Isn't always actually a problem because for a lot of these properties, it's their owner users. So you find the motivated sellers from the sellers when they're retiring from using shop. So they're looking to get out of the business. And additionally, they leave all the equipment behind. So it's not so hard. Like we've gotten some of these properties where there's no one, we need to find a tenant with all the equipment's inside.

So for two of them, I just picked up the phone. And we're aggressive. We take an aggressive stance on everything we do. So I'll just call around every surrounding neighborhood, every area, and I'll talk. And I'll ask to speak to the owner or manager and I'll say, hey, we have another turnkey operation business. We're just investors looking for a tenant. All the equipment's inside. We need a security deposit and first month's rent.

and you can get going right away. Good business. Yeah, this is very good business. Keep doing that. What are you about to say, Jack? You're about to say something. Nothing. That's just, that's nuts.

30%? That's just, Jack, that's what you should be doing. Do that. What? You're going to encourage me to do that? Listen, 30%. That's shocking. 30%.

Yeah. That's time away from work, Graham. That's shocking. Not if it's triple net. That's true. True. So I heard, we were kind of chatting before filming this podcast because he wasn't wearing socks.

Okay. And it's kind of an issue because if our guest isn't wearing socks or if one of us isn't wearing socks, including you Graham. Yeah, but your socks last episode, they had a hole in them. A big hole. And we got some comments. I don't know. Your feet were poking through. Yeah, we got comments about your feet.

So I like how Brooks starts recording as soon as we're talking about my feet. So I let you borrow my socks so you could cover up your feet, right? And, you know, I said we get a lot of comments about the feet on this podcast. so everyone usually wears socks. And then you said that you've sold. I mean, if you're getting, you guys were speaking about people messaging you to buy the pictures of your feet on Instagram.

No, no, you're not saying it. George was saying. This is what happened. So I sat down on this couch, right? And I didn't come here with socks on because I'm enjoying the heat in Vegas. I'm from Chicago. So then as soon as I asked,

well, are my feet going to be in the shot? And they said, yeah. And I said, oh, no, no way am I doing this podcast with no socks on that. At least not for free. No, at least not for free. Pay me. And how much did you want? You said, Jack, you have to pay me if you want to see my feet.

Yeah. And Jack just said how much? Yeah. You'd have to pay me a lot. Actually, I feel like you could easily get Yon to do that for. Look, man, I'll use it as my down payment. Yon is an entrepreneur. Whatever it takes.

Yon is a price. Opportunist. Wait, so people have actually asked, they've asked for feet pictures for me for money. Haven't they asked you guys? No. Some guy wanted to buy my shoes and I'm serious. I think I think I'm going to be doing it. But the only thing is that we got to get the offer higher because he offered a price where it's like it's the cost of the shoe.

Oh, yeah. I'm not going to send him shoes worth the price he's willing to pay. Wasn't it like 400 bucks? No. It was less. It was under that. We're not going to give the exact price because we don't want to low ball ourselves here. Right.

Right. But it was the price. It was like that's the cost of the shoe. At a certain price on a pair of shoes I don't like. maybe haven't worn a little bit, I'm gonna, I'll send them off. There's a price for everything. So,

so what was your experience with the... By the way, I'm trying to sell my bathwater. It's on Grand Steffatstaffat store.com. $5,000. No one has got it yet. It's a gallon, too. It's not just a cup. It's one gallon.

Think of shipping on that. I have an idea. How much are you asking? I could flip it. $5,000. Why don't we... Why don't we use that for an aquarium? What?

Graeme bath water in an aquarium? Yeah. Would it be safe for a human just to dip in an aquarium? That's what you're wearing. You don't want to wear like sunscreens and stuff like that. It's inside. Why would you wear sunscreen? It's inside. If you're outside with suns...

Chemicals. Yeah, chemicals in the aquarium. But I mean, I just, I don't know. I thought it was just common. It was funny because when we got it, you know, I thought it was common like everyone, every influencer gets like asked for feed pictures. So you, you've gotten asked. Did you sell your feet pictures or... I did not. I did not, although it is very, very tempting sometimes. Because like it was the highest offer you got. I feel like it wouldn't.

Highest offer was like two, I don't know, like a few hundred bucks. Wow, dude, come on. It's like, what if your face isn't in it though? What if it's just like. That's what I'm saying is like it's so, to me at least it's innocent like, A, how are people going to know they're my feet? And then B, like, whatever. If people like are into feet, like, I don't care.

You can be into whatever you want. Like 300 bucks for like some photos that really do. Take me a minute. It takes me like even less than a minute. It took me 10 seconds. And I mean, I don't know. It's tempting, but I knew immediately what you're referring to when you're like, oh, no, George, like, you better get some socks off.

Yeah. I was like, bring me some socks. I don't want the feet people. The feet people. I don't want them. I want them to, they better, I don't know. I'd rather than focus on the conversation. Sure.

I'm sure my feet are. You're about to get a lot of feet. That's a strong community. Listen, yeah. it was for the feet people out there we should be getting a percentage of this because this right now is free promotion so if you sell if you sell any feet pictures from this we'll link it down below we want 10% yeah 10% of gross 10% of gross that's too much driving traffic you could set up an Instagram you know for your feet and then on that's just too much only fans for feet

yeah we just want 10% whatever whatever business you decided Dude, we're getting 30%, Graham. I don't... What do you mean? We're getting 30%. We don't want... Wait, we're giving you the traffic. We'll take 30%.

No, no. Wait, was it what... I said, we're getting 30% on real estate. We don't want... Oh, we get 30% of feet pictures. Yeah, we get 90% of the feet. That's true. Too little time in my day, honestly.

To take a picture of your feet? Jack will do it for free. Graham, would you sell photos of your feet? What is... For the right price, I would. What is that price? Oh, geez. I mean, honestly, $1,000.

A thousand dollars, dude. Yeah, that's a lot of money. A thousand dollars, dude. Literally someone says, Jack, I want to see. My feet. Dude, I see your feet all the time, bro. I see them all the time. You must have some pretty nice.

You don't have a picture. They're all right. You don't have a picture where you could look at it all the time. Dude, I could get one when you're not looking. It would be so easy. Dude, I would sell a picture of my foot for $20. Like, literally it takes me 10 seconds. Why does it matter?

It's not weird. For me, a thousand dollars is a price where if it ever got out that I had sold pictures of my feet, no one could ever look at that and be like, I wouldn't have done, I wouldn't have done that. People would pat me on the back. They would applaud me for being entrepreneurial. I have a better idea. I just set up an email, Graham Stephanfeet at Gmail. Okay, so we got gram stephenfeet at gmail.com, a thousand dollars and I will send you a picture of my feet.

Even if it's, you know, someone that's just associate with us, Andre. If you want pictures of feet of Andre, let it. Let us know in your price. To prove it's my feet is they could have me write something on my foot that only they would know. So it's like a timestamp, like initial blank. I have, you're going to come out with the Graham Staffman, foot NFT. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's what we're doing.

All right, all right. If I sell 10 pictures of my feet, I'll reinvest that money back into creating some sort of NFT. One of one. of one of my left foot. I want to save the right one in case I need it. Is there a better one? Do you have a better foot? What?

Do you have a better foot? No, they're the same thing, but it's like, I'll keep one foot to myself. What kind of toes you have? You know how people, people have like different types of toes?

Oh, yeah. The middle one will be out more. You don't want to spoil the secret, man. Yeah, actually, let's not spoil the secret. Yeah, I was going to say something that would reveal the type of foot I have,

but I just didn't want to spoil the secret. Did you actually create the email? Gramstuff and feet at gmail. We created the email. We actually did create the email. I'd be surprised. But just making it clear, money has to be paid up front.

Don't worry. I mean, it's not like, we're not going to, you know, go back on our work. But it'll have to be sent up front before I send anything. So I think that's fair. Yeah.

Or me. Or Alex. Jack's only 20 bucks. So, we'll see 20. Grab seven feet. We'll get Jack. That's enough to go get a nice meal. And if I can pay for a meal in 15 seconds,

by taking a box. Okay. All right. deal. All right. Cool. So with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. We'll link to all of your information down below in the description where you could also get feed pictures. Make sure to also destroy the like button, subscribe button, and notification bell. And also, you can get a free stock worth all the way up to $70 when you sign up for public using the link in the description. Code Graham, $70 and you'll have a chance to win a completely free stock of Tesla. So you may as well do that. It's pretty much like free money. Thank you guys so much for coming on. Thank you guys so much for watching and until next time. See, now you're loosened up. Now you're gonna kill it. All right.