E165: Hollywood Lessons on Risk, Reward, and Relationships with Alexander Ludwig

Speaker 1 Audiences don't come to see you, they come to see themselves. So you want actors that have that sort of vulnerability.

Speaker 1 When actors start to put themselves on a pedestal outside of their work, I do think that that translates into your work and suddenly you're not seen as like the everyday guy that you want to root for.

Speaker 2 Welcome to the How and Best Podcast. I'm your host, David Weisberg.
Today, I'm thrilled to sit down with Alexander Ludwig, actor, producer, and star of hit series Vikings and the Hunger Games.

Speaker 2 Alexander shares his journey from child actor to landing his first major role in a movie.

Speaker 2 We'll dive into the business side of entertainment and how he approaches risk and reward as an actor and businessman. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Alexander.

Speaker 2 When we last chatted, you quoted Pitbull: that if you chase money, it runs. How do you relate that to the movie business?

Speaker 1 Steve Jobs talks about this too. If, if, you know, just making money is the object

Speaker 1 in my business, I think you would quit because it's just such a

Speaker 1 brutal business to be a part of if you don't love it. You know, if you, if you, if you know, if you're chasing things like fame or

Speaker 1 money, you're going to be, I think,

Speaker 1 in for a really

Speaker 1 rude awakening. No bunch of luck is involved in this business and every business in a lot of ways.
The only thing that really

Speaker 1 guarantees a semblance of success is persistence. The only way you'll be persistent is if you truly, truly love.
your craft.

Speaker 1 And I think that applies to a lot of, you know, a lot of businesses, if not all of them.

Speaker 2 And the luck is not only about getting your first big role, it continues throughout your entire career.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. The misconception in our business and the misconception in

Speaker 1 I think actors have in general is that once you get that role, you're set. I've been in this business now for about 20 years, which is crazy to say.
I'm 32.

Speaker 1 And the longer I'm in this business, the more I realize it's... That's the exact opposite of how it works.
Just because you have one

Speaker 1 great win, it doesn't ensure anything. And then you realize it's no different from pretty much every other business.
I mean, you need investors to say yes to you.

Speaker 1 You need people to believe in you. You need mentors.
It's the exact same thing. Literally, the other day, I was at an amazing birthday party for a friend of mine in Austin.
His name is Hayes Barnard.

Speaker 1 He started a company called Goodley. It was an amazing birthday, such incredible people there.
And we went to this bar, and this one guy was a big fan of Vikings.

Speaker 1 This TV show I did, and he came up to me and he goes, you know, my God, I'm such a big fan, you know, and then we kind of got into the, you know, my process and how it works.

Speaker 1 And then he starts asking, like, well, why haven't you done this? Right. Like, well, why haven't you, you know, why have you done a Marvel movie? And I go, let me ask you a question.

Speaker 1 What do you do for a living? And he's like, I'm in commercial real estate. And I'm like, okay, so like one of my best friends in Austin, her dad is one of the biggest developers in the state.

Speaker 1 And I said, why aren't you as big as him?

Speaker 1 And I said, you know, it's no different.

Speaker 1 You know, it's like, don't get me wrong, like, we, we actually, I have signed Marvel deals and we have, you know, had the potential of possibly being a part of this, but like so much of this business is just timing and luck and just keeping at it if you think about hollywood like a casino and you have different odds at different tables how do you stack the deck in your favor and how do you create your own luck what does that mean is a very interesting thing because acting is very different than a lot of other businesses there are coaches that i work with one in particular named ivana chubik who's um one of the most celebrated coaches in this business.

Speaker 1 And I work with her on literally every single word of dialogue on everything I ever do because she has seen it all.

Speaker 1 She's worked with the great, she's worked with Charlie Starone and Ali Berry and Brad Pitt and all these people before they were who they were.

Speaker 1 She's like my secret weapon in that, that I, everything I do, I break down every project with her.

Speaker 1 And that's a way that I can ensure that at the very least, I know that even though I don't have control of how the project will be received or how it will do, I know that I can give my best in this and deliver what people expect of me.

Speaker 2 It seems like the way to success in Hollywood is one, is just be the best overall athlete, the best actor, and all things being equal, also be the easiest to work with as well.

Speaker 2 It seems also from the outside that two of the drivers are the skill development, becoming better through repetition and all these scenes, versus kind of the new and young actor or actress that is coming up, and people always want younger, more beautiful.

Speaker 1 I don't think attractiveness is as much of a part in this world as I think people think it is. I know super

Speaker 1 incredibly successful, talented actors that I wouldn't say are like the most attractive people in the world. Of course, you have like outliers.

Speaker 1 And, you know, if you want to be cast as like the pretty girlfriend or like the, you know, the pretty boyfriend, like I'm sure you'll have success in that.

Speaker 1 And then you're kind of more just like a model. Looks can certainly help you, but it can only get you so far.
I really do think that there is a, you know, that's the beauty of our craft is when you...

Speaker 1 you know the difference or you feel the difference when you're watching an actor who really transports you to that place.

Speaker 1 One of the quotes in this business that I love that Julianne Moore said is that audiences don't come to see you, they come to see themselves.

Speaker 1 So you want actors that have that sort of vulnerability when actors

Speaker 1 start to put themselves on a pedestal outside of their work. I do think that that sort of translates into your work and suddenly you're not seen as like the everyday guy that you want to root for.

Speaker 2 Biggest misconceptions in Hollywood is you see a successful actor. and you think it's their first role because it's the first time you've seen them, but they've done 20 previous roles.

Speaker 1 They've done a bunch of smaller roles.

Speaker 2 In terms of hunger games, how far were you into your career before you had your first big break?

Speaker 1 That's a great example of like having, you know, for the world, that was probably the first time that they had seen me, arguably.

Speaker 1 But, you know, I had been doing this since I was like, I mean, I think I got cut out of my first movie when I was about nine years old. And then I really started going after it when I was like 13.

Speaker 1 And I always, I'm one of the lucky ones. I always knew that this was,

Speaker 1 I just knew it was my path. Like, I just loved storytelling I love being a performer

Speaker 1 one of my friends the other day told me he was like I really believe you know humanity is built of two things storytellers and tool builders I'd like to consider myself as somebody who could do both yeah I was doing uh movies of the week and commercials and slowly building and then I got my first big break and this was a huge deal uh it was called the seeker the dark is rising and it was based on like a big series of books I think in Europe and it was the first joint venture between Walden Media and Fox feature films I was cast as the the lead

Speaker 1 at 13 years old.

Speaker 1 I had done 16 auditions for this. They'd flown me out.
I mean, it was a huge deal. And of course, the movie turned out to be a disaster, but I had the most amazing experience ever.

Speaker 1 And I got my agent in LA from that. Then, because of that film, I was able to book Race to Witch Mountain.

Speaker 1 I saw the audition, but I think I was in a smaller group because one of the director, Andy Fickman, had seen me in that last film.

Speaker 1 So I auditioned with Dwayne LaRock Johnson and Honest Fear Rob, and I ended up getting in that role. And I'm so grateful for that.
And that was a big, this big Disney film. And then there was a lull.

Speaker 1 And I'll never forget this. I was like 15, 16, but I looked like I was 12.
I was a really late bloomer and

Speaker 1 just wasn't booking anything. Like I was just going out for so many auditions and I was just like miserable.
How many years was that lull? Two years, probably. Just under two years.

Speaker 1 And I was terrified. And I was like, okay, I need to find a way to get to LA permanently.
So that was through college.

Speaker 1 My grades weren't that great, but I knew that if I went through the theater program, I'd probably have a chance of getting to USC. So I did that and I did.
And when I was at USC, I was finally in LA.

Speaker 1 And I'm Canadian, so this was a way to get me in the United States. And

Speaker 1 then,

Speaker 1 you know, about a year into college, I booked The Hunger Games.

Speaker 1 And suddenly I was like off to the races in terms of, I was pretty sure I'd be able to keep working. I wasn't set by any means.

Speaker 1 I certainly wasn't making enough money to, you know, like I still had to work desperately, especially when you're on a film like that.

Speaker 1 Another misconception in our business, when we talk about, you know, pay,

Speaker 1 like people assume that it's the big movies where you get paid. That's true if you're on the second or the third film of a big franchise.

Speaker 2 Your character got killed, right?

Speaker 1 I was only on the first film and

Speaker 1 I died, right? Yeah. So like, so like, I would have paid to be in that film and they know that.

Speaker 1 So.

Speaker 1 They have the luxury of basically getting you for pennies on the dollar, which is fine. I'm so grateful for that movie for so many reasons and it set me up.

Speaker 1 But it wasn't until later in my career that I was able to really make a great living doing it. And then after that, you know, Vikings happened and Vikings was a really, really big, big show for me.

Speaker 1 Vikings, I was able to show the growth from like, you know, a boy to a man.

Speaker 1 And by the end of the show, I was, you know, four years old and had like four kids. That really helped me kind of transition from being a child actor into a man.
And that's a lot.

Speaker 1 That's really hard for, I think, a lot of young actors, especially back then, who would get type cast as, oh, that's the child actor, or that's that.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm lucky enough that I didn't have so much success that I was like stuck in that, but I could keep working.

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Speaker 1 Switch now while your back office has breathing room learn more at juniper square.com slash vc so in many ways if you look at somebody like a macaulay colkin he was basically anchored as this child from home alone his success became his his downfall it's it's very easy to just assume that like every actor wants to be the biggest actor in the world and wants to have the most success i don't actually think that that's true for a lot of people i know people who like genuinely don't want that at all that just love doing it and just kind of want to just pull it back I mean I don't know him at all.

Speaker 1 I can't imagine how he did it and like survive through it because that is like

Speaker 1 man, that's hard. That's really hard.
Like getting stuck in that, having that much success that young. And by success, I mean like success in our business.

Speaker 1 Based on the things I see about him, he seems like he's doing great and he's like had this big turnaround, which is awesome. And I think he's a great actor.

Speaker 1 I just, you know, that, um, but maybe that's what he wanted. Maybe he wanted to pull back.
You know, I, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not sure. I would imagine it was really tough for him, um,

Speaker 1 after having so much success as a a kid to find it, to kind of like transition into

Speaker 2 adulthood. And if you take away the money, you take away the fame.
What is it about acting that you love so much?

Speaker 1 It's the only thing I know that I'd probably do for free because I love it. I love it so much.
If I,

Speaker 1 you know, I'd figure out some other way to live. But like, I think I have it inside of me that I have to tell stories and transporting people to other worlds and seeing other cultures.

Speaker 1 history buff through and through. Like I love history.

Speaker 1 So Vikings is truly like one of those like dream roles that I think my 12-year-old self would just be like, just losing his mind that I ever got to do. Just bringing an audience into

Speaker 1 a place away from the craziness of life and

Speaker 1 allowing them to be introspective or inspired or scared or excited and feel all these emotions with a character. It's magical, man.
It's truly magical.

Speaker 1 I'd go as far to say I think film and television is one of the greatest arts, if not the greatest art in the world, because it is a culmination of so many other artists to make something great and you're using every one of your senses so when you go and see a film every actor had to show up the grips had to show up you know the cgi if that's in it had to show up the production designer the director the editor i mean it's all these incredible artists and and it's collective art it's just magical man i'm an optimist at heart and i believe that we're going to find our way through this but i do feel like with so much content out there it's it's just it's hard to get things seen which is sad because like you know of course when you make art you want as many people to see it.

Speaker 1 I did a film called The Covenant with Guy Richie and Jake Jillenhaw and it was such a cool movie and it was so great.

Speaker 1 I'll have, you know, a few people come up to me about it here and there, but like it didn't nearly, you know, impact the way that I thought it would, especially given that kind of talent.

Speaker 1 And it just was a reminder to me that it's just like, you know, you're rolling the dice every single time.

Speaker 2 You want both a high-quality piece of art and also a lot of people to see it.

Speaker 1 I do this so that people can see what we do. You know, that's like, you know, nothing makes me happier.

Speaker 1 I was just in Costa Rica and like Vikings is so big there it's like it's unbelievable and so many people would like suck me on the street or like I genuinely like it was just madness and my friends that were there because it was my brother's bachelor party my friends over there were like do you ever get like frustrated by this and I was like no it's the greatest thing in the world it's the greatest thing in the world to know that you've made a positive impact in somebody's life is and all I have to do is be nice and you make these people's day like that is such a blessing that I do not take for granted for one moment.

Speaker 1 And sure, like sometimes you have to deal with, you know, people who are a little overbearing, but like, it is what it is. Like that's, that comes with the territory.

Speaker 1 And the more that happens, that means probably the more stories I'm being able to tell. So that's awesome.

Speaker 2 I have to admit, until literally a couple of months ago, I guess I implicitly look down on entertainment. I look at myself as an educator and I think this is important stuff.

Speaker 2 These skits or these videos, like that's just entertaining people. Like that's just leisure.
And I did a couple skits with this TikToker European kid. I don't know if you've seen him, Eris.

Speaker 2 He talks about, you know, he plays this kind of French, French, spoiled kid.

Speaker 1 I have seen this. Yes, I have seen that guy.

Speaker 2 So, you know, the guy, he's a good friend of mine. And our first video got 4 million views.
What I saw in the comments really

Speaker 2 surprised me a lot in that people were getting so much joy out of this video. They're like, it was about me hiring him.
And he's talked, I asked him, you know, why do you want to work here?

Speaker 2 And he said, you know, my papa has all these great businesses. It was hilarious.
And just seeing the small skit that brought so much happiness to 4 million people,

Speaker 2 especially in a world where we live in such a divided world and so much of what we consume is polarizing, meant to scare you, but just having this like almost like moment of happiness in people's lives, it clicked in me.

Speaker 2 I'm like, this is powerful. This is really valuable stuff.
So I'm a complete convert to kind of media, art, and entertainment.

Speaker 1 So often now, especially like, you know, Some people's livelihoods depend on how many people see certain things and people can be,

Speaker 1 you know, a group of people can basically be reduced to a number on a screen and you forget that that was four million people four million actual human beings that's the size of a small country that is unbelievable and you made them all smile i think it's so easy to forget that entertainment is the best thing in the world and it's amazing storytelling of so many different forms is amazing and you know i have you know content creators have their their place and actors have their place and and we're all you know doing our own things i love everything about it and i think it's one of the most important things in the world because uh we need it like we need food And storytelling has been a part of us since we have been a part of this planet.

Speaker 2 You mentioned Ryan Holiday. We share the same favorite offer.
I saw your podcast with him.

Speaker 2 My favorite book, Obstacle is the, is the one I put it slightly higher than Ego is the Enemy, which is my second favorite all-time book for any author.

Speaker 2 Let's talk about Ego is the Enemy. What were your takeaways from that? And how did that influence you as a book?

Speaker 1 So, The Obstacle Way is also one of my favorite books as well. So, but Ego is the Enemy.
I think every actor needs to read this book.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it's not because I mean every actor is like egotistical or whatever. One thing I hate about my business so much is that

Speaker 1 it is a thousand percent go, go, go. And then it is nothing.
Like there is no in between, you know, and I am a control freak at heart. I need to be working all the time.
I love working.

Speaker 1 I love doing things, moving things.

Speaker 1 I either have to be doing like an epic adventure, like climbing a mountain or doing something like that, or I need to be working on a business or I need to be writing a script. Or or I just need that.

Speaker 1 Robert De Niro talks about this too. He says the importance of just staying calm in our business, and I think the best way to do that is just by being grateful.

Speaker 1 If you've had some big success moment and you assume that you know everybody's seen your work and that you're sent forever, you will have a really, really rude awakening.

Speaker 1 I've seen it time and time again with people who have come and gone in our business. Only way I know to be successful, and I just don't even think about being successful.

Speaker 1 I think being successful in life is just by being a humble, grateful person for everything

Speaker 1 we have.

Speaker 1 Now, I'll speak from my personal experience. Like, I have always been a kind person, and that's something I'm very proud of.
Like, I think I was raised that way when I work with people.

Speaker 1 I, you know, I could literally tell you to call anybody I've ever worked with. I've always been raised to treat the janitor the same way as CEO, and I love that.

Speaker 1 And that's something I'm very proud of. It's probably the thing I'm most proud of in this business.

Speaker 1 That being said, like, when the Hunger Games came out and I was 19 years old, like, I thought it would be different. Like, I thought for sure that I wouldn't have to audition for sure.

Speaker 1 Like, I was done. I was like, thank God.
Okay. I put in the work, like, we're done.
And then I was like, holy fuck. Like, are you shitting me?

Speaker 1 Like, I have to keep, like, this was the biggest movie on the planet. And, like, sure, I wasn't the lead, but like, I was an important part in this.
Like, I like, what?

Speaker 1 Or like, what do you mean this person hasn't seen The Hunger Games? You know, like, like, this person in the business, right?

Speaker 1 Because, like, you're assuming, like, well, if it's a big movie, like, probably everybody watched it. That's just not true.
And even today, like, I'm constantly humbled by, like,

Speaker 1 just because Guy Ritchie has seen Vikings doesn't mean Martin Scorsese has. You know, he probably doesn't know who the fuck I am.

Speaker 1 That's actually not true.

Speaker 1 Martin Scorsese did tell one of my co-stars that he loved Vikings, but there's other directors who definitely haven't seen Vikings or who definitely haven't seen any of my work. And

Speaker 1 if I sit there every day and just assume that like everything should just come to me and I've made it and like, oh my God, I'm so amazing, like

Speaker 1 nothing will. And so, for every actor, Ego is the Enemy is a really important book to read.
I swear when I read it, I just felt like I'd just been hugged or something.

Speaker 1 It's like, it's just reminding yourself, just how lucky you are to be even making a living doing what you love, even if it's not a crazy living.

Speaker 1 Like, just making a living doing what you love is such a dream. When I sit back and I just live in peace and I stop trying to force things so much,

Speaker 1 things surprise me in beautiful ways. And in terms of my business, I've seen enough people have rocket shit moments and just epic falls.

Speaker 1 I've realized that just because you have that moment doesn't mean it's that moment forever.

Speaker 1 You can even see this now with some of the biggest stars ever, you know, not really having the power they used to have.

Speaker 1 And then you see somebody you've never heard of come out of left field that you're like, where did this person come from?

Speaker 1 And that's also the beauty of our industry.

Speaker 1 And that's not by design. Like you can't, you can't be like, oh man, that person planned that out to a T.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm going to replicate replicate exactly what that person did and i'll end up exactly where they are because um they couldn't have planned for that and i don't know what you call that like i don't know if that's if that's luck or if that's you know some divine intervention or just destiny or whatever you want to call it but like you know there are people that i know who work so much harder than i am and have had so much so much less success i think it's just probabilities right everything has has a certain probability i do think that staying in the game and being in fitness whether it's career fitness is really important creates that luck.

Speaker 2 I think there's this availability heuristic: how you only think about the actors that have stayed consistent for 20, 30 years. You don't think of the ones that have burnt out.

Speaker 2 It's very trite, but the luck, the harder you work, the luckier you get. Another variation of that is the more you make yourself available, the luckier you get.

Speaker 2 With my podcast, I'm on, you know, this will probably be roughly episode 150.

Speaker 2 You know, every once a couple months, I get a really big star, whether Jake Paul, Ryan, you mentioned real estate, Ryan Surhant, Alex Hermose.

Speaker 2 It's impossible for a podcaster just to target those people with no other episode. So you have to have this longevity.
You have to love what you're doing.

Speaker 2 I would do this with no audience, just building a relationship with the guests.

Speaker 1 You got to sometimes, you got to fill it in with like a me every once in a while. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I was going to say, Alexander Ludwig, but we were talking about ego. So

Speaker 2 just to follow up on that, do you think that ego has a positive, positive purpose? And also, can you overcorrect and become too egoless for a Hollywood or a business pursuit? Thank you for listening.

Speaker 2 To join our community and to make sure you do not miss any future episodes, please click the follow button above to subscribe.

Speaker 1 I don't know what I expected from this podcast, David, but like I love these questions. And I think that they're really fascinating.
And I love having conversations like this. I love what you said.

Speaker 1 I know somebody who's massively successful who deals entirely in probability.

Speaker 1 And even when the odds aren't sacked in his favor,

Speaker 1 he still went. He still went for it and was massively successful.
And I think that that's really fascinating. But I love what you said about probability.
I totally agree with you.

Speaker 1 And I think that luck is when preparation meets opportunity and you just got to keep going.

Speaker 1 I love that. And what I love about what you just said is that it takes the pressure off of you in a nice way that you don't have to be so down on yourself.

Speaker 1 when things don't go your way because if you understand

Speaker 1 the game of probability, then suddenly, listen, I know actors who aren't that great, who are massively successful, aren't that great actors.

Speaker 1 I also know actors who are phenomenal and better than probably most of us. And, you know, but I know, I do know that if they keep rolling the dice, I truly believe they will get a shot.

Speaker 1 You just got to keep, keep going. In terms of how successful you become,

Speaker 1 that is an interesting topic for me. And this is where like your question just comes in for me because,

Speaker 1 you know, a friend of mine, Joe Gebbia, here, who I love dearly, he founded Airbnb. And I look at that and I look at VRBO, you know, and,

Speaker 1 you know, both are, in a lot of ways, a similar platform, right? What is it that separates the two? And I'm sure we can find a million reasons why Airbnb is probably more successful.

Speaker 1 But, you know, how much of that was timing?

Speaker 1 And Because he's so successful, you know, I think Joe is probably, you know, you're multi-multi-billionaire. I'm just talking on financial level, but

Speaker 1 is it because he worked harder or did he work smarter or did he get luckier? You know, what is that? I will say this.

Speaker 1 The most successful people I have met, Joe included, are some of the nicest and most humble people I know.

Speaker 1 I have met other people who are also massively successful, who, for lack of better words, are like assholes and like really savages.

Speaker 1 But I believe in my heart of heart, those are the outliers. And what we're talking about probability, every once in a while, one of those guys is going to make it through, you know?

Speaker 1 But across the board, I have found that it is the guys who have a mission, a purpose, you know, who believe, like this birthday party that I had for Hayes.

Speaker 1 Hayes is another one, you know, multi-billionaire, Good Leap, unbelievable guy, nicest, humble, you know, amazing guy, just wants to celebrate his success, wants to share it with his friends.

Speaker 1 He's a lovely human, wants to give back to the world.

Speaker 2 Jeff Bezos has this quote where in baseball, you strike at the ball and people with a higher hit rate do better, but you could only really score four runs if it's a grand slam.

Speaker 2 But in business, once in a while, you could step up to a plate and you could hit a thousand

Speaker 2 X. You could hit a thousand runs.
So in venture capital, you call this power laws. You try to build a portfolio.
of 30, 40, 50 companies that could all be the next Airbnb.

Speaker 2 And if you hit one, it accounts for all the losses and many times over. Those Those have been some of the best portfolios.

Speaker 2 It's not about making sure that each one returns, you know, three, four X, like a private equity deal. It's more about how do you find that one huge outlier.

Speaker 1 Ashton Kutcher is a really, really brilliant example of this. Ashton and I are rep by our manager, Stephanie Simon, and she's just incredible.

Speaker 1 And Ashton, when started a fund back when, like, in Silicon Valley, when it was like really getting going and invested in,

Speaker 1 you know, and by the way, I don't know these exact numbers, so forgive me, but I'm just going to use round numbers. Let's say invested $25,000 into a hundred different companies, all startups.

Speaker 1 97 of them failed, but three of them were Spotify, Airbnb, and Uber.

Speaker 1 And without question, Ashton has made more money and had more success in the tech world than he ever has all the years he's had acting. And I will say that for me,

Speaker 1 the wonderful thing that

Speaker 1 my business or that my job gives me is access.

Speaker 1 And that's something I'm really grateful for is that I I get to meet these really interesting people that are doing really interesting things. And they want to meet me for some crazy reason.

Speaker 1 And it's really nice. And I love smart people.
I love people who want to change the world, who talk about things that they're trying to do to help

Speaker 1 the world. The hardest part is that

Speaker 1 you do need money to deploy in this space. The key for me has always to just make sure that I don't live beyond my means.
I think that wealth

Speaker 1 is how much you keep. You just need to be very careful and not try to live like the

Speaker 1 billionaire you're not or

Speaker 1 crazy person for me. I've talked to my wife about this all the time.
I said, what do we actually need?

Speaker 1 Who are we trying to oppress here? Like if we need more space in our house, that's great because we need more space in our house. But like I have zero desire to have the biggest house on the street.

Speaker 1 That's just not like something I care about. I would much rather be using this money and investing in things that I think that can really make a difference in the world.

Speaker 1 We'll say I've got to that place by realizing how quickly money goes early on in my career.

Speaker 1 If you make $100,000 in our business and you're 19 years old and you feel like you've made it and then suddenly you take it home and you realize you have $46,000 and you're like, oh my God, like, you know,

Speaker 1 okay, this is not nearly as much as I thought. And very quickly you're at zero.
And, you know, I think I learned very early on that like that, you know, to invest in assets, not liabilities.

Speaker 2 Do you think it was a necessary condition for you to quote unquote lose or spend all your money before you can learn? Was that a lesson you had to learn the hard way?

Speaker 1 Without question. Nobody could have told me.

Speaker 1 This is where I go back to like, you know, child startup and I, and how grateful I am for how it has happened for me because I cannot imagine what I would have done.

Speaker 1 I look at somebody like Justin Bieber as an example of somebody who is just so massively successful, so young. And I just, I don't know how he's done it.
He's managed to keep it together.

Speaker 1 And it's just, you know, I applaud him for it. Here's my one rule: if it's an experience, spend the money.
Like 100%.

Speaker 1 If you're going to go on a trip or you're going to do something that is like, that will, that will fill you, like fill your soul, like, you know, bar, like barring barring buying, like, you know, getting in the presidential suite somewhere and chartering a jet, like, go spend the money to go, you know,

Speaker 1 explore and see other places and, you know, climb that mountain, go on that hike, you know, do that thing. Because that, what are you doing if not, if not living life, but responsibly?

Speaker 1 You know, at the same time, you got to be careful and live below your means. And for everybody, that means something different.

Speaker 2 It's also a misunderstanding of the business model. If you had a big hit, you could maybe expect that every five years.

Speaker 2 So if you plan out in that way versus the idea that now you've made it, now you don't have to audition, you don't have to do more, you're going to get this twice a year, I think that's where people get in trouble.

Speaker 1 It's not that dissimilar from private equity or anything else. You think about it.
You get one great one, and then, you know, that's awesome. People know you from that.

Speaker 1 You can always go back to that and be like, hey, I'm the guy who did this, you know, and then they're like, oh, we love that. So like, we'll get you in this.
But like, it certainly isn't every year.

Speaker 1 And I think something that really frustrates me as the artist side of me, kind of the business side, is that,

Speaker 1 you know, we have limited time. And I want to be able to tell as many stories as I can that I love.
And it's frustrating at times when you have years.

Speaker 1 Last year, there was maybe three things that I was really excited about.

Speaker 1 But like, you know, it's far and few between when you get to find those projects that you're like, oh my God, like, I would love to be in this. And I would love for the audience to watch this.

Speaker 1 Like, I am so excited. Vikings, like, it was on the history channel.
Bulgaria was one of the biggest films in the world.

Speaker 1 And then I I went and just did a show for the history channel that people were just like, dude, what? Like, what are you doing? Like, it's that was a World War II documentaries.

Speaker 1 And we got lucky that the show became what it became. And the only reason it did is because

Speaker 1 I think because it was like, I would watch that show. Like, I loved, you know, I loved it because I would watch it.

Speaker 1 So, like, you know, I have to trust that there'll be more people like me who would like to watch it too.

Speaker 2 It's one of these luxurious issues that you have. I have the same thing in my podcast.
We cracked top 100 podcasts in the US for a couple of days. Now

Speaker 2 we're back down, but we crossed the Rubicon. And now we have only 100, and we're doing it twice a week.
We have 104 slots per year. So it is a finite amount of people I could talk to.

Speaker 2 I want to talk to some people two times. We're thinking about potentially doing three a week.
But it is this like fixed amount. I love the saying, you could do anything.

Speaker 2 You could just can't do everything. So you really have to pick your shots.

Speaker 1 I love that you said that. And actually, this is a great thing for you because like,

Speaker 1 you know, you look at, and I know this is, you're in a totally different field in terms of, you know, the audience and what you're focusing on, which I love because you have your niche.

Speaker 1 And I think that that's really amazing. But like, you look at somebody like Joe Rogan.

Speaker 1 He's the perfect example.

Speaker 1 Despite how people, you know, I love his podcast, but, you know, it depends on what people, right? It depends on the person, and that's fine. Everybody's telling their own opinion.

Speaker 1 But like, you look at him,

Speaker 1 he had zero plans to be like the biggest podcaster in the world, right? Like he, like, zero. Like, he did it because he loved it.

Speaker 1 Like, if you look at his old podcast, like, he's in some shitty little room with like his buddies just shooting the shit. Like, just before everyone else was doing podcasting,

Speaker 1 I seriously doubt that if he was about like, I'm going to make money, like, this is like, I'm going to make so much money. I'm going to be the number one podcaster in the world.

Speaker 1 And like, I will not stop.

Speaker 1 If he did that, as opposed to just like, you know, inviting people on that he was curious to talk to and learn from, which is what makes his thing is interesting i doubt he would have continued doing it and it's not to say like of course i want to provide for my family and of course i want to be a successful actor of course i would love to make more money and do bigger things and trust all that like of course but at the same time like if i didn't inherently absolutely love what i was doing i doubt i would be sitting here today if it was just about being famous and just about getting rich like there's no way i would have there's no way my ego could have taken it you're made to feel so small in our business it's crazy.

Speaker 2 The feedback loop is just too long. You, you mentioned you started at 12, you had your first big break at 19.

Speaker 2 Seven years might not sound like a huge, but to a 12-year-old, seven years is, you know, 75% of their life. It's massive.
Insane.

Speaker 1 Even today, like, it's pretty shocking.

Speaker 1 It's pretty shocking the caliber of actors that I talk to

Speaker 1 that don't get roles. in things that you were like, are they stupid? Like, how would they not have cast you? Like, you're so much bigger than me and more successful than, you know, and

Speaker 1 it's a toss-up every time. It's not as easy as people think.

Speaker 2 You're touching on my 2024 obsession, which was compounding. I talked to everybody about compounding.
One thing that I found among billionaires, they have two things in common.

Speaker 2 I've interviewed seven billionaires now. One is they're all compounding in one sector.
over years, just massive compounding, just going deeper and deeper and deeper.

Speaker 2 And every year, until they have their first couple of billion, billion then there's more flexibility in the model second is they're actually doing a contrarian bet they're compounding in an area that nobody thinks should be an area airbnb is a good example i interviewed the ceo of iCapital he's connecting high net worth individuals and sometimes even non-accredit investors with the blackstones of the world, the large private equity firms.

Speaker 2 10, 12 years ago, people thought he was crazy. Now it's a massive, massive business.
And now everybody believes what he believes. Said another way, you have to be doing something.

Speaker 2 You have to be so passionate about something for so many years that everybody is either not paying attention to you or ridiculing it. Another counterintuitive example is Ryan Serhant.

Speaker 2 Ryan is a big deal. He was a previous guest.

Speaker 2 My fiancé is on his new show, Owning Manhattan.

Speaker 2 He was doing reality TV on

Speaker 2 for real estate. Everybody ridiculed him.
All the real estate agents are like, that's not real. You're joke.
His vision was this was media. I enjoy it.
I enjoy kind of the art aspect of it.

Speaker 2 And now overnight, everybody wants to go become in media. All the top brokers are trying to pursue it.
But now it's too little, too late. So you have to have this like compounding in the area.

Speaker 2 And the only way to really survive that seven years of,

Speaker 2 you know, any external validation is internal validation, which is another way of saying you love what you're doing.

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Speaker 1 He loved doing that.

Speaker 1 Like he loved doing the realest, the real estate thing. Because I don't even think, maybe he saw it.
Maybe he did. I'm sure he did.
He's a savvy guy. Maybe he saw how this would help his business.

Speaker 1 More often than not, I think that there's a little bit of a star aligning here, too, because you know, he could have been seen as a joke for doing that, like totally.

Speaker 1 Like, and maybe, and then suddenly he's not a genius, he's an idiot.

Speaker 1 That goes to the point of like, he did it because he loved it, he loved being on the show, and he ended up parlaying that into a massive business. And I think that that's that's exactly it.

Speaker 1 The reason I'm not, you know,

Speaker 1 on TikTok every day creating little skits, which is is like, love that, love watching it. That's awesome.
That's just, I just don't feel the desire to go put my time in that.

Speaker 1 I'd rather be writing a script and trying to get a movie made, right? Like, because that's what fills me.

Speaker 2 We started a newsletter. And, you know, a lot of people liked it.
We got like a thousand subscribers, which for our space is a non-trivial amount.

Speaker 2 But every week I would go sit down to do the newsletter. It was hard work.
And I asked myself a very simple question, which is, can I do this for five to 10 years?

Speaker 2 A, I could probably theoretically do it. I would hate my life, but I couldn't really be the best because I'm not passionate.

Speaker 2 I know there's people out there that are passionate about writing newsletters, just not me.

Speaker 2 And I decided to kill off the projects early on, despite some early success because I knew that it's not an advantage I could compound. I could do podcasts till the day that I die.

Speaker 2 And frankly, I expect to do some form of this type of media for the next 50, 60 years. So it's something that naturally aligns with my strengths and my interests.

Speaker 1 Which is why you're going to continue to be massively successful because, like,

Speaker 1 and honestly, like, I think podcasting is amazing. Like, I would love to do it.
I love being on podcasts because I love great conversations with interesting people. I think it's like amazing.

Speaker 1 It's such an awesome thing to do. It's, you know, it's hard with, like, for me to come up with the idea of starting one because it's like, I got to, you know, travel.
I have like no real schedule.

Speaker 1 It's kind of just like, tomorrow I could be in South Africa. The one thing that I heard from that newsletter that I got was like, I do country music, which I absolutely love.
I love to write music.

Speaker 1 I love doing it. But

Speaker 1 I like doing it because I like doing it. Like, cause it's like, it's a hobby for me.

Speaker 1 I don't want that to be my job. And I had a really real conversation with the label and everything who wanted me to tour for 300 days and do all this stuff.
And I'm like,

Speaker 1 I just had two kids. Like, I want to be a dad.
You know, that matters to me more than that. And I know so many amazing artists who put so much time and effort.

Speaker 1 And if it's anything like the film business with how much shit you have to eat before you have any semblance of success, like, I just don't have it in me for that.

Speaker 1 Like, I just don't love it enough to be, to be excellent at it now.

Speaker 1 That's not to say that down the road, like, my, you know, my thing about just at this one moment, I'm like, I got to focus on acting and making movies because that's where I love, that's what I love to do.

Speaker 1 And I can do that to the band.

Speaker 2 That's also, you have a 20-year head start there.

Speaker 1 I have a 20-year head start, you know, and it's like you said, it's compounding in this one thing. Do you believe that to be really successful at something, you need to focus on one thing at a time?

Speaker 2 I'm going to turn the question on you. So,

Speaker 2 being,

Speaker 2 let me use a derogatory term, an amateur country singer. Does that make you better at acting and producing? And I know you're also a competitive skier.

Speaker 2 Talk to me about the skill overlap, but is there also a benefit, a cross-sectional benefit there?

Speaker 1 One of the biggest things is networking.

Speaker 1 Like my network in the country community is unbelievable just because I was there and like writing music, not to mention brand deals that I got in the country world that I could continue to get because I've put my foot in.

Speaker 1 There's certainly benefits to me having done that. So realize, okay, so when I first did country music, I had a break from Vikings and I was like, I'm going to start going to Nashville.

Speaker 1 And I took, like, for nine months, I took planes there and wrote, wrote, wrote, didn't know anybody, just kept meeting people and trying to figure it out.

Speaker 1 And then, of course, the universe conspires to work in your favor when you believe in yourself. I always believe this.

Speaker 1 And on a plane, I met the right people at the right time and ended up signing a deal.

Speaker 1 And we were supposed to do a huge radio tour and all of these things. And then COVID happened.
So, to me, I think the music business has become completely democratized.

Speaker 1 and that's fantastic for, you know,

Speaker 1 Joe, who lives in, you know, the middle of Kentucky, who isn't going to go to Nashville, but can just upload music. I'm happy for him.
It's a lot harder, I believe, to have continued success because,

Speaker 1 you know, country radio is still where it's at, I think, to like really build a massive following that are going to show up to your shows. And

Speaker 1 I think you can have a little success. I think you can do really well.
You could probably make a living, probably.

Speaker 1 Back in the day, it used to be you do

Speaker 1 a radio tour,

Speaker 1 you put a song out. If it breaks the top 10, that's great.
We're going to put one more out. If it goes to number one, like we're off to the races.
Like you had a pretty fast feedback back then.

Speaker 1 And I talked to Luke Brian about this because

Speaker 1 I was at lunch and he had come up to our table. We started talking.
He was like, it's a singles game now. Like it's single, single, single, single, single, right? Your singles are your albums now.

Speaker 1 And it's like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and pepper the audience. And by the way, you have to be on TikTok.
Like, you have to be, right?

Speaker 1 And it's like, and I remember being there, be like, okay, listen, this isn't what I thought that I was signing in.

Speaker 1 Rick Rubin talks the best about this stuff, which is like, you need to look at your music as like an offering to God or the universe or whatever you want to discuss because, like, and just let it be how it's supposed to be.

Speaker 1 Because if it's only to just be massively successful and be a huge star, you're going to be miserable.

Speaker 1 You know, I know firsthand that the bigger, you know, the more your star rises in a business, the more optionality you have in terms of the stories you want to tell.

Speaker 1 So I would be completely lying to you if I told you that that wasn't a goal of mine, was to continue to grow and build.

Speaker 1 You know, I could never be one of those actors who's like, you know, like whatever happens, happens. And I'm just kind of like, I'm just going to like sit back and like do my thing.
I just.

Speaker 1 I do want to be a part of more great stuff. And I hope I get the chance to tell more great stories.

Speaker 1 But in the meantime, I think it's also like be patient. I just sold a show to MGM that we closed on like two days ago, which I'm super excited about.
So, like, thank you.

Speaker 1 But, like, that could happen next year or that could happen in 10 years. Like, I don't know.
I do want to answer your question.

Speaker 1 There's two questions I want to ask, and I think your audience will love this. One is, do you think you have to focus on one thing?

Speaker 1 Because I think that you're a very, you're an expert in this field now. And two,

Speaker 1 what is something that is common amongst some of the most successful people you you have interviewed? I'm going to start with number two.

Speaker 2 So, a good test of whether you could do both is: are other people doing both? So, I'll use an analogy. So,

Speaker 2 how many people have played NFL and NBA or NFL in another sport or baseball, right? These are people that are legendary, right? Or played multiple possessions.

Speaker 2 These are people like Deion Sanders, Bo Jackson from Auburn. The fact that we know these names is a good sign that's not very common.
And I think the same same applies to business.

Speaker 2 To be the most elite, the 0.001%,

Speaker 2 I think you do have to focus. Unfortunately, I think

Speaker 2 now that's from a purely like value maximizing. And the reason for that is I think at a certain level, everybody has a very high level of talent.
Everybody's really hardcore.

Speaker 2 So you're at some level, it's a zero-sum game where that being said, I think a lot of business industries benefit from the 20% rule.

Speaker 2 So you have Google 20% of your time, you get to tinker on a side project. And I think that leads to really good ideas.

Speaker 2 I also think there's something to be said in terms of I do some consulting to some companies. So it just keeps me fresh.
It keeps me thinking from a third-party perspective on other companies.

Speaker 2 And I integrate a lot of those learnings. A lot of my own advice, I basically end up taking.
So I think there's a benefit to that. I also think there's a huge lifestyle benefit.

Speaker 2 to having some variety in your life, but that's purely lifestyle. And I think as long as you keep it at that 20%, you could still be at that elite level at whatever you're doing.

Speaker 2 And probably this is something I'm not sure is, is there transference? Does being a country singer just from purely the skill of it make you a better actor?

Speaker 2 I would guess that it does have some benefit to you and some neuroplasticity of learning new skills and things like that.

Speaker 1 I played the watershed, which is a massive fasting country festival at the gorge in Washington.

Speaker 1 It was like, it's one of the, if you have any artists, like the two places they want to play, it's usually the gorge and red rocks. And the gorge was unbelievable.

Speaker 1 And I will say, like, playing in front of thousands of people, singing your song, which was crazy, some song I wrote in Nashville. was was something I'll never forget.

Speaker 1 And I think that learning to be comfortable in that kind of thing, because that's more like live theater as opposed to what I do, was a whole other ballgame that I think did help me going forward.

Speaker 1 Plus, I loved it and I had a blast.

Speaker 1 So let me ask you this. Is your podcast your main thing? That's that's your thing right now.

Speaker 2 In my situation, so we have the podcast. We have the world's top limited partners that come on.
We have calipers.

Speaker 2 We have the largest, the CEO of the largest pool of capital in the United States come on.

Speaker 2 The second largest Calisters, we've had them come on, endowments, Rothschild family, Forrest family, all these people. And that allows us to do what we do best, which is we start funds.

Speaker 2 So we start three funds in the last couple of years. We continue to start funds.
So it's very synergistic to our business. But even within our business, I'm in charge of the podcast side with my team.

Speaker 2 And then my partner, Curtis, runs the asset manager and is in charge of that. So we have a co-CEO framework.
We are both really focused on what we do best. So it is very synergistic.

Speaker 2 And outside of that, you know, one of the things, talking about ego is avoiding the seduction of trying to do other things that you may not be in your circle of competence.

Speaker 2 Warren Buffett is so famous for this.

Speaker 2 My great uncle, who's the chairman of Jeffrey's, he's done two deals with him. He said his biggest criticism of him, which is kind of ironic, is that you can't get him out of his box.

Speaker 2 Like if you go a little bit outside of his box, Warren Buffett's always like, no. I see that as a huge strength, right? Talk about compounding.
He's compounded for, I think, roughly five decades.

Speaker 2 That's where your ego leads you astray as an investor. Oh, I know venture capital.
Well, maybe I also know private credit or I know crypto.

Speaker 2 And unless you're investing with a very 0.1% manager or top 10% manager in that space, you're going to make a lot of mistakes. And that's also ego

Speaker 2 could take you astray in terms of what you actually know. What are you world class at? Is a question that every investor should ask themselves.
What do I know that 99% of the world doesn't know?

Speaker 2 And that's a hard question to answer if you're honest with yourself.

Speaker 1 You're really great advice. And

Speaker 1 I couldn't agree more with that.

Speaker 1 I think the frustrating part about hearing that as somebody who loves to, and I think you should be learning every day and you should be growing, but as somebody who loves to learn is

Speaker 1 in my business, you are a thousand percent or you're, you know, not working, right? It's one or the other, right?

Speaker 1 So like last year, I went from working, literally shooting two films at the same time, which I've never done before.

Speaker 1 We negotiated it so that they would have to work around my schedule and they were both being filmed in Vancouver, Canada. I would work on one film till four in the morning.

Speaker 2 I would sleep two hours.

Speaker 1 At six in the morning, I would wake up and go to the next shoot, shoot all night, shoot all day, shoot on the other one all night, and do it again and again and again. It was, it was horrific.

Speaker 1 I would not recommend on anybody, but it was too good of an opportunity for me to pass them. So I just had to deal with it.

Speaker 1 I go from that, and I have like five films coming out this year. I go from that to nothing.

Speaker 1 Like it goes from that kind of busy to just like dead. And that's awesome.
I went to Costa Rica with my family and everything.

Speaker 1 And of course, there's offers that are coming in, but like these are for like, you know, the middle of the year or for different different times so it's like it's a really weird thing and of course in these periods being somebody like me you want to just think about all these other things you can do with your time right as opposed to focusing on the one thing that you know the best which is entertainment and more more specifically film and television right um and that's where you should be putting your time and these are conversations i have with myself all the time because it's so easy to be like oh my god well this person over there is doing really good he flipped a house like damn like maybe i should like go flip a house like no no no i'm not doing doing that.

Speaker 1 It's like, oh, okay, okay, okay. And then you have this other guy.
He's like, yo, like, he's starting this company. He like wants to be involved.

Speaker 1 Oh, this other, you know, I got hit up by this, uh, one of my favorite coffee shops is coming back and, you know, they want some help.

Speaker 1 So I know that like, I can make some introductions, but I'm certainly not going to be, you know, on the front lines here making coffee. There's two things there.

Speaker 2 One is it's called the ignorance depth, which is basically the grass is always greener. You look at a business like flipping houses.

Speaker 2 If you're going to do something, you should ask yourself what I asked on the newsletter question, which is, if I'm going to do it, I should do it for five years as a business decision.

Speaker 2 You could go salsa dancing and just do it for the hell of it. But if you're going to start a business, the minimum commitment you want to do is at least five, probably 10 years.

Speaker 2 And if you're doing a 10-year commitment, all of your 90% of your returns will be year 10 to 15. So it just keeps on compounding.

Speaker 2 The second thing is having flexible mandates, something like a vesting where you might start with a coffee shop and helping them, but at any point you could stop and you still vest a portion of your equity could be helpful as well.

Speaker 2 I did want to talk about your startup because that's how I cajoled you to go on the podcast. Tell me about there and what is there?

Speaker 1 Great segue because you spoke about the five to ten year thing and this is exactly the plan we had with this company.

Speaker 1 So there is a hundred percent recycled gold and sterling silver jewelry company that I founded with my wife

Speaker 1 in 2020. Lauren is an incredible designer.
She designs all the pieces.

Speaker 1 We have it at a very reasonable price point. There was two ways that the inception of this company came to be.

Speaker 1 One was Lauren always got these like horrible allergic reactions when she wore gold-plated jewelry.

Speaker 1 So basically her two options was one, buying 100% gold, which is very expensive, or two, buying gold remain pieces, which oddly enough were also quite expensive in the market that we were, in the places we were looking at.

Speaker 1 So we felt that there was a gap in the market there. And we felt that people.

Speaker 1 One thing I love about jewelry is it is a version of storytelling.

Speaker 1 You know, my dad has this ring that was passed on from his father and his father before, you know, and one day it will be passed to myself or my brother. And there's a story with that.

Speaker 1 And we love the idea of creating these heirloom pieces that could be shared.

Speaker 1 That being said, we wanted to build a sustainable business.

Speaker 1 And going into that, I knew that I would have literally two jobs, which was, you know, helping promote the brand and fundraising, overlooking the

Speaker 1 overarching goal of this company and where we want to be.

Speaker 1 And then Lauren would be, you know, and this is something I told her for, you know, first and foremost, I'm like, you know, like, this is going to be your thing, you know, right?

Speaker 1 She's, she is the one designing it. She's in the weeds with the company.

Speaker 1 I mean, truly, all the success we have had is a hundred percent because of our wife and our incredible team that we, because of my wife and, and the incredible team that we've assembled.

Speaker 1 It's really a beautiful thing to be in partnership with with your spouse because, especially when I'm traveling for work and I'm doing my other, you know, my main job, which is being an actor and producer, Lauren can basically be doing this from anywhere, which has been amazing.

Speaker 2 The jewelry space is very saturated. How do you differentiate against other players?

Speaker 1 Like, I had a call with, do you know Rob Dierdrich? If you ever heard of him, he's like a professional skateboarder and turned entrepreneur, super successful, awesome dude.

Speaker 1 And there was a conversation back in the day about me starting this nutrition thing, which I think I will do eventually. Just had to, you know, there was, it's got to be the right time.

Speaker 1 It's got to be something

Speaker 1 I'm going to use 100%. So,

Speaker 1 and he mentioned the the same thing about

Speaker 1 the nutrition space being really oversaturated. And sometimes I feel like that the most oversaturated thing is the word oversaturated because, like, what hasn't been done before,

Speaker 1 unless you're starting your own,

Speaker 1 you know, like you said, your own sector, which I think is, you know, a totally different thing. And I love that.
So, what separates us? To me,

Speaker 1 it's twofold.

Speaker 1 One, it is the fact that we are at a very reasonable price point. You can buy something on their site for $70 and you can go all the way up to, I think it's like $600.
But we're there where

Speaker 1 it's not going to cost an arm and a leg, yet it's still high quality.

Speaker 1 It's going to make you feel like you purchased something very, very well-made and nice for whoever it is that you're gifting it to or for yourself, because we also believe that you should buy yourself something nice as well.

Speaker 1 But it's not, we're not charging

Speaker 1 $750 for a necklace. you know,

Speaker 1 and we operate primarily in gold for May. We also have solid gold pieces.
We wanted to make that available for people. And

Speaker 1 we undercut literally as much as we could for our prices to still make it, you know, economically viable for us.

Speaker 1 But I'm really proud of the company. It's growing 177%

Speaker 1 year over year. Candidly, we are still a very small company, and that is by design.
I did not want to raise a ton of money for this. And, you know, Lauren and I put in a good chunk ourselves.

Speaker 1 And I really want it to be a business that is sustainable over 10 years. I don't want to be the company that just raises to survive.

Speaker 1 I do know that there's, I know that in the tech world, it's the, you know, the whole thing was move fast and break stuff and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 But for me, like, I really want to create a sustainable business that is profitable as soon as we can be.

Speaker 1 You know, keeping in mind that, of course, we want to be growing as a company. So, you know, obviously we have to take on some sort of capital, but

Speaker 1 as of now, we'll be profitable in 2026 and

Speaker 1 have our first million-dollar year. So we are very small, and that's how we want, that's how we want to be.

Speaker 2 You have an interesting angle with waste and recycling.

Speaker 1 Tell me about

Speaker 2 that. Tell me about the economic model behind it.

Speaker 1 This is purely conceptual right now, and this is something we're slowly building out.

Speaker 1 But this is one of the things that we noticed in this space is we didn't want to just create another jewelry company.

Speaker 1 We wanted it to stand on its own two feet.

Speaker 1 And it wasn't just working with

Speaker 1 the best manufacturers that are sustainably certified.

Speaker 1 We're part of 1% for the planet and we're part of the Artisanal Gold Council, which means that every dollar of a piece that we sell, we donate to the Artisanal Gold Council, which actually helps small-scale miners

Speaker 1 in places like Mongolia, who are dealing in mercury, and we're trying to help these small communities get away from that because it's actually super toxic.

Speaker 1 Our approach on this is that it's very easy to kind of greenwash in this business

Speaker 1 and say we deal in recycled materials.

Speaker 1 Our mindset is we deal in recycled materials with the best in the business, but at the same time, we are very aware that mining is still a thing, and we are going to try to help these people

Speaker 1 while we try to transition. Like, I don't believe we need to mine any more gold for jewelry.
And our perfect example is in electronic waste. So, electronic waste or e-waste

Speaker 1 is rep is representative of roughly, I think, 70% of landfills toxicity around the world.

Speaker 1 It's growing at three times the rate of the human population. Roughly every American family will throw away $400 worth of e-waste annually.

Speaker 1 So it's a massive problem that, of course, nobody is discussing because we don't see it. When we throw our recycling or our trash away, it doesn't just disappear.
It actually goes somewhere.

Speaker 1 And eventually, this is going to be a massive problem for us. So the problem isn't that we don't have the ability to process electronic waste.

Speaker 1 We do, and actually, some of those companies are massively successful. The problem is, we haven't incentivized consumers to actually turn in their electronic waste.

Speaker 1 Why aren't people turning in their electronic waste? I believe

Speaker 1 it's twofold. One, the incentives aren't quite there.
And two, we are worried about our data that are on our old devices. You know, some might be sentimental, some might be all these other things.

Speaker 1 What we'd like to do is create basically an e-waste

Speaker 1 program program where you know if you're 16 years old and you have an old phone you can turn it in back to Apple for a credit towards your new phone you can turn it to Best Buy for probably 20 bucks

Speaker 1 or because the margins in jewelry are so much better than most products we can give you

Speaker 1 we can either pay you like every other company does we can pay you cash or we can give you a sizable

Speaker 1 credit to our store

Speaker 1 The chips in your phones, those gold chips are about 400 times more dense than gold ore. So, the biggest gold mines in the world are essentially in our pockets, and nobody's really discussing it.

Speaker 1 And if we can be a middleman where we can collect this electronic waste from consumers,

Speaker 1 allow them to go buy something nice, and then with our partners, recycle it, jewelry is one of the only places we can do this with because

Speaker 1 we can take the hit on our end because the margins are so much better with something like jewelry.

Speaker 1 So, like, as a company, like we can take a bit of a hit there so that we can help you recycle this, and you can have, you know,

Speaker 1 you can feel way better about what you're getting back for your phone than $20. It really takes us full circle.

Speaker 2 We were discussing billionaires, what drives them. I think what drives a lot of these billionaires when they start out is this chip, chip on their shoulder.

Speaker 2 They need to prove themselves, they need to make money so that they get attention.

Speaker 2 A lot of the billionaires that I meet might be shorter or maybe less attractive than the average person, but what keeps them going is this positive drive.

Speaker 2 I get really excited about building a company where people want to work. It's one of these things that I thought when I heard other people say it, it was a way to just like depreciate people's wages.

Speaker 2 It was disingenuous, but it literally is something that drives me. And as you get to a certain income level, I haven't gone to this, you know, let's call it $100 million and you have $100 million.

Speaker 2 There's just so few things you can actually spend your money on. that don't hold its value, like real estate, you know, a lot of the art, all these things tend to hold their value.

Speaker 2 In order to become a a billionaire, you need that higher calling.

Speaker 2 You know, whether it's recycling, whether it's creating a new industry, whether it's changing, bringing a product that was otherwise very expensive to the masses, you find these themes behind these billionaires that they have to use another source of rocket fuel once they've kind of gone past that chip on their shoulder.

Speaker 1 I totally agree. The mission has to be so much deeper than just, you know, becoming a billionaire.
I really don't know what

Speaker 1 anybody needs that much money for, but if they do make that much money, you know,

Speaker 1 my hope is that they use it to do things that betters the world and help as many people as they possibly can. After $100 million,

Speaker 1 what's the difference? I mean, honestly, after $50 million,

Speaker 1 after $25 million in the bank, like, really, what is the difference? I can tell you the difference. It's a yacht and a plane, right? It's like, that might be it.

Speaker 1 But, like, if you're smart enough with your money and you live, you know, you can pretty much travel anywhere you want, whenever you want. You can stay wherever you want.
um

Speaker 1 so i think um a deeper mission you almost need that

Speaker 2 because it's like if it's just money it's like well what's how much like how much more do you need for most people it may be just money and we see them kind of stall and retire you know mark zuckerberg had to say no to a billion dollars in his 20s what kind of person does that with uncertainty it's somebody that's really looking to build something dramatically bigger.

Speaker 2 So it's almost a self-selection. The people that get to a billion dollars are the people that are really mission driven.
And maybe everybody else stops earlier.

Speaker 1 I've seen a big difference between the tech billionaire and the billionaire. I know a lot of billionaires who, you know, most of them have read like the art of war, right?

Speaker 1 And like they love risk, right? And it's about the accumulation of things. And they see this as like a game.
I'm not saying this is like a bad thing at all.

Speaker 1 It's just this is this, you know, it's a game for them and they want to keep building and building and building, right?

Speaker 1 But I think there's something very fascinating about somebody like the tech billionaires. And I don't know, Zach, you know,

Speaker 1 based on the ones that I do know,

Speaker 1 and this is something I love so much, is that money was never the thing.

Speaker 1 One of the most successful in the world has that I know has proven it again and again that money wasn't the thing because he risked it all again and again. And

Speaker 1 that's crazy. That's like that's next level crazy to put those kind of chips on a table to go, I've already won the lottery.
I'm going to do it again.

Speaker 1 And then you realize, well, there's something else driving him, and that's why he's not, you know, winning the lottery. And he's building things.

Speaker 1 Like, I can't imagine saying no to a billion dollars at 20 years old.

Speaker 2 Unless you basically don't care, or only marginally care about the money. That's the only rational explanation.

Speaker 1 Unless you're mission-driven. And, you know, he even proved, unless you don't care.
And I think that's why you have the ability to become a billionaire because, like we said, it's your risk capital.

Speaker 1 I mean, in a way, think about it. Like, sure, he turned down a billion dollars, but Mark essentially, in that moment,

Speaker 1 he put a million dollars on the table, you know, a billion dollars on the table. He reinvented in that way, right?

Speaker 1 He just said, fuck it, you know, this is risk capital that I'm tax-free, I'm willing to lose. And it's like, and it worked out for him.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, listen, I think he's gone through this like total,

Speaker 1 based on what I've seen, like this, like total rebrand right now.

Speaker 1 But before,

Speaker 1 my understanding was that he was living in the same small house. He was doing the same thing.

Speaker 1 And I thought that

Speaker 1 I had a huge amount of respect for that. You know, it's like,

Speaker 1 I just, yeah, I mean, it's pretty damn impressive to be able to

Speaker 1 live outside of the way that everybody else is supposed to thinks you're supposed to live and

Speaker 1 just focus on your mission. I think that there is so much power in that.
And more importantly, there's so much peace in that.

Speaker 1 There's so much peace in that. Like, to just be like, no, like, I'm not going to subscribe to this.
way of life that is being pushed at me all the time. Like, granted, by the way, way, people change.

Speaker 1 I could be very wrong. I've also noticed that some of these billionaires who used to live that way certainly aren't anymore.
So, like, something might have changed along the way, right?

Speaker 1 But, but I do think that there's serious power in being like, I'm going to live my life the way that I want to.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to live it like peacefully and gracefully and be the best version of myself I can be.

Speaker 1 And I'm not going to subscribe to these ideas that because I've made X, Y, and Z, I need to do X, Y, and Z. You know,

Speaker 1 I'm going to spend my money and my time how I see fit on the things that matter most to me.

Speaker 2 One of the central theses behind capitalism is that we want to incentivize these people to irrationally pursue more and more, right? It's the feature and the bug of

Speaker 2 capitalism and the bug of it is consumerism. But thank God for the tech billionaires that keep on building new and new technologies that

Speaker 2 go out to millions of people and billions of people. Obviously, it's not very politically correct to say that.

Speaker 2 But if you look at it from a utilitarian perspective to the population, thank God Apple produces new products.

Speaker 2 Thank God that there's more and bigger social networks that we're getting a lot of these new technologies as well. You know, AI is a whole can of worms as well.

Speaker 2 But that's part of the thesis of capitalism versus kind of capping somebody's upside and saying, you know, $10 million is enough for you. Like, don't, don't do anything else.
Just chill.

Speaker 1 100%. And I mean, this is like a whole other bag of worms that is like, you know, we'll probably have like hits out on our heads eventually, but like, like getting too deep into this, but like,

Speaker 1 there's two arguments to every to everything, right? It's like, it's like, well, how much money do you need?

Speaker 1 This is the very value argument, too, right, about capitalism, which I sort of subscribe to as well. Like, if this person has been able to achieve a certain level of success,

Speaker 1 and like Bezos said, their upside is limitless.

Speaker 1 My hope was that with that money,

Speaker 1 they can do it again with something that could meaningfully help the world. I'm certainly not in a place to be able to judge what that is.

Speaker 1 I know some of those guys, and I do believe in my heart of hearts that,

Speaker 1 at least the ones that I know, genuinely want to change the world for the better. And I would much rather them have access to that kind of capital and power than other people.

Speaker 1 I think a lot of them are incredibly generous and are really good people. I don't know all of them, but the ones I do know,

Speaker 2 that's why I'm present with them. I think Winston Churchill says this about democracy.
It's the worst form of government except every other form.

Speaker 2 I think a similar thing could be said about capitalism.

Speaker 2 What do you wish you knew before starting as an actor at 12 years old?

Speaker 1 It's a really good question. Focus on the job, not the career.
But again, like it's in the same way we talk about the money thing. Like, I think I would have never listened.

Speaker 1 I think I would have had to have gone through it on my own. But I do believe this, and I believe this more and more as I get older.
Like,

Speaker 1 as a kid, you have this dream of where you will end up. I believe this 100%.

Speaker 1 And maybe I'll tell you in 30 years, if I'm right, you have a vision in your head. Like, you know deep down what makes you happy and what you want to do.
I think everyone has that.

Speaker 1 And without getting too spiritual or anything,

Speaker 1 I do believe that God or a universal entity or whatever you want to call that put that there. And I do believe that that is a reality.
I believe that you will get there.

Speaker 1 How long it takes to get there

Speaker 1 is out of your control. When it's supposed to happen or how it's supposed to happen is out of your control.

Speaker 1 But I truly believe that that vision, and I've heard it enough from people that I love, I've experienced the version of it myself already.

Speaker 1 And Bob just saw an interview with Bob Dylan talking about this, and I totally agree. If you trust in yourself and you put one foot in front of the other and you stay on that path towards that vision,

Speaker 1 I promise you it will happen. Just never how you expect it to or when you expect it to.
And I have to remind myself this every single day.

Speaker 1 20 years from now, I could tell you I didn't know what I was talking about, but this is something I believe wholeheartedly: that you just got to stay the course. And just that's where faith

Speaker 1 is so important.

Speaker 2 It's this paradoxical mix of long-termism where you know kind of where you're trying to go, but also you have to focus.

Speaker 2 Like, if you don't do this next gig or this next role correctly, you're not going to have a 20-year plan. You have to focus on your three-month and six-month plan in order to get to that 20-year plan.

Speaker 2 But also, you don't want to make take decisions that would keep you from that 20-year plan.

Speaker 1 If you look at somebody like a Kobe Bryant, I'm not a huge sports fan, but Ryan Holiday talks a lot about him in the books. But like, Kobe's whole thing wasn't like being better than anyone else.

Speaker 1 Like, his whole thing was being the best version of himself.

Speaker 1 And because he was constantly competing against himself, constantly growing, he was getting up earlier, he was practicing harder, and that compounded so much so that even if these other players tried to work over the summer, he didn't even come close to how much practice Kobe had had.

Speaker 1 Being the greatest was inevitable for Kobe Bryant, or being one of the greatest, because he had just put in so much more time. But he wasn't like, oh my God, I got to be better than this guy.

Speaker 1 I got to do. They weren't even a thought.
It's like, I've got to be the best version of

Speaker 1 me.

Speaker 1 I need to not let myself down.

Speaker 1 And that's like my biggest fear in life is

Speaker 1 looking back and going, like, I could have done.

Speaker 1 I should have. I could have.

Speaker 1 I just with everything. I mean, that's why I get on planes and go to Nashville and start writing music and just see it through because I owe it to myself to do that.

Speaker 1 It's why I write scripts. It's why I produce.
It's why I do everything that I can to get something going because it's like, I am so scared of

Speaker 1 looking back at 80 years old going, fuck man. Like you did try.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 how it goes, like, that's out of my control, but like, I'm, I'm, I'm absolutely going to try, you know, and it's worked for me so far. So we'll, I mean, we'll see.

Speaker 1 Xander, this has been completely phenomenal.

Speaker 2 I really appreciate you taking the time to chat and share with the audience. And I look forward to sitting down.

Speaker 1 I know, and now you have some availability on your calendar, so fly out to New York. I would love that, David.
This was such a pleasure. And like, thank you.

Speaker 2 Thanks for listening to my conversation with Alexander. If you enjoy this conversation, please hit the like or subscribe button.
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