I have some rules that I play about whenever I buy.

There's some general, like, just rules of the game.

Okay, we can start the show now.

Okay, we can do that.

We can start the show now.

Right?

Yeah, right there.

Yeah.

So I have some rules of the game.

Whenever I buy people's shoes, I will not buy you a pair of shoes that I do not endorse.

Not doing it.

Oh.

Like, yeah, because I.

You would hate for someone to clown on them, be like, oh, Chris bought me these.

It's not even that.

It's like, if I wouldn't wear them right, or I couldn't see myself wearing them.

I'm not buying them for you.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

No.

Not doing it.

And then why?

Well, that way, that goes against everything you.

Would you wear the Ben and Jerry's?

No, I've not picked them up for anybody.

We gotta get those for Arun, though.

Yeah, I'm not doing that.

Come on.

I mean, I might do it as, like, a sarcastic gift or, like, you know, hey, I know he's not into the shoes.

Like, it's whatever.

Yeah.

But you gotta understand, like, I.

I don't want that on my track record.

Like, I don't want anybody pulling up my receipts going, like, Chris brought.

He bought these Air Force One that were, like, pink and blue.

Like, it's not.

Yeah.

If I'm not gonna wear them, I'm not buying them.

So that throws off a lot of things.

Like, you know, my number one offender here, Adam.

Adam from Mind Pump, is very eclectic when it comes to the shoes he's got, but it's.

Some of them are sentimental.

I could tell, like, they mean something to him from, like, the past again.

That's all well and good in the past, brother.

Yeah.

But today, like, I'm not.

I'll be honest.

I.

I it.

This might be bold.

Take.

Oh, God.

The Travis Scott dunks.

I'm not a fan.

That's the skater.

The skater ones with the bandana logo on it.

Those are Travis Scott.

Oh, I hate those.

Yeah, those are Travis Scotts.

I bought him those.

Like, I'll be honest, I.

They're very expensive.

Okay.

Yeah.

No, so I got those for Adam.

I know.

I've seen.

Yeah.

And it burned my soul.

And then I sent him texts when I got them.

I'm like, why do you want these?

But then when you got it, we also got the Oreos.

The fours, I think.

White Oreos, I think they're called.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Those are nice.

Those are nice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The horrendous Whatever.

Yeah.

Oh, I got the new, the Nike bike ones that just came out, the bricks, the Jordan four bricks everybody's trying to get.

Those are going to retail in the secondary market for like, I should say aftermarket.

They'll be like two grand each.

I think I'm due for a new pair.

Let me know what you want, bro.

With that.

Welcome back to the number one financial literacy podcast in the world.

Sitting next to me is my partner in crime, Chris Nahibi.

And sitting next to me on my right is my partner in time, the one and only Syed Omar, everybody.

Thank you.

And if you didn't know by now, you're listening to the higher standard, who does not have anybody sitting behind the ones and twos.

Empty desk.

Empty desk.

So let's fully autonomous, let's start off the show with another amazing repeat 5 star review.

It always makes me feel good when someone left a five star review and they're like, you know what?

You guys have been doing so well.

I got to send you another one.

I don't feel like doing this at the top of the show is very engaging.

Really.

It's not engaged, but we got to let people know that we appreciate them.

You drew the end of the show.

We don't do it and show because those are the listeners that stay locked in.

If you left a review, you have a reason to wait to the end.

That's true.

We can do that.

Stay tuned to the end of the show.

Yeah.

For PDUBS review.

Oh, good review.

Yeah.

So it's been a very tumultuous week.

We knew when we did the tariff episode, episode 276 last week that dropped on Tuesday of this week, that it was going to be impactful.

I don't think we knew exactly what that meant at the time.

When we made the episode and we did the episode, it was still really up in the air.

Whether.

Is this really a negotiating tactic?

What's, what's the driving force here?

Does he really believe everything he says?

And we saw the market go up and down based on just singular statements in some cases that were not actually being made.

A great example of this is that the White House was believed to have made statements that were inaccurate and that swung the market up and down.

Yeah.

And it's not just on a daily basis.

It's on the hour, like the markets are moving, you know, and then Trump came out and he said that China was retaliating with its tariffs and that it was the only country that was allegedly doing so and that he was going to raise tariffs today on China to 125%.

But everybody else was going to get a 90 day moratorium.

See, and that just creates even more suspense and more uncertainty.

Right.

Like what's going to happen?

Here's the problem with this now that the market definitely is listening and reacting in real time to headlines.

Yep.

Okay.

So now with that another 90 days now, people are still going to be waiting on the sideline and worried about what's going to happen next.

There's no that, you know, we know that.

We talk about this on the show all the time.

Investors are looking for certainty.

Right.

They want to know if they could put their money at play, is it safe for the long term?

And the best proxy for this investor sentiment is the vix, the fear gauge vix, if you want to Google it.

And we got as high as just above 60, which is very, very high for the Vix.

I would say anything above 25 would be considered to be a very elevated number.

We're still, I think above 30.

We were as we closed a couple days this week above 40s, about the high 40s.

And then one day above 50 and another day above 60.

And then today when everybody else tariffs were dropped to 10% and China was raised 125% with 90 day moratorium for everybody but China.

We saw the VIX drop down to 33, close.

It was a pretty wild swing.

And we saw one of the best days in market rises, frankly in the last several decades.

Probably one of the top three or four of all time.

And I would argue that's not good, that level of volatility, whether you made money on it or not.

And Trump had come out saying now's a great time to be in the market.

And then he did something which swung the market.

This or anybody else, this would be an SEC violation.

Like you're moving markets based on your statements.

It, it's, it's questionable behavior.

I mean, for the s and P500 to take a six and a half percent swing within a five hour window, that's crazy.

That is insane.

And I know that people are, someone's inevitably going to listen to this and say, hey, are you endorsing?

Are you, are you not endorsing?

Do you like Trump?

Do you not like this is nothing to do with liking him or his politics?

No, no.

Right.

This has nothing to do with having a political opinion that's Democratic or Republican.

No, but I do, I will say this, okay.

I think there's a time and a place.

I do believe that There's a time and a place for tariffs.

Ok.

That if used properly in a certain way, that I can get behind.

But, well, I mean, let's be clear.

Trump ran literally saying he was gonna, he was gonna do it.

The most anomalous thing here that I frankly have seen, and I know there's gonna be some dissenting op.

He said when he was running the tariffs were going to be a strategy he was going to deploy.

He said that.

Yeah.

He's the first president that I can literally recall in recent memory.

But he also said that got in.

The office and did exactly what he said he was going to do.

Yeah, but he also said that if we, you were to go the other way and elect the other, the other party, that the market would crash and this and that.

And he repeatedly said it over and over and look at the volatility that we're seeing right now.

Right.

So, but here's my thing.

There isn't enough, no different and actually worse than what Jerome Powell and the FOMC did.

Right.

By raising rates as fast as they, as they did two years ago.

Right.

Two and a half years ago at this point.

Right.

That banks and financial industries as a whole could not plan fast enough for the future.

No, no, you couldn't account for it.

Same thing with the tariffs.

What are all these businesses supposed to do?

You can't plan for this fast enough.

Well, I mean, again, I'll play devil's advocate here.

I'll take the other side of this equation and not because, again, my political opinion, but, you know, I'll try to play the other side.

My answer to that would be something along the lines of you don't need to plan for was less than a week of disruption for you.

It's been what, Thursday of last week to now.

Yeah.

It hasn't even been a full week.

Right.

What have you really changed?

But what we.

Here's the thing.

What's really changed?

We don't know where this could all go.

Yeah, I hear you.

And just like the, like the deficit.

Right.

And just like we have a, a budget that has to be approved in Congress.

Right.

And oh my God, we, we're, we have to approve funds by midnight, otherwise everything shuts down because we're out of money.

We have to approve another, another cap.

Well, people are gonna freak out in 90 days when they say, oh my God, we don't have tariff deals.

We're.

The tariffs gonna come back online, the market's gonna move again for sure.

I don't think anyone's gonna Come out.

Let's just say Trump's negotiating.

Let's just say that's the tack that he's taking here.

I think everybody's got a pretty good feel.

That's what he's attempting to do at least, right?

Mm.

If that's what he's attempting to do, he's not gonna have 100% compliance in 90 days.

No.

Mm.

Mm.

And there's a theory out there, and I think this is really bothersome for most people, that China did retaliate in our markets by creating a sell off in the bond market, driving Treasuries up and devaluing the US Currency in the process.

And there's a lot of people who are, what are called market experts going like, why the hell the treasury is rising with all this other stuff going on?

Doesn't make any sense.

That's the only plausible reason why that makes sense is that China retaliated with passive aggressive sell off of their US Debt.

Like forced liquidation.

Yeah, yeah.

And this has happened before a couple times in history, largely in response to, again, tariffs and some trade activity.

So explain, maybe unpack that a little bit.

How does that, how would that impact the economy as a whole by China doing that?

Well, I'm gonna do a terrible job.

Treasuries did work, were coming down.

Right.

And the Treasuries were coming down and they had a sell off of the Treasuries.

Right.

So there's more, there's less demand and more supply, if you will.

So what does that do?

It causes the long term end of the curve to continue to spike up over time.

And effectively in this window of time, it happened at such a rapid cadence that it caused the 10 year treasury to spike well above 4.

4.

I mean, it was a huge movement, like 30 basis points in a single day in some cases.

I mean, it was massive for the Treasuries.

And that's not normal with this much volatility and recessionary fears.

You would normally see them drop down and instead they're going up.

The only way that happens in my mind is that they're manipulating it.

I heard a really good argument.

There would need to be a large amount, right.

That would need to get billions of.

Billions of dollars that would need to be liquidated and kind of force this type of transaction.

That's theory number one.

Number two is that, and this is actually by my buddy Mark Sandy over at Moody's, he was, he was saying something the effect of.

I want to make sure I don't mischaracterize this, that he believed that there were margin calls happening in the market because of the stock prices dropping at such a rapid cadence that there are margin calls in the market and the margin calls in the market were impacting the credit defaults and having a sell off like tendency which made the market look like it was selling off, but when in fact Treasuries were rising because it was a forced sell off.

I don't know there's a real way to validate either one of those as a theory.

All I can tell you is we're seeing some very bizarre behavior not only from the executive office, not only from the response internationally, but also from the economic response in the markets.

None of this is normal.

And if you're confused by it or anybody listening to this is confused by it, I would say it's a totally rational thing.

Some very brilliant economists, brilliant financial minds are still very confused.

Well, yeah, things like this shouldn't be shifting as quickly as they do and.

You shouldn't have things acting in polar opposites.

So for example, the treasury shouldn't be rising while you're having a market sell off.

Right.

And then you shouldn't have.

Well, so Jerome Powell was at some conference the other day and I know they had an emergency meeting also April 7th, on the 7th, mind you, which the next.

I think a lot of people were like, oh my God, they're going to cut rates.

No, they're not.

They have a fiduciary responsibility to respond to things in the market that are abnormal.

And by respond, I don't mean to cut rates or not cut rates.

I mean they have a fiduciary responsibility to get together in a formalized committee, have a conversation about what they're seeing in the market and confirm whether their course of action to do nothing is the right action for right now.

Right.

Given that the Fed has always been data dependent, none of the stuff that we're seeing right now is data per se.

The markets are moving.

Yes, they've pivoted.

Those are numbers.

And they've also come out and said that, you know, a correction wouldn't be so bad.

And we've not seen anything that speaks to their primary focus.

We haven't seen inflation numbers come back in higher or lower yet.

We haven't seen jobs come back higher or lower yet.

So he was posed the question, right, basically insinuating stagflation.

Right.

Which is a form of recession.

People, people try to diminish it and say that it's not a recession, it is essentially recession too.

So remember if, if there, if there's a catalyst and something breaks, ultimately what the Fed will, would do is lower their Fed Funds rate.

Right.

Cut rates.

That will ultimately stimulate the economy.

That's how this works.

So he was asked, because of their dual mandate, they have to either stabilize prices, AKA inflation, and also control and give maximum employment.

Right.

And again, neither one of those other than speculation at this particular juncture in time, and this is April, what, 9th?

At this particular juncture in time, there is nothing from a data perspective that would cause the Fed to pivot other than speculation and fear of what could happen.

Right.

And so you posed the question, what would happen if, because of everything that we're seeing in the markets and what's going on with tariffs, if we did all of a sudden see mass layoffs, but inflation did not hit our goal.

Now you have two pieces of data that are working in opposite directions.

One is signaling that you need to keep rates higher because inflation hasn't come back down.

And the other is you need to cut rates because you need to bring the unemployment figure back down because in theory, at that time, unemployment would be spiking.

Right.

What would you do?

So he says, you know, the FOMC has a statement that they release, it's called the consensus statement.

Right.

Where they talk about this and they say essentially you, you examine them as two different formulas, and whichever one is further away from its goal, that's the one you attack.

So they have to analyze and try to consider, okay, is the, is inflation at 3% further away from our 2% goal, or is our, in theory, unemployment rate of 7%, 8%, 9, whatever it is, further away from our maximum employment.

So, and then how hard is it to get that back into focus?

And that's the one they have to tackle.

And I should point out at this particular juncture that there is competing priorities between what the executive office, the President wants and what Jerome Powell wants for their respective jobs.

I'm not making this, like, personal, but to give you some color and some context on exactly what does that mean by this?

You have Jerome Powell, who does not want the interference because he's supposed to be politically neutral.

Yep.

He can't respond to politics.

He can only respond to the economy.

And then you've got the President who's going out on open press releases and statements saying now would be a great time to cut rates Rome.

On his own platform.

On his own platform.

And it's that we really could use.

You cutting rates right now.

Because, look, if Trump and Doge and everyone Wants to lower the deficit.

Right.

It's going to be really hard to get to their $1 trillion mark.

The fastest way they could do it is if they can lower their interest payments.

And how do you lower interest payments?

By rates being cut down and then refinancing some of that debt.

See, and this is where I understand if you're in the President's seat and you don't want to strategically be open about what it is you're doing, because what you don't want to do is give away your negotiation power.

Fine.

I get that as a plausible theory as to why he hasn't explained himself.

Mm.

However, what I would argue is, is that this is not one of those cases when you're talking to the Fed Secretary of the fomc, Jerome Powell.

And yeah, you can do this behind the scenes.

You're doing this openly in front of everybody else.

Yeah.

Through headlines.

Through headlines.

Why aren't you explaining why you think.

And again, you are not an economist.

You are not Jerome Powell.

And find your successful entrepreneurs.

What CEOs are.

That's what the President is basically CEO of the United States.

But he has not explained why he thinks that is the right solution.

And I'm not saying that he has an obligation to.

I'm just saying it would very much help everybody to have some perspective.

On what exactly?

On why do you think cutting rates is the solution here?

Why do you think that helps anything?

Right.

And maybe he has a great scenario.

Maybe Navarro, some people who work for him have good explanations as to why they think that is a solution to this problem.

But yes, solutions to this problem, short term versus long term.

And now, and I'm just going to throw out again another speculative thought here.

Real estate owners are much like realtors and like people in the mortgage industry, they believe that the solution to the affordability crisis is lowering rates, not values going down.

And if you happen to own a lot of real estate like the President of the United States does, you don't want your real estate values going down.

You want cheaper financing.

Yes.

Right.

Which then drives values up over time.

There's a very much something you cannot ignore is a self serving benefit to him to have that rhetoric.

Now, you may believe that for other economic reasons and that's fine, but you know that's the baseline.

You know that people are going to look at you and say, okay, how does this benefit you?

And there's a reason that it does benefit you.

Yes.

So you owe it to the people to explain to them why this is not about Your personal gain.

Why you think this is right for the business world.

Yeah.

And everyone that you interact with.

Well, that's not necessarily true either, because let's be honest, these tariffs did not exactly go the way Tesla wanted them to.

No, yeah, that's true.

No, exactly.

But they.

A lot of the.

A lot of this can be rebounded.

So did Trump and Elon Musk have a falling out?

Is that what's going on here?

It kind of feels like he's sitting on the outskirts now.

Right.

Like, he's with Neel Kashkari in the back with crayons.

He went from being, like, in the White House with his kid picking his nose, wiping the president's desk, bro.

Tesla sitting right there in front.

Tesla and Apple are probably two of the largest companies impacted by these tariffs.

Yeah.

He's like, Tesla factories in China.

He said.

He said we could.

We could build the iPhones here in the US And Apple's like, no, no, no.

Well, some of the numbers that have come out on what that would look like if it was just tariffs, what it would look like.

The components are put together here.

3,500 bucks.

That's a lot of money for an iPhone.

I.

I don't know that I could.

I could swing that.

The price.

Yeah.

And to get a new one every couple years, that's.

That's a problem.

That's a huge problem.

Actually, I'm due.

I'm due this year for the new Apple iPhone.

We have a 15.

Yeah.

We.

Every two years, we get a new iPhone.

Every other year, we get.

So we get an iPhone.

Next year we get new Apple watches.

Next year we get new iPhone.

Actually, we've been hanging on to the ultras for a while, though.

Yeah.

I really like the ultra.

I have the old ultra.

I didn't get a new one.

I have the original Ultra that came out with the heart reminder.

A lot of stuff on it still.

Yeah.

And I got to tell you, I have really enjoyed this.

Well, out of all the watches I've ever owned, and I'm including all the fancy ones, this watch, by far and away, I get the most utility out of.

Yeah, me too.

Undeniable value.

I love it.

Yeah.

The only problem is it does mess up with dress shirts.

It is a little thicker, but I get my dress shirts with the cuff having increased a little bit for the watch.

So regardless of what watch I'm wearing, there's always a little bit of room.

So hard, bro.

Not really.

Custom shirts.

You know, most shirts that have the two buttons on it yeah, that's what.

That's for.

The second one, it's not because we'll have fat wrists.

No, I know that's a common misconception.

Oh, you're one of those thick Riz boys.

Are you going to use the outside button?

Right?

That thicky, thick.

Can we have this little anecdotal sidebar here?

I know the economy's been stressful, and this episode's supposed to be about, you know, the tariffs, and that's going on on some level, but why are all these people doing water fasts?

Is that.

Oh, multiple days.

They're doing, like, weeks and, like, 30 days, months in, like, water fast.

Why?

What is like, first of all, there are health benefits to this, right?

Allegedly.

But here's my thing is I don't like cleansing.

Same thing.

Well, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

You can't do this.

I don't like the idea of cleansing.

No, no.

You.

You take a nice, cold plunge every morning.

Okay.

Allegedly.

There's really good benefits.

I don't do it for that, though.

I know you don't do it for that.

I think some of these people also, allegedly, it makes them feel good, but they do feel better as they come off it.

Yeah, well, that's.

That's also because there's other biological reasons for it that make total sense, like fight or flight response.

You're.

You're triggering a.

Imagine if I shocked you, which I just got shocked earlier.

Earlier tonight, working the lights in the studio.

That was weird.

I'm like, ah, I'm getting shocked.

And then I.

Then I move my finger.

I wasn't like, move your finger.

I got shocked.

I.

I did that once.

I.

I have a story.

Go ahead.

I didn't know what was going on at first.

Yeah, Yeah.

I was like, ah, yeah, I'm getting shocked.

I'll move my finger.

Now I do the cold plunge thing because I know that there is a mental dexterity that comes from it.

Right.

Like, it's a difficult thing to do.

I don't want to do it.

Every single time I do it, I have to, like, talk myself into it.

Right.

I know there's a mental dexterity component, which.

Adversity builds character.

I'm trying to build character through physical adversity.

Yeah.

That's all it is.

And some days, like, when I work in.

When I do the construction stuff, I don't know what it is.

I lift weights more than most people do, and.

And I'm in decent shape, certainly.

But when I do construction work all day long, My back hurts.

I'll wake up the next morning and I just am craving getting the cold plunge and reducing the inflammation.

Really?

That's real?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, same thing goes with fasting.

I think that's why people are doing it.

Okay, fine.

I intermittent fast pretty much every day.

I'll stop eating dinner.

Yeah, but usually you know like 7, 8.

Huh.

You cheat though.

What do you mean?

On the gear.

That's cheating, bro.

That's not fast.

What?

Microdosing.

The.

Yeah, yeah.

Come on.

That's killing your appetite on purpose.

It's still intermittent fasting.

I know it's.

Yeah.

Technically what say is trying to say is I micro dose tirzepatide.

Tirpatide.

And I found.

I'm gonna make a bold statement here.

It has probably been one of the most life changing things I've ever taken.

Really?

I know.

And you've always said that since you started taking it.

Yeah, it was.

There's a mental clarity that comes from it.

I don't make any explanation as to why.

I think maybe it's blood sugar driven.

But they also say that comes with.

With fasting.

So what if it's the fasting that's give you the mental clarity.

Maybe.

But before I used to really struggle with 16 hours a day, every single day.

Like not eating.

Yeah, that's.

Yeah.

And I would get to the point where mentally I just think about food.

And now I can go the entire day not think about it once and I still get my calories in.

But there's also a component too.

I'm over 40, right.

I'm damn near 45, which is really weird to say.

Still for me, I know physically I need less protein and less calories.

My metabolism has slowed.

I don't know that.

Less protein.

Yeah, dude, I barely eat any protein.

I.

And you're still maintaining all your muscle mass.

I mean, I'm not as.

As muscular as I once was, but I'm also not trying to be super muscular.

I just want to be fit, dude.

Like I want the.

The rule of thumb is eat a gram of protein per pound of lean body mass.

Right.

When I was younger, that was the rule of protein.

Yeah.

So how much do you think you're taking it now?

Because there was a point in time where if somebody asked you, I knew every gram.

You knew every hit, man.

I, you know, I don't track and I don't even try to count anymore because I honestly, most days it's a struggle just get the calories in that.

I think just.

I Need to maintain.

I'd say I probably get between 80 and 100 grams of protein a day, and I weigh to 25.

That's low.

Yeah, man, but I really don't eat much.

Good for you.

I don't eat.

I don't eat a whole lot of food.

So I'll have my first meal around like, 12 or 1 mm, and then I'll have my second meal at like, 7, 8.

That's it.

I'll have some protein snacks along the way.

You know, give me 20 grams protein here, 20 grams of protein there.

But it'd be rare that I get more than 150 grams of protein a day.

Yeah, I am on testosterone.

I am on, you know, all the.

All the chemicals, so.

But yeah, man, I don't.

So what.

What bothers you about people doing the water fast?

I just don't think, first of all, we're 60.

Water.

Right?

Your brain is largely water and fat.

And I think this ideology of putting your body through something like that cleanses you.

Or.

You have to be real careful with how you introduce food back into.

Yeah, well, I mean, that's people who go on, like, the larger fast.

Yeah.

It's just.

I've never found the idea of, like.

I don't think human physiology is meant for cleanses.

We're not built like that.

Right.

Like, we wouldn't go through these periods of time.

We're like, you know what?

I'm just gonna naturally eat nothing but squirrel meat.

Like, what?

What?

Like, I'm just gonna.

You.

You.

You lived off what you lived off of.

You ate when you ate, but you didn't.

Unless.

I mean, unless you couldn't hunt or something.

I get.

You go through periods of time where you eat more, eat less, but you wouldn't be like, you know what?

I'm just not gonna drink water for a month.

Yeah.

What?

And then I always criticize people who do this, and they always tell me how amazing it feels, and I'm like, all right, cool.

You look like you're dying, but fine.

Look frail, you know?

Like, it's just.

It's just weird.

It makes them happy.

Whatever.

Whatever makes you happy makes you a better version of yourself.

And I guess it's adversity.

So good for you.

But, you know, I just know there's that.

There is that moment for some people, because I know that I.

I used to do the whole intermittent fasting thing, too.

I know it doesn't look like it, but once you pass that, like, 10am Mark, it's like, smooth sailing and Then it's like I could keep going.

I look at it more as, like, if I'm busy, then it's easy.

Oh, yeah.

If I'm not busy, I'm like, nachos sound good.

I know during.

During Ramadan this year, I fasted a handful of times, and that's not how Ramadan works.

I know it's bad.

Yeah.

I can't modify it, but I've made sure to fast on the days I was coming into the office because I'm not doing that on the weekend.

Fasting.

Yeah.

It's difficult going around kids events and then just sitting there and you're like, this is terrible.

I'm just looking at the clock constantly.

When I'm at work all day and I'm just working, it just.

Clocks is flying by.

So you don't love your family.

How do you come to that conclusion?

They make you stressy?

Yeah, no, they don't make it stress either.

Just you're sitting there at a kid's sporting event, you're like.

And also when you.

If you see people, it's like your breath smells.

Yeah.

You don't want to breath smell.

What do you mean?

Your breath smells?

When you fast all day, you don't have any water and you don't eat.

You know, you haven't fasted in a very long time.

I fast every day for 16 hours.

No, you drink water on top of it and you drink your C4 energy drink first thing in the morning at 6am See your stories, bro.

Crack it open in the fridge.

Yeah.

There's no doubt.

Like the present.

Yeah.

I mean, you know the whole reason why I started the stories, right?

Why I feel like a lot of those influencers who post like a day in the life, they post these curated days in life, but they don't ever post the stories.

So I thought, let me post what an actual, like, daily routine looks like.

Yeah.

This is what it looks like when you really do it.

It's not glamorous.

Right.

No one's throwing me a Saratoga bottle of water.

It's very simple.

Get up, get your workout in, first thing, answer some emails while you're in the cold plunge, and then get.

Get to the office.

It's not complex.

I did 20 minutes cardio.

I do, you know, my cold plunge, and then, you know, I get ready for the day and then I'm out.

And then some days I gotta be in the office by 8.

Some days I have a little more leeway.

Flexibility.

Those days I grab a coffee before I go in.

You Know, try to mix it up.

But how do you plan your days out?

I mean, do you plan them out in advance as far as, like, how you plan on tackling next day?

I need your morning routines, your morning routine.

So I always look at my calendar for the next day as my last thing before I leave the office.

Because you have so many things going on, right?

Yeah.

Like, I know all this stuff is outside of work hours.

It's 10:30 on a Wednesday, 10:30pm Right.

But with everything else going on, I mean, with the studio and you got, you know, the officer, all this stuff you got going on, the office got.

Five calendars working out.

Yeah, five calendars, yeah.

The way I look at it is, is I just, I stay busy.

Yeah.

Everybody's got different levels of output.

And I'm not saying that I'm better or worse than anybody else.

I just have a high level of output.

I've always known that about myself.

Yeah.

And, you know, I don't mind working.

Hard, but is it going to be hard for you to slow down when, as Carter continues to get older?

No, I work around it.

So, like on Sunday we went to Disneyland all day long, you know, um.

Let'S say he gets into sports or something, or music or something else.

No, I'll just sacrifice sleep.

Yes.

It's just more sleep.

No, I'm dead serious.

I'll just, you know, sacrifice the things I need to sacrifice in order to be there.

It's just what it is.

I like the idea of, of going home and like, watching television, but I don't really do that ever.

I think it's.

It's like rare.

We, like once a week, if there's a show out, like Severance, like, I'll come home, like with Joanna, and like, we'll have like one night a week where I'll like, watch an episode, maybe two for like, really, like, you know, looking out.

But I've got a great wife who's very understanding of my impatience with a lot of things.

So I'll get up before her and I'll be in the downstairs on the bike and getting the cold plunge.

I'll come upstairs, usually her and Carter awake by then, say good morning, spend a little bit of time with them if I have it.

Most mornings I don't.

And then, you know, I get ready to go to work.

Yep.

I usually leave before they take.

She takes Carter to school, which usually about 8:00, and then I'm working all day long.

I'll leave the office, I'll go to the gym for 20 minutes cardio, then 40 minutes lifting, and then most days, I've got something after that, you know, I'll go home for, like, an hour, spend some time with them at whatever.

If I'm lucky, I can stay at home and.

And do some work on the computer.

If I'm not lucky, I'll go to the studio.

And I've been doing a lot of these days lately, and I'll work on.

On the studio because it needs to be up and running by May 1st, which is, you know, less than three.

Weeks away now, right around the corner.

Right.

And then weekends are usually full day of work, too.

Like, I don't take days off.

I haven't had a vacation since my brother really got married, which was 20, 23, and that was, you know, five days I went to Hawaii with my wife.

But this is the conversation I had with my wife the other day, too.

And I was listening to one of Rogan's episodes, and he was talking about his hobbies.

Right.

And you're in.

It's no secret.

Right?

He's like.

He has OCD when it comes to this stuff.

When it went.

Any of.

Any of his hobbies, he, like, he just gets engulfed, and he wants to.

Gets all in.

He's all in.

Right.

And you think, like, okay, he's got a wife, he's got kids.

You know, he takes the podcast seriously.

You know, he takes working out very seriously.

Does the UFC thing, does UFC thing.

He does the whole archery thing.

Right.

He does the whole hunting thing.

There's all these different things that he does.

And in order to become really good at all those things, if that's what you want to do, there are sacrifices you have to make along the way.

Yeah.

I mean, and you have to ask yourself, like, okay, well, if you idolize somebody like that.

Right.

And you want to be equally good at all, all those types of things or that many different things.

But that's the disconnect from you.

A lot of people do that stuff because they idolize somebody.

That isn't the reason to do it.

No.

This is just who I am.

No, but what I meant is, like, look, like, he's.

He's.

He's not defined by any one thing.

I'm saying if you want to be like that, where you like multiple things and are good at multiple things, society discourages that behavior.

Yeah, man.

Right.

Really discourages it.

Like, people will make you feel bad about, like, oh, you don't spend time with your family, like, you know, every night or this.

And that and you're like, well, why am I a bad person for wanting to get good at other things, too?

And, like.

And if it works for my wife.

And I, then society discourages the hell out of that behavior.

And it's weird.

Like, on one hand, you get compliments, like, oh, I don't know how you do it.

Blah.

But then on the other hand, you get a lot of criticism.

Mm.

It's weird.

So, like, I get, you know, I'm an attorney, I'm a broker, contractor, all this other stuff.

And, you know, I make quips here and there, but people will comment.

They'll see my stories, be like, oh, like, you should get a contractor's license.

You should be a contractor.

This doesn't work out.

And I'm like, no, I am a contractor, dude.

Yeah.

And they.

They typically go like, oh, my God, you everything, man.

Like, and it's like, yeah, but at the same time, you have to understand, like, I like this stuff.

Like, I.

I do it.

I'm not doing it because I go, look at me.

I'm big man on the campus.

La, la, la, la, la.

You know, it's just.

It's just I'm.

I do it because I like it, and I share what I like with people that.

Because I'm doing these things.

But I know a lot of people, and I.

Look, I'll call my brother out right now.

My brother sees this stuff, and he's a closet hater about it.

It's a competition for him.

He feels.

He feels, like, super competitive.

And I'm like, look, dog, don't.

You don't have a need to compete with me.

It's not.

Yet.

I'm not.

It's not competition.

Yeah.

Like, I.

I'll be honest with you.

I probably make less money because I do all these things, not more, you know?

And what's your.

What's your.

What's your design of wealth?

Is your design of wealth and your idea of wealth to go make a ton of money and, like, have a lot of time off, because that's not what I get.

That's not my life.

Well, I don't know.

I don't know that that's the case for your brother, but I'll speak about just closet haters in general.

Right?

But it's like, okay.

Why it's okay to idolize that type of behavior when it's someone like Steph Curry, LeBron James that are, like, ultra successful, making millions of dollars.

But if.

If you're not to that level, then you can't idolize it.

Like those guys are making.

Those guys are making equal sacrifices.

Yeah.

But there's.

There's a big, Big societal miscommunication here.

It's a misconception.

You can call it whatever you want.

We believe that you have to work hard, and if you put this massive amount of effort in, you get this massive reward, and that's usually money or fame back.

I wish life were that equitable.

I wish it were that fair.

It's not.

And I'll give you a great example, and I'll use sports because I know how much you can't focus on anything else.

You would think.

Yeah.

You would think.

What is that the soundtrack for?

Is it like the soundtrack?

You would think that some of these athletes wake up, train super hard, you know, work out, eat well.

They do all these things, and they're just in incredible shape.

And I'll tell you, I've seen a whole hell of a lot of athletes over the years.

Yeah.

Who eat terribly, who don't like working out, who literally never lift weights.

Yes.

And are still among some of the most incredible athletes and make millions of dollars.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Every single year.

Yeah.

That ain't fair.

That ain't fair.

No, but it's not fair.

But.

But.

No, no.

Okay.

There's no secret.

Obviously, genetics do play a role in it.

But all.

You can't.

You can't also, in the same.

That's just one, though.

But you can't.

In the same breath, you have to.

You have to also consider that sacrifices were made along the way to get to that point.

Not always.

That doesn't just.

Not always.

That doesn't just happen like that.

You're generalizing way too much, bro.

No, hell, okay, let's take it someplace else.

Nepotism is ripe in Hollywood.

It's in everywhere in the work environment.

And it's not just gen nepotism, it's colloquial social nepotism.

I like Saeed.

He's brown.

Like me.

I'm gonna hook him up with a job.

I mean, it's just.

I hate to say it like that, but sometimes it's as petty as that.

And if you think that it's fair that it's a, you know, meritocracy all the time, I would say more often than not, it is not a meritocracy.

And I'm not saying that your job is doing this, but I'm just saying, like, look, like, if you think that some people get ahead because they're putting in all this work, well, there's a Lot of times that ain't the case.

They just got opportunities you didn't get.

Which is a terrible way to say that sometimes luck is, in fact, the combination of preparation and opportunity.

That's not a terrible thing, though.

That's true, though.

That's not a secret.

Sometimes your preparation level can be a whole lot lower than your opportunity level, and you can still just get the same level of success.

I'll use an example that's very visible to the world.

Lucky Palmer, who starts.

Who started Andrew, who's a billionaire, who got.

Who sold this virtual reality headset?

He was a kid.

He found two pieces of technology.

And this story is very public.

It's out there.

He's told it.

Two pieces of technology.

He put them together and made a superior virtual reality helmet, which ultimately got sold to Facebook, which became the Oculus device.

And he worked for Facebook and made billions of dollars from that transaction, which included stock and cash as well.

He was really young.

I know he probably feels like he worked super hard to get there.

And I'm not saying he's not intelligent, but there are a lot of brilliant engineers who probably work in some part for him at Andrew now, which is an amazing company, and they do some really crazy things there.

I mean, the technology is just astonishing, some of the stuff they've got now.

But that was a pretty wild series of opportunity and preparation.

No.

Is it because he's brilliant?

Brilliant.

Right time, right place plays a role.

There's a lot of factors, man.

There's a lot.

There's a lot of variables.

Of course there's a lot of variables.

And the problem I have is, is a kid will say, oh, look.

And I grew up with a friend who was always looking for.

At the time, we were growing up as apps, mobile apps, AB solutions.

Everybody had to have an app.

Yeah, apps how you make money.

Apps make you rich.

Yeah, yeah.

And he was always looking for apps.

And like, I'm gonna build out.

I'm gonna build an app.

And it's like, dude, you understand?

It's like social media on some level.

Sometimes you just gotta have enough, you know, you gotta have enough things that are visible, and maybe one will pop off.

Maybe they'll do something for you.

Yeah, maybe you wind up being the hawk to a girl slanging a meme, coin disappearing.

Right.

You know, I don't mean to be, you know, malicious, but it's not just the opportunity sometimes.

She got off the hook too, by the way.

Right?

I think she did.

Yeah.

But this is just wild.

Disconnect.

And the problem is the proverbial downside to this is a lot of young people and old people alike will look in the mirror and see failure because they didn't get the opportunity to get lucky.

That doesn't make you a failure, man.

You can't use money and fame or status as a proxy for success.

Right.

You got a roof over your head.

You can pay your bills.

You're living comfortably.

That's a W, bro.

You're a present father, a present mother, whatever it is.

That's a W.

Just being able to do that and be there and making that a priority in your life, that costs you nothing.

But time.

Time is a resource, just like money is.

Right.

I'll say.

I know.

I have several family members who are a little bit older who are, you know, coming to the end of their careers, and they don't have hobbies.

Right.

And some of these things that we're doing outside of work hours, and if nothing ever comes to them and as long as they provide you the mental clarity.

Yeah, right.

Like, that's a W.

The fact that you have.

That humans inherently need that you need struggle.

You need to.

That's why.

Why do you think people love doing marathons and they.

You almost are searching for the struggle to overcome.

Yeah, I never, I don't like them.

Yeah, I know, but like the cold plunge.

Why do you like to.

Why do.

Why do people like the cold blood?

It feels good to do something hard that you don't.

Doesn't feel good right away.

Now it's gotten to the point for you where it feels good.

Yeah, there are moments, but like, building out an entire studio, it's got its challenges.

I regret that deeply.

You're talking about electrical, right?

How much you hate electrical.

I, I, I regret starting that project.

Yeah, I, I did.

So probably this is not public knowledge, but I'll share.

My dad listed that property, and I bought it and got him a commission on that deal.

I probably overpaid about 40 grand for it.

I was still reeling, which I talked about on the show before, from selling the one property I had to sell to cover taxes and everything else.

And it really bothered me to go, you know, minus one on a property.

So this opportunity came up, and it gave me that a property back and the timing was right.

But when you and I walked in.

I'm not gonna lie, my guy, I didn't see the vision.

Yeah.

When you, when you decided to pull the tr.

Like, if it were.

If I really had a say.

Say in it, I'd be like, this Ain't the one, bro.

Like, initially, because I didn't see the vision.

Now, after all the work that you've done to it already, I'm like, oh, okay, I see it now, but I've always been that way.

When we.

When we bought the house that we bought, and my wife had ideas to make furniture, this, like, really.

I mean, I guess I didn't see.

The vision either, to be honest with you.

Like, it.

I.

And keep in mind, like, I don't.

I might be a general contractor, but I'm not an interior designer, you know?

Yeah.

I just.

I was like, look, I can't.

I can't operate in this space the way it is.

We got to figure something out.

Yeah.

And then I started doing, like, research, and I'm like, okay, like, I'll get some.

I'll get a glass wall right here.

People wanted, like, 10, 11 grand for a glass wall.

Let me just do myself.

And then.

Not even that.

That was just the wall cost.

I'm like, wait, what?

Yeah, we paid $2,700 for the glass wall.

I mean, I got quotes from everybody.

I think the cheapest quote I got was, like, eight or nine grand.

And I'm like, y'all know this is glass and metal, right?

Nothing fancy.

Like, I don't need.

What?

What?

Yeah, it was wild, man.

If you're like, well, you need it to be soundproof.

I'm like, I really don't.

I got a noise gate on the.

On the.

On the audio equipment.

It's just gonna be me in there.

And look, this.

This.

This space right now is not, like, totally soundproof, but it sounds totally fine.

Right.

I mean, I listen to a lot of podcasts that sound really bad.

Yeah, no, not as good as this, for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So the mental clarity, I think, in and of itself, is a W.

So to your point, if you can spend time with your family and do whatever you need to do to get that mental clarity, that's a W.

Yeah.

But I think for a lot of people, it's still social media.

I am super tired.

Like, damn.

Yeah.

I'm so sorry you haven't been.

You have not been sleeping very much.

I've not been sleeping much.

I.

You know, the last couple nights, too, I've been up super early and going to bed super late, but I've just been kind of tired, man.

I think this market volatility has really been emotionally taxing because I'll wake up in the morning, and instead of, like, just.

Because normally when I wear the peloton in the morning I'll watch like Netflix some couple minutes.

I've got CNBC on.

I'm trying to get it right out the gate.

Yeah, yeah.

So I knew on Sunday I was watching the futures market which was telling me exactly kind of what was going to happen in the market.

I saw the pre, pre market open trading, which I knew was red.

So I knew.

So maybe unpack that a little bit for you.

Why would you look at the futures market and what does that look like?

A futures market is generally an indication of what you can expect to see in a stock market coming up.

If the future market is exactly what it sounds like.

Right.

It's basically you're pre trading what's going to happen.

I was also watching some of the overseas markets.

I knew that.

Yeah.

A lot of tech companies are in the future markets, right?

Yeah.

Japan and China, I knew were having hits from tariffs.

And that doesn't necessarily mean that the US can have hits a big hit.

But certainly if you're seeing global markets that are ahead of you by a day in trading, meaning it's already Monday, there's already start to take a hit, you can pretty much unpack.

This could be a global problem.

Right.

The futures market was getting a little volatile.

The VIX had closed high up.

So I knew volatility was a real problem.

So I started watching.

I got up early and started watching pre trading.

There's a window of time before the market actually opens where you can kind of pre trade anticipate what's going to happen.

And it was all trading down negative.

It isn't always a good proxy for what's going to happen when the market opens.

But certainly I expected there to be some volatility and I think we got that wild swings in the market.

It was down one minute up the next minute.

You couldn't really call it.

There's never neither no day since this whole terror situation has been announced.

Has the market been consistently down the entire day?

There's been trading up and trading down and trading up and trading down and every single verbal thing that's being said is being unpacked.

Yeah.

You know, somebody said that oh my God, tariffs are going to affect at 12 o'clock and they're like, oh my God, 12 noon.

And they're like no, no, it was 12:01am and people.

And that for some that difference drove a pretty big change in the market because you're like, oh my God, it's only an effect now.

Oh my God, it's only an effect.

You Know, tomorrow morning.

In reality, that has no tangible impact.

If you ever had a reason to buy into the idea of long term investing, this is it right here.

Right?

Like, this is why I could never do the day trading thing.

Well, and there are some theories that, that are not really substantiated, that I think are worthy of discussion.

Like, to be completely honest, does this make the US a less attractive place to invest your money if you're a foreign country?

The US In a lot of ways is like the water in the pipeline pushing things through.

Because it's such a heavily invested country, everybody really invests here if they can.

And because of that, money typically flows to the United States pretty aggressively.

So one could argue, you know, the US economy is too important for other parts of the world to say we're going to back away from it.

But there are those out there who believe that you can take a country like Russia, who's got sanctions and a country like China, who is a big trade partner in the United States, and say, okay, we're now aligning these two people to not like the United States.

We're now aligning their behavior against the United States.

Could they facilitate economic growth outside of relationship with the United States and what would that mean for us?

You know, China being manufacturing trading partner for the most part.

And there could be some ramifications.

You could get the Saudis and people in the UAE saying, you know what, the US has been a safe haven of stability over time.

We've been very confident in the market to say we have a president who's willing to do things that we don't think are stable.

The VIX is showing the fear gauge at very, very high numbers.

We don't feel that we should be so concentrated in the United States.

We should diversify into other countries where the risks are probably not as great, or if this were to happen again, we wouldn't have the same single event risk that we had before.

So there is a compelling argument to be made that you could see this having long lasting impacts to the perception of trading with the United States.

And even if the market is stable and things are okay, you could make an argument again, this is not fact, this is speculation that people will say, you know what, as long as this president's in office, there's too much risk of unknown and rogue behavior for us to be this concentrated.

Yeah, it does.

It does.

Really, it.

From the very beginning, it did kind of blow me away that like this administration found the one thing that there weren't any checks and balances.

On that he can fully control by himself.

Yeah.

And that, that, that's tariffs, man.

So tariffs, you can do that.

It's not like the federal government employees where it's not so easy.

There's lots of court cases around that.

But.

And then you got.

So just as an update for everyone, our next FOMC meeting is in May.

Right.

70 some odd chance that there's not going to be any cuts.

He already came out and said we still have room to wait.

You know what I don't think is right right now.

So since the whole tariff conversation, the world intake probability in Chicago Mercantile Exchange have shown up to four cuts coming before the end of the year.

So.

And just as a recap for everybody, in March in that meeting, they had to lay out their projections for the rest of the year.

They said only two.

Yeah, right.

And as of right now, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is showing that the cut will be in June.

So there's 95 chance.

There's a high probability in June, in July, in September and December, there's four that are high probabilities now.

Which I think is wrong.

Right.

I don't think the FOMC is going to pivot from and we're not going.

To get an update on their projections until that June meeting.

Yeah.

So that, that's the one that everyone right now is circling on their calendar.

And that's going to be hard, man.

Nothing that we've done so far has not been inflationary.

Make sense?

There's a lot of double negatives there.

Nothing that we've done so far has not been inflationary.

Yeah, yeah.

Everything.

Everything has been inflationary.

Everything's been.

Yeah, it could have been that way.

See, dude, I am strangely tired tonight.

Yeah, that C4 did nothing for me.

That's just water for you.

That's candy.

It's not candy, but it's.

It's certainly hydrating.

I don't know, man.

It says Hawaiian Punch on the side, dude.

It's the best flavor known to man.

Hawaiian joint.

Yeah, that's good.

Hawaiian punch is my new favorite C4 flavor.

Yeah.

And it literally tastes like Hawaiian Punch.

And what made you get on the C4S?

First of all, it's got 200mg caffeine and it's got all the.

But honestly, they all got the 200 milligrams of caffeine.

No, monsters are like 140.

They're just not cutting it.

It's not getting it done, bro.

I was at the Rock Stars for a while.

I did.

I Have a caffeine problem.

I'm so desensitized from a cortisol level, like, response now.

Like, I can.

I can drink this and go to sleep.

I literally just had a C4 and I'm.

I'm exhausted.

I'm ready to go to sleep.

That's why.

That's not normal.

That's not normal.

That's not.

You keep looking at the clock like you want to get out of here.

Well, you keep looking at the clock.

You keep yawning.

I do.

I'm trying.

I'm trying to hook you up.

Let's, let's, let's.

Let's read P Dubs.

P does review.

How about that?

Okay, let's do this.

This from our boy, P Dub.

Another five star review.

Broseph Saeed getting some hate recently with some of his negative Nancy attitude.

Deservedly so.

I mean, deservedly so.

Yeah, but people are so sensitive.

Yeah.

Most chiefly among them is Saeed.

No, I'm not.

I got thick skin.

No, you don't.

You just got a lot of hair.

I got thick skin.

Come on, man.

You know, stuff bothers you.

What?

Oh, come on now.

Give me some.

Give me something.

You think that bothers me when people.

You know, I'll be honest with you.

I'll be 100 honest with you.

Tell me, what do you think bothers.

Me when they think.

Then they call you a raging Democrat.

That bothers you?

That's how.

No, it doesn't.

Because that's hilarious.

Because that's so far from the truth.

Is it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I guess we'll never know.

Yeah.

Modern.

I'm Cuban, baby.

I'm independent.

Right?

I'm not gonna lie.

I didn't like the shade he threw at all in David Sacks.

Neither did I.

Friends.

Neither did I.

Unfortunately, I had a right to question it.

No, you didn't.

What do you mean?

David Sacks, a living legend.

How dare you?

He's okay.

Why?

Because he's funny.

His last name's Sacks.

Can't hate on sackies.

Can't handle.

Yeah, yeah.

Can't touch that anymore.

But he's got every right to question.

So chill, people.

Driving and listening to the attempted positive pod number 275 and had to reach out.

Love the pod, the new format and all the solid info you put out.

Tempted, Positive.

Translate, Lucy.

Y'all failed.

Yeah, y'all weren't positive, man.

Positively negative.

If I have time for only one episode and choose between the Higher Standard podcast and Mind Pump.

Oh, yeah, this is.

This is where it got a Little twisted.

I've crossed over to the number one financial literacy podcast as my go to listen.

Also, where's DJ Baboon?

Is he ever coming back?

No, he's not, no.

Yeah, he's got.

Baby number three is due in June.

See, but he didn't really depart in what I would call a meaningful way.

So the questions like that come up like, it's fair.

I get it.

Yeah.

He owes it to the listeners.

He owes an explanation.

And I'm not gonna lie, we replaced him with AI and the AI is way faster.

Like, it's just.

It's not even.

I used to wait days for him to get, like, the ultimate Bother Me.

Yeah, that's right.

Now I can do it like, two hours, and it's literally like.

Like 40 minutes of that is just the computer doing its own thing.

But I miss him chiming in, really.

I miss his breathing, man.

You know how many times I'd have to clean up his.

It was nice.

It was nice having a carpool buddy on the way over here.

I'm sure it was.

Yeah.

I don't have one still.

Yeah, you live five minutes away.

Well, I mean, I am building the damn studio at this point in time.

You could have built it next to me.

If I had to drive 30 miles to build a studio, I'd kill myself.

I just honor kill myself.

There are some days I come here, man, and I'm like, I don't want to be here.

I don't want to be here right now.

So if you're listening to this podcast and you still haven't left us an honest 5 star review, please go over and do so.

We actually have a lot of good things planned for the upcoming future.

Anything you want to hint at guests lined up?

Yeah, the goal is to get everything done by May 1st so I can get guests in the door.

We're gonna do a lot more episodes with guests.

What do you think the conversations are gonna be geared and steered around?

Keep my ass awake.

Science not doing a good job?

No, I think we.

We try to increase the cadence of the show back to two episodes a week.

But we can do that by facilitating guest conversations that don't have a timely aspect.

A lot of what we cover now, despite shows like this, where we're just, you know, talking to you is really timely, like, so that, you know, data comes out.

We talk about it.

The Fed makes a move, we talk about it.

The President does some strange stuff.

We talk about the ramifications, but it kind of has to come out.

I mean, even Even this last tariff conversation, we were thinking about putting it out earlier just because we knew how timely it was.

But we decided not to deviate from our regular Tuesday cadence because we know that does.

I mean, look, people have schedules.

They look forward to it.

Like, the last thing I want to do is pivot.

Yeah.

It'd be nice to throw in, like, a bonus episode.

Yeah.

So we could throw in.

So we.

If we get enough guests episodes logged in, I'd like to be able to just drop those on, like, a Thursday or Friday.

Drop those, like, later in the evening, like 5pm and you listen to it.

Great.

Awesome.

If you don't.

Cool.

You have a main episode that drops on Tuesday.

If you like hearing this.

I love hearing the stories of guests.

I love hearing just kind of, like, their personal journeys.

For me, that's always been intriguing.

It's kind of the reason why I got in this to begin with.

Yeah.

Is that it wasn't just about, like, me talking to the camera.

That's what was the beginning.

It was that I got to talk to other people about what they did and how they got to where they're at.

I think, to me, that's compelling.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of people that I know from a social sphere, especially social media, that I'm connected to that have really cool stories, and a lot of people that I have not brought on the show just out of respect for the space that we're in.

And I'll be honest.

Like, I know this is probably gonna sound real stupid to a lot of people, but when we started the show, we were in my garage.

Right.

When we built this space out, we did it with the idea of having guests in, but I think it just didn't function right for us.

No.

Yeah, in theory, it would be nice, but it would be a little challenging.

And I'm a little embarrassed of the space as it is in here right now.

It's a nice spot for you and.

I.

Yeah, it's perfect for us.

But when you bring guests in, it's cramped.

It's not very welcoming.

All that will be resolved with the new space, where you got a dedicated green room up front.

You got to, you know, show in the back.

You got to.

We'll have a fully stocked kitchen slash coffee bar.

People can, you know, have a drink, you know, relax.

And it's got a completely dedicated space.

There's not people walking in and out in the backgrounds.

And the sound deadening in there is actually way better than this space.

So I think you get a Lot more privacy, a lot more open conversations, and I think we can really space out the cameras.

And what I want to do is I want to have more of a.

A desk format where you and I can be across one another.

Yeah.

And think of, like, Joe Rogan, if you will, with like, Chris Williamson lighting.

That's kind of what I'm.

Although his.

His.

For those of you who don't watch his show, his lighting, particularly like the Matthew McConaughey episode, is so incredible.

I don't know who cinematographer is and who's doing his lighting.

He's obviously got a professional team and he's got multi million following.

His lighting is so beautiful, so cinematic.

It's not one of those things that most people would notice, but you can watch like a Logan Paul podcast or a Dear Media podcast.

Great shows.

Really, really high, like, you know.

Yeah.

But there's something about those shows, too, that are captivating because it's.

It's like.

It's almost like it's real.

It's raw.

Yeah, super raw.

That's the.

That's the draw.

Yeah.

Well, generally those usually.

That's why you got the guy with the one camera that's holding it and it's shaking.

They want you to feel like it.

You're there.

I get that.

Me, personally, I want to look at something that looks curated and beautiful, and I'm not going to be the beautiful thing, so I got to have lighting, you know, fill that gap.

Yeah.

Right.

So.

But it's taken me, honestly, four years to really understand the value of lighting in cinematography and how to really bring something.

Oh, I remember when we went up to Mind Pump and I just looked up at the ceiling and I was like, what in the 60 grand?

Just for those lights.

Just the lights.

Just the lights.

Yeah.

It makes those guys look really good, though.

I mean, they look all right.

Yeah.

Doug's the best.

All right, man.

Brilliant mind behind the scenes.

Doug, you know, he's.

Dude.

Doug is a loyal follower of my social media.

Yeah, yeah.

Homeboy is always in the stories.

I love him.

And for those of you who don't follow me on social media, I would point out that I do share a whole lot of content on Instagram and the stories that goes away in 24 hours.

There are things that I post to X into threads which are more narrative driven.

Certainly LinkedIn as well.

Yeah.

But if you want a more inclusive look at my day and what I deal with on a daily basis, I'm trying to really post pretty regularly in the stories to that end.

I want to share what it is that I do at a normalized cadence that's not curated.

This is just what I see and what I do.

And there's a pretty big gap in the day because when I go into the office, you got clients, I got NDAs.

I can't share everything, but certainly I try to give you a look before and after.

Yeah.

So you can kind of see what this is.

This is what it looks like for somebody that's really doing it.

Yeah.

Do you want to actually start a podcast?

This is what it takes.

Yawning at, like, midnight.

This is what it looks like.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's not pretty.

Yeah.

Not elegant.

All right.

You got anything else?

Yeah, I do.

Tell me.

So today is Wednesday.

It is 10:57pm yeah.

Trump just announced that there was a moratorium on.

On all the countries except for China.

90 days.

Where you go with this.

Okay.

Oh, God.

The market had a huge positive swing.

It was wild.

And tomorrow is anyone's guess.

So I want to hear your guess at what you think tomorrow is going to be.

What do I think tomorrow's going to be?

Is the stock market going to see the same level of volatility we've been seeing the last couple days, or are we now looking at stability for the.

No.

I'm volatility camp, baby.

Really?

Yeah.

What would be the bad news that would change the market's trajectory after a positive take today?

China retaliating.

China putting out a release.

No, with.

With the way.

With the way everything's been going.

It could literally be any headline, any.

I mean, Bill Ackman could come out again and say something negative about what he sees going on and that people could be like, wait a minute.

This guy was supportive of everything he's done so far.

What's going on?

Elon's been oddly quiet, hasn't he?

Yeah.

He's probably pissed off.

Yeah.

What if.

Yeah, everybody took their toys, I went home, left him in the schoolyard.

I wouldn't really consider him as someone that's.

He'll do something off the cuff.

God.

Have you seen.

They caught him lying about his gaming.

What do you mean, caught him lying about his gaming?

I don't.

I don't know how much of this is true, but I saw the outcome of it.

People believe that he was lying about how he said he's one of the best gamers in the world at one of his games, Diablo or something.

Right.

And he's posted some gaming sessions.

Right.

But then he hosted and the nerds.

Came out and were like, you're not that good, bro.

He hosted this live stream while he was gaming, and the comment section was just lighting after him.

He had to, like, block people.

Like, that's a rookie move.

And then ultimately, the quote, the Internet went down.

Elon Musk, your Internet.

It doesn't go down.

That don't happen.

You have Starlink.

We know this.

Okay?

If anybody's got a big Starlink satellite that's not as reliable as you, bro.

So they were.

So they were roasting him.

He was roasted.

He got a little sensitive.

He.

He was.

He didn't get sensitive.

He wasn't emotional about it, but he was certainly blocking people.

So.

Okay, you have.

You would consider yourself as someone who.

Has thick skin Sometimes.

Sometimes.

I was real pissed off earlier tonight.

What is some.

What is something that you cherish a lot that if somebody roasted, you'd get really sensitive about?

Obviously not, like, family stuff.

Obviously.

You know, wife, kids.

You can't leave that stuff out.

But, like, something that you care about enough to where if somebody roasted, it would make you sensitive.

A little sensi.

Like somebody just started attacking your shoe game.

Nah, I don't care.

Because, you know.

You know well enough.

So, like, nah, I know what I got.

So what would it be?

My wife and my son.

I said, live the family out.

That's.

I know.

That's corny, bro.

There's no.

There's no haircuts.

Your hair, your transplant.

Hair transplant.

I make fun of that myself.

I openly talk about it.

Yeah.

Nah, man.

They'd be really hard to get under my skin, like, criticizing me.

It's.

You're too old not to care.

No, I.

I do care.

It's just it, you know, to care.

What other people think.

People have opinions, man.

Like, and it's.

And I've had a lot of people's opinions without even asking me.

That's probably the answer is people who form an opinion about me without even giving me the professional courtesy of asking me about it.

That bothers me.

Like, you guys are just forming a conclusion about me based on speculation.

Oh.

And when all I've ever done is show you, shown you that I'm 100, honest and transparent.

I just believe before you be in a professional setting.

Right.

If you can't form a negative opinion about me without giving me the professional courtesy of offering up an explanation to what you think this negative sentiment is about.

But in the professional setting, people are just avoidant to have conversations.

I'll give a great example of this show.

People will go, oh, I don't like your show or I don't like the language.

First of all, if you were to have that conversation with me, I would say to you, we don't cuss in the show anymore right off the gate.

Second of all, what is it that you think so bad about the show?

I don't like that it's taking up so much of your time outside of work.

The time that you're sleeping.

What do you mean?

The time that everyone else is sleeping?

Well, yeah, so.

And this is where it gets into this debate where it's like, okay, cool.

I get that you think that I might be distracted with other things in my life, but we all have distractions.

Whether you have a hobby or not, there's something else that you do.

Right.

There are very few people who are like, you know what?

I am a firefighter.

That's all I do.

I think about fighting fires when I'm not fighting fires.

I'm a dentist.

That's all I do.

Yeah.

You know, I'm an underwriter.

That's all I do.

I think that's an unrealistic expectation.

It's completely devoid of humanity.

Yeah.

Right.

And, like, I.

Look, I respect everybody who feels that they're that committed to whatever it is they're doing.

But you're lying to yourself and everybody else around you.

No.

Yeah.

So stuff like that bothers me.

People, like, form conclusions about, oh, he can't be a good dad because he's constantly working.

That's not.

Why don't you ask me how I do it and what I do before you form that conclusion.

Right.

And why are you assuming that this isn't thought out?

You know, and again, you're.

And so it all boils down to one concept that bothers me a great deal.

I don't look at other people who don't put out as much work as me and say, you're lazy, because I know.

Did you.

Were you always that way, though?

No.

I had learned Roger Lipson from Yale.

He taught me a lot about.

About just humans in general and about output.

And he's like, look, just like your thumbprints, unique.

Your caliber and capabilities of putting out work are different, human by human.

And, yeah, my pump said this, right?

They say, just, it's not what you can tolerate that makes a good workout.

It's also what's optimal.

Yeah.

Right.

So everyone, everyone, maybe.

Maybe your output is enough to where it's still optimal for you, but for somebody else to do it, it's.

You can't withstand that.

Long term.

Yeah.

And it's about just you having a.

A certain amount of, like, mental health.

Right.

Like, you got to figure out what your output is.

You can get that mental health.

Recently, like, the last couple days, I've been leaving, like, 4, 4:30, as opposed to, like, later in the day because I was working, like, six, seven, every single day.

Just because I know that I need to just get back on, like, a mental health, like, trajectory where I'm not focused a hundred percent.

Time.

It's smart.

Yeah.

I mean, I go through phases of burnout and whatnot.

I mean, what.

What's.

Somebody says something about you.

Is there something that bothers you?

What?

Oh, for me, if somebody were to say something about me.

Harry Knuckles.

No, hair down.

I take pride in my hairy knuckles.

It's weird.

What's the word about it?

Silicone ring, Hairy knuckles.

It's just like a static, logistic nightmare.

This is me and Robin Williams, bro.

You know, he was notorious for stealing.

Jokes that just recently came out.

Who said that?

Damon Wayne.

Damon Wayne said that?

I saw the headline.

Yeah.

People would, like, see him walking in.

They'd be like, I'm not telling jokes.

I'm out.

Robin's here.

He's gonna steal my jokes.

And he would just.

He had to do with him just write checks.

So I stuff the.

Why?

Why?

Don't.

Don't say this.

Now that he's gone.

I know that's messed up.

Can't say that.

So what is it?

What somebody say to you that bother you?

My family, bro.

You said you couldn't say that.

Yeah, I'm just gonna say what you said.

That was so corny.

Terrible human being.

Yeah, the podcast, if somebody says something about the podcast.

No, it doesn't.

People say, what are you talking about?

No, about the podcast.

Like, the product is crap.

Then be like, oh, what?

Just say it's portion of it anyway.

Yeah, just.

Yeah, Arun's portion is definitely bad.

Yeah.

All right, man.

Got anything else?

Nah, man.

I'm trying to stay awake.

All right, let's do this.

All right, good night, everybody.

Goodbye, everybody.

Bye.

We love you so much.