Stocks Just Hit ANOTHER Record High - WTF Is Happening?! | MeetKevin

20:37Graham Stephan:They had 5X. Why did I not know about this? Oh man. So they weren't available yet. So they banned it before they became available because it was getting so ridiculous. And if you look at just either the tariff shock or this Iran shock, you would be at zero. 5X would already be at zero. They would have all already collapsed. So the SEC, you know, did a good thing there. They stopped that because they would have already been at zero. 3X leveraged the next recession because we are so, like we've never been through a real recession. Well, I don't even know that during COVID we had triple leveraged ETS.

21:10We should look into that. But let's say we did. Absent COVID, because it was such a short recession, absent COVID, we didn't have triple leveraged ETFs in the great financial crisis. Back then, they would have all gone to zero.

21:22Graham Stephan:So you would always argue, hey, don't touch the triple leveraged ETFs. But you do think QQQ is fine. Totally. Oh, I think QQQ is great. Love it. If you're going to buy it long-term, get QQQM. It's a little trick. So slightly different, but their fees are like, I want to say half. Or you look into the fees. the reason is they advertise QQQ. So everybody who comes in from the advertising funnel buys QQQ because that's where they spread the name. Everybody who knows like the financial advisors that they're trying to, you know, also have use their product, they have QQM for them. I have no idea. So what do you think is the biggest risk to the economy right now that no one's talking about?

22:01Graham Stephan:It's that credit, credit, credit, credit, credit. That's it. So explain this like I'm five. Because Jack is five. Basically. Explain it to Jack. A lot of debt, so people owing other people money, and we don't know if those people are going to be around in the next five or ten years. Whether those are data centers, people who are building out H100 NVIDIA facilities, or they are construction companies that are building these and rapidly expanding their debt so they can hire people to build out. whether they're generator selling companies, whether it's, I mean, not Generac, but there are plenty of other even private companies that are trying to build out data centers and everybody's trying to expand quickly.

22:50So people are taking on debt to facilitate data center construction. Somewhere that's all gonna go to crap one day when that cycle turns. So how are you so sure of that? I'm not, that's the toughest part is I don't know where the credit cycle will be. I think it'll be in data centers, but it could be in somewhere else. somewhere.

23:10Graham Stephan:So what you're assuming probably will happen because these, we don't just, we will always need data centers, but there will be a few winners, a lot of losers, and these losers are going to be caught up in the credit cycle? Well, it's typically what happens when you have an industrial boom is we overbuild. So there were like a quick comparison. If you go back to like the dot-com bubble, we always think of like the consumer dot-com bubble, like pets.com or whatever. But before that you had the infrastructure build out boom, dark fiber, basically, you know, let's live fiber everywhere we can. I think there was a company called WorldCom and cross country, I don't know, whatever massive debt expenditures driven by spending from the big mega cap incumbents of the day, which is exactly what's happening today.

23:55Except just for scope comparison, back then, the total like the highest annual CapEx spend was$82 billion from all of the mega cap incumbents back then. Today, NVIDIA almost makes$80 billion in a quarter. In about 100 days, NVIDIA makes about$80 billion. The top five data center plays, so like Google, Meta, Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon, are projected to spend over a trillion dollars in CapEx next year, which is more than 10 times what we saw in the dot-com bubble. And I think a lot of that is financed by debt. There's a reason why companies who are doing great, you know, Google's great. There's a reason why, though, Google and Meta have stopped doing stock buybacks.

24:40If you go look at their earnings, you're like, oh, last year you guys were buying back all your stock. They do that because they issue a lot of stock comp to their people. And the people who work there are like, well, I want to buy a house or a boat. I'm going to sell some stock. So the company buys back the stock so it doesn't impact the stock price and the CEOs get yelled at or fired because the stock goes down. So they buy back stock. They've stopped doing that because they're out of money. which is crazy. If you look at Microsoft's balance sheet, it's like, what'd you guys do with all your money?

25:07It's all gone. It's crazy. The balance sheets have gone from amazing to bad. And Meta is now hiding debt from their balance sheet. They're literally able to structure somehow legally $27 billion lease commitments that don't show up on their balance sheets. That was a Blue Owl deal that they just did last year. Doesn't show up on their balance sheet. So a new investor who goes in says, I'm going to be a diligent investor. I'm going to look at the balance sheet. $27 billion wouldn't even show up. So you wouldn't even know, which is scary. So I don't know where it all comes out. I don't know when it's all going to collapse, but it's going to be an overbuild.

25:40It's all going to collapse. It's going to be ugly. And a lot of people are going to get really hurt and leveraged ETFs are going to go to zero.

25:50Graham Stephan:I was reading, though, that a lot of those aren't really going to impact the broader market, that if you're in the S &P 500, you're going to have very little to worry about outside of a few deals that seem to be isolated. That's the hope. The biggest thing that concerns me about the economy outside of credit is the labor market. The labor market drives everything. There's a reason why retail sales are still booming right now, which is crazy that they are, but they just keep beating estimates. Even with oil prices, what, 50%, well, actually, we're almost double the oil prices per barrel that we had in January, which is also crazy.

26:24But despite that, people are still spending more than economists have been expecting. And that's even excluding oil and gas.

26:32Graham Stephan:But that's all driven by the top 1%. Predominantly. Yeah, okay. Like 80 % of that spending is like the 1 % because the stock market is so high. And it's an annoyance to go and fill up your gas tank and pay$7. But you don't care. This is true. There is a massive, massive wealth effect. people are feeling rich because the stock market is at all-time highs and so that'll actually bring me to my point and you're right yeah the top you know one percent has a big spending top 10 percent has a big spending top half spends almost all of it right the bottom half doesn't matter so much for spending which is sad but the point is that's what drives the economy it's the consumer still 72 percent of the economy you know that'll start flipping because of ai but what's really interesting is when people lose their jobs, then they stop spending.

27:21And so that's what makes me the most scared is that once we see that slowdown, we don't know when it's going to be, but once we get that construction build out slow, all these great jobs reports we're getting, they're not going to have that support anymore from construction or from, you know, software developers getting hired. Ironically, even in the age of AI, we're seeing more software developers get hired now. And here's my prediction.

27:43Graham Stephan:The stock market's going to keep going higher and higher and higher and higher and people are going to keep saying it's a bubble it's a bubble it's a bubble and then there's going to be a point where they're going to say i was wrong it's not a bubble and they're going to buy and that's when you sell it's that's the moment you gotta click sell is where all the doubters say i can't keep doing this any longer i'm back in but they'll never do that they will i just don't think that i think there will get there will get to a point where the majority of people out there who've been sitting on cash and say, I've lost so much in opportunity cost.

28:17Graham Stephan:I've been wrong. I'm going to buy it. So what do you think then for the average person? Because this is one of Graham's favorite things is having what we call dry powder. So having a good amount of cash. You said your portfolio is what? 15 % cash? 20 % cash. Well, it's not cash. It's treasuries. Yeah. Cash. So he has 20 % cash, treasuries. A stabilized asset. Cash equivalence. do you think that this is a reasonable approach for most people like what percentage cash or dry powder treasuries cash equivalents should they have set on the side to purchase in in the case something happens like there we have another like geopolitical yeah crash i think that's great i i actually i'm a big fan i i you know i i think a lot of people could benefit from that because what it means is, first of all, if you have cash on the sidelines, you probably don't have a lot of margin.

29:12It depends on what kind of structuring or deals you're getting. But margin rates for most people are very high right now. And so if you have cash on the side, there's a good chance you're not borrowing against your stock, in which case you don't have pressure to sell. And if the market goes down, the market goes down. It doesn't matter. You have that opportunity to buy. And psychologically, when people are buying, when the market's going down, it kills that feeling of fear of oh crap it's going down i'm losing all this money you're buying if you're buying you're psychologically seeing it as an opportunity which is great because you're increasing your ownership like i always see it as ownership with um any stock if you like if you have a favorite company or you want nvidia the stock price is at 150 during the geopolitical crisis great i was able to buy more ownership of that company at a lower price.

29:57It's great.

29:58Graham Stephan:DCAN. So then how is your net worth divided up? What does your portfolio look like in the middle of 2026? Well, there's a good amount of treasuries, cash equivalents. Love that. I'm really big fan of that right now. What percentage cash equivalent? A lot of my net worth is in house hack, in reinvest. And I don't really know what the daily value of that is because it's a private company. There's one value based on what we We're about to raise that probably in like September, you know, and then there are also stock options. So there that's a big skew. But let me put it in comparison to history. In comparison to history, I've got probably four times as much cash than I've ever had before now.

30:43And I feel great about it. No debt, too, which feels great. So I think that's probably the easiest comparison.

30:48Graham Stephan:There was a viral clip from our podcast that occurred recently of Kevin O 'Leary saying you're not truly wealthy until you have$5 million of cash liquid available to you at any given moment. What do you think about that? I think that's great because now you're sitting around with true like just FU money basically. It doesn't really matter if you, you know, oh, the car needs a$10 ,000 repair or the house needs a new roof or whatever. If you've got five in cash sitting around, those are all just rounding errors, right? That's a wonderful place to live in, but that's not for everybody right kevin o 'leary's compare you know talking about the top one percent or maybe even a fraction within the top one percent so it's not relatable and so he honestly i i haven't seen the clip but he's probably gets a lot of flack for that but that's kind of what keeps kevin o 'leary really relevant because he says these things that people go crazy he's really good at clips i think that's why like fox loves having him the clip man a lot of people actually agreed with him like you went into the responses a lot of like wealthy people are like, I actually 100 % agree with this.

31:49Graham Stephan:I was blown away by. I thought he was going to get a lot of hate for sale. I honestly thought he was going to get hate too, but I also agreed with him. So that's interesting. It's funny you're talking about treasuries here because I just saw for the first time since 2007, US treasuries are selling at 5%. And Jack says, is this a good investment? No. I have to say, to me, it seems kind of appealing to be able to lock in 30 years at a 5 % return. Guaranteed risk rate. I mean, obviously, there's some interest rate risk in between there, but I think locked in 5%. And we're talking right now about the risk reward of the S &P 500.

32:25Graham Stephan:And people basically say that the risk premium that you pay for the S &P 500 is now negative when you account for what you could get guaranteed in a treasury. It's true. So, I mean, let's break it down. The reason people say that is the S &P 500 trades for like 21 times forward earnings. So if you just divide that into 100, you get like 4.8 % a year. That's what you're expecting. You're expecting 4.8 % per year from the S &P 500. Yes. Okay, this is always what people end up doing. And then the S &P 500 ends up doing 13 % years, you know, or dividends reinvested even more. I think historically, it's like over 9%.

33:02But lately, it's been more. The problem with the Treasury play, and that's why I was so quick to say no is I understand the appeal of locking in that 5%, but the problem is duration. So if for whatever reason, interest rates go up a percent, you know, because inflation lasts even longer, that 1 % is going to kill like 22 % of your portfolio instantly. That's what you'll see. Now, if you want to hold those bonds for 30 years, you'll get 100 % back. But in the meantime, one year later, interest rates are 1 % higher. You're going to be 20 % lower. You put a million bucks in, you're going to be looking going, I only have$800 ,000 left.

33:48Now, you're still getting a 5 % yield on a million, right? You're still getting that$50 ,000. But usually that then shakes people out and be like, oh, just tax loss harvest over here. So people just don't hold them till the end. If you really, truly hold it to the end, fine. It's great for retired people.

34:04Graham Stephan:For you, at what price would you invest in a 30-year treasury? I don't think I ever would. I really like the Warren Buffett mentality of 6 to 12-month treasuries. And the reason for that is if there's some kind of crazy, weird shock, whether we have stagflation or rates go to zero, I want liquidity. But there's got to be an interest rate where you say, hey, you know what? I'm going to go 50 % in this. Because I got to say, if right now I had the option to lock in a 12 % return, I would probably just lock in a 12 % return. If I knew guaranteed for 30 years I'd just average that, I would probably do it.

34:42It all depends on what inflation is too, right? Because if inflation were 13%, you'd be like, hell no. I'm not going to do that. Just given right now. Just given what we know right now at what price. So I think that all comes down to people's individual opportunities too. Like if you're a real estate agent and you're making$100 ,000 a year, I'm thinking to myself, all right, what can we do to get your business to$300 ,000 a year? That boost of income is going to be so much larger on a percentage basis than worrying about that treasury bill, right? Like what can we invest in? Let's get you some better open house signs or a nicer suit or whatever.

35:17It's not that expensive of a business to run. So it depends on everyone individually. Me personally, with what we're doing with HouseHack, reinvest, I wouldn't want to lock in 12 % because I think we will make more than that on an annual basis. But that comes down to everyone. That's also going to take a lot of work. So if I think we can make 25 % compounded per year, I have to work my ass off to earn that, right? And if I'm retired or I'm not running a startup, yeah, dude, 12 % might look pretty appealing. So I don't blame you. Are you worried about the hentai virus? It's funny you ask me that because I joke that it's the - Dude, I always call it the hentai virus.

35:59I love it. Yeah. I joke that it's the virus that's the final boss of House Hack because it's spread by rats. And dude, we buy a lot of properties that are like infested with like hoarders and rats and cat urine. and people are getting sick from this just by like sweeping garages and like aerosolizing or whatever it's called or whatever uh the the urine and the feces or whatever and that's how they're getting sick and people are dying from it like a lot like 300 people have died i think it's like a 38 death rate it's bad on your properties no not nobody's died on my property people are dying from it uh no it's it's so weird because it's like it's it's literally i'm reading about this virus and I'm studying it and I'm like cat urine, rat urine doesn't spread human to human.

36:49So it's like you have a really low population risk. But then if you get it, it's like bad. You have like a one in three chance of dying. But I'm like, man, this is like a hoarder's virus. If you're a hoarder, you probably have rats in your house. You probably have hentavirus in your house. So now I have to underwrite my deals a little more sharply, but I'm not really broadly worried about it.

37:08Graham Stephan:Why aren't you worried about why are some people saying that this is like the hidden catalyst for a recession in the economy that no one's paying a lot of attention to. Now, I did look back at a tweet from the World Health Organization in January of 2020 that said the same thing about COVID. The transmission rates are really low. It's nothing to worry about. And a month later, you're like, oh, well, we were wrong. Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, COVID was crazy because you just wonder what money interests were at play, especially with like wuhan and the development of like oh yeah let's direct evolution between these monkeys it's crazy that virus should have never existed but that covid spread person to person through us just sitting here you know breathing and talking i can't spread henta virus to you if i have it right now maybe i do you know i have to like urinate you have to go touch it you know Or like we have to hug.

38:04Uh-oh. So fortunately, I think just because, and I'm not a doctor, but because of the mechanisms of it, as a stock analyst guy and a real estate guy, I'm not worried about it for the market. I probably am not going to be sweeping any rodent homes anytime soon.

38:26Graham Stephan:So do you think then, given all of this, there's nothing to worry about so far with that and our economy, that is it easier to build wealth right now for the average person in 2026? This episode is in partnership with Airbnb. Graham and I are always traveling for the podcast. We were just in Nashville filming a few episodes there and let me tell you, the food was incredible. I had the absolute best appetizers I've ever had. There was this dough ball and these steak skin potatoes. It was incredible. But let me ask you this. do you ever think about your place back home when you travel? When you're gone for days or even weeks at a time, you can list your space on Airbnb so it works for you instead of just sitting empty.

39:02Graham Stephan:And if you've ever considered listing your space, but you weren't sure how you'd manage everything while you're away, well, that's exactly where Airbnb's co-host network comes in. With this, you could partner with a vetted local co-host who has hosting experience and can help take care of the important details for you. A co-host can manage the reservations, communicate with guests, and handle the onsite logistics so everything runs smoothly while you're traveling. If you have upcoming travel, you probably don't think twice about your home sitting empty, but you could bring in some extra cash while you're away.

39:30Graham Stephan:I kid you not, a couple years ago, before I had all of the rooms in my house filled up with roommates, I actually listed a room on Airbnb and the entire process was genuinely so easy. The extra cash was amazing and I was genuinely just so surprised at the simplicity of the entire process. If you're trying to make some extra cash on the side, I couldn't recommend Airbnb more. If you're ready to host but need a little bit of help, find a co-host at airbnb.com slash host. Now, I gotta say, we recently replaced our entire invoicing system with AI, and what used to take five hours now takes about a minute.

40:02Graham Stephan:So it's no secret that AI is a must at this point. But here's the thing that most people miss. Knowing that AI is useful and actually putting it to work are two completely different things. And that's where our sponsor Zapier comes in. Zapier connects tools like ChatGPT and Claude directly to the apps your team already runs. so you can automate real work. You're able to do this whether it's enriching leads, managing sales workflows, resolving IT tickets, or building out an entire backend process without touching a single line of code. 3.4 million companies are already using Zapier with no IT bottlenecks and no technical background required.

40:36Graham Stephan:Teams have automated over 300 million AI tasks through Zapier. So if your team is still doing manually what a workflow could handle in seconds, it's time. Join the 3.4 million companies already automating with Zapier and transform how you work. Get started for free at zapier.com slash ICH. That's Z-A-P-I-E-R dot com slash ICH. Is it easier to build wealth right now for the average person in 2026? I actually think it's going to, and it's going to continue to get harder to build wealth. I think, unfortunately, AI doesn't make people wealthy unless they're like at the top tier of being able to use AI.

41:16I don't think most people use AI to the best of their abilities. A lot of people still doubt AI. I think only 18 % of companies, according to Goldman Sachs right now, are actually implementing AI inside their companies, which is insane. That's such a low level. But what will longer term happen, I believe, is corporations will take almost all of the profit from AI. Corporations, whether it's logistics, shipping packages, customer service, your T-Mobile, your grocery store, whatever, stocking, inventory, making products, everything can almost all be automated with software over time and artificial intelligence.

41:53And guess who cuts out, gets cut out? People. A lot. And I'm not saying there won't be other jobs or other opportunities, but the people who will make most of the profits will be the shareholders. Because you're going to see companies like even Cisco, where, I mean, they just reported banger earnings, their stock has gone like straight vertical. And they're literally reporting what I expect is going to continue happening. Wow, we're beating earnings and we're firing more people. And it's a terrible transition because to me, it says it's harder for people to build wealth. It's kind of hard to build wealth if you can't qualify for a loan or you got fired and now you got to take a different job and you got to go back to school or, you know, go learn a new skill.

42:34That's hard. That takes years. So I think there's like, there's unfortunately this sort of like a lull that we're in right now where if people are kind of screwed and it's the corporations that are winning and that's going to lead to a rise of more AOCs and more Mondomines in New York.

42:51Graham Stephan:So if you were to give advice then for the average person out there, not what you would do, but you think would be the most productive at scale for someone to implement in their life to become wealthy in today's environment, what would it be? And then also, what would you specifically do? Because I'm sure what you would do would be different than the wide appeal advice that you would give. Let's say I was starting over or somebody else is listening is like, how can I make a lot of money right now? I actually think the people who are going to make the most money are the people who are the best at implementing AI at things that are traditionally kind of boring.

43:25Insurance, bookkeeping, accounting, these are places that AI is going to dominate. And I'll tell you, I'll get on the phone with insurance brokers and I immediately know the people who are actually productively using AI because these people get emails out fast, they get quotes out fast, they get policies out fast, and they know where the holes are because they're using AI. and I can tell they're using AI, but they're not using it in a way where they're copying and pasting everything. They're still using their brain and they're like, okay, yeah, yeah, this is what this person needs. All right, let's fit this puzzle.

43:56That's where all the money's gonna be. Eight out of 10 people, I would argue, are the opposite. And they're like, oh, nah, man, nah, man. AI, you know, this one time it hallucinated and it told me this, AI's stupid. Those are the people that are gonna go bankrupt because AI is now, you know, chatbots basically are like three and a half years old already. You know, the chat GPT moment It was about a little over three years ago. Came out in November of 22, three and a half years ago. It's gotten a lot better. Now, I don't think it's going to exponentially keep going. We're not going to get artificial general intelligence.

44:27This is still token, like, next letter prediction stuff. But basic stuff, a real estate agent, a lender, getting your loan license for when rates come down in the future, because they will come down again in the future, bookkeeping, whatever. Power that with AI. even an attorney, honestly, an attorney with AI, probably the most dangerous thing that could exist right now.

44:51Graham Stephan:It's so funny you say that because right before this podcast, we were talking about Grant Cardone. We asked him the same question. He said the exact same thing. Shut up. Yeah, he said he did. He said the exact same thing. It's AI implement. Yeah. Yes. And AI implementation. He said you go to businesses that don't have 24 seven sales centers and a lot of people will call after hours, but they can't get ahold of anyone. So what do they new they call another business yep exactly if they want a solution they want it right now they want their ac fix you don't answer they call someone else exactly so if you can get an ai call center that i mean realistically if i call and it's an ai call center as long as it's good i don't care or text exactly i don't even know if it's an ai i just want my problem solved he said you go to 10 businesses completely revolutionize their business take eight thousand dollars from each business you're making a million dollars a year first year doing i actually i mean those numbers are very ambitious but i think that this is like the lowest lift most scalable thing that people could be doing right now to make a ton of money.

45:43Graham Stephan:Totally. I agree. That's scary. That clip got millions of views and people were sh**ing on it. Yeah, well, a lot of people in the tech world were sh**ing on it. What'd they say? They said it was unrealistic. You're never going to get 10 businesses. No one's going to pay$8 ,000. If you're an 18-year-old kid who knows nothing about AI, how are you going to afford other businesses? And Grant Cardone responded and he just said, have fun being poor. Well, okay. That would be his reply. Well, so the thing about Cardone, is he's not really, like, somebody who's 18 doesn't have to make a million. They have to have a goal of making a million.

46:19Even if they make 200, they're freaking killing it, right? That's the mentality that Cardone's trying to push with his 10x, which is good. Like, that's one thing I won't bag on him for. I'm like, damn, if you try to go 10x, well, even if you 3x, that's better than what you were doing before, right? It's like shoot for the moon and even if Messi's still around, whatever, we've all heard that crap before. But, so he's not wrong with that. uh but but yeah i mean how much the more people are reluctant to use ai around you when you hear your parents or doctors or people around you are reluctant to use ai the more you should be doubling down on it that's my take because that means there's more money to be made what sort of

46:54Graham Stephan:investing opinions do you have that you think most people would disagree with i think this is going to be the best decade ever 2022 to 2032 to buy real estate now everybody hates that idea absolutely everybody hates that idea, which is exactly why I think it's the best idea that exists. Mostly because between 2022 and 2032, we're going to likely continue experiencing the highest interest rates that we've seen since like, you know, the 70s, sagflation era, which is crazy. But it's been caused by shock after shock after shock, whether it's the tariff shock, the Iran shock, COVID, Russia, Ukraine, whatever.

47:35These are all inflationary shocks. Okay, great. So we have rates higher for longer. Even though we are getting Kevin Warsh as the new Fed chair, he's not going to be able to dump rates. The best thing that he's going to do is be an anchor to prevent them from going higher. That's it. That's the best you're going to get out of Kevin Warsh for a while, which means real estate will continue to be unpopular unless you have a lot of cash. So we're fortunate that at House Act Reinvest, we don't have any bank debt. so it's 80 million dollars of real estate maybe 85 if you include some of our dirt of paid off real estate and i see that as not sort of a way of saying oh you know we have all this money or whatever it's it's a way of saying this is where we're actually putting money and the reason we like doing it during this decade is because we believe that by 2032 rates will probably be back at zero we might actually even look like europe it becomes socialist and then Then all of a sudden wages go down for the average person, productivity goes down, and interest rates end up going negative on savings.

48:38We'll probably be back to that in the 2030s. And the people who have acquired the most real estate between 2022 and 2032 will have the biggest piggy bank and say, oh, I now get to refinance all of this at you thought 2.7 % was great. Try 1.7 % or whatever.

48:55Graham Stephan:So I think it's interesting that 75 % of the U.S. right now, in terms of homes that are currently for sale, are unaffordable to the typical household. 97 % of the U.S. counties are now considered unaffordable by historic standards. Most Americans say now is a bad time to buy. There are 64 % more sellers than buyers. And negative equity is increasing for buyers who purchased in the last few years across the country. I would argue that real estate is fundamentally too expensive at today's interest rates, that prices have barely budged because there's such a lag effect. And I'm taking the opposite approach of you, and I'm selling my real estate.

49:36Graham Stephan:In fact, I just listed one of them for sale today, hours before this podcast, and I can't wait to be done with it. I'll buy it with shares of House Hack, and you'll get a call option on the future. Real estate software and cash real estate, baby. I want cash right now to be able to buy these 5 % treasuries. We'll install and sell you so you don't have to pay taxes or 1031. I want 5 % treasuries. If you could just give me a 5 % treasury. Our last round was a 5 % round. I don't want house equity. I want the cash. I want cash to be able to buy triple leverage. Triple leverage QQQ. I just think your thesis counts a whole bunch of what ifs.

50:20Graham Stephan:Now, I do think real estate is stable. But I look at the yield that you get on real estate. And when I say you, I don't mean you specific. I just mean in general. I see the yield on real estate and what you're getting. And I think there's no way that's worth it at today's levels. And I see in a lot of properties, I say, okay, if I get this at a 30 to sometimes 40 % discount, I could make that work. Yeah. And that makes sense to purchase. But unless they're willing to come down to a certain level where I feel that compensates for the higher interest rate environment that we're in, it doesn't make sense.

50:53Graham Stephan:And then if you buy it today, what I believe to be a premium, you're basically banking on all these things happening in the future to bail you out, so to speak. I totally understand where you're coming from. And I agree with you. With all your statistics, I think you're 100 % right. I think there are a lot of portions of the country that have been overbuilt. And those are areas that are seeing a lot of negative equity. Austin, Texas was a great example of that. Parts of Florida were an example of that. I also agree with you that if you're going in financing a property, it's very challenging to make it make sense right now.

51:28You'd probably have to put 35 % down. And a lot of people don't have that cash. You know, 35 % down, we're filming this as, you know,$350 ,000 just to buy a home out here, which is crazy. So for most people, it doesn't make sense. And you're right. It doesn't make sense to finance. There are certain areas of the country that valuations have gone down. On top of that, your returns right now are probably in line with kind of like a commodity. It's almost like gold. I mean, gold has done really well over the last year. But traditionally, longer run average, it's sort of like you're trying to protect yourself from inflation.

52:04So you're really not getting anywhere, which is exactly why I want to be shopping. Because nobody else is wanting to buy really real estate right now.

52:11Graham Stephan:So here's what I'm seeing though. You say cash. I would be the equivalent of a cash buyer. And what I see, even if I were to buy a property, is to look at the opportunity cost of something like a treasury. And so even though I'm not paying the 6 % mortgage rate, I am paying a 3.5 % to 5 % tax-free yield on a muni bond. And that's how I view it. Because right now I could get risk-free 3.6 % in one of the Schwab tax-free muni bond funds. And it'll deviate plus or minus like 5 % in perpetuity, basically. Until the cities go bankrupt. They did during the financial crisis. If the United States goes bankrupt, then those funds - You said muni bonds.

52:52Graham Stephan:That's different. Yeah, but not when they're buying a basket of funds spread across hundreds of funds. That's fair. If the United States goes bankrupt, then I am screwed. I agree. But I think we all are at that point. Yes, correct. No, I agree with you. I think treasuries are great. But here's my point is that I look at that and then I say, well, I could rent basically the same house for 30 % to 40 % less than it would cost to own. Of course, you're right. And then I look at that delta, that premium that I pay and I say, well, what else could I do with that? I could invest. I could burn the money.

53:23You could. Grant Cardone, you could join him. He burns the money. You guys could have a little money burning part.

53:29Graham Stephan:you know that you guys have the rich person laugh that's crazy you guys both have it i've always wanted that laugh all right at what net worth does the rich person laugh start i'm really curious oh man i don't know man is it five million ten million life it's just a rich person i mean i can never say that oh well you should have listened to yourself three cackling that 10 seconds ago graham you have the rich person laugh. Did I not have that before? I don't think so. I think it's developed. I'm not even kidding. I think it's developed. I crossed a milestone recently and I told Jack and a few people I crossed this milestone and then he says I have this laugh.

54:11Graham Stephan:It could be that. Yeah, it could be. It could be that. That's incredible. I mean, you guys have to, Graham did not laugh like that back in the day. Well, congratulations. Congratulations. Yeah. So something to consider the way we look at it, which is just how we run our business is we look at buying our properties for 20 % less than what they're worth because we buy fixed roppers and that's considering the fix up costs. So for us, we're getting a discount on the property up front. Of course, you butter that out over years. You know, it boosts your rental return. But yeah, you're right. Treasury yields are attractive.

54:45But to us, it's already a stabilized asset that we can do a lot with in the long term, primarily refinancing. If and when, which I expect will be by 2032 rates come down and let's say by then we've built to make math easy a hundred million dollar portfolio which we're already at like 85 so we're going to be at 100 million probably by the end of the year then we can turn around and leverage that with 30 percent down all of a sudden that becomes uh you know a tool for us to get access to maybe another 200 million dollars and so now we have a nearly a third of a billion dollar company based on assets that we can buy.

55:25If I can go buy another$200 million of real estate, especially when rates are low and I get a 20 % discount on those, that's another$400 million, or sorry,$40 million. So for me, I look at owning real estate as a stable inflation hedge. It's very undesirable for people to buy right now. And it's a call option on the future, but it could only be in highly desirable markets. So we buy in high cost of living markets. and most people especially hate that idea.

55:54Graham Stephan:Well, your risk, there are two risks. One is tenant habitability lawsuits, which in California are a dime a dozen. Your other risk is all these initiatives that are going into effect right now that want to ban institutional buyers. Yeah, you're right. And I saw the recent Trump proposal and I think it was 250 homes or more. And what they're probably going to do is they're going to go back and forth on that. They're going to argue and someone's going to push it up to 500. And it'll only impact a few specific places. And I saw even in that fine print, because I looked through it, because I'm really curious about this, that it doesn't apply to build to rent communities, which means that all these companies are now just going to buy a plot of land, build their own rental community with 501, and they're going to be totally fine.

56:39Graham Stephan:But I think it's a risk that if housing prices remain high, it's politically popular to ban investors from buying houses. It is. So there are two things to answer there. One, it's interesting. The habitability issues have been more of a red flag in insurance policies, and insurance is hard to get. Keeping insurance happy is tough. So we've actually used our software team to make habitability inspection software. So we have to deal with that crap, which we could do with the scale we have. How do you do that? Because habitability is such a legal. It is, but you have to send people as the owner of the property to verify that these properties are habitable.

57:19Okay, let's explain it for people who aren't aware.

57:22Graham Stephan:A habitability lawsuit is basically all a tenant has to say. My unit, I had a leak over there and it's not habitable. The heating isn't working. This window is broken. I got a rodent. I can't live here. Anything, any reason. They could come up with a myriad of issues that they could make up. There was even a case recently. It was a mansion. and in one of the mansions, I'm talking about like$100 ,000 a month. They claimed a habitability lawsuit because there was like water damage in one of the bathrooms. Oh yeah. For the whole house. Of course. And then they stop paying rent. Yep. And then they get a lawyer who could drag it out for a year.

58:02Graham Stephan:And during that year, you can't sell the property. It's untransferable. You are paying legal fees and it's basically this legalized extortion where the tenant just says, you give me this amount of money and it all goes away. Or you let me live here for a year and it's going to cost you a few hundred thousand dollars. And in many cases for the tenant, the legal services are free, paid for by the mansion tax or by these taxes that landlords and real estate investors have to pay. So tenants, no risk. Landlords, all the risk. Almost all these settle immediately. This is why you're getting out of L.A.

58:34Mansion taxes in L.A. OK, so OK, let's talk about that bill because it is interesting and a lot of people are going to care about that. So there's a Senate version and a House version. the senate version said if you built a rent or you bought a fixer you're allowed to exceed the limit but you had to sell the property after seven years so there is now forced liquidation after seven years and you would give the tenant a 30-day option to buy the property first which i'm actually not really opposed to because your costs are going to be a lot lower if your tenant pays a fair market price for it, you know, just saving real estate commissions and whatever.

59:10So that's fine. The house fought this with like, I think it was somewhere around 76 members of the house signed a letter. They're like, this is a horrible idea. We can't do it. And what they struck was specifically the seven year sale, which is really interesting because it basically means if you built a rent or you buy a fixer upper, you can hold a property forever. So it basically changes nothing. But a A lot of people always say, well, Kevin, what does this mean for reinvest? Our thesis and what we're doing is we're taking our real estate software profits from our valuation AI and from the other things that we sell.

59:49And we're reinvesting them into real estate. So really simple.

59:53Graham Stephan:How do you grow an AI company like that to like a billion dollars? Well, hopefully you sell a lot of AI software. So you're very bullish on home ownership and real estate investing. Graham is very bearish on it. Who then should buy and who should rent? Because you agree that it's cheaper to rent. So like 100%. So what would make it a good decision for someone? I'm a contrarian, right? So I buy Nvidia when it's in the toilet and it paid me seven figures. I buy Tesla when it's in the toilet, made me seven figures. I like buying when people hate stuff. Like what I like right now, software. Dude, everybody hates software right now.

1:00:30I think, are people going to vibe code away Intuit QuickBooks? No. Are people going to vibe code away body camera AI that you're getting at Axon or, you know, Taser manufacturing? No, you're not going to vibe code these companies away and they're making massive software revenues. That's where people can make big money, in my opinion. Great software companies or even advertising companies, another great sector. Anyway, you know, I like buying when those things are in the toilet and they're all in the toilet right now. They've all gone to crap. But for real estate, then who should buy and who should?

1:01:00People with a lot of cash, which is not very relatable. But again, if you could put 35 % down or 50 % down, great. So most people should probably rent.

1:01:10Graham Stephan:Yeah. And then I am curious because you didn't necessarily answer the question of what your portfolio looks like. You said you have four times more cash now than you have in the past. But what about the other portfolio allocation? Like how much of it is in the stock market? You did mention house hack. That's some big ambiguous. No one knows how much it is or whatever. but let's just say outside of that. Stocks, real estate, etc. What's it look like? It is, I would say... The vast majority is short-term treasuries, some stock, and the rest house hack. So that's almost like the pie of that. And of the stock?

1:01:43A little bit of real estate, personal real estate.

1:01:45Graham Stephan:Of the stock, what does that look like? Software. Are you really? Yeah, software sucks. Yeah. What's the number one holding you have right now? As the NBA season goes on, teams are gearing up for the playoffs and you don't want to miss out. And that's why we're excited to be sponsored by FanDuel and FanDuel Predicts. You can predict the playoff action all the way to the finals with FanDuel Predicts. All you have to do is sign up to get your$25 bonus. From missed free throws to fourth quarter buzzer beaters, every play is a potential plot twist. Predict the spread, total points, and even game-winning moments that make the playoffs.

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1:02:46Well, it's kind of a balanced pie. Circle has done really well. You know, Applovin is another really good one that's sort of underrated. Axon and Intuit are some favorites that I have.

1:02:59Graham Stephan:Yeah, Next was talking about that. Applovin? Yeah, there was a huge discussion. Everyone loved talking about it, yeah. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So those, I mean, they're the things nobody wants right now, which is fine with me. There are some software that I don't love, like I don't really love Adobe or ServiceNow. Like, so, you know, I'm a little choosy. You know, it's so funny. Someone on Twitter said that, you know, Photoshop is screwed because no one says that's Photoshopped anymore. Everyone just says that's AI. That's like how Xerox died. Nobody uses that phrase anymore. That's true. Like I posted a picture of me and a horse and everybody's like, that's AI.

1:03:34And the irony was there was not even like a color filter on my photo. There was nothing on my photo at all. No AI. But everybody thinks it's AI.

1:03:42Graham Stephan:This is like a humble brag. Did you see this photo? I did. Oh, stop. Well, I literally messaged you back. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if it was this photo, but one of the other shirtless ones. I think that was one of the few ones that I responded to. As a story, I never swipe up. I think I swiped up. I sent like a little thing. Yeah, he zoomed in. He looked at the story. Wow, look at this. I think it was one of the people that was like, that's fake. But you're right. I mean, like, it's now, you're right. It's not Photoshopped. That's AI. That's crazy. So you have gotten into incredible shape.

1:04:10Graham Stephan:and I know we're not like a fitness podcast or anything, but I'm curious, are you taking Redditorietide? I take nothing, nothing. So it's literally whole wheat, nuts, salmon. That's my diet. But you run. You run a lot, right? Yeah, so this is actually where I give a lot of credit to AI because I don't know much about fitness, but I tell it I want Mediterranean diet, I want pure, and I talk to it about everything. And one of the things that I've been learning is you've got to run with your heart rate low if you're also lifting weights. Because if your heart rate's too high, you're burning all your glycogen stores in your muscles or whatever.

1:04:45It's too complicated for me. I just listen to it. And so I've actually been running more slower. I even go on walks with Lauren. So I'll go on like a five mile walk with Lauren. I'll go on a five mile run. But it's like a slow run most of the time. Sometimes like 20 % of the time I'll run fast and I'll do a four mile. I'm not that fast, but I'll do a four mile in like 31 minutes or whatever, which is an improvement for me. but uh it's it's mostly i never in my life have i done weights and i started doing weights november 30th and it's awesome i'm a big fan so i i i wish i started many many years ago but i never had the

1:05:20Graham Stephan:consistency and now i go every day so two questions which ai do you use casually like if you're just having questions that you want to bounce back and forth because i am constantly using a bunch of different ones i want to commit to one no graham uses grok i love his favorites grok i still use chat interesting chat is awful what is like your go-to ai it depends what it is so uh for me i think the daily driver is probably gemini uh but i find that if i'm reviewing documents like legal text or i need to write an attorney letter ish or whatever chat is actually really good at letters like i don't copy and paste i actually tell the things like you know I don't want you to rewrite all my stuff.

1:06:02I just want little tips like change this line or this, that or whatever, right? But I talk to all of them and I kind of ingest it all into all of them. Then I close all my windows and do new chats with no memory on and I start the conversations over again and I get such good insight from these models because they're not biased to what I've anchored them to before. So that's sort of my little AI usage tip. But Dr. Claude, I call it, Gemma for Gemini, and then chat.

1:06:29Graham Stephan:And then for the diet. Yeah. I'm curious, have you noticed any other benefits outside of like, you know, having a good physique? I've regularly had sort of this Mediterranean diet, but the one thing that I found is I have been able to cut my coffee back because I'm increasing my carbs more than ever before because I'm tracking all my calories now. And I'm not getting tired like I used to. I used to have six, seven cups of coffee a day. Now I stop drinking coffee by 12 p.m. And I might have usually it's like two or three cups of tea, green tea, which is like barely one cup of coffee, maybe a cup of coffee if I didn't have all my tea.

1:07:07It just depends. But I stop then and that's it. So for me, the carb intake has been great for boosting my energy. And I was blown away because people are always like, oh, when you work out, you need more protein, more protein. But I look and I'm like averaging 200 grams of protein and all the AI are like, heaven, you're actually getting too much protein. Your body can't use all this. Get more carbs. And it actually works. I'm sleeping better and more hyped up.

1:07:30Graham Stephan:So it's pretty cool. One thing that sparked some interest online, we had George Camel on the pod. George Camel thinks that we need to make$6 ,000 per month in order to support a family of four. Oh, that's low. So in 2026, how much does someone need to retire with a family of four? $8 to$10 million in assets, whether it's real estate, stocks. I think anything lower than that, if you're, you said 40 years old, you're going to run out. And why eight to 10? Like what's the math? If the traditional financial advice is retire with 4 million bucks, what happens when we have a 50 % market downturn? So I'd rather be at eight and then be at the four after the market downturn.

1:08:12It is so funny.

1:08:12Graham Stephan:We had - I don't disagree. I do not disagree. Exact conversation. Exact. I'm just going to say it. Jack said he wouldn't be working or he would work for fun once he has 10 million okay and i said well when you're at 10 you're gonna want 20 because a 50 market downturn will take you down to 10 so you need a buffer yeah you gotta have the buffer i'm like it's it's when you really start looking at it like a three because really i see 10 million bucks is 300 000 but the reality is that 99 of people don't have that amount of money and they're getting along just fine. Well, a lot of people are getting along just fine with less than that.

1:08:51Graham Stephan:And so like, why would I need to have, you know, sterling silver silverware? I don't need it. I don't need to have like all of the nice people with 10 million don't have sterling silver silverware. Well, at least now they don't. Inflation. There's the rich left. There it is again. There it is. it depends on your lifestyle too you know some people are happy playing world of warcraft and rust all day long and uh they don't need a lot of money you know you can play video games you can you know crash uh in in a small apartment and you just you can survive on way less money um you know my dad doesn't survive on a lot of money i mean he fortunately lives rent free I bought him a house to live in.

1:09:36But beyond that, he budgets to save up and he's happy. Oh, now I'm going to save this month so I can invest in this or buy this or whatever. And he seems very happy. He's got a dog. He's happy. He's got family nearby. He doesn't seem like he needs more. Some people want to retire and they want to travel a bunch. I think what a lot of people underestimate is when they retire, a main source of your sort of busyness goes away and you got to find a way to be entertained. So typically people are like, oh yeah, when I retire, I'm going to spend less. The reality is you're probably going to spend more.

1:10:07So that's why I would encourage people to try to retire with more money rather than less.

1:10:11Graham Stephan:It's true. If you have more time, you're going to be spending more money. It's like, it's so funny because everyone thinks as you start your own business, you start making a bunch of money, then you're going to be cashing out all the time. But the reality is if you're working 12 hours a day, you're not going to be spending a bunch of money. You have no time. You're so tired by the end of the work day. You want to go out. Yeah. Yeah. Which is absolutely true. Just keep reinvesting into the business. Yeah. When you're bored, you tend to spend a lot of money. Like I find that the days where I'm not busy, like nothing planned on the weekend.

1:10:40Graham Stephan:I start scrolling heritage auctions. There you go. I start seeing what's going on. I throw a few bids. Yeah. You know, because you never know what might hit. And then I check carsandbids.com just in case there's a good deal. And then I check bring a trailer. And then I browse eBay. I'm just trying to find like deals. But every now and then I get a deal. The other day, I bought these Nightmare Before Christmas animation cells from the originals. And I was like, oh man, I need this. Yeah. So I bought them. That's awesome. Congratulations. I had Nightmare Before Christmas bobbleheads when I was a kid.

1:11:13Oh, the bobbleheads.

1:11:14Graham Stephan:Yeah. Jack. What I'm curious about is you said eight to 10 million. To a lot of people, that sounds ridiculous. Yeah. You would say that that's probably that final tier that is worth striving to. And then after that, you see a strong diminish of returns in terms of amount of effort that you put into working and then the money that you get back. You'd say that's about where the dollar starts to diminish in terms of value. It might even diminish before that. You know, a lot of that 8 to 10 is just hedging for market fluctuations. I'm a big fan of like stay at a margin debt or just debt in general.

1:11:45But again, it comes down to your lifestyle. I mean, when I was flying my own jet around, you know, 8 to 10 goes really fast in expenses. So it depends on your lifestyle. And I think eight to 10 is a great target. The problem is, you know, a few sentences ago, you mentioned that a lot of people are doing just fine on way less. But I think 70 to 80 percent of Americans are paycheck to paycheck. So, I mean, yes, could they be fine? Yeah, we're surviving. But are we thriving? And then the question is, where do you want to be?

1:12:17Graham Stephan:Over 50 percent of the people that went to Coachella did it on credit. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, the buy now, pay later stuff honestly probably helped us avoid a recession. Like the amount of spending that was enabled by BNPL. Did it avoid or just deferred? Probably deferred. Delayed, right? Yeah, probably. Because that's going to come due at some point. A hundred percent. That'll be part of sort of that next recession. Whatever causes it, that'll be part of it. Because, I mean, what's crazy to me is there's so much talk about how AI, everybody's spending money on AI. You know, Gemini just two days ago had to come out with BNPL, a firm in Klarna now available so you can pay your stupid$24 a month or whatever to Gemini.

1:12:57Graham Stephan:But that boosts conversions. I saw like 40 % to have buy now pay later. Of course. Oh, it definitely boosts conversions. No, it makes sense. But it does make me wonder, is it boosting conversions on that because people wouldn't get it otherwise? And then is that because they don't have the money? So that's the question. $25 a month is not a good sign. I mean, it's like another Netflix subscription. So, I mean, then you get Disney Plus. You know what does all add up? YouTube Plus. So what do you think is the ideal amount of money to have? I'm not a big fan of thinking retirement-wise. I like to think, can you get to a lifestyle where your salary covers all of your expenses and your bills?

1:13:43So let's say you're an entrepreneur and you're able to make$200 ,000 or$300 ,000, but your entire family can live on 10 grand a month. So that's$120 ,000. Whatever extra you make, you should immediately pay yourself$120 ,000 salary to pay your bills to cover all that net of taxes and then invest the rest. Just pretend you don't have the other growth. Like I'll put myself in these shoes. I would, and the place that I feel like I'm in, is whatever money I make from stocks or investments or house hack or whatever, that's all bonus. Any living expenses that we have for school, insurance, kids, seven children, cars, car insurance, whatever, should be covered by my salary for running Reinvest.

1:14:32And it is. So for me, I'm very happy because I look at it as, okay, I don't need a single dollar more than that. And that's why I started early in the podcast by saying it's hard not to be happy right now because all bills are covered. There's nothing to worry about. How much do you spend a year as a family of nine? It's hard to say because the numbers fluctuate a lot because all of the children just started going to school in February. So our expenses on home care has plummeted. We had nightcare specialists for like summer who almost died and we had help 24-7 for the first year of their lives.

1:15:10Those expenses were absorbed and insane because we're not just paying for help. We're paying for specialized help.

1:15:16Graham Stephan:How much was that? Probably north of 800 grand just for a year in payroll expenses or contract expenses. So that's a lot. Now, that said, it's come down massively. And so I honestly think if we spend, you know, just for, you know, travel or giggles or whatever, the family might spend, I don't know, eight on average a month, maybe with food. It probably comes to 10, 120. And then add to that just other living expenses. We probably live on a$250 ,000 salary. Without a mortgage. Correct. No mortgage. So we watched a really interesting video. We drove from Vegas to the city you live in, Ventura, Southern California, beautiful city.

1:15:58Graham Stephan:And on this five hour drive, the one video that stuck out to me was this video, Ben Felix, and it's the best way to spend money. And I'm curious, what is the best way to spend money? I would say my favorite, and I've spent money in crazy ways, whether it's in Vegas on, you know, parties or again, flying my own plane around, learning how to become a pilot, all the licensing or whatever, business ideas. By far, of all the money I spent, my absolute favorite money to spend, family vacations. That's it. Disneyland, Disney World, going to Hawaii, going to Europe. That time you spend with family, I think, is everything.

1:16:40I always on my phone or my iPad have a little memory screen on the top. And I always get those feeder scrolls of like, remember that time you were in Rome or remember that time you were in Japan? Those are priceless. So big fan of spend money on experiences. You could cut on the size of your home or the size of your car or all that crap. But experiences with family, spend it all. Or the size of your jet. Yeah, well, that's the joke about jet ownership is as soon as you buy a jet, you think you're cool until the guy with the bigger jet rolls up. I mean, I've parked next to Taylor Swift's jet, Jeff Bezos's jet, and you look like you got a really small peepee.

1:17:22Graham Stephan:Did you ever feel broke pulling up in your jet and seeing like the next guy over there? No, actually, it was it actually robs a lot of the enthusiasm of like be a billionaire because I had the exact same experience as them, which isn't like look, flying private is great. but I'm using the same bathrooms, the same like FBO where you get your rental car and you get your little snacks or they hand you a little glass of champagne or whatever, unless you're a pilot, then you don't get any, obviously. It's the same thing they do. The same little golf cart treatment to take you from the side of your plane to your rental car.

1:18:03They drive the car. It's the same exact treatment. So it kind of like owning that aircraft for three years sort of burst the bubble for me. And it's like, all right, it's like, I don't need it. But you still have the motto, billionaire broke. I do. I do. Yeah. So it didn't quite burst the bubble. It burst the enthusiasm of what money can buy. I still have that as sort of like an entrepreneurial goal because it means that House Hack was a success. Reinvest was a success. If I have a billion dollars, the people who invested in House Hack early should be very well off on their investments, right?

1:18:37so that's a that's sort of a dream in a milestone of mine like trying to create like a mini berkshire i know bill ackman wants to do that you know and i admire that i think that's great i'd love to do that but it's certainly the private aviation it's great it's awesome but it doing it sort of burst

1:18:54Graham Stephan:the bubble of how great so walk us through the purchase of the jet how much was the jet what with the payments like how much did it cost to have a private jet uh we bought it for uh 12.9 we sold it from 69 000 more than that which was really weird because my tail number was 69 for pp from the very beginning so it's sort of weird that it's sort of like oh you got 69 000 for your prime right weird how that worked out uh but fate loves irony i guess but um on a monthly basis i mean i I put 25 % down on it. I wrote off all of that$12.9 million year one, which was great because I paid like no taxes that year.

1:19:38The problem is when you go to sell it, you get to pay all that back, which I did. And I was actually really grateful to because when you own a plane every single month, you hate going to the mailbox because it's like, here's your$70 ,000 mortgage. here's your$100 ,000 Ventura property tax bill you had no idea existed right here's your insurance renewal oh you're gonna fly your own aircraft that'll be$135 ,000 for insurance for a year so the bills are insane and you really have to have a lot of FU money to do it I'm grateful that we had the opportunity, but it got to the point where A, I wasn't flying a lot.

1:20:26And then it becomes a really expensive paperweight. Like in order to justify it, you probably need to be flying two or three times a week. And it got to the point where the only flying I was doing was off this coast and around on top of Santa Barbara stalling the plane because it was fun. And I called it practice. That's how I knew I'm like, this is stupid.

1:20:46Graham Stephan:So how much was it costing every year to have a private jet? Probably$3 million. $3 million per year? Yeah. Is that expenses? Not even an equity building? Yeah. Was that stressful? Yeah.

1:21:04Graham Stephan:You don't keep practicing that because it's going to catch. And it's going to stick. So you spent$10 million on owning a private jet for three years? Probably somewhere around that, yeah. Was it worth it? Yeah, I wouldn't change it. Would you buy a private jet again? I should say no.

1:21:28I should say no. But honestly, I probably will again in the future.

1:21:34Graham Stephan:What's the worst waste of money you've ever done? A jet. Outside of a jet, because you said nights in Vegas, you said this, you said that. I'm curious. Yeah, but experiences are so worth it. All of that I'd love. So what's something you did that was not worth it? But one thing is not worth it is like getting to the point where the regulators are starting to like breathe down your neck. So I was trading a lot of options for a period of time. And then I got these letters. They're like, you need to register as a large options trader. And we're going to monitor every single one of your trades. The SEC is going to be breathing down your neck.

1:22:08And I'm like, hmm, this is not really a game I want to play with. So and what's weird about that is soon after that, the SEC is like, oh, by the way, give us all your shit on House Hack. We're going to do a colonoscopy on you. And they did for nine freaking months. Like and it's not just like, oh, send us this one statement. It's send us everything like they go through. They're like, just send us your general ledger, every bank statement, access to your discord, your courses, your video, everything. Deeds for properties, appraisals, everything. Closed it, no issues. No comments. When was this?

1:22:52That would be May 2025 through about a month ago. Holy crap.

1:22:59Graham Stephan:What were they looking for? Well, I mean, think about it. YouTuber raising money on YouTube, flying around in a private jet, telling people that he's not using any house hack money to pay for the jet. Let's see the proof. I give him respect though, because in fairness, from the day I created this company, I told people, I go, look, anybody who's ever worked for me, I said, YouTuber, plain, raising money on the internet. It's not if, it's when they will come and they will look at everything. And it's fine. It worked out. We were prepared for it. This is why we're PCAOB audited, which like no private company is, but ignoring all that for a moment.

1:23:34Your question was, what is like basically almost like something you would spend money on that that was a mistake? Anything that would attract bad regulatory attention, even if you're totally innocent, it's still a burden. It's like it feels like you're going through a lawsuit, right? Because somebody's examining everything you're doing. And I'm sure still are. Now, in fairness, I feel fortunate because I went through a lot of securities licensing tasks. You know, I kind of know a little bit about the finance world in that sense. So I felt more prepared. But it's a lot. And I just anything you could do to stay out of the radar worth it.

1:24:11Remember when I ran for governor? I ran for governor and I commented on somebody's stock portfolio. And then Gavin Newsom sent his California version of the SEC after me. And then they ended up finding me five grand because they said, you raised money making YouTube videos talking about stocks. You gave personalized financial advice on a YouTube video. We'll settle it for five grand. I cut the check. It wasn't worth it. But my point is, don't attract bad regulator attention. Be a good boy. Do the right thing.

1:24:41Graham Stephan:What kind of options trading were you doing in order to get the regulator's attention? Just like massive volumes worth of like zero days. So you were like, it's almost gambling. So you were buying call options that expire on the same day that you were buying them. Heck yeah. The problem is if you spend too much money, the very movement of your own money can move the market. And that's a problem. You don't want to do that. So you were moving the market. I don't know that I was, but... You had an effect that caught their attention. You must have some degree of movement in the market. To a small degree.

1:25:22Graham Stephan:Right, right. So I'm like, okay, I gotta get out of the radar. This isn't worth it. Explain these options though. I'm curious, what stocks were they? Were you making money on it? Oh, yeah, yeah. So I would do things like, hey, I think Nvidia is going up. I'm gonna buy a one-week call, expire next Friday. Or I think the Qs are going to this today. And so now what I do instead, because again, my baby is house hack. The focus is on that. What I do now is I just do a report in the morning. I go, here are my ideas. Like, for example, today was, hey, I think we're going to 718 to 720 on the Qs, on triple Qs.

1:25:59And we went from 714 to 719.50, right? Okay, great. Great call. Not every day is perfect, but I think we have a really good track record on that. But the point is, I used to make all the trades. And I think the concern was, were my dollar volumes influencing the actual market? You wouldn't on the Qs.

1:26:20Graham Stephan:Like on other stocks, you wouldn't. Like lower cap stuff. There's so much volume on that. Yeah. Yeah. So are you still doing those trades though? I don't trade anymore. Yeah, because of that. I just, I don't want the radar. I've had too many colonoscopies. I've had a personal colonoscopy, the SEC colonoscopy. Too much, man. Too much of a radar on me. What was the largest amount of money you made in options trading? And what was the largest amount of money you lost? Individual trades, probably plus or minus 300 at a time, which is crazy for option swings. in a day. Well, yeah. Like zero day or weeklies?

1:26:52Well, so one example was, this was, it was awesome. I made a bet on Tesla and it was a one week option. And I said, I'm going to hold this over the weekend. And then there was news over the weekend. I think I fluked into it, but I saw that the volatility was really, really low. So what I, and this is a lesson for anybody who trades options. I like buying options when the volatility is low, the historic volatility, because they're cheaper to buy. And I like selling options when the volatility is high. It's very simple. You could look at historic volatility graphs. Not everybody's into options, but I think Alpha Query has some good options.

1:27:28Bloomberg Terminal, Refinitiv Terminal. You know, there are plenty of tools you could look at these, but most people don't. It's just, I want this option because I feel this. So it was a low volatility entry and there was news over the weekend. And when you go from low volatility and added news, volatility skyrockets. So the options premium went through the roof. and within 10 minutes of market open, I'm like, get me out. I'm taking my profits. Had I held on, I probably would have made another 30%, but that's always how it is, right? You always sell, and then it goes up even more.

1:28:00Graham Stephan:Jack has a great option strategy that all of us call kind of dumb, but Jack swears by it, and we're not going to go too deep in the weeds here because he'll talk to you for an hour about it, and I'm sick and tired of hearing about it. Selling calls? Yeah, I'm just selling covered calls on stocks that I think are either fair valued, maybe a little rich, maybe a little bit cheap, but they have the high implied volatility. And so something like Robinhood, which I think is a pretty blue chip stock, you can get two to 3 % selling weekly covered calls. And realistically, you're going to make your money back.

1:28:29Graham Stephan:Or if you just consider as decreasing your average cost by 3 % per week, if the stock goes up, I don't really care if it gets called away from me because the only way that I see it is in terms of a weekly percent change. And an annualized return is only just 52 weeklies combined. And if you can make on average two to 3%, if everything goes according to plan, if it doesn't, it's fine. Cause you're still holding Robin hood and you made two, three, two to 3 % on the premium. Right. Like I, I, I don't see how you can lose except for the tax consequences. Those can be pretty brutal, but I've been doing it in my Roth IRA and it's been going extremely well.

1:29:00Graham Stephan:Even with QQQ. Doing it in your Roth is brilliant. QQQ, you can still make like, like 30 % annually selling dailies because they have daily options. So how, so Jack's question is this. Why isn't everyone making 90 % a year selling call options? That's not necessarily Mike. But that's what he implies. Because the market makers take all the money. I hate to say that, but the more options volatility there is, the bigger the spreads are, the market makers never lose. I like that strategy, what you're saying. If you're like, I'm married to the stock, I want to hold it, great. In fairness, Robinhood has also gone from$140 down to$70.

1:29:37I like Robinhood. I happen to actually like Vlad, and I actually think it's at a fair price, right? It shouldn't be down this low. But a lot of finance stocks are down, so it's not just Robinhood. So I went from like$35 down to$16, right? It's just we are in a momentum-driven market right now. And what's sexy right now is hardware and nothing else. Software's in the toilet, finance stocks are in the toilet, real estate stocks are in the toilet. Some of the pharmaceuticals aren't even doing well right now, which is crazy. So we're momentum driven. That's why Bitcoin, people are like, well, well, the stock market's at all time highs.

1:30:10Why is Bitcoin not at all time highs? Well, it's not at all time highs because that's not where the momentum is right now. The momentum is in hardware stocks. That's it. So who makes money in the meantime? The market makers. That's why all the betting markets love people betting on like the stupidest, most random crap ever because the spreads are the widest. The bigger the spread, the more money they make. they don't make a lot of money on you selling options on the queues because the spreads are really tight. They're going to make more money on Robinhood. But in fairness, a lot of your option money is probably getting paid by the YOLO weekly buyer.

1:30:44Graham Stephan:Yes, that is exactly right. That's why you have to go to Wall Street bets and find the people that are shooting that volatility up and like paying crazy rich prices where if you're getting 3 % on a blue chip stock, like the thing is, even if the stock goes down, it doesn't matter because it's such a large percentage relative to the share of the stock that I don't understand how you can go wrong. Jack doesn't understand that he could have his shares called away, the stock pops 15%. But that's fine. And then he's saying, well, I'll buy back in. And then he buys back in and the stock drops 15%. But is that going to happen every single week?

1:31:19Graham Stephan:It's going to happen. I think you'll average probably less than if you had just held the stock and done nothing. I think that is possible, but this is more predictable. Yeah. I mean, it's, uh, it's how much work do you want to put into it too? For me, all I do is like the top of the week, Monday, I just sell a call on Robinhood and I'm doing a test right now because we collaborated with the money guys and we went back and forth on this strategy. And I was like, guys, I've never done it like weekly because it's just never been worth my time. And everyone tells me it's a dumb idea. So I just believe what they say.

1:31:47Graham Stephan:And so I'm like, I'm not going to do it. But now because we're all in a group chat, I can add you to the group chat and I send my reports every week. And guess who's up 3 % in one week? What's interesting is there are a lot of hedge funds and financial advisors who know that there are so many people who are buying these short-term options that you can make some spread. So yeah, you are picking up onto something that institutions love. You have to go into the stocks that have the high volatility, the stocks that everyone's super hyped about. Because realistically, if you try to sell calls on something with a bunch of volume like you want to sell calls on apple like no one is going out there buying weekly calls on apple because they think it's going to pop right right unless if maybe they're doing a new dropper release but on something like robin hood that dropped as much as it did everyone is just waiting for it to completely skyrocket which even if it does and i get the bag called away it doesn't matter the bag oh well to me the way i see it it doesn't matter because i still made my three percent that's fair so yeah i agree with you if you go to the ones where everyone's chasing the money then it's it's it's funny and that's why so much of this makes me think like the millennial money podcast would could be like all over this right the the good old days if you will uh but it it's it's so funny because i feel like a lot of us i guess i can't speak for everybody but it certainly seems like you guys uh and uh and me to some extent here feel like hey like there's so much to talk about in finance, but we are also so removed from that daily struggle of, you know, filling up the tank or your credit card bills or, you know, wanting to get ahead and get a home or you're having a baby and it's like, crap, these are a lot of expenses.

1:33:27So it's fun to talk about all these things. But I go back to like the early part of the pod where we're like, man, how does this affect like the consumer, that regular person? And it's I think every single year from now over the next 10 years, it's just going to get harder and harder and harder. So if there's any motivation to leave from all of this, I would say the sooner you can grind and make more money now, the better because it's just going to keep getting harder.

1:33:53Graham Stephan:So if you were to give one piece of wisdom off of that, what would it be to the viewer? So your grinding is very like, it's hard to quantify. It is because you got to grind on the right thing. So, uh, you know, like I always make the analogy, You can only be so good of a forklift driver and you could go, you know, do laps in the forklift all over, over and over and over again. But, you know, your money is going to be capped. To some extent, the same is true of being a pilot. You know, how many times can I land this plane and how smooth can I make that landing? You're not going to get paid anymore if you butter the landing, right?

1:34:26So it's got to be where you're able to make more money. And usually that's entrepreneurship. There are, though, people who can work for startups or larger corporations that have growth. You know, a company that's growing, great place to work. You don't have to be on your own. A place you can clock in at eight and clock out at five is great, especially if you're at a growing company, because eventually you'll probably get stock options and you'll be able to grow with that company. So I'm a big fan of being either at a company that's growing or finding a vertical that you could really use your energy with AI and accelerate like bookkeeping, we said, accounting, whatever, lending.

1:35:06Graham Stephan:You know what Chris Camillo said? He said his prediction was that podcasters over the next 10 years are going to be the next like professional athlete. That's interesting. The New York Times just had a piece yesterday about how YouTube is so desperate to like get even more podcasts onto the platform. They're going to celebrities, they're pre-setting up sponsors and they're like, hey, do a podcast, host it on YouTube, we'll get it all set up for you. We'll even place your first sponsors so that that very first episode you make, you already know you're going to get paid X dollars by this point. I think it's a terrible idea.

1:35:42Graham Stephan:I actually think it's a great idea. I think it's a terrible, no, no. Just because they're famous, they could attract initial attention. It happens all the time. They start a podcast. They get a few episodes that hit and then it's boring as hell. You have to be... You have to pick the right guy. You pick a Matthew McConaughey. He's going to have a banger podcast. He doesn't need to do a podcast. You have to find someone hungry enough and interested enough to do podcasts and in the game of the algorithm. I will say LeBron James, his podcast does incredibly well. You have other sports people that are not podcasters.

1:36:11Graham Stephan:You want to tune in to the podcast where they're talking about Game 7 finals and it's an ex-NBA player and they're able to cover it. You can pick the right person. If you find the right talent, I do think that there's still like a ton of demand. Even like the rewatch podcast. Like the, I think there's a lot of demand for podcasts. My, my thing is that if you're bringing in a celebrity is the poll, I don't see that at all. I don't get it. I think YouTube channels and media are so fickle that it's like a needle in a haystack and like, Hey, you, you maybe do a hundred of these and a few of them stick and it's just a numbers game.

1:36:44Graham Stephan:I mean, I agree. You have to be entertained. There are some podcasts that are popping up now that are like covert big mainstream media. like there are some even in the finance space and and they're getting like a lot of these podcast interviews or whatever with people from finance and you dig into it a little bit and they literally work for cnbc yeah you know or bloomberg and they don't advertise that they do so they come across as like oh yeah i'm just so it's so funny man uh there's a big company that i did a like a free consulting thing with and i was telling them their social media sucked and my advice to them was start a podcast.

1:37:20Graham Stephan:Do a podcast. You have access to like all these people, all these like the top talent. Like this would be the best user. They didn't listen to me. And I'm honestly like, I'm looking at that and thinking you're an idiot for not listening to me. But I think for big businesses out there, that's the best way to do it. Oh, totally. I don't know why Robin Hood does not just like acquire us. Dude. Or like Schwab. It's so incredibly, if we just had the Robin Hood things right here and there was a Robin Hood segment on every podcast where I could show my Robin Hood, collapsing portfolio if i could just show that every episode he's literally buying call options every week zero day no no because playing earnings you get these uh what is it these big like like black rock is buying uh youtube channels what is this so what are they called like institutional buyers are coming and buying youtube channels oh i didn't know that it's it's massive because i know robin hood started their own podcast and they look at like stock charts and stuff there's this there's this video that went viral that was like your favorite YouTube channel is corporate owned.

1:38:17Graham Stephan:And they listed out a lot of YouTube channels that actually had corporate backing that you would never know. And believe it or not, because they have ownership, you don't have to disclose that this is an advertised product. Wow. And so this YouTube video explained it and I'll link it. You'll see it here on screen as we're talking about it. I want to check that out. That's interesting. But I am astounded that we haven't gotten any offers. And I'm thinking like we are the best acquisition for the right company. You're like putting a hot air balloon out there. Like, hey, guys, we're for sale. Take us.

1:38:53Graham Stephan:Obviously, we wouldn't sell the like just Joe Schmo. Yeah. But like, listen, if the numbers make sense. I got House Hacks shares. Yeah, if the numbers made sense. We wouldn't just go to anybody. Fine. If China has a big budget. Xi Jinping comes over with his yen. Yeah, I have no problem complimenting his haircut. hilarious to talk about the latest like chinese electric car it's all just like dubbed in oh my yen you won yeah anyway oh dear that would be hilarious yeah i told jack about i don't think i've ever talked about this before 2021 i got an offer for 2.2 million dollars to buy 10 percent to my youtube channel oh really yeah oh wow they were reaching out to all the finance channels at the time and what they wanted to do was ipo they wanted to acquire like a few dozen finance channels specifically and then IPO it and then people could invest in this stock which is backed by your YouTube channel and a portion of your earnings funnel into this and I said no to it and the reason why is because I said it's such a terrible investment to pay uh this multiple that they were offering me I'm like you're never going to make your money back and then what's inevitably going to happen the stock's going to fall yeah and if my name is attached to that stock it falls yes there it goes and it's not worth it because it's a bad and what's funny is that you i was talking to these guys in their 50s and 60s who are like corporate dudes and i'm telling them it's a terrible idea like your offer is more than just it's just a really bad idea you're never going to make their money ever and what's funny is that i know a few of the channels that sold to them oh interesting they're in the toilet really yeah because they were on the run-up from like 2020 2021 and i'm like dude i've never seen these views before i've never seen the sad revenue before That was crazy.

1:40:39Graham Stephan:It makes no sense at all. And this is not going to continue. And those channels that did it, their views dropped probably 90 plus percent. And this stock is in the toilet. Sure. Oh, so it actually did go public. It did. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's funny, or maybe not funny, but there's so many CEOs that I'll see that go on, essentially, CNBC and Bloomberg, and they complain about how the stock market is treating their stock because they see it as a reflection on them and the quality of the business. And it kind of makes sense why a lot of companies are staying private longer. I think you've made videos on this before.

1:41:19Maybe not. I don't know. But there's this idea that companies have stayed private a lot longer because why do you want to deal with being in the regulator's eyes? You've got a momentum-driven stock market that's going up and down on a daily basis. And the stock's down 5%. You're getting blown up with emails going, what did you guys do wrong? And it's like, bro, we're doing the same thing every day. And the stock market's manic. I honestly wonder if Warren Buffett would go public in this kind of environment that we're in today. I think it's an interesting thing to speculate about because I don't think he would.

1:41:50Graham Stephan:I am going to give you a great idea for a podcast and anyone could steal this. I told you, Jack, this is a banger idea. I started seeing these clips on Instagram of a father just talking to his toddler who's like three years old as a podcast. Wow. And you see the toddler in the chair with the big mic and he's like, so what did you do today? Oh, I want this thing. And then I got mac and cheese. He's like, what did you like? Yeah, I love the mac and cheese. Can we get ice cream? And the guy's like, well, a little later we could get. Okay, because I really like ice cream. The vanilla flavor. And it's like so cute.

1:42:25Graham Stephan:How could you not watch that and just it uplifts your day? Because it's like you're scrolling and you're seeing this disgusting vile stuff in your feed and negativity. It gets negative. And then you scroll and you see just a kid just eating ice cream and having a great time. Like, that's a great idea. Let me just say, he has never had urgency to have a child. And then he said this podcast, and he said, you could probably make like 30K a month. And I'm like, are you saying you now want to have a child knowing you could make a podcast? Like, I'm not going to get the wrong idea. 30K a month? And he's like, well, you know, it'd be pretty easy.

1:43:02Graham Stephan:I'm like, dude. It would be easy, but how wholesome is that? It's just a bit, because, listen, most parents. Dude, for 30K a month, freaking give me a, shave my head bald, give me a big lollipop and I'll be the baby. Like we can do that, you and me, man. I would almost pay 30K to be able to do that. Big swirly lollipop? Yeah, dude, count me in. You're in like a diaper? Yeah, it doesn't matter to me. One thing that I found for me is, or my channel, is we've really, I try to niche it down really to a finance person. It's way more even niche than I think you do. Like you do great. But like some of my stuff is just really niche into this finance person.

1:43:45And I think it's, you know, either an entrepreneur who wants to build wealth or maybe, I mean, my average ages are like 25 to 45. That's sort of the big curve right there. I don't get a lot of high school or younger than that. I actually have more people that are seniors than are under 25. and for me I think it's helped us build House Hack because I look at it when we first raised money we raised$25 million and we've had more raises since then the last fundraise we did we raised$37 million and so what's interesting is even though I might get fewer views per video we've raised more money than ever before and so I think it's because of niching down and providing more value on finance And so if there's any reason I wouldn't do a podcast with Jack, it would probably be that long winded response to that.

1:44:40But that's fair. I do actually think, you know, like a family, an occasional family vlog video would be fun. I don't know if anybody would watch.

1:44:48Graham Stephan:I also think what would do well is a family dinner podcast. Oh, it's just a family table talking about like, what did you do today? I clean the floors. I did this. What did you do? Oh, work was kind of tough. You know, Joe, who was over there, kind of like fumbled a little bit. we lost a client this week. Yeah. It's okay. And like the kids like, well, I had my math essay. I would love to just be a fly on the wall. I wish I could have a functional family dinner without kids throwing food at each other or somebody screaming. Retention spike right there. Somebody crying, right? Like, yeah, true. I mean, there'd be plenty of those, but at least with seven, it seems like there's always somebody pissed off.

1:45:27They all sleep well, but boy, we did not invest enough money into actually getting him to sit at a table yeah it's tough you'll see one day all right how many children are you gonna have i'd say two to four and what about you two two probably yeah yeah trying to get to 12 you really yeah why i want double digits

1:45:49Graham Stephan:and i don't want it to be 10 and i don't want it to be odd but why yes what joy do you get in having 12 kids versus 7. They're all different personalities. It's the weirdest thing. I thought they would all be clones. I honestly thought this. That, oh, 5 children all at the same time, they're all going to be the same. Every single one of these kids, even the identical twins, totally different personalities. Every single one of them. Jack, Max, totally different personalities. The 5 babies, totally different personalities. I had a dad aura moment today. I got our uh one of our first of the the bunch uh twin one of the first twins uh got her to go poo in the potty that's that's a that's a big milestone to do that i got her to do it well i saw her kind of like grabbing her leg pants and i'm like do you have to go to the bathroom she's like yes potty and so i took her over to her little potty and her sister's come running in everybody's looking and i'm like no wait do you really have to go she shoes off dad shoes off i go okay other girls out One of those ones.

1:46:59Yeah. Took her pants off, gave her her privacy, put her down, walked out, came back giant poop. Greatest dad moment ever. She didn't flush. But mom didn't get it. Nannies didn't get it. Dad got it. Wow.

1:47:14Graham Stephan:How did that feel? Oh, like I've been, I think I've probably told Lauren like 20 times today. And she's like, I know. So how do you not look forward to that? It's just fecal matter. I don't know, man. It's just like, it's a shit. it's a shit could have hentavirus that's where it all started man it's just like it's a bodily movement it's just like I don't but for some that's a big deal but maybe it's different when it's your own like I hear that I'm like it's a shit it's a first shit though it was the first time in a toilet in a toilet it's like do you know we go through about a thousand diapers a month yeah that's that mediterranean children isn't gavin newsom giving you some diapers that's true yeah baby born more free stuff good gas might be 750 and houses might be unaffordable but you'll free diapers and we'll tax you 55 welcome to california technically structure your income under the poverty limit to then be able to get like all the free subsidies yeah sure you could also take write-offs yeah like i mean if if you buy equipment right and depreciate it whether it's a plane or whatever yeah you could you could write your income down to zero qualify for medic cal i i don't structure my income that way but i think there are a lot of handouts and i it's gonna get worse are you doing the trump account well my children were born after the trump accounts i thought you could can you enroll yeah i would do it sure because i do 529s for them uh i pay the children to hold coupon codes so that way they earn a salary and they have earned income and then they can invest in their Roth.

1:48:55So I'm a big fan of that. I'd consider the Trump accounts. I haven't really looked into that yet. I thought it was just they had to be born. I could be incorrect. Great thing to look up. It's$5 ,000. Total. Across the kits. I'm a big fan. I think it's great. Any of those tax advantages, HSAs, I'm a big fan of. Use them. Yeah, but more children.

1:49:18Graham Stephan:All right, Kevin. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you for the flexibility. This is pretty last minute. We have one final question. If you were to leave the viewer with one piece of advice, what would it be? don't ever skimp on experiences spend on experiences with the people you love and the second thing is if you're jaded about AI know that 80-90 % of other people are as well you gotta be part of that 10-20 % that's gonna take you to the next level in whatever you do and if you can do that no matter what your job is you will always get a job at any corporation you'll be the last to get laid off what's your advice?

1:49:59Graham Stephan:i didn't think you're asking me the question that's what makes it fun yeah yeah first thing go ahead the first thing is just always work more but like i don't know if that's i'm always just like just double down just whatever you're doing is work work more it's it's weird i i have honestly i feel like i've been working fewer hours and i getting more done i i'm not just blaming it but I've had time to go on runs and walks and go to the gym. You know, I cook bread now. I have a little garden. I have a little moss garden. I bought a gong. I play my gong, you know. Okay, well, here's, I'm going to dive deeper now.

1:50:38Graham Stephan:Now I've had time to think. I think most people only use a small fraction of what they are capable of. And that if you had a gong to their head, and they say you have to do this or it's over, they'll do it. So they have what it takes to do it. But most people don't operate like that and they'll not utilize everything they could. And so I think if you just approach the days, though, you have to do it. Otherwise, lights out. You'll be able to accomplish so much in the same amount of hours that you wouldn't otherwise have done. I agree with that. I mean, Jensen just did an interview like 10 days ago, CEO of NVIDIA.

1:51:16He said, you're underestimating your potential. That was sort of his like walkaway line. Like you're, and it's essentially the same thing you said, just in a different manner, which is you don't even realize that you can do so much more. you know i do this little trick where there are many times i don't want to work out or i don't want to do a work project or i don't want to send an email or don't want to write the letter and so i call it micro grind and i try to convince myself like okay i i have those feelings coming in that i don't want to do this just get it done don't be a little b like grant cardone says don't be a little b just get it done and then i make this little challenge out of it like well if i micro grind it and i just get it done really quick then it's done and i get it done and it's great it actually gives me more free time.

1:51:59So I agree with you. You could definitely double down and get surprisingly a lot more done than you think in a day.

1:52:05Graham Stephan:Now, what's yours? One of the most important predictors of success is your response to failure. And I think that if you can see failure as an opportunity to learn and to pivot and do things differently, then you win from your successes because you won. There's a yield, there's a reward there. And then from your failures, all it is, is more information. Yeah. Right. Like the thing that will cause you to lose is inaction, not action. And if you could see a failure as an opportunity to think, okay, what did I learn from this? And I'm going to try something a little bit differently this time. You're coming in with more of an educated perspective, a more experience-based perspective to increase your likelihood of success.

1:52:44Graham Stephan:And you fail right there. That's another opportunity. So it's like how much consistency and how much I would say devotion do you have to the craft? I think that's so amazing. I would actually say the best people to hire, if you're at a company or your manager's thinking about who to hire, who to promote, the best person to hire, the best person to promote is somebody who has had a lot of failures themselves because they have the experience and they know how not to fail. And you know they're not going to give up if they fail. Yeah. Well, thank you guys so much for watching. And by the way, if you want the extended version of this podcast, because we had to cut a lot for retention purposes, because we know a lot of people might not be interested in some of the weeds and the nitty gritty, feel free to join as a channel member and you're going to get the extended cut, no ads, no sponsors, and you get early access to all of our future episodes as well.

1:53:35Graham Stephan:So feel free to join. Really appreciate it. And I'm personally responding to all the comments on members. That would be absolutely incredible. All of your stuff is linked down below. Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. And lastly, we have a new business that we're working on. And if you want to be a beta tester of it, it has to do with credit cards. You'll get some money back. If you're nerding out about sign-up bonuses, getting the most amount of money that you can, squeezing every drop that you can out of the cards, sign up. The link is also down below in the description. You will not regret it.

1:54:04Graham Stephan:All you have to do is go to extra dollar dot com. Extra dollar dot com to sign up. Bought the domain. $7 ,000. I think it was$5 ,000. $5 ,000. Guys, thank you so much. Until next time.

1:54:22Thank you.