Why I Struggled With Money, Focus, and Fame | Iman Gadzhi

Today's guests bill a hundred million dollar empire at 23 years old.

I didn't have teenagers. I don't know what it's like being a teenager.

I can't spend a billion dollars to buy those teenagers back.

Raised in South London by single mom, he watched her work several low-paying jobs to keep the lights off.

But at 17, he made her this promise.

I made multiple promises to my mom and I've made good on every single one of them.

It was always a dream of hers to go to Paris.

Paris is so close to London, she'd never been to Paris in her entire life.

I'll take you to Paris.

In this episode, we'll dive into his rise to generational wealth,

explore his controversial views on relationships and modern dating,

and unveil the exact playbook that's made him one of the most influential names in business.

One thing that I just think needs to fucking stop right now is like,

shaming men who are trying.

It's like, yeah, if he doesn't get you a burkin run, it's like, shut the fuck up.

Aman Gadji.

Welcome to the Chakno podcast.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, of course.

We're here in New York City at the WAP office.

WAP is a huge education company.

And yeah, we'll maybe get into that a bit later.

I'm not sure how much we can talk about it, but by the time this goes out,

I think we would have made the announcement so.

Awesome.

Yeah, I think we'll get on that in a bit.

But I think a good place to start here is what's the most common misconception people have about you

that I'm not a normal person?

And what I mean by that is, like, oh, I asked it maybe like 80 months ago.

Someone was like, do you ever watch TikTok?

And I'm like, yes.

They're like, it was like so, I know he was like kind of joking.

Like, he's like, do you ever like, he's just like normal person stuff.

Like, do you ever like go for pizza?

I'm like, yes, like, you know, and I think it's funny.

Like half of what I do now on social media is like making it clear.

Like, I don't want to put myself on a pedestal.

I'm not anyone's savior.

I'm not anyone's like, I'm a normal person living a life.

And if there's parts of that that you want to draw from.

If there's parts of it that you respect me, there's parts of it you respect.

There's maybe other parts of it that you don't drive with.

That's fine.

Like, I think that's a lot of what I try to do on social media these days is just trying to remind

people like, you know, I'm just a normal human.

Just like figuring it out like the rest of us.

What do you think people have that assumption about you that you don't do normal people things?

You're kind of categorized in this type of creator or entrepreneur that is all about monk mode,

lock in like no drugs, no alcohol, sleep at the same time every night,

never go out to parties, never be in relationships, that kind of thing.

Do you think you kind of get thrown in with that?

I think here's what it is, what you do when you first start,

I kind of describe it kind of like getting a plane off the ground.

Like to get a plane off the ground, it takes so much fuel.

It takes so much to actually get it off the ground.

Now, once you're up, you know, once you're in there,

it just kind of sips fuel and it chugs along.

And that's kind of the same way I view success.

You know, the truth is, the first few years, it is a little intense.

You know, like you kind of have to have that intensity to get you off the ground.

But then the most successful people I know, they all, like they eat whatever they want.

The most successful people I know, they eat whatever they want.

They like, they're not like, they don't have a 15 step morning routine.

They're not like super optimized.

Like, listen, of course, they take their stuff seriously.

I take my stuff seriously, you know, I train every day, I make, you know,

you won't see me at like 11 o'clock eating KFC, for example, right?

Now at 9 p.m., you probably would see me at a pizza because I'm like, you know,

it's at the end of day and there's different cadences throughout the day.

So I just, I think maybe sometimes people see my

content where I'm helping out the 16 year old me or the 17 year old me.

And the truth is, at 16, at 17, at 18, I really was locked in like that.

And I had to have those seasons of intensity.

And you go through these different seasons in life.

And one season, a lot of times, especially those early seasons,

demand that level of intensity and demand that level of like, by the way,

I hope people don't take this in the wrong way.

Like, I was almost like a little autistic back then, right?

Like, I had to be like, everything had to be so diligent to the point.

And I had to be that way.

And that served me to get to a certain point in life.

But it's funny.

Then I started to plateau.

And then I had to kind of like, not be a stringent with my schedule and allow myself to have

new hobbies and new interests.

And it was only once I allowed myself to have like a less rigid schedule and have more hobbies

and have more interest.

That's when I started making more money again.

And I reached like the next level of my career.

So I think maybe,

yeah, maybe I do get clumped in with some of those like really intense people.

And maybe, you know,

people only see some of my videos.

They know how to watch the rest of it and they don't see some of the nuance.

So that's why like whenever I can have a nuanced conversation with someone,

I always try to make it clear that like,

yeah, I'm a normal human and I can tell you like behind the curtains,

all the people that say they like,

wake up at the same time every single day and everything is regimented in this now.

But like it's not like that at the top, at the highest echelons.

At the highest echelons, like everyone is just like,

yeah, they all have their own weird quirks and their own weird like,

it's not as stringent as when you first started.

Yeah, it's interesting you say that because there was an interview

in 2019 that you did and someone had asked you the best piece of advice you'd received.

And it was something along the lines of,

you have so much time, you're so young, like kind of don't worry about it.

But a few months ago, you tweeted something like,

lack of urgency is killing you.

So what do you have time for and what is urgent?

That's a very astute observation.

I think it's this weird juxtaposition where

basically what happens is in my opinion, in the short term,

you need to have this feeling of urgency.

And when I say the short term, I mean like today,

like you need to have this feeling of urgency and this like level of almost

adjective.

And by the way, this is also if you want to be very successful,

not everyone wants it.

And by the way, that's also cool.

And I think that's also the other thing that I try to really make it clear to people is like,

just because I've accomplished this doesn't mean that that's success.

And I always try to like someone's like, oh,

would you consider yourself successful?

I'm like, I consider myself successful because I know what I want from life and I'm close to that.

And now for another person, that might be making $50,000 and you know,

being able to surf all year round.

Like I have a friend like that who literally started business because he literally

wanted to work as little as humanly possible.

This is 15, 20 years ago.

Want to work as little as humanly possible.

So that way, the rest of the year, he could just surf.

And that is success to him.

So we'll get on all that back to that stuff later.

The point that I'm trying to make here is that in the short term,

as in day to day, you need that level of agitation.

Like you need to have that feeling of urgency.

But from a macro perspective, as in like giving yourself a one year,

three year, five year timeline, you have to be patient.

So it's this weird.

Some a lot of life is a juxtaposition where it's like,

you have to believe two things at the same time.

So short term, you have to have this feeling of urgency.

But then in the more medium term,

you have to have this understanding that like you are young,

you are young and you have time.

And at the end of the day, there's only so much you can push.

Like you can, the only thing stopping you from reaching your goals is time.

Now you can shrink that time down.

Like let's say it takes this long for you to achieve your goals.

Maybe you can shrink that down to like here.

But you still, time still has to play out.

And that's why everyone needs to understand.

Like you still have to be patient and let things come as they may.

And there's also an inverse effect, I guess, of if you were going

to try to make a million dollars as quickly as possible,

I that might be a different path than making a hundred million dollars

as quickly as possible.

It would be two different paths, you know.

On the urgency thing, what would you say maybe for you

or what would you recommend for other people to kind of put on the back burner

in their early 20s?

Like what isn't important right now and what are kind of the priorities?

Well, here's where it gets nuanced once again.

Because it's just like I didn't have teenage years.

I don't know what it's like being a teenager.

And does that mean that I've lived a,

because once again, it's my situation, my mom,

yeah, I just kind of had to become a man at a house when I was 11, 12 years old.

So yeah, it's just, does that mean that I've had a better life than someone else?

Because like no amount of, let's say I had to, you know,

I could spend a billion dollars right now or let's say I had a billion dollars in my bank account.

I can't spend a billion dollars to buy those teenage years back.

And sometimes people tell me about teenage years or even not to say that you should go.

I guess it's up to, you know, it's up to the viewers.

But even like college experiences, sometimes I hear people talk about their college experiences.

And I'm like, yo, that sounds fucking sick.

I would have loved to experience that.

So that's the issue.

Like when you're giving real advice, there's just so much nuance when it comes to stuff.

So I can't tell you what's right or wrong.

All I can say is if you do want to be, oh, very successful.

Of course, the more successful you want to be, the more sacrifices you have to make,

the more successful you want to be, the more intense your life has to be.

And that's why I was telling people as well.

Like usually there's a sweet spot.

It's the same thing with like training.

Like if you train three times a week, people will be like, okay, you could probably train.

Well, if you don't train at all, people will be like, okay, that's not good for you.

You should train.

If you train once a week, they're like, okay, cool.

Like at least you're getting started, but like do more.

You go up to three, five, and you know, these are all positive improvements.

At seven times a week, someone might go, okay, this is, you know, you're doing quite a law here.

If you start training two or three times a day, people are like, what the fuck is wrong?

You're like, well, this is, you're doing more harm than good.

And people understand that when it comes to something like training,

but they don't view money in the same way.

And they're like more money, more money, more money, the better.

Now of course, if you're, if you have, if you could make a hundred K,

or a hundred million in a year, and it comes with the same level of responsibility,

then of course, make a hundred million in a year without a doubt.

But I've never seen a case where you make more money, but it doesn't come with more responsibility.

So that's why you always just, there is no correct answer to these things.

Like it's unique to you and anyone, I just think anyone telling you,

you have to live this kind of life or this kind of life, it's not very authentic.

Most advice is bad advice.

And I've said this on podcast before, like really as a viewer,

you should try to pick out the things that pertain specifically to you or try to take the advice

and see like, what are the different ways it could apply to my life?

A lot of people listen to podcasts or they listen to creators and they're like,

oh, this is the answer.

I should try to be exactly like this person, but that's often not most beneficial because

they don't even know what they truly want.

And it's definitely not the same thing as that creator.

You made a video a while back that I found very interesting on dopamine.

Why should, maybe not everyone, I actually probably everyone.

Why should everyone do a dopamine detox?

Well, I look at dopamine detox as in the same way I look at fasting.

You know, fasting is a modality that's been used for thousands of thousands of years because

I think it's good.

I mean, even me personally, actually, I was thinking when I, you know,

after this, I have one more stop back to Dubai.

But on my way, once I get back to Dubai, I need to get do a fast because sometimes you just like,

you need a reset and that's what a dopamine detox does for you.

And for example, that's even fasting can be a part of dopamine detoxing or fasting kind of

provides those same sort of benefits, which is you just need a reset of your baseline.

And it's whether that's caffeine, whether that's caffeine, whether that's dopamine,

whether that's whatever it may be in your life.

Having that reset then allows you to find more meaning in things you're doing.

The issue is when if your dopamine receptors are just consistently fried,

then when you go to do day-to-day tasks, now all of a sudden,

it doesn't give you the same sort of pleasure signals as something like scrolling on TikTok

or playing video games.

So I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with those things.

If you want to do those things, that's fine.

As I said, there's no right or wrong.

It's just a matter of to really make something of yourself in a big way,

if that's what people truly want.

It takes a lot and it takes a lot and you really have to find ways to enjoy the work.

And when you are constantly scrolling on TikTok or playing video games or doing all these other

things, it's frying your dopamine receptors so much at the point where you can't sit down for

even an hour and focus on one task.

And if you can't do that, it's very hard to make something of your career.

Have you always been a focused person or would you say that's something you've built?

It's something I wouldn't say I'm focused.

And even right now, I wouldn't say I'm a focused person.

It's something that I had to focus on for a specific season of my life.

And once again, this goes back to what I was saying.

I remember when I was younger, I used to watch GaryVee videos and I was like,

all he was doing was just doing meetings and on calls.

And I was like, that's not real entrepreneurship.

You're not sat down focused on one task.

And it's like, I don't have an apology because now that's like all I do.

Like all I do is meetings and on calls.

Like I don't really sit down and focus on one specific task.

Now I might have something that's in the back of my mind and a key decision

that maybe I might have to go for a walk and think about it.

But like I mean like really like computer work or like sit down building something.

Almost never have to do that.

So it was a season of my life where because I was basically the whole business,

I had to develop that skill.

It seems like a lot of entrepreneurs are kind of optimizing for deep work.

But long term that's not really the most high leverage thing they can be doing.

It's activities like networking or just mindfulness.

But in just ideating on the business as a whole.

Because if you're doing hours and hours of deep work,

you're kind of in the business instead of like working on the business.

What are the most profitable businesses for 2025?

Listen, there's many profitable businesses.

It just depends on your risk tolerance.

There's a laundry list of factors that you need to take into consideration.

So there's certain businesses where can be very profitable.

The issue is you can also lose a lot of money.

So anyone, when it comes to beginner specifically, I don't like businesses where

you could, where failing spectacularly means that like you've bankrupted yourself.

Like I like businesses where you can fail for six months, 12 months.

And by the way, I don't review anything as a failure.

I view it as you're getting closer and closer.

You know, you're closing that gap to success.

So for me, honestly, take your pick.

Take your pick just as long as it's something where you can fail for six months or 12 months

and like the worst case scenario is, okay, maybe you're spending $50 or $100 a month on software costs.

You know, but just as long as you're not risking like 30 grand on physical stocks,

like I have businesses in mind where I'm sending a half a million dollar a million dollar wire

for our next batch of stock.

And like I've even had situations in the past where I've had,

even during COVID times, I've had stock held like some of my physical product brands

where I've had stock held.

And it's like, for me, that's fine because you know, I have other cash flow from other businesses.

But for someone else, if that's their entire livelihood to get to have stock held the customs

for three months is, is scary.

And I mean, even now recently, one of my physical product businesses, we had a big packaging issue

that set us back six weeks.

And it's like not only set us back six weeks, but you know, there was some

long story short, we got, you know, we're out of about 80 grand worth of packaging there.

So we lost 80 grand.

And the more important thing is we push back six weeks on release.

So like, these are things that in my position is fine now to have that sort of risk tolerance.

But as a beginner, it really gives me a lot of anxiety.

Like beginners pouring a lot of money or let's say, you know,

you're playing around with different investments and stuff like that.

And it can be very easy to, it can be very easy to lose all.

And that gives me anxiety.

So I mean, listen, even for example, what we do here at WAP when it comes to digital products,

I like businesses like that where there's no, you're not going to, there's no situation where

you're out 30 grand because you've invested into a whole bunch of ads or a whole bunch of

a physical product stock and now you're in a sticky situation.

I guess if you, with the knowledge you have now, if you were back in high school and you wanted

to make 10K a month, what would be the industry or type of service you would offer?

Anything digital product related?

So either selling a digital product or services.

Digital product or services.

And can you go a little more specific on what type of digital product,

how you'd go about doing it?

Like what could someone tangibly do after this podcast to kind of make 10K a month?

Yeah, so obviously like, you know, a large part of what I do is looking at the numbers and

looking at the data and looking at like how our users are using WAP.

And our average, the average user right now on WAP makes $9,000 a month,

which I think is fucking spectacular.

And we have people making money in like all sorts of different ways.

Like for example, there's a guy right now making $8,000 a month selling 49 maps.

So he sells that as a digital product.

So it's a great niche.

Yeah, I mean, it's a great niche.

And you know, we've got someone else who's making $71,000 a month

showing people how to make money trading Pokemon cards.

And you know, these are things like, I don't know if you remember like what I was like 12 or 13.

I don't think I actually said this anywhere.

I used to like trade FIFA ultimate team coins.

I don't know if you know what that is.

It's FIFA like, but like I used to trade and used to make money on ultimate team.

I used to sell it the coins to the kids at school.

So like if you can learn how to make money with that, like now you're playing video games,

but you're also making money on the back of it.

So whether that be with Fortnite or you know,

as people who just geek out about like,

you know, Pokemon now all of a sudden you're making a real tangible solid business out of it.

So those are some examples of digital products.

Finding like, I'll give you another example and I'm very excited to get more cases like this on

the wall. There's a digital product out there that's made $150 million and it's a $30 XL course.

Is that Miss Excel or something?

No, no, no, no. I know here's how I'm about to.

No, the course has been around for like a long time.

And the person teaching it, I don't know their credentials.

I don't know, I don't even know how you have like qualifications for Excel.

Like, and people don't really care.

They're just like, they see it.

There's some good reviews.

They see they're like, people have bought it.

I don't need to know if you're an expert.

I don't, all I need to know is the product is about $30.

It has some good reviews.

I want to go from beginner to intermediate or advanced in Excel in Voila.

So I just like other examples like Shopify themes,

you know, those other digital products, you can sell like anything in that sphere.

Or, you know, even if you just geek out about a certain topic, creating a community around these

things, these are all ways to make money where you're not going to invest 30 grain into physical

stocks, like physical stock, whether that be FBA or building a brand, or you know, invest $10,000

into Facebook ads to validate, you know, some dropshipping products.

And by the way, not like those business models can work.

I want to make that very clear.

There's money to be made in those models.

I don't want to like discredit them whatsoever.

This is just my personal philosophy and the personal, you know, the way I see the world.

I just, it gives me a lot of anxiety when I see beginners risking a lot of money.

That's what I mean when I say digital products.

And then when I say services, services is like, for example, me, I start off with agency.

So I start off with agency.

I got my first agency clan in 20, probably or at least in 2016.

There's a baby clan.

I was like $300 a month or 300 pounds a month, I should say.

And, you know, I was just doing creative services back then.

So like my background is in photo video.

So I would like shoot video services photos for clients and stuff like that.

Now that's an example of a service where it was a skill that I was already learning

because I picked up a camera.

I started uploading on vlogs on YouTube, but just out of personal interest.

And that's something that I could do for local businesses.

And then eventually we started doing advertising.

So we moved to an advertising agency.

But even like a, you know, going back to WAP, like we have, we have a content reward system.

So clipping, like there's people making bank by clipping, right?

So there's like, we have clippers that are making thousands of dollars a month

just by clipping other people's content.

Like at some, at one point, I was spending, this is two years ago,

like I've had a clipping internal clipping department for two and a half years.

At the height of it, I was spending a quarter million dollars a month

on my short form, like clipping department.

So that's an example where like, to learn simple editing skills,

once again, to buy a $30 digital product or a $100 digital product and learn

how to clip content and then either work for a company,

or for example, use a platform like WAP where you can find clipping opportunities

and clip directly on platform.

Yeah, listen, are you going to be a multi-millionaire from it?

No, of course not.

But like, it's a, it's a foot through the door.

And that's the other thing sometimes that is very frustrating

to see like people wanting to jump all the way to the end of the journey.

Because I get this a lot.

I've had this criticism and people are like,

why are you telling me to do one thing when I should just do what you do?

It's like, yeah, I mean, I get it.

But some of the moves I make, like, you know,

investing in companies, for example, cost me millions and millions and millions of dollars.

Like, you know, that's not how I started.

So I started off by doing simple services for local businesses.

So yeah, are these opportunities going to make you a multi-millionaire?

No, but it's your foot through the door.

Yeah, it's hard to know what it would feel like to make a million dollars

or know what it would take if you haven't even made a hundred K.

You know, people can't really think that far ahead of the success that they've already had.

I want to go back to the clipping thing.

I do really think that's a great opportunity for people.

Because there are so many podcasts just in general and so many streamers that

people aren't doing clips for, that they could just monetize off of

creator fund programs and do things like a WAP campaign.

Shameless plug, this podcast will likely have a WAP campaign attached to it.

So someone wants to make some money.

You can literally just clip a segment of this podcast.

And my team is not fast enough to clip every single second of this video.

So go for it.

And it's also cool because you're now giving back to your fans.

Like, that's, I find that pretty fucking cool.

They're like, you're assigning a budget.

And you're paying out directly to the people that, like, are supporting you.

So it's like, it keeps them, because right now,

if you think about how much money is going into Facebook ads or going into

Google ads, like, of course, great platforms have done a lot for all of us,

you know, from all of our businesses.

But at the end of the day, you're paying these platforms directly.

You're just making these platforms richer.

Whereas, you know, let's say you're putting 5K into content rewards.

It's like, you're making your fans richer.

But you're still accomplishing advertising and you're accomplishing advertising at like,

you know, 10% or 5% the CPM of what it will cost on Facebook.

That makes sense.

So what is your involvement with WAP?

New co-owner.

So yeah, it's been a journey.

Not a decision I took lightly.

Obviously, it's a lot, a lot of money.

But more so than that, it's,

this is a $100 billion race for any of these

other like any platform that's involved in online digital products,

informational products, info products, online courses, coaching.

This is a $100 billion race.

If I look at what happened with e-commerce between 2012 to 2022,

and you look at all the graphs, it's the exact same thing that's happening with digital products.

One for one.

So like, you know, the reason why I was such a big decision is for me, it's like

taking a major stake in Shopify and being a co-owner in the business

back in like 2012.

It's like, this can be the biggest play of your entire career.

Obviously, there, you know, there's a few runners in the race,

but when I look at WAP specifically,

you know, when I look at WAPs specifically, there's nothing else

that's comparable to it.

And the reason I say that is because you have,

as a creator, you can make money.

So you can sell a coaching or digital product, whether that be a Fortnite map,

whether that be a course, coaching program, community, whatever it may be.

You can do that.

And then so it's the payment processing and the checkout,

but then it's also the delivery.

Because let's say, for example, Shopify, when someone, you know, buys like, let's say,

my I wear a brand, Shopify does the payments in the checkout.

By the way, you don't need to use Shopify payments, but that's a separate conversation.

You, I still have to use a 3PL to deliver it to the customer.

So I'm still responsible for getting the product to the customer.

Whereas with WAP, it's like it's payments checkout, but then they also

give the product to the customer.

So it's the delivery of the actual product.

And then let's say, for example, you want to make more money with your offer.

Now you can set a budget rather than spending, you know, 10K a month on Facebook,

for a K, you can get the exact same exposure on using content rewards.

So now you say, okay, I'm going to spend a K a month and put that towards my advertising,

clippers, go do your thing.

You know, go fucking bring me for that price, what a million views.

You know, I don't want this to turn like into like a too much of a WAP promo,

but just so you guys understand like, it's, you know, I had offers from every single company in the

space. And obviously it's a big, you know, I do okay for myself.

But nonetheless, it's a very substantial part of my net worth and, you know, a big chunk of money.

So not only from a financial perspective, but also from a positioning perspective,

because there were other companies that financially look like good propositions.

But I didn't want to be on the wrong side of history.

And I knew that making the investments and, and, you know, taking a stake to become a

corner in that, those companies, I will be on the wrong side of history.

And WAP is, it's a, it's a horse like I've never seen before.

And I find it interesting that you made a comparison of it to Shopify.

And I heard the co-founders say that the other day when I was here,

but it seems as though it could be compared to Amazon because it kind of has that feature of,

like a strip mall that you see all the products on the page and they do the fulfillment there.

You know, because Shopify, you're kind of, it's the tools to build your own store.

But ultimately it would end up going on Amazon and that would be the highest lever.

Do you think WAP could be bigger than Amazon?

Honestly, yeah. And the reason why I say that is because of advertising.

With the content rewards, I'm telling you right now, I'm to, like, obviously, you know,

there's stuff that we can't, you know, talk about, but there's, and going back to what I was

discussing of services, like, listen, if you, if you become a clipper, the chances of you making

20 grand a month is all, you know, next to nothing, right? Listen to some people that do it,

but it's a business where, you know, it's a side hustle where you can make a K3K, you know,

maybe five K a month. But the reason I bring that up is like, we have, without going to specifics,

like we have massive businesses coming to us right now and saying, listen, by the end of year,

we'd like to put 10 million dollars monthly of our budget, of our advertising budget

into content rewards. So our issue right now isn't actually the buyer, which is it should be great

for the people listening. Our issue isn't the buyers. Our issue is getting the clippers. So it's like,

one of those cool situations where like, we have the money there. Like people want to spend the

money. We just need like enough clippers to like, fulfill that demand. So to answer your question

of, do I think we bigger than Amazon? The reason I say yes is because at the end of the day,

Amazon is an advertising as well. You know, Amazon is an advertising where as a walk is it,

that's why I say you can't compare it to anything. It's, it's, it's, it's its own beast where it's

fulfillment that you're correct. Amazon does Amazon does payments check out market, market place

and fulfillment through FBA. But it's not an advertising platform. We're an advertising platform

as well. And by the way, content rewards go so much deeper than just clipping. You know, like,

for example, now you start to like bringing like upwork and fiber because let's say you need

thumbnails, you know, I have three full-time in-house thumbnail designers like full-time. And,

you know, we're doing rehashes every single day, which is why our content keeps, you know,

performing incredibly well because we're constantly going back rehashing titles, thumbnails,

all the stuff. But and that's, that makes sense for me with, with the size of my businesses.

But for most people, that's overkill. But if you can do a content rewards and say, okay, every

week, I'm going to give you a hundred dollars for the thumbnail that I choose. Listen guys,

submit your thumbnails, whichever one I end up choosing, I'm going to give a hundred dollars to.

So now rather than me who's spending whatever, let's call it, you know, over 10 grand a month on

having in-house team do that, you can pretty much get the same result for 400 bucks.

So this is where, you know, when you think about like that, it's just that's why I say you can't

compare it to anything else out there. Do you think we'll get to a place with content where people's

personal pages don't matter that much? And it'll be more so about the distribution. And I know it's

something you've done. And kind of for a trailblazer of the whole mass distribution of your content

across multiple theme pages. But do you think we'll start seeing that with long-form YouTube,

like different thumbnails? And essentially you would upload your content to something like WAP.

And it'd be content rewards. And there're like 30 people that post your YouTube video. And do you

think that'll be the future of content? It'll be more so similar to Facebook ads?

I think we're already somewhat in that direction. I mean, when you look at, I don't think followers

or subscribers count like matters anymore. Like we're already in that place. So if you give the

algorithm more chances to pop off, like as you said, if I take my latest vlog and I say, of course,

I'm going to post on my main channel. But then I'm also going to give it to people so they can

post it on secondary channels. And you know, maybe that my channel gets X amount of views. But then

all of the other secondary accounts get X amount of views. And I say, you know, inside of the

content rewards cool, just make sure you have this link back to main channel or make sure you have

this link to whatever funnel or via cell or whatever products being sold. I think we're already

transitioning to that place. What's one thing everyone should buy once they've made $100,000?

I know what specific to people are. What's a purchase you made when you made your first $100,000? That

was really worth it. I took my mom to Paris. So we grew up in London. And yeah, I also like I want

to make some clear because you said something in the intro. Like in no way, shape or form,

that grew up in poverty. Like in no way, shape or form was like we, we never struggled for meals,

we never struck. It was just a, it's a very common story, which is you see your mom, single mom,

you know, my step that cut us off when I was about 11 or 12. She was, she worked at NHS,

which is like the public health care service. So she was receptionist there, which is rough because like,

you know, I know you guys don't have public health care here, but in the UK, like public health care

is free, but that also means it's very backlogged. And that also means that like people are very,

can get very intense and very like pushy and aggressive. So just like between that and she

she also worked at a place called Harrod's Retail Drop. And that was for a few years when basically

like she, she was tucking away money because, yeah, my mom was very, very frugal. And then eventually

that money ran out once or once, you know, my step that cut us off. So it wasn't, you know, it wasn't

like we were homeless or this, that it was just you see someone you love who's in pain. And

I don't know, maybe like for the viewers, this won't mean anything, but like Paris is so close to

London. Like Paris is so close to London. And like my mom, when she moved to London, it was always a

dream of hers to like go to Paris. I think like for women, that's like a very like idealistic

thing. Like she'd never been to Paris in her entire life. And going to Paris, it's not like it's

a very expensive thing from London, you're traveling within Europe is pretty cheap. And

just small things like that, the fact that like when I was 17, I made a promester like growing up,

like I'll take you to Paris. It's not like the most expensive thing on earth, you know, only

costs like a couple grand, you know, for the entire trip or whatever the way we did to do it nicely.

But just, I'm sure at least I'm sure you've experienced it yourself. Like there's nothing you

probably you can buy that gives you the same love of joy as seeing like a love one or like making

a promise to a love one because I feel like we all make these promises to our loved ones. And by

the way, if you don't, I think it's probably one of the most powerful things that you can do to

guarantee your success because when you make a promise, because I made multiple promises to my

mom and I've made good on every single one of them. Even ones that I didn't know if I could do or

I thought it would take me, you know, multiple decades to do so. And yeah, I just, I know that people

will do more for their loved ones than they will for themselves. And that's a much stronger anchor

than like I want X Y Z thing. Yeah, that's something I'm often critiqued. I'm shocked that so many of

these guys that make content and they like buy Lamborghini or buy some nice watch. And I'm like,

have you taken care of your parents first? And I would guess that some of the time, that's not the case.

But what was another promise you made to your mom? Promise I made to my mom was to buy her a

dream house. So buy her a dream house and have a range over a park in front. That's actually

word for word my promise and made good on that promise. Ranger was a funny one. She drove it once

in six months and then I sold it because she said it was too big for it. Like it's too big in London.

But whatever, at least tick that off the list. Yeah, listen, that was a very big one for me.

I thought it would take longer to accomplish it. Obviously was able to do it at a

relatively young at 23. So yeah, London is very similar to New York like, you know, in London like

to buy a box cost two million dollars. Is there anything kind of materialistic or whether it's

for your health or fitness that you would say was a well worthwhile purchase when you were at maybe

a hundred K network. There are a million dollars network. I think anything that gets you more excited

to work. I always tell people to spend money on. So what I mean by that is like, let's see,

you start seeing some success. Like reward yourself with maybe a new like Herman Miller chair.

Maybe reward yourself with like the latest MacBook. Like reward yourself with maybe some new working

headphones like some whatever it is that can get you more maybe a nice new desk like a stand-up

desk like anything where you're like, fuck, I feel better about showing up to my desk every day.

Anything like that or you know, when it comes to sleep like any wearable tech that like helps

you focus on your sleep like one of my old agency clients in a company called ordering back in

got one on. Yeah, there we go. Back in 2018 and whether that's ordering, whether that's a

a whoop, whether that's a little bit more expensive, but something like an eight sleep. Like these

are things where you know, you're investing money, but now all of a sudden you feel like you spent

money, but you're more excited to to be the better version of you. So anything like that,

anything health-related, maybe a better gym membership. I would do all that stuff before like any

materialistic. I mean, eventually you know, treat yourself like if you have a dream everyone has

everyone signs different meaning to different things. So and I also that also that annoys me

sometimes when people try to shame someone else like, oh, why do you spend this much? It's like

also like none of your fucking business quite frankly. Like maybe you don't find meaning it because

you know, I have very wealthy friends of mine that will spend eye watering sums of money

on certain things, but then I'm like, I can't believe they would spend that much like sometimes I

have to stop myself. I'm like, fuck that's so much money, but then I remember that like they're just

if I think about how much more money they have compared to me, I'm like, well for me it's the same

thing as like buying like maybe I don't know like a new car, which of course is like a small thing,

but it's not like I don't fret over it. So yeah, all that to say that spend money on whatever you

find value, but in those early stages, I think anything you can spend money on that gets you more

excited to like train more or work more, for example, like a cleaner. Like that's something that

frees up hours of your week that, you know, you're not going to do that when you first start, but maybe

once you start hitting, you know, five K months, 10 K months, like having a clean spaces invaluable,

like a laundry services, you know, where they come pick up your laundry and then bring it back to you,

maybe meal prep, like these things that just improve your quality of life rather than like, okay,

cool, you've got like a new whatever shirt or something. Is there anything material that makes you

more confident? I think the way address makes me confident, but I don't think you need to spend

crazy amounts of money. The way I address if someone else addressed this way, they might, they

make, might make them less confident. So I think you just like, I really respect even have friends

of mine, obviously, I just like a bit of a grandpa, but I friends of mine that just like genuinely

love drip. Like it's not like they're not trying to show off, they're not trying to impress people,

like they'll find like old vintage pieces and listen, like Chrome hearts or Louis Vuitton, like they

they genuinely love drip. Like that's their character and that works for them. So I think the way

you address is very important. I don't think you just spend a lot of money on it. But yeah,

addressing in a way that, I mean, it's an expression of oneself. Something I was talking with

her about, thought it was interesting. I was like, you know, people really didn't start like our age,

wearing Ralph Lauren, this old money style until a man made content about it. Do you think that was

a coincidence? Or do you think you maybe had some effect on culture there? Yeah, listen,

I'll be honest, I will give myself credit there. I do think I brought a lot of people that maybe

wouldn't have found it like cool. Like I have, you know, one of my, there's a guy on Instagram

called Stadguy. He's a good friend of mine and I'm an investor in his company. And he like,

because, you know, the jokes are so niche, like he's done so much for loripiana. It's insane. Like,

you know, the amount of exposure they've had because of it, but it's still relatively like niche.

Like you have to be in that world. Whereas I think what I've done is I've exposed a lot of people to

this way of dressing, which I guess maybe it's just very European. I guess it's a European style

of dressing. And, you know, I expose a lot of people that now look at this style of dressing and

they're like, oh, that's cool. Whereas, you know, maybe five years ago, they're like,

that's lame or that's not like loud enough or that's not like. And I think,

I don't know, for me, my style, I never want it to be like too offensive. And I just think that

I know wearing something like this, I can walk into any room and not be overdressed or

underdressed. And that's also why I don't wear like three-piece suits because then you started

going the opposite end where it's like, now you go into certain rooms and it's like, okay, this is

you know, chill out, bro. So yeah, I do think I will get myself credit there that I think I've

brought a lot of people into this way of dressing. Yeah, I appreciate your humility about it, but I

do think you made a very big impact on culture with your fashion. Where do you get your fashion

sense from? I think it's just a European thing. And, you know, I will say I've never been like a

big labels kind of guy. But when I 2017, 2018, when I did start making some money, you know,

every once in a while would have maybe like a like a one brand or something. And I think it's just

like growing up in Europe, like it's, it's a very, you just don't really do it. Yeah, it's just not

as common there. And I think also in my world, funnily enough, I've never, I never really networked

or hung around people my age or in this like online entrepreneurship space.

In general, I, that's, yeah, that's just generally not who I really spend time with.

I spend time with my friends who are far more successful than me, usually older than me.

And I observe the way that they dress and it's, yeah, just, it's never with logos or labels. Now,

I have friends of mine that are super successful. They dress like kind of homeless,

but it's still with no logos because that's in their world. That's what's accepted. You know,

they're in, for example, the VC world and it just in that world, it's like, yeah, this,

this would be like off-putting to them. So yeah, I think it just

product my environment, quite frankly. What's the most unnecessary purchase you've ever made?

They can tell you what, listen, there's lots of, lots of things that are unnecessary. Definitely,

yeah, I guess it's, it's, it's very subjective. What's unnecessary? Because sometimes, for example,

I buy things like whether that be like legacy businesses or legacy domains or legacy properties that

I just, I know I don't need. I know I'm never going to make money. I'm not going to lose crazy

amounts of money, but I just, I just want it in my possession. But dumb purchases, there's one I

can think of specifically. It was in April, it's somewhat sometime early 2022. I bought three

board apes, board apes. Because I bought three board apes because like in that space, I was like,

I came from like traditional business space. And I was like, what? These people are so weird. Like,

they keep like, what? It's like this flex. And eventually, I was just like, you know, a fuck

I'll just buy three. And yeah, that was very stupid. I think I bought each one for 400K. So

$1.2 million in board apes. Do you still have those? I sold two that I'd really just didn't care

about. Like, honestly, it's, and that's an important lesson. Like, when you make ego purchases,

I was like, you know, whatever, I would just, that was one of the rare times my ego kind of got

the best of me. And I was like, you know, like, fuck it. Like I'll just buy three just cause.

Which is just, it's stupid. And it's just a hundred percent ego. And yeah, you know,

whatever lessons learned there. But as they were coming down, I think I sold it. I bought them

off for 400K. I sold two for 200K. And then one, which is like a board apes that is like

smoking a cigar and it's got like a, a USSR hat, you know, a RJ from Russia. So that one I kept,

I don't know. It's probably worth fuck all, but I just, I just find it cute. Yeah, I think I

bought some back in 2021, not board apes, but some other enough to just ended up keeping them

because the market went to shit. I was like, maybe one day I'll be worth something. At 17,

this might be a bit personal, but what was your net worth at 17 years old?

I mean, really, that net worth at 17 is kind of how much cash you have in the bank, probably

about 100K. How about 21? 20, it depends what time? At some, it's 21 was very rocky year from

basically, 2022 in November, I put a million dollars into Bitcoin. So that's why I ask 2021,

I mean, there was lows of like, let's say my entire net worth would have been like 5 million,

there was peaks of 15. It was a very crypto, you know, it was a very trest this year. How about now?

Well, this, the house where it gets more sticky because then you have to look at the price of

some of your assets. And like, once again, those become very subjective, like what is, let's say,

for example, my stake in this company worth, what's my stake in this business worth? What's

even domains, like I have domains or multi-million dollar domains, I just, whenever I just wanted

the domains and I'm sitting on them. Now, let's say, for example, I wanted to, like, we had to do a

net worth by fire sale. Like, it's in like, by next week, if you had to sell all of your assets

and be worth this much, now, you know, let's say a domain that's worth four million dollars,

I would have to fire sale it for a million dollars, you know, there's not much liquidity in the

domain market. So it's, this is where I like, when you get that, maybe to sell everything off.

Once again, it just gets very subjective. Let me put this way. It's, it's over a hundred, no.

It's over a hundred? Yeah. That I can comfortably say. At what age would you say it would be

a billion? I don't know. I don't know if I'll ever get there. I think, you know, the past year or

so, I've really, all I've been doing is just investing in companies and that's been like,

my new swari and I'm coming in in this world of sharks as a tiny little fish and, you know,

having to basically learn and absorb everything and learn all the pitfalls and how people try to

fuck you and this and that. And so in the world of investing, I've done relatively decent in the

last year. So I'm lucky to have some very good advisors in that space. So I don't know if I can't

really answer that one. It's interesting how much leverage your personal brand is kind of given

you to invest and start so many companies. On the topic of personal brand, I don't want to go

into it too much because you've made some great videos about it in your interview with Simon Squib.

Guys, you should definitely check that out. It goes really deep into it. But what's the number one

mistake people make when building a personal brand? Number one mistake is not being intentional.

And, you know, for example, you just mentioned one benefit. In the last year and a half,

it's been the biggest benefit. And definitely the next five years will be by far the biggest benefit.

I just kind of played dumb online for a few years. Like I didn't really tell people what I'm doing.

I didn't really tell people by the scenes what was going on. And, yeah, all that to say,

now for me, the two biggest benefits from my personal brand is hiring and deal flow.

And also the terms I get when I'm actually investing in companies. Now there's specific

examples like the other day I had a napkin company. That's where it's $60 million. It's a napkin

advertising business. That's where it's $60 million that want to meet and invest. And I was like

the terms that I would want. I can't really ask of you. And I wouldn't even want you to give it to me

because I just I don't have enough value at here. So I'm not going to sit here and try to ask for

X amount discounted equity when like I just don't even myself. I don't feel like I deserve that.

So I think it's just a matter of deciding what you want your what benefits you want from your

personal brand. Now when I first started my personal brand, I didn't I didn't monetize my personal

brand for like two and a half years. Like for me, it was just a diary. Like it was I was just

uploading vlogs because I just there wasn't as much of a community back then of people making money

online and entrepreneurship and all this stuff. So it was kind of like my diary to myself and

it was also a way for me to connect with people online. So it went from that to eventually I

started actually getting agency clients from my personal brand. So I guess I didn't why didn't

directly monetize it for two and a half years. But I started getting some agency clients like that

company, the first big client I ever had. It was a company called athlete back then. They're

called Gemflow now. They came in from a video I posted on YouTube. So it started helping build

the businesses up. So it's kind of morphed the main benefits I get from the personal

brand as time goes on. So there's very long winded way to basically say what are you trying to get

out of it? And what I mean by that is I see people posting really broad like they'll see short

form stuff that we do and they post really broad content. And yet they're trying to get like

they're trying to sell high ticket B to B services. And it's like what does your really broad

video about like seven millionaire mindset tips? Like what the fuck does that have to do with

like getting enterprise clients? So you just have to be very intentional and ask yourself what do

you want? And also don't correlate views with success. Like views can mean success. It just depends

what kind of game you're playing. What kind of game you're playing on the front? Because sometimes

there's one game that you're letting people see you playing. Then how are you actually playing

on the back in terms of monetization? So that's what I would say to people. Be very intentional

and decide what are you using social media for? Which you advise most people to kind of start with

the higher ticket, very niche audience route? 100% without a doubt. That was probably the nugget I took

out of that interview with Simon was you'd said something along the lines of creating a micro

personal brand? And that's something I follow your backup Instagram page. And I find it very

interesting your strategy there. Where did you learn that from? And how has that been beneficial to

you? In terms of like siloing out to multiple accounts? Yeah. Listen, the honest truth is you in

your position probably won't watch my main YouTube channel. You're too successful. And it's maybe

a little too. It's for earlier career stage. But my I have a business channel now, my business

channel video, you might watch because you're like, okay, cool. I want to learn like the back in

SOP systems for his thumbnail rehashing for, you know, his card abandonment flow. Like all of these

like more niche topics, but that's relatable to you. And I also know that I have friends of mine

that are super successful. They're not in the space. They don't like even when they're super

successful business owners, they don't give a shit about card abandonment flows. They're not going

to watch my main YouTube, but they religiously watch my vlogs. And these are like multi hundred

millionaires and sometimes even multi billionaires, but they just because they find it entertaining.

And then I have some people that only watch my short form, but won't watch YouTube. So like,

I just kind of have it in a way that is something for everyone now. I don't recommend people do that.

Once again, that's very specific to my business goals. But the reason I created the business

channel, or for example, the business Instagram is because the more niche the advice, the more niche

the market. Okay. So like if I gave hard hitting business advice on my main Instagram,

like very specific needy-gritty stuff, the main audience would be like, this is kind of going

over ahead. Like I'm not, I don't drive with this. And vice versa, if you're giving like

very open-ended like beginner content advice on, on the, um, to an audience that wants

is high level searches yourself, they're not going to drive with it. So it's just, it's just a matter

of like knowing who your audience is, um, and knowing who you want to attract. And I know this,

like it, everyone at home is like, okay, cool. Like no shit, Sherlock. Like very, that sounds like

very simple advice, but you'd be surprised how many people are getting this wrong. And how many

people are creating content and not thinking, okay, I'm creating this content or I'm speaking,

my messaging is this, but how does this tie back to the business backend? Like what I'm actually

trying to accomplish, you know, on the back of it. Yeah, um, I have experience with that as a,

like, uh, making podcast content now because my goal is really just, how do I get, uh,

like more impressive guests, uh, maybe guests with more followers that will do a really good podcast.

And the only way to really do that with the content is get as many views as possible. But

in reality, these guests don't realize what you're saying, which is that a niche podcast with

say 3000 subscribers, uh, could be way more beneficial for their business and for their goals

if they went on it, uh, hit the right audience. Have you ever seen a Harry Stebings?

He has a podcast called 20VC. I've heard of people talk about this. So he has like crazy, crazy,

uh, uh, yeah, he has some crazy, uh, like, uh, founder of Salesforce, uh, revenue, like, crazy

guests on. And this guy, uh, I think maybe he's a 200,000 subscribers from right now, uh, he's

raised 500 million dollars from his podcast. 500 million dollars, you know, you think about a two

and 20 fees. Well, the guy's making fucking tens of millions of dollars a year. He's killing it.

And that was all from having a niche podcast. Well, that's not like a super niche topic. Of

course, anyone who's in that world is interested. Uh, but that goes to show, you know, people think

that you need to play this game of having, no bare mind. I'm also speaking to someone who does

play the game of views, you know, I still do it strategically, but once again, that's because I

have the business back in like I have a consumable brand. I have a, uh, I wear brand. I have a, uh,

you know, a 30-ish dollar a month mobile app. Like, you know, you can get star on warp for free.

Like I have these ways to monetize a broad audience, but if I only had like we have a B2B

licensing program called 8FL, like you actually, we, it's not like a, oh, we don't work with

beginners. Like we don't work with beginners. Like it's true B2B. If you don't have a successful

business already running, like we, we just simply don't work with you. And, and we will not take

your money. So with that, if all I was selling was 8FL, I would not have all these other channels.

Because like, what does like me doing broad market content that helps like the 17 year old

version of myself or 16 year old version of myself, what does that have to do with getting an

enterprise client? So this is where, you know, you need to know what your goal is. For example,

in your case, your goal is, I'm trying to get as many views as possible because then I'm trying to,

then I'm trying to, uh, get higher caliber of guests and obviously guests, you know,

these, uh, these guests want to make sure that they're coming all podcasts with great visibility,

millions of views, all this stuff. Now, let's say for example, do you, do you sell anything on the

backend? Uh, no. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's say, for example, like we, we actually have an individual

in 8FL and he, he's making about a few hundred grand a month. Uh, and he has a podcast. And on

the backend, he helps people with their podcasts. So he does a done for you. He has a, uh, uh, uh,

coaching offer as well. Uh, he helps beginners that want to get star with podcasts. So he kind of

has this monetization framework on the backend. So let's say you were to do something like that and

you want it to make, let's say we're 300 grand a month from a backend offers. It wouldn't make

sense for you to promote on here. Maybe it makes sense for you to have a business channel where you

talk about the business of being in the podcast game and you're like, okay, well, listen, I've had

all these guest speakers on it's done x, y, z for my life. And but your audience here,

probably a very small fraction of them actually care about or have any desire at all to get into

podcasting game. Uh, and that's where you would basically like silo and have a second channel to

talk about that. It's something I've definitely, uh, considered. And it actually started as it

means to an end of doing high ticket coaching for blowing up people on social media. And I realized

how hard that was with like going viral on social media does not mean you get, uh, business owners

who can pay you a hundred thousand dollars a month to make them viral on social media. They're actually

inversely correlated. But, uh, out of the spirit of this being too niche, uh, let's maybe go a bit

broader here. Um, let's do this is a segment called this or that you choose one of the two things,

you don't have to say why, but you can if you want. Monk mode or networking.

For most people watching this monk mode, personal brand or AI, personal brand, info or agency,

info, US or Dubai, purse, uh, yeah, man, this is so tough. I hate giving like saying personal

things that don't apply to the people for me, Dubai, real estate or crypto, for me real estate,

private jet or private chef, private chef, Rolex or AP, great relationships with all them, uh,

they're all great. I'll let you have a buy on that one. Um, Mercedes or Rolls Royce,

Rolls Royce, 100 million followers or 100 million dollars, 100 million dollars,

books or mentors. It's so tough because as I said, like, for most people, books, but as you get

further along, mentors are more valuable. Like more mentors now than I get from books. Discipline

or passion. Discipline. What would you do with your time if money was no object? Well,

I'll be honest, money isn't an object. So I would just do what I'm doing right now.

I would just do what I'm doing right now. Honestly, like for me, it's, I think sometimes in

life, people think they need like to save the world or change the world or all these things. Like,

now it's actually funny because I genuinely feel like what I'm doing right now with, uh, you know,

specifically, you know, with WOP is like, we are actually reforming that education system.

Like, I had that on my Instagram by on 2017. I don't know how I was going to do it. I don't know

what that would look like, but I genuinely believe that online education and the fact that more and

more people are finally starting to realize like the traditional education systems are bloated.

They're outdated. I don't want to like, there's so much messaging around that. Like, I don't want to

like kind of, you know, kick a horse when it's down. Like it's like, I think we all kind of get it,

right? College sucks. Yeah. It's, it's just not what it used to be. And as I don't want to be like one

of those people, you know, just talking shit about that. Uh, the point is, okay, let's now look

forward and let's look with all alternative options are. And I just love the fact that like now,

everyone understands that online, you can go online and you can, you know, have, have this breath

of mentors and you have this breath of, uh, people in your corner that can guide you to wherever it

is that you want to go. Uh, so yeah, I feel like we've talked about that enough, but the reason I

bring that up is like, for me, that's something that's genuinely meaningful. But even if I was

working on something that isn't meaningful, I'll give you an example, like my I wear brand. Like,

I actually grow, I don't like sunglasses. Like growing up, I didn't like sunglasses. And until I

had my I wear brand, I didn't wear sunglasses. I only wear my I wear brand. I wear religiously.

I refuse to wear any other I wear brand on earth because I just make stuff that I like. And it's,

if you told me 10 years ago, like this year, you know, especially in the e-commerce space,

nothing crazy, but like we'll do eight years this year. If you told me like, you know,

if you told me that 10 years ago, like you would sell 40% and so 40% of business back in May to

my business partner, uh, who's a strategic as well? Cause he's done a billion dollars in I wear.

So it's like pretty good business partner I have. If you told me 10 years ago that I would

be in this industry, I'd be like, why I'd never wear sunglasses. But now I find so much meaning.

And I find so much enjoyment from like building the product with the team. And I get so excited

when I get like new samples in. And it's like the detailing is exactly how I want it. And like I'm,

you know, geek out about packaging and like all of this stuff. And like, I find the meaning, like

even in the I wear industry, I genuinely like get so worked up when I talk about like our,

our target market, which is like our I wear is anywhere from 95 to 120 dollars. And I like get

so worked up. And I'm like, right now you have this monopoly in I wear where you either get like

shitty 30 dollar frames or even like ray bands are like 250 bucks now. Like it's insane. And I'm like,

there's no like reasonable, I don't, I don't, I never want to use the word affordable because

honestly, if you hold the glass in hand, the only thing that's comparable to is like Jack

Murray, my Azure Chrome hearts, like it's insane. And so I don't hate using that word. But like

the truth of matter is it's incredible product at an incredible price point. And it makes you,

you talk about, you know, what makes you feel confident. Like that's something I wear. I feel

confident. And I know that's had that effect on so many people because it's kind of an extension

of your face. It's different, you know, whatever. Maybe you're going to nice jacket on, but it's for

that day. Like this is like becomes a part of someone's personality in a way. So to tie this whole

thing together, that's something where I find meaning in the work, but I feel like even if I was in

whatever it could be any industry, I'd be able to find meaning in it because for me, I just find

meaning in like, am I working with people I love working with? And am I also just making,

coming into industry and just can we make the product better? And if I can do those things, I don't

actually really care what I work on. Like I could be making plugs, plugs, sockets for all I care,

as long as I do like people I love working with. And I feel like we're actually doing something

to move the industry forward a little bit. Like I'm happy. So you kind of see yourself as an

inventor, like you like to build cool shit. I guess why do you find enjoyment in that? Is that

always been the case with you? Well, I just think people of character, I really respect,

for example, I don't know if you've ever seen this documentary called A Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

And it's about this, like it's about this like little omakaze restaurant in his Japanese subway.

And this guy's like booked out for months and months and he could like move into like the super

grand and or franchise and you know, turn it into a nobu or this ad, but like all he does,

all he's done for like 67 years is just obsessed over finding the freshest fish and preparing the

sushi in the right way. That's all he does. In like, I love stuff like that where someone commits to

a craft or finds meaning in something so that maybe it does. We seem small, but to him that's

like his entire life. And you know, I say even with like the the team, if we got into like, let's say

we started selling knives, like I'm not going to see here and say that our life's mission is to

we're going to change the world. Because I also think like when your company's mission is like so far

away from reality, like it's actually a demotivator. It's like guys, what we're saying we're doing

here is like we're we're just lying to ourselves. But if I go into a knife making business,

I would make it my mission that you never ever cook again without a smile on your face.

Now that's and you're never going to achieve that mission because of course you could have,

you could have just been broken up with, you know, you let's say you make the best knives in the

world and you're cooking, you're going to be fucking miserable. So it's not an attainable mission,

but it's something that's still rooted in reality and people understand that like we're just trying

to make, we're trying to put a smile on our customers face. We're not always going to accomplish that

goal, but the closer that we can get there, the better it is. And I just feel like when you can

find meaning in these things that maybe for other people don't seem like big deal, but for you,

if you get a group of people together and you're all aligned on the same thing and and to you,

you make it meaningful. That's the same way like if you hear me talk about like I wear like I

actually get like worked up about it. I'm like the fact that someone can step out the house and

they don't have to spend fucking $500 on all these other brains. And they step out the house and

I know that extra feeling of like confidence it gives them. And it's like now part of their

personality. It's like, yeah, I just find a lot of meaning in the stuff. And just a backtrack,

I wouldn't call myself an inventor at all. You know, for example, even in my Iowa business,

Alex Hawkers, who's my business partner, he's, I give him 100% full credit when it comes to

products. He's a wizard, a genius there. You know, once again, same thing with walk like these

guys are one of the best product companies in the world. The engineering team gets 150% of all the

credit. But you know, I'm very good at coming in and and steering the ship and saying, okay,

this is what we should focus on or we should, you know, put more attention here and and make a

little difference in that way. I like what you said. I think that is the one piece of advice in

this interview that could apply to everyone. Just do what you do as good as humanly possible.

But I do have to ask that if that is your framework for choosing how you live your life,

then why have you done it at such scale? You know, because you could have, I perhaps been a chef

or been a teacher at a school and just done that thing as good as Eman can do. But why go past that?

I think for me, it's the story and the people I do it with. And the opportunities, like I can

come into multiple different companies, you know, different businesses I own or, you know, I'm a

significant stakeholder in. And I know I'm creating opportunities for everyone within that

organization. So I just think I genuinely do feel like I wake up every morning. I'm in service

to people around me and ask just like, you know, I hate like very like I feel like that's a very

look at me like I'm a whole I don't like holder than now things. So I'm really not trying to say

in a holder than now, you know, I feel in service every day. But like I think everyone has a different

way they give like give love and feel love. The way that I show people I love them or I care about

them is like being useful. And like, like, let me help you or like, let me create an opportunity

for you. Like, let me make sure that you're safe. So I think that's kind of like the way I show

love to the people around me and also like kind of almost no way like love to the world is like

let me be that container to create opportunity for people. Let me be as helpful as possible

in the way that I know how that makes sense. But I like the framework of not wanting to change

the world because not just one person can change the world. And there's a lot of stuff that could

just be better. And I think that's like I wish people felt like didn't discredit themselves.

Like I feel like when you say, oh, we need to change the world. It's almost discrediting the fact

that like, yeah, but you changed your industry or like you made things better in your industry.

And like rather than trying to change the world, can you just come in and just find your little,

you know, can you find your little carving of land and just make that like as prosperous as

humanly possible. And that's realistic. And if you do that, like in my opinion, that's how you

change the world. What does it mean to be a gentleman means different thing in different countries

and different cultures, to be honest. I mean, it's a funny place where the Houston is like I'm

close. Like Iman is it means faith in Arabic. So like I'm like kind of between the Middle East and

Russia. So obviously it's a very like traditional kind of place. Being a gentleman to me,

I just think it means being considerate and putting others before yourself. I guess specifically

in relationships with a woman. Same thing being considerate, putting them before you, but obviously

like I think being German also means having a backbone because the people, I think sometimes

people take it too far in the sense of like, I'm a gentleman, so I'm going to do everything

and bend over backwards and let this person tread on me. And to me, that's not like a real man,

like a real man needs to have boundaries. You know, I don't trust people that say yes to everything.

I don't trust people that don't have boundaries. To me, usually those are the most dangerous people

because when they lash, they lash hard. So, yeah, I mean, I guess do you want more specific examples?

Yeah, I guess to go more specific, like what are some things maybe men don't consider in a

relationship with a girl or they might think it's cheesy, but you're a proponent of it.

I think it all comes to where you go geographically. I guess the way I was raised is how you come

to date and how you go home from a date or things that from what I understand in America,

maybe sometimes can be a bit of an afterthought. It also depends where in the country you are.

Like for me, you know, you pick up a girl, if you know there's certain instances that might be

stuck in a meeting, you arrange transportation, you drop a girl home, those are, you know,

to me, just giving things, maybe this might be a little provocative, but just where I'm from in the

world, like splitting the bill is not a thing. Just once again, the way I was raised, you know,

no judgments for people that want to live. Otherwise, I mean, I don't know, for me, it's just very small

things. Should you ever try to win someone back in a relationship? Why did they leave? Sometimes

you fucked up. So that's like, listen, if they left because they're, they just quite frankly don't

want you anymore or they don't feel like you're the person for them. I don't think you ever chase

them. But if there are situations and this is usually much rare cases where you're the one that

pushed them away, that's the only time I would ever say, yeah, potentially winning back. But those

are anomalies. Have you ever tried to get a girl back that you ended a relationship with?

I wouldn't say tried, she came back. Yeah, no, I also, she came back. I also don't, I feel like

that almost makes it sound a little disrespectful. We just, we came back together, you know.

Yeah, that's happened to me in the past. Do you plan on having kids? 100%

do you want a lot of kids? Do I want a lot of kids? Yeah. Me personally, you know, two, three,

is there a certain framework for that or horrible example, but I think people will get the point

like it's like having multiple businesses. Listen, the more businesses you have, the less

love and attention you can give it. So like to give it 100% of your undivided attention to grow in

the way it needs to grow and flourish in the way it needs to flourish. I think, yeah, of course,

the more you divide your attention, the harder it becomes. So, you know, that's my stance on it.

Do kind of disagree with the, it's kind of a new statement that's popped up that men don't really

need to be involved in the child's upbringing that much. It's really the mother's responsibility

and the men should just check in sometimes, but they should still be focused on their mission.

Like, how do you kind of view that? Finally enough, I actually do agree with that. And I think,

it's, I think it changes. So, I also want to preface something by saying, I don't have kids.

So if you want like a good answer, maybe go ask someone to successfully raise kids. Like,

I also want to make that clear because sometimes you get asked questions and podcasts and it's like,

this is theoretically my view point, but I haven't lived it. So, you know, maybe go ask someone that's

raised a bunch of kids and they'll probably give you a better answer. This is just the way that I view

the world. I think really, like really up until a kid is about like eight or nine years old,

you're not as impactful as a man. Like, the woman is far more important in loving, nurturing,

that's not to say that you, listen to me, you shouldn't be absent. It just means being around 24

seven, I feel like if that's something you want to do, that's great, but that's more for you,

you're, that's more selfishly for you. I don't think that's like, like, I can't remember a single

lesson I was taught when I was three or four years old, quite frankly. But once your kids

go past the age of like eight, nine, ten, I feel like as a man, that's really when you're very

impactful to like, impart life lessons, teach skills, and that's where you become very,

that's where it's, as a man, it's more important that you're present than the woman in my opinion.

I'll get back to the parenting in a bit, but on relationships, what's the most attractive thing

a woman can wear? Can wear? Once again, I guess, each thrown, I like stuff that's more modest.

You have just smart casual, smart casual, define smart casual. For me, I like it when a girl

knows she has it, but she doesn't need to show it off. Like, when that just, because you can always,

yeah, it just, it just makes them far more attractive. I'm just not very like into

revealing everything to the world, you know what I mean? But that's not even just in terms of like

your body and your looks, that's also just like as a person. Like, I don't really, I actually don't

super connect with people. This is a podcast, of course, it's slightly different, but when I meet

people at first, a lot of times, I'm very polite, I'm very respectful, but I'm not going to

fucking tell you my entire life story. I'm not going to, like, you don't deserve that.

And I don't like people that I meet them and they tell me everything about them straight away. I

don't trust those people. I'm like, why are you telling me, why do I get to know intimate parts of

your life? Like, I should, I should have to earn that right. So maybe that's like the Russian

and me, like Russian people are very cold, you know, when you first get to know them, but, you know,

once they trust you, they're like the most loving, sweet people on earth. So yeah, all that to say

that I kind of view it the same way when it comes to the entire. Like, I don't, I don't,

listen, I'm also not, I get it. Everyone comes from different cultures and whatnot. Like, I'm not

saying, you know, you need to be fully covered all the time. That's also fun enough, not the way

that I was raised. It's just, it's a happy medium between the two. So you, I'm guessing you kind of

like European fashion, New York fashion, as opposed to something like Miami or Los Angeles,

where I can be a bit more pretty much got it. It's a really thoughtful answer. What does real love

look like? Do you think the media portrays it accurately? No, not at all. I think the media like

absolutely sets people up for disaster because they think like real love is fireworks 24, 7 and real

love is for me real love. Once again, I want to preface this by saying, I'm not married. So,

you know, maybe go speak to someone that's been a happy married for 30 years. This has just been my

experience of it. What I know, like, Jenny, deeply, I truly love someone is there's no, not to say

that there's never fireworks. But even when there's no fireworks, I'm like, I don't give a shit. Like,

I don't care that this doesn't look like some New York romcom 24, 7 and we look like we're in a

movie. I'm like, and I don't care if, you know, maybe I, listen, when you've been with a person

for a long time, and I've been in, you know, a long relationship, I've experienced that. It's

there's days you wake up and maybe you're not, so you don't want to rip that person's clothes off.

But like, you still wouldn't look anywhere else like that's still your person. You know what I mean?

So, that's my experience of love, which is, or that's the way that I view real love, which is like,

maybe it's not fireworks and want to rip each other's clothes off 24, 7 and like the media portrays in.

And it's a shame because the way the media portrays is like, if you're not feeling that anymore,

it's like, oh, the spark's gone. Like, you should just give up and move on. And it's like,

what you're describing to people is a feeling of, it's like drugs. It's like, that's why when people

tell me about their relationships, they're six months, or even like a year and a half, I'm like,

I don't mean to be patronizing, but like, that's cute. That's cute. That's like,

you're so deeply in love and it's been a year. But like, talk to me when it's been five.

Like, talk to me when it's been five and you still have more appreciation for this person

in year five than year one. Sometimes even like a female friends of mine are like, oh, he did this

for me. I'm like, that's cool. Like, he wants to have sex with you. Like, talk to me.

What things are going to be like after three years after he's gone and everything that he's

wanted. And he has nothing to benefit more from you. How is he showing up in year three?

Because for me, real love is like, when you show up more in year three or year five,

or you're 10, or you're 20, then you do in year one. So, yeah, that's that's that's that's

the way I view these things. Is it hard to find someone you would date long term,

perhaps marry, have kids with with your level of success status at your age?

I've had a bunch of people ask me this. No, I'll be honest. Sometimes I hear

guys and they talk to me and they're like, you know, all I meet is, you know, they use the word

hose. You know, all I meet is these these women and these blah, blah. And I'm like, bro,

where are you looking? Because like, I'm I've only ever like interacted with great women. Like,

listen, of course, you know, you meet people here and there. I'm not saying that had the perfect

woman around me my entire life. But I'm saying like, people that I've had genuine like more serious

things with. I've never had a girl be late, be disrespectful, shout, nothing. And I think it's

because like the way that I carry myself and the energy that I have is I'm once again,

I'm going to be very polite. I'm going to be very respectful. But don't get twisted. I have

boundaries. And by the way, I expect you to have boundaries as well. But like if I encroach all

those boundaries, there should be repercussions. If you encroach on my boundaries, there will be

repercussions. And I think that's healthy. So yeah, I don't know when sometimes I hear from guys

that like, I don't can't be any good women this time. I'm like, bro, maybe that's a fucking new problem.

Because yes, for sure, don't get twisted. I've met a bunch of women that I would for me personally

that all my people and I would never consider dating them. And sometimes actually it's crazy. I

talk about this with my boys. I look at the amount of the back flips that some guys will do for

certain girls. And I'm like, I get it. They're like, they're attractive. But I'm just like, I couldn't

once again, maybe this is me. This is not my person. But like, I couldn't spend a day with this

person. Like there's nothing of substance there. So once again, maybe it's not my person. Maybe

you know, there's someone else's person. But yeah, I just I don't think it's as bleak as most

people make it out to be. I just think they're looking the wrong places quite frankly. Or I think

they're maybe they're attracting a lot of times people think they want something, but they want

something else. Like if you want to hold around, I'm speaking as a guy here. Like if you want to

be a guy and you want to hold around, like just fucking own it. But don't sit here and pretend like

you won't wifey when like your actions aren't like, I don't get these guys are like going to the

clubs. And then they're like, all these girls are hose. And it's like, bro, nothing good happens

past two o'clock. And by the way, there's nothing wrong going clubs every once in a while. You know,

maybe you know, twice a year, you might find me in a club. You know, if I'm just getting a

shit face with my friends, there's nothing wrong with that. But like if I wanted a good strategy to find

my wifey, I'm probably not going to be hanging out in the clubs until like four or five every

morning in these major cities. But then like gang pissed off that can't find a good woman. Like,

it's just like, you know, once you make your bedlay in it. And don't flip flop. Don't say you

want one thing, but then all of your actions reflect another way. If you want to hold around

as a man, I'm saying, go for it. Enjoy it. But then don't get pissed off when like you get exactly

the thing that you wanted. It seems like the methodology men use to find women is somewhat lazy.

If they have that experience because it's like, oh, I only date women that I message on Instagram

or they message me on Instagram. Or like you said, went to the club and let them there or at a party

in college, but they're not really putting an effort to find a girl who I guess is in an

environment in which they would like her to be commonly, like perhaps library or coffee shop,

just something normal. Like if you want a girl that doesn't go out, don't meet the girl at the

club, like you're saying. One of the pieces of advice I've thought was particularly interesting.

Or your opinion, I should say, when researching this was you said,

mention it, look at a woman twice unless they plan on approaching them. I thought that was really

good. Three times. Three times. Okay. Because I think like for, you know, as a guy, you obviously

like a double take, like, you know, maybe you see someone you're like, oh, wow, that's, you know,

attract, you know, she's very attractive. You can look again, but I think at that point,

once you recognize, okay, cool, this is a person that I would like to speak to, make your decision.

Now bear in mind, some days like no matter how good you are as a guy, like no matter how confident,

some days you're just not feeling it. So that's not to say that like every single time you're going to

go up to this person, sometimes you're just like, you feel like shit that day, you're not feeling

confident and you're like, you know, you're in your head and that's fine. But don't like,

now try to like, I fuck this person for the next like hour and then just not talk to them.

Like make your decision. Are you going to make your move? You're not going to make your move.

And I think that's what I was trying to get across there. It's like,

make the decision there. Am I going to do this or I'm not going to do this? And by the way,

if you're not going to do it, it's fine because I said we're not always like Mr. Confident and

Mr. Approachable, but make your decision. Yeah, and I guess the bad side of like staring at a woman

if you're not going to approach them is you're kind of giving yourself this dopamine hit almost like

you did go and talk to her or almost like you were dating her. But by not acting on it, you're kind

of cutting yourself short. We're not actually doing the thing. And I think sorry to interrupt it

also puts them on a pedestal because you're like, there's so much like energetic disconnect where

you're like, I'm scared to talk to you and blah, blah. So like the less you can do that, the

when the time comes and you're like, I do want to approach this person. I think you make it less

of a big deal. In my experience, a lot of guys that work in marketing or product aren't very good

at approaching women are there a bit scared. This is not everyone, but particularly salesmen

are really good at it because they're used to knocking doors, making calls. Like where did you

kind of build this habit of not being afraid to approach girls? I think it's not even a gross

thing. I think it's a people thing and I think it's I don't know. I've been uploading on YouTube

for 10 years now. You know, and I guess I've just become so aware of the fact that first

of all, people don't care about you anywhere near as much as you think they do. Like, you know,

people are like, embarrassed maybe if I go up and she doesn't want to talk to me. Bro, people

don't give a shit. Like no one, no one's going to talk about it. No one's losing sleep over it.

That's number one. And number two, I also understand like, let's say, for example, you're trying to

close a client or let's say, for example, you're going up to a girl and you know, it doesn't go the

way you want. That is also, it's not a hundred percent of reflection of you. Like maybe that person

just maybe that client is going through financial issues. Like they, if they could, they would buy

your services, your product or whatever. Maybe that female has just gone through a brutal breakup

four days ago. Like she or her heart is open to no one or nothing. So I just once again, I don't

put it on such a big pedestal. And I don't make it a big deal. So that's where it kind of takes

the pressure off of things. What advice would you give to young women trying to find a husband?

That's something we do talk about quite often actually. It kind of does break my heart because I see a

lot of, I feel like there's not too much great advice for women. And it makes me quite sad.

Like yeah, we were having this conversation another day. I see all this, I see all this

stuff out there like women will be like, oh, you know, run if he doesn't make at least a hundred K

a year or wouldn't be like, oh, if he's not getting you a birkin or this or that. And then just like,

it breaks my heart because it's, if you meet a man in like his early days as he's like coming up

and you give him your everything, like that's been the longest relationship and the happiest

relationships. And most like firm relationships I've seen ever is like when a woman meets you

as you're building and she gives you that trust and that faith, like I think as a man that goes

that bond is stronger than like anything else in the world. And it's

all I guess I would say to women is just if he doesn't get you a birkin, that's fine.

Like that's fine. If he doesn't make a hundred K a year, once again, that's fine. If you think he's,

if he checks, checks off all your boxes, like I just, I get quite,

it's this weird thing where I almost have like survivors of guilt because in this whole social

media, money, notoriety, this that, like it's weird because I'm at the top of this pyramid of like,

you know, being young, relatively successful, relatively well known and I'm a beneficiary

from this entire system, this construct that the world's had of like a man who is

does well financially and is desired by a bunch of like I'm one of the top beneficiaries of this

whole thing. But I like walk around and like breaks my heart and when I see this messaging around

there of like, you know, if he doesn't make a hundred K run or if he doesn't have a black card,

blah, blah, this that and it's just like, well, fucking world are we living where you're like

shaming someone for that or even see stuff out there as, you know, there'll be content like,

you know, why are you crying? He's broke and I'm like, imagine if men were like, why are you

crying? She's fat. It's like, why are you shaving like a man? Because first of all,

going back to how we actually started this whole conversation, being successful in life is also

a time thing. Like you could give a hundred and ten percent, you could be doing everything right,

but you still have to wait. Like time still has to catch up to all that effort you're putting in.

So like as a man, I just find it like a little upsetting that these men, like young men are being

called, oh, you're broke or you're a brokeie or you're of this side. It's like this guy's

fucking doing a hundred ten percent of everything he could do and you're sat here fucking mocking him

when in ten years, this person will be so fucking far ahead of you because he's putting in the ground

work. He's doing everything he needs to do. But yeah, you're going to sit here and like,

like put this fucking person down with like, I don't know, it's just like, honestly,

it genuinely, it makes you so upset. Yeah, it seems as though people often don't understand the

math either of how many guys are like any man, God, see, you know, I'm like, I've only met four

that are similar net worth, but they don't have any status. You know, it's, it's, they're,

it's few and far between and even like the amount of guys that make a million dollars below

the age of 30, very, even a hundred K. But people are so, like delete, like, what was, what was

this that? Because we were talking about this. It was, I think 38% of families in the US households

bring in a hundred K. But that's households. And then we break it down to individuals.

It's less than 20% and when you break it down to off the tax, it's less than one percent.

So if you bring in a hundred K post tax in America, you're on the top.

And then you, that's not even factoring in age. Yeah. Yeah, like, and then you look at like

people under 30s and and the other thing is there's certain careers where I actually had this

conversation with one person because like her sister, her husband had gotten her a car and it wasn't

like the car that she won and this car was like, fucking 50 grand. And I'm like, and this guy is

30 and he makes a, what are a few hundred thousand a year, three, four hundred thousand a year.

And they were like, you know, it's not enough. And I was like, yes, but this person,

this person was for fucking Goldman. Like, yeah, maybe he's 30 now making 400 grand a year,

but he's going to be like 40 in 10 years. He's going to be like 2.7 million dollars a year.

And then like 10 years on from that, if he keeps going in the same trajectory, like,

so, you know, a lot of people just very like short-sighted and they just see like, what is the

like, what is the person today? And unfortunately, they don't see the future potential. And I do also

get it like women have a lot of trauma around, okay, I poured into this man and then he left me

or I poured into this man and then you know, when he did make something of himself, you know, he forgot

about. So I get it. It's like, it's tough on both sides, but like the one thing that I just think

needs to fucking stop right now is like, shaming men who are trying. It's like, yeah, if he doesn't

get you a berk in run, it's like, shut the fuck up. Like, what is, what world are we living in? It's

insane. You know, like, it's like, once again, it's like men saying like, oh, if she's not a Victoria

Secret model, run. It's like, like, we all realize that that's ridiculous. But yeah, with the men

example, it's, yeah, it's, I don't know, it's, it's said, if coming at someone who's like the,

one of the top beneficiaries of this whole system, I'm like, I look at it, I genuinely am heartbroken

for men, like genuinely heartbroken. I think the other side of it is that men who are winning,

this is something you preach should stay loyal to that girl who was there. 100%. I don't think

that's often done enough either, but okay. Last question on relationships. Why has porn

ruined young men? I think it goes back to false sense of expectations. Like, they have these,

it's kind of like a much darker way. It's almost like the same thing with like movies. Like,

it's like, do you think it's constant fireworks and this and that? And like, you have this false

expectation of what it is in reality. And then like men now, you have to, it has to be such an

unrealistic image for men to get aroused or interested when it's like the female body is so

beautiful in of itself, but then now all they see is like these caricatures. So I think that's number

one, number two, you know, on the, on the scale of, I forget what it's a technical term for it,

but basically on the scale of emotions, one of the most emotions you can feel is shame or sorry,

levels of consciousness. And porn brings usually among with it shame. So now you've got all these

men walking around in shame. And it's hard to live an inspired life and take action in the world

when you're constantly living in shame. You know, guilt and shame are two different things.

Guilt is a lot, shame is a lot worse than guilt. Guilt is, I did something wrong. Shame is

fundamentally, I'm wrong as a person. Like, fundamentally, there's something wrong with me.

Like, and that's a very rough negative emotion. Because fundamentally, you don't think you're

enough. Fundamentally, you don't think you're good enough. Fundamentally, you think there's

something wrong with you. And that's not a good way to be walking around in life. What's something

that happened to you that you believe was unfair? I know it's like a delusional answer, but nothing

like this, this is, this is God's honest truth. I just don't view anything. This happened

in my life is unfair because this people have had a far more unfair and then you start getting into

this. Like, sometimes it annoys me because people will be like, you know, how can you be having a

bad day when there's kids dying in Africa? And I'm just like, come on, man, like everyone's problems

are real to them. And I see it now in the... Actually, that was probably one of the most interesting

things growing up is I would see my mom who is like miserable with no money. But then I would see

like friends parents who are wealthy, miserable with money. And I'm like, you guys are living the

same level of consciousness. Like, you guys are living the same life. Even though the external

might be slightly, you know, is different. The internal is the exact same. So,

yeah, I just don't look at anything in my life as that's unfair because it's just, I view it as,

you know, it served me and it helped me. I guess another way of asking, um, is there anything in

your life that you struggle to let go of? Yeah, I'm sure there's a bunch. Like, for example, my,

I think my sense of self worth comes from being useful because that's how I got my sense of

self worth growing up is like being useful. And I think that's definitely something I struggle

to let go with. But I also don't know if I want to let go of that or I don't like,

I don't know if it's noble to be like, oh, you have to let go of that trauma and you have to

let go of the fact that you're not, uh, you know, you get sense of self worth by being useful to

the people around you. It's like, I don't know, I feel like that's a pretty like noble thing or

I feel like I'm happy with that. That that's my reality. On a wider note, uh, what's your favorite

rap lyric? Uh, uh, Drake when he says, uh, more blessings because I'm generous. Do you believe in that?

Yes, because I think back in my life and honestly, no, listen, I'm sure there's some individuals

I've had, you know, smaller interactions with and it was skewed the other way, but

I can pretty commonly say a hand on heart. 99% of interactions I give more than I take.

And the other person gets far more out of it. The relationship and interaction than I get out of it.

But then when I think from a macro perspective, I'm the one that's done the best.

And I think about that because people want to continue doing business with me, people want to

continue being associated to me. Like, even the fact that I've had people, I've had someone

work for me for eight years. And, you know, he started working for me in 2017. Like,

the fact that I've been able to keep talent around for that long, it's because I understand

how to make it win, win, win, I understand how to set up win, win situations. So yeah, I do think,

as long as you're not a pushover, and that's the main thing I want to make clear. Like,

there's people that just are pushovers and I think that

not knowing how to have boundaries is also like a negative thing and I don't think you're serving

the other person. So in general, I do believe that, you know, the more you give, the more you give,

the more you get, what's something you wish your dad taught you? My real dad or my stepdad,

I guess you're biological. Yeah, I don't know, to be honest. It's tough when you're so happy with

the outcome because you just don't want to, you know, kind of like butterfly effect. Like, you don't,

there's nothing you wish you would have changed because you're just so happy with the way things

turned out. I will say there are some things like when I see my friends and they know how to like,

for example, I don't know how to change a tire. Like, my friends dads taught them that or like,

you know, I didn't know how to fish. And like, my friends dads taught them that. So there's

these things that like sometimes I do have moments where I'm kind of reminded like, oh, fuck, like,

you know, that's kind of the stuff that that teaches you and I didn't have that. What's one thing

your mother taught you? A lot. Honestly, probably the biggest thing she taught me is that you don't

always deserve a round of applause for the things you should do. Like, she never wanted a fucking

standing ovation for being a mother. Like, it's funny. I've had moments where I've been like,

thank you so much for everything you did for me growing up. And like, I remember one time,

this is actually after I bought her, her dream house. She told me to shut up. I was like,

so it's like having a Russian mom, um, fiery Russian mom. And I was like, kind of taking it back.

And I was like, like, that says something wrong. She's like, don't ever thank me for something

that I was meant to do. She's like, I'm a mother. Like, why, like, you don't need to say thank you.

Like, I did what I had to do. I don't, we don't need to talk about this anymore. And,

you know, like, part of me really appreciates that because I think a lot of times people,

not to say that you shouldn't appreciate people around you, but like, I don't expect,

I don't need constant praise or constant thank yous from people around me. Of course, you know,

ever around me is so sweet. And they do those things either way, but I don't think it's,

I'm just doing what I need to do. And these are my obligations and these are my duties. And I made

this bed. I chose this life. So I don't need constant, like, praise or validation from the people

around me. It's like, yeah, I think that's honestly the biggest thing. I found this story in the

research. I was a story about your mother breaking her bone. It was your biological father.

He pushed her out of a car, I believe. What was the story? Well, this is another thing where,

like, still to his day, my mom, she's a very interesting character. Like, she will tell me stories of

parts of my upbringing or her upbringing. And like, yeah, my biological father, like, they had

a argument in the car, opened the door, pushed her out, and yeah, whatever she broke a couple bones.

But like, the way she says is like, you think she's like talking about like the weather or something.

Like, there's zero motion, zero. And listen, I'm sure we could psychoanalyze that. I'm sure there's

some trauma there and this and that. But whatever, that's just my mom. She just, you know,

it was something she actually told me maybe only a couple of years ago.

When we were having lunch and it's just another one of those examples where,

I don't know, she never makes a big deal of what she's been through. She's just like, you know,

do you think she doesn't view it as trauma? I don't think so. She views it as maybe just something that

happened. Yeah, honestly, I don't think she views it as trauma at all. It's really interesting.

Sorry, just to close that loop. It's weird because anything regarding my biological father,

so my biological father, like, he was an alcoholic abusive. So this stuff would only happen

when he was drunk. Apparently, you know, when he was sober, he was a fucking angel and like the

best person ever. And yeah, it's weird. When I talk to her about it, I think the main,

the main thing is the fact that she's like, I don't care about all this stuff because I have you,

like, I think that's the thing that kind of helps her come to terms with all this stuff.

She's like, yeah, by that end day, like, you came out of this, you know, all of this, like,

without, you know, your father and also like, I know where my dad is. Like, I know where my dad is,

like, my mom and my dad still speak, you know, maybe once a year or something like that. Like,

if I wanted to go see him, you know, next week, I could do it. It's just for me, you know,

if you're not around in the hard times, I don't know. For me, it's just you don't get to benefit

from the good times. And it's not like, I feel no anger or no malice or no like,

fuck you, energy or anything like that. Just like, you know, unfortunately, if you never helped

out when times were bad, you know, you can't just all of a sudden walk in. No hard feelings,

nothing like that. Just, you know, that's the way I view the world. So, um, yeah, it's the last time

you spoke to him. Well, this is a funny story. It was what I was, I've only ever met him once,

when I was eight or nine. Man, this is so fucking like, you can't make this shit up. I met him once

and he promised me the next day he would come and take me to a water park and he never showed up.

I was like, fuck you, are you kidding me? So, yeah, that was the one time when I was eight or nine.

Did he tell you like, you was your dad or what was to you? No, my mom obviously told me,

gosh, yeah. And did you, were you guys under the assumption that he was like going to come back

in your life at that time? No. Just like, I'm going to take it to a water park. Yeah, we met one day

and he's like, oh, it could cool out. I've got to go tomorrow. I'll take you to our park. Yeah,

it did. You know, I had a question about how I noticed a pattern among hyper-successful

guys that grew up without father figures or with their dad, not super present, that they

strive and strive and strive, but kind of never let that fire burn out. I don't really think

it's applicable to you based on having this interview, but do you ever catch yourself chasing

something that feels bigger than money, even if you can't fully describe it yet? I think you're

asking me if I feel like I'm enough or something in that realm. I guess a lot of people want to

kind of do it for a parent that wasn't there. I don't think that's the case with you,

but do you think there's any other reason? No, no. No part of me is like, oh, you know, I want to

prove my dad wrong or this and like absolutely zero part of me. Do you want to prove your mom

right? I already proved my mom right and also quite frankly, she doesn't give a shit. Like that's

the other thing my mom is like, my mom is the one, you know, we talk about how like raise voice,

like, you know, be like almost like a bit rude. Like my mom is the one woman in my life who like

she shouts at me and I just sit there and I listen, you know, and I like, my mom is, yeah, she's

and all that to say like she could not give less of a shit about like, of course, she's proud

and she's this dad, but like moms are moms, you know, at the end of the day, like no matter what

no matter what network I reach or what figure I cross, she's like, you're too skinny, you have

an even of today. Like that's just like what Russia moms are like, you know what I mean, so it's

I don't know part of me does it for at this stage, no part of me does it because I want to make

her more proud, like I know she's proud no matter what. What I forgot. Have you ever been close

to taking your life? Yeah, actually there was a point in 2022 and I thought it would never happen

to me and I'll be honest, I didn't believe in, I guess that's a whole another can of worms like

like I just never thought, okay, I could get depressed, I could get this, I could get

being that mental head space and you know, I was 22, very, very successful already, you know,

years into business, still had everything that anyone could ever want. And yeah, I had a very

difficult six month window where it wasn't, am I going to do it? It was how am I going to do it?

And once you start thinking about that, that's where you know, you're not in the best place

because yeah, you know, you're really thinking about the next steps.

And yeah, a lot of that was linked to a autoimmune condition that I was going through.

And there was a lot of things that I had to remove from my life because I was just so,

I was in such a fragile place and I kind of had to like almost go back to like treating myself like

a kid and even down to like music, like there was a, in that window, I couldn't listen to music,

it was too intense. Like anything that could kind of penetrate my psyche, I had to push away.

So obviously, you know, no alcohol, even caffeine, like no caffeine, just like, I was as like

fragile as as could be and I was in my most fragile state I've ever been.

And yeah, I just had to like kind of pick myself up and be very patient with myself, but be patient

and understanding myself without being a victim because sometimes people are patient with

themselves, but they victimize themselves. I was like, well, I'm not a fucking victim here.

I'm going through it. I'll get myself out of it. But right now, I just anything that

is too stimulating, I have to keep away from me and I have to just be myself in no external

influences. It's one of the better pieces of advice that I've gotten is like when you grow up,

you have to learn how to parent yourself. Tell me about the autoimmune disease if you don't mind.

What kind of situation do you have? Yeah, so I had really bad psoriasis. Now psoriasis,

you know, for a lot of people, maybe they experienced it, but I mean, to the point I was like my

entire body was like scales. And if it gets bad enough, it gets the point where it turns into like

psoriatic arthritis where like, yeah, now, you know, your wheelchair bound and you lose

your mobility. So I, yeah, I don't know what particularly caused it. You know, I had some

assumptions, but long story short, I had to clear it. And it also, it's horrible, bro, because

you're like, your entire arms are fully like flesh red, everything is like, and it's a very,

because autoimmune conditions really all, they have different ways they,

this, they materialize in different ways, they appear. You know, there's some autoimmune

conditions where someone could be going through. You have no idea. Whereas like, this is a very like

visible thing, especially for someone that like, you know, I've been used to uploading on YouTube,

it was something, you know, interesting to go through. And yeah, I remember going to all the

best doctors in the world, because at that point, you know, I was doing well for myself,

financially. And they were all like, you know, this is, we'll be with you for the rest of your

life this time. I've always had a disdain for medical system and doctors and this, and I was like,

fuck you, no way. And I went and I studied and ended up doing a carnivore diet. So meat only,

I think for six weeks, all I ate was beef, salt, water. That was it. Beef, salt, water, then I

started introducing foods in. I started learning, okay, what does my body agree with? What does

it not agree with? Then I started doing just general carnivore. You know, in that period, just

remove, obviously, no alcohol, no caffeine, nothing that could just stimulate my system. And,

yeah, you know, I mean, they call your gut your second brain. And I genuinely, I believe that,

like I cleared the autoimmune condition and then all the depression stuff, all the suicidal thoughts

really went away. And yeah, that's been ever since then. I will say I'm also, I live in Dubai.

It's my personal belief. If you live somewhere sunny, like 95% of physical ailments go away.

I can do basically whatever I want right now. And I know I'm very fortunate and blessed. I can

eat whatever drink, whatever this that. And it doesn't really ever come back. You know, maybe

small flare ups once a year, something like that. But that's because I'm, you know, I'm always

getting sunlight. Where were you living when that happened to you? UK. And you're

Dagestani originally, right? And so you probably get darker than you are now, like more tan.

Yeah, I mean, where I'm from, you know, in the summers, it goes up to like 40 degrees Celsius.

Like it gets super hot, but then the winches get super cold. Yeah, so it's a bit of both.

So the UK probably had a big impact on you. I think that's a whole other issue in

of itself is the whole issues with the UK is probably caused by immigrants coming from countries

where they might have more melanin and they have the lack of sunlight. But it's interesting.

Interesting. You say that my mentor, he had an autoimmune and almost died and he went carnivore

and it saved his life completely. He was like bed bound. He's on salt, beef, water, and I think

he does butter now. But yeah, do you have you added all things back in? Or you know, I mean,

this is like four, yeah, four and a half years ago at this point. So you don't have bad flare-ups?

No, no, no. But once again, it's because if I lived in like, let's say New York all year round

or London all year round, it would be an issue. But simply because like I of some very

incredibly blessed unfortunate, like I literally live on the beach. Like my house is on the beach.

Are you on the palm? Yeah. Yeah. So like for me, for me to wake up and be

in the beach water, it takes about like 20 seconds. So, you know, I make it a point to get as much

sun as possible. Don't wear sunscreen. We'll never ever wear sunscreen. I'm sure that's the topic

of for another day. But yeah, just a bunch of natural sunlight is humanly possible.

And that really, that's the number one thing that helps in my opinion, actually autoimmune conditions,

any autoimmune condition. Yeah, direct sunlight as much as possible. And then if you're still struggling,

yeah, stuff like carnivore. Yeah, for me, it was, it was incredible. And that's kind of when I

started learning more about it. And now, and then I started using, did you find it? Did you find it

from Michaela Peterson? That was, I saw some of her podcasts around it. But yeah, there was like,

there's a few creators that like it was very niche. I just started looking like ways the

diet could fix a carnivore. And I saw some people fixing it with vegan diet, other diets. I just

thought back to my upbringing. And I was just trying to use logic like when it comes to the vegan

stuff, it, I just grew up on a farm. I say grew up until I was four years old. And nine months

here, there's no vegetables. There's no fruits. There's no vegetables. So I'm like, this vegan

thing just didn't really make sense to me. So I was like, okay, what does make sense to me is

eating meat. And I can see why it's not like vegetables. Why they would have anti-nutrient

where they won't, they don't want to be eaten, right? Whereas, obviously animals have claws and

teeth and things to protect themselves. So yeah, just using my logic, I thought, let me test this out.

And yeah, within six weeks fully clear, they went back to the same doctors. They're like, how did

you clear it? Boba this time. I was like, this is how and also like, fuck you guys. I like to tell

them, I was like, I didn't, it wasn't that. Boba, I just said, be very, very cognizant. Please

next time when you tell someone that you stuck with this thing for the rest of life, when they're

that, when they're at their lowest point, like, I'm mentally resilient enough. And also I have

enough distrust in the medical system to know that you telling me that this, there's no way to

clear this. It's just a management like a, I have to manage it or take this, all these medications

and stuff, just a manage. I was like, I'm mentally resilient enough to know that that's not the case.

But, you know, you can really fuck some people up mentally by telling them that they're stuck with

this for the rest of their life. Last question. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

For me, the thing I live by the most in the phrase that I've always

repeat to myself is this too shall pass. And for me, that's just,

that's been a good mechanism to, you know, help go through my life because I've had lowest

lows, highest highs. And I'm sure as you know, when you have the lowest lows, a lot of people

stay in that place and they never recover from it. But, you know, vice versa, when people

have the highest highs, they think that it's going to last forever. So, always

keeping that in my mind, that this too shall pass, whether that's good or bad. It's been a good

remedy for whatever life throws at me. Well, everyone, this has been your guest. I'm Longaji.

Thanks for coming on there. Thanks for having me. Yeah. This is the Jack No podcast.