The Iced Coffee Hour - Getting Sued By A Fake Guru | Spencer Cornelia

Episode Date: August 25, 2021

Find your rate in as little as 5 minutes: http://upstart.com/ICH This week we are joined by Spencer Cornelia, a YouTube commentator with over 200k subs known for his recent videos on exposing fake gurus. We cover how to spot fake gurus, his house hacking strategies and more! Add us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan https://www.instagram.com/alex_nava_photography Subscribe to Spencer: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV0OPCa5_LS8SWp118FRHIA Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w GET YOUR FREE STOCK WORTH UP TO $1000 ON PUBLIC & SEE MY STOCK TRADES: http://www.public.com/graham  MY NEW COFFEE IS NOW FOR SALE: http://www.bankrollcoffee.com/ Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w Join the 2x weekly mentorship group: https://tinyurl.com/yaexko4o The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 Audio Equipment Used In Podcast: Rode NT1, Rodecaster Pro The YouTube Creator Academy:   Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF  For Podcast Inquiries, please contact [e-mail] *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up guys? My name's Spencer Cornelia and so far this podcast has made $95,726. So make sure to watch it five times so we can get over that 100K mark. Wow. Wow, that was incredible. That was such a great intro. So just to intro who you are, Spencer Cornelia, you are a house hacking legend. You also have an amazing YouTube channel that's been doing really well lately and old software developer back in the day. I have an interesting backstory. But yeah, man, house hacking's killing it right now and YouTube's blown up. So thanks for having it. me. Definitely. I've noticed on YouTube you've been, well, I think you start, where I found your channel was the authentic or charlatan. I did one on you. Yeah, I remember that video you did on me. So, you would basically take somebody online who maybe people would, would question and really go through

a deep dive and analyze are they being authentic or are they being like a fake guru? And I think lately, it seems like this last like eight months has really taken off for the whole like the fake guru industry. Is that a thing? Agreed. I have had the sense for a long time that a lot of what I've seen was not really what it is. I come from a very fortunate position in life my family does pretty well

and so I've been around money in my life and been very fortunate for that and so I've seen what real wealth looks like but I look at online and these guys are flashy. They've got the sports cards and I'm going to teach you how to get rich. I'm going to teach you how to get rich

and so I've always felt like there was something missing and that series was there was no other reason and then let me just get an objective look of people who are popular on social media. Let me give them a fair shake. And let me see, because I run a meetup here in Las Vegas for real estate investors.

And a lot of people were coming and they were following the wrong people or they were following fortune builders, which is a big business in one of these expensive seminars. And I just wanted to do something where I say, hey, let me look into the background of these people and figure out if they should be someone you follow or somebody you not. And that was all.

It wasn't so much about ruining reputation or anything. And you obviously were a big name. And I felt like you were a good voice in the real estate space. So I did a couple episodes. that were probably a little more negative, and then I wanted to do one where I kind of painted you in a good light. Yeah.

The thing is, though, negativity definitely gets the clicks. Nobody wants to hear authentic or charlatan. Oh, he's authentic. Oh, we knew that. They want to hear like, he's a charlatan. My audience wants blood. They do. And so it's, well, here's the thing.

I don't just think it's your audience. I just think it's people in general would rather hear something a little bit negative. It just gets some... What are we not seeing? Exactly. What they're not telling you. That used to be a big thing.

See, when I first started making YouTube, it was all about exposed. If you put exposed in the title, this is like four years ago, the video would blow up. Grant Cardone exposed. Dave Ramsey, exposed, and all of them. It gets clickbaity if you aren't delivering. And that's why I try to do my best, because I do know there's some titles and I'm like, oh, that's a sexy title. And oh, I know it'll get views.

But I think it's a little not fair for the person I'm speaking about. So there is a fine line for sure on YouTube. Yeah. So how do you pick people as a target or like as a subject? At this point, not a target, a subject. At this point, a lot of people are, I've reached a point now where a lot of people reach out and they say, hey, man, you really need to cover this guy. So I'm over here watching like sports highlights.

And then thankfully for my audience, thank you so much for reaching out for those of you who do send messages. So that's generally now is how I see it. But I'm also, I'm on YouTube all the time. This is truly all I do. I'm like a YouTube addict. Even in my free time, I'm in the culture. You know, I'm seeing what's going on.

What are people talking about? What videos are getting made? And I'm doing it for my own. Yeah. You know, I'm sure you do it where you see what thumbnails are working. Oh, totally. What titles are working? Yeah.

Are there colors in the images? What text? Where's the text located? So you made an authentic or charlatan video with Graham as the main subject. By the way, it was one of my favorite videos to make. If you remember it, I told your story backwards. Do you remember that? I, listen, I know I've seen that video multiple times.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was super dope because I felt like your story was more interesting. It's like, oh, Graham. Sam started YouTube, this, this, that, and now he's doing successful. I think some people it's more interesting to stay. Here's where he's at today. Let's tell the story backwards. That's a movie called Memento.

Yeah. That's amazing. It does that. Cool. So what was the verdict? Was he authentic or was he a charlatan? Charleston. And if he was authentic, what were the, what were like the core pieces of information that

you used to determine that he was authentic? Was there anything working against him that was charlatan-esque? I actually have a question for you. Have you ever felt like a charlatan? No. Never. Good. Yeah. So for Graham specifically, does he do real estate? Boom, he's got verifiable success. He shares it.

And then also with YouTube, that's clear as day. We can see the numbers. You also shared your numbers. So we know the income. We did before he stopped making those videos. Oh, gosh. You know what? It got to a point where like it's, it sounds so arrogant to say, but the numbers have gotten too high to make it like. And then it's like you're showing these numbers like these high numbers every like six months. I just can't do it. I told Jack, the last one I did was like how much I make with three million subscribers. and I was like, this is the last one I want to make. Even then, I didn't want to do that. I was out of ideas. And I'm like, well, this is my last one. So I may as well just go out with her. A lot of my videos, the goal is awareness.

Now a lot of my videos aren't so much. I don't really attack the person. I'm not trying to ruin people's careers. It was all about, here's just the strategies they use. So for instance, I have done recent videos on Instagram and how people can growth hack on Instagram. It's not so much to ruin people or expose them. It's more of, here's what you are seeing on Instagram.

Here's why these people who we can't tell if they're real or not, they have a million followers out of nowhere, zero to a million in a year. So I do a part of Exposed, but also I want to educate that way. You're more aware on the platform. I think right now social media is like the Wild West. I think there's so much bad with it. Of course, we can also talk about the good, but there's also a lot of bad right now. Yeah, let's talk about the negative first.

We want the negative. What are some of the red flags that you look for? You know, what's funny is a lot of them are so obvious, right? They are. I did a guy recently who does sports betting, right? And he talks about, I've won 24 of the last 25 days. I track him for nine days. Verifiably loser.

I have my source has been tracking him for another few days. Verifiable loser. Comes on Instagram yelling in this phone. 24 the last 25 days. Sign up for my package. I guarantee I'll help you make money. But he was just outright lying because you were taking, you were paying for his calls. And he said, my source was.

Oh, your source was. And then he was just lying. Yeah. So this is general. And then, of course, the stock market, you would never, if you, if I put money into, Let's say you're a real estate, you're raising money. If I put money into the Graham Steffen Capital Fund, you would never come out and say, Spencer, I can guarantee you'll make 30% return.

You would never do that, right? Because you're ethical. And you just understand that's not. Right. We abide by a certain code of ethics and morals. And a lot of these guys, they need the money from social media. And this is where the trick comes in, where if you have real estate company, you've got a real business, YouTube, you can get by with not making much.

A lot of these guys' business is YouTube. So that's why they promote so heavy because their courses are their only source of income. So if you come at them, you're potentially drying up their only source of income. But let's say this, okay? Let's say that I found a way to make $1,000 a month on Amazon. And I could replicate that success with other people. I could teach that. But I'm making a million dollars a month, teaching people how to do that.

What is your thoughts on that? Is that wrong to do? Because technically, if you're teaching other people how to do a small amount, it's just teaching a scalable. Sure. I focus a lot on the claims. If you came out and said, I make a million dollars a month and I'm going to show you how to do it, but you've never done it, to me, that's where you get into that line of Charlotton. But if you are very transparent and say, this is the method I use, I've been making, here's my tracking, right? I've got a paper right here for all of my income from my house hack. I can show how much money I make, how much I spend. And if you show that, and then it

just so happens that enough people buy where you're making more, I personally don't have a problem with that. As long as, and let's be real, you're not taking advantage of others, too. That's another aspect of this where some of the course sellers, I won't name names, but some of them are totally cool taking someone's last thousand. They have $1,000,000,000 in their account, their course costs $1,000. They'll take that money all day long. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, I've seen some where they tell you to open up a credit card. Oh, we could talk about the seminar business if you want to get into Sue for Shia. Real estate, one of my least favorite people. He's in a part of a lawsuit, so this is public. The seminar business is one of the worst in real estate. and you appreciate this because you're a real estate investor. And they get people in for the free event. All it is is hype, hype, hype, pipe.

I'm going to teach you how to make so much money in real estate with my proven system, six figures in three months. And then on the weekend seminar, they barely teach you anything. You can go on bigger pockets on a couple podcasts and learn what they teach. Then they upsell you into their mastermind. Well, the reason why you won't ever find the mastermind price online, you want to know why? Hey, Graham, call your credit card company. We'll see how much you can afford.

Say you're going to start making $200,000 next year. Because with our proven strategy, you're going to start making $200,000. thousand. So call your credit card company. Oh, you got $28,000 approved. Well, it's $25,000 for the course. Me, I got $50,000 a credit card limit. It's $45,000 for me. So it varies in price. How do you know this? How do you... It's in lawsuits. And it's shared. If you really research this, you'll see it. So people are saying that they've paid different varying amounts for the same thing based on their credit cards. Yeah, there's even a video on YouTube where someone goes undercover and see some of these shady practices and lying to credit card companies.

It's a shady businessman. It's ugly business. So who, so they go in and they call someone else's credit card company. I get you to call yours. Oh. And say, because they'll usually ask how much money are you making. We might be making $25,000 a year. But with my proven system, you're going to start making $225,000.

Right. So to a credit card company, if you can claim that, they might give a higher limit. Oh, yeah. So this is, this is something that American Express has recently started cracking down on because they had an issue with COVID, that a lot of people had overstated their income to get higher credit limits, and American Express saw that as more liability. I think same with Chase, and so they lowered credit lines, or they requested your tax return. There's a little thing there that says that if you want this credit limit, we have, we have the right to request a copy of your

tax return to verify you make what you said you make. Tony, man, there's so many dirty business practices in this world on social media. Social media driven is when I say social media. A lot of their audience comes from the promotion of their brand on social media. That's interesting. Wow. So who's going to regulate that? It's a great question, man. Coffeezilla and I are a good start, right? Yeah. I've reached out to the FTC numerous times. They'd never contact me again. I'd never contact me, period. You know, I have a feeling the FTC is looking at like the big fish. Here's what's depressing. Yeah. I make, I'm probably going to make $250,000 this year. Doing pretty well in life, right? Some of these guys make $500,000 a million were nothing. Yeah. Nothing compared to

some of the scams out there in the world. I did a video on online dating scams and I started researching it and some guy was like, yeah, this girl is taken, we found that she took 40 million or something. You start thinking of the scams out there. We're talking 40 million, 100 million. Some of these bitcoins, it's like $600 million

scam. Well, if you have limited resources, what are you going to go after? You're going to go after some guy who's like, I can teach you how to make a million. I've made a little money on e-com. I'm going to teach you how to make a million or real scams. Now, I use the word scam.

I try to use it as infrequently as possible because someone, calling your grandma and scamming her. That's a scam. Someone selling you a little more than what it's worth. It's a gray line. Yeah. Part of me believes it it's hard to regulate because how much do you prove is on the person with these claims versus the work ethic of the person who signs up? Because I guarantee you put someone who's like so motivated, like a 19 year old kid who's like, I'm just going to do whatever it takes. I got a $15,000 credit line. Don't care. I'm going to make it work. And that kid does versus someone else who's like trying to keep, you know, jump from one thing to

another from another. It's like, oh, I got 30K, let me spend that. Oh, it's not working this month. I'm going to leave. How do they, it's like to go through all of those claims. It's, uh, big part of my authentic or Charlotteson series was I wanted to, I think it's very important what guru you follow. Because most information, if you want to buy a rental property, a lot of it's pretty

similar guru to guru, but I do think there is going to, there are going to be differences when you follow. So that was my goal. It's just bring awareness. Is this guy real? Does he actually do real estate or does he do e-commerce or does he not? Because that's going to matter on the course side. But then this ugly area of how much responsibility do you put on the student?

Because I for sure am in that ballpark where I do think if you buy a course, I can't really go after someone if you buy the course and you don't put in any work. Right? That's on you. Yeah. It's the unfortunate nature of the course business. And I think the reality to a lot of people just in general, whether they buy a course or not are just very few people really will follow through with it, whether or not they

spend $100 or $500 or $1,000. and I do think there is some level of responsibility for the person buying it to, first of all, verify what they're buying is legitimate, believe in what they're doing, and I think just knowing how to be self-sufficient enough to kind of fill in the gaps. So I think it can be good to get you in the door, get you thinking about some stuff, but then beyond a certain point, if you get stuck, it's like, oh, I got stuck, let me quit. Here's my only clap back to that, right? So if I'm selling a course on how to get started on YouTube and I sell it, it's going to be

incredibly difficult. You're probably going to need to have this much money to start for camera work, all that stuff. And this is the timeline, right? It's going to take you possibly up to three years to get your first of the thousand subscribers. I have nothing, no problem with selling that. The problem becomes when you are selling, I'm going to teach you how to be a millionaire. I saw one guru teaching, I'm going to 100x your subscribers in 12 months. You can't promise that, right? Yeah, I mean, you know YouTube, come on. There's some, there's some difficulties with growing that fast. I mean, it's not everyone can do it. First, I want to thank our sponsor Upstart.

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in your loan application. Go to upstart.com slash ICH. Thank you so much Upstart for sponsoring this episode and back to the podcast. So the problem lies in the marketing, right? If you're funneling people who shouldn't be buying. So where I come in, a lot of my content revolves around the lack of disqualifiers, right? You should not buy this. If you don't want to work on weekends, you shouldn't buy.

If you only have $1,000 in your bank account, please do not buy. That's where I think the ethics start to come in. Ethics is a little subjective, right? That's where it kind of exists. I'm here. I want to put you on the spot. What do you think of my YouTube Creator Academy program? Be honest.

I haven't gone through it. Okay. I have not gone through the course. Okay. But with that said, I've heard good things. I do know that our friend Ryan, our friend Ryan went through it and he's made seven figures on YouTube. You also don't promote.

Link down below in the description. If you said anything bad, I'll be like, all right, all right. Link down below the description. But the thing is, you don't really. You don't really promote it hard. I don't. I would have a problem. Okay, let's say, so here's a good example.

You have the same information, course A and course B, exact same information. But in the funnel, in course A, you're promoting as guaranteed way to make a million, you know, I've shown videos on how much money I make. I can guarantee you'll get there for course A. But course B, you just say, here's the course. If you want to get started on YouTube, you can buy it if you want. Can you see that there's pretty clear difference, right? Even though it's the same material. You have to do that, though.

I think that's just what's required because think of it this way. When I first started making YouTube videos, when I looked on YouTube for financial advice or just financial videos, you'd go on there, and it would be like a title, how to start a Roth IRA,

or why you need a Roth IRA, like those would be the titles. I switched my title to how to be a tax-free millionaire by 60. You have to do that, because otherwise, the people who need to, see that wouldn't see it because they don't know what a Roth IRA is they want to know tax-free

millionaire how do I Roth IRA so I think some of that is just is required you have to sprinkle a little bit of sugar on it because it attracts the people who otherwise would have overlooked it because they don't know what to look for yeah marketing sugar guarantees are you guaranteeing anything that's usually the best start yeah there's nothing wrong with marketing a product look I understand business excuse me yeah but there is a line though I think we can agree and I yeah yeah I think we agree on it. I'm just given some counterpoints, that's all. But I think overall we agree on the same things.

Yeah, I'm not anti-course, by the way, which is generally, I think a lot of my fans think I'm anti-course. I'm not. I think there are a lot of courses out there that could really help people. Honestly, I've struggled on YouTube for five years. Had I gone through your course earlier and condensed, you know, what's the value of cutting a success from zero to five years, from zero to three years?

Yeah. You know what? You should go through it. If you want to, if you want to go through it. I actually should add that I was thinking of doing a mentorship for YouTube, and someone reached out with notes on your program. So that's why I have seen notes. And I saw it and I was like, this is solid.

Okay. I was about to say if you go through it and you don't like it. Well, it doesn't matter. I don't want to make this a plug for it. Yeah, sure. What would be, if you don't like it, don't mention it. What would be really interesting? What would refund you in 21 days if you don't like it down below the discredit down.

What would be really interesting, though, a question to ask to put you on the spot is, do you feel like you would ever withhold information for a course? There are a few things that I think yes. I don't think there's anything big. Like I'll tell you, I think our thumbnail strategies change so often. Right. So I would say that information, what's in the course right now works. But gosh, I have to say with thumbnails lately with Jack and I, it changes every like three to four weeks. Here's my perspective.

Yeah, yeah. Against course creators is that I personally believe that success comes from mentorship and constant. I do know you. Do you still have the monthly mentorship? I do. I've heard good things. And I think that is a better strategy, especially with YouTube, growth on YouTube. How valuable would it be?

If I sat here and showed you a couple thumbnails and you said, A, B, and C, change those thumbnails, just do this one little thing. Like, that's insanely valuable, right? But you can't put that in a course. You can get that in the mentorship. You can. The mentorship is down below the script. But I think overall, as far as, like, withholding information, there's other things.

I'm not going to mention what it is, but you mentioned something to me really interesting. And I wouldn't put that in a course. Yeah. But it's also not tested. So there's a lot of things out there that I believe could work, but I don't believe it enough to be able to talk about it and put it like in a program for everyone to see when it's like may or may not work. I haven't tried it long enough.

Thumbails change so frequently. Do you believe YouTube is art or science? It's got to be both. I feel like it has to be both. It has to be 50-50. because it sucks because you could have the perfect video but if you don't know what to title and thumbnail it nobody watches it so it's like I really believe title first

then thumbnails equally is important and then the content second so agreed I think it's never ending and go back to the course part that's why it's always evolving so you can't really put like what I'm doing now on YouTube is different than I did six months ago which is different than 12 months ago how do you put that in a course do you constantly update it and plus my content is different from yours. So my thumbnail is what works for me. I might have the same click-through rate than you do. Totally different look. Yeah. Well, here's what I think. I think the strategy is to get from zero to let's say 10,000. Really, there's not a lot of difference between 10 and 50,000 in terms of

strategy. I think to get from zero to 10, let's just call it, zero to 50, is pretty much this is going to be the same for 85% of people. So my program at least really describes, from starting from nothing to get to that point. We're at least starting to make some money. Once you get the momentum, you're good. But I would say once you get above 50 to 100,000 subscribers, that's where there's like you've got to start testing what works for your audience. That's what's hard to put in a program.

There's no one size fits all. Right. There's some thumbnails I look at it. I'm like, oh, that's awful. 1.8 million views. Channel 400,000 subs and you're like, how? Yeah. But I got to say from zero to 10,000, I think it's just like the main few points.

It's just like you've got to upload consistently, good content, good title. thumbnail, you've got to rank for SEO, and you just got to get enough from YouTube search to get some data on your channel that it could then recommend it. So I think just in terms of growing like that, that works pretty universally. Have you ever had any issues with them like reaching out to you? You made a video on them and they're like, hey, take that down or like they want to rebut those claims? Where do you want to start? And you want to start with a lawsuit? Or the other day when a fake guru called me out of nowhere? Let's start with the lawsuit first. Okay. I'm getting sued right now by a guru. I made a video on him. I had a guest on to speak about this guru, a

first-hand experience, a former co-worker with this guru. I'm getting sued, and my lawyer is $20,000 retainer fee. There's already been work being done. We're going to file a motion to dismiss for anti-SLAPP. It's absolutely a frivolous lawsuit, but it is the unfortunate part of this business. Coffeezilla called me the other day. He was wanting to chat about it. He has insurance lawsuit insurance to cover him, which I didn't. I don't make videos that I was worried about. lawsuits ironically enough it was the one where i had a guest on and we spoke about someone so that's an unfortunate side of what i do so yeah media insurance is extremely expensive jack so if you guys want to pay for this yourselves i pay over a thousand dollars a month just so that something happens

that i am partially covered it's a big deal and the thing is you don't even need to say anything wrong you could say all the right things and someone go oh i don't like that you said that bad that's no that's naughty jack's laughing Because he hasn't seen, he has not seen just the threats and, and just the issues that you have when you, when you open yourself up to a possibility of a lawsuit. You've received this is what you're saying. What's up? You're receiving these.

No, no, threats. Oh, yeah, threats. You've received threats. Thankfully, nothing has ever happened. Interesting. But, yeah, thankfully nothing is. You're pretty political even. That's why I'm going to, guys, I'm going to convince him.

We've got to get you on the side. You know, when you see something shady, you're going to call them out. No, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, I'm not going to do. I stick with just myself, but I do speak less about people, but with companies. So it's not like I'm calling out like, oh, Joe's over there. But I've said negative things about certain companies. And I've had those companies reach out.

And I've got much deeper pockets. Right. And so, like, I'm not going to risk it. I don't think it's a, it's very serious. And I've seen also what it's done to Kevin. I've seen what Kevin with you. Yeah, Kevin hasn't stopped. That's the point.

It's worth it for him for full transparency and all of that stuff. He did stop. He still pushes it a little bit. Obviously, the one thing that, the things that he did to get sued were very extreme. Agreed. He toned it back a little bit. But I don't think that we would get to that extent. Obviously, it would be a higher risk if we were to be full, like talk about the certain things and say people's names and stuff like that.

It would be higher risk. But at the same point, I think just for transparency's sake and for the quality of like, that's the stuff that if I was a viewer, I know for fact, I would want to know that stuff. It just sounds exciting. No. My philosophy is you stick with yourself. In my opinion, if it's public record, I think we should be okay to talk about it. Yeah, no, I'm not, I'm not going to take a risk.

You have a lot more to lose than I do. And plus, it's not really your brand, whereas it's my brand. Like, there's going to be a rally. When I win this, this guy's, there's going to be videos about this. I know a lot more than he wants me to know. I'll leave it at that. There's a lot of shady stuff. And so I have reached out to him and told him I'd sign an NDA,

messaged him on a DM on Instagram and just said, hey, before we got lawyers involved, I'll sign an NDA. I understand why you're mad. No, no hurt feelings. I totally understand. Guess what happened? It was an automated message. You want to sign up for my real estate my business mastery, my stock market mastery. And I was like, really? So my next message was, please send this to the guru. And it's regarding our lawsuit, blocked. Wow. All right. You want to play that? I was going to be nice. Yeah. And now you're going to, now we'll have fun with it. My lawyer is really strong. I've got enough money to pay. How much is that going to cost? I don't know if you want to say that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I can talk about it.

$20,000 for a retainer. I'm already about probably $6,000, maybe $10,000 into it on top of the retainer. Now, the retainer will come back to me when the case is closed, but this could get $40,000, which for me, that's a huge hit. That's money I'd much rather invest. Here's the thing. You're dealing with somebody else who is litigious, who can continue to drag this out and bleed you dry of money. I've seen this happen to other people. You are taking the risk right now that it might not be 20 grand. It could be 50 with the potential to drag on for two years. And you're like 20K, 20K, 20K, 20K, 20. And the deeper you dig on this, the more you're invested, the harder it's going to be to pull out. And that money doesn't come back. And then, I don't know,

man. I've seen too many cases of people not collecting on this or throwing good money after bad. The good thing is I do have a platform. That's my leverage. I can talk about it. Hey, man. There's been H3H3. That was huge for him. They basically ended that guy's career, I think. Yeah, basically. And he also, that was a net benefit for H3H3. Right.

Overall, because also you got the fair use thing out of that. So the whole fair use precedent, you know, combined with the content that, you know, Ethan H303 got out of this whole thing. I mean, it's net benefit. Huge net benefit. So that's what I'm hoping for. There's going to be a cost. I'm also not as tied to money like I used to be.

I'm okay, man. As long as I roof on my head, I got opportunity. Pretty Filipinas out there, then I've got plenty of opportunity to live a good life. Yeah, man. That one came out of left field. I'm like, roof or red, food, water, pretty Filipino, all right. Hey, we've got to tell jokes on the podcast. Light, light in the mood a little bit.

Yeah, there you go. We're talking about lawsuits. Come on, we've got to throw some humor in there. Okay. Who was the other one who called you? Yes, I made a video about a sports betting guru. He made claims of buying a $4 million house in Las Vegas. which he probably didn't know I was a realtor,

made it a little easier to search for this information. And he made a lot of claims about how much money he made. I made a video about him. One day, ring, ring, about 8 p.m. Hello? Hey, what's up, man? Hey, who is this? Hey, what's up?

It's the person I made a video about. Oh, hey, how'd you get my number? How's it going? Talked about the video. He was very respectful, nothing, nothing ugly or anything. And after about 10 minutes, he was a little upset about the video, but he's like, I'm going to dinner. I'll hit you back.

Nothing happens. 30 minutes later. Text me my address. I was like, oh, yeah, that's where I live. Send it to lawyers just to alert them. And then about two weeks later, I'm sitting at the gym. I get another call from a 702 number. I answer it. It's someone talking about the video. Hey, what can we do to get the video taken down? Well, this sounds like a bribe to me. Is that what this is? Is this a threat? No, no, man, this isn't a threat. Okay, what's your

relation to the person who made the video? Oh, I'm just a guy behind the scenes. I just do little things here and there. I was like, this sounds like a threat to me. Yeah. I will alert the lawyers if you do anything silly, so please watch your words carefully. And he just goes, no, man, no, no, we're cool. Just, you know, your businessman, right? How much is it going to take to, you know, what's it going to take to get the video taken down? I was like, I can't be bought. And then he kept going.

Once he realized I couldn't be bought, I think it threw him off because he's got no leverage. I caught this guy. He's a fake guru, and he's got no leverage. Anyway, so after, at about the 11-minute mark, I say, look, man, I was waiting for him to say something really stupid. Yeah, yeah. Because then I can go, okay, now I got something. But you can record the phone call, can you? Couldn't. No. I don't know how, but also in Las Vegas, you'd have to have two-party consent.

But anyway, I say, hey, I've got one minute left. Phone gets handed over to the fake guru. Hey, what's up, man? It's so-and-so. I was like, oh, you were listening in the whole time. And he starts yelling at me. I don't know why you're doing. What you're doing is weird, man. It's not cool. You didn't even buy my picks and all this. And then he hung up. That's that. I hope he doesn't keep contact me. And that was the last, how long ago was that? That was two weeks ago. Two weeks ago. And this, this is a sports better who set. He lives here in Las Vegas. I know where he lives. lives. You should just text him his adjutant. Well, I already know where he lives. Yeah, he knows. I talked to him

about it. I was like, look, man, why did you, why did you say you bought a $4 million house when you didn't? What, how much was his house? I'm not going to say because that will release public information, but he did not buy it is the catch. He didn't even buy it. Thankfully, I'm at the point now. I had a mortgage loan originator in town reach out to me. He's like, he helped me kind of behind the scenes. See, it's so awesome because you're in a position where like you own two properties and you rent out the properties and you make good money house hacking these. You're profiting a lot. And it seems like like you're pretty stable financially. So you're at a place where you'll be able to take these sort of risks to do what you want and make the exact type of content that you want because

you're comfortable enough to be able to do all of that. Yeah, exactly. This is the turning point today is the turning point. This is a big moment for me because over the past couple years, I've had a lot of struggles financially. It's also Graham, you were someone that I followed for years. I spent five years trying to grow on YouTube. I really wanted to. I just wasn't good at it. Yeah. If you look at my old video, they're not good. And I couldn't grow, but I always looked at you. And I was like, okay, if Graham can do it, if the upside is what he's making, this is worth it. There's a concept by Nassim Teleb called asymmetric outcomes. And what you look at is, if you look at five years of YouTube, let's just use numbers. Say it's a minus 100 loss every year from energy, time, and a little

bit of money, minus 100. Well, if the upside is an income of 50,000 a month or a year, whatever, it's worth it. And so that's what I always viewed. If you're the upside, every amount of, if it takes me eight years, I'm going to do it. If it takes me 10 years, I'm going to do it because if that's the upside, it's worth it. The outcome is worth whatever the amount of time is. And so today, getting on this podcast was indicative of an end to the previous phase

where I lost all my money flipping houses. I had the current house I come in, $120,000 of renovations. Oh, man, it was wild. I had, so listen to this real quick. I lost all my money flipping houses. Cincinnati two properties lost about 90,000 between the two. I got to a point I had to sell my car was riding the bus four hours to and from work every day like making as I was growing on YouTube I was riding the bus two hours every night just to get home and and then so I get out and then

I start to rehab my current house hack I wanted to make it a little nicer before I officially bought it well we get into the rehab and there's a sewage problem underneath the house do you know what that means bring in the jackhammer baby so some of these videos that have done really well, I was doing that, I had to wait until the jackhammer completed in my, I've got videos, I'll show you after this. There was a jackhammer in my house for two weeks, and I had to wait until the, I have people living in my house, working in my house, working from home with a jackhammer. So it was a $31,000 expense. I had concrete around, it ended up being about $110,000 rehab. Wow.

And so I went through with that and that I was spending money I didn't have, like I was putting all in credit cards, and then as YouTube money came in, I paid it off. And now, right when I got to the point of being even, meaning all my debts paid from previous renovations, I get sued. There's been so many setbacks, man. But I'm so optimistic,

I'm probably one of the most optimistic people we meet. All I do is look forward. There's no looking back. Look forward. Are you worried about flying a little too close to the sun? No, not at all. Really? I'm arrogant in this way.

I will always find an answer. Always. I always have, and I always will. Is it worth it? Yeah, of course. I'm in the high growth. Yeah, I'm in the high growth stage now.

I don't need much in life. I just bought a Tesla. I have a roof over my head. I'm super simple with food. I'm not a foodie. I don't need jewelry. There's nothing I need. What I want is opportunity.

And I have that right now. Right now I'm experiencing hypergrowth. I'm sure you remember that stage. But the podcast, you guys are killing it. Like that growth is, there's no high that can match that. There's no drug that can match that high when you start growing, well, at least for us on YouTube. And so I'm in a great spot right now where I have the opportunity. to reach the goals that I set out for myself.

It's me that's all that I want. Is it worth potentially risking now? Let's say there's a 5% chance, one in 20 chance that you talk about the wrong person, you get a big lawsuit, and they just drill it in. Sure. And you lose all of that growth.

You get the stress on top of that. Everything you've worked for in that hypergrowth phase is risked. It can happen, man. It can happen anytime. Anything can happen in life. after you, there's a quote in fight club, it's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. And I was down to, dude, I couldn't buy. I had ripped shoes that I was walking on when it rained. That sucked. I was right in the bus before I was too. I'm researching videos on YouTube and I got like a crackhead behind me. Yeah. Dude, there's, there's not much lower than that. I could barely afford food. So I was like strategically spending money. I would pay my minimum on the credit card and then that would allow me to buy food, right? Because you pay the minimum. Now you have like $100 remaining. Well, that's my food budget for the next however much. So like once you go through that, man, you can, you're free to do anything. I'm happy. I'm good. I've got a car. Dude, go, go two years without a car in Las Vegas. You'll appreciate the car. Yeah, you're riding the bus everywhere. In fact,

everywhere. You're almost going to ride a bus here. Yeah, my Tesla came in time. I was almost going to have to, I was like looking at the, looking at the route. Hey, Jack, can you pick me up? Yeah. Wow. What Tesla do you get? Model 3, 2021. So I was going to use it for Turro. Wow. So you're, you're hacking everything, basically. So you want to do the Tesla and How much you expect to make from that? I'm thinking gross maybe two, $2,500 a month, minus $1,000 for payment and insurance. So let's call it maybe $1,000. There's going to be some problems here and there.

And look, I might do it for a month and realize YouTube is where the energy needs to be at. I'm making $22, $23,000 a month on YouTube. Yeah. That's the moneymaker. This is more like content. And I'm a man of my word. I said with Lucky, the video we did two months ago, I said I was going to do it. And so I got to do it now.

I set it on video. You may as well try it for a month. Worst case you can make a video on you. There's an interesting conversation. So you brought up the risk. So here's what I do. I'm actually an interesting investor. So I go for super high risk.

Like I love super high risk investments. I think it makes life fun. But on the underside of that, I have stability. What's my stability? House hacking. This is why I'm so big in a house hacking. So I just bought my second house. It's in the beautiful southwest part of Las Vegas.

Beautiful zip code. Super awesome house. Half a million dollars. And I'm now at 8,600 a month gross from two houses. And I want to buy two a year. So it's not going to take it. month gross between two houses. Two houses.

That's incredible. Yeah. So I do what's called house hacking. You're familiar. You buy a house rent by the room. So I go to the extreme. So I have one house that's seven bed, five baths. And then a second house that I'm converting into a six four.

It's a five four currently. So I'll have 12 tenants. So you live in which house. Yeah, I'll just keep, I'll keep house hacking. So I'll move into my. Yeah, buy it as a primary owner occupied. Rent out bedrooms. Yep.

Each year I can buy one, right? Because I'm putting 5% down. And then as YouTube. grows, I'll be able to buy an investment property 20% down in tandem with the owner occupied. What about the leverage? I don't worry. You want to know what it would take for me to, for that business to crumble, Vegas would have to shut down. A lawsuit.

Well, not for that. That's totally separate. These are LLCs separated. Lake Mead would have to dry. I'm also not too concerned. I don't know. The biggest defense against lawsuits is being guilty. I'm not guilty.

I'm totally innocent of all charges. I don't, unfortunately, I don't think, see, I don't know. I don't want to get too much in the law. I disagree. I disagree. Lawsuits are not guilty. I think a lot of lawsuits are whoever has more money. True. But here's the thing, man. Life is life.

I don't know how long I'm going to be here. I just live the best I can today. And you live on. I live with the results. Right. I know. I just, I don't want to see anything happen. That's all.

That's all I'm saying is it's like you've worked so hard. You got these properties. Everything's going so well. I'm just saying maybe. But he is diversified across like house hacking. He's got his YouTube channel. I'm just saying even with an LLC, it's easy. for not easy, but a lawyer could always

claim that you could pierce the corporate veil as they call it and those LLCs or it's only a single member. Did you almost lose your YouTube channel? What's up? You almost lost your YouTube channel, didn't you? Oh, close? Anyway, my point is, man, life happens. That was, I was 99.99%

that nothing was going to happen. My point, after I lost all the money, these big plans, I'm going to be a big YouTuber, I'm going to make so much money in real estate and all this. And then when life throws you a curveball, you realize, man, There's a lot outside of your control. This is actually a question for you guys.

How much do you think luck and timing plays into your financial success? So I'm mixed on that because in the one hand, you could look objectively and be like, well, he started investing in 2010. In L.A. Yeah, in L.A. And everything has gone up in price since then. I've only really ever invested through a bull market. I remember the market collapsing in 2008 and 9.

Didn't really have anything to lose. I was just starting my career. So in that sense, absolutely that was luck. But the other thing that I look at is that like, you know, how much of that was luck versus how much of that was seeing an opportunity and recognizing that. There's risk involved. You're putting money into something in hopes that it returns. Yeah.

And here's the thing, too, I remember in 2010 when I was interested in buying real estate, how many people said it's going to get worse? Now is a really bad time. The market just collapsed. It's not getting any better. There's so many foreclosures coming in the market. There's shadow inventory that was coming up that is going to crash it even further. It's still going down.

You should wait for it to recover. And I remember when I was submitting offers, I mean, like every house was a short sale. It was not, it was rare to see a normal house on the market versus it. Rare. And for me, it was like, I saw the opportunity. It made sense. I was like, even if it does go down, I'm buying this house for a fraction of what it costs to build. it. Like this is a $200,000 house to build and it's selling for $70,000. There's no way that's sustainable.

So for me, it made sense to buy. And timing is an interesting element though. So if you look at life, like some people, they get married, have their kids, they're financially ready to buy fall of 2007, right? It's just the way their life works out. They were born in a certain year. Their job led to a certain income and down payment at a certain time. They don't know any better. So they buy it that time versus someone who's timing, that same person, that timing, they were ready to buy in 2000. Okay, we're going to buy a house. This is on the market. We'll buy this one because we like this. Right. That's the crazy. I'm not, I'm not criticizing you or anything. Yeah, I know, I know. Luck and timing is very interesting. I've gotten bailed out by a good market too. I got

fortunate that I was able to sell my houses that I lost a lot of money on. Yeah, I mean, YouTube, like, I'm super lucky in that I kind of joined this, coffee Zill and I, he was a little head of me. We joined this kind of movement that didn't really exist and it's blown up. Yeah, but here's the thing. I think, in a sense, you do create your own luck because I remember when I start YouTube late 2016 December. I was too late. I cannot tell you how many thoughts that I had. It's like everything has already been done. I am too late to this. YouTube is a huge, but I did it anyway. And now looking back, it's like, oh yeah, well in hindsight, yeah, that was the perfect time to do it. So I don't know. I believe there is a sense of what's

outside of your control that is just pure luck. But I also believe there's a sense that you create your own opportunities, you create your own luck. Had I not posted on YouTube because, you know, it was too late. I bet people are looking at the same things now and believing it's too late to do this. It's too late to do that. Where five years from now, I'll be like, oh, I was so lucky I started right now. So I believe, yes, there's some of it that's outside of your control, but I believe there's no benefit to looking at luck because that's outside of your control.

So I just think it's like, what's the point to focusing on luck or no luck? You don't control that. Focus on what you can control. The timing of it. I agree. It is kind of a moot point to think just about luck and where you place on that. But also, I do agree that there is a spectrum between luck and timing and, you know, your actions and stuff like that. Because, look, to throw out an example, okay, I'm very, very, very fortunate to be in the position that I'm in.

But finally, as I'm 22 and as I have enough money to afford a home, we have seen the craziest run-up outside of, you know, a pandemic and the supply chain issues and stuff like that, like one of the craziest runups in real estate. And now I'm looking at homes and the first home that I'm going to buy. It's like it's probably going to be like in the 500,000, you know, right around that range. But I asked Graham yesterday, I was like, how much was the first home you bought? And he's all 56. And I was like 59,000. Oh, 59. I'm like 59. I'm like 59.000.

And I'm thinking to myself like, that's the downpay. Like to be able to afford a home, you know, that's $59,000 versus $590,000. You know what? In fairness, I think. we are putting down about the same amount of money. I paid for that home, home in cash. I was all in 72. I would have to,

20% of 50%. Oh, so you're putting down a little bit twice as much. Yeah, yeah, okay. But also like, but he's mine in Vegas, which is a way better market than California. Hmm. That's true.

But then again, it's like, I look at that and then I also think like, look, how lucky was I that Graham got back to my first email and then I got to start working with him? You know what I mean? Like, was that luck or was that my action, me going out of the way to email someone that I admire.

Yeah, and that's the thing, too. A lot of people could look at Joe. Oh, Jack just luggy, you're working with Graham. But, yeah, Jack sent me like eight emails. One of these days, Jack, we're going to go through those emails. No, we can't. Oh, my God, for a podcast exclusive. No, no, no, no, no.

They're embarrassing. Please. No, I honestly think, if we do it, we should actually do it on, like, the second channel, where it's actually going to get, like, we may as well make it worth our while. By the way, I prefer using the word fortunate, I think it's a better word, because luck does have some negative connotation where it's like, you only. only made your success because of luck, but it's just good fortune.

But people like the word luck. It's a nuanced conversation that I find interesting. Yeah. So do I. So do I. The intensity of success you've had. You have to attribute some to just good fortune in and just. Well,

if you did grow up and you finally had money, you know, you're 20 years old. You've been working for a couple years. You made your own luck with the real estate. I mean, you did that. You executed beautifully. Right. Which is a grind. Exactly.

But at the same time, when you finally have money and the, you know, the market's basically at its bottom and you're buying real estate and then you've become a millionaire through equity and appreciation due to timing. And then you make a video hybekin real estate millionaire. It's like it is a combination of both luck and action because you also decided to make YouTube and you decided to get started in real estate. Here's what I'll say. Here's where I do feel like I've gotten lucky.

And I'll be, I'll be honest with this. I think that being born into the family I was born into in L.A., getting to see other people who had absurd amount of wealth in Los Angeles, not having that and looking like, wow, all of these people have this. What is it about these people where they could live in Beverly Hills and a $10 million? And just seeing it, wondering, and that gets my mind going. Like, why do some people have this Ferrari? I remember, like, you know, seeing these cars, like, so people are doing it.

They got a Bitcoin. They got a Bitcoin. But then having two parents who were very supportive, who are not abusive. And, you know, and, and. Are they still together? No. It's pretty well. My parents are still together.

It's weird that I see that as a huge advantage in life. Like one of the biggest... No, well, I don't think so. To me, they divorced... Healthy household. Yeah, yeah. Otherwise, healthy household. Yeah, they divorced when I was five.

And I don't remember much before that, but I just remember... Five, my dad got an apartment. And, like, listen, being five, I didn't understand what was going on. But I liked it because I had, like, mom's house where mom was kind of strict and wouldn't let me watch... South Park. She wouldn't let me eat peanut butter out of the jar. And then dad's house was like I could eat food on the couch while watching like adult

swim and like naughty cartoons. Wow. Not like not like notty cartoons. Not like those. Not like this. But like South Park. Gosh, what was the other one? There was a TV Funhouse on Comedy Central like the Comedy Central shows.

Yeah. Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel the Man show. I love. So I'd watch those. I go to my mom's or like Jerry Springer. I could watch that. my dad says, but I go to my mom's like, no, no, no, no, Nick Jr. So, but, but, but, but, honestly, having, having,

but mom doesn't have, or dad doesn't have the parental controls. Oh, oh, oh, you know what? My mom hated this, too. And here's, here's the other reason why I kind of liked going back and forth was because my dad would allow me to play, uh, Nintendo 64, Golden Eye. And my mom was very against any sort of violent video games. Right. So I couldn't play that there, but I could go to my dad's house and play Conquer's Bad

Fur Day. Um, but no, but, but, but having two parents that were really supportive that never ridiculed me that if I had an idea, they would always entertain it. They were so encouraging of me. Like, I remember I wanted to get a reef aquarium. And I think it was either a birthday, that my dad got me a small reef tank, and it just lit the fire underneath me. And then, like, my mom would drive me after school. So you're going to own the Las Vegas Zoo one day. I would love to, yeah. The Las Vegas Aquarium. I would love to. But, but seriously, but then I think that, like, that, that's luck. I had no control over that whatsoever. But I, I'm thinking,

too, like, what would have happened had I been born into another family where both parents were like abusing drugs or, or, uh, were talking down to me all the time or getting an argument. Yeah. That's a whole different. Yeah. And like, how would that mess with my, my confidence? Because I think, too, it's like, I've always been confident that like if I do something, I'm going to be good at it. If I, if I, if, as long as I give it 100%, as long as I take it serious, it's going to do well. And I've never had a doubt that I can't do something. But that was, I think, I think, think because of my upbringing versus like imagine if I did something like I suck and just going into life thinking I'm a failure or you had a little success in your parents like suppress yeah yeah oh you're

going a job you what you did yeah one thing I'm very fortunate with is my career in sports took me all across the country so I've lived in like 10 different places I've lived in Georgia I lived in Florida Texas Alabama Oakland California and so I've seen the whole spectrum of people I've seen I've been around wealth I've been around very poor I've been on the bus with people struggling from mental health. I've seen the whole spectrum of humanity, and I feel like that has played well into my content where I feel like I'm not puff of myself. I feel like I understand humans pretty well and the culture and everything. I want to actually talk about that. You just said your career in sports, but I do briefly want to mention, like, it's like for you, Graham, I feel like if you,

with the luck considered with everything, if you didn't have that luck, I still think that you would be like disproportionately successful, just based off of your characteristic. But I think like what if you removed, you know, like his, his character, like his ability to be like relentlessly into one thing or something like that? If you removed that, would he still be disproportionately successful? I don't think so. That's a great point. If he was as lucky, but he didn't have that character. Or here's another thing to consider.

We see so many people that they have like a string of luck and they, you know, they make all of this money and they have access to all of this like this working capital. They have access to, you know, funds, all of this stuff. But they don't capitalize off of it, you know, like to have one string of money. of luck and then they're just content and they sit there. But Graham also didn't do that with real estate. He was successful in real estate, but it didn't matter. You know, like he utilized that to be successful in YouTube. So I do think it obviously, it is a spectrum between the two, but for Graham himself, I think it was more his actions, definite. But to get back to house hacking because that's, I know what we want to talk about. The strategy right now is so valuable in Las

Vegas. I can't tell you how many people need this. Renting an affordable room in a safe house, nice house. I furnish my rooms. I include utilities in the total cost. So in my new house, I get $9.50 for the master, $750 for all the other rooms that share a bathroom. Are you worried sharing rooms with strangers? On a story? Yeah, I do. My buddy Mace messaged me the other night. He rents by the room as well. He's had a really good string of good luck in that he is very good with finding the right people, getting good people in his house, background checks, credit checks. You can do the whole nine yards, right? He messaged me the other night about midnight. Bro, ten cops are at my house.

Whoa, what's going on? Dude, six are undercover? I don't know what's going on. Hey, are they there? Is this a sanity check? Is this a mental health check? On one of your tenants? Like, what's going on?

I don't know, man. I go to sleep. I wake up like 10 messages. Bro, you have no idea. He sent a Las Vegas review journal of a suspect for armed robberies. Bro, this is one of my roommates. They got him in custody. What do I do?

There's the downside of it. Now, granted, this is, to be fair, all real estate you're going to be dealing with people. People have problems and issues. Every now and then at a certain unit. point, even if you do the apartment building thing, you're going to have people that are not great for whatever reason. But yeah, he was freaking out. What's crazy is I actually went up and hung out with him at that dude's house. And when I didn't have a car, this guy actually gave me a ride somewhere. Super nice guy. Actually kind of looks similar to you. Like, you know,

nice looking young guy. He drove Uber. He looks just like you, Jack. You're going to find out, huh? What have you been doing on the weekends? But anyway, so the downside is that. I've had a tenant pass away in my house. I've had a former UFC heavyweight. I had a former UFC heavyweight fighter. I had him yell in my face one night. That was fun. 6.3, 2.25. Pretty big guy.

So there are downsides to this. This is certainly not for everyone. But when you learn to manage it, you can reduce the amount of headaches and stress. I got to say, I would never be able to do that ever. What's funny? Is you house hack right now, don't you? You got roommates? What up?

Yeah, but like. You have one. By the way, I've been told this, even in my old job, oh my God, you have roommates? Wow. Why do you have roommates? You should live a little. you should live in life you have the first 18 years you're generally living with roommates right family after that a lot of people will go to college you're forced to live with roommates you have an apartment

you live with roommates and friends and all that and then there's a little a little segment of life where you live alone you can afford it you've got the job before a lot of people get married or have a serious relationship and then live with someone for the rest of their life theoretically you house hack basically your whole life meaning you have roommates what i do is i just get roommates that pay me I haven't paid a mortgage or rent since September, August of 2016. It's weird to me like thinking about rent. It's been so long. Like the idea of paying to live somewhere.

I've profited for the past five years. That's smart. Yeah. That's what I want. To answer your question, yeah, the one guy, the poor guy passed away in a mental health, or mental health, excuse me, a health facility. He was not in the house. So he was a tenant, though.

I had one guy, by the way, my first property is in a not nice area. So for some people looking to do this, you can look at, numbers and you can you can buy a property specifically for numbers which is what I did would not recommend it thankfully I'm in an income point now where I can afford to live in nicer you get a nicer tenant class a little bit better on the on the quality of tenant scale right sure a little bit better jobs better employment but you never know man things can happen I've never had fights that's something I never had to deal with are you are you concerned about uh because right now I think it's a numbers game yeah and you get enough tenants enough buildings eventually you're going to get to

But it's for like one tenant doesn't like another tenant or I Hey man I've dealt with it all I've got a camera in one of my houses I've got people So and so is eating eating my food out of the fridge I was hanging out with my buddy Taylor the other day he rents by the room he does the extreme he has like eight people in a house and one guy's like hey man Joe just punched me kick him out of the house He's like really when did it happen we look on his phone on his security camera and it's like The action happened you can see it on the camera and then 30 minutes like Hey man we're cool we brush it off don't worry about it

I'm going to have to see that footage after. Yeah, so this stuff happens. Wow. That's nuts. But my comeback to all this is, what's an easy way to make money? Have you figured it out? Have you ever figured out? An easy way to make money.

I'm talking about an easy way. To make good money? Yeah, an easy way. Like, there's no easy way. Like, you're either going to have to hustle on YouTube for years, or you're going to have to work, work a job. Like, at some point, you're going to have to put in work to make money. And the downsides of this is every now and then you're going to have some type of dispute,

some type of spat. Someone went into someone's room. I had one. So-and-so stole my walk. I'm like, I mean, how do you manage that? Yeah, here's the thing, though. I think your time is starting to be more valuable. Agreed.

Better spent elsewhere. So, like, how long do you think you'll continue doing this for until you realize it's like, even if one thing stresses you out a day? Just one little thing. Is that worth potentially sacrificing that thought process or that mental capacity for the rest of the day? It's a great conversation. Number one, my new house, I don't even, like, remember I own it because my roommates don't

even text me or anything. They're so easy going. So I do think when you swing into the kind of the upper, scale of housing, better tenant class, it's easier. I'm telling you the extreme stories. I've been doing this for a long time. Most of the time, probably 99.99% is nothing. You just wake up and go to sleep like a normal day.

I'd shoot my YouTube videos. Nothing happens. But every now and then, something happens. And I actually gave Jack here a checklist. There's a lot of problems that I've been dealt with, and you can solve them beforehand. I want to see the rules. So you came in and you said you had, you want to see them right here?

Yeah. You said you had house rules. I give it to everyone. So are these are these strict? I make it very clear that when you move in, you will follow these rules. All these rules, you wrote them down because of some event that occurred. Pretty much, most of them. So they usually have a story, each rule.

Most of them do. Go by number one here. If you like to play music, noise levels must be at a reasonable level. I've found, I've found, yeah, most of these are fair, by the way. They're not like too sexy. But what I found is quiet is best for everyone. Everyone lives differently. Some people totally cool with noise.

Others, like myself, has to be silent. There we go. So I like this. A reasonable level is defined as barely being audible outside of your room with the door closed. Fair. In the event that one roommate needs the noise to be turned off, other roommates must comply with their wishes.

That's fair. I like that. But don't you think that could be a beauty? Let's say the two roommates getting this spat. I'm like, well, you know what? I want your music off. I'm the dictator. My rules go.

So you should... I don't deal with this, by the way. There's not many noise. I make it very clear when people... So here's the thing for you, if you want to do this. You'll see on the checklist at the end, you set a culture within a house hack. This is very important. It's kind of like a company.

So before people move in, I make it very clear. I say, it's not going to hurt my feelings if you don't want to move in. But if you move in, I'm making it very clear. Here's the rules that you follow. Number one, it is quiet at all times. This is inexcusable. Quiet at all times. You will be clean.

I hire a maid service. But these are the rules that you will follow no matter what. And it's very clear. And when they move in, the culture is already established. That's so smart. Yeah. So my buddy, I told you about The Punch.

He said what he didn't do well with that property is it was kind of a party house. He was living in at the time. And the people that move in kind of join the culture, right? If it's a party house and you're here, we got every Friday night, we got dinner and drinks and all this stuff going on. Well, when people move in, they're going to be a part of that and they're going to join. Or if you want it, students only, super quiet, everyone works from home, super quiet. When the next person moves in, they'll abide by the rules.

What I found, the rental demand right now is so high. I could buy two more properties tomorrow and have them book. with great tenants. It is so high right now because I furnish and I include utilities and I never raise rent. So when you move in, it's super easy for a lot of people.

There's a transient town. So this might only really work in Vegas, this model, what I'm doing because I've got a lot of people moving to town. They need a furnished place. All in $750 a month. Really nice three-story $500,000 house

and kind of an upper scale neighborhood. You can't beat that. You know where I think you would make a lot of money more than YouTube is replicating that business model and just starting your amazing. management company. I've talked about that with my buddy

Machia and Taylor who do this and if we get to a certain point we'll hire full time and then that's where the criticism of when when will this be too much will hopefully be solved by that full time. I'm telling you man, if you just take 10% or 12% 15% and you say we will take your five bedroom house. You want the numbers by the way

on my new house? I know you like numbers. Yeah sure. Just so you can get an idea. I just maybe I do want to say like with the clips exclusive maybe we shouldn't use this as a clips as if it's really good content because the most more thing is the podcast, we'll just see how this is. Fair enough. Yeah.

We'll go through this. They'll show me to numbers. Okay. Yeah. You are not allowed to enter another roommate's room without prior consent. One issue I have never dealt with. I, yeah. Punching people and going into people's rooms.

There's some, like, respect that people have. I've never seen someone going to another person's room. Yeah. I wouldn't. Unless it's to take Jack's Rolex. We need the. Or if Jack, Jack bringing home those dates.

Yeah, yeah. Hey, Jack, what are you doing in there? You're waking up a little later on Saturday. Cool. All right, quiet time is between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. Do people, people run the blender at midnight and you're like, come on, guys, what are you doing? It seems like elementary school. It does.

This is babysitting, man. This is baby sitting. This is baby sitting. I have had kids before. These are all teenagers. I have a problem with this one, okay? Okay. Be real.

Laundry is not allowed after 11 p.m. Off peak electrical hours, man. Please plan accordingly. Here's why. So I have a converted garage in my. current house act and so the laundry is right there and it's super loud like getting sleep run the garbage disposal and anything but water is sent down the gym that's good i agree i've seen someone put down oil and grease and i'm sitting there like oh my god i just dealt with a 30,000 dollar sewage

problem please not put grease down the yeah wow yeah no oil of grease to be sent down the drain wow please pour in the trash can yeah wow yeah the cost of paper towel is significantly less than the cost of replacing the draining system yeah you'll like that yeah okay i like that uh please do your best to take out the trash whenever the trash has reached the ceiling of the trash can. I put a recycling bin next to the trash can for the recycling bin next to the trash can for the recycling. Jack, we should get in a habit of that, man. Jack

and Alex, looking at you guys. Dude, I take out the trash all the time. I take out the trash. Do you have someone here that keeps filling it up over and never takes it out? All of us do. I don't even use your trash can. Well, you do. All right, please do not leave anything in the kitchen sink. Jack,

I know. I provide plenty materials to dry your utensils. A quick soap and rinse is clean enough. Okay. I like that. If you have anything in the kitchen that you would like no one else to use, please notify every roommate that said item is off-limist. I had someone with like a very special coffee. Yeah.

Coffee mug. What do you call a mug? And it was special to him. And so I just make it clear. That's good. I like this. Did that, uh,

did that special mug happen to be one of the limited edition sign mugs now for sale at binkgirlcffee.com? Am I supposed to answer? Yeah. Yeah. What do I? You want me to plug it? No, no. I would just say it was three years ago now.

This was three years ago. But if it happened today, I know where to buy it. Please be mindful of the noise levels if you happen to bring over guests at night. Jack, the noise rules still apply when guests are over, Jack. With a house with thin walls, you know, you got a relationship. You know, there's some noises at night. I heard some wild noises coming the other night. Jack, that a boy.

From where? From your room. From my room. When? I went in, this was last week. I went into the office. Like a grunting sound. Don't spread this.

That is not true. I'm not even allowed to have friends over. I'm not allowed to have people over. I had to get you. I'm kidding. That's a show. That's the last rule you get to read. Graham's only rule is no randoms.

That's one of my only ones. All right. No random people. So you want a story. I had one guy who was up in the master and he had a buddy coming in. He had like a cousin come in for a day or two. No problem, right? Stay for a day or two.

After three or four days, He's like, hey, how long is he staying? Oh, his flight, something, something. He's going to stay another couple days. Well, then there was an issue with the MMA fighter, the heavyweight in the garage. I'm sitting at work. I'm working at like a nice tech company software development, right? And I'm getting texts from this guy and that guy.

Yo, so-and-so, the heavyweight's coming up to my room and trying to fight my brother. And the brother's saying he's like, this is my house, and he doesn't live here. And the heavyweight is obviously a very confrontational guy. So he's up there banging on the door. And he's like, come on out. And I'm sitting at my job. And I'm freaking out. I'm like, what, what's going on?

You know, hopefully not a fight. ended up subsiding, but they got into a disagreement. So that was the thing with the guests. Wow. Yeah. Keep windows and doors closed at all times during the summer and winter months as the electric bill will be significantly higher if we are blowing air to the outside. Yeah, my buddy Machet, the one who dealt with the armed robbery guy.

Just recently he had some girl that just moved out, and another tenant said that she had left her window open all summer. An electric bill was twice what it was last year. That's unfortunate. These are all good rules. Please do not eat others food unless given consent. In the event that food was mistakenly eaten, please offer to reimburse the roommate for the food. Oh, I would...

I would upcharge that so high, so much. What? Okay, the only time I ate Jack's food, the only time Jack had watermelon in the fridge, but he had a lot of watermelon, and it was looking so good. You can justify it however you want. Yeah. There was plenty for Jack. I offered to reimburse Jack.

You did, which I thought was so ridiculous. But thank you. I appreciate that. No, you didn't need to reimburse me. the point. Because Jack eats so much of my food. All the bars, Macy buys, she goes to the grocery store. I don't eat the bars.

Who eats the bars? Which bars? This is why you install a camera. This is why you install a wise camera. No cigarettes or smoking. We'll bleat that out. Inside any, or no cigarettes or smoking. Inside.

Sorry. You just said it against. No cigarettes or smoking. Okay. No cigarettes or smoking of any substance. Green stuff smoking. Inside, under any circumstance. I do not want to see any cigarette butts in the yard.

If you smoke, discard the cigarette in the trash properly. Graham. Everyone will be like, Alex. That's reasonable. Cigarettes make a yard so trashy, man. Yeah, because cigarette smokers just haven't. They just seem to always flick them on the ground. I did actually see someone throw a cigarette outside of their car yesterday.

Oh, it happens all the time in the freeway, and you see like the little orange. I hate that, yeah, I hate that. Please do not leave the house when your clothes are. being washed in the washer out of respect for others who may need to do the laundry. Talking about energy. That does make, I actually like this really a lot. So-and-so's laundry. Can you tell them to get it?

It's like, come on. I'm not a no, man. If you need to leave the house in your clothes or in the dryer, please provide a laundry basket for others to place your clothes in so washing can continue. I include that in your checklist, by the way. You might want to go get like a small hamper to put by the laundry. Dude, you shouldn't sell that, man. Basically, I've dealt with like every problem in the way I operate is you bring me a

a problem. I find a solution to implement so that it'll never happen again. these spreadsheets like these rules I mean that that's great yeah take out dry lin after use this is mandatory we are risking the house being burnt down if the dry relent is not adequately removed fair enough you'd be shocked how many people don't remove yeah dry or lent I don't nothing foreign goes down the toilet this includes but is not limited to condoms Graham blunts and food jack if you order food please be alert for the food when the delivery has arrived that's fair

lock the door lock the back door whenever you return inside this is mandatory to ensure safety for all roommates yeah that's smart if there is an urgent need for anything that i have not provided please text me asap and i will reimburse you for the expense that's good i always try to be a great landlord i think i'm the best landlord in Vegas like the goal of house hacking is to always provide the best experience to your tenants and i try to implement that every day yeah if you're having any issue related to the house or between another roommate and don't feel like you can settle it yourself please let me know by text Asap, which I think is great, ASAP, to squash the beef immediately once it occurs, so there's no. You should do something like, please settle it yourselves. Please settle yourself. With a coin toss. It's too bad. It's just you can't just like an arm wrestle. What I'm excited about with this next house is I'm going to now be able to manage the first house hack from afar, which is something I haven't had to deal with yet.

That'll be interesting. Yeah, because if it works, I'm going to scale this pretty quickly. If you damage anything on the property is your responsibility to reimburse me for fixing the damage. Fair. Let's see your numbers. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see it.

So you usually add a unit, though. So you buy a house and then you somehow like add a wall or something like that? That's the goal. I look to maximize the properties as best I can. So my new one, it's a 5-4, and I'll show you pictures, but I'm converting a downstairs living room into a sixth bedroom. It's free cash flow whenever you have the ability to do this. You generally have lofts upstairs can be converted.

You have potential dining rooms. And then in my case, on a three-story house, downstairs living room. I'll give you the numbers for the new house. So purchase price of $500, $25,000. down, which was 5%. It appraised for $4.95, so I needed to come out $5,000, unfortunately. $7,500 closing costs all in about $3,000, $4,000 all in, if you include buying furniture and other various things.

So I'm in about $3,100 a month gross expenses, $3,100 a month, and I'm getting $39.50 income. So while living in the property, I'll be cash flowing $850 a month. Got it. My other house, the seven bed, it grosses $4,600, whatever. like 4,6.50 or whatever it comes out to. And the total expenses with made services, all utilities and everything is about 2,100. Let's call another $200 a month for various. So, $2,300. It'll gross somewhere around, or net $2,300 a month cash flow. So I'll be about $3,000 a month, net cash flow between the two. So what's the, what's it look like in

today's market? So you're buying something, let's just say, we'll call it $5.50 because the market's going up, putting, let's just call it 15% down. So you're putting $82.5 plus another, let's say 15,000 different expenses closing out. Let's say 100K. Yeah. 100,000, five bedrooms. What would you get per month on that? Well, between the five, I get 3950 for mine.

So if you buy in kind of that, I think there's a sweet spot right now. Right in the 550 range, it's the perfect model for house hacking. So you'd be somewhere around 3950. You could probably get a little more if you pushed it, but I prefer coming in a little below market. I think people stay longer and they enjoy it more. if they feel like they're getting a deal. So I'm just doing some numbers here.

So I'll walk you through it. So we're looking about, yeah, I see. Okay. So it's going to be about $3,300 a month. Correct. Okay. By the way, that includes highest speed internet, all utilities, and made service. And I did no PMI for mine.

I did a lender paid up front. So let's just say worst case, $3,300. Yeah, let's just say. $3,300. So you're making $650 a month. Correct. Which is $7,800 a year. So 7.8% return.

And it'll be about $750 a month for the paydown, principal paydown. Right. I see at another $9,000 a year for principal paydown. And you also live for free. So there's the opportunity cost, right? So most people live for probably $800 a month if you include all the utilities in our apartment. I'm saying for an investor.

If I were looking to do it, then it would be even higher. Then it would be... Yeah, because you would put more down... So it would be basically the same thing. So I'm calculating this the same. If you took a management fee, let's say $1,000,000. 15% or whatever it is, you'd be looking at a total return of 16.8 a year on 100,000 with equity pay down or cash flow, you'd be looking at like 8% with a management fee.

Yeah. I think those numbers are a little high, by the way. If you put down 20%, you should be in the 2,300 ballpark. I think there's another 300 or so a month that you're adding in that I think is. Yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right. Yeah, you're right, right. Yeah, I put loan amount of 550 instead of the purchase price. So $1,971.

So you're right. So yeah, so 78. And keep in mind, what I do is with the six bed, I'm going to get six beds for mine. I'll be at $4,700 a month in income when I move out of my new house. Right. So take the expenses was, well, let's call it $3,000 for everything. Right. So you'll be at $1,700 a month cash flow for one property.

Yeah, right. So yeah, yeah. So this comes out $7.75 a month with a management fee if you were to do that with this. You can't match the returns. As far as house hacking, you cannot match the returns. It's the best way to get started in real estate. I run a meet up here in town, and a lot of beginners come, and they just seem so lost because it's so hard to get started now,

because the barrier to entry is so high, man. Like, if you make $50,000 a year, how are you going to get into real estate? If you have $10,000 saved up, good credit score and everything lines up. How do you get started? How do you go get a hard money loan if they want 20% total cost? How do you get a hard money loan? Okay, that's hard. Wholesaling, incredibly competitive, and requires marketing fees.

Going to get your license, you could do that. That's a good start. but to me, house hacking is for most people. And because a lot of the comeback is, oh, well, I have a girlfriend or I have a spouse or whatever, you can house hack, you could get a casita. In my current house, you could wall off the downstairs, which would cost about $2,000, so it's a tri-level, right?

You can go upstairs and wall it off. You could have its own unit downstairs basically be an unpermitted duplex. Downstairs would have two beds, one bath, and you could even kind of form a kitchenette. So that would combat any type of issues about living with others is you would essentially have your own unit, if that makes sense. Right?

So you rent the four rooms upstairs, you break even. Yeah. In L.A., that's never something you would do because all it takes is one neighbor to complain about an unpermitted addition or the wall or anything like that. I see you're a man of following the rules. Yeah, yeah. Because here's a thing, if there's a fire. It's always for fire compliance of like, what are the exit points? What about the person on the second unit?

How many exit points do they have or the windows? Yeah, what was it? I got cited too for something. I forget what it was. I had the wrong, and I bought a property, but it had the wrong type of, I took the bars off. No, I didn't.

Bars off the window? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You need that in L.A. I'm picturing like a million dollar property with bars on the window. No, no, no, no. It was weird to me not to have bars on the window, seriously. Oh, that's not good.

Yeah, it was always, yeah, because growing up, we had bars on the window. I never knew it was not a thing to have bars in the window. Yeah, it was like four. You know what? It was actually, when Macy first came over, I think she mentioned the bars on the window. And her thinking was that this is not, it's not like a safe area. Because it had, they all, every house had bars. So that's why you have them here. It's like brings back memories of home, right?

No, but so anyway, so like for me, it was like, growing up, we had bars in the way, but like every house. What are the bars for? To prevent people from getting in the house. So it is for safety. Yeah. But, yeah, so anyway, for the compliance, it was the, the, bar, the bars on the bedrooms had to be one where if you pushed it from the inside, they would swing open in case of a fire so that you're not trapped.

The metal bars in one of the master bedrooms when I bought the place did not do that, or it was like, it was only like partially opened. I don't know, so I had to fix that. I do have a question for you since that threads over. What's your relationship with the algorithm, with your YouTube analytics? And I leave that question open. We're like that. I leave that question over to see how you answer.

I'm curious. Yeah. Because I'll answer after you. Yeah. Is that your answer? You're real close? Extremely close. Because I am in a way, like not in a good relationship with it because our careers on

YouTube are so tied to the numbers and analytics that it can almost become unhealthy where you're sitting there checking the numbers and it becomes all about numbers and oh, today it's 50. I've looked at some of your numbers on the social blade, right? Some months it's like 50% less. I know you feel that. Yeah. But if you look at macro level, I'm doing pretty well in life and you're doing pretty darn well

yourself, should we really care about that much? And I know for you, you take the YouTube series. But anyway, at what point, I'm just curious, at what point do you start making enough money where you just go, I'm putting the video out? If you don't care, it's a hobby. If you have no problem, just going and post it what you want and do it, it's a hobby. I love the aspect of a business. To me, I take it so seriously.

And it's like... And income has not changed at all. This has been the same behavior for a couple years? Oh my gosh. That's the only way to get to past a million subscribers is to be relentless with the You have to treat it like a business and you have to be meticulous. If the video doesn't do well, you have to find a solution. Just like you're about finding solutions.

You've got to find a solution to why a video is not performing. Where did you go wrong? And sometimes it's like we pick a topic that's too niche. That's my bad. Oh, well, I won't do that again. Or you post a video that should have done really well. But then it's like, well, what's wrong with the title? What's wrong with the thumbnail?

How could I fix this? That's never going to disappear. I was just curious if you have and maybe you aren't able to say, sense it in yourself, but if anyone, not just saying you, if you get to a point where you're making a lot of money and you're still like so tied to the out. At what point to detach? You have to. Then you stop caring. Then you stop caring. Then it's like you may as well at that point be like, all right, well, then I'm retiring or I'm just not going to care. But then you let the business die. That's what you're doing. It's like you're, you built up a successful company.

You're like, oh, now I'm just not going to care about it anymore. You have to be so on point with all of it. Now, here's, you're talking about views decline. Now, here's where it gets me. If, if, if, is an isolated incident. If my channel is going down, well at the same time, everyone else is going up, then I know it's an issue with me, and that's something I can control, and then that's something where I got to pinpoint where I'm going wrong. If I see it where every single finance channel is down 50% from where they were in the beginning of the year, and it's across the board, I'm not doing anything wrong. That is just the general momentum of the market, and at the end of the day, we're at the whims of just what people want to hear about, what they're clicking on,

Because I know you're still in the strategy of when I can tell when a video's not performing, I know your numbers, when the video is not performing, that title and thumbnail gets changed. And I would never speak on other people's health, like mental health and your like relationship with the analytics, but I wonder at what point do you have a good enough life where you can detach. And it doesn't sound like it's affecting you negatively. I know for me. I love it. Yeah. Okay, good.

I think my sense, and tell me if I'm wrong, my sense is you've had enough success. We're like, the money problem solved. You're good in life. You've got good people around you. So this becomes your focus. It's like a game to you. I've always to. Regardless of money, how much income you're making, it's like it's a game.

So if you can beat the game, that's your joy. Is that correct? The money's never been, never been a goal, believe it or not. I know it's odd because it's like... From the outside, it's easy to judge that. Oh, 100%. But I've been just the same as I am today as it was when I was making no money on YouTube, like absolutely nothing and I was still taking it just as seriously.

I love it. And same thing with working as a real estate agent. It was, the money was great. I love it. But it was never like, I was never like, I got to sell this house. I was going to make the money. I just, I had so much fun. with it and just and and and I think that the accumulation of of of building wealth and

investing it that's a byproduct of just I I love it so much that like and and there is an element where it's like I do feel sometimes it's like well if this video like yesterday's video was something where it's like it it was frustrating than anything because I'm so happy about this video but I think just we were using titles that people have gotten used it we got to find so this is a thing like like the program It's like, now we've got to find a new angle. Because the current titles, the stock market just blanked. That format worked three months ago.

It doesn't work anymore. Yeah, every single video, the stock market just flipped, flopped. Topped, peaked, whatever. You could pick any, and we'll look through the dictionary, literally. We'll pick words that we think are cool. And really, there's a few of them in there that are just random words. They don't mean any. There will be a word that works, like the stock market just and then a word.

and then if it performs successfully, you know, you can't just use that same word, but we use that same format, the stock market just, and then we just type in that word synonym. And then just like go through like an entire list of words, like what seems like it will work, what doesn't.

You've treated it like an algorithm. Yeah, and then you could apply that to, well, if the stock market just flipped. What about real estate? The real estate market is. I'm just fascinated from a guy like you've had so much financial success. You know, at what point? Because we're all different too, by the way.

Yeah, here, this is it. The stock market is about to snap. Oh. That was a word that was like, it just hit. And it sounds good. It doesn't mean it. The snap was snap. Totally ambiguous.

But it's a good title. Like, I liked that title. Thank you so much for coming on, Spencer. It was nice officially meeting you today. Thank you for all of your guidance. I've been DMing you for like, I don't even know how many months now. A couple weeks? Yeah.

A couple months. It's been over a month talking about real estate in Las Vegas and how to house hack and stuff like that. So thank you all so much for that for that advice. And thank you for showing up. It's the best place to start. If you want to get started in real estate, house hacking, baby. Look at the camera, that one right there, and tell them to destroy the like button. You need to destroy that like button right now. And subscribe.

You need to destroy that like button right now and subscribe. Cool. So thank you guys so much for watching. Thank you so much for coming on. Also make sure to get your free stock down below in the description. Just use the code gram. It's worth all the way up to $1,000 in public. $1,000. $1,000. That can start you on your house hacking journey right there. Yeah, if you get the $1,000 one, that's pretty good.

have to manage tenants for a thousand bucks. And you're telling me you can just sign it for now. Free stock. Enjoy that free stock, guys. Thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having you guys. Until next time.

I'd say your last name too. Last name? Oh, yeah.