Jack Selby On Favorite Podcast Guest, Traveling 100 Miles for Tinder Date & Being Sober | DSH #162

I saw one of your YouTube videos.

You walked 100 miles for a dinner day.

Is this true?

I did.

Yeah.

No way.

Yeah.

So the total distance traveled was about 150 miles.

Jesus.

Yeah.

Hitchhiking is dangerous, man.

It was horrifying.

Yeah.

It was so scary.

First time I came to Vegas.

I ate an edible, right?

My friend's like, you want to go to a magic show?

I'm like, yeah.

Like, little did I know, it was Chris Angel.

So it's a super dark room.

You walk in, there's crows flying everywhere.

And it's pitch black.

So imagine that.

That's the best thing to have, by the way.

So imagine walking into that, and you're late.

So everyone's already in their seats.

So now you have 500 people staring at you.

I didn't make it to my seat.

You didn't make it to your seat?

No.

So I collapsed, got to my room, threw up everywhere, called my girlfriend, told her I'm dying.

Welcome to the Digital Social Hour.

I'm your host, Sean Kelly.

Here with a great guest today, Jack Selby.

How's it going?

Good, man.

Thank you so much for having me.

I appreciate it.

What you been up to?

Up to today, man.

I just woke up, went to the gym, went home, showered, shaved my neck just for this, trimmed my beard.

Nice.

Yeah, and now I'm here.

It's a good start to the day, man.

Fantastic start.

Do that every day, gym in the morning?

I try to hit the gym every single morning.

I just notice myself feeling a lot better throughout the rest of the day, and I sleep better, so then it sets me up really well for the following day.

Yeah.

Yeah, I hit the gym probably 85% of the days.

Okay.

Yeah.

Nice.

Man, I met you through Nate O'Brien about a year ago.

Shout out to Nate.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What you've been working on since.

I see the podcast taking off.

Yeah, the podcast mostly.

So I was a year ago, I was doing a lot of other stuff.

So I was managing the Graham Stefan show, which is the second channel that Graham has.

It's like reactionary content.

Graham Steffen is the other business partner that I have in the whole entertainment, I guess, business that I'm in.

And I was managing that.

And I was also doing like a mentorship group and I was doing all this other stuff.

And then I dropped all of the auxiliary work that I had just to focus solely on the podcast.

So I would say in the past year, I've just kind of honed my craft on the podcast.

Nice.

That was the focus, yeah.

And talk to me about what actually goes into a podcast because people just watch it, but they don't see the behind-the-scenes work.

Oh, man, a lot.

So primarily, I would say guest selection is very crucial for the podcast.

So you have to make sure we have three criterias on the iced coffee hour.

One is, do they have a following?

Do they have business accolades?

Like have they done impressive things that they can share so our viewers can hopefully learn?

The final one is do they have a podcast or have they been on a podcast?

Because speaking in an entertaining way is kind of a skill that you can only really be taught through repetitions.

So we look to see if they've been on episodes and how good their speaking is.

Absolutely, because there's some people with insane stories, but they can't articulate it.

We've had that before on the ice coffee hour.

And we've had, we've ditched episodes before, honestly, because they were incredible people with the craziest stories, but they just can't relay their message in a really entertaining way.

Yeah, you need repetition because I remember my first few pods.

I wasn't good, honestly.

I don't think anyone is their first few.

Oh, certainly not.

No, I was horrible.

Not awful when I first started on the podcast.

So I relate to that.

Yeah, no, I literally cringe when I watch my old episodes.

Yeah.

Just that bad.

Yeah, dude.

I'm even, I'm not going to lie, I'm nervous going on other people's podcasts because usually it's me asking the questions.

So asking questions is very easy for me.

I'm very comfortable doing it, but answering them, it's like also a different skill to be completely honest.

No, it definitely is.

It's honestly harder to answer for me.

You got to come up with stuff on the spot.

Yeah, I would agree with that.

I would agree.

Asking questions is a little bit easier, but it's fun to answer them.

It's fun to be here.

So I would say that is it, would be the guest selection.

Another one is obviously post-production is usually kind of challenging.

We heavily edit our podcasts.

So we actually like remove segments.

And a lot of the times, it's kind of like putting together a puzzle.

So maybe there's a segment that doesn't make contextual sense where it lands on the the timeline and we'll grab it and then move it to a different section of the podcast to try to make it flow better.

Wow.

And it'll seamlessly, like, there'll be a section we talk about this and just snag it, move it to the end, move it to the beginning, wherever it, I would say, makes the podcast flow the best and be the most entertaining.

Wow, that's interesting because I've seen a lot of your episodes and I've never noticed any like customers.

Oh, we do that a lot.

Wow.

Yeah.

I thought it was just one take.

No, no, we take editing really seriously on ice copy, extremely serious.

And are you doing it yourself?

No.

I have an editor.

Shout out to Andrew.

Thank you for doing the great editing work that you do.

And I'll try to review them, but I do now trust Andrew very much because he's been doing it for like two years.

And I've known him for like 10.

So he knows kind of what we want in and what we want out.

Nice.

And how did you even meet Graham in the first place?

I met Graham in the first place because I was a huge fan of his channel.

So I grew up interested in finance and entrepreneurship and stuff like that.

And I just naturally found his content, absolutely loved it, got my first credit card because of him.

And from there, I just emailed him over and over and over again, basically begging him, hey, can I do anything for you?

I can provide value in any way.

Don't have a lot of skill, but I'm more motivated than anyone else you'll ever meet.

Wow.

And so finally, after like the seventh or eighth email, he got back to me.

He's like, all right, let's try this out.

Interesting.

Yeah, so I got a little bit of work, didn't get paid for it, just grinded it out, worked extremely hard.

And I was basically just data scraping through a Facebook group that he managed and banged out the work.

And he was impressed that I did it in such a short time span and then from there just got more and more work and then finally to the point of like you know dropping out of college starting the podcast and here I am wow now there's probably hundreds of people begging him for work so what do you think made you in particular stand out from the rest I mean a lot of it was timing like you can't deny the fact that there's a lot of luck in the equation but I also think he noticed that I had sent several emails over several months.

So it wasn't just like one spurt of motivation.

It was like, yo, like I'm serious about this.

It's not just like that I want to be in the industry, industry, but I want to be with you.

I like you.

And I really was in line with his mission, like spreading financial literacy.

And he noticed that through the text.

And I was very, I tried to be very thorough.

I was honestly looking back.

It's kind of cringe.

Like, I was like nearly begging him.

Like, yo, can I please do anything for you?

But yeah, like, I think it was just the consistency.

The length of time that I was reaching out and also the length of the text that I was sending.

It was pretty, pretty long.

Nice.

Yeah.

Now, you guys have been able to interview some amazing people.

Are there any that stand out to you that really shifted your perspective on anything?

So many.

I would say the Tom Billiou episode shifted my perspective a lot.

I would say the Hormosey one, the first time we had Alex Hormosey on, that shifted my perspective.

We had Jeanette McCurdy on, and she was teaching me about, or teaching us about like how rough it is to grow up a child actor.

When I was a kid, you know, you watch iCarly and you're like, oh, these kids, they seem to have it made for them.

Like, it sounds awesome.

You just walk into the studio, you rehearse some lines, and then basically you're famous.

And it sounds like all amazing,

sunshine and rainbows, as they say, but actually extremely challenging.

And putting those kids through that at such a young age, especially sometimes if it's against their will,

not a very good thing.

So, yeah, a lot of those child actors, man, they go down a dark path after they're done with the actors.

Yeah, it's sad to see.

And it's like everyone's idle growing up.

I mean, you watch those shows and you idolize like Jeanette McCurdy and you idolize, you know, Drake Bell, Josh Peck.

And then sometimes, I mean, it just screws with their head.

Like that fame and the money and the recognition, it just gets healthy.

It's probably too early of an age to be that famous and they just can't handle it.

Absolutely.

What do you learn from Hormozzi?

Hormozy?

So I like one quote that he said, which is,

how do I phrase this in an effective way?

He says, you cannot say, I will be happy or something like that.

Or you can't want things because just by virtue of wanting something, I want a million dollars, I want this, you're implying that there's a dissonance between where you're at right now and what you need to achieve in order to be fulfilled or happy.

So I like that.

And I try to eliminate the amount of wants that I have in my life because I recognize the fact that anytime I want something, I'm kind of becoming a bit of a slave to it.

Like I just worship it and do everything that I can to achieve it.

And I'm creating a implicit dissonance between where I'm at now and what I need to be happy, which I think is just mentally unhealthy.

Wow.

So you don't say I want anymore.

You say...

I try not to.

I mean, obviously there are things I want, right?

And I can't help just the natural phrase of I want this.

I want the snapper.

I want the steak or whatever when I'm out at a restaurant.

But I try not to want things in general.

Interesting.

Yeah, that's a good mindset shift to have, I think.

What about Tom Billie?

What did you learn from him?

Tom Billie was interesting, man.

A lot of relationship advice.

A lot of relationship advice.

There was one thing that he said that is kind of a hard thing to, I would say, not only contextualize, but also to articulate, which was a lot of divorces happen after 25 years.

And the reason why divorces happen after 25 years is not what you think.

A lot of people think it's because the kid's 18 and they grow up and they move out of the house and that was kind of keeping the parents together.

But it's actually because 25 years is about the amount of time where in the beginning of a relationship, two people are very aligned with interests, with values, with who they are.

You seem to know them very well.

And then after, year after year, as you grow older and mature and go down your own path, you get confirmation bias, survivorship bias, all these cognitive biases that kind of turn you into a little bit of a different person.

And let's say you have this cognitive bias that brings you 1% of an angle off kilter in this one degree, and your husband has one that brings you off in this degree.

Confirmation bias after confirmation bias after confirmation bias, and your own priorities that you don't vocalize to your partner will turn you into a completely different person 25 years down the line.

Whoa, so you just get farther apart.

You really have to accurately and effectively communicate how you feel feel with open and honest dialogue with your partner throughout the entire way.

And it's such a cliche that like, oh, you know, communication is the most important in a healthy relationship.

But it's a cliche for a reason because it's effective.

Wow, that's interesting.

I like Tom, but his take on s ⁇ s was pretty interesting.

What was his take on s ⁇ ?

I don't remember.

So he structures his s ⁇ s on the weekends only.

So he doesn't have s ⁇ during the week.

And I thought that was a bit too like structured.

Like s ⁇ s is something that, you know, should just come up, right?

Yeah.

Hey, look, whatever floats your boat.

That's kind of my logic when it comes to most things.

Like, you know, if that works out for the relationship, sure.

The one thing I don't like is when people see what works for them and then just like spreads it like a philosophy, like, hey, guys, this will fix your life.

You exclude just to the weekends, fix your relationship.

That's the stuff I don't like.

So I don't know if he's like preaching that as though it's going to fix everything.

No, I don't think he's a preacher, but he just said it on a show and I was like, interesting.

Yeah, I just, I don't know about that.

So each their own.

And it's kind of weird because like, you know, honey, it's Friday night.

She's like, oh, yeah, I'm not really feeling it today.

What about Dave Ramsey?

I mean, you guys had him on.

He's got the biggest business podcast in the world right now, crushing it.

Yeah, Dave Ramsey.

Oh, my gosh.

Super wise.

Obviously, he's been investing and successful as a business person for, I don't even know, 50 years or however long.

I have no idea how old he is.

I'm so sorry, Dave.

But he's wildly successful.

So, learned a lot about actually anti-debt philosophy, which I've always been very pro-debt.

But I would say after that podcast, there's some different philosophical stuff and psychological stuff that happens when you have debt that impairs your judgment to make not very clear decisions in other areas of life.

That he was kind of, that was his message kind of.

So it's not actually about the debt itself, because obviously if you crunch the numbers and you have a low interest rate on your debt, you're like, oh.

like this actually makes financial sense.

But it's actually the subconscious stuff that it could do to cloud your judgment when it comes comes to other decisions in your life that has the negative impact.

Interesting.

So you found some middle ground with him, even though you have opposed.

Yeah, I really did.

And I wasn't expecting that because we are so wildly different when it comes to opinions on debt.

But definitely opened my eyes, I would say.

Interesting.

Now, I saw one of your YouTube videos.

You walked 100 miles for a Tinder Day.

Is this true?

I did.

Yeah.

No way.

Yeah.

Actually, I will say this.

It turned out to be like 96.

That's still a lot, dude.

It was a lot.

And I also hitchhiked 50.

So the total distance traveled, I'm i'm gonna say this again so the total distance traveled was about 150 miles jesus yeah hitchhiking is is dangerous man it was horrifying yeah it was so scary i did not expect it to be so scary it is man yeah so i was i was with my partner and he had hitchhiked previously in like southeast asia and other places that definitely are a lot less safe than nevada and utah uh so he was very confident about it but i was so nervous i mean we were out there just like with our thumbs up for i don't know what what what was it like probably seven hours hours yeah and it was hot too.

That's awesome.

And then finally, this guy pulls over, and dude, this is so bad.

He's all, yeah, yeah, I'll take you 20 miles.

Just like 20 bucks is cool.

And I'm like, all right, sick.

Yeah, yeah, sounds good.

So I give him the money.

Yeah.

And then he pulls out.

We go on the freeway.

Maybe it was like five miles down the road.

He's like, I got to get gas real quick.

I'm like, okay, cool.

And he's like, can you get out of the car?

I'm like, yeah, sure, why not?

So I get out of the car.

He gets gas and he's like, hey, I got to run an errand real quick.

Just have to drop something off at my friend's house down this dirt road.

And I'm like, first of all, sketchy.

But second of all, don't really want you leaving because I already paid you.

But I was like, sure, why not?

I'm not really going to, you know, he also didn't look particularly safe.

I will say I did profile him as somebody that I would probably not let my kids be with.

But he went off, never came back, obviously.

And so then we got stuck at another place and then finally hitchhiked to the destination we needed.

Was this before Uber existed?

No, Uber certainly existed.

It was about a year ago.

But I felt like it was going to make better content.

And also, hey, I'm in it for the experiences.

Honestly, I was like, why not?

I've never hitchhiked before.

Obviously, it's unsafe, but so are like everything else that we do in life.

A lot of things are.

I hear stories from my dad of him hitchhiking across the country and back, and I'm like.

Back in the day, I feel like it was safer.

Yeah, it must have been, right?

Because it was more socially acceptable.

So if you're someone that's going to pick up a hitchhiker, if everyone's hitchhiking back in the day, it's like, you're just a normal guy, you know?

But now who is hitchhiking?

Not necessarily people that like can't get from one area to another.

So then then you got to think who's then picking up those hitchhikers.

It's risky both ways, though, because I personally wouldn't want to pick up a hitchhiker.

And I might sound like a d ⁇ , but like, is it worth the risk to build a relationship with someone I don't know that well, you know?

Probably not.

Probably not.

Yeah.

I mean, my mom has picked up a hitchhiker.

Yeah.

Yeah, but it was like two girls that were like 16.

And my mom's a kindergarten teacher.

So she like scolded them.

She was like, what are you doing?

Yeah, that's fine.

Do not do that.

That's risky at that.

Yeah, it was bad.

Yeah.

I saw you also don't do drugs and alcohol.

Is that still the case?

I do do alcohol.

Oh, you started drinking?

Yeah, yeah.

I'm a big drinker.

No, okay.

No, I do drink occasionally.

Yeah.

I never, I still don't like the taste.

Yeah.

So I would say maybe it's once every two weeks or so.

Yeah.

And I also, I will say this confidently, I don't drink casually.

If I'm going to drink, I'm like going out, hopefully, to a party or we're all hanging out as a house, me and my housemates.

And we'll drink, I would say, a good amount, enough to certainly get drunk.

And I know that this is stigmatized or whatever, but it's really fun.

And I don't drink just like one or two beers if I'm going out to dinner or if I'm making a steak at home.

I don't just like have a gin and something like that.

I don't like the flavor.

So if I do drink, the goal is to get kind of sick.

You're going all up.

Yeah, or my buddy's hosting a barbecue and everyone's getting kind of tipsy.

I'm like, yeah, let's play drinking games.

Sure, why not?

Have you blacked out yet?

Yes.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

This is bad, dude.

So when Graham and I were living in LA, I would say that was probably my most degenerate times during drinking and all that stuff because I had a guest unit all to myself.

I just lived there by myself.

He was in the main unit.

And I had a buddy.

His name's also Jack.

He would come from Ventura, which is about an hour away.

And we would go out on occasion on these weekends.

And that was when stuff got, you know, like the Jack in the Box runs at like 3 a.m.

Blacked out on lime scooters, crashing.

Yeah.

Definitely not the highlight of my life, but I look back on it very fondly.

People always used to say they would black out in like high school and college when I used to drink.

and never happened to me honestly you never blacked out maybe like moments but not like a whole night you know what i mean well you're like six eight dude so i feel like it's kind of hard to my metabolism is so fast like i can be drunk at dinner i'll take a breath laser this happened at carver the other night i drank two three drinks As I'm walking out, I take a breath lyzer straight zeros.

Yeah.

Like I just sober up quick.

Yeah.

I feel like that's a that's a double-edged sword, you know?

It is because I can't have sustained periods.

Like I got to keep pounding.

Yeah.

Yeah, but the flavor, man, it's just gross.

Flavor sucks.

Yeah, you know what?

I have a theory.

People that say, this is me just being ignorant, probably, people that say they like drinking, I'm going to say about 85% of them actually don't like the flavor.

For sure.

They just like the feeling of getting drunk or they like the idea of drinking with their friends.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've never told this story.

I'm going to say, so I, first time I came to Vegas, I ate an edible, right?

It was just became legalized.

This was like eight years ago.

I ate,

so the day before, I ate 10 MGs, which is a good amount.

Felt fine.

That's a ton.

It's a, yeah.

I was smoking a lot back then, though.

Okay.

So I was like, all right, I'm gonna double it the next day.

Eat 20 MGs.

My friend's like, you want to go to a magic show?

I'm like, yeah, like, you know, rabbits pulling out of hats.

Like, little did I know, it was Chris Angel, which is like, have you been to a Chris Angel?

I have not, no.

So it's a super dark room.

You walk in, there's crows flying everywhere, and it's pitch black.

So imagine that.

That's the best thing to have, by the way, when you're like high out of your mind.

I can imagine that's horrifying.

So imagine walking into that and you're late.

So everyone's already in their seats.

So now you have 500 people staring at you.

I didn't make it to my seat.

You didn't make it to your seat.

You just turned around.

I had a full-on panic attack, collapsed to the floor.

I had to crawl to my hotel room.

Oh, you crawled, man?

Come on.

That's terrible.

Have you had a panic attack?

I mean, I've certainly panicked before.

I don't know if I've had a panic attack.

Panic attack, you collapse.

Okay, I've never collapsed.

So I collapsed, got to my room, threw up everywhere, called my girlfriend, told her I'm dying.

It was the worst experience ever.

Yeah.

And when you're like under the influence of something and you can't tell between what is real and what isn't, and you start breathing and you're like, am I breathing at a normal cadence?

And you start questioning everything, worst.

Worst thing ever.

And that's what I experienced when I took the edibles.

Because you think it's going to last forever.

Yeah, you just don't know.

Your impairment is convincing you of things.

that are just flat out lies.

Yeah.

And I know it's easy when you're sober to be like, well, obviously you're safe.

You're just breathing.

And if you hold your breath, you can't die from suffocation above water.

You're just going to hold your breath, knock out, and start breathing again.

But I was scared of even just like my normal breathing.

Yeah.

No, you get in your own head, man.

Yeah.

I don't recommend edibles to anyone.

Honestly.

Same.

I saw you bought a house at 22 years old.

I think I was 22.

Yeah, I was 22.

That's impressive.

Most people are in debt at that age.

How did you pull that off?

Well, I would say just like saving a lot.

Obviously, I had a stronger income, I would say, than the average 22-year-old in order to buy a house.

Also, didn't have any college debt because I was at like community college for a little bit.

And then the one year I was at UCSB, I will say my parents covered it.

So thank you very much to my parents.

Still wasn't horribly expensive.

I think it was maybe like 15K or something like that, maybe 20.

And

yeah, I would just say being really frugal.

I've never really had expensive taste.

Like, I think you do, right?

You spend money on some things.

With certain things.

With a watch.

Yeah.

Not with cars, but...

You do drive a Tesla.

I do drive a Tesla.

Vacations, I'll ball out.

I used to be a cheapo on vacations, but that's not really a good mix.

Yeah.

You don't want to cheap out while you're trying to enjoy yourself.

Okay, so what's like a cheap vacation you went on?

I used to go on like Cancun trips and I'd try to spend like a thousand bucks.

Okay, I mean that's probably how much I spent in Mexico.

I was in Puerto Vallarta like two months ago.

Okay.

But now I get the best hotel, even though I probably shouldn't be.

I'll spend $5, $10K on a...

$5, $10K?

Yeah, like an all-inclusive resort, adults only, all you could drink, all you could eat.

But when you're traveling, are you looking for leisure or are you looking to experience the culture of like the the the people that live there

see i want to do that but it's in mexico it's tough because it's kind of kind of daycare it can be a little unsafe yeah so i for that one i didn't but i do like to travel and have a local with me usually like in greece beautiful went with my mom was dating a greek guy at the time best vacation ever that makes sense and what type of watch did you buy what type of watch i have five you have five watches yeah okay so like what most expensive one is the richard or not richard uh automars per gay okay I got a rose gold.

How much is that?

I spent $132.

$132,000?

Yeah.

But the thing with watches is they hold their value.

And if you wear them to certain events, it opens up a lot of doors.

People will talk to you just because of the watch.

Yeah.

Yeah, I see that.

I don't know.

I've never personally, but I also am around content creators a lot more.

Like, those are the people I generally network with, and they have no idea.

Usually, when it comes to watches.

So I guess maybe if I was going to like more of an entrepreneur meetup, a watch could do me some justice.

Yeah, content creators don't be flexing watches now that you said that.

I'm trying to think of anyone that you can't think of anyone.

Even Graham doesn't have one, right?

I mean, well, he has a Calatrava, and he also has, he has a Rolex that he got gifted.

Yeah.

And he has a Zenith El Primero.

Okay.

So I think, yeah, two, actually.

You bought one of Rolex, right?

I did.

I bought a Rolex submariner.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Single tone black.

And I got gifted, actually, a watch from Liver King.

So he gave me a Rolex sub-Mariner, two-tone

stainless and gold.

Yeah, probably around there.

And you don't wear it out?

Not really, man.

Why?

Here's the thing, man.

To be completely honest, I just don't like the idea of flexing.

And I know maybe it's not a flex to wear a watch, but a lot of people think it is.

And I just, I don't know.

I don't really like flexing.

If I wear the watch, it's usually I'm at my house.

Yeah.

I'm like home.

Especially if I'm going out and I'm going to have any drinks.

I'm definitely not going to wear the watches.

I feel that.

But I will wear it around my home on occasion.

Or if I'm going out with like some close friends.

But But if I'm going out to try to like impress people and I'm wearing a fancy watch and stuff like that, it's just not me.

I feel that.

Yeah, I don't wear it often, actually.

I only wear it probably on five times a year.

But I stopped flexing because I posted 100 grand on my story once, 100 grand cash.

I just did a big, I sold sports cards to a card shop and they paid me in cash.

Next day, this was in LA.

Group of 10, 15 guys at my apartment just stalking me.

They were there for months trying to rob me.

Stalking you?

Yes.

Every time I would walk my dog, they would try to kidnap me.

You know for a fact they were there for you?

Yes.

And you would just go to your apartment, 10 guys just following you.

10 guys, multiple cars, all wearing blue.

It was a gang, probably.

And it got to the point where I had to leave the whole apartment and move.

What are they going to do?

Like, okay.

They're just stalking you, right?

Well, they're trying to see when I'm not home to rob me, or they're trying to grab me and rob me.

They broke into my car, so when I got in once, it was hotwired.

They tried to hotwire the whole thing and leave.

I had my friend pull up, and I wanted him to take all my valuable stuff.

So we're unloading all my stuff into his car.

We walk outside.

There's a guy on his knees writing down his license plate number.

So we're like, oh my gosh, now they're going to follow him.

See, at that point, I would have just like posted, like, shout out X Company for the fake 100 grand.

You guys make it like none other.

So from that day forward, never posted cash, never posted watches, nothing valuable on my Instagram.

I learned my lesson.

Yeah, that's...

Because it almost cost me my life.

So it's stupid to flex for.

And also, the real people that you want to impress aren't going to be impressed by those material goods and a bunch of money and stuff like that.

They're impressed by other stuff.

Yeah, no, I definitely agree.

Is that how you always saw flexing?

Did you have an instance?

My parents are very modest.

So they never, like, we never went on fancy vacations.

They never had like nice cars or anything.

Now, as they've grown older, they've gotten like fancier things.

Like, you know, my dad drives a Tesla, my mom drives a Tesla, stuff like that.

But growing up, my dad was very, very against like all that stuff.

Always remain extremely humble.

Yeah.

You know, never, you know, we drove beater cars.

I've had like seven cars because they were all beaters.

Not because my parents were like, oh, get you this car, get you this car, but because they were bad cars that would either break or like, you know, something would go wrong.

Yeah, i had a hyundai launcher before the tesla but i like the tesla man it's convenient yeah i do too the only thing is i make the commute between vegas and ventura which is just an hour north of la all the time and i would have to fill up i would have to charge yeah the charging takes a while that's the one downside yeah you're there for like an hour right so once they come out with a battery that could maybe do it in one trip i would consider getting one yeah uh but i was in my car right now it's fine what do you have right now i have a 2005 lexus rx330

Yeah, got it from my grandma.

Dude, you're wild because you're making a lot of money and you're driving that thing.

I'm living comfortably.

Yeah, I would say so.

It just doesn't matter to me.

I don't know how to put it.

I mean, I'm sure there are certain things in your life that don't matter to you.

Does okay, this is not me doing it.

Does like grooming your face matter to you?

Not too much.

I've taken it a bit more serious because of the podcast, but I used to not really care.

Right, but why doesn't it?

Because it just doesn't.

Yeah.

Right?

Because it just doesn't.

There's no real way to explain it.

You just have no interest in it.

Right.

In the same way that I don't really have an interest in material goods.

Like, you can ask me why it doesn't matter to me.

I have no idea.

You know, why do some guys not care about their hair?

Why?

Just doesn't.

You know?

Yeah.

Why do some guys not care about going to the gym?

It just doesn't.

So I don't know how to put it aside from it.

It just doesn't matter to me.

So it seems like Graham's frugality has rubbed off on you a bit.

It's not even that.

It's just like growing up, there were certain things I was, okay, it could also be this.

So growing up, I was super fixated.

on a lot of stuff.

Like I wanted an iPod Touch as soon as they came out and all my friends got iPod touches.

My parents wouldn't let me get one.

Growing up, I wanted a cell phone, my parents wouldn't get me one.

All of my friends had that.

I wanted a PlayStation, and PlayStation 3 had already came out, and my parents wouldn't get me a PlayStation 3.

And then finally, I saved up like $160, and I'm like, Can I get a PlayStation 3?

They're like, No, I'm like, Okay, I'm just gonna go get a PlayStation 2.

They're like, Okay, that's all right.

Like, we can we can vibe with the PlayStation 2.

I'm like, that doesn't even make sense, but sure, I'll go get a PlayStation 2.

So, I got a PlayStation 2 after the 3 had come out, and all my friends were on PlayStation 3.

Then, I finally get a PlayStation 3, I'm getting to it, and our house gets rubbed.

Whoa.

And all of our stuff gets taken away.

I lose my PlayStation 3.

I lose a lot of the stuff that I wanted so badly for such a long time.

And it makes me upset, obviously, because I was 12 when that happened, maybe 13.

And

it made me realize a little bit.

It planted the seed in my brain that like material goods are transient, right?

They come and they go.

They're not going to be around forever.

So you shouldn't base your happiness off of something that will leave you one day.

And then, obviously, we acquired all this stuff back eventually, not from the actual people that stole it from us, but we got a little bit of insurance money.

I think I got like a couple grand.

Yeah.

And eventually, over the course of the next six or so years, I collected back to being where I was.

Then, when I was 19, I was in community college at the time, living with my parents, and the house burned down.

Jeez.

So, the California wildfires, they came and they just,

I don't know, eviscerated all of the houses in our neighborhood.

550 homes were burned down in the Thomas fire.

Ours was one of them.

Didn't save anything.

Did save my baseball cards.

And the clothes in my back, obviously.

Did you guys know it was coming?

Not really.

I remember I was with my girlfriend at the time that night.

And

I saw a glow in the air or in the sky.

It was just glowing orange a little bit.

Dropped it off at her house.

Came back.

The glowing was a little bit more prominent.

And I saw some stuff floating through the sky.

Turns out it was ash.

Didn't know what it was at the time.

I thought it was just some weird wind stuff.

And I tell my parents, I'm like, hey, just letting you know, like, the sky is glowing a little bit.

And then I get a call from my buddy Jack, who's our neighbor, and he's like, hey, there's a fire in Santa Paula, which is, I don't know, kind of near L.A.

area, and it's coming our way.

So just letting you know, you should probably pack up your stuff and leave.

And I was like, ah, it's not a threat.

We're going to be fine.

I tell my parents this, and they're like, yeah, we're fine.

I'm like, okay, sick.

And then 40 minutes passes.

The orange glow gets deeper and deeper orange.

And then all of a sudden, the sky is nearly all orange.

And then then we get a knock on our door.

Our neighbor down the street is a fireman.

And he's like, hey guys, you should probably get out of here.

It's actually getting pretty serious.

We're leaving right now.

I'm like, nah, it should be okay.

It should be okay.

And then all of a sudden, like the fire becomes a real threat because police are driving through the neighborhood with bullhorns and like saying, This is an emergency evacuation.

You guys better get out of here.

So then

we grabbed a couple of things.

I got the house fish.

We got some our tortoises out of the fire.

We got our dog and left the house came back and it was all gone

that's crazy and then that also kind of like reinforced that idea that was planted in me from getting robbed at a young age that like stuff comes and goes and obviously I was a little bit unlucky to lose everything twice yeah but it definitely you can find the silver lining in anything that you know has been traumatic I think that

any trauma could be a blessing in disguise if you want it to be yeah it's all how you interpret it right some people would that would happen to them and they would just get destroyed eventually.

Yeah, but the thing is, like

you're going to just put yourself through more pain if you allow yourself to see the negatives in it.

You're just like creating a little box that you put yourself in where pain is just constantly being bounced and thrown at you

in every direction.

It's like, just accept what happened and move on.

Find the silver lining, learn a lesson from it.

Maybe, hey, maybe we should get better fire insurance.

That's a good lesson.

Did you have fire insurance?

We did.

It wasn't that great, unfortunately.

But we were able to rebuild on the same property.

Okay.

Yeah.

Nice.

So, and also the old house that burned down was built in the 60s.

So it was kind of old,

not super nice.

Like the countertops are old and all that stuff.

So now they're trying to find a silver lining in that.

Nice.

So if you're not into material bangs, you're going to be making millions of dollars over the next few years.

What do you plan on spending your money on?

What do I plan on spending my money on?

Well, that's a good question, man.

I would say vacations.

Like, I'm not very frugal when it comes to vacations.

I didn't spend much on the Mexico trip just because I didn't really need to.

Yeah.

What else do I like spending money on?

Food.

Like, I would say I don't really have a food budget.

The ribeye doesn't have to be on sale for me to buy it at the grocery store.

I don't know.

I do want to hit a certain net worth goal.

And I know this kind of goes against the philosophy I was just explaining of like $2 million.

Not there yet.

But once I do hit that, I think that you could comfortably not worry about money if you're making passive income off of $2 million.

It's about 80K a year with a 4% withdrawal rate.

Interesting, because I've heard that number, people have different opinions, but it seems that's on the lower end of

different people.

Yeah, and growing up, it was $4 million was what I wanted because that's, I mean, that would be $160K a year, right?

At a 4% withdrawal rate, which is the metric that people use basically to determine how much you could have that amount forever based off of it growing and then you taking a certain percentage of that.

It was $4 million.

And then,

I don't know.

I think like I've became more and more immaterial.

So as time has gone on, so the number has shrinked, which is very atypical as well, because generally speaking, when you get closer to the number, it continues expanding.

Right.

But I would say it's also like my own personal philosophy that has changed and evolved that has, you know, brought that number down a bit.

So you think you could live off 80K a year comfortably?

I would always want to be working.

So it doesn't mean that I would just be, you know.

foot just slammed down on the brake and just like, all right, I'm not working anymore.

But just not necessarily my freedoms and time restricted and me doing things I don't necessarily want to be doing for the sake of money.

Right.

Trading your time for money.

Yeah, well, I also try not to do that because just as a business person and an entrepreneur, you never want to be trading your time for money.

You want to get, you know, three output from one input.

So I try not to trade my time for money as a general rule of thumb, but I don't want to be doing things that I'm doing now to save money, to get to that amount.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Jack, it's been a pleasure, man.

Where can people find out more about you?

Where can people find more about me?

The iced coffee hour, I suppose.

Yeah.

All right.

Check out the iced coffee hour, guys.

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