https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IoKsGLpGys&t=3s&ab_channel=TheIcedCoffeeHour

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:01:00.000
i appreciate i appreciate you having me
and to the audience like i know that a
lot of the stuff that i i say can be uh
triggering and i want to make it clear
that it's not my intention to do that um
at all uh it's just me sharing beliefs
that uh as i understand the world
and that is no way projection on you or
how you see the world etc it's just this
is how i see the world and these are
beliefs that served me well um that
helped me overcome
um
a lot of things that i thought mattered
i'm alex mosey welcome back to the iced
coffee hour podcast and this podcast has
made four hundred thousand dollars in
the last 18 months that's a good guess
it was a good guess getting closer yeah
yeah it's a hundred and sixty eight
thousand seven hundred and fifty six
dollars okay yeah i probably backtracked
what current revenue is to earlier that
was probably no you were saying like oh
we think at 40 000 uh a month and add no
way no nowhere close to that no
no last probably 28 days we probably did
like 10 grand 10 grand yeah yeah ad
rates are down this year yeah a lot yeah

2
00:01:00.000 --> 00:02:00.000
my channel which is like not even like a
legit youtube channel um does like 28
000 a month
how many views do you pull
four million a month right now that's
why yeah so we get because we only post
once a week so we only post four
episodes every month okay because of
that views are on like one to two
million a month okay okay yeah yeah
because i feel because you probably have
a big i would imagine decent businessy
audience because mine's pretty much all
business owners yeah the rpms are
definitely pretty high in our audience
okay yeah yeah what we need to do we
need to post twice a week that's the
only way to take this podcast to the
next level because we kind of hit i
don't want to say we've uh you know
we've done as much as we could for one
episode a week yeah we gotta go to two
yeah i think that's the next step
i agree so
thanks alex as resident youtube advisor
thank you between everybody here
yeah we'll do it yeah we'll do it so i
gotta say man i've really enjoyed this
story of yours uh i listened to the my
first million podcast of you and i
thought it was really good and you gave

3
00:02:00.000 --> 00:03:00.000
such a complete breakdown on just like
sales being an entrepreneur and making a
ton of money so tell us
that's the important part we're going to
talk about today so tell us your tell us
your story
did you go to college yeah what were you
like as a student how did you get these
ideas what did you want to be when you
grew up wealthy yeah um yeah that was
definitely like my primary goal so i was
um i was actually really good student so
i don't think i have the traditional
entrepreneur like you know of skill like
school failed me like i couldn't focus
on classes or anything like that like i
was actually a really good student i was
um vice president of the newspaper i was
editor-in-chief of the creative magazine
um played three varsity sports did well
um went to vanderbilt
uh for my undergrad uh graduated in
three years um
just kind of was always like trying to
just push
um a lot of that was because i had like
the the traditional middle eastern
parents who were like
you had a hundred different tests that
you got a hundred on but this one you

4
00:03:00.000 --> 00:04:00.000
had a 99 and then failure failure
i'll never place him okay that's useful
to know um
and so anyways i did that and then kind
of followed the path which is to do
management consulting or investment
banking um after you kind of go like
through the white bread path
um i did management consulting because
it seemed like more interesting i did
defense contracting so i was in the
public sector so we did space cyber
intelligence for the military for two i
say we i
did that for two years which sounds
really cool but was actually just
transcribing interviews and then
compiling 600 pages of notes and then
color coding them and then trying to
give them to people ahead of me and so
that they could make a 20-point slide
deck that would be sold for 4 million
dollars back to the military of like how
they should
combine their assets to kill the most
bad guys for least amount of money um
just like complex problems
um and so i did that for two years and
then wanted to not do that
so i was going to go to business school
and then was able to uh do really well
in the gmat um so i think i scored above

5
00:04:00.000 --> 00:05:00.000
harvardsmith score and so i was like
okay cool i think i can get into like
with my experience and what's the gmat
uh it's like the sat for business school
so it's like a higher like a harder sat
basically um
and then anyway so i i i did that and
then i started applying to these
business schools and on one of them it
was like how will this business school
mba help your short and long-term goals
and for like four days i just sat there
and like couldn't answer this question
because i wanted to like start a
business and i like couldn't figure out
how i was how spending like 200 grand
and like two to three years of my life
and not making money during that period
of time was gonna like help me
um
and so i was like you know what i'd
rather just take the money and
start a business and
and see and so i had saved up like i
think 60 grand at that point so i was 24
and or 23. i was 23 because i graduated
early so um
i took took the money um i looked at a
bunch of different businesses and so i
look i was going to start either a test
prep business because i was i was good

6
00:05:00.000 --> 00:06:00.000
at that
um for like sats or whatever because
there's really good margins in that
business um i frozen yogurt store
because those are like blowing up like
10 years ago what year was this
2013 oh 12 was when i was looking at
that yeah so i was the exact same for me
i wanted to open up a uh a froyo store i
think it was 2013 or 2014. we could talk
about that a little later about the yoga
business disaster oh it's bad like cost
per ounce like yeah percentage of people
do toppings versus like there's way
there's a lot in it but um it was that
and then the third was just like do
something i'm passionate about like i
like fitness like maybe i'll do
something there um and i didn't have
enough money for the yogurt store so
that one was out
i had enough money for the test prep and
i did a bunch of work for it and i was
gonna like partner with somebody for it
and then that kind of fell through so it
kind of like left this weird like taste
in my mouth so i was like i guess i'll
just do the gym thing and so i knew from
the consulting world that like the best
way to learn is to consult with experts
like that's how you rapidly like learn
new subjects for like i don't know
anything about defense like about
satellite mixes and stuff but like you

7
00:06:00.000 --> 00:07:00.000
interview
a hundred people who are experts in it
and like you get a pretty good idea
pretty fast and so i was like okay i
don't know anything about the gym
business so i'll just email a bunch of
gym owners and see if they'll just like
let me work for free and um one guy got
back to me i emailed like 40 gems and he
was like
uh yeah come on out you can work for
free yes i was like all right awesome so
i left every um i like sold my condo
sold all my stuff packed my car and i
drove straight to california from
baltimore which is where i was um showed
up at this guy's doorstep and he was
like this is really creepy i was not
really actually expecting you to do this
i was like what do you want me to do and
he's like i don't know like i have stuff
to do um you can hang out here for a
little bit he's like where are you
staying and i was like i don't know i
just got here i just drove to your gym
from my house in baltimore he was like
so you have nowhere to stay and i was
like no i figured i figured out where
was this located in california so you
drove from baltimore to california it
was 36 hours i packed food you didn't do
it you slept though right like you
didn't do it yeah yeah i slept i slept
but i didn't stop for food or asking the
important questions
i'm amazed 36 hours and he was he was

8
00:07:00.000 --> 00:08:00.000
surprised you even did it yeah
you didn't call him while you're driving
like on the way like hey man just let
you know i'm like i'm on the way i mean
we talked once and i was like all right
i'll be there and then i mean i'm sure i
wouldn't say that yeah you would think
that like hey i'm on my way i'll be
there like this this time
i didn't even have his phone number
you just showed up at his house i showed
him at his gym wait a second
yeah so this uh so wait so if you didn't
have his number how did you correspond
so we email so i opted in and then
emailed me and then and then we we did
have a call but i don't think it was a
cell phone because i think there was
like a work like a business like a
business phone it was like however many
years ago
um so anyways yeah your parents think of
that by the way your parents were
probably telling do not do this wildly
against all of this yeah like because
they wanted you to go into something
more like academic they're like just
get there like you ace the gmat like you
can get into
business school and then you can go
continue on the path you know and i um
i mean basically what i figured out was
that the amount of money that i wanted
to make

9
00:08:00.000 --> 00:09:00.000
no job would pay me with the exception
of investment banking management
consulting so you can make five 10 20
million a year as an investment banker
or in private equity or as managing
consult like you can do that
but the path to getting there the
traditional way you pretty much give 20
years
and then you start making that and i was
like well i want to give up my youth
to have money later that i won't
have like the user energy to spend so
that was kind of the thought process was
like i'm guaranteed to not get what i
want this way and i have a chance of
getting what i want this way so i
decided to go that way and that was
pretty it was like the risk adjusted
return was i have 100 guarantee that i'm
not going to get what i want here
even though like people think it's
good um which is kind of a interesting
side note is that like every one of the
big advancements that i've had in my
life and i've like marked all of them
like i added a zero to my income
uh like per month
and each time it was by giving up
something that everyone else told me was
really good to have something that was
better but it's like the one that you
have and giving it up for something that
you do not know exists yet but you
believe can exist and i think that's the
hardest like jump in life like those

10
00:09:00.000 --> 00:10:00.000
jumps it's like i had a really good job
um and i was gonna start a business it's
like but you have this thing that
everybody will give you status for
but i want to do this and then like i
scaled that up to six locations
you know fast forward three years and
people let you yeah
okay no no you show up this guy's gym
and it's weird when it happens yeah so
he was actually um really cool about it
um and i always remember this he
actually just died last year um from
covet but um no way yeah it was really
sad um for a lot of reasons because he
was also like incredibly jacked he's
persian like me
like really into the business scene was
a pretty big influencer
um so there's a lot of like similarities
and we had like a
like a sort of father-son dynamic you
know what i mean um and so anyways uh he
was like well dude if you don't anywhere
to stay you can stay at my place tonight
and i was like oh thanks and so i went
to his place and i stayed there for uh
that night and his like wife made me
food or whatever and i was like this is
nice like california is great

11
00:10:00.000 --> 00:11:00.000
and then the next morning i went to the
gym with him and then he just like
literally just asked everyone at the gym
he's like anyone have an extra room and
one guy was like you can stay at my
place and so he had next room i paid him
like 400 bucks a month and
that was uh
that was how i that was how i like
started living i worked at that gym for
for three months so what were you doing
at the gym though so he said you can be
my apprentice
and so i mean i think you recognize that
i was like relatively intelligent and
hard working and so he was like just
learn everything that i do so that i
don't have to do it you can do it i was
like okay cool like and so like i was
with him from 4 a.m until 4 p.m every
day because so like my early mornings
kind of started with him because he was
like be at the gym before i was like
okay got it you know because in the
consulting world i was at the office at
10. so it was like
a big difference and so we would work
out from four to five and then we would
start working at five and so that was
and then he was like man everybody
always says that like you can't uh like
work really hard like you have to trade
off he's like he's like they're just not
willing to wake up early he's like i get
i see my kids at four or five o'clock
every day he's like i just wake up
before they're up and i was like hmm but

12
00:11:00.000 --> 00:12:00.000
you know what before we go into that we
got to thank our sponsor ftx alex why
why are you crying
i just got paid
is that isn't that a good thing
yeah but i i want to invest in crypto
and nfts but i don't know how alex if
you want to buy cryptos and nfts easily
and without fees just use ftx ftx ftx
ftx is a cryptocurrency exchange that's
trusted by over 6 million people to buy
sell and track their favorite
cryptocurrencies and nfts all you got to
do is download the ftx app and you could
start buying and selling crypto in
minutes unlike other exchanges that
charge fees any time you make a crypto
transaction withdraw money or basically
just exist the ftx app has no fees
whatsoever the ftx app gives you
important news updates and news feeds
directly from top crypto projects and
every trade you make over ten dollars
you could earn free crypto and they even
have a crypto friendly debit card
allowing you to spend your crypto at
millions of merchants worldwide you can
buy nfts using the ftx app with no gas

13
00:12:00.000 --> 00:13:00.000
fees supporting both ethereum and solana
blockchains start trading crypto and
nfts today with no fees with the ftx app
the link is down below in the
description and start trading cryptos
and nfts with no fees thanks so much ftx
for sponsoring this episode and back to
the podcast back to the podcast what
time does he go to bed he's going to bed
at like nine yeah yeah i mean that's i
go to bed at night all right
and so that actually has kind of stuck
with me is that like there's so many
hours before people wake up that like
you can get like the high quality work
done but anyways
did the three months with him and he was
like hey there's this guy um who's got a
gym like close by to where you want to
open a gym maybe you guys should partner
up and i was like cool sounds good
um so i found a spot
met the guy and uh we were like okay
which is terrible way to do a
partnership like you guys both have the
exact same role and let's just split a
facility which makes no sense but
anyways he was like we should go to this
marketing event and i was like
sure marketing is important like i
didn't know anything um and he's like
yeah it's it the guy said that if you

14
00:13:00.000 --> 00:14:00.000
don't make ten thousand dollars by the
end of the weekend
uh you can get your money back it was
three thousand dollars and i was like
that's a lot you don't mean enough money
like i don't have a ton
and so um i i decided to do it because i
was like well if i don't make 10 grand
i'll get the money back right um
i didn't make 10 grand if i did the
weekend i did not but he did teach this
thing that was kind of crazy and new at
the time called facebook ads this is
2013.
and so um learned uh learned enough to
understand that there was like something
here went back to sam's gym which is the
guy hold up hold on did you get your
money back i didn't no i didn't ask for
it but i i learned enough okay so you
didn't make the amount of money that
they promised anything i didn't make it
but you made no money with your facebook
page i promise we'll give you the money
back and you didn't get the money back
yeah i said you can't ask for it it's
just like how much was it yes it was it
was three grand he said if you don't
make 10 grand by the end of the weekend
you can ask for your money back how are
people making 10 grand by the end of the
weekend i take it through setting up a
facebook uh like a shopify store running
facebook ads it would be like lead ads

15
00:14:00.000 --> 00:15:00.000
to a call then you sell them something
got it yeah i mean so like and i was the
only guy there who didn't have a
business so like from a selection
standpoint i shouldn't have been
selected to attend so it was like a tiny
little workshop of like
10 10 dudes who all owned gyms and so
they had businesses that they could like
sell people into oh i didn't have
anything i was like what am i supposed
to sell but i like i understand like
this is how you build landing pages how
you build ads and i was like just trying
to like understand it um
and i didn't but like i got enough of it
to go back to sam and be like we should
run facebook ads and he was like doesn't
work
it's like i tried it once it's not it's
not for us and i was like well give me a
budget i'll i'll i'll figure it out and
so i ran ads at his gym
and we killed it and so i was like okay
awesome like i'm gonna do this at the
gym that i'm now starting with this
partner and the night before the lease
was supposed to get signed uh the
partner couldn't come up with half the
money to do the gym and so the night
before i ended up assuming the entire
gym um how much did that cost so
supposed to be both we're going to put
25 grand in um and i had 60 and so it

16
00:15:00.000 --> 00:16:00.000
went from
me having like some padding to no
padding uh so it was 50 grand and i had
60. um and so i had like 10 000 left
which is enough for two months rent um
at that gym so i stopped living at the
the place in chino
and started sleeping at the gym because
i couldn't afford two rents
and so um
i remember selling the entire first
month and making exactly
and 4
three dollars which is the exact amount
of the rent and so then i just watched
it go back down to zero and i was like
this sucks
um but the next month we made ten grand
the next month made fifteen then twenty
then twenty it was like five grand a
month all the way up to like thirty five
thousand a month pretty much by month
then um i started hiring people and
bringing people in and then at by month
like nine it was it was all outsourced
so i had the like a manager and some
trainers and whatnot then i had two guys
come in there's a very long story here
like i can i can skip through it but um
anyways it started it started working
started opening a new location every six
months because we kind of did something
a little different where we figured out

17
00:16:00.000 --> 00:17:00.000
i could liquidate the cost of
acquisition for new customers and make
money in the acquisition so like i would
put a dollar in and i would get dollars
back before having a back end so it was
like it was almost more advantageous
just open more gyms so what because i
want some money but what was that one to
thirty yeah so it's like walking through
the process it's like if i had um two
dollar leads right and i know that i'm
gonna close one out of five leads it's
like my cost of acquisition is 10 bucks
and i'm selling a 500 thing and then 48
hours later i'm going to sell 250
supplements and then three weeks after
that i'm going to sell them a year paid
in full up front with a discount and so
if you follow the cash flow it's like i
put 10 out then i got 500 and then i got
250 and then i got a thousand and so i
was like it was insane what was the
business model of the gym like how many
people would be signing up for it how
many people would be actually showing up
what was the cost of that yeah so we
sold we kind of had a different model
than most people and i think that's why
it ended up working well is that most
gyms tend to like i called like the sell
your soul problem which is like you just
they just give away as much as they
possibly can on the front end to attract
people but it attracts in general less

18
00:17:00.000 --> 00:18:00.000
committed people they don't actually
follow through because they don't really
value it um and so we just kind of flip
the model on its head which is like
charge people when they're the most
excited up front
uh so like charge them 500 for define
end program rather than a membership
because one really wants a membership
they just want like a result so sell
them the result and then put like a
really compelling guarantee around that
um and so the offer that we had at that
point was like lose 20 pounds and you
get all the money back
and so people were like oh that's
awesome so it's like they kind of like
bet on themselves to hit the goal but
once they were in the mousetrap it
didn't really matter because as soon as
they came in we'd sell them products so
that would already cover even if they
did refund because they were going to
buy the products and that wasn't
refundable and then you know three weeks
in it's like hey you know lucy you just
lost 12 pounds you need to hit 20.
once you hit 20 or you like you done
forever like your body's perfect and
they're like no i really want to keep
going and you're like right so then you
understand that this is not about six
weeks it's about six years so why don't
we just take that you know 500
i'll give it to you like you want it and
we'll just credit towards you staying
and she's like okay and it's like cool

19
00:18:00.000 --> 00:19:00.000
new agreement signed and then the money
disappears
right and so it didn't really matter and
so um and then yeah and we'd give them
you know payton fool for the year
discount if they wanted to like pay it
all then or we just discount it off of
like the next 12 months or whatever got
it how to lose the 20 pounds
how do you stick with that is that with
a trainer or is it like if you follow
this planned outline yeah so there was
three things right i'm getting my my
fitness selling days but it's like
fitness nutrition accountability so like
fitness-wise you got to work out of the
gym three times a week with a trainer
we'll walk you through everything we'll
show you what to do can you do that yes
cool second thing is nutrition walk you
through a nutrition plan that's made
specifically for you you'll have you
know grocery list for your preparation
instructions eating out guides
everything that you need to make sure
that you can get to where you're trying
to go and make it as easy as possible
i've got kids who don't speak english
and 12 year olds who can do it do you
think you can handle that they say yes
and he's like great third thing is
accountability so it doesn't matter what
plan
i sold 4 000 of these so
i can still do it and spend 10 years um
and so it's like you know i can give you
the best play in the world and the you
know best training best nutrition but if
you don't show up it doesn't matter
right right okay cool so the reason that

20
00:19:00.000 --> 00:20:00.000
we have such a high success rate is that
we have three forms of accountability
one is that you have peer-to-peer
accountability other people are gonna be
starting with who are in the same spot
as you next is you have alumni
accountability so people further ahead
of you are going to be pulling you and
cheering you ahead because they've done
it
and then you've got expert
accountability from the coaches who've
done this 100 times right and the last
one in the most important one is that
the reason we have the success rate we
do which at that time we were doing
about 78 of people who started would hit
the goal which is pretty impressive it's
actually way more impressive than most
like weight loss programs is that people
basically make a bet on themselves and
so you pay 500
you do everything you hit the goal we'll
give you the whole thing back right
and
that was pretty much the explanation
so it's like that makes sense so how
much money were you making from like
actually selling the
membership or whatever because you said
you're giving that money back to them
versus how much your money we didn't
actually if you follow the cash right so
it's like right right versus how much
money you're making like with the
supplements and with like all of these
other things so it was like
about 50 50 in terms of like membership
on the back end ver like because like in

21
00:20:00.000 --> 00:21:00.000
the beginning there's way more front end
sales than there's back in and then the
back end can continue to grow and kind
of compound um
but yeah we was like about 50 50 between
front end and back end
in terms of like cash flow got it
because i know with a lot of gyms don't
they try to get a lot of people in or on
new year's just expecting that like 80
of people are never gonna show up it
depends on the type of gym so it the gym
kind of exists on a continuum on this
side you've got like what i call
facility leasing
gyms which are like you know anytime
fitness planet fitness like they just
the the business model is based on 92
percent of people not showing up like it
couldn't work because if if 100 people
100 of people actually showed up they
would have to charge 200 to 300 a month
because there wouldn't be space okay so
once you've started expanding these gyms
yeah why not just continue on that was a
great question yeah so i yeah i had six
um and i had my next four locations so i
was going to get to 10. i had united
fitness it was going to be like
america's gym i was like very
motivated to do it um and i joined an
internet marketing mastermind which was
like a click funnels mastermind by

22
00:21:00.000 --> 00:22:00.000
russell brunson this is like six years
ago or seven years ago
and um anyways i i went there and
the sales guy was like oh yeah there's
tons of like gym owners here and i mean
i
i it's all like we're all good you know
what i mean but like um he's like yeah
tons of guys like you know learn and
they make even more money doing internet
stuff or whatever and i was like all
right cool if there's other gym owners
and stuff like
cool so i show up i'm the only brick and
mortar business owner every single
person in the group is an internet
person and i was like what am i doing
here um and i think at the time it was
like 25 000 so like i had more money at
this time but it was still a significant
chunk of change um and so i got up there
and i was like well i kind of just
walked them through what i just walked
you through was like this is my model
the sally car customers this is rltv
this is our cost of acquisitions how
much it cost me to open a gym this how
many like gyms i can open per per month
based on this cash flow whatever and i
like talked really fast and i was like
so what do you guys think
yeah and um russell the time was like
i don't think you should be in the gym
business

23
00:22:00.000 --> 00:23:00.000
and i like it actually like killed me
because i was like in front of all these
people i like gave this like whole spiel
about like why i thought it was awesome
he was like
i think you should be showing other
people how to do exactly what you just
talked through
and um and then he said like the
sentence that changed my life which was
um i think you have a level ton skills
in a level two opportunity he's like i
think you should be like building these
types of businesses not like opening and
running gyms
and so that really changed my life
because at that point i was like well
either i don't listen to the guy and
just continue down this path or i you
know
accept that he has more money than me
and
therefore you know i don't necessarily
think he's black and white now but you
know i was like he's a lot more than me
and if i don't listen to him then why
did i pay for this and so i was like
okay and so the next 90 days i sold all
my gems um not for a ton of money i
think in cumulative like i think i sold
them for like
maybe 300 grand it wasn't a lot it
really why so you were making so much
money off the gym yeah i was making like
there's overhead
and every all the cash flow like i
wasn't taking dividends which is a which

24
00:23:00.000 --> 00:24:00.000
is a lesson i can talk about later um
so like i took all the cash in each gym
and just opened up new gyms right and
that was like basically what i did um
and like i unders like
i feel like through like my
entrepreneurial journey it's been like i
very much have come from the the extreme
side of like selling and value and
building stuff that people want and then
there's like this other extreme which is
like investors
and i think as you like age you kind of
meet in the middle because i've got some
friends who like started investing and
then they started buying small
businesses and they started getting
better at business they started getting
better marketing etc
and then you know i'm i was on this side
like i understood how to like make money
but then like didn't really understand
like capital allocation and understand
like how debt worked and understand how
like they're like the equity and the
companies actually had value like you
know i mean like for me it was just like
oh all these gyms are a lot of work i
wonder if somebody will just like take
them off my hands
and so um i probably could have waited
like a year and like got them ready for
sale and like you know cleaned up all
the books and like done all that stuff
but
um

25
00:24:00.000 --> 00:25:00.000
i've just been a huge proponent of
opportunity cost and like within 30 days
i was doing 100 a month in the next
business
so like you know and i was taking home
100 grand a month which was more than i
was taking off from the six gyms
so it's just like okay well that worked
and so like
at the end of the day like whatever we
should be doing
could probably make us 10 times more
than what we're currently doing and like
the faster we can switch to that thing
got it
like it makes more money so how did you
switch to teaching other people how to
do that model yeah so um i was debating
doing a franchise um
so there's there's three basically
different models that you can do to
expand a brick and mortar service type
business you can either franchise you
can license or you can um
or you can do you can privately own them
all right that's kind of like the three
big paths um i had a friend who'd done
the franchise thing i flew out to one of
her facilities we spent the weekend
together show me about all the pros and
cons and she was like it's really slow
it's very litigious and i was like i'm
like 26 at the time i'm like i don't
know if i want to deal with all that
that kind of sucks
um on the private internship side had

26
00:25:00.000 --> 00:26:00.000
already done that
so i was like i guess i'll license and
so um but the in between there was like
i wasn't even sure if i wanted a license
though so i was like well i just know
that i make a ton of money opening gyms
so i'll just go and open a ton of gyms
but i'll just give the gyms to the other
people
so that's when gym launch actually
started was i would fly out to a gym
and i would fill it up doing all the
stuff i knew how to do at my gyms and i
would just keep all the money and they
would get all the customers for free so
that was the deal so i would risk my
money risk my time do all that like run
all the ads everything and all the cash
that i collected was mine and then they
would get 200 free customers that they
would convert on the back into their
membership how do you ensure that they
actually do a good job with those
customers that you don't bring them a
whole bunch of people and they're just
like all right see ya
excellent excellent uh
question uh that was the hole in the
model
uh and so all these gyms that were
coming to me who wanted the help were
typically not that good you know
and that's not that's not an insult to
them it's just you know they didn't know
what to do um and so i would sell 200
people into a gym that currently had 70
members they'd go from 70 270 in like 30

27
00:26:00.000 --> 00:27:00.000
days and they didn't have the systems
they didn't have the bandwidth they
didn't have the trainers any of that and
so what ended up happening is i did that
for
and then we started getting like refunds
and chargebacks and i was like what the
hell but like i'm the one who carries
the bag on the processing because i was
the one who processed the money so they
were doing a bad job but i was the one
who was holding the risk
um and so i uh like in two gyms at one
point got on a chair and told every
single person to refund because they're
like i just can't deal with all these
people like just go home they're
literally just really like go home and
so i had like a hundred fifty thousand
refunds in a week
and that's when i was like all right i'm
done with the gym business like you know
i had my gyms i did this turnaround
thing which was almost two years that
layla and i were flying out to gyms we
scaled up to like eight sales guys doing
eight gyms a month so like it became an
operation we're doing i think a highest
month was like like 350. you know what i
mean so like it was it was a decent
sized operation
um
but we uh anyways
they did that and layla my wife now had
this little like side online business
where she would like train people and so
i was like you know what screw this why

28
00:27:00.000 --> 00:28:00.000
don't we make you the front person i'll
be behind the scenes
and we'll just take the eight sales guys
and we'll just sell fitness direct and
not do the gym thing anymore and so that
actually started to work and so we
started doing a thousand bucks a day
within like 14 days and so i was like we
take the eight guys we'll do eight
thousand a day like this could work how
do you build these businesses so fast
every single business you've told me so
far it's like all right in one week
we're like doing 300 grand a year you
know it's like so i mean acquisition.com
the reason it's called that is like
acquisition has never been the
bottleneck in any business i've ever had
like we know how to get customers um and
so like we knew how to market and sell
and so we knew how to do that and so
that's what we did so we knew how to run
ads we had to get on the phone and talk
to people who didn't know us and get
them to give us their money
and so that's what we did and then what
ended up happening this was like the
craziest thing of my life
is that i had eight gyms that were
supposed to launch the next month and we
started this thing started working her
like the fitness thing
so i called up the first gym and was
like hey man like changing model like
i'm not flying out you know and they
didn't pay for me to do this they
basically just reserved a date and i
would fly out or one of our team you

29
00:28:00.000 --> 00:29:00.000
know would fly out we'd launch the ads
and we'd sell i was like sorry man not
gonna happen he's like dude i just
refinanced my house i'm acting on my
credit card it's like just to make this
gym work i've been doing this for three
years like you you launched my buddy jim
and he's like totally pumped and his
gym's packed like i need like you have
to do
this and i was like all right man um i'm
not flying it like i'm not i'm not going
to do what i did i was like but i can i
can show you how to do it um i'm calling
my getting out of the gym business like
sell my secret sale um he's like well
how much and i was like and i remember
thinking like the highest number could
possibly imagine which was at the time
six thousand dollars like that was like
the highest number i could just to show
you where i was um he was like done and
i just remember like staring at the
phone and being like holy [ __ ]
six thousand dollars like
hot damn um and so i you know
called the next guy i had the exact same
conversation he was like how much and i
was like eight grand and he was like
okay
and i called the
the next six guys and we did like sixty
thousand dollars in sales in that day
just selling like my entire like system
of how i would fill the gyms up and all

30
00:29:00.000 --> 00:30:00.000
that stuff and i was like holy [ __ ] i
looked delayed i was like i think we're
still in the gym business i was like i
think we're just doing it wrong and so
then i called back all the 30 40 gyms
that we'd already done the turnarounds
for and i was like remember i filled
your gym up they're like yeah i was like
remember how i made all that money and
you didn't they were like yeah thank you
for that
and i was like want me to show you how i
did it and they were like really and i
was like yeah they were like done
because they'd seen how much money i'd
taken out of their jobs right and so i
like overnight i'd sold like we did like
300 and like we again did like 300 grand
but this time there was no operational
drag because it was just like the same
like the cost of making the thing once
versus selling it 100 times was the same
and that was when i basically understood
the
value of having leverage so can you
explain acquisition.com so you yeah
what does it do
yeah what's the so
um it's it's we call it value
acceleration capital but if you were to
look at like three circles on the table
and you've got like private equity
venture capital and then management
consulting it's kind of like the
intersection of those three so it's like
we deal with companies that are
typically smaller than most private
equity so ours are like one to ten

31
00:30:00.000 --> 00:31:00.000
million dollars in ebitda so so for
people to know that means just like
fancy word for profit just use it as
that right um the amount of money that a
company's taking home most of the
companies that we're working with are
like
three is the minimum top line cut off
most at times they're at like
five to like 25 million
ish um
i think the smallest company we have
right now is five million next smallest
is like 10 so like and then after that
they're all bigger um
and so what we do is we we take a
minority stake in the company um and i'm
using this as kind of my way to
practice being a majority owner without
being a majority owner so we're doing
everything exactly as we would if we
were to take over the entire company
and so we kind of follow a three-step
process so the first thing we do is we
we get the data infrastructure in place
and so typically a company of that size
that's doing like you know one million
two million five million in ebitda um
you know they got there pretty quickly
they don't have infrastructure they're
reporting that their finances are
terrible like everything's a mess but
like they know how to sell and they've

32
00:31:00.000 --> 00:32:00.000
got some product market fit and so um we
go in and just get all of the data
correct so we can actually like make
good decisions so once we have the
correct data uh then we come up with
kind of our strategic plan of like okay
what kind of company do we want to build
where do we think like the biggest
leverage opportunities exist and then we
put them all out and then we're like
okay there's a lot of things we could do
what are the two things we're going to
do and then we just disregard everything
else and just ruthlessly focus on those
two things and then um and then the
third kind of arm of what we do is we're
very good at recruiting and so like the
reason we want to build so many
companies that we're very good at
finding talent and so um kind of an
interesting framework for for you guys
or for your audience
is i think a lot of times we talk about
like pipelines in terms of like building
businesses it's like how do i turn raw
attention into leads into prospects and
customers etc but there's a second
acquisition channel which is like how do
i market to get applications that i then
interview which is the same as the sale
just internal right and then how do i
onboard just same as onboarding a
customer and then how do i send the same
thing how do i send a customer so
there's mirror mirror acquisition

33
00:32:00.000 --> 00:33:00.000
pipelines that are happening on both
sides of a business as this one flows in
with new customers you so too need one
that flows in uh with recruiting to
build the infrastructure of the company
and so most of the times the companies
we're working with have this sort of and
none of this and they don't have the
infrastructure upon which to build and
so it's like we get the right data to
make the right decisions and then we
fill the people that can actually
execute that vision so that like a lot
of times people most entrepreneurs think
and and rightfully so usually with like
under 3 million 5 million like the
entrepreneur needs to learn more um
and typically the company will be a
subset of the entrepreneur's knowledge
so it's like i can do every job of my
company better than all the people who
are currently doing it and all of them
have learned from me
that's a really terrible way to build a
business because it's literally just you
and no one's smarter than you
and businesses are always the
the accumulation of all of the brains in
it but if the brains are all subset of
yours it's the accumulation of one brain
which the bigger your brain great but
but like it's way better to have like 10
good brains that are that all know
different things
and so

34
00:33:00.000 --> 00:34:00.000
that's when uh we kind of have to be
like it's not about you learning more
like we need to get someone who's
already done this 10 times in companies
just like this so we need to go find a
director of finance we need to go find a
you know controller we need to go find
you know recruiter we need to go find x
y and z to really build the company into
what it needs to become rather than like
the
transition from the genius with a
thousand hands uh which is what most
companies are at that point to like an
actual company that has people who can
drive growth in their respective
apartments so they'll probably just talk
straight for like an hour or so yeah
what's the end goal with it do you want
to now sell this or is your goal is to
have a whole bunch of small ownership
interest i think eventually i'll do
majority buyouts um but i think for the
next five years minimum i'm focused on
these minority deals to prove track
record um
but i'm not planning on raising money um
i don't need it um
i want to there's a lot of checkboxes
that acquisition.com met which is like i
wanted to have something that uh i would
have a lot of new different businesses
that i could like interact with um i

35
00:34:00.000 --> 00:35:00.000
wanted to still have one singular focus
which is a difficult
balance to strike between those things
which is why i ended up selling the
majority of those three to just go all
in on the portfolio being the one thing
rather than like i have three companies
and i have my portfolio which for me i
can't handle um most people probably
better than i am and that's why they can
do it but i can't do it um and so uh it
had to have a way that i could actively
get returns on my own money because like
it's great to invest but like
i know the stuff that i'm buying i i
know what it's worth and i know how to
improve it
um so i can just i can just get so much
better value from my money in doing
these types of transactions and these
types of deals
and so ultimately i want to build
something that i don't ever want to sell
i don't think i'm going to transact like
the only type of transaction that i
would ever do would be some sort of like
very minority participation of like
mosey nation friends and family and
things like that i might sell like five
percent to like everyone who knows me
and just to be like
trust me like just put this in your
pocket and wait 20 years like because

36
00:35:00.000 --> 00:36:00.000
i i think that we have a a pretty cool
opportunity we're very good at like
we've built six
uh multi-figure businesses in the last
five years so like we know this process
and so i just want to prove it out with
like 50 or 100 and in terms of like the
why because like i don't need the money
obviously um
like the mission of the company is like
rings true to my heart which is just
like it's the documentary the best
practices of building world-class
companies it's like what i love it's
like why i wrote the books why i do the
channel so i make the courses like
i just i just love business yeah do you
invest it doesn't sound like you invest
at all it seems like you have no index
funds you have no real estate you're
just like why would i waste my time
earning a measly eight percent a year
when i could just buy another business
no i um so actually you'd be surprised
um i have i've probably
a quarter of my cash in indexes
um i've got uh probably you mind talking
numbers yeah sure i've got about 60
million bucks um like that's not like
equities in companies that are not like

37
00:36:00.000 --> 00:37:00.000
publicly traded so like i would consider
a commercial apartment building or a
stock
stuff that people would accept as like
money whereas like my equity in a
company that's doing 30 million a year
what is it worth it depends on the day
right you know what i mean um so like
that's what i have and so like it's
basically split up between um indexes
um
indexes uh
real estate just big multi
buildings i try and do like fewer so
like just a handful of like
multi-million dollar like um allocations
because
like at some point like it doesn't make
sense to put like 100 million so a
hundred thousand dollar like 250 000
allocations like it just it's just are
you investing in um like like syndicates
for that money or you're doing it
yourself well i'll share something with
you so um i learned from a mentor um who
sold his company which is in the real
estate space for 3.6 billion and i was
like hey man who is it i i won't share
because he doesn't want his numbers
publicly all right um
but anyways he sold his real estate
thing um and i was like so what do you

38
00:37:00.000 --> 00:38:00.000
think i should do and he's like well
with the
he's like the slugs that you're putting
in he's like you should just always have
you should always be participating in
the gp um and so for everyone who's
watching like you have your limited
partners and you have your general
partners so limited partners normally
will will contribute the majority of the
capital general partners will actually
run the deal and there's usually some
sort of agreement between them in terms
of the split there's some sort of prefer
you know preference or some sort of you
know split in terms of after the fact
like there's a million ways to structure
those agreements and so he's like well
if you're going to be putting up the
money for these deals and if you can do
like a third or a half or more of the
entire deal he's like you should just
also get a corresponding percentage of
the general partnership and so like we
realized that and then you know after
talking to lots of different gps we're
like all right what are the handful of
people that we want to do business with
that we like
and then we're just like listen we'll
just fund all your deals like just like
when you see another you know 30 million
building i was like we'll just fund it
like and then we'll just
like there won't be lps it'll just be us
and we'll fund it and we'll just have a
simple arrangement how do you do your
taxes i'm thinking of all of this
thinking like it's got to be a stack of
like that it's not as complex as you

39
00:38:00.000 --> 00:39:00.000
think because like all the stock stuff
is like automatically generated right um
and then you know we don't and because
of like in the very beginning layla and
i were like all right let's try and
participate in these like real estate
things and i think we allocated like one
and a half million dollars between like
eight deals and i was like this is
stupid let's not do this
because like they would be like hey can
you sign i was like dude like the fact
that you asked me to sign this is not
worth the time
um and so uh we stopped doing that we
were like all right what's our minimum
allocation size it's like 5 million
bucks those are the chunks that we're
doing and so like if it's not that i
don't care and so that's kind of like
what and so now it's just like we have
two or three operators that we work with
that can that do that are doing deals in
those sizes and so like when they come
with a really good one and then we're
like yeah we'll do it we'll take it down
or we're like we won't but it's
interesting but they pre they like
pre-screen you know i mean and like the
nice thing is that like when you're not
on like the traditional lp you're not
just like on their their list of 100
investors that they're going to go and
try and get 50 to 100 grand from right
like you're just
a nothing for us it's like
dude if we take the whole deal down like

40
00:39:00.000 --> 00:40:00.000
make it good you know like i'm making
your life easier making my life easier
right so like everybody wins
that's awesome yeah so that's what we do
on that side and then um
and then i i still have a big chunk in
cash and um i'm just not that afraid of
inflation okay it's just not as big of a
deal for me mostly because i just own
businesses
so like i can adjust prices if i need to
and i think just in terms of a
percentage it's like if three percent of
your portfolio is in cash oh no it's
like way harder than that even five
percent it's like way harder than that
ten i know we're like twenty five
percent twenty five percent oh oh wow so
twenty five percent of sixty million
yeah
but
fifteen you know why
is that just for to find deals as they
come up
yes okay um we i have considered
actually putting it into like a dividend
etf um and then just taking loans
against it to fund the deals it's
something i'm literally actively
thinking about um
i think there's just like peace of mind
um and as you probably just saw from my
decision to sell three companies in one
year and a house and two cars um i saw

41
00:40:00.000 --> 00:41:00.000
everything last year um literally all my
material possessions um why'd you do
that i just wanted a clean slate
you know i mean like every five years or
so i feel like i've like i had like
three seasons i had like my college and
management consulting season
um i had my gym ownership season i had
my
gym launch prestige labs allen season
and then like this is like the season of
acquisition.com
so it's like it's always been in like
that three to five year season range and
so like every time i end up usually just
like cleaning the slate how do you focus
how does your wife feel about that oh
she's fine she doesn't care well she
works with me in the business she's
co-ceo so we actually met um
so our first date
i just pitched around working for me
because i was like
how did you meet her
i was like this might not work out i was
like but like
like if you could because she could sell
she was the top sales person for 24 hour
fitness um for all of our is that how
you met her not i met her through bumble
but dude
she told me she was the top sales rep

42
00:41:00.000 --> 00:42:00.000
and i was like
like if you can sell we can make a ton
of money together and she was like okay
she's like i want to learn how to market
and i was like well i just so happened
to know how to do that
and so um yeah so i was like i'm going
to start this company called gym launch
and then she was like whatever and the
next time she saw me i was like look i
got the bank accounts i got the
corporate and she was like okay you're
like really doing this i was like yeah
like yes
i'm doing it um i was like you should
quit your job and join me and she was
like i literally just met you i was like
yeah you should totally quit your job
and join me like i'm gonna go like fly
around the country and launch these gyms
and she was like
let me know how it goes and so i
launched the first three gyms came back
um she picked me from the airport i
hadn't taken her date yet it's a funny
story yeah and um
and uh
i was like i will take you on the state
i promise as long as you do this one
thing for me first and she's like what i
was like you helped me process these
contracts and so i had this stack of
contracts that was like this pie and so
i told her how to process them and we
processed like 120 grand in like an hour
and she was like
what do you do again and then and she
like before i could even answer she was
like is it legal
but you know for a fact when you're

43
00:42:00.000 --> 00:43:00.000
handing her a stack of contracts between
120 grand you're like all right yeah
come join now you see you see these
numbers you see what we're doing you
want to join did you start off as like
employees first was she your employee
first and then it evolved
so we we were it was literally like same
time like we started dating and i was
like you should quit your job
and so like there was a lot of trust
obviously you know what i mean like and
while i went to go launch these three
gyms like i left and i was like hey
here's my bank account and can you go
pick up all the money at all my gyms and
so she was like showing up as this girl
that i'd only known for 10 days like
with like a big bag where they would
like put all the cash in and she'd be
like thank you like a drug dealer like
and she go to the next gym and like they
just put all the cash in she was like
they're not paying with jack or like
well so we had so anybody who bought
physical products well people still use
cash you know i mean this was five years
ago too um
and so like we had a certain percentage
of the sales that were i didn't have a
cash register because i didn't want to
encourage cash theft and all that stuff
and so um if someone paid in cash that
we had a little envelope system where
they were like what was it for the
amount then they'd slide it in the safe
and then we'd pick up the cash once a
month so what did you sell

44
00:43:00.000 --> 00:44:00.000
the other year like you said you sold
everything yeah what was that like
there's a house he said two cars so i
sold allen the software company the
strategic buyer you can't just go
surprise on that one okay so the
supplement company procedure apps i sold
gym launch um i sold the majority shares
of both of those or all three of those
and then i sold my house in austin um
which
was crazy um
it like doubled in value which is cool
um
since you sold it
no no since so we bought it for 1.8 we
sold it for four got it um
in in three years which is cool um and i
bought that all cash no mortgage so i
actually have zero debt which is
um ironic uh
everyone's like that's all smart and i'm
like i don't know whatever i might just
mean it it's very possible um and so
anyways we uh sold that and then sold my
cars i had a bentley um which i only
bought because like i hadn't spent money
on really anything expensive and then
people were like dude you should buy
something expensive and i was like all
right i guess we'll like we only had one
car until like last year what car was it
uh it was an i8 which i got as a gift um

45
00:44:00.000 --> 00:45:00.000
for being an affiliate of click funnels
so they give you an i8 yeah we sent them
a lot of business oh my gosh yeah did
wow does russell send you that like
personally
uh basically he's like here's the list
of cards you can get
and i was like can i just get like can i
just get the money he was like no you
have to get the car i was like why is
that for like marketing yeah yeah it's
like you got you set up a picture and
then like a video like clickfunnels
great and then and then you get the car
so um wow yeah so
so about the i8 um ironically couldn't
even uh
couldn't get a loan for the i8 and we're
doing like a million a month take home
at the time you know what i mean
couldn't get a loan
no credit score i've never had debt okay
i've like i've never had that ever yeah
so like i don't have a besides credit
cards like which like like business
credit cards like we i have no i have no
history of repayment i bought my house
no you have no personal credit card i
have a personal credit card that gets
paid off you know every month or
whatever but like i have no like
loan i don't have a mortgage i have
nothing
so i'm gonna take i think i'm trying to

46
00:45:00.000 --> 00:46:00.000
take my first mortgage out buying a
house so it'll be exciting
why just to have a history of the
mortgage um oh why am i taking the
mortgage yeah yeah and you know
i think it makes like that seems like
low-risk debt to me you know i was uh i
would say you know a lot of people poo
poo on dave ramsey he he introduced the
concept of debt to me that i that i
thought was valuable which is like debt
increases risk risk expanded over a long
enough time horizon can get you to zero
and my
my tolerance for zero like the marginal
utility i have more money is basically
nothing the the marginal cost of me
going to zero is very high and so like i
want to risk money
i want to increase my risk to get more
of something that i don't need and risk
something that i do have that i do need
like you just thought about it like that
yeah yeah and so
you know and and when i think about like
how how am i going to become a
billionaire um because right now because
like i'm probably over like a 100
million if you like took the other 40
million from my equities of the other
companies that i own and so it's like i
just have to 10x over the rest of my
life and so but like i don't think i'm

47
00:46:00.000 --> 00:47:00.000
gonna get there through indexes i mean i
could if you put it 45 years out or
whatever but um
i think that like it's the appreciation
of equity which is where i'm going to
get it through these companies that
become something big
um and so just realizing that that's
actually where my wealth is going to be
built
i just everything in my life is built
around just minimizing the amount of
head space that it takes up so i can put
it in the vehicle that i get the highest
return on i wouldn't even get a mortgage
why i would just pay it out just
continue doing what you're doing yeah
not even worth it
i think um
we might i mean like i mean it's it's a
non-decision like i don't i don't have a
lot of emotional investment in it okay
yeah walk us through like a normal day
like what time do you get up because you
said like you you showed up here and
you're like no i don't want coffee i
already had two coffees yeah i was like
i told you i was like we should do it at
night and you're okay sure and i said
sure 7 30 or i said something like that
you're like oh man that's late i was
like you partying
um no like we usually get up at four or
five you know i mean like i don't we
don't we don't have an alarm clock uh

48
00:47:00.000 --> 00:48:00.000
but we i have like
i have a mental alarm clock for when i'd
get exhausted and get sleepy
what time is it yeah like between nine
and ten okay nine and ten i'm usually
going to bed okay so i thought you know
fall asleep at 10 wake up at four at six
hours like it's fine so if i need more
sleep i'll sleep till five like you've
always been a morning person
since i did that thing with sam since i
went from like waking up and
i mean i've always been okay in the
morning like i i i definitely now would
be what i can't i can't strong word i
i don't work past like four
so i'm like uh like i usually work from
like four or five until
like 11.
and that's when i get all my work done
and then from like 11 to 3 or 4 is when
i do like meetings and stuff then i've
structured my day like that for a while
and it works for me what advice do you
have for us see i need to pick
i need to pick your brain on this yeah
i'm here let's rock give us advice
how do we make
money
well you have like an insane audience

49
00:48:00.000 --> 00:49:00.000
and so i think it's just like figuring
out what what you know i was talking to
um
uh mr beast uh
and he was like and i i still have this
recommendation so if you do if you are
watching this i'd still stand by what i
said which i feel like he should have um
an energy drink called like beast mode
or something i was like every single
like it's because it had to be something
that like kids could consume it had to
be something that was a mass market it
had to be something they had good repeat
purchase it had to be something that had
good gross margins and i was like so i
thought about it for a while because we
were talking about stuff um
and i feel like i feel like he should
have that for his channel and so i feel
i i use that as an example of like i
think that there has to be something
that that within your audience would be
really awesome that would be a good
vehicle like um i know you know grant
cardone right like
he's been able to build you know a
billion dollars worth of equity because
he used a better vehicle than all the
youtubers but he doesn't have like more
reach than youtubers he has a better
vehicle
and so i think that it's it's that it's
like i think the vehicle that most of
them are like the ad revenue and like
core sales are like meh like who cares i

50
00:49:00.000 --> 00:50:00.000
mean like nothing wrong with it but like
there's there's better ways to skin the
cat and so i think it's really um
figuring out what high leverage play you
can make there so that's where like fun
vehicles or high leverage plays you know
i mean like anything that's investment
related is always a higher leverage play
and it's like well i don't know what i
would necessarily invest in it's like
well then go acquire that skill or go
find the guy who has that skill bring
them in cut them a piece and then be
like cool here's this guy he's awesome
like i'm putting all my money with this
because xyz and you can too or whatever
yeah
obviously there's regulatory and all
that stuff but like you can do it legit
there's nothing different about that
versus you know a guy on wall street
doing the same thing he's just like
calling friends and family and calling
lists from trust funds you know what i
mean and you just be hitting your own
audience which gives you your own upside
you mentioned grant cardone i noticed
that you posted this one video i paid
yeah cardone it was a hundred and twenty
thousand dollars yeah over the 30th 130
000 over like what was it said 120 i
actually now remember i think it was
130. yeah got it yeah and that was over
what like four sessions
yeah so my wife got me a christmas gift

51
00:50:00.000 --> 00:51:00.000
as a surprise yeah and so she was like
what can i get alex and so she like
called
um grant's office up and was like i
would have paid
thousand yeah i know she skimped this
year i'm like really upset about it um
magic no just give me the money yeah
i think so right but like do you guys
have joint accounts
yeah i mean i've i don't i've never
logged into our account so i don't i
could all this money i could be making
up i have no idea like and i mean in
terms of like i'm not making it up but
i'm saying like right you just don't
want my yeah she'd manage all stuff i
don't know okay so when you're
purchasing it how often would you say
you purchase things i mean daily and do
you ever like think when you swipe
it's just like okay i think i need it i
kind of want it i've always been curious
about that so if you guys share an
account and she
buys the 120 000 is that gift kind of
like you both are paying for it yeah i
mean yeah
yeah for her money you know i mean like

52
00:51:00.000 --> 00:52:00.000
yeah i was hustling on the side on only
fans just yeah yeah i was like i'd
rather you just not do that yeah no but
she yeah she co-owns everything with me
you know i mean so she's half the
money's all hers anyways wait what did
you get her when i was for christmas
yeah would you get her um actually
something pretty cool um i told her i
was like this is my best present for
five years like you just gotta give me
credit next year too um so i got her
this uh this there was like a whole
presentation behind it um which my
assistant helped me with um but uh got
this
photo book that had like all these
pictures in it from like the early days
until now like hundreds it was like
really well done and then it was like
hey we've made lots of memories together
maybe we should make some more and so
got like uh the lady who does the
photography sessions for vogue
um to do like a joint
like we need more head shots and stuff
it's been like four years since we've
done the last one so i was like maybe
i'll make a thing of something that
would be a business expense um and so
we're gonna do like a full day like uh
like photo shoot for like you know it's
new season
new all my stuff's like gym stuff so
it's like new season new pictures

53
00:52:00.000 --> 00:53:00.000
so that was the gift
sounds lamer now that i'm describing it
too but like no it's cool the
photographer yeah yeah it was nice
there was like some stuff around it but
yeah that was uh that was but anyway so
she got me that because like what do you
get somebody who
like
it's like money has very very little
marginal utility right like there's once
you have enough there's the added value
is very low right and so i was like well
like for me everything i always value is
like if i can get education or some sort
of skill or belief that needs to be
broken like that's all that i try and
spend my money on it's the highest and
like is the best thing that i've gotten
honestly in in a long time um
and so she called them up and they were
like you can't do that and she was like
just name a number i'll do it and then
they was like i'm not sure i'm gonna
have to call you back and then the guy
hung up and she was like i thought this
was a sales organization
she's like i'm here saying i will pay
you whatever you want so anyways the
manager called back was like you will be
dealing with me directly forget about
that guy
um and he's like we can absolutely
facilitate this um and so i think it was
30 000 a call or something like that how
long were the calls

54
00:53:00.000 --> 00:54:00.000
um an hour
ish so uh would you say you got a
hundred and thirty thousand dollars
worth of value out of that so explain
the calls so like how does the first
call go
have you met him yet at this point not
in person i mean we met on zoom so you
had spoke to him previously
the the first call i had with grant was
a zoom call oh that was the first time
you've ever spoken to exactly
wouldn't you think uh and when was this
actually
uh about a year ago i still haven't used
all the calls
got it
okay i've done two calls i was just
thinking at your level even a year ago
that you would have access to grant
cardone without the maybe i mean he's
pretty busy you know what i mean and
like i'm
i don't
like i'm
i'm no one from like uh
like i you know i mean like a year ago i
didn't have an audience i started making
youtube stuff a year ago so like okay oh
that's new sure um
but yeah so i mean i didn't have
anything to offer besides money i was
like i will i would happily pay you for
so

55
00:54:00.000 --> 00:55:00.000
what what happened in the first call
um i said you know
these are the four kind of areas that
i'm looking at and i'd like your
contacts and one of the things that's
unique about grant is that like he's
he's he's he's followed a similar
trajectory obviously you know he does
his own vibe he does his own thing but
like in terms of like actual doing this
like he was a car sales guy
and then he started teaching car sales
and then he went broader and started
teaching sales
um and then he transitioned to marketing
briefly uh and then he transitioned to
real estate which has been the main
thing now
um and so with each of those kind of
iterations uh he's grown bigger and
wider uh in terms of what he's done and
so i was like okay you know i was a gym
guy and i started teaching gyms and i
started going more general and so like
there's a similar path there and he also
has a i think a good dynamic with elena
that i was like i think that's cool i
think they have a good thing going there
which i which most people don't um so i
was like okay i would like to understand
the fame machine it's like my bullets so
it's like i'd like to understand the
fame machine i wanted to understand more
about how's actual businesses functioned
um i would understand the wealth machine
in terms of how he sees it um

56
00:55:00.000 --> 00:56:00.000
there's a fourth one i can't remember
but i did have four and those are the i
mean obviously i guess those are the
ones that i care about most now but um
yeah so i i asked him for context on the
income thing which actually did help
give direction for acquisition.com so
for me like did i make 120 back like in
five seconds you know what i mean and i
think one of the things with like people
see the prices but like
i think it's understanding like relative
income and also relative to upside which
is like
for for context it's like if you make 10
million dollars a year
right it's like i'm making 20 times more
than the average american household
right is that 10 million or 200 times
200 50 there it is yeah yeah so um so
200 times more
than the 50k so take whatever price
something costs and divide it by 200 and
that's the relative cost
and so it's like okay i can't believe
you got to 200 dinners every night i'm
like well it cost me a dollar would you
go out to a five-star dinner for cost
you a dollar sure
well that's why we do it you know what i

57
00:56:00.000 --> 00:57:00.000
mean like and uh like would you pay this
hundred twenty thousand dollars if it
cost you whatever that is divided by two
hundred right less yeah
you know whatever that it was six
hundred bucks to talk to grant or seven
eight hundred bucks to talk to bring
hard on yes i would do that
absolutely and so that's why we we do
that and then relative to upside is like
i like only way that i can like people
like i wish i could have access to bill
gates right yeah 150 to talk to grant
credit right so it makes sense like to
talk to um to bill gates right it's like
there's nothing that bill gates can tell
me
i don't think at this point that i could
ever get
what it would what it would cost me to
pay him for his time like i have to be
bigger
in order to have enough leverage to use
whatever he would give me so like if i'm
at like a billion and he's at 100
billion he's a hundred times bigger than
me but like he could give me something
that for the relative small amount of
time to pay him i get enough leverage to
go from one billion to 10 billion like

58
00:57:00.000 --> 00:58:00.000
that's reasonable but if you're like a
hundred thousand dollars
you don't you know there's no lever you
can pull on right that's gonna
make up the delta and so it's like i'm a
big believer in like try and go two
steps ahead but like ten steps ahead
this month no yeah yeah it makes no
difference you know like they're so far
like
the cost because we're like i should pay
grant cardone you're like i'm like dude
you're a sales guy there's nothing he
can tell you besides like save your
money which
there you go you know i mean right like
for me i had things that i was like i've
got these three portfolio companies this
is what i'm doing with my money i'm
consider you know and like when i was
thinking about doing the sale i talked
to him about that i was like what do you
think about this and
you know he basically said like
don't don't sell if it's financial he's
like but there are other reasons to sell
which if you don't want to own it
anymore you want to do something else
then
then then do it you know what i mean but
it's not from from a financial
standpoint doesn't make sense and so we
were in agreement on that but i ended up
pulling the trigger for other reasons
how many calls have you done with them
so far two i did a podcast which has got
what got aired that actually wasn't a
coaching call that was a podcast for
like the community but um

59
00:58:00.000 --> 00:59:00.000
so i've done three calls technically but
two of them were coaching calls and the
two calls that were coaching calls were
not aired
not because i didn't want to but he they
weren't recorded for whatever reason
there's like a text malfunction it's
funny that you paid forty thousand
dollars or whatever it was per call 30
000
and uh and then
you held on to like the tickets that you
have like the coupons or whatever for
the calls what if you held on for like
10 years yeah and grant is then worth
you know like billions of dollars or
something like that right then you can
can you still use this
probably
that's funny i mean grant grant so as
much as like a lot of people talk about
a crap about grant but like haven't met
grant um
he's incredibly respectful he's super
attentive he like writes notes during
the calls he like pays attention
like and he genuinely came from a place
of trying to help and so like i have i
have nothing but
you know respect and he's been nothing
but helpful for me
you were telling uh uh me something
earlier about the mustache as far as
branding is concerned that's why i
mentioned jack shaved the mustache i
shaved my mustache i gotta say i'm not a

60
00:59:00.000 --> 01:00:00.000
fan of the mustache personally
i thought you're gonna say that you're
now like realizing that it was good for
me now mustache
your podcast the my first million that
you did you're talking about personal
branding uh could you explain this
because i do think it's really
interesting and i and i do think that uh
uh jack you should probably hear this
and i'm i'm going in with an open mind
well i just don't understand why you get
rid of so much raw masculinity in one
foul swoop you know you're like i'm not
a fan of the stash it's like i'm not a
fan of the feminine face no
i'm just kidding um no but uh but on the
on the show i read a book by dan kennedy
and i think in some paragraph somewhere
he was like people who have recognizable
facial features are um are more easily
remembered um and so it helps for
branding and things like that and so i
was like okay and i fell into the
mustache it wasn't supposed to be like
the stash i had that in the back of my
mind
but i ended up just doing a porn stash
for my first
event because i was like so nervous to
like i was like what if i tank or what
no one likes me or whatever and so i was
i did that to like look at myself in the

61
01:00:00.000 --> 01:01:00.000
mirror and be like
you will survive you have a porn stash
like
this is all a joke and it's all gonna be
okay and so anyways i got out and i
think the event really went really well
and like two-thirds of the dudes the
next week all had porn stashes who came
to the event and so so like it just like
instantly just became a thing and so
then i was like i guess i can't shave
this and so five years later like i
didn't shave it pretty much until
um until cove had hit and then i was
just like burnt out um at that point but
um i'll probably bring the stash back at
some point but now i have a beard so
but you were telling me uh what was it a
buddy in college yes
i also had a mustache uh so he well he
was dipping that was his issue so
um yeah what's dipping
uh real oh like putting like tobacco in
your lip like
dip oh like the baseball players yeah
exactly yeah yeah so there's two in
tobacco and then there's like dip which
is like smaller pouches and stuff or
dirt um but anyways i was in college i
was a pledge and this guy that i was
driving home because that's what you do
in your pledges drive you know drunk
brother's home with the girls that they

62
01:01:00.000 --> 01:02:00.000
have in the back um and uh and this girl
was with this guy who was like notorious
for like always pulling the hottest
girls and all this stuff and he was like
a senior and uh and he was still dipping
while this girl was like while he was
like making out with this girl like he
still had tobacco in his bath but still
like everywhere and she was like ah dip
is so disgusting
um and he was like pledge he was like
life lesson listen and i was like oh god
because either he's like going to haze
me or something or you know and he was
like
she's more attracted to the fact that i
don't give a [ __ ] about what she thinks
then she's disgusted by the dip in my
mouth and i which was ridiculous but
also probably true so i think um i think
the stash is a lot like that which is
like
because i think you asked me like how
does your wife feel about the stash like
i think at the end of the day like she
would care she'd be more attracted to me
being me than she would be unattracted
by a choice of haircut if i was not
being me to have a more quote attractive
haircut that would be a far bigger turn
off than
than me just being me i think that's

63
01:02:00.000 --> 01:03:00.000
very true that was that was my that was
my porn stash and dipping uh lifeless i
just thought that was really interesting
but from like a brand standpoint
well i actually had to uh license out
likeness for the stash uh in the sale of
the business so it was definitely a
thing enough that yeah it was like had
to be listed as a line item on
intellectual property so is the beard
intentional too for no no i just
happened to have one and i like it was
like scruff they got too long and then
it was like keep it i was like it seems
like you're going for kind of a look
though like like uh like uh like you
just came out lumberjacks yeah you know
it's a lumberjack
these are so comfortable look this is
stretchy i know well i know because
there's no way to get your biceps
through like a normal non-stretchy
flannel
well but
i've been looking at them the whole time
man they're insane oh yeah man we're
gonna we're no
oh yeah we're going we're going all the
way man we're going all the way i gotta
hit the gym right after this no me too
seriously do you want to go to the gym
now anyways uh wow it wasn't really so

64
01:03:00.000 --> 01:04:00.000
so i've been consistently just always
trying to optimize off function and so
like these shirts are super comfortable
but i also have like four temperatures
because like right now i'm a little hot
um and so like so there's four
temperatures with the shirt i actually
stopped wearing t-shirts because like
beaters are awesome and so i just like
recently discovered these and i was like
i will wear these forever i think how
much are they yeah beaters like five
cents these are nothing
oh you're talking about the beater i
thought you're talking about that oh the
flannels these are actually really
expensive yeah i'm kind of embarrassed
by that i'm guessing probably two fifty
three what they're like one yeah they're
like 200 bucks yeah i thought that looks
like you got to find every time and get
like and get like 30 or 40 bucks off you
should be getting this for free i
probably should yeah but i'm not good at
the influencer game you know what you
should do is a handlebar mustache well
that's what i had that's what i kind of
had for you like gunslinger
yeah but i think go all the way down all
the way yeah
all the way down
um but yeah so this is cool because i if
it gets cold i can button up and i can
roll the sleeves down yeah if it gets a
little warmer i can roll the sleeves up

65
01:04:00.000 --> 01:05:00.000
and keep it buttoned
i can open it and keep the sleeves
rolled or i can keep it open and roll
the sleeves down so i have four
different temperature settings and i can
take it off so like i have tons of
temperature adjustment with one setting
and with this i have the beater and i've
got like basically hawaiian shirts and
i've got flannels so it's like when it's
summer i'll switch to hawaiians and it's
winter and i'll have flannels and i can
just have beater as the base and i'll
have any t-shirts an affiliate link like
you gotta buy a minority steak in this
this i probably should i have a lot i
literally have all of the colors of this
shirt oh my gosh
[Laughter]
jack do you want to tell them about your
walk do you want to mention oh sure yeah
yeah so all right this is also something
i haven't told you so basically i
planned
on i plan on walking from los angeles to
las vegas okay tomorrow tomorrow
actually yeah that's insane okay thank
you yeah yeah and
and basically i talked with greenberg i
kind of wanted to make a video around it
i walked this amount of x miles to 300
miles for a tinder date first that was
the the plan of the video and then i

66
01:05:00.000 --> 01:06:00.000
spoke with graham about it and graham
was like you know it's not really
different if you walk 300 versus 100 at
least
like for the audience and 100 might even
look better than 300.
and i was like well
makes sense it's a lot less walking too
i just figured los angeles las vegas
because it's like i drive that all the
time and i was like yeah why not it
sounds kind of fun uh so i might
actually now just walk 100 miles i know
sounds terrible really i mean it's a lot
does that mean that's like four
marathons well here's my thought five
yeah well it's st george so yeah 120. it
sounds good to say i walked from los
angeles to las vegas does it really it
does yeah but
your title was i walked 300 miles
forward terrible right and so i thought
between 300 and 100 100 people can
conceptualize 100 more than they can 300
just like we say how to make 100 a day
in passive income we never say how to
make 300 a day even though that's three
times more see i figured i walked to los
las vegas from los angeles is not that
great of a title because it's like it's
restricting your audience because you

67
01:06:00.000 --> 01:07:00.000
have people only west coast to know the
difference that's true the distance
between you know l.a and in las vegas
but if you say i walked this amount of
miles for a tinder date then it's
universal what about hours we feel like
i walked for no no
here's how you do it i walked from los
angeles to las vegas would be your title
and the thumbnail would show 300 miles
boom
i was gonna do a matthew beam type
thumbnail like day six and it's me like
like this and like i have like the crazy
you know eye bags and stuff like that
and you could do that like wilson
yeah but the thing is that if you don't
walk all the way and you want something
like walking to a tinder date yeah that
gives an alternative title so for tinder
date i think it's 100 i think tinder
date's probably the way to go i think
that's pretty clickable but i'm planning
on doing that and i think we're gonna
leave for st george now instead in utah
it's 120 miles you have to find a date i
don't know man i think you uh you sold
yourself short there
[Laughter]
what are you talking about alex

68
01:07:00.000 --> 01:08:00.000
that's it that's it that's all you're
gonna say i mean you're gonna say
anything else you hyped up this whole
why you've been telling graham and i oh
i'm gonna walk this jeb alex put
everything you're like hold on but
before this video idea the whole reason
you told us that you wanted to do this
walk was you know you were so passionate
about you want to do it and then all of
a sudden now it's like oh well now i'm
doing a video and then now it's like
well you know a hundred miles does seem
better clickable so now i'm just going
to watch the 100 you know what it was
you know what it was shifted from a
personal adventure to a youtube video
and optimizing well if i'm going to do
it it makes sense to do it first are you
letting the youtube
tail wag the life accomplishment dog
that's a hard
analogy for me to understand but i'm
assuming no it's the tail wagon
i don't think so no it's not but here's
the thing man i brought this walk up to
you guys and you guys shot it down and
you kept saying it's stupid it's dumb
it's idiotic you should not be doing
this and i'm like and now all of a
sudden when i change the

69
01:08:00.000 --> 01:09:00.000
the range so it's not 300 it's 120. you
guys like oh no it's a you know you're
doing it for the the whale tagging yes
when jack brought this idea to me he was
filming he was filming and uh i was
critical of the idea because we and we
were both filming so i was filming for
the vlog and jag was jack was filming
for his channel telling me about this
idea and i'm thinking well you know if
you look at the value of your time what
are you going to get from this what is
this going to do for you and i was like
we should use that time to get more
sponsors and like that was like every
episode is completely filled with
sponsors but we could do more we can i
don't want to put in my sponsors i just
thought there were other things like
from a utility point of view and then he
was explaining it's not utility point
it's it's a personal thing that he wants
to do for himself that would help his
personal growth it's like
it's a lot of things yeah and then i was
like okay well then you know well
then you just got to do it what if you
just did it and didn't youtube it
i would do that but the thing is but
i don't think it's smart to just take

70
01:09:00.000 --> 01:10:00.000
two weeks off to do this walk and also
i've been training recently for this
walk a little bit 10 mile days and it
kills my legs my legs are toast wait
after 10 minutes
to take two weeks off it's hard so
here's the thing
it's hard man like i had to ice bath my
legs oh my god jack explained this to me
like because i was like jack how are you
going to take like 10 days off what
about so like a podcast episode comes up
like what's gonna happen and jack
explained to me well you know it's no
different than me going on a vacation
for a week or two and it's like you
wouldn't say this at if i went to the
bahamas for a while i was like okay you
know what you're right uh but
but now but now jack's saying well it's
you know he doesn't want to graham this
is so silly because i went and i got
dinner with graham and graham spent
probably 20 minutes trying to convince
me to walk 100 miles instead of 300. and
all of a sudden when i say you know what
graham i think that's a good idea no
jack you should go back to doing 300
miles i'm taking more time off the
reason why was because uh it sounded
like you wanted to optimize for a
youtube video and between the two as a

71
01:10:00.000 --> 01:11:00.000
youtube title i think 100 miles is
easier to conceptualize yeah and also
i'm getting the same experience like i'm
walking a marathon a day for what would
that be five days maybe a little bit
less for six days camping in a tent on
the side of the road it's still gonna be
the same content it's still going to be
the same experience you know what i mean
personal growth and everything yeah
i don't know just keep telling yourself
yeah
what do you think
you're you're a neutral third yeah
you have a lot of experience in this i
think he
a big personal thing which is like no
half measures
and so
a lot of times we
we
we compromise on the goal and try and
mix two priorities
so it's like either i'm buying my dream
house or i'm buying a good investment
and a lot of times people are like well
i'm gonna try and buy my dream house but
also make sure it's a good investment
and you end up with a mediocre
investment and not your dream house so
it's like you have to just figure out
like is this something i'm doing for me
or is this something i'm doing for
youtube if you're doing for youtube then
just make it for youtube and accept it

72
01:11:00.000 --> 01:12:00.000
or you're like i'm doing it for me
period
wow that's why that was like
wow
if it's youtube i think 100 miles tinder
date optimize for that and make a great
video out of it
and then you can still do the 300 for
yourself if you want to
i also thought it would be somewhat
idiotic to walk 300 miles after only
walking 10 miles two times
i tell jack to train try to get like 25
miles a day because that's how long we
were supposed to do that yesterday but
apple was like too much work and that's
the guy i'm doing it with
so we didn't do it
and i wanted to you know 10 miles a day
would take you 30 days i know
that's a saturday
and the thing is it's like i i could
damage my body doing that and i don't
want to do that why don't you just bike
because man i like well i i do really
like walking and a part of it is like i
just want to walk and just walk for as

73
01:12:00.000 --> 01:13:00.000
long as i can you know what you should
have something to do with 300 miles
10 miles for a tinder date and then just
be exhausted when you get there that's
the thing i'm going to walk straight
into the date well i'm saying like just
just
just 10 mi like just walk the whole day
and then go no because i want to walk
for multiple days like that that is a
desire of mine i want to ask you this uh
so here's my question to you i've had a
really difficult time scaling mm-hmm uh
because everything is just yes okay i
would say the entire graham stefan brand
um i would say
brought on jack
we scaled through the iced coffee hour
there's been a few other things here and
there but i would say the iced coffee i
was the only one that really hit
um but i find myself no more productive
uh we got alex on now
i'm not getting any more work done i'm
not getting any extra content done
um
obviously we we could go to two times a
week on the podcast that's something i
know we could probably double growth on

74
01:13:00.000 --> 01:14:00.000
the podcast by doing two times a week
um i'm kind of tapped out on what i
could do
because i can't make more videos in the
main channel so like the main channel is
optimized yeah um
i've been starting to outsource some of
the editing with alex
i'm not getting any extra work done
because it's not not like i could get an
extra video down in the main channel
some of that's new what's the objective
uh i would say both
longevity because i really enjoy it but
i also don't like just feeling like i'm
in the same place or like doing the same
things repetitively i'll ask you a
better question you said we're having
trouble scaling scaling what scaling
influence scaling money scaling income
scaling like what are we scaling all of
it probably all of it because the gram
it's money well okay so for
well don't just give him a straight
answer man but it's not just that but
it's like for for scaling for scaling
money i know it's sponsorships it's
getting more sponsorship is it though no
it's not sponsorships it's not sponsored
i just don't want to feel well i would

75
01:14:00.000 --> 01:15:00.000
say money money is a component of it but
i wouldn't say it's the entire thing
do you want to be a business guy or do
you want to be a media guy a genuine
question i don't like have a dog in the
fight
i don't know i like the media aspect of
it but i'm worried of how fickle it is
that uh you know it's it's way riskier
to do that and so part of me would like
to maybe over 10 15 years scale back on
that and be more of a business person
than a media person but right now i know
i've got a unique
media
opportunity here that i don't want to i
don't want to waste it but i also know
like how easy it is to you know i've
seen just what could happen with a
cancel culture or you don't even do
anything but you get accused of
something and then your brand is kind of
tarnished and i've had so much writing
on just like a clean image
scaling media you have this unique
opportunity right now you don't want to
waste it because something could happen
because you have a clean image right so
in my my my opinion is that you have
like
my opinion is that unless you monetize
it in some way it doesn't have to be now

76
01:15:00.000 --> 01:16:00.000
but like as long as there's some sort of
plan to do so then it then it isn't
wasted because like if you have
monetized it then it's like cool this
thing happened and like i've set myself
up for life that's done um and then you
can just continue to play the media game
or because like right now like if i had
your size audience like
i mean i would have a billion dollar
thing
um and so like i feel like you're
working on something that's not the
constraint of the system you're like i
need more eyeballs but like you don't
need more eyeballs you need more
monetization of the eyeballs you have i
guess my problem is that i feel like i'm
so good at the media aspect of it that
anything that diverts my attention away
from that
kind of kills what i have going for me
fair
i just see the world through a business
lens and so like i'm like man just
attach a business to this gigantic media
machine that you have here um i mean you
could just do the media play i mean i
still think that like the easiest types
of businesses are the the rock you know
tequila or like mcgregor tequila or
kylie tequila actually they're all doing
or you know what's his name mcgregor's
doing whiskey but like it's that's why i

77
01:16:00.000 --> 01:17:00.000
said the beast thing with the with the
the soda it's like what's an
operationally
simple business that you can do a
partnership with somebody and then you
push the traffic and it makes sense i
have the coffee brand bankroll okay but
uh our margins are so slim yeah and it's
a good business it's just
everything's reinvested i don't make
anything myself yeah and i don't know
how long term to make money without
either raising prices yeah uh in which
case we might upset some of our customer
base probably not the end of the world
or eventually partnering or selling a
portion of that to a much larger
established company it seems like those
are the only two outlets on that but i
started it really just for fun yeah so
so i think rather than starting it
necessarily for fun it would be like
looking at a number of different like
the thing with the the soda thing is
like the cost on making soda is very low
which is why cocoa is still here because
they make so much money um like their
gross margins are amazing and so it's
like i think i like i only want to get
into a product and if i can sell it for
like usually at least five to ten times
what it costs like or i'm just not
interested it's just too it's just too
difficult
um for me that's probably because i'm

78
01:17:00.000 --> 01:18:00.000
could be an idiot so like i just want
things to be easier if i can like we get
to choose so we might as well choose the
easier thing
um and so like i think that
the simplest business like media selling
media because you make media is very
simple because it's sponsorships but
like the people who are buying your
sponsorships are getting 10 times their
money or more
from the sponsorship which is why they
continue to buy them so it's like well
what is everyone else selling on my
channel and which of these things could
i also
just do myself
like that would be like maybe the first
thing i would look at yeah you know what
i mean but um or like
creating some partnerships like and if
you're doing the sponsorship deals but
it might also just be valuable to say
like i don't want money like give me
equity in the company and i'll and i'll
push the traffic so it's very difficult
to do that
i believe it but you're you and you can
just choose to
say like it's kind of like the gp thing
with the real estate people like you you
just ask for it i'm like i just don't do
deals unless it's this and so i think
you can just draw a new line and say
like from here on forward like grab
stuff and show just

79
01:18:00.000 --> 01:19:00.000
like i'm not promoting anyone that i
don't have equity in
period
so if you want to be on the show then
yeah i tried that for all of 2020
and there was only one company that
agreed to equity and it's interesting
the other companies that agreed to
equity were terrible companies i mean
they're the ones that oh yeah no we'd
we'd rather do that give that away
um but i found that either they're
overpriced they want some crazy high
number or valuation yeah crazy
evaluations where it's like well there's
all the upside i'm paying a premium for
that i'm not going to do that um or
they're just crappy business all the
good businesses that i've seen
guard that so heavily like they never
want to give up equity like that's their
bread and butter
and uh they know their potential they
know their 10x
so
i have so many thoughts but yeah yeah
sure
but like so i mean it's either like i am
a media company that's all i want to do
i'm going to stay in my lane it's like
like either way that that business
component has to get looped in yeah so
it's either you partner with somebody or
you

80
01:19:00.000 --> 01:20:00.000
build the simplest business possible so
i know you have i think you have a
teachable thing yeah i do
uh so it's like you could do more stuff
like that you could do a higher version
of that which you know but that it
creates a business so it's like you
might want to just bring somebody in who
is a businessy guy if you want to just
keep focusing on what you like doing or
you can learn that game which i think my
opinion is that like everyone who stays
in the game long enough like everyone
does kind of meet in the middle like i
feel like you've come from like the
personal finance savings investing side
um but like the more complex and the
more your assets grow like i feel like
you can like you continue to start
walking more and more towards the
value creation
buying marketing selling you know like
running operating a business yeah so
that's just i've come from this world
and walked this way i think you're from
this world walk this way but i think you
do end up in the middle out of necessity
like you have to know how to allocate
capital and you have to know how to get
return on the capital yeah the only
thing i could think of uh is is working
a real estate syndicate similar to what
grant cardone does and uh that makes a
ton of sense yeah to me i think a lot of
people would trust you to do that and um

81
01:20:00.000 --> 01:21:00.000
you can either do it yourself or just
say like it's me and i am the fund raise
like it's it's really typical and fun to
have three parties like you've got the
guy who does the money the guy who does
the actual investing and then the guy
who like operates the the fund like
those are like kind of typically the
three roles the guy who
does the thing the guy who gets the
money and the guy who runs the little
shop right and so i mean you could
sometimes have two you know in that
instance but like i think just getting
the partner who goes and like operates
all of the
um
the the the units or whatever you're
buying yeah and then you raise the money
i think those are really good
partnerships and that would make a ton
of sense for you yeah
any other advice that you have in terms
of like productivity or getting more
accomplished because i feel like you
know i could bring five more people on
the team but i wouldn't get any more
done
i think it's so i'm a big believer in
the theory of constraints which is like
it's kind of like you getting more media
like the constraint on all the scaling
stuff is not the media you have more
media than like anyone so
like you're working on the wrong side of
the bridge
so
it's it's like

82
01:21:00.000 --> 01:22:00.000
the reason it's my belief that we've
been able to move quickly you know
professionally i'll use quotes here like
quickly um because
it's like only focusing on what is the
thing that is stopping us from getting
to the next level and then ruthlessly
working on that thing until it is
de-bottlenecked and so it's like having
the awareness to say
okay i have this thing um i can do more
of this but it's being pushed through a
pinhole like so i can just try and get
more water it's like where i can just
expand the pinhole and so i think that
right now like the pinhole is the
opportunity vehicle that you're working
off of adsense is not an efficient
vehicle
teachable is okay but like it would be
way better if you had like a sales team
and a phone system and like you had an
actual like you would 10 like you'd go
to a million a month like two seconds
like
one second you'd be at a million a month
probably two million a month or three
million a month if you had like chops
around doing that um like seriously um
or uh you know um the syndication thing
given just given what i'm like the very
limited amount that i have met so take
this with a gigantic himalayan grain of

83
01:22:00.000 --> 01:23:00.000
salt um i think this indication play
makes a ton of sense because you just
get to still be pretty much in the
position that you're at in terms of like
your day to day it's just like make
stuff that people like and find value in
um let people invest with me because
they're probably already asking too i
would imagine yeah and then find
somebody who does that full time and has
been doing it for 20 years and then just
like
and that's it and then you just
participate really like very well
because you can build it yourself and
you're not asking for equity you're
building equity
i mean that would be the easiest way for
you to just like go to 100 million
and like skip all these in between stuff
yeah
definitely good food for thought thank
you i appreciate that otherwise you have
to build a business which is then like
you can either sell service or you can
sell a product and so i don't think
you'd want to sell a service because
it's difficult
or it's more operationally complex and
so a product would make the most sense
but it has
generally lower margins uh because you
have cost of goods unless you can figure
out like a coca-cola or
you know something that's
very very like you know when you saw

84
01:23:00.000 --> 01:24:00.000
like stickers you know i mean or like
there was a girl i know who sold um
magnet lashes right or whatever it's
like the cost in those like 10 cents you
sell for 20 bucks it's like great you
know what i mean like
where you can just sell air right like
that's that's always been my like
moniker for when i'm looking at
businesses this unique expensive sticky
air so i want something that only i can
sell um i want it to be very uh very
expensive premium
uh air very low cost uh and sticky
something that people keep buying and so
like if i look for all four of those
things then i try and find a manager who
is hardworking has an impeachable
character um and is super sharp and so
if i and has a long-term owner mindset
so it's like if i put those things
together like i have a business
interesting thank you
any advice for jack
i think i'm pretty perfect
get ripped yeah it just gets folded yeah
i'm trying not
i can't wait to see this tinder date
yeah she's worth that i was

85
01:24:00.000 --> 01:25:00.000
is she worth it we'll see we'll see i
know you're walking or are you finding
somebody and like
i'm working on it
that's the real challenge honestly what
if she stands you up after actually be
better that's good content yeah it
really is yeah but then you're doing it
for the tube
well it's a
i disagree i think
let's hear it you sold out
guys you will know when you see jack's
video on his channel if he releases the
i walked 100 miles he sold out and he's
doing it for youtube if he walks the 300
miles you know he stayed true to what he
told him
here's the thing if he walks 300 miles
and doesn't film it yeah you hated that
idea you hated it too greg i didn't like
the idea well i was kind of okay i'm all
for like personal goals and i think that
graham needs to like do more fun things
crap and uh i don't think so
no okay anyway
but you know so i was kind of giving you
some slack because it's like you know

86
01:25:00.000 --> 01:26:00.000
we're vlogging we're having fun but if
it's truly like your goal and it's truly
what's going to make you happy and it's
going to give you life fulfillment then
i say do it and you know but if you're
changing your
your goal based on doing a youtube video
then it's not really like
unless unless your personal goal is like
being fulfilled by youtube but when you
pitched it to graham and i you know you
said it was for you so you know
from my experience and you know this too
i think filming it ruins it it takes you
out of the moment and i i have to force
myself to film but like there's some
things it's like i have less of an
experience because i have a camera up
yeah even just thinking of the camera or
trying to get the shot or trying to
think of like how i could structure it
well i have one quick one because you
said something uh alex to graham about
like the working thing
um i mean a lot of people used to get on
me about like
you need more work life balance like
blah blah blah and it's just like

87
01:26:00.000 --> 01:27:00.000
i just like you have one life and they
are your terms and no one else's terms
and we optimize typically for the things
that we enjoy doing and like if you have
more stimulus from working than you do
from not working then like work and then
if you feel like at some point you have
traded off something that you don't want
to trade off for then you can adjust
that's why i've always felt i enjoy
working
like what was it my mom um
so
we have we have like um
a wedding to go to on uh
the day after my birthday yeah so we
were talking about uh you know we have
to fly up on my birthday she's like oh
we could do this on your birthday this
time like no i just want to work she's
like no but it's your birthday you
shouldn't have to work and i was like i
want to work yeah that's all i want to
do i just want to work even uh santa
monica my birthday i was like the only
thing i want to do today is work that
was it just wanted to work i mean
everybody wants to they're like man do
something do do something you love and
you'll never work another day in your
life but like it's just because everyone
has this really poor definition of work
but like

88
01:27:00.000 --> 01:28:00.000
if if you have accomplished that which
obviously you have
like
you're just living yeah and like what
you do in life so i'll i'll rewind
something really quickly which is like
2021 i did nothing
so like i owned all the companies
pounded out a lot of cash flow and i did
nothing
and it was
a very miserable year for me because i
tried to spend the money that i was
making and i couldn't like it was just
not even really a possibility and so
like i got into a place of like why why
am i even doing this like what's the
point like i'll never even be able to
spend this money that i have like why
have i been doing all this stuff um and
in starting acquisition.com we're at
least making that the sole focus now
again and being able to build all the
infrastructure you know hire the teams
and all the stuff that we're doing on
that side of the business like i have so
much joy getting back into the game uh
because i feel like i've been kind of
like in a super high leverage position
for like an extended period of time um
that i exited the business because i
thought that was what the next natural
step was supposed to be which is like
you go from ceo to owning it as

89
01:28:00.000 --> 01:29:00.000
shareholder or board of directors
whatever and that is
very much what happened um but
i realized that for me at least it's
like i work to create options not to not
work and so a lot of people like they
work really hard to not have to work
later it's like no it's like i work to
have the option to work and so i can
choose to work and that choice is the
freedom that i have and so like if i'm
choosing with the optionality that i
have to work then that is exactly what i
want to do
and so um just being on the other side
of it of like
going to the like there's literally no
way i can spend this money for the rest
of my life mountaintop um
like the only thing that i wanted to do
was the thing that got me here which is
like i love working and so it's the
thing that i find meaningful and i think
that maybe you shift direction in terms
of like
maybe some of the stuff that you create
like maybe there's some things that you
create that are for youtube versus like
for graham and i just think that it just
slowly optimizes to only doing things
for graham
which a lot of times still ends up being
that but like you get there backwards

90
01:29:00.000 --> 01:30:00.000
it's like if you made it purely for you
then you might be able to make a video
after that that's like i walked 300
miles and i didn't film anything and
this is what i learned
like that would probably be a really
valuable video because you probably
would have some interesting insights
like i didn't film either of the grant
cardone videos and then just
like made videos about the calls of like
my takeaways and they were still really
great videos interesting
okay so my only thought to that is like
you are in a very unique position
because you run this
this business with your wife and and
stuff like that and i think that
marriage plays a big part in my life
and i think marriage is a compromise and
so
um
my
my wife doesn't like it when i work as
much and her i guess her
like love language is what quality time
or whatever and i think graham
his girlfriend macy
is similar and i think that there's a
compromise there where yes graham if all
he wants to do is work that's great and

91
01:30:00.000 --> 01:31:00.000
he can work and work and work but i
think that marriage a successful
marriage is truly a compromise and if if
it turns out that you know
like like you're really good i have like
so many thoughts right now yeah it's
stimulating conversation
and i think yeah and i think everybody's
in a unique position because um
you know definitely like there's
you you could say well you know i'm
gonna grind away now so that you know i
i don't have to work in the future we
could spend time together um or you can
kind of balance and live in the now and
live in the future but i think
everybody's kind of in a unique position
but i think that that part of your life
is is is always going to be a compromise
to some sort of extent so i think it's a
belief that you choose to define it that
way
yeah i'm okay yeah
is a belief statement like that's not a
statement of fact that is a belief and
so like i don't believe that marriage is
compromise
tell us your experience with that
because i have uh because i'm sure we
all have different experiences
mine in the beginning was that i did
find that there was a compromise because

92
01:31:00.000 --> 01:32:00.000
macy came from the mindset like you know
five or six p.m comes around
you're done with work yeah and you're
free and my mind works 24 7. uh i tried
that and i woke up really early i'd wake
up at like 5 a.m so i could be done by 5
p.m and the night and
i that worked for actually quite a while
because i actually found it was so
productive in those morning hours that i
could be done by five and be like oh wow
this is great uh but over a long time
trying to figure out like like a balance
i found myself i wasn't myself like i i
was really
i felt anxious i was just like uptight i
was um
like about what part like no because
because i couldn't work during the hours
that i wanted to work like sometimes
just you just have this there's days
where it's just like no no i'm so
focused and i got it like you have that
concentration you just have to continue
and so having that freedom for me if i
don't have that i just wasn't myself and
i was miserable yeah
i mean i this is
what i'm going to say and i

93
01:32:00.000 --> 01:33:00.000
i have very strong views um
and they are not common um but i also
think that
i don't want to live a common life and
so that i cannot have common views right
so just like as a as a big disclaimer to
that um like i've only seen two dynamics
that work in relationships over like an
extended period of time um one is kind
of the like we're in it together and the
other is like the
you know cheerleader and quarterback
like cheering you on
but the thing is is like
i can tell i can speak a lot to the you
know we're in the game together um for
me i know personally like i had two
very long relationships that were two
liter dynamics um and to me
i could not imagine living life that way
having now lived what i live now
um because like there's a certain amount
of shared respect that you never get
with somebody who does not know what
it's like to be in the battlefield or in
the arena
and
if i'm like i need to work for the next
three days and like write five book

94
01:33:00.000 --> 01:34:00.000
chapters like there's not a discussion
it's like of course do your thing
there's no like there's no like i can't
believe you're like
and to the flip side in the cheerleader
dynamic
a cheerleader who's really rooting for
the team
doesn't ask the quarterback to come out
when the game's on the line
and so i think that a lot of people are
running in what they consider to be
cheerleader dynamics but they are
inverted dynamics they're
actually sabotaging the game
and
i think that it's like in that dynamic
it's harder in my opinion to do the
cheerleader quarterback because you have
to have a very aligned mission and goals
of like the relationship
it's easier to do that in
um in the dynamic that you're working
together because it's so clearly stated
with the mission the goals of like this
is where i want to go and this is how i
want to get there and like do want to
come with me and then you're very much
operating on this shared sense of
reality and it also becomes difficult
for entrepreneurs in my opinion now like
i mean i'm sure you've seen plenty of
people get divorces if they get older
and whatnot is that like if you're
like all right this will be interesting
so

95
01:34:00.000 --> 01:35:00.000
typically um when people become
attracted so esther perel if you've
heard of her she's really interesting
like relationship person she's like one
of the top ted talks on it um
there's a thing it's called mating
captivity is her book um but in the
beginning you have kind of this mystery
because you don't know each other and
that's what creates like the excitement
right and as you get to know each other
over time you swing like from uh mystery
to familiarity right um you get a little
bit more security get to know each other
better and it feels like more and more
amazing and so what you do is you just
keep trying to do that right but what's
up happening is you over correct and
then you become siblings and then it's
like ah well that's not good and so it's
not a problem to be solved but a a
dichotomy to be managed right in terms
of like how much space do you create
versus how much familiarity what happens
when people uh like entrepreneurs
specifically like have their business
and they
have the wife they spend more time in
the beginning and all of a sudden they
don't spend as much time together and
then they grow apart because they're
also
exposed to different stimuli right and
so you adapt to the stimuli that you
have then you grow apart
on the flip side if you're in my

96
01:35:00.000 --> 01:36:00.000
scenario where we're like doing the same
thing together the downside of this one
these couples make five times more money
than any of the other
versions that i just said
but
the
you can become too familiar and then you
just become siblings so for us we
actually create more space so it's like
we try to work on separate sides of the
house we don't attend the same meetings
so like at the end of the day we can sit
down at dinner like how was your day and
you can tell me something rather than me
saying like oh i was there i know right
yeah and so the happiest couples are
actually couples that have uh
both have careers
that are not necessarily together so on
average these couples are the ones that
because they have a shared goal in terms
of like this is what we want to do they
have shared values in terms of how they
want to get there
and they respect one another and they
respect each other's goals and then they
walk kind of in parallel so you've got
the like i'm working the entrepreneur
and you've got the stay-at-home wife
there's many times everyone's seen that
one go wrong there's the like we're both
working together in it where you so
these people have to uh
uh correct for trying to create more
familiarity these ones have to create

97
01:36:00.000 --> 01:37:00.000
more space so you have the space to be
missed and then these ones tend to be in
the middle already and so they just kind
of like have to keep walking and so for
me it was actually just interesting
seeing the the different dynamics and
like how we had to correct in the
beginning like we were wait we spent all
day every day together and the business
was small so it was like she was there
and i was here and we worked out
together and we ate together and we did
that for like two years and i was like
you know
maybe i'll sit on different meetings
than you
yeah um but like seeing the level of
like commitment and loyalty that you get
from that and i don't know so i want a
little bit of a tangent there but i i
have strong beliefs around around that
and i think that you don't have to
compromise anything if you don't want to
that's i think maybe we just have
different goals because my goal is not
to make a boatload of money with my wife
my goal in life is to be happy have a
great relationship and just enjoy life
and honestly if i live my entire life
like you know as long as i don't go
broke i i think i'm gonna be happy and
and that's okay to disagree with
somebody and have different goals
because everybody yeah everybody has

98
01:37:00.000 --> 01:38:00.000
difficulty so does that mean you would
you would you agree with with kelsey in
the sense that like you'd rather be
have a more like predictable schedule
spend more time together build a family
i think it's a it's a balance for me
right because um
that's my like long like if if if this
job if i was working for you and it was
so intense and i knew it was going to be
intense like till the day i die like to
the fact where it's going to affect my
relationship i don't care how much money
i'm making like personally um but it's
also a balance because
we want like i'm not oblivious to money
right like i want to make more money i
want to reach for more i want to do
things
but i still want to
keep my first goal in mind which is to
be happy and
like i said i don't i i think one time
like
graham like pulled me aside and asked me
like how much money i want to make in
the future we were just having like a
conversation and i didn't have like a

99
01:38:00.000 --> 01:39:00.000
specific number but i was just like you
know just enough to like
you know not have to stress about money
and
you know that's a different number for
different people because we all have a
different also changes yeah it also
do you feel like because
you're above that number now do you feel
like you stress about money still
oh uh yes but i feel like that's only
because i have that
uh like i live like i'm like gonna be
broke the next day mentality
like i'm like like like in my head i'm
like well if this all just disappears
the next day like
because i because i remember you you
telling me that number and you're you're
above that number
and i i think we could double it from
here and you would still have the exact
same
mentality of just like well the you know
still live you get 100 i'll just tell
you yeah it doesn't it doesn't go away
so how do you how do you as somebody
who's made a ton of money and
and you know how do i because graham's

100
01:39:00.000 --> 01:40:00.000
right like
i we kind of reached that
number and i'm like i i've accepted the
fact that this thought right is not
going to go away so what do you do like
what do you do like i really i'm kind of
maybe you could give me some advice
about that
maybe i'm the one you should be giving
advice to i guess there's so many
statements i was trying to like keep
like keep track but like you make a lot
of belief statements
um and so like when i'm like a lot of
people make statements like they're like
isms like this is this way um like i
have this thought and it is um
and you're like and i've just accepted
that like i'm always gonna have this
like i would just never speak that over
yourself just right off the bat because
like you're just saying i'm never going
to get over this thing like the
statement you said earlier about like um
at the end of the day i just like i just
want to be happy like when you admit
that you just want to be happy then what
happens is you create a deficit between
your current reality and happiness which
means that it doesn't matter what
happens because there will always be
happiness that is outside of yourself

101
01:40:00.000 --> 01:41:00.000
does that make sense
kind of yeah i mean but i would consider
myself no no he didn't get that at all
oh man but i thought okay so here's my
here's my interpretation of it if i'm
telling myself that i just want to be
happy then i will never be happy that's
what you're saying no i understand what
you're saying right but i'm telling you
right now that i am happy now
good
so but it
okay
wait graham i
why do you still think i don't
understand that
no
no but i i think um the the so like
deficits deficits occur when we
speak desires right and so um i love
this statement um
a desire is a contract we make with
ourselves to be unhappy until we get
what we want
and so whenever we state a desire like i
want this i want this amount of money i
want whatever you literally sign a
contract that says like i won't be
unhappy until that happens right and so
like i had this thing earlier on where i
was like i want to have meaning i want

102
01:41:00.000 --> 01:42:00.000
to have great meaning in my life and i
was talking to a guy who made a lot more
money than me um
and he was like
because i asked him i said how do you
create and destroy meaning in your work
that was the question i asked him on a
podcast um
and he was like why do you think life
needs to be meaningful
and it was the same exact thing as the
happiness versus like the meaning thing
where it's like i say life has to be
meaningful and therefore everything that
i'm doing
like i create this expectation of life
whereas if life just is
it just is
and it's the only way that you can
actually be there
it's just it's just pure acceptance
right um which is why like the whole
like shoulds of like we should work we
should have balance we should acts it's
like i believe marriage is a compromise
like these are just statements of belief
that are casting expectations out in the
world that are just bound to be untrue
at some point and then create dissonance
and so it's like i believe marriage is
marriage
and i believe my marriage is my marriage
and i believe your marriage is your
marriage and like i believe that i can
work 24 hours a day if i want to and
that is all period not and it's bad or

103
01:42:00.000 --> 01:43:00.000
and it's good there's no judgment on it
it just is
and so like if i
get you know if i get
dopamine secreted in my brain when i
start working cool like and i will
optimize for dopamine and if i die i
know that on a thousand generations
nothing i do anyways is going to matter
so who cares
like that's like the the opening thing
in my book is like there are no rules
like we live in this like this like
shoulds and have to's and like
like
happiness everyone talks about it and
it's just like everyone is unhappy
because they say they want to be happy
rather than being like accept me like
[ __ ] happiness
like i just am
period
and then like
i don't need to judge the am it just is
how do you what do you say today i don't
know
that makes sense yeah because
so one thing i noticed is if you're like
i just want to be happy yeah
does that mean alex that you think that
at some point that will change for you
or something or you're you have you live

104
01:43:00.000 --> 01:44:00.000
no i think that that will change i think
you guys maybe are taking what i'm
saying the wrong way i mean like like
alex is saying you know everybody has
different beliefs and there's no one
rule fits all to everybody and so if i
say i want to be happy that doesn't make
me wrong like if i want to live my life
that way that's perfectly fine
but the the thing that that what jack is
saying is
no i am like happy like i but
i for me i like to make like a conscious
effort to work towards that and
alex can live his life like life is life
my marriage is my marriage um and it
works for him and that generates
happiness whether he's like thinking
about it it doesn't have to generate
happiness that's the point yes that's
right yes yes like right like but like
because it makes like not because
it's like when people say like hey um
work uh
you know set these goals and like the
rest will take care of itself

105
01:44:00.000 --> 01:45:00.000
it still makes the rest taking care of
itself the reason that you're doing it
which means that it's actually not
getting around it when people were like
you got to be process driven if you're
like if we focus on the process the
goals take care of themselves it still
means that the goals are important
so like you have to if if you want to
make the transition from like a process
driven life which is like i'm doing
these things to do them period
then the so that i can be happy so that
i can have a good marriage so that i
have a meaningful life has to disappear
from the equation
it has to be i do them
period not because
i do them
but then it goes back the other way like
but why because you say so like
because you want to right
like if you want to have if you want to
describe a meaning to why you're doing
something you can do it for whatever
reason
wow
this is deep
so i mean this is what i spend a lot of
my time thinking of because i have
nothing else to do and this is what my
last year was was like trying to figure
out like why
why i didn't have like i i felt the
exact same way while i was well i had
nothing as to where i have now i feel
the same like like

106
01:45:00.000 --> 01:46:00.000
people were like man it was cool when
the money hit my account i felt nothing
like truly like not even like the
two-day like i it was irrelevant how did
you learn all of this did was this
through speaking with other people who
have been there before you thinking um i
mean my closest friend is a philosopher
and i use that in terms of like the
actual meaning of the word philosopher
so like filet to love and then sophos's
wisdom or knowledge so like he's a lover
of knowledge lover of wisdom and like we
talk every week it's like the only
standing meeting that i have is we talk
for like two hours and we just talk
about
life and he's one of these guys who like
lives in a cave um and it's like he got
his phd when he was 20. like just a very
brilliant guy and so he and i just talk
about
things you know should uh share his
contact
information for some guests on the
podcast oh i mean he's brilliant i mean
if you like
dr gashi is brilliant he's the he's the
smartest human that i know in terms of
like
brilliance and their ability to
communicate it um in a simple way um and
so

107
01:46:00.000 --> 01:47:00.000
he helped me get over a lot of the
things that i that i used to struggle
with and a lot of it was just like the
language that we use matters a lot
because like how we say things is how we
think things
and so like what i was saying earlier
alex and this is not like this is not
like a
a slide i'm just saying like when i hear
like when i hear anyone talk like on my
team or or customers or whatever it's
like people talk so many things over
themselves and they're like i don't know
why i'm not successful and it's like
well define success and why are you not
and then what are the you know i mean
like i just want to do this to be had
like there's so many chains that they
put on themselves that it becomes very
difficult to live
and so like i spent a long time trying
to not do that um
and it was just because like i was
unhappy
and i didn't like being unhappy and then
i stopped judging myself for being
unhappy and then i stopped thinking
about it all together and so i think
that like i'll give you a really real
example for this so
one of the things that i'm vehemently
opposed and i'm like you

108
01:47:00.000 --> 01:48:00.000
no one give gram flack you can give it
to me
um
and like this is coming from a family
they like had out alcoholics and drug
addicts and things like that like i
really don't like the alcoholics
anonymous um concept of every morning
waking up and saying i am an alcoholic
high you know whatever and then they go
into their in their meetings because
what it does is it puts it at the
forefront of their mind and they they
literally label themselves every morning
as having this problem right when
somebody who's not an alcoholic just
doesn't think about it they don't think
i'm an alcoholic i have to fight not
drinking every day they just
don't think about it
and so i think to the same degree that
um like living a meaningful life is not
saying like
i'm living a meaningful life you just
are and you're not casting it you're
just you just are but don't you think
some of that is just that inherent
belief that some people just have
they're raised from that they have
positive experiences that turns into a
spiral but the people who don't have
that who are used to every day being
like i'm worthless i suck at this i am
bad at this don't you think that maybe

109
01:48:00.000 --> 01:49:00.000
that like first step in like getting in
that direction is positive affirmations
of like i could do it i could isn't that
like that's better than zero like i feel
like we're going to zero to one because
i think it's exiting i think it's
exiting the equation all together
so it's saying i am worthless
instead of saying like i want to be
worthy or i am worthy just saying
worthiness doesn't matter but then
wouldn't you get just people not caring
at all yes yeah so i'm 100 percent of
nihilus yeah like i believe nothing
happens and like you know it is what it
is right but um
and there are different ways to take
that
some people are like life is meaningless
and there's no point in any of it which
i would agree with them and then the
other people are like there's no point
in any of it
and so i'll do what i want
and some people see that as like very
very very self-serving which it might be
um but to the same degree like you
are
released from the chains of the
expectations of others
and most people
in my opinion that i have witnessed who
are unhappy is because they are weighted

110
01:49:00.000 --> 01:50:00.000
down by the chains of their parents of
their friends of their siblings of the
whatever things the people that they
believe are casting judgment on them and
they care so much about that person's
disapproval that they don't want to do
the things that they want to do
and so if i think it's easier to get
someone to realize that none of it
matters and then build from there than
to try and flip the negatives it's just
to exit the equation altogether
just say none of this matters therefore
i will start my youtube channel and not
care if my dad says that youtube isn't
real
like it's not about being worth it like
this is one where they're like i deserve
success like they don't
no one deserves anything but you can do
the stuff that gets success independent
of your deservingness give me a terrible
person and get and become successful so
that person doesn't deserve it but they
did this thing to create success
if we define success as some material or
whatever
and so i think um like if you can exit
the equation of like labeling
yourself
and then just doing because because what
else will you do while you are alive um
it creates some levels of freedom that

111
01:50:00.000 --> 01:51:00.000
allow for clarity of thought and also
for the ability to take risks that most
people can't take
and i candidly i understand the
difficulties it's not like i'm
some perfect like you know like nihilist
who just like never believes anything
matters and doesn't get upset like of
course i do but like my instant
self-help is like whenever something
happens it's like i'm gonna die and it's
not gonna matter and that like it's like
it just got so ingrained in me now that
like it's okay but would you consider
yourself emotional
yeah i mean probably
so i think i have emotions
got it because a lot of the times at
least in my experience like and and what
i've seen people that are nihilus it's
easy to that's like an easy out if
something bad happens if something good
happens it's just like oh yeah that's
fine sweep it under the rug it's not
it's not that matters anyways something
bad happens it's not like you actually
deal with the process whatever you know
event or action occurred that make you
felt that emotion if we believe that we
have to
like why should we
why should you feel that emotion like
why should we process a traumatic event

112
01:51:00.000 --> 01:52:00.000
like what does that mean well i do
believe that there are
like you know things in your brain
biologically that if they are deprived
of something or there's like uh some
some bad traumatic event or something
like that will affect your biological
dramatic versus non-traumatic
i
i mean i feel like the definition of the
word trauma would probably but what
would be the line between like
okay in like let's let's give an example
of
something terrible right um actually not
because it's a podcast and people might
hate on crap so let's just say something
bad happens
that we describe as bad in this culture
right in another culture that might not
be bad
it's trauma in this culture it's not
trauma in this culture
so if the circumstance is the same why
was it traumatic circumstances weren't
the same
why not because the culture
the facts were the same
will we describe the facts as changed
which means that we can choose to cause
something trauma

113
01:52:00.000 --> 01:53:00.000
but wouldn't
isn't it doesn't it make sense that
people would be built up due to a
culture and environment 40 year old guy
sleeps with a 15 year old girl
terrible right
rewind 200 years
four year old guy sleeps with a 15 year
old girl 100 normal
right
how is it trauma now and not trauma that
and mind you like this is not my state
i'm just i'm you have to pull an extreme
example if we're going to talk about
trauma to to illustrate the concept
right
so if it's traumatic in one instance and
not traumatic in another then it means
that we can basically change the
cultural narrative that we're ascribing
to our context and make it not traumatic
that makes sense
right which means it didn't matter which
means the only thing that matters that
you chose to make it meaningful but
let's say like like the the the passing
of a parent or like a love 100 or
something like that
if we think
like
we feel like
we have this we have a narrative that
says if i don't mourn it means i didn't
care about them

114
01:53:00.000 --> 01:54:00.000
right
that's a statement of belief i could say
that
if i don't mourn about them it means i
totally cared about them
like why does my morning have any
indication of how much i cared
they're non-correlates right
but it's just because we have like we
have so many of these belief statements
that like quote society are things that
we inherit right
but we just choose to say that this is
how life is
and so i think it's just like monitoring
what those statements are and so like
one of my favorite one of my favorite
sayings probably like if i had one thing
on my tombstone um it would be it would
be a
a permutation of a quote by orson scott
card which is um we question all of our
beliefs except for those that we truly
believe and those who never think to
question
that's a good quote right yeah so it's
like we like oh of course i'm opening to
question my beliefs it's like what's
trauma
like when someone's like i was
traumatized it's like were you
or do you just choose to label this
trauma and then now you [ __ ] up the
rest of your life because you call it
trauma

115
01:54:00.000 --> 01:55:00.000
when 200 years ago it was life
and a thousand years ago having your
parent come in front of you was just
nature if you want to go biology right
and so we're just like we just choose to
create meaning around things and so like
at the end of the day like end to end
end bottom bottom bottom root yeah
all our brains do is just creating a
story meaning
and so we say this is a threat this is
not a threat we make like we need to
reinforce this behavior we don't need to
reinforce this favor all through meaning
and so if you can control what you deem
meaningful
you can massively shift the odds in your
favor because you don't need to ascribe
meaning to well couldn't that be let's
say like like 500 years ago you see like
a parent killed in front of you isn't
that because
all you have in your mind is like food
shelter water sure and now that we have
those things taken care of our minds go
to other places sure yeah i just don't
think it changes the actual facts so
it's like we have we there's there's
stimulus response
right and so like we get to control the
response we control the stimulus and so
like
was it um it's either seneca or
epictetus who's like no one yells at a

116
01:55:00.000 --> 01:56:00.000
rock
right so it's like if you are the rock
then like just
it doesn't matter right like you just
like eventually like people just [ __ ]
off and just leave you alone and so like
and if you if you see stimulus of life
that way in terms of like how you deem
things or label things traumatic or not
dramatic or good or bad you know it's
the same thing i'm sure with like the
hate comments and whatnot is like if you
deem the comments of of the fans as
meaningful then you will both care about
them being positive and you will care
about them being negative but if they're
not meaningful at all to begin with then
like i don't think you can do either i
think you just either have to
participate in both sides or you remove
that is also a belief statement right so
like maybe you can um so you know
interesting thoughts so how did you
transition from assuming i'm assuming
you used to care a little bit more about
beliefs and stuff like that how did you
transition from that to now not caring
and like did you have to completely
change your mindset to where your
automatic response to things was just
like what what are these chains of

117
01:56:00.000 --> 01:57:00.000
emotions and like the cultural
constraints and stuff like that that are
making me feel this way yeah that did
did you just switch that light switch or
do you still on occasion catch yourself
slipping i just did right now i was like
i just said that as a belief right
that's what i figured 100 yeah i mean i
think you you systematically
you hear like that's why the talking is
so important like what words are we
using what do those words mean like you
say trauma like define that what do you
mean by that which is why like when you
hear really good writing that's academic
like the first few pages will be like
we're going to talk about this and this
is how we define this and this is how we
define this it's like we're putting
constraints around the words that we're
using because they mean they equate to
thoughts they're just buckets right that
we like say a word like trauma and like
it means something different to all
three of us so it's like we have to
agree on the definition before we can
talk about it does that make sense um
and so no i had um so i i i definitely
made uh a conscious efforts when i was
like 19 or 20 i became a born-again
christian
um
the dunk the whole thing was like oh my
god life's amazing jesus is great um and
then
i ended up falling away from that
because i was like i don't know if this
is true um

118
01:57:00.000 --> 01:58:00.000
and uh and then i spent the next five
years
um dedicated to apologetics which is
defense of faith of the christian faith
so just learning the arguments around
like why christianity
like
is true right um
i ended up not believing uh in it and i
can give a variety of reasons but i'll
give you the simplest one um hopefully
i'm not insulting anyone this is just my
belief that i'm sharing
which is
a lot of one of the biggest one of the
strongest arguments for christianity
against other world religions is that
um other world religions say like if you
go to the good place so if you do a good
job you go to the good place right and
fundamentally that's it's a it's a hard
paradigm because it means like at what
point are you 51 good versus 49
should have just held one more door open
and i would have gone to the good place
forever right
not even talking about like finite
circumstances and creating infinite
outcomes but like whatever um
and so if you can draw that line then it
makes it kind of makes it ridiculous
right it like kind of breaks down on the
like be a good person system
right and so that's all world views with

119
01:58:00.000 --> 01:59:00.000
the exception of buddhism and
christianity
with christianity they're like you don't
have to be good you just have to have
faith and if you have faith in jesus and
you go to the good place right
and so
the the reason that for me fundamentally
i didn't believe in that was because you
actually create another false binary
which is believe or not believe when in
reality is to what extent you believe
it's how hard you believe and again you
create another fifty percent line which
is i believe one percent more
and then i would go into the good place
forever right
so um anyways the point is is that i i
studied apologetics for a long period of
time um and then i was really sad
um
and i was just like
[ __ ] sad
i was like [ __ ] happiness i was like i'm
just going to do stuff that i think is
cool
and that was like that was like the
first break in the chain for me um my
slogan myself was actually just about
happiness um
and
that was wildly fraying because i
stopped judging myself for not being
happy

120
01:59:00.000 --> 02:00:00.000
and then i was just like
oh i'm like i am unhappy i'm like cool
whatever
i just kept going and all of a sudden
just like stop mattering to me
like i don't think about it i genuinely
like i don't think like does this make
me happy does not like i don't think
about it you just do what you want to do
in the moment do whatever you're doing
and it's not like it's like all
short-term like all pleasure-seeking
whatever like i still have a long-term
perspective of like this is what i want
to build yeah like i want to write these
books i want to build these courses
um
i want to do this stuff but it's like
those are things that
i enjoy so that's what i that's what i
do
i love it
it's great
all right
i mean i had questions but now i know
the answers to them just based off here
i'm just listening i'd rather just
listen and not say know like i don't
want to mess it up
but then i created a belief that now i'm
going to mess it up oh god
why does it matter man yeah even matter
that i meant to begin with it doesn't
and you can't miss out and the comments
are going to be
why does that matter

121
02:00:00.000 --> 02:01:00.000
i know i mean i know it's crazy stuff
but like i think that like if you want
to
like you can't do what 99 of people are
doing if you want to be in the one
percent yeah like fundamentally and so
like you have to have like what i would
consider like maybe uncomfortable
conversations just be like that's okay
like cool like i just i'm gonna do my
thing and then they're like
and the thing is a lot of times if you
just even just make your statements of
like this is how i believe like people
feel like you're attacking them
especially if you articulate it well
because they're like why i don't i'm
like cool like i don't get like do
whatever you want like it's all good to
me um and so which is why i don't talk
about it as much publicly how about this
yeah what bothers you there's got to be
something out there that like i also
haven't wasted my time people wasting
your time
that's that's a really good answer
that's a great answer yeah
it's the only thing i don't have a lot
of
this may seem like a silly question but
if you go to a restaurant and you order
something let's say you order a steak
and you order it medium well and it
comes back medium rare yeah do you say
something not worth his time
no i i don't actually you don't no why
would i

122
02:01:00.000 --> 02:02:00.000
i don't care
but at the same time i was like well a
lot of people would be anxious to say
something and i figured you probably
wouldn't care about those emotions right
i wouldn't even have an emotion first i
mean that's such a no yeah yeah yeah i
mean maybe like like like we have a big
ad campaign that's supposed to go out
and like i get all the creatives today
before and it's supposed to launch
like would that annoy me i'd be like yes
but let's fix it you know like this is
bad we can't run this let's try again
you know
and in the end it won't matter because
we're all gonna die and this money is
gonna go back to the game i'll give you
this one analogy this might be a good
wrap up um
so this is like my mental analogy that i
that i i don't make sense to me which is
like
if if if life were a game right
and all of us are given a token to like
enter like a casino because we're in
vegas right so we're all getting you
know a token we enter the casino and we
sit down at the table to play poker
right and everybody's playing
everybody's got cards and all you know
we're dealt cards everybody's dealt
different cards and we got to play the
handwritten

123
02:02:00.000 --> 02:03:00.000
and depending on our level of skill we
amass more and more chips throughout the
game right
and um at the end of the game the
difference between the real world and
the casino in the the game of life right
in the real world you just you go and
you can cash out your chips and you walk
out with money and there you go there's
your day
um but i feel like in the casino of life
you get tapped on the shoulder by the
grim reaper and he says your time's up
and then all your chips get pushed right
back to the middle of the table and then
you leave the casino empty-handed
because it was a fake game with fake
rules
that didn't matter
and so like we accumulate these chips
that i'm just going to push back in the
middle again that other people are going
to play on and like the reason that that
analogy became real for me is like i
bought this piece of land in austin
and i was like
that's neat
and then i was like how many people have
owned this piece of land
it's like the guy you know the guy
before me owned it and the guy before
him owned it the guy before him doing it
and i was like and they were like this
is mine

124
02:03:00.000 --> 02:04:00.000
and then they die or they sell it and
someone was like this is mine it's like
they're just chips that just get played
with and
they just get amassed and they get
redistributed it just doesn't matter
like death taxes everybody 100 so like
everyone's like estate planning it's
like
dude 500 generations from now like
a your your offspring are you know 500
to the
you know 0.5 or you know one half to the
500th power of like diluted they're
basically just humans at that point so
if if your wealth somehow is a big
enough that it can be diluted that that
much
um and last that long the people who own
it are just humans so like they're so
they're just as close to me as you are
you know it doesn't matter right um and
then the alternative is the people that
i'm giving this to are just the ones
that i care about are the immediate
family but then when people get
resources that they didn't learn how to
use or manage then it destroys them
because it's too much potential energy
they can't handle it right and so it's
like
it's really for nothing
and so like if you want you can build

125
02:04:00.000 --> 02:05:00.000
something that you think is cool um but
like at the end of the day like we're
just gonna cash the chips in so
anyways alex's world views but
it's a great analogy
just let's start to think about this one
yeah i don't have to re-watch this but
you know
you know what's funny i was actually
thinking i would yeah i remember listen
to podcasts
this segment i would actually listen to
this yeah yeah money income no earth
investing indexes
savings accounts what credit cards
that's good geez thank you so much thank
you alex for coming on this has been an
incredible podcast yeah i think so
i appreciate i appreciate you having me
and to the audience like i know that a
lot of the stuff that i say can be uh
triggering and i know that at different
points in my life if i had heard someone
say what i'm saying in the position that
i am i would be offended
and i want to make it clear that it's
not my intention to do that
at all
it's just me sharing beliefs that

126
02:05:00.000 --> 02:06:00.000
as i understand the world
and that there's no way projection on
you or how you see the world etc it's
just this is how i see the world and
these are beliefs that served me well um
that helped me overcome
um
a lot of things that i thought mattered
that you thought there we go that was it
that should be our intro yeah that could
be our intro
that's a good segment to put right there
in the beginning because it's going to
catch people to tell you where they were
like what what's offensive but
what am i going to disagree with perfect
let's do that thank you so much thanks
for coming on man it was nice meeting
you too thank you good luck on your
tinder date thank you thanks she should
grow the stash out by that you think so
i mean if you want to that's why i
shaved it last night by the way
it's a thumbnail oh yeah
one sec
oh my god that was incredible

