The Iced Coffee Hour - The Untold Story Of Ludwig | Inside The $10,000,000 Per Year Empire

Episode Date: October 22, 2022

Go to https://hensonshaving.com and enter ICEDCOFFEE at checkout to get 100 free blades with your purchase.  Check out the Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/icedcoffeehour  SUBSCRIBE TO LUDWIG: https://www.youtube.com/c/Ludwigahgren Add us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan https://www.instagram.com/alex_nava_p... Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ... For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] GET YOUR FREE STOCK WORTH UP TO $1000 ON PUBLIC & SEE MY STOCK TRADES - USE CODE GRAHAM: http://www.public.com/graham  MY NEW COFFEE IS NOW FOR SALE: http://www.bankrollcoffee.com/ The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 Audio Equipment Used In Podcast: Shure SM7B mics, cloud lifters, rodecaster pro audio interface The YouTube Creator Academy:   Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF  For Podcast Inquiries, please contact [e-mail] *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Ludwig is a live streamer and a YouTuber with 3.5 million subscribers, and he has done the impossible. From being fired from three different jobs, moving out to California with absolutely nothing, to now having the world record of most subscribers in a month on Twitch, beating out Ninja, making over $1.4 million a month. It's safe to say that Ludwig is one of a kind. Well, in this video, we get an exclusive inside look into Ludwig's business empire, where he will reveal how he did it and how much money he made along the way. So if you're interested in content like this and want to see more like it, make sure to subscribe because we post a brand new episode every single Sunday.

So hit the button. It's totally free. And now what that said, let's begin. Podcasts over two years so far has made $550,000. No, $266,000. And the podcast is with Graham and Jack. No, no, Jack and Graham. We agreed on Jack and Graham. We've always said Jack and Graham, haven't we?

That's Graham and Jack. I actually wanted Graham and Jack. You wanted Jack and Graham. It does sound better. The short than the long. It's got to be short and long. That's true. Well, anyway, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much for coming on. And we're in your set today, by the way. Graham Jacker. Like Graham Cracker? We'll work on it. No. We don't need to work on it. We planned on meeting at 1130.

We kind of mentioned it. But Graham and I were like, oh, we should go to a coffee shop first. We could plan out some questions, get everything straight. And we decide some random coffee shop. We show up there. And right after we get our coffees, Graham's talking to a fan that, like, recognized him. And I'm like, wait a second.

There he is. And you just walk straight to the coffee shop. go all the time. Yeah. That was just a wild coincidence. You guys picked a great coffee shop. Yeah, it's good stuff. It's good stuff. I mean, come on. Yeah, I type in your area, and I just typed in coffee. And I saw the coffee places. Some of them didn't look good at all. And there was a Starbucks. I'm not going to Starbucks. But I found a random place that looked so good with like really unique drink options. And I tried it. It is so good. Now, this is like a $7 coffee. But this is the best coffee I think I've had. It was good. And you just strut in, man. And the funny thing, too, is when you

were there. There were probably 15 or so people in there. Two of them recognized you. Yeah. Is that like, is that a common thing? Does that happen often to you? Yeah. Yeah. What is that like? I get recognized a good bit. I mean, it's generally like everyone's pretty nice. The thing that they usually want is a picture, you know, that's like the, like the end of the engagement. It's like initially it's like, you seem familiar. Oh, I know who you are now. Confirm by asking. then greeting and then end it by asking for a picture so that you can say you have done this move on with your day

and I think that's generally how every interaction goes I always have the encounter where I'm just kind of like sitting somewhere and I'll look around and someone kind of like looks you make eye contact for a split second and then I'm like let me look back and they're always like this oh they're like comparing things like that and then we lock contact

you're like like that always but it's always they have to confirm on the phone to be like because they don't want to be wrong The embarrassment of being wrong outweighs the pleasure of being right. But you know what I do is I never look at them. Because you can tell your peripherals if they're looking at you. Oh, yeah.

I make them do the work of confirming and coming up to me. I'll never do the look because that's like an invitation to come in and they need to have that bravery on their own. And you mentioned I was watching a video when I was researching you before this that you used to have a password where people would have to say this in order to prove to you that they're like true fans. Yeah. Yeah, that's something PewDiePie did.

I had a silly one. It was like, you are Gigacad, super ripped, awesome hot dude, something like that. And they had to tell me that. And only one guy ever gave me the password. And the problem is when people meet, I don't know if you experience the same thing. When people meet me, they're very nervous, unnecessarily nervous, I would say. But I think it's just very unexpected, shock met with like, oh, I have not planned for this interaction. And so they're always very nervous.

And so when this guy was telling me, like, my passcode, he's like, you're like, like super tall and hot. And I was like, I was like, okay, this is weird. He did the thing. Wow. And I was like, I was like, did you just forget that you had told people this? No, I remember I told people,

but in my head when they would tell me, they would tell me in a way that was like, we had known each other for years. But obviously no one plans to meet me because they don't know where I'm at. And so when it actually happens, it came out a lot weirder than I thought it would. So I'm like, all right, let's just cut that.

Just come up to me. We'll grab the picture. It's all good. Yeah. Yeah, you know what's kind of surprising? You're actually six feet tall. Yeah. You actually are.

And here, I'm not saying that I was initially kind of like, you know, questioning. People round up. I round up to six feet. A lot of people, they say they're six feet, but they're like five nine, five ten. Right. But you, when I saw you, you're actually as tall as I kind of thought you would be. Yeah. Which is, yeah.

Yeah, I think it's a big thing for streamers especially because you have no idea how tall streamers are or how big streamers are. Because you always see him behind the camera. and the only thing you have for reference is what's around them in that frame. And so every single streamer deals with a joke of being short. And I probably wrote that joke harder than most. So everybody thinks I'm short or comes in at least like thinking that maybe I'm not as tall as I say I am. But yeah, I'm tall as hell. I got a truck because my dream car.

It's a mini truck. It's called like a K-truck. It's a Subaru Sandbar in 1997. It's imported from Japan. Oh my God, dude. Yeah, he had it on front check. I'm surprised you didn't see that. Yeah, you walked right by this guy.

Yeah, I noticed it. I was trying not to hit it with my suitcase. How much was that? It was $5,500. And then it costs about another $1,800 to import, so $7,300 total. That's safe to drive. Like, I'd imagine, is there an airbag in that thing? Yeah, there's an airbag.

Yeah. The things that make it a little more dangerous is that it's a right side car because it's an import from Japan. So I'm driving on the right, which can be a little weird. And then it's also like a left-handed, you know, manual transmitting. which can be a bit weird. Left-handed manual? Yeah.

But I drove it for the first time from Long Beach. And it felt fine. Like I, you know, it doesn't go the quickest. It goes about 70. But like, I felt decently safe on it. I wasn't too worried. I mean, I'm sure if I hit something, it's not a Tesla safety rating.

Shit's a fucking tank. It hits a wall. Bang. But, you know, if I don't do that, I should be fine. I've been curious. Left-hand drive, how, difficult is that to learn versus right. I don't even for me like I drive stick but I think it's like instantly because you don't you're not gear shifting especially in a car like this I mean it's not like a

sports car where you're like you know having to go first second third four fifth like it's pretty slow and steady uh and you just you just put it in the slot and you and you know when it's right like you do the same habits like do you wiggle a neutral yeah I'll wiggle the the gear shift or neutral just to make sure it's in there uh so it's the same vibe uh it's just the other hand And what's your inspiration behind all of these weird modes of transport that you have? Like the Vespa in this car. Like, why don't you just get like a, you know, I feel like people in your situation would buy like a Lambo or buy something flash. No, I don't, I can't see you in a Lambo.

I can see it necessarily. I can see a model as plaid. I could see that. Yeah. So, well, I thought about getting like a Tesla for a bit, but I didn't get it because everybody has a Tesla. And I think I enjoy a sense of originality. And I hate sports cars. Like I would never, I would never blow money on.

a sports car. I would never blow money on any, like, fashion brands. I don't like spending money there. It makes me feel like a, like I once rented a Porsche 9-11. Like, do you call it 9-11 or do you call it 911? 9-11. Anytime someone says Porsche 911, I just kind of cringe a little like, 9-11. Okay.

Porsche on 911. A Porsche. Porsche 9-11, never forget. And it was lime green and I was driving it around like West Hollywood. And I just felt. like a piece of it driving by a bunch of people who are homeless on the streets and I'm in a Porsche at a stop sign you know I just I I feel like it's too much of a flex and then I also am way more stress driving it because it you know I'm scared where I park it maybe someone nicks it

maybe it gets broken into maybe it's so because it's so low I just hit a curb or something and and now I just have a $7,300 car that I think looks dope that if it gets beat up I don't really care. Yeah. But my plan for it is I think I'm going to put a ton of money into it and make it an EV. Whoa. Because I think that's worth it. Or you just want the originality.

I think it's so sick. Yeah. Because I think the car looks dope. And so I want to paint it to match my Vespa. And then I want to make it an EV. And then it would probably be way better to drive. Yeah. That was something I was not expecting.

We ran into you at a coffee shop. Yeah. And you're like, oh yeah, just follow me there. And you're in a Vespa. Yeah. And a cool looking one, too, is like some retro style. something or other, right? Yeah, it's like a Chinese knockoff.

My girlfriend got me, but it's meant to look like the style of a classic 80s Vespah. It's like a sick mint green color. I got it because I went to, I went to Italy, and I just rented a Vespa in Rome. I just like asked the concierge. I was like, can you get me Vespa? They just hooked me up for like three days, no license, no nothing. And I just rode it around, and it was so fun. And I've always had a problem where I'm like an AI bot with a small AEOE field, and I will,

only engage with humans who I'm physically able to interact with in person. And I'm very bad at, like, messaging online. But the problem is I can only engage with those I can physically walk to or if I live with. And the VESPA is, like, unlocked my radius. Because now I'm way more happy to hop on the Vespa and drive 10 miles than I was getting into a car, which is weird because it's very similar. But the Vespa is just, like, easier to get in and I'm happier riding it. And I feel, like, annoyed if I have to drive 10 miles in a car.

Driving the Vespa? Yeah, it's pretty safe. I feel good. I don't know. I feel like I would worry about the safety of a Vespa. And I've, I've wanted a Vespa for a strong six years, but I was never allowed to have one for my parents because it's dangerous.

Yeah. So what I did to circumvent that was I bought a bike and threw a motor on it. Okay. And of course, I mean, I totally destroyed that thing and it broke because I don't know what I'm doing. Right. But it's probably a lot more dangerous than a Vespa. But I feel like I would just be worried about the safety. I don't know.

I think it depends where you're at. Like where I'm at, it's not like downtown L.A. And so riding the Vespa around feels like pretty safe to me. me. And I think you get used to it after a while. I mean, it certainly is more dangerous than a car, like just inherently. But you don't feel that because every day when you drive, you don't get injured. And so after doing that 100 times, you're like, oh, I am in a safe vehicle. So I think your brain tricks you. But first off, we have to thank our sponsor, Henson Saving. Now, I don't know about you guys, but I'm a hairy dude. And in order to look my age, I need to shave nearly every

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much, Henson, and back to the podcast. So what do you do for fun? You said Vespas and cool cars. I ride my Vespa around outside of that. I love watching Sunset. I'm a big Sunset fiend. I thought you were about to say watch Selling Sunset, the Netflix show. No. No. The real estate show. I just literally. literally go at sunset hour and I'll either walk and do a little hike or I'll just like stretch and I'll just watch it go down. And then I met a random Taiwanese dude. And so sometimes we catch up there because he also likes watching sunsets. And so we're buds. We hang out. You plan that out or is it just by chance you guys meet up? Literally just two ships in the night crossing. And I don't have any way

to contact him because he's like a 55 year old Taiwanese man. It's cool though. But if we do cross, we chat for like an hour. You don't think about getting his number. If you chat for an hour you would think this like how do I contact you again? I think it's cooler this way. This is like how you have to do it back in the day. What if he's just socially awkward? Like he wants you to reach out but just doesn't know how to ask for it. Yeah. He feels like it's been so long and he hasn't asked me. You probably isn't interested. It's about once every two weeks. So, you know, maybe next time. Maybe we've hung out about four or five times. Maybe the next time I'll slide the number in. What is it about watching the sunset? Is it just calming? Is it? What about it? I think it's

grounding. I think it's very easy to be in your own. world, think about your own game, but it's really small. Every YouTube channel is small. Even Mr. Beast is small in the grand scheme of the world and how it's moving. And in a hundred years, if you look back, is Mr. Beast someone that people talk about regularly? Probably not. And I think it's grounding to look at the giant sun that we spin around. And it makes me feel good. Why does it make you feel better? For me, I feel like that would make me feel insignificant and that everything I'm doing doesn't matter. Nothing I do matters. Why am I doing anything? I think it helps humble you and it helps make the things you do less about the ego and about being the biggest and the best.

But it still matters that you help the lives of those around you because that changes like all of society for years. And I think that's the most important thing you can do is uplift the people around you. And so I think I think that's still an important thing. It makes me feel good. And I have less of ego importance put into I have hit three and a half million subscribers. Wow. Because that doesn't matter. Let's talk a little bit more.

I know you've talked about this a lot, but I feel like we kind of have to visit it, since this is a finance and business-oriented podcast, the YouTube acquisition type thing. Right. What was that process like to get acquired by YouTube from Twitch? I know that you kind of had a relationship with Twitch since you, I mean, you've been on there for an extreme lot of time. Was that hard to disband from Twitch to go to YouTube? And what was your reasoning to switch from Twitch to YouTube?

Yeah, I think the dream for every creator is to eventually be a big enough creator that you can leverage that and then fish a deal from all the major players, which now is Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch, and then try to get the best one for your livelihood. And for me, I was like, okay, I've reached status as a big enough creator that I can try to get one of these deals after my original partner contract ended. So let's do it. And the goal was to just get a deal from Facebook and YouTube so I could leverage it for a better Twitch deal.

That was what I was thinking going in because I was like, I'm a Twitch streamer through and through. I'm not leaving Twitch. Why would I do that? And so we started and you know we had like a like a verbal Facebook offer and a YouTube offer. But when I was actually in the negotiations, I started to shift how I was thinking about it. Because the Twitch people were just a lot. They weren't like the people who I specifically talked to were very nice, but they were a lot less caring about like what I was trying to do and the goals I had and trying to accomplish that.

And it was much more, I am a gear in the system that makes Twitch run. They need me to stream this amount of hours, which gives them this much money, and they give me this much of a cut of that amount of money. And then, okay, good job. Tap me on the ask, get the next person in line. And so you're very replaceable on Twitch, which I don't think they're wrong to think that because throughout the whole mixer thing, turns out that people are very replaceable. Twitch is still has the biggest market share, you know?

But when you get, when you, when you feel like that, it feels a lot worse. and YouTube, I mean, they make you feel like you're having drinks with your buds at the table. And so talking with them more and more, I started to feel better about it. But I was still very much leaning Twitch up until the very end. I don't know if, you know, like the whole coin flip story. I like that story a lot. Yeah. Can you explain this?

Yeah. So like I was, even though I had a much better deal from YouTube, it was not like double the amount of money, but it was pretty close. Like it was pretty close to double the amount of money Twitch offered. I was still leaning towards Twitch. And I went into a call with the YouTube guys. And, you know, we had shared a lot of time. We'd gone on lunches, all that good stuff. And I was like, hey, you know, it's nothing you guys did wrong.

You guys fought really hard. And I think you guys did really well. And I love what you're doing with YouTube, but I'm going with Twitch. And they were like, and they hit me with the last second offer that was just like a 20% bump. And I was like, wow. That's like crazy. So I thought long and hard. And the original.

reason that I told them I wasn't going with them and I didn't let them know right there is that I had flipped a coin and heads was Twitch, Tails was YouTube and it had gone with heads because I just I couldn't make the decision and a lot of the times in my life I like to leave it to chance and somehow that ended up as an insane negotiating tactic of me walking and they were like nah stay and so then I thought I'd do the same thing to Twitch which is like hey let's hop in the call I'm going to tell you I'm going to leave and then they were just like I have fun, and, you know, they have the next creator in line they have to worry about, which again, no flame to them. That's how their business runs. I like the coin flip

thing. Jack knows. I'm, yeah, I believe that whatever's meant to be is going to happen. So I like to leave it up to fate. You call it chance. I just say, you know, then it's destined to happen. It's out of my control and this was meant to go in this direction. So I flip coins or I flip my phone. Yeah. So I'm like, you know, if it lands at this, it's heads and this is tails and I'll flip my phone half the time. That makes the decision for me. Yeah. And, it's never led me astray. And for you, even when you flip the coin, I mean, that coin flip ended up making you so much more and getting you to where you are today. If it wasn't for that coin flip, or if it just had landed on YouTube, you would have just done it anyway and

left some extra money on the table. Yeah, if it was just YouTube out, it just had a worst deal overall. Yeah. Which is funny to think about. Yeah, I'm not as deterministic in destiny focused, but I know that any path you take in life, it will work out because it just has to. The world keep spinning. Your life keeps moving on. Everything has to work out. There's no other choice. And so it's like whatever decision you make, you just have to be happy with it. And I think that's why I was okay with the flip. Do you think that Twitch's unwillingness to fight for their creators is going to come back and bite them in the butt at some point in the future? And are you bullish on Twitch as a platform for the, you know, to have longevity? Or do you think YouTube's going to dominate? Because

I have friends that stream as well, like more casually. But they say that it seems like Twitch is like kind of falling apart. And it's mostly internal stuff that that's causing that. Yeah, I think the not paying for creators is honestly a decent decision that they've made internally to try to become profitable. I think what's going to screw them over, and to be clear, I think they're going to have market share for the next five years. But I think five years from now, they're going to be a bit screwed because of every single decision they've made. I don't think any product they have released has really helped them grow. And they really lucked out by doubling in size because of COVID.

Without that, I think they'd be in a really bad spot. I think COVID saved their asses because every product they make is extracting value out of the people that already watch them rather than growing. And YouTube already dwarfs them in terms of people on the platform. So it's like just a matter of time, I think, for YouTube to catch up in terms of the basic products that people expect watching a live stream. You know, like a better functioning chat, a culture of emotes, in all that stuff. YouTube will get that. They're slow because they're a bloated company. And then it'll be a lot harder.

And I think what also might screw them over is I know there's an internal pressure to become profitable because they're just tanking money. And I feel like they might eventually remove Twitch Prime, which is a huge driver in revenue for creators. So I think if that day comes, that's going to be the turning point. It seems like Twitch makes the creator compete with them as a platform rather than really boosting them up. know they also have that, like their TOS as far as banning goes is pretty like, it's not

very stable. And I know people have been banned for like really simple things and kind of honest mistakes. And then other people haven't been banned or, you know, temporary short bands for some crazy. Who was the one that, you know, had, was doing stuff. Yeah, they were doing stuff. Yeah. You want to say what that was? You're familiar with that?

Stuff. What's up? Like, you know, like, uh, oh, the one who's getting railed doggy style? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't want to say that. I don't watch this, but, yeah.

Check Grandma, you just got to be. Yeah, Giggy, I'm sorry. Hey, hey, it's okay. Susan, you should have seen it, bro. But yeah, but yeah, so what, that was a suspension and then brought right back. But other people is getting, yeah, right. She was having actual intercourse. Yes.

Explain to your grandma, so she understands it. No, I think I'm intercourse. Yeah. Grandma, you know it, doggy, you've been there. We all been there. I'll cut it that fun out, but. No, I, like, leave that in. PR-wise, Twitch has just had a detrimental past year and a half.

Part of it is all the products they release. And then part of it is just a failure to adhere to like a terms of service that people like generally align with their morals. And so like, yes, someone had sex on stream and they were banned for seven days and they were back. And then just yesterday somebody got banned for 30 days, a pretty well-liked creator because someone in chat was like, like, roosting them. being mean to them, and then they said, I'm going to fight you at TwitchCon. This is not a joke.

As a joke, which, you know, because honestly they're not going to go to TwitchCon. That's a joke. Yes. But they said that, and then they gave him a 30-day ban.

Which, look, I'm not against banning someone for threatening physical harm to somebody else, even if it's an anonymous stranger online. But 30 days in relative, relative to a seven-day ban for actually having sex, seems weird to most people. And I think that problem

always comes up. And it's just a PR thing. Because like, look, the same problem exists in the NFL. Like the NFL has varying bans of weeks to months. And it, none of it lines up. Like, people get banned for smoking weed for two months. And then there was like, what's his name, who assaulted like 30 women in a massage parlors.

Have you heard of this? I haven't. He's one of the highest paid quarterbacks in the league. And he was originally just suspended with pay for like four weeks for a insulting about 30 women at massage parlors. There's no criminal. And coercing them. Just, no, it was just, I think it was like a civil case and settled out.

But it was just like he had coerced them into doing sexual favors after asking them for just massages. And it's like he got suspended less long than people smoke weed. But the NFL is very easily able with their PR team to just shove that aside. And then Twitch doesn't, you know. Twitch is held accountable. and then probably overly roasted for the bad decisions they make. And they've never been able to get behind that. Yikes.

I think another issue with Twitch is discoverability. And it seems as though the people on the top stay at the top because they're the ones that get pushed versus everyone else. The algorithm's not there to find new creators who are up and coming unless you already know of them. Yeah. Yeah, this is a real quote from the CEO. He had said this in a private meeting and I had found out about this. He said, the best way to grow on Twitch is to grow on another platform and then bring the audience over to Twitch, which is just a failure of the platform.

And I discovered recently that I don't know how to stream on YouTube. I just figured it out this week because the entire time for the first eight months, I'd been streaming as if I was on Twitch. And the way that you stream on Twitch is you just have the most viewers in a certain game category and then you stay live for a really long time. Because you'll build up a lot of dead viewers. people who just have you on their second monitor, they leave to work, they go to bed, whatever, and then you'll stay higher in the category,

and then people always click whatever's at the top of their favorite category, whether it's just chatting, a video game like League of Legends or Valerant or whatever it is, and you just grow and grow and grow. It doesn't work like that on YouTube or TikTok. There's no categories. You don't go to a game you like and then watch who's playing that game.

You are fed the stream based off what the algorithm thinks you will like. And so it's much more important to create a stream, that has really good watch time and has a sense of urgency that makes people stick around because the better the watch time the more people will will stay and the more it'll get recommended which doesn't exist on Twitch and I just figured that out this week because I started doing streams that are like I have one hour to beat this game and I play like Minecraft and I have a timer on screen and the closer I get to the hour the more the viewership goes up and I and I ended up with streams I would get like

30,000, 40,000 viewers, because it just gets pushed and push and pushed because people will stick around, waiting for it to reach an hour. As opposed to Twitch, you're better off streaming 20 hours straight like XQC or train wrecks do. Lily Peachy is doing that now. I see her video. Yeah, she'll be streaming for like 12 hours straight. Yeah, that's not good for YouTube. It's nuts.

But I have to also say, so I had a channel, well, we had a channel. It's called Millennial Money, where we went live and we did that for about a year and a half. And then we talked to someone who was a rep at YouTube who said, that if you just film this ahead of time and post it as a video, it's going to do better than a live. And we did. And instantaneously from going from live to just pre-recording something like this and posting it, our views doubled.

Yeah. So I think there's something there that YouTube isn't quite pushing live streams. And for some reason, people don't seem as willing to click on a live stream that was like a day old because it's like, oh, it's not live anymore versus if it's just pre-recorded. How do you approach that? Do you have to go live? or is this something where you could just film something? I guess it's less fun for your audience

because they're accustomed to that. Yeah, so my original strategy, which was a new strategy when I was streaming on Twitch, is every stream would have segments that would become YouTube videos. I'm not just streaming for the sake of being live and playing a game. I have a specific thing like I'm going to give my credit card

to stream to buy anything they want on Amazon for a couple hours. That'll turn into a YouTube video. And that worked when I was on Twitch because there are people who like watching live streams and there are people who like watching YouTube videos it's separate. When I went to YouTube,

I recognized pretty quickly that the watch time that I would get from viewers was way lower. Like they would stick around for like seven, 10 minutes. Then they'd leave

because I'm competing with other videos. Like in the sidebar, there's like a juicy veritacium video that's going to make you feel like a genius for 10 minutes. Or it's my dumb ass playing Mario. You know?

So it's like the competition is way, way fiercer. And so it's important that for a good YouTube video you need like an intro, you need a specific goal and you need stakes, right?

Those are all important things to a YouTube video. And then the thing that you need for a live stream is a sense of urgency. Because the thing that a live stream has as an advantage, you can think of it

when you think of like a professional sports game, like a basketball game, is the ability to be there for the moment. Say I was here. And you lose that when you watch the video. That's why, you know, like highlights are way less popular than watching the game itself.

Like, that's the cultural moment. So you need a sense of urgency in a live stream that make it feel like it was worth the time to watch in a moment that makes it that you can say you were there for. How do you come up with these ideas? Like what to do on stream? So like the idea of like the urgency or like that concept or like specifically what I'm doing. Specifically what you're doing because it seems to get multiple segments. Sometimes you'll do one thing over the other. How do you pick so frequently what you think will do well?

I spend a couple hours every day and I'll just walk. watch streamers. Like the way I watch streams is like I click on Summit 1G. I watch him for three minutes. Then I click on lyric. Maybe he's doing something cool. He's playing a cool new game. Watch him for a few more minutes. Should I try that game? And maybe not. It's a little more niche. He's a little different of a creator. All right, what's Ms. Kiff doing? What's XQC doing? And I click on every creator who I think does things well and who might push the meta of what is being streamed and what is being consumed and see what maybe I could try doing. And if I don't find inspiration there, then maybe I look at YouTube videos or maybe what I was doing six months ago

because, you know, what I was doing six months ago probably will work now if I just spin it a little bit. And I try to think that day of what I'll do. And it's pretty much on an everyday cycle. Like I know what I'm doing like at 4 p.m. at 2 p.m. that same day. And I don't know like any anytime before that. What if you have no idea? If I have zero idea, Sometimes I just won't go live at all. Like I will, like that period of time that I'm saying is 12 to 2 p.m. Might go from 12 to 5 p.m. Or 6 p.m.

And it can feel sometimes like I'm not even working because I'm just actually just watching streams and just trying to think of things. Maybe I just get some air, ride my vesp, go somewhere and try to come back. And I will either make a decision to just not do anything. And then maybe I'll make a mogul mail. I'll do an offline recording for something else. I'll work somewhere else. Or I'll just go live and I'll just be like,

Like, hey, I got nothing to do today. Maybe we can just like watch this video, play this random game and just like at least still give a stream to the people who look forward to streams as content for their day. How do you find inspiration and how do you stay productive? Like, wouldn't it be easy to get distracted if you're just watching people's streams and then maybe extending that three minute period to a 30 minute period? Oh, yeah, dude. Like I pretend that I'm working when I'm watching TikToks because it's like, oh, I'll like

the TikToks and watch them later on stream. But it's like, no, I'm like, sometimes I just watch from TikTok for 90 minutes. I always have the goal of trying to. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower.

Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero, more like Habinier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Accomplish something that day. So I feel accomplished if I do a stream or if I record a video offline or if I'm working on something business related in a profound way. So as long as I'm able to accomplish one of those and I know the deadline is when the day

is over, I'll still feel like I've done something. in the greatest way that I'm able to at least get something out is just the good old yoinck and twist. So like if I'm really out of options, like I can just take something I've done and twist it up a little bit. And it usually will do well if it did well in the past. Sure.

Tell us about this credit card spending on Amazon. How does that work? That was an idea I had because soda poppin used to do this concept where random people would link him items and he would just buy them. And I was like, that's cool. but what if I had like a time limit and I allowed them to buy anything they wanted

and they would vote on whether they buy it or not with an item limit you know so it's like you guys can only buy 10 items you have an hour to do it I will I will purchase everything you link me things and then I'll just click on them and then you vote yes or no and it's interesting to see like some people will buy really expensive things

some people will try to buy like a hundred gallon bottle of lube or something just because they think it's funny and uh... So I've done that series probably like six or seven times in slightly different ways. How do they vote on it? Do you just see like yes or noes in the chat? Yeah, you just run a poll. I run a poll.

I run a poll. I guess or noes. 51% I get it. 51% knows I don't get it. What's the weirdest thing that you think you've bought from that? Yeah, I bought insane. I bought a $16,000 statue of Jackie Chan. What'd you do with it?

It's just in my stream room. He's just there. He terrifies people when they walk in because no one expects. Why is it $16,000? It's like a Madam Tussaud's level like no wax figure like it looks very accurate and it feels Like it feels like Jackie Chan it's like silicone yeah yeah and it looks like Jackie Chan How bummed were you when they picked a $16,000 like item that has no utility? Yeah I think I think it's funny like I don't cool with it I don't like spending money again like on fancy cars or fancy clothes but I don't care how much I will spend on on

videos and content because it feels like it's productive in a way. Is there ever a desire to return it the next day? Let's like get it and then think, ah, let me, let me refund this. Let me send it back. The only time that I really hate it is when it's something that I just really can't use. Like they bought a $1,800 water buggler, like the ones you would see at a school or an office building.

It was a water buggler. Like a water fountain. Like the ones where you like you click it like an eclay and then the water comes out from the spout. I don't know what you guys call them. You call it water bubbleers East Coast. Water fountain? Water fountain, yeah.

Sure. Yeah, water fountain's probably West Coast terminology. Okay. But yeah, just one of those water fountains. And it's $1,800. And I just can't install it. Like, I don't have a plumbing for this. I can't attach it to the wall.

So it's just useless. And I just ended up donating it to like some school because I can't do anything with it. So I'm only annoyed when I have something that I feel like I cannot use in a way that's entertaining. What about everything else that you can't use? Like you're talking about just random. items. Do you keep them? No, we end up usually trying to donate what we can and then it's a lot of waste of just, you know, I have just a stupid amount of random statues and knickknacks and like desk ornaments that that I just cannot keep all of them. And so I've done, there's three ways I get rid of them.

One is I just straight up donate it to who will take it. The other is I've done like charity auctions and I've sold on stream for charity the items I've gotten in the past. past and then people will buy it. And then the third is I just have to trash it. Well, before you trash it, Jack will take it. I don't know about that. A hundred gallons of loop, Jack. I would take the Jackie Chan. If you ever get rid

I think that's so funny. Jackie's awesome. Yeah. You guys will see him. He's terrified when you walk in and see him. Yeah. There was a really cool it was a movie prop. So you could go on websites and find these really realistic like alien movie props, but there was like a big, scary 16 foot

Yeti. It was so cool looking. I wanted that for the living room. A 16 foot, 16 feet? That's tall, yes. How are you going to get that through the, through the back door? Yeah. You got 16 foot vaulted ceilings? Yeah, Vegas. Vegas are 22 foot ceilings. I guess that is a Vegas thing, right? Having this giant vaulted ceilings. Yeah, the craziest thing I wanted to buy that I was so close to buying, and I should have bought it, was it's, it's called

the Timothy Olten Apollo. And it's a replica of the, one of the Apollo spacecrafts or whatever. And inside of it was like a sitting area. So it's like a like a circular thing with the table in the middle. And they're so unbelievably cool. And I thought I could put that in the living room. And it looks like a spaceship. And we could film the podcast in there. How much was it? $150 grand. But I could write it off because it would be for the podcast. True. Yeah. But it just happened to sit in the living room. Now I think these things would have been way more. Because this was in COVID. Yeah. Because this was in like the worst of COVID where everyone was like just panicking, didn't know what it was going to have with the economy.

and they discounted this thing. I think normally it was like 200 grand for these things. And they discounted it. And I explained, like, here's who I am. Here's how it would be used. I think they only made like 10 of them. What do they make them for? Decoration.

Oh, just too seldom. Two seldom. Yeah, but they're like seating arrangements inside of it. So it's purposely there's supposed to be a utility with it too. Yeah, I couldn't imagine how big that would be. It's huge. Yeah, but there are things like that that I see that I'm like, man, I would love to do that. There's a thing.

It's a $700 flashlight. I saw it on TikTok. I have 10 of those. You have 10? Are you serious? It's the Ileman. Yep. What's the purpose?

I got a bunch to see how many it would take to cook an egg. That's a genius idea. How many did it take? Two. So you didn't need eight. I didn't. Because I thought stupidly you get eight and then everyone stands around and they just point it at the egg. But what you actually do is you put one flashlight underneath and then one on top and it becomes like a convection oven.

So I know you have a relationship with Mr. Beast. Mr. Bean. Pretty good one. You were in one of his videos. Three. Yeah, I saw the plane video, right? I've done three videos. One's been posted on his channel.

One, he didn't post, so I stole. And then the final one hasn't been uploaded yet. Oh, okay, yeah. See, I only saw the, yeah, the plane one. The plane one he posted on your channel, but I didn't know if that, like, count. Right. Yeah, maybe it doesn't count. Yeah.

But what was that like? Because for those that don't know, Mr. Beast basically made a full-on video. How much money did he spend on that? Yeah, so the first time he ever asked me to do a video was like a one. $1.1 million shoot that involved like two people, military guys doing a bunch of obstacles, biggest sumo wrestler in the world, giant obstacles, whatever it was. And I went out there to record to be basically a backup host for him because it was a race. He would not be able to get to the next obstacle sometimes if they're going faster than him.

So I would just be there in case to explain what to do. And that was why he asked me to go out there. And I had met him before this just to hang out. And I think he thought I was funny and I would do well. And so we do it all. Finish recording. A couple things go wrong in it. Like there's a few hiccups.

And so I'm waiting for it to get uploaded. Hit him up like every week. I'm like, what's it going up? I'm curious. What's it going up? He's like, I don't know. I don't know. And then one time I hit him up.

I'm like, what's it going up? He's like, I'm not uploading it. Like what? He spent $1.1 million. He's like, yeah, I didn't like it. It's not good. Was he that matter of fact about it? Or was he like depressed at all?

No. He's, when he makes a decision, he just does not care. It just is what it is. And like he's the person who makes that call too, right? It's not like somebody above him who's like, you know, Jimmy,

I don't think this is the one. It's him who's like, we're not uploading it. And everybody else who's worked on it for months, like, dude. But like that's his thing. And I think he almost takes pride in the fact that he spends money

on things that don't go out because it shows how much he cares and how much he's willing to put into YouTube. Where most. creators wouldn't. So he just scrapped it. And then we did a podcast with him when I was filming a second video with him. And just as a joke, I was like, well, if you're not uploading it, let me upload it on my channel. And he was like, yeah, that'd be funny. Because he wanted my most viewed video to be his video. And now it is my most viewed video. It's just his video. It's just his video. Is it his thumbnail, too? Yeah. His thumbnail, his video. I did it. I did two intros.

I'm in it for about 30 seconds. I remember clicking on your video and being so thrown. off that like I thought it was a Mr. Beast video at first, but I saw you uploaded. Wasn't it like I stole, was it how much a million dollars from Mr. Beast? That was my explanation of it. But the actual video is called I buried a hundred thousand dollars. Go find it. Yep. And it's I and it's Mr. Beast in the thumbnail. It is my channel. Yeah. Do you think it could have done better? Because I honestly didn't know about you too well when I, when I scrolled across that video for the first time, but changing your profile picture and channel name to Mr. Beast when you post it. And And then you post it as him.

That would have been hilarious. I would have been more compelled to click on it had I known. It was an actual Mr. Beast video. Don't you lose your verification when you change your name. No, yeah. That's a good point.

You'd have to re-verif. You would have gotten it back. Yeah. But yeah, I think it would have. And I think part of it was an experiment. Like he was curious because he's always had the idea that YouTube is all skill, not luck.

And with the knowledge he has, if he had to start a channel from ground zero, it would just skyrocket it upwards. And so this is like, okay, let's find out. And I think there's definitely an element to a video being really good. having great click-through rate and great watch time.

But also it helps if the video is uploaded on a channel with 100 million subscribers and has just a guaranteed bedrock of viewership. So I think like if this video was on his channel, it certainly would have gotten 40 million views at least. And on my channel it's sitting at about like 7.5. I agree with that. I probably would have been more compelled as a viewer to click on it just because it's... Do you know what he didn't like about the video?

Because I saw it. I didn't think there's anything wrong with it. Yeah, there's a couple things that went wrong. Like the first problem was they had a giant target that they were supposed to shoot like a bull's eye with a cannon and the targets ripped because it was outdoors. It was just vinyl. It's huge vinyl targets. They just ripped both of them. And then they were like, okay, backup will shoot the car with a cannon.

And then the cannon ball just turned out to be super flimsy in the wind, barely moved at all. So that just looked kind of bad, like that segment. Whatever, one segment, move on. there's another segment they're supposed to wrestle a Japanese, the heaviest Japanese sumo wrestler, they're supposed to do a sumo match against him. They both end up because he has the coordinates tucked in his side, just running up, grabbing it and leaving it.

And you can hear the Japanese sumer wrestler in Japanese after he goes, have he started? So it's like just kind of lackluster. And then the ending, they just sprinted to the end before anyone was really there. So it's like, I think the day of the shooting felt a lot worse than what the final product ended up being, but it's hard to detach that feeling from what it looked like at the very end.

He's got an interesting business model with his main channel. It seems like that's the loss leader. Like that's the Costco chicken that's in front that gets people through to then watch his other channels. Like his gaming channel he was talking about makes so much. And then the React channel. And if he wanted to, he could just post React videos all the time and just print money. I mean, that's got to be mostly profit. Right.

But the main channel, yeah, he's very upfront that he loses money in a lot of those videos. And I think Costco is a good example, because I think he's just as prideful of it being a lost leader. I think he's like, he loves that he is like, I've spent like $10 million on videos in the past two months and I've thrown away half of them. It's like, he loves that because I think it gives him a sense of pride. Yeah. It is astounding, though. He's not exaggerating that he does spend everything. Yes.

It there's, I don't know. I was trying to calculate on my mind. Like, here's how much he makes. Here's so much he spends. It all gets reinvested. It is amazing to me. how little he's taken out for himself and just everything is back into the videos

and just making good videos. And he's that serious about it. I'm like, all right, you know, Mr. Bees, just, okay, really. Not just about making their best videos, right? He's like, no, it's the best videos. That's all I want to do. It's incredible.

I would love to see you do that again. Would you try another channel and see if you could replicate that once more? I think it's too hard to completely isolate all the variables in that sort of experiment. And I think the idea of skill. not luck is interesting and fun and people love exploring that. So I am working on that. But rather than do it through a video that I make, I'm working directly with a creator and I have been for a while now.

Because you remember that Mr. Beast tweet and it's like, I worked this creator. This is the before of how much they made. This is the after. I was like, that's crazy. So I thought I would try the same. And it's been going pretty well. And you can't say what creator. No leaks. Because then it'll kind of sell you. How does that work? How did you find the creator? Do you do you take a split in terms of now? Is it just a test? Purely just like I am trying to mentor this person and, you know, at first we would have like scheduled calls and it's been going on long enough now that they know what they're doing. And I think they're incredible at it. And I want no ownership of it. And I keep telling them if the. thing that comes out of this is you have grown and I don't even get a video out of it. I'm happier than if I get a video, uh, and you haven't grown. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I'm, I'm, I'm just mostly

focused on, on that. Yeah. Sometimes I'll notice people and I think they're going to be successful no matter what happens. If I'm helping or if I'm not, they're going to do well. And sometimes some people that you come across just have whatever that might be. And you're like, I don't know. Jack Gordon was a great example. I found his channel so early on. I'm like, oh my gosh. Uh, he's like a young, V-Sos. And, you know what, I think, I can't remember if I, I think I made him an offer to come work with me in the very beginning. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I did. I thought it would be so cool because then we'd have two Jacks. We'd have one Jack and then Jack Gordon. And I thought it was a long shot. He even take the offer. And he's, and he didn't. But I was, I wasn't even surprising

him like now. He's, he's going to blow up. And sure enough, it did. Yeah. But he just had some, he's at 350 now, but he's in high school. And he barely ever posts. Oh really? Yeah, he'll post. He's just a high schooler? Yeah, he'll post every now and then, but I'm like, if you just quit high school and just posted one video every other week, you would be, he would be at a million subscribers within like a few months. I remember, I think I was, it was Vid Summit last year I was there, and I was at an event there,

and some lady came up to me, and she started talking to me. Turns out it was his mom. And she was like, yeah, like, I don't want him to drop out of high school, or I don't want him to, like, pursue this because he needs to pursue his education and stuff like that. But he's an example. He'll do well whatever he sets his mind to. Like if he wants to be a marine biologist, he'll be the best marine biologist. He's just got that mind.

But he's also good on camera. Just a focused person who's charismatic? Yeah. What's the most expensive thing you've bought? Probably the Ford GT. But that was an investment. Everything I bought was like, that car was actually better than the S&P 500s. It's almost as good as some of the best real estate deals I've done.

Why? What is the goal with the money? Why are you the dragon who horse? the gold. I don't think it's a dragon in a horse. I just enjoy it. I like being frugal and I like business. I understand being frugal and not spending, but for me, when I hit a million dollars, I'm like, I'm good. This is all I need. Any amount more than this outside of a house, I will say, is not necessary for my day-to-day to function. And if I had more, I wouldn't know what to do with it. And I would rather, I don't need that, which is why I have a lot of overhead, as opposed

to you who doesn't have a lot of overhead but has way more money than me. So it's like what do you see I love investing. I love personal finance. I love finding a deal. I take so much enjoyment in finding an undervalued whatever it might be and investing in it. So I take a lot of pride and finding something that maybe other people didn't see. And for me like the Ford GT was something like I think that these are going to be half a million

dollar cars. This is a good deal. I set a price. Like I found the car. worked out. So everything I do is kind of focused around that. But then I also, I only want to spend like 2% of what I have invested. And then that way it's sustainable so that no matter what happens, I'm always living off of 2% of whatever the total is. But that means also that, let's say, you know, you make a million dollars, you invest a million dollars. Well, that's now an extra

$20,000 a year that I could spend guilt free because I know no matter what happens, it's going to be coming back. Right. To be fair, like, I, I, Respect the fact that you are so thrifty to the extent of like it actually probably helping the environment because we'll go out and he'll like save the ketchup packets But he's still on record saying you makes like six million or whatever in a year but still at the same point saving ketchup packets But here's the thing, but I don't want them to go to waste so I'm very much like if I waste anything like this cup for instance I'll keep the cup wash it out so I could reuse it again But stuff like that is because I don't want to waste the cup it's a plastic it's a plastic cup I don't want to reuse them

Macy, Macy hates that. Oh, that's terrible. I rinse them. Yeah. She's, she's, he doesn't use toilet paper

because it's wasteful. What do you use? It's my hand. What? You could just wash it in the sink. Water's cheaper than toilet paper. So you just, what do you mean you,

what do you mean you, do you have a bidet? No. That's expensive. What? You need to get a bidet. I'm kidding. No,

he doesn't have wiped with his hand, man. Chegg's made that out. That was a joke. Well, they do that in France. No, they don't. Yeah, because the bidets are separate attachments

from the main unit. So you have to get up after you're shitting and then you go over to the other bidet and then you turn it on and then just use your hand to clean it out. Wait, what? You just use your hand to clean your ass. I mean, like you would in the shower.

I don't know. That's too far from me. Yeah. I thought you might have had a little French in you. I thought you had that dog in you. I have attached bidet. So it's like, that's actually something that I'm about to drop

is I just made my own bidet because I love bidetes. Do you have one? No. Do you have one? You know what? Everyone who has one swears by them.

Yeah, no, I've tried one or two times. I don't like them. What did you use? It was one in a hotel. That's why. So it's a heated seat, two different types of oscillating sprays,

heated water, okay, five different pressure levels. It has a deodorizer for when you're using it. You need that. All right? It also has a self-regulated energy saving and dryer.

If you don't want to use TP, but I mean, I still use TP. But what you do is, I've been working on this like a year now of making this bidet and I've made two one that's probably similar to the hotel like a everyday $50 unit and then one that's like the $500 souped up unit and I think it's just a total life changer so what about Bidays are you so fascinated by like bidet Bade a day but what about

Biday's really enamors you I think it's the correct way hygienically probably you're right to go to the bathroom I guess it's just it's just like it's like you asking me it's like Why are we showering and not just using more deodorant? Like that's what it feels like. It's like you are taking a poop and then just using dry paper and then just pulling out some of it. Yeah. Like it's like pulling out some like Jack. Think about this.

Think about this. You have a pet? Yeah, I do. Okay. Your pet poop's on a carpet. What are you just going to grab bounty and then just rub it in and then be like, all right, I've done it. And then walk away.

No. I like to think my butt isn't a carpet. It's close, but it's not a carpet. Unless you're waxing it is. And unless you want to open up to this podcast right now, like Graham, Graham know what's going on down there. What if you do wax? Does that make a difference?

I think so. Yeah, I actually think if you wax, it's just the cleanest wipe. It's probably still better to have water, right? Like just hygienically. You wax? No. No. God, no.

My friend got wax for a podcast and he was crying in pain. Really? Yeah. He got everything. I've been waxed on my chest before. Yeah. Very, very painful. Right.

Very painful. Anyway, I'm going to get, I'm going to have you try a bidet. Okay. And then your lives will be changed. So you're selling a bidet? You're turning this into, you're going to make money from it? Yeah, I've made a bidet. It's been like a eight-month process.

I have a factory in Korea that I've worked with. And we're about ready to sell them. Give us a price point. How much is that going to be? It's 50 for the base level and then 500 for the primo. Why not anything in between? Because there isn't much, right? Like, there's the bidets that just directly connect to the water line.

and that only requires like a splitter and then you just turn it on, turn it off. And then there's the ones that require electricity. And so there's not like a way for that one to be cheaper. It's a bunch of electronics. So it's like you would just be making up value. Couldn't there be a battery operated one or one that you just plug in and like charge?

Maybe, but no one would use that. I think the amount of electricity you'd pull and the amount of time you'd have to. It's not really something that exists in the market. Okay. I think there are versions of the $500 ones that are cheaper, but I went with the one with all the,

all the, the gizmos and the gadgets. So are you taking like a, like a, like a white label sort of product and kind of switching it up a little bit? Or do you developing from scratch? It's kind of similar to a,

yeah, it's mostly a white label project, but we've customized it because they're like the largest bidet manufacturer. It's Brondell. And we've worked with them to like, basically find the best thing we can make. and then have one that is still affordable

that they think looks good. You serious about selling the bidet? Like you want to take this in the direction of like making money from this? Or is it a side project for you? I want to be like the my pillow guy, but for bidets and not racist. Who's the my pillow guy?

He's like the big Trumper who would sell pillows. They're like $60 pillows. And he was just hardcore. So every Republican would have like their pillows and you'd see guys at rallies with their pillows next to him. But like he's like trying to revolutionize by having comfy pillows. I feel like everybody should use bidets.

Like, I feel like that is the correct thing. And after using them, most people hate going back. Like, if you go on a trip, your life is significantly worse. And so I want to bring bidets to America. It's already in most of Europe and in Asia and the Middle East. It's just America that's very far behind. Why do you think that is? Why are Americans not embracing a bidet?

I think we're shy about potty. We're shy about bathroom stuff. You know, like, like, I think that's mostly it. I think it's like we don't talk about it. We don't discuss it. It probably doesn't do well for marketing as well. You know, talking about what you're going to poop with.

So I'm just trying to, I'm trying to start a movement. All right. So when I'm done with all the streaming, you know how Mr. Bees got Beasberger? Yeah. This is my Beesburger. Okay. Ludwig's Bidays. It's called Swipe.

Wow. That's a great name. That's pretty good. You like that? Yeah. You should incorporate movement in like the logo or the slogan. I'll show you the box. Yeah.

It could be like, you know, sure for bowel movement. Like, you know, the movement you need or like something like that. I don't know. The slogan is welcome to the 21st century. That's good. Yeah. Because I think that, you know, toilet papers, that's ungo-boon to stuff. Can I connect to your iPhone now?

Like, I feel like it should have some sort of control of like a smartphone. They have a remote specifically for the toilet that you just connect to the wall. Huh. And then you pull it out. Okay. That's the whole thing. How about this? Can we talk about your relationship?

Yeah. Yeah. When did you meet your girl? friend. I met her streaming. I was live and she was live because she was a streamer. She started at the same time as I did. And she used to compete in these like, I don't know if you know like Austin show, but he used to do like these like dating shows online, kind of like reality TV type stuff, but for live streams. That was the thing, minx did. Yes. That was the thing minxed. Oh, really? Yes. Okay. Yeah. And, uh, and she would compete on them and she would win a lot because she was very good at like,

like going above and beyond. She's like a baker. So she would make cakes and stuff. stuff for them. And then she would farm like random guys in who are streaming for content. So she would just go to their streams and be like, be my chat's dad. And then leave and go to another person. Leave go to another person. And it just came into my stream one time. And then I was like, no, I'm a tier three sub to Pokemon. And we just joked around. And then we followed each other. And we started talking. And now we've been dating for almost three years. And how is that balancing relationship while also having a pretty rigorous work schedule. It helps that she's also a streamer, right?

Because there's periods of time where she's way busier than I am. Like she's run events like the streamer awards that that have got more views than me, XQC or like Mizkiff I've ever gotten. And when she's working on that, she's gone the whole time. So like I get it when she has to do that and she gets it when I do my stuff. The only time that there was ever a period where she was like, okay, this is way too much was the sub-a-thon, which I get. because I wasn't even sleeping with her at night.

I was sleeping on the street. She was uncomfortable sleeping in front of the... I mean, she wasn't sleeping on the camera. She was by herself in our room. But she was uncomfortable to sleep on the camera. Oh, yeah, she wouldn't have wanted to come. That makes sense. Of course not.

Yeah, that'd be weird. That would be a little bit weird if we're both sleeping together. Didn't even come up. Get banned for seven days, Jack. Yeah, it's only seven days. So it's been good because I think we both understand the space pretty well. Do you think you want marriage and kids one day? For sure, yeah.

But it's kind of weird. weird in the at least where I am right now. I think part of being a streamer is you're also like a like a you act like a teenager and like you just like go live and then you yell and you play video games all day. And I think it's hard to balance having a family with that. So I think it would be at a point in my life where I am selling bidets and I'm producing streams for other people rather than I'm the person in front of the camera at all time. Is that the end goal?

I think so. Yeah. And that's why I started off brand, which is the company that I made with my business friends, Aetrock Stans and Nick Allen, that is just meant to make shows for other people, make productions for other people. Because I thought one day, I just, like, six months ago, I was like, why do I have to be the guy in front of the camera all the time? Like, I think I'm a decent host, but I'm not the best at this job. I don't attract the largest audience. I'm not the like, you know, most palatable.

I know how to make a show and I know most streamers just like being live 10 hours a day so they can make money but won't put the effort in and the work in, in the hours in a day to actually make a show. So why don't I do that work for them? Why don't I get funding for it? Why don't I sell on it? Take a larger cut from it and then just produce it. Have them create their like greatest thing they will do that year in terms of viewership and like critical acclaim.

and just be behind the camera. What do you mean by a show? I think like as opposed to an average stream, right? So like most streams is just like dude behind camera. And there's not really a way to build upon that. And oftentimes when you do, it feels inauthentic. Like if you have an insane setup with like, you know, the five cameras and dog cameras. It's too professional.

And it's hard to relate to the person behind that. But the meta and the thing that has been succeeding a lot for streams is a large-scale production. So I don't know if you know the Spanish streamer, Eby. But he does these large productions very frequently. He has a huge team in Spain. And he got, I think, 3 million live concurrent viewers on a boxing event he ran, which is the record for the most viewers on any live stream. In these events, you can think of them in the same way as Mr. Beast's loss leader.

Almost assuredly, it's a huge cost to run this and it'd be much cheaper and he'd make much more money if he just sat behind a camera at his room playing Minecraft. But they bring in so many new eyes that then his daily streams get a lot more views. And he'll do a lot of these at a very high rate. And so I've run a couple of these like I did a Jeopardy clone called Muggle Money. Yeah. And it got 150,000 viewers live. and we had an in-person audience of 6,500 people.

And it was probably like the greatest live-streaming event I've done to date. And it lost money. But it will funnel in people for live streams in the future. Wasn't that the one where a sponsor backed out? Wasn't that the reason why it was a loss? Like you would have made money had it not been for that? I think so. We definitely didn't hold back on spending.

Like I booked the venue for an extra rehearsal day, which cost 75K. And I think if I hadn't bought that, we probably even would have broke even. But yeah, that was the biggest one is that Coinbase was our sponsor and then Crypto crashed. And then they just pulled out of all verbal agreements because they just couldn't, they couldn't pay for it anymore. So yeah, events should make money. Usually the first ones don't because like it's proof of concept. Brands are very risk-averse.

But after doing like that one, if I do another one, I know that will probably make money. Now, how do you balance that between, I think more of like an amateurish, which could do better because it feels more relatable. Like when I see big shows like that, I appreciate all the work and the production that goes on. But then I think it feels less like I'm there sitting in the room because of how produced. It feels like I'm watching a TV show.

Right. How do you find the balance between that? I think it's always important to make it feel like an event that you cannot miss that has that urgency that you were there to see live. And it doesn't necessarily need that one-on-one feeling as if you're watching a friend behind a kid. camera as long as it feels like something that was worth your time to watch so like in December I'm running a chess boxing event and I've lined up about seven to nine matches we'll

see how many we get at the end of it and I think like that's an event that you need to watch live because if you don't you're going to hear who won on Twitter you're going to see who won on Twitter whatever it is and it will feel a lot less rewarding to watch the vaught of it. What's chess boxing the coolest sport ever dude what it is one round of chess and then you switch for one round of boxing and you alternate until somebody wins by checkmate or knockout. Are you serious? Wait, wait, wait, wait.

So it's just two people going back and forth? Yeah. Wait, one round of chess? Yeah, you play two minutes of chess. And then after the chess portion, you switch, you do boxing for 90 seconds. You switch back to chess. How do you do boxing for 90 seconds

and put the gloves on and have that be? So for the boxing specifically for chess, you have one glove on. you're wrapped up and then the other one is wrapped but you have one glove off and then you have to choose your chess hand and then you play chess with that hand and then you have like a 30 second

we'll have a trainer come out put the glove on make sure you're good to go have the referee clear everything and then they box for 90 seconds what if it's like 10 rounds that people have to go there's a maximum so the chess is a timed chest it's going to be like five minutes of chess with zero seconds added per move

so you will guaranteed lose by time if you are not, you know, moving quickly enough. Now, my thought is with the boxing, removing the glove is a big deal. Yeah. Have you thought about the timing that it would take between like playing a round of, like I'm guessing it's probably 10 minutes for someone to sign off on that glove to make sure it's... No, so just boxing's a real sport.

Like it's a sanction sport. There's associations in almost every single state. And they do this professionally. And so the turnaround time is actually a lot faster than you think to sign off on it. it's about 30 seconds when it's functioning at its best. Because it's only one glove you need to have on and you keep the wraps on. Who is going to be boxing? Could you reveal any names?

Are you boxing? So initially I thought about doing it, but I really want to host the event and I want to be commentating the events. And I think if I had a fight that day and then I had to switch from host to fighting, that'd be impossible. Yeah, I agree. So I haven't been able to pull this together. last piece of the puzzle that I'm missing, but I want to slap box someone, which is, I don't know

if you ever seen Moist Criticles videos on this. It's a real thing. It's mostly like Eastern European sport, but you just have two men, you're huge burly men and they stand there. They're not a lot of move. And then another person across from them slaps them. And you just keep going back and forth until someone quits or passes out. I've seen it. I don't get the point. Am I the only one who just, I don't. What's the point of being in the Olympics? It's all content, baby. Come on. Man slaps man in the face, man falls, that's fun to watch. Is it a sport or is it just like entertaining? It's a sport too.

Like there's an actual competition. I've seen like the crowds it generates, but I, maybe I still get it. So this would be a slap chest boxing. So we would slap each other that make a move, slap each other, make a move. When is this going to be live? When can people see it? December 11th, we have the Galen Center, which is like where USC does their basketball games. And it's, you know, we're trying to get a crowd of like 10K out and, uh, and, um,

just make a real high. I would go to that. That would be fun. Yeah. It'll be in LA. It's in LA. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'd go to that. Yeah, I'd go. That'd go. That'd be fun.

I would love to go as like a spectator and watch. But there's a lot of training that goes on for that. Oh yeah. Yeah. They've been training for like most everyone at least the past two, maybe three months. It's been like five, six months of lead time, which isn't the most in the world, honestly. But at least everybody started with the same like totally amateur knowledge of boxing. You did it.

Yeah, I started with six. I had six months, but I really was serious about it for four of those six months. What's serious? Like, how often were you going? Three to four times a week for an hour, but I should have sparred more. The last month I started sparring, but I only did a few times. And I should have been doing sparring, I don't know, after two months of doing it. Right.

And just like, you know, light rounds, just to get used to it. But that was my one regret is not doing that more. Because it's, is it jarring to get punched? and that's like you need to get accustomed to that. Yeah, that was where I feel like I could have improved because once I got hit in the head, I've never been hit in the head like that before. Right. Because when you're wearing the head gear, it's a bigger target, but it's not so like crazy.

And when you're doing a, you know, sparring, it's not quite the same intensity with like people around. But yeah, when you're hitting the head, it's so weird. It's kind of like imagine like blinking for like a split second. and things just go and then come back, it doesn't hurt, which is strange. I thought it would hurt. Yeah. But it's just that weird, like, out back in,

and it takes you, like, a few seconds to just get your bearings and be like, all right, I'm standing here, this is what's going on. But you don't have that time. It's like you have a split second, and then, at least for me, I got hit once, kind of went out, came back in. It was like, came back, thinking for a split second, like, oh, that was, and then boom, happens again. So that's something that I think you need to get used to, like, getting punched.

Instinctually in that feeling when you know you're going out You put your guard up? Yeah, that makes sense to me And I also think it should be better Because of the extra break time in between rounds I expect everyone will become pretty fresh in the guard will be you know You'll be it's not gonna your hands are gonna be heavy you know You're gonna be able to lift up the gloves Because you have two and a half minutes in between each round

So you know I'm hoping everyone comes out of it Yeah I think that break that two and a half minutes is going to set people up to be really energized when they come back in. So each round is going to be full intensity. Yeah, because what happened, like, even like the Idubs fight, it's like at the end of it, they're just cooked. Yeah. Which is like, yeah, it's like a cardio thing.

And so I think that break is going to make it more casual, but also make everyone feel a little bit better doing it. Yeah, it was weird watching Logan fight Mayweather. And I remember round like five or six or I forget how many. I think they went eight rounds. Nine, right? Or maybe it was nine. Yeah.

I remember like round five. I'm like, Mayweather seemed like he was just doing just fine, but Logan was tired. Yeah. And I'm thinking, oh, that's easy. Why is you tired? I don't get it. But, oh, man, you're like, end of round one and you're just winded. You can't explain.

It's like running as fast as you can without a break for three minutes. And then expecting you to be like, I still have energy after that. It's insane. Yeah, the time's so short, so I think people's expectations are you'd be fine. But, like, if you just actually, I went to one boxing training, they made us to jumping jacks for three minutes. Yeah. I was cooked. Yeah.

That's not even boxing. I was just doing jumping jets. I couldn't feel my calves the next day. I was like, okay, I get it. I get it. You can tire yourself out real quick. A lot of it too is mental. It's the thinking through,

what are they going to do? It's your mind racing at the same time that you're physically exerting yourself. Right. I think that's what it is. I think it's the combination of the two. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's the next event. I'm pretty excited for it. And so how does that work money-wise? Do you have sponsors covering it? Are you selling tickets? Is there an expected ROI? You're looking to break even? Is it pay-per-view?

No, it'll be totally... I want it to be my most viewed stream ever. So currently that's like 205,000, which was the end of the sub-athon, concurrent viewers. And I'd like for this to be the most. So it's not going to be pay-per-view. Because I think pay-per-view is also,

like, yeah, maybe you pull a million bucks, you know, maybe $2 million in, like, sales. But I don't think that's worth the loss in, like, cultural momentum. them by creating something that people care about and watch and talk about. So the main way that I'm hoping to make money is ticket sales and sponsors. I don't really know. I don't think I have, I've already spent about half a million just for all the people

who are competing in it and just paying them, making sure that they're covered for all their boxing time and food because that's not cheap. And so I'm not exactly sure where this will come down. I mean, it has a lot of seats. So maybe it'll make money, but I'm also very happy if this breaks even, and I just have a really cool event. Yeah.

So anything that you want to ask us, any other topics that you feel like you want to cover? Yeah, I got a question for you guys. What do you think, and I don't know if you have much knowledge on it, on the general e-sports space? Because it's kind of a money sink from VCs who all put money into it.

Have you looked into this at all? I'm always a firm believer that if something's that good, you'd keep it private. Right. And it seems like a lot of the IPOs are a way for investors to get their money out. And a way to capitalize on all the work. And I do think that from everyone, I mean, Fais is so recognizable and they built such a huge brand. But I kind of think if they believed in themselves and they had the longevity, why do they need more money? Because they would have no problem funding what they need to. But again, I don't know the inner workings of their business.

What generally happens with most e-sports companies is they start somewhat small, somewhat manageable, and then the overhead becomes absurd because getting like a spot for, for League of Legends, like an LCS spot, it's like $40 million to buy that. You know, getting a spot for like Valerance, like 15 million. What does that mean? Like to be in the league, like think of it as like the NBA, like buying a team slot. And if you don't have that, you're not a premier team, right? So you need to earn it?

You have to buy it. you can have an amazing roster of players in maybe a different league or you know some minor doing some minor league stuff but then the only thing you can get out of that if you're the owner of it is selling the players so the the game has really become flipping players so just trying to get talented players and then sell them to bigger orgs or flipping spots in professional teams uh in like um like syndicated teams i forget the exact word i'm looking for uh but like flipping the is like generally how people are making their money. But outside of that, they're usually just burning through investor money with insane overhead and then eventually hoping to go public or get another round. But pretty much everyone is like just tanking money from the Eastport side. Yeah, it doesn't sound viable. No, it doesn't sound sustainable.

It sounds like it's a bit fatty. Yeah, kind of. Yeah. For sure it is. There's like teams that have just poofed away. Right. And just disappeared. I feel like phase also kind of wants.

wanted to do like the cloudy thing, which was like, you know, if you go public, that's a ton of clout. Yeah. But they were the first, they were the first to do it, right? They were the first, yeah. Yeah. I think there's like a holding company that's public that owns another esports org. Yeah.

But they're the first that's like their tickers phase. Yeah. I'm sure it could be a lot of just a fad right now. But then over time it could develop. But I'm very much about like, what's the bottom line? How much money does it make? Let's not spend too much money. Let's keep low overhead and keep this thing running slim.

Or lean. Then let me give you a little question. I'm going to show you my Robin Hood account and you tell me what are good investments and what are bad investments. Yeah. All right. Can we, uh, could you see. Yeah, you can see. All right.

Let's see. All right. So you've gone from 261 down to 180. I mean, that's the market generally. But in total, he's lost $25,000 in principle. Which isn't like,

it's not bad. I was up like 40% at one point. What sucks is that you're down 5% today, uh, nine, almost $10,000 today. That's not, that's not bad, man. That's good. down. Are you using margin at all or no? What does that mean? Okay.

Then that's a, that means you're borrowing money from the platform. All right. So you got a third of a Bitcoin. I think that's fine. 6,000 doge coin. That's fine. I had some doge coin back in the day. I turned $100 into $17,000.

Isn't that crazy? That's insane. You had a really incredible time. He sold at the peak. Yeah, I lost it all, though. It's fine. Yeah. I'd made a bit off it and then just kept some just in case.

Yeah. but I sold a lot of it. That's good. Probably good, yeah. I like your stocks in our Microsoft, really safe. Apple, you can't go wrong with it. Disney, I think, is pretty good. Baba.

What do we got here? Coca-Cola. Got a Warren Buffett stock there. Love Coke. Then we got Veracola. Verizon. Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of Verizon, but, you know, but I'm bitter.

I invested in T-Mobile a while ago, and they did nothing. How'd you pick these stocks? So they're mostly things that I believe in, One, things that somebody told me to buy, like Verizon, was the stock guy on Twitch, who just told me to buy Verizon. So I did. And then some are memes, like United Airlines I bought as a joke, because I had a running thing that airlines can only go up. And then some are random yolos that I found on random websites. Yeah, like app harvest.

That's a, we, I've never heard of this company, but you got, uh, your average cost is $3.95. Not bad, but at the peak, this was a like $30, no, yeah, $33 stock and now it's $256. Yeah, how do you pick that one? Yeah, Germa told me to buy it because he said it was revolutionizing agriculture. Oh, no. And I bought it because I like Germa. Anytime it's democratized or revolutionized, I'm just like, no, move on from that. Honestly, it's not that bad. I invested in Rocket. That's, that's been a terrible, terrible a Wall Street bet Yolo.

It was right before their call or earnings call or whatever, and they're like it's going to go up and I bought it and it's down a lot. Yeah. Ford, I really like Ford a lot. Palantir's been awful. That was one I never got into. No, they were Wall Street bets. It turns out

they're also an evil company. Oh, really? I think so, right? I don't think so. I'll stop recording. I don't think it's bad. So bad? No. This is your play money, right? Yeah. This is, yeah. Yeah, so this is the, so that's the thing. It's like, if this, if this were your retirement account, I would look at that, be like, bro, we got to sell everything, just an index fund it, keep some cash on the sidelines. But if this is just like play money, it doesn't really matter. And I would just look at this, like, are these companies that you believe in for the next five years? And if not, I mean, it doesn't hurt to take a loss on them. Get a right off and put that money in a company that you do believe in. What does that mean?

If you sell those at a loss, you're able to sell other investments that you have as a gain to cancel out. So let's say you lost 100 grand here, but you made 100 grand over here. You could sell those winning investment, that profit, offset it with a loss, oh, no tax whatsoever. But it's the same amount of money. Correct. But it's like the net change in total. Is it just a way to pull out of a company you don't believe in that you're losing on? Correct.

The benefit, yes. Yeah, just sell. and then re-buy back in if you really want to. It resets your cost basis. So that way, like, imagine you sold those profitable stocks for, you know, 100,000 profit. Now you have the own tax on that.

But you could offset that with losing investments like this. And then that way it resets your cost basis on whatever you want to buy. So I've made a shit ton on Amazon. I believe in them. I've lost a shit ton on app harvest. I don't believe in them. Yeah.

I sell both. It offsets. And then I go right back to Amazon. Correct. And now your cost basis is higher. Like, imagine you're at, uh, let's just, let's just call it even numbers $10 on Amazon.

Now it's worth $20. Yeah. That difference, you're going to have to pay tax on that. But by offsetting it, now all of a sudden, your tax basis is $20. So if it goes from $20 to $30, now you're only paying tax on the $10 instead of on the $20. Okay. Do you get that or? Yeah, I'm here.

I'm here. Are you guys are a tax loophole enjoyers? I enjoy. No, maybe not a loophole, but, you know, within the tax code, there are some opportunities there. Is that not a correct term? Not really. I think loophole has a negative connotation to it. I think using the tax code as it's intended is a great thing.

I guess I'm referring to things like billionaires borrowing and then borrowing they're borrowing and borrowing they're borrowing so they never have to pay capital gains tax. Eventually, no, but the thing is eventually they'll pay the capital gains tax. It goes somewhere. Now, the goal is that you will pass away and that your airs will inherit that at a stepped up tax basis. I think that's a loophole that they will close at some point. But right now it's totally fine. So I'm all for it. I think for most people, it doesn't make sense to borrow against assets to pay for things.

But if you're in a category where you could do that effectively, then I think it's okay. What about the flying to Puerto Rico living there for the 10% income tax and then sailing out of it? There are a lot of stipulations to doing that that you have to follow. I think a lot of people just think blindly, oh, I'll move to Puerto Rico for six months in a day and I'll save all this tax. There's certain businesses that are qualified to do that. You have to comply with that.

I think if you go through the process, why not? But I think it's a lot more involved than most people think. Sure. We just got a warehouse space. And we're going to do most of the work out of the warehouse for any shows or productions that we have. And I'm excited to not be in my house and work for my house because I've just been doing that for four years, you know?

See, once we visited Jimmy, like, he knows this too. But as soon as we saw his warehouse, we were like, oh, my gosh, having a place like this feel like could make us so much more productive and give us so much more freedom too. Right. Because right now, our podcast space, like, it's good. We have really high quality equipment. It looks professional. But at the same time, the room is tiny.

Like the room is significantly smaller than this. Right. Right. And it's, oh, wow. Yeah, I mean, it's like, I mean, I'm probably. Is it like the blue? Yeah, it's probably like the blue. Oh, no bigger.

Probably where those things are. I see. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a pretty small room for the amount of like production that we walk in. They're like, wow, we thought there's so much bigger.

Right. But it's a warehouse. I mean, it opens up so much more freedom too. You could have depth in your podcast too, which is kind of sick. And lots of stuff. So we kind of have been dabbling with that idea. Realistically, it's probably not going to happen. Sure.

But it'll be interesting to see how that affects your work. And if you find yourself more productive, leaving the house and working somewhere else and like being able to separate like home life from. work life. Yeah, I think I'm excited for that idea. Yeah. I think that'll, uh, it'll change how I feel in my house because I don't think I've felt

that in like, ever, you know? Really? It's kind of funny because I, I, growing up, like, I always figured I would do some sort of nine to five at some point. And you dream to do the job where you can work whenever you want. But as soon as you start doing that, and especially if you're working from home, you strive to have more structure and to be able to effectively like clock in, clock out.

Oh, yeah. And go in, like, but if you don't have. have that, that's all you want. It's just like the grass is always greener. Yeah. Schedules are so sick. And when I first went full time, I was just going live and then I'd stay alive until I'm tired and then I would go to bed. And I ended up having just a terrible schedule. And my life was just in shambles. Yeah. Because I just didn't have a time I had to show up. So I just showed up when I wanted and I stayed how long I wanted. And it was just unhealthy. And I think a lot of streamers are unhealthy because they run that same what I was doing before

I switched to like a more concrete schedule. Yeah, I'm afraid it would just. never leave the office. If this was something that wasn't at my house. Yeah. But in that same logic, then you are never mentally leaving the office in your house. Correct. But at least I'm home. Sure. Yeah. It's really hard for me to turn my mind off. Yeah. It's something I'm working on. Right. But yeah, it's hard. When you're in the focus and just like you're in the moment, I'm always thinking about it's always in the back of my head. Especially if you're able, because like it's fine to think about work when you're not at work, but if you're able to act on it, too, then it's like, well, why don't I do it right now?

Why don't I just go do this thing? Well, I always have a task. So, like, I'll make maybe five things that I have to do and my day doesn't end until those things are done. And so usually once I finish up, I'm good. Are you good at making sure the task list isn't too big or too small? Yeah, usually. Yeah, they'll rarely ever be something that I put on that list.

I don't finish. Because I just got to get it done. So it'll get done. Are you good at that? I'm terrible at that. Like, I'm always like, it's 8 a.m. I'm like, I'm do this, this, this. And it's so much stuff.

I can't get it all done. I'm not really a task guy. I know there's things that I have to do. I just have things that if I do them, I will feel accomplished for the day. So it's like I got to work out. That will make me feel good. I got to post at least one video or stream.

And so it's like I just do one business thing. So it's like if I do all three of those, I feel good. Yeah. And it manifests in different ways. What do you have to do for the rest of today? Today I have to make a thumbnail for one video. Okay.

So I can upload that video right after my stream. I have to figure out what I'm going to stream. And then I got to stream it. And if I do those, then I feel good. And then I'd play at least two League of Legends games. So you're streaming today? Yeah. Final question?

Cool. You said China would fail on 13 days. It hasn't. I didn't say 13 days. What did I say? It was 31 days. 31 days. Well, that was meant, I don't want to say in, what would you recall it?

A lot of the times what we do for our time? Tongue and cheek. Yeah. Is you quote other people's ridiculous claims and you talk about said the article within the video. Right. So it's not necessarily Graham's quote saying. that, although he didn't necessarily quotate it or whatever.

Yeah, I think I put in the thumbnail 29 days, but that was in reference to, I think it was Cascane's Academy video, which is 31 days, and I posted like a few days after him. Yeah, I think their economy is in the crapper. I think there's a lot of things that they have to overcome,

but I, and all that collapses is going to take a lot. People would have to completely lose faith in the system, and there's nothing stopping China from bearing it and just trying to find a way to, you know, snuff this out over here, print more money, ease policy. There's so many things that they could do to prevent that from happening. But long term, it's not looking good.

I think they have a lot of potential, though. I mean, if they really wanted to, like, you know, be competitive, they have a lot of areas that I think they could improve and grow at the same time. And they could be a major competitor, but I think with their current policies, it's not going to happen. I feel like it's so easy for them to switch it, though, because it's an authoritarian regime that, like, if it's not going well, they can see that and they can just do it. They can just change it.

It's not like something they have to sway people on or convince companies. They just, they can control whatever they want to. Yeah. So they have that advantage. So I feel like they do spin it around. Yeah. And I think they will continue to do that. Right.

But no, I don't think it'll collapse and three, three, exactly three. I actually don't know how he came up with that. I'm thinking it's just, you know, a title sort of deal. It's like, hey, it could be somewhere on here. If you put a time frame on something, people are more likely to, click it. For sure. There's like a sets of urgency. Yeah. So I'm guessing they're like what's going to happen in 30 on that 31st day that's going to be different from the 30th day. I think there's also like an inherent nationalism even for like finance bros or or like business guys to like be like

okay China's failing. Yeah. Because like for 10 years they hear that China's going to usurp America as the number one economy. So anything that's in contrast to that is like interesting. Yeah. I think a lot of people worried Ray Dalio came out with a perspective. of the changing world order. It's an incredible video. It's like an hour long. But it explains that the U.S. has been the reserve currency now

since I think it was like the 1940s or 50s, is when it was officially announced. And no currency has been the reserve for more than like a hundred and something years. And so, according to him, there will be a point

where maybe something else takes over. And so some people were speculating, well, maybe it's Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. And, you know, his argument was that China is growing at such a fast pace that they could outpace the U.S. and they could, but then again, you have to have trust in that currency,

and right now there's not that universal trust that they would need. But I think a lot of people took an interest in that. And also everything happening with Evergrand and the fact that it's something different and, you know, I think just in general, China's been in the media quite a bit. And so people take an interest in that.

Yeah, that makes sense. So when I post those videos too, it's interesting to see because 80% of my audience is U.S.-based. When I post one of those videos, it's only 60%. US based. So it's a lot bigger reach. And I think a lot more people outside of the US that could watch that video maybe learn something from it. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Because I guess it's like, especially if you're not American or in China, you want to see like big world players,

what's going on, feel in touch with those. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. But I try to make videos that I think people would want to see. So if people are either commenting on a certain topic or I see certain topics doing well, chances are that's a topic that people are interested in hearing about. And then from there, I'm just happy to show my perspective. Right. I got one other question. You said as soon as you passed $1 million, and I'm assuming what net worth? Liquid net worth?

Yeah. That's when you finally calmed down and allowed yourself to add on to like more expenses and overhead and stuff like that. As soon as you hit that, because I feel a similar philosophy. I didn't set mine at $1 million. I set mine between $2 and $4 million. It used to be $4. Now it's kind of two.

I'm kind of like inching down. Right. But as soon as you hit that, did you feel a great wave of relief or did it not really change anything and you feel the same? No, because it doesn't for me manifest by the dollar amount. I don't really know where my finances are on a day-to-day basis unless I like specifically look it up. I can tell how I'm doing financially by seeing how well I'm doing like professionally, whether it's like my viewership or with like my like my video views and things like that. So, you know, I think when I was starting to average, like, a quarter million, you know, views of video or when I reached like a million subscribers on YouTube, like, those are the things that I'm more able to look at and be like, oh, okay, nice. And this is a theory that I have, but as soon as you let go of this, like, financial constraint you put on yourself where you cared about it so much, did you actually see a positive ROI on that when you allowed yourself to take on more overhead and not worry so?

much about the financial consequences of every single business decision you make. Maybe it spurred more creativity or something. I think it's a little different for me. I think I have a dumb brain in the sense that I've always been, I've never been burdened financially or felt stressed financially. I mean, part of that is we grew up middle class and we were pretty comfortable. And then, you know, we had like a decent amount of savings. We had like a life insurance policy.

My dad died. So it's like money, money was not a big. problem. Like college was half paid for. So I always had this mentality that was like, yeah, I'll make money, whatever I do. Like, I don't think I need to be rich or I will be rich, but I'll always have enough money to live life. And it's always worked out. And I always assumed everything would work out. And I think humans are way better at adjusting to the life that they lead than they realize. And so it's like, you know, if I'm if I'm at my poorest, which was when I first moved to Los Angeles, I immediately adjusted to that and I was cool just eating, you know, peanut butter

sandwiches from Trader Joe's. And then if I'm at my richest, I immediately adjusted to that. And I was like, oh, this is normal and it is okay that I'm getting, you know, insane first class fights and I think nothing of it. So it's like, there's never a point where I had, I'd thought about it, which I think is a part of just the privilege of having grown up middle class. And do you think that that inner confidence or even like potentially could be considered naivity, worked in your favor or do you think it worked against you? Maybe like you got to like I got to the time is now. I got to grind.

I got to do all this. Do you think that perspective would have helped you out more or do you think this confidence? Yeah. I think it helped a lot but it also could be what's the word? Survivors. Oh, survivor bias. Yeah. So it's like in my mind, yeah.

Like the idea that everything will always work out has helped me because it allowed me to throw myself going full time with less money in the bank account that I was comfortable with and hiring people. before I knew if I could even afford the salaries. And it's all worked out. And the business has only grown every year by like, you know, insane numbers. But that's also because it's grown and it succeeded. Like there's a world where it's failed and then I'm not in a podcast, but talking and kicking

myself because I spent it all and I could have done better saving it. But I've never had to confront that because it hasn't happened. So it's hard for me to say if the naivity helped or if I just got lucky and now I don't to worry about it. All right. Is there anything else? That's great. All right.

Hell yeah. Thank you.