Money Expert: These 5 Money Habits Are Keeping You POOR! | Codie Sanchez

the average American dies overweight alone and broke we sure as don't want to be the average you can definitely make your first million in a 9 to5 easier than you can an entrepreneur go steal somebody else's homework and learn on their dime instead of your own every action you take either makes or loses money for a company how much profit do you make the company because that's how you figure out how to negotiate to earn more we were taught budgeting and saving and don't have Starbucks and I don't believe in any of that what is your advice for people who want to become rich I think the best advice for people that are young is simply this idea of well there you have it everybody there is the recipe to become rich Cody Sanchez this has been a long time coming you're extremely impressive I've seen you on quite a few different podcasts every single time they blow up just because you're so knowledgeable and everyone loves you thank you for coming on the iced coffee I really appreciate it my pleasure I'm excited to be here guys so I'm curious why should people listen to You O I mean you shouldn't really I don't think you should listen to anybody on the internet question everything is actually our motto at contrarian thinking but one of the reasons that I like talking on the Internet is that I don't think enough people talk about the fact that the most important thing for any human is ownership in one shape or form so I don't think you have to listen to me but I do think you should listen to more people who say you're capable and you can do it and you should have skin in the game as opposed to a CA or a chorus of humans these days that tell you all the reasons why you can't and you're a victim and it's not possible especially in this world today what qualifies you well I guess I could give my background depends on what you shouldn't listen to me about anything to do with cooking cleaning um but when it comes to finance and investing I've been doing it a long time and so you know if you I think the best predictor of future behavior is past Behavior right and in my career I've been in finance since 2008 so a long time worked at Goldman Sachs works at State Street worked at Vanguard built a billion- dollar Asset Management business at a company called First Trust in Latin America and so I don't know a lot of things but I know a lot about how to invest and how to do it in the private Equity side of the field which is where I've spent most of my life so if that's interesting then maybe you want to listen to me um but no I don't profess that uh anybody on the internet should be listened to 100% of the time and you guys are probably the same way no how did you get started doing all that like what was your life like growing up like most young people I think nobody has won career and set path I think this idea of linear career progression is completely false and if you've talked to anybody who's had any real success all they've done consistently and linearly is fail continuously and so I was the same way I started out thinking that I wanted to be in politics I worked under a a senatorial campaign then I thought that I might want to be a lawyer so I worked for the rule 11 competency Court which is um somewhere that you go to determine if you should become a war of the state or not and then I went into journalism and I covered human trafficking along the US Mexico border for a period of years and then finally I think all of this I was trying to Circle this round if you see what's kind of consistent throughout it it's like rule of incompetency Court Freedom like should you be in charge of your future or should you not politics comes down to Freedom human trafficking certainly the ultimate freedom and what I kind of realized is um that I think the only real Freedom stems from money that I think the international language that allows freedom is green and uh that most power comes from do you understand and do you have money and if you do in this day and age you can control a lot of things and so because of that I went from becoming a journalist to well I want to understand this stuff I didn't have any money I didn't know anything about investing at the time I come from a family of very humble background my mom was a 30-year special education teacher father um you know didn't get a chance to go to college immigrated to the US and uh and so I climbed up up the ranks of Finance so maybe a little bit different than other people on the internet although you guys have been sh on he's similar I had a lot of traditional jobs for a long time before I decided to do anything on the interwebs were you always inquisitive as a kid because it seems as though you're very curious about things so I know we talk a lot about financial success on the channel but honestly what's even more important is the mental aspect that goes right alongside with it our sponsor better help is the world's largest therapy service used by over 4 million people and with over 30,000 licensed therapists within their Network you'll get access to a wide range of expertise with helpful unbiased advice so I've mentioned this before but I've had ADHD my entire life and I've always struggled with it it's a constant battle if you have ADHD you know exactly what I'm talking about but actually after a few sessions with my better heel therapist I understood it way better and actually how I can leverage my ADHD to my advantage to start all you got to do is fill out a questionnaire to help address your specific needs and then from there you'll get matched with a therapist often in 48 hours or less better help is also extremely simple to use you can talk to your therapist via text chat phone or video call and you can even message your therapist at any time or schedule live sessions when it's convenient for you plus if for any reason your therapist isn't the right fit and trust me I've had a few therapists and some of them have not been the right fit you can actually switch to a new therapist at no additional cost which is a huge benefit so if you're interested in getting started with betterhelp click the link Down Below in the description or visit betterhelp.com iedc coffee hour and get 10% off your first month of therapy again the link is down below in the description to get started today and now let's get back to the episode were you always inquisitive as a kid because it seems as though you're very curious about things Curiosity has always been an underpinning I would take a curious Optimist over a brilliant pessimist any day of the week and it's one of our core principles for hiring at our our but um you guys have a podcast because it is actually a beautiful thing when you get a chance to ask humans who have some sort of specialty how they got there why they got there what they learned and so um I learned from an an early age we used to have these four chairs in my parents uh living room and we have them to this day when I have kids I have this theory of four chairs which is basically our family would get together and instead of watching TV after dinner we would sit down and we would talk about what happened today and we would kind of debate a lot of politics in my family we would debate a lot of principles philosophy and so from a young AG I got pretty comfortable with well why do you believe that idea what is the underlying first principles thinking in that idea well if you believe this Jack like what would be the second and third effects of thinking that way and um and a funny thing happens when you ask questions continuously I think it becomes an addiction and that addiction actually can lead to a lot of intellectual progress because all you're doing is trying to figure out root truth root truth root truth and uh so I I really owe it a lot to those four chairs I think yeah were you a good student seems like a lot of entrepreneurs kind of rebel against school was that you thre my first protest at 15 so I think it depends on you mean you threw your first protest what were you protesting I was protesting uh what I think it was some rule at the time where we weren't allowed to they wanted to limit our in between hours you guys remember that was called like so you go to class and then you'd have a break in between so Administration wanted to limit that they yes they like a lunch or like a like no it's like in between each class you had like 10 minutes there we go and they wanted to limit it from 15 minutes to 10 or something like that and I think like most high performers it's very hard to sit still for you know an hour plus listening to a lecture on history from a teacher uh who you know doesn't have a speaking ability and so I struggled in school with being able to focus so I threw my first protest to say that's ridiculous like we already are sitting for cumulative 5 hours a day or something like that we should be able to move in between classes and so that was that was my were I was 15 and how do you throw a protest do you get your friends together or like what do you do also you said most high performers have a hard time listening to teachers that just kind of like Ramble On yeah were you a high performer at the time I was a high performer in that I was you know a straight A student the parents definitely had an expectation yeah now I didn't love school and I think similar I think I'm a little bit unschool and unemployable at this stage like most entrepreneurs are um hard to stay focused always questioning wondering why we're not doing X instead of Y but um but at the time you know when I threw a first protest which is a great thing for people to do at a young age I think you um you learn are you willing to take a stand are you willing to fail are you willing to put yourself out there but basically I got a bunch of my friends together we created poster boards I don't know if they still had those back in the day we went on a little strike out front of the school campus and it was a smaller town in Arizona called Arcadia and uh and we got some press coverage and then eventually you know the the principal at the time um sat down with me which was really interesting to hear what were my complaints and why do we think this one way or the other and so um yeah so that was that was the firstest they they gave us the five minutes back they did won I won yeah now that doesn't always happen but why did they want to take it down five minutes was it just because they wanted more school time or they were thinking kids are kind of like corporate overreach you know I imagine just kids just kind of hanging out maybe wasting time and class you know Idle Hands Are The Devil's play toy right and so I think from a from a facilitator's perspective people who have power always want more power is the core thesis of my life I think and that tends to be true with school teachers just as much as it's true with politicians and so in this case what is easier to manage a group of students who are all in one location with in independent supervisors much easier than when students are Milling about in between doing what they will and so I I think there's this fundamental balance between you know safety and freedom that always happens when you have structures and so in that instance of course they go hey kids aren't very safe in between their smoking you know cigarettes they're leaving campus they're getting into fights and so we could decrease that if they were just a little less free and uh I think instead of doing that we should actually teach people how to make the right decisions through correct incentives as opposed to limitations did you ever get in trouble as a kid for sure for what let's see I wasn't as bad as a lot of kids I wasn't big drinker or drug user or anything like that but I do remember my father good good lesson for any fathers out there did plant a row of cactuses in front of my window for a long time I thought that he was a an avid Gardener and it turns out there was a secondary reason for cactuses in front of my window which is uh I did sneak out I snuck out of the house and got in trouble and got caught for doing it so that was my why you sneak out of the house I'm sure meeting a boy okay you know young girl um going and causing some Shenanigans so I'm curious when I think back to to high school you can kind of point out the people that you think are going to be extremely successful later in life were you somebody that people around you were like oh yeah that Cody Sanchez girl like she's definitely going to be extremely wealthy could anyone have guessed that eventually down the line you'd be running a or owning a bunch of different businesses making famously like just under $100 million a year well um I never took no for an answer which is a beautiful thing to do I think at a young age to always ask why why why instead of just complying yes but in the high school yearbook I wasn't valedictorian you know I didn't have the traditional path that you saw from like a Ben Shapiro or a Vivic ramaswami where they just had such a high intellectual grade early that it was noted that at some point these individuals were going to go on to big things I think mine was more Brute Force you know I don't like no and I want to keep working until we solve the problem as opposed to take things at face value and so that was probably the difference but um I sort of have an underlying belief that intellect isn't important as uh never quitting and that entrepreneurship is 95% grit and 5% skills and talent for most of us and I think that was Apparent at a young age it's interesting we've been hearing that a lot lately actually that it doesn't really take intellect yeah well I mean they say that there's I mean there's a lot of research that shows that um up until a point you know it's it's like any bell curve right on either side of the bell curve you have on the low very very low end of the IQ curve that is very different ult to then succeed so there is some level of intellect that is necessary in order to succeed but actually at the very high end of the bell curve it's harder to succeed by and large um because social norms are so important and so instead of you know trying to optimize like I think we all did at a young age how high are my SATs what college am I going to get into am I smart enough it's really you know we were doing some research the other day for our companies because we're always looking at how do we determine the best people to hire at any time and when it comes to high performers what we found through looking at a myriad of studies is two which is Angela Duckworth's work on grit so you know do you continue to go forward even in the likely event of failure and then the secondary was interesting it's actually um it's actually behavioral aggression so if you were to come to me and say you get to pick between High performers and figure out which one you think will be more likely to succeed the most likely to succeed typically has this thing called behavioral aggression which basically is similar to what you see in sports let's say um it's typical to what you see in dating and it sort of holds consistent across both business dating and uh things like sports it which is simply how aggressive are you do you continue to ask questions do to continue to try to go hard after the things you want and that is a much better indicator for Success than raw intellect which I thought was interesting so you got good grades in high school then you went off to college I'm guessing right that's the next thing in the timeline how'd you do in college well I mean I went to the Harvard of the west Arizona State University which is not known for its intellectual prowess at all what do you mean Harvard of the West it's the opposite of that A J maybe there maybe there's a class not not on my radar um no Harvard is uh is nothing like ASU um but uh you know if I had one regret in life it would be that I listened to my parents who said just go for the school we get into for free go play safe you know don't go too far from the family instead if I could listen to any other advice it would be you know shoot your shot in every sense of the word in every way possible try to go for the hardest and best and highest thing that you possibly can and so instead of that they said go to ASU because you get in and it's free and I said okay that seems reasonable so I went to ASU and yeah I got good grades but I mean the classes at ASU I think I took a history of Elvis Presley class I took a Beatles 1 two and three you know this is not rigorous why do they teach you that they have to but why it's all a part of undergrad I you have to do all the prerequisite classes you have to get though why I took history of jazz seems more sophisticated it really isn't it sounds sophisticated but it's not the professor would eat hot dogs during the middle of the lecture that's incredible yeah and then one day he forgot he was eating a hot dog put it on top of the piano taught the rest of the lecture and left the room he forgot he was eating a hot dog so Happ to the hot dog I don't know I left with the professor just go to Har finish that I should have asked yeah you only ate half of it there was plenty left I don't know why they make you teach or they they teach you those lectures I don't think it's important so weird it's just a part I think a lot of what it is and for the credit of college it teaches you how to study how to learn and how to have grit kind of like what you said I mean like learning something you don't necessarily want to be learning and pushing through that is a skill and I think actually that's where most of the benefit from college comes from is pushing through that right I mean the there's fascinating data out there and it's hard to get data out of 20122 but the last data I saw said as of 2010 if you have a high school diploma versus a college degree you are going to earn somewhere around $3 million more over the lifetime earnings of an individual with a college degree than a high school grad degree and so you'll earn about a million you'll earn about four at the high end so just looking at the stats you would say college has a RI we should go to college but one I think that data is outdated over the next 10 years we're going to see that materially change and two I think um the two things that we are told about college right is that it will prepare you for the real world so this is your Preparatory class for in business in life whatever the next stage may be and the second thing when they say that they can't quite prove that one anymore is it's the network right and that's especially true I think for mbas and I went to MBA at Georgetown and I don't talk to anybody that I went to MBA at Georgetown with because actually it's not that hard school when you're contextually young seems hard and then how many of us actually think school looks hard when we've run a business when you can't pay payroll when you're close to bankruptcy when you did a deal and it's going to fail when you can't bring in any Revenue when you got to tell your friends and family that you aren't making money School actually seems quite easy by comparison and so I think the network only actually comes by doing hard things which is why all of my friends now are former business owners or current business owners because we've been through difficulty together and I actually don't think school teaches you that at all so I got good grades at ASU but what does it actually matter what about the college experience was that worth it I mean a lot of frat parties and uh tailgates for me um it's fun you know Georgetown was fun too it's beautiful campus both experiences are super fun and if my kids want to go there you know I will certainly let them do so but do I think that they might be better served by going out and actually starting a business themselves or going out and working at a few startups Yeah by and large minus the fact that I do think that we should have an in a base level understanding of philosophy like how do you think you want to show up in the world what are good ethics and values um what does it mean to have a successful life what is the definition of winning what do you want to accomplish before you die that you might not learn how to start up and so I do think we have to teach children those Classics but I'm not so sure that college actually does that anymore it's interesting that you bring brought up the data that I felt like everybody has seen where if you graduate college you're going to make 3 million times more than someone who doesn't they use that as like a weapon against us in my public high school where like everybody then felt like they needed to go to college if they were going to provide yeah why do you think that is well historically it made sense yeah but like today do you think that still applies no absolutely not I think in the future I mean we're already seeing it I was just on the news next yesterday and I did a bunch of research on it so it's top of mind and I can hopefully get the numbers right but you know today I think category Al more CEOs will hire from Twitter and product hunt than they will from universities I think receipts are bigger than rums we want you to not tell us what you've accomplished but show us think about the members of your team I have no idea where Tanner went to school uh I actually don't even know if you finished College probably not I don't even know his last name did you finish college okay there we go his mom's like what the [ __ ] um so uh you know those are not things that I ask anymore and um what I actually want to see is show me your proof of work and so I think in the future that will be a huge differentiate and we're already seeing it at a lot of the major firms I mean I was going back and forth with bology the other day who's you know kind of a categorical genius and we were joking he's like well aren't you kind of a hypocrite because you went to Georgetown for an MBA but you're telling people that MB don't have a high Roi and shouldn't do it like Ivory Tower much and they said well I went to Georgetown in 2013 and so I suppose that that's the same year that Google Glass came out I suppose my degree from Georgetown University is worth just about as much today as a Google Glass from 2013 is worth which is categorically nothing I don't actually find that there's huge value in it today I heard something recently too I think it was zip recruiter 55% of their applications no longer require a bachelor's degree so the majority of degrees out there and I think I even heard overall just outside of zip recruiter it was 45% of all jobs no longer require a bachelor's degree yeah I mean doesn't surprise me if you look at the trades you know the average welder makes somewhere around $172,000 a year now that's a high level trade that is Tak some apprenticeship in order to learn the average marketing degree makes anywhere from 37 to $65,000 a year and requires a college degree and so it's just math you know when you look at the math if the creep of degrees has increased at a level that is outpaced their level of utility from an earnings perspective then we should question it more and so so I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 20 to 30 years schools have to categorically change or um they need to start getting stop giving Government funding or they need to increase uh decrease the amount that they increase their um tuition every year so to continue the timeline you graduate college and then you go to all of these different random jobs that you mentioned in the beginning and then eventually you find yourself going into finance and becoming what was like an investment banker or financial analyst or something that my first job was Vanguard yeah so I joined their accelerated development program which is a great hack if you're young and I think a lot of people these days say don't go to corporations I actually disagree with that I think you could even skip the university as often as you want but if you can get into a corporation they actually pay you to get a mini MBA I went to Vanguard and had to take all of these licenses in order to get um Securities trained uh in order to invest and then we would go around different divisions of the company and I would have different jobs every I think it was every two months or three months it was an 18-month program and relatively hard to get into but almost every large corporation has this so um if you go to to deoe to DuPont to Vanguard you can join their accelerated development program and so I did and I did that for about 24 months two years something like that um before I realized that some companies are also super socialist and Vanguard is one of those it's an incredible company if you want to stay forever and you don't want to progress quickly and you don't want to have a meritocracy where you make money depending on how much you provide value to the company Vanguard is technically a nonprofit and so uh because of that I didn't stay there very long as Cody talks about in the episode running a successful business requires that you have the right people and the right systems in place to get the job done and thankfully with a sponsor Shopify you could get all of that and more for the low cost of just $1 Shopify is the global e-commerce platform that has already helped transform millions of businesses worldwide for example Shopify is an endless list of Integrations thirdparty apps and flexible templates to customize your store exactly how you want it and what set Shopify apart from their their competitors is their ability to turn browsers into buyers with the internet's best converting checkout that's 36% better on average than leading competitors on top of that Shopify also Powers 10% of all e-commerce Platforms in the United States including Brands like Alberts rothy and Brooklyn and in over 175 countries in fact my coffee company bankr coffee is run exclusively through Shopify and initially when we were getting started up there's no other competitor it was just Shopify that was the only platform that we even considered using because they're that good plus they have an award-winning support team to help you every step of the way so sign up for their $1 per month trial period guys it's only $1 per month at shopify.com all lowercase or visit the link Down Below in the description again the link is down below in the description to get started with just $1 it's a dollar guys thank you so much and now let's get back to the episode how does that make sense a company that only makes money by moving money how is it a socialist company well there is is a this is slightly technical but vanguard's interesting because they're actually a mutual holding company and they patented this unique structure that allows all additional profits to go back and to decreasing their fees and so that's why we see such low fees from Vanguard exchange traded funds and was patented by the CEO of the company at the time that I was there and he got zero dollars for that patent by the way because he worked at the company which is fascinating and so um Vanguard operates on a principle that I think is true which is most people want safety they don't want upside and so so people stay at Vanguard for decades and decades because they get a percentage of the profit share and they are comfortable living a life where they're highly unlikely to ever get fired Vanguard does not have mass layoffs they've never had them and so if you want to choose safety versus upside a company like Vanguard is interesting I just didn't I said I'd rather have an a likelihood to get fired but make more how much were they paying their employees like is it like a good like six figures 100 Grand a year 37k a year 36k a year or something like that my there was generally going to be upside like you you definitely make more than $36,000 a year but you could go look up on the Internet definitely the CEOs of Vanguard are one of the lowest paid uh SE Suite individuals in the country for sure and they are the one of the largest Asset Management firms in the world and so it is not dollar for dooll better pay and and I think there's a lot of virtue signaling that goes on in companies like that too like because the guy who who founded that company called Jack Bogle back in the day right you know he still drove similar to Warren Buffett incredible publicist honestly uh still drove his Camry or Buick sort of similar story every single day and then simultaneously um lived in his same house and so I remember at Vanguard back in the day you would see managers who would have a a timax and a Buick or something that they would drive into work and then you'd see them on the weekends and they'd have the rolles and they'd you know have their nice BMW or whatever um and I just I like having congruency in life it makes it a lot easier to remember things if you don't lie found that they really tried to subdue or hide their wealth from the employees was that more sort of a jealousy thing or a principle like here's what we stand for here's the image that we portray cultures of companies are just Cults right and so you know in my belief if you have a good culture in a company you have a cult-like company and what does a cult necessitate uh socialized Norms behaviors Creeds and sometimes dress often dress and so I think vanguard's cult was one of we are value based you know we don't we're not showy um we don't try to have more for me we have more for we and so because of that yeah I think they had to normalize to the quot like behavior of the company what did you decide to leave and what was the Catalyst for that because it sounds like a pretty cushy job all things considered vanguard's a great company I'm sure you get amazing benefits there amazing benefits and learned a lot that's why I think those rotational programs are a great place to start and a terrible place to die you want to leave somewhere in between so that you can continue to progress and a lot of people don't they get trapped in the sea of safety but um I actually left because of one man which is often true I think people leave jobs but they really leave bosses right and so my boss shout out Ron uh nice enough guy but um you know I wanted to move quickly and so I came up with a an idea for a division at Vanguard and at the end of how an accelerated program works is you have like 20 of us or whatever it was and at the end of your accelerated program you get placed in a division somewhere within the company permanently right and I wanted a placement to run investments in Latin America low level right I'm a nobody at that stage but I'm like I think we could do this here's how I can you know start this one segment of division other under this other one over here I'm going to come up with my own job and I did that and I gave it to Ron and Ron ran it up the food chain and they said yes to this idea but then uh which has long been a thing I've been bad at um but then I remember like very uh like it was yesterday he sat me down and he said you know we've agreed to move forward on this position I'm so excited I'm going to go do something in Latin America on the investing side and he was like um however I wanted to ask you what are your peers think of you I'm like what I don't I thought we were talking about this long story short he goes uh I think uh your peers have said that you would leave dead bodies behind you to get ahead and I was like literally figuratively you know I'm kind of like a it was like 120 blonde chick back then um like probably couldn't do that what do you mean and he's like and so he starts to peel back the layers and it's that I didn't show up for company parties and I you know kind of only worked I was at my desk all the time I was dismissive of people if they came by because I was on the phones I was focused on work I was like a very focused individual and it's sort of like that duck on the surface right you know I came from nothing Harvard of the West ASU I didn't have the fancy backgrounds these people did I didn't know what a mutual fund was when it started so on the surface I might have looked okay but I was I was [ __ ] paddling and uh and so anyway they ended up giving the job to somebody else but you created it but I created the job wow I was pissed and in retrospect he did me an incredible favor because what that led to is me saying okay so culture really matters in your career the company that you choose is important the company's culture is incredibly important for career advancement so where do I find a company where dead bodies are okay where they just want me to be a meritocracy and win and to do it ethically and morally but that it's okay to really focus on winning and that would be a seen as a good thing not a bad thing and so I found Goldman Sachs and it was a natural progression to Goldman because I found a culture where they were like we win you know and we do it ethically and morally but we win and so I left to go there how do you just up and leave and pick Goldman Sachs what's the application process like is it difficult if you ever want to get a job a top tier company which I don't know if kids even want that anymore but if you want a job at a top tier company and you want to get there fast the secret is to find the recruiters who recruit for that company and so I'm always looking for my who not my how and my who uh was Finding who the recruiters were for Goldman and so I went out and typically all Financial firms have third party recruiters that recruit for them so if you want to go work at a big Investment Bank you find the recruiter that recruits in lists at that level and so I found one I reached out to a ton of them and then I found one this guy by the name of Taran who was incredible who coached me because they make money when they place you right the average placement fee in finance is $100,000 for an analyst level role what M they pay you almost equal to the first year salary of an analyst well they did back then I don't know if they do anymore that's insanely high so just recruit people to just recruit an individual to pay that much it depends how long the person stays and what they're able to get the contract for so do these people get paid if you sign a year-long contract and you leave like a year and a day into it I don't know okay uh and the contracts are highly variable and I think you know back then they also had metrics woman Latina quota higher and that would pay differently on the recruitment yeah I don't even know if that's legal anymore but uh so I found Taran he helped prep me for the interview because recruiters do get paid every time and even if they don't get paid that amount like right now we pay recruiters who find us C- level Executives anywhere from 60 to 80,000 per sea level executive um and if we have more junior level hires those hires typically make somewhere around 3 months of the salary of the hire of the hire and so that can be really lucrative for recruiters um so I found that guy and he helped me get in the door at Goldman but it was 10 12 interviews you know presentations and hours of prep to get there just curious when you were working at Vanguard you said you were working extremely intensely and you weren't rewarded for it is this something that you always were this level of intensity because I know for a lot of viewers they hear from people like you and they're like I just don't have what it takes I don't have what what she says she does day in out she' clock in she' just grind all day is something that you think like maybe because you're from like a family of immigrants or like this is just something you were naturally born with it's like in your genes I tend to believe every human has that thing that they are meant to do that they completely lose track of time in I heard you guys talking about this with another podcast member I am annoyed when somebody interrupts my flow state of work I am grumpy I don't like it um and I'd much rather be obsessing on the things I want to do at work than doing 97% of things in life and I tend to think that every person has that It's just tough to find what it is you know I've been through probably seven or eight different careers because each time it wasn't there it wasn't right it wasn't right and so I think the sad part about humans is that we think that we have to stay in jobs we don't like doing things we don't want to do for decades because that's what work is and that's why people have like an anti-work anti hustle culture but man if you find a thing you love to do doesn't mean everyday is fun there's many many miserable miserable days but it does mean um that you can lose track of time in it just as easily as you can run a meditation or an orgasm yeah what did you do at Goldman Sachs exactly I did many things at Goldman Sachs when I first went into Goldman Sachs I worked in what was called the Gan the Goldman saxs Asset Management Group and so they brought us in there and basically at the time so this was right pre crisis so we sold Investments to institutions that Goldman had and that was fun I did that for a period and then I went to pep which is the private Equity Group um and I think they spun that off actually so then we sold Goldman saxs private Equity products to other institutions and then I went into the investment banking analyst program and I had two choices Investment Banking analyst program is interesting it's like a two-year program something like that but the problem was when I was a Goldman we were during the financial crisis and so they they fired uh every year they fired 20% of the uh of the employees at Goldman Sachs um it's part of their churn process or at least it was back then and um and I thought they were going to have to spin out the investment bank because they were under huge scrutiny and so I had a decision do I stay in the investment banking side and move forward with that or do I go to this other Vision which was the the private wealth Division and so I was deciding between that there was a lot of going on at Goldman at the time and then I chased a man to Dallas instead and left the firm uh because I wanted to be out of the Dallas office and they didn't have Investment Bank in there and they only had a segment of private wealth I didn't want to do how did you find the man he was he worked at Goldman too yeah so that was my first husband I'm I'm divorced and remarried um but we both worked there at the same time and so um so he ended up going and working at a different firm in Dallas and I you know I kind of put my my career as a back back burner and and followed in hindsight do you regret that decision no because well the only decision decision I ever regret is when I didn't strive for the really big huge thing that I wanted and um so when I decided to move to Dallas I'm actually glad I didn't stay in Investment Banking I think that was an incredible career for people you know 20 years ago and increasingly Investment Banking to me was less interesting than than private equity and so instead um I think you should step change in your career as often as you can you sort of skill stack like Adam Scott talks about right you try to get as many disperate types of skills as you can because it's really hard to be Lance Armstrong or to be you know Tiger Woods but it's not that hard to be somebody who has an amalgamation of many talents and so I'm I don't regret that decision uh because I went and aggressively pursued another another job which was State Street at the time um and I did the institutional Development Group there and so you know if there's a Common Thread it's basically these days we hear a lot of entrepreneurial stories that go like this it was really hard I didn't make any money I almost left everything lost everything so then I slept on my couch and then something took off and I worked really hard on that something and then I kept going right I think that's a lot of entrepreneurial stories these days but I think there's a huge segment of humans out there that are working in nine to FES and don't realize you can definitely make your first million in a 9 to5 actually I think easier than you can an entrepreneur because there's already systems and processes in place now making your first 10 million plus hard to do uh if you don't become an entrepreneur but your first million in a job I think is actually much easier and then you can have a cushion of which to propel yourself through the rest of your career I think a big disservice we do to entrepreneurs today is we tell them you know go now take a huge risk now you don't know anything when you're first starting out go steal somebody else's homework and learn on their dime instead of your own um and then you can have a cushion for when you want to eventually take the huge jum and you might fall but you'll be okay so when you were working at Goldman you said that your income would be reflective of your production yeah how did that look for you then when you finally felt like you were contributing to that yeah oh well I mean There Is No Greater Joy I think than seeing output done or activity done and dollar made I think it's like a great joy in business if anybody likes video games it's the same thing in business it's like you know how do you guys feel when you see a video start to take off that you spent time on how do you guys feel when you have a product and it starts to sell it is beautifully addicting and so uh I think that's where I first got addicted to this game of business was seeing at Goldman Sachs okay if I make this much in one of our funds uh for our investors here's what I get paid here's a dollar for- dooll amount if I make you know this much by bringing in this many investors here's what I make and so you know for our companies that contr and thinking Capital we try to have incentive aligned pay for every single person we can even down to like an admin because I want to instill in people this idea that every action you take either makes or loses money for a company and you should really understand if you're an employee are you a cost center or a profit Center and if you are a profit Center you should figure out how much profit do you make the company because that's how you figure out how to negotiate to earn more and I learned that at Goldman so how much were you making at Goldman and how how was your income affected by your um towards the end of Goldman probably a couple hundred thousand oh that's wow that's a lot of money and how old were you at the time uh I was in 20s early 20s that's insane well you made money at Goldman off of two things at Goldman and most of these Financial firms you make money off of salary which is really not that high I don't remember let's call it $100,000 $120,000 something like that and then bonus and bonus at that time was individually tied to how much money you're bringing in and so if I brought in x amount of you know dollars from investors I got a percentage of every single dollar I brought in uncapped upside which is I think where anybody should be so safe to say you were successful at that position yeah and do you think that gave you a lot of confidence then going in when you started buying your own businesses oh for sure I mean the good thing about Goldman a couple different things once you have a few pennies to rub together and then you can take those first pennies and make it on your own outside of your ninet to-5 I think that is probably the the single biggest trigger point for Freedom it's like how people talk about you make your first dollar on the internet and that makes life a lot easier and I think that was the same thing for me at that company I made a couple pennies and I started started investing in the stock market in 2008 well we had an economist back in the day that had a great line he would speak to a bunch of our investors and and they'd say what stock should I invest in right now in 2008 and he would say yes they be like no no what he's like pick a stock any stock because we're at rock bottom level prices right so I started investing pretty heavily in the stock market at that point and that ended up being a really good bet at the bottom of the market so your position at Goldman was it investing in public companies deploying Capital there or was it more so like buying up smaller businesses and stuff like that well the pep pep the private Equity Group was buying up bus buying up business so that's what you specialized in I mean I was so young back then I couldn't say I specialized in anything those roles when you're an analyst too I think I left and I was an associate you you're you're glorified PowerPoint maker Excel spreadsheet taker that's about it but working a lot but working like crazy it's a universe of please fixes and late nights and all you really learn is the language of Finance the language of money and hard work um and then and the language of money is really important for people to know I mean you you guys teach this all day long but um if you don't understand how people talk about money you're never going to make it you know it's just like uh money is a cruel mistress if you don't track her she'll leave you for somebody that does and it's the same thing with the language of money if you can't speak to it it's not going to speak back to you um and so that's what I really learned at Goldman so let's talk about the language of money because you bring this up a lot in your interviews does that require a certain vocabulary that certain viewers should know or is it just the way that you speak with confidence what is the language of money and how can people learn it I think it is actually vocabulary it's and it's not that comprehensive but if you spent like 10 minutes a day on Investopedia you could probably play this game pretty easily like most people don't understand Roi like what is your return on income they don't actually understand basis points which is just another way of saying fees Finance has a separate language because they want you to think that making money is harder than it is you have money and so you give it to them and they charge you a fee instead of the other way around and so I think money is a little bit like medicine it's gate kept right because there's a huge financial incentive for you to put your trust in them as opposed to yourself and so I do think people need to learn the language of money in some some way shape or form that's really interesting so you're saying that the people that know the language the people that make money with your money just kind of created this exclusive language so then it can seem like there's a higher barrier to entry and can't do it yourself I think it's yep I think that's exactly right why would you ever leave that job at Golden Sachs it seems like making that much money in your early 20s if you just grind that out yeah for like 15 years you're set for life like why risk it why even leave gr you sound like my mom my matina mom I think she cried when I left the firm um she cried I don't know she hates when I do these interviews and say stuff like that but she was not happy um listen um I do think that you have to keep I think you should stay at a job for exactly this long amount of time that you are still continuously learning with an upside to continue earning and in the beginning of your career you should optimize for learning who cares what you make in your first couple of jobs because you don't know anything and so you aren't going to be able to earn enough you just have to optimize for learning at some point you want to have the learning equal the earning but the second that you stop learning on a job is the second I think you should first tell your boss about it and then second leave and that's what I do with our employees too it's like you if you are stopping learning at any point please tell me come to me and let's figure out a plan for you to continue to learn because um I stopped learning at Goldman I felt like I had learned what I needed to learn in this this one uh individual segment and uh and I needed to move on and if I couldn't find a way to move on or move up then I was going to move out and um and that was that was basically the idea and I really wanted to do this job so there are like couple different types of jobs in finance in in Investment Banking and private Equity asset management and I wanted to do the type that was in the field like I wanted to go do due diligence on the companies individually I wanted to do Partnerships with big institutions like I wanted to give the PowerPoint presentations I didn't want to be the one creating them and uh and Goldman you know rightly so was like you're five take it easy like give it a few more years and I was like No And so that's why I went to State Street where I could go do that and play hand toand combat did they match the offer that you had with Goldman did you tell them hey I was making a few Grand like just match this plus a little more H I don't remember um I do remember I've always been interested in upside so like where can I go I don't care that much about what you start me with I don't want you to limit the top and so at that time the job that I went after was I wanted to head a Latin American Investment Group for them because they didn't have one and they were like No And instead I interviewed with 452 people and finally settled on uh this idea of I invested cash for them it was the cash management group at the time and ran a segment of the business doing that and so um my only thing that I really wanted to do was be paid dollar for dollar for everything that I brought in and keep learning and I didn't understand anything about this side of the business so that's why I went there you said you were interviewed by 452 people not literally it was probably more like I when I interviewed for State Street I flew to Boston I flew to San Francisco those are two offices uh I met a guy in Dallas for it and at each location I think I met three to five people because just had to clarify yeah yeah not literally 452 um because I wanted a job that didn't quite exist which um is a common a Common Thread and something people don't do enough you know like how thrilled would you be if somebody came to you and they were like um I've watched your business for some time I think you guys make money by doing advertising and sponsorships largely I imagine that that's tough and that you don't have enough people to do it and if I was able to bring you aligned advertisers and sponsors for your channel uh and you approved them and liked them could I come on board and be one of your distribution partners for it I'll work for you and you only have to pay me a percentage of the stuff that I bring in you guys would probably say yes yeah and and so that's what I did um and I think more people should do that continuously they wait for a job opening to come up as opposed to saying I'm actually going to I'm not going to Sniper I'm not going to rifle shot what I want I'm going to sniper shot I want to work at the ice coffee hour and so because I want to work for these two and I want to optimize for learning let me create a position that is so irresistible to them that they can't say no to me and if I do that then I bet I get to learn I bet I get to earn and they're going to have a lot of respect for me because in a world of you know rule takers uh I'm going to be a rule maker and and game recognizes game at what point did you buy your first business when did you realize that like State Street was not enough that you couldn't satisfy the entrepreneurial bug by doing these jobs well the first business I bought was actually it was called selling South back in the day and it was a Consulting business basically across the US Mexico border so that was like State Street days and um and that business did okay uh how did you just buy a business did you did you know of them ahead of time like you were familiar with them I was so they were trying to sell me services this is so I call this one of the best ways I like to buy businesses is called the personal p&l review which basically means you look at the things that you spend money on and you look at the things that you um that you get money from so I was in a business at this point but if you work in a job you could say the same thing and you figure out are any of these businesses small enough where I could actually get to the owner and if I can get to the owner can I talk to them does it seems like a business that I'd want to buy and if so can I have the conversation about buying so in this instance the guy wanted to sell me consulting services to uh Latin America as part of our business and it was a little you know kind of tiny little operation and I started talking to them and I was like God this guy's terrible at sales and yet he's pretty smart and this is actually a pretty good business model it's a product ised service why don't I why don't I negotiate with him and say you're not very good at sales it doesn't seem like you like sales I like sales and bringing people into businesses what if I buy part of your business and uh and I only do it for the amount of Revenue that I can add additionally add to your business and if that works out maybe I buy the business out right so that was one of the first transactions and how much was it 150 170 something like that not a big transaction but not all at once I kind of got to test the waters first you get a loan for something like that or you no at the time I had enough money but if I did it again uh like now I'm very greedy with personal capital I think anytime you can you want to play with other people's money instead of your own because you just decrease the risk and money is way more abundant than anybody ever thinks and so there's money all around all the time and it's there for the taking it's just you have to speak the language and you have to be able to give the ask um and most of us weren't taught that you know we were taught budgeting and saving and don't have your [ __ ] Starbucks and I don't believe in any of that although I have a lot of respect for the people that help people get out of debt because that is actually very hard once you've dug a hole but uh if you want to have upside earnings you can't you can't save your way to your first 10 million like this is not going to work and I like playing the upside game because I've never really liked budgeting I don't I don't I want to be able to spend what I want to spend when I want to spend it and the only way to do that is make a lot of money so that was the first deal and then I did another couple deals then I did a laundromat deal that was the first one that I talked about on the internet basically yeah what happened with the laundromat why laundromats I looked into laundromats like 2014 2013 I decided against it because of how Capital intensive it was and all the overhead and how competitive it was I had no idea that laundromats are so territorial like if you open up a laundromat within a certain location of another established one it's like really frowned upon in the industry and the established laundr could actually undercut the other one the new one and they'll run it a loss just to run the other one out of business if they're like really successful I've just read these crazy stories online yeah I mean I talk about uh gateway drug businesses so like what are the businesses that are simple to understand that uh don't take a ton of capital that cash flow and I like starting with those just like you would any gateway drug because they're easy they're simple and once you can understand that business then you can stair step your way to higher levels of the game and not all businesses are created equal right um and not all business models are created equal and we weren't taught that you know that's something I learned probably doing you know at Goldman and looking at all these businesses is you see like why does this business that does a million dollars a year and this business that does a million dollars a year why is this one worth5 million and this one is worth $250,000 they both make the same amount of money and like those are the classes we were never taught right things like valuations and multiples and um you know and what is what is eida a first profit and and how about thinking about the value of different types of evida and so um I bought laundr mats because I had a guy uh I always start with who as opposed to how and I had a laundr matat guy and so here I just have a lrat guy he I think you should try to be a collector of humans and so um I collect competency wherever I see person who leaves bodies beond that's exactly yeah no I actually did the I like to do the opposite of that like that person funny story actually that person who took the job that I was supposed to get at Vanguard back in the day instead is a dear friend of mine to this day her name is April reppy shout out April and uh she ended up coming my number two at the Latin America investment business that I built and so um you know when I see a human that is competent uh you guys know this how many people do you meet how about this game you go into a business how many times you go into business and go why do they do it this way why I'm in this donut shop and they could sell me a coffee with this but they don't the line is out the window why don't they hire two more people there's like a register there there's a register there wait a second they don't have a subscription model over here like once you see it you see that incompetence is all around it's the status quo most people don't want to work that hard and most people don't want to think that critically and so when you see competence when you see somebody who's good and loves the game I just try to keep them in my circle and so with this individual I met him back in the day and his name was Mike and um he was running uh another laundr mat but it was smaller and I was like if you run one and it's kind of buy this couldn't you run two and I'm running a business at the time but if I fund it for you could you couldn't you run it for me theoretically he was like yes but why would I and I was like oh it's this thing called equity and I give you a portion of it and um so that's how I started that business and then I grew to other laundr mats but I wouldn't recommend everybody go out and buy a laundr mat it's just where I started what how much did you make from that like what was involved in in running that yeah well not much for me um I try to have operators that run businesses that I don't have any expertise in I run three businesses right now which is contrarian thinking contrarian thinking capital and our hold Co so the one where we keep our small businesses um but back then you wouldn't want me running a laundr matat uh that would not have been good for anybody and so Mike ran it but I did the bookkeeping and I made sure that I understood how our banking was set up and our taxes filed and all that um and when we first did that business we made something like 60 $67,000 in profit when we bought the business and then I think we got it up to 8090 $100,000 and how much was the laundr Met uh the laundr M that we bought was about 100K and then eventually you got up to $100,000 a year in profit with the the guy only 100K because usually these laundromats are selling for like 2 to 5x what you would make in profit well couple things to think about a business is really only worth what somebody will pay for it right and so a job job of running a laundromat for $60,000 $67,000 a year is actually not that it's not that highly sought after of a job right and so that's a very it's it's what's called a micro level deal it's a very tiny deal and so the reason why I could buy that laundromat is nobody else wanted it he it been listed for a long time there was no additional market for it and nobody wanted a job for $677,000 a year running this laundr mat and you know the books are a mess or they don't even really have books it's an unbankable deal meaning you can't get debt for it and so there's all these reasons why businesses never sell but usually the reasons are they don't make enough money nobody wants the business the books are really messy and um you know they're not big enough for an institution or a strategic to come in and buy it so that's actually really really normal and if you were to look at the numbers it's really funny because people go one two ways on this deal they go no bucket way that Deal's so good who would sell it for that and then the other side they go that's a terrible deal why would you do it and there's like no in between but uh I don't actually believe in good or bad deal deal I think it's only whether it's a good or bad deal for you and that one I was like I could lose 100K and like it wouldn't bankrupt me and so I'm going to learn on this deal I'm going to learn with this guy and it's I felt like that was an okay Bet to take at that time and how' you split it between you and the operator I think he got I think he got like 30 or 40% and I got 60 or 70 but I paid him a salary so what he got whatever the salary was and then he got whatever percentage of the profits it was which is typically how I do deals so I get really granular on that first deal because for most people watching this that want to get involved in their first business or by their first business that I feel like is the hardest barrier to surpass deal your very first deal you had a connection with this consulting firm that brings people across the border is what you said the selling self yes yeah yeah so H how were you this is just like randomly yes so um how this happens is right now we think about the people that we spend money on right so if you think about your podcast production team or people who do video editing if it's outsourced or could be even your agent who has you know a 20% commission that you pay you just kind of pay it right you just pay it maybe you try to negotiate down the rate that's first level acquisition thinking which is you know I already pay this person can I negotiate it down or find somebody who's less second level is you go huh I actually really like working with this person they're good at their job um what if I just owned a portion of their company instead and that's a huge unlock for people the the second that you guys start thinking that way it'll happen to you guys too now all of a sudden you'll say I will never start a company again because I get an unfair Advantage by taking a look at a company that already exists getting to know the owner and if I'd want to do a deal with them and then I can just decide whe I want to own a portion or all of this business one way or the other and so that's what happened with that guy I was like huh this is an interesting business you're charging me a lot for this I like what you're providing what if I just own part of it and what do the numbers look like after you bought it I don't remember the exact numbers on that but um was it well worth it and probably not you know that was my very first deal so I think you know we're talking maybe you're making 50 60 $70,000 at the time that was like you know 12 years ago something like that so that wouldn't have been worth it for me at the time in a total monetary perspective but I think like stair stepping your way into deals is okay it's okay for your first deal to not be huge and replace your entire salary because you're kind of learning the first business you buy will never be the last business that you own I don't think if you do it right and so kind of depends on what you mean by is it worth it you know it was worth it from a learning perspective which is what I always go to first right and it wasn't an insignificant amount of money and if you had maybe three or four of these then it would have actually been a big piece of the pie right yeah and that one I actually ended up having to sell out of and shut down because my firm saw it as a conflict of interest State Street didn't like me having two businesses because I was in finance so could that business have become a million plus business yeah I think so I just was too much of a wuss to leave my job at the time so how many businesses did you buy until you you had to step down from State Street well I didn't step down from State Street I just went to a new a new job so instead of selling them I said oh you know I'm going to pass this off this is now a passive investment when you're in finance you have to typically any business that could be a conflict of interest you have to disclose it because we're Securities licensed and so you know imagine trying to tell your boss or having to tell your boss every time you buy a single family home you know at some point your boss is like what the [ __ ] Ram you own like 52 of them and you work for me bosses just like kind of get this resist to that so how many businesses did you buy until you Chang positions a lot probably probably 10 to 15 oh oh at State Street yes oh no for your own personal portfol I think one one and then that had conflict of interest with Stage Street and then you had to find a new job yeah exactly yeah then I went to First Trust where they were cool with it then I bought a lot of businesses at First Trust over the years um and then uh eventually six years after I was at First Trust I went to another company and at that company I became a partner cuz I bought in that was a company called at the time that was Cresco Capital Partners they s renamed and then I bought a lot more companies why are you buying so many companies doesn't it seem like a bit of a hassle why not just buy like two of them and run those really well yeah why 10 15 well one I come from private Equity so it actually makes sense right what do private Equity Funds do they buy lots of businesses so you're always a reflection of what you've been surrounded with and so most people who are entrepreneurs are like what is wrong with you why would you own 15 or 20 companies and then if you've been in private Equity you're like oh of course and then you wrap some layers around it you add some management fees you know you have a CIO at the top it's a typical fund strategy so that was just you know two ways to to play this game one is private Equity Fund where you have a lot of different companies totally different sectors typically um another way to play it is a holding company where you don't have investors you just do it by yourself that's typically what I do right now and then I guess a third way to do it is uh you have one company and you add on a bunch of Acquisitions to that one company none of them are better yeah than the other did you have a segment of businesses that you would invest in although before we go into that does your hair look like this take a look on screen if you're listening to this does it look like this and do you want it to look like this well that's a possibility thanks to our sponsor hyns hims is a 100% online platform that is changing men's Healthcare with hims you can find the right treatment to regrow your hair back in as little as 3 to 6 months him is a 100% online platform that helps you regrow your hair in as little as 3 to 6 months him uses doct trusted Min oxidal and finasteride which we discussed in detail in the more plates more dates podcast just a few weeks ago and if you don't want to take a pill hims also provides serums sprays and chewable options and if you're prescribed your medication will be shipped directly to you for free with discret packaging they also treat erectile dysfunction and weight loss if that's what you're struggling with no insurance is needed you'll pay one low price for all of your treatments online visits ongoing shipments and provider messaging and you're able to track everything on the HS app so if your hair is receding thinning at the crown or just thinning in General you can start your free online visit today at hims.com once again if you want a free online visit check out hms.com to get personalized treatment options or click the link Down Below in the description today disclaimer prescriptions require online consultation with the heare provider who DET approprate restrictions apply see.com for details important sa information subscription required price varies based on product and subscription plan and now that said let's get back to the episode did you have a segment of businesses that you would invest in and what was that cuz it seems like you know laundromats are very like a kind of like blue collar services so do you have a preference of what you specialized in well right now at contr and thinking Capital we have sort of two types of businesses we buy we have our media accelerated businesses which I think anybody who is online who is a Creator you are absolutely crazy if you are just taking advertising and sponsorship dollars you should be owning a portion of the companies that you talk about the most think about it this way if you guys didn't know this I was blown away when I saw these numbers Venture capitalists who fund startups right they give a dollar to a startup 40 cents of every dollar goes immediately to what client acquisition which is just ads it goes to Facebook it goes to Instagram it goes to Google 40 cents of every dollar that a VC gives them goes to distribution so if that's the case you should know if you are the distribution what are you worth about [ __ ] 40% of a company now they're not going to always give you that but you definitely shouldn't be taking a one-time purchase as part of your your fee and so um we have one segment of the business it's media accelerated companies so we have companies like viral cuts that does video production um for us and uh and they do video production for a ton of other people then I own a portion of that company and then we have a company called approachment that's sort of the same it's a chat box that helps accelerate how fast you respond to leads if you have a company so that's the biggest denominator of success in a small business is do you respond faster or do you respond faster whoever responds faster wins that's like the easiest rule of business that nobody pays attention to yeah it's interesting because I tried that strategy I heard of that uh four or five years ago why would you just take sponsorship just ask for Equity instead and I found a weird correlation between anytime I asked for Equity instead of payment the good companies would say no they know what they're worth they have no interest in giving up any amount of equity y but the bad companies would say oh yeah absolutely this is great and just in my mind I now get instantly suspicious you're giving that back why if you really believed in yourself why on Earth would you give up equity and it seems to remain true the companies that are really good want to keep it to themselves well it depends what your offer is so if you're going to go and have I don't know 50 sponsorships a year for ice coffee hour you don't want to go and get 50 little bets 50 little hail marries that you're going to throw with trying to get Equity what do you actually want to do you want to talk to 150 companies and you want to have four companies that you have sponsor throughout the year and by sponsorship I don't just take Equity you take something called Distributing equity and distributing Equity is basically just for all of your listeners Distributing Equity means yes you're going to you're going to give me a percentage of your company so if one day you sell I win awesome but for every percent equity you give me I want you to give me a distribution either of profit or Revenue sharing depending on what you can negotiate um so that I get paid to wait because I'm being I'm doing a lot of work this work over here is expensive and so I want to get paid to wait and so because of that you need to do a lot more due diligence to figure out which you're going to do and then you pick a few companies um but yeah it's true I mean Spotify is going to go that's cute Graham like no of course you can't have any equity in our company um but if you have um vendors that you've been working with that you already know they're great and uh then you then you probably can't get equity in that company you know or if you try friends products and you like those products you can probably get equity in that company too okay would love equity in new tonic by the way these are so good which deal would you say in the first few years really made the biggest impact where you're like okay this is 100% something that I can 100% do it's going to make me a bunch of money and this is where my future is the first deal I think the laundromat was the first deal where I realized oh I can buy a business and I cannot drive that business you know the the Consulting businesses in some of the vendors I it was basically a a Sweat Equity deal right it was I'm going to buy a portion of this but I will do this thing for you and the laundry Mount was the first one where I was like I'm not going to do anything I'm just going to invest in this and then you're going to run this business and so that one even though it's not the biggest deal I've ever done it was the most impactful because I saw what could happen if you hire great people to work for you and I think that's the real unlock for wealth that nobody wants to talk about it's it's can you attract other people to your dream is your dream big enough where other people want to stand under the umbrella of it and that was the first company that I sold a dream to somebody why does it seem like blue collar work is really underappreciated it's not sexy I mean there's something called the S Hurst Matrix and the S Hurst Matrix basically shows that the um more boring a company is and the more simple a company is the higher likelihood it has to succeed in cash flow over the long term and the lower likelihood it has to attract talent and individuals and so you know we humans are attracted to flashy sexy things for whatever reason and I think we have also been sold a Dream by Venture capitalists uh for a long time that the best way to make real wealth is to do a startup and take their money and then go build it and um and so I think it's been sort of systematically beaten into us that we want to be on the cover of Forbes with some flashy new social media site and that's what all the movies get made of like there's no movies about plumbers who make tens of millions of dollars unless they look like idiots you know and so um I don't know that there's some you know cobal of elite trying to teach us that this the service industry is bad I just think that it has had really bad PR um because you know over time how do most people get on the The Fortune 100 or the Forbes 100 wealthiest people list if you look at that list it's like it's it's basically three categories it's Finance people whether it's private Equity you know asset managers investors it's inherited money and it's people who have built businesses and the people who have built businesses category is really split more like 6040 to industries that wouldn't seem sexy agriculture uh energy um grocery as opposed to like the number of tech billionaires on there it's just that Elon Musk is a lot sexier of a story than the CEO of Walmart at least that's my thought I think there's a lot of businesses out there that are in the1 to10 million range that are just they fly under the radar but it's a lot of like you said like the plumbers electricians people running small operations um there's some businesses that I've that I've seen on YouTube where they go into it like one dudee was making millions of dollars a year putting up fences and then one I think was $600 million a year in Revenue building basements are such cool businesses I think it was either uplip or Noah Kagan yeah one of the two you're right I think it was I think it was Noah did the uh basement did your basements yeah well I think it's having a little bit of a Resurgence you know um actually our mutual buddy Chris Williamson does talk about how you know that a market is saturated once it's becoming MD right and so like every every movement goes through sort of like three phases and the first phase is Discovery right it's like the first Spider-Man movie right like this is cool I've never seen anything like it and then you get to the peak of the movement which is like holy crap there's you know Spider-Man two and 57 and then you get into the meme of Spider-Man which is like Thor Ragnarok where the hero is no longer cool he's kind of a joke right and so like each movement kind of goes through this set of stages and um and I think you know a movement is sort of at its peak tail when they started to make fun of it and so Silicon Valley and and VC is definitely there and I think people also I think we're we're at Peak Interest in boring businesses right now and it's just starting to get to a place where people are like you know some jokes about Wharton and haror grads you know all flocking to want to go buy a LUN at right and so we're we're like coming into that tale where it's going to become I think a little bit of a meme but what I'm really curious about is what happens over the next 10 or 15 years with all of these businesses transitioning you know I tend to think I don't know if Hollywood will ever catch on but I tend to think there's going to be a lot more people interested just like they are now in like the tradwife movement and in the like you know I want to go live on a farm movement I don't want to be in the city anymore movement I want to make my own sourdough bread movement I think that's same thing wants to make sourdough bread everybody sour having a moment why sourdough yeah it's it's it's the Kardashian uh whipsaw effect I think it's you know it's the same thing it's we for so long have been told if you think about it like people ask me why are women this way when I come out a podcast you seem strong and like you have a good head on your shoulders what's what's wrong with women and I always kind of giggle I'm like think about it this way when we were young we were told um you know you're going to need to carve up your face with plastic surgery you're going to have to have lips that look like a platypus you're going to have to have a waist like this an ass like this you're going to want to go you know wear all of these like kind of scandalous clothes then we were told now in these days OIC body get really skinny get rid of the BBL now we're going for like a more natural look you know are are the role models that we gave young kids was the Kardashians now maybe it's not and so I think there's just this whipsaw that happens in society and so anytime that we have something so egregious as like body dysmorphia and massive amount of plastic surgery we're going to have the opposite movement which is going to be no makeup Tallow butter no shoes sundresses so growing up obviously as a guy uh and not having a sister or anything like that I feel like this is still very honestly kind of new to me all of like this pressure and everything that like who is instilling this pressure in these young girls that they need to have these sorts of bodies is it like the news or is it like like who who is it well I think it's uh social media has been a catalyst of this for all of us it's just now coming around for you guys I think you know now it's going to be a big big movement for men where that's why we had the Andrew Tates the alpha movements all of that because we had this push back to you know what should a man be one way or the other and it was like now men should you know first it was men should cry uh men should be soft huge me too movement and then it was [ __ ] that I don't want to cry I'm going to be tough I'm going to drive Lambos I'm going to do whatever and then I think the next St stage of man is going to be something else Chris Williamson might be a product of it the Phil the philosopher king you know this yeah right the the I am strong but I am also thoughtful and soft and not a [ __ ] boy you know and so we kind of see these movements go and you know liver King out Chris Williamson in um and uh he's gonna love that comparison but with with women just the same with men it's just it's social mirrors we're all a programming of the things that surround us with mtic desire 101 human beings are program to want the things that we see other people having and um you know Joe despenza talks about this a lot that we kind of become the things that other people are because we don't actually know innately what we want individually and so young girls just saw filters and makeup and you know XYZ that they needed to have on and thought that that was normal how did that affect you um I've always been a bit of a tomboy so the only thing that affects me on that is thinking about you know actually mine's different the weird part for women which nobody's going to care about on YouTube I think is like once you start aging as a woman it's a really weird phenomenon so like I'm in my later 30s and starting to think about what is it what does it look like to be like a middle-aged woman you know there's like a stereotype to what is middle-aged and so that part's going to be interesting I think and tough especially when you're watching it on camera all the time you know like what does my face look like you know what about when wrinkles come and bags or is it because you're getting comments or feedback telling you this or is this not yet thank God but no I think about it I try to forward think about what are the things that will I try to think about going forward where could I fall into societal traps right and I think that's one of them and that's why people's face can end up getting crazy looking at a certain point if you have money because you worry about that how do you deal with some of those societal pressures that they put on you let's say to why aren't why don't you have kids yet and all of these things why do you focus so much on your career I can't remember who said it but uh there's a line I love which is in order to be successful you have to have someone who loves you greatly and you have to have a great enemy and I always liked this idea the great enemy is somebody to overcome it's David versus Goliath it's um this big huge goal in front of you and the someone who loves you unconditionally is you know the mother figure the partner figure Etc and so a lot of where I get my grounding is those closest to me you know I have an incredible husband and I I think partnership is probably the foundation for success for me it's a lot easier to strive far when you have somebody that you can really rely on and you're a team together so I treasure that and then the other side of the coin is you know you build up an armor of nose I think being online you guys have gone through it um you get a little bit desensitized to the amount of negative commentary that comes to you because you get so much of it um and so I think it's a constant game but I did I was reading somewhere that human brains are wired to ignore positive feedback and compliments and to focus on uh detractions or um not compliments and it makes sense so basically what is Fame then that means that Fame is essentially a few periodic moments of bliss in the form of a lot of compliments a lot of attention uh largely predominated by uh negative commentary because you just get so much of it if you open your feedback loop and you don't remember the positive but you remember the negative and you start to get kind of famous what are you what's going to happen you're going to remember more of the negative commentary because you just get so much of it and so I try to think about that philosophically when I post online or when somebody doesn't like something that I do that just this is my lizard brain and that's how it's going to function what do you think of gender roles and do you think they might exist for a reason I mean some some parts of it yeah I think Anatomy is real and uh I do not want my husband to be exactly equal to me that is a personal preference I think anybody can be whatever they want in their relationships but for me I like my man and my husband strong and able to take care of me and be a protector and simultaneously he's an incredible cook so he does most of the cooking and um and so you know and I've made a lot of money for a lot of a lot of years and he was an Navy SEAL and they don't pay very well and so we have that flipped Dynamic now it's interesting because I'm going to go on another podcast here which you guys know today that we'll probably talk about some of this and he has very traditional gender r well we could just say it cuz you know Brad Lee right you know Brad is like I'm the man and when I what did he tell the other day that I'm going to give him [ __ ] about today he's like uh he's like I have a magical carpet and he's like on this magical carpet when I set something down on it disappears you know how is my wife picks it up because I make the money and she picks up the stuff and you know he's actually a lovely guy um but I was joking with him that like that wouldn't worked for me but that doesn't mean that you know his is wrong and mine is Right which is my biggest beef with the internet these days I'm like let's yeah let's have strength space relationships which is what my husband and I have I'm good at this he's good at that and we allow each other to be great at the things that we're great at and we don't feel badly for it and we do only what works for us and [ __ ] everybody else yeah are there any difficulties having an income inequality between you and your husband I think uh if if he ever optimized for earnings as his definition it would be tough I think men who think that the only way that they are masculine is by the amount of money that they earn that would be difficult my husband never optimized for that he optimized for becoming a warrior an incredibly strong individual both mentally and physically um and living by code in a world that was codeless and so for him you know if he wanted to optimize for money he could do just as well that just wasn't his code and so I think that's also really beautiful in a relationship to determine what's code familially and individually like if your wife's code is that I am the protector of our children and I am their Shepherd to becoming incredible humans that's a beautiful code and if the husbands is that I am the protector of the family financially and I'm going to be the one that determines our ability to live within a society that's based on money that's a beautiful code and so um it really just depends on you finding the person that aligns with your code in my opinion how did you meet him though my father actually old arranged marriage um the uh the we both grew up in Arizona and um Chris and my father used to hunt together and so I've known Chris since I was like 10 years old we've known each other for whatever I don't want to give away my age but a long time and uh he uh used to hunt with my dad for years and years and years and after I got divorced you know my dad wanted me to find a nice guy again and so uh introduced me to Chris and there's an old um I should have brought one for for you guys I will next time there's there's a um there's a tradition inside the teams which is what they call the Navy Seals where when somebody does something really special for you you gift them both a knife and a coin and the knife is a reminder of you know the fact that we all are these these Warriors if we choose to be and the coin is something they're supposed to give back to you which is um it started from the challenge coin uh which was started during World War II challenge coins were given by pilots for achieving certain things and so they give the coin back to you and so he did that for my father and my father thought it was really cool and so I actually slipped into his DMS and said thank you for doing that and we struck up a relationship um I was living in Chile at the time he was unemployment and then it's been uh been Off to the Races ever since then was there ever any power dynamic because you made so much more money no I remember I remember exactly like the moment that I knew that Chris was going to be the one for me and that was I was uh struggling with my career I was going to get pushed out of a firm essentially and um and I didn't know what I was going to do and I had def find myself most of my Life by What My Title was what I earned and you know who I was you know like do you know who I am by the work that I do and that's how I defined myself and I was rudderless because I had built this really big business for somebody and they were saying that I wasn't good enough and um and I remember Chris came down to this like nice hotel we were at and I told him like Hey you know I might have to leave this firm because I don't think I can align with what they're doing and I and I think I'm going to get pushed out and he was making I don't know what you make when you're a Navy SEAL at that amount but not very much in comparison and he just like looked at me and he was like I got you like I'll take care of all the expenses you can move in with me it doesn't matter what you make I got you and I remember kind of chuckling at first cuz I was like you don't know how much I spend so like what are you signing up for but um but it was that moment where he did not care he was like we will live in you know we'll we'll live in a tent together like it doesn't matter and like we've been through harder things than this he's like and he often will look at me and he did that day and he was like well is anybody going to die and I was like no and he's like then I think we can figure it out and so now a lot of times we say to each other well is anybody going to die when something happens and if nobody's going to die we'll probably figure it out and so never a power dynamic because he sees the world differently good could use that on Graham oh time you know I'm trying to make a left turn and he's like no Jack don't go down that street it's going to take a long time we're going to wait at the light anyone going to die anyone going to die use that on everything everything I thank you for giving me that 10 out of 10 we got to fix it but is anyone going to die there we go know it's funny it's a good line I love talking about dating hopefully we'll get back into that but feel like we need to finish up this timeline okay do so you started acquiring all of these businesses your first like real confidence boost was the laundromat how did it evolve from there until now where it's just I mean I don't even know what to call it now it like it reminds me of a very horos esque thing just because we're so familiar with him that's why I related to that uh where it's kind of like your own family office in a sense yeah well that's what it was for a long time so um Alex and L dear friends I respect them immensely um it started as a family office uh which was just me and my chief investment officer while I was still working at a few firms and then common story you know I was I kind of got pushed out again of another firm like I really had this belief that nobody believed at the time that that the way we raised money and did deals was going to be on the internet in the future and that we would no longer go and do steak dinners and Road shows which is the way that stuff got done in the past it was going to be the internet we were going to drive deals to us from the internet we were going to drive investors to us from the internet my partners disagreed and so they said two options like you know you go do your own thing uh or you do it you know our way cuz there are four of us and they disagree all three of them disagree with me and I said well I can't do it your way and so um so I finished up the last fund with them and and we're still friends to this day and I went and said I'm going to start talking about what I do online and um that was in 2020 and I had already had this portfolio of businesses and I started getting this inkling that people thought it was interesting because I spoke on a few panels randomly in the industry and people were like what you buy businesses and anybody can do it how does that work and I'm like oh interesting and so because I noticed that we just started talking about on the internet and that's when contrarian thinking was born during the pandemic when I couldn't run around and do po uh Road shows anyway and so um from there we just grew the business I started to realize wait a second we can have media be our Salesforce so typically you have when you have a private Equity Firm uh you have like two types of sales teams you can call them you have somebody that brings in your deals and you have some that brings in your investors right so twofold distribution and um and I was like I think we could take both of those and we can change from humans into content and that was my bet it turned out to be right and so we started telling people hey we buy businesses and because of that I started getting more businesses and then I started saying hey we do individual deals and so then we have a few deals that we did spvs on with individual investors and we brought in some of my good friends now to this day who are that now we don't take public money anymore but um and that turned into what I now call the Main Street holding company which started out as a glorified family office and um I remember when I was first talking to Alex and Leila and they were thinking about Acquisitions you know we were talking about it and I was like I'll tell you what happens because there's like a proven path for everybody that does this and it's why it exists the way that it exists you have Venture Capital which is tiny little percentage of equity in a company plus godp speed good luck they don't really help you right anybody who says they're value ad they're really not very value ad it's like tiny we'll take a tiny percent of company we'll invest than a thousand of you [ __ ] and couple of you were survive and we'll make all our money off of that which is called modern portfolio Theory then you've got over here private Equity right which is like we're going to have a lot fewer players but we're going to own basically all of you and anything that is in the middle I call the tragedy of the commons and the tragedy of the commons is when you own a small percentage of companies but you actually have to operate them too and that's awful and so um what we did is we we basically barbell it so now we have a venture capital fund where we do what I just talked about and we have our private Equity holding company where we own most of the underlying businesses and that's what we do today so where's most of the revenue coming from across everything well the biggest segment of Revenue is from the holding company so the holding company is where we hold all of our cash flowing businesses and all the Investments that have just had a long time to percolate because we've been doing this for a decade plus um so that's our biggest investment uh the Venture Capital basically has no income it's a smallish fund and that's all like an asymmetric bet maybe on the upside and and then I guess you know over here at the top you have contrarian thinking which is the media company the media company I sort of treat it like uh it's almost not profitable because we take all the money we make from education and courses and we funnel it back into Tanner Tanner's huge bonus um but our uh our media company and so we use the dollars that we get from education and courses to get more followers and create what I call a virtuous cycle and then from that virtuous cycle we also get deals and if we want to money we could get investors so the holding company that's where the $80 million a year comes from yeah okay and then of this holding company if we're getting a little bit more granular let's say we got a little pie okay Grand loves the pie why can't we have a cake sure it's a cake what kind of cake Graham uh red velvet ew are you kidding me red velvet no we're not doing I veto that I V because you hate it all right F he lime pie oh that's worse are you kidding me chocolate just say chocolate chocolate chocolate okay so we got a chocolate pie okay cake chocolate cake all right chocolate cake what do these slices look like I'm sure that it's probably a few businesses that do a bulk of the income and then everything else is kind of just like minuscule little gram slices yeah thanks what do it what does it look like he doesn't eat much that's why he doesn't eat much so in the Main Street holding company uh there's there's kind of those three types of business I talked about so we have media accelerated businesses we have uh real estate uh based businesses which are things like mobile home parks um property management companies Airbnb businesses and then we have uh boring businesses typically service or professional based businesses and so of those you know we have 25 businesses the what do you want the percentage of breakdown between the three types sure yeah um let's see so in the media accelerated businesses that's probably our smallest slice that's what I want to be our biggest slice it's our smallest right now let's call it 10 or 15% and those are like the viral Cuts thing and yeah and we have we'll talk about this in a second where I want to go but um that's probably the smallest slice then the next bigger slice would be the boring service based businesses and then the final slice would be the real estate businesses which are probably more like 20 25% so what does that leave 60 60 65% boring businesses what's the best business for someone to buy what makes the most money the best business to buy is your unfair advantage bus which is a super annoying answer except it's true anybody who tells you like so I don't like people on the internet they go it should be Drop Shipping it should be Amazon FBA it should be laundromats no it shouldn't the there's like 10 steps to buying a business that I talk about and the most important step is step two which is what's called your dealbox how you decide what you should invest in individually and so everybody wants the 30 second answer which is you should buy gems because that's what horos does um that's that's actually not right in my opinion the right thing is you have to go down this checklist of like the Oracle of Deli said knowing yourself and so once you know there's like basically five key segments any business right every business has marketing they have operations they have product they typically have uh like sales of some component of it and they have Finance right and every single one of us typically has one or two skill sets of those five things so you guys may be great at sales in marketing maybe you're not so good at operations and finance and so what I really like to do is have people think about what type of business is best for you a business that needs more sales a business that needs better operations a business that needs better product and to focus on the type of business that needs that so that's my long-winded answer to that and how do you hire people and how do you look for the a players a couple things with a players in particular we have uh an idea overall that we think a competent Optimist is worth about six figures more than a really brilliant pessimist and so when I'm looking at a players one I want optimists because optimists make money and pessimists make the news and so we obsess on this idea of optimism and one of uh you know Tanner's quotes for this year that was really good is it's our our mantra for 2023 is like we're optimistically discontent so we're consistently slightly upset with where we're at but optimistic about where we can go and that's what I want in the people that we hire we have a list of characteristics for a players that we hire and a couple of them are things like this the best predictor of future behavior is past Behavior so we want a history of winning I call this a wall of medals so you don't actually want to bet on somebody who has Bumble [ __ ] their way through life today let them get a few wins under their belt and then hire them because there's something called uh continual velocity right so the likelihood of you continuing to move quickly if you've moved quickly historically is higher and that's the same thing with humans we also want Shepherds not sheep and so the best hires are people where you go amazing Graham We want to hire you who else would you bring and if they go oh I don't I don't know that means they're not a leader okay and so you want to find people who are already going to bring your next couple of people super super important and then you know the last thing that I think is is really important is obsessed people will always beat interested people and so we hire people who are obsessed with something doesn't have to be what we're talking about but I always talk to them about like what is the thing that you can't stop doing even if you tried like where do you lose all sense of time uh when was the last time uh you stayed up almost all night working on something because you chose to not because you had to and I want to find the people who have that what are the dangers with hiring B players I found it so interesting I think it was Tom Bilu about how B players bring you down bring down the whole team significantly a a players bring everyone up yeah so like what's been your experience on that what's the studies behind that yeah there's an incredible study that basically shows proximity to Performance so if I sit next to Graham and Jake if you sit next to an under oh I call you Jake Graham and Jake Jack Graham and Joe um and Jake and you are chocolate cake and Jake I remember that now get that for the red velvet comment and the key line pie it's G to give me all the hard questions now like you do all the guests okay so um if you sit next to an underperformer at your company you are about well let's actually flip the other way because it'll build up the expense suspense if you sit next to a high performer at a company that high performer on average will increase your performance by 15% if you sit next to a low performer at your company that low performer will decrease your productivity by about 30% and so if you think about it this way the people that you surround yourself with well whatever energy that they bring it's contagious and so for our teams I obsess on this fact and we've all felt it you've felt that person who sat next to you who you're like God shut up Marge like it's not always negative I don't feel good at the end of these conversations I don't feel like we're we're progressing that is a real phenomenon and now there's a lot of studies Arthur Brooks has incredible studies on the effect of Happiness as Contagion on the effect of obesity as Contagion on the effect of divorce test contagion and the same thing tends to be true with performance if you surround yourself with high performers you will perform higher if you surround yourself with low performers you will double your underperformance and of course these are laws of averages not individuals but important to know the law that's really interesting why is it that b players have that big of an effect on people like let's say I'm at the top I'm an a player why would let's say Jack's a b player let's say Jake you're the Jake you're the b player I'm the a player Jake is the B player why would that impact me to that degree would it just be a distraction would I just be less motivated like does that really have I like to think that I'm somewhat like impenetrable that I have this thing around me no matter what's going on like I could still give it my all I can see him doubting you on this I can see the doubt on his face um okay so I have a couple different theories and it's hard to to determine um you know causation as opposed to correlation but um in this instance what I've seen is um your high performers will be the ones that are most annoyed by your low low performers and so if you have really high performers on a team and you you make them babysit or you make them Step Up for your low performers they won't stay so on average they're going their annoyance level is higher than anybody else because they're these people are in their way so when that happens one fascinating you start to lose more High performers what does that mean you start to more underperformers which means that then you have an effect that ripples wider so that's one thing I've noticed in our companies second is that I do think we underestimate the impact of distraction so there's a lot of studies out on this and I'll probably get the numbers incorrect but there's a lot of studies that show the um the negative consequences of uh task switching right and that in effect you think well you know I don't know Graham just came in and bothered me for 30 seconds so that means I lost 30 seconds well it doesn't actually mean that because Jack might have to go really deep back into his work by rereading going backwards getting refocused getting another cup of coffee that 30 seconds may actually have a 20 minute effect on him and so even if you're impenetrable none of us are impen impenetrable to task switching and the Ripple effects of it so those are the two things I see that's really interesting you've talked also about seeing behind the curtain could you explain that behind the curtain basically means two two things in my mind when I was younger I thought that the people who were successful were something magical you know like they had a different gear They Were Somehow wired different and you guys have met a lot of successful people and I'm sure what you've probably noticed is maybe there's a few things different but they're wildly human that the people at the top are just like the rest of us and once you normalize that I think it's something that it's hard to unsee ever again it's like you see through the Matrix you know and you realize that this little guy is just standing on a stool and like most people that stool was his unfair advantage that he got to stand on one way or the other you know the second behind the curtain that I think I noticed early on is how much the people at the top work together so you know if think about us the Ripple effects that we have from I know you through XYZ you also know me here we both know Chris we've talked about Alex we've hit on you know some of the other media companies we've worked with and behind the curtain is a series of humans who are all interconnected and so one of the unfair advantages and hacks I think people can do is like how can you break not into individuals but into circles because once you break into a behind the curtain Circle you just move faster it's like they're on an an elevator and they're all together and you think that they're sprinting up the stairs but together actually it's a lot easier than it is individually and so that's what I mean by behind the c why do you think people get so jealous at seeing someone's success because I remember as a kid like 16 years old you'd see this young guy driving down in a Ferrari or like a Lamborghini and I never understood why someone would look at that person think uh it must be daddy's money it's spoiled i' look at that and think what is this person doing how did he do that is he self-made is it if it's family money what did his dad do it or his parents why do people look at that with envy and disgust yeah well I think you're wired that way because you know that curiosity is the biggest driver for long-term cash flow you know the more Curious you are the more cash you're going to make the more Curious you are the more you're going to win because you're actively trying to find answers non-stop um sadly I think when you win you become a reflection for everybody else's non achievements and so you took the the shot you risked the failure you went for what if because you know that only lasts for a moment instead of why never which lasts for a lifetime right right and so I think for most people it's sadly it's not about you it's that when they see success they see all the things that they should have done but they never did and you know there's an old adage which is basically that that I found to be true in about 80% of humans 80% of humans want you to be just slightly less successful than them and the second that you go beyond their success level there's envy and there is a decreasing um selfworth basically why haven't I done that and so once you realize you realize it's very painful I mean dandi who's a kind of like an Indian Guru I listen to he has this incredible uh thing he does and it's called the tissue Challenge and basically if you could imagine it like this so imagine I have a a tissue in my hand right here and I'm holding the middle of it and on each of the corners of the tissue is like your best friend um a business partner your mom your brother right as you have more and more success what do you do you make yourself higher than them that's hard for people again it's a negative reflection of the things that they have not accomplished and that you have for most humans but eventually what happens is you continue lifting the tissue if they stay on it with you everybody lifts right so I think that we have this unique ability if we are winning to pull everybody else alongside us and the people who stand your tissue are the ones who when they see the Ferrari they go WoW instead of why what is your advice for people who want to become rich or want to Achieve Financial Independence where do they even start cuz in your case they could say well yeah you had a sixf figure job you had all the savings you're making a ton of money I'm working 9 to5 I have no savings I'm paycheck to paycheck how does this apply to me yeah well I think I think my path might be the easiest path to millions that anybody's taken which is came from nothing got my first job for $37,000 a year and worked for a bunch of other people for I don't know 8 years climbing the ladder without a lot of risk and so you know I was a public school kid I didn't make a lot of money out of college the only thing that's different is that you just stop taking no for an answer and um I am I didn't have a brilliant idea to do early on I I didn't have a cool business model I thought that I should try you know I was I was devoid of any way that I could see to start my own business in fact I had so little I had so little creativity with it that I had to go and work for other people and then I had to buy other people's businesses right because I didn't have the idea of how to start it by myself it took me a long time to do that and so I actually think the fastest path for people that is generalizable because a lot of advice is actually just you telling people what you did because it worked for you I think the best advice for people that are young is simply this idea of you learn you earn then you invest then you compound and that's it it's like how can you learn as much as possible how can you continue to increase your earnings how can you start investing those earnings continuously and how can you continue to Compound on that and if you can learn that if you can do that while not taking no for an answer it's I think it's pretty hard to to not succeed and in fact I mean look at some of the people at the top who came from absolutely nothing there's there's a flavor for everybody in America today and what about women specifically it's not very often that we get actually a woman on the show most of the time they're guys and then same for the viers most of the viewers are guys but for the women watching right now how would they do it and then also on top of that what are your thoughts since it's in the news right now on Dei yeah well let's start with Dei because that's a fun one I think Dei is really harmful for members of the diversity and inclusion group and the reason why I think it's hard for is because you're immediately labeling yourself as someone who needs help as someone who is less than as someone who is a victim in one shape or form and and um you know I remember many times uh I would get speech requests or I would get somebody asking me to be on a board or something and they would say we need a female CEO and I just said no if you need a CEO we can talk but if you want to speak to me only because I have a vagina as opposed to a penis that makes no sense in business what's the difference the only time that makes sense is if I'm trying to go for a female audience particularly in my anatomy in some way is necessary for the business to move forward but I actually think it does us a huge disservice to focus in in this specific way now do I think that there is a huge advantage to be part of a powerful majority yes 100% being part of a power powerful majority is real in any situation um and so you know I there were many times where I felt like I got left out because I was a woman um where I didn't you know just and not even from a sexist perspective from a very reasonable perspective like you know if I was single and you know you have your lovely fiance fiance here and um you know I was texting you late at night and we were only talking about business stuff but then we were going to go grab dinner she might be like it's a little weird like why are you you know don't do that respect what we have here right and that's totally reasonable but if most of the men at the top are you know the ones in powerful positions if uh Jack was you know texting you late at night doing that she wouldn't care you wouldn't think anything of it and so inherently there's like a little bit of difference between the two and I think we have to realize that does it feel or have you gotten comments of people saying like oh you are where you are because of Dei because I wonder if now that's like working against people like you who have gotten to the position you're in purely based off of Mer yeah no I mostly get you know uh must be nice having Daddy's trust fund or uh you know did your husband make all the money or um do you get pretty privilege ever no I would I would be like no like that comment yes absolutely PR for um I do tend to believe like anything somebody says to me I try to flip it to the perspective of how could this help me as opposed to why is this annoying you know and so I try to just let that roll off but no the you know what annoys me is that um I actually this is maybe dumb I did not really think that misogyny or sexism really existed very much anymore in the US before I got on the internet because my best mentors were men like asexually like you know not in any way shape or form like that my I'm incredibly close my dad my brother have an incredible husband most of my team is guys um and so I have a lot of respect for the opposite sex and I never really got it I didn't think I got pushed back because of that I thought there were in you know some instances but we all have those you know maybe I had an unfair Advantage here and they didn't I'm easy to remember you're not if everybody's name is Jack Jake Todd Chad you know like harder right and so I I kind of thought it was good but then I got on the internet and I did find that man people are nuts on the internet what are they saying like for instance um you know must be nice you were a secretary at Goldman Sachs that one bothered me like I had a tweet real go really really viral and uh and and yeah like somebody you know and they get rolling together you know and so they're like yeah I bet she was a secretary there and then you know then I'm like I'm going to show them my my u4 I'm going to show my f I was like Jesus Christ but then they're like oh I bet you was flirting with someone there that one I haven't really gotten but only maybe from other women sure um I think men kind of know that like deep down in in men's gut like I don't know how many times are you promoting to the CEO of a company a woman that you slept with like you're just not [ __ ] doing it that's not a there's not really a way to like sleep your way to the top maybe unless you're in Hollywood like you're just not going to do it because it's money and the one thing we all know in business is that people care more about money than anything else you can't really sleep your way to the top there politics maybe where money doesn't matter Hollywood maybe where there's a diamond dozen uh girls and a lot of people with Talent maybe but in business it's not really a thing who can be more vicious adversaries men or women as far as the the the commenting and the the hate I think men categorically you know I think there's a a little army of uh really pale vitamin D deficient dudes in basements who haven't achieved anything that get triggered as [ __ ] by women who have I describe Jack no no no no we're both very pale we're both very pain hey come on man uh I don't think a little darker I'm just hairy I think it's just the hair that's I just have a lot of makeup you can't even tell like what is my real color who knows um no I think I you know if you ask most women on the internet uh who most of the trolls are it's it's men it'd be fascinating if there was a study on that but I anticipate that that's true pretty much across the board and I actually understand why because if men were told that masculinity is tied to money and success and that women will not choose you if you don't make more money than them then of course they're going to lash out at women that have been more successful at them and that have more money than them because they've defined that as masculine and they think that somehow we're taking that away from them and there's been a lot of you know women that are tough on men these days so I actually get it in some way shape or form still pisses me off but um women by and large are like nice on the internet I mean the comments women have are like it's the best you know they're like yeah girl you do it you know thanks you know but um maybe that's different if you're like a Kardashian or beauty expert I don't know yeah kind of a weird question but what do you think about the the culture in its entirety of like now I feel like women are supposed to be going into more high paying positions you should be the girl boss this is like what's right whereas beforehand it was like you stay at home and I this is now the counterculture of that but then also this may be too big of a switch and we're over compensating for something and now if you stay at home and you're just just a wife I shouldn't say just a wife but you're a wife stay-at-home wife that's looked upon in such a negative way what do you think yeah I mean you're a bit damned if you do damned if you don't for sure but maybe it's not that different for men I mean if you're a stay-at-home D dad there's still a stigma like oh really your wife earns all the money you stay at home um you know if you are a girl boss God I hate that term but if you work for a living whatever the [ __ ] it means that you're a real boss I don't know could you imagine why do you hate the term someone someone say a guy boss yeah he's a he's a it because it sounds like a cutesy sort of thing it's like oh yeah she's a girl boss or do you what what is that invoke it's like you're ju supposing girl which is kind of like I feel like a smaller you're just a girl boss it's like it's it's showing that there's like a big disparity between girl and boss that's the reason why I feel like that term exists rather than like woman boss maybe is aw also well also why does it have to be genderized yeah also feels gross maybe it's Lord boss we get to the root I mean I think uh yeah imagine being a boy boss or a band boss it also sounds awful I think all of us should just um try to have ownership over our own lives and leave it at that but um no I think these days if you are you know a powerful woman in a professional sense there's also a feeling like that's not great and in fact I think that might be swinging more you know there's all these we we talk about this a lot at our company because there's all these Alpha men podcasts that are out now that are like I was on one the other day and they were like what was a podcast I I don't want to we could bleep it we we'll bleep bleep it so he was on so I was on podcast who uh a good friend but he was like what does it mean to be a power cuffle and you know and I was like I don't know we're just a couple like that one of us you know works and the other one works too and we all work out and I think there's this there's this movement of like you know women for so long have been in the homestead and now they're coming out they probably came out a little too strong in some ways like [ __ ] men the patriarchy whatever and now men are like well got to [ __ ] you right back and so I think you know and so now the the commentary is if you make too much money you're actually not going to attract a guy and there's all this data that everybody is looking at and and I by and large just don't buy into it do you think there's some truth to that in terms of the average that yeah yeah that you are not average by any means I think you're the exception to just about everything so for you you this doesn't apply but like if you were to take pick like a hundred average people throughout the US do you think that would apply probably but I mean think about it this way I think anybody listening to this podcast your entire reason you're listening is because you don't want average average the average American dies uh overweight alone and broke that's just what the the data says and so if that's true we sure as [ __ ] don't want to be the average um which means that we should strive for something extraordinary and and I think the bar is so low for above average these days that it's actually not that hard of a hurdle so let's say that it that they're right that our Buddy's right that uh if you are monetarily successful it will be harder for you to find a man on average because uh you make more than the average man does let's say that's true well add to it going to the gym and being kind of fit add to it being kind of nice nicer than the average person add to it being marginally funny and is it really going to be that hard and I think the answer is by and large no it's just we want to find excuses for why things work out so your advice for guys is they got be better I mean that flat out the bar is set so low that you just both sides I think okay like I mean I think now I I mean from the male perspective I could comment I do agree with you completely I think the bar sit so low that you just have to do above the minimum to get ahead yeah and people will complain about that but to me it seems It's so unbelievably easy if you just try most people won't even try so well think about the confidence fact I think dudes actually you guys have it interesting in a in a couple different ways let's think about this three wom reasons women pick men that we hear constantly right one is money that's the easiest right two is looks maybe there's four three is he's funny I like him because he makes me laugh and four might be he's really confident you know he came up and asked me out so if there's four different legs on which the stool stands which is the woman of your dreams that you want like I think you should be able to get one of the four so if you're not you know if you're not the most attractive guy if you're not the richest guy can you be a pretty confident guy if you're not not the most confident guy can you be a little bit funny and could you be a little bit richer I don't know what to do about looking ugly because I think past plastic surgery for dudes is tough but uh but yeah I think you got four legs I have so many friends who have husbands that maybe aren't as attractive as they are or maybe aren't as wealthy as they are but they're really funny or they're really confident and Lord if you're going to be with somebody until you're 85 rather optimize for those two things so you don't think it's a money thing you think it's a package thing if you're lacking in one make up for it with another yeah I do what is your advice for women watching this who they make 150 Grand 200 Grand a year they're Highly Educated they have trouble finding a person that matches or exceeds their needs I do want to also make this point real quick yeah I went on a date with a girl I'm not going to say where I'm not going to say anything about her story because I got in know unfortunately I got in a lot of trouble Josh if you're watching this don't clip this up please um because clip this Josh I went on someone else's podcast brought this story up and then it got posted as a clip she saw it and got upset at me that I brought it up don't know why I'm bringing it up again because I could get in trouble Josh don't clip this up I went on a date with a girl that's the only detail I'm providing and she said that she needs the guy to make more money than her period and she is a very successful person she works at a elite level high-paying job and she said in her parents relationship the mom made more than the dad and it caused insecurity from the guy's perspective and that was actually where a lot of the tension came from was from his insecurity of her making more than him do you see this as like an issue with high earning women generally speaking they're going to want a guy that makes more than them I think typically when this comes up I'd ask questions like I'd say to that girl is she single obviously yeah the one I went on a date with she better be single I don't know single boyfriend a boyfriend now you can't tell was she saying it like she was having a hard time finding somebody because was a caveat that she has uh she said dating in oh she said cut that out and her name was she she said dating was very challenging in the location she lived in yeah I mean women are going to hate me for saying this on the internet I think if you cannot find somebody that is a you problem and not a them problem because categorically there are enough humans on this planet for all of us to find our needs to be met and if you have one I don't think you get to complain when you have really strict parameters like that like okay you either can say I will only date somebody if they make more money than I am and because of that I know I have a limited reach of men and so categorically it's going to be harder for me to the date ipsofacto I shall not complain but I think complaining about something that is a self-prescribed non-rational reason for you to do it is a lesson in Insanity uh sorry Carla or whatever her name is and but number two I would say um like we all need a little bit more therapy like you know if if you dug into that and I was sitting with that woman I would say um if you were to look if young if older you was to look back on younger you and you were to do it not from a place of fear and not from a place of historical PTSD and say that I'm so glad that I married this man because he made more money than me does that seem rational and if that doesn't seem like a rational sentence then why would you determine that is the biggest reason why you date and I know that didn't work out for your parents but was it really only your father's issue like do you think your mother had any say in the reasons why he might have felt insecure let me ask you this how is that saying I want more than let's say 200 Grand a year any different from her saying I want someone who's funny or I want someone who's confident to me it just seems she has four you know there's four preferences on that list for legs she's like one of those legs needs to be this I'm flexible on the other three so how is that different than say I want someone who's really confident well I think it's not if older more thoughtful her can look back and say thank God I married this guy cuz he made more money than I am that I did if she does answer that question and say yes that is that is what that is the core pillar in a man that I want to spend the rest of my life with okay fine but I think what would actually happen instead is she would go no I want him to be a good man I want him to love me I want us to build something really cool together I want him to be an incredible father I want him to make me laugh because I'm going to care more about that that during really difficult times and I don't want us to be despondent so I want him to work hard all the time just like I will for our goals but I think women these days are slightly ridiculous I want them six2 $200,000 a year funny good-look great hair like William defo you know not going to be every single man and so find the things that actually matter that reminds me of that delusion calculator that you've seen on Tik Tok those little Clips where they're like just describe the type of guy you want under the age of 40 yeah over six figures you're like yeah uh you know not obese yeah and then it's like Point like 1% of the population fits that yeah and then they turn it back on her like what do you have to offer and then like all the dudes are like yeah that part's tough but I don't think it's bad to have a mirror like you know I don't know if you want the top 1% be the top 1% and if you're not then work on it and it's uh it's probably not very popular to say these days but I think we all would do so much better if we just focused on us as opposed to why other people are the reason why we don't achieve the thing that we want to achieve you know because even if that's true that's not a very useful belief for us to have so I'd rather have a useful belief which is at the end of me attempting to become the top 1% I'm the top 5% that's pretty [ __ ] cool as opposed to oh it's really hard to date in New York and I'm not going to change myself and I'm just going to swipe right 452 times there's that number again until I find the perfect person which seems to me again like you know Ben Franklin's lesson in sanity is doing the same thing continuously and expecting a different result I do have a random video that I would like to get your opinion on if that's all right yeah and I think it would be fun for Graham to put his opinion forward I haven't seen this video he didn't want to show me amazing so many people have philosophies towards money you know people will say oh you got to save more than you spend you got to [ __ ] not have the Starbucks Coffee that's how you'll get rich what is your overarching philosophy to building wealth and money do you have something like a philosophy a mantra well uh first I think you should have the [ __ ] coffee I think that is terrible advice um so I I like Dave Ramsey I get where he's going with it but um I think you cannot save your way to wealth you can only earn your way to wealth oh no should they not have the coffee according to you no absolutely not have the coffee absolutely the Mantra he built his entire career off that's like the foundation that's my my rationalization is that it's such loow hanging fruit it's that one little thing that you could start with and the type of person who's not going and buying coffee is also not going and doing a lot of other things that waste money so no it's not going to make you rich well it can actually if you if you go to Starbucks at $5 every day compounded at an 8% return over 40 something years that could be a million bucks yeah especially you do that in a Roth IRA it's taxfree but I just see it as such a loow hanging fruit and something that you could do yourself or a fraction of the price I hate it I hate it um let me tell you why I hate it I I only hate it uh because I think there are two types of people I do think they're either uh they're either safety or upside people and I think for a lot of people you're right they're never going to focus on maximizing their earnings in order to increase their spending to whatever they want for a safety focused person who wants to make sure that they can live a really nice life not have too much volatility in it and retire at a at a good you know age with plenty of cash maybe don't drink the coffee because you're never going to optimize your earnings on the upside for somebody who is focused on upside earnings potential the only thing you should be focused on in my opinion is how do I make more money not how do I save it uh because and that's from a different side of the mathematical equation which is I look at asymmetric upside there's no such thing is asymmetric downside because nobody can really get enough debt unless you're a billionaire to have unlimited downside you have a limited downside especially because we have bankruptcy in the US and so you do not have a limited upside and so if I just look at the math I can go as high as I want but I can go as low as zero to oversimplify what does that mean I should always optimize for going higher and but that is my type of mentality I think you're right in the perspective that a lot of humans are never going to do that and so maybe don't drink the coffee if you're more concerned with safety than you are with earnings there's a 2020 study that showed that Millennials spent more money on coffee than they did on retirement and that is something that I think is just unacceptable spend the money on retirement get rid of the coffee yeah start there start there it's easy it's just so it's so simple what about the other side of the coin why retire you know lots of studies show well you don't have to retire you're unhappy and that you're more likely to die when I mean when I mean retire I don't mean necessarily stop working I mean you have the means to be able to do whatever you want to if it's if it's you know working on a hobby garage so be it but having the means to be able to do that or having the freedom to pick and choose what you want to do with your time so it's not like oh you get to sit on the couch and watch TV yeah well I think you're right like I heard another one of your guests I can't remember who say that they like to have zero dollars in their bank account I could not disagree with that more intensely because oh yeah that was I think that was Grant Cardone that makes sense yeah um he saids spend your last thousand do on a course was his advice burn the bridges burn the ships you you got to be at zero to push you to make more I mean he has a bigger bank account than I do um so I'll give him that for sure I just don't like I actually don't really like Risk I like having some safety net or cushion for me to take bigger and bigger bets um and and I think that goes back to the Warren Buffet ISM if first rule of money don't uh first rule of investing don't lose money uh second rule don't forget rule number one and so for me it's always been this idea of how can I actually protect the downside but I have a good friend that's become an investor in one of my deals with me Bill Perkins who wrote da was Zero he is always telling me you are thinking too small you are thinking too small and if you are not willing to lose something then you will never win something big and so I think there's a there's a happy medium between the two but you know could you imagine a CEO of a company that's publicly traded would go to jail if they ran a company and they had zero dollars in Savings in that company that would be considered a fiduciary liability breach of their company and so grants private so he can do whatever he wants but you know the the the history shows you that markets go up and down you should keep something in reserve yeah it's just math I I somewhat did that up until 2020 where every year I'd invest everything I had into real estate and I would maybe have a few thousand in the bank account when I was done so my goal at the end of the year was spend everything I had back into real estate fixing up properties doing some sort of renovation I wanted something and having so little money in my bank account was absolutely motivating for me now I would absolutely not do it at this point but back then my expenses were so low that I could justify it and have like three grand left over and just immediately January 1st I would hustle for the next deal and that was that was a lot of motivation for me just to know that like hey the bank account's down I got to build it back up was that the only way you could have motivated yourself uh probably okay yeah when I see that bank account go that low I'm like oh man I got it cuz it it made me appreciate the smaller deals yeah uh like you know if I earn $500 on this commission that on three grand is pretty cool yeah but you know if I had $100,000 and I'm like why would I do the $500 deal oh interesting it's like every little bit you start to you really see the impact in small amounts interesting yeah I could I could see that I I just think I want to make sure that I don't have something that could wipe me out ever and the the things that you can that can wipe you out typically there's really only three of them and that's something Reg at that the government could do uh that's some sort of civil lawsuit uh you know some sort of legal issue and the third is running out of cash and so um I do everything I can to protect from regulatory overreach from uh lawsuits and from running out of cash those are the those are the business Killers what do you do to protect yourself from lawsuits have a lot of attorneys that I pay a lot of money to uh you know the thing nobody tells you about in business is if you go into business you will be stolen from be defrauded from be lied to and probably be sued at some point it's just the nature of our society today and so the bigger you get the bigger Target gets on your back and um and because of that attorneys become your friends because one you want to understand deal terms and two you understand that um you know at the end of the day there'll be some sort of situation where um somebody will want to take advantage I mean go like drive down the freeways from the airport to the strip what's on every single billboard injury car accident attorney attorney attorney why do they do that those are expensive Billboards because they make tens of millions of dollars a year on people suing for things that by and large probably they shouldn't have sued for mhm and the part that's crazy about our society is how many people settle and how often you can get sued for anything that's the other people thing people don't realize like they don't have to have the case you can just get sued because somebody feels like it we had a injury attorney on the podcast recently interesting very successful guy in California and he was explaining how his entire business model worked and a lot of it comes down to what the insurance companies are willing to settle with because for a lot of companies it's cheaper for them to say I'm going to give you 50 Grand right now it's done then to fight this thing to court and it's a waste of time and resources so for them if their client is insured and they have proper limits the attorney just needs to go in and say hey we have this claim here's our evidence we're going to take it to court or give us 50 Grand and in most of those cases they'll just say here's the 50 Grand wild yeah it's kind of a sad sad world we in I always wonder about I imagine it' be interesting to do a study but I imagine that the people who get their money through means like that are like lottery winners it comes fast it goes fast because when you don't actually earn it or when you earn money from something that you shouldn't have earned it from I do believe that there's like this karmic tie to money made and uh and that it won't stick and so you know a lot of the things that I talk about with with making money and getting rich it's not really because I want people to be rich and have Lamborghinis and drive around it's because I think that when you learn to value your time in a way that ties to ownership it changes your entire perspective on life and actually makes you a better person because you believe in yourself because you think you can achieve things without having to go after other people um and so I I wonder about those people do you worry that you're putting a Target on your back by being so public about your income who you are where you are all of these things what's the advantage to you on this yeah I mean I don't I don't talk about my income anymore and increasing ly you know I was talking with some of our friends about how how to talk about the portfolio and I don't share all my portfolio companies and I never have because it does put a Target on those companies which I don't think it's fair because they didn't sign up for that like why does a roofing company in Phoenix Arizona benefit from my big platform it doesn't they're just going to get more competitors and if I say something silly then they're going to get negative reviews that's no benefit for them they shouldn't have to deal with that um so I think there's downsides and uh and increasingly like I don't talk about exact how much our Revenue our portfolio companies do and that's from a couple different reasons not just a Target but also because what about when it changes what about when I sell one and then you know there's a bunch of historical stuff saying it was this amount now it's this amount what about when it doubles just doesn't feel it feels misleading um but no it's all my husband thinks about he's you know former security military guy and he's very concerned with security but I do think I think attention is the new currency in a lot of ways I think it's an incredible opportunity and privilege for people to listen to you at all on the internet I think it's really fun and um and I I do truly believe which is maybe slightly egotistical that we the world bores abor is a vacuum right and if the only people putting stuff on the internet are people that are relatively unethical are not really giving any value then that's going to be what's out there and I think we need More Humans who are doing the right thing and talking about it and I wish that I had somebody like you guys that I could listen to when I was younger to figure out this game of business and success and life and money um and so I'm willing to do that yeah I think it's interesting the longer I've been doing YouTube the more private I've started becoming I bet just just naturally the less I want to share the less I want to talk about things the more i' I'd like to just kind of Remain the guy that's why I love the podcast too is it's less focus on myself and more focus on the guest yeah and uh they they say like a lot of wealthier people prefer to remain quiet and I could start to see why initially I thought no they should be you know on platforms giving advice and helping people but I kind of see the perspective of you know the advantage of not having that sort of attention and eyeballs on you yeah I it's it's it's a it's an incredible privilege but it is also a huge burden I think and you have to you're a type of Personality that wants and can deal with it I mean could you imagine what for instance politicians go through right now we're in election period right can you imagine putting their families through that that immediately you sign up on one ticket or the other and 50% of the company hat or 50% of the country hates you um I have a lot of respect for the people who do it and then get out of it because it's a it's a hard game but I'm with you one of my favorite CEOs of all time uh he scrubs himself off the internet completely you can't find him anywhere he's a multi- multi- billionaire and um and that's what he said to me back in the day he was like we get rich quietly here don't talk about it publicly and I did not understand it then and now I get it a little bit and I I do respect it why did he try to be so secretive with that like to that degree to like nothing online about this person I actually the two richest guys I know are like that uh one I I sat on the board of their hedge fund for a long time you can't find him anywhere he would be pissed if I mentioned his name on a podcast um and I think it is because of that you know there is a feeling in this country and around the world that uh if you are rich you didn't earn it if you are rich uh there's something bad or wrong with you and that uh you should be pulled down and in fact I do think the tall poppy syndrome is true that you know when we see a poppy that rises above the rest it gets picked right um and and I think that happens across our country and many others but we have to you just have to choose what type of person you want to be you know do you want to be do you want to be the warrior do you want to be the gardener and you know my husband really inspires me to do a lot of this but I think that we are at a let me get on my soap box for a second I think we are at a critical Tipping Point in our country and the developed world for uh making sure that people realize they're not victims they can have opportunity and that those who win win because they work at it and that's available for everybody and if if we don't have people out here saying that more often um then I think our country doesn't look very good for our kids if we choose to have those in decades mhm what are your weaknesses what do you think is what do you think you should be working on um a lot uh I mean I have a terrible memory um I forget everything all the time um I also uh I forget loose with numbers I forget exactly the numbers of deals so now I've I've started saying more like I don't remember the exact numbers here's what I think it is plus or minus 10 to 30% um I do not have that kind of photographic memory do I think that I can get better at that though I don't actually know doesn't matter yeah maybe it'd be really nice if I could rattle off some of the people that come on here they they say the numbers so specifically they remember every aspect of it I've never been like that um but to your point I try to focus on the things I'm good at as opposed to optimizing for my biggest weaknesses and instead of optimizing for those I hire for those and so it's like can we you know team can you make sure that I have numbers somewhere if I need to reference them can I like have a place where I can say I can't remember what that deal was but go look at our site here's the numbers on the site um but that's one of my bigger weaknesses for sure and I like to work probably more than I should how much do you work a lot um I I really like it maybe at some point if I have a kid I'll like the kid more than working but uh but right now it's it's my favorite thing to do um you know like what a weird job we have now like think about this I remember you know people would say I'm so tired from recording all this stuff you know I'd look at the team and I'd go we're doing [ __ ] YouTubes we're doing Tik toks as opposed to spreadsheets for 400 hours at Goldman Sachs like this is this is Barney's playtime and uh and so I think that's not always the best perspective to have it means that I'll do things for a lot longer than I should and I and I certainly don't focus on you know I don't know Health as much as I should maybe although that word should bothers me I try not to use it too often so what does your daily routine look like really standard I'm a big believer in the the Small Things replicated continuously allow for you to not have decision fatigue so I don't want to have to question every single decision I eat the same thing for breakfast I order the same thing for lunch or what do you get for breakfast very simple I'm all protein right now so I eat steak and eggs steak and eggs yeah what kind of steak uh it's it is I don't know I'm not that particular about food um at all my husband's more no we just my husband loves to cook or we order pretty continuously we own part of a couple restaurants in Austin that don't use seed oils don't you own a lot we'll go to Austin we'll be like hey we need a rental card be like no I own a place that does that don't own that you want insurance we I own that place too I would like to own that yeah um so yeah steak and eggs in the morning like around 10 o'clock a coffee with uh with ghee in it um ghee in the coffee what's ghee why do you add ghee it's like fat right it's like yeah I don't actually know what it is it's called like theprof coffee yeah exactly yeah um so that's just basically uh I'm pretty sensitive to coffee and so if I have a lot of coffee I'll get all jacked up and jittery I'm already I already run pretty hot and so having fat inside of the coffee decreases apparently that jitteriness with coffee so we have half calf coffee not full calf we have ghee I get rolling out of bed I drink big thing of water um and I go to work and then I work for a period and then I do like the same thing for lunch like protein steak something like that and then uh and then I probably go out and then I work until pretty late um and then I do dinner with my husband every night is non-negotiable so we always do dinner together uh we no phones no TV um we're not drinking right now but typically like a nice glass of wine the two of us and we have a little conversation um that's focused on you know what we did that day and what we want to do the next day what we want to achieve next how do you work on your marriage and make sure you guys are on the same page it's my biggest priority and so in life uh I think you can only really focus on three things at a time time really well and so you know it for me it's always first and foremost my husband the second that I decided to get married that was the most important thing uh second is my business um and the third is my health and um and so we're pretty fanatical about our relationship uh we hang out more than I would assume most couples do he runs our portfolio on the media accelerated side um and I think you know one of the nice Parts about us working together it's interesting because your studio you know is here and your fiance is here too I really believe in work life integration and so I take Chris along with me and so you know he comes to most travel trips he's not this week because he couldn't but we almost always traveling together uh we do most meetings together um he's a great relationship manager and like continuer and executor of things I'm a great starter and bringing people inner uh of things and so we work really well together in that way and then we always have something to talk about you know do you believe in separate or joint accounts I don't think I have a hard stance either way on that I think we have separate and Joint so you have mine his ours mhm yeah why do you do it that way not out of any particular reason one way or the other I mean again I I have a philosophy overall right maximize earning maximize earnings so I'm never really concerned with what he's spending or what I'm spending he's much more thoughtful on spending I think that comes from the military he's much more programmatic um but in the beginning yeah for sure he would have been the one that set rules and parameters around it I've always been a little bit loose and he's been like you know no what's yours is yours what's mine is mine and I don't really believe in that do you believe in prenups yeah I only believe it because I believe in expectation setting and so um anything after the marriage you know 50/50 anything before was his or mine um pretty clean and um I don't think emotional I didn't have a prenup last time so that was painful what did that look like when you split without the prenup yeah I mean it was it was pretty quick because I wanted it done but my dad said a great line to me at the time I was struggling because I was GNA have to pay a lot of money and he said there's an exit tax to Freedom every time and so I just remembered that when I had to write a check and do whatever which was there's going to be an exit tax but you know divorce is awful I don't wish it on anybody it's miserable and it's it's both people's faults nine times out of 10 and so it was my fault just as much as it was his and um it's miserable and I remember like you know my credit cards getting cut off and my bank account getting cut off because it was joint but it was in his name even though I you know it was a mess um and it took a long time to recover from that it's also very very expensive for the typical you know person um and so I have a lot of empathy for people going through divorce I think most of it can be I don't know how to not have people get divorced what I do know is that you can decrease a lot of your financial stress around Divorce by a prenup setting expectations and both parties always knowing where the money is and having equal access to the money and I think that's just good partnership so when you split with or I should sayit when you got the initial divorce um that was one lumps on payment that you had to make it wasn't like some sort of like continual spouse no I didn't have I didn't have that he earned well I earned well I do remember at the time and I was like you [ __ ] he uh he asked for a percentage of my future earnings tried to negotiate that and I was like the thing is get [ __ ] um but uh but I guess it was a compliment cuz he thought I might earn a lot in the future yeah yeah when did you realize that was a bad fit and what is your advice to people who are in relationships or maybe they don't know if it's a good fit like when did that realization come to your mind most I got married because I thought that's what you did I thought you find a nice person that you're attractive to that you're attracted to that's successful um that you kind of have fun with and you get married you have kids and you settle down and uh I prescribed to all the social norms and when I found that and he proposed we got married and I thought that was just the next check off the book The Box terrible idea if I looked back uh I would be a lot more particular it was the one area of my life where I think I settled and I felt bad which I think happens to a lot of people on both sides you say yes to marrying somebody because you would feel bad staying no what you already have confirmation bias you've been with them for a period of time time why haven't you left if you weren't going to say yes to getting married um you know the other person pressures you hey I want to get married hey I want this to happen sooner if there's any doubt or inkling in your mind about should you get married in my instance I think don't because uh it's a long road and it's very difficult and I do think it's a beautifully kind of sacred thing to live your life with another human and you should be really particular about the one that you decide to do it with was there a Breaking Point that like something switched where like like this just isn't working out there's no way to fix this yeah I mean we wanted two different lives right I think a lot of times when you get married you think your person's going to change your person's not going to change they are who they are and they've had you know 25 years of compounding to the person that they are today that cement is set and he assumed that I was going to change and I assumed he was going to change he thought one day I'd want the white picket fence and the two and a half kids and that one day would be a lot sooner and I thought he would chill out from the you know clubs and and Wall Street and all the craziness and he didn't want to and so um we both set poor expectations and we thought we could change the other person to our purview now I think he's perfectly happy and on his own thing but don't expect your other person to change because the likelihood is low what is your advice to new couples to make sure they don't end up in that situation I think you should sit down and have a conversation it's what Chris and I did we sat down and the internet loves to laugh at this they're like that's really romantic like that sounds awful I'm like all right man go through a divorce um but you know him and I sat down and we basically just said what do we want out of life what are our really big visions and we had that I think cemented us more than anything our visions and our values and the vision was we wanted to build an empire together we wanted to see could we squeeze every single drop of capability out of both of us before we die uh and wouldn't that be fun to try can we continue to play the game at the highest level possible not just how much money we make but how much can we contribute how much are we actually capable of what's the limit what that feel like to hit it and we both wanted that we didn't want to live small lives and we were honest about that and then second uh was our values and that was if we get married do we do this for life you know um how do we want to raise kids how do you think about lying cheating stealing uh what if one person feels something for another person do we talk about it or not um like we got pretty granular and we put up a whiteboard and we both kind of workshopped this and I learned this through therapy in my first marriage and I wish I would have done it before because it's really really it's very revealing have you done something like that with your F yeah yeah we did the whole marriage counseling beforehand uh and there's a whole bunch of like questions but honestly a lot of the questions I knew like I think Macy and I are like second or third date we went through practically everything to make sure yeah because I think we're both on the same page like hey if it's if either one of us deviate from this and it's just not the right fit let's figure it out now yeah so like why waste time if it's if if we know there's going to be a sticking point somewhere so I think we kind of threw everything at the at the wall I love that it's actually it's also kind of sexy because then you know you know your other person is going to be with you through it all because you've already you've already talked about it and it doesn't mean they can't change their mind but they're probably not going to change their mindset so I do think the Carol DW fixed first growth mindset is really critical too you know my my ex-husband had a fixed mindset we are this way I am this way it is this way and mine was like well we're that way now but like couldn't we continue growing changing evolving and I think if you are a growth mindset there's nothing worse than being with a fixed mindset and figuring out that fast yeah what do you think the biggest uh red flags are for relationships how things begin is usually how they end and so if your relationship begins because you two were cheating red flag if your relationship begins and it's tumultuous and hard red flag if your relationship begins and you two don't have a lot in common and that bothers you and it's slightly boring red flag and so um that people are at their best when they're trying to impress you in the beginning and I do think at some point it gets better like that happened to Chris and I our first year of marriage was definitely the hardest it's like how do two fully formed adults come together and compromise on things and feel okay about both being slightly unhappy in our compromise um but after that first year you know it's gotten easier do we fight absolutely you know the team's all seen it but do we have the same vision and values it's so clear that we know that at the end of the day you know if he called me from a third world jail I'd figure out how to get him out do you want kids yes when I'd like them sooner rather I'm 37 so you know time clock on the ovaries but uh you know sooner rather than later I think um but it's not something that I always wanted and so often I think women seem to either know right away that they want them or they wait for the right partner in the right time and then they feel like they might want them why do you want kids when I talk to a lot of people I feel like that are similar to you or like on your level uh like Tom Bilu he's like no I don't want to have kids I don't want anything that distracts me I'm nervous I'm going to love my kid more than I love my work and I love my work so much Alex Orosi says no I I fear that I would hate my kid like why why are you the exception why do you want kids I want to have the full Human Experience I think that we probably only get one shot on this planet and that uh reproduction seems to be something that is programmed into to us to desire in some way shape or form and I want to be a part of that I want to feel what that feels like um I also think there's something beautiful about this idea of legacy and what what would make me work harder than having a human who was completely reliant on me working hard and maybe trying to make some effect on the planet that could have helped them one way or the other and so for me I'm the opposite I imagine that my dedication to what I do is going to 10x it's kind of Roi s still like lens yeah 100% um but I don't you know I didn't ever have that matriarchal I want to hold the baby I want to feel it in my belly would you do a surrogate I would like not to um again I think bonding happens through extreme trial right and so nothing more extreme than what you go through with pregnancy and with childbirth and so that seems like a pretty incredible thing to attempt um for first of all and then second I don't have any shame one way or the other with surrogacy but there's a lot of it's a lot of intricacies and nuances with that that um that I would hope to avoid but I have a lot of very successful friends that are like [ __ ] it ship in a surrogate you know um I'm not necessar that necessarily that way how do you ensure that you'll raise kids with the values that you want them to have I I don't think you can be sure of anything with children you know maximum level of huus is the parent who says I shall never EX before they have a child right who knows um I'm going to attempt to do just slightly better than my parents did um and hope that uh as Chris and I like to say I [ __ ] up our kids just enough to be a Navy SEAL or a private Equity investor and not a stripper um you know and uh like I think every CH I mean talk to somebody who has parents and they don't think that the parents did something wrong I haven't met one yet so I'm sure our kids will have many of things that they think we did poorly um but what a beautiful challenge to attempt what are your thoughts on Modern Freedom hierarchy oh yeah um so this is why I started contrarian thinking uh basically this idea that it was obsessing on how do we get people to think critically so I saw not a lot of that was happening in 2020 and um and what I realized is people it's maso's hierarchy of needs but slightly changed the hierarchy goes first as the base level you have to have physical Freedom right like you have to be able to I don't know live in the house that you want to live have your body be you know safe healthy Etc second level after that you can have Financial Freedom Financial Freedom meaning I can spend what I want where I want with whom I want and the final level being philosophical Freedom like only after you have your physical Freedom your Financial Freedom can you get to philosophical freedom because you're just trying to pay your rent and you're trying to get out of debt you are in a fight ORF flight stance you cannot stand for you know morals and high grounds at least it's much harder to and so I think if we could get more people to a status in which they're not fighter flighting they can stop they can breathe and they can think critically we probably have a much different country so our idea with contrarian thinking is all right let's see if we can get more people to be financially free and then I think I can get them to think critically and that was our bet our Trojan hores money and out of the troan horse spills hopefully critical thinking because of skin in the game that you have when you own something how did your values beliefs or perspectives change once you obtain philosophical freedom I could say and do a lot more things when I had the [ __ ] you Fund in hand you know I think um so be more forthright with your opinion yeah so but your philosophy didn't necessarily change it was more so just your ability yeah like um did My Philosophy change once I already had Financial Freedom did I change my mind so for example we've brought people on this podcast before Destiny was one person who is like a liberal political commentator and as he gained more money he actually it it kind of solidified and validated his liberal policy prescriptions which I found very interesting because that kind of runs against what most people think so like as he obtained more wealth and he eclipsed the uh Financial Freedom to the physical freedom to the philosophical Freedom like how did your own philosophy change I'm not sure that my philosoph well I do think that uh the worst thing that you can do is have uh opinions strongly held I think that you should have opinions loosely held um and you should debate them fiercely and so My Philosophy changes frequently uh as soon as I get new inputs I want to evolve the philosophy that I have I don't think there was a magical moment at which point it changed maybe the Only Magical moment was the first moment that I really became responsible for a company I think that was a pivotal moment in my career because it was the moment that I understood every bad boss every you know tough decision my parents like once you own a p&l somebody's livelihood um you're the person in charge you're responsible it flipped my mindset because no longer could I have excuses about why things didn't happen it was all up to me like there's nobody else in the way um so that did change my mindset hugely it's like oh man the buck actually does stop with you um it was hugely freeing but it was really hard you know you really have to look yourself hard in the mirror I think at that point who' you say is your idol or like your your main Mentor I never liked the word Mentor uh because I I think I have never met another human that I want to change lives with you think that's what Mentor means I think mentor to me often means you follow somebody and they guide you through to achieve what they've achieved and I I've never found like a holistically pure Mentor I probably found mentors in finance mentors in relationships so like maybe not an overall Mentor but I've had specific mentors like Graham has been a mentor my father's been a mentor maybe even a professor at a college has been a mentor you know problem is with mentors did you ever ask Graham to be your Mentor no of course not that's we I think the student makes the mentor the exactly I think that's my problem with today A lot of people are like will you be my mentor or will such and such be my it's like no no no your Mentor can happen from somebody you've never met if all you do is read the books even long after they've died and so I suppose if we talk about a mentor that way like they don't even know but they are then I've had many many of those um let me think about who that is lately I mean there's a couple people I'm going to say Bill Perkins probably recenty bias but what I love about Bill he does not care about what anybody thinks he will be friends with people because he wants to be friends with them even if it's not convenient I think that is very rare today I think people do not want to choose sides and especially for people that are on the internet they're only willing to go so far if it doesn't further their value Bill Perkins is not that man he does not care and so like for instance I'm not a big Dan bazaran fan but Bill's great friends with Dan because Bill thinks that Dan is something different than what the internet portrays him at even though that's probably degrading to Bill's reputation and I have a lot of respect for that um so bill for his like [ __ ] you mentality and also he's always thinking bigger I remember I went to him I have this big business that we're going to launch this year I bought it we're going to plow a couple million dollars in it I have a huge like two huge investors and I plow a couple million of their own into it and it's going to be my big billion dollar bet this year we'll see if it works and um and I brought the idea to him and I remember he looked at me at his like big mansion over looking awesome Lake and he's like I I think I'm presenting him with like an incredible idea and he's like do you think that you've been around small business for so long that small has infected your thinking and I was like it's kind of rude and and then as I thought about it I was like well maybe because you're right we could actually do this and it could be bigger this way and so he's another Mentor for always pushing me to think bigger and I often think the people that can be the best mentors to you are the ones that they've kind of already achieved and so and they don't have a lot of reasons like they don't really care what you do they they've already achieved what they need to achieve they're just kind of sitting on the sidelines going I'd like to be able to cheer for somebody and Bill is one of those for sure do you think we have a problem here in the US that people are just not critically thinking why do you think that is so I think the problem with critical thinking is uh it makes you stand out from the crowd and none of us actually really like that like we think we want to stand out for the crowd we want to get like kind of famous but we actually don't want to stand out that much from the crowd and critical thinking just means that you're doing that constantly non-stop over time and then you also have to be able to have the ability to hold two things in your mind at the same time that might not both be or that might both be true have real cognitive dissonance and that's tough for most humans it's much easier to go I'm I'm a liberal I'm a conservative as opposed to well I have some components of this and some components of this and they both are bad and they both are good and very in ways hard to do actually and probably because we aren't taught that anymore we're taught in 60-second sound bites do you think shorts are destroying attention spans I think Tik Tock is digital Fentanyl and we should regulate it as such I think the way that we are fed information into our brains in 20 years we will look back on and think how did we allow this to happen to our youth in particular I think my generation and maybe both of your guyses too got really lucky because we skipped growing up our entire lives with the ability to Non-Stop self-record and Screen ourselves and so that would be one thing I try to do if I had children would be to sincerely limit what input goes in I mean it's the same thing as I think we will realize and I'm sure there's studies out there that show this already but that there is no question in our minds right now if I eat only fast food and if I eat only processed things I shall probably become sick right MH we would be pretty safe saying that I think in the future we will look back and think if I consume only negative news if I consume only trash and nonsensical things I shall be sick in some way shape or form and I think that yes some social platforms are doing that and you have to fight back aggressively on what you allow into your mind just like you do what's allowed into your mouth does that mean you contribute to the platform because you're there to make it better or do you believe that contributing to a platform like Tik Tok is only going to bring more people in and eventually they'll win my thought and I thought long and hard on this so one I don't have Tik Tok on my phone so I do not actually consume anything on Tik Tok ever and I thought long and hard about getting off of Tik Tok entirely but but my counterweight to it is our youth is there and so if our youth is there maybe it's our job actually to create better more interesting content that has a white pill in it as opposed to a black pill in it and so that's our mission for the next couple of years can we make financial literacy positive mindset growth just as interesting as teenagers dancing in unison and I don't know the answer to that but we're going to try just out of curiosity why such a large ring oh yeah I always wear them you know you know what nobody's ever asked me that before what if you get in a fight and you have to that's that's what it was that is you know I'm always nearly in fights it's it's very ve I mean it's as big as the face of on your watch yeah it is um slightly smaller okay um it actually it stems from my uh my grandmother my great grandmother Evelyn she always used to wear really big rings and I think there's something uh there's something about having a piece a fashion that's signature that I always liked and so for a long time I didn't care about fashion at all and I thought that it didn't matter and now I actually think it does I think it matters a lot the way you're you the way you look in the first seconds that you are perceived is very hard to take off of somebody's mind once they've made them and so I think having like sort of a signature look having a piece of having fashion that you take seriously is actually really beneficial and so I've thought about that a lot of lately and then this was her ring so I wear a lot of these and tribute to her I got a crazy one we're going to do a 180 is the American dream dead oh yeah um want to hear something wild yeah what percentage and you already know don't you have you read that yet read what okay well I'm not going to ask the question because I think you guys might already know the answer but the audience won't you might not know okay what percentage of millionaires do you think America has as opposed to the whole world I'm G to take a guess 85% you think 85% of millionaires live in the US as opposed to the rest of the world I'm going say 80 okay uh in the US I'd say 60% maybe 50 okay you guys are very positive the answer is 42% 41.9% so the American dream is not dead on the ice coffee Hour podcast but regard this I thought about that and and it's wild when you look at act the actual population of the world we have almost half of all millionaires live in the US and so when people say to me the American dream is dead well there is no other country in which the American dream is more alive so just mathematically we own more people who have more money than anywhere else in the world but assuming you don't have a million dollars let's say assuming you're eight you just turned 18 YP don't have a million is that American Dream debt just because people have a million dollars already doesn't mean that you going to get a million dollars good point forward looking all right well we could look at a different way so a study came out recently that said about $3.4 million is what is needed for one human's entire lifetime to achieve the American dream yeah I'd be curious your take after this so like 3.4 million pretty standard things house cars kids funerals um I thought that was interesting and they were saying it like this was this huge number and then I was like well let's look at the underlying assumptions which we should always do when we see numbers and I'm like okay they start this from 18 and then the average person in the US dies at 77 so I can't remember what's 77 it's like 59 5 years between the two so if we divide 3.4 million is by 59 we we reach something like $8,000 a year is what you need to achieve $3.4 million in lifetime earnings one pretty reasonable the average American in the US uh the average American salary is somewhere between 30 to $60,000 depending on how you but that's starting at 18 which 18year olds are not going to have that income and that's also after tax oh oh the $3.4 million is is after tax that's also not assuming any growth of income yeah and yeah lots of assum starting off at 18 I don't know I believe you're probably most people probably not going to have that income until late 20s I think there's a lot of things that could be sideways with the numbers 30 you know definitely starting at 18 maybe you can't make 30k you could also say what about inflation it's not actually 3.4 it's going to be higher at some point but let's let's be and then on the other side it's of course well are you going to earn $58,000 forever no and so I think the answer is it's actually more achievable than even I thought um I think even if we take those so when do you actually start earning something like 30k a year when you're 20 21 or 22 Yeah well you graduate college at 22 so probably and so you're in the interim you're probably making if you have a part-time job I don't know 10 to 20K a year a server uh you know a bartender unless you go to college with debt yeah you know and you graduate at 22 you're like negative 50,000 you could mhm yeah think college throws a huge wrench into a lot of this and that I think is real um but to me that seemed like wow the American dream is actually slightly more attainable than I thought it was and especially if we don't do what people tell us to typically do which is go to like a quite mid-tier very expensive college yeah um so I don't think the American dream is dead but I do think it's under attack and so to your point like if we have inflation where it's at if we have high interest rate numbers if we have the highest asset price numbers that we have if we don't continue to build more homes if we have uh tuition continue to go at the level that it's going at and if we increasingly don't have wage growth which is something that has been stagnant for some time I do think that we're under attack but I don't think the solutions are going to be the things that a lot of politicians are talking about it like Ubi and um you know overall allowances for minimum wage increases I saw that I thought the numbers were really high actually like $335,000 was the amount that they put in for the average wedding plus a ring I think you could easily do without that then they also assume wasn't even that I think Chris bought my wedding no I was like a little wedding ring nothing fancy I think it cost like eight or 10K and we make a lot of money why do you need a $35,000 ring that's crazy oh it wasn't it was a uh the ring and the everything how much is your can you say how much your whole thing's costing you um I think at this point we're trying to keep it under 20 grand yeah that's incredible well especially because I think sometimes especially when maybe people think about how much money we both might have they assume you know you see most people who have a lot of money have a giant ring because it's like a a signal somehow I know I love the understated aspect of it yeah why um same thing with a wedding you know if you threw a party and you threw a party that costs 20K your friends would be like this is a sick party but you throw a wedding that costs 20K and people think that's cheap yeah yeah so the wedding is one thing that I think a lot of people could do without or do something a lot smaller then also assumes you buy a new uh buy a six-year-old car every 6 years yeah if you just drive a six-year-old car every 8 to 10 years that skews the numbers and then people were saying that they're double counting the cost of raising a child which I think there was two kids $550,000 over the course of a lifetime but that also was baked into the cost of housing of like $800,000 of having a larger house so I think they were double counting some of those numbers so just assuming you cut some of those out oh and then it was also the cost of health insurance which was like $700,000 over the course of a lifetime which is to me insane any employer is going to cover a significant portion of that no one's having more than like a $5,000 deductible a year if you're if you're employed through that part so it's like I bet the American dream would probably cost more like two million bucks is is maybe 2.2 give or take if you try to be reasonable about it yeah which means you would easily cover it with you know let's call it somewhere between 30 and $60,000 in earnings but that also assumes that you only have a one income earning household yeah it also from the AG of if you die at 77 or you're going to die at 77 and not have the part that that I thought was wild is when you look at the the great everybody's talking about the baby boomer wealth transfer right and I think they're totally getting it wrong because they're talking about it like the average baby boomer God I'm going to mess up the numbers slightly but let's say the average baby boomer maybe you know has $265,000 that they're going to um transition to their kids but the problem with that is that baby boomer needs that to last throughout their lifetime including even if we say that Medicare Medicaid continues um the cost of retirement homes and getting sick is so high now that that $265,000 if that's what they have uh you know call it let's let's call it like 70 years of age and increasing we we're living more to like 85 86 years old will actually be gone by the time that baby boomer dies and so they might you they might hand you down not they could hand you down but they might die in debt or they hand you down a very small amount of money instead of uh 265,000 so that's why I'm so passionate about people transitioning businesses because I think all the money is actually in business and assets not liquid cash this would have been a perfect place for you to say and that's why I own assisted living facilities I bought them last year no I don't that would be a great business to to buy into it would if you could do it nicely I the numbers show that increasingly a lot of them are owned by private Equity players and there's a lot of problems with over uh with over focusing on profit in my opinion in that sector and so there's so many horror stories it's it's not something that I would roll up and grow unless I was really not focused on on profit could you imagine like a 95-year-old can't pay pay their monthly rent and they don't have any family and they don't have any money left and you're going to like kick them out on the street I don't I try to stay out of like okay I won't wash your car fine okay like I won't wash your clothes in the laundro mat fine but I'm not going to kick out a 95y old out of the building that can't afford to stay there that'd be awful awful yeah I remember seeing in the news this was about 10 years ago father bought a condo for his daughter near USC and there's someone who's living in there like a veteran of of course in their '90s he bought the condo and was evicting this person because the daughter was going to move in to go to college well of course this person has nowhere else to go they've lived there for 30 years and you had this split down the middle where the news was villainizing the owner but the owner was saying I have a legal right to this unit to do with as I please and reading the comments about that was you had I would say half the people thought this guy was the worst in the world world the other half of the people said it's his right it's it's not his fault that this person didn't save up for this but that's a difficult position either way and I think at the end they ended up helping this person find another facility or something like that it was a pretty positive ending but it either way it's just it's bad all the way around yeah I try to avoid businesses like that but that's you know that's what people can't do today no cognitive dissonance they can't hold in their mind this is sad and maybe bad and simultaneously the guy has every right which is both true right um yeah and yeah and it's in California so I'm actually imag may could even evict the guy yeah you could evict as an owner user in plenty of situations um I think in that case if they were there less than 10 years in certain buildings over the age of 50 65 you could you could legally get them out yeah but there are all these restrictions on what is a protected tenant in Los Angeles County oh yeah I remember I mean you know way more about real estate than I do but we own a series of of airbm BS and we don't uh we don't allow anybody to stay over 30 days in California because of of the you hear about the dentist guy in Los Angeles yes he's the one that the person lived there for how long yeah years never paid rent and then asked him for $100,000 to leave do you hear about this Jack oh it's crazy this guy listed his unit on Airbnb and this lady came to him and said I want to rent here for like six months he said perfect well guess what she moved in didn't pay and so he says didn't pay a single time she she paid like the move in just like a little bit of money to rent his guest house that he like and this is a multi-million dollar home in Brownwood so this is like afford a $6 million house and he's renting up the guest house she doesn't pay well he tries to evict her and she says no no you can't evict me because this is not permitted you didn't get a certificate of occupancy and technically the lease I have is invalid you can't evict me and she hires a lawyer and sure enough he could not evict her the city wouldn't wouldn't help them because they say well you didn't get a certificate of occupancy when you when you built this place so technically that's between you two and it took years and he got to a point where he had nowhere else to turn she had been there for two years not paying anything apparently it was really hostile between them and so he got media coverage and this lady become became like a micro celebrity and she had Paparazzi outside of her house and they would follow her to like restaurants and did people like her no no they didn't like her but they would speculate on like oh she's going to dinner with this guy who is this guy they just invaded her privacy and then she uh and then she asked for $100,000 to leave he said no that got even more attention and eventually she moved she voluntarily just left and it was a big thing I mean there was like news outlets and helicopters like taking photos because it was on a hillside in Brownwood and they're like taking photos of the inside showing like people moving out of this place like it was a big deal but the owner said he had no idea that this certificate of occupancy was never released cuz he hired a contractor to do it and just assume that when they finished the job everything was good so he was oblivious to it but it was just a crazy situation and now oh and also apparently she has a history of doing this oh so this is not her first time like she'll purposely seek out places that she knows she could rent Liv in there for as long as she can use the system to her advantage and then just find another place when she Lees so what kind a lawyer would represent her in this situation how is he making money off of that you you have to think there are there are plenty of public defendants out there that will just get paid by the state uh and a especially a state like California will have people on retainer for people who just can't afford their services everyone has a right to legal representation yeah that's a good point well and there's so many people that'll do it on contingency she could have even paid him some like hey if I don't have to pay two years worth of rent I'll pay you 3 months of 15% of cost orost oh yeah and her rent I think was like four grand a month $5,000 a month so how did she get access to a public defendant if she had the income to rent a place maybe she didn't have the income maybe she just moved in and said hey I'm going to sign you four five grand a month I'm going to rent it maybe she didn't I'm sure there's some requirements that you would have to prove that you can't afford a certain person those are the hard Parts about ownership right and especially real estate it is you're dealing with you're dealing with humans and anytime you're dealing with humans it gets tough but that story was wild there was one in orgon that was similar too really yeah but he he had to live in his van outside of the house because he rented his house out for a period and then he couldn't afford anymore to cover the house and so he had to live in his van while the awful the the ones that upset me the most are the squatters oh yeah when someone can't move in their house because a squatter has somehow broken in and then they can't evict them that to me makes no sense and there was a story of a lady who uh bought a house got the keys on the closing day went inside the house and there's squatters in there and she's like I have my moving truck here I sold my house I'm supposed to move in here but these people now claim a right to the property so the police come and the people have forged a lease and the police say sorry this is a so you're going to have to go through the eviction process I just closed on the house I don't know who these people are while they've been living here for the last few days or whatever and they say they have a lease we can't evict them that makes no sense in my mind they could just and say no I'm here it taks ended up Tak I think like months to a year and they trashed the place it shouldn't happen yeah um do you think that life is a zero some game no no no I mean we all do die so everybody will die that is the only eventuality but no I don't think that you have to lose or win in every situation at all we cover practically anything dra you yeah let's see here if there's any other cover everything in more nice what's your biggest insecurity um what's my biggest insecurity you guys want me to tell you a funny one yeah uh I have really long toes so for the people on the internet because feet really get people going I don't show them on I have like finger toes and so it's not really a real insecurity it's just funny the team makes fun of me because I wiggle them a lot when we're presenting how how bigger the toes like can you like I mean they're just like this work but yeah they're like I have longer toes I can pick things up with them and that's not insecurity that's a okay fine you want feat it's a you know Cody Sanchez comes with finger toes he has uh toe fingers Gavin has these things called tingers oh my you do whoa I we're like Spirit Animals but opposite tingers you want to show the camera real quick just take stup old okay we'll do yeah show show The tingers Man Show the tingers that's so funny um a real insecurity um my biggest insecurity is that I'm not enough that I haven't achieved enough that I haven't done enough that um you know that the next thing that's in front of me will be the thing that takes me down and I think um I think that's why I achieve things in life it's this constant search for validation of capability not necessarily peers but just capability it's a common theme that we see with really high Achievers is that they feel like they're not enough and I heard something I think it was V ramaswami who said his biggest strength is also his big biggest weakness I think that very much applies in this case do you ever feel like that's something that you'd like to conquer or you fine compromising maybe this sense of like you know fulfillment or whatever being enough to achieve these things that you want to achieve I only look to overcome things like that if I feel like they are negative use case to my life so if I felt like me striving for more meant that I let relationships fall meant that I was letting myself get sick then I would strive to overcome it but you don't feel like you're com compromising any part of happiness or Joy or fulfillment by feeling like you may not be enough my Pursuit of Happiness is found in the chase of enough and uh you know Arthur Brooks talks about happiness a lot and he's been somebody that I've looked up to for years I'm part of a think tank that he used to run called Ai and um and he talks about the The Pursuit of Happiness being multifaceted H but one of the biggest Pursuits of happiness is Pursuit of Happiness and so I think Pursuit of Happiness actually means doing the thing that you are called to do there I don't think there is this Blissful State I will ever have well I will be picking sunflowers and dancing in fields that will achieve happiness and I and I actually find that a lot of the people that strive for that uh I mean it's creating dissonance between where you are and where happiness lies yeah I don't know I think um I'm quite happy in the pursuit of happiness but I I am I assume at some point you know actually I don't I assume that there is no 100% happy I have never met a human that I feel like is 100% fulfilled at all times maybe a child um but I don't profess to regress to Childhood um and so I'm happy with the the pursuit of enough I think but the other thing that I think is true more than anything else is that any human you guys have on here talk to us in 30 years or 40 years because uh I have found that the ideas that were strongly held at 10 at 20 at 30 change materially with really only one input which is age um and so maybe there will be a joy that I find in enoughness with time as that goes on to break down your personality also we try to do this quickly because this has gone pretty I'm trying to understand would you say that higher than average intelligence was a big factor in you getting to where you are today no but I've never taken an IQ test I have no idea how smart I am you don't think that that played a role no I I don't actually think of myself as as smart at all okay but but here's the thing you're so smart that you realize your own limitations so by you saying that you're not smart and you know you're smart you're also being humble I'm not really that humble or nice I'm pretty honest um I think that I am competent um and I suppose what does smart mean do we intelligence maybe just like computing power ability to adapt raw horsepower yes um I mean I did very normal on my SATs and GMAT which I think are two levels of of intellect um I think I'm above average in ability to take ideas translate them into words more simply defined so maybe I might even perceived as be perceived as intelligent than I am because I'm good at speaking uh like idea to word combination um Bill actually calls this uh humans that have uh subject to verb a ability which basically just means anybody who can talk um but uh so no I I guess I don't think about it as intelligence but I don't think about that that often what I do know is that I have a very high pain tolerance for continuing in a work perspective little pain tolerance probably physically but I I don't think there are very many people that can outwork me and I think it's very hard to win against people who are obsessed and who work continuously so you would say it's grit and then you also mentioned earlier that it wasn't necessarily that you were always this way but it was that you tried a bunch of different veins and you finally found the one thing that was easy for you to outwork everyone else in yeah so if you're saying for any viewer right now if they want to learn how they can put themselves in a position maybe that they want to be in a very successful position it's just to continue trying and testing a bunch of different veins IQ doesn't have much to do with it Y and then find something that's easy for you to to work in yeah I think that's well summarized I think curiosity paired with grit paired with iteration over long periods of time equals success I mean I met this guy Joffrey Kent who's maybe become another mentor of mine because he's like a renaissance man you know he's in his 80s he created abomi and and Kent and the you still keep in touch with him I do that's funny she mentioned she sat next to want a plane yeah might have want an airplane um yeah we're going to go to Monaco this summer and CM um but uh he mentioned that the only reason he thinks he's been successful over time is that he ran ABIA and Kent for 61 years and so he just said you know time plus compounding plus consistency equals success um and now we all have survivorship bias so maybe that wasn't exactly it for him but it stuck with me well there you have it everybody there is the recipe to become rich I have one final thing word associate a I always enjoy doing this I like are you like a psychologist major I mean that's the stuff I'm currently interested and okay I'm going to say something and you tell me the first thing that comes to your mind okay okay like one word response let's just but if I say something like you know placard I don't want to hear you say you know like hogen light bulb like I want it to be have some you know what I mean okay okay Alex Orosi uh great friend Chris uh my husband H work fun money lots of it that's good Freedom we need more subscribe now good one that's good I love that was great Chris Williamson other friend who else do we have Lea horos oh she's awesome drone Powell not Great's try not to say anything terrible Grant Cardone I don't know him Trump thank you so much for coming on the ice coffee means so much everybody listening right now please subscribe because we're beating Caleb hammer in a race Milli subscribers but it's kind of just like rotating he's kind of beating us a little bit we're beating him a little bit shout out to Chris Williamson I don't know why I keep doing this it's just such a good beverage he's not paying us to say this thank you