Investing in Top Golf, Graduating from Harvard and Raising 5 Sons I Erik Weir DSH #459

And they would basically buy the land and build the building and then sign a lease with Topcoff.

So I flew with my team.

Actually, originally I flew and I met a guy actually in Vegas.

I met the chairman.

And I said, over dinner, and I said, I'd like to be the worldwide exclusive financier of Topcoff.

Wow.

And he's like, well, that's a big ask.

And he goes, how much money do you have?

And I guess, as of right now, not even $1.

He laughed.

He goes, I like your style.

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All right, guys, I'm here with Eric Weir here today.

My man, Top Golf legend, huh?

How'd you get involved with Top Golf?

Man, it's a funny story.

So I went to Top Golf, had an appointment cancel, and I was with one of my sons.

We went by to visit a Top Golf.

And I'm like, this was so much fun.

And we stayed longer, and we spent more money than we planned on it.

And I'm like, I would love to be involved in this at some point.

And then a little time went by.

I went to another Top Golf.

And this time was Father's Day.

And I brought my dad and I brought all my kids.

And it's one of the few times that all of us had a great time doing the exact same thing.

Yeah, I want to get involved in this.

And then he started building one in my hometown.

And I learned that at that time, Topgolf had a company that would provide capital.

And they would basically would do what's called reverse build a suit.

And they would basically buy the land and build the building and then sign a lease with Topgolf.

So I flew with my team.

Actually, originally I flew and I met a guy actually in Vegas.

I met the chairman and I said, over dinner, and I said, I'd like to be the worldwide exclusive financier of Topgoff.

Wow.

And he's like, well, that's a big ask.

And he goes, how much money do you have?

And I goes, as of right now, not even $1.

He laughed.

He goes, I like your style.

And I was with my son.

He goes, so you flew all the way out here to ask me to finance Topgoff without any preparation or capital.

I'm like, well, give me a chance and we'll pull it off.

I said, we've raised capital before and I've a history of an investment bank.

And I said, if we have exclusivity, I think we can add value and also help you raise capital.

And then we partnered with other people because everything you do, you can't do by yourself.

It takes a great team, another organization.

And then we began to finance five in the U.S.

Wow.

And then

I kept asking the management team.

The then CEO, hey, I'd love to be involved in Europe and actually have a franchise.

And in their great wisdom, they didn't give it to me.

So they gave it to another group and I approached them.

I'd love to be your capital partner.

And that's how I've gotten involved.

So we're capital partners and our goal is to build 20 locations in Europe.

Wow.

I didn't even know they were worldwide.

I thought it was a U.S.

thing.

No, they're worldwide now.

And actually, they're in the Middle East and there's some in China.

And our location, the first one we opened up, is in Oberhausen, Germany.

Nice.

So if someone wants to franchise one, they look very expensive to build.

How much would that cost?

It depends on the materials of where you are in the world, but roughly they're above the land.

They're between

30 to 40 million.

Wow.

Above land.

That's a lot, but you probably make it back within a certain amount of time.

They're very profitable.

Nice.

Yeah, because once it's up,

the cost is, I guess it's just labor and cleaning and making it.

It's labor, it's material.

I guess when you look at most things, it's people are your largest cost.

And then with Top Coffee, you have a revenue of food and beverage, and you also have a revenue if you actually rent the lanes during certain hours.

You said you had experience raising capital before this, which is a very valuable skill.

How did you get into that, and how much did you raise it first?

Well, it depends

how I got into it.

It was being in participation.

So, I was with a major investment bank, and it was in San Francisco, and it was during the dot-com and software growth phase of the 90s.

And I was a vice president with a particular company, and I would call on technology companies and try to meet with them, and I would bring our head of investment banking with us.

And I witnessed how how they would raise capital, how they would structure transactions and deals, and the benefit and value they created for entrepreneurs.

Like, yeah, wow, I've got an idea, but I need capital.

And then when you find, if you can find

competence and capital and creativity together, it's magic.

And that's what I learned in that process.

And I did that with a company without my own capital.

And then after I left and went up my own business, it was then Weird Capital Management in 1999.

We began doing individual real estate deals, like a single house individually.

Then I did a multifamily and then self-storage and then ultimately multi-use properties, warehousing, and then ultimately Topgoff.

Goddess.

You worked your way up.

It took time.

And

like anything else, you go, you'll have a setback and you keep persevering.

And then as you execute, you get more opportunities to oftentimes execute on a larger scale.

Right.

And do you invest in revenue companies or have you done any pre-revenue?

I've done pre-revenue, I've done post-revenue, and usually now what I look for is a CEO or somebody who has clarity of what they want to accomplish.

They know exactly where they want to end up, and they just need a little bit of capital to get there.

Right.

And they have a clear business plan of who they'll bring in to help them along the way.

Okay.

So you do care about the plan?

Huge on plan because this is going to sound unusual.

Most people think that capital is the hard thing to get or money because a lot of us think about lack.

Like, I don't have it in my pocket, so I don't have it.

But actually, actually, getting to clarity is a hard thing.

Clarity is the hardest thing to get to.

And if you get to clarity, clarity attracts capital, it attracts people who are competent and people who are creative.

So, clarity is the most important thing.

I love that.

I used to have the mindset of, yeah, accessing capital was hard.

But once you establish some connections, some credibility, some experience, it's actually not that bad.

It's not that bad, no.

I just got 0%, $200,000 on credit cards like a few months ago.

Oh, wow.

Just because I have a good business record, good bank statements.

Sure.

And yeah, 0% for 12 months.

No way.

That's fantastic.

In this environment, that's almost unheard of.

I know, right?

Especially in this environment because I just took out a car loan and that was 10%.

And that's like unheard of.

Whoa.

Yeah.

Those used to be like 0% to 2%.

No, they'd almost pay to take a car.

0% for three years.

I know.

I kind of wish I just bought it out at this point because that's so much.

Exactly.

Exactly.

But for 2024, 25, are you specifically investing in certain areas?

That's a a great question.

It's hard to you've got to think it's really hard to predict the future.

And you want to try to predict consumption.

So for example, if you're in an area that's grown a lot of apartments and a lot of residential, then you want to look and say, are these people have adequate place for self-storage?

So that might be something.

A lot of things now, you'll see the tunnel car washes are popping up everywhere.

So you look at models and trends and see if there's a way that you could be involved.

And people are really changing the way they consume entertainment.

So with Top Golf, people like more of the interactive.

They like it as a group.

You can have food and beverage and laughter.

And I mean, I've heard of, I don't know how many hundreds and thousands of people have gone, and the experience they have at a Top Golf is really among their most favorite experiences.

And if you look at the dollars people spend on entertainment, they look for units of joy, you know, basically per dollar spent.

And at TopGolf, people just have a fantastic time.

Right.

The producer said, could you talk more into the mic?

Okay.

But yeah, Topgolf's great because I went to a networking event there last week.

Okay.

And it was honestly more fun than going to a networking dinner.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Because the golfing, you got the food.

The food was actually good.

Right.

The food's gotten better.

Yeah, the food has gotten better.

And what's fun is a new golfer, you can go and have a good time at Topgolf.

And in fact, in Germany, if you want to be a golfer, you typically have to have a license.

You have to be familiar with it and pay a fee.

Wow.

And when Topgolf came to Germany, it made golf available to everybody.

So you'll see people playing in jeans and high-heel shoes and just having a great time.

And what was so fun about Topgolf is much like bowling.

You don't have to be a league bowler to enjoy bowling.

You can just go your first time and just have a great time.

And top golf is the same way.

Absolutely.

Did you get a master's degree at Harvard?

I did.

I saw that in a podcast and that stood out to me because a lot of my guests actually don't graduate college.

Right, right, right, right.

So is that something your parents forced you to or are you doing?

No, no.

It was a goal that I had, actually.

So

it was something that I wanted to graduate from an Ivy League school.

And it was something that

it came from within, right?

But when I was there, I met a lot of people, networked.

It was a great experience.

It was very challenging.

And it's been very, very helpful.

But a lot of people today, if you have, going back to clarity, if you have clarity, you may not need to spend the time to do that.

Right.

I feel like it's changed a lot in the past 20, 30 years with the internet, with social media, courses, mentors.

College seems seems to be losing its value a bit.

Do you agree with that?

I do.

I do.

So what's not losing its value

is focus and getting the clarity and taking responsibility, accountability.

You know, that's not losing its focus.

But as far as school, our methodology, oftentimes they're a stepping stone or a checkbox.

They might not be what a person actually needs.

So if you're going to be an entrepreneur and depending on the industry, you may not need a degree, but you might need an understanding of accounting.

You might need an understanding of marketing.

And you could take a master's class online or you could you know go go uh and be an intern for somebody and pick that up so there's lots of ways to get education outside of the university system right so when you graduated what was that next step were you in debt Are you interested in coming on the Digital Social Hour podcast as a guest?

Well, click the application link below in the description of this video.

We are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about business and life.

Click the application link below and here's the episode, guys.

I was not in debt.

I actually worked my way through college and paid my own way.

And then I was not in debt.

But,

you know, I didn't really have a plan B.

So when I got out, it was like, I really got to make a go at this.

And if you read my book, I had a car wreck at age five.

And I had a traumatic brain injury, which I had a stutter.

It was really bad.

Wow.

And I started of all places at Merrill Lynch.

And back in those days, you would cold call.

And I remember the manager saying hot leads and gave me a white pages.

And I thought, I'll start in the back of the W's.

And all my clients had like crazy names and I couldn't pronounce them.

But I'd call, I'd say, hi, it's Eric

Mayor Lynch.

And I get hung up on almost all the time, right?

So what turned out is that was such a hard thing to deal with.

But when you go and knock on somebody's office door, that was before all the no trespassing, and we'll arrest you if you show up, right?

You kind of show up and knock.

And they'll let you in and you're stuttering.

They're like, oh, come on in, relax, you know, have a seat.

And next thing you know, it ended up being a very, a big blessing in my life.

Wow.

How were you able to fix the stutter?

That's a good question also.

So I was at a church service.

I'm about 38 years old.

And a pastor was talking about be grateful for the things that you view as an impediment.

Your lack, turn it into gratitude because it has power over you

if you.

if it holds you back, right?

And for me, I was angry.

I was frustrated.

I got this wreck.

Maybe I was even mad at God, right?

And then I said, well, God, thank you.

And this was the hardest prayer I ever did.

God thank you for the stutter that has so impacted my life wow and I thought impacted negatively right and it wasn't like it went away the next day but over two or three years the stutter went away and a funny story is I did an interview with stuttering magazine and that's a thing yeah it's a thing

there's a lot of us out there I guess like like Ed Sharon did an interview like you know he stutter

yeah yeah I didn't even know that no I didn't either no but apparently he has a stutter he did an interview too but I did my interview and it was the only interview at that point where I didn't stutter.

And I felt so bad, like I'm a fake stutterer.

I'm not even stuttering right now on the interview.

But it was a big shaping event in my life.

But it really gives you gratitude and it gives you, I guess,

relatability to other people.

Yeah.

Has God always played a big role in your life?

He has.

He has.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's something I've noticed in some top-level entrepreneurs, some sort of religion or faith, actually.

Right, right.

And I think it's, you know,

believing there's purpose to life.

There's something that's bigger than you.

And also believing and really getting to gratitude.

I tell people that

your attitude will never exceed the altitude of your gratitude.

You know, so if you're grateful, you almost, those people are almost always happier, right?

They have seem of a more contented life than the people who are not grateful.

Yeah, I love that.

Gratitude's important.

I do a gratitude journal every morning.

No way.

That's so powerful.

Yeah.

Yeah, I've done it for three years straight and just write down five to 10 things I'm grateful for every single day.

Yeah.

And it's, and we all have that.

You know,

my father was in a car wreck recently and he lost some mobility.

And he's still a happy, grateful guy.

Because instead of being like missing, hey, I can't walk without a walker, he says, I'm grateful I'm alive.

Wow.

I'm grateful I can still have time with my family.

So he's actually as grateful as he was before, though his circumstance changed.

Incredible.

And that's a mindset thing because a lot of people get in a wreck, they get paralyzed, and it destroys them.

Oh, yeah,

100%.

And

I think that for me, being grateful, and there's some days we all have hard days, right?

Something bad happened, but how do you take a moment?

And the way you're doing it at night is probably the best time because you go to bed with grateful thoughts.

Yeah, I do it before bed and when I wake up, yeah.

And that's when you can really start manifesting too during those hours because your brain's in a different mode.

100%.

Yeah, I know you're also a big family guy.

I am.

Five kids.

Yeah, only five, yeah.

That's a lot, man.

All sons, yeah.

I'm proud of all of them.

Wow, all sons.

Yeah, it's fun.

And they all love top golf, too.

It's fun to go out.

We go out and we'll play green grass golf sometimes.

Yeah.

And I've got to talk to the guys.

They're a lot of us.

What's the most we can play at a time?

So

we'll rotate through, but they smack talk each other, give each other a hard time.

Nice.

And George, the little guy, he's 10.

So, yeah, it's start from 25 down to 10.

Wow.

Who's the best one in top golf?

Oh, I'm going to put me on the spot.

No, I don't know.

It depends on the day.

So, yeah.

So they're all different.

I guess

we have Harrison in Granville, he's good.

And

Matthew's

in California, he's good at it.

Patrick's in Nashville, he is.

And Wyatt's not in Virginia.

And they really, they go back and forth.

Nice.

And it depends on the day.

But whoever's having a good day, make sure they point it out to the others how much better they're doing that day.

I love that.

Wow.

Imagine having four brothers.

That'd be sick.

Oh, yeah.

It's so fun.

That's fun.

Are you educating them?

Are they going to public school?

How are you doing that?

Wow.

Another good one.

So it started off when they were younger.

They were homeschooled, right?

So the oldest one went almost, Harrison went all the way homeschooled, then went on to Furman and became a Fulbright scholar.

So

he's a very academic.

And then the second one, they went down, they went almost all the way, but not quite as much, right?

And they all went on to college afterward

because in their particular fields, that was important for them to pursue.

And the youngest one, we just don't know yet, right?

With George, yeah.

But I've always thought education was important.

Now, what I'll say is formal education may be important for some people, but educating yourself daily, whether it's master's classes or reading or points of interest, are really the most important things.

And for business, I'll say that reading books and going on to Amazon or something and searching, I want to learn about marketing, I want to learn about social media, or I want to learn about whatever.

And then reading the reviews and finding something there has probably been one of the greater sources of education.

And mentorship,

finding somebody

who is where you want to be maybe three, four, five years down the road, or maybe even further and call and say, can I have a half hour of your time?

And you'll be surprised how often people say yes.

They almost never say no and they'll spend that time with you.

And then I always say like, knowing what you now know, if you were starting exactly what you're doing now, what would you do differently?

And then really write that down because they'll give you solid advice.

Like, so I say, if you want to start an exterminating business or a home care business, find somebody who's doing that and just go spend some time with them.

And that's some of the best education you'll ever have.

It's applicable to exactly what you want to do and it's free.

It's the best.

I remember probably the first year or two of business, I learned more doing that than 18 years of school.

Yeah, exactly.

100%.

And I think that's where the debate over the value of a college education and going into debt to get it, because

it's terribly expensive right now.

And it can be a very big tool.

But you have to evaluate with clarity, again, what are you trying to get out of it?

And then where do you want to go?

Yeah, the debt's the crazy part to me because five kids, that could be a million dollars in debt if they all go to college.

Oh, absolutely.

It's a lot.

It's very expensive.

Which is crazy.

But learning is super important.

Warren Buffett reads eight hours a day, I just found out, which is nuts.

Right.

I don't know how people do that, man.

No, it's a lot.

It's just

whatever your passion is, right?

Like you may, if you look at, I think the statistics, somewhere around four hours a day on social media.

So there's time, but you can learn watching social media too, obviously.

But I think it's whatever you're trying to accomplish.

And if you

start each day with strategic thinking,

I suggest 15 minutes a day.

What today would I like to accomplish that could massively change my life?

And then where do I want to go?

Faith, family, fitness, finance, friends.

How do I get there?

Spend 15 minutes thinking about it.

And then you break your day into strategic action, like take action right away.

Then you break it into offense where you're trying to gain ground, defense, hold ground, like return phone calls, things of that nature.

And my favorite's moonshot.

Like what one thing could you attempt to do today?

Who could you call?

What could you, could you forgive somebody?

What one thing that could you do that could massively change your life if successful, right?

If you tried that every day, even if you got like 10 or 15 in a year, right?

Those are 10 or 15 things that in your view could massively change your life.

that you might not have tried otherwise.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

For me, that reminds me of just reaching out to huge guests.

Like that's a moonshot, right?

Getting huge people like Grant Cardone or Tony Robbins.

And some of them have come on.

You never know.

Right.

You just don't know, right?

But if you never made that shot, it wouldn't have happened, you know.

But you obviously took some time to think strategically, whether formally or not, what would make a massive difference for my podcast?

Getting this guest.

And then you're like, okay, well, I'm going to make an effort to get that guest.

And then, you know, maybe there were 10 people like that, but three came on, but those are fantastic odds.

Yeah.

And you got to be strategic, right?

So the way I got Grant Cardone was I saw what mutual followers we had.

I had three of those guys on the show first.

No way.

So he was able to see the podcast before he, before I knew about it, right?

And then that's how I got him because he already knew about the pod.

That's so smart.

That's that, and that's strategy right there.

Exactly.

Some people, they go too fast, I think, but you got to be a little strategic.

Right.

Right.

Let's talk best and worst investments.

I'm assuming best is Top Golf.

Best is Top Golf.

That's right.

Okay.

Worst one.

Oh, that's easy.

There were two,

there was an electric car company named Fisker that came out about the same time as Tesla.

And I'm like, Nat Fisker looks like they've got something going on.

Let's invest in Fisker.

And great appearance, you know, great concept.

Wrong horse.

I mean, it was a total zero.

Wow.

I feel like they might have been a little too early.

I think Tesla was able to just have enough capital to kind of stay in shape.

They were super early, too.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

But now you see Lotus, you see pretty much every dealership launching an electric car.

They are.

And I just saw on a podcast that we're going to be switching to hydrogen cars in like 10 years.

Can you imagine?

That'd be crazy.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

The change is so

it's exponential.

Yeah.

So how do you stay on top of these changes as an investor?

Because that's super important.

Yeah.

I heard a quote one time.

It says, you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same, right?

So I try to be aware of trends.

I try to, I've tried being a pioneer, like with like with Fisker, and I've done it with certain types of solar and things of that nature, where you're like, you're so far out in the leading edge that you can be wrong, right?

I had somebody say, Eric, a lot of times

the pioneers are the ones that take the losses, right?

But the guys who are like Gen 2 can do a lot, can do a lot better, and they've already can see what's going on.

So for me to stay on point, I read, just like you're saying, every day.

I watch trends.

I'm aware of what's going on in

different business journals or magazines.

And I talk to people all the time, just like you do.

What are you seeing differently?

So for me, I learned about Chat GBT early because I had some friends talking to me about it.

I'm like, hope me understand this.

And then I started playing with them.

I'm like, this is a powerful tool.

Wow.

Right.

And then it's like, okay, then you can use it for creating ideas for podcasts.

You can use it for ideas for papers, for whatever you want.

And then you'll know at the university, it's just like, you can't use chat GPT, right?

They banned it.

Yeah, they banned it.

Wow, I love that.

It's cool to see someone your age so on top of stuff because I feel like the older people,

they're a bit slower.

It's a different era.

100%.

Yeah.

But it's so much fun to me to

get technology and just study.

And how I've learned a lot is just going to YouTube.

Like, how do I do this?

And just enter it.

And I just get like, you know, 200,000 reviews.

I'm like, this guy knows exactly what's going on in this space.

And you spend five minutes and I learn learned things and like uh my wife likes to buy stuff online and i have to put it together right yeah and what i used to read the directions now i go to youtube how to assemble this

youtube university right yeah exactly i'm on youtube probably six hours a day are you really yeah podcasts audiobooks i mean videos um studying the algorithms to see what's going viral no way that's smart yeah love learn how to do that that's great absolutely so how has your relationship with money changed as you went from being broke to having you know millions of dollars?

It goes back to gratitude.

And I would say, as I was a boy, my parents taught me about generosity.

And

we went to a church and you would give a percentage away to that.

And then they were like, hey, why don't you give time, not just, you know, time, talent, treasure.

How are you generous with everything?

So do you take time to give back to others?

Are you the kind of person when clothes don't fit, you take it to goodwill so somebody else can enjoy it, right?

Or do you just keep it and everything?

That's it.

So for me, it was just

learning generosity and having it modeled for me because it's not really intuitive, right?

You have to have somebody kind of model it for you, being generous.

And what you find out is that things like possessions and money, they don't have control over you if you live in abundance mindset or you live in a mindset of generosity.

Wow, I love that because too many people are controlled by money.

Right.

You're controlled by the scarcity mentality.

And there's so many wealthy people who still are bound up by scarcity.

And in fact, they have enough for many generations, but they don't feel that way.

Right.

And oftentimes, if they were, you know, would, you know, in time, experiment with generosity and giving and helping other people, they would just feel, I think, joy and a relief even.

And then the money no longer has the control over them that maybe it does at the present time.

Yeah, because you see people, seven, eight, nine, 10-figure guys that feel like they still don't have enough.

I feel like I had enough in

probably a million.

Right.

But it's different for everyone, whatever that is.

But I didn't notice any significant changes past that number personally.

Yeah, there's a statistic, and it's somewhere around, you know, maybe it's changed inflation, but it was like $80,000, $90,000 a year, gave you the majority of the experience almost anyone would have.

And not that, you know, a million doesn't make you a little happier, a little more flexibility.

But oftentimes it doesn't really materially change anything.

And sometimes that comes with complexity in life that maybe you didn't anticipate, right?

So it takes away

some of the, maybe the more simple times that you had before.

Easily, more money, more problems, right?

Right, right.

I look back at the days where I'm grinding, sleeping on couches, and I was pretty happy then, too.

Right, right.

That's fascinating.

And I think what people try to do is remove struggle from their life.

But struggle is life.

Yeah.

And

it gives you focus, and oftentimes it gives you fulfillment.

Absolutely.

Talk to me about the book, Who's Eating Your Pie?

Yeah,

I wrote that book in 2019 during.

And I wrote it because people were just seemed really despondent, disconnected, and depressed.

And the first chapter is called Permission to Dream.

And it's like, what would you attempt to do if you could not fail?

What would you do if you had the resources, the education, the network, the capital, everything you needed?

What would you do?

And when you start dreaming that way,

you don't start with like, oh, I can't do this because I don't have the money or I don't have the education.

You start.

at the end in sight.

And say, determine where you want to go and then build the ladder down from the clouds down and watch how that changes.

Instead of building from what you know today, where would you go?

What would you do if you couldn't fail?

And then you break it into steps.

You know, what you can do right away, one week, three weeks, a month.

But there are tools in that book to help someone go from never setting a goal to set a goal to have achievement to learn about generosity, giving back, learning about investing,

all the different pitfalls.

And a lot of it I've learned from other people over the years.

Worked with so many different people and I've learned from them.

And I try to create a book that would be helpful to

people in a mass way.

Sounds great.

Sounds like it's purpose-driven.

And that's kind of the path I'm on right now, too.

So I'm going to definitely read that book.

Do you believe you can learn something from everyone or?

100%.

100%.

Some of the best advice I got was from a,

you know, was from an Uber driver.

I've learned things from an Uber driver.

I've learned things from college professors,

just about everybody.

And even children, you know, like a kid, sometimes seeing something through their eyes, like them look at a puppy or them look at something new.

You're like, man, I've lost my novelty for that or my novelty for a bumblebee or a flower or whatever.

So you can always learn from everybody.

Something special about innocence, right?

There is.

Yeah, because that's something you kind of lose as you get older.

Yeah, and you just get jaded.

You just get so beaten up and you have people taking advantage of you, or you perceive you're being taken advantage of, or you've made mistakes and had setbacks and you hold them against you.

And, you know, and I was telling people, you know, you've got to forgive other people.

And when you forgive other people, that sets a prisoner free free.

And that prisoners yourself, right?

But oftentimes you've got to forgive yourself too, right?

Of mistakes that you make,

knowing or unknowingly,

but move on because it really is baggage that keeps you from being where you could ultimately be.

Yeah.

So that being said, do you believe everyone deserves to be forgiven?

I think that, yeah, I think there is everyone deserves to be forgiven.

I don't know if deserve is the right word.

You go back to Christ.

You died for all of us, right?

My faith system.

And for the worst of us, to the best of us, right?

So that's above my pay grade, but he was like, I died for you, right?

And so I think that's a big deal.

So for me, as a person who makes mistakes and falls short frequently, to withhold forgiveness from somebody else when I've been given so much, that's the way I look at it.

So I've received a lot of that.

So why would I withhold it?

I'm similar in that regard because my father never forgave certain people and I saw it eat away at his health.

And even though I've been scammed, I've been wronged, I actually forgive those people because I don't want that mental load on me.

That's so it's actually in a way for me too, to just get it off my chest.

Yeah, I mean, it's so powerful.

And the simple things in life,

they may be hard or they may be difficult, but there's not a cost, a monetary cost.

There could be an emotional cost, right?

Not a monetary cost.

But by forgiving people, they're not consuming you.

You don't have an ulcer.

You don't have, you can sleep at night.

You're not vengeful.

You're not driven by awful thoughts, right?

But think about how your creativity is consumed

by that.

We only have so much energy, right?

If you're using your energy to hold stuff against people, it's just a bad, it's bad energy, really.

Bad energy.

I believe in karma, all that stuff, negative energies.

So I want to be as positive as possible.

Yeah.

And I could see it, honestly, because I used to have resentment.

I used to not forgive people.

And my life was a lot worse, to be honest.

Yeah.

So true.

So true.

And you see it.

Well, you know, for you to pick that up at

such a young age is fantastic, you know.

But a lot of people, they take that to the grave, you know.

It was hard to pick up.

Yeah.

If I didn't have the right mentors and the right videos to watch, I don't know if I would have, honestly.

Right.

Because it's really hard to just pick up natural.

It's not natural, really.

It's foreign because you feel you've been taken advantage of.

So why would you?

You feel like you're doing them a favor, right?

Yeah.

To let them go.

But in fact, the favor is for yourself.

And because, you know, if you believe that like the world's ready for all the karma, the world's round, you you know,

you sow and you reap, all that.

So it's really not up to you what happens to them, right?

Because we really want them to experience what we experience.

It's not up to you.

You let it go.

It's just up to you.

All you can control is releasing them.

That's all you can control.

Absolutely.

Eric, it's been fun, man.

What are you working on next?

And where can people find you?

Okay.

Yeah.

Thanks for having me on the show.

You can find me on ericweird.com.

That's E-R-I-K-W-E-I-R.com.

I continue to work on TopGolf, and I try to always meet interesting people.

Awesome.

Thanks Thanks so much for coming on, man.

Thanks for watching, guys, as always, and I'll see you next time.