The Iced Coffee Hour - Humphrey Yang | The Millionaire Who Lives With His Parents

Episode Date: June 14, 2022

Humphrey Yang is a personal finance guru with millions of followers, former financial advisor, multi-millionaire, and still lives with his parents? Today's podcast discusses how to make it as a successful entrepreneur/finance creator and that living with your parents until you find success might just be the fastest route there.  View important disclosures and sign-up on Stash to redeem your $50 bonus* here, T&C’s apply: https://bit.ly/3MkYT9K SUBSCRIBE TO HUMPHREY YANG: https://www.youtube.com/c/HumphreyYang 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] Investment advisory services offered by Stash Investments LLC, an SEC registered investment adviser. Investing involves risk and investments may lose value. Nothing in this material should be construed as an offer, recommendation, or solicitation to buy or sell any security. Holdings and performance are hypothetical. Bank Account Services provided by and Stash Visa Debit Card (Stock-Back® Card) issued by Green Dot Bank, Member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. Visa is a registered trademark of Visa International Service Association. Stash banking account opening is subject to identity verification by Green Dot Bank. Investment products and services provided by Stash Investments LLC, not Green Dot Bank, and are Not FDIC Insured, not bank guaranteed, and may lose value. Fractional shares start at $0.05 for investments that cost $1,000+ per share. Subscription fee starts at $1.00/month; you are responsible for fees and expenses related to pricing of ETFs and fees related to ancillary services. All product and company names are trademarks ™ or registered ® trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them. For more info, visit www.stash.com *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 is Humphrey Yang. And so far, the podcast has made $209,000. Oh my gosh. You're the closest to actual guests we've ever received. Incredible. Yeah, $213,332. I almost said $2.12, but I had watched that one that you did last week with the billionaire.

The billionaire son. Yeah. What's his name? Bobby Mizner. Yes. Bobby Misner. And it was 203. So I was like, hmm, I'm going to go in there with like 209. It's fantastic.

Yeah. You're a podcast fan. Yeah. I watch them all. Not all of them. Yeah. But I watch a lot of them. Well, thank you so much for coming on the the iced coffee hour. We're confronting a TikTok finance guru. Yes. You got 3.3 million followers on TikTok. You're a financial advisor as well. I used to be. Merrill Lynch. Nice. And how did you get started? Tell us a bit about your journey. How did you go from financial advisor to TikTok finance guru? How far do you want me go? Like all the way. All the way. Yeah. So I was born in

Bay Area, Redwood City. That's the name of the city. But I'll just skip forward to the financial advisory part. I graduated from college with a finance degree and from Loyola Marymount University down L.A. And I did a tech job for like a year, like a video game job, like customer support. And then what I did was I wanted to always try my hand in finance because I had the finance degree. And I felt like for some reason that my dad would like it because he's very Chinese. It's like, I want to prove to my dad that I can do it. And so I became a financial advisor for a year. I didn't really like it.

I didn't do a good job. And I left after a year. And then I went back to tech. So I went into mobile video games. And I've always had this like dual passion of like video games and finance. And then also just like getting better at things or like growing things. And so I thought growing social media was always pretty fun. And I've always watched YouTube.

Like from a really young age, I was watching YouTube. like when it first came out in 2007, like 2008, I was watching a lot of it. And so basically I was doing my mobile video game job. I'd come across like an MKBHD video. I'd come across a Casey Knitsap video. And then I started watching some Graham Steffen videos. And that's kind of how I got started with the whole content thing. In 2019, I made three YouTube videos just to test in the summer.

I was kind of bored. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. And it didn't do that well. No surprise. no followers there. But at the end of 2019, I looked on TikTok and I searched for the hashtag personal finance and there was none. There were like no videos.

There was like one guy making stock videos. And I was like, okay, this is my opportunity. I've been listening to a lot of Naval Ravikant. And he was like, you want to be first and you like you want to scale with media. And so that's when I started, I made like a commitment to make 30 TikTok videos in 30 days. And by the end of 30 days, I think I had like 120,000 followers. Did you really? Yeah.

Wow. Because you can make a really bad video, like, What Is Credit? And I was, no camera presence, bad script, bad lighting, worst lighting, like the worst lighting possible. And it would get like 20,000 views. And for a new account, getting 20,000 views on a What Is Credit video, I was stoked. I was like, all right, let's try this out.

Let's try this out. And I just stuck with the 30 days. I got to 60 days. Then I got to 90. And it's like, I might as well push for 100. And then after 100 is like, I can't stop now. Yeah. And it was 2020.

It was a pandemic. I got nothing to do. And I ended the streak at like 262 days of a TikTok every day. And I don't know if you remember, we talked. Yeah. In like April or May of 2020, I called into the Graham Steffen show. I had like 300, 400,000 subscribers at the time, followers at the time. And yeah, like, that's kind of the story.

Why did you bring your streak? I had a million followers and I was like, I don't know what, like, why am I still keeping the streak alive? I didn't really know what to do next. And so that's kind of why. Did it. Were you making any money throughout that process? Yeah, I think when I called you on the Graham Steffin show, I had made at that moment like $4,000 and I had 400,000 followers on TikTok.

And I remember we, us, we were talking about some brand deals and stuff. And my first brand deal offered me like $2,000 for a post. And I was like super stoked. That was awesome. But for a really long time, I just didn't take any sponsors on the TikTok channel. Yeah. And still, I'm kind of not against sponsors, but I don't take that many sponsorships. And so to answer your question, I think in 2020 I made like $19,000 off of content.

How else were you making money, though? Because you probably have expenses, rent, mortgage. What were you doing? So I was an e-commerce consultant. So between my tech job, I left my tech job in 2016, I started my own e-commerce business, basically selling posters. And I grew that pretty substantially. But then I became a consultant for other types of e-commerce businesses.

So I was supplementing my income with that. And I also lived at home. And I still live at home, actually. So I live at home with my parents. Didn't you mention that on the Graham Steffin's show? Did you? I think I did. Okay.

Yeah. And I think, yeah. So I am 34 years old. Why do you grimace? Because I still live at home, but my dad's gone nine months of the year. Okay. And it's only him. So basically, I have the house to myself.

I haven't really felt the need to move out yet, but I want to this year because I'm getting a little bit bored at home, and I get kind of complacent, and I get kind of in the same routine. And so far, I think this year I've kind of realized, like, it's not really making me happy anymore to stay at home. And I'd rather just spend the money to move out somewhere. It's a very U.S. thing, I think, to move out really quickly. It seems like everywhere other than the U.S., like it's customary to live at home, almost until, like, you get married and at which point you get your own place. Yeah, and I did move out at the age of, like, 20, 28 for a year. I lived in the city, San Francisco. And I had an okay time, but I would still drive down to

my hometown and go to all my favorite, like, my coffee shops and my favorite restaurants and my gym down there. And I just felt like I'd never like experienced the city life. I was just kind of commuting from the city back to my own hometown. So I was like, why am I even doing this? Yeah. And I was paying like 2K a month in rent. And I thought it was okay, but I wasn't really like living my best life because I had a couple roommates. They're great roommates. But at some point, I was just like, I'm just going to move home because it just seems so easy. But at this point, it's been five years since then and getting a little bit bored at home and don't know where else to move. I can move anywhere technically with my job, but I feel really bad leaving my dad.

Like my dad's 90. That's another thing. Oh, yeah. Okay. So my dad's 90. He's in really great shape, so he travels a lot. But I feel really bad leaving him. And I would feel super guilty if I, like, moved to, like, New York or Texas or Las Vegas or anywhere.

And then something were to happen to him. Right. And it's like I don't get those years back. I don't get that time with him back. I agree with that. So if I were to move, I would move somewhere like San Francisco where I could just drive back for the weekend if he was home or I could be at home when he's home. And then the rest of the time I can just be in the city. I agree with that. Yeah. So tell us when you're making these TikTok videos, how are you coming up with ideas? Is there a formula to like going viral on TikTok? I think in the early days, it was it was easier because there was no finance content. Right. And as long as I picked a topic that was somewhat interesting. And I had a good hook and I could hook people into a story about finances or learning something about how much a hydroflask costs. That was good enough to go viral. I had a couple good viral hits in 2020, but I would say since then it's been really hard.

What are you noticing now at TikTok? How is it changed? Finance TikTok or just TikTok in general? Both. Finance TikTok seems like it's kind of like a content farm. Like you just farm the videos. Let's make a skit about credit utilization. And so it's like, hey, what's credit utilization?

I don't know. You tell me. And I think I'm partially to blame for that because I took that format from another creator called Admani explains. And he's a great guy. And he was making these business skits back in like April of 2020. I was like, oh, let me just take that and simplify it for like broader finance. But now that is like the de facto format for finance. Who created that?

So I noticed Mark Tilbury does it. Erica Kalberg was the one who really did it with like the life acts. Really learned that. I learned it from Erica. Yeah. Can we trace it back? Like, who was the first to have done like that sort of sky? Because I'm sure it didn't originate in finance. I'm sure it came from something else. It initially came from like these comedic skits. Like people would just make really funny skits on TikTok. And that was like the trend on TikTok in 2020. Just make these funny skits of you talking to yourself. Right. And then, and Moni was really the guy who took it to business. He started to cuss in them. He was explaining like why Elon wants to take over Twitter this year, for example. But it was all business focused. And I think at that point, we had a small finance TikTok community. on like a Slack chat or Discord chat or something. And we just were kind of bouncing ideas off of each other.

And I was like, oh, let me try this skit format. I think my first one was what is a dividend. And that first one did like six million views off the bat. Man. And that whole summer, like from July to September, every skit I made million views, two million views, 10 million views. Like, it was just crazy. It was crazy the amount of people that loved it at the time.

And how easy it was to explain a financial concept, because it's so easy to explain a financial concept when it's conversational. So that did really well, but then I would say in 2021, it started to kind of like, I noticed they didn't do as well anymore. And then now this year, like after the life hack stuff, Erica Colberg, shout out, we like Erica. I love Erica. But it's like everyone's seen that format now. So like it's really hard to differentiate that format.

Or like I feel like people scroll and they see the skit format. They're like, yeah, scroll away. Yeah. It's so interesting on TikTok, just how fast trends change. And I feel like something could be in for like a week and then it's done and it's played out like you have to find the next one. Yeah, yes, no. Okay. I would say I would say with finance content, it's really topical.

So like the topics that do well will always do well because people want to hear it again. And people have like the shortest term memory on TikTok. Like after two months, you don't even remember what you saw. So like if you saw another one, that's fine. But first we got to thank our sponsor's stash. Graham, I've been saving up some money recently and I just don't know what to do with this fast, vast, Cash Stash that I received. What? The FastCast Vastash. Jack, I think you just answered it with your your last rhyme, Stash. Stash is a personal finance app that helps make investing easy and affordable.

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The seven-seat Atlas, you deserve more space. Visit vW.ca to learn more. S-U-B-W, German-engineered for all. So you could remake the same video a few times. Yeah, I actually have remade the same video maybe three or four times, but told it somewhat differently and changed the words around or maybe use a different example, and it does just as well. Sometimes you can even straight repost a video and it does better the second time.

Are you serious? I don't really repost, but there are some other financial creators I've talked do they're like yeah why I just repost I've always I'm not I can't try this but I've always been curious to take an old video of mine and just repost it as new I'm curious how it would do I just want to speak Jack why are you laughing

man dude curious we talked about this a while ago I'm just curious I just think it's funny so lazy Graham I'm just like you're trying to so hard not to miss your upload schedule by posting something that I already posted before Graham what are you thinking but I'm curious how it'll do it will be it will do well. But if it's the same video, yes, on YouTube, if I post the same video and I have it

listed as an old video, but I just reposted a year later, is that going to be recommended against the old videos? You're going to know that it's a re-outplay? We could try this on the Graham's Stafford show. He has this great video. I always loved it, but it's like, who makes more after X amount of years? Is it the plumber or the doctor? And I love that video. I watched it such a long time ago. And I think that video is perfectly evergreen. It can be posted whenever. And your original thumbnail was so bad. I know. And I feel like the title wasn't that great, but it's decent.

And you could remake that exact same video and it could do like super well. That's better for a TikTok video. I'll give you the idea for TikTok. For YouTube, I couldn't make that video. But basically I came up with this like four years ago. You know what? I didn't come up with that. I think I saw someone else who did some sort of comparison between someone who did a trade versus a physician

who had a higher net worth at the age of like 45 and 50. And the answer was you'd make more money. you'd have a higher net worth working in the trades than you would becoming a doctor by the age of like 50. And it wasn't until a person became like mid-50s did the physician actually make more money. Why is that?

Debt. Debt. Yeah. Student loan debt and the age at which you really start making money. So for a doctor, they didn't really start making a serious income until their mid-30s at the very earliest. Right.

Versus a tradesman, I tracked the income. If they started working at 18 years old with no student debt, that gave them such a huge advantage with the compound interest. Does that also assume that tradesman was making good decisions investing? Correct. Yeah. But also that assumes the doctor is as well.

Right. Got so. Yeah. The doctor could be buying a brand new 7 series BMW to park out side of the office and like 10 secretaries and, you know, they could do a whole bunch of stuff as well. For sure. But yeah. What about you?

What are you doing on YouTube right now? So right now we have my main channel, which went through a bit of an existential crisis the past three months. I didn't really know what to make. And I kind of wanted to make it more broad. Like I wanted to make like broad business essays, but they just don't do well on the main channel. So what I've done is I've created a second channel.

I'm going to post them there. And the whole reason behind that is that I'm just still going to keep the main channel on the main channel, which is like personal finance and investing advice. And then on the second channel just kind of build, build this like library of content that's hopefully bingeable for that on each What's a broad business essay? something like how Amazon makes money or the dark side of casinos.

So kind of like a documentary type thing. Yeah, like a kind of Jake Trane. Yeah. If you Jake Tranned, kind of went over. Yeah. If you Jake Trant that video, I think it would be so well. You Sunny B2 that video. You Patrick C-C'd that.

It would do so well. Yeah. So yeah, that's the idea. It's like, okay, let's do business essays. But I'm going to be more in the video. So it's not completely voiceover. Like, I'll be part of some of the video. So that's actually why we're here.

as well is we're going to film that video about casinos tomorrow at the casino. What's the video on casinos? It's, uh, I think we have two titles. The first is called the, the dark side of slot machines. Or it's called how ugly carpets

make casinos massive profits. I don't like that. Okay. Yeah. I, that's why we got two. I don't mind the ugly carpets because it's really thought-provoking. Yes.

So if you could somehow, uh, like have like a, the classic YouTuber thing right now, is a big red arrow. Pointed it at like a disgusting carpet. How this makes casinos. I probably wouldn't say ugly carpets.

Or how about this? How this makes casinos millions? Why all casinos have ugly carpets? Maybe something like that. I don't know. I think how this with a big ad, that's just me. That's kind of like the new YouTube style.

It's the new YouTube style. It's a huge red arrow pointing at something kind of obscure that's thought-provoking. Exactly. But I actually don't mind that at all. There was a video that I saw that went super viral about how a door makes some Twitch streamer a bunch of money. Yep, it was that. And that did extremely well.

So you could do something so much for that. That's actually the exact thumbnail, like, inspiration I had, but just with a carpet and just like make everything else black besides the carpet with a little arrow to it. But yeah, it's like stuff like that. Yeah, so tell us about that. I mean, what's, it's not going to be Jake Tran, which is all voiceover. Yeah.

But he's in at the end. So credit Jake Tran. He's at the end. But it's more just like, I'm the host. And then like, you're going to see me 15% of the time on camera, but then it'll still be mostly B-roll. Yeah. So tell us about the dark side of the casino.

What do you want to know? What the video is about? What the house always wins? The carpets are distracting, so it's disorienting. There's like four psychological ways that casinos get you to stay inside the casino, right? Like carpets are ugly, no clocks or windows. They have curving hallways where they don't want you to make a right hand turn because a hard right turn activates the decision making part of your brain.

So like you don't want that. So they all curve and they all have maze-like layouts. And then we talk about the big. business breakdown, like the revenue breakdown of casino, because it's not all from gambling. It's actually mostly from rooms and entertainment and actually shopping and like food. And then, yeah, it's only 30% of casino profits, at least at MGM, is from gambling. I thought that they give all of the rooms to the really big high rollers. They do, but they still make a lot of money on the rooms.

Like, we paid $3.40 for our room tonight for a night on Wednesday. So, yeah, it's like that. And then the last part of the video is on slot machines because slot machines, actually make the most money for casinos. Right. Just straight up. They make a lot of money. And a lot of people play them.

It doesn't really make sense why they play them. I think they're boring. But some people love them and they make like five times as much revenue for the casino than Blackjack or Crapes or roulette. So that's why they're everywhere. And what about online casinos? Didn't do any research there. That would be the interesting.

That's what I think they're going to be cracking down on pretty soon. Maybe that Twitch is... I would say that, make that the next video. The more I'm seeing about how much these... Twitch streamers are making from from online casinos, it's staggering. Staggering. Millions a month. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'd run their own casino. Yeah, two to three million dollars a month just to get paid to gamble. Who was it that turned it down? I think it was Miskiff, who said that he turned down, I think it was like $800,000 a month. And he only had to stream for 15 hours a month. Yeah.

And then he said that his like, he's like, but that doesn't mean that everybody has a prize. He's like, because if somebody. he's paying me like, I think he said 10 million a month he'd take it. Yeah. Something like that. Oh, you know what? Yeah. Shamelessly, I will say that. Yeah, he said it was $10 million a year.

Yeah. Oh, there it is. Yep. Yeah, $10 million a year was his offer. Or how much he was offered to gamble for 15 hours a month. On Twitch. On Twitch. And it's this weird gray area because, like, technically, they're not breaking a law. But at what point does that influence children's

desire to maybe gamble where they shouldn't. Right. Right. Yeah. I think what they should do, why isn't there like a website where you could just, this would be a good idea, a website that you could stream just gambling. Like just that. And you have to enter like your age or like, you know, I'm 21 years old. So you can watch it when you're only 18? No, so you can watch it if you're, I don't know with the, if it's 18 or 21. I don't know. But like whatever it is, you have to like select I'm 18 years And it's just a website that you could just watch people gamble. You think people would watch that? I do.

Yeah, but then these casinos wouldn't be offering the streamers, which then means that streamers would stop doing that. So it's like... Yeah, I don't know. I think, I mean, the value is definitely in their audience. Right. But, uh, yeah. Would you have a price if, like, a casino comes to you and says...

I don't think you could pay me to do that. No price to break your morals? Like $50 million a year. I turned down a lot of sponsorships because I just don't align with them. Really? Yeah. And it's like I could use the money, but I don't, you know, I don't feel like I would not use the product. So if I don't use the product and I don't feel good about the product, I'm not going to promote it.

Graham, what's your price? Oh, to do, everybody's got a price. To do gambling. Every day, man. He does it for free. Man, I just love to get it. No. The options.

Yeah, I mean, it's a, it depends. Gosh. I mean, it would have to be so much money that like, right. It would probably have to be. probably 10 million a month guaranteed for a year. And I would just have the disclaimer like, guys, this is stupid. But I think my audience would respect it enough and be like, hey, Graham's getting paid so much money.

Like, it would be the financially smart move to take it. So I would, I think my audience would understand and would get like, hey, that's, they're overpaying. It's a lot of money. We get it. But it would have to be guaranteed for a year and guaranteed that I would not get in trouble. Because the last thing I'd want is like in legal trouble or then it's not worth it. Like any risk of any, it's no.

Yeah. But assuming it's fine for one year, you know, $100 million. I would do the same as Graham, but I would make sure, because I could never lead someone in without a disclaimer. Right. So I would make sure that somewhere in like the clause or in the contract or whatever. There's a clause where it's like, Jack, you can say whatever you want. And I'd be like, guys, never do this.

Don't touch this casino. Whatever. I'm getting paid bank. Like, that's why I'm doing this. But hey, enjoy. And you've got to have like the little, you know, disclaimer that shows on the bottom of the screen that goes by. Like, do not do this at home.

Yeah, no, we've turned down. So, like, I'd much rather do that. We've turned down, like, every NFT offer, every, like, crypto, oh, gosh. Yeah. I would say 80% of them are just crap. And there's a few that, like, even get through, like, we have an initial, like, we sift through them, and it's, like, 90% just go on.

Even the remaining 10%, there are a few, look and do afterwards. I'm just, not a fan. I just don't like it. There's a train going by. It's the classic. Oh, gosh. I thought we moved on from this. No, no, no, there's a train going by.

And there are two kids playing on the train tracks, like 100 yards in front of the train. And there's a really obese person standing in front of you. And you're like on this balcony above where the train is going, right? Would you push that obese person in front of the train? They're just obese for the sake of being, you know, stopping the train or whatever. Not to be insensitive. But just to like stop the train. Would you do that to save the lives of the two people that are on the tracks?

So it's one life for two. See, that's a utilitarian moral question A utilitarian would say, yeah, push that person. Sure, yeah, yeah. So what would I do? Yeah, gosh, that's so hard. What would you do, Graham? I think I answered this, yeah.

You answer first, I'll tell you my answer. Why do they have to be obese, Jack? No, that was just for this. Okay, never mind, I take it back. They're not obese. Okay, they're a person. They're a normal person. Yes, okay, we're not normal.

They're a human that is average. The train has to be able. a sensor that detects people once they're hit and they're just a regular person and if you push this person over the sensors will go off and stop the trial it could be yeah it's no different than like a saw a movie like would you yeah I would push them you would push them one for two I think I said I wouldn't because yeah because the the train track they're on the train tracks they shouldn't have been on the train tracks and They're playing on the train tracks. They shouldn't have been doing that. It's tragic, but I couldn't. So, like, an innocent life, I couldn't do that. The other two were on the train tracks.

So they, they, I guess I was trying to think of it more in like a vacuum, like, they're there. Let's say they were tied down on the train track. Yes. Oh, gosh. Now they're forced against their will to be there. Then would you push this normal, sorry, not normal, just like an average person. I don't know.

Comment below what you would. I wouldn't, well, it sucks because I wouldn't want to be the cause of that person's demise, you know? So it's like, right. The other person, you know, demised the two people on the train tracks tied down. Like, that's their responsibility. But mine would be the unaliving of an innocent person. What if the person was like a serial killer? I would push them.

Okay. Yeah. I probably couldn't do it. Like, I don't know if I would even like to say I could, but I would. I feel like I couldn't live with myself if I actually was responsible for the of someone else. That's a really tough question. Yeah, we don't say the D word. Oh, sorry.

Unalive. Unaliveness of another person. The demise. Yeah. So, anyway, what do you think about, anyway, I don't know. No, no, no, no. Really quick, let's talk about, I want to know your thoughts on the TikTok finance gurus aspect. Because I think TikTok has maybe not the best reputation.

for some people pumping stuff or maybe not giving the best advice. And from what I've seen, there's both a lot of good advice, but there's a lot of really bad advice. And what are your thoughts on the stigma of TikTok finance? I think the stigma is there for a reason. There's probably more bad actors than there are good actors.

Obviously, if I see something that doesn't really resonate with me and I think it's bad advice, I just ignore it. You know, I let them do whatever they're doing. I'm not going to like come for them in the comments, but I would not recommend that channel to anybody learning financial advice. And so, yeah, there's going to be good and bad with everything, just like with YouTube. Like, there's going to be some people on YouTube that are bad actors and trying to get you to buy whatever that they're buying or selling.

Yeah. So I do think that it's gotten a pretty bad stigma, though, because, you know, the videos that do go viral, sometimes they can be really dumb. And I just don't feel like that happens on YouTube versus, like on TikTok, like some 16-year-old thinks that they can make $50,000 flipping, you know, crypto in 24 hours by just getting 1% a day. or something like that. You know, something silly like that. And that could go viral. That could get like 2 million views because people watch it and like they rewatch it. I remember when TikTok banned cryptocurrency for a while.

They did. And that was for like eight months. They banned financial, not banned, but they shadow ban. They basically put a like a kind of like a filtration on anything finance related. So if I mentioned the word stock market, the video would get no views. Not no views, but it would get throttled. And same thing with like bank accounts or. I don't know.

And when was that? I want to say summer of last year. So like May to like August or something. Really? And as a finance creator, how did that affect the content you were making? That was a depressing time, the TikTok in the TikTok life.

I mean, every video wasn't doing very well. So I had just had to reset my expectations for how good a video would do. I was actually flown down to TikTok for like a, I guess they just wanted to talk to some creators. And I did tell the CEO that, like directly.

It's like, hey. The CEO of TikTok. Yeah. He's like, hey, you guys got some bad filtration going on, bad moderation. And it's because TikTok has a development team in China. And they're all Chinese, all the TikTok developers that are working on the algorithm for the U.S. product. So what happens is, is the U.S. team will give them feedback. But that feedback might get lost in translation.

Like, imagine telling a developer, hey, filter out finance content. What is the developer going to do if they don't know much about finance content? They're just going to take the keywords and just filter them all. Versus like contextually, it could be good advice or bad advice. You know, you never know. And so there's a big disconnect in the teams. And so I think that remote work is tough. And then there's also a language barrier.

So like the developers have to figure out how to do that. Now I saw a video. I'm not sure if it's, you know, Pocus Pocus. But I watched a video on the algorithm of TikTok and how the U.S. is a lot different than what it is in China. And I heard in China, they're showing very uplifting videos that are, very motivational, that are very educational, and that, in my opinion, make them just overall better, more well-rounded people.

Versus in the U.S., I scroll TikTok, and I see the most mind-numbing content that just dissolves the brain. It's just so bad and just puts you into this days of, you zone out, and then an hour goes by and you're dumb. I hate to say it. Like dance videos or trends. But it's all really viral content. And it's addicting. I mean, I'll straight, like, every time I go on TikTok, if I'm sitting there, like, actually scrolling, 10, 20 minutes. And it feels like a minute. But they're all mind-numbing videos.

Do you know if there's any truth to that? What do you think on this? I don't know if there's any truth to that. But it could be also a difference in cultural values, right? Like, the culture over there, they might value that type of stuff versus what do we value in the United States? It's tough to say. I don't know if TikTok is doing something crazy with their algorithm in different countries. or it's used as a weapon to make us dumber or something like that. But I'd like to think that I always like to think on the optimistic side. I give people the benefit of the doubt, even companies sometimes. And I think sometimes to a fault. But I give people the benefit of the doubt. And I think that probably the algorithm is just optimizing for view duration, right?

Because that's all they want to do is keep you on the platform. I think when you said values, it's very true. And I think the algorithm is probably so good that it just gets whatever. gets the most watch time, clicks, engagement, and that just happens in the U.S. to be the content that, you know, is mind numbing. Is mind numbing. Think about everyone just wants to zone out. Like, if you go on TikTok, probably, and I would say the same thing with YouTube,

probably not as much with YouTube, but a lot of, for a lot of people, TikTok is just a way, how could I spend these next five minutes, 10 minutes, that turns into an hour because it's just gets you. Yeah, it's quick content and some people really enjoy it. Like, I know that we watch. it and we're creators and so sometimes we're watching it with a critical eye but I have friends who just watch it and they're laughing the entire time they're loving it and they're sending it to their friends and making memes and they have a great time they don't think it's a waste of time

yeah but some people like like me I think it's kind of a waste some time to watch it I'm always like oh I just watch 20 minutes guy that sucks but at the same time I don't watch Netflix and some people you know at the end at the day yeah so it's like who am I to judge that's true that's fair right that's fair I agree it's kind of like the same argument with video games and I I've had this video game argument before. Like people will come to me like, oh, why do you play video games? But it's like, it's just entertainment.

It's like, what do I, like, what does it matter if I choose to play video games or go watch a movie or go read or do something? And I think there's a stigma there that video games are not engaging or good for you. But I learned a lot of my social skills through gaming growing up. And I also learned a lot of, you know, typing skills and commerce skills. Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

You know, trading my Final Fantasy deal and not getting. getting scams. Like I haven't been scammed on crypto yet. Why? Because of video games. Like I'm really wary. I'm like, oh, you're trying to scam me. Like I'm not going to fall for this. Falling for this before. Hey, if you send me a hundred bucks, I'll send you $200 back. Oh, yeah? Yeah. You know what that sounds like, Graham? This is going to be way off topic here. But when I was younger, I used to play this game called the RuneScape. Yep. I know exactly we're talking about and I was going to go there. So yeah, so there's this, there was these people at the marketplace. They said stand there and they would be like, oh, doubling gold, right?

So, you know, so, and then so what I would do is I would go up to them. I'd be like, well, I want you to double, like, let's say, 500,000 of my gold, but you have to prove it to me first. So here's like 50K, like some measly amount. And then they would do it because they think I'm going to give them the big thing. And I would just take their. They reminded me. So I was scammer. You would scam the scammer.

I scammer. This is one of my favorite videos that I was showing this to Jack. This is like two years ago. You know the scammers in the comment section that pretend to be you? I remember that video. Yeah. So for those unaware, I started talking to three of those scammers, and they promised these Ponzi-like returns where I'm going to put money in.

They guarantee it's going to be worth a certain amount. And so I put $20 in one to see how it works. And I told them up front that I said, hey, I got like $50,000, but I just want to see, like, make sure it works first. And so I gave them $20, and they take you to this, like, fake webpage where basically they could type in how much money is in your account. And then it grew over time to like $36, like $40. And I said, wow, this is great.

I just want to make sure the withdrawal works first. Can you send me this money back? And then I'll send in like $5,000 or something like that. They legit sent the money back. Like extra money? Extra money. We did the same thing, but you did it in real life. Yeah.

So I sent in $20. They sent back $40. And I think we used your buddy's PayPal or Venmo so they wouldn't know it's me. And so your buddy actually got the money and sent it over. me. Amazing. Yeah. Didn't you want to still collect the money?

What do you mean? The $20 profit. Yeah. Something like that. My buddy got it and then he set it back over to the ground. It was my money to begin with. That's my money to begin with. That's my money to begin with.

Yeah. So, but yeah, it reminds me of that. So, you know, as long as you're a step ahead, you got to bait him with a little bit, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, actually, we never really told this story afterwards. It's what happened. One of the guys found out about that video after I posted it.

The scammer. The scammer. Wow. Not the guy who sent me the money, but another one of the guys. Watched the video afterwards and then actually got in contact with me. And we talked. And it was after we talked, I wanted to get him on the second channel. And it was a weird thing because I felt 90% he was telling the truth on this.

But he gave depictions of like the working conditions there. He was from, I think, Uganda, I think it was. and just the working conditions are really terrible. They're trying to support their families. There's no money. This is one of the only ways that they could, like, support their families. And he basically just said, like, I don't want to be doing this. Right.

There are, you know, it's run by the gangs here. And if we don't do it, they threaten our families and this and that. So this is why we're doing it. Oh, and then he would only call me during, like, certain time. Like he said, like, you cannot text me at all. Like, just called it. He was pretty secretive about it, which made me think that, he was legit.

And then I said, if you wanted to come on the second general, I'm like, just expose this. I'll give all the ad revenue to you. Yeah. And I will set up like a,

I don't know, if we could do a go-fund me, I don't know, something like that. And that's why I worried about that. I worried just in case. I felt it was real, but I didn't know if I want to think that.

Part of me thought maybe I just do it and let the audience decide if they believe it's fake or real. He never decided to go through with it and decided to hold off, which makes me think it was real. Because he was worried about the safety of his family and like if he gets outed as like that guy.

Right. I don't think it's worth it too. So I have a feeling it was real. That's a tough moral situation as well. Yes, for sure. And I couldn't post a video like that. If anything were to ever happen to him, that would be my fault and I couldn't. Got it.

Do that. But overall, it seemed like a nice guy. Okay. So behind all of this, you know, behind these people scamming, even though it's annoying, the situation there is incredibly different than me. I think a lot of people put ourselves as like, well, I wouldn't do that. But meanwhile, you have access to, you know, get a job anywhere and make $20,000 a year versus them. Children that you have to take care of.

Yeah. Yeah. Imagine, you know, the areas run by gangs. Right. You have three kids at home that don't have food. And like, what's your option? It's not like you could beg or, like, go work at Starbucks or anything. Yeah.

What do you do? You do that because that's the way. And, you know, and they rationalize it. You know, they're wealthy Americans. They got health care. They have roads and electricity and running water. And, you know, they could have. afford it.

So, you know, so I could see what, yeah. So after, it gave me a, depends on the situation. Big perspective on just like, in America, or really in many first world countries, you're very fortunate. So, and you kind of forget that the rest of the world is not like that. Lesson of the day, guys. Love that lesson. Thanks for nice.

You're welcome, Jack. Yeah. I think we should also talk about your income over time. Oh, boy. I'm sure that'll kind of be an interesting journey. I remember you said you initially started out as a video game customer support. outside of college. Yes.

How much were you making doing that? 40K year. You did that for how long? A year and a half doing customer support. Year and a half. So 40K year, this was 2011, 2010, 2011. And this was in the Bay Area as well? This was in the Bay Area.

How did you survive on 40K a year in the Bay Area? I lived at home. Well, nothing's changed. That's the thing. In the Bay Area, rent would have been $40,000 a year. Yeah. It would have been $2,500 a month. It was a little cheaper back then.

The whole tech scene hadn't. exploded quite yet. Like Facebook really started to explode after 2014, I would say, is when like all the developments started to happen and rent prices started to go crazy. So in 2010, it was still okay. It was still like manageable, but I still didn't want to move out because I'm only making 40K a year. As a financial advisor, I made like 50K a year.

So a step up. A step up. Yeah. Yeah, but not by much. And then even after I was licensed, it was still 50K a year. And then they wanted me to get clients in and start making more through commissions. So mutual funds, they have expense ratios and, you know, the financial advisor gets paid a percentage of the mutual funds that you sell. And it's usually just mutual funds like VTI, but wrapped differently with a higher expense ratio that, you know, someone pays for because they want the service or they want someone to guide them through the market, if you will.

So is that what most financial advisors do? They just find other like index funds and then kind of wrap it in a mutual fund-esque type thing. I'm not, yeah. And then slap on an expense rate. But the reason why they can justify doing that is by finding people and presenting them to it in a service where you basically, you're the financial advisor to be the person that takes the action of investing and basically guaranteeing, you'll be fine for the most part. Right. When I was at Merrill Lynch, I'm not going to speak for all financial advisors, but I would say at Merrill Lynch, there was one guy who was doing very well for himself. And he says, I don't really manage portfolios.

I manage expectations. And so he was just on the phone with clients all the time managing their expectations for what the portfolio should return. And that's essentially what they were doing is kind of like picking funds, you know, let's say the lazy three fund portfolio. They would just kind of pick that for a client. Obviously, you want to tailor it to their risk tolerance and their time horizon and all that good stuff. But essentially that was the investing piece. And then they also offered like planning. So like retirement planning, estate planning, five to nine plans, all that sort of thing.

So it was like an all in one service. But I would say for the most part, if you're just going to a financial advisor to invest, you'd probably be better off doing yourself with like, VATI or VTI or a robo advisor like Wealthfront for example. Like we just find. Yeah. And that's what you kind of notice with like millennials and maybe even younger is that they're more willing to do it themselves. But I would say the older generation still likes a financial advisor.

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19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connets Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. I think a lot of it is just calming people down, making sure they don't sell and they keep investing. Because I would imagine how many people in 2020 were like, we got to sell everything.

The market's going down. And then the financial advisors tell him, no, don't worry. Don't worry, we got to buy more. What do you mean, buy more? I bet it was a lot of just, you know, calming. The stock market just flipped. Yeah. I just saw Graham's video.

The stock market's about to reverse. And they got to say, you know, did you watch the end, though? He said buy and hold index funds. Oh, I didn't make it that far. I only looked at the title thumbnail. Yeah. Yeah, so that was my financial advisory period. And then I, the next gaming company I worked at was called Machine Zone.

and Machine Zone created that video game called Mobile Strike and Game of War. They used to have these Super Bowl commercials with Arnold Schwarzenegger and like Kate Upton. Do you not remember those? Yeah. And that was a really well-funded company. But I started off doing quality assurance for them. So very similar to customer support.

I was making like $16 an hour. And then I started doing LiveOps. So LiveOps is something very different. It's basically optimizing in-game packages based on the hour to sell the most revenue possible to the gamer at that time. And that was paying, I think my first salary was 75K year. So this was now, yeah, it was a big step up. And then six months after that, it was like, it got increased to 90.

And then six months after that, I was making like 120. But what exactly were you doing? So imagine like a mobile video game. Do you play Clash of Clans or? I did back in school. Candy Crush, for example. They have those offers that when you first sign in, you can buy a package, like an in-game package of items.

Sure. And that stuff is not just random. that's all backed by data analytics, by, you know, A, B tests, by everything that you can imagine, because they want to figure out what's going to get people to spend the most amount of money. And so every hour to have a real-time chart of the revenue for that company, for that game, almost by the minute. So it's almost like looking at your YouTube analytics, like you're seeing how many views per minute are coming in, but instead you see revenue.

And so when you're looking at that, you're like, okay, right now this package that I'm running on this game is making this, this hour about 100K. Let me try to make a package for the next hour that I'll run at the top of the hour so like let's say it's 12 p.m. right now. I'll make a package that starts at 1 p.m. And I'll try to get people

more enticed to buy that second package. At the same time that package is going, you can run an in-game event to really incentivize people to buy that first package or that package that you're showing. And then you can look at the data analytics for all the user balances.

So like, oh, this user doesn't have enough coal or this user doesn't have, The majority of users don't have enough, like wood, for example, just an in-game item. And so then you can sell them the wood with an event that requires a lot of wood to beat the event, if that makes sense. Wow. So you're using like user. That's genius. So you're using user balances, the data there.

Then you're crafting a package that exactly matches that event. And oftentimes the package would have just enough wood, but not enough wood to finish the event. And that was basically how that company monetized very well. Oh my gosh. And so I could change these packages on an hourly basis, and I was doing that for like a year straight. But it was almost a 24-7 job. How much were they making?

At its height, I think we made, one game made $110 million in a month. Oh, my gosh. It was about like $3 to $5 million a day. And if it was under three, the CEO at the time would get really pissed. No way. It was the team. The team started out with just me and another guy. Well, actually it was me and like two other guys.

My boss and like another guy at first. And then it really started to expand. By the time I left, it was a team of like 20. And almost every mobile video game company has a live ops team now. And maybe not Clash of Clans. Clash with Clans is in Finland. They do things a little bit differently. They probably just have one or two guys running it.

But a lot of the video games now have like massive teams because it makes a big difference in bottom line. But the thing is you have to manage it 24-7. So we had like these weird random night shifts. I'd have to get up at 4 a.m. sometimes to run the events until like 12. And then then I would go into work and then I'd stay there all day. And it was a very like FaceTime culture. Like you wanted to spend a lot of time in there. So that was from 2014 to 2016.

And that time flew by like that. Like I don't even remember it. Like it was so fast. Did that not make you want to get into the mobile video game space? No, it didn't really feel like real money. Just like, you know, like anything, you get kind of numb to it. And you kind of don't really put the numbers together. But yeah, it was a bit.

I mean, it was a big company. It did really well. It was valued at like $5 to $10 billion at one point. It eventually did come crashing down a little bit. And they got bought and they got bought by App Lovin. Have you heard of that company? App Loven is a mobile game studio and they IPOed like last year or something like that. Oh my gosh.

How did they get acquired for? They actually got acquired for like, I think it was like $700 million. So it was worth $5 to $10. But then like some macro events happened. Like they couldn't get the funding to like. like raise at that valuation. Then they got acquired for $700 million after everything was going down. And the initial investors or all the investors put it $800 million into the company.

So it's underwater. So all my stock was worthless after that. Really? And that happens to a lot of tech companies where they raise so much money to scale as quickly as possible. But if they don't get acquired for above what they raise for, then all the common stockholders, aka the employees, they get wiped out. Yeah, because they got to pay back everyone else. Yeah, they pay off the debt first.

so they pay off the C team to like transition the company wow they don't actually pay you know a lot of the common stockholders don't get anything where you still work there and and in that case they gave the people that still worked there the new shares of app 11 so they did pretty well actually oh my gosh what do you think led to their downfall there were a few things I think they pushed really too hard on monetization like it was a team that was really incentivized to make a lot of money and so if they weren't hitting their revenue targets based on the invests investors, you know, expectations, the team would push harder and like basically you can inflate a game. What that means is like if you keep pumping resources into a game, like if I just make

two trillion wood in that wood example, then wood becomes valueless, right? Just like anything. So you have to balance in-game economics with what you're selling. And if like you're just pumping the, because you want to sell more, you just pump. Right. You can give crazy deals. Yeah, you can get crazy deals. Yeah. And then there was one exploit or exploit where like, users could switch their app country to like, I was gone at this point, but users could switch their app country to like Egypt or something

and get a $100 pack for like $15. And it was known as like the bug sale or something like that. Like it looked like a bug so like people were buying it. Wow. But essentially like it was a team with like bad, I guess, incentives to try to hit revenue. And then that bug occurred and they kept pushing it because they thought it was making them revenue,

but it was just eroding the game. Oh my gosh. And so eventually that game kind of like, slowly falls off. A typical mobile strike or game of war. Those typical games have like a three to five year life cycle. So after like, yeah. I think this also circles back to ethics.

Like did it ever feel weird to make events that, oh, like you don't have enough resources, so you got to buy more or, you know, because at that point, are you losing the vision of the game? Yeah. provide entertainment? Yeah, I think so. I mean, the games weren't really designed to be, in my opinion, fun. Like, I didn't really have a great time playing them, but they attracted a really hardcore user base that was not afraid to spend money.

Wales. And whales make up most of the revenue of any mobile game, right? Just like at a casino, the top 1% probably makes up their entire revenue. Why does whales spend so much money? There's just, like, a certain cohort of person. So, like, if you acquire 100 paid users, like, they're going to pay in the game, like the top one or two percent will spend the most. Like they'll make up your entire revenue stack.

So like, it's kind of like the 80, 20, 20% of the people. It was like that of whales. Like there was one whale. It's like the son of like some sort of like Dubai billionaire or something like that. I thought you meant people from Wales. No. Jack are you meant your host people?

Jack is so adorable. Jack was like, wow, those people are from whales. That was a Jack moment. That was a Jack moment. Straight over my head. Wow. That was like quintessential jackly. Oh my God.

Holy cat. I wouldn't admit that. I just roll with the punches. I had to, man. Why you have to? You didn't have to. I'm Welsh. So that's why.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm like super well. That explains why you're spending so much money on the game. That makes sense. Mobile games. So there was a son or a daughter of a billionaire in Dubai, and she basically spent like $3 million in the game. And she was the biggest whale.

She just had so much money I forget what her name was But then there was also another really rich Billionaire or something in Dubai And you could track their locations If they allowed it in the app And this guy would only be at beach clubs In the Mediterranean Sea

And just like buying these $100 packs all day And he spent like a million dollars too At that point can you reach out to them personally And invite them and be like hey They wanted to They're like this guy's great He's literally saving our Yeah

Yeah they spent I would do that I'd fly them out Like give them as much what does they want to? You spend a million dollars to get unlimited everything in the game. Like it becomes no longer

a challenge anymore. Was she the best player in the game? Yeah. Yeah, it was a pay to win game. I mean, I mean,

there are some games that are not paid a win. For example, League of Legends, like you just get skins, like you need skill. And there are games where you just spend as much money

and you become the most powerful being in the planet. I wonder what she's thinking now, though, especially after the games, like falling out of relevant. Yeah, you get bored of it. I'm sure she has so much money.

Okay, that's a fair point. Oh my gosh, three million bucks. She's probably Ron Rubet. Yeah. She made all it back. Steak. Yeah, so that was my income trajectory.

I made 140K my last year there. And then after that, I started my own business. And then those two years, I probably made 65K each. And then maybe 50K in 2020. But then in, you know, in 2021 with YouTube and stuff, that grew a lot. So what are we talking? I would say like 200. 200.

Yeah, 200. Maybe like if you add in my investment income, it was probably a little bit more. But yeah. I feel like I could make way more money if I just did more sponsors. It's something I'm kind of thinking of tinkering with this year. It's like adding in the right sponsors. Like I would still do some sponsorships. Don't get me wrong here.

Like I would do some. But I'm not like, for a long time I didn't want to put any YouTube ads in the videos. Yeah. Just like kind of like Andre. And I think that. as long as the reason I'm putting the ads in is like, or sorry, as long as the sponsor is the same consistent one over time, I'm okay with that.

I just don't want to send the wrong message where I'm like sponsored by Robin Hood one day, Fidelity the next, you know, Schwab the third day. Yeah. Well, that's why they have the clauses in there that says you're exclusive in that category. Right. You talk to me before this podcast, but you were talking about how it is to be single. You know? Yes, I am single.

Do you think that there's any correlation between living with your father and also being single? Maybe subconsciously. I think subconsciously, yes. Yeah, I think probably it's in the back of my mind for sure. I'm also pretty picky. And I also maybe am, I'm not good at dating multiple people at once. So, like, I always had a hard time, like, if one person, if I was dating one person, like, trying to find other people to date. And I think what happens is I get really over-invested in that one person.

And that's a turn off. Right. because I'm just like, I'm ready to go. I'm like, hey, I really like you. Like, let's hang out all the time. But when you're dating, you kind of want to take it a little bit slower. And you really just try to, like, connect with that person and learn more about them. And I feel like I can't even be myself into, like, the fourth date.

So, like, a lot of times I don't even get to the fourth date. Put it that way. Do you think that it's usually the girls not reaching out back to you for the second date or they're ghosting you? Or is it you being too picky? So, like, which side of the... It's probably both. Yeah, I've had many, my fair share of, like, people that don't reach out after that. I think the issue is that it takes you four dates to open up.

I think it takes even three, even two is too much. You need to be pretty open on the first date, I think. And the cure to that, yeah, just be, well, not like nervous or not like, you know, or not like putting on a bit more of like a facade, not a facade, I don't know, but, but, you know, yeah, your guard up going into it just like, hey, this is me. And I think the cure to that is going on a lot of date. It's back to back to back. So you know what?

Like you did, 30 TikToks and 30 days, 30 days and 30 days and 30 days. Or even five a week, Monday through Friday, every night. I just say, you know, I'm going to go out to dinner. Yeah. Every night. I'd like that. And just. Be expensive.

Jack, do you want to be the first? First date? Yeah. But here's the thing. There'll be, I mean, I don't know how you coordinate that. Realistically. But you'll get a sense very quickly. what you're looking for and you'll be the picky one because you'll know like, oh, I don't like

when, you know, people who do this and I prefer this and I like that. Right. You'll know so fast that, you know, after the 10th one, it'll just be like, I've got to do another one of these. And then you're yourself. Yeah, yeah. And I think for me, like, even on this podcast, I don't really feel 100% authentic. No offense.

Not because of you guys, but because the cameras are on and stuff like that, like even on my own channel, it's like really hard to like, for me. me to show my real self. The personality a little bit sometimes. Yeah, yeah. And I think I like, especially on a date, you know, I'm like, I'm trying to be as positive as I can be. I'm like pretty optimistic.

But it really takes a long time to get to know somebody. I don't think you need to be positive. I think you just embrace how every feeling. You're having a bad day. I'm having a bad day. I got a headache right now. But here I am. Yeah, my steak's undercooked.

But, you know, I'm not. 10 out of 10. That's something I would say, though. Like, hey, like, I'm really sorry 10 out of 10. I mean, I do that. You're not single then, man. I know. Macy,

Macy knows that. She knows if I walk in, she's like, I was it a 10? I'm like, yeah, I was a 10 today. She's like,

anything I could do? I'm like, no. I did title thumbnail. I tried. There's nothing you can do to solve the way I'm feeling right. No, there's nothing.

Nothing you could do. It's ruined. Rewant. Rewant. All right. I'll try that next time. And one thing that's held me out with my confidence,

a little bit at least, is the abundance mentality. So like, I find myself, the more dates I go on, even if I'm not having a great time or I don't mesh very well with the person. I'm like, okay, you know what? I've been on, let's say, three dates in the past three weeks. That's an abundance, right? And it definitely

helps my confidence, which helps my personality shine through a little bit more. But I have the same issue that you do. It's really hard to act yourself with someone that you're, it's kind of like performative, right? You kind of have to be like the perfect person. So, well, it's like stage right. It's like stage fright. You just you get it over with. And then the more experience you have, the less anxious you feel. Yeah. So yeah, that's where I'm at. Yeah. With that. Yeah. Are you what, Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, what not? I had Hinge for a while. I've kind of, like, stopped it just because it was giving me more anxiety than, like,

having it on. Really? That makes sense? Yeah, like, I was always, like, nervous about it or I'd check it too much. I get kind of distracted. Do you ever get people, like, recognize you and they'd be like, whoa, I got my stock advice to you? Yes, that does happen.

That does happen. I think that actually led to me getting, like, a video date once during the pandemic, but then she got on the date and she just like, tell me about being a TikToker. Like, I just wanted to match with you to. Oh, gosh. That would upset me. Yeah, I know. She had a King Charles Cavalier, too.

I was so excited. Oh, wow. I was already thinking about my future with them, but, you know. Oh, my gosh. I was kidding. But, but, so yeah, that does happen. Yeah. But I think it's still a net, net positive thing.

Like, yeah. It's like reputable and people Google you and you're like, okay. Like, he's like a normal human being and they can see what you look like on video. So, like, it's helpful. Yeah. I don't think it's a downside thing. No, no. Yeah.

It's tough. And that same stuff happens to me. There was this girl that I've been DMing with for a while now, probably like two weeks. And it was actually pretty lengthy messages. And she, her Instagram profile was private. But she did have a gallery, right? Like a link in her bio and I tapped it and she's a model. And I was like looking at all the photos and everything.

Like dang, this girl's very pretty. And we were talking a lot, right? Like a lot. Yeah. And then I finally send the follow request and she accepts it. Second photo now. It's like her and her boyfriend. She's talking about how much she loves him

And I'm like, we've been talking for like a while now In fairness, was she talking like in a flirtatious way? Wow. Do you tell the boyfriend this? I mean, I'm just gonna Yeah, you gotta leave it. Yeah, I'm gone. That's interesting.

So sometimes that happens, you know what I mean? Or you're just too good looking, I don't know. Well, I don't think she was in it for that. Okay. But yeah. And shady. Shady, man. It's crazy stuff out there.

Do you have people reach out to you because you work with Graham, for example? All the time. Yeah. Well, actually, I wouldn't say. all the time, but a decent amount. People will be like, hey, man, I got this question. Can Graham answer this question or whatever? I mean, I mean women.

Do women reach out to you to date because they're like, oh, Graham? I thought people reach out to me for Jack. Oh, yeah. All right. But I don't, yeah, I don't want to throw anyone under the bus. But that's funny. Not the best options. Oh, are you talking about Graham posted on his Instagram one time.

He wanted me to go on a date with someone. Yeah. I didn't specify the gender. Okay. So, no, I wasn't even talking about that, but you go ahead. Oh, you were. Okay. I was saying to something else.

Yeah, he posted on his Instagram because we had this idea to bring a first date on the podcast and we could talk to this person, right? This girl, ideal. I remember you had like the episode where he had like three women blindfold or he was blindfolded. Oh, this is way before that. This is our first one. We just started the podcast. Yeah.

One idea was, yeah, let's get. Yeah, we wanted to do get Jack a Tinder date on the podcast. Got it. But we felt on Tinder, it's, we, Jack wasn't having good luck, getting someone from Tinder on the pod,

like, and going over to a stranger's house on, as well. Yeah. Yeah. So, how old are you, Jack?

23. Oh, you're young. Yeah. But I posted on Instagram, and I, I think I showed a picture of you. Yeah,

like, hey, if anyone, like, looking for a date. Yeah. And turns out, he got a lot of swipes, swipes,

right? A lot. Like, like, it was probably up for 15 or so minutes, and he maybe got 20 or so swipes. Wow. All dudes, not a single girl.

So he didn't specify in posting if I'm looking for women, but I was and I still am. So we just took it down. And that was that we just wanted to take it down. I like it. I did like it. I didn't happen. Took it down. I like that.

Yeah. No, the other one was someone who became very persistent, wanted to go on a date with Jack and messaged me and said she messaged Jack and Jack wasn't getting back to her. So she messaged me. And then I brought her up to Jack. And I looked and I said, Jack, she seems kind of normal. And you might want to, you know, reach out. And Jack was like, no, I'll do it.

I'll do it. Jack never reached out. But it was just the incessant just like, hey, what's going on? What's going on? Like, just the follow-ups got too much. Like, a follow-up a week later, like, fine. But when it was like multiple. Multiple follow-ups.

And then I'm like, wow, if she's sending me messages and I'm not responding. And she's sent me like five or six in a few days, like, that's too much. That's too much. I'm like, all right, Jack, dodged a bullet there. Okay. Too much. It seems like you've got a lot of options out here, too.

Vegas is a virgining place. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, I'm rethinking this whole thing now with Jack. I'm thinking it's better he's single. There's more time to work.

His focus is going to be... But he just plays ping pong. Yeah, I'm not the type. Like, Graham, I think, is a type where you find someone he invests himself all the way in it. I'm very much not that person. Interesting. I don't fall in love quickly.

I find someone and I like. them and then we become friends first and we're friends for a while but I also don't really want to spend like so much time with this person like my last girlfriend I probably hung out with her three two to two times a week maybe I think that's and that was like what she's your girlfriend that was high school no that was college that was college yeah that was like three months of high school and then oh that's right you're right you're right yeah yeah okay so one thing you brought out before this podcast was that you have a chunk of change your city yeah Here's how you're investing.

Yeah. Yeah. So I have enough for a down payment on a house in the bay. And that's just sitting in cash. And I have a good chunk invested in the market as well. That's just kind of, I'm still DCAing into that. But I don't know what to do. I don't know if I should buy an investment property.

I don't know if I should buy a single family home to live in myself. You know, I just live in my dad's house. Or should I just go rent somewhere in San Francisco and just try to continue to build my income with YouTube and TikTok? and all that stuff. Kind of just holding because I don't really know what's going to happen to the economy. And I think we'll know a lot more in six months, especially with, you know how like the first inflation report in November of 2021 was like 6% or something?

I think in November of 2022, we'll have that one year data of like, okay, how has inflation been for the past from 2021 to 2022 when it really started to ramp up? And that's when I think we'll know a lot more about interest rates inflation, the economy, what's going to happen? 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 flame thrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the. Every Day with Amazon. Interesting. So are you set on moving out? You're going to move out either way? I think so. I think so this summer. 100%. Yes. Okay. I would say it's probably better for you to rent

than buy something up there. I think when you look at the values in the Bay Area, renting almost always makes more sense unless you're buying and planning to keep this house for the rest of your life. It's probably in the short term, renting is better. Also gives you a lot more mobility. Where in the future, if you want to up and leave or go travel, do whatever, you're not going to be stuck and saddled with a house that you're going to have to rent out that probably is not going to cash flow. So I'd say you're better off renting. Yep.

Good mobility. And plus your income's going to fluctuate so much for these next like five, ten years. Yeah. I'd rent. As far as the rest of the money, do you want to be a landlord? Not really, no. I know you're a landlord. How do you like it?

It was great in the beginning. Now, yeah, I have property manager. If I could, I mean, I don't want to say if I could snap my fingers and just be done with it all. But right now at this point in time, I want. nothing to do and just like my brain my capacity is filled and so like anything at this point now I'm now I'm not have to like I know I forget things just because I have no more space so like something is forgotten but yeah the properties in comparison to everything else right now they make very little in terms of

the percentage right so it's just it's a mental drain but they're all rented thankfully and you know it's good enough a pilot yeah but just thinking like uh you know I'm making sure the property taxes are due and if I get a notice in the mail about like insurance coming out like I'm the one he deals yeah deal with it so little things that add up little things that add up uh so actually the one i've enjoyed so far was i invested in a syndicate with brandon turner and uh in a mobile home park and he takes care of everything that's good and i loved that because it's like a stock that you know he's doing all the work and i just that's kind of like a reet right in essence but uh you know it's a

syndicate where I'm involved, at least in the investor's side. I've liked that so far. I mean, I wouldn't dump everything into that. But, you know, I value simplicity so much right now. And that's why I've just like the index funds. And that's why I say for you at this point in time when you're so busy, at least with index funds, it's so you don't have to do anything. You don't have to stress. If the market goes down, it's an index fund. It's like the whole market goes down. It's not just, you're not doing anything wrong. That's why I like about index funds. Yeah, the other thing I want to bring up was that my, chunk of change can buy a very

crappy place in the Bay Area, right? It can buy like a condo, a one bedroom little mini thing that I would never live in for like the rest of my life. I live in in it for like a year, maybe. Or it's going to be a big fixer-upper, right? How much, how much cash you're talking about here?

Oh, like half a mill. Oh, yeah, I would say just dollar cost average. Yeah, dollar cost, yeah, I would say I have $100,000 in cash at all times just sitting in a high-yield saving and then the other $400, that's just dollar cost average. Okay. Thanks.

So simple. I'd rent. I'm just going to rent. Yeah. Yeah. Most likely. There's no sense in you buying something like that. I would say when you're ready to settle down, you know, maybe have a family or something like that and you know where you want to live and you're like, this is where I want to live for 15 years. Then buy. Okay.

But until then, yeah, I think mobility. Fair enough. Fair enough. What about you, Jack? What do you think? For you? Yeah, do you agree with Graham's comments? Yeah, I agree with Graham.

I think you shouldn't be totally closed off. to the idea of being a landlord. But also, I wouldn't consider buying too much right now. So I think, right, yeah, I would say just dollar cost averaging into an index fund, probably just be the most ideal thing. But also, when you are sitting on that cash that is invested, always, you know, if you are considering being a landlord, just like studying some deals and whatnot. When did you close in your house, Jack?

October 11th. October 11th, 2021. Last year. Kind of interesting. That was almost near the peak of the market. your house is a Libra wasn't it the market has still gone up

so I bought my house just under $600,000 and the Zestimate says it's like I don't know 670 or 680 or 680 but I'm not accurate but I'm just saying

it's odd you know because the stock market peaked in November of 2021 so it's kind of weird that jack buys and then 30 days later the market peaks I'm just saying

I'm just saying hey you know when he sold Robin Hood it pops the next, like an hour later. So is he the counter trade? Is that what you're trying to say? Yeah. Are you saying I should just empty everything into the stock market right now?

If you want it to crash. If I want the world to end. Yeah. Oh, wait, empty. You mean like sell off all your mess or? Like put all of my money, all of my cash now in the stock market. In the stock market, it's going to crash. Yeah, please don't check.

But if you pull out all your money out of the stock market, it'll go up. Yeah. Well, we'll see what happened with that. Yeah. We tested the Robin Hood theory. I've been wanting to test this first. the longest time and it proved to be true. Part of me wants to see, like,

Jack has to investigate, like, a serious, he can't just like, you know, here's a hundred bucks. It's got to be considerable on money. I've already lost so much money on Robin Hood, man. It's like, that was my contribution. Okay, that was the case study. Jack, how about this? Can we do a test?

I think this would be really fun. Fun for who? They'll probably have to do a midweek. We'll probably have to do a midweek. I want, I'd say you invest $10,000 into, and we'll just do a one month or like, you know, one week or something like that.

$10,000 into something, and then we track it the next week just to see if it's up or down from the day you bought it. And we're going to put the theory to that. Now, 10 grand, so chances are in a week, plus or minus 10%. I mean, the very most.

And that's like a general, that would be a crazy week. You don't know that, man. It could be 40% for all I know, man. I have a question for a gram. Yeah. What's your 5, 10 year plan here? No clue.

No clue. No clue. I know I wanted to do the podcast. One year plan is to continue. at the same trajectory as I have been. So three main channels a week? There are three main videos on the main channel. We've talked about this before,

but my original goal was to go down to two videos a week on the main channel. And I became, I was so used to doing three. And I was like, oh yeah, eventually I go down two. But then every week I did three, I'm like, yeah, I got an extra video out there. I got an extra video out today. Feels good.

Yeah. And so I want to now continue that throughout this year because now everything for me is like, oh, it's a bonus, an extra video and I'm still doing it. I want to continue, Because I know building up this, but I would not be able to build up the momentum again.

I think I've worked so hard to build up that stamina for three videos a week. As soon as I go into two, I'm never going to be able to get back to that day. Right. What do you think about the future? Do you think the podcast could be a really scalable format for you five years down the line?

Yeah. I would, yeah. One day I could see myself putting like 80% of the effort in the podcast and treating the podcast as I did the main channel. Like not that I don't treat the podcast, you know, well, but it's just my my focus has always been main channel first before anything like that was that's still my my biggest focus is that everything else is secondary to that main channel but at some point I could see that switching I don't know when but I'm getting better now if I I think there's been

maybe two two times this year where I've not posted and on the main on the main channel I think in terms of like three times a week so I missed two episodes and I think I it's easy for me like before I'd have panic attacks. Like, I'm missing an episode. It was like, I would, I wouldn't miss an episode. I know how that feels. Yeah. Yeah.

So I wouldn't. But there was, you know what? It was on a holiday. I remember this. It was on a labor day. A labor day. I didn't post that day. Even though I had a video ready because it was a holiday.

And just the amount of nerves I have. Be like, oh my gosh, I post on Friday. My next video is not going to post them to Wednesday. It freaked out. And so I never missed a video. So, but yeah, I missed two and I didn't feel bad about it. So I'm moving in that direction, but I'm still, you know, I want to post my three. Okay.

I like that. Jack, what do you think of his plan? I think it's a fantastic plan. I think he should go all in on the podcast. No, I like his plan a lot. I think it makes sense. One thing that is a little concerning is when he says, oh, I'll never be able to go back up to three. And when he does describe things as like things such as forgetting certain things because he feels like his, his,

his brain's capacity is already full. That sounds like burnout to me very clearly. And I'm worried that you are still sprinting and it's just straight into a wall. Well, no. So what happened is that I've taken on too many obligations. I've said yes.

Yeah, you have a lot of stuff. Yeah, I've said yes to every opportunity. Not every opportunity. I've said yes to almost to every opportunity that's good. And these are great opportunities. And I've said yes to them because I'm like, I'd be stupid to turn this down.

And like, I don't know how long this is going to last for. This opportunity is here. I'm going to take it. Like creator properties with Ryan Panetta. Correct. I mean, there's been a whole bunch of them. They're all good. But I think mentally I have space for like three.

Even though 10 of them are like home runs. But like I could focus mentally on so many things and there's like three of them. So I think I said yes to too many things and that really affected me. So like I've been slowly working on scaling back. I've been slowly cutting things not because they're bad, but just because it's like mentally. Yeah, low ROI. No, not even. It's just, it's more of just the mental drain.

Like some of these things are really high ROI. Yeah, I think the brain only has a finite amount of space, right? So like, if you're, if you're thinking about ROI in a vacuum, yeah, you know, the mentorship group probably makes you X amount of dollars. But if it's taking up that mental space, that mental space can't be used for something else. Yeah, and it's tough. That is higher ROI.

Because I do look at every hour of my day. I'm like, this hour is worth that, this amount of money. And I calculate that, like, everything I do per hour, that is the opportunity cost. So if I go and have a coffee with someone in the afternoon, that's a very expensive coffee. So like I got to prioritize everything else. And like, if I take an hour off, it's not just that hour. It takes me three hours to get back in the zone.

I know exactly how you know. So it's, yeah, even I forget what it was. And I've started looking at this. If I answer a text, even though that text might be just a simple thing, then I'm waiting for that person to respond back to that text. I'm keeping an eye on it. It takes my focus away even just a little bit. And that little bit of focus,

it takes me the 30 minutes to get back to where I was in that zone. Yeah, the zone is tough to get in. The flow state. The flow state. I'm in the flow state for like four hours, five hours of the day during certain hours. And anything that takes away from that, I just, I can't do it. So that's why it's kind of so rigid. Flow state.

Scripting or planning? Planning. Yeah. And then I could only film before 9 p.m. Because after 9, I get tired. Yeah. I can see that. Yeah.

And it's not as energetic and not as fun. So, certain filming times, certain planning times. So. Yeah, I'm the same way. I got to film like,

usually afternoon. That's when I film. Yeah. Like, between 12 and three. Like, that's when I'm the most energetic. Yeah.

I felt my best filming times are usually four to 8 p.m. Ah. Right now. Evenings. Yeah, it's right now. Yeah.

It's right. Early mornings, it's too like, I feel groggy. I feel groggy. I feel like, my eyes. So, okay.

Fair. Well, I think it's a cool plan. Yeah. I would love to see you guys do more, more podcast stuff, like, or just double down on podcast stuff. I think there's only so much we could do on the podcast, because you don't, you can't oversaturate. So right now, oh, we just started doing this. So when this posts, we will already be doing this, but we're going to twice a week on the podcast.

So once, once every Sunday, and then once every Wednesday. Okay. Yeah. Cool. So I don't know if we could do more than that, realistically without like, you know, without, you know, without overdoing it. So I'd say... I guess you would focus on, like,

higher quality people, guests. I think so. So I think getting... Celebrities or something. Yeah, we definitely want to grow the roster of guests. We would love to get into, like, TV actors. Yeah, mainstream. Taylor Swift.

Yeah. If you're watching Taylor, come on the podcast. It's interesting, though, the downside with a lot of those people, those, that they have PR teams. Right. And they're so strict.

They don't want them going on it. It's a liability. They come on the iced coffee. hour they talk about something it's like hey it's bad uh gets them in trouble so uh yeah it's it's a lot more easy to get someone on um youtube to come on and talk about yeah yeah they don't what are the repercussions nothing yeah so okay but yeah that's our goal so if you're watching this by the way and you have any recommendations or you have a connection to someone who you think would be amazing on the ice coffee hour uh we'll link to all the information down below in the description

where you could either submit an application or, yeah, make the connection. We would love that. I think you should do like professional golfers, man. There's so many that live in Las Vegas because of that TPC that's over here. And they make a lot of money. As we're getting like deeper into this,

we're starting to realize more. It's like not as easy as just getting a cool guest on. They have to fit this like this mold of just like what will do well and what comes across on camera because especially with, I don't want to say a lot of athletes, but you know, they're really good at that sport, but when you put him in front of a camera speaking,

it's just you really have to like pull information out or it's, you know, you want it to be exciting. I think some of the best guests that we've had, Houston, he runs royalty exotics, put him in front of a camera, oh my gosh, he lights up. Yeah. Like, he's more talkative and, like, tells better stories on camera. He's so good.

And then Brandon Turner. Brandon Turner is another great example. and Alex Romozy. Those are people you put them in front of the camera and they just bloom and it's so good. Like we don't even need to talk. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I love about Alex Formosie.

He just like, he just talks. He'd be like, go. And it's great stuff. Yeah, that was a really great episode. Yeah. Houston's the same way. You just talk. And he'll do the entire podcast himself.

It's so good. You want me to talk more? No, no, we just listen. We just listen. We just listen. I guess I could talk more. And then it's always, Jack, be like, wait, what do you say? Oh my gosh.

Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. You'll get at least one of those in every episode. And then it's me. How much was it? Oh, my gosh.

You want me to bring up a story? Sure. We love to. Okay. Go. The first time I was on the Graham Steffen's show. Yeah. Which was when I called in on TikTok.

I was actually a little bit disappointed after. And I felt a little sad because I felt like I looked up to Graham for so long. And, you know, I finally got to. on the podcast and I felt like the call was pretty short and just for the video and then like we didn't get to chat after. And I felt like we can maybe talk about this because it probably was a parissocial relationship on my side, right? But I felt like, you know, this is the guy I looked up to for so long and he was very short

with me. Not that you were short with me, but like you were just doing it for the show and then boom, hang up. And, you know, I was just starting to make YouTube videos. And at that moment, I remember being like so disheartened and like so sad. Oh, man. Okay. So I wanted to bring that up and confront Graham Steffick.

Yeah, I'm glad you did that. Yeah. But also to let you know that now I don't think that you meant any harm by that. And I know you a little bit more personally now, especially after we met at that care event. And I felt like, oh, like, this is, yeah, he's totally normal. It was just like he's busy. And like his time is worth is valuable. So like I could see why.

Yeah. Did we not talk? Because usually after every call, there's like a few minutes afterwards. Do we not? No, we didn't. No, you didn't do that usually. Yeah. No, you would just say, it would be before the call a little bit.

Oh, that was it. It was like a minute before. You know what it was? Jack would line up three to four calls at a time. And we would do them nine, nine, twenty, nine 40, ten. Got it. And we had to set these strict deadlines. Because otherwise.

Because we had scheduled calls with these people. Yeah, yeah. That was the difficult part with those calls is because sometimes if we would run over on one, the other person would be unavailable in the next one. Right. And so if they went over a certain time, We missed the next one, which then pushed the next one back. And pretty soon we're on, like, the third call.

I'm texting Jack. Like, hey, man, we got to move it to, like, one p.m. Does that work? Yeah, because you guys did text me and say, hey, I'll be, like, 10 minutes late. And I remember being like, okay, that's fine. Yeah. So that's probably what happens. Yes.

I'm just letting you know. That's what counts. And I told all my friends about it, and I was like, oh, like, Graham wasn't that nice to me? I never considered that people could develop, like you said paris social relationships with Graham. Of course. These calls. Yeah. Never thought of ice coffee hour.

Yeah. We just figured they just wanted. I'm going to call in and ask questions. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I think maybe as like a creator, you know, especially one on TikTok and like didn't really find my footing on YouTube yet. Like that's really, I was like hoping for a little bit of like mentorship or like, hey, you should try this or, you know, like you'll run into this problem.

Yeah. Like just avoid this. And so. But that was then. Got it. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. Yeah. Scheduling them back to back was difficult. It's like that's what made it where you had to like. like ended a certain time and immediately afterwards we'd call another person. Were you there

in person, Jack? You were. Yes. Some of these, you were there. Yeah, and Jack would be like looking at the time and texting the next question, we're going to be five minutes late. And then texting the person after that, be like, hey, we're going to be this time. I think you were texting me probably. For context, on the Graham-Stefons show, in the beginning, some of the first style of videos that we did was

people would call in, would provide financial advice. For entertainment purposes only. And they were paying for it. That was a big thing too. For these people. And he would just talk them through whatever financial or relationship, sometimes problems that they had. And we'd post those. And you were someone that called in a very long time ago.

Very true. And I just want to say like now being on a creator, on the creator side, we get a lot of requests. It's like the DMs are full all day with a bunch of questions. And I try to get to as many as they can. But now I kind of know like maybe where you were coming from. Yeah. Totally makes sense. Like any other, you know, issues you have with Graham?

Yeah. We may as well bring out all the issues. Yeah. The coffee was actually very good. It was very good. You got to say it's really good. Now for sale of bankrupt coffee.com. Yes.

How is that doing? Is that still not doing okay? I mean, we're not doing it for, we're not doing it for money. I mean, at this, at this point, like at the very beginning, prices were significantly lower. They're like 25% lower than they are now. Oh my God. Yeah. And it's our fault.

Like, yes, we could raise prices. But, you know, and we did a little bit. Like we had to, we raised prices enough to cover our own cost or that we're not a loss. It's doing just fine, but it's not something that we do for money. Does it sell well without you shouting it out? Correct. I mean, does it sell pretty good without you shouting it out? Oh, it does.

Yeah, it's doing if I, so I've, don't really shout it out. I have it as the banner below, below the main channel videos. You have that, like, YouTube thing. It's there. It does about $2 to $700 a day. that's great in sales consistently we have a 55% returning customer rate which is really really really high

and they get a discount too if they do the subscription so if I think it's like 15% 10 or 15% off if they agreed to the subscription shipping once a week or once a month or whatever so a lot of people have done that for the discount that's great for us too because at least we could kind of predict where the next sales are going to be

but it's good and then if I do a shout out and I'm talking like a main channel video we'll do anywhere between 50 and 100 grand of sales. So I usually have to give them a heads up and like, hey, I'm doing an update on this. Let's make sure we have enough. Have you noticed like every time you shout something out, the efficacy goes down? Or no? No.

But I've only shouted it out like three times or four times in the last two years. So it's rare. And usually those videos are more about like, hey, I'm not making money still. It's interesting. I find it. And people love it. The coffee for me, the best thing is the branding. Because everyone is like, you know, man, there's bankroll coffee.

No one has it. You, how's your rental property is doing? Yeah. Nobody care. How's the coffee? Because it's something that anyone could buy at any price point. They could get it. Well, here's what I was doing.

About the, you know how I asked you of the efficacy of the shoutout? Yeah. Well, eventually, I don't want to do that many sponsorships because what if one day I want to create a business on top of my YouTube business where every time I shout out, I can just get free customer acquisition. Right? Do you think it doesn't matter? No, I don't.

Load up the sponsors. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Because you got to think to every video, there's going to be a significant portion of them that have not seen your previous videos and are brand new. And so every time I post a video, you could see just like the new viewers who have never seen me before. It's shocking that when I post a video,

it's like, I'll say, what's up, Graham, it's guys here. And people are like, you made a mistake. And I'm like, I've been saying this for like two years. But they've either not watched the previous videos or they're brand new. And so that's why. sometimes you have to repeat certain topics because you're reaching a new audience that hasn't seen the old ones. Have you noticed your new audience or your new members declining or are they still growing like your new audience coming to you? Growing but not as fast as 2020. Like 2020,

I think was this 2020, 2020, 2021 was an anomaly year. I think January of 21 I gained 180,000 subscribers in one month. And that was new. That was because of GameStop and Dogecoin. And that just brought so many new people into into the investing space. is like we're entering a time of what should be normal. 2020 just like... Exploded. Yeah. And so just like you see the tech companies going up like 400%.

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Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. What do you think about like dead subs? Because like you definitely have some subs that don't watch you anymore. Yeah, right? Like they're just inactive. What's your opinion on that?

How do you get them back? Is there any way to get them back? I don't focus on that. Yeah. I mean, I would focus on the people that watch the content. And even for me, I subscribe to channels that I saw like five years ago. I don't really watch them, but it's the occasional video every now, and then I'll see, oh, what do they post?

Click on it and then I'll watch it. Interesting. Very few channels, I'll watch every single video. Very few. Do you worry about the view to subscriber ratio? No, I don't think about it. Okay. No, for finance, it's different than, you know.

Like Matthew Beam or Mr. Correct. Correct. Yeah. Shout out, Ryan. Finance, I would say, having a 10 to 15% view to subscriber ratio is really good. Okay. Less than 8% and it's bad.

Probably bad. I usually aim for about 10%. That's about for me. You feel bad when you put on an evergreen video and it's like a 10 out of 10 first day? Because I know it's going to be. So like those are the only 10s that are good. Correct.

I don't really care. Yeah, I posted a credit card video and it was so bad. Like it was a 10 out of like, of all the tens, that was the 10 if they did that. But that means your next 10 and your next nine won't be 10s. I agree. I do tell, well, I count some of those as like a 9 is still a 10. Yeah, I hear.

But we'll see what the credit card video is. is. Now it is a, it's a three. Congrats. So yeah, it's a three. Oh, it's a wild to be a two. So you could see just how much it underperformed in the very beginning. Oh yeah. Significantly. Yeah. Way below the curve. But, but I've gained 3,500 subscribers in that video, which is a lot. Usually I'll post a video and I'll gain 400 to 1,500 a video. Sometimes 2,000, 3,500 on this. And yeah. So for my channel, I don't have a lot of those. I mean, I have some evergreens like that,

but maybe I should post more of those just to get more of a stable ad sense revenue coming in because I don't really make that much on YouTube. Yeah. A bad idea. Yeah. I would do that. The other...

The other one that was really bad for me was this how to get a perfect credit score for $0. That was a 10 out of 10 and it became a 5. And it's still gaining about 3,200 views every other day. Search volume mostly, probably. And that's gained 3,000. So for me, the credit card videos, believe it or not, get the most subscribers. And high CPM.

And high CPM. Because the people that watch those videos have to search for them. Like, they're the ones how to get a credit score. Like, that's exactly what they want it. All right. Let's load up the credit card videos on the channel. They do so. You know, it's been a while since they've done a credit card video.

How about cards for like certain people, like Gen Z, millennials? Would you do that? No. Too niche. Yeah. I did a best credit cards from millennials. My worst performing video of the credit cards. So it's just better to do

Top 5 credit cards, 22, correct. Updated. And it's going to do so bad up front, but I think long term it'll be fine. I would do that. I would do, I loved your Metaverse video, by the way.

Thanks, he wrote that. Did you really? Yeah, he wrote most of it. Are you serious? Yeah, it was his first one. It was a banger. I loved it. Yeah, and the title came from Brian Jung

because it was very clickbait. Yeah. I felt really bad about that. And I also, this is something I want to talk about. I don't want to become a stock picker on YouTube. That's not how I was, taught to invest. And I definitely DCA still into the index funds.

And I felt like that video was a poor representation of my channel. Maybe not the first half where I talk about the metaverse, but the second half where we talk about the ETF and the two investments. Oh, man. It's the equivalent of like the gambling stuff. Yeah, by picking the way. Yeah. I watched that video too.

I liked it. Okay. Like I think there's an audience for people who want to try their luck and are just looking for a point in the right direction. I, yeah, I wouldn't, like for me, I wouldn't make those videos, but I do see the appeal because I watch those videos. And I don't buy them, but I find them interesting. I wasn't like pushing them to buy the stock.

I was just like, if you are interested, try this out. But still that's, I think it's thought-provoking. I always, as long as you go in and be like, hey, listen, I'm not doing this. I'm buying index fund. But if you're interested, this is a point in the right direction. These are the, I thought it was so interesting how they're involved in this and just the development of the metaverse. I loved your video.

Like, I liked it. I saw a lot of other Metaverse videos after that. And I was like, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Andre. Mind, yeah, how to be a Metaverse millionaire a year of my plan to be a member's billion or something like that.

I mean, I have no qualms with that. Like, I don't care at all. I would continue. Okay. But you had, but it's whatever's trending. And at the time, the Metaverse was like really trending. Yeah. If there's another subject that comes up at some point, I don't see any problems with that as long as

you're up front. Okay. Yeah. Thanks. Appreciate that. I still probably will go away from the stock picking thing, but. Yeah, as long as you say that you are just dollar cost averaging into index funds and stuff, but this is some other stuff you learned on the side, that's fine.

But you're also noticing as the stock market's been plummeting, there has been like disproportionately a lot of negative attention going towards those who have suggested individual stocks, whereas Graham, since he's always only shilled index funds, is completely fine during this. That makes sense. Yeah, it goes two ways. When everything's going up, I'm the idiot. And when everything's going down, I'm a genius. Yeah.

So. Okay. Fair. Humphrey, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. And glad you enjoyed the coffee. Loved it.

And you got to get your free stock down below in the description when you signed up for public using the code Graham. Have you done that yet? I think I, yeah, I think I've done that. Awesome, guys, go check out FTX, our beloved sponsor of this episode. They're great, guys. No fees whatsoever.

85% less fees than the competitors. Yeah, I'm not even sponsored by FTCs. I know. And $100 free dollars of FTAX, up to, When they do what? When they sign up using our link down below in the description, depending on how much you trade. Cool. And probably on Instagram guys.

So what I said, you guys. Thank you so much. And until next time. See you guys. Later. All.