The Ugly Truth About Why Most People Fail in Business | Derek Moneyberg DSH #596

50% of people are below average in anything by definition.

And

I don't know that some of the social media platforms or the entertainment of our day doesn't reward long-term thinking.

Definitely not.

People are trained to have a lower and lower attention span and be focused on immediate results.

Or if they can't be a millionaire this weekend, then they don't want to try.

Right.

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And here's the episode.

All right, guys, we got Derek Moneyberg here today, fresh off the gym, coming up with the bling.

Thanks for coming, man.

How are you doing?

Good.

What you been working on lately?

You've been kind of in the shadows a bit, right?

Shadows.

I don't know.

I've been working on my business, working on finance and

perpetually for my whole life.

And,

you know, kind of hobbies I have a do a lot of MMA training

lift some weights and it's kind of it my friends ask me oh what's new what's nothing I just do the same things repetitively same old same old I like it that way and you're speaking after this somewhere right yeah we have a negotiation conference in town this weekend so four days about negotiation and you know optimizing you know whether whether you're an employee and you know you need to I'm thinking, I'm curious your opinion on it, but I think like any employee, if you had a job, but if you're a good negotiator, you could at least, if you're thinking entrepreneurially and negotiating well, you could double, triple your salary over time, easy enough.

Right.

And if you want to be an entrepreneur, then you have to be a decent negotiator.

It's a rare skill these days to have negotiation skills.

I had Chris Voss on the show, and he was an expert negotiator.

And

he doesn't bring emotions into his negotiations, which I thought was interesting.

Do you take that approach as well?

I mean, you have to have enough

emotion to say empathy or to understand what is the other person's situation.

I think a lot of people really mistake negotiation where they're like, negotiation means to beat the hell out of your opponent and take everything you can and screw them in some way.

And I think the most valuable negotiations are not these one-off transactional adversarial circumstances, but long-term mutually beneficial relationships.

So if you could bring a lot of value to somebody's life over time,

And don't waste your time with people that don't reciprocate, but if you can have valuable reciprocal relationships, like why do you want to be

overly aggressive with those people?

I want the other person to win, because over time we're both going to win, you know?

Yeah, I like that approach, the win-win mentality, right?

Rather than just trying to take everything you can from someone.

It's very short-sighted, but most people are.

Yeah.

It is interesting why most people are.

Why do you think they are like that?

50% of people are below average in anything by definition.

And

I don't know that some of the social media platforms or the entertainment of our day doesn't reward long-term thinking definitely

people are trained to have a lower and lower attention span and be focused on you know immediate results or if they can't be a millionaire this weekend then they don't want to try right and I was actually I was talking about this at my conference last night that

a guy named Greg Jackson was on stage with me Greg Jackson is an MMA coach is one of the best coaches in the world He's a coach for John Jones, George St.

Pierre, Holly Holm, and 20 other champions.

And

yeah, we were talking about the same thing that you know, it takes years to get great results at something.

Like, if you want to be really good at something and have like a differentiated skill set that you can capitalize on long term, like it takes years and years to do that.

Yeah.

And, you know, a person that wants to make, he made a comment and said, well, if you want to make a million dollars overnight, you know, you're not going to do that.

I'm like, actually, I did.

And I showed him the stock market.

Yesterday I was up.

260 something thousand.

And the day before I was up 760,000.

So I'm like, well, I did make a million dollars overnight just now, but it took me 30 years of prep to do that.

Right.

And if you don't want to do the prep and you don't want to do the little boring and dirty things, then how would you do that?

Yeah, it is a childish way of thinking about it.

Also, a million dollars isn't what it used to be, too.

I say that all the time.

You can't live off that these days.

You can buy a great parking spot in Hong Kong.

That's about it.

Yeah, it's really nothing.

I mean, I just did this calculator where it shows you how much money you need to make in order to like retire.

And they're saying the average person needs $30 million now with inflation factored into it.

Inflation is going to be a lot higher in our lifetime than it has been historically.

So the second half of my life, I expect inflation to be much higher than the first half.

Wow.

That's scary.

Inflation is so bad that...

Inflation is a tax on stupid people.

Inflation is an additional tax that

inflation only comes from one place.

There's only one group of people that can print money, and that's the government.

So when the government says inflation came from anywhere else, it's beyond nonsensical.

The only people, you have a monopoly on the currency.

So if there's inflation, it came from the government printing extra currency or Federal Reserve Bank expanding their balance sheet, et cetera.

They call quantitative easing.

And you know, this never happened before

1913.

And

in the past 110 years, the currency has been devalued 98%.

So if you were a millionaire at that time, so people use the term millionaire like it means something.

And a millionaire 100 years, 110 years ago, that was significant wealth.

And today you'd have to have $50 million to have the equivalent spending power that a millionaire did a bit over 100 years ago.

Wow.

That is crazy.

And that's not like a guesstimate.

That's the math.

That's the math with inflation, 98%.

So why before 1913 was there no inflation, you think?

Well, you still had a gold standard.

This is even before the Bretton Woods Act.

But

that's when the Federal Reserve Bank was formed where you could start playing games with the currencies and

creating inflation.

Dang, so it's all manipulated.

I wonder if this happens in in every country.

It happens in every failing country.

Well, over the history of time, every currency has failed other than gold.

So that's pretty concerning.

I agree.

So that means a dollar one day might fail.

Will.

You think so?

I think you just said it pretty clearly that historically that

that's been the pattern 100% of the time.

I wouldn't expect it to be any different.

Right.

Why are we engaging in behaviors that are more responsible than other countries yet?

Or

why would it be different here?

Just all sorts of absurdities that we do with the currency here.

Yeah, you saw the new plan Biden announced?

He has a plan?

I wasn't aware of that.

$1.5 trillion loan or something?

I don't know this one.

They spend a trillion every hundred days now.

I don't know what this trillion is for.

That's crazy, man.

So that being said, how much of your wealth do you store in just physical fiat currency?

Very little.

A few hundred thousand.

Okay.

I like to have a few hundred thousand in cash laying around.

But

I think if you have more than that, it doesn't make sense.

I'd rather have assets, like infrastructure assets.

So real estate, stocks, companies?

Mostly stocks.

I managed real estate.

I had my own properties for a long time.

I still own several properties, but as far as rental properties,

it's good business if you're starting off, if you need to make

your first million or first few million.

That's cool.

Long term, it's really quite an annoying grind to manage rental properties.

I've heard.

And people idealize that, like, oh, it's just free cash flow.

You can just rent the house and the rent just comes.

And they don't understand all the human things that go with that.

And, you know, and governmental things as well of,

you know, you can't do this, you can't do that, or different code things.

Some of them make good sense and some of them are nonsensical.

So yeah, that's a great way to get started with some money.

But if you have a decent chunk of money, I think the stock market's amazing.

I love the stock market.

And how is someone like you able to crush the stock market?

Because 80% of the stocks are owned by five companies, right?

Five hedge funds?

You're not going to have an advantage overnight and like, you know,

algorithms or, you know, I'm not going to write better code than those funds can hire the best PhDs and the best computer scientists in the world to create whatever algorithm they want to.

So as far as when I hear somebody say they're going to be a day trader, I just think, oh, you want to be bankrupt.

I understand.

But usually those people are very committed to their bankruptcy.

So

okay.

I just think longer term, it's kind of what we said a few minutes ago.

It's like, well, what's out of favor right now that's likely to be considerably valuable in the future?

Right.

And you see things that are, you know, in 2020, you could buy,

there's a lot of energy companies that were

10%,

7% of what they're currently trading for, 25%, you know, things that had wonderful balance sheets that are 25% what they're currently trading for.

And, you know, when you, do you think energy is going to be popular in the future?

Do you think people will like electricity?

Probably.

I think it'll remain popular.

I like to buy very boring things that, you know, in two or three or four or five years are probably going to be worth a lot more money.

Got it.

Did you catch the NVIDIA wave?

I don't care about whatever the next trendy thing is.

Really?

Nvidia popped off, man.

AI?

It's up 20x.

Yeah.

Did you see AI coming at all?

I'm not a tech nerd now.

Okay.

So you just stick to

what you know.

Yeah.

Which is great advice that said.

Worked out pretty good for Warren Buffett.

Yeah.

Doing okay for me so far.

Yeah, because you're at the point now where you don't need to chase crazy risk-return ratios.

I think what I'm doing is less risky than what it's a lot less risky than holding cash.

Yeah.

If you hold cash, you're for sure you're losing money with the inflation that we talked about.

And

if you buy an index, then you're guaranteed an average return if you buy an S ⁇ P, you know, ETF or something like that.

And

I bought Class A malls.

I buy high-quality real estate through the stock market through REIT's real estate investment trusts.

I buy boring things like Macy's or Kohl's or Nordstrom when they were beat up.

And, you know, I made a lot of money doing little things like that or energy stocks.

Nice.

Nice.

Yeah, I think people overcomplicate making money and they do a lot of analysis and read the news and all this stuff.

But you're keeping it simple, which I like.

I spent nine years in university, so I went to University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, which was the number one ranked graduate school for business in our country.

So I can do all the nerd analysis, but

you can't do math better than the computer can.

I can do math very well, extremely well, but my classmates can too.

So, you know, and the computers can too.

So, I just don't think you have an advantage there.

Like, it's important to understand to be able to read financial statements.

If you can't read the financial statements, you don't know what's happening.

But then you also have to think about human behavior.

Like, well, how are the crazy humans likely to behave over time?

And where is the mispricing

between

asset fundamentals and human behavior?

You could buy Macy's a few years ago, 2020, you could buy Macy's for $4.50.

And it was trading for 23% of their book value of what the assets were worth.

And anyway, I did the math, I'm like,

if you pay 23 cents on the dollar, most of their portfolio is real estate.

So if you said the brand name was worth nothing, if you looked at their credit card company, If you looked at their, they have a beauty line called Blue Mercury.

And if you looked at their primary asset was their real estate, if you looked at those assets and you thought the brand name is worth nothing, which is silly because it's the number 10 retail website in the country at that time,

you buy it for 23 cents on the dollar.

And it's gone up considerably since then.

It's up over 400% since then.

Wow.

Interesting pick, because a lot of people thought retail was going away.

I don't believe that.

You don't believe shopping malls will go away?

Do you think that shopping is going to fall out if women won't go shopping in the future?

Definitely not.

I think women are going shopping.

Yeah, I think women are going to spend all of their disposable money and

retail of various kinds, shopping and entertainment.

And historically, they tend to get some subsidies from men and spend some of that money too.

Yeah, they got a lot from men.

Yeah.

Yeah, you think.

Yeah.

You got kids?

No, that's not for me.

No?

Interesting.

I like business more than kids.

Wow.

So you chose business over family?

Yeah, I guess.

Wow.

So what do you think of that balance, though?

Like a lot of people recommend just balancing that instead of going all in on one or the other.

Yeah,

if you want to be poor, I think balance is a great idea.

Interesting.

But a lot of top...

Let me kick back at this, because a lot of top entrepreneurs do have a a woman.

I have a long-term girlfriend.

Okay, you just didn't want kids.

Yeah.

Okay, fair.

Interesting.

I don't know.

I think I want kids, man.

I didn't tell anybody else to not have kids.

I just said it's not for me.

Yeah.

Was that from like early age you always wanted that decision or it kind of changed?

I never had that calling.

I just, I never felt,

yeah, it's not for me.

I like to travel.

I like to have my freedom to do the things I want to do.

I don't want to, it sounds like hell to me to have

a kid squawking and get to wake up and take care of it.

So

a lot of people like that and that's great.

And I hope they're happy with it.

And it's just not for me.

I feel that.

Now growing up, I know you had a

pretty poor upbringing, right?

Yeah, I didn't have the best mother.

She was not very attentive.

Maybe that's my decision to not have kids.

Mom wasn't very attentive.

There'll be some trauma there, man.

We've got to dive into this.

I'll play around with it.

You know, dad wasn't there much.

And then he went to prison for a lot of my childhood for drug trafficking.

Wow.

So,

yeah, I didn't have a, you know, I kind of was in charge of the house or took care of myself since I was 10 or so.

Yeah, so I became a good problem solver because of that.

That helped with a lot of things that made my, it really sucked at the time.

but a lot of things that helped make my life good later.

So it's not at all a bad experience, but

there's plenty of people.

Everybody's got a sad story about something.

So I don't think it's mine so special or unique.

But

yeah, I think there's plenty of things at the time that were unpleasant.

That later on,

some of the problem-solving things that I developed or awareness about human behavior, things like that, helped me an awful lot in business later.

So you had to grow up very quick.

Interesting.

Yeah, that definitely played a role in your mindset.

Of course.

So did you want to go to college?

Because you said you went for nine years?

Yeah, I went to, well, you know, I was a high school dropout, and then I went to community college, and then I got a scholarship, a 50% scholarship to go to a good private school to finish my bachelor's degree.

And I hung out there for a lot longer than I needed to.

They gave me a four-year scholarship.

I'm a nerdy guy, so I'm happy to take extra classes and play around with that.

And

then later I went to graduate school for MBA.

Okay.

Now I feel like there's a new narrative for people my age about college.

How do you feel about people not wanting to go?

You know, I used to think that was ridiculous.

I used to think it's a terrible idea.

And when I look at it today, and I'm not politically correct at all, I think it's for extraordinarily naive or low IQ individuals.

And

you know, when I see the things that are, you know,

I had to, I hesitate to say being taught, you know, but the things that people are learning in college today is so much of it is so useless or even counterproductive.

So, you know, when I went to school, it was still, I'm old enough, that, you know, a university was a place that you went where smart people

congregated to share intelligent ideas and argue a bit and look for like, you know, a truth or a better way or a better path, you know.

Right.

Like a mastermind.

Yeah.

And now it's a place where dumb people go to get dumber.

So,

yeah, I don't think I'd go to college today.

Wow.

What do you think think changed within, because this is only 30, 40-year period.

It's not like it's...

I'm not that fucking old.

It's maybe 20, 30.

My bad.

I'm 44.

Okay, so 20.

20-year period.

No, I mean, I think that

there's an extreme bias in the people that are

supposedly educating young people.

And

this political correct stuff is just nonsense.

If anybody that values political correctness over factual correctness deserves the the terrible outcomes they're about to experience in life.

So

when you turn that university experience into

you're not allowed to say this, you're not allowed to think that, versus

it should be a place for open thought and open discussion.

Yeah.

I saw on Patrick Bett David's show, I think he said almost 100% of education is owned by the left.

Yeah.

I mean, it's so bad that

Yeah, you know, I mean, I'm not a Republican, but I'd say I'm, you know, financially conservative.

I'd say I'm very socially liberal in the sense that I don't give give a shit what people do.

Like, pursue your happiness, enjoy your life.

I don't care what people do.

But don't ask me to pay the bill for their mistakes.

You know,

I don't think you and I should have to pay the bill for other people's mistakes.

Right.

And I don't think they owe me anything either.

Nobody owes me a cell phone.

Nobody owes me rent.

Nobody owes me medical care.

I don't think anybody owes me anything.

But I also don't think I owe them anything.

Right.

So you're a believer, just get your own.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Have your talent get your own.

That's what a competent person should do.

A respectable person should do.

Yeah.

No, I agree.

I don't like when I'm leeching off people.

It

feels like I didn't deserve it almost.

They don't deserve it.

Yeah.

And when you have an ethos of people that are very undeserving and try to rationalize why they deserve your wealth, why they deserve your hard work,

it's literally

a philosophy of slavery that you and I are supposed to work hard and then give

our earnings to someone who doesn't deserve it.

Right.

50% of our earnings.

Yeah, more in some states.

Yeah.

Cali, 60% plus.

New York.

It is pretty wild.

And then you see where it goes to and you're like, what the hell?

I never complain about taxes.

I don't mind paying for things like infrastructure, military, police.

I kind of like the idea that the U.S.

has the best military in the world.

I like that.

I don't mind paying my portion of that.

No problem.

But to your point, that some of the spending is so absurd is for things that like...

No one would do this with their own money.

No one would do this with their own money.

Yeah, I wish you could kind of choose where it went to, like maybe a category at least.

I've had that thought at different times, and I don't know that it works.

Well,

it would work in the sense that you and I are thinking of it, that some absurd programs just simply wouldn't be funded because no one would donate money to do those things.

Right.

Yeah, for sure.

There's a lot of those programs right now.

On your website, it says financial success is a lifestyle choice.

It is a lifestyle choice to become smarter and work harder.

And I mean, the only way to get in hell of life is you're going to have to be smarter or harder working than your competition, hopefully both.

So I do think it's a lifestyle choice.

I think millionaire, as we discussed, a million dollars isn't what it used to be, but

being a millionaire in a first world country is absolutely his lifestyle choice.

And being poor is also a lifestyle choice.

Yeah, I think people would get offended by that quote, but I think it makes sense.

I don't give a shit what those people think.

They don't think much at all, actually.

Yeah, there's a lot of programming, right?

A lot of bots right now.

A person who would argue with that statement is quite literally doesn't think much at all they just have you know very little faith in their competency it's the group of people that we were just talking about that that think that um you know someone who's industrious and productive and works hard is somehow bad right and i owe them health care or something yeah no no i don't and a lot of that is programmed

you know i i agree and you know um

A lot of public school systems,

you mentioned leftist programs and universities, and that starts through the public school systems.

The unions control a lot of that.

And there's a lot of

communication in that vein that

welfare is good and

somebody else should be paying for your expenses in life.

It's like, you know, come on, man.

Yeah, they teach you some wild stuff.

I was taught by my accountant to contribute to my IRA, which is useless.

It pretty much is, yeah.

Can't touch it until 65.

By the time inflation kicks in, that money is worthless.

I have very little money in those type of retirement accounts.

Yeah, it just doesn't make sense.

Why would you lock up your money for 40, 50 years?

I have IRAs.

I don't have 401k.

But I have

a traditional IRA, Roth IRA.

And I have the same opinion about it.

If that's what you're relying on is your whatever $6,000 or $7,000 a year that you can contribute and grow over time.

If that's what you're relying on for your retirement, you're going to have a very sad retirement.

Yeah, for sure.

Did you ever have a 9 to 5 job growing up?

I quit my my last job in January 1999.

I was a lowly manager at Walmart.

Walmart.

I was 19 years old managing Walmart employees.

Wow.

And

I didn't think that was my best opportunity in life.

And this January of 2024, I needed an excuse to buy a Rolls-Royce.

So I kind of always wanted one.

And I thought that's a...

Not a good reason, but a fun excuse to, I'm like, well, let me go buy a custom Phantom and the extended one with a a lot of customization.

So,

I spent $800,000 on a car to celebrate my 25th year of unemployment.

Wow.

I didn't know they went out that much.

Yeah, I just bought a G-Wagon last December, just same reason.

A little tax write-off.

But yeah, I was never

too materialistic.

I definitely went through a watch phase, but watches, you could argue, are an asset.

Yeah, I mean, you can sell a watch and make a profit on it, probably.

Yeah, but there is that allure that a lot of people fall into with materialistic cars cars and objects, you know.

Live whatever life you want.

Yeah.

I think the most important thing that money buys is your freedom.

You don't have to spend time with people you don't want to.

You don't have to agree with nonsensical arguments from people that you don't want to.

Right.

If you showed up to your

job and

if you don't have much savings or much wealth, then maybe you're going to go along with whatever your employer says.

Like, all right, you know, Bob now identifies as Susan.

You're going to call Bob Susan from now on

and use, you know, preposterous pronouns.

Now, I don't care if Bob wants to change his name to Susan.

Cool.

I might even call Bob Susan.

I'm like, all right, your name's Susan now.

I'm probably not going to hang out with that person.

They're like, all right, Susan, peace.

Bye.

But I'm not going to agree to say these ridiculous pronouns and

engage in a delusion of like, you know,

she, her, whatever.

No, if you have enough money, you don't have to participate in that nonsense.

Right.

You know, they say, we're going to cancel you.

We're going to this, that, we're going to throttle your accounts.

We're going to cancel you.

Fuck you.

Yeah.

Well, as a boss, they're making requirements.

You have to hire certain genders and races and all this if you're a public company.

I just think it's ridiculous.

How about hire the best people so like the doors don't fall off the jets?

Agreed.

And that's why I'll never want to go public no matter what I do.

Yeah.

It's not worth it.

I'm not in a position where I'm growing a company that would be a public company, but I've built good lifestyle companies, have very good income from that.

If I didn't have that, I'd have a great income from my investments.

I don't have to do anything if I don't want to.

But I still

like solving puzzles and solving problems, and I like helping my clients a lot.

So I really enjoy what I do.

But

I would just revert back to what we said about wealth creation.

More than, you know, I have a Maybach.

I have the Rolls Race is coming in a few months.

It takes six to eight months to deliver, they said.

But I don't care about material stuff so much, you know, but live comfortably.

But the most important thing is your freedom, that you don't have to participate in somebody else's delusions.

You don't have to,

you can spend your time as you wish.

If you want to go travel somewhere, you could go travel somewhere, stay in a nice place, feel pretty comfortable.

So, after leaving Walmart, how long did it take you to achieve what you consider freedom?

Oh, it's you know, only

15 years or so.

Oh, okay.

So, it was a grind.

Yeah.

I thought it'd be quicker than that.

Um, I had a, I had my first million dollars when I was 29, just after my 29th birthday.

And with inflation,

I don't know, maybe that's 1.5 or 1.6 million today or something.

And then in my early 30s,

32, 33, that was about 4 million.

And then it was kind of a slow grind to about 11.

And then the 2020 recession happened, and I got to...

to multiply it that nicely through the hysteria of 2020 2021.

And

there's plenty of people that are richer than me.

Most of them are older than me, but I'm in the middle of 70s right now.

And I have 100 million in my 40s still, I would think.

And again, I'm not telling somebody else, you have to be a millionaire.

You have to be rich.

Be poor if you want to.

But I've just said it's a lifestyle choice.

That was the original question that you mentioned.

It's like

Yeah, it's kind of hard to go make uh a hundred million.

It's probably an effort most people don't want to make.

That's fine.

But you know, make enough money that you're you're actually happy with your life.

And, you know,

only rich people can afford groceries now.

For real.

When I go to Whole Foods now, it's like 300 bucks.

Everything's 300 bucks.

That's not like a big shop.

When I was a kid, which is only 40 years ago, it's not so old.

But when I was a kid, $100 was like a huge shopping cart of food.

Oh, I bet.

At Costco, you could do a lot with $100 back in the day.

Yeah.

And now, you know, $100 is like you could go to Costco and buy like a filet mignon, like a long piece of five pounds of filet mignon or something.

That's crazy.

Nothing else.

And you can't even trust certain groceries with the quality of food these days, too.

I bought a bunch of crab legs.

It was quite a lot.

It was a bit ridiculous.

But we bought about 50 pounds of crab and about 100 pounds of meat, and it was over $5,000.

From Costco?

Yeah.

It's one shopping cart.

It's all premium stuff.

It's nice filet mignon and the big king crab and nice rearby steaks.

So it's all premium stuff, but

it's over $5,000 with checks.

God is crazy, man.

One shopping cart.

I kind of did that just to make the point of like, you know, if you fill the shopping cart with premium stuff, it's kind of expensive.

Yeah.

No, it's it's a shame.

You gotta have money to eat healthy these days in America at least.

Yeah, I agree.

It's pretty wild.

In Europe, you can eat a lot better.

I I like Europe because the food quality is actually good and you can eat the pasta and not feel heavy.

Do you travel a lot right now?

Um I have in the past.

I've been to over 60 countries and uh flew cu I don't know a little over two million miles.

Nice.

So I used to fly internationally quite a lot and spend five, six months a year in other countries.

I've been spending more time domestic.

I go to Europe once in a while still, but

I don't hate it.

But I wanted to be in more better fitness routines for like MMA training and weightlifting.

And if you're changing time zones week after week after week, it's a lot more difficult to do that.

Can't be Vegas for fight training.

Yeah, I have a lot of friends over here that are fighters.

And I have a I built my own gym that a lot of them come to train with me in Chicago as well.

And we have a studio and gym over there.

Nice.

Are you looking to fight?

Or are you just...

I'm 44, man.

I'll be 45 soon.

Tyson's fighting.

I don't want to say anything negative.

Tyson's getting a good paycheck.

Yeah.

Shout out to Mike Tyson.

Good for you, Mike.

So you just do it more just as a health, holistic thing to stay in shape?

I train like a pro fighter, and I train with a bunch of pro fighters.

I train like a pro fighter, but it's not a career.

Even there, you don't make that much money doing it.

Yeah, unless you're John Jones, you're not really making millions like that.

Very few people.

No, that's true.

I was with his coach last night.

And

yeah, I mean, John can, you know, John's 24 or 25 and 0, basically.

He lost one fight technically, but he knocked the guy unconscious and then was disqualified for like an illegal strike.

So

I think of him as being undefeated.

And

yeah,

if you're the best fighter in the world ever, John Jones, then maybe you can demand 10 million or something for a fight.

Yeah, Dana White has him as the GOAT.

Do you consider him the GOAT as well?

I do.

I think it's hard to argue differently.

Yeah, I have him as mine too.

I mean, some people say Khabib, but I think John's beaten tougher opponents.

I've met Khabib, and I know his manager well.

Khabib's a nice man.

I have nothing negative to say about him, but

I don't think he's done what John Jones has done.

Agreed.

You interview a lot of fighters on your show, right?

Yeah, I've done quite a few.

What drew you to the fight world so heavily?

You know, it's the last group of people that aren't full of shit.

It's the last group of people that are they're very performance-minded.

They have to be honest with themselves.

You know, it's an individual sport.

It's not like a team sport.

So you have to go in a cage and

do some very tough things.

It's not enough to be like a tough person, psychologically tough, physically tough.

By the time you've done enough training for 10 or 20 years to have a very high-level skill set,

you have injuries that accumulate over time, etc.

And

you don't get to go in there and make excuses.

You're in there by yourself and outcomes are very clear.

And

people that make a lot of excuses don't fight at the highest levels, you know.

For sure.

Yeah, you've got to take accountability, which is something people seem to lack these days.

Yeah.

I think there's people,

you could say plenty of things about amateur fighters or lower level, you know, people that made it to the UFC and they're going to have two or four fights and then they're going to go manage a Denny's or whatever it might be.

But the people that made it to the higher levels there and stuck around for 10 years or something, those are people that have a high level of personal responsibility and accountability.

They're very reliable.

They tend to keep their word consistently.

And I have a lot of friends that are that way.

I have a lot of respect for those people.

Ali, have you met McGregor yet?

Well, there's a conflict there that a guy named Pauli Malinagi was my boxing coach for,

I don't know, 14 months or so.

And they have a significant beef with one another.

Really?

I've been offered...

two and a half times to interview McGregor, and

I don't need to spend time with my friends' enemies.

Wow, so you're very loyal.

I am.

Okay, that's a good skill.

Dana's known for being loyal as well.

I have nothing personally against McGregor.

I have nothing bad to say about the guy, but

great marketer.

Yeah.

Made a lot of money over there.

Great marketer.

But we just have a conflict that way.

Yeah, I think he's fighting Chandler.

I don't know if they announced it yet.

Chandler coming up.

I know Mike Chandler.

I've trained with him.

I've done interviews with him.

He stayed with me.

He's a good man.

Nice.

Who do you got winning that fight, if it happens?

It could go either way.

Could go either way.

Jandler's going to be.

He hasn't fought for a couple of years by that time.

And

he trains hard.

I hope Connor's training hard.

I'm sure he is.

He looks pretty fit.

It could go either way.

It's going to be an exciting fight.

They're both pretty action-oriented people.

Both tend to

use a lot of energy in the first couple rounds and get exhausted later.

So,

you know, probably won't go to decision.

Could.

I hope not.

Probably won't go go to decision.

I want to see it done quick.

Any up-and-coming fighters you got your eye on that you think can really take it off?

I'll give a shout out to the homie Brendan Allen.

He's a young guy still in his twenties that

I think he's got a main event coming up.

What's that?

This weekend, he's got a main event in Atlantic City.

So

I mean, I mean, no, that's not true.

That's

that's next week.

It's a Apex.

Next week.

Okay.

Next week in Las Vegas.

So yeah, he's he's he may be ranked number ten right now or something like that at one hundred eighty five, but he's doing very well and has good momentum and has the right type of mindset or personality to perform well.

Nice.

I've been keeping my eye on Sean O'Malley.

I saw him climb the ranks and he's number one now.

What do you think of him?

I don't much.

I went to his fight in Miami.

He beat Cheeto.

I think he's very talented.

I don't like his outward persona.

I'm not a fan of his outward persona.

But I think behind the scenes, I think he's a lot more hardworking and

responsible and respectable than his outward persona suggests.

You wouldn't be able to get those results without being very consistent and diligent and intelligent in the background.

So I think that's mostly an outward marketing thing that he's doing.

I think so, too.

I think he followed Connor's path a little bit,

that wild side.

I could see that.

You know, the Brashrat brothers, there's a couple of kids out here that

they came from London.

I think they

came from Middle middle eastern country pakistan or afghanistan first and then they were in london for some time those guys work really hard they're smart they work hard they pay attention to detail i think they're going to do very well cool keep an eye on them ufc 300 coming up will you be there no i won't went to the last four weeks i've been at the fights and i got a couple other obligations the next couple weeks okay

uh anything else you got coming up anything you want to promote or close off with um

Yeah, I think for, you know, if there's an introductory program they have called the Ten Commandments of Wealth, if somebody's serious about, you know, understanding just good basic fundamentals to

go from being an employee to an entrepreneur and maybe entrepreneur to an investor, that'd be a great place to get started.

Just check out my YouTube channel.

It's going on YouTube or Instagram.

And

plenty of little entertaining clips in there that also are informative and can help somebody

orient in the right direction to do a bit better for themselves.

Perfect.

Choose prosperity over poverty.

Love it.

We'll link it below.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Take care.

Hang out.

Yeah, thanks for watching, guys.

See you next time.