This Week in Startups - Billy McFarland on Fyre Fest fraud, failure, hacking, & the long road back | E1730

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

Billy McFarland joins Jason to discuss the lessons he has learned from his Fyre Fest fraud, before discussing the festival’s origin story and what led him to winding up in jail (1:36). This leads to an all-encompassing conversation about Billy’s early days as an entrepreneur, his experience in prison, and if he is a changed man (13:46). (0:00) Jason kicks off the show (1:36) Reflecting on Fyre Festival (6:57) The origin of Billy’s charisma & communication (11:31) Billy’s first experience with computers (12:29) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://vanta.com/twist (13:46) Spling (14:40) Billy’s experience in solitary confinement  (17:52) The origins of Fyre Festival (25:34) Pilot - Get 20% off the first 6 months at https://pilot.com/twist (27:06) Billy’s behavioral changes (29:02) Fyre Festival ticket sales  (30:41) Fyre’s board of directors (36:22) DIY Syndrom  (39:28) Hyperice - Get $50 off your order of $150 or more with code TWIST50 at http://hyperice.com/ (40:57) Billy’s early release from prison  (43:37) Billy’s prison experience  (46:22) The final moments before Fyre Festival (50:44) Can we trust Billy Macfarland 2.0?  FOLLOW Billy: https://twitter.com/pyrtbilly FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis Subscribe to our YouTube to watch all full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkkhmBWfS7pILYIk0izkc3A?sub_confirmation=1 FOUNDERS! Subscribe to the Founder University podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/founder-university/id1648407190

Welcome back to this week and startups, everybody. A little bit of a controversial guest here. And some of you might agree about me having Billy McFarland, a fire festival on the program. Some of you might be upset. Hey, why not give this slot to a founder who is not a convicted felon? I understand both arguments. I'm taking a little bit of a risk here having Billy on the program, but he reached out to me. And I think there's some lessons to be learned.

And having watched some of Billy's interviews and social media, I think, think he's in honest reflection mode. So I thought I would take the chance and have the notorious Billy McFarland on the program, who is, of course, the co-founder of the Fire Fest. This week in startups is brought to you by Vanta. Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal breaker for startups to win new business. Vanta makes it easy for companies to get a SOC2 report fast. Twist listeners can get $1,000 off for a limited time at vanta.com slash twist. Pilot, grow your business sustainably and operate more effectively. Pilot provides the most reliable accounting, CFO, and tax services for startups and

small businesses. Head to pilot.com slash twist and get 20% off the first six months. Hyper-ice. Warm up and recover faster with the Hypervolt 2 massage gun and NormaTech compression therapy boots. Save $50 off your oil. order of $150 or more with code twist 50 at checkout at hyperice.com. And as I said, convicted felon. Billy, when you hear me describe you as such, what goes through

your mind now that you have this moniker? So have people been trying, if people been trying to get at me emotionally over the past handful of months, they refer to me as inmate McFarland. So I think at this point, I've been through everything and hurt everything. And it's like, just think it reminds me of the mountain that I have to climb to just get back to being above water. And that means so many things that it just could be a really long journey ahead. You've been an entrepreneur. You've been attracted to being an entrepreneur pretty much your whole life. And he was aware of you before Fire Festival.

But let's go right to Fire Festival and your reflections on what happened. because I think people would be curious after that debacle disaster, just knowing from your perspective, what went wrong ultimately, and then what have you learned from that? You were convicted of wire fraud, you got a six or sentence, I believe, just broad strokes. You served some number of years for, I think.

Yes. So broad strokes, you look back on it. do you feel like you deserve the sentence? And I guess it's a pretty good starting point. And then what did you get wrong about this whole enterprise known as the Fire Festival? Yeah, so it certainly deserved my sentence. And I think that a lot of entrepreneurs listening can probably understand this thought process where you feel, especially with your first or second venture fund and startup,

where you feel that the way you view the world is solely to determine based on the success of your company at that point. And I had an inability to zoom out and realize that fire was just not the most important thing going on in the world. And if I failed honestly, most people would have been okay with that. And I wrongly assumed that everybody cared as much as I did. And then I equated caring to this do what it takes at all cost attitude. and that's totally raw. So there's just this mentality where your startup at an early stage

is not going to ruin the lives of a lot of people if you fail honestly. And I just wish I could have understood that. And how did you come to this understanding? Because I think the public perception is, you know, you were, I guess there's multiple public perception. So let's try here to get to reality.

Did the crimes you committed, were they ones where you found yourself committing, bending the rules, then breaking the rules, then covering up, you know, a series of, you know, lies as sometimes people think maybe Elizabeth Holmes at Theranos got into. In other words, you know, you didn't start out and intend for Fire Festival to be a giant fraud. you didn't intend to commit wire fraud. You didn't intend for people to get bilked out of their money. It was a sort of series of smaller lies that built on them. Or did you go to therapy or, you know, have some counseling when you were in prison and come to the conclusion like, wow, I was sociopathic and I really need to work on myself as an individual? How did you come to the conclusion that you just stated? That's a great question. And in the four years I served in jail, I served 10 months in solitary confinement. And there was a point in that 10 months where it's like, what am I actually most sorry about? And like when you're all alone after a month or two, you just like can't lie to yourself anymore. I just like thought back to all the critical decisions.

And at the point where I started lying, the investors at that time were mostly venture funds, mostly seasoned investors. And whatever fire was was a very small percentage or their portfolio. When I started lying, I brought more investors in, people maybe not as professional, people maybe who didn't understand their risks, people who may be invested because of the lies. And then I realized when everything failed, the professional investors who were there when I started lying, their biggest loss was not the money. Their biggest loss was to trust that I violated.

A number of them had been backing me for five or six years at this point. And I think, like, that hurt them more than one of their 50 portfolio companies had failed. It's like, wow, how could I have led to believe that this is a good person? How could I have had dinner with him 20 times? How could he be playing with my children for so many years? And then, fuck me. And so when I was alone and realized, like, if I had just failed honestly and didn't bring in the non-professional investors and failed honestly,

meaning these professionals lost their money, they probably would have been okay with that, had it gone honestly. And that was like a really weird awakening for me, which is like, wow, it was okay to fail. and it wasn't the money. It was the honesty and the trust that I abused. And like, that makes me sickest today. And sure, I am fully motivated pay everybody back.

But I feel like I will finally be able to look them in the eyes when I pay back the trust, which is, I think in my opinion, at this point, way harder than the money. What was your childhood like, I guess, when people behave this way, when you see a crime at this scale, when you see trust broken at this scale, people say, hey, what's the origin of this? And you are an undeniably charismatic individual. You're an incredible communicator. So you happen to have the skill that people look for in a leader.

You're charismatic. You communicate well. And you swing for the fences. So as an angel investor and as a seed investor, I'm looking for people who are charismatic and can get people behind a crazy vision, who can think big and who want to take risk. So you check off in an investor's mind, a lot of boxes. And I think you know that. Were you always this charismatic?

Were you the class president, the class clown, you know, star athlete? Take me back to your childhood. Where'd you grow up? And when did you first realize that you had some super power around charisma and communication? So I've been asked by like every prison related therapist over the years had to answer this question. And I'm actually like thinking of a different answer now that I probably have been able to answer before. I started programming super young and like I am by no means an all-star programmer at this point, but I was good enough as like an 11, 12, and 13 year old in the early days of cable internet

to bring, you know, an early teenager's idea to reality. And I kept feeling like these websites I was building and, you know, selling to a certain level, making a couple of dollars to a certain level, I kept feeling like I was breaking the rules because I wasn't focused on school. I was focused on programming. and in order to justify breaking the rules to everybody around me, whether that was family or friends or school administrators, I felt like I couldn't show any kinks in the armor,

and everything had to be perfect. And obviously, that was a small scale, and we're dealing with small dollar amounts and small risks from some social media website for my middle school bedroom. But I think for the first time, like literally right now, I'm kind of realizing that since I was always kind of breaking the rules and even though it was harmless in a certain way, I felt like when the stakes were higher,

and I had a venture fund startup, and I had 100 employees, that I was afraid to show weakness. And therefore, when things weren't perfect, I felt like I had to lie to keep up the mirage, things were perfect. And like looking now, I think a seasoned investor would realize

that no startup is like this, right? You're going through like circles of hell. Yeah. And the fact that I was too naive to admit that, it was just like crazy and silly. And so in your youth, people rewarded you for being technically able to manifest things in the world. At that period of time, you're in your 30s.

You were born in 1991. 191, yeah. So you're a millennial. You get rewarded early in your teens for being a programmer, being able to be an entrepreneur. People are patting you on the head maybe or kind of excited to hear about your exploits. But, you know, inside you realize, hey, this maybe isn't. that big of a deal, but maybe you start getting a little obsessive about the image you have as this entrepreneur, and you want to keep that up. You want to keep up this image that you are a

great entrepreneur. I think there were two sides of the equation. There was like, socially, I was 100% reaping those benefits where I was trying to live the rewards of being a successful young entrepreneur. And the other side, there was family in school who was like, you should not be running a business, you're 13, you're 15, you're 18, you should be in high school, you should be in college, you should be focusing. So I wanted to prove to the naysayers that I was successful entrepreneur and to the people who believed I was a successful entrepreneur, I certainly was, you know, basking in that image at that point. Were you parents entrepreneurs or one of your parents entrepreneur? A little bit, just like grew up in a regular, you know, family in the suburbs

in New York City. But, uh, they were about. They were not. A small town called Short Hills, it's like 40 minutes west of Manhattan. Yeah, the Shore Hills Mall, very famous. Yeah, Yeah, so that's New Jersey. New Jersey, yes, unfortunately. No, I'm from Brooklyn. So it's New Jersey's like the sixth barrow. So what did your parents do if I may ask? They're real, they're in real estate.

So there's small real estate stuff in New Jersey. Got it. So they flipped houses or developed stuff or brokers? Developers in New Jersey. Got it. And so you got to see some entrepreneurship up close and personal from them. and that led you to want to be entrepreneurial. I feel like I was really lucky or unlucky to get a computer when I turned like 10 years old.

And I think we just got high speed internet in our house. And there were just like no safeguards online at this point. So this is like late, you know, late 1999, early 2000 right around then. And cable and I was coming to your average suburban household. And it just kind of got lost in this world where I can interact with adults. And no one knows I'm 10 or 11. or 12, and I can start making decisions and, like, see how these decisions actualize themselves and something tangible. So I think it was like this playground for a young kid to live beyond

his years from an early age. I had a similar, I had a similar experience in 1982, 83 when my dad bought me an IBM, PC Jr. And I had a dial-up modem. And you do get this sense that you're part of a world that other people don't get to see. And then entrepreneurship, you become aware of this concept of entrepreneurship or technology entrepreneurship and venture capital. All right, founders, if you're a SaaS or services company that stores customer data in the cloud, you need to be SOC2 compliant from third parties in order to close big deals. And you need to use Vanta if you want to do this quickly and easily. Vanta makes it so easy for you to get and renew your SOC2.

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They all report back that they had an amazing experience. And that one major customer, right, that lighthouse customer, that whale in your system, Listen, bottom line, you can't afford to lose sales for something silly like not having your sock to. Vanta also helps with GDPR compliance. And, you know, that's a big one. You got to get your GDPR in order because they take it pretty seriously over there. So here's the best part. Vanta wants to give you a thousand. All right, that's 10 hundies. Get $1,000 off at vanta.com.com slash twist. That's vanda.com slash twist for $1,000 off your sock, too. So you had a company before, what was the Spling or something? So Spling. So one quick story for you. I just graduated high school.

And this is, I think I just signed it for Twitter. So this is like late 2010. I wouldn't say May or June of 2010. And I became a fan of yours then. So this was 13 years ago. And you were competing in the World Series of poker. And I was like obsessed with trying to learn how to play poker. And I think I pay pal to you like $150 to try.

trying to get some action 13 years ago. Yeah, I'd offer people if they wanted to be part of. I was trying to remember how we had cross paths, but I'd let people if they wanted to free roll be part of like my buy-in. So that was fun times. Yeah, so that was 13 years ago. Now you bought me a mic, so thank you.

There you go. Yeah, anybody who's on the podcast. If you... Yeah, one of the big payoffs of coming on the, as we send people a professional mic because we want everybody to not miss a word. I've always thought solitary confinement was cruel and unusual punishment

described for the audience what solitary it was like on a day-to-day basis. When do you wake up? When do you see humans? And what was that first nightlife? That first night like in prison. People always talk about in the movies,

like people crying for their mom or just maybe some people kill themselves. It's supposedly super intense. You had some time to prepare for this. It was a little, you know, drawn out trial, all this stuff. Take us to the, you know, day one. and then those 10 months in solitary. So you're basically in a long concrete hallway behind a metal door,

and there's maybe a half an inch slit on the bottom of the door, and that's how you communicate with other people. You can't really see them, but you can kind of scream through. If you get on all fours, you can scream through the door to communicate with others. And I think what scared me was seeing people who, by all appearances, were tough individuals, and maybe they're, like, leaders of a gang. they had the intangible traits that would make them, you know, self-sufficient human beings. But after a certain period of time, seeing them totally break down and go from tough leader to primal child,

whether it's the screams or the cries. And as you kind of think about that, that led to this idea where there is a certain period of time where if you were here for that long and you're past your breaking point, you were just done and there's no coming back. and you just kept internalizing like, hey, have I crossed that point yet? Like, has it been too much? Am I going to be able to come back from this? And that was kind of like the nagging fear. So you had a fear that this would break you as a human?

Yes, and like, oh, this guy who I saw in the prison yard leading 100 men who is super tough is now in the fetal position crying for his family and crying for this. Like, if that could happen to him and he's way tougher than me, like, it can happen to me too. And like, when's it going to happen? And that was just so scary. Why did they have you in solitary? Were they concerned for your safety? Or did you opt for them?

No, I kept trying to be an entrepreneur in prison, and that was archimely as bad as my crimes. I tried doing a podcast over the pay phone, and that did not go well. So it was for punishment. So it was punishment? Yes. Because even when you were in prison, you kept making bad choices. Yes, correct.

Yeah. And so at some point, these bad choices got you in solitary. Yes. And then you talk to some therapist or something or counselors there and you finally start to have some self-awareness or breakthroughs. I think you just kind of learn the real purpose, right? And when you're stripped it, I think for me, when I was stripped of everything, I'm like, what's important? And I had a couple of friends who really stuck with me. And the letters I would get from them, whether it was every seven days or every 10 days, that allowed me to survive 10 months.

And I got out. It's like the most valuable thing you've ever had wasn't an experience. It wasn't a dollar figure. It was these handful of relationships I had. And if I hadn't lied, I would have had so many more of those. And they would have been so much deeper and so much more impactful. Like, that kind of helped me reevaluate, like, what actually mattered. What was the original idea of Fire Festival?

When did you have this inspiration to do a music festival? Because we remember seeing this marketing video and getting the influencers. And so it does not seem like an unreasonable idea. for you to want to do a music festival. There's plenty of successful ones out there. Doesn't seem like a crazy idea to do it on an island necessarily. I mean, there's no facilities

as somebody who produces events. Sure, sure, sure. Kind of important to have like bathrooms and water and electricity, but putting all that aside, you decide you're going to do something that is comparable to Burning Man, but with the aesthetic of maybe Coachella or some VIP club,

doesn't sound crazy to me. You pitched this idea to your board of directors at the time or to investors, and they thought, yeah, why not? So maybe take us to the origin story. Yeah. So I had a couple of days of time called Magnesis, and I was trying to build a more relevant credit card for young people who live in cities. And what that meant was access and experiences that were outside of your typical day-to-day life. And I had a number of thousands of members at this point. And as a way to get back to them, I started booking music artists to do private concerts.

for my magnesium cardholders. I had booked upwards of a couple of dozen music artists and realized how bad and awkward that process was. There are so many middlemen and people who claim to be managers or agents and promised a fee. At the end of the day, it was all smoke and mirrors. It was totally opaque. And you would pay somebody who'd pay three people

and then the artist would get a fraction of the money. And I was with one of the artists I'd booked and basically said to him like, hey man, why did it take so long for you to accept this? He's like, what do you mean? Like, I said yes right away. Like, how much did they pay you? And the dollar amount he got paid was, you know, maybe a third of what I had paid. And we started talking and forming a relationship.

And like, this makes no sense. What if we just make an app where, you know, every idiot with 10 grand like me could contact every artist in the country and make them an offer? And the artists can quickly scroll through every morning and say yes, no, yes, no. So fire started as, yeah. So like cameo for personal appearances. Correct. So fire started.

Another great idea. Honestly, like you pitching me that idea. I'm like reasonable idea Yeah it's disruptive I could artist benefit The audience benefits And it's not going to be that hard to make And you're charismatic so

Seems like you're the person to build it And so did you wind up building that app And then how did this become Fire Festival? Built the app and then literally a couple of weeks After launching the app I'd been taking my 90s customers to the Bahamas for a number of years So just kind of love like the Outer Island Ventures and the Ocean scuba diving

and things like that. So I had been bringing a small number of customers there in a manageable scale for years and started bringing the talent that we were signing to fire on these trips as a way to basically ingratiate them within our app. And on one of those trips, I had a high school buddy who said, you should totally do a music festival here for all your mannesus cardholders. And fire was born.

And I think we just got really lucky or unlucky that we hit an Island music festival at the right time where Coachella had proved itself as a business to investors. However, the influencer attendees were looking for something new. So we piqued both the interest of the influencers who could sell tickets, as well as the investors who were intrigued by missing out on backing Coachella a number of years prior. At this point, were you involved in any criminal activity or doing anything that was, let's just say, bending the rules in a way with this magnesis card? You're already starting to, you know, cut corners, let's say, to be generous. It started happening very quickly after the festival got announced. And I think deep down, I knew that I didn't have enough money to actually execute this festival.

So subconsciously, I started trying to pull money from wherever it was. And I started over-exaggerating the number of customers Magnus has had. I over-exaggerated how much backing fire had or whatever revenue was. And it was this whirlwind period of four to six months where I felt like my entire existence was based, based on the success of fire in the fire festival. And for lack of it or terms, I was lost in the sauce of the entertainment world as well, too, where I had the who's who coming to the island every other weekend and felt that it'd keep upping those experiences. And it just like totally lost, you know, sight of reality and lost my ethics more importantly.

You got high on your own supply. Yep. You, you realized, hey, this, I mean, when that video came out, it took over, it went viral. It took over the entire I saw it and I was like Maybe I want to go to that It looks pretty good An island music Wow sounds like a great party

I like a good party So you did capture the world's attention You did have all these influencers Who you paid to promote it And you had artists So you got a little excited But then you knew you couldn't pull it off And now the great charade

The cover up starts to happen Is that the sort of How you've reconciled this in your mind, that that was the moment at which you tried to keep up this farce? Yeah, I think that the narrative that I believed was that no matter what the costs are of anything today, we are leveling up at such a fast rate that today's dollar amount doesn't matter. So, you know, let's say we're a million dollars in the hole today. Oh, it doesn't matter because next week our company is going to be worth 2x.

So what's a million dollars? And it kept getting to the point where the numbers kept getting bigger and the hall kept getting deeper. and it got to the point where it just wasn't practical to dig ourselves out of that hole. And sure, having the trust of investors for five or six years, you know, they'll happily give me an extra million dollars or even five million dollars. But when it got to 15, 20, 25, 30, I started reaching the limits of, you know, what was feasible for a lot of these investors and just push people past their comfort zone. And that was like my true violation.

And you had no experience running a large-scale event. Oh, zero. I had no idea what I was doing. And so there's also a certain naivete, which we in the industry celebrate. Sometimes we say, listen, if you want to create Airbnb or Uber, if you hire somebody who owns a taxi company already or owns medallions or you hire somebody who runs a hotel, that's a bad idea because they're not going to come to it with fresh eyes on the problem. They're going to have some secret cows. They're not going to think innovatively. But here, doing some basic level of research on how to run a music festival.

or how to transport people to a remote island, you had neglected to do any of that diligence after you fired the starter's pistol. Yes. So I think very good point there. I think there's two distinct skill sets. One is the work that you need to do to get on base, right? I think like our video got us on base. And if I was smarter, I would have realized, okay, we are on base now.

It's no longer time to keep tethering the line of like what's acceptable. Now is the time to get real help. We did a video, we came together in a way that most established festivals probably wouldn't have taken that risk. And now we've done that and we're still alive. Okay, let's pause. Let's call the investors who are supporting us and be like, guys, four months is not practical. I need help. What can we do to make this vision of reality? And I just didn't have the confidence to make that decision. I think like me trying to appease people ended up hurting them in the long term. You gave yourself four months to pull this whole thing together. Yes. That's an incredibly stupid decision in hindsight. Ridiculous. It's terrible.

Okay. In the early days of a startup, you need to be focused on your product and your customers, right? You build a team, you build a product, and then you embrace a customer base and try to delight them. But we can't forget about getting your accounting dialed in. I see so many accounting horror stories. People are doing cash-based accounting versus accrual-based accounting. They're forgetting to do their tax returns. Maybe they're like taking a draw and not paying proper payroll taxes.

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So they're going to get your books tight from the start and some big. news, Pilot's annual virtual founder conference is happening on June 8th. And they'd love to have you join them. The vibe is 100% about actionable, concrete advice from season operators and investors. And this stuff is really designed to help you run your startup perfectly. And they have an amazing speaker lineup. Folks from Stripe, Mercury, and Sequoia are all coming. So go to pilot.com slash summit.

You want to get 20% off your first six months at pilot? Yeah, very easy. Go to pilot.com slash twist. So pilot.com slash summit for the. their summit. pilot.com slash twist to get 20% off the first six months. I asked this not in a insincere way, but in a way to maybe help people who are their founders listening, have you ever been diagnosed with a mental illness or a substance abuse

problem? You know, by, during this time. No, I think, I think one of the hardest things to believe to almost every podcast I've gone on I was like, I've never done drugs. And I think I've smoked weed like 10 times in my life, but never tried any other drug. Never drank coffee until I put the jail. So it's like, it was just, you know, it was just a mistake. And I suppose coffee in jail, not too great.

Yeah. But you were not high or you don't, have you ever been, have you ever, you know, you did some therapy in, uh, in prison, uh, I guess? And yeah, did they ever diagnose you and say, hey, listen, you have some sort of borderline personality disorder. You have a manic disorder because it's, It reminds me of friends I have who do have some manic behavior. In addition to your charisma, I do wonder if you have a little bit of mania to you. Or if maybe you just had a moment of delusions of grandeur there. What are your thoughts?

I think it's a good question. I guess to directly answer, I've not been diagnosed with any mental disorder. I think one thing I've noticed just in the change of behavior on pre-jail. and post-jail is that I think the highs and lows now are way more centered than they were before. I think I had that moment where it's like I can pull off the world in four months and, you know, get really excited. And then like when things go bad, they're like a negative 10 on the scale. I think like my post-jail thing is nothing is as good as it seems and nothing is as bad as it

seems. So I think I'm a little bit more boring now and more measured. But I certainly, you know, fell into that trap, whether it was mental disease or a period of delusion I'm not sure what it was, but I think I recognize what the traits of that were. And you started collecting, you started selling tickets from fans. In the first 48 hours, how many tickets were sold? What was the pace of the money coming in from the people who wanted to come to the festival? I'm curious.

So what kicked everything off was this orange tile. And our idea was we called it the Fire 400, where we had 400 people who really wanted to attend the festival, all post this orange square and Instagram at the exact same time. And the concept was they weren't seemingly related. It might have been an NFL athlete, a comedian, a model, a musician who didn't really know each other. So if you are your average fan scrolling through your Instagram feed, you're like, why are all these people posting an orange tile?

And there was nothing about fire on the tile. You had to kind of click through their bios and see the link. So we created this like confusion as to like what was happening, why the orange was taking over. and we've launched the video, we launched the orange tile, and I had brought 15 of the bigger talent to the island is to make sure they did it. They literally kept them all in one room and said,

all right, guys, here's what we're going to post. We posted it and nothing happened. And I hit that low point where it's like, went all on to this video. I went to bed all depressed. And then I remember waking up, you know, a handful of hours later in the morning. It's like, Billy, we sold thousands of tickets.

Like, how can we fit these people here? So it was just like a weird lag. Millions of dollars worth of tickets came in. Yes. Literally overnight. And it was this weird lag where nothing happened for a couple of hours. Sure. People were trying to understand what it all meant.

And then all it took was a couple of people like figuring it out, recreating their own content about what they thought was happening and waking up to what became four months of hell. I tried and pulled this off. Did you have a board of directors at your company at the time? I did. And board meetings. I had a board of directors. And a lot of them were by backers from my previous company.

So they had seen, you know, we operate for three or four years. And I certainly had a leash and I abused that leash and, you know, pushed things off, pushed off oversight and basically said, don't worry, guys, I got this and pushed away the help that I obviously needed. So you had built up massive credibility with your board of directors. So they trusted you. You violated that trust.

Yes. If you, and this is a tough question to ask, but if you had just said, you know what, to everybody who bought tickets. We're going to refund your money if you want. Or we're going to set this for Q4 of next year because there's been so much demand. It's gotten so much bigger. But you have your reservation.

And this will be 14 months from now. I'm adding 10 months to schedule. Just because demand was so great. What do you think would have happened? And did you consider that? Or did anybody pull you aside and say, hey, Bill, four months not enough, but you got the money in the bank. Maybe 20% will ask for a refund.

The rest, it's probably going to create more demand, if you say, because of overwhelming demand, we're going to do this in 14 months. Did those conversations or thoughts ever come into your head? They did. And obviously, I would do anything now to go back and have listened to those people. I think they were, and I didn't know why I didn't know why I didn't listen. And I think, like, looking back now, I think I secretly knew four months. is impossible. And I was going to kind of die in the sword and try to make it happen. And I believe

that I had oversold something that wasn't practical. So my only chance at making it practical was to just like create this, you know, vision of reality and make it happen. And I was afraid to show any kinkton the armor. And I thought that if I postponed it 10 months or a year, which would have been the right move, that people would have started asking questions that I couldn't answer. So I think like my insecurity stopped me for making what was the obvious business call to anybody to any kind of operational experience. Yeah. I mean, if we had any kind of relationship before I was on your board, I would have said,

okay, tell me about the toilets. And how are you going to get toilets there? And who is responsible on the team for making sure, was it 5,000 people ultimately? Yes. 5,000 people got to use the loo four times a day. 20,000 flushes. Tell me about 20,000 flushes. How many do you need?

You wouldn't have been able to answer that question, would you? No. And then I would have said, is there running water on this island and in this location? And what would the answer have been? No. Okay. Is there electricity?

And how much electricity is there on this island? Would you have been able to answer that question? So I think at that point, no. And I think what I was doing and it was like so silly is that, say, say you brought up one problem, electricity. And I would go find a way and, like, get electricity there in three days and bring you there and show it to you. And be like, look, this is impossible three days ago and now we pulled it off.

Okay. And the idea was I kept climbing, like, one boulder that I shouldn't have been able to climb, not realizing there's an entire mountain. So sure, I can pull off 12 miracles, but I can't pull off, you know, 2,000 miracles. And that was like the entire issue. Oh, Jason, you don't believe I can get power. Like, let me show you. And then I'd find somebody to do it, but it didn't matter because there was so much else they needed to have.

which I'm just going to point out for the audience here is absolutely delightful for an investor to have that moment with the founder when you say hey you know how you're going to get electricity there and you're like you're not going to believe this but I call this company and they have the generators they also have solar and they have battery packs and I gave them 10 grand they put them there, look, we already have enough for 500 people, and I did that in 24 hours, I got 120 days to get the other 4,500 people electricity. We can get this done. This is not rocket science. Now, you have that dialogue with me. I'm like, all right, let's move on to the next issue. Let's talk about bathrooms. And so what you're saying is you got lucky on four, five, or six of

these. In other words, you're not a great rock climber. You're not Alex Honnold, whatever that kid's name is, who goes up without a rope. But you make it a third of the way. But you make it a third of the way up, El Cap. And now you'd think I can climb this whole thing without a rope. But you actually didn't have the skill to do that. You actually look back on and go, oh, I got some early wins. And that diluted me into thinking I would just be able to thread the needle. Is that correct? Correct. And like there is time to it. If I had two years, maybe I could have figured it out. But I think there's also a deeper issue where I was at this point where I was starting to take shortcuts. I was getting distracted by the attention of the celebrity world. And I was attracting

people who also desired those things, who wanted to click money, who wanted click fame. And I wasn't building the proper team. I was hiring other young people who wanted shortcuts. So it was like me, and that's all my fault because as the CEO, right, like your entire job at this level is hiring when he raised $10 to millions of dollars and whatever addition we were in. So I was hiring a bunch of kids who wanted the same shortcut to me but didn't have the ability to pull off the small miracles. So it was like basically just me trying to climb a mountain

with a thousand people cheering me on and me not understanding that my downfalls at that point were attracting other, you know, bad people to. So it was a mess. You know, we call this DIY syndrome. And DIY, do it yourself, is a skill set for founders. And you were rewarded early in your career.

So I can actually, who knows, like maybe you're a complete sociopath. and you're snowing me on this interview. But I'll put that aside because probably some people are thinking that right now. We'll get to that at the end. Like, is this all a put on?

But knowing what I know about entrepreneurship and specifically hacking culture, I was a, did some hacking and phone freaking and, you know, and breaking into, I should say breaking into, I will just say exploring online services when I was younger.

Exploring. Nice. We were exploring things that, you know, people maybe had used the password password on or, you know, first name as their password. as their password or the dog's name. So what hackers do sometimes is they figure out how to hack things together

and that is a huge dopamine rush. When you're able to hack something together and you came up with this brilliant, you know, fire tiles, you came out with this brilliant location, which has limitations, but was also quite captivating on the video. You figured out so many things.

Then you hire people who are not bar raisers they're actually completely inexperienced and now they're a liability because you don't have time when you're short on time you need people who are bar raisers you need somebody who did Coachella who worked at Coachella

and saw Coachella fail these three ways so they can tell you like hey don't take this turn at 100 miles an hour you'll flip the car and then that's just another massive strategic strategic era but

we've seen a lot of entrepreneurs who DIY it changed the world We've seen people who cut corners make mistakes, but there's time to correct the mistakes. So I don't think actually the strategy of hiring young, inexperienced people and trying to figure out things in a new way is bad. Unless you happen to be making a blood testing machine managing people's money, or you're going to fly them halfway around the world and charge them $10,000 for a tent and a slice of cheese or whatever that famous photo was for a sandwich. you have. Like, when people get hurt financially or their health or whatever the stakes are, that's when you get yourself in a little bit of trouble. I think, you know, I'm trying to parse here.

What are good entrepreneurial lessons? There are some things that you did, if I'm being honest, that are great entrepreneurial achievements. Your ability to hire great people and listen to them, where's your downfall, as well as, you know, just abusing the trust of these investors, as far as I can tell. Yeah, I think the trust issue is, it's what eat me alive when it most mattered. And I think both, like, selfishly and in every other way, because, like, selfishly when you're alone and you just need that human interaction and you've severed 90% of the relationships you've had, like, you just feel alone.

That sucks. And you start, like, how could I not feel alone? And, like, wait, why do I feel alone? You start analyzing the situation. Okay, everybody. Are you sore and tired? It's hard to keep this peak performance up, but I have an answer for you. Right as I get off the slope, Hyperice is waiting for me.

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I use that product. What? So it's amazing. You're going to love it. Get out of jail two years early. They let you out for good behavior or COVID. How did you get out early. So everybody in the federal system gets 15% of their time off. It's called a, you know, good time. So six years becomes five. And then there was Trump passed a bill at the end of 18 called the First Step Act. And that essentially allowed nonviolent offenders to earn up to one year off their sentence for doing programs in jail. So I earned a year off through, you know, basic jail programs and classes. So I'm saying for four years, yeah, at a six. Take me to, what do they call the day when you leave prison?

Your wake up, it's like you got 10 days in a wake up. It's how they say it in the military. What do they say in prison for the day you get released? What do they call that day? I had five months of halfway house slash home confinement at the end. So my last facility was outside of Detroit and Michigan. And my family, you know, flew in, rented a car and picked me up to bring me to the Brooklyn halfway house.

So it wasn't quite free yet. It was like the 12-hour car ride or whatever it was to New York. But you're at a prison. And at that point, so many things have gone wrong in jail. It's getting in trouble. I'm in solitary confinement. I'm getting transferred, you know, across the country to worse and worse prisons. I just kept thinking that there would be some point we're like, hey, Billy, this is a joke, like, back to your cell. So, like, literally did not believe it was real until I have my mesh bag over my shoulder in the parking lot, like running towards the rental car. And I was just convinced there would be somebody there saying, uh, get back. Like, you're not

going anywhere. So you had a fear that, hey, it's not going to actually happen. But take me to the moment you're walking. I guess there's this moment we see in movies where they're handing you back your watch and your keys and you're putting on civilian clothes. Is that literally what happens? And they give you $100 for a sandwich and a bus ride? I think I had like $17 left in my commissary account. And they put on a debit card. And I'm in my prison gray sweat pants and sweats shirts with all my belongings, which were essentially journal entries I'd written for four years over my shoulder. and ran to the car and wanted to spend, you know, the first five or six hours talking with my family. And then my next, like, need after that was getting back on the phone.

It's like reconnecting with friends we hadn't seen and heard from in years. What's it like to see your parents after all that? Because you obviously must feel some shame or feel bad for the fact that, hey, their promising son from Shore Hills, who they were so proud of who was a great happy. and had this grant and raised money. How do you deal with that relationship with the parents? So it sounds cliche, but it's totally true that the punishment is worse on the family that it is on you. I think anybody who's probably gone through something traumatic themselves would probably agree with that. And when you're going through something really bad, you at least

know what's happening in real time, but your family doesn't know what's happening in real time. I think it's like human condition to assume the worst. So for four years, they're assuming the worst is happening, whether it's getting raped, you're getting killed, or spending your life in jail. And while it seems silly, like now looking back, that's where their mind goes. So you just like, yeah, trust me, 100% of people who are listening to his interviewer are thinking that where you're raped or beaten in jail, you're like considered this like white, white collar criminal. You're highly notable.

What was it like? Were people gunning for you or did people want to be pals with you because you had a little micro celebrity and listen, you're not a murdering, child abusing person, or you didn't kill a woman, all those things that they will kill you for in prison. So did people embrace you? Or did... One rule that I think really helped is that like a lot of people go to jail and they try to make money in jail. And my entire rule was all of my entrepreneurial pursuits will be stuff that happens outside of jail and I'm not going to make a single dollar off anybody in prison. So whether it's cooking for them or cleaning for them or cutting hair. I'm not going to do anything. That allows me

to charge anybody. So I stayed out of the way at people's hustles, as they called it, which I think really helped. I also think which is interesting is that the people who are leading gangs while on paper are bad people doing bad things. Some of them, if they had different exposure, they would be leaders in different sense. What I'm trying to say is like they sent opportunity. And at the end of the day, If, you know, you are in a gang in Detroit, and remember I left Detroit and you're meeting someone who's, you know, done something in media entertainment, I can provide a level of exposure possibly one day that they don't have. So I felt like the higher ups in the underground prison culture saw potential opportunity post-jail. So generally people were, you know, fair, I would say. Ah, so they were like, oh, this could be a, this is a connection for me. This is like a networking opportunity that I, that could level me up. So you kind of. got looked after in prison or you were able to buy some protection essentially? Especially, like, you know, a guy who leads the gang is like, wait, now I can know someone

in New York and like maybe we can like, you know, maybe you can introduce me to someone in music one day. Like, I don't know how to do that. And so like that was an opportunity, I think for for some of the more like ambitious people who were there. So yeah, generally met a couple of like closer friends and luckily did not have any physical issues. It was more just like the mental, you know, ties from family. So the month leading up to the fire festival, like 30 days out, at some point you realize you're not going to pull this off. So at four months, you're diluting yourself. You're climbing L-Cap without a rope, going spectacularly.

You feel like your might as everything you touch turns to gold. Celebrities, money pouring in. Yeah, you're breaking the rules. You're committing fraud. But things are checkboxes are getting checked. at what point did you realize, I'm not pulling this off? How many days out was it when you realized? No chance. I think this makes me look worse, but I truly did not know we were screwed until the night before the festival. And the last 30 days were the worst 30 days in my life. We had a system called the daily urgent payment sheet.

And it had a full-time employee who would assemble all of the vendors who had invoiced us and sort them based on urgency. And like the least level of urgency was like extreme urgent and like the highest level of was like, we're all going to die if we don't pay this, you know, by tomorrow. And I'd wake up every morning and have until 2 o'clock to raise that dollar figure in so we can get the wires out by the 4 o'clock that went. So some days it was 100 grand and some days it was $3 million. And basically I live 30 days where I essentially raised the equivalent of a small seed round five days a week. And that was just the worst period. So literally every day you're raising a half million. Yeah. It could have been like some days it was 100 grand and some days there's

a couple million dollars and like anything in between. And it was terrible. at your prowess at raising money. Your ability to get people to give you money. What do you think the key is to getting people to wire you money for your crazy festival? Why do people, in your mind, do it? And then what did you exploit when you look back on it to get them to make those wires? So I think I was beyond the lies, which were unforgivable. I think I was very good at getting people access to something outside of the ordinary. And whether that was an island, whether that was a finance guy meeting a media mogul or a media mogul meeting the fashion mogul. So I think a lot of the investors were buying into either the experience or to have a seat

around the table. And it really struck me, and like for better or worse, like I utilize that and struck me a couple weeks before the festival when one investor who is a huge name in his career, but is all in in one industry. And, you know, has in my mind in limited money and limited access, limited resources, he sits down to me and goes like, hey, Billy, can he help me meet these people? I'm like, I'm looking up at him.

Like, this guy's a billionaire. Like, why does he need some 25-year-old to make introductions support? Is it public who that person is, can you say? It's not public who he is, but he's, he's someone that, you know, most listeners will probably have heard of. A finance person, a Wall Street person. Yeah.

But like a Wall Street, not a venture capitalist. No, he runs a hedge fund. And it does not do tech investing. It's a, you know, It's traditional finance. I'm like, wow, like this person is getting beyond a couple million dollars, you know, he invested. He's getting value out of

having the seat around the table. So I think it all kind of came down to providing these experiences where like, you know, this guy works 90 hours a week. He goes between this, you know, office building that he owns, and his town house that he owns. And now he can come to this island and meet all these people. I think there was, there was like value in that for

a lot of the investors. What you learned is you built an incredible network and you learned that the person who throws the party and that people covet affiliation and access. And I can tell you this is incredibly powerful, not to make it about me, but I did this my whole life. I threw events. I hosted dinner parties.

I had launch festival. I engaged it would have events all in Summit, my angel summit. I've always brought people together because if you bring people together, introduce them, they always remember, hey, who introduced, you know, this person to this person? Like, oh, that was J-Cow. We had dinner one night. And that currency led to an article in the New Yorker that was written about me named The Connector because I was so famous in the 90s for connecting people when you were 10 years old.

And you just happened to use that superpower on a project that didn't work out and to do criminal felonist, felonious, I guess, is the word, activities. But again, you had a lot of great entrepreneurship. entrepreneurial skill and you just chose the dark path. Let's talk about today. How do we know that the Billy McFarland 2.0 we're talking to here on the program? It's not a complete utter sociopathic individual who is not trying to raise money, but is, you know, basically doing this all over again because you want to do fire festival too. So how do we know you're sincere?

How do we know that you've, you know, if, listen, we've been talking for 40 minutes here on podcast, I don't know if you're sincere, if you're actually going to do fire festival to for the right reasons and try to make this happen, or if this is all a put on and you learned the wrong lessons in prison. And now you're just in, you're a criminal masterminding. You're Alex Luther right now. How do we know? So I think what makes my actually crime from five, six years ago, more heinous, but also as eye opening is at this Detroit prison, there were very few people there for financial crimes. There is a Harvard guy who was in finance who had, you know, similar dollar figures to me, similar

sentence length. Tens of millions. Yes. Like, he was, the guy had the world by the balls and, you know, at a higher skill than me. We were walking on the track and he just goes to me, look at all these idiots. How are we here? And I'm like, I kind of like, don't say anything, but like stop and look at him. It's like, the majority of the guys there don't know anybody in their life who hadn't

gone to jail and both of us didn't know one person who had gone to jail. It's like, no, like, we were the idiots, right? We had every opportunity. And sure, you might not have stolen tens of millions of dollars. You might have been like a regular person. But we had every opportunity in the world to not be here. And they had zero opportunities to not come here for the most part. So it's like, I think that made the actions more heinous.

I know I'm just like talking down on myself now. But that was kind of like one of the eye-opening experiences that it's like, look at the exposure and the access we have and the opportunities that we have. And for better or worse, the attention in the storyline of Fire Festival too just opened an incredible number of doors for me. And I'm just lucky to have a chance to do the right thing here. I know there are 50,000 guys coming out of jail this year with no work prospects and the fact that I could email someone or get my phone calls picked up and I have a chance to work

and do right with it is something I don't take lightly. So you're going to do Fire Festival too, not on the same island, I hope. Or are you planning on doing it in the same location? Yes, I think overall it's like I need to pay everybody back. and I still need to do something incredible while doing that. I've just been doing a lot of marketing work for venture-back startups as everybody keeps the lights on, doing a ton of media stuff. You're a consultant right now.

Consulting. You're a marketing consultant. At our half-time, I'm filming a number of TV shows working on a movie project. And throughout all these media projects, I've been pitched on every iteration of a fire festival from a local nightclub to making it a Broadway musical to a sovereign wealth fund that I'm sure that you are familiar with. And it's been really interesting to see all these partners and see all these deals. And I think for me, it's like, how can I use what I'm good at,

which I believe I'm good at marketing. And I believe I'm good at bringing people from different worlds together through experiences and just do that and find partners to make everything else a reality. So any kind of iteration of Fire Festival, too, whether it's a Broadway musical or whether it's a festival on a beach somewhere, will be fully executed by a partner who specializes in that. And I'm just going to live and breathe the marketing and bring people together to try to make this story as a possible.

What do you charge as a marketing consultant? How do you have? Literally, I'm totally hacking bare bones. I have a calendar link where I charge $8,200 an hour. So, yeah. How much an hour? 1800.

1800 an hour to get a Billy McFarland idea for your startup. And people have paid this. Pays my content team and pays, pays, pays my office rent, pays some restitution. So you literally have had people pay this $1,800 and you've just riffed with them on ideas. Yeah, I'm not doing crazy. I'm doing anywhere between like 70 and 120K a month since they got out of jail and like revenue. So, but a lot of it goes to business expenses, of course.

So you're making a million dollars a year as a marketing consultant. Yeah. And then you're- employees and salaries and all the bullshit. So it's like, it's not, yeah, not living in life. And restitution's killing me. How does that work? Restitution.

A percentage of all my, all my personal income goes to restitution. So, you know, if I, you know, it actually varies based on how it's earned. If it's basically, if it's like a travel opportunity, it's pretty much all of it, if it's like somewhere thing, I don't have to travel and it's like less of it. And I'm just trying to find a cadence like with, you know, the system to it to make it fair. So I can survive, you know, pay my team, but also pay back. So 30%, 40% of whatever you make, something like that? Yeah. It just varies depending on the opportunity. And the issue is like it's not, it's not tax deductible. So like 40% restitution is really like 80% of your income. So and the hill you have to climb for restitution is how big? Uh, it's 27-ish million. So in, yeah. And I think like, listen, it's not going to happen by doing calendarly consulting calls. And I think like if I can pay back every three or four weeks to give a check, that's a really great step. But it's going to take, you know, owning a business and and doing that process. And I think like, if I can pay back every three or four weeks to give a check, that's a really great step. But it's going to take, you know, and, and doing that

This is a 10-15-year journey. And you're committed to making sure everybody gets every dollar back. Yeah, it needs to happen. I can't stop until it happens. I think the hardest part for me, Jason, like, it's just so crazy. It's like whenever I try to work and people are like, how can you be allowed to work unless you pay people back? And unfortunately, I don't have $27 million under my mattress.

I'm like, I came out of jail. My family gave me $200 in a Timberland wallet and said, you know, good luck. So I literally started from ground zero here. So I think I paid back close to 40K now in eight months. And it's something, but it's not enough. And I understand that it's just going to take time. And so there is some mechanism for this in the world for you to pay that restitution. You just send it to a bank account somewhere.

There's some auditor or some accountant who manages this restitution. And then the people who you owe money to are in some order and they get paid back or they each get pennies on the dollar every couple of years. So every 30 days, I disclose. all my finances, like all my accounts, every dollar, where it came from, and like what all my revenue is. And then I was literally going to the Southern District of Manhattan's courthouse every three weeks and giving the physical check. But I finally got set up online so I can send it by H now. Oh, it was SDNY is who pinched you. Yeah. Yeah. So literally I was physically going there every few weeks. They're like the hardcore prosecutors in the country. Yeah.

They don't play games. No. And I think my case was super. easy no matter who took it, right? I was like, I was black and like guilty. There was, there was nothing. There was nothing to fight. Did you wind up just settling and just doing a deal? You did a deal, right? I took a, I took a plea deal. Yeah, it took a plea deal. And then you have to do that attestation where you just tell them everything. No, I didn't do that. Just like

literally took a plea deal and now is it. Wow. Yeah. I think the way to judge you is, you know, how much you pay back over what period of time and how serious this is. you know, what you did is terrible, but you seem to be owning it. It's a little crazy to do the fire festival again. I understand the media opportunities. You must get paid to speak at stuff and doing consulting works.

It's a little crazy to do a fire festival again, but that is the asset you have is notoriety and the name fire festival. So if you were to pull off one, that was modest, but made a million dollars or a half million dollars, and it went to restitution, and it became a thing. Fate loves irony, and it would certainly be quite paradoxical

for a fire festival too to be awesome and for you to pay everybody back. So, I was really struggling with having you on the podcast. I think this has been useful for everybody who listens,

and, you know, I wish you luck in paying everybody back, and I hope you learned the hard lessons, and I hope, you know, you want to think,

there's a path for people to come back when they do stupid shit in the world criminal stuff and maybe you can be an example of that and maybe that could be your legacy is just owning just how stupid this lesson was for entrepreneurs and maybe you write a book about it, you know?

I'm sure you got all those things you wrote in prison but where you could really help entrepreneurs is I think which we kind of teased out in this podcast which is unique because it's a startup podcast but we teased out what you were good at and we teased up all of those superpowers you have. And then you set it yourself when walking with that douchebag from Harvard

was like, look at all these idiots. And you had the realization that you, in fact, are the idiot. Because the entrepreneurial system is set up. So a kid from Shorehill who's just a good at executing and writing code can have unlimited opportunity. And you f***ed it. You had a clear path to success. and just because you didn't have the presence of mine or mentorship

or you were high on your own supply, whatever combination of things happened, you just didn't put it off for 14 months or say, you know what, we're not going to pull this off. I got to give you your money back and just be honest with everybody about the state of affairs.

It's an important lesson for entrepreneurs, you know, and you didn't have any co-founders, I guess, in this enterprise to check you. Yeah, my co-finder was the rapper jaw rule. So we were, you know. So the,

the benchmark was kind of low in terms of... It didn't have the operational. Yeah. Great salesman. I think we shared some similar positive traits. We just didn't have the operational experience. Yeah, no, no, no dig to Jarluh. I mean, I'm just saying he wasn't the VP of Opset Square or he didn't work in an operational

rule. He wasn't like an opposite Salesforce for six years before that. You know, he was doing music festivals. So in a way, it was almost like enabling. You had just two people who were great sellers. What's the relationship with Jarlu like? You guys talk or no. Why didn't he go to jail?

Why didn't he go to jail? I think I was definitely the one who was, I was the one who was pushing, you know, the illegal financial reporting for sure. So it was on me. Got it. All right. Well, listen, this is an important lesson for everybody. I hope you, did you get a book offer yet? Have you considered that?

Yeah, working on it. I think, but what's also interesting is, I come back in 15 years when everybody's paid back, I'd be like, it was so hard. Like, that's almost like more of a cautionary tale, right? Like the last six years have been held, but the next 15 are going to be held too. And hopefully they'll learn more along those ways. You know, it sounds crazy. But given your skill set, which is undeniable in marketing, you're going to be able to think of a product eventually.

And if some number of people, you know, find you credible enough because of your charisma and your superpowers, who knows? Maybe you build a $100 million company and you just give $26 million of your equity. to these folks, and they get back double their money eventually. And I wouldn't say all's well, that ends well, but at least those people will be made whole. And maybe you can be an example for people of what not to do on their entrepreneurial journey, which is why I wanted to have you on here, is to see if you could actually be honest about the superpowers, the skills you have, and then maybe, you know, what you would have done differently. I think you did a good job explaining that.

having co-founders, like legit co-founders, would have solved this problem as well. If you had two co-founders, then somebody would have said, you know what? You would have went to the board and been like, and this isn't going to happen. We don't have the ability to pull this off. And you would have had some check. But, you know, this is the problem with solo founders, especially you built all that credibility. And then you weaponized it against your investors. And that's another, I think, thing you have to live with.

and ultimately, you know, I feel like, gosh, I don't know if you're sincere or a sociopath, but I'm going to go with my gut and say you're sincere in that you want to do this restitution. And so I'm going to pick the side of sincerity here, and I wish you well, and I hope that you get everybody their money back and that you learn to live with, you know, the mistake you made. So I wish you luck, Billy McFarland. Yep. Thank you, Jason. appreciate it.

And for people who are going to say, why did you give an hour to this guy and not another entrepreneur? Because maybe, maybe there's somebody listening who's bending the rules right now and they are about to break it. And I can tell you those four fucking years, you're not getting back and it does not feel good, does it? That you're not getting those back. The four years and the 15 ahead of you after that, it's not worth it. And to the person who's afraid to go for it, if you fail honestly, you're going to be okay too. So I think there's both the cautionary tale and hopefully the motivating tale for the person afraid to pull the trigger in an honest and ethical method. All right. There you have it, folks. Some advice from somebody who screwed it up and is trying to fix it.

Just fail honorably. Nobody has a problem with failing honorably. Don't break the rules. You will pay the price. Okay. We'll see you all next time on this week. It serves.