May 8, 2025 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
37:45
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| I almost died at 21 years old. | ||
| Had an ambulance come to my house. | ||
| I was thinking about like, "Wow, am I really gonna die right now?" And that was like a wake-up call for me. | ||
| Let's go through the trends there. | ||
| So you first make money. | ||
| Now you're talking about college. | ||
| Now you've got some money and then lose it? | ||
| I made and lost all my money twice during the pandemic. | ||
| I sold masks and gowns and gloves. | ||
| I sold $15 million of that over cold email. | ||
| But so how do you do it? | ||
| So okay, so it's day one. | ||
| You're like, all hell's breaking loose. | ||
| Everyone wants all this stuff. | ||
| First, you need the plug. | ||
| You need the supplier. | ||
| I was on a blurry Zoom webcam camera and I knew nothing about life. | ||
| I was like 21. And now we're getting like, you know, 100 million views a month. | ||
| You do 50 interviews a month? | ||
| 50 interviews a month. | ||
| Yeah, we post one a day, every single day. | ||
| I got a brain scan, found out I had that, autism, childhood trauma, and it was kind of like, dang. | ||
| Everyone seems to want to be autistic now, and yet Bobby Kennedy wants to stop autism. | ||
| It's a new trend, man. | ||
| All right, Sean Kelly, you've already... | ||
| Started a Rubin Report first off here, which is that you're wearing shorts. | ||
| And I've never had a guest in shorts before. | ||
| I dressed down, knowing you were going casual. | ||
| But shorts. | ||
| Shorts. | ||
| You've really taken this thing to a new level. | ||
| Well, we're in Florida, you know. | ||
| It's hot. | ||
| And I'm usually in shorts, maybe khakis, but sweatpants if possible. | ||
| But shorts and the hoodie. | ||
| That seems very Gen Z to me. | ||
| It is. | ||
| Like a confusion between you need your legs to be cool and yet your body. | ||
| Up here, you didn't want to go with the t-shirt. | ||
| I wanted my legs to be able to breathe. | ||
| Get some fresh air down there. | ||
| I'm glad to have you here. | ||
| I was just mentioning, like, your stuff I see constantly. | ||
| For some reason, you know, you just see certain people's stuff. | ||
| You don't see some people, and you see some people's stuff. | ||
| I see your stuff constantly on Instagram. | ||
| I've done your show a bunch of times. | ||
| We've gotten to know each other a little bit. | ||
| You do a similar show to what I do, and you once called me. | ||
| What did you say? | ||
| I was like one of the OGs, which... | ||
| You've been doing this a while. | ||
| It's the oldest I ever felt. | ||
| I was an OG. | ||
| But you interview all sorts of... | ||
| You're doing this out of Vegas now. | ||
| That's where we first met. | ||
| But let's do a little backstory first. | ||
| You're a Jersey guy. | ||
| I'm a New York guy, so we have a little in common there. | ||
| Tell me the Sean Kelly story. | ||
| What gets you to be a big-time podcaster? | ||
| Yeah, I grew up super introverted, super shy, got bullied a lot growing up. | ||
| Only child. | ||
| She didn't have many friends. | ||
| And I think that's a big reason. | ||
| Why I started the show? | ||
| Because I just dealt with a lot of trauma. | ||
| Wanted to have conversations and kind of like address all that, to be honest. | ||
| Because podcasting is like a form of therapy. | ||
| You know, you get a lot off your chest. | ||
| And throughout these conversations, I've had 1,500 episodes now. | ||
| I've just learned a lot about myself, a lot about the world, a lot about politics, which I never was into growing up. | ||
| And it's just been a game changer, man. | ||
| What were you bullied about? | ||
| I mean, were you... | ||
| All sorts of stuff, you know? | ||
| Yorkie, like, what? | ||
| I mean, tall, skinny, what? | ||
| Tall, skinny, for sure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I was 140 pounds, six foot five in high school. | ||
| So super skinny, got no girls. | ||
| So it was bullied for that. | ||
| I'm also half Asian and I didn't get the best grades. | ||
| So I get bullied from the Asians. | ||
| Oh, that's interesting. | ||
| You got put down by the Asians because you weren't getting good grades. | ||
| Yeah, they wouldn't be friends with me because I wasn't getting a 4.0 GPA. | ||
| I didn't fit in with them. | ||
| Their parents saw me as a disgrace. | ||
| That's like an Asian thing. | ||
| They're always comparing their kids with other Asian kids. | ||
| And did that make you want to just kind of like... | ||
| Explore the world a little bit more as kind of the outsider. | ||
| Yeah, it kind of shut me down. | ||
| Like, I went really silent. | ||
| My parents also got divorced at a young age. | ||
| So, I was just really shy, really introverted, really nerdy. | ||
| And, um, I had to do some soul-searching. | ||
| Yeah, I had to do some depression, too. | ||
| Yeah, and how did you deal with that stuff before you end up doing a podcast? | ||
| Yeah, Xanax did not help with that. | ||
| I'll say that. | ||
| I got prescribed that, and it made it worse. | ||
| In what way? | ||
| Because you become reliant on it. | ||
| And then what happens is I ran out. | ||
| So they don't tell you this when they prescribe you it. | ||
| I had a seizure. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So I almost died at 21 years old. | ||
| Yeah, had an ambulance come to my house. | ||
| I was thinking about like, wow, am I really going to die right now? | ||
| And that was like a wake-up call from me. | ||
| So after that, I was a big stoner at the time. | ||
| I stopped smoking weed, pretty much cut drinking. | ||
| I was a big drinker as well. | ||
| That's sort of where I, like, dive headfirst into business, I'd say, from there. | ||
| Does that seem like, like, were a lot of your friends doing that kind of stuff? | ||
| I mean, I feel like you see more of that now. | ||
| Like, I was kind of a dork in high school, too, but nobody was really, like, drinking like that or doing drugs like that, at least where I was from, where now you hear a lot of this, like, kids that are now in recovery that are 20. It seems crazy where usually it's like when they're 40, maybe, or something like that. | ||
| Yeah, no, you're right. | ||
| In college, it's just so easily accessible, you know, drinking, partying, weed, whatever, drugs. | ||
| I was doing a bit of those too. | ||
| Yeah, it's easy to get persuaded. | ||
| You have no guidance. | ||
| You're just on your own. | ||
| And I fell for it. | ||
| So you get to Rutgers. | ||
| I assume mostly this was eaten at the grease trucks that probably... | ||
| Those things are good, man. | ||
| I kind of want one right now. | ||
| Oh, man, those things. | ||
| I told you, I did one week when I was doing stand-up. | ||
| I would just take these odd jobs, and we were literally, I was working for a company, like a promotions company. | ||
| We were handing out keychains on the campus. | ||
| But basically, for like six days in a row, I ate at those grease trucks. | ||
| I gained like 40 pounds. | ||
| Did you ever do the challenge? | ||
| Oh, God, what's the challenge? | ||
| You have to do three in 10 minutes. | ||
| That sounds completely... | ||
| We'll have the guys put up some pictures of what these things look like, but what was your go-to? | ||
| Do you remember? | ||
| I got the Chuck, I think it was fun. | ||
| It's been like 10 years. | ||
| So it's like a cheesesteak with chicken fingers, with french fries, with tomato sauce. | ||
| What else? | ||
| Tomatoes, like bacon, I think. | ||
| Just super unhealthy. | ||
| And did you ever do it? | ||
| You did three in ten minutes? | ||
| No, I could barely finish one. | ||
| I don't know how people did that. | ||
| So you're at Rutgers. | ||
| You're partying a bit. | ||
| You're eating from the grease trucks, but you start becoming a businessman. | ||
| I start doing e-commerce. | ||
| Yeah, dropshipping was hot at the time. | ||
| So that was my start using social media. | ||
| What even got you into that? | ||
| Like, what was the idea? | ||
| Just, yeah, watching videos and looking for a way to make money. | ||
| You know, I want to be able to afford alcohol and weed at the time and whatever, food. | ||
| So just hustling. | ||
| I like how food came in third there. | ||
| Food's important. | ||
| Yeah, food's important. | ||
| So yeah, that was my start, and that's where I started Instagram. | ||
| You know, I started taking it serious, started figuring out how to grow followers, getting views, and turning the views into money. | ||
| Yeah, and so were jerseys the first thing that you were selling? | ||
| Yeah, jerseys. | ||
| So I started with jerseys, you know, was doing decent there for a college kid, you know, making 50k a year or whatever. | ||
| In college, that's a lot. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, that's great. | ||
| Right now, it's not what it... | ||
| It's not the same with family and everything now. | ||
| Well, you're an adult now. | ||
| It doesn't quite go this far. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| But yeah, that was my start, man. | ||
| And looking back, I still use a lot of the skills I learned back then, right now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Cold DMing. | ||
| So you were just, it was just the grind, basically. | ||
| The grind, the ultimate grind. | ||
| Working 12 hours a day. | ||
| It's not sustainable. | ||
| I burnt out. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But you made some money. | ||
| Made some money. | ||
| Made some connections. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Who I later was able to get on the podcast. | ||
| So everything, because I get asked a lot, how did you blow up so quick? | ||
| The podcast is only two years old. | ||
| A lot of the connections from the podcast I had for years before that. | ||
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| So you basically create this business. | ||
| You start the podcast. | ||
| The podcast, yeah, so I didn't realize it's only two years old. | ||
| I mean, you've got over a million subscribers. | ||
| It's done really well. | ||
| You've got a great guest list over there. | ||
| So then what was the transition? | ||
| Like, okay, I'm going to do business, and now suddenly I'm going to take this to the podcast. | ||
| Yeah, so I did e-commerce for a few years. | ||
| Then I started a podcast. | ||
| Completely failed. | ||
| It was called Business All-Stars. | ||
| Oh, interesting. | ||
| Total flop. | ||
| Like, yeah, it's hard to dig this up. | ||
| It's actually a pretty good name. | ||
| Yeah, it's a good name. | ||
| But it was just, from the start, it wasn't a good idea because it was a virtual show. | ||
| Those are hard to pull off. | ||
| I was on a blurry Zoom webcam camera and I knew nothing about life. | ||
| I was like 21. Right. | ||
| So I'm not a good host. | ||
| Is this, this is COVID time or this is pre-COVID? | ||
| Right before, right before COVID. | ||
| So that flopped. | ||
| So I'd got like 15 episodes in and gave up. | ||
| So it was always in the back of my head to do it again one day, but I wanted to get more success, more connections. | ||
| So the next five years, I just built up my network, built up some more capital and retried it two years ago. | ||
| And then what was the secret? | ||
| By then I built more followers, had access to better guests on the show, and then I was able to figure out how to go viral. | ||
| And now we're getting like, you know, 100 million views a month just on Instagram. | ||
| So I think I cracked the formula there. | ||
| Yeah, well, you've definitely, it seems to me you've cracked something in like the type of people you have on because whenever, as I mentioned, you're, I don't know what the Instagram algorithm is doing, but you are in the thing of the, you're in the bucket of people that I see. | ||
| And every time I see one of your videos, it might be about finance. | ||
| But it literally might be about someone drinking their urine to heal themselves. | ||
| And then, I don't know, give me like... | ||
| No, no. | ||
| And then it might be UFOs and then probably something even wackier than that. | ||
| So it's like, is that just because you like all these crazy things? | ||
| I'm interested in it. | ||
| I'm also playing... | ||
| I'm a numbers guy, so I... | ||
| Interview a bunch of different topics and perspectives, and I see what hits, and then I'll double down on it. | ||
| So, like, the UFO stuff was hot. | ||
| You know, we met through politics. | ||
| That was hot six months ago. | ||
| It's still pretty hot now, but I definitely milked that. | ||
| But, yeah. | ||
| Do you find you enjoy one more than the other? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm kind of bored of the business stuff. | ||
| You can only talk about making money so much. | ||
| I like the health stuff, the spiritual stuff. | ||
| Politics is interesting. | ||
| I have on both sides, which is... | ||
| Very interesting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You had a woman on not too long. | ||
| Didn't she visit some aliens or some aliens? | ||
| Oh, she had like some aliens came into her during the show. | ||
| The channeler. | ||
| And then she spoke to you as the alien. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That was, that was, can you pull that off right now? | ||
| No. | ||
| So let me say this though, because this has never happened. | ||
| You've been to my biggest studio. | ||
| I filmed 500 episodes there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The TV screens when she was channeling behind her were going off and on. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| The lights were going off and on. | ||
| We've replaced everything. | ||
| Like, we stopped the episode, replaced all the wires. | ||
| My producer came in. | ||
| All right, then. | ||
| It's still going off and on after. | ||
| And I filmed six episodes right after her the same day, no issues. | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| So you're saying it's the aliens? | ||
| I'm saying it's something. | ||
| I don't know if it's aliens. | ||
| I don't know if it's a spirit. | ||
| Do you believe in any of that stuff? | ||
| I don't. | ||
| I would always say I believe what Carl Sagan said, which is extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. | ||
| But, like, I'm not. | ||
| You know, I saw a ghost once when I was, yeah, about 10 years ago, for sure. | ||
| I was at my buddy's house late night, about 3 a.m. | ||
| He had an old, oh, in Jersey, had an old Jersey house, probably built in the 1920s. | ||
| It had sort of a haunted feeling to it. | ||
| And in the middle of the night, I swear on my life, I woke up and at the end of the bed, his girlfriend had her vanity, you know, where she would do her makeup with the mirror. | ||
| And I looked in the mirror and I saw an old woman, like a very old woman, 90-year-old woman. | ||
| Combing her hair with a big paddle brush. | ||
| I remember it. | ||
| Combing her hair like this. | ||
| And then when she turned her head and looked in the mirror and we locked eyes, she disappeared and my dog, who was sleeping on the floor, jumped into my bed and was barking like crazy. | ||
| Whoa. | ||
| What do I do with that? | ||
| So that must have messed you up because you were a non-believer prior, right? | ||
| I mean, I didn't not believe or believe. | ||
| I enjoyed Ghostbusters, but those type of things. | ||
| Well, what does that make you think? | ||
| I mean, so did you walk out of that being like, man, she fried my systems, there must be something here? | ||
| I walked out saying, there's something with energy. | ||
| You know how you meet certain people, you can tell if they have good or bad intentions? | ||
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| Do you find that you're generally just very open with these guests? | ||
| Because some of them are saying things, you know, they're literally the guy who's drinking urine or you had a woman on who, what was it, that she drinks the guy's jizz or she wants the guys to drink their jizz? | ||
| She drinks her own pure blood and she drinks the guy's jizz. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because she doesn't want the energy, because it's energy that's coming at you, so she wants that back in. | ||
| Sexual life for you. | ||
| Yeah, and you're usually, I think, very open to all these things. | ||
| You're kind of with them and just... | ||
| Yeah, my goal is not to debate them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I just want to give them the floor to share their side of stuff, you know? | ||
| Sometimes it's hard not to fight back a little bit or laugh even. | ||
| The channeling one, it was hard not to laugh. | ||
| I'm not going to lie, but I try to be open-minded. | ||
| You do something interesting when you're interviewing, which is that you're taking notes the whole time, and yet you're also very present, which is why I said to you after we sat down the first time, I was like, you actually are a great interviewer. | ||
| Because a lot of interviewers, you know, they ask the question and then they're gone, basically. | ||
| And then they know when you're wrapping up the sentence and they come back. | ||
| What's your reasoning for taking the notes the whole time? | ||
| So I have ADHD. | ||
| So that's part of the reason. | ||
| But also, I don't want to forget anything that they brought up earlier because I like swinging it back later in the episode. | ||
| But you're right, though. | ||
| It's a balance. | ||
| You can't be too caught up in one or the other. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you find that that can be tricky at times? | ||
| Sometimes, yeah. | ||
| Sometimes I write too much and I'm like, okay, I need to be more present because it's hard to do both. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because the first time I saw you do it, I was kind of thinking like, all right, was he doing this for YouTube purposes to know when to put the tags in? | ||
| And I was like, if that's the case, that seems a little crazy. | ||
| So how do you work with ADHD? | ||
| Well, I just found out I had it. | ||
| I got a brain scan, found out I had that, autism, childhood trauma, and it was kind of like, dang, I'm just so used to all this. | ||
| I didn't even know I was working with this. | ||
| But now I just treat it as a superpower. | ||
| A lot of the top entrepreneurs and CEOs have ADHD or autism or both. | ||
| Everyone seems to want to be autistic now, and yet Bobby Kennedy wants to stop autism. | ||
| What do you make of that? | ||
| Is that just partly like a generation that grew up, or now two generations that grew up, staring That's nuts. | ||
| Because when I was in school, I was probably one of the only ones that had it. | ||
| I went to a school of 3,000 people. | ||
| Maybe five of us had it. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It was probably harder to diagnose back then, too. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They also say that the diagnosis has widened, so more things now fit into that bucket or something like that. | ||
| I could see that. | ||
| But yeah, my generation, we're awkward, man. | ||
| I'm going to be honest. | ||
| We're just on our phones. | ||
| When I go to restaurants, I see people just on their phone. | ||
| So what do you do to balance that? | ||
| I get what you mean. | ||
| Like, you know, you're talking about you take the notes for a reason, but you are very present also. | ||
| And as I said, you're a good interviewer, which to me, that means you can pay attention. | ||
| Well, I do research. | ||
| So you have to have some level of research and confidence prior to the episode. | ||
| Some people come in empty-handed. | ||
| So at least I have a one-sheeter at least like you. | ||
| And I think with the reps, you get better over time. | ||
| My first five episodes, ten episodes, so bad. | ||
| Like, god-awful. | ||
| I cringe watching them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Did you have anyone that you really loved on one of those that kills you now to, like, go back? | ||
| Um, no. | ||
| So I was strategic with that. | ||
| I didn't start off with the biggest names. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Purposefully. | ||
| Because I wanted to, A, see if I could make random people go viral, but also just develop my skills. | ||
| Because I was a huge introvert, and I sucked socially for years. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How's it been meeting people that you really like and admire and, you know, whether that turns out to be good or bad or indifferent? | ||
| Because obviously I've had all sorts of versions of that, of course. | ||
| I don't get super starstruck usually. | ||
| I've been nervous like a couple times. | ||
| Grant Cardone I was a little nervous for because that was the first conference I ever went to. | ||
| He has sat in that very chair. | ||
| Oh yeah? | ||
| Shout out to Grant. | ||
| Yeah, one of my most viral guests. | ||
| And then Tate, I was a little nervous for Tate. | ||
| Just because I've seen a lot of him online beforehand. | ||
| And it's easy to form an opinion of someone when you just see their content nonstop. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you get hate, really? | ||
| I feel like you kind of duck it somehow. | ||
| Usually not. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I get called broccoli head or some dumb stuff like that. | |
| There's nothing crazy like you. | ||
| You get some hate, my man. | ||
| We'll get you some hate today. | ||
| We'll get you a little ambient hate. | ||
| You engage in debates. | ||
| So the hate is going to come no matter what. | ||
| It's just part of the game. | ||
| I hate to tell you, but one day it will come for you. | ||
| And it's going to be on something that you think is the most innocuous. | ||
| You're going to be like, some lady wants to bathe herself in urine, and for some reason, that'll be the thing. | ||
| And then the hate will begin. | ||
| Okay, so you're doing the show for a while. | ||
| It really takes off. | ||
| How did you end up in Vegas, a Jersey guy? | ||
| How did you end up in Vegas? | ||
| That was not planned. | ||
| But growing up in Jersey, I always wanted to move to L.A. to make it in social media, be like an influencer or whatever. | ||
| That was like the dream. | ||
| LA just sucked, man. | ||
| Like, I was there during COVID. | ||
| Yeah, so COVID, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And it was brutal. | ||
| That was probably the most depressed I've ever been. | ||
| What part of town were you in? | ||
| I was in Woodland Hills. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, my car got broken into. | ||
| Like, I didn't feel safe. | ||
| Every time I walked my dog, I was getting stalked. | ||
| It was just weird, dude. | ||
| Yeah, I was in Encino, so right by over there, and it was... | ||
| It's a damn shame, too, huh? | ||
| Lasted five months. | ||
| Oh, so you were there only during COVID, so you never saw pre-COVID LA? | ||
| Because pre-COVID LA was great. | ||
| There were still some problems, but it was great for all the reasons LA used to be great. | ||
| COVID, man, just day one. | ||
| Suck the life out of it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you decide, okay, I'm going to get out of here. | ||
| That can't be an easy decision. | ||
| It wasn't easy. | ||
| Had to break the lease early. | ||
| Luckily, I mean, not luckily, but the car got broken into at the apartment, so I used that to break the lease. | ||
| Luckily, only someone from LA would say that. | ||
| So I got out, drove to Vegas, wasn't playing, stayed at the MGM for a month looking for a house, because at that time, everyone was fleeing Vegas. | ||
| I mean, fleeing LA. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, fleeing Cali. | ||
| So I couldn't find a house for a month, so I was with my two dogs in the MGM. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, that was rough. | ||
| Had you been to Vegas before? | ||
| Because it's funny, now that you're, I think of you as a Vegas guy. | ||
| Like, I went once for a conference, but no, I wouldn't count that. | ||
| So, eventually got a house. | ||
| The problem was, since I'm so young and my credit sucked, this was four years ago, they wanted six months deposit. | ||
| That was all the money I had in my bank account at the time. | ||
| I was broke. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So I put that down and then just figured it out and made it work. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| A little stressful? | ||
| Super stressful. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
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| Even post-deadline, a free consultation can help you act now to avoid penalties, threatening letters, And now Vegas has really changed. | ||
| I mean, even in these last couple of years, there's a podcast scene out there. | ||
| It feels like a lot of the refugees from L.A., a lot of them came here, obviously, in Tennessee and Texas, but a lot of them went to Vegas. | ||
| What's the general vibe in Vegas these days? | ||
| It's good, man. | ||
| Yeah, you got some good pods. | ||
| The Hodge Twins, Ice Coffee Hour, myself, a few others. | ||
| Great conferences. | ||
| Every week there's a conference, so it's easy to get guests. | ||
| We're booked till July, 50 episodes a month. | ||
| You're doing 50 episodes a month? | ||
| You do 50 interviews a month? | ||
| 50 interviews a month. | ||
| Yeah, we post one a day. | ||
| Every single day. | ||
| I don't miss a day. | ||
| So part of the reason is I'm going for the world record. | ||
| And also, I just have fun, man. | ||
| Interviewing people for a living. | ||
| I'm sure you can relate. | ||
| It's super fun. | ||
| Well, when you sit down with someone you like, that it's good. | ||
| Every now and then you get one, you get one, and you're like, well, whatever. | ||
| But wait, what's the record? | ||
| What's the record? | ||
| According to Guinness World Records books, it's 4,080 at the moment. | ||
| 4,080 episodes in a year. | ||
| No, total. | ||
| 4,080 total episodes of a podcast? | ||
| Of a podcast, yeah. | ||
| That's it? | ||
| I probably have that. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Well, if I do a show five days a week, I've been doing this for... | ||
| You might have to submit a... | ||
| Yeah, wait a minute, wait a minute. | ||
| Hold on, somebody's going to crunch the numbers on this. | ||
| Am I a Guinness record holder? | ||
| I'll challenge you on that. | ||
| All right, we're going to race to that. | ||
| So I got a new opponent. | ||
| 4,080, that's it? | ||
| Even someone like Corolla, who's doing a five-day-a-week show for 10 years? | ||
| I mean... | ||
| Yeah, I wonder what the qualifications... | ||
| Well, that would get you to about 4,000 shows. | ||
| Right, I wonder what... | ||
| Is it an hour each? | ||
| Yeah, I wonder if there's a time limit or something. | ||
| I'd have to look more into it, but that's something. | ||
| So that's a star for you. | ||
| Guinness record holder. | ||
| I'm very competitive. | ||
| I've always wanted a Guinness as a kid. | ||
| I used to read them. | ||
| You know the shiny books? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| What impressed you the most? | ||
| The fingernail one. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I remember that picture from back then. | ||
| Like that chick with the... | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| There was one with the guy too, right? | ||
| I remember the chick. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That was crazy. | ||
| And the eyeball one. | ||
| Eyeball popping out of the head. | ||
| You didn't see that one? | ||
| What's the record on that? | ||
| Biggest eyeball popping out of the head? | ||
| You can pop it out, but not where it falls out. | ||
| It's like barely hanging on. | ||
| I lived across the street from a guy who had a glass eye, and he used to take it out and play with it. | ||
| Oh, yeah? | ||
| Was that Charleston White? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No. | ||
| Darren something. | ||
| He used to play with his eye. | ||
| That's wild. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, you're obviously digging the podcast. | ||
| You're getting all these business people there. | ||
| It's going well. | ||
| How do you feel about the other side of success? | ||
| I mean, you talked about the struggle part and all that. | ||
| That's got to be pretty good. | ||
| Yeah, life's very cyclical. | ||
| I made and lost all my money twice. | ||
| Um, so I've experienced like being super broke and then also in between because I grew up middle class and then now being, you know, a multimillionaire. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So how'd we go through the, go through the trends there? | ||
| So you first make money. | ||
| Now you're talking about college. | ||
| Now you've got some money and then lose it or? | ||
| So college I made, uh, six figures and how did I lose all that? | ||
| If you can't remember, you were having a good day. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I think it was crypto. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It was crypto the first time. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| So were you just getting into shitcoins? | ||
| Shitcoins, memecoins, altcoins. | ||
| Got wrecked. | ||
| In retrospect, do you realize, like, you must look back and be like, wow, that was all... | ||
| Nonsense. | ||
| It was stupid. | ||
| Yeah, I wouldn't do it again. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, so that sucked because I actually made a lot at first. | ||
| And that's the problem with meme coins. | ||
| You could get lucky and think you're amazing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I actually made millions at first. | ||
| I think maybe one or two million. | ||
| And then I invested all of it back into meme coins and lost pretty much all of it. | ||
| So you lose all that. | ||
| This is pre-Vegas. | ||
| Yes, pre-Vegas. | ||
| Okay, so then when do you start making money again? | ||
| During the pandemic, I sold masks and gowns and gloves. | ||
| I sold $15 million of that over cold email. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So wait, tell me about that. | ||
| I know, crazy. | ||
| So that's how I learned how to cold email, which is a good way of getting guests. | ||
| But I would email these hospitals and government organizations, sold $5 million of PPE to the state of Connecticut. | ||
| But so how do you do it? | ||
| So, okay, so it's... | ||
| You're like, all hell's breaking loose. | ||
| Everyone wants all this stuff. | ||
| First, you need the plug. | ||
| You need the supplier. | ||
| So you gotta lock that down. | ||
| I had a contract with 3M. | ||
| They make masks. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| How did you get a contract with 3M? | ||
| One of my mentors at the time had a good relationship and he worked out a deal where we would get 10 cents for every mask we sold. | ||
| And we had a signed contract with him. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And even despite the fact that there were shortages and everything else, and you're just some random kid. | ||
| Well, that was a whole other issue, was the shortages and the delays. | ||
| So a lot of the orders went through, but it would take six months to get them, and then some clients ended up canceling. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But we eventually got paid out down the road on some of them. | ||
| So somehow you create... | ||
| Okay, so you create this... | ||
| You get the contract, in essence, and then... | ||
| How are you selling? | ||
| How did you sell that many of them? | ||
| I mean, I know everyone wanted them, but like, what world are you entering to? | ||
| So, I had the, I had a whole system. | ||
| So, I had these Google News Alerts. | ||
| So, you can set this up. | ||
| PPE shortage. | ||
| Hospitals struggling PPE equipment. | ||
| And as soon as you see an article that has those words in it, you'll get an email. | ||
| So let's say this hospital, like we sold to NYU Hospital. | ||
| NYU, there was an article about how they were low on masks. | ||
| I would get an email instantly. | ||
| And then I would find whoever was in procurement at the hospital on an email database. | ||
| And then email or call them. | ||
| Were you kind of blown away that there weren't other people doing this, or that 3M wasn't doing it directly, or that some guy using Timu something wasn't figuring this out? | ||
| There probably was. | ||
| It was all about timing and connections. | ||
| The hardest deal was the first one to close, but then as we had more and more clients, we could say, oh, we just sold to these guys, to these guys, to this hospital, and it got easier. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| What was the name of that company? | ||
| I think it was, there's a few articles about this, PPE of America. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| PPE of America. | ||
| You nailed it with the branding on that one. | ||
| Wow, so you made 15 million bucks on that? | ||
| In revenue. | ||
| In revenue, right. | ||
| I didn't make that much because, like I said, a lot of the orders got canceled, but the skills I learned from that, you know, priceless. | ||
| Okay, so now you got some skills, you got some money again. | ||
| How'd you lose that money? | ||
| So that time I got obsessed with sports cards. | ||
| Do you collect sports cards? | ||
| I used to when I was a kid. | ||
| I got a pretty great collection up there. | ||
| What were you going for? | ||
| Rookie cards like Zion Williamson, John Moran, stuff like that. | ||
| I bought a lot of Luka Doncic. | ||
| A lot of NBA cards mainly. | ||
| And I just got way too excited. | ||
| I was ripping packs that were like a thousand bucks just casually for fun. | ||
| It was a bad addiction. | ||
| That sounds almost like from a comedy movie, like the guy who gets rich and then has an addiction to baseball cards or basketball cards. | ||
| It was not healthy. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So what did you think? | ||
| You're opening up the packs. | ||
| Was it just getting off on, like, I can blow $1,000 on the pack? | ||
| Or was it like, oh, I'm going to find the Jeff Curry rookie card? | ||
| You're going for the chase. | ||
| Most people lose money when they open packs, but sometimes you'll get a really rare card, and it'll just 100x what you invested in the pack. | ||
| So I was chasing that, and I never got it. | ||
| I got a Pete Rose 1973 MVP Tops card upstairs somewhere. | ||
| Can we Google that? | ||
| Let's see how much that's worth. | ||
| Pete Rose 73. No, he was MVP in 73. That card's got to be worth a couple hundred. | ||
| Depending on the condition, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, no, it's pretty solid. | ||
| You might have some expensive cards up there. | ||
| I've got a great, I'll show you my basketball collection. | ||
| I mean, I've got great, it's my stuff from the Jordan years, but I might have a Jordan rookie up there or something. | ||
| Yeah, so social media brought sports cards back and Pokemon cards back because now people just for a living open them on live. | ||
| So I don't know if you've seen this. | ||
| It's called card breaking. | ||
| And I got a buddy that does tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue just doing that for people. | ||
| All he's doing is opening their stuff and basically going through it and being like, this is shit, this is shit, this is good. | ||
| So what happens is they pay him to open it and then ship it to them. | ||
| But why wouldn't they open it themselves? | ||
| Oh, because they just want their stuff to be on his show? | ||
| Yeah, they want the experience and there's live people watching. | ||
| So they'll pay 30% over what the product costs to open it on live. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And then they hope, obviously, they're going to get some. | ||
| So when you opened one of these... | ||
| What were you looking for? | ||
| Like, what's the card you were looking for? | ||
| I was looking for like a... | ||
| What was the gold standard? | ||
| Yeah, like a Zion Williamson or a John Moran rookie, but like a specific variation, like a one of one or like a one out of 25. Some of them are autographed or a jersey number or whatever. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And when did you realize, boy, this is a bit of a problem? | ||
| Too late. | ||
| I ran out of money. | ||
| Like, how much did you possibly spend on opening the card? | ||
| Six figures. | ||
| So you spent probably a couple hundred grand or something like that on opening these cards. | ||
| Are you just dumping the rest of them? | ||
| Yeah, most of them are worthless. | ||
| I was also buying, they call them raw cards. | ||
| So these are cards that are not graded yet by PSA. | ||
| I would buy those on eBay, send them to a grading company, and hope it got a 10 or a 9 out of 10. Wait, what is that? | ||
| A grading company? | ||
| So you could grade the sports cards. | ||
| And it's basically on the condition of the card. | ||
| And if it's a 10 out of 10, it's worth way more than just the raw card. | ||
| So what I was doing was I was buying the raw cards and then sending them to get graded. | ||
| But what do you mean the raw card? | ||
| It's just the regular card. | ||
| People call them raw. | ||
| So say you have a sports card, that's considered a raw card because it's not graded. | ||
| Oh, I got it. | ||
| I got it. | ||
| And then you get it graded and then maybe it's worth more somehow at that point. | ||
| And then that didn't work out as well as I thought as well. | ||
| So I was just losing on multiple streams in the sports card industry. | ||
| Could your health issues be caused by an invisible enemy? | ||
| Fatigue, bloating, brain fog. | ||
| What if parasites are the real culprit? | ||
| I was doing digging into parasite cleanses when I came across this video from a trusted doctor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What are the main differences between ivermectin and venbanazole? | |
| These are two anti-pathogens used to treat parasitic infections and other similar types of conditions. | ||
| They are used quite often in the oncology world to treat cancer. | ||
| They both have as anti-pathogenic abilities. | ||
| Interesting, right? | ||
| Did you know that 60 million Americans apparently have parasites? | ||
| That's scary. | ||
| They're everywhere, in our food, water, and pets. | ||
| But the wellness company has a solution for you. | ||
| Ivermectin plus Mabendazole. | ||
| They are FDA-approved parasite solutions now combined in one cleanse combo. | ||
| Just fill out a brief medical intake form to get your three-month supply. | ||
| Maha is officially here. | ||
| The wellness company is making these hard-to-get medications digitally accessible so you can live your best life. | ||
| Head on over to TWC.com. | ||
| Okay, so you blow it on the ship coin thing. | ||
| Now you blow it on baseball cards. | ||
| I'm really enjoying this story. | ||
| So now it's give me the comeback story. | ||
| The comeback story. | ||
| Like how broke. | ||
| So now you're, you had money. | ||
| Like how broke were you? | ||
| The worst part, you opened the last pack. | ||
| Where are you at? | ||
| I mean, maybe $10,000, $20,000. | ||
| Because I spent the six months of rent. | ||
| My rent was $4,500 a month times six. | ||
| So that's, yeah, $25,000. | ||
| That was everything I had when I moved to Vegas. | ||
| And I spent it all on rent. | ||
| And then I'm like, babe, you're a trooper for sticking with me, first of all. | ||
| Yeah, what did she think? | ||
| And you're engaged now, right? | ||
| Yeah, she was pissed, obviously. | ||
| And she told me from the start, this is an unhealthy obsession. | ||
| And she's always been right about everything. | ||
| About business and people. | ||
| Whenever I don't listen to her, it ends up terribly. | ||
| Okay, so it ends up terribly. | ||
| You open up the last pack. | ||
| Now you're basically broke. | ||
| Then what did you do? | ||
| Just did some social media hustling, man. | ||
| Went back to my roots. | ||
| Figured out how to get views. | ||
| I think the pod started probably, yeah, like a year and a half after that. | ||
| So, just locked in. | ||
| And now... | ||
| All in on the podcast and content and events. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So tell me more about it. | ||
| So you're here this weekend in Miami for F1. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I host the biggest networking events during F1. | ||
| So in Vegas, we just had 3,000 people last year. | ||
| For Miami, we'll have about 1,500 people tonight. | ||
| And how I monetize it is I just have sponsors set up tables and booths. | ||
| The tickets are free. | ||
| I don't charge people. | ||
| And people just come and network and hang out. | ||
| And then sponsors cover everything. | ||
| Who do you feel is your, or do you feel that you have competition? | ||
| I have this weird thing where I don't think I'm in competition with anyone. | ||
| I just think if I'm doing good work, then it's fine. | ||
| I'm not that worried, sort of. | ||
| I'm sure I am in competition in some way with someone, but I'm just not worried about it. | ||
| To me, if I do good, it'll kind of present itself. | ||
| Do you see yourself in competition with anyone? | ||
| Is it different maybe on the business side than on the podcast side? | ||
| Not directly, but there's shows I definitely admire. | ||
| And I look up to, and I, you know, respect. | ||
| But I don't get envious or jealous. | ||
| That's where you can go down dangerous paths when you're comparing yourself so much with people or other businesses. | ||
| But definitely respect and admire some shows. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What else do you want to do with the podcast? | ||
| Like, do you just want to, you want to get that Guinness book and then just... | ||
| Keep rolling with that, or is it just that you want to build out other verticals with it? | ||
| Yeah, there's two routes, and I'm sure you struggle with this too. | ||
| A lot of people are asking me, can you help me start your show? | ||
| So you could go the network route, but that seems expensive and stressful, so I don't know if I want to do that. | ||
| Or you could just go all in on your show. | ||
| So I think I'm leaning towards just sticking with me for now. | ||
| Yeah, we should talk a little bit after. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh yeah? | |
| Off camera. | ||
| There's some things brewing. | ||
| That's exciting, yeah. | ||
| But no, I just want to do more international stuff. | ||
| We're going to Cannes next week. | ||
| F1, Monaco, and Cannes Film Festival. | ||
| Because I've done a lot of interviews domestically. | ||
| I want to start taking it abroad. | ||
| What do you find your friends that you grew up with are doing? | ||
| Because the other meme is not only, oh, everyone's sort of autistic or weird or introverted or all that, but that they're all struggling, don't have jobs they like. | ||
| Do you find that? | ||
| In some sense, are you a hero to your friends now? | ||
| Because you're doing it your way and they're... | ||
| Somewhat lost? | ||
| I only have one left, if we're being honest. | ||
| The 10-year reunion is this year, so it's going to be interesting. | ||
| You should go. | ||
| It was one of the best nights of my life. | ||
| Oh, yeah? | ||
| Yeah, it really was. | ||
| That was kind of before social media really blew up, so we had no idea who we were bumping into again, where now it's like taking the luster off of it because you see everybody all the time. | ||
| Yeah, I think I'll go. | ||
| It's important for me to see everyone again, forgive everyone, and move on. | ||
| All the people who called you broccoli head. | ||
| Was it broccoli head? | ||
| That was more recent. | ||
| Back then it was like twig or whatever. | ||
| Or tomato face. | ||
| Tomato face. | ||
| So I would get red when I drank. | ||
| Oh, the Asian flush. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Tomato face. | ||
| And, uh, yeah. | ||
| I don't like to hold resentment to people. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So you would go, so you would go back to actually put down whatever needed to be put down, whatever was left in you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, that's, that's pretty healthy. | ||
| I think so, right? | ||
| Some people just... | ||
| Yeah, and by the way, you will also find one of the fun things of going to a reunion is like the guy that you hated the most for whatever reason or one of the guys that bullied you, you will see his life did not work out. | ||
| And then you'll see people that were like the dorks that maybe you weren't that nice to. | ||
| They've become superstars. | ||
| Like, you just have no idea. | ||
| That's why it's worth going to. | ||
| What did people think you would end up... | ||
| I got voted most likely to, like, fail. | ||
| Like, yeah. | ||
| Did you really? | ||
| That'll saddle you. | ||
| Everyone at my lunch table said you'd be dead or in prison in five years. | ||
| So... | ||
| So you basically had a very low bar, and you've really gone high. | ||
| My friend, everyone thought, if I look at my high school reunion, everyone thought I was going to host The Tonight Show. | ||
| That's what everyone said, you're going to host The Tonight Show, you're going to host The Tonight Show, host The Tonight Show. | ||
| Now, I don't do that, but clearly I did something that was going in that direction. | ||
| So you had the opposite experience of me. | ||
| You had support. | ||
| It was weird. | ||
| Well, I guess I was still at the early part of my career at that point for my 10-year reunion. | ||
| But like, I was definitely doing something that I wanted to do and it was going up. | ||
| So yeah, it was cool to be there for that purpose. | ||
| But that's like a weird ego thing, you know? | ||
| It's more just about just seeing people that you've totally forgot. | ||
| You know, there's going to be some girl that you sat next to in fourth grade that you haven't thought of in 15 years and suddenly she'll remember you and you're like, you remember what we did in art class, you know? | ||
| I think I'm one of the first in my class to get married because East Coast usually wait a bit longer. | ||
| How old are you again? | ||
| 28. Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you're like, I feel like last time we spoke, you're like ready to have kids and just like... | ||
| I want kids. | ||
| Get going. | ||
| Yeah, I definitely want kids. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When are you getting married? | ||
| October this year. | ||
| Yeah, October 17th. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What does your girlfriend do? | ||
| She helps with the pod. | ||
| She's gardening at home. | ||
| She's really good at cooking and baking and she's wonderful. | ||
| How do you garden in Vegas? | ||
| That can't be easy. | ||
| That's a business right there. | ||
| That's a good question. | ||
| Yeah, does she just dig in the... | ||
| What? | ||
| Arid, dry? | ||
| We found a one shade spot in our whole house. | ||
| Which is good, yeah? | ||
| Broccoli? | ||
| Is she doing broccoli? | ||
| Yeah, broccoli, jalapenos, lettuce, tomatoes, onions. | ||
| I'm pretty excited. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We just started a few weeks ago. | ||
| Are we going to shoot some hoops now? | ||
| We are. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So what skill level? | ||
| What do I have to prepare myself for here, knowing that I just went through this ACL, blown out knee, busted up? | ||
| Stem cell situation. | ||
| I'll say this. | ||
| I think you got me beat on threes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I think middies and layups I got you beat, but we'll see. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| How tall are you again? | ||
| 6 '6". | ||
| Shit. | ||
| I might dunk on you too. | ||
| Joey, I'm going to need you out there. | ||
| Maybe take out his legs. | ||
| It's been an absolute pleasure, man. | ||
| Thanks for having me, man. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| If you're tired of the mainstream media circus and want more honest conversations, go check out our media playlist. | ||
| And if you want to watch full interviews on a wide variety of topics, watch our full episode playlist all right over here. |
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