The Iced Coffee Hour - How to 10x Any Business | Houston Crosta

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Houston Crosta, owner of Royalty Exotic Car Rentals, Houston's Hot Chicken, and a successful youtube channel talks about the recession's potential lasting impact on the car market, the inside secrets of running a successful restaurant, and what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur/multi-millionaire.  Sign Up For Wealthfront For A $50 Bonus And Earn 1.4% APY On Your Cash! https://wealthfront.com/ICH SUBSCRIBE TO HOUSTON: https://youtube.com/c/RoyaltyExoticCars Check out the Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/icedcoffeehour  Add us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan https://www.instagram.com/alex_nava_p... Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ... For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] GET YOUR FREE STOCK WORTH UP TO $1000 ON PUBLIC & SEE MY STOCK TRADES - USE CODE GRAHAM: http://www.public.com/graham  MY NEW COFFEE IS NOW FOR SALE: http://www.bankrollcoffee.com/ The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 Audio Equipment Used In Podcast: Rode NT1, Rodecaster Pro The YouTube Creator Academy:   Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF  For Podcast Inquiries, please contact [e-mail] *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to the ice coffee hour. This podcast, educated guest this time, has made $203,000. Getting closer, $233,000. Well, I got it pretty much dead on. 866. Yeah. Just minus the three. Great guess.

You've made $50,000 since I've been here last. Has it? No. Has it really been? I swear it was 1 a minute when I was here last. Solid. We'll take it. Where do the money go, Jack? That's no idea, man.

It's been three months. Has it really? You guys, wow. I'm going to start a podcast. That's not bad. You should, man. People love you because we had you on last time with the video titled something like the man who owns a hundred Lamborghinis for $10 million. And you were telling us about your stories and how you rented out these supercars to these people and they would crash them.

It would be a huge liability issue. And I know you've been recently trying to get out of the car rental, the luxury, sorry, not get out of it. But expand your horizons into other businesses. I'm the man with 10 million chickens. 10 million chickens. It's funny. Daniel Mack came up next to you, my Konex egg, and, you know, asked me what I do for living.

I was like, I just sell chicken now. And he just, it was actually a pretty funny story, but he didn't understand it, you know. And I thought it was actually really cool because that means I'm doing something right, you know, like when someone doesn't get what you're doing, then you're doing a good job, you know? Yeah. So renting cars is becoming oversaturated. and like insurance and just so many little things are becoming just too much. Honestly, like, I just don't see a path how this business exists in five years.

So transitioning into, you know, chicken was the only way I saw a way to like continue to monetize my skill set, right? And grow to a level to where we're international or, you know, just national is good enough. But that business, you can just drop one anywhere, right? Like we've got a thousand plus franchisee applications now. And we're getting all over the world, right? We have like Flagstaff, Arizona with 73,000 people. And we have like the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia. I mean, you just name it.

People want to put one there. And like when I started to have the idea to maybe franchise royalty, it was Miami, L.A. That's it. I believe that. Yeah. You know, it's like there's not really much you can do with that business. Now that business is sexy, right? everybody wants, not very many people have unlimited supercar power, right?

I mean, that was kind of one of the things that made me popular, right, is the ability to just drive any car at any time. And funny enough, I never drove by rental cars. I always had this weird anxiety that they'd be like dirty or something, you know, which they're not, but like, I don't know. Really? It's kind of like. Let's talk about the rental car business, first of all. How is that industry evolved? How has Turro impacted it? And why are insurance rates going up so much? Why are we hearing about this auto bubble? Well, luckily, Turo hasn't impacted my particular business because my particular price point of cars isn't really on Turo.

Every once in a while, someone throws a Lamborghini up there for like $700. But that doesn't affect me, you know? But it affects everybody else. Turo, I think, don't hold me to this, but they have between like 5 and 10 million members, right? That's not that many people when you think about a nationwide amount of members, right? I mean, over 30 million people come to Las Vegas every year and rent a car. So there's a very large number of people that are renting cars that have no idea what Turo is.

But in general, the rental car industry is becoming oversaturated because of things like Turo because of the price points. Right. Hertz and Avis and myself, we know what it takes to rent the car, right? Your next door neighbor that has three cars on Turo has no idea where it takes to rent the car. She knows what her payment is, and she knows how much she needs to make every month to make that payment. And that's her goal is to make that payment, maybe more, to make her other car payment that she's not renting, right? And so that's why Turo was a problem because of people not understanding the business model behind renting cars, right? They're just looking to just kick the can down the road.

And this is exactly what happened with the auto loan bubble that everybody's talking about right now, right? It's like the mortgage crisis in 07, 08, 09, right? The only reason someone bought a car or bought a house was because they thought someone else would pay more. Like, it didn't matter what it was. If they got approved, they'd buy it. And so because the car market was going up so fast, everybody was like, oh, I'd buy a G-Wagon because I'm not going to lose money, right? If it's 50 over sticker or 100 over sticker, they're not going to lose money because they think that the cars are going to keep appreciating in value because of the low production. Or there's an issue in, you know, getting chips and all these little things.

It's a lot of excuses. You know, I mean, if you looked at Ford's inventory, I mean, they had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of cars sitting in parking lots, right, waiting for chips. Yeah. But doesn't matter what card is. Like, let's just say you're guaranteed to buy a Ferrari, a new Ferrari at MSRP a year from now.

Would that be a good deal to take over, let's say, a Lamborghini at MSRP versus like a McLaren at MSRP? What are your thoughts a year from now? You're definitely not going to buy a McLaren at MSRP because those, if you're buying one in MSRP, you're getting a bad deal. So because they go under MSRP very quickly. Yeah. And even in this environment, manufacturers like Ashton Martin and McLaren still depreciated. So it sucks to be that.

Yeah. Ferraris always are, we're limited because they make less than 10,000 cars a year. So Ferraris did a really good job of always limiting their production for two reasons. A, because they don't make very widely used cars, right? They make a very niche car for a very niche person, right? So like their mid-engine V8, you know, the current F8 model or the new 296, those are the most widely used cars. But like their GTC for Luso and, you know, the 812, they're very niche. And so those cars always appreciate over time because Ferrari actually sells out majority of their production line before they really release the car.

And so they do that because, well, they want the orders so that they can get the customers. and maybe the car isn't up to their extenders or it's not kind of that good, people are still committed to buy it. And Ferrari buyers are scared to not buy the next car because they're afraid that they won't get the car after that. Right. So it's this kind of mantra that Ferrari's got like their customers wrapped around their finger, which is a good thing.

So if you're going to get a Ferrari at MSRP, yes, it's great. But that Ferrari actually comes with a two-year, like no sale clause. So you sign a paper saying you're not going to sign a paper. saying you're not going to sell this to anybody except a dealer who sold it to you for two years. And if you do do that and you sell the car before that to someone else, you'll never

be able to buy a Ferrari again. Because if you buy the Ferrari and I'm the dealer, let's say you paid $300, the car's worth $400, I'm going to give you $320. And I'm going to sell it for $400. And so you make $20,000 which is a minuscule amount of money in comparison to the value that you've imported for the car.

So that particular brand's really unique. Sure. But like Lamborghini, I mean, they're making an SUV that's doing $100,000 over sticker. You can just go and order one of those, and they don't care if you sell it the next day, right? And so that's why the cars are so increasingly, you know, transacted, right? So they're doing a really good job of that. But that's changing.

I mean, just in the last two weeks, I mean, for instance, I purchased an Aston Martin DBX, which is the SUV, right? And that car was around $240,000 new. This car had 5,000 miles. And it had basically some just, it like blew a tie. And it like the fender kind of got messed up a little bit right. I purchased it for a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars and the value of the car when I bought it was one hundred and seventy thousand I fixed it and a dealer had offered me one hundred and sixty five thousand and so I agreed to sell to that out within that two week period of me fixing the car and getting all that done by the time I was able two weeks the car was worth a hundred and forty grand so yesterday I sold the car for a hundred and forty thousand in two weeks it dropped literally over fifteen percent of its value like that. Why?

Is that because of the market going down? Exactly. That's because your bubble popped. That's the problem. Once the bubble pops, it's like people's mentality changes, right? So kind of like similar to what's happening to real estate right now. It's like how low can we get this, right? Not how much money can we make on it.

It's like an opposite approach to like buying the car. So that dealer and every dealer is low balling me, low balling me, low balling me, low balling me, saying, you know, one guy will offer 140, one guy will offer one 45. one guy will offer 130, and someone's just going to see who bites, right? Before, it was, let's get closest to the what I can sell the car so I can get the auxiliary items, the financing, and the tire protection, and the dealers would make their money on the after-sale products. Now they're back to trying to rip the cars from the customers because there's an overabundance

of cars available. So that's the difference in the bubble. Yeah. Where do you think it's going to end up? I mean, the end is probably very close to becoming. the start of the end is probably very close. You know, if it starts with one car, like the G-Wagon, for instance, was doing 150,000 over a sticker.

So now dealers are asking 50,000 over sticker. These are for brand new ones. If you have miles on them, it's less, right? So it dropped 100,000 in a month, and it's going to continue to drop. Because the demand, like for me and for you, if you knowingly are going to buy a car that is going to depreciate 50,000, thousand dollars you have to either a really want that car like it's your dream car for the rest of your life you're never going to sell it or you have to be kind of like not that smart you know and so

there there isn't that many customers that fall in the middle of that yeah right or the people who just don't care like 50 grand for them is like a penny yeah but those people already bought the cars yeah they don't go out and buy 10 more g wagons like how many customers don't care and how many customers can you get to trade in the g wagon that they bought last year for the new new one that they don't care about losing money for for the next one and the next one and the next one. Yeah. The car is the same. Different color maybe.

So like those customers that have the $6 trillion that was free for our economy, they spent that money. And now that money's gone, right? So they paid a million over for a house. They paid $100,000 over for a car. Now they have all this stuff, right? What are they going to do with it? You know, if they want new stuff, they're going to sell it cheap, right?

To go get the other cheap stuff or it's just a revolving circle. Yeah. Big problem is in your car rental companies, when they went and bought everything for auction value, they have to replace those cars, you know? So they're going to, they're going to devalue the market the most, right? Because they have, you know, some of these companies have 100,000 cars, right? So think about 100,000 of the same model cars going through auction that just start to drop the value. Right. Right. And that's where like the biggest problem is. And what does that mean for people like you who probably hold millions of dollars in supercars?

while like you mentioned the bubble just popped and you could have some debt on these cars. How do you feel towards this whole thing and how is this affecting your business personally? I've actually made some quite big adjustments, right? So I had a bunch of new allocations that were coming in. Like I got two Lamborghini Euras three months ago. I didn't even rent them. I got them and sold them. So it's affecting my business because my inventory is normally at 30 to 35 cars now that are plus

200,000, right? I mean, my company holds about 70 cars in total, but the ones that are really expensive, it's 35. Now I have 16. That's how it's affecting me, because I'm, I'm, like, running slim because I don't want to lose the money. Doesn't that also go hand in hand with demand? Aren't we seeing less demand right now? So couldn't that even out? Like, let's say you have 16 customers now, 16 cars works out before you had 30 customers, 30 cars. For through the rental business, the demand isn't really shifted. I mean, there's less people in Vegas that are doing more extra activities, right? So, like, we have, I have a helicopter that does a, you know, strip tours, and that

business has slowed down slightly because, I mean, people are coming to Vegas. I don't think there's, there's probably some metric out there that says Vegas is the cheapest place in America to drink, right? It's like the cheapest alcohol, the cheapest food, you know, because the casino subsidize it, right? It's kind of like Venezuelan gas, you know, how it's like quarter a gallon, right? because they subsidize it. So Vegas subsidizes her hotel rooms.

They subsidize your food. They subsidize your alcohol to get you to gamble. Right. So now we're seeing this huge influx of people that are not leaving the casino. They're just staying there to drink, party, and kind of like hang out at the pool. Right. So the tourism numbers are really kind of changing and their values are going up, but the people who are coming in are not spending money, right?

So that's why, you know, companies like the Venetian, I don't know. You're not really on the strip too often. No. But like the wind has like 30 Rolls-Royce phantoms. And in front of my office is like their way to get to the airport. I used to see like 15 to 20 a day. I haven't seen one in a week. You know,

those people are not coming to Vegas anymore. So the demand is slowing down for like these wealthy, crazy people, right? But the people who don't have a lot of money are coming and they're spending money on credit cards. You know, they're renting the slingshots that I have. I see those everywhere. Yeah.

So like the demand shifted. Yeah. Right. So like the supercar is like you're saying, Jack, it's different, right? But for the like the auto cycle product, which is, you know, decent margins. It's pretty good. It's increased. So like we just are like in the car market, the bubble shifting the demand, right?

Now you're going to see the demand go towards the like the low income. For instance, you have a guy that shouldn't be driving a BMW is now going to probably lose his BMW because his payment's 11. The average car payment's like $700. I saw that. Like how is that possible? Yeah. I'm just looking at my financial ability. Yeah.

Right. And everybody around me, like my sister, right, she makes like $75,000 a year. Her car payment is $400 and she's like not having a hard time, but she's not having like this overabundance of savings to like live off of. Right. Imagine if her car payment was $700 like for a Mazda, you know, how could they survive, right? So all these people that have the above average car payments, I mean, if an average car is 700, what is a nice car? 12? Like, Jack, can you have a $1,200 car payment?

I mean, of course you can, but like, would that make sense? Jack, problem. There's more to life than finding the perfect car. But finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life. Like the SUV that handles everything from drop off to off road. and the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family. Whatever you want, wherever you're going.

Start your search at autotrater.ca. Canada's car marketplace. I'll be just thought about that. Let's be real here. Jack has looked at Tesla's and been like, it's not that about $1,500 a month. Well, Tesla's were like $700. Yeah.

My mom has a Tesla lease, and it's $700. $19 a month for a model S, 2000, like 20, right, the base one. That's what my mom drives. You know, but she contributes part of that car payment to her fuel, right? So like the excess fuel that she would spend, you know, maybe it's $50 a week.

That's $200 that she credits in her mind towards that car payment. So her old car payment may have been 600 and she'll get a Tesla with 800. She breaks even. She gets a more reliable car, you know, a better driving experience, you know, and something along those lines, right?

But now a Tesla is $15. 100 the same car. I mean it's it would scare me to have a $700 a month car payment. I would hate that. What about a $1,500 one? What about 2000 jack? I would hate it a little bit more. Yeah. I mean those are real numbers now. Those are normal numbers. How are people qualifying for this though? That's what I know with mortgages. It needs to be 33% of your income. So what's the metric for cars? Funny story. All right. I know a guy who he makes $2 million a year on salary. He owns a he paid for a $700,000 house and um, he, he, um, he He paid cash for it. He went to take out a mortgage on his property to cash out refi at 2.7 something percent back a couple months ago.

He took him four months. He's an orthopedic surgeon. Four months to do a cash out refi. He took $300,000 out. Okay. The following month, he has a few Lamborghinis as well, all paid for. The bank offered him refinance on his car. He got a $300,000 car loan.

on a car they did not even look at, they did not even inspect. They walked into the bank and in nine minutes, they took the title and gave him a $300,000 check. But couldn't they see that this guy has a ton of assets? He has plenty of income. Four months for the same amount of money, right? That's why the auto loan industry is terrible because they don't do any due diligence. Yeah. They could literally write you the same exact, you could take an asset that's worth a million dollars,

pull 300 grand on it, right, for a house and take you four months to go. through the world of questions, but walk in and get a car loan and take out 100% of the value of the car for 300 grand at the same interest rate or just slightly more in 10 minutes, right? So like that's the problem with the auto loan industry is they don't check, right? That's how it wasn't 07. They didn't check. You just buy a house. Is that because of regulation?

That's because that's how the banking system is designed currently. I think for auto loans. When I was talking to Lucky, he said there's no oversight or there's no one, you know, company or one industry or one, you know, entity to look over these loans to ensure that they're accurate. They don't sell them. It's up to the banks to have that due diligence, but a lot of them just will stamp it off, sell it off. Yeah. Well, they're not selling them to government entities. Yeah. That's the problem, right? So like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, you know, they're buying all these homes and they're buying all these mortgages. They're putting them on the stock market

and stuff. I don't know if they don't do the same thing. When did you sell your excess 20 cars of your inventory? Over the past. six months. Because I saw the market coming down. When you were selling them and also when you were holding cars all through the appreciation of the car market, when you eventually did sell them, were you selling them for a profit?

And then what about when you recently sold this last, you know, with the exception of the most recent Aston Martin that I just told you about like last week, every car sold out of profit, right? That's why I sold them because I knew that I couldn't make as much money. Like I could make more money in that one hour selling the car to someone who was

willing to pay for it than I could renting the car six months. Right. So that's the way I looked at. I was like, well, why would I rent this for six months? Take a gamble, you know, on on this. It's wild. But are there going to be any cars that hold their value? Because you still bought a car that was how much, $5 million? I have a couple of multimillion dollars. I just bought a Pagani. For a personal, yeah. You have a Pagani? I was going to drive it today, but. Oh, what did you drive today? I just drove a, okay, so funny story. Tell me it's a Volvo, 2006. No, it's a 2022 for Bronco. Oh, okay, yeah, sure. I was yesterday. Look, it's... I wish you drove the Pagani today.

Whoa, what do you mean to half the key? Well, the other half's in the car because it has a little thing. No. So I was going to drive that today. Gosh, look at that. But yesterday, I took off to go check on a restaurant of mine in Summerland, and I had to take some stuff there.

I had a light fixture, right? And so I needed to drop the light fixture off of the electrician to install it. So we have this like Ford Bronco that I bought two of them. for the rental fleet to like build them and make them all cool and crazy. Yeah. And I left my office keys in the in the office. And then I didn't get back in time and my employees locked it. So my office keys are in the office.

And our podcast happened to be before my office opened. And so I had the key to my car in my pocket. So they couldn't move it out for me. So I took the Bronco. I would have loved to have seen that. I noticed first of all, how much is it Becani? So this car is worth just under like around 3, 3, 2, 3.1. It's worth what you pay for.

Like 300,000? No, 3 million. Yeah. Oh, oh. Yeah. We're talking like. Yeah. So this car.

If a Pagani was $300,000, I would have one. Yeah. I'd have all of them. The thing with the Pagani's is that there's only 100 made, right? So I have a coop, the goaling doors. And there has only been four sold within the last few. years. So the value of a Pagani is kind of undetermined at this point, right? There is one listed right now. It's a B.C., which means it's like a race car version for $5 million. So mine's on

a B.C. Mine's actually car number 50 out of 100. I got a cool number. So I think that my car's worth like what I paid for it and what it's worth, I think I have like a million and a half equity. Okay. Hey, sorry, don't want to interrupt. But first, we want to thank our sponsor, Wealthfront. Graham, you wouldn't believe it, man. I found a $2 bill on the street. And I don't know what to do with it. Should I hang it up on a wall? Yeah, no, if you want to lose money to inflation, you could do that, or you could put it with our sponsor Wealthfront. Wealthfront is a saving and investing app that can help you earn more on your money and start building wealth for your future.

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That's wealthfront.com slash ICH. This no-brainer good news has been a paid endorsement from Wellfront. So thank you so much, Wealthfront, and back to the podcast. What about values for these cars? Are you worried about this car going down or like these high-end? The reason to like my Konig Seg, right? You know, that's like a $4.5 million car now? You have a Konig Seg?

Well, I know you have a Konig Seg, but I didn't know it's $4.5 million. Yeah. They have both of them at the same time? I have, yeah, I have a lot of those cars right now. Yeah. Why? Because you're not renting them out. No.

Why keep the money in those cars? Because it's better than houses. A, they're more liquid, right? And they have no value. There's no comps. Right? So, like, my Koenig Seg, for instance, is a Agara S. So I have the only road legal Agera in the United States.

There's only one. So there's eight Agara RS's, which are like race cars that are very, I don't want to say the word, like, uncomfortable. Because that's like a kind of a slap in the face for a Koenek's egg. But they're like very, very. difficult to use. My friend, there's one here in town. My friend has an Agarra RS and I drove it on the block compared to mine and I'd probably almost pay more for mine because it's more usable than his, right? And I think he feels the same way too. I'm not exactly sure. I don't know. But like that car is almost unusable and those cars are upwards of $10 million. So I have the only car that's

road legal, right? And I feel like mine's worth like five, like half of that because it's not as cool. like as like fancy right but it's still the same car same engine but you pay less for these how are you able to pay less and come in with instant equity wouldn't the guy before you to say i have the only one got to pay me well i bought it a long time ago yeah you know before this this transition into like because think about like a few years ago there wasn't that many cars that cost this much money and now every new car right like the new konexegg the jesko is like $4 million, like base price, right? So that pulls the value of mine way up, you know?

So it's just the way that it works, right? Like the Ferrari, like the 4-5-8 Italia, right? They used to be 140,000. And now they're like 240,000 because the base price of Ferraris went up, right? So when the value of the car goes up, like your car was $140,000 new. Right. And it's worth $400,000 today. Right.

So the new Ford GT being $1 million brings your car up. And so the cars that I have, the new ones are so much more expensive that it's more attractive to buy the older ones. Right. And that's what happens. You know, so if the new Ford Broncos, right, like the next year, the base price went up $20,000, it would bring the value of my previous year one up, you know, at least half. So that's what's happening with the car world today is Mercedes. announced that they were going to drop all of their crappy cars, right? Like their A class, their B class.

Are they really? Yeah. They decided to just not make those anymore and raise the price because, A, they don't want to sell to people who are faking it because they're complicated and they complain a lot. They bring all their cars in for warranty work all the time because they can't afford it. And when they get the cars back on lease, the people that have those lower tiered cars don't maintain them properly. Right? Because, like I said, they can't afford it. And Mercedes service is the same price.

It's terribly expensive. Yeah. For E class, C class, whatever class you have, they're all the same, right? You know, the service, the spark plugs, they all use the same stuff. So people in the lower tier cars aren't maintaining them. They're trashing them. And so the dealers are getting these cars back that they have to put, you know, 10, 20% of the purchase price back into reconditioning and then try to resell them again and to another person to have the same revolving circle

versus just selling one S class instead of like 11 C classes, you know, they make the same amount money, right? And so that's what's happening into the car world. The next like Mercedes G-Wagons, they raise the base price by $40,000 for 2022. Let's talk about the chicken now. Yeah. How did this idea come to light? How do you start this off? Well, I'm kind of like one of those guys that knows that the end is near, you know, all the time. I mean, what comes, what goes up must come down. And, you know, I had such a great run with the car rental business. I started in 2015. and by 2020, I was like kind of like it was surreal. You know, we were just, it was just printing money.

It was so good. But then, I mean, in reality, it just, it's going to change, right? And so I didn't want to be thinking about what I do next when the other one was over. So I sat down and actually it was about the time that the election was happening in late 2019. And I was like, wow, you know, the world is going to change. the economy is going to change. You know, we're going to have a different party takeover.

Everything is going to shift, right? So let's prepare for that now. So my best friend, Edmund, he always, like, wanted to get me to invest in this other chicken company.

And I went out there and I tried it. And I was like, yeah, it's cool. I'm not like a big proponent of doing things with other people, right? Because then the control factor

is kind of unique, right? So I said, Edmund, let's just do it on our own, right? Everybody's got Nashville hot chicken, right?

Why don't we make something else? It's make like Texas hot chicken. We'll leverage my name, Houston. We'll call Texas hot chicken, right? And we'll create a sweeter version that's more mass marketable. Because like Nashville, hot chicken is very, it's very aggressive. It's designed to like hurt your mouth. It's very spicy.

Like even in the mild and mediums and stuff, like their flavor palette is very aggressive. So it's got a lot of Middle Eastern spices in there like cumin and other different things that are not very well-rounded for America. and it was very popular in L.A. But L.A. has a very diverse community of people, right? So it worked really well. It's funny in Nashville Hot Chicken got very popular in Los Angeles. Yeah, I could see it. Yeah.

And I mean, you lived in Los Angeles. But if you go to L.A., there was like probably 300, 200, some crazy number of different businesses that sell Nashville hot chicken. So when Emin and I sat down, we discussed it, we created this recipe that was a little bit better than Nashville because it was, like I said, more even kill. And I think that that's the reason why we became so popular, so fast, is because we made a product that was like sweet.

You know, it's spicy. You can get really spicy ones. I mean, you guys have all had it here on the podcast. I mean, it could hurt you. Regrettably. Yeah. I mean, that's not designed to be edible. It's designed to be like almost like a gimmick, right?

You know, anybody that eats Houston's, we have a problem is just, I've never even, I couldn't even touch it, right? I've only had a mild. I've never even had a medium sandwich at my restaurant. Really? Yeah. should. I just,

we should have brought one and just had to eat it. Yeah, well, I just have, like, this ulcer and, like, maybe I'll just,

like, puke blood and hence the IV business. I'm just trying to get healthy, you know what I mean? I'm like super fat now, you know? So, started this chicken business.

I was like 170 pounds in 2019. Yeah. Now I'm 203. Okay. Like, that's a lot of weight, right? But it tells you how good my food is. Right.

So I keep eating it, right, which is wonderful. But, yeah, I got to go, I told all my employees, don't serve me anything but a salad no matter what I order.

Okay? Just if I order a really crazy sandwich, bring me a salad. Yeah. Houston has a great setup too. I went to his house the other day. I guess a few weeks ago. He's a private chef. Yeah.

Cooking, like making pokey. Like fresh, a fresh pokey bowl. Yeah. I walked in, he's like, do you want poking? I'm like, what? He's like, no, they're making it right now. Like, literally a chef. Yes, and it was amazing.

How much does a private chef cost? Less than it costs to go out to eat every night. For a family of four, though, right? Yeah. I give him five. grant a month. Um, covers all my stuff.

Guys, let's just, uh, let's just split it. Let's just go three ways. Let's go. Five, I bet we could.

If we all went in the same amount between four people, that would be, you know, with Macy, 1,200, 1,250 a month. Calcian too. Yeah,

that would be about a thousand a month. It's, it's $30 a day. That's not bad. That's not bad because nobody, uh, in my household likes cooking. So yeah.

Well, what's good about the, the chef is that they, um, so he makes, I don't eat, uh, I don't eat anything comes out of a microwave.

I never have. I figured like that's where cancer was invented, you know? Cancer in the microwave came out of the same time. So I've always thought that in my life. It's probably wrong, but it doesn't matter. So anyways, I don't reheat any food. So he, I eat my lunch out with my team in my office or whatever. But when he comes over and cooks,

he actually makes enough food from my kids and my wife for the next day. So like they get their lunches. And if they want breakfast, like he puts a whole menu together for him. So my kids are homeschooled. So their teacher comes over and she reheats the food and like the stove and everything. It has the whole kitchen for. Yeah. And so that 5,000 doesn't just include dinners.

It's pretty much all the meals that we eat as a family. So yeah, it's pretty dope. Side tangent here. Is there a reason you chose homeschooling versus like a public school or a private school? Yeah. Why? Because they're like not safe. So it's a safety thing?

Yeah. I mean also like mentally and physically both are not safe. you know you can't control like your kids are taught what the teachers know right so like if i wanted my kids to be taught by somebody i would want them to be taught by someone who i look up to or i trust that is giving them the right kind of knowledge i mean i think that the next generation like my kids are three and six and there's just no reason that like the the teachers that are in i'm trying to be not rude right now i'm just going to yeah yeah okay uh the teachers that are current teaching their skill set and their knowledge is based on the past. And our world is changing so fast.

They don't have time to adapt. Right. So like let's just say for instance in YouTube, right, right now if you want to get into a business, right, you're going to learn from people like Ryan, you, Alex Ramazi, these, these like business influencers who've had a very long track record of being successful. Right. So if I want my kids to learn something, you know, now basic skills like reading and writing is simple stuff. Okay, I'm not concerned about that. But like the basic rules and principles and morals that they're going to live by, I want them to learn that from someone who I look up to or I trust.

Right. And so I hired a very specific teacher to teach them those things, you know. And plus school kind of gears kids towards working nine to five, right? I mean, you go to school from X amount of time to X amount of time and you have homework. And like there's just so much structure there. And in the future, 20 years from now, when they're going to be. on their own. I don't think that that structure is going to exist anymore. What about the social aspect of them getting to hang out with other kids and trying to figure

out where they fit in and networking and all those skills that are kind of learned at a younger age? Everybody says that. And then I ask them like, like, when have you ever seen kids playing anymore? They're all on their phones. None of them go out after school. Like when we were kids, we used to go on the front of the house and just skateboard and hang out and ride bikes. You can go in any neighborhood and you'll never see that now right there is no social aspect of school it's actually antisocial like all the kids are getting bullied online while they're at school you know and it's like this whole new like front you know and and that's like the worst part about school is being around other kids you know because everybody has their own demons now and now that there's

so much information like even there's there's an actual number there's a real statistic for side among girls under 14 like if you would have asked me that that if that was even possible, I would have said no way. But now there's a real number for that because of like of peer pressure and of all this like crazy science stuff that they're going through, you know, and there are hormones and all this stuff. And during that age, right, I don't want them around those types of people because the other parents maybe neglecting their children at that time. And those kids are taking it out on my, you know, children, you know, like I don't know if my kids are hanging out with the right people when they're at school. I don't know what they're doing, you know. What about when they're like 20 and they're going off on their own?

Do you think that maybe they might not be as prepared as someone else who's had those experiences? I don't know because we don't know what the future holds. But like my kids go to gymnastics, right? I mean, I have four or five employees that all have kids that are about the same age. And every week, you know, they do a play date. Like you see my house, I have a playground. And it's a kid's environment there. Right.

So they have their friends over two, three days a week. They play. There's a couple cousins that we have, you know, that are all the same. same age. So they're getting a lot of time with other kids, but just not a massive amount of kids, right? They're getting a lot of time with specific kids that I think are all being raised in the right, the right setting. Sure. You know, so I don't know. I'm really specific with that stuff. Yeah. I feel like the 15 years that I was in school or whatever that is, 14 years, was the worst part of my life. And all the bad decisions came from people that I knew, whether I was trying to be

cool like them or I was trying to lead them or whatever it was. all those choices were all from that environment, right? And when I started to be on my own, when I turned 18 and I moved out and I did all this stuff, my life started to just go straight up. And I was very focused and I was independent. And I chose my own friends, right? And I had two or three, not 30, right? So it was a really different, I don't know.

I'm just like, maybe I'm really weird, you know? It's a tough conversation. It's easy for me to say without kids. Side tangent back to chicken now. I know you got a you gotta say yeah we this is we okay we got a exciting new opportunity here I'm actually really looking forward to this so you held a car meet at a grand opening of a restaurant

which I do all the time yeah at Houston saw chicken and I show up there and we go in and the food was so unbelievably good and the staff was so incredibly friendly and then you came up and thanked us all for coming and I think I joking and I want to see the back or like because you guys were so busy back there. And you gave me and Macy the tour of the back. And it was like this, it looked like a, you know, the,

the really high-end lab from Breaking Bad at the very end. It kind of looked like that with like all the stuff. No, but seriously, like, that's a lot. No wonder that chicken is so addictive. But it looked, it reminded me of just like, this is how pristine everything was and like how nice they kept it. And I jokingly said like, oh man, I want one of these. You're like, and you said yes.

And so for the last few weeks, we've been working on some of the contract details, but I think we're pretty close on signing to get, can I say the location? Sure. Sahara and Jones here in Las Vegas. And that would be the building. And it has a drive-through, which I'm really excited. Are you using the drive-thru? We're not using the drive-thru.

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exclusively on Paramount Plus. Oh, I was looking forward to drive down. All right. The drive-through is such a bad idea. And I've been saying this for a long time. because no one sees the end result of the drive-through. With the drive-thru, you cannot serve alcohol, right? With a drive-thru, you have to have six extra staff members.

And with the drive-through, people drive around the building and don't get the full experience, right? So they're not seeing the inside that you saw. They're not feeling that inside, right? And they actually order less per ticket than if they go inside. And so the drive-thru increases your revenue, but decreases your profit.

And so I had this argument with my business partner, Edmund, and we agreed to try it. And so I finally got it through everybody's head. The drive-thru is a bad idea because alcohol pairs so well with our food. And it's got the biggest profit margin on anything we sell in the restaurant. So if you want to make money and you want to differentiate yourself from Chick-fil-A, my biggest pet peeve is someone comparing my restaurant to Chick-fil-A. We're not even close.

I mean, that's like literally comparing your Volvo to my Pagani. Which I tried to do. Yeah. It's offensive. You know, I don't get offended easily, but... We both have leather seats, which is kind of cool. We both have windows and windshield. Yeah.

Yeah. But it's the drive-through is such a bad idea because we're not building a brand to be considered cheap, right? We're building a luxury chicken brand, right? That's what we want to be. That's what you want to be. Because in the luxury space, right, the sky's the limit, you know, you're bringing in someone that's like ready to spend $30, $40 for their meal, get a drink, a beer, a 20 ounce draft beer, right? We have draft beer, uh, craft, regular Modelo. You know, we have our own beer now at H.HC called Afterburner.

And, um, it's, it's like designed to be that place where you want to hang out, you know, like the above, it, like, I think we're going to replace the restaurants like Applebee's. Okay. Right, Applebee's, Outback, Chili's, those restaurants to me are dying, right? Margins are too low. The buildings are too big. And these fine casual, Chipotle-esque restaurants are going to replace those big box waiter, you know, sit-down tables. Because that experience is not, they're not able to compete, right? When I can serve a chicken sandwich that is miles ahead of that food, right?

I mean, Chipotle, sorry, not Chipotle, chilies and apple bees are serving frozen food. Everything's frozen. Nothing's fresh. Right. And they have huge staff numbers that cost a lot of money. And so like that genre is going to get replaced. And I want to be the one that replaces them. And so that type of food isn't fast food, right? But it isn't like Fleming's or high end food like catch or something that you go into rent like a full crazy, you know, $100 meal for. Right. And so when we put alcohol there, we make way more money. How do you have your employees so friendly and happy all the time? Because I pay them well. Can you share some of those numbers or like how you look basically there's 25 the average restaurant is 25 people right everybody gets a tip share so the average restaurant brings in 22 to 28 000 a month in tips so between 25 people they all split that so everybody's getting like a thousand dollar bonus at the end of the month and we're hiring based on experience so you know

people make 13 dollars an hour people make 15 dollars an hour no one makes minimum wage I mean our lowest paid employee is 13, which is $5 above minimum wage here in Vegas. But it's the culture, right? Like when you walk into royalty, and you really have meant to royalty too often, but when you walk in there, like, it's the vibe. People love that. That's why I'm so picky about people going inside the restaurant because that's what you're missing. No one expects that kind of environment when they walk in. Like, you're asking you about people that are friendly from four months ago that you remember.

Yeah. You remember the people that served you four months ago. go, that should be like right there to tell you that the experience of going in is worth every minute that it takes for you to get out of your car and go order inside, right? You know, that's the goal for the restaurants, for people to feel like to always exceed expectations, right? And so that's our company culture, you know, I mean, there's all these business guys that ask you what your values and your principles are. And Houston's Hot Chicken is, the principle is to exceed your expectations, but it's the culture around the employees. And it's that experience that

customers get when they walk in. But how do you pick that? And how do you ensure that they keep up to that standard? The easiest way to continue your culture is to make sure your leadership has that culture, right? Because people follow the leader. Okay. Like if the leader has a bad attitude and he's over there yelling at everybody, your culture just dies immediately, right?

But if you have this guy that's always so happy, it's contagious, right? And if you see the manager of the restaurant going out and cleaning the tables and taking care of the customers and, you know, remembering people's names. names, right? We have people to eat at Houston's on chicken three times a week. You've got to remember their order. You've got to remember their names. You got to really treat them like they're special, right?

And so if you have that from the top, it just trickles all the way down. Another thing that you were mentioning, you want to talk to Alex Hormozzi. Yeah. What's up with this? I've been, I watched actually Alex for about a, I don't know, maybe a year now. And I just, I think that Alex and I have a lot of things in common. And I think Alex and I have a lot of things that we don't agree on. And I know Alex lives in Vegas.

And I think it'd be cool to do. Honestly, I just, I feel like your podcast needs drama. You know, I mean, your best video, like was Jack and his dating life. Right.

People love that, Jack. Yeah. Come on. For the algorithm, we want to bring back another Tinder date and Jackson, no, I don't want you.

But you got to think of the algorithm. I do not like it, man. I really don't like doing. You don't like anything. What do you mean you don't like anything? Anything like that, like airing it all out online.

I've just not been a thing. We get that highest in game, we get that highest again. That's why it's so popular because everybody wants to know the drama. Yeah, but the thing is there's external like things that occur outside of whatever happens in the podcast. It's all for the views,

dude. Yeah, but then I leave the podcast room and I go back home and then I get a few DMs or whatever. I get a few texts from my family that's watching it. And it's like, what do they say? Give us some examples. It's just weird, man.

My grandma watches every episode. So? I don't know. What's wrong with that? You grandma's say, let's say there's like a girl I went on one date. with, right? And then I talk about an experience that I had with some other girl that I went on a date with. Then it's like, well, what is this one girl that I went on date with? Think now that she's

seen me talk about a date that I had with this other girl. That's not a good thing. Those are in the past. I don't get it. If you went on a date a year ago. I'm not talking about dates a year ago, man. But eventually it'll be, let's say, eventually it'll be a year ago. So we'll just start talking about dates that are a year. So basically just saying, Jack, you have to postpone your love life for one year. But what's the downside if we have one Tinder date on now? I just What happens? First of all, I think people are going to get sick of it. Second of all, I don't think so.

Second of all, they're just weird, like stuff that happens, like I said, outside of the podcast. The thing is, we finish wrapping up the episode. You go home and you go, you know, kiss Macy or whatever you guys doing secret, okay? Alex does the same with his wife or his fiancé wife, Kelsey, right? And then I go, and then I have like all of these random awkward situations that happen outside of this because I tied myself to this. Maybe they would want. want to be like I feel like some girls are such attention grabbers that they would want to go on dates with you just so they can end up on the podcast.

That sounds terrible. I don't want that. Jack, here's the thing. I think what Jack's worried about is that we're going to film an episode and sometimes we post like a month later. Sure. So maybe in that month he starts seeing someone new. It's not what I'm worried about at all.

But what's the problem? It sounds like a great idea. So when we did that thing where I went on a date with those four girls, right? let's say that there were, let's say, two, three girls I was casually talking to, right? Maybe we hadn't even gone on a date yet, right? But I met him on some Tinder thing or whatever. Or maybe I'd gone on one date with them. We just went out and got lunch or dinner or whatever, right?

And then they see this video where I blind date four girls on this to family. Graham's stuff and after I do that, right? Then what, right? You're casually dating. It's not like, and if they think they're your girlfriend after going out for dinner once. Although we are casually, I think it's best to keep that stuff. That they haven't even met? Like, you were saying, like, maybe just talking to online on Tinder and if they see the video, but you haven't even met them yet.

I think we have to define dating. Dating is literally just going on a date with someone. Yeah, you have no obligation to that person whatsoever. But the thing is, that's not necessarily stuff that you want them to be privy of. You don't want to air all that stuff out. But how do they even know to look for it? They know who I am. Oh, they do.

Oh, so. But you don't want them to be on the podcast? I'd say it's pretty hard at this point not to define me at least somewhat by my work, right? It's like if I talk to someone, this is going to come up inevitably. They're going to look it up.

Just try it one more time. I don't see the issue, Jack. Yeah, because you're already, you have a fiancee already. Just go like this for a second. Me? Just go like this for a second. Yeah, you should just bring a blind date

on the podcast and not tell them. I've been thinking that. You should really do that. I'd be so funny. Be like, hey, who's our podcast guest? It's your new blind date. All right. You know?

All right, Jack, you're good. That wasn't even that bad. All right. I just didn't. Okay. I agree. Yeah. Yeah.

I agree. Surprise. Back to Alex. You know, he's so, he's so, he's very just like me, very specific in his views, right? And I think that that would be a cool conversation to have. I don't know. I just think that there should be some drama on this podcast, you know, besides Jack's love life, right? You should just get a couple of guys on here that just don't have the same opinions on some stuff and just have.

them debate it out. You know? I love that. I would absolutely love to do that. I was on Ryan's podcast and we were talking about the real estate market a little bit and like I don't see how it's sustainable that someone bought a house in 2020 for 700 grand and posted it in 2022 for sale for 2.7 million, you know? And he said there's not there's no crash coming. And I'm like, well, I don't really see how that's sustainable. So, you know, we had like a little mild argument about that. And he gave his opinion and everything. And I even actually went back and watched it myself. You know, I was interested to like, hear his side of the story without me having to think of my rebuttal in that side of the story.

You know, so, um, I think the debates between these big entrepreneurs, I mean, there's so many people online now that tell you how to get rich and how to be successful. And a very small amount of them have an actual track record of running businesses outside of the business of telling people how to get rich, right? You know, so like I think Instagram and all these places is oversaturated with, with the gurus, right, that have never done anything with their life other than, be a guru, you know. And so I think Alex is the first guy that's like had a long track record of business and he's

doing it for the right reasons. You know, he's putting out all that content that is very, very important. I mean, his wife is incredibly intelligent, which is super cool, you know. And so I don't know. I just think that would be a good thing. I mean, what do you think? I really want to do that. I love the idea.

I think we should definitely host a debate. Yeah. Yeah. That'll be the first ever ice coffee hour debate by. Yeah. I just think that'd be a really cool. like update or upgrade to the iced coffee hour. Yeah.

I agree with that. How many people do you plan? I mean, how many more people can you put on here? I mean, you've literally interviewed everybody. No, California.

Oh, no. Mark Cuban. I mean, those are the big on- We've hit maybe 10% of the potential of what we could do. Yeah, but you guys are like,

you're hitting a lot of the YouTube guys, right? So if you want to branch out into the real business role, then you get like Gary Vernichuk and, you know, the big, big guys, right? I think those would do excellent,

you know. but that's a different level, right? That's like a different stage of the podcast. You know, that's when you don't do the YouTube guys anymore, you know, because those are the, that's the bottom tier, right? And they're the next tier. But as far as like YouTube guys, I mean, I've watched almost every podcast, you know, and I guess I'm just trying to, I'm trying to figure out who I'm missing, you know?

But there's a lot of people that are new and upcoming, you know? I think you should actually interview some, like, local, like, celebrity type people, too. maybe like um we really want to do dan bolzarian yeah he would never come on here no he's terrible i i i i'm here i mean he's just maybe i mean dan's about to be on dancing with the stars kind of lifestyle you know like i feel like he's a fall from grace at this point you know what i mean he's like really falling off but that's just basically because he doesn't care you know just watch you watches the pod be like i'll debate houston oh yeah i actually lived in dan bolzarian's ex house so He lived in this house and I moved into it

And it had all like the guy that had bought it I rented it for like eight months because I was in transition And I don't know It just felt weird Did you see anything in that house that like screamed Dan? It was all the same stuff He left it furnished It was his I had to replace the beds

Right For the eight months I lived there I bought any beds But all of his furniture is still there All of his stuff is still there Every single thing is still there Was it like fancy stuff? Yeah

Dan's got excessive taste He's amazing taste No I mean I was renting it So it was the only The owner probably just took the furniture or made like a buyout. I don't know. I think like Shin Lim, the magician. Totally.

He's cool. You know, like he'd be a great person because he's like, I agree. Just a cool come up story. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of guys like that in Vegas that have like a cool kind of story. I mean, Andre, he's kind of like that, right? I mean, like Las Vegas local was like some fame and everything. Yeah.

And he did some cool stuff. I don't know. Yeah, we've had Andre on what three times. Twice? Twice. Andre's cool. I like Andre. Yeah.

I met Andre like, I think five or six years. ago. No way. When he first started. Yeah. Wow. We had a mutual friend. It was like a roommate at the time.

Okay. He was one of my employees and Andre had moved in with them. They started living together and he'd come around and show me all those card tricks and I was like, I just cannot believe how skilled someone can be at something so specific like playing cards. Yeah. Like I went and saw Shen Lim with my kids and I mean, I just, it's like you're watching a movie. Yeah. It's crazy.

Like it's, I couldn't believe. Andre was doing some tricks for Jack and I the other week. It was crazy. He did the same trick. Like six times in a row, couldn't figure it out. Yeah, so he'd do a trick where basically he'd ban out cards and have us pick a card. And we'd look at it and we'd put it back in the deck. He'd shuffled the deck.

And then he would pull that card out of his pocket. And we're like, how did you do that? He said, I'll do it again for you. And he did it multiple times. And I'm sitting there looking at his pocket the entire time. And he does the same trick and he keeps pulling it out. I'm like, he's not even close to his pocket. Didn't he pull out of his mouth one time?

Oh, yeah. He was like, doing all this stuff with his hand and then he just points up and then we look up and there's a card in his mouth and it's the card that we picked yeah well yeah but he was calling that misdirection because you're so focused on the pocket now that he put it in his mouth and then we're focused on his mouth and the pocket and he pulled it out of like somewhere else was insane I'm convinced that people that do that stuff can stop time it's got to be something they have to be there has to stop time and they take the car they look at it they put it back in your hand and they put the card

in their pocket and then they renew time like it's got to be something like that it doesn't make any sense like there's a there's an insane this guy shouldn't let me you should see this guy yeah i mean he's like he had us go in the audience have you seen the show no he had a he had a trick where the audience all had cards and basically you have to like rip them up in different ways and then you throw them away like whatever ones you you have and then every single person in the audience got the same card like put back together it was you Yeah, I saw the show. Like that's an absolutely incredible show.

It had like 500 people in the audience and they all got the same damn card. It's like crazy. Wow. My kids, three years old, six years old, did the same thing and they got the same card. Like I was just, I just couldn't believe it. You know, it just blew my mind. I want to know how they're done. That's what I'm so curious about.

I just, how do you do it? Isn't there like a show that does magic exposed? Like there's a YouTube channel that shows you all of the things that have like magic exposed. I think, yeah, but a lot of these are custom tricks that they work on individually. I think that's why, yeah, like, David Copperfield is so wealthy. You know, I heard David Copperfield's like a billionaire and he's the one that designs all the tricks and he, like, sells them to other people or something. I'm sure. I mean, think about that.

That's like, it's got to be an insane business. Yeah. You know, so niche. I think with the show that you guys are talking about, they can show like all the gimmicks, like all the, like all the stuff that doesn't take like much skill. but nobody wants to watch a TV show where you're talking about slide of hand for like 30 minutes like this is how you do this

you know by misdirecting here so it's like it doesn't really reveal some of those tricks that you guys Yeah it's like the cut in half or like the disappearance Yeah those big ones right Yeah the slide of hand stuff I probably not that easy

So yeah would that be a good That'd be a good person to put on here I would love that Yeah he's our age He was in his 30s Yeah right so that'd be cool I don't know who else do you thinking Oh gosh

we've had a list of we want to get some some TikTok people yeah we feel like that's the next step uh because we've covered a lot of YouTube we want to get I actually learned new audience on TikTok like I was pretty surprised how Instagram and like how Snapchat pays the most yeah I would I had no idea so we're starting on Snapchat now yeah yeah me too like literally like I I watched that video and I text my my film guy and I was like start a Snapchat right now yeah you know I hope maybe that's a bad thing maybe it's not going to pay as well because There's someone who are going to go on it now. The thing is we're using, what do you want to call it?

Companies or like we're using agencies. agencies who do this for us because there's a strategy to Snapchat and Facebook and even TikTok that it's hard to replicate. Like I know YouTube really well, but what I'm doing in YouTube would not be applicable for Facebook. And it's like relearning a new algorithm. Facebook is a machine too. It blows my mind.

I have a video that I put on YouTube. it only got like 500 something thousand views. Got like 3 million views on Facebook in two weeks. Wow. And I'm just like, what is this place? Like how I don't understand.

Maybe I should stop making YouTube videos. Yeah. And going back and forth, trying to figure it out like who, I have a different editor for Facebook. So all of my YouTube videos have different cuts than, you know, Facebook.

So we recut them all. So they're like maybe the same person watches it. I don't know. Just like an extended cut kind of thing. And Facebook always makes like three to one more money than YouTube. Maybe even more. actually. Do you guys post these on Facebook? Not yet, but we're planning to.

Yeah. Well, the thing is what's great about it is Facebook's an older audience. Yep. Right? Instagram and all the other ones are very young. And so YouTube is a kind of a younger audience as well. I mean, YouTube is a very broad audience, realistically. But like 20-year-olds aren't on Facebook. It's all like the 30, 40, 50-year-olds. Yeah, the downside, I will say, Facebook is that it's a big international audience.

So that means when you're targeting with ads, the ads, Generally pay lower, but there's a bigger audience to reach to. Yeah. Well, I think, yeah, definitely running and play ads, you know, not like just the Facebook generated ads. Yeah. The ones that are, you know, we're getting sponsored money and stuff for, those don't have the same outreach, obviously,

unless you're selling a product that can be shipped somewhere. I mean, all the ads that you do are pretty much. They're all US-based. Yeah, but can you, like, sign up with the stock things overseas or no? No. No. No. No.

Even Canada. Right now it's just a US-based. Is it? Okay. Yeah. Some of those things are pretty sweet. Yeah, all that stuff that they come up with. So, guys, if you guys don't know, we actually have a Patreon.

If you guys want to sign down below, there's different tiers, some of the perks. You get to ask our guests some questions or submit, you know, a chance to ask them some questions. And our highest tier, we're actually throwing some private events about two times a year. So if you guys want to come hang out with us, check out the Patreon. And while you're on the Patreon, just go back to YouTube, go to the description, and then follow me on Instagram. My link is down below. And so, yeah, you know, so now we're going to ask some Patreon questions from some of our members. No Patreon questions.

Oh, really? Now we're not going to ask some Patreon questions from some of our members. It was last night at APM. You didn't ask earlier? What? Didn't ask earlier? No. Great news.

The federal EV rebate is back. Eligible customers get up to $5,000 with the federal EVAP rebate on select 2027 Volt and 2026 Equinox EV models. Visit your local Chevrolet dealer today for more. details. Jack, Andrew, you better leave this in. Do you want to do it? Oh my gosh. It says who? It says, it's the drama we need. All right. No, no, no. Here's the drama. I have no login to Patreon. I have no idea. I will gladly give you the login. I can't do it.

That's the thing. It's like you can't either. I can. But you have all the employees, Jack. You have all the employees. We have the same amount. And I don't have employees. I like that. I like that. So first of all, Graham likes to take on new things, right? Which is great. Entrepreneurant mindset, right? That's what you do. But the thing is, as soon as he takes on any new thing,

especially with regard to the ice coffee hour, it basically defaults that the responsibility is put on me. So he came up with the idea of creating a Patreon. And I said, I love the idea of the Patreon, but I already told him. I remember that one of the first things I said, as soon as we start the Patreon, I know that the responsibility is going to be put on me.

And I think that this is something that we should discuss, right? And Graham's like, oh, no, it'll be fine. I'll be fine. And of course, the Patreon happens. Graham has not logged into the Patreon once. He hasn't gone back to anybody on the Patreon at all. I get back to every single message we've gotten on the Patreon. I'm posting every single podcast early on the Patreon.

I'm asking questions for them to ask to our guests on every Patreon thing. And then one time I posted it late at 8.30 p.m. the night before, right? And this is 12, they had 12 hours to ask questions to you. And sure, maybe I could have posted it earlier. But Graham didn't even think about it once. Didn't think about texting me. thing is when... He didn't think about text to me.

Hey, Jack, post on the Patreon. He doesn't remind me for any of this stuff. Basically, the responsibility automatically gets shifted over to me, and Graham sits on the side. Our agreement... Guys, I'll gladly take care of this for a fee. No, our agreement, Jack,

was going to handle everything in the back end, including editing, it was sponsors, scripting. Everything back in Jack was going to handle, I was going to handle the title Funmail, being physically here, and coordinating guests. And so, to me, everything else in the back end is the responsibility of Jack.

Right, but the backhand has been handled by me. And then we add on the Patreon, which was a thing that we was outside of the scope. It was outside of the scope of the stuff that we initially agree on. But the thing is, Patreon, how much money have you earned from the Patreon? I'm sharing. I mean, we started like three weeks ago and we have like $15 to $1,600.

Did you get a cut of that? Yes. That's your responsibility. Why? Because you're the backend. But this was outside of the scope of the initial agreement. It's also outside of the scope of the income, too. And it's true, Jack.

I know, but we never, okay, so if you're seeing this as one independent project, we never talked about the terms and the workload of this independent project. It just defaulted to my thing. I just, I feel like because you're getting paid for it, right, that it's an additional income and it's an additional work, right? If it was free and you guys had a Patreon and it was another thing that wasn't an income, right? Then I would agree that maybe Graham should take a role because he's,

doing the very small amount right and you're doing a very large amount but because there's an income added to it right that is using the likeness of the ice coffee hour and everything that that it falls in the line with the back end only because there's an income that's my opinion i think houston worded that perfectly couldn't have said it better myself yeah i think that's a that is a very strong argument but at the same time like i said we agreed on some sets like some set responsibilities okay those responsibilities were designed on the income ability of this ice coffee hour it weren't they weren't designed on the new additional income from the future projects that the ice coffee hour brings so like that that's also an assumption well it's an assumption that's going to make money yes

but if in three weeks you've made $1,600 and you've split that appropriately right then the same rules apply you know because it's an auxiliary option to the ice coffee hour but then you have to think about this like to the nth degree right imagine graham starts adding on all these other responsibilities all these other verticals that somehow correlate back to the iced coffee hour right I mean, still, your income would scale in proportion to that. I know, but at the same point. What you would do with that, let's say there was like an enormous amount of responsibilities that the two of you agreed that you would need a third person, right, and that would cover

a salary, and then that would come off the top of all of the items combined, right? So let's say the ice coffee are made $10,000 a month, right? And you need to pay someone 1,000 to help you out with all these things. And so limit some of your responsibilities, limit some of your responsibilities, and you both agreed to take it off the top and then you would split after. That would make sense. So there's going to become a time where Patreon turns into the, like 10 other things, right? Right now, if it's at the maximum capability of your workload,

then I think that you agree, you stay with this. And then this is what you tell, Graham, like, hey, look, this is, this is it. I can't add any more responsibilities than these particular items. So if we add one more thing, we need to bring on someone else. So I think with regards to the Patreon and anything else that we add on to the podcast, realistically something Graham and I've been talking about for a while now is that we need a producer of the podcast. Agreed. Basically, that handles all this stuff. So we let the host be the host, and then we let someone else basically be managing the back end and having it flush. The thing is I'm good at it, right? I'm finding it. I've been doing it for a very long time, but I know that out there,

there's someone that's better. And there's someone that's going to be more diligent, more structured. That's what cost, right? I mean, how could, what would you pay your producer? So we've talked yet. So we've talked about this salary. But what do you think the salary would be? Should we go on record to say it? I'm on record. I'm on record. I'm on record. I'm on record as telling Jack, I don't think we need a producer. Maybe not yet. But I mean, let's just say you did hire a producer, would you pay them $5,000 a month? I mean, how much are you willing to pay them for that service? I don't think it, yeah. I don't think it makes any, I don't think it makes any sense to have a producer. But you did, you told me literally like a month and a half ago that you wanted it.

No, that was from one of your existing contractors who could take on some additional work to help us out. Yeah, to step into the position of producer. And then you were also, but there's no, but there's no like dedicated producer. You also mentioned someone that has never worked in the business whatsoever before. And they just, at this time, did not have a job. And you're like, oh, we could move them into the position of producer. We could try them out for a few months. You said that to me at the gym.

I remember it was a month and a half ago. Because they were not working. Because they were willing to work at a price that, like, if you get a good deal. Exactly. Of course. And it's like, well, then it just makes sense. You'll find something for them to do. But to go out of our way to find a podcast producer.

So, like, that's what I'm asking. So like, if you took your contractor that was making, let's say, $500 right now for their work and said, hey, can you take on this amount of responsibilities that's going to take. we'll give them 500 more, but that 500 you can turn into 5,000 or 15,000 or some excess amount of money. You can flip that money and their responsibilities will return you 10, 15, 20x. That makes sense. But like to hire a producer to run the show and pay them a normal salary that I would consider maybe $5,000, $8,000 between that area that they could run the show because of the size of the show.

I mean, you don't have a small view count, right? You have a lot of views. And so, you know, that producer would then respond to, you know, the questions, the comments, it would take on your role essentially, right? And you would become more of like a gram role, you know. So that would be the only way I see this, you know, transition. What ROI do you see it worth it? Like obviously spending, let's just say 50 grand to make 50 grand.

That's not good. No, no, no. You need 10. In my book, like, I don't start a new project unless I'm getting 10x, right? Like I was offered to invest in so many things in the past couple of months. And, you know, at 10% return, at 20% return, it's just, it's not, worth the risk, right? So for you to take on that responsibility, hiring someone is more risky than an investment, right? Because you're taking on their livelihood, unless it's a contractor and it's a very

small amount of money and they understand that. But like when you're talking about taking on someone full time, this becomes their job. They have to pay their rent. They have to pay their stuff. And you're responsible for their bills, their lifestyle, right? So you have to commit to them as well as they have to commit to you. So you have to see at least 10x from that position. You know, like if they're paying them five, you got to return 50. So they've got to be getting you extra sponsors, right? They've got to be reaching out to, I don't know, someone that is going to bring in more money, right? So I hired a producer for my YouTube and, you know, digital business. Yeah. Right. And they signed a deal with the company that brought me $200,000 in ads, right, over a course of time. So I paid that person,

you know, $25,000, right? It's like a 12% commission for that. right because i got this long-term contract so that was worth it right i mean would you give me 12 grand if i gave you back 200 absolutely yeah right so like i think the same thing has to follow like with the patreon right now it's only bringing you 1600 or 2 000 right so that responsibility is probably going to have to lie on you but if it starts to bring in 10 12 15 20 000 then you can afford to say look this is an auxiliary income we didn't expect this right we should use this money together to add someone to help us oversee this business and grow it. You know, that's my opinion.

I think 10x return is totally feasible. I agree. For a producer? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's absolutely feasible. I don't see it. Well, I think is that since I've been here for three months ago or two months ago, right, you've increased the podcast has gained 30% more income from a total amount.

And it's solely, that's YouTube value. But I don't know what a producer would give us. That's completely different from sponsorships, which I don't know what a producer would give us that we can't already do with what we're already doing it. But we aren't doing it. What aren't we doing? Okay. First of all, for a thing, midweeks every single week. Sometimes we just don't have anything to talk about. That's nothing a producer would hold those too. Well, the producer needs to tell you. That's what I'm saying. The producer needs to find you the content, right? I mean, they have to reach out to guys like myself or Alex or whoever's

going to come on this show and say, look, we need to schedule Wednesday and Saturday or Wednesday and Sunday. That producer needs to fill this seat every week twice a week. That's their job, They need to break down the content. They need to say, look, Houston, you're going to talk about these topics today, right? And be prepared for these topics because this is what we want to talk about, you know. And for me, just to come on here and talk, I mean, we're friends. So, you know, we have mutual respect. We have a lot in common.

We can make that conversation. But when it's someone you've never met before, this is the first time. They need to do. Exactly. I would say have Andrew do it. I don't want. Okay. So also another thing is you have to consider the workload that some of your contractors or for

some other people, employees are bearing, right? Of course. And just to automatically add more workload in, I think is dangerous. I don't want to burn out my. I think it'd be a great test. It tests the proof of concept. And if they like it, it's a step up. If they don't, then, or if it doesn't work, or if we're not seeing the ROI, then we

lose nothing. And they get the benefit of trying it out. Sometimes you have to burn the, burn the wick at both ends to see what works. I agree with Graham. Yeah. In my opinion, you know, when you have contractors, right, I mean, obviously if that contractor has 10 other clients, right, you have to know that, right? You can't take a contractor that's already an 80-hour workload and be like, hey, here's 20 more, right? They're just, they're not going to perform for you, right?

They're not going to perform for the other people. And then they're going to get stressed and their work is going to just be worthless. So you definitely want to get someone who can commit to you and say, look, I'm going to give, you go to your contractor, Andrew, and say, look, Andrew, I'm going to give you three months, okay? I'm going to pay you this much money. and I want this result. If you can contribute to that, then we can bring you on full time and you don't have to worry about the other clients that you have.

We can afford to pay you this much and you'd be solely, you know, working for us or, you know, a balance of 50% of your income will come from us, right? So that should be for you guys, in my personal opinion, is twice a week. Consistency is what's going to pay you, right? Consistency is what's going to get you those ads, those better views, this better everything, right?

And you need diversity, right? I mean, the ice coffee is amazing. You've got diversity right now. I mean, you've got some really cool people on here. But like I said, I mean, you need some people that are going to bring the view ratio. I mean, I guarantee if you look at this particular portion of the podcast and watch the view count or, you know, watch the duration. It's going to spike. How people always love our topics.

It's great. I mean, we're talking with emotion right now. And we're talking about something interesting, but we're also solving a problem, you know. So if you can get that producer to do some research on, let's say, Some person get some background, right? Find someone with some drama. Like what happened with this? I remember there was a guy on here that had like a bunch of drama

One time and you were lot of people were commenting negative about it right? Yeah, yeah, I don't really know. I didn't I didn't really understand that because I don't know what happened before But I watched it. Yeah, I thought it was like interesting. But like that producer needs to know what's happening in that person's life, what they're into. Interview them first. Talk about their stuff and bring you that content so you guys can utilize that here and not just hope for the best.

That's great. That I agree 100%. Also because if we do too much research on our own end, then it makes the entire conversation planned. Exactly. So I agree. A producer would be great for that role. And also it's the structure.

It's like I think that there are a few things that I like to think I'm at least uniquely good at. I have a competitive advantage in, right? And I think structure is like the exact opposite of what I have a competitive advantage in. And that's what a producer needs. And I think that's why I really don't think that I would be good at structuring out these guests, giving out time slots, posting a Patreon at certain times. And you know I don't have I know. I know. But I think it's a 15 hour a week job. That's what I think. I, I just am worried because

I do have some of the contracts that we would pass us on to does great work. Yes. You do amazing work. And I don't want to just throw, you know, throw them into a spiral because I, right? Well, of course, I would present the opportunity to them. But you got to commit to him. I mean, if you're going to have him do this, you've got to give him three months and say you're guaranteed. Now, after month one, if he sucks, you've got to deal with him for month two. And then after month two, if he sucks, you've got to give him that third month. It's going to take someone some time to get used to their role, right? They might have the skill set and not know how to utilize it yet.

They might, you know, have a bad first two, three weeks and get discouraged. But them guaranteeing, you guys guaranteeing them three months to give them the idea to figure it out is going to help him come into that role. I like a three month test. I think within three months, by the end of it, we should see whether or not it's working. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is a really cool thing you've got going on, and I would love to see this expanded, right?

I mean, just for my own personal entertainment, right, these are 91 hour and two hour videos that are very engaging, right? And you have the potential to take this to a very, very high level, right, that no one really has. I mean, Graham celebrity in this industry is worth watching just to hear his opinion, right? Because obviously it does so much research. So if you can get that same back end for the other side of this, I think that'd be great. I'm open to it. Part of it is difficult for me because I really take a lot of pride in keeping things small. And like the team is right here.

Yeah. And so that is what I think has kept us like really grounded and connected with the- You know, I mean, this is his business. Yes. So you have so many other things going on. Yeah. You have so much other income from other places. It's unfair to both these guys, right?

Because their incomes coming from here. Yeah. And so you need to obviously build it for them as well. I mean, he's putting in more work physically than you are, right? And you're getting the same benefit, if not more, you know, whatever it is. Right. So at the end of the day, I think being small is cool because you have all those things. But, you know, Jack has a Miata.

So like. And Alexis. I told him by a lotus Elise, but didn't listen. Yeah. So, yeah. I think that's good, man. Cool. I'm happy.

Thank you for your insights on this. That's a really good insight. Yeah. Yeah. So if you guys ever need anybody to mediate, you know? I like this. Thank you, man. Yeah.

I got a couple random finance questions for you. Let's do it. Okay. So if you were to get a pie of all of your assets, how would like the slices be arranged? All right. So I have 60% in cars because I know that business the best. I have 20% in cash. and then I have about 10% in commercial real estate

and then the other 10% in like NFT bullshit. What about your house? I don't own home. Rents? Yeah, I rent right now. How much is your rent? $30,000. A month?

Yeah. My theory. It's a nice big house, man. I have a cool house. And like to my defense on the rental, it's not that I don't want to own a home, but basically to own a, I live in a little over $7 million house

and like that house would be 30% down to do a mortgage on. And at the rates that I, when I started renting was about four and a half percent. The mortgage would have been more than I rent. And that 30% down would have been around two, two, two three, two million. And I feel like with a two and a half million dollars, I could make $30,000 a month with ease. Yeah. So I save that money. I rent this house.

It pays for itself. You know, it's free to me. Right. And, um, I know I don't get the best. benefits of write-offs, right, with the interest and all that stuff. But if I were to buy, like, I considered buying like a cheap $2 million house, like in, like a nice neighborhood to kind of like chill out in. Cheap. Right. Cheap two million dollars. Well, in comparison to us. Yeah. The cheapest house in the sky is actually the one I live in currently. Yeah. It was seven million, right? Because like the other

ones are like 10, 12, 15, whatever. There's only 30 something houses in that neighborhood. But like the, I have the cheapest one. And so, you know, I was thinking of myself, like maybe if I just take this money and I, hold on to it, right? Right now in cash, I have just about $2 million. Right? I just bought this Pagani. And so I took a, I put half down on the Pagani and I financed the rest. And I did the same with my

Konexig. So, you know, I don't want to leverage too hard on those cars, but I also don't want to put down too much money as well. And so like I was thinking of myself, you know, like my, my overall debt load, you know, my Pagani is $20,000 and my Konexxx $35,000 a month. And

those are the only two cars I have financed. And so, like I'm thinking myself like how do I you know the rest of them are paid for as like an investment you know the GTRs the 4 GTs and all those things they're on yeah the Veyron um the Veyron I built so it's a little bit unique but um to leverage that you know I can write off the cars like the 35 and the 20 I can write that off because I use them for YouTube right so those are great writeoffs for me and um I have like a good balance you know and I know the liquidity of those things right with houses and with real estate like I have a commercial piece of land that I'm building a dispensary liquor store on right it's a ridiculous location it's like

it was like winning the lottery for me to get this piece of land and that's paid for no debt you know and I'm building the building with no debt so I feel like at the end of the day you know my situation is based on my geographical location in Las Vegas right and the ability that I have to move around with that you know and all that that 10% of NFTs and crypto and investments was just a waste you know I mean I mean, hopefully it'll turn on to do something. But, like, I bought a board ape. Why? How much was it?

800. No. Yeah. 800 grand. I was thinking like 300. I partnered with Steve Aoki and another guy. And so, um, we have a, we have a board ape together. I have actually three board apes.

I got a, I got a mutant. And I have two mutants and, uh, the regular one. Have you gone to any of the events? What does it do for you? Nothing. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't do anything. Lose his money.

Uh, So why do you buy it? Just, because I'm, I was like all into this NFT crypto thing like for a little while and I was like super stoked about it. And I bought it because I thought someone was going to pay more. That's the problem with the world. And what happened to these?

Well, they're worth the same amount of money in Ethereum, if not more. I think they're actually, I think my board ape is actually worth more than I paid for. We paid 200 Ethereum. But Ethereum's $4,000 when I bought it. So if I get 200 Ethereum back,

I'll have one quarter of my money. Right. So if I get 250 Ethereum back, I'll have made a profit on my Ethereum, but then the Ethereum value is so low. Right. I end up losing money. That's an interesting way to look at it. Yeah.

Because if you're going to keep your money in Ethereum anyway, you just want that Ethereum back plus some regardless of its value. That's a really interesting way to think about it. There was a board aid that was sold recently for 800 Ethereum, 860 Ethereum. It was a gold one. So that tells me that people are still buying them, right? But that's $860,000 versus like $2.5 million. It's really for the people putting money in Ethereum now.

So now they're able to buy it cheaper unless they already had their money in Ethereum and it was worth whatever anyway. I mean, I don't see, NFTs are a weird thing. There's this taxable thing. There's a lot of like art. There's a lot of balances around NFTs. And then Gary Vernichuk talks about Web 3 and like a bunch of stuff with that. I mean, there's some future, I think, with NFTs, but at the end of the day right now,

I mean, I'm a pretty firm believer that NFT is just a JPEG on the internet. I don't think there's any intrinsic value. The value of the NFTs in verifying who's the owner. And so I think, like, if you buy a Gucci bag or a Rolex, there should be an NFT with that that verifies that you are the owner of that Rolex. That is yours. Same with any, and it should cost nothing to do that on a large scale. Like any designer item should have an NFT,

with it. Yep. Which makes the most sense because then you can, the product itself is raised. Right. It's going to really help with counterfeits.

It would eliminate counterfeiting. Right. People would, it would be just, do you have a counterfeit or you don't have a counterfeit? But like imagine changing title for a car, but that's done on the blockchain.

Oh, it'll be so much better. Oh my gosh. It would be a dream. You would have to YouTube videos. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa. Whether it's Verde, Roja, or

The orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon

and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea and milk. Habaniero? More like Habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon.

I don't know. I don't see the reason of the content being like that. I don't know. There's a way you could give licensing or ownership to someone. That would be interesting, but I don't know how,

each video would be treated separately. So like someone could buy my video, let's just say, and they get the ad revenue on that. It's kind of like a song. Yeah. That's actually not, I'm sure it's a way to do it, but that's the thing.

Right now there's so many great ideas, right? It's just executing them and bringing them into a mass market to actually monetize them are so difficult. You know, I think Bored Ape did a really good job of building a brand, right? I mean, they built a brand. It's not just the N of T. They built a brand around the Apes. And they've contributed so well.

And the reason people want Bored Apes is, and the reason, reason why I wanted to buy a board ape is because they air dropped so much value, right? So the mutant serums that we got were free, right? And intrinsically, those turned into 30, 40,000 dollar assets. They air dropped ape coin, right, based on the value you paid or I don't know how exactly they did it. But I got, my portion was $26,000 in ape coin for free. And that was when it was only $12 when I first got it, right? And actually went to $20 something. So I sold it immediately because I didn't want to hold it. I got $26,000 like real money for free, right? And so like do these guys that are air dropping auxiliary items because they want the residuals, right? They want them traded back and forth. So they get

the commissions, right? The NFT structure is so good for the creator because of commissions. You know, for me, I would love to change my rental car business into like a membership program with an NFT. You know, I've thought about it and it just, it takes a very intelligent person. and it's way smarter than me to really fine-tune that business plan. But, I mean, imagine just having a card, like I bought one of the Nelke Boys cards just to have it, right? It was like $3,000. It was one, one, uh, Eth at the time. Yeah. And, um, it allows me to have access to all their events, which I haven't thrown

an event from my understanding or whatever. I don't know. Did they? Yeah, with Snoop Dog. Okay. Cool. So yeah, I was able, I would have been able to go to that. But like, if I did that for my rental car business and I created like a meta card and it gave

you access to see i think that the real good version of this would be car sales you have access to you part of my dealership network right and i sell you cars based on the auction value right versus based on the retail value so you give me 3 000 one ethereum right you hold this card you buy it and um you hold it until you want to purchase a car or you purchase many cars right and it gives you access to buy these cars from me at at a 12 to 13 15 percent discount from retail right and say all those fees. You know, so I think that there's a good business plan for that. And then it allows you to rent cars at cost or allows you to rent private jets at cost.

You know, being a member in this and being very limited would make sense. And it'd make those cards value grow, right? So if you paid $3,000, someone might pay you $5,000 because you're looking to buy a Mercedes and they don't have the ability to buy it in an auction. They'll buy my card and then get a Mercedes from me and save $15,000, right? So like, there's like so many cool ideas to do with NFTs and blockchains and cards. and everything, but it sucks to like market against the industry. Yeah.

You know, you have like that push of where I've got a great idea, but how do I combat all of the fraud that's in the industry and the notion that NFTs are fake or whatever they are going on in the media, right? How do I say that I have a really good idea, this is a good product, but I'm, you know, I'm trying to battle that as well. So it's difficult to like scale it, you know. Are there any business ideas that you're not doing that you wouldn't

mind sharing. You might think it's a good idea. You don't have the resources for. Well, that was a good one, actually. I do think that we need to create a bring a trailer. Have you been on that website? All the time. For houses.

Would be difficult without the inspection. They used to have. You do an inspection. Pre the listing. Think about this. They've tried doing that in the past. All of them have failed. They haven't done it like Bring a trailer.

Right. Now, it's bring a trailer so easy. because it's so simple and the commission that bring a trailer takes is very minuscule. But with cars, it's a lot easier

to place a bid than with a house to make sure that buyer is pre-approved because you don't necessarily need to sell for the highest price you want to sell to the buyer is going to close.

Of course. And so if someone offers 100K but the best buyer is 90K all cash, no contingencies, you need to view all the offers and select the ones based on who's most likely to close. That just depends on the type of house

and the type of buyer you want because you can open your house. your house up and limit it, right? I mean, if we posted a house that was $200,000 and you wanted to only accept a certain amount of offer, your buyer pool would just be able to bid on that, right? You'd have different levels. I only want cash offers, and this is the price that the cash offers would take, you know? Like, it just, I think there just has to be different ground rules.

Yeah, it's, it's tough because you need MLS exposure on those. And generally the-enolus exposure. Generally, with the auctions, you don't get the same level of interest because people are waiting for a certain date. I think it was auction.com that used to do this throughout like 2010 to 2013. It was really popular. But those were bank-owned properties. And a lot of those banks just had to do that because they had no other options.

So they just put them up there with a really low reserve. But now in today's economy, I just can't see that. I just think that the auction mentality is normal now, right? eBay was the only auction in a long time ago. Right now everything is sold at like a bidding price. right so i do think that there's like plus just because you get the hundred thousand dollar winner doesn't mean you know that person has to close i mean you have the other two three backup people look we don't have to think through this right now yeah i'm just saying that i think that i think

that because of the the way that the pandemic changed our mentality no one knows what you know maybe it doesn't have to be an auction where you win it's more of like you put it up for 14 days and this is my bid and then you pay through those, right? It's just like a public offering system, right? So it's on the MLS. And instead of writing a contingent offer through the real estate agent, not knowing like, I wanted to buy a house a couple weeks ago for an investment. And I put in a specific offer. And the real estate was like, nah, man, we got way better offers than that. Well, what if they didn't? And what if it was public? And what if it was like my offer was the strongest? But they were trying to screw me and get me a better one.

Well, even if it is public, you could always tell your friend to go and bid on a house or, you know, submit something. Yeah. I mean, I don't. I don't know. I think you just bring a trailer charges you for the bids, which is super cool. Like when you make a bid, you have to pay for it. Now, if you don't win, they give you your money back. Yeah, well, it's the deposit. What is it? Five grand or it's, they put a hold up to a certain amount or it's a 5% of the price. I feel like there's something there. There's some way to make it to where we could eliminate the realtors opinion in a purchase. I think this is a real problem. I'm very against realtors. Because their opinion is the issue. I don't think so. I think

it's their expertise that you really pay for. The expertise, yeah. It's the expert. Now, obviously, but just the same thing like with any business. There are good business people and there are terrible ones. I think with real estate, it should be as a consultant. There's 99.99% of realtors are based on their own pockets. I mean, the reality is 20% of the agents are really doing the majority of the business and the top 5% do the vast majority of it. What do you think of people that are buying their houses for, let's say in 2021, they bought their house for 1.4, and then they posted it for 3.2 today. Is that a problem with the agent or a problem in the seller?

No, that's a problem with the market. I don't think it's the agent or the seller. If that house is worth $3 million, they would be... What's just asking $3 million, right? And hoping for the best. I mean, there's no comps based on that, right? Well, obviously the market's going to always dictate what people get. So a lot of times from my sellers, they would say, well, I want to list it.

You know, why list it this price versus this other price? The market will always dictate it, but it's marketing. So if your home is worth 1.1 and you listed at 999, your home is going to sell way over based on what the market's worth. If you overpriced your home, the market will eventually sell what it's worth, but then you're wasting all the momentum in the beginning. So I think a lot of it's strategy, there is an element to marketing that you have to, just like with anything.

But I think the expertise is in figuring out where the balance is, and then the market will dictate what the home is worth. Your home is not worth, you know, a million dollars if it sits on the market for six months. It was never worth that to begin with. Or it could be really bad marketing and you miss the market in the beginning. Right now, it seems like everybody's just shooting for the stars and they're like, oh, in this market.

I mean, in this market means that the government gave everybody $6 trillion and they spent it. And they were like, oh, well, hey, this is worth this much money because I have this extra money. Yeah, but a lot of those are based on comps. And so if you have some... This is one guy to buy one house to get one comp and then another one's like a daisy chain comp effect.

You're never looking at just one house, especially in a place like Vegas, you're looking at almost the entire city in what you could get. You're probably looking at 10 to 30 different comps and taking the average of all of those based on a square footage. I don't know.

I just think that's not happening right now. If you're looking at a kid, but you could always pick one off comps if you want to, like let's say a Skya. You could look at one sale because there's really nothing in there. It's so funny about a Skyas or not selling. That's the best market. But you could look at the one that sold

and say based on this one that's sold, but when you expand beyond a half a mile and you see, wait a second, and everything else is selling for 20% less. How do we compare with that? So you could always find a one-off comp. And sometimes sellers will do that, and that's unrealistic.

But overall, you've got to look at 20 or 30 different homes. I agree. I don't think that's happening right now. Half the time, by the way, or I would say probably 90% of the time, the homes being priced high are not the agents. The agents, if anything, have a financial incentive to price it low.

It's the sellers. And agents are like, well, crap, do I just not want to take the listing? Because if they don't take the listing, someone else will. So they're just like, Well, I may as well take the listing at this high price that the seller insists on. And then maybe I could talk some sense after a few weeks.

They don't get an offer and we could come down to something more realistic. But these are sellers who have no idea what they're doing. And if anything, if they have better guidance from an agent or a consultant, they might not price their home that high. Because the agents have a better pulse of what's going on. And they don't want to waste three weeks or let's even say months of their time and energy and money. They have to actually pay. I mean, the agents are paying their marketing.

They're paying. They're doing that. It's costing them money, too. If anything, it's better for the agents to price lower, but it's the sellers. I mean, just from just anecdotal stuff that I've seen, it just seems like people have an unrealistic expectation of what their home is worth based on values six months ago, and they're sticking with it. And there aren't enough agents. And agents are desperate for any listings. If they're, you know, maybe not doing as well, they'll take anything.

So, and those are the people to say, well, okay, let's go ahead and do it. But the good agents, and from at least what I've seen, We'll turn down listings. If they don't believe they could sell it in a realistic time frame, they'll just say no. It makes them look bad. Right. You know, there's a group of agents here in town that just take everything high end, and they just post it for whatever the price they want. I mean, it's like astronomical numbers.

And it just takes one to sell, right, for them to get good money. But at the end of the day, it's like, it's wild of how much people want. I just don't think that people understand how the housing market, like, should work, right? as buyers. You know, it shouldn't go up 150% in one year, right?

Like houses shouldn't raise that much because that means... But that doesn't mean they can't. Of course, they can't. But now when you buy it at that price, it's going to come down, right?

Because it can't do it again. Well, it just depends on what your mortgage rate is. I mean, if you buy a home at a 2.5% mortgage rate in your payment's, you know,

$5,000 a month, let's just say. And even if home prices go down 20%, but interest rates are now 6%. Your payment could be the exact same. Yeah, yeah. So it really just depends. 20% drops based on like, like, I don't know.

I guess because I'm on the other side of the fence, right? I want to be a buyer, right? Sometimes and I want to be a seller sometimes, you know? Everybody wants to hold both cards, right? You want to be the one that sells the highest amount and want to buy the cheapest house. So it's tough. I just, I live in Vegas so long that we used to be a city of value

and now it's like cheaper to live in California. I wouldn't say that. No, I would say. No, gosh, no. Gosh, no, not at all. It's way cheaper here. It's my joke, but, yeah. I mean, I've never seen the 5, 8, 9, 1,000 a square foot.

It was like 250, 300, and now every house is 500 plus. Yeah. You know. I think there's an element to that that can be sustained just because of how many people are continuing to move here. Sure. And I think generally the worst California gets, the better Vegas is going to do. Yeah. Well, I want more people to come here.

I want them because they're going to eat about. restaurants right I mean the more overpopulated Vegas gets the more dense it gets but I will say the one thing that would hurt Nevada is if they get rid of the the salt cap so if they get rid of that in California they bring down taxes a little bit and they improve the areas I think we'll start to see either fewer people moving out of state or maybe you might see some of the people that left coming back yeah I actually can see that I mean right now in my my research all I see is homes that were purchased in 2020 and 2021 for sale in 2022. Like there really isn't anybody selling a home that bought it before 2020.

I mean, it's just like nobody, right? And some people are just buying a house and three months later putting it back for sale, right? Like, that's just happening all over the world. I think a lot of that is just the surprise and the shock of just, wow, how much money I just made in such a short amount of time. Like for the properties that I had bought in 2016 or 17, it's less of a shock because you've seen the incremental price you're used to it. But when you buy a home two years ago, it's like, wow, in two years, I just made $600,000.

Maybe it's a good at how I may sell. I think those are the people. We're more likely to sell. My theory is that everybody's like moved to Vegas and realize that it wasn't a good idea to live here because the summer it's hot or this or that. Or they don't like something about the city and they're moving back or they're moving somewhere else. I've never seen anybody move back. People that I've seen sell or selling because they either had too much space. they bought too big of a house

they maybe learn the area a little bit better and they want to move somewhere else those are the people that I'm saying selling I don't see how you sell it a high amount with a 3% mortgage and go into a 6% mortgage at a higher amount I don't see the mentality for that

but that's why a lot of people are also just not selling yeah like I wouldn't want to sell this house I've been so tempted just because of values going up but I would hate to move and I don't I have a 2.8% mortgage on this It's literally like a million dollars more at least. Yeah, so it's just like it doesn't make sense to sell. So I don't want to get rid of that mortgage.

I agree. You know, that's why I think people should stay. Yeah. And then bring the prices of the houses down a little bit because the more people are. Well, the more they stay, the less inventory there's going to be. So you'd want people to leave and list their homes because if everyone is like, well, I'm going to give up my mortgage, then there'll be way more inventory and prices would come down. Yeah, but if people stay, then they don't need a new house.

Well, if people stay, if, if people, stay, then there's going to be less inventory. So anyone who does want to move is going to have less to pick from. In my own perfect scenario, which is probably not going to happen, prices stay the same and maybe increase. Like, let's just say the floor is now a million bucks. That floor stays the same and maybe increases at a rate of 2 to 4% the year after that, just basically in line with what I would consider to be a reasonable inflation. That's what I would like to see. So we don't see a crash, but we don't see prices continuing to skyrocket. We just see stability. Do you think we're in a recession? Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, I do. Do you think that they're

going to announce something that says we're in a recession? I think it's September. They actually come out and make the proper announce, the official announcement. But by then it's usually too late. Right. Yeah, it seems it's like too far gone. Right. Usually they've found that once they announce we're in a recession, the worst is already over. And that the peak tends to happen six months prior to the worst of a recession. So, right now. Like this could be the, I mean, depends. The peak of the market was back in, let's say, November, December, January.

We're past six months of that. Who knows? I mean, it could continue to get worse. It's just, it's difficult to, I guess, dictate what's happening outside of America, right? Like, I mean, you have these wars. You have all this stuff going on. And that's out of our control. And that really drives our market down, you know?

Yeah. So it's like, there's so many other factors today. Right. Well, I think a lot of it is the fear and higher interest rates. Yeah. Do you think they're going to go to 9, 10%? No. Or they're going to hit stop at like seven?

No, I don't. There's this mortgage guy I follow in Los Angeles. He's one of like the biggest mortgage brokers. And he sent an email, I think two months ago, saying that from his experience of like 40 years in the mortgage industry, that he believes mortgage rates have already peaked and that they've already priced in all the future Fed rate increases and that we're not going to see seven or eight percent mortgages. He thinks, honestly, mortgages are going to stay between five and six and a half percent.

maybe Bob a little bit plus or minus, you know, a tad in between there. I could see that becoming true. Well, I noticed that they lowered the rate a couple of... Mortgage rates... Yes, mortgage rates dropped from, I think, six and a half to like five and a half percent. Yeah, five point something. In a matter of a few weeks, just because demand was drying up and so mortgage rates came down. So it makes sense to me.

Jerome Powell raising the rates, right? He's raising the prime rate, right? So the bank is adding their fees. Correct. Right. So the bank is the one dictating the five, six, seven, eights. Yeah. right? That's where the bank's money's at.

So the banks see zero demand or less demand. They're going to lower those rates off the prime rate. The bank's going to make less money and interest rates. It's all going to be supply and demand. So I think if we see less demand, we're going to see mortgage rates come down. So I think that's pretty true. I think the hardest part is going to be if the Fed raises the rates, let's say three and a half percent, four percent. When you have a savings account that's offering three and a half to four percent interest,

it's going to pull a lot of money away from the market. Like, why would you invest and stop? to maybe make 7 to 8% when you could get a guaranteed 3.5 to 4. The savings account, have access to your money, not lose it. People forget, I think it was 2018,

a savings account was the best investment you could have made. Seriously? No idea. 2018. Yeah, 2018. That's great. Savings account was the big.

Because the stock market went down. Asset prices went down. Real estate went down. I think it was like a percent or something. Negligible. But a savings account was the only profitable thing you could have invested in that year. Wow.

And that made like one and a half percent two percent. Bitcoin. I know that was when it was down was like yeah. The savings that was the best event. So sometimes people forget it's like that can be. Now obviously that also would have been a really good time to invest in the stock market because it was underperforming.

Look at it now. I like so much diversity. That's why I like chicken so much, right? Because you could do medium, mile. Really hard. So much diversity. So much diversity. Yeah.

Right. I don't know. You just, if like, Miami is performing well, just throw up. restaurant Miami, right? If overseas is performing well, international expansion, right? I mean, it's just, it's not bad everywhere, right? That's what's good about chicken is that you can just move it around. Just like stocks or bonds or all these things. I mean, not everybody's going to do bad, right? In a recession, it's only half or a portion of companies go down and a portion of companies go up, you know? Yeah. So you just have to move your money around and that's the best way,

you know? So I don't think I have any other businesses that I want to do other than like, I did want to start like a shoe cleaning company. No one cleans shoes. Like there's dry cleaners. There's like car washes. There's like everybody, but nobody actually cleans shoes. Oh yeah,

Houston. I see Houston's shoe collection, man? You guys don't understand. I think that's where the biggest problem my life is, is this addiction to shoes that I have. What? Okay. So that's probably like a real issue.

Are you into fashion? Yeah. I mean, it's ironic that the first, no one knows. this. Everybody's going to know now, but I went to fashion school for a few weeks. My dad actually manufactured denim. And so he was a very world-renowned, like, denim designer. And he had, like, a bunch of manufacturing facilities in L.A. and made denim. He's 74. So he retired,

like, when I was in high school still. And so I originally wanted to be in the denim industry. So, you know, I wanted to kind of, like, do that. And I went to fashion school for a couple weeks. And just realized L.A. wasn't for me. Like, Fidham was, like, really cool. But it just... fit him. Yeah, yeah. Wasn't my vibe. Yeah, you know. But so yeah, anyways, I love fashion. When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want. Like, all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha-chings from every channel, right in one spot, and turn real-time reporting into big-time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify. Start your free

trial today. So what is it about shoes that has such an allure to people? Because I know shoes are really popular amongst like fashion. Shoes are like watches, right? It's an accessory because, okay, so like let me put it perspective. Like a really cool designer t-shirt is like $500. Right. It's like very expensive for a t-shirt. But those t-shirts have no resale value, right? Jeans, five, three to $400 for jeans, no resale value. Shoes for some reason are like watches and they have resell value. sell value. They actually can be worth more money than you pay for them. Like a lot of different types of shoes are like that. So there's this collector-esque about it. Right. And you can now, obviously if you don't wear them, they're worth way more money, right? But if you do wear them,

they're still worth money. So this is why shoes are so popular now is that like I have a couple employees that flip shoes for a side hustle. Like it's a thing, you know? And like there's a new Supreme or a Virgil collab with Louis Vuitton coming out. And, and, And I was told that some of those shoes would be worth upwards of $50,000 for a pair. That's a legitimate business when you buy a pair of shoes for a few thousand dollars, one to two or whatever they cost from Louis Vuitton and are able to sell them for 50,000. I don't know where the buyers are for that, but it's a real thing, you know. And so I think that there's no one that caters to those guys, right?

I mean, if you have 15, 20, 30, 50 pairs of shoes, you can't throw them in the washer, right? And there's no service that comes to your house and, like, at a van and just clean them, you know? So I think that's a good business idea for someone. I thought about doing like a small franchise where I buy like a bunch of like 20 year old kids, their first job, get a van, get them all their equipment and everything and then start like an app. And then people just want to like go wash your shoes and then send a van out. I'm like a mobile car wash service. But I don't know if that's very effective.

You would be the biggest customer. There's a lot. Actually, there's so many people. Like I would definitely be a huge customer. Um, right now, um, I, um, I have a guy that, that basically does other things for me, kind of like a handyman type guy. And he, he, he does that particular job for me. Wow. Yeah. So I give him 10, $12 a shoe, depending on which one it is. But I'm going to have 250 pairs, 300 pairs of shoes. So it adds up for him over the month, you know, gosh. Yeah. I just have a question. Like this is random because it could go one

way or the other. Houston, how much did your shirt cost you? The t-shirt? Yeah. Just looks like a black. 12 bucks. Okay. Yeah. I mean, that's why I don't, okay.

You never know, not to wear it. Like, I love really nice, like suit coats, like sport coats, like Versacei and really high-end designer things, but I don't want to,

like this t-shirt is just such a bad investment to buy a $500 version of this. Yeah. Right. Because this is a brand. I don't need a brand to tell me that I'm like, cool or something, right? But I do like the quality and like a really nice suit jacket. Like,

where I, where are my grand openings, like those Versacee jackets have golden them. And they're very unique and they're very special. and they kind of accentuate my personality. But like my jeans are $110, you know, their guests or whatever they cost. Like they're normal. But like the shoes is like a watch, right?

Where it's like an accessory. And, you know, every time I come here, I wear different cool pair of shoes. And they're all so fancy. They all got spikes on them. Yeah. So how much does your entire outfit cost? Well, you're going to count the watch. Well, if you count the watch, it costs more than a house.

But I don't know. I've got like probably $130 worth of clothes on. And then a, I don't know, essentially a form. $140,000 watch. Kind of watch is that. It's a RM. Oh my gosh. That's what I thought.

Yeah, I mean, this is a carbon one. It's not the most expensive. There's RMs that cost millions. How much did you pay for it? This watch I paid $1.90 something. So it's like this watch, I believe, was a sticker price of like, I think it was $120 something. And I pay like 60 over sticker. I'm on the wait list for like a good new one.

But they try to give us. like RM gave me a allocation for a watch that was like kind of like the dinky one and that doesn't go up in value so I'd rather pay 60. This watch was purchased before the big boom. Now here's the thing why, because you're selling off some cars, why wouldn't you sell off a watch? I only have one. I used to have 13. Watches. Yes. Okay. So I've kept one watch that I just wear every day. And I kept my first watch I ever bought. So that one I don't wear. It's a, it's a Hubello. It's like 30 grand. And I financed it on my credit card. I was like super excited.

soaked and you know it was like a big moment for me to buy like a really nice watch but I used to have a whole bunch of watches and I just have one now so whenever I like go out I don't know I'd like I'd like to have two one that's not just like one black one and like one gold one maybe that's like luxurious but I just wear this watch every day you know and I mean it's a lot it's worth a lot of value now but like I couldn't replace it and I feel like I just need one watch and I think that's the key in any any personal success you could have a billion dollars and you're still going to we're the same close, right? I'm going to be the same way, right?

I like to be slightly pretentious with the cars and the shoes and the watches, but I'm like overkill where I'm like shopping at Versace every weekend with $40,000, right? Where I'm trying to be someone I'm not. I'm trying to be a big guy. I don't party. I don't drink. So like I never want to be surrounded by that level of like, you know, uh, insecurity.

Yeah, sure. Right. And so I don't know. I think that's the key to success in this city into any big city is just be yourself. you know. I think that's good? It's a good point to I ended on

it's like breakfast time. Yeah, I know. It's almost lunch. Exactly. All right, guys, so thank you so much for watching. The other thing you could do besides be yourself

is get a free stock down below in the description. Subscribe to Houston. He's going to be down below. Use the code Graham. You may as well do that. It's worth all the way of $2,000. I'll be getting back to your messages.

Okay, so make sure to message us there. On time. Thank you so much Alex for producing this podcast, man. You're doing a great job. Make sure to follow me on Instagram, JOS. You are. And thank you guys so much for watching.

And until next time.