281: Ben Baller On Being An Innovator Of Culture

Ben Baller is a musician, actor, and jeweler. He founded IF and Co, which creates extravagant diamond-encrusted jewelry. Baller has attracted many client celebrities, such as Kayne West, Drake, Nas, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Snoop Dogg, Black Eyed Peas, and Mariah Carey. He even created a diamond-encrusted belt buckle for Michael Jackson. In this conversation, we discuss the wild stories from Ben's days at Priority Records and Aftermath, how he became the number one jeweler in the world, why Ben is an entrepreneur and innovator, the story behind the $10 million ring he created for a Middle Eastern Prince, and why Ben was born to talk shit. This episode is an unedited view into the life and mind of one of culture's most important people. Please be prepared for foul language and powerful ideas. =============================== TaxBit is a refund-maximizing, cryptocurrency tax software you can depend on. Visit taxbit.com/invite/pomp and receive 10% off your tax plan today by signing up for a free trial. =============================== Pomp writes a daily letter to over 45,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pomp.substack.com

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

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast. Simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Ben Baller did the chain. That's right. Ben Baller is a musician, actor, and jeweler. He founded If & Co., which creates extravagant diamond-encrusted jewelry. Baller has attracted many client celebrities such as Kanye West, Drake, Nas, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Snoop Dogg, Black Eyed Peas, and Mariah Carey. He even created a diamond-encrusted belt buckle for the late Michael Jackson. In this conversation, we discuss the wild stories from Ben's days at Priority Records and Aftermath,

• 0:43Anthony Pompliano?

  how he became the number one jeweler in the world, why Ben is an entrepreneur and innovator, the story behind the $10 million ring he created for a Middle Eastern prince, and why Ben was born to talk shit. This episode is an unedited view into the life and mind of one of culture's most important people. Please be prepared for foul language and powerful ideas. Before we get into the episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. The first is TaxBit. TaxBit automates your cryptocurrency taxes, enabling you to effortlessly track, calculate, and report your transactions. They easily connect your exchanges to securely sync your transactions and run them through TaxBit's tax engine. You can generate a completed tax form with a single click.

• 1:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Founded by tax attorneys and CPAs, TaxBit is the most trusted cryptocurrency tax solution. You can get 10% off your tax plan today with a free trial by going to taxbit.com/invite/pomp. The link's in the bio. Go click it. Taxbit.com/invite/pomp. Also, this isn't just a podcast. Every day, I wake my ass up and I write a daily letter to over 45,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. I break down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pomp.substack.com or go in the description and click the link. pomp.substack.com. It's the email you never knew you needed.

• 2:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, let's get into this episode with Ben. I hope you guys enjoy it.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Ben Baller here. Dude is ready to crush it. Thanks for doing this, man. I really appreciate it.

• 2:52Speaker 03

  Nah, man, I appreciate it, bro. I'm, I'm, it's so funny, I'm just thinking, sorry, man. You got the New York hat on, I got an LA hat on, so it's hilarious. And I didn't wear that, I wasn't one to go wear a hat, but I forgot to shave my head today, so I look kind of crazy with my Mr. Burns.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  That's why I got a hat on, because my hair is all crazy, can't get to a barber.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, man.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  Let's jump into your background. I think a lot of people know you now as Ben Baller, the jeweler. Obviously, got the songs and everything kind of, you know, really riding the top of culture. But you had a whole nother life before, before the jewelry game. Maybe let's start just like where you grew up and kind of your life coming into high school and into college.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  Well, you know what's really crazy is like, I'll give you like a forward before we get into that. It's, it's just, you know, being a big jeweler in the game and it's, and it's without an ego, you know, I'm, you know, people rank me the top three biggest jewelers in the world. I think I'm even, even higher than that in a certain way, but I mean, I won Jewel of the Year a few times, you know, where some of these people, or 99% of the people on Instagram, never been nominated, you know, and there's millions of jewelers in the world. And to be recognized for not being orthodox, you know what I'm saying, being totally unorthodox, a t-shirt, not wearing a button, not wearing a suit, you know, tattoos, whatever else.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  But one of the reasons why I never tattooed my face or my neck or my hands was because I knew I was going to meet Saudis or certain people to get in a room. Nowadays, it's not necessarily accepted, because I think You walked into, you know, a meeting with some VCs in Silicon Valley in Atherton, you know what I mean? Your face is tired. They'll be like, you know, about how much money you make, it's kind of like, all right, dude, like, you know. But going back and forth, um, it wasn't until about maybe two years ago, even after I won Jewel of the Year, that I even considered myself a jeweler. And I've been doing this for fifteen years. It is my main profession. It's my longest profession. But I always considered myself a Renaissance man because of all the, the things I've done in my life. So to go to the beginning, um, I've always had a, a love for hip hop culture.

• 5:02Speaker 03

  And, uh, you know, I'm forty seven, so when I grew up, it was sort of a taboo thing. It was exotic. It wasn't really out there like that, you know? I mean, obviously, rock and roll was, um, everything. It wasn't alternative back then. It was mod, you know, modern music. We listened to the Smiths and the Cure and things like that. Then there was like metal and ACDC, then you got the country. And like hip hop was so, so foreign, um, I just adapted. I, I mean, I, I didn't even, I like, I was born into it, you know, I, I jumped, I didn't even dive deep in. I was born in it, trying to search for it, you know? And, um, you know, now today, it's the biggest, uh, format of music there is in the world, pretty much, right? It's the most influential, it's crazy.

• 5:46Speaker 03

  So with that said, you know, I grew up with a graffiti background, breakdancing, um, DJ. Um, and you know, uh, I was just in the streets. I came from, um, a father who was a part-time minister, was a, um, he had, uh, well, he was a professor at UCLA for thirty years. And my father is very big on academics, very, very severe, super crazy traditional Korean. Have to get fucking straight A's. Um, I'm the youngest of three kids. My oldest brother, uh, to give you an idea, my brother got a fifteen eighty on his SAT score. And when he was fourteen years old and my dad put him in the hospital because he missed the one question.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  So, you know, with that said, um,

• 6:34Speaker 03

  My sister, she did pretty well as well. My brother went to a school called Phillips Academy Andover, which is a very prestigious high school. We didn't have any money going up. He had a ninety percent scholarship and um his boarding school, obviously. My sister went to Exeter. And then um, you know, my parents got divorced and it was a wrap for me. I was getting straight A's in school because I was getting my ass beat. And uh, it just wasn't for me. So around sixth grade, my parents got divorced and I just was like, I became a latchkey kid. The parents got divorced, they separated. Um, my mom could have won custody, but she's a workaholic. My mom's totally different. She was a dress contractor for most of her life. And uh, my mom's just always been a hard worker. She came from the era of when

• 7:16Speaker 03

  she could have taught a Harvard Business class from just hard work ethic and how to execute it right. Well, now it's, you know, you've got to work smarter. You know, a lot of people can work hard, right? You have to, you know, there's people who, there's Mexicans out here, Hispanics that are working insanely hard manual labor. I'm not speaking about that unless those people were able to turn it into a landscaping business or, you know, things like that. My mom, my mom just knew how to do that. She regrets putting the sewing machine in like, people like Forever Twenty One or like, you know, just people, you know, like, like she, my mom put the sewing machine in a lot of people's hands. And they became very big in, in, in the garment industry and became some billion, you know, billion dollar companies. So anyways, um, I grew up in that household and I was running the streets, DJing, just wanted to fucking listen to music and whatever else.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  And, and um, I wasn't a great student. I think I graduated high school with like a two point seven five GPA. I did get like a thirteen something on SAT after three times, which is still pretty good. And I think the basic stuff was like, you know, I think if I'd have took it one more, I would have got better. But um, I still couldn't get into any schools that I wanted to academically. And my dad was a, you know, was the head of fucking Asian Studies, you know, he's, he's, he's the head of Asian Studies at UCLA. And I couldn't even get to UCLA and pay for it, fuck a scholarship, right? So with that said, um.

• 8:36Speaker 03

  I uh, I got more serious about sports. And I love basketball. But I always felt like I was a year behind and I don't know if this, it's, it's, it's something I figured out in the last decade, which is crazy because I've been out of school for thirty years, right? And like, um, I figured out that

• 8:56Speaker 03

  when I left varsity basketball, I was like, damn, if I had one more year, I'd have done better. But you don't have that one year, you know, you gotta move on. But football, I got it immediately. Even football, I could have even did better and I kinda like slacked off. But I got a scholarship playing football at a division one school, you know, so I ended up getting into college, good school. Um, you uh, you know, you enter a different world. You're the shit, um, all state, all county, all CIF, which is like one of the best, you know, it's the conference in the, in California. Um, there's not as many schools, uh, there's not the programs that are now, you look at high school programs in Texas and their football programs look nice to the NFL stadiums, right? And they're, they're, it's serious.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  And um, you know, I get to college and there's a hundred thirteen people at camp.

• 9:45Speaker 03

  The next day, immediately, twenty people drop camp. And the thing is, remember, there's no cell phones, there's, there's payphones. The payphone, there was one and then there's another one really far away. It's like a two mile walk just to get to the entrance of this naval academy in Vallejo, California. And people just don't want to do it. And for some reason, the bay doesn't really get hot like that, but it was really hot that day. And people were quitting and everything else. And um, my first day at camp, I just noticed I talked a lot of shit. But I wasn't as good as these people. I had guys and uh, you know, that were three hundred pounds and they're right behind me, chasing me. And I'm like, Jesus Christ, the level of athleticism is a whole different level. I'm like, man, I don't know if this is gonna work. And I have the coaches telling me, hey man, gang, you better step your shit up.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  You know, and I'm thinking like, fuck, man, you know, what am I gonna do? You know, I, I, I mean, I wanted to not go to school, but I'm here now, so let me make the best of it. And it was just crazy. And then um, someone stole my cleats the first week of, of, of, of, so they're talking shit to me and everything else. And um, It was a struggle. I get to school, um, I end up playing a little bit here and there, but I realized because I wasn't a starter and I wasn't a star. There was a lot of different like, you know, um, like things where they could pull your scholarship. You know, if you're not, if you're not playing right here and there, whatever. But meanwhile, the star players never saw them in class. Never saw these guys doing anything. The homework's getting done for them. They're at least getting a 2.7, 3.0 average. They're gonna get all their shit taken care of.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  They're the booster program there with the alumni. You know, I had a guy who was pushing the gym lights. Like the lights and the things to put the stands and the basketball courts away. I mean, it would maybe take 15 minutes to push all the lights in a gym. And he was getting, you know, $50 an hour back in like 91. And I'm like, Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, I'm like still trying to whatever. So I figured that, okay, what am I gonna do here? This is an academic school. This ain't working out. So I ended up transferring over to a Division II school across the bridge of San Francisco. On top of that, they had a film school there, which was Nicholas Cage's dad, who's Francis Ford Coppola's brother, Augusto Coppola. He's the head of the dean of cinematography there. And so I said, all right, well, look, I can play basketball and football here.

• 11:54Speaker 03

  I can flourish, kind of get this going and whatever. Even still, I missed home, but it was there. That my love for the Bay Area became like very heavy. And, um, you know, uh, even though I was born and raised in LA, um, I have an apartment in San Francisco. A lot of my business is in San Francisco. And I was there way before the, the 2011, 2012 Uber and all the, the app, um, smash and before even the, the, the, the dot com shit and everything, right? And, um, I've always had a, a fond feeling for San Francisco. So that was something in the back of my head, whatever. Um, finished college. I, uh, start PA work, which is slave work.

• 12:37Speaker 03

  And then I realized, said, what the fuck does this have, what is getting coffee, building someone's house? Grabbing someone's contact lenses. What the fuck does have to do with the film industry? This is the stupidest shit in the world. Like, I don't get it. And it's just LA. And everyone's coming to LA to be an assistant or be this, this and this. And after like four or five movies, I was like, man, this shit ain't coming in. So my sister got me a job as a promoter at the world famous Roxbury nightclub, you know, night at the Roxbury, right? It was like funny. So I started working there as a promoter.

• 13:06Speaker 03

  And long story short, I hated promoting, but a lot of celebrities were there and whatever. And I was going about the wrong way, like, like I would see like Sylvester Stallone. Hey, man, hey, you know, Porter H should come out here, boom. And people like, hey, man, don't talk, are you fucking crazy? You don't talk to celebrities or whatever. And I was like, bitch, I was born and raised in L.A. I see these guys. I was just, I thought because I was part of the club, I can kind of talk to these people. Bottom line is, I kind of started still figuring my way out. Um, but my passion was DJing and music. So, uh, one night, the DJ didn't show up to the Roxbury. He was smoking crack and I had no opportunity to DJ. So I lived five blocks away from the Roxbury in a shitty ass apartment, had roaches and all kinds of stuff. The day I moved into this apartment, there was fucking epidemic needles, epidemic needles,

• 13:51Speaker 03

  um, inside the, the, the, the, the fucking cabinets. I'm like, holy shit. It was a very heavy, uh, predominant like gay area and whatever. That makes a difference. It was just a fucked up place. And I was like, you know what, dude? It's cheap. I'm very close to good shit. Boom. I go home, grab my records, come back. I do a pretty decent job. They give me the night there at a super fraction of the rate. And I'm like, fuck it, I don't care. That starts going good. Um, a buddy of mine, who was a very good friend of mine, he, uh, his dad was investing in a new restaurant. And, um, they had a restaurant that was successful. It was only soul food, like high end, five star soul food restaurant that Denzel Washington or Nixon, Debbie Allen, um, this one black socialite guy, uh, Brad Johnson, they owned it.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  They're opening a new spot called Creek Alley and Denzel was one of the main guys. They're gonna make it like, I don't know how old you are, but back in the day, Mumba was like, it was a restaurant, but it had like music, it had ambiance, you know, it was like a good thing. So I was like, hey, man, I'm ready to, you know? So I waited outside the fucking place while they're building this place. And one day, sure enough, um, there's this, uh, uh, gift, it was like a, a retail store called Forty Acres of Mules, Spike, Spike Lee's merch shop. And Denzel Washington's car was parked in front of there. So I just waited until he came out. Like I literally waited, it was hours. I just shot the shit with people in the store, blah, blah. So he gets there, I give him my fucking tape and I'm like, hey, man, uh, I know you're opening the restaurant, man. I want to give you my thing. And he's like, It's not a nightclub, like, why are you having me?

• 15:18Speaker 03

  So I was like, well, I know you like hip hop and I want to provide the music and if you don't like this tape, I'll work for free for, you know, a year. And I was working for so cheap anyway, I was doing whatever I could to survive. And, um, sure enough, you know, a week later, assistant calls me, he's like, hey, man, you got a job here. Boom. I go in there and it's like a full state of the art DJ system. It was probably the nicest DJ setup I've ever seen in a nightclub. I'm like, the fuck? And it's not a nightclub, it was a bar, Jamaican restaurant. From there, I had, um, I had met people prior, like from DJ, I met Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, a lot of rappers that were working at this nightclub. It was an all ages club. Um, the founders of the club was my best friend Nick Adler, whose father is Lou Adler,

• 16:00Speaker 03

  uh, rock and roll legend, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Cheech and Chong, um, beyond, like insane, you know, California Dreamin', Moms and the Papas, he produced that song, like insane. He was like my, you know, kind of like my illegitimate godfather. He, uh, you know, helped me tremendously with my career. So his son was my best friend, loved hip hop. Him and David Faustino, who was Bud Bundy from Married with Children, and another guy, they started this club called Ballistics and it became huge. It was at the world famous Whiskey, Whiskey to Go Go, where it's, you know, the doors, every single rock band's performed there, James Brown. And, uh, Nick Adler's dad owned the place, so we're doing this thing there. I was the DJ, I met, um, I'm trying to think of someone people would know, Will I Am,

• 16:45Speaker 03

  who's the, the, the lead rapper, the head of, uh, Black Eyed Peas. A lot of people also understand that Will, like Will I Am was the founder of Beats by Dre. He actually came with the concept and everything. Um, and he was a battle rapper, just on the stage, broke, no money, nothing. Uh, exhibit was a pretty famous rapper, was up there. There's some pretty big underground hip hop people and it, it was, it was a platform, you know? And, uh, so, you know, I get this job and, and, and, um, the first week I, I DJed there, they do the Black Oscar party there. And I'm like, holy shit. And obviously Denzel, you know, like I meet everybody, Quincy Jones, blah, blah, whatever. And then like, right after that, I'm doing the Black Grammy party. I'm like, this is fucking insane. So I meet Dre, I meet Pac, I do Jada, Jada Pinkett's birthday.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  So all these people started to gravitate towards me because I was a good DJ and I was doing these things. And one night, I'm DJing and a couple fights had broken out and people were like, oh, you know, they're like, "Hey, listen, we don't want this to be a stereotypical club where fucking fights break out and there's fucking..." They're like, "Oh, they're worried about drug dealers and all the racism against black people. We gotta keep this shit classy." Yo, man, you can't play any music after like 80 like 4. So if you want to play some fucking, you know, some Earth, Wind & Fire and some some Al Green shit like that, cool, you can't play with hip-hop. And I was like, "Fuck, man." One night, the owners of the club, they went to Vegas to go see an Oscar De La Hoya fight.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  They're flying in a private jet. So, we're watching the fight at the bar. The general manager's my boy. He was 15, 20 years older than me and I was like, "Okay, this guy don't give a fuck." He was messing with some chicks and I knew already he was about to go get his dick sucked in the fucking office. He didn't give a fuck what was going on. So, I wanted to make sure these guys were going to Vegas to be at the fight. And at the fastest, they're gonna hang out, watch the fight, maybe have a couple of drinks, and then fly back by a certain time back to LA. So, I seen Dr. Dre sitting down, ready to watch the fight. And I said, "All right, fuck this. I'm playing all hip-hop. I'm playing everything. I don't care if I get fired. This is my shot." So, I gradually go from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and then obviously now

• 18:54Speaker 03

  to the 90s, current hip-hop. I take the fights off. I take all the sports off the TV screens. And there's a big movie screen. And I put all black exploitation films, The Mac, Superfly, all the shit. And Dre's bugging. Everyone's in this place. NBA players, Lakers and stuff. And I have a guy who's my buddy. I'm like, "Hey, man, play for like 20 minutes. I'm gonna go to the bar and get a drink." So, I go down. Everyone could see me. I'm like elevated, way up in the sky. And I go down and I sit like 10 streets next to Dre. And I know that Dre would, you know... And sure enough, Dr. Dre's like, "Hey, man..." Fuck you know about that music, bro? Like, you, you, you, what are you, Chinese? What are you, like, you playing all this, like, real funk? Like, you're playing some real shit? Like, what's up? And I was like, oh, man, my brother's your age, you know?

• 19:38Speaker 03

  And, um, um, I knew a lot about Dre then, before the internet even existed. And I was like, you know, uh, I've just been a big fan of hip-hop and, uh, you know, um, this is what I'm doing and, and, uh, you know, I, I, music's my life. And so, he's drinking a long iced tea. I'll never forget this, it's crazy, right? This is 25 years ago. And, uh, he buys me a drink, and he goes, yo, man, do me a favor, man, you got a number? And I was like, back then, I had a pager. I had no cellphone, no nothing. I had a house phone, and I had a pager. And the pager was like, boom, so, get the pager number. And, uh, three days later, like, on Monday, he pages me to go to the studio and bring some records. Next thing I know, I'm working with Death Row Records. I'm DJing, scratching, doing stuff. I'm seeing Suge, and I'm seeing all this crazy stuff. I'm really starstruck at this point.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  And I've been very little, I've, I've been starstruck less than a handful of times in my life. And then, um, he tells me, he's like, hey, man, um, you know, uh, I'm in a situation here, it's kind of getting tricky. And this had been brewing up between his beef with Suge, or what's going on, and who's trying to leave after, uh, trying to leave Death Row and start his own company, because there was a lot of things. It was like, if you watched the NWA story, there was a lot of friction between, obviously, Eazy-E and NWA, they all broke up, boom. And then now's another situation. So, I didn't know what was going on, but he was like, hey, man, I got a dude you need to talk to. He's the guy that gave us our first deal, boom. Next thing I know, I meet this Jewish dude named Brian Turner, who owned Pride Records. And the craziest thing, these chicks that I was hanging out with, they were a lot older

• 21:08Speaker 03

  than me. They were five or six years older than me. You know, when you're 21 and, and trying to figure things out, 22, and the girl's 27 or 28, it's definitely, you know, it's, it's a big, especially back then. Now, it's like, ah, but we're hanging out with these chicks, and all four of them were pretty hot. One of them tells me she just started dating this guy. And um, I was like, oh, man, you know, like. Fuck that dude, you know, and I'm trying to like hook her up my boy. Somehow, some way, I connect her with the president of Party Records. Who's enormous mobile. They get together, they get serious, they get engaged, they get married, they've had kids and everything goes. So I was like, part of that. So this guy took me in. Um, I wasn't the mailroom, but I was, I was an A and R manager. So that's like.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  The, the bottom of A and R. But you still got some clout. You know? And within two years, I became vice president of Party Records. You know, we had Jay-Z, signed Jay-Z's first album deal. We had Master P, we obviously had Ice Cube and, and. Uh, a lot of things going on. Dre hits me and says, hey, man, um. I finally got my situation straight. What you want to do? I just signed. A two-year contract for a hundred thousand dollars a year for the next year to be one twenty-five. I have an expense account, I can go eat at fucking Spago's or Mr. Chow's and charge for the company. I can even buy like something nice, every, my whole life's a write-off at this point, everything's free. Um, I have flights, I have a cell phone, I manage everything, I have great benefits, I have a 401K.

• 22:39Speaker 03

  And.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Dre said he had a pretty decent infrastructure, but he even had this corporation of small companies, like, yo, what do you want to do? Now. This is the guy that gave Dre his start, pretty much. And I tell, I tell my boss and I'm like, hey, man.

• 22:55Speaker 03

  I got an offer, you know, I gotta be honest with you. And he's like. We've never had any kind of static. He's like, you, you know what kind of a punk kid you sound like right now? Like I, like, you're young as hell, you have a lot of talent, you know, you're doing well, we have big things. He goes, listen, I promise, man, stay here. Don't leave, but if you want to leave, then go ahead. I didn't respond back to what he said and he knew immediately. So he's like, yo, dude, just, just get the fuck out of here. And I felt bad, but I was so, I wanted to work with Dre, you know, he's a legendary dude. I go work with Dre. Shit does, I'm just sitting there twiddling my thumbs for three years because I think he was trying to figure out his life and everything else. But he signed Eminem, Eminem became huge.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  Finally, he drops his second album. It took six, seven years to drop an album. Back then, it's ridiculous. Like, now it's even ridiculous, but back then it was unheard of to wait that long to drop a solo album. He put out like other albums, right? But anyways, that being said, I got lost in the mix. There was no one I could really work with. We had 11 artists sign the label. None of that shit really mattered because Dre was focused on Eminem, his solo thing. So I kinda signed a couple of big producers there and whatever. Meanwhile, throughout all this that's going on, I became a pretty big nightclub DJ. When I say big, I was like, you know, if you've ever heard of a guy named Mark Ronson, he's a very big DJ, he's a very big, he's enormous now in the music business, and even more than that.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  Me and Mark were probably very comparable to each other in careers, and he was DJing at all the hype nightclubs in New York. I was DJing at the best clubs in LA. Once in a while, he'd fly to LA and guest spot. I would go to New York and guest spot as well. It was one of those things. I had a billboard in Vegas before any of these big EDC, like all these nightclubs are having, these big DJs come all over the world from Tiesto and Calvin Harris, whatever. So I had a flourishing DJ career. I had a lot of clout being head of A and R, Aftermath, but the music business just kept being too political. Like, hey man, we gonna make this record big this year. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, you're gonna spin this record here? I'm like, nah, fuck this chick. Like, what are you talking about? I'm about to play this. But no.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  And it got political even in the clubs where it was hard for me to say no to play a record for two minutes, you know? And then I started to understand what payola was and things like that and bribes. And I was like, yo man, I've let myself get so infiltrated and so, my mind got so polluted and so corrupt with just, so pretty much, I wasn't playing what I wanted to play anymore. And I wasn't even playing for the people anymore. I was like doing things. And I just started to hate the music business. DJing was like, alright, the only last thing left. I leave Aftermath. I'm still DJing.

• 25:34Speaker 03

  This is the part that gets tricky.

• 25:37Speaker 03

  I start selling drugs. And uh, no cocaine, I know it sounds weird, right? I just, I wasn't dealing with the, because the sentences were different. You know, you get busted for weed, you know, like if you're selling a million pounds, you might get ten years, which is insane amount of time. But you know, you sell, you know, a fucking ounce of coke, man, you're going to jail for thirty years, you know, so it's different. So anyways, going on, I started selling weed and it was profitable. It was, it was very well, I was doing it very low key. And I was doing a certain amount and I was running damn near fucking, you know, crazy weed shit, having vacuum sealers, shipping packages, had drivers going to interstate and everything else, I was doing that while DJing. And with that, it was affording me not to DJ four or five nights a week, I could DJ one to twice.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Only the biggest premier hot clubs were Paris Hilton, Supermodels would be up at, fucking Kobe, you name it. And I'd pull up to the nightclub in a Porsche. And a Porsche is small, it has, you know, a trunk in the front and I would bring like one and a half crates. I had an assistant that came out and I just started getting crazy, whatever. But um, throughout that time, I never invested anything, all my money was cash. So with that, um, besides buying like stupid shit like Louis Vuitton or Gucci and things like that, I was buying sneakers, an enormous amount of sneakers. Um, when I got to like a hundred, two hundred pairs, I was like, holy shit, I don't have space for this. So I moved into a three bedroom apartment in the valley, in San Fernando Valley, in Sherman Oaks, California.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  And um, you know, people were like, why you got a three bedroom, you know, why don't you buy a house and this, I couldn't. Because I wasn't, you know, well, not going to incriminate myself on here, but you know, basically, um, I uh, just said, hey man, I'm gonna sell sneakers on the side, right? While I'm doing this, this and this. Now meanwhile, you know, drug money's cool, I wasn't like, you know, a cartel person, so like I was making good money, but it wasn't ridiculous to the point where it was any retirement shit or anything. And I knew that this was a very short-lived career, until you get arrested, whatever. So I was just buying sneakers and I was stocking up on anything rare and it was just something that I had a hobby with. I was buying them 2001, 2002.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  In 2002 Nike had hit me up because I'd been on the early, very early sneaker message forums. There was only two. One of them was very big. It was called Nike Talk. And it was no affiliation to Nike, but it was just a Nike fan site. And this, this thing produced a lot of enormous people. Kanye West was on there. Just a lot of rappers, a lot, a lot, a lot of big streetwear people. And we would do buying trades and sells and there was like, it was like the first social media. Like we would post, what did you wear today? Oh, what, what shoes are you wearing? You know, boom. And sneaker values were going up and up and up. And we started realizing this is like baseball cards, but on a whole different level. So around 2003, late 2003, I have about 1800 personal pairs of sneakers. 1,800.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  People who have 500 pairs today are considered like insane sneaker collectors, right? I remember at 500, my mom said, you know, when you had a couple, I was like, hey, you know, 100 pairs of shoes is a lot, you know. You know, maybe something's wrong with you. You know, maybe you should go see someone to see, you know. To, to, um. You know, consult if maybe mentally you're okay. Maybe something's wrong with your brain. Then it got to 500 and she's like, hey man, you know. Something maybe is really wrong with you. And at a point she didn't understand it was a business and I didn't understand it was a business. I was bartering. I was selling things. But I was buying shit just to support my habit. If I didn't like a pair of shoes, I was buying three pairs and people couldn't get one. I just had built these connections throughout Tokyo. Um, London, New York, Philly.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  Um, some parts of Atlanta, Baltimore, and I was doing all this shit. And, um, you know, working with Nike, doing marketing campaigns with them. I have a fallout with Nike, the same way I do with the music business. It became very political. Very, um, and I don't care. Listen, at this point I'll, I'll speak freely. I heard the gap is run or was run very like, not like Scientology, but it was very run like very strict, like a weird thing. We don't do this, this. I started noticing that, like I was wearing a polo one day and I get an email like, hey. Uh, yeah, we make polos at Nike, so you can't wear a polo into the store. It's considered competition. We do parties at this house, it was an energy house, and she's like, "Yeah, we saw that you put a flyer on Nike Talk, you said, 'parties.'"

• 29:52Speaker 03

  "We don't do parties at Nike, we do events." And I was like, "Alright, here we go, trying to influence the narrative and what I could say and how language is..." And I was like, "I saw people doing that, and I was like, 'You know, man, I'm too free, man. I'm like, I can't do this shit.'" So, I'm excited, I'm about to release my first sneaker collaboration with Nike in '04, started in '03. And again, certain things I can say, the language, and I was like, "Yo, man, you know what, man, I was fed up at this point." I stopped, um, um, selling, uh, selling weed around '02, and I had saved up money here and there, I was like, "You know, man, fuck this." I also spent a lot of money on just stupid shit, a lot of meals, everything.

• 30:34Speaker 03

  In 2004, I finally said, "You know what, fuck Nike." I went on my website, which was a very big sneaker website called benball.com, and I had no page. You couldn't buy shoes, you couldn't look at shoes, it was just a one-page front, it said, "Fuck Nike," in Arial block letters, very big. And when I looked at the IP addresses, because you could search, you know, who's with your page, there are so many from Portland, Oregon, like Beaverton, Oregon, Portland, Oregon, I'm like, "Oh shit." And then I get this message, "Hey Ben, we just want to let you know that, you know, we're not, we're not gonna cut relationships with you, we don't wanna talk to you." And I was like, "Bitch, I'm gonna give a fuck, fuck you." But, at that point, she was even telling the owners of very big sneaker stores, like, that they were the business, and, "Hey, if you let Ben in your store..." And of course, it's allegedly, "Bitch, I know." They're saying, "If you let Ben in your store, we're gonna have to pull your Nike account."

• 31:20Speaker 03

  So they're trying to blackball me from these stores, I was like, "Okay, alright." So I gathered my sneaker collection, I started selling off small parts here and there, some of the bigger, like, more generally shoes that were like, two, three hundred bucks, whatever. I started moving them to Yokohama, Tokyo, Japan. And, um, I decided to put an auction up, and it had to be two different auctions. The auctions hit, hit every message forum, it hit message forums that weren't even like, like, sneaker-related. And the auctions started growing on eBay, like, "Oh shit, here we go," I was like, "Oh, we knew." And it was like, I started, and I truly did, because it never happened before, I started what is now called the reseller game, Gordon Gekko-style.

• 32:04Speaker 03

  Both auctions end at just under two point nine million dollars. Now I've become a millionaire for the first time in my life. By accident. Which I say it's not by accident, but I mean, I didn't intentionally do that, but still at the end of the day, you know. Uh, from that point forward, I knew everything I've been doing in life meant something. And so, you know, I went and bought a Ferrari. The immediate data check cleared, you know, I went to that, I went to fucking do a bunch of silly shit. I'd go to restaurants and order six drinks, I'd have an iced tea, orange juice, a Sprite Coke. Uh, alcoholic beverage and other shit, when I buy appetizers, you know, I finish what I can and I was never that guy. Um. And then, uh, you know, um, my fiance at the time, she was a supermodel.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  And, uh, she was like, she was the one who watched the bread winner in our house and she was like, hey, man. Um, I gotta be honest with you, you know, I don't know who the fuck you are, one. Um. You've turned into a total douchebag. And, uh, this just isn't working out. And I was like, fuck, man. And I was like.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  I'll find another girl. I ain't tripping, you know, blah, blah, whatever. She leaves. Um, I fucked up, by the way, I got caught cheating on the girl. She never caught me. She knew though that was what was going on. Women have a great intuition. And, uh, I started my, I just started seeing my life kind of spiral like down and I was like, fuck, man. I got depressed. I actually went to go see a therapist for the first time in my life. Um, I was smoking way more weed than usual. I was drinking. I was even taking pills. I was being just a little reckless. And I said, hey, man, you know what? I need to fucking. Get some culture. I need to get a passport and see the world and do something I've never did and I want to do, boom. So. I travel. I think I had about twenty countries. In a six month span. And I'm trying to figure out what the fuck I'm gonna do next.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  And I couldn't figure it out for the life of me. I thought about opening up a business. I was gonna open a barber shop that was like, you go there, buy some dope white tees. You can buy some other cool clothes, some trinkets, all the cool shit that hip hop people like, boom, come out of town, there it is. And I was like, yo, man, this ain't it. I know I hate, I was not gonna ever work in food, cause I worked at Burger King when I was in high school. I worked at Subway. I hate any kind of, uh, food business is just a nightmare. I'm the one who wanna invest in a restaurant. I don't care how successful, just. That shit just brought back bad memories of being like. A slave and busboy and, and, and drive through it. I was just like, no, fuck this, even on a nicer little restaurant. So. I came back, I had a mentor at the time, Mr. Cartoon, who's a world famous tattoo artist.

• 34:33Speaker 03

  And he gave me a lot of good advice, you know, and I hit up my cousin who had been doing jewelry for a long time. His dad, my uncle, had been a jeweler. They're in a pretty seedy part of South Central LA, in the hood, in the ghetto. And I go sit down, just drive and take a drive to his shop and it's like, you know, it's the hood. I go there once in a while to get white tees and socks and just, sometimes I used to get sneakers down there and like, you know, this is after the riots, obviously, way after, it's 2004. And I see my cousin has a Corvette. And that was like a nice car, you know, he had a Corvette. I have a Ferrari, but at the same time, I also have a Rolls Royce, it was weird. And I didn't want to go to Slauson, to South Central, in the Rolls Royce, so, you know. I borrow my friend's BMW, I drive down there and I see my cousin's car.

• 35:18Speaker 03

  And it knows his car, and it had an iridescent paint job. So it was like, green, pink, it was chameleons, I was like, dude. This is the biggest douchebag who drives this car, I know it's my cousin's car. He tells me he's doing very lucrative business, it's very good, you know, blah blah. Considerate, and he had proposed this to me in 97, when I got in the music business, to like, bring Bone Thugs in Harmony, bring, you know, Dr. Dre, anybody, bring some celebrities here, so we can get this business going. So we agree the Korean way, which is just a handshake, and I said, hey, listen, we gotta at least start an LLC. Our parents have not spoke to each other, because they fuck each other over in business, and they didn't do things the right way. Let's at, at least have some paperwork. You know, handshake was one thing, so, you know, we started LLC, I said, hey, there's some conditions.

• 36:02Speaker 03

  Let's start this business, boom. Next thing you know, I have an insane Rolodex from the music business. And being out in the nightclubs and, you know, whatever, and, you know. I worked with Travis Barker, I worked with Mariah Carey, I worked with The Clips, Pusha T, and these guys, legendary hip hop group. And things start to take off. My mentor and idol in the games, a guy named Jacob the Jeweler, Jacob Araba, Jacob and Co. And Jacob went to jail for money laundering. And um, when he went to jail, no one wanted to talk to him. So I had to get in with Diddy and these other big celebrities. And so now everyone, this guy had killed us, making millions upon millions. They all started shifting slowly my way.

• 36:46Speaker 03

  But it also opened for other New York dealers to flourish as well. But that's where it started. And then, you know, I just went in increments. Um, oh nine, the recession hit. And I realized, I was like, wow. I've never seen nothing like it. My parents have never seen a recession like that in their lives. Oh nine, it's getting really bad. And I said, all right, I need to figure something out because I'm about to quit jewelry. This is ridiculous. So I had some of the name, people on MySpace knew me, I was popular enough. Um, and uh, I started creating jewelry that wasn't twenty five, fifty, sixty thousand dollars. And I started making jewelry that was a thousand to two thousand. I mean, three thousand max. I started making these pieces and it was a little more, it was kind of like the style to wear like little classy diamond chains.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  Just be, you know, keep it like Major League Baseball, oh, keep it, you know, hip hop. And um, that did pretty well. I met my wife in oh nine and, and um, you know, we got together and she became like a good luck charm for me. And things started turning around. And even parts two thousand and ten, people were doing bad. I started to do really well, like in February. And next thing you know, I just take my marketing, never had, I've never had a real agent at anything else. You know, I get a small reality show later on, on Fuse Network. They dumb the shows down, put them on Google, which is YouTube. And you know, just each year, I just took it to a little level. And then, you know, I can't tell you how many rappers have said my name in a song. And then, you know, there's hit songs, things like that. And then I uh, I incorporated my, my side brand, Ben Baller, into chain.

• 38:13Speaker 03

  And you know, I just had, I had money coming in from different directions, from, from streetwear, jewelry, from appearances. And I finally, like, it took so long to like, I didn't know I was, I'm represented by WME. I had CIA before that. That's theatrical and they tried to get in the business. They never understand the influencer uh, marketing or thing. They're getting it now, but one, I hate that word influencer. I fucking can't stand that word because I have too much talent and there's too much that I do for me to be called that. So. I finally just recently got with a real big agency and they've taken it to a whole different level like partnerships with Snickers, with Moet Hennessy, K-Swiss, Puma, Nike, you know, just a bunch of things. And I'm starting to get things. And even though I'm

• 38:57Speaker 03

  not for everyone, I'm a very brash, I have a very foul mouth, I, you know, I, I'm very outspoken, you know, I'm not for every company, you know, but, but we started to find the companies that could look past that. And I've been okay, I just obviously can't say fuck Trump and things like that, like so freely, I don't talk about religion and things like that. But that's where we are today, and you know, in a gist.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. So let's go back to the aftermath days. I think a lot of people just like, that's a time of hip hop where everyone was like, man, that was the golden era was when all that was going on. What is like the number one memory you have of working there with Dre and kind of all the work that they were doing?

• 39:39Speaker 03

  The number one memory was I had an ego out of control. I've never changed. I think my mom has said this last year, she said, you've never changed. If anything, you've polished some areas, you know, you always had confidence and money never changed you, it enhanced, you know, certain things about you. But that period of your life, you were definitely a piece of shit. My mom's saying this, right? She was very proud of me, but at the same time, like, you know, like this was embarrassing because, you know, Koreans, you know, they want you to be a doctor, lawyer, blah, blah. I'm like, look, man, that's like, that's the worst job to be in now. I mean, not, I mean, my attorney and my doctor are

• 40:19Speaker 03

  great people, but, um, ego out of control. I'm making a hundred fifty thousand dollars a year. And, um, the, I'm starting to see checks. Like, I wasn't getting this fifty five hundred dollar a month paycheck. That's, you know, after taxes and everything else, blah, blah, whatever, you know, you get your paychecks and things. I was getting bonuses and points and things like that, you know. And I remember Dre wrote me a really big check. I've never had a check like, I've never had a six-figure check in my entire life. And he pulls me to the side. And he says, hey, man. Making a million dollars is easy. Keeping it is not. And I was like, what are you talking about, man? You know, I'll make a million.

• 41:04Speaker 03

  I thought a million, even then, I'm twenty four. I thought, once you become a millionaire, you stay a millionaire. You know, I didn't know, you know, you know, why would I know? So pulls me aside. And he bought everyone an Expedition. This was like the hottest, this was the hottest SUV out. And there wasn't a ton of people, but he bought like, you know, the eight guys, uh, Expeditions. And he bought like three or four girls, Explorers that worked in the company. And I was like, you know, dope. And everyone got their checks. A lot of these guys were making more money because they had points with their producers and their artists and stuff. But, you know, he pulls me to the side. He goes, what are you gonna do with the money? And I'm like, why are you asking me? That's fucked up. Did you have, did you ask them? Did you ask Butter? Did you ask Mel? Did you ask Chris? Like, you know, why, why, why you fucking with me?

• 41:48Speaker 03

  And he goes, you're my Asian man, you know, and I think you have more potential, you know, like, what are you gonna do? I'm like, I don't know, man. You know, I mean, I've never had money before. You know what I'm gonna do? You're like, I want to get a Versace shirt. He goes, okay, get a, get a Versace shirt. What are you gonna do? And I was, I don't know, man. Why, why, why you? He goes, because, man, look at, man. Don't be an N word. And I was like, what? And I was like, man, okay, whatever. You know, I was, I really wasn't paying attention. I was focused on going to the BMW dealership. Century West BMW, it was in the back of my mind. I just had to go. And he was like, man, listen, man. Just be smart. And I was like, okay, fine. I go straight to Century West BMW. I go buy an M three.

• 42:33Speaker 03

  Left there, I was there an hour and a half to a paper blow. I left there. I go to this play called JR's Jewellers in Sherman Oaks. And I buy a Rolex with diamonds in it. I come back to the studio because the studio, our, our hours are different. Dre worked till three, four in the morning, two AM. You know, so I go back to Aftermath Studios and I pull up in the car and everything else, blah, blah. I don't say anything because I don't want Dre to be mad, right? The dude who runs the studio is also Dre's like right hand man. He tells him what's going on. Hey man, this one here, this, this, this. And we have a ton of security because you can't just go in there. We had ID cards and everything. So it starts going around the studio. Hey man, Ben Baller, yo man, Ben Yang, yo Ben, Ben Yang and Ben Baller, man, yo. He bought this pink Tandy Dosh, he got chrome wheels, man, just blah blah. Oh man, this motherfucker, man, he went out there and did this.

• 43:17Speaker 03

  And so, from what I heard, Dre got up, like literally out of his seat. They said he got up, it was like a beat is just being made, like he's making a beat. Like he's like, you know, like halfway into making a, a song, stops it, walks out of Studio B, walks into the kitchen, I'm making this roast beef sandwich with all this extra mayo, cinnamon, blah, blah. I'm back to the record, he goes, oh, you having a nice sandwich? I'm like, yeah, I was like, oh, what's up, Dre? I was like, DR, man, what's up, man? And he goes, so what's up, man? Uh, what'd you do today?

• 43:52Speaker 03

  And I was like, oh, man, you know, um, I was like, I never had a Rolex before, you know? So like, you know, boom, and he goes, oh, that's a nice watch, man. It's a nice watch, man. You didn't buy anything else? And I was like, well, I mean, yeah, I bought a couple of things. He's like, oh, you get a Versace shirt? I was like, nah, nah, I'll get one this week. He goes, nah, you don't need to get one this week. I was like, why? Because that's your motherfucking black BMW out there on chrome wheels and everything else. And I was like, man, I, I, I, I wanted a nice car. And he goes, you have a nice car. You know, you got a Lexus and you have an Expedition. And most people at your age don't even have two cars, let alone you have a third car. I was like, well, I'm selling the Lexus. And he goes, and he didn't speak to me for almost a month. That was probably my most memorable moment, one of the most memorable moments.

• 44:36Speaker 03

  And he was just disgusted with me. Now, the funny thing was, all that money went. So when I left, after that, I had no money. I was broke. I spent everything.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  It's cra- it, it's crazy how, uh, he, he saw it coming, right? But, uh, but you gotta kind of learn lessons for yourself. Um, and then I'm the-

• 44:54Speaker 03

  I learned a lesson, by the way. I think I needed that kick in the ass.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, that's what happens, right? And then on the Nike Talk forums, you were wild, man. I had a lot of people telling me when I said I was gonna do this, they're like, "Yo, you gotta talk to me about the Nike Talk forums." He was going wild on there.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  You know, um, there's moderators and admin on these, I don't know how, how, I don't think any other message forum was this crazy. Even like, I've been part of car message forums, Ferrari forums, everything was ever. There's people here and there, and people have jokes or whatever. This was like, a real legitimate forum back in the day, and um, I was like, not the first, because I didn't know if you could get banned, but I got banned like, two or three times immediately. And then I became one of the most banned people on that site. Then they IP banned me, where I had to go change internet providers to go watch the site, you know, and start to create name, whatever. It was crazy, so, um, I started to play nice, I started realizing, because I would talk shit.

• 45:52Speaker 03

  I would literally, this is the thing, I grew up in the streets where we talked shit to each other. No one's gonna go call the police, or call the Me Too movement, or whatever, blah, blah, and okay. Are some of the words wrong? Yeah, okay, I get it. Bagging on somebody? Look, man, the shaming thing is just so fucking ridiculous. Now, someone's like, "Oh, man, you're fat, you're old, you're washed up." "I'm going to come and retaliate back and kill you again." "You ain't gonna get a shot in my w-" That's what we did, we talked shit to each other all day long. Now, it's like, "Hey, man, did you really just fat shame that person?" Man, shut the fuck up, bro, listen. I'm not with that pussy shit, man. Everyone's so sensitive today and everything else, but, you know, I mean, it was just a different thing, I would talk crazy, and so, um,

• 46:39Speaker 03

  I helped a lot of people on that site, though. And, uh, one day, I went, uh, this was during the time, was like, one of the most famous things was, I found out that these Nike skateboard shoes that called SB Dunks were gonna come out. And I found out early, so I did a trip all the way from Oregon down to San Diego, the entire West Coast, and I cleared out forty percent of the SB stock. I put all of them in storage and didn't even look at them. I think I let like, forty pairs go for like, a lot of good friends, sold at retail, whatever, blah, blah. I put them away, and I forgot them, I forgot they even existed. You have to understand, I've never been a type of person to save money, I've never been a save person, whatever. This was like, I was like, "You know what? These gonna blow something." I just had, I just had a hunch. I didn't have like, this IPO thing where you're like, "Oh, it's, you know,"

• 47:23Speaker 03

  but I had a hunch, in an IPO sense, like, "This is gonna fucking blow up." Let me let, and sure enough, there wasn't enough supply to go around, it wasn't a big release. And it wasn't a big release on purpose, it was just, I mean, like they did that on purpose, like, oh, it's limited edition. They just, it was a skateboard marketed shoe, they didn't know if it was gonna do well or not. And hear me, I, I, I, you know, again, Gordon Gekko mentality, I cleared the shit out. So when I did that, I posted a big picture in my living room with all the shoes lined up. And I said, yo, you guys keep posting your collections, right? What about the stockroom pics, fam? I created a term called stockroom pics. It became a rule on Nike Talk, one of the new rules, because anyone posting stockroom pics will be banned from this site, blah, blah.

• 48:07Speaker 03

  Because it didn't do anything but it promoted it back, you know what I mean? Now, you're not collecting anymore, now you're reselling, even though I was a collector. You're looked upon, now I'm taking other people's who wanna get shoes. And I'm selling to them for four or five times the price, and it just fucks up the game. This is the early part, now there's StockX, there's, there's Coke, there's Stadium Business. Like, there's so many different websites you can buy shoes from, and there's so many retailer stores. So anyways, I found this out early, so the stockroom pics pissed everybody off. Then, for all the people that were banned, like, for real, for real, and they couldn't get a new IP address. They created Hood Talk, which was the Nike Talk hater page.

• 48:46Speaker 03

  It was called Hater Talk at first, but somehow, somewhere, we violated a bunch of rules, so they, they, they got the website, the forum banned. And then it became Hood Talk, and it was basically, there were forums in there, general forum, boom. Then, name all the moderators and admins you think are haters, and they would Photoshop pictures of them. Post their addresses, fuck these people ever, then they had shit where, could obviously post porn in Nike Talk, but like, there was a porn section. Then there was joke section, then there was this, then there was a section where all you do is roast each other. Like, aw, man, you love this shitty ass mustache, yo, pop, you're still wearing the fucking wired, what's all with the AirPods? Why you got that cheap ass hat, that's a 47, that ain't even real new era, like, it was just bag sessions going on.

• 49:26Speaker 03

  And it was so much xenophobia, racism, every possible homo, it's just crazy. People were just going loose on there. And they're like, yo, man, Ben's really active on this thing, and it was just, I was like, you guys are snitches. I just talked so much shit on there. I don't think I ever even grew up, I never even, like, matured, I just acted like, throughout the entire time. And then at a certain point, I became really popular on the page and people were just like, yo, people would call me out like, oh, man, you're doing shit with your life, blah, blah, whatever. When I got my first place, I bought, I posted pictures of it, posted pictures of my cars, things like that. And so I was like just flexing on there heavy and people hated it. But some people were like, hey, man, you know what?

• 50:11Speaker 03

  He did it himself. You know, he made the money himself. He didn't come from a rich family. Every young guys have these, and even still, this guy bought a bunch of shoes, sold them and, and, and, you know, he hustled. Some guys that are still doing, there's, there's one guy who's sitting on shit, you know, five, six million dollars in shoes. And part of me is like, yo, bro, like, amazing you stuck it out, but what a fucking nightmare, dog. Sell, sell your shit, dude. Do something different with your life, bro. Like, what, like, that's all he has though, you know, like with me, I was like, nah, bro, something's better than this.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I think part of it is, uh, when it comes to all the shit talk, I grew up in a family with five boys. So that's basically the way we communicated, right? You could never walk in the room and say, hey, man, I like your clothes, right? It's gotta be, hey, man, your shirt looks stupid, right? And that meant that you actually-

• 50:57Speaker 03

  And you're Italian, right?

• 50:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 51:00Speaker 03

  You guys are fucking kings of talking shit, like, you know?

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and, uh, look, I'm real close to all my brothers and still to this day, right? You answer the phone and it's like, what's up loser?

• 51:12Speaker 02

  So, so I, I hear you on that. Uh, I, I think part of what's so, uh, compelling about your story though, right? Is everyone tries to put labels on it. Oh, he was a DJ. He did, you know, the shoes, uh, he's a jeweler, all stuff. But at the end of the day, like your entire story, every stop along the ways, you're just an entrepreneur, right? It was just constantly pursuing, how do I do something that creates value and leads to revenue or, uh, or income? Now you're good. Um, and, and so maybe talk a little bit about just like, at what point did you realize like, I'm actually conducting business here, right? I'm actually an entrepreneur. It's not just me with like a bunch of side hustles. Like there, there's a structure to this and I can do this in any industry, right?

• 51:54Speaker 02

  Whether it's DJing, whether it's with shoes, whether it's with jewelry, like it's the same thing over and over again, just in different industries and creating value.

• 52:02Speaker 03

  So what happened was I never worked in anything I didn't actually have an interest in.

• 52:09Speaker 03

  People have a hard time becoming successful in one career, like you said, right? I had a successful, I was successful in three careers, okay? And one of those careers being two side careers, you know?

• 52:22Speaker 03

  This is how it goes. I never had a wealth manager or a CPA to advise me on how to incorporate myself. And once I learned how to incorporate myself and do things like that, I was like, oh my god. Fucking somebody tell me this a long time ago, like I just fucked off, you know, like, one, it would save me enormous amount of money on taxes and whatever, and things like that, but um,

• 52:48Speaker 03

  from music early on, I saw where I missed opportunities to make money. I could have sold mixtapes here, boom. What if I sold 5,000 mixtapes? Well, it cost me nothing but my labor and some basic cost, boom, okay. There's also the cost to buy cassettes, da-da-da, and these are no mixtapes. But now there's like some bullshit. We're talking about real mixtapes that were like, you know, like, they were blended through, there was this and that, then people elevated it, and then all of a sudden they call it mixtape, it's part of a record label, and it's like, not a mixtape. It's like, songs, it was just different. So anyways, going on, I realized the missed opportunities I had as a record executive. When I became a solo DJ, I started to understand, alright, how important it is to market myself.

• 53:32Speaker 03

  So, if you remember that movie American Pie, is that what it was called? I forgot what the dude's name was, but he told that one chick, Natasha Lyonne, I think, to tell everybody he had a really big penis or something, right? And it was like a boom, and it was like a rumor went around, and like, in a way, I was telling people, oh, you know, man, yeah, you know, I'm getting paid like 500, 600 dollars a night. 500 was definitely, was Mark Ronson, nobody was getting paid that much in a nightclub back then in the 90s. And like, I was telling people, yeah, man, you know, it's crazy, man, I'm going to Paris next week to go DJ this, this, and this. And I was making up these stories, but I was doing it because I had no other way to promote myself. And people are like, yo, what? And it wasn't like, it's Instagram, like, oh, where's the pictures at? There's no fucking cameras back then, like, they barely had the disposable cameras back then, but no one had,

• 54:17Speaker 03

  no one really cared, you know, you had like, guys who had real professional photos, but it was like, no, it wasn't that common to have, to take pictures of your, of your, I mean, sometimes, yeah, but me, it just wasn't. I know I'm Asian, people are like, oh, the cameras, that was a big joke back in the 80s, you know, 90s and 70s. You know, Japanese people always have cameras around, anyway, I didn't have one. So I started marketing and I developed this folklore of Ben Baller being bigger than he was. It landed me a job in Vegas at the Hard Rock Hotel Casino. I ended up getting a billboard there. That started, you know, started doing, and I started taking out ads in newspapers. The LA Weekly and Spotify, that's like, hey, boom, you know, Ben Baller's doing this this week. Boom, be at Dragonfly, gonna be here. And um, I started to realize that was good.

• 55:02Speaker 03

  Then the sneaker thing was part of my DJ, because I was DJing, I was selling weed. The weed money, that was cash, was going into sneakers. The sneakers, when they got sold or whatever they did, I've washed the cash at that point. They weren't checking shit like that back in the day. Ebay wasn't even fucking charging you a fee. PayPal didn't charge nothing. Now PayPal's making sure the taxes are done, you know what I mean? Like, they're, they're hitting you. They're recording everything. It wasn't like that back then. You know, even on Ebay, Ebay had a feature where you were able to look, let's say for instance, I'm like, I wanna see what Pop is buying today. Oh shit, Pop bought some KY Jelly, he bought two pairs of Nikes. Specific things, I could see everything you bought. I could see the things you were even watching. It was crazy, it was super, you know, like invasive of your privacy.

• 55:47Speaker 03

  But I was able to like, you know, just, I understood like, alright, I got this little thing here. Okay, let's make some t-shirts. And I'm gonna say they're limited edition. I only made a hundred. Nobody fucking knew I made five hundred, whatever it was. And we did it and they sold out. And so that was another hustle. And then I created a crew, um, Air Max Crew. There's this sneaker called the Air Max. But then there's the term Mac, which is sort of like a pimp, M I C K. So I called ourselves the Air Max Crew. So we were like the Nike pimp crew, right? It was me, this guy named DJ Homicide, who's very famous, he was in a group called Sugar Ray, an enormous rock band, pop band. Um, and then DJ M, rest in peace, who was my boy.

• 56:31Speaker 03

  And uh, we had an honorary member who, no one even knows this, his name's Demaney. He owned Flight Club. He started Flight Club, but this time it was called Vintage Kicks. You know, he sold his company for sixty million dollars, it's a lot of money, you know? So we had this crew. I was doing appearances, I was able to market myself without a manager. I had an email address that was my acting manager. No one ever met this person, he's like Charlie from fucking Charlie's Angels, right? And um, I was just able to, to, to, you know, keep elevating myself. But as basketball happened, I told you, I wish I had another year, wish I had another year. This where I'm at, you know, I wasn't a rapper or certain things were like, you know, after you turn thirty, you're like washed up, can't wanna hear your music anymore like, oh, you're not talking about

• 57:14Speaker 03

  drugs and guns anymore and blah blah, it's harder as you get older to be a rapper to stay credible, stay relevant. So, you know, I never looked at the entrepreneur side until I sold my collection. And I realized, holy shit. I could have did this a long time ago and not have to sell an entire bulk. I could have did this in a different way. But I understood at that point, anything I'm passionate about, I'm gonna find a way to make money. So when I started the jewelry business, even that, I said, we gotta create a separate name. We have Friends, certainly, we have MySpace to promote it. And then we have the traditional stuff, we can put flyers out and do certain things and whatever. I could start marketing it, putting on celebrities, of course, that's the best promotion, whatever.

• 57:59Speaker 03

  And I started realizing, okay, we're big. We got so big that I have in co, my company, which stands for Internally Flawless and Company. Internally Flawless is technically the best diamond you could possibly get in the world. Our company was originally called I C Fresh and Co., I C E E. And we were using the I C logo, like it's I C, I C E E, it's all melted with ice and everything. And then we had fresh in a, a engraver's font, which like the cash money font. And having together and putting this out there. I see the, the slushy corporation sees that when you Google I C. We were coming up in the top five, they wanna own the top twenty on Google. So they sent a cease and desist to us because they're saying that we're confusing people because we're talking about ice and stuff.

• 58:43Speaker 03

  I'm like, well, ice is a fucking, is a slang for, for diamonds. You know what I mean, slang for jewelry. And they're like, okay, we don't care. That happens, boom, we have to restructure. And at that point, I said, all right, man, look, you wanna get big? Okay, Tiffany and Co. doesn't sell T-shirts, they don't need to, they have the turquoise box, that's their marketing thing, right? What do we have? All right, we need to go out here and market this shit. So we're making plastic pieces. I started making T-shirts, so that became.

• 59:13Speaker 03

  I was making enough side shit that wasn't jewelry. Well, technically, the plastic things were t-shirts. That was taking care of our entire payroll. That hustle. So everything else now is just cream on the top. You know what I'm saying? It's fucking icing. Literally, pun intended, right? So I, um, I started to realize, hey, man.

• 59:35Speaker 03

  You know, I think Cole is dope, but what about Ben Baller, the brand? So I just started to market myself after O A. And, you know, it just, every, you know, five years or so, even less, I elevate what I'm doing. When I got into the cannabis space, you know, I'm like, hey, man, let's see what happens. Boom, you know, out there, whatever. There's people who have a lot more followers than me. Five, six, maybe. I don't know if they're fake or not. Their engagement isn't the same. They don't have the same following. When I did my television show, these people did a professional, they did professional analytics of what my, my, my, my demographic was. And they're like, hey, man, look, man, for someone your age, you know, they're gonna have someone strong in their age group.

• 1:00:21Speaker 03

  They might have a little bit of people above them, a little bit of people small. You have fucking 12, 16 year olds. You have the 18 to 24. You have the 24 to 32. You have the 32 to 40. You even have the 60 year olds. I had such a wide audience that I was like, holy shit. I was like, this is a good thing. So, you know, I didn't have to study my market anymore. And, uh, I just put, I said, hey, look, if anyone 21 and over, I got this new vape pen. You know, it was early on, no one was doing vape. And I was like, I had this cannabis thing going. And I was, I wanted to be high end. I didn't want to be some mediocre shit. I was trying to be the Walmart of weed. I wanted to be the apple. So I said, you know what? I did gold, platinum and rose gold. Those are the three colors they made available. I had 12 strains, put them out there.

• 1:01:07Speaker 03

  Next thing I know, I get an order for 100,000 pens. And my partners who were big in the cannabis space were like, holy shit, Ben. All right, man, this is exactly what we thought would happen. I didn't invest a single dollar in the company. And I was able to get 40% of the company, but 30 and 30. But them together, they had a majority share. You know that my voice, whatever. Bottom line is.

• 1:01:27Speaker 03

  It became insanely lucrative. The cannabis space became big and again, I was like, yo, we gotta do merch. We gotta do hats, this, this and this. And I gave a ton away. Um, and you know, um, I was very passionate about it. I started doing in-store appearances all throughout California and there'd be three hundred to a thousand people lighting outside. And every time I'm like,

• 1:01:47Speaker 03

  if you told me even ten years ago, people would line up to meet me, this is the stupidest thing. Why can't these people actually wanna meet me? It's silly. And I, you know, I'm meeting these people and, um, you know, it's just, it's just been really, really good. It didn't get bad until the pandemic happened. One, the technology of pens that I use for our cannabis business is built and based in China. It's called CISO technology, of course. So that shit got stopped. And obviously there was people who were complaining about vaping deaths. Now, look, I've never said COVID was a, was a, was a hoax. I've been a big advocate on spreading the awareness for a long time. The vape thing, definitely a hoax. Yes, people are getting sick. Guess what? They were smoking things with pesticides. They forget to say that. They're just saying that all pens are.

• 1:02:31Speaker 03

  Very poor job on the media's part, because there are people out there that are doing a good job and putting out good products that's pesticide-free. And listening to the BCC, which is like the IRS, FDA of, of cannabis. And you know, we're following the rules and it just sucked. It killed our business a little bit, but I was able to work around that. And I always am. One door closes and I, I could be in an all cement room. Okay, I'm going to fucking laser saw a door and open that bitch, you know? I'm gonna figure out a way to do something always. But, um, you know, it's, it's, I've always figured out a way to, to come up. Now in the pandemic, we're in a very special space. I could have made a lot of money selling masks and doing certain things. I felt morally, ethically, it was wrong for me to benefit off this.

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  Even if I donated shit of money, I just felt that's just ending it. That's not it, man. And I've seen people make a ton of money selling things like that and I said, look, man, there's gotta be another way. You people don't realize, look. I didn't talk about that until like, you know, a month ago, but right now, we're at what? Twenty-six million people have no jobs or thirty, I don't know the exact number. But what I'm getting at is, I truly feel like, okay, fine, open the economy back up. Not New York, but open it back up. I did a poll the other day. Eighty-nine percent of people said, we ain't going to no fucking store to sit, I mean, some restaurant to sit down and eat. We're not going to no fucking movie theater, I'm not gonna get, it's, they're scared too, whatever, and they have every reason to be.

• 1:03:56Speaker 03

  Especially people like me and myself, you know, I'm a smoker, I fucking, I'm twenty-five pounds overweight. You know, my son has a very, very high chance of dying from it. So with that said, this shit's gonna be bad and the economy will get worse, worse and worse. And I feel terrible if I accepted money from someone buying certain things. So it's like, certain things where I feel like they bring down you, you know, or whatever it may be. I have a collaboration with Tops Baseball Cards, I had a big, you know, I was a big baseball card collector when I was a kid. And there was a really, really big episode of Gary Vee that he did about baseball cards. I've never followed Gary Vee, heard his name a bunch of times, we have mutual friends. I always felt like, okay, what's up with this dude, whatever, I don't know.

• 1:04:37Speaker 03

  Listen to the episode, he talked about baseball cards, and when you're talking about investments under two thousand, it was like the most, that was the best, you know, option, I didn't know. So, these baseball cards are selling really well. My podcast, by keeping it real, informing people, now that obviously people realize later, holy shit, Ben was right. And we all thought he was a fucking idiot. This fucking guy gave us right information, like, you know, like, we should probably, you know, like, give dude his flowers. And with that said, traffic went up. With that, obviously sponsorship money came up, and I started generating real money, you know, more than six figures now, where, where, where, holy shit, never in a million years, my income from jewelry has stopped.

• 1:05:19Speaker 03

  My custom jewelry is there and it's this, but I don't consider that, like, I don't look at it like, oh, well, I got money here. That's not how it goes. I need to have a positive on every aspect of every business. My cannabis has gone down, because we're not essential, because it's a vape. Now, if it was my flower company, which we haven't launched yet, that was being launched in March, so it's fucked up. I have three enormous collaborations with Takashi Murakami, probably one of the greatest, biggest, living contemporary artists on the earth. And like, we made a lot of money then. I had, you know, potentially 1.7 million dollars to make with him. That got cancelled for the rest of the year because one of them was in Hong Kong, one is in New York, another one's in Japan, and these collaborations aren't just gonna happen. They can't, or they have to be, I don't know how they're gonna, but it can't happen now. Um, I had a big show I was doing, so a lot of my money had stopped.

• 1:06:04Speaker 03

  So even though podcasts is doing well and everything else, I'm not considering, yeah, we should be blessed, we should be lucky. You know what?

• 1:06:13Speaker 03

  I read, I don't read very much, but Phil Jackson had said in his book, "If you have no expectations, you'll never be disappointed." Fuck that, bro. I demand more out of life. You know what I'm saying? Koreans and Italians have a lot of passion. You know, we talk a lot of angry, have, you know, have angry issues, we're aggressive people. And because my retail dream business sucks, the custom one's going all right, that might offset each other, but the Canada business sucks, whatever, so it's like, I don't look at it like it is a blessing. But at the same time, like, alright, how do I do this and figure this out because it's going to get worse and worse? How many people are gonna go out and buy a $25,000 bracelet in three or four months? You know, like, even the 1% or the .001%,

• 1:06:53Speaker 03

  they're not spending like that. You know, I see the car, exotic car industry taking and things like that. So, I'm just in a very unique space right now where

• 1:07:07Speaker 03

  last year, late last year, I thought that we're gonna have a recession, so I've been saving for that, and I've been worried about that. So I scaled back on a lot. I haven't scaled back on my cellphones. We have six cellphone accounts because every one of my kids has a cellphone. Why? Because I'm a fucking idiot. So I got rid of their cellphone accounts, boom. I had every single channel on DirecTV and I had like so many different extra boxes, like, wait, okay. One, we don't need 12 televisions in the house. We have 12 flash, this is fucking stupid, okay? So, we need to figure that. But, but I basically had an overhead of $71,000 a month of my bills before I ate a chicken sandwich. That was my bills. That includes my kids' food, not my personal or whatever.

• 1:07:50Speaker 03

  I got that down to 47 last month. And...

• 1:07:56Speaker 03

  I just got it two days ago down to thirty five thousand a month. Now, that means I've cut my entire overhead fifty percent. And I'm still technically living the same lifestyle I live. And I'm just trying to figure that out as we go venture into into into new waters. Um, I have to use my entrepreneur skills of how I can do this without. And some people I understand at this point, if you're fucked up, you're unemployed or whatever. And you're hustling as long as you're not stealing or you're like selling fucking. Uh, what's hydroxychloroquine, whatever, or some or fucking putting, you know, um, disinfectant in your arms or bullshit like that. As long as you're not hurting anybody. But you're out there hustling, hey man, I can't be mad at you, right?

• 1:08:41Speaker 03

  Because people have to feed their kids or whatever. So with that said, I think I've been pushing my podcast. It's the thing I enjoy the most out of anything that I've been doing. I think I've been meant to talk shit, you know? And I was like, you know what? I talk so much shit. I should talk into a fucking microphone and and and, you know, put it out there. It became popular. It's doing well. It's something I can do until I'm seventy, eighty years or sixty years old. So I've been focusing on that. Now with podcast. Okay, yes, there's sponsor money here and there. How do we take it to another level? Well, believe it or not, and this happened before, before the pandemic started. My birthday is January twenty seventh. Someone gave me a really small ball of sanitizer. I'm a germaphobe.

• 1:09:26Speaker 03

  For the last two or three years, I've always carried small ones like an ounce. But I saw this half ounce size is really small. And I was like, oh, that's really cool. I contacted that company in January. And I was like, you know what? I want to make Ben Baller, uh, did the chain sanitizers for my podcast. I order it. And then this shit happens. So as the bottles are being finished, boom, we're ready to go out. They hit me and say, hey, listen. We can't send you your sanitizer bottles because, you know, we have millions of gallons of of sanitizer. We have to fill orders and boom. So I find a guy who can finally do it. So, I mean, I'm not going to make a profit. I mean, I'm sorry. I'm not going to sell it for ten dollars, twenty dollars, whatever. But if I sell my sanitizers at a one, two, one ounce, two ounce size for three or four dollars, which will be anything.

• 1:10:10Speaker 03

  I'm just competing against other companies. What do people do after that? Fuck it. That's their problem, right? And I just figured out other ways where I can do things and not fuck people up because it could bring value to them. Like my Ben Bar the Chain appliance collection, like I have a money counter, I have a gold vacuum sealer, I have things like that. Those items sold out in eight seconds for a hundred fifty to two hundred dollars. The resale value of them has moved from eight hundred to twelve hundred. So the things that I'm selling are bringing value to people. My baseball cards, they're nineteen dollars for the regular ones. The artist's proofs are ninety-nine dollars. Ninety-nine dollar ones are going for a thousand one week after. The regular card is going for a hundred fifty. So it's like, look, man, as I've said, everyone hates on old people, they think the old people hate on young people.

• 1:10:54Speaker 03

  I just troll a lot and talk a lot of shit. I have a lot of respect for young people and I've always been attracted and I gravitated towards younger people because they have very cool innovative ideas and things and I don't steal them, I just, you know, like, I'm like, okay, how do we enhance this? How do we magnify this? How do you monetize? While these people are out there in their early thirties and feel like they're washed up or whatever, I'm still relevant and becoming more relevant at forty-seven, you know, and, and, and as I get older. So it's like, I'm just, I've never been this busy. I've never stayed put in my entire life. In twenty years I haven't stayed put. You know, I took a hundred eighteen flights last year. I went on some early flights in January, I did a mandatory one in February and I canceled everything after that because of my, my family.

• 1:11:37Speaker 03

  But now that I've been staying put for sixty days, right? I'm like, holy shit. This is crazy. I've spent so much more time with my kids, even though I'm very hands-on with my family and my three kids. There's different types of time. I'm learning things about my children I've never knew about and I'm spending time, but at the same time, now, my wife is, you know, the principal of the school, she's the head teacher. I'm the fucking vice principal of the school. I'm also a teacher. We have parent teacher conferences with each other. We get in arguments and it's just like crazy because you know it's it's difficult because our kids have so much homework. So with that said, that amongst Zoom, amongst my podcast and taking a lot of meetings for content,

• 1:12:22Speaker 03

  I've never been busier. It's crazy. I'm so fucking busy with this. So, you know, I don't know if that addresses the entrepreneur thing, but I've used that to navigate myself through these through these and it's helped.

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I think part of like, you know, as as people have kind of gotten to know you and you've been really public and talks about podcasts and stuff. First of all, you got to make the motto of the podcast. I was born to talk shit. I mean, that's like all time motto right there. But but as part of like being an innovator and all the innovation that you've done, you got to tell a story about the $10 million Saudi ring, whatever you could say about it. So I think that was like the one piece of jewelry that you've made that people are like, hey, we got to hear whatever story he's got there that that he could tell what's behind that piece.

• 1:13:10Speaker 03

  So with that story, it's like now I'm doing everything right now. I think had I not made jewelry for Michael Jackson, like the Sultan of Brunei, Dr. Phil, people who are like very outside my hip hop demographic clients.

• 1:13:32Speaker 03

  I get a call from somebody and every time we go out to the nightclubs and stuff in the late 2000s to the early 2010, 11, 12, this, you know, Saudi dude, this Arab guy, he'd come around in the sickest Lamborghinis. I ain't talking about like supercars coming in the hypercar. Hypercars technically anything above, I think, a million dollars, right? And he'd have a security guard or something, but he drove like in regular clothes. He'd wear his his outfit with his with, you know, with the, um, goddamn, I can't think of the word.

• 1:14:06Speaker 02

  The With the headdress?

• 1:14:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, but what forgot what the anyways, um, not the turban, but not a turban, sorry. But anyways, yeah, the whole thing. And I finally found his Instagram page. I never pushed jewelry on him. I think he always knew what I did. And, um,

• 1:14:27Speaker 03

  When I saw the page, I saw my boy and I was like, hey man, what you know about Dubai and stuff? I went to Dubai in 2008, but I never like, you know. And I showed him this picture of my boy wearing all those traditional clothes. When he's in LA, he's not wearing that. Plus, he doesn't like pictures being taken of him. So no one ever takes pictures. They'll take pictures of the car, but he's not, it's part of their culture. They're not supposed to be popping, be out there. So I didn't know he was a prince. I had to find out, you know, through his Instagram page. And how I found out was the headwear, you know, it's like red, white headwear. I didn't know that there was like patterns in it. And when you have a pattern in it, those patterns mean something. It can be regular, it's just a regular, it's silly, whatever. But if you see it a certain way, immediately anybody in Abu Dhabi, Saudi, or like, you know, whoever, they'll see that. He's royal family. And my boy, he noticed that immediately.

• 1:15:11Speaker 03

  And then he goes, you know, do me a favor, man. He goes, uh, he got car pictures on his page. I was like, yeah, he got some car pictures. So I showed a picture of a Range Rover and a Rolls Royce. And he goes, Ben, man. He has a single digit license plate. And he goes, when you have a single digit to us, to even to like two or three digit. You aren't even a regular, even a police or civilian, anyone, a car, you could be rich. You got a Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce. You have to stay at least a hundred feet back from that car. Even police have to stay there. They're not allowed, you're not allowed to get next to that car, everything else. They have different, different rules out there. They're royalty, king, right? So I showed all that shit.

• 1:15:49Speaker 03

  One day, the guy who always is his liaison for LA was like, hey man. He's getting married. And I'm like, all right, cool, man. Don't, man, what's he gonna have, fucking, you know, seven billion dollar wedding? And he's like, no, it's gonna be, you know, traditional. And um, he needs a backup ring. Fuck does that mean? And he goes, well, Cartier is making his ring. And I was like, of course they are. Fuck, you know, like, what do you want me for? You know what I'm saying? This shit is like ridiculous. He goes, well, I mean, you know, you're big and he, you know, he respects you and, you know, he thinks you're pretty cool. And you do for all these people. He can't tell his mom he likes all these hip hop people, but, or his family, but you know, that's what he does on his personal time. And, you know, he sees what you're making. Could you make something really cool for his wife to be?

• 1:16:33Speaker 03

  And I was like, yeah, man. I was like, in my head, I'm like, dude, this motherfucker's gonna spend two million dollars. It's gonna be like three million dollars. It's gonna be my, you know, it's crazy. And I had made joy for a million, two billion.

• 1:16:45Speaker 03

  He hits me with a stone that he wants. And um.

• 1:16:53Speaker 03

  I like to think I'm the biggest thing in the world, right? And then you go to these jewelry trade shows and you realize how, okay, yes, I'm the biggest popular person. But when it comes to significance in the diamond game, I'm so insignificant because people have these booths that have thirty, forty, sixty million dollars of diamonds and there's like not that many diamonds there and you're like, holy shit, you know? Like, the most expensive thing in my store at any given moment might be a quarter million or four hundred thousand, whatever. Do these people have a twenty million dollar diamond here, thirty million here, seventeen, six? Like, their shitty shit is like one point six million, like the little bullshit. So, I reach out to somebody and I say, "Hey, man, I'm looking for this stone here.

• 1:17:37Speaker 03

  It's a pink diamond and um, I need to get this, I need this color, this everything." And the only thing that they wanted was, they didn't want me to specifically say what it was, because it goes gen- it could kind of genetically go back to the person, whatever. And I can say prince and say everything else, they just didn't want me, whatever. So, going on, I hit my cousin up, because he's the part of the backend that deals with the diamond dealers. And we text and he goes, alright, so he calls me. And I'm like, "What's up, man?", and then he goes, "Is it a joke, or did you, did you, did you add an extra number on the backend? It was the first number, that's how big the diamond is?", I was like, "No, bro, it's both numbers. That's the number", and he goes, "Who the fuck is it?", and I says, "It's the prince",

• 1:18:22Speaker 03

  and he goes, "Holy shit, okay, um, let's try to figure this out." So, we hit up our diamond dealer, who has got us everything, like, and we're looking for this stone. And the guy goes, "Get the fuck out of here", and I was like, "No, I'm looking for the stone", so now it became like a fucking, a, a, a, a whole mission to find this stone. Um, even the big places like, like Graff, Harry Winston, Van Cleef, they have a hard time finding a stone the size of this, this thing. Anyways, I end up finding it.

• 1:18:55Speaker 03

  I had to give somebody a million dollars to get the diamond. Not, I'm talking about, they got a million for finding the diamond. Do you understand what I'm trying to say to you? Right? So. My cost on the stone, which he understands whatever they be, was six and a half million. So, you know, I made two and a half million dollar profit just off that ring. And it was fucking crazy. And just my flight there, which was the fucking worst flight I ever had. It was probably tech, second worst flight I ever had in my entire life. Flew private. Private is cool. You're flying a fu- if you're on a really big like jumbo jet, yeah, go to New York private. That's not bad.

• 1:19:36Speaker 03

  If you're like in a small, if you're in a G4 even, flying to like Vegas, you know, LA to Seattle, not bad. Flying to fucking Saudi Arabia is not fun in that motherfucker. Like, it was terrible. Refueling, everything, scary shit. I get there. Um. And I, I delivered the stone. And at that point, meet his mom, I meet the king, meet the sheik, you know, and meet them. They all see everything, boom. And, uh, they were like, wow, this is a beautiful stone. Mind you, it's fucking ninety something degrees outside. I'm dying. I can't cover my tattoos anymore.

• 1:20:16Speaker 03

  You know, I'm like, this is crazy. My head is shit clean. I made try everything else. My earrings, everything I was wearing was super classy. It's just I had a fucking button down shirt on. And I'm like, bro, I gotta take my shit. I can't do this. Oh, don't take, if you wanna roll your sleeve, don't take your shirt off. You know what I mean? Cause I'm like fucking, you know, I'm like all the way through. He's like, don't. And I was like, all right. Um, his dad pulls me aside. He's like, hey, man, I really appreciate it. You know, that's, this is amazing. You know, um, um, leave your information. I was like, well, she has everything, you know. And so the ten million dollar ring was cool. He spent ten million dollars in a year with me, just on gifts for his, his, his, his founding members and shit like that. So it led to a whole different, you know, thing.

• 1:20:59Speaker 03

  Um, when I go to Dubai now, and I was there two times last year. Was there, you know, a couple of times before that.

• 1:21:09Speaker 03

  I enter a restaurant, let's say for instance, Zuma. Zuma is one of the, it's like, I think Zuma is better than Nobu. Zuma is like, you know, the high-end sushi place. And I'll be in Zuma in Dubai. And I'll order eleven hundred dollars worth of food with like another person, whatever. And then no bill will come. And they just knew, and they've taken care of it. I'll go into Sipriani in Dubai, which is much nicer than the original Sipriani. Either Forty Second or the one in uh, in um, in uh, in Soho. It's crazy. Anywhere I go out there, it's like I have carte blanches. So amazing. It's just like a, it was, it was, it was a dope thing, you know? And to him, that's nothing. Like, when this guy shows me his watches, he'll show me watches. I can even show John Mayer, but you ever seen this before? He goes, honestly, I haven't, but remember, I even get one of one custom bespoke watches made by Patek Philippe or by Rolex.

• 1:21:53Speaker 03

  These dudes are getting, like, and it's notorious for Saudis. And like, even some of the stuff that they have, some of the Gucci things they have, they were made by Gucci for them. And I'm like, holy shit, this was a fucking amazing thing, being in the right place at the right time, you know? Being able, but if I didn't find that diamond, he was gonna get it from somebody else, probably he'd have to, so that's what she wanted. And on top of that, um, I would never have met his dad. You know, so it ended up being, you know, it was a beautiful situation there.

• 1:22:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. I- i- it's pretty cool to see how, uh, just kind of be in the right place, right time, leads to one thing. And then you do a good job, right? And do something that they think's not possible. Next thing you know, it rolls into a whole other part of the business. Uh, but that's kind of the whole, the whole thing of being an entrepreneur, right?

• 1:22:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:22:39Speaker 02

  Uh, what, what, uh, what are you most excited about? Once we get out of, uh, coronavirus stuff? What, what's the kind of the things that you're looking forward to most, um, as, as you kind of keep building this empire of yours?

• 1:22:50Speaker 03

  As crazy as it sounds, I feel like I've probably done, I, I think there's a couple of goals I haven't hit in my life and, and a couple of those goals were like, you know, I had aspirations early on to be a billionaire, then I realized like, you know, man, it's gonna happen by a fluke or something's too. And I was like, I'm not trying to be too smart anymore. Let me fucking focus on what I, when I mean smart, I'm not trying to fucking create the next Uber. I just, you know, and there's a lot of proposals. It's just to sit here, it's like listening to demo tapes, right? When I was at A and R, it's like, hey, I got this group, boom, here, I got this idea. Everyone has an idea, everyone has this, everyone has this. It's like, you know, man, I have to, I have, you know, I have enough wealth to where I couldn't retire and maintain the lifestyle I have, but I have a lot and, and, uh, because I want my kids to be set up, but.

• 1:23:31Speaker 03

  My thing is, I'm excited about showing my kids the world, right? With this pandemic now, all three of my kids aren't going back to school for at least two or three years. So now, which never in a million years that I ever think this is gonna happen, they're gonna have to be homeschooled now, until something happens to where my son doesn't have that risk. If my son didn't have the risk, I wouldn't even give a fuck. I would, I mean, I'd be worried about me, but I'm very careful as it is. But because his situation, um, and my mom, who's old and everything else, I just have to be very careful. So with that said, you know, I want my kids to, they all have passports. I'm looking forward most to traveling.

• 1:24:16Speaker 03

  I want to show them all through Europe. I want to go, I can't wait. But the thing is, again, this is a global pandemic. This is not a, you know, so it's difficult. Um, I miss being in my apartment in San Francisco, looking over the fucking skyline and looking at, you know, being here and having my little fucking private time to think and think about this and whatever. And like, I mean, I have 12 custom chains that are backed up right now that, you know, who knows when I'm gonna be able to finish them. But, um, I'm excited for, for, for fatherhood, you know? I always say that, and I tell people, I'm a husband and father before I'm for anything else in life. Before entrepreneur, you know, that's why I waited so late in life to have kids, you know, like, I was talking to my boy two hours before I talked to you today, and it's just like, fuck, man, he just found out he's gonna be a grandfather, and he's two years younger than me.

• 1:25:00Speaker 03

  And it's just like, a lot of my friends' kids are in high school, whatever, and my oldest is seven and a half years old. So it's like, I just started late, but I started late because I wanted to be able to provide for my kids. Now with that said, you know, I am working less, but I'm working smarter. And, uh, but I'm still working a lot, it's just, you know, some, it's not, it's, I don't have so much tedious shit I have to do. But, but, but again, I know it sounds silly, but I'm looking forward to getting on a fucking plane and getting the fuck out. I'm going a little crazy, you know, and, and even though I'm telling people, stay at home, it's like, trust me, if I didn't have a big home, um, you know, and, and I tell people, look, this ain't a dickhead thing to say. I'd rather tell you what it is and what's on my mind than you think. Man, guys don't understand.

• 1:25:41Speaker 03

  Fuck you. Zero dollars is zero dollars. When I was broke and homeless, that's zero dollars. I had nothing else. You have a phone, you have a lot of shit. You're entitled. Go fuck yourself. I know it's such you just lost your job. I'm sorry you live in a fucking eight hundred square foot apartment. You know, man, I earned all this. This is, you know what I mean? Like, I don't feel bad at all. I never, would you ever make me try to, you know, shame me for working hard, want to fire my family? I prepared for this. This was all planned. So we're here now. And with that said, you know, um, I just can't wait to, you know, show my kids sports and things like that. Or like, you know, and, and, and do it on a bigger level. I'm just, but I do want to get out of the house. Um, I'm excited about my podcast. I'm excited at, you know, meeting more people, even though I don't want to meet anybody.

• 1:26:25Speaker 03

  I want to meet people to talk to. Cause you know, I've been an enormous fan of Mike Tyson. And, you know, there was like this, there was a rumor going around that he's like, oh, he's not very smart. You know, he talks like this, da, da, da, da. Mike is actually fucking brilliant. He is so insane. The stories, now that the podcast is there, his stories of what he's done is, like, I'm like, I'm blown away. And, um, you know, there's a lot of people out there that I want to reach out to, whether it be even, I'm not a big fan of Tony Robbins, but I'd love to get him on the show and talk to him about things. And, you know, even Mark Cuban, I remember when Mark Cuban, when the Dallas won the championship. Mark used to party with us, we used to get fucked. And he was like, he was a gangster. I was like, yo, Mark is cool as fuck.

• 1:27:08Speaker 03

  Um, but the podcast is, is, I know it sounds silly, but I'm, I'm excited for that, you know? I'm excited to just chill. I'm excited to, to do more state putting, you know, and, and, but I am excited, obviously, to get on a fucking plane. I do want to go somewhere. I do want to go to an island. I do want to go to the beach. At least Cabo, shit's two hours away. But I, I do want to get the fuck out of the house. But, you know, I also want to go back to work. One of the beautiful things about my podcast setup is it's professional, but it's still very portable. So I can record a lot of my shows in the hotel room. I can do this, this and this. And, um, you know, that's, that's, I know it sounds boring, but, but, uh, um.

• 1:27:48Speaker 03

  You know, I just want, I just wanted to, to, you know, extend all my travel shit.

• 1:27:52Speaker 02

  Look, I think that's a great life to live. I got two questions to, uh, to wrap up with, and then you get asked me one to end it. Uh, what's the best or most important book you've ever read? I know you say you don't read that much, but what's the one book that you're like, damn, everyone should go read this?

• 1:28:09Speaker 03

  It, it's, it's completely specific and it's really crazy. It's a book called Everything You Want to Know About the Music Business. Whether everyone or not, whatever, it's today in 2020.

• 1:28:25Speaker 03

  Ninety percent of these kids that are signing deals, whether the age from seventeens or, or, you know, younger or the ones that are twenty-two or beginning deals. Ninety percent of them, it doesn't matter if you have a good attorney.

• 1:28:36Speaker 03

  The attorney is not looking up your best interest, no matter how cool you are with them. Do you know, these deals are structured for you to fail. Now.

• 1:28:45Speaker 03

  People are making more money because there's three sixty deals, right? Which is crazy. Never in a million years in the nineties could you, could you fucking ever ask an artist to give you your merch? Or your touring money? Like, no, you give up album sales, you know what I'm saying? Like boom, like, you know, there's certain things you do. That book is the general basic of everything you should know. It's more than even record executives know. It tells you everything about the business, the fine print and everything. Once you understand that, you will truly understand.

• 1:29:15Speaker 03

  How not to fuck yourself. And at that point, after finishing that book two or three times. Every situation you go into and you fail in, you purposely failed it. You wanted to go in there and fuck up your business. Because someone threw a check for five hundred thousand dollars, not realizing that there was seven million on the back end. But you needed that money right then and there. You couldn't survive without that money because you had to post a watch or a car on Instagram to look like you were doing okay. But yet there was other ways to flex. If you had some patience, there'd be other things. There's other deals that people sign because they didn't want to shop around. The first deal came around. But that book, it's by Kashif. Kashif, there's other people, my boy, uh, Clint Sparks just put out a game, a, a book about the record business.

• 1:29:59Speaker 03

  I didn't read it and he's my friend and I don't want to say anything so bad, but. I don't know how in-depth this, this book is super in-depth. And the reason why it was important to me was because doing deals in life.

• 1:30:15Speaker 03

  You have an attorney, you know, never in a million years I think I have an attorney on retainer. And people are like, why? Like, well, I got NDAs, two, I'm being sued, three, I have other shit and I have, you know, contracts I need to let, because I don't understand the English, the, the, the, the language on them. And people are like, they're not written in English. And I'm like, Jesus Christ, I don't mean English. I'm saying, you know, the, the, the terminology and everything and some of these things. So, basically, that book changed the way I look, because you look at somebody who has a lemonade stand, and I don't mean that verbally, I'm saying like a mom and pop, they don't understand how much more they can enhance that business, because they have no, you know, they're just like, oh, it is what it is. No, fuck that. Why go in there, even if you do it for a hobby?

• 1:30:56Speaker 03

  You know what? You're gonna open a store, you know, your wife is, you know, you're, you're rich and you're like, oh, let me give my wife something to do. Because she's at home, she's at home, mom, she's going crazy. Alright, why do that? I mean, happiness is one thing, sure, but why do that and take a loss? Or take an L or certain things, you know, there's sometimes you take an L in life. And that's why I mean, you read that book and you start understanding that, because it's not just the technical side, but it's a reason why you take a loss somewhere. Um, Louis Vuitton in this one mall loses about four hundred, two hundred thousand dollars a month, every month, for like ten years, they'd lost two hundred thousand dollars. And people are like, that's the stupidest thing in the world. Why are the doors still open? Because it's the fucking best billboard in the fucking entire world.

• 1:31:40Speaker 03

  And their marketing right there is crazy. So them losing there, okay, great, all the other stores are doing well. And I was like, whoa, some people won't see eye to eye on that. And if you have it, boom, it's like, you have to really just understand this book kind of talk, it just taught me about business, even though it is the music business. It could apply to film, it could apply to a lot of things, you know, it's just a lot of my people I'm, I deal with on a regular basis are part of the music business.

• 1:32:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, and, and it's also when you read a book, right? It's not just what's in the book, but what time of your life do you read it to? It's always helpful. Uh, what about aliens? Believer, non-believer?

• 1:32:18Speaker 03

  In short, no. Um. In semi-long. Look, man, I smoke a lot of weed, man, I've done a lot of mushrooms, I've done a lot of acid. They say what you do LSD like five times. I've done acid a lot, you know, I went to school in San Francisco, you know, it's like, you know, the Grateful Dead and all that shit. Uh. With that said, again.

• 1:32:40Speaker 03

  Look, man. When someone tries to tell you that the earth is like a molecule, grain of sand in the galaxy, and this galaxy is like one galaxy, like the fucking, uh, the solar system, like the, that's like one atom, like. How the fuck, like, how do you not sit there and get high and think, okay, well, how is the English language created, right? What was the first word that says, oh, this means fire? Okay, how do you know what this means and how you know what fire means and how do you know what, you know, and you could go crazy thinking about it. Okay, we like fire, stick, I, them, what's them, what's I, you know, like, how do you, the language was created at one point, right? And it makes sense to all of us. Two plus two equals four. Mathematically, you can understand how it makes that.

• 1:33:23Speaker 03

  How is there not another galaxy, because we're one grain, right? Has to be this, oh, there's no living, no one fucking knows. So, yeah, there could be somewhere seventy trillion, zillion miles away, and they might have a different language, that's their language and how it makes sense, whatever, and like, you know, or baseball, whatever, and they have different, I don't know what it is, and it could be a whole different thing. So I think it's possible. But do I think, like, ET's here? I don't fucking know, man. I wish there was, you know what I mean? I don't really, I don't believe in the Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster and shit like that, but I don't know. Why did you ask that question? Just out of curiosity.

• 1:33:59Speaker 02

  I ask every single person. Um, and, uh, and I would say that, uh, like ninety-five percent or more say, uh, yeah, there's something out there, I don't know what it is, or, uh, is it little green men or is it just some bacteria? You know, there's gotta be something. But, uh, the only thing I take away from all of it is just, let's hope that we find them, they don't find us, because whoever's the one getting baited. Yeah, I mean, come on, it's similar mindset, right? It's just like the world's so fucking big. How is there not aliens or some sort of life out there? The thing I always go to is like, it's not a question of is there life? It's are they actually more intelligent or more developed than us? Right? And my guess is probably not.

• 1:34:41Speaker 02

  But I also think that that's somewhat me just wanting to go to sleep tonight thinking that there's nobody out there that's going to come invade the earth and, you know, kill us all. So what question you get asked me one question to finish this shit up? What one question you got for me?

• 1:34:56Speaker 03

  Let me tell you something funny. I've never heard your show before until Lamar Cuban won.

• 1:35:02Speaker 03

  I don't know where that came from. And I just came with my own. Every question I ask somebody on my interviews, the last question I ask them is, hey, ask me anything you want. I've never heard that before my entire life.

• 1:35:14Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:35:15Speaker 03

  That's weird. That's crazy. Last question, I say, last question, is there anything you want to ask me? I always say that. I have two things to ask you if you don't mind, but that's crazy you said that. First thing is, when did you make your first million? And what was it off? And what was the first thing you bought after that?

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. So when I saw my first company, or I'm sorry, second company, was the first time that I was like, damn, like, this is real. Right? And and you kind of get in this position where you're just sitting there and you're like, nothing changed, but everything changed. Right? It's kind of at the same time. And I actually didn't buy anything. I literally bought nothing.

• 1:35:56Speaker 03

  Oh, you suck.

• 1:35:59Speaker 02

  Here's why. Here was my logic was, it was one of these things where I was in the military for six and a half years. Right? And when I came back, I'd already gotten a lot of the like, I want to go buy shit out of my system. So I went to Iraq for a year, made a bunch of money, you know, for a kid at 20 years old at the time, all tax free. And, you know, it's not a lot of money for real, but when you're 20 years old, coming back and you've been in college, all this stuff. And so I bought a motorcycle, you know, I bought. God, you know, all this kind of crazy shit. And it was one of these things where I remember, you know, I'd be flying down the highway on a, on a, you know, ninja and doing all this crazy stuff.

• 1:36:41Speaker 02

  And then after like a year or two of that, you kind of get it a little out of your system. And you start to realize like, hey, man, if I keep doing this, like, there's a chance I might die. Right? Like, I, I, I got in a very minor motorcycle accident, like literally in a parking lot type thing, right? Which is just enough to cut open my chin, whatever. And you're like, oh shit, like, I'm lucky that I was going 15 miles an hour, not, you know, 75 miles an hour. And so I think I just like got a lot of that out of my system. And then you overlay it with all the military stuff, like, that's like the adrenaline rush of adrenaline rushes, right? Is, is kind of all the combat stuff. So I think that it's just one of these things where I was kind of over it at that point. And I just kind of had a different bent.

• 1:37:21Speaker 02

  But at the same time, I look back and I hear stories of guys, you know, I, I ask pretty much every guy who comes on who's a billionaire. I say, what'd you do when you first realized you had a billion dollars? They got wild stories, right? And it's kind of like the excitement of that.

• 1:37:37Speaker 03

  I said, if I become a billionaire, I'm going to have my head removed. I'm going to make it look like Optimus Prime, or I might do like, I don't know, something crazy. It's gonna be all metal though. And then on top of that, I'm never going to walk ever again. I'm just gonna have people carrying me everywhere I go. Um, I'm sorry. So my second question, but the funny thing is, let me go back to you real quick. I was an avid motorcycle rider since I was eight, even living in the hood. We had dirt bikes in the hood. Um, I was in a Bois motorcycle gang. I rode bikes heavily. I had a high boost side, did 195 on it. I don't think I left my house and did under 160 on a motorcycle in traffic even. And when I had my first kid, there was my, my wife and I were hooligan. I've been on the news three times, being chased by helicopters, high speed chased, and I got away every time.

• 1:38:18Speaker 03

  Um, and I had to get rid of the bikes. I was crazy with bikes. Anyways, my last question is, is, do you think there's any correlation between 5G and coronavirus?

• 1:38:29Speaker 02

  Oh, no, I'm probably not there on that one. I, I, here's my take is, uh, so I was real early, uh, in taking it more serious than us. I won't say that I was like full on super serious, but there's a picture, uh, in January, uh, last year did 120 flights. So you and I are very similar in that we took a bunch of flights last year. My goal for 2020 was to not travel that much. So I had to take one flight in January, uh, to go to this board meeting in San Francisco and I, uh, went in New York to go find the, uh, like N95, like the, the real good masks and they were all sold out. And I was like, that's weird. So I ended up, the only thing I could get was like one of these, uh, construction like dusk masks.

• 1:39:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:39:10Speaker 02

  So I said, look, it's better than nothing. And I was super freaked out. I'm really not a germaphobe, but just for whatever reason, I was like, man, this, this is kind of freaking me out to get on this plane and sit there, breathe the same air with everybody, all this stuff. So I get on the plane, put the mask on, take a picture, you know, screwing around, post on the internet. Everyone's like, oh, you're an idiot, whatever. And now I'm looking back, hey, man, I got proof. Back in January, this shit was, you know, uh,

• 1:39:32Speaker 03

  No way.

• 1:39:34Speaker 02

  But, but here's the thing is, to me, it was less about like, I thought it was this serious. It was just more of like, why not be overly cautious? Uh, but the, the big moment for me was, uh, when Zero Hedge, Zero Hedge is just like a big, uh, Twitter account. I have like 800,000 followers or something. They were one of the first people to really surface the idea of, uh, the coronavirus Wuhan, the virology lab there in Wuhan and like start trying to like, really like highlight some of these data points. And I remember saying, look, the odds that the like conspiracy theory is true is very low, right? At the time, probably 5% or less. But I said, there's more information here than we've currently been told. That seems like a pretty

• 1:40:18Speaker 02

  big important fact that I haven't heard yet, right? That there's a virology lab that studies coronaviruses in the city where the outbreak happened, whatever. And so it just set me off on this path of like, man, I gotta learn about this myself because I'm questioning the information that I'm receiving from the traditional sources. And so I think 5G coronavirus falls into that, the, uh, lab falls into that. Um, it's hard to tell what's true and what's not true, right? But it just, I walk away just knowing that like, we're probably not getting all the information and that's upsetting.

• 1:40:47Speaker 03

  Hear me out. I don't know who the CEO of T-Mobile is, I don't know who the CEO of Verizon is, or the CEO of AT&T. Currently, the actual only company that carries real 5G is T-Mobile in the country. Just because your iPhone says LTE 5G does not mean you're getting 5G on that phone. I found that out. Why would the CEO of Verizon in America want to kill his family? Because there's no way to get, you can't, you know, you're gonna get radiation, period. You put them up, people see the towers going up, they're not going up like that, that's one thing. Number two, you can't give somebody, you can't handshake somebody, and all of a sudden, 5G, boom, guess what? Now, now they got 5G, that's not how it gets, you know, transmitted, you know what I'm saying? That's one thing. But coronavirus is in currently 214 and more countries in the world.

• 1:41:32Speaker 03

  5G's not even in 100 countries, so that's, that's why I want to understand how to explain it. Like, it can't travel again. You can't cough on somebody, and now all of a sudden, they got the 5G, and their immune system's weaker now and things, but do you know what I'm saying? It's just, it sounds so fucking crazy, like, I couldn't imagine being CEO of, or the, the founder CEO of Verizon, being like, yo, you know what? We're gonna put these 5G towers up, and then my son, my grandkids, they're all gonna get sick because of the, it just sounds fucking crazy. I was just curious what you thought, and I, I just, nah, it's funny.

• 1:42:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I, I'm definitely, uh, I think that part of this is people are sitting at home and they're bored. They ain't got shit else to do, right? So it's like, what crazy things can we come up with?

• 1:42:10Speaker 03

  You know what's funny? After everyone got their stimulus checks, no one talked about it. I didn't, I haven't heard, in fact, I've, I've heard very less, I've heard less and less talk about it, but right before that, it was just going ham, and I was like, oh my god.

• 1:42:23Speaker 02

  I, I, I don't know if you saw this video, I'll have to send it to you, uh, somebody went, and, uh, they basically went through like, black Twitter, right? And they found all these, uh, people who were tweeting, who had been like, very anti-Donald Trump and the current administration and all this stuff, and then when those checks hit, there was people tweeting like, ah, damn, you got my vote, bro, like, you know, you, you a real one for this, and like, all this stuff, because they, because they were saying that they got their Trump bucks. And I was sitting there, and they made a whole, like, montage of this thing, and I was just laughing, because I was saying, listen, this, this is the game of the internet now, right? Is you go and you pick up a bunch of pieces of information, and you can twist it however you want to tell whatever story, and, and I was just sitting there, and I was just like,

• 1:43:04Speaker 02

  that's probably going to be one of the biggest, uh, things that we have to pay attention to over the next few years, is just, what information are you getting, and how accurate is that information, right? Because you can literally make the internet say anything.

• 1:43:18Speaker 03

  Scary man, scary man.

• 1:43:20Speaker 02

  Absolutely. All right, where can we send people? Where do you want them to go after they listen to this?

• 1:43:25Speaker 03

  You know, obviously, any social platform, I'm at Ben Baller, just like I said, B E N B A L L E R. But what I'd love people to do, because we're obviously in the same thing, and I don't look at like competition or anything, we are obviously two different people, but I'm just in the business category. But if you go to Apple, go to Spotify, go to Stitcher, go to anything, anywhere you listen to podcasts,

• 1:43:47Speaker 03

  you know, listen to Behind the Baller, because Behind the Baller means it's no jewelry, no flash, it's more my journey getting there, my journey where I'm going, me being a husband, me being a father, me being a Renaissance man, how I help people get free game, I like to talk about people. There's people who are celebrities on my show, of course, most of them are, but like, I have people on my show who were bottle waitresses and then now own a $25 million logistic company, somehow, some way, and you hear these stories, and it's like, I want everyone to understand that if you apply yourself and you are smart, you know, it's possible. Now, is it gonna happen? I don't know, but you have to at least look at things at half glass full, you know, it just, it just, I would love you to send people to Behind the Baller podcast, and other than that, man,

• 1:44:29Speaker 03

  look, man, I'm a big supporter of you now, because, you know, we've had a really cool conversation.

• 1:44:33Speaker 02

  Absolutely, Behind the Baller, born to talk shit, I love it.

• 1:44:38Speaker 02

  All right, man, well, I'll definitely link to it in the show description, and we'll send people that way, I appreciate you doing it.

• 1:44:44Speaker 03

  All right, thanks, man.