"People Are LAZY!" Billionaire Exposes The BEST Ways To Make Money In 2026 (& Why 99% Will Fail)

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  There's nothing that stops the music like the word billionaire.

• 0:33Graham Stephan?

  Do you have a billion in the bank?

• 0:34Speaker 01

  I'm a billionaire.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  A real one. What was your business? I own one of the largest law firms in North America. I hunt money. I fish for money.

• 0:45Speaker 03

  Income and wealth disparity in the U.S. are at all-time high levels.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Nobody wants to say, look, here's a real reason. I'm a lazy slug.

• 0:55Graham Stephan?

  What do most people get wrong about your business?

• 0:58Speaker 01

  I am the most authentic person you're ever gonna meet. But I'm very, very street smart and my social IQ is off the charts.

• 1:06Graham Stephan?

  So how did you become a liquid net worth billionaire?

• 1:10Speaker 01

  If work is work, you're fucked. I love to work. Cause I don't lose.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  They lose. Sir, I'm tired. And when somebody fucks with me, I fuck back.

• 1:25Graham Stephan?

  John Morgan, thank you so much for coming on the Iced Coffee Hour.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Well, it's good to be here and welcome to the big O.

• 1:32Graham Stephan?

  Thank you.

• 1:32Jack Selby?

  Thanks so much.

• 1:33Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33Jack Selby?

  You say you don't hunt deer, you hunt money. And now you're a confirmed billionaire. I'm curious, are you still hunting money?

• 1:41Speaker 01

  People who hunt deer are still hunting deer and people who fish are still fishing. So I'm still hunting and fishing, yes.

• 1:49Graham Stephan?

  So what's remarkable is that your firm did over $2 billion in revenue last year. What do most people get wrong about your business?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  What people get wrong about my business is that, you know, we're, we're chasing frivolous cases. We probably take about seven to 6% of the calls that come to us. We don't have the money to chase frivolous cases because the people we're going up against have unlimited money. So when people say, you know, jackpot justice and frivolous lawsuits and ambulance chasers, they say it because they're trying to have what's called tort reform and to scare the public. I don't have the money or the time to chase frivolous lawsuits. So I think that's the number one thing.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  What I do for a living is righteous. What I do for a living is somebody has something taken from them due to no fault of their own. Their health, their income, their enjoyment of life, consortium, you name it. It's been taken from them due to no fault of their own. And my job is a great job because what I get to do is go back and get back as much as I can that has been taken from them. I think the people who get something wrong about my job will go, if something's taken from you, you want it back.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Now, if you get your leg cut off, I can't put your leg back on, but we can get justice and compensation for that. So not only is what I do good, it's righteous and right.

• 3:38Graham Stephan?

  How common are frivolous lawsuits?

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Well, I don't think they're, they're common because the insurance industry, these are smart people. And when they get a frivolous lawsuit and it goes to an insurance defense lawyer, they love frivolous lawsuits. You know why? Because they get to bill, bill, bill, bill, and they bill like crazy on frivolous lawsuits. Why? Cause they know they're gonna win. If, if somebody sues somebody with a frivolous lawsuit and the defense lawyer gets it like, no, we're paying nothing. We're paying nothing because who gets to pay the money? The insurance company. So why? The question is why? Cause I'm starting to think about a new ad. You might give me a good, new ad idea.

• 4:24Graham Stephan?

  I'll take my 10%.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Three, three.

• 4:28Graham Stephan?

  Five.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  When we say frivolous lawsuits, for there to be frivolous, not lawsuits, frivolous cases, the insurance industry has to go, we're gonna give you money for this frivolous lawsuit

• 4:42Speaker 01

  for nothing. You think they're gonna do that? No. And if they don't do that, then they go to a jury of our peers. The same juries who get to put people in the electric chair. We have the, we have the best civil and criminal justice system in the world. So that's what people get wrong.

• 5:03Jack Selby?

  You've spent over a billion dollars on advertising. What do you understand about human attention that most people don't?

• 5:10Speaker 01

  It's a bit more, way more than a billion. I'll spend 600 million this year.

• 5:15Jack Selby?

  600? I, I heard 500 million this year.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  We've, we've adjusted as we've gone because we've, we've moved into some new cities and I got a new domain called injury.com.

• 5:25Jack Selby?

  How much did you pay for that domain?

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Injury.com, I think I paid $4 million.

• 5:29Jack Selby?

  $4 million to injury.com?

• 5:31Graham Stephan?

  It seems like a bargain.

• 5:31Jack Selby?

  Yeah, that's actually not that.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Believe it or not, here's what I said. When I bought injury.com, here's what I said. I wanna buy, whenever I do an ad or do something in my space, I wanna do something that my competitors literally shit up their back when they hear or see. So if, if I was a competitor and I saw a billboard that said injury.com, I would shit up my back. Cause that's, that's, that, I mean, if you could have a name, what would you want for my business?

• 6:05Graham Stephan?

  I would run injury.com, personal injury.com, car accident.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Not personal because let me tell you, when I did my domains, I, I got down this, I was doing this before anybody was thinking, I mean, nobody even had BlackBerries when I was doing my URL.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  I got down to two names that I was gonna make. I wanted it to be my branding statement and my URL, my mission statement. The two choices I had was for the people. And the other one was justice for all.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Now, let me tell you why I didn't do justice for all. The average reading age in America is about sixth or seventh grade. A lot of these don't know how to spell justice. So what I don't like about personal, how do you spell it?

• 6:54Jack Selby?

  How do you spell it, Graham?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Go ahead.

• 6:58Jack Selby?

  Jay. Wait, no, no, I got, I got this.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Pneumonia. It's, it's like, so I would, I don't like per, I mean, there is a personal injury.com, but you gotta think how they think and how they spell and how they read. And they don't read or spell well. For, that's like kindergarten. The, like, that's like the second word you learn. And people, that's the hard one.

• 7:26Jack Selby?

  How much have you spent in total on advertising, do you think?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Oh, I'd say billions and billions.

• 7:32Jack Selby?

  Multiple billions of dollars.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Multiple billions.

• 7:33Jack Selby?

  So what do you understand about attention that most people don't?

• 7:36Speaker 01

  I understand that the, the tension that people have is like a gnat and not, it's not a long attention. And here's what I wanna do with my ads. If I took you out in the field and there was a thousand brown cows and I pointed to one and I told you, look at that cow.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Cause we're gonna come back here in six months and I want, I want you to pick this cow out of the herd. You'd look at the cow, okay, he's got a little, little scratch on the eye, he had a little sock on one leg and you'd be looking at the cow. Okay, all right, get in the car, we're gonna come back. And then we come back in six months and I tell you, go find the cow. You might, you might not. Now, we went out to that same field and there was a thousand cows, but only one was purple. And I pointed to the purple cow. We can come back in 60 years and you're gonna pick the purple cow. I wanna be the purple cow.

• 8:37Jack Selby?

  And so how do you become a purple cow?

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Look at all these insurance companies ads. Look at Progressive, look at GEICO, look at State Farm. There's humor, a lot of humor. My director of marketing was with GEICO before he came with me. But then there's other ways. You gotta be educational. You can't just be this big head going, if you've been injured, call me, you know? Boom, boom, boom. No. You have to have people watching. My goal with my commercials is that they're so good that the public rewinds them to go, wait a minute, wait, wait a minute, what did that say? Or the billboards, like I did a billboard once was highly controversial. Size matters. America's largest injury firm.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Well, a lot of people gave me a lot of shit for that. That's offensive. Why? Well, you, we know what you're doing. Really? What am I doing? The fuck you think I'm doing? You get your head out of the filth. You're a filthy person to be thinking like that. I'm saying size matters. The size of my firm matters. So when you say size of it, one thing I did before years ago, I took all my billboards and I defaced them myself. But I made it look like it, somebody crawled up, you know, put for the money and blacked my teeth out.

• 10:01Graham Stephan?

  Glasses.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Glasses, all this in college towns, I had, this thing went viral because guess what's happening? Everybody's like taking pictures of the billboards and sending them out to their friends and posting them on media. The news people were calling. Your boards have been defaced on Alafaya. What? Can we come by and do a story on it? I need to figure this out. They're doing stories on my defaced ads. Cars are stopped and they're outside of the thing taking pictures of my defaced ads, which was really, you know, negative shit about me, made up by me, for me. That's a purple cow.

• 10:43Graham Stephan?

  So you came up with this idea yourself. Do you run these ideas by anybody else or you just decide on your own? That's great.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Have you ever seen Bill Cosby or Art Lincoln or kids say the darndest things? They're up in high chairs. So we're gonna film this Sunday here in Orlando, a bunch of kids. And we're just gonna be asking kids about Morgan and Morgan, sitting on the chair.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Kids say the darndest things.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  We're gonna film them all. Then we're chop it up. And then we're gonna run this ad called Kids Say the Darnedest Things. Yeah, I came up with that.

• 11:15Jack Selby?

  Who do you look to as inspiration for advertising, marketing? What do you think is the most effective advertisement of all time?

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Coke is the real thing. I'd like to have the world to in perfect harmony.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  And I love the ending of Mad Men. Did you see Mad Men?

• 11:34Jack Selby?

  No.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Mad Men was a show and Don Draper was this big executive who was the king of Madison Avenue. And then he kind of, you know, after he's everybody in town and had a great time, he decides to drop out of life. And he's sitting there at the end, the last, the last episode, he's gone to find himself and he's in Hawaii. And he's sitting up there, hmm, hmm, he's meditating and all of a sudden, I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. And he's sitting there. And it was the Coke and the inference was he's coming up with the Coke ad. You gotta watch it. It's fantastic. It gave me cold chills.

• 12:20Jack Selby?

  So your marketing, I have to say is fantastic. Why don't you sponsor the Super Bowl?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Well, I might. Um, it's so expensive.

• 12:30Jack Selby?

  How much does it cost to sponsor the Super Bowl?

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Well, different things. I mean, it can be millions and millions.

• 12:36Jack Selby?

  Did you get a price ever?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  I've run Super Bowl ads, not national ads, but in regional, in DMAs. Yeah, I've gotten, listen, they, they're pitching me all the time stuff. But the Super Bowl is one day. Here's what I don't like about the Super Bowl. If it's a blowout, are they gonna watch the second half?

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Where are they gonna place you in the, you know, I mean, if you're in the beginning, if you're the end, it's all about placement. So I wrestle with it. There's, there's certain people that advertise just for their own ego. And then you look at the ads and we're so disappointed in some Super Bowl ads. But then there's, then there, then there's the Budweiser ads and you're like, I wanna, I wanna rewind that.

• 13:22Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  And that gives you cold chills, those Clydesdales.

• 13:26Jack Selby?

  What's the most you've ever spent on an ad?

• 13:29Speaker 01

  I had some ads with Kyle Busch and we, we haven't been able to really run them because he passed away. He died. We have an ad with John Daly and his son. And, uh, cause then you got talent, you're paying. I've sponsored the car. So part of my Kyle Busch deal was I sponsored the, the car. So I got the car. I got the rights to all that. And I was, I was in the races and then I, so I spent millions on, on, you know, with NASCAR.

• 13:59Jack Selby?

  Now, one thing I found really incredible is that I've heard you received about 3 million leads, which is equivalent last year to 1% of the entire United States. Have you ever had to sue a friend?

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:15Jack Selby?

  How do you deal with that?

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Here's, here's what I do.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  If it's, if it's a, well, first of all, there's friends and acquaintances. Everybody's your friend when you're gonna sue them, right? But a lot of times what I'll do is I'll call them. I'll say, listen, I got this case. I can do it or you can, I can have somebody else do it. You tell me what you want me to do.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  And a lot of times they say, I'd rather have you do it. Cause sometimes people just wanna be vicious to be vicious and, you know, it almost turns into extortion on a lawsuit. But if it's somebody that's a good friend that I've given, you know, I give them diplomatic immunity. I don't, I don't need the money that bad to sue friends. You know, I had a case one time where

• 15:03Speaker 01

  malpractice case and I called him up, a doctor. And, you know, me and him used to play basketball together in high school. And I said, listen, this is gonna happen, but do you want me to do it? He goes, I don't want you to do it. And they settled the case against him for $4 million. So I lost, you know, $1.6 million for my friendship. Funny thing about that,

• 15:28Speaker 01

  I never saw them again for the rest of my life. So I've been thinking about that 1.4.

• 15:36Jack Selby?

  What's the most you've ever won in a lawsuit?

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Well, we hit Google for 500 million last year in San Francisco. I settled black, Black Farmers was 1.2 billion, a lot of 100 million. These are verdicts. And I've been in big mass torts, the BP oil spill. I live in Hawaii in the wintertime. Uh, I was one of the lawyers that represented the, the fire victims. We settled that one last year for 4.7 billion. I'm on the opioid. MDL. So, but it's, you know, it, it, it's from, you know, a little to a lot.

• 16:14Jack Selby?

  So what's the most you've ever personally made from a lawsuit? As many of you know, we moved into this warehouse and it has been absolutely game changing. Having the teamwork together in person has been an absolute blast. That said, we are constantly on the road for the podcast and there are plenty of times that there is a file I need on a computer back in Vegas. Which is exactly why we're excited to be partnering with Anydesk. Anydesk gives you remote access to your desktop computer from anywhere in the world. Your office computer shows up right on the laptop in front of you and you use it. You click around just like you would if you were sitting at your desk back home. All you have to do is install Anydesk on both computers, connect them one time and you're ready to go. And moving a file over is an easy copy paste at any size. It works from a laptop, a tablet or your phone. So you're not stuck waiting until you find a real computer.

• 16:58Jack Selby?

  Plus Anydesk encrypts connections and it has two factor authentication. So your company's information stays secure. Your work shouldn't have to wait until you're back at your desk. Get remote access set up today at anydesk.com/ICH. Once again, that is anydesk.com/ICH or just click the link down below in the description. So what's the most you've ever personally made from a lawsuit?

• 17:19Speaker 01

  The, where you make the biggest money are these big mass torts. But it's misleading because it could take 10 years. And then you divide 10 into that number to annualize it. And you go, was that worth it? I mean, yeah, yeah. You know, it's kinda, but the fees are nowhere near what the public thinks. I mean, if I, you know, a hundred million dollar case, you know, I had a case in Miami, a hundred million bucks, fees 40 million.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Black Farmers was 90 million on the 1.2 billion. So when you see, when you hear 1.2 billion, it doesn't mean I got a third because there's all sorts of.

• 18:03Jack Selby?

  Cause fees go to many different things.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Fees are.

• 18:06Jack Selby?

  Doctors, they go to the partners.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Well, fees go, and fees are different. Fees are not just a third. I mean, that's on a single, you, single event cases are a third. And what you gotta remember, when you hear these verdicts in some of these states, they knocked the verdicts down. They set the verdicts aside. They don't have insurance. There's not many people have a hundred million to pay a hundred million.

• 18:27Jack Selby?

  What's the most surprisingly large settlement you've ever gotten? We, or verdict, we have a friend that settled something. He's a personal injury attorney in the Valley of Los Angeles. He settled $50 million for someone who spilled hot tea on their groin going through the drive through.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  I just had a big hot coffee case. We got a verdict for like 5 billion.

• 18:48Jack Selby?

  5 billion?

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Million.

• 18:49Jack Selby?

  Oh, I heard billion. Yeah.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  It was probably that lettuce on my tooth sliding down.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  The fees that I've had over the years is right at, at the beginning of this year was 35 billion for everything. But remember, I got 1,200 lawyers, you know? So it's, it's a big number, but I got a lot of people, you know, cracking out those cases.

• 19:18Jack Selby?

  What is your annual overhead on the business? Like what do you spend to keep this whole business alive?

• 19:25Speaker 01

  It all depends because the lawyers got bonuses tied to their production. So, and by the way, what I wanna do is pay them a load of money. I want my lawyer's bonuses to be astronomical.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  But it's a, it's a, it's a, you know, it's a, it's, it's a huge number.

• 19:44Jack Selby?

  And when it comes to lawsuits, I'm curious. Why don't the loser in the case, why don't they pay for the other person's legal fees? Like if I sue Jack and he wins, why?

• 20:00Speaker 01

  It's called loser pays.

• 20:02Jack Selby?

  Loser pays. Why not?

• 20:03Speaker 01

  I want it.

• 20:04Jack Selby?

  You want it. Why isn't it, why isn't it like that?

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Because I win. They don't want, they don't want it against me. If they have, listen, the first person who'll run for once loser pays is me. Cause I don't lose.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  They lose. Cause I get to pick the case. I get to take, I get to pick what I want.

• 20:26Jack Selby?

  Here's where I'm coming from is that in California, which is where we used to live really until 2020. I've seen so many frivolous lawsuits and how they always start is they say, I'm gonna claim this and it's gonna cost you $50,000 to fight this. And you're correct, but you're gonna spend $50,000 to fight me or you give me $20,000. I'll go away. And that seems like a very common tactic.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  Well, but see you're misinformed. There's all sorts of things. Like there's a thing called a, a demand for judgment. If they put a demand in, if they say, okay, we're gonna pay you $10,000. And the verdict comes in 25% less than that, 75, 74, 9999, it's loser pays in Florida.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  And vice versa. If I put in and I get 25% more, they gotta pay my fees too.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  So there are devices and motions and pleadings that you can have loser pays and I get it all the time. I do it. I do propose, it's called a proposal for settlement. Now they're different in different states, PFS. I do, I do a PFS on 95, 96% of my cases and they have to pay my fees when they lose.

• 21:46Graham Stephan?

  But some of this also assumes that they're easy to track down. Like we have a personal friend who got sued, uh, spent $400,000 fighting it, won the lawsuit. He was in the clear completely. And now he has to sue back to get his legal fees.

• 22:02Jack Selby?

  But that cost hundreds of dollars.

• 22:04Graham Stephan?

  But that's going to cost more money. And the guy who he's suing cleverly hid and moved assets around so that actually collecting from this guy is going to be almost impossible.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  There's also something called fraudulent conveyance. And you know, you tell your friend to hire me and I'll go get his money.

• 22:21Graham Stephan?

  But that's assuming the fraudulent conveyance was done during the lawsuit and not years before.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  No, as soon as they have knowledge of the lawsuit. So they know it's coming and they start moving money around. That's fraudulent conveyance.

• 22:34Graham Stephan?

  But let's say it was already moved.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Well, then it's not. But every story has a story that's not necessarily true. Like you thought there's no loser pays, but there is in many states.

• 22:52Graham Stephan?

  I have just personally seen so many people I know go through this and just settle, settle, settle. And they pay out of pocket because they don't want to file a claim with their insurance. I see, I see this happen probably a few times a year and I'm in the real estate industry. I see landlords dealing with this.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Well, listen, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in the, I own attractions, I own hotels, I own shopping centers, I own billboard companies, I started banks and I'm sued too. And when somebody fucks with me, I fuck back.

• 23:26Graham Stephan?

  But part of this, I feel like is your name, is they see you as the owner, like, no offense, I would never want to sue you. I would, just knowing that it's like, this is you. You are your deterrent. You are your best insurance policy.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Listen, a lot of people call me and say, hey, we have a case against you at, at one of your museums. You know, I, I say sue me. Because if I fuck up, I want to pay. If I'm negligent, I want to pay. That's why I have insurance. So I, they'll say, well, are you going to be mad at me? I'll, no. Go for it. And we pay sometimes and sometimes it goes to court and we win.

• 24:09Graham Stephan?

  Like, speaking of insurance, here's a good example, is that in my rental properties, insurance has more than tripled and they have gotten rid of habitability lawsuits in their coverage, which means if a tenant purely claims, my unit's not habitable, my insurance is not going to cover that. Defending that is going to be $60,000. Or a lot of people that I know just say, here's $20,000, go away. And they get out of the business entirely. Is that a California issue?

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm in California. No, it's not. I mean, I think you're getting false information because I own all that, all those buildings across the street, those are mine. Those are all mine. You know what they are? Bars. They're all mine bars. And I don't have that problem.

• 24:56Jack Selby?

  If you were to sue yourself, how would you defend yourself? Would you, how would you be able to move around your assets and money to best protect yourself? If people are watching this right now and they want to protect themselves, what do you recommend they do?

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Hire a lawyer, like I did.

• 25:13Graham Stephan?

  But how could you prevent it? We're talking about what we see, LLCs, irrevocable trusts, insurance policies, umbrella policies.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  I'm not really sure. My lawyer's down in Palm Beach named Andy Cometer. What I would tell him to do is call Andy Cometer and protect your assets now so that you don't have fraudulent conveyance later. The second way in most jurisdictions is.

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• 26:10Speaker 01

  Put everything in husband and wife's name, joint tenants by the entirety. Cause you can't, like, if I do something, they can't get my joint assets. But I did another layer because my wife and I own the firm together. So I had to go get Andy Cometer to get my documents put together that are way more sophisticated than me. I'm a, I'm a trial lawyer, not a, a states lawyer, a states and trust. I'd go get an estates and trust lawyer. I'd ask about the joint tenants by the entirety. And then I'd say, what's the other layers I can do to protect, to protect my assets? And you better protect them before you're trying to hide them. Cause when you're starting to try to hide them, like we talked about earlier, it's called fraudulent conveyance. They can set it aside.

• 26:50Graham Stephan?

  What's the best insurance someone should get?

• 26:53Speaker 01

  The best insurance somebody should get, and it's the cheapest, is umbrella. Just buy a load of umbrella. Because the umbrella very rarely, you want to hear a statistic that I just Googled this other night laying in bed? This will show you how bored I am. What percent of life insurance policies do you think are paid?

• 27:14Graham Stephan?

  Probably more than 50%.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  1% ever pay.

• 27:17Jack Selby?

  How do they do that?

• 27:19Speaker 01

  People live. I'm saying, at a certain point, my insurance, the term insurance starts to burn out. Also.

• 27:27Jack Selby?

  Term insurance?

• 27:28Speaker 01

  That's all you want is term. You don't ever want, if you, if you, if you start buying whole life or annuities or any, you're getting fucked. Where the insurance agents make the most money? Whole life, annuities. It's a, it's a racket. All you need is term insurance. The younger you are, you don't have a pre-existing condition. When you go in and, hey, I had a lesion here. Oh, you gotta get it done early, early and it's cheap. And then when you do it for your liability insurance, you buy a load of umbrella. Cause the more you buy of umbrella, the cheaper it is. It's the cheapest insurance. Those first layers are the most expensive. There's not many claims paid.

• 28:13Graham Stephan?

  Above the umbrella policy.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Above the premium, above the main policy. You very rarely get into the umbrella.

• 28:20Graham Stephan?

  What's the best way not to be a target? Like, we've heard from people that if you're not searchable, and if they can't find your assets, it makes it less likely that a lawyer's going to see this and want to take your case.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Well, I'll find your assets.

• 28:34Graham Stephan?

  How do you find assets?

• 28:36Speaker 01

  That's what I do for a living. I sued some doctors one time. They thought they hid their assets. I took 6 million out of their bank account. The funny thing is, he comes to me, he's like, you know, and I said, look, your insurance company fucked you. And he goes, how? I told him how. He goes, what should I do? I said, there's a lawyer over in Tampa named Dale Swope. He's a bad faith lawyer. You need to go hire Dale Swope and sue your insurance company for bad faith and I'll testify for you. He went and hired Dale Swope. Dale Swope made the bad faith case. He got 6 million, he got his 6 million back. And guess what happened? This guy now invests with me in my deals. The doctor that I took the 6 million from, because I got his 6 million back. But he got, by his insurance company.

• 29:20Graham Stephan?

  How could he have remained invisible to you?

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Well, some kind, some people could. You know, I took, I mean, I basically was like hunting and pecking.

• 29:28Graham Stephan?

  Like, where did he go wrong? How could you find it when he thought you could?

• 29:32Speaker 01

  I just kept hitting banks and all of a sudden I hit one bank and there it was.

• 29:36Graham Stephan?

  In his name? Or was it in an LLC that he had?

• 29:39Speaker 01

  I watched his wife drop off a deposit in the bank. And then I left it.

• 29:46Graham Stephan?

  This is another level.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  Well, it was 6 million bucks. The wife was the office manager. I saw her make a deposit. I go, there's a bank. Then I had the judgment and I served it on the bank. I already got the verdict. I already got the judgment. I got the judgment. He thinks I don't have the judgment.

• 30:08Graham Stephan?

  Wasn't that his fault though, for not disclosing? Cause you're supposed to do a disclosure of assets. So wouldn't he disclose?

• 30:14Speaker 01

  He doesn't have to do that.

• 30:16Graham Stephan?

  Okay.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  I mean, we hadn't got to the point of in aid of execution. Then that's a different hold. You get the verdict and then you start deposing in aid of execution. Then they start moving shit around then.

• 30:27Graham Stephan?

  Got it.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  I had a guy one time that we hit for $22 million in a commercial case and, uh,

• 30:38Speaker 01

  I drug his ass to bankruptcy court and he wouldn't turn over his laptop to the judge and the judge put him in jail. And as he was being taken off to jail, he's like, I will give you, the Indian guy, I will give you the laptop, I will give you the laptop. And the judge is like, well, then you better get him the laptop and then you get out of jail. And I got the laptop and I got the 22 million.

• 31:02Graham Stephan?

  Wow. What do you think about irrevocable trusts in terms of asset protection?

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Well, the word is irrevocable because now you're locked and loaded and the person you've given it to turns out to be an asshole or a drug addict. Irrevocable trusts are usually for your children.

• 31:20Graham Stephan?

  And what do you think about them for asset protection?

• 31:22Speaker 01

  It's just your money's gone. You just know it's gone. It's, yeah, it's very good, but it's not yours anymore. If it's irrevocable.

• 31:29Graham Stephan?

  Correct.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, then it's just not yours.

• 31:32Graham Stephan?

  Doesn't mean you can't draw on it, though.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  No. It all depends. But again, this is getting above my pay level because when I did mine, I hired a lawyer in Palm Beach, Andy Cometer, who represents the richest people in Palm Beach.

• 31:48Graham Stephan?

  And how does he set up your estate? Is it through land trusts?

• 31:52Speaker 01

  It's, it's hard to explain, except it's really, it's there, but I can, I can get to my money, but it's harder for me to get to my money. It's not like I can just sell something, do it. I, I, I control it, but I don't control it. But I control it. It's just another layer. Look, I'm also got, I'm also married with joint tennis by the entirety.

• 32:12Graham Stephan?

  Is that true throughout the entire United States?

• 32:15Speaker 01

  It all depends state by state.

• 32:16Graham Stephan?

  Okay.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Everything's different. I mean, I, I mean, California is different, Florida's different, everything's different. It's like divorce, you know, in California, Florida is, you know, bad at, you get divorced in California, Florida is bad news. You're getting, getting divorced in Montana, that's good news.

• 32:35Jack Selby?

  Is there any tort reform that you would support or policy change that you would support that would make being a personal injury attorney less profitable, but would make the overall?

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Let me tell you something. Tort reform, State Farm doled out $5 billion to their stakeholders. There's never been tort reform ever in the history of America that they say, we're going to have tort reform and we're going to have mandatory rollback of rates. Never once. When you vote for tort reform, you're just making them richer and they're [__] you. Find one time where there's been tort reform tied to a mandatory rollback of rates. When that happens, I'm in.

• 33:23Graham Stephan?

  How common is it that someone with money can bully someone else into either settling or quieting them down or just scaring them?

• 33:33Jack Selby?

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• 33:42Speaker 05

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• 33:44Jack Selby?

  And you may think that this will not happen to me. Well, that is exactly what Kevin thought.

• 33:48Graham Stephan?

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• 33:55Jack Selby?

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• 34:00Graham Stephan?

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• 34:06Jack Selby?

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• 34:13Graham Stephan?

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• 34:19Jack Selby?

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• 34:26Graham Stephan?

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• 35:10Jack Selby?

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• 35:20Graham Stephan?

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• 35:26Jack Selby?

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• 35:31Graham Stephan?

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• 35:39Jack Selby?

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• 35:47Graham Stephan?

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• 36:01Jack Selby?

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• 36:12Graham Stephan?

  Again, that's evenrealitiesbio/icedcoffee. You could scan the QR code on the screen or just click the link down below in the description and use the code IcedCoffee. How common is it that someone with money can bully someone else into either settling or quieting them down or just scaring them?

• 36:32Speaker 01

  I don't see it. I mean, I just don't see it. You know, the thing about money is there's something more powerful than money, the truth and our jury system. Jurors can figure it out.

• 36:46Graham Stephan?

  But it costs money to get to that point. Like, we see what's common on YouTube is that you have some creators who want to silence other people and they do it through lawsuits. And some of them, I would say, valid, and I think they're in the right. And some of them are also not. And it's someone with a lot of money who's, I don't like what they say, I'm going to sue them for this, it's, I'm just going to keep milking it.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  What you got to remember is these stories you hear take on a life of their own and a lie of their own. You hear stories that just aren't true. You heard the story about the McDonald's hot coffee and they got $5 million and they just brought it in and it's just terrible and we need tort reform. Well, guess what the true story is? The true story is, before they got that verdict of $5 million, it had happened hundreds of times. And how did it happen? They heated the coffee up at 140 degrees. Why did they heat it up at 140 degrees? So it stayed warm by the time you get back to the office. And it kept happening and happening and happening and happening.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  And by the time the case was finally resolved through everything, the person got like less than a million dollars. But the whole story was a lie. But hot coffee was like the poster child for tort reform because people heard a snippet of a lie and then spread the lie. Remember how you'd whisper in kindergarten and then whisper, whisper, whisper, whisper, whisper and go around the hill? And when you get back to this final guy, what he says is not even close to what he started with. That's what happens. And guess what? We live in a conspiracy theory world, you know? Hillary Clinton's got, you know, underground.

• 38:36Graham Stephan?

  That not only, she eats babies.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  She eats babies.

• 38:39Jack Selby?

  Obama's a lizard person.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Or a lesbian.

• 38:41Graham Stephan?

  Michelle's a man.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Michelle's a man. I mean, all of it. That's, that's the world we live in. And that, that's bad for my business because that, those distortions.

• 38:54Graham Stephan?

  In fairness, I just want to defend myself on this one. I know a lot of these people personally. And so it's like me talking to Jack. And sometimes I know the other person involved as well. I know them both personally and I could see.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Well, in fairness, I would like to sit at the table and ask the questions and get the real facts because people that are, that feel like they've been [__] over tend to tell their story a lot differently. Like, if your wife is a [__], she doesn't think she's a, she thinks you're a [__].

• 39:27Graham Stephan?

  That's what I tell them all the time.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  But you're her.

• 39:33Jack Selby?

  True.

• 39:34Graham Stephan?

  Now, going back to the topic of your business and success, Forbes estimates your net worth to be one and a half billion dollars. How do they estimate something like that? How do they know?

• 39:45Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 39:46Jack Selby?

  You don't know how they try to source that?

• 39:49Speaker 01

  I think they try to source, but they go, what, how much of the firm does he, how much of the firm does he own? What, what would he be taking out of, what would, how much of the firm does he own? And by the way, net worth's all bull. I don't consider anybody a billionaire that doesn't have a real billion in the bank. Guess how many people have a real billion liquid?

• 40:08Jack Selby?

  I have, how many?

• 40:08Graham Stephan?

  Oh, weird. Yeah, I don't know how many.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Maybe 20?

• 40:12Graham Stephan?

  Papa John was one of them.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  He doesn't have, no, no, no way.

• 40:16Graham Stephan?

  He said he put a billion, he sold for 1.2 and he said he put a billion in dividends. Dividend stocks running 5%. That's what he told us. I think it's on, it's on the record. It's on video.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Well, then tell him to show you his financial statement where he signed it. My financial statement's got every dollar, every brokerage account. Look, Kanye West was a billionaire. That wasn't a billionaire. They're like, hey, we're going to extrapolate. He's making 40 million a year and that means it's a 25X and 25 times 40 is 1 billion. You're a billionaire.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  It's this. They're just each other off. A billion for me is when a billion's in the bank.

• 41:03Graham Stephan?

  Do you have a billion in the bank?

• 41:05Speaker 01

  I'm a billionaire.

• 41:06Graham Stephan?

  It's a powerful statement.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  A real one.

• 41:09Jack Selby?

  One of 10.

• 41:10Graham Stephan?

  20.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  20, give or take. Cause most people have their, their net worth in their businesses.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  They have the, you know, and they say, okay, we're making 30, you know, uh, what's the girl Rihanna is a billionaire. She ain't no billionaire. You know, she's got his, some kind of makeup company that's making 30 or 40 million. They're giving her like a 40X.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  And it might, the company may not be around. Kanye had all this money because he had the, the Reebok deal or the, whatever deal until he's the bed. And then he was worth that, you know, then he's dead. So billionaires, look, there's nothing that stops the music like the word billionaire.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  It's, it gets clicks. That's why you're here.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  It gets clicks.

• 42:08Jack Selby?

  This is, I mean, I really appreciate the transparency. This is fascinating. This, this is like, we're pulling the curtain back in Wizard of Oz and.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  It's not gonna pull back. Listen, I am the most authentic person you're ever going to meet. Cause when you start bull, you're just bull yourself. And guess what? If my banks hear that, they're going to know if I'm bull or not.

• 42:32Jack Selby?

  So when you say a billionaire, you mean you pop open your brokerage account or you pop open your, your business savings account? And it just, however many, I don't even know.

• 42:42Graham Stephan?

  I'm sure through foundations and trusts and.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, you know, but I'm saying, most people don't have it. They have it in real estate.

• 42:50Jack Selby?

  So how did you become a liquid net worth billionaire? Where did the money come from?

• 42:56Speaker 01

  I have an attraction business that does 33 million a year in an EBITDA. I've made a fortune in real estate. I had a billboard company that I sold. I had an advertising agency that I sold.

• 43:09Jack Selby?

  What are you selling all these companies for? Like, I'm curious how much?

• 43:13Speaker 01

  I sold my billboard company to Lamar for 13X.

• 43:17Jack Selby?

  And then your real estate portfolio, how did you make the money there? How, how much money do you have in real estate?

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Only thing I ever put on my financial statement is my basis. A lot of people bull themselves. They go, hey, I bought this house for a million dollars, but it's really worth 3 million. Why?

• 43:34Graham Stephan?

  Cause you could sell it. I would say the same as a stock.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Maybe something is worth what somebody will pay.

• 43:40Graham Stephan?

  Correct.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  So for, on my financial statements, the only thing I put on my financial statements is my basis.

• 43:47Jack Selby?

  And you don't account for appreciation?

• 43:48Speaker 01

  No. Cause I'm not going to myself off either.

• 43:53Jack Selby?

  At what age?

• 43:53Speaker 01

  When I sell it, when I sell it.

• 43:57Speaker 00

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• 44:27Speaker 01

  And it goes liquid.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Then it goes into my brokerage account and that's real money then. And until it goes in my brokerage account, it's not real money to me. The guy that, you know, the hero of mine is a guy that started Patagonia.

• 44:41Jack Selby?

  Oh, yes. Yvonne Chouard.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  That's the guy you ought to go interview.

• 44:46Jack Selby?

  I would love to. I've seen him speak one time.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  He's the one, he's the one I heard, I'm not a billionaire. They made him a billionaire. He said, I'm not a billionaire. I don't have a billion in the bank.

• 44:56Graham Stephan?

  It's so funny. Even Jake Paul said the same thing, that he wouldn't consider himself a billionaire until he has a billion liquid.

• 45:02Jack Selby?

  Yeah. When did you become a liquid net worth billionaire?

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Recent.

• 45:06Jack Selby?

  It was recently?

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:07Jack Selby?

  And what?

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Liquid.

• 45:08Jack Selby?

  And the main things that contribute?

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Well, don't forget, I'm also, I've got children. I'm, I'm, I'm making my money, but I got four children that I'm fanning out serious money to.

• 45:20Jack Selby?

  And where do you think most of your net worth crossing that billion dollar mark came from? Was it appreciation of stock? Was it the active income from your law firm? Was it the real estate?

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Law firm.

• 45:32Graham Stephan?

  You also have a lot of profitable businesses besides the law firm. What do you attribute these ideas to? And why do so many of them seem to hit?

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Well, some don't. I mean, I've had some, I've had a few losers. Look, Warren Buffett is only, his, his whole net worth and success is basically 11 or 12 stocks. It's not what you would think. It's not this bunch, this like this. Uh, I feel like I have a pulse on what people want and what people like. I'm also

• 46:06Speaker 01

  risk adverse and debt adverse. Like when I, when I do my businesses, if I don't have the money, I'll go get partners or I'll do a private placement memorandum. And when I started building the attractions, I, I raised the money. OPM. People in real estate are much more risky than me. Cause it could just take you down.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  And then what I do is I call it, I got the A side and the B side. The A side is my cash that I, that I use to invest. The B side, once money goes over to the B side, it's never ever touched for the rest of my life. All it does is throw off, you know, 4% tax free-ish. So if I got a hundred million, I make four. If I got 200 million, I make eight. If I got a billion, I make 40.

• 46:54Jack Selby?

  And what are you making that with? Is that?

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Tax free bonds, T bills and, and, and, uh, and interest rates.

• 47:01Jack Selby?

  Wow.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Between three and 4%. Some of it's tax free, some of it's not.

• 47:05Graham Stephan?

  What are the differences that you've seen between the type of people that make millions, tens of millions and hundreds of millions? Is there a personality trait? Is there a mindset that they have differently?

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Look, everything is different, but I would say that the people who really get filthy rich are patient. I didn't make a million dollars till I was 41. Because I was pouring everything back into my businesses. Some people pour it into boats and Ferraris and whores. And I'm like, that's a non-performing asset as far as I'm concerned. So the mistake they make is they want to get rich quick.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  The biggest mistake they make is greed. Greed is not good. Greed is dangerous. And by the way, and I have been greedy and made mistakes and it goes like this. How do you know if you're being greedy?

• 48:07Speaker 01

  If it's too good to be true, it's too good to be true. If you see somebody offering, hey, we're going to pay you 11% interest, run. It's a lie. If I, if I could take everything I have

• 48:23Speaker 01

  and have only invested in an instrument that gave me 8% compounded, that's all I would want.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  It's all I would need.

• 48:30Jack Selby?

  But don't you think that you go from a place when you have less money of like trying to gain appreciation, rapid growth to the point of asset protection and capital preservation? Like there is a kind of tipping point.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Well, the book, the books, the book I like is The Tortoise and the Hare. I'm the tortoise.

• 48:50Jack Selby?

  And so what's the most amount of money you've lost due to greed?

• 48:54Speaker 01

  It really wasn't lost money. It was I lost, I wasted my time. I went with some people who kind of me. I mean, to put down what I lost, I lost so much time around with them.

• 49:07Graham Stephan?

  Were there red flags or something that you should have identified?

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Always.

• 49:11Graham Stephan?

  What are the red flags?

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Here's the red flag. Let me explain it to you in Kentucky terms. You ever been walking in the woods and felt your foot slip like that?

• 49:21Graham Stephan?

  Loose ground. Yeah.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  No, you're like, was that dog shit?

• 49:25Speaker 01

  And then you keep walking. And then you keep walking to your car and you're like, as you're walking to the car, you're like, no, that's probably pine needles. That's probably grass. That's probably wet leaves. Cause we don't want it to be dog. We don't want there to be dog shit on our, our shoes. And then you walk to the car. Now you've been, you've been thinking about dogs the whole time, but by the time you get to the car, you're convinced yourself it was leaves or pine needles. And then you get in the car and then you shut the door.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Y'all know that smell I'm thinking about right now? All three of y'all know that smell I'm thinking about right now. And here's the lesson for everybody out there in Podcastville. If it smells like dog shit, there's dog in life and in love.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  And we can sense it, but the reason we don't is greed.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  We're so crypto, and I don't know if y'all are crypto people.

• 50:25Jack Selby?

  No.

• 50:27Graham Stephan?

  A little. I like Bitcoin.

• 50:28Jack Selby?

  I mean, eight percent is not worth in Bitcoin. I have like maybe one percent.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  And listen, when Lamar Odom is selling Bitcoin, I'm out. Everybody that sells Bitcoin, you know, got gold chains on, medallions and a Russian hooker. I'm not, and maybe they're gonna make money. I don't know. But, but to me, crypto's dog for me. Now, some people, Donald Trump is making billions. He makes it even when people lose. Cause he gets, he gets, he's, he gets it coming and going. He, I mean, he's smart. So I look at Bitcoin and the, why do we do Bitcoin? The same reason they bought the tulip bulbs. You know, the tulip bulb story?

• 51:09Graham Stephan?

  Of course.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Okay. So it's everybody out there listening, Google tulip bulbs in the 1600s. Everybody's buying tulip bulbs, tulip bulbs, tulip bulbs, tulip bulbs, tulip bulbs. The tulip bulbs were crazy high. What I look at, did lessons from tulip bulbs is to me, tulip bulbs are crypto today, to me. Why were people buying tulip bulbs? I still can't figure it out. You ask somebody who's investing in crypto, how do you make money with it? What's the deal? How do you make? If I can't figure it out,

• 51:45Speaker 01

  then I just don't do it. To me, if I can't, if it can't be explained to me, and listen, I've invested, I've, I've investigated crypto because I'm greedy. But what happens is, is called herd mentality. When I grew up on Kentucky, I go down to my uncle's farm and I look up on this field.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden I'd see a bull start running up the hill.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  And then I'd see some other cows start to run up the hill. And then before I know it, they're stamping, they're all stampeding up the hill. A hundreds of them. And they get to the top of the hill.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  And they're all looking at each other. And I was a little boy and I was like, you know, you know what they're saying? What the are we running to? To me, that's crypto. To me, that's tulip bulbs. We're just following the bull.

• 52:35Graham Stephan?

  But in terms of red flags of people, what do you look out for specifically? And when you first meet somebody?

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Tortoise shell glasses that invest in crypto.

• 52:44Graham Stephan?

  The eight percent, eight percent in a Bitcoin ETF.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Well, look, it's gambling. It's gambling. You live in Vegas, it's gambling. Not, but the book I wrote called Life is Luck, Lessons from the Paper Boy. Here's what life is. Life is, since you're from Vegas, I want to speak your language.

• 53:04Graham Stephan?

  Please.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Life is a casino.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  And you walk in and there's all sorts of games to play. And there's some lottery games over the years as well. Now, there are games to play and there's games you shouldn't play. You should not play Keno.

• 53:20Jack Selby?

  It's fun though.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  It's fun.

• 53:22Jack Selby?

  But never with a measurable amount of money.

• 53:24Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, it's an entertainment.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  To me, Keno's crypto. If you're gonna play a game, you probably should play blackjack. And then when you play those games, there's rules for those games. There's the book.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  I'll give you a test to see if you're really from Vegas. You get two aces. What do you do?

• 53:44Graham Stephan?

  Split.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  You got 15 and they got 10. What do you do?

• 53:49Graham Stephan?

  Hit.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  You got 15 and they got five.

• 53:53Graham Stephan?

  Stay.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Those same rules in the casino are the rules in life and business. Location, location, location, undercapitalized. All the rules are there, but sometimes when you start drinking and when you get blinded by greed, you say, you know what?

• 54:16Speaker 01

  I'm going over to the Keno table.

• 54:18Graham Stephan?

  So you're saying that you need to look at this person's life pretty holistically and see how they're spending their time? If they, if there's anything, you kind of like investigate the entire car, like a pre-purchase inspection. You look at a car and if like one little thing is wrong, you're like, okay, well, maybe this person that maintained their car perfectly, actually, you, you know, they didn't. You look under the hood, you see one little thing wrong, you can assume that there's more problems.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  When I look at the people in the crypto industry, when I just look at who they are, what they're wearing, what they're, not you, not you, not you.

• 54:48Jack Selby?

  He's not, he's not.

• 54:49Graham Stephan?

  I'm not incredible.

• 54:50Jack Selby?

  He just owns a Bitcoin ETF.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  No, I'm not looking at you. No, I'm talking, I'm talking about the sellers. I'm talking about the guys who are out there, you know,

• 54:57Jack Selby?

  preaching it.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  Preaching it, selling it. Lamar Odom. I saw a conference Lamar Odom walking out of a crypto convention. I'm like, I'm out. But why do we do it? Because the same reason they bought the tulip bulbs.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  The same reason Bernie Madoff. I had a guy, I had a friend of mine one time, he kept saying, hey, you need, my aunt got in this deal with this guy in New York and he's returning 12% interest. I go, he goes, year in and year out. I go, that's what? Yeah. It's hard to get in, but my, why, my, my aunt got in, so I got in with my aunt and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he kept always waving this thing. You ought to put some money in with us. I said, it's too good to be true. 12%. And I'm just telling you, 2008 comes, everything crashes. I said, Seth, how did you do this year? Well, 11%.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  How the is that possible? He goes, he pulled out of the market and did some puts and some calls and we got 11%.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Are you, were you in Madoff?

• 56:03Jack Selby?

  No, no, I, I like selling options. I like.

• 56:05Graham Stephan?

  He tells me all the time, buy puts and sell these calls.

• 56:08Jack Selby?

  I never say buy puts. I say sell options.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Okay. But listen, you, young people are reckless. You have to learn. You gotta get burned enough to, you know, get old and fat like me and you won't be doing that. But so Seth called, so that's, so that's the deal. Seth had everything in it. 12 million dollars. 12, that's all I had. I get an email from him on the subject. I said, SOS, call me. I call him up. What's wrong? He goes, you're not gonna believe it. I go, what?

• 56:43Speaker 01

  He goes, you remember my aunt's fund that I was telling you about? I said, yeah. The 12% I knew the number. He goes, yeah. He goes, it was Bernie Madoff. I repeat, if it's too good to be true, it's too good to be true.

• 56:58Graham Stephan?

  How does that apply to people? Not on crypto, but just in general, in terms of who you do business with and who you want to partner with and who you want to keep in your life. As I'm sure you've seen, we're down to the last few weeks of summer, which means your schedule is about to get a lot busier, whether you're ready or not. And naturally your health could start to slip, which is why we partnered with AG1.

• 57:18Jack Selby?

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• 57:25Graham Stephan?

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• 57:28Jack Selby?

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• 57:37Graham Stephan?

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• 57:41Jack Selby?

  So AG1 sent us over a care package a while ago and I've been trying it out and it actually tastes like really, really good. And I'll be the first to admit, I am not very good at getting my vegetables in. So having one of these every single morning has been a huge unlock and definitely has improved my daily nutritional intake.

• 57:57Graham Stephan?

  For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro when you go to drinkag1.com/ICH.

• 58:06Jack Selby?

  One more time, that is drinkag1.com/ICH to lock back in before things get too busy.

• 58:13Graham Stephan?

  How does that apply to people? Not on crypto, but just in general, in terms of who you do business with and who you want to partner with and who you want to keep in your life.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  You can tell the most about a person by the people they surround themselves with. That's Machiavelli, the prince, the book. I look at people and I look at who they surround themselves with. Character matters. Morals matter. Decency matters. You know, a liar is a liar, a cheat is a cheat. And they cheat and lie in different forms and fashions. So you can size them all up from, from all of that, just their lifestyle. And we know bull bidders and non-bull bidders, but.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  What overtakes us is our greed and we just want that money and we don't want to miss out. We just don't want to miss out. Look, in my book, Life is Luck, the average person that plays the lottery plays it like 400, spends like 400 and something dollars a year.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Forty percent of Americans don't have $400 in the bank today, but they're all out there trying to take this job and shove it. And they're all chasing something that's just not gonna happen. It's just statistically not gonna happen. Now, I'm in a business that I know is gonna lose money. I own racehorses and I know that I am probably not gonna make money in my lifetime with racehorses, but I enjoy it. But I also know that when I write that check, that money's gone. Now, I've had some luck because I had a great horse named

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Ultima D. Her father was scat daddy and she lives with American Pharaoh and once a year, me and Pharaoh match up and we get a colt or a filly and that horse is worth a million bucks and I split the money with the, you know, my friends from Ireland that own a Pharaoh and justify. But by and large, you know, horse racing is gambling.

• 1:00:26Graham Stephan?

  So what's the best investment you've ever made outside of investing in your own business?

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Well, the attractions have been gigantic.

• 1:00:33Graham Stephan?

  So that was the best investment you've made?

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  That was, but that was me. I built them. I invented it. The whole, the upside down houses and all that. Yeah, I invented that. I've had some good things. I had, you know, I had some land that got condemned for a school. Condemnation is great because you don't pay taxes when your land's taken from you. I had some land over here and they wanted to build it, build a school on my land. They took my land. So I was so happy that they did take my land.

• 1:01:05Graham Stephan?

  So what did you pay for and what did they buy it for?

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  I forget exactly, but I didn't, I mean, I mean, it was like a, you know, 15, 20x because I bought it a long time ago and, you know, I had a trailer, little trailer parks on it and, uh, but look, I made my money on me.

• 1:01:22Graham Stephan?

  Now, how much of this can you teach somebody in terms of entrepreneurship, drive, motivation versus is just genetic, that you were born with this desire to build something, to be good in business, to forge your own path?

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Well, the reason I called my book, Life is Luck, Lessons From A Paper Boy, is because, you know, you all are too young to have been paper boys, but I guarantee you, you and you, when you were 11 or 12, you were hustling something. I don't know what it is. I can just tell by looking at you and talking to you. For my generation, it was the paper route. You're 11 years old, you're 12 years old, you're 10 years old. I had to buy my route. I had to go down to the Second National Bank of Lexington, get a loan with my grandmother's son, and then I had to buy my route. And I had to get up in the snow and the sleet and the rain, the heat, every day. And when somebody didn't get a paper or missed a paper, I had to go back and give it to them. Then I had to collect the money. I think a lot,

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  that's why I call the book, Life is Luck. I think some of us are born with an entrepreneurial seed that's as powerful as Shaquille O'Neal being seven foot one and, and built like a Mack truck. There's no way I could be Shaquille O'Neal because I'm just, you know, physically.

• 1:02:41Graham Stephan?

  Hey, me too, man.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Well, me and you, we're the point guards, but that just happens in life. And by the way, the reason I call the book, Life is Luck, there's so many things that are out of our control. Just being born is trillions and trillions and trillions to want. The country you're born in, we have no, we have no control over that. What, what's the country you want to be born in? The United States of America. We were born here. For a lot of us, being born white was, and we had no control over that. And if you keep going, good looking people, this is gonna do very good because good looking, good looking, this

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  do good too. Good looking people are usually the CEOs of companies. If you're tall, you have a better chance of being president. You're short. Me and you are not gonna be president. He could be president. Height, it's out of our control. There's so many things out of our control that come back to us. And then you go, well, you gotta work hard. If you work hard, that's true, but some people are not built to work. You go, wait, of course they are. No. In the jungle today, a lion will be born and a sloth will be born. The sloth is incapable physically of working. He, he wakes up like this. He, only thing he can do is eat and go down once a day, go back up, go to sleep. The lion is born

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  and he's a king that day. If that door opened over right now, this six month lion walked in his room, me and you'd be jumping up on the table scared shitless. If a sloth walked, then we'd just kick it the out of here. And everybody thinks it's all hard work. This, oh, I'm, I'm successful. It's hard work. Let me tell you this about hard work. The hardest working people in America are the ones who make the least, the least. You ever dug a hole with a shovel? You ever tried that?

• 1:04:33Graham Stephan?

  As a kid, yeah.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  Could you do it?

• 1:04:36Graham Stephan?

  Not more than a foot or two.

• 1:04:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And lay some frost on that ground. Sometimes I see these people on, with squeezes on this, up there, suctions. And I'm, you know, you're looking at them, you're like, well, he's from Guatemala illegally because nobody's getting up there and he ain't getting paid worth his to do it. He has to do it. So the people who want to pat themselves on the back for being successful, there's a lot of left turns, a lot of right turns, a lot of U-turns, and it can go good and go bad. I know this. If I got started again, had to do all over again, I don't get to be who I am. Something would happen. If Bill Gates was born today, he's not Bill Gates. Somebody else would have been Bill Gates.

• 1:05:18Graham Stephan?

  What do you recommend to the people who feel like they've got dealt a bad hand? They're here in America. They want to be successful. They want to make a lot of money. They just say, I don't have the resources.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  What I would say to them is this, you always have the resources. You always have the, if there's a will, there's a way. And in the book I wrote, Life is Luck, I lay out a roadmap to finding luck. Finding luck, improving luck, return on luck, turning bad luck into good luck, making failure your friend. There's all sorts of ways to do it and that's what the book's about. But the main way you do it is you are constantly, constantly looking for opportunities. It's never gonna happen sitting at your house eating peanut butter and jelly. I got a chapter called Never Eat Alone. There's a book called

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  Never Eat Alone, which was very good for me. If you're sitting in your office, not going out and hustling, it's not gonna happen. If you're not out giving a speech, it's not gonna happen. If you're not out networking, it's not gonna happen. And so in the book, I lay out all sorts of things. Now, when people say, I don't have the money. When I built Wonder Works, the first time I built Wonder Works, I did not have the money. My first real estate development was called Heritage Square down at Kissimmee. I did not have the money. But there's something called OPM, other people's money. And what you do is you find a deal, you lock the deal up, you get a private placement memorandum

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  and you go out and you pitch your idea to your friends who have money. That first deal I did, I was raising $10,000 increments. And guess what? Heritage Square was a success. Now I've got these investors who will follow me. Then I did, when I built Wonder Works, Wonder Works was millions and millions and millions of dollars. I didn't have millions and millions of dollars. But I would tell the people listening, OPM. I wrote another book one time called You Can't Teach Vision. There are visionaries that we all know about. Steve Jobs is a visionary. Bill Gates is a visionary. You know, there's visionaries everywhere. That's a wrong, that's a wrong term. Because visionaries just have an idea.

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  There's a big difference between a visionary and a vision maker. Big difference. Once upon a time, after church, we'd go to Denny's and get crayons for the kids and the crayons would roll onto the floor. I'd be down there picking up crayons and I told my wife one time, I said, you know what I need to do? I need to...

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  Invent a crayon that doesn't roll. About six months later, we come in, there's a crayon made out of a triangle. I held it up, I went, I go, look, this is my idea. This is my idea.

• 1:08:19Jack Selby?

  And what'd she say?

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  You should have done it. But I was a visionary, but I wasn't a vision maker. And by the way, there's a big delta between visionaries and vision makers and they're called vision blockers. You know, I'm gonna go patent these crayons with our money, no, you're not. Or your friends, guess who doesn't want you to be successful? Most of your friends. Most of your family would rather have a total stranger win the lottery than you. Because people are eaten up with jealousy and envy. So you got these, what I tell these people, first of all, if there's a will, there's a way. And there's, the vision is not the, the, the deal. The vision is just the beginning.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  And you gotta jump over these vision blockers to get to be the vision maker. And you know who the number one vision blocker is? You. Fear. Fear of failure. I would tell them, listen, failure is not a problem. Cause when you fail, you learn so much. You now know the next time what you're not gonna do. And you know what you're gonna do. And I've had failures. I opened up an attraction in DC once called the National Museum of Crime and Punishment. It was just unbelievable. It was fantastic, but it was a bad location. It turned out I shouldn't have ever gone to DC.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  Cause shit was free and I built this magnificent, magnificent attraction called the National Museum of Crime and Punishment. I didn't lose money, but I didn't make money. I'm just paying the rent, get a little bit, you know, I'm dribbles. So I closed it, like, you know, it's not worth it. But you know what I did? I took that failure. I said, this was good. I took all the stuff, all the content from my attraction in DC and I went over to Pigeon Forge, Smoky Mountains, 13 million views a year. I found a location. Instead of having no building, or an office building, I built the thing that looks like a prison, 1800 prison. Instead of calling it the National Museum of Crime and Punishment, I called it Alcatraz East.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  When you finish up at Alcatraz East, the last three, four things, you see JonBenet's bicycle, you see the Murdoch golf cart, you see Ted Bundy's VW, you see John Dillinger's sedan, Bonnie and Clyde's death car from the movie, and OJ's Bronco. And this attraction is unbelievable. I'm printing money at Alcatraz East. Everything's the same. The Broncos there, everything, I just moved it. Location, location, location. If I had let failure beat me. But that thing makes about six, seven million bucks a year. And all I did is just move the stuff to a different location.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  Most people don't because, because when people get beat, they become defeated forever. When I get beat, I get back up. That's what I tell people.

• 1:11:23Jack Selby?

  What impresses me is the volume of successful entrepreneurial things that you're doing, from the upside down houses, the different hotels.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  Banks.

• 1:11:35Jack Selby?

  The banks, you know, Alcatraz East. I'm curious, you don't have enough time yourself to be doing all of this. Like, how much of this is your vision and your plan and your decision making versus you just hiring out phenomenal operators? And like, what, what does that mean to be an executive and to find and manage talent?

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, it's all me. The, all the ideas are mine. Every, everyone that works is me, Alcatraz East is me, the bank one.

• 1:12:04Jack Selby?

  Do you have a counsel that you run these ideas by?

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  Me.

• 1:12:08Jack Selby?

  Who do you look to for advice? Do you ever go to someone else?

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  I read, I read, I read books like crazy. I'm, I devour books. And I had a seminar in Vegas and I brought Dan Martel. Dan Martel.

• 1:12:20Jack Selby?

  Yeah, we've had him on the podcast.

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  He's a genius.

• 1:12:22Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  And, and I write about that. I write about him in a book. Look, you only have so much time in a day. What I try to do is I try to find people around me that I call send, delete. It's a person I know if I send something to, it's done. I can delete it. I call them send, delete. Then when I find a send, delete person, then I give them a task. Because remember this, everybody's gotta have a specific task and responsibility. If everybody is accountable, no one's accountable. So when there's a fuck up, we know who fucked up. You find a send, delete person. They emerge out of nowhere.

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  You don't, you can't tell when you first, who's gonna be send, delete and who's not. And then once you get that send, delete person. Then you delegate ruthlessly to execute your vision. You buy back your time. You pay these people. I just hired a guy from Amazon for my AI, cause I gotta figure this AI, I don't know what the AI is. You know, I mean, I failed, you know, basic math. But I'll pay this guy a load of money from Amazon to figure out AI for me. And you, you just have to do that. So I get the vision and then I got the team around me and then I have them execute and

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  I delegate ruthlessly. Now, all these ideas, remember this, I don't fish, I don't hunt, and I don't golf. To me, that's all fucking off. I hunt money. I fish for money. That's how the time, you take golf and hunting and, and, and first of all, I don't wanna shoot a deer, cause I could taste the fur. I don't wanna fish and, you know, catch and release, I'll rip the fish's face off or eye out and throw him back, oh, look how good I am. You're, you know, you're swimming around with no eye for the rest of your life. I don't wanna do that. And golf, with Tiger Woods just hitting the ball in the water, I'm just not interested in trying to perfect that.

• 1:14:34Jack Selby?

  There's nothing you're interested in outside of hunting money?

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  Oh, a lot. I'm, I love to read, I love the beach, I like tennis when I was young, when I was your guys' age.

• 1:14:43Jack Selby?

  Well, there we go. So you play tennis?

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I played tennis. When I was your guys' age, I played a load of basketball, played basketball three days a week. I played in three man leagues. You get to be, in my age, you can't play, you know, you can't be, when I see guys my age playing basketball, I'm like, stop, stop, stop, stop. It's embarrassing. I went across the street to one of my grandsons the other night and he was shooting free throws and I went, I said, cause I could usually really hit some free throws. I go to shoot a free throw, I didn't hit the net.

• 1:15:12Jack Selby?

  Well, maybe with a little practice.

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  Well, but you ever heard of muscle memory? I, I started researching muscle memory. And then I'd try to do it again, I really heaved it and I didn't even hit the rim. But in, in, you know, when I was your guys' age, I played a lot of basketball. I played a lot of tennis. And, uh, so yeah, I, I have those, those interests. And, uh, I probably exercise four or five days a week. An hour, mostly walking or, uh, recumbent bike or the elliptical. But to me, hunting and fishing, I just don't get it. So I don't feel like I'm losing anything there. Nothing. Putting me in a tree stand.

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  Waiting for, I got, I got so many deer in my, at my house, I could lay in my pool with a, like 20 big deer this morning. When I left my house this morning, there was these deers laying in my front yard and I rolled the window and I said, have a good day, guys, you're at the right place. Hank, well, I don't wanna eat them.

• 1:16:18Jack Selby?

  Now, speaking of money, you previously mentioned that you believed that income inequality was one of the biggest problems of America. And I'm curious, from your perspective, why is that?

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  Because the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and the system's rigged.

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• 1:17:06Speaker 01

  Now, and listen, I'm taking advantage of the rigged system. When Trump got elected president, I bought a new G500. Why? It's almost free. I mean, I mean, when you do the math, I'm like, it's crazy. These hedge fund guys have carried interest, all, it's all stacked that way. But here's what happens. When the poor get poor or, and the rich get richer, there becomes an uprising. And you're seeing it now, it's called the democratic socialist progressives. There's two types of envy. There's benign envy.

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  Which is you take that envy and you challenge it to motivate you. You know, I wanna, I wanna be, I wanna, you take that as a motivation. And then there's what's called malicious envy, where you're just so mad. It's just not fair. It's just not fair. They got all the money, I got none. And then they, political leaders, they take that malicious envy and they turn it into socialism. They harness that malicious envy. We're be, you know, the word, the new word now oppressed, we're oppressed, we're oppressed. They almost turn into a, a, a political movement. We're oppressed.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  And that malicious envy turns in to socialism, which turns into communism authoritarianism. Castro, Hugo Chavez, it all started as malicious envy. And all throughout time, if the rich people in this country don't understand, at the end of the day, that malicious envy turns into a movement and they just take it. Marie Antoinette said, let them eat cake, they cut her throat. I'm tempted to write one more book called The Castle on the Moat. It goes like this, there's this castle where the 0.1% live and they got everything. Then there's this moat

• 1:19:17Speaker 01

  deep and wide, and in that moat, there's electrical eels and piranhas and sharks. It's deep and it's wide, and that's the middle class. And then outside the moat, there's the barbarians at the gate, they want in, they want, you know, they wanna come get it. But the people in the castle keep drawing the water in for themselves. They got pools inside, they're drinking, they're taking a lot of baths. And the, and the middle, and the water starts to go down.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  And the eels die, and the sharks die, and the piranhas die. And then there's not even water. And the barbarians just walk across. And by the way, that's what MAGA is, they're mad. On January 6th, they went to the, they went to the castle. They went to the castle because they're pissed. MAGA is pissed. And guess who let them in the castle? The, a lot of the cops, because they're pissed off at who they're guarding, guarding for. If we're not careful, if we let this moat sink

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  and the middle class go away,

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  we've only been around for 250 years.

• 1:20:33Graham Stephan?

  So what's the solution? Because a lot of people would say, the solution is we have to tax more.

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  I don't mind taxing more as long as it's tied to, like I talked about Torah form. As long as it's tied to what Bill Clinton did, he's my boy. You know, that we gotta have a balanced budget. This, this is not sustainable. The, the, the national debt is not sustainable. And at some point, we're gonna be Greece. I would say tax more, but tied, like I said about Torah form, tied to rate decrease, I would also say tie it to a balanced budget. I'm, I'm happy to pay more taxes

• 1:21:19Speaker 01

  if we can balance the budget, you know? And look, I put my money where my mouth is. In Florida, I ran a constitutional amendment to raise the minimum wage from $8 to $15 an hour. And guess what? It passed. People can't live on $8 an hour.

• 1:21:34Graham Stephan?

  What do you think? If you could control the minimum wage, what would you make the minimum wage? If you could just snap your fingers and that's what it is?

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  Well, if I could snap my fingers, it's different, different strokes for different folks. If you're living in New York City, there's one. If you're living in Columbus, Georgia, there's another. You can live in a, you can live like a sheik in Columbus, Georgia. You can have a mansion in Columbus, Georgia, the same money that wouldn't buy you New York City. So that's the kind of the problems that is that, you know, living in LA and living in Mississippi.

• 1:22:05Graham Stephan?

  Now, if a business can't afford to stay in business by paying an increased wage, should they deserve to exist?

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  No, listen, here's a stat from the soon to be, I'm number one in Amazon today.

• 1:22:19Graham Stephan?

  Congratulations.

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  For self-help books, uh, life is luck. 25% of all businesses fail in the first year. 43% fail within five years and 65% fail within 10. And that doesn't even account for, they'd have been much better off just working for somebody

• 1:22:46Speaker 01

  than going on this, you know, having this juice bar. When I see juice bars, I'm like, what the, I mean, how many juices you gotta sell? So the first thing is, but we all want to, we all, we all dream the dream, we wanna own the business. And if you're gonna open up a restaurant, you're most likely gonna fail.

• 1:23:05Graham Stephan?

  And what if the minimum wage increases and then some businesses just say, all right, fine, we're gonna hire overseas. We're gonna pay less over there.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  I do, I got, listen, I got 11, my call centers, I got 1100 people in my call centers. El Salvador, where abogadas.com goes to, the Philippines, Belize, I'm doing it. And by the way, in El Salvador, I got lawyers working in the call center. They're making more money as, with a law degree, working in my call center in El Salvador.

• 1:23:42Graham Stephan?

  So why not then pay people here the $15 an hour? Hey, by the way, really quick, if you want extra content just like this, as well as early access and a bonus post show posted every single week, feel free to join as a channel member to get immediate access to all of that as well as early access to everything else that we post, along with priority responses to all of your comments. So if that sounds cool, feel free to join, would love to have you on board. Thanks so much. We'll get back to the podcast now. So why not then pay people here the $15 an hour?

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  I, oh, I do. The reason I do use El Salvador mainly, primarily is because it's, it's just an incredible pool of Spanish speaking people

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  with college degrees.

• 1:24:29Graham Stephan?

  It's also less expensive.

• 1:24:30Speaker 01

  Yes. It's, it's, it's win-win. It's not only less expensive, it's more effective. If I can pay less for more, I want it.

• 1:24:39Graham Stephan?

  So it's interesting, we asked Kevin O'Leary about a year ago, what the minimum wage should be? And he said zero. And he said zero because the market should determine what they're willing to pay for a task. And if someone doesn't wanna take the task, that's fine. If no one wants to take it, the person has to pay more to entice people. What do you say to that sort of philosophy?

• 1:24:59Speaker 01

  I believe that we have a moral responsibility to do the most for the most with the least. There's a lot of sloths out there and there's a lot of sloths with children. And at the end of the day, there will be an uprising because there, there has never not been one. At the end of the day, if you let the moat go to, to dirt, there will be an uprising. It is in our best interest.

• 1:25:35Speaker 01

  And look, in the world that I look at in the future, I'm not probably gonna be a part of, there's gonna be a, with AI, there's gonna be people who get paid to do nothing.

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  Because there's not gonna be jobs, I think.

• 1:25:48Graham Stephan?

  I tend to believe that AI is gonna balance the curve quite a bit, that.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  I think it'll be, it won't be as bad as we, it won't be as bad as we think. But it's, it's gonna eliminate jobs. Look, I just hired a guy for a lot of money from Amazon because I gotta figure out AI. And guess where I'm using the AI first? The call centers.

• 1:26:05Graham Stephan?

  What do billionaires financially owe to the people that are struggling financially?

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  Look, I'm not a guy that wears my religion on my sleeve, but I don't, I believe that my money belongs to God.

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  I believe that what's happened to me has been so, I have been so lucky and so fortunate that I believe that my money belongs to God. I believe if I did it again, I would never be where I am. I believe that one different turn would have changed everything. And I truly believe that. And I know this, I don't live a big lifestyle other than the jet. You know, and I have houses, but they're not, you know, like that one you showed me. And the food I eat, I like, you know, I like, like, you know, cube steaks with smothered onions and fried potatoes and cabbage. You know, just country food. You don't need a lot.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  You know, what's the difference between 100 million and a billion? As far as lifestyle, if you get rid of boats and, you know, Rolexes. See, I, I got nothing.

• 1:27:15Graham Stephan?

  The wealthiest person in the room, this is gonna get clipped.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, gosh.

• 1:27:18Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  I gotta, you know why I don't need it? You know why I don't need it? I got an iPhone.

• 1:27:25Graham Stephan?

  So why? You actually put your watch away?

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  What kind of watch is, what is it?

• 1:27:30Graham Stephan?

  Mine was a, it was a gift from Brent Navar, Rolex Datejust.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  Listen, my brother Tim, when he was alive, one time, you know, he's always wanted a Rolex. And, and I don't want one for myself, but he always, he was the one that was paralyzed and he, he ran my call centers for me before he passed. And one day I'm down on Park Avenue over here in Winter Park and I start drinking and I get drunk. And I go down to the jewelry store and I bought Tim a Rolex. And I forget what it was, what I paid for it years ago. And I call him up, I say, hey, come down here to Park Avenue, let's have a drink. He comes in and I handed him the Rolex. And he started crying,

• 1:28:11Speaker 01

  which made me start crying because he was so happy. And he's sitting there with a Rolex on his wrist. I go, I go, look, just between me and you, what, what is it about, what is it about the Rolex? What is it for you? He goes, I'll never forget these words, he goes, it's like having a, it's like having a Rolls Royce on your wrist.

• 1:28:38Speaker 01

  I'm like, I got an iPhone.

• 1:28:42Jack Selby?

  I actually, I don't disagree. Says the person wearing a nice watch, but the only reason I bought this watch was actually to spite Graham. So that was.

• 1:28:50Graham Stephan?

  And mine was a gift. Mine on the back says 2 million subscribers. It was a gift from a subscriber.

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  Look, a lot of people, a lot of people, a lot of people wear them to pull ass. And you know, get women, get men, but here's the problem with all of it.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Comparison is the thief of joy.

• 1:29:13Speaker 01

  We look and we want. There used to be a guy in this building. His name, he's dead now. His name was Mick O'Brien, and this guy lived a high life and he had this unbelievable car. And he had this unbelievable girl and it was just, I mean, it was, it was just, and I was over there going, what am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong? I'd see Mick, I'm like, what am I doing wrong? I'm pulling up in a Previa van with four children. And then all of a sudden, one day Mick just collapsed. The building he had, there was IRS tape around it. The Ferrari was rented, the whore was rented. And at the end of Mick's life, I represented him in a social security case.

• 1:29:56Speaker 01

  But that guy took so much of my mind, so much of my space.

• 1:30:03Speaker 01

  With envy. Going, what am I doing wrong? Why is he making so much money? He wasn't, but he was in my head. That's why they put blinkers on horses, blinders on horses. So they can't see. If you can put, if, if your listeners can do anything, put blinders on. Because all the glitters is not gold. It's usually not gold at all.

• 1:30:30Graham Stephan?

  Now, one thing I was really curious about that we were talking on the way here, in terms of income inequality. If we balanced the money, everyone had the exact same amount. Over enough time, would we see the same distribution of wealth? In that the people who are good with business will grow their money. The average person's going to end up spending it, not investing it. And is that a problem of the person or the system?

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  The person, because listen, at the end of the day, adults are really children. Like I told you in the beginning, the reading level in America is seventh grade. You see a guy walking down the street, you think he's smart, he's a seventh grader or six or worse. Just because they're older doesn't mean they're smarter. So we're dealing with grownups that are really children. I asked my wife one time, I said, let me ask you a question. If we could give up all our money and everybody in the world, all eight and a half billion people.

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  Could have a house, three bedroom house, white picket fence.

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  Grill on the back. Full refrigerator and we have it forever.

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  I said, would you do that?

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  And she said, let me ask you a question. So what? Would that, would the houses be air conditioned? I go, okay, yes. And then she goes, yes. I said, what if the houses are not air conditioned? She said, no.

• 1:32:00Speaker 01

  She needed AC. And I would too. That's called utopia, but utopia doesn't exist.

• 1:32:09Jack Selby?

  You mentioned that a hundred million is the same as a billion. I'm curious, before a hundred million, are there any actual lines you could draw? From zero million to a hundred million and where like life takes.

• 1:32:22Speaker 01

  I think the number that makes you.

• 1:32:27Speaker 01

  Golden is 30.

• 1:32:29Jack Selby?

  Why 30 million?

• 1:32:30Speaker 01

  30 times four is 1.2 tax free. If you can't live on 1.2 tax free, I can live like a sheik on 1.2. I don't have, can't have all the houses. But if you give me a house. And 1.2, and a house paid off and 1.2 million dollars a year, I can live like a sheik.

• 1:32:50Graham Stephan?

  So it's 30 million.

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  I won't have Rolex, huh?

• 1:32:52Graham Stephan?

  30 million plus a paid off house.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  30 million and a paid off house. The first thing I tell everybody listening. Consumer debt you pay off before you put anything in the bank, before you. Any consumer debt, car debt, anything with crazy interest rates, credit cards, you pay that off.

• 1:33:08Graham Stephan?

  You and Dave Ramsey.

• 1:33:09Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm Dave Ramsey all the way. And, and then, and then, and then this, this, people will argue with this, then I pay off the house. I haven't had a mortgage since 1988. I had a case that I settled, David Vega versus Key Capital Leasing. It was my first big case. I took the money and I bought a house and that's the last time I've ever had a mortgage. The number one payment every month in every household in America is mortgage payment. You pay off the house, you get 30 million, you put it in tax free bonds. And why tax free bonds? Even in the Great Depression, less than 1% of the tax free bonds defaulted. People will pay to flush the toilet.

• 1:33:52Speaker 01

  Water, sewer, you know, electricity, tax free bonds. And nothing's, nothing's foolproof.

• 1:33:58Graham Stephan?

  Right.

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  But I believe that the magic number is house paid off, no consumer debt, 30 million, tax free bonds, 1.2 million. You're making a hundred thousand dollars a month, tax free.

• 1:34:14Graham Stephan?

  Now, what do you say to the people though, that say that investing in the stock market long-term is going to yield more than the 4%?

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  They're right. They're right. They're right historically. But look.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  I would say two things to them. I'd say there's two books that are bibles to me. One is A Random Walk Down Wall Street and the other is Black Swan. And what I'd say about a random walk down Wall Street, as long as you're disciplined, and I'm very disciplined. Every month I put. 500 in this deal, 500 in this deal, 500 in this deal. Dollar cost averaging is very important. And as you get older, you reduce your stocks. So like if, if you're 70, you know, you maybe have 70% in tax frees and treasuries and 30 in stock. And then, but as you're younger.

• 1:35:07Speaker 01

  And you start taking the weight off. So when you're, how old are you?

• 1:35:11Graham Stephan?

  36.

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  36. So you would have, you know, 70% in the stock market because you got time. And if your dollar cost averaging. And I've been in this, when it's crashing, I'm happy. Sometimes when it starts to crash, I start putting more in. And when it starts crashing even further, I put even more in. Cause I got time. Warren Buffett will tell you that time takes care of everything. And even if it crashes, you know, loses half, it's okay. It's good if you're young. It's not good if you're 70, because you only had the wind to pick it up. And as long as your dollar cost averaging, you're going to be okay.

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  And so that's, that's what I would say. You know, my children are, you know, your age and they're in the stock market. They're slowing it down a little bit because it's too frothy right now, you know, but, but, but what we're praying for is the stock market to crash.

• 1:36:08Graham Stephan?

  That's what I'm hoping for too.

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:10Graham Stephan?

  Now, my introduction to you, by the way, was in the Jubilee video.

• 1:36:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:36:14Graham Stephan?

  Where you debated 20 people.

• 1:36:15Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:36:16Graham Stephan?

  What did you learn from that experience?

• 1:36:18Speaker 01

  That malicious envy is on the rise.

• 1:36:21Graham Stephan?

  What was most surprising to you about talking with those people?

• 1:36:24Speaker 01

  There's, there's jealousy and envy and they don't want to, you know, go out and get it done themselves. They're just kind of pissed off.

• 1:36:31Jack Selby?

  Were you surprised by the video? Once you had completed it, you went home, then you saw it posted, all of the people's recounting of their thoughts on the conversation. To those that don't understand, there was a 20 V one. So it's you as a billionaire and then 20 people asking you questions. And it got a little bit combative at times. And then the video ended with one guy saying, well, what's stopping you from directly helping every single one of us here? We took time off of our job to come here to film this. You say you help people. Well, here's a direct opportunity to help us and you gave them a hundred dollars. And that seemed like it was the end of the video and it was a happy ending. That part ends and then it goes to everyone recounting their experience on set, talking with you.

• 1:37:14Jack Selby?

  And most of them said, yeah, you know, he seems like an okay one, but generally speaking billionaires are parasites. Or it's like parasitic in nature. Or the other person said, yeah, he gave me a hundred dollars, but not all of these other people, he didn't give them a hundred dollars. I'm curious, like your, your experience on set and then watching that afterwards.

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  Look, I've given money away. I give a lot of money away every year, like right, right this minute. We're building at the Coalition for the Homeless, we're building a wing for women and children. I'm building a boys and girls club in Tallahassee. I just built a food bank in Appalachia. The food bank here in Orlando is called the Morgan Morgan Hunger Relief Center at, at Second Harvest. Rich people have a moral obligation.

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  Because I believe that most of what's happened has been lucky. And, and maybe just like being the paper boy was lucky. And I do believe what Bill Dimitri told me that the money does not belong to me. It belongs to God. And so, you know, they're always going to be, well, it's not, you know, if I had his money, I wouldn't give, you know, you give money away and they're like, you know, Oprah, Kate in Hawaii, Oprah gave a load of money away. And I have, you know, Oprah, you know, Jeff Bezos gave the food bank like 25 million. They're like, that wasn't enough for a guy. I mean, no matter what you do, you're, but you can't, you can't, you can't, you gotta put the blinders on. You gotta do what you can do.

• 1:38:37Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. Did any of those people ask for a job afterwards or come up and talk to you and try to get advice from you?

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  No, but one, one kind of called me later. I thought she was wanting to fuck, but I kind of got this phone call. I'm like.

• 1:38:51Graham Stephan?

  What'd she say?

• 1:38:52Speaker 01

  You know, I, you know, I really enjoyed meeting you.

• 1:38:57Graham Stephan?

  You, why'd you give her your phone number?

• 1:38:59Speaker 01

  She left me a voice message here on my phone. I didn't give her my phone number.

• 1:39:03Graham Stephan?

  Oh, she just called the office.

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, she went to my voicemail. I didn't talk to her. She, I met you at Jubilee.

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  I'm like, then you're thinking this is cra- this is a crazy person too.

• 1:39:15Graham Stephan?

  What's really interesting, I really liked the Jubilee with Patrick Bet David. And with PBD, he made a really great argument and someone said, well, why don't you hire me? And so he offered this person a job and they disqualified themselves. So I want these benefits and I want this.

• 1:39:30Jack Selby?

  Well, he said, would you, would you consider moving out?

• 1:39:33Graham Stephan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:39:33Jack Selby?

  Would you consider showing up at this time and leaving at this time? Would you do this? Would you do that? Cause they were lamenting about not having a job and.

• 1:39:38Graham Stephan?

  That was it.

• 1:39:39Jack Selby?

  The marketplace is very difficult. And then he said, this is what you would need to do if you wanted to work for me. They said, no, he's like, okay.

• 1:39:45Speaker 01

  I'll tell you two stories to kind of go hand in glove with that. You ever heard of that shoe company Zappos or?

• 1:39:51Graham Stephan?

  Zappos.

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  Zappos? I forget the guy, I think the guy's dead. He's dead now, right?

• 1:39:55Graham Stephan?

  Tony Shay.

• 1:39:55Speaker 01

  But Tony Shay used to do this, where he'd give people a job. He'd offer them $2,000 to quit the first day.

• 1:40:01Graham Stephan?

  Dan Martel did the exact same thing.

• 1:40:03Speaker 01

  He stole it from that guy then.

• 1:40:05Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:05Speaker 01

  I had Dan at my convention and, and, and so I looked at that, I'm like, that's smart. Cause you know,

• 1:40:14Speaker 01

  why train those people if they don't want the job? Look, we're living in a world where there's a lot of people that just don't want to work. Here's a real interesting story. Getting people to come back to the office was just like, I mean, nobody wanted to come back to the office. So I said, you know what? So these people didn't want to come back to the office. Here's what we're gonna do.

• 1:40:40Speaker 01

  You can work from home. But guess what?

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  We're gonna put a camera on your computer. We're gonna put a camera up your ass.

• 1:40:53Speaker 01

  We won't look at you, it'll be a pixel. The first week, 23 people quit.

• 1:41:00Graham Stephan?

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:41:02Speaker 01

  It's not that they don't want to work from home. They don't want to work. And the people who want to work from home now, we're like, well, here's how it works. If you qualify, we're going to have a camera on you. We're going to be monitoring you closer than we would. And we've got, we, we measure keystrokes. We, we have this productivity score that's incredible. And look, what's going on is a lot of people just don't want to work. And they're pissed off, but they really need to be pissed off at themselves.

• 1:41:35Jack Selby?

  How do you justify that when you also say something like, most people that are not successful or financially comfortable just lack the capacity? If you say someone lacks the capacity, it sort of implies that they don't have the ability to become financially comfortable. But then if you say, oh, they have the ability, but they just choose not to because they're lazy or they just don't want to work, then like, what is the actual? So you can't come up with a solution if you have two different symptoms.

• 1:42:04Speaker 01

  Well, look, there's, I mean, there's no, there's no perfect solution for all this. But I do believe you have to say, look, you're gonna, you're gonna punch in, you're gonna swipe a time clock. And we are going to make sure and measure your productivity. And if you don't want to do that, go somewhere else. I mean, at the end of the day, I am a very strong with a capital C capitalist. Very strong capital C.

• 1:42:36Graham Stephan?

  What does capitalism mean to you?

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  And what capitalism means to me is because the way we've set up our country, we became the greatest country in civilization, in this history of civilization. That's what capitalism means to me. There's no civilization that's ever measured up like we have. And so to me, the proof is in the pudding. I'm seeing this civilization crumble with malicious envy and the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. So it's like, it's, we've seen this movie. We've seen Marie Antoinette.

• 1:43:11Graham Stephan?

  Who's to blame though? Because if the rich are draining the middle class.

• 1:43:14Speaker 01

  The politicians are, you cannot be given, the, the rich should not have these tax breaks that like carried interest.

• 1:43:22Jack Selby?

  I don't think, I, I.

• 1:43:24Graham Stephan?

  Carried interest is such a small amount though.

• 1:43:26Speaker 01

  It's just one thing. Look, jets, deduction for jets, all of it. Not having a balanced budget.

• 1:43:34Jack Selby?

  I don't think that's what the, the poor people care about though. I think for me, it's the display of wealth. When they look at Jeff Bezos with a yacht, like whether or not he got the deduction with the yacht. I think you, with the amount of money he has, he would buy the yacht.

• 1:43:46Graham Stephan?

  I mean.

• 1:43:46Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, listen, listen, during the, during COVID, people were pissed off at David Geffen. He's out there on his yacht and they're all drinking champagne. It's, it's, there's two types of envy. Remember I told you there's benign envy, but the big one is malicious envy. And when they see you two boys walking in with their Rolexes, they're pissed because they don't have it. It's just, it's comparison is the thief of joy. It's just, why? I don't know.

• 1:44:16Speaker 01

  Why it rains, I kind of know, but not really. Cloud. But it's envy, it's jealousy. It, it's, there's an emotion. What about me? And look, I remember when I was your old age, you know who I, who I really got pissed off about? Monarchies. God, I hated kings and queens. Still do. Why the?

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  Is Prince Harry getting money just because he was born? I mean, he's a piece of, the wife's worse.

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• 1:45:35Speaker 01

  Monarchies. Why does a monarchy, why does a democracy need a monarchy? I mean, what, if, if they got rid of King Charles and what, what would happen? What happens to the country? Nothing, they get more money.

• 1:45:50Graham Stephan?

  To me, it just seems like the internet has really just led to a concentration of wealth. Because you could leverage in such ways globally that you never could before. So you get extremes, but then it also seems like politically it's easy to weaponize the outliers to get votes. And now they've weaponized that.

• 1:46:08Speaker 01

  But it's even worse than that because what social media does is there's people pretending to be rich that aren't rich. One time I had a guy call me looking for a bankruptcy lawyer.

• 1:46:19Speaker 01

  The next week I see him on social media in Las Vegas in a limo with, with champagne.

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  He'd called me the week before to, to BK his business. It's, it's the pretending of wealth. There's a book that I tell a lot of people about and not many people have read, it's called Richastan. You got these neighborhoods in America and the author calls it Richastan. You got Upper Richastan, which is the people with the real money. You got Middle Richastan. And then you got Lower Richastan, but they're all living in the same zip code. And they're all going to the same school and they're all trying to keep, the, the lower Richastan is trying to pretend that they're Upper Richastan. And there's this competition. And what happens then? You know, credit cards, they go to Neiman's, they go to, you know, and it's, it's your, it's the envy.

• 1:47:12Speaker 01

  It's looking, you know, I want, I want the watch. I want the dress. I want the designer dress. It's envy and the envy turns malicious. Because nobody wants to say, it's my fault. They want to find a reason for it not to be their fault. Because nobody wants to say, look, here's a real reason. I'm a lazy slug. Have you ever heard anybody say that?

• 1:47:44Graham Stephan?

  Not that I could think of.

• 1:47:45Jack Selby?

  Well, I claim that I'm lazy sometimes. I think.

• 1:47:47Speaker 01

  Well, you didn't shave today, but that's, that's kind of, that's a look.

• 1:47:50Jack Selby?

  I actually did. I shaved my neck.

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  That's a look. That's a look. That's a look. I've tell my kids.

• 1:47:56Graham Stephan?

  I trimmed it.

• 1:47:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's, look, he's, did you trim yours? No, he's like, but yeah, it's, nobody is ever gonna, they're gonna, everybody's gonna have an excuse.

• 1:48:07Speaker 01

  They're never gonna say, look, here's the real truth. I just didn't work.

• 1:48:12Speaker 01

  I'm lazy. Now they're gonna say the, the system is rigged.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  The system is rigged. And the rich are getting richer and the rich are taking care of each other and the poor are getting poor and poor old me, I'm, I'm, I'm in the, I'm in the poor section.

• 1:48:31Speaker 01

  Nobody wants to take personal responsibility. The best way out is of course, work. Work, work, work, work, work, work, work. When I worked at Disney.

• 1:48:42Speaker 01

  You know? Or Christmas Day, you got triple time.

• 1:48:48Speaker 01

  And I could, I'd, I'd work as long as they wanted to be on Christmas Day. Cause I can open up presents later. But I can't get triple time, ever.

• 1:48:57Graham Stephan?

  That's what I always thought. I would think that I would just celebrate Christmas the day after, the day before.

• 1:49:02Speaker 01

  For triple time?

• 1:49:02Graham Stephan?

  Absolutely. Even for double time.

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:49:06Graham Stephan?

  A Thanksgiving Day to celebrate it the day before.

• 1:49:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course, but, but, but, but there's some, there, listen, there's also, there's that, that thing, you're the paper boy. What did you do to make money when you were 11? Anything?

• 1:49:20Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, I worked at a, it was a fish marine aquarium wholesaler and I love, I was really big into aquariums. And so I worked there after school for free fish and coral and I loved it. I wanted to skip school just to work.

• 1:49:32Speaker 01

  Here's what I tell my kids. If work is work, you're.

• 1:49:37Speaker 01

  I love to work. I love to work. And I love money. And the two go hand in hand. If work is work, you're. The people who are the most successful, you know why you're successful?

• 1:49:50Graham Stephan?

  I love it. Even this to me, it never feels like work. Somehow we, we make money by doing this.

• 1:49:56Speaker 01

  You must be making a lot. You're, you got a lot of viewers, but.

• 1:50:01Speaker 01

  Work, if work is work, you're.

• 1:50:04Speaker 01

  That's why you're skipping in here.

• 1:50:07Speaker 01

  And that's what people need to do. They gotta find out what they love. Not, you don't go to make money, you go to do what you love. If you do what you love, then work is not work. That's a, that's another secret thing. For me, you know, when my brother got hurt, there was a lot of things that happened in our life and then I wanted to go get revenge for my brother. So I have, I've had purpose from the very beginning. And it's never, I've never, you know, I, I hated when Fridays would come.

• 1:50:39Speaker 01

  Cause back then we didn't have internet. We didn't have nothing. You know, I was just like, you know, with a, you know, tape recorder at home. I mean, Fridays would come, I would be depressed. Everybody else is skipping to the parking lot. I'm like, I wish it was Monday.

• 1:50:53Speaker 01

  Cause they have so much to do.

• 1:50:54Jack Selby?

  Yeah. Who is the most famous person in your phone that if you were to call them, they would pick up?

• 1:51:00Speaker 01

  Bill Clinton.

• 1:51:02Jack Selby?

  And how, how is that? Like to have such a powerful network? One thing I, I noticed in doing my research of you is that you remain very warm to people. In every, and probably because they want to remain warm to you as well, which it does, I, I don't know if that turns out to their benefit, but. It seems like you remain very warm to everybody and I'm curious, like how, have you strategized this? Was this by plan?

• 1:51:28Speaker 01

  No, I think what happened for me is I'm Irish and I love people. So being warm is like, it's who I am. I love people. I, I, I'm a connector.

• 1:51:38Jack Selby?

  I wonder how the average viewer can use this, what you've done to their own benefit. Like how, you've built a good network.

• 1:51:46Graham Stephan?

  They learn from what you've done.

• 1:51:47Speaker 01

  Bill Clinton told me something one time that I think they can learn because I learned from him. I said, what's your secret, President Clinton? He said, here's what I do. Everybody that I meet, I treat them like this. There's an election tomorrow.

• 1:52:05Speaker 01

  And they're voting.

• 1:52:09Speaker 01

  And I'm on the ballot.

• 1:52:12Speaker 01

  And I treat everybody just like that, even when I'm not running. And he said, I call it one at a time. And that's what I do. Everybody I meet.

• 1:52:23Speaker 01

  I'm running off for office, they're voting and the election's tomorrow, one at a time. It's not mine, it's Bill Clinton's.

• 1:52:30Jack Selby?

  And has this served you very well? A lot of people say your network is your network.

• 1:52:34Speaker 01

  It's made me. That's my talent. I'm not, I'm not smart, I'm not academically smart.

• 1:52:41Jack Selby?

  I don't believe that.

• 1:52:42Speaker 01

  It's true, but I'm very, very smart, smart. I'm very street smart. I have x-ray vision. I can smell.

• 1:52:52Speaker 01

  And so, look, I'm not good at standardized tests.

• 1:52:59Speaker 01

  Thank God my wife is, so the, kind of she balanced us out with the kids, we got smart, but I'm very, very street smart and I'm very, my social IQ is off the charts.

• 1:53:09Jack Selby?

  So I believe those. When you said you're not very smart, I thought for a second.

• 1:53:12Speaker 01

  There's different smart. Here's, here's how smart I am. I'm smart enough to know what I'm not smart at. And smart enough to go find people who are smart at what I'm not smart at. The most dangerous person is the person who thinks they're smart, but aren't smart. I know what I'm not smart at. I know that. But I know what I'm very smart at.

• 1:53:38Jack Selby?

  So if you have x-ray vision for people, I would love to know what you think Graham and I can improve on. What do you read from us?

• 1:53:46Speaker 01

  Well, you, you, you're tort reformers. And you're misinformed about your information. You're getting third party stuff. You're, you're business people. So plaintiff's lawyers are not your favorite people. You think the, the system could be rigged against you because of, you know, greedy.

• 1:54:07Speaker 01

  But the thing you're good at is you're relentless. You're tenacious. No means yes.

• 1:54:16Speaker 01

  No's gotta mean yes. If no means no, you're.

• 1:54:21Speaker 01

  And I don't think you two take no for an answer and you're both smart.

• 1:54:26Speaker 01

  And, but you tend to be conservative, I think.

• 1:54:30Jack Selby?

  I agree with that. I don't know if I would agree that I'm a tort reformer per se.

• 1:54:34Speaker 01

  Well, I'm not, I'm not, I don't know. I'm just, it's like trying to guess your weight.

• 1:54:38Jack Selby?

  Right. This is, this is just what I've heard and we know people closely that are in the industry on both ends.

• 1:54:43Graham Stephan?

  Oh, I know, but we may have dealt with some stuff.

• 1:54:45Speaker 01

  But you, you're hearing lies or not lies, but just, it's not true.

• 1:54:53Speaker 01

  Look, they say there's an insurance crisis and we need tort reform. They got it in Florida and then the next, the next day State Farm issued $5 billion to their. To their stakeholders. It's all a lie. Insurance companies are liars.

• 1:55:07Graham Stephan?

  I do agree with you that even if we were to change this, I don't think the insurance companies would ever say, oh wow, we just saved all this money. Let's lower policies. I don't think that's ever gonna happen.

• 1:55:17Speaker 01

  That's why I told you, as I get this broadcast, what, what tort reform, when I tie it to, is I've been in this business for a long time. I've never had one tort reform where the rates got rolled back. They were promised to be rolled back.

• 1:55:29Graham Stephan?

  I would agree with you.

• 1:55:30Speaker 01

  Just the opposite happened. It went up. It's never stayed flat. It's always gone up. And the insurance companies have a great business model. If they lose money, they raise rates.

• 1:55:40Graham Stephan?

  I have one more question for you.

• 1:55:41Speaker 01

  By the way, they don't just lose money paying claims. They lose money buying real estate and buildings and, and, you know. Hedge funds and all sorts of, but when they lose money, they just raise rates and they say it's John Morgan is causing this. And the malicious envy.

• 1:55:57Graham Stephan?

  It seems like you have a great relationship with your kids and your wife. What do you attribute that to? And what's the best relationship advice that you could give for someone who's married?

• 1:56:06Speaker 01

  The best thing I say is about children is your child is one friend away from total disaster. I remember I told you, if you smell dogs, there's dogs. I've had to remove two children from my children's life along the way. It was the best thing I ever did because both those kids turned out to be exactly who I thought they were. The second thing is. You have to have rules and real consequences. You can't just pick, you gotta, you know, really do it. And then the best thing is you just gotta spend a lot of time with them.

• 1:56:38Speaker 01

  I mean, I lived in, I lived on sports fields. I lived at the beach. I lived, you know, in batting cages. I, I, you know, they were in the car with me constantly. And there's only this one window that you get. And when you get to my age and you look back at the tranches in your life, the tranche that was the best was when your, your children, the time with your children.

• 1:57:01Speaker 01

  Till you get to be about 15 in a car.

• 1:57:04Speaker 01

  But from the time they're born till they're 13, 14, 15, that is the best tranche you're ever gonna see. And the kids are, the kids are baked by the time they're five. After five, the cake is baked. You gotta spend a lot of time from the beginning till five. And then you just have to love them.

• 1:57:25Speaker 01

  But you have to have consequences and you have to be steady. I mean, one time Dan, I told this, I was on a podcast yesterday, The Breakfast Club. And the guy said, well, you, I said, well, look, because Dan was with me. After I did Morning Joe and he said, well, and he'll give me an example. I said, well, look, you know, one Christmas, Dan came home. Dan's 37, he's y'all's age. Dan came home and had Christmas break. And I said, Dan, I think you've been smoking marijuana over Christmas. He goes, no, I haven't. I said, I think you have. Well, I haven't. I said, well, well, I think you have. He goes, well, I haven't. I said, well, we're gonna find out. Cause I got a peat kit back in the bathroom by the pool room. Go pee in the cup. Oh, okay. I said, and let me tell you this, if you fail, you lose your car for the semester. If you want to admit it, you lose your car for a month.

• 1:58:10Speaker 01

  There was this moment where he's just standing there looking at me. He finally reaches in his pocket and he throws me the keys. And that was that. I drug tested the shit out of them. Cause you know, I use marijuana every day. I mean, if I don't have, I mean, I float to bed. I mean, I'm, I'm flying on a pink, pink dragon when I go to bed. But, but when they're young, that, that can fry their minds. You know, it's stoners are light. They're just real slow. And I wasn't gonna let that happen to them. And you know, I had one boy, Matt, who's, you know, a star now, but he was a surfer and surfer smoked dope. And I just drug tested the shit out of them. Mike and Kate, I didn't have to. Dan and Matt, I did.

• 1:58:54Speaker 01

  All children are not the same, but you have to have consequences. One time Matt was playing the All-Star game and I was coming upstairs and he was talking to his mother because his mother was late and I heard him scream, shut up. Shut up. He didn't know I was there. I walked in. I just slapped him down on the floor. I said, the day's over. Go, go, go take your All-Star uniform. It's over. It's over.

• 1:59:19Speaker 01

  You're not gonna tell your mother to shut up. And I called Joe Strada, the coach. I said, Joe, Mike's not gonna be there for the All-Star. John, you can't do this to the team. He's a shortstop. I said, I don't give a about the All-Star game. I give a about this kid. If you win today, we'll be there tomorrow. They won today, we win the next day.

• 1:59:37Graham Stephan?

  And what about you and your wife? How do you keep a solid relationship with your wife?

• 1:59:40Speaker 01

  Well, look, marriages are tough. One time we were interviewed and the interviewer said to my wife, have you two ever thought about divorce? And she said, yes, just never at the same time. Look, marriage is an unnatural situation. Because you got two people that have, and my wife's very smart and very strong willed. But uh,

• 2:00:01Speaker 01

  here's what you need to understand. I've seen, listen, I've seen so many people get married and get divorced and all this. I just decided, you know what?

• 2:00:11Speaker 01

  I'll have rough patches, but I'll get past those rough patches. Because I'm just gonna stay married to the crazy I know. Then marry the crazy I don't know, because all these bitches are crazy.

• 2:00:26Speaker 01

  And I'm crazy.

• 2:00:29Speaker 01

  It's, and guys, we're all crazy. I stay with the crazy I know and love.

• 2:00:34Graham Stephan?

  Thank you. This has been a pleasure. Really appreciate it. We'll link to your book. All your information down below in the description. Really appreciate your time and giving us extra time on top of it.

• 2:00:44Jack Selby?

  Thank you, everyone, for watching. We're in a rush. We gotta go.

• 2:00:46Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:47Jack Selby?

  Until next time.

• 2:00:47Speaker 05

  2.7 million is what I paid for the car.

• 2:00:50Graham Stephan?

  And what'd you sell it for?

• 2:00:51Speaker 05

  I sold it for... No.

• 2:00:55Jack Selby?

  And I will drive this car more than anyone has ever driven a car in sex.

• 2:01:01Jack Selby?

  What's the craziest thing you've seen in the car market? Where to begin?

• 2:01:07Speaker 05

  There's more money in the market than ever before.

• 2:01:09Graham Stephan?

  You believe that maybe some of it's fake.

• 2:01:12Speaker 05

  I know it is.

• 2:01:13Jack Selby?

  Anyone who's in the business know that there's some fishy stuff that happens at those auctions.

• 2:01:16Speaker 05

  I had a plan. I had an idea. I turned a $600 video camera into $10 million.

• 2:01:21Graham Stephan?

  What triggered the audit?

• 2:01:23Speaker 05

  I owe like a million dollars.

• 2:01:24Graham Stephan?

  Holy crap.

• 2:01:26Speaker 05

  I was in a dark place. It was tough. Then I just have to turn it on for the camera.

• 2:01:30Graham Stephan?

  Is marriage on the horizon?

• 2:01:33Speaker 05

  Soon.

• 2:01:34Graham Stephan?

  When are Strad kids gonna happen?

• 2:01:52Speaker 07

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