Inside The Mind of a $500M Entrepreneur | Jess Mah

25:46Like invest 5 % to interview the best tax experts in the world and get those S-tier ideas. So yeah, I know I didn't answer your question on what is the best, but I at least gave everyone a really good way to figure that out on your own. Yeah, well, that's what I was getting to. I think, so people are like, okay, well, how do I actually do it? No, it's like, no, you actually have to go through the motions of building that network. How do you build that network? You have to become useful first, right? So use your 20s to become useful and then you start to build a network because people look at you as you're useful.

26:13And then you keep doing interesting shit so that compounds and you meet greater, like you meet cooler and cooler people but then also like don't forget about the people that you grew up with, right? Yeah, exactly. But that's what it is. And that's how you get to the S tier. Because the S tier stuff, to your point, you can't talk about publicly, which is that's why it's the S tier. That's why it's the S tier. Everything juicy is like not shared publicly. So that's the entire that's the theme we're going to come back to every time. But A tier. So luxury items would be yacht, planes, G wagons, art too, right?

26:44Like art. Yeah. Art's really interesting. I mean, hey, you are now an influencer. you could write off all your experiences and events and you know random equipment and you know having a business right that's more like A tier I mean it's kind of obvious but like if you don't have your own business like you know just getting W2 income you can't write off anything yep yep no this is good this is perfect this is exactly what I was looking for so you I mean how do you do all these things right now because okay on one end you do see influencers this is what bugged the crap out of me like four years ago, seeing on Twitter, it's like, yeah, you know, all I do is, you know, I have a holding company and then I just hire a bunch of operators, blah, blah, blah.

27:27And I'm like, man, like it is not that easy, right? No, it's actually way harder than anyone makes it seem. That's like the joke of this. So how do you do it? Because you're actually like a legit operator and like you've done things, right? So how do you do it? With lots of pain and misery. So yeah, a lot of people want to pretend that they're like Warren Buffett, right? All over Twitter. Yeah, and I think a lot of these people are pretending that they're Warren Buffett, where they get to just like hang out 90 % of the time, read and watch podcasts, and then they make only a few decisions a year.

28:00But the truth is, we're all like, you know, we're all frenetically trying to hunt for deal flow. It's very competitive to find good deal flow. So if you're building, if you're doing the whole holding company buying assets thing, you know, there's a lot of lower middle market private equity people now. So every deal is spit up. Integrating these deals, total pain in the butt. Hiring people, really challenging. And so what I've done is I think the first thing is accept that it's a lot of work and that's a lot of difficulty. It's not actually that easy. Yeah, I've gone through I think three iterations of my entire team before I got to my current team.

28:44And it's only been like three and a half years that I structured the Topco. And we have like 15, 20 people there. And I'm sure it's going to be a different group of people five years from now. But yeah, I have this whole playbook on how we hire CEOs, how we hire people in C-level, VP-level positions. And we are just like refining the model constantly. That's not public, right? It's not public, but I'm making it public. Yeah. I'm actually going to publicly release my playbook. That's beautiful. And still no one's going to follow it. No, for sure. They're going to follow it for sure. Okay. So tell us a high level, right?

29:23Cause that's the ultimate dream. Yeah. Hire a bunch of CEOs and add them to your holding company. It sounds easy. So how do you actually do it? The first thing is you hire a really strong executive recruiter. So you hire an executive recruiter full time who knows exactly what you look for in candidates. So what do you care about on the LinkedIn? like for me i say i don't want anyone who can't stay in a position for at least four or five years they're like hopping around it's a x all right away yeah um if they haven't had wins they don't have that mindset of winning that's really hard to fix unfortunately this idea of betting on people who are like down in the dumps like i'm not a huge fan of yeah um oh my god and if it's like ah this person could be an a tier but you know they're not necessarily a tier like that's really risky because the downside is unlimited and the upside is like i used to do that shit all the time because I came from nothing, right?

30:13I used to not do well in school. I'm like, yeah. I'm like, if I could do it, then anybody could do it, right? We used to kind of sit and wait for people to develop. And yeah, it doesn't work. It's really, yeah. I don't really like doing that anymore. So anyway, hire at least one full-time recruiter. I've got three. And why I like having three full-time recruiters is because someone gets sick, someone's going on leave, you know. And they have different perspectives on candidates too. and so they're doing a lot of sourcing through LinkedIn obviously you could try to find someone through your network but one of the things I was told by people is hey just like ask people in your network and you'll find someone and I found that the people my recruiters were finding were often better than the ones I could source through my network which is really sad but it's true and so anyway full-time recruiting team build out a playbook with them what do you like what do you not like I have them drum up 10 ideal candidates for any role I'm looking for.

31:10So I want to prove the top 10 candidates that we're going to, uh, sniper target and customize message from either me or another senior exec at my way. And then I'll get my hands dirty. I'll actually talk to all of them. Um, and if, if it's really busy and I can't talk to all of them right away, I might have someone else like filter them down. So the recruiters will take the best people that they might reach out to like 50 people and bring it down to the top, you know, five to 10. And then I'll talk to those five to 10. Do you, and I, because, so I look at life as a game, right? I tend to sense that you look at it like a game kind of too.

31:45So like, how do you, incentives are a big piece of the game. So how do you, do you incentivize your executive recruiters at all? Because when I think about the other executive recruiters I talked to on the outside, it's like, it gets pretty hefty. Yeah. I'm giving my executive recruiters equity upside in the deals that they're part of. So that - The best incentive. If we win, then they win, yeah. Yeah, that's great. Cool. And so, okay. A lot of this isn't just cash compensation. I think a lot of people are motivated just by, like, you know, the art of being better. The art of perfection. Like, this goes back to what we were texting about this morning.

32:21Like, GR Dreams of Sushi. Like, beautiful documentary about just, like, taking pride in making good sushi. once you apply that to your recruiting and your product development and everything else you do, people just want to get better and they want to learn. You know he's still alive. Yeah. How old is he now? Like 101? Oh my God. That's amazing. Okay. So let's talk about some of the Japanese. People think, at least in our 20s, at least for me, I'm like, yeah, being rich should be the goal, right? Because especially Asian, everyone just looks at like, everyone envies like the rich uncle, right? But then you realize pretty quickly that shouldn't be the goal, which is what you sent me this morning, right?

32:59So if becoming rich shouldn't be the goal, what should the goal be? Well, I'm not saying it shouldn't be the goal. I'm suggesting that you need to be more reflective on what are all the potential goals out there. And then you have a menu and then you can choose which ones are important. And it might be multiple in order, multiple at the same time, but you just have a different ranking. So for me, after college, making enough money to pay my bills, that's number one. And so I think the problem is throughout your twenties, um, that's your top goal. And then you're in your thirties and you're like, Oh my God, I might like get married and have a family and have kids.

33:37So it's still your goal, but you never reevaluate it when you're like actually successful and think, Hmm, maybe this isn't my top goal anymore. Maybe like having great relationships is my top goal, but then you do that for a while. So that was my top goal for a while, like have great friends, great life experiences. And then And that got so boring. So I'm like, all right, that's no longer my top goal. And then it became just like, how do I create my life and my work in a way that helps me pursue my curiosity and just like get better and like learn more and advance myself? And then the money and other like, you know, material world success stuff came further down on the list.

34:16So my point is like, we just have to reevaluate this on at least an annual basis. and how does that relate with ikigai um ikigai i think is really interesting everyone's talking about ikigai now right um which is like how do you find the intersection of like what you're good at what you love and like what actually makes a living yeah and um and and i think getting to 100 ikigai attainment is really almost impossible yeah so maybe 100 ikigai is not the goal maybe the goal is 80 % Ikigai. I don't like, okay, maybe you're right on the 80%. But like, because I was so addicted to games growing up. I'm just like, dude, I'm so screwed.

34:57If I can't find something in life that feels like a game. But it turns out it's actually business because you meet cool people, you get to do cool things. And like everything unlocks, right? And you get to bring people along with you. And so to me, it's like, that is the intersection of everything. So it's like, maybe for the vast majority of people, I mean, like, if that's what you really want, then you go through the pain and you start a business, right? I don't know. What's your response to that um i mean i agree with you i like the game and i'm willing to go through the pain um but yeah i think a lot of people you know they they're not thinking about this ikigai concept yet or when they do they they're like all right i'm gonna start a business and try to play this game but it's still not like fully clicking for them yet you said a key thing it's it's they don't know how to go through the pain and when i think about just whether you're japanese korean chinese or whatever if you're asian you know how to go through the pain right and like no like maybe i could we can only say that because we're asian yeah but it's a lot of pain right yeah yeah i mean you kind of this idea of like happiness being the goal that wasn't the goal as an asian kid no right yeah exactly like if it was like mom like i'm not happy she'd be like uh no the goal is to uh you know have more grit and to like learn how to get up when you're beaten down yeah get straight a's right exactly happiness is not like even top 10 on the list of goals happiness is not even a word right yeah i know i love you is not a word either i know it's so funny i'm not saying that's right either there's probably some balance yeah yeah yeah but um a lot of other cultures you know they don't talk about happiness as much as western culture does um and as far as he guy goes um i think a lot of people they try to pursue their passion or whatever and it's not clicking right away like oh man this ended up being so much more work or pain or hassle or like you know i'm working with the wrong people and the point is like it sometimes takes five ten twenty years to like go from 20 percent ikigai to 50 percent ikigai to you know whatever you know ends up being Where do you think you're at?

37:01I think I'm at, I told someone last night, I think I'm at 75%. And 75 % I'm very happy with. I think it's great. And I think I could do better. But, you know, I'm very content with 75%. What do you think you were at three years ago? Three years ago, I was probably at like 50%. That's before you started Maui, right? That was at the early stages of Maui because I didn't really know what I was. I didn't have enough people around me. So I was doing a lot of work that wasn't my Sona Genius. And then I hired the people to do that. So one from 50 to 75. But there's a lot of just like, all right, who are the right people?

37:37What's the culture I want to build here? So a lot of that consternation makes it hard to have 100 % Ikigai when you're going through that process. That's fine. You mentioned Sona Genius. Can you define that? Yeah, it's just like, what are you absolutely amazing at? That's like your unique calling where like you're probably going to be better than everyone else at this. um that's my what how do you define sona genius no it's that i just wanted to define it for everyone but it's what do you think it is for you because i know you mentioned on another podcast like operating is not your happy place right like being in a day-to-day having to like deal with all the nitty-gritty stuff like that bothers me too so yeah yeah i mean it's awesome it's like what are you like what could you hire someone else to do better than you clearly not your son a genius and for me there's so many other better operators out there who love operating yeah and And they just love refining the business.

38:30And I'm just so ADD that that's just too difficult. I love meeting amazing people like you and coming up with great ideas and saying, hey, Eric, that's a great idea. How do we build that together? How do we build out the management team, get this funded, and get this launched and going? That's my son of genius. If I could do that all day long and only that, I'd be at 100 % Iggy Guy. So, I mean, business is all a game of resource allocation. And so, you know, what I've been told, like reading a lot of these self-help books growing up, right. It's like, oh yeah, you know, you should focus. You listen to Warren Buffett focus, Bill Gates focus, right.

39:02I just couldn't do it. Like I'd love playing all these different video games growing up. I love playing these different games, but I would say the last three years, I'm probably more focused than I've ever been, but there's that muscle. There's that, it's like bothering me. Like I think focus is a muscle, but like I didn't work it out enough. Right. But in the back of my mind, like I've got the entrepreneurial ADD. I want to work on a bunch of things. So the question for you is, how do you manage all your resources? Because you're constantly looking to the new frontier and looking at all these new things, right?

39:28How do you keep an element of focus there? Yeah, well, I'm not launching new things every week or every month. So it's just like, what do I feel called to do? And how do I make sure my current bucket and basket is being properly resourced and getting what it deserves before I add something new in? And then once I feel like I'm on a bit of stable footing, then I'll add the new stuff in. And last year, I didn't do a good job of this. I was definitely a bit too scattered, so I've refined that. I've simplified. So that's why I feel a lot better now. I think having good role models here helps a lot.

40:00And yeah, I looked up to originally it was Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. I'm like, eh, none of these people are really hitting the mark for me. And then I found Richard Branson. I'm like, yes. And then I also love Tony Hsieh, who ended up becoming a great friend of mine. Yeah, I just thought, what did they win at? because everyone right now is looking up to Elon Musk. But, like, Elon, I don't really want to be Elon. No. Like, I think we admire him, but I would not want his life. It's a hard life. Because, like, if you're jealous of someone, like, you have to think, would I swap every part of my life for every part of this person's life?

40:36Yeah. You know, like, he spent Thanksgiving Day hanging out with Donald Trump, not with his kids. Like, is that the type of, you know, person I want to be? No. Yeah. But I respect it. I admire it, what he's been able to accomplish. then I look at Richard Branson and you know I was on Necker Island for five days um this year he was playing tennis every day and sailing and hanging out and just like having a great time and he's able to like have his businesses and like do so much amazing philanthropy and like helping the world yeah um and he's an idea person too he loves to like call this person that person and make something happen but he's not the most successful right like he's worth a few billion He's not worth, he's not like the richest man on earth like Elon, but he knew when enough was enough.

41:18Yeah. And, and so he's my hero. So like if someone wants to become like you or they want to become like Richard Branson, right? Is it, should they, like he started, I think he started with Virgin Airlines first, right? And then. Virgin Records. Virgin Records. That became successful. Is it like. It was successful, but yeah, Virgin Records is obviously not as big anymore. and they had the mega, the super stores. And that ended up not being a thing after, you know, Apple ate their lunch. And then he pivoted to the airlines and just added on more and more. Well, maybe let's just do a experience share from your end.

41:52So how did you, I mean, you had Indonero first, right? Indonero was my number one. And then like, what's your blueprint to getting to where you are now? Is it one main business first and then like you get the resources from that. And then, you know, maybe you raise money for the other stuff, like walk us through that. I think that having one thing first is an important prerequisite. It's kind of like when you're going through college and you have to do calc and all these other things that you probably don't want to take, but you just have to take it. That was like starting my first company. So I had to do that.

42:24I was CEO. I hired all the people, hundreds of employees, had every executive reporting directly to me, raised all the money myself, tens of millions of dollars. and I was trying to figure out, could this be the company I still hang my hat on and I'm still doing this 30 years from now? Yeah. You said 30 years, right? That was the hope. And I quickly realized that's not going to be me. And I admire people. Like you look at, you know, the CEO of NVIDIA, right? He started there decades ago and he's still the CEO. Did you buy those video cards when you were like younger? Yeah, absolutely. I installed them in my own computers.

42:59I told my mom to buy that stuff. I was like, that'd be$9 million now if you put somebody in. I know, I know. Um, so that's one path. You could do that. But I think it helps to have that experience. Cause if I didn't have the direct operating experience, I wouldn't know how to think about like investing and starting new companies and mentoring new CEOs. Like, how about for you? Like, what was your, you know, path to getting to where you are now? Well, I mean, I think I tried to do too many things in the beginning. And then, then I learned that, no, it's, you lock in on one. because once you lock in on, I call it focused involvement.

43:36Founder mode became such a big thing this year, right? But I think the whole time founders have known that you can't just go hire a CEO and go do some other shit. It's like if you want to make that one thing really work, for me at least, I have to stay involved, right? So I do agree. I think it's one thing and then you can start to spread it if you want. And I don't think there's any right or wrong way to do it. It's like Richard Branson has one way to do it, right? Warren Buffett has his way of doing it. I think it's like what do you want ultimately? I don't think I have the ambitions to be the richest person in the world.

44:05I just want to have the most fun and then die happy. That's all. Yeah, that's a great goal. And I think it's important to recognize that there are these different flavors of entrepreneurs out there. You have the Giros of the world who want to do their thing. Their goal isn't even to make a big business. Their goal isn't even to have the best lifestyle. Sushi master forever. Exactly. It's just to master their craft. And then you have people like you and me who want to follow our curiosity. We're ADD, up the WISU. We have so many interests and we want to have the most fun playing the game and as many games as possible.

44:39Then you have the Elons and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world who have their one – well, actually, Elon's got a bunch of things. But they're just like maniacally focused, right? And that's another path too. And then you have the Warren Buffetts, right? So you have to categorize all these different entrepreneurs. Yeah. Warren Buffett and every other passive investors, another category. Then you have the private equity people, right? Like, like the David Rubenstein. Yeah. The world who, you know, have Carlisle and Blackstone. And he's an influencer. And he's an influencer now, right? So anyway, you have all these flavors.

45:11You just got to figure out what works for you or combine them together, right? Yep. Like take the best of each world and then make your own thing. All right, quick note. This is about my company. It's called Single Grain. And Single Grain is an ad agency where we're focused on driving innovation. And so I want to talk about a couple of new strategies. And if you need help with marketing, great. If not, here are a couple of new strategies that you should try out. One is programmatic CRO. So we are doing programmatic conversion rate optimization on our site. We're building products that will automatically optimize your site to increase conversion rates.

45:41We're also auto optimizing, auto updating from an SEO standpoint. and we're constantly thinking about what else we can do in terms of enriching the visitors that are hitting your website and also tailoring custom messages for them using AI. And so there's a handful of things that we're doing from a marketing standpoint and our mission is just to drive more innovation. So if you want to learn more, just go to singlegrain.com, grain like rice. So singlegrain.com to learn more and we'll see you inside. You have another Japanese phrase here, but I just want to go back. I'm kind of ADDing this a little bit too.

46:13Like how do you, when you launch something new, Is it just, okay, here's an idea, here's the concept, and then you have, like, Mr. Beast has, like, 28 chiefs of staff, right? Like, do you have a bunch of chiefs of staffs with you? Like, how do you guys, how do you launch these things? Because obviously, you can't oversee them all, right? Yeah, I think it's a balance. I've thought about doing that. And, I mean, I've got three executive assistants. So everything goes through Team Jess. And then I've got three research people right now, but I'm adding a fourth and maybe a fifth. And I like having a relatively small team there because then they could really immerse themselves into, what's the Jess Ma way of doing things?

46:51Are you in office or...? No, we're remote, but I bring them in for a few days every month. So we do work in person together. Yeah. And do you know the Mr. Beast chief of... Like, do you know how that's structured? No, tell me. Okay. So I think he has like 28 of these, right? Three of them live with him. So like literally they see all the things that he did. They basically become a shadow of him. when you play games sometimes you can have a shadow a shadow version of you so they all go through the ringer and basically you have like 28 different versions of him he's shooting a bunch of different videos at once he's working on a bunch of different things and they all start to think like him too and so I'm like man I don't know if I want someone living with me but that sounds like the best because here's my thing I'm like okay yeah you get to do a lot of cool things I get to do a lot of cool things but am I really that genius or anything at the end of the day maybe not But here's all the playbooks.

47:40You're going to give them all the playbooks, right? I'm like, I don't know. That just seems like I feel like more people are going to do that. Yeah, I've tried the chief of staff thing. I've gone through many, many different ones over the years. And I decided it's not for me. Yeah. I had someone living with me and shadowing me this year. And I did that for like five months. And then I realized that I felt like claustrophobic. Yeah. Was it even worth keeping that person? I didn't keep it. I just wanted my privacy. And I didn't want to be. I wanted peace and quiet. and I wanted to be able to like think on my own.

48:10And then I went more down the path of specialization, which is like everyone kind of has their unique thing that they're an expert at. And instead of trying to duplicate myself, that's not really the goal. The goal is to have like a great operation doing like my recruiting versus my company building versus my company overseeing. And like, so these are the three different pillars of my way is the way to think about it. And I like that approach better. but what's cool is, you know, Mr. Beast, whatever he's doing is working for him. Yeah. You talked about being super intentional with the people that you just hang out with, right?

48:50Or the people that you spend time with. Yeah, like, who are the people you're spending the most time with, and are they influencing you in the right way? And so, how do you, I mean, on one end, like, I know, you did that podcast and you had a bunch of people come in, right? Uh-huh. And you're like, okay, like, I'm gonna be open-minded here. I'm going to meet these people. I guess, how do you think about being super intentional? Like, what is your criteria for someone like, you know, making it in to hang out with you? I mean, for me, it's the first thing is like, am I going to have fun and enjoy it?

49:20So my goal is first and foremost to like have fun and to enjoy along the way. Otherwise, and to not have it feel like work. So that's criteria one. And then two is like, all right, are we going to have like a lot of interesting banter and just like, will time fly by because we're, you know. Time has flown by for this one, but I haven't even looked at, like, 95 % of my clients, I haven't even looked at that. I know, this is amazing. This is exactly how it should feel, right? And then, like, could we develop a real friendship? Will this, like, be more than just a transactional, like, once I'm done dinner?

49:49Yeah. And, um, but, yeah, it's like, you got to be open to a lot of things, and then you filter down from there. Got it. You brought up, I mean, what's the, so Ikigai can pronounce, what's the other word? Kotowari? Yeah, Kotowari. What is that? Yeah, I mean, Kotowari is just this relentless pursuit for excellence. And, you know, just the art of getting continuously better at this. That's such a Japanese thing. Like, they're so good at everything. I know, I know. It's like, it's distinct from Kaizen, which is just like the concept of small improvements along the way. You know, that's really, you know, beautiful and amazing versus just trying to have major step functions.

50:30Like what if you refine your factory process where you just like cut out 1 % of the waste on a daily basis? That's Kaizen, right? So I love these words. So Kotowari and Kaizen are almost the same thing? They're different because Kotowari is the pursuit of excellence. Okay. So that describes more like JIRA. Got it. Okay. But I think it's like to be Kotowari, you're applying Kaizen principles is the way to think about it. Yeah, I think Kaizen's the step. I mean, that's the step to take to get to Kotowari. Yeah, exactly. And so that word is not as popularized. But why I think it's so beautiful is because, again, in Western culture, we're not necessarily trying to become excellent at something.

51:16We're just trying to get to the destination and win. And I think that's actually really awesome. And we shouldn't lose sight of that. And we should steal what the Japanese have created with Kotowari. What if you could have both in parallel? That, I think it's a recipe for just having a really fun time doing business. I mean, you can probably coin this. I mean, it's like you can have the three-year journey, like three and 50 or something, right? Because here's the thing. When you say 50-year intentions, the story that Neil and I have repeated on the Marketing School podcast is he was hanging out with this billionaire heiress, right?

51:49And she said she herself hadn't built anything, but she's observed her uncles and her grandpas and all that. Like they've built and built and built. And they've all had one thing in common, right? It's always one business and it's 30 plus years. And it's interesting because we have a client that's YPO and he's like 60 something now. But, you know, nine figure business. I'm like, how long have you been doing it? It's like 30 plus years. I'm not saying everyone needs to do it 30 plus years, but like the 50 year plus intention, it's like, that's actually how long it takes to build something really big.

52:18It takes a really long time. most of the time, unless you're Elon or, you know, some of these folks who are well popularized in the media. The problem is if you go look at the Forbes list of billionaires, and actually I did this when I was 23. Of course. I went through every single person on the list and I put them in a few buckets. The first bucket was, are they in tech or are they not in tech? And then were they self-made or not self-made? So I just got rid of all the non-self-made people because I'm like, all right, that doesn't apply to me. So, all right, of the self-made people, most of them were not in tech or software.

52:52And of those people, most of them had built one business over the span of 30, 40, 50 years and that they got to their wealth well into their 50s, 60s. Like they didn't get there in their 30s. And so all of us are just so impatient. And what's so frustrating to me now about all these influencers and podcast hosts, not you because you're awesome, but a lot of these other people, they're putting out a bunch of this content around how to, they don't see get rich quick because it's obvious that get rich quick is like not great yeah um or that content does well on youtube because everyone wants it yes exactly so all of you guys watching this you're clicking on this click beat stuff where it says like oh yeah how to go from zero to a hundred million in three years yeah and it's like but but then the whole thing is around like actually it took much longer and that person you know like took a bunch of shortcuts along the way or they like built up a career before that so it wasn't really over three years it was really over 30 years you know like there's all this fine print plus if it were that easy like it wouldn't even be that fulfilling yeah exactly it's not there's actually a lot of science behind that if you study um dopamine and how this works it's like actually the more pain you endure like it it's really um more satisfying yeah at the end that's why you hit the cold plunge in the morning right?

54:11Yes, exactly. Cold plunge is a great example. Working out. And in business, it's just raw suffering. Business, you're just getting punched all the time. And then like you go work out like, yes, that's pain. And then you're sonning, you're cold plunge, everything. It's like you almost have to run towards the pain. Otherwise, you're miserable. You have to embrace the pain and accept the pain and like psychologically. I kind of enjoy it. I'm not going to lie. Like I used to play a lot of poker growing up. Like Like in poker, you're getting beat down the whole time. You can play your best for like six months at a time and then still lose.

54:42Yeah, I mean, I think that going back to just like, how do you build over a long time versus like, you know, get rich quick. Yeah. I think being careful about the content you consume, spending more time with people who built over a 20, 30, 40 year time horizon and having them be your role models. And they're down to hang out with you too, because they miss having these conversations. They do. They want to help the younger generation. Even if you're 50 and they're 70, they still want to hang out and help you think long-term. So anyway, I've been thinking a lot about that lately. Trying to ask myself, what would I do if I had to be stuck doing this 30 years from now or 50 years from now?

55:26And I'm building for that. It feels like you found it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And everything I'm adding, I'm trying to have it fit into that and not take on short-term projects. So that's why I'm not doing a lot with Web3 or crypto stuff. It's just not something I want to do over a long time horizon. Yeah. I mean, the stuff you're solving or trying to solve for would be like, we're talking curing cancer, regenerating limbs. What else do you have that's in that universe? Yeah. I mean, that's probably the boldest stuff. Bold science, right? Bold, cutting-edge science. If you look up Mike Levin on YouTube, he's got this three-plus-hour-long Lux Friedman podcast I highly recommend.

56:10TED Talk. He's been everywhere. And he will talk about how he's able to use bioelectricity to normalize cancer cells. And why is this so profound? It's so profound because we're so used to killing cancer. with chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, CAR T therapies. It's all, you know, unfortunately going to get rid of healthy tissue as well, very difficult to heal from. So could we come up with a completely novel mechanism for curing cancer and not just treating cancer but curing cancer? Are you working with him? Yeah, I mean, aren't you one of our investors? I don't look. I just like, it's just my.

56:51Yeah, you're a backer of this. Yeah, you're doing really well on that. So his research is absolutely insane. Um, we're doing a lot of longevity stuff too. That's I think still top secret, but let's just say it's really, when we release the info on longevity, you will, I'll tell you offline, but it's absolutely bonkers. Okay. So that's the kind of stuff I love doing. Yeah. Um, but it gets no credit today. I can't even really talk about a lot of it. So like, there's no public praise. There's no like networking value. It's okay. You're Asian. You don't need praise. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Actually, that's a big part of it.

57:29Could you train yourself to not need praise and to not need PR and to be on these stupid lists? I've gotten so many kids saying, hey, could you help me get on this Forbes 30 Under 30 or Inc. 30 Under 30 list? And I'm like, this list, like... It's a scam. It's like, yeah, they're just trying to get you to promote their list and to promote their brand. There's like so many sub-segments of 30 Under 30 now. Yeah, I know. It's like 3 ,000 under 30, really. And it's just a waste of time. So I got on the list not because I asked to. They put me on the list without my permission. Well, I think you were on probably before it was cool and before they commercialized it so much.

58:10Yeah, exactly. That's what happened. So people are like, oh, how did you get on the list? I'm like, I don't know. They just put me on the list. Yeah. Can you tell me then, I mean, I'm curious, what's in your learning stack? How does your day-to-day look? and you can even talk about like your longevity stack too, right? There's like a lot to work off. Like I just kind of want to know your habits. I first off like to wake up early and go to sleep early. I'm trying to stick with like the natural sunlight. Why is that important? Because I just think I'm healthier and happier. And then – You sleep at like 8.30, wake up at 4.

58:52like today was like 6 a.m. So it's not even that early, but it's like, you know, it's a Saturday on Thanksgiving weekend. So, um, so yeah, I mean, and then I'll go to bed around like nine to night. Um, I sleep at least eight hours every night. I'm really into my peptides. Um, I hate needles, but I train myself to inject myself in the butt every day. Yeah. Um, and, um, yeah, I've got a bunch of these peptide and longevity docs. In the butt or on the butt? The lower butt, like through the juicy area. Got it, got it, got it. So I have like a mini fridge in my bathroom. Are you like reading five hours a day like Warren Buffett?

59:34No, I'm not. I wish. I have to like operate all the time. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I listen to a ton of podcasts on 2x speed. You know, I can't do that anymore. Like as I get older, I'm just like, I used to listen on 2x speed and now everything's on like 1.5x. Okay. Yeah, maybe you have to break age 35 or something. No, it depends on the podcast, too. Some people talk too slow. So you could do 2X or 1.5X. This podcast, like, my goal is to talk as fast as possible, so you can't do 1.5X even on this one. You have to go 1X. They saw that the performance was better when the content was more fast versus, like, it was too slow.

1:00:09So that's why you have to chop these clips up a lot more efficiently. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, dude, I've got some clippable moments. We have, like, 15, 20 minutes left. I've got some clippable moments. You ready? Perfect, perfect. Yeah. You mentioned that. So Jess, why are all women gold diggery? Oh my God. I think that this is kind of provocative. I think that women are programmed to want to have safety and security. And they want to have usually a guy who can take care of them on, you know, on at least a basic level. And I'm no exception to that. So we make fun of gold diggers all the time.

1:00:46but we're all little, most women are little gold diggery. Yeah. And that's totally okay. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't see that in a condescending way. I'm just stating it as like reality and truth. Yeah. I think most people aren't willing to accept that truth. Like I'm willing, like, it's fine. It's natural, like human tendency, right? So I'm like, I used to hate it because like my mom, again, was the breadwinner. I'm like, okay, so that should be the model. The mom should be the breadwinner. I'm like, no, no, no, that's not how it works, right? Not necessarily. But then I think you've had to deal with like, you know, I think you've worked up to this point, right?

1:01:17And this is, can you talk about that a little bit? Sure. Well, before you go into that, I just want to mention that I have so many successful guy friends who are so scared of dating a gold digger as if that's a bad thing. And yeah, like you have to be careful out there. You want someone who loves you for you. But I think that we've kind of overcorrected. It's kind of like a lot of people who are, you know, very PC, right? Super politely correct about everything. Like this is one of those examples. And then the other one that you had was, I mean, should women become boss babes? I don't see any reason why not.

1:01:56Yeah, why not? If you want. But I actually think that a lot of women shouldn't be boss babes because like being a boss babe is like it's kind of painful. And it's like actually not necessarily that fun to be a boss babe. And so a lot of people say they want to be a boss babe, but they don't actually want to be a boss babe. They want to be like, you know, they just want to be like zen and chill. And that's okay, too. Yeah. I mean, what parts are painful? Like being a boss babe means you're like, you know, running things and you're like organizing and hiring people and firing people and dealing with litigation and lawyers and all this BS all the time.

1:02:32That's like, I mean, that's like comes with just entrepreneurship in general. But do you think you have to deal with more being like a female? For me, less so. people don't tend to mess with me very much, but I have girlfriends who present as if they're much more like soft and gentle and they could be walked all over. I think they have more trouble than I do, unfortunately. So how, so my prompt to them is how could you optically, like how could you change your stick and your identity so that like you come across as being like someone who's unflappable? But you're such a like kind person. Yeah, but I still have people who like try to extort me or blackmail me all the time.

1:03:11I mean, I had two people try to do that to me last month. What? Yeah, it happens still. Damn. Like ex-employees or whatever. Oh, okay. Yeah, of course. So it happens, but just have a good litigator and have them deal with it. My whole thing is like, I think people will complain about discrimination or hating or like, I just ignore all that. And you just kind of seems like a similar thing to you. You just focus on the work, right? Everything else seems to be noise. It's all noise. And so the giant mind trick is how do you just like not get distracted and not care? Yeah. And like not let it bother you.

1:03:44It's like when you're playing your video game and then, you know, some random thing happens. You just got to like keep on going on your track. Yeah. Not take anything too personally. It's a game. Yeah. You know, they're messing with you. You just mess with them back. You know, it's just part of the fun. So, okay. I mean, I want to go back to the spending piece because Money Wise was great. The Money Wise podcast you did was great because it's like it revealed like how how you're spending habits work. Right. So. Yeah. But it goes all the way back to your the mind. This was fascinating to me where you said your mind.

1:04:14Your mom was like, hey, like the goal isn't to be frugal. Right. You shouldn't be frugal. Yeah. My mom loves to spend money on experiences. Yeah. When we were growing up, we were. Even when you guys didn't have a lot of money. When we didn't have a lot of money, but she was starting to make some money. I remember I was eight and she's like, like, kids, we're staying at the Four Seasons. I'm like, what's the Four Seasons? But for her, it was a big deal. Because she was like, I'm an immigrant, and this is the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in, and you're coming with me. And then I remember the day she bought a Mercedes.

1:04:46And for her, it was a big deal, too. She's like, kids, I bought a Mercedes today. And it's just cool to celebrate these small experiences along the way with her. And so because I was so young and impressionable, that taught me, hey, don't be scared of like buying trophies along the way to celebrate your wins. And so that's why I think I was so comfortable like buying a jet, buying another jet, you know, buying, you know, crazy cars and stuff. Because they don't actually cost a lot of money. But the mindset is I'm willing to celebrate my wins. Yeah. And like you said, you put, I mean, for the two jets you have, it's 20 % down, right?

1:05:22And I think you, one, I think you own outright. And then the other, I think it's... I mean, it's like$12 million in aircraft that I collectively own half of both of them. Got it. Okay. Yeah, but it doesn't seem too insane if you've got a successful business and you put 20 % down. It's really not a lot. It's like, you know, tiny pennies. So I think a lot of people want to either talk about how they, you know, bought these toys and how expensive it is because they want to show off how, you know, how successful or rich they are. But the truth is they didn't put that much money into it. And they actually probably got some money out of it because of the tax side.

1:05:58It's just sexy to say, oh, it's my$100 million jet. It's sexy to say that. But really, they're$70 million G550 depreciated down and it's only worth$15 million. And then they put 20 % down. Yeah. But I think on Money Wise, you said annual spends, just call it$2 million,$3 million or something like that. No, less than that. Personal annual spends, maybe$1 million, I think. $1 million, okay. Which is still a lot for everyone. It is a lot. I still think at the end of the day, though, you're reinvesting heavily into the stuff that you have, right? Yeah, absolutely. It's not just like, oh yeah, she's just living the life.

1:06:32No, we're spending like, you know, millions more on the holding company and on, you know, and then many, many millions more on investing in stuff. So it's like, that's just, but I think it's important to also take care of yourself. The example of, um, put your own oxygen mask on before helping others. I think that applies to all good things in life. Like, how do you treat yourself to a good time? How do you make sure that all your luxuries that you really want? Like, it might be simple. Like I want to fly first class. I want to stay in a five-star hotel. If you add up all of the amount of spend you're going to have across the year there, it's not that much money.

1:07:05It's maybe$50 ,000. But by just spending it, you're not going to think about it anymore. And you'll make like millions of dollars more to compensate for that 50K spend, you know? Let's talk about, okay, so what's your biggest splurge this year? Biggest splurge this year? Other than the new jet. You got a new jet this year? Well, I got a CJ3+. I don't even know what that is. So yeah, I could fly it. I'm licensed in it already. But yeah, I mean, I made a lot of other random investments that I'd consider splurging. Some that are doing well, some that are not doing well. Yeah. And how about you? What's your craziest splurge this year?

1:07:48Man, I don't know if I have, like, no, I don't have anything crazy this year. I'm trying to think. I don't know. Like, okay, I'll tell you what. If I were to get married and have kids, family, it would be a house. But I'm just like, no, I'm happy where I am right now. That's amazing. I think that's just so beautiful to be able to just be happy with what you've got right now and appreciate that. I think a lot of us have the disease of more is more. As we work towards wrapping up here, I would be remiss not to ask you about... Everyone talks about AI right now. right? Like what's the cool stuff that you're excited about around the AI stuff right now?

1:08:30And I think you're probably limited on what you can say, but whatever. Yeah, I'm a bit limited on what I can say, but I think there are a bunch of, what I will say is that I think there's a lot of really interesting research on AI that has nothing to do with language models. I think everyone's obsessed with LLMs, but there's so much that LLMs cannot do very well. And what if we made more progress in those other areas? And so I would just encourage people to think about that more. What would be an example? I mean, now we're getting into some of the companies I'm funding, so I'll tell you offline.

1:09:09Okay, fine, fine, fine, fine. Okay. Rapid Fire, best book you read this year? I've read probably 70 books this year, and I wouldn't say any of them made it to my top list that I would say is my best this year. Unfortunately, they're just kind of normalizing. But I'd say a memorable book that I would want people here to read is the top book on Naval Robicant. Oh, The Almanac. The Almanac. And I've re-read this book three times. I like a lot of stuff he says. And I like a lot of... The only issue with it is that he advocates for leaving the game and not playing a game. whereas for someone like you or me that's just not possible you want to play the game the goal isn't to not play the game the goal is to enjoy the game more because then what would you do?

1:09:59you would just do nothing if you don't play the game you would basically be a zen monk sitting under a tree meditating all day, I don't know alright so I'm going to go with that have you heard of the book Reality Transurfing? no we'll leave this public for everyone my friend he was sitting in Europe and then this like really beautiful woman walks up to him and is kind of talking into him in a condescending way. And he's like, what kind of watch is that? Right. And then he's like, he's looking at her. He's like, he's like, is she like a prostitute? And then, so like, he like responds in a condescending way.

1:10:32It's like, no, it's this brand. Right. And it turns out this gal runs a company that does a billion a year in revenue. Right. It's, it's, it's her, she's divorced and all that. Right. And then they start talking It just goes in a different direction. And the book's called Reality Trendsurfing. And all these entrepreneurs are raving about it right now. It's really dense. It's like 800 pages. You probably have to audiobook it. That's what I've been doing. And I'm not even finished with it yet. But the whole idea here is like, it's just a complete mindset shift. And I remember speaking at a conference in Germany, and there's like four people.

1:11:05Everyone, their eyes perked up when we talked about it. So anyway, that's my gift to you. That'll be my book for this year. it's yeah super dense though but anyway 800 pages fully cow yeah 36 hour audiobook so you know i do want to mention that it's okay to read like books that are not like a top book like you know i read you know again obvious books about um like relationships and dating and like i read oh and i finally found a boyfriend after i read like 20 of these books yeah wait is it you met the boyfriend because you read the 20 books or like it definitely helped me get my mindset in a better spot yeah to then be open to dating.

1:11:45But these books are all terrible. They're all very short, quick, obvious reads, but by reading them, you just kind of get into this mind space of putting yourself in the energy of whatever the author wants to convey. I have a final question for you. You tend to run a lot of crazy experiences, because you bring up the boyfriend, right? I remember you ran an experiment. I think it was Wall Street Journal. I'll give you 100 grand or something. Yeah. Go ahead. You can finish the story. I mean, I told the Wall Street Journal that if someone found me, my husband, I would pay them$100 ,000 bounty. And so it's front page on the Wall Street Journal.

1:12:19And I got like hundreds of random dudes sent my way. And then people were calling my customer service hotline at Indonera saying, hey, I got like a potential husband for Jess Maul. Like, oh my God, like, but yeah, I never found a husband. So I was gonna jack up my bounty to a million dollars this year. but then I found my boyfriend who I hopefully will still be with long term so but if it doesn't work out then I'm I'm gonna uh open up the bounty again okay that's that's insane um well I hope it works out thank you um and I trust that it will but okay what we're always trying to go with this is what's the craziest experiment that you ran this year uh the craziest one that I ran this year that was public or just private or anything you choose um i mean i oh i had a full-time live-in uh chef bodyguard assistant driver this is not the chief of staff right now okay and this person it was really interesting because i've heard of like billionaires who like just had a you know someone just like at their beck and call and i'm like oh like let me try that too And yeah, I just, again, like I was trying to simplify and get like clear out the energy to have like fewer random dudes in my house.

1:13:33But yeah, that was kind of interesting experiment. Oh, that's fun, man. Okay. Well, the private stuff can be offline. So Jess, what's the best way to find you online? This has been great. Yeah. I mean, I'm on Instagram at Jess Ma Official. And yeah, LinkedIn. I post on my LinkedIn a lot. So check out my content there. And thanks for having me. Cool. Thanks for being here.