Confronting The Workaholic Millennial Making $3 Million Per Month | MeetKevin

Welcome back to the Ast Coffee Hour. So, today we have a really special guest. We have Meet Kevin Paffrath and he's going to tell us all about how much he's making this year, his tax write-offs, why he wants to buy a plane now, everything else about his business. It's a really interesting episode and he also gets into his thoughts on the market. Stay tuned if you want to see what's going to happen in 2022 right now. Welcome back to another episode of the Ice Coffee Hour. The podcast has made more than $69,420 to date. I don't know exactly how much, but let's just get into talking and drinking ice Well, drinking Hello. Thanks for coming on, Kevin. It's great to see you as always. Welcome. And this time in California. Yeah, it Well, back to California. I think I'm stuck here forever. I think last time we talked about me wanting to leave and go to Vegas or something like that. Yes, what what happened to that? Can you tell us? Yeah, what what what I actually One of the things I did is I just went to the extreme and I'm like, you know what? I should just move to Puerto Rico. Uh and I should move there half half of uh the the week essentially. Go there for 4 days, work Monday through Thursday, and then just fly back and forth from Puerto Rico. It's like a 6 and 1/2 hour uh one way and just do that back and forth. Uh and uh I thought then my theory was I'll just work really hard during those 4 days, do the 4-day work week, and then the other 3 days do zero work and just spend time with Lauren and the kids or whatever. Uh and then I would be mostly in Puerto Rico. If you start businesses there, you have to prove you have a a more critical connection there, which that's probably one of the hard parts to do, but anyway, you could try it. And your tax rate would go down to like 4 and 1/2%. It would be tricky because your family is here. So, there's like a criteria of like 20 different things on the form, like where you're registered to vote, what clubs you're part of, where your businesses are. So, we were thinking of starting like five businesses there, like hiring dozens of employees, and just trying to check everything else off on the list to kind of weigh the scale more to that side. But If Yeah. In that in that you know sort of thought experiment, I'm like, "My goodness. Let's just say as an example, you have $10 million of income. You would save somewhere around four what? $0.75 or whatever million in taxes doing that, which is just like insane, right? You'd be paying virtually no taxes. Uh but the problem with that is A, you have to go back and forth, which is a pain in the butt. Uh and number two, I I would not see my family for those four days. And one of the things that we've what I I really like about working from home is I make a video, come outside, and I just wrestle with my kids or hang go to breakfast with Lauren. would argue you might actually see your family more. If if you did the three days because you'd see them all day and you wouldn't work. Yeah. Could you actually though go a day without posting a video? I almost believe that you would be like, "Hey kids, one sec." And then you'd get out your phone and be like, "Guys, the market just went crazy. It's about to flip." Yeah, that was another issue, too, is that I I don't know if I could actually and it it sounds weird. Like, how could you not take a day off? So, I did this thing where gosh, maybe 5 years ago, my father-in-law said, "You know, Kevin, you you owe yourself. Just take a day off and just put your phone in a drawer. Just don't Just do whatever you want just for a day. Take a day off. Do that every week." And so, it became a thing. Like, I'd have a in a signature on my emails, "Kevin takes Saturdays off to spend time with family." And so, clients knew just just leave me alone that day. If you need someone else, you know, to cover like call somebody else who could cover me on Saturdays. And people really came to respect that. They're like, "Oh, that's so great. You spend time with family on on Saturday." I did that for about a year and I realized I was the most unhappy that Saturday over and over and over. I was like I was a Grinch. I wasn't happy around being being around my family all day because I felt unproductive. I wasn't getting anything done. And and so, I was actually losing my mind. So I was I was actually more bitter to Lauren. And so Saturdays were worse than than when I would like work. And then hey Lauren, let's go to breakfast cuz like I I feel great. Lauren wants to you know, Lauren dropped the kids off for school and I'm like hey, um let's go to breakfast. Give me 25 minutes. I got to bang out a video. And then I post that video and then right after I post that video, I feel like I have like an hour and a half to just screw around because then and then my anxiety starts setting in again. All right, I got to go back to being productive. So, I've I'm curious though. Have you talked to a therapist about like the the work I don't want to call it an addiction cuz I have a therapist but cuz I have the the exact same thing. But have you but would you consider talking to someone and like getting to the root I don't want to say the cause but like what what's what's pushing you in that direction? Have you always been like that? Probably. And and I probably should. I think the right answer is yes because we so much characterize like mental health as like oh, if you see a therapist you have a problem when that's not true at all. Like we should all be talking to somebody. But we don't learn that in our schools that we should talk to people about how our mental health is. But yeah, I I definitely feel broken. Like there's a lot of anxiety. I feel like I've always got to be working. It's even even when I came here, you guys are setting up and I'm like what's the terminal saying? Christmas freaking Eve, man. Yeah. It's so slow. That's what I hate. I like even weekends for me, I keep looking at CNBC and Wall Street Journal like it hasn't updated in like 3 hours. There's nothing there. So this obsession is mainly just in work or has this been in every facet of your life growing up? Uh well, I mean it it it could be video games as well. When I was really obsessed with playing let's say World of Warcraft or Runescape, every every opportunity for example, I'd be in high school and I'm like this class is so dumb. I I can just do what I need to pass the test but I don't actually need to be here. So I would try to find ways to leave my class. We had a lockdown campus though. So I I usually park where the construction site was, and the none of the construction workers cared, and they had no security there. So, I would go that way and then take my car and drive just to go play video games to Oh, because I'm wasting time in this class. I I could be advancing. I could be leveling up. It really feels like that. Like, you get this anxiety addiction. It's It's bad. And that's why I'm most happiest when I just posted a video, because I feel like that's my opportunity to be like, "Okay, I'm going to go wrestle with the kids. I'll take them to the park. We'll go on a run." Whatever. I feel the same way. It's For me, it's always an hour after I post a video and it does well. If it does If it does bad, I'm thinking about it the entire night. How could I save the video? What could I change? What sort of title? And even though I could be present, in in my mind I'm thinking like, "Okay, what what what title? What title? What title? What could I do? What could I do?" So, yeah, when it does well, that that hour afterwards where there's nothing that I need to do. I think I just posted one that's probably a like a one to three. It is Oh, it's a one out of 10. I watched it. Oh, did you? Okay. It was We Are F'd Elon Musk Greed. But but half of it I would say 90% of the video has nothing to do with Elon Musk. Just the first The first minute kind of does. That set the the standard for what we were talking about. Like, logic and and and the research and reasoning. And And then I wanted to give people some value, too. Like, deep dive that that. But anyway, uh yeah, so that feels great. You're right. When a video is doing really well, and so that gives me less anxiety, for sure. I agree with you. And if I have a bad video, I'm usually like, "All right, I got to find another video to post." And then you go to the end of the day and it's like, "And Kevin had eight videos today." And they're all They were like nines and tens. And it's like, "Oh, finally a one. All right, I'm going to bed." So So, for people that watch your video, is it ever the more videos you post, the more you keep posting until you hit out like a one, which is like a best performing video? So, if you post eight videos that day, I'm like, "Well, that means the other videos didn't perform that well, so you're posting more." Like, if you have a one right out of the gate, are you less inclined to make another video that day? Yeah, Absolutely. So, if uh days I post more, uh sometimes So, I think there can be really great content, but sometimes the content is is a little niche down. So, if I really want to talk about Rivian, only people who care about Rivian are going to watch that, right? Uh and so, those videos can be really information dense. I can do a fundamental analysis, and and maybe they'll they'll be a eight, nine, or 10. Well, that It's like, I just put in the most amount of work for a video that did the worst. Yeah. Sometimes the videos that are just off the cuff. Like, honestly, this one was just like, Elon tweeted this, and then it got me thinking for 20, 30 minutes, whipped it out, 20 minutes, and uh and it's doing great. Sometimes those videos are just the best, the ones where it's just that flu- free flow of of what you're thinking, compared to the fully researched ones. I I've noticed it. Yeah. But first, we want to thank our sponsor, Ritual. Hey guys, the only thing that is more intimidating than these guns right here are the confusing ingredients that are in protein powders and the overall idea of them. And the truth is, deep down at a cellular level, we all need protein, and it's not just about muscles. Ritual's team of scientists reimagined protein from the ground up, from how it's made to who it's for and why it's needed. The result is a delicious plant-based protein offered in three premium formulations for distinct stages in your life that have different nutritional needs. Whether you're doing reps at the gym or you're more into walking dogs, Ritual's essential protein is perfect for everyone. I personally make a protein shake twice a day, and their 20 g of pea plant protein keeps me going strong all day long. And Ritual's protein powder is made to satisfy your bones, brains, and muscles to help maintain your body as you age. So, why not shake up your Ritual today? And to make trying something new less scary, Ritual offers a 100% money-back guarantee if you're not in love. Plus, Iced Coffee Hour listeners can get 10% off your first 3 months by visiting ritual.com/ich to add your essential protein today. That's ritual.com/ich to get 10% off your first 3 months. Thank you so much Ritual for sponsoring this episode and back to podcast. Yeah. Tell us about your team now because my understanding is that now you have a few people that you've hired. Yeah. And we've hired people now. You know, can we can we make the announcement about you, Jack? No, no, no. We can't make that yet. Well, Jack is looking Jack is looking for his own Jack, aren't you? Yeah, yeah. I've hired out of a few of my projects right now. It's really nice because then it gives me more time to focus on other things and more free time that I can just enjoy and spend working, working, you know, doing things. But yeah, I I found someone to to take care of a few things. For example, this podcast right now is being edited by a new person. So, shout out to that new person. Yeah. It's really nice. Yeah. Will the audience know the difference? No. Because you know why? How long have you had this Jack for? Like editing the podcast? Just in general. Uh a month and a half. A month and a half. Nobody's noticed. Yeah, no one said anything. Yeah, I mean, I think there is such a value to having employees that that can really help you advance. Oh, yeah. Uh there there is a point where and it's always this tipping point where sometimes you get to too many employees to where it feels like you you added another employee, but they're doing Let me Let me rephrase this. Think about it this way. You add one employee, the productivity from that one person, amazing. It helps you out so much. You add another person, you get maybe 50%. You add another person, you get like 20%. It feels like sometimes That's true. diminishing marginal utility. Gosh, Jack. See, that's what I've been telling Jack. Jack and I have been going back and forth over this. We we agree on 90% of stuff. There's 10% that we don't agree on. And, you know, I want I have my way and Jack has it on his way. But one of the things is hiring out people. And every guest we have on the podcast is like, "You guys should be hiring that out." And they hear about my schedule, "Oh, you're working 12 hours a day. You should be hiring that out. Find someone else to script your video." I'm like, you you don't get it. But they always say hire and I see Jack's eyes just light up. He's like, we should hire. We need more people and I'm telling Jack, no, no. I just don't think we're at that place where the diminishing marginal utility is so low that it's not worth a basic salary. So, not to not to boost your ego here, Kevin, but I say look at Kevin. I get you're the only example that I've that I've ever given Jack. I'm like, look at what Kevin's doing. Whatever Kevin's doing, I want to do that. Stop. posting several times a day. Right, but look at but look at the productivity of the videos. But look at the productivity. Right, but do you mean do you want to do that as well? I can't post I can't post It's just an example of why Kevin's not you. I don't think it's a a fair comparison just based off of the types of videos I would be in. Well, I guess more more broadly, the the way to look at it is at no point should you have too many employees to where you start feeling resentful, like the productivity is going down. I think that's the ultimate test and and I've gone through this many times. Once with my construction company, once with the campaign and and then more recently where I'll hire folks. Same thing again, construction campaign and more recently. Hire folks. First, lots of productivity. Second, lots of productivity. Feels great, love it. Then you add two, three more or whatever. Now all of a sudden it's like, oh no, the the the last addition has not been what you expected potentially. And now all of a sudden, and this is the dangerous part, is if one person becomes less productive, everybody else sees that as oh well, if they can get away with being less productive, let me be less productive. And then it hurts the whole ship, right? That's interesting. dangerous. And it's so dangerous, especially if you're trying to build a company because imagine if you took if you had a a five-person team and two of them were slackers. And but now you 10x this and you had a 50-person team. That means you have 20 people on payroll that you're paying Right. Right. That's really bad. So, it's really difficult to let people go, but sometimes it has to be done for for the sake of of of growing properly, I think. And it's been really hard because I've done that in the construction company. I've done that in the campaign. And there'll always become a time where I have to do that again. I love hiring, but I've also been very frustrated because there are so many times I've looked and I'm like, "Okay, I'm paying somebody for 8 hours for something I can do in 30 minutes." And and that's when like when you're having those comparisons, that's when you know you have the wrong person for the job. So that that I think is is And I'm not expecting somebody to work the way I do. Yeah. But like like if something takes me 2 hours, it shouldn't take you 20. Right. And sometimes there's a training element to that as well. And some people just don't care. And that's a danger about us being public finance folks is they see, "Oh, well, that's how much money you're making. You know, you owe me." And we see this a lot in societies that people have this belief that, "Well, you owe me a living wage. Well, you owe me you know, my rent or you owe me this." Well, my belief has always been you should provide your value first. Prove how good you are first and then get paid. If you're not getting paid for it, then it's time to move on, right? But for example, one one I'll just go back into the past. One person and I'll stop talking about this. No, no, I find it interesting. So I'll I'll make a hypothetical example because I don't want to reveal numbers for their own privacy's sake, but let's say somebody and again, fake numbers here, but similar scale. Let's say somebody started working for $20,000. And you're like, "Oh my gosh, this person has this incredible perspective. They're they're early to work. They're the last to work last to leave work and they provide perspective that's valuable and they really care. Even though they might make mistakes, which is totally normal. Mistakes are different from lack of caring, right? They put in the effort and they try to get better every day. That person has in my world gone from making 20k to making 60k to making 120k. Different scale, larger scale, but that exists. And and that in my opinion is what every That's the goal if you're going to hire folks is you want to hire people where you're like I I value them so much I will gladly pay them more. And if you're ever feeling bitter, they got to go. And that is probably my biggest weakness is I don't let people go soon enough. You know, somebody told me yesterday I went to sushi with them. He's does wholesaling like product wholesaling with China. So he's in the depths with this whole supply chain nightmare. He does like um little garbanzo bags where they put I don't know like Christmas things in or whatever. Anyway, he sells Think about it like he buys them for 5 cents sells them for a quarter, right? That's the goal. So he'll buy thousands of these. Anyway, so he's very experienced working with employees and he's always said that unfortunately if somebody's not productive in your company you've hired them. What they're really doing is is there's no difference between them being unproductive and them just stealing from you at one point. And so he has this like really extreme view of that and and I think this is a little too far, but he's like if if you're running a business and you want it to be successful and you don't want to go bankrupt like 50 or 60% of businesses do go bankrupt then you almost have to be and this is such an evil word, but he said it you have to be a tyrant. And to the point where if somebody's not productive they got to go. And you you always you want to give people warnings, you want to be able to train people, right? So there's there's always that. But beyond that if somebody's not caring and obviously their head's not in the right place, they don't care about the success of the business, they got to go. And so that's always been a big struggle for me because I don't I never want to be the guy that's like oh you're fired. Like that is like the the worst possible thing. Like I just want to be able to say I want to hire hire hire hire, but I know I'll go bankrupt if I keep doing that. How many people do you have there right now? Right now I have let's see here. We just hired an in-house CPA. And that would bring us to five and I should probably be at four. Tell me about this in-house CPA. That's interesting. How does this work? Well, so one of the frustrating things that I've had is bookkeeping is is very complicated when you have multiple different businesses going on. It's one thing if you're running your own like rent.com and you have business and it's just a side hustle or something you have a personal income and you have maybe what like two or three transactions a day to look at. But if you have multiple rental properties, multiple different businesses, multiple different employees, multiple different notices and insurances that you have to deal with with a state and and follow up on insurance policies to make sure you're protected in all these different ways whether it's you know, every business has liability insurance, errors and omissions insurance, then there are umbrella insurances and that's for every business. So we we might have 20 or 30 insurance policies and it's just exhausting. So we I can't do it myself. And I've had a lot of problems trying to say okay, well, I'll outsource and hire a bookkeeper because the bookkeeper I'll give them sort of my notes on what the expenses were. Really good trick that I think everybody can use quick tangent is just use like with Lauren I use this little spreadsheet. So I have a little number spreadsheet on my phone we're synced together. Every time I spend something money, let's say I spent $7 on this. I'll put $7 personal expense. Or $18 business purchase for Amazon real estate. And then that way a bookkeeper can later go in and and organize that all and chart that all. But I've found that not having somebody in person is like a nightmare because I'll end up just getting an email from an outsourced bookkeeper every 3 months and they're like okay, here's all the things we have questions on and I'd have to sit there for like 20 hours to answer their questions and then at that point when like I may as well just do it myself every day. So, now I wanted to bring somebody in-house. So, we'll probably pay them uh you know, somewhere around $120,000 to $180,000. Somewhere That's about the range for that. Wow. Yeah. That's tax deductible. And I expect that's going to save me a lot more in the event there was ever an audit in the future. This would be the best insurance policy for that. Somebody who's like, "Okay, you spent money on that. Give me the receipt. I'm going to document it. I'm going to sort it." So, if they're in-house, are they How How often do you see them? Well, I I really like seeing employees every day. Uh not that I I don't want to micromanage people because I I don't have the time to micromanage people. This is another difficult thing. Like people have to be self-motivated. Uh which I would love to hire self-motivated uh computer programmers or editors to come come work with me. But, it's also hard to find people right now. But, beyond that, uh I like seeing people every day because that way if we sit down in a room in the morning, middle of the day, afternoon, like, "Okay, here are the latest problems. Okay, here are the latest questions." And And so, that way it's kind of like I post a video, I can go in, sit down and go, "Hey, what do you got? What do you got? What do you got?" And we can solve things right away as opposed to like, "Oh, I got to get back to the emails or I got to call this person back." It's so much easier in person. That's interesting. That's what Jack and I were talking about uh gosh, not even a few weeks ago. Yeah, it would save us because it's already difficult enough to get paid between Graham and I because we have different set percentages on all of our different business ventures. And then there's that 30 on some payments, that 45, that 75 on some payments. Oh yeah, the sponsors are a pain. And to balance all of that out is a total headache. For example, I just recently got paid from the month of July. That was like Yeah. That I think that was like la- like last week maybe or the week prior. But, just because it's so much of a headache to go through that entire spreadsheet. And not only that, but also like just bill collecting in general when you have like tons of sponsorship revenue coming in all the time or like frequent checks, you know, coming in. Even his rental properties. No, no, sure. Like dividing up the payment between Alex, Graham, and I on this the family, the Ice Coffee Hour clips, all this stuff. It would make sense to have someone just to handle all of We're doing it all ourselves, basically. But, for the time saved. first, I want to thank our sponsor, Trends. Jack, have you heard about Trends? No, I haven't. But man, I sure wish I had some sort of service that would tell me about all these new things that are coming out. Well, I have great news, man. Trends is exactly what you're looking for. Business and finance is an extremely competitive space, and it always feels like everyone around me is one step ahead. But that is until I got Trends. Trends is a networking hub with a thriving community of entrepreneurs and ambitious people, and they're constantly learning and collaborating on business ideas and projects. Trends even hosts live business training and Q&A sessions where you can learn the latest marketing tactics and fundraising strategies from their team of business analysts. And when you subscribe, you instantly get access to the Trends community, meaning you could potentially link up with other ambitious people, kind of like yourself. Don't make the same mistake others have made and learn from the accumulated wisdom of people just like yourself that have made their dream a reality. Trends is a tool to help you find a very valuable mentor and guidance in the sometimes scary world of work and being an entrepreneur. Man, if only I had Trends to teach me about Trends months ago. So, take advantage of this special offer that they're only giving to Ice Coffee Hour listeners. When you visit trends.co/ich, you can get a 7-day trial for just $1. That's trends.co/ich to get a 7-day trial for just $1. Thank you so much, Trends, for sponsoring this episode, and back to the podcast. Yeah. And and see, there are some really cool things that I think a great CPA can help you out on a lot as well. See, there's something called a research development tax credit. I'll give you a quick example of this. There's a limit to it. I think the limit's $250,000 a year. But, I'll give you an example. Let's say you spent $500,000 on on a new business idea that was a new innovation or something like that. Well, you so you can write that off. So, in California, I'd I'd uh take a $500,000 write-off, which would save me about 250k in taxes. So, I spent 500k on a new idea. That saves me 250k in taxes, which means I've taken $250,000 out of my pocket and and spent it. Reality. But now, there's this research and development tax credit, where you can take 30% as a tax credit on top of that. So, 30% of 500k is a 150k credit uh to offset that 250k. So, now I've actually only taken $100,000 out of my pocket to do $500,000 worth of work. That's really incredible. That's something I can do. That's the research development tax credit. And again, it has to be for something innovative. There are rules for it. You can only do it for 5 years, 250k max per year. So, what did you spend that on this year? Well, I haven't this year. Uh but uh if I've planned to in the next years. Yeah. Wow, why didn't you do it for this year? You still got another week. Yeah, no. Come up with an idea, Kevin. Right. Well, uh because I would want to maximize the whole credit. See, the like I don't want to start it this year and then only use like 50k. Because then your your 5 years, one of those years is chopped off. And maybe I do, but see, this is where it'd be nice to have a CPA where like, "Oh, no, no, we do already have 250k." But, you know, accounting is a pain in the ass. It's too bad you wouldn't be able to buy a $500,000 asset. To be like, "We're we're testing this out as research, and we're going to buy this Picasso over here." Right. That I'm going to hang up in my living room for business purposes and uh research. It's And that's the other thing that makes me so nervous now is that there are so many creative things you can do, but if if you don't document it very well, you you and then and then you have, you know, like an administration that we have now that talks about, "Okay, let's ramp up audits 10x what we've been doing." Then you're going to have a cancerous audit that's going to live with you, and you're just going to hate your life trying to go through that. If you have somebody in-house who does this full-time, I mean, that's obviously a different level. Like, I don't recommend that for everybody, right? But having good books is so it gives you a lot of peace of mind. Yeah. Tell us about the other four people you have, though? Yeah. Well, so What do they do? Uh well, we we do various different things. The biggest thing that I'm trying to train folks to do, and it's so difficult, is is research. This is probably the most important thing is trying to find good research. And there's plenty of research out there. It's just a matter of finding it. So, I have subscriptions to whether it's VandaTrack or Bloomberg Terminal or all these other services, and they cost thousands of dollars a month. But to me, they're the cheapest employees because, you know, Bloomberg Terminal I now get access to, let's say, 2,000 researchers that that are consolidating information there. I don't have to pay for all those salaries, right? But now, what we're trying to do is is find information. So, that could be, "Oh, JP Morgan published an analyst report, and they see a trend happening in, I don't know, electric batteries or something like what batteries for electric vehicles." Finding little pieces like that and putting them into larger bits of content is really useful, and I think it gives folks a reason to keep coming back to the channel. Uh and so, that's what I really like doing is finding unique perspectives or unique content that I haven't thought of before. So, just as an example, one of the things that I thought of recently was it seems like that and and all the math kind of reiterated this, but just bottom line, it seems like the hedge funds are shorting stocks purposely where retail investors are not investing because they're scared about what happened with AMC and GameStop where they What hedge funds are really doing is I I mean, in the case of GameStop, I think they want to go bankrupt. But most of the time, hedge funds are trying to protect their overall accounts from losing money. So, they pick some stocks to hedge. In the event the market crashes, they think they'll pick up money on on that hedge. Uh so, but now they're worried about this whole WallStreetBets retail movement coming in and seeing, "Oh, oh, the short interest is high here. Let's all rush in and squeeze these hedgies out and burn them." When a A of hedge funds, and I'm not trying to defend hedge funds, but there're definitely some crooked ones. But a lot of hedge funds are really just trying to make sure that if the market crashes, they don't lose everything and then lose all their clients, right? Uh so, what I noticed is there are four companies particularly, Lemonade, Shift Technologies, Corsair, and Tattoo Chef. These have all had substantial declines in retail investments or even outflows. So, there's a service, I think it's like 3 3,500 bucks a month or whatever, and they'll tell you where retail investors are investing or not. So, they parse out, okay, here's retail, here's, you know, institutional. And when you notice that like Tattoo these four companies have had either zero retail inflows or net outflows, and the short interest is like 30 to 33%, it's a sign that hedge funds can take safety in shorting these companies because they're unlikely to get squeezed out. Now, they can track that on the daily basis, and if all of a sudden you saw a retail spike, then they can see, "Oh, we don't necessarily have to go monitor every social media forum. Somebody in the retail community is now pitching this stock." They see the spike, they can get out early. So, it's that kind of information that I just love. And so, I spend most of my day behind a computer screen trying to research stuff like that. And you And you hire four people to do that with you. Uh yeah, but most of that right now is me training because it's very like we don't teach that in school. The like, for example, if I give okay, an example here, I found this really, really good piece on The New York Times. They did this phenomenal exposé on certain YouTuber Chinese travel bloggers getting paid by the Chinese Communist Party to make positive YouTube videos and blogs. Yeah, and it is really incredible about how The New York Times even said people will have access to parts of China that uh the media won't have access to like Western media. So, Reuters, Associated Press, or whatever, they're not allowed in certain areas. But then, these bloggers are and then they get a catered experience. Yeah. Go here. You know, these people are going to walk by or whatever, say nice things. It's funny you mention that because all of a sudden, I don't know how, but the YouTube algorithm sometimes recommends me just like stuff out the blue and then I watch it out of curiosity. And now it just like keeps recommending uh North Korea. Believe it or not, uh and there was a a tour guide who went through North Korea and it was like, "This is what it's actually like." And it got like 8 million views in like a year. And it was the very similar thing. He acknowledged that it was a very catered tour. And and they made it seem like everything is fantastic. Oh, yeah. Um but then that led to another video to another video to another video. And then I was watching this auto documentary of the the whole thing that went on with him. That's a Uh but yeah, but it it's crazy how they are they can spin the narrative. It's uh propaganda coming to YouTube. Yeah. Uh and uh you know, there's always there always those jaded people in the comments that are like, "Oh, paid shill." or whatever. Like, I mean, we're not paid by companies or corporations or whatever unless we disclose a sponsor. But, it's interesting to think that uh countries would do that. Uh and in that New York Times article, they even mentioned that uh the Communist Party wanted the YouTubers to say things that were bad about the Communist Party as well, but to talk about how great traveling was. Like, "Oh, yeah, they do this. That's a little weird, but you know what? They're they're they're changing. They're changing." And kind of like trying to acknowledge the stereotype, but then saying, "But don't worry, it's getting better." And then it's really like this incredible psychology. Then you look at the comments and all the comments are like, "Can't wait to plan my next trip to Shanghai." No, uh you know they planted those? Yeah. It's it's really weird. bots to the top. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's very very interesting. So, I thought that was incredible, but anyway, so I was going to say about the So, employees and research like So, all I read that piece I you know, I had a coffee couple nights ago I had a coffee at like 11:00 p.m. I'm like I'm 11:00 p.m. Jeez. The reason for that is So, I get the I get six newspapers every day and I had gotten like a week behind. And when I get a week behind on newspapers, it's this tall the stack. talking physical newspaper? Physical newspaper, yes. Physical newspaper, okay. And so, I took the entire stack and a cup of coffee and I went through it and that was one of the articles I found. See, I found the article on like December 22nd, but it was actually published in the paper on December like 16th. Had I not had the physical paper, I would have never seen that story. Because the cool thing about the physical paper is it's kind of like blockchain. We go in through the blockchain, right? It's this record that doesn't change cuz it's there in paper. Right. Whereas like websites are constantly updating. Every few hours, yeah. Every few hours and and so, it's only the latest stuff, not the the stuff that could be really interesting that's timeless. So, anyway, uh that's when I found that and then I'm like, "Okay, hey, let's go deep on this." And I asked somebody to like go to some of these different videos and like give me timestamps. Give me clips because I myself went through some of the videos and I'll say things, "You know, some people say I'm I'm bought by the by the Chinese government after this article came out, but but I'm not and and yeah, I read off a teleprompter, but I swear I'm not getting a script from the government." And like in the New York Times article, they're like, "These people are often getting scripts from the government." It's hilarious. But could there actually be a chance though that they're being honest? Yes, of course, of course. I and I think there's it's a mix of both. So, I do think there is probably like, "Hey, say some nice things about us. We'll show you some exclusive areas. We'll take you to some exclusive restaurants. We'll pay that for you." And sometimes they'll acknowledge that. They'll say like, "Hey, you know, I'm getting this paid for." So, I don't necessarily blame the creators so much. Maybe there should be a little bit more transparency, especially with the comment section. of that. The comment section's sometimes a cesspool anyway. Uh but it is I think the more broadly interesting thing is uh country propaganda now coming to YouTube. Yeah. Uh and then the reason I brought this up as well is uh when when uh working with and this is where I'm trying to train uh employees because you had asked about that initially. Uh this is where it becomes very very difficult because my thinking is, okay, I want to be able to stitch together like a 20-minute video putting together clips comparing it to the article, comparing it to comments, clips, clips, clips and and then this a deep dive which would probably take me 3 hours to put together. Well, one person had worked on it for 3 days and I have no more than the summary of the article. Uh and I'm like, I had the summary of the article that night. I gave you the summary of the article. And so I've talked to them about that like, "Hey, let's let's go through. Let's do this this this." But that's where sometimes I feel like I'm a bad boss because it's like, I need to either train harder or there's a lack of motivation or uh I'm just not being really clear with my expectations. I don't know, but that is one thing that's just frustrating stress me frustrate me about being an employer. No, at that point definitely I feel like 3 days is just lack of care and wouldn't they have kept you updated throughout that as well? Hey Kevin, this is taking a lot longer than I thought it would. Some people do and A lot of people are afraid to ask though or they're afraid to bring that up cuz they don't want to acknowledge that I'm having a difficult time cuz it to come up with nothing virtually. Uh it's it's painful because then uh the thought is, okay, well, maybe are they just misplaced? Is there something else that they could do? Uh is there something else they could do better? Uh but that's always so hard because sometimes you wonder is it or are they in the right place at all? Uh are they um do they not like me anymore? Are they resentful of me? Like what what happened? You know? So it's You know what's interesting? I was talking to uh I was with Jason Oppenheimer last night and we we got together after a long time. Haven't seen him for a while. He mentioned to me that that whatever you get in like the first month, usually that's what you're going to get. It The people don't change. Um so, he acknowledged that the people who are really pushing themselves, they'll do that from the very beginning. There's there's nothing that you could do to incentivize someone to push themselves beyond what they're already doing. Um so, I I I believe that. And he's hired quite a few people. And and he's not been shy about letting people go. They just don't fit. Very quickly. Yeah. and shrewd business person and I I admire that about him. And and so, it's sad because, you know, again, you don't want to be the person that fires people, but Yeah. But I did want to talk about something else. Uh there's a lot of uh I notice a lot of people they give like real estate or mortgage advice on TikTok. And I'm just shaking my head and I'm like, okay. Well, I I maybe I need to go in there and make some. And then I'm not trying to say like my perspective is right. I just have a very particular perspective. Like, no, that's not the Kevin way. And again, You know, it it sucks because everyone is And I acknowledge TikTok is something that we should all be doing. Yeah. All of us know we should It's like going to the gym. Like, you know you should be going to the gym every day, but you don't do it. Yeah. And TikTok is one of those things for me where I just I can't I can't seem to get into it. And it's so I don't like how basic it is. Like, I see the people doing well. And uh Mark Tilbury is a perfect example of someone who's done TikTok incredibly well. He's done everything right for TikTok, but it's so basic. And I like that's how I started on YouTube is doing these really basic videos like the three best index funds to buy and like what an index fund is. I can't bring myself to do that again. But he's doing it and he's doing so well. I think it's because you're trying to mentally grow and you've so checked out of the basics. Uh I I I have empathize with Uh that it's kind of like, ah, do I really want to explain whether you should pay down your 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 3% or not. You know, do you want to pay that off earlier? And do want to go through that again? Uh and and I get it. Like I'd rather be like, "Oh my gosh, like what is the latest Barclays research and finding the latest cutting-edge thing that's going on or whatever." That makes me excited and I feel really successful doing that. But that stuff doesn't do well on TikTok. No, but you have to realize too for myself is that like this is a new audience. Like you're saying this to new people who have never seen you before and have no idea what they're doing. Honestly, even if you posted those original videos again or or just remade them on your main channel, there'd probably be a lot of people who are part of your new audience that haven't seen Yeah. Well, that's what I do every now and then is I take the old videos that have done well from like 2 to 3 years ago and I'm like, "How could I just update this and make it better?" And there's definitely I would say the the maybe the few percent of people who notice that, "Graham, you made this video 3 years ago." But nobody goes back and watches it. Nobody goes back and watches the old videos. Yeah. But but I mean those people are like, "I've seen this before." It's like, "Okay." And click out and wait for the next one. Now, I I agree with you. You know, the most fun I've had on a video recently was the metaverse video and that was that was your idea, Jack. was it out of 10? What was it out of 10? It was a two. That's good. It was a two. It almost tied with the one. It was like a few thousand views away from the one, but the one just kept doing better. But yeah, it was a new topic that I just immersed myself in for 48 hours. I spent a long time on that video doing everything I could. I loved it. That's fine. so much fun. Yeah. And that's new. See, because now you walk away from that with all this extra knowledge too about the metaverse. Yeah. That's what I've been trying to re- reinforce in Graham is that he needs to do new stuff because that's what you're great at. You're constantly reading stuff and keeping people up-to-date on like all these new things that are happening. But a lot of the times like we're still posting videos like credit cards, like how to increase your credit score and I know that those do well, but at the same time if you push the envelope a little bit like Andre's doing as well with like the metaverse stuff and he even did an options video which you've never wanted to explore. Yeah. Pushing the envelope a little bit and trying out new things, I think is the only way that you can just not die out as a YouTube channel. Cuz people don't want to see the same thing over and over again. But do you worry about that? I have a feeling you feel the same way about like every day is the same. For the market opens, market closes. Mhm. Do you feel like every day is like, you know, we're doing Neo again. Neo's up 33, Tesla's down. Yeah, I mean to some degree, uh you had actually mentioned that you like watching the market open. So maybe maybe I think the question is for you. We got to ask you Graham because Yeah, I mean something like I wake up and I'm like, ah, I got to you know, it's it's early. I got to do the market open and the market close. And sometimes I'll be in the middle of research in the middle of day like, I've got to go do that market close, right? So it feels like a little bit of a wedge in the day. Uh I enjoy doing it and doing it and obviously people like it. But I don't know Graham, why do you like it? You know what? Uh so I'll be honest. I've seen every single one of your live stream for the last few months. Uh well, actually really since the beginning. I watched them all two speed uh beginning to end. Every single one. I don't think I've missed a live stream from you. And in the morning it's it's because it's become a part of my morning routine where I don't start the day until I turn on your live stream and I have my coffee and I'm I'm like, you know, doing my own research while listening to yours. Same with that the market end. Uh the part I don't like sometimes is I feel like sometimes the the stock is a little repetitive when you're going through every stock individually and like this one's up, this one's down, this is up. I love the news. When you go through the news, what's on the Bloomberg terminal? And let's do this. I you know, the stocks are good, but I think the news is interesting and I wonder if if you took 15 minutes before and and before doing a live stream to plan out the top five news articles that you want to cover and talk about. Just Even if you glance over it, just a headline and a few sentences. summary on this one. Two-minute summary on this one. I think that's what would make a difference because I love the news. Yeah. I like the I've I like the news portion of that the best. What about um tax write-offs? Have you thought about tax write-offs this year? Yes. Yeah. I Oh, I didn't tell you guys. Neither one of you guys. So, I was talking to Brandon Turner who introduced me to this guy who he says is like the number one commercial wholesaler. And I was blown away at this guy. He's like 30 years old. We could get him on the podcast. If you If you guys want to see him on the podcast, just let us know. He's 30 years old. He's already got a hundred million dollars worth of real estate. Uh himself or like under management? wow. Himself. Started from nothing as a as a wholesaler, but he's that good. And his thing is basically he'll he'll find like a vacant building and he'll do all the work to basically say, "If you buy this building, we could get this tenant in and in there." And the tenant's going to start They're going to sign a 10-year like big tenants. They're going to sign a 10-year lease. He just has the connections. He's so knowledgeable. But I explained the situation to him and I said, "You know, I got like 2 weeks and I got this big tax bill coming up and I would love to spend enough on a property to write off that tax bill." And he came to me with a deal. It didn't work out because he couldn't guarantee that it would close by the end of the year. And it was a lot of work, but it was like 80 units in in Minneapolis. And it was a fixer-upper. So, he's like And it was 22 million dollars. And he said the seller the the seller was willing to carry some of the loan. Um I love this deal. Honestly, it's just I I couldn't guarantee to close and it would be a lot of work. So, he says you're going to be spending probably the next 6 to 8 months fixing it up. And I'm like, "I can't do that." But basically I take all my cash that I sitting on the sidelines for taxes and I put it into this building instead. Cost segregate it. Cost segregate it. The first year write-off was almost 6 million dollars in the first year. be in service for you to get the write-off. So, you would have had to I guess call it in service with the existing tenants and then renovate it. Or Okay, I guess you could do that. Yeah, well that's one of the cool things about being in the real estate industry is you could take that that loss against some of your other ordinary income. Correct. But I don't that's not necessarily open to everybody, but unless you're like a broker or in the real estate industry. Right. So, the downside though, couldn't guarantee to close by the end of the year. So, that wouldn't work. So, it didn't from that standpoint, but also it was more work than I wanted to take on and for such a big purchase, like that's a purchase that I would probably spend a month or two like really analyzing and to and he's like, "If you need this deal, you have to get everything into the lender by 6:00 p.m. today." And I was like, "I have until 6:00 p.m. They've already done appraisers. They've done everything on it." But, uh Yeah, I would be curious to know like I think this would be an interesting podcast guest because how So, what did they start with? And and I'm skeptical that they have a $100 million portfolio themselves. I mean, maybe they do. They could do that with, you know, I mean, maybe they was $20 million of of equity that was a really good deal and then financed that they were able to balloon into a $100 million portfolio. Which I'm I'm sure there's there's obviously going to be debt. But, still, I mean, even if there's $65 million doesn't matter or even $50 million that's still a lot. That that's created by 30. So, it would be really interesting to see how that built up. All right. So, I think that would be phenomenal. The other option is So, this year I basically I'm going to pay a big tax bill. It just It is what it is. I you know, I I waited too long. So, that was my fault on that. But, the other option I was thinking about maybe doing something with Brandon. Brandon Turner from BiggerPockets and maybe we could work together on a deal and I could go on 50/50 with him or something like that. Cuz he's doing like mobile homes. Right? He has a syndicate where he's basically buying parks. Yeah. Okay. Okay. But, it was interesting to hear him talking about mobile homes and you know, he runs that business and it's it's the cash flow from these mobile homes is incredible. To to make 12 to 15% to have very little responsibility other than management. Like you're not fixing up these these mobile homes yourself. They own them. They're renting the land. Yeah. Correct. Very interesting. And then sometimes you could buy the mobile homes and then sell them and then you're carrying basically this this mobile home that you own. But, what kind of how could you cost segregate, you can't depreciate land. So, how do you get a tax write-off doing that? Buying the mobile homes and then selling them Yeah, right. And then selling them to the people who live there. Ah, I see. And so, instead of taking out a mortgage on a house, you are basically you are the lender for the asset that you own. see. Okay, you guys are lending on them. That's what he's doing as well. That's incredible, because then you're almost it's almost like you're buying inventory. Correct. Yeah. Because they're like registered with the DMV. Right. So, that's that's very interesting. Uh there are so many creative things you can do. Uh sometimes I worry that uh that end of the year rushed for tax write-offs leads to bad decisions, which I almost made. Yep. What was your bad decision? to buy a plane. Oh, the Grant the Grant Cardone method. The Grant Cardone method. Oh, well, uh it's mostly because I I also put KP on the side of the plane. It's just me lying down and then right where the landing gear comes out it's like right, you know. Right where the landing gear comes out it's like right, you know. Uh but Mhm. What's interesting about it is so, picture this. I'm just going to use round numbers here to make an example. Let's say you had a $20 million of income and you bought a $20 million plane. You put 10% down on it. That means you're putting $2 million down and then you're saving about $10 million in taxes. Yeah. Uh that tax write-off would pay probably for operating a plane for 3 to maybe 3 and 1/2 years. Pilots, hangar fees, landing fees, gas, maintenance, they're expensive as crazy. Uh the problem with this is uh well, multi-folded. Uh one, you have to have a really good use for the plane. The Puerto Rico idea would have made a lot of sense that we talked about earlier. Now, that would make a lot of sense to have your own plane for it. Uh the the second problem though is if you ever had to resell it, you'd have you'd be hit with all the depreciation recapture. Recapture, yeah. So, let's say Now, is that tax or that's ordinary income then, the recapture? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, it's not a capital investment. Yeah, it'll just be ordinary income. So, uh that would be really bad. Because then, let's say in 3 years, you're like, "I'm going to sell this plane." You sell it for 15 million or whatever. All of that 15 would be taxed. So, you're paying 7 and 1/2 or whatever in taxes, uh which would hurt. Uh but then, the probably the biggest thing that really hurt everything for for all of the math that I was doing beside purposes for it is uh the amount of inflation you have right now and in in plain values. So, people are selling planes today for uh $25 million that they bought for $22 million 2 No. Why? ago. Because if you Well, first of all, because it is such a lucrative tax advantage, people are like, "I don't care. I want it, right? Like, I want the tax write-off." But, the airplane manufacturers are so behind because they can't get chips or parts out of China or whatever. They're They're dealing with labor shortages. Like, there's this uh airline manufacturer or airplane manufacturer called Embraer. Uh if I wanted to buy a Phenom 300, which is like an $8 million list price plane, uh and and it could get me around California, probably to Texas. I don't think I could get to Florida without stopping, but I could get to Texas. So, it'd be really good like middle of the United States and West Coast. Like, if you were going to do a real estate fund or something, you could get around easily. And then, you know, I got an airport 10 minutes away in Oxnard, which is really cool and convenient. But, anyway, uh if I wanted to buy one new, I would have to wait until the summer of 2023 to get one. And if I bought a used one, I'll be overpaying. So, now imagine this worst-case scenario. You take the tax write-off, buy a plane, after 3 years you realize you don't need it. Now, not only did you overpay, so your depreciation is is like massive. Like, your loss on actually having that asset is massive. But, then you're paying depreciation recapture the extra taxes. You'd get screwed. Uh so, and it's just like, do you really need it is is probably bigger question as opposed to just being That's really interesting. It makes sense because used cars right now are insane. So, what's cool, the Ford GT I bought, I paid 306 for it. One just sold with the almost identical mileage on it for 390. And that was that was only eight months what maybe eight eight or nine months later. So, that car did just as well as the S&P 500. Yeah, it I don't think it'll last. No, I don't think so. No, no, no. I'm not trying to slam your car. No, no, no. That's also a concern that I have about buying something like if you bought a plane, let's say, and you overpaid for it. Well, then you're literally buying at the top of the market for you know what it's worth. my thought. Let's say the market does end up going down or it softens for cars like that. My thought is that the people buying those planes or buying those cars are in a position where they don't need to sell it at a loss. So, like for me, for example, let's say I did pay the 390 for this car and now it's worth 330. I just be like, "Ah, you know what? You know, unless I need to sell it, I'm not going to sell it. I'm just going to hold it." So, it's a bit of a different market. Like the art market's very similar. But see, uh the huddle costs for art are like zero. Minus maybe some insurance. The huddle costs for your car, I mean, what is it going to cost you maintain your car in your garage or show car? Probably I don't know, two grand a year max. It's not much. Yeah, but the huddle costs for a $20 plane are probably one and a half to two million dollars a year. Yeah. That's true. Hanger fees, there's limited hanger space because everybody wants a plane now. does a hanger cost? Uh you know, I I have kind of just lumped it all together. That my my fixed costs for a $20 plane are are about one and a half to two. That's crazy. That's a lot of gas. I My understanding is that the hanger fees could be like 5 to 6,000 or I guess 3 to 7,000 a month depending on the size of the plane, right? I mean, the way just I mean, quick quick math, it was probably something to the effect of a 100 grand a month as your payment on the plane, right? Yeah, right. Uh, you're probably looking at uh, somewhere around a depreciation of um 1 and 1/2 uh, a year. You know, in some of these in depreciation, right? Just lost value. That's not even a cost. That's just you know your asset value is losing 1 and 1/2 a year. Cuz if that plane is 10 years old, it's going to be worth half as much it is now. It's not an appreciating asset like real estate. Uh, then you have uh, yeah, uh, the maintenance. Stuff breaks. Yeah. Uh, and so you don't want stuff to break when you're in the sky. So, you're paying uh, massive uh, warranty programs, uh, massive fees for warranty programs so that way your engines, hopefully, don't break and and little sensors don't break. They were showing me, because I visited some of the planes, uh, they were showing me that one of these little needle sensors, it looked about this long, maybe, uh, just a little needle that came out of the front of the plane. Measures the altitude and all these altimeter, I don't know. I don't know plane stuff. It measures a bunch of stuff. They said that somebody just like walked into it and like bent it a little bit and we had to replace it, it'd be $75,000. Oh, yikes. Yeah, yeah. That's this little tiny thing. You want to paint the plane because you can't wrap a plane. You have to paint a plane. Why can't you wrap it? Well, because the siding is just you have to keep it painted. So, well, I mean, you don't. Uh, but I mean, like I just I wanted to paint myself on it cuz that's what I do. Crazy stupid stuff. really? But uh, you you can't wrap it because Put your phone number on the side of it. Absolutely, man. Uh, everything that you do uh, in aerospace has to be approved by the uh, FAA and anything that increases the drag on the outside, no, no. Because now you've changed all of the calculations for the plane. You want to paint the outside of the plane? This plane we're looking at, $300,000. No way. want Listen to this. So, interior, you have like lumber Yeah. for the the next to the upholstery, you know, where your arm rests are and and whatever. And you wanted that to look good. Uh you you could restain it all for $280,000. Just for restaining the lumber inside of the plane. Uh which is so different. due to like regulations or is that due Cuz I feel like you could just pay a handyman Yeah, right. Stain it, right? change to a plane has to again be certified. Uh so certifications. Oh, the ins- inside stuff as well. Everything. You cannot Really? You can't change anything on the inside. It's all regulated. Are they going to Are they going to know? Do people do Is Is it like a rental property where it's like, "Yeah, you're supposed to put the AC in with a permit, but people do it without it all the time." I was actually thinking about wanting to do like the Mile High podcast and do like a podcast on it. It's a great name for the podcast. somebody's going to take it. Um but so I was thinking about that. Uh but the problem is if you're flying it's noisy. You could use Yeah. microphones. That's useful. But where are you going to fly? You just going to fly in circles and waste a bunch of gas? Like that's that's very bad. Yeah. People are going to hate it. Could use it as a set, though. Right. So but then you use it as a set. Have you ever been on a plane when it's on the ground? And you're like, "Please get in the air cuz it's so hot." Do you ever get that feeling? No. Wouldn't you have like recirculating air and I'll I'll Okay. Could build a set that just looks like a plane, honestly. didn't work, but every time I get on a plane, I'm like, "Please turn the freaking air on." And it isn't until you're actually getting airborn that you're getting really good circulation. Uh maybe people in the comments can justify me here, but um so I asked them to close all of the little things and we closed them all and we cranked the AC. They're because you know you know my studio. It's ice cold in there. They crank the AC and I'm like it's hot. You're sitting on the tarmac. Black. You know, that heat is reflecting up. It sucked. Uh it was not a good set. Like you said, it would be better to just build a fake set Yeah. that looks like you're inside of a plane than actually film inside of a plane. I wanted to mount cameras and lights and I'm like, "Oh, well, I could just use like clamps or whatever." Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. You change anything to the weight dynamics or whatever, it's a cluster F. I think if you're looking for a good write-off this year, do the plane idea. I like I hate it I feel like I'm giving Kevin like a way to compete with us now. Cuz Kevin's going to do well doing the Mile High podcast. Hey, man, I'm a abundance mentality type of guy. Really? I'm more of a keep it to ourselves kind of guy. Let's not give Kevin any ideas. That is If If you did like you had the plane here and you had like the really nice seats and you had like LCD or LED screens as the the windows and you could project like lighting and stuff like that. Like how cool would that be? Or you could project like, you know, clouds like kind of like passing by or whatnot. As though you're in an airplane. Yeah. And you could even like if you want to go crazy, you could do it as though like you rotate the the cameras a little bit to make it seem like you're taking off. be cool. And you could act it. All right, we're going to take off now with our guest and you rotate the cameras a little bit, make it seem like you're going back or you put the whole thing on a hydraulic. You know, so it's like some of these things that actually It's getting some turbulence sometimes, but it's just the camera shaking. That would be funny. Or no, you actually have it as though like the whole set kind of like moves up and down and your drinks kind of shaking So, so I went So, I did a the podcast with Cody Co's people recently and check out their set. So, they have Yeah, I did that. Yeah, no, it wasn't it wasn't with Cody Co, it was their Trillionaire Mindset, the Trillionaire Mindset or something. Oh. So, that yeah. But anyway, that's their set and they have it so that these are screens, the giant TVs basically that have mounted here that make it seem like you're in space. Mhm. The whole thing. And so like the constantly, everything seems like you're just in space. Can you drop that to me? Uh it's so one of the things that I've noticed is I honestly don't know how much people care about the set. People come for the value of the content. Now that's a thesis that I have. I could be wrong. Set matters. Okay, that's your opinion. No, that's a No, that's a That's a fact. And I'll I'll I saw I saw your video about argument. Do you want me to make an argument? So, I've done both without a set and with a set. My videos have done substantially better with a set. The iced coffee hour, I noticed an almost immediate difference when we did the set. I told Jack I didn't think the set mattered at all. I liked the couch approach because I thought like oh, you know, it's just it's it's more casual, it's more natural, having a real conversation. And you know, I didn't think it was needed. We did the set, almost immediately the videos started doing better. I think it adds a sense of professionalism. And when people are even even when you're accounting for any better retention, like do you think your videos would be a 5% better retention, even 1% better retention with a nice set? Well, so I I agree with you. I think like having a beautiful set has has its benefits. And who knows, maybe they'll they'll encourage people to come back more. But personally, I think the most important thing in in our space compared to like a vlogger's kind of podcast or or an entertainer's kind of podcast, I think in in our space, we're always trying to provide value to people. Like hey, here's a new way for you to make money. Here's a new way to think about something. Here's a way to succeed or whatever. I think if if that's missing, I don't care what set you got. Nobody's watching your crap. Uh whereas you could be in front of a wall. If you're providing the best information possible, people love you. Look just as an example, look at the guy Dr. John Campbell. Maybe maybe put like a little B-roll of his setup or whatever. It's just him in front of his his laptop webcam and then he has a paper camera where he shows like some of his statistics on a piece of paper and he moves it around. You see his finger on it or whatever. Nobody cares at all about a set. The guy's got like over the last month because of Omicron he got a 100 million views in a month. Nobody cares at all. What do they care about? This guy knows what he's talking about. He's knowledgeable. He's researched. I want the best. Can you sustain that? And that's the thing. Yeah. I don't think because we actually saw the views on his channel ramp during the initial COVID surge but then plummet substantially when when COVID wasn't a big topic anymore. So you're right. So that's where maybe does maybe the set help with sustainability. I don't know what you think. I think it matters but there's extreme diminishing marginal utility as we discussed prior with sets. So it's like as long as you have a good set you're fine. But like realistically you could drop like easily 200 thousand dollars on like a super nice set but like it's not going to have I don't think it could necessarily bring that much value back to you if you already have a five to ten thousand dollar set. For example, the iced coffee hour set all in with cameras and everything is about 12 13 thousand dollars. No way. These three cameras are worth more than that. Round it to 30. Okay, well we got the the custom table for free. So if we throw that in maybe it'd be like closer to 20 thousand dollars but still at the same point it's like we could have a two three like I mean yeah if we you know shelled out the cash or whatever. But I don't know if it would necessarily bring us back that much value even in the next like three years. Yeah, that's also true. Just cuz it's good enough. But then the couch was not good enough. That was really not I okay. I think that's a fair middle ground. It's like hey we've got good enough set, good enough cameras. Like I've always asked like oh should I make a new set? Would it bring Remember we went to Disney or what was it Disney or Hollywood? Whatever whatever Oh Disneyland. The The Harry Potter Was it Disney World? We saw the bookshelf in the Harry Potter uh Universal. Right. Yeah, whichever it was we went on the Harry Potter ride. And wherever the Harry Potter ride is, we went on that and there was this really sick library set up where it looked like a sorcerer's table and all these books and it was it was a gorgeous set. I mean, that set design is probably worth half a mil right there. It was so good. Would people watch my videos more because of that set? In a way I do think the answer could be yes. But then and this is the hard question is would it bring us that money back? And see, this is the question that I had to make ask myself with plane as well is like if I'm spending $3 million a year on on a plane after my tax write-off period pays for itself. So first 3 years free basically because of the tax write-off and then I pay $3 million a year for plane. Am I going to make $3 million more per year because I have this? And if the answer is sure, you'll make $3 million more per year, is it worth breaking even? Like it I have to have a return on it to do that, right? Uh and I think sometimes we get lost and and this happened to me. Like I I admit I almost screwed up. Like I got so caught up in I should do it. I should take the tax write-off, but then I haven't really proven the need for it yet or the return on that. And it's the opposite what I do in real estate. Like would I buy a house because I'm like, oh I I I really love this house. It's my my tenants are going to love this or am I going to buy rental property because the numbers make sense? Either it cash flows really well or it's an upside down deal like a wedge deal, right? Like I do that for real estate. Why would I not do that with with a plane? So that's when I finally realized All right. I'm just going I I would argue realistically if you're going to drop $300,000 on a new set, you would get a way better ROI paying someone even if it's a 100 grand to just post stuff on TikTok. Ooh. If you're looking at ROI, probably. Yeah, you're probably right. You would get way much more value doing that than You know what? A daily news segment would actually be real and you could do this so easily. Just daily news segment 45 seconds where you just Ooh, yeah. summarize 10 seconds a topic. Yeah, exactly. That would do really well. I would try that Kevin for 30 days. And you don't even have to post 7 days a week. 5 days a week at and you have to stay consistent at like 4:00 p.m. a day Monday through Friday. 45 seconds 45 seconds here's what's happened in the market today and I have a feeling in the beginning you're not going to do much because people are going to be scrolling Tik Tok and be like you know I'm not interested. I think after 30 days of you doing that you're going to gain such a loyal audience who's going to look forward to that. That's a very good idea. I wrote it down and that's I like that. That's the trick with Tik Tok it just has to be quick. And and and the good thing with that with you is that I know you could do it in one take and I think your total I honestly I think your total time commitment per day on that cuz you've already done the research anyway is probably 5 minutes a day realistically. So Very good idea. I I mean I encourage people to like you know this is a big question that I think we always get all the time too is like hey I want to be a creator too like what should I do? Post. Just freaking post. And and this is what I'm literally not doing on Tik Tok cuz I'm just not posting and people are like oh but I don't know what to make I don't know what to make. Well make try it. Try 10 different things on Tik Tok. Try 10 different things on YouTube and guess what after a month you're going to look back and go well that did well that failed okay do more what does well. That could do well but I'll only know if I try it. You know what speaking of which I called it first. If we could do a Tik Tok at the end of this. Oh okay. With you. Yeah absolutely. I called it first. I said it first it's my idea Jack. My idea. I look I I think it's collaboration that's it's so awesome. What about so for next year what are you going to do tax wise? You're going to go real estate? I'm I'm like 95% set on buying a property because I I got how much did I get? I got 7 million invested in stocks this year. Okay. And congratulations. I basically yeah, so I I I wanted my stocks and real estate to almost be 50/50 and when I count equity in the real estate versus equity in the stocks, it's almost 50/50. Actually, it would be 50/50 you count like cryptocurrency and stuff like that. I would I would count that too. So yeah, so I hit my goal this year to be 50/50 between stocks and real estate on that. So now I think I want to get back to real estate. But just because I think the tax write-offs are so great and I'm realizing too like I got in the stocks thinking ooh, you know, if I spent 3% a year, then that could be you know, what what whatever is 3% of 7 million, you know, 210 a year I could live off of in passive income forever. And then I'm thinking to myself, well realistically, I'm never going to sell. Like I look at the dividends and that that portfolio generates I think it's $50,000 a year in dividends. Wow. And I think to myself, well, I'm just going to live off the 58. Why live off the 210? So I think psychologically I can't sell something. Even if I were to retire, I couldn't sell the 3% a year. I love it. So I think for real estate I think it makes sense because then at least I'd have some cash flow that is coming anyway and it forces you to yeah. You'll you'll you know, be I don't know what like 95? How old are you 30? I'm 30 years 100 and I carry the two But But you know, then these properties are paid off too. I mean not necessarily I mean when you're retired, that's great. Imagine I mean I was talking to somebody like I mentioned that wholesaler yesterday. So he's got I don't know 20 properties or something like that and I think he's about 80% paid off relatively close to retirement and probably somewhere in the neighborhood of you know, I guess without disclosing too much multi hundreds of thousands of dollars in in just passive income. Doesn't have to do anything every year. And but the interesting challenge or issue that he has is he's like Kevin, I want to do something. And so it's such a weird thing to see that in him who's, you know, in his I don't know how old he is, 60, 65 or something like that. Uh you know, we we think, "Oh, we're going to retire when we're 65." retire. I don't think I could retire either. You know, he You know, he and he's in that place where it's like, "I don't have to do anything." The kid The properties just pay for it. You know, you buy them and over time you pay them off. Now they're paid off. Now what?" And I was like, "What's the next thing?" He keeps asking me, "Kevin, what am I going to do when I grow up?" And it's like it's really interesting. It's uh There's something just about working. I don't know. I couldn't retire either. I'm the same way. What's The most common question I get, "Kevin, what's what's the number where you're just like that's it, sell everything and retire?" You know, it's like it's not about a number. The whole game for me is not about a number. It's Yeah. Graham, do you have a number? I did. No, at first I looked through my old Reddit posts, by the way, from like I know it was five. Oh, wow. It was five. And this is when I was probably 22 or 23. And I remember posting on the financial independence subreddit. I'm like, you know, 5 million would be my number. That would be enough to get like a nice like one and a half million dollar place in Los Angeles. You could invest the rest in rental property, and that would be enough. Um but yeah, and then it was 10. Now it's going to be I mean, I don't have a number, but you know, milestones. 20 I think would be just the next milestone just to hit, but I think a hundred. A hundred to me seems like Yeah. a tenth of a bill. A tenth of a billion. Yeah. That's that's big, man. I just want I just want to see the hundred. No, he's so talented. But it it wouldn't change anything. Yeah. No, it it doesn't change anything. That's the thing. It's If anything, it just gives you an opportunity to to start businesses or to do things that you couldn't have otherwise done. What do you think about the whole like the Elon Musk like tax the rich thing and stuff like that? I don't know if you want to talk about that, if that's No, we could talk about it. What about it specifically? Well, just you know, there there's there's all of this talk about, "Okay, we should raise taxes on on people who have over a certain net worth." Or tax people based on their net worth. Does Yeah, the wealth tax. Does that disincentivize people from from doing projects or working I got to say if the tax if well, yes and no because if if the tax rate were high enough for me, I'd spend it. So, if let's say the tax rate was 90% if I didn't spend it, you guarantee I'd be spending all of it. That's true. What would be the point? So, there's got to be a middle ground between where the tax rates make sense to encourage spending, but not enough to disincentivize saving. And I remember a while ago I was doing research on like like the capital gains tax and it was 28% was found statistically to be the point where it would it would encourage you to hold on long-term, but not enough to incentivize you to sell. So, it was 28%. I'm sure that also exists with taxes. To me, I think 37% incentivizes saving with the mindset that most likely it's going to be going up. So, I'd rather save at 37% and spend later when it's 50%. That's what I'm saying. And it's and it's worth more. Or you're in California already at 50%. Or you you have 52 I think it's 52%. Or it's it's actually it's 50 What was it? 57 58% if you count short-term capital gains with a net investment tax. Yeah, that's true because and and then you're also losing other benefits. Correct. So, it was almost it was or no, it wasn't it 60 It would It would It would have been 62% had they raised it back up to 39. Yeah, it was it was insane. But at at 62% I'd be spending it. Um and I would just I'd buy whatever just because I'm like, you know, I may as well. Maybe the argument there is would that generate jobs or That and that's the thing, too. Potentially. So, I think a higher tax rate would encourage more spending that would benefit the economy, but what is the cost of not saving or what is the cost of not reinvesting long-term? Now, what what about the another concern I had with like the plain idea is like, oh my gosh but like what if next year you get canceled right and now you have a plane and and that liability does that ever cross your mind god all the time. because it could all just go away tomorrow realize how fast things could change and you know I don't want to go into examples but I've had probably three times throughout the last few years that I could think of where I thought this is it and it's just and but it it's insane how quickly things could change like people will love you one day and one comment or one thing comes up and it's tide turns and and there's very much a ripple effect where it's like you say the wrong thing Yeah. and then people have to disassociate themselves because then it reflects on them and in a way it's like I get it if if let's say you know I'm I'm not accusing you of anything but let's just say something comes out with you and you know Kevin's being out to be the bad guy we would almost have to disassociate ourselves because if we work together then it's like well you're supporting someone who did this or said this even if you're not guilty of it even if it's just an accusation I disagree with it does that matter if the public perception says otherwise if everyone believes something to be true even if it's not do I want to insert myself there and say well and that becomes the balance it's like what's worth fighting for what's not and I I had this um really good in my opinion video that I I spent days on making and it was everything about my campaign platform and I had B roll in it about what's wrong with California's water situation or homeless situation or whatever uh the video was about 45 minutes long and I I think it was one of my best in terms of the problems and solutions for California but one little part of it made a reference uh it it had B roll of the homeless issue in California and Ben Shapiro talking about how bad the homeless problem is in California he was right about everything he said about the homeless problem and the B-roll was perfect. That one clip made a lot of folks think that uh-oh, Kevin support supports Ben Shapiro. We can't vote for him because we don't like Ben Shapiro. Yeah. And and it's like like you got to be kidding me. Like what he said was about homelessness and he was right about what he said. Don't you agree? Don't care. I hate Ben, therefore I hate you. Yeah. It's it's scary, honestly. And uh you know, I've talked to Jack about this, too. It's just like it it's all and it's always the things like you're very careful like I am so careful even I'll be honest like even something like having a drink. This is This is one of the few times I've ever been on camera drinking anything. I don't swear. I don't drink. I don't do anything. I'm so I script everything I I say, so it's you know, I'm really careful about what I say and what I want to put out there and I'm thinking can someone misinterpret this? And as careful as you could be, sometimes the thing you'd never even think would be an issue is an issue. And it's like well, I didn't mean it that way. That wasn't my intention, but I could see how someone could perceive it that way and it just it is what it is. So I've basically taken the approach that like every month I'm just month by month at this point. It's like every month you could be perfect and for what you have. Okay. Yeah, so like mentally I'm preparing myself for like and I hate to like ever will something into existence, but I never want to think of something like oh, I screwed this up. But you know, I I just always think to myself I I'm really grateful for where I've gone so far. I've gone way further than I ever would have expected and if something were to happen, I'd be really happy with with the point up until then. What you've done. That's a good point. It's like you're reaching like checkpoints in a game and you're saving your progress and like I did really well to that point in the game. I've saved everything. here, it's fine. But that's why I've saved everything. It's because I know um you know, one thing or you know, guilty or not, one thing could completely everything could stop. So what about um if you had to start over? Let's just say you or I or both of us got canceled or whatever. Like we got canceled over this interview or whatever. Both of us. Would would you start over or would you just That's fine. I'll I'll take my dollars, throw it into, you know, a dividend stock and just Depends. I I think it depends on what it would be and how bad it would be. I mean, I would hope that there would be that there would be from YouTube is the scenario. You got deleted from YouTube. Gosh. Okay. Just I You know what's funny? I did a podcast with Ryan Pineda and he asked me like, "If you're not doing YouTube, what would you do right now?" Okay. And I said music. Oh, wow. music. Okay. Okay. So as a passion project or to like really try to make it I can't do anything without the purpose of making money behind it. So I like I'd find a way to make money from it. Good. But I would be doing music. Damn. Uh music and coffee. Music and coffee, yeah. The brand survives. do music. What about you? If I got canceled? Yeah. Well, I'd still have to work. I'm not at quite at that point yet where I would just chill. But uh I'd probably reach out to Andre and be like, "Yo, Andre, you need some help?" I'll find another job. Okay. Got you. another job or something like that or just do my own Well, actually no, I can't. you say Kevin? Well, because you got canceled. Oh, oh, oh, as in the scenario. No, who would be worse to get canceled? Me or Me or Well, who would be worse? Yeah, because Well, like I I was about to say like if you got canceled, I couldn't probably. Yeah, but I but like I couldn't do the podcast with without you. I mean, that would be the thing and then I you know, I don't know. If you got canceled, I would I would probably I'd call up Nate O'Brien and I'd be like, "Nate, can No, I can't. He's like, "Nah, sorry, man. I'm only posting once every other month." Yeah. He's got a great lifestyle. Oh, yeah. So we went to Vegas with him at this point years ago. He was 18 or 19 or something. Maybe it was in 2018. Uh and I remember walking with him. It was ice cold outside, too. But he was so happy and he was just so carefree, which was so wonderful because he had no stress at all in his life. And just I was like, "Yeah, you know, I post what I want." And then like, "Well, what you So, you don't have a schedule now? Yeah, what do you do?" I just travel with my car and I go places and do whatever I want. And I'm just like Man, I wish I could do that. And I can do that. But I know But I don't But But you know what the thing is? I don't think you would You wouldn't be happy with that. Nate would hate your life. Oh, yeah. He would hate it. The schedule, the constant responsibilities. I've seen like what what he's about. He loves the no obligation. And I I envy him, too. I'm like, he has all of his stuff in a It basically he could fit fit in the back of his car and that's it. That's all the stuff he has. It's not complicated. And he can go anywhere at any time. But I don't think I would be happy with that. Of not having that strict schedule, having that obligate Like I like that to to go back to. So, almost like a different definition of happiness for everyone. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. But I think all of us would like to be Nate. Um But I don't know if we would be happy with being Nate for more than like a few days at a time. Okay. I think it's a different type of happiness. Because when I talk to Nate like off camera and everything, he is like you said, the most chill person and he seems so happy and just stress-free at all times. But then sometimes I'll talk to other people like I'll talk to you off camera and stuff like that and you're stressed out sometimes. Oh my god, all the Oh, yeah. Sometimes. All of us. So, like you could say that every person has their own idea of what happiness is. But I also think that like like there is a really like I think there is a an objective truth to balancing work and life. Yeah. Yeah. Try Well, everything's a balance, right? Right. And it's just tough to to find that balance. And also there's another thing I wanted to point it out I wanted to point out, but it was I think that it would be really tough for you guys to get canceled. Because I think the finance be the people that consume finance content, all that they care about is your credibility the credibility of what you're saying, right? So, like for example, if you guys did like something sketchy like fraud or you guys were sellouts or you guys pumped something, something like that. That could cancel you guys. Like a coin, right? Like you made a coin and you frauded everything. Exactly, but I think you guys are way too smart to do something like that. And just moral. But, as far as like saying something maybe like not so PC or something like that, I honestly think people would not cancel you because they're here for the information more than they're here for like the personality, just in general. Oh, that's an interesting So, POV? That's I mean, that's That that makes sense. But, you know, but sometimes you don't know exactly. Like like seeing uh Ellen got canceled. That was She got canceled? Oh, wow. You haven't seen it? It was big. For mistreatment of employees? Oh, I heard about that. I never really liked her. And she she stepped away from her show. I mean, she said she was going to I'm sure she was going to do it anyway at some point, but it's like, well, if I do it now or 5 years, I may as well just do it now. Yeah. Or like the the I mean, I don't know enough about this to really go deep into it, but even like Andrew Cuomo, like could you imagine? Yeah. Like both of the Cuomos, Yeah. Like one's got a solid gig at CNN, the other one's got you know, he's he's he's well in politics and well-established in politics. Right. And then just to go from like And honestly, people would watch Andrew Cuomo and his COVID briefings during the beginning of the pandemic. I don't know if you guys did, but like March and April and May of the beginning of the pandemic, I remember Lauren and I be like, oh, what's what's Andrew Cuomo got to say because like New York was like the epicenter. It was like I remember when I lived in Florida listening to like the hurricane forecasters. Okay, it's now category five. It should make landfall at 7:00 a.m. and like getting that that up-to-the-minute update was always so like, oh my gosh, what's going on? And I remember watching him and and I thought his briefings were were good. I mean, obviously now in hindsight we're like, okay, some things maybe weren't the best, but and again, I'm not trying to get political on the podcast, but just to think that you could be at such a a place where people are watching you and care about what you say, and then literally now canceled. Yeah. Fired from CNN is it's it's a herd mentality, too. It's if everyone else hates him or her or whoever it is, then you should, too. And they and and what's what's crazy is they villainize you if you support them. Yeah. Right. But, it's it's I've noticed, too, and you know this as well, on YouTube it's it's if if there's good information or if there's something positive, people won't watch it. If it's negative, people will watch it. If there's drama, they'll watch it even more. And so, some of our most viewed videos, unfortunately, they're they're the videos with drama or they have some sort of emotional spike in the video that's like, "What did this person say to this person? Why are they angry? Why don't they like this person?" And it's something that I think people inherently get really invested in that. That's true. And opinions are are really hard to change. Like, it could be you could have a positive opinion. It's hard to change a negative opinion about someone. That's a good point. So. Really good point. Now, I want to jump I want to ask you when are you ever going to go into margin? Maybe I'm only asking you because I just recently went back into margin and I feel bad about it. Oh, I'm so heavy in margin right I'm so upset. ASMR margin. No, no, no. Yeah, I was worried about you for a second cuz I know you went you went in margin. How much? 5 million? 3 million in margin? Right now, if I net out cash because I have some cash at a different broker, just about 3 and 1/2. 3 and 1/2. And I knew that while watching your live streams that you invested like all of your money during the recent dip. Yes. And then it kept dipping for this extra 2 days. And I I could tell like in the back of your mind you're like, "Oh, crap. Did I just spend everything a little bit too soon?" Sure. Oh, yeah. Uh and then the market just rebounded. Sure. But, uh yeah, no, I don't want to mess with it. It's just the stress. It's just like I don't want to do that. it. I would I was I would go into margin to buy like that real estate deal if I needed to. Temporarily. Gladly do that if I knew that like, "Okay, you know, I'll be able to pay it back off in you know, X amount of months or whatever it could be." But, that would be it. That's a good point. Yeah, I because now Uh, I mean, the tax bill's going to be insane. I don't even know what to do yet. Uh, and so I have to pay off my margin before tax time, so that way I can now go fully in margin again just to pay my taxes. Uh, but yeah, taxes are are always an interesting thing, especially in California. See, you got out of California, lucky dog. One last question, and then we can turn it on you if you have any questions for us, well. But, what are your thoughts on the metaverse? Ooh, well. Uh, I think for now we're going to be in this spectacular phase of ridiculous speculation, mostly. Everything's going to be extremely speculative. There are some really practical applications in the metaverse that I think are going to be really cool. So, for example, Jack, your dad, does I'm not sure if he still does, did appraisals. That was his career. And, uh, I think it would be phenomenal if we had like Matterport scans of of let's say a property, and he could essentially like teleport or just appear in that scan of a property with let's say the listing agent, and they could walk around that property just wearing like a VR headset and and VR stuff. So, it's as if we're having this conversation, but it's all digital, but I can also walk with you around a space. So, it's kind of like, "Oh, what's what's over here? What's what's over there?" Uh, that I think is going to be our first sort of practical application of the metaverse, where it's kind of like going to spaces or inviting people to a space. That could be. Home appraisals, that could be concerts, I think will be very very popular. It could be, "Hey, let's visit the Great Wall of China." I'm never going to China. I think I'm going to get killed if I go to China. I say too much crap about China in my live streams. So, I can't. Like, I reached out to to NIO, and they're like, "Hey, we'd love to to to like do a video with you or whatever talking about NIO. Let's do it in Norway." Really? They're a Chinese company. Wow. Yeah. So, uh Anyway, so I don't want to go to China, but I want to go to China, right? And if I could do that in the metaverse, and I'm at home, then it's like, "Hey Lauren, it's 5:00. What are we going to do?" Oh, let's go to the Great Wall of China. Let's go watch a I don't know, you know, a a Chinese show, like a performance or whatever. In the metaverse space, that I think is spectacular. think it's going to go in that direction. I was I thought it was stupid initially, and then and then I spent that weekend doing research, and afterwards I was like, "This is going to change everything." And I remember during COVID we would sometimes play those games on I forget what what that was called. Whatever game that was called. and then go to that website and we play the game together, yeah. But imagine being able to put on a screen, and both of you are here, and we could do this virtually, and it would all be recorded. We could kind of set up our virtual cameras anywhere at any, you know, the lighting would be perfect always. Or to be able to go into an office, and you put in that headset, and your office is there, and everyone's around you is working. And you could share documents instantaneously. So, I could see exactly what you're working on. You could see what I'm working on. We could share. Um I I think eventually, this could be 20 years down the line, but eventually, I think office space could be decimated by this. If eventually you just put on a headset and you're there, and everyone's around you, it's it's going to Well, I you know, I think real estate's always going to be a bit of a local market. So, like places like, you know, by by the beach are always going to be, you know, in in desire, but uh Yeah. Office space. That's really interesting because see, one of the problems with office spaces you want to have this balance between like having your own like cubicle, like sealed off thing, but then wanting to be with people. But the problem is when you have too much of an open concept, and like you're working on a project, and then every 2 minutes somebody comes up to you and talks to you, and like has an opinion or a comment or a question or whatever, now you can't be productive. Mhm. But if you were in the metaverse, you could probably, I'm guessing, Just like do not disturb. push it do not disturb mode, and you're like red. Yeah. You don't hear anything else. be a poke button where if like you give three pokes to this person then it then it disables. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. You only get one of those uses a day? Right. It's It's brilliant. Uh I want to It's one of the reasons in in real estate I I've I've been really fussy about real estate. Uh I only want and and people get mad at me for this, but I only want SoCal. Uh and people get mad at me about this and then like I've considered Austin and Florida and maybe I'll expand in the future, but I look at it as like I just want the Mediterranean climate and I believe that if I buy properties that are in the Mediterranean climate, which is only in 7% of the world, SoCal is the only place in the United States that has the Mediterranean climate, then then I guaranteed have at least a reason people will always want to move there. I'm not relying on the Ford factory. I'm not reliant on the office space over there or whatever. I don't care. I'm reliant on the weather, which this is the only place you can get in the United States. At what cost? If it becomes too expensive, people are going to give that up. Oh yeah, I mean don't get me wrong. Like I was just in uh looking at a fixer-upper in Santa Barbara. I might post a video on it, but I looked at a fixer-upper in Santa Barbara and it was um $950,000 for a three and two 1,100 sq ft tiny little 1950s cracked foundation total fixer disaster, right? $950,000 for this. I get there, it's a circus. Everybody's got their home because it's under a million dollars. And I'm like I think And I said this to her the other day. I'm like I think this is going to sell for like 1070 or something. So I found out from the listing agent that even she was blown away. She was getting offers for like 1150. And I'm like this is insane. Like it doesn't even make sense to try to flip something like this anymore. Uh and so There I do think And I so I asked her I go, "Are these flippers?" She's like, "No, there's no margin anymore." They rental investors? She's like, "No, these are just people who have They want to live there." And they have cash. have the cash. Uh and so uh I do unfortunately think that because this is a common complaint in California is like, "Oh, well, it's unaffordable to live here. I have to move. I shouldn't have to move." is is the argument people make. Like, "Why do I have to move?" And it's like, "Well, unfortunately, in a capitalistic society, that's the way it works. If a place is really desirable and people want to live there, they're going to pay for it. And if you can't afford it, that means you have to move. And it sucks, but I think that's going to continue happening. So, I do think that like SoCal real estate is special investment, especially where we're filming right now in Ventura. Is is a hidden gem because you're getting the Santa Barbara, the San Diego weather without the LA homelessness. You know what's crazy? I never would have said this about Ventura, but I I really like it. I knew you would, Graham. Jack, but you know what? When I when I was going to the open house every single day, I never would have bought up here. Ever. Because it's too far. But with the shutdowns and like not needing to go anywhere, I like it. Like if if it's the best, man. Part of me believes if I could snap my fingers and turn that house where I have now in West LA and get I would get an even nicer place here. I I might do it. You know, it's it's nice. I I believe it. I believe it now. I I see it. Yeah. It's it's I don't know. It may be I'm biased living here, but look, I grew up in South Florida. I I know Florida weather. I know there are some wonderful things about Florida. I feel like it's a lot more of a free uh You can do you can get away with a lot more. Everybody's got a gun. Uh the town I grew up in was very cowboy. Everybody had a horse. Everybody had So, a gun. Uh and uh even the police force still had a mounted unit. Like Davie, Florida. Like really, really country. So, I feel like I grew up with uh cowboys, cowboy hats, belt buckles. I've got my Tesla belt buckle on. Uh and and boots, right? Uh which is very, very different from from uh California. But this little part of California, some people call it Ventucky instead of Ventura because it has a lot more of that like that cowboy-eskness. Yeah, it does. And that freeing feeling, so. All right, Kevin. The question everyone is dying to know the answer to. How much money you making this year? Oh, man. Yeah. Well, I wish I had a CPA to give me an exact which that's why we're hiring one in person. There's still so much accounting to do. But, it's probably going to be in excess of about 22 this year. No. Yeah. And you talking Are you talking about stocks? Are you counting stocks? no. No, not counting stocks. Like just ordinary income. What? How? Well, we started doing brand sponsorships now. That has helped a lot because I do a lot of videos. So, that's that's how I've noticed almost every day you do a sponsor out of like your five Is it one sponsor a day? Oh, no. I mean, I could do three a day because I'm post If I'm posting like eight videos I thought you were about to say like 10 to 12 and I was like, all right. That's nuts. I really I was hoping to to to double that what we had last time that we talked about because last time it was it was It was like we talked about makes it was like $2 million a month. what that that $1 million a month and it was one time I hit $1 million a month. Oh, yeah. Have you ever had a $3 million a month? Yeah. Oh. You know what You know what sucks? Are you kidding me? You know what sucks, Kevin? Honestly, we've like secretly I've always had this I feel like this bit of a like a rivalry with you where I like I kind of look at what I know you look at what I'm doing and I look at what you're doing. We're like how we one up each other. And I've given up. I just Seriously, man. For a while I Back when you were doing the stimulus updates Jack was like, Graham, so you know, Kevin's doing like 20 million views a month. I'm like, but he's doing five videos a day. Yeah, no. He was just totally like I know I can't just you know, do that. But, you know, I'm doing well this year. Oh, man. It's like so When we're like this I I be like, all right. Well, I could compete. You know, I could push myself that much. When it's like this, crap. So, you've done a $3 million a month. And this is funny because the first title we did was how Meet Kevin makes a million a month. The second video was how Meet Kevin makes $2 million a month. This video, how Meet Kevin makes $3 million. Gosh, Kevin. It's It's It's that much from s- Well, and that was That was a Those were like peak months. That's definitely not on average. I I guarantee throughout this next year, now that you have the efficiency cuz I've been seeing more of the sponsors in the mid up that you've been pre-filming. If you're doing five videos a day, and you have someone who's really on you with the sponsors, you could have like an 80 to 100% fill rate on your videos with sponsors. That's true. I only do a few a month cuz I don't man. You go down to two, and then you can have every single video filled with a sponsor, and you'll make so much more money. And your content will be better. Yeah, but but the issue with Kevin is that Kevin's doing so many of them that he could just like But your content will be better, and you'll make more money. For like Kevin, right now, like maybe half of your videos are sponsored, if that. Sure. Yeah. So, yeah, for me to have half of my videos like the same ratio, I would only have like one every other Gosh, Kevin. It's It's Congratulations, man. That's That's incredible. Yeah. It's It's also a problem because then I think you You have brought this up in your videos. It's like that hedonic treadmill. It's like, oh, now I got to Now I got to beat that. Like, now that's the norm. Now I got to Yeah, and you know what the thing is too, Kevin, like I your sponsors, um they like they don't even bother me. And And I worry with my audience too that they get bothered by sponsorships, but I I see yours, and I'm like, they've reached out to me too. They're There's almost all of them that you've done. Almost all of them I've worked with too. So, I know the talking points. I know what you hit. I'm like, sometimes your sponsor Do you have someone else scripting them for you? Uh-huh. That's why. Because they're good. They're They're good sponsorships. So, they just give you the ad, and you literally just read it? I like can't stand dealing with any of that. So, like I This is why I like having people in person. So, there's one person that's like, "Kevin, do this right now. Here's the prop. Now. Film it for me." And then he sends it off for approval, puts the little graphic edits or whatever, and then uh then you know uh for another video he'd be like, "Okay, now this one's approved. Here's the link you have to put in the description. Here's the clip." Mhm. And you How far ahead do you film these? Few days, 4 days, something Okay. Yeah. That's insane, Kevin. Congratulations. It's okay. It's not okay. is okay, man. No, it's not. Why? He's your friend. Be happy for your friend. I'm happy for him, but like But usually there there's a point where Kevin could get to where I'm like, "All right, I I can get to that, too." I can't post five videos today. I I He's He's productive in ways that I don't even know is possible without like stimulants of some sort. And you don't I I And I I can attest to this. Kevin will wake up in the morning at 5:00 a.m. He'll He'll stay up until 2:00. He'll wake up at 5:00 and be like, "I have so much energy. I'm just going to go on a run." And he'll go on a run for like several miles, come back. It'll be 7:00 a.m. He'll take a shower. He'll get a video done like 7:30. I can't do it. It's gosh. All right. Congratulations. Happy for you, Kevin, but uh Got to I got some thinking to do. That's Well, good to end on that. Thank you so so much for coming over, Kevin. It is awesome to shoot with you. Also, happy Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas Christmas Eve. Thanks, y'all. So, with that said, you guys, thanks so much for watching. Make sure to subscribe. Get your free stock. Hit the like button in the description. Subscribe to Kevin. Subscribe to Kevin. Check out his content, guys. And his Tik Tok. And hit the notification bell. And with that said, until next time.