The Iced Coffee Hour - Meet The Millionaire Bodybuilder Spending $200,000 Per Month

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

Get Extra today to start building credit with debit! https://extra.app/ICH  This episode we have on fitness YouTuber Bart Kwan and discuss how he grew his business to $200,000/month. Bart’s Fitness YouTube: https://youtube.com/user/bartkwan Add us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan https://www.instagram.com/alex_nava_photography Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w DOWNLOAD MY NEW FINANCIAL APP: https://hungrybull.page.link/graham 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/ Join the 2x weekly mentorship group: https://tinyurl.com/yaexko4o The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 Audio Equipment Used In Podcast: Rode NT1, Rodecaster Pro The YouTube Creator Academy:   Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF  For Podcast Inquiries, please contact [e-mail] *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Bart. Welcome back to the Ice Coffee Hour. And so far, this podcast had made $103,000, $103,700. Wow. There we go. Nice. And is that like a rolling tally that you guys keep about how much this podcast has made? It is.

We started that. Not our first. Ever since we were monetized. Yeah. We were saying how much we had made. It was fun in the very beginning because you would see such a big difference. between week three and like week five. What was week one like zero dollars?

Or pre-sold ads? We hit the ground running. Yeah, I think it was like a hundred bucks or sell in our first week. Okay. 200 bucks maybe. Something like that. I don't know. We got monetized pretty quickly.

And then everything after that, because we had such long episodes, I would put ads in the video. Perfect. I always say, I do the ads and I'll like load up the ads. And then I would show it to Graham and Graham be like, okay. Everything checks out except it needs 50% more ads. I would put ads in between Jack's ads. He does the same to me still.

So this is just on YouTube where you guys put on iTunes too. It's on everything. On everything, I see. So you're going to be everywhere. Perfect. So is the 103,000? Is that just like AdSense alone? Just AdSense.

That's awesome. Yeah, just adsense. And it's been about a year. It's been about a year in five weeks or so. And what's the point of adding that up? to motivate the viewers that they can get after? Listen, we're a finance channel. So we dive into the finances and get to the bottom of everything.

So I think part of that is just like we want to be up front with how much the podcast makes. You like to scratch the itch that the viewers probably have. They want to know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even if you don't have the it. You're still going to scratch it. That's one of the things that actually drew me to your channel. Like I'm always just looking at random things.

And then I think there's this one where it was showing your like your portfolio pretty much. I forgot how much it was, but you started off with your story of like when you're 18 or 19 got into real estate and you started stacking like real estate homes and like and the transparency of it, I think it's super cool because usually even if you have a close family friend that is someone in like finance or whatever, when you ask them like direct questions, they usually kind of give it to you bits and pieces or still kind of beat around the bush, but you never really get a clear idea of what you're supposed to do. So I always thought that was super cool. And I like that on this episode, you make $103,700. You got it. We want to make this about you, man. Okay. So tell us a little bit about yourself.

You're into bodybuilding. I got to get to your level at some point. You got to tell us not only how you got into this, how you built up a YouTube channel, a pretty substantial amount, how you've turned that into a business of bodybuilding, and then also how Jack and I could get in shape. And how the viewer, how we could get six-minute apps. And how you're here, because you're our name. neighbor. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So yeah. It started off in 2007. In my junior year of college,

me and my buddy, we didn't really quite know what YouTube was just yet. I was about to transfer from a J-C to UCLA. My other buddy was also transferring from a community college into a four-year. And he sent me this video on YouTube and he drew like two eyeballs on his chin and he filmed just this much upside down. I remember that. Yeah. And he was, yeah, he was like telling this sad story about how his, a dog died,

but it's, it's a comedy video. Yeah. He sent it to me and through aim. And I thought it was like the most. Aim. AOL instant messenger. Yeah.

And I thought it was the most, I love that. Yeah. I thought it was the most hilarious thing I've ever seen. So I recorded another video called Uncle Sam gets jacked. And I did it in my bathroom and I poured contact solution on my eyes, pretending like I was crying. And I sent it back to him.

And we thought, YouTube was like photo bucket where it's just a place that stores content and both of our videos started getting like 300 views 500 views 800 views and then we're like oh shit there's other people that are watching this that's not leaked the video that's just not between you and me you know and then we'd read the comments you guys got to make more and it's one of those things where I think like the stars aligned where we're in the middle of transferring so there's not much to do that summer so we just decided to dedicate that summer to making all kinds of like weird comedic sketches and we actually really fell in love with it so we created a channel called just kidding films and that's 2007 and it's

like all comedy sketches and so fast forward to probably like um maybe like 2011 or 2012 after all of our shoots like we were shooting at least what we were trying to shoot was like key and peel a chapel show type stuff so there's high production there's always locations and cast and stuff and after we shoot we always have like these parking lot discussions with our friends and we're just cracking up for like four hours and we're like we need to shoot this so we created a roundtable talk show called just kitty news both of those channels ended up getting into like a million each and from that point on um people have always seen me like i guess look a little bit more built so they're like oh like barb like put out your fitness programs.

How do you train? And I'm like, you know, I'm not a personal trainer. I just like lifting for myself. But I was like, you know what? I can show you, I guess, my journey. So I started a fitness channel just to kind of have people come along. And that kind of started to take off a little bit. And I was like, you know what?

I feel like I'm pretty strong in the gym. Like how strong am I compared to like the rest of the state or whatever? So I signed up for this thing called power lifting. I didn't even really know what it was. I just wrote like Google. strength competition or whatever powerlifting came up and you compete in the squat the bench the deadlift and so I signed up from my very first powerlifting meet and I think that kind of gave it like I guess like a little viral catalyst because at that time it's anything that was journey based on

YouTube was very intriguing to people so I signed up I competed I did pretty good and I was looking for a powerlifting gym and I couldn't find one in L.A. And I pitched to my friends like we had our K office already. I'm like, what if I just get like a container, fill it up with equipment? And we just saw all train in there. And overnight, like 20 of my buddies, they're like, well, I'll chip in. And I'm like, oh, wait, if I can get 20 people overnight, maybe we can get like members, you know, like I don't know how many members I can get to cover the rent. So me and my wife, we literally went to Barnes & Noble and we found like a how to write a business plan book. And the one that we chose was one where like after every chapter, there's a worksheet. So if you,

fill out the worksheet at the end of every chapter. You technically have a business plan. So we're like, let's just do that and we'll do like an hour a day. Because we're like full time doing JK. We're like, we'll do that an hour a day. None of us know how to open a brick and mortar.

Let's see what happens. And we finished the whole book. And we went to the city, got like, you know, permitting, like the right zoning and all of that. And then we started a crowd fund on our website. And in two weeks, we got 100 members.

And that was enough for us to break even. So I'm like, okay, if we can break even, and this is a side. project anyways, then I get like a free gym to train in. So we open and that kind of took off became its own gym. We moved to downtown LA where we have over 400 members now. It's like a 6,000 square foot warehouse. And then we built like a fitness and peril and supplements and all of that stuff like on top of that. So now there's like these two like main babies. And that's kind of like the

two of the most, the two of the things that are the most. I had no idea about any of this. Oh, really? No, that's incredible. You've been successful in everything that you've put your mind to. I got super lucky because that's what we always talk about because I have other buddies that are in like, like the apparel industry and they're like, dude, I had five failed t-shirt businesses before this one took off. And I'm like, I don't know, maybe you just got the good people around me or something. What got you into fitness to begin with? Oh, man.

So that's actually funny because I got into fitness back in, I would say, I guess. like 1999 or 2000 so i'm 37 okay and back in like the late 90s early 2000s like the stuff that you hear on the radio was like teupac big you was like super like gangster everything was gangster so usually most people get into fitness through like health and wellness i got into it because all of my homies older brothers just got out of jail and that's the thing that we did we just lifted in the garage and smoked cigarettes which is kind of like opposite to fitness. Where'd you grow up? So I grew up in L.A.

But it's like Gabriel Valley. Okay. And at that time it was, at that time it was like the Asian gang capital of the world. It's a little bit different now. Now it's quite nice. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

But before it was like Asian game capital of the world. So I got into lifting through the guys that were trained in jail. Yeah. And what happened with your original YouTube channel? Like when did you, do you continue to make content? Did you stop making content for it? Was it profitable at the time? Yeah, so at one given time I think we were super maxed out. We had JK Films, which is sketch comedy. We had this one called Ask the Fields where we actually have callers call in and then that was a kind of like a relationship

and also a sex like fun talk type of channel. We had JK Party, which is a game show channel. Then we have Barbell Brigade, which is like the fitness channel and had a personal vlog. So at one given point in time, I had five of those channels going and we were just so, so burnt out from that that I think once we hit our like max bandwidth, we started to dial back down. So one of the first things that went was asked the feels because that was just more like for shits and giggles and fun. But the second one that went was just kidding films. And that one kind of hurt a little bit because that was kind of like the start of it all. But with like the YouTube algorithm changing, it just didn't make sense to put almost like two or three weeks of pre-production, production, production,

post-production into a video and then post it. And we have to do this like one-week cycles. So it's almost like trying to produce like Chappelle Show level skits when you don't have that kind of team. Yeah. You know, like those guys, they could be if Dave Chappelle's not in all the videos, they could be shooting all five videos at the same time, you know, in different locations, whatever. For us, it's like all hands on deck for every single video. And we were just so burnt out from that. So unfortunately, that was the one that, the second one that we had to shut down.

And it still gets good views, but that's not something we're active on. Yo, yo, yo, but first, we got to thank our sponsor Extra. Alex, take off the hat, man. That's my thing. Jack, do you know the one thing I absolutely hate when people say? That you need to post longerst to family videos? Well, I mean, yes.

But I also hate how people say that you have. have to have a credit card to build credit. But you do, don't you? Wow, Jack, you've obviously never heard of Extra. Your Extra, Alex. Anyway, Jack, Extra is actually a debit card that lets you build credit and earn reward points just like a credit card. Wow, Dave Ramsey is probably over the moon right now.

He probably is, especially when he finds out how simple it is to use. You just connect Extra to your existing bank account, swipe the card to buy something, and then they spot you for the purchase and pay themselves back the next business day. And boom, at the end of the month, your payments are added up and reported directly to the credit bureaus. And they do all of that without a single credit check. Can you believe that? I do believe that because they're extra. So sign up for extra with our link, extra.com, slash ICH, and start building credit now with a debit card.

Yes, I said it, a debit card. And if anyone out there knows, Dave, go ahead and send them our link. Thank you so much extra for sponsoring this episode and back to the podcast. Got it. I want to know more about the fitness, though, Jack. Switch, you switch topics too quickly. How do you go from just working out with your buddies to then getting like yoked? That doesn't happen.

Like how do you, how much time did you put into this? What was your routine like? What were you eating? Like walk us through your day to like to go from just working out with your buddies who got out of jail to then getting big. Okay. So it was kind of like, like these days you can go online and research a lot of stuff and you get pretty decently accurate information really quickly. And you can kind of jumpstart your fitness career. For me, it was kind of like a lot of trial and error because it's either those guys that I learned from who probably don't know things, don't have to do things the right way or it's the magazines that I would read at 7-Eleven, you know, and it would be like this is my five-day split or six-day split.

So the first thing that I did wrong was I only focused on like the show muscles, which is like just chest and arms. And, you know, that's ignoring an entire part of your body. And if you want to gain weight and build muscle, like legs is huge. So that's one thing I didn't do. And then the next thing is one of the biggest pieces of advice that someone told me was I used to work out at this place called Bally's. And one of those like really, really big bodybuilder guys, he was like, if you're not stuffed, you're wrong if we're trying to gain weight. Meaning what he told me, and this is probably the unhealthy way to do it, but what he told me

is you should be so stuffed that you should feel like you're about to throw up at any time. And if the minute that that feeling goes down, he goes, put another cheeseburger in your mouth. No. So I followed that and I'm like, you know what, if this is the right way to do it and it's not the right way at all. But I'm like, if this is the right way to do it, then I just started to pay. I started eating like two four by fours every single day just for one meal. And I would have like two breakfast burritos at night.

And I would pound maybe one or two protein shakes throughout the day. Wow. And I got from one, like 150 to 190 in about six months. Did you get fat? Yes. I mean, you put on calories. So you just kind of like blow up. But then like the abundance of calories helps you put on, of course, both fat and muscle.

But the important thing is. that surplus of calories kind of puts you in like this anabolic state where you get very strong and the strength helps you build the muscle overtime. Were you skinny growing up? Yes. Yeah, you were. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in high school, when I got my freshman year, I was like 90 pounds and I didn't break

100 until like a sophomore. No way. Yeah, yeah. And then my junior year I wrestled and I wrestled like 120s, 1.30s. Yeah. So I graduated high school, fine, because I started lifting my junior year and I got from 130 to around like 150, 160-ish. and then afterwards is when I really started like pounding the food.

So when you were packing on a lot of muscle and fat from eating a lot, where did that evolve from there? Yeah, what happened after that? So then you got way bigger. Yeah. Did you then go on a cut to lose the fat or how did this evolve after that? Yeah, so I got pretty big and I kept that going for a while probably up to like past 200 because like that was just the number that I wanted to break.

and a lot of people they want to get to like 200 pounds. Once I got there and I started to realize that, okay, I don't think it's healthy to wear size 38 jeans when I was like a 30 or 32 before. I started to dial it back down. Fortunately, as well, I was in the military at the time. So you have to have like kind of like a BMI check where they like measure your chest to waist ratio. And if you're not what they call regs like under regulations, you won't be able to get promote it because the last thing you want is like like a fat soldier you know so uh when i got when i

got measured and my my whole b-m i was too high and i was trying to chase the next rank then i started jogging way more i cleaned up my diet and so now the thing that i keep is i make sure i get a gram of protein per body weight per pound of body weight so i'm like 190 right now so i make sure i get 190 grams of protein a day um and then i fill the rest of my meals up with as a much veggies as I can and then whatever, um, and whatever amount of carbs I need to keep me satiated. So that's kind of how, how I ballpark it. But if you really want to be like particularly, you got to track your macros, which is like your macro nutrients, yeah, that kind of stuff.

What drives you to be so focused on, on like bodybuilding, gaining weight, working out and all of that stuff and always getting bigger. Because for me, it's like, I go to the gym. Yeah. And I do it mostly just to look toned. Like I don't have any desire to get huge or any. I don't know about Graham because I think Graham kind of does. His arms are great.

Thanks. It's a facade. It's a facade. I don't know. I take off my shirt and I was like, no, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, what, what is in you that makes you want to get huge? Is it just, like, the aesthetic or is it, like, like, because you grew up skinny?

Or do you think it's because it's healthy? Like, I think in the beginning, it starts off, like, an aesthetic. And, um, also, growing up in that. era like you just got into a lot of fights so if you're a little bit bigger um you just do better in fights and i mean now you can take an actual martial art and actually learn how to fight instead of just look intimidating so that's kind of how it started off in high school um but as i got older and i found more i guess like physical hobbies like whether it's like m m ms or like lifting competitions that's kind of what fuels me to want to like train and and

and lift. So now I don't lift to try to be the biggest myself possible. Now it's just for like, what do I want to do? And I kind of reverse engineer my program to achieve that. So like I grew up with asthma and I've never been good at cardio. So in 2019, 2020, I don't know, the pandemic here is get kind of mixed up. But yeah, 2020. I have asthma too. Okay. Yeah. So in 2020, I was like, 2019, I signed up for a marathon just because I'm like, I suck. I always say like, like, like I have asthma and cardio sucks and all that. So I'm like, I want to sign up for one and then hire a running coach to coach me for like three months.

And so when I signed up for that, like my lifting got like reduced like crazy, you know, because you're like running three times a week. Sometimes they're like the lengths are like 12, 13 miles. Then you have like a day of a seven mile like pacer and then you have like a light what they call like could be a seven or nine mile there.

Like you're just jogging for rhythm. And so for me it's, Finding physical endeavors that I like and then now using the training to kind of like help me achieve it. So I think it's the challenge for you, right? Yeah, I think so. And I think you apply that to everything, whether it be fitness or business, right? I think so. Yeah.

I guess I'm like figuring out myself here. You know, the funny thing is that I've seen that people who are really into fitness tend to be really good at other things too because they're disciplined. Yeah. And they could push through that pain to achieve a great. greater result. Yeah, that's one thing I noticed that people that are, who have been able to transform their bodies, they've actually been able to transform other parts of their life. Because in fitness, like, once you start coaching and you kind of figure out almost a formula to achieving what you want, you can pretty much adjust like three variables. One is frequency,

like how often you do something, intensity, like how hard you're doing it while you're doing and volume, like how much of it you're doing. And just through these three manipulations, you can get bigger, get smaller, you can get faster. And I think with the other parts of business or even in your relationship, you can do the same thing. Like my relationship, my mom isn't that good. Well, is it because I'm not seeing her enough?

Or... Because you're not working out enough. Exactly. Yeah, like, or if you see your mom and half of the time you're on your phone, so you're not that intense working on the relationship, you know, so I feel like, um, you know, so I feel like, um, applying like having those principles ingrained in you on a daily where you're working out has helped a lot of fitness people figure out other parts of their lives too got it did you go to college yes and what do you study in college something completely different i was a cycle bio major um it's kind of like on the pre-med track but then when i started doing the comedy videos with my partner joe um this comedy was just way more fun than science yeah when did you go into uh active duty so i actually wasn't duty. I was in the reserves. In the reserve. Yeah. So after high school, you still got to go to boot camp.

You still got to go to Marine Corps training, combat training, and then you still have to go to your MOS school. So all of that is like almost a year of kind of active, but you're not really like in the fleet, as they call it. But as soon as you're done with that, then you go to your reserve unit. And so I was able to balance the second part of my college with my military career. So you're doing both of those concurrently? Yes.

Gosh. And then you graduated from that. Is that when you decided to go full time to YouTube? Yeah. Like that, my senior year at the craziest senioritis, I was like, man, this stuff's so boring.

And like, all I could think about was shooting more YouTube videos. Like, I was tutoring students at the time as a part-time job. And I would literally be like, all right, um, here,

do questions like one through 50. And I know that was going to occupy them for like a good 30 minutes. And I would just write like content ideas like on the side, like every single day. Wow. Yeah, my partner too. Like we would meet at 8 p.m. until 11 at night, Monday through Friday,

because she was working a full-time job. And I was working. And then on the weekends, we were dedicated to shoot like a 12-hour day, Saturday and Sunday. We kept it up like a year. What were the finances like at the beginning of that? Were you making money from YouTube back then? Oh, my God.

All right. So our first assets check was $1,000. And we were so happy because we're just two broke college students. And we didn't even know that you can get paid, you know? And then we're like, wait a second. This was for like six months worth of videos. We're like, damn, I don't think that's really that good, to be honest. I don't know if this is sustainable.

But we promised ourselves if we can, by the time, like college finished, if we can get to a point where if just both me and him can be like full time, meaning like he makes a thousand books, I make a thousand bucks. My mom owned a rental property that she said she would just let me stay at at the time. Then my keep my expenses low. If we can at least just get to that point, then we're like, who knows what the channel can achieve once we go full time into it. So that was kind of like the goal. Got it.

Let's get it to making like two or three thousand bucks a month. And then we're going to quit our jobs and go full time. What year was that? That was probably maybe 2010, 2011. Wow. Around there. What channels did you look up to back then? Back then, of course, Ryan Heo, he was like number one.

William William, Ray Johnson, because Ray William Johnson, because he was just crushing it not only on his channel with the amount of quantity that was coming out, but he started doing a Spanish version of equals three. And I'm just like, man, these guys are thinking like next level. You know, it's like, this is my audience. How do I expand, expand, expand, expand, expand, expand. And you just see like this very, like how do I increase my market and territory?

Like it almost feels like very business, very strategic. And also, oh man, I don't even know if he's around anymore. But there's this guy named, I think his name was Julian something. Julian Smith 87? Yes. Oh my gosh. He did the. I love him fast.

Yeah, he did Akbar. He did waffles. He did jellyfish. She did all the songs. And he also did a lot of like Milkman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Milk man. Yeah.

I loved his videos. That was a long time ago. Like he didn't make very many videos, but each one he made was like, boom, like 10 million, like two million. Like he was crushing it. And that was like the first time I saw some like really good artistry being put on like short films. Got it. So like those were the guys that I looked up to. And of course like just all the OGs, you know.

Yeah. So when did you go full time? How fast were you able to go from $1,000 in an ad sense check to like $3,000 a month? So we went, once we got to 2000, we all quit our jobs. And I think from 2000 to $6,000 we were able to get within like six months. So with that, we're able to hire on like an actual like a full-time director, editor, videographer. And that was like the first.

I think the minute you can kind of scale them. little bit and delegate some of the duties like that was that was everything like yeah yeah that afforded us to be able to um get a bigger team with bigger team we get more content and then now we're shooting behind the scenes for the skits so now we're like doubling up on the content we open another channel and then i think the minute we're able to get to like 10 or 11 grand a month that helped us be able to get our first studio so now we don't have to shoot stuff from the home and we're hiring people it just i don't know it felt like more legit. Yeah.

And how many subscribers did you have when you were making like $6,000 a month? Hmm. Don't remember. Maybe like two or 300,000 subscribers maybe. That's pretty good. What were you, do you mind sharing what you were making at the peak? Oh, man.

At that channel? Yeah. So at the peak from just AdSense or from. Maybe we separate the two. You just got one on AdSense and then just like a total. So when we had all of the. the channels up and running, I think our best, our best year, we're probably doing about 200 grand a month, I think, with all the channels added together. And that's with AdSense. Is that including

sponsorships and everything? That was just the AdSense. There was this one year where this company doesn't exist anymore, but they were really trying to like compete. And they gave us like a really big seven figure brand deal. That was super cool. But, and that, had all the right people involved. Like the head of programming from Amazon Prime was in it. I think a couple guys from Hulu were in it. And they were trying to do like capitalize on first window where if you are an Uber fan, you would watch stuff here first before they put it on their YouTube channel.

And they got a bunch of big YouTubers again. So that helped out a lot. That was like our first like big, big brand deal that were like, oh, this is like crazy. Wow. So it's a multi-million dollar business. What's the overhead? look like on something like that um at the time people yeah how many people are working on that so when we were growing like the jk side of things um we were just growing and scaling and growing and scaling

and we wanted to be like our own tv network so we end up getting this huge space in downtown la and that was 17 grand a month just for like the office and then we spent another 300 like building our own soundstage and that was crazy. It was like a trust system. We had like 40 keynoes. There's like mixers and like all the cast members are locked. We're pretty much trying to shoot our own Nickelodeon. Yeah.

So I think all of that kind of like added to the burnout. Because when you think about content, now I've learned like the easiest way you want to figure out what's the easiest, the easiest way to achieve developing your idea. But we had so much like operation and how. how to to get there, that anytime we needed, we had one idea. It's like, okay, cool, everyone sits down. Once we sit down and we pre-produce it.

So everything, there was like so many additional steps. And it kind of took the fun out of, like, you know, like took the fun out of it. It's almost like if you wanted to cook something before you want to cook it, you have to go sharpen their knives for an hour. It was kind of like that. Got it. So yeah, that kind of like all led to. So we were making big money, but also lots of operation, like maybe 30, 40 people on

staff. And it became this huge operation. And so as me and my partner, our first time doing business at this level, we're like, damn, this is crazy? And we really had to do a sit down. Like, is this what we wanted to do? So now we scale down way more. We, instead of having both of our offices, we just have the one office. And that place is only $2,000 a month. And it feels like our channel, or just kidding, news channel has so much of its heart and charm back to it now, because we're not so much focused on like the numbers and the operations and the things it's more about it's more content driven yeah so kind of having gone full circle like that feels the best now i want to know because i know graham would not do this but you scaled back the business i wouldn't do this i wouldn't even scale

listen like 40 people to me it sounds intimidating it was just the idea of even like i was i was thinking about getting on an editor to help me on my man and just thinking about another person can't do it right but i want to keep you Now, I like just Jack and Alex. But here's the thing. It's like if you scaled and you knew for a fact you could hire on 10 more people, but make 20 times more money. Like, for me, it's the mental stress.

So that was for you. It was the stress and the weight of it all is what led you to decide to scale down a little bit. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's kind of like you, you love dogs, right? And you have one or two. And then you're like, well, let's add to my love of dogs. I'm going to get 20. and then because you're thinking of like the reels or like the TikTok of 20 dogs running around in your backyard and they're all cuddling on you and in the day they all like take a fat shit you're like fuck that's 20 pieces of duky I got to walk them and I got ordered like 20 bags of dog food they're going to hire somebody to clean that up yeah so it was like every time we had a shoot day our lunches would be the lunch budget for each shoot day was 300 to 500 bucks like each time you know it's just everything everything just scaled how much money you were those videos making. How much would it cost to make a video versus how much would you expect

to make from the channel? I wish I got that granular with it. We actually hired a manager to run the numbers and finances part of it. So I gave him broad like kind of like limits and categories and as long as they stayed there and we kept our, so our goal was always to keep cost of operation between 40 and 60%. Need a vehicle that isn't afraid to make a splash? That's the Volkswagen Taos. Capable and confident, the Volkswagen Taos is fit for everyday life. Nimble in traffic, agile and tight spots, and still spacious enough for weekend getaways. While available 4-motion all-wheel drive gives confidence in rain and snow.

The capable Taos, you deserve more confidence. Visit vw.ca to learn more. SUV-W, German engineered for all. So if after all of the pre-production, staff and labor, equipment, all that stuff, if that can be 60% or under, we're good. And that's all I wanted to worry about. Because I wanted to stay focused on the creative side of things. That seems expensive, though. I can't imagine 60% overhead or a YouTube channel.

I mean, it makes sense. Yeah. I can only imagine what Jubilee is like. Jubilee has to. No, their overhead isn't that much. They don't pay the people that go on. No, they don't pay the people to go on. They pay like $100 if you can spot that.

They got an incredible warehouse. They have a team of probably 15 to 25 people. They have a great office space. I think it's like around Sautel. I don't know. But they have a good team that they built out. But I imagine those videos cannot be cheap. That's true.

Imagine casting. And they do a new episode like three times a week. Imagine casting, 20 people per episode, assuming that like half of them flake last minute. it's got to be i i don't know yeah they probably have like a team of producers if they oh yeah come out with that much content every single week so why didn't you when you realize that like hey this is we're not as happy doing this why didn't you immediately start just scaling down and getting right back to doing the same content because it seemed like it was a slow process

i think the tough part is you also fall in love with your staff like we were trying to build like this family environment right so when we have like big dreams We're like we're growing our team and then Now everyone has like a full-time job and then now people start to have families or they're like they have girlfriends or they want to move out of their house or they're gonna go buy a house or whatever So like all of those things like as the boss or like as a business owner Those are things that you take into consideration So like it was hard for us to kind of like if we had like a legit CFO come in he'd probably go cut this cut this cut this It's like business is the number one priority, you know.

But we were so close with our staff that some of the decisions that we probably should have made way sooner. We're like, oh, but he just got that new place with this girlfriend. Like, let's not reduce hours. Like, what else can we do? So I think for me and my partner, we were always trying to figure out a way to put staff first, if not find other places or other streams of income to make it work. So because of that, it just took way longer to make like the hard business decisions. How were you living like back then? Because it's a substantial amount of money coming in.

Yeah. Consistently every single month. Were you taking that and investing it? Were you spending it? Were you buying cool cars? Are you going to bottle service? So the first thing that we were renting and I wished your videos came on before. I think I would have learned way more about investing in real estate back then.

But the first thing that I got was Porsche 9-11. Like that was always like How old are you? This, I would maybe like 20 Actually, I don't know No, not 20, it can't be 20 31. All right.

Around there. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Listen, I feel like it's a reasonable age to get. And that's a great car, by the way. They don't depreciate that much. Yeah.

I mean, but it's like, you also still feel young. Like when I walk into the dealership, like everyone else coming in, no one looked like me. Yeah. You also look young. Yeah.

You could surprise me when you said you were 37. Yeah, you could pass for 25. True. Easily. True. Yeah, like, yeah. But even me going in there, it was kind of intimidating. I'm like, oh, shit, this is crazy.

Like everyone's like older. Everyone looks like, I don't know, they've been owning a golf courses or something. So, yeah, that was the first thing I got. And most of it I did actually save. Although, when you have more money, it was easier to just say yes to most. experiences and life choices. So for example, I knew me and my girlfriend at the time we were going to get married. So we're like, you know, we've pretty much born and raised in L.A.

And we've never lived in the city city. So we're like, we should just test that out to see if we would like it. So we ended up. And this is like during like the peak of, I would say, when Casey and Istack came on and all his vlogs was like of New York and drone footage. We're like, we should try living. that life in LA. So we found this place. It was super sick in downtown. And it was like six grand a month. And for us, it was easy to just go, oh, yeah, let's do it. You know, but then once I was living there,

then I started calculating, I'm like, six grand. I live here for a year. That's like 70 G's. And I'm like, if I live for like two years, that's like 140, 150, I'm like, this is easily a down payment or a house. And we also just didn't like city living at all. Like the noise never ends. unlike Vegas where it's like quiet it's quiet i love it out here and it's like 3 a.m there's like cars drag racing sirens people screaming like people coming out of games or clubs or whatever helicopters yes helicopters circling with the search light and yeah and we were living on the 25th floor with one of those like those corner views and i can see the which building is this it's called uh 717 and it's at olympic and figaro yeah

Yeah. We had concierge service. Like it was, you felt like a boss because you would get a phone call. Hey, I have an Amazon package. Let me send it up. I'm like, sure. And this guy would come up in like a suit and like, here you go, sir. You know, and I'm like, damn, my Bruce Wayne, like what the hell is this? You know, that's what it felt like.

Alex, you got to start doing that. So I just felt like. We'll get you a suit. Yeah. So we just felt like, yeah, the city wasn't for us. So we moved out. But I think being able to make more money was it gives you. you options to say yes to cool experiences like that, you know? Got it. Where would you say you wasted your

money? Did you ever do anything crazy? Any falling out besides a Porsche? Other than that, not really, but I would say the first thing that I think me and my partner kind of regret, but not really regret, is spending so much on getting that office. So the office that we got in downtown we spent like three to four hundred just building out the set which you can't really get that money back because the set is custom you know it's like building like a ellen degenerous set and so if we're going to leave you can't be like hey you want to buy any ellen degenerous parts you know it's like that's no it's so unique to that show no one wants it so you don't really get any money back from that um and then also having spent pretty much 17 grand just on the lease alone and we were there

for, I don't know if it was a five year or seven year at least. But yeah, if you do the math, it's a lot, you know. So if all of that money could have went towards, we probably could have bought our own commercial building, but just way smaller, you know? Why didn't you do that? Because 17 grand a month. Why did you need to be there and not just 20 miles outside of L.A.?

I don't think we were looking at it from a, like, smart financial point of view. I think it had a little bit to do with like keeping up what the Jones is and also like doing what you think a startup media company was supposed to do. Yeah. You know, like an arts district, you see like all these up and coming. So you kind of get caught up in that. And you're like, oh, well, if that company has like a 1,000 square foot spot and they're paying like $4 a square foot, like if they're doing it, shouldn't we be doing it? And then you got like people with like cool glasses and you're like, oh, we're an artsy. You know, just kind of like get caught up in the whole, like,

and not viewing it from a financially sound point of view. I think getting caught up and that is what is probably one of the regrets. But then also we're also happy that we went through all of it because then now we know what not to do, you know. Got it. What happened to everything in the warehouse? So we ended up selling what we could. And there's actually a ton of lights and equipment still just in public storage.

Really? Yeah, like we have like, there's these things called like Kino Flows. They're like these four foot light bulbs. We need those, Graham. Do we actually? Should we go shot? It would be fun to go to the way. If you're going to sell any of us, can you give us first dibs?

Yeah, so we have like these four foot like kinos and we have maybe like 40 of them. And each one of them got to be like, I don't know, a ground or two or something. And we just have that stacked up. We have like all kinds of stuff still in. like the warehouse pretty much. What are you going to do with it? How much does that cost? The warehouse.

How much is that a month? Maybe like 500 or something. It's negligible in the grand scheme of things, but it is just like a bunch of equipment that's just sitting there. And now you no longer post on the Just Kidding or do you do like the podcast-y type thing? So now, on Just Kidding films, we don't.

But our channel Just Kidding News is like our main thing. So in terms of like the J-Ks-Sikis Because I had like, I guess from my perspective, I have like three, three main initiatives. I have my JK stuff. I have like my fitness stuff, which is completely separate from the JK stuff. And then I have like my family vlog channel. So with the JK side of things, it's just narrowed down just to just kidding news. Got it.

Who runs that right now? Still the same team. I still have our manager that runs that channel. And we have maybe like now we might have maybe 10 editors now. Because that channel posts... 10 editors? Yeah, because that channel posts... I want to see this.

I'm going to look this up. Because, yeah, that channel posts anywhere from three to five videos a day. No way. So we have a lot of content that goes out on that channel. Just kidding news. That's incredible. I wish I could... I can't bulk film videos.

The most I could do is like one afternoon, second channel reaction videos. I could maybe get three of them done. It's easier when we have more castmates. Sure. So like me and like the other five were so close now. It's literally like, let's all just shoot the shit for the whole day. And it's so easy. I feel like it would be easier if we were to mass produce something like this, a podcast,

then it would be for you to do like a second channel or main channel. Because you resay the same phrases like five to ten times just to get the perfect take. And that's tough to do if you're going to be producing bulk content. Yeah. If you're teaching, it's much harder because I've done like, like instructionals on how to lift and stuff like that. And creating like a how to lift or instructional video or anything with a lot of information because you want to get it right is so much harder than just follow me while I work out. You know, because follow me while I work out. I get to like fuck around, do whatever.

Right. And that's so much easy. I don't have to, if I say something wrong, it kind of adds to the charm of it versus me trying to teach someone like how to get like bulging triceps or something. I got to make sure I hit the right muscle. I pronounce the muscles correctly. it's much harder. So the Just Kidding Films, I see you haven't posted on there in four years. Maybe even long.

Yeah, so maybe almost five years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How much does that make now? Five years later? I'm curious. That's, I don't know. Yeah. But I wouldn't be surprised if it still made like 500 bucks to like a grand a month.

Wow. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah. That's not bad. And so now how is your business broken down? And but, oh, you know what? Actually, here's another question. You left California recently.

Yes. Why? So, I guess like many of the same reasons that you posted in your video, I think for sure the tax benefits, you just get so much more for your money here. The cost of living is cheaper. But I think for me, the main reason is actually like family oriented. So me and my wife and our extended family were pretty much born and raised in L.A. and when when you have been in L.A. for such a long time, the families just kind of spread apart, you know,

because like real estate isn't cheap. And so you kind of go where you can afford and all that stuff. And so like our families are all like, it could be an hour or two hours away from each other. And me and my wife's dream, because we are like probably the biggest bread winners of like our immediate family circle, It's been our dream to have everyone be in the same city. So coming to a place where the average house is like 300 grand or 350 grand versus a place

where the average house is 700 grand. It's just so much easier for that dream to come to life. So that's really like our main reason. Like if we come here, if we make sure we like it after the first year, then we can actually like strategize how do we get our whole family like within five, 10 minutes of each other? if we could buy them homes or whatever. So that's like the main driving force is trying to bring our families close together. How do you like it here so far?

So far I love it. But I also kind of like take that with the grain of salt myself because I just know there's honeymoon face. You know, like with anything. Like my the first year of driving the Porsche is different than the third year. You know, the first year it's like that's everything. Like oh, what the hell is that bird? Hell now. Yeah.

And then the third year you're like, oh, that was just kind of like a basic. 9-11. And you see a couple like GT2, G2, G2, G2, you drive by a turbo and you're like, hmm, I don't know. You know, you don't get that same satisfaction. Yeah, yeah, right. So it's just so knowing that,

I know that I'm in love with Vegas because it's the exact opposite of where I came from, where it's quiet. Taxes are cheaper on all levels, property tax, sales tax, income tax. I like that. It's not congested at all. Like, I don't even, I mean,

I take mainly the 215, which is like the local freeway. So I never even see that the congestion that comes in for the weekend for the casinos. So like all of that I love. But I want to make sure that I don't get too ahead of myself. So I'm still just kind of waiting it out. So I even, yeah, I told my dad because he was really excited about coming out here too. And I was like, you know what?

Let me stay here for a year. And I love the school that I put my kid in. Like he's loving that school. And that's like that type of school. I don't even know if I could afford if it was. Oh, is that private school? Yeah. Yeah.

So that kind of, like the type of school that he has right now, there's only eight to 10 kids per class with two teachers. Wow. So I was looking for a school that I felt like I could have thrived in where you get a lot of attention. And they have like four recesses a day. Is this the one that's kind of like down the streetish? So there's a high school down the street. Yeah.

And that's like then I think Snoop Dog kids goes to that school. Like he actually. That's a gnarly. They have like one of the best football teams. in the nation. Yeah. Best football. Best baseball.

Like, best everything, I think. Yeah. Because I think when you have like a bunch of like a high concentration of billionaires living in a city. Yeah. I think they demand the best out of like like just the Summerlin area. Yeah. There's just so many billionaires because like casino owners or whatever.

Like they're going to demand the best out of whatever's happening. Wow. But yeah, he's not going to that school yet. But there's another, there's a lot of really high-end elementary schools. It's funny to even say that. But yeah. High-end elementary schools. Yeah.

has elementary school over here where they like they pick fruits from their 40 acre farm. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. They pick fruits. And then that's the same fruit that they eat during snack time. So they kind of have like this. I'm connected to my food type of like. Yeah. Because we're so disconnected from the supermarket. Right. Right. Like you see like, oh, I love chicken. But then you see someone killing a chicken. You're like, hey, don't do that. And like, where's your chicken going to come from? So I like that it's just like this another type of education and like, um, like child development that I don't think I could afford if it was in California. But do they also have like the common core?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, like four recesses. They pick apples. That sounds really nice. Yeah, I know. Yeah.

Los Angeles, those elementary schools would probably start at 25 to 20,000. They started that per year. And they could go as high as about $50,000 a year for anything K through, I don't know, eighth grade. Yeah. And not only that, but either you have to know somebody within the school to get in, or you're on a waiting list, or it's a random lottery selection.

Or you have to test into it. It's nuts what you have to do in some of these elementary schools, just how competitive it is. I know with Harvard Westlake, it's so competitive that there's a wait list for years. Yeah. Like basically, as soon as your child is born, you got to go down there, sign them up, get them testing well, and then they could maybe get in. Yeah, some of them also.

50 year out of year. Yeah, I've seen some applications where it looks like a college application. And I'm like, dude, my kid's four. He needs to go preschool. But the stuff that you have to fill out. What's the extracurriculars that he's doing it for? Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, he's not donating enough to charity at this at this age.

Where's this volunteer work? Where is he volunteering? Where is he working? What's his resume? Yeah. Yeah, so, yeah, how many other foreign languages do you know? Yeah, so like finding this school, I think, really helps ground us. Because I'm like, okay, this school is awesome.

And every day I ask him. He loves going to school so far. It doesn't feel like a chore, which is something. How old is he? Four. I don't know if that'll last. I don't know. We'll see.

Give it to a little eight. And it's going to go to school. Yeah, yeah. No, stupid. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see how long that lasts. But so far he likes it. And I just like what the school is about.

So yeah, there's a lot of things keeping me here and making me really like Vegas. So I'll see if we, if we do another podcast in a year, I might have a different story. But so far I love it. What don't you like? the heat but it's so temporary yeah i know like literally this week it dropped like 10 20 degrees yeah so like this morning i woke up to go work out and i'm like wait this feels like california yeah it's cold yeah i'm like weird i did not i did not like that i opened up the uh the it was cold it's kind of chill it this morning was it was what jack you sleep in too yeah it was like

65 degrees it's kind of like oh do i need a light jacket yeah 65 yeah that's perfect it is perfect but I was like, damn, this is... It was, I almost, it's weird, because I got so used to opening up and you get the wave of heat. Like 110, 115's, yeah. I was used to that. So now it's weird opening it up

and it feels cold now in comparison. Huh. I almost don't like it. I prefer the heat. That is true. It's like when I initially came here and I saw my first like 115 degree day, I was like this, I am not going to live here.

And then all of the sudden, like, after like the 20th 115 degree day, as much as that sounds like torture, like I actually kind of got, used to it. And 115 degrees now is kind of like 90. Yeah. It is. It's like you can go out, you can do the stuff you want to do and that's

that. Have you been back to L.A.? Yeah, I've been back. Yeah. It feels nuts. The IRS is watching, Jack. How long have you gone back? I remember I was here for like, I was here for like a month or maybe like a month and a half before I went to L.A. And I didn't realize how humid L.A. was born and raised in L.A. And I'm like,

oh my God, L.A. feels kind of like Hawaii. It's crazy. Yeah, it just felt into some... And the smog. That I saw it too. Yeah. You know what's something I've never had an issue with before? But I went back to L.A. for a weekend.

I don't know. This is maybe this last week. And the last two times have been to L.A., my asthma got so bad. Really? Really, really, really bad. I don't know what it is. And at first I thought maybe just the house is dusty.

Yeah. So I'm like, okay, I'll clean the house a little bit. But it's even when I would leave the house. When I would go other places, it was just as bad. I think something with a pollen or something. And when you come here, does it clear up? It clears up immediately. It's so strange.

Yeah, that's crazy. So I've never had that happen. So I'm wondering if almost my body is adjusted to whatever's here. And then you go back to L.A. and just everything. You're smiling, Jack. I don't know why you're smiling. That's a good point. It could be that.

It could just be the time of the season or something like that. And now you're connecting to things. I mean, you know what I've never had a problem with? Ordering coffee from bankroll coffee.com. You know what? That's a really good point. It's so easy to go to bankroll coffee.com and pick out your order. You could buy the total portfolio where you get all the coffees in one great nifty price

and free shipping above $30. I love having you segways. Anyway, I don't know. That was unplanned. Yeah, my wife likes it out here because she has like wavy hair. So in L.A., the humidity, like her hair is always out of control. And over here, she's like, oh, it's so manageable, which is crazy. Yeah.

See, all the things you're learning. Yeah, little, it's just like little, like little things. Yeah. But I didn't realize, I don't know if it's due to construction, but there are a ton of crickets out here. Yes. There are lots of crickets. Yeah. They're everywhere.

Yeah. There's a ton of them. Inside, too. And big ones. Yeah. Yeah. They're large. Yeah.

Yeah. I feel almost bad walking outside because sometimes I'll open the front door. I'll step outside and like 50 crickets everywhere. And I know I'm stepping on one. And I hate, I hate that. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't, yeah, I don't know if, uh, because someone also told me,

me because there's construction, so the ground's vibrating. So they don't know where to go. So I don't know if that's it or if it's just Vegas does indeed have a kind of crickets. Yeah, that could be it. Well, I like Vegas so far. Overall, though, it seems like everything you've done has been successful. You've done well at it. Has there been something that you failed at?

I think there's many failures along the way, like whether a show concept or a new, like, format that we try and it doesn't do well or like an apparel launch that didn't go the way that we plan but i think with a team that knows how to like troubleshoot and like critically think um anytime that something doesn't go the way we want we're able to figure out what went wrong and fix it so everything like generally if you zoom out it's kind of like a like a what's the word called like an uphill trend right yeah and what's your schedule look like today how busy are you day to day. So now, um, it's actually not that busy, but during the times that I give myself the work time, it's like, I try to be as like, uh, like as present and as, as intense as possible. So I'll

wake up around six, get my kid ready, take him to school, drop them off. And then so pretty much from seven till three is our work time. And so within that time, I focus on our fitness brand, which has anything to do from apparel, supplements. We still have a physical gym in LA that we've got to check up on. And I produce our Just Kiddy News show. So I have to run all the logistics for that. And any other like outstanding projects. And I do that from seven until three.

After three, pick up our kid. And then we take them to his jiu-suitz classes. And then after that it's just like family time. So we'll go to the park over here or the park outside. And I try to like that that's kind of. have been the goal. Like me and my wife are talking about what's the dream life. And it's let's get all our work done when the kid's at school so we can have as much family

time as possible after. So really your entire day is just from seven to three. Really. Yeah. That's really what it is. How many hours, eight hours a day? That's awesome. What about weekends?

The full day, we just try to make it family or visit family or do fun stuff. Wow. What do you think makes you so family oriented? I think since I was, my parents were divorced when I was. six, that was something I never had. So that's something I just valued so much. And my wife's Mexican. And so, like, family is, like, one of their, like, pillars of, like, of, like, the

Mexican culture where, like, you always got to hang out, be together, stay connected all the time. So I think those two put together. That was something that was just important to both of us. Got it. Jeez. What questions do you have for us? How about that?

How do you guys like Vegas? I love it. I didn't like it at first, but now I do. And are you from L.A.? Yeah, I'm from just like an hour north of L.A. Okay. Yeah. But at first, I definitely, I was not having a lot of fun, especially before Alex was here.

Because I didn't really have any friends at the time. And I was also, I was like working a lot. But then finally, when Alex came here, I gave him a good amount of work. And I got to hang out with him and stuff. So I had a friend there. So that was really good. And then I also made a couple other friends at the gym. Oh, sick.

The one over here? Yeah. Yeah. I never see you there, man. I did in the beginning when I saw Graham because we didn't get our home gym built out yet. But then now that I have it built out, we don't really go to that gym. Yeah, the weights

don't go up very high there. You know what? I would love to go to the home gym. Why don't we turn this into a vlog? Can you train all of us for one episode? Yeah, that'd be cool. Really? Alex, are you game? Dude, yeah, but I don't want him to go easy on me. Oh, you don't want to go easy. No, yeah, don't go easy. Can you go so hard on us? Yeah. I could try something where you guys will have a hard time walking.

Yes. Yes. Let's do it. Do you know what the MRF is? That's like a crossfit workout, right? That, I could not, I could barely walk the next day. And that's how I want to feel. Okay.

Yeah. I don't want to feel like that, but I'll do it. Do you know what a squat is? I couldn't walk the next day either, yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't do that. That would be so cool. That would be super fine. That's a good plug for the Stifanley vlog channel.

We'll link to it down below in the description. We'll do one episode where all three of us go in and you just give us a beating. Perfect. Like you just put us through the ringer. you're down the street we can walk over there and we won't be able to walk back. Is family a big part of your like you too? Because I just heard family vlog channel too. Well, I met family vlog is in like all of us.

We call it this the family, but it's Jack, myself, Alex, Macy, Ramsey and the puppy Bailey. Oh cool. So it's all of us is like the Stafamily. That's awesome. We have like a work family going on. Yeah, yeah. That's great. Yeah.

Did you know Graham before Vegas or like were you guys working? Yeah. Yeah. I've been working with Graham. for maybe like two and a half years now. And I was just a fan. I reached out and then started working together. And then I moved in with him in L.A.

And then we both moved here to Vegas together. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. One of these days, we got to go for Jack's emails. I'm only going to give the deal. One of these days.

He sent me like eight emails and just following up. And I just didn't respond to any of them. That's awesome. And it was just like, the first email was like an intro. The second email is like, hey, maybe you didn't see this email. I'm bumping up.

Third email is like, Hey, I'm just showing you, I'm still here. And he kept doing that for months. And then email like seven or eight came around. And I remember I was in the car driving home. And I was just overwhelmed with Facebook emails. And so, and Jack said, I'm willing to do anything. Just let me know what it is.

I don't want money or anything. Just tell me what to do. And he put his phone number. So I'm like, okay, you know what? Let me see. If he's really down for anything, he's going to go and copy these Facebook emails. And it's like eight to ten hours. just like the most menial boring work of just sitting there copy paste copy for like eight hours.

And I told Jack, hey, if you want to do this, you don't have to do it, feel free to do it. If you want to do something, and he did it like that night, the whole thing. And so the next day, I was like, wow, this is pretty good. So I just wanted to thank him by like just taking him out to a dinner and just chatting. And we had a good dinner. And I was trying to figure out like, how could I implement Jack? And I was like, no, my emails are pretty busy. So he starts going through my emails and just forwarding over the most important stuff.

And then we had the idea to do, I think maybe I had just started this. The second channel. Yeah, the Graham Stefan show. Yeah. And so I told Jack, hey, I'm just throwing up some like extra content on here. I want to do phone calls like Dave Ramsey does. Can you just go through and pick the emails that you think are the most interesting? And then I'll just go and talk to him for the channel.

Jack did that. He went through hundreds of emails. We're like, these are the three best people. They're coordinated for nine. 930 and 10. Just call these numbers at these times, record it. And then you're good. And I taught Jack how to edit the video.

He started editing. And then now Jack was, you know, telling Alex now how to edit and stuff like that. So, but yeah, then a year later, Alex, sorry, a year later, Jack moved into the guesthouse. And we went full time on it. And that's, yeah. Went to this. I really respect that. Because like, I think for a, like, a lot of the, like, some of the, like, some

of the questions that I get, they always ask, like, how do I, how do I, like, pursue what I want? And a lot of people, they start at one, you know, like, I call, I call for this job where I submit this resume, and they don't hear back, and then that's it. And I don't really think you can get anywhere in life like that. Like, if you really want something, you have to send eight emails. Yeah, like our COO for our fitness brand Barba Brigade, very similar story. And now, like, he's about to be, like a partner of the brand, just because he's been around for so long. But so he's been around with us for eight years now.

But when we first opened our first physical gym, he would send emails all the time. And I would see this email from like, Aaron. And I'm like, this guy's writing like the most lengthy emails. Like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. We're just opening this gym. I'm like, so I would just skip them over and over.

And I would just see him one come in every single week. You have this idea for the gym that I think we could be doing or whatever. Or I think we could do this for the brand. I'm all right, whatever. And then one day I came out of the gym This is our first location It's only like 1700 square feet And I see this guy just sitting in the front

Like after he trained And then he was like hey I'm Aaron I'm all cool And I didn't really put two and two together And then he was like I'm the one that's been writing you Like the emails I'm like oh shit

Okay cool Like nice to meet you And he was like hey I really want to just set up A meeting with you Because I have some plans That I want to go over through my mind That I would love to like present to you And I actually wrote like this 10 page

Like business plan of how I think the gym should be operating. I'm like, what? So when we set up a meeting, he brings like a pretty much a presentation of like certain protocols that he thinks we should be doing, certain things that he feels like we're vulnerable legally, like all kinds of stuff that I was just like,

damn, I need someone with this kind of mind on my team. And we couldn't really afford him at the time because, you know, like me and my wife's goal at the time was just to have a break-even gym. Yeah. So for him to leave his job, like we can't afford you.

So we worked. on like kind of like a tiered like pay scale where he would just work on our stuff part time and this was this started off in like 2013 and then he kept going and going he was able to quit his job and now he's like literally like my right hand man in the business and it started with him writing these super long emails like every single why didn't you get back to him in the beginning there's too many emails well it's like there's ones that are like serious ones and then there's ones that like you open the email like the title says like hey I'm like your biggest fan you click it and it goes fuck you no okay cool so you know you kind of get jaded reading different

emails too so some of them you just don't know what's real what's right and then so like to kind of like cut through the noise you do need you know that persistence you got you got to show it got it yeah and then also then when when you meet them in person or when you finally like are able to have the opportunity to meet face to face like you already know what kind of person they are like there they're willing to get after it. You know, so I'm okay, cool. If you're willing to get after this, then when it comes to startups or any other type of business, like you need to be really about what you're trying to chase.

And so I know that you can apply that to this. Because in business, if you're working for yourself, like you can't really take no for an answer for anything, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It's very similar. It reminds me of Alex, your YouTube video. So, dude, you just like embarrassing.

Oh, yeah. Never mind. I thought you said. I thought you were going to say that. the thing I brought. Oh, well, we'll talk about that too. Thanks for reminding me. I wasn't going to bring that up, but now we will.

So Jack and I wanted to have a third person come on the team. So our idea originally, it did not go over well, was to ask people to make a YouTube video, explaining to us why they should come work with us. And in the video, we wanted to make a point that, like, hey, it's not going to be glamorous work, and you're going to be expected to do, anything. I mean, not like

legally of course, but like Jack's example was that you would be willing to do Jack's laundry. Okay. And people did not like that. They did, they got upset. They got really upset. Yeah, hate comments with lots of likes on the comments too. Yeah. I can't believe they would be

paying someone to say, dude, Jack's lawn. They're like, what is Jack a king? Does he think he's like a pharaoh? They thought it was demeaning work. Wow. Yeah. And it's just weird because to Graham and I, it made sense. We posted this thing, unlisted, you know, we made it public or whatever. And we thought to ourselves, this is totally normal.

We didn't think anything of it. Like asking someone to be your assistant and do laundry. Like, like, we didn't think we thought, pick up Bailey's poop. And pick up Bailey's poop. We literally thought to ourselves like, oh yeah, yeah, that's fine. Because we would do that. I would do it. If it's something that you want, you'll put anything on the line for it.

You will do whatever it is. Like, I don't know. So we didn't think anything of it. Some people did. Obviously they're the ones that didn't get the job. Oh, yeah. And here Alex's. Look at me now, guys.

He hasn't done my laundry. Yeah. Whoa. That's crazy. That would mean we never really seriously expected someone to do the laundry. It was more to say like someone that would do something like that, someone that would do anything. It was more so to. But that's literally what an assistant is.

Like you can. To save your time. Yeah, you can, I mean, there's all kinds of assistance. There's personal assistants. There's executive assistants. There's people that go that like, I think like Diddy, for example, I think he has just like a wardrobe assistant because he He needs to travel with 12 suitcases. Wow.

So he can't have his like brain like focus on where his clothes and shoes are because he's going to travel like hundreds of pairs of shoes. So he has like an assistant just to here's your necklace, sir. Or here's, you know, like there's like, and I'm sure that person is doing the laundry. Yeah. And there's people that have like the, this is my, my vehicle's assistant because everywhere I travel, I'm going to bring like 30 cars with me. Yeah. You got to find a way to keep them washed, clean, drive them, whatever. So like, I don't know.

I think maybe people project their own insecurity on it or, I don't know, to me, like, when you're hiring someone, as long as it's legal, there's everything else. It's up to the two people that make the agreement. We weren't forcing anyone to do anything. Yeah, because it's almost like, hey, my neck hurts. Can I pay you like 50 bucks and you just massage me for 10 minutes? Some people might think that's demeaning, like, oh, you're going to put a hand on someone else, you know? but it's like, well, if it's between these two people and it's legal, like any type of agreement should be fine.

I don't know. My neck kind of reticill. Yeah. And I also think coming from like a startup entrepreneurial environment, that's just something you're used to. You know, like when we first had our JK studio, we were cleaning the bathrooms. Like we take it like when we have guests come and they take a dump.

And if it's not nice, we got to clean it. We empty out the garbage. So I think like when you own a business, you're so used to doing everything from A to Z, even the stuff that people think it's, what was the word that they use? Demeaning. Demeaning. Like even the quote unquote demeaning thing. But I think it's because you've done it where you're like, it wasn't demeaning to me because I did it. And I knew it was a necessary thing.

So I'm just like, okay, cool. So now anyone else want to do this so I can continue to grow the business. Yeah. But yeah, I guess like for people, they have to It's an ego thing It could be, it could be, yeah, yeah And also people, look, it's easy for people to know their own worth, right? Yeah.

But it's difficult for a business to know their worth. They kind of have to prove themselves before the business starts to understand, okay, this is, you know, the value that you can provide. Yeah. So they probably think that they, I don't know, are worth a lot more. Yeah. But anyway, we got Alex. And Alex had such a great YouTube video. It was just, it was very thoughtful.

That's what I liked. It was very thoughtful, well-planned out. A few little inside things with coffee. It was just very creative. And that's what really stood out. And then when he showed up, here's the part he didn't. I'm a little embarrassed about this. He shows up with a like a presentation of all the things that we should be doing

or that he wants to take on. And he's like, the iced coffee hour needs a clips channel. So I want to do these clips. And I want to post them here. I don't want to do. And he had a whole outline of what he wanted to do. And we're like, yeah, they're all pretty good ideas. I think there's maybe one that we hadn't done.

I don't know why we hadn't. I know, Alex, you should go over that. Yeah, well, one of the things on there was getting this live switcher. Yeah. Which is implemented now, you know, so. So you're editing, like, on the fly. Yeah. Yeah.

That's awesome. Yeah, so what Alex does is we'll go through the video and just do a few fine clips and maybe parts where we've talked for a little bit too long. He'll clip it down a little bit and just make it more concise. So we'll take probably a video that's an hour and a half. Let's just say we'll take it down to about an hour or 10. Usually there's about 20 minutes in there. Like, just cut it out.

Yeah. That's awesome. I think I hear like the same recurring theme like where when you want something, you're persistent and then you over deliver like with you. You're like, I'll do this, I'll do this. And then you give them like just a small task of copying emails and you crushed it. He crushed it. My CEO crushed it.

So I think like that's the type of attitude that you need to be successful. It just sucks that that's like not really what I think is taught in school. Yeah. I think what's taught is like the kind of like that wage mentality where if you if I do exactly this then you pay me this but then the problem is it's hard to grow from that mindset because oh you only scratch my back once I'm only going to scratch her back once right but then if you're like but with the other mindset I'll scratch you back as much as you want and they're like oh this guy's really cool here have these three other projects that I think you should jump on yeah yeah that's what I'm trying to do now with Alex he's going to edit my first ever I've never done this before he's going to edit a video on my main channel. I'm going to give him that. Are you going to be like super stringent on the back end or like I'm going to watch this over and over again?

I don't know. I'm not. I'm not. Are you going to see the final edit or are you just going to let it go? No, no. Oh my gosh. No, no. No, no.

I told Alex, I'm going to film the whole video by new. So he has between 12 p.m. of tomorrow and until Thursday night to get this video to me and then we're going to go through it and add in the final touches. So by Thursday night, it's done. So he has 36 hours to just, I'm going to leave it up to him. How long does it take you usually? I could probably edit this video. It's going to be B-Rill intensive.

I could probably do it in five hours. Maybe six. Six is the most. So you feel like you're giving him more than enough time? Yes, I do. Okay. I would say for me it's five hours. For Alex, I'd say it's probably 10.

Just because he's going to learn the ropes. Are you up to the challenge, Alex? Or do you feel like you're going to mess it up? No, I'm up for the challenge. Or do you think you're going to smash? anything that Graham can even think, like you're knock it out of the park. I mean, I'm sure there's going to be a couple things that Graham's going to want me to change up, you know, for his liking, for sure.

And, you know, I've only been editing full time for six months. But I think it'll be good. I think it's going to be really good. Yeah, Jack edits right now, the Stifamily vlog channel. And those edits are incredible. But to incorporate, yeah, to incorporate this style of. I said Jack. Sorry, Alex.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So, yeah, so Alex has been editing the, uh, the blog channel now full time and the edits are incredible but to incorporate his style a little bit with mine so that it doesn't look like I didn't edit the video

I mean that would be the goal is that it looks the exact same yeah the same feel of it same feel so Jack was able to learn that on the second channel like in the very beginning actually I almost couldn't tell which videos I edited and which one Jack edits the only ways I could tell is because he doesn't zoom the way like I would zoom

Like sometimes, like I always zoom in, zoom in, zoom in when I end a thought, it's like the total zoom, and then when I start a new thought, it's back. Yeah. Sometimes, Jack, you'll zoom in, and then mid thought, it'll be all. I know, I knew that you did that.

Yeah. I figured that out. It's like, it's pretty smart. It's like, you further on the opinion, you further it on. You put it on it. But even now, but even now, sometimes I've noticed I've been like mid thought.

Oh, yeah, that's just because I need it. I change it, I think, a little quicker. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, so that's the only way I could tell the Jack edits this video. Who do you think is stronger between Graham and I? Hmm. Upper body, maybe Graham?

I don't know. He looks pretty like... Well, I'm wearing a baggy shirt. Okay. Did you guys play sports? I don't look that. I ran cross-country. I did not play any sports.

I assume your legs were pretty strong. I don't know. Or at least have really good endurance. Yeah, I did. I mean, I still do. Like, I can go out and do a five-mile run. And nothing. Well, I mean, I definitely would say it's like something.

Like, I'll be a little tired after a five-mile run. But, yeah, not as tired as the average person, definitely. I see. You know, Jack, just so you guys know, I did poll that exact question on the Stafamily link down below community tab. I said, who is the strongest Stafamily member? All right. I didn't know that. Overwhelmingly, Jack won at 30%.

No, come on. Followed by Ramsey at 27%. Followed by Graham at 18%. Oh, that's false. Come on. You're switching Jack and Graham. Who's Ramsey? Ramsey's the cat.

So the cat's stronger than Graham. But people, they're taking it as a joke. Like they're joking when they select you. It's not meant to be serious. They're just messing around. Really? Is that so? I don't think so.

That's true. It was meant as a joke. They want to make you feel about it. Your arms are very large. How often do you guys go to the gym over here? I try to go. I try to go four days a week lately. It's pretty good.

Yeah. Yeah, four or five days a week. And I used to do six, but now I'm down to four or five. Do you guys go together? No. We used to. Because your schedules are different? Kind of.

Yeah, Jack lights going in the morning. You guys live in the same house? Yes. Yeah, I live right there. But your schedules are just... I also like going, honestly, kind of like going alone. Oh, okay. I push myself a lot harder when I work out alone.

I don't know what I'm doing. I go in there and I lift... Lots of weight, and I make sure I'm tired, and then I leave. That's good. Yeah, our schedules are different. Every time, listen, almost every single time I go to the gym, I text Jack, hey, you want to come with me? No, I'm editing. Or it's usually, I just win.

So Jack goes in the morning, but if I go in the morning, it throws me off for the entire day. Like, I got to get right to work. Oh. Yeah. If I don't get right to work, I lose out on the most creative work. I see. Which is for me, is in the morning. Yeah, yeah, a lot of people are like that.

It's interesting, though, because grandma will start working out, and he will show. go with. Like he already will look way buffer if he goes to the gym like three times. However, I don't look buffer and I've buffer and I've been going to the gym for probably six months now. Is there any explanation to that? I don't know. I might have to see you guys shirtless

and then see what you guys look like when you guys trained and then three months later. All right. You know what? That'll be in the Stifanley vlog channel. How is that? You're going to get the full breakdown, everything in the Stafamily vlog channel. You know it would be funny. If you give us like a workout routine or something like this and we do a follow up six months later and we see the progress

between now and six months from now. I'll give you guys a routine and we'll see what happens in like 30 days. Oh, the 30-day makeover. Six months is hard to stick to sometimes. I'll push myself. Yeah, there's things that hop up all the time, people travel. Deal. All right, 30 days.

It's doable. Deal. Let's do it. Cool. I think we're good. This has been so productive. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Really is amazing to meet you and have you on. Oh, awesome. This is so much fun. So I really appreciate it, guys. Thank you so much for watching. We'll link to all of your information down below in the description. Make sure to subscribe. Don't forget to do that.

You want to tell them to smash the like button? Yeah, smash the like button. And see you guys next time. All right. I'll see you guys. Bye. Now we stand up. There we go.

There we go. Showing I was wearing shorts.