SPEAKER_01 0:02

You wanted the house. You wanted the car. You wanted to be with one of the most materialistic, prettiest girls you know on Instagram. Now you gotta live with that person. Now you gotta upkeep that lifestyle. Now you gotta pay for the gas. Now you gotta pay the mortgage. Now you gotta pay pest control. Now you gotta pay landscaping. Now you gotta pay a home cleaner. Be careful what you wish for and really ask yourself why is it that I want this thing? Failures Podcast. Today we're talking about the invisible millionaire deadline. Who created this deadline? This fake pressure of being rich before 29, being rich before 25, buying a Lambo before 23. I don't get it. We don't get it. And we're trying to help figure it out. Are you somebody who's 22 years old, 27 years old? You're making decent money, you're buying a real skill set, you're going to college, you're in a trade school, and every time you open your phone, you catch yourself resenting the route that you took, and you're thinking to yourself, damn, there's probably a faster way I can make money. If that's you, just know you're not behind. Stop comparing yourself to other people. You're on the right path. Rich and I are going to unpack and dissect in today's episode. Why is it that this idea that you have to be a millionaire or you have to have all these material goods before you turn a certain age is getting worse and worse year by year? Rich, I know this episode kicked off with something that your son told you, and I want you to share that with our audience. But you have a son, he's 14 years old, and I imagine that he's interested in becoming someone that has money, has material things. Where do you think this I have to make an X amount of dollars by this age pressure comes from in this particular era for young men? Where does that pressure come from?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

I feel like that pressure comes from social media, bro. I feel like it comes from all the content that these young men are consuming. And it appears to the exterior world that every streamer, every gamer, every young professional athlete are just getting money fast, right? So you see the lifestyle, you see them driving the cars, you see them with the women, you see them with the going out on dates and all the fresh clothes, and you're like, damn, I want that. I want that for myself. And man, I feel like there's a lot about our society that has tricked us into believing that these things are obtainable in a very fast way, right? You look at the people who've hit big on crypto, right? The crypto bros, and they'll tell you they turned 10k into a million, right? Uh the streamers, right? They didn't show you the moments where they only had 40 followers watching the stream, but now you you're looking at them and you're seeing that they have a million subscribers, a million viewers, right? They don't show you all the work that it takes to reach a level of success. And that's what social media is, bro. All of social media is is just showing you the best version of people's lives. So it appears that everyone's rich, everyone's wealthy, everyone's got it. And I think as a young person, if that's your only source of information, if that's all the content that you consume, then naturally you start to begin like, damn, I want these things for myself. Like, I feel I'm 25, and why haven't I made it yet? I feel like I'm behind. And that's that's what we're here to unpack today.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Rich, zoom into what you said earlier, and that's why is this a fake deadline? Why is this an invisible pressure you're putting on yourself? And how does the conversation you had with your son about what he wanted to buy at 14 years old, how did that start this episode? Like, what is it about that combination of things that made you feel like we need to talk about this today, Jess?

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Bro, my son, he's 14 years old, and he came up to me. He said that by the time I'm 18, I'm gonna have a Lamborghini. And I'm like, Oh, really? Okay. Did something prompt the conversation? Nah, we were just casually watching TV. I think he was watching some YouTube shorts or something like that, and he was like, Oh, you see that car? Like, I'm gonna have that sports car, I'm gonna have a Lamborghini at 18. And my only advice to him was, well, you better get started because um you only got four years left for you to Wait, wait, stop right there because you run a platform that is for young male self-help and making sure young men are getting their mind right.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

And you have a a real life scenario where a 14-year-old, remove the fact that he's your son, just a 14-year-old man. Do you think he was trolling? Do you think he understood what went into that? What do you what do you think his sentiment lied? And and like, you know, how did you react after the fact?

SPEAKER_00 5:04

No, I think he was serious, but it's my job to instill a little bit of realistic expectations. And I had to remind him, like, hey, do you know how much a Lamborghini costs? Okay, cool. You got the number, right? Now, factor all the things you need to do to obtain that number, right? Or what do you oh well? I need to work. Well, how many hours do you need to work? Well, what job do you need to get? Like, then it became quite apparent to him that, oh shit, this goal I have of having a Lamborghini at 18 is probably a lot harder than what I anticipated. So I say that to say I instilled a little bit of realism in his thought process, but I know I don't knock him for having the dream for believing that this could be attainable for him. But back to my point earlier, like that's part of the thinking that he has when he consumes this social media content because every streamer appears to have the sports car, right? Every influencer, every crypto bro, every young professional athlete, everyone just appears to have the level of wealth that one would want for themselves. And that's where the comparison trap comes into play.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

And I get it. I mean, I was young and ambitious once. I too can relate to this invisible financial goal. As you know, Rich, we were friends at the time. And my mom's little tiny basement in her house, they put me in a fucking shoebox basement. I think at the time I was reading like uh manifestation books and the power of making a million dollars and the secret. And one thing that I read is that if you put your goal in front of you every day, you can accomplish it. And of course, I'm from the hood, I don't really know much. I'm living in my mother's basement. I wrote on a wall one quarter billion dollars, and I signed the check to myself. Yeah, why did I pick that number? I literally do not know. I can relate to the young man in this episode. You give yourself an arbitrary goal at an arbitrary date, and you don't know why you set it, but I do want to give credit to the young man who's ambitious. Fuck it. Set a goal, set it high, and attack it. But what you're saying, Rich, is like, but why the deadline? I don't get it.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Yeah, why the deadline? And if we're being honest, bro, like every post you see from an athlete with their sports car or living a lavish lifestyle, you have no idea how long it took them to obtain that. You're just seeing the end result of what they've been able to achieve. So think about that framing, just like you're on Instagram, you're on YouTube Shores, you're on TikTok, you're on IG Reels, and you're consuming all this content nonstop, and it's just success, success, success, success. It's only showing you the winners, the lottery winners. Only showing you the lottery winners, only showing you the end result of what everyone has been able to obtain. Because by the way, no one is going to publish and post the hard stuff, the failures, the misattempts, the game cut from the team, the game fired from the job, the not getting the promotion, the options trade, the crypto trade. They're not gonna show you that. They're gonna show you the lavish lifestyle. And think about the young guy who's doom scrolling and consuming this content. You're only consuming the successful version of what other people are publishing about their life. So it's it's a false sense of reality when you come to think of it, if that's your only source of truth and your only source of information.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Rich, one thing I don't think people understand, and this is everyone, is being a millionaire, literally a liquid millionaire, meaning you have this cash available to you that you can take out of your bank account, is so rare, let alone a millionaire before you're 29 years old or 25 years old, also insanely rare. This is something that is a huge misconception. Now, we're just using a millionaire as a benchmark number, but if you want a Ferrari, if you want a penthouse condo in New York, if you want prime real estate in Los Angeles, one has to have liquid income to put into these properties or this asset. That's why we keep using liquid millionaire as a benchmark. That's not to mention when you say 5 million, 10 million, 20 million, 50 million, it gets rarer and rarer as you go on. Not many working class people that are building their skill set, going to college, starting a company have this money available. It's so rare that it's 0.05% of men under the age of 29 are liquid millionaires. Fill a gym with 10,000 people. That's like a concert. Imagine a concert with 10,000 people. That means only one person in that concert is a liquid millionaire. Let that sit for a second. Now you're telling me someone's gonna share their goal with me and tell me they want to be a millionaire before 29. I would tell them, go to a Don Tolliver show, go to a Travis Scott show, look around that arena. There's probably only one or two people in this arena that are liquid millionaires, not including the artist. That's how rare it is to accomplish this thing. Rich, when you mention the bias towards lottery winners and people that have already done this, your son and the other 14, 15-year-olds that are scrolling through the social media all day are looking at a very rare human, this person that is wealthy before the age of 30. And I know that shit is gonna sound like we're hating, but we're not. We're just showing you how rare this thing that you want is. And there's nothing wrong with wanting the goal, but we're talking about two things. And I want you to piggyback off of this, Rich. We're talking about why give yourself a constrained timeline? Because it's gonna force you to do things for quick money because you've given yourself this invisible deadline. And what happens when you give yourself an invisible deadline is that you start doing things to make money quicker. And that's something we discussed in our prep. Fast money culture. That is a problem for a lot of young men, Rich. And I want you to unpack what you've discovered on your end with the whole new fast money culture and how this has become a predatorial angle for a lot of creators and people online.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

It happens, it does happen. There are guys in Silicon Valley that end up selling their company at 29 years old for millions and millions of dollars, right? Like those stories exist, but to your point, those stories are a one in a million chance, you know what I mean? Yeah. Uh no pun intended. They're not the norm for most people. You have to build a foundation, you have to get a job, you have to create a business plan. Like you have to subscribe to a journey that can very well take five, 10, 15, 20, maybe even 25 years for you to ultimately reach some level of success. So we're not knocking the dude who's ambitious and wants to get the million. We're knocking the deadline that you're putting upon yourself to reach the million. Get rid of that deadline because that'll allow you to free yourself from the burden of stress that you have to carry of meeting that goal by a set date. You don't need to give yourself that deadline. And just I really think this comes back to just how our society and culture has shifted throughout the last couple of years. I saw this fire like title that I really like, and it's called The Jackpot Brain. And it's like a reference to the fast culture that we live, where like now sports betting is like really cool and really popular. Predictive markets investments are really popular. You have poly market, right? You have all these new apps to allow yourself to place many different types of predictive bets. You have the crypto bros, right? The crypto bros will convince you that you could turn a dollar into a million in less than 12 months. Like where that shit came from is is I have no idea, but they commonly use phrases like yo, you could 100x your money, 200x, yo, I had 250x my investment in just six months. And this rhetoric starts to become normalized. And in your brain, you really feel like, yo, it's really that easy. Look at all these people doing it, it's really that easy. So I think naturally you just start to build this mindset of like, oh, I can get it fast. I don't need to wait 5, 10, 15 years. I could get it today, I could get it next week, I could get it in three weeks if I just do and run this play that these other dudes are running out here.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Well, listen, Rich. If anyone is down bad, got a job they hate, living with their parents, life is not going the way you thought it would go. The most sexiest and the most exciting idea of getting out of that situation is going to be someone that pops up on your phone with a get rich quick scheme that has been gamified. That is predatorial behavior. We have identified a group of young men who are down so bad that they will do anything to change their circumstances. Now, what does crypto day trading, poly market, fan doll bets, quick flip uh real estate schemes, what do they all have in common? You know what they have in common? That the sucker is the person that buys the course, or the sucker is the person that believes that they're gonna get just as rich as the person who is selling them access on a quick flip. If someone has to explain to you how they make money through selling you a course or selling you something about how they made their money, chances are you are the product. So be aware of that. Casinos in Las Vegas have always been built from the people who visit the casinos, and hope is their exchange of currency. What does a casino sell? Does anybody know? I've never seen a casino sell anything other than hope. They even give you the alcohol for free, they even give you the food for free. Shit, if you're spending enough money, they will fly you in and put you up at a hotel. Who do you think is paying for that? It's the person who bought in. And online platforms and digital creators and content creators have realized this business paradigm. If I sell you the eight numbers to how I won the lottery, maybe you can get rich too. How fucking stupid does that sound? If I sell you my lottery ticket numbers, you're gonna win the lottery too. That's essentially the game that these people are playing. And don't be fooled, I'm naming them because they are predatorial for people who don't have a lot of money. I told you, Rich, I love a good gamble. FanDuel, Polymarket, all of them have definitely got enough of my salary to the point where I have to reconsider my lifestyle. But I do know at the end of the day, at the very most, I'm gonna break even. That's how these businesses survive and thrive, offer predatorial behavior for people that want to change their life, playing short-term games, trying to win the lottery. Essentially, it's a gamified version of the lottery.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Yeah, and listen, I understand to the young man listening, right? Like everyone's trying to get it fast, right? Like everyone's trying to have that instant gratification. Like, we saw things like the GameStop situation in real life. We saw people go from a couple hundred thousand to millionaires in 48 hours, and we really believe that, like, damn, this could happen to anyone, right? And anyone can get this money. And I get it to a degree, right? Like, everyone wants to throw their hat in the ring. Shit, when the Powerball hits a crazy ass number, a billion dollars, you got the whole world playing that motherfucker, right? Like, so everyone wants to buy into like the hope that they would one day reach a crazy bag, and especially if it comes easy and effortless, like who wouldn't want that, right? I think the way that I would reframe this for like the young man listening and and the failures fan listening, it's just like, bro, the way we operate, man, like we subscribe to the marathon, we subscribe to the Nipsey hustle mindset reframe where we are fully conscious and understand that this shit we call life, this road to success, is a marathon. It's going to take us a while, right? We are going to have to make a lot of different decisions and fail and learn things along the way, but ultimately we're subscribing to the journey that is this successful life that we're trying to achieve for ourselves. But we acknowledge that this shit is not gonna come fast, right? Like Nipsey Hustle didn't rap for two weeks before he became a multi-planum selling artist, right? Like that shit took over 10 years for him to refine his art and craft his audience and build his stage presence and build his clothing brand, right? Like all that shit took time, and then he repackaged his brand to show that hey, you guys could do it too if you subscribe to this lifestyle of the marathon, and you know, the marathon continues, is what he preached.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Rich, I'm glad you brought up Nipsey Hustle because last time I checked, his name was Nipsey Hustle, not Nipsey quick flip, not Nipsey parlay, not Nipsey. I'm gonna run a quick play and get 30 times my money back. He was Nipsey Hustle, a hustler. He named his company the Marathon. There is a huge difference between somebody who goes out into the world and gets it and makes it, getting it and making it. Those are two very fundamental components to going out there and changing your life financially. And then you have the other side the guy who flips for it, the guy who gets rich quicks for it, the guy who got the play for it. Those two sections of language are people that I grew up with my whole life. I didn't know many people that discuss things like building foundation, putting some money away. When you get your income tax, don't spend it all. Put that money away, put that in a 401k, put that in a slow building account, have $30,000 set aside in case life throws you a curveball and you need quick liquid funds to hold you over while you build your business. These are things I was never taught, Rich. So I know for a fact a lot of young men, and I'm trying to put myself in the headspace of the young guy that is working a bullshit nine to five, or maybe a bullshit five to nine while he's going to school and he's getting these weekly paychecks, these monthly paychecks. You know the feeling, Rich, and it's just not enough. It's just not enough. I don't have enough to take my girl out. I don't even I don't even have enough to have a girlfriend. I don't have enough to get my own apartment. And I got these two grown ass men who obviously have their life sorted out telling me that I shouldn't put my money into something that's gonna 10x, 20x. Well, I don't know any other way. It's easy to speak down on high when you're standing at the peak of your life and you're talking down to people. What is your response to that, guy, Rich? Because I almost put myself in the headspace and I got angry at myself for being a little too preachy.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Let me tell you something, Justin. I said this before on earlier episodes. I lost $15,000 trading Tesla options back in 2020. I literally closed a crypto position where I'm down. I kid you not, over $25,000. Lost on paper, lost $25,000. I'm not speaking on high. I'm guilty of this too. I'm still failing out here in this road to financial independence and financial literacy. I think we're all trying to figure it out. But what I've learned over the years is bro, the sports. Betting is not going to get me to the ultimate end goal of financial independence, right? Like the options trading, the meme stocks, the online businesses, the courses, the drop shipping, you name it, like all these get rich, quick, fast options are not going to get me to the financial independence that I am seeking. So, how have I reframed my mind? Is bro, I am more than happy and comfortable getting an 8% rate of return on my money year over year. That is very safe. And that will compound and actually have you trending financially in the right direction versus losing 50-60% of your net income to some bullshit meme stocks. Think about it. Like the slow money seems boring, right? 8% year over year. Oh man, that shit is boring. Like there's no dopamine hit with that. But that's actually a smarter financial option than blowing half your bag in a meme stock and hoping and praying that that fucking decision and option pans out. That's the mental reframe that I'm sharing with our failures fan and our young listener. It's like, bro, you have two options. Like you could take the fast route, you could try to take the shortcuts and get burned more often than not. Or you could take a little bit of a safe route and build a momentum, right? Get that 8% year over year, 10% year over year, shit, even 5% year over year, and slowly but surely build your wealth over time. To me, that is a smarter financial path to take.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Respond to this, Rich. A guy works at Papa John's part-time throughout the rest of the week. He works at um, I don't know, a car wash. He has a negative, overdrawn account, bank account, keeps all this money in cash, gets paid in cash. And he just heard your advice that you gave him. And he's telling you, bro, what you just told me is not even resonating because I don't even have any money to put into any of that lingo that you're talking about about investing. Investing into something that's gonna quadruple my money, 5x my money, 10x my money is my only plan. What's your response to that?

SPEAKER_00 24:25

I think that's a great plan. But then now I would challenge you and ask that young man, where are you getting your information from? Are you subscribing to TikTok University and trying to think that you're gonna become a financial guru in six months with all the bullshit that is on that platform or any other social media platform? Everyone's a financial guru now, everyone's a real estate mogul now. So, like, where are you getting your information from?

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Show me the receipts. Yeah, show me the receipts of these people you're following. And why are they selling you tips?

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Yeah, so I would challenge that young man to really educate yourself in the proper way, like actually go out and read books and watch documentaries and learn what a successful trade actually looks like. Because those skills, those fundamental financial skills that you pick up along the way are gonna pay off. And I've said this before, bro. Sometimes people are like, man, but I don't got money to invest, right? Like, I don't have the income to invest. Speak to that guy. And what I would say to you is like, education is free, bro. You can educate yourself for free. And guess what? When you finally build that nest egg of income to invest, you had overtly invested in gathering all the information that you needed to make a smart financial decision, right? But you only derive at that smart financial decision because you spent six to eight months learning the game, learning how to trade stocks, right? Learning about options, you know, learning what a bad trade looks like. Not fucking, I was about to bash some like crypto influencers right now, but I'm not gonna go down that route.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

You don't got to say their name, but you should speak to it because I'm sure in your world it comes across your feed. You know what's funny? At 38 years old, Rich, you were probably getting tricked by some creators. But once you start seeing what a finesser looks like, at least from where we're from, we know when somebody's finessing. I can tell a motherfucker who's making it, and I can tell a motherfucker who's faking it from the hood, from where we're from. But online, they've gotten so good at peddling this bullshit that it even tricks me sometimes that I gotta do my due diligence and be like, wait, wait, wait, how does a young man or even an older man know the difference between somebody that's faking it online or somebody that's really making it online?

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Just do you want to know the percentage of finessers that there are online? It's a hundred percent. A hundred percent of everything you consume online is motherfuckers trying to finesse. I wouldn't trust or believe anything that you find, read, watch on the internet and take it as Bible. Everyone's packaging content to try to sell you a fucking narrative or trying to sell you a course or a newsletter or a product or merch, right? Like we're all consumers at the end of the day, so I wouldn't trust or believe anything in the financial space that exists online.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

Yeah, I mean, I I already know that that part is gonna get clipped. Breaking news, breaking news. You want to know how many finesses are online? All of them, yeah, yeah. Everybody's playing an angle. That's what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00 27:39

Everybody has an angle, everybody has an angle, bro. And I think you know, going back to the education topic, I think that's what we're advocating to our young guy, right? It's like, bro, you need to educate yourself because all this fucking sports betting, predictive markets, get money fast, right? Like, this shit could work if you're lucky, but more times than not, this shit does not work and it burns a hole in your pocket. The way that you reframe your thinking, and if you really genuinely want to build long-term wealth, I feel like you need to study some of the greats and some of the people who have done it before you. And ironically enough, just and I think we have some examples that we've pulled. There's a lot of people in pop culture, and a lot of people that you and I admire that didn't have their first break until they were in their late 30s, early 40s, sometimes even 50s, right? And I could kick it off. One person is Joe Rogan. Bro, Joe Rogan was a comedian, stand-up comedian. He did the Fear Factor, he did UFC commentating. He didn't figure out what he was elite at, which was podcasting, until he was 42 years old, bro. Took him until 42 to build the media conglomerate that is the Joe Rogan experience, right? Think about if he had the mentality of like getting rich now and getting money fast, right? He might have never discovered podcasting and ultimately build his multimedia conglomerate.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Yeah, and I think Joe Rogan has even been honest about that, that he tried to be a comedian for everyone when he was younger because there wasn't any real way to get in the business outside of being like a sitcom comedian like uh Jerry Seinfeld. And that wasn't his brand. As you know him, he's a little bit off-center. He caters to a more interesting, creative, wild, zany, MMA-loving, fucking UFO-believing ass person. He wouldn't be able to do that if he was chasing a bag, because then that means he would have to sacrifice the amount of integrity to be chasing a million-dollar bag. But he doubled down on what worked for him. And I think he is a great cautionary tale. Someone else you brought up, Rich, which I didn't even know about, was Andrew Huberman, the dude who does the Huberman podcast.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Yeah, he launched Huberman Lab in his mid-40s, right? And he's another example of someone who took the path of the journey, bro. He subscribed to the journey, he became a scientist, gathered all this wealth of knowledge and information, and built up his confidence enough to get to a point where he felt like he had something to share with the world of value. And that didn't come until his mid-40s. Um, I got a couple more, just uh Mark Cuban founded and created broadcast.com that eventually I believe sold to Yahoo. He was 40 years old when that transaction happened. Jay-Z, bro. Jay-Z didn't reach billionaire status until he was 49, almost 50 years old, right? And that was years, decades of grinding in the music industry and fashion and investments, right? And alcoholic beverages to ultimately become the icon that we know today as Jay-Z. But this shit takes time, bro. And I think that's what we're trying to share with our listeners is like the road to financial independence, the road to abundance, the road to a significant amount of wealth takes time. It's a journey that you subscribe to, and no amount of online course, get money fast, crypto meme situation is gonna get you to that level of freedom that we're hoping every listener of Failures podcast has.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

Rich, you talking about all these older guys that really stabilized and started making real wealth in their 40s. It almost feels like that's just a law of money. You can't really compound anything, including your skill set and what you offer the world in exchange for money, until you start hitting a stride and you have proof that you can go to someone and say, hey, here's an exchange for my time to solve your problem. And here's how much the world has already paid for it. It's proven that I'm worth this much. Here's the exchange on my time. That's an exchange for time and money. That's how you make a million dollars. If you do that enough times, you can make the money back. And this is something that I learned from one of my mentors. He taught me an exchange on your service is only a 10x. Meaning, whatever you charge somebody, you have to be solving a problem that is worth 10x more to that person. Meaning, if I charge you $1,000 for something, that means the solution that I'm providing is $10,000 worth of a problem to the person that is paying for my services. So if you take that same math, which is not exact, but it's a good rule of thumb. If the 10x is for a business, if somebody's gonna take a business off your hands, that means that it's worth 10 times more in the open market. So if I created something and somebody bought it off of me for a million dollars, that means that the potential value of this thing is $10 million. That is the only exchange you're gonna get on your time.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

Yeah, Jess, I think you're exactly right, bro. It's like not only do you want to compound your money, but you also want to compound your skills. So learning things like sales, coding, finance, design, right? Like learn how to negotiate, like all these skills can eventually compound for you and actually pay dividends in the long run.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Why do you want this? Why do you want it? I have it in my notes. When you get it, what do you think is going to happen next? That is the higher level conversation. Conversation you have with your son. Okay, you proved me wrong. You got the Lambo, but you still live with me and your mom. What now? Oh, you broke offender on the Lambo? Do you know how much it costs to get a full body replacement for a Lamborghini? Okay, you made $500,000 in one trade. Do you have the skill set to make that amount of money every year, or did you make it one year? Now we have a problem because your appetite is bigger than the amount of food you have. Now you're gonna starve, or you have to make an adjustment on your lifestyle. So you have to ask yourself the question, Rich. Any young guy that wants to live like their favorite creator allegedly is living, is why do you want that? And what problems do you think will go away when you get that? Because what I've learned, Rich, 40 years on the planet, the more you want, the more you get, the more you get, the more problems come with it. And when more problems come with it, you start wanting more stuff, and it's almost like this spider web that grows out. You just wanted one thing. Now you got 50 problems, and they all came from that one thing that you wanted most. So be careful what you wish for. Just like the movie Obsession, that movie is about a cautionary tale. Are you sure you want that girl to love you more than anybody else in the world? Because when that young man broke that stick and was like, I want this, that girl became so obsessed with him that he wanted to reverse it and say, No, no, I don't want her to want me that much. It's like, nah, chill, playboy. You wanted the house, you wanted the car, you wanted to be with one of the most materialistic, prettiest girls you know on Instagram. Now you gotta live with that person. Now you gotta upkeep that lifestyle. Now you gotta pay for the gas. Now you gotta pay the mortgage. Now you gotta pay pest control. Now you gotta pay landscaping. Now you got to pay a home cleaner. I don't own a home, Rich. You can speak to it more than I do. Be careful what you wish for and really ask yourself, why is it that I want this thing?

SPEAKER_00 35:57

Yeah, and to bring it full circle, I think that's what happens when you set that age deadline for yourself, right? It's like I need to have a million by 25, 29, whatever fictitious number you're coming up with in your head. And I think what we're saying is you have to operate life with a personal scorecard, not an external scorecard, not a scorecard that was crafted by social media, not comparing yourself to what every other influencer, streamer, gamer, professional athlete is doing. But what is your scorecard? Like, what do you want for yourself? To Justin's point, like, why do you want the million in the first place? Why are you setting this deadline to begin with? Right, like what's the rush? What is the the ultimate goal after you obtain the million? You know, and how do you plan to make that money work for you long term?

SPEAKER_01 36:50

Rich, I know I said this story before, but I'm definitely saying it again because it fits more for this episode than anything else. First year in LA was dating a gorgeous woman, arguably one of the prettiest girls that I've ever dated. She lived in a home, three bedrooms. She was the only one in the home. Beverly Hills, great place to live. I visited her enough times to know she literally lived there alone. She had friends that would come in and out. She had an iPad that was connected to a credit card. I never asked, but I would always order food from that iPad. Never did she ever charge me for it. And it hit me one day that I went to go visit her on a day I had off, and she wasn't working. She was just doing nothing. And I asked her, Who funds this lifestyle? She laughed it off. Never answered the question. Long story short, I'm going through my Instagram, showing her something on her page that I saw. And I noticed an NBA player was following her. And you know I'm a big basketball fan. I was dumb enough to not stop and think, oh, how does she know this guy? I got excited because she knew a basketball player that I really liked. And I was like, oh shit, you know insert basketball players? She was like, Oh yeah, it's a good friend of mine. Never put two and two together. Showed her whatever I had to show her on Instagram, kept it moving. Anyway, long story short, we could never hang out as much as I wanted to because she was always out of town. Where was she out of town? She was always in Phoenix. There was a professional basketball team in Phoenix, the Suns. It took me until we stopped officially hanging out, and she was like, hey, you know, uh, I really liked you, whatever, but I don't think it's gonna work out. No love lost. I moved on, I'm in a happy relationship now. But it didn't hit me until I was watching the NBA playoffs, and I was on her Instagram, and I seen that she was at a Phoenix Suns game.

unknown 38:46

Huh.

SPEAKER_01 38:47

I think the guy that was funding this woman's lifestyle was the guy that she followed on social media. So I'm doing the forensics with the red yawn and the and the storyboard, and I'm playing back all these moments that I was trying to link with her, and she was in Phoenix and she lived in LA and she lived in an empty home that must have cost at least $7,000 a month, $10,000 a month in mortgage. Who's paying for this? I say all that to say, Rich, if hypothetically I would have swooned that girl and I would have made her a part of my life, and I would have gotten her to commit to me instead of anyone else on the planet, instead of a professional basketball player, do you think I would have had the lifestyle and the money to compete with an NBA basketball player? Probably not. Would my life have been miserable if I would have followed through with that woman? I would have been chasing the carrot of insatiable unhappiness for the rest of my life in order to keep this woman happy because she already was living a lifestyle that I had no business competing with. I don't know if it was God, it was timing, it was her senses, where she had great senses to find men with a lot of money, but she cut me off because I couldn't afford her, and I couldn't afford the lifestyle that she needed in order to be a happy girl. And I thank her for that. Because if it was up to me and my appetite, I probably would have tried to make it work with that person, and I would have been fucking miserable because she was the mansion that I couldn't afford. And there's a few humans on the planet that can afford the type of lifestyle that that young lady wanted. And I'm happy she found that guy because there's not a lot of people on the planet that can do that. And my cautionary tale to our listener is are you sure you want that million-dollar home? Are you sure you want that $500,000 car? Are you sure you want to date that girl that has been exposed to a lifestyle that you can't currently uphold given how much money you're making? That girl told me, Rich, as a rule of thumb, she knows if a guy is a high earner and somebody that's really about his coins, verbatim, the words she said. I know if a dude is about his coins, if he's a six by six guy, what's a six by six? Has he earned six figures for six years straight in his life? That means that guy is worth all the money that he's getting. Now, if you only earned five to six figures once in your life and then your money dropped, that means you hit the lottery. You got lucky. You got it paid one time and you can't get paid again. Understand that math. Remove the girl. Understand that math for yourself. If you went crazy one year on crypto investments, if you went crazy one year on Tesla stocks, if you went crazy one year on polymarket, you got it right two times, good for you, man. Take that money you earn, put it in the bank. But if you can't do it year after year, guaranteed dependable income, you're not a six by six guy. You're a lucky guy. You got lucky one year and you can't do it again. And that allows me and Rich to take a step back and put some cold water on the young man that might have had that year last year, and he's laughing at us. These old motherfuckers don't know what they're talking about. Well, if you can't do it again for the next three years, chances are you got lucky, and your skill set is actually the average of what you've made in the last six years. That's who you really are in the open market. So, Rich, before we close, I do want to go through a few tangible pieces of actionable advice that are boring, personal finance, but I'm gonna share it with you, Rich, and you're gonna explain to the young guy watching why is this important for a 10-year plan? Not a 30-second TikTok, but a 10-year plan. You say this every episode, Rich. Learn to learn, develop a skill set. Why is that crucial for the young man listening to this to have a 10-year plan that he's making six figures per year?

SPEAKER_00 43:02

Listen, ultimately, you have to have skills that you're able to monetize off of. And even if you strike gold and you do hit a crazy bag with the meme stock, right? Like, and you have those millions of dollars, right? Like, how do you administer, how do you deploy that capital properly if you don't have any skills to do so, right? So certainly educate yourself and obtain skills that can compound over time and that you can use to your advantage, right? Like, I can't think of a worse case scenario than someone hitting the lottery. How many lottery stories have we've heard of someone hitting the lottery and then in under 10 years they go right back to to being broke or being poor, right?

SPEAKER_01 43:47

The research shows most lottery winners that don't have a skill set return to their baseline of income within 10 years. Right. And the other thing that study shows, Rich is. Is they also return to their baseline of happiness after 10 years. So the money just kind of bought, like you said, this dopamine. But no skill, you can't maintain it.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

Yeah. That's exactly right. And you know, I would advise the young man listening to is like understand the difference between an investment and a gamble. Like most of your generation, if you're the listener listening, is just gambling. They're taking speculative risks, speculative bets, right? Everything is fast and now and instant gratification. But investing is a little bit of a more strategic, less risky long-term play. Just understand the difference between the two. I'm not advocating one way or another, but I'm saying that understand that these two strategies exist and adopt whichever one you feel like is right for you. But we're obviously advocating that the longer-term investment plan is a much more wiser strategic plan because it'll allow you to build wealth over time, build investments over time, build equity over time, right? Like these things don't happen quick like they would in a sports betting situation.

SPEAKER_01 45:17

Two more things before we go. Network and surrounding yourself with people that have similar or complementary skills. Why is that important for a 10-year plan versus somebody who's trying to make money quickly?

SPEAKER_00 45:28

I feel like your network is everything, bro. And your network can put you in a situation that can accelerate your journey at the end of the day. And I feel like that's a much more strategic type of way to view like investing and working towards something. Because if you think about you coming up with a homie or um linking up with someone who's already, let's say, done the streaming game for like 10 years, right? And now you got a big homie that you can shadow, right? Like that dude will that network, that relationship would accelerate your growth and get you to where you want to be ultimately. It's a shortcut on pain, education, money I spent. But it's a valid shortcut, Jess. Yeah, it's not a gamble, right? Like this dude has been through it, he's willing to mentor you. That is a different level of risk. That is worth the investment of time, right? That relationship, that network is worth the investment of time versus the shortcut that is like hoping that you strike a million-dollar deal with one trade, right?

SPEAKER_01 46:37

Stay on network real quick. What would be your advice to someone that is saying, like, damn, I don't know how to phase out my friends that are on some get rich quick shit running plays? Because I feel like we can relate to that. When you think of your network, how have you transitioned into people that are more long-term set in their mindset and and are positive to your network? People that when they text you or call you, you're like, Yeah, I definitely want to get back to this person because they're valuable to what I'm building, versus people that are just on bullshit.

SPEAKER_00 47:08

Yeah, I mean, listen, you got to understand the mission at the end of the day. And everyone has their place in the mission, right? I have tons of friends that still do speculative trading, still do options trading, still trade meme coins. And I kind of just block it out, bro, because I'm not in that game. So I don't subscribe to anything that I'm not a part of. If they can educate me on something, I'll still listen, but I'm not gonna partake in something that I'm not actively participating in, right? Because it's to me, I've learned a long time ago, like that's not my game. And I feel like when you've been burned enough times, you know what is for you and what isn't for you. And that game is just not for me. Damn, that's powerful.

SPEAKER_01 47:50

I like that, Rich. That was not rehearsed or prepped, but that's a bar. Know the game that you're playing before you get into it. That could summarize a lot of this episode because people are playing games that they don't even understand the probability of their risk and loss. Yeah, they don't even know they're gambling, they actually think it's legit. So I love that you said that. The last one, Rich, which I think is something that we are currently doing at this point in our lives, and I'm 40, Rich is 38 years old. This is one of the best 10-year, 20-year, 30-year plan pieces of advice that I've gotten. Why is it important to invest in liquid capital, having money, cash money available at any time? Why is that important? Putting away money that's available. Why is that important? And why is ownership important? I think that's the last boss in running the opposite of get rich quick jackpot mentality.

SPEAKER_00 48:46

I think you got to have liquid cash because life happens, bro. Emergencies happen. Like people, hospital visits happen, right? Like injuries happen, unfortunate situations happen. And my biggest fear in life as a father of two kids is that one of my children have an emergency hospital crisis that I can't respond to because I don't have the financial funds to do so. That to me, as a father, is irresponsible and unacceptable. And if you're someone who's young, taking care of your parents, let's say, and they have a hospital bill that you can't assist them with, like you're gonna feel like, damn, I can't even help in an emergency crisis, right? So I highly encourage everyone to build that nest egg of emergency fund situation for life's unfortunate circumstances.

SPEAKER_01 49:32

100%. And before we sign off, I did want to say for our young guy that made it this far and and you know has enjoyed all the feedback is Rich and I will never stand in front of greatness. We will never stand in front of blind ambition, we will never stand in front of someone with an insane goal because those are usually the people that change their lives, change their families' lives, change the world. So shit, go crazy. Have the biggest and craziest goals. But what we're saying is adjust the deadline that you're giving yourself. It's not reasonable, it's not realistic. Have a deadline, but don't put that pressure on yourself to achieve something that literally 0.0001% of people have achieved because it doesn't allow you to build the foundation that you're really gonna need in order to achieve that actual goal. And if you build something insanely quick on a weak foundation, you can't stack multi-million dollar businesses and multi-million dollar plays on top of a weak foundation, but you can stack billion-dollar dreams and billion-dollar plays on a foundation that has been built over four or five years because you've been putting that bitch together for a long time. You've been maniacal, tactical, smart. And that's what we're saying. It's less about the ambition, it's more about the deadline. Be careful with the deadlines you give yourself for these arbitrary numbers because they really don't mean nothing at the end of the day. How do we know that? Rich and I are in our late 30s, early 40s. We've been ambitious, we've had crazy goals. Whether we accomplished them or not, they never were or turned out to be exactly what they thought they would be. From my story about a girl to Rich's story about his house or his crypto or Tesla investments, never what you think it's going to be. So pace yourself, build it right, build it tight, make sure you have something to build on for 10 years plus, not for 10 weeks.

SPEAKER_00 51:35

100%, bro. And like the late great Nipsey Hustle once said, the marathon continues. There you have it, Failures Podcast. Yao.