Millionaire Dating Expert Reveals How To Get A Girlfriend ft. Kong Pham

What's happening, man? This is cool. I know. It's a dream come true. So, welcome back to the 20th ever episode of the Iced Coffee Hour. So far, we've made something like $5,600, something something crazy like that now from the podcast and ad revenue. Uh Meet Kevin's episode by far wins. I think his episode has made like $600 so far. So, Kevin, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. And today we have get a cut of this or is that a Absolutely not. You can keep this $20 bill right there. Okay. At the end of your life. I'll take it. I'll take it. You can keep that. But today we actually we have a amazing guest. I say that every episode, but but this one I mean it. Uh What? Uh how do I I don't even know how to introduce you cuz you've changed the channel name. Uh so, let's just say this. I want to just call you a viral internet sensation, uh business owner, and now just a little bit of everything I would say. Yeah, Renaissance man, if you will. Renaissance man. Uh what's up guys? My name is Kong. I am the founder of an old channel called Simple Pickup. I've since changed the name to Kong Fam. Um I also now run a venture-backed startup called JumpCut where we make online courses. Our most popular one is called Viral Academy where we teach people how to start and grow their own YouTube channel. So, I actually have been watching your channel now for almost 10 years. You started out with a channel that's called Simple Pickup where you made these really hilarious I don't want to even call them skits because they weren't skits, but you would pick different ideas or concepts to go to say to say to women on the street and then see if you can get their phone number. Yeah, yeah, the concept was um you know, I I grew up as a very introverted like shy guy, very you know, typical Asian family where you don't really voice you you're like you can't be too loud, you got to keep to yourself. So, I had a hard time um basically dating for for a very long time. And it wasn't until probably around college that I kind of went on this almost like journey of of not only trying to like get girls cuz that sounds very surface level, but it was more of like trying to be a better me, trying to be a more confident person, showing my actual real self and not being afraid of that versus just like being the shy guy who stays in the corner all the time. Um so, I went through that journey. It changed my life and I wanted to make a channel that um where where people could see that look, these things that you think are really difficult, for example, going up to somebody who you think is attractive and and and trying to start a conversation with them, it's really not that hard. It's actually quite easy. Um so, we turned that into a YouTube channel essentially and uh yeah, you know, Who had that idea to turn that into a channel? I think uh well, my my college roommate at the time, Jesse, and I were like entrepreneurs at heart and we would always think like what what can we do as what how can we start a business, right? And we had all these ideas. Um couple of them failed that we tried to do, but the one that worked was making a YouTube channel. So, this was right when YouTube was started paying people. Um you know, they they just they had just come out with it like a year or two ago. And we said, "Hey, why don't we jump on this bandwagon cuz we watch YouTube way more than than than TV or movies." me. Yeah, yeah, exactly, right? So, it's like I think I can know I I think I do this. I think I know I think I know what works on YouTube, what goes viral. Um so, we put out a video and instantly it got about I want to say 50,000, 100,000 views, something like that. And then we said, "I think this is it." Um spent that whole summer spent that whole summer making more videos, got a bunch of viral hits, and then literally the semester after that we dropped out of school. So, the first video you ever made got 50,000 views right off the bat. So, quote unquote first, we made a couple ahead like before that that I believe we put out, but it just one, I knew that it sucked as soon as it came out, and two, it didn't get any views. So, technically, yes, it was the first video in the sense that like we really So, it had promotion and like Yeah, well, yeah, we pushed and tried to promote it, whereas the other videos we just kind of put it up there and then we're like, um okay, this is not really that great. How much did you make from that first video? How much did 50,000 views pay back then? Not that much, dude. I look at your CPMs today and like the people doing it today, I'm like, what? You get that much money? Um so, back then, like we would be So, so our content was also a little bit like we would swear in the videos. So, you know, sometimes we would get flagged. I would say on average we got about $1 to $1.50 So, every thousand views we would get about $1 to $1.50. Wow. Yeah. What was that first at best, it was like we signed a contract with Machinima at that time and they gave us $3. So, that was the highest we ever got. Wow. And that was like a good deal. But you were getting on some of those videos tens of millions of views. You had a few of them that were over 10 million views. Yeah, yeah. And then for those videos, the CPM actually went higher for some reason. I guess it's just because um more advertisers are are are advertising on on viral videos. I don't know. Um but it would never go above like $2 CPM. Okay. What was the first video that you released? The the one that was successful. What was it? It's got to be PG-rated. Oh, yeah, so can I can I swear on this podcast or Uh not I would prefer not. If the occasional slip, Jack edit it out. We we want to keep our high CPMs. We don't want to be flagged. We want to keep this as family-friendly as possible so we can had me on then. We just got to be getting How about I like you I I I almost can't explain it. Okay, so basically, it was called Asian um Asian private part pickup. And uh I would have to say variations of this private part word in conversation casually um before getting somebody's number. So, for example, I would say, "Hey, Jack, uh where can I jeez, I'm I'm going to butcher it now. way to say it. Yeah, there's really no way to say it. It's it's yeah. Yeah. No, here's the interesting thing. In all seriousness, I don't think you could make that video today. I think with the current environment, that would not be okay. I think back then, it was tens of millions of views. Now you couldn't get away and say a lot of the things that you could back then. Surely not. could. You just need the stones to to to to keep it up there and not you know, apologize for things. I think people are just um you know, there's definitely this wave of people who are really sensitive about these things. Um but I know plenty of comics, plenty of people who are still making really outrageous content. Dave Chappelle is one famous example, right? If you watch his specials, he's very very polarizing. He's, you know, to the point where it's it's somewhat offensive. Um but he stands by it. He says, "I'm I don't care. I'm not going to apologize for anything I say say on this stage." So, I think you can still do it. Okay. But you're going to get a lot of heat for it, for sure. Fair enough. But uh so, back then you were making these making these videos and then when was the point that you realized like you're going to move out? I remember you got a house in mid-city LA. Did you all together? Where was that? It was a it was v- You mean our first place? It was in Van Nuys, I believe. Um so, this like really part of LA for people that don't live there. Well, some of it is. Okay. Um the the neighborhood we were in was there was literally bars on people's doors. Um but uh you know, we said, "Look, let's commit to this. Let's let's do it." Um it was four dudes that lived in a two-bedroom apartment where water would turn brown when we turned it on um in the morning and uh we did that for about I want to say like nine months or something like that. You know, just toughed it out, started making money, and eventually we were able to to move into a bigger and better house and and and actually live comfortably. Did you graduate college at that time? No, no, dropped out. So, you were in college and then things were going well with the YouTube channel. So, then you just decided to drop out and pursue this and move to Van Nuys with these other guys. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, I I think that's the thing that people get really wrong, too, is that like they always say like, "Hey, look at Kong or like whatever whoever, like they didn't go to college. They did they dropped out of college." I think if you're going to college, you should do something on the side and once it takes off, then drop out. Guess who just dropped out? And I don't know if you've seen, Jack just dropped out. Yeah, I heard. Yeah. Congratulations. You're doing really well. Yeah, you're you you have something that's going on for you right now and you know, things you know, you're things are picking up. You can see the trajectory and I think that's a good time to drop out, but you know, if a lot of people always ask me on Instagram for some reason like, "Should I drop out of college? I hate it, blah blah blah blah." Well, start something on the side first and then do it. So, yeah, to answer your question, um you know, we we spent that whole summer basically trying to get as many views as possible, trying to make money, and um it was only once we got traction that we dropped out of college. And then you created a program that it was a monthly, right? $5 a month? Yeah, yeah. How much did that make? I want I'm so curious cuz now we get all the details. Yeah, so basically um for people that don't know, uh we had this kind of almost like entertainment channel where we would do these almost like prank videos, but we're you know, cheesy pickup lines, getting girls' phone numbers. Um and we had a subscription product on the back end where we would actually give advice, give uh more of a in-depth have a more in-depth discussion on how to be more confident, right? How to get more dates. Um so, at first we charged $5 a month for it and it eventually turned into, I believe, $37 a month. How much were you making? How many people pay $5 a month? When we first launched it, we made $15,000 for that month. Your first month? Or it might have been more than that. I forget. Um, but like it was under it was under 50 for sure. And that was between four people? Yes. Yeah, that's correct. So it's it's like it sounds like a lot of money, but considering all our expenses and and we share it, it really wasn't that much. Um, but over time we started building that more and more. Um, we added more features to it. We added a community feature. We added podcast, things like that. Uh, increased the price to $37 a month and at its peak I want to say we were doing about, um, two two and a half million per year on on on that Just that? Yeah, just just that program. How many people split that? Sorry, sorry. It was Gosh, I'm getting my This was like seven, eight years ago. Um, I want to say it was two to two and a half million dollars per year that plus um, our YouTube and brand deals, but 80% of it was coming from this program. Wow. about 10% of our revenue was coming from ad revenue. So you turned this in a in a few years into a three million dollar a year business. Yeah, yeah, essentially. And I think, you know, if we stuck with it, we could have grown it into a really, really big company, but um, I think at one point I, you know, the things that we were doing within that community and also on YouTube started getting redundant. It started, uh, we were kind of doing the same thing over and over again, but just rehash in a different way. And um, I just stopped being fulfilled by that. I felt like the message we wanted to get across to, you know, lonely guys around the world had already been been accomplished. Mhm. And um, I wanted to do do something bigger. You know, as an entrepreneur, I'm sure you you know as well as anybody, like you always want to do better. Like you don't want to just do the same thing over and over. You you're going to start a second channel. You're just going to start this podcast. Like you just want to do more and more. So I think for me, it was uh, starting a business that uh, that could could have more impact on the world, number one, and two, um, be be a bigger home run, if you will. Then I noticed you you uh This is great coffee, by the way. I've watched your channel and you know, I always I always judged you because I was like, there's no way this is better than Phil's coffee that I get for $5, but you know, you might have converted me. You might have converted me. This is not paid. I didn't pay you to say I didn't give you a script to read. This is your real reaction. And you know what? You actually used a light cream to coffee ratio. I would have gone a little bit heavier on the cream, enhance some of the flavors, the cinnamon toast crunch flavor that we have, but I'm glad you enjoy it. This is a this is a business opportunity right here. We'll talk after. Deal. Gram's Gram's coffee. 20 cent iced coffee. But uh, you started then after all of that, JumpCut Studios. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people of ads, yeah. We we ran a ton of ads. Like literally millions of dollars worth. So explain explain what JumpCut Studios is. So JumpCut Studios, um, well, it used to be called JumpCut Studios, then we changed it to just JumpCut. Um the original goal of JumpCut was to create online courses that didn't that weren't boring. Cuz if you look at the world of online courses right now it's basically a lot of people who are just talking to the camera, right? There's maybe some some some like nice PowerPoint thing going on, but that's pretty much it. And you know, coming from the world of YouTube we were like, this this this is when we were transitioning from Simple Pickup. We wanted to come up with like, what's our next big business idea? And coming from the world of making viral videos, we thought, we could do better than that. These guys making like online courses are so boring. And I thought that there was a really big opportunity here essentially to um to to it to help educate people in a really fun way. You know, you see people doing like that doing that kind of stuff on YouTube all the time. That's why I got these tattoos. It's inspired by um, Kurzgesagt in a nutshell. Um, because they made science and physics and astrology really, really interesting to the average people to the point where they're getting tens of millions of views per video. And so we said, why don't we do that? And we can bring the world of YouTube into online courses to make it more entertaining. So that was the premise of of of the of the um of the company. In 2016, we went through Y Combinator, raised about 1.8 million dollars in venture funding to get this company started. Yeah, yeah, it was it was a wild ride. It was a wild ride. Well, it's No, sorry, sorry. Y Combinator only gave us I want to say 125,000. Okay, that's that seems to be Yeah, 1.5 million. and then they have this thing called Demo Day where you pitch to investors and and Why do you need so much investor capital for that? We we started a course with nothing. Why do you need so much money on that? Yeah, you had the audience. I mean, all you had to do is just mention it on the channel and So we did. Okay. And then we got some traction and that's why we were able to raise 1.8 million dollars. Why why raise? Why give give away some some of the equity in it? So because because the production that we wanted to do was going to cost a lot of money. So I'll give you an example. We filmed the course with Justin Kan, the founder of Twitch, right? Um he sold his, you know, worked on Twitch, worked on Justin.tv, and then turned it into Twitch and then sold it to Amazon for like a billion dollars. We did a course with him really cinematically. We interviewed a bunch of other entrepreneurs, some some investors as well, had some really nice motion graphics on there, really great B-roll that we filmed. Um, and that whole course cost uh, cost us about $500,000 to to produce. Approximately. Geez. Yeah. Um, so that just gives you the scale of how and we didn't even get to do all the things we wanted. Wow. just gives you the scale of how how much it would cost to do something like that. So what was that exactly for? Cuz I'm still a little confused on what exactly JumpCut was. Was it like uh, a company that would help people that create courses make the courses more entertaining? No, sorry. Yeah, so let let me let's let's do do a little bit more high level here. Um, it was an online business school. Think of it like that. Mhm. So one of the courses was this one called Art of the Startup where Justin Kan was teaching how to start a startup, get venture funding, find a co-founder, all that stuff. Our most popular course, the one that you saw a lot of ads for, was called Viral Academy. That was it. So it's the name a couple of times throughout the the the years, but that's that's what it's most known as. Um, which teaches people how to start and grow their own YouTube channel. That's what I did. The YouTube Creator Academy, link down below in the description. Well, no. It's very similar, yeah. Different Yeah, different than the YouTube one, cuz the YouTube one kind of gives you like a really high level of how to do it, but ours really goes into kind of like the frameworks that you can use to make really great content. was that? Um, so Expensive, right? I think it was Not if you got in at the beginning. It was $20 a month. Okay. people are still subscribed for $20 a month. Is there content still being produced to the Not anymore. No. So we've updated it like three or four times already. Um, and now I think it's the best that it could be. Uh, but it is it used to be $1,000. Um, now we've lowered it. We have a lot of sales that that that lowered to about 500. Okay. Yeah. Wow. How much did that make? I'm just I'm curious how much it made, how much of that you saved, where you spent your money. No, and um, you know, this is a cautionary tale for all the entrepreneurs out there. We were very caught up in like the startup mentality, right? Um, so for me, I didn't care like I'm not somebody who cares about money. If I make over, let's say Get out. Yeah, I know, right? I'm on the wrong podcast. No, but like if I make more than, let's say, $100,000 a year, I'm like totally set. I'm happy. I don't I I have enough to travel um, um, and I can eat out with my friends without worrying about it. I'm totally fine. Mhm. What I want to do is I want to build a big company and and and, you know, look back and that's kind of think of it as my legacy almost. Sure. Right? So that's uh, that's a blessing and a curse. Um it's a blessing in the sense that you'll move fast at any cost, but it's a curse in the sense that, you know, we overextended basically what we believed we were capable of doing and ended up with a business model that was not built for that kind of growth. So going back to your question, how much money did we make? I I might be getting these numbers a little bit wrong, but 2016, that's the year we went through Y Combinator. We did about two two million dollars in in revenue. Okay. Um, the year after that, 2017, we did about four million. Might be like 4.5. And then the year after that, that was our best year, um, which was 2018, and we did 12 million in revenue. Wow. And about five million of that was profit in the sense that we had no clue what to do with like we wanted to spend all our money so that we don't have to pay taxes, right? Like Amazon style. Cuz if you make five million dollars, you're paying like Trump Trump lowered the taxes that year. So he made America great again. It's still it's still half. California state income tax, all the other little bits and pieces, it's half. It was yeah, it's about half, but it was less than it was before that. So you're you know, you we literally paid like two million dollars in taxes. Right. Um, but uh, our goal was to to be able to spend more than we made. So then the next year, 2019, we're still in this growth mode thinking, all right, we're this is great, everything's going fine. We continue to to ramp up uh, ad spend. We hired a ton of people. We actually hired a hiring manager to help us hire more people. We had 100 people at working for JumpCut at one time. Almost 100 people. It was like 85 people. Wow. Um and the issue was that our business model wasn't sustainable. Cuz you have to keep churning, what's the new thing, right? Exactly, exactly. And the other courses that we made weren't as big of a hit as Viral Academy. So um, you know, Too niche. That's what I learned on mine. You got to you got to appeal to the broad demographic out there. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think just like the the subject matter of of making YouTube videos was so, you know, foreign at the time. No one was really making a course for this that we were pretty much the only people that were doing it. Um, and so so eventually, you know, we started to launch more courses and we realized that was a one-off that works really, really well and we grew our team a lot banking on the fact that all these other courses would work just as well. Now, when we launched the other courses, they worked well but they didn't work well enough to support an 85-person team, right? And so, unfortunately, um you know, late last year, I basically had to lay off a ton of a ton of a ton of people and um we made the decision to essentially uh stop being a high-growth startup, right? And we said, "Look, this is a nice small business. Let's keep it cash flow positive and we'll work on another project that has better product market fit." Yeah. That's why I love the low-overhead model. For really until we until honestly about 3 months ago, it was really just me. Jack is now as of uh what? About a month now? 2 months has it been full-time? Since August 1st. Since August 1st. Full-time. Got got a Jack. I highly recommend everyone get a Jack, by the way. Jack of all trades. But I just keep everything as simple as it could be. No office space. Don't have to pay for anything. It's just the same camera. Buy buy buy it used. Towels on the lights. Just buy things once. At one point, I think my overhead um some of the best months I've ever had was like 3 400 bucks total. Yeah. All my overhead. No, I totally get it. Like when we were running Simple Pickup, that's kind of how we operated, too. We just wanted we just said, "Look, let's put as much money in our pocket as possible cuz I grew up poor." So, I was like, "Fuck that. Like I want this money." Um and uh it's different though when you when you run a startup and you have investors, right? Because now you're sending out an update every month and they're going, "Why isn't growth as as good as last month? Why why aren't you doubling your sales? Why don't you hire this person? Let's get on a call." So, there's this like pressure and then there's there's external pressure from other peers too who are you know, doing really, really well. So, they're kicking your Dude, come you can do better than this. I'll help you. I'll introduce you to the right people. So, there's this kind of like pressure, you know, the fire under your ass to grow, grow, grow under any circumstances. And again, I think it's a blessing and a curse but for us overall because the business we overestimated how how how good the business model was. It ended up not as great for us Wow. 2019. Yeah. Why did you need 85 employees? Because realistically, I mean, I have no idea how big of an operation Jump Cut was but for Graham and I, like Graham created the course and then now to maintain the course, it's very pretty low maintenance for the courses. At least on his behalf. Like why do you what were the 85 people doing? Yeah, I would say most of them so out of that 85, about 50 of them were doing customer service. Um so, we so we scaled up 50 uh a lot of customer service people in the Philippines. Um they spoke really great English but you're only paying them like, you know, four or five bucks an hour which is above the median pay uh there. And so, so um most of them were were on customer service cuz it's a pretty pricey course and you know, it's not like your course where people watch your videos and then they're like, "I like Graham. I'll go buy this." This is cold traffic that we're running ads to that we're saying, "Hey, go check out this course and buy it." So, they have a ton of questions and we trained these customer service representatives to essentially answer all these these these really nuanced questions. You know what I actually heard from somebody else? They said if you don't get a 10% refund rate, you're not selling hard enough. Because the sale is supposed to be so impactful that people are just supposed to buy it without thinking about it. And when that happens, you get about a 10% refund rate. So, if you get below that, you need to ramp up your marketing and sell harder. Believe it or not. I don't do that but I'm just saying that's from a marketing standpoint, that's typically what they recommend. Yeah. Um we we kind of operated like that for a while. We had a pretty high refunds rate but um we we we made we made a change to our refund policy where you can only get a refund now if you do all of the assignments, right? And I think that changed you know, that lowered our conversion rate but that also c- drastically lowered the refund rate as well. Um and the assignments aren't hard to do. Like people do it in like 2 hours and then send it to us and we give them a refund. Don't don't tell my co-founder I said that. Did you see a serious change when you would spend more money on ads? Like there was a direct correlation on return on like your ad spend expenses? Because when Graham did, he did a video where he launched ads for his for his courses. The ROI I think at the the peak one was a 32 time ROI. So, for every dollar I spent, I got $32 back. Why didn't you continue running it? I didn't want to be the guy. I didn't want to be that guy. Yeah, there's like this guy that Graham doesn't like. We're like, "Dislike. Unsub." after I got I got a big backlash. Because part of it was just honest experiment to be like, "Hey, let's I I had two different types of ads they ran against. One had a Lamborghini in the background and one did not. The one that did not have a Lamborghini had a much higher conversion rate. And I made a video showing you that like it's much better to be honest and and just upfront than it is about like flashy things in the back. Yeah. But I didn't want to be that guy running ads. I knew that would just hurt my credibility. I think in the short term, I can make a lot of money but I'm worried that like what would that do to the perception of me that I am running ads? Yeah, I think you know, that's one of the the problems we ran into as well where people would like you like these guys sell too hard. They're super scammy, whatever. So, um I totally get it. You know, we we made a lot of money but like at what cost, right? Now, when people see my face, they're like, "Oh, that's the guy that I see on ads all the time." Um so, yeah, it's a double-edged sword. Do you ever get recognized from the ads and not from your actual channel but you're like, "I saw your ad."? Yeah. Yeah. I get more I get recognized more from my ads now than I get recognized from my my old channel. Do people recognize you and go up to you and use the pickup lines that you had previously used? Because I feel like that would be something that that that would happen. Sometimes, yeah. Yeah, sometimes. And um it's it's it's fun um but not when I'm with my family. That makes sense. Come on. I'm trying to have dinner with my mom here. Like don't Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. So, what are you working on now? Um yeah, so now we are uh we're still running Jump Cut. You know, we're still running ads um and and still making money off of the the courses but the the there's two projects that I think are are more in term in line with what we're trying to do long-term. So, one of them is a creative agency. Um so, now we're making ads for other people. Uh if you think about like Poopourri or Squatty Potty um stuff like that. Uh have you heard of those? Squatty Potty. Okay, yeah. We basically It's like a like a Well, no, they they had a really viral ad. Oh, they did? Yeah, where where they would be like um this guy's literally eating like a like an ice cream cone from a unicorn's Oops, sorry. Delete that. Um so, you can put a funny image on the screen. You can even use their B-roll. A unicorn poops into this ice cream cone and a guy eats it and he's like, "You can make your poops better with Squatty Potty." Um and so, anyway, this went super viral. I can't believe you guys never seen it. No. Uh anyway, we're going to make ads like that for other brands. Um so, right now we're working with a company that makes probiot- like custom probiotics where they literally, you know, you send them a sample of your poop and they give you custom probiotics. Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's pretty it's pretty fascinating. Gosh. Imagine giving that to someone as a gift. Imagine sending it to the wrong address. You mix up your mail and like send it off to your aunt or something. Yeah. Yeah. So, that's one thing that we're doing. Oh, you got to turn the cameras off. You got 32 to one, huh? On the return on ad spend? Crazy, dude. Instagram was the highest. Though, I spent nothing. So, I made more money on Instagram, believe it or not, than I did from the ads with zero money spent. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, uh so, what was the second thing? Oh, yeah. So, the second thing we're working on is um a little bit I don't know if I should actually say it. It's basically a uh LinkedIn for video creators. Hm. Cool. Um now, I think we're going to be getting into the really interesting segment. I would say you're a bit of a dating expert. Mhm. Jack is single. I'm going to put you on the spot here. We need to give Jack some dating advice. I wouldn't I wouldn't say I'm a dating expert as much as I am very uh comfortable with myself when it comes to like meeting new people, right? So, uh I think dating expert means like, "Oh, he's he can get any girl he wants." That's totally not true. I get rejected all the time. Um and uh yeah, but what are you you know, what's the goal right now? What's your journey look like? He's going to have so many women hitting him up down there in the DM. Oh, yeah. Have you guys Have you guys mentioned that he's single on on the Yes and we Okay. Okay. They're sharing messages down there. All right. All right. Anyway, so explain this. Um I guess I'm not looking for anything uh specific, you know. Uh I'll take I'll take a girlfriend, you know, if that's Just like any any girlfriend? Anybody. Yeah, anyone. If there's anybody out there, please. So much No, I don't know. I'll take a girlfriend. I like stability. I'm a fan of stability. Yeah. Yeah. What do what do you what How did you Okay, how did you go from being a like a Shy, reserved. Shy, reserved person. How did you make that change? Did you do that yourself or did you have influence to to teach you how to We're going to title this video something like how to get a girlfriend or something like that. So, let's let's give some advice to everybody watching who doesn't have a girlfriend or a a boyfriend. Oh, my this card's full. We'll teach you how to get boyfriends and girlfriends. So, everyone will have lovers. That's true. Um all right, where were we? How to get a girlfriend boyfriend. How did you come out of your shell? Oh, yeah. Do you have influence? Yeah, so I mean I you know, I was inspired by this book called The Game like a while ago where this guy kind of went on the same journey as me where he would he started at this as this like geek nerd guy and then like became like a pickup artist and uh essentially became oops became uh this rockstar and now he's a very famous writer. So, um Neil Strauss if you guys don't know. So, you know, I kind of went through the same thing uh literally almost exactly like how he described in the book except you know, with various various nuances. And at the end of the day it was just putting myself out there and getting comfortable with the fact that some people just aren't going to like you and that's totally fine and some people are going to love you. So, I think you know, whenever people ask me to give them like a one-sentence piece of advice I always say just be really comfortable in your own skin. Like I think people make the mistake of always trying to impress when they meet someone or always trying to impress when they match with someone on Tinder. But I think you know, it's telling them upfront what your interests are if even if they're really weird. Showing your personality even if it's really quirky. like like music taste? What if you have really boring interests? Yeah, like personal finance. per se No, no. So, that's Yeah, so that's what you might think where it's like personal finance sounds kind of boring, but if you put that on your Tinder profile, right? Um I think that's a very very strong way to get people who are into that as well and be like yo, I love personal finance too. basically you have a cool people you have a pool of people, right? And then as soon as you say, oh yeah, I like personal finance is what goes on in my mind like 95% of the time. All of the sudden that pool of people becomes a water droplet. Yeah, but you're assuming that you could have gotten those pool of people anyway. Right? No, you're right. The reality is sorry, not you but like the reality is no one's going to attract everybody. I think the the way to really get the person who really likes you and that you also really enjoy spending time with is putting those things out there at the beginning. Now, I'm not saying put I love personal finance in your profile. There's better ways to say it, right? Um so, what if you said something like um uh things that really turn me on like something something and a high fico score. Like that's a kind of more clever way to do it where it's like It wouldn't be funny. It would be funny uh for you Kong to review his Tinder profile. Do you want to do that? Or we could cut this out. Do you if you do you want to? Is that are you are you a good Yeah, sure. connoisseur of Yeah, I think I think I'm I'm I'm pretty decent. Okay. One second. All right, so we're going to review Jack's Tinder right now. Mhm. And um I'm going to give you my honest thoughts. Uh let me just double check it beforehand to make sure it's I won't I won't read I won't read the messages. I'll just look at the the the profile. Oh, no. You want to read the message. I mean if you want me to read the messages, I'll read them. That'll get you a lot of views for sure. I did that one time with my friend Arya reading his Tinder messages. Um and uh and um it just blew up for some reason cuz people just love watching that. Could That could be a good title. Kong reads Jack's Tinder. There you go. All right. Work with a YouTuber lives in Santa Monica less than a mile away. Yes, I am that guy that did that one thing. See, I had a different bio, but it was like, hey come on the podcast, but no girl wanted no girl wanted to. So, so I just removed that and I was like, well I have to have something so that was the first thing that came I didn't put a lot of thought into Yeah, initially we wanted Jack to match a Tinder date and then bring a Tinder date on the podcast. What? It didn't work. That's great. That would be hilarious. I would totally watch that. Okay, so first thing I wouldn't say work with a YouTuber just say um I make viral videos. I make viral videos. you don't think that's a little bit overly confident? Yeah, they're like, what kind of videos you make? I link them the podcast. Okay, okay, fine. So, that makes sense. Um I would say um host of host of uh What's this called? Ice coffee podcast? Yeah. But also I I feel like that's not an accurate representation of the work that I do. This is like this I would consider a passion passion project. What if he just says works work at Graham Stephan? Is that bad? Knows Graham Stephan personally. No, no. I honestly I think you should do it and then and then they're going to look it up and be like, oh wow, this gets pretty decent views. Ah, I feel like that's just like a unnecessary flex, you know, if you will. Like I I don't like to be uh is that braggadocious to say like You know what I mean? If you want to, you can add a joke in there. Just put like um the The guy I work for makes a lot of money. Yeah, like the like the assistant My boss makes a lot of money. Yeah, yeah. Like there's a way you can make it so if you if you don't feel good about that, if you don't feel like that's part of your personality, you can just you you can say something that's a little bit more um a little bit more like self-deprecating humor. But you're still you're still you're still flexing that, right? Okay. But like you saying work with a YouTuber is like already the same thing in my opinion. You think so? Yeah, it's like the same thing. Except this one you're trying to use someone else's credit instead of instead of being confident about your own worth. Huh. Right? That's true. Cuz you do a lot of editing. Lot of really good editing. Lot of really good ideas. No, but you are the co-host of this podcast. Okay, anyway, this is my opinion. Take it with a grain of salt because I think everybody has their own personality and I I think it's it's more important to be genuine than it is to like do the right thing or like you know, whatever it is. Um That's just music. I don't think that's super significant. Oh, no. It's significant. Um yeah, put so I would change your your your bio to something that explains more about you. Like this doesn't tell me anything about you. It was supposed to be uh It's supposed to like I thought it would be the the people would see it and they'd be like, oh my gosh, what is it who is this guy? I would never have thought that. Yeah. I I think it's thought-provoking, is it not? No, not at all. No. Yeah, you should just They think I'm a loser. Like I think the I think the best ways to to do it that I've seen work really well is um talk about your interests and what you like but like write it in a really creative way. Right? So, um in one of the guides that we put out a long time ago um one of the one of the examples we gave was like instead of saying like I like to travel, you just say um Anyway, I've never really traveled what I would put is like something along the lines of um I love going to I love eating food at third world countries. Right? Trying the food there. Huh. So, it's like very specific and it's not it's not like and I do. I love Vietnam. I love Thailand. I love you know, um all the Southeast Asian countries. Um but it's specific enough to where it's interesting and then and you're not just saying I like travel. interesting point actually. Yeah. So, it's like you want to be you want to show them tell them your interests, but you don't want to be generic. You also leave them with a little something, too. Exactly. Yeah, so then it's like if they really enjoy it's like, what? What what foods have you tried there? Right? It's it's something that doesn't get brought up in conversation a lot. So, take whatever your interests are and then find a really interesting way to like phrase it. Okay. So, that it invites conversation. Okay. Um That's good picture. I wouldn't that I can't see anything there. That's uh me falling on a bike. Oh, okay. That's just That looks like a fail video from like uh what's it called? Ebaum's World. That's me and uh Kevin Abstract. I saw him at a concert. Oh, cool. Okay. That's me and Taylor Lautner when I was a sophomore. Yeah, don't put this don't put this picture. What is this? It's me and Taylor Lautner. I was a it's cool. Yeah, but do you want them to look at Taylor Lautner or do you want them to look at you? I kind of agree with that. And also you look like a kid. They're going to feel like a pedophile. They might mistake Taylor Lautner for me. No, you got to remove this, dude. You look like a kid in this. Um That was me and my dog. That's cool picture. Yeah, dog pictures. You got to take a cuter picture of your dog, dude. Come on. The one red eye. Yeah, this okay. This dog looks like it should be cute, but this picture is not very flattering. I would take a good one with your dog. my lizard. Oh, this is cool. I like this picture. That's my dog. Again, like if you're going to put a picture of a dog, let's get one that's really clear and cute. This one he looks like a like a ghost. Yeah. That's my tortoise biting my toe. That's odd. I didn't know that was up there. Yeah. Honestly, you That's me doing a handstand in a I think you have a lot of odd pictures in here. Um See, you said I got to give them a taste of who I am. Yeah, yeah. I would just put like two of these and not the the majority shouldn't be odd pictures. Right. You know, cuz at the end of the day Tinder is as much as I hate to say it is a very superficial thing. Like they want to see what you look like, right? And I think there's only like two pictures in there that show what you actually look like. Taylor Lautner one. Exac Yeah, that that's No, not even the Taylor Lautner the Taylor Lautner one you look like you're eight. Yeah, okay. That makes sense. Um and then and then maybe put like two or three weird ones. But like you should have pictures that show what you actually look like because that's what they want to see. Interesting. Yeah, I I agree. Okay, that makes sense. I've made some adjustments But dude, you have such an Yeah, you have such an interesting life like it would be a it would be a waste to not talk about all those things in your profile. Huh. And you don't have to do it in then a really like See, I think for me because I'm Asian, people have this perception of Asian people being like really shy and introverted. So, I almost have to overcompensate. That's what I found in the past at least. Um because you're white I'm guessing you're just straight-up American white. Um because of that, you might want to play down a little bit. I don't know. Depends on your personality. But there's still ways to say, "Hey, I'm really interesting and I have this great life without being like super braggy about it, right?" Huh. Oh, we got our visitor. Oh, we got the cat. got Ramsey. I appreciate that advice. Yeah, I mean like Dude, don't I I I'd say just don't be afraid to put yourself out there. Um yeah, like brag in a way that makes you feel comfortable, but let people know what you have going on, dude. To be honest, I kind of have the app right now. A lot of it is just kind of as a novelty because I do enjoy just kind of going on it and stuff. I don't I'm not really like I don't really meet up with people and I don't really carry conversations. I kind of just have it because I think I think it's really fun. But let's say let's say I meet someone in person, okay? Can we do some role-playing or something? let's do it. Okay. So, I guess I'll be the No, Graham Graham of course would be the girl. Okay. Okay. And you would be approaching Graham. So, let's say a grocery store. Okay. And Graham is wearing an outfit that you like. Okay, here. Why don't you approach Graham and then and then and then I'll give you the critique, okay? Cuz you can see me doing it on YouTube. All right. Go. Poor Jack. Okay. I've never done this before. Uh Pressure's on. Pressure's on. Okay. Okay. He- Hey, ma'am. Hi. I just wanted to say I think that your outfit's really nice. Oh. Thanks. Do Do you want to go Do you I like your What's your name? Uh Graham. It's a very pretty name. Do you come here often? I I may have se- seen you before. I got to go. I'm in a hurry. Okay. So, how did I do? Um I Okay, so first off, I wouldn't call someone I wouldn't call someone ma'am. That's That's That's number one. That's just weird. to think of other words, but lady sounded even weirder. You just don't use any noun like that. Just don't use any nouns. Um um and then second would be I You know, I try to stay away from generic like you look like I like your outfit. Um The The The What you start with doesn't really matter. It's really how you continue, right? Cuz no matter what you say, it's going to it's going to They're either going to be like down to talk or not. Maybe she's in a bad mood. Maybe she's like, "I'm in a hurry and I'm not going to talk to you. Like F off." So, um I think for for for me All right, you want to You want to do a You want to do a second role-play? Sure. right. Do you want to You want me? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Cool. All right. Um Let's see. So, what's she wearing? I would look for something situational. I'm just going to Okay, sure. Um So, let's say we're standing in line. You know, the first thing I notice is watch. I would say or her watch. I would say, "That watch looks expensive." That's hilarious. Uh thanks. Appreciate it. How much was that? Like 10,000 bucks? It's a gift. From who? Subscriber. Oh, you make YouTube videos? Yeah, I do. Do you watch YouTube? teach I teach people how to make YouTube videos. Oh, no way. Small world. That's What it What's your channel? Graham Stephan. Oh, cool. See, now I would say like, "Have you heard of like Graham Stephan or whatever?" and get into this conversation, right? But now it's more conversational versus like you're going and hitting on her. That was actually pretty good, man. So, yeah. That was really That's a good That's a good That's a good uh It's just to make a comment like that. Yeah, like I don't I generally, you know, cuz cuz when you go up and compliment somebody, um some some women will just have like a shield up and like, "Oh, he's hitting on me. I can't like I can't deal with this." and it gets them to be kind of uncomfortable. Some are really confident about it and they're like, "Hell yeah. Like I'm totally down to talk to people." Um but I think when you make more of like a situational comment like that and you're trying to be a little bit more, you know, creative or funny with it, it gets them to open up a lot more easily. Wow. That was good, man. That's crazy. Wow. And the best The best time to do it is like uh at like bars or or um you know, if you're like hanging out with a bunch of friends and you just kind of see someone, you just kind of start talking to them. It's really easy because if they just kind of turn away, you're you know, you're still there with your friends and it's totally fine. Um whereas I think a lot of people put a lot of pressure on these kind of things where they're like, "All right. I see this really attractive person." Whether it's a guy or a girl, it's like, "I see this attractive person. I got to go talk to them." and then they get in their head and then they're like, "Oh my god. I got to do it." They walk up. They go, "No, I got to Hold on. I can do this. I can And if it just becomes this like this whole thing, whereas if you make it more of a casual thing and you start talking casually, now you're just a normal human being that's starting a conversation, right? And if it's a a good conversation, you can say, "Hey, you seem really really fun. Let's get coffee sometime or let's get dinner sometime." Jeez. Yeah, that's what happens when you do it when you know, when you do those kind of things for like 10 years. Wow. What other questions you have, Jack? We got We got the the master the master here. is like a I should be charging for this this this session. I I feel I I feel I I feel weird because I feel also feel like Don't you think that our audience would want to redirect to like finance or something like that? Let's get back to it. Let's get back to the personal finance. Just Just in case we make sure we cover all the bases. That's true. You could always cut it out. Cool. What's your credit score? My credit score? I haven't checked in a while, but I believe it's 780, 790. That's fantastic. How many credit cards do you have? Dude, you know what's funny is my credit score was like really before I started watching your channel. Because Wow. um you have to understand like I dropped out of college not knowing any of this personal finance stuff, okay? So, I started making money really really easily or not easily, but like really quickly compared to a lot of other people and I didn't really know how to manage it. So, I just had it sitting in a bank for a very long time. Um uh sometimes I was late on my credit card payments not because I couldn't pay it just cuz I like forgot and I didn't give a [ __ ] Um and then it wasn't until I started watching your channel that I was like, "Oh. Wow. You can credit card hack and get all these all this free stuff." your ad spend. I can only imagine. Um so, our ad spend was it was fine because we got 2% back cash unlimited. Um so so that was fine and for for a startup, that's cash is better than points, right? Um but there were a lot of like everything before that, we didn't get We literally just used like a Bank of America credit card. Wow. crazy. And so, it wasn't until, you know, watching your channel and and a few other channels on YouTube too that I was like, "Oh my gosh. I've been doing this wrong my whole life." Right? Cuz I didn't care what my credit was. I didn't care like what credit card I used. Um I didn't understand the the benefits you get from this. And um ever since like maybe 2 3 years ago, um I started really paying attention to that and my credit is is is great now. That's awesome. So, how much are you saving now? Did your financial habits change over time? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You know, one thing that really changed for me, you know, maybe it's age. Um part of it is definitely kind of like watching you and your channel and I I really loved how you have this like almost pride in being really cheap and not spending that much money. And I was like, "That's pretty cool, man." Because the When when when I was kind of like on up-and-coming YouTuber, I'm hanging around like these pranksters, right? And like these people who are just like living at large. And so, I always felt like to be to fit in, I I I also have to do that. And um recently my mindset has really changed on Now, I'm kind of on your side where it feels good to save money. I take that to almost a almost an extreme now where, you know, I'll go to an arcade with with some friends and they'll want drinks, but it's like I brought my own vodka in my belt. It's funny. I talked about that in a video, too. I mentioned that's one of the ways to save money. I'm like, "If you're going to go to the bar and get a drink, uh don't get the drink." Yeah. And and bring your own. I I mean, I don't want to endorse people sneaking things in anywhere, but I mean Yeah. Or or if you want to do it real legit, you can just drink beforehand, go there, maybe get a diet Coke or something and just chill and then or maybe a beer like for five bucks. Um and then and then you don't have to waste money on alcohol. I used to when I went out, I would spend like $200 a a night Wow. Are you serious? think about it. If you go to a club in Hollywood, right? It's like $15 a drink. And then if you buy it for five friends, that's already like 60 70 bucks. Um so, imagine you're going to multiple bars a night and you're kind of Why are you paying for all your five friends though? They can't get their own drinks? Um so, it depends. Sometimes uh usually my friends will buy buy their own drinks, but if people are coming in for example to visit, then I I always feel like, "Hey, I should buy you a drink." Something like that. Yeah, but it's not like I'm going out buying my friends drinks or something. you. Five friends. Wow. But yeah, man. Now Now I am um I basically have the mindset of every single dollar that I save is or that I spend is a dollar that's not making me more money, right? I literally learned that from your videos. That's why I was so excited to be on this podcast. I was like, "I really learned a lot from you. You've changed my perspective on a lot of things." Yeah. Um and now Yeah. So So, my story is not the only story like that. Um a lot of YouTubers who are up-and-coming and they they suddenly get at this crap ton of money are in the same position, right? I talked to a tons of people who are like, "Hey, Kong. Yeah, I like like this one guy um Well, I shouldn't say his name, but he basically um he went through our course, got successful, and now he's making, you know, he he has his own course, too, and now he's making like every single launch $50,000, $80,000, something like that. He was like, "I don't know what to do with it." I was like, "Watch Graham Stephan's channel." thanks, man. Dude, it's awesome. It makes me really happy to hear it. Yeah, cuz you know, you go through Look, I went through business school for like 3 4 years, and they didn't teach you any of that. They taught you stupid stuff like how to segment your market and all this stuff, and I'm like, "I'm never going to use that." They don't teach you the most important thing, which is when you have money, how do you save it? How do you invest it so that you're not losing value from that money every single year by leaving it in your bank account. They don't teach you that stuff. Right. Um so, I think it's really important, you know, what you're doing, and it's it's really changed my perception on on Do you have a a rate now that you save, like 50% you try to save, 60%? Um no, I don't get as meticulous as that. Um but generally speaking, I just don't spend that much anymore. Okay. Um I'm also getting old now, so, you know, I used to party a lot. And now my body can't really handle it. So, um I'm I'm pretty responsible with it. I really will only spend money when uh when it's justified, like, you know, I'm going going to like some event with my friends or, you know, it's dinner for for a friend's birthday or something like that. Where are you investing now? Where is it all going? So, I want to say out of everything I have invested, probably uh um 60% of it is in index funds. Cool. Um or similar, like so some of it is in uh what's it called? Oh my gosh, I always forget the name. S&P 500? No, no, no, it's it's the Wealthfront. Okay, cool. You know, it's a glorified index fund. Sure. Um and then 20% of it is invested in Tesla. Um just because I've done a lot of research on that company, and after I bought a Tesla, I said, just there's no way this is not going to be the future. did you buy in Tesla? I mean, I'm still buying, like every week. But if you took the average, probably around 5 600, something like that. Pre-split? Pre-split. Pre-split, yeah. Pretty Nice job. That's not bad. the cameras. Oh, man. Oh, yeah, so so 20 Yeah, so 20% is on Tesla, and then what else? The other What do we have? 80? So, the other 20% is more like a little bit more high-risk investments. So, I've invested in a couple of startups, um and then I also have a little bit of cryptocurrency, probably like around 5 to 7%, something like that. Got it. Yeah. Do you have any goals for the next 5 years, like net worth goals or income goals, or like what what's the next thing you want to hit? Um you know, my goals are always not monetary, uh to be honest. So, I think with the creative agency, we want to create an ad that is really well respected within the ad world. So, maybe it gets featured on Adweek or like one of these like advertising magazines. Um I think that would be a really great goal for for us to hit. Um and then with the with the LinkedIn for for video creators platform, I would like 1,000 people to to be on it that are like hardcore fans. Um so, you know, we have a decent number of people on it, but we're still developing features, figuring out what people want. There's nobody that's coming back every single day to use it yet cuz it's still in beta. But if we could get a thousand people that's literally coming back every day, I'd be super happy with that. Um because that's a pretty good sign of you're getting close to product market fit. Yeah. When did you start investing? So, I I I invested in a lot of like risky stuff beforehand, to be honest, cuz I didn't know what else to do with my money. Um but I started like investing in the index funds and stuff after I watched your channel, actually. Cool. So, it was like Like 2 3 years ago, something like that? Hm. Um back when you were at like 50,000 subscribers. I was like, "This guy knows what he's talking about." You know, it's cuz cuz the thing is everybody tells me to to to invest in index funds, but the way that you described it of like, "Okay, uh 99% of it, you know, the market beats 99% of investors, and no matter how you time the market, like it's always better It's generally just better to just invest consistently every single month and get in early." And after I watched a couple of those videos videos of yours, I was like, that just mathematically makes sense. That literally mathematically just makes sense. So, I'm going to do that from now on. Um so, it was probably around 2 or 3 years ago that I started like actual investing and being smart about it. What were some of the risky investments you made? Um I got So, it's okay now, but I invested in a startup 2 years ago that was pretty risky, to be honest. Um and it was a pretty large amount of money. The company's called Flex. We made an ad for them. Anyway, so I invested in them. That was like a risky investment, quote unquote, cuz it's a startup, right? At the end of the day, startups are just risky investments. you say how much you invested? Yeah, uh it was $50,000 um in in into their company. Um and this was like basically their seed round. So, they're doing really well now, but after I made that ad for them, um I was like, crap, I got to invest in this company. It's it's too good. They have a patent on it. They bought out their other competitor, and um it's just great. But I think in the grand scheme of things, considering I just had money in the bank and I wasn't doing anything with it, that is Yeah. quite a risky investment. you made money on that? No, no. I mean, as with any startup, you don't make money until they get sold or they IPO, right? So, it's not going to be It's going to is it worth more than 50 grand now? It has to be. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, they were worth a certain valuation uh when I invested the 50 grand, but yeah, it's it's worth Yeah, it's now it's definitely higher. Okay. So, on paper you at least you made a little money so far. Yeah, exactly. Could you sell your position and like give it to some other investor? No, I mean, technically you could, but it's pretty it's pretty hard to do that unless they're like a super hot company, like when Uber was coming up, you know, and nobody could get in. Um but but uh no, it's it's generally pretty hard to do that. Let's do a quick Millennial Money on you. So, could you say some expenses that you think that you that you've had in the past that you think Graham would not approve of? Oh, I have I have a lot. All right, let's hear it. Yeah. Um Yeah, I want to hear it so I just hear how bad this is. If there's If there's anything that's bad that you think is just you look back now and you're like, "I regret spending that much money on that." There's so many. Okay. You guys are going to be here for 5 hours. All right. Um Top five. So, the first one is definitely going to the bar and buying drinks. Like, that's just so expensive. It's ridiculous. Um like every night I would go out, I would probably buy around, let's say, like eight drinks at $15 each, so you're talking about $100 a night. And then um this is not including like, you know, if we were partying, getting like bottle service or something like that, too. Now, is this a This is a a write-off, I'm assuming, because Well, yeah, everything was a write-off back then. Right. Right. Um that's how I justified it cuz it was a write-off. Um but uh Jeez. That, and then what else? Um I was always, by the way, that sober friend because I refused to go and get a drink at the bar. I did not want to do it. Yeah. Yeah, that's smart. I refused, and uh if that meant I would drive everybody, fine, but I just did not want to spend the money. I I distaste that so much. Well, now I just bring it in my in my belt. Put a water bottle in there. And then I get a Diet Coke, and then I just kind of pour some in. Um not that I recommend doing that. It's pretty shady, but you know, that's who I am. I admit it. So, who else? Um okay, so drinks was definitely a big one. I would say travel was a really big one, too, cuz I love travel, but I didn't know how to credit card hack and travel like I do now. So, I was paying for like business class tickets to places. Wow. New York, for example, flying business class, I'd pay like $2,000 $2,500. Jeez. Yeah, it was it was it was nuts, man. Um that was a that was a really big one. Um spending spending on travel and and not travel hacking. Mhm. Designer clothes? I never really got into designer clothes, uh to be honest. I See, for me, when I spend money, I always spend money on experiences. Um like these more material items weren't that important to me. Um so, if they had no function to it, I generally wouldn't spend that much money. There were a couple items that I did that I splurged on, but I don't think There's nothing I'm that I'm not proud of in terms of like clothing. It doesn't seem like you're too you were too crazy on spending or anything. It sounds like you No, no, yeah, it wasn't like Yeah, it it wasn't it wasn't like I was spending way more than I should have. It was just like I wasn't smart about it. That's all. Yeah. Um so, those are That's two. What was the third one? What about rent, housing? Thinking about should I say this or not? Um That's a yes. So, PG-rated, you should say it. Oh, no, it's definitely PG. I'm just talking about from like a legal perspective. Um okay, so, rent was actually usually fine because I uh I'd spend I I spent a lot on rent, but um most of it was written off as an office. Yeah, as an office. Because back then, when I was making YouTube videos, I was literally using most of my apartment, yeah. You know, for vlogs, for marketing materials, that kind of thing. Um could I have spent less on rent? Yeah, probably. Um but I don't necessarily regret that. Rent at its highest was $6,000. Wow. I think I remember that place cuz it had a view. Was Hollywood or downtown it looked like? Yeah, yeah. Um it was in Hollywood and well 6,000 I only paid that for like 6 months cuz I was living month to month. It was usually around 5,000 prior to that. Wow. Yeah, like 4 to 5,000 depending on which floor I lived in where I moved. The mortgage here by the way just the mortgage I think is 50 now it's $5,200 a month. For the mortgage. Wow. Yeah, this was way bigger a lot down. This is way bigger than my price. Without property tax. Well, you know in hindsight I wish I had just bought a house right? Because I didn't understand cuz I was like, you know what? I don't want to buy a house. This this was literally my mindset. I was like, I don't want to buy a house because I don't want to pay the interest. Like that's how that's how that's how stupid I was. I was like, I don't want to pay interest. I'm just going to save up until I can buy it the whole house in cash. I didn't understand that you could use the money that you don't spend on the house to invest in the market and you're making more than the interest that you're paying right? Or at the very least a write-off. Exactly. Yeah, I didn't know any of these things. Right. So my my justification was I'm just going to spend spend the money on this baller apartment and I'm going to save up until I can buy a house in cash. That was my goal. Um I know better now. So now I'm looking for a now I'm looking for a house. Here we go. In in the worst time possible. It's tough but you know what? I think good deals are to be had. They're they're out there you just got to look. They take forever to find. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure. I've not found a good deal in LA since I started looking. Oh, I started seriously not seriously but I I wanted to buy another like I wanted to buy an office space originally here and I've been looking since March. Nothing. Yeah. There's one that I loved that was a big like open concept spot. Show it to you afterwards but it sold sold a little bit higher than what I was willing to pay for it. Okay, got it. It worked out in the end. How do you calculate that though? Because if it's a little bit higher than you're willing to pay but you're willing to keep it for like 10 years doesn't that just justify like the the higher price as long as you enjoy the property? Not really. I felt there was a cap in terms of the value that I would get from it versus how much I'm willing to tie up in that property. It's a it's a really unique space that's been on the market for like a year and you just need one specific buyer for that. It's and so I was worried that in the event I needed to sell it or get a tenant it would be really hard to get a tenant or a buyer. I see what you mean. Okay. So there's just a risk that I figured I'm willing to take a risk up to a certain dollar amount and then anything over that it just it doesn't pencil out in case something were to happen. I see what you mean. Okay, okay. That makes sense. Got it. Did we ever get cuz I don't I don't know how to say I don't remember but did did you ever say exactly how what what you used to be able to to exit your shell or to be able to to turn to an extrovert? Do we Not really. Um I so yeah, in order to get out of my shell I I talked about the game and it really just came down to literally going out and talking to random people on the street and at bars. And just doing it. Yeah, like I literally just did that for like years. was that for you? Extremely uncomfortable at first. Like I was that guy that was like, oh my god I can't believe I'm doing this. Get away And your friends be like, yeah go go. Yeah, yeah essentially. You know and like it was just really really hard for the first year or two of doing that cuz I forced myself to go out there and it wasn't even just like I was trying to get girls numbers. I was literally talking to random dudes. I was literally talking to old ladies. I was literally talking to old men. Like I would force myself to go do those things and even when it was an old lady I would like Yeah. You know I I I would be like drenched in sweat. He'd be like, that looks expensive. Yeah, yeah. That's true. Looks like an expensive watch. But yeah, just doing that so many times I came to the realization that um that you just need to have fun with it. You know, I met a few people along the way that were just kind of like really naturally good at talking to people out at the bars and out in public and I realized that this is not really something that you have to be like mentally prepared for or you have to have scripted lines. It's a mindset right? It's a mindset of I don't care what other people think about me. I'm going to go out and have fun and if you don't respond to me in a positive way then I don't care. I have my friends over here. I can go back to my great life that I'm living. And so it almost came down to me accepting that I have a good life and being proud of who I am versus like I hate who I am and I have to impress people when I meet them if that makes any sense. sense. Um so it was it was a mindset shift and once I had that mindset shift and I went out and stopped caring about what people think and found like, you know, when if I got rejected I started finding that totally okay. That's when everything changed for me. And what about now? Do you ever get nervous now when you're testing yourself or is it all just so easy for you? Um no. I don't I don't get nervous. I would say the closest is like if I you know, if I see somebody who I really look up to like for example if I saw I don't know Graham Stephan Graham Stephan yeah. Um or if I saw like I don't know Elon Musk or something and we're at some networking event I'd be like, oh like you know, I get a little bit excited but I I don't think I'm ever like nervous to the point where I'm drenched in sweat like I was before. So you think you cured it. You think you got over that hurdle? Is it like riding a bike where once you get over it then you never have to worry about it again? I don't think so. I think it's very similar to to like working out. You know, you always have that voice in your head that says like you can't do this. You're worse than them. You suck. Whatever. And it's kind of like working out it's like, no I don't want to go today. I'm too tired. I'm too lazy. Like I got too much stuff to do. You're always going to have that voice but you get better at dealing with that voice and and and and you know how to handle it if that makes sense. So I I always have that those like thoughts going into a situation like that but I'm just better I just handle it better now than I did before. Yeah. So Kong thank you so much for coming on. This has been really fun, really good advice and we'll report back to you on Jack's Tinder profile. All right. Excited to hear about it. Pleasure meeting you. With that said you guys thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. Make sure Oh, you got to tell them to destroy the like button for the YouTube algorithm. Look right in that camera right there and say destroy the like All right. I want you guys to do one thing for me right now. Just one thing and that is to destroy and demolish that like button right now for the YouTube algorithm. We should get a compilation together of just every guest being like destroy the like button for the YouTube algorithm. I almost I almost wanted to say that like seductively but then I was like, I don't think that's G-rated. Tell the like button how expensive it is. Uh make sure to obviously subscribe. You can add us on Instagram links down below in the description and now we will by the way brought back the promotion of two free stocks and now they did and now it's even better. This is the best offer they've ever had. Both free stocks you're going to get are valued at minimum $8 and all the way up to 1,600 dollars. So yeah, it's actually a really good deal. Back back in the old day the first stock was only like $2 and the second stock was eight. Now they're both minimum $8. So if you want those two free stocks claim them down below in the description and they'll let us know which two free stocks you get. Thank you so much for watching and until next time. Till next time. Cool. Excellent. is. Cool. All right. Just make sure I'm in frame here. Yeah, there we go. Let me scoot over a little bit. Oh no, you're just Okay. Okay, okay. Cool. Yeah, you're good. You're good. You're good. Cool. Let's start. You want to you want to intro us Graham? Uh yeah, what episode are we? 20th. How much has the podcast made so far? 5,700. 5,700 okay. That's a good amount. Yeah. Wow. And what 20th you said? 20th. 20th. Okay. Uh look into this one.