How Patrick Bet David Spends $400,000,000 | The Full Story

I'm Patrick Bav. Welcome to the Ice Coffee podcast. And my guess is this podcast has made roughly $193,000. Okay. Not terrible. Very good guess. Yeah, it's close. It's close. $246,000. Okay. I'm 50K off. You're within the ballpark. This is good. Well, thank you so much for being able to make it this morning. This is, I have to say, an honor to be on a video with you because I've watched you now for probably, no joke, 6 years. When I first started making YouTube videos, you were one of the very f people on YouTube who's making business content. It just didn't exist. You, Ty, Grant, Dave Ramsey, I think that was it. So, and you're crushing everybody, by the way. So, great job for what you guys are doing because your content is absolutely amazing. Thank you so much. I want to hear about your story. And just for for people that don't know who you are, how did you make your money? So, uh uh story. You want me to tell you my story or how I made my money? Both. Okay. So, born and raised in Iran. Uh I lived there 10 years. Uh six weeks after Humeni died, we escaped. We went to Germany. I had a refugee camp. I lived there for about a year and a half. Then I came to the states and uh moved to Glendel, California. Lived there for about six years. School wasn't really for me. I had a 1.8 GP. I went to the army, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, 100 airborne. I got out. I wanted to be a bodybuilder. That was kind of my route. I was going to be a Middle Eastern Arnold, win a Mr. Olympia, going to Hollywood, marry a Kennedy, wanted to be a governor. That was kind of like the vision. And then I met a girl named Jean Vier at Venice Beach who worked at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. She introduced me to Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. I applied got a job a day before 9/11 with Morgan Glendale. Got my series 766 3126 life and hell. That was my life. That's the direction I went. I went to Transame. I was there for 7 and a half years and then started my own company October of09 PHP agency and we grew that from 66 agents to you know we're putting an event here at the MGN Grand Arena. We're probably going to have 12 to 13,000 people here. We have 20,000 agents nationwide. So, my money was made through insurance, financial services, investments, and then accidentally start a YouTube channel, turns into a media, turns into consulting company, and it is what it is today. Great story. And just to clear the air, so cuz people are going to be very confused because we're not in our usual studio. Where exactly are we? And you said 12 to 13,000 people here. So, we are at MGM Grand Arena. So, the big Tyson fights, Michael Jackson, Jay-Z, Connor, Mayweather, Drake, Beyonce, everybody's put a concert here. There's a place I'll walk you from the back and you'll see the VIP where they stay at. You got to get a sneak peek of that. And you'll see the wall of fame, you know, the Hall of Fame where all these guys performed here. But yeah, this is the MGM Grand Arena. Takes, you know, this event that we're putting together next four or five days. 6 million give or take uh budget to put an event together like this. And we're going to have Shaq here Friday. Okay, we're going to have Nelly open up with a concert. We're going to have Pen and Teller performing. We'll have Leila Ali here. We'll have Kurt Warner here. That's Stephen. We're putting together this is just for the insurance company. This is your insurance company. The one I started. Yes. The purpose of this, what is the purpose of this? It's an annual convention recognition, training, announcements. Uh this is a very special event because we just got uh partnered up, acquired by Integrity Marketing Group, and we'll be making that announcement here. They'll be hearing from uh the new folks that it's it's a very important meeting that we do, but it's once a year recognition, competition, training, inspiration, all of that happens here next few days. How important is that for your employees and the people that work with you to have that sort of recognition and to have an event like this where they all come together in one place? So, so recognition is why any one of us does what we do, right? I mean, if you look at the data analytics, what are you looking for? How to improve? You want to compete? You want to put out better numbers? How can we get better? We have more viewership. We're staying relevant. It's consistent. The numbers here. So recognizing W2 folks is different than 1099. A sales organization does not exist or thrive without any form of recognition. You take any sales commission type of an environment. You have to have a form of competition recognition to uh reward the people because the whole concept of capitalism is what? Okay, so we're here doing this interview. I'm putting the event together right now. And I've been up since god knows what time talking to all the AV guys this morning. I don't have to do this meeting. You don't have to do this meeting. You got a plenty plenty of money in the bank as a young guy. You're doing great for yourself living in a beautiful home. You've been successful. And so why do you choose to do this? Why do I choose to do this? Why not take today off? Why not you take today off? Why travel 6:30 in the morning today after your flight got cancelceled last night 11:00? You could have made a great excuse and stayed at Washington State. Nobody would have [laughter] said anything to you. That's a great point. But the point is we all compete and the form of competing is we're thriving to accomplish something that's we feel proud of to share with our family, with our kids, with our parents, with our competitors, with our folks that we're doing business with. So recognition is a big part of running a sales organization. How do you motivate people? Because I feel like everyone is different. Let's say one person might not be motivated by money. Yeah. How do you how do you encourage people from your perspective? Do you have any kids? I don't. Okay. Okay. So, I got four of them. Uh uh and they're all different. Okay. I was just with them this morning. They read a book this morning. Every day they're required to read 20 pages. So, from the moment you're a kid in the bed David family, you turn six, you got to read 20 pages a day. Okay? And that's been the case for every one of my kids since they and by the way that includes holidays, Sundays, it doesn't matter what it is. The currency in our house is reading. You read, you get whatever you want. So, yesterday I'll give you an idea. We're at Chino Pablano, a restaurant here I go to all the time. It's not a high ranking restaurant. And it's a Joseé Andres restaurant. It's a fusion between Mexican food and Chinese food. So we go there. Mario looks at the poster and says, "Who is that?" That's Freda. Then he looks at Dylan and Patrick and says, "What do you know about Freda?" Well, let me tell you this. Who was she married to? Guy named Diego. What happened to her legs? Did you know she had a ampute leg? Did you? And they start talking. I'm like, "How do you know all this stuff?" Well, that you made us read the book Freda, right? So currency in us in our house is that. When I talk to the kids, each of them are not driven by the same thing. My middle son will play sports all day long. Loves it. My oldest son went and made his first movie two weeks ago, three weeks ago, and he loves it. 10 years old, right? It's a short film he made. I can't drive my son, the older one, on playing baseball. One day we're sitting outside, we're throwing the ball, and I said, "Listen, we got to throw the ball for 20 minutes." And he throws the ball so good, the oldest. And I say to him, I said, "Man, you're great at baseball." He says, "Yeah, but I don't like it." So I keep encouraging him, "Oh, Dylan Tiko, you throw the ball so good." He says, "Yeah, but I don't like it." I keep telling him, "Man, such a great pitch. My hand hurts. It was great." He says, "Dad, can I just talk to you real quick?" He says, "Yes." 10-year-old kid tells me this. He says, "Dad, no matter how much you want me to play baseball, I don't like baseball." Okay, so motivating folks is very different for everybody. Mhm. The first thing you do to motivate anybody is asking questions. Are you single? Are you driven by fame, money, success, mom, dad, chip on the shoulder, a teacher said you couldn't do it, an ex broke up with you, a friend backstabbed you, a spiritual connection that you want to make God proud, a uh mom left you, dad left you, dad say you will never amount to anything. You have this vision of what kind of a life you want to live. more inventory and content I get from the individual, the more you can drive them. But if you're trying to motivate him the same way to motivate Alex versus motivating you, it's going to be a uh you will not succeed. So, first gather content, then based on that, paint a picture of what life could look like and then break it down on what needs to be done for that to become a reality. And then ask, are you okay if this never becomes a reality? I'm not. Well, then are you willing to pay the price for this to become a reality? Yes. Well, then let's go cuz it's going to be hard. So that formula is generally what we use. What about for you? I mean, what drives you every day? You do a lot. Yeah. So, you know, for me, you got to realize I'm born in a very weird family. My mother's they were communist. My dad, they were imperialist and born and raised in Iran. You know, you you don't have a lot. When my Dylan was asking me a question last week, he says, "Dad, what was your dream when you were my age?" I said, "What's yours?" He says, "You know what mine is? Football, baseball, etc." I said, "Okay, cool." I said when I was your age, at 8 years old, I had one dream. The dream was to come to America. That's all it was. I didn't have a dream of being a doctor. I didn't have a dream of being an engineer, realtor. Purely come to America. Well, that dream became a reality when when we came to the States. And then for the longest time with my life, I'm just going women, bodybuilding, partying, military, it's great. That that's my life. And then one day I get out and I'm I'm partying and my dad has a heart attack and I go to the hospital. My dad is laying there at uh UCLA Medical Center in LA and he's being mistreated in a way where they're not coming and servicing him. He's pressing a button. They're not coming for 20 minutes. I go out there said, "What are you guys doing?" My dad's asking for help. Says, "Excuse me, who are you?" I said, "I'm his son." He says, "Call security." They kicked me out. And a lady said the most magical thing. She says, "You have no say at how we treat your dad here. This is a governmentpaid hospital. you don't pay it here. Taxpayers are paying for this. It hit me. I said, "Okay, no problem. This is what it is." I went in the car. I sat in the car. My Ford Focus. I said, "This will never happen again." So, for me, it's changed. It was making my mom and dad proud. My dad wanted to go to Hawaii. I took him to Hawaii. I sent my sister to to their honeymoon because they couldn't go to their honeymoon. It was a lot of that. Then it was about the car, the travel, the speaking, the personal pride, accolades, all that stuff. And then you make money. 2008 at this point I got money in the bank. I'm in my late 20s. I'm doing good in the insurance business. I'm known. Uh I'm not creating content. It's a very private small industry I'm a part of. And suddenly I'm sitting there saying, "Okay, what's next? You're not going to do it just for money. If it's for money, you'll slow down. If it if it's just for a house, you'll slow down. If it's for another watch, you'll slow down." And I uh had meetings with them. These are all folks that are 30 years older than me. And I said, I said, "Listen, I'm at a phase of my life where I'm very uh my my fuse is short. I got to figure out what I want to do next, but I don't know yet. What should I do? I want to commit to something for 20 years." And then I went and met uh George Will at Santa Monica uh what's that hotel? Myar Hotel, which you guys lived close to before. And I went and met with George Will and all these other guys that were there. And he says, "Why don't you go study why so many people come to America from other countries? Why does America lead the world in, you know, immigration? Why does America have 40 million? Why do we only say American dream? Why do we not say Russian dream? Why is there no such thing as the Chinese dream? Why is there no such thing as the Iranian dream? Why is there only the American dream? Why? Why is America 4xing number two in immigration? Why is that? Go study that and share that with the world for the rest of your life. I said, great. I left. And so the obsession came. Once that obsession came here, I said this is what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life. And so everything with today with what's going on in the economy, I think we have missed the mark on her making machine. I would much rather have my guys, my kids look up to a guy like you who's going out there independently, winning, making money, becoming somebody that we don't need to support you. He doesn't need to support you. Taxpayers don't need to support you. You're taking care of your family. You're educating people. We need to clarify who the real hero is. The media is making the wrong people into heroes. And so for us it's uh to compete having four kids, you got to you got to build a media company and tell the story the way you feel is right because uh uh I think that direction of turning the right people into heroes, we've missed the mark the last few years. How was having kids changed your perspective? At what age were you when you started having kids? I I was 32 when I had my first one. Uh and you got to realize I have kids. If I could have have 20 kids. We just got married late and my wife is not comfortable having more kids. We were supposed to have twins. One of them didn't make it. So, we made a decision. Decision. We got four right now. Decision was to have five. We were going to have five. One didn't make it. We got four. We're very happy. But what do kids do? So, think about uh Jordan Peterson said something very interesting. He says, "Man will not really uh uh lose the ability to be selfish until you have a kid." I'm pre, you know, not necessarily saying it specifically the way he said it, but once you have a kid, something changes about you because everything's about, you know, I'm gonna go do this and yeah, you love your wife, but you love your wife in a different way than you love your mom in a different way than you love your dad in a different way than you love your, you know, brother or sister, than the way you love your best friend, than the way you love your career, than the way you love your kid. I've experienced all those loves. It's a very very different love for your kid. Now, having said that, somebody's going to watch this and say, "I'm gonna go make a baby tonight." Okay? I highly discourage doing [laughter] that because before you have a kid, you have to also know you can't be It doesn't take a lot to make a kid. It takes a lot to raise a kid. We have Shaq here. So, Shaq's story is an interesting one with his father where his biological father wasn't there. He went to jail when he was born. So this other gentleman comes in who helps raise him and there's a lot of great stories about the way his father raised him. One time uh Shaka caught drinking beer at 13 years old. So his dad finds out he's drinking beer. So he goes to his dad says, "You want to drink beer?" He says, he says, "No, I'm just having beer, Dad." He says, "No problem. Come with me." He has him drink 12 beers that night. He says, "I hated it so much. I never touched beer ever again. I couldn't stand it." Now whether he had it or not back it is what [laughter] that could backfire. I loved it. I had so much fun since then. Fantastic. But the point [laughter] is you hear these stories and you say okay at least his father whether you want to call it stepfather or not he was committed to wanting to raise leaders. You have to love raising leaders. If that's not something that you value and it's not a dream of yours don't have kids. But you know the Jewish proverb says there's three things every man should do. Okay, plant a tree, write a book, have a son. Okay, because all those three outlive you when you write a book, if you write a good book, people are going to read it when you're dead. When you plant a tree, if you do it right, it's going to outlive you. When you have a son, it's going to outlive you and your legacy continues. So, it's a very different dynamic. Um, you officially are in two places at the same time. It's where you are and it's wherever your kid is at. If you got two kids, three different places at the same time. You're always thinking, but it's a different dynamic. That's for sure. So, I have a friend, Alex Hormosi. We had him on the podcast, and he said he would have a hard time having a kid because what if his kid didn't turn out to be the type of man that he would want his kid to be? Okay, so great question. So, let's talk about that. We're on a flight yesterday, and in our family, what we do is we debate. We like debate. So, I'll tell the kids, "Who's better, Marvel or Avengers?" One kid will say, "Oh, definitely Marvel." And the other kid will say, "Let's debate it. Why do you think?" and we'll debate for 30 minutes. So, yesterday we're flying out here, myself, my wife, uh, Sam, Mario, and Tom and the kids, and we start a debate. So, let me ask you a question. My sons are sitting there 10 and eight. I said, "Would you rather marry a girl who you're crazy about her more than she's for you, or would you rather marry a girl who she's more crazy [laughter] about you than you're, you should have seen what happened." First of all, no joke, a couple of the people on the flight, I won't mention them, started crying an hour and a half later because it's an emotional conversation because you go deeper and deeper and deeper because the risk is if you love her more and she doesn't love you as much, what if she gets bored? But then the risk is what if you marry somebody that she loves you more, but you get bored? What if you then go bored and do something? So there's a risk. So here's the moral of the story to Alex. Alex is an absolute stud of a guy and I think I think he's a doing a phenomenal job for society with the message he's given and it's a different kind of a message but it's crystal clear teacher he's doing a very good job I think that guy's going to be a giant in the content creation he's already doing great for business but in content creation but let me make the point to with what he said everything in life is a risk you choose to get married it's a risk you choose to stay single it's a risk you choose to have kids, you're taking a risk. You choose to not have kids, you're taking a risk. There isn't anything in life you do that's not a risk. I can choose to have been a I could have chosen to have been a bachelor living in a $40 million penthouse in in Miami and had different girls coming every night. But then I asked the question. I said, "So, what will my Tuesday night look like? What will my weekend look like? What will my Friday night look like at 43? What am I doing?" Okay, cool. One weekend you do it. It's cool. Five girls, 10 girls, 20 girls, 30 girls. Then what? At what? Like what are you chasing? Are you trying to compete with Will Chamberlain? You're going after Warren Betty. What record are you trying to break? And then what if you get that record? Are they going to put a frame in a Hall of Fame saying 5,293 different? Who cares about that? Only guys in their 20s may care about that or some other people may care about that. But some people may care for that. That's still a risk. It's a lonely life eventually, okay? If you end up in that uh space, but I've said this as well when it comes down to marriage. you get married if you want to have kids, your family will benefit more if you're married uh instead of not being married. And there's a very clear argument for not having kids. Especially today, it's a very big risk for having kids today because if you don't have money, say you have a certain set of values like he's not in risk, you know, but certain people will be in risk. Say you have certain values that you want to teach your kids, but you can't send your kids to a private school. Your kids will go to public school. What happens if your kids go to public school? How much control and influence do you have over what those teachers 8 hours a day will teach your kids? You have this much influence. Okay? Cuz you ain't paying for it. Taxpayers are paying for it, right? There is massive, massive risk. You bring this kid here, you raise them, you feed them, you finance them, and then other people shape their mindset. That's a massive risk. So for me, the argument of not having kids if you don't have the money to put them in a private school that teaches the values and principles that you want to teach, I fully understand that argument. But the idea for Alex who can afford to have 50 kids himself to say, "I don't want to have kids because what if that kid turns out bad?" He's right. It's going to That's why you don't have only one kid, Alex. You have five [laughter] kids. Can you play the odds game? You have not. You know what's funny? That's why Macy says she wants two kids. She wants two. Yeah. Did she really say that? Yeah. She's like, "What if one's like something that happens? You have a bag." I know. She's like half joking cuz I've always wanted one. I'm an only child. Uh, you know, I have a half sister, but she's way older than me. So, I grew up just by myself and I've always wanted like I loved that attention and focus. So, I've always wanted one, but she's grown up in a family of, you know, two siblings. So, it's kind of interesting you said that. You know, the only thing about having one is um I have a friend uh who's the only child and her parents run the business and they raised her well. She went and became a doctor and then one day the parents build this business that's doing 20 million a year. One day she sits down with her husband and tells her parents, "Look guys, you better take care of this company because it's our business anyways." So the parents come down and they say, "How do I handle this kid? She already thinks it's their business." I said, "That's the price of having one kid. It's too much of a risk." Now, your parents got lucky for having a guy like you, so [laughter] there is a benefit, but I think three is a good number. Okay. I think three, you know why three? So I read a story about Billy Graham one time, which was great. He says, "Look," he says, "the was an era where these pastors were traveling on their own and they're going and giving talks and these young girls would be like, "Oh my god, that pastor is such a great speaker." And they would go to pastor's room and pastor would send right after he just gave a great message. So pastor said, "Moving forward, we're only going to travel with twos. We're not going to go with uh one. We'll room up with two of us together." So these pastors go and what they notice is if one pastor can sell the other one on doing something and not telling anybody, they can generally do something bad. Then they said, "No, we have to travel in three." Because in three, at least one person is going to say, "Guys, I'm not in it." So one is going to make the other one from not doing anything dumb. So if you have three kids, say two of the kids convince each other to do something stupid. One of the kids going to say, "Guys, I don't want to do that because dad's going to be unhappy." [laughter] And then if there's four, there's two people that can agree on this and there's two people that you have good debate. So that's a good show. That's a great thought, Patrick. But all of a sudden, we're back in our office and we want to say thank you to our sponsor, Wealthfront. 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And honestly, they've been a company that I've been personally using for a few years now. And at 2% interest, it's pretty much higher than almost every other option out there. So, I would highly recommend them. This no-brainer good news has been a paid endorsement by Wealthfront. Thank you so much, Wealthfront. Once again, link down below. And back to the podcast. What are your thoughts on homeschooling? Because we had a very uh dicey conversation with Houston that got a lot of views on Instagram. Houston is very adamant about homeschooling. What are your thoughts on that? Okay. So, what was dicey about it? I'm curious what what led to He said something similar to what you said where if you bring a kid to public school, you don't know what they're teaching your kid. You know, the the values that they instill in your kid. Yeah. Even private school, he believes that he could shape their viewpoints and their mind uh to a way that he believes is I don't want to say correct, but in a way that's maybe different from everyone else. Okay. So, what's controversial about that? A lot of people believe that it was sheltering to the child and that they're not going to have the social skills to develop and come to their own thoughts and and experience the real world because once they're out there, they're not going to be in that environment where it's safe. And I'm happy I was public schooled, by the way. I'm public schooled as well. So, but but I I'll tell you this. So, let's talk about sheltering. You don't think you're sheltered growing up? You don't think you and I were sheltered to a certain degree? Yes and no. I mean, think about it. Just compared to what? I guess but but but the sheltering to me it's not even from the standpoint of your parents. If you're living in America, say you're in like you know how you go I'll go to Alabama and I'm like you know at a place doing a meeting and I'll go to a restaurant and I say hey so where'd you grow up at? Right here. How long you been here? 28 years. What was it like growing up in Alabama? You know what people will say? The famous line. It's the only thing I know. She was sheltered in Alabama. Right. We are all in a sense sheltered in the city we grew up in, in the state we grew up in and in the country we grew up in. What you think about Iran is based on how the country sheltered you to believe in about Iran, right? What you believe about China or Mexico or Brazil or Canada. Everything is a form of sheltering. So there is risk and you know everybody is a little bit afraid of the wrong influence getting a hold of you. Now eventually here's what happens. The sooner you teach values later on, if this kid wants to go sell cocaine and go become a drug addict and do whatever he wants to do or she wants to do, that part's on them. You can't teach the right values and principles after 18. It's very hard. It's not receive the same way as you teach it early on. So the sooner somebody teaches you the right habits, the sooner you have an edge, the later somebody teaches, like for example, insurance industry, uh if I were to tell you, having been in this industry for 21 years, now it's going to be 21 years September. The people that gave us the most problems when they came in were people that came in who left three other insurance companies, and we would sit there, we would look at and say, why are we having so many problems with these guys? Well, they brought bad habits from another insurance company. The people that we train ourselves, we have the least amount of issues with because they're learning how to sell the proper way. You know, in in mortgages and real estate, I don't know if you remember mortgage and real estate in '08. In ' 06, a phrase that was going viral was called creative financing. Are you familiar with creative finance? Okay. So, you know what creative financing is? Creative creative financing. I Isn't that when they you like use a bunch of weird like terms and stuff like that? No. So, he knows what it is. So, creative financing would be uh how much money you made last year and you say $82,000. Use that information to No, no, no. So, say you want to get a loan to buy a house, right? Okay. And I would say to you, don't worry about it. We'll make a fake uh 1099 that you made 220 last year and we'll put in the file. Don't worry about it. We'll make a fake Bank of America statement. Wow. So, was that's there was there was all of that going on all over the place. We're creating 06. A lot of guys went to jail. Ninja loans. No income, no job verification. Yeah. No income. That's right. It's stated. So you could say whatever you want on the application and they're just like all right tell you creative financing was a wink wink business model. Those guys that got trained in creative financing wherever they went to next they brought those habits with them to the next place. If forgery was a normal habit at that real estate office or mortgage office you brought it into pharmaceutical sales. You bought it in digital media agency. You brought it into stocks you know in it doesn't matter. So that habit continues. the if there's a reason why people hired people away from Jack Welch. There's a reason why companies recruited people away from Xerox. Xerox was known for training their salespeople better than anybody else. If you got a guy away at 29, 30 years old away from Xerox and his first job was Xerox. You're doing back flips cuz Xerox was known for having the best training. If like I came from BS, Bal was known for having the best sales training out of everybody. So, guess who went and recruited people from Bales? LA Fitness, 24-hour Fitness. Why? Cuz we were the best trainers. We were trained the right way. No misrepresentation, none of that stuff. It was the right way by from the top. So, what's the moral of the story? He's right. Homeschooling. I won't homeschool because to me, homeschooling, not everybody makes a good teacher where I'm going to have the time or the ability to have my wife teach. Teaching is not for everybody. If you can have somebody else do the job for teaching, it's great. But I support the idea of people wanting to do homeschooling today because they're scared of what's going on with the marketplace. What the kids are being fed today. That is a big risk today. When you have kids, you look at it from a different perspective. Look, guy asked me today, security asked that the guy that we all came through here, the 70-year-old man up there who uh is from Virginia, went to World War. He's 7 years old, been here for 50 years. Him and I are having a conversation this morning at 6:00 a.m. when I'm checking out the property. we're talking about uh uh uh schooling and stories about, you know, what the school's like. He says the same thing. He said, "Look, I wanted to have my kids be in an environment where they're learning a certain values and principles." You go to public nowadays, somebody's raising your kids. It's a very, very big risk today. Very big risk today. Very different today than when I went to school. It's a very different risk today. So, I fully understand it. But if you don't have the means, you don't have the choice. You have to go through public schools. Yeah. How do you balance the relationship between your business and also your wife? And how do you keep that spark between you and your wife when you're when you're doing so many things? How many hours would you say you working per week? Uh, so good question. I'm non-stop because I'm running nine businesses today. Uh, and I'm doing podcast and I'm creating content for Val when I get a chance to, you know, and deals I'm a part of, etc., etc. But let's talk. That's a great question. So a lot of our relationship today is how we got married, not necessarily today. So let me unpack that for you. Our first date, we go out. We had known each other for 5 and a half years. She was dating another guy or two and I was dating another girl or two. And then finally, we were single and I said, "Who are you looking for?" And we went on our first date. The next date we went out and I took her to Borders. Borders in Santa Monica, right by the stairs in Santa Monica, which you guys know the stairs in Santa. I took her to Borders when there used to be a Borders cuz there's not a Borders today. I bought her a book on our on our second date. It was called 101 Questions to Ask Before You Get Engaged. I've done this exercise with three other girls at the same time. Okay, not being promiscuous. I'm just doing this exercise with three other girls because I was at a phase that I'm looking for a wife. I'm not looking for no more playing around, fooling around. I knew I was ready. I was not ready for a long time. 28 I was ready. 28 29 I was ready. So she reads the book. I said you go through the book. I said 55 54 the questions are important to me. I don't care about the rest but whatever questions are important to you. I'll give you my answers. A week later we meet and we go through it. 6 hours to go through these questions. Questions are how long can you handle me being away on the road? Questions are you know what baggage do you bring to the table? And on the bottom it says if the person says none run. The questions are how many kids do you want to have? who manages the money? What do you think about prenuptual agreements? What do you Everything is in there. Okay. So, we went through it and then I kept asking her for a year and a half because you need arguments cuz the first 3 to six months of a relationship is a lie. It's all fake. It's Hollywood. We're acting. We're given our best. We're not given our worst. So, I had to learn eventually. I'm like, I'm so When you date a lot of people, you learn what you don't want more than what you do want. I definitely don't want this. I can't deal with this. I don't want that. I want these five things, but I definitely don't want these 13 things. Okay? [snorts] So, it was less of an act upfront. This is who I am. You're going to see the best of me, the worst of me. And then when it got to a point where we're getting married, we sit there, there's a moment when you're talking to your girl that you're going to get married to, and here's what happens. You don't say anything. She doesn't say anything. It's all here. You look at her and you say, "I think there's a 55% chance we can make this marriage work." [laughter] You look at her, you say, "I think it's like a 62%." You may look at one, you're like, "I like her so much, man. She's so hot." But I think this is a 23% one. So, I'm definitely not going to go marry this one. And that's internal dial. But, by the way, everybody does it. And and and when people say, "No, we were for sure." It's like, "Oh, okay. No problem. Go wait till people get involved. Wait till family needs money and you have to pay for stuff that it's your money and nobody pays you back. Wait till kids come and you lose. Wait till some stuff happen. You're going to learn. Marriage is going to be tested. But again, going back to Alex's comment about kids, no matter what you do with marriage, you're going to take a risk. So, going back to your question about my wife, she knows I work hard. She knows I'm doing what I'm doing. Uh, I intentionally built a life around our house. So, one of the buildings I bought is.1 miles away from our house. The other building I bought is 1 and a half miles away from the house. Our school the kids go to is 6 milesi away from the house. church is.7 miles because the school and the church is the same one. And the restaurants we go to, so we have lunch three times a week. We have dinner twice a week and I'm there outside of me being on the road. If I'm on the road, I'm on the road and I'm doing what I'm doing. Sundays is pure family. You want to go on the boat, you want to go out there, you want to do this, you want to do that, no problem. And then uh rituals you create for your family. Christmas is something we look forward to and we spend a lot of our resources for Christmas. It's very important. It's a time where we get together and we can only be around people that we enjoy their companies for four or five days, not enjoy their companies for two hours. We want five day your company, people you enjoy. And then you start adding new rituals, new traditions to your family and that increases the chances and hopefully if the people around you are the right people, you'll you'll increase the chance of making your marriage work. But keep this in mind, uh I got a call the other day from a guy that I never thought was going to get a divorce. Never. I mean, this is a guy like, think about who you know that you say that couple never they're going to be together. That kind of a guy calls me. And I said, "What happened?" The guy is a money guy. He's a $20 million guy. He makes money. They have a kid together and she just woke up one day and she says, "I want to go back with my guy from high school and he's single now and I can't stop thinking about him." Woke up, left him. She's an absolute great girl from a great family. There is nothing about her track record that you could say, "Well, that one thing, nothing. He's a stud." But that just happened. So, what's the concern here? Now, somebody listens to that story and says, "That's exactly why I'm not getting married." No. The moral of the story is people change. You're not God. I can't change you. You can't change me. We have to take risks. And marriage is the ultimate risk. It's the biggest risk you're taking. No startup company when I risk all my money was as big of a risk as getting married. And so a lot of times we don't talk openly like this. If you talk to people in church, it's all like, but you have to make it work. That's not true. I'm not from that school of thought because both people have to do their part. What if I'm doing all the work and the other one doesn't want to do it and I have to sit there and go through that process all the time. I think we have to openly and and men, we don't have too many conversations like this where we talk about our insecurities and all these fears that we have. the more we have these talks and then eventually it goes to the point where look at the end of the day there is a risk and you make a decision. Do you want to do it or not? I don't want to do it. No problem. I do want to do it. Great. Take the risk. It's worthy of a risk. What are your thoughts on prenups? I'm all for it. Do you have a prenup? Absolutely. I'm all for it. I think you need to have it. Uh and let me tell you what what it did to our relationship when we have a prenup. So, do you have one yourself or I do? Okay. [snorts] So, let me tell you what it did for us. So, here's what happened. Family calls. Uh, hey babe, such and such happened with my mother's cousins, nephew's wife, whoever it is, and I want to bail this guy. I need $8,000. Here's $8,000, babe. And you go to work and you're kind of bitter at your wife. You're like, I don't even know who this person is. Why the hell are we bailing this person out $8,000? Hey babe, you know this person died and we kind of have to help with the funeral final expense. They don't have any money. $18,000. Okay, here's $18,000. When those things happen two, three, four, five times, you're eventually a little bit annoyed. She says, "I want to buy that new Chanel purse." How much, babe? Well, it's up a little bit. $12,000. Okay, go buy the Chanel purse. Somebody may say, "What's wrong with that? What's wrong with this?" No problem. Everybody has this different set of guidelines. I like where we have your money, my money, our money. This is your money. You want to buy that Chanel purse, buy it with your money. If I want to buy that purse for you, I'll buy it with my money. So, you know, I bought it with my money. It's a form of I bought it with mine rather than our money. Okay? If we have something that we're doing for our kids and ourselves, which is us, team us. This is our money. [snorts] If you want to spend $50,000 on your nephew or your niece, you don't even need to ask me because you're using whose money? Your money. I noticed that minimize arguments to the point where no one's being judged. No one said, "Why are you buying that purse? Why are you doing this? Why are you buying that? Why? No. So, we go to Louis Vuitton when this thing gets set up and she says, "Uh, can I see that purse and can I see that purse?" Yes. How much is that? 35. How much is that? 45. She looks at me. I want to buy these. And I look at I'm like, "Okay, I'm buying it with my money." Okay, go for it. Now, what if she doesn't have money, though? What if she is stay-at-home mom? She's not having income, but she wants, let's just say the $10,000 should not burst. But how much do you make? How much do you make? Say, so give me that scenario, but give me the case study with the husband. What does the husband make? Gosh, let's just say, let's just say a million bucks a year. If he makes a million bucks a year, and you know, you're going to set up a prenuptual to protect you. Create a portion, an account where you put money in where she can do whatever she does without asking you. That's the account. So whatever she wants to buy without ask because I'm in the business of minimizing arguments. So for example, the biggest business issues I've had in my life is because I hurried a contract too much without us getting those additional three disclaimers in there that if this happens, here's how we exit this. And because we didn't have that, it caused an argument. I don't want that. So let's spend a little bit more time with the contract. Have your lawyers talk to our lawyers. Let's take one more week and let's see what else we want to add into this. What if it doesn't work between the two of us? You say, "Pat, so, so let's just say you all of a sudden wake up one morning. You say, Pat, I'm already worth 20 million. We're partners 5050. I don't want to do anything. I have the right to buy you out at the market value at the time. I can go find financing can buy you out. But if that's not in the agreement, guess what you can do? I don't want to sell. I just want to take my profits every year." Now, I hate you. Now, we have issues. So, the same thing with marriage. If the guy is making a million and you're worried about the money she's spending, put $4,000 a month in an account. This is an account for you. This is our account expenses. This is your account. Do whatever you want to do with it. That prevents some of the arguments. Got it. How many times do you feel Alex is clapping over here. [laughter] How many times do you feel unmotivated or you feel like you wake up and you just I don't feel like doing anything today or you feel lost or maybe you feel like what am I doing this far? So, you know that one video uh that says um he says, you know, you wake up in the morning and you say, "I still go to the gym because I don't feel like it. We're not the same. I feel like working out every day." You know, I don't know if you've seen that one audio that goes it's picked up on TikTok. I'm not probably not saying it the right way, but here's the point. Uh I think that's a great video to go viral. I don't think that's the reality because there's going to be many days I don't feel like being a dad because of the responsibilities of changing the diaper and I got poop on my jacket. One day I'm having a business meeting and I'm holding my son. I have my brand new Lakers gear that I'm wearing. All of a sudden, I'm looking at the guys. I'm like, "Why do you guys did you guys step into something?" I said, "Look at the bottom of your shoes." They're looking, "No, Pat, we didn't step in. Why? Why does this place smell so bad?" So then all of a sudden, like, "Hey, Pat, can you look at your son?" I look at my son. No joke. Everywhere here. Oh no. I'm trying to encourage you from not having kids, [laughter] by the way. Okay. Everywhere here. You see, in that moment, I'm not feeling like being a dad. Yeah. I I wish it was in a different place, right? You don't feel like running a media company when this thing keeps breaking, the audio is not being picked up, there's noise in the background and chips are getting lost and the 30 minutes has gone and you lost best footage that would have done very well. You don't feel good in that moment. So, but the reality of it is, you know, in those moments, if you truly have a vision that's a real vision, it's a big vision and it excites you so much. You have no choice but have to tolerate chaos and times of stress and things not going your way. You don't have a choice. So, when in that moment some people are like, "Ah, I just don't feel like doing it today." No problem. It's your choice. But if your vision's big, you kind of got to figure out a way to win on days that you don't feel like it. Yeah. Now in you were mentioning though in like 2007208 you rethought how you want to go about business and things you want to do. How did you go about doing that? Was there was there a strategy that you used or how did you think of the next big thing when you didn't know it yet? So when I didn't know it yet I didn't know the bigger vision is what I didn't know. Right. So for me I got 20 different motivators under four different categories that people have. One is individual. So you have individual accomplishments you're going after. Right? You want to have a degree to be able to say you went to UCLA or you went to Penn, you went to Wharton. That's an individual accomplishment. Makes you proud, right? Individual. You want to have a car, a watch, clothes, you know, a house, whatever, right? That's individual accomplishments. Those will run out eventually if it's just individual. Then you have one that's lifestyle. Lifestyle is purely selfish stuff that you want. The other one is uh a purpose. You know, I want to do something big and memorable. And the last one is madness. Madness is, you know, Michael Jordan is part of Madness Community. Tom Brady is part of Madness Community. Connor is part of Madness Community. I I mean, you can go down a bunch of people, you know, that are part of Madness Community. You'll know if you're part of Madness Community or you're not part of Madness Community. I read I read two books. One was called Hypomomanic Edge and the other one was called First Rate Madness. Why you know some title is like why the crazy people run the world today. you know, whatever it says about people's personality disorders. So, for me in ' 08, I'm so upset because I finally figured out that money doesn't drive me. It's got to be something more than money. It's got to be something that's a vision correcting an injustice. You know, that's my belly. There's fire on my belly constantly. I can't get rid of it. I've tried a lot because believe me, life would be probably a lot more peaceful without it because you can take timeouts and kind of be a little bit more but you have to be self-aware and know who you are, right? So for me, I sat there and I said, "Okay, so what are we doing? Is it the big parties? Is it the house? What is it?" No, it's not. It's much bigger than that. Okay, how does this feel? You know how sometimes you want to buy that watch? Let's just say, you know, beautiful watch you have there. And let's just say you go look at it first time and you say, "Babe, I like this watch. How much is it, babe?" $68,000. Okay, not going to buy it right now. I'm going to go and see if I still like it. You come back, you look at it again, still like it. You come back two months later, doesn't do it for me anymore. Why buy it? Okay, but if you keep seeing something and it keeps drawing you in, maybe there's something you got to pay attention to there, right? So for me, what it cause was every time I like, you know, people say, "Why do you talk politics? You were doing great with Vitam you talking entrepreneurship. Why touch politics? You shouldn't do it. You don't do it. Gary doesn't do it. A lot of you guys don't do it. You guys are just kind of like your business like this guy. I'll have you do it, man. [laughter] I'll have him do it. I don't want to take the risk. Let this guy do it. He's losing followership because they don't like the fact that he's giving his opinions. And I can take that strategy, right? And by the way, I know that you guys know. I know that you guys know that. Why is this guy touching politics? Cuz we know the space. But at the same time, I can't help myself because it's so deep in my bones that for me, it's more than having a 100 million subscribers or 50 million subscribers. We got to have that not because it's bragging rights. We got to have that because we get to get to more eyeballs to get the message across, right? So, the messaging for me changed a little bit. But I I got more and more self-aware in ' 08 of myself than I was in O2. In O2, I was just just wanted to make money. I hated being broke. It was a complete different perspective. 08 was like, okay, you can actually compete in the marketplace and you can actually make some real money, but what's bigger than that? So, that was a shift that I made. Got it. Can you say about how much you had when you realized that you didn't want to focus? I made half a million dollars savings. It's not a lot of money, but for me, it was a lot of money that I had in08. I feel like I'm kind of going through something similar right now where what I'm doing right now is working so well and I don't want to scale back and I want to continue with the same trajectory. Uh and even just another two to three years of just what I'm doing right now just maintaining would be lifechanging. Um but I've been going through just the last like two years feeling like I've kind of like learned as much as I can. I've done already so many things and I feel like I'm not growing as a person anymore. and I'm trying to figure out what's next, but at the same time, I don't want to give up what I have or scale back on that because it's doing so well. I feel like I'd be an idiot to take the the foot off the gas, so to speak. Um, what would be your advice in that sort of situation? But see, that's why people love you, though, which you just did right there. That's why people love you. No, because because that's who you are. You you just told the world where you are right now, and the book tells you not to do it. That's why they love you. That's why people want to listen to you. You know, look, I I will tell you uh uh those who are not creating content, this is very hard. This is not easy. There's only so many times you can come up with another market crash video. There's only so many times you can say that. [laughter] But you know what? They work. But but people watch them. That's the thing. It's the [laughter] I thought the same thing. But I posted other videos. Nobody watches them. But when I post a market crash video, everyone watches it. And the like ratios are the same, by the way. So, it's not like I'm getting you anyway. No, but I agree. But, but but but you know, uh but here's the point, though. What what you're doing is not easy to do. Here's the other part you got to be thinking about. There's two aspects to it. There's a quote that said, changed my life. It said, "Sometimes on a way to a dream, you get lost and find a bigger one." You're a little bit lost right now. It's kind of where you are. Not that you're lost. Everybody, many people would love to have your life being lost right now. So there's got to be gratitude and perspective, but you expect more from yourself and you feel like you can do more, you can contribute more and you can go to a whole different level. Um, I love operating businesses. Okay, so for example, I sit with my Goldman guy and we just had a nice multi-figure exit four weeks ago. So we're sitting there and you know, he's saying, "So what do we want to do with this?" is we're talking to blacks black, you know, we're talking to all these guys on what to put a portion of the money in. And he said, and I said, "So, how much is this going to give? If we put $50 million here, what is this going to be in 10 years?" And and don't give me the best case scenario. Give me the worst case. He says, "That 50 could potentially be 100 million 10 years from now." That doesn't excite me. I said, "What's the best case?" He maybe it's going to be 125 million. So, he doesn't even tell me the 50 is going to be 300 million, like overexaggerating. He's being very straight up. He's a very conservative guy. So I said, "Okay, cool." He says, "Patrick," this is during dinner. He said the most amazing thing to me. He says, "Pat, no matter what you put your money in with us, nothing you're doing right now in your life is going to make higher returns than whatever you operate." Look what he said. Whatever you operate, cuz operating, I know how to grow and scale a business. You know how to operate and grow this. This didn't go to where it did by pure luck. You have a system behind it. You're a data guy. You're a numbers guy. You're all that stuff, right? sooner I found out I'm an operator. That's my game. I'm not a guy that's going to build a $17 billion real estate portfolio. That's not my game. I'm not a guy that's going to go out there and, you know, be the next Bitcoin guy and talk I'm a maximal, you know, I'm not that guy. Yeah. I'm an operator. I like starting businesses, building businesses. You got to take a piece of paper and write out for yourself what excites you. What are you very good at? And match those two. If what excites you matches what you're very good at, that's that's that's peaking. Yeah. If if what I'm doing, I'm an expert at is this, but this excites me as well as this, that matches, I'm solid. But sometimes, like, I've taken three breaks creating content. Three breaks creating content. One was at uh you know uh uh 20,000 subs, one was at 455, one was at 1.5, and one was at 3.2 that we took a break. We took those three breaks. And I think sometimes just like Johnny Carson, Fallon, just like these guys got to take a break and just go away and say, "Hey, what are we going to do? Who's the next guest? What are we going to do with this part? What are we going to change up? Are we going to add something new to the show?" The same thing's got to happen because if the product becomes the same over and over again, and you're not recreating with the times changing. So I I have I have a guy comes up to me. I'm not going to mention his name, but you'll know who this guy is. We're having a conversation together and he says, "Man, my YouTube channel went from having we went from 200,000 to million and a half subs in 12 months and we were getting millions on top of millions of views. 25,000 people would stay live when I was doing any kind of thing." And I'm lucky if I get 50, 60, 80. I said, "Yeah." I said, "Can you pull up those videos that did very well?" He pulls up the videos. I said, "Okay, 5G, masks, COVID." No one cares about those three today. Nobody does. And you still want to talk about 5G, masks, and co. Once you go into a certain box like that and you don't adapt quickly, you're gone. Yeah. So, as content creators, we have to constantly recreate ourselves. If we don't, you're like that person that was a motivational speaker in the 60s and 70s and 80s and still saying the same message from 60s7s 80s. Nobody cares today. They respect you. You got to kind of adjust or else you're going to be left behind. Yeah. Sometimes I feel like I lose that sharpness though after so many years when you don't have that same level of focus and that same drive as you did when it was new. And because of that, you have a harder time adapting. True. But you're not 72. It's true. You're young. How old are you? You're 32. You're 32 years old. Like you, you know, like you're like, just so you know, like your next 20 years is you're you're like the next 20 years, you're going to do 100 times what you did the last 10 years? It's not even close. So, you mean to tell me I'm going to wake up one day, I'm 22, 32 years old, I got a channel that's got 4 million subs, another one that's got 880, I've got a few billion online views, I'm everywhere, you know, I'm respected, people calling me from I've have a good net worth. I've done well for myself. I have a voice that's heard by tens of millions of people. What do I now want to do with this voice? I will tell you, if it's just subs, you'll eventually get bored. But if I want to do XYZ with this, it'll excite the hell out of you. Yeah. I don't know. Uh for me, when I was working as a real estate agent, I was always looking up to people on YouTube. And so for me, that had always been a dream. And when I started making videos, I had so much fun. And instantly, I knew that like this is it. I just had a gut feeling that this was my purpose for the time. And that was after about 7 to eight years working as a real estate agent. I'll be approaching six years now on YouTube. And I feel like there's that 7-year sort of itch where I'm like, what what's next for me? What's the next challenge? Um, and that's where I'm struggling. I think you're going to be all right. I think you're going to be all right. I think you're it's a very normal thing. You go how long you've been married? Uh, getting married in probably a year and a half, two years. We're engaged. So, you're not married yet. You're not yet. You're going to go through as well when you get married. It's going to happen. You're going to be at your seventh year marriage and you're going to be like, "Let me tell you, man. It's all about the kids. It's all about this. I feel like we don't go on dates anymore. I feel almost everything you do in life, you're going to hit plateaus. You know, half the battle isn't hitting those plateaus. Plateaus are inevitable. Like working out. I used to work out to impress girls. I don't work out today to impress girls. My uh desire to work out today is to be able to have energy enough to run the businesses and to be able to wrestle with my four kids and spend time and have time with my wife, you know, and stay healthy. I want to be able to live a good amount of time to, you know, witness these things. So, the evolution of working out changes, the evolution of marriage changes, the evolution of health and eating changes, the evolution of consuming content changes. I don't read books I read today that I did 20 years ago just because somebody recommended it. If you send me a book 15 years ago, I would read it. I don't read a book today if you send it to me. I read books I want to read today. I don't read books because you tell me to read the book. So, for example, say if I meet a guy and they say, "You got to read this book." His credibility score for me is zero cuz I don't know him or his credibility score is a two. I'm not reading that book. Now, let's just say you say to me, Pat, the best book I've ever read on content creation ever, I've never read a book better than this. If you you think I'm going to read that book, of course, because your credibility score is a 10 when it comes onto this world. Pat, just read this book. So, so I evolved on what I consumed. I evolved with what books I read. I evolved with how I wanted to spend my time. I evolved with who I wanted to be friends with. I had friends in my life where eventually I'm just sitting there. I'm like, I don't even know why I'm doing this. Why am I even picking up these calls? Every time I talk to you complaining about two of your friends and an ex, everything is complaining. How can I help you? I can't help you. So content is the same as well. You eventually kind of have to ask yourself, why am I creating content? You ever read the book The Story of David Letterman and uh uh Jay Leno? I haven't. Must read. Okay, must read. Deal. I'll read it. But you know why though? Because it's about content creation. Okay, you know, David Letterman and Jay Leno were fighting to get Johnny Carson's position. Okay, it's an older book, but when you read this book, you'll see the struggles both of them went when Jay Leno ends up getting Johnny's time. Breaks David Letterman's heart because it was David Letterman's dream to get Johnny Carson's time and he was the better comedian. Jay Leno was a hard worker comedian. David Letterman was a natural comedian. So then you have to see the negotiation. You'll be fascinated by this. But David gets a different job. I think it's CBS. Jay gets Johnny's side. The first four years, David Letterman wins and is number one for four years. Do you know after the fourth year, David Letterman never once beat Jay Leno? Cuz Jay Leno was a harder worker on finding ways to improve. And David was just natural. Sometimes natural people don't improve. They just rely too much on their on their natural abilities. Sometimes people that are not naturally funny have to work harder to be funny, but that ability to work harder and figure things out gives them an edge long term. So, but I think you'll enjoy that book, especially at this phase that you're at. Do you have any other advice in terms of finding that passion for you? Yeah, that's a little off topic. I read a book called Leaderless Revolution. Leaderless Revolution written by British diplomat. Don't recommend the book by the way. I'm just telling you I read this book so it's not worth reading. But there's a part he talks about. So, leaderless revolution leader that mosquito really likes you by the way. It's a fly. It's like a little net. Leaderless revolution. So, leaderless revolution. He says there's three things that drive people and you got to make a list and figure this out. He says make a list of what you love, what bothers you, what you hate. So you make a list of those three things, what you love. And you'll say, "I love my wife, I love my mom, I love real estate, I love this, I love that." What bothers you? What bothers me is when people are late. What bothers me is when people d What do you hate? Oh, I hate bullies. I hate manipulators. Like, that's true, right? And then there's a quote that says, "Whatever you don't hate, you learn to tolerate." Right? Whatever you don't hate, you learn to tolerate. Most people just don't like their jobs. They don't hate it. So, they'll tolerate it. Yeah. Most people don't hate their financial situation. They just don't like it. If you don't like it, you'll tolerate it. If you don't if you hate it, you ain't going to tolerate it. You're going to do you going to do something about it. So at this phase of wanting to recreate oneself, it won't happen logically. I'm right now working with uh uh Penguin Portfolio, we're writing a a book specifically on business plans and one of the elements about writing the business plan when I was presenting it to Adrian from from uh portfolio was I said, "Listen, what's the missing link in business plans? Why do 90% of people that write a business plan in December, last week of December, never look at that thing again after February? Because that entire business plan was stemmed on what? Logic. I'm going to do this much in the first quarter, that much in the second quarter. I'm going to buy this office. I'm going to open up this. I'm going to get this license. I'm going to take this course. I'm going to take this. Who gives a All of that stuff is logic. Logic. Logic. Logic. Logic. Logical stories are boring. No one watches a lot. Right now I'm having my kids watch Derek Jeter's documentary. You know what my oldest son says? He says, "Dad, can I watch Derek Jeter's documentary in a movie format?" I said, "They don't have it yet." I said, "I much prefer watching a Derek Jeter documentary captain on a movie format than documentary." Because documentary is boring. The movie is what? Entertaining. He's he's able to consume it more. So what does that really mean? Your business plan needs to also have emotions attached to it. What's emotion? Okay. So, emotion could be enemy is emotional. What enemy do you have? That produces emotion. You ever made a list of 10 things people ever said to you that really hurt and just kind of mess you up a little bit? You ever heard made a list of 10 things people said that really felt very good. The compliment like genuine that you truly believed that you're like, you know, my dad one time said this to me till today I remember this and I made a very big impact on my life. Right? It's emotional. But enemy is a driver, you know? Jordan look for enemies. Kobe look for enemies. Brady look for enemies. It produces something, right? Sometimes uh if I want to get uh one of our guys in a company to move, it's my job to find an enemy for them. It's your job as a father for your kids to sometimes find an enemy that brings out the best in them. Because the best positive distraction in life is when you're in the pursuit of something and you got a target that you're going after. Maybe there's a little bit of enemy behind it. So again, less skill, more will, less, you know, competition, more enemy, less, you know, who we need to hire next, more culture, less, you know, what our uh uh business plan is, more mission statement, less about, you know, what numbers we going to put up and write the business plan, more what is the vision. So, it's more on the emotion side and tapping in that emotional side when all of a sudden, you'll feel it, by the way, when all of a sudden you're like your eyes change. You know how you talk to somebody in three different seasons of their lives and you look at their eyes and you say, "This person's uh defeated right now, huh?" And you look at their eyes, you're like, "This person's very curious right now and hungry." And you look at their eyes. My gosh, this guy's so focused. What the hell is going on with those eyes? That's telling a story. Okay. Eyes is a reflection of where we are here. This produces this. If this is clear, people going to tell this. Yeah. So, what is this logic? No, it's only emotion. This is only emotion. This is not logic. This is logic. This is emotion. So, if we can tap into that, that's when we start like even if you started your YouTube channel, there was a reason behind it. You know, it was more emotional. It wasn't logical. So, that's the part we got to tap. We got to go back and you know, one time Big Poppy went on a streak of not hitting home runs for like a couple hundred at bats. And he was like, he was like this. And the coach takes him in and says, "Look at your swing." When you hit 50 something home runs and look at this swing. You're so tight. You're so worried about striking out. He says, "Just play loose. Just open up a little bit. Play loose. Just swing like you're dancing. Just start dancing again." You know, sometimes we play too tight and you're tight. you throw the ball, you know, you fumble a video, you you fumble the ball versus you just got to dance sometimes. We we we put too much pressure of performing and crushing it and killing it and competing that we forget to dance. All of those unfortunately are things that are reminders and sometimes we are not reminded of those things. We need to be re-calibrated every once in a while. This might sound silly. How did you become such a good talker? How did I become very fluid in the way that you speak? Yeah. your emotion, your annotations, everything about the way you speak. I'm listening to this and it it's very captivating. It's easy to see how you could motivate somebody or stumble over your words much. You guys, I got a bad accent. You know, my grammar, if you if you go back and write it out, if you transcribe what I said in this video today and give it to an English teacher, they'll go like this entire time. [laughter] I understand what you're saying and I appreciate it. What I will tell you is the following. Here's what I will say. And and I'm not uh um being super humble about it. Oh, thanks guys. But let me tell you, I'm just a regular guy. Um [laughter] you know, every every once in a while in life, you're all of a sudden going to realize you're very very good in an area. Okay. So for me, my biggest strength is I'm extremely curious. I'm so curious. Like I want to know I want to know why they do what they do. I want to know why they set up certain things the way they do. I want to know why they made a decision that they made. Yesterday was a big day in America. You saw it all over the news what happened with the FBI. Why they do that? I want to know why. What's the motive behind it? So the level of curiosity is what gets me in. But since I was a kid, I've been telling stories since I was a kid. The first company I ever incorporated was called the story builders. I love stories. I think stories move people. And you know, if that's a gift of telling stories, you know, that's my ability to be able to tell that story, I I I have to be in it. So, I I I go into the story. I'm curious about the story, but I would say that's probably one of my strengths. Got it. What are your thoughts on Andrew Tate? I think he's a stud. I think he's scaring the crap out of a lot of people. Um I again, I've never spent time with this guy. We both follow each other. I like his style. You know, we uh uh if I would have gone a different route, I would have gone the tape route. I just chose a different route to go. Uh I think he's making a lot of great arguments that's pissing people off. I think he's pressing on a button and not slowing down. Like he goes like this, he gets irritated. The average person stops doing that. Tate goes like this, you get irritated, he goes like this, and he goes like this, and he goes like this. It's like, are you not going to stop? That's Tate. So, you would have I would have loved to have seen how Tate was at 8 years old. That's what I would have known to to see that. And my curiosity would have been more about his dad and his mom dynamics because obviously his dad was a very strong personality man and some of the stories of what happened with his life. But a lot of content creators right now are envious of the guy of what he's doing and they want to say well he's running this uh affiliate marketing thing and you know he's running this uh scam and he's doing this he's listen he's selling an online course something many people have done. He's just doing it at a bigger scale than others today. But here's the reality of it with Tate. The biggest challenge he's going to have is what? How much can the world consume that content before they get over it? Is it a one-year thing? Is it a three-year thing? Is it a five or 10 year? I think he's not going away for a while. I think he is very attractive. I think he's very entertaining. I think he's also a great storyteller. I think he makes very good points. I think he is multi-dimensional. He doesn't just talk about dating. He talks about politics. He talks about religion. He talks about finance. He'll talk about sports. He'll talk about fighting. When you're that multi-dimensional, you can be in any room and you can be interesting. Most people are not very multi-dimensional. If you were actually to sit there and take the top 20 content creators who are out there going viral and you were to say who are multi-dimensional, Tate's on that list. Logan Paul's multi-dimensional. um you know you got you don't have that many people that are that multi-dimensional. So uh so it's not and and by the way this is the important part to realize that a lot of people are saying you think many people are going to model after him. No Tate is not duplicatable. He's not a duplicatable guy. It's not like a here's a format. You start a YouTube channel. You talk about this. You go Google and you search for titles. Then you make listicles. Top 10 reasons why women shouldn't date uh men without good mothers. You know, top 10 reasons why this, seven mistakes why, six keys to this. So, you do 200 of those videos. And then you're like, okay, now what do I do? Tate doesn't need the seven keys to whatever. He's just that interesting and entertaining. That also bleeds over to cancel culture. And I know you have very firm thoughts on that. Could you explain some of those thoughts and the direction we're headed in terms of this mob mentality of ganging up on people if they say or do something that might be incorrect? So, okay. So, what's the what's the smarter thing to do? Let's process that, right? If if you want to live a peaceful life, don't model after Jake Paul. Don't don't model after Connor or Trump or Tate or I don't know what other name you want to add to that list. Don't model after them. Okay? Because if you can't handle hate, it's not for you. Okay? There is got to be an itch where you're yearning for that. You're kind of like you like a good fight. Like you like to get into the ring and get a little dirty and get, you know, people to say stuff about you. There's a part of those guys that like that, right? Are you surprised Trump is getting cancelled? Surprised? Not not is the right thing. Sure. Surprised is a different question. Are you surprised he's getting cancelled? Are you surprised people are hating on Tate? Are you surprised people get upset at Dana White? Are you surprised people get upset at Jake Paul? Are you Are you surprised? None of us should be surprised because they're in your face. And they're not even surprised. If they're surprised, they're naive. And they're not naive. So they know this is going to be happening. Right. Right. So for me that's that part. Now is it right to cancel? I think what does cancel culture really mean? It means envy. It means you're afraid. It means you're jealous. It means you, you know, you [snorts] wish you could be like them. You wish you could talk like them and they're saying something that's really offending you. So your only way to beat them is to silence them. That's a very cowardly way of competing. You know, the way you compete is you compete. The reason why Muhammad Ali has as much respect as he had is because he fought everybody at their peak. So, everybody respects Ali, he's got six losses, I don't know, six or eight losses. He fought people at their peak and he would show up and fight. He never turned down a fight, right? You know, the other day Dana White gave a great compliment to uh Bisbing. I don't know if you've seen Bisbing's documentary. Oh my god, it's an incredible documentary. I watched it on a flight back from Monaco two weeks ago. And Dana White says, "There's a lot of guys in UFC that I call and they'll say things like this. Well, Dana, why are you calling me now? You know, the fight is in two weeks. I need six weeks to be ready for camp. And D. He says, "There's one thing about Bisbank. I've never called Bisbank." And he ever complained about the fact that he wasn't ready for a fight. He says, "That's why I respect Bisbank so much." Right? So, there is this element of some of these guys that are ready to go and, you know, and compete, but most people don't like that. And I think that's not going away anytime soon. I don't think it's a new thing. I think that's going to be around for a very long time. Yeah. And what about you? Are you nervous? cuz you mentioned earlier that you're starting to talk a little bit more about politics about being cancelled or saying something that maybe the the mob doesn't agree with. So So what is the mistake? The mistake is on the following. The mistake is speaking in certainties. Certainties. Like for example, Alex Jones right now going through the issue that he's going through, right? What is really the problem? What is the problem with Alex Jones? Did Alex Jones say anything that anybody else said? No. He spoke in what? I know for a fact this is what's going on. And I know it. I'm telling you. I have people on the inside. You can't talk like that. You can't talk like that. That's But that's certainty. That's a little too certain where where all you have to do is the following. I don't know. What if it's this? Maybe if it's this, maybe it's that. I have no clue. But what if you are certain? There's a difference. [laughter] But there's there's there's a difference. He was not certain though. Yeah. So, as long as you are certain about something, it's okay. But a lot of people I agree a lot of people can make something out to be a certainty even though you know. But here's a part. You're certain about what though? What are you certain about? What am I certain about? Yeah. What are you certain about? 5 * 5 is 25. Okay. I'm certain about that too. 100% we're on the same page. What else are you certain about? The earth is spherical. Okay. There's certain things that we can be certain about. Okay. If you're certain about something you don't have all the information in, it's a little foolish to do that. That's the part where you get people to come. You become a target. You caused it. Yeah. I know for a fact market crash is happening [snorts] versus like the other day I I did something with Dave Ramsey and I said, "Listen, Dave, don't know if you're watching this or not. I think you may be wrong." Now, he may be right with real estate if inventory is not going to be there. He may be right, but I think he may be wrong. And here's why. Da da da da. So then there's reaction videos and people say, "What? I disagree with Bet David. I disagree with Ramsay." No problem. But I didn't tell I didn't tell you 100%. Mhm. I said, "Based on this data, here's what may be happening, and you may want to do your own due diligence." People get in trouble when they talk 100% certainty, here's what happened, and you don't know for a fact. So, it's not really a concern of yours to be at all. Zero. No, because because it should be a concern of mine if I [music] talk from an area that I'm 100% certain something is happening without me knowing. Okay. You have to be and you got to work on that. Even as a talent, you got to be like, "Let me back up a little bit on this message out." Maybe because there's been times that I've also said, "Here's what I think is going on, and I'm pretty confident this is going on." But even pretty confident is what? It's not certain. It's not certain. So, it's that one little out that some of these guys got to put that they're not putting in there and that gets them in trouble. So, I'm going to play this game and go do what I'm doing because I love it. I can't stop talking about it. And I'm so totally fine when some people pull me aside and say, "I disagree with your position about that. Tell me why. Which part of it? I disagree with myself sometimes. Well, which part did you disagree with? When you set the follow on this, okay, cool. So, what's your solution? Tell me yours. Well, I don't have one. Well, then don't debate it if you don't have a sol. I give you mine. Then give your solution. You your part of the problem as well. If you're not giving your solution, what's yours? Maybe you got a better one. But until you come up with your own solution, don't judge mine. Give me a resolution that you got is maybe better than mine. And let's hash it out. Let's debate it. Let's see if we can find somewhere there. So that's the part also knowing how to react to somebody that's confronting you because the direction I'm going I'm going to be confronted and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But do I want to see you two debate in something? I want to see youate. We we could see if we could debate something. I I just got a quick question for you. As you're kind of moving into the political talks, do you ever worry that's going to impact your business? because in some way you might be alienating somebody who wants to do business with you, but because you said a certain thing, h maybe I'm going to go with the other guy. So, I want I want to kind of give you some perspective here. I run an insurance company. So, the insurance industry, here's why we were able to build the insurance company that we built. Uh you're going to be in Vegas on Friday night. Yeah. You should just come to the backstage. Shaq will be here. I just want you to see I just want you to come and see backstage what's going on here. Oh my gosh. I just want to see what's going on. Okay. So, Friday night, you'll be with us. And even if you wanted to come see Nelly, Nelly will be Thursday morning, but Friday night is the main one to come in dressed in black, you know, black tie and come real nice. You'll you'll like it and you'll get some good footage as well. But what if I offend somebody? Okay, so I go into insurance business. I write a book called The Next Perfect Storm in 2011 2012. Not recommending you read it. It's an insurance book. You're going to be bored out of your mind. But for the insurance space, it was a book that was written that did very well. And I talked about what was going on in the marketplace. This is why I started my own insurance company. In in 2008, data came out saying the average insurance agent in America was a 56-y old white male. Only 17% of agents were women only. Okay. So, I said, Ron Paul in 04 raised $6 million in MySpace in 24 hours. Obama became a two-term president with a one-term senator. Who is he to become a president? But he did it through 5 10520 $20 on Facebook. That meant anybody can run. the game has changed and everybody was trying to get the Hispanic vote. Okay? So, when you come to the conference, you'll see one thing. We are 54% women and 51 52% Hispanic and the average agent is a 34 year old. So, the average agent in our company is a 34 year old Hispanic female. An anomaly. Most of our company, if you're Hispanic politically, you may disagree with me, okay? But the way we have created our values and principles in PHP is that you and I can have disagreements but we can respect each other, have a conversation together. Matter of fact, I welcome it. We like it. We like a good discourse. We like a good debate. So now having said that, does that also get some people to say, I don't like the way this guy said this, this, that. Yeah, I don't want to do business with them. Sure, I probably lost some business as well. But has it also flipped and brought some more true believers that we know for a fact that we're on the same page? Absolutely. And have some people been able to consume the content and say even though I disagree with this guy, I like the approach he takes. I'd like to go into business with them. Yes. But to say there is no risk, I'd be naive saying that 100% there's a risk. Do you have a solution for California or something that they could do differently? I really enjoy your California videos. Yeah. I mean, you saw the the the I did a video the other day talking about if you're going to be staying in California, you know, that was that was great, by the way, about buying the place in the valley. I mean, you made this comparison of buying a average house in the valley, what was it? One 1.8 $1.8 million. How much you have to make uh as either a single person or a couple in order to comfortably afford that home. And it was insane. Insane. How are you going to do it? How you going to pull that off? So, so here's here the whole thing with California for me is I lived there 20some years. I love that place. I I California is a place, specifically Southern California, I can drive with my eyes closed and I'll know exactly where to go cuz I know all the freeways. I drove a few hundred thousand miles when I was selling insurance policies going north, going south, going east, everywhere, right, in LA driving. But California has um a couple problems uh uh with where they're at right now. Uh people are not uh politically getting involved and fighting back and they're just sitting there saying yes to it. When you live in a place that doesn't want to hear what you have to say and it's their way or the highway, you have one of two choices. You either have to become so powerful moneywise, influence wise where you can fight back. Meet Kevin, try to do a little bit, you know, he tried to go out there and do some stuff with that. So, you go out there and impose yourself or you you you get behind somebody and you say, "Let me help him out, dude. You got to go run. We got to figure something out to get him in there. You're the right guy for it. Let's get behind him. Let's support somebody." Or you sit there patiently saying maybe one day they're going to change. And last but not least, it's what? You got to leave. Now you say that to somebody from California that doesn't want to leave. They say things like, "But that's cowardly." I said, "Be careful saying that. Why? You just call your grandparents a coward." What do you mean? Were your grandparents born in California? No. Why did they come here? Well, what does that have to do with anything? They're from Mexico. Your grandparents are cowards, man. How do you feel knowing your grandparents were cowards? They're not cowards. So why did they leave Mexico? They should have stayed in Mexico. Do you know how conditions were in Mexico? Do you know how conditions are in California? What do you think? Sure. So what are you supposed to do? Sit there? You're in Nevada. Why are you not in Santa Monica? Yeah. You you have 300 miles. You come over here this way. You save yourself 13.3. What are you giving over there for 13.3 that you're seeing being improving? Are you seeing things get better? Right. Yeah. So you you would much rather come 300 miles this way, build it in a state that says you keep the taxes, do whatever you want to do. You've created jobs here, you're happy, you know. So California needs um [snorts] uh this Mayor Caruso is good on what he's going to be doing. Hopefully I hear he doesn't have a lot of support though. I thought when he was running, yeah, it seems like he has a lot of great policies. He could bring a lot to the table, but it doesn't seem like he's he's up the popular vote. Who says that to you, though? Polls. Okay. And who comes out with those polls? I'm not sure. Okay. So, but but the point is like and who shows me those polls? There's only a few polls I trust, right? I trust Gallup, you know, for the most part. Pew. It's a few polls. There's only a few of them. Like, hey, Fox News poll, CNN poll, MSNBC poll. Come on, guys. Let's not get naive here when they pitch it to us like, "Oh, you're definitely not one-sided." Uh CNN poll says 82% of America loves the job Joe Biden is doing, right? you know, Fox News poll says 3% of people support what Joe Biden is doing. Both of them are, you know, kind of. So, you have to kind of take for yourself, but I would say the following. If a if some of the most influential people in LA are starting to like this Caruso guy, you know, and the ones that are not are the ones that fear that maybe there's going to be a movement of guys like him going out there making a change. Of course, that's going to be scary. and they have the bigger mic. The existing politicians have the bigger mic than the ones that want to be the politicians. [clears throat] The existing politicians are united and they don't want other ideas to come into California. But it's it's it's foolish and it's naive for Californians to think California is going to be great forever. You're you're you're naive. You go study Detroit to see how Detroit was the richest city in the world and then all of a sudden, where is Detroit today? When's the last time you said you're going to go, you know, buy a house in Detroit? There's a lot of opportunities, but Detroit is not going to be the next LA or New York anytime soon. So, we don't think LA's ever going to lose it all because it's LA. Well, nobody thought Kmart was going to go out of business. Yeah. Nobody thought Leman's Brothers was going to go out of business. Nobody thought Countrywide was going to go out of business. Nobody thought a $330 billion WAMU was going to be be bought out by Chase for 1.9 billion. Nobody thought Wamu was going to go out of business, just like nobody thinks anything's going to happen to them. But to to have your first year where you have a net loss to population since 1851, that's 170 years. Mhm. For you to have your first year ever since inception for you to lose people. California. What? First time. I mean, you got to realize there is there's a lot to be said about that. Now, my understanding that was 2021. 2021. Yeah. Could that be a lot of people moving after the pandemic? Okay. So, but why are they leaving though? I would say more space uh and maybe taking time off work has opened their mind up to different opportunities. I wouldn't have left had it not been for the shutdown. And that for me because I had a bit business working as a real estate agent. When are you going back? I'm not. So why not? But why are you not going back? I love it here. That's the point, right? So but but here's the thing. Okay. So say a girl leaves you. Okay. And she says, "I'm trying to find myself. I'm soulsearching." Mhm. But I babe, I love you. Okay, if she comes back a year and a half later knocking on your door saying, "You're the love of my life." Guess what? Maybe she was really soulsearching. Okay, but if you leave California during co because our friend here Graham was soulsearching and you go find a new girl called Nevada and you don't come back, you were not soulsearching. You found something better. Sure. So sometimes the scary part is being arrogant, thinking all of these people are going to come back and they don't. Miami. Go to Miami right now. If you come to Miami, uh um property value skyrocketed, rent up. Homes were selling for 15 million now selling for 30 million. Selling for 5 million now selling for 10 million. People moving there from Citadel, you know, Goldman Trading, you know, Singer, all these guys that move from DC, Chicago, New York, that they moved there during COVID because they're going to go back to New York. How come they didn't go back to New York? No. When an arrogant guy says the following to a girl, oh, she'll come back. She can never live without me. Oh, buddy, there's a lot of people in the world that are better than you, California. Let me tell you, you keep staying cocky like that until people realize, you know, the whole thing we talked about sheltering. Yeah. You know how we said it's not good to be sheltered because of public schools and I said in every society, every city, we are in a way sheltered. Okay. So, California sheltered a lot of people. The pitch was a great pitch. Nowhere in the world you're gonna have better weather than this. I mean, look at this. The mountains, the water, the weather, the beach. This is the greatest place on the planet. So then 10 people started saying that. A thousand people started saying that. 100,000 people started saying that. Not people are believing it until they left and they're like, "But the weather is pretty good. Weather is pretty good for vacation. But did you take advantage of the weather every day?" No. Weather is incredible at Monaco. Do I want to live there today? No. Sure. Weather is great on a lot of places in the world. I don't want to live there though. Now, how do you think the return back to an office is going to affect that? Because I've seen a lot of employers asking their employees to come back and there is a difference in working remotely than something in person. In what way? In a way where I think in terms of creativity, um I I think there's there's a there's a hive mindset that happens when you get people together in a room that you just can't recreate online or over Zoom. So you're more for working in office than working from home in Oh yeah. I mean there's and there's no question about it. It's like saying taking a girl out on a dinner uh and you say, "Hey, uh Mary, love to take you out on dinner. I'm going to have Uber Eats deliver and I'm going to send you a nice bottle of wine. You have it over there, but let's do it on Zoom and I'm going to order the same thing here and I'm just going to look at you through the camera. You're so beautiful, babe. Can Can you give me your hand? Let me give you your hand here through Zoom and let me do this. What are we talking about? Right? I mean, it's not again. This this and by the way, here's what's crazy about it. Watch this. The same people that said working remote, it's what we should do. You know what states they were? California, New York, right? DC, Illinois, who were all for working remote. And then what happened when it backfired on all these politicians? People said, "Let me get this straight. You mean to tell me I can make 120 and I can leave Chicago and go to Nashville? I can leave New York, go to Miami, you still going to pay me 120? I can leave California and go to Nevada. You still going to pay me the 120? You know what? I support remote. You're right. Except I'm remotely leaving your state. Mhm. So the concept of working remote backfired on the people that shut down states, cities, and p supported it. You're seeing a lot of entrepreneurs nowadays. Look what Goldman just did. So Goldman originally, Solomon is like, "You guys got to come back. Nobody's coming back. You guys got to come back. Nobody's coming back." Solomon just announced a month ago, guess what? What? Quarterly reviews and annual reviews are back. Why? We can officially document that your performance is bad and we can fire you because before we couldn't fire you because what if you come back and you say XYZ? Nope. We're bringing that back. What's Facebook saying? What's Google saying? What's everybody else saying? Either come back and improve your performance or you're fired. what Zuckerberg just said, if you don't improve your performance, you're fired. What's going on with the market? Amazon 180 this year so far. So, what happened there? This this remote thing is a great idea and it's solid, but it's not effective. One of the best ways to gauge whether companies are still using Zoom or not is through the stock. It's very simple. Four years ago, pre- pandemic, stock of Zoom was $70. You know what it peaked at? You remember what it something like that? Crazy numbers. Crazy. Yeah. It went from 70 bucks to 500. 500 600 $700 some dollar amount like that. You know where it's at today? 100 bucks. Yeah. So what does that mean? If Zoom went from 70 to 56 700 down to 120. What's it saying? What percentage is 70 on 120? Yeah. It grew how much in the last 3 four years? So companies are no longer using Zoom as much as they did a year ago or a year and a half ago and they're going away from it. So do you think though that's going to bring a lot more people back to those states? I worry that people maybe have gotten a little bit too confident that they could take a remote job, work in another state where right now I would not be surprised if companies begin laying off people and they say, "Hey, if you don't show up, you don't have a job." Everyone says, "Well, the job market is good now." But I think a year from now it might not be the case and people might say, "Well, no, no, actually I'll go back." No, you're right. I mean, look, data came out today. Do you know uh uh 26% of all homes in Illinois right now are in foreclosure? Is it uh one in 385? That's the highest in America. 26. Now, somebody may say, "Well, that's not a big number. One in 385 homes in Illinois right now is in foreclosure. It's the highest in America today." We haven't started that yet. Now, obviously, we're going to see what's going to happen because of 300%. Well, last year when they were doing the forgiveness and you know more banks right now are saying don't worry about it. Don't worry about making a payment. Don't worry about making a payment. There's plenty of equity. Plenty of equity. Eventually they're going to say listen man you got to make a payment. Okay. This loan modification concept is only there's a timeline to where you eventually make a payment. That's going to happen. Companies are going to go back realizing I can't create a culture on Zoom. I can only create culture on face to face, you know, and they're going to try to sell it to their management and their management, some of them that fight it will be fired and they'll go and take a nice severance for three or six months and then they're going to have to go find a job that's going to ask them to work face to face live and they're going to say, "I don't have any other choice. You know what? I should have stayed at that last company because the benefits was better." That is going to come that movement will take place. But if you lost those people to another state and they realize another state cost of living is lower, they're probably not coming back to your state. Got it. What are your thoughts about an upcoming recession? I mean, obviously, by definition, if you were to take your series 7, okay, securities license, and a question comes up, they showed this the other day on FINRA. Definition of recession, of course. Yeah. If you're taking a series 7 exam, the right answer is two consecutive quarters. If I answer three, I fail that question. I have to put two consecutive quarters. So, we're officially in recession of where we are today. How bad is this going to get is going to be predicated based on are we going to do more bailouts? If we do more bailouts, that money is going to roll to the top. If we're going to print more money, it's going to roll to the top. If we're going to do this inflation reductionary whatever plan, the money is going to roll to the top. I mean, here's what's crazy about myself. I've made millions of dollars in my life, but 2019 or 2019, I made more money than my entire life. 2020 made more money than my entire life, including 19. 2021 made more money than my entire life, including 2020 uh 2020. 2022 so far made more money than all of those years combined. What happened with these money they print and they throw in the market? It rolls up. Guys like me are like, "Print more if you want to." But it's not a good thing, you know? the the right solution today for us to overcome the challenges we're facing. No one would win White House if they ran the right policies today. The right policies that America really needs would never win the election today. Never. It wouldn't be a popular policy. You need to run some shitty policies to convince people that you're going to give them something for free to win today. That's what's unfortunately attractive today. But if somebody got up and said, "Hey guys, let me tell you, uh, here's what I'm running for. I'm going to make sure our military gets stronger in the area of cyber warfare and bowarfare. We're going to take our spending a little bit more on that side. Uh, we're going to do what we can with taxes. We're going to take some of these resources and try to pay off our debt. And uh, the next four years, our goal is to get some of our reduce some of our debt. And we all got to get to work. So, you're not going to see me too much. We all have something we got to do. You got to pull your own little red wagon. I got to do the same and let's let's bring America back to what it was before. Wait, what do you mean? I don't have any policies. We need to take some policies off the table. We need to get to work. That wouldn't You would never win with that. Mhm. You know what? You would never win with that. So, you know, in regards to recession, you know, I think it's a great time. You know, you got to pay attention to what's happening with inventory. uh an SF90 Ferrari a year ago you would have three of them in a market to buy. Today there's 3540 of them. Certain rookie card uh Michael Jordan was selling for $700,000 a year and a half ago. Vegas Dave and I both of us said this is not going to go any higher. Oh, it's going to hit a million bucks. It's back down to 150 to $200,000. Mhm. Card going from $700,000 to 150. That's that's a 75% drop off. Yeah. you know, certain, you know, from October of 2021, I'm sure you've seen this one to today, October 2021 to today, eight months, discount stores in America, their sales volume is up 71%. Sales is up 71%. Why are people going to discount stores? And and they did a research to see that top earners are showing up there before than they did before. They consider top earner somebody that makes $80,000 or more. M they didn't have this many people making 80k or more going to the discount stores. They are today. Why are they going? What are they afraid of? What are they preparing for? So, you know, have we hit the part where people have fully lost their optimism where everything's going to be okay? We're not there yet. Have we hit the fully paranoia? No. People are a little suspicious, but no one's yet paranoid and no one's yet scared. So, there is no scared opportunities today. People are still greedy. Sure. So, how are you pivoting your business right now? How am [clears throat] I pivoting through business right now? Yeah. Are you taking into any of this into account in terms of your own strategy? Absolutely. I'm I'm I'm buying a couple uh media brands today, well-known media brands today that I'm in negotiation talks right now that are being hit by the market, but they're a value company. Two years ago, they were a great company, but they can't afford it today. So, I want to go buy them up. Couple of them I want to buy. So again, I know if I buy them what I'm expert in doing as an operator, I'm going to increase the value of that business, whatever that business is that we're talking to. Investment wise, right now, there's many things that there's still great opportunities in. Um, you know, the other day we met with a 140,000t building in Fort Lauderdale where the company's about to go public and they need to sell that building. It's a beautiful building. They just did a bunch of upgrades two years ago. spent $22 million of upgrades. They bought the building 15 years ago for $58 million, but nowadays they're people are working remotely and they're like, "Hey, this building, we got to get rid of it to take it off the balance sheet because the new buyer private equity firm doesn't want to see that uh uh this debt is there." Well, I can buy that on pennies on a dollar sit on it realizing people are going to go away from this remote concept and they're going to need space again two years from now. buy that for 25 million, sell it for $75 million or $100 million. There's a lot of opportunities today uh for investment. So, but interest-wise, you know, I'm a collectible card guy. I like non-duplicatable assets uh non-duplicatable assets that they're oneoff or limited amount. Can you give us an example? For example, like right now there is a Mickey Mantle SGC 9 and a half being auctioned off in heritage auctions. Just last week, a Honest Wagner baseball card T06 SGC2 sold for $7.2 million. This is not a high quality graded card. It's only a 2 out of 10. That same exact card last year sold for 3.6 million. So, it went from 3.6 to 7.2 million. Well, this Mickey Manel card that is on Heritage Auctions right now, if you wanted to buy it, it's at 7.3 million. It broke the record. There's 19 more days left in this auction. don't know when this video is going to go live. When it goes live, it could already be done or it still could be going. That card is probably going to sell between 10 to $25 million. Okay. So, why is that a valuable asset? Because there's only four graded at that number. It's an SGC9 and a half and three PSA 10s. You can't reprint many of those. That's an asset that's non-duplicatable. So, areas that people like, for example, say the best private school in Nevada. What's the best private school here? I've I don't know. No, I have no. So, let's just say, do you know what the private school best private school? Isn't there one uh in the with the football team, the good football team? It's just down the street. Okay, let's just say there's a great private school here, okay? And say it's 35 grand a year. And it's where top earners want to live. Okay? If I buy a house around that area, people are moving from California here, Arizona to here. If I get a house around that area that's close to that private school, there's only 500 homes around that area. That's cream of the crop. Everybody that moves here is probably going to want to put their kids in the best private school. That's a non-duplicatable asset. You're not going to be that close to that best private school. There's going to be always a market for it, right? So, it's it's more strategically, but there's going to be a lot of stuff that's going to be discounted. And at the same time, you have to be ready that if they do go into quantitative easing more, you have to know that everything's going to go up again pricing wise, inflation, everything's going to go up again. Quantitative tightening is the one that's a little bit concerning. I don't know how long they're going to last with quant quantitative tightening. You know, where the idea is quantitative easing is you got a $10,000 credit card, we're increasing your rate to $15,000. Quantitative tightening is you got a $15,000 credit card. They're going to say we're lowering it to $10,000. Every month they want to take 95 billion off the table. You've seen the numbers. 95ish they want to take off until it hits a trillion and maybe they continue. There's only one other time they did this for a couple months when they did a market just went like this. Nobody has a clue what's going to happen. There's not like a case study. Yeah. You know, hey, there's a new steroid out. You do this, you're going to win Mr. Olympia. But no one's ever tested it before. Can you show me case studies on 50 other people that use it? We've used it on horses and cows. What happened to those horses and cows? Well, 17 of them died, but they're horses and cows. They're not human beings. You're going to be able to make it. You're going to be fine. We have no idea what quantitative titan is going to do. So, there's a very unpredictable era we're in today. Mhm. So, just as much as you're being aggressive about it, you have to be um you have to have a touch of paranoia today as well. What non-duplicable assets are you holding on to right now? Real estate that you can't have, you know, like waterfront properties are non-duplicatable. You can't build waterfront properties. It's just a waterfront property. Okay. real estate in a freeway or a you know section community that everybody wants to be there because traffic location based real estate location based real estate is to me is non-duplicatable. Collectible cards is non-duplicatable. I'm not an NFT guy. Some people are NFTs. It's not what I specialize in. Uh it's anything that I can't have that there's oneoffs or two offs or five offs or limited amount of supply for it. What's your most valuable alternative investment? Like a sports card or something like that. What would be a sports card today? No. For you? For me? What would Yeah. What's the most valuable Yeah. sports card or collect it I have right now? I sold uh two of them. Uh it was a record I sold. And I'll tell you what happened when I sold this card. This is exactly a mistake I made. So I bought these two hockey cards for 540. 18 months later I sold those two hockey cards. It was a record-breaking card ever in the history of hockey. I sold the two for $2.2 million in 18 months. Okay. Made nice money. One of the cars a guy bought 6 months later he sold for $3.5 million. One of them. Wow. [laughter] Jeez. You should put it up. You should actually show this. Show mine when I sold it for $1.29 million. 6 months later show sold for $3.5 million of Wayne Gretzky card. So I missed out on how much money? $2.3 million. So oh my look how much I missed out, right? Because that was a non-duplicatable asset. One of the guys that tried to buy my card was Wayne Gretzky. He wanted to buy his own card because there's only two graded at that level. I got a call from Bruce McN. I don't know if you know who Bruce McN is. The former owner of the LA Kings and the former owner of the best Honest Wagner card in the world that he bought with Wayne Gretzky at a New York auction in 1994, I believe, for 451. That's a $15 million car. Today I own uh a high-end uh Mickey Manel card. Uh I own some high-end basketball cards. I got some stuff. I got probably six to an $8 million card collection today. That's awesome. Yeah. Where else are you investing? Are you invested in stocks? Index funds. I am in stock. Did you say cars? Yeah. Not at all. That's not my space. Other guys are doing that. I'm not in cars. Uh uh if I buy a nice car, I'm driving it. The only the other day guy asked me if I like cars like I'm interested in the in the Rolls-Royce that the Shave Iran had. I'll buy that and I'll put it in the museum and never drive it because I'm going to look at it cuz I remember I was 7 years old when I went to the museum and I saw that Rolls-Royce and I said one day I'm going to buy a Rolls-Royce. If I ever buy that Rolls-Royce from his museum, I'm going to buy that and I'm going to put in my house because there's a story behind it. I drive an F-150 Shelby 770 horsepower every day and I I got a million auto Ferrari in my garage. I never drive it. and I'm in the market to sell it right now. So, I don't drive it. I've driven it five or 10 times. Which Ferrari is that? SF90. Okay. That guy. Yeah, it's a nice one. And it's not comfortable for me. I'm not comfortable in it. But uh you were asking a question about uh um you said what do you invest stocks? Yes, I am in stocks. He said cars. I'm not in cars. Majority of the money right now that I have is going to go in businesses that I'm going to operate or have influence over. That's what it's going to go to. Okay. That's what the investments are going into. Got it. Can you share some numbers in terms of like net worth or how much you you make in a year? It's not a public number, but I sold one of my insurance companies uh shy of, you know, it's a multi multi multi- nine figure check that was sold to and I owned 83% of it and a lot of it was cash. Uh so I have that and I have a big chunk of stock in a company that's uh doing very very well and where it's at. So you know that's that part. So you know if you're asking if you're asking net worth [sighs] you want to count paper or you want to count cash. Let's do both. If you want to do cash is probably sitting on shy of 200 million of cash right now. Right now. Where do you keep it all? It's in my house. I put in my bedroom and [laughter] I stack it and it's every day I come home and I count it. No. Yeah. But but uh where do I keep it? I keep it at my uh advisers who manage my money for I'm always curious how they handle that amount of money cuz it's beyond any FDIC amount. It's got to be treasuries. No, no, no, no. You put it with some of the main guys on what they're doing. So you're talking the main guys are who? Talk about the big ones. Whoever they are, that's where your money is going to be at. You got Morgan Goldman, you know, you got a few other ones that you're going to put your money in. Do you plan to leave an inheritance? So, I have a relative of ours in Iran who they they they were doctors and they made a lot of money and what they did is they didn't wait till they die to give the money to their kids because they didn't want their kids to wait for them to die. So, they gave a chunk of the money. They had a meeting with their kids and they said, "Look, here's how much we're worth. Here's how much we're giving you now so you can enjoy it and not wait for us to die. And the other money that we're keeping, we're keeping it for ourselves. And that money is going to be given to our grandkids, but they're not going to be able to touch it until they're 30. But this is yours. This is yours. This is ours. And this is for our future grandkids. Whatever is left that they can't touch till 30. The kids are like, "Oh, cool. That's great." Cuz you know, sometimes kids are like, "Well, my dad's got $6 million and he's 82." They're counting the days. Like, dude, it's your dad. you know, you'd be amazed how weird sometimes people are, right? So, um, the way the way my structure is going to be when it comes down with the kids is, you know, you're not going to know who's the most responsible till later on. It's not going to be a model of everybody's going to get money the same way. That's not that's not the model. It's going to be whoever knows how to do the most with the resources will be, you know, given more resources to handle. And then later on at the end of the day when I'm no longer here and I'm dying plan is to get a lot of the money go to them and portion is going to go to charity and then you know whatever other things that I am going to be universities my aspirations are going to be different for the last 20 year run. This 20-year run is going to be business business media. This is the 20- year run. The last 20 year run is going to be politics sports education. So, could a lot of it go to a university that maybe we start later on in a format that I want to create? Maybe. But that's what the format will be and preferably uh I would like the kids to either be doing business together or to be doing business with us, but it'll be their choice. And um there will be markers. Everything in our family is based on markers. My kids take jiu-jitsu. Every stripe they get, they get 10 bucks. Every time they change the belt, they get a 100 bucks. every straight A they get, they get a 100 bucks. Every, you know, assignments they finish. Everything has a scoring system for them and they follow it on what to do. So, their mindset is to earn. And the same thing's going to happen when later on they go to school and what they want to do with it. Do you want to buy a house? Do you want to start a business? If you do start a business, I would preferably have you not work with me for the first few years. I don't want you to work with me. I'm going to have a lot of contacts and I want you to go work with one of my guys. You know, you want to be a YouTuber, go work for Graham Stefen. and see how it is for two years. Do you really want to do that or not? Hey, I want to go be a lawyer. Go work for XYZ and see how that is and then come back because it's better for you to get a flavor of other people, other businesses that you work with and then to come and say, "Dad, I'd like to be in business with you." Great. Or say, "Dad, I don't want to be in business with you. I'm killing it." Awesome. Either way, I'm winning. But the idea is to figure out a way for you to contribute to society. Is there anything that you're afraid of? The unknown. I am afraid of uh letting down the 63 year old PBD. Uh you know like the other day I was I saw a video of my year and a half ago a friend of mine sent an old video of me when I was 21 22 years old and I'm saying a year from now I'm going to make seven six figures and I'm going to do this and and I'm looking at that video I'm like man I'm so proud of that guy because while he's saying that he's still partying hardcore five six nights a week but he's working his ass off. He's at Vegas every other week. Uh you'd come to Vegas, they had a pimps and hoes uh uh party they would put you that's what it was called that the it was one of the biggest parties of the year. 15,000 people would show up and everybody would go. It was like a Halloween dress up. You you can put pictures of it. The ones that are appropriate you can show. But that's that was me. Every other week I was partying my tail off. And then one day I said, "Okay, no, we're not doing this no more." So I'm proud of the decisions that guy made, the 22-year-old Pat made. I'm very proud of him for what he did. I'm not where I'm at today because of what I did the last 12 months. I'm what I did today because of what that 23 year old did, 22 year old did, 25-year-old did. So, I fear not reaching my capacity and I fear not fulfilling the vision that I have in place. All right. So, I had to step in here because I had a question I wanted to ask. Uh, how much of your success do you attribute to luck if any? Yeah. So that's that's you guys have heard hundred different people tell all the stories. Here's all I'll tell you. I think I truly am the luckiest man alive. Uh I've always thought I was the luckiest guy. You ask my wife, she'll tell you how many times I've been pulled over. My license has been suspended two or three times because I like speed, but at the same time, like a cop will pull me over. One time my wife and I are in a car. I'm going 120 mph in a 45 zone. Don't recommend it, by the way, but I'm going and it's in Victorville, which is not far from here. a couple hours from deserted, you know. Yeah, it's pretty it's a great area to go 12. But so this [clears throat] guy catches me and he pulls me over. I mean, that's like 120 and 45. It's not just a ticket. Yeah. Yeah. They're throwing you in jail. So he pulls me over. He comes up. He says, "What are you doing?" I said, "Dude, I was beating you. What are you talking about? Are you upset?" He says, "What?" I said, "Are you upset you couldn't catch up? Is that why you're upset?" What's the matter with that? I'm just joking with you. I was going 120. It was a little too fast. Not going to lie to you. But I bought a new car. I wanted to show my wife a little bit of the speed. I went a little too fast. He says, "Is he always like this?" "Sorry, officer. This is how he is all the time. I'm so sorry." She's like, "Can I trust that if I let you go, you're not going to drive fast again on your way to Vegas?" I said, "I don't know if you should trust it, but I'm going to do my best." The cop is confused, and he says, "Listen, man. Slow down, but you can go." And he let me go. Ah, he should have given me a ticket. Okay, I should have gotten a ticket that day as fast as I was going. But what is that? Is that a form of recklessness? No. Is that a I feel like it was smooth talking. Maybe it's smooth talking. But a part of it is also, you know, I feel I'm a very lucky man. I feel I get lucky all the time. But I also feel if you want to spend a week with me and see how I work, then you will say this guy's not lucky. So if you come around and you you run for a month and you're going to say, "Yeah, I'm good." You know, it'll be a certain time like, "Yeah, guys, I got to go hit the sack. Okay, you guys go. I got two Zooms to do. You guys do your thing." That's why what happens when this happens. Like for me, there is work after the kids and the wife goes to sleep at 10:30. I I got two and a half hours to work right there. Everyone's asleep. Most people are, you know, doing hitting the sack themselves. I got a lot of time right there. So now I don't recommend this for everybody but I think the concept of luck is that when I bought the Wayne Gretzky am I such a great investor? No. I got a call from a guy saying there's these two great Wayne Gretzky cards in the market. Guy needs cash tomorrow. Do you have it? Yes. You want to send the money? I send the guy Tren. Tren was ready. You just met Tren a minute ago. He went to LA, met him up at PSA. We bought it at PSA. PSA's president showed up. They said these two are legit. Give him the money. We gave him We wired him the money. Took the card. sold it a year and a half later. Is that because I'm brilliant? I get credit for the risk. Who the hell buys a hockey card three years ago for four years ago for whatever the amount was? Nobody's spending that kind of money. Okay, I get credit for the risk, but I got also lucky to get that call. If I don't get that call, I didn't find that. I got the call. It's a big difference. I think a lot of that's mindset though is being optimistic to look for those opportunities in ways that other people might disregard. And I think a lot of those, let's say you lose money in something, I think people could say, "Oh man, I'm unlucky because that happened and if I had done this instead, it wouldn't have happened." But I think a lot of lucky people view that as maybe an opportunity where what did I learn from this? Okay, it was it was a lesson and now that this is good that it happened because now I'm not going to take this to the next thing. I think a lot of it is just being optimistic. I don't disagree. Uh I don't disagree that a lot of it is optimistic, but optimistic is one of them. You gota uh somehow someway it's the art of being in 50 different places at the same time. That's that's like if the market says, "Wait, what? Then weren't you just there? Didn't you just do that? What are you doing over there? What? This is like what the hell is going on? There's so many things that's going on like it's the guy's at five different places at the same time. If people are saying that in the market about you, you're creating a lot of opportunities that good things can happen to you." Now, let me tell you that at the same time. Last week, three deals I wanted to go through fell through. Didn't happen. Three deals. I wanted all these three deals, didn't fall through. The week prior, two deals didn't fall through. I got a pipeline of, you know, 21 in my phone. 21 major projects right now that's pending that I want to be able to do. Are all of them going to close? No. Are 50% of them going to close? Probably not this year. Are 25% going to close this year? Probably. So, you're playing the odds game and you're hoping some of them fall in your favor, but it's not always going to happen. Yeah. You know, would you ever consider running for public office? And if you could, would you run for president? I would, and I would make a great president in my opinion, but I'm not born here, so I cannot. They would need to change the law. But if you could, you would do it. I would do it. You think that law needs to be changed? Uh, do I think that law needs to be changed? I mean, so what you're trying to say is a person that's born here 40 years old, 35 is the age, but let's just say he's 40 years old, he's more qualified than a person that was born somewhere else and lived here for 45 years. I don't I don't see the logic behind it. I think it's a it's an older tradition type of thing, which I respect tradition, no problem. But if it's about making progress and improving, I think eventually, maybe not in my lifetime, but eventually, they're going to have to change that law because what are you going to do if the better talent is not born in America? I do think they have to do what you've been here for 35 years. I do think there needs and I'm not qualified. I do think the number has to be somebody that's been here for 35 years because it can't be like, "Hey, China, send a guy over there to go there for 9 years and go run for office." No. So, I do think and maybe even natural is 35, but if you came here from another country, maybe you have to have lived here for 40 years, maybe a bigger number, but I think eventually they'll do it. I just don't think it's going to be in my life. I agree with that. I think there's so many great people who maybe moved here as a child, but they they've grown up here. They've been here forever. It never made sense to me. Couldn't you not technically? No, I was born here. Oh, I thought it was Canada. No, no, born actually born in Florida. Really? What part? Orlando. Wow. Yeah. Cool. Very few people know that. And by the way, your uh getting pulled over story. I don't think I've ever told this story before, but I'm going to say it because it was it was on my mind. 19. I had just gotten a Lotus Elise and I had finished a car meet in Santa Monica and I was in a really good mood. I just had a great time and it was maybe 11:30 midnight and Santa Monica Boulevard going all the way up was empty and just a good song came on the radio and I was just in the zone and I just decided to floor it and there was no one on the road and I was probably going I don't know probably double the speed limit uh if not slightly more and there was a car up ahead and I thought okay I'm just going to zoom around this car and I did and as soon as I got back in front of the car there was a police officer coming the other way And I was going really fast. So I was thinking, did he see me? If he did see me, like I'm I'm already going so fast, he's not gonna be able to catch up to me. So I look in the rear view mirror and I see his lights turn on and he's flipping around. He got you. And I thought for a second I could outrun the cop. [laughter] And so I immediately downshifted. I made a right-hand turn, went down a side street, made a left, made a right. I was trying to like zigzag through these side streets because I'm thinking, I'm going so fast. I had never gotten a speeding ticket before. And if he catches me going this fast, like what is he going to do? And so maybe a minute goes by and I think I lost him. So I start slowing down and then I see lights behind me and the cop actually catches up to me. And then I'm at a point where I'm like I can't run from I'm not going to run from the cops. He caught me. You're not going to run from the cops. I'm not going to run from the cops. But up until that point I thought maybe he just couldn't find me or something. Great story. So what happens? So, I see the lights behind me and he pulls me over on like a random residential street and I've never had this happen, but he yells from his from his megaphone, "Get out of the car, step back." Uh, he had me sit down on the on the side. He comes up and he says, "What were you doing?" Uh, were you trying to were you trying to run away from us? And I was honest. I was so scared cuz I was 19. And I was completely honest and I just Yes. I was going way too fast. Uh, I thought I could get away from you. I I panicked uh and I thought you were really far back. I've never gotten pulled over. I have a clean record. I just freaked out. I didn't know what to do. And I thought maybe I could get away. And he says, "Okay." He goes back to his car. He gets my license and all that. He's probably gone for like 10 minutes in his car. And he comes back and he says, "Okay, we're impounding the car and we're taking you in tonight uh because you're being arrested." And I forget what he said. He said for reckless endangerment, exhibition of speed, and like he put in like an illegal lane change or something like that. And I think at that point I like started crying or there's like where I froze up and I was like I couldn't believe it. And then I will never forget he said that's what would happen if I wanted to be an tonight but I'm not going to. Will you never speed again? And I said nope. And he let me go with a warning. And I never sped again. What a story. Yeah. I was always so paranoid cuz I kept coming back to that moment and just thinking how lucky I got in that moment. I never did it again. And Jack knows I I never speed really ever speed limit guy. He accelerates fast but I don't think but I never reach the speed. I don't think he like pushes the speed limit but he accelerates. Good for you for So your parents you you what values did they teach you mom and dad? Oh gosh I don't I don't know. Um my mom was really caring so she was very supportive emotionally and my dad was a I I think a really hard worker. So he always valued like uh you know going into the office, showing up, making making a good impression, working hard. My mom was very She balanced that out. I feel great combination. Yeah, that's cool. They're still married. No. No. So they divorced when I was five. Got it. My mine divorced twice in 20 years. So they divorced by the way got back. They got married. My sister's born. They got divorced. Remarried. I'm born. 14 years later they got divorced. Did that have any impact on you them getting a divorce? Yeah, at first it did. Yeah, because you know, you want mom and dad to be living together and you want to see them together. My dad was my best friend and and to be in a household when I don't see my dad for a year and a half when I'm in Germany. No question about it, you know. But then in Germany, you know, I I don't know what it is to be 10 to 12 years old because I replaced his role. So I was forced to be a leader earlier. You had to have the lens on of a man watching out for your sister and your mom. So, it could have been a different kind of an upbringing with my dad. But here's the thing, values and principles. My dad taught the right values and principles. Um, eventually I realized the best thing they did to get a divorce, right decision they made, you know, to uh uh go about their business the way they did. But yeah, at first it did. And then later on I'm like, you know, we got to figure out a way to win. We did. Yeah. At first it did though. Yeah. I think for myself too, I don't think it did quite affect me. Everyone asked that and they were like, "Oh, did that must have really messed you up." But I think when I was five, I had no real conception of just what a relationship looked like or what what that was about. And I just remember liking it because I got two Christmases, two birthdays, and I saw both of my parents equally. So like half the week was mom, half the week was dad, and they switched weekends. And they were good together. Were they Were they still as far as co-parenting? Yes. So they respected each other and one didn't talk smack about the other one. No. Okay. Well, mine was not like that. They were both good smack talkers, but uh my dad would say, "No matter what your mom says, you got to listen to her." And my mom would say, "You got to listen to your dad." But it was a very competitive environment. Got it. Because it's Armenian and Assyrian and uh it was great. But again, if I I'm if I didn't go through that, I'm not who I am today. True. It's a very weird dynamic how life works. Yeah. You know, do you have any questions for us? What's next for you? That's what I'm asking you. Yeah. What's next? I still don't know. Okay. I I feel like everything I've done so far in my life, it's it's a gut feeling. Like I just had this gut feeling to get my real estate license and pursue that. I had a gut feeling to do YouTube and I followed those passions and I don't know what the next passion is. And part of me is afraid of finding it because things are going so well right now. And I feel like I'd just be an idiot to take the gas off the pedal right now for what I'm doing. And so it's I think that's I'm in that zone too much now to think of something else where but I but in my heart I know there's got to be something else. So what we do know is we do know you get married in 18 months. Yeah. Okay. We do know you're great at creating content. You know how to make money. We do know you don't drive fast. You you follow the speed of a race car driver. Alex, I think we're making progress. What do you think? I think we're making progress. This is a sport, right? It's a sport. You're an athlete. I'm an athlete. There's a bunch of athletes in the sport that are going through what they're going through. And sometimes when you win a championship early on, you kind of don't have the fight of a championship and you got to go back and see why you got to come back and do it again or take the approach in a different way. And sometimes when you don't win a championship for a long time, you know, you're sitting there saying, "Do I really have the goodies to win a championship? maybe I'm not good enough. So, but to each player, it's a different structure, but at the end of the day, you're a very worthy athlete in the content creation world, and you've inspired a lot of people that are kids growing up saying, "I want to be like Graham when I grow up." You got to be proud of that. That's a big deal. Thanks. Because they're going to watch you more than they're going to watch. I'm 43. I'm old to them. You're 32, right? You know, you're still closer to them. So, they're looking at what you're doing. Mhm. And it's impressive. It's very impressive. I'll keep you posted. I'll let you know what happens. But, uh, it I just have a feeling it'll whatever's meant to be, it'll be meant to be. It's a great thing about life. Sometimes you got to let it happen, right? Thank you so much. Yo, thank you. I really enjoyed this. This was great. Um, so Friday, we're going to have a good time on the backstage. You know, you kind of get an idea what's going on. I'm looking forward to that. We'll go from there. Just tell me a time and I'm here. Yeah, we we'll give you all the details. Okay. We we got to get him to pass as well so we can get him set up. We'll take that. We'll take care of that. Cool. This was great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Enjoy it. Really appreciate it. Alex, you're the man. [clears throat]