Meet the Millionaire Who Lives In His Car | Confronting Nate O'Brien

Welcome back to the Ice Coffee Hour. My name's Nate, and so far on this podcast, I believe you guys have made $94,346.98. Yeah, that's pretty good. Wow. I'm not good at remembering these numbers. What a good intro. That was great. best one yet. Hey, I I think we should address the elephant in the room here. There's already an elephant? Uh yeah, uh you have a tall mic stand, and we both have small ones. I don't know what to say, guys. I mean, uh yeah, I wasn't the one who set up the the the room, Jack. This was nuts. So, we wanted to order three of them from Amazon, and you could get two of them delivered the next day, just fine. But, you throw in a third one, and then all of a sudden it was delivered on Monday. So, sorry. No, actually Okay, no, the actual elephant in the room Okay, we should talk about the actual elephants in the room. It's this uh the studio. We got a new studio. Check out the behind-the-scenes on the Clips channel. But, uh yeah, thanks for coming, Nate. This is huge. We've been trying to do this for a very, very long time. Yeah, I I feel like I'm in Vegas for some reason like every couple of months for one reason or another. So, the last couple times, it didn't work out cuz we were just had different schedules, but this time it worked out, so happy to be here. Yeah, it's exciting to have you on because you're the millionaire who sold everything and now lives in a lives in a van. I don't Yeah, I I guess so, yeah. It's a truck, but yeah, it's a That's a dream. It's a dream that So many people, I think, just uh have that fantasy of just like, you know, I'm just going to sell everything and just be on the road. Yeah, it's like a short like probably a short-term thing like I need to get it out of my system and just do it in my life now cuz I'm 23, and I feel like it's going to be a lot tougher to do that if I have a bunch of kids and I'm 35, and it's like, you know, I got to take them to school and stuff. Can't can't move into a van then, right? So, uh it just felt like the right time to do it for me. So. How long have you thought about doing that, though? I started it in May. Um I I really don't know. Probably for like a year. And then after that, I'm just going to keep it and then use it like for random vacations, you know, like when I want to go somewhere just get in the truck and just drive and and go camping in it. But, you're planning on stopping? Like stopping the full-time living in it? Yes. In one calendar year? Uh yeah, probably like in the next 12 to 18 months cuz like you couldn't do it forever, you know, like living in in a in a tight space like that. Like it is nice having a kitchen and and, you know, like all those other amenities. So, um but it's it's definitely a fun life experience. But, this isn't something that you just decided you woke up one morning and you're like, I'm going to do this. How long was the planning process? Like what was involved? When did you first start to get this idea that you wanted to just get rid of your apartment? You know, okay, it it was uh maybe 6th grade, 7th grade. Had a really good friend, and we would just talk about, yeah, I'm going to go live in a van one day, and then he did that like 2 years ago. And so, I watched him convert his van. He did like a full conversion. He's living out in in in Colorado. Uh now he's in Utah right now. Um he's been doing it for a couple years, and I was like, hell, he did it, I should do it, too. Um there wasn't a lot holding me back on it. So, I was just like it's you know, it's a good time to do it. How did you find the van? Uh it's it's actually a truck. So, it's it's a It's a Ford F-250. I mean, yeah, it's I don't know. I mean, like it's like van life, but it's it's it's a it's a Ford F-250. So, um yeah, I bought it for like 19 grand right before I think this was right before like the used car market really came to like a real uh So, it was actually a decent deal, I think, on it. Um and then I just put a like a truck cap on it. Pretty tight space. I should have driven it over here so you guys could see it. Yeah, I would have loved to have seen that. Seriously. Yeah. Graham Stephan reacts to my truck. It's it's uh pretty tight quarters, not going to lie. I don't think you could fit, you know, uh much in there. It's uh I I have to be very selective about what I bring into the Like I'm like, all right, I can't buy this item because it's it's just there's no room. Like I need to count every square inch. Did you have to get rid of all of your possessions, or did you get like a temporary storage locker or something? No, so um my brother just bought a house. So, I kind of, you know, I was like, hey, Mike, can I do you know, like there's there's obvious things that you're not going to get rid of. Um you know, like certain sentimental things. Um and I kind of gave him my furniture because when I broke my lease for my apartment, it was a perfect timing where he just moved into his house. So, I was like, hey, do you want my couch? Do you want my like other like carpets and everything? So, it it worked out perfectly. Um so, that's kind of where I put some of my stuff. Yeah. What do you take with you? Uh on the road? Yeah. Uh just the basics. I mean, you know, I have my laptop. I was going to bring my iMac, and I was going to put that in the truck, and it's like a huge iMac. Um but, two problems with that. I I didn't want it to get stolen, but also it was it just didn't fit. Like it it did not fit in the back of the truck cuz I can sit back there. I can like edit videos. Um on top of that, you know, just some some clothes. Uh you know, I have to do laundry like once a week cuz I don't have a ton of clothes. Um I have a cooler. I didn't put a fridge in there yet. I want to build a fridge in like a whole version two of the the truck maybe in like a few more months. Um yeah. Now, why why a truck? Why not just go like uh kind of glamping? Get like an RV. Get one of these like professional the big things where you look at that and you're like, wow. Like the the they do all the vacation movies and the big, you know, the camper, you know, the I mean, okay. First of all, like I I feel like I don't really need that. It's more fun to be more stealth when you're doing it. So, um I can just pull up and and park anywhere and just sleep in it cuz nobody expects somebody to be sleeping in the back of a truck. Like it looks very normal. Um and also, I want to just be able to use the truck, you know, after I'm done with this whole time in my life. I'll probably just take the cap off the truck, use it as a regular truck for work and for hauling stuff around. So, uh that was kind of the reasoning behind that. Do you think that you're saving money by living in the truck, or do you think that you're like going out to eat all the time? Cuz I can imagine it'd probably be difficult like making breakfast, lunch, and dinner in a truck. It depends because there's times when I'm in the truck and I'm out on government land, and it's like, you know, there's nothing around. And I'll I'll be out there for a week or two at a time, and there's like absolutely nothing. I you couldn't possibly spend money. So, those are the times when I save money, but then also, of course, yeah, like if I'm for example, I'm in Vegas right now, and I I I got a hotel cuz I'm not going to sleep in it in Vegas. And I was coming from LA, got a hotel there, too. So, overall, I would say the lifestyle probably is actually more expensive. Um it guzzles gas, gets like not good gas mileage. It's more expensive to live in a car than it is in a in a apartment. Uh I would actually say yes. If if you're moving around a lot, um I I would probably say it's pretty close. I mean, it doesn't have to be, but it it usually ends up being that. If you're like, oh, I'm going to go to Colorado this week, and that's going to cost you $200 in gas or something. You're not necessarily living in the truck to save money. Yeah. You're just doing it You're right. If someone could do that if they wanted to, but Yeah. Yeah. I feel like the question we're all, you know, dying to ask here, you two, Graham. Me? Is Yeah, yeah, yeah, Alex, too. Say you meet a girl you fancy. Okay. How do What do you What do you do? And you know, cuz I I'm in a struggle right now. I can't really, you know, a girl that I I I may like, I can't bring her here because it's someone else's house, you know? I Well, I told Jack he can't bring bring randoms home. You know, that That's the thing. Like that's the type of guy I am. So, you're saying But, BUT EVEN IF I BUT, I'M not saying even if you meet her like on a first date, come back to the house. Like you don't know somebody really until like a few dates in. I told you I just go on a few dates, and then after a few dates, you kind of feel the situation out. Then you could bring her back here. You're bringing her on the first date? Are you bringing her back on the first date? No, I'm not. He's just saying that I would. I'm not saying you would. That's the first thing you told me. I just said the condition was, you know, go on a date or two, feel them out. Just don't meet someone and bring them back here. out, man. That's Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you got it. Yeah, you might be thinking I'm like you, Graham. I'm not. But, uh yeah, so what do you do when you, you know, Um I built the truck for one person, not going to lie. There's there's there's no room for anybody else in the truck. Has there been? No. No, it's cool, man. No, no, there's there's actually I I really should I'm I I really regret not bringing it over because you guys would see like the bed is like this wide, and there's there's there's no room for But, what if you There's barely room for you. Yeah, but what if you met the perfect person? You You guys hit it off. Uh I don't know. I I would I would uh cross that bridge when I get to it. So, Yeah. Tell us about your first night, though. Your first night living in the in the truck. Yeah, the first night I was in uh I slept in a Walmart parking lot in Tennessee. So, you got out of your posh apartment. Yeah, I It was a Walmart parking lot in Tennessee, and I it was a probably a bad spot to to sleep over cuz it was like it was definitely sketchy. And then somebody who lived in Tennessee who like was in the area DM'd me, and they're like, oh, like welcome to my town or something cuz I posted something on my Instagram story. I said, yeah, I slept at the Walmart last night, and they're like, oh my god, like that's the worst part of town. Like you don't want to be So, yeah, that was that was the first night. Um but, you know, usually it's pretty safe. I guess. I mean, I'm still here, so. Did you ever reevaluate like, what what am I doing doing this this this Maybe I got in over my head. No. No, I I don't think so. First, I want to thank our sponsor, Ladder. I want to talk for a minute about the things that have fundamentally changed the way that we live. These are disruptors. These are things like smartphones, streaming services, and wider than white paint that actually cools down buildings, and even things like commission-free trading. Another one I heard of recently is a company called Ladder, who basically took the life insurance industry, flipped it upside down, and shook out all of the inefficiencies. 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Go to ladderlife.com/icedcoffee. That's ladder, l a d d e r, life.com/icedcoffee. ladderlife.com/icedcoffee. Thank you so much, Ladder, for sponsoring this episode and back to the show. So, let's talk about your financials. How do you make money? Uh during this entire process? Yeah, so I mean, I still do have YouTube videos. I mean, I make maybe one a month now, right? Um but the videos, like I have videos from three or four years ago that are still getting views. So, it's it's kind of weird. Um I mean, that my personal brand YouTube channel is still, you know, like covers all the bills that I might need. What is it making these days? Um the ad revenue on it, it definitely went down a lot because I I don't post anymore. Um so, I think it's like 17 or 18 grand. That's wow. That's I mean, that's good. incredible. Really? I thought you guys were going to say No, that's really good. Gosh, to post once a month. Yeah. Like that's that's a lot of money. Yeah, I mean, I can show you if you want. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's um I mean, it's just like old videos that that Last time I remember, we had you on about a year ago, maybe. And I think you were doing like 40, 50 a month on your channel back then. And you're posting like every other week, I think, or every like third week. And you're also making like totally different content. Like not money content. Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't make as much um cuz I just kind of wanted to go for the lifestyle content that I wanted to make. And I kind of just do the the channel for fun now. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you're making content like the the top books that I want to Yeah, it's just what I want to do, like I live in my truck or whatever. Like all that content. I feel like I would get bored with it if I was making the same content that I was making two or three years ago. This is awesome. I mean, you're you're living by the saying like it's it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. Yeah, yeah. I mean, hey, the way I look at it is like as long as I'm in the green every month and as long as revenue's growing every month, then I'm I'm cool. Is it still growing every month? Uh not my personal brand, necessarily, but um in total, you know, just from any other stuff that's going on. Any other stuff? Well, yeah, tell us about this other stuff that's going on. Um yeah, there's just always projects, you know, like um I have some other channels I've been working on. Really? Yeah, outsourcing and uh Wait a second. What other channels? I thought you only had one channel. Well, there's the Nate O'Brien Show, right? Oh, yeah. Or the the other one. I do have that one, yeah. Yeah. And then, don't you have one with your brother? I do Yeah, I own two, yeah. And then, um I have a Yeah. That's all of them? No, tell us Tell us about the other channel. You're holding something back. No, I'm not I'm not holding anything back. I'm just uh you know, there's there's definitely like I'm I'm always working on something, right? So, like I'm not going to just sit around and do nothing. So, there's always like investments and things. I've just been spending a lot more time doing like active investments and just other ways to make money, you know. Yeah. I know you went in on the AMC, BlackBerry, Nokia thing, right? You comfortable talking about that? Uh yeah, I can I can talk about that, yeah. Yeah, that's fun. I don't know about this. Yeah. And Build-A-Bear, too. Build-A-Bear. Wait a second. Yeah. Um yeah, that was probably one of my better trades that I've made. So, tell us a little bit about what happened there. Walk us through the very beginning, how you found it, where you saw it. Let's hear this. So, it started with Brian Jeong called me up one day. It was January, like early January. And he's like, "Nate, there's something brewing. Look at GameStop. It's it's like going up, you know, 10% every day." Um and he was like still I don't know what the price of game of GameStop was at the moment, but it was just brewing on Wall Street Bets. It's picking up steam. Um and and then we started to look at it and we realized AMC was next. Why? How How do you realize AMC was next? It was You could just see it brewing. Like it's it's so hard to Okay, first of all, first of all, I'm not just a like a degenerate gambler. Um I have two like portfolios. I have my real like investment portfolio and then I have my sort of like swing trade sort of, you know, gambling gambling portfolio, I guess you could say. That's like a lot smaller, but yeah. Yeah, speculative. That that's the word for it. Um and and so, we saw it brewing with AMC and it was like $3 a share. This was like so early on and we just were like, "I can't believe we found this. Like it's it's going to pop." Um So, what happened is I then put in like I was so confident on it. Uh I put in an order for 60,000 shares. So, what? 180,000 dollars? We rounded up to 200 grand, yeah. So, I put in an an order for 60,000 shares of AMC, went to bed um and I think it was a market order. Um But then, like I woke up in a panic at like 5:00 in the morning and I was like, "I cannot do this. This is like too much too much speculation here." So, um I I canceled the order, changed it to 6,000 shares. Um Yeah, I know. Um and so, I think if if those 60,000 shares, if I would have actually bought those at $3, it would have been went from three to uh peaked at like $60 a share, right? So, it would have been 20x Yeah, it would have been like yeah, like a few million. Yeah, but you can never look at it like that because you wouldn't have sold it necessarily. You're lucky you still got in. Yeah, I I got in I got in so early. I got lucky with that. Um yeah, Nokia um and BlackBerry, I think. I think I post those on like my close friend story sometimes. I I don't publicize it to like my followers because um I don't want to like influence people. Yeah, I don't want to influence people and then it's because it's my speculative portfolio. It's really like yeah, I'm not going to publicize that. Um I think also uh Chris Camillo, right? He he he made like a million or two off of that that trade as well. Like he did the same thing. He bought AMC like so early on and then it like So, you can see it. Like you can see it coming up, you know. So, what what did you sell the AMC at? Are you still holding? Uh this was after the little uh you know, fiasco with the uh brokerage companies, you know, saying, "Oh, we're going to like out outbound only. We're only you're only allowed to sell." Um so, I kind of it like got hurt by that, but um I I don't know exactly how much I made. I mean, it was uh I I probably sold it for like $10, $12 maybe a share. Um definitely profit cuz I just cuz I got in so early. So many people lost so much money. Um and I think just like as a side note, if you guys like as a good indicator, too, of when to get out of of any type of like swing trade or or meme trade, just whenever Dave Portnoy buys, that's when you sell. That's when you're at the top. Like with SafeMoon, remember he was like, "I'm going all in on SafeMoon." Next day down like 50%. You know what I think it is? Yeah, that that's a good indicator. By the time it ends up on CNBC, it's too late. Yeah. Always CNBC. CNBC was the the the front page headline everywhere when Robinhood went up to like $70 a share. That was the peak of the market right there. Yeah, and it's it's like really tough. Um that's why it's my speculative portfolio because it's it there's definitely like a certain amount of like you can have a good hunch, you can have a good understanding of it you think, but it's still like you you got to be on the right side of the momentum. How Yeah, what did that portfolio start at? Like what was the amount that you put in and you're like, "This is how much I'm going to risk?" Um it was probably like a couple hundred thousand. Like it was both Yeah, like most of that portfolio when I started it was like I'm dedicating this. It was like that 180 I was going to do for AMC. So, it's like about what it started with, probably 200. And then, now what's it worth? Um okay, so interesting. Um so, it it it definitely it went up to like a few hundred thousand after the whole thing. Like still ended up in the green. Not as much as I was at like peak. I was up what, like um I think I doubled my money on on Nokia in like 5 minutes. It went from $4 to $8 a share and I made like 136 grand on that. And then it came down. But What Okay, so then eventually, I was up maybe like 100,000 or so, just estimated. Uh and then the meme stuff died down. I I sold before like, you know, didn't get left holding the bag on that. Um and then you could see it brewing again in like April and May. I like I I remember I was on the subway in New York and I just overheard these transit workers talking about AMC coming back. Um and so, I then went back and bought 12,000 shares of AMC at like $9 a share in May after it came all the way back down. Um sold it at 11. And then, I bought Build-A-Bear with the money that I used for AMC. Wow. So, you're just browsing Wall Street Bets all day. All day, yeah. Yeah, but like I said, this is really just like this is like the fun portfolio that like, you know, Be reasonable, everyone. Yeah. Yeah. But also, like there there are certain times when you just like you have such high conviction on something. Um and I've really watched a lot of the dumb money guys' videos. Um I think it's really great. And and Chris has some great points. Um and there's times when you just have like such like strong conviction on something, like with Build-A-Bear, uh which sounded crazy at the moment um before they released their earnings um back in May, but I think it's good to go in pretty heavy when you're when you have like really strong confidence on something. Do you think the whole momentum thing is starting to like fizzle down a little bit? Yeah, right now? Seems like it is. Um I I see no reason why it wouldn't be back at some point in the future. Like there's no catalyst to like stop it from being back. Um I think the thing that will stop like the whole meme stuff where it's just like some random stock goes up to hundreds of dollars is some type of regulation. Um and I know the SEC was talking about that. I think it was the SEC or whoever's in charge of that was talking about like potentially like how do we prevent securities from getting totally manipulated by just like people with like a collective like people just pumping something up. Um What are your thoughts about that? Because you do have these big people with these huge platforms. They're like, "You know what? I like this stock a lot. I'm all in on it." And they they could very easily manipulate the price without actually manipulating the price. This is just sharing their opinion. But at what point does that become price manipulation? Like when you have a million followers, 10 million, 20 million? And that's why because I don't have the answer to that, that's why don't talk about my trades ever um like publicly because I don't I don't even want to have like anything like any problem, you know, I don't want to have even like the slight doubt that like oh, I moved a stock, right? Because I think I like not bragging but like I'm pretty sure if I start posting stuff about hey, I'm buying this small cap stock and it's going to it's going to move especially if it's like a $200 million company like it doesn't take a lot if it's really low volume usually it doesn't take a lot to move that stock. It's going to be interesting interesting to see how that plays out eventually because if your if your uncle Jimbo is on Facebook with like three followers is like I'm going all in on yeah, it's definitely Fisker hurts cuz it's going up 50x nobody cares. They're like oh well Uncle Jimbo that's just fine. But meanwhile let's say Logan Paul says the same thing and it's like wait a second and it's just the difference of how many people are listening but who's to say you don't say something and that goes viral and then then are you on the hook for that? Yeah and I I think it also depends on like if you actually believe in the company and you're actually holding long-term or if you strategically like are planning on like people who just like crypto all the time it's really unfortunate, you know, I see so many influencers just like pumping something up they're like buy this buy this buy this like and it's yeah, I just wouldn't want to be in that. Right but here's where it gets iffy too. Let's just say you have a price target of like $20 and it's a $5 stock you say hey guys, I love this $5 stock. I'm going to hold it until it hits like 20 down the line. Imagine if it hits 20 the next day and they're like wait a second. I already hit my price target. I'm going to sell. Yeah um I mean yeah, like I'm not a lawyer so I don't really know what the the laws are on that so I just avoid. It's right. What's in your other portfolio? Uh it's mostly just like index funds, you know, VOO the simple ones like that. I bought Jets index fund it probably should have unloaded that like a couple months ago cuz that's actually down since I went into it last year. You know, it it was up quite a bit like it was just like the airline ETF but they've been having some trouble lately. Yeah, it's a lot of those companies you know, Walmart Penn National Gaming you know, a couple of the fangs but I'm trying to really like consolidate things and so that I don't have to actively you know, listening in on on the earnings call from like 20 different companies cuz I just feel like I don't have the time for that now and I think it'd be a foolish to sort of blindly invest in like random companies like Apple for example. I'm probably not going to have like sit down and listen to their earnings so I'm not going to go buy their their stock. Are you not focusing so much anymore on the financials of your life because I remember last time we met you it was interesting meeting a personal finance YouTuber that didn't care so much about like saving like a little bit of money here or like spending money here or raising your income so much and it was that was fascinating for me to see cuz I'm not used to it. Are you still kind of similar to that? And Graham was baffled at that cuz it's like the opposite of Graham, you know? Yeah, I mean I think there's a saying that's like you never see like a U-Haul being towed by a hearse or something, right? Like like you can't really bring your stuff with you and like in terms of money, you know, I feel like I'm I'm at a good spot. I'm I'm pretty content with it and as long as I have more money next year than I have this year then I'm happy, you know, and it it doesn't have to be you know, 10x growth every year for the next 20 years like I don't need to be a billionaire um but I can tell what where I am. Do you have any like money goal or anything like a net worth goal or anything that once you hit that you'll definitely like chill out or Um not not really. I I did set those goals like when I was when I was younger when I was like 17 when I was in college I was like all right, I need to make a million dollars by the time I'm 21 and then I think once you get to a certain threshold everybody has a different threshold. For me I think you only really need I shouldn't say only but like that's that's the wrong way to put it. It's the wrong way to put it but like I think you really only need like a million um to be set for life. Depends on the area. Yeah. A million in California first of all they're going to take like 30% in tax. Yeah. Cost of living is atrocious. Gas now by the way in California it's already reaching $6 a gallon. I paid five. I paid $5.40 on my way here. I just drove in from LA. Yeah. Was it was it in Bishop? It was on the border between Nevada and California and I was I had like 10 like 10 miles left like I was like I need to get gas. Yeah. Yeah. They get you. Yeah, I saw a picture I I think it was on CNN at the Beverly Center in LA. It was like $6.19 for premium. Wow. $6 for gas for a gallon. Yeah. It's wild. supply or what I don't know what but yeah, definitely everything's going up. Yeah, but a million could take you pretty far in a lot of states. It's just I think if you're a coastal state New York, California maybe maybe some more expensive cities it doesn't Yeah. But I I guess like kind of just the way I view it is like um yeah, like I if I had a million I could just live and I I don't have to do crazy things like I'm I don't need to spend a lot of money and I'll still be pretty content so yeah. So what are you spending your time doing these days aside from traveling in the car? Like there's got to be some Uh yeah, just a lot of thinking I guess meditating um thinking more and also just like socializing too. You know, I like a lot of networking actually. I feel like I go to dinners quite a bit with YouTubers cuz because I travel a lot there's always like other YouTubers or business people in any like any city that I go to so it's always I love meeting people making connections with people and just making more friends. Yeah. What do you think about most mostly? Just just life sometimes I sometimes I don't even think. I don't know if I should say that it makes me sound stupid but like like just like really clearing your mind and just and just being able to like really relax and just like enjoy the world. Yeah, just like existing I some people probably don't understand what I'm saying there but like yeah, just existing just living life. What's the what's the biggest thing you've learned from that experience so far? Um probably that I mean you can be content like anywhere that you are like when I'm in my truck in the mountains somewhere I don't really need like items and stuff I don't really need a lot and just like just living life. Yeah. Have you ever had any dangerous situations or anything that kind of freaked you out? Uh there were times yeah where like you know, like I can lock my truck from the inside and everything but yeah, there's times where you don't have cell service and you're in the middle of nowhere and nobody can hear you scream so yeah, but otherwise I mean I'm still here so feel pretty mostly safe. Yeah. Yeah. Shouldn't there be something where if you were in a position like that like no cell service like your car broke down or something like that. Shouldn't there be something like where you could press a button and it like it sends a GPS signal? That's a good idea. I should definitely get one of those. Should get a few flares. Yeah, some flares. Yeah, couldn't light those in this area you get wildfires. Yeah, I I should probably get one of those. I mean I guess like oh, I don't even have a spare tire. I have to get one of those because if I break that like if I get a flat I'm I'm screwed. I'll have to hitchhike somewhere so Have you ever had to hitchhike? Uh only in the Yosemite so and that's like a really safe place to hitchhike, you know. I think. Yeah, like you're not going to get killed in Yosemite. So hitchhiking can be a little bit weird though. I kind of want to do it but it's I feel like you need to do it with somebody else. and now it's it's a little dangerous and you also have to think about the type of person that would pick up a hitchhiker. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean have you never picked up a hitchhiker? No, I've wanted to but I I was usually in the car with my parents and you know, you don't really want to bring a random person into a close quarter with your child, you know? I would I would pick up Danny Duncan. You see him on the side he hitchhiked. Didn't he didn't he do that from Florida to California? Yeah, I mean yeah, exactly. Yeah, but you know, Danny Duncan has a lot of people like oh, that's Danny and this yeah. Yeah, but I I picked somebody up once when I was in Colorado like two months ago. I think it was two months it was it was it was in May. It's like yeah, you can hop in the back of the truck so you know. Not going to kill you. Well, that's good. Yeah, you want to have some safety. Yeah. Yeah, but they're just trying to get like 20 miles down the road so So what about loneliness? If you're if you're kind of in the middle of nowhere no one's around for like a week on end. Yeah, I think a week is is like a good time. Over a week yeah, I'm sure you would you could get lonely but I feel like I I just have friends like in most places so I'm always hanging out with people and a lot of cases too. I'll like meet up with people who are also doing van life and and living in the cars and stuff and camping. So and also I'm pretty introverted so I'm like I get a lot of energy by being by myself. So I've never really had any problems with that. That's fascinating. You think you could do that Graham? Uh I think for a few days I could definitely do a few days at a time. I don't think I could do a full week. So I could definitely do probably three to four days. Yeah. Yeah, I would actually agree with that like three to four is a good number. I mean I've done a week or more but that's like a good number and then you go back into a city somewhere socialize, you know. So how do you know where to park and sleep? Um so you you kind of just get to know places and like you find a good spot and like this is the spot that that like you know, but there's there's an app actually I think it's called iOverlander that I use and you can see it has like a map of everything that you can use like places to sleep like places to park places to take showers do do laundry like all kinds of stuff like that, internet. Um so, it's really really nice. Like it's like a communal, everybody contributes to it and like hey, this is a good spot right here. Um so, I I look at that all the time. That's how I figure out where I'm going. Yeah, I was about to say how do you figure out showers and stuff like that? That's also never really been a problem. Um I mean, so I do like uh I'll stay in like Airbnb sometimes, hotel sometimes. So, like what I was saying with like how it's not cheaper, um just to like, you know, clean up and everything. And also friends, um and then using that app like you can find places to to shower. I think I need to get a a gym membership like Planet Fitness or or one of those. Uh I think that would really help like kind of give more options for that. Mhm. Yeah. Mhm. I remember we did something last time you were here where we talked about the cost of your outfit. Okay. Okay. You want to you want to run us through? Yeah, I mean, um let's see. I actually don't remember how much this was. I just bought this the other day Mhm. at like Zara. So, it was like probably like 30 or 40 dollars. Yeah. Um just cuz you know, I got to look a little fresher on the you know, coming out of the woods or desert or whatever. So, didn't want to walk around like a dirty t-shirt or something. Um you guys should see me like last week. Um And then these I'm just wearing black pants, probably also, you know, 30 dollars maybe. Um and then some socks that I borrowed from my friend. Jack, what about your outfit? Wait, is this That's not That's not the new shirt, is it? Is it? Uh no, this is a different shirt. Oh, you know what we did? We did uh we gave Jack a makeover. Oh, really? A hundred dollar makeover. A hundred dollar makeover. H&M. Yeah. Good stuff there. Yeah, I mean, yeah. The problem with H&M is the stuff falls apart pretty quick. Um I would disagree. All of my clothes are H&M and almost everything I've had for years. I do like their t-shirts. That's where I get my t-shirts from. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah, my whole outfit's like really cheap. I think this shirt was like 10 dollars. And I think these shorts were 12. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, I've never really understood the like designer clothes. No. No. Yeah, but I always see massive lines outside of them. Um like I'll go to malls a lot and I don't buy stuff. Like I hate shopping. It just like is annoying. Um but I just like walk around and just like observe like things. Like how many people are going like not I'm not counting how many people are walking into a store, but just like observe things. Yeah. Um it also helps with investing, too. Like, you know, looking at Build-A-Bear and it's like hey, there's a there's a there's a there's a decent amount of people coming in and out of there. Um but yeah, there's always so many people outside of the Gucci store, Louis Vuitton always has a massive line. For the past really since um the first stimulus check came out. And not to say there's a correlation there, but it was around that time like when malls opened back up and like um yeah, I I definitely noticed something there. Did you watch Meet Kevin's explana- uh explanation on that? Yeah, I saw a lot of people disagree with it, too, right? On uh What are you talking about here? Are you talking So, what Kevin said was when he was in Las Vegas, he went into Was it a Gucci or a Louis Vuitton or Dior? It was one of those designer stores. He walked in and he was talking to the people about how busy they were. And he said the people who worked at the store said that they would purposely price their handbags or their items around what the stimulus check is. Yeah. And knowing that people would go into the store and be like wow, this is kind of free because I got the stimulus check and this bag is like exactly 1200 dollars. Or they would just try to upsell them a little bit so like this one is 1350. So, technically it's only costing me an extra 150. Yeah, I think Walmart did that as well. Um for the maybe the first one. Was the first one 600 dollars? It was 12. I think it was 12. Yeah. Okay. So, whatever like the first one was Or there was a second one that was 600, right? Okay. So, that one I remember seeing in the news like or people posting just like the like the Walmart aisles, they're just like you'd see like 600 dollar TVs, 600 dollar like items. Um so, yeah, probably I mean, I guess that's just smart business uh to to kind of, you know, realize that like I don't I don't know how many people got a stimulus check, but you know, over a hundred million probably. Um so, yeah, it's smart business. What about minimalism? Because I remember last time we spoke as well, you were like very very into minimalism. And obviously like living in a truck truck, it's hard to have like quite a few things. Yeah. Yeah. So, have you gone more minimalist than the last time we spoke? Uh I I guess so. Yeah. And how would you say like the whole minimalism thing affects your lifestyle and your overall happiness? Like I I remember I heard this one thing where I think it was like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates only has black shirts. Mhm. Because like it's fewer decisions to be made in a day. Zuckerberg, too. Was it Zuckerberg? Yeah, he said the same thing. Exactly. So, you wear the same thing every day. You remove a decision from your day so you can focus elsewhere, which is kind of smart. Like Like how would you say your minimalism affects your life and would you say generally it makes you happier? It definitely makes things a lot easier. Um you know, like there's so many benefits to it. Like if you have an apartment or a house and you're you're a minimalist, uh instead of decluttering every week and putting stuff back into their cabinets, back into the closets, you can just get rid of it and you save so much time cleaning. Um you know, like even with my truck, too, by like having not a lot in it, I can have more space, less time cleaning. Um and you also save money, too. I don't really do it for the money side of it, but that definitely is a benefit for people. Like if you find yourself living a paycheck to paycheck especially and you want to cut something, just like start really thinking about do I actually need this? Cuz there's always like, you know, I go to people's houses and they have like three different types of blenders. Um I I I don't know. I feel like you can get away with just one. So. Yeah. Wow. Sorry, I'm I'm not coming at anybody if if they have three. Don't don't don't. we have two blenders. Do we really? We have two. Yeah, we have a Magic Bullet and we have uh something else. Yeah. But they're but they're each for a different purpose. Mhm. The blender is like you need a big blender for stuff. The Magic Bullet's for like, you know, just on the go. Just you know, a few things. It's easy. Uh how much do you spend in a week? We got to bring that back to what I spend in a week. It's It's so hard to gauge because there's there's weeks where I will literally spend zero dollars. I mean, you know, if there's probably like subscriptions or something that'll like kick in or whatever, but um when I'm off the grid, zero dollars. And then there's other times where I'm traveling a lot. Like in the past week, I definitely spent, you know, a decent amount of money cuz I went out to dinner last night and the night before, uh business meals. Um And you know, hotel tonight, that was like a hundred some dollars. So, the the there could be weeks where, you know, I'll spend like a thousand dollars in a week. Um when you add everything in. Like I was just over in Europe in Airbnbs for like a month. Um so, that probably cost at least a few thousand dollars. Yeah. What do What do you think the average week there? Like a thousand bucks a week? A fifteen hundred? Um if if if you're including business expenses, then probably about a thousand dollars. Yeah. Yeah, like just like business dinners or like um you know, other things. Business recreation. No, I I'm really conser- Business Chipotle. Yeah, no, no, no. I like not not to get into taxes, but I'm I'm really conservative with like what I, you know, like I don't write off that much cuz I'm just, you know, want to steer clear of any problems with that. Yeah. Now, for for your taxes, uh do you have to worry about being in a location for too long and like oh, I I technically I filmed a video in Montana, so now I got to file a tax return in Montana. Uh yeah, my my I talked to my accountant about that kind of stuff a lot. Um it does definitely like if I am in a place for a really long time, then I would start thinking about that. Um and I think there's certain places, too, where like you have to pay tax based off of how many days you were there. Mhm. Uh which is crazy. Um but yeah, I mean, I'm I'm a Pennsylvania resident for now. So, uh and I think I would only worry about that if I was spending like a lot of time somewhere. Yeah, what's the state tax in Pennsylvania? Uh it's 3.07%. That's the top tax rate? Uh yes, for personal. Um so, it's it's not terrible, really. That's That's why That's What is Is that a lot or a little? little. Yeah. So, that's why I haven't changed my residency yet because like, you know, if I was paying 10% or 13.3 in the top bracket in California, uh I I definitely would would move. Um especially because I I move around so much that it's like why not establish residency somewhere else? Um you know. Got it. Yeah. Let me ask you this. I'm just curious because the I think the last time we talked, you were getting close to a million in a year, right? Mhm. Uh a million subscribers? No, no, a million dollars. Making money. Yeah. Did you Were you able to cross that? Uh with like my like Just everything With my YouTube channel? Yeah, no, no, just just with everything. Everything combined? Combined. We do that. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. You did? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Congratulations. With the right? Like that included was pretty significant, I can imagine. Yeah, you could include that. Yeah. Congratulations. Yeah. Good job. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. I don't I don't really call myself like a a millionaire. It feels weird like saying that, but I guess I guess you could say that. It's It's weird because you're the only personal finance YouTuber. You ask questions like that and you're a little bit reserved about giving the answer even though like you got started in finance. Yeah, I'm like I'm I'm a pretty private guy, I feel like, you know. And people are surprised by that cuz I'm sitting here talking about my life, but I still there's a lot of things I like to keep private, you know. Sure. Like yeah. Do you Does it make you uncomfortable to talk about money and stuff like that? It does feel weird. Um like growing up, my parents never talked about money. Like I have no idea how much money they make. Um and they never talked about it. And that's kind of like the culture in my family. Mhm. Um and I think it's like how it is in a lot of households. Uh but also like I think, you know, it was fun to talk about it and I would do like those income updates back in 2018, 2019. And then it just kind of kind of got to a point where it just felt weird, you know? Because like it went from people cheering you on of like this is so cool, you're making like 6000 dollars a month in college, this is amazing. Uh and I just kind of felt like, you know, like too much like bragging almost. Um and so, yeah, that's why the last one I made on income updates was like January 2020. Yeah. I could see that. The same something similar happened to me. I think originally when everyone started doing it, it was new. Mhm. And nobody had ever done that before and it was like, "Wow, they're just like revealing all this transparency." And especially for someone like you, I think people have followed you from the very beginning and they really support like everything that you're doing and they're excited for you. And just you sharing that little victory is like, "Wow, if if Nate could do it and he came from there and I watched his journey, then I could do something similar, too. And if I if I follow along, like this is what's possible." So, that's that's that's how I originally went into it. But then it did seem a while. Like I think the last income update I don't know, like 6 months ago. And that was a lot. I even told Jack even that one. I was like didn't want to do it, but you know, I I'd carried this on every year. Yeah. I may as well do one last hurrah video on that. But then after that, it's like you're right. In the very beginning, it's it's fun. It's new and exciting. But then after a while, it's like, "Okay, this is the the 20th update." Yeah, and like those videos always do well, too. Cuz people are interested. Like they want to know and I think it's great. Like it is good to be transparent cuz it's um like probably thousands of people have watched your videos and then been like, "I'm going to be just like Graham." And then they went out and they did it. And now they're probably almost full-time like making thousands of dollars a month cuz they they saw you come up like this um and it inspired them. So, yeah, it's great. Now, you know what's fun, too. Uh in our last podcast, we were talking about videos that end up doing really well. Told me to make a video on side hustles. And back then I told you I hated making videos on side cuz I feel like side hustles don't really change. The same thing. Uh well, I made a video about side hustles because uh you know what, you recommended it. That video is almost at a million views. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what happens, too. Like I I made a um like you know, five top seven businesses to start in 2021. And I I I make those every year and I was like, "Okay, like people aren't going to watch this now. It's 2021. Like I've been making these for years." Yeah. And yeah, that video is doing like it gets, you know, three or four thousand views a day for the past year, you know, so. Those videos always do well. So, what are some of the top businesses to start in 2021? Um right now. Yeah, let's talk about first side hustles. Okay. Okay. Maybe the top side of top five Okay. side hustles and then we'll do the top five ways to make $100 a day in passive income. Oh boy, I I hope I can come up with some of these here cuz I haven't made a video like this in a long time. Um usually I spend a lot of time. Like if I'm going to make a video like that, I'm going to spend days. Like you ask like what do I think about? It's that kind of stuff. Like I'll just like pace around all day and be like, "Mushroom farm." You know. Yeah, I remember that. Side hustles. Uh I don't I don't know who made this table, but looks a little pricey. Make this table. Oh, you know what? I do think we got to give a huge shout-out to Black Forest Wood Co for this table. Believe it or not, they made this entirely from from scratch. Look at this. You Well, you can't really see. We'll throw some b-roll on this. They included coffee inside the table, which is incredible. And then they put this cool like glaze through it. It almost looks like a river of coffee. So, we're going to put their information down below in the description. Well, you know what? We'll put up like a little thing right here. But thank you so much. And for anyone else who's interested in a table like this, they have some fantastic products. Yeah. So, what are we talking about side hustles? Side hustles. Yeah, I mean how like there's anything. Like the money is everywhere and you can make money in anything. Like literally you guys just got these, right? Yeah. black walnut. Right? Yeah. Black walnut, that's worth a lot of money, okay? And so, you could you could make these, right? Like I I remember because when my brother and I, we had a firewood business and sometimes we'd stumble upon like black walnut trees. And those are worth a lot of money. And we knew that we could sell these if we cut them into really large pieces, really large chunks, we could sell them to somebody who made things just like this or made furniture, made tables. Um and you can get premium for that. So, like there's money everywhere. I feel like if if you look at your hobbies and and you analyze like what do you love doing and then also have a lot of knowledge about and then just find a way to monetize it. Like there's always a way. Sometimes you have to be really creative with it. Um but yeah, that's what I'd suggest. Just coming up with anything. Every side hustle is viable in your mind. Yeah, like I mean I used to sell mealworms, right? Um the mushroom farm didn't didn't work out, unfortunately. Portobello mushroom farm. Why? By the way, of course. Why did it fail? I mean, I was like 13 and just I it was hard to find customers. Um you know, like who's going to buy bags of mushrooms? It was it was it was it sounded like a good thing in theory cuz Pennsylvania produces a lot of mushrooms. Um but it just you know, there was also like the shiny object syndrome thing going on when I was 13. It was like I was trying to find a business. I was trying to find something. I'd get excited about something. I'd do it for 2 months and then find the next thing that looked like a better opportunity. You know what's going to take off? I guarantee this is going to blow up. You heard it here first. Growing funguses. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's going to be a huge thing. Uh went to the uh oh gosh, what was the farmers market the other week. And there was a table there that was selling these kits, the grow your own fungus kits. Mhm. I got to say it looks so cool. And all it takes is for like a few viral TikToks to be like, "Look at this fun." And they're cool looking. I mean, it looks like a piece of coral that you could grow in like no light that's easy to take care of that that you could kind of do on your own. Doesn't take a lot of work, but you could give it the time it needs. They're just neat. It made me want to grow fungus like that. And and I think a lot of these are edible. Like you could you could either not like poisonous or anything. You're going to like have some crazy experience, but it's it's just cool stuff and they grow in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Like um gosh, what is this the the putty stuff blew up. Like there were people making like a 100,000 a month Selling slime? Slime. Yeah. Yeah, like the slimes and it's just you see these Instagram things of them like kneading the slime and it's it's just it's cool to watch. Fungus. Yeah. I'm telling you. I I think fungus could be a big one. Yeah, I should talk to my sister. She's uh she's going for botany for college. Yeah. She loves fungus. She's always like sending me like things about mushrooms all the time. Yeah, listen. I think you make you make a a fungus kit that sends you a new type of new type of fungus every Fungus subscription? Seriously. No, there's so much money in fungus, seriously. Because like I've I I saw a new company that uh instead of packing peanuts, they use some type of like fungus or like cardboard. Like instead of cardboard, Wow. Is it biodegradable? Yes. Yes, totally biodegradable. That's incredible. I forget what it's called, but there's just so many new things coming out with it that it's definitely an industry that's going to blow up in the next 5-10 years. I feel like I feel like the name fungus though could work against it. Like like you don't want I'm like, you know, eating my fungus. Yeah. That just doesn't sound very appealing. It's hard to sell. There's a fancier words for for mushrooms. Like what? Uh well, I'm blanking. Um Like mycelium, my my What is it? Uh What the hell? Plant. What is it? Mycelium. Mycelium. Speaking of the mic. Uh it's not Calvin. Okay. Yeah. It's like mycelium or Something like that. That does sound pretty fancy. Is that a fungus? Yeah. So, this is uh Yeah, so look at this. It's called golden oyster mushroom grow kits. $28. But look how cool that looks. Yeah, you just throw some mushroom spores in there and uh gets the job done. That's neat. And imagine every month as a on on the table right here. Yeah. We should. That would be pretty cool. That's called lion's mane. I want more side hustles. One more. Give us another side hustle. gee, I mean, you know, 18, no money. What do I do? Okay. Um you got to look at your skills, obviously. And everybody's some so so many people say I have no skills. Like I'm totally worthless or whatever. Um everybody has something that you're slightly better than the average person at. And it could be something really stupid or it could be something like really cool. Like you could teach people how to surf. Like there's like look at all of your hobbies and you can teach somebody how to do that. Right? You're good with guitar. Teach somebody how to play guitar. Um you you speak, you know, uh like Spanish and and you know people who want to learn Spanish. You can teach them that, right? So, teaching people how to do something, great side hustle. You definitely know something that that somebody's willing to pay money for. So, and and the great part about that is that there's really no overhead for it, right? So, it's not going to cost you much money to get started with that. That's great. answer. That is really good answer. I'm a little curious like like you're talking about all your different businesses and stuff. And and you say that you spend a lot of time just kind of pacing and thinking. Mhm. It seems like like you have more time. And I'm trying to get like a feel for like where does the time go? How I mean, you drive around in your car. You you sit places, I'm sure like admire views. I always see you like you're in mountain ranges and stuff like that. Like you Um yeah, I mean, there's I don't really know uh to be honest with you. Um I mean, it's definitely like there's meetings, obviously. Um I'm on the phone with my brother a lot cuz he I kind of do a lot of thinking and then he does a lot of work, I guess you could say. Um so, we kind of work together with some business stuff. What kind of business stuff are you working with? Yeah, you're you're holding something. You're holding something back. What is it? I'm trying to figure out what it is. if you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to talk about it. I mean, it's It's like a little bit. I mean, I'll just say like yeah, we have some YouTube channels, uh some blogs, um and then also yeah, a lot of my time is spent like finding places to put money, I guess. So, like I don't like pumping all of my money into the S&P 500. So, I'm looking for new investments. Sometimes, like angel investments that get pitched to us. Um but you know, more so looking for cash businesses that I can invest into. So, I'm probably investing into another media company uh in the next couple of weeks. I'm excited about that. Probably can't talk about it like Yeah, sure. Um and yeah, just like putting money into different projects and kind of like setting things up. Like we'll have some random business idea and be All all we want to do this, but we don't have any more time to go and like try to build this business. So, we'll just set up like a project basically like and say, okay, we'll put 25 grand into this over the next 12 months and kind of just let it run and then it should be profitable by that end of the 12-month period. Now, you say media company and you say YouTube channels. Can you Can you tell us the YouTube channels? Or like How about the niche? No, I don't think I I don't think so. So, okay, so if you can't tell us that the channel, is it that you're you're running another channel or you you have some sort of input on another channel that Yeah, so like we I'm not on the channels. Like this cuz I like being behind the scenes. So, so we'll just hire somebody to to make the content. Um, you know, script writers, editors, and they'll just do all of that and it's kind of just like we'll just say like, all right, here's what we're going to do next. Here's the next 20 videos and go ahead and go make those. Wow. Yeah, and we just let them marinate for a while, like, you know, half a year or something. Have Have any of them taken off? Maybe. I am so curious. I Hey, you don't have to say. You don't have to say. That's That's awesome. I'll show you guys a little bit after Okay. after the podcast. That's That's awesome, man. Congratulations on this. That's something that I wanted to do originally. Before I I even started making YouTube videos, I wanted to do exactly that. I wanted to invest in a YouTube channel and have some just oversight. I I I thought a lot of channels back in like 2013 could have done so well had they just had like a business mindset. Yeah. And these were a lot of channels that just they had really good content, but they had no direction in terms of like how to monetize it. They were really good at being in front of the camera. They just needed someone to take control and be like, this is how we should structure it. We're going to We're going to do this and make a lot of money, but split it. And what was holding a lot of people back was that they were still working jobs. Like the channel was not making any money. They couldn't give it 100%. They were like, you know, working a job half the day and then like going and doing this and it just didn't turn out the same. I wanted people to do it full-time. Yeah, and I guess that's where it kicks in where it's like if you're so confident in it, you just say, all right, I'll like I'll pay you. Like I'll I'll make sure that you can quit your job and do this full-time. That's a bigger gamble, obviously. Right. Um, but yeah, people do that sometimes. Wow. All right, last question on this before we move on. Would this have been a channel that maybe I would have stumbled across? Like maybe I had seen a video or like Probably not. No, actually no, definitely not. Okay. I'm That's awesome. Congratulations though. Like congratulations. Oh, thanks. Yeah. That's so cool. It's pretty passive, I'm assuming. Uh, yeah. I mean, it's pass- passive for me, not really for my brother that much. Um, like we we We're We're really good business partners and I'm really happy that I like we have such a good dynamic where it's like um, not I don't know if this is a good analogy, but like let's say if like if a business is a car, like I'm kind of the one steering the wheel and then he's the he's he's the engine. Like he's the one doing day-to-day operations, like really like making it work. So, um, I don't know, maybe I should pick up the slack a little bit, but Wow. Would you say then that's like surpassed your own channel in terms of like income? Jeez. Wow. That is so cool. I am I am shocked that that you're not just like dancing around about this and like screaming at the top of a mountain. This is incredible. I don't see why I would though. Why would Why would I publicize Because you're the first one that that I've talked to in the entire finance niche that has managed to build a second channel outside of their own and manage it behind the scenes. First person I've seen to do that. See, it's just impressive to me that like that you were able to do it with yourself, right? And then you go and you apply all of the knowledge that you had learned and you weren't a part of the equation at all as far as like using your current celebrity to grow the channel. But I think the hardest part of being able to grow a channel is is like understanding the algorithm. So, I kind of got that part down by building my own channel and then you know what works, you know what doesn't work um, going forward. So, it's easier to just kind of like, you know, I'm sure finding the right personality to be in front of the camera very difficult. Yeah, very difficult. Yeah. If you guys notice, sometimes they'll post like things on my story with like Google Forms of like, hey, anybody looking for like freelance work? Yeah, yeah, so I just build like a big bank of like hundreds of people who can like script writers, editors, be like people on camera. Um, yeah. See, I'm I'm interested in just like the process, like extremely interested in the process behind like I don't know how much of this you want to talk about. Like this to me is the most exciting thing that that I think I've I've talked about all day here. But like the process be like what gave you the idea uh, like you and you don't have to reveal too much, but like also why you chose not to promote it through yourself, like why you wanted to grow it organically not like jump-start it from the very beginning, how you found people, how you knew that someone was going to be good in front of the camera, did you have to let people go in the meantime? Like Yeah, so I mean, um, I'll just bring people on as like independent contractors, try out a couple people, right? And then and then see how they do. Um, but I mean, so I really don't like I don't mind being on camera, but I'm not naturally an entertainer. I'm not naturally a speaker. So, I really do prefer to work on things behind the scenes. Um, and there's just so much opportunity with with YouTube. Like if you have the All right, so let's say you have 25 grand um, and you want to put it somewhere. You want to invest it somewhere without spending too much time on it. Uh, you can put it into the stock market, right? I feel like I'm already way overexposed to equities. Um, and you can put it in real estate, you can put it in other things. Maybe grow 10% per year or something. But I just feel like with our understanding and not to say like I have a superior understanding of YouTube in the algorithm, but um, like I just realized that, you know, I could take 25 grand and instead of putting in the stock market, put it into a new brand. And if that can turn 25 into say 250, like, you know, that's a better return than 10%. So, that was kind of why we started doing that. And you're also diversifying like a lot out of the finance niche. Obviously still beholden to I yeah. Yeah, no kidding. That was why. That's why we we started these. Wait, really? No, no, not like the primary reason, but it was definitely like I was like, I don't want to have all my eggs in one basket. I think the worst I I I feel so bad for people when like they're an influencer, they're doing well, and either like, you know, something happens, whatever. I mean, usually it's their own fault anyway. Um, but there's also times where it's like they start to slip, like their their videos are not as good. People don't watch them anymore and you can just see like they're still trying to make it like cuz they quit their job, they're doing YouTube full-time. Two or three years later, they're not as popular. So, now they're barely making enough money to make ends meet and like they have to do it cuz they don't know what else to do. Um, I I feel like a lot of YouTubers get boxed in and influencers in general and they're like, I have to keep doing this to keep my money going so I can pay my bills. Um, and I I didn't want to be in that position. Wow. How How do you know someone's going to be good in front of the camera? Do you just test things out until eventually like you're like, that's that's our person? to Yeah, you just got to test out. Are you afraid Here's a weird question. Are you afraid that um, the person you have in front of the camera is going to feel like they're irreplaceable after a certain amount of time and then they're going to demand an amount that uh, really eats into the the bottom line? Um, no, that's why you put different people on the channels. Are we talking multiple So, multiple channels or one person per channel? No, like multiple people per channel. Wow. Okay. Yeah. And And that way it's it's not like it's Yeah, cuz I can see how that would be a problem if it was like one person and they're making all the videos, then it's like people just associate that person with the with the brand. Yeah, so that could be problematic. That's really smart. You know what it reminds me of? And I'm not I'm not saying this is No, I'm not saying this is what you're doing. Uh, but right now the Dhar Mann style video. What's that? Really? Dhar Mann? I can't tell. Maybe you're playing this and No, no, he he doesn't know what Dhar Mann is. I genuinely don't know what this is. Are you serious? He makes skits, basically. Like really high production quality skits that are supposed to teach you some sort of lesson. And they're super cliché, super just like typical and uh, yeah. But oh my gosh. So, Dhar Mann on Facebook was getting like over I think it was like a billion views a month. A billion a month on Facebook. And you know on Facebook the monetization is like through the roof. Yeah. Dhar Mann's probably making like 50 million dollars a year, I'm guessing, just from like Facebook. His YouTube channel blew up. When his YouTube channel blew up, and all of his videos, by the way, are getting like Mr. Beast style views and he's posting like multiple times a week. And uh, that inspired a whole bunch of copycats who realized that format's working. And then the copycats go in and then their videos just blow up because it's just like these short little quick skits that are easily shareable. And the audience is like, you know, your parents, your grandparents, your uncle, whatever. They'll send you those video What? Boomers. It is, but but you know what they're doing You know what the boomers are doing that millennials are not? Sharing. Millennials rarely will send a video to one another, but meanwhile it's like What? Why millennials don't share videos? Dude, I get inundated with TikToks from people. TikToks. 100% TikToks. Not YouTube videos though, but on Facebook it's so easy to be like, you know, Jerry, come check this out. And Jerry can not I don't know. Young people don't have the name Jerry. I don't know a lot of Jerrys. I don't know. I'm just saying it's it seems like that content is is more easily shareable. Yeah. Same with Tik- TikToks, you know. No, I do agree. Like my mom out of everyone does send me the most videos. Like out of everyone, my parents, yeah. And speaking of TikToks, uh, Macy, I checked my phone. She just sent me a TikTok. Oh, yeah. Yeah, multiple You get like at least four a day that is like, here's a funny TikTok. But it's easy cuz it's like 30 seconds. It's so addicting. Yeah. Like like that's why I I think that's why YouTube and Snapchat and Instagram, like they're all pushing these so much, you know, Reels and YouTube Shorts because they look at how much time's being spent on TikTok and they're like, wow, like we really are dropping the ball here. We We need at least keep up with TikTok because that's the way content's going. It's it's it's scary because YouTube is slowly getting there. Uh-huh. They're they're I think uh YouTube is trying to I don't want to say they're trying to copy the algorithm, but they're trying to create their own algorithm to compete. And they're working on it right now. Cuz I got to say when when Facebook first came out or sorry, when YouTube first came out with it, uh was not a fan. I thought like this these are like silly things and it just everything had the TikTok watermark on it. Uh-huh. They're getting better. Cuz now I'm scrolling my homepage and I see them come up with like It's always You know what it is? The teeth. It's it's uh getting plaque off teeth for some reason it's always the first thing and and I want to watch it cuz it's so satisfying to watch. you watch it. So I click it and then it ends in like 10 seconds, but it automatically before you have time to click off it's like here's the next one. It's like a black hole like warps time. I've I've downloaded TikTok in the past. Um I think I made like one TikTok one time. I saw it. Yeah and and um I've downloaded in the past and it's just like so addicting that I had to get rid of it because you You're like, "Oh, I'll just you know, 2 minutes, whatever." Like you lay down and go to bed. You scroll and the next thing you know, an hour and a half goes by and you think it was 10 minutes. Like it's just it's insane. it's it's I want to see more studies on the effects of TikTok, but I could see No, but I could see at some point that uh like 10 15 years from now we're going to look back at the effects of what that does to the brain. It has to because I know even for myself, I'm not a fan of TikTok. But I know if you go on there, it's so easy 20 minutes goes by and I don't even like TikTok. So if if that's doing it for me, imagine what it's doing for people who like always go on TikTok and it's just like this dopamine hits. Bam! Bam! Bam! Every like 20 seconds you get something new that is algorithm tested. What effect does that have on the rest of your life that it's like every time your mind goes blank for open up TikTok. It's almost like a drug, yeah. And that's something actually that I really been focusing on the past couple of years is I I've noticed my attention span is so It used to be so bad. Um and I think And I've explained this on my channel before. It's like if you look at movies that were made in the 1970s like the movie Rocky versus a movie in 2021. Like in 2021 there's a Yeah, it has to be. the screen every 3 seconds is changing. But I remember watching Rocky and it's like there's like a 5-minute clip of him just walking down the street. Like nothing happening. And I'm like, "Come on, like so something happen." Like I I need something actually or something. Um and it's just like it's getting faster and faster. Like these dopamine hits are getting like shorter and shorter and shorter. Um so I don't know. I feel like something has to What do you think that's What What impact do you think that's going to have on the next uh generation? Uh I'm definitely worried. Um I mean hopefully people can and you know, this is not like me saying that there's a right and a wrong answer. If people want to go watch TikTok for 10 hours a day, they can. But I think just like realizing that it can actually be almost like an addiction. It's like, "All right, I need to get rid of this." And then really just focus on like meditating actually is is is something that I do because it it really helps with that with my attention span. Yeah. I think having a good attention span, it gives you more patience. It allows you to make decisions better. Um some people say you you lose your edge with it a little bit, but I think overall it has great benefits. Reminds me a little bit of the uh casino. Like TikTok. It's a weird comparison, but like when you walk into the casino, it's like it they want to give you the right conditions of like, "Ooh, this this machine is lighting up over here. Look at all the numbers." And just making I found it interesting. I actually I learned this from a TikTok, believe it or not. Funny. Nice. But uh I think it was Was it Humphrey Yang? I think it was. Yeah, he was going through Las Vegas and he and he pointed out why a lot of casinos don't have hard turns. You'll notice they're I saw that one, yeah. Yeah, there there there's not like a right and a left. There's always like you could go kind of to the right, kind of to the left or you could go in a circle because they want to limit the amount of decisions that you have to make. And the fewer decisions you make, the more likely you are to play more. Yeah. It's a true thing. You can get lost. carpet. The carpet is always like a weird like psychedelic design that just like it just calms you down and makes you not think. Like the carpets are always like that. Obviously no natural light. They don't want you to see what time it is. No clocks. And I'm I get so lost. Like I'm like, "Yeah, I'm just going to go outside and like go get an Uber or something." And I'll spend 15 minutes trying like I'll walk a mile to try to find it. Um so that's also probably one of their strategies as well. Just make it confusing. Yeah, but it reminds me of TikTok. They they have this dialed in to be like, "I'm going to show you this video first." And based on other users like this, if we show you this video second, you're likely to watch that. And then they just keep testing this and they test it millions of times for like every video that you see to be like perfectly tailored to you in just the right amount of time. And I bet they know too. Like if a video's too long or it's boring and people click out, they're not going to show that video again. They're going to show you something else that's better. Everything you see is tailored. This is like part It's it's accumulation of how many millions of hours of testing that go into just the first few videos that you see on TikTok. This is bad. Macy sent me a TikTok of uh people trying This is a clips exclusive, guys. So you you have to go and subscribe to the clips channel to go and see this. If if you're game on this. You don't have to Let's do it, yeah. Well, let's do it. Okay. Oh, I know what it is. I know what it is. We're all going to do it together. Okay. So don't think that like we're going to subject just you to this. All right. All right. All right. It is the world's most sour candy. I'm taking this? If you If you want to. If you want to. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm trying to buy a house somewhere uh and I'm looking at the different states that don't have income tax, right? Um just cuz it makes sense. Like I don't have anything holding me down, so might as well just go live somewhere um that also I end up saving money and the money I save in income tax will basically pay for the house in a in a weird way. Um so yeah, I'm trying to figure out that and I know you just moved to Nevada. Um what are your thoughts on that? I love it. It seems like so many people have moved here now. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely people moving here from California. I see that. Like lots of my friends are just all over the place. But what about the property here? Like I feel like it's bubbly. No, I I think It is, man. It is. Okay, so first of all, everywhere is bubbly. There's not one place you could go. If you go like in the most rural parts, that's bubbly because everyone wants to get out of the city. Every city now is bubbly because people moved out and people are like, "Ooh, this is a good opportunity. I could get in." It's going to be the same no matter where you go. I think the benefit that you have with Las Vegas is that there seems to be such a huge influx of people coming from California. And I got to say they're the people who are who are bidding up prices. I bet if you go and Jack, you would know this, but I bet if you talk to most realtors out there in like the 500 to 1.3 million dollar price point and you ask them, "How many people are coming from California? How many offers do you have from Californians?" They would say at least 30%? Maybe half? And what was it? When I was looking even and this was like a year ago, over 1 and a half million dollars, they said the majority of those buyers were from California and New York wanting to move here. That's the market. So I would say in terms of property, gosh, Las Vegas is is fantastic. You are competing with California money coming in and everything here is like relatively cheap compared with there. But they're they're doing so much development right now that I just I can't see how over 20 years. Like You know, between now and like next year, I have no idea. But I can't see how like 10 years from now, 15 years from now it it wouldn't be more expensive than it is today. So I think over 10 years I think it's a good investment. Yeah, I'm definitely thinking about it. I got to check out Vegas real estate. I'm probably going to go down to Houston tomorrow. I'll look at some properties. You know, not everybody loves Houston. I've I've I've never been there, but like I know 10 people there and I always ask them like, "How do you like Houston?" They're like, "Uh it's all right." But um their their houses are so cheap. It's like you can buy a mansion for a couple hundred thousand dollars. Um so I want to check it out just like see if I like the area cuz you wouldn't want to live somewhere that you don't like just for tax reasons. I think that'd be kind of like a waste, like you know. Um cuz you're that's where you're spending your life, right? Um there's some other interesting options though. Like Alaska, a little bit far removed. Uh South Dakota, Wyoming, not a whole lot of like infrastructure there, you know, like if I want to find like accountants and stuff and like, you know, banks, it's a little bit more spread out. Um Florida, obviously Texas, New Hampshire. I think Tennessee doesn't really have much of an income tax now. Uh and Washington state. So definitely some options. That's what I've been doing exploring around with like my truck. I've been stopping through the states, looking at towns. I think there's just going to be a time where it's like it's just right. Like I stop in a city, I stop in a town. I'm like, "This is the place." What's your favorite so far that you've seen? Um of of those states, um I would probably have to say uh obviously I I really liked Austin. I mean, I just liked how young everybody was. Seemed like it was really up and coming. Um you know, doing well as a city. Um property taxes were really expensive, but uh definitely like Austin. And you know, I like Florida because it's so close to everything else on the East Coast. I love being East Coast time like New York time. Um so Yeah. That's something I didn't consider is just the time zone of it. Oh, I can't stand like being in Pacific time. It kills me because I If I wake up here at 7:00 in the morning, it's already 10:00. Like the market's already opened and it you know, it's it's 3 hours earlier in New York. Um so I love being on the East Coast. I actually love being on Europe time even better. Like if you're in London um cuz then you can, you know, wake up at you know, 8:00 a.m. and it's 3:00 a.m. back in New York and you're ahead of everybody, you know? So you can really get the day started there. That's interesting. Yeah, I think the benefit of Las Vegas is that you're so close to the to the west side and like Southern California. So if you want to go to the mountains, you want to do all that sort of stuff, go to the beach, it's really close. That's the benefit. A lot of people are also here. They're really business friendly, no state income tax. Um but Florida would be very tempting, too, I think. Yeah, a lot of people, um Miami's a lot going on there, so it'd probably be a little bit outside of of of Miami, um up closer to like, you know, Boca or something. Yeah. Yeah. You You mentioned that you wanted to like maybe buy a mansion. I I figured that that sounds kind of atypical for for me. Well, you said you can buy a mansion for like a few hundred thousand dollars. Oh, yeah, you could, yeah. Um I mean, I don't want a huge house. I'm thinking like 2,000 square feet, maybe. Um that's not Is that average? It's not. The average size house is The average is probably 1,500 square feet. Okay, yeah, so somewhere around that is what I would go for. So, if I buy something in in certain areas in Texas, yeah, it would be like, you know, probably $200,000. And at that point, I'm even wondering if I should just buy it in cash. And I know you're going to disagree with that, probably, right? how much would you be looking for? Say if it was like 200,000 250,000. Cash? Yeah? You think it's better? I do. I do. I'm happy that you say that, cuz I'm leaning towards it. Yeah, I just think for your income and like your position, is it worth it to get a loan? Yeah. Financially, it probably is, because you're going to be able to use that as a good write-off. But I also think that um you know, is it worth it then to save like an extra We'll call it like two grand a year. Maybe is how much you're going to save by having a by having a mortgage you're going to pay off. Um maybe. You know, two grand a year, is that is that worth it? I don't know. And there's time There's time involved with that, too, because anytime you're self-employed, I feel like, you know, it's just more problematic with with home loans and everything, and I feel like I might just be better off just doing cash. And I kind of view it uh in a way of like uh if if you look at income, if it's almost uh if somebody was making $50,000 a year buying a car in cash, like it's not a huge thing. Yeah, I would say for you and knowing your lifestyle and not having like a lot of overhead, I just think having a mortgage for you, I think would be a like another little Yeah. checklist in your mind. Oh, I got the mortgage got paid this month. Uh uh and and the one thing I don't like with the the mortgage, it's so silly, but um they require that property insurance is sent in every year, and I had one that uh it's not that it lapsed, but there was like a day or two where I forgot to pay the insurance, and they they canceled the policy, but they have to send a notice to the mortgage company, and then they issued me like a $35 like fee or something like that per day that I didn't have insurance by mistake. Um it's just like stuff like that is just kind of silly. I don't like that. And also, I mean, you're not going to have this issue, but when you when you're getting other loans, they want uh proof of your mortgage payments on everything else with property tax. It's just like Yeah. I don't know. Beyond a certain point, it's just not really worth it uh to save a small amount. Yeah. I'm I'm really happy you you're saying that, cuz I've I've been on the fence, cuz like most people say, you know, why would you buy cash? It sounds stupid, but uh yeah, thanks. Yeah, but financially, it's probably a little bit better, but I think for you mentally, it'll be easier to just pay cash, be done with it, don't have any lenders to talk to, nothing like that. If you honestly, if you put out one more video in the time it takes you to speak with lenders, shop around the rate, send them all of your information, and close on the house, uh that one video would pay probably double what you would save by having a mortgage that year. That was That was my line of thinking, as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's not worth it. Yeah. So, that's my response to you. But uh I think you'd be happy in Florida. I think you'd be happy in Nevada. guy? Like Florida Man? You could Florida's cool. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it's the button. Yeah. Yeah, you're perfect for Miami. Oh, great. Yeah. But I could also see Texas, because if if you're looking to travel, I mean, that's like right in the middle of the country. You could You could pretty much go anywhere and be equidistant from like the East Coast as you could from the West Coast. Yeah, and that's why I need a big airport nearby, so that's why I was thinking Houston, maybe Dallas. Um being within an hour of a major airport, cuz I just travel so much. It's like I couldn't be in Wyoming. That's why. It's just too far off the grid. But why would you why would you buy a house if you're planning on traveling and doing all of that so much? Um I I want to because I want a place that I can like have a home base at if if I want to come back and work for two months straight. Like cuz there are times where I'll just go on like a grind, and I'll just work work work work work, right? Um and I want the ability to do that, cuz right now, like, you know, I had my apartment, sometimes I'll go back to my brother's house and just like he has a bunch of rooms, so I'll just like stay there for a week and just crank work, but I want a place to do that. Um and also, like keeping the same address and everything would just be nice, as well. Instead of like imagine you have apartments, and you're moving around, and you're like change all your addresses like every year. It just seems like a big pain with like bills and taxes and everything. Yeah. So, I want a home base. That makes sense. Yeah, you know what? For something like that, I'd I'd just buy a place like 200 grand. So, the you know, we got one question. It was from a woman called Sass, and she just said, "When will you get a haircut?" And I said, "Me or Nate?" And she said, "Both." When are you going to get a haircut? Um you know, I actually gave myself haircuts like most probably more often than I don't. Well, wait. I worded that wrong, but you know what I mean? Like I like I I get most of my own haircuts, um but probably I'll get a haircut whenever I go back to Pennsylvania. Like back to my my When I go visit my parents, there's a barber I like there, and I only go to that barber, and I'm either going to the barber or I'm cutting it myself, cuz I don't trust anybody else. Wow, Jack, who cut your hair this last time? I cut my hair actually for the first time ever myself. It's honestly better. Like it might not look as fresh and clean, but It's quick. It saves time, saves money. Yeah, and you get better doing it. Like in the mirror, it's all like reversed and stuff, but like over time, you just get better with it. you just do a buzz cut? I feel like for you, just on the road, you just Yeah, oh my You would look like tough with like a buzz cut. I'm going to save the buzz cut for for when I go bald, you know, like Oh, just to clear it all off. I might as well just have the hair now, like Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, everybody in my lineage just goes bald, so it's like, all right, it's What age? Uh pretty early, like 20s. So, I mean Really? I mean, your hairline is is immaculate. I hope I'm good. I mean, I was actually analyzing that earlier today. Your hairline is it's incredible. All right, yeah, well, it's holding strong for now, so we'll see. But um yeah, the buzz cut I feel like I'll plenty of time in my life where I'll I'll end up with buzz cut. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like you would you would look good, though, with a buzz cut and grow out the beard a little bit. Oh, yeah, should I grow out the beard? Because if people are 50/50 on it. And like I hate shaving. It's just such a pain. Yeah. When's the last time you've done that? What, shaved? Yeah, no, grown it out. I've never. Do it. 100% do it. Grow it out just to see what it looks like. Why would you not? Yeah, I guess so. I agree with that. It's like 50/50, though. Like it's the only negative comments I've ever gotten. Like one time, I didn't shave for like two weeks, and people like, "Dude, you need a razor, man." Like Because you have a very youthful look, that when you're clean-shaven, it just it takes like 10 years off. Mhm. Yeah. That's what I think it is. I think I'm going to go beard, cuz the fall is coming up. It's like going into winter. Yeah, right. The warmth. Sure. You look pretty cool like with what you got right right now. Oh, okay, thanks. I I think I'm done shaving, so I won't shave until I come back on the podcast. Ooh, that that'll be Wow. Yeah, there we go. Five years from now. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. I think we're good. Hey, Nate, thank you so much for coming. It's been a blast. having me, guys. It's always great meeting up, and uh I love this new studio you have here. This is the first episode. So, congratulations. No, we're honored. Uh but one big question, have you got your free stock yet from Public down below in the description? Because they raised it, it's all the way up to $1,000 now. Really? Wow. I I did get my free stock. I used your link. Yes. I also have a link, but Oh, you do? Wow. No, no, no. Use Use the link in the description below to get your free stock. That's a That's a good endorsement. And And make sure you you finish, you know, creating your account. Like don't don't half-ass it. Finish your account. Connect your bank account. Yes. Link it. Yeah. Link your bank account, and add the Eclipse channel down below in the description. Yeah. Cool. So, with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. Really appreciate it. Nate, thank you so much for coming out here. I will link to your information down below in the description. Feel free to add us on Instagram. We post Jack, you got to post there more often on Instagram. Yep. Yeah. Now that uh Jack in the Box is following you. Jack in the Box followed me on Instagram. It's huge. Yeah, big. You better get that sponsor. Yeah. Jack in the Box, if you're watching right now, feel free. I'll take anything. Okay, I'll take anything as a sponsor. You want to give me a Jumbo Jack to eat it on the podcast? I'll do it. That would be incredible for them to sponsor the podcast, like just an episode where we just have Jack in the Box. We'll eat Jack in the Box. I'd be fine with that. It's so good. I love it. I'd be fine with that. So, Jack in the Box, we got to make that happen. Uh also, Black Forest Wood Company, thank you so much for this table. I will link to their information down below in the description. I can't speak of this table highly enough. It's incredible. You have to like truly see it in person to appreciate it, but if you want any work done similar to this, 10 out of 10. They're absolutely incredible. So, thank you guys so much for watching, and until next time. This one? Okay. Yeah, cool. Should I go? Yeah, go.