The Iced Coffee Hour - Money Expert: These 5 Money Habits Are Keeping You POOR! | Codie Sanchez

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

BETTERHELP: BetterHelp If you’re struggling, consider therapy with our sponsor BetterHelp. Click https://betterhelp.com/icedCoffeeHour for a 10% discount on your first month of therapy with a licensed professional specific to your needs. SHOPIFY: Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at https://shopify.com/ich HIMS: Tackle hair loss with simple, effective treatments at https://hims.com/ich Follow Codie Sanchez Here:  @CodieSanchezCT  NEW: Join us at http://www.icedcoffeehour.club for premium content - Enjoy! Add us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! 0:00 - Intro 6:32 - Codie on Growing Up & Starting a Protest 13:22 - Why College Degrees Aren’t Valuable Anymore 20:42 - Why Codie Quit Vanguard to Work at Goldman Sachs 35:27 - Make Your First $1,000,000 at a 9 to 5 Job 41:56 - Signs It’s Time to QUIT Your Job 46:01 - You Can Buy Businesses - Here is What to Look For 54:26 - Codie Breaks Down The FIRST Business She Bought 1:00:17 - The BEST Businesses to Enter Into in 2024 1:04:53 - Why Blue Collar Work is Under Appreciated 1:10:03 - Social Media’s Impact on Men & Women 1:14:40 - Codie’s Thoughts on Gender Roles 1:20:48 - Codie’s Business Portfolio and Investments 1:29:27 - Avoid ‘B-Players’ and Become an ‘‘A Player’ 1:38:52 - Codie’s Advice for People Who WANT to Become Rich 1:41:02 - Codie’s Thoughts on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Business 1:47:06 - Girl Boss vs. Stay-at-Home Wife & Tips for Men 1:58:28 - Codie vs Graham Debate: Should You Buy Starbucks Coffee? 2:07:38 - Attention is the NEW Currency 2:16:10 - Codie on Marriage, Divorce & Prenups 2:28:25 - Attaining True Freedom: Physical, Financial, and Philosophical 2:38:50 - Does the American Dream Still Exist? 2:47:39 - Real Estate Tenant HORROR Stories 2:54:22 - Codie Opens Up About Her Biggest Insecurity 2:58:13 - Closing Remarks *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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an entrepreneur. Go steal somebody else's homework and learn on their dime instead of your own. Every action you take either makes or loses money for a company. How much profit do you make the company? Because that's how you figure out how to negotiate to earn more. We were taught budgeting and saving and don't have

in Starbucks, and I don't believe in any of that. your advice for people who want to become rich? I think the best advice for people that are young is simply this idea of... Well, there you have it, everybody. There's the recipe to become rich. Cody Sanchez, this has been a long time coming. You're extremely impressive. I've seen you on quite a few different podcasts every single time. They blow up just because you're so knowledgeable and everyone loves you. Thank you for coming on the iced coffee. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. I'm excited to be here, guys. So I'm curious, why should people listen to you? Oof, I mean, you shouldn't, really. I don't think you should listen to anybody on the internet. Question

everything is actually our motto, like contrarian thinking. But one of the reasons that I like talking on the internet is that I don't think enough people talk about the fact that the most important thing for any human is ownership in one shape or form. So I don't think you have to listen to me, but I do think you should listen to more people who say you're capable and you can do it and you should have skin in the game as opposed to a sea or a chorus of humans these days that tell you all the reasons why you can't and you're a victim and it's not possible, especially in this world today. What qualifies you?

Well, I guess I could give my background. Depends on what. You definitely shouldn't listen to me about anything to do with cooking, cleaning. But when it comes to finance and investing, I've been doing it a long time. And so, you know, if you, I think the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, right? And in my career, I've been in finance since 2008. It's a long time. I worked at Goldman Sachs, works at State Street, worked at Vanguard, built a billion dollar asset management business at a company called First Trust in Latin America.

And so I don't know a lot of things, but I know a lot about how to invest and how to do it in the private equity side of the field, which is where I spent most of my life. So if that's interesting, then maybe you want to listen to me. But no, I don't profess that anybody on the internet should be listened to 100% of the time. And you guys are probably the same way. How did you get started doing all that? Like what was your life like growing up? Like most young people, I think nobody has one career and set path. I think this idea of linear career progression is completely false.

And if you've talked to anybody who's had any real success, all they've done consistently and linearly is fail continuously. And so I was the same way. I started out thinking that I wanted to be in politics. I worked under a senatorial campaign. Then I thought that I might want to be a lawyer. So I worked for the rule of law and competency court, which is somewhere that you go to determine if you should become a ward of the state or not. And then I went into journalism and I covered human trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border for a period of years. And then finally, I think all of this, I was trying to circle this round. If you see what's kind of consistent throughout it, it's like rule of incompetency court, freedom. Like, should you be in charge of your future or should you not? Politics comes down to freedom. Human trafficking, certainly the ultimate freedom. And what I kind of realized is that I think the only real freedom stems from money. That I think the international language that allows freedom is green and that most power comes from, do you understand and do you have money? And if you do in this day and age, you can control a lot of things. And so because of that, I went from becoming a journalist to, well, I want to understand this stuff. I didn't have any money. I didn't know anything about investing at the time. I came from a family of very humble background. My mom was a 30-year special education teacher, father, you know, didn't get a chance to go to college, immigrated to the U.S. And so I climbed up up the ranks of finance. So maybe a little bit different than other people on the internet. Although you guys had Ben Shapiro on, he's similar. I had a lot of traditional jobs for a long time before I decided. to do anything on the interwebs. Were you always inquisitive as a kid

because it seems as though you're very curious about things. So I know we talk a lot about financial success here on the channel, but honestly, what's even more important is the mental aspect that goes right alongside with it. Our sponsor BetterHelp is the world's largest therapy service used by over 4 million people, and with over 30,000 licensed therapists

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Were you always inquisitive as a kid? Because it seems as though you're very curious about things. curiosity has always been an underpinning. I would take a curious optimist over a brilliant pessimist any day of the week. And it's one of our core principles for hiring at our firm. But you guys have a podcast because it is actually a beautiful thing when you get a chance to ask humans who have some sort of specialty how they got there, why they got there, what they learned. And so I learned from an early age. We used to have these four chairs in my parents' living room. And we have them to do. And we have them to this day. When I have kids, I have this theory of four chairs, which is basically our family would get together and instead of watching TV after dinner, we would sit down and we would talk about what happened today. We would kind of debate a lot of politics in my family. We would debate a lot of principles philosophy. And so from a young age, I got pretty comfortable with, well, why do you believe that idea? What is the underlying first principles thinking in that idea? Well, if you believe this, Jack, what would be the second and third of our effects of thinking that way? And a funny thing happens when

you ask questions continuously, I think it becomes an addiction. And that addiction actually can lead to a lot of intellectual progress because all you're doing is trying to figure out root truth, root, truth, root truth. And so I really owe it a lot to those four chairs, I think. Were you a good student? It seems like a lot of entrepreneurs kind of rebel against school. Was that you? Through my first protest at 15. So I think it depends on. You mean you threw you first protest? What were you protesting? I was protesting. I was protesting. I think it was some rule at the time where we weren't allowed to, they wanted to limit our in-between hours. You guys remember where that was called? So you'd go to class and then you'd have a break in-between.

So, is the administration wanted to limit that? Yes, the administration. Is it like a lunch or like a break? No, it's like in between each class. You had like 10 minutes to get between classes. Yeah. There we go. And they wanted to limit it from 15 minutes to 10 or something like that. And I think like most high performers, it's very hard to sit still for, you know, an hour plus listening to a lecture on history from a teacher who, you know, doesn't have a speaking ability. And so I struggled in school with being able to focus. So I threw my first protest to say, that's ridiculous. Like we already are sitting for cumulative five hours a day or something like that. We should be able to move in between classes. And so that was my flat. How old were you? I was 15. And how do you throw a protest? Do you get your friends together or like, what do you do? Also, you said most high performers have a hard time listening to teachers that just kind of like Ambalon. Were you a high performer at the time? I was a high performer in that I was, you know, a straight-A student. Parents definitely had an expectation. Yeah. Now, I didn't love school and I think similar. I think I'm a little bit unschoolable and unemployable at this stage,

like most entrepreneurs are, hard to stay focused, always questioning, wondering why we're not doing X instead of why. But at the time, you know, when I threw a first protest, which is a great thing for people to do at a young age, I think. You learn, are you willing to take a stand? Are you willing to fail? Are you willing to put yourself out there? But basically, I got a bunch of my friends together. We created poster boards. I don't know if they still had those back in the day. We went on a little strike out front of the school campus. And it was a smaller town in Arizona called Arcadia. And yeah, we got some press coverage. And then eventually, you know, the principal at the time sat down with me, which was really interesting to hear what were my complaints and why did we

think this one way or the other. And so, yeah, so that was, that was the first protest. Did they, did they gave us the five minutes back. They did. He won. I won. Nice. Yeah. Now, that doesn't always happen. Why do they want to take it down five minutes? Was it just because they wanted more school time or they were thinking kids are kind of like, corporate overreach, you know? I imagine just kids just kind of hanging out, maybe wasting time. Yeah, I'm sure that, you know, idle hands are the devil's play toy, right? And so I think from a, from a facilitator's perspective, people who have power always want more power is the, core thesis of my life, I think. And that tends to be true with school teachers just as much as it's

true with politicians. And so in this case, what is easier to manage? A group of students who are all on one location with independent supervisors, much easier than when students are milling about in between doing what they will. And so I think there's this fundamental balance between, you know, safety and freedom that always happens when you have structures. And so in that instance, of course, They go, hey, kids aren't very safe in between. They're smoking, you know, cigarettes. They're leaving campus. They're getting into fights.

And so we could decrease that if they were just a little less free. And I think instead of doing that, we should actually teach people how to make the right decisions through correct incentives as opposed to limitations. Did you ever get in trouble as a kid? For sure. For what? Let's see. I wasn't as bad as a lot of kids. I wasn't a big drinker or drug user or anything like that.

But I do remember my father, good lesson for any fun. fathers out there did plant a row of of cactuses in front of my window. For a long time I thought that he was an avid gardener and it turns out there was a secondary reason for cactuses in front of my window which is I did sneak out. I snuck out of the house and got in trouble

and got caught for doing it. So that was my... Why do you sneak out of the house? I'm sure meeting a boy, you know, young girl, going and causing some shenanigans. So I'm curious when I think back to high school, you can kind of point out the people that you think are going to be extremely successful later in life. were you somebody that people around you were like, oh yeah, that Cody Sanchez girl, like, she's definitely going to be extremely wealthy. Could anyone have guessed that eventually down the line you'd be running or owning a bunch of different businesses making famously like just under $100 million a year?

Well, I never took no for an answer, which is a beautiful thing to do, I think, at a young age, to always ask why, why, why instead of just complying yes. But in the high school yearbook, I wasn't valedictorian. I didn't have the traditional path that you saw from like a young age to always ask why, why, why, instead of just complying yes. But in the high school yearbook, I wasn't valedictorian. You know, I didn't have the traditional path that you saw from like a Ben Shapiro or a Vivek Ramoswamy where they just had such a high intellectual grade early that it was noted that at some point these individuals were going to go on to big things. I think mine was more brute force, you know. I don't like no. And I want to keep working until we solve the problem as opposed to take things at face value. And so that was probably the difference. But I sort of have an underlying belief that.

intellect isn't as important as never quitting and that entrepreneurship is 95% grit and 5% skills and talent for most of us. And I think that was apparent at a young age. It's interesting. We've been hearing that a lot lately, actually. That doesn't really take intellect. Yeah. Well, I mean, they say that there's, I mean, there's a lot of research that shows that up until a point, you know, it's like any bell curve, right? On either side of the bell curve, you have on the low, very, very low end of the IQ curve, that is very difficult to then succeed. So there is some level of intellect that is necessary in order to succeed. But actually at the very high end of the bell curve, it's harder to succeed by and large because social norms are so important. And so instead of, you know, trying to optimize, like I think we all did at a young age, how high are my SATs? What college am I going to get into? Am I smart enough? It's really, you know, we were doing some research the other day for our companies because we're always looking at how do we determine the best people to hire at any time. And when it comes to high performers, what we found through looking at a myriad of studies is two, which is Angela Duckworth's work on grit.

So, you know, do you continue to go forward even in the likely event of failure? And then the secondary was interesting. It's actually behavioral aggression. So if you were to come to me and say, you get to pick between high performers and figure out which one you think will be more likely to succeed. The most likely to succeed typically has this thing called behavioral aggression, which basically is similar to what you see in sports, let's say. It's typical to what you see in dating. And it sort of holds consistent across both business, dating, and things like sports, which is simply, how aggressive are you? Do you continue to ask questions? Do you continue to

try to go hard after the things you want? And that is a much better indicator for success than raw intellect, which I thought was interesting. So you got to grades in high school. Then you went off to college, I'm guessing, right? That's the next thing in the timeline. How'd you do in college? Well, I mean, I went to the Harvard of the West, Arizona State University, which is not known for its intellectual prowess at all. What do you mean Harvard of the West? It's the opposite of that. Yeah, it was a joke. Maybe there's a class in there. So comedy is not on my radar. No, Harvard is nothing like ASU. But, you know, if I had one regret in life, it would be that, I listened to my parents who said, just go for the school we get in to for free. Go play safe. You know,

don't go too far from the family. Instead, if I could listen to any other advice, it would be, you know, shoot your shot in every sense of the word, in every way possible. Try to go for the hardest and best and highest thing that you possibly can't. And so instead of that, they said, go to ASU because you get in and it's free. And I said, okay, that seems reasonable. So I went to ASU and yeah, I got good grades. But, I mean, the class isn't at ASU. I think I took a history of Elvis Presley class. I took a Beatles 1, 2, and 3. You know, this is not rigorous.

Why do they teach you that? They have to. But why? It's all a part of Underwreck. You have to do all of the prerequisite classes. You have to get the punits. Why? It's a fair question.

I took history of jazz. No, that seems more sophisticated. It really isn't. It sounds sophisticated, but it's not. The professor would eat hot dogs during the middle of the lecture. That's incredible. Yeah. And then one day he forgot he was eating a hot dog,

put it on top of the piano, taught the rest of the lecture, and left the room. He forgot he was eating a hot dog. So what happened to the hot dog? I don't know. I left with the professor. Jackton also not go to Harvard.

I didn't know. He's going to finish that. I should have asked. He only ate half of it. There was plenty left. I don't know why they make you teach or they teach you those lectures. I don't think it's important.

That's so weird. I think a lot of what it is. And for the credit of college, it teaches you how to study, how to learn and how to have grit, kind of like what you said. I mean, like learning something you don't necessarily want to be learning and pushing through that is a skill. And I think actually that's where most of the benefit from college comes from is pushing through that. Right. I mean, there's fascinating data out there and it's hard to get data as of 2022.

But the last data I saw said as of 2010, if you have a high school diploma versus a college degree, you are going to earn somewhere around $3 million more over the lifetime earnings of an individual with a college degree, then a high school grad degree. And so you'll earn about a million, you'll earn about four at the high end. So just looking at the stats, you would say college has a high ROI. We should go to college. But one, I think that data is outdated over the next 10 years. We're going to see that materially change. And two, I think the two things that we are told about college, right, is that it will prepare you for the real world. So this is your preparatory class for in business, in life, whatever the next stage may be. And

And the second thing, when they say that they can't quite prove that one anymore is it's the network, right? And that's especially true, I think, for MBAs. And I went to MBA at Georgetown. And I don't talk to anybody that I went to MBA at Georgetown with because actually it's not that hard. School, when you're contextually young, seems hard. And then how many of us actually think school looks hard when we've run a business, when you can't pay payroll, when you're close to bankruptcy, when you did a deal and it's going to fail, when you can't bring in any revenue, when you've got to tell you. You your friends and family that you aren't making money. School actually seems quite easy by comparison. And so I think the network only actually comes by doing hard things, which is why all of my friends now are former business owners or current business owners, because we've been through difficulty together. And I actually don't think school teaches you that at all. So I got good grades at ASU, but what does it actually matter? What about the college experience? Was that worth it? I mean, a lot of frat parties and tailgates for me. It's fun. You know, Georgetown was fun too. It's beautiful campus. Both experiences are super fun. And if my kids want to go there, you know, I will certainly let them do so. But do I think

that they might be better served by going out and actually starting a business themselves or going out and working at a few startups? Yeah, by and large. Minus the fact that I do think that we should have a base level understanding of philosophy. Like, how do you think you want to show up in the world? What are good ethics and values? What does it mean to have a successful life? What is the definition of winning, what do you want to accomplish before you die, that you might not learn to start up. And so I do think we have to teach children those classics. But I'm not so sure the college actually does that anymore. It's interesting that you brought up the data that I felt like everybody has seen where if you graduate college, you're going to make three million times more than someone

who doesn't. They use that as like a weapon against us in my public high school where like everybody then felt like they needed to go to college if they were going to provide. Yeah. Why do you think that is? Well, historically it made sense. Yeah, but like today, do you think that still applies? No, absolutely not. I think in the future, I mean, we're already seeing it. I was just on the news yesterday and I did a bunch of research on it so it's top of mind and I can hopefully get the numbers right. But, you know, today, I think categorically more CEOs will hire from Twitter and product hunt than they will from universities. I think receipts are bigger than resumes. We want you to not tell us what you've accomplished, but show us. Think about the members of your team. I have no idea where Tanner went to school. I actually don't even know if you finished college. Probably not. I don't even know his last name. Did you finish college? Oh, yeah, there we go. His mom's like, what the fuck?

So, you know, those are not things that I ask anymore. And what I actually want to see is show me your proof of work. And so I think in the future, that will be a huge differentiator. We're already seeing it at a lot of the major firms. I mean, I was going back and forth with Bology the other day, who's, you know, kind of a categorical genius. And we were joking. He's like, well, aren't you kind of a hypocrite because you went to Georgetown for an MBA, but you're telling people that MBAs don't have a high ROI and shouldn't do it.

ivory tower much. And they said, well, I went to Georgetown in 2013. And so I suppose that that's the same year that Google Glass came out. I suppose my degree from Georgetown University is worth just about as much today as a Google Glass from 2013 is worth, which is categorically nothing. I don't actually find that there's huge value in it today. I heard something recently, too. I think it was ZipRecruiter. 55% of their applications no longer require a bachelor's degree. So the majority of degrees are out there. And I think I even heard overall, just outside of ZipRecruiter, it was 45% of all jobs no longer require a bachelor's degree. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't surprise me. If you look at the trades, you know, the average welder makes somewhere around $172,000 a year. Now, that's a high level trade that takes some apprenticeship in order to learn. The average marketing degree makes anywhere from $37,000 to $65,000 a year and requires a college degree. And so it's just math. You know, when you look at the math, If the creep of degrees has increased at a level that is outpaced their level of utility from an earnings perspective, then we should question it more.

And so I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 20 to 30 years, schools have to categorically change or they need to stop giving government funding or they need to decrease the amount that they increase their tuition every year. So to continue the timeline, you graduate college and then you go to all of these different random jobs that you mentioned, beginning and then eventually you find yourself going into finance and becoming what was an investment banker, a financial analyst or something at it. My first job was Vanguard. Yeah, so I joined their accelerated development program, which is a great hack if you're young. And I think a lot of people these days say don't go to corporations. I actually disagree with that.

I think you could even skip the university as often as you want. But if you can get into a corporation, they actually pay you to get a mini MBA. I went to Vanguard and had to take all of these licenses in order to get. securities trained in order to invest. And then we would go around different divisions of the company and I would have different jobs every, I think it was every two months or three months. It was an 18-month program and relatively hard to get into, but almost every large corporation has this. So if you go to Deloitte, to DuPont, to Vanguard, you can join their accelerated development program. And so I did. And I did that for about 24 months, two years, something like that. Before I realized that some

companies are also super socialist and Vanguard is one of those. It's an incredible company if you want to stay forever and you don't want to progress quickly and you don't want to have a meritocracy where you make money depending on how much you provide value to the company. Vanguard is technically a non-profit and so because of that I didn't stay there very long. As Cody talks about in the episode, running a successful business requires that you have the right people and the right systems in place to get the job done. And thankfully with their sponsor Shopify, you can get all of that and more for the low cost of just $1. Shopify is the global e-commerce platform that has already helped transform millions of businesses worldwide.

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Guys, it's only $1 per month at Shopify.com slash ICH all lowercase or visit the link down below in the description. Again, the link is down below in the description to get started with just $1. It's a dollar, guys. Thank you so much. And now let's get back to the episode. How does that make sense? A company that only makes money by moving money, how is it a socialist company? Well, this is slightly technical, but Vanguard's interesting because they're actually a mutual holding company.

And they patented this unique structure that allows all additional profits to go back and to decreasing their fees. And so that's why we see such low fees from Vanguard exchange traded funds. and was patented by the CEO of the company at the time that I was there. And he got $0 for that patent, by the way, because he worked at the company, which is fascinating. And so Vanguard operates on a principle that I think is true, which is most people want safety. They don't want upside. And so people stay at Vanguard for decades and decades because they get a percentage of the profit share and they are comfortable living a life where they're highly unlikely to ever get fired. Vanguard does not have mass layoffs. They've never had them. And so if you want to choose safety versus upside, a company like Vanguard is interesting. name. I just didn't. I said I'd rather have a likelihood to get fired, but make more. How much were they paying their employees? Like, is it like a good, like six figures, a hundred grand a year? I mean, I made 37K a year, 36K a year or something like that. But there was generally going to be upside? Like you would definitely make more than $36,000 year. But you could go look up on the internet. Definitely the CEOs of Vanguard and one of the lowest paid C-suite individuals in the country for sure. And they are one of the largest asset management firms in the world. And so it. It is not dollar for dollar better pay. And I think there's a lot of virtue signaling that goes on in companies like that, too.

Like because the guy who founded that company involved Jack Bogle back in the day, right, you know, he still drove similar to Warren Buffett. Incredible publicist, honestly. Still drove his Camry or Buick sort of similar story every single day. And then simultaneously lived in his same house. And so I remember at Vanguard back in the day, you would see managers who would have a time X and a Bucs and a Bucy. work or something that they would drive into work and then you'd see them on the weekends and they'd have the roles and they'd have their nice B&W or whatever. And I just, I like having congruency in life. It makes it a lot easier to remember things if you don't lie. So you found that they really tried to

subdue or hide their wealth from the employees. Was that more so out of the jealousy thing or a principle? Like here's what we stand for. Here's the image that we portray. Cultures of companies are just cults, right? And so, you know, in my belief, if you have a good culture in a company, you have a cult-like company. And what does a cult necessitate? Uh, socialized norms, behaviors, creeds, and sometimes dress, often dress. And so I think Vanguard's cult was one of, we are value base. You know, we don't, we're not showy. Um, we don't try to have more for me. We have more for we. And so because of that, yeah, I think they had to normalize to the cult like behavior of the company. What did you decide to leave? And what was the catalyst for that?

It sounds like a pretty cushy job all things considered. Vanguard's a great company. I'm sure you get amazing benefits there. Amazing benefits and learned a lot. That's why I think those rotational programs are a great place to start and a terrible place to die. You want to leave somewhere in between so that you can continue to progress. And a lot of people don't. They get trapped in the sea of safety.

But I actually left because of one man, which is often true. I think people leave jobs, but they really leave bosses, right? And so my boss, shout out Ron. Nice enough guy, but, you know, I wanted to move quickly. And so I came up with an idea for a division at Vanguard. And at the end of how an accelerated program works is you have like 20 of us or whatever was. And at the end of your accelerated program, you get placed in a division somewhere within the company permanently, right?

And I wanted a placement to run investments in Latin America, low level, right? I'm a nobody at that stage. But I'm like, I think we could do this. Here's how I can, you know, start this one. So I'm in a division under this other one over here. I'm going to come up with my own job. And I did that and I gave it to Ron and Ron ran it up the food chain and they said yes to this idea. But then, which has long been a thing I've been bad at, but then I remember like very, like it was yesterday, he sat me down and he said, you know,

we've agreed to move forward on this position. I'm so excited. I'm going to go do something in Latin America on the investing side. And it's like, however, I wanted to ask you, what are your peers think of you? I'm like, what? I don't, I thought we were talking about this. Long story short, he goes, I think your peers have said that you would leave dead bodies behind you to get ahead. And I was like, literally, figuratively. You know, I'm kind of like, it was like, like, 120 blonde chick back then. Like, probably couldn't do that. What do you mean? And he's like, so he starts to peel back the layers. And it's that I didn't show up for company parties. And I, you know, kind of. only worked. I was at my desk all the time. I was dismissive of people if they came by because I was on the phones. I was focused on work. I was like a very focused individual. And it's sort of like that duck on the surface, right? You know, I came from nothing, Harvard of the West ASU. I didn't have the fancy backgrounds these people did. I didn't know what a mutual fund was when it started. So on the surface, I might have looked okay, but I was fucking paddling. And so anyway, they ended up giving the job to somebody else. But you created it. But I created the job. Wow. I was pissed. And, and, and, and,

And in retrospect, he did me an incredible favor because what that led to is me saying, okay, so culture really matters in your career. The company that you choose is important. The company's culture is incredibly important for career advancement. So where do I find a company where dead bodies are okay, where they just want me to be a meritocracy and win and to do it ethically and morally, but that it's okay to really focus on winning. And that would be as seen as a good thing, not a bad thing. And so I found gold with sacks.

And it was a natural progression to Goldman because I found a culture where they were like, we win, you know, and we do it ethically and morally, but we win. And so I left to go there. How do you just up and leave and pick Goldman Sachs? What's the application process? Like, is it difficult? If you ever want to get a job at a top tier company, which I don't know if kids even want that anymore, but if you want a job at a top tier company and you want to get there fast, the secret is to find the recruiters who recruit for that company. And so I'm always looking for my who, not my how. And my who was finding who the who was finding who the recruiters were for Goldman. And so I went out and typically all financial firms have third-party recruiters that recruit for them. So if you want to go work at a big investment bank, you find the recruiter that recruits analysts at that level. And so I found one, I reached out to a ton of them. And then I found one, this guy by the name of Terran, who was incredible, who coached me because they make money when they place you, right? The average placement fee in finance is $100,000

for an analyst level role. They pay you almost equal to the first year salary of an analyst. Well, they did back then. I don't know if they do anymore. That's insanely high. To just recruit people? To just recruit an individual. How is that profitable to pay that much? It depends how long the person stays and what they're able to get the contract for. So do these people get paid if you sign a year-long contract and you leave like a year and a day into it?

I don't know. Okay. And the contracts are highly variable. And I think, you know, back then they also had metrics. Woman, Latina, quote of higher. And that would pay differently on the recruitment. Yeah. I don't even know if that's legal anymore.

But so I found Taryn, he helped prep me for the interview because recruiters do get paid every time. And even if they don't get paid that amount, like right now we pay recruiters who find us C level executives anywhere from $60,000 to $80,000 per C level executive. And if we have more junior level hires, those hires typically make somewhere around three months of the salary of the hire. And so that can be really lucrative for recruiters. So I found that guy. And he helped me get in the door at Goldman. But it was 10, 12 interviews, you know, presentations and hours of prep to get there. Just curious, when you were working at Vanguard, you said you were working extremely intensely and you weren't rewarded for it. Is this something that you always were this level of intensity? Because I know for a lot of viewers, they hear from people like you and they're like, I just don't have what it takes. I don't have what she says she does day and day out.

She'd clock in. She'd just grind all day. Is this something that you think, like, maybe because you're from like a family of immigrants or like this is just something you were naturally born with? It's like in your genes. I tend to believe every human has that thing that they are meant to do that they completely lose track of time in. I heard you guys talking about this with another podcast member. I am annoyed when somebody interrupts my flow state of work.

I am grumpy. I don't like it. And I'd much rather be obsessing on the things I want to do at work than doing 97% of things in life. And I tend to think that every person has that. It's just tough to find what it is. You know, I've been through probably seven or eight different careers because each time it wasn't there. It wasn't right. It wasn't right. And so I think the sad part about humans is that we think that we have to stay in jobs we don't like doing things we don't want to do for decades because that's what work is. And that's why people have like an anti-work, anti-hustle culture. But man, if you find a thing you love to do, it doesn't mean every day is fun. There's many, many miserable, miserable days. But it does mean that you can lose track. of time in it just as easily as you can to run a meditation or an orgasm. What did you do at Goldman Sachs exactly?

I did many things at Goldman Sachs. When I first went into Goldman Sachs, I worked in what was called the G-SAM, the Goldman Sachs Asset Management Group. And so they brought us in there. And basically at the time, so this was right pre-crisis. So we sold investments to institutions that Goldman had. And that was fun. I did that for a period. And then I went to PEP, which is the private equity group. And I think they spun that off, actually. So then we sold Goldman Sachs private equity products to other institutions. And then I went into the investment banking analyst program. And I had two choices. The investment banking analyst program is interesting. It's like a two-year program, something like that. But the problem was when I was at Goldman, we were during the financial crisis. And so they fired every year they fire 20% of the employees at Goldman Sachs.

It's part of their churn process, or at least it was back then. And I thought they were going to have to spin out the investment bank because they were under huge scrutiny. And so I had a decision, do I stay in the investment banking side and move forward with that? Or do I go to this other vision, which was the private wealth division? And so I was deciding between that. There was a lot of stuff going on at Goldman at the time. And then I chased a man to Dallas instead and left the firm because I wanted to be out of the Dallas office. and they didn't have investment bank in there,

and they only had a segment of private wealth I didn't want to do. How did you find the man? He worked at Goldman, too. Yeah, so that was my first husband. I'm divorced and remarried. But we both worked there at the same time. And so he ended up going and working

at a different firm in Dallas, and I kind of put my career as a back burner and followed. In hindsight, do you regret that decision? No, because the only decision I ever regret, is when I didn't strive for the really big, huge thing that I wanted. And so when I decided to move to Dallas, I'm actually glad I didn't stay in investment banking. I think that was an incredible career for people, you know, 20 years ago. And increasingly investment banking to me was less interesting than private equity. And so instead, I think you should step change in your career as

often as you can. You sort of skill stack like Adam Scott talks about, right? You try to get as many disparate types of skills as you can because it's really hard to be Lance Armstrong or to be, you know, Tiger Woods, but it's not that hard to be somebody who has an amalgamation of many talents. And so I don't regret that decision because I went and aggressively pursued another job, which was State Street at the time. And I did the institutional development group there. And so, you know, if there's a common thread, it's basically these days we hear a lot of entrepreneurial stories that go like this. It was really hard. I didn't make any money. I almost left everything, lost everything. So then I slept on my couch and then something took off and I worked

really hard on that something and then I kept going, right? I think that's a lot of entrepreneurial stories these days. But I think there's a huge segment of humans out there that are working in nine to fives and don't realize you can definitely make your first million in a nine to five. Actually, I think, easier than you can an entrepreneur because there's already systems and processes in place. Now making your first 10 million plus hard to do if you don't become an entrepreneur. But your first million in a job I think is actually much easier. And then you can have a cushion of which to propel yourself through the rest of your career. I think a big disservice we do to entrepreneurs today is we tell them, you know, go now, take a huge risk now.

You don't know anything when you're first starting out. Go steal somebody else's homework and learn on their dime instead of your own. And then you can have a cushion for when you want to eventually take the huge jump and you might fall. But you'll be okay. So when you were working at Goldman, you said that your income would be reflective of, you know, your production. How did that look for you then when you finally felt like you were contributing to that? Yeah. Oh, well, I mean, there is no greater joy, I think, than seeing output done or activity done and dollar made. I think it's like a great joy in business. If anybody likes video games,

it's the same thing in business. It's like, you know, how do you guys feel when you see a video start to take off that you spent time on? How do you guys feel when you have a product and it starts to sell? It is beautifully addicting. And so, uh, I think, you guys feel, you know, I think that you guys feel, think that's where I first got addicted to this game of business was seeing at Goldman Sachs, okay, if I make this much in one of our funds for our investors, here's what I get paid. Here's a dollar for dollar amount. If I make, you know, this much by bringing in this many investors, here's what I make. And so, you know, for our companies at Contrary Thinking Capital, we try to have incentive aligned

pay for every single person we can, even down to like an admin, because I want to instill in people this idea that every action you take either makes or loses money. for a company. And you should really understand if you're an employee, are you a cost center or a profit center? And if you are a profit center, you should figure out how much profit do you make the company? Because that's how you figure out how to negotiate to earn more. And I learned that at Goldman. So how much were you making at Goldman? And how was your income affected by your... Towards the end of Goldman, probably a couple hundred thousand dollars. Oh, that's a lot of money. And how old were you at the time? I was in 20s, early 20s. That's insane. Well, you made money at

Goldman off of two things. At Goldman and most of these financial firms, you make money off of salary, which is really not that high. I don't remember. Let's call it $100,000, $120,000, something like that. And then bonus. And bonus at that time was individually tied to how much money you're bringing in. And so if I brought in X amount of, you know, dollars from investors, I got a percentage of every single dollar I brought in, uncapped upside, which is, I think, where anybody should be. So safe to say you were successful at that position? Yeah. And do you think that gave you a lot of confidence then going in when you started buying your own businesses? Oh, for sure. I mean, it was a good thing about Goldman, a couple different things. Once you have a few pennies to rub together,

and then you can take those first pennies and make it on your own outside of your nine to five, I think that is probably the single biggest trigger point for freedom. It's like how people talk about you make your first dollar on the internet, and that makes life a lot easier. And I think that was the same thing for me at that company. I made a couple pennies, and I started investing in a stock market in 2008. Well, we had an economist back in the day that had a great, line, he would speak to a bunch of our investors. And they'd say, what stock should I invest in right now in 2008? And he would say, yes. They'd be like, no, no, no. He's like, pick a stock, any stock, because we're at rock bottom level prices, right? So I started investing pretty heavily in the stock

market at that point. And that ended up being a really good bet at the bottom of the market. So your position at Goldman, was it investing in public companies, deploying capital there? Or was it more so like buying up smaller businesses and stuff like that? Well, the PEP, the private equity group, buying a businesses. That's what you specialized in. I mean, I was so young back then. I couldn't say I specialized in anything. Those roles, when you're an analyst who I think I left and I was an associate, you're glorified PowerPoint maker, Excel spreadsheet taker, that's about it. But working a lot. But working like crazy. It's a universe of please fixes and late nights. And all you really learn is the language of finance, the language of money, and hard work.

And then, and the language of money is really important for people to know. I mean, you guys teach this all day long. But if you don't understand how people talk about money, you're never going to make it. You know, it's just like money is a cruel mistress. If you don't track her, she'll leave you for somebody that does. And it's the same thing with the language of money. If you can't speak to it, it's not going to speak back to you. And so that's what I really learned at Goldman.

So let's talk about the language of money because you bring this up a lot in your interviews. Does that require a certain vocabulary? that certain viewers should know, or is it just the way that you speak with confidence? What is the language of money? And how can people learn it? I think it is actually vocabulary. And it's not that comprehensive.

But if you spent like 10 minutes a day on Investopedia, you could probably play this game pretty easily. Like most people don't understand ROI. Like, what is your return on income? They don't actually understand basis points, which is just another way of saying fees. Finance has a separate language because they want you to think that making money

is harder than it is when you have money. And so you give it. it to them and they charge you a fee instead of the other way around. And so I think money is a little bit like medicine. It's gate kept, right? Because there's a huge financial incentive for you to put your trust in them as opposed to yourself. And so I do think people need to learn the language of money in some way, shape, or form. That's really interesting. So you're saying that the people that know the language, the people that make money with your money, just kind of created this exclusive language so then it can seem like there's a higher barrier to entry and you can't do it yourself. I think it's, yep, I think that's exactly right. Why would you ever leave that job at Goldwood Sachs? It seems like making that much money in your early 20s. If you just grind that out for like 15 years, you're set for life.

Like, why risk it? Why even leave? Graham, you sound like my mom, my Latina mom. I think she cried when I left the firm. She cried? I don't know. She hates when I do these interviews and say stuff like that, but she was not happy. Listen, I do think that you have to, I think you should.

state a job for exactly this long. Amount of time that you are still continuously learning with an upside to continue earning. And in the beginning of your career, you should optimize for learning. Who cares what you make in your first couple of jobs? Because you don't know anything. And so you aren't going to be able to earn enough. You just have to optimize for learning. At some point, you want to have the learning equal to earning.

But the second that you stop learning on a job is the second, I think you should first tell your boss about it and then second leave. and that's what I do with our employees too. It's like if you are stopping learning at any point, please tell me, come to me, and let's figure out a plan for you to continue to learn because I stopped learning at Goldman. I felt like I had learned what I needed to learn in this one individual segment, and I needed to move on. And if I couldn't find a way to move on or move up, then I was going to move out. And that was basically the idea. And I really wanted to do this job.

So there are like a couple different types. of jobs and finance in investment banking and private equity asset management. And I wanted to do the type that was in the field. Like, I wanted to go do due diligence on the companies individually. I wanted to do partnerships with big institutions. Like, I wanted to give the PowerPoint presentations. I didn't want to be the one creating them. And Goldman, you know, rightly so, was like, you're five.

Take it easy. Like, give it a few more years. And I was like, no. And so that's why I went to State Street where I could go do that and play hand-to-hand combat. Did they match the offer that you had with Goldman? did you tell them, hey, I was making a few hundred grand, like, just match this plus a little more? Hmm, I don't remember. I do remember, I've always been interested in upside.

So, like, where can I go? I don't care that much about what you start me with. I don't want you to limit the top. And so at that time, the job that I went after was I wanted to head a Latin American investment group for them because they didn't have one. And they were like, no. And instead, I interviewed with 452 people and finally settled. on this idea of invested cash for them.

It was the cash management group at the time and ran a segment of the business doing that. And so my only thing that I really wanted to do was be paid dollar for dollar for everything that I brought in and keep learning. And I didn't understand anything about this side of the business. So that's why I went there. You said you were interviewed by 452 people? Not literally. It was probably more like when I interviewed for State Street, I flew to Boston.

I flew to San Francisco. There were two more offices. I met a guy in Dallas for it And at each location, I think I met three to five people Because Just had to clarify Yeah, yeah, not literally 452 Because I wanted a job that didn't quite exist

Which is a common thread And something people don't do enough, you know? Like, how thrilled would you be if somebody came to you And they were like, I've watched your business for some time I think you guys make money by doing advertising and sponsorships largely. I imagine that that's tough and that you don't have enough people to do it. And if I was able to bring you aligned advertisers and sponsors for your channel,

and you approved them and liked them, could I come on board and be one of your distribution partners for it? I'll work for you and you only have to pay me a percentage of the stuff that I bring in. You guys would probably say, yes. And so that's what I did. And I think more people should do that continuously. They wait for a job opening to come up as opposed to saying, I'm actually going to, I'm not going to sniper. I'm not going to rifle shot. What I want, I'm in a sniper shot. I want to work at the ice coffee hour. And so because I want to work for these two, and I want to optimize for learning, let me create a position that is so irresistible to them that they can't say no to me. And if I do that, then I bet I get to learn. I bet I get to earn. And they're going to have a lot of respect for me because in a world of, you know, rule takers, I'm going to be a rule maker. And game recognizes game. At what point did you buy your first business? When did you realize that like State Street was not enough? Yeah. That you couldn't satisfy the entrepreneurial bug by doing these jobs.

Well, the first business I bought was actually, it was called Selling South back in the day. And it was a consulting business basically across the U.S.-Mexico border. So that was like State Street days. And that business did okay. How did you just buy a business? Did you know of them ahead of time? Yeah. So I was, so they were trying to sell me services.

So I call this one of the best ways I like to buy businesses is called the personal P&L review, which basically means you look at the things that you spend money on and you look at the things that you get money from. So I wasn't a business at this point, but if you work in a job, you could say the same thing. And you figure out, are any of these businesses small enough where I could actually get to the owner? And if I can get to the owner, can I talk to them? Does it seem like a business that I'd want to buy? And if so, can I have the conversation about buying? So in this instance, the guy wanted to sell me consulting services to Latin America as part of our business.

There was a little, you know, kind of tiny little operation. And I started talking to them and I was like, God, this guy's terrible at sales. And yet he's pretty smart. And this is actually a pretty good business model. It's a product-dized service. Why don't I negotiate with him and say, you're not very good at sales. It doesn't seem like you like sales. I like sales and bringing people into businesses.

What if I buy part of your business? and I only do it for the amount of revenue that I can additionally add to your business. And if that works out, maybe I buy the business out, right? So that was one of the first transactions. How much was it? 150, 170, something like that. Not a big transaction, but not all at once.

I kind of got to test the waters first. Can you get a loan for something like that? No, and at the time I had enough money. But if I did it again, like now I'm very greedy with personal capital. I think anytime you can, you want to play with other people's money instead of your own because you just decrease the risk and money is way more abundant than anybody ever thinks. And so there's money all around all the time and it's there for the taking. It's just you

have to speak the language and you have to be able to give the ask. And most of us weren't taught that. You know, we were taught budgeting and saving and don't have your fucking Starbucks and I don't believe in any of that. Although I have a lot of respect for the people that help people get out of debt because that is actually very hard once you've dug a hole. But if you want to have upside earnings, you can't save your way to your first 10 million, but this is not going to work. And I like playing the upside game because I've never really liked budgeting.

I want to be able to spend what I want to spend when I want to spend it. And the only way to do that is make a lot of money. So that was the first deal. And then I did another couple deals. Then I did a laundromat deal. That was the first one that I talked about on the internet, basically.

Yeah. What happened with a laundromat? Why laundromats? I looked into laundromats like 2014, 2014, 2013. Yeah. I decided against it because of how capital intensive it was and all the overhead and how competitive it was. I had no idea that laundromats are so territorial. Like if you open up a laundromat within a certain location of another established one, it's like really frowned upon in the industry.

And the established laundromat could actually undercut the other one, the new one, and they'll run it a loss just to run the other one out of business if they're like really successful. I've just trained these crazy stories online. Yeah, I mean, I talk about gateway drug businesses. So like what are the businesses that are simple to understand that don't take a ton of capital, that cash flow? And I like starting with those, just like you would any gateway drug, because they're easy, they're simple. And once you can understand that business, then you can stair step your way to higher levels of the game. And not all businesses are created equal, right? And not all business models are created equal. And we weren't taught that. You know, that's something I learned probably doing, you know, at Goldman and looking at all these businesses is you see like, why does this business that does a million dollars a year and this business that does it a million a year why is this one worth five million and this one is worth 250,000 dollars? They both make the same amount of money. And like those are the classes we were never taught, right? Things like valuations and multiples and, you know, and what is what is EBDA of a first profit and how about

thinking about the value of different types of EBTA? And so I bought laundromats because I had a guy. I always start with who as opposed to how and I had a laundromat guy. And so here I just have a laundromat guy. He, I think you should try to be a collector of humans. And so, um, I collect competency wherever I see it. So the person leaves bodies behind. Yeah. Yeah. No, I actually did the, I actually like to do the opposite of that. Like that person, funny story, actually, that person who took the job that I was supposed to get at Fangard back in the day instead is a dear friend of mine to this day. Her name's April Repi. Shout out April. And she ended up coming my number two at the Latin American investment business that I built. And so, you know, when I see a human that is competent,

you guys know this. How many people do you meet? How about this game? You go into a business. How many times you go into business and go, why do they do it this way? I'm in this donut shop and they could sell me a coffee with this, but they don't. The line is out the window. Why don't they hire two more people? There's like a register there. There's a register there. Wait a second. They don't have a subscription model over here. Like once you see it, you see that in-competment. competence is all around. It's the status quo. Most people don't want to work that hard, and most people don't want to think that critically. And so when you see competence, when you see somebody who's good and loves the game, I just try to keep them in my circle. And so with this individual, I met him back

in the day, and his name was Mike, and he was running another laundromat, but it was smaller. And I was like, if you run one, and it's kind of by this, couldn't you run two? And I'm running a business at the time. But if I fund it for you, couldn't you run it for me theoretically? He was like, yes, why would I? And I was like, oh, it's this thing called equity. And then give you a portion of it. And so that's how I started that business. And then I grew out to other laundromats. But I wouldn't recommend everybody go out and buy a laundromat. It's just where I started. What, how much did you make from that? Like, what was involved in running that? Yeah. Well, not much for me. I try to have operators that run businesses that I don't have any expertise in. I run three

businesses right now, which is contrary in thinking, contrarian thinking capital and our hold co. So the one where we keep our small businesses. But back then, you wouldn't want me running a laundromat. That would not have been good for anybody. And so Mike ran it, but I did the bookkeeping and I made sure that I understood how our banking was set up and our taxes filed and all that. And when we first did that business, we made something like $60, $67,000 in profit when we bought the business. And then I think we got it up to $80, $90, $100,000. And how much was the laundromat? The laundromat that we bought was about 100K. And then eventually you got up to $100,000 a year in profit? Yeah, about 80 or 90. How did you split that with the guy who ran it? How is it only 100K?

Yeah. Because usually these laundromats are selling for like 2 to 5x what you would make in profit. Well, a couple things to think about. A business is really only worth what somebody will pay for it, right? And so a job of running a laundromat for $67,000 years is actually not that, it's not that highly sought after of a job, right? And so that's a very, it's what's called a micro level deal. It's a very tiny deal. And so the reason why I could buy that laundromat is nobody else wanted it. He had been listed for a long time. There was no additional market for it. And nobody wanted a job for $67,000 a year running this laundromat. And, you know, the books are a mess or they don't even really have books. It's an unbankable deal, meaning you can't get debt for it. And so there's all these reasons why businesses never sell. But usually the reasons are they don't make enough money. Nobody wants the business. The books are really messy. And, you know, they're not big enough for an institution or a strategic to come in and buy it. So that's actually really, really normal. And if you were to look at the numbers, it's really funny because people go one or two ways on this deal. They go, no, bucket way. That deal's so good. Who would sell it for that? And then the other side, they go, that's a terrible deal. Why would you do it? And there's like, no, I'm between. But I don't actually believe in good or bad deals. I think it's only whether it's a good or bad deal for you. And that one, I was like, I could lose 100K and like it wouldn't bankrupt me. And so I'm going to learn on this deal.

I'm going to learn with this guy. And I felt like that was an okay bet to take at that time. And how did you split it between you and the operator? I think he got like 30 or 40 percent. And I got 60 or 70, but I paid him a salary. So he got whatever the salary was. And then he got whatever percentage of the profits it was, which is typically how I do deals. So I want to get really granular on that first deal because for most people watching this that want to get involved in their first business or buy their first business.

that I feel like is the hardest barrier to surpass. First deal is the hardest. So your very first deal, you had a connection with this consulting firm that brings people across the border, is what you said? Oh, the selling south? Yes. Yeah, yeah. So how were you, this is just like randomly. Yes. So how this happens is right now we think about the people that we spend money on, right? So if you think about your podcast production team or the people who do video editing if it's outsourced or could be even your agent who has a 20% commission. that you pay. You just kind of pay it. Right. You just pay it. Maybe you try to negotiate down the rate. That's first level acquisition thinking, which is, you know, I already pay this person. Can I negotiate it down or find somebody who's less? Second level is you go, huh, I actually really like working with this person. They're good at their job. What if I just owned a portion of their company instead? And that's a huge

unlock for people. The second that you guys start thinking, that way it'll happen to you guys too, now all of a sudden you'll say, I will never start a company again because, I get an unfair advantage by taking a look at a company that already exists, getting to know the owner and if I'd want to do a deal with them. And then I can just decide what I want to own a portion or all of this business one way or the other. And so that's what happened with that guy. I was like, huh, this is an interesting business. You're charging me a lot for this. I like what you're providing. What if I just own part of it? And what do the numbers look like after you bought it? I don't remember the exact numbers on that. Was it well worth it?

And probably not. You know, that was my very first deal. So I think, you know, we're talking, maybe you're making 50, 60, 70,000 at the time. That was like, you know, 12 years ago, something like that. So that wouldn't have been worth it for me at the time in a total monetary perspective. But I think like stair stepping your way into deals is okay. It's okay for your first deal to not be huge and replace your entire salary because you're kind of learning. The first business you buy will never be the last business that you own, I don't think, if you do it right. And so it kind of depends on what you mean, but is it worth it? You know, it was worth it from a learning perspective, which is what I always go to first. Right. And it wasn't an insignificant amount of money. And if you had maybe three or four of these, then it would have actually been a big piece of the pie. Right. Yeah. And that one I actually ended up having to sell out of and shut down because my firm saw it as a conflict of interest. State Street didn't like me having two businesses because I was in finance. So could that of business have become a million dollar plus business? Yeah, I think so. I just was too much of a was to leave my job at the time. So how many businesses did you buy until you had to step down from State Street? Well, I didn't step down from State Street. I just went to a new job.

So instead of selling them, I said, oh, you know, I'm going to pass this office. This is now a passive investment. When you're in finance, you have to typically any business that could be a conflict of interest, you have to disclose it because we're securities licensed. And so, you know, imagine trying to tell your boss or having to tell your boss every time you buy a single family home. You know, at some point your boss is like, what the fuck, Graham? You own like 52 of them and you work for me. Bosses just like kind of get this resistance to that. So how many businesses did you buy until you change positions?

A lot. probably 10 to 15. Oh, oh, at State Street. Yes. Oh, no. For your own personal portfolio. I think one. One. And then that had conflict of interest with State Street and then you had to find a new job. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Then I went to First Trust where they were cool with it. Then I bought a lot of businesses at First Trust over the years. And then eventually, six years after I was at First Trust, I went to another company. And at that company, I became a partner because I bought in. That was a company called at the time. I was Cresco Capital Partners. They assumed renamed. And then I bought a lot more companies. Why are you buying so many companies? Doesn't it seem like a bit of a hassle? Why not

just buy like two of them and run those really well? Why 10, 15? Well, one, I come from private equity, so it actually makes sense, right? What do private equity funds do? They buy lots of businesses. So you're always a reflection of what you've been surrounded with. And so most people who are entrepreneurs are like, what is wrong with you? Why would you own 15 or 20 companies? And then if you've been in private equity, you're like, oh, of course. And then you wrap some layers around it, you add some management fees, you know, you have a CIO at the top. It's a typical fund strategy. So that was just, you know, two ways to play this game. One is private equity fund where you have a lot of different companies, totally different sectors, typically. Another way to play it as a holding company

where you don't have investors, you just do it by yourself. That's typically what I do right now. And then I guess a third way to do it is you have one company and you add on a bunch of acquisitions to that one company. None of them are better than the other. Did you have a segment of businesses that you would invest in. Although before we go into that, does your hair look like this? Take a look on screen if you're listening to this.

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Yeah. Services. So do you have a preference of what you specialized in? Well, right now at Contrary in Thinking Capital, we have sort of two types of businesses we buy. We have our media accelerated businesses, which I think anybody who is online, who is a creator, you are absolutely crazy if you are just taking advertising and sponsorship dollars. You should be owning a portion of the companies that you talk about. The most, think about it this way. If you guys didn't know this, I was blown away when I saw these numbers. Venture capitalists who fund startups, right? They give a dollar to a startup. Forty cents of every dollar goes immediately. to what? Client acquisition, which is just ads. It goes to Facebook, it goes to Instagram, it goes to Google. 40 cents of every dollar that a VC gives them goes to distribution. So if that's the case, you should know if you are the distribution, what are you worth? About 40% of a company. Now, they're not going to always give you that, but you definitely shouldn't be taking a one-time purchase as part of your fee. And so we have one segment of the business that's media accelerated company. So we have companies like viral cuts that does video production

for us and they do video production for a ton of other people. Then I own a portion of that company. And then we have a company called Approachment. That's sort of the same. It's a chat box that helps accelerate how fast you respond to leads if you have a company. So that's the biggest denominator of success in a small business is do you respond faster or do you respond faster? Whoever responds faster wins. That's like the easiest rule of business and nobody pays attention to. Yeah. It's interesting. Because I tried that strategy. I heard of that four or five years ago.

Why would you just take sponsorship, just ask for equity instead? And I found a weird correlation between any time I ask for equity instead of payment, the good companies would say no. They know what they're worth. They have no interest in giving up any amount of equity. But the bad companies would say, oh, yeah, absolutely. This is great. And just in my mind, I now get instantly suspicious. You're giving it back.

Why? If you really believed in yourself, why on earth would you give up equity? And it seems to remain true. The companies that are really good want to keep it to themselves. Well, it depends what your offer is. So if you're going to go and have, I don't know, 50 sponsorships a year for ice coffee hour, you don't want to go and get 50 little bets, 50 little halemories that you're going to throw with trying to get equity.

What do you actually want to do? You want to talk to 150 companies, and you want to have four companies that you have sponsor throughout the year. And by sponsorship, I don't just take equity. You take something called distributing equity. And distributing equity is basically just for all of your listeners. Distributing equity means, yes, you're going to give me a percentage of your company. So if one day you sell, I win. Awesome. But for every percent equity you give me, I want you to give me a distribution, either of profit or revenue sharing, depending on what you can negotiate, so that I get paid to wait. Because I'm doing a lot of work. This work over here is expensive. And so I want to get paid to wait. And And so because of that, you need to do a lot more due diligence to figure out which companies you're going to do. And then you pick a few companies. But yeah, it's true. I mean, Spotify is going to go, that's cute, Graham.

Like, no, of course, you can't have any equity in our company. But if you have vendors that you've been working with that you already know, they're great. And then you probably can't get equity in that company, you know. Or if you try friends products and you like those products, you can probably get equity in that company too. Okay. Would love equity and Newtonic, by the way. These are so good. Which deal would you say in the first few years really made the biggest impact where you're like,

okay, this is 100% something that I can 100% do. It's going to make me a bunch of money and this is where my future is. The first deal, I think the laundromat was the first deal where I realized, oh, I can buy a business and I cannot drive that business. You know, the consulting businesses and some of the vendors, it was basically a sweat equity deal, right? It was, I'm going to buy a portion of this, but I will do this thing for you. And the laundromat was the first one where I was like, I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going to invest in this. And then you're going to run this business. And so that one, even though it's not the

biggest deal I've ever done, it was the most impactful because I saw what could happen if you hire great people to work for you. And I think that's the real unlock for wealth that nobody wants to talk about. It's can you attract other people to your dream? Is your dream big enough where other people want to stand under the umbrella of it? And that was the first company that I sold a dream to somebody. Why does it seem like blue-collar work is really underappreciated? It's not sexy. I mean, there's something called the Songhurst Matrix, and the songhurst matrix basically shows that the more boring a company is and the more simple a company is, the higher likelihood it has to succeed in cash flow over the long term and the lower likelihood it has to attract talent and individuals.

And so, you know, we humans are attracted to flashy sexy things for whatever reason. And I think we have also been sold a dream by venture capitalists for a long time that the best way to make real wealth is to do a startup and take their money and then go build it. And so I think it's been sort of systematically beaten into us that we want to be on the cover of Forbes with some flashy new social media site and that's what all the movies get made of. Like there's no movies about plumbers who make tens of millions of dollars unless they look like idiots, you know? And so I don't know that there's some, you know, cabal of elite. trying to teach us that the service industry is bad, I just think that it has had really bad PR. Because, you know, over time, how do most people get on the Fortune 100 or the Forbes 100 wealthiest people list? If you look at that list, it's like, it's basically three categories. It's finance people, whether it's private equity, you know, asset managers, investors. It's inherited money. And it's people who have built businesses. And the

people who have built businesses category is really split more like 6040 to industries that wouldn't seem sexy agriculture, energy, grocery, as opposed to like the number of tech billionaires on there. It's just that Elon Musk is a lot sexier of a story than the CEO of Walmart. At least that's my thought. I think there's a lot of businesses out there that are in the one to $10 million range that are just they fly under the radar, but it's a lot of like you said, like the plumbers, electricians, people running

small operations. There's some businesses that I've seen on YouTube or they go into it. Like one dude is making millions of dollars a year putting up fences. And then one,

I think was $600 million a year in revenue, building basements. I was just such cool businesses. I think it was either Uflip or Noah Kagan. Yeah. One of the two.

Oh, you're right. I think it was Noah did the basement. Yeah. He did one of them. Yeah. Well, I think it's having a little bit of a resurgence. You know, actually our mutual buddy Chris,

Williamson does talk about how you know that a market is saturated once it's becoming memed, right? And so like every movement goes through sort of like three phases. And the first phase is discovery, right? It's like the first Spider-Man movie, right? Like, this is cool. I've never seen anything like it. And then you get to the peak of the movement, which is like, holy crap, there's, you know, Spider-Man. one, two, and 57, and then you get into the meme of Spider-Man, which is like Thor, Ragnarok, where the hero is no longer cool, he's kind of a joke, right? And so, like, each movement kind of goes through this set of stages. And I think you know a movement is sort of at its peak tail when they started to make fun of it. And so Silicon Valley and VC is definitely there. And I think people also,

I think we're at peak interest in boring businesses right now. And it's just starting to get to a place where people are like, you know, some jokes about Wharton and Harvard grads, you know, all flocking to want to go buy a laundromat, right? And so we're like coming into that tale where it's going to become, I think, a little bit of a meme. But what I'm really curious about is what happens over the next 10 or 15 years with all of these businesses transitioning, you know, I tend to think, I don't know if Hollywood will ever catch on, but I tend to think there's going to be a lot more people interested, just like they are now in like the Tradwife movement. And in the like, you know, I want to go live on a farm movement. I don't want to be in the city anymore. I want to make my own sourdough bread movement. I think that same thing is going to happen. Everybody is having a moment. Why sourdough?

Yeah. It's the Kardashian whipsaw effect, I think. It's, you know, it's the same thing. It's we for so long have been told. Do you think about it? Like, people ask me, why are women this way when I come on a podcast? You seem strong and like you have a good head on your shoulders. What's wrong with women?

And I always kind of giggle. I'm like, think about it this way. When we were young, we were told, you know, you're going to need to carve up your face with plastic surgery. You're going to have to have lips that look like a platypus. You're going to have a waist like this and ass like this. You're going to want to go, you know, where all of these like kind of scandalous clothes. Then we were told now in these days, ozempic body, get really skinny, get rid of the BBL. Now we're going for like a more natural look. You know, are the role models that we gave young kids was the Kardashians. Now maybe it's. not. And so I think there's just this whipsaw that happens in society. And so any time that we have something so egregious as like body dysmorphia and massive amount of plastic surgery, we're going to have the opposite. Hey Ontario. Come on down to BedMGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show. Only at BetMGM. Access to the Price is right fortune pick is only available at BetMGM Casino. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly.

19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please play responsive. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BEDMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Movement, which is going to be no makeup, tallow butter, no shoot, sundresses. So growing up, obviously, he's a guy, and not having a sister or anything like that, I feel like this is still very, honestly, kind of new to me, all of like this pressure and everything that. Like, who is instilling this pressure in these young girls that they need to have these sorts of bodies? Is it like the news or is it like, like who is it? Well, I think it's, uh, social media has been a catalyst to this for all of us.

It's just now coming around for you guys. I think, you know, now it's going to be a big movement for men where that's why we had the Andrew Tate's, the alpha movements, all of that, because we had this pushback to, you know, what should a man be one way or the other? And it was like now men should, you know, first it was men should cry, uh, men should be soft, huge me too movement. And then it was, fuck that, I don't want to cry. I'm going to be tough.

I'm going to drive Lambos. I'm going to do whatever. And then I think the next stage of man is going to be something else. Chris Williamson might be a product of it. The philosopher king, you know, this more. The stomach. Yeah, right. The, I am strong, but I am also thoughtful and soft and not a fuck boy.

You know, and we kind of see these movements go. And, you know, liver king out, Chris Williamson in. And he's going to love that comparison. But with women, just the same with men. it's just, it's social mirrors. We're all a programming of the things that surround us with, memetic desire 101. Human beings are programmed to want the things that we see other people having. And, you know, Joe Dispenza talks about this a lot, that we kind of become the things that other people are because we don't actually know innately what we want individually. And so young girls just saw

filters and makeup and, you know, X, Y, Z that they needed to have on and thought that that was normal. How did that affect you? I've always been a bit of a tomboy. So the only thing that affects me on that is thinking about, you know, actually mine's different. The weird part for women, which nobody's going to care about on YouTube, I think, is like once you start aging as a woman, it's a really weird phenomenon. So like I'm in my later 30s and starting to think about, what does it look like to be like a middle-aged woman? You know, there's like a stereotype to what is middle-aged. And so that part's going to be interesting, I think, and tough, especially when you're watching it on camera all the time. You know, like, what does my face look like? You know,

what about when wrinkles come and bags? And there's not enough makeup. Or is it because you're getting comments or feedback telling you this? Or is this in your head? Well, not yet. Thank God. But no, I think about it. I try to forward think about what are the things that will, I try to think about going forward, where could I fall into societal traps, right? And I think that's one of them. That's why people's face can end up getting crazy looking at a certain point if you have money because you worry about that. How do you deal with some of those societal pressures that they put on you? Let's say to why aren't, why don't you have kids yet and all of these things? Why do you focus so much on your career? I can't remember who said it, but there's a line I love, which is in order to be successful, you have to have someone who loves you greatly and you have to have a great enemy. And I always liked this idea. The great enemy is somebody to overcome. It's David versus Goliath. It's this big huge. goal in front of you. And someone who loves you unconditionally is, you know, the mother figure,

the partner figure, et cetera. And so a lot of where I get my grounding is those closest to me. You know, I have an incredible husband, and I think partnership is probably the foundation for success for me. It's a lot easier to strive far when you have somebody that you can really rely on and you're a team together. So I treasure that. And then the other side of the coin is, you know, you build up an armor of nose, I think, being online. You guys have gone through it. You get a little bit desensitized to the amount of negative commentary that comes to you because you get so much of it. And so I think it's a constant game. But I was reading somewhere that human brains are wired to ignore positive feedback and compliments and to focus on detractions or not compliments. And it makes

sense. So basically, what is fame then? That means that fame is essentially a few periodic moments of bliss in the form of a lot of compliments, a lot of attention, largely predominated by negative commentary because you just get so much of it. If you open your feedback loop and you don't remember the positive, but you remember the negative and you start to get kind of famous, what's going to happen? You're going to remember more of the negative commentary because you just get so much of it. And so I try to think about that philosophically when I post online or when somebody doesn't like something that I do that just this is my lizard brain and that's how it's going to function. What do you think of gender roles and do you think they might exist for a reason?

I mean, some parts of it, yeah. I think anatomy's real and I do not want my husband to be exactly equal to me. That is a personal preference. I think anybody can be whatever they want in their relationships. But for me, I like my man and my husband strong and able to take care of me and be a protector. And simultaneously, he's an incredible cook. So he does most of the cooking. And And so, you know, and I've made a lot of money for a lot of years. And he was a Navy SEAL and they don't pay very well. And so we have that flipped dynamic. Now it's interesting because I'm going to go on another podcast here, which you guys know today that we'll probably talk about some of this. And he has very traditional gender roles. Well, we could just say it because you know, Brad Lee, right? You know, Brad is like, I'm the man. And when I, what did he tell the other day that I'm going to give him shit about today? He's like, he's like, I have a magical carpet. And he's like, on this magical carpet, when I set something down on it, disappears. You know how? This my wife picks it up because I make the money and she picks up the stuff.

And, you know, he's actually a lovely guy. But I was joking with him that like, that would have worked for me. But that doesn't mean that, you know, his is wrong and mine is right, which is my biggest beef with the internet these days. I'm like, yeah, let's have strength-based relationships, which is what my husband and I have. I'm good at this. He's good at that. and we allow each other to be great at the things that we're great at, and we don't feel badly for it, and we do only what works for us, and fuck everybody else. Are there any difficulties having an income inequality between you and your husband?

I think if he ever optimized for earnings as his definition, it would be tough. I think men who think that the only way that they are masculine is by the amount of money that they earn, that would be difficult. my husband never optimized for that. He optimized for becoming a warrior, an incredibly strong individual, both mentally and physically, and living by code in a world that was codeless. And so for him, you know, if he wanted to optimize for money, he could do just as well. That just wasn't his code. And so I think that's also really beautiful in a relationship to determine what's your code, familiarly and individually. Like if your wife's code is that I am the protector of our children and I am their shepherd to becoming incredible humans, that's a beautiful

code. And if the husband's is that I am the protector of the family financially, and I'm going to be the one that determines our ability to live within a society that's based on money, that's a beautiful code. And so it really just depends on you finding the person that aligns with your code, in my opinion. How did you meet him, though? My father, actually. Good old arranged marriage. The, the, we both grew up in Arizona and Chris and my father used to hunt together. And so I've known Chris since I was like 10 years old. We've known each other for whatever. I don't want to give away my age, but a long time. And he used to hunt with my dad for years and years and years. And after I got divorced, you know, my dad wanted me to find a nice guy again. And so introduced me to Chris. And there's an old, I should have brought

one for you guys. I will next time. There's a, there's a tradition inside the teams, which is what they call the Navy SEALs, where when somebody does something really special for you, you gift them both a knife and a coin. And the knife is a reminder of, you know, the fact that we all are these, these warriors, if we choose to be. And the coin is something they're supposed to give back to you, which is, it started from the challenge coin, which was started during World War II. Challenge coins were given by pilots for achieving certain things. And so they give the coin back to you. And so he did that for my father, and my father thought it was really cool. And so I actually slipped into his DMs and said, thank you for doing that. And we struck up a relationship.

I was living in Chile at the time. He was on deployment. And then it's been, uh, been off to the races ever since then. Was there ever any power dynamic because you've made so much more money? No, I remember, I remember exactly like the moment that I knew that Chris was going to be the one for me. And that was, I was, uh, struggling with my career. I was going to get pushed out of a firm, essentially. And I didn't know what I was going to do. And I had to find myself most of my life by what my title was, what I earned, and, you know, who I was. You know, like, do you know who I am by the work that I do? And that's how I defined myself. And I was rudderless because I had built this really big business for somebody and they were saying that I wasn't good enough. And I remember

Chris came down to this like nice hotel we were at. And I told them like, hey, you know, I might have to leave this firm because I don't think I can align with what they're doing. And I think I'm going to get pushed out. And he was making, I don't know, what you make when you're a Navy SEAL at that amount, but not very much in comparison. And he just looked at me and he was like, I got you. Like, I'll take care of all the expenses. You can move in with me. It doesn't matter what you make. I got you. And I remember kind of chuckling at first because I was like, you don't know how much I spend. So like, what are you signing up for? But it was that moment where he did not care. He was like, we will live in, you know, we'll live in a tent together. Like, it doesn't matter. And like, we've

been through harder things than this. He's like, and he often will look at me. Then he did that day. And he was like, well, is anybody going to die? And I was like, no. And he's like, then I think we can figure it out. And so now a lot of times we say to each other, well, is anybody going to die when something happens? If nobody's going to die, we'll probably figure it out. And so never a power dynamic because he sees the world differently. Good. Could you use that on Graham. Oh, gosh.

You know, I'm trying to make a left turn and he's like, no, Jack, don't go down that street. It's going to take a long time. We're going to wait at the light. Anyone going to die? Yeah. It's going to use that out of life. I will. Everything I can't.

Thank you for giving me then. We got to fix it, but is anyone going to die? There we don't know. That's funny. It's a good line. I love talking about dating. Hopefully we'll get back into that, but we feel like we need to finish up this timeline. Let's do it.

So you start acquiring all of these businesses, your first like, like real confidence boost was the laundromat. Yeah. How did it evolve from there until now where it's just, I mean, I don't even know what to call it now. It's like it reminds me a very hormosy-esque thing just because we're so familiar with him. That's why I related to that. Yeah. Where it's kind of like your own family office in a sense.

Yeah. Well, that's what it was for a long time. So Alex and Laylor, dear friends, I respect them immensely. It started as a family office, which was just me and my chief investment officer while I was still working at a few firms. And then common story, you know, I was, I kind of got pushed out again of another firm. Like, I really had this belief that nobody believed at the time that the way we raised money and did deals was going to be on the internet in the future. And that we would no longer go and do steak dinners and road shows, which is the way that stuff got done in the past. It was going to be the internet.

We were going to drive deals to us from the internet. We were going to drive investors to us from the internet. My partners disagreed. And so they said, two options. Like, you know, you go do your own thing or you do it, you know, our way because there are four of us. And they disagree. All three of them are disagree with me. And I said, well, I can't do it your way. And so I finished up the last fund with them and we're still friends to this day. And I went and said, I'm going to start talking about what I do online. And that was in 2020. And I had already had this portfolio of businesses. And I started getting this inkling that people thought it was interesting. because I spoke on a few panels randomly in the industry. And people are like, what? You buy businesses and anybody can do it.

And how does that work? And I'm like, oh, interesting. And so because I noticed that, we just started talking about on the internet. And that's when Contrarian thinking was born during the pandemic when I couldn't run around and do road shows anyway. And so from there, we just grew the business. I started to realize, wait a second, we can have media be our sales force. So typically, when you have a private equity firm, you have like two types of, you have two types

of sales teams, you can call them. You have somebody that brings in your deals and you have somebody that brings in your investors, right? So two-fold distribution. And I was like, I think we could take both of those and we can change from humans into content. And that was my bet. It turned out to be right. And so we started telling people, hey, we buy businesses. And because of that, I started getting more businesses. And then I started saying, hey, we do individual deals. And so then we have a few deals that we did SPVs on with individual investors, and we brought in some of my good friends now to the day who are that. Now we don't take public money anymore. And that turned into what I now call the Main Street Holding Company, which started out as a glorified family office. And I remember when I was

first talking to Alex and Layla and they were thinking about acquisitions, you know, we were talking about it. And I was like, I'll tell you what happens because there's like a proven path for everybody that does this. And it's why it exists the way that it exists. You have venture capital, which is tiny little percentage of equity in a company plus godspeed good luck they don't really help you right anybody who says their value ad they're really not very value ad it's like tiny we'll take a tiny percentage of company we'll invest in a thousand of you fuckers and a couple of years of survival we'll make all our money off of that which is called modern portfolio theory then you've got over here private equity right which is like we're going to have a lot fewer players but we're

going to own basically all of you and anything that is in the middle I call the tragedy of the commons. And the tragedy of the commons is when you own a small percentage of companies, but you actually have to operate them too. And that's awful. And so what we did is we basically barbelled it. So now we have a venture capital fund where we do what I just talked about. And we have our private equity holding company where we own most of the underlying businesses. And that's what we do today. So where's most of the revenue coming from across everything? Well, the biggest segment of revenue is from the holding company. So the holding company is where we hold all of our cash-hoying businesses and all the investments that have just had a long time to percolate because we've

been doing this for a decade plus. So that's our biggest investment. The venture capital basically has no income. It's a smallish fund and that's all like an asymmetric bet, maybe on the upside. And then I guess over here at the top you have contrarian thinking, which is the media company. The media company, I sort of treat it like it's almost not profitable because we take all the money we make from education and courses and we funnel it back into Tanner. Tanner's bonus, but our media company. And so we use the dollars that we get from education and courses to get more followers and create what I call it virtuous cycle. And then from that virtuous cycle, we also get deals. And if we want to raise money, we could get investors. So the holding company,

that's where the $80 million a year comes from. Yeah. Okay. And then of this holding company, if we're getting a little bit more granular, let's say we got a little pie. Okay, Graham loves the pie. Why can I have a cake? Sure, it's a cake. What kind of cake, Graham? Red velvet. Ew! Are you kidding? Yeah, red velvet.

No, we're not doing red. I veto that. I veto that. Just because you hate it. All right. Key lime pie. Oh, that's worse. What is wrong with it?

Are you kidding? Just say chocolate. Just say chocolate. Chocolate. Okay, so we got a chocolate pie. Okay. Chocolate cake. All right.

Chocolate cake. What do these slices look like? I'm sure that it's probably a few businesses that do a bulk of the ink. Yeah. And then everything else is kind of just like minuscule. little gram slices. Yeah. Thanks.

What does it look like? He doesn't meet much. That's why. So in the Main Street Holding Company, there's kind of those three types of business I talked about. So we have media accelerated businesses.

We have real estate based businesses, which are things like mobile home parks, property management companies, Airbnb businesses. And then we have boring businesses, typically service

or professional based businesses. And so of those, you know, we have 25 businesses. the, what do you want, the percentage of breakdown between the three types? Sure. Yeah. Let's see. So in the media accelerated businesses, that's probably our smallest slice. That's what I want to be our biggest slice. It's our smallest right now. Let's call it 10 or 15%. And those are like the viral cuts thing. Yeah. And we have, we'll talk about this in a second, where I want to go. But that's probably the smallest slice. Then the next bigger slice would be the boring service-based businesses. And then the final slice would be the real.

estate businesses, which are probably more like 20, 25%. So what does that leave? 60, 65% boring businesses. What's the best business for someone to buy? What makes the most money? The best business to buy is your unfair advantage business, which is a super annoying answer, except it's true. Anybody who tells you like, that's why I don't like people on the internet, they go, it should be drop shipping. It should be Amazon FBA. It should be laundromats. No, it should. There's like 10 steps to buy in a business that I talk about. And the most important step is step two, which is what's called your deal box, how you decide what you should invest in individually. And so everybody wants the 30 second answer, which is you should buy gyms because that's what Hormozzi does.

That's actually not right, in my opinion. The right thing is you have to go down this checklist of like the Oracle of Delphi said knowing yourself. And so once you know, there's like basically five key segments in any business, right? Every business has market. they have operations, they have product, they typically have sales of some component of it, and they have finance, right? And every single one of us typically has one or two skill sets of those five things. So you guys may be great at sales and marketing. Maybe you're not so good at operations and finance. And so what I really like to do is have people think about what type of business is best for you, a business that needs more sales, a business that needs better operations,

a business that needs better product, and to focus on the type of business that needs that. So that's my long-winded answer to that. And how do you hire people? And how do you look for the A-player's? A couple things with A-player in particular. We have an idea overall that we think a competent optimist is worth about six figures more than a really brilliant pessimist. And so when I'm looking at A-player, one, I want optimist because optimist. because optimists make money and pessimists make the news. And so we obsess on this idea of optimism. And one of,

you know, Tanner's quotes for this year that was really good is it's our mantra for 2023 is like we're optimistically discontent. So we're consistently, slightly upset with where we're at, but optimistic about where we can go. And that's what I want in the people that we hire. We have a list of characteristics for a players that we hire. And a couple of them are things like this. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, so we want a history of winning. I call this a wall of medals. So you don't actually want to bet on somebody who has bumble-fucked their way through life today. Let them get a few wins under their belt and then hire them because there's something called continual velocity, right? So the likelihood of you continuing to move quickly, if you've moved quickly historically, is higher. And that's the same thing with humans. We also want shepherds, not sheep. And so the best hires are people, where you go, amazing, Graham, we want to hire you? Who else would you bring? And if they go, oh, I don't, I don't know. That means they're not a leader. Okay. And so you want to find people who are already going to bring your next couple of people, super, super important. And then, you know, the last thing that I think is really important is obsessed people will always beat interested people. And so we hire people who are obsessed with something. Doesn't have to be what we're talking about, but I always talk to them about, like, what is the thing that you can't stop doing any of if you tried. Like, where do you lose all sense of time? When was the last time you stayed up almost all night working on something because you chose to, not because you had to? And I want to

find the people who had that. What are the dangers with hiring B players? I found it so interesting. I think it was Tom Bill you about how B players bring you down, bring down the whole team significantly. Yeah. A players bring everyone up. Yeah. Like, what's been your experience on that? What's the studies behind that. Yeah, there's an incredible study that basically shows proximity to performance. So if I sit next to Graham and Jake,

if you sit next to an under, oh, how I call you Jake? Graham and Jake. Graham and Joe. And if I... And you are chocolate cake and Jake. I'll remember that now. Get that for the red velvet comment. And the key lime pie. It's going to give me

all the hard questions now like you do all the guests. Okay. So, So if you sit next to an underperformer at your company, you are about, well, let's actually flip the other way because it'll build up the expense, suspense. If you sit next to a high performer at a company, that high performer, on average, will increase your performance by 15%. If you sit next to a low performer at your company, that low performer will decrease your productivity by about 30%. And so if you think about it this way, the people that you surround yourself with, well, whatever energy that they bring, it's contagious.

And so for our teams, I obsess on this fact. And we've all felt it. You've felt that person who sat next to you, who you're like, God, shut up, Marge. Like, it's not always negative. I don't feel good at the end of these conversations. I don't feel like we're progressing. That is a real phenomenon. And now there's a lot of studies. Arthur Brooks has incredible studies on the effect of happiness as contagion, on the effect of obesity as contagion, on the effect of divorce as contagion. And the same thing tends to be true with performance. If you surround yourself with high performers, you will perform. If you surround yourself with low performers, you will double your underperformance. And of course, these are laws of averages, not individuals, but important to know the law. That's really interesting. Why is it that B players have that big of an effect on people? Like, let's say I'm at the top. I'm an A player. Why would, let's say Jack's a B player, let's say Jake's a B player. You're the B player. I'm the A player. Jake is the B player. why would that impact me to that degree? Would it just be a distraction? Would I just be less motivated? Like, does that really have, I like to think that I'm somewhat like impenetrable that I have this thing around me no matter what's going on. Like, I could still give it my all. I can see him doubting you on this. I can see the doubt on his face. Okay. So I have a couple different theories and it's hard to determine, you know, causation as opposed to correlation. But in this instance, what I've seen, is your high performers will be the ones that are most annoyed by your low performers. And so if you

have really high performers on a team and you make them babysit or you make them step up for your low performers, they won't stay. So on average, their annoyance level is higher than anybody else because these people are in their way. So when that happens, one, fascinating, you start to lose more high performers. What does that mean? You start to attract more underperformers, which means that then you have an effect that ripples wider. So that's one thing I've noticed in our companies. Second is that I do think we underestimate the impact of distraction. So there's a lot of studies out on this, and I'll probably get the numbers incorrect, but there's a lot of studies that show the negative consequences of task switching, right? And that in effect, you think, well, you know, I don't know,

Graham just came in and bothered me for 30 seconds. So that means I lost 30 seconds. Well, it doesn't actually mean that because Jack might have to go really deep back into his work by rereading, going backwards, getting refocus, getting another cup of copy. And that 30 seconds may actually have a 20-minute effect on him. And so even if you're impenetrable, none of us are impenetrable to task switching and the ripple effects of it. So those are the two things I see. That's really interesting. You've talked also about seeing behind the curtain. And you explain that. Behind the curtain basically means two, two, two, things. In my mind, when I was younger, I thought that the people who were successful were something magical, you know, like they had a different gear. They were somehow wired different. And you guys have met a lot of successful people, and I'm sure what you've probably noticed is maybe there's a few things different, but they're wildly human. That the people at the top are just like the rest of us. And once you normalize that, I think it's something that it's hard to unsee ever again. It's like you see through the matrix, you know? And you realize that this little guy is just standing on a stool.

And like most people, that stool was his unfair advantage that he got to stand on one way or the other. You know, the second behind the curtain that I think I noticed early on is how much the people at the top work together. So, you know, think about us, the ripple effects that we have from I know you through X, Y, Z. You also know me here. We both know Chris. We've talked about Alex. We've hit on, you know, some of the other media companies we've worked with. And behind the curtain is a series of humans who are all interconnected. And so one of the unfair advantages and hacks I think people can do is like how can you break not into individuals but into circles? Because once you break into a behind the curtain circle, you just move faster. It's like they're on an elevator and they're all together and you think that they're sprinting up the stairs. But together, actually it's a lot easier than it is individually. And so that's what I mean by behind the curtain. Why do you think people get so jealous at seeing someone's success? Because I remember as a kid, like 16 years old, you'd see. this young guy driving down in a Ferrari or like a Lamborghini. And I never understood why someone would look at that person, I'd look at that and think,

what is this person doing? How did he do that? Is he self-made? If it's family money, what did his dad do to it or his parents? Why do people look at that with envy and disgust? Yeah. Well, I think you're wired that way because you know that curiosity is the biggest driver for long-term cash flow.

You know, the more curious you are, the more cash going to make, the more curious you are, the more you're going to win because you're actively trying to find answers nonstop. Sadly, I think when you win, you become a reflection for everybody else's non-achievements. And so you took the shot. You risked the failure. You went for what if because you know that only lasts for a moment instead of why never, which lasts for a lifetime, right? And so I think for most people, it's sadly, it's not about you. It's that when they see success, they see all the things that they should have done, but they never did. And, you know, there's an old adage, which is basically that I found to be true in about 80% of humans. 80% of humans wants you to be just slightly less successful than them. And the second that you go beyond their success level, there's envy and there is a decreasing self-worth, basically. Why haven't I done? that. And so once you realize, you realize it's very painful. I mean, Don DePondi, who's kind of like an Indian guru I listen to, he has this incredible thing he does. And it's called the tissue challenge.

And basically, if you can imagine it like this. So imagine I have a tissue in my hand right here, and I'm holding the middle of it. And on each of the corners of the tissue is like your best friend, a business partner, your mom, your brother, right? As you have more and more, success, what do you do? You make yourself higher than them. That's hard for people. Again, it's a negative reflection of the things that they have not accomplished and that you have for most humans. But eventually, what happens is you continue lifting the tissue if they stay on it with you? Everybody lifts, right? And so I think that we have this unique ability if we are winning to pull everybody else alongside us. And the people who stay on your tissue are the ones who, when they see the Ferrari,

they go, wow, instead of why? What is it? your advice for people who want to become rich or want to achieve financial independence? Where do they even start? Because in your case, they could say, well, yeah, you had a six-figure job, you had all this savings, you were making a ton of money. I'm working nine to five. I have no savings. I'm paycheck to paycheck. How does this apply to me? Yeah. Well, I think my path might be the easiest path to millions that anybody's taken, which is came from nothing, got my first job for $37,000 a year, and worked for a bunch of other people for, I don't know, eight years climbing the ladder without a lot of risk. And so, you know, I was a public school kid. I didn't make a lot of money out of college. The only thing that's different is that you just stopped taking no for an answer. And I'm, I didn't have a brilliant idea to do early on. I didn't have a cool business model I thought that I should try.

You know, I was, I was devoid of any way that I could see to start my own business. In fact, I had so little, I had so little creativity with it that I had to go and work for other people and then I had to buy other people's businesses, right? Because I didn't have the idea of how to start it by myself. It took me a long time to do that. And so I actually think the fastest path for people that is generalizable because a lot of advice is actually just you telling people what you did because it worked for you. I think the best advice for people that are young is simply this idea of you learn, you earn, then you invest, then you compound. And that's it. It's like, how can you learn as much as possible? How can you continue to increase your earnings? How can

you start investing those earnings continuously? And how can you continue to compound on that? And if you can learn that, if you can do that, while not taking no for an answer, I think it's pretty hard to not succeed. And in fact, I mean, look at some of the people at the top who came from absolutely nothing. There's a flavor for everybody in America today. And what about women specifically? It's not very often that we get actually a woman on the show. Most of the time they're guys. And then same for the viewers. Most of the viewers are guys. But for the women watching right now, how would they do it? And then also on top of that, what are your thoughts since it's in the news right now on DEI? Yeah. Well, let's start with DEI because that's a fun one. I think DEI is really harmful for members of the diversity and inclusion group. And the reason why I think it's hardful is because you are immediately labeling yourself, as someone who needs help, as someone who is less than, as someone who is a victim in one shape or form. And, you know, I remember many times I would get speech requests or I would get somebody asking me to be on a board or something, and they would say, we need a female CEO. And I just said, no.

If you need a CEO, we can talk. But if you want to speak to me only because I have a vagina as opposed to a penis, that makes no sense in business. What's the difference? The only time that makes sense is if I'm trying to go for a female audience, particularly and my anatomy in some way is necessary for the business to move forward. But I actually think it does this huge disservice to focus in this specific way. Now, do I think that there is a huge advantage to be part of a powerful majority? Yes, 100%. Being part of a powerful majority is real in any situation.

And so, you know, there were many times where I felt like I got left out because I was a woman. where I didn't, you know, just, and not even from a sexist perspective, from a very reasonable perspective. Like, you know, if I was single and, you know, you have your lovely fiancé, fiancé here, and, you know, I was texting you late at night and we were only talking about business stuff, but then we were going to go grab dinner. She might be like, it's a little weird. Like, why are you, you know, don't do that. Respect what we have here, right? And that's totally reasonable. But if most of the men at the top are, you know, the ones in powerful positions, if Jack was, you know, texting you late at night doing that, she wouldn't care. You wouldn't think anything of it. And so inherently there's like a little bit of difference between the two. And I think we have to realize that.

Does it feel or have you gotten comments of people saying like, oh, you are where you are because of DEI? Because I wonder if now that's like working against people like you who have gotten to the position you're in purely based off of merit. Yeah. No, I mostly get, you know, must be nice having daddy's trust fund or, you know, did your husband make all the money? Or, um, do you get pretty privilege ever? No, I would, I would be like, no, like that comment. Yes, absolutely pretty privilege. I do tend to believe, like anything somebody says to me, I try to flip it to the perspective of how could this help me as opposed to why is this annoying? You know, and so I try to just let that roll off. But no, the, you know what annoys me? is that I actually, this is maybe dumb, I did not really think that misogyny or sexism really existed very much anymore in the U.S. before I got on the Internet because my best mentors were men, like, asexually, like, you know, not in any way, shape, or form like that. I'm incredibly close to my dad, my brother, I have an incredible husband. Most of my team is guys.

And so I have a lot of respect for the opposite sex. I never really got it. I didn't think I got pushed back because of that. I thought there were in, you know, some instances, but we all have those. You know, maybe I had an unfair advantage here and they didn't. I'm easy to remember. You're not. If everybody's name is Jack, Jake, Todd, Chad, you know, like harder, right? And so I kind of thought it was good. But then I got on the internet. And I did find that, man, people are nuts on the internet. What do they say? Like, for instance, you know, must be nice. You were a secretary at Goldman Sachs. That one bothered me. Like I had a tweet real go really, really viral. And, and yeah, it's like somebody, you know, and they get rolling together, you know, and so they're like, yeah, I bet she was a secretary there. And then, you know, then I'm like, I'm going to show on my U4. I'm going to show on my FINRA register.

And I was like, Jesus Christ. But then they're like, oh, I bet she was flirting with someone there. That one I haven't really gotten, but only maybe from other women. Sure. I think men kind of know that, like, deep down in men's gut, like, I don't know. How many times are you promoting to the CEO of a company, a woman that you've slept with? Like, you're just not fucking doing it. That's not a, there's not really a way to, like, sleep your way to the top, maybe unless

you're in Hollywood. Like, you're just not going to do it because it's money. And the one thing we all know in business is that people care more about money than anything else. You can't really sleep your way to the top there. Politics maybe, where money doesn't matter. Hollywood maybe, where there's a dime a dozen girls and a lot of people with talent, maybe.

But in business, it's not really a thing. Who can be more vicious adversaries, men or women, as far as the commenting and the hate? I think men categorically. You know, I think there's a little army of really pale vitamin D deficient dudes in basements who haven't achieved anything that get triggered as fuck by women who have. Graham and I are both described Jack. No, no, no, no. We're both very pale. We're both very pale.

Hey, come on, man. I don't think it's a little darker. I'm just hairy. I think it's just a hair that's. I just have a little bit. lot of makeup. You can't even tell. Like, what is my real color? Who knows? Um, no, I think I, you know, if you ask most women on the internet, uh, who most of the trolls are, it's, it's men. It'd be fascinated if there's a study on that, but I anticipate that that's true pretty much across

the board. And I actually understand why, because if men were told that masculinity is tied to money and success and that women will not choose you if you don't make more money than them, then of course they're going to lash out at women that have been more successful at them and that have more money than them because they've defined that as masculine and they think that somehow we're taking that away from them. And there's been a lot of women that are tough on men these days. So I actually get it in some way, shape, or form. It still pisses me off. But women by and large are like nice on the internet. I mean, the comments women have are like, it's the best, you know, they're like, yeah, girl, you do it. You know, thanks, you know.

But maybe that's different if you're like a Kardashian or a beauty expert. I don't know. Yeah. Kind of a weird question, but what do you think about the culture in its entirety of like, now I feel like women are supposed to be going into more high paying positions. You should be the girl boss. This is like what's right. Whereas beforehand, it was like you stay at home. And I feel like this is now the counterculture of that.

But then also this may be too big of a switch and we're overcompensating for something. And now if you stay at home and you're just a wife, I shouldn't say just a wife, but you're a wife, stay at home wife. that's looked upon in such a negative way. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, you're a bit damned if you do, damned if you don't for sure. But maybe it's not that different for men. I mean, if you're a stay-at-home dad, there's still a stigma.

Like, oh, really? Your wife earns all the money. You stay at home. You know, if you are a girl boss, I got, I hate that term. But if you work for a living, whatever the fuck means that you're a girl boss, I don't know. Could you imagine? Why do you hate the term? Someone says a guy boss.

Yeah, he's a guy boss. Is it because it sounds like a cutie-sie. sort of thing that's like, oh yeah, she's a girl boss. Or do you, what does that invoke for you? It's like your juxtaposing girl, which is kind of like, I feel like a smaller. Oh, you're just a girl. Boss. It's like, it's showing that there's like a big disparity between girl and boss.

That's the reason why I feel like that term exists. Rather than like, woman boss, maybe is a little. Yeah. All that. Also, okay. Well, also why does it have to be genderized? Oh, sure. Just be boss.

Yeah, also feels gross. Maybe it's the word boss. We get to the root cause. I mean, I think, uh, yeah. imagine being a boy boss or a band boss. It also sounds awful. I think all of us should just try to have ownership over our own lives and leave it at that. But no, I think these days, if you are, you know, a powerful woman in a professional sense, there's also a feeling like that's not great. And in fact, I think that might be swinging more. You know, there's all these,

we talk about this a lot at our company because there's all these Alpha Men podcasts that are out now that are like I was on one the other day and they were like... What was a podcast? I don't want to out of them. We'll bleep it. I don't want to out them. We could bleep it.

We'll bleep it. So he was on, so I was on this podcast who's a good friend, but he was like, what does it mean to be a power couple? And I was like, I don't know. We're just a couple. Like that one of us, you know, works and the other one works too and we all work out. And I think there's this movement of like, you know, women for so long. have been in the homestead, and now they're coming out. They probably came out a little too strong in some ways, like, fuck men, patriarchy, whatever. And now men are like, well, kind of

fuck you right back. And so I think, you know, and so now the commentary is if you make too much money, you're actually not going to attract a guy. And there's all this data that everybody is looking at. And I, by and large, just don't buy into it. Do you think there's some truth to that in terms of the average, that you, yeah, that you are not. not average by any means. I think you're the exception to just about everything. So for you, this doesn't apply. But like if you were to take, pick like 100 average people throughout the U.S.,

do you think that would apply? Probably. But, I mean, think about it this way. I think anybody listening to this podcast, your entire reason you're listening is because you don't want average. The average American dies overweight, alone, and broke. That's just what the data says. And so if that's true, we sure as far. fuck don't want to be the average, which means that we should strive for something extraordinary.

And I think the bar is so low for above average these days that it's actually not that hard of a hurdle. So let's say that they're right, that our buddy's right, that if you are monetarily successful, it will be harder for you to find a man on average because you make more than the average man does. Let's say that's true. Well, add to it going to the gym and being kind of fit. Add to it being kind of nice, nicer than the average person. Add to it being marginally funny. And is it really going to be that hard?

And I think the answer is by and large, no. It's just we want to find excuses for why things won't work out. So your advice for guys is they got to be better. I mean, that flat out, the bar is set so low that you just... Both sides, I think. Okay. Like, I mean, I think... Now, I mean, from the male perspective, I can comment, I do agree with you completely.

I think the bars it's so low that you just have to do above the minimum to get ahead. Yeah. And people will complain about that. But to me, it seems it's so unbelievably easy if you just try. Yeah. Most people won't even try. Well, think about the confidence. I think dudes actually, you guys have it interesting in a couple different ways.

Let's think about this. Three reasons women pick men that we hear constantly, right? One is money. That's the easiest, right? two is looks maybe there's four three is he's funny i like him because he makes me laugh and four might be he's really confident you know came up and asked me out so if there's four different legs on which the stool stands which is the woman of your dreams that you want i think you should be able to get one of the four so if you're not you know if you're not the most attractive guy if you're not the richest guy

can you be a pretty confident guy if you're not the most confident guy can you be a little bit funny and could you be a little bit richer i don't know what to do about looking at ugly because I think past plastic surgery for dudes, it's tough. But yeah, I think you got four legs. I have so many friends who have husbands that maybe aren't as attractive as they are or maybe aren't as wealthy as they are, but they're really funny or they're really confident. And Lord, if you're going to be with somebody until you're 85, rather optimize for those two things. So you don't think it's a money thing. You think it's a package thing. If you're lacking in one, make up for it with another. Yeah, I do. What is your advice for women watching this? Who, they make

150 grand 200 grand a year they're highly educated they have trouble finding a person that matches or exceeds their needs I do want to also

make this point real quick I went on a date with a girl I'm not going to say where I'm not going to say anything about this story because I got in a unfortunately I got in a lot of trouble Josh if you're watching

is don't clip this up please I went on someone else's podcast brought this story up and then it got posted as a clip she saw it and got upset to me that I brought it up. Don't know why I'm bringing it up again because I could get in trouble. Josh, don't clip this up. I went on a date with a girl. That's the only detail I'm providing. And she said that she needs the guy to make more money than her, period. And she is a very successful person. She works at an elite level high paying job. And she said, in her parents' relationship, the mom made more than the dad and it caused insecurity from the guy's perspective. And that was actually where a lot of the tension came from was from his insecurity of her making more than him. Do you see this as like an issue with high earning woman, generally speaking, they're going to want a guy that makes more than them? I think typically when this comes up, I'd ask questions.

Like I'd say to that girl, is she single, obviously? Yeah. The one I want on a date with. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. She's single. She could have a boyfriend.

I don't know. Now you can't tell. Was she saying it like she was having a hard time finding somebody because this was a caveat that she has? She said dating. and she said cut that out and her name was she said dating was very challenging in the location she lived in yeah i mean women are going to hate me for saying this on the internet i think if you cannot find somebody that is a you problem and not a them problem because categorically there are enough humans on this planet for all of us to find our needs to be met and if you have one i don't

think you get to complain when you have really strict parameters like that. Like, okay, you either can say I will only date somebody if they make more money than I am. And because of that, I know I have a limited reach of men. And so categorically, it's going to be harder for me to the date. I so facto, I shall not complain. But I think complaining about something that is a self-prescribed, non-rationalistic reason for you to do it is a lesson in insanity. Sorry, Carla, or whatever her name is. And, but Number two, I would say, like, we all need a little bit more therapy. Like, you know, if you dug into that and I was sitting with that woman, I would say, if you were to look, if younger you, if older you was to look back on younger you and you were to do it not from a place of fear and not from a place of historical PTSD and say that I'm so glad that I married this man because he made more money than me, does that seem rational? And if that doesn't seem. like a rational sentence, then why would you determine that is the biggest reason why you date? And I know that didn't work out for your parents, but was it really only your father's issue? Like, do you think

your mother had any say in the reasons why he might have felt insecure? Let me ask you this. How is that saying I want more than, let's say, 200 grand a year? Any different from her saying, I want someone who's funny or I want someone who's confident. To me, it just seems she has four, you know, there's four preferences on that list, four legs. She's like, one of those legs needs to be this. I'm flexible on the other three. So how is that different than saying, I want somebody who's really confident? Well, I think it's not if older, more thoughtful her can look back and say, thank God, I married this guy because he made more money than I am that I did. If she does answer that question and say, yes, that is that is what, that is the core pillar in a man that I want to spend the rest of my life with, okay, fine. But I think what would actually happen instead is she would go, no, I want him to be a good man. I want him to love me. I want us to build something really cool together. I want him to be an incredible father. I want him. I want him to be an incredible father. I want him. I want him. him to make me laugh because I'm going to care more about that during really difficult times. And I don't want us to be despondent. So I want him to work hard all the time just like I will for our

goals. But I think women these days are slightly ridiculous. I want them $6,000 to $200,000 a year, funny, good-looking, great hair like William Defoe, you know, not going to be every single man. And so find the things that actually matter. That reminds me that delusion calculator that you've seen on TikTok, those little clips, where they're like, just describe the type of guy you want. under the age of 40? Yeah. Over six figures, you're like, yeah.

You know, not obese. Yeah. And then it's like 0.1% of the population fits that. Yeah. And then they turn it back on her. I was like, what do you have to offer? And then like all the dudes are like, that part's tough.

But I don't think it's bad to have a mirror. Like, you know, I don't know. If you want the top 1% be the top 1%. And if you're not, then work on it. And it's probably not very popular to say these days. But I think we all would do so much better if we just focused on us as opposed to why other people are the reason why we don't achieve the thing that we want to achieve. You know, because even if that's true, that's not a very useful belief for us to have. So I'd rather have a useful belief, which is at the end of me attempting to become the top 1%, I'm the top 5%.

That's pretty fucking cool. As opposed to, oh, it's really hard to date in New York and I'm not going to change myself and I'm just going to swipe right 452 times. There's that number again, until I'm. I find the perfect person, which seems to me, again, like, you know, Ben Franklin's lesson in insanity is doing the same thing continuously and expecting a different result. I do have a random video that I would like to get your opinion on if that's all right. And I think it would be fun for Graham to put his opinion forward. Okay.

I haven't seen this video. He didn't want to show them. Amazing. So many people have philosophies towards money. You know, people will say, oh, you've got to save more than you spend. You've got to fucking not have the Starbucks coffee. That's how you'll get rich. What is your overarching philosophy to building wealth and money? Do you have something like a philosophy, a mantra?

Well, first I think you should have the fucking coffee. I think that is terrible advice. So I like Dave Ramsey. I get where he's going with it. But I think you cannot save your way to wealth. You can only earn your way to wealth. Oh, no. Should they not have the coffee according to you?

No. Absolutely not have the coffee. Absolutely don't have the service. He built his entire career off. Yeah, that's like the foundation. That's my thing. My rationalization is that it's such low-hanging fruit. It's that one little thing that you could start with.

And the type of person who's not going and buying coffee, he's also not going and doing a lot of other things that waste money. So no, it's not going to make you rich. Well, it can actually. If you go to Starbucks at $5 every day compounded at an 8% return over 40-something years, that could be a million bucks. Yeah. Especially you do that in a Roth IRA.

It's tax-free. but I just see it as such a low-hanging fruit and something that you could do yourself or a fraction of the price. I hate it. I hate it. Let me tell you why I hate it. I only hate it because I think there are two types of people. I do think they're either safety or upside people. And I think for a lot of people, you're right. They're never going to focus on maximizing their earnings in order to increase their spending to whatever they want. For a safety focused person who wants to make sure that they can live a really nice life, not have too much volatility in it, and retire at a good, you know, age with plenty of cash, maybe don't drink the coffee because you're never going to optimize your earnings on the upside. For somebody who is focused on upside earnings potential, the only thing you should be focused on, in my opinion, is how do I make more money, not how do I save it? And that's from a different side of the mathematical equation, which is I look at asymmetric upside. There's no such thing as asymmetric downside because

nobody can really get enough debt unless you're a billionaire to have unlimited downside. You have a limited downside, especially because we have bankruptcy in the U.S. And so you do not have a limited upside. And so if I just look at the math, I can go as high as I want, but I can go as low as zero to oversimplify. What does that mean? I should always optimize for going higher. And but that is my type of mentality. I think you're right in the perspective that a lot of humans are never going to do that. And so maybe don't drink the coffee if you're more concerned with safety than you are with earnings. There's a 2020 study that showed that Millennials spent more money on coffee than they did on retirement. And that is something that I think is unacceptable.

Spend the money on retirement. Get rid of the coffee. Yeah. Start there. It's easy. It's just so simple. What about the other side of the coin? Why retire? You know? Lots of studies show that you're- that you're unhappy and that you're more likely to die after you retire. When I mean retire, I don't mean necessarily stop working.

I mean that you have the means to be able to do whatever you want to. If it's working on a hobby and garage, so be it. What's having the means to be able to do that or having the freedom to pick and choose what you want to do with your time. So it's not like, oh, you get to sit on the couch and watch TV. Yeah, well, I think you're right.

Like, I heard another one of your guests. I can't remember who say that they like to have zero dollars in their bank account. I could not disagree with that more intensely. Oh, yeah, I think that was Grant Cardone. That makes sense. Yeah. He said, spend your last thousand dollars on a course,

was his advice. Burn the bridges, burn the ships. you've got to be at zero to push you to make more. I mean, he has a bigger bank account than I do. So I'll give him that for sure. I just don't like, I actually don't really like risk. I like having some safety net or cushion for me to take bigger and bigger bets. And I think that goes back to the Warren Buffettism.

First rule of money, first rule of investing, don't lose money. Second rule, don't forget rule number one. And so for me, it's always been this idea of how can I actually protect the But I have a good friend that's become an investor in one of my deals with me, Bill Perkins, who wrote Die Was Zero. He is always telling me, you are thinking too small. You are thinking too small. And if you are not willing to lose something, then you will never win something big. And so I think there's a happy medium between the two. But, you know, could you imagine a CEO of a company that's publicly traded would go to jail if they ran a company and they had zero dollars in

savings in that company? That would be considered a fiduciary life. liability breach of their company. And so grants private, so he can do whatever he wants, but, you know, the history shows you that markets go up and down. You should keep something in reserve. Yeah. It's just math. I somewhat did that up until 2020, where every year I'd invest everything I had into real estate and I would maybe have a few thousand dollars in the bank account when I was done. So my goal at the end of the year was spent everything I had back into real estate, fixing up properties, doing some sort of renovation. I wanted something. thing. And having so little money in my banking, it was absolutely motivating for me. Now I would

absolutely not do it at this point. But back then, my expenses were so low that I could justify it and have like three grand left over. And just immediately January 1st, I would hustle for the next deal. And that was a lot of motivation for me just to know that like, hey, the bank accounts down, I got to build it back up. Was that the only way you could have motivated yourself? Probably. Yeah. When I see that, bank account go that low, I'm like, oh, man, I got it. Because it made me appreciate the smaller deals. Yeah. Like, you know, if I earned $500 on this commission, that on three grand is pretty cool. Yeah. But, you know, if I had $100,000, I'm like, why would I do the $500 deal? Oh,

interesting. It's like every little bit you start to, you really see the impact on small amounts. Interesting. Yeah, I could see that. I just think, I want to make sure that I don't have something that could wipe me out ever. And the things that you can, that can wipe you out typically, there's only really only three of them. And that's something regulatory that the government could do. That's some sort of civil lawsuit, you know, some sort of legal issue. And the third is running out of cash. And so I do everything I can to protect from regulatory overreach, from lawsuits, and from running out of cash. Those are the business killers. What do you do to protect yourself from lawsuits? I have a lot of attorneys that I pay a lot of money to. You know, the thing nobody tells you about in business is if you go into business, you will. bill be stolen from, be defrauded from, be lied to, and probably be sued at some point. It's just the nature of our society today. And so the bigger you get, the bigger target gets on your

back. And because of that, attorneys become your friends because, one, you want to understand deal terms. And two, you understand that, you know, at the end of the day, there'll be some sort of situation where somebody will want to take advantage. I mean, go, like, drive down the freeways from the airport to the strip. What's on every single billboard? Yeah. Injury, car accident. Attorney, attorney. Why do they do that? Those are expensive billboards. Because they make tens of millions of dollars a year on people suing for things that by and large probably they shouldn't have sued for. And the part that's crazy about our society is how many people settle and how often you can get sued for anything. That's the other thing people don't realize. Like they don't have to have a case. You can just get sued because somebody feels like it. We had a injury attorney on the podcast recently.

Oh, interesting. Very successful guy in California. and he was explaining how his entire business model worked and a lot of it comes down to what the insurance companies are willing to settle with because for a lot of companies it's cheaper for them to say I'm going to give you 50 grand right now it's done than to fight this thing to court and it's a waste of time and resources so for them if their client is insured and they have proper limits the attorney just needs to go in and say hey we have this claim here's our evidence we're going to take it to court or give us 50 grand and in most of those those cases, they'll just say, here's the 50 grand. Yeah, it's kind of a sad, sad world we're in. I

always wonder about, I imagine it would be interesting to do a study, but I imagine that the people who get their money through means like that are like lottery winners. It comes fast, it goes fast. Because when you don't actually earn it or when you earn money from something that you shouldn't have earned it from, I do believe that there's like this carmic tie to money made and that it won't stick. And so, you know, a lot of the things that I talk about with making money and getting rich. It's not really because I want people to be rich and have Lamborghinis and drive around. It's because I think that when you learn to value your time in a way that ties to ownership, it changes your entire perspective on life. And it actually makes you a better person because you believe in yourself,

because you think you can achieve things without having to go after other people. And so I wonder about those people. Do you worry that you're putting a target on your back by being so public about your income, who you are, where you are, all of these things. What's the advantage to you on this? Yeah. I mean, I don't talk about my income anymore. And increasingly, you know, I was talking with some of our friends about how to talk about the portfolio. And I don't share all my portfolio companies and I never have because it does put a target on those companies, which I don't think it's fair because they didn't sign up for that. Like, why does a roofing company in Phoenix, Arizona benefit from my big platform? It doesn't. They're just going to get more competitors. And if I say

something silly, then they're going to get negative reviews. that's no benefit for them. They shouldn't have to deal with that. So I think there's downsides. And increasingly, I don't talk about exactly how much our revenue, our portfolio companies do. And that's from a couple different reasons, not just a target, but also because what about when it changes? What about when I sell one? And then, you know, there's a bunch of historical stuff saying it was this amount. Now it's this amount. What about when it doubles? It just doesn't feel, it feels misleading. But no, it's all my husband thinks about. He's, you know, former security military guy. he's very concerned with security. But I do think, I think attention is the new currency in a lot of

ways. I think it's an incredible opportunity and privilege for people to listen to you at all on the internet. I think it's really fun. And I do truly believe, which is maybe slightly egotistical, that the world abhors a vacuum, right? And if the only people putting stuff on the internet are people that are relatively unethical, are not really giving any value, then that's going to be what's out there. And I think we need more humans who are doing the right thing and talking about it. And I wish that I had somebody like you guys that I could listen to when I was younger to figure out this game of business and success and life and money. And so I'm willing to do that. I think it's interesting.

The longer I've been doing YouTube, the more private I've started becoming. I bet. Just naturally, the less I want to share, the less I want to talk about things, the more I'd like to just kind of remain the guy. And that's why I love the podcast, too, is it's less focus on myself and more focus on the guest. Yeah. And they say, like, a lot of wealthier people,

prefer it just to remain quiet. And I could start to see why. Initially, I thought, no, they should be, you know, on platforms, giving advice and helping people. But I kind of see the perspective of, you know, the advantage of not having that sort of attention and eyeballs on you. Yeah. I mean, it's a incredible privilege,

but it is also a huge burden. I think. And you have to have a type of personality that wants and can deal with it. I mean, could you imagine what, for instance, politicians go through right now we're in election period, right? Can you imagine putting their families through that that immediately you sign up on one ticket or the other and 50% of the company hate, or 50% of the country hates you. I have a lot of respect for the people who do it and then get out of it because it's a hard game. But I'm with you. One of my favorite CEOs of all time, he scrubs himself off the internet completely. You can't find him anywhere. He's a multi, multi-billionaire. And that's what he said to me back in the day. He was like, we get rich quietly here. We don't talk about it publicly. And I did not

understand it then. And now I get it a little bit. And I do respect it. Why did he try to be so secretive with that? Like, to that degree to like nothing online about this person? Actually, the two richest guys I know are like that. One, I sat on the board of their hedge fund for a long time. You can't find him anywhere. He would be pissed if I mentioned his name on a podcast. And I think it is because of that. You know, there is a feeling in this country and around the world that if you are rich, you didn't earn it. If you are rich, there's something bad or wrong with you. And that you should be pulled down. And in fact, I do think the tall poppy syndrome is true that, you know, when we see a poppy that rises above the rest, it gets picked,

right? And I think that happens across our country and many others. But we have to, you just have choose what type of person you want to be, you know, do you want to be, do you want to be the warrior? Do you want to be the gardener? And, you know, my husband really inspires me to do a lot of this, but I think that we are at a, again, on my soapbox for a second, I think we are at a critical tipping point in our country and the developed world for making sure that people realize they're not victims, they can have opportunity, and that those who win win because they work at it. And that's available for everybody. And if we don't have people, you know, people out here saying that more often, then I think our country doesn't look very good for our kids if we choose to have those in decades.

What are your weaknesses? What do you think is, what do you think you should be working on? A lot. I mean, I have a terrible memory. I forget everything all the time. I also, I forget, loose with numbers. I forget exactly the numbers of deals. So now I've, I've started saying more like, I don't remember the exact numbers. Here's what I think it is plus or minus 10 to 30%. I do not have that kind of photographic memory. Do I think that I can get better at that, though? I don't actually know. Does it matter? Maybe. It'd be really nice if I could prattle off.

Some of the people that come on here, they say the numbers so specifically. They remember every aspect of it. I've never been like that. But to your point, I try to focus on the things I'm good at, as opposed to optimizing for my biggest weaknesses. And instead of optimizing for those, I hire for those. And so it's like, can we, you know, team, can you make sure that I have numbers somewhere if I need to reference them?

Can I, like, have a place where I can say, I can't remember what that deal was, but go look at our site. Here's the numbers on the site. But that's one of my bigger weaknesses, for sure. And I like to work probably more than I should. How much do you work? A lot. I really like it. Maybe at some point if I have a kid, I'll like the kid more than working.

But right now, it's my favorite thing to do. You know, like, what a weird job we have now. Like, think about this. I remember, you know, people would say, I'm so tired from recording all this stuff. You know, I'd look at the team and I'd go, we're doing fucking YouTube's. We're doing TikToks as opposed to spreadsheets for 400 hours at Goldman Sachs. Like, this is, this is Barney's playtime. And so I think that's not always the best perspective to have. It means that I'll do things for a lot longer than I should. And I certainly don't focus on, you know, I don't know, health as much as I should, maybe. Although that word should bothers me. I try not to use it too often. So what does your daily routine look like? Really standard. I'm a big believer in the small things replicated continuously, allow for you to not have decision fatigue.

So I don't want to have to question every single decision. I eat the same thing for breakfast. I order the same thing for lunch. What do you get for breakfast? Very simple. I'm all protein right now, so I eat steak and eggs. Steak and eggs? Yeah.

What kind of steak? It's ordered. A5 Wagoo. I don't know. I'm not that particular about food at all. My husband's more. No. We just, my husband loves to cook or we order pretty continuously. We own part of a couple restaurants in Austin that don't use seed oils. Don't you own. A lot. We'll go to Austin. We'll be like, hey, we need a rental car. I'd be like, no, I own a place that does that. I don't own that. You want insurance? I own that place too. I would like to own that.

Yeah. So, yeah, steak and eggs in the morning, like around 10 o'clock, a coffee with with ghee in it. Gee and the coffee? That's ghee. Why do you add ghee? It's like fat, right? It's like, yeah, I don't actually know what it's butter. Is that what's called like the waterproof coffee? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So that's, just basically, I'm pretty sensitive to coffee. And so if I have a lot of coffee, I'll get all jacked up and jittery. I'm already, I already run pretty hot. And so having fat inside of the coffee decreases apparently that jitteriness with coffee. So we have half calf, coffee, not full calf. We have ghee. I get rolling out of bed.

I drink a big thing of water. and I go to work and then I work for a period and then I do like the same thing for lunch, like protein, steak, something like that. And then I probably go work out and then I work until pretty late. And then I do dinner with my husband every night is non-negotiable. So we always do dinner together. We know phones, no TV. We're not drinking right now, but typically like a nice glass of wine, the two of us. And we have a little conversation that's focused on, you what we did that day and what we want to do the next day, what we want to achieve next. How do you work on your marriage and make sure you guys are on the same page?

It's my biggest priority. And so in life, I think you can only really focus on three things at a time really well. And so, you know, for me, it's always first and foremost to my husband, the second that I decided to get married, that was the most important thing. Second is my business. And the third is my health. And so we're pretty fanatical about our relationship. We hang out more than I would assume most couples to do. He runs our portfolio on the media accelerated side. And I think, you know, one of the nice parts about us working together, it's interesting because your studio is here and your fiancé is here too. I really believe in work-life integration. And so I take Chris along with me.

And so, you know, he comes to most travel trips. He's not this week because he couldn't, but we are almost always traveling together. We do most meetings together. He's a great relationship manager and like a Continuer and Executor of things. I'm a great starter and bringing people inner of things. And so we work really well together in that way.

And then we always have something to talk about, you know? Do you believe in separate or joint accounts? I don't think I have a hard stance either way on that. I think we have separate and joint. So you have mine, his hours? Yeah. Why do you do it that way? Not out of any particular reason, one way or the other.

I mean, again, I have a philosophy overall, right? Maximize earning. Maximize earnings. So I'm never really concerned with what he's spending or what I'm spending. He's much more thoughtful on spending. I think there comes from the military. He's much more programmatic. But in the beginning, yeah, for sure, he would have been the one that set rules and parameters around it.

I've always been a little bit loose. And he's been like, you know, no, what's yours is yours, what's mine is mine. And I don't really believe in that. Do you believe in pre-nups? Yeah. I only believe it because I believe in expectation setting. And so anything after the marriage, you know, 50-50, anything before was his or mine, pretty clean. And I don't think emotional. I didn't have a pre-up last time, so that was painful. What did that look like when you split without the pre-up?

Yeah, I mean, it was pretty quick because I wanted it done. But my dad said a great line to me at the time. I was struggling because I was going to have to pay a lot of money. And he said, there's an exit tax to freedom every time. And so I just remembered that when I had to write a check and do whatever, which was there's going to be an exit tax. But, you know, divorce is awful. I don't wish it on anybody. It's miserable. And it's both people's fault, nine times out of ten. And so it was my fault just as much as it was his. And it's miserable. And I remember, like, you know, my credit cards getting cut off and my bank account getting cut off because it was joint, but it was in his name, even though, you know, it was a mess. And it took a long time. to recover from that. It's also very, very expensive for the typical, you know, person. And so I have a lot of empathy for people going through divorce. I think most of it can be, I don't know how to not have people get divorced. What I do know is that you can decrease a lot of your financial stress around divorce by a pre-nup, setting expectations, and both parties always knowing where the money is and having equal access to the money. And I think that's just good partnership. So when you split with, or when you got the initial divorce.

That was one lump sum payment that you had to make. It wasn't like some sort of like continual spouse. Oh yeah, no, I didn't have that. He earned well. I earned well. I do remember at the time

and I was like, you fucker. He asked for a percentage of my future earnings, tried to negotiate that. And I was like, the thing is, get fucked. But I guess it was a compliment because he thought I might earn a lot in the future.

When did you realize that was a bad fit? And what is your advice to people who are in relationships where maybe they don't know if it's a good fit. Like when did that realization come to your mind? Most, I got married because I thought that's what you did. I thought you find a nice person that you're attracted to, that's successful, that you kind of have fun with and you get married and you have kids and you settle down. And I prescribed to all the social norms. And when I found that

and he proposed, we got married. And I thought that was just the next check off the box. terrible idea. If I looked back, I would be a lot more particular. It was the one area of my life where I think I settled and I felt bad, which I think happens to a lot of people on both sides. You say yes to marrying somebody because you would feel bad staying, no. You already have confirmation bias. You've been with them for a period of time. Why haven't you left if you aren't going to say yes to getting married? You know, the other person pressures you. Hey, I want to get married. Hey, I want this to happen sooner. If there's any doubt or inkling in your mind about should you get married, in my instance, I think don't. Because, you know,

Because it's a long road and it's very difficult. And I do think it's a beautifully kind of sacred thing to live your life with another human. And you should be really particular about the one that you decide to do it with. Was there a breaking point that like something switched where like this just isn't working on? There's no way to fix this. Yeah. I mean, we wanted two different lives, right? I think a lot of times when you get married, you think your person's going to change.

Your person's not going to change. They are who they are. and they've had, you know, 25 years of compounding to the person that they are today. That cement is set. And he assumed that I was going to change and I assumed he was going to change. He thought one day I'd want the white picket fence and the two and a half kids and that one day would be a lot sooner. And I thought he would chill out from the, you know, clubs and drinking and Wall Street and all the craziness. And he didn't want to.

And so we both set poor expectations and we thought we could change the other person to our purview. Now I think he's perfectly happy. his own thing. But don't expect your other person to change because the likelihood is low. What is your advice to new couples to make sure they don't end up in that situation? I think you should sit down and have a conversation. It's what Chris and I did. We sat down and the internet loves to laugh at this. They're like, that's really romantic. Like that sounds awful. I'm like, all right, man, go through a divorce. But him and I sat down and we basically just said, what do we want out of life? What are our really big visions? And we had that, I think, cemented us

more than anything, our visions and our values. And the vision was we wanted to build an empire. Together, we wanted to see, could we squeeze every single drop of capability out of both of us before we die? And wouldn't that be fun to try? Can we continue to play the game at the highest level possible? Not just how much money we make, but how much can we contribute? How much are we actually capable of? What's the limit? What did that feel like to hit it? And we both wanted that. We didn't want to live small lives. And we were honest about that. And then second, was our values. And that was, if we get married, do we do this for life? You know, how do we want to raise kids? How do you think about lying, cheating, stealing? What if one person feels something for

another person, do we talk about it or not? Like, we got pretty granular. And we put up a whiteboard and we both kind of workshopped this. And I learned this through therapy in my first marriage, and I wish I would have done it before because it's really, really, it's very revealing. Have you done something like that? I have. Yeah. Yeah, we did the whole marriage counseling beforehand. And there's a whole bunch of like questions. But honestly, a lot of the questions I knew. Like, I think Macy and I on our like second or third date, we went through practically everything to make sure. Yeah, because I think we were both on the same page.

Like, hey, if it's, if either one of us deviate from this and it's just not the right fit, let's figure it out now. Yeah. So like, why waste time if it's, if we know there's going to be a sticking point somewhere? So I think we kind of threw everything at the wall. I love that. It's actually, it's also kind of sexy because then, you know, you know your other person's going to be with you through it all because you've already you've already talked about it. And it doesn't mean they can't change their mind, but they're probably not going to change their

mindset. So I do think the Carol Dweck fixed first growth mindset is really critical to. You know, my ex-husband had a fixed mindset. We are this way. I am this way. It is this way. And mine was like, well, we're that way now. But like, couldn't we continue growing, changing, evolving? And I think if you are a growth mindset, there's nothing worse than being with a fixed mindset and figuring out that fast. What do you think the biggest red flags are for a relationship? How things begin is usually how they end. And so if your relationship begins because you two were cheating, red flag. If your relationship begins and it's tumultuous and hard, red flag. If your relationship begins and you two don't have a lot in common and that bothers you and it's slightly boring, red flag. And so people are at their best when they're trying to impress you in the beginning. And I do think at some point it gets better like that happens. And to Chris and I, our first year of marriage was definitely the hardest. It's like, how do two fully formed adults come together and compromise on things and feel okay about both being slightly unhappy

in our compromise? But after that first year, you know, it's gotten easier. Do we fight? Absolutely. You know, the team's all seen it. But do we have the same vision and values that's so clear that we know that at the end of the day, you know, if he called me from a third world jail, I'd figure out how to get him out. Do you want kids? Yes. When? I'd like him sooner or rather than. I'm 36. So, you know, time clock on the ovaries. But, you know, sooner rather than later, I think. But it's not something that I always wanted. And so often, I think, women seem to either know right away that they want them or they wait for the right partner in the right time and then they feel like they might want them. Why do you want kids? When I talk to a lot of people, I feel like that are similar to you or like on your level, like Tom Billiou, he's like, no, I don't want to have kids. I don't want anything that distracts me. I'm. nervous, I'm going to love my kid more than I love my work, and I love my work so much.

Alex Formose says, no, I fear that I would hate my kid. Like, why are you the exception? Why do you want kids? I want to have the full human experience. I think that we probably only get one shot on this planet and that reproduction seems to be something that is programmed into us to desire in some way, shape, or form. And I want to be a part of that. I want to feel what that feels like.

I also think there's something beautiful about this idea of legacy. And what would make me work harder than having a human who was completely reliant on me working hard and maybe trying to make some effect on the planet that could have helped them one way or the other? And so for me, I'm the opposite. I imagine that my dedication to what I do is going to 10x. It's kind of R.O.Y still like lens. Yeah, 100%. But I don't, you know, I didn't ever have. that matriarchal, I want to hold the baby, I want to feel it in my belly.

Would you do a surrogate? I would like not to. Again, I think bonding happens through extreme trial, right? And so nothing more extreme than what you go through with pregnancy and with childbirth. And so that seems like a pretty incredible thing to attempt, first of all. And then second, I don't have any shame one way or the other with surrogacy, but there's a lot of, it's a lot of interesting and nuances with that that I would hope to avoid. But I have a lot of very successful friends that are like, fuck it, ship in a surrogate, you know, I'm not necessarily that way. How do you ensure that you'll raise kids with the values that you want them to have?

I don't think you can be sure of anything with children. You know, maximum level of hubris is the parent who says, I shall never X before they have a child, right? Who knows? I'm going to attempt to do just slightly better than my parents did and hope that, as Chris and I like to say, I fuck up our kids just enough to be a Navy SEAL or a private equity investor and not a stripper. And like I think every child, I mean, talk to somebody who has parents and they don't think that the parents did something wrong. I haven't met one yet. So I'm sure our kids will have many of things that they think we did poorly. But what a beautiful challenge to attempt. What are your thoughts on modern freedom hierarchy?

Oh, yeah. So this is why I started contrarian thinking, basically this idea that it was obsessing on how do we get people to think critically. So I saw not a lot of that was happening in 2020. And what I realized is people, it's Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but slightly changed. The hierarchy goes, first, as the base level, you have to have. physical freedom, right? Like you have to be able to, I don't know, live in the house that you want to live, have your body be, you know, safe, healthy, et cetera. Second level after that, you can have financial freedom, financial freedom, meaning I can spend what I want, where I want with whom I want,

and the final level being philosophical freedom. Like only after you have your physical freedom, your financial freedom, can you get to philosophical freedom? Because when you're just trying to pay your rent and you're trying to get out of debt, you are in a fight or flight stance. You cannot stand for, you know, morals and high grounds, or at least it's much harder to. And so I think if we could get more people to a status in which they're not fight or flighting, they can stop, they can breathe, and they can think critically. We probably have a much different country. So our idea with contrarian thinking is, all right, let's see if we can get more people to be financially free, and then I think I can get them to think critically. And that was our bet, our Trojan horse is money. And out of the Trojan horse spills hopefully critical thinking because of skin in the game that you have when you own something. How did your values, beliefs, or perspectives change once you obtained philosophical freedom? I could say and do a lot more things when I had the fuck you fund in hand, you know, I think. So be more forthright with your opinion? Yeah. So, but your philosophy didn't necessarily change. It was more so just your ability. Yeah. Like, did my philosophy change?

once I already had financial freedom. Did I change my mind? So, for example, we've brought people on this podcast before Destiny was one person who is like a liberal political commentator. And as he gained more money, he actually, it kind of solidified and validated his liberal policy prescriptions, which I found very interesting because that kind of runs against what most people think. So like, as he obtained more wealth and he eclipsed the financial freedom to the physical freedom to the philosophical freedom, like how did your own philosophy change? I'm not sure that my philosophy, well, I do think that the worst thing that you can do is have opinions strongly held. I think that you should have opinions loosely held and you should debate them fiercely. And so my philosophy changes frequently. As soon as I get new inputs, I want to evolve the philosophy that I have. I don't think there was a magical moment at which point it changed. Maybe the only magical moment was the first moment that I really became responsible. for a company. I think that was a pivotal moment in my career because it was the moment that I understood every bad boss, every, you know, tough decision, my parents, like once you own a P&L, somebody's

livelihood, you're the person in charge, you're responsible, it flipped my mindset because no longer could I have excuses about why things didn't happen. I was all up to me. Like, there's nobody else in the way. So that did change my mindset hugely. It was like, oh man, the buck actually does stop with you. It was hugely freeing, but it was really hard. You know, you really have to look yourself hard in the mirror, I think, at that point. Who'd you say is your idol, or like your main mentor? I never liked the word mentor because I think I have never met another human that I want to change lives with. You think that's what mentor means?

I think mentor, to me, often means you follow somebody and they guide you through to achieve what they've achieved. And I've never found like a holistically pure mentor. I've probably found mentors in finance, mentors, in relationships. Right. So like maybe not an overall mentor, but I've had specific mentors. Like Graham has been a mentor. My father's been a mentor. Maybe even a professor at a college has been a mentor. You know what my problem is with mentors? Did you ever ask Graham to be your mentor? No. Of course not. Because that's weird. I think the student makes the mentor at the mentor.

Exactly. I think that's my problem with today. A lot of people are like, will you be my mentor or will such and such be my, it's like, no, no, no. Your mentor can happen from some but you've never met if all you do is read the books, even long after they've died. And so I suppose if we talk about a mentor that way, like, they don't even know, but they are, then I've had many, many of those. When I think about who that is lately, I mean, there's a couple of people. I'm going to say Bill Perkins, probably recency bias, but what I love about Bill, he does not care about what anybody thinks. He will be friends with people because he wants to be friends with them, even if it's not convenient. I think that is very rare today. I think people do not want to choose sides. And especially for people that are on the internet, they're only willing to go so far if it doesn't further their value. Bill Perkins is

not that man. He does not care. And so, like, for instance, I'm not a big Dan Blaserian fan, but Bill's great friends with Dan because Bill thinks that Dan is something different than what the internet portrays him at, even though that's probably degrading to Bill's reputation. And I have a lot of respect for that. So Bill for his like fuck you mentality and also he's always thinking bigger. I remember I went to him. I have this big business that we're going to launch this year. I bought it. We're going to plow a couple million dollars in it.

I have a huge, like two huge investors and I plow a couple million of their own into it. And it's going to be my big billion dollar bet this year. We'll see if it works. And I brought the idea to him. And I remember he looked at me at his like big mansion overlooking the awesome lake. And he's like, I think I'm presenting him with like an incredible idea. And he's like, do you think that you've been around small business for so long that small has infected your thinking? And I was like, it's kind of rude. And then as I thought about it, I was like,

well, maybe, because you're right. We could actually do this and it could be bigger this way. And so he's another mentor for always pushing me to think bigger. And I often think the people that can be the best mentors to you are the ones that they've kind of already achieved. And so, and they don't have a lot of reasons. Like, they don't really care what you do. They've already achieved what they need to achieve. They're just kind of sitting on the sidelines going, I'd like to be able to cheer for somebody. And Bill's one of those for sure. Do you think we have a problem here in the U.S. that people are just not critically thinking? Why do you think that is? So I think the problem with critical thinking is, it makes you stand out from the crowd. And none of us actually.

really like that. Like we think we want to stand out for the crowd. We want to get like kind of famous, but we actually don't want to stand out that much from the crowd. And critical thinking just means that you're doing that constantly nonstop over time. And then you also have to be able to have the ability to hold two things in your mind at the same time that might not both be true or that might both be true, have real cognitive dissonance. And that's tough for most humans. It's much easier to go, I'm a liberal, I'm a conservative, as opposed to, well, I have some components of this and some components of this. And they both are bad and they both are good. in varying ways, hard to do, actually.

And probably because we aren't taught that anymore. We're taught in 60-second sound bites. Do you think shorts are destroying attention spans? I think TikTok is digital fentanyl, and we should regulate it as such. I think the way that we are fed information into our brains in 20 years, we will look back on and think, how did we allow this to happen to our youth in particular? I think my generation and maybe both of your guys as too got really lucky because we skipped growing up our entire lives with the ability to nonstop self-record and screen ourselves. And so that would be one thing I try to do if I had children would be to sincerely limit what input goes in.

I mean, it's the same thing as I think we will realize, and I'm sure there's studies out there that show this already, but that there is no question in our minds right now. If I eat only fast food and if I eat only processed things, I shall probably become sick, right? We would be pretty safe saying that. I think in the future we will look back and think if I consume only negative news, if I consume only trash and nonsensical things, I shall be sick in some way, shape, or form. And I think that, yes, some social platforms are doing that. And you have to fight back aggressively on what you allow in your mind, just like you do what's allowed in your mind. just like you do what's allowed in your mouth. Does that mean you contribute to the platform

because you're there to make it better, or do you believe that contributing to a platform like TikTok is only going to bring more people in, and eventually they'll win? My thought, and I thought long and hard on this. So one, I don't have TikTok on my phone. So I do not actually consume anything on TikTok ever, and I thought long and hard about getting off of TikTok entirely.

But my counterweight to it is our youth is there. And so if our youth is there, maybe it's our job, actually, to create better, more interesting content that has a white pill in it as opposed to a black pill in it. And so that's our mission for the next couple of years. Can we make financial literacy, positive mindset, growth just as interesting as teenagers dancing in unison? And I don't know the answer to that, but we're going to try. Just out of curiosity, why such a large ring?

Oh, yeah. I always wear them. You know, you know what? Nobody's ever asked me that before. What if you get in a fight and you have to. That's right. Thank you. That's what it was. That is. You know, I'm always nearly in fights. It's very, I mean, it's as big as the face on your watch.

Yeah, it is. It's slightly smaller. Okay. It actually, it stems from my grandmother. My great-grandmother, Evelyn, she always used to wear really big rings. And I think there's something about having a piece of fashion that's signature that I always liked. And so for a long time, I didn't care about fashion at all. and I thought that it didn't matter. And now I actually think it does. I think it matters a lot the way you look in the first seconds that you are perceived is very hard to take off of somebody's mind once they've made them. And so I think having like sort of a signature look, having a piece of having fashion that you take seriously is actually really beneficial. And so I've thought about that a lot of lately. And then this was her ring. So I wear a lot of these in tribute to her.

I got a crazy one. We're going to do a 180. Is the American Dream dead? I want to hear something wild? Yeah. What percentage, and you already know, don't you? Have you read that yet? Read what?

Okay. Well, I'm not going to ask the question because I think you guys might already know the answer, but the audience won't. You might not know. Okay. What percentage of millionaires do you think America has as opposed to the whole world? I'm going to take a guess, 85%. You think 85% of millionaires live in the U.S. As opposed to the rest of the world?

80. Okay. In the U.S., I'd say 60%, maybe 50. Okay, you guys are very positive. The answer is 42%. 41.9%. So the American Dream is not dead on the Ice Coffee Hour podcast. But regardless, I thought about that.

And it's wild when you look at the actual population of the world. We have almost half of all millionaires live in the U.S. And so when people say to me, the American Dream is dead, well, there is no other country in which the American Dream is more alive. So just mathematically, we own more people who have more money than anywhere else in the world. But assuming you don't have a million dollars, let's say you're just turned 18. Nope. Don't have a million. Is that American dream debt?

Just because people have a million dollars already doesn't mean that you're going to get a million dollars. Good point. Forward looking. All right. Well, we could look at a different way. So a study came out recently that said about $3.4 million is what is needed for one human's entire lifetime to achieve the American dream. Yeah. I'd be curious your take after this. So like $3.4 million. Pretty standard things, house, cars, kids, funerals. I thought that was interesting. And they were saying it like this was this huge number. And then I was like, well, let's look at the underlying assumptions, which we should always do when we see numbers. And I'm like, okay, they start this from 18 and then the average person in the U.S. dies at 77. So I can't remember what's 77. It's like 59, 59 years between the two. So if we divide 3.4 million-ish by 59, we reach something.

like $58,000 a year is what you need to achieve $3.4 million in lifetime earnings. One, pretty reasonable. The average American in the U.S., the average American salary is somewhere between $30,000 to $60,000 depending on how you... But that's starting at 18, which 18-year-olds are not going to have that income, and that's also after-tax. Oh, oh, the $3.4 million is after tax. That's also not assuming any growth of income.

Yeah, and... Right. Lots of assumptions. But starting off at 18, I don't know. I believe you're probably, most people probably not going to have that income until late 20s. I think there's a lot of things that could be sideways with the numbers. You know, definitely starting at 18, maybe you can't make 30K. You could also say, what about inflation?

It's not actually 3.4. It's going to be higher at some point. But let's be, and then on the other side, it's, of course, well, are you going to earn $58,000 forever? No. And so I think the answer is it's actually more achievable than even I thought. I think even if we take those, so when do you actually start earning something like 30k a year when you're 21 or 22 yeah well you graduate college at 22 so right and so you're in the interim you're probably making if you have a part-time job I don't know 10 to 20k a year a server

you know a bartender unless you go to college with debt yeah and you graduate at 22 and you're like negative 50,000 you could yeah I think college throws a huge wrench into a lot of this and that I think is real um but to me that's seemed like, wow, the American dream is actually slightly more attainable than I thought it was. And especially if we don't do what people tell us to typically do, which is go to like a quite mid-tier, very expensive college. So I don't think the American dream is dead, but I do think it's under attack. And so to your point, like if we have inflation where it's at, if we have high interest rate numbers, if we have the highest asset price numbers that we have, if we don't continue

to build more homes if we have tuition continue to go at the level that it's going at, and if we increasingly don't have wage growth, which is something that has been stagnant for some time, I do think that we're under attack. But I don't think the solutions are going to be the things that a lot of politicians are talking about it, like UBI and, you know, overall allowances for minimum wage increases. I saw that. I thought the numbers were really high, actually, like $35,000 was the amount that they put in for the average wedding plus a ring. I think you could easily do without that. Then they also assumed you bought it.

Mine wasn't even that. I think Chris bought my wedding. No, I was like a little wedding ring. Nothing fancy. I think it costs like eight or 10K. And we make a lot of money. Why don't you need a $35,000 ring? That's crazy.

Oh, it wasn't it. It was the ring and the wedding. Everything ends up. Can you say how much your whole thing's costing you? I think at this point we're trying to keep it under $20,000. Yeah. That's incredible. For everything.

Well, especially because I think sometimes, especially when maybe people think about how much money we both might have, they assume, you know, you see most people who have a lot of money have a giant ring because it's like a signal somehow. Now, I love the understated aspect of it. Yeah, why? Same thing with a wedding. You know, if you threw a party and you threw a party that costs 20K, your friends would be like, this is a sick party.

But you throw a wedding that costs 20K and people think that's cheap. Yeah. Yeah. So the wedding is one thing that I think a lot of people could do without or do something a lot smaller. Then it also assumes you buy a new, buy a six-year-old car every six-year-old car every eight to ten years. That skews the numbers. And then people were saying that they're double-counting the cost of raising a child, which I think there was two kids, $550,000 over the course of a lifetime. But that also was baked into the cost of housing of like $800,000 of having a larger house.

So I think they were double counting some of those numbers. So just, just, you know, assuming you cut some of those out. Oh, and then it was also the cost of health insurance, which was like $700,000 over the course of a lifetime, which is, to me, insane. Any employer is going to cover a significant portion of that. No one's having more than like a $5,000 deductible a year if you're employed throughout that part. So it's like, I bet the American dream would probably cost more like $2 million, is maybe $2.2, give or take. If you try to be reasonable about it. Yeah, which means you would easily cover it with, you know, let's call it somewhere between 30 and $60,000 in earnings. But that also assumes that you only have a one-income earning household.

Yeah, it also assumes if you die at 77 or you're going to die at 77 and not have the part that I thought was wild is when you look at the great, everybody's talking about the baby boomer wealth transfer, right? And I think they're totally getting it wrong because they're talking about it like the average baby. boomer, God, I'm going to mess up the numbers slightly. But let's say the average baby boomer, maybe you know, has $265,000 that they're going to transition to their kids. But the problem with that is that baby boomer needs that to last throughout their lifetime, including even if we say that Medicare, Medicaid continues, the cost of retirement homes and getting sick is so high now that that $265,000, if that's what they have, you know, let's call it, let's call it like 70 years of age and increasing we were living more to like 85, 86 years old will actually be gone by the time

that baby boomer dies. And so they might, they might hand you down, not that they could hand you down, but they might die in debt or they hand you down a very small amount of money instead of $265,000. So that's why I'm so passionate about people transitioning businesses because I think all the money is actually in business and assets, not liquid cash. This would have been a perfect place for you to say and that's why I own assisted living facilities. I bought them last year. No, I don't. That would be a great business to buy into. It would if you could do it nicely. I mean, the numbers show that increasingly a lot of them are owned by private equity players. And there's a lot of problems with over, with overfocusing on profit in my opinion in that sector. And so there's so many

horror stories. It's it's not something that I would roll up and grow unless I was really not focused on on profit. Do you imagine like a 95 year old can't pay their monthly rent and they don't have any family and they don't have any money left and you're going to like kick them out on the street? I don't. I try to stay out of like, okay, I won't wash your car. Fine. Okay. Like I won't wash your clothes in the laundromat. Fine. But I'm not going to kick out a 95 year old out of the building that can't afford to stay there. That'd be awful, awful. Yeah. I remember seeing in the news this was about 10 years ago, father bought a condo for his daughter near USC and there was someone who's living in there

like a veteran of course in their 90s he bought the condo and was evicting this person because the daughter was going to move in to go to college well of course this person has nowhere else to go they've lived there for 30 years and you had this split down the middle where the news was villainizing the owner

but the owner was saying I have a legal right to this unit to do as I please. And reading the comments about that was you had, I would say, half the people thought this guy was the worst in the world. The other half of the people said it's his right. It's not his fault that this person didn't save up for this. But that's a difficult position either way. And I think at the end, they ended up helping this person find another facility or something like that. It was a pretty positive ending. But either way, it's just, it's bad all the way around. Yeah, I try to avoid businesses like that. But that's, you know, that's what people can't do today. No. No. cognitive dissonance. They can't hold in their mind, this is sad and maybe bad. And simultaneously, the guy has every right, which is both true. Right. Yeah. And it's in California. So I'm actually amazed you could even evict the guy. Yeah. You could evict as an owner-user in plenty of situations. I think in that case, if they were there less than 10 years in certain buildings over the age of 65, you could legally get them out. Yeah. But there are all these restrictions

on what is a protected tenant in Los Angeles County. Oh, yeah, I remember. I mean, you know way more about real estate than I do, but we own a series of Airbnbs, and we don't allow anybody to stay over 30 days in California because of the law. You hear about the dentist guy in Los Angeles? Yes, he's the one that the person lived there for how long?

Yeah, years, never paid rent and then asked him for $100,000 to leave. Do you hear about this drag? Oh, it's crazy. This guy listed his unit on Airbnb, and this lady came to him and said, I want to rent here for like six months. He said, perfect.

Well, guess what? She moved in. Didn't pay. And so he says... She paid like the move in. Just like a little bit of money to rent his guest house that he like, and this is a multi-million dollar home in Bruntwood. So this is like afford a six million dollar house.

And he's renting out the guest house. She doesn't pay. Well, he tries to evict her. And she says, no, no, no, you can't evict me because this is not permitted. You didn't get a certificate of occupancy. and technically the lease I have is invalid. You can't evict me. And she hires a lawyer.

And sure enough, he could not evict her. The city wouldn't help him because they say, well, you didn't get a certificate of occupancy when you built this place. So technically, that's between you two. And it took years. And he got to a point where he had nowhere else to turn. She had been there for two years, not paying anything.

Apparently it was really hostile between them. And so he got media. coverage and this lady became like a micro celebrity and she had paparazzi outside of her house and then follow her to like restaurants and they take people like her no no they didn't like her but they would speculate on like oh she's going to dinner with this guy who is this guy they just invaded her privacy and then she and then she asked for a hundred thousand dollars to leave he said no that got even more attention and eventually she moved she voluntarily just left and it was a big thing. I mean, there was like news outlets

and helicopters, like taking photos because it was on a hillside in Browardwood. And they were like taking photos of the inside showing like people moving out of this place. Like it was a big deal. But the owner said he had no idea that this certificate of occupancy was never released because he hired a contractor to do it

and just assumed that when they finished the job, everything was good. So he was oblivious to it. But it was just a crazy situation. And now, oh, and also apparently she has a history of doing this. So this is not her first time. Like she'll purposely seek out places that she knows she could rent, live in there for as long as she can, use the system to her advantage, and then just find another place when she leaves.

So what kind of a lawyer would represent her in this situation? How is he making money all this? You have to think, there are plenty of public defendants out there that will just get paid by the state. And especially a state like California, we'll have people on retainer for people who just can't afford their services. Everyone has a right to legal representation. Yeah, that's a good point. Well, Anne, there's so many. people that'll do it on contingency. She could have even paid him something like, hey, if I don't have to pay two years worth of rent, I'll pay you three months of rent. Fifteen percent of rent cost her. Yeah. Oh yeah. And her rent, I think, was like four grand a month, five thousand dollars a month.

So how did she get access to a public defendant if she had the income to rent a place? Maybe she didn't have the income. Maybe she just moved in and said, hey, I'm going to sign you have four, five grand a month. I'm going to rent it. Maybe she didn't. I'm sure there's some requirements that you would have to prove that you can't afford a certain person. Those are the hard parts about ownership, right? And especially real estate. It is, you're dealing with, you're dealing with humans. And every time you're dealing with humans, it gets tough. But that story was wild. There was one in Oregon that was similar to. Yeah. But he had to live in his van outside of the house because he rented his house out for a period. And then he couldn't afford anymore to cover the house. And so he had to live in his van while the proof is awful. The ones that upset me the most are the squatters. When someone can't move in their house because a squatter, has somehow broken in and then they can't evict them. That to me makes no sense. And there was a story of a lady who bought a house, got the keys on the closing day, went inside the house, and there's squatters in there. And she's like, I have my moving truck here. I sold my house. I'm supposed to move in here, but these people now claim a right to the property. So the police come and the people

have forged a lease and the police say, sorry, this is a, so you're going to have to go through the eviction process. I just closed on the house. I don't know who these people are. While they've been living here for the last few days or whatever and they say they have a lease, we can't evict them. That makes no sense in my mind that they could just take over a property and say, no, I'm staying here. And it takes months. Ended up taking, I think, something like six months to a year and they trashed the place. Of course. That shouldn't happen. Yeah. Do you think that life is a zero-sum game? No. No. No. I mean, we all do die. So everybody will die. That is the only eventuality. But no, I don't think that you have to lose or win in every

situation at all. We cover practically anything, Derek. Do you want to... Yeah, let's see here. If there's any other... Covered everything and more. Nice. What's your biggest insecurity? What's my biggest insecurity? You guys want me to tell you a funny one? Yeah. I have really long toes. So for the people on the internet, because feet really get people going, I don't show them on the... I have like finger toes. And so... So it's not really a real insecurity. It's just funny. The team makes fun of me because I wiggle them a lot when we're presenting.

How big are the toes? Like, you know. Like, I mean, they're just. Like this. It doesn't work. But yeah, they're like, I have longer toes. I can pick things up with them. But that's not an insecurity.

That's a. Okay, fine. You want a real one? It's a feature. You know. Cody Sanchez comes with finger toes. He has toe fingers. Gavin has these things called tingers.

Oh, my. You do. Whoa. We're like spirit animals, but opposite. Tingers. You want to show the camera real quick? Just take it. Stupid you roll.

Okay, we'll do. Yeah. Show the tingers, man. Show the tingers, man. That's so funny. A real insecurity. My biggest insecurity is that I'm not enough, that I haven't achieved enough, but I haven't done enough. that the next thing that's in front of me

will be the thing that takes me down. And I think that's why I achieve things in life. It's this constant search for validation of capability, not necessarily peers, but just capability. It's a common theme that we see with really high achievers is that they feel like they're not enough. And I heard something, I think it was Vivek Ramoswamy, who said his biggest strength is also his biggest weakness.

I think that very much applies. In this case, do you ever feel like that's something that you'd like to conquer? Or are you fine compromising maybe this sense of like, you know, fulfillment or whatever, being enough to achieve these things that you want to achieve? I only look to overcome things like that if I feel like they are a negative use case to my life. So if I felt like me striving for more meant that I let relationships fall, meant that I was letting myself get sick, then I would strive to overcome it. But you don't feel like you're compromising any part of. happiness or joy or fulfillment by feeling like you may not be enough? My pursuit of happiness is found in the chase of enough. And, you know, Arthur Brooks talks about

happiness a lot. And he's been somebody that I've looked up to for years and part of a think tank that he used to run called AEI. And he talks about the pursuit of happiness being multifaceted. But one of the biggest pursuits of happiness is pursuit of happiness. And so I think pursuit of happiness actually means doing the thing that you are called to do. I don't think there is this blissful state I will ever have. I will be picking sunflowers and dancing and fields that will achieve happiness. And I actually find that a lot of the people that strive for that. I mean, it's creating dissonance between where you are and where happiness lies. Yeah, I don't know. I think I'm quite happy in the pursuit of happiness. But I assume at some point, you know, actually I don't. I assume that

there is no 100% happy. I have never met a human that I feel like is 100% fulfilled at all times, maybe a child, but I don't profess to regress to childhood. And so I'm happy with the pursuit of enough, I think. But the other thing that I think is true more than anything else is that any human you guys have on here, talk to us in 30 years or 40 years, because I have found that the ideas that were strongly held at 10 at 20, at 30, changed materially with really only one input, which is age. And so maybe there will be a joy that I found in enoughness with time as that goes on. To break down your personality also, I'm trying to do this quickly because this has gone pretty long.

Freud. I'm trying to understand. Would you say that higher than average intelligence was a big factor in you getting to where you are today? No, but I've never taken an IQ test. I have no idea how smart I am. You don't think that that played a role? No. I don't actually think of myself as smart at all.

Okay. But here's the thing, you're so smart that you realize your own limitations. So by you saying that you're not smart, you're not smart, you're also being humble. I'm not really that humble or nice. I'm pretty honest. I think that I am competent. And I suppose what does smart mean? Do we...

Intelligence maybe just like computing power, ability to adapt. Raw horsepower. Yes. I mean, I did very normal on my SATs and GMAT, which I think are two levels of intellect. I think I'm above average in ability to take ideas, translate them into words more simply defined. So maybe I might even be perceived as more intelligent that I am because I'm good at speaking, like idea to word combination. Bill actually calls this humans that have subject to verb ability, which basically just means anybody who can talk. So, no, I guess I don't think about it as intelligence, but I don't think about that that often.

What I do know is that I have a very high pain tolerance for continuing in a work perspective. Little pain tolerance probably physically, but I don't think there are very many people that can outwork me. And I think it's very hard to win against people who are obsessed. and who work continuously. So you would say it's grit. And then you also mentioned earlier that it wasn't necessarily that you were always this way, but it was that you tried a bunch of different veins and you finally found the one thing that was easy for you to outwork everyone else in.

So if you're saying for any viewer right now, if they want to learn how they can put themselves in a position, maybe that they want to be in a very successful position, it's just to continue trying and testing a bunch of different veins. IQ doesn't have much to do with it. and then find something that's easy for you to work in. Yeah, I think that's well summarized. I think curiosity, paired with grit, paired with iteration over long periods of time equals success. I mean, I met this guy, Joffrey Kent, who's maybe become another mentor of mine because he's like a Renaissance man.

You know, he's in his 80s. He created Abercrombie in Kent and the luxury. You still keep in touch with him? I do. That's funny. Yeah. She mentioned she sat next to him on a plane. Yeah, I met him on airplane.

Yeah, we're going to go to Monaco this summer and see him. But he mentioned that the only reason he thinks he's been successful over time is that he ran Abercrombie and Kent for 61 years. And so he just said, you know, time plus compounding plus consistency equals success. And now we all have survivorship bias. So maybe that wasn't exactly it for him. But it stuck with me. Well, there you have it, everybody. There is the recipe to become rich.

I have one final thing. Word association. I always enjoy doing this. I like this. Are you like a psychologist? He does. I mean, that's the stuff I get, I'm currently interested in.

Okay, I'm going to say something and you tell me the first thing that comes to your mind, okay? Okay, like one word response? Let's just, but if I say something like, you know, placard, I don't want to hear you say, you know, like halogen light bulb. Like, I wanted to have some, you know what I mean?

Okay, okay, okay. Alex Formosey. A great friend. Chris. My husband. Work. Fun. Money.

Lots of it. That's good. Freedom. We need more. Subscribe. Now, good one. That's good. That was great.

Chris Williamson. Other friend. Who else do we have? Laila Hormosey. Oh, she's awesome. Jerome Powell. Not great. Let's try not to say anything terrible.

Grant Cardone. I don't know him. Trump. Thank you so much for coming on. I think so much. Thank you so much. Everybody listening right now, please subscribe because we're beating Caleb Hammer and a race to a million subscribers.

But it's kind of just like rotating. He's kind of beating us a little bit. We're beating him a little bit. Shout it to Chris Williamson. I don't know why I keep doing this. It's just such a good beverage. He's not paying us to say this. Thank you.