The Iced Coffee Hour - From Broke To $300 Million - The Underground World of Exotic Cars, Watches, & LOTS of Money

Episode Date: May 25, 2025

Rocket Money: Try Rocket Money for free https://RocketMoney.com/iced CleanMyMac: Boost Speed, Cut Costs — Get Tidy Today! Try CleanMyMac free for 7 days and use our code COFFEE for 20% off https://clnmy.com/TheIcedCoffeeHour Range Rover Sport: Start designing your Range Rover Sport today at https://www.rangerover.com/us/sport Shopify: Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at https://shopify.com/ich Follow Louis Flory (Gentlemans Garage) : On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@UCJJY3f4fx9yPxoY3PkKjiBw On Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thegentlemansgarage_/ Apply To The Index Mastermind: https://entertheindex.com Add us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan Apply for The Index Membership: https://entertheindex.com/ Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:16 - How many cars do you own? 00:02:06 - Cost to maintain the collection 00:09:35 - Biggest loss on a car 00:14:30 - Business secrets 00:17:13 - Sponsor - Rocket Money 00:18:38 - Traits of successful entrepreneurs 00:21:01 - What does your company do? 00:31:58 - Business startup costs 00:37:17 - Past revenue breakdown 00:37:20 - Sponsor - CleanMyMac 00:38:48 - Scaling from $10M to $300M 00:41:20 - Thoughts on AI taking jobs 00:43:47 - Recession coming? 00:45:55 - Tariffs 00:52:23 - Where you're investing now 00:55:47 - Who shouldn't be an entrepreneur 00:57:02 - Gen Z vs. millennial work ethic 00:58:41 - Work-life balance 01:00:49 - Outsourcing your remote job 01:05:17 - Importance of work ethic 01:17:20 - Sponsor - Range Rover 01:18:25 - Sponsor - Shopify 01:19:44 - Why start a YouTube channel? 01:23:08 - Net worth and buying supercars 01:25:56 - Advice for buying a Lambo 01:28:14 - Best car to attract women 01:31:40 - Best budget-friendly car 01:37:55 - Used car market 01:38:34 - Ferrari allocations 01:49:37 - Climbing the Ferrari ladder 01:51:34 - What do your kids drive? 01:53:41 - How to raise grounded kids 01:59:46 - When did you feel rich? 02:06:02 - Do you want to be a billionaire? 02:07:07 - Biggest waste of money 02:09:52 - Watch allocations 02:21:02 - First watch to buy 02:26:37 - Best things to spend money on 02:34:49 - Workout routine *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

Amazon presents Laura versus Fruitflies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen. These little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. Is this your Ferrari?

Yeah, it is. What do you do for living out of Houston, Texas, to be able to afford a Ferrari? I'm an entrepreneur. I wasn't always the smartest person in the room, but I was always the one person who refused to quit. My company will do $300 million this year in revenue. The intestinal fortitude it takes to start something out of nothing. Every single day, massive obstacles are going to come your way. Setbacks are going to come your way.

I can guarantee you I've taken years off my life building this business. What are you seeing these days in terms of? of a potential recession coming on. So in my business, we have a front row seat to when things are going well and when things are about to turn really bad. What secrets do you know in terms of business? There's one mistake that's guaranteed to put people out of business. And that's...

Louis, thank you so much for coming on the ice coffee hour. I first found you on a channel School of Hard Knocks. Yes. Came up to you on the street in a TikTok video. asked you what you did for a living. You said in that video your company was doing about $300 million. That's correct. And that video got 20 million views.

Mind blowing, right? Last thing I ever expected to happen for sure. So we're here in your garage. How many cars do you own currently? Currently, embarrassingly, we have 28 cars in the collection. I think there's about currently another eight incoming. of those eight will only replace two, so we will net gain six over the next 12 to 15 months.

So that'll put us, what, about 34 cars total? But 28 in the garage at the moment. And what's the total value of your collection? Currently, our current value is about $31 million. So it's more than a million dollars a car. Roughly, yeah. If you average it outright, obviously there's some big hitters here, F40, F50, LaF Ferrari, those are big chunks, right?

Even the car right behind you, the 599 GTO, that car is more than doubling in value, and it's righted between a 950 to a little over a million dollar car today. So I'm curious, what are the logistics of owning something like this? How much does it cost? Let's just start there. Well, you know, that's a crazy question and crazy time we would ask that, a video that we just put out, we went through, and I had not consciously added it up in total what we're spending to maintain these cars. But we went through the video, and I spoke about each car individually. And currently, we have seen. spent about $800,000 on the cars that you see in this garage today to get them at the level

that they're at. The reality is that I'm kind of doing both things with cars. There's guys that have drivers cars, and then there's guys that have more like concourse level cars that never get driven. I want both, which is very costly to do to maintain cars at a concourse level. As we were talking as soon as you came in, there's some cars in here that have one platinum that the Ferrari Cabellino show. They're 100-point cars. But I also drive those cars. I mean, the F-50, right, my wife and I road trip that 1,200 miles from Houston to Palm Beach, Florida, where they host the Cavalino Show at the Breaker's Hotel, then showed the car and not only one platinum in that car, but one best F-50 overall. And then what's the 100-point rating that you're referencing?

Okay, so there's a show called The Cavalino Show, Big Car Show. They hosted every year at the Breaker's Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. It is the most prestigious car show anywhere in the world for Ferrari only. Okay. So on Saturday, it's only Ferraris that are there. It's a very curated group of cars. You've got to submit your car. A lot of documentation has to come along with that submission.

And then they have to approve your car just to be in the show. Then when your car's in that show, they have the most, the knowledge these judges have are absolutely insane. I mean, it's unreal the knowledge that these judges have of. these cars. So they come around and they judge everything. I mean, they open the front bottom up, they open the rear engine up. They even so much just get down into where the little tool, uh, tool kits that come with some of the older cars and it's got the bulbs and, and, uh, fuses and things like that. They pull them out to make sure they still look pristine and clean. And so these cars are 30, 40, 50 years old. So yeah, we actually had to get somebody to sit down and get the toolkit out

and use a navy jelly to hand polish these tools. And, little ends on the bulbs and all this things. But they go through those cars to that extent and judge them, and they rate them. So you start out on 100 points, and every flaw, blemish, or something that's missing or something that doesn't work right on the car, you lose points, depending on what it is.

Some things are half points, some things are full points. So things will be two points. And as long as your car, when it's all said done, as 97 points or more, it would be awarded platinum. Okay. So that is the most rigorous highest level for Ferrari only judging that there is anywhere. So you make changes on the spot. Like let's just say, hey, there's a little blemish here.

Could you say, hold on one second, have a guy come over. Like just fix it. Unfortunately, no. Really. So it's like, what's there is there? What's there is there. What did your car get? So I know that it got platinum.

They don't give you your scorecard. I did request it, right? But the F50 that we have did win platinum. So it's at least 97 points. I think it's actually a hundred point car. Reason I think that is there were some amazing F-50s there in class, really amazing examples of that car. And let's remember, there's only, what, 349 F-50s in the world,

and there's only 31 yellow ones ever made. So we have one of 31. But then we were awarded the best F-50 in class, and actually, what made it even, as special as that was, what made it even more special is that Enzo Ferrari, great-grandson, actually is the one that handed my wife and I at that award. So that was a really, really cool moment, life moment. So what's the value of that car?

So currently that car, you know, speaking to the brokers that know my car really, really well, we were just having this conversation last week because we had to insure the car because we're sending it over to Italy because this is 2025. It's the 30-year anniversary of the F-50. So Ferrari is actually arranging an F-50-only cavalcade through Tuscan and whatnot. So we have to get the car appraise and insured. And they're appraising it minimum 6.5 closer to 7 million because of the pedigree with the car. So you drove a 7 million car 500 miles.

1,200 miles. Why? Why? Why did you do? Why not? Because the value that you're maybe losing by putting that extra mileage on the car. Like, how much do you think realistically putting 1,500 miles on that car devalues it? Well, I don't think it did.

And this is my reasoning, okay? So I've been collecting cars for a very long time. And in the last seven, eight years, my wife, and I've really gotten to collecting older cars. And what I have found is that the older cars that sit around and they're show queens or garage queens, they don't get driven, they're full of problems. They're absolutely full of problems. Nowadays, when I go to get an older vintage car, whether it be Ferrari or any other brand,

you know, our Kuntosh is another great example, right? I want a car that's been driven a few thousand miles. I know that the engine is still running. The seals are not dried out. The hoses aren't dried up. The car's been maintained to this point that it's still running and driving reliably. And I get a car with a lot less problems. So, in my opinion, number one, I'm going to drive and enjoy my cars, right?

My primary intention of my car collection is not the ROI of the value. It really is not. This is my passion. This is what I enjoy doing. These cars bring me a lot of joy in life. And they're kind of my reward to me for what I've accomplished in business and in life. and I'm having a blast one. It's my toy box, if you will, right?

So for me, I'm like, what is the coolest way to show an extraordinarily rare car at a car show, road trip the darn thing there, make some memories along the way. My wife and I road tripped it together, had an absolute blast along the way, met some amazing people along the way. So rather than just being the stuffy guy that shipped this incredibly valuable car

to this prestigious car show, got award of my trophy, and then loaded it back on the truck and shipped it back home, we made a life memory out of it that my wife and I will cherish forever. And that carries much more value to me than whatever value is on the car. Now, to answer your question, though, I think it increased the value of the car. That is now known as the F-50. They got road trip 1,200 miles to Cavalino and won best F-50 overall.

Okay. And then when you're driving this $7 million car, are you just like white-knuckled, eyes focused on the road, caffeinated to the max? I'm caffeinated to the max. Now, that part is for sure. Now, I will say I was white-knuckled for about three and a half hours. I think that was a Saturday morning portion of the drive.

It did nothing but poor. So I'm driving this 30-year-old supercar, no trash control, no nannies assist whatsoever, you know, F-1 V-12 engine in the back, a true F-1-derived V-12 engine, gated manual, no ABS, none of that kind of stuff to help you in pouring down rain. So there was a white knuckle portion of that. Other than that, you know what? I drive these cars hard. So what's the most amount of money you've lost on a car?

Oh, goodness gracious. We have done very, very well with the vast majority of cars. I hate to admit it. It's painful, but everyone, you guys have all seen where the SF90 values have just dropped dramatically. And we lost almost 400,000. on our SF 90 coup. How much did you buy it? We, so we paid, I think, 815 for the car, and I traded in, and I got 400,000 for it. So we lost $450,000 on that car. Yeah. And that was the peak of the market

for that car, right? It actually got a little bit higher than that. I mean, I remember maybe 2021 going in the 2022, somewhere in there, there were some of those cars trading over 9,000. $800,000, you know, and they just, boy, they just plummeted. Why do you think that car took such a big hit? You know, that's an interesting question. I get asked that quite a bit. And, you know, I have to guess because, well, it's an educated guess. I say guess because I've had a great experience with that car.

And I'm on my second one. I have the spider. My SF90XX is in production now. It'll be here hopefully in the next two months. I'm very excited about their car. And that car is actually trading way over MSR. I just saw a car last week, a 977,000 MSRP, SF90 XX, COOP, trade for $2.1 million. I just saw it myself last week, so it's not rumor mill, saw it myself, which is amazing to me that the XX version, the light version, or special version, is trading more than double MSRP when you could get the COOP base model version for $400,000 right now, maybe even a little bit less.

So what I've seen with that car is there's a lot of people that don't. don't understand how to use that hybrid system. So, believe it or not, there's a little setting in the menu that you have to put, hit charge on the generator to charge the hybrid battery. So I personally know of three guys that thought their battery went dead on the car and we're just done with it. We're going to sell it because they didn't want to be bothered with it. And when I talked to them about it, they had no idea that you had to hit to tell that car

to recharge. So it was a little self-induced. I could actually say that I think that a lot of the sales guys, that were presenting those cars when they were taking delivery, customers were taking delivery of them. They weren't that well educated on how that hybrid system worked too.

That was new from Ferrari, other than a lot of Ferrari, which that system's completely different than what's in the SF 90 or even the 296. So I don't think that a lot of guys were explaining that very well at delivery or they just didn't retain it because that's new to the customer too.

And so they just didn't really understand that hybrid system. They had a lot of problems with that due to not understanding. And I have not seen any SF 90s. I'm not saying it didn't happen. but I personally have not seen any that have actually had any sort of hybrid system or electrical system failure. I'm sure it's happened.

I haven't personally seen it. But I think that that rumor just got around and it scared a lot of people. And I think it just turned the market. I think like the financial markets are a lot of time driven based upon emotion. And once people start seeing a little bit happen, they think, oh, these guys know something I don't know. And then they start selling or they all start buying. And it can drive the market up and down. And it had nothing to do with actual factual business, right?

And so I think that happened with that car. What's the most that you made on a car? On any one single car, I have made a little over a million dollars in one car that I did transact. Now, there's cars sitting here today that have increased much more than that in value, but I haven't transacted the car. So I guess it's on paper, if you will, right? So what's the biggest paper gain you have so far? it's close right now because when you look at with the f80 that's out now right obviously the reaction to

that car has been mixed to say the least and what that has done is it's really driven up the values of the f40 the f50 the enzo and even the lufferrari so for example our lufferrari right now i know what what we paid for it right and it was january of last year so in just a little over a year uh two cars that i saw transact in the last two two to three weeks we're up about 1.2 million from what we paid for this car, right? Our F-40 were up at least 1.7 million from what we paid on that car. And then the F-50 for what we paid for it were up but 1.5, closer to 2 million on that car.

And those are in very short periods of time. But I do have to agree that that's directly driven because a lot of the guys that had different aspirations for what the F-80 would be have packed away from that. And now they're chasing these other cars because they realize it's never going to be produced again. So you recently did an interview where you talked about what you do for a living. Right. The top comment of that video is Lewis might have some secrets. What secrets do you know in terms of business?

It seems like it's a positive thing. Okay. Oh, yeah. I was hoping it was about. I haven't read that comment. Yeah. That's entry. Lewis might have some secrets.

That's interesting. So I'm curious. What secrets is you referring to? So, you know, it's kind of funny. The longer that I'm in business, not only myself, I know what lessons I've learned, right? And then I know what attributes I think I've contributed most of my success to. But, and that's what's kind of been really cool about being in the car community, you meet other guys that have pretty similar stories.

A lot of them are entrepreneurs, a lot of them have started businesses of some sort. And then when we get to talk and you start realizing just how similar a lot of those attributes are. And not only how similar there, but what I kind of find in comical is really how, how basic and simple it really is at the end of the day. Secrets. So one of the things that really drove my business model and the idea that I had for my business model is an interview I saw back in in my early 20s of Warren Buffett where someone had asked him, what does he look for in businesses that he chooses to buy or invest in? And he says really quite simple. I look for companies with a clear competitive advantage in their industry. That really resonated with me. Because, you know,

I wanted to, I knew that I don't want my business. business was going to be before I started it, but I knew I wanted to start something that within 30 seconds, I could say, we're in this industry, and this is what makes us different than everybody else. Here's our competitive advantage, right? So that really resonated with me, and I believe that we've done that with our business, and most of the people that I meet, they understand that if they're going to build a business, it's going to be successful. They need to have something that makes them stand apart from everyone else that's in that same industry or space or niche or whatever. That's number one. Number two, and it's no big secret, and I tell my kids this all the time, anybody that comes to me

that's looking for advice about mentoring or should they start their business or what do I think of their business idea or things like that. And I love those conversations because I'm at a place in life now where I've kind of done my thing in terms of professionally. And I'm getting much more joy by being in a position where I can give people hopefully some good sound advice or direction and hoping that I can possibly impact their future, even if, and many times it is, that's a great idea that's never going to work. So I'm saving them from themselves, right? But like I tell people, and I tell everybody to the same thing. It's really so basic elements. I wasn't always the smartest person in the room, and even to this day, I'm not the smartest person in the room, but I was always

the one person that refused to quit. I just, once I locked on to something and I do that with anything in life, even to this day, at 46 years old, whenever I lock in on something, I grind and grind and grind away in until I feel like I've gotten to being the best that I possibly could be whatever that is. Now when it comes to everyday spending, here's what I've noticed. A lot of the purchases we make are out of sight, out of mind, like those daily coffee expenditures or the streaming subscriptions you barely even use. It adds up very quickly.

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goals faster with RocketMoney. Go to RocketMoney.com slash iced today. That's rocketmoney.com slash iced. Once again, RocketMoney.com slash iced. Thank you. you so much to rocket money for sponsoring this episode. So you said all of these other high-level entrepreneurs, these very successful people that you've spoken to, you guys have shared attributes. Would you say that's the main one? Absolutely. Perseverance is absolutely the main one. That is for sure. Absolutely. What other similarities I see? Definitely perseverance, okay. And then all these people I found they're very good with other people. In other words, they're very, very good at motivating and inspiring others around them because none of us, that when I speak to people that have built,

really large companies. It's one thing to be self-employed and have a small mom and pop company, and that's great. You can make a great living at that. I'm all about it. But I'm talking about the guys or gals that have built large corporations. None of us could have done what we have done alone. And we had to have the ability to inspire others to not only see our vision and our dream, but to want to be a part of it, to want to be an impact and be a part of making that dream and that vision a reality. So their ability to motivate and inspire and influence others around them, also all of us I think attribute a lot of our success that we were able to make people feel very appreciated and valued for the impact that they're having on our business and the goals that we're

trying to achieve those are absolute attributes that I think any successful entrepreneur those are must-haves perseverance people skills ability to influence others so for a viewer out there maybe they don't have those people skills and ability to motivate people but they're still really motivated to build a massive corporation would you say that those people skills are something that you've had for your entire life, and you could easily look back to when you were young, you had the ability to, like, rally the troops and get something done? Or is that something that was kind of a byproduct of running this business? You were forced to learn these skills. They certainly got honed over the years. There's no doubt. You grow and mature and you learn,

but absolutely, if you look back, you know, it's funny raising kids and you see groups of kids, their friends and whatnot. And you can start pinpointing who's got some of those attributes. Who's that natural leader? Even if it's on a playground, it's that one kid that comes up and he or she's got. the idea of what the whole group's going to do and they're kind of taking leave with the whole thing. And you can see people naturally just kind of flocking to that one person as as the leader of the group. And so I do believe that those are innate skills. I think you can hone and sharpen leadership skills, but having that innate ability to inspire and lead others and people that want to

be a part of whatever it is that that individual is doing, I think that's really innate. I really do. So one thing that was really attractive about your interview with School of Hard Knocks was just that $300 million per year income. You hear that? Yeah. Completely blows your mind. It's just an absolutely incredible number. It was still kind of hard to figure out exactly what it is that your company does. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Great question. So if you were to explain very simply how your company makes $300 million a year, what is it?

Well, we don't, we generate that in revenue. We don't make that in profit. I wish we did. That's revenue. And then, of course, all of our operating costs come out of that. Then there's a net profit. So what we do is we partner with, companies, all my clients are in some sort of manufacturing or distribution, assembly business, things like that. And they outsource their labor force to us. So we become the full employer. And we handle everything from recruiting, onboarding, training, and then the management of that entire labor force. So what I'm doing is because of our scale, not only about getting my customers at the people business so they can focus on their business, right, their core competency,

see, whatever widget it is that they're producing, if you will, right? And I'm providing that labor force back to them cheaper than they could do it themselves, right? Which makes them more efficient and profitable as a business. And when they're more efficient and profitable, that gives them a competitive advantage to grow their business. Okay, so let's just say Jack and I want to hire a hundred people to help us on the pocket.

We go to you and say, hey, we don't want to spend all this time hiring. We're going to go to your company to find us these hundred people. How much do you charge for that service? Like what would I, would I pay you a percentage? That's right. Yeah, it's a percentage of over the payroll that you use each week. So you got 100 people working on your podcast, right? And whatever their job's doing, we generate that payroll.

We're paying them, you know, probably every other week in this scenario. And whatever we're generating for the payroll, the labor that you have used, we pay the employees. They're our employees, okay? And then we bill you back that payroll plus a markup. Got it. So I'm not hiring the people. I'm hiring you. That's right.

So I'm paying you and you pay them. That's correct. Are the people then legally your employee? They're 100% legally our employees. And there's a huge benefit to you, the customer and to the employee in that scenario, right? Because of our scale, right? First of all, my cost per employee are going to be far cheaper than you only having 100 or 200 or 300 or 300 employees, right? We have some clients where we're providing, you know, over 2,000 employees too.

my cost per capita is going to be much cheaper, number one. Number two, we're far better than you are at interviewing, pre-screening, and training people to this job, because this is all that we do, right? So we're going to bring the expertise of all of our clients from all these different industries on how we've been able to take people and onboard them, train them, and get them up to a maximum efficiency to run your facility at full capacity. And what if someone, an employee of yours, wants a raise then? And does- Do they then go to you or do they then go to the establishment in which they're working? Right. And that's where I was going to talk about the win.

There's the win for the company, right, because of our scale, we're able to provide that labor force at a cheaper cost than they could do it themselves. And what that allows us to do where the win for the employee is, right, is that our job primarily is to train these people and set them up for the best career advancement opportunities. they could have. And that's what we're really good at, right? That's our space. And so when there is opportunity for promotions or raises, because we have lowered the labor cost to our clients that provides much more money for raises and promotions and increases for the labor force. So our clients win and the employees win as well long term. How do you get started doing that? Wow, that's a great

question. So when I got in this industry, I didn't even know it existed. I fell into it by complete accident. I got kicked out of college at 20. Or as I like to say, I got out on the early release program. What did you do? Mostly just being bored and doing silly shenanigans on campus. You got to tell us what you did. Okay. We may have to edit that out. Okay. So I will tell you the story. You guys decide what you do with it. Oh, I don't know if I want to tell you the story. It's not bad, but it's... Tell us. I'm sure we're going to find it funny. You'll definitely find it funny. All right. So at the university they went to, there was a statue of the namesake of the

university in the middle of campus, right? Campus Square. And it's like a waterfall. So he's kind of standing there and he's got one foot up on this rock and he's got this long out in the distant stowet look on the statue of his face, right? And then the water flows from his feet and the rock into the fountain below. And everybody used to soak the fountain when we were in college. And that was just kind of lame. Of course, as with everything I do in life, I kind of have to take it to the next level. So we soaked the fountain,

but then we took a summer sausage, a big long summer sausage. He said where this is going, ran a rope through it, tied it around his waist, and then put a pink G-string over his head. So it is really funny. Yeah.

This was, what, late 90s? I was like 1998, and there was a little thing that was getting to be much cheaper to have and much more prevalent that we didn't take into consideration security cameras. And so because the university was tired of kids soap in the fountain, they put security cameras in. And we were one of the first to. And what were the repercussions?

So suspension, right? So I got suspended. And so got suspended from college. Fun fact, when you get suspended from a state university, you're suspended from all state universities in the state of Texas. So I couldn't go to any other state university. Well, suspended or expelled? Suspended. So I say kicked out kind of loosely. It was a suspension, right? What was amazing, though, is through other goofy shenanigans on campus, mostly me being bored, right? Of course, I didn't realize at the time I was a kid. It wasn't my first time to sit down with the dean, right?

And so finally, during this situation, he said, listen, Lewis. He said, serve your suspension. And he said, if I were to give you, and he said, you know, I've been doing this for, you know, 30 some odd years, whatever it was he said, he said, if I could give you some advice, he says, don't go back to college. He said, this is not where you need to be. He says, you're going to be an entrepreneur because I have no idea what kind of business you're going to end up in, but that's going to be your space. You're truly wasting your time, continue to go to college. It sounded like really, it felt really shuring because I knew my heart was not in college, right? It wasn't in that at all. Did you have other businesses going on?

Like, why would you say entrepreneur and not? just like, hey, just stay out of jail. That probably would have been good basic advice. So, you know, no, I didn't have any other business going on. You know, I was involved in a lot of everything's on campus. And I think he saw that I, as we were talking about those innate natural leadership tendencies and qualities. And I think just from over 30 years of seeing people come through the door, he probably

knows the type somebody that's going to, you know, be an entrepreneur and going to do their own thing and kind of blaze their own trail, I guess, if you will. But that was the advice that he gave. Was this the first business you started? In short order, I had to get a job when I got home, right? And I originally, even though he gave me that advice, when dad was like, you're getting your butt back in college, you're going to finish.

That's what every parent would say, right? And so I, for whatever reason, just thought I would get a job bartending at this TGI Fridays here in town so that I could serve my suspension for one semester and then have a night job to maintain while I go. go back to school. That was originally the idea. And the next day, so I went to go interview at TGI Fridays for the bartender job. And so I did the interview with the manager on duty. She says, you know, come back tomorrow at 2 o'clock, meet with our general manager. So while I was waiting for that interview,

I decided to go get a haircut, literally at a supercuts in a strip mall. Right next door was a temporary staffing agency. And a buddy mine from high school was with me. And he's like, listen, man, you should go in and they can find you a job. I'm like, listen, I don't need a temp job. I need a real full-time job, right? And after him, you know, lecturing me there for a little bit, I reluctantly went ahead and went into the staffing engine next door. The regional vice president happened to be visiting that office that day. She interviewed me, asked me, you know, what skills I had? I'm like, you know, I can sell, right? And that's, that's really about all I got. I was 20 years old. Lo and behold, she hired me as a salesperson in that branch office, right? I had never even heard of this.

staffing industry before this, right? And the training was really sophisticated. They just handed us a yellow pages, if you guys remember that. And it was just smile and dial. Call these companies see if they have a need for some short-term employees or temporary employers or whatever. And that was it. So just started beating away at the phone. Actually, they're doing very, very well in a short period of time. But I quickly realized, like, there's a downside to this business. Like, we're only staffing our clients for temporary needs. that is a, there is a value there. I'm like, we have, I understood, because I was pricing the business, so I understood how the pricing worked. And I started talking to some of my customers

about what their payroll costs were, what their legal exposures were relative to unemployment claims, workers' compensation claims, EEOC type claims, all that kind of stuff that they're not really that well versed and that equipped to manage and mitigate and prevent by, you know, a lot of these times they get sued for honest mistakes because, you know, they're too busy running their business. don't know all the employment laws and they get themselves in the trouble inadvertently, right? Most people are out to do the right thing, okay? And I'm like, not only are my payroll costs cheaper, because I know, I didn't understand what our payroll costs were to price out, you know, the employees we're providing our clients. So I quickly saw there's a huge, by, because of our scale,

there's a financial opportunity here. And I go to these customers, I say, listen, you've got, you know, I started out kind of small. Maybe they had 30, 40 employees in their warehouse or in their distribution center or whatever it was. I said, listen, you could, we could take over as an employer, right, provide these employees better benefits than what you're getting them and save you money and eliminate all your liability because we're the legal employer. And I love that because not only was I actually making, providing real value to my client's bottom line and really making their businesses better, but we were able to provide much

better benefits for the employees, right, because of our scale. So it was a win-win. And it really worked well for me because rather than having employees working short-term where I would get commissions and then those assignments end, these employees are on a payroll forever. How much did that business cost to start? So I had that idea. I started working really well. And then I started my business as soon as a few years later. And the biggest problem I had was I'm paying these employees each week.

And then my customers want to pay me in 30 or 60 days. So I've got to be able to carry four days. eight weeks of payroll before I get my first payment from my clients. So you need a lot of credit to float that payroll and the payroll taxes on. And, of course, to get a line of credit, you need to have equity in your business. Well, when you start out a company, you have no equity. I was 24 years old. It's not like I had some big assets that I could let the bank leverage against to give me some sort of line of credit. So I had to factor my invoices, which is one of the roughest things that... What does that mean? Okay, so what factoring is, is basically

you generate the invoice to your customer, and then I call it loan shark money, because the rates are outrageous that they charge you. When you, back then, I don't know what they are today, back then is this, and they're very good at hiding the fees. Well, there's a buy rate, then there's these processing fees. The interest rate they show is not that bad, but when you add all the fees together and you divide that and you average it out by, by your APR, your annual percentage rate on how much you're borrowing, is closer to 21%. it's outrageous, right? And so they will, but these factoring companies,

you generate the invoice to your customer. They buy that invoice from you. So legally, they own that invoice from you. And they set up a lockbox, okay, at a bank. So when your customer sends their payment in, it goes straight to that lockbox. The financial factoring company that loaned you the money on that invoice

takes their money, their fees out, and they give you whatever's left over, which considering that payroll and payroll taxes are by far our largest cost of goods sold. And then you put 21% on top of that, it just destroyed my profit margins back then. But it was one of the greatest things that I've ever gone through. I'm extraordinarily grateful for it because it taught me a very valuable lesson that I see so many entrepreneurs make today. And I think social media is driven a lot of it too because there's so much glamorization on social

media of, oh, I've got this new call or I've got this new watch or I'm taking this exotic trip here or there, as soon as someone starts a business and they start making more money than they've ever made before, okay, great, you've got a successful business. That's awesome. They start spending that money, living that lifestyle, right? And not understanding that they're robbing themselves of a future. You've got to reinvest that money in the business. You've got to build up your balance sheet.

You've got to build up your retained earnings in that business. Or, A, you're never going to grow. That's one, because it costs money to grow. number two, every business is going to go through hard times. Every business is going to go through hard times. And you've got to have the cash to get you through those hard times. Okay. And these people, I see it far too often are not doing that.

So going through what I went through, it forced me every week, whatever profits we made to leave in the business so that next week I had to borrow a little less and a little less and a little less. But then, of course, I kept growing, the business was growing. So that was a really difficult part emotionally. and managing financially because I'm having to borrow more and more and more to fund the growth because my growth far exceeded how fast my cash flow was catching out. So it took probably the first three to four years of taking the only thing I took out of the

business was just enough to pay my household bills, right? And the hard part, if you guys saw the school Hard Knocks interview, and I saw a lot of the comments that people don't really quite understand what I was talking. about and that's my fault when I talk numbers I tend to go fast because I've been doing this my whole life but when you're making that profit as a business people think well if you didn't take the money out of the company you don't pay income taxes on it that's not the way that works that business it's an LLC so whatever profits the company made flows to your personal income tax whether you took it out the business or not doesn't matter so when you look at and I referenced it in that the gentleman on

Scholar Hartox asked me if you have you ever been broke before I'm like every entrepreneur's been before, but the brokest I'd ever been, I was actually making a lot of money at that time. I was 28 years old. The company made about $3 million. Okay. I was not able to take very much of that out of the bank. At the time, I had $10,000 in my personal bank account, right? That was it. But because the company and me, because we're one and the same in terms of as the IRS had made $3 million, I owed like, was it, $950,000 in income taxes. And on, on the same. And on, you. Uncle Sam doesn't care that your money's tied up in the business. And if you take that cash out, you're bankrupt the next week because you can't make payroll

for all these employees that, and that's how we generate revenue. Like I said, our revenue is a percentage of the payroll. So I've got to be able to generate that payroll, right? So that was one of the most difficult financial times I went through. But all that to say, I'm so grateful I went through those years because it gave me a lot of financial discipline to, to never rob the company of its cash, build up the, the, the company cash and also to live, you know, far below my means. What was the company's revenue over time then?

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your Mac clean saves so much money and makes editing, uploading, or any other work way faster too. So boost your speed, cut your costs and clear out some space today. You could also feel free to try Clean My Mac free for seven days by using the link down below in the description and using the code coffee for 20% off. Thank you, Clean My Mac for sponsoring this podcast. We grew really fast, you know, so I'd been in the industry for about four or five years before I started my own company. So I had some relationships that once my non-compete expired, which was a 12-1 non-compete, I was able to leverage those relationships and grow the company very quickly. So, for example, our first year, we did really, really well. I'm very proud of it. We did $14 million in revenue,

okay i think we did 22 million the second year i know the third year we did 31 million okay so it was growing those are large percentage chunks right uh and then by our fifth year we were just over 70 million dollars and in revenue at the time was it the same strategy that brought you to 10 million the strategy that you implemented to go to 300 million that's correct or what was no it is it absolutely is you know i think um i've had people ask that question are similar way they ask that question and I still stand very firm on this, growing a company to say a million, right, depending on what it does, but let's just say it's growing to a million is one thing, okay? And you probably don't have to really scale that much to get to a million a year in revenue,

okay, maybe even two million. But to go from two to ten or to twenty million, you have to learn how to scale whatever that foundation of that business is doing, right? That's where you learn how to scale, okay? And once you understand how to scale your business, then yes, it's taken that same strategy, the same mindset that it took to scale that business from one to 10 or two to 20 to get it from 10 to 300. And of course, you know, I am very proud of the size of the business it is today. That number kind of pisses me off, to be really honest with you guys, because, you know,

the goal is to get it to a billion. I wanted to do that before I turned 50. That's four years from now. We'll see. We'll see. The team's working very hard to get there. What do you have to do to bring it from 300 million to a billion. And I think it would be cool, 365 million. So that way you could say a million dollars a day. Or, yeah, a million a day in revenue or whatever. Yeah, that would be cool. We're not there yet.

We're just as tad over 300. So what do we got to do? You know, it's really a matter of continuing to do what we do, but we've got to really ramp up the, and this is where it's gotten tougher. Your technology has actually made this harder because this is a business-to-business sale, okay? And our business model, we're extremely proud of it.

It's so beneficial. The clients win, the employees win, and of course we win as a business as well. So it's a tremendous scenario where everybody wins. We don't have any direct competitors that do exactly what we do because we're not a temporary staffing agency or that kind of stuff that people see. That's not what we do. Not knocking it, that's just not what we do. So it's a matter of getting in front of decision makers. And with technology, that's getting so much harder because people are much more mobile now, right?

so getting a hold of them. Everybody just assumes whenever our new business development team is trying to reach out to them it's just another salesperson or it's another temp agency which they have no value to them for any of that.

And I get that, I get that perspective. So getting in touch of someone, getting in front of them to be able to drive down what the value proposition is of the business has gotten much harder in the age of technology

and everyone being so mobile. No one's tied to a desk anymore. What do you think about AI taking people's jobs? Like, do you have a concern that all of these people that you employ could theoretically have a percentage replaced by robots or artificial intelligence or you have

some humanoid that's going on like putting something together. Absolutely. I mean, that is a strong reality, right? And I don't know where all that shakes out. Where's the right balance, right? I mean, the companies need automation, right, to reduce their labor span. I mean, all my customers, labor is either number one or very close number two shortly behind raw material for their cost of good sold. So they have to seek that competitive advantage as it becomes readily available and reliable, a reliable, real resource. So, you know, I do see that that is a reality. And then what comes of that, right, you know, so if companies, they're going to have to leverage it because their competitors are going to do it to remain competitive, they have to do it. It's not the companies are trying to be evil.

They have to do it. The market says, hey, this widget is only worth X dollars. And if somebody is able to do it cheaper, customers are going to buy from that person. So if that person is leveraging AI to reduce its cost and ultimately its cost of its product, they're going to do that. So, but what is what does that do for, you know, employment in our country, really any country, right? How many thousands or maybe millions of people? I mean, you look at our company, right? You know, we, we process about 34,000 W-2s a year.

Well, what if, you know, a third of that was able to be replaced through automation? Just my company alone, you know, that's nearly 11, 12. between 11 and 12,000 people, just my one company, multiply that by however many thousands of other companies are out there. You know, does that result in a massive unemployment situation? You know, I mean, if we just think, you know, logically and analytically, that's a strong possibility, right? So it'll be interesting to see where all that shakes out,

where we have to value what's good for humanity and society, and then how AI impacts that. Let's hope that we find a healthy balance, and the AI is able to, what I'd rather see AI do is allow people to do more with the effort that they put in. So they're able to produce more, they're able to be more efficient, there's less risk for bodily harm or for any sort of workplace accident. And I really hope that AI focuses in that so they're actually enriching the lives of employees. What are you seeing these days in terms of a potential recession coming on or higher unemployment? because I feel like you would see it before anybody.

That is 100% correct. I tell people all the time, I have a front row seat to when things are about to be really good and when things are not to be not so great, right? Because companies begin hiring when they're anticipating growth. Right. So I see that before the market sees it because the growth hasn't come yet, but they know that they've got business coming their way, so they've got to ramp up their employment.

Same thing when they see out in the distance, whether it be a year from now, two years now, or even just six months out, that, hey, new business is starting to slow down coming our way, right? They start to trim down the labor force, right? So we have a front row seat to see when that's going one way or the other. And absolutely right now, listen, wherever you stand politically, it's got nothing to do with it. It's just a reality of the marketplace. And we are across the board seeing a slowdown.

That is an absolute truth. And again, my customers are in many different industries. So this is an ice slid. You're seeing an overall slowdown on average. Absolutely. How big of a slowdown? We, right now, I would say almost, I was about 12, 13 percent just from January through right now.

That's fast. It's fast. It's very fast, yes. I was expecting a year ago through today, not January through today. We ended fourth quarter really strong. How much of that correlates to the stock market? So because my customers are all manufacturing some sort of widget or something, or something, refurbishing, some forward electronic, whatever, ours is really driven by consumer spending. So I really look at the consumer spending index CPI. That's what I really look at. But I do think that's directly correlated because when people see that their 401ks are going down or however they're invested in the marketplace and the market's down overall, right? They start to tighten up their discretionary spending, right? And they start stretching their dollars a little bit more. And that's what we're seeing right now. So it is in

directly related to what's going on the start market because that's directly related to people's personal wealth. How much do you think this has to do with the tariffs? I think it is directly related to the tariffs. You know, it absolutely is. I mean, I don't have one client right now that's not looking at and already factoring in how the tariffs are going to impact their business. Because all of my clients, listen, we are a global economy. That's a reality, right? There's very little to nothing happens just in a silo within any one single market.

country, right? Everything's globally impacted. Even my clients that are, you know, American made, American produced businesses where they're called, where does the raw material come from, where's transportation and things like that have to happen. So there's a lot of raw material and things like that that come from other countries, right, into our country to produce whatever it is that my clients are producing. So it is absolutely directly related to the tariffs. I have a friend that runs a sheet metal manufacturing and a laser cutting business in Southern California and he was celebrating the tariffs because he said for his business specifically, they've really positively impacted him. You know, I'm glad you brought that up, though,

because currently, yes, it's having an impact. Okay. I can say that strongly, very strong education. I'm seeing it straightforward, okay? That's not my rumor meal. That's not, I didn't read it online anywhere. I'm speaking directly to my customers' businesses. That being said, long term, I think the goal of the tariffs is to bring much more of our production and manufacturing back to the United States. So I think this is a short-term pain that even, and I'm feeling the pain too, but I'm willing to do that for the long-term good of the country, a long-term competitive landscape of where that puts us, because if we bring more manufacturing and production and things like that back to this country, number one, it, I think it makes, it's good for national

security because I think it makes us less reliant on other countries should, God forbid, some sort of World War breakout or something like that. But countries have less to leverage. over us. I mean, you know, I was so shocked, and I don't know how many people knew it, but it was news to me when COVID happened that nearly all, I think 90% of our vaccine, don't quote me on that number, but a very large percentage of our vaccines were produced in China. That's kind of scary to find out realizing that, you know, medicines that we all rely on to protect our society is vast majority being produced in another country that may not always be our best friend. Do you worry that tariffs, though, even though, even though there could be a long

term advantage will result in higher prices for everyday people. Because my thought is that if it is manufactured in the United States, right, more people have a job here. That's right. But it's going to cost so much more money that at the end of the day, sure, it might be produced here, but the cost could double or triple. Like if an iPhone were made here, I saw like some, there was some article that they calculated it would be like $4,000, $5,000. If they made all of the iPhone here, it's like some exorbitant cost. Well, that number is probably. probably true when you don't consider all the other factors, when you start looking at the fact that we're leveraging the playing field for the global economy. So prices will come down overall, right? That's what, you know, I think the tariffs will ultimately do. Now listen, I'm no economist, right? I'm just speaking by what I've seen and experienced in my time in this business, right? So I think that that would happen if everything remained the same, right, is what I'm saying. I think that with the tariffs, it starts equalizing the playing field, wherever. Everyone has to start lowering their cost of production to be competitive.

It's kind of like resetting the global economy, if you will, right, to where we're not getting taking advantage of. That's number one. Number two, if more production is done in the United States, that means there's more demand for employees. Guess what that means for people? Higher wage rates. Because the need, the demand goes up tremendously, right?

I mean, look at what COVID did for wages, right? So you look at our company, like I said, roughly 300 million in revenue. right? A very large percentage of that revenue is my payroll cost, right? Well, just because of COVID, when I average out the wages across all my different clients, how much they've gone up during COVID because of the demand, it's up 38% across the board. The counter to that is that your wages might have gone up, we'll call it even 50%, but houses are now up 100%. The stock market is now 100% higher. Groceries, maybe not 100, but everything else has risen more than the cost of labor. I haven't seen those numbers. I haven't seen my home value didn't double. I wish.

It did not double. The stock market has certainly had a tremendous run. That's a fact, but that's good for everybody. So if your wages were in the stock market, your wealth has gone up tremendously probably since 2019, right? Just even if you were, I mean, if you're in the S&P 500 or even in in safer positions in the market, you've gone up tremendously since then. I think, argument, and again, I'm playing devil's advocate. I'm with you. Is that a lot of the people don't have their money in the market or in a house. That's a fact. So if you had

your money in, yes, absolutely, you came out on top. But for the people that didn't, I feel like they're further behind. Listen, it's not good for everyone, right? And again, I can't say, I'm not sitting here advocating for the tariffs, right? I can't say that I would have, if I were president, I would have gambled with a trade war, right? I can't say that I would have done that, right? Do I think that

we need to do something to equalize our ability to remain competitive in a global economy? Absolutely. Do I think we had to go this route? I'm not so sure, right? I would like to believe maybe a combination of some tariffs, but maybe some renegotiations with some trade agreements, I think would have been a far healthier way to go about it. But I'm no politician. I don't have that level of expertise. I do think it's right now I think that we're slinging a sledgehammer and maybe we maybe we didn't really need to I don't know but I you know I'm not in that position I just feel like between an economist and you I would trust you more because you have just a firsthand experience and no race in the game really is right yeah no race it's it's just you're seeing what's going on before an

economist could even begin to recognize that data because you're seeing it in real time they're seeing it 30 days out and just tracking month over a month. Right, right. Do you change at all your investment perspective based on what you're seeing? Oh, 100%. And so where are you placing your money these days, given what's going on? So we're, you know, we're being very conservative, right, with the investments. I'm not in equities at all right now.

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Okay. As soon as I knew, all right, listen, as soon as I knew that, I didn't know that this administration was going to be all about terrorists. I really didn't know that. Maybe I was really paying attention. I don't know, right? I'm far enough down the game that we've been through, I've ran my business through so many different administrations that I don't really get all, you know, tied around.

I don't get too uptight about all this kind of stuff. One more another, the idea is to find a way to continue to make money and run a business successfully and take care of those employees that make the business happen. Sure. That's what I care about. So when I found out that he was going hard on tariffs, yeah, I'm like, listen, this is a lot of uncertainty that's going to spark.

I understand that all these companies are manufacturing producing something, which means that this is directly going to affect their costs of goods sold. And so we pulled out of equities, right? We just got very conservative. So what's your plan now?

Like, okay, so you pulled out and I'm guessing treasuries? Right, lots of treasuries, absolutely. Some mutual funds along the way as well. So then what's the plan? How do you know when to buy back in? And then what do you buy?

That, you know what? I don't have, I don't have that clarity yet. Okay. Right. I really don't. I am waiting and seeing how this plays out. Because listen, there's a, we're not, it's pretty transparent to me.

A lot of these tariffs are a lot of bluffing and negotiating taxis. Okay. These are not going to be played long term. I mean, at the end of the day, whether you voted for the guy or not, the one thing that is true, Trump is a businessman and he's a shrewd negotiator. I don't know that I would want to have to negotiate with Donald Trump. I really don't. I think he knows how to just beat you down and beat you down to where you're just like, okay, enough, right?

And I think that's really what he's trying to do here. So I'm going to let that play out a little bit. We're going to stay conservative until I start to see some signs that either we are starting to make some concessions or some of the other countries starting to make some concessions. Sure. And depending on which countries are doing what and then based upon which companies are those countries would directly impact their business, then we'll slowly start easing back into equities.

So if that's 25% of the overall portfolio, or this the other 75%. I say very conservative. You know, listen, I run a business. I've lived with risk for 26 years. When I pull money out of the business, it goes at one in two places. Cars, which bring a tremendous amount of joy,

and have turned out to be very good investment. Sure. Right. And then the rest goes invested. But because I live with so much risk being a business owner, I invest pretty conservative. So like you said, a lot of treasury, mutual funds, things like that. So even when I am on the aggressive side, it's only like 25%, you know.

Interesting. I keep by saying, I say, it's a pretty, pretty, pretty conservative. So who do you think should not be an entrepreneur? It's a tough question to answer because I don't want to paint in too broadest strokes, right? But, you know, people have to really have a hard look at themselves. You know, the intestinal fortitude it takes to start something out of nothing. Right, to create something that never existed before. Every single day, massive obstacles are going to come your way.

Setbacks are going to come your way. Let's put it this way. And I still consider myself relatively young. I'm 46 years old. I would not want to have to go through today at my age what I went through in my early mid-20s to get that company up and off the ground. You know, it takes an unbelievable amount of perseverance and tenacity to overcome. situational setbacks and obstacles that come your way. And people have to have an honest question,

or honest discussion with themselves and say, have you really demonstrated throughout your life the ability to do that? Do you really have those innate skills? And also, how far are you willing to push yourself to make this happen? Because I promise you, one thing's for certain. However far you think that is that you think you're going to push yourself to do it, that's half of what it's going to take.

Do you notice any difference between like Gen Z and molecular? And millennials and like Gen X, is there a difference in work ethic between the two? You hear a lot of people complaining about Gen Z. Do you see it? I absolutely do. You know, I feel the seat. They just have such a different mindset. And, you know, they're definitely used to instant gratification, you know, at 46.

I didn't grow up with the Internet. I didn't have immediate access to whatever I wanted. I couldn't Uber eat, deliver whatever I wanted to have for dinner that night. And that's the world they've grown up in. So they're looking for instant gratification. And there's just a reality that your career doesn't happen overnight. Business opportunities don't happen overnight, right? These things take long time to develop.

And so they have an expectation of how rapid things should happen for them. And they're massively disappointed because business and career growth and opportunities just don't happen at the speed of instant gratification. And so I see them, like, struggle with that. Okay. And there's definitely a difference in that. And there's also a difference in when you look at, you know, the generations that come before, everyone, by and large, understood that if they work hard and they persevere, that the rewards will come to them in life.

And so they have a stronger work ethic, the one more methodical. They're more about being part of a team. A lot of the gins. And again, not everybody. But painting with broad strokes, they're really more. about what's in it for them individually, then they are really about how can I make a bigger impact to the team? And then as the team wins, we will win together. And what about having a work-life balance? Is that possible?

Oh, boy. Yeah. They want a life work balance, not a work-life balance. You know, I always joke around with them when they say, hey, you know, I want six weeks vacation. And I'm like, okay, so basically you want to be gone a week every other month. If my company can fully operate with you gone one out of every eight to nine weeks, then maybe I don't really need your position, right? And most successful entrepreneurs learn how to run a business very lean so that what profits and growth are available can be given back to those that really deserve it versus carrying so much fat and having to cover that massive cost, right? So, yeah, they definitely, the work from home thing, you know, is such BS. I'm going to go on.

Cameron say that and I'm not ashamed. You get a lot of hate. That's fine. Let me tell you something. Look at what's in your best interest for you working from home, okay? How are you getting mentored? Who's growing you? How are you getting career advancement sitting on your couch, banging away on a laptop?

You're not. You're not. How are you growing leadership skills that we've spent this whole time talking about so much of what I attribute the success of being an entrepreneur or in any sort of leadership position, for that matter? You've got to have great people skills. if you can't connect with people and inspire them, they won't follow you. So you can't lead people that won't follow you.

How do you develop and hone those skills sitting on your couch and, you know, in your pajamas and a laptop? You can't. So it's not in the best interest for the employees that think that they want to work from home. Now, listen, if you're the only way work from home works is if you're in some sort of productivity-based role, right, where let's say you're an account. I'm just going to make up a position. Say your account's payable. All right. well, the bills come in, you get them, you key them into the accounting software,

and you know, you process the payment sheets week. And we can measure your productivity, you're getting everything done on time. But that's a productivity-based role. And but if somebody wants to grow to become a CFO, how do they get there, working from home, right? Now, what about the people who work from home get their work done on time, but they outsource it to somewhere else? And you don't know about it, but they're basically taking the cut.

I got a real problem with that. That's an integrity issue, if you asked me, right? I hired you because I thought you were the right man for the job. I thought your skill set, your background, the sense that I got of your integrity, your commitment to doing the right thing, to doing a good job for my company, the way I feel like you'll fit and contribute to our company culture, because company culture is a major thing that you've got to have to have a company that's going to continue to grow and to continue to foster growth of the other employees.

you've got to have a strong company culture of everyone trying to lift one another up. I felt like you were going to bring positive contributions to all that. And they come to find out, I'm paying you because of those things. I, as a company, committed that role and that salary to you and all the benefits that I'm providing to you. And then you turn around and you're outsourcing out the back door. But now, what if that person's reviewing all the work? So, like, they send it out. It comes back to them.

They look it over to make sure it's perfect. And you notice that they're one of the highest performing employees. Like in terms of quality, they're top-notch, but they're outsourcing it. I still find that be deceptive and I still find an integrity issue with it. Now, if you're forthright with it, that's a whole different story. But let's say you're not forthright with it, but you come and you say, hey, how are you getting all this work done? And they're honest with you. Say, hey, listen, I've been outsourcing this for last two years.

Would you give that guy a promotion saying, hey, you know what? I want you to look throughout the rest of my company and let's find a way we could continue doing this. That's like, there's that saying to hire like the laziest performance. to do the job because they'll find a way to do it the fastest. There's certainly some truth to that. And I'd have to really consider that because, you know, to trust someone to have broader influence on your business, I have to also believe in your integrity, right? And again, had someone been forthright with me on that?

I'll give you a great example. I'll give you a really great example. So I had a guy doing sales for our company, doing new partnership development. And it was very forthright. So listen, pay me as a 1099, hire, I've got an LLC, hire my LLC. Because what I'm going to do, I've got five people, they're going to do all the research work, the cold calling, the appointment setting. And I'm going to take the appointments and close the deals. I was all about that.

100% all about that. But he was forthright, right? And quite honestly, what we ended up doing, I learned so many lessons from how he had it structured that we implemented a lot of that. structure in our business, right, and full credit to him, right? So he got, I mean, not only did he, you know, come into the fold, but, but, you know, got a larger role in the business, because I saw that this person had strong business acumen, understood how to maximize his efficiencies. So listen, I don't, my time is not most used making cold calls of research in the background of companies and who the decision makers are. It's being in front of as many

decision makers possible. And he came with his own little team to do that. Fantastic. Now, we've built teams that do nothing but that. Reminds me at Jack, on the second channel. So this was years ago. Jack was editing videos on my reaction channel. And he came to me and says, you know what,

Graham, my time is better spent, not doing this. And I want to hire this out. And I was really concerned about it because Jack has such a good eye when it comes to videography work, humor,

doing the right cuts and the right spots. And at first I was really against it because I'm like, dude, why would I pay you when I could just then outsource it to someone else? And the more Jack brought this.

up to me, the more I said, you know what, maybe, how about this? If I don't know it's outsourced and I review the episode and I have no idea that you didn't do it, I'm good with it. Right. But you're holding him accountable to that. Yeah, sure. No problem. And, uh, but he was still forthright. I had, oh, yeah, he came to way before. Integrity. Oh, I was asking him if, if I could do it for a long time. And he's like, no, no, no, I'm like, dude, I would have said no to in the beginning. It's not worth it. But then fortunately, after enough time he budget. Yeah. And there were, there were a few episodes that I was like, oh, this is really good work. Yeah. And I post, And then I think Jack told me, hey, for the last, like, month, I haven't edited any of those videos.

And they've been outsourced. I was like, you know what? Good job. The quality is the same or higher. Doesn't impact me. Go for it. Well, now he's chief editor. Chief editor.

Yeah, I like that. There we go, Jack. Look at that. Upward mobility in the company already. See that? Thanks. So what's the important of work ethic these days? And why do you think that so many people see themselves as a victim of the system?

A victim of the system. I would have to hear how someone finds themselves to be a victim of the system. They're being oppressed by bosses who are too demanding of them, that they don't have a chance to get ahead, that things are too difficult, that maybe they're going to look at you and say,

well, back in your day, you had it easier. It is technically more difficult for most people to have upwards class mobility, I feel like right now. Because back in the day, the primary wealth builder was the home, and the home is becoming less affordable

relative to wage increases. And so there is a valid argument there, or just to grow financially. That is a really interesting perspective. I don't know that people looking to your personal residence as the primary wealth grower is a very, I don't know that's a real reality, because when people look at that,

let me give you a great example, Okay, great example. My wife and I had a second home that we bought, bought it in 2019, okay, September 2019. We sold it May of last year. So huge COVID swing, right? Huge swing in value, right? I'm born and raised in Texas. I've never seen real estate jump like that in my life, right? So we benefited from it. But then we look at, so we sold it for about 40% more than what we paid for the house. That sounds fantastic. Then you back out five years of property tax, maintenance. utilities, you know, repairs, so on and so on, right? Upgrades that we did to the home, we really didn't, we made nowhere near 40%. We really didn't make much money. It really, dollar for dollar, was not a very good investment. Now, where I also challenge you on that, though, that perspective,

listen, the stock market moves so much faster now than it did when I was young. There was no day trading back then. Bitcoin, how many millionaires, multi-millionaires, have been generated because of Bitcoin. And then social media, you know, you look at all the different ways that people are making money via social media. Those avenues did not exist back in the day,

so to speak, I'm not that old, but those avenues didn't exist. So it was only through traditional, get a job, hard work or start a business, grind it out. That was the only way. I also strongly argue against the idea about it was easier back in the day. So you talk about work ethic. right back in the day, if you will,

everyone could walk up to you, shake your hand, look in your eye, carry on a conversation, had at least relatively decent social skills, personal accountability. You know, and today, you know, because people spend so much more time online or, you know, through their phones and whatnot, I mean, listen, there's a reality that social skills have diminished.

They truly have. I've learned that working on my YouTube channel. We got Anthony off camera here. But, you know, he's brought a couple of guys. They're good guys that they didn't even know to walk up and shake my hand and introduce themselves to me when they were going to come work for me. And I literally walked over to what he is. And the guy is a good guy, but he just didn't know. And I didn't know how to accept that.

I thought it was extraordinarily disrespectful. How old is he? I would say he's probably 21, 22, I'm guessing. 19, 19-year-old young man. By the way, a very nice young man come to find out. But when he walked in, you know, Anthony knows exactly what I'm talking about here. And I was standing over here in the warehouse guy walks in. And Anthony goes, oh, that's Mr. Florey over there.

He just kind of throws me the piece sign. No. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. The peace sign like this? So, man. Yeah, so. And so I walk over. Yeah.

That's what prompted it. So I walk over. I shake his and say, hi, I'm Louis Florey. I like to shake people's hands and greet them in the eye with the You should be doing this? Yeah, no, yeah, yeah. We weren't doing any of that, yeah, yeah. And I was like, you know, like a real man does.

And my wife was standing there and she was like, I was looking for a dog to pet or something. She's like, it was such an awkward moment. moment, right? And I'm making a joke. Well, that did happen by the. How did you respond to that? You know, okay, here's the response, all right? My wife thought I was too strong in my response. It just happened. I didn't contemplate. It just happened. It came out naturally because I felt really disrespected. Worked with the guy that day and Ross, he is a nice guy. He just didn't know any better, right? But probably four or five months later went by, right? And he ended up working on a project with us again. He came up. Hey, Mr. Flore, good to see you again. How you've been? And, but

connected with me, spoke to me, looked me in the eye, shook my hand, and I didn't say it to his face. I told my wife about about that, about that night. I'm like, he's about better. He's a better man for it, you know? And so, and I'm making a joke out of this or telling a funny story about it. But what I'm referring to, though, is when I was growing up and when I was younger in my career, everyone had that ability, right? Today, if you had that ability, you stand head and shoulders above everyone else that is more like that young man that day that just doesn't have those level social skills anymore. And in a professional world, you've got to be able to connect with people in a professional setting, in a professional manner. And I just see such a massive degradation.

So I tell my kids, quite honestly, I'm like, listen, if I were y'all's age today, I would kill it. I would absolutely kill it because I don't see the motivation. I don't see the drive. I don't see the grit in this generation right now. I don't see the ability, their social skills. Everything's so focused about them. They're very, very person, if you will, or I don't, you know, just person centric, that they're not looking at, you know, how do I benefit others around me to build a team and rally around what I'm trying to achieve? And they're not focused on any of that. So, you know, and another person feels the same way as Dana White.

He's like, he would be a savage today. And I agree with that, by the way, because the level of competition is, it's lower when you, in that frame. Now, there's certainly a lot of positive things I can say about this generation as well. I mean, they multitask very well. They're used to doing things at a much, much quicker pace. I think that if they can leverage the networking they do on social media into businesses, and I've seen a lot of them do that very successfully, a lot of these people that have that business acumen to leverage that. There's some of the wealth generation I was talking about earlier that I see that those opportunities weren't there when I was growing up.

It's so funny because you sound exactly like Graham every single. No way. Graham is always going. It's so easy to get rich because the average is so bad. It is. People show up late. They don't complete their jobs on time. The quality of their work is really bad.

Average is so bad. And if you're just good or better yet, great, you'll be completely fine. You know what I said? All you have to do is pick up the phone when someone calls you and show up on time. That's it. That's it. If you just do that, you're in the 90th percentile. Just those two things.

And when an entrepreneur see someone that just does those couple of basic things, we latch on to them. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. It's so much harder to find that these days. So 100 percent, I think it's easier. Plus, you know, listen, there's another reality of it, too. Look at the wealth generations that's happened over the last 15 years globally, right? I mean, you know, listen, we look at supercar channels, right?

And the number of people that I remember when I was 28 years old about my first Lamborghini, which actually is here. I bought it back and restored it. But when I bought that car, Houston is the fourth largest city of the United States. You didn't see Lamborghinis the Ferraris very much at all around town. Now they're everywhere. There's been so much wealth generation.

There are a lot of the avenues that I just talked about that didn't exist when I was younger. And so I think that's a great thing. It's giving much more opportunity for a lot of people these days. But yeah, going back to having those basic skill sets, there are a few... I think it's another one is being able to talk on the phone versus texting.

I think that's the biggest difference between... I'm gonna put Jack on the spot here. Jack's... Jack's really taking some wrath here, poor guys. Go for it. You hate taking phone calls. And?

Sometimes you just need to hop on a quick call to bang it out versus texting back and forth. I'm not going to bang it out with you, Graham. Okay, first of all, I'm not going to do that. Well, it's 30 seconds. That's all you need, man. He's paying for that.

That's what he needs, right? That's a good point. It's in the day, to Graham's point, like, I get so annoyed when I look up and I'm like, I've exchanged 27 texts with this person that a three-minute phone call would have resolved. The other big thing, too, with texting, or it's really texting these days, not so much email, is tone and intention gets lost, right? People read it not the way you intended to say it. And then sometimes that can certainly have a negative fact.

So for clarity. Yes. Yeah, for a couple things. I'm going to, Jack, I'm going to start calling it once a week just to force you to answer. Good luck. Phone's always on Do Not Disturb. No, but it is. And everybody your age is on D&D.

Yeah, but here's the problem is we have so many people reaching out. I had Graham as actually pushing through my Do Not Disturb, but then we couldn't figure it out because it would only ever ding. And it was becoming an issue when we were recording podcast for some weird reason. Yeah. But we like voice memos. And I think a lot of the viewers that are younger can attest to this. Because in voice memos, you get like the tone that you're trying to come across. And also with our employees, it makes it so much easier.

If they're trying to call me, it's either a call or they don't transmit the message, whatever information they're trying to relay to me. Right. But instead, if I miss that phone call, then it's gone. And I have to then inquire about whatever it is that needs to be tended to. But if they just send a voice memo, let's say I'm in the middle of doing something. We're having a meeting or maybe we're doing a sponsorship read or this or that or I'm reviewing something and I don't want to break focus. As soon as I do break focus

and I go and I use the restroom or I go and I get a drink, then I can pop open my phone, listen to the voice memo and then send a voice memo right back. Yeah, I would say, I'll give you a point for that. In Jack's fairness, that's a good one. Half of the phone calls could be a text. But the other half, it's better for the phone call. If it could be a text and it's a phone call, that for me, I'm like, it just breaks my focus and I already have a really hard time breaking focus and getting right back in. So if I'm hyper fixated on like a word. work activity. That's all I want to be doing at that moment. You know, I'm listening to you give this expand upon your answer, and I'm going to have to go ahead and own it that if you call me for something

that is simple text, I'm pissed off to you. I'll be really honest. Jack, you're right. That is 99% of it right there. It is, if you could have just texted me, boom. Or another thing that you do a lot, not to just completely air out all of these issues. Let's get a therapy issue. We can really work this You'll be like, hey, is there any chance Gavin can do this? And I'm like, why don't you ask Gavin? Why are you asking me to then ask Gavin? Because if I don't, if I'm not on my phone, because we text way outside of, like, we'll text at like 11 p.m.

or we'll text early in the morning whenever a thought comes in his brain. And then if I don't get, if I don't get to that in three hours, right? And then I texted to Gavin and Gavin doesn't get to it in three hours. That's six hours of delta between when the thing needs to be solved and when it actually gets solved. But if instead he could have just texted Gavin directly, which it should happen, that would have been so much better. It's made me very selective. When I call Jack, I don't call him if it could be in a text unless it's something I need an answer like pretty quickly on something.

So I've got very selective. That's the balance. And now I know when I call Jack will pick up unless he's like in a truly in the middle and just can't pick up. Yeah. So it made me very, I'm very conscious. If I call you, it's usually something. Yeah. And I'll pick up the phone call.

If you call me, I'll pick up. Just bang it out. Bang it out. Well, it's been banged out. I think we just bang that whole thing out too. Yeah. You might be asking yourself, what makes a leader stand out? It's not just about taking charge, but about setting new standards and embracing bold moves.

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So I'm curious, why did you start a YouTube channel? Because it seems like you got everything figured out from a business perspective. You don't need to be making videos. You're not trying to do this from money. That's right. So that's a really good question.

And this is when I talk about, you know, people that come to me about, you know, business advice or opinion on, whether it be a business that they have to try to scale or a business or thinking about starting. That's really food for my soul. I love being able to. to give whatever experience and hopefully a positive impact to them.

I really love that. It brings a lot of joy in life these days. For me, the cars are also in that same vein. You know, I grew up extremely humble background. And a lot of people say that. So we went and made a video where we actually drove where I grew up. So listen, this isn't some, you know, feel good story. Here's a reality, right?

The area was so bad, they had to tear down and move the elementary school because crime was so bad in that area. The only only little school I went to, but back in those days, one of the things that really drove me in really aspiring for something more than what I'd ever seen in alive, because again, going back to those days, you know, there wasn't social media, there wasn't the internet. So we didn't have a lot of exposure to what levels of wealth or opportunity or possibilities were even out there. And I was living on my grandparents' farm. And so that all started for me, though, when I won a posture of a Lamborghini kundash. I didn't even know what the hell that was. I'd never even seen the night before my life. But obviously, the car just looks so extreme.

How that car looks extreme today? And that poster was on my wall. And it became like, wow, I didn't even know that levels of success existed in the world. And I just kind of thought, why not me? What says I can't achieve something like that one day? And that is what that poster became to mean to me. and it drove me to reach beyond anything I'd ever seen before in my life to levels of wealth that, you know, not only that I've gotten to today,

but obviously there's people far more wealthy than me. But it was a strong motivation for me. So now when I would go to some car shows, and we don't really do a whole lot because I've been busy raising kids, and so on weekends are usually, you know, whatever kid activity we have going on, that's where I was at. Now that my kids are getting a little bit older, my weekends a little bit more free,

and I would do some car shows here and there. and I would see kids and I would see just how enamored and just wide-eyed they were to see some of these cars. And it just hit me. I'm like, oh, my God, I could be inspiring some young person today like I was with that one poster. And then by way of doing it on a YouTube channel, listen, the cars are my passion today. A lot of my time in my life is doing different things with these cars, events and chasing cars and things like that, whatever it is, I'm doing these cars. So Phil, I'm already doing these things anyway, and then bringing people along and showing them what's possible if you really hone in on some of the attributes that we talked about earlier, that if someone like me can come from their grandparents' farm on welfare to sitting here with a $31 million car collection, if I could do that, so can you. And I'm really hoping, and that's kind of our little tagline is that we're driven to inspire, you know, cars are driven to inspire.

I'm really hoping that we can inspire that growth or that next young person to believe in themselves, take a chance of themselves, bet on themselves, and make something happen out of their life that they never even dream possible before. So how did you know if you had enough money to buy your first Lamborghini? It was a matter of cash flow, right, in the business, right? So it was a matter of being able to say, hey, you know, the business cash flow is good. We're in a good spot cash flow-wise. took care of some personal things, you know, for personal financial securities, was able to start doing a little bit of investing to start building a load of the family nest egg, if you will. And now, I couldn't really take the money out to go buy a brand new Lamborghini at the time, but I did.

I bought a 2005, so at the time it would have been, I think it was 08 or 09. So it was either three or four years old when I bought the cars. I bought it used. And so no one. only that I had enough money for it. I knew that I could take that money out of the business, not impact the business, not impact the financial security of the family, and reward myself with, you know, an exotic car, a little toy. Can you just say how much money you had at the time or how much you were making at the time to justify this purchase? Yeah. Well, so at the time, I was probably

making somewhere between three to five million dollars a year or something like that. Like personal income? Yes. So it was just easy. No, it's not easy. That's a way higher than I expected. I thought I thought you were going to say three to 500,000. Yeah. It's like, oh, wow. Yeah, you're stretching it. That seems like a no-brainer then with the income versus the cost of the car. How much was the car?

At the time, I think I paid, gosh, $195,000 for the car. And so your next day was probably a few million bucks. No, no, no, guys, you've got to understand. Yes and no, yes, but it was tied up in the growth of the business. Remember think about this, okay? Right, because you did a whole... Talk about the growth of that business growing, you know, 10, 17, 30, and then, you know, what was it, your, I think was your four, what it was, you know, we were doing a little over 70 million in

revenue. So, you know, I was funding all that growth with that cash and then having to pay income tax on the income, which was extremely difficult to do because my, my business is a very cash intensive business because you've got to float those receivables for so long. Floating those payrolls is a lot of money, you know. And so, you know, even right now, you know, the company's carrying probably close to $20 million in receivables, that's cash. Is that every month? Yes. Well, that's weekly.

That's weekly. That's weekly. Yeah, that's what we're carrying on the books, right? And, you know, we've gotten ourselves away from debt. So that's all, you know, through the years I continue to build my return to errands and I finance it with my own cash. Was this when you had paid off all of the debt? Yes. So this is after you paid off all the debt.

The debt at that time. You're going to understand. You pay out that debt at that time, but it's not static unless your company stops growing. Right. you take on more clients, then you need to take on more debt, unless if you have the cash bill. Unless you have the cash. That's right. Exactly. Now, what about for the average person, they want to buy a Lamborghini? Okay. What would be your advice to that person? How much should they have to spend $250,000 on a car? You know, that car purchase means to not be a major

life purchase, financially speaking. Okay. So when I say it to say, like, you know, you're going to buy in that car should not mean that, well, I'm going to buy this $250,000 car. I'm going to put 20% down, right, or something like that. I'm going to finance this. So I put, say, $50,000 down and I've got, you know, $50,000 left over in the bank, right? So if you're taking half of what you had saved and putting that as a down payment on a car, probably not wise, right? I think that whether you choose to pay cash or finance is really a decision based upon what interest rates you're doing at that time and what you're doing with your money otherwise. So if interest rates are low, there are times that I will throw debt on a car, especially back of

the good old days where I could get 1.9 or 2.9% interest while I wasn't going to take my money out of, you know, good investments to do that. But you need to be able to pay cash for that car very easily before you go spend that kind of money. So how old were you when you first bought your Lambo? 28. 28. And did you have a girlfriend at the time or were you saying? No, I was married. You were married by the time you bought your Lamborghini. I was going to ask you if you got more attention from women once you started buying supercars. But I guess no. Just from one, maybe. Your wife is going to see this, so be careful. Yeah, well, yeah, exactly.

And the answer is no. It's kind of funny. Like, I don't really find at any stage of life where cars have got me much attention from females. It's mostly other dudes. Graham wants to know, yeah, is it other, so it's mostly other dudes is what you're saying? It's all 16-year-old boy. That's right. Well, that's really.

That's a fact. That's fact. It's just 16-year-old. You are the man when you drive by the high school. That's all that is. So, you know, I always think it's kind of funny. People have this, I think it's more of an older mindset, because the younger generation, I think, accepts, you know, exotic cars so much more

than, than older generations did. But the older generation was always like, you know, oh, so-and-so's doing it for attention or they're really insecure or this or that. I'm like, the only attention you're getting is from teenage boys. So that's probably not feeding your ego very much at all. So truly, these, you know, any car of our own has been because it brings me personally joy. Okay, but if you are trying to get girls, which car is the best? That's a really great question.

You had to pick one. Wow. It doesn't have to be in this garage, just like any car to get girls. If that's the primary objective and money is not a concern. No object. Then you got to go big. You got to outshine every other guy out there that's got a hurricane, you know, or a whatever. Mazda Miata?

No, you got, yeah, yeah, you got to outshine those guys, right? So to show you're the real deal, money's no object, so you're obviously like... They don't even know, do they? Listen, I'm pretty sure the average lady does know that a Bogotty cost much more than a Hurricanes. Or a Corvette, yeah, yeah, yeah, the Z8 or whatever. They probably don't have any idea that it's three to five million versus, oh, I bet that's a million-dollar car versus a Huracon, you know, is a couple hundred thousand years. So you think it would be Gotti would be the best cost. Something at that level.

Yeah, probably Bugatti. Now, Kona's sake, they're not even going to know what that is. You're right. You're right. What about Pagani? Pagani, probably not. Probably not. Bugatti probably would be the move.

You know, that's weird. But yeah, I think you've got to get a big car. Any Ferrari, ladies don't know the price difference between a La Ferrari and a 4-5-8. You know, it's just not their space, right? And if they do, that may not be the girl you want to attract, right? If they do, they've had some past experience that you don't want to compete with. Yeah, that's a good point. My answer was going to be a convertible Porsche Turbo S.

Now, why is that the car you think gets the most girls? Porsche. I think they just know the name. Over Ferrari. Yeah, I would say just because I think the go-to sentiment is that Ferrari, he's trying to show off to people. What does he have to prove? Porsche in Silver is a little bit more subtle. Okay.

It's a convertible, which is kind of fun. And it's a turbo S. So it gets attention from car guys, but not from people who think that you're trying to show off because it's very under the radar. Graham, a girl does not know the difference between a Carrera and a turbo S. But the Turbo S gets... I know the difference between a career and a turbo S, if I'm being honest. You don't. Maybe you should.

So, all right, let's qualify the expertise of your opinion. Yeah. married single day married yeah okay all right and i don't have a Porsche turbo but but i'm just saying if i was single and if i was right trying to like you know do the dating scene it would probably be a Porsche turbo s i would absolutely go get some convertible Ferrari that's exactly what i would do uh if i was just in generally speaking trying to get attention from girls right it would be a convert because a Ferrari's more in generally speaking it's more classier elegant if you will than Lambo Lambo says show off, got something to prove all that stuff all day long, right?

And don't get wrong, I love Lamborghini. But if we're just speaking from where the opinion I think ladies would have, the Ferrari is known as, in my opinion, more of a connoisseur's car, especially, you know, when you look at the history of Ferrari and things like that, it's a more beautiful car. It's got curvy, more sexy lines like a beautiful lady would have. Lambo is every 14-year-old's rendition of what they would draw of a supercar. What about if you want a ball on a budget and you have $50,000 and you want people to think

that you've got way more than that. 50,000, I think a lotus is a great option. Don't give him answer. But I love that answer. I absolutely love that. Listen, I was kicking around, you know, I don't know that Corvettes, even though, listen, I think the news was it the Zora?

Amir? Zero one. I thought there was a project Zor or something like that. Yeah. I mean, listen, I think they're doing phenomenal things. But it's always going to be a Corvette, you know. But, you know, you get a C6 Corvette. That's a phenomenal car.

I would say that's bawling on a budget. That's a badass car. That's a lot of car for the money, especially these days. A Lotus, 100%. Lotus at least gives that exotic vibe, right? You know, the funny thing is the sales. tax on one of these cars would be worth more than the Lotus. Oh, God, yeah.

The sales tax. I mean, that's... No, the first car I bought, like the fun car, was a 2006 Lotus Elise. I bought it in 2009 for $30,000. Okay. And I sold it two years later for $30,000. Awesome. The next one I bought was in 2014.

It was a 2008 Lotus Exige S240. I paid $50,000 for it. Drove it two years. I sold it for $50,000. And then in 2020, I got a 2010 Lotus Avora GTC with the whole body kit on it and everything. Right. Right. Still have it. Still have it. Still have it.

What years is again? 2010. Any problems? No. It's been solid. Right. So the only problems are self-inflicted problems to the car because it's modded. Right.

And so the issues I have are stupid stuff because he redid the, the prior owner. redid all the interior with Alcantara. Like everything on the car is custom. But the door handle broke. So there was one time where I tried to get out of the car and the door handle wouldn't open with me in the car. And I had to climb out the window. Little things like this.

Or I had to replace some fuses on the car. Right. Which requires you taking out a back panel. And in fixing that fuse, now the radio doesn't work. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Little things like this. It's a little annoyances. mechanically, it's been perfect.

All lotuses have been perfect. Just the oil changes, that's it. That's a 15-year-old car. Like, there's just a reality to some of these older cars. Just things, silly things like they're going to have just because of age. I actually think I'm going to update my answer,

but we've got to update the budget just a little bit. If I want to ball on a budget, it's a really gorgeous car, super cool, and very few females would know the difference between this car and a super expensive version of that car. I'd go get a 360 spider. You could probably pick one up for 7580 grand.

Hmm. That says Ferrari. It's convertible. It's gorgeous. What if you don't have the money for the maintenance? You know, the maintenance isn't that bad on that car.

It's not like this 355 over here. Every three to five years, you got to do the engine out and stuff like that. The maintenance on that car is not too bad, especially going back to when I said, don't buy the one that's got 3,000 miles on it and it's a, you know, a 2002. Get the one that's got 15, 18,000 miles on it.

The guy's been driving it. He's kept it maintained. So there's not a bunch of it. of back maintenance or deferred maintenance on that car. He's probably kept it in good shape. That was probably his baby, took good care of it. And you probably buy that car for, you could probably buy that car for $70, $75,000. And you look no different to most ladies, like the guy that's got the latest and greatest $500,000, you know, SF90.

My vote, if you want a ball on a budget, is any used to Aston Martin. Oh, that's an excellent way. Or a used Bentley. The Bentley GTs, 2007. six that you could pick up in the 30 grand range. That's an excellent answer. It looks like 150,000, $200,000 car. And they look almost identical to the new ones.

They do. That is so true. That is absolutely so true. Those are two actually really excellent. Mercedes S class. You could now find them in like 20 grand for a used Mercedes S class, like a 2010, 2009 with 80,000 miles on it. And I see them with 200,000 miles on these cars. They just, they're bulletproof.

They're good cars. They're great cars. Absolutely. And if you roll up in that S class, everyone immediately assumes it's at least $150,000 car. Yeah. Because they don't look that different year to year to year, right? You know, another one, nowhere near that price point, but I laugh about the fact that like Rolls Royce, right? Oh, the phantoms, like the $70,000 Rolls Rose Royce Phantoms.

You roll up in an old school phantom like that. Wow. Like, I don't even care what you paid for it. You're a baller. Even in my book, I'm telling you, that's a baller car. There was a Maybach that went for sale. I think it was on cars and bids, a Matt Black one. And I'm looking at it, and it's got like 10 hours left on the bid,

and it's like 40-something thousand dollars. For a Maybach. For a Maybach. And I'm just thinking to myself, if this sells for under 50, there's no reason why I shouldn't be buying this car. It's just a good deal. Yeah. And I'm always a buyer of anything if it's a good enough deal.

Even if I'm not in the market, if it's a good deal and I can make money on it, I'll buy it. And I thought it like 42 grand, it's worth it to buy the Maybock. Isn't that crazy how some cars do that? That's amazing. Bentley is one that really, I'm a huge fan of the Bentley, the Continental GTC convertibles.

I had one. I sold it recently just really to make room for stuff and there's more stuff on order and all that kind of jazz. But it's a car that I miss. It's a phenomenal car, but I've owned two. I had a, my last one, I think was a 2022. I think it was, bought it brand new. My first one was a 2011 or 2012. It was actually Robert Orie's car come to find.

I bought it used, right? And the difference between those two car was minimal. Like if they were both parked outside, 99.9% of people would have no difference of those two cars. Yet, one of them, to your point, is $40,000 today, you know? And the other one was, what, 303 brand new? There was, in terms of catching attention from the laser, or even just making a statement, period,

there was no ROI in buying the brand new one whatsoever. I agree. What are you finding right now with the car market? Are prices trending downwards? Yeah, things are definitely getting much softer. you know, depending on the car, right? You know, listen, the blue chip stuff is still pulling crazy numbers, which kind of runs counterintuitive.

I mean, no one's immune to the market's being down. Nobody's immune to a lot of things we talked about what's going on economically. But, you know, I'm still watching blue chip cars trade at absolutely ridiculous numbers. I mean, look at the Ferrari SP3, Daytona. I mean, that car is changing hands right now between $6 and $6.5 million. That's a $2.2 million. What's the MSRP? 2.2 million.

That's insane. Yeah. It's absolutely insane. Speaking of that, though, to be able to get that allocation, what do you have to do to get that car? A lot. A lot. So to get to that place with Ferrari, and it's really interesting what Ferrari's done with their Halo cars. And we talk about the Big Five, which is now the Big Six.

So I'm currently I'm referring to allocations of the F-80 when I talk about that, versus the Icona cars. The Icona cars are the Monza SP1 and twos and now the Daytona SP3, which I think is one of the the most beautiful things to come out of Marinello. Yeah, I agree with that. That cars. Unbelievable. Notice, I don't have an allocation of any of the Icona cars in my garage. And the reason for that is you can almost consider it kind of like a Y or a fork in the road with your customer path with Ferrari.

So the things you have to do and have to have done with Ferrari. Okay. So to get the F80 allocation, and listen, this isn't written in stone anywhere. This is my understanding, my personal experience, and the experience I've seen of many of my friends that are kind of in that same boat, some that did and some that did not get allocations of the F80 and the Icona cars, okay?

You have to have, I would say, probably 12 or 13 cars in your garage, Ferraris. Of those 12 or 13, I would say at least 5 to 7 of them need to be limited edition cars, you know, a 458 speciali perta, 599GTO, F12TDF, things like that, limited edition cars. You have to have a full order bang.

What I mean by that is that whatever Ferrari is producing right now, you need to have at least one of them on order. Pyrsangue, Roma Spider, 296 Spider, SF90, whatever they're producing, you need to have one of those on order. You also need to be involved in participating with the brand, whether you're doing cavalcade that they host over in Italy or actually all over the world, like me, racing in the Ferrari Challenge series. So you need to be doing other things that you're intimately and very much involved with the brand.

And that's, you know, a lot of you want to hate on Ferrari with that, okay? We kind of have ourselves to blame because they didn't set the standard of what the top five to 600. It's really the top 600. When they refer to Ferrari top clients, they're talking about the top six hundred in the world. It's what we as the marketplace have been willing to spend on the brand that continues to raise the level of what it takes to be in the top 600. So it's really not Ferrari going, you must check all these boxes. It's what everyone's been willing to spend with Ferrari that has risen the level of competition. How important is the relationship with the salesperson?

Or like at what point does the chain of command go up that like that person makes a decision? So used to be it was much more about the relationship with the dealer. Ferrari is taking control a lot of that. And the guys can argue both sides whether that was a good or bad thing. but what it did do is eliminate a lot of backdoor under the table dealings that some people were doing with their dealer to get special allocation cars. It leveled the playing field to say, all right, listen, we in Italy are going to look at the profile of each customer and we're going to dictate who gets the allocations of the really special stuff.

So it evened out, and I think it brought some integrity to who gets those allocations. Okay. Now with the icono cars, all that I've done, I checked all those boxes, everything I named, my wife and I do, and we participate in quite a bit. Not because we have to, but this brings us joy. We actually really love it. And we love these cars. I don't buy anything I don't love.

And, but with the Icona cars, when the SP 1 and 2 Monsas came out, I didn't get it. I'm like, all right, it's an 812 with a body kit on it. It doesn't have a windshield. They weren't homologated at the time. It couldn't be homologated in the United States, so I couldn't drive it on the road. I didn't want to buy something that's a garage queen. None of my cars are garage queens. I drive everything I have.

And so my wife. And they offered this allocation of the SP 1 or 2, which one would you like to have? And I'm like, listen, my wife and I are not going to go down the road with a helmet and cockles on in this car. And so we didn't take an allocation of it. Then the SP3 came out and, oh my God, that car is just dropped it. Gorgeous, open top V12, limited edition Ferrari. Yes, across the board. Start reaching out to my dealer.

Start reaching out to those at Ferrari about, you know, is there anything I could do to potentially get an out. and what not, and they don't directly tell you, but looking at it, the only way you get an SP3 are the guys that are high up with Ferrari and have an SP1 or two in the collection. And then you guys may know the SP4 and 5 is coming very soon. And the rumor right now that I'm hearing very strongly is the SP4 is going to pay homage to the F40. I think that's going to be an unbelievable car to have. And then the SP5 is going to pay homage.

to the 250 GTO. So does that mean you're just out of luck? You're out of luck. You're out of luck. And what I'm hearing right now, listen, obviously anyone that follows my channel or knows he personally knows how near and near the F40 is to be. And really my whole family, my wife, my kids,

the F40 is really our car, pinnacle of our collection. The fact that they're going to do a modern interpretation of an F40, and could you imagine for a moment to do that car justice you'd have to put a manual gearbox in it. So they twin turbocharge, do a twin turbo charge V8, just like the original F40, gated manual, no hybrid, no nothing, modern interpretation of that car. Oh my God.

We'd love to have that car. I mean, any, and then, of course, it'd be very some of the 250 GTO, but it'll be a gated manual V12. I'm not saying they are going to do a manual, but I'm thinking, if you're going to pay homage and do it right, you kind of got to, right? and if they do that.

So I very much want to get in a position to where we get an allocation of an SD4 and 5. So on that, you're mentioning a Y. You go down that one Y and let's just say you don't get that one allocation. Now, the rest of that Y, you don't have access to. But does that mean you could go through another series of cars

and continue that trajectory, just not this one? Yes, I know. The only way for me to get an SP4 and 5, I've got to go buy either one in SP one or two. I don't have to have both, but one of and an SP3. And that's about a $9 million investment, maybe $10 million investment, because SP3s are changing hands at $6 million, between 6 and 6.5. Let's say we got one at 6.

And the SP1s are mid-3s, and an SP2 are changing hands right around 4 to 4.2. But do you have to buy through Ferrari or you could buy secondhand? You can buy secondhand. You absolutely can. And then just ensure that it gets entered into your profile with Ferrari so Ferrari knows you have those cars. Is it still then not guaranteed, though? It is then still not guaranteed. That's correct.

Like I said, no one, these, these are what we as consumers and participants, heavy participants of the brand have deduced. Let's say it this way. If you don't have an Icona car, I don't care how big your collection is, you're not going to get a future icon of That's for sure. That's guaranteed. No way. No matter, even with all the brand participation that my wife and I've done, even with all the cars that we have, all the stuff we have on order,

I do not believe there's any reasonable chance that we're going to get an allocation of an SP4 and 5, unless we make the investment to get the one and a three. And I say one and three, just do the math. They're going to make probably $599 of the SP4 and SP5, just like they did the SP3, which was $599. Well, if everyone's already got a SP3, right? But then some guys have an SP 1 or 2, those are going to be the ones that get those, I think has a very strong chance of getting the 4 and the 5. How much is the F40 vehicle going to be, the one that pays a mod?

I do not know. Listen, had you asked me that question before the pricing schedule, the F80 came out? I would have said similar to the SP3 about 2.2, 2.3 million. It's what I would have said. Local news is in decline across Canada. And this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void. And it gets harder to separate truth from fiction.

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No one expected that to be a almost $4 million MSRP car, right? And Ferrari's clearly looking at the success of their halo cars, the market growth. We've been talking a lot about wealth generation. I mean, listen, there's been so much wealth generation, even Ferrari recognized. it within their own financial outlook, because up until about, I don't know, even just a few years ago, the top clients, it was the top 500 in the world. Well, there's so much more wealth generation of world now that Ferrari expanded it to be 600, right? So they're now looking at what these cars are changing hands secondhand. Well, Ferrari is a public traded company.

They're going to maximize their ROI. Why don't they just increase prices, though? If things are constantly trading, like, I know that they have. Isn't it a constant thing, though, that if you get an allocation for a Ferrari, let's say you pay like a million bucks for it, immediately you could turn around and sell it for like 1.5? Most of the times. Well, that's what they've done with the F80. A lot of people would argue that's what they've done with the F80 versus selling it to us at 2.2, like they did with the SP3, and seeing that the market will absorb another $4 million of cost, because people are buying that. car at $6 million.

Ferrari's going, well, look at the love Ferrari, okay? That was what, a $1.6 to $1.7 million car depending on your spec. Okay. That's a, that's a 4.3 to, I just saw a black one change hands last week at $4.9 million. So Ferrari's recognizing that there's much more demand at a higher price point in the marketplace, and so the F80 ends up being almost $4 million. So to answer your question, I really don't know where the SP4 and fiber are going to be priced. I would bet strongly.

It'll be far more expensive than what the SP3 was because the market's changed so much. Here's what I think is you have to make people work for it to value it. And if it's just money, a lot of these people, just throw money at it and get the car.

But as soon as values start falling on those cars, the entire market cracks apart. Because then people get in the precedent of, well, you know, if I'm going to pay $5 million bucks, but it's going to sell for three. I don't want to take a $2 million hit.

There's something special about them. selling out every single time. About selling out, but also them giving you, hey, here's $2 million of equity. Right. No one else could get this and you worked hard for it. It's like a reward. That's how I see it.

Well, that's an absolute fact. But also remember, that is a fact. And I also remember the mindset of the people that are, that are the Ferrari customers. You know, as we said, the vast majority of these people with that level of wealth are business people, they're entrepreneurs of some sort. What would you say is the median net worth of people buying those Ferrari Halo cars? The big Halo cars, probably $100 million or more. And what does someone have to do if they're starting out today? They got a little money coming in and they want to work their way up the Ferrari chain.

How would they do that? I just laid it out. Like I said, you're going to have to, first of all, you've got to have a full order bank. Listen, if you go by, let's just say you went and bought a 599 GTO, F12 TDF, let's just say you went and bought a Lough Ferrari or an F40. Those are all used. Good for you. Ferrari made $0 off of you.

Because those were all secondhand. Ferrari is a business, just like any other business, right? So you need to have a full order bank. So you need to be ordering one of everything that they have. That's basic because there's a lot of guys out there doing that. So that doesn't make you special yet. Okay? Oh, that's nice.

You bought every, you know, production car we have going on right now. That's not going to get you a special car because there's too many other guys that have done that. Plus have some of the special edition cars, Halo and Halo cars in their collection. so it shows the commitment to the brand, the enthusiasm of the brand, and Ferrari's trying to reward the people that are really passionate about what they're doing. Because they know, to your point, these limited, the SF90X, now they got the 296 version speciality coming out, right?

That car is going to do very, very well. I think that car will probably do even better than the SF90XX, because every guy that's a real driver knows that the 296 is a better driver's car. So the version speciality, the light version, track version, whatever we want to call it, is going to be an even better car. So they know that when they reward people with these cars, there's a big upside. So they're trying to reward their most loyal customers to it. So, yeah, you're going to have to make a very large investment.

If you want to get in a position where you're getting some of these cars, you're going to have to have a full order bank. You're going to have about 13, minimum, I think about 13 cars in the garage, and about 6 or 7 are going to have to be limited edition. Just curious, what do your children drive? Oh, are you adopting? So much for me to catch so much hell. Their dad's a car guy.

Okay. How old are your kids? All right. My daughter's almost 21 and my son's 18. Okay. So my daughter was really, you talk about bawling on a budget. I bought my daughter. Now she's almost 21 now.

In my house, I painted myself into a corner because these are all the cars that I have. I don't really have an average daily car. So in Texas, when kids turn 15, they can go to driver's ed and get their learner's permit and start learning to drive. And my wife's like, you have to buy, my daughter was the first, she's the oldest. You're going to buy her car at 15. I'm like, that's absurd. I'm not buying a 15-year-old kid a car. She was, really, what are you going to teach her how to drive on? And I thought, oh, crap, I really did this to myself. So I went and bought her a very used Mercedes, I think it's a, I think it's called a 330 GTC.

I got it for $34,000. It was used. It had 28,000 miles on it. So the little Mercedes SUV, and she just came over. A GLC. GLC, thank you. That's it. 330 GLC.

And that's been a phenomenal car. Every time I get in that car, I think dollar for dollars is the best car I've ever bought in my life. It's reliable. It's fun. It's peppy. It's classy. It's comfortable.

And it's a beautiful little car. And we've had zero problems with it. And she's driven it now for going on six years. my son's first car was a little Subaru BRZ. And then he started a little pressure washing business in the summers because he wanted to mod the car. And I'm like, look, buddy, I bought the car for you, but I'm not paying for the mods and said in the other.

So he came up with the idea to start a pressure washing business, did really well. And he's put probably $18,000, for the mods into this car. You know, he got the pro charger on it, heavier clutch, airbags, exhaust. you name it, body kid, wrap, the whole thing. How do you teach your kids about wealth and make sure that they appreciate all the work

that you put in, understand where you came from, and not have them just be entitled, they're spoiled? I think that is the key thing as a parent. Any parent that has done well in life when you're raising kids, I think it's one of the the strongest obligations you have as a parent. It's also one of the trickiest ones to navigate because you want to do a lot for your kids. at the end of the day, you know, it's about the expectations in the home. Nothing's given, right?

And so, like, for example, you know, my son, it's a Subaru BRZ. That's not a super expensive car, nothing flashy about that car at all. And then if he wanted to do mods on, he had to work and do those. So he knew that getting a little local hourly job was never going to be able to save the kind of money you need to do that car. It was his idea to come up with starting his own business. And then he comes to me, he says, Dad, I'd love to start this pressure washing business. I said, I think it's a great idea.

That's a lot of hard work, too. Plus, it would force my son to really come out of his shell, socially speaking, because he's not the big extrovert. His personality is not really that much like mine. So for him to go knocking doors and try to make cold calls? Yeah. So I was all about it. And I said, well, where are you going to get the money for the equipment?

And so we talked about a little bit And so I'll tell you what I'll make you a business loan Interest bearing Right And you got to pay it back And so he's all excited about it You researched it

And he got kind of He was very particular with with his choice Of what equipment he bought And he said to be reliable But knew he didn't want to go into too much debt With dad to start his little business And he was 14

Well 15 years old at the time Excuse me So he comes back downstairs He's all excited He's been researched equipment and he goes um he was dad i um how do i get to and from my jobs and i'm like that's a problem you don't have a driver's license that i don't have a car that we're throwing a pressure washer in the back of well at the time we had a little golf cart that my kids had a drive around the neighborhood on

so he goes back downstairs about an hour later he was dad of research that i can i can get this little trailer and this little hookup on the golf cart da da da da da da the whole assembly was like 600 box or something like that so i made him a small business loan and he went we went and got the equipment, was charged him interest on the loan. And I was like, listen, you can either carry the debt and pay the interest, which is going to cost you more money over time, or you can earn money and pay the debt down quicker, but much less of your money is going to go in your pocket right away, much like the lesson I had to learn when I started my business. And so he had to go knock doors, which was way outside his comfort zone, but he's in debt. He's got to make money now, right?

And he started knocking doors. The kid made $14,000 that first summer, pressure washing. And he sold his first couple of a big jobs where he needed help and getting his other, you know, 15-year-old buddies to come show up and do this because this man, labor, in the middle of Texas summers was hard. So sure enough, one of his buddies was supposed to show up in helping. Didn't show up that morning. He's got to get to this job. And it was, you knew it was going to take him like nine, ten hours to do this job. So his first employee helper was me. So I actually have a video of me out there dragging this hose and moving this pressure wash all he's up there, pressure.

the back patio and the planner pots and everything. But it was so awesome. It taught my son hard work, what it means to start a little business. I set him up a little financials, a little balance sheet. He could, you know, log in his revenues and his operating costs, pay down his debt, build up the assets and minimize the liabilities on his balance sheet. I'll also go over the company financials each month with my kids of our main company. Yeah.

I want them to understand how business is run, how you manage the finances of a business, why I make some of the decisions that I make, financially speaking, relative to the company, how I determine what the company's cash flow needs are going to be, the casual health of the business. So they understand that and they understand what it takes to make, make those things happen. The other thing, too, is, like, you're going to look at, like,

what their jobs are, right? They don't have jobs when they're growing up, but their job is, there's chores to be done around the house. You don't, I just don't believe in giving an allowance for nothing. You earn your money, right? So there's no allowance, but, but, and, and by the way, making your bed and doing the dishes, that's for free.

you know, I'm not paying you to do that kind of stuff. But, you know, if my son wants to pressure wash the house, because we get the, you know, whatever's going on, we'll do that. But their job is also school and applying themselves to school, education, and whatever extra curricular activity they're going to have. And they've got to have at least one. I prefer two to three because I need to be working hard a lot of different areas. It develops them a lot of different areas. I'm a big fan of them doing team sports. They learn how to win together, lose together.

rely on others, have others rely on them to do their job. And also leadership gets built a lot in team sports as well. I think a lot of those really, and I still consider them traditional values. And that shouldn't change whether you as a mom or dad have been financially successful or not. I think it's what I see, and it's not very awesome. Once in a while I see kids that are like what we're talking about, they grew up very entitled. There's one person I know that comes to mind that he's in he's mid-30s, you know, grew up very successful families and, you know, it's about as entitled as they come. I can't stand up. You know, just it's a real problem. But I can tell that, that the parents kind of gave this person everything they wanted, everything kind of was handed to them, then we're not to work hard.

They come to expect people to, what's the right word? Cater, thank you. They expect people to cater them because of who their mom and dad was or whatever the situation was. And that's when, I mean, what good could come out of that, right? So with, with us and with my family. The other thing, too, is here's a really big thing, especially when you're a business owner, or remind my kids, listen, when you're a business owner,

you never know what tomorrow brings. This can all be gone tomorrow. And so evaluate, be wise with what you've earned, what you do, how you treat others, and hopefully be wise with securing your future. At what point did you feel like you were rich?

Any other, there's two, I look at being rich and being wealthy, is two very different things, right? I probably considered myself rich, probably right around the age of 30 where the majority of the company's cashwood caught up a good chunk of what we were making I could actually take out of the company

and deposit into my personal bank accounts to start developing my own personal financial portfolio, right investment portfolio. Having money, not in the business, but in my personal investment accounts, that's when I really started to feel rich. And really, I didn't feel rich until I had like a million dollars in my own personal bank account and investment portfolio.

Then I felt like I was a rich person because it's weird because like you make all this money in a business, but you can't take it out because especially when you're in a cash intensive business, you don't feel the benefits of that money because it's not in your pocket yet, right? Taking it out of the business. And so, yeah, so as I think that through, it was probably right around the age of 30 when I had about a million dollars in the bank. Personally. And then what about wealthy?

Probably when my net worth exclusive of the value of the business. Because again, the value of the business is one thing that's great on paper. That can diminish quickly if you have a few down years. That can go away very quickly. So I've never really considered that me determining myself to be wealthy when I looked at that number. It was really when I looked at my personal assets outside the business, everything inclusive, of, you know, real estate, cars, you know, my investment portfolio, things like that, at about $50 million is probably where I started to feel like that's a difference between.

$50 million? Is there anything at $50 million that you still couldn't afford, like flying private jets or buying a yacht or anything? Well, yacht, I don't know. I mean, there's some, like $200 million yachts and more out there. And fortunately, that's a direction I've never gone. I've never gone the yacht route, but private jets, you know, I've certainly done over the years. But to answer your question, you know, and that's what I tell people and it's kind of hard to

understand that or visualize that, but I should say conceptualize that. There is a number, right, after which you can continue to add to your personal wealth that doesn't change your life, okay? And absolutely, listen, if you've got $15 million worth of assets, you having $300 million worth of assets probably isn't going to change your life at all. Having a total net worth of a million dollars versus having a total net worth of 50 million is a very different scenario, right? That difference is huge. When would you say the law of diminishing returns really kicks in? Probably around 20 million. Just think about it. At $20 million, right, let's just say you have $20 million invested in various different avenues, whether it be

real estate that's paying your return. invest it in the market or some sort of any other asset that's driving income cash flow. Okay, whatever that may be. If you've got 20 million doing it and it's doing, say, let's just use easy about, 8 to 10% per year, right? And you stop earning a living otherwise. Those assets are still paying you between $1.6 to $2 million a year passive income. That's your passive income is paying you that kind of money a year? Yeah, you can't spend that.

Yes, you can. I can show you how. Well, sure. With like ultra-luggery goods. For sure. But your, but your life is so secure at that point, right? So where I'd say you're, and that's, I'm speaking of being wealthy, right? Rich, well, let's back that number way down. You know, if you've got $5 million, right, drive, and I'm talking about being rich, okay,

you've got $5 million of assets that are driving cash flow. or some sort of return to you for a passive income. That's probably paying you in the neighborhood of $400,000 a year. That is, there's nothing you can't do without getting into ultra-luxury stuff with that kind of income per year. Just going to significantly change your life whatsoever. How did your life change going from being, growing up very poor to growing to like being wealthy? What were the main differences that you noticed? I guess two things.

One, it got me to this place where I'm at in life now where I've got nothing left to prove to myself. So a lot of inner peace, knowing that what I believed I was capable of, I actually have now done. And that brings a whole other level of happiness that unless you struggle with that, you can't really appreciate. And that was probably one of my biggest things in my younger years, especially through my 20s. So I'd say late teenage years through my 20s that I have expectations. of what I demanded of myself, but this massive fear of not having the ability to achieve it. And that, that, that, that, that,

it really put a massive fear not only in me, but gave me a lot of anxiety. And it probably drove me, maybe a little bit to an unhealthy level was, I just didn't want to look at myself in the mirror one day and not feel like I'm looking back at myself in the eye. Because you can't lie to yourself when you look yourself in the eye. Did I actually achieve what I know and believe my potential really is?

Okay. So having achieved that really brought me a tremendous amount of inner peace. I'm not really chasing that mindset anymore. The other big thing, too, is it allows me to be in a space where I'm sitting here with you guys today and the zero benefit to me. I'm hoping that, hey, we have a wonderful chat. I make wonderful new friends. But also, I hope that people watching this video, I hope I can make an impact on their lives. I hope that there's something that they see, whether it be from my background or my perspective.

on things in life or whatever advice or opinions I've shared here today, I hope it helps someone enrich and better their lives. Because having the ability to positively impact someone else's life, I think is one of life's great joys. Do you want to become a billionaire? Yes, and I don't care. Yes, I do because I know where my company stands in the marketplace, and I understand that it's right in front of us, my business, to be doing about a billion a year in revenue. And once you're and that in revenue, it's only a matter of time that the personal net worth gets to a billion, right, through retained earnings. There's another part of it doesn't care because it's not going to change my life, right?

And that's not really what I spend every single day driving for anymore. You know, the last, you know, I would say four or five years of my life have really been more about maximizing my time as a father. And for the first time in my life where the business, I don't wake up and that's the first thing on my mind. So I've really, that is not the primary priority that I have in life today. Right now it's family, it's life experiences, and then hoping that everything I do, the people that I meet, I hope that I can make a positive impact on them. And that's what's really bringing me joy today.

What do you think is a big waste of money? Oh, my, gambling. I don't gamble. I can't stand to gamble. Yeah, yes. It's just, I think it's just a massive waste of money. You know, I tell my kids all the time, and we'll go to Las Vegas. And listen, I love Vegas.

It's fun. I love the shows. I love the meals. My wife and I, you know, we'll do some shopping or whatever out there. I want to see F1 this year in Vegas. It's a good time, right? But you will not find me throwing down large amounts of cash at the crafts table or on blackout.

I'll play a little bit just for fun and entertainment. But like I tell my kids, when we walk down the Las Vegas Boulevard, the strip, these big, beautiful casinos and resorts were not built on us winning the odds are stacked against you right that's just a fact so i think gambling is a massive waste of money um believe it or not and oh boy i'm gonna this is controversial but it's just a fact because i understand what the markup is in these things but but um jewelry does not hold value it does not you know your markup on diamonds like 300% horrible it's horrible yeah i joke with with with you know Obviously, I love watches, and those are usually authorized dealers that are a jewelry store. And I joke with that are my friends that own, they are the authorized dealer.

Let's listen. The only time jewelry is a good investment is if I'm on your side of the counter. So I don't really spend a whole lot of money by my wife. Listen, she's got a beautiful diamond ring and earrings. And fortunately for her, she really doesn't care about that stuff either. And she has the same perception I do that, you know, there's some sentimental pieces that have meaning behind it. But does she want me to lavish her in diamonds? and do I go buy a bunch of diamonds and stuff like that?

No, no. It seems like a lot of those are best spent secondhand. Absolutely. Because you could buy them for like 20% of the value you knew. 100%. And they always go down in value. Always. Always.

Diamonds are not nearly as rare as your jeweler wants you to believe. Now, speaking of that, though, let's switch to watches. Yes. How similar is the Ferrari buying experience to getting a high-end Rolex? There's a lot of similarities there, right? So, you know, again, and again, the market has done, has made this happen, right? There's such a demand for Rolex watches today, right, that the jewelers or the authorized dealers have got to decide. I've got, you know, a hundred people on this waiting list for the next Daytona, right?

Stainless Steel Daytona. How do I decide who gets that watch? Well, how much money they spent with me in other ways? How big of a customer is that to my business? Do they, are they part of some of the events that we try to host and things that we try to do to grow and build our jewelry store and things like that? So it ends up being not as competitive, but there's a lot of similarities in that. So how do I get a Rolex Daytona from Rolex? How do you do that?

So you're probably going to have to, A, you've got to find a good authorized dealer. You're going to have to establish a relationship with them. You can't just be another person walking in the door asking for a Daytona. You're the 30th guy walked through the door that day asking for a stainless steel Daytona. Okay. A great thing too, a little known little cheat code here. Guys have a much more demand and interest in watches than ladies. Go buy your wife a couple of ladies watches. They don't move near as fast.

You're helping the dealer out, right? And they will greatly appreciate that. And then you're probably going to have to buy a little bit of jewelry along the way just to kind of up your profile with the overall dealer. But I would say if you went and bought your wife, which is good for you. you as well, or any of us that are married, buy her a Rolex. You're helping the deal her out. Like I said, they don't move nearly as fast. Buy her a bracelet or an necklace or something like that. Be patient, be a good dude, participate some of their events. You'll probably eventually

get a... How much do you think you have to spend? You know, that's... Okay, so my wife and I travel a lot, okay? So the answer would be very different if, when we're in New York City, because look at the market there, right? There's millionaires and billionaires everywhere, right? Houston's a very large market as well. There's a lot of wealth in this town versus, you know, maybe I'm in some small town USA,

but it's big enough to support a Rolex dealer. My spend will probably be a lot less. To get a Daytona, and I'm just guessing here, okay, you're probably going to spend at least $50,000 with that jewelry in some form or fashion, which is why the great market, although it has calmed down a lot, is done so well because a guy goes, listen, I could pay $10,000 over today and get the watch I want today. versus spending 50 grand with a dealer hoping someday that my name rises to the top of that list and I get that call.

So I get it, right? But that's short term. And it depends on what your goal is. Is your goal to have one Daytona or is your goal to collect many Daytona's and skydwellers or whatever it is that you're after? If it's only one, I say go buy it all the green market. Just be done. Get what you want. Pay a little bit over and be done with it.

If it's, hey, I want to start getting into the watch collecting game, you don't want to keep paying over retail. spend the little money up front, do the couple things I suggested, and then you'll start getting watches slowly but surely. The one thing I never understood is that vintage Rolex watches, I think, are so much more unique, so much more rare, and they're about the same price as a new one.

MSRP from the dealer. I don't get why those aren't going up in value more. I don't either. I agree with you 100%, and that is exactly where the market's at. They're not... It's like the new stuff has risen on the secondary market tremendously, right?

Even though it's calmed down a little bit. And I say it's probably down from about 30, 35% from where it was peaked at, maybe closer to 40%, but because the numbers got so crazy. I mean, look at what a John May or Daytona was selling for. That's, I'm trying to remember

what MSRP is on that watch. I think it's, yeah. It was like 42 grand. Somewhere in there, okay, yeah. By 30s maybe. Right, I think it's like 37. Yeah. And of course, Rolex raises their prices

every year. But, I mean, I remember at one point that watch was like $160, $170,000 on the gray market, which is crazy. Now it's, I think it's come down. I think maybe you could buy them

probably around 70, 75, somewhere in there. Still an excellent return if you bought it to MSRP, right? So you look at that new stuff with these crazy, but my dad, you know,

had a Rolex growing up, right? He still has it. It was a gold day date back in the day. He probably bought it in, I don't know, 91, 92, right? that watch didn't go up in value tremendously at all. But all the new stuff did.

So that's a phenomenon. I don't know if it's just driven by everybody wanting the latest and greatest, but not caring about the older stuff, which is different in cars, right? Because the value of new stuff and then you look at older stuff, I think older cars have risen dramatically in value, whereas, you know, there's a lot of new stuff that you can still lose a lot of money on.

Yeah. Does this differ with Potech? How are Rolex and Potech different when it comes to allocations? Well, let's look at like this. The Cupidis came out. How do they decide who gets that new Patech? Yeah, if you're getting, so you're going to have to have been pretty loyal to the brand for quite some time. You know, you've got to remember Patech only makes what I think 72, maybe 74,000 pieces a year.

That sounds like a lot, but then you remember that Rolex makes, what, 1.4, maybe 1.6 million pieces a year. That's a dramatic difference, okay? And what's crazy about Patac is that, you know, even going back, I bought my first Patac in 2016. It was a Nautilus, 5726 stainless steel, right? Walked in, I was on a cruise with my wife. And we were in St. Thomas, walked into an AD there. I bought that and a 5960 stainless steel, bought them both the same day, right? What was the cost of that?

Like 30 grand? 35. So the 5726, I think, was around maybe close to 40-ish. Okay. And then I think that the 5960, at the brand new, I'm guessing, this was, you know, nine years ago. But I think all in all done, I think I wired like $92,000 over for both of watches. Was that just on a whim? You just walked in.

A guy never met me before my life. I never walked in that shop, right? No big deal. If you can afford it. It's in the case. You can have it. Right. And that will never happen today, ever, right? And so, so the demand for Potech has just exploded. And I really think it's mostly because of social media. Listen, in 2015, being, I was a,

always been a watch guy, right? I was in a Rolex. I thought that was really it. You know, and then a little bit of AP started seeing, I got in the A-Long and Sown pretty heavily. phenomenal watches. That's a watch that's not really gotten it to do on the secondary market yet. I think it eventually will, but it hasn't yet. Why, I don't know, because it's a phenomenal watch. It's not trendy. It's not trendy. It doesn't have the trend to it. When the Patech become trendy. When rappers started wearing it. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly right. I think it was Drake. I think Drake wrapped about a lot of these watches. He brought a lot of it in. Yeah. That's what I think. When you see him, like, doing this, and he's talking about, got the, you know, the Patech on, the AP. Right. But otherwise, raise your hand at home if you were even aware of protect

Philippman, 2010, 2013, 2014, no. So wouldn't did Drake come out with that song? Gosh, probably, it would probably be he was rapping about these like 2014 to 18 give or take. Yeah. But it became, he started getting it out there. Right. I think people started thinking, oh, wow, he's got this million dollar watch on. Right. Who where, who makes that one. Right. Right. And so I think it's the awareness and then going back to the wealth generation that we've seen in the world. since say 2010, right? The last 15 years has been phenomenal wealth generation worldwide.

So much more, many more people can now afford but is these sustainable? That's where I don't, I don't know about that, right? I don't think so. I think there's only so many people that will buy that watch at that price before eventually everyone's already bought it. They're making 75,000 excess watches a year.

But that is one of those things that doesn't, you just don't throw it away. What do they call it? You only own it. It's only yours for like this generation because it's meant to be like passed on. You're like the curator of it or whatever. There's a term no use for it.

You're taking care of it only for the next generation. Right, right. So it's like there's always going to be 75,000 more protects. Every year? Always. They don't get destroyed. It's not like a car. They get crashed and, you know, they degrade over time.

I'll watch. Yeah. How many gold nautiluses have they made in the last 10 years? Right. So I think it's a bit of a bubble that has to contract. It's back to a normal level. It is absolutely a bubble.

There's no question. And listen, we're already starting to see things starting to soften. And, you know, okay, that's an excellent point you say. And I can not only theorize it, but prove it. So my wife and I were on a trip two weeks ago. Had a little at a time to kill. We walk into a Rolex dealer. Never bought anything in there before.

And a year ago, you walk in. there's all the display only nothing for sale right nothing for sale and we walked in and without saying much at all now we both were wearing some sort of whatever we were wearing that day but a nice watch so they knew that we were into watches right she immediately showed us six pieces that were available for sale that day immediately I'm like proof positive the bubble is bursting are they nice pieces or are they just like the standard no no there was there was a skydweller right a white color dial. I can't remember now.

Okay. But there was one that is a very special piece that I was shocked that I'd ever even seen again, that I did buy my wife two years ago for Christmas. It's a very rare. It's actually an off catalog piece. They had it in the window and it was for sale. They would have allowed us to buy it. What was the watch?

So it's a ladies' day date, all diamond with the, Tiffany colored dial all down and then the Tiffany colored leather band. So I don't remember the reference number of the watch or whatever it is. I had never seen another one of those. And not only did they have it, but if we would have wanted it, it was for sale. That's out. I mean, that's insane. With the way the watch game has been lately. Do you think if you walked in with a replica Rolex or a replica AP to an authorized dealer, would they be able to tell? Like, if you're trying to impress them and get sold to watch. Like, is that a good $500 investment? You walk in, they think, oh, shit, he's wearing a $50,000 AP. Yeah. We should sell this guy something.

Probably not. All right. Okay. Okay. Listen, I have seen some really good fakes. For 500 bucks, I don't think it's going to be a very good fake. Okay. Let's say you have a good fake. Whatever it costs. And I don't know what they cost. Let's just say you got a really good fake. At a minimum, it will get the conversation across the counter going. They will assume you're a true watch collector or watch connoisseur or whatever. They will assume you have the wealth to buy that watch. They will assume that not only could they potentially sell you a watch of that caliber, but we can sell you some other stuff because they really want to sell you the other stuff. Remember, the margin in watches is only about 40 points. Well, only, it's still very, very good.

But when I say only because the margins in jewelry, like we just talked about, is about 300 points, right? So they really want you to buy your wife that necklace or diamond tennis bracelet or another ring or whatever so they could really make some money. And then maybe we'll get you that that $15,000 Daytona that you really want. So if someone's buying their first watch, what do you recommend they buy? There was a well-known thread on Twitter, by the way, where the guy said, if you're a man between the ages of 18 and 25, sell everything you have, max out your credit cards, do whatever you can to buy a Rolex Submariner. Because that is going to give you enough attention from other guys in terms of the watch status, that they're going to give you a chance

on other things that are going to make you 10 times more. And that is just going to get your foot in the door for so many opportunities. All right. As a man that is wearing a Rolex submariner? He maxed out credit cards. I have two of them. Don't do that. Don't max out your credit cards and sell everything. It was a very divisive thread. But half of people believed in that and said, Absolutely. If I'm, if I'm a salesperson, I'm wearing a Rolex Submariner. Yeah. I get more sales with the Rolex Samariner. And also, when you do that, please hit up this link down below in the description where you can get discounted Rolex Submariners. There you go. I'm going to find the threat. I just want to say, I don't, I don't wear watches all

too often. I have two submariners and I maybe wear a watch how often once every like three weeks. I'm begging Jack to wear as watches. Once every two. So watches are not your thing. I like watches. I just don't wear them. Like I love. I I love having them. I love collecting them and looking at them. Oh, I got you. But I don't really, I don't know. I just like the, on my wrist, it doesn't really. Plus I have like a lot of arm hair. And so it gets caught in the, in the links. I don't want to be like a leather strap guy, you know? Yeah. Anyways, I don't get attention from guys because of this watch. I don't know if I've actually ever had a single comment. Jack's hanging around the wrong crowds. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have to say. Well, I wear this during the right opportunities. Like when we do something fancy like this is this is when I wear the watch. But you don't know anything about like. Like, like, like, like, Like, like, we've been to a few events where I've pointed out, oh, that's the, you know, the 5711 and that's from this year. And they're really, how did, how did you know that? Oh, well, I really like. And it gets the conversation going.

And then they're like, what's that? I'm like, it's a 1969 Zenithel Primero. I just don't think we're going to, like, anyone's going to do that with a submariner. It gets you in the door. It says, I like watches enough where I, I'm sophisticated. It's not over the top. So this is financial advice. If you're listening to Graham, sell everything.

max out the credit cards, buy us a marriage. I think it's certain industries it'll help you. I think in sales, it could absolutely help you. Whatever happened to buying a $300 fake? That was something that you vouched for? I would still vouch for that. I think, you know what, between maxing on a credit card and getting a fake, you've got to get a good fake.

If you get a good fake, you're still getting the same ROI though, right? Actually, a far greater ROI, excuse me. Yeah. You're getting the same effect, but a far greater ROI. Yeah, I would say if you have to max out credit cards and sell things, get the fake. All right, I'm going to tell every young man and lady out there Don't go into debt over luxury stuff.

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Now, if I walk in and, you know, this 5990R, that says a very different statement, I don't know that it opened doors for me, but, you know, it does make a different, statement if that's what I was after and I wasn't I love I think it's a phenomenal watch and I think it's absolutely gorgeous if I was telling a young man because I'll speak to the young men right now because most of the time it's young men looking by that first watch most ladies watch was probably their husband bought it for them it's not a big it's not important to them right by and large

the best watch you can buy that I think uh phenomenal far better ROI than even the the the submariner okay and does make make a statement that says you're not just the the comic johnny come lately or hopping on the bandwagon or just another guy with a submariner uh when i see someone wearing this watch it tells me they're intelligent they make independent decisions and they're very wise of their money and omega stainless steel speedmaster you're going to say that yes oh that is such a classic watch sorry rolex i love the brand love what you're doing that speed master is an amazing movement there's a reason why all those speed masters have a clear caseback.

So you can look at the movement, the Daytonas don't, of the exception of the new platinum one or whatever. But other than that, for all these decades, they really didn't. And Omega's always proud to show off their movement. It's a phenomenal watch. It's about $4,500, maybe $5,000 cheaper than that. And the Submariner tells the time, and you may or may not have the date bubble on it, right? that's relatively simple

watch movement at what is that 125, 127 these days close to 13 for that watch the new rean of a little times I think MSRP's

at least 125 maybe more MSRP MSRP I don't know what MSRP is manufacturer's I know what it stands for

I just don't know what the MSRP prices it's at least $1,000 I'm on camera I'll tell you right now off top of my head it's at least 125

okay and you can get the Speedmaster, it's around, it's in the $8,000-ish range, right? But that's a chronograph, which is a far more complicated watch. So to me, it's someone that made that decision for themselves. They bought it for themselves. They didn't buy it to impress others. They're well-researched, and they make independent decisions.

So I'd love to see that on a young man. What else do you think is a great thing to spend money on that you found you've got the highest ROI from? Listen, cars or watches have been very good to me, right? I'm very passionate about both of them. We were talking about this off camera. Most all car guys are watch guys. So those passions go hand in hand, those interests, that mindset goes hand in hand.

And by and large, I have done very, very well buying things that I really enjoy, bring me true enjoyment in life that have done well from a value standpoint. Outside of that, when you're looking at luxury brand stuff... It doesn't have to be luxury brand. It could be a first class plane ticket, good food, just. Like in general, maybe that the, that most people watching would be able to purchase if they saved or it might have access to. That's an excellent point. Okay, with that, with that question framed that way, spend your money on things that make memories. Because that's value, that's true cherished value that you take with you the rest of your lives. So, so spend and save and go on a very nice vacation. Go see places in the world that you've never been to.

go to Italy. Italy is one of the most beautiful places in the world. The culture there, the people there, the food, the history is unbelievable in Italy. I was so grateful when the first time my wife and I went to Italy, two months later, my kids were still in school at the time. Two months later, they were out of school for the summer. We went back to Italy. We've been several times. It is literally one of our favorite places in the world to go visit.

So outside of cars and watches and things that I think could potentially bring value, spend money. spend money, see in the world, live your life, and make memories with those you love. Just curious, if you were to go back in time, would you have done anything different, maybe ease your foot off the gas pedal a little bit near those last years where you were really grinding, or are you content with the way you did things?

No. I'm so grateful today. I live the life I live today because of how hard I worked back then, how much I grinded, how much I stressed and agonized and, and pushed myself to reach what I felt like was my potential. And now, not just me, but more importantly, you know, my family gets to live a financially secure life.

And I've afforded them to be able to go for the things that they dream of in life, whatever their expectations are of themselves. I've built that ability for them. And it took me going through all that I went through the level of stress. I have no doubt in my mind I took many years off my life building a business of that magnitude. But I'm ever grateful to make that sacrifice for the benefit, long-term benefit of my family. The only thing I would have done different, seeing what I do admire about a lot of young people today, is they're very good about reaching out for people to mentor them. And I wish I

would have done some of that in my earlier years. I wish I'd have gotten involved, whether it reached out to someone that I really believed in that I thought maybe could have mentored me. It probably would have helped me to figure a lot of things out quicker. I probably would have avoided some business mistakes that I made along the way just out of not knowing, lack of experience. But the other thing, too, is I wish I would have joined a group where no one's in the group is there to sell anything to anybody. Those just annoy the hell out of me, and they're a huge waste of time, and I get no value out of it. But if I'm sitting around a room with a bunch of other young entrepreneurs and we're all going through a lot of the similar things at the same thing, same time and we can bounce ideas off each other or collaborate or hey I had that same problem.

Here's some things that I've done to overcome it. And even just even if you don't have the answer, knowing that I'm not the only one going through this right now with my business is gives you such reassurance. It's funny. I just started something like that. Exactly like that by the way. And I'll put a link down below in the description. But we've spoken to some of the people on the list and it's incredible how similar they all

are. Absolutely. And we're starting at a point of the list where they're making more than $10 million a year. And it's literally the copy and paste of the same people with the same problems, with the same concerns. And I'm actually most surprised about that group. When we're interviewing those people, none of them said they wanted to make more money. It was all, how do I make sure my kids grow up well-adjusted? Tax planning is a big one.

Oh, yes. asset protection is a big one structure. And then it's also, I think, about finding relatability that a lot of them say, I have problems that come up in my life and I've had the same friends, but they don't understand the problems that I'm going through from my perspective.

And I just don't have access to other people outside of my industry. I mean, unless you've gone through something that you can't relate. Right. You know, I mean, most of my buddies that I hang out with, right? We play a lot of golf together,

and we go do a lot of goofy stuff together, whatever it is, guys trips here and there, whatever that case may be. You know, we can all relate on the level of dads being a father, right? Well, most of them. Only a very, you know, a couple, two or three of my friends that I genuinely hang out with just as friends, own or run a business and could ever relate to any the things that you go through when you're trying to run a business, trying to grow employees, incentivize employees, get people to think about or look at the business the way that you need them to be looking at the business because you

can't do everything. Everything can't run through you if you're really scaling a business, all those kinds of things. So that's the one thing I wish I would have done in my, in my 20s and my early 30s. I wish I would have spent more time with that. And I just, I just didn't for whatever reason. I just felt like no one's going to relate. I'm just going to grind it out and figure it out myself and kind of, you know, went about it my own way. And I think I could have got a lot of value out of it. Maybe that's why I enjoy mentoring people today so much. Because I know how much that would have meant to me back in those days. I think the same thing applies,

at least for me with YouTube, is just reaching out to other creators who are doing what I'm doing and just asking them. And the amount of help that we've gotten from other creators has saved us so much time. And we do the same thing back.

Like, we had someone on the podcast recently who was telling us about some of his issues with his channel. We're like, oh, that's easy. Just do this and this and this. Oh, yeah. Don't do that. Like, we probably saved,

we could either saved or made, him like $100,000 with five minutes of a conversation. I will take those five minutes for our channel. Oh, 100%. Yeah, no, however I could help too. Yeah, for sure, for sure. But having that, you know, that's really what's been very different for me now that we're doing a little bit of the social media stuff is it's so different for me than being in

business, right? And obviously social media is it can be a business, but, but, you know, in the traditional sense of business, my peers or my competitors. So we weren't collaborating together, and we weren't sharing advice and guidance with one another whatsoever. We were there to outdo one another, right? But in the social media space, everybody wins together. It's not a competition. Just because someone's your subscriber doesn't mean they can't be my subscriber too.

So if we work together or collaborate, I'm not taking subscribers from you. So we both win. I've got subscribers that now discover you. You've got a subscribers that now discover me. and we both win with that exposure and collaboration long term. So it's a really cool space for a guy like me that's been in a hyper competitive business space, his whole life, to kind of be in this, hey, we can all be friends and benefit together. Yeah, I found on YouTube especially, the better other people are doing, the better you're doing to.

And people find you through other channels that are doing well. That's right. And so if they're doing well, chances are a small percentage is going to find you. Isn't that amazing? percentage from you is going to find someone else. And it just, it trickles down. Yeah. And it's so different than traditional sense of business.

So it allows me to still have fun, you know, while doing a little bit of the social media stuff as well. It's like, oh, it's collaboration. It's not competitive. We're not at each other's throats. We're really there to help one another along and have a good time doing it. So it's been cool, man. I got a link in the description.

I got one more question for you. Okay. What's your workout routine? When we're home and my wife and I travel a tremendous amount, okay? But when we're home, I'm pretty hardcore about diet. and exercise because it takes both, right? Especially at 46. Listen, you know, I can physically, I can do everything.

I could do at 20. At 46, it just, it hurts more. But so I eat, when I'm home, I eat five meals a day. Five meals a day? Five meals a day. That's right. I'm very strict about the diet, okay? Because you can put all the work in, but if you're not eating right,

you're never going to get the results that you're after. So, for example, if I go back, so two years ago, ago before a lot of this travel and really a lot with racing in the Ferrari Challenge series requires a lot of travel and some of the other things that we're doing with the brand. And then, of course, now my kids getting a little older, we're seeing more of the world. Up until two years ago, you know, I consistently maintain between 9 and 10% body fat, right? That requires a strict diet. So I ate 5 meals a day.

I was very strict about what I was doing. It was very intentional. 40% came for protein, 40% came from carbs, 20% from fats. okay um and eating every two to three hours your metabolism is just burning like crazy because your body knows we're going to get fed again two or three hours versus you know you go 10 12 hours not eating uh the the metabolism slows down so five meals a day very attention about my macro nutrients and caloric intake uh and then workout regimen uh i work out seven days a week when i'm home uh i do a what i call a three day split so uh i work uh i lift weights i work two muscle groups

a day. I lift weights for about 50 to 55 minutes, working two muscles. So, for example, day one will be chest and back. And then I do, and I run three miles when I'm done. Day two, it's shoulders and legs, run three miles. Day three, biceps, triceps, run three miles. Day four, I don't lift at all to give the muscles a day to recover, but I run between six and seven miles that day. And then day four, five, and six, and six, I'm sorry, five, six and seven are a repeat of days one, two, and three. Wow. I know I ran that bike fast. Have you always been like that, or is this a recent development? Well, I mean, so I grew up loving sports.

You know, I play football and I kickboxed, right? So I've always stayed, I guess, pretty physical, I guess you'd say. When I got out of college, I started working in my career, I didn't touch a gym for like three years. I just wanted nothing to do with it. And then I slowly started to realize that I needed some sort of release, right, from the mental stress. And so I got back in the gym, really, just to kind of, get something that I had to focus on, to get my mind off work or whatever I was stressing about or whatever.

So I got back in the gym and started working on again. And so, yeah, I've stayed physical, pretty physically, try to stay physically fit my entire life. At the end of the day, I love my life. I want to live it as long as I can. And to do that, we've got to take care of ourselves. Are you adopting? Like, would you consider another, like a grown son?

That's a very kind of. I'm bringing on new close friends. Let's say it that way, but nothing more than that. Nothing they could sneak into a will. No, it's going to happen. Absolutely not. Yeah, the trust fund and the will has been locked down. No new additions.

Okay. Not a chance, though. Unfortunately, no. Unfortunately, no. But we'll definitely hang out more. I loved it. Yeah. Is there anything else you want to mention?

You know what? I did want to say the fact that you guys spent time to look at the content we're putting out there, take an interest in my stuff. story and to make the effort to come here, spend time and have this conversation. Me, not only has been tremendously enjoyable conversation, but I'm incredibly humbled and honor that you guys sought enough of my story to make the effort to come down and spend time with me. So thank you very much.

A hundred percent, man. Absolutely. Thanks, Jack. Appreciate it, buddy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And with that, we're out. Oh, we'll link to all of your information in the description.

I found your video. I think it was four months ago. You did a tour, and I was thinking to myself, or maybe you, you're, you're, you It was the F-40. Okay. Who is this guy? What does he do? And this is before you did a lot of the interviews.

Yeah. But I was just watching the channel thinking this is an insane collection. Oh, thank you very much. There's got to be more to it. So this is something that I've wanted to do since then. Well, pleasure's all mine, and I'm honored that you reached out. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming on the show.

My pleasure. For being so generous. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you guys for watching. Until next time.