Confronting Techlead About Everything (As A Millionaire)

Welcome back to the ice coffee hour. This is tech lead and the ice coffee hour has made some pitiful amount like two [laughter] bucks, five bucks, whatever it is. I probably lost more than this in the crypto markets. But welcome. Yeah. To this it's probably it's it's nothing to you as a millionaire. Mhm. But to us it is $191,9131 penny. Is that supposed to be a lot? It's like nothing you guys. It's nothing. It's a pitiful amount. As you said, it's supposed to be something. But anyway, we we're almost at two years now. Yeah. So, it's almost two years worth of Yeah. Again, this is something I just make or lose in a day, every day based on the crypto markets and fluctuations. How much did you make or lose today in crypto? Your entire portfolio. Millions. Multiples of millions. Multiples of millions. [laughter] It's just whatever Ether Scan tells me. It's just paper gains, paper losses. What I do is I mint a coin for and I sell it for like a dollar. But if I'm in 10 million coins, I have a net worth of 10 million. You see, that's genius, actually. Yeah. Well, we got a lot to cover today. So, first of all, as a background, I watched your channel uh when you were at X Google, ex Facebook. So, I I've seen your progression on YouTube and like through your careers working in in tech as a as a tech lead. Yeah. Um, and then ex Google, ex meta, ex-husband, ex-convict, exocciopath, ex psychopath, tech. [laughter] It's hard to keep track of anymore. Well, but just shows how far ahead I am with you. Yeah, I guess I guess a lot of Most people underestimate me. You got to go. I don't know if the the ex convict. Yeah, definitely [laughter] not ex real estate agent. But but you know what? I've uh almost got my license now in Nevada. So, I've taken all the classes online. I just got to stay take the state exam and then I will be licensed again in Nevada. So, I will no longer be an ex real estate agent. You know, but I've beenve been managing my own property. Maybe come out. No, you got you got join the ranks of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk. Myself. [laughter] Oh gosh. Anyway, so I had you back on the channel on the Graham Stefen show. This would have been 3 years ago had you on and then brought you back very shortly after when you made a video about your ex-wife leaving you and she took your your kid to another country. Uh, and this was just a crazy story and I remember you making these these videos just discussing the subject and these videos were just not only very heartfelt but like were gain like garnering millions of views on on some of these topics. Uh and then was it around that time that you were like tell a bit of your story here because I think it's a very tumultuous uh probably in high school I was already a straight A student valid dictorian right like very traditional upbringing you could say paved the road into becoming essentially a software engineer. I'd always been interested in programming. I got into UC Berkeley, you know, top three college in the country maybe for a computer science, electrical engineering, computer science. During that time, I did spend a year studying abroad in Japan, right? And that was probably one of the best years in my life. So, you know, travel and minimalism are some things that have really been instilled in me. After that, came back, I spent some time working at Sun Micro Systemystems for an internship. I did internship at Microsoft, a software engineer. I worked at I went to UC San Diego for grad school for about a year. Went to Sony Pictures. Worked there for a year. 75K income at the time. It was really good. And I was feeling I was hot stuff. I was like 23, 24, something like that. Uh during my time there, I built my first app. I taught myself uh PHP web development full stack. the Facebook apps were happening. So, uh, I launched that app and it took off, right? So, I made probably a million dollars right there, uh, by the time I was 25. And this is something I recommend to everybody is you don't need to take like I'm against taking risk. Um, like I don't believe in taking risk. Your life is far too valuable to to risk it on anything like so I would do both at the same time. I did my side hustle in the evenings and weekends. did my full-time job in the daytime. After that, I went off and traveled actually doing the digital nomad thing. Been to a bunch of different countries, worked from like London, the UK, worked from Hawaii for a while, worked from Japan, went to New York for a while here and there, and I kind of went back and forth and alternated with some uh full-time jobs actually here and there, right? So like I would go back to Silicon Valley, work in some app companies. 120K Income over at Playdom is some app company. Worked at Groupon, worked at some startups, worked at some of my own ventures again, right? Making more apps and projects. Some of those also blew up. So this is the time I made like 50 apps or so, you know, like more than that. a bunch of different websites, ideas that failed, some of them succeeded and made maybe another maybe another million dollars or so, right? Um, and then probably at around that time, I did go to Japan. I met my wife over there. I was doing my own independent side hustles during that time. And you know, you can fill up these gaps in your resume by saying like, "Yeah, I was working on this venture, this project." Right? that's how you can fill this up. Came back, landed the job at Google and that set me on several years working there as a tech lead. Went to uh transferred over to Facebook after that, right? Voluntarily. So that that was a clean transfer. Um and then during that time at Facebook, I had also my YouTube channel that I was starting to do. So went to Microsoft too. A lot of people don't know that. But I did get married. I had a kid, my wife from Japan. So, I met her in Japan. She one day decided to accuse me of domestic violence. I would say it's alleged. I don't think it's real, but she used that as an excuse to take the child to Japan. Uh, this is actually a pretty big issue if you're into various circles, but you know, Japan is known as a black hole for child abduction. So, she she took the kid. It was uh at the time it was devastating. Now I've kind of pretty much moved forward with that. You know, the show has to go on, right? Like I can't just uh kind of like it's made me realize that you need to focus on making the most of your life no matter what. And that life is short so you have to enjoy it, right? Like there's certain things you just can't go up against like it's not worth fighting necessarily. uh we can talk about this a little bit more but then yeah after that I I mean during this time I also did work at uh Google tech lead there uh you know and then I went over to Facebook also working as a tech lead over there. Some people at Facebook think I'm I'm not a real tech lead but I mean this is why I have to keep telling people I am an ex Google X-Mac lead. So Facebook was doing $600,000 in income over there. Actually, one day they decided to fire me for running a YouTube channel. And yeah, ever since then, I've been running this YouTube channel. Uh, you can check it out, Tech Lead. But I essentially ran out of content like two or three years ago. I don't know what [snorts] people are still there on the channel for. It's probably loaded with crypto trading bots just trying to scam you. But, uh, maybe it's only bots watching my channel right now. [laughter] 100,000. You know what? I'm always curious how many of our views are due to the bot because as soon as I will post, there's always like there's always one who will comment on every single post. Now, they could probably do that with one view because it's the same account, but I'm curious. There's got to be like at least a few thousand views. The bots are the bread and butter of my uh monetization strategy, right? It's like I I know a lot of people say they don't want bots on YouTube, but I need them for my ad revenue. You think they watch the ads? They probably add to the impression counts on the ads and boost the revenue for the creators. Yeah. Yeah. So, going back, you mentioned that Japan was a black hole for child abduction. Is that because they don't have because it's hard to track people from the US to Japan or is that because they they don't have the infrastructure to or or the resources to to track people or I mean there's a whole discussion unrelated to finance perhaps but there is the idea that Japan believes in single custody of children right and and they typically have the situation where the uh the mother watches the child the husband goes to work all day and barely shows up at home. And if there's a separation, the mother oftentimes will get the child single cous, the father never sees the child again. And that's just the system that they go with. And what happens is um it's just maybe my personal point of view, but uh there's kind of this princess psychology. Uh like a lot of Japanese women tend to grow up as little princesses. In in my personal view, there's a lot of immaturity involved in this. So when there's conflict, there's not good conflict resolution and there's no concept of uh double parenthood there. In my personal view, I kind of made peace with this because if you've ever seen a woman give birth, you'll know that it's massively painful. And you know, it's like my view is if it if somebody wants a child and they they get like the woman should probably get to say like I I kind of see how single custody uh if anybody gets to decide maybe it should be the mother, right? Because like if you ask me would I like to push a watermelon through my body and then say this is half somebody else's, I would say like that's not a clean deal. Like maybe it should just belong to this person. Mhm. Um so yeah that I mean as far as enforcement goes the more you pursue somebody the deeper into hiding that they go. There are things like the H convention which uh are very difficult to enforce. People try to pursue this. It costs uh I know people who have spent like $250,000. Uh I've met these people on trying to get their children back. There's there are entire communities and this happens I mean this happens everywhere in divorce as well like all of these situations you can plow hundreds of thousands of dollars into this and you still may not get the result you're looking for and the only people that win often times are going to be at the attorneys the lawyers so I mean there was even this guy he made the headlines a while ago he was starving himself to try to get his held back in Japan. This guy was um like a finance manager, Vincent Fitcho. And like these people are all many of them are very wellto-d do, but to me it's not worth like you have to pick your battles in life, right? And to me, it's like this open world game and there's some bosses on the map that are just you can spend a lifetime fighting for. like you can spend you can throw your whole life trying to defeat this boss and maybe you're going to win or you can go explore all the other fun parts in life. So even though yes I can go throw hundreds of thousands of dollars into this hey convention and hire all these attorneys and take this very aggressive attitude. I think it's better to just say, I'm going to go continue to enjoy my life as best as I can, make the most of it in the short time that I have and take a more gentle approach, which is typically like like this is a problem with Western culture is that we believe in litigation and we believe in confrontation and aggression and getting our way, fighting for it and that is victory. But I would say you if you can find the an approach that is more gentle and reaches compromise that's going to be more ideal. So my approach these days is really more more towards compromise and just understanding that people are like totally insane sometimes and irrational. Yeah. Um and to just treat everybody like rabid dogs. Like people are not rational. So you just have to try to manage it as best as you can. I can try to fight this person and confront them and reason about them or I can just say let me just give you what you want, right? Like let me just handle this situation as as carefully as I can without trying to provoke this other person more. I've just accepted the situation for what it is and done your thing. Yeah. I think some things like I just don't want to throw resources, time, and effort into into fighting, right? like it's just uh it if if the mother wants the child to grow up without the father, that's her choice. And and I think that she does have priority. The law may say there's 50/50 ownership, but if there were no law, by nature, the mother has has priority. That's what I would say. Yeah. And also through the divorce, what were the finances like through the divorce? because I know especially for high earners [clears throat] uh the results can be pretty uh yeah controversial. And you when did you become a millionaire? I think it was 25 24 right. We we talked about this on the early episode of the Graham Stefen Show. I mean I I've been a millionaire since age 25. So I've lived with wealth quite a while. When were you a millionaire? 26. All right. See that's how far ahead I am of you. And it compounds, by the way, too. So, it's like it just the distance keeps going. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I'm not going to ask your net worth, which maybe [laughter] do it. You could ask it. No, I'm so upfront about it. I made a video about it. It's 15 and a half. You didn't ask, but that's that's what it is. What's yours? Check Ether Scan. I mean, I was worth like $20 million on Ether Scan. Check that out. Paper gains right there. And I can I can probably mint another uh 200 million if I want to, right? It's like simple. Just make a coin like that. Um what were we talking about? Uh your your your the wealth that you built up in your 20s. How do you how you did that? And then what happened in in a divorce? This is how you get messed up in in in family court, right? like whatever amount that you offer, you can say, um, I'm going to offer you $5,000 child support, a million dollars in uh total finances. Uh, the other person does not know what is fair, right? So, because they have no understanding of what is fair by the legal system, they're going to say, "Give me more. It's always going to be more until the other person gets to a point where they may really until an attorney comes and the judge says this is fair. But that makes mediation incredibly difficult in my opinion. And what happens if you're a high earner is that if you go talk to an attorney, they will they'll just charge you through the roof on everything. So like I try to do everything myself because I don't want any funds to go to the attorneys um if at all possible but if if the other person is there comes situations where like the other person can try to get you to pay their attorney fees. So you're paying double attorney fees and attorneys can cost what 800 bucks an hour if if if it's a good one. So you could be paying $1,600 per hour in the worst case possibly maybe. But what happens is like I probably spent 25 $30,000 on an attorney and they didn't even get me through a single trial, right? It was only paperwork up to that point. So I I fired the attorney and just said, "I'm going to just represent myself in trial, go in and I just lost." And you know, like I went in there and I said, "This is a kidnapping. This person's taking the child. You know, this isn't fair." And they're just like, "Cool." Uh, so, so let's let's have you pay. And I think that's just a norm for family court. Even if she's in another country and you have zero custody, even if she's in another country, kidnaps, nobody, it doesn't matter. That's just the way family court is. Nobody. The California family court because you think it's all western courts. Yeah. I think because number one, child support has nothing to do with custody. So, it's it's simply based on like we we don't care what happened. We don't know like even if this was a kidnapping whatever like you pay it's just as simple as that. The divorce is the divorce is still going on quite frankly. So th this is going to be another uh it's going to be another headache. How did you build your wealth to begin with? So I think this is something valuable for people to understand but my wealth was built over probably uh five six seven different projects over my uh career right it's not a single thing and these took many years so it's it's really the personality that you have and that determination and persistence to keep doing success after success after success in my personal opinion that's going to get you to a success uccessful position, right? So, like probably my first million was made from making a bunch of apps on my own, right? Like Facebook apps, Facebook gaming, right? When that took off, but that only got me to 1 million or so, less than that, you know, I probably had to create three different social gaming apps, taking advantage of the the whole app trend on Facebook, Twitter apps, and all that to get to that stage. But that's not enough to retire on. That's why I went back to work many later on and you know like there was the whole Google Facebook career episode I had that made me some more money here and there. I had episodes where I had to learn stock trading, right? Because after a while your investments take over. If you make money but you don't learn investments, uh you're going to be limited, right? Like like there could be massive gains there that you don't pick up on. after that then maybe there's the whole YouTube se right segment which helps make more money but if all I did was YouTube I would not have monetized as much as maybe if I were able to create additional content and courses and continue to pivot the channel to stay uh relevant to just keep keep the uh clickbait farm coming along right so you know you see a lot of other people they're making their YouTube channel maybe they make one channel that's all they do it fades out they go back to work, right? And I so I would say what the thing about me is I kept reinventing myself and kept finding new opportunities. So it's not like this is why when people say, "Oh, you're just lucky." Well, I got lucky like seven times, 10 times in a row, right? Like the these are ventures, multiple ventures, not just one. And and many people have trouble even doing a single venture, right? In in their entire life. they don't ever get off the rails. I'm a little confused on the storyline here. So, this is I'm assuming just after college or was this while you were in college when you started developing apps? Yeah. So, the apps business was done uh right after I finished grad school. Mhm. But before you started working at Microsoft? Yeah. So, it was in 2007. Facebook was booming. Uh people were making lots of money on the Facebook apps. Everything was going viral, right? So I I actually had to teach myself uh PHP, JavaScript, uh it it was hellish, you know, like full stack web development, server management. Um this is not something that any college is going to teach you, right? Like nobody teaches you this stuff. You just have to go learn by yourself. Uh so that's what I did. Why that? Did you just spot an opportunity? You how do you come up with the idea? So I I think I'm personally attracted to whatever is just interesting or cool or trendy at the time, right? Like uh this was just a very interesting trendy technology, you know, like the whole Facebook apps thing, you can make massive impact and maybe it's impact for me that I've been attracted to. It's like anything that can that looks like yeah, it can just make impact on upon the world, right? Um, the Facebook apps was ability the ability to reach massive amounts of people. You could kind of say the same with the whole YouTube thing. When I when I saw YouTube, probably when you saw it too, it were not taking it seriously, right? It was it was like if you were doing YouTube, people would laugh at you, right? People would say, "Oh, professionals don't do that." Nowadays, you see venture capitalists and entrepreneurs and like loads of professional people on YouTube trying to build their audience, but they're way too late. So, you know, there's the what? There's the followers and the leaders, tech lead like me. Um, but you know, it's like if you're attracted to impact, then I think you may have what it takes. There's many people who come to me and say they are attracted to code. They love coding. That's not right. Right. Code is a tool to achieve impact. It's a it's a tool to achieve massive scalability uh at low cost to reach right like massive amounts of people and deliver value. But code is not the draw. It's never been the draw. It is the product that impact that I've always been seeking. So I just learn whatever technology is necessary. Like when I was working at Google and Facebook, it was through iOS development. iOS is completely different tech stack than full stack web development. A completely different technology. So I switched right away to just whichever technology is going to be necessary. YouTube in my mind YouTube is also another different tech stack, right? Like it's a whole set of skills that you need. And so when people come and say they just want to learn to code, it's like if all you do is learn how to code, what what you're really looking at is a a 30k job, low income in an outsourced facility center. Uh where you're at the computer 12 hours a day for 10 years straight. That's coding. I don't think anybody really wants to do that. But you see so many people say, "Oh, my dream is to become a software engineer." There's plenty of software engineers like the Linux programmers who just sit in their basements and never achieve anything with their lives and make zero impact upon the world. And those are the people I've never envied. Who we envy are myself. [laughter] Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and myself. And the people who make the impact, right? These people were not just programmers. They they were entrepreneurs. But first, I want to thank our sponsor, Grammarly. So, guys, it's already April, but I feel like the year's just started. I've been spending way too much time writing and perfecting emails. Well, Jack, if you want to save time writing emails, just install Grammarly. Grammarly is an all-in-one writing tool that helps you communicate clearly and effectively, even when you're short on time. Grammarly is like having a professional writer look through your work 24/7. 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Again, guys, that's 20% off at grammarly g m a r y.com/ced coffee. Thanks so much, Grammarly. And back to the podcast. How much were you making on the app at its peak? because you must do you were 24 25 years old. Yeah. I mean the So the first app I I built is it was a social gaming app. Uh probably was about a million per year type of thing total. Yeah. There were some apps that were doing uh $20,000 per day actually. So like but these apps can be shortlived things. Other apps would do $5,000 per day. But the thing that people don't understand is even though I had say three four highly successful apps, there were 50 apps I built probably that were not successful that nobody heard about. Right? So you know one lesson I did learn I remember was uh in my younger years uh entrepreneur told me you need to fail three times before you before you find your first success. What do you think about that? I don't know if I've really failed at at just [clears throat] wins and wins and wins. I'm thinking of it like I I didn't have many failures in the sense. What about the vlog? Huh? Yeah. I wouldn't I wouldn't call that necessarily a failure, but but it's like you have to have three failures to have one success unless you count a failure like going to see open houses. For you was the very first YouTube channel you started. It was just everything I've done, it's usually done well, but but I've never gone into anything I've done for the money. It's always been I do something because I really enjoy it and it happens to make money. Like uh like what started off as taking pictures for reef aquariums for fun turned into a turned into a job that then turned into this whole passion throughout high school where I just make money. Uh same with real estate. It's like I I [snorts] I I did a quick job before that that I thought I wanted to go in investment banking. So I got a job at a precious metals investment firm. I hated the job but it was really good experience. Um but even as an agent I was like I just wanted to like I would wanted to work for free honestly and it turned into a great career and then YouTube was something like I would do that for free. It turned into a great career. Um well I I would say even for YouTube you have videos that perform poorly, right? That get 10 out of 10. Yeah. and and some that maybe after you do a series of poor videos, you get a one out of 10, right? So, like you can even consider some of some of these videos to have been sort somewhat fail. I don't know. I think it depends how you frame it because some people are like, "Oh, I failed at this. This sucks. I I'm a you know, I'm worthless." But I've always viewed every failure is like, "Why did I fail? Why did I So, I guess I I frame any failure as like, oh, I learned something good." So, it's never been a failure for me because if if there is something that doesn't work, I'm like, "Oh, what can I do? How could I do that differently? Oh, I learned a really good lesson from this. Here's how I'm going to make it better in that." And so, like that's it's almost like a step up. I think that's a good point. Yeah. Because like even for me, maybe I made 50 apps even I don't consider those to be failures, right? It's like maybe I made an app and I I learned something or I got a few hundred bucks from it. And so a lot of people say, "Oh, being an entrepreneur is so risky because you may fail." I don't think these people fail, right? Like they they probably make a few hundred few thousand dollars from their venture, they learn something and they move on and they satisfy their curiosity. So even for them, they not they may not picture it as a pure failure. Yeah. I think it just depends on how you frame it. And there's uh what what is it called? I read I read a uh a book on this or it was like an audio book about like um a self-fulfilling prophecy that when you get in the when when you start doing well at something it it spirals into another thing into another thing because you have that self-fulfilling belief that if you do something you're going to do well at it and because of that you shift your mindset to do well at that because you believe in it. Yeah. Versus other people get caught in the mindset of like oh I suck at this. Let me give it a shot and it's probably not going to do well but let me try and it doesn't do well. I was like, "Oh man, I'm I suck at this. I I can't do this." And that continues that influences the next choices. Yeah. So, this is something this is a theory I have that plays into this, which is, you know, how um love uh cannot be negotiated, right? Desire cannot be negotiated. You cannot rationalize somebody to love you, right? It's like you can't sit down and have a conversation and say like here are the top 10 reasons why you should love me. It's just if the person wants it, they will rationalize to themselves all your good traits. And if they don't want it, they will convince themselves that you're a terrible person. Right? So in a sense I it's like we are where we are because we we chose that place that we wanted to be and then selfrationalize ourselves into that. Um and it's kind of like how you people also say I don't have time for this. No you didn't you have time right? You didn't want to make time. it wasn't a priority in your life and so therefore you decided not to create the time for it and you made these excuses. So I tend to believe like um all of us are exactly where we want to be. No, I think all of us are where we we think we're at where we deserve or we're at what we believe to be our own limit. That's what I kind of think because I don't think anybody could look at not anybody could look at their life but I think a lot of people would look at their life and say I'm I'm not necessarily happy but I I didn't want to be here. I want to be over there. But I think deep down maybe it's they they are where they are because they uh they feel like that's what they that's what they they deserve or like that's what I'm worth is this. It's like we many people are addicted to their own struggle, their own self-m right like somebody may say I want to I want to be a a book author and that's this state of mind that they stay in and they never write a book right and I think we kind of push ourselves into these limiting areas and there's this there's this other book I read called the courage to be disliked it's a pretty interesting one but it's based on the idea of um so like Young psychology basically says that we are a product of our past. Right? So they say if you had trauma when you were a kid uh then for example you can never have a family a happy family life because you had this trauma as a kid and so therefore your future is predetermined. But there's also this idea that trauma doesn't exist. Okay? So it's like if you're here and you just will yourself to be happy uh you can be a happy person right you're a point in time you're not necessarily the result of prior action so anyone can just say uh I'm happy and what like I'm suddenly I'm happy right and you can let go of that prior identity that you may have had uh so based on that idea it's like you can choose where you want to be kind of like Say to yourself if you want to be a happy like if you just want to say I'm a happy person uh the things in my life I'm going to view with a certain perspective as being that of success then say right like maybe these were good things right like some people say to themselves I had a bad day maybe you had a wonderful day right you you're not in jail right like you're not dead you're doing fantastic and then other people may just characterize that as something bad Yeah, it's weird. I always view things as it could be worse and I try my best even even if I have a bad day. I'm like, well, at least this didn't happen. Well, that could have happened. It didn't. Yeah. Or I try to think, you know, how how could this be better? And am I going to what? How was today for you? Terrible. Today was the Could it have been worse? It could. Yes. Today was the worst day I've had in probably a year. Maybe. Yeah. Maybe two years. This is probably been the most Yeah. This is the worst day. Yeah. Basically, my aquarium sprung a leak. And that's like every aquarium owner's worst nightmare is the seam of the tank just all of a sudden bust. So, I woke up this morning to 40 gallons of water. This is why minimalism is what you need. You're a slave to your possessions, right? You're a slave to your aquarium. Oh, but I love the aquarium. The the aquarium is the one thing that has so much. Yeah. So much happiness. Grasp on you. You're an emotional slave to your things, right? But I think Graham actually likes being like you mentioned people are generally where like wherever they are they're at their happiest because they made their own choices to put themselves there right and Graham may be a slave to some material things such as his aquarium such as his zenith El primero. Oh but I'm not a slave to that [clears throat] but the aquarium. Yes. But I think that that's kind of what fuels him. He's a very interesting person in so far as like he's very fueled by like stress and like negative emotion. Oh gosh. I don't have negative emotion. This is like a jacket going. [laughter] Have you done like a personality trait? Like there's a trait in the ocean analysis for an neuroticism. So that's the tendency to overw worry or to overstress. I don't know. I'm happy to take it and see and see what come up for me. What's your MBTI? Do you know that? What is that? MyersBriggs. Oh, I and I don't know. INTJ or something something like that. I'm not really sure. Cool. All right. But yeah, but the aquarium is I I was unhappy with at the aquarium because I really wanted an aquarium and I did that was years of just like looking forward to getting the aquarium and I get the aquarium and it leaks, but I'll get a new one. But you still got an aquarium. I still got an aquarium and I'll get a new one in 3 weeks that I could set up. So now I'm thinking like, okay, what's the what's the bride said? Well, the tank didn't explode. Wasn't still safe. Everything is still safe and I get a new tank. What's the downside? Well, it's it's a day. It's it's basically two days of my time. That's the downside. Is it two days? One day is going to be very memorable of cleaning up the all the water. The next day is going to be transferring it to a new tank with and I'll put sand in this tank this time. Didn't put sand before. I'll make it better. So I I try to view everything like that. If something bad happens, it's like how could it be worse? Gratitude. [snorts] I I did. You got to get on the influence. Like we influencers have to like have mindfulness, practice gratitude, drink black coffee. Do you do intermittent fasting? No. You got to get on that, man. I mean, otherwise, you're not legit as an influencer. Uh, yeah. I got to take cold showers, too. Wake up at 4:00 a.m. to meditate. I Yeah. Yeah. You got to do I did practice gratitude. Minimalism. I mean, where is that? I couldn't do minimalism. Really? No. Why? Uh, I think there's some of that that that I would enjoy temporarily, but like deep down, I'm a collector. I love collecting things and I like consumerous consumerism materialism. You're just consumed by your own physical design. I love having a collection and and that that fun and the challenge of putting together something that uh it's like the searching of putting together a puzzle like for me it would be a car collection and like what cars can I buy? Well, the Ford GT it would be a Tesla road. If you cannot be happy with a cup of coffee, you can never be happy because your desire will be limitless, right? Like if you temper your desires, uh you can be happy with with anything. Otherwise, you're always going to be on that head on the stick treadmill. But see, I'm happy looking forward to stuff like like I'm looking forward. I want a Tesla Roadster, you know? I'm looking forward. Yeah, sure. There will always be something else, but like to me that's that's part of the collection. But if everything got stripped away from you, would you be able to be happy? Uh, yes. But but I would be happy with the expectation that I'd be able to build that back. So, you're not going to be happy unless you have this Tesla Roadster that's holding you back. I mean, you you've already got plenty of cars, right? But it's a but it's a part of the collection. It's like But but for me, it's the fun of picking a car that I think is a good investment. But you what if you can't buy the car because you got stripped of everything? Then it's just the hopes of being able to buy a car. Yeah. I and yeah I I' I've always had the hope and the and the belief that like well if I'm not going to do it now I'll be able to do it in the future. Always this is the the thing I've realized is investment is is the most boring thing in the world to like I used to be into it just like you but I'm I've like transcended trans beyond that. Yeah. [laughter] But like let's pretend that uh Bitcoin is the ultimate investment. Let's pretend that it's just going to outperform any other thing. Sure. So then would you just say and and let's so would you just say okay let's just like get rid of everything put it all into Bitcoin if you make more money put it more into Bitcoin and it's like just anything you get you're just going to plow into uh crypto some type of cryptocurrency. No because now I valued more so my time so I'm like I'm doing things now that would save me time and or for convenience. Um, so like I do see a more of a value in that. But as far as the car, I mean the car is something you could enjoy. So the car is part of something that like you could go and stare at it. It's like a piece of Can't you just rent a car? Like here's the here's the experience that changed me is Have you ever driven like a Lamborghini? Yeah. Huracan. Like I went to this race course, you can do one in Las Vegas. drove a Lamborghini Huracan next to like a Aston Martin and you know there were GTRS and like Ferraris and everybody just said yeah the Lamborghini and Ferrari are in a totally different class and just like the other cars just look like pure trash compared to like the Lambos and after driving that for me I just thought um I have absolutely no desire to own like a GTR which I used to want to own um because it's it's just total trash and you know other cars you're playing the status game like people say Audi is the car for uh basically like poor wealthy people right people who are trying to show status who are actually poor people right like if you want to actually show status uh get a classless car so for me like which cars have no class Mini Coopers Teslas gosh Minnie Cooper and Audi's. Yeah. I mean like [laughter] said Tesla, too. So yeah, they're saying all of Macy and Graham's car is an Audi and she's Volvos and Prius and Priest, too. Yeah. I'm pretty up there. I mean, you guys don't have to prepare yourself. You have transcended [clears throat] everything and everyone and everything. I am life experiences, you know, like let's talk about life experiences which like have you been out of the country? Yes. But never out of the continent. So you've been to like Canada, right? Mexico is where I've traveled. When I was your age, I had already been to How old are you? Like late 30s, but I I say to myself early 40s just just to give myself he's transcended beyond his actual age. Actual [laughter] age. How can I guess like you hear Jack? Like what is age anyways? It's a it's a tech doesn't have an age [laughter] tech just I use like the lunar calendar. He lives in the moment. He is how old he thinks he is. [laughter] Age is just a mindset, Jack. Like when I was your age, Yeah. I studied abroad in Japan. You know, I had already been to like Ankorwa, Cambodia, Vietnam, Halong Bay, Thailand multiple times, selling in the Caribbean. Like it's beautiful. You rent a catamaran for like a week. You go sell it in the Bahamas, in the British Virgin Islands. I went selling in Thailand, you know. I had already lived in Have you been to Hawaii? Yeah, you went to Hawaii. I had already lived in London, you know, the UK. I spent time traveling through all of going from like the Swiss Alps down through the uh French coast, right, into the southern Spain area. I've been to Iceland, right? Like done all of these things and you're like here reading news, right? Like you're reading a bunch of news and making video about news in order to buy more Bitco like paper wealth to invest that into more paper wealth. For me, I realized I was like, I just think this is time that you're not going to necessarily get back. What are your assets? Health, wealth, time, and youth. Youth is important, right? Because if you go if you go traveling when you're 40 or 50, or if you're driving in a Porsche when you're 40 or 50, nobody cares about that. And your experience will be totally different than if you do it, you know, now. And arguably since I made my wealth early, I recognized everybody gets wealthy. Everybody becomes a millionaire by the time they're 60, 70, right? Like it's very simple. You work 30 years for 30k. That gets you what? A million bucks. So the advantage that you have is your time. People want that money now in order to experience it and use it. And I don't think it would like this is something you're going to realize when it's too late maybe. But you're going to say lose the next five 10 years of your life and then you're going to say okay I made another uh $1 million. What happened? You made 5 million but then you lost 4 million in the market crash. So or right or you may have made some money, you lost a bunch in the market crash and then uh and then you got divorced or whatever, right? Like something somebody sues you and then you break your leg and what happened, right? That was it. Maybe you get cancer. So people often say like you have to enjoy your journey. The destination is going to be trash. Like in many ways life is a car crash in slow motion. The ending we all die, right? We all we all just die. So in in my opinion like you create the lifestyle that you want and you you need to live that and the lifestyle needs to use money, right? Because many people I think they they go through life, they make money and they want to live the fire dream, right? a financial independence stream where they're they're essentially just burning very little amounts of their money and they're just living at home watching TV and they take two vacation trips a year. This is something that you're born with, right? Like when you were a kid, your parents already gave you that life, right? Like just go live with your parents if that's what you want. You you can go you can play your video games. You don't have to work and your parents can take you on like a vacation twice a year or something like that, right? like it's extremely boring. I would say this financial independence route. Fatfire is one where you're able to live a little bit more, but these people still end up with um multiple millions, right, in in their bank account when they die. and they they never truly they never truly find a use for that money, you know, and and it's kind of saddening and extremely boring, especially now that we have cryptocurrency where you just say if you get money, just put it into a into this uh digital dashboard, right? That's what we're all doing. Make money, put it into a digital dashboard, number go up. That's it. Keep doing that and then uh 10 years pass, 20 years pass. So, in my opinion, saving money and investing money is like living on autopilot. It is the most boring and lazy path. And if you're able to actually figure out how do you deploy cash, right? Spending money is difficult. It It's extremely difficult to spend money and deploy it into a way that achieves enjoyment for you. You can go buy uh a Rolex. Um, I don't know if that gives you much joy, especially, right? Like you buy it, you put it in a in a cabinet, in a drawer somewhere, and you say, "Okay, this is a nice investment and and you don't really look at it so much." I I guess you two own Rolexes. See? Yeah. Here's the thing, though. For me, it's like I think a lot of people enjoy what they do and they would be doing it regardless. So, for me, it's like I I don't I don't know. Right now, I I would enjoy vacations like that. Like to me that just sounds I' I'd rather just like what sounds great to me is a free schedule over the next week. Get to work. If you if you could pause time right now though and there was no expectation of you posting the algorithm would stop. How would you spend that time? Gosh, I don't know. I probably want to get ahead. I mean yeah that would make me feel good. I have family friends who say like um they're doing extremely well. I mean we all have friends like this. they're doing extremely well and they're still working in their 60s or 70s and they say, "Oh, I love my job. I would never quit because I wouldn't know what I would do with my time." It's extremely lazy, isn't it? Right? Like uh these people are on autopilot. They follow the path laid out to them by society to uh do their 9 to5 and to not think further than that when there's a whole world waiting for them. And and you have to actually it takes extremely amount like a lot of time and effort to figure out what you want to do. Like what I think about is um an itinerary like when you take a vacation trip you need to spend maybe uh two weeks planning the itinerary. You need to actually sit down and put in time and effort and research this like what are you going to do? Uh if you don't have an eternary and you never put in the time and effort to think about what you want to do, then you just say, "Well, I wouldn't know what I would do. This is too hard. I guess I'm just going to keep working because I can make five bucks an hour if I do this." You're going to reach a point in your life, you may have already reached it, where your investments, the returns on your investments will outpace any active income that you as an individual is able to generate, right? Like Um, and at that point, why do you work? You can increase your like let's say fun. I enjoy it. Like, I don't know. I I love doing like this. This is kind of work, but like I would be doing this regardless. And and I've even thought like what would I do if I took, you know, a full week off work like I I would be loading up podcast. I do more podcast guests. I'd do more reactions on the second channel. I would just keep doing what I'm doing. Yeah. probably for you this is absolutely the position you should be in. Yeah. Let's say you're 10 years older. Yeah, I know it's gonna change. Let's say let's say you're 10 years older now. Uh would you is your answer still the same? Probably not. But but I would but I would have the options to do at that time or it could be in a month. I mean realistically it'll probably be two to five years. that's what you know kind of and and and at that point I could re evaluate the schedule and kind of maybe figure out something different but I see probably two to five years like I love this and maybe if it's longer it's longer if it's less I've I've always just done like what I felt in my gut of just like this is what I want to do I'm just going to do that and that's the right choice it's always been the right I have a question for you Graham um if you knew you were going to be gone one week from now what would you do if I were going to be gone like yeah I don't want to say it because the YouTube algorithm I would be unal alive in one week. Unal alive in one week. What would you do? Oh gosh. Um I would probably go scuba diving in Fiji with with with Macy. Well, with everybody. I I would take everybody I could and Yeah. I And you two. I would probably take 30 people to Fiji uh to go scuba diving and then I'd find a way to divide up my money so that so that it goes to the right people and places. Jack, who was saying I'm not going to Yeah. Why are you saying what? I didn't say anything. You're a good guy. [laughter] It goes to Ramsay and Bailey. Oh, okay. The the Ramsay and Bailey Foundation. [laughter] They're going to have this huge house in Bair. Yeah. It's going to be so nice. Let's say like let's say um you make a video, you get no views, and you get no money. Do you still make videos? Certainly not. What? But there's there's because like there's there's [clears throat] two things that feed you. Number one is uh your own ego, right? By getting the views, you you you feel self-important, right? Like, hey guys, everybody's watching me. The second thing is maybe maybe money the money is going to get to a point where and you may already be at this where it's it's money that like like for me I'm going to die with money in the bank account, right? I I'm there's going to be money in the bank account when I die even if I try to spend it. many people are going to get to that point. You're you're probably at that point. Um, so the money is just kind of like you can make it. You're you're never going to touch it in your entire life and quite frankly your investments may outpace your your active income by 10 to one. I mean, you know, you may get to a point your own narcissism or ego is something that you don't necessar like if you escape out of it and get out of the status game anyways like Yeah. But I think it's it's less about myself and more about like what you provide to somebody else. And for me, it's the it's the fulfillment and purpose that I get when I see someone come up and say, "Hey, it's because of you that I bought a house. It's because of you that I got my first credit card and I did this and now like now I'm financially secure." And like that's the sort of stuff for me that really pushes me. And and it helps that money is a byproduct of that. And like obviously that that's a component of it. I enjoy that. uh and that just as it gives me more content to make. But even something like this, it's like I would say there's a very small portion of like ego and I would say the bigger portion is that whoever's watching this is able to get a different perspective that they wouldn't have without us being in this room together and spending our times like talking about stuff like this. So, I think that's that's great for me since I'm I'm basically like I was where you were like 10 years ago or something. It's like I had my phase where I dedicated a year or more of my life to reading news every single day and day trading. Uh I got nothing out of like the news I read. I'm I'm not sure if I I attained any skill out of, right? no long-term lasting learnings, no personal growth. I realized that all the news I was reading every day was I couldn't care less about, right? It's like Jerome Power raised interest rates by 25%. You know, uh Joe Biden is doing something, they're printing this much, some company released some annual earnings report. Two weeks later, is that news important? No. It's it's complete garbage, right? It's like you it's unactionable priced into the market. So you do this long enough, you do this another 5, 10 years, you may get to a point where you're just like, buy and hold, you guys, right? You, if I want to help you, I tell you, uh, buy and hold. Deploy all your cash into uh, Amazon, Apple, Google, S&P 500, and just hold it, right? And and get like Bitcoin or whatever, right? Get some crypto and that's it. Just buy and hold, don't sell. That's all you got to do, right? Maybe that's it. And and then all the other news that you're reading is just causing you to wor around to spin and you're just like, do I buy? Do I sell? No, just you already deployed your capital, so just hold on to it. Yeah. But some of that I think I enjoy it. I love the process of reading through the news every day. I love seeing what's new. And for me, it's like it it's it's a component of that, but both entertainment because like I watch I watch like every finance video that's out there. And I would say half of them I I watch just for the information and that's it. I just I wanted just the details, but the other half is just entertainment. Like I'll just sit there and I'll like eat dinner or I'll eat lunch and I'll watch a video and like that's what I just But I also acknowledge that I'm not I I'm kind of weird when it comes to that sense that I I find like these very specific topics extremely interesting and I I fixate on them. And so for me it's like the reef aquarium and business and making money. It's just like those are the two segments that I just love. I mean, I would say I I still do pay attention to I I still read it as well, but it's just like when you step back, it's it's maybe the most interesting thing of all the boring news out there. So, it's still something to pay attention to. Yeah, it's interesting. But let's for someone like that, you you know, you're not you're not chasing anything. Why why do this? Why create Million Token? Yeah, Million Token. Check it out. Million Token.org. We got them, you guys. We're on the Graham Stefen ice coffee hour. Check it out. [laughter] Yeah, with with Jack. Yeah. Million token. You know, 1 million limited supply. So, I had spent probably the last nine months of my YouTube channel really promoting this, right? This token was released in June in July of last year. Uh, initially it was I mean I mentioned this before as well. It's a joke, right? was like it was supposed to be this fun social crypto activity because I'm a programmer. I know how to create how to create some of these smart contracts that it would be this community activity. we could just all get together and it was going to be something that just lasted one video. Really? Right. Like uh is that really your expectation though? Because really Yeah, it was like it was going to be this fun activity, show you guys how I created the token, how you can create your own tokens and just put it out there, right? And and it was supposed to be this like I make apps all the time, right? So to create a token like I make programming projects on my channel occasionally as well. So to me it was just like hey this is kind of neat. I didn't give it much more thought than that and deployed it. It turns out over time that uh the token has pretty good fundamentals actually, right? It's like one token backed by uh one USD coin. Um the rest is up to market fluctuations and there it actually had some legs to continue running. And the more I looked at it and other people started getting into it as well, it's just like th this is actually pretty neat, right? Like the fundamentals are actually pretty good. I mean, I don't want to toot my own horn here, but the fundamentals are super clean because it's like it's never been hacked. It's bridged across almost every blockchain. You know, you got Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, Phantom, Harmony One, um maybe some more. The zero inflation rate, transaction times are super fast. You can use any blockchain that suits you, right? So it's like if you compare it and it's smart contract compatible. It supports NFTTS. It supports like all of the capabilities of that. So when you compare it to so here's the thing, right? Like Bitcoin and Dogecoin are firstg coins. They don't support smart contracts, right? They they don't have NFT support. They don't have staking, right? Aren't they working for They're still trying to deploy that, right? like Jack Dorsey of Twitter is trying to come up with uh like smart contract support for Bitcoin still, right? Like like they're trying to work on some of this stuff. Then you've got the second gen coins which I would say is like um maybe she enu or something like that some some token that is purely on Ethereum. Ethereum gas fees are crazy expensive and plus some of these coins have pretty terrible fundamentals like they may have inflation. you don't know who the founder of Sheba coin is. It's like you don't know how many coins like there could be some shady stuff going on in there. So when you take a look at um million at least it's interesting because it's on so many chains you can get super low gas fees and like the founder is stocks and it's it's it's just kind of a ne but why but why create it just for fun? Was it was it out of boredom? Was it just what why why put your time into that when you could be traveling or doing something else? I tend so again I believe in like what the journey right it's like whatever's neat whatever's interesting maybe it'sn't like a art project or something right so I I make apps out there all the time whatever I think is just kind of interesting so that's it's really like it's game theory it's a social experiment right it's like if if I put out a token backed by one USDcoin one interesting thing about this is it will never uh disappear right the project will never lose value. It it won't just vanish because there's always value attached to it. So, and then any price above that is simply market dynamics. Mhm. Right. So, it's like what would happen to this? It's also pretty cool because like it's a NFT. It's a hybrid NFT, right? It's like um Right. It's like it's it's a fun badge for anybody, at least on my channel, like as a millionaire. If you also want to be a millionaire, you can own like a million tokens. So, like there's some pretty fun things with that. It It didn't take too long to deploy and I always wanted to. [laughter] Way to go, Bailey, for lightening the mood here. Yeah, I always wanted to just try out the smart contract. So, yeah, that's what happened with Coffeezilla. We we saw some big this was the biggest drama of YouTube back then when this came out. Coffeezilla made a video. Yeah. So, unfortunately, here's the thing. When Coffeezilla initially messaged me, um he was intent to just like he built his reputation on destroying as many he just wants to call everything a scam. That's how he gets his views. If he came and said, "This project is pretty neat. Actually, there's some things I like about it. Hey, crypto is kind of cool, you guys. He's going to alienate his audience, right? He builds his life on criticizing other people. Like, what value do you add? But when he came to me, he said, I I want to destroy your token value, basically. Like, I I want to just come and and make this video that you're scam. And I'm just like, there's a lot of people who are holding on to this. And like I want I I I don't think the val I don't think you should just go and like trash these people's values, right? You're not hurting me. You're hurting these people. I'm trying to protect my community. But he just wanted to make any claim that he can. So he comes up and makes up this claim that really has no basis. But what he's saying is um he he particularly lashed on to this thing about liquidity. Okay. So where he says I put a million I said I put a million dollars of my own money into a million token and he says well did you really when actually the way I deployed it was I put $50,000 uh liquidity with 50,000 of tok the tokens right this is just a way that unis swap works but here's my original thinking right I was going to say I have a million of these tokens supply I'm going to I I actually like through Coinbase I can't just bring in a million dollars right away. They have all these restrictions and account limitations. So I'm able to bring in 50,000 and deploy match that with 50,000 tokens and deploy that. But originally I was going to say why don't I deploy these tokens over time. Uh I'll release 50,000 tokens and back each one with $50,000. Right? So the backing is there. When those are sold out, I'll release another 50,000 and set a buy floor for another 50,000. Right? So, I will set these buy floors and just put in the buy order for 50,000 at a time. Now, if you have 50,000 and I'm not that familiar with it, let's if you've just released 50,000, wouldn't that mean less liquidity, meaning there's more volatility in the price to go up because there's fewer being released? So, at this point, I did not even understand liquidity, right? Like, I didn't all I knew was I I can create a token. I want to figure out how to get it deployed. I I even imagine in my head that I can set buy floors, right? So I I can deploy 50,000, set 50,000 by floor, deploy another 50K, put another Yeah. So what's a buy floor? Is that is that it's a market order, right? A market limit order to buy, you know, like 50,000 tokens at one USDC. Okay. Right. It turns out that in the decentralized exchanges you cannot set I mean this is getting into the weeds right like you cannot set uh market orders for buy and sell there is no buy and sell order actually what you're doing is you're doing a swap and you you're interacting with liquidity pools so because of the way this works essentially like you need to deploy the liquid you basically need to match up the number of tokens with the the liquidity that you put in and you just put that out anyway. So So but there's no way that you could set a minimum be like I'm going to put 50,000 out there but the minimum price I want for these 50 is $2. Yeah, you you cannot set limit orders like that. So this was something that I mean at the but you couldn't but don't you have to to guarantee that it's a dollar? Doesn't there have to be a limit order to be like well I'm not going to sell this below a dollar. So at the time, Uniswap V3, which is concentrated like capital efficiency liquidity pools, this complicated uh concept. Um it just came out. People were still figuring out how it works. Um I was able to over time I realized that I can use the V3 pools to set a liquidity wall at 1 USDC for 1 million token. And so now there is you can check even there's a million dollar liquidity wall for uh $1 million worth of USDC for every token. So that backs each token. But yeah, e even now like it's excess. You could even say it's excessive, right? Because if I if I release 50,000 tokens and I have a million dollar liquidity w that's like you don't need that much capital backing whatever you release, right? So but isn't there a chance that let's say hund,000 people want to sell at the same time and there's only 50,000 in liquidity pool. What would h is that is that possible that that more people can sell than than liquid? No, not not if you monitor not if you so again you have to keep track of how many tokens are in the free market. If there's like 10 tokens floating around, you only need a liquidity wall of 10, right? 10 USDC coins to back all of those, right? So essentially the like every token was always and has always been backed. Yeah. Right. by the one USDC peg and Coffeezilla is simply I think he was simply just saying like hey you only put in 50,000 at first right and and this the and then like as the basically as people exchange USDC coin for million token there were more mil there were more USDC coins that I figured out hey you know what rather than waiting for Coinbase to bring in more funds to deploy. Uh since people were exchanging one for one, the USDC can actually be used to deploy more tokens. And in either case, right, they would always all be backed now for but how many do you hold on to? Because I mean, and again, I'm not familiar with this, but let's just say you hold on to 900,000. So there's only a 100,000 for sale. Doesn't that mean a smaller float essentially means that the price could go up higher if more people are buying a smaller amount? Like with GameStop, the reason it went up so high was because a lot of those were were held and there wasn't a lot on the market. So because there weren't a lot, if people were buying, it was driving up the price higher. Couldn't that be a component? Yeah. So I I think this was probably one thing that I I wish I could have done earlier was to deploy more of the tokens faster given like again this was something I was not super familiar with with the whole liquidity thing I learned over time but like I did not think like I I deployed with 50,000 you know and and within the next day I think I deployed another 50,000 so but I was thinking how much are people going to buy right like maybe 5,000 tokens. So, in my mind, 50K was just like excessive, but I was just thinking, you know what, this this is the limit I can bring in. Um, and I I deployed the tokens pretty much as quickly as I could, you know, to people who wanted it. Yeah. Uh, could you disclose how many you have now? Yeah, you I mean, you can totally check on Ether Scan. I own uh 60 about 6% basically of the million tokens which is from a distribution standpoint this is what you want like you want you don't want whales in the community so this is like I mean at first we had some people who would just buy come in they recognized hey this is an opportunity they they kind of knew like their game around cryptocurrency so they bought a whole bunch they were whales and they were able to like like the whales are very dangerous in a community like I see people sometimes in the past they would be holding on to massive amounts of tokens and would just be thinking when are they going to sell this um if you check the distribution now it's like we there's no whales it's it's it's a very nice distribution when you take a look at Dogecoin do you know like 50% of all Dogecoins are held by like 10 wallets or something like that, right? So, like it's like these these 10 people or so can crash Dogecoin if if they wanted to get out. Now, I am curious though because you went from 100% ownership with a million dollars down to six. Doesn't that mean that to give up your ownership, you you've been selling coins along the way at whatever price someone's willing to pay? Because you provide the million, but if someone says, "Hey, I'm willing to spend $20 for every one." That has to come from you, right? No, it's so I don't to understand liquidity you like if I were to sell I sell to myself. If I'm the liquid I'm the primary liquidity provider, I can right like you trade against the liquidity pool. If you create the liquidity pool and you buy and sell, you're you're trading against yourself. So I think this is one thing some people don't understand. is like you it's it's actually I think it's actually difficult to try to so-called rockpool project because if you sell you sell you just sell it back to yourself. So what I do is uh I I provide I create the liquidity pools and the liquidity pools were a way for people to just um the tokens essentially get deployed as the as there's buying pressure. All right. Right. But the price deploying a liquidity pool is generally a neutral position and it it never causes the price to go down. But I guess my question is let's say you you deploy 50,000 at a dollar, the price gets bit up to $2, let's just say, and you said now I need to provide more liquidity. So I'm going to give another 50,000 tokens, but the price is $2. Now, by you giving up that 50,000 tokens, does that now mean that you in return get $100,000 because you gave 5% of your liquidity? Because you would because you wouldn't sell it for less than what people are willing to pay because then that would be unfair to the people who bought the first 50,000. So, you have to match the market value. So wouldn't that mean that you went from 100% ownership and would release the liquidity at whatever price it's trading at? Uh I so I think it's important to recognize [clears throat] you can lose money on liquidity. Yes. Okay. So like let's say the price is 200 and you deploy a liquidity pool. That's an agreement to not only sell tokens at a price of 200, but an agreement to buy them back at 200 as well. So, so if if you think the market has gone ahead of itself, like let's say it's just there's a lot of hype and speculation and you deploy liquidity, you're buying, you could be buying a bunch of the tokens and if the tok right you'll be buying them at 200, 199, 198 the price can drop and then you're holding a bunch of million tokens and then you redeploy more liquidity at a lower price, you can lose money, right? Because no matter what, right? Like let's say the price goes down to 100 bucks, you deploy more liquidity, you you would have and let's say at that price you sell out all the tokens, then you would have lost uh half of your money by then. If you were to do that, so what you're trying to say is that just like you would provide liquidity from $1 to $20, you could also provide it from $20 down to a dollar. So, just like you're making money, the price goes up, you're also losing that equivalent money as it goes down. You can lose massive amounts. I mean, I remember there was a moment where um I I put in like $100,000, maybe more of liquidity in order to try to just support the current price range. And it got wiped out in four hours, right? Because some whale decided to just sell out. Mhm. Um, so they just cashed out that liquidity position. So, you know, it typically liquidity is supposed to be a neutral position. It's it's actually anybody can do it. You know, it's like it's not like I'm special in any way. Like anybody can just come in and add liquidity if they want. So, when you're going back and forth with Coffeezilla, how much of that was strategic of just you're going to drive more attention to Million Token? because I watched your videos and I think a lot of people can't differentiate you being real versus the sarcasm and I like I kind of knowing you would watch these videos of yours and be like, well, you know, you're being really sarcastic here, but you're it's also trying to prove a point and it's driving still more traffic. Nothing I say is ever a joke, you guys. You need to understand that. But, you know, I've dealt with Coffeezilla enough before. I mean, come on. um ex-convict, but I've dealt with him enough before to know that many people, especially in his audience, are simply out for a mob hunt, right? Like it's kind of like the Twitter mob coming after you and people have already made up their minds. They believe what they want to believe and there's no reasoning with people, you know? So it's like yes I can sit down and give you this long explanation like I've done already but um it goes with my prior note my philosophy that people believe what they want to believe. You know they they are where they want to be and then they come up with all sorts of self-rationalizations and uh explanations for why this is the way it is. Um, it's kind of like how I told you you can't you you can't negotiate love. If I can give somebody the best explanation in the world. They don't want to if they don't want to understand, they will will themselves not to. So when I'm debating with Coffeezilla, uh, it's just like just feed into it, right? like just feed into just fan the flames you know and get some views out of it and give I can give some explanation which I've done but at the same time humans are irrational like I said so you can I would say like do you believe it's necessary to explain anything right like if somebody asks you for an explanation um should you explain why you're a rational pain. Hey, I'm rational. This is why I'm rational. Or should you just say, I'm a psychopath, you guys. Humans are irrational. What What do I have to explain? It's like asking a rabid dog, please explain yourself. It's like this. Don't expect people to be rational. I don't know. Sometimes I think a good explanation goes a long way in a very calm, collected way because I feel like you're able to articulate something that might be misconstrued. So if there is something thrown at you, combating that with with points against it and why the other person might be incorrect or or explaining your point of view, I do think goes a long way because I I I think people are able to see that and contextualize it and I don't think you can uh argue with a mob, right? Like have you tried arguing with the Twitter mob? Well, I well I think there's a difference between arguing with each person individually and addressing the situation as a whole. So, I think yeah, like there are certain comments that I've received that are like, "No, I'm not going to respond to this comment." But here's the other thing. Like, Coffeezilla never I don't think he wants an explanation, right? Like, he's ever This is the YouTube game. Everybody's in it for money. He builds his business off of criticizing other people and just calling like life like, right? Like, is life a scam? Yeah, it probably is, right? Is is marriage a scam? Sure. Sure it is. It's like, is life uh unfair? He should make a video about that. Hey, life's unfair. You guys, breaking news. It's like if if he already has a in my view, if he already has a perspective and he doesn't want to sit down and have a long conversation explanation about this, um, and you know what he's going to do? he's going to just clip out whatever he can and just attack the other person and just make a video and leave out anything necessary, right? So, like this is my problem with criticism culture, by the way. Uh criticism is easy. Everybody can criticize. I've had so many people come criticize me in the past, you know, like uh I made a tech interview pro course, right, to sell interview tips on how to get into fame and people come and say, "Hey, this is a scam, you guys. I this is a scam. These people never even took the course." Meanwhile, other people came in and said, "Uh, let me just see uh like let me try to focus on myself instead of just blaming other people." Yeah, I heard a story about that and we could Let me ask you if it's true. I heard that there was a competitor. I don't know where I heard this. I think it was a video that I saw on YouTube. Someone said that there was a competitor to your program and their website expired and you bought their website and then when people went to their website, it rerouted it to yours. That was a pretty old piece of drama. Yeah. Um [laughter] and I mean we we can go into that if you want. No, I'm just there's plenty of content, but like I I would say he should focus on himself and focus on collaboration instead of it's like if you're trying to tear like let's say you spend your life tearing somebody else down. Let's say you spend your life trying to write all the injustices that were done to you. So, you grew up to age some age and you you make a list of everybody who wronged you in your life, right? Hey, that person uh stole my website. That person uh stole my piece of candy. I'm going to go back and just like get these people back. I'm going to find justice. You got to focus on yourself. I would say event ultimately if you want to find success, uh there's no room for anger. There's no room for hate. Like it's a think about it. Hate is a luxury, right? Hate is a luxury that if you truly want success you cannot afford to uh like right isn't hate something that just and anger something that just makes you feel good but you lose in the process of pursuing that. So it's it's a luxury that I would say you cannot afford if if you're truly going after the the highest success um you collaborate with everybody. Somebody wrongs you, you say, "Cool. You wronged me. How can we still make the best of this situation, right? Instead of saying, "Oh, you wronged me. Let me burn my bridge with you. Let me just burn all of my bridges. Uh, let me like get you back and focus my life on tearing other people down." Then you tear yourself down, too. Got it. Yeah. I think what was it? I forget. Someone a while ago. I've had two instances, but it but both of them have turned out really good. One person I think it was on I think it was Tik Tok. They got my uh don't like my screen name like Graham Stefen and uh they were really kind about I forget which what it was, Jack. Maybe it was Tik Tok. It wasn't Instagram. I forget what it was. But anyway, um I reached out to the person. They're like, "Oh, yeah. No, I got it. Maybe it was Clubhouse. I got it because I didn't want anyone else to take it. Here you go." It was so nice about it. And then one time my do my domain grahamstfin expired and I don't know who did this but they bought grahamststephin.com and rerouted it to go to meet kevin.com or [clears throat] like met kevin.com. It was like one of those funny things and I asked Kevin I'm like dude is this you? He's like no it's not me. And then eventually they just they gave it back but I just thought that was really funny. But both of them have have really good endings. This was a year ago probably over a year ago when Clubhouse first went out. Jack just got a whole bunch of us bunch of usernames. whole button like good usernames. I don't we don't have to mention them specifically, but these are names that like should be reserved for like the elite of the elite. And Jack just I went in and yanked them all. I got my friends phone numbers and I was like, "Can I use your phone number? Can I use your phone number because you need to attach it to a phone number?" And then I just got them all to your poor Jack. This is something [laughter] like And guess how much money I got out of it? Two bucks. Five zero dollars. Tens of thousands of dollars. have good username. If you had cash out, you'd make like a few pennies. Here's the thing, though. Now, I asked Jack, I was like, "Why what's your plan with this?" And he's like, "Well, if they ask for it, I'm going to give it to him." I'm like, "You wouldn't sell it?" He's like, "No, I wouldn't sell it, but like I would just give it to him." Um, the the downside though is that in the beginning, you didn't know if it was going to go the route of Instagram where eventually like you have a one-word uh username on Instagram that's like 20 grand. Jack behind all those YouTube boss, you're the one posting on all those channels. But unfortunately, Clubhouse is just like it went really downhill and now all your usernames are kind of worthless. Worthless completely. But it was still I mean it took me what an hour and a half and I gave myself an opportunity to have I don't know a lot of upside. He but he has you got to go 10x chat. Yeah. But he has good usernames of also like uh corporations and like uh this isn't passive income man. No, [laughter] it was very active and it also wasn't income. So So yeah, never what? Never sell your time. Never sell it. Well, I also enjoyed it. It was kind of fun because you try a username and it doesn't work. You're like, "Oh, what about this celebrity?" And you try it and maybe it works and they give you a little, you know, a rush. It was just a late night one. Yeah. But Jack got a few people with with well over like 40 50 million followers and Yeah. It [snorts] was a good time. Gosh. Worth nothing now, but it was fun. Yeah. Yeah. So, in terms of uh in terms of your channel now, I've noticed that you've you've made some we don't have to mention specifically some controversial opinions and topics lately between some channels. How much of that is simply for the shock value of let me say the most out there thing? I'm against the current thing. What's up? I'm against the current thing. Whatever the current thing is pretty much like whatever it is, you'll take the opposite stance of it. But I notice when you do that the views are like 5x what they would be any other way a lot of push back but at the end do do you just see this is like a if I say this or I take this stance the there's more upside than downside or we'll move on or I think it comes down to um like I stopped reading mainstream news right because there's no alpha there like everything there is priced into the market so if if all you do is follow mainstream news, you will always be one step behind. You know, Yahoo Finance is going to come and say, um, this is what you should believe in, whatever, right? Like, uh, some markets doing well. Um, but that's all pressed into the market. Everybody's seen that. So, you have to think by yourself and often times go against the herd, right? because that's where you find uh new thoughts, new opinions and ideas and where you're really at the forefront, right? And so you have to keep your mind open and just question and ask yourself question like just ask yourself like is this really the truth? Don't just believe what whatever you read. Um that's where the so to speak alpha is right that's where the reward is. Um so personally for right it's like I avoid mainstream news. I like to read controversial news. I mean even Elon Musk right recently took a hold of Twitter to say that there's no free speech anymore. Yeah. If you say anything that is against current mind speak the current thing or believe whatever like uh you could be cancelled for sure but then you don't find returns on investment. You don't find opportunities because you're just following the herd all the time. So what I like to do sometimes on my channel at least is um I present different opinions right different points of view ask people to question themselves and this is something that like let's think about your upbringing you were raised with certain values your teachers your mentors your parents all came to you and said these are things that are important these are things that these are your values so then you go into the world and you're afraid to reflect your values into the world. You're quiet. So the flame that they lit in you to stand up and speak your voice was extinguished because you were too afraid to speak. Right? You let the voices of others drown you out. Maybe and this is maybe a freedom that's only provided to uh people who are not able to be cancelled like may maybe if you really want to reflect the values and respect everybody you met in your life who gave you the values and beliefs that you currently hold and these people spent so much time and effort trying to get you to believe in these things and hold these values that are so strong. Maybe you should reflect those values into the world too, simply to show respect to every mentor and teacher that you encountered in your life. But when you let other people just drown you out uh because you're afraid, you're showing disrespect to anybody who put any time in you, they should have just said, "Why am I even wasting time with you?" Right? Why am I even trying to teach you anything when you're going to just coward out and just be quiet because you didn't want to speak up? And if if you were to speak up enough about whatever it is, right? Like um maybe even just saying, "Hey guys, maybe we should think about this. Uh I'm not sure if I believe this." Um like maybe if enough people say that together that forms an opinion, that forms a voice. Uh, is it okay to be Some people don't want to be the first candle that lights up, right? Because they're afraid to go against against that crowd. Maybe you're a follower. Uh, that's why I'm the tech lead, right? Like maybe maybe you need to lead and like initiative is extremely uh difficult to find in people. impact. You probably know most people are extremely low impact, low initiative people, zero initiative, right? Like um this is what separates tech lead by the way from software engineer. So right software engineers, by the way, they only do what they're told to do. They enter a company, they're great coders. You give them a task, they do it. Solid engineer, great. You did the task. uh the senior engineer what separates them is initiative and impact. So you need to take initiative. You need to come and say I've seen enough of the world. I have experience. I know what's right or I know what's worth pursuing, worth exploring. Here's an idea and not only is it something worth thinking about, but we need to make it a reality and actually execute on this idea and take that initiative, right? So like very few people do that. Most people say, "Hey, [snorts] wouldn't it be cool if uh somebody made this?" Hey, I had an idea for an app. That's that's kind of interesting. Hey, this this is somebody should do that sometime. Yeah, I'm going to do it one day. One day I'm going to go to uh South America and explore. One day I'm going to go scuba diving in Fiji with all of my friends. Uh are you ever going to do that, right? like probably maybe it's never going to happen because maybe do you have sufficient initiative and impact to execute right and and that execution can be extremely ugly. It's where the rubber hits the road between what dream and reality right between sky and ground. That's a very dirty messy part. Sparks are flying. Um, but you have to get in there sometimes. And yeah, people can disagree with you. There can be a lot of mess going on. It's not a place that a lot of people want to be. It can push you out of your comfort zone. Uh, it can make you look like a fool. Your pride, your ego, your status can get in your way. You may still need to just say, "Uh, let me go make a fool of myself. Let me humiliate myself." And by doing that, you take initiative. Why did you leave California? Some of that I know was, you know, maybe some of the some of the taxes. Yeah. How did I end up in this whole random? And you made a video complaining about dry skin and just the Yeah. Just washing my face with hard mineral water that's just scratching my skin. Going to make you age more. Yeah. Just aging and dry air. Just So I'm crying now. Actually, you just can't see my teeth. Yeah. But if money was a was a consideration, wouldn't you just say, "Yeah, I'm going to live in California where it's where my skin's going to be better." Are you here for the money, for the your tax savings? That's definitely a component. But I would say for me, I would say taxes is is one of them, but the lifestyle is is a huge component of just I feel like I'm getting way more than I would be able to do in California. Las Vegas is very functional, right? It's it's very nice actually, so far from what I've seen. Like I I spent time in San Francisco and it's it's total trash. It's a total trash pile of a city. Like everything boarded up. But um I mean this is where like if you're rich enough, you end up in a desert in the middle of nowhere, right? Like if you're if you're kind of middle class, you might be in a nice city like New York making your way Los Angeles or something like San Francisco. Um, really for me, after I figured out like after I totally trashed this city and told everyone how how trashy it is, hey, I'm here you guys. I'm in Las Vegas. Now, you know why I don't have friends? Um, but for me, it was a decision like I I realized that if if I'm going to be my plan is actually to do more traveling, right? To integrate more traveling into my life. So, if that's my plan, it simply doesn't make sense to uh get what like a nice seaside apartment in Los Angeles or something where I'm paying uh whatever rent it is and I'm not using the space, right? So, it's the cost of living, I would say, for Las Vegas that gets you something pretty good um for a price that's not going to just, you know, like it's not going to be something that you're you're not even paying for. uh or or it's not going to be excessive to that point. It's pretty reasonable here. So yeah, I wouldn't say the tax savings are meaningful at all really, right? Like 10% tax savings is not meaningful. You should go to Puerto Rico, right? Like if you if you're really after tax savings, go to Puerto Rico. Um, so to me it's kind of like it's a pretty decent cost of living base from which is close enough to California for me. If if my family were on the east coast, I would definitely go to Puerto Rico, right? But uh since I still have family and I have a dog I need to take care of over in uh California, occasionally I like to go back and visit. So uh Las Vegas makes sense and it's a pretty interesting change of pace. And I think I mean this is an experiment kind of for me but you know I've I've been interested in travel and like I'm trying to maximize experiences. I have I have very little interest in material things you know like I I don't own a a nice watch. I don't own a nice car. I don't own a house. I don't want to own a house. You know like your aquarium uh exploded right? It's like I don't want to maintain that. I I have no interest in fixing anything. My hands are for typing. That's it, right? As a as a dig, like I live in the metaverse, but um so I'm trying to focus more on traveling and experiences and Las Vegas is is a great base for that. So that's that's kind of my current plan, but I'm not here to save money. I think saving money is um it's a waste of uh youth and time. Like I'm not sure I I believe in saving money even anymore. Like I believe if there's a young person who has youth, time, and health, and they're only lacking in wealth, but they have every other capacity to maximize happiness and enjoyment, maybe they should deploy that capital at that point in their life to maximize that than waiting until they're 60 or 70 and they're not able to deploy capital. It's easy to say that when you have the money cuz then it's easy to go back and be like, well, you know, I I got this I could focus on the other aspects, but when you have no wealth and it's it's a grind of like, well, I have to suck it up at this job for the next 30 years just to pay my just to break even every day. It's not like it's like enjoy the journey, right? I so I I don't think like you can like what you you've got to maximize enjoyment every step of your life. If you think what I like to think of is right like if the most successful of people are doctors and lawyers they achieve wealth early retirement at the best age 40 maybe age 50 by then their life is over right it's like uh so you've and that's in the best case scenario so you have to make sure you're enjoying life every step of the way and and deploy I think you need to find ways to deploy capital to do that because as you get older And you know, you're going to realize that you cannot derive enjoyment anymore from your from money. You know, you you may find that or you may find it very difficult to deploy in a way to make yourself. See, I see it as a means to an end. If you if you have a job that you dislike and you're 25 years old, you have you have health. But he's talking about you. Well, let let me ask you talking about me specifically. Has anybody saved their way to riches? I think so. I I think like we all made our wealth through focusing more on making money than on saving on like Starbucks coffee. I mean, I did that. I mean, it's it's hard for me because I saved everything. I lived so cheap. I mean, I would I even a $5 Subway. Like, I thought about that purchase and I'm like, do I really need the $5 Subway or can I do uh uh eat two eggs and ham and cheese for 97? And I did that for I did that too. But I think it's I think it's a scam story that the media sells you as an easy way for anybody. Hey, we can all become rich. Here's how. It's so easy. All you got to do is uh skip lunch. When the answer is far more difficult than people want to hear. Go start a business. Go apply yourself and make money. It's easier to make money uh than to save it. Who wants to hear that? I don't know. Part of me thought it was easier to save than make because if you if if I save a dollar, I'm saving a dollar after tax. If if I'm going and making an extra dollar, I'm taxed on that. It's worth less than just if I saved it. So, for the first from really 18 to 30, I was just like hyperfixated on just saving. And those those habits I would there there'd be no way I'd be here today if it weren't for those habits that that were just so ingrained from the very beginning of just like save save save. It was the habits but it wasn't necessarily the saving itself, right? Yeah. I mean obviously if I were making $15,000 a year but I was saving $14,000 of it and you know then obviously I I wouldn't be here today either. But but I think it was a combination of saving everything but then also actively working on improving myself and making more money at the same time. If you're a young person, uh use the money that you have. Don't save it and deploy it into like learning something, right? Acquire some skill. Use the money to go to business free. I I think so much learning could be done for free. like a lot I besides books. Um I I learned everything from YouTube and Reddit. I mean that's like and then if there was something I didn't know, I would learn it in real estate. I would I would talk to other agents. I just it was my time. I spent my time. Let's just put it this way. There's so much advice online and from every like Dave Ramsey person who's saying uh you need to cut back cut your budget. you need to like pack your lunches. Everybody feels that's actionable. They feel good about themselves. Nobody's saying, "Hey, why don't you like uh start a YouTube channel? Why don't you like build a course? Why don't you try to teach something?" Like why don't you like build a product, start a business? Nobody tells you that. So, everybody's just out there saying, "Okay, 401k. Le let's let's let's max out that 401k, you guys." Well, because those those are I I want to say those are pretty surefire guaranteed ways that people could have instant results. I think starting a business, a lot of them fail. Doing a lot of these things, a lot of them fail. So, by focusing on the core of the foundation of these, I know contributing to a Roth IRA, saving money, that's money in my pocket. That's guaranteed. Anything I do beyond that, that's where I take the risk. But let me at least have my fortress over here and that gives me the safety and the reassurance that I could focus on whatever else I want and once those pay off or if they pay off then I could take that route. It also is like yeah like he said it's the safety and reassurance that you know for a fact if you do end up saving money that is completely within your control is that you can save money and you can invest it and it's a safe way to to collect a lot of money rather than going and starting a business starting a YouTube channel where you have so many so much chaos and variables. Yeah. You're poor. Hey, look. Bought a house. What do you [laughter] That house is 15% this year. You're poor. Like, look. Yeah. Let the millionaire speak. Okay. I'm not talking about Graham. I'm talking about me. The true millionaire. I have a I have a question for you, Graham. Yeah. Uh, how much money were you making per year when you hit a million dollars net worth? [sighs] Somewhere between 150 and 220 a year. Probably. Maybe two. No more than 250. Definitely in my opinion. 20 to 250. I think that you you didn't make yourself wealthy by all the penny pinching. I agree with tech lead. No, I I would disagree. I think it were it would first of all there would have been no way [laughter] first of all there would have been no way that I could have bought those all of those properties that contributed to that net worth and that that foundation of income had I not saved every single penny even at the time I bought those first few properties. Uh, I was still like $2,000 short and I didn't have money to pay a contractor and I had a tenant moving in shortly and I had I I went to my grandma. Let me ask you and she and she gave me two grand. I'd be like, "Thanks, grandma. I'll pay you back in three weeks. I'm literally getting this money from She could have gave you three grand. Could you have driven Ubers? Driven Uber on the weekends?" No, I was working on the weekends. I was a real estate agent and those weekends I would go up to uh to San Bernardino, check out properties there from I was and here's how I know this at 18 I think I was 18 or 19 my girlfriend at the time throughout high school broke up with me and I was so sad and depressed because you were too cheap. You see that's why [laughter] she said Graham it's you need to buy that Starbucks. No, no, that's that's what it cost you for being all the savings. I mean, you don't know what you lost. No, I I know it had it had nothing to do with money and that was absolutely Yeah. If you had focused more on making money, you would be a billionaire now, right? In in comparison, you're only a millionaire now. So, that's what it cost. I feel like But you could say the same. I could be a billionaire. You'd be like, well, you could always be worth $10 billion, you know? Or you could if you focused more on this, you'd be more. But but my point being is that when I went through that, my way out of it and my escape was just like, I'm going to put everything I can into bettering myself, improving myself, going to the gym, and any moment of free time, I poured myself into work because that was my like outlet and that was my uh creative just I felt alive doing that. I had so much fun doing that and that was like made the days fly by because I enjoyed it so much. But yeah, I mean, but I saved every little bit of that because I knew that that my income was so sporadic as an agent that that's what gave me comfort was being like, "Okay, if I make a commission, I could save it." I also in a competitive sense felt like I could net more than the agents who's been doing this for 20 years because I've seen how they live. I mean, they'll spend everything they make. They make 300 grand. They're spending 300 grand. They got nothing left over. But if I could make 50 grand and save 25 of it, then technically I'm saving more than they are. And that's how Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if your spend rate is extremely high, then then yes, you maybe my spend rate just tends to be low either way. Um, but in in either case, it's just a it's just a recognition for me that there's a lot of mainstream media saying, "Hey, just put it into 401k, save your money, that's how you're going to uh become rich." And I'm just questioning that narrative, right? It's like uh I'm a futurist. I tend to think what are people 100 years in the future, people are going to look back and laugh at us and say we were totally idiots. So, like right now everyone thinks 401k and saving money is the way to go. In the future, everyone's going to say something else, right? They may say, "Yeah, this is totally flawed." Question that. Well, I I I think the end goal is that there's probably both. I'm not a huge fan of the 401k. I much prefer the Roth, but I I if someone makes more than $6,000 a year, I would do anything possible to tell that person, save everything you can until you max out that Roth IRA. Whether you're 18, 19, 25, doesn't I would tell the person like buy a DSLR camera and start a YouTube channel, right? [snorts] Like start a business. Maybe use that and learn a programming and uh right get a job as a coder instead of just saving that and and working a dead-end job and you're going to save like 50 bucks. But see the issue that I that I see is that people view either let's say in your YouTube channel example as a means to an end be like I'm going to start the channel make a ton of money. Everyone who I've seen who's done YouTube has done YouTube for fun first and if it takes off great and and that will eventually evolve over time but everyone successful that I've seen never started being like I'm not going to max out my Roth IRA I'm going to start the YouTube channel and make a lot of money. It's just I've never seen that happen. Uh, I would agree with that that money is a extremely poor motivator and [clears throat] people should not be chasing money in the first place, right? Like I it's it's not going to you get money you're just going to throw into Bitcoin or crypto or something like that. It's like figure out the life you want. Many people even if they achieve massive wealth like you say the life I actually wanted was to stay at home reading news and making videos all day. that's actually what I wanted. Well, you didn't need wealth to get that. I think the money gives options and it gives the person the option to say, "Hey, you know what? I don't feel like doing this today or maybe 10 years from now and if I want to do this, I can." That's where I think the value is because otherwise if I knew that I'd be perfectly happy just making a video every day and so be it. But I don't I don't know if that's going to last forever. I've always just gone with, hey, this feels right. This is what I want to do. this is where where my intuition leads me. I'm going to pursue that. It's always been like that. So, and have having money gives me the means to pursue whatever it might be. I would say money is is definitely useful. Most people who have it don't know how to deploy it and never use it properly. But if you know how to figure out how to actually deploy that and maximize that in conjunction with your other assets, right, like health, wealth, youth, and time, uh you may be able to figure out how to actually use it properly. But generally, it's it's very difficult, I would say, to deploy money in a way that's going to bring you happiness, right? Some people just buy uh a car that makes them happy for a month and they lost $500,000 and it gave them one month of joy, right? I mean, right? Not if they buy a Ford GT that goes up in value, then they can make money and enjoy the car. I mean, I can tell your status just from that is like pretty cheap. Like, it's not not very rich. I mean, you think that's expensive that what's what's expensive to you? What What would impress you? Be like, "Wow, Graham has a Lexus LFA McLaren F1." It would be like uh owning a catamaran out in the British Virgin Islands, right? It's like you're you're a land lander. You just go around on land. [laughter] All right. If that's what you enjoy. You know, some people got catarans out there. Yeah. I still need to transcend. I'm going to work on that. [laughter] Yeah, you you'll get there. Keep working at it. If you're here, I'm like right around there. I know. That's why that's why I always have to look. Jack, you're like under the table by now. Jack has to transcend to my level. Where's Bailey? And where's Alex? They're They're not even I They're like They're not worthy. They're 16, [laughter] but like this table is even They're not even worthy of his table's worth more than me. Why isn't this table goldplated, right? This is trash. This whole studio is trash. How much was that? How much was that jacket you're wearing? This is um This is top-notch stuff, right? It's made out of ex-husband material. [laughter] This was a gift. Yeah, this is a gift from my ex-wife. You know how much she cost me? [laughter] Half my assets. There you go. Yeah, that's how expensive this is. That's how much it was. No, this I mean this, you know, this is like I I wear outing gear, right? It's like it's a it's statusless, classless. I would say. So if you're wearing like Prada or Gucci, I know your social level right away. It's like it's not that not that out there. So what do you think you can work on? I mean, what I'm working on now is is really this new project for me for for myself, which is um I'm curious about can hap can money buy happiness? Everybody says no, right? Everybody says, "Oh, money can't can't make you happy." I'm I'm trying to understand that and to challenge that belief. I'm trying to um find more creative ways to deploy capital, right? Like I told you, it's it's autopilot and extremely lazy to just go through life selling on the 9 to5 course and to just continue working. like Elon Musk is living uh it's a very boring uh like it's it's it's nice that he's doing that but it's also a thoughtless path that requires zero creativity or the people who are uh I'm inspired by Tom from MySpace he quit social media entirely like 3 four years ago he disappeared went off to like explore nature you know I think some of these other people who you never hear about are living probably the best lives out there Right. So, like I'm I'm challenging some of those beliefs for myself. Um, and that's kind of the current thing that I'm trying to explore. So, for me, like saving money, investing money is it's a boring pursuit to me and I'm I'm personally more interested in just figuring out how to deploy capital in in a meaningful way. Thank you so much for coming on. It was really nice meeting you. I appreciate it a lot. Mentorship group link down below where you can also get your free stock. It's worth all the way to Republic with the code grandma. G r a h a m. Thank you for having me. Thank you. It was nice meeting you. I really appreciate it. Thank you for coming here and until next time. Bailey, what is it? What? Get it.