In short
Podcast Summary: My First Million - Episode 674
Episode Title
He made $100m betting on the NBA… here’s how Hosts: Sam Parr & Shaan Puri Guest: Haralabos Voulgaris Air Date: [Date Not Provided]
Episode Overview In this episode, hosts Sam Parr and Shaan Puri engage with Haralabos Voulgaris, a renowned sports bettor who has made significant profits from betting on the NBA. The conversation delves into Voulgaris's journey from humble beginnings to becoming a successful sports bettor and NBA consultant, as well as his ventures into Bitcoin and soccer team ownership.
---
Key Discussion Points
- Stumbling into Gambling
- Voulgaris shares his childhood experiences growing up in a gambling environment, particularly influenced by his father's unsuccessful gambling habits.
- His initial exposure to sports betting began during his teenage years at the local racetrack and observing NFL games.
- Finding Your Edge in Betting
- Voulgaris emphasizes the importance of having an edge in betting. He describes how recognizing patterns and market inefficiencies played a crucial role in his success.
- He began to focus on betting strategies that involved detailed statistical analysis and pattern recognition.
- The Concept of "Alpha"
- The discussion highlights "alpha" in betting contexts, which refers to the excess return or profit generated by a bettor compared to the market.
- Casinos vs. Independent Betting
- Voulgaris expresses disdain for traditional casinos, labeling them as "losers' playgrounds." He believes serious bettors should operate independently or through less regulated channels.
- Investment Strategies
- The conversation shifts to Voulgaris's experience in cryptocurrency, particularly Bitcoin, where he significantly increased his investments.
- He discusses the advantages of Bitcoin as a financial tool, particularly for those looking to minimize tax implications and maximize control over assets.
- Owning a Soccer Team
- Voulgaris shares insights about his decision to buy a soccer team, driven by a desire to engage in a different kind of sports management and investment.
- He discusses the challenges and learning curves he's faced in this new venture.
- Biohacking and Personal Health
- The discussion explores Voulgaris's interest in biohacking, including his use of peptides, stem cells, and other health optimization techniques.
- He reflects on the importance of maintaining physical and mental health amidst the stresses of high-stakes gambling and business ventures.
---
Key Takeaways
- Mindset and Confidence: Voulgaris's journey illustrates that confidence and a strong belief in one's potential can lead to extraordinary achievements. He emphasized the importance of having a positive mindset and visualizing success.
- Pattern Recognition: Success in betting often relies on the ability to identify and act on patterns that others may overlook. This skill has been central to Voulgaris's betting strategy.
- The Importance of Automation: Voulgaris discusses the transition to automated betting models to improve efficiency and reduce emotional decision-making.
- Investment Philosophy: His approach to investing, whether in sports or cryptocurrency, underscores a commitment to long-term thinking and risk management.
- Life Beyond Betting: Voulgaris's exploration into sports team ownership and health optimization reflects a multidimensional approach to life that goes beyond gambling.
---
Conclusion This episode of *My First Million* provides fascinating insights into the mind of one of the most successful sports bettors, Haralabos Voulgaris. His story serves as a reminder of the power of perseverance, strategic thinking, and the pursuit of diverse interests beyond one's initial passion. The conversation seamlessly blends topics of betting, investment strategies, and personal well-being, making it a compelling listen for entrepreneurs and sports enthusiasts alike.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This was the biggest, greatest edge in the history of gambling. edges, I can promise you. But I've never uttered this in public to anyone ever before. You want to nuke it? Let's nuke it. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off. So we got to tell your story because your story is, you basically did what me and probably 50 % of other young guys wanted to do in their life. It's like, oh, what if I could take a few thousand dollars, find an edge, beat the house in Vegas, and turn a few thousand dollars into millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, and ultimately, I believe, over hundreds of millions of dollars, not by counting cards and blackjack, first by sports betting.
0:43And then you get recruited by Mark Cuban to go work for an NBA team at one point. You now own your own soccer club. So you've had this really cool life and career. You're like a comic book character. Yeah, you're like your man cave came to life, you know, like it worked. So that's dope. But, you know, of course, no story is perfect. You know, there's ups and downs. And it's not all, not like you planned it out this way. But what we like most on this podcast, this podcast is mostly a business podcast. So somebody comes on and they tell us about their company or their investments or whatever. And, but what we like most is people who play their own game.
1:17What I like about you is you play your own game. You're a pretty independent thinker. And so I want to kind of walk through the story. So, you know, what I'll call chapter one is stumbling into gambling and figuring out how to have that edge. Can you tell a little bit about that story? Because I think I know a little bit of it, but I know, Sam, you don't know any of that story, right? Like how he first got, and made a name for himself doing this. No. Yeah, I mean, I grew up around gambling. My dad was, I use the term unsuccessful gambler. Some people might refer to it as degenerate. He was someone who gambled a lot, unsuccessfully, and it caused a lot of problems in our family.
1:58Not to sugarcoat it, it was bad. But I grew up around the horse racetrack and I grew up around watching football, NFL football on Sunday, basically trying to help my dad make picks. What city? I grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. So I was at the Assiniboia Downs racetrack from, I guess it was every Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday for most of my teenage years. I would say 12 to 16, 17, 18. And so yeah, I just kind of was around. And I always thought it was rather interesting. And I also saw like, first thing I didn't realize when I was younger was just how it was near impossible to beat the horses just because of the takeout.
2:35The vig is so high. It's like 30, 36%. They got to pay for everything, the stables, the horse purgles, all of it. But I just thought, well, these people don't know what they're doing. Like they have no process. They don't know what's happening. They're very emotional. I'm a Greek family, so you would hear these people like they just were not in control of their emotions in any way. They would be upset when they win, they'd be upset when they lose, they would be arguing with each other. I'm very low-key, so to me it was very different for me.
3:06So that's how I got started. And then at some point after I graduated from high school, I went to Vegas with my dad. He was there, and I went there for like a month or so. He was there gambling? Yeah. My dad was, it was daylight hours, and he had money in his pocket. He was gambling. What was his occupation? He was a first-generate. He moved to Canada when he was, he's got a great, you should have him on the show. He's got a great story. He moved to Canada when he was like 20 years old, didn't speak a lick of English, became a dishwasher at Kentucky Fried Chicken, and just worked his ass off. And so he moved his way up from dishwasher to restaurant to finally getting involved in real estate somehow by some way, owning a commercial.
3:54He had strip malls all over Winnipeg. So he's an entrepreneur? Big time entrepreneur, yes. And when you go to Vegas, you're not 21, right? You just graduated from high school. So what do you do with your dad? You're in a casino, you can't really do much. I park myself in the sports book and hope that nobody tells me. Because they don't ID you in the sports book. They're supposed to, but they don't. You're just in the sports book. you're just sitting there. And I just watched basketball. It was the first time I really ever watched NBA basketball to that extent. Previously, I watched a lot of hockey and Canadian football.
4:25And yeah, my dad would give me a little bit of money, not a lot, and I would watch basketball and I would sit there from 4 p.m. Pacific to 10 p.m., 11 p.m. Pacific and just watch the games on these giant TVs. And then I started to really enjoy the routine of watching the West Coast games. So I started to kind of pay attention more to the West Coast teams. I was like Chris Webber's rookie year when he played for Golden State. And they had run TMC, I think it was, before that. And so, yeah, that's what I did. Were you losing money at first? What was going on? When did you start making money? I didn't really win.
5:02I wasn't losing a lot, though. I had an okay opinion by the end. But yeah, I was losing, of course. I was probably flipping coins and paying big. So I was probably 50-50 roughly. but I needed to win 11 out of every 10. So it wasn't bad. It wasn't like I was getting my ass handed to me or anything. But then I realized I really like this and I want to get good at it. And I just thought about what does that mean to entail? What do I have to do to get good at it? And so I just went to work and just started taping games to start reading a lot of newspaper articles on the internet. When you're saying you're learning to get good at it, how much of it is a human side where you're learning human emotions of the players and leadership and things like that, and the story versus statistics?
5:48Yeah, back then there was not a lot of good statistics. There was just something called the box score, which is just not very illustrative of the game. So it was almost that and a little bit of database work in terms of just getting aggregates from teams in certain situations. I also tried to really also understand the market more, I think. In other words, the opening lines. would go. What I got to be really good when I was in Vegas around that time was seeing the sharps that would line up at the Stardust Casino in the morning. They had something called the lottery. The lines would be posted in the morning.
6:21Then every sharp would be able to make a full limit bet down in the morning. They'd have to do a lottery to see who could go first. Then they'd make a bet and then the book would decide to adjust. I started looking to see who are the actual sharps? Who are the guys who seem like they're moving money for other people? What are A-betting. So you're treating it like a job. You must have been getting there early then. What time is that? Yeah, I mean, it's not a lot of work. It's not manual labor. I'm not like laying bricks or like riding off the back of a brontosaurus like Fred Flintstone, breaking rocks.
6:48But yeah, it worked. And so did you go ask them to learn from them or are you just watching them from afar and figuring it out yourself? I just wanted to see like, okay, this guy made a bet, the line didn't move. That's interesting. Then you see him back like the next day and the next day and then you see By the way, it wouldn't just be one. You'd see now at four o 'clock post-time, the lines would move even more. So it's like, okay, this line moved a lot. There wasn't an injury. That guy bet it early. So it was just little things. I think if I have one skill in life aside from being not really caring what other people who I don't know think about me, I think, and just being confident in that, I think it's maybe a little bit of pattern recognition.
7:27I think I'm decent at that. I think I can see patterns. And I'm also able to identify, was that an actual pattern or was I just fooling myself with randomness there? Did you have a role model?
7:41As an 18 or 19-year-old, are you thinking to yourself, there are other people who have gotten super rich doing this, I think I can do it? Or were you like, there's some people who make an okay living doing this, I think I can do it? Or you're like, I don't think about next year, this is what I'm enjoying today. When you're 19, you don't really think like that. in terms of like, oh, I want to make a... I've always been someone who's always been very confident that I was going to be successful. I would recite things in my head when I was a kid, like I'm going to be a millionaire. I would just do that.
8:12And so at that age, I think I was just kind of... I wasn't sure how I was going to make it. I just knew I was going to make it. I kind of went through life with this irrational confidence, I think. Was there a definition of making it? Was it like$10 million by the time I'm 25? Yeah, I think when I was tree planting, I was listening to Tony Robbins books and reading them, listening to them at night and then reading them in the morning. And I think I had 10 things that I wanted. And yeah, I think it was 10 million before the age of 30, I think. Back then, that was a lot of money. Now you can just spin up a meme coin and you're making it by noon.
8:46But back then, it was a lot. What was the first profitable pattern you figured out? The one that really kind of worked? Canadian football was the first profitable. My first bit of money was Canadian football. not like soccer, but actual football, three-down football. There's a lot of things going on then. They expanded into America at that time. And so you had some interest, for whatever reason, in Las Vegas to book Canadian Football League games or offshore markets. And the Canadian teams had to abide by different rules than the American teams. So that was part of it. You had to have a certain amount of Canadians on your roster that were starting.
9:25American teams didn't have that. The Canadian stadiums were all compliant to Canadian Football League rules. American stadiums did not. So some of the end zones, like the Canadian rules are like the end zones are 20 yards deep. But in some stadiums in America, they didn't have that luxury. So they were like squared off at the back. And so those games are lower scoring. That was a big part of it. And I just got to be really good at knowing a lot about Canadian football and which teams were sharp, We're doing innovative things. So Canadian football. So can you give us a sense of the journey? So you start with roughly what bankroll?
10:05And then how long did it take you to get to your first million? And then at one point, I think you were betting like a million dollars a day or maybe even more than that. Somebody said 10 million a day. I mean, I was betting a lot. I mean, I think like, so it's a long story.
10:23I was a skycap at the Winnipeg International Airport. That's when things really took off for me. I don't think anyone's ever said that before in their life. What is a skycap? I was the first white skycap hired at the Winnipeg. The dudes who sit curbside and carry people's luggage in and check their luggage in. In the US, they check the luggage in, but in Canada, that's not allowed because transport counts. You would just carry people's luggage in. She's a bag boy. We don't like being called bag boys. Bag boys. You're just carrying people's luggage. Or in Canada, a big thing in the winter was snowbirds who are fleeing Winnipeg to go move to Florida for the winter.
11:01And they're in wheelchairs and you're just wheeling them through customs and immigration and making sure they're bagged. And you're making what per hour, roughly? I was making a lot. So I started out as a sky cap. In the summertime, I was printing money. And I started out as a sky cap. I realized that the Saturday-Sunday ships were very profitable because we had American fishing travel that where people would come in on these boats and they'd have to take a charter plane to go fishing somewhere in northern Canada. And those days you're making$400 or$500 in an eight-hour shift, easy. And so I basically went to the boss of the company, he's like, hey, I really want to work the Saturday and Sunday shifts, what do I got to do to make it happen?
11:38He's like, no, we got to spread those around. It's not fair. And the other dudes weren't making any money, they would make like$80. So I just started paying them for their Saturday. I started paying him like 80 bucks to work on Saturday and Sunday. And then the owner got wind of that and he got upset. And so then he started working the Saturdays and Sundays and couldn't figure out why he wasn't making money that I was. What were you doing? You were like complimenting these folks and just getting tipped? I was just like, you know, I was doing things like getting them limos to go to the strip clubs when the four hours that they're, they're getting them Cuban cigars because Cuban cigars are legal when they land and like making sure they had like Cuban cigars and charging them like three times the value for that.
12:13Just like little things like that. Just being attentive. I was being intense. I was like a concierge of the Winnipeg International Airport. But anyways, I ended up taking over the company from him. I just undercut his contracts. And so there was actually, at the Winnipeg International Airport, I was making so much money. That's an easy leap, right? Bag boy to taking it. It's like you're walking in his office and you're like, hey guy, move. I was like, I went to him and I was like, yo, I've already got Northwest Airlines, now Delta, I guess. but it was Northwest. I was like, hey, I've already got them to agree to the contract.
12:48Everyone wants to work for me. I can give you some money and you can just move on or I can just undercut you. The money I'm going to give you, I'm going to say it's a win-win. He was like, nope, don't want to do that, whatever. I ended up doing that. I ended up undercutting him. How old are you? I was 22, 23 at the time. That's amazing. There's actually a crazy story. So I was making so much money at the Winnipeg International Airport as a Skycap and gambling, mostly Skycap, that at the time, there was some cocaine that was found in Air Canada. I had a pass to go everywhere as a Skycap. And there was a situation where some drugs were found, a big amount of drugs.
13:35And one of the U.S. Customs and Immigration employees who I became friends with said, we know what you're doing here as a Skycap and I know you, but you're suspect number one. Just so you know. They don't understand why you have a brand new Cadillac. Not brand new, but you're driving a Cadillac like some gangster and you're walking around with lots of cash from the salt tips. I was like, what? They were laughing, they thought it was funny. They realized, of course, it had nothing to do with it, but you can Google this, so it actually happened. And there's some kind of thing that happened in Winnipeg at the time where they found something.
14:13So what was your income at the age of 22, 23, 24 doing all this? Like$50 ,000 or$60 ,000 a summer easily. I was living with my mom and my older brother. We were paying my parents rent for a while. After my dad kind of had a down slope during the 1987 or whatever, the interest rates went up. strip mall business wasn't so good anymore, especially when you're borrowing money at floating rates to build these strip malls. So yeah, that was about what I was making at the time. So you've been rich since you were 23 years old. Oh, I don't think so because I've been spending, you know, like I wasn't exactly saving.
14:55Like money was going, I was like going out for dinner every night. I was like spending the money. I was taking trips to Vegas. I was doing stuff. But yeah, I had to pay for my school also. I had to pay for my university. So I was paying for my university. I was supporting my parents. I wasn't rich. I just worked hard. Also, while I was working at Skycap, I also worked as a video store at Rogers Video. I was working 40 hours a week at Rogers Video in the summer. Skycap in the morning and Rogers Video, which is like a Canadian blockbuster. So I had a work ethic, I guess. You're more of a hustler than I thought.
15:25Because you, I guess, I don't know, the public perception is you're kind of just a sharp. It's all mental. You sit in your room, you have your models, and then you make bets. and the money comes in. I didn't know at least some of these stories about you kind of hustling as the sky cap and figuring out how to run your own operation down there. So that's pretty cool. When did, I don't know, Sam, if you've heard these stories, but I guess a couple of your famous betting stories are, I guess you went all in at one point on the Lakers to win the championship at like six to one odds. Yeah, six and a half to one roughly.
15:58How much is all in and what age in the timeline? It was like 87 ,000 Canadian, give or take. And that was all your money? Yeah. But you could go buy. I looked at it like, okay, it was all my money now. It's like October. Fishing season just ended at Winnipeg International Airport. I've already paid for my tuition at the University of Manitoba to get my useless philosophy degree. I'm living in my brother's basement. Worst case, I lose this bet and I just go back to sky capping and just make half of that or two-thirds of that back again. But yeah, I made the bet. It wasn't a sharp bet by any stretch.
16:34Looking back, it wasn't sharp, but it felt sharp to me at the time. Your risk model hasn't developed. Your amygdala hasn't fully developed to that age to really understand if you're making good decisions. Did he win? Yeah, he won. Sam, have you heard the Bill Burr quote about risk? No, what's he say? The comedian. He has this great line about risk because being a comedian is like, it's risky on many levels, right? You're probably not going to be a successful, famous millionaire traveling touring comedian. But on top of that, just stepping on the stage is a risk. You're going to get humiliated most of the time when you're not that funny.
17:08And he goes, somebody asked him, they were like, how was it taking that risk? Taking on that risk, taking that leap of faith. And he goes, I didn't see it as a risk. He goes, the best thing that ever happened to me. He's like, I'm kind of dumb. But the one smart thing I realized early on was the risk was waking up in a king-sized his bed when I'm 40 years old, turning over to a woman that I don't love anymore, that I'm married because I thought it was the right thing to do, dreading this job I have to go to in six hours. And he's like, that became the risk in my head, was waking up like that. And he goes, chasing your dream, there's no risk at all.
17:44He goes, there's no risk in chasing your dream because you're doing the thing you want to do and versus living this life that you don't want to live just to play it safe. That seemed like a bigger risk. Definitely relate to that. I mean, I don't know if any of you guys had the pleasure of spending a winter in winnipeg but it's not pleasant so uh one of the other stories then that's pretty sweet is he uh i guess at one point uh like in vegas you can bet on the full game which is what most people do like me i'm a casual i go in i just bet on the over under maybe on the the final score and what he realized was like that you could also bet on the first half only which was like not as common of a bet but the way that vegas was doing is it would take the full score, which they're pretty accurate at predicting, and then for the halftime score, they were just cut in half, divided by two.
18:30Roughly. I think the first half a little bit higher scoring in general. I could tell you guys, look, I haven't told this. I tell this story in a way that makes it so the edge still lives on for the people that are still betting. But I don't know. You want to nuke it? You guys caught me out of it.
18:49Okay. This is, this will maybe go viral. I don't know. Probably fuck up a lot of people money. But I think most people have figured it out by now. But I've never uttered this in public to anyone ever before. True story. Okay, the away team gets to choose which basket it wants to shoot on, oriented. So, you have teams who play. Back then, I would say 30 teams in the NDA, 28 of them, 27 of them, when they're on the road, would always want their offense shooting in front of their own bench, and they would want their defense shooting in front of their bench in the second half. Therefore, the first halves are higher scoring.
19:29The second halves are lower scoring. You've got the bench in front of you. You can park out instructions, this and that. Three coaches, God bless them. I wouldn't be here without them, decided that they wanted to flip it. And they wanted to have the defense in front of them in the first half. And the second half, they wanted to randomize the game and make the second half's higher scoring. So you would literally, like Eddie Jordan, Jerry Sloan was the king of this. He was the first original guy from Utah. And so this was the biggest, greatest edge in the history of gambling edges, I can promise you.
20:02You would have situations where the total would be higher in the first half, lower in the second half, and the team would literally score, on average, 106 points in the first half in 87 or something like this, or 90, whatever it was back then in the second half. You also have the advantage of fouling at the end of games, which will also make the score in the second half higher scoring, and overtime, which is a nice little bonus to working in your favor. So the second half over was like, you'd have teams playing, doing this 41 times a year, and they would go nine overs in the first half, 30 whatever, 32, 33 with some pushes in the second half.
20:38And you could just print money making this bet. And that's what I did. And I figured that out very, very quickly. I actually didn't figure it out that quickly. To be honest, I'm not as bright as I think I am because it took me a long time to figure out what the fuck was happening. I just knew these teams had situations where on the road, their games were much lower scoring in the first half than they were when they played at home. And I thought, well, they're trying to slow the game down. It's this and that. But really, it's just you're more efficient when your offense is in front of your bench because the other team's defense can't get set and you can barcode instructions.
21:08But that seems like a clear pattern, right? Like you'd only need a season of games to understand that pattern. Well, you don't know that teams are doing this. Not like they say, hey, the Mavericks are shooting in front of their, like they're the one team. Nobody's paying attention to this. Nobody knows that a team that, that back then it was a perfect situation because it was three to four teams a year. They were all shit teams. It was, in my heyday, it was the Utah Jazz, it was a shit team. The Washington Wizards with Eddie Jordan, shit team. Byron Scott, New Jersey Nets, shit team. And then you had a few teams like the Minnesota Timberwolves did some games, not other games, which is the dream scenario nowadays that's probably screwing these gamblers because when that happens, you've, So that was it.
21:49That was the edge. That's how I made a lot of my money. And if I had a bankroll of, this is not responsible, please don't follow this. But if I had a bankroll of like 250K because I was betting on credit, you settle at the end of the week, I'd have a situation where if I somehow lost all my bets, I'd be like two or$3 million in debt. But it didn't matter because I knew my edge was so big that I was betting and I somehow partnered up with some big bookmaker slash alleged mafia guy in Montreal, which is another story, who was able to get me down for a lot of money. And he just basically, I gave him the bets.
22:27I told him what I wanted to bet. He would go bet them for me. He'd collect. He'd give me the money. I'd win. And that was that. So that's the edge. That's the whole edge in a nutshell. This is insane. I have so many questions. But I'm a new fan. I don't know what's always. I'll have friends who I've told this to are like, oh, can you please share that on my podcast with me? I'm like, ah, I feel bad for the people We're still grinding out a living doing this, but you know what? It's a new day. Tariffs are here. This is my tariffs of the gambling community. I'm a new fan of yours. Sean was like, we got to talk to this guy.
22:53So I'm a new fan. So I went and read everything I could in the past week. Can you give me a noob some type of scale as to your winnings? Are we talking like hundreds of millions of dollars in winnings or whatever you're comfortable with? Yeah, no. I mean, look, I made between$10 to$12 million a year gambling for 10 to 15 years. So we're talking nine figures in winnings. Yeah, but I spent a lot. I didn't just always, that was like my net win. I'm not talking about local. I won, but I lost. I mean, I lived a pretty good life. I compared my parents. I did other things. But yeah, I profited a lot gambling on basketball for sure.
Read the full transcript
23:30Like a bad year for me on the NBA, I think it was like six or seven million. Average year is probably eight. And in the early heydays, I made more money than I, yeah, than I, but I was also, I made some mistakes afterwards. But yeah, definitely. In your personal life, are you living a life of a 28-year-old rich guy? I mean, are you spending seven figures a year in personal like - No, no, no, no. Okay, not that crazy. But I did other business. I tried other business things. I helped out some family. I bought a property in Montreal. I bought some stuff for my - Yeah, I mean - So you're not, you kind of overplayed.
24:06It doesn't seem like you're being irresponsible. No, I was just like, I just think life is short. and what's the point of how money feeds and spend it? But I don't spend it. I spend it on experience. I spend it on experiences. I'm not a flashy guy. I don't drive a fancy car. I don't wear jewelry. I've never had a watch. I've never had any expensive. I'm pretty basic in my clothing. Just like a lot of NBA players end up going broke or NFL players end up going broke in their later career. One of the crazy things about, I grew up idolizing Phil Ivey and a lot of poker guys, basically. And once I got into the world of business and investing, it's like, okay, this was kind of like what real wealth looks like.
24:40and I realized that a lot of the guys who were really great poker players, really great gamblers that you thought were really great gamblers, I don't think they were as successful as I thought. I don't think they made as much in their peak and I think they lost a lot along the way or they had huge downswing somewhere along the way. As far as you know, did you do the best? Are you the most successful sports better that you know or were there people better than you that made more than you? Billy Walters is very, Billy Walters had the biggest, my edge was, I had to scrap for my edge because Billy Walters had the first computer program when they were using giant, these old Westinghouse machines to feed the information on those giant cards for computer programming.
25:27And they had a computer program. When the Vegas odds makers would just sit there and sit around a table like, I think the line should be seven and a half. What do you think, Jack? I think it should be around eight and a half. And then Billy Walters' computer guy is like, no, it's like 4.3. He's the right price on this game. So they had like the best edge ever. He made a lot of money, super successful. And Billy Walters, I think I saw a 60-minute special on him. Is he the, he's a Southern guy? Yeah, he's a Southern guy. Yeah, I read about him, you know, I saw the 60-minute, and he was exactly like I thought he was going to be.
25:58Like he seemed like a fast-talking, wheeling and dealing. No, no, no, not a fast-talker. Opposite. The number one thing Billy Walters had going for him is he's from the South. and if you're a gambler, one of the greatest things you can have going for you is people thinking you're not as intelligent as you're actually. I guess I shouldn't have said fast talking. I guess I mean like charming. Oh, yes. Yeah, I know. But he's like, well, I'd like to make a bet if I could. I mean, I'd like to make a ball game. But the thing about Billy is like people underestimated how sharp he was early on, but he's as sharp as they come.
26:28Did you have any, you know, like in the movies where it's like at some point the casino's like facial recognition. They're like, don't let this guy bet anymore. Tafe you in the back and bruise you up a little bit. Did you ever run into problems with winning too much? So the way sports betting works, you're not usually betting in the casino. You're betting with like, back then when I was at my heyday, you were betting with literal street people that had corner bookmaking operations. The casinos are for losers and people who can't win. And if you win, they'll just not let you bet anymore. and so you need to find a way to bet on credit through like you need to find someone who's going to play a game of telephone with you who's going to take your bets and then maybe bet more later or thinks you're a loser or you find a sock, like my big business like nobody knew who I was nobody knew I was winning money betting because I was never the guy making the bets I'd always find what's called a beard who would make my bets for me and so I've had numbers of like numerous beards throughout the years who were making my bets for me Either they were really successful business people or degenerate gamblers or Hollywood people or Floyd Mayweather, who's a beard for half an afternoon for me.
27:41How did that go? Yeah, he just wasn't... He was too difficult to work with. He's got so much money and he's not... Just impulsive? No, he'd been hit in the head for most of his life. How much? Couldn't he have just piggybacked off your bets? He's a huge bankroll. Couldn't he have just piggybacked off your bet? I think Floyd was already moving for someone else, whether it was Billy Walters or someone. For sure, someone got into Floyd and Floyd making those bets. Nobody posts their bets on Instagram for millions and millions of dollars unless there's an angle, whether they're sponsored by the casino.
28:18I think he was moving money for someone. I sat next to him at a Miami Heat playoff game and my friend who was sitting next to me took a liking to her. and so they became friends and so we somehow had a situation where for an afternoon, his business guy and I were talking and Floyd was going to make the bets but it just didn't work. I told him I wanted to bet one game and they said, no, we like the other side and I was like, that's cool but can you please go bet this one for me? And they're like, no, we don't want to do that. We want to bet the other side and I was like, okay, well then we'll just bet against each other.
28:51You bet that side, I'll bet this side and they're like, no, but you always win. We can't do that. And I was just like, yeah, I can't deal with this anymore. So that was it. Is the motivation on all this getting rich or is it getting a rush? Is it an intellectual challenge? What's the motivation? It's not a rush. No, the rush is like, I'm not a rush guy. I think it's the intellectual challenge. Also, I realized as I've gotten older that I take pride in putting myself in really, really stressful situations and seeing how well I perform. That's probably a weakness of mine is I'll put myself in these really stressful situations without knowing it, but I'll do that.
29:31What's an example of that? Like being all in Bitcoin since 2013, like for 160 to 170 % of your net worth at various different points in time. 160, so you borrowed? Yeah. So betting on sports and making money was challenging. And in terms of your winning money, like I was living in Canada at the time. I was betting all over the world and having to receive money from people all over the world. My bank accounts were constantly getting closed. Even in Canada, I was like, I'm a professional gambler. This is what I do. I pay my taxes as a professional gambler. It's one of the few dummies in Canada who actually, because in Canada, gambling is considered non-taxable.
30:12I was one of the few people who actually paid tax on their gambling winnings in Canada because I was considered an expert. I didn't have to, but I did that. Probably stupid on my part. But yeah, so just that and then seeing how easy it was to move money with Bitcoin. And then the other part of it was later on in life, I left Canada after I got tired of paying taxes in Canada and I moved to Monaco. And that entire principality is built on minimizing your tax exposure. You're looking at flats that are like the current places in Monaco now that just got built are$85,$90 million for a 3 ,000 square foot condo.
30:54It's the most expensive real estate in the world. And the only reason it's that expensive is because there's a limited amount of land and everyone lives there because a tax is zero, zero tax. And so my point is, is that that whole, that's like a Swiss bank account move. But whereas there's a lot of people, whether they're, whereas Bitcoin, you can, you don't have to invest in Monaco real estate to hedge. You can have your money in your pocket. You don't have to worry about a bank. You can move money without any intermediates, any permission. Even the bank accounts I had, whether they be in Monaco or Canada, they'd always been like, why are you sending this money?
31:27Where is it going? Why did you get it? Now it's even worse. That was part of it. I like the math behind it. It made sense to me as a math guy. I'm an independent guy to begin with. I didn't really click for me until later on. I heard about it maybe five or six times before it finally clicked. It finally clicked because I was betting with someone in China who had had a really difficult time in paying me money. Also, I was living in Vancouver before I moved to, and my entire apartment building was owned by Chinese expats who were literally laundering their money in Canadian real estate. None of them lived in my building.
32:04The entire building was empty except for six people, but the entire building was sold. At all of Vancouver, if you've ever been to Vancouver, Canada, It's an entire money laundering operation. The real estate is all owned by foreign people trying to escape regimes that are just capital flight. So Bitcoin just made sense. Okay, I'm going to go buy a condo in Canada or I'm going to buy some Bitcoin and put it in my wallet to escape some total, some regime, some capital flight. So were you taking the 10 million gross earnings and just going straight to Bitcoin? No, then I was trying to get paid by people who owed me money.
32:40and so the first time I ever acquired Bitcoin I had a gentleman that I met playing poker who got me a bunch of accounts in China to bet on NBA basketball or Asia, let's say. I don't know where it was exactly but somewhere. And he was like, it was 2013-ish and I was like, hey, how are you going to send me money? At some point we had an HSBC account in Hong Kong and he's like, I can send you Bitcoin. And I was like, Bitcoin, really? You guys like Bitcoin? I think the price was around$180 at the time. He's like, yeah, everyone in China loves Bitcoin. And I was just like, well, if everyone in China loves Bitcoin, maybe I should love Bitcoin too.
33:16Like, why do they love it in China? And he's like explaining to why everyone loves it and how great it is. And so that was it. So I bought it. Then it very quickly went to 600, then 1 ,000, like very after. And then it slowly went down to about 150 after I think Bitfinex got hacked after that the next summer. But that's when I got involved. And it clicked for me instantly. When I was all the situations, moving to Monaco for taxes, seeing all of the real estate in Canada being super expensive for native Canadians especially in Vancouver because of especially people from Asia buying real estate and just holding it and not doing anything with it.
33:49And I was just like, why would you? Michael Saylor now has a really good view on it. It's like, why would you ever own real estate? You're at the mercy of the government who can change the rules and change the taxes or you could just buy Bitcoin. So that was it basically. When you're dealing with, I'm not saying that you're shady or you ever do anything illegal, but as an outsider, when I hear about gambling, I watch the movie Casino and I think of Mafia and whatever. When you're owed money, and I had read stories how you were owed money and you talked about it, what's up with the gambling culture?
34:25Do people actually pay their debts just on a handshake agreement? Yeah, I think I had an advantage. Just to be clear, I lived in Canada, gambling was legal, I paid my taxes, I wasn't doing anything illegal. Some of the people who I'm, my customers are all breaking the law because they're bookmakers. I'm not the customer, I'm the shark, they're the sucker, I'm winning the money. They may think that I'm the customer, but really I'm not. So for me the hard part was like, okay, Revenue Canada wants 57 % of my money as my partner, but they're putting all my customers out of business. by making it hard.
35:02So that was part of it. To answer your question, is it hard to get paid? Yeah, people lose money. Because I'm betting through intermediaries for the most part, I think part of the deal is you have to guarantee the money when you're making the bets. And people would go out of their way to guarantee me, not because they're afraid of me, because why would they be? I've never ever done anything to get money other than be annoying. But if you knew that I was always going to win and if you didn't pay me, you knew you were not going to get my bets anymore, You might go out of pocket to make sure your relationship with me was good, knowing that eventually you're going to make the money back if you're smart enough.
35:38If you're smart enough, you'd realize, why would I step for Alibos? Alibos is going to win. We're going to win it back next year. I'll go out of pocket. We'll figure out a solution. That's generally what happened with me. That's a good threat, though. Look, I'm going to call you at least five or six times to get paid. I know. I was pretty bad at it, to be honest. The way to get paid is to be the most annoying person in that person's life. so I had a famous poker player who was like a really good dude but he was for sure a degenerate and he owed me money and not like this guy Eric Lindgren he talked like he that's what I was referring to yeah yeah and I would just like if he won a tournament I would like get on a plane and just like be there when they paid him I would just like hand out but you also have to be like kind of like understanding that this guy needs to live his life and also have some money But he was a guy who at the time owned a piece of Full Tilt.
36:32So they had all this imaginary money. They thought they were all going to be so rich. And so you didn't really worry about getting paid because you thought eventually they'd get paid by Full Tilt Poker. But then Full Tilt Poker got shut down. So all these guys. Anyways, yeah, that's what you do. You just be annoying. What inspired you to buy the soccer team? So how long had you had that idea before you end up doing it? I wanted to buy an NBA team. And then I saw the sausage was made. And I was like, yeah, the NBA is not for me. What do you think about that? Why not? For one, the franchise valuations are going up and up and up.
37:05It's a very, very, very difficult business to buy because you're competing with the richest people in the world who want these assets. So it's very difficult. And then I just started finding the sport not that interesting anymore after seeing how everything was... I think the bubble for me kind of ended it because it was during that time when the league became like, which is cool because the league was primarily, it became almost like a social cause and I thought that's good for society in some ways if you believe that. But for me, it just became too much. I just wanted sport. I just like sport.
37:41So around that time, I didn't want to, I think where the NBA maybe missed things is I think a lot of people wanted to escape during coronavirus into sport. Okay, forget about other people. I wanted to escape the shitty, the whatever, the riots, the burn, the whatever. I wanted to escape all that into sport and I'm watching the NBA and maybe the answer isn't escape for people who are, I'm not American, but maybe for Americans who are living through it and they really believe that that, whatever, that's cool. But for me, I was just like, yeah, I don't want to watch this. I just want to watch a basketball game.
38:15I don't want to have a message. And so yeah, it just became too much, I think, in some ways. It became overwhelming. and then also I was working for the Mavericks at the same time and they were in the bubble and I'm hearing the stories from them and you have African American coaches who are really upset with what's happening as they should be, the players are upset. It just became really draining emotionally in a way that made me really kind of sad and I started watching football more because soccer was the first sport to start up after COVID and so I just got really into it and we were already building models to begin with before then and I thought, you know what, this is new, it's exciting, it's more mathematical in the sense of it's unsolved, it's a lot more, the game tree is bigger, it's more nuanced.
39:03Basketball's pretty simple, you get a top five player, you put him on the court, you surround him with other players, but he's the guy, it's called heliocentrism, and then you profit, and then you trade him for Anthony Davis and won first. I don't know, but that's it. You just find a guy like Luca or LeBron or Jokic or whatever. And off you go, but it's not that difficult.
39:35Well, guys, when it comes to banking, the only time I feel truly happy is when I'm using Mercury. And that's today's sponsor for the show. That is the banking product I use for not one, not two, but actually eight of my businesses. I have eight Mercury accounts. I just went and counted. I use it for every one of my companies. It's an absolute no-brainer. Over 200 ,000 other fast-growing, ambitious companies use Mercury. It's one place you can go where not only you can, of course, have your money there, but you can send invoices, you can pay bills, you can create reimbursements for your team. Pretty much all of your financial needs can be housed under Mercury.
40:07And the product is beautiful to use. And the reason why is because it's a product that was not made by finance people. It was made by a founder, Imad. He's been on this podcast before. and he used tons of products as a startup founder, and this is the one that he wished he had. And I actually reached out to them to become a sponsor for this show because I'm such a big fan of it. So if you need a banking product for your startup, use Mercury. You will not regret it. It's amazing. For more information, check out mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details.
40:38You said we. You said we are building models. I think Sean and I were talking, and he was like, this guy's like a lone wolf. uh and well well yeah and i don't know the truth and i want you to tell me the truth do you um i think you don't have a family i think you're you're uh and i think that like from an outside perspective it doesn't seem like you have this massive company like what i'm a lone wolf yeah okay this now i am a lone wolf when you put it that way yeah like i've always been very um yeah so i but i have people who work for me i have people yeah can you explain that what what's What's the organization?
41:13What's your team look like? I have now my organization, not counting the football team, which is completely separate. Just like 250 people or something worked for me. I don't know how many it is. It's a lot. Maybe less. I don't know. Account academy players. I still do my basketball betting. I spend zero time on it. It's an automated program. But when I first started betting on basketball programmatically with a model, when I decided that my method works, but it only works if my mindset is good. If I want to have a life and have emotional relationships with females and have a partnership, whatever, and I'm upset, I'm making bad decisions when I'm gambling, it's harder to be a perfect arbiter of what's right and what's wrong and what's the right information when you're the input.
41:59So I wanted to automate me, basically. And so yeah, I hired a couple different quants unsuccessfully, they weren't great. kept trying. And then a friend of mine, a poker player, he played poker. This guy named Brandon Adams was teaching at Harvard at the time. And I was playing poker with him. Really, really smart guy. And he said, I have this student that you need to talk to. He's a genius. And he'd be perfect. And I met him, and that was the guy who basically, together we built our simulation models that really took me to the next level, which was not the little halftime thing, which I made a lot of money on.
42:40This was now full game bets on sides, totals, everything. And so him and I together built, and our operation was myself, this individual, and then one person who basically was two people who were putting the bets in and also making the lineups. And then me and the person, we call him the whiz because he doesn't want to be, nobody wants to know who he is, but he's out there, what's up? and we had a falling out he doesn't when I went to go work for the Mavs I basically turned over the business to them and he ran it for a while didn't enjoy it they didn't do that well and he left and then when I quit the Mavs we started back up again and that was it so I basically did the gambling again not for myself but for the people who worked for me to allow them to continue to make a lot of money because I've had guys who've worked for me now for over 12 or 13 years with a gap period in Mavericks.
43:42And so they run everything and they do everything. Dude, you're basically running it like a small little seed fund, Sean. You know what I mean? Like a hedge fund. Algorithmic hedge fund, like jump minus, you know. So, you know, those guys, they measure their success on IRR or annual returns. And if they could get 20%, 30 % returns, what's a good annual return for you? What's a bad annual return for you? Where do you land? I know what multifamily can get you. I know what private equity can get you. I know what venture can get you. It's hard to really quantify because I'm never able to bet my entire network.
44:17I can't take in outside capital. And so I don't look at it as an annual ARR. It's more of a return on investment on every bet you're making. And so every bet we make, a bad year for us was 4.5 % on every bet we're making. A good year is in the 8s and 9s. And now, of course, you want to have as many bets as possible and the most profit as possible. So you want your ROI to go down a little bit as your bets go up. So it's like you're threading the needle. But the game has changed so much now that now we've got two models that are going at all times. and we use a mix between two of them. When I say it's automated, it's completely automated.
45:03Zero, last four or five years, even when these guys are running it themselves, nobody's saying, I think the model's wrong. It gets teams wrong, for sure. And we have a guy who says, yeah, we're really off on these Oklahoma City totals. We think they should be higher scoring, but they're not. We think they're higher scoring, but they're going under. And I'm just like, cool, we're not making any changes. and has you know now i we said this before i don't pay attention to just too much of sports i think it's fucking insane though that like every sport is basically a gambling thing now like it's like gross like it's i think it's weird um but not weird it's gross yeah it's messed up i think it's wrong and but does that make you richer then because you have more uh retail investors yeah this the amount of i don't even look like last night like i probably lost more money on fart coin yesterday, my fart coin holding on paper that I would break to make an entire year betting NBA.
46:04I don't care what we make in the NBA. I just do it because it's meaningful for the people who work for me and they have a massive profit share in it. That's why we do it. Let me just recap a couple things. You said if every bet, low end, 4 % or 5%, good, 9%, 10%, That means you need to bet$100 million of total betting volume, total dollars bet to make$10 million. Is that right? You don't need$100 million to do that because you're doing it every day, multiple times over. That's exactly right. So couldn't you have just applied your brain to buying HVAC companies as private equity and gotten better returns?
46:42I always think about this. If I hear somebody's a pro blackjack player, I'm like, first of all, I don't even know if that's technically a thing. I don't know if Blackjack is a game you can get an edge in anymore. But secondly, if you're that good and that smart, couldn't you just apply it to an easier game and made more money? Don't you think about that for yourself? Yeah, if my dad was Ray Dalio, I probably would have went a different path. But unfortunately, my dad was a Greek gambler who spent his time at the racetrack. So this is what I knew. I don't know what else to say. But you have done it.
47:12You have done it, right? You're buying a team. That seems like it could be a great business move. And you did crypto. Yeah, the crypto thing is really the part I think that is because I don't have an edge in finance. These people have bigger, they're smarter. Maybe I could have honed in on one specific category that I knew very well. But again, I'm a gambler in the sense that I like gambling games, but the number one edge in poker is playing with players who are worse than you. That's just it. And so I try to apply that also to my businesses. I try to stay away from people that are smarter than me where there's plenty of them in terms of that I'm competing against.
47:49And so, yeah, I mean, am I going to compete with like, no, I don't think so. I mean, maybe, but at this point, I think I'm good at what I'm doing. I like my quality of life. Well, what do you do with your money now? Do you, like your income or your investments, do you do any boring stuff? I mean, I mostly do boring stuff, index funds. Yeah, I do super boring stuff. Every dollar I earn goes directly into Bitcoin. That's my boring stuff. Is that, so that's still how you roll then? Correct, yeah. Wow. Every dollar I make betting sports goes into Bitcoin. It has forever. So you've made more money off Bitcoin than you have sports betting.
48:21Yeah, for sure. I've done very well with Bitcoin. What's your endgame with Bitcoin? Is it hold forever? Is it Bitcoin becomes global reserve currency? There's no exit with Bitcoin, right, for you? I don't know. I wish I could do better Michael Saylor impersonation. But I don't know. This guy, I like this guy. I feel like his endgame, as crazy as this guy is, I feel like he's a savant. He's kind of figured, what is your endgame? I don't know, dollars? What am I going to do with dollars? Sorry, they're printing more of it. It doesn't seem like it works for me. I remember being in COVID, living in Malibu during COVID, and the houses that I had rented had gone up in value.
49:01Rich people's stuff was becoming more and more expensive as more and more money entered the system. So what's my endgame? I don't know. Protect my wealth, I guess. Maintain my sovereignty. That's my endgame. I don't know. Just to be clear, I don't have it in, I like Bitcoin, but it's still, I'm not like the pure Bitcoin guys, like the guys who have their own seed and they have it memorized in their head. That's not me. My money's in Ibit. It's in the bank. It's with a third party. It's not smart, but I like my quality of life. I don't want to be my own bank. Being my own bank was cool before. People knew what crypto was.
49:40Now being your own bank is not cool. For me, just to be clear, I love Bitcoin. I love the self-sovereignty of it. That's the ethos, but my money is custodied with institutions, unfortunately. Do you own anything? Do you own any real estate and cars and items? Or do you live light? Yeah. Dude, I feel like a lot of this guy thinks I'm like an alien who just dropped into the world and has nothing but nothing but otherwise Bitcoin and watches sports all day. Sean and I actually both rent homes. And I actually don't own a lot of stuff. I like living light. Sean does too. And we don't actually own houses.
50:14I'm at the full house. I was with you guys. I bought real estate when I was younger. Before that, I just thought the better move is Bitcoin. Why am I going to buy this house in Malibu when I can rent and buy Bitcoin? I also sold all of my assets during the 2017 dump. I own property outside of Mexico. I had some vacation property on some property in Europe. Had a plane, sold it all. Actually had some friends try to schedule an intervention for me because they thought I'd lost my mind when I sold everything to buy more Bitcoin at$3 ,300. You sold all your shit to buy the dip? That's incredible. That's amazing.
50:59I got to ask you a different question. What are you into now? We asked you a bunch about the past, but what's the future shit you're really... Somebody said you're into biohacking or you're into that. Sam mentioned something interesting about owning things. and I'm just kidding. What am I into? I'm into biohacking. I'm into, yeah, I don't know. I think I'm into, it's interesting because I'm really into analog things like records, books, old games, old pinball machines. Are you detoxing from phone? Like phone goes away for hours a day? I'm getting this new, oh I forget what it's called but this new thing that's black and white I'm trying to I'm into that I think O-Box is a new one that just came out Palma 2 I think is what it is it's supposed to be getting shipped but that looks really cool we love those things I used to break all the time and then there's Daylight which is like another dumb phones basically I've used Daylight I'm into that to be honest during COVID I started getting into western life This is going to sound crazy, but I want a ranch.
52:09Sam bought a ranch. I bought a ranch, my friend. Do you want to be buddies? I bought a yacht before. I was on the Mediterranean cruising. Now I'm like, no, I want a ranch. I want courses. I want simple life. That's what I'm into. What are you doing for biohacking? What are you finding valuable or helpful? Best thing, yeah. I do a lot of peptide stuff. I kind of grew up in like I spent a lot of time I should say in like rich guy LA circles for a minute playing poker and all these guys were on like TRT and HGH and all this other stuff and they looked great but they weren't necessarily optimizing for living longer so HGH is great you feel awesome on it but you're definitely not living longer taking it TRT I think can be good for some people it didn't work for me I tried it it made me irritable so I do other things to raise my testosterone I take some rhodacea and I do a lot of squats and kettlebell stuff.
53:09I do quite well with that. What am I taking? I'm taking peptides for the most part. I do a lot of sauna. Red light therapy. I would say the best thing. That Brian Johnson regimen. I admire what he's doing. He's doing it for science, I guess. For me, it's not for me. I'm not that bad. But I do have, you know, I do take about 20 supplements a day for sure. I inject myself with some peptides when I'm diligent about it. But I think the best thing I've ever done was stem cells. Are you doing peptides and stem cells for injury recovery? Or are you doing, I thought peptides is like for injury recovery.
53:47Do you use it for other stuff? A peptide's like a protein, yeah? Or an amino acid, I guess, which is a precursor to protein. Yeah, it's a precursor. You can find a peptide, it's a precursor for whatever you want to solve for. So like some is for injury recovery, like DPC-157 is really good. That's what I took. I took that on my Achilles, it was great. Yeah, but it also, by the way, that also helps with your gut, which then your gut connects to your brain, which helps your brain. There's a lot of benefits to it. I take casamoralin, epimoralin, hexarolin. Through the doctor, I get tested very regularly.
54:17My blood tested very regularly. But the best thing I've ever done and the thing I could recommend to anyone who can afford it is, aside from sauna, five times a day, or five times a week, excuse me, is stem cells, getting actual stem cells that are mesenchymal, which is through the umbilical cord. Do you do that if you have an injury? I feel great. You look great. Both of you guys look like, I'm not sure how, but you guys look like you're doing great stuff for your health. People do it for injury. I did it because I wanted to feel better. I found this place in Panama that I went to, Stem Cell Institute.
54:58and they were kind of one of the pioneers behind it, Dr. Riordan. I think Mel Gibson's dad may have talked about this on the Joe Rogan show. I'd already gone there, but I think there's an episode where Mel Gibson talks about his dad going there to get stem cells. I've seen similar things. It's unbelievable. Is this the one where it's its own sovereign land? No, I don't know what that is, but this is just Panama. You stayed at Hilton. Last time, I don't think it was sovereign. Oh, I know what you're talking about. I do know what you're talking about. No, it's nothing like that. Aren't they doing genetic?
55:30They're doing genetic. Chris, what's it called? Were you? Chris Girl. Yeah. They're doing that, right? It's like a Peter Thiel thing. They're doing genome editing. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want none of that. I just want, I want building blocks into my body to make me young. So if you can give me the stuff that little baby has to grow a fucking actual. Wait, but what are these guys doing? It's like their own little sovereign area and they're like building like the future Yao Ming super baby or something. You know, like the network state stuff, right? where it's basically like, oh, if we can get, like, you know, I invested in Praxis.
55:59It's like people who want to create new lands where they can have, like, you know, let's say more, they can have different rules, right, for themselves. Yeah, it's like a land where, like, Ayn Rand is the president, you know? Like, it's like libertarian land. You got to watch the documentary. It's hilarious because Brian goes there. I think he goes there for, like, a full plasma, like, swap with his son and his dad or something like that. I don't remember the exact procedure he did, but he goes, and it's like the two scientists who created this institute and they show the guy and the guy's clearly like 22 years old.
56:31He's so young. But he has this mustache and he has glasses with like a rope as if like, bro, we can see through the disguise. You're 22 years old. And the narrator... Was he standing on another kid's shoulders with a trench coat on? Exactly. It literally looked like that. And he's like, you know, I think these guys' hearts are the right place, but you know, they're not like 20-year PhDs if you know what I mean. It's like, yeah, because he's 20. It was so funny. you gotta watch that part. Yeah. And I actually did watch it. And I know what you're talking about now. And I remember like, I had my finger, this is where I need my digital, whatever, but I had my finger on the fast forward the entire time.
57:06I'm like, cause you can't watch it all the way through. It's just like, what is, this is not that interesting. But yeah, I didn't like you're talking about now. Yeah. It's nothing like that. This is more for, you have a rotator top injury. Some parents were there with some kids who were autistic and they were doing that therapy. There's people with MS. There's a lot of different stuff that they were doing. and I've done it maybe seven times. The injuries you have will repair permanent. That's permanent. The Superman feeling you have for three to four months afterwards is fleeting, but it feels amazing for that two or three months period.
57:44There's a lot of physiological effects that you know that you got a good batch. Sometimes you don't get a good batch or it doesn't take, but if you had a good batch, you'll know it. It's great. I haven't done it in a while, but it is amazing. Do you do any drugs or drink alcohol? Do you get fucked up at all? Are you sober? Yeah, I think the last time I ever got I was betting on NFL football and Canadian football in university and waking up with a hangover and I was like, yeah, this doesn't work. So you've been in this world of vice but not substances. No. I'm a control. I like to be in control of myself.
58:20I like to be in control of my emotions. I like to be making good decisions. I don't like to be unable to think rationally. So alcohol doesn't do it for me. Dude, this is great. Thanks for doing this, man. Where should people follow you? Is Twitter still the best place or X? Yeah, I mean, follow the football club. I'm not looking to promote myself, but I would love for the football club to get more. You know, we were doing some great things this year at the football club. And then - You guys won, right? You won the like - We were recently promoted to La Liga too. We had an amazing first start of the season.
58:48And then we had a game, we had a stretch where we played 22 games in six days. and I failed the culture in that I wasn't able to demand that we do things that were proper for rest and health for the players, and we ran our players into the ground during that period because that was something that the coaches wanted to do. Then we suffered some injuries, and we're in the midst of a six-game losing streak right now, which is sad, and we're paying for it from what we did in November, which was a cultural failure on my part. Are you able to apply the biohacking shit that you're learning to your sports psychology?
59:25Not in the medicine part of it, but there's lots of studies on how to optimize health and your risk of muscle injury goes up 25 % if a football player plays more than one game every six days. There's plenty of research that can make you come to good decisions. But like sleep and recovery? We're going to do a better job. When I bought the team, we didn't even have a training facility. So we're building a brand new training facility. We hope to announce the land that we've acquired soon. and yeah, we'll do stuff like that. Did you think that you were going to go from doing these bets and hanging out with your dad in Vegas to owning a team and implementing whatever you want to implement?
1:00:04That's pretty wild, right? That's a good ending so far. It's not the end, but it's a good part of the story. You thought that? I did. I was very delusional when I was younger. I'm really a big fan of that sort of stuff. Speaking things, not speaking, but just having the belief and why not? Why not? I know the universe is kind of there for you do it. Like you, you can craft your own path. Just keep trying until you get there. Dude, you're insane. You're the man. Awesome. You're the man. Thanks for coming on, dude. You, you're welcome. Well, thank you, man. That's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world.
1:00:38I 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.
1:00:49Hey, 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.
1:01:19If 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, and Evolve Bank and Trust members FDIC.
From the publisher
Get our Business Monetization Playbook:
Episode 674: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to the most successful sports better of all time, Haralabos Voulgaris ( https://x.com/haralabob ).
—
Show Notes:
(0:00) Stumbling into gambling
(6:19) Finding your edge
(19:23) Alpha
(27:28) Casinos are for losers
(30:02) Betting 160% on Bitcoin
(35:36) Getting paid
(37:31) Buying a soccer team
(46:11) Investing every dollar into Bitcoin
(49:27) Analogue things and biohacking
—
Links:
• https://www.cdcastellon.com/
—
Check Out Shaan's Stuff:
• Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com
• Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents.
• Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies!
Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC
—
Check Out Sam's Stuff:
• Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/
• Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/
• Copy That - https://copythat.com
• Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth
• Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/
My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano
