The Iced Coffee Hour - Confronting The Workaholic Millennial Making $3 Million Per Month | MeetKevin

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

Shake up your ritual today with 10% off their essential protein for your first 3 months! https://ritual.com/ich Find the next big thing months before it happens! Get a 7 day trial of Trends today for just $1! https://trends.co/ich This episode we have on MeetKevin and discuss things such as his insane work day, 2022 income, buying a private plane, and moving to Puerto Rico.  Add us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan https://www.instagram.com/alex_nava_photography Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w DOWNLOAD MY NEW FINANCIAL APP: https://hungrybull.page.link/graham GET YOUR FREE STOCK WORTH UP TO $1000 ON PUBLIC & SEE MY STOCK TRADES - USE CODE GRAHAM: http://www.public.com/graham   MY NEW COFFEE IS NOW FOR SALE: http://www.bankrollcoffee.com/ Join the 2x weekly mentorship group: https://tinyurl.com/yaexko4o The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 Audio Equipment Used In Podcast: Rode NT1, Rodecaster Pro  The YouTube Creator Academy:   Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF   For Podcast Inquiries, please contact [e-mail]  *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to the iced coffee hour. So today we have a really special guest. We have Meet Kevin Paffraf. And he's going to tell us all about how much he's making this year, his tax write-offs, why he wants to buy a plane now, everything else about his business. It's a really interesting episode. And he also gets into his thoughts on the market. Stay tuned if you want to see what's going to happen in 2022 right now. Welcome back to another episode of the Ice Coffee Hour. The podcast has made more than $69,420 to date. I don't know. exactly how much. But let's just get into talking and drinking ice, well, drinking. Hello.

Thanks for coming on, Kevin. It's great to see you as always. Welcome. And this time in California. Yeah. Well, back to California. I think I'm stuck here forever. I think last time we talked about me wanting to leave and go to Vegas or something like that. Yes. What happened to that? Can you tell us? Yeah. What I actually, one of the things I did is I just went to the extreme and I'm like, you know what? I should just move to Puerto Rico. And I should move there half, half of the the week essentially, go there for four days, work Monday through Thursday, and then just fly back

and forth from Puerto Rico. It's like a six and a half hour one way and just do that back and forth. And I thought then my theory was, I'll just work really hard during those four days, do the four day work week, and then the other three days do zero work and just spend time with Lauren and the kids or whatever. And then I would be mostly in Puerto Rico. If you start businesses there, you have to prove you have a more critical connection there, which that's probably one of the hard parts to do. But anyway, you could try it. And your tax rate would go down to like four and a half percent.

It would be tricky because your family is here. So there's like a criteria of like 20 different things on the form, like where you're registered to vote, what clubs you're part of, where your businesses are. So we were thinking of starting like five businesses there, like hiring dozens of employees and just trying to check everything else off on the list to kind of weigh the scale more to that side. But in that sort of thought experiment, I'm like, my goodness, let's just say as an example, you had $10 million of income, you would save somewhere around $4.75 or whatever million dollars in taxes doing that, which is just like insane, right? You'd be paying virtually no taxes.

But the problem with that is, A, you'd have to go back and forth, which is the pain in the butt. And number two, I would not see my family for those four days. And one of the things that we've, what I really like about working from home is I make a video, come outside, and I just wrestle with my kids or go to breakfast with Lauren. I would argue you might actually see your family more. That was my belief too. If you did the three days because you'd see them all day and you wouldn't work. Yeah. Could you actually though go a day without posting a video?

I almost believe that you would be like, hey, kids, one sec. And then you'd get out your phone. Be like, guys, the market just went crazy. It's about to flip. Yeah, that was another issue. too is that I don't know if I could actually, and it sounds weird, like, how could you not take a day off? So I did this thing where, gosh, maybe five years ago, my father-in-law is, you know, Kevin, you owe yourself, just take a day off, just take your phone in a drawer, just don't ask, just do whatever

you want just for a day. Take a day off. Do that every week. And so it became a thing. Like, I'd have a signature on my emails. Kevin takes Saturdays off to spend time with family. And so clients new, just leave me alone that day. If you need someone else, you know, to cover, like call somebody else who could cover me

on Saturdays. And people really came to respect that. They're like, oh, that's so great. You spend time with family on Saturday. I did that for about a year. And I realized I was the most unhappy that Saturday. No. Yeah.

I was like, I was a grinch. I wasn't happy around being, being around my family all day because I felt unproductive. I wasn't getting any done. And so I was actually losing my mind. So I was actually more bitter to Lauren. And so Saturdays were worse. than when I would like work.

And then, hey, Lauren, let's go to breakfast. Because, like, I feel great. Lauren wants to, you know, Lauren drop the kids off for school. I'm like, hey, let's go to breakfast. Give me 25 minutes. I got to bang out a video. And I post that video. And then right after I post that video,

I feel like I have, like, an hour and a half to just screw around. Because, and then my anxiety starts setting in again. All right, I got to go back to being productive. So. I'm curious, though. Have you talked to a therapist about, like, the work? I don't want to call it an addiction because I have a, Therapist.

Because I have the exact same thing. But would you consider talking to someone and like getting to the root, I don't want to say the cause, but like what's pushing you in that drag? Had you always been like that? Probably. And I probably should. I think the right answer is yes because we so much characterize like mental health as like, oh, if you see a therapist, you have a problem when that's not true at all.

We should all be talking to somebody. But we don't learn that in our schools, that we should talk to people about how our mental health is. But yeah, I definitely feel broken. Like, there's a lot of anxiety. I feel like I've always got to be working. And even when I came here, you guys are setting up. And I'm like, oh, what's the little terminal saying? It's Christmas freaking Eve, man.

Yeah. It's so slow. That's what I hate. Like, even weekends for me, I keep looking at CNBC and Wall Street Journal. I'm like, it hasn't updated. Like, three hours. There's nothing there. So this obsession is mainly just in work, or has this been in every facet of your life growing up?

Well, I mean, it could be video games as well when I was really obsessed with. playing, let's say, World of Warcraft or RuneScape, every opportunity, for example, I'd be in high school, and I'm like, this class is so dumb, I can just do what I need to pass the test, but I don't actually need to be here, so I would try to find ways to leave my class. We had a lockdown campus, though,

so I would usually park where the construction site was, and none of the construction workers cared, and they had no security there, so I would go that way, and then take my car and drive, just to go play video games to, oh, because I'm wasting time in this class, I could be advancing. I could be leveling up.

It really feels like that. Like you get this anxiety. It's the same thing. It's addiction. It's bad. And that's why I'm most happiest when I just posted a video because I feel like that's my opportunity

to be like, okay, I'm going to go wrestle with the kids. I'll take it in the park. We'll go on a run. I feel the same way. For me, it's always an hour after I post the video and it does well. Yes.

If it does bad, I'm thinking about it the entire night, how could I save the video? What could I change? What sort of title? And even though I could be present in my mind I'm thinking like okay what title what title what title what could I do what could I do so yeah when it does well that that hour afterwards where there's nothing that I need to do I think I just

posted one that's probably uh like a one to three it is oh it's a one out of 10 I watched it oh it was a title we are F to Elon Musk agrees but but half the I would say 90% of the video is nothing to do with Elon Musk just the first the first minute kind that sets the standard for what we were talking about, like logic and research and reasoning. And then I wanted to give people some value, too, like deep dive. But anyway, yeah, so that feels great. You're right when a video is doing really well. And so that gives me less anxiety for sure. I agree with you. And if I have a bad video, I'm usually like, all right, I got to find another video of the post. And then you go to the end of the day and it's like, Kevin had eight videos. And they're all, they were like nine's and

tens. And it's like, oh, finally you want. All right. I'm going to be it. So for people to watch your video, is it ever the more videos you post, the more you keep posting until you hit out like a one, which is like a best performing video. So if you post eight videos that day I'm like, well, that means the other videos didn't perform that well, so you're posting more? Like if you have a one right out of the gate, are you less inclined to make another video that day? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So if days I post more, uh, sometimes, so I think there can be really great content, but sometimes the content is, is a little niche down. So if I really want to talk about Rivian, only people who care about Rivian are going to

and watch that, right? And so those videos can be really information dense. I can do a fundamental analysis and maybe they'll be a eight, nine or ten. Well, it's like, I just put in the most amount of work for a video that did the worst. Sometimes the videos that are just off the cuff, like honestly, this one was just like, Elon tweeted this and then it got me thinking for 20, 30 minutes, whipped it out 20 minutes, and it's doing great. Sometimes those videos are just the best, the ones where it's just that free flow of what you're thinking compared to the fully researched ones I've noticed. But first, we want to thank our sponsor, Ritual.

Hey, guys, the only thing that is more intimidating than these guns right here are the confusing ingredients that are in protein powders and the overall idea of them. And the truth is, deep down at a cellular level, we all need protein, and it's not just about muscles. Rituals team of scientists reimagined protein from the ground up, from how it's made, to who it's for, and why it's needed. The result is a delicious plant-based protein offered in three premium formulations for distinct stages in your life that have different nutritional needs.

Whether you're doing reps at the gym or you're more into walking dogs, Ritual's essential protein is perfect for everyone. I personally make a protein shake twice a day and their 20 grams of pea plant protein keeps me going strong all day long. And Ritual's protein powder is made to satisfy your bones, brains, and muscles to help maintain your body as you age. So why not shake up your ritual today and to make sure that you make sure that you're made to make sure that you're made to make sure that you're made. trying something new, less scary. Ritual offers a 100% money back guarantee if you're not in love. Plus, iced coffee hour listeners can get 10% off your first three months by visiting ritual.com slash ICH to add your essential protein today.

That's ritual.com slash ICH to get 10% off your first three months. Thank you so much, Ritual, for sponsoring this episode and back to the podcast. Tell us about your team now because my understanding is that now you have a few people that you've hired. And we've hired people now. you know, can we make the announcement about you, Jack? No, no, no. We can't make that yet.

Well, Jack is looking for his own Jack, aren't you? Yeah, yeah, I've hired out of a few of my projects right now. It's really nice because then it gives me more time to focus on other things and more free time that I can just enjoy and spend working, working, you know, doing things. But, yeah, I found someone to take care of a few things. For example, this podcast right now is being edited by a new person. So shout out that new person. Jack has got a jack. It's really nice. Yeah.

Will the audience know the difference? No. Because you know why? How long have you had this jack for? Like editing the podcast? Just in general. A month and a half. A month and a half.

Nobody's noticed. Yeah, no one said anything. Yeah, I mean, I think there is such a value to having employees that can really help you advance. Oh, yeah. There is a point where, and it's always this tipping point where sometimes you get to too many employees to where it feels like you added another employee, but they're doing, let me rephrase this. Think about it this way. You add one employee, productivity from that one person, amazing. It helps you out so much. You add another person you get maybe 50%. You add another person you get

like 20%. It feels like sometimes there's this diminishing return. That's true. Diminishing marginal utility. Gosh, see, that's what I've been telling Jack. Jack and I have been going back and forth over this. We agree on 90% of stuff. There's 10% that we don't agree on. And, you know, I have my way, and Jack said on his way, but one of the things is hiring out people. And every guest we have on the podcast is like, you guys should be hiring that out. And they hear about my schedule, oh, you're working 12 hours a day. You should be hiring that out. Find someone else to script your video. I'm like, you don't get it. But they always say hire. And I see Jack's eyes just light up. He's like, we should hire. We need more people. And I'm telling Jack, no, no.

I just don't think we're at that place where the diminishing marginal utility is so low that it's not worth a basic salary. So not to boost your ego here, Kevin, but I say, look at Kevin. You're the only example that I've, that I've ever given Jack. I'm like, look at what Kevin's doing. Whatever Kevin's doing, I want to do that. Well, he's posting several times a day. And barely editing his videos. But look at the productivity.

Right, but do you mean, do you want to do that as well? I can't post as many times. Yeah. I don't think it's a fair comparison. Just based off of the type of videos. I don't know. Well, I guess more, more Broadly, the way to look at it is at no point should you have too many employees to where you start feeling resentful, like the productivity is going down. I think that's the ultimate test. And I've gone through this many times, once with my construction company, once with the campaign, and then more recently where I'll hire folks. Same thing, again, construction campaign and more recently.

Higher folks, first, lots of productivity. Second, lots of productivity. Feels great, love it. then you add two, three more or whatever. Now all of a sudden it's like, oh, no, the last edition has not been what you expected potentially. And now all of a sudden, and this is the dangerous part, is if one person becomes less productive, everybody else sees that as, oh, well, if they can get away with being less productive, let me be less productive.

And then it hurts the whole ship, right? That's interesting. And that's dangerous. And it's so dangerous, especially if you're trying to build a company, because imagine if you took, if you had a five-person team and two of them, We're slackers, but now you 10x this and you have a 50-person team. That means you have 20 people on payroll that you're paying that are actually hurting the other 30. That's really bad.

So it's really difficult to let people go, but sometimes it has to be done for the sake of growing properly, I think. And it's been really hard because I've done that in the construction company. I've done that in the campaign, and they'll always become a time we have to do that again. And I love hiring, but I've also been very frustrated because there are so many times I've looked and I'm like, okay, I'm paying somebody for eight hours for something I can do in 30 minutes. And that's when, like, when you're having those comparisons, that's when you know you have the wrong person for the job. Right. So that, that I think is, and I'm not expecting somebody to work the way I do. Yeah.

But like, like, if something takes me two hours, it shouldn't take you 20. Right. And sometimes there's a training element to that as well. and some people just don't care. And that's a danger about us being public finance folks as they see, oh, well, that's how much money you're making. Yes. You know, you owe me.

And we see this a lot in society, is that people have this belief that, well, you owe me a living wage. Well, you owe me my rent or you owe me this. Well, my belief has always been you should provide your value first, prove how good you are first, and then get paid. You're not getting paid for, then it's time to move on, right?

but for example one I'll just go back into the past one person and I'll stop talking about this no no I find it interesting yeah yeah keep talking so I'll make a hypothetical example because I don't want to reveal numbers

for their own privacy sake but let's say somebody and again fake numbers here but similar scale let's say somebody started working for $20,000 and you're like oh my gosh this person has this incredible perspective they're early to work They're the last to leave work, and they provide a perspective that's valuable, and they really care, even though they might make mistakes, which is totally normal.

Mistakes are different from lack of caring, right? They put in the effort and they try to get better every day. That person has, in my world, gone from making 20K to making 60K to making 120K,000k, different scale, larger scale, but that exists. And that, in my opinion, is what every, that's the goal if you're going to hire folks. is you want to hire people where you're like, I value them so much, I will gladly pay them more. And if you're ever feeling bitter,

they've got to go. And that is probably my biggest weakness is I don't let people go soon enough. You know, somebody told me yesterday, I went to sushi with them. He does wholesaling, like product wholesaling with China. So he's in the depths with this whole supply chain nightmare. He does like a little gourbons of bags

where they put, I don't know, like Christmas things in or whatever. Anyway, he sells these. But think about it like he buys them for five cents, sells them for a quarter, right? That's the goal. So he'll buy thousands of these. Anyway, so he's very experienced working with employees, and he's always said that, unfortunately, if somebody's not productive in your company, you've hired them, what they're really doing is there's no difference between them being unproductive and them just stealing from you at one point. And so he has this, like, really extreme view of that.

And I think this is a little too far, but he's like, if you're running a business and you want it to be something, successful and you don't want to go bankrupt, like 50 to 60% of businesses do go bankrupt, then you almost have to be, and this is such an evil word, but he said it, you have to be a tyrant, and to the point where if somebody's not productive, they got to go. And you always, you want to give people warnings, you want to be able to train people, right? So there's always that. But beyond that, if somebody's not caring, and obviously their head's not in the right place, they don't care about the success of the business, they got to go. And so that's always been a big struggle for me because I don't I never want to be the guy that's like oh you're fired

like that is like the worst possible thing like I just want to be able to say I want to hire hire hire hire but I know I'll go bankrupt if I keep doing that how many people do you have though right now right now I have let's see here we just hired an in-house CPA and that would bring us to five and I should probably be at four tell me about this in-house CPA that's interesting How does this work? Well, so one of the frustrating things that I've had is bookkeeping is very complicated when you have multiple different businesses going on. It's one thing if you're running your own like mint.com and you have business and it's just a side hustle or something of your personal income and you have maybe what, like two or three transactions a day to look at. But if you have multiple rental properties, multiple different businesses, multiple different employees, multiple different employees, multiple different notices and insurance,

that you have to deal with with a state and follow up on insurance policies to make sure you're protected in all these different ways. Every business has liability insurance, errors and emissions insurance. Then there are umbrella insurances, and that's for every business. So we might have 20 or 30 insurance policies, and it's just exhausting. So I can't do it myself. And I've had a lot of problems trying to say, okay, well, I'll outsource and hire a bookkeeper, because the bookkeeper, I'll give them sort of my notes on what the expenses were.

a really good trick that I think everybody can use a quick tangent is just use like with Lauren I use this little spreadsheet so I have a little number spreadsheet on my phone we're synced together every time I spend something money let's say I spent seven dollars on this I'll put $7 personal expense and or $18 business purchase for Amazon real estate and that way a bookkeeper can later go in and organize that all and chart that all but I've found that not having somebody in person is like a nightmare because I'll end up just getting an email from an outsource bookkeeper every three months. And they're like, okay, here's all the things we have questions on. And I'd have to sit there for like 20 hours to answer their

questions. And then at that point, it's like, I may as well just do it myself every day. So now I wanted to bring somebody in-house. So we'll probably pay them, you know, somewhere around $120,000 to $180,000. Somewhere that's about the range for that. Wow. That's tax deductible. And I expect that's going to save me a lot more in the event there was ever an audit in the future. Yeah. This would be the best insurance policy for that. Somebody who's like, okay, you spent money on that, give me the receipt, I'm going to document

it, I'm going to sort it. So if they're in-house, how often do you see them? Well, I really like seeing employees every day. Not that I, I don't want to micromanage people, because I don't have the time to micromanage people. This is another difficult thing. Like, people have to be self-motivated, which I would love to hire self-motivated computer programmers or editors to come working.

But it's also hard to find people right now. But beyond that, I like seeing people every day because that way if we sit down in a room in the morning, middle of the day, afternoon, like, okay, here are the latest problems. Okay, here are the latest questions. And so that way it's kind of like, I post a video, I can go in, sit down and okay, what do you got? What do you got?

What do you got? And we can solve things right away as opposed to like, I got to get back to the emails. So I got to call this person back. It's so much easier in first. That's interesting. That's what Jack and I were talking about. Gosh, not even a few weeks.

ago. Yeah, it would save us because it's already difficult enough to get paid between Graham and I, because we have different set percentages on all of our different business ventures, and then there's net 30 on some payments, net 45, net 75 on some payments. Oh yeah, the sponsors are a pain. And to balance all of that out is a total headache. For example, I just recently got paid from the month of July. That was like, I think that was like last week maybe, or the week prior, but just because

it's so much of a headache to go through that entire spreadsheet. And not only that, but also like just bill collecting in general, when you have like tons of sponsorship revenue coming in all the time or like frequent checks, you know, coming in, even his rental properties. Stuff like that, like dividing up the payment between Alex Graham and I on this to family, the ice coffee hour clips, all this stuff. It would make sense to have someone just to handle all. We're doing it all ourselves, basically. Yeah, for the time saved. But first, I want to think our sponsor, Trends. Jack, have you heard about trends?

No, I haven't. But man, I sure wish I had some sort of service that would tell me about all these. new things that are coming out. Well, I have great news, man. Trends is exactly what you're looking for. Business and finance is an extremely competitive space, and it always feels like everyone around me is one step ahead. But that is until I got trends.

Trends is a networking hub with a thriving community of entrepreneurs and ambitious people, and they're constantly learning and collaborating on business ideas and projects. Trends even hosts live business training and Q&A sessions where you can learn the latest marketing tactics and fundraising strategies from their team of business analysts. And when you subscribe, you instantly get access to the trends community, meaning you could potentially link up with other ambitious people kind of like yourself.

Don't make the same mistake others have made and learn from the accumulated wisdom of people just like yourself that have made their dream a reality. Trends is a tool to help you find a very valuable mentor and guidance in the sometimes scary world of work and being an entrepreneur. Man, if only I had trends to teach me about trends months ago. So take advantage of this special offer that they're only giving to iced coffee hour. listeners, when you visit trends.com slash ICH, you can get a seven-day trial for just one dollar. That's trends.com slash ICH to get a seven-day trial for just one dollar. Thank you so much, Trends, for sponsoring this episode and back to the podcast. Yeah.

And see, there are some really cool things that I think a great CPA can help you out on a lot as well. See, there's something called a research development tax credit. I'll give you a quick example of this. There's a limit to it. I think the limit's $250,000 a year. but I'll give you an example. Let's say you spent $500,000 on a new business idea. That was a new innovation or something like that.

So you can write that off. So in California, I'd take a $500,000 write-off, which would save me about $250K in taxes. So I spent $500K on a new idea. That saves me $250K in taxes, which means I've taken $250,000 out of my pocket and spent it. But now there's this research and development tax credit where you can take 30% as a tax credit on top of that.

So 30% of 500K is 150K credit to offset that 250K.K. So now I've actually only taken $100,000 out of my pocket to do $500,000 worth of work. That's really incredible. That's something we can do. That's the research development tax credit. And again, it has to be for something innovative and their rules for it. You can only do it for five years, $250K max per year. So what did you spend that on this year?

Well, I haven't this year. Okay. But I plan to in the next years. Yeah. Wow. Why didn't you do it for? this year. You still got another week. Come up with an idea, Kevin. Right. Well, because I would want to maximize the whole credit. See, like, I don't want to start it this year and then only

use like 50K because then you're five years. One of those years is chopped off. Maybe I do. But see, this is where it'd be nice to have a CPA. We're like, oh, no, no, we do already have $250K. But, you know, accounting is a pain in the life. It's too bad you wouldn't be able to buy a $500,000 asset. Be like, we're testing this out as research and we're going to buy this Picasso over here. Right. that I'm going to hang up in my living room for business purposes and research it. And that's the other thing that makes me so nervous now is that there are so many creative things you can do. But if you don't document it very well, and then you have like an administration that we have now that talks about,

okay, let's ramp up audits, 10x, what we've been doing, then you're going to have a cancerous audit that's going to live with you. And you're just going to hate your life trying to go through that. If you have somebody in-house who does this full-time, I mean, that's obviously a different level. I don't recommend that for everybody, right? But having good books is so, it gives you a lot of peace of mind. Tell us about the other four people you have, though. Yeah. What do they do?

Well, we do various different things. The biggest thing that I'm trying to train folks to do, and it's so difficult, is research. This is probably the most important thing is trying to find good research. And there's plenty of research out there. It's just a matter of finding it. So I have subscriptions to whether it's Vandatrack or Bloomberg Terminal or these other services. And they cost thousands of dollars a month. But to me, they're the cheapest employees because, you know, Bloomberg Terminal,

I now get access to, let's say, 2,000 researchers that are consolidating information there. I don't have to pay for all those salaries, right? But now what we're trying to do is find information. So that could be, oh, J.P. Morgan published an analyst report, and they see a trend happening in, I don't know, electric batteries or something. Well, batteries for electric vehicles. Finding little pieces like that and putting them into larger bits of content is really useful and I think it gives folks a reason to keep coming back to the channel. And so that's what I really like doing is finding unique

perspectives or unique content that I haven't thought of before. So just as an example, one of the things that I thought of recently was it seems like that and all the math kind of reiterated this, but just bottom line, it seems like the hedge funds are shorting stocks purposefully were retail investors are not investing because they're scared about what happened with AMC and GameStop, where they, what hedge funds are really doing is, in the case of GameStop, I think they want a GameStop to go bankrupt, but most of the time hedge funds are trying to protect their overall accounts from losing money. So they pick some stocks to hedge.

In the event the market crashes, they think they'll pick up money on that hedge. But now they're worried about this whole Wall Street bets retail movement coming in and seeing, uh-oh, the short interest is high here. Let's all rush in and squeeze these hedgies out and burn them. When a lot of hedge funds, and I'm not trying to defend hedge funds, but there are definitely some crooked ones, but a lot of hedge funds are really just trying to make sure that if the market crashes, they don't lose everything and then lose all their clients.

Right. So what I noticed is there are four companies particularly, Lemonade, Shift Technology, Corsair, and Tattoo Chef. Genuinely, I know. These have all had substantial declines in retail investments. or even outflows. So there's a service, I think it's like $3,500 a month or whatever, and they'll tell you where retail investors are investing or not.

So they parse out, okay, here's retail, here's, you know, institutional. And when you notice that, like, tattoo-chid, these four companies have had either zero retail inflows or net outflows and the short interest is like 30 to 33 percent, it's a sign that hedge funds can take safety in shorting these companies because they're unlikely to get squeezed out. Now they can track that on the daily basis And if all of a sudden you saw a retail spike Then they can see

Oh, we don't necessarily have to go monitor Every social media form Somebody in the retail community is now pitching this stock They see the spike They can get out early So it's that kind of information that I'd just love And so I spend most of my day Behind a computer screen trying to research stuff like that

And you hire for people to do that with you Yeah But most of that right now is to be training Because it's very like we don't teach that in school Right. Like, for example, if I give, okay, an example here, I found this really, really good piece on the New York Times. They did this phenomenal expose on certain YouTuber,

Chinese travel bloggers, getting paid by the Chinese Communist Party to make positive YouTube videos and blogs. Wow. Yeah. And it's really incredible about how the New York Times even said, people will have access to parts of China that the media won't have access to, like Western media. So Reuters, Associated Press, or whatever,

they're not allowed in certain areas. But then these bloggers are, and then they get a catered experience. Go here, these people are going to walk by or whatever, say nice things. It's funny you mentioned that because all of a sudden, I don't know how, but the YouTube algorithm sometimes recommends me just, like, stuff out the blue, and then I watch it out of curiosity, and now it just keeps recommending. North Korea.

Believe it or not. And there was a tour guide who went through North Korea and it was like this is what it's actually like and it got like 8 million views in like a year and it was a very similar thing.

Square knows that in hospitality, efficiency is everything. That's why the system lets you take payments. Track sales, handle inventory, manage staff, send invoices and keep up with finances all in one place.

Fly through orders with zero mistakes. Get the data you need and keep everything working together. So you're ready for whatever's next. Learn more about their customizable plans that's squareup.com. He acknowledged that it was a very catered tour and they made it seem like everything is fantastic.

But then that led to another video, to another video, and then it was watching this auto documentary of the whole thing that went on with him. But yeah, but it's crazy how they can spin the narrative. It's propaganda coming to YouTube. And, you know, there's always, There always those jaded people in the comments. Like, oh, paid chill or whatever.

Like, I mean, we're not paid by companies or corporations or whatever, unless we disclose a sponsor. But it's interesting to think that countries would do that. And in that New York Times article, they even mentioned that the Communist Party wanted the YouTubers to say things that were bad about the Communist Party as well, but to talk about how great traveling was. Like, oh, yeah, they do this. That's a little weird. But you know what? They're changing.

They're changing. And kind of like trying to acknowledge the stereotype, but then saying, but don't worry, it's getting better. And it's really like this incredible psychology. Then you look at the comments and all the comments are like, can't wait to plan my next trip to Shanghai. No, you know, they planted those. Of course. Yeah. It's really incredible.

The like bots to the top. Yeah. Yeah, it's very, very interesting. So I thought that was incredible. But anyway, so I was going to say about the, so employees in research. Right. So I read that piece. You know, I had a coffee, a couple nights ago I had a coffee at like 11 p.m.

I'm like, I'm going to. The reason for that is, so I get six newspapers every day, and I had gotten like a week behind. And when I get a week behind on newspapers, it's this tall. The stack. We're talking physical newspapers. Physical newspapers. Physical newspapers, okay. And so I took the entire stack and a cup of coffee, and I went through it.

And that was one of the articles I found. See, I found the article on, like, December 22nd. but it was actually published in the paper on December, like, 16th. Had I not had the physical paper, I would have never seen that story. Because the cool thing about the physical papers, it's kind of like blockchain, we go in through the blockchain, right? It's this record that doesn't change because it's there in paper. Right.

Whereas, like, the websites are constantly updated. A few hours, yeah. Every few hours. And so it's only the latest stuff, not the stuff that could be really interesting. That's timeless. So anyway, that's when I found that. And then I'm like, okay, hey, let's go deep on this. and I asked somebody to go to some of these different videos

and, like, give me timestamps, give me clips. Because I, myself, went through some of the videos, and I'll say things. You know, some people say I'm bought by the Chinese government after this article came out, but I'm not. And, yeah, I read off a teleprompter, but I swear I'm not getting a script from the government and, like, in the New York Times article

or, like, these people are often getting scripts from the government. It's hilarious. But could there actually be a chance, though, that they're being honest? Yes, of course, of course. and I think there's it's a mix of both. So I do think there is probably like, hey, say some nice things about us. We'll show you some exclusive areas.

We'll take you to some exclusive restaurants. We'll pay that for you. And sometimes they'll acknowledge that. They'll say like, hey, you know, I'm getting this paid for. So I don't necessarily blame the creators so much. Maybe there should be a little bit more transparency, especially with the comment section. The comment section is sometimes accessible anyway. But it is, I think, the more broadly interesting.

thing is country propaganda now coming to YouTube. And then the reason I brought this up as well is when working with, and this is where I'm trying to train employees because you had asked about that initially, this is where it becomes very, very difficult because my thinking is, okay, I want to be able to stitch together like a 20-minute video putting together clips, comparing it to the article, comparing it to comments, clips, clips, clips, and then this deep dive, which would probably take me three hours to put together. Well, one person had worked on it for three days, and I have no more than the summary of the article. And I'm like, I had the summary of the article that night. I gave you the

summary of the article. And so I've talked to them about that, like, hey, let's go through, let's do this, this, this, but that's where sometimes I feel like I'm a bad boss because it's like, I need to either train harder, or there's a lack of motivation, or I'm just not being really clear with my expectations. I don't know. But that's... is one thing that does frustrate me about being an employer no at that point definitely I feel like three days it's just lack of care and wouldn't they have kept you updated throughout that as well hey Kevin this is taking a lot longer than I thought it would some people do and stuff like a lot of people are afraid to ask though or they're

afraid to bring that up because they don't want to acknowledge that I'm having a difficult time but three days to come up with nothing virtually it's it's painful because then the thought is okay well maybe are they just misplaced is there something else they could do. Is there something else they could do better? But that's always so hard because sometimes you wonder, is it, are they in the right place at all? Are they, do they not like me anymore? Are they resentful of me? Like, what happened? You know, so it's, you know, it's interesting. I was talking to, I was with Jason Oppenheim last night and we got together after a long time, haven't seen him for a while. He mentioned to me that whatever you get in like the first month,

usually that's what you're going to get. The people don't change. So he acknowledged that the people who are really pushing themselves, they'll do that from the very beginning. There's nothing that you could do to incentivize someone to push themselves beyond what they're already doing. So I believe that. And he's hired quite a few people,

and he's not been shy about letting people go that just don't fit very quickly. He's a smart and shrewd business person. I admire that about him. And so it's sad because, you know, again, You don't want to be the person that fires people. Yeah. But I did want to talk about something else. There's a lot of, I noticed a lot of people,

they give like real estate or mortgage advice on TikTok, and I'm just shaking my head, and I'm like, okay, well, maybe I need to go in there and make something. And I'm not trying to say, like, my perspective is right. I just have a very particular perspective. Like, no, that's not the Kevin way. And again, I make my mind. It sucks because everyone is to, and I acknowledge TikTok is something that we should all be doing. All of us know we should.

It's like going to the gym. Like, you know you should be going. the gym every day, but you don't do it. And TikTok is one of those things for me where it says, I can't seem to get into it. And it's so, I don't like how basic it is. Like, I see the people doing well. And Mark Tilbury is a perfect example of someone who's done TikTok

incredibly well. He's done everything right for TikTok. But it's so basic. And I, like, that's how I started on YouTube is doing this really basic videos, like the three best index funds to buy. And like what an index fund is. I can't bring myself to do that again. But he's doing it and it's doing so well.

I think it's because you're trying to mentally grow and you've so checked out of the basics. I empathize with this. That it's kind of like, do I really want to explain whether you should pay down your 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 3% or not? Do you want to pay that offer?

Do I really want to go through that again? And I get it. I'd rather be like, oh, my gosh, what is the latest Barclays research and finding the latest cutting-edge thing that's going on or whatever? that makes me excited and I feel really successful doing that but that stuff doesn't do well on TikTok

No but you have to realize too For myself is that like this is a new audience Like you're saying this to new people who have never seen you before And have no idea what they're doing Honestly even if you posted those original videos again Or just remade them on your main channel There'll probably be a lot of people who are part of your new audience that have said Yeah well that's what I do every now and then is they take the old videos that have done well from like two to three years ago and I'm like

How could I just update this and make it better? And there's definitely, I'd say, maybe the few percent of people who notice that, Graham, you made this video three years ago. But nobody goes back and watches. Nobody goes back and watches the old videos. But I mean, those people were like, I've seen this before.

It's like, okay, and click out and wait for the next one. Yeah, no, I agree with you. You know, the most fun I've had on a video recently was the Metaverse video, and that was your idea, Jack? And what was it out of ten? What was it out of ten? Oh, was it two? It was a two out of thin.

It almost tied with the one. It was like a few thousand views away from the one, but the one just kept doing better. But yeah, it was a new topic that I just immersed myself in for 48 hours. I spent a long time on that video doing everything I cut. I loved it. That's fine.

It's so much fun. And that's new. See, because now you walk away from that with all this extra knowledge, too, about the Metaverse. That's what I've been trying to reinforce in Graham, is that he needs to do new stuff because that's what you're great at. You're constantly reading stuff and keeping people up to date on all of these new things that are happening.

But a lot of the times, like, we're still posting videos, like, credit cards, like how to increase your credit score. And I know that those do well, but at the same time, if you push the envelope a little bit, like Andre's doing as well with, like, the Metaverse stuff. And he even did an options video, which you've never wanted to explore. Yeah. do you feel like every day is like,

you know, we're doing Neo again. Neo's up to 33. Tesla's down. Yeah, I mean, to some degree, you had actually mentioned that you like watching. I love them.

So maybe I think the question is for you. We got to ask you, Graham, because, yeah, I mean, something, like, I wake up and like, oh, you know, it's early. I got to do the market open and market clothes. And sometimes I'll be in the middle of research in the middle of day, like,

I've got to go do that market close, right? So it feels like a little bit of a wedge in the day. I enjoy doing it. And obviously people like it. But I don't know, Graham, why do you like it? You know what? So I'll be honest. I've seen every single one of your live stream for the last few months.

Well, actually really since the beginning. I watched them all two speed beginning to end. Every single one. I don't think I've missed a live stream from you. And in the morning, it's because it's become a part of my morning routine where I don't start the day until I turn on your live stream and I have my coffee. And I'm like, you know, doing my own research while listening to yours. Same with the market end.

The part I don't like sometimes is I feel like sometimes the stock is a little repetitive when you're going through every stock individually and like this one's up, this one's down, this is up. I love the news. When you go through the news, what's on the Bloomberg terminal? Let's do this. You know, the stocks are good, but I think the news is interesting.

And I wonder if you took 15 minutes before and before doing a live stream to plan out the top five news articles that you want to cover and talk about, even if you glance over it, just a headline in a few sentences. There's a two-minute summary on this one. Two-minute summary on this. Yeah. I think that's what would make a difference because I love the news. I like the news portion of that, the best. What about tax write-offs?

Have you thought about tax write-offs this year? Oh, yes. I didn't tell you guys. Neither one of you guys. So I was talking to Brandon Turner, who introduced me to this guy who he says is like the number one commercial wholesaler. And I was blown away at this guy.

He's like 30 years old. We could get him on the podcast. If you guys want to see him on the podcast, Just let us know. He's 30 years old. He's already got $100 million at the real estate. Himself or like under management? Himself.

Oh, wow. Himself started from nothing as a wholesaler. But he's that good. And his thing is basically he'll find like a vacant building and he'll do all the work to basically say, if you buy this building, we could get this tenant in there. And the tenant's going to start. They're going to sign a tenure. Like big tenants are going to sign a 10 year lease.

And he just has the connections. He's so knowledgeable. But I explained the situation to him. and I said, you know, I got like two weeks, and I got this big tax bill coming up, and I would love to spend enough on a property to write off that tax bill. And he came to me with a deal.

It didn't work out because he couldn't guarantee that it closed by the end of the year, and it was a lot of work, but it was like 80 units in Minneapolis, and it was a fixer-upper. So he's like, and it was $22 million. And he said the seller was willing to carry some of the loan. I love this deal.

Honestly, it's just I couldn't guarantee to close and it would be a lot of work. So he says you're going to be spending probably the next six to eight months fixing it up. And I'm like, I can't do that. But basically, I take all my cash that I have sitting on the sidelines for taxes and I put it into this building instead. Cost segregated. The first year ride off was almost $6 million in the first year. But it has to be in service for you to get the right off. So you would have had to, I guess, call it in service with the existing tenants and then renovated?

Okay, I guess you could do that. Yeah. Yeah, well, that's one of the cool things about being in the real estate industry is you could take that loss against some of your other ordinary income. Correct. But that's not necessary. Hey, Ontario. Come on down to Bed MGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price is 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 Righteous Pick is only. Beatt MGM and GameSense Remind you to play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 180. 6-6-3-1-2,600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. It's really open to everybody, but unless you're like a broker.

Right. So the downside, though, couldn't guarantee to close by the end of the year. So that one works. So it didn't, from that standpoint, but also it was more work than I wanted to take on. And for such a big purchase, like, that's a purchase that I would probably spend a month or two, like really analyzing it. And he's like, if you need this deal, you have to get everything into the lender by 6 p.m. today.

And I was like, I have until 6 p.m. They've already done appraisers. They've done everything on it. Yeah, I would be curious to know. I think this would be an interesting podcast guest, because how, so what did they start with? And I am skeptical that they have a $100 million portfolio of themselves. I mean, maybe they do.

They could do that with, you know, I mean, maybe it was $20 million of equity that was a really good deal and then financed that they were able to balloon into a $100 million dollar portfolio. Yeah. I'm sure there's obviously going to be debt. Oh, yeah. I mean, even if there's $65 million of debt, or even $50 million in debt,

that's still a lot. That's created by 30. So it'd be really interesting to see how that built up. So I think that would be phenomenal. The other option is, so this year I basically, I'm going to pay a big tax bill. It is what it is. I waited too long.

So that was my fault on that. But the other option, I was thinking about maybe doing something with Brandon, Brandon Turner from bigger pockets. And maybe we could work together on a deal and I could go on 50-50 with him or something. like that.

So he's doing like mobile homes. Correct. He has a syndicate where he's basically buying parks. Yeah. Okay. But it was interesting to hear him talking about mobile homes and how he runs that business.

And it's, it's the cash flow from these mobile homes. Sure. Is incredible. To make 12 to 15% to have very little responsibility other than management. Like you're not fixing up these mobile homes yourself. They own them. You're just renting the land.

Correct. Very interesting. And then sometimes you could buy the mobile homes and then sell them. And then, you're carrying basically this this mobile home that you own but what kind of how could you cost secur because you can't depreciate land so how do you get a tax right off doing that buying the mobile homes and then selling them yeah right and then selling them to the people who live there and so instead of taking out a mortgage on a house you are basically you're the lender for the asset

that you own oh I see okay you guys are lending on them correct what he's doing as well that's incredible because then you're almost it's almost like you're buying inventory correct yeah because they're like registered with a DMV right right So that's very interesting. There are so many creative things you can do. Sometimes I worry that that end of the year rushed for tax write-offs leads to bad decisions, which I almost made. What was your bad decision? I wanted to buy a plane.

Oh, the Grants Cardone method. This is a clip right here. This is a clip. The Grant Cardone method. Well, it's mostly because I also... You could put KP on the side of the plane? It's just me lying down. Half-raf capital.

Right where the landing gear comes. comes out, it's like, right, you know. But what's interesting about it is, so picture this. I'm just going to use round numbers here to make an example. Let's say you had a $20 million of income, and you bought a $20 million plane, you put 10% down on it. That means you're putting $2 million down, and then you're saving about $10 million in taxes. Yeah.

That tax write-off would pay probably for operating a plane for three to maybe three and a half years. Pilots, hangar fees, landing fees, gas, maintenance, they're expensive. It's crazy. The problem with this is, well, multi-folded. One, you have to have a really good use for the plane. The Puerto Rico idea would have made a lot of sense that we talked about earlier. Now, that would make a lot of sense to have your own plane for it. The second problem, though, is if you ever had to resell it, you'd be hit with all the depreciation recapture.

So let's say... Now, is that taxed is ordinarily? That's ordinary income then, the recapture? Absolutely. Yeah. It's not a capital investment. It would just be ordinary income. So that would be really bad because then, let's say in three years, you're like,

I'm going to sell this plan. You sell it for $15 million or whatever. All of that $15 would be taxed. So you'd hang $7.5 or whatever on taxes, which would hurt. But then probably the biggest thing that really hurt everything for all of the math that I was doing, which I had purposes for it, is the amount. of inflation you have right now and in plane values. So people are selling planes today for $25 million that they bought for $22 million. No. Why? Why? For years ago. Because if you, well, first

of all, because it is such a lucrative tax advantage, people are like, I don't care, I want it, right? Like, I want the tax right off. But the airplane manufacturers are so behind because they can't get chips or parts out of China or whatever. They're dealing with labor shortages. is, like there's this airline manufacturer or airplane manufacturer called Embraer. If I wanted to buy a Enom 300, which is like an $8 million list price plane, and it could get me around California,

probably to Texas. I don't think I could get to Florida without stopping, but I could get to Texas. So it'd be really good, like, middle of the United States and West Coast. Like, if you were going to do a real estate fund or something, you could get around easily. And then, you know, I get an airport 10 minutes away in Oxnard,

which is really cool and convenient. But anyway, if I wanted to buy one new, I would have to wait until the summer of 2023 to get one. And if I bought a used one, I'll be overpaying. So now imagine this worst case scenario. You take the tax right off, buy a plane, after three years you realize you don't need it.

Now, not only did you overpay, so your depreciation is like massive, like your loss on actually having that asset is massive, but then you're paying depreciation, recapture the extra taxes. You'd get screwed. And it's just like, do you really need it? is probably a bigger question

as opposed to just being... That's really interesting. It makes sense because used cars right now are insane. So what's cool, the Ford GT I bought, I paid 306 for it,

one just sold with the almost identical mileage on it for 390. And that was only eight months, what, maybe eight or nine months later.

So that car did just as well as the S&P 500. Yeah, I don't think it'll last. No, I don't think so. No, no, no. I'm not trying to sling. am your car. No, no, no, no. That's also a concern that I have about buying something like,

if you bought a plane, let's say, and you overpaid for it. Well, then you're literally buying at the top of the market. Well, you know what's about. Here's my thought. Let's say the market does end up going down, or it softens for cars like that. My thought is that the people buying those plans or buying those cars are in a position where they don't need to sell it at a loss. So like, for me, for example, let's say I did pay the $3.90 for this car, and now it's worth $3.30. Yes. I'd just be like, ah, you know what? You know what? You know, Unless I need to sell it, I'm not going to sell it. I'm just going to hold it. So it's a bit of a different market. Like the art market's very similar.

But see, the hoddle costs for art or like zero, minus maybe some insurance. The hoddle costs for your car. I mean, what is it going to cost you maintain your car in your garage or show car? I don't know, two grand a year max. It's not much, yeah. The huddle costs for a $20 million plane are probably $1.5 to $2 million a year. That's true. Hanger fees. There's limited hangar space because everybody wants a plane. Now, how much does a hangar cost? You know, I have kind of just lumped it all together that my fixed costs for a $20 million

are about one and a half to two. That's crazy. My understanding is that's part of the variable. The hangar fees could be like $5,000 to $6,000, or I guess three to $7,000 a month, depending on the size of the plane, right? I mean, the way, just, I mean, quick math, it was probably something to the effect of $100,000 a month as your payment on the plane, right? Yeah.

You're probably looking at somewhere around a depreciation of one and a half a year. You know, in some of these, in depreciation, right? Just lost value. That's not even a cost. That's just, you know your asset value is losing one and a half a year. Because if that plane is 10 years old, it's going to be worth half as much it is now. It's not an depreciating asset like real estate. Then you have, yeah, the maintenance.

Stuff breaks. Yeah. And so you don't want stuff to break when you're in the sky. So you're paying massive warranty programs, massive fees for warranty programs, so that way your engines hopefully don't break and little sensors don't break. They were showing me, because I visited some of the planes,

they were showing me that one of these little needle sensors that looked about this long, maybe, just a little needle that came out of the front of the plane, measures altitude and all these altimeter. I don't know. I don't know plane stuff. measures a bunch of stuff. They said if somebody just like walked into it and like bent it a little bit and we had to replace

it, it'd be $75,000. Oh, yikes. Yeah, yeah. That's this little tiny thing. You want to paint the plane because you can't wrap a plane. You have to paint a plane. Why can't you wrap it? Well, because why do you have to keep it painted?

So, well, I mean, she don't. But I mean, like, I just, I wanted to paint myself on it because that's what I do. Crazy stupid stuff. Oh, no, really? But you can't wrap it because. You put your phone number on the side of it. Absolutely, man. Everything that you do in aerospace has to be approved by the FAA.

And anything that increases the drag on the outside, no, no. Because now you've changed all of the calculations for the plane. You want to paint the outside of the plane? This plane we're looking at, $300,000. No way. Listen to this. So interior, you have, like, lumber for the, next to the upholstery, you know, where your armrests are and whatever.

And you wanted that to look good. You could restain it all. for $280,000 just for restaining the lumber inside of the plane, which is so different. Is that due to like regulations or is that due? Because I feel like you could just pay a handyman. Yeah, right. Stain it, right?

So any change to a plane has to, again, be certified. So certifications. Oh, the inside stands as well. You cannot. Really? You can't change anything on the inside. Let's see a faucet. Are they going to know?

Do people do, is it like a rental property where it's like, yeah, you're supposed to put the AC in with a permit, but people do it without it all the time. I was actually thinking about wanting to do like the mile high podcast and do like a podcast on it. That's a great name for the podcast. Yeah, now somebody's going to take it. But so I was thinking about that.

But the problem is if you're flying, it's noisy. You could use good microphones. That's useful. But where are you going to fly? You're just going to fly in circles and waste a bunch of gas. Like that's very bad. People are going to eat. You could use it as a set though.

Right. So, but then you use it as a set, though. a set. Have you ever been on a plane when it's on the ground and you're like, please get in the air because it's so hot? You ever get that feeling? No. Wouldn't you have like recirculating air and so let me see? Okay. You could build a set that just looks like a plane. My question to you all didn't work, but every time I get on a plane, I'm like, please turn the freaking air on. And it isn't until you're actually getting airborne that you're getting really good circulation. Maybe people in the comments can justify me here. But, so I asked them to close all of the little things and

we closed them up and we crank the AC. Because you know my studio, it's ice cold in there. They crank the AC and I'm like, it's hot. You're sitting on the tarmac, black, you know, that heat is reflecting up. It sucked. It was not a good set. Like you said, it would be better to just build a fake set that looks like you're inside of a plane than actually film inside a plane.

I wanted to mount cameras and lights. And I'm like, oh, well, I could just use like clamps or whatever. Nope, no, no, no, no. You change anything to the weight dynamics or whatever. It's a cluster F. I think if you're looking for a good ride off this year, do the plane idea. I like I hate to, I feel like I'm giving Kevin like a way to compete with us now. Kevin's going to do well, doing the mile high podcast.

Hey, man, I'm an abundance mentality type of guy. Really? I'm more of a keep it to ourselves. No, let's not give Kevin any ideas. It gets translated to you. If you did, like you had the plane here and you had like the really nice. seats and you had like LCD or LED screens as the windows and you could project like lightning and stuff like that like how cool would that be or you could project like you know clouds like kind of like

passing by or whatnot as though you're in an airplane yeah and you could even like if you want to go crazy you could do it as though like you rotate the uh the cameras a little bit to make it seem like you're taking off that would be cool and you could act it all right we're going to take off now with our guest and you rotate the cameras a little bit, make it seem like you're going back, or you put the whole thing on a hydraulic. You know, so some of this thing sort of actually...

It's getting some turbulence sometimes, but it's just the camera shaking. That would be funny. Or no, you actually have it as though like the whole set kind of like moves up and down to your drinks kind of shake and whatnot. So I went, so I did the podcast with Cody Coeke's people recently

and check out their set. So they have... Yeah, I did that. Yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't with Cody Co. It was their trillionaire mindset or something. Oh. So that, yeah. But anyway, that's their set. And they have it so that these are

screens, giant TVs, basically, they have mounted here that make it seem like you're in space. The whole thing. And so like constantly, everything seems like you're just in space. Air drop out to me. So one of the things that I've noticed is I honestly don't know how much people care about the set.

people come for the value of the content. Now, that's a thesis that I have. Because that matters. Okay. That's your opinion. No, that's a fact. I saw your video about an argument. You want me to make an argument?

So I've done both without a set and with a set. My videos have done substantially better with a set. The iced coffee hour, I noticed an almost immediate difference when we did the set. I told Jack I didn't think the set mattered at all. I liked the couch approach because I thought, You know, it's more casual. It's more natural, having a real conversation. And, you know, I didn't think it was needed.

We did the set almost immediately. The videos started doing better. I think it adds a sense of professionalism. And when people are, even when you're accounted for any better retention, like, do you think your videos would be a 5% better retention, even 1% better retention with a nice set? Well, so I agree with you. I think having a beautiful set has,

benefits. And who knows, maybe they'll encourage people to come back more. But personally, I think the most important thing in our space, compared to like a vloggers kind of podcast or an entertainer's kind of podcast, I think in our space, we're always trying to provide value to people. Okay, here's a new way for you to make money. Here's a new way to think about something. Here's a way to succeed or whatever. I think if that's missing, I don't care what's that you got. Nobody's watching your crap. Whereas you could be in front of a wall. If you're providing the best information possible, people love you. Look just as an example. Look at the guy, Dr. John Campbell, maybe put like a little B roll of his setup or whatever. It's just him in front of his laptop webcam, and then he has a paper

camera where he shows like some of his statistics on a piece of paper and he moves it around. You see his finger run it or whatever. Nobody cares at all about his set. The guy's got like, over the last month because of Amhercon, he got a hundred million views in a month. Nobody cares at all. What do they care about? This guy knows what he's talking about. He's knowledgeable. He's researched. I want the facts. Can you sustain that?

No, no. I don't think, because we actually saw the views on his channel ramp during the initial COVID search, but then plummet substantially when COVID wasn't a big topic anymore. So you're right. So that's where maybe, does maybe the set help with sustainability? I don't know, what do you think? I think it matters, but there's extreme diminishing marginally utility as we discussed.

Oh yeah, I agree with that. With set. So it's like as long as you have a good set, you're fine. Good enough. But like realistically, you could drop like easily $300,000, on like a super nice set. But like it's not going to have,

I don't think it could necessarily bring that much value back to you if you already have a $5 to $10,000 set. For example, the iced coffee hour set all in with cameras and everything is about $12,000. No way. These three cameras are worth more than that. Round it to $30. Okay, well, we got the custom table for free. So if we throw that in, maybe it'd be like closer to $20,000.

But still, at the same point, it's like we could have a two, three, like, I mean, if we, you know, shilled at the cash or whatever. But I don't know if it would necessarily bring us back that much value. Even in the next, like, three years. Yeah, that's also true. Just because it's good enough. But that's fair. The couch was not good enough.

That was really not good. I mean, I, okay, I think that's a fair middle ground. It's like, hey, we've got good enough set, good enough cameras. Like, I've always asked like, oh, should I make a new set? Would it bring? Remember, we went to Disney or what? Was it Disney or Hollywood? Whatever.

Oh, Disneyland. The Harry Potter. Was it Disneyland? We saw the bookshelf in the Harry Potter. Universal. Right. Yeah, whichever it was. We went on the Harry Potter ride. And wherever the Harry Potter ride is, we went on that.

And there was this really sick library set up. I love that set. Where it looked like a sorcerer's table and all these books. And it was a gorgeous set. I mean, that set design is probably worth half a mill right there. It was so good. Would people watch my videos more because of that set? in a way I do think the answer could be yes.

But then, and this is the hard question is, would it bring us that money back? And see, this is the question that I had to make or asked myself with a plane as well is like, if I'm spending $3 million a year on a plane after my tax write-off period pays for itself. So first three years free basically because of the tax write-off, and then I pay $3 million a year for the plan. Am I going to make $3 million more per year because I have this? And if the answer is, sure, you'll make $3 million. dollars more per year, is it worth breaking even? Like, I have to have a return on it to do it, right? And I think sometimes we get lost, and this happened to me, like I admit, I almost screwed up.

Like, I got so caught up in, I should do it, I should take the tax right off, but then I haven't really proven the need for it yet or the return on that. And it's the opposite of what I do in real estate. Like, would I buy a house because I'm like, oh, I really love this house? My tenants are going to love this, or am I going to buy rental property because the numbers makes sense. Either it cash flows really well or it's an upside down deal, like a wedge deal, right? Like, I do that for real estate. Why would I not do that with a plane? That's when I finally realized I'm like, all right. I would argue realistically, if you're going to drop $300,000 on a new set, you would get a way better ROI, paying someone, even if it's $100 grand, to just post stuff on TikTok. If you're looking at R. Probably. Yeah, you're probably right. You would get way much more value doing that than spending on money.

You know what? A daily news segment would actually be really, and you could do this so easily. Just, just, Daily News segment, 45 seconds, where you just summarize. 10 seconds a topic. Yeah, exactly. That would do really well. I would try that, Kevin, for 30 days. And you don't even have to post seven days a week. Five days a week.

And you have to stay consistent. Like 4 p.m. a day, Monday through Friday. 45 seconds. 45 seconds. Here's what's happened in the market today. And I have a feeling in the beginning you're not going to do much. Because people are going to be scrolling TikTok and be like, you know, I'm not interested.

I think after 30 days of you doing that, you're going to gain such a loyal audience who's going to look forward to that. That's a very good idea. Yeah. Yeah. I wrote it down. I like that. That's a trick with TikTok.

It just has to be quick. I want to say I might do that. I should tell myself I won't do that. And the good thing with that with you is that I know you could do it in one take. And I think your total time commitment per day on that, because you've already done the research anyway,

is probably five minutes a day. Realistically. A very good idea. I mean, I encourage people. You know, this is a big question why I think we always get all the time too. Like, hey, I want to be a creator too. Like, what should I do?

Post. Just freaking post. And this is what I'm literally not doing on TikTok because I'm just not posting. And people are like, oh, but I don't know what to make. I don't know what to make. Well, make, try it. Try 10 different things on TikTok.

Try 10 different things on YouTube. And guess what? After a month, you're going to look back and go, well, that did well, that failed. Okay, do more what does well. that could do well but I'll only know if I try it. You know what, speaking which, I called it first if we could do a TikTok at the end of this.

Oh, okay. With you. Yeah, absolutely. All right. I'm happy to do it. I called it first. I said it first. It was my idea, Jack.

Okay, take it, take it, dang. My idea. Look, I think it's the collaboration. It's so awesome. What about, so for next year? What are you going to do tax wise? You're going to go real estate. I'm like 95% set on buying a property because I got,

How much did I get? I got 7 million invested in stocks this year. Okay. And I basically, yeah, so I wanted my stocks in real estate to almost be 50-50. And when I count equity in the real estate versus equity in the stocks, it's almost 50-50. Actually, it would be 50-50. You count like cryptocurrency and stuff like that. I would count that. So, yeah.

So I hit my goal this year to be 50-50 between stocks and real estate on that. So now I think I want to get back to real estate. But just because I think the tax write-ups are so great. And I'm realizing to, like, I got in the, the stocks thinking, ooh, you know, if I spent 3% a year, then that could be, you know, whatever 3% of 7,000, you know, 210 a year I could live off of a passive income forever. And then I'm thinking to myself, well, realistic, I'm never going to sell. Like, I look at the dividends and that portfolio generates, I think it's $58,000 a year

in dividends. And I think to myself, well, I'm just going to live off the 58th. There you go. Why live off the 210? So I think psychologically, I can't sell something. Even if I were to retire, I couldn't sell the 3% the year. I love it. So I think for real estate, I think it makes sense because then at least I'd have some cash flow that is coming anyway and it's forces you to, yeah.

You'll, you know, be, I don't know, what, like 95? How old is you? 30 years? I don't know, 100 and I'd carry the two. But, you know, then these properties are paid off too. I mean, not necessarily, I mean, when you're retired, that's great. Imagine, I mean, I was talking to somebody, like I mentioned that wholesaler yesterday. So he's got, I don't know, 20 properties or something like that.

And I think he's about 80% paid off relatively close to retirement. And probably somewhere in the neighborhood of, you know, I guess without disclosing too much, multi hundreds of thousands of dollars and just passive income. It doesn't have to do anything every year. But the interesting challenge or issue that he has is he's like, Kevin, I want to do something. And so it's such a weird thing to see that. And him, who's, you know, in his, I don't know how old he is 60, 65 or something like that. You know, we think, oh, we're going to retire when we're 65.

I couldn't retire. I don't think I could retire. No. You know, and he's in that place where it's like, I don't have to do anything. The property is just paid for it. You know, you buy them and over time you pay them off. Now they're paid off. Now what?

And I was like, what's the next thing? He keeps asking me, Kevin, what am I going to do when I grow up? And it's like, it's really interesting. It's, there's something just about working. I don't know how I can retire either. People always ask. same way. What's the most common question I get, Kevin, what's the number where you're just like, that's it, sell everything and retire? You know, it's like, it's not about a number. The whole game for

me is not about a number. Yeah. Graham, you have a number? I did. No, at first, I looked through my old Reddit posts, by the way, from like, no, it's five. Oh, wow. It was five. And this is when I was probably 22 or 23. And I remember posting on the financial independence up read, I'm like, you know, $5 million would be my number. That would be enough to get like a nice, like, one and a half million. dollar place in Los Angeles. You could invest the rest in rental property, and that would be enough. But yeah, and then it was 10. Now it's going to be, I mean, I don't have a number, but, you know, milestones.

20, I think would be just the next milestone just a hit. But I think a hundred. A hundred to me seems like, yeah. A tenth of a bill. A tenth of a billion, yeah. That's big, right. But I just want to see a hundred. No, okay.

But it wouldn't change it. No, it doesn't change. No. That's the thing. If anything, it just gives you an opportunity to start businesses or to do things that you couldn't have otherwise done. What do you think about the whole, like the Elon Musk, like taxed a rich thing and stuff like that? I don't know if you want to talk about that. Now we can talk about.

What about it specifically? Well, just, you know, there's all of this talk about, okay, we should raise taxes on people who have over a certain net worth or tax people based on their net worth. Oh, the wealth tax? Yeah, the wealth tax. Does that disincentivize? Does that disincentivize people from doing projects or working out? I got to say if the tax, well, yes and no, because if the tax rate were high enough for me, I'd spend it. So if, let's say the tax rate was 90% if I didn't spend it, you guarantee I'd be spending all of it.

That's true. What would be the point? So there's got to be a middle ground between where the tax rates make sense to encourage spending, but not enough to disincentivize saving. And I remember a while ago, I was doing research on like the capital gains tax, and it was 28% was found statistically to be the point where it would encourage you to hold on long term, but not enough to incentivize you to sell. So it was 28%. I'm sure that also exists with taxes. To me, I think 37% incentivizes saving with the mindset that most likely it's going to be going up. So I'd rather save it 37% and spend later when it's 50%, let's just say. and it's worth more.

Or you're in California already at 50%. Or you're 52. I think it's 52%. Or it's actually, it's 50, what was it, 57, 58% if you count short-term capital gains with the net investment tax. Yeah, that's true because, and then you're also losing other benefits.

Correct. Yeah, that's the overall tax. No, it wasn't it 60, oh, it would have been 62% had they raised it back up to 39. Yeah, it was insane. But at 62% I'd be spent. it. And I would just, I buy whatever, just because I'm like, you know, I may as well. Maybe the argument there is, would that generate jobs or?

And that's the thing, too. Potentially. So I think a higher tax rate would encourage more spending that would benefit the economy, but what is the cost of not saving or what is the cost of not reinvesting long term? Now, what about the, another concern I had with like the plain idea is like, oh my gosh, but like what if next year you get canceled, right? And now you have a plane and that liability. Does that ever cross your mind? Oh my God, all the time.

Because it could all just go away to the arm. You don't realize how fast things could change. And, you know, I don't want to go into examples, but I've had probably three times throughout the last few years that I could think of where I thought this is it. And it's just, but it's insane how quickly things could change. Like people will love you one day. and one comment or one thing comes up and it's tight turns.

And there's very much a ripple effect where it's like you say the wrong thing and then people have to disassociate themselves because then it reflects on them. And in a way it's like, I get it. If let's say, you know, I'm not accusing you of it, but let's just say something comes out with you. And, you know, Kevin's made out to be the bad guy. We would almost have to disassociate ourselves because if we work together, then it's like, Well, you're supporting someone who did this or said this, even if you're not guilty of it,

even if it's just an accusation. I disagree with it. Does that matter if the public perceptions is otherwise? If everyone believes something to be true, even if it's not, do I want to insert myself there and say, well, and that becomes the balance. It's like, what's worth fighting for, what's not? I had this really good, in my opinion, video that I spent days on making,

and it was everything about my campaign platform. and I've had B-roll in it about what's wrong with California's water situation or homeless situation or whatever. The video was about 45 minutes long, and I think it was one of my best in terms of the problems and solutions for California. But one little part of it made a reference. It had B-roll of the homeless issue in California, and Ben Shapiro talking about how bad the homeless problem is in California.

He was right about everything he said about the homeless problem, and the B-roll was perfect. That one clip made a lot of folks think that, uh-oh, Kevin supports Ben Shapiro. We can't vote for him because we don't like Ben Shapiro. Yeah. And it's like, like you got to be kidding me. Like, what he said

was about homelessness and he was right about what he said. Don't you agree? Don't care? I hate Ben. Therefore, I hate you. Yeah. It's scary, honestly. And, you know, I've talked to Jack about this too. It's just like, it's always the things like you're very care of like I am so careful even I'll be on like even something

at having a drink this is this is one of the few times I've ever been on camera drinking anything I don't swear I don't drink I don't do anything I'm so I script everything I say so it's you know I'm really careful about what I say I want to put out there and I'm thinking can someone misinterpret this and as careful as you

could be sometimes the thing you'd never even think would be an issue is an issue and it's like well I didn't mean it that way that wasn't my intention but I could see how someone could perceive it that way and it just it is what it is. So I've basically taken the approach that like every month, I'm just month by month at this point. It's like every month you could be perfect. Be thankful for what happened. Okay. Yeah. So like mentally I'm preparing myself for like and I hate

to like ever will something into existence, but I never want to think of something like, oh, I screwed this up. But, you know, I just always think to myself, I'm really grateful for where I've gone so far. I've gone way further than I ever would have expected. If something were to happen, I'd be really happy with the point up until that you've done that's a good point it's like you're reaching like checkpoints in a game and you're saving your progress and like I did really well but that point of the game but that's why I've saved everything it's like you die here it's fine you say but that's why I've saved everything it's because I know um you know one thing or you know guilty or not one one thing could completely everything could stop so what about um if you had to start over let's just

say you or I or both of us got canceled or whatever like we got canceled over this interview or whatever, both of us, would you start over? Or would you just, that's fine, I'll take my dollars, throw it into, you know, a dividend stock and just, depends. I think it depends on what it would be and how bad it would be. I mean, I would hope that there would be, like, you're deleted from YouTube, it's the scenario. You got deleted from YouTube. Okay, just, you know, it's funny, I did a podcast with Ryan Panetta, and he asked me, like, if you were not doing YouTube, what would you do right now? Okay. And I said music. Oh, wow. Okay. So, so, really, as a passion project, or to, like, I can't do anything without the purpose of making money behind it.

So I find a way to make money from it. Good. But I would be doing music. Dang. Well, music and coffee. Music and coffee, yeah. The brand survives. I do music.

What about you? If I got canceled? Yeah. Well, I'd still have to work. I'm not quite at that point yet where I would just chill. But I'd probably reach out to Andre and be like, yo, Andre, you need some help. Oh, find another job. Okay.

Yeah, I find another job or something like that. Or just do my own. Well, actually, no. Why didn't you say Kevin? Well, because you got canceled. Oh, oh. We're all here. You know what?

Who would be worse to get canceled? Me or, well, who would be worse? Yeah, because, well, like, I was about to say, like, if you got canceled, I couldn't. I need this more probably. Yeah, but, but like, I couldn't do the podcast without you. I mean, that would be the thing. And then, you know, I don't know. If you got canceled, I would, I would probably, I'd call up Nate O'Brien.

And I'd be like, man, please join me. He's like, no, sorry, man. I'm only posting once every other month. He's got a great lifestyle. Oh, yeah. So we went to Vegas. with him at this point years ago, it was 18 or 19 or something. Maybe it was in 2018.

And I remember walking with him. It was ice cold outside too. But he was so happy. And it was just so carefree, which was so wonderful because he had no stress at all in his life. And just, yeah, you know, I post what I want? And I'm like, well, what? So you don't have a schedule now? Yeah, what do you do?

Oh, I just travel with my car and I go places and do whatever I want. Yeah. And I'm just like, man, I wish I could do that. But you know what? But I don't. But you know what? The thing is, I don't think you wouldn't be happy with that. Nate would hate your life.

He would hate it. The schedule, the constant responsibilities. I've seen what he's about. He loves the no obligation. And I envy him too. I'm like, he has all of his stuff. Basically, he could fit in the back of his car. And that's it.

All of the stuff he has. It's not complicated. And you could go anywhere at any time. But I don't think I would be happy. with that of not having that strict schedule having that obligate like I like that to go back to So almost like a different definition of happiness for everyone. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, but I think all of us would like to be Nate. But I don't know if we would be happy with being Nate for more than like a few days at a time. Okay. I think it's a different type of happiness because when I

talk to Nate like off camera and everything, he is like you said the most chill person and he seems so happy and just stress-free at all times, but then sometimes I'll talk to other people, like I'll talk to you off camera and stuff like that, and you're stressed out sometimes. I'm happy sometimes. All of us. So if you could say that every person has their own idea of what happiness is, but I also think that like there is a really, like, I think there is an objective truth to balancing work and life.

Yeah, yeah. Well, everything's the balance, right? Right, and it's just tough to find that balance. And also there's another thing I want to point out, I wanted to point out, but it was I think that it would be really tough for you guys to get canceled. Because I think the finance, the people that consume finance content, all that they care about is your credibility, the credibility of what you're saying, right?

So, like, for example, if you guys did, like, something sketchy, like fraud, or you guys were sellouts, you guys pumped something like that. That could cancel you guys. Like a coin, right? Like, you made a coin. You frauded everything. Exactly.

But I think you guys are way too smart to do something like that and just moral. But as far as, like, saying something maybe, like, not so PC or something like that, I honestly think people would not cancel you because they're here for the information more than they're here for like the personality just in general. That's an interesting. So, POV. That's, I mean, that's, that makes sense. But, you know, but sometimes you don't know exactly.

Like, like seeing Ellen, you canceled. She got canceled. Oh, wow. You haven't seen that. That was big for mistreatment of employees. Oh, I heard about that. I never really liked it. And she stepped away from her show.

I mean, she said she's going to, I'm sure she was going to do it anyway at some point, but it's like, well, if I do it now or five years, I may as well to do it now. Yeah. Or like the, I mean, I don't know enough about this to really go deep in it, but even like Andrew Cuomo. Like, could you imagine? Yeah. Yeah. Like, one's got a solid gig at CNN. The other one's got, you know, he's, well in politics and well established in politics.

And then just to go from like, and honestly, people would watch Andrew. Cuomo and his COVID briefings during the beginning of the pandemic. I don't know if you guys did, but like March and April and May of the beginning of the pandemic, I remember Lauren and I would be like, oh, what's, what's Andrew Cuomo got to say? Because like New York was like the epicenter. It was like, I remember when I lived in Florida listening to like the hurricane forecasters, okay, it's now category five. It should make landfall at 7 a.m. And like getting that up to the minute update was always so like, oh my gosh, what's going on? And I remember watching him. And I thought his briefings were good. I mean, obviously now in hindsight, we're like,

okay, some things maybe weren't the best. But, and again, I'm not trying to get political on the podcast, but just to think that you could be at such a place where people are watching you and care about what you say, and then literally now can't. Fired from CNN. The thing is, it's a herd mentality, too. It's if everyone else hates them or her or whoever it is,

then you should too. And what's crazy is it. They shouldn't villainize you if you support them. That's right. Right. But it's, I've noticed, too, and you know this as well. On YouTube, it's, it's, if there's good, information or if there's something positive, people won't watch it. If it's negative people

will watch it. If there's drama, they'll watch it even more. And so some of our most viewed videos, unfortunately, they're the videos with drama or they have some sort of emotional spike in the video that's like, what did this person say to this person? Why are they angry? Why don't they like this person? And it's something that I think people inherently get really invested in that. And opinions are really hard to change. Like it could be, you could have a positive opinion. It's hard you change a negative opinion about someone that's a good point so really good point now i want to jump i want to ask you uh when are you ever going to go into margin maybe i'm only asking you because i just recently went back into margin i feel bad about it oh i'm so heavy in margin right now i'm so

upset i'm a smr no no no no yeah i was worried about you for a second because i know you went you went in margin how much five million three million in margin right now uh if i net out cash because i have some cash different brokerages about three and a half three and a half and i knew that uh well why watching your live streams that you invested like all of your money during the recent dip. Yes. And then it kept dipping for those extra two days. And I, I can tell like in the back of your mind, you're like, oh, crap, that I just spend everything a little bit too soon. Sure. Oh yeah. And then the market just rebounded. Sure. But yeah, no, I don't want to mess with it. It's just a stress. It's just like, I don't want to do that. I would, I would go in a margin to buy like that real estate deal if I needed to.

I would gladly do that if I knew that, like, okay, I'll be able to pay it back off and, you know, X amount of months or whatever it could be. But that would be it. That's a good point. Yeah, because now, I mean, the tax bill is going to be insane. I don't even know what to do yet. And so I have to pay off my margin for tax time so that way I can now go fully in margin again just to pay my taxes. But your taxes are always an interesting thing, especially in California. So you got out of California.

dog. One last question. And then we could turn it on you if you have any questions for us. But what are your thoughts in the metaverse? Well, I think for now we're going to be in this spectacular phase of ridiculous speculation, mostly. Everything's going to be extremely speculative. There are some really practical applications in the metaverse that I think are going to be really cool. So, for example, Jack, your dad does, I'm not sure if he still does, did appraisals.

that was his career. And I think it would be phenomenal if we had like Matterport scans of, let's say, a property. And he could essentially like teleport or just appear in that scan of a property with, let's say, the listing agent. And they could walk around that property just wearing like a VR headset and VR stuff. So it's as if we're having this conversation, but it's all digital. But I can also walk with you around a space. So it's kind of like, oh, what's over here? What's over there?

That, I think, is going to be our first sort of practical application of the Metaverse, where it's kind of like going to spaces or inviting people to a space. That could be home appraisals, that could be concerts, I think will be very, very popular. It could be, hey, let's visit the Great Wall of China. I'm never going to China. I think I'm going to get killed if I go to China. I say too much crap about China in my live streams. So I can.

Like, I reached out to Neo, and they're like, hey, we'd love to do a video with you or whatever talking about Neo, let's do it in Norway. Really? They're a Chinese company. Wow. So, anyway, so I don't want to go to China, but I want to go to China, right? And if I could do that in the Metaverse and I'm at home, then it's like, hey, Lauren, it's 5 o'clock.

What are we going to do? Oh, let's go to the Great Wall of China. Let's go watch a, I don't know, a Chinese show, like a performance or whatever in the metaverse. That I think is spectacular. I think it's going to go in that direction. I thought it was stupid initially, and then I spent that weekend doing research. And afterwards, I was like, this is going to change everything.

And I remember during COVID, we would sometimes play those games on, I forget what that was called, whatever game that was called. We'd zoom and then go to that website and play the game together. Right. But imagine being able to put it on the screen and both of you are here and we could do this virtually. It would all be recorded. We could kind of set up our virtual cameras anywhere, anywhere, you know, the lighting would be perfect always. or to be able to go into an office and you put in that headset

and your office is there and everyone's around you who is working and you could share documents instantaneously so I could see exactly what you're working on you could see what I'm working on and we could share I think eventually this could be 20 years down the line but eventually I think office space could be decimated by this

if eventually you just put on a headset and you're there and everyone's around you it's gonna well I you know I think real estate's always going to be a bit of a local market So like places like, you know, by the beach, are always going to be, you know, in desire, but that office space. That's really interesting because, see, one of the problems with office spaces, you want to have this balance between, like, having your own, like, cubicle, like, sealed off thing,

but then wanting to be with people. But the problem is when you have too much of an open concept and, like, you're working on a project, and then every two minutes somebody comes up to you and talks to you and, like, has an opinion or a comment or a question or whatever, now you can't be productive. But if you were in the Metaverse, you could probably, I'm guessing, just like, do not disturb. We should do not disturb boat and you're like red. Yeah.

You'd be red, but there would be like a poke button where if like you give three pokes to this person, then it didn't disables. It's an emergency or whatever. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. You only get one of those uses. Right. It's brilliant. I, it's one of the reasons in real estate and have been really fussy about real estate.

I only want and people get mad at me for this. I only want SoCal and people get mad at me about this. And then like I've considered Austin and Florida and maybe I'll expand in the future. But I look at it as like I just want the Mediterranean climate. And I believe that if I buy properties that are in the Mediterranean climate, which is only in 7% of the world, SoCal is the only place in the United States that has the Mediterranean climate, then I guaranteed have at least a reason people will always want to move there. I'm not reliant on the Ford factory.

I'm not reliant on the office space over there or whatever. I'm relying on the weather, which this is the only place you can get in the United States. At what cost? If that becomes too expensive, people are going to give that up. Oh, yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong. Like, I was just in looking at a fixer-upper in Santa Barbara. I might post a video on it, but I looked at a fixer up or Santa Barbara, and it was $950,000

for a three-and-two, 1100 square feet, tiny little 1950s, cracked foundation total fixer, disaster, right? $950,000 for this. get there, it's a circus. Everybody's got their home inspectors. It's under a million dollars. Oh, that's under a million, right? And I'm like, I think, and I said this in a video, I'm like, I think this is going to sell for like 1070 or something.

So I found out from the listing agent that even she was blown away, she was getting offers for like $11.50. And I'm like, this is insane. Like, it doesn't even make sense to try to flip something like this anymore. And so I do think, and so I asked her, I go, are these flippers? She's like, no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, these are just people who have, they want to live. there. And they have cash. And they have the cash. And so I do unfortunately think that, because

this is a common complaint in California, it's like, oh, well, it's unaffordable to live here. I have to move. I shouldn't have to move, is the argument people make. Like, why do I have to move? And it's like, well, unfortunately, in a capitalistic society, that's the way it works. If a place is really desirable and people want to live there, they're going to pay for it. And if you can't afford it, that means you have to move. And it sucks, but I think that's going to continue happening. So I do think that like SoCal Real Estate is a special investment, especially where we're filming right now in Ventura, is a hidden gem because you're getting the Santa Barbara, the San Diego weather without the LA homelessness. You know what's crazy? I never would have said this about Ventura, but I really like it.

I knew you would, Graham. Jack, but you know what? When I was going to the Ovena Group every single day, I never would have bought up here, ever because it's too far. But with the shutdowns and like not needing to go anywhere, I like it. It's the best, man. Part of me believes that if I could snap my fingers and turn that house where I have now in West L.A. and get, I would get an even nicer place here. I might do it. You know, it's nice.

I believe it. I believe it now. I see it. Yeah. It's, I don't know. Maybe I'm biased living here, but look, I grew up in South Florida. I know Florida weather. I know there are some wonderful things about Florida.

I feel like it's a lot more of a free. you can do you could get away with a lot more everybody's got a gun the town I grew up in was very cowboy everybody had a horse everybody had so a gun and even the police force still had a mounted unit like a davy floor but like really really country so I feel like I grew up with cowboys cowboy hats belt buckles I've got my Tesla belt buckle and boots right which is very very different from from California but this little part of California some people call it ventucky instead of Ventura. Yeah.

It has a lot more of that like that cowboy-esqueness. Yeah, it does. And that freeing feeling. All right, Kevin. The question everyone is dying to know the answer to. How much money you make in this year? Oh, man. Yeah.

Well, I wish I had a CPA to give me an exact, which that's why we're hiring one in person. There's still so much accounting to do. But it's probably going to be in excess of about 22 this year. No. Yeah. And are you talking about stocks? Are you counting stocks?

No, no, no, not counting stocks, like just ordinary income. What? How? Well, we started doing brand sponsorships now. That has helped a lot because I do a lot of videos. I've noticed almost every day you do a sponsor out of like your five videos. Is it one sponsor a day? Oh, no. I mean, I could do three a day because I'm posting if I'm pushing like eight videos. I thought you were about to say like 10 to 12 and I was like, all right. It's nuts. I really, I was hoping to double that what we had last time. that we talked about because last time it was it was like how me kevin makes it was like two million it was like what that one million a month and it was one time i hit one million a month right oh yeah have you ever had a three million dollar month yeah oh my gosh you know it sucks are you kidding me you know it sucks Kevin honestly we've like secretly i've always had this i feel like this bit of like a rivalry with you where i like i kind of look at what i know you look at what i'm doing

I look at what you're doing, we're like, how do we want up each other? And I've given up. Seriously, man, for a while, back when you were doing those stimulus updates, I was like, Graham, so, you know, Kevin's doing like 20-mills a month. I'm like, but he's doing five videos a day. Yeah, no, he was just totally. I'm like, I know I can't, you know, do that, but, you know, I'm doing well this year. Oh, man, it's like, so it's like, when we're like this, I can be like, all right, well,

I can compete, you know, I can push myself that. When it's like this. So you've done a $3 million a month. And this is funny because the first title we did was How Meek Kevin Makes a Million a Month. The second video was How Meek Kevin Makes $2 million a month. This video, How Meat Kevin makes $3 million. Gosh. It's that much from... Well, and that was a...

Those were like peak months. That's definitely not an average. But I guarantee throughout this next year, now that you have the efficiency, because I've been seeing more of the sponsors in the mid-up that you've been pre-filming. If you're doing five videos a day And you have someone who's really on you with the sponsors You could have like an 80 to 100% fill rate on your videos with sponsors That's true

I only do a few a month because I don't say you man You go down to two and then you can have every single video filled with a sponsor And you'll make so much more money But I feel like it'll be better Yeah, but the issue with Kevin is that Kevin's so many of them that he could just like But your content will be better and you'll make more money Like Kevin right now like maybe half of your videos are sponsored, if that.

Sure. So, yeah, for me to have half of my video, like, the same ratio, I would only have, like, one every other. Gosh, Kevin. I'm sorry. Congratulations, man. That's, that's incredible. Yeah. It's also a problem because then I think you, you have brought this up in

your videos. It's like that hedonic treadmill. Yeah. It's like, oh, now I got to, now I got to beat that. Like, now that's the norm. Yeah. And you know what the thing is, too, Kevin. Like, I, your sponsors, um,

They don't even bother me. And I worry with my audience, too, that they get bothered by sponsorships. But I see yours. And I'm like, they've reached out to me too. There's almost all of them that you've done. Almost all of them I've worked with too. So I know the talking points. I know what you hit.

I'm like, sometimes your sponsor, do you have someone else scripting them for you? Uh-huh. That's why. Because they're good. They're good sponsorships. So they just give you the ad and you literally just read it? I, like, can't stand dealing with any of that. So, like, I, this is why I like having people,

person. So there's one person that's like, Kevin, do this right now. Here's the prop now. Film it for me. And then he sends it off for approval, puts the little graphic edits or whatever. And then, you know, for another video, it'd be like, okay, now this one's approved. Here's the link you have to put in the description. Here's the clip. And how far ahead do you film these? A few days, four days. That's insane. Kevin. Congratulations. Kevin, it's not okay.

Yes, it is okay, man. No, it's not. Why? He's your friend. Be happy for you. No, I am happy for him. But usually there's a point where Kevin could get to where I'm like, all right, I can get to that too.

I can't post five videos today. Peace productive in ways that I don't even know is possible without like stimulants of some sort. You don't, and I can attest to this. Kevin will wake up at the morning at 5 a.m. He'll stay up until 2. He'll wake up at 5 and be like, I have so much energy. I'm just going to run.

And he'll go on a run for like several miles. Come back. It'll be 7 a.m. He'll take a shower. He'll get a video done like 7.30. I can't do it. It's gosh. All right. Congratulations.

Happy for you, Kevin. I got some thinking to do. Well, good to end on that. Thank you so much for coming over, Kevin. It is awesome to shoot with you. Also, happy Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas Eve. Thanks all.

So with that said, you guys, Thanks so much for watching. Make sure to subscribe. Get your free stock. Hit the like button. Subscribe to Kevin. Subscribe to Kevin. Check out his content.

And his TikTok. And hit the notification bell. And with that said, until next time.