The Iced Coffee Hour - Confronting Our Worst Fears | Yes Theory

Episode Date: March 16, 2021

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What's up everybody? My name is Mark Indiel and I am one of the creators of Yes Theory and today we are on the 39th ever episode of the Ice Coffee Hour. And so far the show has made over $36,000. So that was amazing. That was incredible. It never rolls like that. That's just you guys. No way. Wow. Wow. Wow. Thank you. Thank you guys for having me. Thank you. This is a trip. Like there are very few people that I meet that like I can't believe you're here. that you exist because I've been watching Yes Theory pre a million like I remember when you guys did your million subscriber video like this big celebration and I was so pumped for you back then

like before I was even making YouTube videos so it's crazy to go from that and it'd like be sitting here with you man what I talk about this stuff it's crazy likewise we've been a fan of your stuff for you know for a long time now and I mean weeks now this disclaimer I am like it's that there was a joke made before I came because I was telling Matt that I was coming on your show. And it's for like the guy who cares the least about finance and about money on the team to be the one actually sitting here with you is quite the joke for my team. You got to talk about that.

Yeah. You were warning me. You were like, now it's time. Like I'm going to get my finances in order. We're going to do this. 2021 is the return around. I mean,

it is truly one of my biggest discomforts. And I think it's, today I was analyzing whether it's, you know, if it's just a matter of not. liking money or not being finance oriented because I feel I have the luxury of being in a team where it's very much up Matt's alley. He likes managing our money, making investments and like doing all that. So I feel like I can just kind of not worry about it and focus on the parts I'm going at.

But this year I just realized that I feel behind on my own financial literacy and understanding how things work. Like every day just talking to, you know, Cliff, it tells me more about ways to optimize my financial situation being a startup founder. being someone who lives in America, you know, an immigrant. So there is definitely a lot that I'm missing and I'm starting to believe that it's no longer just the excuse of being like, oh, I don't care about finances. I'm actually probably scared of finances.

That's why I haven't pursued any kind of like seeking awareness, seeking knowledge in it. It's not such a scary thing. Once you know a little bit, it's not such a scary thing. This is an intervention. That's what this really is. We have your parents in the back. We're going to have. Oh, man.

We're going to have this sit down and talk about this. Let's just go all the way back. Well, first of all, we should say, I owe this all to Jack. That's true. Jack ran into you in Venice. He did. I was playing. I was mid-paddle tennis game on the beach.

And Jack walked by. I was like mid-serving. And then he said something. He was like, oh, like, ground. I felt so bad. It was not the most comfortable experience for me, right? Like, I saw somewhere I recognized from, like, YouTube. and I was like, should I say hello?

Should I say something? And I called Graham before I went up to you. And I was like, Graham, like I see a Mar from yesterday. That was early. Wow, you're up. I was like, I was like, should I say something to him? Like, what's going on? And he's like, yeah, man, you got to ask him to come on the podcast.

I'm just trying to like hype him up. Yeah, he's trying to hype me up. And I'm thinking to myself like, like, oh, their whole channel is about like seeking discomfort or whatever. Like, I feel like I should, I should just go for it. And so I decided I was like, all right, I'm going to ask him. I know what to you. I was like, totally like, called out Graham's name. I was like you'd grim, you know, personal financing videos.

I think he talks to Thomas or something. Yeah, yeah. And Thomas had told me, so that's when I connected. Yeah, so then, and then you're like, oh, yeah, tell me to DM me, and then I guess we're here now. That's so cool. Interestingly enough, yeah, we just ran into each other. Serendipity. Yeah, we are.

Yeah. So explain this, yes theory from the very big, I know you've said this a bajillion times now, but for anybody who doesn't know you or hasn't heard the backstory, how did you get started doing this? And by the way, your channel is inspired, I think millions of people to see. discomfort, the documentaries that you've made, the Iceman thing is so cool. Anyway, I'll stop talking. So I'll take it back to 2015 when I was a sophomore at university in Canada.

I, well, I guess maybe let's take it 10 years back. Let's take it to 2010. And I was 15 at the time, made the decision that I was going to pursue my education abroad because I got an opportunity, a scholarship to go to a boarding school in South Africa. And the purpose of the school was to bring together the next generation of African leaders. People wanted to solve different problems on the continent. And my personal interest was more in tech, social media. And so that was 2010.

I left Egypt when I was 15. In 2011, a few months in, the Egyptian Revolution happened, the Arab Spring, which is actually right now, it's January 25th to February 11th was when it took place. So we're like we're in the anniversary, the 10th anniversary of that happening. So 10 years ago, this took place. And that was a transformational moment for me where I realized that I want to work and create in this intersection of technology and storytelling. Because I saw how much it impacted the narrative in Egypt and how young people were able

to use, you know, the tools that are available today, Facebook and Twitter back at the time, to actually mobilize people and to bring people out on the street. And I just, the power of the tools that we have and the power of the tools that we have, on the power of the internet manifested in the most powerful way had ever experienced and that was really impactful for me. So I decided that after high school

I want to take a gap year because I wanted to see if maybe there's a path where I don't go to university and go back to Egypt right away, start working in tech, build something and contribute my part into like the revolution, this new wave of for the country.

But, you know, very quickly in 2013, which is when I did my gap year after graduating high school, I this is that was the time Egypt kind of crashed politically and I decided to do a gap here and then after the gap year I decided to go to university in Canada the gap here is in San Francisco lived there for a year and then did two years in Canada at university where I studied cyber politics cyber politics and cyber sociology and I was the my school didn't have majors they had questions and my question at school was who controls cyberspace which actually is

very relevant to what's happening today course which I'm very very very excited to talk to you about. But back to the... Citadel. Exactly, exactly. Back to the S3 narrative. I'm giving you the background because it brings me to Montreal in the summer of 2015. Sophomore and university, had this idea for a tech startup that I was building,

went to Montreal to raise venture capital 19 years old, just not knowing what the hell I'm doing. And mid that journey, I end up sneaking into a party at a rooftop in where the students live in Montreal, which is, they have McGill and Concordia. They're big two universities. And I just showed up on this rooftop, started talking to people. And the more I talk to people, the more people pointed at Thomas being like, you should talk to this guy. You guys sound very similar. And 20 minutes later into being at the party, I ran into Thomas. We talked. There's this instant like chemistry. There was this click that was just right there. And we started, it just

felt like we've known each other for a very long time and the following day we met for coffee just started talking more he was tipsy at the time so you know it was just like in the fun but the following day was actually when we started talking about our aspirations what we wanted to build uh he was graduating university i was still in my second year so um there was a lot of synergies there and he told me that he had been making comedy skits on youtube but he it wasn't really his calling but he felt like his calling is still in creation on youtube but he really wanted to figure out what the thing was. And he told me about his idea to do 30 things he'd never done before in 30 days

and tell a story about it every single day, Project 30. And at the time, he had just met this other guy, Matt, who also went to the same university. They worked on a marketing project together and he ended up bringing me in to meet Matt. And that was just like, that was it. I met Matt and it felt like the three of us were just like unstoppable when we were in the same room. just right off the bad, the first conversation, the level of vision and dreaming and this desire to truly live a different, take a different path

than what's the conventional one that was set for us and the one that society just tells us to go down, finish university, go work for the big company, you know, have a secure job, yada, yada. And at that point, we just had this moment where for the next month we're going to quit everything we're doing and we're going to fully commit to this. And so we did.

And after a month, we looked at each other. We saw that this was the deepest connection. The three of us have ever developed. And that was like the closest each of us have ever gone to anyone. And we started to realize that there is such an immense power to this comfort and to the idea of consistently getting out of your comfort zone together and being able to do that in the context of community. And actually the fact that by doing that,

you're able to create community and have the strongest bond that you can possibly have amongst you, which is, again, this memory or accomplishment of doing something that you did not think that was possible. And for us at that moment, it's just like, we're all in our early 20s, not knowing, you know, what life is holding for us. But at that moment, our, like, our moment was we're going to be together for this month. We're going to put everything aside and we're going to fully focus on that. So as I said, like after the month, we just, it didn't take a lot of thinking for us to decide that we need to double down further on. on this into this and and really just see how we can take it to the next level so from that point

onwards we all of us put everything we were doing on the side i didn't go back to school put my startup on hold same with thomas same with not and within four months we just fully committed all our resources all our time and uh in november of 2015 so we started summer of 2015 in november we got this very obscure email uh being hey do you very informal hey do you want to move to Venice Beach, make videos together, have a house together. We're like, what? What is that? I thought it was someone trolling us.

Got into it, checked, and it was a real company. It was Snapchat out here in Venice, Beach, California, being like, hey, guys, do you want to be the face of this new channel that we're doing? And at the time, we have 8,000 subscribers. So it's not like, this shouldn't be an opportunity that the channel that 8,000 subscribers gets, but their thinking was the ethos of what we were doing and the meaning behind the why was so strong. that they just trusted that, you know, we will adapt.

And by having, by them giving us the exposure that Snapchat would give us at the time, they kind of, like, believed in yes theory and believed that that could really take things to the next level. And it did as we, you know, as we started posting on Snapchat in our first year after we moved to L.A., that had, like, pretty good conversion to YouTube and gave us a good launch pad for the channel. And then after a year of doing that with Snapchat, we just decided to fully take the risk. leave the money and the security that they provided and just do yesterday full time. Let me ask you about the Snapchat. So when they, this, the Snapchat, when they reached out to you, how were they funding

you? Were you trying to split the channel? Did they say, we're going to give you a house in Venice and just we retain ownership of something or how did this come up? You see, these are the kind of questions that people don't really, people want to ask. The actual nitty-gris over, yeah. I don't know. And then I have a story.

Don't forget me to tell you the story. Okay. Snapchat. Yeah. But first, do you know what? keeps me up at night, Graham. Your lack of Tinder matches? Nope, it's not that. Your inability to get a girlfriend? Jeez, dude, can you just please? No, it's, it's not that either. It's that tons of different businesses and entities actually have my private credit card information. I mean,

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Thank you so much privacy for sponsoring this episode and back to the podcast. So the way it worked is they actually invest. in yes theory so there was an a stake into they they just thought that the synergy that was going to be created by them giving us the opportunity to be on snapchat and the the quality of content that we were going to make for them they thought it made sense that they also allow us to post this stuff on our YouTube channel and reap the benefits because it would only be on on Snapchat for 48 hours 24 to 48 hours and that's it it would never see the latter day again so you know we were able and again again it

this whole deal came genuinely because they believed in yesterday before they thought like oh this thing will make us money they just like so we were aligned throughout that um you know we were able to create synergies and like making it a win-win for both of us for us to be here and not not just lose on the value of creating all this content for them but also be able to repurpose it and post on our youtube but for them to get and also for them to get a stake in yesteria at the time which you know it was it was just an idea Yeah, it was nothing. But we end up. Yeah. Go on. But that story ends up. That story ends in 2019 when we buy back our shares. Wow.

Okay. So now can we go a little bit further? And like how much do they invest? Because this is something I've wanted to do for quite some time. Before even making YouTube videos, I wanted to invest in a YouTube channel. I wanted to pick a creator at like, you know, 30, 40, 50,000 subscribers and be like, you know what? I'm going to pay for you to be able to quit your job, focus on this full time.

But I want like 50% owner. ownership. It's got to be like a 50%. No, no. So it was it was 20% ownership. Okay. And it was about, I have no idea if I'm allowed to say any of this, but I'm going to say it anyways. It was a $50,000 in cash and throughout the year between $400,000 to $500,000 in production value. Wow. So this is, wait, how many subs did you have at this time? We had like 10,000 subs. Yeah. Okay. So back then for you, I mean, looking back now, I'm sure it's a drop in the bucket, but back then, they were taking a big gamble on you. Wow. Yeah. So back then that was a generous offer.

Anybody would jump at that. And they funded all of your ventures and was like they were like the springboard to like all the success. Yeah. So do you think there's a chance? You wouldn't be here today if it were not for that offer. No. No. I think the biggest, the reason I say no is immigration piece to it.

Because that's the one piece that no matter how hard we worked or how much, how many hours we committed, that's the part that we were not going to get. passed but actually not according to cliff um we uh we ended up uh snoucher end up facilitating the process of getting bringing in you know two out of the three of us were immigrants uh and for me you know thomas is french swedish so it's things a little easier but for me as an egyptian moving here having dropped out of college so it's not like there's a case for the government to be like this guys he has a youtube channel yeah yeah um so they were definitely instrumental to just, you know, really,

I think the other thing that they did for us is there was no financial restriction on our creativity right off the bat. Any idea that we dreamed we were able to make happen. And that really, like, made a lot of, made a big difference at the beginning. And I feel like that's one of the main reasons that yesterday has been able to build such good momentum

with our ideas and how advanced, like where we think about, and flesh out each concept before we create the story. I think it definitely came from just having to do that at such a deep level because we were working with budget, working with traveling abroad and not being here in America filming for most of the part when we were back then. So everyone can understand what exactly like happened was that like yes or that Snapchat gave you funding so you could post on Snapchat stories when they were trying to like push their stories, correct? So again, I want to correct because it was a production wing that was with Snapchat. It was like we weren't dealing with Snap.

It was vertical networks, which was a joint venture between Snapchat and Elizabeth Murdoch, big media investor. And they were operating out of Venice and they were building one of, they built one of the first studios for Snapchat to be able to make original content. So that's who the deal was with. And again, one of, it wasn't like the mentorship element and the advising element, too, was so big. I mean, we're just a bunch of dudes just finishing college

from Canada coming to L.A. but this big town where, you know, so many opportunities, so many people want to talk to us, so many agencies want to sign us. We just, uh,

it made a big difference at the beginning to just have someone looking out for us. Wow. And so yeah, there's definitely, there's a massive, like, divine element to our story that I truly believe in.

Like, I feel like at so many points, we're protected in ways that we're so unusual, even in having like, you know, our mentor through this investment come through and be with us along the journey throughout to give us the advice from how to handle the whole thing. Wow. Here's my Snapchat story. This is back when I was, I must have been 21 or 22. So this was back in like 2010, 2011, 2012, like between 2010, 2013, I was doing a lot of leasing back then. So people would come to me as like, grandma, they would find me from Craigslist. And they would say, I want to rent a

house. Can you show me houses in this price point? And I probably get like 10 or 15 emails a day from different people wanting to see leases. And I got an email from a group of like three or four roommates saying that like, hey, we want a house in Venice or Beverly Hills. We're not quite sure yet. We're all living together, but can you just show us all of these houses? And usually I think like roommates, I don't want to deal with roommates because usually what ends up have you waste a whole bunch of time. One of them doesn't like it. And then they all like, we're like, well, this guy doesn't like, so we're all going to start

looking over here. And then what ends up happening, like a month later, they're like, oh, we just each got our separate spot. So roommates rarely ever work out. So I asked another agent to just show them around. And I did that. And I just, honestly, I didn't follow up.

But they would email me and say, like, hey, we saw this place come up in Venice. Can you show it to us? Hey, we saw this place. And I just gave him to another agent. didn't think anything of it. And then I run into that agent, like, a few weeks later. And he's like, Graham, those are really great clients you send me. They're so cool.

And I'm like, what do you mean? They're roommates. He's like, or I didn't say that because I didn't want to, but I'm like, oh, yeah, they are. And it's like, yeah, I didn't realize that they're starting Snapchat or they're, they're setting up their business of Snapchat in Venice. And it turned out, then I looked back. I was like, wait a second. So I looked back at them.

And it turned out it was like four guys. one of the original, I don't know, I don't think it was Evan, but I think it was this other guy and like three others that they were living together in Venice, looking to rent the house because they had set up that spot on like Ocean Avenue, like, right? Right, yeah, yeah, exactly. But it was that when they were first starting up.

Now all of them are billionaires, and then I saw like a few years later, they're all buying these like five and six million dollar spots in Venice from that. But I just didn't take it seriously in the beginning. So that was my Snapchat story. So, you know what, next time you think, it's roommates, maybe it's go founders.

Yeah. And that's a huge job. Yeah, it's a big upside here. You never know. But that's incredible that Snapchat invested in you so early on. Yeah. And then how did you start just growing the channel from there? Like, what are some of the ideas that you used in the beginning and be like,

this is going to go viral? Did you ever try to do that or was it all just organic? Also, were they giving you the advice on what you guys should do? Or was it all just you guys? And then you just asked for funding for each event. And then they're like, yeah, sure. Basically, we would give them all ideas of the things that we wanted. And then they were like, we like that.

Let's see that. So they just picked from our roster of ideas what they thought would fit the platform, fit the demographic, fit the people that they want to talk to. So yeah, so that was, if they advised us or not. And your question was, how did you start growing the channel? I think the number one thing was to fully commit full time to not, you know, We were creating for Snapchat and that was taking a lot of time. And obviously, you know, still making, taking these cuts and doing it for YouTube,

but still mentally our main focus was with our contract, with the commitment that is paying for the, paying the bills. So I feel like, yeah, the biggest shift happened when we decided that this is the only thing we're doing. And this is the year that we're going to hit a million subscribers. And we did. And we did. Like, it was truly just that. because there wasn't like a shift

and the kind of ideas that we're coming up with or I mean obviously we're always seeking refinement and seeking like evolution and our ideas and never to get stagnant with formats or just get stuck in a little YouTube, you know, algorithm, dark hole of, of these trends that people would just like do and never stop doing.

So yeah, it was just a matter of giving it our full time and attention. And early on, you know, algorithm rewards consistency and big volume of upload and at some point we were able to reach posting three times a week wow yeah i didn't i thought it was once a week no we at some point we're doing uh sundays thursdays and tuesdays so like sunday was the main video Thursday was uh like a smaller adventure and then tuesday was the house show which is kind of like more vloggy what's happening around the house but you know

part of us always thought that yesterday the main YouTube channel should not be diluted with like vlogging or showing things that are like subpar from the regular yes theory concepts that people are used to like every story that you come to has to be life changing and that we kept that as the as the

like the standard for what we what we create isn't the problem how do you keep one-uping yourself because I imagine you've you've done some crazy stuff But first, do you like free stuff? That's because Audible's giving away a free credit that can be used on any book in their premium selection that comes with their free trial. With Audible, you can download content and listen to it offline.

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Audible has something for you. So if you want to check that out, visit audible.com slash iced coffee or text iced coffee to 500-500. And as always, if you're looking for more information, check out the description. Thank you so much, Audible, for sponsoring this podcast and back to the show. How do you decide, like, I'm going to want up this? It's got to be a point eventually where you're just like, I'm out of just, I've conquered every fear imagine. No, man. I mean, we started this by talking, like, I think one of my biggest unconquered fears is, you

know, my own relationship with money and finance. So maybe, yeah, maybe on the outside, it seems like, well, at this point, he's very, you know, jumped off all these things and did all these stunts, like what else is, what other discomfort is going to seek. But the reality is, you know, the more you seek discomfort, the more you discover, like, the depths inside of you that you need to really, you know, fill and, and, and, and, oh, my time to shut it. Let's seek some discomfort here.

Graham needs to start spending money. That's an uncomfortable thing for him. Yeah, that's uncomfortable for me is spending money. If you told me. Oh my God. Can we do an episode of you? I would love to spend your money. I don't even spend my money

I don't even spend it though I was about to say like if you told me like Graham you have to spend $10,000 on Rodeo drive I would be like in a panic I mean like it's a waste of money Wow no well that she's I'm gonna brainstorm I'm gonna brainstorm something to

yeah I feel like I've been looking at at this 4GT and I've been looking like every day on eBay and like auto trader and just all these sites of just like a 4G anxiety that I get just looking at the price and just it's not worth it but you know what this isn't about me this is about you today

why do you feel like you have so much discomfort around money was it was it was it from your family it was your family very much doesn't talk about money it's no i think because i left when i was 15 and i realized that it was a big financial uh commitment for my parents even though i i was on a pretty much a full scholarship to go but my dad had to pay some somewhere between like three and four thousand dollars a year um which to put things in context that was how much my my my my education along with my siblings for an entire year in egypt including all material would cost wow so all of a sudden like one kid was just costing as much as as much as all of them were costing together so um i lit i was very much i didn't have any money in high school and uh that was very stressful because like

felt like I couldn't do so much of, of, like, exploring and being out and actually taking advantage of living in a different country. I was very much on campus all the time. And then when I, like, moved to San Francisco, I lived, I lived with host families that were very wealthy. So it also felt like I, you know, I was very much taking care of and never had to worry about money in that regard.

So it went kind of from one extreme to the other, but still very much removed from needing to worry about money. And then I end up going to university on. a full ride and they like I would get monthly stipends so it kept almost the decision to care about money or to deem it as like an important thing to me kept getting delayed circumstantially and then obviously started yesterday with Matt and Thomas and I was definitely not going to be the one managing the money for the team right you know Matt was taking care of that and I just stayed on my lane creating just coming up with coming up with ideas for videos directing

and so it continues yeah and now i think i convinced myself that it's the story that i don't really care about money but when in reality i know that all my dreams probably are dependent on me being in a good financial standing to to drive because i have such big dreams and you know i'm definitely i'm definitely going to need money to make that happen that's going to cost money yeah i was trying to count like in the last two years how many the last three years how many podcasts i've done outside of our podcast. Yeah. Maybe there's two.

It's Colin to me, one of them. Wow. We're honored. You know what? Quite a few people have come to us to be like, we never do podcast, but this is the one. I'm like, what?

Yeah. That's why it's like, people always expect like, oh, I do podcasts, but it's, we got a lot of, we got a lot of requests, but I just, I, for some reason, I don't feel compelled. So I, I'm honored to be on here. So cool.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm happy to be having the conversation. Thank you. Why do you think you have this, like, inner drive to, to do all these, like, crazy. things and to be adventurous. Do you think that's just like an eight thing? Like it's just within you? I believe that like our true power comes from our own recognition to the free child inside of each of us and what that free child truly desired and dreamt and wanted in the world because

it's very much like the uncorrupted version of yourself before society kind of puts it on you. And I just always see the what you describe is the crazy things is like when I feel like the most like a free child like when I do the sky like the extreme sports stuff whether it's skydiving cliff jumping or any of like the high energy things that I do. It just like that puts me in a state where I feel connected to that. And I think this is where like to me it's not I'm not like an adrenaline junkie. It's almost to me that brings a meditative state where I feel more connected to myself than ever. So I feel like, yeah. You need to explain what you're doing tomorrow through Friday because I was asking like, hey, you want to do the podcast on Tuesday?

You're like, no, I, I do. Oh, I was like, what am I do? Yeah. Yeah. So I am, it's actually a big deal. So I've been skydiving for two and a half years. And one of the main, one of them, I have two big goals in skydiving. One is to do a halo jump, which I'm going to get to in a sec.

Okay. The second is to skydive over the pyramids in Egypt. in the next five years. That sounds expensive. Yeah. How much for permits to do that? Oh, well, you see, that's not at all what I'm thinking about. Well, you can do it without permits, but then just don't get arrested.

Yeah, but I'm talking about the money part. Like, I'm not thinking about much. You could do it without permits and put yes, Siri uncensored, just on your stomach, do it vitality. Get down, you get arrested, but you're going to all the PR. Yeah. So back to the halo. Halo stands for high altitude low opening.

So for the military, to avoid getting in the radar zone, when you're going vertically that fast, you can really go undercover past the radar, like where a radar is detecting. So you're flying at night, like really high. You're getting out of the plane. I'm not going to do it at night. Oh, wow.

But usually halos are done at night. And then so you open at light, you jump at 25 to 30,000, feet, which is really high up and really cold. Yeah, that's like planes are up there. Exactly. And then you deploy at 3,000, 2,000. So you've got like 22,000.

Where do you normally deploy? Like 10,000? Five. Five is like safe. Three and a half is usually when I end up. So we're talking a difference of what, like five seconds? Every thousand feet of dropping is seven seconds. Is it normal skydiving like enough for you though?

No. Like why? I'd be happy with that. All you're, it's essentially. the same thing. It's just like the free fall state, right? Except you're just doing it closer to the ground, go at the same speed. I think it's just the matter of increasing the my free fall time.

No, no, my free fall. Imagine like I would be doubling my free fall. So instead of falling for 50 seconds, I'd be going for like a minute 40 or a minute 50. Have you ever done one of those like dome things where you can get inside and they shoot air up at you? Yeah. Is that the same thing? So it's actually one of the most effective ways to train for skydiving because you You can practice different body positions and flipping mid-air, and it's the same thing.

And, you know, in this case, you can go in the tunnel for 10 minutes, and that simulates 10 minutes of free fall, which is 10 jumps. So in 10 minutes, you can get training that you would need 10 jumps to do. That's where, like, it gets really efficient. Now, here's the million-dollar question is insurance. Insurance. Who insures you for this? Like, any insurance company would be like, you know, we don't want to cover that. That's why I don't go to them.

My insurance is. my insurance is just in me running safety properly and really understanding that my gear is yeah I have health insurance that covers extreme sports but I mean to ensure they know you're doing this no Kaiser has entered so that's yeah I don't think so that's yeah I if anyone from Cigna is listening to this I am not a mark and deal uh what got me on to the insurance thing was David Blaine was talking about the insane insurance, like, loops that he has to jump through just to get insured. And they're on site a lot of these times, like with proper protocols.

But he's doing these, like, big extreme, like, just crazy stuff. Like, what was the one in a balloon that he was doing? So he did a halo jump in a balloon. So he went up with the balloon to 25. And that was in. And he let go. But so actually, you know, this is, we had to face that with the stunt with Will Smith. In 2018, we challenged.

Will Smith to Heli Bungy to Bungy jump out of a helicopter and he end up and then he end up accepting the challenge he wanted to do on his 50th birthday became this huge YouTube event as like the live event of the year on YouTube

and that was the first time where we realized that our YouTube world and what we you know and what we do with our production and how just like very much guerrilla style run and gun is so different from how this town runs and like all these layers of permit

and insurance and this and that that in my mind I'm like well I mean it makes sense because will Smith they have to he has to get like that kind of insurance but overall like for someone like David Blaine I also bet he would be more than happy to do it without insurance but it's because he's a part of a bigger production that has a legal team and has YouTube's name on it like the more you end the more you you leave the realm of it being like creating as an independently, the more you will start needing to abide to the rules of the game. That's very true. So for me, like, I'm doing this at my own risk.

I'm doing it with the best coach in the world, with the best gear. So for me, I'm like, I'm not trying to, like, have someone pay all this money in case I die. You know, like, I don't care about that because it adds such a big layer of complication the way we prep for these things that I'm not, I'd rather do that. That is true. That's a nice part about making YouTube. videos is that you could just walk down the street and film. And when they're filming something like selling sunset,

they have to give notices to every single storefront for like a week or two prior. And then if you don't agree with the notice, you could dispute it. And then it could go through like this weird, where it's like just with the city and then back and forth and it could delay it months. It's crazy. And that's just for like filming a scene indoors. But if they're going to be using the parking lot or like anything,

you got to notify everybody. versus like Danny Duncan can just go to Hollywood Boulevard and just flip on a camera and just, it's wild. It is. But I mean, I wonder where is going to be the breaking point for like YouTubers not being able to allow to like to just go down on the boardwalk and fell in more. I don't think there is going to be a breaking point because when do you draw the line between someone just like, hey, I'm videotaping my mom at her first time at the pier

versus no, you have four million subscribers, so you got to pay a permit. They're never going to put some arbitrary like over a million subs permit under a million subs, no permit. I don't think they're ever going to get like that. I hope so. But it's once you get like a production crew behind it, then there becomes this big like conglomerate that you could sue. Yeah. Like somebody trips on a wire and then they stub their toe and that's like 20 million bucks to CBS for doing that. But really quick, we have a word from our sponsor, Skillshare.

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trust me, you're going to love it. That's skillshare.com slash iced coffee. Thank you so much Skillshare and back to the podcast. But just listening to you, I would say, I think just from what I've gathered so you're very much a creative type and that I think leads the way, not so much financially, but I think just this is the aspirations outweigh almost anything else. I don't think it's a bad thing. Most of my family, I think, is the same way. It's very much just creative. And when it comes to finances, that's just this abstract thing that they've never really thought about before. So it makes sense. And I don't think it's a bad thing at all.

I could probably use more creativity in my life. Besides the thumbnails. Well, we can. All right. You, you know, rob my back of yours.

Yeah. As long as it's just spending money. But you help you spend money and you help you save money. Or heights. That's another thing. Heights I couldn't do. Couldn't do. Okay.

I get so anxious over that. Have you been skydiving before? No, I never would. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, we are doing this live on the podcast. I never want.

Graham is going to be joining me skyliving next week. So I'm going to be going back to training anyways. No, we'll start. We'll start with just a regular jump. So next week, yeah, make sure you comment. And if this video gets, how many, how many views do you get? It's a 25 million. Okay.

No, no, no. If this video gets 10,000 likes, Graham is definitely doing this with me next week. No, not 10,000 like, maybe 100,000 likes. 10,000 likes, guys. Okay, wait, wait. What's the most likes you've gotten on a podcast? I should have been, 20. 20,000?

Okay, if this video gets 30,000 likes, Graham is going to be joining me and he's going to be jumping. Don't like the video. You agree to this? No, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Graham agrees to it. Yeah, I would agree. I heard it, yeah. I would.

Hey, man, I'm coming. I don't even go on podcast and I'm on your podcast. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. Wow. I wouldn't do it. Joe, why don't you do it? I don't want to do it.

What do you do it? No, no. I also, I want the guy who doesn't want to do it more. Check really doesn't want to do it. We'll give this a try at the end. I think we should try to. the end. I would say if I got paid, $0.9 for me to get a $0.000 for me to get a $0.000.000. Yeah. I just wouldn't do it.

Oh my God. Okay. Well, 30,000 likes right now, please. And then if it gets 30,000 likes, I'm going to show up to his house. Why increase? I like life too much. Like, why do something that would just put me at risk a little bit more of something happening? Just a little bit more. Let's say there's a one and a thousand chance you see one and a thousand like that is an amazing segue to my next point because we started talking about uh skydiving and there's like this funny saying yeah that we always say for people who are scared is that you're more likely to die in a car accident than you're likely to die skydiving and it's statistic that's but isn't that because people just don't skydive so few people want to do it it's still true that's the point it's still true

And I end up the one I so I had a previous attempt where I was training for the stunt and I was going to do it in September of 2020. And on August 28th on my way back, I end up getting in a deadly car accident almost almost took my life. That's right. The car flipped, didn't it? Yeah. So that's why I'm like, you know, you just don't know when you say like why do something that increases that risk. Yeah. You actually don't know if that moment of skydiving will, you know,

significantly impact your perspective about life and your appreciation for where you live. Or, you know, in comparison for whatever perceived risk that you're thinking will add to you. Graham is not falling for it. I feel like he's the exact opposite of you. Like Graham lives in comfort. His old life is like, what is the most comfortable thing he can do? That is, that is very true. We're working on it.

I don't leave the house. rarely. The extent of me leaving the house is like, let's go pick up sushi from sushi Ippo because they have a good deal. Yeah, it's cheap. It's a good deal. That's good.

Yeah. Mine is just seek comfort. That's Graham's motto. You could just get a shirt that says that. That's me. You got a heated seats in the car. I'll spend your money and I'll take you skydiving. That's horrible.

I like that being like the takeaway of today. I'll spend Graham's money. I like that. I love that. I got a. say like since you do so many uncomfortable things that's like your thing do things still make you uncomfortable or is everything just like easy for you now um as i said it's like the more you seek this comfort the more you realize your own capacity for uh like self-improvement right like it's

you're never going to reach a point where i'm like you know what i'm very happy with where i'm with where i'm at i don't want to improve anymore and the process of improving is the process of seeking discomfort. So it's like to say that I've gotten so good at seeking this comfort means that I never approached seeking this comfort in the right way in the first place. Because it's, it's, it's never supposed to run out. Right. There's always something there's always something there. Yeah. But then again, I'm sure that you're getting better at being comfortable. Like certain things, for example, like last time I was at the grocery store, I forgot to get charcoal from my grill. And I was already in line. And I was like checking. I was like, can I go grab something really

quickly to the guy like at the you know cash register and it was uncomfortable for me like i didn't like saying that because there are people behind me waiting in line and i'm like i gotta go get my thing now that was really uncomfortable like stuff like that you know it's like the way i see it so definitely i'm more i'm more comfortable like i'm very comfortable now expressing myself saying going up to anyone on the street telling them whatever it is that i want to tell them so the next level of discomfort here is to be able to use this comfort to maybe step in situations where someone else might might need it. You know, someone's stuck in a situation where it's, you know, they, I'm seeing that they can't

really express themselves or, or get what they, what they want. So maybe that's a moment where I use this extra comfort that I have with situations like this to step in and, and be uncomfortable. Yeah, and be uncomfortable in a situation that it doesn't, that is not mine. So I always like, this is the leveling up that I see in, in this conference. Like, well, if I'm so good at something, then I should probably use it to benefit someone else. And in this, like if you follow that, like, philosophy, you'll never, it will never get to a point where you're like, oh, yeah, I'm good. I shouldn't seek any more discomfort. You're going to write a book one

day. Yeah, Matt is writing the book. Really? Yeah, Matt is writing the book. So end of 2021, that's when the first yes theory book is going to be out. And he's definitely the better writer. Is it going to have pictures in it? I think so. Is it going to be a picture? It's going to be a cartoon. It could be a Oh man, we have like a thousand Polaroids from our past five years. I'm like big on Polaroids and big on like keeping photos. I didn't realize what it takes to be a New York Times bestseller is just 10,000 copies. Yeah, so like anybody. Yeah, anybody.

Well, not anybody could be a newie time. But I feel like it's achievable just to sell 10,000 copies. If you just put the price super, super low. Yeah, everybody buys it like a dollar, five dollars an e-download, whatever. So there's, it's a little tricky because. You have to go to be like the way they submit the list. Yeah, it has to be physical. There's like a few very old school.

Sell it seven bucks. That's break even. Hardcover's got to be like 12. Sure. You could do that. But it's definitely, yeah, there's people who like back, like reverse engineer the process of like being top of a category on Amazon and they can tell you exactly how much money it will require how many copies.

Yeah. They give you the full breakdown of how much you need to pay to get to like the number one and how much and what the return will be on. I wonder if there's a way to game this where I could be like, guys, I'm coming out with my book. It's one page long. And just, it's going to be like five bucks. I'll lose money on it.

But then I could call myself a New York Times bestseller. Maybe you open the book and it's just like smash a like button or just like some one little word. That's the end of the book. You know, something, this is like a very yes theory idea, but, you know, writing a book in 24 hours and making it a New York best seller. If it's going to be a page like come up with like what is, you know, the 20 pages of that you can write in a day. day.

That would be terrible because I feel like the pressure. It would be an essay. You have to get done in 24 hours. That would be a lot of fun. Have you thought about doing that? So, I mean, we're brainstorming now what ideas can help with the launch of the book when Matt is ready. I mean, he's going to take nine months to write it. So it's definitely not going to be 24 hours.

A week. I feel like a week. A week sounds good. A week does sound like this way it can actually be a book rather than an essay. You should really think. Think about it. That would be interesting. See, that's something I would do in comfort, though, at home.

Yeah. I would totally do that. I think that would be amazing to be able to do that one week to be a New York Times bestseller. And I'm sure people would love to have just like your knowledge synthesized and book for it. That would be cool. Yeah. I might do that. Go ahead.

Go ahead. I'll do that. I'll do it. Be in New York Times best seller. I'll do it. Fine. Okay, fine. I'll do it.

I just, I find it amazing because, like, a lot of our guests, I feel like, like sometimes it could be a little uncomfortable coming on to like somebody's podcast, especially if it's about finance, where we like grill them about their finances. But like, look at you man, you're like sitting back. You're the most laid so comfortable

right now. I want to hold the mic in my head. Yeah, I think your legs are like crisscross applesaws. Yeah, it's awesome. You're chilling, man. Okay, so now let's make you uncomfortable here. Let's talk about the finances of yes theory. Can you talk about that or how much can we talk about or we just talk about you? I'm

just curious. You see, I would have, I don't know, I don't know the finances of yes theory because we're in this like transitional moment for us as a company. So I don't know how much I, but I mean like we can talk about like. Let's talk about you. Yeah. So I'm guessing what happens is yes theory is a company that's owned by all of you. And then you pull a salary from that, I'm guessing. Yeah, that's correct.

Okay. Can we talk about what, what salary you've decided to take in there? And also, how much did you buy back your? portion from Snapchat. Oh, we're getting there. We're getting there, man. We're getting there. Hey, Ontario. Come on down to Bed MGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price's Right Fortune Pick. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show. Only at BetMGM. Access to the Price's Right Fortune Pick is only available at BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please

play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connets, Ontario at 1866-531-2-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BenMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. So I can't disclose that, but we got a hell of a good deal. Why did they go out on such a limb for you? Yeah, we really, as I said, that's what when I say, like there's this divinity in our story. Like to even see that investors, you know, giving us back our shares knowing that they could definitely get more. But out of just like the good in them and not wanting to drain yesterday out of cash, they truly just honor.

that that was that was incredible yeah and uh and again it's like a testimony for creating with purpose and when you know your purpose is at the center of what you do even in situations where that's never what that should never happen like there's a finance guy there in that room that is not supposed to have a penny on the table you know unutilized but for us like there's this like they just fully understood that you know we shouldn't these guys are just starting their career and they have big plans for what they want to do with the company. So that's not drain them out of the cash. That's good.

Yeah. Good on Snapchat. Good guy, Snapchat. Yeah. Shout out to vertical networks. There we go. Yeah. And how easy they made that.

For, yeah, we do have, we do take salaries. Man, I have, we've never ever talked about numbers. So I don't even like, for the team. I don't even want, like, no other expectation for, like, what are we, what, what we're supposed to share. We're like, we've never talked about this. That's fair. I don't want to put you on the spot.

Whatever you feel comfortable. Yeah. I'm okay with that. Honestly, whatever you're comfortable talking about. And it serves a part of, I mean, we're going to go from that, but then we're going to deviate to like exactly where it breaks down and how to

improve that. Yeah. If you want to share numbers, I'd say, yeah, I'll keep it as like undisclosed. Okay. Yeah. So the way it works is we take a salary,

uh, nothing too crazy. we're keeping that low. And then at the end of the year, since we're shareholders in the business, we get distributions. And again, we very much keep most of it in the business

because we want to reinvest. But we make sure that, I mean, for the first three years, we were not paying ourselves. So the whole paying, it's like a thing off the past two years is when we actually started building,

like having liquid in our bank. Before that, it was just like we were living off the business and business covering travel, expenses, transportation, house, all these things, and we were just happy putting all the money back in. That makes sense, too.

I would agree with that. And I would imagine, I don't know if the overhead has to be high because I've seen that crazy nights. Don't you have two places? We have our apartments, which is where we live. And then we have the yes house.

The yes house. That looks so cool with you. You got the aquarium in there. You got the multi-levels. I saw that place. I'm like, oh, that's a good. You got to come visit. I want to.

I want to visit. Come this week. I would love to. Yeah, yeah, we'd love to. But yeah, I mean, so for that, because we didn't get like an office office, this is a live work for like artists and living. It's not as crazy expensive as you think for, you know, a full company where you've got seven employees. So we pay $7,200 a month for that. And it's on a bikini.

It's a nice spot. A bikini prime location too. Very, very much prime. location and you know compared to other commercial spaces that I was touring before we made the decision on that which was like I think the minimum was 12 yep in Venice at the time so we're a lot lower and we're able and that you know gave us leeway to be able to I was I fully designed the place and customized it worked with artists and architect best friend on on setting it up so definitely gave us leeway to be able to spend more on making it feel like our space commercial real estate

is so behind on this there's so many people now that are right renting houses instead of renting an office because a house is nicer and it's way less money. You get the same thing for half the cost. It's incredible. Yeah. Especially in the current landscape of how people are running their companies being like that mix of like remote and on site. Yeah. A lot of like I was just visited a friend yesterday who gave up his $40,000 a month lease on Lincoln to get for a commercial space to get this amazing house. house in Marvista that has great pool a hot time. Probably like 18.

Wow. Really? Holy shit. Spot on. They're real estate agents in me. I know how much this Marvista places. Yeah. I was like, damn.

No, because I figure it's a new construction. I know they all did. They're just cookie cutter plate. But yeah, they all read for 18. Wow. Spot on. So yeah, we, that helped a lot with just like being able to make the decision on optimizing for space early on okay so where's the money going yeah your own personal expenses

because i'm sure a lot of your like expenditures are just like business expenses because you said like right food when you're working and stuff like that like what is my biggest expense clothes i i don't i don't get yeah food maybe like but i'm also not like i don't go to fancy restaurants i'm just when i if i'm gonna like i i i just it's like the basics i don't really spend on anything i mean my biggest my biggest cost so far is i I'm investing in a foreign country's economy to get their passport. That's interesting. Yeah.

What country? Same kits. How much is that at 250? 120. 120. Wow. What's the advantage of doing that? The advantage of doing that is compared to my Egyptian passport that gets me into 54 country visa

freeze and it's the 54 countries that you've never heard of that you probably wouldn't want to visit. So my passport is pretty useless for travel. everywhere I go. I need to apply for a visa. I need to show up in person. I need to show them that I financially capable or won't break my visa

and run away to their country. So it's just the most annoying process. And it has prevented me from participating in 50% of travel videos for yesterday. Wow. Yeah. So there's like a big part of yesterday

that I'm missing. Thomas is in the process of he's going to Chernobyl in Ukraine. He's going to Mauritania to do like this crazy train ride. like all these, the most amazing adventures. And the only reason I'm not participating is because it's really complicated with my Egyptian passport.

And, you know, I just thought at some point it made sense. I did the math and it made, like, that investment made sense for my career and my own personal just well-being and being able to enjoy the opportunities that I get. So the Sanket's passport would allow me to get into 154 countries visa-free, including the UK, Schengen area, so Europe, all of Europe, Russia,

like all these countries that, you know, before it would be a nightmare. Or you could just get married. So marriage was always something that, you know, my immigration lawyer was bringing up, but it's not as straightforward as people think it is, and it's not as as just like, oh, yeah, let me just pay this person and get me.

And I also just didn't want this to be how I get a status in. Okay. You know? I get that. Yeah. Like, I want, I just. wanted it to be like I know that I can do work that that makes me deserve to be here okay and I wanted to be through that through that process and right now the visa that I currently

hold in the US will transfer to a green card in the next round and then after that three years after that I'll be able to get a passport to the US but because my Egyptian passport expires sooner than that timeline I need to figure out a way to to go to get around it so Sinkets became the solution. All right. So where is your money now going? Let's get back to this. We're skirt around the question here.

And what, yeah, what do you want to work on? Doge coin. Did you invest in any in Dogecoin? I just like, I was in an Uber ride in Austin going to a friend's house. And then I was seeing all the buzz on social media.

I was like, ah, put 150. It was my first, like I downloaded Robin Hood in the Uber ride. Yeah, yeah. So I just like put 150 and I finished dinner and I looked at my account.

I was like, there's $500. in it. Wow. With that right before the Elon Musk tweet, it must have been. It's beginner's luck right there. That's beginner's luck. Every, yeah, every beginner gets one win. I'm not, I sold to get back the money that at the 150 and I left the rest. Yeah. So now it's just like the money is all done. Yeah. So where else are you investing? How do you want to work for your finances? Yeah. I'll tell you the biggest I have, I mean, my biggest investment in 2020 was

Speechify which is Cliffs' company. So I'm more focused on investing my money into projects that I can engage with and and you know so far I've done four investments Tanzo tea

which is a macha company our friend started a few years ago Liquid IV which just exited with the new lover they sent us some some stuff. Did they? Nice. Yeah. Great. Wait, so you exited that position. No, no, no. The company exited after we invested. So that was a buyout?

It was a, yeah, they got acquired. So you were able to pull out your money? Yeah, I mean, the money made its return. So that's like, that was our first successful. That was our first successful. Can you just tell us the R.O.Y on that? It was like 10x or 50x? It was like we invested in the last round and it was three, three, four X. Okay. Yeah, last round. Yeah. Early rounds would be Yeah.

That's what you want, man. Wow. That's what my investment in speechifies for. Wow. It's for all those exes. Okay, so you're investing in startups mainly. Yes. And that's like, you know, I was actually telling Thomas, like, I hate the idea that,

and I know you're going to really agree with me on that. But like putting on in all these like retirement funds and all these, like I hate the idea of putting money to just sit like that. I don't care how much it's making. I don't care about the compound and all of that. I just feel like I'm a lot happier to just be putting this money in an entrepreneur that is just like doing actually something meaningful. Because at the end of the day,

I don't think my wealth is going to come from whatever I put on the side for my, you know, for my separate IRA or any of that. I know, I know, I know, I know, bro. That's why I'm here. That's what I'm good. I think you're doing enough and you're living frugally enough. We're putting $50,000 a year into the, the stock market and a boring retirement fund is not going to change your life.

It's not going to do it. You're not going to notice any different. You could still do all the other investments you want. You could live exactly the same except you could put $50,000 a year, like $5,000 a month, into the S&P 500. That's it. And here's the benefit. Here's how I could spin this around for you.

Think of it this way. You will grow your money consistently so that when you find a really good deal and you find a startup and an investor that like you really believe in, you have all this. money sitting on the sideline so you could be like all right I'm going to use that money and I'm going to invest in this really good opportunity or you just leave it there see think of it that way yeah are you just like sitting on a bunch of cash

in your bank account yeah no don't tell me it's in a it better not be in a check in a check in a high interest it's in a checking account no can I is it over six figures in a checking account yes oh wait six figures is over 100 yeah no come on no no no Oh, shit. Yeah. Damn.

Okay. Yeah, okay. Well, first of all, I'm going to tell you immediately what you should do tonight is sign up for Ally Bank. Okay. So it's an online bank, totally free. Ally Bank? Alli Bank.

Now, I could pitch, it depends on what you want to do. I could pitch Yada Bank, which is the company that I invested in. That was my first startup investment ever was Yada Bank. It's a savings account that rewards you for every $25 you save. You get one entry to be able to win a prize anywhere from like 10 cents. Oh, I saw you post about that. Yeah. sends up to like 10 million bucks. Some guy won 40 grand. Some guy. I forget, is it Mark or something

like that? I can't believe it. That's been the top prize ever paid out by Yada Bank so far. Wow. So if you want to do that, the interest rate on that right now works out to be about 1.8 to 2%. But that's spread across a year for all prizes. Or Ally Bank is just a guaranteed, I think it's 0.5 or 0.6%. They're a great online bank. If you want to use them for like checking and stuff like that, that's what I would recommend. Yada Bank is just a saving. So if you knew like next month or two, you're not going to use that money, you want the best return to Yada Bank. You want like a bank account and you think, hey, maybe next week I'm going to use the money. I want all of it. And a customer service line, I could call them up and do Allie Bank.

Okay. Well, that's really great advice. So, yeah. So that's what I would do. And then at the very least, you're going to get half a percent in interest, which is not much at all. But it's better than getting nothing. Yeah. You know what actually would make this worse if you said the bank was Wells Fargo. No, it's Chase. Okay, okay, good. I have Chase. Your Chase is decent.

But yeah, you got to get the money out of there. Okay. Because think of it, if you've kept that money, let's just say you've kept $100,000 in a checking account over the last year, really what you're missing out on, you've just sacrificed $20,000 in profit by just keeping your money out of the market for the last year. 20%, 20 grand. Well, technically you're losing money. Wow. And you're losing. Well, you could say that for the 20% return on the market, too, is subject to inflation.

but I would just say, just cancel that out, 20 grand is how much you've just left on the table by not making a decision on that, just keeping it cash. Now, we're all guilty of it. We all have uninvested money, and there's a chance the market could have gone down, in which case, you know, good on you for keeping the money in cash. But overall, you're going to have more gainers than losers. And overall, I think it'd be pretty safe to say you're leaving about $7,000 to $9,000 on the table every year for every $100,000.

You're just leaving in there. Well, time to change that, evidently. Yeah, and 20 grand. Think of it this way too. Like this would, because I think as long as we could, we could relate this back to what you want to do, which is investing in entrepreneurs, that's an extra 10 grand right there that you could be investing back for every 100,000. So just think of it. I'm investing my money so that I have more left over that I can invest in these other things I'm really passionate about. But in the meantime, I may as well be doing this boring stuff because it just, it pays the bills. Have you thought of starting a, like a fund? No. Never want to do that. Really? No, because YouTube is, is, is where. I think my strength is. And I don't want to deviate my time because I know. Like in order for me to do something well on for a startup, that's got to be 24-7. Yeah.

And I can't do YouTube and that. I feel like YouTube is like the machine. And I want to be involved in startups that I would be able to work on just as an ideas person and then create content around that. Like Yada Bank was something that I, Yada never asked for a video, by the way, at all. But I purposely invested in Yada Bank because I love them. But also because I knew that like I'd be able to. to make such a fun video with this.

And, like, is my first angel investment. I could explain why I invested in them. I could talk about the company. And then I was thinking, well, you know, I'll make some of my money back. Just even if the investment flops, the video itself is going to be really good. And it's like another idea to get a video out there. I see. I see. So, like, I want to do more like that.

And if I find a company. That was your first investment. First angel investment. Okay. Not a first ever investment. Yeah. First ever angel investment. Have you invested in startups before?

No. Before this? Okay. Never before. That was the first one. And then I had two. others right after that, that we'll just see how they do. Oh, man.

Maybe I'll get you excited about investing in entrepreneurs and investing in idea. And you can get me excited about saving my money. Yeah, what I've really wanted to do, and this is going to happen at the Las Vegas place. But what I want to do is basically do a shark tank sort of deal where I could get like me and the buddies together. And we'll just invite people on the show just to pitch their ideas. And we'll just see if we want to invest in them or invest in their idea. Yeah.

And I, but it's, it's tough because I don't want to just copy Shark Tank. So we've been like developing something in that direction. Really? And yeah. So maybe there's an opportunity there to. I would love to be a shark on that. Yeah. Yeah.

Something like that. Yeah. But yeah, that's what I wanted to do. And we've come up with a few ideas just on the back end of like, I want to bring 10 entrepreneurs to the house and have them like duel it out over like who gets an investment. Stuff like that. I wanted to start going in that direction. I think would be a lot of fun.

I'm down I'm definitely into it I want to make it happen I'd be good with that I'll tell you one of my ideas after after filming but it's like Jack this but yeah if you would want to travel to Vegas for this

you'd probably do it in like a few months but I think it would be a really fun concept you could be one of the judges I think it'd be really cool well definitely yeah let's make it happen and just the overall like the investment space as I said Matt has been very much

focused on how we can like allocate our money to go towards investment because you know with the s theory it's not just like it's not just the money that comes it's actually the main thing that comes is the distribution power and the max the community and we feel like there's just an opportunity for like a creator's fund and being able to like pull together a bunch of creators that very much aligned and can together make some really great decisions on things to invest in that would have like really high return. So we'd love to, you know, bring into that conversation and see if there's... Yeah.

Yeah. Cool. Synergy there. That's what I'm realizing to. I think the big thing with YouTube is that I think initially you see that like, oh, I could sell merch or I could get ad revenue or I could come out with a program. But really, like when you get down to it, it's marketing. Yeah. Like big brands. For what you would make a video on,

a brand might pay like $500,000 just to get to the eyeballs that you were able to do organically for free. And that's what I'm starting to realize. It's like you're able to drive so much traffic and attention to places where ordinarily they would never have that reach. Your CPM for the main YouTube channel

must be huge. It is. Wow. Like what is it at? 25. 50, something. Yeah, at the peak, I think, was almost 40. It was like $38.

That was December, this last December. It was like 38 bucks. Wow. For context, that's like compared to four to five for us. You get four to five CPM? Yeah. That's not like a high. So your RPM is like two to two and a half?

It's too low. Yeah. I don't get it. See, that's what doesn't make sense to me. You also probably maybe put like an ad or two per video. Like we, yeah, there's pre-roll and post-roll. Yeah, we don't do mid-roll? We do mid-roll for longer videos, yeah.

You got to do mid-roll on every video. Yeah. Really? Okay. Because what I've noticed, too, is that mid-rules help the algorithm. I think the algorithm just knows that this video is performing well. It's making more money for YouTube. Advertisers are happy that they get more exposure.

And because of that, and this isn't proven, I just think the videos do better. And my experience has always been that videos that are heavily monetized, heavily monetized, lots of ads, heavily monetized, tend to do better for the algorithm. So anytime people are upset. I mean, for throwing in midrills, it's just like, if you want to grow and you want to help YouTube out and you want to help me out,

just understand it's a part of the process. You throw midwills in the video. It does better in the algorithm. YouTube pushes it to a brand-new audience who could get the same message. I think it's a win-win for everybody. And it's better than watching TV commercial. People have gotten so spoiled now

over like, oh, I have to watch five seconds of a night. Do you remember when you used to watch like SpongeBob? And like at the peak, the peak moment, three minutes. You would have enough time to go in like microwave like a hot pocket and come back and like you're still going through commercials. That's what it used to be like. We have it so easy right now. We really do for free information. But anyway, but yeah, I'm open to that

idea. But that's my advice to you. It's 50K a year. I think that's doable. You'd be able to do it 50K. Put that aside and everything else could be your fun money. But I think as long as you have just that foundation of 50K consistently. you be set because no matter what happens, you're always going to have that to fall back on. And you could be set for life. You just got to do that for like 10, 15 years, 50, 50, 50, 50, keep it growing.

You'll never have to work after that if you didn't want to. Just don't do it in Robin Hood. Do it in like a different brokerage. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I mean, we'll choose it. I don't, I know I'm going to get hate for it.

I don't mind Robin Hood. I don't mind. Maybe maybe, now this is going to be some canceled. Leave it in there. Yeah. I think they're the easiest brokerage just to point at, like, a finger at and be like, you're bad. A lot of

brokerages had issues. Robin Hood, I think, is the poster child of issues because they've grown the fastest. They're the newest, most disruptive brokerage out there, and I think there's a lot of growing pains. They didn't do everything right, but, you know. But if you're doing buy and hold where you're not even checking the app every day, you're checking it like once every year where you're contributing like $50,000

at one time, yeah, then just by all means, six different brokerage. My personal belief is that anything over like 200 grand it's probably best to go with a big brokerage like fidelity or Charles Schwamp most likely they're a vanguard they're all great we're with vanguard vanguard fantastic so any company that you could physically just pick up the phone and call someone for me over like 200 grand that that's the amount under like you know under then then it's like if you play over it doesn't matter i was going to be like oh well i actually put 56 000 in the

set by our IRA this year but it wasn't my idea and i would have never done it if i wasn't like Thomas and Matt were like, you just do it. Just don't fucking think about it. Oh, I'm so glad you did that. Yeah, yeah. I'm so glad. You need to be doing that every year. And they were like, listen, it's just don't even think about it.

It's going to save you money. Just trust this. And I was like, well, what if I just, I literally said that. I was like, I don't want to save. I just want to use this money. I'm going to take it. I'm invested in five startups. I don't want to put this.

And they were like, well, do both. Yeah. Just like, don't be dumb about it. So you're making enough where you could do both. And it's not like your day to day lifestyle does not sound expensive. It's not like your ball in a clubs and stuff like that. So you have so much money left over. I don't drink alcohol.

Huge. If you want to cut, I've never been drunk in my life. Really? Yeah. Wow. It's the biggest money saver. See,

I stopped drinking for the most part. I will have the occasional drink and I limit it to one and it's usually not more than like once a month. And it's rare. Like that's a celebratory thing where it's just like one drink. If that, because it just, I hate the way it makes you feel the next day. Yeah, that's that too.

Yeah. but yeah that's uh so yeah i mean give that that your main advice to put 50 aside i guess is that same thank you matt thank you thomas yeah appreciate the they're on it yeah i would agree what else what what other financial questions you have for us oh wow getting a free consulting session pre consulting um what has been your smartest financial decision that you've made in your life we're asking questions like that now huh game stop No, I'm kidding. Smartest financial decision.

Sorry on the YouTube channel? No, no, no. I would say the smartest financial decision was probably investing in real estate and living. No, I would say is living below my means, living so extreme for so long. I would say it really was not until about a year ago when I started like spending money a year ago. And even then, it's not been like frivolous stuff. But a year ago, I wasn't even in here. I was in an 800 square foot duplex.

It was a one bedroom, one bathroom, worked from the garage, and I had kept that up. I mean, I was doing even over a million dollars a year, still living in that same 800 square foot duplex in mid-city. I don't want to say it was like a bad area, but like when you think of the income, you don't think of like mid-city L.A. Absolutely not, yeah.

And yeah, and I just didn't spend any money. And that was the best financial decision ever eat this this house was the first time i had ever done something for myself was this house and i could justify that it that it made itself back because i was able to do so much better work yeah from this house in the backyard and just being in a better environment i got more creative did you buy this house no okay and then the las vegas place was was i think a fantastic decision just when you look just at all the benefits of living in las vegas and no traffic and just all the connections and all the friends there and everything else it just made sense but uh

But yeah, it was a year ago. That's when everything kind of, not everything kind of switched, but that's when I started loosening up the pocketbooks a little bit. But prior to then, I lived on it basically like $1,500 a month. What about you? Smartest financial decision I've ever made? Lull, you shouldn't ask Jack that the option. Doge coin.

Yeah, what's the least amount of money that you've lost in an investment? I don't know. I mean, the smartest financial decision I've ever made. Yeah, what's the biggest return you've ever made? The biggest return? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I, my dogecoin return was pretty nearly. I guess probably the biggest return would probably just be Apple.

Okay. He's made $20 on Apple. No, I don't even know what I did. I like, actually it would be doge coin. It would actually be doge coin. Yeah, because I got like 1,700% in doge coin. Wow. Yeah.

Which was pretty mild. It was $100 into $1,700. Yeah. If we're talking about R-O-I like that, like best investment was actually GameStop. For you? And I was, I was, upset that I almost hit a

2,000% return, but I didn't. It was like, the peak was like 1935%. And, well, I guess we could talk

about it because we're posting this in the future. But I bought into GameStopper around like 18 bucks and sold half of it at 350, 360 something. Yeah.

And that was, I debated on that one. I'm like, I wanted to hold it, but then I was looking to Jack. I'm like, how, I shouldn't,

get greedy on this and I'm like I could see that the the attention on it was was was it was like waning down and uh and I knew I was going to be posting videos about it and I didn't like I never wanted to be seen as trying to like like drive up the cost I'm like you know what let me I'll get rid of half yeah uh so now I'm left with 50 shares and I'm just I'm holding those 50 shares for whatever happens happens but that's my that's my tribute to Wall Street bed I'm just going to keep that I got one share as a tribute as well yeah We got two days ago. Nice.

After it was already at like 300. But I was like, not for, you're in the game. You got some skin in the game. Not for financial in the game, but it's more for a statement. Yeah.

Yeah. Cool. So after some thinking, I would also agree with Graham. My smartest financial decision is living below my means as well. Yeah. Graham knows I'm frugal as well. Jack needs to keep that.

I'm worried with Jack now that we'll be saying, funny enough, I'm telling Jack to like get a Rolex. He's telling me to buy a Rolex. But Jack wants a Tesla. I'm telling him don't get the Tesla. Wait, how are,

I guess a Rolex is a, Not a depreciating value. No, it's not at all. He's going to get a wholesale cost submariner. Ask him how good of a deal of that. It's like he's getting this watch 20% under market, and I guaranteed to him that I would buy the watch back at any point instantly whenever he needs the money.

I'm locking up, like, a lot of assets. That's the way that I don't like, you know what I mean? It's going up to value. That watch is going up. It's like you make an instant 20%. As soon as I put a down payment on a house, I'm done. Like my finances are toast. I have nothing after I did that.

Didn't sell the watch. And I'll buy it. Okay. All right. Fine. Wow. Fine. But I would say, yeah, living beneath my means.

But also, I've been wanting to ask this question, this whole podcast. What is the most uncomfortable thing you have ever done? Wow. You've gotten that one. Let me guess a million times. Oh, yeah, definitely. It's like the go-to. It's the craziest that you've done.

Not those craziest, but the most like, what were you, you were like, this is like odd or uncomfortable. I would say the two days that I spent on the streets of L.A. with nothing. Wow. Yeah. So that was, I don't want to say

it was like, became homeless in LA because I don't, I don't think there's anything I can do that can simulate homelessness. It can simulate the feeling of not knowing when

or where I can go back to safety and comfort. But so I approached it through the stoic philosophy of, they have a specific practice called negative visualization, which is you living for a day or two

of your year, assuming that the worst happened. and kind of like just going about your day assuming that and living life as if you're responding to the worst so for me that was you know losing all my privileges including being able to be presentable being able to go up to people and express myself and ask for what I want so I couldn't even like be begging or asking someone for for help I fully took the 48 hours I only had the face of my cellular Apple watch

just in case anything goes wrong I can make a call from it but other than that I had nothing I ate from the trash that day. It's two days. I walked from Beverly Hills all the way to Santa Monica and then to Playa Vista and then to the airport to sleep on the second night because it was the only like public place where I wasn't going to get, you know, hassled for for Stephen because everywhere else. Like there's just so much I realized about my life in L.A. that I took for granted and then for city that by the day you see homelessness increase. It just, it was such a wake-up call. Why couldn't you beg? Because I felt like I felt like I'm very comfortable with that.

Like I've done, yeah, I've done episodes where I would go to a foreign country and, you know, be on the street for 24 hours and have the best experience just by asking people. So I feel like I have that skill and the whole point was to lose all kinds of privilege. So that was, again, to be living in a city where homelessness is so prominent and it's something that I deal with every day. I'm so happy that I went through the experience because it just was such a prospective giver. What did you do all day? Was there ever a point where it's like you, I don't know, like, also wouldn't you have gotten recognized?

So I would, that's why I was like sort of invisible. I wasn't even trying to be in people's, like in people's face. I was just like walking, resting during the day because at night it was too cold and it was really hard to sleep. So the whole time, you're just focused on survival. And also the other thing, the reason this was really hard is because, you know, I'm so social. I, like, very connected. I'm on my phone.

I, you know, social media, all that. And then all of a sudden, you literally have nothing. You're the only thing you're left with is your mind. There's no, there's nothing to escape to. So I went from like the extreme contrast of having the best support system, the best friends and like an amazing place to live and all these things to nothing. And that, I think that contrast was. was a really significant one in my just yesterday career. What did you eat?

I ate one meal out of the Whole Foods trash. It was the leftover of a drumstick and a bunch of potatoes with hummus on them. That's it. Didn't taste very good. I mean, it was, I mean, it tasted decent. You're probably pretty hungry. Yeah. And it was my only meal for the 48 hours.

What did you dress? Like, what were you wearing? I just wore, I wore black pants, a t-shirt, and a jacket. and a backpack that had my point and shoot and that's it would you do that I would consider it yeah I probably do that before I would ever do skydye

wow that makes you even more commitment to be like I mean no I mean I rather no no I'm terrified of doing that no no no no I'm terrified of staying at home all day and lying in his bed I can't do that well that's so scary you brought a friend here I did.

Cliff Weitzman. My greatest investment ever. As just in terms of like my time with... Do you want to... How are we doing this? Let's put them... You want to just go right now? Can we...

Yeah, because I can scoot over a little bit down. Yeah. If you scoot right here. Yeah. This has been my greatest investment, both in terms of time, just the time that I've invested spending with this man and in terms of money. It's my biggest investment that I've ever made. And it's in his startup because I,

I literally, and again, this is not at all. Like, I'm not trying to do this. Like, oh, I'm bringing him to promote what he's building. It's truly one of the people that inspire me the most. And I'm grateful to be introducing to you because you guys, he had. Yeah. We saved this all for the podcast. I don't want to hear about it until we're filming.

Yeah. So we got evidence. But what, you know, Cliff, you were saying that Amar is leaving something out. Oh, yeah. Oh, what did I leave out? You have a major expense category that you're forgetting. Oh, shit. which is Amar spends an unusually high amount of his personal income on gifts.

Did he bring a gift today? I'm the gift today, apparently. But one of the first time we hung out, we were playing paddle tennis. So I would have been the partner that was waiting. And there was a lady who was like, oh my God, I love your sweatshirt, seek discomfort that's so beautiful. And she didn't know who Amar was. And she's waiting for the court.

And at the end, he takes off a sweater. He folds it, and he just gifts it there. Wow. And I've seen this happen over and over and over again. And he just has this ability to figure out what a person would make a person really delighted. And he just will go and get it. Thank you. It is true.

I do spend a lot of... Well, I like gifts. So you're welcome back anytime. Your gift is a skydiving. I like this. No, I'm kidding. It wouldn't fit me. I'm going to make one.

No, no, no, it's happening. Are you texting? Really? I love it. He gets complimented of this every time we go up. Yeah. I'm looking at this. Like, I would look like such a boss if I wore something.

Like, could you like imagine me walking around with this? Because I, you see this and you're like, that's money. That's cool. I like it. All right. It's got to be like a small or like an extra small for me. Done. All right.

But it's less material. So it should be easier to make. So this is your investment here. Yeah. Do you want to tell the story of how we met? I'll tell the story of how we met. Okay, so in October of 2019, I got a text one random night being like, hey, there's someone from a friend of mine, entrepreneur, female entrepreneur here in L.A., she was like, you know what,

there's someone that I think you should really, really meet. He reminds me a lot of you. And then within five minutes, I got another text from another friend, also female entrepreneur, being like, you have to meet this guy. Turns out that Cliff. Like the ladies, man. Turns out. turns out that cliff was having dinner with both of them one of them goes to the bathroom and then he he sat with the other one she goes you should really meet amar then the other one comes back from the bathroom and goes dami you know who he should meet he should meet amar so both had the same thought uh like separately yeah and then you know when both when both of them texted me that

i was like okay well we got to meet we got to meet this cliff guy and honestly i don't think i ever told you this i honestly thought he was was too unbelievable the first time I met him that I'm like, is this another like, Ellie guy who's just saying a bunch of, a bunch of things? Because he was so unbelievable. I was like,

there's no way all these things. He's built like all these products in college and he's done all the things that he's saying that he does. Like he was just like, usually I hear that it's red flags. Like every time someone goes off about that. I'm like, I did. Big time.

Big time. So for me, I was like, I was like, well, I guess. And then, and then I don't know what end up happening.

I think I, what made you the, decide that it was not I think I think I started I started hearing about you from other people and then having a lot of these things be confirmed and I also start following the trajectory of of speechify like all these things that that you're saying that were that seems so like out of the out of your league at the time I was just like whole bit by bit month by month I'm seeing him like get to these things that he said that he wanted to get to and you know we end up reconnected reconnecting when he came back to LA we just like ever since be be be came very, very close and very invested in what each other are doing. I think out of all the people that I've ever met in my life, there's no one that has shown such a deep understanding of what is it that we're trying to do with the S theory more than Cliff. And I think in the same way with what he's building as,

you know, as someone who's needed the tool that he's building more than anyone growing up, having learning this ability and having a really hard time just dealing with academics and reading in college. to me it was like I was also very invested in what he's building so maybe I let him I invested in clips

I did invest yeah I did all right let's see my biggest investment and you know proudest one yeah yeah I was just like over 100K

no I wish you could you know what I swear I would do it if he let me right I was like you didn't want that big investment there's a few people that I've got very mad at me for not letting them invest

well I want to win best. Let's hear the pitch. I'll give you the background. Speechify. Do I speak to you or do I speak to you or which direction you want me to push? So my story is pretty straightforward. I grew up in Israel and I moved to the U.S. when I was 13.

And I'm super dyslexic and I have ADD. So it's very hard for me to read. Like first, second, third, fourth grade, like I suck at school. And I have four younger siblings who are brilliant. So I was just like twiddling my thumb. mom's not able to spell my name, and my brother is, like, building websites and making iPhone apps, and my sister, like, speak seven languages, and I'm just like, eh. But, like, I had an idea of the person that I wanted to be, and that person, one of the

things they should be able to do is read. So I would practice reading. And I would always fall asleep in the book. So then my dad started reading books to me. And the first book he read to me was Harry Potter. And I loved it so much, he recorded himself in a cassette tape and would walk around the house listening. And then we moved to L.A. when I was 13.

And I found an audiobook set of Harry Potter. in English. And I listened to that 22 times in a row. To this day, I have the first chapter memorized. Sadly, I lost

the British accent. But it made me fall in love with audiobooks. So I listened to two books a week every week for the last like 16 years. And when I got to college,

I went to Brown, I studied renewable energy engineering. I ended up building this app that let me take pictures of physical books and it would read. And I could upload a PDF and it would read.

I could open a website it would read. And I built everything from like 3D printed skateboard brakes to payments companies and apps and websites. And at the end,

I really wanted to do my own thing. I didn't want to take a job. I had like one internship and I hated it. So I convinced two of my professors to let me stay as a visiting scholar at Brown. Basically I didn't pay tuition, didn't do homework, lived on campus, ate on meal plan,

and I just built stuff and like guest talk classes. And my philosophy is you want to be the person that you needed most when you were young. And when I was young, the thing I needed was someone to read my books to me. And around that time, there's a subcategory of algorithms called deep learning.

And it's really good at optical character recognition and text to speech and translation and parsing, and I tied them all into this hack that I built for myself. And it got really popular up around. And then it built this cult following of people like me who had dyslexia and ADD and low vision and concussions and autism and second language learners. And then it got really popular with normal people.

So now most of the users are professionals or people in school who use it because they can listen and understand better when they listen compared to when they read, or they can listen faster than they can read. or they do other things at the same time. And so then we built the iPhone app for it. And then we built the Chrome.

How does it work? So for the Chrome extension, you can open a website and a little play button appears. So for example, if you're reading about Robin Hood and GameStop, you're like, damn, this is like a long SEC document. Play. And it just starts to play. And I like, I read all, every like contract I read. And I listen at 700 words per minute, which is three and a half times faster. It's nuts.

when you walk into a room. Can I hear 700 words a minute? Oh my God. Because I listen to all my YouTube videos two times speed. And for me, sometimes that's like not fast enough. Why did that one? Hold on. Is it two times speed? I do audiobooks at 2.75.

Oh. Wow. It's a super user here. Yeah. That's crazy. We need to get you on the train. No, I mean, I was telling you like, I would walk into, I would walk into a room where he's listening to something.

And I have no idea what he's listening. And then I'm like, There's no way you just understood what was just said. And he would be like, oh, yeah, yeah, this is what happened. And he would be listening to our, like, a news article. And then he would tell me what happened in the news. I'm like, hmm, you can understand that. But the trick is just like you're training yourself.

You're training, you're increasing your capacity bit by bit to like listen faster and faster. And that was, yeah. Let's hear it. So I listen. The teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with study literature. And so all over the country students are writing not about how a baseball team of small but you might compete with the Yankees or the role of fashion or what constitutes is a bit of

Is that like, I only know in things. Dickens himself would be more interested in a general baseball. How did things get this way? John's about to go back for a thousand years. Around 100. Europe last began to catch it spread out of the centuries of chaos.

And once they have the luxury of curiosity, they'll be discovered what we call the classics. Like what? Because I only know in like YouTube. 3x? 3x. What is the normal reading speed for a like a normal human being?

So the normal person when they read on a digital screen will read at 180 words per minute. And if you read in a physical book, it'll be 200 words per minute. And most people who use, speechify off the bat are listening at about 240 words per minute because most people like listen a little bit faster than they read and if you practice you can start listening really fast like you do 2.7 5x and audible so when i learned english like i didn't speak english when i was 13 so i would listen

to harry potter at 0.75x speed and then little by little i increased the speed um and the key is that i was using i started using it for everything and speechify has an automatic speed ramping algorithm inside of it so every thousand words it'll boost you by a little bit And actually, we're now adding the ability to increase YouTube videos beyond 2x, and you can increase them by, like, 0.05x increments with a keyboard shortcut. So you can train it. And so when I listen, most of the time, right, I went in, I'm quiet, speech of fine. I used to go to.

If you get texts, do they just read off like that? No, not yet. Honey, honey, dinner is ready. Please come home. It's 9 p.m. It's bad for your curfew. Please come. Thank you.

Love mom. Yeah. But what used to happen is I used to sneak into conferences for kids with dyslexia. And when the keynote speaker was finished speaking, I'd jump on the stage. And I'd plug in my computer, I'd demo. And then, like, principals would offer to fly me out to the schools to teach the kids how to use Speedify. And I'd come in, and kids would listen to 240. And I'd come in a couple of months later, and the kids are now listening at, like, $350, $400.

And I'd come a couple months later, and they're now listening at $600, 700. And the principals would go, yeah, this is crazy. because like this kid was getting these and Fs. And what we realized is the speed of the listening needs to match the speed at which their mind is working and that helps them. Because if you were to be forced to watch the YouTube video a 0.5 speed even though you like the channel,

you leave because it's so boring. And for most people, their reading speed is not at the same pace as their brain works. Like most 19-year-olds today, they grew up on YouTube and Instagram and TikTok and they move really fast in their brain. But the information intake is too slow. And so I'll listen at 700, which is three and a half times faster.

And I'm number, like, there's a leaderboard. I'm number like 2,500 in the list. Like a lot of people listen way faster than I. How do you approve that? Do you actually understand? How do you, I could just listen at four times speed and then call myself like tough time. We listened to a second ago, yeah? Yeah.

It was talking about the literature in England and how even the writer of Moby Dick would not be interested to read some of that material. Yeah, but you memorize. I'm sure you listen to that before. I've literally tried it. I've tested that. I've tested that one time. And I mean, right? You listen to 2.7?

Yeah, I couldn't understand that. No, no, but you listen to audio books, a 2.7x speed. Most people, when you give them those audiobooks, won't be able to listen to them. And you practiced over time, right? Yeah. So what did you listen when you started listening to Audible? Probably 2X. 2X.

And you built up to 2.7 over time. And you watched YouTube videos off. Everything 2X, yeah. By default. Yeah. So here's the crazy part. My dad used to hate it when I would listen fast. Amar hates it when I used to hate it when I listen fast too.

And he couldn't stand it if I would watch a video at 2x speed. And now he watches all his videos at 2x speed. He's 60 years old. And he uses a speechify for everything now. And it's just a matter of practice. So, you know, Roger Bannister ran the four-minute mile. And then everybody ran a four-minute mile that year. It's just the type of thing where, like,

You start at first grade and you're supposed to take like 10 years to become a fast reader with high comprehension. And we've been reading for thousands of years, but we've been listening for millions of years. But to answer your previous question, the way that it works is on Chrome, you just click play and it starts to read to you no matter what it is. On iOS, you take a picture of a book or you send an article from Chrome or you're uploaded PDF and it reads. Now, my thinking is on websites. Sometimes there's so much just noise that's on there. You don't want to read necessarily who the article is buying. and you got ads.

How does it differentiate the actual content? Great question. Smart question. So when I first built it, right, it was optimized for PDFs and for books where I could take a picture with my phone and it would read the book. And I tried seven iterations of the Chrome extension

before I succeeded in building a parser that was good enough to automatically skip over most of the ads. And so if you click play, it'll just, it knows just from training and from like, we just like went to all the most popular websites and adjusted it and wrote macros for it. to skip the stuff that's irrelevant.

And then you can also like pick the section that you want highlighted and play. And so for example, 30% of the uses in Chrome are inside of Google Docs and Gmail. And we just build like a play button into Gmail if you click play. And one of the cool things is we were talking about like how I met Amar. All of our team are people who I met either they found like stuff that I wrote in Medium or wherever or people introduced stuff. So we're like 25 people. And they're all folks who ended up using it in the same way. from all over the world who work on it with us.

And they just keep coming up with ideas of how to make the product better. How do you come up with the voices? How do you keep improving those to make it sound realistic? So today I had a meeting with Morgan Friedman's agent to try and get Morgan's voice. How much does that?

Didn't he do? A lot. He did a GPS a long time ago. I don't think it was ways. He did one of the old ones back in like, this must have been 2006 or seven. Back when GPS is first. started being like I used to Garmin.

Remember those? The Garmin GPS is there was like a Morgan Freeman. How much is that? Like it's got to be like 10 million bucks. No, not 10 million. No? No, it's expensive, but it's not that expensive. Really?

He's actually, you know, he has already other celebrities on like a celebrity voices as a part of Speechify. Trevor Noah. Did they just read the entire dictionary? So here's what we do. Yeah, I've seen how they do this. It's so interesting. You explain it.

I was actually a Gwyneth Palser's house last week and I just recorded her reading a bunch of stuff for the app so we can make her voice um it used to be the text of speech was what was it was made with the thing called concatenative text to speech that copy and paste speech utterances together and i am a computer like i talk to you then deep learning came around um i don't know if you saw like right the computer that beat the best world player and go etc um and so it builds the sound wave from the ground up and so then you have like this corpus this engine that's really really good at reading but it's like kind of unisex engine and then let's say you you want Trevor Noah's voice.

So you pepper in the South African accent. And all I need is like a couple of hours of audio. At this point, we've got it down to I need 40 minutes. And boom, it sounds like the native speaker. David Adam Barrow, you guys know?

Yeah. He's, he's the narrator. Discovery. Yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah,

yeah, yeah. Yeah, sounds great. This is the thing. Yeah. Yeah. And it's crazy when you actually listen to it.

Because I think his intonations lend themselves to to work well in like a, computer generated voice. Yeah. It's so good. It actually feels like David Anambor is reading you a book. I want Gilbert Godfried.

That's who I want. All right. I log the request. What's really... I got the dictionary. You know, what's really cool is that, you know, in Speechify,

you can, you know, at some point you'll be able to just record if your mom's voice is one that you like is really soothing to you. That's crazy. I would love that. I would love that.

Just a voice of a loved one, imagine that is a Christmas gift. Like, you just talk for 40 minutes and then whatever you want is in that person's voice. So two things that we're doing right now. That would live on forever. Is we're going to release probably later this year. You'll be able to upload anyone's voice. And if I sent Amara text message and he clicks play, it'll play in my voice.

Right. Now we're talking to that for sound deep fakes. Blackmail. Yeah. Right. And so every contact in your address book has a speechify voice associated with it. But the other cool thing is exactly what you're saying, memorialized voices.

So if you have loved ones that are going to pass, you better make sure that you upload their voice to speechify because they might pass, but their voice can stay forever. I think everyone would do just based on that. Yeah. Everybody, like you hit the age of, I don't know, 70, and you just automatically will do this.

How do you prevent copycats? Because it sounds like once you get the template and the framework, anybody would be able to go and just kind of make something similar. It's, so, okay, this is a question. I'm going to bounce back to you. The trick with building companies that are like fast growth startups is it's all about the company, the team. And so we build at such a fast rate that it's very, very difficult to keep up.

So that's number one. That's the most important part. And then the second I want to ask him are why he decided to invest in Speedyify and why really all yes theory ended up investing with us because I'm sure that's the reason. The second reason is the U.S. is really good. It's just very, very easy to use. And you end up with the data mode. Because once you upload, right, all the article, have you ever used Pocket?

No. So the problem with Pocket is a lot of people love using Pocket, but you never actually read the material. With Speechify, let's see you have 25 tabs open. It goes, oh, 18 of your tabs are long-form content. Would you like to collapse them into a folder on your iPhone? And if you go around and walk or drive, you can just click play and listen where you stop. And you're like, yeah, that would be great. So then all the material you want to listen, it's like, it's already there.

It's like this expensive switching costs. A lot of the voice stuff is proprietary. For example, if you get the agreement with Morgan Friedman, that's it. Like, there's an exclusive agreement with Morgan Friedman. You can't have his voice elsewhere. How is that? So, but doesn't he already have his voice out there, like with ringtones and voicemails? Yeah, but the exclusive is like you can't lend your voice to another text to speech application that reads PDF and news.

So yeah, you can use it. Yeah. And it's like dynamically generated. So the cool part is, right, anything you want to read about finance, anything you read in your like, masters in medicine, anything you're reading for your job, my emails. It dynamically generates everything. imagine my voice. Like people could pay like 10 bucks.

Just read a book in my voice. That's not hard to do. I would love that. We're doing a partnership with a couple of YouTubers right now. Where we're making their voice. Thomas's voice is going to be. Yeah. And then yeah, you can promote your speechify link.

And if someone buys a speech on your own channel, they can have your voice. You know what's going to happen? People could easily just create like a fake web page where I say something I didn't say and then play it back, be like hidden audio grim admits to something. And what you do, use the trick, is you have a high frequency tone that's inside that you can't remove. So you can always prove that it wasn't new. That's good.

How many users do you have? Many, many, many, millions. So Speechify has been like the number one app in the magazine and newspapers category on Apple for the last like 10 months above the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. So it started with like very few and then it just grew a lot. And why the investment? With this guy? Yeah, just in general. Because I love him and I want him to succeed as we can.

continue to grow and he also is one of the best product thinkers I know do you know what can you say it like what the valuation is right now or like you can't say that okay have you gotten buyout offers a lot yeah exceeding like 50 60 a lot like most companies that you can think out so like right among our investors um the founder of robin hood flat yeah um charles schwab uh gary cohen um the founders of grammarly of audible of who else brex plaid most really fast growing startups and for the most of what we've done is like we try to dodge like the bigger reces and take it money from like founders who've built stuff because there are other people who are actually super useful because they can like give you the advice that's valuable and i i don't know even if

if you're could be saying that it's it's not a cheap certain like product it's it's 140 bucks and you pay it, right, 140, and you pay it right away, like after a week of using it. So for him to have millions of user that actually made the financial decision to pay 140 bucks, that means something. Wow, so it's free to download, free to use for a week, and then it's $140 to try it out. Is it also a subscription service? It's a subscription service. You pay after the 12 months.

So, just to be clear, there's many millions who are free users. Oh, I see. And then there's, yeah, a lot who are also paying users. And the differences in the quality of the voices. So you can have voices that are lower quality and then you can have really nice voices. Do you put your voice on there? No. You got a pretty nice voice.

Thank you very much. Later. If you have an audience that likes your voice, all I need is like an hour of your audio and then I can put your voice on Speechify. And then if anybody comes from your links and buys Speechify, then you get a cut of the feed. People say have an annoying voice. I get caught.

I hate your voice, Graham. Your voice is heard. But some people like your voice. A few people do. Some weirdos. Psychos like mine voice. So Amar, to answer Graham's more important question, why did you end up investing in Speedify?

The money. No, I mean, because it was truly the product that I would have wanted to use the most. It was the product that I wanted to build the most that in 2015 I found a piece of paper that I actually sent him a photo of when I was doing brainstorming on my tech startup building at the time. And it was like one random night where I just wrote on the same. side of like basically like the idea for not speechify but something something very very similar like i want something to achieve the same functionality because i couldn't think of a product that i would

use more given that i'm also dyslexic very ADHD always had a hard time just like focusing and and and consuming knowledge in that way and it's prevented me from i mean now like i use audible to listen to books but you know anything that doesn't have a real human listening to it that's kind of it rules it out from the things that i would read or not but now just being able to literally like if I'm given a piece of paper and I can just take a photo of it and have it be read to me that's that's pretty life-changing for you know someone someone like me and and again for someone also speaks English as a second language I see how this can be like a game changer for people to like learn languages and you know what opened up the whole world to me is the fact that I spoke English it's literally it comes down to the fact that I just was able to speak English because you know it's like otherwise I'm my knowledge is just just a just limited to what is an Arabic. And what's in Arabic can just be, you know, a specific perspective that might not necessarily be

the perspective that I want of the world. So to me it was like more of like a like an emotional decision. It was like I want to see every person using this. And I want to use my platform to be able to bring it to every person that could potentially benefit from from that product. Yeah. Do you do other languages? It works in all languages.

It also does auto translation between languages. Okay. Is there a feature to help. kids learn how to read? Great question. So there's a feature called automatic speed ramping that helps you improve your listening speed over time. There's a feature that we're going to release later called the language learning algorithm. And so it works in two ways. The first one is when I learned English, I didn't speak English, but I knew what Harry Potter was in Hogwarts and Aloha Mora. So I could like understand the context of Harry Potter. And so you start where the 500 most

commonly used words are spoken to you dynamically in the language of the want to learn. And then as you improve, more and more of the words happen in the other language. So let's say I want to read Portuguese. And if I get to a certain level, I could just take things that are in Portuguese and listen to them, but the really difficult vocab words are dynamically read in English. And as I improve, it just increases the difficulty rate. And it's across everything you want to consume. You know what would make a ton of money, man, is something where you could take a picture and it translates it to your language. I was already here.

Really? Okay. That's what I would love. Doesn't Google translate do that? With pictures? Really? But they do that way or like you can take a picture of a sign. It'll be the sign.

With Speechify you could just like, I've done this in the past. I'll take a book in Japanese. I'll scan the first chapter and then I'll say translate to English and then it just reads the book in English. And the thing about the way Speechify converts text to speech is that at some point, this deep learning, this deep machine learning is going to be able to take an article that's maybe written for college level reading and it can give it back to you in like 10th grade because it's literally, it has synthesized everything and it understands exactly what the article is trying to say that it can give it to you. And then I, that's also like, I see that

being such a game changer for people who are learning how to, for learning new languages. Just the overarching computer science behind it is like people think about AI as like take over the world. That's not what's going to happen in the next like 10 years. The way that AI is really interesting is AI is just computer that teaches itself. And it's a system for learning. And what's really interesting today is narrow AI. The application in AI in narrow fields.

For example, the optical character recognition of taking a picture of this can and have it turn into digital text. The data building of the sound wave so it can speak. The ability to dynamically do natural language processing to summarize. something in a way where I can rewrite the sentences from scratch. So it's a 100-page article turns into a five-page document that's accurately summarized. And that's a lot of the stuff that we do internally.

What's your end goal with it? Are you going to sell it off? No? We've had so many SPAC offers at this point. So the great thing about Speechify is number one like when I graduated

college, I could have gone and like chilled on a beach somewhere because I had like the kind of muse companies. But the goal was, if I was a billionaire right now, what would I want to do with my life? And my answer was, I want to solve dyslexia. And I got very, very lucky that Schwab saw a video of Speechify early and sent me a message. And we ended up meeting and he ended up being one of the first investors. And if I was a billionaire, what I would want to do is go work on that.

So it doesn't matter who you are, where you are. I want to make sure that reading is never a barrier for learning to anyone. And the thing that really strikes me as odd So for example, India is our fourth fastest growing country right now And Africa as a continent also grows really, really fast. So I just had a call with a woman from Zambia And she's doing grad school in nursing. And she like reads decent,

but like not fast enough to be able to have an easy time doing a master's in nursing. So she uses Speetify for everything. And so it started off as an accessibility tool, then it turned into a productivity tool, and now it's becoming a literacy tool. And so my goal is I should be able to go into any office, any school, and say, hi, my name is Cliff. I have this Lexxan, ADD.

Anyone here has this here too? Cool. Anyone heard about Speechify? Sweet. Who uses Speechify? And all the hands should stay up. But the long-term vision is not just having this, like, utility that's a great consumer subscription. It's you get to the point where people are consuming trillions of words per week on your platform.

And you're able to start building an audio profile to recommend to people based on their completion, right? Not the clicking of the title. The things that are most relevant to them. because there's just the world was dust up first and then it moved to mobile first. So like, so you would create like a YouTube algorithm where it's like, oh, you like reading investing articles. Well, let me suggest these other investing articles. That's right.

You know, it would make a lot of money. I just think about everything that would make money. Get this. Really quick. Yeah. Throw in an ad right in the middle of it. Like right at the peak interest. And then it's like, by the way, go, go and use Weebel where you can get four free

stocks down below in the description. Click the link. And like a link comes up on the app and you click the link. four free stocks down below in the description when you deposit $100 in the platform. Well played. Yeah. What was I going to say? The biggest thing is that, you know, how do you consume the world?

It's either through your browser. YouTube and Reddit. YouTube and Reddit. Exactly. Listening at this point in Washington. Listen to YouTube, Reddit, reading. Yep. But like in terms of your access to the internet, you're accessing that either through apps

that are trying to get you to stay on YouTube. On your device. On your device for as long as possible so that you can continue consuming the world through them. Or your browser, because it's how you go on to any website. Imagine the point where you're able to consume just the whole internet by listening.

And for that pipe that controls that being speechify, all of a sudden you know exactly what people are reading, up to what point they're reading it, know exactly who are the most prominent writers on the rise because people are having more completion rates for their articles past anyone else like all of a sudden you're just able to identify so much about what people are genuinely interested in because reading is such a specific meticulous task it's not just like you can't just passively you can't passively read but it's different than passively watching something or like scrolling through it but the oddly enough for

reading and stuff like that i guess for me it's more so Spotify or i'll listen to a podcast And that'll be like my version of reading and just listen to it. So yours is basically just doing that but taking the text that's already up there. Yeah. So for me, I love books. I hate reading, but love books because they're really dense sources of information. But there's books that I just, I can't, they don't have an audiobook, right? Or a Wikipedia article or a long Reddit thread.

And there's like so much good text that exists on the internet. Like I want to read. I remember when I was young, I wanted to know how planes fly. And I would go to the Wikipedia article. I'd read the first sentence. I get a little bored. Second sentence, I'd quit. But now, like, I just, like, I walk around and I listen to it.

And so if you are an auditory learner and you use audible or you use podcasts or you use YouTube and you're assigned a textbook for school, it makes it just easy to consume. Same thing for any other source of medium. So it's not to replace them, but it's to allow you to add text. Do you worry about, let's say, I write this really amazing article and it's mine. But then I'm pissed. that like wait a second, everyone's consuming it through your app and you're making money from my thing and people aren't going to my website on that. You ever concerned about that?

So the trick there is you do attribution for those creators and you make sure that it links back to their article, be if you run ads like they get credit for it in the same way that YouTube does. How would that work? Because wouldn't everyone have to sign up for ads? Like let's say I write a medium article for free. Throw it up there and then you're running ads, but I don't know that you're making money on that.

Yes. So right now we don't run ads on speechify, and we don't intend to for a very long time because the subscription covers everything. And there's also like, mostly users use the free version. It's only the power users that subscribe. And for them, like it saves you like five hours per week. So it's a no-brainer.

One thing that we're doing now is if you are a creator, let's say you had a blog and you wrote your blog somewhere. You can include the link to Speechify. And if someone clicks on your link and listens, then you get paid by Speechify. You wouldn't need to register in the same way that you would need to register for YouTube. But yeah, like the way or protecting content is really important.

So right now within Speechify, there is no way for you to discover content inside of the app. Anything that you read, you need to find somewhere else, right? So you take that book and you scan it. You go to your website and you click read inside your browser. 50% of the time, people have the phone open when they're listening. So they look and listen at the same time, which increases retention and comprehension. But you can then also take a walk if you want. Later, we'll need to cross the bridge that you're describing.

Cool. I like it. Thanks to the pitch. You got it. Shark tank, round one. I'm going to use it. I like it. I'll throw in 10 grand today, but $5 million valuation today. Cash. Cash.

There you go. You making money? Did your valuation go up? I'll flip it on you. I'll pay you 10K. And you promote speech. I'll give you a cut of the number of people who download it. Could that be a welcome our video? a sponsor today.

It's a video sponsored by Speechify. We'll link everything down in the description. We'll take your 10 grand. And then we'll do it. Guys, I was just the guest. I brought the sponsorship as well. Thank you guys so much.

I really appreciate this. This has been probably so much fun. Just being up the chat and it's just a trip. It's a trip media. Like I keep looking over and I can't believe it. Seriously. Because I remember watching you guys. Like now six years ago.

Wow. Yeah. So it's just, it's wild. Thank you so much. Yeah. What an honor. Thank you. I definitely thank you for the advice. And I hope to stay in contact and just like continue consulting with you on.

Yeah. You know, how I can live a financially healthier life. And, and I think it's, I was just talking to Matt about this. It's very much within, you know, our interest to have the topic of like discomfort and finance be one that we, you know, discuss more in 2021. So I hope that we find ways to collaborate. Whatever you need. Like, you could just shoot me a tax. Perfect.

I don't care. Anytime. Perfect. whatever I can help with Cliff, amazing, good pitch thank you I appreciate it

cool so with that said you guys thank you so much for watching really appreciate it we'll link to all the information down below in the description oh you gotta say to like the video you have to say like guys please

destroy the like button for the YouTube out of run all right guys please destroy the like button so that the algorithm can recommend this video make sure you leave a comment let us know what really stuck out to you in this episode

and we'll see you for the 40th episode not me but these guys Yeah, right after you get your four free stocks. Four free stocks for the 40th episode down below in the description. It's totally free. It's like basically free money. So if you want free money, you may as well just go and do that.

So thanks guys. Until next time. Cheers. Okay, just say, welcome back to the 38th ever episode of the iced coffee hour. Okay. My name is Amar. And so far we have made and then just say the amount of money, which I'll pull up right here that we have made so far.

on the podcast 36 454 okay cool got it so what's up everybody i'm my i'm a mar from yes theory and we are on the 39th episode ever of the ice coffee hour what is it iced coffee hour ice coffee hour yeah okay got it's yeah you just wing it so far the podcast is made 36 454 yeah and then say that yeah yeah yeah cool uh into which one probably the uh that big one right there, that's just on you. So that's your angle.