Liquidity & Liquor - Yosef Martin & Scott Clary

Welcome to success story, the most useful podcasts in the world. I'm your host Scott D. Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. The HubSpot podcast network has other great podcasts like Marketing Made Simple hosted by Dr. J.J. Peterson. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly, make it work. Now, if any of these topics are interesting to you, you're going to love his show, how to write and deliver captivating speeches, how to market yourself into a new job, how design can help and potentially hurt your revenue and how to create a social media ad strategy that works. If these topics hit home in their things that you want to learn about, go listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Today, you're going to hear an episode of my new podcast, liquidity and liquor. I co-host liquidity and liquor with Josef Martin, a serial entrepreneur who sold his last company boxy charm for over $500 million. On liquidity and liquor, we have conversations about business, money and life with some of the most interesting people in the world. You can download and subscribe to liquidity and liquor on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so we're going to do this podcast episode a little bit different. We're going to go deep between Scott and myself. We're going to ask, we have opinions and mostly we talk to people and we want you to meet other people, but sometimes it's good to kind of catch up, take a breather and talk about the episodes we had, a couple of things that changed and ask each other questions. I have some really cool questions. You know, I like these. You know, I want to do more of these because every time we're sitting just like hanging out, you actually have really smart conversations. Yeah, yeah. It's actually frustrating because then I'm like, damn it. I wish there was a camera. It changes you. The camera, once you have the camera, you feel like you have to think we didn't know a cortex, nothing comes intuitive. It's just different. I'm not the same person. It takes me a minute, actually, until I get that. I think that's why, actually, listen, you can drink or you cannot drink, but I think that the drinking gets rid of all the inhibitions. Do you have anything over here? Yeah. All right. Okay, let's do bourbon. Bourbon, let's do it. Who are the editors? What? No, that's fine. It's residues of it, whatever. Okay. The stomach juices are going to burn it. Yeah, we definitely need to, but I have more. I just, I don't know why about this one. That was the only one. That one is all full and I need to scrub the one that's fine. All right. Okay. Okay. Okay. Now I'm happy. I don't see this being that much worse than tequila, but when you took tequila last time, you died. Oh my god. The killer is disgusting. Why? I don't know. The taste, after taste goes, it's my, I feel like I'm going to throw up every time I get tequila. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I mean, I'll do it once I do it when that's only thing around and I suffer. I don't like it. Okay. So here's a story for you. We went to Mexico. I took with another brand pure cosmetics and boxy charm. We took in 2018. A lot of influencers to Mexico was in Punta Dmitta. Punta Dmitta. It's a nice resort. You know, honestly, we thought because the Kardashians were there and we're like, yeah, let's do it over there too. And four seasons, you know, we had some relationship with them. And anyway, it was awesome. Like, the crew of influencers were both all awesome. And my team, pure, the team was great. Now, I can't like promise myself. I'm not doing any alcohol because I don't really drink much and when they do, it takes a little bit to get me off balance and I figure I'm going to be serious. crowd control over here. So I'm going to be the adult in the room. So anyway, I was sitting down all of them. It was a plus one. So all the girls were in the pool and there were some gay guys too. They're all in the pool. And most of the guys were, we're just hanging out. So it's all the the husbands, the boyfriends, you know, we're just sitting. It was awesome. And I don't remember how and they came to me with the killer shots. I'm like, I don't do it. I'm still sober at that point. This is yourself sober yourself, right? Oh, no, I don't know. Anyway, you can say no to them and they're very persistent because they're already after couple shots. And they're using those champagne glasses for the killer shots. Yeah, but they're you they're feeling them like more than half. Yeah. So then I took one and then another one. It's like a glass. It's a couple shots. Few of them. And then after three or four was already in the pool. And after that, I got on the bar and there were more shots. And remember this one of the influencers, she was coming to me. She didn't know. Don Julio 1942. No, I didn't know. She's like, what's that? And she was mad at I mean, anyways, she's like, there is mother fucking killer. Anyway, I got two more and I was. So then I told her that's it. I can't I can't. I was barely sitting down and a couple of other girls were like, don't take anymore. So I was sitting down to and being all sober. And I remember I spoke to one of them. I think it was Jack and we were talking about business thing. And I didn't want to talk business at that point because I didn't know what I really looked like because you think you're okay because you're trying to focus. Yeah, and I told all of them, listen, after dinner, after party in my room. Now you have to understand my room was huge. It was huge. It was a suite with a pool and all that stuff. Infinity pool overlooking the thing. So then my team and pure cosmetics heard me talking about this in the pool already drunk. And they said, okay, we're gonna have to prepare. So they put bunch of merch, staff pillows with the names of the brands. They already prepared all that. I don't even remember what they said. So then I was talking to Jackie and McJackie. I'm sorry. I get to go to the room. So it was like 3 p.m. I went to sleep. I woke up at 1 a.m. I woke up completely like that and I saw a bunch of messages all knocking on my door. All of them came in thinking there was a party. There was no party. I was crushed. I was crushed and I was so mad at myself. How am I going? But it was awesome because they get to relate to you more because you just you stop all that barrier that you were like, okay, let's do it. I just I'm not used to. And the thing is they have parties all the time. They drink like sailors. Yeah. It doesn't matter. Small like 50 girls. They will drink more than three of us together because they're used to drinks. So I just see some I'm not going to compete with them. It's tough as part of it. It's not a tough part. But I mean the part that taxes you the most on networking and going on alcohol. I'll call. Yeah. I talk to friends that are down in Miami and I'm actually happy that I'm in Fort Lauderdale because I'm very picky about which events I go to. But I friends that are in Miami and like it's a problem because you can drink every single night easily. And then drinking at a networking event. I went to one networking event that was put on by a great organization. It's called like the hedge fund association and they rented out three yachts and they and you could basically just go between yachts, yachts, yachts and every yacht and different food and liquor. It's awesome. It's right in Miami. How do you do it? Like do you swim to the other yachts? Like you're in the middle of the ocean? No, they had it. Okay. So nice. Okay. But one of the guys got like shift faced. You got absolutely shifted. And then you make an asset of yourself. Yeah. But the point is it's just free liquor. Everything's open bar. Everything's free liquor. So you've got to watch yourself. And especially if you do that every single night. So not only is it going to be bad on your body, it's going to be like you're going to put on weight. It's for sure. A lot of a lot of negatives and drinking all the times. You've got to be careful when you network a lot. My weakness is sweets. I just never like alcohol because it tastes bitter. And I don't like the taste of it. So I'm the opposite. So I don't like sweet stuff. I like pizza, I like burgers, nachos. I actually the only sweet stuff that I like is like a get to know you. Yeah. So the only sweet stuff that I like is chocolate. Oh, okay. So I don't like candy. I don't like smell like anything like. You don't like caramel? No. If you tell me the last wish before we kill you, I just give me all the caramel you get. It's like a psychological thing. Some people are like wired for like salty and savory. And some people are wired for sweet. Yeah. No, I mean, I mean, I have a lot of weaknesses. I guess because I do like salty, I like cheese and I love sweet. You know that there's a chemical reaction in cheese when you eat it. That's a kin to like it's some sort of drugs like a reaction to like crack or something like that like that. Wasn't that sugar? It could have been too. Yeah. I think you're confused with sugar. Oh, cheese does it too. Really? Cheese does it too. Oh my god. Okay. You know what we need? We need to. Jamie. We need Jamie like Joe Rogan. Joe. We need that. Jamie, can you tell us exactly what's going on? Yeah. And now I have, I have, so I just don't like alcohol. So I'll sit down and I mean, I don't like the taste. I don't, I don't like it. And I look, the thing is, if once I need to get to a certain point where I drunk enough to not care about the taste, and I'm not going to get, I don't need too much to actually feel. So when I feel like I'm already tipsy, I just shut myself down. I go away. I don't want to be with. But it's hard. I can count on like one hand. How many times it happened to me since I was alive. But when you let your drunk, yeah, because it's just, I don't have enough hands to count. Yeah. I just, it's hard for me to even get to that point because I don't like the alcohol test. We had, we had then if everything, everything I'll tell you with alcohol was with influencer events that we took them out, right? Because when there is an event that I'm invited to, no one pushes anything down my throat. When I'm with, with influencers, there's always that, that pre-repressure, and you're like, yeah, fuck it. Let's get another one. You know, we did this thing in Coachella, we before COVID in 2019. We brought a bunch of them and it was awesome. It was great. I mean, we became friends, all of us became friends because of that for life. It's not just, you know, but we had a, a bus and there was just alcohol that they were serving us and I told the guy, when you give the shots to me, give me water. So I would literally take the shot and I would be like, ah, and there was nothing. It was just water. And they, one of them noticed, they're like, no, no, no, I saw you and I was like, I think his name is cis. I was like, no, drink it later. So I had to, and that's when I get, but I didn't, that like, I don't, I don't really. But I mean, at least, you know, the one thing when, like, it's not like drinking is good, but the one thing that I do appreciate is when people's inhibitions are reduced, like, you can see what kind of real person they are. That's true. So they can't put on a facade. They can't, like, half the reason why I like podcasts is because when you talk to somebody for two hours, there's less of a chance of them bullshitting you than if you talk to them for. Who's the guy that we were drinking and, you know, we were laughing and I had to stop myself from laughing because we, we had a little bit extra shots. I think you remember who was, um, I don't know. It wasn't with Zic. It was, it was, it was, you know, Zic doesn't, doesn't drink, but yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to remember. We were, I don't remember. Okay. So you don't know, but I was trying to stop myself from laughing. What? The whole, because I, I, I had maybe two shots and that's all it takes. You know, nothing funny. I was just trying to, I was like, smiling like it is. And one of the podcasts, I don't remember which one. Yeah. But I was asking smart questions. I was able to, yeah. Well, that's actually, you know, it's funny because when I drink more, I'm like, it's all, when I'm sober, I'm already a nerd. I would, like, I already like talking about business. Yeah. But when I drink more, like, I like talking about it more. Yeah. For sure. You're not even making smart points. You think you're so smart. Yes. You increased your sales force. You increased your sales. Wow. I found out. Yeah. I feel like you're like, like God's gift to business. I think you're awesome. I mean, you're like, you know, well, at least our camera's recording. You know, the, you know, the, um, I was, I was talking today to, uh, to a friend and, uh, I was telling her that, um, we're talking business, uh, kind of like in general. And I, I said, do you have any hobbies? Dollar before I had my first company, like 20 years ago, I had a bunch of hobbies. And you know, as soon as I started the first business, it was so exciting for me. I mean, my hobbies were dancing salsa, cooking, MMA, right? Stopped all of that. Everything, even the gym just recently, I'm doing it more because I need a reset. But I don't have, so now I go and I remember I used to love going to the beach, used to love going to, and now I'm not like it's completely transformed. I think, I think that's actually why you've been successful. I think it's because you have an obsession with something. Yeah. And I think that people who've never had an obsession with something have a hard time understanding that. So people always ask me, people ask me a lot. Like people will random people will DM me that will say stuff like, oh, I love your content. But like, do you do anything outside of this? Like, you know, do you have any other passions? Like, and it's hard because ultimately I love what I do. And people don't understand this is your hobby. Why would people love writing a newsletter at one in the morning? Why would people love like jumping up and finding the perfect clip and see if it goes viral or not? Do you feel it? It affects your relationship with Gina? No. And that's why I think that we're still together. Because I don't think anybody can date somebody who's trying to build something. I think that, I think that, I think that if you don't set the expectations with the spouse first, I think it's selfish. And if you're saying going to be an entrepreneur, I'm going to build a company. Yeah, but what if you change in the middle? I think you didn't know it's going to happen to you. But you didn't know that, right? Let's just say that's why I think a lot of relationships fail. Yeah. I don't think it's, I don't think there's a nice way to say it. A lot of relationships fail when you have somebody who is a C suite and a certain size company. But it's also because your girlfriend has her own business. So she can understand that. Yeah. Yeah. So she has her thing. She understand your thing. And that's where it makes sense. Where you focus on what you do. I think that you have to have your, I think, you're right. Like what happens if you want to build something when you're in a relationship? If you don't, if you don't know what you're getting yourself into, well, first of all, it's going to not only affect your relationship, but most entrepreneurs end up being depressed and burned out anyways. Do you feel? Do you feel like your, I mean, I think most do. Yeah. I really do believe I think there's a whole discussion about mental health and entrepreneurship that nobody really has. Because I ran, so I ran Buxy after I ran another company for once a 15 years to do some part. You never had the option of like you never have the option. You have the option. You never worked in a company. So you never made, you never made $200,000, $9.5. No. So your perspective, your perspective of life is entrepreneurship. So what if somebody is $200,000, $9.5, then they have, and then you didn't have mortgage. You didn't have kids when you started. So then that mortgage they have kids. They have bills to pay. No, but I had, I had out of situation and when I started, I was a full-time student. I had to pay about 30,000 a year or so for school. So I guess it's, it's a obligation. I really grew after I graduated because I had the first year that I didn't have to do anything like I was able to just look for a job so I kept working and eventually I got married. I didn't have to go back to school. Then I had mortgage, then I had kids, then I had all those stuff. But the thing is where, for me, I think it did affect the relationship because when Paddy met me, we had a different business. So yeah, I was thinking about the business all the time, but it wasn't like running boxy charm. And at one point, I had both companies. And I mean, when I tell you boxy charm is a scary business because you can in one day find out that you lose everything for one tiny mistake. Just literally you go and you send all the boxes. And when you send an Excel sheet, everything, I think I mentioned that, right? And at one point, I lose everything I ever made. And I'm going to be in debt. And that didn't happen. We thought it happened, but we thought so it was just losing everything and having to reimburse it. It was very stressful, right? And she was with me. But that just to show you that you're always on edge because you always think that you understand that you can let your guards down and it's underline stress. You're doing it for so many years. You don't just go to sleep. Okay. And it's vacations. I mean, I can relax in the vacation. So it really changes. You said, then you come out from the other side, you sell the business. I never take vacation. I can go places. I've gone to places, but I don't. I'm not. When I was working in a company and I took a vacation, no one's emailing me. I'm not responding to anybody. When I'm building a business, there's, I check my email four times a day. It's not healthy, but it's like you're obsessed with it. You can't stop because you have something you understand that if you move aside, you feel like things are going to happen. So much risk into it. That's the reason why you went. You put risk in. That's the reason why entrepreneurs win. Why? Why are you stressed out? Because literally everything is on you. Yeah. And when everything's on you, you don't take a vacation because if you take a vacation, I mean, hopefully you have the team to support you, but ultimately like you still want to be clocked in. Yeah. It's just like it's a psychological. It takes years to get away from that. Like I was sitting with Richard, John's Fashion Nova. I was sitting in his house and one time we were talking and he only started, I guess, enjoying his life like a year or so before COVID. He was really dedicated laser focus, no vacation, nothing, right? Single, like, bolder. And just monsters. So then one time he decided, fuck it, let's go on a cruise and whatever. And they they rented this mega. And then he goes back and he said, you know, things move on. Like the company's okay. And he said, yeah, you find some inefficiencies here and there and mistakes and you fix it. But you said, if a forest fall in the middle of the if a tree falls in the middle of a forest, doesn't matter. Like why do so then do I need to enjoy my life now? It's got like a struggle for him and many others like, do I go in that side or that side? What do I do? Do I just just fuck it? The business is big enough to carry mistakes. Let's go and enjoy or no, no, no, I need to think growth. I need to build myself. And I felt like it's so rewarding when you're doing stuff like this when you're building stuff. It's just a challenge because you're not going to be the same. You can just sit down. I mean, for guys like me, maybe like you too. I can't just sit in the beach. I can't. I can't sit down. I have to move around. I don't enjoy it. And maybe it's because I've been conditioned to build too long. But that's fine. I mean, every day we're conditioned to like new things and to and to accept new lenses that we look at life through into our life. Like you look at Alex Ramosi. Alex Ramosi always talks about why do I need to have hobbies if I enjoy what I do? Exactly. And for somebody who doesn't enjoy it, they're like, oh, that guy's you know, that guy's fucked up. It doesn't make any sense. Why would he say that? It's his life. He enjoys it. If you want to paint, if you want to go to the gym, if you want to build the business, if you enjoy the... It's challenging when you're with a partner that doesn't get to that, right? But his partner is Layla Ramosi and she's also the doctor. So for me, for me, it wasn't. Yeah, for me, it wasn't like that because with Paddy, she was like, you need a work-life balance. It was the whole time. And I know she, she got it. But I was just not the same man she married because when I started boxing, everything changed. Before that, we would do a little bit more stuff. But then, boxing came and all boy like that. And then we did the first sell for Baxi. I sold a piece of it in 2016. And she thought, I'm going to be more in a house because now we cashed out at the time. It looked pretty big and I was like, oh, now you... But then instead, I doubled down. I got more obsessed because, you know, in your mind, you're like, you're thinking, well, those people trusted me. They gave me that kind of money. And I fuck, I can fuck it up. It's just... That's true. So it was even worse. So yeah. And then by the time we sold the company, we were already not together. So there was that sad part that it doesn't work for everybody. So it is an interesting point. So we were writing down questions and and you had a couple of questions for me that I thought were good. And I think that actually, I want to bring up one of the questions because I think it's going to create a good conversation. So one of the questions that were brainstorming is, does your life change after an exit event? And you asked me this previously. And I said, no, it doesn't. And it's because the cash out that I got from that wasn't big enough for me, for my life to change. Like, I didn't have to jump in right away. But at some point in the future, I would have had to have done something. So I'm curious when... And my life didn't really change. Realistically, like, I was making good money in the role. My burn rate per month maybe went up a little bit. But that's not really... You're still lean mean, fighting machine. Yeah. Like I don't think I spend that much more. I think the majority of my spend for my last company as most in Toronto rent was a little bit cheaper. You add a couple thousand bucks in rent when you move down to Florida. Okay. So that's a little bit, I mean, the average dinner in Miami is a little bit more expensive. Yeah. And also the American dollar versus the Canadian. That's it. But it's not like life changes that much. So I was curious, in your opinion, what's the amount of money that you have to make for your life to considerably change? Because in theory, you can never work again. Yeah. So, but do you think that it's like 10 million, 50 million, 100 million? Like, what's the amount that you have to make so that... Every person is different, right? I leave different than others. I have a nice house, but I don't really buy stuff. I don't care about... I don't buy a lot of stuff. I don't care about anything, because I don't know, I just the way I am, right? I find that... I know. That's it. The last drop, I'm... That's generous. So, yeah, I don't really need much. I do like experiences. So if I travel, I need to get first class, or I'll get a jet here and there, but it's not that I do it very often, because I like to stay home. So you do... You do drive it when it's in the blue moon. But you mostly fly first. Fly first with friends, I'll do private, because I'm maybe gonna do it by myself. It's kind of weird. I'm not like a world would jump together, and it's kind of fun. But even then, I farm myself, I give you a story. In 2021, I went to Mikanos, because my friend told me get a camel, change your life, Mikanos, Mikanos. He said, go, let's go. So we went group of friends, right? In the first two nights, three nights, I think, I had to let myself go. I mean, that's it. I sold, I don't have anything to worry about. That's it. Enjoy. Right? We're going into all those restaurants and clubs and all that is... I just couldn't connect the first two nights. Third night, I was already enjoying it. And then, I remember, I was just one of the morning parties. Someone was... Morning parties. Someone was talking to me over there. It's a really successful people over there, but you know, it's a different vibe. And none of them told me what he does, and we're talking, and we start getting into conversation. It was kind of loud, and I told, tell me more, and it was interesting what he told me. And he gave me a couple ideas. One of them was really exciting. And I remember, I wanted to get a fuck out of there, which is a destruction for me. I went to go and try what he was talking about. And I said to myself, this is my hobby, so then I figure a podcast is a thing. I'll sit down with smart people. I've done my house. I'll get smarter. I can't expect everyone to change my perspective on some topics, but fuck, man, this is awesome. That's what I enjoyed. If there's one single event that I had was one point of intellect between all this alcohol and parties, it was fun, but it was that... So, my life ended up changing... You have freedom. Yeah, my freedom, yes, but you know what, changing my life. The 18 years that I was running companies, there was always an underlying stress that you don't know that you have it unless you get out, get away from this for a while, and then I get divorce. So, you get divorce. So, you get the freedom, you buy this house, you live alone, not too far from your kids, you get to see them every week. But in the days you don't have the kids, you don't have to worry about managing hundreds of people and having all this underlying stress, and you can do whatever the fuck you want. And if you do a podcast, it's for fun. And this is where your life changed. So, it's not because I can go and get a jet, and a crew, and a boat, and a crew, and it's not that, or yeah, well, it's not that. It's because I don't care for any of those. I care about the fact that here, close to my house, close to my town, I have the ability to go and wake up in the morning without knowing that it's a doomsday today. Yeah. Some problem happened in a class action on the business and just, you don't have that stress. That is a big thing for me, and you know, being single again, it changes you. So, there are too many elements that happened to me at the same time. I think there was, so, oh my god, I'm going to blank on his name. Chimath, and I can't pronounce his last name. Oh, I know which one. So, he was on Lex Friedman's podcast, and Lex actually asked him how much money it takes to be happy. And I think I'm going to try and look it up. I think he said 50 million. I think he said 50 million. Yes. 50 million, because there's no, there's nothing you can really buy after 50 million, but 50 million is enough to not work. Yeah, for the rest of your life. That's true. That's true. You don't need more than that for now. No, it all depends where you are. The inflation maybe. Who knows? Who knows? Yeah. I don't think I don't think I don't think 10 millions. I feel I feel it's obviously less than that. It does not have to be 50 million. No, but you got to think, okay, so fine. Yes. 20 million, starting to be. Yes. I don't think 10 million for most people is enough. No. 20 to 30 million is probably enough if you invest wisely to not work. So you could invest. I feel he meant 50 million without even investing it. I feel the point is if you don't have, so if you don't even invest the 50 million, you're not even going to think about your burn rate. Yeah. You're going to have, you're going to spend $50,000 a month, and you're going to blow money on stupid vacations. Yeah. And I don't know how many months still the math. What's if you have 50, if you have 12 months out of the year, you're at the age of 40 and let's just say you're very lucky and fortunate to live another 60 years. Yeah, which is probably not going to happen. So that's that's $600,000 a year just in in life. Yeah. And then you say times times for last 25 million a few times 40 years. That's what I say. You don't need more than. Yeah, I mean, you'll still be okay. I mean, in 50 years from now in 50 years from now, 600 is not enough. So you have to have some interest compound on this. Yeah. So the 50,000 dollars a month, I mean, even if you think about, okay, so for the average person, that's way more than they spend. But if if you're running a company that allowed you to make 50 million after the acquisition or the sale, your expenses are probably high property tax, probably private school for your kids. But you've got to be completely foolish. This is not an investment all the time. No, no, no, no. 100% but you get to be completely foolish to do it, right? You have to say, all right, if I want to go and buy a property, why don't I buy a couple of other properties that I can rent to pay for that property? And that's it. I can park my money in land. Yeah. And that's all I have to do. And in time, it's can pay itself off. You can even put it in in a real estate investment trust or something or some reach. Yeah. And then you're fine. It's not because it's going to pay for right now. I mean, interest rate is high because of the conditions in the market, right? But but you say yourself, like, you're not supposed to actually use that money. I think what he meant was 50 million is for you either to live a little bit more lavish or to not even invest that money and to run through that cash. I mean, I didn't do the math that he did, but I think it can be with less not everybody has to buy the same houses. But if an average house goes for say 800,000 because you did get 50 million, a million dollar, whatever it is, and you say, I'm not going to work anymore. The interest in the United States is going to be 1.8% a year, right? So for a million, it's 18,000 a year, right? And then you do homestead on it. And it's not that hard. You take yourself 10 million dollar, you put it in reach, you get about 14% return and about 5% is going to be in rent collected. And you put that 400,000 back into your pocket. You're living good. You're fine. Yeah. You never, that money is enough for you to live a lifetime, right? So I felt like it's without investing. You think so? I think so if you know how to manage your money. Look, what do you do after your cash out? And I think we're going to have one of my friends come in one of our podcasts and this is our conversation. It's my neighbor, one of the most beautiful homes in Miami. He exit in 2016. His name is Brad. And he saw me walking down the street and doing something and he saw the construction I have. He said, welcome to the life of a homeowner because I had that leak over there. And I told him, yeah, I've been having homes for a while. I've been having issues with every home I had. And we're talking about that. And then and we both run into the same problem. You have the cash that you have. And then you have your your checking account. And eventually if you don't manage your money right, you run out of money in a checking account because you don't have an operating business. So you have to go back to the main account and he don't mentally want to ever touch it. That's for those who cash out. Now, even if you appreciated that money more than the money that you had in the checking account, mentally you don't want to touch it. It's fighting inflation, whatever it is, right? And he said, well, we need some kind of operating account to start creating new and we both run into the same scenarios like this is our problem. When you have a company, you know how to make money. You don't know how to park your money. Yeah. And after you exit, all you can do is park your money wise, but you don't have that. You're in different habitat. This is not your natural habitat. So now we're figuring out like, I mean, two years into it, you're doing much better, obviously, than before, but I mean, you're going straight into a bear market. Do you park a lot of your money than loan against those assets? I have not done this yet because till now, so I don't have any loans or anything like that. Because I think that's a way to do it 100%. I'm definitely going to do it now when it comes down to real estate, even though interest rate is high. There are some portfolios that we're buying that are going to be about 25% return. It's, and then okay, so the six percent, no, no, Reads would never give you that. Yeah, no, so we're just buying. You just buying. Yeah, you buy homes that, so, so we found that we have quite a few portfolios and obviously managing everything, but that's worth it because then you don't manage your money and when you do the math, it makes no sense to use your money. So you can get yourself quite a few units and you never have to work it. All the money is going to be, Grand Cardone was saying it better than me. He was saying, just you can buy stupid shit with passive income and he goes around showing his cards and watches, like buy stupid shit with passive income and one of those things. That's where you, that's where you don't need 50 million. I want to, okay, so I want to go into something that's happening to me on LinkedIn right now and I want to talk about a post that I did because it's really relevant and actually you gave me inspiration for this post and then it went. I'm a very inspiring person. You are a very inspiring person. So basically this was, this was the, it was about the square root of people doing most of the work. How do I pick that up from someone else? But give me the credit. No, no, okay, so I found out, I found out who did. I found out who the original guy was. I'm going to read the post and then it went and when I say viral, it has currently as of what's the date today, the 21st, yeah, like four in the afternoon. It's like 11,000, 11,000 likes, 895 comments, 500 on LinkedIn, which is supposed to be 2 million, 24,000 impressions. By the way, so LinkedIn has 2% of the users in LinkedIn post content. I'm speaking with Eric Goldas, Eric. So he said 2% of the people on LinkedIn post content versus Instagram, which is 87% of the people. So if you want to go viral, it's much likely to go and link the inversions. I'm now I'm repurposing all my Twitter stuff all onto LinkedIn because it's wild to reach you yet. So I'll read the post. I did some research into this principle and then I'm going to, and then a guy added some more context, which is really good, but it's very polarizing. Okay, so I said when Elon bought Twitter, they had 7,500 employees. He fired 50% of their workforce. Another 1200 left after he told them he was going to make Twitter quote, extremely hard core. That means that less than 2,900 remains. So how can 2,900 do the same job? The 7,500. So the law was originally called prices law. So it was dare price, a British physicist, historian, and scientist. He discovered something interesting about his peers. There was always a handful of people who dominated the publications within a certain subject. Being a scientist, he investigated, he found it the following. 50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participated the work. He tested it across different groups, different audiences, it almost always universally applied, especially in business. So the square root of the number of people in a company do 50% of the work and a company of 10 employees, three of them do 50% of the work remaining 50% is done by the other seven people. This scales. So competence grows linearly. In competence grows exponentially. 10 employees, three of them do 50% of the work, 100 employees, 10 of them do 50% of the work, the other 90 to the other 50%. 10,000 employees, 100% of them do 50% of the work, the other 9,900 do the other 50%. So the survival of any business requires the execs to figure out who the most competent people are in the organization and keep them happy, keep them around. And this is prices lost. So I said Elon just has to hope that the right people are still in Twitter. And why is it polarizing? People find that it's, so I think it's polarizing for a few reasons. I'm going to add this guy's context because it's important and then I'll then we'll discuss why it's polarizing. But this isn't, this isn't a normal LinkedIn post. That's a lot of impressions for a LinkedIn post. So this guy, Fredrick, he also. By the way, one thing you can tell the different between audience, everything is just a long chain of information that you wrote the brilliant. That means people, no, people read on LinkedIn, people view on Instagram. That is the main difference. You won't be able to get that writing it on Instagram. That would be only on Facebook or on LinkedIn. And Facebook has no organic reach. Not really. No, it's not like before. It's not like before. I mean, if you're going to try and go viral on Facebook, especially in North America, Facebook and other parts of the world is actually still pretty popular, but I don't think it's, I don't think it's popular. No, not anymore. Okay, so a couple things. So price is law applies, but it assumes the nature of the work is without specialties, meaning if A, B, and C, all the way to a disease are all workers, then they can do the work of each other and then no division of labor or work delegation. So what are the exceptions? So football has divisions and duties. A goalkeeper cannot become a midfielder accept. An IT team, there is a division of work front-end, back-end, database, full stack, platform. So special situations and how to go about applying prices law in a very large team. So for an IT team, for example, although IT teams seem like an exception in a very large IT team, like in the case of Twitter, with careful cutoffs and layoffs, you can achieve prices law. You will only apply prices law to various subunits. So you apply it to the front-end team. You apply it to the back-end. So no, he's saying, no, you cannot just get rid of all the UX designers or UX developers. You have to do it for a team. You have to do it for a team, but still across the teams the law apply. Now, how do you know because he fired half of the people? How do you find the most impactful ones? So this was another follow-up to this. A follow-up to this was how do you find the most impactful teams? You focus on employees that first of all think like entrepreneurs and you focus on X-shaped or multi-shaped employees. People that can manage their core tasks, but also have experience in other tasks as well. So that's one. Does that mean that they won't be perfect, but they can lend helping hands to other departments? So if somebody doesn't have experience working with developer teams in particular, because this is what a lot of people were complaining about. No, it doesn't work just in silo. He has one more. But in my past company, I had like a full stack developer, but he focused on the front end because he had a gift for creative and aesthetics, but he could totally do database and back-end work if he needed to. So yes, he is on a, so him as an employee is useful because his job mandate is to do the front end and the UI and the UX design. But ultimately, if, for example, somebody was laid off, he could instruct someone else on how to do back-end, or he could take that up himself or herself. Now, I'm not saying that you want to build an organization where you fire people and push extra work onto the people that are good at it. That's a different story. That's not keeping them happy and they're going to burn out and they're going to leave right away. What else is it's over there? There's a lot. There's 900 comments. No, no. So I'll tell you what I think. But I want to know why it's polarizing. And you ask, why would you think it's polarizing? I mean, I get the point of people getting good, but why do you think it's polarizing? I think it's polarizing because people feel as though people feel as though every person in an organization contributes at their 100 percent capacity. It's a nice thought. It's a nice thought that everybody tries really, really hard. It's not true. But it's not true. It's not true, unfortunately. I read another question. There's every basketball player contribute the same when you play basketball and everyone contribute the same like LeBron James or Michael Jordan. You can see it anywhere you go in life. Why is it when it applies to sport? It's okay, but when it applies to business, it's not okay. Why is it that we understand that LeBron is more gifted than the rest of the team that he has? Without LeBron, there is no victory. Why? People don't like being told that they're actually replaceable. Exactly. That is why it's polar. No one's going to say that in the thread, but the underlying psychology is nobody likes to think that they're replaceable. It's a demoralizing concept. You know what Val said about that? He said, a group would never admit they're mistaken. That would separate the group. I can go and tell you, as an individual, you did a mistake in your degree. But if I tell you that group is wrong, so if I go and I say, well, if you look at this as a collective, you would say, no, it's not. But if you're an individual contributor that you understand ultimately that you're the one that come up with all the solutions and all that, but you don't know how to kind of climb the ladder and that's what happened to the best engineers. They are so focused on results. They don't really know how to build themselves up and ask for their own benefits. Typically, they'll be always that person next to them, a beda that's going to sit next to them and would try to climb and they will build up on what they say in a more coherent way. And then the job of the manager is to say, okay, I see what's going on here. Thank you. I didn't ask you to add. He already told me that and make sure they separate it, but most managers don't realize that. They'll go for those with a better PowerPoint presentation and all that stuff. And that's where the good ones would write on a piece of napkin because it's all about the value of what I'm giving you and not the presentation of that. So what you see over here is, I guess the thing with Elon Musk, he's a poll-roising person. And as soon as he said vote for the Santis, that is going to be for Trump. I don't know if he said no, he said no, sorry, sorry, I find him a Santis reinstating Trump on Twitter. No, that is obviously people would have an opinion about that, right? But when he went and he said, I vote Republican this time, okay, that's it. Anything he's going to do is going to be poll-roising. From this point on, there's not going to be substance to the matter that he's dealing with. But when you look at him, right, see of PayPal, see of, I mean, the chief technology officer at the time, until he hired one for SpaceX, literally, SpaceX, then Tesla. So is that technology guy? He knows everything about technology. So I feel like the good ones, the real alpha ones, the one that A plus plus, we'd know who the A plus plus engineers are. If you're a bit, I don't know, he just can't see what other people see. So he can come in and say, okay, what are the projects you're working on? Let me see, okay, cancel this, cancel this. He's big on, you shouldn't optimize a product that you don't exist. Yeah, right? So I bet that he killed half of the projects. Okay, now we don't need so many people. Now let's go. This is what you get. I have to focus on. Well, if you look at, so he's polarizing, people love to hate him. But ultimately, somebody asked somebody DM me today, because I posted that and they're like, what's your fascination with Elon Musk? I'm like, I'm fascinated because he's, I think, probably one or two in terms of richest people in the world documented. He's built a ton of very successful companies. And he's basically applying all these startup lessons to Twitter. So he's trying to get cut all the trim, all the fat. He's trying, Twitter has the lowest revenue per headcount of any social media company. So that's a problem. So he's trying to introduce recurring revenue. He's trying to increase the revenue per headcount. He's trying to ship new products and iterate and Twitter blew $8. He shipped a new product, saw features or functions or bugs or whatever, pulled it back trying it again. He's like doing what startup founders do, but he's doing it with one of the largest organizations. It's kind of like what he did with SpaceX. He was going to blow up a bunch of missiles in here until one is going to fly and come back. But nobody was able to blow it up. If you go to a traditional organization, they'll say, if that missile blew up, I'm going to have to chop some heads off. In his case, like, no, if it didn't blow up, that means we didn't try hard enough. But our ambition wasn't. So yeah, I mean, some things are going to break, but he's going to fix it. And he did mention that early on. Look, I mean, Elon Musk, I think it's kind of like in every generation, you have one person that can carry not just discussions, but like where people want to go and focus on, right? People wouldn't mention or talk about electric vehicles if he wasn't for him. If the world is going to be a cleaner place, it's much because of him. Now, an interesting example, right? If you're talking about space exploration without him going back and down, blowing up missiles and potentially his entire wealth, humanity wouldn't be able to explore in the future what we are doing today because of himself. Even if you don't like him, I feel like for that point, everyone has to kind of has a certain gratitude for that. For the fact that he puts everything on the line like no one else would. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't put everything on a line. I have things to think about. I was coming for pie. I'm not going to put everything on the line the way he did when he had a hundred and eighty million coming out of paper and he put it all and then he slept at my his friend's couch. Yeah. He really pushes the bar and he sees Twitter as something that is valuable enough to put his time and energy into. I mean, he plays at a bigger level, Jeff Bezos, but Wall Street Journal does not play at the level of Twitter. So he bought it to buy in front with politicians more than anything, right? He wasn't doing it to actually, in Elon's mind, he was like, look, walk is a problem. We have to kill the walk mentality and just make sure that we have free speech. He wasn't going into going by politicians with this, so he was just saying I'm going to go and buy free speech. It's interesting, but it's obviously a very polarizing topic. I think that I think that with how fast he iterates and tries new things and chips things, I do believe that Twitter will be incredibly successful. Because if you test enough stuff at scale, you'll find out what works. I have no doubt. I have no doubt. I feel like I feel like what people get to take from this from from your article is that when you run a company, you will have free riders. You will have mediocre people. You will have people that can articulate themselves and say stories and give you stories wider, so good, but it can be a facade and you only figure it out after you let them go. I said this before and I'll say it again, I never regret letting go anybody. I only regret not letting them go sooner. When you have that hinge, when you end out, the idea is that as higher they are in the organization managerially, you need to have less chances. If I hire a VP and that VP doesn't perform zero chances, get out. That's it. You're VP. If you're a coordinator, I'm going to teach you what we'll educate. Make sure that you understand. We'll prep you. We'll give you crash course and another one. We'll give you many options until because it is the beginning. But when you hire someone all the way in the top, if you find that that person doesn't really understand that, figure out what it is obviously. But if if he doesn't know their own or she doesn't know their own job and my job is not to manage a VP, VP needs to manage a lot of people and manage himself. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, you don't have to cut it fast. Worse when you keep him longer and you feel that mistake later on. So that's the idea. Then you'll find yourself with much more effective organization. You'll never be able to succeed 100% because when you have two or three people with you, do something about the funder that gets the best out of people. That's why they're so efficient. If you have four people, two will do 50%. It's perfect. Once you start scaling, you can't manage so many people and now you start seeing inefficiencies. Then from there on, just understand it happens and then go back to your managers and say, usually the organization, the subpartan organization falls under the jurisdiction of that manager. If that manager wasn't good enough, it's on them. If those two people under that manager poorly executed, go back to the manager always. Don't go to those two people only. All right, let them go and do their thing, let them fire underneath, fix, correct? But if after a while, you see that they keep those people, they retain those people and if something doesn't work, it's on the manager. Okay, let's talk about FTX because that's trending right now. Did you ever heard of them? What's that? Get money on it? No. But I do have friends that lost them on here. Oh, what? Actually, it's one of my partners in one of my investments. Good guy and I think he lost about $400, $500,000. Okay, that's enough. That's enough. Okay, so where does this leave crypto? I mean, I think everybody who cares about this has probably heard the story. But basically, what had happened was FTX is a crypto exchange run by Sam, like SPF. Bankman, free, free. If you actually look at free, it spells like fried. Bank, men, fried and you're going to invest with that man. It's already a big red flag. So he had a US based operations and he had international based operations. US has regulated international wasn't. A lot of people said that was because there was a lack of clarity from US regulators on how to operate a business in crypto and DeFi in Web 3. Basically, CZ, who's a CEO and founder of Binance, another probably the second largest crypto exchange or largest actually. I'm not sure the volume compared to Coinbase, but they're pretty big. He had basically said something on the lines of like, I don't trust FTX. And it created a run on the bank and then FTX was not liquid enough to fulfill the orders. And I think they were short about $8 billion. And then it was like a house of cards that collapsed and FTX international collapse and they couldn't, they weren't liquid enough. And then obviously now that was a, that like cascaded and the whole crypto markets felt this. And I think it's based in Bahamas and Sam Bankman, free, is in the Bahamas. And now he's being investigated by the Bahamian authorities and it's a whole thing, right? And now the issue, big issue with this because FTX and SBF Sam Bankman, free, they invested in all these crypto companies. They have tons of investments. And then now they're going to their, they were also like the second largest democratic donor like they put money in a lot of places. So now what's happening is you see FTX, absolute chit-chot, they're saying it was fraud. SBF is saying that it wasn't fraud, but they had all their assets properly documented. Also, there was some shady stuff like he had a hedge fund called Alameda Research and they were like investing some of the investors money that was supposed to go into FTX into Alameda Research, which is technically what banks do anyways like reserve fractional banking is the same thing they were doing, but they weren't a bank, which is the bigger issue because if a bank which does invest some of your money, if you're wanting to bank it's not actually yours, they invested in different assets. If there's a run on the bank like a, you know, Bank of America or TD or whatever, they have insurance and they can also go to the government for bailouts and there's like a whole thing. But it was in the reason they felt right, they felt because... Well, they were doing reserve fractional banking in crypto, but they weren't a bank. So when there was a run on the bank, they issue what I understood and I'm not most technical in this one what I understood is that when you go a longer short and you buy futures against particular coin, the day is that there has to be a margin, margin call. And then they just allowed it to go too big and play the market in actually. Compound of things happens. So Alameda Research was doing some shady stuff with investment with investor funds, but the point was FTX was lending investor funds. And then on top of all, that was on FTX, that wasn't on Alameda. Oh, that was on when you go on FTX you can buy futures. Well, they didn't have short stops for some reason. That's a point, right? Because you need to have a margin call. If you go to say, if you go right now to any organized platform, I don't know, e-trade, right? And I want to go by options or in their case, I want to do futures. If you have a dollar in the account and you say, well, let's just say you go to NSMP 500, right? A future contract will cost you 12,000. So they take the 12,000. And then how much money do you have in the account? Well, let's just say I have in the account another another $12,000. Okay? So then you decide if you buy a long or short in a short explanation is that if I short the market and the market goes up every point on the S&P, that's 50 bucks. So that means it starts going up while I short the market and I decide to stay in my position because I think it's going to turn. Eventually, I ran out of those the remaining fund. I had 12,000 left. If the bank decides that they can still give me some leverage, one time leverage, I have an additional 12,000 if they decide no because of the record of whatever calculation I've said, that's it. You ran out of the $12,000 that you have. Here is a margin call. We're issuing you back the $12,000 that the contract cost you and you just lost $12,000. This way it keeps the system. You only play with your money in one-on-one. What they've done with FDX was they didn't have that. I didn't have those. Yeah, that was the reason they failed, right? Because there was no regulators. If you already go there and you say, well, you know, we are anti-establishment. We don't need any of those regulators to tell us what to do. This is all about decentralization. Well, first of all, you're not decentralized. It's a company. You're a company. Second, you did donate to regulators, right, to the Democratic Party in this case. So you did donate to regulators, but you decided not to be regulated as a private company going into the philosophy of crypto saying, well, the point was that if you already go to a company that's like, if it's going to be Binance or if it's going to be, make sure that it's an organized company. So it's easier when you go to a company that's regulated by the stock exchange like Coinbase. They're regulated. It's one-on-one. They have a transparency with, and I'm sure now it's going to be much more scrutiny. And it's safe. It's a shitty customer service. You want to kill them. You literally want to kill them, but it's safe. Versus going into a better UI UX with FDX and a guy that's putting himself out there and then takes away all your money. They're also hacked, too. This is the whole thing right now. They're active and they think like, are they being hacked? Inside job and then the Bahamian authorities are saying that we forced SBF. It's like a whole shit. Anyway, the point is, it's not good. It's not good. It's been like, I mean, if you're hearing for it first now, that's surprising, to be honest. But it's been newsworthy for a bit. But what does this mean for crypto? What do you think it means? I have, I don't, you know, it's a great opportunity for both of them to make a prediction because the reason why is because this is huge. This is bigger than Bernie made off. This is bigger than Enron. It's not really bigger than Bernie made off. That was 50 billion back then and Enron, Enron was 10 billion. But that was in the 90s. What about the, what is 10 billion in the 90s versus 20 billion today? So what about all the other, I'm giving you a little bit more because you didn't good so far. I reward you with some to kill. I'll drink with you some to kill. But what about all the subsidiaries invested in? Yeah, but all combined was 20 billion that they lost, right? I don't know. Was that the total? I think it was 22 from all the portfolio. It's so fine. It's not very big though. It's very big because it affects, I felt like what it does, it affects the crypto market and that causes a loss of much more than 20 billion. It's bigger than Enron though. I mean, yes, but it's paper money that it lost, right? In Enron, when they lost 10 billion in the 90s, I think it was 10 billion or eight billion, right? I just remember it was in the 90s. What was eight billion back then in the 90s? What was the house going for today? Let me figure it out. So what was Enron? Enroy. Let me look it up. Was 18 or eight? Something with eight. I want to say I remember eight over there. Jamie. Jamie. No, Enron was 74 billion. What? The Enron scandal drew attention to accounting in corporate fraud as the shareholders lost 74 billion. Oh, well, Ben, there you have it. Okay. But what were the Enron? Bernie Madoff was 50 billion. Yeah, so outstanding. Okay, so never mind. Well, too bad. It wasn't that bad, guys. You know what we just said. Okay, so it's not as bad as Enron or Bernie Madoff. But first of all, Enron and Bernie Madoff operated for a lot longer than SPF did. Oh, that is correct. Yeah. That guy did some damage. Bernie Madoff showed that he was like boarding like regular like regulator. He was on the board of FF. No, he wrote legislations. He was. Wow. I mean, watch his movie with the Nero. No, I haven't yet. Oh my god. You have to watch it. You should watch margin call. Margin call would make you understand a little bit better. You have to watch margin call. It's on Netflix. I want to say it's on Netflix. It is an amazing movie and basically talks about exactly what I said. A margin call comes down. It comes to if you're too short on your position. I think I've seen margin call. You've seen it. I think I've seen margin call. If you need to watch the big shorts and prices, right? No, no, no, that is the big short. It's important to watch the big short. When people talk about the housing market today, if it's going to crash or not, I feel like the primes and sub loans were the reason it happened. Yeah. Or you had derivatives, right? It's like I buy kind of like I buy a bet that those loans are going to be paid and I'm buying a bet on the person who made a bet on those loans. And then I buy a bet on the bet. So it was just the market was so leveraged at the time. The market is not as leveraged right now. So I know that there are quite a few people. What happens to crypto though? That's what I mean. Well, crypto crypto has its cycle. Crypto had its cycle and he needed that cycle. A big slap in the face. I don't think it's going to go anywhere. I think it's very naive to think it will. Even when I look at Birdy Piat Club, which I can relate to it. I'm sorry. I can buy a freaking picture with 10,000 of those. So this is the thing about it. But then but then still it's still 60 grand. I mean, if you buy for price for boardype. If you know, many people lost millions of dollars when they bought when it was hype and phone more about 100% Justin Bieber lost something like 2.3 billion and it was but the question is was he selling it for that price? Was he selling it for 100 something because why would he even sell it for that price? Just leave it. If you if you lost it just for 175 dollars, just leave it. Yeah. Don't touch it. I don't know. I also heard on cases where people mistakenly put it for sale and instead of putting say 1,300 ETH. They'll put 1.3 ETH or point 13. Yeah, so there were mistakes like this. Look, I don't understand why would anybody buy a computer generated image and there are 10,000 of them and you would buy it for so much money. This is the issue with board at Yop Club because they launched the NFT first and now they're building the product with the money they use from the original sale. And what is the product? It's like community events, meetups. Yeah. So they're taking they're taking a project and they're making it into a company, which it's okay because you have a community around this and then you make it a company. It's always a case of like, how is that not just raising money? It's very easy. I'll tell you why because they exchange when you buy board app every time there are gas fees and some of it goes to the founders. So if you have let's just say every day a trade of let's just say 200 images and each one in average at the high post $250,000 and you make 2% of that but you have 1,300 or 2,000 transactions right? That is your revenue that comes in and that is why they made it. Now you have that endless money coming in. How can you make people exchange more? That's the entire objective. So okay, let's throw parties. Let's throw stupid money because we get stupid money. It falls off a sky. Yeah. People are buying this selling that just all that exchange kept going on and they needed this to continue. Once that exchange dies, the whole project dies and it's going to be gloom. But I won't be surprised if in the future it's going to have its value. I don't get me wrong I don't want to crash that theory because right now it's hard to say it because right now everybody wants to demonize it. At first everyone idolize it and if you said anything against this you just don't understand and don't I don't want to explain to you. But now if you try to go and say wait in 10 years perhaps there's going to be something out of this and people are going to go and demonize you over there. There's no in between or people sell us and if it's a couple thousand dollars all by it and if it turns something I'll keep it if it doesn't it doesn't. But I mean if you put it if if I go and I put like say $10,000 and it turns into a hundred thousand and you didn't take it out you're fucking fool. You know that happened to you know that Dogecoin millionaire. Do you hear about this guy? No. He put a couple a couple bucks into Dogecoin like a couple a hundred thousand bucks in the Dogecoin and when this was when Elon was tweeting about it. Yeah. And he became like multi multi-millionaire and he held at the top and he held and he held and he held and now I think he's lost all his money again. But he's a guy Dogecoin millionaire. The biggest. The biggest on Fox 490. The former I should be after 10x sell about half. Another 10x sell another half. He means they're greedy though. That's greedy. Well I mean you have to have discipline when you're an investor. I remember I learned a lot from a car prily the investors that came into boxy charm at first and we're still really good friends and I can't tell you how much of a better CEO I became because of them and I have to give them a shout out. Definitely probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I became a different person working with them. I was able to see bigger and I was able to understand that it's okay to lose a deal. You know there was a phrase I heard before but with them it made it I was able to embrace it. Okay it was I never made I never lost money on a deal I didn't make. Now start from there. If I would always think about the money I lost on a deal I didn't make you're a freaking gambler. The philosophy is to say no an investor doesn't worry about what he missed in what he didn't make. An investor should say the money I dodged that I didn't lose the deals I dodged that I didn't lose. As long as I keep winning I am okay. This is where it is. I put a dollar I have a dollar plus I'm good and positive. Don't worry about what you missed so when you have some revenue coming in 10x go cash out your principal plus extra and then sit down again. So let's talk about okay smart, smart theory everyone's gonna say yeah for sure but you as an angel investor so far you haven't cashed out of anyone. Have you? If I have one. As an angel investor you haven't cashed out. So I made couple investments one of them I mean the only a little bit long term and one of them distributed dividend so it was a dividend play one of them right and the other one in naturally was it's a company called Stringpack. I can't really talk much about this all it is is that it's extremely profitable and it's a longer term play like this when you think about investing. Yes you do want to cash out but when it makes sense to cash out right. They have you so all your all your plays so far I'm even invested in some real estate some. No forget real estate like with the startups have they all you're still in all them? No. Did you or there was like the small ones you put 25 for 50k you don't care like if it works good if it doesn't it's cheaper than going on vacation somewhere yeah yeah yeah some some did not and to be honest with you there there's some like like anybody else like you invest in certain heights right and you but you have a discipline like no more than this amount or that amount right so with you lost 25k for example was there anything that that person or that founder could have done that would have made you put more in or was it I didn't even better no I said listen always it's all good so it was one investment and it was actually 15 it was just no worries like she had to shut it down it didn't work I mean the whole NFT market collapse she wanted to create some application for NFTs and and the idea was good she's highly connected with a lot of people so I thought maybe but did if I had to choose what what is the odds for that to make it I give it 10% I knew what I'm getting myself into I said 10% but final give her the 15 if it does it's going to be good it came in early so I said no problem but but that's where you put that type of money you was to pay you back now because because it's it was it was it wasn't a personal guarantee and I feel like it's fine like I know she wasn't coming and taking the money to go and party or in in Disneyland or something it wasn't that she was working she was trying so in my case it was different like the other investments that were more you put a couple millions those did very well and that's the that's the one I cared about and those are the ones that in year one I think we gross like 80 million dollar year one yeah but that's wild that's not normal no that's a normal that's a but again that was only one investment how did you okay so let's do okay let's teach over a little bit so how do you how do you look at an angel investment like how did you scope that one out what were the things you look for was it the founder was it the idea was it the tam like what did you look for definitely the founder has to make sense it has to make sense also what is what made what made the guy girl I don't know so great so in this case the the girl was highly connected and the thing is here's where it comes it for me at least okay and I'm not a professional investor so I kind of like say well how much is it 25 for 50 the two diligence is going to be much less than half a million or more so I made one investment that was a little bit less than a million and then another one that was a million plus right so so those ones were different right one of them I was I was not the lead investor there was an organized investment group that went and did the entire due diligent and the friends are like if you want to come in with us on the same terms they said okay they did all the due diligence they organized their success rate is 90 something percent make sense that's the one I mentioned so that was a different story and it's a lot easier for me because I'm not experiencing deal anyway it's a lot of work too a lot of work the other one that was a couple hundred thousands it was dividend and you start looking at your balance sheet you do some due diligence and you said well I wanted to actually put more so what I said was well I'll put half first I see how he does I'll give it a year just give me an option to invest the same amount of money in a year from now and then if it does good I'll put more money and even if it does good I might not invest more money because I might find other deals but I protect myself yeah I can reserve the option so I did that and and the company is cool okay they they have a good it's a good potential it's been quite a few years it's a good business and and then the small one there was it was too small and you know a couple of friends came in and like let's try and that's it I figure you know it's it's probably one or two vacation vacation in meconos or something which I don't care to go again so let's put it over there instead and maybe something's going to happen if not I'll write it as a loss you know very good um all right what do we do well I have a couple of questions for you sir I didn't really I asked I have a question yeah go go I'm trying to think I think I got through most of my let me find one okay what did I write down I want to make sure that I actually got through mine um oh where the hell did I write them okay so let me go and ask you this one okay you ready yes so you move to Miami with Jenna and by the way she's awesome I love her but I gotta ask the question it's a little bit less serious if you had the chance to be single coming down to Miami knowing Miami that you know now would you come single or would you come in come like half engaged already half engaged so obviously um I would never choose to ever ever be single again because I really do love Jenna but I think that if I was single I'd rather be single in Miami than single in Toronto that's a smart answer so Miami is definitely a single person yeah would you think it's a problem to stay married in Miami I mean I know a lot of people that have issues with the relationships already so I can't imagine that being in Miami in a tough relationship is a good idea I think that maybe if you isolate yourself in the middle of nowhere with your spouse that's all there is yeah so I think that I think that you know um if you have a good relationship it doesn't matter but I think that if you probably look at the horse rates in Miami they're probably higher than the national you know you know I'll tell you I tell you I think there's actually stats on like cheating in Miami and stuff no they don't do that in Miami you're talking about no you know so after I broke up with my wife and again glad got blessed or she's amazing I kept the ring for a while now first it was COVID so you couldn't go anywhere but then when they open it up I kept the ring for a while and honestly I kept it because it was just hard for me mentally to take it out then I learned that it's actually a good thing because it doesn't stop a girl from talking to you in a bar I actually think it always it would probably increase the chances of a girl it's to say it's the same odds right because I couldn't find a girl to say hey you're married what is that no and if she would I would say no no I'm not married but but point is I kept it because I figure you know I'm not into relationship right away I want to stay single so I kept the ring and I figure they're not going to bother me I just play and she's not asking I'm not lying I would have told them I'm separated and if that's me why do you keep the ring some of them did I said I should take it off but I'm separated here's my apartment all that but most of them don't ask and then they don't bother you because they think you're married and you just call them when you want to call them so I know it sounds bad but I'm just being honest over you because Miami's the party city yeah so I think everybody's coming here to like get away from something yeah especially if you go on vacation you're you're getting you're coming here to get away from something so if you're trying to get away from something obviously people want connection but a lot of people don't want connection yeah a lot of people want one like just one night that's 100% yeah and that that think about it if you're if you're trying to go after a guy and and the guy's receptive to you and the guy's wearing a wedding ring then you got one night yeah and that's it that's it you don't got some guy blowing up your phone for like the next two that's in case of tourism I'm talking about locals right because yeah I go to its locals and they still didn't care but that's okay so that's about you and Gina okay okay I kind of wanted to ask you something about that if you had to bring into our podcast a guest host co-host once a while to bring in kind of like when you see Diamond Joan and Barbara Corking yeah once a while they're there once a while they're not there it's a rotation over there we need we need a woman boom when they're right over here what did you write on the bottom all out of woman yeah another perspective no we need a woman there's too much of bro energy here yes 100% but I don't know who but I have some options yeah some really cool cheeks that are just smart you know why because you know that podcast we did with a non daily and dearly like I really liked that energy and she was awesome she was like she was and she was like grilling me and she was like pushing back and I actually appreciate it and like actually I was talking to Gina about that podcast because that's I've done like a lot of podcasts and she doesn't listen to all the podcasts but that one in particular she did listen to and she's like having a woman's perspective on the show added why don't we bring Gina and Paddy my ex and other people that we know like they'll be giving perspective they love it being alongside guys like I said yeah that'd be awesome but I think that perspective because it's like it's like they think of things that well you said this before you said this a few times even running a business the most important asset you had in running a business was was your wife because she looks at things differently it's not just in your business it's in life so to have like complete 360 degree of any topic you need to have all these different opinions the mistake where people say well there's always a woman behind a successful man they're they're thinking well she's gonna fold this clothes and no no no it's not that it's much more than that she sees things that men don't see and men see things they don't see so it has to be a lot of blind spots they have a lot of ego yeah the cover our six yeah yeah yeah I remember Paddy was looking at a protein at first some guys to box itch I mean I told her I were great and and she didn't like them from okay she told me done that good and working with him later on she was right about everything yeah everything she said in the first look she already didn't like them she told me everything why and she said they want your life they want and she was right just I couldn't see it yeah right so I know it was one out of many so women can definitely get an out of perspective so we're gonna have to bring some women over here um I actually wrote down questions but then my no pad got deleted why I don't I didn't save the note you don't remember what you write no I do so I was asking about investing in like risk tolerance um I was asking about like after your company like are you bored like you know what if I'm bored I found myself bored at first in around June no around August 2021 and that's when I decided to build stuff yeah so we got obviously I get a couple projects and business-wise we're doing this yeah and we're doing this so so the projects you know you start working in dark until it works and you have a proof of concept and then you go and you brag to everybody yeah well that right then you lose your humbleness but uh but first you have to make it work right before so you don't um but I had to build something I remember you know I get this call in 2018 and I think I told you the story where I got a 2018 or 2017 chronologically I remember no before that fact that 2014 2014 right I get this call and uh they're telling me look were from the night foundation we work with endeavor we found that you're one of the promising entrepreneurs of Miami like me at that time I had just the liquidation business was doing about 10 million in sales but that's not a business in Miami that's kind of say Maxi was so young it it wasn't even a thing to mention so they invited me to a round table meeting I was sitting over there some people were heavy hitters but some were like me got lucky to even be in that situation we were sitting on a 50 something floor we're looking the bay and I remember I was looking at at the intern dress with a three-piece suit amazing place everyone this dress beautiful and I was just there coming from Hyalya and I got like a cheapest part in town to get like the cheapest square foot in town and I remember I saw one of the ladies that was there and she she had her exit when she was 23 selling something to IBM then she said I decided not to do anything after a couple years I got bored I built another business I sold it to I think all more it's something crazy like that now I'm doing another thing like that time she's I want to say she's like 50 60 kind of hard to tell she had her mess box she had the driver rolls all that right and I said myself look at this I have a business yeah I make some money but this is nothing I'm thinking too small look at look at what people they have the intern has a better lifestyle than myself working over here I need to get something else I got to double down on on the box I gotta make sure that if I have an office this is what I want to be I want to dress with I want to be dressed to impress every fucking day because every day is a special day it doesn't have to be a wedding or something I don't want to be one of those 50 60-year-olds that run a liquidation business that has warehouses somewhere and that's all their life in a shittiest part of it I don't want that let's go on chat let's change it up and this is what I say you you have to change it up you have to see something else to get perspective of what else is out there and it's not all about the money and that really transformed me I went back and I I doubled down on the box I said that's it okay here's a tough question after you exited do you feel like when you're not working because you're not you're working on projects but you're not I don't have a job but you feel like you're not as sharp as when you were on every day different right it depends when you have your uh-huh and you sit on something then you dive into it deep deep deep deep break do you have to like so do you like do anything because like I I found this that's why I asked because when I take a break from working this hard or Sam more comfortable in a job I don't like this feeling but I feel like even like when I'm having a conversation like things don't like come as fast I feel like if I'm doing and solving problems every single day like my brain is just always firing and sharp and with it and on it maybe this is me I don't know but I'm curious like if you felt like it's a good question because look if I had to sit down right now and take myself back into the time where I built my first website yeah and I had to figure out SEO and I had to figure out everything right I was laser focused on a couple things I was focused on marketing so focused that you couldn't get me away from that so I wasn't the best thing say buying the right merchandise and all that because I understood that the most important part is the marketing then I can optimize everything else right so there's parts into it I feel like I haven't changed when I ran back see up until then and the money doesn't really make it different because you have the pride and you have your ego and your your the image of your business is some it's reflected on you so eventually once you have a business and you have a proof of concept that's when you know exactly where to drive so say right now we're just driving north we know it's somewhere north but then we found the highway that it's free instead of paved roads from here and there with the compass like here is the northern highway yeah then you're so focused on that drive right so once you get the aha and you know that this is what you got double double down on that's when you're gonna go back to be the scrappy if that's what you mean yeah yeah exactly because you need that you need that part because I can be scrappy right now and and build something that might not need to be existing as you need the north star to like drive you and yes yes so then so I have right now two three projects right and then once you find one but this is a leisure right this is literally leisure I'm not looking to go and make this a billion dollar business because it's it's a leisure for me but and for you to do money behind this and all of it but it's it's cool yeah it's a cool thing I it's very different once you go and you build yourself a business let's just say decide to smell cell smoke detectors and some easy market smoke detectors once you find the proof of concept and you say hey here's that company they're doing 700 million a year and they're not even that good look at this the only distributing through they don't have any online presence and we can go and do it better and you start selling and you start growing and you find out that it's better and you find those channels from your past life that were already too competitive for the beauty industry but now for smoke detector industry have no competition so you feel like this is awesome let's go you feel like you're you're going into I always like to give this it's a bad analogy but it's it's right for that it's like you're coming into a new continent that was discovered with AR and everyone else over the old indigenous people have bozen arrows okay I'm running this place now right eventually they get ARs they they they they can compete with this okay now let's go to another continent I'm not competing with them on so that's what you're doing like okay this is it here is my new one right so I have a couple of them I was looking for categories that are not competitive online and it's hard everything is competitive online what are you going to find that's not competitive right what are you going to do you you have the Logan brothers you have Logan Paul brother and you have the rock you have you have to find something that no one was touching it but yet the market cup is big enough that you can still enter and then the cost of goods makes sense to sell it online because not everything sells online because not everything has a profits you have to find something and say does the cost of goods make sense to even sell it online and then if I enter this I have to grow fast enough before some celebrity is going to go and try to copy me and build community behind this and then eventually make sure that it's going to be too big to fail so this is where I go and once you find it you double down on that so the reason why I ask this is because even I feel that feeling that feeling of excitement and and conquering something and figuring it out I feel like that's the excitement that gets entrepreneurs sort of up in the morning but in all seriousness the reason why I started this podcast is because every time I have a conversation with somebody who's an expert in a different field or a different domain I have to find a way to keep up with them and I think it's like the ability to keep up with somebody that keeps you sharp you mean so if you interview a person if I interview a person I'm under I'm trying to understand everything they've learned over their entire lifetime kind of like I'm going into a new company and trying to understand a new market new product for the first time it's like it's this rush and it's just it you have to you need to give them a lot of alcohol to really tell you the important part but you have to yeah you 100% because people are all shy on camera but you gotta go and you gotta be like operating at 150% 100% and that's why that's why I love this that's why I love this because it's just you're forcing smart conversations and smart interactions on you and I think that the better way you build that into your life if it's just like listening to podcasts or reading books or whatever or actually hosting a podcast talking to awesome people I think that that keeps you sharp and it keeps you yeah the top of your game it keeps you sharp doing this right this is this is definitely the first thing the first thing you mentioned you said I want conversations with people to make me smarter yeah yeah you want to be you want to come out smarter off to that conversation because the idea was that when when when you go and you say what what if what kind like separates successful people and not successful people is when they sit down and talk the successful people when they talk to the friends they talk ideas and opportunities yeah they want that another talk about everything that's unimportant right and they're gonna go to sleep thinking about what's unimportant I don't know video games whatever it is right so you said yourself well I'm gonna go and give you those conversations over here right and they're plenty of those they're plenty of podcasts to plenty of this but you'll never know where is that one little piece that you needed to hear to change you yeah right I had I had maybe four events in my life that really spiked my business because of something I heard from someone but you can I now actually bring in your head 100% those those sentences you heard no how wild is that crazy you you feel the first time was when I get the list of all the suppliers for the liquidation and I ask them all right so I get all those suppliers awesome but first how do I buy the goods I mean I don't have money to buy truckloads from Macy's from older in or older access inventory they said well you don't need to you get the list and then you show the list to a buyer and then you buy it for them and you put some you mark it up how do I get the buyer oh they call it search engine optimization so it's like okay how do I get the buyer I have the goods now how do I get the buyer now okay now I know how to get the buyer and I have the goods okay let's start to that moment was was it's the real moment where I knew that this is it my life changed that's it that's all I needed to not say no more I'll figure it out SEO you said okay those are the words you got okay you know what it was for me and not my last company much earlier on I was I was managing and heading up sales in a company was acquired by a private equity firm and I had never thought of startup I had never thought of exit events I'd never thought of acquisition of my my my my family they're all in government and they're all they've all worked non startup private jobs right even the people that my family that have worked in private they've worked in like fortune 1000 yeah so the the word startup never really no one has a conversation about startups or entrepreneurship and when that company was acquired I'm like shit I know how to I know how to get to where I want to be so I'm gonna double down and work in startup land and that was like the beginning of everything it was working as a consultant with startups it was doubling down as CRO of a startup who's going through an exit event it was working with my current company to start it was and and when you start working in startups then you start learning on the skills that allow you to build something yourself so working with all those startups and working from a ground level gave me the tools and the skills that allowed me to build the podcast successfully allowed me to do everything successfully so that particular event because up until that point how many people were induced in the in the first startup 50 in the second one 20 20 yeah yeah that's that's so you work with a CEO all the time then you get to be around an entrepreneur and then you become them yeah right that's that's that's the that's the idea so yeah that was it that was I was like this is how because before that career growth seemed very linear it's like you get a job and you move up and you move up and you move up and I was damn good at my job too but it was never leverageable there's never a point where I could leverage my time for more than my salary and then all of a sudden the equity conversation comes into play and all this like now there's leverage everywhere everything I do I look for leverage I look for how did you think about leverage that only equity in the company because unless unless you see some friends getting that because I saw the founder sell the company yeah yeah yeah I saw the founder sell the company for just under nine figures yeah and I saw that the fact that he had worked for something for 10 years he cashed out yeah yeah like the change for me was on 20 and on my shit I should have been part of this listen I look everyone needs that transformation in their life and if they don't that's fine as long as they're happy it's not for everyone this is a tough route that you take because there's a lot of many uncertainties you have to find the what the what is probably the biggest challenge what is the next idea and then the execution especially after you did this the first time it's not a big deal it's just very challenging where especially when you get the first one to get the second one it's already it's a it's a it's a really luck maybe now I don't think so how do you know that it's gonna work how do you know to double down well I kind of tried a couple things for the second one not that many but really quickly I knew what is a winner what's a loser so the loser killed them five this library of experience so you already know the 99 things that won't work yeah so you're like okay let's I know I know I know the best practices in ops and sales and marketing and HR in fine I know all the best so far I mean I have my experience so let me just try and optimize every little bit what's the difference between reading a book about this or listening to podcasts about this versus actually doing it I think the difference is that you know if I've been in in a particular area actually been there spoke to people versus reading about this it's a big difference right what do you want to do do you want to actually play it there is a part there's a movie with Kevin Costner when he was it was teaching he had to go and teach he had to instruct a team of soldiers how to extract people from drowning in Alaska I forget the name of the movie and ask Jamie is going to find the name so then the the point with me was kind of like a hero he was the one that saved more people than anybody else it's kind of a helicopter people go fishing in Alaska very dangerous they he jumps and and I remember he was kind of like the unorthodox teacher when the the army brought him over at the Coast Guard and it was a point over there where you see those generals coming into his room because they had enough with this this off off the box type of teacher that goes over there and teaches yeah so they go and all the soldiers are in the pool like this and then they're coming to me like what are you doing you have to go being the class with them and talk to them about hypothermia so he goes and he was telling me like in about 32 seconds they're all going to have hypothermia so he literally said oh you want to know about hypothermia forget the books right away let's go to the ice cold water stay with me we're all gonna get through the experience together so you'll know what hypothermia is right this is what you get when you actually get to do the job right this is what happened when you get to do the job so trying something and failing is part of your process don't read about this don't keep getting models will it work no fuck the models you need to try the model is gonna the probability the model is right is so low go and do it yeah try just make sure you fell very fast because if you fell slow yeah well you're just just more expensive I'm very more expensive and you never make it like you have to move fast so so to go and get the second part is like I feel like the the situation is after you go and you take an entrepreneur you strip him away from everything you had you said okay no more money for you what do you do now okay it's gonna be harder because I have less but I have what's in my head but what I've been through those roads so that's easier what happened is when you do have a business and this is where it's easier to start another business when you have a business is that you have a platform what is the worst thing that you want to do when you start a business well I have to hire a couple people two three people for example to get one is a secretary bookkeeper for example or not even I can do it myself not actually I need one okay fine plus not a person to do xyz and I need a place and so now you have to invest some money to a maybe and a lot of people don't want to do it because you're saying yeah you know what I don't know let me go and check before let me start in my garage again and all that but if you have no infrastructure you're winning out quite a few options of what you're gonna try because you want you have a business it's a lot easier to start a second business on top of the other business because you have already office space at least for me warehouse office employees can you guys build boxes over here we're gonna allocate those those pilot tracks only for boxy charm merchandise and let's take that place to assemble the boxes and once you start seeing a proof of concept okay so I didn't have to go and hire people for that it was so easy right so what I'm trying to do now is I said well I'll start a business that's gonna be doing good lifestyle business but what I'm gonna have is an infrastructure is not gonna be the next big thing maybe is that for sure no but it's gonna be the platform I needed to make the next big thing and that's also why a lot of the brands that you know today did not start out as the brands that you know they started out as one thing and they tried it out and they tested it out and like household names I could Jamie can pull examples too but there's household names of companies that you know that are known for one product the starters very differently that's true yeah you deviate right you you zigzag no one will fail if they just try and learn and learn from the mistakes for like 10 plus years yes it's impossible to fail and people always think what is a chance what are the rates of entrepreneurs failing 90 it's not 90 percent only 90 percent because people give up after two three years so if you have a job or you have cash flow from another business if you keep trying and iterating and trying and learning and trying you will build something I mean there is there is also a dark side in entrepreneurship a given example I've seen on Shark Tank a guy that I mean I like this guy because he was ex-army and he came down and he ended up talking about how he served and all that and and then he came up with an idea and he needed to build this it was like a big device the size of a refrigerator that you can put in a doctor's office and there's bunch of screens on it and you can play a game or something like that and he said each one cost I'm not 20 grand and he needs some money and he already mortgages house twice and that's not smart exactly exactly so you also have to have intelligent options when you're going to and I remember where they got when he left they were trying to convince him to not not invest anymore and he said no I'm I'm not going to give up and if that means I have to get another loan I'll do it and I'll please don't do it and he left and you you see all the sharks like no and then and Kevin O'Leary said something smart he said this is the dark side of entrepreneurship so there is that and I think it's important to hear this in this show say listen guys don't put your life saving your kids saving you can do things like this when you're young when you have no liability when you don't have dependence don't do it when you have dependence that's that's why you want to try when you're young yeah you know what you you definitely can always try there's also ways to try without the spend I'm sorry when I say you try something for 10 years I don't mean you spend two million three million five million dollars trying over the course of 10 years there's going to be some capital required but you have to be smart too and like when do you listen to people when when you don't right it's very it's a challenging thing right when people tell you it's not going to work but you still come out from the other side say look it worked and this is what you see a lot on social media people brag about this but sometimes you should listen to people in that case they told me that no one's going to be using it they're you're going to using their iPhone so you better and how do you know like there is it's just the way people are wired and you cannot teach at all no but if people are going to fail and die learning then that's that's part of the formula for success so if you don't take feedback and you don't improve and you don't change things and you don't pivot and you don't do all these buzzwords which are real then that's where you fail yeah I know I agree with you 100 percent I just think that it's really not for everybody yeah the bottom line is it's not for everybody and sometimes there will be casualties yeah there will be some dead people along the way and that's why the risk reward is a big it's a big thing it's just the reason we're compensated like this because we assume the risk yeah so all right that was good that was awesome okay we'll do more of these awesome