Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
Transcript
Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.
Kind: captions Language: en i’m i am human optimization and optimized to to be what though to just be happy i feel like i can rule the world i know i could be what i want to sorry we’re late we uh we’re we were recording another episode and yeah look i got the context i thought it was fascinating i love the idea of like your digital media company being acquired and then you have to do a a podcast with the guy who acquired it who no longer works there or no longer ceo it’s fascinating well he told a story that was i think good because i think most people don’t want to hear necessarily from oh you’re the ceo of some marketing companies a public company it’s not the sexiest story but he he just got in a crazy snowmobile accident and broke like every bone in his body and was sort of like lying there on a mountain for an hour thinking i might die or you know maybe hopefully his cell phone had like one bar and he was able to call the police and get get a firefighter to come save him um so he told that story and i was like okay this is good this is good content then everything i’m happy with how this turned out wow that’s that is fascinating yeah it was good he was like it was like a movie we were like you know brian this is like a movie you know like billionaire tech guy almost dies quits and starts meditating and yeah he became like a philanthropist afterwards he reevaluated his life while he was lying there that sort of thing um all right sam you want to do a quick intro no you do it you do it i like i’ve enjoyed you uh doing it lately okay i’ll give the um i’ll give the like the brief context of this okay so rob um i don’t know if you know this but your your show on mtv there’s a there’s a kind of a meme about it on reddit do you ever go to reddit i do not okay so do you know of reddit it’s like a popular kind of website or whatever of course so me and sam both watch the the show the challenge on mtv and um and the challenge has been around for like 15 years it’s kind of like our you know i’m not even a guilty pleasure frankly i’m not guilty about it i i feel great about it it’s a great choice this is great this is great and so museum both watched the challenge and we’re probably the only kind of like tech investor dude bro it’s my wife my wife watches it yeah sam hides behind his wife i love it i i’m i’m i’m not afraid to say it i came out the clouds i said i love the challenge so on on reddit there’s this big separator about the challenge and the running joke is that mtv plays 23 hours of uh of ridiculous uh ridiculousness and then one hour of the challenge on wednesdays and so because your show is your show is always on tv i don’t know if you know this but it’s kind of like constantly on mtv and so there’s a running joke that that’s that’s all the channel is basically is ridiculousness um i don’t know if you know about that or if you have any thoughts but i wanted to start there well i mean yeah i mean it’s 60 of the total programming yeah is it really yeah and it’s it’s fascinating because it’s like you know as i have evolved the program and my relationship with the network and ultimately sort of the business that i have with the network it evolved into creating more content and airing more shows and so they began to air more shows and the ratings went up higher and higher so then now people are watching it in blocks of you know two and three hours at a time so it you know in linear cable as a whole kind of faded to appointment television and you had hero content that pushed up to the forward on almost all the networks and i just happened to be lucky you know what i mean of like finding that sort of resurgence but i was also because i control and own the the the production i have negotiated on the unit economics of the show and what the network needed as the uh cable advertising world was evolving so i i was able to control it at a higher level than traditional talent which took me from getting 30 episode orders to 168 episode orders which then eventually became 500 episode orders right it’s a hey for example athletes like floyd mayweather right starts off as a boxer but then the promotion the production company basically takes all the economics and he’s out here the talent the one that’s drawn in all the viewers but didn’t own that piece and then over time now he owns it all because he he kind of like got screwed for a few years or you know sort of wisened up and said oh i need to own more of this stack in order for me to like benefit in the way that for the value i’m bringing were you did you get it from day one or did it take some time for you to figure that part out look i think you guys know the complexity of making a successful business right so at the at the end of the day there’s arbitrage for talent and different aspects of business and it relates to entertainment but the ability to actually monetize it create value and then in my case sell it for a significant amount of money is extraordinarily difficult unless you really understand business at a really high level so it’s it’s way beyond i’ve you know i started my first company at 18 years old i went through basically years and years of of making millions and losing millions through ventures where i ultimately created a system uh to to grow into being a great entrepreneur and then i capitalized on uh this unfair advantage that i had in the entertainment space to be able to look at the opportunity and maximize it both from a talent perspective and create a business that i was able to have acquired um through that platform you know what i mean it’s i think it’s more rare than it is common for an athlete to have that mindset yeah and let me give a background here and this is what i’m about to say is with no research it’s just as a fan so i don’t you don’t know this but i i still skate so i’ve been a fan of yours forever and so here we i i have here look here here it is can you see that there’s my tray flip talking about a full tray flip right here fully caught yeah yeah totally crazy look at that i can still i still have it in me a little bit oh my camera will come back in a second but so you um you you started skating very young and i think you were sponsored by alien workshop when you were like 13 14 15 something like that right well to give you more context like i got sponsored it at 11 years old but i i connected with the group and and when they founded the alien workshop and i turned pro for it when i was 16. and you uh but now i think you you own alien workshop right or your part owner no i acquired it for four million dollars and then i gave it back to the original foundation that was free and clear on top of buying a bunker in ohio so they could run the company out of it and gave that to them free and clear that was the worst mistake i’ve ever done in my life was um look i you know i i did it more they were acquired by burton and i i every advisor around me was like this company does not make money it has terrible margins like it burns cash like this is a terrible investment i didn’t care i didn’t understand business well enough i just wanted it for the story the hometown kid buys back you know the alien workshop that he sat in the room and helped choose the name and create the brand when he was 16 years old and finds great success and comes back and acquires the business and when i i acquired it i felt like i acquired a hornet’s nest and i i learned so much about the operational side of business and culture and and the dynamics of um what i’d consider a a a toxic culture and i just realized that that my passion was to create build and and create an roi and irr for the stuff that i created and that’s that doesn’t align with skateboarding very much right like they’re really like misery loves company let’s all be broke let’s all barely survive let’s all like keep your artists everything starving artist syndrome and i i literally like was on another call and was like man i don’t even want to be on it i don’t want to put another bit of my energy in here and i’m like you want to know what the real hero story will be i’m going to give back the original founders who built the company and sold it i’m going to just give the entire thing back to them and that’s what i did we have to talk about that in a second that’s crazy to me uh not a bad way but it’s crazy and so you’re you’re a skater you know i used to watch you in a lot of trans world videos as a kid and a bunch of other stuff and then you were early-ish at i think very early at dc shoes before dc shoes was even named dc right um that ended up becoming a pretty monster success um and so you’ve seen a bunch of stuff then you started some of the early shows which crushed it and then now you’re telling you’re sitting here talking about ridiculousness and the way that you’re describing things i’m like it’s just the evolution is crazy right from skateboarder to like talking about how you own 60 of the programming on mtv and so i wanted to give like context there because it’s it’s amazing and it’s inspirational but at this point you’ve got your hands and everything it seems like you’ve got you do you dabble you do a bunch of stuff if i remember correctly years ago you had like a food truck is that right um i might have wrote an episode around a food truck but it was probably fake a fantasy factory you had like a bunch of different you know you had a bunch of different stuff you got your hands on everything i think you even did i read that you were you do uh horse racing you own racehorses i did i did when i got into horse racing i jockeyed a horse for a race at hollywood park and won the race um went on to own 12 or 13 racehorses including a horse that i uh that got third place in the breeders cup that i sold for two million dollars that i paid 200 grand for that’s crazy to me so is owning a horse a good good investment in general like that’s a great obviously that’s a great flip but it’s it’s not but i for me i got out unscathed you know what i mean like for a lot of people i know that are in it it’s just really for the enjoyment of it it’s a lot of fun to go watch your horse race um you know i had a lot of respect in the racing community because they know i jockey the horse they know how insane that is right did you do that as a skit or did you take it seriously i know i mean i did it as a skit i mean it’s like the don’t it’s the scariest thing i’ve ever done you’re talking to a guy who’s broke the world record for jumping a car backwards i’ve barrel rolled a car i’ve been attacked by a shark a tiger it’s like i’ve done you know broken 25 world records on a skateboard but the scariest thing i’d ever done in my life is jockey a horse at hollywood park because it’s just you on the back of this horse you got a hold of its mane you break the gate you’re going 50 miles an hour on the back of this giant beast how do you how is your current your your entities set up right now as well as your focus because if you have well i was gonna the reason i’m listing all these crazy stuff the crazy things that you do and all these projects that you’ve got going on which are very substantial how are you balancing all of this and what’s your current business structure i mean do you have like a rob deirdick media which only does the mtv stuff and you get uh some type of fee from them and then you have you know i’ve been i i would’ve let me hey if you want to talk structure let’s talk some structure yeah basically operate as a very pro like a hybrid entertainment family office right slash venture creation studio right so i have a single entity the direct machine llc that owns everything including rob dyrdek inc which is the the entertainment side of rob deardex business so all of that capital flows into this single llc and then i distribute that capital into uh real estate holdings right the cash flowing real estate holdings or i distribute it into ventures that i co-find and create right so i co-find and create almost every single company that i build and i i do i co-find it with common shares and then i do the initial funding uh usually in the 800 to a million and a half a million dollar uh sort of pre-money and then i put 250 to 500 into every venture i try to own between 25 and 70 of every single venture that i have at maturity um i have built 17 companies sold six for and netted 450 million since i launched the company in 2016. one of those is the production company but all of these entities sit under the umbrella of the venture side of the direct machine business including rob dyrdek the television business so my production company that was acquired my earn out goes into the llc um that i own 100 of right and then uh my talent money lives in that same same thing then i pay myself a salary that goes through that and then i invest all of that in in basically non-correlated cash flowing uh real estate investments whether that’s manufactured housing multi-family units storage units like i’ve been investing a lot of rv parks lately dude this is music to my ears yeah it’s just very sophisticated it’s a very sophisticated you know hybrid family office that i built for myself right now and keep in mind every venture that i create has a has a time structure we call it the unified theory we at the very beginning we lay out the entire capital path and growth path and and when we want to sell it how much we want to sell it for and that’s our target everything is built to sell from the very beginning whether that’s pig out chips and outstanding foods or mind right bars or lusso comfort wear or any of the build builds that i’ve done over the last five years but all of it is connected to this idea of uh the capital that you’ve earned the tax efficiencies on how you earn it and then ultimately the irr on every dollar wherever it goes inside the system and what do you do then you keep your expenses within the range of your dividends that come from your real estate so you basically play the entire game for free and then as you scale and have big exits and big big uh liquidity events you just pump more money into the overall system and you basically live this extraordinary free life now to that point i do all of this with 30 of my time right because i i manage i’ve mastered time energy and capacity right so i live this extraordinarily balanced life by design where i only dedicate 30 percent of my time to podcasts in my shooting television and uh building my businesses i spend 30 percent sleeping 10 percent on my health never compromised it than 30 with my family you know how much is 30 for you like how many hours are you looking at 30 of a 40 hour work week or thirty percent of your weight he’s saying my entire life all hours eight hours no all life of the 24 hours in a day i sleep 30 so seven hours right like i work seven hours i’m with my family seven hours and uh i spend uh three hours on my health on average right when you look at the the overall balance and then i could show you this because i track it every day and it pumps all of it into this beautiful dashboard because what i’ve done over time because to give you an idea i shot 250 episodes of television this year it’s exactly four percent of my total time that’s how highly optimized it’s become right because you basically have a certain level of human capacity and in order to scale it you either hire or automate it so i live this deeply automated life uh that that hires people in to add capacity and at the end of the day i just live super balanced and happy that’s it so give us one example wait what software are you using to track all that time yeah that dashboard i created i i had a i had a programmer write me a script that goes inside google the google calendar it’s an app on your phone or it’s just on like a spreadsheet basically it’s inside google calendar and then it pops it populates a google spreadsheet right and then the beauty of it is is i qualitative data and quantitative data is what i live my life off of right so every day for the last five years i asked i wrote down how i feel about my life work and health 0-10 and so i could show you by the qualitative numbers how i’m living a higher quality and happier life and and the result of that is based off the optimization that i’ve done on my quantitative stuff my quantitative stuff is did i get up before five did i brain train did i get in the gym did i meditate did i have a clean diet did i not drink i could show you by my quantitative numbers that i have done all of those almost every single day of this entire year about 87 of those quantitative things that have just driven those qualitative numbers how i feel about my life my work and my health higher and higher so by the numbers i could tell you what a high quality life that i’m living compared to just five years ago you’re saying somebody amazing things i gotta yeah i’ve been to each one all right so you just said something did i brain train what’s that mean i use a luminosity app right like where it’s just adding flexibility and just letting your mind do all of these things that are different than just getting in and reading your emails and you know just going through your rhythm is really what i i do that for and when you wake up at five what’s the morning routine like sounds like you’re pretty yeah look i i’ll get up i i i get i have to get up before five but depending on what time i go to bed i’ll get up um at four or four thirty two right and to me uh you know always have that that coffee pre-made so i can get up and get cooking and then i track all my numbers from the previous day fill in all my time if i missed any time to make sure that that all my data is there on your phone or on your computer on the computer right and and then i try to just like organize and knock out sort of my more executional work before the kids get up and all that um then at six o’clock i brain train 6 30 i meditate uh when i jump out of meditation i sent we’re actually at 5 15 i bring my wife a coffee and i send her an email of every single thing that i’m doing that day what it means to me with a love quote on top right um again this is what it means to me like each thing you’re doing just like you know just like what you’re doing you know yeah in my in my one of the one of the pulls of our relationship was like i do so much stuff that she would be it’d be i’d just be talking to someone to be the first time she ever heard of it and so she would just like i would do so much stuff in a day she just would would feel disconnected so i just started giving her an email every day of like what i’m doing what it means with a nice love quote right and and that then settled down the energy of feeling disconnected from everything that i’m doing um bring her a coffee at 5 15. god bless her she started doing 5 30 calls for her business um which means she’s going to be tired earlier that means we can go to bed by 9 30 right which is another sort of blessing and this is happening in l.a right you’re this is yours yeah yeah and then but you know i pop out of meditation at seven wake the kids up uh get them both down to breakfast at 7 30 my trainer doctor comes to the house uh 7 30 to 8 30 um training and then take the kids to school at 8 30 right and then the day depending on what the week is you know sometimes i go to breakfast dates with my wife sometimes it’s you know on mondays you know i basically run a flat organization right so i have you know 10 core divisions that are ran by an executive and i just spend monday fully organizing from when i get up four o’clock into my chief of staff for an hour into my president ceo for an hour and then half hours for every single person that runs that uh division so that we can just be highly organized and then plan the rest of the week which of course is inside thursday night date nights and friday night sushi night with my wife and picking my kids up and all of you know i design balance and then i only work within the structure of balance and then depending on how i feel depending on how my wife feels then i’ll even adjust that to lean into making sure that my family is feeling priority above business always you you you are like yeah you’re you’re like you know like people make fun of silicon valley people because they’re like like here’s my calendar i’ve got it adjusted like this this and this but uh i’m sitting here looking at you i think it looks like you’re wearing a black blazer with a black sweater and you got these slick air pods in you are more silicon valley techie in tune with this than like the stereotypes of it and i i love it i think this is yeah i mean look i’m i am human optimization and optimized to to be what though to just be happy you know what i mean like at the end of the day that’s why you’re playing the game and you got to figure out yourself to understand what truly makes you happy because your goal is to not be happy in pockets your goal is to be happy every single hour of every single day of your life right and that’s really what i’ve accomplished and i’ll tell you something if you think about how you live right you you can live in two places that’ll get you nowhere it’s dwelling and being negative right or it’s being hopeful and like wishing right either of get you nowhere but real where life is lived is you’re either problem solving you’re either creating the future or you’re experiencing the present right and the truth is whatever you’re experiencing the present is based off of the decisions you’ve made in the past and it’s your choice to create whatever you your reality is that you’re going to eventually experience or god forbid something hits you rather than dwelling on it or hoping it didn’t happen if you problem solve and handle it you’re not going to you can basically live a life with no negative thoughts if you learn to live in a state of either experiencing creating or problem solving in your entire life right but it’s on you to understand what that is to be able to live in that state i’m flabbergasted sean rob is is just here’s what i’m shocked me here’s what i’m wondering we share a lot of philosophies by the way the things you’re saying there’s a lot of philosophies i i live by sam lives by as well but i’m wondering this in my life because i live by a similar philosophy i’ve encountered a bunch of people and what i’ve found maybe i’m wrong here with you but what i found is kind of two two groups there’s a group of people who kind of were this way from day one they were sort of like optimizers from day one they really cared about they sort of recognized the importance of time early on they recognized the importance of their mood and how they’re feeling early on and they say cool i’m going to design systems to make this work for me by default so i’m not swinging from highs to lows i’m not pissing away time i’m actually making imaging so some people get it early i don’t know if that’s nature or nurture but they they were this way from day one and then there’s other people who sort of live life in the exact opposite way for a while and then it comes sort of screeching to a halt and they say i gotta make a change i gotta get some order and some organization i gotta like i gotta actually take control of this and not just have it be so loosey-goosey and i’m looking at you and i’m thinking is he skater early how does the skater guy become human optimization embodied the way you are were you always this way or was this i lived a certain way and then i had a realization in a moment where i decided to kind of shift my path so that i could design my life a little bit differently yeah i was not this way you’re talking to a guy getting attacked by sharks who’s starting company after company breaking world records jumping cars doing cartoons television shows doing doing all these things as you related to in the beginning like you you were pulling into i would say you were pulling energy from like who i used to be and what you know me as right so just as i said like yeah right so so the way that you were viewing was in fact really how i was kind of living where i was being i always refer to myself as going in so many directions that at once i was i was like pulled tight and so what happened you swing from side to side in order for there to be some sort of give and whatever you were ultimately doing and for me i was i had had built my league my professional skateboarding league and took it to market to raise capital and and these groups were like oh we want to we want a piece of everything that you do look at all that you do they offered me a 360 deal i thought this is it you know i’ve just you know done this whole thing by the seat of my pants and like finally like these people are gonna recognize me and turn me into the billionaire i’m meant to be and when they did the diligence on how i ran my finances how i ran my life all aspects of it they were like you’re not even investible you’re just like you spend all the money that you have like you’re not creating any value like all this stuff and it was this this deep awakening of like you’re not who you think you are like you you’ve attached yourself this this identity that you’ve created for yourself is actually false and the success that you’ve had by being so driven and so ambitious like as you know despite all these other things you’re doing that are failing you’re making up for it by other things working like it you aren’t actually what you think you are and i went on this journey to begin the discovery of like how can i begin to put a system around myself to become first it was like how do i learn business i don’t know business and i hired a consultant to teach me how to build a company beginning to end and and in that process i found this book called start at the end that was a business book about decide what you want out of a business before you ever started and then it was like this sort of like like you know insane sort of moment that where i was like man like i need to start treating my life like that what life do i want and hold on that would have been in 2013. you know what i mean so it wasn’t you got to understand i this the evolution and the growth that i have gone through over the last six years is is four or five lifetimes of growth you know you’re talking about from from saying you’re uninvestible to creating generational wealth in a five-year period okay more and and now transitioning beyond you know self-preservation to generational preservation what is my 500-year plan how am i gonna affect your dex for the next 500 years and i couldn’t even in you know i was single partying and like part of like when i looked at like what’s my ideal life i want to have balance and love in marriage and kids and these things so i had to begin to change the way that i was living to ultimately create the energy to attract the person the people the knowledge everything that i would need to grow into the person that i that i had designed for myself in 2014 and 15. and was the you said your production company was acquired um was that the biggest win for you financially well you know i mean there’s no doubt you know what i mean but you got to understand like even you know it’s it’s such a significant amount of capital um and i own 70 of it right so it’s just a it’s a much it’s a it’s a big acquisition um you know you know the final numbers aren’t we’re still in the middle of the earn out but it’s it’s oh it’ll it could be close to you know you know 125 130 million for just me now right and so that that unto itself is a really significant single transaction um that is that very few people ever experience you know what i mean so again it’s a in it to me it’s the first company that i built that was in the built to sell structure right of when i just taught myself business completely built a system for how i would create businesses it was the very first one that i built to sell and built it and sold it in three years right and went first to the investment bankers said i’m going to build a production and sell it the people that only sell uh production companies they’re like okay here’s how you got to do it if you want to build it and sell it then i went and hired a person who just went through a build and acquisition who was the number two at the company to help me build it then i went out and began to build it now what happened a whole lot of magical [ ] happened you know what i mean like because like like all of these different things like occurred that allowed me to go from zero revenue to 50 million in the first year that allowed like the trajectory of the growth and the the ebitda and the company to scale based off of ridiculousness having a second resurgence and me being able to negotiate the value of the company based off of now understanding the production the unit economics of what the network would need these unpredictable things that that in the beginning but i said it where i would build it and sell it in three years and then took it to market went back to those bankers three years later here’s the numbers let’s take it out and see if uh see who would be interested now as fate would have it the group that acquired it was the same group that offered me the 360 deal that said i had no value um in 2013. and when they acquired it part of the acquisition i made them also acquire my professional skateboarding league as part of the roll-up that they created right so it was a very poetic justice and beautiful sort of 360 moment as it relates to they as the single sort of private equity group that drove me to like re-evaluate and really push myself to like design my life and then they come around and also provide the opportunity that sets me up for the future instead of owning half of me for the rest of my life they acquired the only two assets i kept from that era and you don’t know this rob but sam is kind of a nut like you uh he i think at the age of he showed me the spreadsheet and he’s like i made this i think he’s 23 24 maybe and basically what he did was he said okay i want to have i forgot what it was i want to be a millionaire self-made i said i wanted to make i wanted to make 20 million dollars by the age of 30. by the age of 30. i want to have 20 million by the age of 30. liquid cash that i actually uh you know i own liquid liquid net worth and so he then created a list of all the rich people he could find in tech because we’re in the tech world right and he’s like okay from jack dorsey who created twitter and square to like whoever and he mapped out how many years did it take them to make their first like their first nut of like a million bucks and then like how long how long before they got their big win he’s like he’s like okay the median time of seven years um the average person is getting this uh i need to be on this trajectory at this and so he’s like mapping it all out so i was like i need my business to be at this revenue with this ebitda inside four years because that means the growth rate is this and then if i own this percentage that means i’m going to make this after tax so long as i’m in this state yeah everything and then it you know when did you do it yeah he did it he pulled it off he just sold 31. i sold the car who was 31. you’re late yeah good for you man and you want to know why you did it because you started at the end and then you know you know hey hey and you know hey like it wasn’t about how the path actually went you could have never predicted you’re like whoa i would have never expected it to be in this one whatever it may be but your mentality was there on what it is and you’re very young because you got to think the way i’m talking i didn’t do this till i was 40. 10 years from now for you guys you know what i’m saying but go ahead so i didn’t mean to cut you off i just wanted to know the payout no you had it you know you had a point for me on that or no i just i just jammed you yeah no no you’re good uh the other things i was gonna say is that we uh you know one of the first messages sam ever sent me i met the guy you know kind of in passing and then you know two days later on facebook he’s like so how much do you pay yourself out of your company and he started talking money in a way that most people don’t most people are very afraid to talk money and i thought at first i was taking it back i was like who the hell is this guy and then i was like actually it’s pretty powerful if i could have some friends like this where we could openly share what are we making how you know what what did we sell for what are we investing it in sharing how what are we spending and it is spending that much money each month actually making you happy yeah that sort of thing and so wow this is amazing here go ahead and so we got to know each other that way created a friend group that way do you have like a set of peers like that in your world where you kind of learned the game together you came up together no and but let me tell you what uh who i do have as a peer group that i think you’ll find fascinating have you ever heard of tiger21 yes we’ve we’ve broke down that business a ton i actually think that you can build a new tiger 21 because it’s pretty old school it’s like all old rich guys so like it’s how you look yo so i’ll tell you what my tiger 21 experience is right so um to me it’s not about the business model of tiger 21 it was about the peer group and so this is what you do in tiger tiger21 so in my group you know they’ve really expanded it since they took on private equity and they’re really trying to grow it so it’s probably a little bit different whenever whenever you had looked at it in my group there’s 15 people of varying ages right really young guys that have made hundreds of millions really young guys that have a billion couple billion dollars in net worth right really interesting group of of guys now this is what you do in tiger 21 you each month one person has to show all of their assets and it’s called portfolio defense right so each person has to like lay out this is every single thing that i’m doing so what are we doing as a group not only do we understand each other’s philosophies what they’re spending their life philosophies all these things but understanding seeing how they manage their wealth their wealth not not not making money but managing wealth right all all of the latest things through their own advisors that we share and all this stuff but at the core of it it’s the realest of the real because you have to be very real in order to open up and show everybody what you actually have and to me when i first heard about i’m like oh my god this is the group for like this is what i need like i know that only like the realest people would be willing to share all of their their their investment strategies and all of their assets and so for me i actually have been in it now for two years and it life-changing for me right because part of that very first portfolio defense it was like what was your hundred year plan and it was like in an instant i’ve i shifted from present self-preservation to generational preservation right but of course i had created enough wealth to be in that mindset to that point right and now over these last couple years it is just it is a a depth of knowledge of wealth building that i’ve like that’s so personal that that i’ve just never experienced on that i could never experience through just people that were my friends that weren’t like open to this being part of the structure of a club if you will so you know look i would even say for it for for you know you guys to even consider it you know what i mean just because it is a an extraordinarily eye-opening and you just learn and learn and learn because at the end of the day you’re you’re you grow like this right you your your entire life as you grow and evolve you you you expand and what you want to do is be expanding in one direction because that’s where exponential growth and greatness and mastery and all these things lie when you grow into a single direction so you know i i think that that it’s something like that as a peer group has been massive for me that i didn’t have before that because i just don’t i don’t have anybody that that because i come from a sort of a different world i just didn’t have any relationships with people that that were thinking like that were you doing i know that you i mean you’ve been famous for forever it seems and you’ve always been doing cool [ ] but you mentioned earlier that when you’re going through due diligence that the the the buyers were like dude you’re running you’re like you’re spending too much money or you’re maybe you’re you’re buying things incorrectly and you’re not you know you’re mixing personal and work maybe i don’t know but were you were you making a significant income leading up to your big exit and also i mean judging just off purely off tv so who knows if it’s real where you it seems like you spend a lot and you like to and you and you like to ball out and you like to do fun stuff were you spending a significant amount and so like were you actually financially successful prior to the the the deal and you’re saying when they offered me the 360 deal uh when they win like like you you sold your production company recently although that’s still kind of mid mid it’s not entirely done right but prior to like your well you said you read the book in 2013 or or whenever it was were you actually doing well or was it like you’re still getting by but you’re you’re you’re you’re making doubt i was not crushing it i was making a significant amount of income right the the problem was i was spending so much and not managing it properly not not looking at what i was doing it i would like you know i put two million dollars four million cash to buy the distribution company i put 2 million building the first ever street dream skateboard movie i put 2 million into building my league i was just making millions and investing and building any any which way but loose on top of having you know a five million dollar a year overhead and bodies in my and running the fantasy factory and then all the people that that were underneath me as as part of the management team so fantasy factory cost 5 million a year to maintain and run like like having the building itself was like you know 750 right and now you you put all the bodies in there you know what i’m saying i had you know president ceo of like like full-time like general counsel like ceos like i had like you know a 30-person team i was like running like an agency almost the way that it was built in that era you know what i mean but also let me give you are you making on any profit at all or or was it breaking even and you’re just spending it i was like i was i was breaking even because yeah i was i was making profit and paying taxes but after taxes i wasn’t saving any money i kept reading and reinvesting in new projects and bigger ideas because i thought that’s how you do it you know what i mean you just keep taking shots and my back then i used to say uh like our money’s fearless scared money doesn’t make money and it’s like you want to know uh dumb money doesn’t make money you know what i mean like that’s like the reality of how i was running and again it was because i was still i revolutionized skateboarding and built street league skateboarding i launched and built a cartoon on nickelodeon i had multiple shows on mtv i i owned my integration right so i was doing chevy deals and microsoft deals and making millions of dollars so i was having extraordinary success only like i wasn’t the way i was reinvesting in it i was still um essentially making rather than creating value i was i was really almost like a creative services agent just kind of sloppy just you weren’t tight was not not only not tight but didn’t wasn’t wasn’t creating value with intention wasn’t looking at markets and market sizes and and trends and how could i create a business that could be acquired one day i’d never even heard of a venture i didn’t know what an investment banker was in 2013 i thought it was someone that dealt with high net worth individuals when i when they told me my league was worth 30 million dollars and we did 7 million in revenue i said how they’re like oh it trades at like you know four to five times revenue and i’m like how the how does business even how does that work i that’s how little i knew about business in 2013 when when the 360 deal was offered to me i had i knew nothing of the capital markets capital staging private equity venture didn’t know anything of the first time i’d ever even heard about it and and compared to who i am today and how i look at creating value and managing capital staging and treating myself like a family office not that many years later it’s an exponential amount of like unprecedented growth you know that almost doesn’t even seem real you’re like transferring through universes you know what i mean you uh you’ve been you know pretty phenomenally successful i’m very impressed by the way but i almost feel like you were too early i feel like if you were 12 years old now because you didn’t have you know tick tock and youtube where you you would have been the you know the the elk boys you would have been bigger than the paul brothers right like because you didn’t have social media when you were doing all these stunts you you did it in tv you you know you did it before tv and then on tv but it kind of helped them in a way right like yeah i bet i think you would have gone viral like nobody’s business i think you know for the amount of views that they get i bet mtv pays more than you of course of course of course it’s he monetized as well but i think fame wise if you were a teen today with the tools they have and you had this same kind of gunslinger mentality of like doing stunts to attract attention attract viewers and challenge yourself and have fun have a blast in public that model works today with people who i feel like have done like a fraction of the level of stunts that you’ve done uh do you think you’re you’re early i don’t know no look i’ll tell you what it makes me tired just even having you say that it’s just like god think about being on youtube you know and like look if i even when i look at the world right forget about sort of being early or whatever it is like an extraordinary exist i’ve lived an extraordinary life a handful of lifetimes but i’ve never been happier than i am today talking to you because at the end of the day there was so much like like angst and ambition and like i want to do something so big and i just kept trying and trying and my will to execute and my ambition and drive kept just breaking me down highs and lows highs and lows highs and lows where now i am just in this like perpetual str state of like high growth in a clear direction right and and inside that is complete happiness right and not saying that i didn’t enjoy what i i went through but it was too much highs and lows and chaos and for for for what it’s worth right like it’s and it’s all experience and i really love my life way more at 47 than i did at 27 or 37 right i and that’s really what your human mission is right at the end of the day you want to live this peaceful happy effortless like fulfilling life that’s really what you’re chasing right you want a a a life of infinite abundance and love right and and the only way you can actually get to that is through learning mastery of self and that is mastery of your energy and all the things that give and take from it your time and ultimately your capacity right and and the only way you can master all those is to really learn yourself at a high level what you really love to do and the difference is back then i was i had to do so many things that i didn’t enjoy to feed that beast right and and continue to find the next thing and constantly struggling with like i gotta do another show and it’s gotta be bigger you know it’s like it’s like that sort of thing where now everything so much more controlled and done with purpose inside balance that you just enjoy every moment of the process right um but yeah could could i have done that on youtube no because i also had you know an 800 000 budget that allowed me to like you know go and do a deal that could you know rent out uh you know six flags so that i could flip a car ramp to ramp over the world’s biggest skateboard that i designed that’s how much that stunt cost it was oh no i’ll shoot i don’t that stunt probably cost like altogether all of those or a few million dollars you know that’s crazy that’s like stunt teams and groups and like test cars and like i mean i was like you know then then the day comes and what do you got to do you got to flip a car and you want to know what you want to know what happens on the day that you got to flip a car you’re like this is the dumbest idea ever why am i even here i have so much going on in my life like why would i even put myself in this position to like flip this car and then you flip the car and it actually works and now it’s a super bowl commercial and it’s part of the the season premiere of season five is a fantasy factory and this giant chevy partnership and you made millions of dollars and now you’re a legend and and you’re gonna all this stuff it was genius and the best idea but the day of when you gotta do it it’s like cool this is so dumb you know what i mean that’s basically all of those uh all the stunts that i did in that era it would always be like this is the worst idea it’s not even funny and then when it was over i’d be like i’m earlier you said that you track trends now and you and you start at the end and you work backwards what trends interest you at the moment what uh what business opportunities are intriguing to you if you had a little bit more like even if you aren’t going to do it but you wish you had more time and it’s just kind of on the side and you’re like this is this this interests me i think someone should pounce on this opportunity maybe i will maybe i won’t but i’m interested for clarity purposes here now now i have a business that builds businesses right so i i build uh you know five to six businesses a year right and although i’ve i’ve you know i’ve kind of like really pushed into all the builds i’m doing at the end of the year here are all in the beauty beauty industry uh adaptogenic um topicals uh water filter system saw real opportunity and and sort of um in the beauty space of like how important like water is and how how many chemicals there are and when you shower but then you go and spend all this money on your hair and makeup and skin care but you wash yourself and chlorine so found a real opportunity to develop a a real innovative sort of shower purification system and and water filter system for beauty and you know really looking at superfoods and plant-based um sustainable beauty products there’s a big opportunity in in in that sort of space you know we launched a nootropic footwear or nootropic um an adaptogen uh plant-based bar and drink mix and coffee mix line this year that’s been really successful we looked at you know the the three billion dollars in market share between uggs uh crocs and birkenstocks and created what we consider the more the the sleeker ugly ugly shoe the pretty ugly shoe uh and luso cloud that we launched this year that’s their last year that that really has ridden this wave of sort of uh comfort this comfort wave and casual wave in the comfort footwear world that we think is going to be uh on track to do really be really big too for because to me at the end of the day like what’s happening in a market is important um and it’s it’s going to be where you live and die right you’re too early or you know in the case of ultra cast you know i launched this company that was a a a live 360 live 360 and vr video platform uh that put 360 videos all over the world and where you could jump on your phone and travel all over the world and be in different bars and clubs and all these different things like right on the conversions of live instagram and and live content and live streaming and sort of vr coming in together and then what happened to vr just died nothing right and it’s like i was like and what did it end up being like the new 3d tv right and so 360 video became like the new like the 3d tv right and so even though i built i got it right on the wave and like it was super innovative with an amazing ceo who once the company went out of business built and took a company public in like nine months but i’m um that that fails right so you’re trying to time markets and look at trends and all of that but at the end of the day like you got to get a little bit lucky so you want to be in the right place white space and an opportunity that’s an investable um there’s so many nuance to a white space and where opportunity is i can tell you uh from someone that’s built 17 companies in the last five years that the the greatest lesson i had in years two and three uh was founder market fit you know what i mean like where it’s like when the the the the biggest red flag you will ever hear is when somebody comes from uh you know one industry and wants to be in another because this one’s so much easier right this one’s it’s the margins over here it’s the shelf stability over here it’s though there’s not sizes like they all have a position based off of how hard their particular industry’s sort of structure is and they’re all hard they’re all hard and you don’t want to invest build companies with people that have to learn the industry as they go right and i think that’s that’s i would get caught seeing great opportunities and ideas and build with really relentless well uh experienced founders uh who get crushed in the learning curve of trying to learn and understand a new industry it’s something that i’ve really it’s very hard for me to build a company with somebody um that’s getting into a an industry for the very first time rob we’ve we’ve had like billionaires on we typically don’t do do guests we typically just sean and i but we’ve had billionaires we’ve had you know gary vaynerchuk was on recently he was he was really fascinating we’ve had some famous people we’ve had all types of people on here you might be the most interesting that we’ve ever had um you’re definitely the most surprising you know and i hopefully this isn’t you don’t take this the wrong way but i i judged you based off of just as a skateboarding fan and what i knew about you on tv obviously i knew you were the slick ass businessman and you always had some cool [ ] going on but you are way more dialed in than i ever would have imagined and you might be one of the most interesting people i’ve ever spoken to and uh yeah i i i think you’re my new hero yeah i i this this has been amazing look i i i could tell by the questions you asked me um that that it was coming from that sort of lens and i thought to myself man let me let me feed this guy kind of the uh the angle and the evolution of where i’m operating at right you’ve evolved a [ ] and think about it too it’s extraordinarily concise and clear right because it’s like i constantly am seeking clarity so i’m always operating from a place of intention and then i’m i’m considering myself to have an evolutionary mindset where it’s like how how can i purposely keep evolving and evolving and evolving with purpose in a singular direction and one of those is like literally human optimization and being happy as could be you know what i mean at the end of the day but no i thank you and i appreciate it because you guys also had me do work right you guys said hey can you write an agenda of what you want to talk about on today’s show i’m like these guys are like having me write an agenda to be a guest on their show and i wrote out an agenda and we never even covered any of the subjects can you come back we didn’t cover it because you blew our mind early on i could have took the first three things you said and said okay i have two hours here where all i need to do is just let you expand on that because if i’m listening to this and somebody says something interesting there’s nothing more annoying in the world than the guests going back to their pre pre-set agenda and not asking about the really interesting thing the guy just said and so we had to do it uh you know look it goes back to what you said about building towards the end yes we had you plan just like i planned my exit but like what you said was you don’t really know what’s gonna happen in between yeah yeah and look even with all this this this planning and structure i’m i don’t let it i’m not controlled by that calendar you know what i’m saying like i still allow myself to like but the beauty of the system is i could just shut down three days and everything continues to move and it picks back right up when i get there you know even as i operate my life i with the same group that helped me develop my system for the deardeck machine in my my business creation system like i had them develop my life system right and i have this this 50 page document called the rhythm of existence that’s managed by my two assistants and my chief of staff and it’s basically the operating system for my entire life right and so that that allows all aspects whether it’s from my food to my haircuts to to like how i deal with birthdays and how i deal with all these different things is put into this system that’s managed that does what it’s automated and gives me back more capacity to be able to do more be more present with my wife and kids be more present when i’m working be more focused be able to get more done because i keep adding more and more automation and optimization to my life that allows me to just live and do the things i love to do which then gives me more energy to be more successful more clear have more intention and push things further and further along would you be willing to come on again and and talk more about like pretty much everything you’ve discussed and also the things that we’ve planned because this is this is gonna be a home run yeah look you know what i’d like to do i’d probably like to like send you all of my i’ll send you all the stuff that i do so you could read it and see it and have that okay here’s a live conversation of how rob lives and runs his life optimization then sends you all of my business stuff including my machine method and how i i run my businesses through a discovery diligence build um uh scale launch and scale phase and my seven core capabilities of business and brand product uh media marketing sounds like you have a new product coming out this is the the deer deck ada program no it’s not it’s just so i can build businesses efficiently and consistently you know this morning i told my uh you know my head of media i said look i think i’m going to come up with a drake equation for business and are you guys familiar with the drake equation you know the drake equation is essentially the probability of intelligent life inside the universe right and to me i do believe that there’s an equation that i’m i can put through market through founder experience founder age like all these different things that add up to a probability number on this company that i’m about to create with this person’s potential successes and it’s because i’ve pointed my mastery towards i want to master curating individuals and ideas and building them into sustainable profitable acquirable businesses and i just get better and better at every single one that i build because that mastery is going in a single direction so my depth of knowledge in building companies is getting so wide which in turn is doing what it’s making me more intuitive i can have a five-minute conversation with a potential founder and fill all their holes know that they’re a a more operated minded like product person like not a brand person doesn’t understand marketing doesn’t understand media oh it’s a financial mind uh that understands product oh it’s a brand mind and product person that doesn’t understand operations or marketing or finances for sure like you become you’re driving yourself if you want to save energy you become extraordinarily intuitive right like that’s where your mastery shows itself so i digress where i would we we could we could do a live show and a business show you know i’m into it they’re very similar dude this is so good i’m so thankful that you came on thank you so much um we’re going to do this again i hope hopefully you’ll do it but we’re into it yeah yeah it’s been our pleasure thank you so much for coming on okay all the best now cool [Music] i travel never looking back