Revealing The Dark Secrets Of The ULTRA RICH | Daniel Mac

Welcome back to the Ice Coffee Hour. This is Daniel Mac. So far this podcast I would say has made $50,000 not including sponsors. No, wow. That's under. Yeah, that's significantly under. Significantly Significantly under. Oh, significantly. Well, I would 225,851.59. Okay, cuz the brand sponsors I feel like are what pull a lot of it. Is that Is that not true? It is true. Yeah, the brands definitely help us out a lot. Thank you brands. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on Daniel. We really appreciate it. You guys I'm sure if you're on Tik Tok you've seen Daniel before. Anywhere. Anywhere. Gosh, you show up everywhere. Like you can't get rid of you man. I'm on Facebook I'll scroll, YouTube shorts I'll scroll, Instagram I'll scroll, you come up for me every like 10 Tik Toks there's one of you. Oh gosh, I hope that's a good thing. I hope so. Yo, yo, what do you do for a living? What do What do you do? Uh uh and then they give off an answer. How did you get started doing this? And how many how many views and and followers did you get so far from doing this? Like across the platforms. What is your like monthly view count across all platforms? I don't know. I mean It's got to be crazy. It's in the billions. So like on YouTube I just crossed a billion views. Um that's YouTube alone. I think Tik Tok's a couple billion. And now though I'd say I think I have like 17 or 18 million followers across all platforms. So it's really crazy cuz I mean I I was working in finance prior. I graduated college, freshly out of college um and I moved to Dallas Texas to do a job in finance like financial advising for Charles Schwab the brokerage firm. And I had never done content before. I like wasn't trying to be a content creator. I was like content creation's out for me. I was going to work like a desk job in finance um for the rest of my life and be happy doing that. But then I just filmed a video cuz I had an idea over the summer. I thought it was like where like how are these people getting these cars? Like and I wasn't even the biggest car guy is the thing. People assume I'm like the wizard of all things cars and now I'm really good but um at the time I was just kind of a moderate fan I you'd say. So I filmed a video um and it went crazy. My first post ever on Tik Tok had like 20 million views in a day. And then I had a million followers on TikTok within a week. Explain what that video was. Where was it filmed? Okay, so it was in Dallas, Texas. I was with my friend Grant um and we were in like kind of a fancy hotel area, literally hunting for cars cuz we came up with the concept. And I saw a Ferrari just pulled up at a hotel. So I asked the guy, "Hey, what do you do for a living?" And he says, I don't even remember now, something like, "I'm a doctor" or something like that. And then we see another guy, he's in an Audi R8 and he just drops, you know, some general life advice. But then we see a guy in a Lamborghini Huracan and he looks really like fancy or just interesting. So he pulls out of the hotel and we start tracking him down the road and go like eight blocks. We roll up to his window and he looks over us with shades on after I asked the question. He's like, "I sell drugs." And that was the video that like popped it off. didn't even expect it at the time, but I posted that and it just went absolutely crazy. I had no idea. I was refreshing my screen, like, what the hell? And all my friends and family were like, didn't even know it was me for like a month or two cuz I never showed my face. Wow. How did you evolve from that? So you obviously knew pretty quickly, like immediately, you had a good concept. So what did you do after? You're just like, let's keep repeating this? Yeah, I mean, people say like find your niche on TikTok, um which I think is really true, but I'm like basically I was surprised that I thought I had like two or three videos with it, you know, I thought like after, you know, one or two, people would stop caring, but I think people are always going to be interested in like how to get wealthy, obviously. But I started branching out into other stuff. So I started doing yacht content. Like I'd go to Miami, I'd like break into these yacht yards in Miami, like where you're not allowed to be with some of these like really, really rich people. Um and I'd ask them like on their ships, like, "Hey, what do you do for a living?" And sometimes they invite me on and we go like on a yacht party or something like that. Like Miami's crazy like that. But uh we started doing like cribs, like um cribs, like MTV Cribs, and we'd go check out people's like 40 or 50 million-dollar mansions and I'd ask them what they do and um they'd tell me and we'd check out their cool collections and interviewing people. It's such a broad like phrase, like, "What do you do for a living?" that now I can sit down with like people that are in various fields and I can ask them how do you get wealthy and it just keeps keeps on evolving essentially. Yeah. That's incredible. Now, how often is it that you get like a really negative reaction? It's funny, I just posted a video of all the negative reactions I've ever gotten. Yeah, that one's funny. Um I'd say it's rare though. Like it's every I don't know, one in one in 10, maybe less. Like maybe 1 to 5% of the time. It's normally not at like a car show. I'll go to car shows and everyone's like they know that I'm going to be there or like they're in the car community so they want to show off their stuff, but I'll go to like Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and you'll get some wonky characters out there. Um but sometimes people just like yell at me. And I used to not like it, but now I love it cuz it's even better content. Right. What's some of the best advice you've gotten from these people? Well, I mean and you probably love this one, but real estate number one. I mean, people ask me like what's the most common uh job that people are in um and it's always real estate. Commercial real estate for the real ballers out there that like have, you know, like yachts and whatnot. They're always in like huge properties. Um but in general, real estate, get into that. It's never too early to buy a property regardless of what the market's doing. People tell me that all the time. Mhm. Um a lot of people are in like various industries like tech. Um that's kind of where you see like the new money McLaren drivers, not to stereotype certain uh car owners, but tech for sure. Um and then you get like the basic like follow your dreams kind of people that don't really know what to say. Um but I'd say investing is obviously number one. And I kind of knew that with my background a little bit, but everyone invests that has this kind of money. Like you literally can't be wealthy by just having like a salary is what I've learned. And then also owning your own business is the other big one. So I'd say like real estate, own your own business cuz there's only so much money you can make like as a doctor even. Like you're capped out at what, like 300k a year or something like that. Three to five depending on or if you private practice, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, how long did you do the financial advisory stuff until you decided to quit that and do Tik Tok and like content creation full time? Um so I was doing it for 9 months I think. So I wasn't like a master or anything like that. I've been fascinated with finance my whole life, so I was always interested in it. But um, I was doing that job for like 9 months. Um, and it was awful when I was doing it because not because of the job itself. I was really interested in it and people would be like, um, hey, like good thing you got out of that desk job. I actually really liked it. I thought it was cool. Um, and I'm always interested in the stock market and stuff like that. But I was basically from the start of the job also simultaneously doing Tik Toks and whatnot. So like I'd finish work, I'd do like a normal 9-5, and then right after work I would immediately jet on over to like some populated like wealthy area like a mall or whatnot. And then on the weekends I would fly out to LA cuz I didn't live there yet. Um, so I would basically be working like 100-hour weeks because after work I'd be editing or reaching out to people or doing like brand deal stuff. And then on the weekends I was filming non-stop while also doing the regular 9-5. So it was quite the grind and at some point I I remember I was filming with Paris Hilton in in uh, LA while still doing this normal job. And I woke up that morning and was just like, I'm quitting my day job. Like I was just with Paris Hilton. I got back at 8:00 a.m. or, you know, late in the night and I just woke up and was like, this is it. I'm putting in my two weeks, which was really scary. Yeah. Were you making more money on Tik Tok at that point? Yes, yeah. I was pretty conservative with it. Like a lot of people are like, hey, like um, you know, it's pretty stupid to move out to LA and you it's like the city of broken dreams essentially. Like people go out there to do acting and whatnot and they fail. But I was making like I think double my um, annual income at the time and I had like seven or eight million followers on Tik Tok at the time. So I really could have quit earlier I think, but I didn't want to be that guy that like moves out there and then has to move back or, you know, quits the job. did your co-workers think about this? Did they know? Yeah, they knew. Yeah. I I kind of had to keep it under wraps a little bit at the beginning. Um, you have to declare the income to your job, but I was like a little late on that. Um, and they were just like gobsmacked. Like they a lot of people didn't know it was me cuz I didn't I didn't show my face in videos for like 6 months. So even my fan like friends basically were like, I see this Daniel Mac name popping up here and it matches your voice. Like, is this you? Um and I just had to be like, yeah, it's me. And then I started showing my face a little more, but everyone was shocked. Do they Now, did Schwab have have an issue with you having like a presence outside of them? Couldn't that be a liability if you did something and then they're like, well, he works at Charles Schwab. No, definitely. Yeah. I mean, it was a they were really good with it though. Um I had a really great boss at the time. I think it could have gone way differently in any other circumstance, but um they knew about it, but it was getting like hairy at the end there. So, Yeah, which office was it? Um it was over in It was north of Dallas. So, Oh, okay. the Frisco or now Plano office. Okay, got it. Okay. Um but at the time we were work from home. So, I never actually went into the brand new facility ever. you say about how much you were making right at the time of quitting from both sources? Yeah, yeah. Um for the first it was a 2-year program, so it's like you're getting your brokerage licenses and whatnot. So, you weren't making a lot at the start and until you actually became a full-fledged advisor. But, I think it was around 55 or 50. So, like just kind of standard out of college job. Um it would have amped up though. So, the thing is I always wanted to do advising. That's why it was kind of a difficult decision and I think out of like 1 or 2 years out or so with your own book, you'd be making like around six figures or maybe slightly under at the start. So, that was something I considered. I was like, well, this is what I want to do long-term for 40 years. What's a little pay off here quitting my job for a couple years potentially. Um but on TikTok, I think I was making What what really happened actually was I I got my first Snapchat check in the mail. Um and that was $20,000 just off of two videos. It was probably my highest one of my highest paid videos at the time. But, um at the time I I just expected it to be like a couple thousand like $2,000. I remember getting the email. I was sitting in my apartment on the phone with my mom actually just talking about like my job and whatnot. I open up the Snapchat email and I see like a invoice or whatever to me for $20,200. Something along those lines. And I just was like, this is a mistake. Like, this can't be can't be accurate. So, I reread it and that was with a 50% cut from Snapchat. So, originally it was like 40,000 I generated them in ad revenue. And then after this it was 20. And I was like, oh, like I've done two videos this month and it did this much in revenue. I'm quitting my job. And then I went to Vegas or LA the next week and I was like Snapchat Spotlight. That wasn't like the actual tiles. No, it was um my show on on Spot on Snapchat, not Spotlight. I missed the train on that. Oh, wow. Yeah. People could have made a killing on there. I know. Yeah, people were reposting my videos on Spotlight and making like millions of dollars and I didn't even know at the time. Yeah, so for those that don't know, Snapchat launched this program to try to like have a TikTok type competitor where it was like a feed and you could post on there and they had a budget. It was $1 million was it per week? Per day at the beginning. Oh my god. A million dollars per day that they were allocating towards the the highest viewed creators. So, people were repurposing your content and then making like crazy Yeah, slimy and shady. millions. Like Cam Casey's some guy. He's like their case study essentially. I think he made like $3 million off of like 10 videos or something on on Spotlight. Wow. you go from filming on your phone to then meeting all these celebrities? I mean, it's DMs on Instagram is how I started out. So, like I there were a couple people that were really cool at the start when I had like low follower count like low but like a couple million on TikTok. So, like I would just DM them out of the blue. And this is for like later in the game when I was doing more skits. So, I would originally was running up to people like on Rodeo Drive like Giannis like the NBA player. I just got him in a random video. Jason Derulo, I just literally got him at a gas station. Wait, that was random? I thought that was planned. No, not not Jason Derulo. So, some of the skits are like I want them I want people to know they're skits. So, some of these celebrities I'll literally like put like hashtag skit and people will be like, this is fake. And I'm like, yeah, they're playing a part here. But some of the beginning ones I were doing were all legit with the celebrities. Yeah, that Jason Derulo one it's like, who just sees Jason Derulo at a gas station? But did he know you from TikTok? Yeah. I I assume so. Yeah, I mean he was in Tarzana when we filmed it. Um and we were out there shooting um kind of like a real estate like crib style video. We pull over to get gas and Jason Derulo was like his house is by there. Yeah. And he was in a green Huracan. So like we pulled off, you know, essentially to go check it out. And Jason Derulo is just chilling there. But he must have known, I think. He's just chilling there. But But let's say But how nerve-racking was that free to go up to Jason Derulo and say, "Hey, what do you do for a living?" Dude, I I didn't even know if it was him at the very start. Uh but it it it was crazy. It was some of these celebrities I've met. Like I've done What did he say? He said He just said, "I'm Jason Derulo for a living." That's serious. Yeah, yeah. I'm Jason Derulo. Yeah. That's a boss, man. When you just say your name and you're like, "Oh, okay. I get it." He's one of the coolest guys. We We filmed another follow-up like skit with him in Saudi Arabia. Um and the man is probably one of the most genuine like A-listers you can ever meet. Like he's also really tuned in with like finance and Yes. investing and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah, we communicated briefly. Uh actually it was like 20 minutes where he he wanted uh he wanted to do something in the finance space online and uh wanted my opinion on that. I was like the entire time starstruck just to be like, "He's calling." I dropped everything. called you? Yeah, he called me. Oh, okay. Yeah, I was like, "He's calling right now. Shh." Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, I mean some of these celebrities are just Yeah. It's like we've done like Helen Mirren for a brand deal and like Richard Branson, like Logan Paul, like people like that and you're just like, "Okay, like I'll be nervous." reaching out to you at this point being like, "Hey, do a video or I'm trying to promote something?" Yeah, I mean all the time. Um it's just like a fine line between letting people know like I I don't want people I don't want to do too many of them because I don't want people to think that my videos are like all fake and stuff like that. So like that's why I'm like I make it apparent where I'm like if we're doing something with a celebrity, I want people to know it's like a skit. Um but then sometimes you just run into them, you know, out of the blue, especially in LA. It's crazy. Do you worry that there might uh you might have challenges long-term with the same format? Oh, definitely. Yeah. I mean, people are like, "Do you think you can do this forever?" And I don't I'm not like stupid. I feel like there's no way that the trend could keep up for years and years. I'm surprised it's kept up this long. I think people are just genuinely fascinated with the like how to acquire wealth, but I think it's obviously I need to adapt and change and do different stuff. Kind of like what I've been saying with like houses, cars, all things luxury essentially, but I also want to move more into the investing sphere as well and really like sit down with people and find out like really like what do you do for a living and like how did you get this car, this house in a way that like a Tik Tok can't actually encapsulate like Yeah, right. 20 seconds. So, your Tik Toks are mostly entertainment value. Like you go up to people that are driving these expensive cars, ask them what they do for a living, and that doesn't really provide like how much insight as so as to like how they got to where they are, right? But, didn't aren't you starting something where you can go more long-form with some of the people you're asking, and you can talk about like the actual process of becoming a an anesthesiologist or like a singer? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, it's more long-form con- I call it kind of mid-form content. I don't know if that's a real word, but like 5-6 minute um video and podcast style like audio video. Um, I have it on my Snapchat, so essentially where I sit down with people. Some of them have been more lewd, you know, we've had like an OnlyFans model on there, but it is interesting stuff. Like the OnlyFans industry in general is like there's managers going on and there's like a lot of stuff on the back- on the back end that people wouldn't expect. Yeah. Um, and it's kind of like a, you know, just a monster empire uh that people don't really realize. So, just cool interesting occupations that you wouldn't expect, but then also anesthesiologist, doctor, like really what is your path to getting to this point? That's what I want to do more of is the more of the long-form. Yeah. You would do so well if you asked somebody, "What do you do for a living?" And then "A doctor. Can you give me 5 minutes of your time just to talk about this?" And just like an impromptu interview on the street. I don't think like a fancy podcast setup or anything like that. Just on the street with a mic, just back and forth 5 minutes. I think we'd do so well. Or in the car with them. Of you driving in the car with them and they're just telling you their life story. I think that would do so well because it's like you're picking a random person off the street and hearing their story. It's not like filtered, it's just like whatever they say. It's like raw, yeah. Right. We've thought about doing that with people in in cars and whatnot. Um I mean it's kind of like comedians in cars getting coffee, but like Yeah. the actual like more serious version of that. Like I'm in their Lambo, I got them in a video maybe previously or whatnot. Like let's drive around in their car that you saw them originally in and let's find out like the real like details on what they did. But I think that's a really good idea with like just I'm outside a hospital and someone's in like scrubs and I'm like give me the real like uh the real details. so well. You know what who did that uh did it great was Deadmau5. Where it was uh what was it? He took people in his McLaren and would go and get coffee with them or would go to McDonald's with them. And just him having a conversation as they drive to McDonald's or it was like a fast food place or Tim Hortons uh cuz they're in Canada and then they drive back. Oh. It was so good and they were like 30 minutes and it was just him just unfiltered. You see the guy getting in the car and they just drive. Oh, okay. It's really cool. I think if you did something like that it would do incredibly well. That sounds like a really good idea. Yeah. Also another thing to consider is do you know like the TikTok salary transparent street? Yes, yes. they came out and they exploded. Like in the past month, I don't even know how many followers they have now. just checking today. It's like 800k or so, 750. But every single video that they post just pops off and it's basically this girl that travels to different places and she goes up to people, "What do you do for a living and how much money do you make?" And she just does it over and over and over again and people just like eat it up on TikTok. And I think if you could somehow incorporate also like revealing people's incomes. Like for example, you see someone like a Benti Bentley and you go up to them, "Oh, what do you do?" "Oh, I'm a doctor." "How much do you make?" And then they'll say do that. How often do people lie? I think a lot of people have seen the videos and they have like these cuz some of the responses are insane. Like and people are like, "Okay, this is like there's no way they actually do that." I think a lot of them are expecting like me to maybe come up to them at some point. I mean, people will be driving around in like LA and they see that they've had like 30 people walk up to them and ask them the question. So that's why people go, "Oh, you're the guy." or like, "Are you the guy?" cuz I don't show my face always. So they're like, "Is this another person coming up to me or is it like the real person that started it?" So, yeah, and it's happened to me before. Like I've been driving, I've had like rental cars in Miami or LA for the day, and I'll be driving and I'll be like at a stoplight and people will roll down like their windows and be like, "Hey, what do you do for a living?" And I'm like, "I'm the one that does that thing." And they're like, "What the hell?" It's it's pretty cool. Yeah. So what do you drive? I drive right now a Tesla Model 3, which is kind of angers some car people, but I just ordered a Porsche GT4. It'll be here in September. Looking forward to bringing it out on some canyons out in New York. did that cost you? You getting that at sticker? I think so. Yeah, Porsche Dallas. Shout out Porsche Dallas. But um, they basically it was like a 7-month wait or like 50k over or like 100k over to get it from anywhere else, but um, I think they're pulling for me essentially if I do some kind of promo and show it off and whatnot. But yeah, I mean, I wanted to get a car cuz I kind of, you know, I have I feel like me and you are pretty similar in that front where I didn't want to get something that was like crazy out of reach at the moment, but I still needed to get something that I could bring around to like car shows. And I was like the car guy that's filming all these videos with cars. And you could daily it. If you really wanted to drive it, you could drive that thing like 30,000 miles, no problems at all. Yeah. What's your favorite car that you have? Uh, the Tesla Roadster. Oh, okay. That's your favorite car? Favorite car. You drive like bar. What? Why I thought you were going to say the GT-R. No. No, no, no. The Tesla Roadster. I'll take the Tesla out way more than I'll ever take the GT-R. Really? Yeah. Oh my gosh, it's so it the original? That's the It's a That one is a 2010. Oh, okay. I mean, Teslas just drive like They get a lot of hate because people are just love them so much cuz they won't stop talking about them, but it's because they're so good. Like I'm obsessed with my Model 3. I I you're also wearing that watch. Now, I remember seeing like when that video came out, you went up to a guy in a fancy car. What do you remember what car it was? It was a Audi R8 in red, yeah. Yeah, and you went up to him and you're like, "All right, what do you do for a living?" He's like, "I have a watch dealership." or something, right? And then he brings you to the dealership that he owns and he gives you a watch. Yes, it's one of my best stories, actually. I'll I'll tell you it. So, it's this guy, Timepiece Gentleman. He's in Dallas and he's like a watch broker, basically. I think he lives in LA now. I get him in a video. It's like my fourth video I've ever filmed or maybe third. Like one of my first initial shots. And I just say, "Hey, what do you do for a living?" He's like, "I'm a watch broker." and then he shouts out his Instagram. And normally now I wouldn't add that portion with the shoutout because people would think it's like a a paid post. Like today I probably wouldn't have done it. But back then I remember I get on the phone with my roommate and he's like, "Yeah, just leave it in. Like maybe something cool will happen to you." And I was like, "Okay, fine." And then I post the video and a day later I get like tagged in a bunch of stuff. And I still don't have like really any followers. But this is on Instagram. So, I had like no followers on Instagram at the time. And everyone's like pointing me to go to his page. And on his page is him holding a Rolex bag and it's like, "Everyone get Daniel's attention. I want him to give him a gift for shouting me out." So, I'm like, "Okay, there's no way this man's about to give me a free Rolex for just shouting him out in a video." And the video did decent. It got a couple million views, which is solid marketing. But I'm like, "Okay, let's find out what's happening." So, the next day I meet up with this guy after work. He gives me a Rolex this Rolex. It's a Datejust. Can I see it? Yeah, take a look. 41 mm. I think they go for like 12,000 now or so. Jubilee band, all that kind of stuff. And it's a great color. Oh, I like You know what's funny? I got the uh almost the same thing. Oh, really? Yeah, it's a different uh different dial. It's the same size. I think mine's a little bit smaller. Yeah, it's mine is a different bracelet. Yeah, yeah, yours is smaller. Yeah. So, the Jubilee band it's even more expensive, too. So, I'm surprised he like cuz the the the bezel it's like a fluted bezel. white gold. Yeah, yeah. Here you go, Jack. He balled out on it. Wow. Uh and then he filmed the video and he posted it and it got him so much more business by posting it. Like this guy's like a genius that he said he sold like 100 watches because of the video. Wow, I believe it though. Yeah. When did you post the video? What year? Uh, this was um Give me Give me Give me like a rough It was literally like 2 weeks after my first video. So it was like mid-September of 2020 2020. Yeah. Okay, so the watch market was going crazy then. And so you posted it at the right time just as the market was taking off and everyone was buying watches like that. And he was in the right spot at the right time. He's a genius. Combined with your promotion in a way just not even thinking about it. Yeah. I had no clue. I was just like, "Oh, yeah, let me post this video. Yeah." But first we got to thank our sponsor Nord VPN. Grandma was at the airport recently and it looked like my laptop got this cool new feature. 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Have you seen much like external benefit from approaching a bunch of really wealthy people and asking what they do? I mean, just crazy connections. Like, every single person that I interact with is wealthy. Like, cuz they're all just driving these crazy cars. Some of them, I mean, I don't know. A couple of them are rentals, probably. I've asked people and they've been like, "Yeah, this is a rental." Um so, they're honest in that fashion. But, uh just like the crazy connections, like I'll go to I'll be like, "I know people in every city now." Like, if I go to Miami, like I there's people there that have yachts and they're like, "Come hang out and do this thing." I'd be like, if I started a business, um I would have a lot of like wealthy people that could help maybe help pool me money or I could work with um so, I don't see myself going back to like a 9:00 to 5:00 anytime soon. It'd probably be like my own business with people that I've met that are wealthy and and uh I'm curious, if you could put a price tag on uh on your connections. Like, when you think of your network and how much that's worth, gosh, what do you think? Man, if if you're to like buy that network, someone who's 10 million bucks, $20 like it The people that you know at this point are worth more than you would probably ever make. Just just having those connections and having those friendships. It's crazy. Yeah, I mean, like it's I got to do something with it though. Cuz people tell me that all the time. They're like, "Oh, you have all these crazy connections." And I'm like, "I don't know what to do with them yet." Not like, you know, I use friends or whatnot as like connections only. Like, uh but yeah, I feel like in the next, you know, couple years or something, some of these people I've met will come to like be really cool be their business partners or life advice people or whatnot getting into fields. Yeah. Do you plan on doing something like that? Like, creating a a new vertical or do you plan on continuing going in the content creation route and building up a social platform like that? I think maybe both at the same time. Like, I'll I'll do the content creation as long as it's still making me a lot of money. But, cuz I mean, you can people like you can make so much money doing content, way more than people would expect, honestly. But, I think also at the same time while using my platform, I would start a business and build it up, but it's not as easy as people think. I mean, like to do even promote like a merch line and stuff like that. People People see like, "Oh, you have 1.7 mil or so on Instagram." Like, if even 1% of your audience were to buy a shirt, then but it's not always that simple. So, yeah, I think it just depends. Yeah. Yeah. Uh now, you were mentioning earlier about like car stereotypes. Can you share any of those? It's like the tech people go for uh you know, McLarens, and then flashy people go for the Lambos. Have you noticed something between cars that Can you share that? Yo, yeah. Yeah. Okay. What what have you noticed? Yeah. Well, I mean, you got the the classics like Rolls-Royce people. I never can even get them in videos cuz their windows are always up. It's always a miracle if I can film that, but Bentley, especially Rolls-Royce, you got the old crusty people every time. Like, they're crusty, they're old, they don't really want to talk. Sometimes they're spirited old fellows, but uh for the most part, it's like crusty white man in the in the Rolls-Royce. Um or like yeah, they have a driver or whatnot. Um and then you have like Bentley people. They're kind of usually like older as well. They're like 60, 70. Um that's pretty standard. Usually kind of friendly, but also kind of along the side the Rolls-Royce train. And then you have Aston Martin people. More like fancy. They're They're not really like flashy, so a lot of the times the Aston Martin people won't want to tell me exactly what they do, but a lot of them are like lawyers. I don't know why. They just like lawyers with the Aston I know a lawyer with an Aston. Yeah, me too. I know a couple, yeah. It makes sense. And they're yeah, they're kind of private normally or like businessy, like in some kind of business. Then you have the McLaren people, and they're like young new money. Like, they're usually in tech. They love getting the crazy colors on them. Um and they love whipping around Rodeo Drive with their windows down. Ferrari is harder to kind of get a hand on. Ferrari is difficult with like who they give cars out to like they'll sue people all the time. You can't modify them. So you normally get like an older crowd and Ferrari won't even sell you a brand new Ferrari. You have to like go through their many hoops of ownership and weird rules and signing your life away. And then Lambo people are also kind of like McLaren people. They're usually like younger money kind of anti-Ferrari. So you'll usually be younger than Ferrari people. The Bugatti people are never responding to me. Like I've literally gotten like maybe one or two like Bugatti Chirons or something like that in a video. Anything above like a million or so, they're private people. I don't even know why they come out to these car shows cuz like people can see what they look like, but it's usually a never they just won't they won't do it. Usually I've noticed it's royalty or sometimes it's something illegal. There was one there was a big issue years back. This must have been almost 10 years ago where there was a guy who disappeared with a Bugatti and he apparently had ties to like the Malaysian mob or mafia or like some ties like that and he came to the US, brought all this money over and betrayed one of them and then he just disappeared. Oh, really? It was a big thing in the car community back then. And this was in Beverly Hills. Oh, really? Or he was he was offed. And like oh, maybe that was it. I think he was offed and people were like and and then all the rumors started to speculate that he was involved in something he shouldn't have. But there's some like crazy usually going like that sort of space sometimes for the the crazy ones. It's happened to me. Like I've gotten I guess this is public info now. I don't really know if I should talk about it out loud. I don't I think I'm fine. But um basically I got some guy in a video in a Ferrari and he's with this like girl who's like an Israeli citizen and he's from um Syria or his dad was from Syria. He's like on the FBI's most wanted list and he's like banned from America essentially. But I get him the son in America. I post the video. They're acting kind of weird. They're like we're students or I'm a student and I'm like student driving a Ferrari must be a really you know, I don't even know what you say to that. Like, you're a student. Um and then everything seems fine, so I post the video and then I get like hit up by all these organizations. Like, and they're like, "We'd like to interview you about this person that you interacted with." Um and then I finally get a link to an article cuz it's trending on YouTube. It gets like 5 million views on YouTube, this video. I think it may be gone now, actually, so I don't know what happened there. But it's like "Playboy billionaire son of Syrian FBI most wanted spotted in Rodeo Drive with Israeli girlfriend." Like press. Like Vice Vice News or like Forbes or something make an article. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I I didn't know." So, I don't know who else I've got to You had him, man. He was right there. Yeah. So, I think he's all good. I think it's his dad who's Oh my god. Do you feel nervous about like your own safety or anything from that or were you fine? I mean, I don't I I feel like it's like a genuine I don't know That's why I said I haven't really talked about it much, so you guys might be some of the first people to hear it. But um Yeah. Yeah, it's not like he got the guy like the fugitive himself. And the video's already out. It's not malicious. So, like I would feel like if you were out there to try to expose him, then you could be in danger. But the fact that it's a one-off thing and like you're doing it to everybody, I don't think you're at risk. It's a bad place, you know, the to film. Wrong place, wrong time for him, I guess you could say. A lot of really wealthy families, by the way, will come here and they'll take like one class at UCLA and they're a student. Yeah. That's what I've seen a lot. A lot of people from like Dubai, um Saudi Arabia. I'll get like the ballers that are on Rodeo Drive and they're driving Every single time I see them, they're in a new car. Um and it's like a lot of royalty. Um so, yeah. That's like That's probably like 5% of the people I get on Rodeo. Yeah, I rented a house to a guy like that and it was $50,000 a month, but it was just for his friends to stay there because he rented out the Beverly Hills Hotel and like an entire floor for him and his family and the assistants and like, you know, all of that. But this house was next to the Beverly Hills Hotel for his buddies. Really? It was insane. What they'll do is they'll take their cars and they'll fly them down. And then they'll be able to park them on Rodeo Drive or outside of the the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Wow, they just they like cargo like fly them like whoa, okay. They'll just show up one day and the thing is they'll have like multiple people just to drive these cars around so they could park them all outside of the hotel. Oh my gosh. And then they just walk out and they'll pick which car they want to drive. It's it's insane. I was just there at the Beverly Hills Hotel like two days ago and I'm just looking at all the cars that are there and it's like 50 super Yeah, what's the other one that's really good? The Peninsula Hotel. There's basically all those hotels there you go to the the valet and guaranteed there's something worth a million dollars there. Yeah, naughty. It's crazy. And just the amount of wealth and and I've gone to a bunch of different cities like Miami, Vegas, um LA are like kind of like the hot spots. But like LA you get like the people that are like really truly wealthy um and they're just there, you know, Beverly Hills style. And then Miami you'll get like the people that are like the Bitcoin um ballers out there. I call them like they're like the new It's like the Bitcoin city now. Like when I go there you got a 50% chance of running into like a crypto bro in Miami. So it's super interesting. Oh no, now they're trading in a Ferraris. Yeah, speaking about crypto, have you ever tried to ask like people in normal cars cuz we know somebody that Dogecoin millionaire and he drives like this very unsuspecting car. Um so have you ever for a day tried like, you know, the Corollas or the Priuses just to see like what you would get? Uh people have told me to do it. The people say do it with bad cars sometimes. That's one thing and I was going to do it at the beginning but now I feel like that would come off like really bad but I think that's an interesting idea with like just regular people um like regular people like regular cars. Just kind of getting like their life advice and whatnot. The thing is you'd have to ask them how much money they make. Because you could find somebody and be like, I own my own business, but you don't know if it's like, you know, $20,000 a year business or $20 million a year. If you ask how much they make and they're driving a Corolla, how much do $5 million a year. Yeah. You're driving this? Yep. The Buffets out there are like, "Yeah, why waste money on a depreciating asset?" Yeah, that's what you would need if you could just ask them, "How much money do you make?" Yeah. Yeah, it's like salary transparency. Right. And that's And that's also a good way that you could always transition, instead of what do you do for a living? How much money do you make? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I just I think it depends on who you get. Some people might be like, "Get out of my face." Very rude, but some You the IRS? No, literally people say I'm like an undercover IRS operative. Um I don't know if I've ever exposed I bet you have. I'm sure. Like, "Okay, you're being audited? Well, you were in this viral video of you driving a Lamborghini. Like, where did you get this money?" your Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm tax returns is $10,000 a year. I've ruined thousands of lives, so Yeah. You could have So, how have you been able to turn this into a business? Cuz I'm I'm seeing some people off camera here. And how much is involved behind the scenes to do this? I mean, there's a couple layers. I keep it so I have my agent, Steven. He's He's over here. Shoutout, Steven. He helps me do brand deals. So, anytime I So, I guess I'm like my own manager. Steven's the agent. So, a lot of like TikTok people will have like their own manager completely and they'll handle like their email, like their day-to-day stuff like that. So, like I'll still get like inbound emails to my email. I'll take a look at it, whatever. I'll pass it along to Steven. He will do all the negotiating. And forgive me if I butcher some of what you do, but he's the negotiation man. Like, before when I was without Steven, who works at CAA, they're one of the biggest firms in the world. yeah. Yeah. They're the biggest, maybe, I think, yeah. Um They I I would be negotiating myself and I'd be like, "Oh, you know." Way undercutting myself. Like, my first couple brand deals I was doing was like $5,000, $15,000, stuff like that. And it would like just was way low. This is right when I was first starting out, like when my account so I had a couple million, but still like getting sizable view amounts. So, then Steven will like negotiate with you know, the brand. They'll you know, basically try to up it to whatever we're comfortable with. A lot of the legal on the background is huge. All the fine tuning of documents and redlining and stuff like that. It's back and forth for like sometimes up to months and whatnot. Um and meeting with the people, you know, you're FaceTiming with them or or WebExing, excuse me. Um setting up with the video idea will be, making a script. So that's sometimes I'll jump in there and once uh the deal's been set and all the other stuff I'm forgetting about is done, then I'll make a script and then that'll go through redlining and approval. And then once that's done, then you finally can shoot. And then there's the edits after the shooting. And there's always a million of them. And Blake over here is my producer and basically once you shoot the video and we think it's good, we always think it's good and we make it our style. Brands have certain tastes and they you know, want it to be perfect to what they want to do for their marketing. So we'll go back and forth sometimes like five or six times, you know, with different edits. And then that's when the video's posted. Yeah, give us an example of a brand. How do you integrate a brand in a What do you do for a living? I mean, it's nice cuz it's such a broad topic. So like What do you do for a living? Could be associated with like any brand. Like I could go up to someone in a car and they could be a representative of the brand or like I've gone up to like BMW for example I did a video with and they had a brand new electric car that we shot with and they have a professional BMW driver in the car. He's like, "Get in, man. Like let me show you the the car. Yeah, I'm a I'm a race car driver." So you can like you can use pretty much any occupation. It's so broad and I didn't realize how good it was when I made it. I just I just, you know, essentially filmed the video, but it works for pretty much any That's true. I didn't think about that. Yeah. And I've seen those videos. Yeah. Um that's interesting. That's a good spin on it. I really like that. It's just so broad. It's It's like I didn't realize how good it was for how broad it is. Yeah, I got lucky with it, I guess you could say. Yeah. And walk us through like an average day. How many hours do you work? What do you work on? I work more than people would expect. I think people with TikTokers like they they say, you know, you're not just doing the dances in front of the camera. Like I hopefully will never have to do a dance in my life, but I'll wake up in the morning normally. I'm a night owl though, so sometimes people will be like, "Oh, you wake up at 10:30? Like, you're lazy." But, I stay up until like 3:00 or 4:00 sometimes like working. So, my whole schedule's a little shifted, but usually I'll wake up like 10:00, 10:30 or so. Um I'll check my email normally first. Um sometimes uh Steven and I will hop on a call and we'll be discussing like what a brand wants or, you know, we'll be reaching out to brands or they'll be reaching out to us. Um I'll usually start filming something during the day. Like, weekends are my film days, so I'll go out to like a car show, go to rodeo, wait around for like 6 hours for something interesting to happen. Um if I'm not filming like an ad or doing um tracking people down like literally on the street, um then we'll be like editing videos or you know, posting is really what takes up all my time. Like, I have managed five platforms and I do I post everything myself. So, like, I'll wake up in the morning and say I have one video. I'll basically stack the videos in order of what makes you most money. So, Snapchat will be first. Like, you'll see everything on Snapchat a week prior to anything else. And then Facebook Hear that? Yeah, Snapchat's Snapchat's where it's at. Um I don't want people to see it on TikTok and then skip away from Snapchat. So, it's kind of like a funnel of Snapchat, Facebook Reels, which is newer. Um And then YouTube and TikTok and then Instagram last cuz they don't have me in the Reels fund. So, thanks a lot, Instagram. You're not in the Reels fund? No, I know. I'm not even in the Reels fund. I They don't like me. don't I haven't posted Reels. That's the crazy thing. They just they never invited me. I think because I post every day, they're like, "Why give him money?" So, it's super screwed up. I don't have an Instagram rep, but um So, Instagram's on the bottom. And then basically all day long I'll be like I'll go through all five of those and I'll sometimes I'll post five posts a day. So, you're getting the captions, you're replying to people to get engagement up. Um and all that stuff, promoting it on your stories. That's what takes up like 40% of my day is just getting all these posts on and then monitoring them, commenting to them, um and making the thumbnails and all that stuff. So, you've got this down to a science now of like what to post. Do the captions matter that much? I'd I so. Oh, captions on screen? Yeah. Oh, for sure. No, no, I mean the captions on like uh uh like below an Instagram post or with a Oh, oh, the actual caption. Um yeah, I'd say so. I I I think it's I think it's important, you know, but I don't I wouldn't say it's like the end-all, be-all. Um I think hashtags also aren't that important. I don't know if it helps too much with like I don't know. I mean, I feel like you know for YouTube more than me, but I My number one recommendation to people is captions on screen that aren't auto-generated, but like moving around to keep it you stimulated and fast cuts. Yeah. Can you share how much money you're making? I can give you like a a rough estimate, you know. I'd say it depends on what's going on with like brand deals and stuff like that. But and some months are different than others, but like on Snapchat, and that's my primary income source, some months can be like 15,000 only, some months can be like 60,000 per month. And then Reels has a new Facebook Reels fund where you can cap out at 35K a month. So, I can't get that now. Like they they used to make it like 50 million views would be the cap, and now it's like 150 or 200 million views. So, that was good for like a month or two while it lasted, but Reels I can make like roughly It'll just depends now, but you know, around 10, 20,000, 10,000 I'd say now. And then brand deals can be, you know, I don't want to give too much info on that, but they're just a rough estimate around that front. So Yeah. So, what would you expect over the course of a year? Just like an average year, what do you think that would equate to through everything? I'd say it depends. Like cuz the thing is last year is was the big blowout year for me, and then this year's different, you know. It's It's like more money in different areas, but as far as like ad revenue goes, it's kind of been going down a little bit. It goes through like phases. But definitely, you know, mid-six figures I'd say is probably standard for like a year-to-year basis. Yeah. That's fantastic. Yeah. I think you need to be expanding this. Yeah. I I get so worried, but I'm so like pessimistic when it comes to like all things social media. For me it's like ah it's last month. I got to make it good. I worry that like beyond another year or two, you got to figure out a shift. I think the podcast man could make you so much money. Yeah. That's what he was telling me. Yeah, the podcast. Yeah, 5 to 10 minutes enough where you get cuz uh didn't Tik Tok have like the 10 minute limit now? Uh yeah, 10 minutes. Yeah. Yeah, but I think you did like 5 10 minute interviews. Yeah. Yeah, not a full podcast like this. 5 10 minutes. Post on Facebook, too. on your own Well, YouTube for sure. Yeah, YouTube. Uh Tik Tok if they do or Tik Tok you even just do 3 minutes on Tik Tok. tiles would be good as well. Yeah, that and Facebook. Yeah. Yeah, I think just repurposing it every Do you film vertical for all that or in vertical and horizontal? So, you would probably have to, right? Yeah, you would have to. I wish they'd make a phone. I've been telling it Apple, you know, not really my direct line to, you know, Mr. Apple. But um why don't they have a phone that has the ability to record in vertical and horizontal at the same time? It would be great. That's a You know what's not? Good idea. You know what's not a thing? What the? What? Why Like that's a that's something for me. That's a problem everyone has had. It's insane. I don't know why it's not a thing. And I don't even know if people have I'm sure people have thought of it. Like like every good idea. I'm like, yeah. That's one of those ideas where it's just like why didn't I think of that? You could do a Patreon. Yeah. You could do a Patreon and then release early on Patreon or you can release the interviews on the Patreon. You could You could have only fans girls on there. What do you do for a living? Let me show you. Yeah. Only on Patreon. What? I don't know. The Patreon people have tell me to do it and they reached out to me like Patreon specifically and they're like, why don't you have one? But I don't know. I just I hate promoting it. I don't know. I hate I hate I hate promoting a lot of stuff and I feel like I should just get better at You got You got to get better at it. I just like I I so cringe to me like I was just kind of shy starting out with my account. That's why I didn't show my face. Something to me just would get like, what up, y'all? Subscribe to my Patreon. I know like everyone does it. I just like got to get better at doing to. And people who want to support you would be happy to do it. Yeah. I would say probably 90% of people don't care. 8% of people will do it. beneficial. It's like you're providing value to these people in the same way that they're providing value to you. Mhm, okay. That's an interesting way of looking at it, yeah. I mean it makes sense, you know, early access to videos. Like if I really liked someone, I would be like, "Sure, I'll pay for that." If you're already tapped out in how much you can work, you can hire someone else out. That's overhead, and the Patreon can help pay for that, and you can produce more with the Patreon as well, which is also pretty Mhm, yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about different platforms, and where you think the most valuable platform is. Like which one is it? And if you were to rank them on having a presence, how would you go from like number one to like number five? Well, it depends on what kind of content you make. So, like if you make short-form content, uh well, and I know it's different for you. You do long-form content. So, like at least on YouTube, and clips on TikTok. Okay, yeah. So, TikTok pays I'll tell you exactly how much TikTok pays. I mean, you guys probably know too, but $20 to $30 per million views, which is awful. Like you'll literally have a video with 10 million views, and an ad revenue, and you're making nothing. So, I'd say as far as like money But then you're getting all the brand deals as well. So, like TikTok to me is if it were if I weren't getting brand deals through TikTok, and it wasn't my biggest platform, I would be like, "Screw TikTok. It's on the bottom. I'm posting it last." So, it's all about the brand deals, so I keep that in mind cuz Instagram I'm doing brand deals as well, and they don't pay me anything, but I still beef it up and post on there as well. But as far as like Snapchat to me is the best platform, but I post like compilation videos. And I don't think I don't see it being around though forever. Like it sort of could be dying. So, I I don't know where to rate it there, but I'd say YouTube has their stuff together. They're kind of ahead of the game on the shorts field of stuff, you know, like they're competing with TikTok now much better. And now they have a bonus fund as well. So, I think YouTube's obviously going to be there forever to stay. Um Facebook's the sleeper pick though, I'd say. Like people in in America at least, like globally everyone uses Facebook. 2 billion users a year a day or a month or whatever. And all people at least, you know, that I talked to are like, why would you get a Facebook? But that's where you make so much money. Like people like Supercar Blondie, for example, you know, she has huge on Facebook. Yeah. I was talking to her. She's like, this is by far our biggest platform to make money on. And they, you know, you post three to four minute videos. You can do two ads on a four minute video or so, and no one is thinking about it. I mean, obviously people internationally are, but for some reason in my generation at least, it's like Facebook's dead. But like money wise, Facebook is not dead. And I was late to it anyways, too. The thing is, I think the uh the people with money to spend are on Facebook, because they tend to be a little bit older and they have the discretionary income. Versus some of the other platforms are so young that it's harder to target them for ads. Yeah. Facebook's the best, apparently, for ad like ad targeting. I mean, it didn't cause a little bit of problems with them. I just tried uh doing Facebook again, by the way. Remember I was doing that? I did that for 6 months. are you? No, no. There's another company who did it. But um yeah, so I did Facebook post uh reposting my videos from the main channel and like little compilation clips and whatnot on Facebook for 6 months. Did nothing at all. And I had Yeah, but your videos were like 10 to 12 minutes, right? No, no, no, no. They cut them down. They cut them down? Yeah, they cut them Yeah, they they fully edited the videos. And uh we had a talk, and we're both very honest. They said, we just don't think your content is working for this. Um it it you know, Facebook tends to be an older demographic. A lot of it is international, and your your videos are very focused to younger US Mhm. uh audience. And um it turned out we I then I stopped in January. Turns out that just like out of nowhere, it started getting traction. And it was getting like 10 to 20,000 views a day on Facebook. Just randomly. So, I'm starting to back up. Yeah, see what happens. Huh. I mean, Yeah. It's so it was so weird. But uh I've heard good things about Facebook. Yeah. Yeah. I have a big international like international is huge for me. I think America's only like 20% of my audience or 25. It's barely the majority. And then older too, like my demographics, like my top demographic is like 25 to 35 and then 35 to 45 or so is almost the same as 18 to 25. Which is really interesting, but I think it's cuz older people are into cars too. I could see that. And also your content is watchable just no matter where you are in the world. Do you do different languages? Uh yeah. Oh, like as far as like sub sub Yeah, sub either subtitles or voice overs. Like Mr. Beast is doing like Mr. Beast in Spanish and like Have you thought about doing that? You could just repurpose everything. Yeah. We've talked to a couple. Some of them are really sketchy. Like they were really always sketchy the ones. So we need to find like a legit one because I've brought it up and I've been like, well, they do it all for you, but it's like the messages are sketchy. They want like your payment info. It's just I know a legit one. Okay. Yes. All right, you got to you got to hook it up after this. Yeah, we could do that for for our podcast too. Just do everything in a different language. That'd be so difficult. Imagine transcribing that. Oh my god. Yeah, Mr. Beast for the entire podcast. I think he also, believe it or not, has like a a company or something or he has a partnership with a company that does that as well. Oh, yeah. I think so. I don't quote me on that, but yeah. He was talking to Joe Rogan or something like that about that. I was just listening to the same pod Yeah, I think that was it. to that podcast like 2 days ago, so podcast. He makes so much money doing that too. It's like, why didn't other people do that? But I guess he's kind of leading the charge there. that's something I would never even think of, but now that he's doing it makes sense. Yeah. It's so easy too. You like don't do anything. Right. Yeah. So one of the thing I want to talk about is it seems like you're a master at getting on every platform and blowing up on every platform. What are some of the strategies or things that you've changed in your own content creation style that have like tremendously affected your your trajectory? Yeah, I mean that some of them are like kind of basic that you would expect like I would say obviously number one and it especially for short form. I'd say I'm like the master of short form. Long form I still haven't mastered completely. We need need look to you guys on that one, but for short form, I mean, if you just watch someone on Tik Tok, like watch them scroll, you people say you have 3 seconds to hook someone, you have like literally 0.2 seconds to hook someone. Like it needs to be in the So, on my videos, like cha-ching pops up, you're like it's like stimulating, the captions are bouncing on the screen and moving around. Like I would not use like auto-generated text, at least for short form. And I'm going to speak to Tik Tok as I would to like YouTube shorts and all that. It's kind of all the same, but um essentially, yeah, you got to hook them like faster than you'd expect. Like there can't even be any lag time, as what I call it, between any portions of the video on any short form. I used to, when I started out, I think it was cuz it was a new trend, I had a like more leeway and and pauses and whatnot, but now when I shoot videos, like this if someone just says like um that's chopped now. It's really like boom boom boom, like so stimulating. Like we call it like crack video is what Blake and I call it. I'm like make it more cracked. Yeah, and we'll be like, "Okay, this is cracked now." So, that's how you know a video is like going to do well is if it's like crazy stimulating, or you cut it early. Um and then as far as I just tell everyone to post on all platforms. Like people are like, "I'm not on Facebook because" and I'm like, "Why?" Like get your same short form video, post it on shorts, post it on reels, post it on Snapchat. Um and then be consistent as well. Like people say to do that a lot, but I post every single day or every other day. Um and I wouldn't have more than like a a week or so break and you know, maybe take a break for whatnot, but I'll schedule stuff in advance, so there isn't a big gap. Does that worry you about people's attention spans being like just turned to mush? Yeah. Yeah. It's already happening, I think, because of Tik Tok. I I can't People can barely sit through long-form videos a lot of the times now in some circumstances because they're like, "I need I need more stimulation." breed, Jack. Yeah. Seriously, we could we I I have a feeling we're dying breed. You know what? Attention spans, I don't know. I I'm actually extremely bullish on podcasts, in the the way you can clip them up. Yeah, that's exactly No, it's because because it's like competitors are music because it's for people that are in the gym, they're driving to work, or they're like, you know, traveling. That's when you listen to podcast, and we're not competing with YouTube videos or stuff like that. away our viewership. do Yeah, when you're driving, you literally can't watch something. Like, you can't watch it. Yeah, so I don't I don't sit down and watch podcast. The only time I listen to podcast quite often, but it's when I'm driving or when I'm working out. And there's I'm not going to be scrolling on Tik when I'm driving. what would be funny? Yeah, comment comment if you guys are at the gym right now watching this. Seriously, just comment and be like, "Yep, Graham, I'm at the gym right now." Don't comment if you're driving. pull over on the side of the road. right now and say, "I'm driving right now." You're right though, right? Cuz I only listen to podcasts when I'm driving or on an airplane. So, we're not competing with like Tik Tok and stuff, which that that's the reason why I'm super bullish on podcasts. Yeah, that makes total sense. Yeah, but here's the thing is that you know, people are getting older. Gen Z is coming up right now. Yeah. And their attention spans are like a minute, you know? So, like So, eventually So, eventually that minute is going to take over. It's going to be just everything you watch is going to be like minute, minute, minute, minute, minute, minute. Everything. You're going to go on TV or not even watch TV, but like your your TV is basically going to be like 3-second clips. Yeah, it's like Rick and Morty stuff. Yeah. Have you seen the videos going over like the Tik Tok conspiracies of like, you know, how it how it is here versus like overseas? Have you seen some of this? No, I don't think so. Pull me in. Yeah, apparently Oh, and this is a What, Jack? I'm going I didn't say anything. Yeah, go and watch any of the videos that say like Tik Tok is the most evil app ever. Now, I I I like listen I'm going with an open mind, but apparently they show different content here than they do elsewhere. Oh, they trying to dumb us down. Yeah, they trying to dumb us down. In China, it's like it's like they're learning about how to create, you know, structures. very like very inspirational. stories and here we get like lip-syncing dances. It's just like just yeah like nothing. Muckbangers. Yeah. They're educating them. It's like only educational content is like praised over there. And over here it's like shut down. Yeah. They're getting very strict by the way in China about influencers. They read a story in CNBC. I think it was last night. It says now influencers have to have proven qualifications if they are to talk about certain subjects. No gurus. No financial gurus anymore. So if So I would not I would not have a career there. But yeah they want you to be licensed with the proper credentials to be able to talk about certain topics. And with that also they said that they did not want any flashing of luxury goods, a luxury lifestyle, or anything that was extravagant or wasteful. Including by the way wasting food was something that they specified in that. Wow. It's very interesting. by like the government? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And then it was also no live streaming after 10:00 p.m. Or it's like no watching live streams until after until you know after 10:00 p.m. Something like that. Have you been on the TikTok live stream? Yeah. It is like a nightmare. It's way worse than Snapchat discover page thumbnails go. It's like you are seeing the bottom of society essentially. On purpose though like it sounds bad. They're literally like it sounds bad. Basically these people are like they're doing the weirdest stuff on purpose just to keep you watching. Oh do you remember when they used to have like a bowl of worms and they'd be like they'd spoon the worms and this is on the live streams cuz you'd see it and they'd be like all right I'm going to eat it and then they'd do that for 30 minutes and they wouldn't eat it. People like one more donation and I'll eat it and then people go in and out and they don't say oh you're not eating it or some people will. Oh cuz they tune out. You clicked on it and you're like oh this guy's just about to take a bite of these worms. But he just leaves it there and he would never eat it. And I remember dude there was this one time were you on there Jack? How much did you donate? when you saw the actual eat when they Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. I was I was I was on this one guy's for 20 minutes. And I I I'm not kidding cuz I was like getting ready for bed, so I was like brushing my teeth, you know, do my thing. And um and he just kept saying he was going to eat it, but he wasn't. And he had like lots of viewers. Like 10,000 viewers at the time. And and then all of a sudden out of nowhere the live ended. So, So, he didn't eat the worms. And I remember I commented on his latest um This is actually where Right. I commented on his latest Tik Tok after he went off of live and I was like I was like um I said something like like you're a sham. Like you'll never find love. No, it was something like basically I was just like hating on him, you know, like like I was like why would you do what you do? Like you're taking people's attention for your monetary gain and providing no value whatsoever. That's Tik Tok though. I mean, let's be real. Like bottom of Tik Tok though. Like they're peeling eggs that go on forever. Sometimes they're on loops. Oh, the the egg peeling. Yeah. Oh my gosh, I Yes, I've watched that way too much. But anyway, to end this story, the guy got back to me. Oh, yeah. He saw the comment and he got back to me. He was like he was like what did I do to you? And I said and I said you know what you did. And then that was where it ended. What if he What if he doesn't? What if he could change his whole What if his Wi-Fi his entire No, his entire thing was the worm eating thing. Chuck, what if his Wi-Fi cut out the moment he took a bite and he's like, oh damn. He got cut out. He's just like innocent. He needs to like change Yeah. You could talk to him. Maybe yeah, change him. Yeah. The algorithm yeah. My issue is that the algorithm I think is very dangerous and it gets you into this echo chamber where it'll it could lead you in a direction where all of a sudden that's all you get and then it's that's your only viewpoint. It's just based on that. And the algorithm is so good at figuring out what that is that within like 3 minutes it already knows so much about you and what to show you. Yeah, that's why Tik Tok works so well. Like they I mean, they'll People think just cuz you like a video that's the only way to do it, but like they're measuring watch time, interactions obviously. You go to the comments more. And that's why TikTok killed the game. Like their algorithm I had zero followers when I first made my account, obviously. And on YouTube, at least at the time before shorts existed, if you had zero subscribers, you wouldn't be able to just post a long form and it could like it would wouldn't get any views. Yeah. But like TikTok killed it at the beginning because I had one and then it got shown to like three people or so. I think probably a certain percentage liked it, like one or two percent. Then it just snowballed. And now they're all doing it as well, but it kind of changed the game. Like they, you know, like them or not, they they definitely changed it all. So what would you do if someone is starting off today? Like what would your advice be to them? I think you need to try I think you need to find a niche and it's super important, honestly. Like you can get viral by doing a lot of like cool ideas and whatnot, but like you need to have like your demographic and like niche of people that come for your just your type of video. So like mine's like cars and luxury and whatnot, like finance, like stuff like that. But um I'd say like throwing stuff at the wall until you see something that you're experimenting with that works. And then it, you know, just literally doing that again and again um is the best way to at least blow up. And then you got to obviously evolve or people will, you know, you could just be a trend, but you got to try a bunch of different ideas and just keep posting them. Eventually, maybe something will work. Um and then you just run with that idea. Um but hopefully it's not just like a trend. Like you want to find like a, you know, some type of video that isn't just like a trend that will last for a week. Is there a topic that you want to do that you haven't done yet? Uh topic in Or something that you're not going to do, but you know it's a good idea. Uh I mean that one we mentioned earlier, I do I would like to go out to people in really bad cars, like really beaten down cars. Uh so that's definitely one of them, but that would get me a lot of flak, I think, with like brands and whatnot. Um And then there's some sketches that we've we've done that, you know, we've decided are probably not brand friendly. Because you always got to kind of keep up, you know, you don't want to be doing some crazy stuff. But there's some sketches and stuff that I'd like to do that are a little off the wall cuz Like what? My sense of humor is just like really screwed up. So, like some of the video ideas I have are just like it wouldn't fly. I mean, you know, just for TikTok for example, like hyper violence like but it's a sketch like where you're just like I was I was thinking it's going to be like like only fans sort of like I thought we were going in that direction. no, no, not like obsessed with violence either but just like sketches where you're just like doing ridiculous stuff. You can't have like a gun in a TikTok video. a car going like 100 miles an hour like that. yes, exactly. Yeah, I get like run over in a video or something like that. It's happened. Some guy hit and ran while I was filming a video one time actually. Did you post it? No, Was he in a nice car? He was well, no, I was filming a video in Miami and I was running in the road I like risk my life all the time you know, risk my life. But basically I'm like if I see a Bugatti I'm weaving through traffic to go get this thing. But one car in Miami nicked me basically was going like 70 past me and just like completely decided like swerve around me hit me like just lately on the back but like if I was this much further back I would have been like dead. And then they run their plates cuz we called the police we're like this guy hit you know, hit and ran. Turns out it was a stolen vehicle and this person was like on the run. So, Wow. Luckily I didn't you know, actually get Holy cow. But yeah, yeah, I'd say to your point some like stuff like that in the only fans sphere and stuff like that. We we try to stay away from it now. You know, there's only so many only fans people you can run up to in LA as well. Or it's kind of like people are tired of that. Yeah. You have anyone signing a release? No, I usually get permission though like I mean or it's like accepted like once I'm done I'm like hey man, thanks so much and they're like after I cut you know, I'll cut the videos early and they'll be like oh, no problem like yeah, and you know, it is kind of an issue. film it when they say it's fine. You should. I have it. Yeah, so I I'll cut the videos on TikTok Oh, yeah, yeah. or you know, the short form you know, crack or what not. But exactly I feel like someone at some point could It's a whole weird thing though like in public I can film someone. I talked to my lawyers and they're like yeah, you can film if you're profiting off of it it's you know, Yeah. Do you know about that? I don't. All it's going to take though is one viral video with someone who's like a public figure who is maybe running from the law or like something like that or maybe like you're going to catch them with like a mistress or something like that in the car. It's going to go viral and then That's happened? Yeah. One guy, this is a short story, one guy in Dallas my first couple times filming he um he was getting in a car with some like good looking woman and he was in a suit. I got him in a video and on camera he goes, "You're the guy that uh and then he just completely changed character and he's like, "Dude man, like I'll let you drive my Ferrari. I'll let you do whatever. Please don't post the video. I'm not supposed to be here." Well what and I'm like, "Oh god." And he's like, "Dude, you can do whatever. You can drive my car." He's like begging me and I was like, "Oh gosh, okay. I won't post the video." assumed it was because of a mistress? Yeah, well he was with another woman next to him. So I mean Come on. You know. Come on. Come on. Or he could be in some legal trouble as well. Maybe, yeah. There could be a multitude of things on it. I don't think it has to just be that. I'd say that's a 50/50 on that but it doesn't have to. Yeah, yeah. But I have a feeling it's going to be a situation like that where they don't think anything of it. They probably don't know who you are and they're just like, "Oh, it's you know some some kid is just coming up to me." It goes viral and they're like, "Well I didn't consent to that." Yeah. I would highly recommend if you don't already have media insurance, do you? No. Get it. Media insurance? Immediately. that do? So what it does is it it it protects you in the event of a lawsuit and especially normally I'm like you never need media insurance but for you I'd highly recommend it. Okay. In the event someone sues you for something um you will be covered. Oh wow. yeah, so like I had you know I have one that I just feel just gives me peace of mind. It's worth it. It's probably going to cost you 20 grand a year, 25 grand a year but I that that is going to pay for even a lawyer lawyer's retainer like right off the bat if something were to happen. With the amount of views that you're getting it's probably going to be fine but like one case especially with people with money Yeah. they could afford to basically just bankrupt you. Okay. Yeah, just that you do any damage to them, uh you know, even unintentional, they could sue you for damage. Okay. Even even if they won't win. But we're like a whole like lawsuit essentially? You could you could uh select your tiers. You could be like, I want to be covered up to 5 million or 10 million or 15 million. Oh, so you get that much of potential coverage. Wow. Okay. My worry is that you do something to somebody and they just want to run you to the ground. Like let's say you caught someone with a mistress or or you you catch someone smoking, let's just say, and like that that bad for their image and they lose a whole bunch of business. Um they don't think anything of it, comes down, they lose a deal, and they come to you and say, "I'm going to sue you." Let's just say they have no grounds to do that, but if they have money, they could just say, "Well, you know what? Uh fight me in court." And and then it's a battle of who has uh more money. Oh, interesting. you'll lose to to, you know, These bottles are like if you win, then you have to counter sue, and you have to spend even more money to get your money back. It's it's a nightmare. So, I think just be insured. I think that's media insurance, okay. Media insurance. you're right, Tom. Like that's something I need. good peace of mind and it's a write-off. Hopefully, you'll never need it. Mm, okay. But I have the same thing and it's worth it. It's just peace of mind. That's all. Okay. What questions do you have for us? We could we could turn this around if you want to. If you have any questions uh for Jack and I. Well, I'm curious like on I'll go I'll go revenue on you guys, too, actually. Um how much do you make, Graham Stephan, for the whole year? Uh it's this year is going to be between probably four and six. Oh, okay. Yeah. Are you investing all that money in the market right now? Pretty much. Um I mean, the default is always to save it. So, it's uh though? No, not necessarily, cuz I I like to to keep cash on hand for opportunities to come up or like if some if if if there's a good opportunity, it helps to have the cash on hand. So, are you buying right now into the like in the Oh, absolutely. Yeah, every day. Okay, every day. been doing that for uh over 2 years now. So, just like every day, I just buy into the market, yeah. On a regular basis, yeah. So are you at what point I just want to take a guess here. What do you And no one can know obviously, but where do you think the market's going to bottom out here S&P 500 percentage wise? I have no clue. I mean everyone's everyone's calling for like I don't know, as a guess. Yeah. Man, it's going to be a coin toss. I mean my guess I would not be surprised if the S&P gets to like 3,000 maybe 32 like somewhere around there. Okay. Wouldn't be surprised. I think I think it's possible but I think it's also possible that inflation starts coming down and they stop raising rates as much. Are you invested too? In generally in like the You don't want to know about them. Okay. What is your What is your portfolio looking like? Like as far as like assets like what assets do you Yeah. Well, crypto was probably 10% now it's probably like one. What were you in? Were you in like some coins? No, no it's just like Bitcoin and Ethereum. It's probably not one anymore but the conservative of crypto, yeah. Jackpotted to 4,000. My average cost for everything was just so high. Well, like 55k for like Bitcoin or something. No, no actually Bitcoin wasn't that bad. My average cost on Bitcoin was probably like 40 or like 30. You know, no it's probably like 30 35. Kind of similar too, yeah. Yeah, and then as far as like the the market I actually had pretty good average cost before December because in December I like just piled everything in. I was like, you know what? It's the end of the year. I have like a bunch of change so I just went all in. Terrible terrible terrible mistake but we live and learn, you know, dollar cost averaging is the way to go apparently. Well, I don't know. I've I've read about lump sum. That's supposed to be You get lucky or you don't. And the thing is for me I put in so much money in the market between November and right up to the very first of the year. Yeah, literally me too. I was like I have a lot of money now and I was like here we go very conservative like S&P 500 like and then like Apple Google like you know like I wasn't buying any I bought like if I buy like a bad stock what I consider to be like a you know not fancy stock, like Lucid Motors or something like that. A a bit of a gamble. It's like a couple thousand, but I was like, "Oh, I'm good. S&P." So, I'm not selling, so I know I'll be fine, but December, me, too. Yeah, it was literally like the exact Yeah. I I had literally no money. Yeah. I had no money but at the That's That's so funny. Yeah, it it completely obliterated me. You You know, we live and we learn. Yeah. And we'll be fine. And I But I was also probably a little bit more speculative than you were. Like I had um I had a portfolio my Robinhood portfolio, and I think my principal in that was like like 20 grand or something like that. And I brought it all the way up to 75 cuz I was investing like pretty early. And uh and then once it hit 75, it was probably at right around 65, actually. I just went all in on margin. Oh. Because like most of the margin though that I bought was like it was like Apple stock. It was like pretty safe margin. It wasn't like sketchy stuff. the rate on that for your margin? Like 5%? No, it was probably less. It's probably I don't know what Robinhood is, maybe 3 and 1/2 4. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I don't know what it is. But at the time that you were borrowing, I think it was at like 2.9. Okay, same. What's it at now? Like 9%? But I got completely obliterated. Like like that But then again, you know, they they do the whole margin call thing, you know, that whole thing happens, but Yeah, but what are you doing to people on the phone? No, you weren't. Margin call? Yeah, yeah. We really? At Schwab, yeah. You margin call people all the time. I mean, you notify them, and it's horrifying for them. It's kind of sad, but also you're like, "Whoa, like Yeah. this person's crazy risk bet that they just did." What do you see What do you see on that? Like Do you look at their You obviously see their investments. Yeah. Do you see stupid things that they're going on there? I mean, well, in the beginning you're kind of just like a phone slave when you're first starting out in this program. Um and you know, but basically you they'd call in and you get some people on like on the line that would just be so rude and really rich, and some of them would have crazy like 90% in one stock. Like they'd be like have a million-dollar portfolio, and it's like all in Lucid or like all in Tesla, which worked out for them maybe at the time. But a lot of Tesla people like Mhm. They like a four, you know, 40% of their portfolio is in Tesla and you're just like, "Whoa, like what are you doing?" But they're just all doing it themselves. I don't know. See, Robinhood did not call me. They just sent me a little thing, "Oh, you're in a margin call. We're selling your shares automatically." So, it wasn't know what exactly what it was like a um I know we did like you do notifications whatnot. Um but you have to be a broker to actually call in and like you'd be discussing directly with them what I was doing cuz I wasn't I didn't get all my set I didn't get my seven basically, my series seven. So, I I literally left right before I was going to take it. So, like I'd basically be interacting with people that would like call in and be like, "Hey, what's going on with this? Why do I have a margin call?" And I'd be like, "Oh, um it's not good, but uh here's a broker. Do this or whatever until you're further along in the process." do you think of Tesla stock? I think it's overvalued. Like I think it's way overvalued, but I was tired It's kind of like Bitcoin. I was tired of just it going up. I don't see it as like at this buying point as something that I would maybe long-term, you know, but I think it was I knew it was going to correct and I don't think its correction now is as far as it could go just based off of like its market cap for the amount of that they're selling. It's worth more than all of the other automakers Combined. combined. It's insane. Like it doesn't matter if you believe that they're going to do other stuff and I'm sure they're, you know, they're doing other stuff that isn't just cars. I know they are, but like it's still overvalued, I think. So, I think if it hasn't happened completely yet, it'll go down still go up, but not Yeah, when I bought the Roadster, I sold off a decent chunk of my Tesla stock at $1,020 a share. Whoa. Wow. Yeah. Thank I'm so thankful on that. Oh, wow. shortly after cuz once you start selling, you're like, "Oh, sell more." Uh so, I sold off all but a hundred grand of my Tesla stock. Oh, wow. Okay. Well, yeah, that's So, we'll see. We'll see what happens, but uh What's up? You're a little swing trader. No, that's that's not bad. I've held I've held onto that for three years. Three or Yeah, three and a half years. I've held it. hold. No, no. But, I'm also going to be selling some losing positions to offset that, so So not going to owe any tax on that. But, and then I took the money and I just put it uh in the S&P and an international index fund. Okay. Can you only write off 3,000 in in losses? No, that's against personal income. So you could offset uh let's say long-term capital gains against losses. So let's just say I make 100 grand in Tesla stock, but I lost 100 grand in uh let's just say Coinbase. Mhm. Now, I don't have to pay any tax because I've used the gain to offset or I've used the loss to offset the gain. Now, if I didn't have any gains to offset, you could write off up to $3,000 a year against personal income. Okay. So that yeah, so if you're W-2, you're making 100 grand, uh you could write off $3,000 of that. Okay, got you. Want to make sure I did that right. Yeah, per year or you spread it across, but but it doesn't make any sense to me cuz that number should be adjusted for inflation and I think it should be higher. Yeah, for sure. I mean, what is that useful for at all? I mean, I guess unless for I don't know, it depends on your income level, but like three grand in the in the scheme of things, like depending on the if you're doing like a wash sale and stuff like that, it's just like I don't think I think they need to make it higher. Some people are losing big. I know. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Uh the one thing I would recommend you do is uh to get your free stock down below in the description when you sign up for Public using the code Graham. It's worth all the way up to $2,000. And you could add JLS Selby on Instagram and point. uh and we can And Alexander Wright Nava. That's it. Yeah. Thanks, guys. Oh, and subscribe. Oh, we have a tier on Patreon. It's $500 a month. But what that gets is uh twice a year we're going to be hosting a private event where this person could come down, we'll be hosting uh you know, food, drinks, all the good stuff. They could come down and just hang with us for the night and just just chat. Just have a good time. Hey, uh Rick, you are on the podcast with uh myself, Graham, Jack, Daniel Mac, and uh Alex. How's it going? Hey, doing good. So So okay, so uh first of all, we just wanted to call and thank you for the uh the for the Patreon. We just put this up and uh Jack was like dude we got we got someone you're the first person we got one we got one and so I I wanted to personally call and thank you and see what made you do it yeah I mean I have I mean I kind of like messed up mentioned on the message like I found you guys probably like the beginning of this year and I've been and I have a listener I've listened to pretty much all your podcast since then and I just enjoyed the show and was like hey why not might as well Oh my gosh well thank you so much man I really appreciate it do you want to shout anything out really quick we'll give you a free shout out no like an Instagram like an Instagram there's got to be something no I don't even have an Instagram Rick tell them to shout me out tell them to follow me on Instagram Rick we're excited to meet you in person I I have I have just started a company working to cure rare diseases called Everloom Bio so also I'll shout that out Oh yeah man come on man well well here's the deal this is you have my cell phone number this is it if there's anything you need just feel free to shoot a text I get a lot of texts so if if you don't get a response back just just maybe text again but anyway we're looking forward to meeting you we'll we'll keep you updated probably in the next few months on hosting some event in Las Vegas but I really appreciate it and are you cool if we include this in the podcast all right thank you so much man I really appreciate it and you're on the contacts now all right I'll see you bye what is cool look at that look at that that is so cool so you got something want to be like Rick meet us in person get a shout out and also meet Rick cuz you got You want to meet I want to meet Rick now. He'll be at the event. You want to be like Rick. Our Patreon is down below in the description. Thank you guys so much for watching and until next time. We We had the best part at the very end for the call and stuff. funny.