O.D. Kobo - Entrepreneur & Asset Manager | Negotiating More Than $15 Billion in High-Stakes Deals

I learned an early age where the real money is for when I was young. I've never been able to get hired anywhere. Born in Hong Kong, Odikovo's entrepreneurial journey began at just 21, disrupting the online lottery space. Over the years, he's built a career spanning industries from tech and private equity to digital assets, with nearly $1 billion in exits, from investing in pre-IPO giants like Tencent and Alibaba to selling feed for $40 million. At the age of 21, 22, I made my first million bucks. I was 20 years old. I had met two guys that were engineers. They had this idea to take the American lottery system, place it online. We all kind of made this company together. And our lawyer in New York called us up one day and said, somebody wants to buy this $1.8 million. We sold that company. Od has consistently stayed ahead of the curve. Now worth an estimated 225 million pounds, Od continues to shape industries, leading major investments in blockchain and infrastructure. His journey exemplifies resilience, vision, and an unrelenting drive to create impact on a global scale. This is the story of OD Kobo, a true modern entrepreneur. After I had that lottery thing, the money went pretty quick with me. The next adventure, we'd buy the .co.uk domains that just come out. Nobody was buying them. And we bought a bunch. So all we do, by bulk of like 100 domains for like three bucks, after a year and a half of going through everything, I sold that. And to take for about 2.2 million pounds, when life you can either eat good or sleep good. You can't do both. Just be happy. Just try to be happy no matter what you do. Welcome to success story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. HubSpot not only supports this show, but they support entrepreneurs. That's why it's such a huge fan of HubSpot. And I'm very grateful for HubSpot for supporting the show because they help entrepreneurs. And as a fellow entrepreneur, I know it takes a lot to grow your business, a lot of audience attracting, a lot of sales, a lot of marketing, a lot of lead scoring, a lot of channel management, a lot of content, a lot of long days, late nights, a lot of weekends, a lot of wishing there wasn't easier way. But there is with breeze, this is HubSpot's new collection of AI tools. It's easier than ever for marketers, for entrepreneurs, to attract audiences, to increase leads, to score customers, and to close deals fast, which means pretty soon your company will have a lot to celebrate. Visit HubSpot.com slash marketers to learn more. If you had to describe what you do for a living to somebody, how would you describe what you do? Externally, meaning publicly, I'm an alternative asset manager. Internally, you know, amongst, amongst my circle, I'm a high-level entrepreneur, I'm an entrepreneur, you know, amongst, amongst my circle, I'm a high-value, large-scale deal maker, with sovereign funds, SOEs, specific individuals, cross-border mainly between Asia, Russia, the Gulf. I'm a deal maker, in that sense, I help facilitate large capital initiatives between governments, private public entities, in various sectors, infrastructure, simply because the sums are a lot larger. Tech-related infrastructures, data centers, or, you know, things of that nature. In the past, in the past, oil and gas, some securities, depends kind of, you know, if, who I worked with. But I think in a nutshell, internally, they kind of refer to me as, as the deal maker. Obviously, you're experienced as really gone across, so many different industries, and you accomplished so many different things, when you look at how most deal makers, investors, asset managers structure their career, at least early on, they start to focus on one thing, because that's what they're proficient at, and that's what they get very good at. So, let's sort of go back in time. Who was OD growing up? Who was OD, who, did you come from an entrepreneurial background? I think your parents were somewhat entrepreneurial nature, but I mean, what was that inflection point, or that moment in time that sort of pushed you down the path that you're on today? I grew up in Hong Kong. And when we grew up in Hong Kong, it was because, at the time, my father was in the manufacturing business. So, a lot of foreigners that came to Hong Kong, you know, were manufacturing other clothes, or, I don't know, something like that. So, that was kind of why I was, you know, brought up and raised in Hong Kong. When we first moved to Hong Kong, sorry, when I first kind of grew up in Hong Kong, we lived in an area called Park Foulan. I think of it like the Queen's area of Hong Kong. It was predominantly all Chinese. It was in, I don't know, if you see those presidential blocks, where you see like 1,000 apartments and like, you know, like that, and, you know, laundry hanging out like that. We lived in a place like that. We were the only foreigners, you know, for a couple of blocks, for sure. And so, you know, I grew up there, and my father, you know, I love my father, but my father hasn't, you know, wasn't around. I don't have a mental picture of him before the age of 14. He was always working and always, you know, out and traveling, you know, to the factories or to mainland China. And so, he was never there. And my parents had me quite young. So, my mother at the time was, you know, once she had me, was roughly around 21-22. And my father had to go make a living. A few years later, my sister was born. And, you know, you're in Park Foulan in Hong Kong. And it was just the three of us, right? My father was never, never around. I only really kind of connected with my father in my 20s. You know, I think the environment in Hong Kong, you know, everybody there, the foreigner side, the expats, were there for work, right? So, you know, the whole, you know, let's go get money, let's go work, wake up in the morning, make a living, you know, grow. It's sort of embedded amongst everybody. And Hong Kong, I love Hong Kong, you know, it has like a, like a New York kind of vibe, or the old school New York vibe, where, you know, streets are bustling, people are moving, you know, nobody's like sitting around on the couch watching. You know, it's an energy. So, 100% energy. And, you know, my father, you know, has this ability sometimes to make money, but then the gambling, you know, in him, not casino gambling, but, you know, with his faunce, he goes down. So, one time, you know, you live in Park Foulam, and then the next time you live in a nicer house, and then you're back to Park Foulam, and then, so I kind of created, I guess, growing up this, this sort of a fear, you know, that, you know, you, you know, you got to be conservative with what you got, like, I'm not an investor. I don't invest. I'll bring capital, facilitate, I'll structure, I'll manage, I'll bring, you know, large capital. But at the end of the day, you know, if you showed me today, I don't know, you know, oil well, that I can buy it, you know, 10 cents on the dollar. Wonderful. I'll, you know, I won't invest. I'll go bring a billion dollars to it, and I'll take a piece, and I'll take a, you know, a deal fee, and I'll take a management fee, and I'll take some other fees, and all that. But me, no, absolutely, no. You're so, so you're very risk-adverse. I tell you, it's, I learned from an early age where the real money is. And, you know, I watch a lot of the podcasts, and I see a lot of, you know, I like things like that. I love where the world's going, and I like, you know, I see a lot of these motivational speakers, or, you know, some guy that made like, I don't know, 50 million or 100 million bucks, and you're like, okay, and you don't know what's up, and they're like, you know, giving lessons to the world, and, you know, okay, you know, I don't come from that side. For me, firstly, I'm lazy, okay, I, you know, yes, I'm an alternative asset manager. Any intern at Brookfield KKR, CarLalcan, I now asset manage me any day over the week, okay? That's, that's not, you know, that's not my forte. You know, I remember when I was young, you know, I even wanted to get hired by guys like that. They wouldn't even let me into like the office, or if I got in, you know, I've never been able to get hired anywhere. I tried, honestly, I really did. You know, and I went to a nice school. I went to university in London. I used to love London, by the way, and, you know, I went to London in the 90s. That was like boomtown in London, you know, that was a Soviet Union in collapse. So like, we had the wave of all the Russian oligarchs coming in, and all of them came in. And you had the Chinese flow, right? You had the Arab, the Gulf money. So it was really, you know, you had an oasis, and, you know, all the crazy things of London, and, you know, and it was a kind of vibing town. I mean, I used to love London, and, you know, I went to a good school. I studied at first at Regions Business School, then at London School of Economics. And, um, but London really, for me, um, you know, it was, uh, I understood that the value of network and people is important. And I don't mean by network, like saying, how I just met you and added you to my roller dex. I'm saying, you know, real connections. And during those years, a lot of my classmates was, you know, the crown prince of, uh, you know, in Indonesia. And, uh, you know, and, uh, world family guys from the, you know, from, from, from the Gulf. And, you know, and so it was really like, those were the crowds that, you know, uh, were around me at, definitely at Regions, and definitely at LSC, and definitely in like the, the London scene at the time, you know, and, um, so, uh, I connected very much on a personal level. I'm not a fake kind of guy, you know, I'm not the kind of person that, you know, if I don't enjoy someone's company, I, I, I, I, I smile and I move, you know, uh, I'm not confrontational in any way, but, um, you know, I only stick around where it's good energy. Uh, I've always been like that. And for me, um, I was, I've always been trying to reach a good life, even from a young age, right? It was never for me about, you know, building an empire or seeing my name on a building or having a big, beautiful, uh, you know, business that's gonna last for a hundred years. I never cared about that. I still don't. When you look, when you look at what a good life is, how do you, how did you define a good life? Then because again, you didn't have a, a quote unquote bad life growing up. Your dad worked hard. You had some periods that were a little bit more affluent. Some periods that were less. So in your mind, what was a good life? Peaceful ability to be free. Um, to be able to go where I wanted to go. Um, not have the, you know, restrictions of not having, uh, the funds to do what I wanted to do. I think that freedom was a big part of it. But, you know, I wanted to enjoy it. You know, when I used to go, uh, you know, I made, I got, I got, I don't know if it was lucky. I definitely lucky. Sorry, but I don't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing, but at the age of, you know, 21, 22, I made, you know, a little money. I made, you know, my, my first million bucks. And, um, ever since then, you know, I, I haven't gone below that, that sort of threshold, right? And, um, it enabled me. I didn't, you know, when I made it, I didn't go the next day and say, okay, what's my next venture? I went to LA. I stayed at the region. I fully well share. I, you know, I, I dated, you know, nice pretty girls. I bought beautiful suits. Wasn't about flash. It was just, I wanted, uh, you wanted a good life. I wanted a good life. I woke up in the morning. I go for a walk around, you know, I don't know, wherever Beverly Hills or, you know, uh, Hong Kong, London, you know, I traveled, you know, wherever I wanted. And I, I wanted to live a healthy life. You know, I never, I never drank alcohol. I never, you know, did drugs or that, you know, that was never my thing. But I wanted to have a nice, peaceful, good life. And, um, and I was fortunate that I, you know, took a glimpse of some people that I noticed around me that I thought lived a good life. And, you know, and I saw that there was times for making money. And, but it's not all about that. Just to take it back to that, because obviously, like, I mean, there's so many milestones and accomplishments over your career. But I think that the first one is very interesting. So coming out of school, you, you know, you just said you were unemployable. I actually, yeah, I was, it was weird because everybody else got like, you know, the high-fancy goldman jobs. I don't know, it's only, I went to a good school if you did some of those. Yeah, you guys remember, LSC was, you know, regarded, I guess, the Harvard Business School of Europe, right? So it was considered, I mean, definitely, we're until today. It's one of the top schools. I didn't finish because, I'll tell you, I remember, I'll never forget. What was it? 1994. Yeah, it was right before my, I think it was right before my 21st birthday or something like July. There it was July. In the summer, I turned, and my birthday is August. So in July of like 1994, Time Magazine published like this thing. And they said, like, I don't know, was it the strange new world of the internet, right? That was like, you know, weird, right? It sounds such a long time ago, right? And I was 20 years old. And I had met two guys that were engineers. They had worked at a company called Sun Microsystem. They were like in their 30s. I thought that was like so old at the time, you know? And they had this idea to take the American lottery system and basically place it online. You know, basically the lottery at the time was the first internet business, right? With, you know, basically an internet is a bunch of networks connected to create. So the lottery system, you know, each terminal connects to the other. So in retrospect, it was really the first internet operating business. Anyways, they thought it would be really cool. We did, if, you know, somebody in London can buy a New York state lottery ticket, right? So we all kind of made this company together. And that was during the summer, you know, time magazine, you know, did that. That was what we did over the summer. And oddly enough, it was so weird. Florida State was the only state that allowed us to play with the terminal because we actually needed a terminal. And that summer in 94, I was in Florida. And we had some real shithole place above some, you know, above, above, above like a true startup, true startup. Yeah, with that background, true startup, we rented this place and we had a terminal, an actual terminal and the engineers were ripped at a part. I sort of, anybody, you know, from the lottery that came in, they thought we were going to like hack in. I mean, I'm telling you, like, wires all over the place. You know, it was horrible. It looked like we were trying to like hack the lottery. But they were working. I wasn't an engineer. And my, my role was mostly at that time, you know, the idea and to try to, you know, I got us that deal with Florida to allow us. And, you know, even silly things, rent the office or find the location. And we had a lawyer in New York. And we had filed patents that they weren't even yet approved. And our lawyer in New York called us up one day and said, somebody wants to buy this for like, you know, $1.8 million. We were like eight months into it or something. You know, it was really early days. They see young kids, you know, doing stuff lottery. We owned the domain lottery.com where we literally just bought it off, you know, I think it was network solutions or something. Somebody sees what you're building. They see the time magazine article at that time. It was all exactly. It was like that. And the lawyer facilitated the transaction. Took 400 grand for himself. Good lawyer. Yeah, good lawyer. And the rest we split. And we sold that company and all of a sudden, you know, I go back to London that, you know, 21 years old, more or less. And, you know, we're around 600 grand. And this is like, you know, long time ago. So when you had BVI companies and, you know, bank accounts, there was no, none of that thing. So it was a lot easier, you know, to transfer capital from banks to banks and all that. And I moved back to London. And my friend did lovely guy comes from a wealthy Indian family. They had just built at the time of a beautiful hotel in Holland Park. I remember called the Halsey and still love it. It's like in a nice area of London. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful hotel. And I took a suite there and I lived there for about a year. And I took another suite next door. And that was sort of like, I don't know, maybe an office or something like that. I got a really good deal. And I lived there for like a year. And I loved London. And, you know, I bought beautiful suits and I'd walk around and I'd go to the nice restaurants. And my friends from school, that LSE, and I just was very difficult for me to go back to school. When, you know, I had like $600,000, which at the time, you know, I got a lot of money. I thought I was, you know, Bill Gates. And, you know, and that kind of sparked off, I guess, you know, the trend for me, you know, because you were still at this point. I mean, that first venture, your peer operator. I was an entrepreneur. I was an entrepreneur up until around 26, 27, until I learned the other side. Because if I'm looking at sort of what you've done uniquely, so you build these bridges between all these different parts of the world. And that's how you facilitate these deals. And you had exposure to that in London because you're mentioning that you had all these peers, but you didn't dive into that world right away. So that sort of planted a seed. I was misled, you know, I think a lot of entrepreneurs today, and I look at the stuff that's online, you know, and I think there's a lot of, how do I say this without? There's a lot of bullshit. That's exactly how you say it. You know, and I see, you know, I see like intelligent people. And I don't know if they're doing it for their persona or, you know, just to sometimes they're either ego or, you know, just sometimes, you know, but there was a difference between, do you want to make money? Do you want to build something or, I don't know, for me? I wanted to make money. When I worked, it was about making money. It wasn't about, for me, it wasn't about changing the world. I'm not here to, you know, I was saying, where, you know, where is the money? And for guys like me, we look where the money is, right? So if there's money moving in Africa, then guess what? I'm on a plane in Angola. What do I do in Angola? No fucking idea, but I'll go sit there in the hotel in Angola. There's not many, certainly not back then. And you'd be surprised, you know, all of a sudden you start meeting some people in Angola. And I've been in Angola, Kazakhstan, Mongolia. I've been to like, you know, a lot of these, you know, distant places, but I'm going forward. I know that's an interesting point. So you discovered, and I think that's actually a really valuable lesson. You have to understand what you're actually building for, or what you want in your life, or what you're optimizing for. And you know, you're alluding to a point that a lot of entrepreneurs chase. I don't even think they know what they're chasing. They're chasing money. Yeah, I think they're chasing money, but they're doing it in a roundabout way, is what I'm saying. Because they're taught that like, oh, you're going to build a company, you know, you're going to raise capital, you're going to up the valuation. Why do, you know, you raise, as a startup guy, you have to raise capital, not because you need it, because you're basically manipulating the price per equity, right? You know, you open up a company, it's a dollar of shares. They do around, now it's $5 a share. I do another round, now it's $10 a share. You're basically mad. You don't sell companies. You sell your equity and companies. And, and, and everyone's taught, then you could dilute it, and you get this board, and you do VC, and then all they are, they're strategic. And you go this like this rabbit hole, and I just, you know, how do I make money? What I've got to wait for like Google to buy me, you know, or, you know, because cash flow, I mean, certainly not in the 20, in the early 2000s, and, you know, nobody's making cash flow. And even today, you know, you see guys with, I don't know, 10 million or 20 million, you know, even in the crater economy world that you're in, you see guys with 10 million, 20 million, you know, followers across their audience. Okay, they're making five, six, seven, eight, 10 million dollars a year. Not knocking it, cool. You know, but the platforms with this, you know, they're making the real money, right? And, and also just one more thing that I notice with, with founders, I mean, if you don't know what you're doing, it doesn't matter what the valuation of the companies, if you're giving up too much of it, especially at the beginning, like you don't end up with a huge check. You know, I disagree with that, but I tell you why, why? When you're in the ground, ground operator, you know things that you're bored or you're shareholders don't know. The most important thing is if it's your company you're in the ground, I believe very much in negotiations and talking, I'm a deal maker. And, you know, I have a close friend and we've been friends for about 30 years. He's worth today, I don't know, according to Forbes, nine, 10 billion or something like that. I never met him broke. Even when we were young, I think I was, when we met, I think I was 23 and he was 26. And even back then, he had like, I don't know, 30, 40 million in cash flow of about a million a month, okay? He was in online gaming. Really one of the pioneers. Anyways, when he IPOed his company for, he was one of the first to IPO on the London exchange for about a billion pounds. Two months before the IPO, he had owned less than 15% of the company. By the time it IPOed, he owned 82%. He was the operator, he was the ground level. I think there's a lot of overemphasis on how much equity do I get? You give me a big company, give me one percent, okay? Let it sell for a billion dollars. I guarantee you I'll get more than my one percent, right? In this way. So, it's how much you're on the ground, how much, you know, you know, what's going to happen. You get the news, right? Data is goal. So, if you know the information before, you can always structure different deals for yourself. You know, there's guys that sold companies to Google. I'll tell you a funny story, you know. In 2010, I was like around 2010, 11, I was 35. I was single until 35. And 35, I moved to like the seaside town to have a nice summer. Took a beautiful house in a nice kind of area on the beach and all I did was, you know, I don't know, fish and workout and swim and no work and none of that stuff. I decided to take a year off. I had been working in Beijing for a long time. I was living in Beijing for about six, seven years. It's a tough place to live. And one of the neighbors, all of a sudden, brings over this company, says, there's this company that's really great. The CEO is really great. Everybody's really great, you know, and they're having a tough time. They're doing a down-round. They need like $1.5 million. And we can, you know, I'm going to do 750. You do 750. Let's jump on it. We can take a bundle. And so the CEO of Ways comes over and, you know, shows Jerry. No, the other one. I was later on the new guys. Yeah, yeah. And they switched everything around. I think his name was Noam. And it's pretty embarrassing, but they showed me, I wasn't in the mind frame. You know, I'm like without a shirt, you know, I'm going on the beach. You know, I wasn't in that mind frame. I had made a lot of money at the time in Hong Kong. And I was partners with the QIA, the Katai Investment Authority. A Prime Minister was, you know, one of my closest mentors at the time. And, you know, I said, let me look at the logo. And the logo he got admit looks like a pretty shitty logo, right? You know, it's like that funny looking cartoon with cars. And I said, that doesn't look like an international kind of logo that's going to be everywhere. You know, not for me, right? And I backed out of that, you know, I love Ways. I used Ways all the time. I came here by Ways, right? And I got out of it because of the logo. The logo, it happened to me twice also with Snapchat, by the way. I didn't like the logo as well. I don't know how to invest. That's not my thing, you know. And once again, I'm not an investor. That's not my thing. But I passed on that Ways thing. Years later, you know, they sold for 1.1 billion. So they get that street cred that, you know, Google bought me for 1.1 billion and blah, blah, blah. You know, he's going to South by Southwest with all the speaking to all the young generation and how to build himself. And he built the magnificent company, an amazing product. I think it's fantastic. But out of that 1.1 billion, he took 27 million. And if I remember correctly, his payout was over four years. And then he had to go work at Google. The neighbor friend of mine that did the deal took about 80 million, you know, from day one. So he took out 80 million, the founder who, you know, lost his hair, lost his stress. I don't know his wife. I don't know when through all the shit that you have to sells for 1.1 billion and kept 27 million. I understood that's not a businessman. That's not a businessman, you know. And I never wanted to be stuck and reliant on that. So, you know, I've had situations before that that I learned. I think or things done to me that, you know, where the money really is being made and when where the money is being moved. At the age of, you know, I tell you, you know, when I was living in London, after I had that lottery thing, the money, you know, went pretty quick with me. And the next venture we had in at the Halcyon Hotel, we'd buy, you know, the .co.uk domains had just come up. And I didn't really know what the hell to do. But I would bring in all the, you know, the guys that were still, all my friends that were still in school during their last year. And they'd come in and we'd buy .co.uk domains. Nobody was buying them. I'm telling you every, you know, blue.co.uk. So the dream guys, we believed in that, you know, nobody was buying .co.uk and we bought a bunch of the .co.uk's. And then we figured out that, you know, can we implement Spanish names on the .coms, you know, like .todosandos.com and this, nobody was really doing that in 96, 97, you know. So we do, in fact, then used to buy bulk of like 100 domains for like three bucks. I mean, it was really like, you know, it was really cheap. And we just buy domains, or we didn't really know what to do. I'm a kid. And after, I don't know, about a year and a half of going through everything, I sold that entity for about 2.2 million pounds. And all of a sudden, you know, the tank of gas is full up. I'm now at 2.2 million. And there was a name around, you know, London, like, you know, what does this guy OD do? And, you know, they stuck me with internet. He does stuff with internet. I wasn't an engineer, but it kind of stuck, you know, when people see me out and I'm still friends with that network. And, you know, and I'm not like an extra vote. Yeah, I don't go to nightclubs. I never did. I just don't really find that fun. But, you know, if it was, I enjoy going for long walks at the park or the beach. And, you know, having dinner is here and there. But my network was always really specific. And I had, you know, been fortunate enough to meet and, you know, really befriend guys during before they became big guys, right? So when the Crown Prince of certain country was a kid, you know, he, not too many people knew who he was and today, you know, when he has this. So I had, it was a, it was a timing thing. And when I sold not for like 2.2, all of a sudden, people are like around London saying, you know, can I give you a million pounds and you do something like I don't know. They don't even know what they're even at the house going on. But I had this like thing that I'm a successful reputation. You have two exits. Pretty, yeah, exits. Yeah, it's two million bucks and think, you know, they're still very young. But, but I, you know, and I'm, I'm still, you know, 25 years old, 20, you know, more or less 25 years old. Hong Kong. Is home to me was always home. I'm from Hong Kong. So London was cool. But, you know, I started traveling to Hong Kong. I managed to like raise about six, seven, I don't know, eight million pounds or something like that, you know, half a million here like that. I never worked for it in the sense that I never went to pitch. I didn't have a deck. It was people coming to your reputation. What were you, so what were you raising for at that point? People telling me, can you invest it for me? That was pretty much how they came to me. So it wasn't formal. Like you didn't start it. I don't. You're not there. I had a company. I called it Cino Sheen. It was a shelf company that I took from the guy in Hong Kong that was ready off the shelf with an existing bank account. But I can have the funds coming in. Basic structure. You guys put in the money. Anything above. We're 50-50. No management fees. No none of that stuff. No deal fees. I didn't know about those things. With this kind of people, you don't really think I'm going to take a salary or anything like that. You're comfortable. I went to Hong Kong. The internet thing in Hong Kong started in China started slowly coming up. Like these big companies, Cina Sohu, later on Tencent, we know WeChat, Baidu. Of course, the great Jack Ma, and Beijing at the time, was a real small town. I was writing you new Jack Ma before. I knew all those guys before because it was like a small town. Not too many. And I was the only foreigner in Beijing doing this kind of stuff. There was nobody else there. There was no Sequoia or Excel. Nobody there. It was just me. And the community was small. My lawyer at the time, Rocky Lee, who was awesome, he was very... We were all the same age. And we kind of just all became friends. When I raised the capital, I had loose heads. So I had a family in here, a family in here. Started throwing it around. Reason is, because I'm a foreigner at the end of the day. No matter how much I'm from China, I'm from Hong Kong. I'm Chinese. I really, you know, I just don't look it, but I'm Chinese. My lawyer in my country, I feel very at home in Hong Kong. But still, because I don't look Chinese, you know, my strategy was always how am I going to get access to deals, right? So I got to be the guy that's throwing cash out. If they hear this, it's crazy guy that's throwing a lot of cash out, then all of a sudden, people start coming, right? You know, there's a guy hanging out, you know, you just go to his hotel, you know, he's at his hotel, and you know, if everything is okay, you're just going to give you a million dollars. And I built that sort of thing for me, you know, a long time ago. A lot of the people I work with today remember me from back then, is this guy that started throwing cash around. But I knew I was building my, you know, building my network. That's a very interesting way to build a network though, because obviously, there could be massive amount of risk and just throwing capital around. It's not like you had like an investment thesis. It's nothing like that stuff. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, investment thesis. No, nothing started throwing cash around. But we did about a 16X, about a year and a half even later. It was crazy. A lot of these companies, a lot of the bankers started coming, you know, credit Swiss, the JP, all these guys started coming and picking up all these Chinese assets and dumping them on the NASDAQ, you know, taking a two to three percent investment banking fees. And then they let them, you know, swim for themselves on the NASDAQ, which is pretty tough because in the NASDAQ, you had, you know, Microsoft, this, you know, Oracle is and who the hell knows what's, you know, so who are this is, right? So they had to fend off. But the bankers took all their fees, made billions up the valuations. I mean, you at that time, there was no more than like 40 million people online in China. Nobody was profitable. Nobody was making money, you know, CPA, click rates, all this. It was pennies. I mean, they weren't even in the States. I mean, nobody was making any money. But, you know, gold, the sudden, I don't know, Goldman or whatever credit or whatever started saying it's worth two billion dollars and, you know, and manipulates valuations and dumps it on the NASDAQ at two billion. They're commissions and, you know, now you got to fend for yourself. So that was what was happening a lot, you know, and, and after I, you know, everybody made a lot of return, I remember it was like something like, I don't know, I had almost like close to 40, 50 million or something like that. And I'm still relatively young. But I don't want to be an investment manager. It's not, it's not fun. So I made a huge mistake, which was the classic thing that everybody told me and, you know, I remember the time that was when the news core purchased my space for like five. So all of a sudden news core purchase is like my space for like 500 or something million dollars and we all were like, boom, 500 million dollars. That's what the, you know, that was a big thing back then. Today it's like nothing, but back then that was a big thing. So I had a, I had made a, you know, I had made a lot of money. I was young still. I had a lot of money behind me as well and in my own. And I saw what these Chinese entities were getting valuation wise. You know, like all these, the scene or so, who by dude, right. Amazing companies, amazing. But at the end of the day, China operates as, you know, the China internet landscape. You had still, you know, 44, 48% of online activity came from internet cafes. Nobody had computers at home. And, and everything was, you know, there were no Facebook. There was no, you know, or at least they were local, you know, counterparts if you will. So the Chinese government, you know, to set up an, and to set up a company in mainland China, you can't as a foreigner until today. You have to structure a wolfie, which is a wholly owned foreign entity, which is basically out of Hong Kong. That company can hold a certain amount of equity in a local company, but still it has to have a local own majority. And you can start operating like that. So a lot of the public companies like Yahoo, this, or, you know, how do you convince your board? Let's enter China. We will put our IPs and we're going to invest billions, but we don't own it. All right. So a lot of them couldn't. So Yahoo made a wonderful deal. You know, they invested in Alibaba. They turned out successful. But everybody else had all of a sudden the local counterpart, basically copycat their product with the support of the PRC. And, you know, sorry, everything that was happening in the West was getting duplicated in the far east. By the way, is that rule still still holds today? What rule? The rule that you cannot as a, as a westerner own a China and own a company in China? Yes, of course. I didn't know that. So if you want to, if you want to, so this is still why, as a western company, it's not easy to get into China. Because again, you're still risking that you're giving your IP to something that's not even, what's not easy? Well, you know, you go, go, go get a lawyer, get the big law firm. Still, yeah, I'm a structure. You some holdings, you know, and they'll get you a local person and you'll pay a little bit more. And, you know, they'll be back to back agreements. You'll be fine. But the actual ownership will be held by a local and the bank account and signatories and all that type of stuff. You won't be able to have it. Hong Kong is different, obviously, but not in mainland China. So I saw all this, you know, people doing it and I said, okay, great. I'm going to go copy Craigslist. I'm going to go copy, you know, MySpace. I'm going to go copy, you know, YouTube and all this type of stuff. And I'm going to go copy all of that for for mainland China. And I moved to Beijing and this is like early, early, you know, early on. And I decided to stop being, you know, an investment guy. Even though I had an amazing, you know, everybody was like, no, what do you do it? I mean, I thought that was the right move to do. And I was disregarding my talent. My talent was raising capital. You know, it was good at packaging, but I thought that was the way. That was what people tell you to do. I still see people say the same nonsense on, you know, on social media and YouTube. You know, oh, you've got to have the passion or you've got to, forget me for saying, I don't know, for me, that never worked, never. And I went into China. I went into Beijing. I set up office. I don't speak Mandarin of you until today. I moved in and I stayed at the hotel. There was nobody at the hotel. China likes to build like thousands hotels, but like, there's nobody there. I just, I stayed in the sec 500 room hotel. I think there was maybe three people there, okay? It was awesome. You know, I lived in a hotel for like a year. And one of the guys at the front desk, Chen Chi, I spoke great English, became my brother from another mother. And, you know, he later on turned into my right hand, my brother and my general manager for, I don't know, 12 years. He has two multi-billion dollar companies today trading on the Shanghai index. But back then, that's how I met him. And I said, leave the front desk and come and help me. Like, I don't know how to speak. I don't know how to rent a this. I need an engineer. I need this. Let's, you know, let's set up shop. And I set up shop and I hired a whole engineering team in an office. And, you know, but for like, you know, for 14 months, I was in Beijing. I didn't leave. No, it's, you eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner by yourself for 14 months. And you think you're on this bigger purpose. But I was in it for money. Okay, that was, I thought this was the way to make the money. And I'm like, oh, and you need to spend all this time, you know, and it takes years. That's not true. That's really not true. It's a, it's a mask. You know, and I went and I, you know, set up and I had like, I don't know, 200, 300 engineers and we were copying the shit out of everything that was in the West. And at the time, China was very much provincial. So there wasn't like one website that was for everything. But each province had like 60 million people. And I got almost two billion people there. So we did like a, like a Craigslist, if you will, for each province. And it was wonderful because I started gaining a lot of traffic. And then I did like a copycat of my space and then it had a copycat. It's video sharing and I had like 80 websites out in China, software, it's I even built a browser. And they had IE, if you remember, and mine was called IQ. And, you know, and but my IQ reached eight, I don't know, eight million users in its first two months. You know, how? I met the number one bootlegger for Microsoft Windows. And yeah, if anybody in China goes out and pays, I don't know, $300, $400 for their salt, right? I'll rip it off. It's all it's China. You know, you got it with the, you know, pirate movies, pirate this. It was a, I went and I met this guy through Chen. He introduced me to this really fat guy who's amazing actually, because I met him at this restaurant on the street eating noodles. And I gave him $250,000 in cash to basically on his next batch of, you know, Windows to remove IE and put IQ. And when he did that, he placed it all across internet cafes. And he, you know, he dispersed like, I don't know, like a hundred thousand of these around. So all of a sudden, the internet cafes, the users in China don't know what IE is, you know, they go in and all of a sudden they see something called IQ. And all of a sudden I had a lot of users from that. So I was, I had a bunch of platforms. And I was all of a sudden, you know, I had millions of users as the sector grew on my platforms. Millions, you know, tens of millions. So I mean, like you're saying, hindsight's 2020 and looking back, there's, that's not the easiest way to make money. But at the time, it's going very, very well. Why as well? My costs are up. Not generating any income. Expenses are through the roof, you know, on the metric of your growing, like you just said, what am I growing? Because I have more users, more viewers, which means more expenses, more money, more hosting, more this, more service, more China also works on a master's slave, you know, the structure rather than clustering. So everything is longer. And everything on that, but no money, right? So when all of a sudden, like the bankers or the VC started entering China and all my friends started getting venture funding or, you know, private equity funding, I didn't get a dollar. Nobody comes to China to invest in a Jewish boy stuck in China. That's not authentic. You know, it's kind of like, would you go to a sushi restaurant that the sushi chef is at in a Colombian? Would you feel authentic? Or Swedish? You feel like you don't think it's authentic? You say, I don't know, let's study sushi here. The sushi chef, he's got blonde hair and blue eyes. So when you go all the way to Beijing and you were looking to invest in, you know, even though I'm doing a lot better than a lot of my, you know, competitors, nobody gave me a dollar, no one. And, you know, we were burning a lot of money and, I flew to London because that was the place where I had like a reputation. And I went to go raise capital. I needed a lot of capital. I was growing. I had tens of millions of users on my platform. But nobody would invest in me like they did in all my, some of these big companies. I know them all, you know, and, you know, I remember even in China, internet at the time was very much like a war, right? It was like, it was like a battleground like, you know, a land grab, you know, and no rules because even though you have this idea, there could be other people that didn't use that same thing. I'll give you an idea when Gmail launched in China, right? The biggest email provider until today is 163, okay? 163 is in that ease, right? I don't know, a couple of hundred billion dollar, wonderful. I know that when Gmail launched in China 163, so if you had a Gmail and I had a 163, if you sent me an email, I would never get it. That's what 163 did. So who the hell would, so Gmail had like no shot, none. And, you know, Google came, built this whole city there and everything. And left and left at a ghost town like eight months later. And the former CEO or head first employee of Google, I took him to be my CEO. And because he looked good on paper, I thought I can raise money on him. But he wasn't brilliant, Chen Qi was always the guy, my guy, my brother. I went to London. I was lucky enough I had this old English mentor in London, Elliot. Very special guy. Elliot managed billions of Saudi capital, Katari capital, used to own the American Embassy, and if you're familiar in Mayfair and London, used to own the Waldorf Astoria, tremendous man. Elliot suffered, he had cancer in the face. And they took like his jaw and his tongue, everything out. And he used to walk around with, you know, the surgical mask that we all learned during the pandemic. The press called him the phantom. He couldn't speak well because he had no tongue. But for some really weird fucked up reason, I could speak to him and understand him perfectly. And I used to spend days and days and days and days and hours at nights, and always with Elliot in his house. And he was like this master dealmaker, my whole other level. And he was classy. And you know, you ever see that movie, The Tom's Crown Affair? No, I didn't. Great movie. Watch it. Well, there was an original with Steve McQueen, and then they made one with Pierce Bros, and also pretty good. Where it's sad. He was cool. You know, before the cancer, it was handsome, beautiful, you know, Savile Rose suits and style and managing billions in the 80s. You know, like nobody was doing stuff like that. And golf and partners and it was just on another level. And he really kind of like, you know, schooled me. And we were talking about life and everything. In a chance off meeting, he told me to come to his office to meet the right hand advisor, senior advisor of the Prime Minister of Qatar. I really needed capital for I'm growing by every metric. Users time on site, all those things that back in the day they used to tell you is, means you're great. But I'm burning a lot of money a month. And I had a chance meeting with this guy, who was an international high-stakes steel maker. And make a long story short, I raised what I thought was, I raised $150 million, which at the time was considered a lot for my business in China, for all the whole thing. And, you know, for more or less a third of the company, I took $150 million and I went back to work. And, you know, when you raise capital, they teach you you have to scale. So basically, you know, everybody else, what do you do when you raise capital? You get another office, you hire more people because you have to justify the expense. The real justification is I just manipulated the share value because when I took $150 million and gave a third out, now my valuation is X. So on paper, everyone tell me how it is. Good job. Good job, you know. I only found out a lot later that the deal was, well, the Prime Minister invested $350 million for a third. But I got $150 million for a third. That's what I stirred. And they made $200 million on the day one that we signed. So they made $200 million, my mentor and his friend, $100 million each. But the day one that I got funding of $150, how long would have it taken me to make $200 million? A long time. And I would have had to work and build and IPO and dilutions and this. They structured a deal. I got what I wanted, right? I wanted $150 million. That was what they offered me, $150 million, whatever a third of the company. The Prime Minister, you know, they told him that $350 million is the cost. And he transferred and they kept $200 million they won. And on to the next, they did that in, I don't know, two months. So in two months, a couple of deal makers took $200 million. The $150 million didn't go to my pocket, right? I didn't take it and I don't give myself, I don't know, or I have to operate this. All right. And that's when I learned that there's something else happening here that I'm on the sucker side. That I'm not on, that I'm taking because 97, 98% I don't know what the right number 99, I don't know, depends where you say, all the startups fail. And one day I get called by the gentleman and says, I always used to do this, I used to be so annoying, I'm in Beijing, I'd be like, you need to be in Geneva tomorrow morning, you know? Well, like, as if I'm taking, like, as if I'm crossing the street. So in Geneva, there's a hotel called the Bo Revache. It's been there for like hundreds of years, beautiful, like, you know, historic hotel. But this hotel, I don't know, up until around, as far as I know, it's up until around 2011, 2012 is like the center of all golf deals, they're all there, okay? They don't have like, there are certain suites and the thing and you'd be surprised who's there? And it's, I'm telling you, everybody's there. Like you go in the lobby and you see the guys from the US, you see the big funds, you see the black stones, you see the, you see all of them, all of them waiting to get called up to go sit to somebody. And, and I was there, I called, he called me up, he said, right before, you're going to have one minute to shake his hand. Don't, don't, you know, don't do anything, just say thank you, nod, and he's going to go to the next one. So I basically flew me over to meet the prime minister, who was also the chairman of the QIA. The QIA at that time was the world's largest sobering fund with around 1.2, 1.4 trillion under management. Nobody had that cash back then. I stood in line, you know, I had my suit and everything here, side, you know, all that. And, you know, he walked by and only shook, shook my head. I don't know what, but I looked him in the eye and I don't know what, but I had it, I giggled. I don't know, that little giggle really changed my life. It was, he took a look at me like, why was I giggling? He gave me a little, kind of, little tap like that and then told me to continue walking with him. I spent the next three, four days with him having, you know, when he was time for lunch, he'd want to eat lunch with me. And we talked about it. We talked about China, we talked about this, we talked about that. And then he said to me, if you had unlimited capital, what would you do in China? It's difficult to say that to a 28, 29 year old guy. But I learned a lot and they sent me on a deal. And it didn't work, the deal that's specific, but it taught me and I changed careers then. I went on to purchase, in China, you had 80 percent, you know, content distribution networks, the infrastructure CDN networks. So roughly around 77, I don't know, 78 percent of it was owned by the PRC and the balance was by like five companies. I knew them because I was paying those companies, you know, large sums through my internet. And I said, if I purchased all of them and consolidated into one, it's a great buy. So he said, great, go for it. I said, they're not going to talk to me. So that's why I said, I need money. So look at the next day they sent me to Holland. They used to be do banking back then with Fordist bank. I sat with the, I walked into Fordist bank as if I don't know, as if I walked into like my mom's house. They were all waiting for me. They gave me a proof of funds that basically I had access to, you know, a lot of capital with my name on it, stamped the whole thing. I used to keep this piece of paper in my suit all the time. So anybody that doubted me has to be like, pal, yeah, anybody that said anything like, oh, I was, and I went to try to consolidate these deals. So I went to one by one, one by one, and I closed the, and if the company was worth 60 million, take 80 million. I'm doing a consolidation, right? One plus one is not two. One plus one is like three or four. This is the same as a rollup. Exactly it. I went all four. And then the last one, I think the company name was 21 VNET. I think he IPO'd later on in the NASDAQ. It was a guy called Joshua. He was difficult. I took him to dinner, took his wife to dinner. I did everything. I tried to close a deal. His company maybe was worth 110. I offered him like 150. But then what did I do? I wasn't just buying. I understood the deal. And all with, I took with the advice and the direction of all the mentors. I went to KPMG. I went to also, I think it was another firm called Hula Hen, Hula Kee in the States. And I said, give me a valuation on what is the consolidated value of all these entities. Forget that it cost me half a million bucks for each one of them, but it cost me about half a million bucks. And their consolidated value was roughly around both of them was roughly around 1.4, 1.5 billion. My cost to buy them all was around 550 million. So I said to me, okay, great. Let's arrange for your meeting in Doha. You'll present this to the QIA for 50% for 750 million. 1.4 is what they're saying is the consolidated. Half of it is 750 more or less million. It cost you 500 million to do. And you're going to make 250 million on day of clothes. And you'll be a shareholder and you'll be partners with the QIA. I flew to Doha. Nobody wanted to come with me like on my team. Everybody, this was before, you know, UAE and Dubai became, it was a bit kind of, you know, scary for people to go to a country like that back then. But I wasn't scary. I was friends with the prime minister. I didn't have a kid, didn't have a wife, you know, and we had a special kind of, a special kind of friendship. And I went and they had like this, like a special hotel they put you in, like guests in that they put me in. And I'm waiting for my big presentation to the QIA. That's a pretty big thing. I'm not yet 30. I went and they all said great. So I said, holy shit, you know, I'm about to make 250 million and still own and I just couldn't convince Joshua to sell to me. That was the missing piece. That deal didn't happen. But I built a relationship with the QIA. I built a relationship with everybody and I understood that that's how you make money. Because if that, if I would have convinced Joshua, I would have made that 250 million dollars me, you know, six, eight weeks. It's also when I learned high stakes, structuring deal-making, whatever way you want to call it, only works if the other side has a deal-maker too. If not, it's kind of like being a boxer without an opponent. You're just shadow boxing. No deal can be done. I don't care what you're doing. If the other side doesn't have a deal-maker, only two deal-makers can do deals. One deal-maker alone, you got no one to play with. And I learned that. And then they decided to give me my first real fund. So they were okay that this didn't go through. They still trusted you. They liked me. They were curious about me. And my internet company, I was, you know, Chen and Naseel is running. I wasn't there anymore. I'm not an operator. I don't know how to do it. I think I don't enjoy it. I don't have leadership. I don't know how to tell. I walk into the office. I'm friends with cool with everybody. I'll hug people that you're not supposed to hug with. I'll give a high five. I'll grab somebody and go to lunch with them. I don't know how to do that. That's not my thing. And I never wanted it to be. And I didn't want to be in the office. I mean, it to make money. I want to go have a good life. I want to take my bucks and continue. But we opened up a real fund. Opened up a real structure. A management company, you know, management fees, deal fees, this fees. I took some of my mentors, placed them up as GPs with me. And the third how it is that when we eat, everybody needs to eat. And in 2000 was already 2006. I raised about 900 something million dollars. If you want to be technically your first fund, that was my first debut straight up at a huge amount for a first fund. Huge amount for any fund at that time. For anybody. But what more was interesting wasn't the amount. It was the LP. It was that. And it put me in a different neighborhood. And what was really cool of them. If they showed me around, you know, they introduced me around. A lot. I've been to that Bo Rivage hotel. I know hundreds of times. I know it really well. I've been there a lot. And I met a huge people. Also in the Gulf. And when I met them all on a very kind of like, this is our guy in China. And it was a big thing for me. I took a lot of pride in it, you know. And I was younger. So I was a little arrogant. But certainly not to them. And then I wanted to do right. But I learned very quickly that. That I'm better at structuring deals between sensitive governments, specific people of that kind of caliber. And when I refer to specifics, you know, it's people that are in rare positions themselves. Through that, I later on dated a girl. I met in London. She had moved to London. And her father was a Russian oligarch, a famous one. No need for names, but it was a pretty big Russian oligarch. And she and I, she's one of my best friends until today. And she's married and kids. And I go, you know, to her for, I don't know, Russia, China dinner, I'm with them and her husband. And until today, she's probably one of my closest friends in the world. But for about 10 months, we were kind of like engaged. Okay. And she was psychotic. I love her. You know, she's she used to work with her father. So 50 security guards, you know, like the four telephones, you know, like she was the she was the the the the sun wasn't really involved in the bad family business. And she was. And she was like real bossy. And you know, I would fly to Hong Kong and all of a sudden, like two days later, she'd be at the hotel too. And I'm like, what are you doing? You know, she would I love her to death, but you know, she was just very bossy. And I love the father. But through her. And this was like, you know, this was the years that the oligarchs were really, you know, unloading a lot of capital and allowing entrance into the Russian market. And all of a sudden, my network, you know, working with the QIA, all of a sudden, you know, they knew that. And that provided me with a lot of, you know, sort of credibility that I'm able to kid things quiet. That sort of that was my, you know, that if they filtered me and if they, you know, gave me the okay, then they can also and also my relationship with with my fiancee at the time. I learned a little bit of Russian. I spent a lot of time in Ukraine, Kiev and Moscow and some weird places that you know, you didn't even know existed. Is this around, this is still around the time when you have that $900 million if I go 900 million, I got company in China. And but I'm making more money off structuring funds between oligarchs and the Gulf. There was a lot of deals, oil, a lot of oil, petroleum, crude, there was a lot of fun deals. And when you structure deals, you know, on that level and you know, these were still like, you know, blackberry Nokia years, okay. And so it's not like, you know, so everything was very quiet in private settings. And I liked it. And I was learning that this internet company I had and you know, by the time I make money off there that I'm making here and you know, two, three, four months. And I enjoyed deal making, you know, and those sides there, there's some of the most amazing deal makers in the world. You know, Russians are amazing at deal making. They have a different style than let's say the good guys in the Gulf. I love the Saudis. I love the Qataris. I love the, you know, everybody has a very sophisticated way to do things. And it's been doing it for hundreds of years and to be into this world. But everybody eats from deals. It's not like an abnormal thing. And you said, when you say that everybody eats, do you find that because you're pointing that out? Is it because you feel in sort of traditional startup land that you feel like not everybody eats? Nobody eats. Nobody eats on the startup. You got some fucking VC sitting there that he didn't do shit. He's a partner. He gets a fucking salary. He's pretending and sitting with you as if he you know, invest out and know what that we did in his life. By the way, I'm not knocking at the big ones, right? You have like, in every entity, right? You have like the real ones, right? So you got Anderson R-Witz, you got, you know, Excel, Lays, right? I'm not, you know, those guys are iconic and, you know, it's not about them. But I'm talking about all, you know, the rest of the food chain. You know, it's kind of like we got Bitcoin and Ethereum and Solana and whatever. And then you got 98% shitcoins, right? So my reference is not those guys specifically. But when a, when a startup guy raises money from a venture capital firm, the mechanism of a venture capital firm is like a meat grinder. The founder won't see shit unless he sells his company for like two, three billion, or like, you know, those guys that sell for a billion and he takes, not everybody turns out into Zuckerberg, right? And, you know, you have tagalongs, you have, you know, a ratchet veto rise, this double dips, triple dips, I don't know all these things they make up, but I don't know it's gotten worse and worse through the years. For a founder to actually make money through a VC, like funded entity, like I wouldn't, me personally, even I don't, it's not my world, I don't, I don't give that type of stuff for those kind of deals. But if I saw a venture capital firm involved, I would never do a deal with, never, there's no harm. If I own 20% of something and some VC this and I don't know, I decide to flip it to somebody else and for three X, you know, that's me, what the, you know, who are you to tell me no because you set a board because you put a million dollars, you know, three years ago at a lower valuation and it's not even your cash and you know, who the fuck are you? So I think, you know, I haven't done business in the United States for 25 years. I hadn't been here. I moved to Florida a year ago. I worked mainly in Hong Kong, you know, and that's office and that's kind of, I guess, my base, if you will. I left England also many years ago. It changed and, you know, nowadays like last, you know, it's a, I'm almost 10 years, 12 years. I work mainly with PRC, SOEs. So a lot of the Chinese, yeah, say it's funny because the UAE, for example, everybody knows the Abu Dhabi Fund and then you know the PIF Fund in Saudi and then you know whatever the QIA of this. And in China, there are hundreds of SOEs in France, not just one. And the Chinese manage more capital than anybody in the world. And it's not just the capital. The Chinese in around the president was brilliant enough to come out with this thing called the Belt and Road Initiative, which you're familiar with in around 2013. And they've allocated trillions for this. And it's brilliant because through the Belt and Road Initiative, they're basically able to partner, purchase, manage, or deal with every major infrastructure deal outside of the United States for the last decade. I'll give you an example. Even the line, you know, you see this on social media a lot and it looks magnificent that they're building in Saudi. You saw that whole building. It's like amazing, right? And then you figure Saudis, wow, they got all the money in the world, right? Well, the Chinese are the major funders there because of an EPC structure. Chinese work under something called an EPC structure. EPC is engineering procurement construction. At the end of the day, after forget the funding, somebody has to build it. All right, somebody actually had to go with the nail and t-t-t-t-t, right? Who's going to build it? The Saudis? At the end of the day, it's Chinese workers that are building these roads in Africa that are building these buildings here. And what country can deploy 200,000 workers in a matter of a month? Only China. Yeah. Nobody else can. So when you see a road being built in, I don't know, or or, you know, an electrical plant or a water plant in Egypt or the airport in Morocco or the roads in Indonesia or it, you name it. The actual people building it are Chinese. They're not there out of their free will. I guarantee you these entities didn't call them up and go to an HR office in Beijing and said, hi, we're looking for 80,000 employees that come and help us build this building. And they're this right. So that's where the belt and road comes in. They come in also with money and with the deployment of actual people that can go build it. Made in China. Still made in China, just like the shirts. Everything is made in China. When BlackRock recently put 25 billion dollars in data centers, and now they did a 100 billion dollar data center. Amazing. I love data centers. I'm now involved in a large data center deal of the 12 billion dollars, the largest deal of my career in Egypt. The BlackRock deal are going to put 25 billion dollars in a data center. But then they're going to have to hire Chinese people to build it. Who's going to go build it? Where they're going to go hire headhunter New York City for who wants to get a job and go fly to Mongolia. Because what do you think they build these the largest, the current largest data center belongs to China Telecom. The second largest also. So when you want to build large data centers, and I'm talking, you know, 20 million, 30 million square foot data centers, you need the infrastructure. So you need your own water plant. You need the resources. You need that. That's right. So even if BlackRock's putting in 25 billion, they still have to. So because of this EPC protocol or mandate, China will be putting in money into a BlackRock. But they'll get the money. No, they'll never do it. Like why did it? First of all, they'll come in and they'll say, for example, if I gave you today, let's say you came right now to, let's say the good old days of end goal. And I gave you right now, I don't know, you met now De Santos who at the time was the guy. And he gave you took a liking to you and gave you now the mineral or the diamond rights for this mine here. Okay. You got the contract. The contract is yours. You don't have a dollar, but you've got the contract. Now to go and build the mining and, you know, to build it's $100 million. So I'm just, let's say, you don't have it. So here comes, let's say, a guy like, I don't know, like a BlackRock and says, here's Scott, here's $100 million. I like to be your partner. Here's $100 million. There's a lot of diamonds in there, you know, and let's go do it. So he gives you $100 million. Now what do you do? You actually got to go build it. So where do you go? Is you go to China? Exactly. So the roads always go back to China. So wouldn't it be just simpler just to raise the capital from China? Of course. But do they do that? Is that what they do? That's what the Belt and Road does. That is the Belt and Road initiative. And American firms, I think, but what happens when you get the money from a BlackRock? Where do you get the money from a BlackRock? Bulls. Black Rocks are saying that they're building it themselves. I don't know how. I don't know. No idea. But the end of the day, you know, I've been to Angola. I've been to Kenya. I've been to Nigeria. I've been to oil refinery. I've been, I've been to Russia. I've been, I've seen, I've seen, I've seen the Sibnefs offices. I've seen, I've seen them. I've seen British petroleum. I've been there. I've seen it. It's sad, right? You go to Angola. You see like these huge refineries in the mid like, you know, a mile off of the water, the shores and the waters all black. You see British petroleum, this here and this that you see it in the waters all black. And you see kids and families trying to swim in the waters all black and then you drive a little more and then you'll see like all of a sudden like a tent village in the middle of fucking Angola. And in this tent village, you'll see about 60,000 Chinese people eating food, Chinese food and all of this because it's lunchtime right now. And then they got to go back and go back to work. It's all China. Nobody can compete. Who can, the cash is there. And the deployment of actual workers is there. Nobody can offer that. I just want to take a quick break and thank the HubSpot podcast network for supporting success story for the past two years. Now the HubSpot podcast network has other incredible podcasts like my first million now. If you are an entrepreneur or you are ready to turn your entrepreneurial dreams into millions, you have to listen to my first million. It's a show that is revolutionizing business podcasting. It's hosted by Sam Parr, Sean Perry. This is a HubSpot podcast network original. It brings you unfiltered conversations with self-made millionaires who actually tell you how they did it. If you want to learn how Alex Ramose built his fitness empire or how Sophia Amaruso turned nasty girl into a fashion phenomenon, these aren't just success stories. They're the blueprints for your own journey to the top. Each episode breaks down the exact strategies and hidden opportunities that you can use right now. Don't just dream about your first million. Learn how to make it. Listen to my first million wherever you get your podcasts. Do you think the LPs that put money into these US funds know that? It's different. It's the United States is a different game, right? I'll give you a sense like, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, that call me an investment banker. Today an investment banker is not a good word because they, you know, they don't like it so they switched it later on to private equity. Private equity also is pretty dull in that sector today. So you got like, I don't know, they call your other asset managers, hedge funds, right? But that's different things. But the Western very much focus on equity. Like you started in the conversation, how much equity are we getting off the steel? A lot of the SOEs that I have been fortunate enough to work with and know for a long time. I've known them since I'm in my late 20s. They don't care about equity. You will never see equity deal structure with anything. It's always on royalties. They don't want to be in any cap table. It's not about that. It's about cash, right? So they'll give you the money. You give them the EPC rights, which basically means the contract to build it. They can take those EPC contracts, flip it over to 20 other contractors anytime they want. So they already profit it off the EPC. So you give them a billion dollars, but you're giving them back because to build it costs, let's say $800 million. So they get it back. Now they have, let's say, 50% profit sharing, which is basically a royalties fund. They don't care about equity. They just want the money. But it's better. I don't have to deal with anything. You don't see a lot of their holdings. So a lot of SOEs, not just them. A lot of SOEs don't like everybody knowing what they own. You'd be surprised how many big assets around the world are owned by certain governments that you'd be in shock. But you don't see them on any cap table, right? A lot of them work with non-fat cut banks, right? So can't track known what it knows. You know, I've seen recently, you know, bank accounts some of these funds have with over $35 billion sitting in cash. I have a very close friend that works at Carlisle. He's a very close friend of mine from when I'm in my 20s, the old New York days. And it's Carlisle. I think Carlisle is one of the best of the best in the United States in their world. He's not a $35 billion sitting there in cash. You know, so the capital is there too. Now, the United States has capital. That's not the problem. US has a lot of money. You have all these mutual pension funds. This funds the account. The problem in the US with these big firms is deal flow. I mean, what are they buying? Some big fucking, you know, trucking company in the United States and manipulating the valuation and it's a lot more. So they don't have access to deal flow outside of the United States. That's why it's very common for a lot of the US firms to offer 8% deal fees just to get in on those deals. So I imagine if you've got like a $5 billion deal in Singapore, the American firms would pay 8% deal fee to take 2 billion or 3 billion or 4 billion, take 8% just let us access to that deal fee. The access to deals outside of the United States are very limited to some of these American firms in the United States. But in the United States, it's all based. Their money comes from retail market. Also, they offer it and they give you credit to this and on CDs and this and they'll offer it to a million people and they go get, you know, guys to put in $3,000 or $10,000. They're 401ks and blah, blah, blah and off you these funny little interests that you can make over the next six years or this and it works. It's nice and they accumulate more cash, accumulate more cash and accumulate more cash and they raise capital like that. But whereas the state operated investment funds, it's different. For example, if you're an oil producing country, you're making let's say a billion dollars a day coming out of the ground. You don't need to make a commercial on TV with the golden retriever and the family and ending. Did you think about your family tomorrow? What is your family going to be okay in the future to try to get a hustle for $3,000, $5,000? So it's a different play. I'm not knocking obviously it works but it's a different play and then there are huge deals in the United States but not so much on the international infrastructure level because Chinese offer an added bonus or added an advantage which is the deployment of actual workers. So that's a big thing. That's a big thing. If you really are a serious really wanting to build a large infrastructure or tech or data center or whatever it is today, it's very attractive to go to China for money. It's attractive to do a deal with them because you'll get the capital, you get the labor and you'll get a cheaper. BlackRock will spend $25 billion to build a 10 million square foot data center across three nations for half that amount. The Chinese can do it cheaper, faster, somewhere else and much larger. When you look at this, you said you were working on the biggest deal of your life is $12 billion. Can you talk about that? I'm limited to but I'll tram my bust. No, I just whatever. So it's very interesting for somebody to structure a $12 billion deal. So I wasn't by myself where I told you it's a bunch of deal makers like me or all asset managers if you will because it's more, it's not institutional friendly to be called the deal maker. That's fair. That's really weird. I don't know why because when I meet people here in the states and they say, what do you do? I say, I'm an alternative asset manager and then I get asked the typical questions that you might ask if I work the JP Morgan. What's the name of your firm? Oh, I haven't heard of it or there. So how much do you have under management? I'm like that and then it's like the typical questions. Yes, I'm labeled and I'm an asset manager. Correct. So you go into this and I guess walk me through how you look at a deal that you want to take on it. So when this particular opportunity presents itself, I never another thing is. Look, I'm 50. Now I turn 50. I'm tired of that. I'm tired. I've been working with not the most ethical people that don't really build things that help humanity or in a sense in weird countries, moving money around. I don't know if you're familiar. Everybody in the United States doesn't understand because in the US when you have money in a city bank and you want to transfer it to, I don't know, Chase, it's not a problem. But if you have $4 billion in a bank account in, I don't know, outside of the United States and you want to transfer it or do deals, you got to be better than PWC on their best fucking day. Structures, offshore structures and offshore don't work anymore and figure it's a very complicated way to move funds today outside of the United States. Very difficult. Very difficult. Try to open up a bank. Go fly even a flight of Singapore. Go fly this. It's a beautiful country, beautiful place, amazing business center. I love Singapore. I love Singapore. Go to Singapore. Open up a Singapore entity. You'll have to have a local director. It doesn't cost too much, too grand, three grand. And then go try to open up a bank account. If you do that in the first, that on a month, you're a superstar. And then when you do, and you want to wire, I don't know, some money into it, it's going to be also quite interesting. And then when you want to wire those funds from that to something else, that's going to be very interesting too. Very difficult. A lot of the Americans or people that work in Western world don't understand all that. The United States imposes a lot of restrictions. Many years ago, the world had Switzerland. There's no Switzerland today. There's no such thing as a private banker today. Switzerland is done. They all turned into a family office or there's no such thing as private banking anymore. Doesn't exist. And the major monies are in the Gulf and in Asia. And with everything that's been happening with Russia in the war and all the sanctions, so it's very difficult. I don't work with Russians today, obviously. But it's a tough landscape. And you're dealing with very complex things that are, I wouldn't say bureaucratic, but it's like governmental. And finding solutions for those things is quite creative. They're creative, however. I told you the last time I ever spoke publicly about what I do was 2007. There was one video on YouTube. That was when I was in 2007. I wanted to list the internet company that I had with the Prime Minister on the handsync. The handsync only had two tech companies and there were both like multiple billion valuations. I wanted to be the third. I didn't go. But then the 2008 market kind of didn't happen. And then I got a better deal by selling my holdings off to the QIA. So I wasn't there anymore. I had to go do that, but I wasn't there. I was morally traveling in Monaco, Russia, Africa, the Gulf. I was traveling around like that, but I'm lazy. I never said I'm lazy. If you left me alone, I'm not standing, I'm watching movies, and I'm going for a walk on the beach, let me hang out, swim by the pool. So with all the headache around, it has to pop up in front of me. And that's what you take on if it pops up in front of you. I believe very much, and I believe in it's like a blessing given to you. If you see an opportunity that's presented to you or appeared in front of you, and if you don't do that, it's kind of like sacrilegious or something like you are bringing yourself with the good energy gods or something. So then what? So let's flip it then. So what deals would you definitely not do? Not do bad energy shit. I don't do definitely never weapons or this or stuff like that or anything that's like, you know, with people that are, you know, I want a good life. So I would never deal with anybody that comes from, let's say, bad, right? Like I would never, my whole point is to structure deals and to have them nice less. I don't have a problem making less, you know, they say, you know, in life you can either eat good or sleep good. You can't do both. You can't eat well and sleep well. And you got to choose which road you want to go on. I prefer to sleep well. I know a lot of guys with a lot of, you know, during big deals, they seem to balance it for a certain time. I don't know. I never look at it like that. I never, I never took it so seriously as that. I try to do my best to provide a solution. Whether it is a structure, I'm pretty good at packaging opportunities on a large scale. And at the end of the day, I'm an asset manager. I'm in it for the fees. That's going to tell you a minute for anything else. I'm in it for the fees. Now, if it turns out amazing and, you know, in, uh, does 10x and 50x or whatever, all that amazing. Great. But I'm in it for the fees. And anybody that's in my world that tells you that they're not full of shit. It would be some of the biggest frictions that you have to overcome when you're putting these deals together. And you're including all these major power players from different parts of the world. Is there, is there cultural friction? Is there government friction, geopolitical friction that you have to overcome? Or is that not even a factor at the level that you play at? I tell you, you know, there has to be a summary. You deal, I think you have to know which side you're playing on first of all. You can't, you can't be for everybody. Who brought you into the game? Who put you in the room? I can colloyalty, transparency, you know, and, and a sense of honesty to the person that brought you in is imperative in my world. I certainly wouldn't be able to work with, let's say, the PRC for 20-something years on the work that I, or, you know, that I do. I like to be very loyal and look out, you know, for the person that brought me into the room. Now, on this kind of level, as I said, the other people on the other side are like me. I don't speak to the fund manager of the, of the SOE or something like that. I mean, I need, you know, but that's not my contact. My contact is a guy like me, another dealmaker. And we both understand that for us to get paid for both our entities to profit is to close the deal. At these levels, there's none of that bullshit of like, did you call me first or I called you for? If you don't email me, I'll meet you at your office. None of that stuff. It's not at this level. And if someone plays a game like that, I don't know, I've never, honestly, in my role, I've never, you know, if someone clowns around, he's not going to be there long. You know, because there's a lot of, you know, a lot of the guys that are in power in those entities, they've been there for a long time. There's not like, oh, we just brought the new guy in and, you know, on this. And, um, yeah, I think it very much depends on people. But you, so I understand, so I mean, like at the end of the day, you're doing the deal with the dealmaker. You, you know the outcome that you're trying to accomplish. I mean, outside of, I know he's loyal to his side. He knows I'm loyal to my side on that deal. But even though you both represent the best interests of the parties, you still both mutually know that the deal has to get done. The deal has to get done for us to get paid. Yeah. And for our stakeholders, you know, they want it. They want the deal. Right. If they didn't want the deal, we wouldn't be in play. So if two dealmakers are at the point of speaking, that means both sides want it. Now it's, you know, let's, let's try to figure it out. What would be the, what would be the one thing that you see people generally get wrong about getting the deal done? What would be the biggest mistake that they make? I don't know if people think what's in it like me, you know, like me, me, me, me, me. I, you know, like how much can I get the most, you know, as a greed aspect to it. As a greed, greed, fucks up a lot. Yeah. The greed fucks, fucks a lot of people up. You know, the greed fucks a lot of things up. And it's, and it's, and it's also the speed, you know, that getting it now. The deal that I've been, you know, fortunate enough to be invited to with some of, you know, the most, the highest of the, of the, of the institutions that I've been working with. You know, people say, oh, oh, yeah, you know, where'd you come from and do this deal? It's happened 22 fucking years in the making, you know. But this deal, for example, took us a year and a half, a year and a half. One deal. That's a long time. And, and there was a lot of smoothing over and a lot of, you know, eagles and, you know, and you've got to, you've got to smooth things open. Be cool about it. I like to think that I'm the cool guy in my group, you know. Um, when I was younger, they used to call me Eugene Utah, which means basically the young Jewish boy. Now they just call me Utah, which is just Jewish boy. So there was like, send the Utah over, you know, me, you know. So I like to bring an essence of, you know, cool. Uh, I like to be cool. And, uh, I don't mean just that my temperament is cool, you know. Um, I, I once took, I once took a, I once took a, a government, a government guy in Moscow for a ride in a car blasting biggie smalls. He was 60 years old. And I was reluctant to me about, you know, I, uh, and we were blasting uh, biggie smalls in the car. And I'm trying to explain to him, you know, why I love biggie small so much and, and, and, and the meaning of the song. And, and, you know, and we didn't talk anything about work, okay? Nothing, nothing about work. We drove around I think for like two, three hours listening to hip hop. He has no idea what hip hop was, okay? And we drove around, I don't know, even where the hell we went. I'm a horrible driver. Okay? Everybody knows I, you know, up until the pandemic, I had a driver. I don't know how to drive. You know, I'm a terrible driver. I let my wife parallel park. I, I don't know how to drive. Um, you know, but we were driving around. And, um, you know, I've had, I've been fortunate that I actually remember some of these people, um, I once spent time in, in Kiev. I had to spend about two months there. It was a deal that we were trying to purchase the port in Odessa. And it was a great deal. And the guy that ran the port was super old school, Soviet style, okay? And, uh, every time I used to fly to Odessa, I used to fly from Belgium. I don't know, that was just the way I used to fly over. And in Belgium, at the airport, at the Brussels airport, they used to have like, uh, all these like special, like, you know, salmon and like fucking, you know, I don't know, salamis and, you know, like, oh, patties, you know, all these like special stuff. And I used to always like load up, you know, buy like all of that shit. And I used to go and bring it to this rather simple man. He was a guy that's been working there for like 40 something years. You know, day in, day out. And I'd bring them these things. And, um, I play chess. I play a lot of chess. Um, I like chess a lot. And, um, if I'm in New York ever, you'd see me every morning from 9 a.m till 12 at Washington Square Park with like a, a big puffer jacket sitting there playing chess on the Washington Square Park. Everybody that's like my spot. And if I made like 50 bucks or 100 bucks on it, can't talk to me. I know all the guys there for years. But when I went there to a death site, you know, it took me months to build a relationship with this guy. He didn't want to do any deals. He's, you can't convince people like that. This is old school. But they sent me there. And they tried to like convince me. And you know, I went, it took me a long time. I went there a lot, a lot of times. And one time he was sick. And I went to visit him at the hospital. And his daughter was there. And his English was really shit. And I was coming with these, you know, sausages or all this stuff. He loved it, you know. And I told him a joke. And it was a joke that somebody once told me, one of my mentors told me a joke that a gentleman that I told you they called him the fan of Elliott. So I loved the early. Even though he made a lot of money off me without me knowing, he's the same guy that gave me 150. I'm top pocketed 200 million. And that's like my trusted mentor. Okay. He taught you a very valuable lesson though. He gave me 150 million. I can't mark it, right? If you made 200 million on the same day, that's just him being on the other side of the playing field. I didn't know. But I gave it to the same joke I'm tired. I did it to me, but like in New York. So I imagine all the pigeons in New York, all the birds in New York, every winter they fly south for the winter. So right before, in a winter approaches, all the pigeons, you know, meet up like in Times Square or something. And every pigeon is there and they're all like stretching and the general is like, you know, telling everybody, okay, like 15 minutes we're going to go north and then we'll make a right turn and we should be in Florida by tomorrow morning. So everybody's stretching a nest and all of a sudden, one crazy pigeon in the back says, fuck you. I'm my own pigeon. I don't need to this shit. I do whatever the fuck I want. I'm independent. I don't need this shit. All the other pigeons look at him and it's winter coming. All right, 15 minutes go. All the pigeons fly north and make a right turn. And they're gone. For two, three, four days, this pigeon is the only pigeon in town. He's fine. He's a big shot. He's the only pigeon in New York City. He's thinking that like he's, he's he's the biggest guy in town. Nobody else there. I have to another two, three days it starts snowing and it starts getting really, really cold. And he says, shit, I fucked up. I'm only a pigeon. So he starts racing, racing down south. Flying as fast as he can. And then he gets caught in a snow storm. And his whole body freezes and he crashes on a farm. And he's covered there like, you know, like an ice cube. As he's covered there as an ice cube, all of a sudden a cow comes. The cow goes, move, turns around and takes a shit on the bird. But the shit was really warm and it melted all the ice. And it was like a warm blanket. Shielded him from the cold and he was all comfortable and cozy. So he started to sing. All of a sudden a cat. Here's like a bird cat. I was singing. Ox over. Sees this pigeon covered in shit. Takes its paw, cleans the shit off the bird and eats the bird. And the moral of the story is not everybody that shits on you is your, is your enemy. Not everybody that takes shit away from you is your friend. And when you're warm and comfortable, the best thing to do is to shut the fuck up. I was taught that joke a long time ago and I say it, you know, sometimes I can't tell you how much it relates to life into many things in business. And sometimes when we have egos or hot tempers, or we jump, we immediately jump and we think that guy that shit on us, what the fuck did you just shit on me? And we think because we don't know the motives of all the sides that we judge very quickly. And I see a lot of times with amateur business guys. Some guy comes and says, I'll give you $20 million, I'll take 70% of your company. So what? Excuse me, what? 70% and you're thinking dilution and you're thinking like you're going to sell your company for a billion dollars and that's it. Breathe. Breathe. Somebody just gave you offered you 20 million dollars. Breathe. Breathe. If you think the only way you're going to make money is to sell that entity and they're stocking the shares and that then you're small minded. There's many avenues and not just looking at one, just like how I when I raised 150 million, I had no idea. Those guys took 200 million, they won. No idea. So I think in my in these kind of world, patience, being cool, building real relationships, knowing how to speak to people in a cool manner like calm down, because sometimes people get, you know, I'm no angel, you get, you know, the stress that is, you get emotional about, of course. Yeah. I think it's imperative that we remember at the end of the day, there's other things to life than that deal. There's other things to life than that chunk of change. Right. All that money without a good heartbeat and a good blood flow, it doesn't mean shit. If you don't have a, I don't know, a kid to tell a story to at night, that's kind of lame. If you don't, you know, appreciate the simple things in life, this all bullshit them. What's the point? For me, at least. Do you think that when you look at sort of the part of the world that you grew up in and the culture that you grew up in, that sort of informed how you approach deals and relationships, and I asked that just to compare us into growing up in the US where I feel like people are almost very comfortable with adopting this very transactional high speed approach to deal making more so than other parts of the world where everything is very transactional, everything is not a handshake or relationship, everything is a doc you sign. It seems to be that the US is very different than the rest of the world, but I think that not growing up in the US probably served you best. I don't know about best or not, you know, I moved you now a year ago, you must notice, and I must tell you something honestly, from living, you know, in a lot of countries, and I'm not saying this for, you know, this or the podcast, and I mean, this God bless America. God bless America. I don't think there's any nation in the world coming close to what's here firstly, and a lot of people that have their criticisms and obviously we see what's going on with with with all the craziness in the world. I challenge anybody, go live anywhere for a year or two years, go live in Europe, go live in Asia, go live in go. Everyone's talking about how Dubai is great, I like Dubai, I go to Dubai a lot, you know, I wouldn't live in Dubai. Oh, it's zero tax, so that's okay, so perfectly okay paying taxes, let's not make more money. Technology has has messed a lot of that up. I don't necessarily believe it's the United States. See, perception is reality. Reality is manipulated due to social media, and then it's monetized. So what we're monetizing is the manipulation, not the essence. I don't pet stocks. Never. We'll never touch stocks. It's it's it's a rich game. It can go up or down, not based on anything. It can be, I don't know if Elon Musk will say something God bless him. I don't drive a Tesla, but I love Elon Musk. And I think he's so necessary for the world. But if you all of a sudden became a shareholder in some company, if I told you right now, I got Elon Musk and Bill Gates and they're going to do a company. We have no idea yet what we're doing, no idea, not no idea. Bill Gates owns 50%, Elon Musk owns 50%. How much time do you think I can bring 10 billion dollars at a hundred billion dollar valuation to that deal? Pretty quickly. Why? Because of their name, their reputations. Okay. So they've never had failures before. Of course, yeah. But that's manipulated. So what we're saying based on past history, everything will be success. And why the valuation of a hundred billion, where did I get? Why do you think 10 billion and a hundred billion dollar valuation? They don't even know yet what they're going to do. They don't know business model. They'll be able to close that and raise that deal in a New York minute. By that logic, though, by that logic, anything accessible to the retail investor can be manipulated. I used to do this when I was when I was an entrepreneur, kind of raising capital. I had my time. I always used to, you know, when I raised capital. And before I did this and, I'd raised a few hundred million for projects. And they always used to bring like an analyst to the room. You know, all those guys, the big guys, they bring you like an analyst, which they get paid to say no. I mean, that's pretty much what the analyst is supposed to say. So one day they brought me like these two big shot analysts and to discuss valuation of tech, which is a complete conundrum. I mean, tech valuations. And I'm 50. I don't understand them. Okay. Why was WhatsApp purchased for 19 billion or 20 billion dollars? Why not 18? Why not 25? Why not seven? Why, right? No earnings, no business plan. But you really, you really worry they can tell that's what it comes down to. The story they can tell and is unbelievable. But yes, I agree completely. But why not 30? I have no idea. Why fiber their competitor two weeks prior, which was with roughly half the amount of users they had sold for 900 million. Two weeks later, they sell for, I don't know, 19 plus this and board seats and that Facebook didn't buy them for their users. Facebook has two billion fucking users, right? Why? What, what, where did, who did the valuation there? Good room to me. I'm dying to figure out how you got to 19 or 22 or 23. You can't sell the data to United States, right? You got laws. I can't like, you know, even until today, I use WhatsApp, right? I don't pay for it. You pay for it. I ask him if he wants to sell it. He'll never sell it, right? Valuations and tech is a wonderful thing because it can play for both sides if you use. And every time they used to bring the analysts, I used to tell them the time machine story. It's worked for me 10 out of 10 times. There are many metrics to what they say is valuation, right? The team, the vision, the IP, the market, the trend, all right, all this crap. Earnings, even if you have earnings, it's really bad because then you'll get some other analysts will say, okay, you're making X amount at a 6% year, seven years, and you're worth out much, and you're like, what? So it's all, so I used to say I used to come in, I can't believe I'm sharing this one, but it's your, if you and I, after this podcast, let's say we went, we had a beer, we really connected, and all of a sudden we decided to start talking about time travel and time machines. And you and I saw that we have this crazy passion for time travel and you telling me a story about, I don't know, your grandfather that you wish you can see him again, and I'm telling you about something that I wish I can see my grandmother again. And we, Chrysler, we're talking about this PhD guy that once wrote some paper on time travel, that if you spin the laser around and, you know, and we, and, you know, what, and we decided to say, you know what, Scott, fuck it, let's go for it. And you close this podcast shit up and I closed my fucking asset management up and we decided to partner. And I went and I take every penny I have ever made and I invested it in and you take every penny you've ever made and this and you mortgage houses and we put everything and then we go into your garage and everybody thinks we're completely crazy. And then, and we're not speaking to anybody, we're not going to dinner with anybody, our wives, their, our girlfriends think we're completely crazy. And with their, we're crying and we put in and we lost the money and we go went more and took another mortgage and for 10 years, we're building this time travel machine. Now you agree with me that if we were to build a time travel machine, it's by far the greatest technology. I know better than SpaceX, better than anything else. We could do it. Yes. If we could do it, right, there's no other technology in the world as we know it today that can be more valuable, right, than a time machine. So let's say after 10 years, we sat there, we all got, you know, more wrinkles, lost some hair, turned white, strives, everybody thinks we're completely nuts. And after 10 years, we looked at each other, we did it. We look at it, it works. And we say, let's go try it. And we jump in the time machine and we put like 10 minutes prior and we press the button, boom, you went back in time, 10 minutes and we're like, holy shit. And then we, and we're back. And we start hugging and high five. And we did it and did it. What's the valuation? Two users. The amount of capital was on here, no outside capital. 10 years, no revenue, no plan, greatest technology in the world. What's the valuation? I don't know, exactly. I don't know. Is what if you can convince the other three associates and the one must gonna board them? If you can convince the other person that your project is a significant, is a time machine, then you surpass valuation. And by doing that, you have to speak really well. Has nothing to do with what you're doing. Very little. And deal making requires a lot of that. And I think with what you said, a lot of people today, you see very talented guys today, you know, making quickbugs through, I don't know, Amazon dropship being this, Instagram promoting and awesome. That's amazing. And as much as we've gained for me, for me, everything bad in my career over the last five years that's happened, came by way of this. Things that I wrote that I shouldn't have written. Messages that I received that I shouldn't have read or read. For me, I don't make my career, I think I would have I would be more successful without messaging and without this technology. And if my meetings were more in person rather than on call. But then again, the new generation, you know, I don't know, makes millions, you know, those guys are doing extremely well from it. It's all how we use these tools. Yeah, but but that tool is a tool is making us less human with each other. There's less of the human connection. And I think that that works to a degree, but when you're dealing with a 12 billion dollar deal, somebody who's only ever cannot do it. They can't do it. No way. No way. That's what I mean. No way. No way. But to, you know, so it's not a dualized thing, bringing it back to test. You know, if I wanted to reach, you know, users online, but everything has to be so immediate for everybody. And I think, you know, don't get me wrong. I like doing things quite, but technology aspect and I gave us this, you know, like ability to diminish patients. We have no patients. Everything is today, now, now, now. It might be great. I don't know. Maybe I'm just too old. Maybe I'm just too old. I'm too tired. You know, a year ago, I would have never done a podcast or anything like that. Today, you know, I was, I moved with my family. I have three young kids. I moved to Florida. I'm tired. It's stressful work and when I work. And I just enjoy some more simple things. You know, let me go order a pizza and, you know, and take my daughter's dog Lucas for a walk on the beach. For me, that's, that's a good day. And if it, you know, and a lot of my, you know, billionaire, multi-billionaire friends or a lot of the guys that run some of these hundred billion dollar firms that I work with, they don't really, in my opinion, they don't really have nice lives. I don't see them with nice lives. I would think the guys that are in the, you know, 200 to 500 million, I'm still in, you know, don't get me wrong. I'm not, you know, but if somebody can get to the 200 or 300 or 400 million dollar range, stop. For what? For what? What's this crap? I hear all these fucking motivational and influencers, generational wealth and all this nonsense. What is this crap? I don't get it. What is explain to me? I don't understand it. But I just tell you that, I can tell you that out of all the people that I've spoken to and interviewed, people that have had exits between 100 million and 500 million. Very few, I don't think I can name one who has had an exit in the nine figures and been like, okay, I'm good. I think they're always trying to build more and more and more and more. I don't get it. I don't know. And those are exit guys. Exit guys should be very thankful because exit guys, but I think they're conditioned. By the way, I think they're conditioned after building something for 10, 15, 20 years that I think it's really hard to deprogram yourself from always building and all. And I mean, I was 31 years old. I remember I didn't own a car. I didn't have an apartment. I had a hundred million dollars in the ATM machine. I used to go take out, you know, like my 200 bucks for the day and see the one hundred and one. I was cool. And and and then the other guys that had 400 million or 500 or whatever and had to rush and their personal assistance and 20,000 phone calls. I at the end of the day, what are we doing it for? Or that's the thing like my close friend, you know, that's eight, nine billion man, he works like a machine every day. Like morning, you know, there's the call that the, you know, nonstop. And I might see it with somebody like that. You speak to him because you're on a good one of my closest friends. Will you ever stop? Never. Why not? He enjoys the enjoys crushing, but he's already crushed it. What have you asked him? Like, what are you, what's the number that you're aiming for? It's not an it's it's a sickness, I think. I don't look at it. I saw, you know, I watch, I've been lately on a lot on, you know, on Instagram. I don't, you know, really, but my wife is on Instagram and I've got like, I don't know, 7,000 followers on Instagram because of my wife. You know, she's got like, I don't know, I don't know, 100, 200,000 kind of people and sometimes she tags me. I don't really photograph stuff. But, you know, so I'm on Instagram once in a while. And now that I live in the States, I see it because I don't really, I don't have Facebook. I don't have LinkedIn. I don't don't start. No, it's that I've no interest. I don't have Twitter. You know, I don't have a tweet or anything. But I watch these guys, you know, and I saw this guy, Grant Cardone. And I understand he is down this straight. He sells beautifully. Okay. He's aggressive. He sharp. He does these, also, these events where he brings like, you know, celebrities on that thing with him. He sells beautifully. Okay. But he sells to retailers. Right. He sells to the guy, give me $50,000, give me $50,000. Right. But I saw him speak once on some podcast where he was telling that he was on vacation with his yacht. And Ozzy was parked somewhere, Jeff Bezos rolled in with his yacht. And he felt terrible and he had to get up or go or something like that, maybe, you know, like, because as you always so much smaller than this on some like that. That's funny. And you know, by the way, that guy, he hasn't taken it. Now he's starting to do, because I've seen him on social for a long time. He said he's down the show too. He's been here? No, not here. This is before we moved down the floor when I found Toronto. I had him on the show. But he does, he works. He works. He works like crazy. Crazy. And even his vacations, he's working. Crazy. He does Instagram live. I think every Saturday or Sunday, I see. Yeah. You know, and I look in his eyes. Okay. I'm good kind of with that. The guy has, you know, he's been through stuff. You can see in his eyes. He has darkness. He's been through things and he's gone out, you know, out of it. Like I said, I don't know his business or in that sense, I know he does real estate and runs funds. I hate real estate, but I hate real estate. But I'm saying, he's been through a lot. He's got scars. You can see it in his eyes. And he works and he's successful. And you know, when he's built this persona, I don't know, just I don't get it. Why not just just go for a walk on the beach, close the door, you know, enough. What's the point? Why? He's not young. He's older than me. Yeah. He's like 60. Yeah. Four. I'm going to get a heart attack one day from fucking yelling on the phone to somebody. For what? Any, he, he, he puts a lot of energy into what he does. I see all these guys on social. So this is a, this is a, I love this guy. I love, you know, I watch podcasts. I love obviously love Joe Rogan. I love Patrick. Patrick, but David up in Fort Lauderdale. He works. So I think he's told his insurance company for just over 300 million. And then now he built a whole, he built a whole media. But he's different in, in, in with regards, I think he's doing it more, it look, it seems more, you know, more like it's organized or more like it's not about the push. He's not using the social media for people to buy into. No, he doesn't have a fund. So Grand Cardone has a fund and his audience are the LPs. Whereas Patrick, but David, he made his money. And now he enjoys, he enjoys doing this. That's okay. That's cool. But that's different. That's what I'm saying. Has a money he makes from podcasting and you enjoy. But he enjoys, he goes here and he goes there. Is it? So, you know, that's perfectly cool. I just, it's sometimes it's like, because we're at the end of the day, all of us waking up in the morning and doing our best to try to make some money and provide for our family and protect right. We're all soldiers. So I look at Grant like another fellow soldier. Okay. I never, I don't know the guy. I never met him. I just wish, you know, I just don't get it sometimes. I don't get some of the, you know, and I'm not saying, you know, I don't know how I don't know his net worth. I don't know anything, but, you know, in that sense, but I think he's got a hundred million. You know, I assume, I think it's companies do a couple hundred million in revenue, depending on how much you have to companies. Him and his, oh, and his, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then again, he's part of this whole, like, work nonstop hustle culture online entrepreneur. And I think that that, so you asked, like, why do people never shut off even after they sell a company for 100, or 200, 300, whatever? And because I think that now you have entrepreneurs that are sort of indoctrinated with this mentality from a very early age. So now if you, when you're, you know, 18, 19, 20, all the people that you looked up to are working nonstop and working on the weekends. But I mean, it's hard to deprogram yourself from that because then you tie yourself worth into what you built. We focused too much incorrect, but it's the way that people have brought up. You know, Mike Tyson said something really hit home to me. You know, it's crazy. I, I don't know how this individual became so wise, obviously, through a thing. I find Mike Tyson's sometimes is, he said something very clever, clever, very intelligent, really hit, really hit me. He said, in our culture today, we idolize greatness, great athletes, great business people, the greatness, and everybody's striving to be great. But we don't idolize goodness. That's not a metric. It's the greatness that we idolize. When somebody's able to achieve a level of success, you know, where they don't necessarily have to go to work the next day, or the day after, or the year after, or forever, and not their children and not their children's children. Children, fuck off. Well, I don't know. For who is it good? I don't know. For me? You know, I don't know. I've never been that type of entrepreneur. I never wanted to build the, you know, Oracle. I don't know. And I idolize Larry Ellison. Don't get me wrong. I love that Larry Ellison. I just don't, I guess, don't have that in me. I think that you have a very balanced, healthy view of entrepreneurship. I think it's good. I think more people should have that. I mean, you focus on your family, you focus on your wife, you focus on building a beautiful home, like, I mean, how many entrepreneurs, I mean, you deal with the billionaires all the time. How many of them have, like, four X, wives and don't even talk to their kids anymore? Like, it happens. You know, I was offered recently, more ownership in the, in the GP. I would surpass the two billion mark personal net worth in about five to six years. Without just based on management fees and deal fees. I didn't take it. I like Florida. I changed maybe five years ago, eight years ago. I would have jumped on it and said, thank you. And don't get me wrong. I like making money. But I don't know, like I told you, I didn't grow up really with a father. I moved to Florida. I was, I was working in Hong Kong, but I had my family in Israel. During the Sukrat holidays, we were in Dubai. I brought my mother, who lives in New York, and my sister that had never been. Then we went to Dubai. We used to go to Dubai a lot, thanks to the Abraham Accord. It was a wonderful thing. We went to Dubai. I loved Dubai. We were there for, like, two weeks and we landed in Israel on October 7th at 1 a.m. Put the suitcases, had like three suitcases with just our bathing suits. I have three young kids and went to sleep. In Israel, our home was in a town called Herzaliyah, which is sort of like the Malibu of Israel, if you will. And it's on the beach. And at around 7 a.m., we woke up to, I can only sound like maybe like 50 explosions, like right above our heads, right? The iron dome. In all my years that I had been visiting or been in Israel, my wife, she's Israeli. And I had never seen rockets above Herzaliyah. They never came that far. And we went outside on the balcony to look, and I'm seeing like poof. My wife, who is Israeli, said to me, get us out of here. Kids crying, alarms all over. And it was very tough to get out because, you know, they closed the skies and all the nobody's own. Only LL was traveling. And there was only two flights out, one to Athens and one to Cyprus. And I had to get eight seats. Pretty tough. No private, no, you can fly. Is that true when there's a tax LLs allowed? Because LL has an anti-missile on the wings of a non-missake. And I thought they did. But I didn't know they're the only ones allowed to fly. And today, there's no other alliance to fly into Israel until today. No other alliance. Private could go. Private, you can go today. But not when there was the alliance. When there were a tax day, they closed it and only LL could fly out. And they were to Athens or Cyprus. So immediately we're, you know, calling luckily, I know some of the people at LL. And we got to the, you know, to somebody. And I got us eight seats for the next flight to Athens. All of us flew to Athens with the same suitcases of bathing suits that we had, you know, and three suitcases and flew to Athens. And we stayed in Athens for about two weeks, hoping things would calm down and can go home. And when they didn't, we decided to come to New York. I have an apartment in New York in the city. And, you know, and this was already around, like, you know, October, all right, so like, 22nd, 3rd, 4th or something like that. And where my apartment is on the 74th by Madison and 5th, usually a pretty quiet area. And then there were people, you know, I was doing the time when everybody was ripping down the hostages and all those things and protestors and all like that. And we had, they had some protestors throw rocks at businesses that were pharmacies that had a Missouza on the thing and my wife, she's not from here. She didn't, she don't understand. She got freaked out. She's in trauma. We just left, you know, this is her first experience, first experience. She, you know, we obviously, we'd been to New York before and all that. We got married in New York, but she never saw things like that. She thought she's like back in Israel or something and there's another attack. She really got freaked out. So we went to Long Island and we have a place in Long Island too. And we stayed there for like around two weeks as well. And with family and my sisters. And after two weeks, you know, it's pretty, it's nice there, but it's boring. And we said, let's go to Florida where there's nice, there are the kids we get not in school. And I came here. I didn't realize the Florida move was just, it was the result of October 7th for me yet. We came here and I, I kissed the ground. Honestly, it really changed me, you know, things, perspectives, life, our kids. It really changed. And, you know, it took a nice place here. It's a different quality of life and less fear. And, you know, and when I'm, you know, I'm usually quite introvert, you know, I up until up until my move to Florida, maybe I'd be out at dinner three or four times a year, you know, public. And I usually speak to the same people I've spoken to for 15, 20 years. I've made more friends in Florida the last year than I have in the last 20 years of my life. I go where good energy goes. And my friend, by the way, you know, the ballet at the Bell Harbors were my good buddies. The guy that runs the pool at the four seasons. And so he's like, my buddy, I go there sometimes just to have to drink with him. I don't care. I just go where good energy is, where good people are. I made the school that took my kids. Amazing school, amazing people, the community there. And I have like a different, you know, view of things. I think today than I had a year ago. Maybe because obviously October 7th and the change that we had and me being the father and role as a protector from my family. And at the end, what the fuck is it all for? And you know, don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm a big religious guy or anything like that. I like to believe in goodness and good energy and good people of all my closest friends when I was in London, they were not Jews. Okay. I had a Bobby who was a Muslim era. I had Omar who was Libyan also Muslim. I had a bunch of Russians. I had Indonesians. Okay. Jakarta. They're not Muslim. Malaysians. These were my those were my buddies. Okay. So I never experienced, you know, like that kind of so it's it's not like that. But coming to America and even New York, I'll never forget it. And I'll never forget the guy at the American Embassy in Athens because my youngest son, when we left, we didn't we literally left. I didn't have any paperwork. I didn't have his his, you know, passport is US passport. I didn't have anything. And the guy I'll never, I remember I asked him for his name. So I said to him, so please, so I just never forget your name. He gave us all the paper, everything in like an hour. He didn't have any, I didn't have any documentation. Okay. And then when we landed here, I think a lot of people here forget how special this country is. And I love it. And I hope that in my time now in my 50s going upwards, it's the first time for me, you know, that I'd like to be part of bettering America. If that makes sense. And the deals and stuff that I do in with PRCs or with the golf or with this, it's great. I enjoyed it. But I'm tired. That's not, that's not me today. And, and you know, and I did this is my second ever podcast. And, and my first, you know, you're very good storyteller, which is really what it comes down to. And, you know, my friend, you know, when he suggested joining his podcast, you know, at first, I was like, you know, for guys, I'm sure there's guys right now in my world that if they saw this, like, I don't know what you two, but wherever it's going to go on, they're like, oh my god, oh, he's on a pot. Yeah. I guarantee you that like sweating right now. Okay. You know, my god, I hope he doesn't say my name or the deals or this or they're like, they're the sweating right now because everything was, you know, top secret stuff. I know that. I get that sweating sweating, you know, right now. It's like not saying everyone thing, but, but, you know, you're very good. You're very good. You taught a lot. He didn't throw anybody under the bus. It's like, what, you know, it's funny. It's true. But, you know, like, I come here and, you know, there's this good here, man, there's good people here. And there's a lot of good to do and there's good stuff. And it doesn't have to necessarily be about becoming the richest dude in the room or building the, you know, and then spending time with the family and doing the basic things and going, you know, I don't know. I go with my flip flops on the beach every day. Well, there's no price for that. You know, there's no price for that. You know, not the guys. I mean, you've experienced so much of the world. And now that you, you know, you're focused on your family and being a father and provider and a protector. Do you feel, do you feel stressed like going to the part of the world that you used to go to? I don't, you want to know something? I've been working on that, like I told you, the largest deal of my career over a year and a half. The last time I was in Hong Kong was in July. Okay. And over the last 15 years, I'm in Hong Kong one week a month. Okay. I haven't been since July. And I've been asked to, and I've been supposed to go also to fly to Egypt and Singapore and things like that to meet with very important people, you know, from the highest level of government. I'm not going for what? I've got money. I'm okay. I like those things. These guys 10 times richer than me. Oh, all good. But did I laugh today? Did I, you understand? I'm 50. I've been hustling and working and grinding since I'm 19. It's got to be more than that. It's got to be more than that. I kind of lame if it's just that. Who might like, for what? The point is to have a good life. That's the point of the cash. The cash is for the good life. You know, my wife, she says to me all the time she says, we don't have enough assets. Am I, what, why do we want assets? I said, I want cash. Cash is king, especially today, especially always having cash in a bank account is always good. That's mean to me. No, we need to buy like, you know, a bunch of apartments, a put for them. I got a phone call. Somebody tells me, yeah, the light bulb and the building and this one in the apartment, the block that you bought in Manhattan and I want no phone calls. I've been sitting here with you. My phone's not on silent. I don't want no phone calls. Nobody, I no phone calls. I don't want to have a money manager to call and tell me what this and I don't want to have secret structures for how to like deviate 5% of tax and all this shit that everybody, no, I went to my tax advisor here. He was like, uh, in Florida, you pay X. Yeah. I said, wonderful. In Israel, you pay 56% tax plus now a new surcharge, you get up to 59%, so roughly 60% tax is so heavy. Plus 18% VAT plus 135% on luxury. That means if you, right, so that is it. And then other jurisdictions and he came and he told me what the tax rate is in Florida. And he's like, but if we stretch you like this and we open up here and I'm like, I'm good. I like United States. I can earn if I get all good. It's fair for me. I'm happy. I don't want to have another entity here and open up some weird trust here and I don't, you know, too much headache, you know, too much headache. I'm trying to live, you know, the best, I guess, most of my years are in the past. I've got one to 120. What are you talking about? Let's say statistically, I got another 20, 20, 25 years, 75. That's young. Unless my brain works, unless I don't have to go every day for like a thing, you know, I got 25. I'm trying to make out of those 25 years that I laugh more. I'm around good people spending good time going to the beach, which is what I like writing a bicycle. Do you know I write a bike? I haven't written a bicycle in 20 years. Not otherwise, actually, you should, it's unbelievable. The little basics, they write it all the time going out, right? Yeah. You remember being a kid and having a bicycle? Yeah, of course, because all my friends lived within a, you know, whatever, a five or five kilometer, whatever that is, mile radius. So you always a bike to their house. That's amazing. Yeah. I want to ride a bike. And nobody call me. And I want to listen to Biggie Smalls on my headphones, and I don't want to get bothered. And if I want to do some work or some stuff, it better be around good energy. Other than that, I have zero interest. Are you going to do another deal after this one? Are you trying to stop? I had no, no, you don't plan. Look, I've never planned. I never, I believe, I have a different, I believe, you know, in luck, a lot more in life. I believe in everything is, you know, you need to work and you need to hustle, but nothing happens without luck. Some people call it God, some people call it, but fate or a diva. I don't know. If something presents itself to me, yeah, of course, I'll check it out. But will I be going on like if somebody tells me, oh, do you like back in the day? You know, I used to chase where the money goes, right? So when there was a lot of money in Africa, I'm an Africa. When there was a lot of money in Russia, I'm in Russia. When there's a lot of money in China, I mean, we're doing that. You have to understand the years of doing that, created the luck that you luck that you have now. You put yourself in a vicinity where there is, right? I mean, you know, if you know, if you put yourself in areas where things are around, you know, money is there, right? I'm not an innovator. I'm not Elon Musk. I'm not, you know, I go where the money goes and I make deals. If all the money next week, right, went into, I don't know, coffee beans or something, you know, and I'd go into the coffee being, check it out, see who's doing that. But my point is, I'm not... It's not what I do. You know, and I try to facilitate a large-scale deal, cross-border, the same stuff, but it's a stressful game. But would be the advice, though, for somebody who is just starting out in their career because now you're very wise. Now, you know, you're actually, well, you're actually, you know, structuring your life around, but it doesn't always start out like that. So somebody who's listening to this, who is on sort of this hamster, real, whether or not it's their first company or they're building an audience or whatever it is they're doing. They're working 24, 7, 3, 65. What is that word of wisdom? Like that one thing, do you think they should learn from you? First of all, chill. Chill. They say like, you know, and stormy waters, you can't fish. And when you're running in this hamster wheel and you can't catch a big fish, I think this whole hustle, hard, hustle, non-stop. I think it's a mistake. I think people need to chill, need to open their eyes. Sometimes you don't have to go across the street to do a deal and it's sometimes right next to you. The main thing is especially if you're young, that there's no race. Everybody has this, you know, because of this Instagram or this, you know, you see what other people and you think someone's achieving more than you. And I think a lot of it has to do with that. A lot of these guys that are starting, why are you starting in a company? Like, why do we need companies? Like, don't you need, if you need it, you need a product or you need, right? Why do you need a company? I hear people like, yeah, I might open up a Delaware L.C. I was like, okay, for what? What are you doing? Like, what for what? What do you need a company for? I can understand you need a product out or you need, right? You're providing a service. Okay, so if you're a service provider, okay? But ultimately, chill. There's no race. Make the right moves. Be a little more calculated. Speak less. Stop sharing your, you know, a lot of everybody shares too much. It's not in your favor. When, when you speak more and when you share more, I know how to evaluate you better. And the money comes from more guys like me than those guys starting out. Then we look at those things. If I see a guy that's like non-stop, you know, talking and yapping and messaging and things, that's not what I'm looking for. Not for big money. And I always always respect, you know, the cool cats, the ones who speak less, the ones who move a little smoother. Rather than the ones that are allowed and jump from place to place and make noise and and and jump from one entity to another entity to another entity to another entity to another. That doesn't show persistence. That shows in stability. It shows that guy's crazy. He hasn't found himself yet. He's not coped yet. He's not ready yet. And when the and every business has stress and pressure, and you just got to see how that guy deals with it. If he's frantic, if he's this, this is not the right guy. You shouldn't be doing that. Because at the end of the day, at the highest levels of all these companies, there's how they handle that stress or pressure. You know, I'm baffled always by Elon Musk. I don't get how this guy does all he does. I don't get it. He's also loud. Completely. And I understand his freak is unbelievable. I don't know how many companies, how many things. I don't know how he has time. I don't know. Does he have a life? I don't know. But I also think somebody like that. So you shouldn't look at him. He doesn't remember. He doesn't appear. You know, well, you shouldn't lie. It's somebody like that at that level of the game that he's playing. Why is he even being just like you and me? I know. But maybe he wasn't like that when he was building, you know, his first thing. I watched him. I mean, I watch a lot about him. I find him so fascinating. And I had once an opportunity, the my LPs and Hong Kong, Leon the rights to the Hyperloop. There are partners of his in China also with Tesla China. We're the same. I'm with the same sort of people. So when he was in China last time, even the time before, you know, a lot of people know that I'm a big fan of his. And they said, come eat him. On a range like, you know, like a real meeting, you know, not like, you know, like in a closed room kind of thing. I had to pass. I was kind of too, you know, too much for me. He's for me a bigger than life kind of guy, you know, he's things. But he doesn't necessarily look and he says as himself, he says, my mind is a storm. And it's not a happy storm. And he doesn't lead a good, happy life. So what can I take from him? What can I learn from him? Those are not the things that I currently in my life today. Maybe if I was 20 or 30 years old and I saw that $200 billion, you know, value or 300, I don't know how big he is today. I'd rather learn from that guy, this guy, John, who runs the valet at Bell Harbor shops. So those guys got blue eyes every time you drive by, he's got a massive smile on his face. All the time. What's up, John? You know, I met him every time I drive in, he's there. He works so hard. He's there like the six days a week. So his guy, you ever see him, little guy, bald head, blue eyes. So I'll look for a nice time. He got smiles from here to here. And he's done. And I'm like, that's something I'm interested to learn of. Elon Musk is too brilliant for me. I'm not that smart. I'm not interested to put a rocket on Mars. And I know interest, I'd rather stay home with my kids and watch that. I know last night we watched, I introduced my kids yesterday to Adam Sandler. And we watched like three out of standard movies yesterday, which ones. I watched a click. Yeah, pixels. Yeah. And Jack and Jill, which they like the most, that's awesome. It's awesome. And I want to learn like from people like that, you know, and how do I maintain to be a good guy and do good things and hang out with simple things? That's for me, or where I am in my life today. The younger guys, it's very difficult, because if I was speaking to my younger self, I'd tell me to shut the fuck up. It's an age thing. You won't get there and you won't know it until you pass through. I'd watch this doc, this podcast of me, if I was 26, I'd say, there's a fucking, you know, there's a fucking husband, it's over. He's tired. He's a old man. Not but you're happy. I'm content. Yes, I'm relaxed. I hadn't been for a long time. And I think the, I think that the chase, you know, we need to forget sometimes what's it for? What would be, I mean, we went through a lot. Obviously, you know, you're one of these guys that I'm sure we could probably talk for like, I'm kind of all day. Yeah, thank you for the time. Oh, this is really good. I really appreciate it. I've appreciated more of a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. I learned more about your story. I had all these things that I was going to go into and we sort of touched on several of them, but I was happy that you went more into your story and where you're at right now. I think that's really the most important lesson out of all the tactical things you can talk to about deal making and even building the relationship with some of the incredible stories and you're going to do more shows in the future. And more of these stories are going to come out there. I mean, your life has been pretty interesting. But out of all of that, I do think that the one just sort of golden nugget and the piece that I'm really happy that you went into is just sort of where you're at right now and the life that you're building right now and life and how you're structuring a life right now because I think that's a very beautiful thing for people to take away from your journey. I think that I think that's probably the most valuable thing that you can give people. But I want more people in my life and also just to who listen to the show to understand that listen. There's unlimited amounts of money you can make in the world. There's unlimited amount of work you can do, but ultimately like your family, your children, your relationships, your peace, your contentment. I think that's really what that's really what's important. Health and peace. Health and peace. I always ask a couple of questions at the end, but you've gone into so much. Let me know if there's anything else that we didn't go into that you did want to speak about or bring up, but is there anything that I should have asked that I didn't? I mean, I've enjoyed the conversation. I always think you can speak for hours and I know, you know, and leave me next time you're back in Miami. I'm here. I'm always here. Yeah, I'm here, but no, I mean, I think you're traveling for a little bit or something like that, but it's anytime. I tell you, I love it, but anytime with pleasure and, you know, I appreciate it. You are, you know, my second podcast ever. They're very easy podcast guests. I'm an easy podcast, right? Yeah, you know, I was like, I didn't know how, because, you know, you didn't know me, you know, and a friend of mine that told me about your podcast, you know, I don't feel sometimes comfortable to talk about, you know, size of deals or net worths or things like that. You know, yeah, there's stuff about the public that I've appeared is, you know, and stuff like that. It's never made me feel comfortable, you know, I don't like to be judged on or approach to as that, you know, in 2017 or 2018, you know, we were the first institutional investors out of the UK to invest 50 million in BTC and Ether. I saw that. I wasn't going to go down that route. Oh, what's wrong? I was saying, back then, you know, and everybody thought I was nuts, you know, for like a year period, but like, yeah, nuts. Today, we say, oh, he's innovative, you know, I said, no, really not. The LPs that I had with me, they were really kind of, they were like, let's go for it. They were kind of gamble guys. And then I had to figure out how to weigh, how to do it, you know, but I think sometimes just happen, you know, and I wish I can say to you that everything is planned and I knew and I there's, but it's not my story. But the things that I really value and I hope a lot of people understand that obviously money is important in the careers and is important in releasing yourself or putting your creativity out in the world. This is also, you know, therapeutic and healthy and beautiful, but pace yourself and and and breathe and never forget that the basics, health, peace, good vibes. That's what it's for. But ones that can achieve that with little money are the winners. But that's what you were alluding to with the value, you know, it's very happy, very much at peace, probably happier than some billionaires or 100%. What would be the lesson that you want to leave your kids with after everything you've done to her? Just be happy and don't just try to be happy no matter what you do. Happy, be happy.