Trading Secrets - 10: The Dollar Drill Down, from Rob Dyrdek, MTV’s Biggest Host! $125K an episode or Royalties?

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

Rob Dyrdek got his first brand sponsorship at 12 and at the age of 16 dropped out of high school to become a professional skate-border. Did you read that last sentence and wonder what he was paid at 12 for the sponsorship and at 16 to be a pro skater? Me too and Rob tells us everything to the penny! A brilliant business man and savvy individual learned from experience and not the classroom. From a young age, he was negotiating, deal making and leveraging his skillset, sport and fame like no individual I have ever spoken with.  We talk all numbers, lessons and strategies with the shows Rob & Big, Fantasy Factory all the way too Ridiculousness.  Does Rob take $125K an episode or negotiate a different angle?  What would you do?  Rob gives us the ultimate dollar drown while providing the ultimate Trading Secret that could change your life and overall happiness!  For All Access Content - join our networking group for less than 30 cents a day! Host: Jason Tartick  Voice of Viewer: David Arduin  Executive Producer: Evan Sahr  Produced by Dear Media.

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets. Today we are talking with someone I have not only been watching on TV for decades, but I have looked up to and admired for just as long. From a high school dropout turned professional skateboard, at 16 years old to TV star, producer, and serial entrepreneur, and CEO of the most fitting name possible, the Deere Deck Machine, the one, the only, Rob, Dere Deck, Rob, I am certain there isn't a podcast currently published that wouldn't love to have you as a guest.

So genuinely, thank you for giving us your time and coming on to Trading Secrets. Oh, thank you for having me. Sorry about my, you know, I responded like three months later to your DM, you know what I mean? before I was able to say like, hey, let's make it happen. Sorry about that. Rob, honestly, if you want full transparency, we're fully honest there. When you even responded, I was like, pinch, I was telling the boys, look, get Rob's coming on. Everyone's like, let's go. So we're excited to have you. And first things first, before I even, you know, get into your rise to fame, business, entrepreneurial, business savvy, all that,

I got to ask you this. I saw that in 2011 on an episode of, fantasy factory. You are an ordained minister and you married your sister. And in July, I have to do the same thing for my close friends, John Walter and Michaela Lynn. So I got to tell you, I'm getting a little nervous about it. And I watched your episode. I saw it on YouTube. You got any advice for me? Anything? Yeah, I mean, look, number one, it was so much more fitting because it was my sister, right? It was like so amazing that like, and make no mistake, I manipulated that a little bit. like they hadn't they weren't even engaged okay and i was like um i asked i was trying to come up with television episode ideas and i asked my mom if they've been talking about getting engaged

and she said oh yeah they said they were just going to go to the courthouse so i said look you tell her if she's willing to get married in the next three months i'll do the craziest wedding like around an episode of television and then i called her to be like oh what am i doing i'm manipulating her life for the sake of my for my television you're like a little bit Bachelor producer, man. And really, for real, that's really how bad it is. And so I said, hey, I don't even, like, I'm so sorry. She's like, what?

Like, and I'm like, did mom call you? She's like, yeah, she's like, we've never even spoke about getting engaged. And so then I feel even worse. I said, can you put him on the phone? I said, look, man, I'm sorry for manipulating your life. But for real, if you want to get married in like three months, I'll throw you guys the craziest wedding. And they got engaged, committed to it.

And then I went through the process, right? Now, of course, I had to, I still even felt bad. I went on for another episode and bought them a house, right? Just so they had like a deep asset and something to build their family around. Because I felt like I was like manipulating their life at such a high level. But I would only say this, you know what I mean? I got into character as if I was like a true minister, like a man of God. like I am I want to shepherd this journey of connection and love to forever right so and of course

I ordained like an entire I saw that outfit I looked like a pope you know what I mean it was really over the top my mom was like this is not legal this is not legal and I took her to a church as part of the episode to prove look this minister right here is going to tell you it's real but yeah look I think you're you seem like a guy who always gets extra prepared so as long as you put that same effort into being highly, highly prepared, so it's effortless for you. Because at the end of the day, you know, a wedding is a beautiful thing and forging this connection that lasts forever. So it's your journey, your job to shepherd it flawlessly. Shepard it flawlessly and get in the actual position to be there. I'm going to put myself in the position. I love it. All right. So let's get

into it a little bit. So, you know, what I'm doing, and as you said, I, you know, prepared for this. researching you up and down, Robin. Your accolades are endless, right? It's professional skateboarded reality TV star. I mean, actor, for those that people that don't know that are listening, world record holder, I could literally just keep going and going. I'm going to stop. But what's interesting is like, it's not like you have this, and you can tell me if I'm wrong, but you have this like specific niche. I see that your industry exposure and your ventures are just so diversified to A to Z. So I'm trying to back into it. Like how this like all happens? So the only way in my attempt to like rewire, Rob, who you are today versus how you got there is starting from day

one. And from what I read is that at 12, you were signing contracts to being sponsored. And by 16, you decided to leave high school to pursue professional skateboarding. So I got to, you know, I'm curious, your thoughts on higher education stuff. Before I get that, what kind of money is a 12-year-old receiving for sponsorships? And how at 16, do you force? foresee your career so much in this lane that you're willing to just completely leave school to pursue it. Well, look, the way you're articulating it, it feels like this glorious path of like at 16, he had found his pathway to capital. And by 20, he had evolved. Like, this is really the truth of the matter at that age, recognized at age 12 and became sponsored. And so really what

ends up happening now you basically get you travel for free and you get free skate gear right and at 12 years old you won the lottery you want to mean and so like what does that embed in your soul at 12 years old i'm going to be a pro skateboarder right it's not a matter of like whether or not that's a career path at the time you know that was when tony hawk it was sort of at his peak power in the 80s and and sort of being a pro skateboarder had kind of became a thing. But by the time I was 16, the skateboarding industry had completely collapsed, right? And it was virtually non-existent. And to give you context, in the year that I quit high school and became a professional skateboarder,

I think total that year I made $1,200, right? And in that year, I had a signature board with my name on it, my very first signature board. And in that year in December, I sold one board and got a check for $2. I got a $2 royalty check, right? And so that would just give you context to how small it actually was. So if you can imagine the pushback that I got from my parents and family and everybody around me of like this idea of like this isn't even like a career. You know, like you can't make a living being a professional skateboarder. And a few months later, like the company that I had turned pro.

for the alien workshop that was based out of Dayton, Ohio. See, I grew up with a bunch of serial entrepreneurs around serial entrepreneurs. That's kind of where I began to like just, I just assumed I would go and start many companies in my lifetime. I grew up around it, right? I didn't, I didn't, I thought that's just what you did. But I was guaranteed a thousand dollars a month if I move to California to be in the epicenter of sort of the professional skateboarding culture and all the media and magazines and everything. And to me...

And what age was that, Rob? That was 17. 17. And so I hit the lottery. You're trying to tell me, I just... 17, 20 bucks is huge. You know what I mean? A thousand dollars a month.

You know what I mean? It felt like, oh, my God, I really did make it. You know, so very humble beginnings for the sport. And the reality of it is, is I grew with the sport over 20 years and played a huge part in a lot of the milestones that evolved it into the stage. You know, even, you know, the league that I built ultimately is the format that I spent many years like needling to get just perfect is now what the format is for the Olympics, right? Like we really carved the path with like skateboarding to the Olympics compared to when I turned pro when it was like, like, you know, super, super niche, very, very underground sport. And how quickly, I mean, that's fascinating kind of what you guys have done since then,

how you've carved the lane for the sport. But at that time, you're making $1,000 a month, 17 again. Like you said, you're hitting the lottery, right? You make 20, 40 bucks playing poker in the basement in high school. At least I was celebrating. So how quickly did that escalate? Was there some big upside in those contracts? Did it get to a point where, like, 17, you're making $1,000 a month?

and by 20, your skate making 10K a month? I mean, how quickly did it escalate for you? You know, I think really when I got to California, because you got to understand I was professional for the alien workshop that was based in Dayton, Ohio, right? So it was the only skateboarding company that was one of the top companies or up-and-coming startups in skateboarding

that wasn't based in California. But as soon as I got to California, like I was this raw talent that then all the California companies started offering me money to quit the small startup, up from Ohio. And so they eventually then bumped up my guarantee from 1,000 to 2,500, right, which was then like, what? You know, and then I'm, you know, slowly started getting, you know, I built my first company at that point, right? When I first got out, when I was 17 years old, I found it and created a skateboard truck company called Orion Trucks. That was the first pure

build that I had ever done, first company that I created right, right when I turned 18 after living out there for a little bit. And so now I'm making money from that and getting other sort of sponsors. And then it really escalated when we formed, when DC shoes formed, and then they formed a street, street skating division. And then I had the first signature shoe on DC shoes. Then now you're talking, it went from making 50,000 to making 200, 250,000. out of nowhere. Now, now you're learning the big boy lessons of, you know, you're uneducated, you have no financial background, you know, you know, you don't know anything about taxes, you don't anything about investing, you don't know anything about anything, and all of a sudden

you're making $250,000, right? I think that was sort of like the big first major transition for me and the sport as it was beginning to evolve and pros now were making real, the top pros were now making real money. That's unreal. And so at that point, how old are you around when this starts to happen? I was 22 at that point, right? So I was still pretty young, 22, 23. Like I want to say my first signature shoe came out at 21. And really why I ended up, the company eventually went on and was acquired for 500 million, right? And I got a big payout from it because they gave me equity in the company because, or I'm sorry, I got acquired 500, God, 100 million, 100 million. But I got equity in the business because in the first years of that as a startup,

instead of giving me the royalty money that I was owed, it was being invested back into the business, right? So then eventually we started getting our royalties. But since we allowed them to basically in the beginning reinvest our royalty money, they gave us all equity, the founding sort of skaters for it in the beginning, which we had a pretty significant payout when it got acquired by Quicksilver 10 years. later, you know. Yeah. And that's, I mean, there's so many things right in those few sentences that so many people listening can take away is taking royalties, investing it back in the company and getting

equity. Because I also did hear you say in a podcast that it always used to be cash, right? Like getting cash up front. And you thought how that was so great until you realized you're creating value for other people's equity. And I think so many people that are going to work every day is a W-2 employee or working for a company, if you don't have some type of tied to the action, you're freelance. And just like that tomorrow, you could be gone and the sweat equity you put in has zero value. So for you, when was like kind of the first time that you realized, I need to do more than just get some of these cash grabs. I need to be investing in equity and making the long term play there. Since I was like born an entrepreneur and then raised by

entrepreneur wolves, I always had sort of one foot in, where's the opportunity for me here? And even when you look at receiving money, right? Because money comes in a lot of varying different ways, right? But at the end of the day, it's what you get liquid pay taxes on and what that tax rate is and what's your leftover is what you now have to invest, right? And then how you invest that now determines your potential of compounding and building wealth over time, right? So it's a very complex, like, matrix when you are an entertainer, an athlete, you have a platform, right? Because now you've got to make the decision, like, am I better off? Do I want to use my platform in this startup and hope that it eventually returns some sort of value to me from an equity position, which I would say,

a lot of the influencers, athletes, and world, they give up so much of their personal services for equity that never materializes, right? A lot of times they even invest in companies that they give their personal services and capital that never materialize, right? So there's this extraordinary balance that I think is very difficult to learn without some sort of former financial background, right? When you are just, especially I'm a marketing brand, creative, like athlete in those days. Like I could put together like companies and put together plans and and do it for royalties and equity. But I didn't fully understand what when was the right time to do that. Right. Because if you go and do a big deal with Pepsi, you want a royalty deal.

Right. You know that they have the infrastructure. You don't, you don't even like the scale of the opportunity is based off of the quality of the operator or the, the partnership that you have. actually have. And then, you know, you can't, like the average person couldn't even do diligence on an opportunity. If someone brings an influencer like, we'll give you 20% of this company, which is already a red flag, that to promote this on your Instagram and be a part, they're like, yeah, let's do it. Right. Like having no idea on the skill set of this entrepreneur, like, like even the business model behind this concept. Like, is there even some sort of way to create a return on this because they see so many stories in the news of people, you know, getting wealthy

off of, you know, skinny margarita and, you know, skinny girl and like, you know, all these, like, and Jessica Alba, honest co. You keep looking at all these one-off things that produce this big return for celebrities, athletes, influencers that you just want to replicate without having the deeper knowledge to be able to diligence and opportunity to understand what the right one is. That now is something that took me many years of navigation and doing nonstop deals to refine over time. Two questions. Give me, Rob, if you could, what the headline of success for you was. When you did, so people that are out there that are thinking maybe I should get into, maybe I should go to my annual review and ask for some equity in this company as opposed to just a raise. One, what is the headline of success for Rob when DC sold? What did it look like? Like, what was that payout? Like, that's one. And two, And the contrary to that huge success, did you ever have any businesses that you did invest

on? We'll say through your learning days, because now the stuff you have going is next level that did go belly up and you did lose a couple bucks. Oh, I mean, look, yeah, come on. Like, there's so many different things. No one talks about their losses. Oh, it's like, it's so funny. Like, you know, of, you know, since I launched the deer dick machine in 2016, you know, including the two builds we have in the middle. middle now. We have 16 builds, right? We've sold five. Really, we just had another merger this week. So really call it six acquisitions, right? Like, in most of the stuff that we do ends up in the,

it's acquired or between like 75 and 150 million, right? So it's like, and then we try to have between by the time it gets acquired, tend to like, you know, in the case of even the production company, it's 70% of it when it was acquired, right? So it's super unique aspect. And we have one, only one, so far that's just gone to zero. And like rather than like, rather than take it off the website, we're putting an RIP date beginning to end, you know, 2016 to 2020 like RIP, right? Like lesson learned, right? Sure.

And we want to claim just as much like we want to put our losses on there as much as our wins, right? So we identify all of our exits and acquisitions and then our very first. loss that we are about to take now it's a testament to the type of people that i build with like no sooner did he put that business out did that business go under than did he step in and take in another existing company public that i'm now on a public board of which is which is something i didn't really anticipate the complexity of which is a lot more but that's a testament of how real he was as an entrepreneur and how the market timing can kill an idea you know what i mean there's

all of these incredible X-factors that will determine whether or not a company gets past the valley of death and finds product market fit and becomes successful. But again, I go back to the failures of non-stop portion, right? And I'd say one of my biggest failures is this company Alien Workshop that I turned pro for got acquired by Burton Snowboards in the late 2000s. And I had now gone on to have multiple television shows, you know, massive product lines and made millions of dollars. And I was going to buy it back and save it. You know what I mean? Like it was now owned by this big corporate company.

So I, against advice of everyone around me, I acquired the IP of the business for a couple million dollars. And then when I got it, it was just a hornet's nest of chaos. cause, right? It was, and I didn't understand the business side well enough yet. It was a low margin business, you know, very what I call now core to core where you're only selling skateboards, the skateboarders, right? I thought I could take and turn it into this like $20 million business with my television exposure, but at the end of the day, there wasn't enough margin in the product, there wasn't enough scale in the distribution. People loved wearing skate shoes, but they didn't buy skateboards that watch TV, right? It was.

this brutal lesson. Then the way that the company was like, like operated. I just didn't know. I hadn't learned enough. And I was burned. Then I was cash flowing the business, right? So now it had seared into my soul that I needed to learn business multidimensionally, right? Like I was always like, you can market and sales your way out of this thing. Sure. Rather than fully understand that like, nope, it's at the end of the day, it's your brand. It's your, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, first off, the consumer and the scale of the consumer, then what that brand says to that consumer, the product line scale that you can create your earned media and your owned media of how you speak, your marketing, sales, operations, finance, and leadership

ties it all together, right? That's how a business engine works. At the time, I thought I could market my way out of anything. And I ended up cash flowing that business and ended up losing $4 million and instead of the lessons that I learned was I learned like everything about supply chain. I learned everything from the operational side. I learned to see business multidimensionally. I learned to understand the consumer and market size way, but all these deep lessons through the searing burn of $4 million. And then what I knew more than anything, that this business was never meant to be bigger than a few million dollars and that it was never meant to be acquired and that I'm a capitalist and half the love the funds, the sport of it. Like I want to come up with the idea

and I want to see it grow and see somebody buy it. Like I want to live the life cycle and I can't do that with this business and I gave it back to the original founders. Right. So there was three founders who had originally built the company and I just literally gave all of the IP back to them and like like I've learned my lessons. I don't want to like I don't want to own this business and then trickle in like little like dividend checks when it's barely profitable and argue with you on how much you should be spending marketing this business like I learned my lessons and then I rather than like I knew that I had a clearer vision now of like like how I wanted to build businesses and because it was emotional too, right?

Because not only was it, it was a, I'm a pro skateboarder from Ohio, went and made it, it is kind of crossover like in the eyes of the core industry on the sellout edge, right? Sure. Because now I'm on TV, right? All these shows on MTV. So I keep digging my roots deeper, right? I started the professional skateboarding league. I built, I started a foundation, built all these parks.

I'm giving back to the sport while I'm, like, using the sport as a platform. And then when I bought that company and bought it back from the snowboard company, he was like, man, he's really about it. You know what I mean? Like, he's doing the right thing. And then that thing just imploded once I got it. And it was this. So if you can imagine the pain, it wasn't just money I was losing.

It was understanding, getting so much clarity. on how little I really know about business, on top of losing millions, on top of getting like hated on at the most extreme level by the company imploding and it being on my watch after I bought it. That's why I just realized like, hey, you know, I also, you know, God bless skateboarding and being a pro skateboarder, but as a capitalist and somebody whose true passion is now return on investment and IRR does not connect with the skateboarding world any longer. You know, and really when I got rid of every single thing in skateboarding from that point on and eventually then even all of my sponsorships and anything connected,

and then the last thing that I owned was Street League skateboarding that eventually got acquired when they bought my production company and rolled it into a roll-up. They all got acquired together at the same time. And that was the final business that I ever had that was connected to the sport of skateboarding. Because I looked at it as like, ultimately, that was my past, if you will. And now my future is what I do in business through the Deerdick machine. And that is much more in the line of like how big and fast can we make it and who can we sell it to. There's so many lessons to take away from that.

One, you already mentioned, it's the credibility factor. And then two, there's a mental factor. then there's the actual fiscal factor of $4 million being gone too. I have two questions for you. With the $4 million that you lost, at that point in your life, was that a pretty material like amount for you? Or was that just like the $4 million that you lost, the second part question, you gained more lessons about everything you need to do as an investor that it was worth the $4 million, honestly, when you look back at it? Look, I spent so much money in skateboarding. You know, I also wrote and financed the only authentic real skateboarding film put up $2 million to do that and couldn't get anybody into the theaters to watch it lost that money.

Like, you know, I have like invested so deeply. You know, I had my wild grinders like little kid skateboard cartoon on Nickelodeon and toys and Martel. You know, it's like I never, that never amount materialized to like capital, right? So, you know, was four million a lot? Four million is a lot to anybody. Right. Now, you know what I'm saying? So I don't want to downplay. But I also, I had so many multiple revenue streams at that point that it wasn't like I'm, it's a painful one. And it's and it was a significant amount of my money, but I was still making so much money too that it was like, I was able to like, it wasn't like I just lost a big chunk of my savings. And I was making little, I was making so much money at the time that it was, it was, it was. was regenerating itself through this L. Sure.

And, you know, everybody points to like, oh, the lessons is invaluable. You know what I mean? And I have learned lesson after lesson through millions and millions of dollars of losses, right? So like, look, and I don't look back and be like, oh, sick. I lost $2 million on that one. But I could write a point five on that one and $2 million. Like, I am thankful and grateful because I have such deeper clarity with money and what I expect from money and all aspects of my existence, right? I have such a deep understanding of just money in general.

And you really can only get there through the fire, right? You can learn as much as you can, but nothing seers or hurts as much as like just being like, why did I? do that. And like, I should have seen that, that, that, that, that, that. You know what I mean? And you can only get there when you go for it. But I love, I love that you said nothing serious, like when you go through the fire in those learning lessons and that you own it. And then you're investing companies that don't work out, you have the RIP because so many times today, whether it's like day traders that are on Twitter or whatever it is, all we see is the good. We don't see the lessons learned. So many people want to hide from it, not talk about it.

bury it and to own that and be here today to talk about those to put it out there is just so important for anyone that's developing themselves one thing you also talked about was your multiple sources of income which is something that is so important and i want to get to that before i do though how about the win the dc united win investing the royalty back how did that pay dividends for where you are today and your future with your signature line and everything like that you know i think it was okay i mean you got to understand like i the payout you know i ended up getting probably a million dollar payout when it's sold. But I was making, you know, four or five million dollars a year off royalties from what my signature products were selling

after Robin Big appeared on MTV, right? Because you got to understand, you know, I've heard you talk a lot about the power of the platform of television, right? And understand that, like, I recognized the power of the platform before it was known as a platform and before I was ever even on. on TV, right? Because this was 2006, right? Robin Big was a long year's ago. It was before, really the thing that tipped the scale was Bethany Frankl's like skinny girl Marguerite was like the one that tipped the scale, right?

Sure. Of like, wait a minute, there's a platform for brands. And so this is what I had in that era. I saw what, since I had all these signature products, I saw what was happening at the retail level of the skate shops with Bam Margera's signature products because he was on jackass. And so I decided before my television show launched, I renegotiated every single one of my deals for a lower guaranteed money and a higher royalty. Betting that if this exposure on MTV does what it did for BAM, I'm going to set the same way for me what it did for BAM. I'm going

to generate just massive amounts of royalty, right? So it comes out. What happens? It explodes. right shows a hit overnight dc was acquired for a hundred million dollars within the first two years of that show it had reached 500 million in sales right that is how big that platform had scaled that now you know again it's like now i have all the signature product that i'm making way more than i did even in the payout of the acquisition right so okay so then what happens then like i'm you know using Robin Big, I launched Rogue Status with Travis Barker. I do this massive deal with Monster Energy to put like monster in the house, like all this stuff, right?

So now I'm just using this platform to build businesses, right? So then we did the three seasons and we decided not to do Robin Big anymore and they asked me to do another show. And so then when I sold them Fantasy Factory, I've sold the show around it being around my businesses. And then I would only do the show if I own the integration. And so because there was a little pushback starting to happen, then they gave me my integration. So now I sold deals to Chevy, Microsoft.

Like I sold all my own deals that I wrote episodes around in the television show, you know, breaking world records, jumping, you know, Chevy cars 90 feet back to back, backwards, backwards ramp to ramp. I did the Super Bowl commercial flipping the Chevy. Pursued your sister to get engaged in no time. Yeah, you know what I mean? You and all. But I did all of that by owning that now I owned that platform. So now not only was I like the height, you know, because even back then I was making $125,000 an episode, which is pretty unprecedented from a talent fee perspective.

Sure. But I was making millions because I owned the platform. I could sell it to anybody, right? So again, this was before television understood that people could use their media and their platform to monetize it beyond advertising. It was before branded integration existed. And I was able to get it in paper because I saw the value before they could catch it. And they just wanted my show on the air. We'll pay you all this money and give you that. But it was again, seeing just around the corner to be able to then go and capitalize on that to create the amount of revenue that I

built off of that show is unprecedented, probably in television. It's unbelievable because I want to give people perspective on timing. The viewers are a little bit younger here. So the time, 2006 guys, we're talking like three, four years after the show The Bachelor comes out. So this is before any social media has really come to fruition at all. Anybody's doing these deals. And so what Rob saying is before his first TV show, he was actually proactively negotiating all of his deal so he was receiving less cash and getting higher royalties so that when he did have this launch pad, which it sounds like I was going to ask you why he did reality TV robin big in the first place. I now have my answer, which makes perfect sense. It was another platform for you

to build your brands at a higher level. But my question is you do Robin Big and it blows up and you're getting paid well, everybody wants to be on TV. And no, not everybody's a Rob Tearduk. That's for damn sure. But how are you yourself sitting there negotiating with the network as big as MTV asking them for actual ownership? Like, how did that work? Because if you, if anyone tried to do that today to go on a reality show or to be a host or anything like that to actually get ownership in the show is unprecedented, it doesn't even do it justice. So what was that process like how did you actually get that deal done i mean look i i think it's it's the age old the gift of leverage you know what i mean it's just the reality right i'm you got to keep in mind like i

robin big aired i was 32 years old you know i mean it wasn't like i was like 22 you know i had evolved pretty significantly i was looking at it as a platform i had i then like saw what i had got from the platform i knew how bad they wanted me to do a show like They were offering, you know, at the time, you know, I was probably getting 35,000 an episode of Robin Big, and they offered me 125,000 an episode to do a fourth season of Robin Big or do another show, right? And to me, I also was, was being cautious with my personal brand too, right, of knowing that like, okay, if you can go and do the next thing, like, and you can, I knew how focused I was on business and how business was really more about sort of my personal brand and how beyond just being a pro skateboarder I was.

So I took the risk of doing the other show and just was in a position to know, like, here's, with this leverage, here's these other things that I want. Because you got to think at the time, I didn't like how hard reality show shooting is, right? And you'll know this where you, you know, you're out in the field all day to shoot something for like 20 minutes then like oh we got to shoot it again you know whatever like that like grind um was was just something that was was something i really really didn't like right and and that's when i originally sold them ridiculousness during the third season of robin big like i read an article with viny de bona about the 500 million dollar syndication business of america's funniest home

videos and i was like you want to know what i'm going to make the faster cooler version of that and that's all we did when we did the first pitch we just took america's funniest home videos took out all the fat and then i stood in there with the pitch with an xbox controller and like did almost like the version where i was rewind and looking this and we put them in little packages like a a mini version of really what it evolved to and became today but the problem was they bought it on the spot but the and i i wanted that because it's like i want to go to a studio i don't want this to be shot in my house I don't want to have to be out in the field, but they would only pay me 35,000 an episode to do ridiculousness. And then they offered me the 125.

And then when I got the integration rights, then I'm like, okay, I'm just going to do this because I can just make millions from doing this. And this is a much bigger sort of platform. Then a couple years later, they're like, can we do this one again? and then I was able to get way more money based off of the success of what had happened with Fantasy Factory, and now this would be my third show with them. Rob, you just said integration rights, and I understand what that means, but someone might be saying, okay, 35,000 in episode, 1,25,000 episode. Now Rob's saying this integration rights, and he's making millions.

Can you explain to someone that might not know what integration rights are, like what that means exactly. Yeah, and integration is ultimately, you know, if there's an hour long show, a half hour long show, like nobody actually, and when they say integration, it means product can be put inside the show, right? And a lot of times in the past, it would be a Coca-Cola cup on the American Idol judges counter, right? And it became inauthentic, right? And really what I did that was unprecedented, since I wrote every episode and completely produced and controlled the show, I could now write entire storylines around businesses and products and companies I'm creating and partnerships that I would do. So basically, every episode was an integrated story around

either a company that I owned or a company that I did a partnership for to be in the show, right? And I mean, just non-existent doesn't exist. And even in the beauty of it, since I controlled so much of it and I had basically free reign to do whatever I wanted, right, that it allowed me to create any storyline for any brand. And then I could go and pitch brands of like this is this is the type of story I'd like to do. And, you know, and I and look, that is Carl's Jr. Microsoft like, man, we even did it. we did one of the funniest episodes. We did a mega integration deal with Extends. And we, for Big Black and Big Black, it was like, you can never be too big, right?

It was like the funniest, like, you know, and since like we had total control on the creative side that we were able to just do deals with just about anybody, right? So it's super, super unique. And it's one of those things that like not even the world very, I very, very. rarely get into it at depth, right? And most people don't fully understand, like, the depth of control that I have actually had from a business side on all of my television, including ultimately, you know, building ridiculousness into this, you know, juggernaut for a production company that I eventually went and sold, right? It's like even, even the sequence of, of God bless MTV,

an extraordinary partnership, but I have been able to monetize it at such an extraordinary scale because I've approached it with a business mindset and a creative way of using leverage and dealmaking all the way through to maximize the potential of what I could earn from just being talent on a television show. And there is, just for anyone that's listening, I'm telling you, It's unbelievable that not only were you able to do it, but you were able to negotiate a deal that you could also add such value organically. Like, who wouldn't want to watch an episode with you in Big Black talk about extends? It's like a commercial you die to see.

Like you can't wait to see. It's absolutely fascinating and brilliant. But then the question is, I understand obviously the placement and how you would get some of the ads there. When these shows would sell, you obviously had ownership of the shows too, correct? You know, you have a little bit of back end, but not significantly, right? Like, nobody in cable has any big back end that's relevant, right? Because it's like cable doesn't quite work like network. So really, you're basically playing the game for a small backend and then your talent-free fee on the upfront, right?

Then I realized like, okay, well, where's another way to actually make and build an asset inside this unfair advantage that I have that is television? And that's what I did with the production company, right? So where the actual opportunity is is then owning the production rights and then building out the infrastructure of finishing and producing and editing and trying to get a nice margin from your production because production companies trade on EBITA, right? And at the end of the day, it's still creative services. But even when I, you know, to give you context of how I approach that is in order to build to sell a production company, you needed three years of EBITU, right?

Is this Super Jacket you're talking about? Yeah. The production company? Okay, three years. You know, but the problem with production companies is television shows get picked up a couple months after the airing of the final episode, right? It's very rare that multiple seasons of shows get picked up. Sure.

And so when I had built the production company, before we took it to market, I renegotiated with the network. Like, I just went straight to the network. and was like with the head of the network and renegotiated the entire show on the unit economics of the show because I knew that like cable was evolving, viewership was evolving, and I wanted a big order that I could take to market when I sold the company. So I could say like, hey, not only is it doing this well, but I got it guaranteed for a long time. And we, and God bless them, since I owned the production company and now could negotiate, not on a talent fee, but on the unit.

the economics of their ad dollars to the value that they're paying to produce that show, we negotiated to that. And then they ordered, instead of ordering 30 at a time, they now order 186 at a time and eventually started ordering 250 at a time, right? But that big 186 episode order, the moment I signed the paper, I took the company to market to sell it. Because I wanted to be like, here's how fast it's growing and then look at this look at I have a sell story now of like and I have this guaranteed revenue no production companies ever had anything like this and then sold the company behind that right so brilliant and again now and again now you got to map that out right you got to learn that you got to understand that then you have to take the shot to be like hey

let's negotiate on unit economics rather than talent fees and show cost. Let's try to get it into like, what's good for you can be good for me. This is what I need it for. They knew that I wanted to sell the production company. They were like, okay, well, if you can give it to us for this, we'll do this. And then went through the process, right? But again, squeezing like water out of a rock. You're maximizing your opportunity at a scale that, again, in television, as talent,

the host to everybody else is unprecedented. Unprecedented is an understatement. And people that are listening, they're like, listen, I'm not intelligent, I'm not Rob, I never will. There are lessons here, though, you can apply to your life. Squeezing water out of a rock is a perfect way to say it in creating a roadmap. Basically, for those that are more accelerated that understood every word, Rob said, take those lessons and run with them. For those that might have been a little confused on some of the strategy,

the most simple version that I could think of to explain it is like, if it's a law professor who knows he has to teach a class and he knows he's going to get paid by the university anyway, well, he might as well write his book because every student needs a book, and therefore he's selling his book at his equity, and he could see how many students he'll have and project his revenue, etc. Rob pretty much created a production company that these shows needed, and then he could negotiate on both sides of the equation with more information. Unprecedented, again, is an understatement, and it's so savvy. Let me also say this, and this is the biggest lesson in it, is lean into your unfair advantage that leads to

revenue, right? At the end of the day, I started at the end. I built the number that I wanted to sell that production company for, right? And how many in the years it would take me to get there, three years to get it to market, right? And everything that I needed to do. But I didn't have to go out and raise capital and find partners since I had the unfair advantage of an existence. television. The only thing I needed to do was to negotiate with the network to get the production rights. And then now my company immediately, immediately goes from doing a hundred grand in revenue to 50 million in like two meetings. Right. So like it's just I leaned in. And it's also why like in you know we're in the middle of the earn out and the earn out scaling and if I

really laid laid out how I even built the earn out it's it's psychotic unto itself but it's a like deem it's also why I own 70% at acquisition because at the end of the day like a lot of people fall in love with two things starting a company or an idea and then one day someone buying it right and getting investors and raising money. But the truth is, in between there is this hellish road of dilution if you are not like growing properly, if you are not like hitting your revenue goals, not like creating enough value to where your capital is just used to grow the business instead of to try to figure out how to get the business to work. Because at the end of the day, it is how much equity you have

when the business is sustainable and profitable is where you win or lose in the game. Correct. In entrepreneurship, especially if you want to play the game of raising money, which, again, is a nightmare. And if I look at the weak companies in my portfolio, I can literally, there's one through line through it all.

Because I just love people. I looked for like there initially, when I launched all the initial businesses, I was looking for the do or dieer, like grit, the termination, fortitude, ambition, relentless work ethic, unwavering self-belief in their ability to control their destiny, this like fire. That's who I want to like build with. But the problem is, is I built with so many people that had bad founder market fit. They didn't have the right experience. They

haven't like grown into this opportunity. They were entrepreneurs who looked at this industry as like, I should make money. I could take my skill set and try to apply it to this industry. But, industries have everybody from every industry will tell you like, oh, I wish I was in that industry, right? Like there's always some sort of problem with everything, but you can accelerate your opportunity to success with having great experience in a particular industry. That's probably the biggest lesson that I learned in my 2016 to 18 vintages of companies that I built in that era. The reality of businesses, it is thrilling and amazing. amazing if it works. If it does not work, it is literally, it's the worst nightmare. Like,

you are pulling your soul apart. Like one way happening. It is just everything about it. And so for me, you know, it's important. This refinement, this is personal mastery. My personal mastery in life is getting better and better year after year at curating ideas, markets and individuals and building them into sustainable, acquireable businesses. So when I look at all the companies I launched in 16, I know that I would never do any of them the way that I build in 2021. The same way in 2006,

I'll be like, look at all the way I was looking at things in 2021. What the hell? It's the beauty of when you point your mastery at the core of what your business is and ultimately what your legacy will become, right? And because the truth is, is beyond the same way how you were like, man, I don't even know really how to like put you into like, what is your career because you've done so many things. I know the same way that I've been building the backbone of this and just recently launched it at this scale this year, that it will be ultimately what I'm known for way beyond skateboarding and ridiculousness and Fantasy Factory and Robin Big through the years is really sort of that. evolution of pointing your mastery at a specific thing. That's really cool.

And I mean, legacy is, in my opinion, something I talk about all the time. It is the greatest thing, I think, in the world that will all supersede any of us, right? In a hundred years from now, we're not here. You know, what are you doing today that can still live on and still make an impact? I think that to think like that is just incredible. Rob, this has been unbelievable to say the least. We're going to wrap up here with a couple of rapid questions just to learn a little bit about you and some of your thoughts. And then we'll end with one trading secret.

And trust me, I'll tell you, we could easily cut one of the segments out here making your trading secret. But the idea is, you know, if someone's Googling, you know, Rob or listening to you on a show or something else, what is a secret you could give someone as they're pursuing personal finance or career navigation or just maybe stuck in life that they couldn't find anywhere. So before we do that, we're going to crack into the vault with a couple rapid-fire questions, if you're ready. Hit me. Rob, Deirdrick, here we go. Are you a fan of cryptocurrency, NFTs, and would you invest in them? I believe blockchain is the future, right? I think smart contracts and blockchain is undeniable.

I think that cryptocurrency and challenging currency is a much more complex sort of thing, but the fundamentals of blockchain is undeniable. as it relates to sort of being what I would consider the next internet. So I invest in with really, really sophisticated crypto fund managers, right? So rather than trying to be on Coinbase, trying to buy Ethereum and guess when Bitcoin's going to come back down and all these doge coins and chase the get rich quick, I'm really betting on really, really smart fund managers that see the long-term infrastructure. structure of blockchain, that's where I've put a significant amount of money.

Yeah, outsource to the experts, and I completely agree with you. Blockchain is it. It's the future. All right, this is one we did before the podcast. I think I know the answer. Did you make more money in the pro athlete space or after launching into the TV reality TV space? Oh, I mean, we know that answer. We don't even have to answer it.

Yeah, I mean, and for the amount of years and the little amount of capital, But, you know, I mean, it's incomparable. Really, though, when I truly combined the power of television and business together is where, you know, the wouldn't even, couldn't even compare it to what I made as an athlete, you know. I love it. All right. Health, wealth, and happiness. Three really important things.

I read an article. It could be bullshit, but I read it that you meditate in a $15,000 dome. Is that true or false? That is 100% true. And can you just give me a little context about what that is, like how that works? I mean, look, I'm, you know, to me, I believe that you have to get extraordinarily clear on what you want the outcomes of your life to be, right? I think then you have to really understand who you are, how you want to live and ultimately what you want to do and then design the life that you want to live. Now, I've done that, right?

I have this extraordinary clarity, deep peace, total balance. And then I use this meditation pod. And I go through a 20-minute guided meditation on just manifestation. And every morning I get in at 5 in the morning. And I just visualize feeling all of these things that I want to experience in the future. Because I ultimately believe your body knows no difference as the great Dr. Joe, Spenza will tell you on whether or not it's real or not. So I go in and experience all of these things I want to happen to basically have the universe

pull these to me. And then what happens? All of these extraordinary things in my life have continually evolved to happen as I visualize them inside that dome. And you're doing this every day of five in the morning. Yeah. I mean, look, you're talking about one of the most disciplined, you know, I track every day how I feel zero to ten about my life, health, and work, right? Qualitative data. And when you

collect qualitative data every day, zero to 10, you begin to see, you get qualitative awareness, as I say, where the same things pop up that bring you down. Then you begin to clear those out. You do that for years. You become almost weightless, right? And now you're only dealing with sort of self-inflicted sort of new things, not institutional stress, right? And then, so I have that data for since 2014 that I've done every day. And then every single day, I have the quantitative data that I gamify my discipline. It's like, did I get up at five? Did I meditate?

Did I get in the gym? Did I brain train? Did I have a clean diet? Did I not drink? Right? That core, and I track it every single day. And then now I've gamified it. And so my average so far this year of the qualitative, I've done it.

87% of the entire year. Meaning, I have done all five of those almost every single day, even when I'm on vacation, even through the holidays, through everything, through a half a year, I have gamified my discipline. Now, when you look at those together and you ladder that up to my qualitative number, you will find the more disciplines you are in those key aspects, the higher quality of life that you ultimately have from a qualitative feel like how do you actually feel so yeah it's a it's a different level unbelievable have you written a book no and i will eventually right like this all needs to be in your book yeah and look i'm gonna i'll share with you sort of all my dad and how it looks like so you can see it's amazing because you're gamifying it's a game to be disciplined and the the benefits that

you reap is just like extraordinary now behind that i like to refer to myself as an automationist right because you know i basically have built all these systems to allow my entire life to be this giant machine right and to give you context of how automated i shoot 250 episodes of television a year and i track every day all of my time and every hour of the day is tracked and has a tag and it pumps into a dashboard of how exactly I've spent my time. And I live a perfectly balanced life where I spend 32% of my time sleeping, 32% of the time working and about 30% with my family and wife, right, and friends, to the fully balanced by design life. But of that 250 episodes a year in television is 4% of my total time for the year. To give you context to how extraordinarily

automated and systematized that I've created and built the television show in still doing it at that scale at this point. You know what I mean? Wow. All right. It is absolutely mind-blowing the thought process that goes into it, the day-to-day routine, but then the end result of it. I'm blown away. I could talk to you forever about this, but I know we're on a time constraint. So wow, that is amazing. I got to ask you this follow-up. Have you, do you, have you noticed since tracking this that your time deployed in the places you wanted to be deployed in has increased and your overall qualitative feeling of, I guess, good or well-being has also increased as you've tracked this? 100%. Because you now just understand when you're asking yourself, how do I feel about work

today? Zero to 10. When it's below a four, when it's a four, half empty. And then you want to know what you feel like in half empty, it's binary. You're like, I should have never even, why did I buy that car? Why did I even start this podcast? What am I even do? Like when you go to half empty versus when you're at a six, you're half full. Hey, you're hopeful. Anything can push. And then you're neutral. You're like complacent, right? And if you can imagine over time, you begin to optimize all aspects of your existence. And that also optimizes all aspects of your time. Because by using that quality you begin to shape your existence into a place where you almost you're so sensitive now to how you spend your time that the moment you over commit to something it's so clear that it's

that it's pushing on your quality and it's not heavy but you filled enough to where then you make the adjustment and and you have options right you can either automate it right when you're building something new you can hire somebody to do an aspect of it or you quit it and when you when you're working through life like that, you just always live in this sort of state of flow and energy, right? And then you're super, it's so easy to say no to things and not get caught in committing to things that pull from you because you're so sensitive to it after clearing it out for so much time. I preached it for years. No one I know has ever actually committed to doing it besides me that I know of. You know what I mean? It's a very difficult commitment. Here's what I'm going to

commit to because I'm about small wins and building off momentum. I'm going to commit to doing this once a week because I think it's absolutely brilliant. I do like the idea of gamifying your happiness. I've never pulled the plug on the rapid fire and the trading secret, but I'm going to pull the plug. We're going to stop the rapid fire. We're going to call this the trading secret because it's unbelievable, gamifying your happiness since inception of like being born, at least for me, the first time I could touch a toy or do anything, it was all about games, playing hockey, playing soccer, video games. Everything's a game. And to me, it's exciting. It's entertaining. And like you said, it makes you want to continue to be better and thinking about gamifying the most important thing

in the world. And my opinion is, you know, health and happiness and time allocated. What else you have? Makes perfect sense. And I don't know why more of us do it. So I'm going to give that a shot. Rob, that was a hell of a trading secret. And I didn't even put you on the point to do it. before you know very thankful and i'll get into that in the second but before i do get into that everything you have going on people are going to listen to this and want as much of you as they can get where can they find you in social media your podcast the name of it and the forums they could find it and anything else you have going on yeah you know podcast everywhere where podcasts are found uh dear dick machine dot com is basically the hub of of all uh things to do with the venture

creation studio and ultimately all the stuff that I'm creating. And, you know, I try to, you know, push a little bit of my life and business through social media, but social media is hard, but for the most part, you can find me on all platforms at Rob Deerdeck. And really, you know, at the end of the day, you know, all of this stuff ultimately is what I love to do the most, right? And that's what I've really evolved in. But in doing inside that, what I actually love to do the most.

And one of those is, you know, being able to have a real conversation with somebody that is smart, understands it, and I can share with them. And it has some meaning. So I appreciate the great conversation as well today. Good stuff, Rob. We really appreciate you coming on. Rob, dear Deere, we always say that hopefully this is an episode you can't afford to miss. I can promise this is an episode you can't afford to miss. This is one I'll be going back, Rob, no joke, with a pen and paper, computer up.

I want to implement this system. I'm going to follow up the next podcast after this with how the system goes. And I can't tell you how much we appreciate your time, especially knowing that only 4% of your time on an annual basis goes to MTV shooting. So we really appreciate you coming out. Thanks for having me. Ding, ding, ding, we are back, ringing in the closing bell on the Rob Deere Deck episode with David and Jason. Again, this is where we break down and recap our guest.

And David is the voice of the viewer, the curious Canadian, the one and only who will get my take on everything we just discussed. Knowing this episode, you'll notice, I didn't do my typical intro where it's usually five minutes and I break down the details of Rob. Why didn't I do that? Because Rob and I had such a long episode and he gave us so many details. I felt that it made sense just to get right into the action with him. And speaking of being right in the action, we have a restart all access membership. You can come on live to these podcasts when I'm talking to Rob and all these people that we're interviewing. We have Gary V. coming up. You can ask questions. And in the rapid refire, I will always state your name,

your Instagram handle, et cetera. So check out the restart all access membership. You can email us restart at Jason Tartick.com or just go to our Instagram and we will get you all taking care of for less than 30 cents a day. Now, getting into the Rob podcast, I will say this, David, and I want to kick it to you. because I know you told me a few times your jaw hurt by how many times you dropped in this episode. But I'm going to say this and go on record, top three smartest humans I've ever spoken to in my entire life, in my entire life. I mean, you texted me right away and I've never seen you so, like, flustered over words being like, so many things. And you said that, like, I know the podcast was long and the interview was long, but you said you guys went on like an

absolute run off camera, which I want to get into later. But yeah, my jaw was dropped. And it's just that surreal feeling sometimes when you're talking to someone that you've seen on TV. And you're like, wait, they're talking to me. Oh my God. I got to answer. Oh, my God. This is fascinating. And he's incredible, an incredible, incredible, incredible human being. Yeah, exactly. And the thing, too, is that when I say, I wasn't even the TV thing. It's just the thing, like the stuff he does, the money he's made and the way he's negotiated is contracted. The word we use, a lot was unprecedented, that again doesn't do it justice. It's crazy

what he's been able to do and leverage with the talent he has. And I'll tell it, whatever you want to talk about, David, in this recap, you asked me about what happened when we stopped recording and I'm going to unleash, but I'm going to follow your lead, brother. Well, it was like, the guy clearly is like the definition of the saying

like chess instead of checkers. Like the guy is playing chess where all of us are trying to figure it out on the other end. But he's just like, is it possible to just be that cool without even trying. Like, his voice was so soothing. I was almost like,

I listened to it for the first time at like 11 p.m. last night. And I was like, ooh, this could like, you know, this is like soothing. Like,

this is relaxing. I felt like I was in his $15,000. Uh, relaxation spot. You know what I was dying at? It's like, when I would like, you know,

I get hyped up and I'm like, so dude, you're telling me that. You know, like, that's me. And then he's like, listen, man,

like, it's not quite that sexy. You're cool. He's like, listen. I'm just like, I loved how he was like, I appreciate you, Herman, team me up to make philosophize like my journey. But yeah, it started. So he was, he was awesome. So quickly, before we getting some business stuff for the podcast, I didn't know that Rob is a massive Bachelor Superfan. He said he's never missed an episode of Bachelor, Bachelorette, or Paradise.

I had no idea about that either. I mean, you heard him say in the beginning, we DM'd them three months ago to try and get him on and he had to respond. When he responded, I was, I was like, there's no, it was right after your bachelor party. And I was obviously a little. foggy. I'm like, am I, like, this guy really respond. He wants to come on no fucking way. So immediately, I get my team. I'm like, get him booked. Let's go. Get a motherfucker calder. So, yeah, man, I didn't know that. How did it feel to be on the big screen again yesterday? I felt like I was back in my natural

habitat watching my boy JT on TV. Yeah, back on the Bachelorette. You know what? It always, yeah, I got a funny behind the scenes thing. There's this thing, okay, God, we're getting the bachelor talk, but it's called this whoa, whoa challenge. So you're not supposed to, she said the guys can't whack off before the fantasy suites. So when she sat down,

we got like she brought it up before she brought out Connor and like Kayla we were getting we probably had a 20 minute conversation all about whacking off literally like I was sweating I'm like oh no they're gonna hear this my mom's gonna watch it shit they didn't they cut it thank God yeah you sent us like a Snapchat or something like sick grill job Jay put the burger on the hot dogs yeah like what was I doing and dude you know you've been on Becca season

for anyone that doesn't know that Becca surprised me with three of my best buddies, David being one of them. So you actually got to, like, be part of that experience. And you realize, like, putting the burger on the hot tag, you would never do in real life, but kind of like the pressure you're like not thinking right. And you do shit like that. And they always catch it. Always.

It was that surprise we were talking about it the other day. It was just a surreal, surreal experience for us to have a catch on film and such a natural, organic, awesome experience. So, yeah. Yeah, that show is wild. And it's captivating, to say the least. Couple things. Like, I'm listening to this podcast.

And I'm like, Rob, you're my guy. Finally, one. I feel like I'm in tune to. He says a quote. He goes, you know, I was making 50 to 60K and now I'm going to 50K and you're learning the big boy lessons. And I feel like he was like talking to me. He's like, you're uneducated. You have no financial background. You know nothing about investing. You know nothing about taxes. And I was like, okay, damn it. Like, I might not be in this. And then he said a line. I was like, okay, this is going to my note section. God asked Jason about it. He said EBITA. So you said it right. I spelled it wrong in the recap. No, but I said, Evita, what is EBTA? I know it's something I probably should know and you're probably going to say it. I know it's like earnings for something, but I don't know what it means. So kind of like all the awesome examples you've used with like the BMW car for the shorts and all these things. What is EBITDA and how does it relate to business? Okay. Great question.

Funny thing about EBITDA is in the world of finance, it's so funny how some people will say words like that with different tones. Like some people will say finance or finance or. Ibada, or they'll say abada. They'll have all these different ways of how they say Ibada. And it's just like such a joke. I would always laugh at it. But essentially what it is is it's six letters, right? E, B, I, T, D, A. The idea of it is it's the earnings of a company before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization. Here's what I want people to think about. if you own a business, right, and let's say you're selling cups of coffee and you do a million dollars in sales by selling coffee, what you're going to do is you're going to have expenses

that are non-cash expenses that will reduce how much you have to actually pay in taxes. So things that you will do is you will reduce that revenue by these expenses and that'll be your net income. The problem is when you're really trying to get an understanding of a company's overall financial performance, you don't want to just look at the net income. You will look at what's called EBITDA. And it's their earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortization. The whole idea is that taxes, depreciation, amortization are what an interest are things

that you can add back to earnings to really show the company's overall financial performance. All right. Well, that makes perfect sense. It gives kind of people a clear idea of what, company actually makes. So that's helpful. Yeah, there you go. A little breakdown in Ibida. Ibita. Eba da. He also talked about how he got successful in one of his first ventures in a company because I think it was D.C. shoes, which I always, by the way, thought my whole life was the Deernet company. I thought that's what D.C. stood for. I had D.C. shoes growing up, like 16-year-old

didn't skateboard. And it was like, yeah, probably wear like a puka shell necklace, too. Real quick, though, wasn't that interesting how he said that? And I want to hear your question. question for sure, but how so many people for DC shoes actually don't skateboard. They just wanted to wear the shoes. That's so many businesses. But it's like guys who wear like LeBron shoes. Sure. And they're not basketball. Makes sense. But he brought up an example where he got royalties from a company, that company. And instead of taking the royalties, they got reinvested in equity or cash in the business. So if you had gunned to your head, a company XYZ came up to you and said, I'm going to give you a cash option in our business or royalty option

in our business. What are you choosing and why? I mean, it depends on my financial position and how badly I need cash at this point. Definitely would take the royalties. And just like any company that has a stock, like if you guys have a stock and it's paying a dividend, so that means they'll actually pay you money for owning the stock, a percentage. Don't take that cash, reinvest that dividend back into the stock. So huge royalty guy. And where do we learn that, David?

The one and only, Mr. Wonderful. He's the man. He also asked Rob about his law. And he kind of loved the question as well. So I'm going to turn the table and talk to you. You've told me about some of the stock losses that you've had in your life. Why don't you shed some light on some of the losses that you've had? Because we always talk about our success stories here.

Yeah, no, it's such a good point. I think let's do some relevant losses I've had. One relevant loss is, and it's not actually lost. It's a win. Doge coin. I actually bought in. I bought in around like the 16, 17 cent mark. I thought the SNL thing was a fucking joke.

So at like 40, it went up to 46. I'm like, I'm getting out of this before the disaster. Obviously, it doubled, right? It literally doubled from that point. So I, you know, I could have had much bigger upside. But in actual losses, there's a company called T, their ticker is T, K-A-T, big in the NFT space, you know, did my research, felt good about the company. I mean, small market cap. And it was definitely high risk.

But the 52-week high on this stock is 75 bucks around. 52-week lows around 77 cents. I got in at $36.70. And I got in not too long ago, probably, I don't know, two months ago, two months ago. My average cost to get in this stock was $36.70. It's trading today at $7.83. Fortunately, I didn't go all in on this, but I would say if I sold right now, I got about a $28,000 loss I can write off.

Okay, 28K, just like that. Now, Dodge. Not $4 million. Dodge coins at $0.18 right now. That's another one. Is it Dodge? Is it Dogey? I've heard of, you know?

Dogey. Okay, tell me your story. I sold half of Bitcoin when it was like, I had a full Bitcoin. And then when it went down from like 19 to 9, I sold half of it for some altcoins, you know in particular. and it's not even. I probably lost $25,000 on that trade-along. So you sold one Bitcoin at 9K?

Half a Bitcoin. So at 9, when it was total value, so 4,500, I bought $4,500 worth the Neo. The Neo now today, at the time was $4,500 worth a Bitcoin into Neo. The Neo is now worth like a thousand bucks. And the upside of Bitcoin would have been. We suck. With wins, there's losses.

and those are our losses. Quickly, move on, move on. Now I'm going to bring up what we talked about earlier. You mentioned you guys went into the weeds a little bit after. And I think I know, I mean, I hope I know what it's about. I think it's about a little bit of his system that he talked about kind of gamifying his discipline and his life and trying to get some more clarity. And he said a quote that stuck out to me.

And I'm going to say it and then I'm going to allow you to get into what you talked about. But he said, I want it extraordinarily clear on what you want. the outcomes of your life to be. Such a powerful statement that's like, let me sit and think about what he means by this. And it makes a lot of sense. But how he does it is extraordinary in itself. So what did you guys talk about? What were your takeaways?

And what can we just kind of banter about? I am so frustrated. We still weren't recording. But I went, because obviously he talks about how he gamifies his life. So I'm like, tell me about it. So he stopped recording. He showed me what he does. every day for six years he has this Excel file that has been created by a consulting company

and he gives certain things of his life a number so did he drink that day did he work out that day what's like his overall satisfaction in life all one through 10 he even has all one through 10 so did it to zero if he did it's like it might be a four workout like I just did abs it's like I 10 like I crush in the gym so it's like that level yeah well it's it for him it's actually for those, those are yes, no, they're binary. So did he work out yes? Did he drink yes or no? And then he would have other numbers about his overall satisfaction in his life and his health and everything, his mental health. And he even has one with his wife. What is his connection with his wife? And so he has the percentages, like in January. I think I remember

saying it was 100% of the 100% of the month he worked out and didn't drink. And like, so he has this all documented every morning his assistant and he showed me his assistant will give him like to the tea what his schedule looks like he then forwards the schedule to his wife with a quote that he loves like about her like a love quote and in return she has to send him back it's all he asked for is a number of how connected she feels with him one through 10 and so like when he's showing me there's some days there's like four some days that were like seven or eight or nine and what he can do is over the six years he can try and draw correlations. Like, is my drinking impacting the connection with my wife?

Is my work balance impacting the connection with my wife? And he has all these takeaways based on the quantitative and qualitative numbers. And then he separates his schedule into, oh, man, I don't, I'm breaking it. It's like health, love, and work. But he has different things. And he showed me his schedule. And each thing before what he's doing will say, like, this is work, this is love. And he has time blocked out for his wife.

It's like 7 to 9 p.m. And he's like, nothing comes. Like, that's my wife's time. And he has kid time, blocked up. No phone, no nothing. That's my kid time. So organized. And every day, oh, wait, wait, I got to tell you this part.

His business plan that I'm done. His business, because I can talk about this whole podcast, his business plan, every three months he updates it. He showed us. He has a three month plan, a one year plan, a two year plan, a five year plan. Guess how long? Give me a number. How long?

How many years do you think his plan goes out? One year, two, year, three year. If it's anything more than like five, because everyone's like, what are you going to do in five years? It's a five-year plan. So five would be like, I would assume the norm. David, he has a 500-year plan. Five-hundred years. My jaw hit the ground.

I said, Rob, what do you mean? He goes, I'll be dead in the dirt. But it is my job. I want to have at least a billion dollars in liquidity for my family that when anybody is born a deer deck, I don't care about like royalty. What you want to know is that you're, what you want to know is that you're, your life will be in harmony. You will be a happy individual. You'll live peaceful. Five hundred year plan. How do you take that? Like I heard, I listen to the podcast. I hear, I'm hearing you talk

about it. How does normal David, and do I have to just call myself normal David? Or can I adopt this myself? I guess, I feel like I can, right? I think everyone should have some time, by takeaway from this is that everyone should have some type of system that keeps them in check and that gameifies their life a little bit because we all love games. Everyone loves games. How you could do it simply, I give you an example. I talked to the Capital One interns. I suggested they do something like this because of it and I gave Rob the credit because of what I learned from him. I said for the Capital One interns, do every day three things. Write the value you brought today. How good were you? Give me a number one through 10 of how good Capital One was to you. So how good were you to them? How good was

Capital One to you? Give me your internship satisfaction in a couple notes. Do it every day. and you're going to be able to change your input based on the numbers you're seeing. I think we could simplify what he's doing. If you had to pick, and we'll go back and forth on this, if you had to pick five things to quantify, like, if you are leading a good life in terms of your personal happiness and your relationship that are important to Jason Tarduk, what are five things that you know if you're doing or not doing

it's probably going to affect the quality of your life? Yeah, I think connection with the loved one is brilliant, right? That will impact my happiness in my life. I think time spent with my family and friends is a big one. How connected do I feel to my partner? How connected do I feel to my family and friends? Drinking is a big one. I love to drink.

I love to socially drink. Managing that is huge. Working out's a big one. And just how I think the one for work I would do is how was one through 10 was I my best self today? And there's no such thing as silos. Personal life bleeds into work life. And if those four things,

those are my foundation, my family, my friends, my partner, and my health. If those aren't lined up, I promise you, I would like to see it. My production's probably down. Here's my five. What's here it? I would quantify how much I'm on my phone. Okay. Because I know it affects my relationship. But could you also say that being on your phone connects you with those like you and I? Which I'll, okay, I'm done. I want to hear it all five. I definitely take advantage of that too because I love talking to my friends and my family, but I also, I need to be I need to you know 10 p.m. 11 p.m. whatever. So I would quantify how much I'm on my phone. Okay. I would definitely do working out because I'm just a better human

being when I work out. I would do how healthy did I eat on a scale of 1 to 10? And then I think my last two would be definitely prayer and reflection. Did I pray or reflect at all? And then I think my last one would probably have to be I would almost try and do like how authentic. was I to my true self today. And I don't want to say like how honest was I or how like, but how much did I impact the world today? How much was I my true self? Did I, did I compliment, thank people? Did I, you know, was I honest about a work situation, a confrontation, a situation with my wife. Did I brush something under the rug? How I think that for me is like, if I was running away from things, I think that would be a perfect time to like give me a low score. Yeah, like how present were you?

and what was your output given your presence or were you just like flying? I like that. I think it's great. Let's do it. Why don't we do it for, I think, let's be realistic, right?

So your wedding's next week, everyone's going to be busy. Why don't we, maybe like the week after your wedding, we try it for a week, and then we recap it? We should do like a New Year's resolution starting in August.

Like August 1st, I think I'm game. I can get back from the honeymoon August 2nd. So I think August 1st, like, I'm going to do it. Done. let's try it for a month. We will put this out for all access members for sure in our Facebook group.

And then everyone could do it themselves. We'll tell people the five things we're measuring and we'll come back on it. Love it. I love it. Thank you, Rob. Thank you, Rob. You are changing our lives. Anything else there, David, the Curious Canadian? No, I think we've gone a little long, but I think it's all great stuff. This has been fun. Thank you. Amazing. Well, guys, thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Trading Secrets. Please remember to subscribe. give us a five-star rating and tag your IG name is I have a full team that is looking at the comments and reaching out to you to connect with you. So thank you for being here with us. Rob, you definitely gave us an episode that no one can afford to miss and make sure you tune in next week. It's a good one.

You'll want to make sure you're on that one. Another episode of Trading Secrets, one you can't afford to miss. Money, money, playing on me. Making that money, money, money, living that dream. Making that money, money, money, pay on me. Making that money, money. Living that dream.