Derek Moneyberg: Tough Guy for Clicks? Strickland vs. Moneyberg | DSH #1556

Sean Strickland confronted Derek Moneyberg.

Like, say, I'm not challenging you to a fight, but we can go roll around tonight.

We kind of kind of head down a look if you don't want to make eye contact.

And he takes the phone out when we're by the elevator, and then he totally, totally changes his persona, and now he's a tough guy on camera.

I don't think you could tap me in five minutes.

You want to say all this tough guy shit?

Like, I think he just wants to talk shit for clicks and views.

Okay, guys, Derek Moneyberg back on the show.

It's been been almost two years since his last episode, I believe, and he's been doing a lot.

So thanks for coming on, man.

Hey, thanks for inviting me back.

Yeah, you've been all over the news.

All the biggest podcasts are talking about you, Joe Rogan included in that, right?

Must be pretty crazy times for you.

I'm just a business dirt that did some MMA training, man.

And, you know, I tried to accelerate that, the way he tried to accelerate everything else in life.

And

yeah, but that's when it's a defense to the jiu-jitsu community that I got in my black belt in three years and seven months.

And so, you know, many of the top fighters in the world, the people that know me and trained with me said amazing things.

And then, of course, people around them,

of course, they ask is like, you know, hey, you know that guy.

Is that legit?

And they'd be like, oh, yeah.

So then they're understood.

But, you know,

for people that don't train much, for people that took 12, 15 years to get their belt and they're a little offended by that.

I put in the same number of hours.

I just did it in a more compressed amount of time

with some of the many of the top coaches in the world.

So I don't even think it should be so controversial, but

you said a little offended.

I'd say some people got very offended based off what I was seeing on social media.

It was very interesting.

Yeah, I guess

Gordon Ryan made the point on the Rogan show about that, that the thing that they're most fussy about is that I did use that something as of a marketing campaign to be like, yeah, I get my belt a lot quicker than you because I'm smarter than you.

I mean, might as well monetize it.

I were less dumb and harder working.

You could do the same thing.

Yeah.

Which I believe, and I stand by that.

I mean, look at it.

You're top 1% in multiple fields.

It's not just fighting, right?

Business, stocks, to probably name a few more.

Well, I mean, objectively, and

it's not even a cocky thing.

It's just subjectively true of like, if we go to the gym and lift weights, I'm stronger than, you know, more than 99% of the people in the gym.

If we go grapple or whatnot, like, yeah.

Even with all the UFC guys, a lot of the UFC guys I've trained with and any other ones, I'm not calling them out or challenging them, but I'm like, yeah, I'll be happy to train with you.

Yeah.

Like respectfully.

And you can hold your own.

Yeah, I do good with the UFC guys.

With the top-level grapplers that are specialists in grappling,

if I go to Gordon Ryan's gym, John Danaher's gym, it's called Kingsway.

It's down in Austin, Texas.

Everybody there is just elite.

So for sure, there's some purple belts there that are better than I am because they're like the best grapplers in the world.

The best school in the world.

So that's totally true.

Okay.

So is that how it works with the belts?

So like depending on the city you're in, like a black belt doesn't hold the same value?

Well,

if you're competing at ADCC, that's like the Olympics of Grapple, and they hold that event every two years here in Vegas.

Or they have the world championships, and there's all sorts of big tournaments, but ADCC is the biggest and best, okay?

And there's a purple belt guy down there.

They call him Big Dan.

He's 6'7.

He's 320-ish.

He's a purple belt, but he'd kill almost every black belt, any normal black belt.

But he's number three purple belt in the world at ADCC.

So that guy's better than most black belts.

So

you can call it sandbagging if you want to, that they hold the belts back.

Yeah, the guy would beat most black belts, including me.

Makes sense if some of the top purple belt guys are better than a majority or like the bottom half of the black belts aren't.

No, that's totally true, you know.

So am I going to go in ADCC or the big tournaments in the world?

No, I'm a business guy that did that as a hobby.

But to your point,

anything that I did in life, it doesn't mean I'm great at everything.

I'm not great at everything.

But anything that I focused on,

you know, I'm very physically strong.

I went to the best business school in the world.

There's for, at the time that I went to my MBA program, there's 416 programs in the country.

I went to the number one ranked school, University of Chicago, Booth School of Business.

Shout out to Booth.

Yeah, I did well in my business.

Recently, I got $50 million revenue recognition.

I did well in that business.

I helped with other businesses.

Before that, I did good at everything.

I did go to stock investing.

I did go to real estate investing.

I'm no good at tennis.

I'm no good at golf.

You don't want me to be your heart surgeon, you'll probably die.

So there's a lot of things I'm no good at, but the things that I focused on, I did very well.

And I kind of have that sort of an obsessive personality that I'm going to do something extremely well, or probably I'll do something else.

I only kind of do things part way.

So, you know, elaborating on the process that went into that belt is like, I spent $4 million on gyms,

which was mostly real estate expenses, okay?

But then the renovations.

So there's four properties that got renovated to be like an MRA gym and a weightlifting gym.

Then I spent another few million dollars.

So you bought your belt.

You bought your belt.

You paid your coaches.

No shit, I paid my coaches.

No shit I paid my coaches.

I also paid my tuition at my university.

I paid tuition at my university too, guys.

My professors got paid.

They got paid too.

Everybody that I,

you know, who else gets paid?

My weight training coach.

When I ask him to come train with me, who's an amazing guy who was on the Olympia stage many times, I pay him too.

I also pay my cell phone bill.

I pay for a lot of things.

So that doesn't mean that you didn't do the work.

Right.

It doesn't mean that you didn't do the work.

People had an issue with you paying coaches.

Oh, right.

It's absurd.

I don't understand that, though.

You know who else pays coaches?

All the UFC champions, they pay their coaches too.

Yeah, that's why I'm confused.

I don't understand the argument.

I understand the timing argument because people just can't grasp how you did it so quickly, right?

Because the average person, like you said, takes 13 years to get it.

Yeah, I think

a lot of people say 10-ish years.

And some people is, I mean, most people would never do that.

But of people that have a a black belt you know 10 years is good you know 12 15.

yeah and that's a guy that shows you know he takes a year off in between and he takes family trips and he's got a normal job and he shows up at the gym three days a week and for an hour of course it takes 15 years if you show up three days a week for an hour and you take time off right i'm showing up most every day of the year and i have the the best coaches in the world literally the best coaches in the world And I put in a lot of hours.

Spent millions, yeah.

It's not even like a controversial thing in terms of like, I spent the same hours with them.

I did it with better coaches, and I did it at my private facilities.

And I don't even know what the fuss is, honestly.

But

I'm grateful for it.

Yeah.

Were you shocked with all the hate and the outrage at first?

Or did you kind of expect it?

No, no, not to that level, actually.

There's always, you know, somebody always has something to say.

I'm sure in your comments, there's

some geniuses out there that have, you know, but what are they doing better than you?

What are they doing?

The guys that are talking shit about me or you or anybody else that did anything of, you know, of any notoriety.

Yeah.

What are they doing better than you?

What are they doing better than me?

Usually it's someone that I don't give a shit about, to be honest.

I don't even know who they are.

The majority of them, I don't even know who they are.

Or if I do know who it is, then it's somebody that's

your name is trendy at the moment, so they're trying to use your name to leapfrog and get more clicks and views, you know.

Which I get that, too, as a someone as a content creator.

I get that part of it.

That's life.

Yeah.

I think of it like

I don't get very emotional about it at all.

I think of it like, you know, if you watch like an animal show, like a documentary about

African wildlife or parasites or something of that nature, you know, they think, well,

when a lion chases down a a zebra in the savannah and digs his claws in and the zebra barely gets away and they chase some more and he tackles the zebra,

usually a she, tackles the zebra, bites it on the neck.

and waits for it to die.

Well, if the lion's by itself, you know, if there's 14 hyenas there, the 14 hyenas can take the zebra from the lion, you know?

Right.

Does that mean a hyena is a more noble creature than the lion?

Not in my opinion.

And, you know, if you look at like, there's all sort of parasitic relationships when, like,

you know, there's, there's,

I'm not an expert on this topic, but, you know, there'll be some

worm that gets in your body and lives in your intestines and swims around in your shit all day.

A parasite.

Yeah.

And sometimes sometimes I look at the internet comment and I'm like, oh, that's one of those intestinary worms.

When a person says some of the things they say, I'm like, oh, that must be like one of those hyenas.

Do you block them or do you just ignore them?

It depends.

It depends what mood I'm in at that moment and if I have time.

I think to myself,

if there's a moment for

a good business promotion, I'll take advantage of that.

If there's a moment where I just feel like I have a humorous response in my mind and it'll just make me laugh personally, I'll take advantage of that.

But you know, some people just say such absurd things and I'm just like, yeah, block.

Like, it's so unreasonable that I'm just like, there's you're not going to change everything.

Yeah, there's nothing.

There's no common ground or we're not going to get to anywhere.

But

last comment about haters is like,

I've thought this many years now.

Like, the number one thing a hater hates is themselves.

They're not mad at you.

They're not mad at me.

The number one thing a hater hates is himself.

And I say himself rather than themselves, because it's almost always a guy it's almost always yeah that's a good point i didn't even think about it but you're so right it's always dudes pretty women don't hate any pretty women i bet when pretty women send you a message they say real nice things to you even ugly women i don't see them really actually no that's not ugly women don't write me much they're they're in the political comments i guess you don't you don't see that because you don't talk about politics but yeah i see that yeah that makes sense yeah but but usually it's dudes when it comes to other topics yeah i'm talking about fighting and finance mostly so i don't have ugly women

no but i'm saying the Trilight from Therisage is no joke.

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And I sincerely make sense that in a political context, there's a horde of ugly women that tend to vote for a particular part.

Yeah, the other thing I think about a hater is like a hater is a jealous fan.

Like, they're not taking the time to poke at you or poke at me because

they fucking really hate you.

It's like they're interested in you, and somewhere in their head, they'd like to be you.

A hater is a jealous fan.

They're projecting, yeah.

No, it's interesting because a lot of my comments are like, oh, I'm on following.

I'll click on their profile.

They still follow me.

They're just leaving comments just for the fun of it, I feel like, half the time.

The hate only gets to me when it's someone I respect.

And I would consider that more criticism in that scenario for the most part.

So when I saw the Sean Strickland thing, that one surprised me because that's someone probably you respected, right?

Oh, you know, I've said that to him.

And, you know, there's a few times that I've, in the past, I asked Sean Strickland twice, like, hey, come do an interview with me.

He never did that.

I did interviews with 300 or 300 or so world champions.

And And even before he was world champion, I asked him, hey, come do an interview with me.

I thought the guy's kind of interesting.

I like that he's not politically correct.

I think he's a talented fighter.

There's things I respect about the guy.

And I said that to him.

And

as soon as I got that black belt within hours, he's talking shit on the internet and saying things that are not true and repeating things.

I have a little bit of a reputation that

Derek likes to sue people.

I only sued two people in my life.

And Sean's going to be the third, by the way.

I only sued two people in my life.

And Sean's reposting that type of content.

He's reposting content from one of those people that I still have an ongoing litigation with.

And

yeah, you're just saying things that, you know,

I'm a fraudster and a scamster and other various things that

I'm disappointed about that.

You know, if you want to say that my black belt's fake, come train with me.

And I sent him DMs privately.

They didn't respond back publicly.

I privately sent him DMs and I said,

yeah, more or less.

And I don't remember word for word, but I have screenshots of all of it that I've given to my attorney.

And I said, you know, hey, if you believe that, you know, take the time to meet me.

Come do an interview with me.

Come train with me.

I'm sure there's something I could learn from you.

I'd be happy to train together.

You know, he don't want to do that.

It's a series of more insults.

And then he goes back and posts more negative things that are just not true.

They're lies.

And

then I see the guy in person recently.

I trained in Glover Teixeira's gym.

Is that in Vegas?

Connecticut.

Oh, okay.

So I flew to Connecticut to go train with Glover.

Glover's one of my main coaches.

He's my striking coach.

Him and Leodo Machita in my striking belts under them.

And yeah, so Strickland's there.

He doesn't go to the gym.

And Glover told me before.

So Alex Pereira has his fight on October 4th.

And he likes, and Alex already beat Strickland.

When they fought, Alex knocked him out.

They're both very talented, though.

And, you know,

he said that, oh, oh, by the way, Strickland's going to be here, blah, blah, blah.

Alice asked him to come spar with him.

And I said, okay.

I said, when I see him, we have to have a conversation.

I'm not going to be aggressive with him.

I don't think he's going to be aggressive with me, but we have to have a conversation about the things he said.

Like, you understand that, right?

And Clover was like, yeah, I understand.

Makes sense.

So when I go there, I'm there all day on Wednesday.

No, no,

Strickland doesn't show up.

Did he know you were there?

He did, and I'll explain why in a lot.

So he doesn't show up all day.

I'm there from 11.45 in the morning till about 10.30 at night.

I left for two hours to get food and stuff with Clover, came back again.

So I'm there all day.

He doesn't show up.

The next day, I'm there from noon, 11-something in the morning till 5-something p.m.

We go get food, and then I ask Clover, hey, drop me off at the hotel.

I want to shower before our second training session.

When I walk into the hotel, he's staying at the same hotel as I am.

And then on the internet, they say, you know, Sean Strickland confronted Derek Moneyberg.

Like, that's not true.

I go see the guy, and I see him in the lobby, and I was respectful and polite about it.

I was a gentleman about it.

I said, you know, Sean, take a minute to come talk with me.

And he kind of,

we can talk at the gym tomorrow.

I said, I'm not going to be here tomorrow.

I fly tomorrow.

But I'd appreciate it if you'd take a minute to come talk with me.

He didn't want to do that.

Then,

He gets some detergent from the front desk.

I waited for a second.

We walk away a few feet and we have have a little conversation for 90 seconds maybe, about two minutes total before he brings his camera out.

And I said, you know, you talk all this shit, but you won't take a minute.

I've asked you to do interviews with me.

I'm asking you now, take a minute to come talk with me in person.

I said, I'm going to go back to the gym in an hour.

If you believe that stuff, we can train together tonight.

I said, I'm not challenging you to a fight, but we can go roll around tonight.

And he's like,

we kind of head down and look away if you don't want to make eye contact.

So then I said, Sean, I don't think you even believe the shit you're saying.

But if you believe that shit, then do a grappling match with me.

We'll do a public grappling match.

We'll do it for the public.

We'll schedule it.

I said that.

I didn't explain this detail, but like,

you know, I need to get my cardio appropriate to do that.

Yeah.

So I need an eight-week training camp, the same way all fighters would.

I said, you can't tap me.

You're not going to tap me in a grappling match.

And then he's, you know, he don't want to do that.

So

then we walked to the elevator, elevator, which, by the way, when you go into a hotel, the natural place you would go is to the elevator to go to your room.

And then he takes the phone out when we're by the elevator, and then he

totally changes his persona, and now he's a tough guy on camera.

That's the video I saw, yeah?

Yeah, that's the video that's on the internet.

He wants to pretend to be a tough guy on camera.

He's not a tough guy.

He's just a bully.

He's just a bully.

That is interesting.

Yeah, that is very interesting.

That he wouldn't fight you because for him, that should be pretty winnable, right?

If he doesn't believe that I've done the work, then it should be fucking super easy.

Like, I don't know his grappling experience, but not a money.

He's had a black belt for over a decade.

Oh, okay.

And I'm not saying that I fucked the guy up.

I'm not even saying that.

I'm saying, I don't think you could tap me in five minutes.

You want to say all this tough guy shit?

Like, you know, and I've tried to be a gentleman to him several times.

There's things I respect about the guy.

There's things that I like about the guy.

And I think he just wants to talk shit for clicks and views.

And that's okay if you want to talk shit.

But then when you get into the realm of saying disparaging things that are bad for my reputation and bad for my business, well, now you owe me money.

Well, now you owe me money.

Yeah, he is pretty unfiltered.

Gotta give it to him.

It's not just unfiltered, it's

detached from reality at that point.

The things that he's saying are just simply not true.

Yeah.

You can say you doubt my black belt.

You can say that.

Okay.

But you can't say that I steal money from people.

You're a scammer.

You're this.

You're that.

It's just not true.

Yeah.

That one was interesting to me because most of the fighters seem seem to talk positively about you.

Almost everybody.

Anybody that knows me well.

Exactly.

So when I saw that one, I was like, what the hell's going on there?

No, it's disappointing.

I would have liked to have a different type of relationship with him, but I've tried that multiple times.

I've reached out to him previously, as I said,

asked for an interview.

I've reached out to him when he did talk shit about me publicly.

I wrote to him privately and tried to fix that.

My coach, Jake Shields, who gave me the belt, trained at the same gym frequently, Randy Couture's Couture's gym shout out to Randy great man

and you know Jake talked to him and said you know Sean what are you doing like you think I gave him a fake belt you know I didn't give him a fake belt but continue to talk shit after that when I see him in person I'm not aggressive as a gentleman I say hey I'd like you to take a minute to come talk with me will you talk with me for a minute please

so he don't want to he don't want to do anything reasonable He just wants to tell lies and spread lies and say disparaging things on the internet.

That's crazy.

You think it's too late to mediate this through a mutual friend or you think it's kind of...

You know, I've tried four times so i'm i'm done trying and that's going to be that's a lot of times yeah that's a lot of legal issue for him while he's he's not he said things that are damaging to my reputation and my company and you know he's he owes me for that yeah we'll leave it there good luck with that man um so the craig jones invitational was

was last month you got invited to that

well

craig jones who also is very talented grappler no one is say anything bad about his uh

i don't know what the rankings are, but I imagine he's top five in his weight division.

He might be higher than that.

So, yeah, for sure, top 10, maybe top five in his weight division.

I know he's a very talented guy.

I respect that about him.

And he's a hell of a marketer and promoter.

Yeah.

He's an amazing marketer and promoter.

Yeah, that event was sold out, I believe.

He does a great job with that.

He used my name, by the way.

He used my name

to market the event.

He used my image and my name.

Without your consent?

Yeah.

Wow.

And I thought to myself, the audacity of this fucker that, kind of in a good way, you know, I thought to myself, this fucking guy is so audacious that he takes my image and my name and uses it for all kinds of promotion of like Derek Moneyberg's Super Fight.

Never spoke to me before.

We never had a conversation.

And in that context, I think to myself,

I'm just like, wow, this is the most audacious, shameless man.

But he's also co-branding me with the event, and it's not necessarily a bad thing for me.

So I'm like,

I guess.

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Which, again, I'm not even saying in an insulting way.

I a little bit admire the audacity of this fucking goofball to do this shit, you know?

So he didn't even message you?

He just...

Well, then he messaged me later.

What's his name?

Gable Stevenson.

My understanding, I don't follow all these things in detail.

So my understanding is that Gable Stevenson pulled out of the fight.

that he was supposed to do with Craig.

And then about eight days ahead, eight days before the event, seven, eight eight days,

Craig Jones reaches out to me.

He sends me a DM.

I posted these on my Instagram recently.

Because Craig's done several slimy things.

So like, you know, when people send me a private message, I've never, ever, ever published a private message ever, except for this one time.

And that's because, you know, Craig wants to talk shit.

He just, he's another guy.

He's a promoter, clicks in views, great grappler.

Not a very high integrity person in my estimation, but great grappler, great promoter.

You know, give credit for what it is.

There's things he's great at.

Happy to give him credit for that.

But

yeah, he wrote me and he said, I'll bring the messages out.

And if you want to, I'll send them to you if you edit them into the video just for if you feel like it, whatever's best for you.

If he doesn't sue me, I'm gone.

Nothing to sue you for.

It's just, you're just.

So Craig reaches out to me.

He says,

want to have a match against me for CJI.

And he's like, legit, no joke request.

What date was this?

August 23rd.

Okay.

August 23rd.

And I said, you're a world-class dickhead.

These are my first words to him ever.

You are a world-class dickhead.

I've been to Australia 11 times, so I know how hard it must have been to out-compete all the other dickheads there.

And

he's like,

he's like, you know, yeah, I am an idiot.

So he admitted it.

Yeah.

So we go on a little bit.

He's like, either way, boss, you want some seats to the event?

Let me know.

You're the talk of the town.

I said, I'm in Europe until September 1st.

The following weekend, I'll be trading with Gordon and some of the guys at Kingsway.

He says, Gordon, my nemesis, ha ha ha, because they used to be in the same team and that team split.

Okay.

I said, when is your event?

Next week.

He says, event is August 31st.

So that's eight days ahead of time

in Vegas.

I said, I'll be in Germany.

He said, I've been thinking, he said, I keep thinking, we have a match and you beat me.

Funniest shit ever.

Socks on.

Then I'm never heard from again.

Ha ha ha ha.

And I said, you know, thank you for the invitation.

I said, I'm a lot bigger than you,

but you're much more experienced and very talented.

It would be hard for me to beat you.

I don't even think I can beat the guy, but

super talented guy, one of the best in the world.

He said, I'd just throw it.

I'd just throw it, haha.

I mean, I have no idea how good you are.

It's just hilarious.

I said, well, you're a great promoter.

Wow.

So I posted those publicly.

If you want to, I'll send you the screenshot.

You think he was joking or serious?

I mean, if I took that, it would be written into a contract.

If I accepted something like that, it would be written into a contract.

Right.

But he's not allowed to win, or there'd be a liquidated damages clause that he owes me X dollars if he violated that agreement.

Yeah, because allegedly Jake Paul does some similar wording to that.

Allegedly.

I've heard that.

I don't know if that's true or not.

I've seen Jake Paul.

We've been in the same room together.

I don't know the guy.

Yeah, it's a boxer.

It's not real like boxing, I guess.

It's like exhibition fights.

So it's a little different, right?

Yeah, I've heard these things.

Whatever anybody wants to say about him, I mean, that guy's done a hell of a job promoting himself.

He's made a lot of money.

He's helped other people make money.

So, yeah, I hear different things about him.

I don't know what's true or not true, but you know, looks like he's doing pretty damn well for himself.

Good for you.

We'll always respect him, even though, yeah, he used to be one of the most hated people.

He's still pretty hated, but he kind of channeled most of it, I feel like, into success.

So you got to respect that, right?

Looks like he's doing good to be.

Yeah.

So you didn't get the belt to get into fighting.

You just did it as a cyclist.

That's a hobby.

There's not a sound bite anywhere.

I never said to my coaches, I never said on Instagram.

I never said anywhere that, like, dude, I'm 46 years old.

Who am I supposed to be beating up?

Yeah.

I wanted to do that for my fitness.

I wanted to do that because I traveled a lot.

I've been to 66 countries.

I've traveled a couple million miles, more than 2 billion miles.

Holy shit.

And I think to myself, you know, well,

in my 40s, I'm still, I'm a big guy.

I'm pretty strong.

Not a lot of people, you know, want to attack some guy, you know, my size.

You know, 20 years from now, is that still true?

When you're 60-something, can you really protect yourself and your woman when you're 60-something, you know, in some other country and, you know, two or three young men want to mess with you.

It's not realistic.

If you don't have good fight training, that's just not realistic, you know?

And I'd like to have the confidence when I'm an older man that I could protect myself, I could protect my woman, I could protect people that I care about.

So I was always interested in martial arts.

I never did that when I was younger.

So I was interested in the topic.

It was good for my fitness.

It was good for self-defense.

It's something that shows discipline and commitment.

So, you know, it's good for a co-branded thing with my business in that way, that it shows discipline and commitment the same way entrepreneurship or other things require discipline and commitment.

Yeah.

So it was a good thing for me.

Yeah, I think a lot of wins came out of it, to be honest.

I think it was very good for me.

Some of the other, the people that are the high-level in,

say, UFC or the highest-level fighters, they're some of the nicest and best and most honorable, good people in the world.

It's like the last enclave of people that are very sincere, hardworking.

They're exactly how they say they are, you know?

Yeah.

Like Leodo Buchida or a guy like Choice Gracie.

It's exactly who you think he is.

It's very interesting how there's so many sports, but you're right, the fighters seem to have, I wonder if it's like the discipline or the work ethic that goes into it, right?

The mindset.

I agree with that.

And it's also, it's an individual sport, you know.

If you're on a team where there's, you know, five people on the basketball court or 13 people in football or whatever it is,

well, then you can say, oh, you know, that guy should have done something different.

No, it's you and one other person in a cage.

It's you and one other person.

And it's pretty clear what your skills are.

But yeah, you got got to take full accountability when you lose or mess up.

Some people don't.

They still want to play a coach or something.

Or the ref.

Yeah, well, true.

True.

And yeah, that comment about the ref just briefly.

Leoto tell me a story like this.

Leoto Machida is one of the best strikers ever, amazing guy.

Former UFC champion, multi-time 205-pound division.

And Leoto says when he's a child, he started training really at birth, but he started official training when he was four.

Wow.

And, you know, he said that he lost a tournament.

I don't know if he's seven, eight years old.

He lost some tournament.

He lost a match.

And he's in the car with his father driving home and he's upset about it.

And he says, the referee, blah, blah, blah.

And he says, father pulls the car over.

He said, Leodo, you never think this way again.

Say, you do better.

If you finish the guy, there's nothing to say about the referee.

Gordon Ryan says the same thing.

He's like, you know, there's no excuse for this shit.

There should never be a referee decision.

If you choke the guy and he taps, you're not worried what the referee thinks.

I love the luck.

Just be better.

Just be better.

That's great advice, right?

That really sticks in my head.

In other areas of life, I think that really is the answer.

If you're not happy with your current circumstances, then work harder and be smarter and make yourself a better man and you'll have better circumstances.

Yeah.

How's the stock portfolio?

I know the first time you came on, we talked about stocks a lot.

You're doing a lot this year?

I'm doing very well overall.

So

when when uh there was a lot of in April, there was a lot of turmoil around tariffs, and you know, that was changing a lot of things in the economy, yeah.

Um, so you know, I got a good smack down for a little while of them, everyone got hit with that, yeah, that's and that's life.

Warren Buffett did too.

So, whoever wants to make fun of me on the internet for that, like that's how life is, guys.

Like a stock market, the stock chart is not linear, it doesn't just go didn't he was that him that cash out everything, or was that Bill Gates?

Oh, no, he did take a lot of liquidity before then, um, and he also didn't buy things when they were low, you know.

I've had an amazing return since then.

But it's hard to argue with Warren.

Warren's done.

The only points where I can have real disagreement is, which is not to criticize what he's doing, but he's managing so much money that there's only certain things that are worth his while to invest in.

He has a smaller basket of opportunities to invest in.

He's not going to invest $5 million here or $10 million.

It doesn't move the needle for him.

It means nothing.

Just his personal net worth is about 160 billion.

So

if he can invest,

there's opportunities available to me or to other people with

a respectable net worth, but a much lower net worth than him.

If I can spend $5 million and turn it into 15, that's a nice opportunity for me.

If he spends five,

but that might not be a big enough opportunity that he have to buy the whole company, you know?

Yeah, yeah, there's no liquidity for his investment size.

Yeah, exactly.

So he has that limitation.

But yeah, he's done great.

He's also been a role model or inspiration to me.

Amazing what he's accomplished.

I mean, I've heard great things from fighters that have been on the show about

your stock picks.

I do very much.

Claudia spoke highly of you, same with Jake.

Are you investing in AI this year?

Are you kind of just thinking that's a fact?

I think you have to, you know.

And a way that I've been thinking about it,

just very honestly, I don't know.

I'm not a heavy tech guy, you know.

I'm not a guy that knows all the little technology things.

I don't know coding.

There's a lot of things I don't know about technology.

So then I have to think about that in a different way.

And I say, well, you look at NVIDIA, the price is up so high, you know, it's hard to follow in there and think that you're going to multiply your money.

You look at a lot of those type of companies, Palantir.

I met Peter Thiel years ago.

Oh, yeah.

I think he's one of the most brilliant people I ever spoke to.

He seemed like a highly, highly intelligent person.

I wish I would have bought that company.

I didn't.

And it's up 23x in the whole two years.

Crap.

In less than two years, it's up to

100%.

So if you put a million, you'd be up 23.

Wow.

Your million would be 23 million.

Two years.

Less than two years.

Look at the story.

That's insane.

Wow.

So, you know, there's opportunities like that that are loosely on my radar, but I don't feel confident enough to pull the trigger on that.

I just don't know the technology well enough.

So then I got to think about second and third order effects.

So then you could look at companies like, say, Digital Realty Trust or, you know, Equinix.

These are

REITs that they own the buildings where the servers are stored, where they have backup generators and redundant backup generators.

So their servers never lose power.

They're air-conditioned, everything is temperature-controlled.

They're going to have power no matter what, et cetera, et cetera.

Got it.

So, you know, but those companies have moved up a lot too.

So then I think, all right, I got to go, you know, further back on the food chain and think, you know, or the supply chain, you know, technically, and say, well, what the hell?

What's not overpriced yet that has to go up later?

And I think nuclear energy is a great place for that.

So I bought URA recently because I'm also an auto expert on nuclear energy.

But if you want to build a nuclear plant, you need uranium.

And I spent a lot of money on URA recently, which is just a uranium ETF.

And I bought the ETF because I'm sure there's some stock in there that's going to outperform the other ones.

But I'm not a fucking nuclear scientist and I don't know every detail.

So I'm just like, well,

if I own the uranium mines,

all this AI and Bitcoin, it takes so much electricity.

Not just Bitcoin, but the cryptocurrency and all the AI stuff takes so much electricity.

It's not possible with windmills.

It's not possible with solar.

We're already burning a good amount of natural gas.

There's a lot of natural gas out there.

They can burn more natural gas.

You could spin up more plants to burn natural gas.

But if you're serious about having significant power, it's not going to be hydroelectric.

It's not going to be windmills.

It's not going to be solar.

It has to be nuclear.

And to build those nuclear plants, you need uranium.

So I bought a bunch of the uranium mines because we're not there yet, you know?

Wow.

And that's done very well in recent months.

Well done.

Yeah, you think like way ahead of the curve.

You know, everybody's focused.

You'll understand this.

You're very smart, and

you'll get it.

It's like everybody's so focused on the short term of what's going to happen this week, this month.

It's hard for them to think past this quarter, and it's really hard for them to think past two quarters.

And everybody's focused on the next six months with a heavy bias towards right now.

And I think it's hard for me to compete in that space.

There's so much capital that goes into that short-term thinking that I have to think of like, well, what are they not focused on yet that

in a year or three is going to be very valuable?

And that's been a very good investment strategy for me.

I buy boring things.

I'm not an exciting, trendy guy

with investments.

I buy boring things like electricity and retailers and REITs and stuff.

I buy very boring things that are just out of favor and underpriced.

And I think, well, these numbers just don't make sense.

In the future, I think this has to do a lot better.

Well, electricity seems like a very safe play these days.

My bill has doubled since I've moved to Vegas in four years.

You know, the thing about, I think another good one, and I'm not telling, hey, if you don't understand the stock market,

don't buy these things.

Not financial advice, guys.

No.

Yeah, but sincerely,

a person who doesn't understand what they're buying shouldn't buy it.

I don't buy things that I don't understand.

I like that advice.

If they don't understand what I'm talking about, like sincerely, please don't buy that.

You're not going to know when to sell it.

If you don't understand what it is and how it works, you're going to find a way to mess it up.

And I don't want you to mess up your money.

So, I mean, I'm not just saying that as like a precaution for,

you know, oh, I'm not giving financial advice, but here's financial advice.

It's like, no, it's dangerous, man.

If you don't know what you're doing, probably you shouldn't do it.

You know, I'm the same way because people ask me for crypto advice.

That's how I made my millions.

And

I never tell them what coins to buy, to be honest.

Yeah.

And I'm also.

Because then they'll get mad at me if they lose money.

If when things go well, it was there, it's because of them.

When things go bad,

you won't even know if you made the money.

They won't tell you that.

And if they lose even 5, 10%, you're going to be getting calls and texts.

And they're going to sell it at the exact wrong time.

And then when it goes up later,

then they're extra mad at you.

By then, the damage is done.

They've already texted people that you're a scam and you gave them bad advice.

Yeah, I teach people how to make better financial decisions and how to be a good independent thinker, what variables they have to think about and consider.

I teach people how to think, not exact specific stock picks.

And I'm happy to talk about things that I own.

I don't mind that at all.

But that's just a case study.

It's like, this is how I'm thinking about it.

This is what I bought.

This is why I bought it.

This is what I think might happen.

And sometimes I have to tell them I'm wrong, you know?

And I don't mind doing that either because

I don't know anybody that's super successful that's like, you know, is 100% right all the time.

It's like

you're going to have little failures and you're going to have little setbacks.

And like, that's life.

No one shoots 100%.

But in stocks, the fact that you're even making money is abnormal.

I think most people lose money on stocks, right?

People that buy individual stocks tend to lose money.

Yeah.

Same with crypto.

If you don't know what you're doing,

the momentum of the market is going to cause you to have irrational emotions or

to have emotional,

make emotional decisions rather than logical decisions.

And you're doomed if you're.

If you're not thinking rationally, if you're not thinking more long-term and radically,

I strongly recommend you don't buy stocks.

It's going to be bad.

People over-leverage, too.

That's the big problem.

You know, people ask me about a guy wrote me the other day.

He's like, I got, you know, triple-leveraged ETFs for this and this and this.

And he's like, you know, I made so much money.

And I'm like, yeah, but someday the market will go down 20%.

That happens every 18 months, couple of years.

Something happens, like the tariffs.

And the market goes down 20-ish%.

Happens all the time.

It happens every couple of years.

And

you won't be down 20%.

You'll be down 60%.

And for most people, that's about the time that they liquidate.

And then the thing goes up again.

I don't even know the guy.

It's just a random guy writing me.

And he's like, yeah, man, but I made so much money, blah, blah, blah.

And I was just like,

you poor thing.

Yeah.

Like, you know, Buffett says, like, a couple times per century, the market's going to go down 50% or more.

Jeez.

And, you know, for that guy, if the market goes down by one-third, your account's at zero.

You have a full liquidation.

Yeah, he'd be wiped out.

Have you survived the swing like that before, 50%?

2000.

I remember this.

I was on Canal Street in New Orleans, which is near the French Quarter.

Yeah.

And I remember with one of my buddies,

I won't say his name for his privacy, but

we met maybe in 2006 or 7.

And he was asking me about my investments.

I started buying stocks

heavily in December 2008, and the market was just down, down, down.

I bought a lot of casito stocks this time, down, down, down, down.

And I kind of ran out of money.

Whereas spending cash, I ran out of cash.

I had assets, I didn't have cash.

I was spending all that money in through December, first half of January.

And then I didn't have any more cash.

And the market just kept

and the bottom was the first week of March 2009.

At that time, I was down, down, my portfolio was down 70%.

Holy shit.

I was down 70%.

And I remember being in New Orleans with my buddy.

He was broke at the time, or more or less.

He was a young kid.

He was in his early 20s.

And he was a smart, ambitious guy.

And we were having a conversation.

I remember this car drove by Lamborghini.

I don't give a shit about sports cars, but I just made an example to him.

Like the car probably costs $400,000 or $500,000.

I just lost that in the last 10 days.

You could have bought a couple of those,

but instead my account's down 70%.

Now, if you fast forward a couple of years, that got me from like 1 million to 4 million net worth.

Oh, so you held?

You survived that?

You didn't liquidate losses?

No.

Well, no, but

I also had a bachelor's degree in business.

I also studied a lot of things from Warren Buffett and some other investors.

That's very uncomfortable.

You don't feel good.

You don't feel good when you're down that much.

And that was without leverage.

Wow.

And I've always thought about that.

I don't like a lot of leverage.

I don't have a lot of debt.

I don't like to have a lot of debt.

It's mathematically impossible to go bankrupt if you don't have debt.

That's true.

It's impossible to go bankrupt.

You at home should write that down.

It's impossible to go bankrupt if you don't have debt.

So do you use credit cards?

I mean, I pay it off every month.

Yeah, I use credit cards.

I pay the bill every month.

Yeah, I'm a fan of credit cards.

Loans are where it gets tricky, though.

You know,

taking loans with high interest.

All right.

For what?

Have you done that before for a house or anything?

I mean, I have normal mortgages, but even in properties I own, I don't have a lot of debt on it.

You put down a big percentage for the debt.

You know, some people criticize that.

And fairly, and fairly.

This is a personal preference, in my opinion.

I grew up poor.

And, you know, I grew up in a small house, 800 square foot, which was my mom was a hoarder.

My dad was a hoarder.

The house was packed with stuff.

My dad was in prison, so at least his stuff wasn't there.

My best friend lived in the trailer park that was basically in my backyard.

There was a second trailer park at the end of the street, and I grew up around a bunch of white trash trailer park people.

And

for me,

I have enough money in, I make enough money in my business.

I have enough money in my brokerage account that

I just don't want a lot of debt on real estate.

If it's things that I use,

Now, I say it two different ways.

If we bought a hotel, you and I go buy a hotel together, an apartment building or an office building, okay?

Ideally, I'd like to own 0%,

and I'd like us to manage it well and have good cash flow that

the cash flow pays all the expenses, and what we have is profit, and we have 0% down.

I'm not saying that structure is a viable structure.

I'm just saying ideally,

if we could buy a half a billion-dollar building with 0% down, and we only make 4% per year, but

we have nothing to lose.

Worst case, it's the bank's problem.

If the economy tinks, it's not my problem or your problem.

It's the bank's problem.

So I think about that very differently than property that you use for yourself that's for your personal use or for your business use.

I'd rather not have debt on that.

I just don't want to have to think about it.

And probably that's fear-based thinking from my childhood.

Right, true.

I could see that.

Yes.

You view your personal property as separate from a business investment, basically.

I just think of them as different things.

So, you know, if it's your personal house, I'd just rather own it or have little debt.

Have the peace of mind.

If it's something I use for my business, my studios and stuff, I own those properties.

I have very little debt on that relative to their value.

No, I could see that.

My loved one,

moving house to house growing up was tough on her mentally, I think.

So when we bought the house, I was like, yeah, I'll put down a lot because I know you want to be comfortable, you know.

Even though I didn't, like, I'm going to be honest.

I like that stability.

And there's a fair criticism on the other side that somebody would say, like, if you're a good businessman,

your money should be in the markets.

Your money should be in your investments, making you more money.

That's a fair argument.

I think it's a personal preference that

if you have a strong appetite for more risk and you're willing to tolerate the volatility of maybe losing all your properties and moving into a shitty apartment somewhere,

okay.

Yeah.

If you like, okay.

I'm just a little less risk averse.

I'm not trendy.

I don't like a lot of again, I don't buy trendy stocks.

I buy boring things.

I like safety and security.

Yeah.

Well, you're at the point now where you're just living off the interest of your investments, right?

I make good money from my business.

My business pays the bills.

And, you know, I put some money away every month from the business.

Yeah.

I make more money with that.

In the future, if I don't want to run that business, okay.

Then my investments can pay for my life.

Yeah.

I don't have to do anything.

I don't want to.

That's awesome.

That's where I want to be in a few years.

I want to probably have, I think I calculated it, 20 mil liquid is where I need to be to live off,

I think, what, 7% a year off that?

Yes, 1.4 minus inflation.

Yeah.

I think I could do that with 20 mil.

Well, you'd be spending, you know, 60,000, 70,000 a month if you, depending on how you want to think about inflation, right?

Yeah, I spend 40 right now without kids, so I think I factored in another 15, 20 with kids.

Yeah.

You know?

So 20 mil is worth it.

I don't know how to do it.

You bring it down a puppy or something.

I got two puppies.

Those are expensive too, but not as much as kids.

But I feed my dogs like raw meat and shit.

It's pretty expensive.

It's like a thousand a month, I guess.

Yeah.

Lucky dogs dogs for them.

Yeah, no tap water for them either.

Shit.

They drink out of glass.

I even drink tap water.

You do?

I even drink tap water.

I'm surprised.

Do you know what's in there?

Maybe if I knew, I wouldn't drink tap water.

I don't know.

I'll have to educate you, man.

I know when I go through the airport, this is the most true thing you've ever heard in your life.

I go through the airport.

I fly twice a week.

I'm always flying somewhere.

And I'll bring about four empty bottles with me.

Yeah.

And then I'll go through security and go fill the bottles up in the lounge on the other side and put cold water in the bottles.

My brain can't fathom that I want to pay $6 for a bottle of water.

I hate it.

No matter how much money I have, still paying that airport water fee is insane to me.

I can't do it.

$8.

Is it?

Yeah, it's $8 for a plastic water bottle.

Some of them $10.

It depends on the airport.

Yeah, you're giving me a heart pill.

Why do you travel twice a week?

That's a lot.

I'm always traveling to meet clients.

And I have a business conference here this weekend.

I'll go to the gym here with you.

Then I got my conference and just non-stop stuff.

So you got events everywhere?

No, I do events about half a dozen times per year.

So I do about

six events, four days each per year.

And then

I'll do like one-on-one client meetings.

You know, weekend after weekend, I'll go do one-on-one meetings with the clients and help them with their specific whatever investment or business problems.

either counselor that weekend or whatever's on their mind that I could help with.

Don't know.

So you're doing a lot of coaching.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's cool, man.

Well, where can people find your coaching, find your social media and everything?

Well, I think a fun thing, if you looked up, you know, Derek Moneyberg on Instagram, you'll find some fun stuff on there.

And that's a pretty good way to get an understanding of, you know, who I am or what's going on.

There's a lot of stuff on YouTube as well.

So, you know, Derek, D-E-R-E-K, Moneyberg, B-E-R-G.

And,

yeah, I mean, I think, you know, just

If you want to get rich quick, I can't help you with that.

You know, I'm not the right person to help you get rich quick.

I didn't get rich quick.

I didn't get anything so quick.

But if you're willing to put in the work and learn the fundamentals that you can make independent decisions and understand how the pieces work,

I think you could do very, very well over time.

And I'd like to help somebody that thinks like that.

Such a breath of fresh air to hear that take.

On social media, you hear the opposite.

That's what sells in the short term.

And that's what gets clicks in views and sells.

And it's really unfortunate because

there's a lot of young people that they don't know any better.

And then they hear that, and then they mess up what they do have.

It's really unfortunate that

you're not going to gain 20 pounds of muscle overnight, and you're not going to get your bat built overnight, and you're not going to be a millionaire overnight.

Later in life, there's days that I made a few million dollars in a day, but that took 40 years of me thinking about it and strategizing and doing the right things before those.

There's times I've lost $2 million in a day,

but you're, you know, later on, you can make a million dollars in a day on occasion.

Warren Buffett, you know, on a random day that the market's market's up or down, you know, 2%, that's $3 billion to him.

Totally crazy.

He's out $3 billion or down $3 billion.

And you don't think anything of it because it's every day, you know?

He still drives the same car.

He's 95 years old.

Yeah, in that same shitty car.

Good for you, Warren.

I know you're watching right now.

Shout out to Warren Buffett.

Legend, man.

Well, thanks for coming on, man.

Hey, thanks for inviting me again.

Check him out, guys.

Peace.

I hope you guys are enjoying the show.

Please don't forget to like and subscribe.

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Thank you.