From High School Dropout To $952 Million At 33

26:52He became my boss. so we go into this like one-on-one and um he's like so like what are your like career you know what's your like goals for yourself here you know at the company and i was like um well i have two options here i'm either gonna lie to this guy and say oh i can't wait to get promoted from l7 to l8 to l10 like you know like that's like the ladder literally it's a ladder and you that's your goal and i was like i'm either gonna lie about this to him because he's you know he's my manager. I guess that's what I'm supposed to say. Or I'll tell the truth. And so I told him the truth and I was like, yeah, I can't wait to go build another thing or just go on my own and I don't see myself being here long term.

27:33And he was like, okay, well, that's... I thought that's going to put him in an awkward position, but he was like, he's an experienced guy. He totally rolled with it. He's like, okay, great. Now that I know that, and I was like, I don't want you to totally write me off because I said that. I do think I'll be here to earn out this part of the deal. I think I can do good work while I'm here. I think you'll get value from somebody with my talents being here. So I hope you don't just say, oh, this guy's not here for the long haul. Write me off. But that's the truth. And he was like, done. I appreciate that.

28:04Now let's talk about the thing you really want to do. What is it that you really want to do? And I was like, oh, I want to do this, this, this. But before I do that, I need to kind of like, I'm trying to save up enough capital because that's going to require a lot of capital. And I'm going to learn some things. I'm going to build my network and and he's like yeah i'm not really a fan of the like i want to do x so i'm gonna go do a b and c before i do x he's like you're better off usually just going ahead and trying to do x and i was like all right you're right that's true i don't need like you don't even need to say anymore you're right i was bullshitting myself a little bit um thank you for saying that that's actually a really valuable piece of wisdom and um it reminded me of um there's this tony robbins TED Talk.

28:47Have you ever seen the one time Tony Robbins went to TED? Yeah. He's like on stage and he's like, what stops? I spent my whole life basically studying what stops people from having what they want in life. And he's like, what do you think it is? What holds you back? And people are like, oh, from whatever it is you want. You want a better relationship. You want a better career. You want more money. You want better health, whatever it is. And people are like, oh, I don't have the time. And other people are like, I don't have the knowledge, the skills. and the people in the crowd are saying it and Al Gore is there and this was like right after Al Gore had lost the presidential race to Bush I think there was like a runoff like they had to recount the votes in Florida or something and like they went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court ruled that whatever Bush won and so he hears this voice that says I didn't have enough Supreme Court justices and he's like what the hell what do you mean like who's oh Al Gore is here and Tony Robbins gives this like one minute thing that like actually kind of like bitch slapped all their answers.

29:46He's like, you know, everything you guys just said is a resource. You lacked money, time, capital, Supreme Court justices. That's a thing you lack. Supreme Court justices. Yeah, that's a hilarious example. He's like, the only thing you actually need is resourcefulness. He's like, that is the master skill, the ability to go get the resources you need when you need them for the thing you're trying to manifest. And he's like, is it not true that if you are motivated enough, charismatic enough, playful enough, convincing enough, determined enough, and charming enough, can you not get everything that you want?

30:22Is there really anything that is outside of you if you really put your all into acquiring that resource? Could you not have gotten the time, the money, the network, all of those things? Al Gore, if you were not more passionate when you were on that stage in that debate, would it ever even come down to that Supreme Court justices? No, right? You would have just won in a landslide if you had acquired the things that you actually needed to get there. And that's kind of what you're saying of your little manifestation studio type of concept. I love that because it's like you are completely striking out from the thought process of an entrepreneur.

30:57They're like, do I have what it takes either personally or financially or knowledge and skill wise? You're like, well, if I want to start a bio company, I'll go recruit the best bio people. and then I'll go raise the funding. Exactly. So that'll be that, right? You say like we don't have enough time or money. Those are always the excuses, but you create the time by hiring other people to do the work who are better experts at whatever that thing is. And you manufacture the money by raising the money. And in my case, I've got a multi-person investor relations team. They have connections to tons of billionaires and family offices.

31:33And we're trying to like place these deals with our family office connections. and that's going to be you know within the next year that's going to be a four person team and a capability I have so instead of creating a hold show let's create manifestation shows that's what I'm talking about right I mean you coined it it's the manifestation show and because now if it could be a profitable endeavor great sometimes it won't be and but the point is all of us have that thing we want to create in our life and we want to have the ability to do that in a way that's painless, fun, and exciting for us as the ideator.

32:15What about like, you know, crazy science dreams you have? You said you have ideas or you're talking to scientists all the time. What are some things that are, you know, in the future that you're excited about that is not just a pipe dream? Like there might actually be a pathway to do it. Like, you know, I don't know if the growth test tube maybe in a vat type of thing. I don't know if that's just a dream or there's actually people working on that that might be scientifically possible or practical. Can you tell me about some parts of the future that I should be excited about or my kids might get to experience?

32:46I actually think that is very viable, the test two babies. I know of, I've talked to several scientists who are doing the portion to, like, for example, let's say you wanted to be the mother of a child, not the father. and we could take your genetic material and treat an egg out of that i think that we're going to see that within the next five years and then the converting you know having a artificial embryo generated avatar style that's a little harder to do i i've met scientists who've been able to um get to maybe six weeks before the whole thing falls apart and that will get better and better over time.

33:28But the implications there are huge. Like for women, imagine not having to deal with this and not having to do egg extraction if you're having trouble conceiving. And then what's also realistic, I think, is extending our lives by 30%. I think we need to be prepared to live till we're 120 or longer. And right now, the upper limit in our head is, oh, I'll probably die when I'm 90. We're not thinking about the exponential rate of change here. And I am talking to a lot of longevity scientists. I'm seeing the data. It's compelling. I think we're going to live longer and we need a plan for that future.

34:11What's the short version of how we get that extra 30 %? Is it drugs? Is it diet lifestyle changes? Is it reversing aging? Is it getting blood from young baby seals? What are we going to do to make that happen? It's probably going to be a combination of multiple factors. And all these projects fall under what you call bold science. Can you define bold science? What does that mean? Yeah, there are just so many companies working on very incremental companies means where it might extend your lifespan by three months or six months. That's not a great outcome. Like you're going to be going to the hospital and taking chemo drugs for another six months before you're dead.

34:57What do you do? That's like, I'd rather go to hospice than prolong my suffering. But if you could, instead of patching the problem, like putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound is the analogy. What if you could get to the root cause and reverse cancer, for example, So right now, everything we do within cancer is about trying to kill the cancer cells through chemo, radiation, surgery. CAR-T therapies are super hot and trendy. But that just basically involves using your immune system to target and kill your own cancer cells. But what if killing cancer is the wrong approach? And actually, cancer happens because your cells are trying to protect themselves in some way.

35:41and if you could train them and coach yourselves instead of killing them, let's rehabilitate them, get them to integrate back in with their surroundings, then you could fix cancer. And so we're working on a company around that. That's what I mean by bold science. That's great. So it's basically non-incremental, a big leap in function or leap in quality of life. So like a complete step change. and usually that's going to come from taking a different approach or taking a different point of view on the problem, looking at it through a different lens. And what you do is you partner with scientists to make that happen.

36:23One of the things you said that I liked when we were talking before was, you're like, I get on the plane. I get on the plane every time, yeah. And I don't know exactly what you mean by that, but talk about that because I think that's just an entrepreneurial, as part of the manifestation studio is you got to just get on the plane sometimes. What do you mean by that? I have a real example. I have, there's this successful entrepreneur who I'm sure you've heard of. Maybe you even interviewed him. He lives in Vegas. I live in LA. And I just said, hey, tell me a time and place on Sunday and Monday and I will fly to Vegas and I will meet you.

36:59I will literally take my plane and fly there just for the meeting and then fly home afterwards. And then Tuesday, same thing. I have Patrick Collison from Stripe asked me to hang out with him and have dinner. And it's like, all right, cool. So I'll just get on my jet and go see him and then fly back and be back in my bed after dinner. And does that only work if you have a jet? No, buy a Southwest ticket. I mean, just get creative about it. I do it so often, though, that it is really nice to have my own airplane. But I think that it doesn't matter. If I have to fly to London and see someone, I will gladly book a ticket and do that.

37:38And I think that it really, I had a billionaire do this for me where he literally flew in from South America and he went straight from the airport to dinner with me. And that was the first time I had a one-on-one meeting with this person. And it really made an impression on me. I'm like, wow, this guy went out of his way. He was planning to go to some other city. Instead, he came to LA to meet me just for dinner. And he's more important than I am. By a million miles, he's so much more important than I am. That made me want to be friends with this person. And I have another billionaire who I hit it off with.

38:22We hung out for drinks. We were part of a bigger group. And we had two hours where we just talked about the meaning of life, all of his regrets, all the things he'd do different. He's like this 70-something-year-old dude. And he's like, yeah, everyone wants me for my money, but no one just asks me these questions that you're asking me about life advice. And I'm like, you know what? We should continue this. Where do you live? I'll visit you. He says, I live in the Bahamas. I'm like, great. I'm visiting you. And we booked the time. I'm seeing him for dinner in three weeks. And I want to literally go there just to see him.

38:53And he's so happy about it. And I want to get four hours of downloading this man's wisdom. And it's super cool. I think it's massively underrated. My uncle calls it meeting belly to belly. He's like, you got to be belly to belly in business. And he's in the real estate game. It's a totally different game, but I loved it. I was like, not face to face. We're going belly to belly. And I just think that that was created such a good visual in my head. If you were going to score it, let's say if I gave you one point of trust, productivity, relationship building for a Zoom call versus meeting belly to belly?

39:31If one is the call, how much is the in-person? Well, I mean, I would think that the other way. I mean, it's just they're totally opposite ends of the spectrum. Like a belly to belly, like flying out to see them is the ultimate 10 out of 10 way to engage with someone. There is no better way than to say I'm flying five hours out of my way to see you and to spend dinner with you. And a call is definitely a one and a Zoom call is maybe a two. It's like, that's how wide the Delta is. Right. And oh, the other thing I want to mention is that even, I think a lot of people think, oh, but Jess, you've already muted a bit.

40:12So of course people want to hang out with you. Well, I was getting meetings like this when I was 16 and I knew nothing. I cold emailed the Reddit guys. I cold emailed Justin and Emmett from Twitch. I guess it was justin.tv back then. And I said, hey, I'm this idiot 16-year-old. I think you just put it on the table. Like, I'm an idiot. And I think you are brilliant. And I'm willing to fly to you. And I just want to be a fly on your shoulder and see you do your work. And just like, you know, just follow you around for a day. and so if you pull up the justin.tv archives you will see me driving him around san francisco and going to a poker game with him and like all this random stuff just because i was willing to do that mark benioff replied to me also again i'm an idiot 16 year old that's amazing this is when you're a teenager you also told me because i asked you because um i think one of the valuable things in life is to study like to become a good evaluator of people Like if let's say you're an NBA general manager, you need to be able to spot talent.

41:20I think any business person or investor needs to be able to spot talent and ideally spot the difference between good and great, great and the best in the world. And when I met you, I really felt like, oh, this might be somebody who's one of those like elite best in the world at what they do. And they're going to do special things that are beyond even what really great, smart, intelligent people are going to do just because they seem to be operating differently. But I need to understand them a little more. so I asked you a question when I was getting to know you I was like if I met you when you were younger like 13 years old what would I have seen and would there have been any signals for this and I said and I will say on my side I was a totally unimpressive 13 year old you know there was no signals that I was going to do anything out of the ordinary forget like being great at something just like out of the ordinary beyond average and And so I wasn't that way, but I've met a lot of people who were, they're like teenagers, they're flipping things like on eBay or they were building a product of some kind or whatever.

42:23You have an amazing kind of backstory. Can you tell it? What were you doing? What was like your first interesting little business you were doing when you were a teenager? When I was 13, I started a dedicated server and co-location business because that's what I thought you did in high school. Well, that's just, I don't know why, but I thought it was kind of normal. And I grew that set out a few hundred grand in revenue. Did you know somebody else doing it? Why would you think that's normal? I don't know. I was like the internet forums, you know, there are lots of people who do this. So I thought, okay, this is like a commodity business, but I could probably figure out how to do it and make a few bucks and offset my gaming server expenses.

43:05That was the goal. I just wanted to make like$10 ,000 a year to offset my own costs and buy some clothes and not have to like go work at the shopping mall or like rake leaves or shovel stuff. So you're like, I'm playing video games. I want to scratch my own itch, be able to play my own video games and like, you know, pay off that, buy some clothes. Were you cool in school? Were you like a smart, popular kid? Or who were you? Total geek loser. I was so lame. I, so I had no friends. I went to the computer club at my pay school, which is all the nerds who also had no other friends. So you have to be friends with each other.

43:40they were making fun of me and they were bullying me i was literally on the bottom of the bottom

43:50like that's how i knew it was really bad i'm like okay i have to get out of here as soon as possible so i ended up dropping out of high school uh halfway through my sophomore year but i got into this really cool college program called simon's rock college you know simon's rock and going to college really, it really deceived me because I was born in high school. I wasn't doing well. I was getting terrible grades because I was uninterested and because I had no friends and I felt like I couldn't relate to anyone. All other girls and guys just like were interested in things that I had no interest in.

44:25So when you said, hey, I would love to create the school for people like us, I just thought, holy cow, I want to create that school too. We can make this happen let's do it let's brainstorm it let's set aside sometime another day or let's just go meet up for dinner I'll come wherever you want any day you want I will I will fly to you and we will put together you know a game plan for what this would look like and how we would manifest this without having to wait till we're you know sitting out a billion in cash yeah okay done I love it belly-to-belly booked you that's over this server business did you make the 10 grand off that I was making like hundreds of thousands of dollars a year off of it i was making more money than my teacher i remember in biology class it's edm and i can't pay attention and i'm like doing like the biology teacher clearly doesn't like me because she knows that i'm high potential but i wasn't doing well because i was up till three in the morning answering customer service and sales emails so of course i only had like five hours of sleep and when you're 13 and you're operating on five hours of sleep, you're not going to do well.

45:33But to make myself feel better, I thought, well, at least I'm making more money than my biology teacher. While I'm falling asleep. Moral victory. So when you were meeting these people, because you were like, I'm a dumb 16-year-old college kid. You're in college because you're 16 because you dropped out of high school and just went to college. You met Justin Kahn. You met Mark Benioff. You met these different YC founders. Did you learn anything? did anything stick with you? Was there a story that you remember? What'd you get out of those meetings? Yeah. What I got out of it was that, holy cow, there are other people like me who are a little crazy, who are willing to approach life and entrepreneurship in an unconventional way, and who are willing to do the hard things.

46:21So when I saw Justin, and when I saw Steve Huffman read it i i realized wow like i don't need to wait till i'm older to start doing this today and i also don't need to have money i don't have to have like a job to demonstrate success first so it was more the mindset i would say it's always mindset and psychology more than tactics when you're meeting these people that i focus on yeah yeah and you you also told me you had met these other people like when I was like oh what's I forgot I was like I think I was asked you like what you do with your money and you were like yeah you said one interesting thing you were like you're like you know taxes people I think I was asking you something about taxes and you were like people don't spend enough time on taxes so can you tell me we'll put this in the bucket of billionaire secrets you said you've met a bunch of successful super rich people and the way they think is a little bit different than the way everybody else thinks and I'm interested in that gap.

47:22What's different about the way that the most successful, the richest people that you know think? What is it that they're thinking about differently? One of the things was taxes, but you had a few more. Can you tell me the taxes point and anything else you kind of remember on that? Yeah, tax optimization is a really big deal because if you think about it, if half your money is going to Uncle Sam, it's really going to impact your compounding. Do a compound interest calculator and you'll see the delta is very wide if you're starting at age, say, 30. And these billionaires employ the best tax strategists in the world.

47:58So eventually I said, hey, could you introduce me to your tax person? And that person, of course, works with like 30 other billionaires and has saved them, you know, collectively$100 billion in taxes. And then I've gotten enough of these tax professional intros where now I have a whole collection of them I call and I can buy the advice from multiple tax professionals and merge it all together. And I think that's the next level. Most people just pick one person and they say, oh, I've been working with Betty as my tax accountant for the past 10 years. Well, Betty doesn't work with billionaires. It's time for a new tax accountant.

48:34I literally had this conversation with someone over lunch last week and he texted me right before we got on this call saying, oh my God, this is going to make me millions of dollars more over the next few years. likes. Well, this is so true. I feel when I like I have like a lawyer and a tax person. And if I feel like if I talk to another tax person or a lawyer, I'm like kind of cheating on them. It's like, that's so silly. That's so dumb of a way to think about it. Like, first of all, it's your job to get the best opinion possible. It is. To get the best answer. The best answer is not going to come necessarily from the one person you know who you picked one time five years ago without vetting anybody else.

49:15They may also not specialize in other stuff you're doing. Oh, now you're doing real estate deals. Well, they don't know anything about real estate deals. Or you're doing, you have an exit, an M &A. They don't know anything about M &A. So, you know, you should be talking to people who really understand that stuff. Multiple opinions is better than one. Specialties matter. Also, when you said that, it reminded me, I was like, oh yeah, the person who I have doing tax strategy stuff, they stopped giving me strategy after year one. Like, you know, like the bulk, if I've had a pie chart of 90 % of the like strategy convos we had were at the very beginning.

49:50And then like, now I'm just like the client that they, you know, stamp the thing on like every year, right? Like that happens naturally. Same thing with legal stuff. And so you kind of need to keep dating in order to have like fresh ideas or advice coming in from that perspective. Exactly. And you also said like, there's a certain amount of time you think people should spend on or like, you know, maybe not should, but like the math tells you you should be spending a certain amount of time on taxes. And actually what people actually do is maybe less than 1 % of their time. Yeah, exactly. Less than 1%.

50:23Way less than even 0.1%. Because if taxes impact half your income, potentially, if you invest just even 5 or 10 % of your time this year to finding five amazing tax strategists, get all their advice and figure out how to apply it, 10 % of your time. as the upper bound here. You're making way more money as a result. It pays for itself like a hundredfold. It's the highest IRR investment you can make. And it's way better than investing in the stock market with the money you're paying these tax people. No, that's so true. Because your tax is always your biggest expense. And if you're a business person, you have your business tax, then you have your personal tax, you have investment tax, capital gains tax, you have all kinds of taxes every single year.

51:05The same dollar gets taxed a bunch of times. so you're right basically it's the biggest it's the biggest expense even 10 % sounds absurd because I'm like oh that's 36 days out of the year it's over till you don't need that much time I mean even five days in the year to do this gets you a lot no but you're right on the math like you would be justified spending 36 days out of the year you would be justified spending 10 % of your time and intellectual mind share on your biggest expense that's going to compound every year for the rest of your life. Of course that would make sense. So that is a kind of like aha moment for me.

51:42Right. What about like coaching or, you know, some sort of like, what is your, like, basically if the studio, the manifestation kind of like vehicle here is an extension of you and your brain and your dreams and your desires, then like getting the brain to be like functioning well seems important. Do you do anything, whether it's therapy, nutrition, morning routine, Do you do anything like that to make sure the psychology, the little voice in your head is saying the right stuff? Yeah, for sure. I have two different coaches I talk with each month. And I think of it as going to the gym or taking a shower.

52:24Even if I think I'm happy or in a good mindset, I need to still go see them to make sure that my head is screwed on properly. And yeah, it costs me a ton of money, but it pays for itself right away. I also have my CEO group I visit once a month. It's kind of like Alcoholics Anonymous for CEOs. I'm in YPO, Young Presidents Organization, but there's also Entrepreneur Organization and Vistage. The list goes on and on. And there, yeah, you think, oh, I don't have time for it, but I actually think you don't have time not to do that. That's a good way of putting it. Also, health stuff. We don't think about that.

53:05What if you could optimize through better nutrition and nootropics and through IVs, not only your longevity, but your mental acuity? So I work with five pancierge doctors to come up with my own custom plan. And I'm actually going to put something together that I could share with all my friends so anyone I love can get on the same program. and includes the supplements, custom compounding my own supplements into just two pills. So it's a little easier. And then doing the exosome IVs once a quarter which I'm a huge fan of. What is that? What is that word you just said? What are you doing? Exosome IVs.

53:53What is that? The science on it is still a little up in the air. So I just want to be, you know, good on the disclosure there. So it's not necessarily the fountain of youth, but there's the belief that, you know, if you're doing, if you're bringing in stem cells, you know, through an IV, it will help you lower your biological age, give you more energy and help you with your autophagy. So basically your body's ability to get rid of old and dying cells. And if you do that, then the thought is you're going to have more energy. More energy means more brain power. More brain power means more ability to manifest and create great things in the world.

54:45And so this is another area where let's say you were able to improve your mental function and your energy by 25%. By the way, if you do all these things, you could probably do better than 25%. is that worth$15 ,000 a year, which is roughly how much I spend on this. Maybe I spend 20 or 25 grand on it. It's not a lot of money. You don't need to pull a Brian Johnson where you're spending a million dollars a year to get 80 % of the results. This is the 80-20 rule of Brian Johnson. Yeah, that's what I need. Good. I'm going to hit you up for some recommendations. I'll send you some referrals. And then, yeah, I'll eventually coalesce all this feedback to make it so that we could share it publicly and for free so you guys don't necessarily need to pay for your own cancerous doctor to do this for you.

55:36I think it's ridiculous that all the work I'm doing here, I'm spending this money on it this should be a public service that's offered. Yeah, because it's not so personalized to you basically. No, it's not that personalized. 90 % of what I'm doing, anyone else should just be able to do on their own. It's just not this whole longevity optimization arena is so new. And in order for other folks to monetize on, it has to feel bespoke and unique to you. So give me the quick rundown. So you spend this money, you have this program that you're doing. You said you do this exosome IVs. Okay, great. What are like, if you were going to go from like most impactful to like, you know, whatever fringe, you know, stuff, what's the most impactful stuff you're doing?

56:24Again, I'll be super honest. It's hard to know where the impact is. Of course, yeah. Like on what - Or just what you kind of believe in or what you would recommend to your cousin or your friend who you're like, look, we get all the disclaimers. You're not a doctor. There's not bulletproof science. Cool. Okay. Amongst friends, just tell me what your opinion is. I'm a friend of EG1. I'm sure people have talked about that on your pod before. I'm a fan of adding in other there's this whole list of supplements and nootropics that I can't even recite the name of for you but I could publish the list for you if you'd like and then having them all again put together and you know a few compact pills that you could take and then I have a friend who does that you like go to a compounding pharmacy and you're like hey can you make these pills for me pretty much we'll have like 32 pills delivered like how does that work yeah I have a friend who actually has his own.

57:20So I get it at cost. But my plan is to work with him to create it so that he can make some profit and then my friends will have basically what I take and not have it be marked up too much like all these other scumbag internet companies are trying to do. Shout out to the scumbags out there. Keep doing your thing. That's it in a nutshell. I know that's just why I'm using something you shout out. And then there's also um yeah i mean there are a bunch of peptides as well if you want to do the more advanced thing um and on the peptides you know some of them are injectable um so you know that i would consult a doctor on but the supplements you could probably just do right and i would benchmark i would take um the true diagnostics um biological you know each test just to see how you're doing before our middle and after and um yeah so that's another so taxes health um coaching and mindset what are the other categories for you know billionaire secrets we haven't covered um i think those are big ones the i mean the other one is what you talked about which is um being non-operational non-operational yeah create a vehicle that's going to create all your other vehicles and be able to recruit talent that's going to be able to put the pieces together.

58:46The way I look at it is like every project needs kind of like a vision. It needs capital. It needs an operator. It needs, you know, what does it need? Okay, I'm going to be able to create those packages. And so I think that's what a lot of them do is they get out of, I'm going to go every day and work on this one business and toil away, like turning the crank myself. And, you know, that's the higher leverage way that they operate is like that. Yeah, exactly.

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59:43And then finally, after 30 minutes there, then they charged me 50 bucks for the pleasure of that terrible interaction. And now with Mercury, I just go online, push two buttons, and I'm done. It's such a seamless experience. It's very intuitive. Everything's under one place. They basically took all the things any company would need for their financial tech, and they made it super easy to use and put it into one platform. So highly, highly recommend it. If you're not using Mercury, I question your judgment. So that's it. You've Put it on My First Million. For more information, check out Mercury.com.

1:00:10Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details. Yeah, I think that's great. And I think also billionaires have a different mindset when it comes to buying expensive things. So you think, oh, they have so much money that why would they waste that on the boat or the plane or the exotic cars? and the truth is um on a lot of that it's taxes so i have a friend who's buying a 30 million dollar yacht right now and he found a way for it to give him a 30 million dollar write-off he's going to charter it out for a bit but like he saves more money on taxes than what he's spending on the yacht and his bank will finance 80 of the yacht he's only putting 20 down so it's net net cash flow positive for him to buy the yacht ironically and the operational costs are offset largely by the charter and you don't think that but it pays for all his costs and um people do this with airplanes too i did this with my airplane i mean i had a bigger write-off from buying the airplane than what i put down in cash to buy the airplane so can you give the quick math on uh it doesn't be your specific plan but just like just the general math so people know, how does the buy a plane work from a tax perspective?

1:01:31Yeah. Well, the rules are changing, but I closed on mine about a year ago. And let's say you buy a plane, it's 5 million bucks and your bank's willing to finance most of it. So you put a million dollars down, but you get a$5 million write-off on the plane. And it's a year one write-off, right? That was an accelerated bonus depreciation year one. But now the problem is this year it's only 80%. You could deduct up front. Next year it's 60 % and then 40 % and then 20%. Yes, it's getting worse and worse. But the point is you do get a tax benefit for buying these assets. They are financed. And then also if it enables you to do more of what you want, then there's that like incapable benefit that you receive.

1:02:20Right. Same with excited cars. A lot of people I know who have excited cars, their excited cars are worth more than what they pay for them. So they buy the car, they drive it for a year, and then they sell the car at the same cost or a higher cost than what they paid for it because other people can't, they want to have access to that car, but they don't have a relationship with the manufacturer and they weren't willing to wait four years on the waiting list to get that car. Yeah, I was surprised to learn that. There's just a whole class of really expensive cars that you basically get to drive for free.

1:02:56It's like putting a deposit down. So you go buy this car. I don't even know if this would classify, but our friend had a McLaren and he's like, yeah, it's great. I've driven it for a few years and I'm going to sell it for exactly what I bought it for. It doesn't depreciate or I'll make 10, 20 grand on this thing for the privilege of driving this around. and there's a whole bunch of these like rich get richer uh style setups like you know where if you if once you start to play it's like a snowball it's like you use the money to buy something that's going to make you more efficient and have more fun or uh you know do better business and then that also is going to save you money taxes today and then it also going to hold value because it's a rare asset and so you're gonna you know if you ever sell it you didn't lose anything just for holding this so you know you get all these like gains and then they start to accumulate once you start to get there.

1:03:46And I think that's a real advantage. And some people who I think are on the other side of that hate that and they feel like that's so unfair and unjust. I don't really give a moral opinion either way. It's just that is what it is. And you can choose to either benefit from that, you can choose to ignore it, or you can choose to be upset about it. You have many choices on how you're going to react to a bunch of these things that come with the snowball of wealth. Yeah, I think it's easy to heat on it. But what's cool is that people could learn about mindset and how to get there. And that's what you're doing with your pod.

1:04:22You're very specific about how to do these things, I've noticed. And this was not available to people five years ago. Well, it's funny because money is this taboo thing. It's like we're all supposed to not share anything we know about money, how much we make, how we invest, what the returns are, what do you do with your taxes? is like everybody plays, you know, close guarded on that. And that's a real shame because it means it's very hard to learn until that gets cracked open and somebody starts sharing and then more people start sharing, then you start to learn faster. And there's this great Conor McGregor quote where he talks about like, Conor McGregor went from plumber to highest paid athlete in the world in a span of five years.

1:05:04And along the way, he was higher paid than any UFC guy ever was, faster than anybody was. And there was a lot of guys who had been paying their dues for 15 years, fighting for, you know, going out there and like fighting in a cage match for$20 ,000. And then they have to pay for their flights or hotels, the medical bills, and they're left with two grand at the end of it. And they were very bitter. And someone asked him in an interview, they go, Connor, you know, do you ever think about kind of toning it down? Because, you know, there's so many people that are, you know, get upset when you talk about, you call your shots, you say how much you're making, you wear the nice watch, you wear the nice clothes.

1:05:37and he goes, no, that says something about them, not me. He goes, some people see this and they take inspiration. And that's who I was. I saw people doing things and I took inspiration. And other people see things and they get bitterness and they will end up bitter. It is not my job to figure out, they get to decide if they're going to go on the bitterness path or the inspiration path. The right people will get inspired. And that actually kind of freed me up in this podcast to do things that I think, ask questions or talk about things that I think are, you're supposed to downplay everything, you're supposed to not talk about certain stuff but fuck that, that doesn't seem like, I when I was growing up, I couldn't wait to get a little more information or inspiration or hear that somebody oh, this guy has a private chef, damn, that'd be awesome I don't feel bad that I don't have one now I now have a new thing that I've decided that would be really awesome, fun to work for and a great a way to improve quality of life that I had never even thought about.

1:06:39And thank you for putting it on my radar. Thank you for putting it in front of me that I now wanted to go do that. I love that. Yeah. I think it is difficult to struggle with the feeling of jealousy and aspiration. And another trick that I'm not sure if this came from Tony Robbins or someone else but if you're surrounded by people who are more successful than you instead of envying them um maybe you could interpret it as hey this is a great sign because this means more success and more happiness is coming my way now that i'm able to surround myself and attract these people into my life how awesome and um i remember having to deal with that a lot especially when i was a up-and-coming entrepreneur and i knew absolutely nothing and i have you know drew from Dropbox and Sam Altman coming to speak to me and these like CS students, right?

1:07:35Like, we didn't know anything. And the gap felt very wide by just having them there to spend time with us and to say, hey, we're open to like, just email us if you have any questions about what it's like to be a founder, we're going to be there for you. Just feeling like all the more approachable and accessible, I think made it easier for me to focus on the education instead of the enemy right that's a that's a great way of putting it can i ask you one thing before we go because i know i took too much of your time uh sam altman is now like this extremely interesting public character um very few people actually know him sounds like you've had interactions with him in the past uh can you give me your impressions or any story you remember of sam altman um because i remember reading paul graham's essays like 10 years ago where he's like of the five most impressive people I've met.

1:08:26It's like Bill Gates or whatever, Larry and Sergey and Sam Altman. That's when he was doing Looped and nobody... There was no track record. It was just very apparent in meeting him at that time that this guy's going to go on to do great things. Did you get that sense? Or I don't know how much interaction you had with him. I mean, this was probably 13 years ago now, but I had a one-on-one with Polygram and I asked him to share who do you think the most successful people you've ever met? Who will that end up being 30 years from now if we have another one-on-one like this? Sam was on the list. I'm not going to share who others were on that list, but they're all also doing extremely well.

1:09:19What a question by you, by the way. Fantastic question. I asked Paul, what are the things in common with these people what what did by the way he put me on the list i'm the worst one by far so i'm embarrassed i felt like i disappointed him but we'll see that for another day um and i asked him for like what are personality traits you find in these people like how you know what do you see and for him it it was less about the intelligence actually it was not about the it it goes back to this common theme we've had throughout the past hour and a half year on like grit and being willing to be unconventional and to try different approaches and to you know to collect ideas from multiple species and merge them together to come up with something even better than what a domain expert in any one field would be able to come up with on their own um and just like how they show up and what they're willing to do to meet the right people was a big part of um what So that also reinforced my wanting to have this policy of just get on the plane because that's a trait that successful people perceive will lead to you being destined for greatness, so to speak.

1:10:37So I'm like, all right, well, I don't think I'm destined for greatness, but what if I could manufacture making other people think I'm destined for greatness? Maybe I'll create that reality somehow. out. Yeah, eventually it walks like a duck, it talks like a duck. Hey, it became a duck by the end of it actually. So those traits you said just now, sorry to recap, was grit or resourcefulness. No. The willingness to make things happen. You said going into being able to collect ideas from multiple spaces and synthesize it so that you actually might create something more than any domain than the individual domain experts had been able to reach.

1:11:16You get to a new ceiling from that. That was the second thing you said. Third was wanting to meet the right people, ask the right questions, and being willing to go to certain lengths to meet them. That was the third one. Did I miss one that you said? Yeah, just to build on that third one, it's that how can you meet yourself interesting enough at a dinner party so that they would want to invite you back to spend more time with them? How do you broaden your field of knowledge to be able to be an advisor, you know, someone that, you know, a king or president would want to call upon for feedback.

1:11:55And, you know, you had a Polygram SaaS, or this was years ago before he left for the UK. He has a huge library of books, and he's read most of these books. And he's just fascinated by so many topics. And that also left an impression on me. Okay, like, we should just learn about random things that have nothing to do with our day-to-day business because they'll help us with category number three on that list right right yeah that's such a good call i went to a farming conference last year like two years ago like for farmers and it was the best conference i had been to in like five years because i'd only been going to tech conferences and you know i'm not learning anything at these tech conferences or you know like i'm adding the same incremental knowledge and it's the same thoughts and philosophies and same types of people in that bubble.

1:12:44And there's nothing wrong with that, but like, there's definitely like, you want that 20%, like total change up that is completely at a left field. That's like, wow, these guys talk about different things, think about different things, have a different perspective, live in it. I was in Kansas city, right? Like it was like, you know, you go to a different place and you have a totally different perspective. And I literally started a company while I was there because I was like piecing together two ideas, one from the tech world and one from this farmer that we had met. And that was when we created the Milk Road.

1:13:14And even the name Milk Road was like, because we're at a freaking farming conference and there's a dairy farmer next to us. It all kind of played into having that. If we hadn't stirred the pot in that exact way, maybe you would have come up with a different answer. Yeah, that's super cool that you did that. and I'm curious to download from you what is also on your list of the next areas you would want to learn about. And I think it's actually a good exercise for me too to think about because for me, it's been bio lately, but I would like to broaden it even more. So give an example of one of the bio companies that you founded.

1:13:53Give us the high level of the problem, the solution you guys are trying to do and the rough stage where it's at? Yeah, the high level is I set up a holding company for biotech venture creation centered around a scientist named Mike Levin. If you search Mike Levin, he has a TED Talk. He has a three and a half hour interview with Lex Friedman that I highly recommend you watch. And you will get sucked in because he's a scientist who studied. He has a PhD in genetics at Harvard. and then now he's devoted his entire career to basically proving the fact that genetics are actually not that relevant in the whole scheme of things and that it's this other thing bioelectricity that dictates how long we live um whether or not we get cancer um how our limbs and body shape forms it's actually not as much genetics as you think and genetics is like the hardware level of biology, whereas he says bioelectricity is like the software.

1:14:55So you told me this. You were like, we have one company's Astonishing Labs. It's about bioelectricity. And I was like, I've never even heard this word. And you said it in a really interesting way. You go, people think that it's like genetics is kind of like what your genes say or your DNA says is kind of like what ends up manifesting. And you're like, turns out it's not that at all, which already I was like, oh, that's a kind of narrative violation. What do you mean? That's all I've ever heard. So what is the answer? and you were like, yeah, there's this idea of bioelectricity. And I went and I watched his TED talk and he talks about like, you know, they're able to like, you know, grow an arm on something's on an animal's back.

1:15:33They're able to like to grow third eye, right? They're able to do all these like show all these amazing like phenotype outputs without any genetic modification. And so can you just like explain that a little bit more about like, you know, the kind of the layman's version of it? Yeah, well, I'll be honest, I don't even fully understand the science of it, but that's everything you said is correct. Like, if you manipulate the bioelectricity on an animal, you can create weird outputs like this. So when they saw that a tadpole was growing an eyeball, the bioelectric signature of the cells in that area changed.

1:16:10And so the question was, oh, what if he created that same biometric signature, but on another part of the body, what will happen? Will it grow an eyeball? Not only does it grow an eyeball there, but it grows connection to the spinal cord. And so you don't have to micromanage biology. If you try to change that through modifying the genome, how would you do that? There'd be no way to do that is the answer. And so if you just think about it logically, genetics are therefore not the end all be all. So anyway, I heard of this, it blew my mind. I said, this is brilliant. Like, does he have a commercialization partner?

1:16:50What's the status of it? And the answer is, it's still in the lab and there was no one commercializing this yet. And Paul Allen was funding the whole lab. And then Paul Allen tragically passed away and then the funding dried up. So he needed money. He needed people to help him make it a real biotech mode. company so i come in i say i know nothing about biotech i know a lot of rich people who would love to fund crazy stuff like this and wait wait wait you say i came in that means like i cold emailed him i i called him i i met him what what did you actually do i met him through a friend so i had a friend who was telling me about mike over lunch and i thought this is brilliant this is amazing could we fly out and meet mike like next week like i'll literally clear my calendar and I'll spend a few days and I will get to know him and figure out what we could do with this.

1:17:40And so I met Mike, spent some time with him and realized that this is really compelling and we could do something cool out of it. So I hired this guy named Tom. Tom had taken a drug called L-Sanris from lab all the way through FDA approval, full approval for$16 million, which is absolutely crazy in the drug world. Like normally it takes hundreds of millions of dollars to get something approved by the FDA, but his drug actually worked. It was putting patients in full remission. The first eight out of nine patients, normally they would be dead within months with his drug. They were, they were going into remission.

1:18:25So I brought him in to go do due diligence on all of Mike Levin's science and figure out a strategy for turning these into real biotech companies. And so my contribution was I have 18. I have 12 people who work with me at my holding company or whatever you want to call it. For me, I don't really think of it as a holdco or a venture studio. For me, it's just an extension of me, where if there's something I want to manifest in the world, I have a team of brilliant people who will figure out how to help me make that happen. That's amazing. And so you do that. What is the product or what are you guys actually building?

1:19:08We are building several companies under this whole show. So the first company we created is called Seljabu. and it's essentially a company that will help overcome drug resistance. And how do I make this more concrete? If you're taking drugs for your leukemia or you're taking chemo drugs, it might be effective and work for a while. You have lots of drugs that are effective and work, but then one day they stop working. And when they stop working, unfortunately, there are sometimes no other viable options for the patient which means they're going to then die but a month late a month earlier the drugs were working and they were fine right so that's one company there's another company that's developing um programmable human biobots and in fact this got you know there's an article about this in nature as of today and that company is called anthrobots.

1:20:10Wow. So I'll send you more info on that if you're curious. That is really cool. I think CNN is going to post their interview with Mike today about that as well. And so is all your bio stuff under this lab with Mike Levin or are there other bio bets too? Because like you've talked to me about at that dinner we were talking about I don't know like pregnancy or something like that and you said something kind of in passing you're like yeah like in the next I don't know at 10 years, you know, you know, you'll, women may not need to birth a baby. Like, you know, you'll be able to essentially grow a baby.

1:20:48And I was like, what? So like, how cool would it be if you could see like a bee brewing in like a fish tank and all you have to do is I could swab your mouth and swab my mouth, put it in the machine and then a bee will start to grow out of it. You know, there's no, the genetic material, no sperm and egg. no sperm no egg just raw genetic material and uh yeah i think that will eventually be in the future i don't think that's going to be the next 10 years probably not even the next 20 years but i i have random ideas like that this and i think how cool it'd be to find who's doing that research and and if if i find people who are then i might support their work and fund it if not then i'll have i'll put together my own team and go try it ourselves and it's likely going to lose money and fail and not work but like this is fun like not everything has to be for the profit i know your your whole pod is all about making money and all the whole shows are about how to like compound tax flow and blah blah blah but like what if we could have fun doing this and by having fun being mission oriented you think bigger you think more grand about what the world could become one day and then you're more likely to end up like elon or whatever like that's kind of the direction i'm going with with my company here um which i realize it's not as sexy it's not as compelling as saying you know we're you know making money well you know maybe i don't know uh like you know when when facebook was uh going public mark zuckerberg wrote this letter to like the potential shareholders that were going to buy the stock.

1:22:30And it was like, I think it was called The Hacker Way. It's a really great thing. You know, I know people are very skeptical of Zuck, but I think a lot of the stuff he does is pretty awesome, including this letter that he wrote. And he described the way that they do things. And one of the things he said is like, you know, we don't build products to make money. You know, we don't build products to make great money. We make money to build great products. Like that is the core of what we're doing. I think Google had said a similar thing when they went public. And, you know, I don't think it's one or the other, but there is a first order bit and second order bit, meaning like if the first order bit is we are trying to fund bold science that might change everything, even though it has a high likelihood of failure, even though it might take many years and a lot of money to get there.

1:23:15But we think that advancing the research and ultimately trying to commercialize the research is the way that to me is the version of like, we don't do that to make money. We make money so that we can do that. so I think in a way it's a lot more attractive and sexier to most people I think if they step back for a minute a lot of the like money first comes from the insecurity right like just the sort of wanting that success wanting that win under your belt wanting that safety in the bank account you know that's where a lot of that comes from I don't think anybody really if they looked at their life would say I'm so glad I devoted it to maximizing you know how much money I made that's a very unlikely scenario I think a lot lot of people would actually be more inspired by, you know, the way you're doing things now, which is like, what's fun?

1:24:02What's interesting? What gets me out of bed in the morning? That's exciting. That will, if done well, can like, you know, change, change, change the world. And in the non-cliche way, because the stuff you're doing actually is more change the world than like, then, you know, the Indian arrows of the world where it's like, we're going to change the world one set of books at a time. And it's like, well, maybe, maybe you're just doing bookkeeping actually. Yeah, exactly. That's how I felt. I literally had this nagging feeling in my soul that I was wasting my capability. And I'm sure a lot of people feel that way.

1:24:33Awesome. Well, it sounds like we got another couple of conversations to have. Thank you for coming on. Where should people go find you, reach out to you? Where do you want to direct people? Yeah. I mean, I'm on my website, maway.com. And I've got a Twitter at Jessica Ma, at just my official on Instagram. And if people want to reach out, you could either guess my email address, which is what I've done with Mark Benioff and everyone else. That's a good filter, actually. You don't want the inbound that's easy. You want the inbound of at least, you're at least able to guess an email address. It's not that hard.

1:25:12Just like, I had, like, I literally emailed, like, Mark at Salesforce, Mark.Benioff, MBenioff. You know, like, every permutation shit I could come up with and most of them bounced and one of them worked. That's awesome. Thanks for doing this. You're awesome. And yeah, that's a great episode. Yeah, great. Great time hanging out with you. Thanks for having me. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel. Never looking back.

1:25:50Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love. I want to read you. It's that we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. And you know, as an entrepreneur, if you're using a bank that was built in the nineties, you're operating like you're in the nineties. And trust me, I've been there. Clunky portals, random holds on your money,$50 wire fees, and then being told, please visit your local branch. Well, that's why I switched to a different type of banking solution. Mercury. It turns your financial chores into a smooth workflow. You can do wires, invoices, cards, reimbursements, two clicks, and I'm done.

1:26:20If you're already using Mercury, respect. If you're still using one of the old big banks, I got questions for you. So go visit mercury.com and give it a test drive. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC.