The Iced Coffee Hour - Graham Stephan's terrible business ideas | Ep. 1

Episode Date: May 24, 2020

Welcome to the first ever podcast hosted by Graham Stephan and Jack Selby.  In this episode we discuss important matters such as weird celebrity names, Graham's terrible business ideas, and we learn our strengths and weaknesses. Enjoy!   Instagrams: @GPStephan  @Jlsselby   Webull: https://tinyurl.com/yd9slfax  Mentorship: https://tinyurl.com/yaexko4o  Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So welcome to my first ever podcast ever that I've been, I don't want to say I'm hosting it. I mean, you're mostly hosting me, but. Right, right, right. Co-host and co-host. There's no host. Okay, I don't like that intro. Should I redo it? It's a podcast.

It's fine. Podcasts are raw. No, yeah, yeah. It's, you know, let's keep going. All right, yeah. It's going to be a completely-ended podcast. All righty, normally, guys, what I would be doing, if I'm doing a YouTube video, I would do that intro like 20 different times.

This is true. And then the 20th time, I would get so upset. I'm like, okay, I'm just using that. That's true. So, okay, cool. All right. Welcome to the podcast. Yeah, welcome to the podcast.

So we'll do a little introductions. Graham, you go first. What do you want me to say? Just, you know, introduce it. I mean, everyone already knows you, right? That sounds so pompous, though. I introduce myself. I'll introduce you and you introduce me.

Okay. So Graham right here, he's a 30-year-old. I'm not going to call him a real estate agent because he mainly does YouTube videos now, but that's what he does. He makes YouTube videos on personal finance. And, yeah, that's pretty much it. that's what I do yeah almost two million subscribers right now that's crazy it is nuts another month exactly exactly yeah so I'm oh you want to introduce me yeah go ahead so you're Jack so Jack is the

one that you see behind the scenes who's been editing the phone calls if you send an email to like the Graham Stefan show or Graham Steffen business or Graham Steffin mentor should we get so many emails if you send an email to anyone it's Jack who reads them in response back to you guys or not responds back to you is Jack. So I don't see a lot of the emails. So anyway, Jack, Jack is the guy behind the scenes and this is his idea putting me up to this. And Graham and I are actually coming up on our one year anniversary. Very cute, right? Very cute. That's true. Yeah, it's coming up soon. Yeah, in like a couple of weeks, that'll make one year that I've been working with him. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. I started off as a lowly fan and now I am. Yeah, you started off going

through the Facebook group emails. Yep. So, yeah, this is a beginning. We're doing this. And first off, I think a good activity for the first ever podcast would be a hot seat for Graham, because obviously most people are here for him. So I've prepared some questions for you. If you're ready to hear me out. All right. So first off, I'd like to say, when you do your videos, you seem to have a pretty moderate opinion, right? Like, you never really want to go astray or extreme or anything. Do you think that you're ever not true to yourself because you're holding back to like, you know, appeal to a larger audience?

Sometimes, honestly, opinions are completely worthless. I mean, my opinion on certain subjects is completely irrelevant to looking at facts and research and data. Like, I could think something might happen, but I think I'll keep my opinion out of it because all we could really look at is the facts, figures, and the data, and the history. And then I let people come up with their own decision. That has always been my go-to. So, sure, I have opinions.

have things that I don't purposely share. But usually that's for a reason. I'd like people to come up with their own opinion. So you do it mainly to be as accurate as possible. It's not really to appeal to a larger audience or to pander. No, because I like that people could go through my videos and they can't say I was wrong. I don't like that.

They can't watch my video and disagree with them because it's like they're disagreeing with fact. Right, right. You can't disagree with fact. They could say a certain thing about the stock market, And I could, well, you know, I cited all of this research. So you can't go to me and say I'm wrong unless you're calling, you know, everyone at Harvard who did the studies, you've spent like years of your life, totally this together.

Like, I'm researching the data. So I put in the time. I show people what I think they would want to hear or see and go from there. This is true. Graham does a lot of research. Hours. It literally will be like six hours, you know, even 10 hours of research per video. Oh, yeah.

Easy. Yeah, kudos to him. Thanks. Okay. So second question. Let's see here. If you weren't a finance YouTuber, what kind of videos would you make on YouTube?

That's a great question. Thank you. Thank you. That's a good question. Yeah. Wow. You know what? Originally, this is like seven years ago, eight years.

I wanted to do prank videos. I thought would be so funny to do prank videos. And I actually came up with the idea. And this is before, like, anyone else started doing this. I was like, a lot of these prank videos would be so much easier if you just hired actors. before. But I thought it would be so easy to just hire actors and go and recreate a lot of these things. Right, right. Viral videos. Yeah, I don't know how. And that's what everyone's doing.

And that's what everyone's doing. There's no longevity in that anymore. But I thought that would be like a fun thing. I'd want to do prank videos. I thought about, I think, like, you know, music, not music videos, but like drum covers, stuff like that, I think would be fun. Who inspired you for the prank videos? Lof. Lof was one of them. Vitaly would be another one Josh Paler Lynn

A few big ones I would say those There's so many praying Overboard humor Before everything that happened with that Overboard humor What happened with overboard humor? It just had some issues

Had some personal stuff come up And I think it leaked itself Into the channel unfortunately And I think just the content suffered Because of that You know just tough stuff in general But yeah Overbore humor

was another one. There's so many channels that I used to watch back then who would just, Epic 5 TV was another one. Limitless EXP, was it limitless? Yeah, Expe, I think Vincent Valentine was another one of those guys. Those are the, those are guys who would just be in Vegas, just pulling little pranks, like harmless little pranks. Yeah, yeah. That's funny. That's funny. Yeah. But that's, yeah, so I would say probably pranks and then music. So, you said that their personal stuff got into the channel. How big of a threat do you think, YouTube is just for, you know, a YouTube creator's own mental health, because I feel like I see a lot of YouTube creators doing a lot of videos, like, about my anxiety, about my depression.

Like, do you think that YouTube can spur that kind of, like, mentality or it can make people, you think that the job is hard? Because a lot of people, like, are very prideful that they're YouTubers and, like, they love their job, but then I see a lot of videos like that, like. Yeah, it's definitely, because your boss is an algorithm that only rewards you if you keep posting and each post has to be better than the last and the way the algorithm works is that if your video does well the next video after that is going to do well too but if your next video afterwards suffers then the video following that is going to suffer alongside with it so it's like

if the faster you run the faster the treadmill goes so the fast you know the more distance you're covering but you're right right you can't just keep doing what you're doing you have to continually push and do better and better and better that takes me a toll on people. Even for me, it's just constantly figuring out topics that I think would perform better than the last one. It's like, you can only make so many topics about personal finance before a lot of them become repetitive. And if there's no, like, if there's no news or anything happening, how do you bring people back into the channel? It's tough. So, yeah, so I think that's why it just, it becomes very time-consuming. And I think keeping that up, you, I definitely think it's

something that you can't sustain for like 20, 30 years at the current level. Right, unless if you have like a team behind you that are doing all the back end stuff. Unless you got a jack, doing all the work. There you go. There you go. So that's why I think it's just, it's so much work and so much involved that there's a high turnover rate. I think of people who do it for a few years and then just move on to something else. Yeah. That's fair. That's fair. We've seen a lot of YouTubers go mainstream recently. So that's interesting you say that.

Let's see, if you could collab with anybody, you know, I'm talking like anybody you want. You know, it could be the biggest YouTubers. You could be like Mr. Beast, you know, not even in the finance, like, area. My first go-to is Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey, so it would be in finance. It's interesting. Yeah, that was my first. If I could collab with anybody, it would be Dave Ramsey.

If you could get anybody on the Graham-Stefons show. So I'm talking, you know, you could get the president or you could get anybody you want. So Oprah. Well, really quick, besides Dave Ramsey, I would love to have Mr. Beast and Danny Duncan. would be the other two guys who I would love to have them on the channel anybody, anyone, Elon Musk Okay, I don't know, yeah, I'm not gonna argue with that

That's fair, that's fair, okay, on Elon Musk, what do you think about his naming of his child? What was it, Kyle? No, it was pronounced Kyle. What? Yeah, no, no, it's like X, A-E-A-12. Yeah, yeah, but like, I think, I read somewhere that that's pronounced Kyle

because if you in pronounced in Greek, those letters work out to be Kyle. The one too is like the L, you know. Are you serious? Well, I thought it was something. Look up Elon Musk name Kyle. So it's a meme, apparently. Oh, wait, meme accounts have convinced people that Elon Musk and Grimes' baby name is pronounced Kyle. Yeah, I didn't think that he would do that.

So, I haven't seen it actually written out. New baby boy, X, I don't know, the A-E, I don't know, I don't know Greek. You don't know Greek? No. A-12. Yeah, isn't that like a fighter jet or something like that? Wait, wait, wait. He identified the second character as Ash, saying it was pronounced X, Ash, A-12.

It's so ridiculous. Yeah, so there's no pronunciation of the name. He's just letting the press take off. Oh, God. So what do you think about? the name. You like the name. You'd got to be so rich to be able to name your kid something like that. Right, right. The kid's never going to have a normal life

like that. So you've got to... Be able to provide. There's got to be a net worth threshold. Threshold. For you to go and name a kid like that. Like, who was named Apple? Like, there's like an Apple something? I grew, I went to high school with someone named Apple, I think. Let's see. It's a common name. I don't know. It was, um, Gwyneth Paltrow. And they named their daughter Apple. Well?

So you've got to have Better apple than like orange Or watermelon or something like that to be fair Blue Ivy Beyonce and Jay-Z That's their kid's name That's a name I didn't even

The more money you have The more wild the names That's smart That's my And 100 million bucks You just you know My mom is a Is a kindergarten teacher

And she had a student in her class named seven Huh Like the literally spelled out S-E-V-E-N That's cool Yeah. Yeah. Some like stranger things.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Seven. Yeah. Okay. All right, so let's move on to the next question here. All right, Graham. So we know your guilty pleasure is all you can eat sushi. What is your real guilty, guilty pleasure?

Like, not with, you know, eating sushi or anything like that. It doesn't even have to be with money. But what would you say you, like, spoil yourself with here and there? The ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road, That's the Volkswagen Tiguan. Its sleek exterior makes a first impression you can't ignore. Step inside to find available full leather seats and wood accents. Under the hood, the available 201 turbocharged horsepower engine gives it a fun to drive edge.

The refined Tiguan, you deserve more style. Visit vw.ca to learn more. SUV, German engineered for all. Do you have a guilty pleasure? Not really. The drum set was something that I spent money on. The drum set was something I got for myself. It doesn't have to be anything you spend money on.

Any glutton. Work. For anything. Work. I mean, that's really what it is. That's true. This guy works nonstop. I love it.

All right. All you can eat sushi for me is like a reward. The McDonald's, a McDonald's dollar menu is something. That's another reward. Drum set was a splurge. The reef aquarium is going to be another splurge. Like, even on my birthday, like, you know this. All I wanted to do on my birthday, I just wanted to work.

I just want to like a normal work day because that's what I like waking up to. Like I'm excited to wake up in the morning so I can get to work. So Graham and I will occasionally go to McDonald's. And when we do, Graham gets the same thing. He gets two McDonald's. Okay, Graham, what do I get?

The chicken. What is it the chicken? I get a McDonald's? And it's called a McGham. I might bleep that out. But what you do is you pull apart the McDouble and you have the meat and the cheese and the bun on one side.

Meat cheese on the bun on the. the other side and you get the McChicken and you put it inside and close it. What do you think of that? I want to try it. I'll try it. You know what? Monday. Monday we'll go and we'll do that. All right, cool, cool. You'll try one. They're delicious. I'm telling you. Like, it's definitely worth it. All right. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, cool. Now let's talk about moving in. Okay, so what do you think? Because right now, I actually live with Graham in the guest houses property right now. What do you think about me moving in? Do you think it went smoother? Or, or? or more difficult than it, you know,

than you would have initially thought. I was worried initially. I'll be honest because I like, like, like, it's hard for me to concentrate sometimes because I was worried that, like, what if I need to work in the backyard? What if he can't keep himself busy enough? Is it going to interfere with me planning and, like, all this. So I definitely went in thinking, like, I just, I need my time not to be distracted so I can plan.

And it went smoothly. I mean, very, just like, very effortlessly. I know I'm missing out on rents by not renting out that. guest house but overall I would say very smoothly and it went I would say better than expected good good I'm glad um let's see here also um about me moving in one thing that you told me which I was I was very careful about this you wanted to make sure that you know our friendship and business that were not really two things that like did I say that yeah you did and believe me like one of the things I want to make sure I do is never like you know encroach on like anything that you're you know it's going on

in your life. But I thought it was interesting you said that. And obviously it makes sense. And it was something, I expected you to say something like that. So what do you think of it now since I've been here for a while? Do you think that it's difficult that, you know, we do have a friendly relationship? Right. You know what I mean?

Working with someone who's your friend, do you think that you ever hold back on me? Do you think that you're not tough enough on me? No. I don't think so. The thing is, I could probably always ask for more. So I would say there's a few times where I'm like, I very much like I like to drop everything and just get it done, like as fast as possible. So there are times where I would love for just like, let's drop everything, work until like 2 o'clock in the morning, wake up at 6, let's keep going. Right, right.

So it's hard for me sometimes to step back. Like not everyone is like that. So, you know, I would say that's my only thing is that sometimes I'm like, we got a millennium money. Let's edit it as soon as possible, get it out. Like all the phone calls, why are all the phone calls done in like five? hours so we could go and do something else. So that's usually how I operate. So I would say overall, though,

I think I'm pretty straightforward when it comes to that. Yeah, I would agree. I would agree with that. Okay, so now what we're going to do is you're going to need three strengths, three weaknesses, or however many you want. What do you think are my weaknesses and strengths? And I'll tell you yours. Okay.

This is dangerous. I mean, you're my boss, right? Let's start with strengths. I would say very motivated. Okay. Very persistent and takes criticism. well. I'm saying three strengths. Three weaknesses. The reason, let me tell you this before you say the weaknesses. The reason why I take

criticism well is because I'm confident. So if you tell me my weaknesses, be sure that it's... Okay, okay, good. I would say the weaknesses, not being able to focus 100%. You know that. I think sometimes there are things that need a little bit more urgency that are maybe just not done immediate but then again that's I wouldn't say that's a big thing no that's fair I was about to say not getting to things immediately but that's the same thing geez I don't know there's plenty of stuff you could pick from

you know lack of original thinking not contributing enough yeah I don't know very punchable face I'm kidding okay it's coming from you half of this guy's comments are just like that's a joke it's like oh another guy said it's a punchable face yeah yeah that's funny I don't know I don't I Fair enough yeah fair enough

would you like to hear you know but you have more time to plan this out this is not I actually okay so I actually did not think of anything for you so this is all

impromptu or whatever so I think that one of your weaknesses starting it off with weakness is I think that you work too hard and you revolve your life around money because I remember hearing in one middle ground episode which I totally agree

and also someone in one of my classes actually at UCSB they said that whatever you worship you become a slave to so you you know you worship money and you worship you know your entrepreneurial endeavors but now you're kind of a slave to it and since you you hold it at such high regard

you'll never really be truly satisfied with money and progress and productivity at this point it's it's less about money i think is just the byproduct of i like working and i like saying the numbers go up and i like yeah but now you become a slave to it you you chase it and i think that you'll never be you know truly truly satisfied i would agree with that okay that's good yeah so i think that that was probably, you know, it's a weakness of yours. You're fired. I think a strength. I think that, I mean, you're extremely honest.

You're a pleasure to do business with. I know for a fact that I'll never get shortchanged. And I think we both have really, really good mutual trust. Another weakness of yours is you're too trusting. I think that you probably let people take advantage of your walk on you. I don't think so. I think so. How?

Because you remember we went to, you know, on that one trip, and you were too scared to ask for a check. You're not confrontational. And as a businessman, you have to be confrontational. Yeah, yeah, okay. We went on a trip and... We don't need to go to details about that check. Why? Oh, oh, no, he's right.

He's right. No, we don't need to go into details. Yeah, we don't need to go into details. Very interesting. So that's one thing. I don't think you're confrontational enough. Okay. All right. That's fair.

Yeah, which is fair. One of my most unattractive trades is my parents sometimes still order for me when we go for dinner. We can leave that part out, though. All right. Yeah, so that was a strength. That was a weakness. I mean, overall, I think that you, obviously, I think you're a powerhouse. Like, I think that you do well in whatever you apply yourself to, and I think that's good.

I think that's probably just because of your work ethic and mentality. Fair enough. Okay. Another weakness. I honestly, I can't. I can't. Too perfect. You see, Graham makes me leave my shoes at his door.

And at first I can't. My shoes. No, my shoes, too. Or when I walk in, you know, he's shoes at the door. Yeah. Which at first I thought was a weakness, but now it actually makes me. a lot of sense. Yeah, because recently I've been kind of putting my shoes at the door of my guest. Yeah. So, um, another thing. When did you enjoy YouTube the most? Because I, I think it's

probably not now because now it's a career and it used to be a hobby. I don't know. Um, part of me feels like now. You think you enjoy it now? Yeah. But now it's your career. And people say when your hobby becomes your career, then you enjoy less. No. Um, I would say my favorites, I would say in the very beginning for the first 20,000 subscribers, I would say, and now. Yeah, I would say the middle part was a lot of those, like the grind, but now it seems like, well, it's very much in a way of the algorithm. Like when the algorithm is in your favor, you love it.

When the algorithm's going down and your videos are not getting views, you hate it. So now I'm loving it right now because the algorithm has been the best thing. So obviously I'm having more fun with it now, because I'm like, you're putting in work, and then you're seeing this great outcome, and it makes you feel like, wow, I did something great. You know, people really like it. It's a good message. And in the beginning, it was really just because it was new.

And every subscriber was like, wow, another person subscribed. The first 1,000 was a big milestone for me. The first 10,000 was a huge milestone for me. And then I remember hitting 20 and be like, wow, that's like, that was nuts. Right, right, right. And that was the point, too, or, like, hitting, you know, a few thousand views in a day. It was insane. So that for me was pretty big.

Good to know. I'm glad that you're enjoying it now. This is good. So I was listening to another podcast and someone asked a really interesting question. The question was, since you've become successful, does anyone ever come to you

with terrible business ideas? Like people that you've known in the past and now they're reaching out to you and they're like, need a little loan. Okay, so two things. In terms of terrible business ideas, yes, believe it or not. I don't want to call anybody out.

It was... Don't have to say. who they are. You could say the idea. Yeah. I don't know the person came up to me and I don't want to give away his business idea. But he had this idea and wanted me to go down to the parking lot in his truck because he wanted to show me his product. And I mean, if it could perform as it was basically like a it was a type of adhesive basically. We'll call it. It was a type of adhesive. And if it could perform the way he says it could perform,

it would be great, but he made these claims that sounds so, just, like, so out there. Like, it was stronger than steel and, like, all this and stuff. And it made me, and just, just the vibes kind of got me off. It's just like, it's in his, it's in his truck. Right, right, right. And just, like, he wants, he needs money.

Like, he wanted, like, $250 and something like this? A few months ago. Really? Yeah. Yeah, I didn't know anything about that. Yeah. I mean, it was just, you know, a 10-minute thing. And then, you know, but sometimes because he's a fan of the channel, so I didn't want to say, like, no.

So I heard him out, but then it kept going and going and going. I don't want to, you know, I just wanted to say it. Right, right, right, right. No, but I just got to get back to my workout. That was it. Fair enough, fair enough. Yeah. Final question that I've prepared is businesses when you were younger.

When you were younger, there were any businesses that you started up or you tried to start up now looking in hindsight they actually were not multiple but I never actually pursued a lot of them oh gosh where to start one I wanted to make so the first one I bought

man I should have done this one in high school I bought the domain odd jobs dot com believe it or not and it was a high school business project and odd jobs was basically a Craigslist for people to post up odd jobs that they want to get done, and people can make an account and do those odd jobs. Like if someone wants their garage cleaned out, you post on oddjobs.com, someone could go and clean out your garage for a specified price, and it could be anybody.

And then that person, the worker, would have their profile on there, and people can review them. Right, right. So basically, it turned into later what was turned into TaskRabbit, and then they sold that for a lot of money. So, I mean, had I pursued that, sure. So only good ideas ever from you. So, yeah, so that was one of them. And I let the domain expire. And so, yeah, and then someone else bought it.

I should have kept it. That was an odd jobs.com. Yeah. It was great. Another one was I bought the domain, ArtSleeve. I don't know why. Just art sleeve.com. And now it's bought?

I don't know. I don't think I ever renewed it, but I bought ArtSleeve.com. What kind of business are you trying to? So what that was supposed to be, that now turned into Etsy. Oh, nice, nice. Before Etsy, this would have been in 2008 is when I did this. I'm sure I still, I might even still have, no, I might still have my whole outline for Art Sleeve. Oh, that would be cool.

But yeah, Art Sleeve was one of them. There were a whole bunch. I came up with all these, let's see, if I type in Art Sleeve, this would be a blast on the past. Let's see, Art Sleeve. All right, so I did find it. All right, you found Art Sleve. So like I came up with all of this on Microsoft Word. So I came up with this whole outline.

Literally on my... So art sleeve and then you could search for like painting sculptures by artist's name. And then it would basically be... So this is before like... I guess this is like basically like a Myspace thing because this was over 10 years ago that this was done. So yeah, so like you would have the user profile picture. People could rate them.

Views. They're featured artwork. They can have like blogs, galleries, reviews, a guest book for people to sign in. So this was a good idea. If you pursued this, this could have taken off. So anyway, so yeah, so that was one of them, art sleeve.com. The other one that I never pursued that I really wanted to do, I wanted to come up with a free cell phone plan where instead of, you know, when you call a phone, it's like, it rings like, boon, yeah, yeah. Imagine if you get a free cell phone, so you wouldn't have to pay any sort of like monthly data or like any, any.

like that, so you don't have to pay like 30, 40 bucks a month. But instead, anytime you make an outgoing call, you'll hear an ad for like 10, 15 seconds. And then the call goes through. Whoa, that's... So I figured, you know, like, or when people call you, let's just say, instead of hearing the, you know, it's ringing, or you know how people have a ringback tone or it plays some classical music or something, imagine if a person calls you and they just hear an ad. until you pick up the phone.

That's pretty smart. Why don't people do that? And, you know, if you're receiving calls, maybe you could even, if you receive a lot of calls, you could probably monetize it. And, you know, you could, like, wait, like, for, like, three or four rings,

wait a while and then finally, like, answer it to get longer playtime on the ads. It's like, you know, so you would either get a free cell phone that all you have to do to make a call is just listen to an ad, fine, or you can get paid. Like, imagine if people call you and you could just get paid.

Now, you would have to figure out some way of just not like manipulating that and hiring call centers call you all the show. Right, right, right. But I think, realistically, it's just a free cell phone plan where you can make as many calls as you want within the United States,

but it's just you listen to an ad before the call goes through. Not a bad idea. So, yeah, I came up, I know I got a business plan in there, but basically I was one of those kids where it's like, okay, so there's 300 million people in the United States,

if we can get 1% of those people and we make an average of, you know, 15 cents a day. You know, you know, all of this. Yeah, yeah, you're like, based on that. That was my pitch, was just, was just that. Like, if we get this amount of people, make this amount. Right, right.

I started looking into it, and it was just, it was, I felt so over my head. I just, like, I had this idea. It's hard. But I was like, where do I start? How do I get advertisers? I think I was, like, 18 years old. I was like, what do I do? Never pursued it.

There were two other ones. One was called TruthIntel.com. And that was a website. I wanted to make a Yelp for people. To see if they're like a good or bad person. Okay, I think I've seen like a black mirror or something on this. Something like that. Yeah, but this made this one again.

This was like almost 10 years ago. Truthintel.com. And this one we actually have, I think you could go to truthintel.com. I just don't know if I want to promote Truthintel.com because we're not pursuing it. So in hindsight, you think it's a bad idea. Terrible idea. To just, like, see how good of a person people. Okay.

If you had an account, what do you think your rating would be? Minus any influence from, you know, subscribers or anything like that. Just the people you meet on the street, what do you think your rating would be out of 10? Probably four, four and a half? Out of 10? Oh, out of five. Oh, okay. So you think you're like, you know, like 80%.

80%? Yeah. I think it's funny. It's funny. Everyone's done things in the past that they haven't been proud of. All right. So anyway, so I thought it was like, if Yelp for businesses, there should be a Yelp for people. And so it's a bad person.

It would be a bad person. Yes. Okay. But here's the issue is that we started getting into it and a few things. One is that people will very rarely go and write a positive review. Usually the people online, if they actually take the time to review something, it's going to be negative. Like, you have to have such extreme feelings to actually take the time. the time to review somebody.

So my thinking right off the bat is that predominantly it's going to be overwhelmed with negativity. The next thing was that there's no fact checking. There's nothing for me to go on and like, I don't like this person. So I'm going to write a really bad review on them. There's no filter to that. And once you begin moderating comments on the internet, you're assumed to then be publishing or endorsing information. So this is something I wasn't aware of.

But you could be a website. and remain completely neutral and be completely a void of lawsuits if you don't moderate comments. If just whatever submitted is submitted, you don't touch them. But as soon as you start moderating any comments or restricting what could be published or removing stuff, then you're endorsing everything else and then you can be liable. Interesting. So I didn't know that. So, you know, if something gets published on the site and it's obviously fraudulent and it's obviously not true and it's so ridiculous,

we can't go in and remove it. And, you know, just you wouldn't want it to be damaging to the person or you wouldn't want to be hurt. Right, right, right. If I wrote a really terrible thing about you and that you lose a job now or something happens, I couldn't, you know, I couldn't, you know,

feel good about myself knowing that my website led to something like that. You know, we did do a mock-up site that we promoted around our friend group. And it actually got, like, it, for some reason, it caught on in, like, this other country. So here's what happened. So what we ended up doing is we went through like 50 to 100 friends

and we'd start promoting it on Facebook. And we got a decent amount of traction for people making like little profiles and kind of like having fun. So you had to make a profile. So you couldn't just like see someone on the street. Like that guy's face looks stupid. No. So I would have to make a profile on you.

And then I would upload your- So even if I didn't even say it's okay for me to be there, like. No, the way we had this section is anyone could go on and make a profile about anybody. So I could make a profile about you. Upload your picture. Put your name. And just say whatever you... Put your location, see whatever you want.

And so we did this, and what ended up happening was that we had our friend. And he had a very unique last name that not many people have that last name. So we made a funny little post about him. Just funny stuff. But it was kind of wild. So, like, we're friends. So, you know how friends is kind of like joke around with each other? So anyway, we wrote some stupid stuff about them, just jokingly.

knowing that we're all friends, you know, ha, ha, ha, ha. Didn't realize that that showed up within like a few weeks as the number one result on Google when you typed in his last name. And his dad has a construction company with that same last name. So guess what? His review came up first before his dad's construction company. So the dad was furious over that because when people Google the construction, you know, I was almost about to say his name.

our friend's profile would come up first with our little joking things. Yeah. And we got very upset about that. So we took that down. But yeah, but for some reason, we would log in and see, like, people had been creating profiles in, like, some other country. And we're like, how did it get, because we never promoted it there. Right. So anyway, so it was, that was one of those ideas that got shut down.

That's funny you say that. That reminds me of something that happened within my friend group in high school. I had two friends, and one of them asked the other friend, can I make? can I sell you on Craigslist as a joke? Yeah. So, you know, the other friend was like, yeah, sure, I don't care. Like, whatever you do. And he didn't think he would actually, like, make the listing.

And my friend made the listing and actually sold, like, tried to sell this other guy on Craigslist and pulled up a picture of him when he was like seven. Wow. So this is where it turns bad. Oh, wow. Yeah, he posted this on Craigslist. A picture of, you know, the other guy when he was like seven years old and he said, oh, this is like young little, like, whatever.

He only needs, like, a pint of water a day. and stuff like that. And like basically, you'll get social services called so fast. Yeah. So he was saying like you don't need to treat him well, whatever like that. And it was like a, it was a bad situation, right? But like back in the day, like we thought that was funny, right? Because, you know, obviously we're getting mature and stuff like that.

And yeah, the listing got taken down. Everyone forgot about it. And three months later, we're at a track event. And like the sergeant of like some crazy like chieftain of police or something like that. comes over and he's like are you so-and-so and he was like yeah and then he's like you got to come with me and apparently they had launched an investigation and they had been investigating for about three months to find out who is trying to sell this person on Craigslist yeah they found it out and and yeah lo and behold like no one got in any trouble but the officer was really really pissed

because obviously a waste of like you know resources and stuff from the police department and yeah there was a little bit of animosity between those friends after that obviously they've settled things now, but like crazy, huh? Wow. Two other ideas I came up with, by the way, that I just remembered. One was an Airbnb for parking spaces. Like, you know, in Los Angeles, parking is so hard to come by. And I remember going around Venice, and especially as a real estate agent, like, you want

to show a property in like Venice or, you know, Santa Monica. It's either all permit parking, you can't find anywhere to park. But imagine an app that you could pull up on your phone and basically pay per minute to park in someone's parking spot. these are good ideas. I don't know why you never really pursued them. They tried in San Francisco. They failed.

No. Because they couldn't find enough homeowners that would agree to do something like that. Now, I kind of get it. I'm sure I had it all in my email too. If you have like a $2 to $3 million house, you're not caring if someone's going to pay, you know, $5 bucks.

Five bucks an hour for parking. I thought that it would make sense for someone's driveway during like 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. If they're at work anyway, why not make $2030. right right away so that was something I thought of oh my God so this we we we tried making a truth-and-tell by the way mobile app where you could swipe your friends so it's integrated on Facebook so you could go on the app download all of your friends from Facebook and then swipe I love that image that just says is Carla honest yeah

but it's a rating system so basically it'll ask you questions about the person and you could say yes or no, and you could go through your Facebook friends. And then, like, is Carla honest? Oh, my God. So we put down here, she is so annoying. Stop posting pictures of your food.

Watch what you say to her. She can't keep a secret for mutual friends. I don't understand. Like, did you think this was, like, funny when you were a kid? Because I think it's funny now. Like, I... Yeah, but, Carla, look, but you could see, like, is Carla honest?

You could see 12 people said no. six people's yes when you were coming up with that idea specifically did you think that it was actually like going to be a successful business or anything I mean obviously at the time yeah did you think that what you were doing

with your friends was funny though oh we had a blast I mean this was us getting together like twice a week hanging out coming up with ideas thinking we're going to be you know billionaires that that's what we thought do you have any questions for me that you'd like to address you could put me in the hot seat and feel free to ask me anything no filter

I'm not good without pre-planning. I don't know. What comes to the top of your head? When is this going to be posted? I mean, that's like the number one thing. See, that's the thing. You just, you don't stop thinking about work all the time.

Do you think that you'll ever change from that? I don't know. You know, I seem to go in these phases where for like a few years, I'll be really hyper into it and then a few years off. Then a few years really into it a few years off. So it's on the scale of years.

It's not like weeks or months. No, no, no, yeah. Because it seems like, you know, for real estate, I was really, really, really, like, interested in that for the fact. first like five, six years, went through a period for a few years where I was just like, eh, got back into it, then YouTube came up.

But still, like, at such a young age, making like that much money, did you really feel like, eh? Or, like, it's hard for me to, like, fathom. No, when you start doing the same thing for a while, it started feeling like every deal was about the same. The showings were the same. Houses were the same. You know, I still

was excited about it, but it went through a phase of just, you know, I was just, I was tired of being at someone's back and call all the time. And it I was tired of just like 8 p.m. would come around and like, oh, I know I got to like pick up my phone and go to a showing right now. Out of nowhere. I didn't like that I couldn't plan around it. You know, like a lot of that was so spur of the moment. If becoming a real estate agent was never really a thing, do you think that you would have ever started making YouTube videos?

Yeah, I'd, yeah, because I'd wanted to make YouTube videos for quite some time. So you think that you still, regardless of whether or not you were a real estate agent, you would have made YouTube videos? Maybe. I don't know. Real estate gave me something to talk about on YouTube. I don't know what I would have done besides that. Because originally it was supposed to be, I was going to be a drummer. Well, first it was an investment banker, but I didn't want to go to the school for that. I didn't have the grades. So that was out. Drummer, I didn't want to be the starving musician living in a van.

Fair, fair. There's some great drummers out there. I don't know. I would have probably come up with some app, some website. I was really, really interested in that. What's fascinating to me is you always say that you were really bad at school. Like you had like, what, like a 2.6 GPA or something? I don't know. Probably lower than that.

Yeah, something like really low, but I don't understand. Did you not try in school? Were you not motivated? Stupid. So stupid. You thought school itself was stupid. I thought it's so stupid. So you think if you really tried, you could have done better.

I don't know. I just thought I thought I thought I was. Because, I mean, you're pretty eloquent in the way that you speak. And, like, I think that you're overall. Like, I think you're pretty, like, intelligent. I think so. I couldn't understand chemistry. I couldn't really understand math.

English, I just didn't see the point. A lot of stuff, I just didn't see the point. So you didn't try? And were your parents never, like, urging you? Like, come on, what is this report card? You know, C's or whatever? Not really. I think, you know, at a certain point,

you're just like, it is what it is. They can't. Really? Yeah. I can't really do. I just, it's so much stupid. Like, I didn't want to learn poetry in English. Like, I just, I would sit there and just be angry

because it's like, this is stupid. I don't want to, I don't want to do this. Sit in chemistry. and just like, I don't want to learn chemistry. Like, what am I going to do with this? Same with Matt. We're very practical. Yeah, it's just like,

all I thought about is how is this going to help me make money? That's it. So even at a young age, you always still had the make money mentality. No. So you always wanted to, like, you had the goal set in mind of becoming really wealthy. Yeah.

It's interesting. Even if, what if you were to do something you weren't ever passionate about? Like a job that you really didn't like. Couldn't do it. I tried working at, but you made a lot of money doing it. here we go. Goldline International. I never said that before. Goldline, that was a job that

was a job that I worked at, um, barely at a high school. That was, that was what I thought was going to get me into like the investment world. It was goldline international. I started doing data entry with them and I hated it. Could not stand it, but I was, how much were we making? Minimum wage. Like, it was either between eight and 12, so it wasn't even that. It's like, it wasn't great. No, but the, the, the goal was with that is that they were going to start me off doing data entry and the mail room and then move me up from that into, and then move me up from that into the it was into the shipping

so it was like data entry mail room the bottom of the barrel then you got into shipping which is like right above that then you got into gosh there was something else above shipping that was just slightly better and then after that

maybe it was a customer service so it was a lot of steps essentially but the end goal would be to be what's called an account representative and what you would do as an account representative is you'd have a list of numbers of people who have inquired by gold in the past or precious metals or numismatic coins and you would sit there all day making calls

to clients trying to sell that's the top that's the top that doesn't sound like the top it sounds like the grunt work no no because you're paid on commission so some of those dudes were making like 200 grand a year but obviously then after that you have like right right oh and the CEO and all that fair so I wanted to be the account representative or the oh sorry account executive telemarketer Yeah, which at the time I saw that I thought that was the most glamorous, glitzy, because like everyone in the back, and I worked in the back

office, everyone in the back office would be like at their beck and call. Right, right. They would have some dude, like, they would wave the sheet in the air when they did a deal and like someone would have to go and like run that over to processing in the back and they'd process the order and there would be like someone going around

and like if they needed coffee or something, they'd give them coffee. They were like the Kings. Yeah. And like everyone, and it seemed like there was this big divide between the front office and the, back off like the back office people were like these these you know little like yeah and the right right people you'd see them like drive the Mercedes oh okay okay I wanted to be that you know

it's a whole like system a whole like it was it was very corporate I hated it though but yeah that was that I hated so that that to me was so impactful that I could never do a job that I hated because I would never want to return to that again it was so awful the first day I liked it and then after that, I load that. I hated life. So a question I remember hearing one time that I thought was really interesting. Would you sit in a blank white room for eight hours a day but be making $200,000? Obviously, before you started making a lot of money in real estate and YouTube, when you were at that point in your life, would you have accepted a job like that, sit in a blank white room for eight hours a day doing nothing, but still walking home with a big paycheck?

Probably. You would. And do you think? At 18, of course. Yeah. Yeah Fair enough I feel like a lot of people Would probably try it out And then after a while I'd be like screw this This is terrible

Yeah Would you do it for 100,000 Yeah $100,000? Yeah 100,000 Okay, that's fair That's fair

Yeah I mean even now Like I'm sure there's a dollar amount Where you would You could pay me To be in a white room For you know It's a day

I'm sure there's an amount I think we all have an amount That we would do that for it Do you think sleep is a waste of time No No Sleep is the one thing for me I just need it.

If I don't get to bed by a certain time, then I'm just, I'm a wreck the next day. Think about sleep, though, because it's eight hours a time per day, depending on how much they sleep. That's just, like, nothing. And think of a way you could monetize sleep. Is there any way that you can make money off of sleep?

Off of your sleep? You could live stream yourself sleeping. There's going to be people watching that would, if I set up a webcam on me in bed sleeping, there would be people to watch it. Oh, yeah. Oh, guaranteed. So I was watching a live.

stream on Twitch and there was this guy that went sleeping and stuff and there was a donation box and if you donated a certain amount people came in like physical people that were taking care of him when he was sleeping and they would do stuff to him so it was like $50 shoot a paintball at him like $100 tase him like $200 like

I don't know spray paint him a certain amount of money an alarm goes off or something it wakes too long no there was like $10 like text to talk so like they you know people would type stuff and it would blast it and wake him up but like no there was like tasers and stuff involved I wouldn't be a pose still, you know, if I can make enough from you live streaming you sleep?

You would sleep and let people watch you? Let's say it's like $2,000 a night. I mean. Yeah, no, I mean, yeah. I don't do anything. Like, I'm sleeping anyway. But what if you do something embarrassing? You like fart or something when you're like sleeping?

Okay, the audio is going to be turned off. I don't know. So you turn the audio off? Maybe, I don't know. I mean, it makes sense. Yeah, I guess you can put a price on anything. I would say if you paid me 10 million in a year, I would sit in a white room for eight hours a day.

No YouTube. So you'd have to take a year hiatus off of YouTube. I don't know if that would be worth it. Wait, wait. No, 10 million a year. No, no, it wouldn't be worth it. I would say it would have to be like 20, 20, maybe 30 million dollars. And you'd do it.

Where would I go, Graham? What would I do? I'll pay it as just, you know, stick around. To just watch you? Because I'm thinking a one-year break in a 30 million box. You could come back and like have a crazy like, what's up guys? I made 30 million in one year. and everyone you watch it.

I guess my biggest concern, though, would be just mentally going crazy. And then, because that might just be enough to screw you up, and then you're never the same afterwards. Like going insane from sitting in. It's not like what insane asylums are? Yeah, but you're not getting paid for that. It might just be sitting there. Just being like, okay, you know, fine, you could count how much you're making from.

I don't know. I just don't know the effects of isolation for eight hours a day. Was it every single day? The hard part would be if you don't do it for an installment. entire year you get nothing. So like if you get to day 300 and you get a dollar, that's what it would have to be. It's either you get all of it or nothing. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah, that would be a really interesting concept. I would probably do it. I bet honestly, I bet most people would do it. I think a lot of people don't like their job and would rather sit in a white room for eight hours a day

with just completely deprived of all of their senses eight hours a day. Just time passing. Just time passing. That would feel like, but then again, could you sleep during those eight hours? No. So you have to be fresh off of like eight hours of sleep. You have to be like your most hyper self with nothing. I don't, you might mentally go crazy. You probably would. Because I think humans are not designed to be that.

I think honestly what I think would happen is that you would get very depressed. And I think you would have a crisis. That's what I think. A little crisis in there. Yeah. And I think every day would get worse. I think you would battle severe depression doing it. And I think coming out of that, you would probably have PTSD.

PTSD? Yeah. So, like, you couldn't get into, like, a white room. For an entire year, you're talking about, let's say, you know, if you live to 80, one 80th of your life was spent in complete isolation for eight hours a day. You're going to wake up after that when that is over and just be paranoid. Like, going back to that. Or like, you're going to be paranoid.

Oh, really? Am I out of it? It's going to seem like a bad dream. That's so hard for me to actually picture because I feel like the entire time I was in that, you know, I would be in that white room. I would just be thinking about like, oh my God, I'm like making this much money.

You know what I mean? In the beginning. Like every time I walk into a room with it's like all white, just be thinking about dollar bills. But if you look at the hedonic treadmill, after about two months or so, making that amount of money

is going to seem completely normal and they're just going to hate it. First two months, you could probably do it, but you'll get used to it. That's interesting. Yeah. We get used to things very quick. So you'd say you're 100% used to your current income.

Do you ever sit back and just think like, wow, this is insane? Yeah, it's hard not to lose perspective. It's really hard. Because now I view things in terms of like how many days is this going to cost me to pay for? Like how many hours is this going to cost to pay? And that's not a healthy way to think of things because now when you make so much money, it's just, you know, you could buy this car two days, two days worth of work. And then it doesn't really show the content.

of just how much money it actually is. So what I'm thinking is, Graham wants to get an aquarium. Okay, and this aquarium's going to cost, like, how much, Graham? 25 grand. 25 grand. You heard it here. And this aquarium, Graham has been thinking about getting for how long now?

Probably 10 years. So those 10 years that Graham has been thinking. I have not had an aquarium since I was 17. So if you sign a value to your time and think about all the stress or whatever thinking, like, oh, my God, this is going to put me in, like, financial ruin. You know what I mean? Like all of that.

If you assign a value to that, do you think that it's equal to $25,000? Probably. But I also, I look at $25,000 and it's hard for me to conceptualize that because I see $25 grand is that that's a lot of sushi. Right. That's a lot. Like when I was 18, that would be a lot of work. I would never have spent that.

So I don't know. It's just, I see that as a lot of money on things. Like, I am so nitpicky of just like I won't buy the more expensive coffee cream or so I could save like, you know, a dollar. Right. Or not even buy generic brand cream sheets, so I could save, you know, $1.50. So I'm looking at all these dollars and $1.50s, and I'm thinking $25,000, you know, that's 25,000 times to be doing that.

So I'm like, part of me thinks, what's the point to me going and trying to save a dollar here and there when it just blow it on an aquarium? I think that your frugality really, like, stresses you out. I don't know. It puts it in perspective. I mean, it's just, it's a lot of money to spend. I don't know. You know, I think it would be a good decision, but it's like, do I spend that much money?

Or do I just get a smaller aquarium and don't need to reinforce the floors? It's like, is it going to be just as good? I don't know. It's also a big commitment on something where it's like, I hope I enjoyed as much as I did when I was 16. I think I will, but. I think if you wanted it for this long, it's a pretty safe bet that you'll really like it. So should we just wrap it up now? Yeah.

So you want to do the answer? I mean, I feel like I'll start it and you can sign it off. So thank you guys so much for watching. We actually haven't even mentioned the name of this podcast. I think that we're going to name it the millionaire and the student. I think it just really wraps up a really interesting dynamic. You know, of course, Graham being very successful and then me, you know. Being not successful.

Yeah, just a complete failure. So, you know, if you didn't know this, I'm a student, I go to University of California, Santa Barbara. And yeah, that's pretty much a study economics. Cool store, bro. Thank you. So, yeah, if you guys have any suggestions for a title, I mean, we may as well be open to suggest. I think we should probably name this to begin, like the Graham-Steffen podcast in the very beginning, and then we could shift from there.

Yeah, we could cast a vote poll or something. Yeah, we'll do that. So, guys, if you have any names for this, look, if you actually got to this point and you listen to the whole thing, let me know. I'd be really excited to hear if people watch the whole thing. So, yeah, because this is going to be posted on YouTube, I don't know where you're going to be listening to this. If you're on YouTube, or if there's a like button to be smashed,

make sure to smash whatever like button this is posted on. This is the first smash like. It's the first smash like button on the podcast. Also make sure to add, I don't know if you want an Instagram plug. Sure. J-L-S-E-L-B-Y. Cool. Add us both on Instagram.

And lastly, if you guys want, oh, subscribe. Obviously, subscribe. And get your two free stocks down below in the description for Weevil. And join the mentorship group. We meet twice a week every Thursday and Sunday. You do a Zoom call with me. That's fun. Yeah.

Link to that is down below in the description too. You want to just do that? So thank you guys so much for watching. So thank you guys so much for watching. And until next time.