“You’re Getting Scammed!” Joshua Weissman Reveals How Restaurants REALLY Make Money

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration blog, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 0:26Jack Selby?

  So you started out as an overweight teenager who loved food, and now you're shredded, rich, successful YouTuber with 10 million subscribers. How much time is realistically needed to get to like a decently impressive home chef?

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I didn't go to culinary school. I worked in restaurants in real life scenarios, learning real life techniques and tricks. Where's the land source? What's the worst thing you've seen in a restaurant?

• 0:47Speaker 03

  State officials today looking to address the growing issue of substance within the restaurant and hospitality industry.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  There have been people that I've worked with that were like, man, then one day they just disappeared. Someone was standing up with their chef knife. The person stood up and turned into their knife. They got rushed to the hospital, got stitched up, went back to service.

• 1:06Jack Selby?

  How much money do you think your restaurant's gonna make?

• 1:08Speaker 02

  I have no idea. I mean, how much does Gordon Ramsay make on those restaurants? Like $200 million a year?

• 1:13Speaker 04

  This is my new restaurant, which officially opens today, and it's called Ben & Lynn's.

• 1:17Jack Selby?

  What's the most you've ever paid for a meal?

• 1:19Speaker 02

  One of the most expensive ones was for you guys. I wouldn't say it's phenomenal.

• 1:21Jack Selby?

  Not my cup of tea. It's too buttery.

• 1:25Graham Stephan?

  What is the biggest mistake that you have made?

• 1:34Jack Selby?

  Joshua Weissman, thank you so much for coming on the Iced Coffee Hour.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you for having me. Happy to be back.

• 1:38Jack Selby?

  So you started out as an overweight teenager who loved food, and now you're shredded, rich, successful YouTuber with 10 million subscribers.

• 1:46Graham Stephan?

  He did this intro and the first thing I said is,

• 1:48Jack Selby?

  I've got to not do that. I'm like, I actually kind of like.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  That's actually, that's so funny.

• 1:52Graham Stephan?

  Jack's like, Graham, don't worry about it.

• 1:54Jack Selby?

  He's a friend.

• 1:55Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, it's fine.

• 1:56Jack Selby?

  So why should people listen to you?

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Listen to me? Well, it depends on the advice I'm giving. If I'm giving advice about cooking, I could give you a few reasons.

• 2:03Graham Stephan?

  I feel like you're an expert, though, at cooking, cars, watches, and business. You're really good at all those things.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  You know, sometimes I feel like an expert in many of those things and sometimes I don't. I feel like in cooking, yes, right? Like in cooking, I've spent my whole life learning how to be good at it, learning how to avoid mistakes. I've made a million mistakes cooking, right? Like, I spent my whole life doing it. So like, my goal is to help other people avoid making the same mistakes I did in cooking. That's pretty much all I ever do. So if you ever watch any of my videos of me cooking, you're gonna see I oftentimes interject and go, oh, by the way, don't do this because XYZ, or do this because XYZ. So my goal is always to give value. That's kind of it. But do people need to listen to me? No, there's a million resources out there, right? But I like to think that I'm doing something to help people.

• 2:52Graham Stephan?

  Why are people so drawn to cooking?

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Something I feel like everybody can understand to a certain extent, right? Like, everybody eats. I feel like this has been said so many times, everybody eats. But the reality is like, if you pick up something and it tastes great, there are certain things that universally taste good, right? Like a perfectly ripe and crispy apple, right? Lots of people love a perfectly ripe and crispy apple. Some people could sit down and like, I could sit down and digress why it's so good, why I enjoy it, why I think other people will enjoy it. But at the end of the day, like, anyone can pick that up, eat it, and understand it. It doesn't matter what language you speak, doesn't matter where you're from, you get it. So I think it's something everyone can touch.

• 3:30Graham Stephan?

  How did you learn to be a cooking pro?

• 3:33Speaker 02

  God, a pro? You guys are throwing the questions at me.

• 3:35Jack Selby?

  I mean, you get paid to cook, right? And you were a pro.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Were, whoa.

• 3:40Jack Selby?

  And you are a pro. You are a pro.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  I'm messing with you. I mean, I think the simple rule for life is just repetition. You gotta be able to do it over and over and over again, and not be afraid to make mistakes. And over time, you will master it. But that, it's certainly, what was the rule? It's like the 10,000 hour rule. It's kind of like, I look at it like that, right? Like, the more time you spend just failing and up and, you know, making small modifications, getting a little better every time, eventually you're gonna reach a tipping point where you have a total understanding of a subject. And in the world of cooking, like, it really comes through repetition.

• 4:17Jack Selby?

  How much time is realistically needed if you're starting from zero food skills to get to like a decently impressive home chef?

• 4:23Graham Stephan?

  Jack's asking for himself.

• 4:26Jack Selby?

  You should see the way this guy cooks.

• 4:27Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, but I thought you cook now.

• 4:28Jack Selby?

  I do cook now, and I use flaky salt, and I have MSG.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you're already there.

• 4:31Jack Selby?

  I think it's healthy enough.

• 4:32Graham Stephan?

  He puts the steak in the air fryer.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  You know, honestly, I've come around with the air fryer. I've come around. They've gotten better, though.

• 4:40Graham Stephan?

  I meant, I meant to say microwave.

• 4:42Jack Selby?

  He hasn't graduated from the microwave. He still uses the microwave.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't even, I've realized.

• 4:46Jack Selby?

  You're talking to a guy who literally, like, when I first met him, his freezer was stacked, bottom to top, with Lean Cuisine and Hamburger Helper.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  You know what, it's funny. Like, the first time I ever came on the podcast, I didn't know you guys that well. And then over time, we've become friends, which I love you too. But the funny thing is, I remember when we first met, and I remember thinking like, oh, you know, maybe like Graham will get into cooking and like, you know, like noticeably better by the next time I see him. And I feel like the amount of growth that's happened in your cooking from then and now is like pretty, pretty small. But I don't know.

• 5:14Graham Stephan?

  I don't need to because.

• 5:16Jack Selby?

  It's completely.

• 5:17Graham Stephan?

  No, because anytime I need like a really nice meal, honestly, I just, I buy Cook Unity. And they're really good.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  And this video is sponsored by Cook Unity.

• 5:24Jack Selby?

  So how much time would be needed if you're taking like someone with no food skills to become an impressive home chef? Like, for an average person, if someone's watching this right now and they like, they want to become a decent chef, how much time would they realistically need?

• 5:36Speaker 02

  If I was speaking to them or just very generally?

• 5:37Jack Selby?

  Just very generally speaking.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  I really think most people can do it a lot faster than they think. It's just they, the people kind of hold back too much. Like, again, this applies to so many things. But if you, if you're willing to just throw yourself into it and let go of the fear of like messing up or wasting ingredients, which are real, you know, there's a real tangible things to be worried about. But if you're willing to forego that, I think you can learn to cook pretty well. And honestly, if you, let's say, open a cookbook and you just keep cooking recipes out of a cookbook and follow directions to a T, let's say you do it three to five times a week. I know it's a lot, maybe two to four times per week. I think you could, you could become relatively confident in your cooking skills within two to four months. I'm not saying you're a master.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  You'll just have the confidence to keep going.

• 6:25Graham Stephan?

  Now, you say that you've made a lot of mistakes, and a lot of this is a learning process. What is the biggest mistake that you have made?

• 6:33Speaker 02

  There was a time I was making a sauce called, do you know what a gastrique is?

• 6:36Graham Stephan?

  No.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  It's basically like a reduction between, it's vinegar, sugar. You reduce it into kind of like a sweet and sour syrup. It's a French sauce. And I was reducing the sauce. And a lot of time in restaurants, when you're doing prep, and it's early in the morning, you can utilize multiple, multiple burners. So you could theoretically have three or four sauces that need to be reduced, but they're all different. So you have like three or four pots with all your different associated sauces. You'd go throw them on the burner, get them to a boil, reduce it to low. And you know that, hey, these are gonna take 10, 20, 30 minutes. I'll put different timers for different things. And then I'm gonna go off and like, I don't know, pick some herbs or do something else, right? Maximize your time. Try to do as many things as once, at once as possible. So anyway, I was doing that, and I had all my pots on the stove. One of them was a gastrique and a few other sauces. They're all reducing.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  I go off and I'm chopping some veg. I'm doing some other prep to the side. One of my timers goes off. So I'm pulling all my different sauces as they get reduced at different rates. But one of them was taking a while. It was the gastrique. I pull them, I leave the gastrique on.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  I'm letting it sit. It's simmering, it's reducing. I go off and do another thing. I'm working. At this point, I forgot about the pot on the stove, the gastrique, the last one. So it's just kind of reducing and reducing and reducing. I have no idea because I don't even think it's on the stove anymore. I've completely forgotten about it. My timer went off and I, I let it, you know, go in my pocket and I didn't know. And someone goes, hey, there's a pot on fire. And I'm like, pot on fire? Well, I had a gastrique on, but I think I took it off. And also, how's a gastrique not gonna catch on fire? It's just water, or it's just vinegar, water, or sugar. That's it.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  And I go over there, and there's literally like, like a 12-inch flame, like a jet engine shooting directly out of this pot, like directly into the air. And I'm like, wait a minute, that. And then it says gastrique with my initials on it on the handle. And I'm like, wait, how is that even possible? That it's, and it's like carbon at this point, it's carbonizing. So like, it's like bubbling with like black soot out of the thing while also being on fire. So I'm like, okay, no worries, I got this. So there's a few ways to put out a pot fire, right? You could do baking soda. You could throw water in there, but that's more dangerous, right? It could splash, so many different things. So I suffocated it with salt. I took kosher salt and I just poured a bunch of kosher salt until literally was mounded up in the pot.

• 8:59Jack Selby?

  It sounds like you're making a bomb.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:03Jack Selby?

  That's crazy.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  And so the fire goes out. But then like a little like wiggling flame goes through the salt. And I'm like, ah, no big deal. And then it just keeps, and then the fire engulfs the salt and it's still going. And I'm like, how is this possible? Like, I don't understand how this is possible. And then the president of culinary for that company walks in, and he goes, whose pot is this?

• 9:28Speaker 02

  It's my pot. I don't know what's, I don't know how this is on, still on fire. It was a gastrique. And he's like, well, take it outside. And I'm like, okay, all right. And so I like, I start to pick it up. And he's like, I got it. Moves me out of the way, grabs the pot, and then walks outside with it, tosses it on the ground. He's like, just put a hose on it. Anyway, this was like in front of the president of culinary, the CDC of the restaurant, and all of my coworkers and all of the front of house are watching this go down. Yeah, it was, it was very embarrassing. Nothing really that bad happened, but it was like one of those things where it's like ingrained in my brain forever. So now I never forget pots on the stove.

• 10:01Graham Stephan?

  So as a chef, when you walk into a restaurant, what is the first thing that you notice?

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Probably honestly sanitation. The first thing I notice is like how clean are the tables? Is the space well kept? It depends on where I'm going to eat, though. Like, if I'm going in and out, I'm not looking for that. Like, I shut that part of my brain off. But if I'm going to like a nice restaurant, I'm not looking for problems, to be clear. I just notice things, right? Like, if the table's really dirty and I put my hands on the table, I'm like, you know, you notice that it's sticky. You get, you ever sit down and like, you feel grease on the table? You're like, ew, right? And then that makes you think, oh, what are they doing back there? So that's probably the first thing I notice. Or staff interaction, like if the front of house are like particularly rude. I mean, I'm not gonna say anything, but I usually notice that.

• 10:42Jack Selby?

  Can you enjoy a mediocre meal? Or do you find yourself hyper analyzing everything when you go out to eat?

• 10:47Speaker 02

  No, it's not fun to hyper analyze everything. You gotta be able to enjoy. Listen, like, half of what is great of going out to eat is being with your friends, hanging out with people, having good conversation. Who, no one really loves to go out to eat alone, unless, I don't know, Graham, you, I feel like you do. I don't know why.

• 11:02Graham Stephan?

  I like eating standing up as fast as possible.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  You're just

• 11:08Graham Stephan?

  It's terrible. Macy hates it because what I'll do is I'll just microwave food. I sit over the counter watching a YouTube video and I just scarf down my food.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Horrible.

• 11:17Graham Stephan?

  I get it down and then I'm on to the next.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Your digestion system's just working overtime, man.

• 11:23Graham Stephan?

  Is there a proper way to eat, though?

• 11:25Speaker 02

  No, I'm not a doctor. I can't answer that for you. You know, you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to get one of these wellness gurus to give you that info. But yeah, I mean, like, I don't, I really try not to overanalyze those things. I don't think about it that often, honestly. I, I just wanna go out and eat and have fun. But what do you mean by mediocre? You mean like something that's not fancy?

• 11:41Jack Selby?

  Yeah, just like an average, you know, you're just like driving through Barstow and you have to stop at a place.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  I prefer eating like that. I, I think I'm kind of over fine dining a little bit, you know, it's like, it's expensive. It's also just like, I feel kind of stressed out when I eat at a fancy place, you know? They're like, when they're sitting there describing the meal to you, like, sometimes I want that, but like over, like, that's just not real life. Like, sometimes you just wanna go out and get a good burger. Sometimes you wanna go out and just chill, something more relaxed.

• 12:08Jack Selby?

  Do you like it when they describe the meal? Because I've found when I go to very fancy restaurants, which is not very often, but when I do, and they're just like, let me read off this menu to you. I'm like, well, I can read, first of all, like, and then they go through everything and they say a bunch of words. I have no idea what they're saying. They're saying like different sauces and this.

• 12:26Graham Stephan?

  Jack's just gonna get the burger too. We don't need to hear.

• 12:28Jack Selby?

  And I'm just gonna get the cheeseburger. And if they don't have that, I'll get the chicken fingers or the steak.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  I thought we were talking about fine dining restaurants here.

• 12:34Jack Selby?

  Okay, yeah, fair enough. But I'm just saying, like, like, this whole process of fine dining is, it's a process.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  Getting a little annoying right now, I think. When they explain every, we need to do retention style editing for for waiters and waitresses. Like, I think, I think if there's a dish that's like inherently, like, there's a necessity to describe it, like, on how to eat it. If you know that people are always gonna go, hey, how do I eat this? Like, if it's, if it's plated really crazy, and you're like, how I eat this? I would underst, I think that's helpful. If some, if staff go, hey, this dish has this and that, it's easier if you eat it like nachos or whatever, right? Like, that, I think, is, has value. But I think if you sit there and explain every single dish, it gets a little monotonous and boring. And also, I'm just kind of like awkwardly waiting there, like, can you leave? I wanna eat, you know?

• 13:18Graham Stephan?

  Now, I'm curious, when it comes to restaurants, why do so many restaurants fail?

• 13:22Speaker 02

  I don't have all the answers to that. But I feel like, I mean, there's so many reasons that restaurants fail. Running a restaurant is really hard. Like, I think people don't realize how hard it is to run a restaurant. Margins are thin. It's very hard to find, you know, people who know what they're doing. It's really hard to, to keep standards high. It's really easy to make mistakes. The margin of error is super small. So, I mean, all of those things combined, obviously, can lead to a treacherous path to somebody who's not as knowledgeable or is more inexperienced. But even experienced people get knocked down in restaurants. I mean, we've seen tons of, like, celebrity chefs and, like, famous people who own dozens of restaurants, and every once in a while, they'll just close a restaurant.

• 14:00Graham Stephan?

  What is more important? Is it location or good food?

• 14:03Speaker 02

  I don't know anymore, honestly. Like, I, I think good location is always gonna help, right? Like, having a bad location is not going to help you. So my first thought would be like, location's probably a little more important. But I think if you have bad food, who cares, right? I think that this notion that, you know, if you have bad food but a good location, like, you'll probably survive, is not necessarily true, but it depends on the city, right? If you're in, like, a really expensive city, like Los Angeles, or, or even Austin, or, or New York, like, I feel like, even if you have a great location, your, your rent's gonna be really high. So you're already spending a ton on overhead. Your staffing's gonna be really expensive, so you're even more overhead. And so now you have all this that you have to pay off before you can even make a profit. So if you're not selling enough volume,

• 14:49Speaker 02

  or you're not selling at a high enough ticket per person, which usually kind of goes back to volume oftentimes, if it's not balanced properly, then you're eventually gonna become that negative pretty quickly. So if your food is bad, like, how are you gonna have repeat customers? How are you gonna sell enough food, you know? So I would say probably a good mix of both, but location definitely helps.

• 15:08Graham Stephan?

  How much does the average restaurant make? Cause we've been to some pretty crazy ones where I see those build outs that are tens of millions of dollars, and I look at the menu and I'm thinking, how on earth are they ever gonna pay this back? But before we go into that, when you hear how much some of these restaurants cost just to build, it makes a little more sense why the food gets so expensive. Like, if you go out, order a couple steaks, maybe some drinks, all of a sudden, it's a $200 bill.

• 15:32Jack Selby?

  That's why a lot of the time, I'd rather stay home, make a great steak, and eat really well for way less money. The only thing is that you have to know how to cook a steak right for it to come out anything like the restaurants.

• 15:42Graham Stephan?

  And that's the hard part, because unless you really know what you're doing, you're basically guessing when to flip it, when to pull it off, and how long to let it rest.

• 15:48Jack Selby?

  Our partner Chef IQ does all of the thinking for you. It tells you when to flip, when to pull, when to rest, and even when it's ready to serve.

• 15:54Graham Stephan?

  So whether you're making steak, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, or even burgers, you don't have to sit there wondering if you're about to undercook it or completely ruin it. Plus, it's really simple. You just download the app and connect the probes, then just start cooking, and Chef IQ will send alerts to your phone telling you exactly what to do and when to do it.

• 16:11Jack Selby?

  Like, our editor, Michael's girlfriend, literally cooks everything for him. He has no idea how to cook, awful cook, but he even cooked a perfect steak with Chef IQ. I mean, this is just incredible. This was the easiest thing. The UI of the app is also so nice. I could not cook a steak like this in a million years if I wanted to. Look at how juicy that is. Are you kidding me? Bro, this is so good.

• 16:34Graham Stephan?

  So if you wanna feel more confident when you're cooking and save money by not eating out, head to chefiq.com and use the code Iced for 25% off site wide.

• 16:43Jack Selby?

  Once again, that is chefiq.com code I C E D for 25% off site wide.

• 16:49Graham Stephan?

  How much does the average restaurant make? Cause we've been to some pretty crazy ones where I see those build outs that are tens of millions of dollars, and I look at the menu and I'm thinking, how on earth are they ever gonna pay this back?

• 17:00Speaker 02

  I honestly don't, I, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not well versed enough in, like, the backend of, you know, I haven't worked at 20 restaurants. I've worked at three, four restaurants. So I don't have enough of a view on the backend, but I will say that every restaurant makes a different amount of money because each restaurant is a completely different business in a way, right? Like, there's really high volume but low ticket cost restaurants, right? So that would be like, like a fast food place or a fast casual place where the price per person is lower. But the volume that they sell is way higher. But then you go to a fine dining restaurant, oh, well, we only serve 50 people a night, but it's like $300 a person. So higher ticket average, lower volume. So you have to, like, tip the scales one way or another.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  So it, it can vary pretty wildly depending on the type of restaurant that you're looking at. But I will say the most profitable ones are usually lower ticket cost, higher volume, usually. Not always. It depends. Like, I'll give you an example, like, like steak houses make a shitload of money. Like, some steak houses can make 20, 30, sometimes 40 million dollars annually.

• 18:03Graham Stephan?

  Wow.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  In one space. Just Google, like, highest revenue steakhouse and what they get per location. Cause it's like a big number. It's like, kind of shocking.

• 18:12Graham Stephan?

  Is that steak or we're talking like drinks, like?

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Both. Steak, steak is like one of those, it's so, I, I think it's a little bit of a perspective thing. I think a lot of what makes these type of restaurants, like, make a lot of money is the perception of value.

• 18:25Graham Stephan?

  That's what I was curious about, how much psychology goes into pricing? Cause if you see a $120 steak, mentally, I'm thinking, oh, that must be a pretty good steak.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  $47 million annually for one restaurant for Joe's Prime Seafood and Steak.

• 18:40Graham Stephan?

  Have you been there?

• 18:40Speaker 02

  No, but I mean, that's just an example, though.

• 18:42Graham Stephan?

  Oh, my gosh, man, that seems like the best place to go. We'll join you.

• 18:45Jack Selby?

  $47 million?

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Per year for one restaurant.

• 18:48Graham Stephan?

  Wow.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Isn't that kind of crazy? So they, so theoretically, like, if they sold that one restaurant as a business at a 3X multiplier, they're selling it for over $100 million.

• 18:55Graham Stephan?

  Okay, what's their profit margin on that, though?

• 18:58Speaker 02

  I have no idea. I don't know. I don't have their books. I don't know. I mean, I'm, I'm.

• 19:01Graham Stephan?

  They gotta be making 20%, right?

• 19:04Speaker 02

  I think it's probably between, I don't, I don't know. Like, it could vary wildly. I don't wanna, I don't wanna say, but like, it could, it could theoretically be 30 to 35% maybe. That's a guess, wild guess, don't know for sure.

• 19:17Jack Selby?

  Have you ever heard of the myth or truth, I, I'm not really sure, about In-N-Out only making money from their drinks?

• 19:23Graham Stephan?

  I've never heard of that.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Never heard of that.

• 19:25Jack Selby?

  You've never heard of that? I feel like that was a, a pretty commonly shared belief, is that In-N-Out literally only makes money off of, like, their soft serve drinks.

• 19:32Graham Stephan?

  There's no way.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  There's so many numbers that fly around in a restaurant. It's kind of hard to say, like, what, you know, how much, how much are they ordering? What's their, what, do they have a special deal with their purveyor? Like, if you're, if you're an In-N-Out, you probably have a purveyor that you have a, you're getting, like, really low pricing on product because you buy so much of it. So you can usually get a special deal on it. So they're probably spending less on tomatoes and lettuce and ground beef than anybody else in the world, like theoretically, right? Or in, in the US. I don't know, like, it depends, maybe. But there's so many different makeups, right? Like, I've heard from, and I don't know if this is true or not, but I've heard from people that Terry Black's barbecue is doing like 30 to 40 million a year

• 20:13Speaker 02

  as well, and they have supposedly like 35, 37% margins. I don't know if that's true. I don't know. Like, I can't guarantee that. I've never seen their books. This was like a he said, she said thing. But I would believe it, though, because again, they have volume and they have high ticket. And that's what makes steak houses so profitable because they're, like, perception of value, right? You've got a steak that they purchased, it's a New York shrimp that's one pound, it's one inch thick, it's a nice big juicy steak. They bought the steak for, let's call it $20 to $25, but they're gonna sell you that steak for $125 to $250, right? Cause it's Australian wagyu and this, that, and the other. But they might be getting a special deal. They may be even spending even less per steak.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  So their multiplier on food, their food costs in correlation to how much they're charging you is just abysmal. You can't do that in other restaurants, but at the perception, to me, when somebody walks into a steakhouse, is they feel, usually when people go to a steakhouse, they're like, oh, this is gonna be a fancy meal, or maybe it's their, you know, Valentine's Day, or it's, it's their anniversary, like, it's a treat. So most of the time when people walk into a steakhouse, they are prepared to and are okay with spending high ticket. I don't know what it is, but they won't do it at a, at certain fine dining restaurants.

• 21:19Jack Selby?

  What's interesting is some foods, in my opinion, have no reason being as expensive as they are. For example, sushi. Sushi is like rice, and it's just like raw fish. You don't even have to cook it.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:31Jack Selby?

  But they sell it for this premium price. You go get one roll and it could be $20 at a restaurant. And who gets full off of one roll? Realistically, you need

• 21:40Graham Stephan?

  two to three.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Have you noticed?

• 21:41Jack Selby?

  Five? You know, like, you need to eat a lot of sushi. So it's extremely expensive for something that you think is, it should be a lot cheaper.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Have you noticed how many sushi places have opened in the last, like, five to 10 years?

• 21:52Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, but that's because, what, they're just more popular? I feel like more people are just eating sushi these days, right?

• 21:57Speaker 02

  It's because they're really popular, and people have recognized that they're like probably one of the highest ROI restaurant businesses you could possibly make. Like, have, have you guys noticed that there's like Omakase is popping up everywhere?

• 22:08Graham Stephan?

  Yes.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Where it's like just a table and like two chefs? Because now people can open a restaurant for like a little bit more reasonable cost because it's a small room. They don't need a huge space. They don't need 20 staff. They only need two sushi chefs and maybe like a porter and, and a waiter or waitress. They serve, you know, they have a seat for 10 people. They do maybe two to three rotations. So 30 people a night. I, I, I don't, I can't think off the top of my head, but let's say you get like a hamachi nigiri, right? It's per nigiri piece. You might spend anywhere between 10, 12, 14, 15 bucks. Dude, it's like a half ounce of fish, like 15. Let's think about this for a second. How much do you think just a filet of the hamachi is?

• 22:47Graham Stephan?

  80 bucks.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  No, way less.

• 22:49Graham Stephan?

  Less.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Way, way.

• 22:51Graham Stephan?

  Really?

• 22:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. Prob- prob- I mean, I don't, I don't have the price off the top of my head, but it's way less than $80. Like maybe the whole fish, um, but like you're probably spending, I don't know, maybe, let's call it per side, I don't know, 40 bucks. So you've got 80 bucks in the whole fish. You have two sides. Each side is, let's call it eight ounces. You got 16 ounces, uh, or probably more than that. Let's call it 24 ounces of fish, right? You're doing a half ounce per roll. So like do the math, like you're making a crazy markup on that fish.

• 23:22Graham Stephan?

  So one thing I'm really curious about, there is an all you can eat sushi spot here in Vegas. It's $23.95.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  He was gonna bring this up.

• 23:29Graham Stephan?

  When you go after 9:00 PM. How do they make money? Because we're getting a table full of food for $23.95.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  Maybe for them, it's like they're regaining margin on product that would be thrown away anyways. So.

• 23:48Speaker 00

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• 24:13Speaker 02

  Maybe they're, they've got like, they, all their fresh fish, they're saving for like the, the, the, the typical day eaters, I guess, uh, you know, the, the, the, the 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM crowd. And then like whatever scrap pieces they do, is it the full menu?

• 24:28Graham Stephan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:29Jack Selby?

  Yeah, no, it's a limited menu.

• 24:30Graham Stephan?

  Well, there's a few pieces they don't put on. There's like a meat piece, like a steak sushi one. There's like very few pieces that are not available.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 24:38Graham Stephan?

  It's like 90 plus percent of the menu.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  That's kind of crazy. I don't know.

• 24:41Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  I'm, maybe, maybe it's just like.

• 24:42Jack Selby?

  I heard it's reject fish. Like this is the fish that would have gone, served at like a nicer restaurant, but it didn't qualify for it. So they just send it to the all you can eat spots.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  There's so many ways that they could make margin on that though. Like theoretically, you're, to your point, they could be buying fish at a lower cost because it's lower quality. And then they can sell that fish and get it sold, um, at a lower cost for you. And then they're, they're able to sell more volume. Again, remember it's like ticket average versus volume. So to, to me, it sounds like they're getting more volume by putting that 9:00 PM. They're packed every night. Cool. Great. So now they're selling way more than they usually do. So I'm sure that they make up their margin doing that.

• 25:18Jack Selby?

  So you just opened up a restaurant. People have probably been wanting you to do this for a long time. What was the logic behind that?

• 25:25Speaker 02

  It's so funny. You, you stated the question like that. Like what was the logic?

• 25:29Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  This is not a logical decision.

• 25:30Jack Selby?

  No, it's not a logical decision.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, I mean, look, I, I love food and I love restaurants. Uh, I'm, I have a huge passion for hospitality. Before I was doing any of this, I worked in restaurants. I mean, I didn't choose to go work in a restaurant to, to, um, be, you know, have a silly fun time. I did it because I love restaurants and I love hospitality and I'd also, to be honest, like just felt weird having this like connection with this community that I've built who also love food. And I feel weird that I haven't been able to serve them my food. Do you know what I mean? Like that's, that's like part of my MO. I cook for everybody I know. Um, it's a big thing for me. It's how I express myself, but it's also how I connect with people. I like having conversation, but it's so funny. Whenever I have people come over, a lot of the time, like,

• 26:15Speaker 02

  I'll kind of like recede into the kitchen and be like quiet for the next hour or two. So I can like really focus on making a great meal. And then once I'm done, I'm like hanging out with everybody. But I really like that part where I'm like in the cut and making an experience for somebody, right? It's almost like if somebody loves acting or somebody loves being a comedian and they like performing, it's, it feels like a performance for me. And I just feel like that part of my body and, or that part of my brain has been like repressed for the past like five years because I, I can perform on camera, but I don't get to serve people my food. Uh, and I, it just feels weird that I'd not. And so it just felt like time to open a place.

• 26:48Jack Selby?

  So what went into making that decision? Like, when did you decide that you wanted to open up a restaurant? How long has this process been?

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Oh, so long. I mean, the last time I was on here, I think I talked about how I wanted to open a restaurant. And it's taken a long time to figure it out because it's a big risk, right? I'm doing, I, I mean, I've gone through so many different iterations of restaurants. There are other restaurants I would like to and will open over time. Um, but I've had to like bounce around on different concepts because I have multiple concepts already built. But I had to bounce around with different concepts of like, should I open this first or should I open this first? And I was worried about what people would think if I opened this kind of a restaurant versus another kind. Should I go high end? Should I go medium, whatever? And ultimately I decided, you know, I really want my first place to be a place that anybody can eat. I don't want to like be another person that's opening a super expensive restaurant that you can't get into, that is like super exclusive. It's like, what's the point?

• 27:38Speaker 02

  You know, I, I want anybody to be able to just swing in, grab a bite. It's affordable. You can go in and get a sandwich and know that you're getting it for like a really, really good price. A very competitive one, like one that competes with fast food prices.

• 27:49Jack Selby?

  So explain this exact restaurant. How did you decide that you're going to make this type of food? How did you determine the, the build out, the location, all of the logistics behind it?

• 27:59Speaker 02

  With, with most of the things that I do, I always identify well, exactly what I want the end result to be. And then I work backwards. So to me, the end result was, like I said, I want it to be restaurant, premium quality, like something that you, you would pay a premium for, but deliver it to people in a much more affordable cost and weighed more chill. Like you don't need to dress up. Uh, and so that was like the core of the idea. And then I worked backwards from that. So I was like, okay, well, what will the dish be like? Will it be multiple dishes? Will it be one? I ultimately decided on like a holistic concept, which was like fried chicken sandwiches. I just feel like it's like an area that I, I love fried chicken sandwiches. My favorite sandwich. I would choose a fried chicken sandwich over a hamburger. 99.9% of the time, it's just, to me, it's a better eating experience.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Um, but most of the new ones that come out are like 25 bucks. You know, this one's way, is, is way less than that. And so I, I'm saying that my sandwich is just as good as a $25, $30 sandwich, but it's just not that expensive. You could just come in and get it for fast food prices. And it's about a hundred times better than what you'll get at. And, you know, a Wendy's or a Burger King, and it's actually made with premium ingredients. We're making our own pickles. We're making our own sauces. We're making our own everything, like basically, right? Like we're bread, hand-breading our chicken, et cetera. Once I figured out all of that, I basically was like, okay, well, we're going to have to work really hard to make this margin possible. And now it comes down to like really getting volume. So like, you know, fingers crossed, I, I, I really believe if you put a good product out there, people will show up.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  So I'm hoping that, you know, we get the, we get the volume that we're looking for, the number of people to come in and eat. And at that point, um, I, once I figured out the branding, I was looking for a spot that would fit that. So I looked for what's called a second generation space, which is like places that already have a kitchen. That's it. Like, right? Like a, like, let's say a restaurant was formerly there. They left. Now there's still a kitchen, but nobody, no resident, nobody's holding that property. It's now up for lease. Those are the hardest to find. Took me three years to find one. Three years. So, uh, I went to multiple people. The first year and a half, I went to different locations and tried to get a lease thing going. And then once I realized how long it was going to take for each spot because of the permitting and build out,

• 30:12Speaker 02

  I was like, we're so screwed if we, if we, it's going to take us years to open a spot and so much more money, by the way, because you have to pay for so much more because there's nothing there. So, um, yeah, I found a second generation spot. We, we built it out. I did all the branding and, um, probably over a quarter million has been invested, like just in like general build out. Um, but I'm, I'm like the only, I don't have an investor. I don't have a fund. I don't have a, a friend giving me money. It's basically like, hey, Josh, we need to buy this. And I.

• 30:42Jack Selby?

  Put it on your personal credit card.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  But not my personal.

• 30:47Jack Selby?

  Business credit card.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, but basically, yeah, if, if something needs to be paid for, I'm, I'm paying for it essentially.

• 30:53Jack Selby?

  And are you going to have a drive-through?

• 30:54Graham Stephan?

  No, what's crazy about doing all of this with no investors is that everything is on his shoulders. So if something goes wrong, there's nobody else there to pick up the slack.

• 31:00Jack Selby?

  And I think a lot of people relate to that. If you have a family and you have people who rely on you on a day-to-day basis, there's a lot that's riding on you being there.

• 31:07Graham Stephan?

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• 31:12Jack Selby?

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• 31:19Graham Stephan?

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• 31:27Jack Selby?

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• 31:35Graham Stephan?

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• 31:40Jack Selby?

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• 31:48Graham Stephan?

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• 31:52Jack Selby?

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• 32:05Jack Selby?

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• 32:12Graham Stephan?

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• 32:21Jack Selby?

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• 32:29Graham Stephan?

  Exactly. The Magback case also has a built in finger loop, extra grip, so it feels better in your hand, a dedicated camera button, and it still works with MagSafe and wireless charging.

• 32:39Jack Selby?

  But there are two other features that I love the most. The first are the magnets on the back of the case that are way stronger than any magnets you can find on any other case. And of course, the other one is the kickstand. I use this all the time when watching videos, reading scripts, FaceTime, and it's even useful for cooking. Just flip out the kickstand on the counter, pull up a recipe, and you can follow along while you cook.

• 32:58Graham Stephan?

  It's really one of those cases where, once you start using it, it's impossible to go back to any other case. Like, I'll tell you, the little finger loop, you think it's like a little minor thing. Oh, my gosh, I can't tell you how many times that I've dropped my phone on my face when I'm in bed, just like scrolling Twitter, and I just like, I lose the grip and it falls and it hurts. But with the finger loop, it solves the problem entirely. I've not dropped the phone on my face since I've gotten the Magback case.

• 33:22Jack Selby?

  So if you just got the new iPhone, or you want to upgrade the phone case that you already have, get 15% off of any Magback product using code ICE15 with the link down below in the description.

• 33:32Graham Stephan?

  Again, that's code ICE15 for 15% off any Magback product with the link down below in the description. Highly recommended.

• 33:39Jack Selby?

  This is completely unscripted. I genuinely love this phone case, and I have recommended it and gotten discount codes for every single one of my friends and family. It is, like, you don't know a good phone case until you have one, and I kid you not, this is the perfect phone case. And are you gonna have a drive through?

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Not for this place. Yeah, no drive through here. But I'm interested in doing a drive through. The only problem with the drive through is it adds a few logistical things that I'm not sure if I want to add yet or not. If people are overwhelmingly asking for it, I will find a way to do it. Like, I want this to be a place that people are excited to go to. But as of right now, we don't have drive through.

• 34:12Graham Stephan?

  I always thought that drive throughs increase revenues substantially. Like, I always wished that you could do a drive through Chipotle. It just seems like an easy thing to do.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  So there's a few logistics that are involved with drive throughs. There's like, I'm sure there's additional permitting, but then there's also like, you need a different kind of POS system, I think. I've never built a drive through, so I don't know. I just know that the, um, my operator that I work with, he's pretty hesitant on the drive through just because of the logistical hurdles to make it happen. It's not easy. Otherwise, everybody would have drive through, but.

• 34:46Jack Selby?

  Do you think it's a good thing that it's so difficult to open up a restaurant?

• 34:48Speaker 02

  That's part of the reason why I wanted to open one. Because I feel like a lot of people are coming into the food space because it's a fun, and I want to choose my words carefully. I don't want to say it's an easy way to make money, but I think people have identified food in the content space as like a place to farm money. And that's not why I got into it. I can promise you that. But I don't like that. I don't like that people are just kind of jumping in just to make money, like, because it skews all the people out there that are trying to do good things. And so the restaurant, I think, is a good barometer of who really cares.

• 35:21Graham Stephan?

  But do you think they actually make money? Like, I saw a clip of David Dobrik saying that Dobrik's Pizza is costing him $10,000 to $15,000 a month to stay open, but he likes it because he likes driving down Sunset Boulevard and being like, hey, there is my spot.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  If restaurants didn't make any money, then nobody would open any more restaurants. Right? I mean, I feel like that's a pretty, that's like one commonsensical way to look at it. But they are, it's harder to make a, it's one of the hardest businesses to make money. And then you have to constantly baby it. But I mean, I mean, how much does Gordon Ramsay make on those restaurants? Like $200 million a year?

• 35:58Graham Stephan?

  So are you planning to franchise? Or are you planning to open up a whole bunch of these? Like, Dave's Hot Chicken sold for like, what, $1 billion plus?

• 36:07Speaker 02

  My number one goal is just to make really, really good food at, keep the quality standards, and just constantly deliver a great sandwich that people love to eat, that people will want to go eat, that will make people think more about having a good experience when they're eating. That's my own, that's my goal.

• 36:23Graham Stephan?

  Here's a, here's a curveball question for you. Could you sell the chicken at that price if minimum wage was $25 an hour?

• 36:32Speaker 02

  I think, yeah. I think so. Because you, we don't need a ton of staff to do our, our, uh, our business. Like, we built it in a way that we don't need like 20 staff all the time.

• 36:45Graham Stephan?

  Does it ever work to automate, like, the cashier in front? Like, I see some of the McDonald's now that really just have those kiosks. You walk up, you press a few buttons, and like, you just see someone scrambling in the bag, just putting it together.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  I mean, of course, you're not paying another person. But I like, I like the FaceTime. I mean, right now, we're so early beginning, you know? I don't know. Like, I don't, I will say this, I don't feel comfortable franchising. Would I open up multiple locations? Maybe, yeah. I mean, I think, I think it'd be really fun, actually, if like, I could interact with the people who watch my videos and be like, okay, let's vote. I'm gonna open another place. Where is it gonna be? And then have like, everybody vote for it. Have everybody be like, LA, or whatever, right? And whatever gets the most votes, we're just like, all right. And then we just open wherever gets the most votes. So I think that would be really fun, because then, then now people can enjoy the sandwich. But if you live in, I don't know, San Diego, and San Diego won, well, now San Diego can get the sandwiches that happen to come all the way to Texas.

• 37:41Jack Selby?

  What's the secret to making a good fried chicken sandwich?

• 37:44Speaker 02

  I mean, many ways, it's skin and cat, right? Everybody has a, has an opinion. To me, it's like a few things. The chicken has to stay crispy for a long time, because once you put it on a sandwich, all the sauce and pickles and everything, it's gonna go like flaccid and chewy. The goal is to keep it crispy. So something that stays crispy for a long time, so it's crunchy when you bite into it. The cook on the chicken is like maybe the most important part. You ever get a dried chicken sandwich? Horrible, horrible. It's just like sawdust. You can't even focus on the eating experience because you're focusing on not suffocating to death when it's a dried chicken. So cook time on the chicken, and then seasoning. Like, and I don't mean like herbs and spices. I say this all the time, and people make fun of me for it, but like, salt levels are like really crucial for chicken sandwiches, because there's so many components that it can, it can be under-seasoned really easily. And then maybe like the fourth one is like adequate saucing.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Like, you need usually a little more sauce than you think you need. I like it saucy.

• 38:31Jack Selby?

  Which fast food restaurant has the best chicken sandwich, then? Like, who's, who would be your main competitor? Outside of you guys, who has the best chicken sandwich? Reliably, you go there, you get a chicken sandwich. This is almost ideal.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  I don't really have like a fast food place that does that for me.

• 38:47Jack Selby?

  Popeyes.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  When the Popeyes sandwich first came out, I would say Popeyes was one of the leaders for sure. But now it's like, I feel like their quality's gone down so much. That's just my own personal experience, though.

• 38:57Graham Stephan?

  Shack is a hot chicken spot.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  I haven't had Shack's yet. Is it Big Chicken or some?

• 39:02Graham Stephan?

  I think so.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  It's called like Shack's Big Chicken. Yeah, yeah.

• 39:05Jack Selby?

  How much money do you think your restaurant's gonna make?

• 39:07Speaker 02

  I have no idea.

• 39:08Jack Selby?

  Like, do you think that it's gonna be worth your time?

• 39:13Speaker 02

  I hope so.

• 39:14Jack Selby?

  So it's really that risky to open up this restaurant?

• 39:17Speaker 02

  I mean, you can sit there and run a pro forma. We've ran a pro forma. But I mean, like, as, as any, anybody who's ever opened a business likely knows that you can write a pro forma, and that's great, but it's a theoretical piece of paper. What if you just don't sell what was on the pro forma? Okay, well, then pro forma's out the window. It could make, uh, it could make seven figures if it does really well. But I mean, of course, there's the margin. And I think if prices change dramatically, the margin will change, right? If wages go up dramatically, the margin will change. But I will say this, though. I'm not taking any money from this place out the gate. Like, I'm, I'm very, very focused on, on nurturing this business.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  I'm not gonna like, the second it becomes profitable, start putting in my pocket. In fact, like, I'm gonna probably, if I, if, if opening another one makes sense, because people really want it in another city, I'm just gonna use the money that we make off this to open another one. I'm not going to just like, start taking cash out of it. So I'm much less focused on making money off this place right now, and more so focused on just like, making really good chicken sandwich and getting it to as many people as possible.

• 40:22Jack Selby?

  What was the most surprisingly difficult thing about opening up a restaurant?

• 40:27Speaker 02

  I mean, the risk. The, the risk is theoretically infinite. I mean, unless you close the doors, the risk is theoretically infinite, right? And as, as you know, like, the failure rate for restaurants are extremely high. The costs are extremely high. And if, in, in my case, if you don't have an investor, I mean, somebody has to pay for something, right? If something goes wrong, let's, let's, let's look at it like this. There's the initial investment of all the stuff and equipment you have to buy. Commercial equipment, super expensive. Like, if you, if you need a commercial oven, $20,000. If you need a new hood vent, that could be $60,000, $70,000 for a hood vent. I mean.

• 41:02Jack Selby?

  Why do you get a commercial thing? Why don't you just get like a residential hood vent?

• 41:06Speaker 02

  It's illegal. Every city has rules. You have to have commercial permitted equipment in a commercial space to serve people. From a food safety standpoint, but also for, from city safety standpoint, they want to protect against fires, they want to protect. And also, by the way, here's another thing. It's not just a hood vent. Where is your, uh, where is your out, uh, your output for the hood vent? Where is all of the, whatever the hood vent is sucking up, where is it going physically out of the building? Is it going out the top? Or is it going out the side? Because there's also rules about that. If it's going out the side, you have to add something on the, on the outside of the building called a scrubber. So it, it, it's called scrubber because it scrubs. It cleans the air that comes out before it exits the building, because it could be blowing on a street, it could be blowing into someone else's building.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  And scrubbers can cost thousands and thousands of dollars.

• 41:54Jack Selby?

  You know what's really interesting? I'm always tempted to go to restaurants when I drive by and I get the whiff and I get the smell. You know, like Wood Ranch, every time you drive by a Wood Ranch, you get that smell of that meat being cooked, and it makes me want to go there. There are very few restaurants that do that. There's also people that theorize, that's not even from the food, they're just spraying fragrances into the air.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  What?

• 42:15Jack Selby?

  That's, that's what.

• 42:16Graham Stephan?

  There's no way.

• 42:17Jack Selby?

  Maybe I'm just on like conspiracy food Reddit or something, but I've also heard about something like that.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  You're a conspiracy theorist with restaurants.

• 42:22Jack Selby?

  I'm just saying, that could also be a potential marketing ploy, is to spray fragrances that lure people into your restaurant. So.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  I've thought about this.

• 42:30Jack Selby?

  Is this something that you're gonna lean into, is making like the streets smell like you're chicken?

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Should I make chicken candles?

• 42:37Jack Selby?

  That

• 42:38Graham Stephan?

  Fried chicken candles?

• 42:39Jack Selby?

  That would genuinely sell like

• 42:41Graham Stephan?

  That would actually do well.

• 42:42Jack Selby?

  And you can buy In-N-Out clothes. You walk into your restaurant, you buy chicken candles.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, like are herbs and spices in the form of a candle?

• 42:48Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 42:48Jack Selby?

  That's hilarious. That's actually really funny.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Okay, I'll see what I can do.

• 42:52Graham Stephan?

  What about the risk of lawsuits? Like someone comes in, they slip and fall, or they say, hey, I got really sick from the food. It's underpacked.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  I mean theoretically, that can happen with literally any business, like any physical business. If you guys decided you wanted to open a, I don't know, like a finance, like a company that finances houses or something, right? A mortgage company, which I don't know that you would ever do that. But if you did and you had a physical building, you run that risk too, right? Any physical location, insurance, right? You should have insurance. We have all sorts of insurances for that.

• 43:22Jack Selby?

  Graham's asking how good your insurance is and if the floors are gonna be slippy.

• 43:27Graham Stephan?

  I got wobbly feet.

• 43:28Jack Selby?

  Yeah, he has really wobbly feet.

• 43:29Graham Stephan?

  Very prone to just slipping.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Well, it's funny you say that. I actually have a picture of you on the wall that says, do not let this man enter, give him the sandwich on the other side of the street.

• 43:39Jack Selby?

  On the drive through, hopefully.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, now you're gonna run the car.

• 43:43Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 43:44Graham Stephan?

  No, one thing I've noticed though is it seems like a lot of influencers these days are getting involved in like restaurants. And they're really promoting restaurants and doing a great job. Like, I love the people in their car. They're just eating in the car.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  I love them.

• 43:57Graham Stephan?

  I've been to a lot of the restaurants because I see them in the car and they just rave about the spot. And then I find it fun to show up.

• 44:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:04Graham Stephan?

  So is this something that more restaurants should lean into?

• 44:07Speaker 02

  You don't even need to because they'll show up if it's good, right? But sure, yeah, I don't see why not. I mean, these guys aren't like chefs, but I mean, some of them seem to have pretty good takes. I did a video where we went and like tested the pallets of a few of them and like went to all the places that they recommended. And a lot of them were actually pretty good. I'm open to it. It's not like you need to be a chef to say if something's good or not. And some of them have good pallets.

• 44:29Jack Selby?

  Can an influencer save a bad restaurant?

• 44:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. It's happened a few times, hasn't it? I think there've been a few news articles of like restaurants that were struggling and then like Keith Lee goes there and then they're fine. But I'm curious.

• 44:40Jack Selby?

  Why is a good restaurant struggling? That's what I want to know. Like if you have really good food at somewhat of a reasonable price, isn't it kind of just like natural that you would start to get regulars and be able to sell enough food to make a profit?

• 44:53Speaker 02

  I feel like at this point, it's like a little bit, you kind of have to lean into the theory of it, right? Because there's no way to know for sure, but I mean, we live in a noisy world. There's restaurants all over Las Vegas. There's restaurants all over every city. And they're all trying to promote themselves. They're all trying to get people's attention. So when you have so much noise going back and forth, sometimes people can get forgotten in the mix. Maybe they're not as savvy from an entrepreneurial standpoint, so their margins aren't right. Maybe their food is good, but they have consistency problems. I mean, there's just so many reasons why restaurants fail. It's tough to like nail down a specific reason, but the one thing that I am curious about is how long can a restaurant succeed from an influencer post? Because let's say like Keith Lee goes somewhere and they blow up, but is it gonna be blowing up for the next five years?

• 45:39Speaker 02

  I don't think so. I think it would be like a couple of months, maybe of like high foot traffic. But like, do they maintain that? I don't know. I'm curious. Like, we don't have the data for that yet.

• 45:46Jack Selby?

  I think Dobrik's is kind of an example of that because originally there were lines out the door, like they, they would sell out. But now, I went there recently and like, there's like a couple of people in there, max. Or it's like empty. And so I think that it might just be like that beginning phase. And then like, if your food is really good, people will continue going there.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  But like David Dobrik is not a chef. Like David Dobrik isn't known for food. And also like.

• 46:13Speaker 00

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• 46:39Speaker 02

  I guess let's take a step back. What about the restaurants that have been around for 10, 20, 30, 40 years? What makes them successful versus these other places? Like if you, let's take a restaurant that's been open for like a long time, like Domino's, right? Because I guess that's a piece of concept. So let's look at Domino's and let's look at Dobrik's. Why is Domino's around for so long, still has the sales that they do?

• 46:59Graham Stephan?

  That's just because it's easy.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  What do you mean?

• 47:02Graham Stephan?

  Just being able to go online. They're everywhere. Everywhere you go, you get essentially the same product. Versus Dobrik's is one location, physical. I don't know if they deliver.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  So then why, so then why doesn't he make those changes to make it easier to get? Like, why doesn't he, why didn't he add a drive-through element? Why didn't he add an Uber Eats element? Why didn't, you know, like, is that his answer? Is his answer to make it easier for people to eat and then his problems are solved?

• 47:26Jack Selby?

  Probably also Domino's is the cost structure down that they're able to do so much.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, but there's so many examples of that, right? It's not just Domino's. There's, there are restaurants where there's a lot less restaurants. I'm sorry, a lot less number of buildings, but you know, they're doing really well. There are restaurants that have 10, 20, 30 locations and they do really well. And they've been around for 10, 20, 30 years. Or what about the single restaurants? There's single restaurants that have been around for decades. Like what about Mr. Beef in Chicago that just all they do is sell Italian sandwiches? They've been around for literally generations, but why are they still around? There's just an Italian sandwich. It's not even expensive, actually. It's not even expensive meat, but they've been around for generations. I think the question is like, what is it that makes a restaurant stick around? And what are these other places not doing that is, you know, that they're struggling with? I also think things ebb and flow too, right?

• 48:13Speaker 02

  Maybe, maybe he'll go back up later. I don't know, right?

• 48:17Graham Stephan?

  Now, for the really nice restaurants out there, how do they treat celebrities different? Like, if, if a normal person just calls up, hey, is there any availability? No, we're booked. But like Brad Pitt comes in and somehow they have a table. Are they, do they always have tables?

• 48:33Speaker 02

  Most restaurants don't book all of their tables in advance. But it's not because they're holding it for a celeb. It's just that they always have, they leave room for walk-ins basically, right? Because people cancel their reservations. So if you fully book your restaurant and you're relying on people to eat in your restaurant, if you fully, fully book it, as in like you book every single table, you know, a day or two in advance. Well, now anybody who comes in off the street, they're gonna walk up and you're gonna go, oh, I'm sorry, we're booked for this evening, right? Which, which can happen, but then what if 20% of the people that booked don't show up?

• 49:06Speaker 02

  You could have sat, you could have seated those people. So you always leave room for walk-ins in the event that there's a walk-in, just to make sure that you maximize as many customers as you can get, as much volume as you can get to make sure your restaurant's full. But, and this is, this is where the celebrity part comes in. If a celeb calls and maybe they really like that celeb or they, they want them in their restaurant, yeah, they'll probably pick off one of their seats that's reserved for walk-ins and give it to them.

• 49:30Jack Selby?

  So we have in the past, not that I like it, in fact, I kind of hate it, but we'll call and they'll be booked. And then Graham will tell someone usually, hey, you call as my assistant and say, we have YouTuber, you know, or some, some person, famous person coming in later tonight if you have some space.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  No shame.

• 49:49Jack Selby?

  And I'm like cringing in the corner, but every, I think every single time it's worked.

• 49:53Graham Stephan?

  It's worked.

• 49:54Jack Selby?

  Every single time.

• 49:54Graham Stephan?

  And we did it the first time as a joke, just to see, let's mess with them a little bit. And sure enough, they got right back. Yes, we'll see you. And it was prime time. It was like 8:00 PM. And it was a party of like six and somehow they made it work. One of them I didn't even believe at first was the in Vegas. Have you seen this place?

• 50:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really famous.

• 50:17Graham Stephan?

  For six months straight, but somehow they could have availability.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. We've had, we've had it happen to us multiple times whenever we do shoots and we need to shoot at a really famous restaurant or like a multi-michelin or like something that's booked out in months in advance. And sometimes we're like, we need to book, but we don't have enough time to book. And we'll call them and be like, hey, we're shooting a video. We want to cover your restaurant. Usually they're like, yes. So yeah, they have room for it for sure. But they're not, I don't think that they're, I don't think that they're inherently reserving it just for famous people, but they will give it to them for sure.

• 50:46Jack Selby?

  And so do they just boot someone else off?

• 50:48Speaker 02

  No, no. I think they're, I think that they're giving.

• 50:50Jack Selby?

  Make a table?

• 50:51Speaker 02

  No, they're giving you the walk-in table.

• 50:53Jack Selby?

  The walk-in tables.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  I think that if it's a fine dining restaurant that actually does have fixed seats and they don't take walk-ins, I don't think they're booting anyone, but I do think they'll try to find a way to make a table or get an additional table. One time I, oh, I feel so bad for this. So there's a restaurant in Denmark. I'm actually good friends with the chef now after, after this happened, surprisingly. You would think that he'd hate me after this. So the restaurant's called Alchemist. Have you heard of this place? Crazy.

• 51:20Graham Stephan?

  Yes.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  Crazy. Have you been?

• 51:21Graham Stephan?

  No, but I've seen all the videos.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  Honestly, this is a place that I think you should go to, even though it's so like outside of your, honestly, I would watch a full-length video of a GoPro of him just.

• 51:30Graham Stephan?

  Gosh, I don't know if I could do it. Describe it to Jack.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  It is a 50-course, seven and a half hour dining experience through three or four different dining rooms. It is the most absurd restaurant experience I've ever seen in my entire life. Not just operationally, but from an experience standpoint, it is genuinely mind-boggling.

• 51:53Jack Selby?

  How much does that cost?

• 51:55Speaker 02

  I don't remember it.

• 51:56Graham Stephan?

  I think it was like 800 to 1,000.

• 51:58Jack Selby?

  That's it?

• 51:59Speaker 02

  I think it's more than that. I think it's at least 1,000, but I don't know the exact number though. We might want to quote that because I don't want to say the wrong thing, but.

• 52:07Jack Selby?

  For eight hours and 50 courses?

• 52:08Speaker 02

  It's a pretty good deal for how long the meal is.

• 52:11Graham Stephan?

  I think some of the courses though are like a little bite, like you.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, one bite.

• 52:14Graham Stephan?

  You'll like lick something.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. There's a part where you start eating like paint, actually, in a room and painting with a crazy person dancing. It's pretty wild. Oh, so the story, so here's, here's what happened. So I, I didn't know how big of a deal this restaurant was. I knew that they did really cool stuff. I didn't do that much research on them. I just knew, oh, this is a really famous place, Michelin star, the chef is amazing. And I was trying to get a reservation, but I couldn't figure out there, I was on, I was on the plane from Texas to Denmark with my wife. And I'm like, oh, I really want to do a dinner with her there. And so I'm like looking and try to figure out and I'm like, I'll just DM the chef. Maybe like he'll, you know, help me get a reservation, you know, whatever. So I DM him and this is the evening before the dinner. Like normally they're booked months in advance.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  There's they did not take walk-ins. They literally have like a locked door that only opens at your reservation time.

• 53:06Graham Stephan?

  No way.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  Uh, like two huge mass of like 20 foot doors, like open, like the gates of heaven or hell. Anyway, so I DM him and he, he goes, uh, let me see what I can do. And then he comes back to me and he's like, um, we got it all sorted. We got you guys booked and we go there. I found out that they had to get a new table and put in a new table in every dining room.

• 53:26Graham Stephan?

  No way.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  New chairs in every dining room.

• 53:28Graham Stephan?

  Just for you.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  For us. And I was, I felt so bad. I had no idea. And then we did, we went through this whole meal. It was amazing and a great time. We met the chef, we met all the people, they were super sweet to us. And at the end of the meal, they didn't charge us.

• 53:40Graham Stephan?

  No way.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  Would not charge us. And I had, we had a lot of wine pairings that night. So, I mean, we, we definitely would have been on the higher end of the cost of that and they didn't charge us anything.

• 53:49Graham Stephan?

  All right, I'm so curious, what perks do you get as Joshua Weissman?

• 53:53Speaker 02

  Perks? I really try not, I, I really try to force people to not give me perks. I don't want that. Like I want to support the restaurants are hard enough. I don't, I don't want to get a meal for free. If anything, I try to force them to make me pay. Like at the end of that meal at, at, uh, Alchemist,

• 54:10Speaker 02

  I specifically was like, please charge me. And they were like, no, no, no, no, no. And they literally refused. So I, I basically got them to, I basically forced them to charge me a dollar so I could tip my waitress.

• 54:21Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 54:22Speaker 02

  Um, that was the most that they would let me do. It's kind of crazy.

• 54:25Graham Stephan?

  But how often do you just sit down at a restaurant? Just you're just out with maybe some friends or whatever, and they just say, don't worry, it's on us.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  It's, it's often, but like, I normally don't let them though. Like I normally don't let them. I, I literally do not let them. Um, usually the like, a lot of restaurants will send stuff out for me, which is really nice, but I always over order. So I usually end up having like my tables like too stacked with stuff. Um, that last night we got, we got that $120 mozzarella for free.

• 54:53Graham Stephan?

  Believe it. Now, what's great about, uh, going out with you is that I get all the food to go. I hate any sort of.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  And then I pay for it.

• 55:02Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. But I don't like any sort of waste. I don't like ever. I never like it. Listen, I never like it when food is thrown away. To me, it just feels like that's, that's food that someone prepared.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:13Graham Stephan?

  Especially if it's like an animal food, like some, some animal gave its life to, to feed people. Like I'm going to eat it. How much food waste is there in restaurants?

• 55:22Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I would hope that it's gotten better today, but I mean, when I worked in restaurants, what I saw was obviously a lot of, a lot of food waste. Um, it, it really depends. Some restaurants are really good about it and they make sure that they, they check. Some restaurants will literally check the weight of something at the beginning, at the end of producing it. So that they know how much food waste and they can calculate how much they're wasting to try to minimize it. So some restaurants are really good about it, but the restaurants that don't do that is really out of control. Because think about it, if you sell like a meat product, you're ordering hundreds, thousands of pounds of meat. Anything that reaches the end of its lifespan in terms of food safety gets thrown away, obviously. So that could be in the hundreds of pounds, it could be more. Fine dining restaurants, whenever they make

• 56:08Speaker 02

  like really highly portioned foods. So like you, you ever go to like a fine dining restaurant and there's like a, a perfect piece of meat. It's like exactly rectangular. Well, the meat didn't come that way. So they'll usually cook the whole thing where they'll like kind of par cut it, cook it, and then they'll do what's called portioning where they portion it into the perfect shape. Now, a good restaurant will take the trim and make something else with it. But a restaurant that doesn't give a, will just throw the trim away. And if they're throwing trim away, they're, they're wasting probably anywhere between 30 to 50% of all of the meat that they use for that. And that does happen, but I, I couldn't tell you which restaurants are doing it right or wrong.

• 56:44Graham Stephan?

  One thing I'm really curious about is the restaurant rating. Like when you walk in, you see like an A or a B or a C. What goes in behind the scenes to get an A? Or when you see a C, is that a red flag?

• 56:55Speaker 02

  I don't know if it's exactly a red flag. Like sometime it really, it's some health inspectors are brutal, man. Um, it's really hard. It's really hard for restaurants, but I mean, there's so many things, right? Like, like from a food safety standpoint, every restaurant has usually two buckets, right? They have buckets for soap and they have buckets for sanitizer. And it's really important that they constantly rotate the bucket of sanitizer. Because, uh, the sanitizer that's in the bucket has a certain lifespan. So if they don't rotate it, they basically, usually people will label it with a time to, to swap it out and put fresh in. And then they put a new label on it. If you don't constantly rotate that and the inspector notices, hey, this sanitation bucket has been out for an hour longer than it's supposed to. And you haven't rotated and put a new label on it, that's a demarcation. If you, uh, if you, I mean, appearance, right?

• 57:40Speaker 02

  If the floors are super dirty and their walls are greasy, that's a demarcation. Like there's so many little things. Like if you're busy and you forgot to replace your sanitizer, like you're getting marked for that. That kind of sucks, right? Um, but it's also dangerous because the sanitizer isn't as effective. So if you wipe something down with sanitizer that's old, you might not be cleaning it at all.

• 58:00Jack Selby?

  But a food safety inspector, are they typically like undercover when they look into a restaurant?

• 58:06Speaker 02

  Okay. Usually, usually.

• 58:07Jack Selby?

  They walk in with the clipboard and everything.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:08Jack Selby?

  Okay.

• 58:09Speaker 02

  And also like, let's be real, like someone's in your kitchen, like doing this, like.

• 58:11Jack Selby?

  Oh, okay. They're like, no.

• 58:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. But you, you usually know like a little bit ahead of time. Like you'll usually know like a hour or two. I, anytime I've ever worked in a restaurant, I've usually been like, hey, the, the health inspector is going to be here today at 2:00 PM. Like, so I've never seen them come in undercover.

• 58:26Jack Selby?

  What's the most you've ever paid for a meal?

• 58:29Speaker 02

  One of the, one of the most expensive ones was for you guys.

• 58:32Graham Stephan?

  Oh, gosh.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  Jose Andres. What was that like four grand?

• 58:35Graham Stephan?

  You know what's funny? We sit down and they're like, you know what, like we'll order for you. Like we will take care of you, like this will be great. We'll get you all of the good stuff. We're sitting down looking at the prices and you're like, this is pretty expensive. Like this is nice of them.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  They brought out the A5 that I didn't order and then they charged me.

• 58:52Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. And then they bring down the bill and it's like a few thousand dollars.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:56Graham Stephan?

  They must've made a mistake.

• 58:57Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 58:58Graham Stephan?

  Did you make your money back on that video?

• 59:00Speaker 02

  Not, yes, yes, yes, we did.

• 59:01Graham Stephan?

  Okay, good.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 59:03Jack Selby?

  So what was the most expensive meal outside of that?

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Um, I did an omakase once with a bunch of friends and I paid for everybody. Uh, and it was like a really expensive omakase. And I think it was like,

• 59:14Speaker 02

  we had 20 people eating with us and it was like with drinks. Cause I mean, think about how expensive sushi is, right?

• 59:20Graham Stephan?

  Mm hmm.

• 59:21Speaker 02

  And then, then go to an omakase and then multiply that by like 15 to 20 people. And then everybody's having alcohol and everybody's having all the expensive cuts.

• 59:28Jack Selby?

  Like 4,000, 5,000 bucks.

• 59:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I think it was like, oh, it was nine grand plus tip. So like, maybe like, it was over $10,000. I don't remember how much.

• 59:40Graham Stephan?

  I think I got you beat, believe it or not.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Really?

• 59:43Graham Stephan?

  Believe it or not. Yeah. So I run this group, it's called the index. Link down below in the description. It's a group of entrepreneurs and we meet up four times a year. And the first meetup we ever did, I booked 21 Royal in Disneyland. And this is Walt Disney's little house above the Pirates of the Caribbean. You have no idea.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  This doesn't sound like Graham at all.

• 1:00:05Graham Stephan?

  Well, it, it's for an entrepreneur meetup group. So it makes sense in context of this. But it's $1,500 a person and it was $18,000 for the dinner. Plus I think we tipped another $2,000 on top of that. It might've been 3,000.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  But it probably already included gratuity, I'm sure. So you probably paid on top of that.

• 1:00:23Graham Stephan?

  I don't know. It was just a flat $18,000 that we tipped on top of that. So it might've been $20,000 total.

• 1:00:29Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:00:29Graham Stephan?

  For, I think it was 10 or 12 people.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  That's brutal. Wow. Does my wedding count? I guess not.

• 1:00:36Jack Selby?

  How much was the food at your wedding?

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  We had a 25 person wedding, but I had a two Michelin star restaurant cater it.

• 1:00:41Graham Stephan?

  No way.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, um, it was 25 people and it was like shockingly expensive. I think it was like $23,000.

• 1:00:49Jack Selby?

  How expensive was your wedding?

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  I don't remember. I don't remember. It actually wasn't as bad as you would think. It was not as bad as you, honestly, big hack, big financial hack. You can either have a big wedding in the States and, and, and, and let's call it a hundred people. And you spend,

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  I honestly don't know. Like if you want like a, you, you guys know this, right? If you want like a, a nice looking wedding, it's expensive, right? Flowers are expensive. The venue might be 30 to $50,000 or more. Sometimes venues are a hundred thousand dollars, but I've seen a lot of weddings go into like anywhere between the 50 to the $100,000 marker for a hundred people with good food and a nice venue, right? You could do that. Or you can take your close family, 25 people and go to Italy or France or somewhere, somewhere that's like vacation like for a week, take them all out there, pay for their flights, get a venue, the venues out there are a lot less expensive. You could literally do this at an Airbnb. You can get an Airbnb for like, and stay at the Airbnb, like a, a wine vineyard. And it's like maybe two grand a night for everybody to stay there.

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  Um, and you'll spend probably less money doing that. And you'll be able to have a whole week's worth of fun. So we did that instead.

• 1:01:54Graham Stephan?

  So what do you think that costs total? Like a hundred and something, 150?

• 1:01:59Jack Selby?

  All right, hold on. When weddings start getting that expensive, you have to start getting a little bit creative with where your money's actually going.

• 1:02:05Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, because you still want it to feel special without spending a fortune on every little thing.

• 1:02:09Jack Selby?

  Exactly. You want to find those unique things that stand out and are actually worth the money.

• 1:02:14Graham Stephan?

  And small business owners are basically looking for the same thing when they're stocking their stores, which is something our partner FAIRE makes a whole lot easier.

• 1:02:21Jack Selby?

  FAIRE gives independent retailers access to over 100,000 unique brands from around the world. So there's a ton of products to choose from, especially if you're looking to stock up ahead of the holidays.

• 1:02:30Graham Stephan?

  And having those unique products can make a huge difference because they help your store stand out. They bring in new customers and they keep your regulars coming back.

• 1:02:38Jack Selby?

  Not to mention, FAIRE has wholesale products across home, apparel, beauty, food and more.

• 1:02:42Graham Stephan?

  And if you're ready to join more than 700,000 retailers with access to over 100,000 brands, sign up today and get 50% off your first wholesale order up to $100 at F A I R E dot com slash iced coffee.

• 1:02:57Jack Selby?

  Once again, that is F A I R E dot com slash iced coffee. You can also click the link down below in the description. Terms may apply.

• 1:03:04Graham Stephan?

  So what do you think that costs total? Like a hundred and something, 150?

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  Probably less, honestly. I think less. I think like, I think you could do it for.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  I think we do it for as little as 50. And probably if you want it like to do a lot of flowers and stuff, it's going to go up pretty dramatically. It could end up in the hundred thousand dollar marker, maybe 100, 150,000, maybe. You could end up, it just depends. I mean, I've seen people do it for a lot less. I have a friend who did, who did one like in like Poland and even if like, like 50K.

• 1:03:35Graham Stephan?

  Seems pretty affordable compared to Logan Paul. How much was his? Three million dollars?

• 1:03:40Jack Selby?

  Millions.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. We didn't spend even a close, close to that. I think we maybe spent 125, maybe. And that was to fly everybody out, put everybody up for a week and a half. We went, I paid for dinners. We went, you know, we, we, we had like, you know, two Michelin star restaurant caterer. We had amazing floral arrangements. Like it was a good deal. I was not looking to get screwed by the wedding industry.

• 1:04:01Graham Stephan?

  Right.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  So it was, it was, it was fair.

• 1:04:03Jack Selby?

  Do you think tipping culture has gotten out of control?

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  I don't care. I just tip. It's fine. Like if it makes somebody else happy, like I'm always happy to tip. I always tip way more than I need to. I usually tip anywhere between like 25 to 35% minimum.

• 1:04:16Jack Selby?

  What if it's, you're going out to a coffee restaurant or like a coffee shop? And you get a coffee to go?

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  I always tip 25%.

• 1:04:24Jack Selby?

  Do you tip when you order food to go? And they give it to you in the plastic bag?

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  I tip regardless, honestly. I, I've just.

• 1:04:31Jack Selby?

  Okay. I mean, I do too. I'm just curious because a lot of people like think that tipping culture has gotten completely.

• 1:04:37Graham Stephan?

  It has. You know what?

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  I think it's made, made it more harder to make things affordable for people. I think the average person, it makes it way harder to make things affordable. I would be frustrated. But I mean, like I, I also know that like I can, I'm, I'm happy to do it. I can afford to tip them. So I do it anyway. And if it, if it makes their life better than great.

• 1:04:54Graham Stephan?

  I tipped on my smog test.

• 1:04:57Jack Selby?

  I've tipped on my smog test as well.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  Okay. Well.

• 1:04:59Graham Stephan?

  Yep. The guy was really nice and really chatty, very friendly and just, you know, turns that thing around. And there's the tip. And I was like, I can't not tip now, but, but it is your, the job.

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  I just understand why, why, why can't businesses just pay people what they should be paid? You know, the tipping thing feels like, I guess, I guess where it gets out of hand is if people aren't being paid what they should be paid. And then needing to use tips to get up to that.

• 1:05:26Graham Stephan?

  But they're not. They're, they're paid what they're paid, but the tipping is free. I mean, it's just like for them, it costs the business nothing.

• 1:05:33Speaker 02

  I guess it's an incentive for them to stay at the company.

• 1:05:36Jack Selby?

  Or to just like.

• 1:05:38Graham Stephan?

  There's, there's no downs, there's no downside for the business or the employee to turn the thing around. And then it says, what do you want to tip?

• 1:05:44Jack Selby?

  And that's why at some point it does make sense to like speak out against, you know, tipping for a smog test.

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Here's where I would draw the line. So do you, do you do Christmas lights in your house?

• 1:05:55Graham Stephan?

  Yes.

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  It's expensive.

• 1:05:57Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, I'm grandfathered in though. So I've got the original price. I was one of the first customers.

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  Really? Can I ask how much you pay?

• 1:06:04Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, I think it's $800.

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  What? That's so good.

• 1:06:07Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, that's what I was saying. So it's 400 to put up or 100 to take down. But I think now they charge like 1500, but they've never raised the price.

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:16Graham Stephan?

  And in fairness, we've given them a lot of business.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  Okay. So there was a, I, I don't use this company anymore, but there was a company that I was using and it was like $2,500 to do Christmas lights every year. And then one year they charged me the $2,500. And every time I, I paid it, I winced because I'm like, God, this is so dumb. Just like the Christmas lights up. But I'd rather do it than, you know, risk my life. They, they sent me the invoice, but there was like a tip, like a mandatory, you have to like put a tip.

• 1:06:44Jack Selby?

  Mandatory?

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  Mandatory. You could press no tip, but it was like a mandatory button you had to press. And I was like, oh, wait, what? Like, but I'm already paying $2,500 for you to put up my Christmas lights. What's the tip? What am I tipping for? Do you know what I mean? Like it.

• 1:06:58Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, but there's no, but again, there's no downside. If, if even 20% of people give something, it's free money.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. I guess, I guess like it doesn't matter. If there's an, if there's an option to press no tip, then I guess like it doesn't matter.

• 1:07:11Jack Selby?

  There's still is that social pressure to always tip. Like if they're turning the thing around, like there's no way I'm never clicking no tip.

• 1:07:18Speaker 02

  I've never pressed no tip. You know, but.

• 1:07:21Jack Selby?

  Did you tip on the Christmas lights?

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  I did.

• 1:07:23Jack Selby?

  How much did you tip?

• 1:07:24Speaker 02

  Uh, I think, I think I tipped like 10% because I was already paying $2,500 dude.

• 1:07:28Graham Stephan?

  I think there's.

• 1:07:28Speaker 02

  And it's, and it's one guy. Who am I tipping?

• 1:07:31Jack Selby?

  That's what I would think. It's like, if this dude is getting, if his business is charging $2,500, why don't you, hey dude? Start your own. Honestly, start your own business with the, the amount of money that you.

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  It was his business.

• 1:07:43Jack Selby?

  Yeah. So you're tipping the business owner. It makes no sense.

• 1:07:46Graham Stephan?

  It's just like, if you want to.

• 1:07:47Speaker 02

  Correct. He, he was.

• 1:07:48Graham Stephan?

  Probably for the holidays.

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  He was a one man band. It was, it was literally just him putting up Christmas lights. So my confusion, that's where I get confused about the tipping thing. If you're a soul, if you're like the sole business owner and you're doing the work and you ask for a tip, that's where I'm confused. Cause I'm, well, you set the price. Why not just set it at the price that you want to charge?

• 1:08:04Graham Stephan?

  We technically have tipping enabled on the channel. Like people could leave us tips and I get them every now and then from people who comment. And it says like so and so tipped you blank.

• 1:08:14Jack Selby?

  Okay. I want to be honest, guys. Do not tip the channel. Just don't do it. Like you don't need to.

• 1:08:18Speaker 02

  You guys have the most tips you've ever gotten.

• 1:08:19Jack Selby?

  I, I would not recommend tipping.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  Everybody tipped us just to prove them wrong.

• 1:08:23Jack Selby?

  No, if you want something, become a YouTube, like a channel member, because then you're actually getting something. Don't tip us.

• 1:08:28Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. Yeah. Right.

• 1:08:29Jack Selby?

  Yeah. Just save the money, invest it in your.

• 1:08:31Graham Stephan?

  The channel memberships are way more fun and we're doing post shows, we're doing midweek episodes as a channel member.

• 1:08:36Jack Selby?

  Either way.

• 1:08:37Speaker 02

  Why do you have a tip button? Why don't you just take it away?

• 1:08:41Jack Selby?

  I honestly didn't even know if I'm.

• 1:08:42Graham Stephan?

  No, because, well, the honest answer is because if people want to do that, it shows up and their comment gets boosted. And then I always see it and I always respond to every single one of them.

• 1:08:51Jack Selby?

  People to tip.

• 1:08:52Graham Stephan?

  No, but it's there.

• 1:08:53Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, okay.

• 1:08:54Jack Selby?

  But yeah, it's not like you're watching a video. It's like, do you want to tip this YouTuber? That's insane. That would be so funny.

• 1:08:59Speaker 02

  They should do a graphic where it turns around.

• 1:09:01Jack Selby?

  Why has, why has a company not came up with that idea? Like tipping YouTubers. That is hilarious.

• 1:09:07Speaker 02

  That'd be so funny if it was like a graphic of a hand emerging from the window and like going like.

• 1:09:11Graham Stephan?

  I would love, I would love to see the video just pause at the exact moment and saying like, how much do you want to tip? And then you could say no, but then you're going to be on a list is like one of the people who said no.

• 1:09:24Graham Stephan?

  I even think I, I could be incorrect here, but I even saw there was like, I was paying a bill or something like that. I'm talking like a utility bill or like an internet, but, but there was a tipping option on that as well of like, it was some sort of utility. It might've been like the pest control guy, but it was one of those where everything now, the tip option is there.

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  I guess like in some ways you could say it's gotten out of control, but in most cases, like pretty much every case, it was a clever, I'll just do the tip and you know, it's all good.

• 1:09:50Jack Selby?

  And what about expensive wines? Because the service is basically the same. If you're opening up a cheap versus an expensive bottle. You know, you could get a $30 bottle or you can get a $10,000 bottle. Should your tip vary from, you know, $15 to, to 300 or 3,000?

• 1:10:08Graham Stephan?

  Speaking of that, I do want to say there was a post that went crazy viral on Twitter of a lady who got reamed for leaving a tip that was like $30 because her meal was like a thousand, but only because she ordered the really expensive drinks. And she said, it takes the exact same amount of time, exactly what you said, but people were blaming her. That if you have the means to do that, you also have the means to tip. But this person argued, no, the person didn't spend any more time, any extra service on me than they did the other table. The work didn't change.

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  That's so funny you say that. I thought about that once before. This happened to me not that long ago. I went to a coffee shop and I got my, I got my typical order, my wife's coffee. But then I got like three bags of beans and the beans were super expensive. They were like 30 bucks per bag. So, you know, my, my bill or the, the final cost is like, I don't know, a hundred and $30 or something. Right? Now, had I not ordered that, I would just immediately press 25%. But then I, I paused because I was like, wait a minute, why is my tip? Cause I, you know, did my typical 25% sign and paid. And I was like, wait, what? Did I just tip them like 40 bucks? Like what, what just happened? But it was because the initial bill was so much higher. I was like, oh wait, but I just picked these bags up and bought them. Does that mean that I should tip them $40 or do I tip them for the coffees that they made me? Like, I don't know.

• 1:11:24Jack Selby?

  I have done that exact same thing at a coffee shop, buying the beans. They throw that in with the espresso shot that I got. And I'm like, I got one espresso shot and I'm tipping like $8, like the cost of the espresso shot for grabbing a bag of beans.

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's, it's a little, that's, that, that part's a little confusing.

• 1:11:38Jack Selby?

  To me, it doesn't make sense how like that you can tip 15%. Or you can order a DoorDash and a person literally goes and picks up food, drives it all the way to your house, delivers it to your front door, takes a picture. And that is like 15% tip too. Like those services in my mind do not appear to be equal. And so like there are certain things that I'll like, I'll tip more aggressively on. And then the other things like I'll tip less.

• 1:12:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like based on the effort.

• 1:12:02Jack Selby?

  Exactly. I think like for me, what I do is like, I've shifted my brackets up. And so like the worst tip that I'll ever give is like maybe 18%. But like, if someone does a really good job, I do, I do let my tip amount reflect the level of service that they give me. Like I, and I do think that people should do that. Like I think if they gave you a really good service, you actually should tip more. And if they gave you a bad service, you should tip less.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. You should have a minimum.

• 1:12:26Jack Selby?

  Yes.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  Threshold. And then if somebody exceeds expectations, you should try to, try to give them some.

• 1:12:30Jack Selby?

  But people always just tip 20%. That's it. It's like wherever I go, it's 20%. I actually think that you should adjust it accordingly.

• 1:12:36Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. I got a guy at a pokey restaurant. He is awesome. I leave the biggest tips. And since I started leaving the bigger tips.

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  Two bucks every day.

• 1:12:45Graham Stephan?

  No, but no, but it's, it started because he gave me these really generous scoops, you know, like a Chipotle where they just like a big fat scoop. And then sometimes they'll go and like get a little more. Started doing that. I started leaving bigger tips and then I started noticing his scoops got bigger. So I kept upping the tip too.

• 1:13:01Speaker 02

  And you're, you're almost equalizing the, the.

• 1:13:03Jack Selby?

  The value.

• 1:13:04Speaker 02

  Yes, you are. Yeah.

• 1:13:05Graham Stephan?

  But he benefits because he gets the tip and I benefit because he's, he's very generous with his scoops. Like, you know, the pokey scoops.

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  But theoretically you're just paying for more fish at that point.

• 1:13:15Graham Stephan?

  Not really. It's, it's implied. It's a mutual respect that I have that like, hey, you, uh, you give me a little more scoop. I'm going to help you out too. And then we're buddies.

• 1:13:24Jack Selby?

  Do you think that Chipotle actually serves four ounces of protein with every meal?

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  Do they weigh it?

• 1:13:30Graham Stephan?

  No.

• 1:13:31Speaker 02

  Okay. So then how can they accurately say that?

• 1:13:33Jack Selby?

  Like, do you think it probably averages out to about four ounces?

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  I mean, it could.

• 1:13:38Jack Selby?

  There is no way, unless if it's just the Chipotle I go to, but I happen to go to, I go to a lot of Chipotles.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  Do you think it's more or less?

• 1:13:47Jack Selby?

  Way less.

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  Way less?

• 1:13:47Jack Selby?

  They're supposed to give you four ounces of meat. In actuality, it's probably close to like 2.875.

• 1:13:54Graham Stephan?

  Have you measured it?

• 1:13:55Jack Selby?

  I've actually watched a few YouTube videos on it. People did measure it and there are tricks that you can use to get more meat.

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  Like having cameras on you. Have you seen this?

• 1:14:02Jack Selby?

  I have seen that.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  If you have somebody film you while you're ordering your Chipotle bowl, supposedly they will give you more of everything.

• 1:14:10Jack Selby?

  I've seen that. Also, here's a trick. If you want to get more meat, this is what I've started to do, is I actually just ask for the meat on the side because they have sized cups and they put it in the cup and they make it level with the top of the cup. And so it's actually four ounces as opposed to like a scoop.

• 1:14:27Speaker 02

  But that's so interesting. Is it compressed?

• 1:14:29Jack Selby?

  So, no, they don't tip it. Maybe they'll give it a couple of pats, but it's not like fully compressed, but it is 100% without a doubt more meat if you ask for it on the side as opposed to in the burrito.

• 1:14:39Speaker 02

  That, that would make sense. Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah. I mean, I, I mean, look, it's not, it's not possible for them to accurately give you four ounces of meat every single time when they have however many hundreds of locations and hundreds, or if not thousands of employees putting the chicken on there, but they're not weighing it. Yeah. How can you accurately say that?

• 1:14:58Jack Selby?

  Apparently it is possible for them to give you three ounces every single time instead of four, or less than they should give you. Because I get, they do, they do that.

• 1:15:05Graham Stephan?

  Where I'm surprised is it seems like a lot of people at Chipotle don't care. And that for them, it doesn't really cost them anything extra if they're a little more generous with their sizes. So I always thought the person-

• 1:15:17Jack Selby?

  The chefs don't have to cook as often is my, that is like my logical conclusion of why they skimp out on the meats is because it puts more of a burden on the chefs if they're constantly churning meat.

• 1:15:26Graham Stephan?

  I would disagree. I don't think the people in front are in cahoots with the people in the back. I think it's probably management who's like, hey, guys, we got cameras over here, corporate's watching. We gotta be, you know, good on our sizes to remain profitable. That's my guess.

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  Do you guys think that it's more so the decision of the people on the floor? Or do you think that it's more so the corporate decision?

• 1:15:46Graham Stephan?

  It's gotta be corporate.

• 1:15:47Jack Selby?

  I would always blame corporate.

• 1:15:48Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. Cause I don't think, I think it's better for the person to be like, yo, I'm gonna hook you up today. I'm gonna make your, here's a big scoop and how about this? A little more. It would make everybody's day and everyone would lighten the mood and they'll make them happier. Cause like, if I had the choice to give it a little more, I would.

• 1:16:05Speaker 02

  I also just think like when you're cooking chicken and serving people chicken and standing in the same spot for eight hours, like you're just like tired of making chicken all day, you know, like they're people. You know, maybe, maybe they don't want to cook more chicken. I don't know. Or I don't know. I don't know if it would make everybody's day better, but I do get the concern with the lack of consistency there though. I, I would, I wouldn't be happy with that.

• 1:16:27Jack Selby?

  Oh, I'm never upset at the workers themselves. For me, it's just like, like you're paying for a certain thing and you're not getting that thing.

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  That's fair.

• 1:16:33Jack Selby?

  And so that's on the business. It's not on the-

• 1:16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm with you on that. Yeah.

• 1:16:36Graham Stephan?

  Now I'm curious when it comes to cooking, I want to talk about cooking myths. Number one, is MSG bad?

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  There's a, there's not a lot of data out there that says whether or not MSG is directly correlated with being bad for you. There's a lot of, uh, uh, conversation out there about it, but at the end of the day, like, I'm not a scientist. Let me be clear about that. But, um,

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  from what I've seen and my own personal experience, at the end of the day, MSG is monosodium glutamate, right? So it's a salt form of glutamate and glutamate is what, right? Glutamate is found in so many different things like pork, tomatoes, mushrooms. It's naturally found in these things. Um, it's just a salt form of it, right? So if, if we're already designed to process glutamate, generally speaking, like a sodium form of glutamate should be perfectly safe to eat. Um, I know that there's all sorts of things on the internet of people saying that they get nightmares and they can't sleep. I have never experienced that personally. Um, I think that there's a lot of things that people ingest when they're eating things that have sodium in it, like all sorts of things that could, they could have an allergy to, et cetera. Um, but there's just not a lot of data out there that suggests it's not good for you and it tastes awesome.

• 1:17:44Speaker 02

  Uh, ever since I got over that whole fear, I've never had a problem with it and it's only made my life better. I love MSG.

• 1:17:50Graham Stephan?

  Is truffle oil a scam?

• 1:17:52Speaker 02

  I think so. Half the time it's not even real truffle. A lot of truffle oil is made from like perfumes or like flavor compounds rather than like, like literally sometimes it's artificial flavoring, right? Like you're eating artificial flavoring in oil as opposed to actual, real, raw truffle. If you want truffle flavor, you obviously you get it from a truffle. Um, it's a great way for a company to make a ton of money off of flavoring and oil to taste like truffles. Um, but I, I don't think it tastes that great. And it's also super overpowering.

• 1:18:21Graham Stephan?

  Is Wagyu overrated?

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  I think yes. Oh my God. I think Wagyu has had this crazy PR campaign for the last, what do you think? Like five years maybe?

• 1:18:31Graham Stephan?

  Probably, maybe 10.

• 1:18:33Speaker 02

  Maybe 10. Yeah. So I think Wagyu has been on this crazy PR train for the past 10 years. I think Wagyu is amazing. From a product standpoint, it's like super unique and there's nothing else like it. And I, I think it's a beautiful thing. I also think it's like a special occasion thing. I don't want to eat Wagyu every day. And also like, it's just so much fat.

• 1:18:51Graham Stephan?

  It is.

• 1:18:52Speaker 02

  Like who wants to eat, when I eat Wagyu, I appreciate it and I love it, whatever. But like, I can eat maybe an ounce, two ounces of it before I'm like, ugh, I don't want anymore. You, no one's eating a whole steak of Wagyu. So to me, it's like a, it's a delicacy. It's worth it every once in a while. But it's right now, just, it's way overrated. Most other types of beef, like there's American Wagyu that's being made that's really good. That's not A5 that has less fat in it. That's way, way better and way, way nicer to eat. Um, it's just too specialized, you know?

• 1:19:22Graham Stephan?

  Is expensive olive oil worth it?

• 1:19:25Speaker 02

  I look at it like, kinda like wine, like if, if, if, if it, it has to do with economies of scale, right? Like certain olive oils are expensive just because it's a small producer and they have to charge a certain amount to make money. Whereas you could go to a bigger producer that's producing the same quality, but they have economies of scale so they can charge you less. So yes and no. I would, I would just look to pick the best quality olive oil that you can afford. Um, and call it a day. But most of the time I would say 50, 50 yes and no. But sometimes you're just buying premium because it's a small producer.

• 1:20:01Graham Stephan?

  Are expensive eggs worth it?

• 1:20:09Speaker 02

  I mean, it's part of egg pricing you can't control because it's like the economy. But I mean,

• 1:20:16Speaker 02

  if, no, because they all do the same thing. If it, if it's a health thing for you, that's your own thing, right? Like if you're like, oh, I only eat pastured eggs or only, I only eat organic eggs. Well, then you're gonna, you're gonna pay a premium. Are you getting an egg that can do something that another egg can't? No, they're all identical.

• 1:20:33Graham Stephan?

  Aren't you paying for the treatment of the chicken?

• 1:20:38Graham Stephan?

  Like free range or?

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  Sometimes they're not. Some, I've-

• 1:20:42Jack Selby?

  Cage free is like not even like helping the chicken down, which is my understanding.

• 1:20:46Speaker 02

  I've read that a lot of these like cage free, like organic, I don't know. I've never been to them, but I've read and I've seen articles about them basically lying.

• 1:20:53Jack Selby?

  Very different from cage free. It's, but cage free is like almost the same thing as just like-

• 1:20:58Graham Stephan?

  People expect that when they see like free range or cage free, that it's chickens roaming this big field somewhere with the sun. But like, when you really look at the definition-

• 1:21:07Speaker 02

  Covered building and they're like, they're not in a cage, but they're in a gigantic pen like pushed up against each other. Yeah. Yes.

• 1:21:14Graham Stephan?

  And a lot of the treatment of that is not what you expect when you buy that.

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. But you, but they're able to upcharge you on cost. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:21:20Jack Selby?

  What is it worth to, to spend the extra money on? Like of all of the different ingredients, like would you say a nice salt, a nice seasonings, nice chicken, nice eggs, nice olive oil? Like of all of these things, what makes an actual impact the more money you spend?

• 1:21:35Speaker 02

  Uh, buying from local farms. It's expensive to buy from local farms, but the benefits are you're supporting your local economy in a legitimate way. You're actually like supporting fam, like real families directly. So that's cool. You're, you are getting almost always a super duper premium product. Like this is like, you know, if you're looking for free range, like likely they are actually roaming around in the sun. So if that's something you care about, you're, the premium you're paying is actually going to that, right? And you're developing a cool relationship, which I think is fun, right? Um, but I would say that that, that's the one where your dollar does actually go towards something that is what you think it is. Does that make sense? As opposed to like the egg conversation where like, oh, it's free range. So you're spending $2 more for free range, but they're actually not really free range.

• 1:22:20Jack Selby?

  So you would say always just try to find a source that makes it. So like, if you could find a source that makes olive oil, if you could find a source that makes butter, it's always better just to go there.

• 1:22:30Speaker 02

  I, yeah. And I also think you'll feel better about spending the money because now you, you have like almost a relationship with those people too. Like you might even meet the person that, not just a salesperson, but you might even meet the person that works for that company. And, you know, maybe you'll become friends with the, the co-owner one day and they'll start giving you deals. Uh, you know, I, that you, developing a relationship with a company like that is really cool. I, I like doing that with small, small producers.

• 1:22:51Graham Stephan?

  Is it true that use is really rampant in the restaurants?

• 1:22:54Speaker 02

  It can be. I don't know where it is today because it's been a long time since I've worked in a restaurant. It's been almost eight years since I've worked in a restaurant. So, but, uh, is when I was, when I was working in restaurants, yeah.

• 1:23:05Jack Selby?

  My understanding is it, it very much still is. Like from my friends that work in restaurants, I used to work in a restaurant.

• 1:23:10Graham Stephan?

  Like what do you mean by that though? Like?

• 1:23:12Speaker 02

  I mean, I've seen, I've seen people do right outside the restaurant. I've seen people.

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  I remember there was a line cook that I worked with and I like got in their car and they were like, like I, there were, I saw it in the car and I was like, oh, interesting.

• 1:23:28Graham Stephan?

  It might sound dumb, but why? Is it like a performance thing to like do better at the restaurant or are these just like?

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  Man, it's, this is such a tough question to answer because it's, it's so nuanced. There's so many reasons why, right? Of course it's a harsh work environment and people bad, maladaptive coping mechanisms, right? They, they do it to cope. Um, and I get it. Um, sometimes it's coping, but also I think that restaurants have this really weird, um, restaurants are in such a weird place in the job market world where it tends to lure people in and will hire. People who have issues like, uh, cause anyone can work in a restaurant, right? There's no, there's no barrier to entry to work in, in many restaurants. And so I think like, because there's such a wide open door for anyone to work in, which I think is amazing, by the way.

• 1:24:18Speaker 02

  That's like one of the best things ever about restaurants is anybody can come into a restaurant and the most restaurants will accept you with open arms, no matter who you are, where you're from. Like you could barely speak English and they'll still hire you. Like that's, I think that's amazing, but when it, when a door is wide open, anyone can walk in, right? So you gotta remember that. That means that people who might have problems that you don't, don't normally see might walk in those doors. But also maladaptive cope mechanism. It's really hard to work in a restaurant. It's very stressful. So listen, it starts like this, right? You go, you work your first restaurant shift. Maybe you have personal problems, maybe you don't. But if it's not a good working environment or it's a toxic working environment, you don't know how to cope with that. You don't have anybody to talk to. Maybe you're very lonely, who knows? And you're getting screamed at every day. It's stressful.

• 1:25:02Speaker 02

  You're working from 11 AM to two in the morning every day, six days a week. You get one day off. And so like the one way to release steam when you're constantly pressured is like, you know, maybe, maybe you have a shot, uh, whiskey at the end of every night and then two, and then three. And then that's not effective anymore. So you're, one of your other buddies, you know, gives you a little or whatever. I've never partook in any of that. I don't drink, um, I don't, I don't, you know, I've never taken any before, but I've seen it many times. And because of how I saw it ruin people's lives, I always was like, I will never touch that stuff. Cause I've seen people like go, you know, there have been people that I've worked with that I loved that were like,

• 1:25:47Speaker 02

  that worked in restaurants and then one day they just disappeared. You know, sometimes like they disappeared because they stopped paying rent and they got evicted and then they got fired. And like, who knows, maybe they're homeless. I don't know. Never saw them again. And that makes me sad, but it also made me realize like, I have to be really careful. Because at some point someone will offer you something at your lowest moment on a terrible night. And you're, and you go, you know what? Okay. And that is the turning point for a lot of people, I feel like. I don't know for sure, right? But I've seen it happen so many times.

• 1:26:18Graham Stephan?

  What's the worst thing you've seen in a restaurant?

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  I mean, I've seen, I've seen so many things. Uh, I've seen people get in screaming matches and throw pots and pans at each other, like big, heavy pots and pans that weigh like 30, 40 pounds. Like if you hit somebody in the head, they'll, they could die theoretically, right?

• 1:26:33Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:26:35Speaker 02

  I wasn't there when this happened. It was somebody that worked at a sushi bar once and someone was standing up from, um, grabbing something from a low boy. And another chef was turned to their right, uh, with their chef knife grabbing something. And so the person stood up and turned into their knife.

• 1:26:53Graham Stephan?

  Oh.

• 1:26:54Speaker 02

  And the knife went into them. Like they accidentally, completely accidentally, not, not meant to happen. And they, they were fine, but they like got rushed to the hospital, like they checked everything. They went back for service that night and finished the night. They still have that chef coat in that kitchen, by the way, in a framed with a stain on it where they got, it's kind of crazy.

• 1:27:15Graham Stephan?

  What's the rudest request from customers?

• 1:27:17Speaker 02

  It's tough because I feel like customers should be able to make requests. Granted, like my restaurant, like we're not allowing modifications for the first couple of months, but that's for the sake of, of consistency. It's not because we don't want to give people mods. We will add them later.

• 1:27:32Speaker 02

  But it's usually in the world of like impossible modifications, right? So if like, let's say you're, let's say you go to a restaurant, right? Let's say you're a pescatarian and you go, I'd like the halibut pescatarian.

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• 1:28:13Speaker 02

  The do I do? Do you want, do you just want, cause then it becomes a series of questions, right? Now it's a big logistical process to get you your food. You deserve to have what you want. And if that's what you want to do, that's totally fine. But like from a logistical standpoint, you are now the hardest person to work with in the room. Because now we have to figure out, okay, well we'll do it for you. No problem. But like, now we have to figure out, are you okay with the fact that you're gonna get literally just like sauce and like maybe garnish and maybe a vegetable? And now you have to make a decision, not knowing what the plate looks like. So you could still be unhappy with what you get, by the way. Not only what the plate looks like to go, yes, I, I want that. And then we have to like kind of make those mods, make those changes and bring it out to you with our fingers crossed that you're gonna like it.

• 1:28:56Speaker 02

  And then if you don't, then there's the worry of like, are you gonna be mean to us? Cause you didn't like it or you know what I mean? So it's just like puts, it puts everybody in a weird position, including you as a diner.

• 1:29:07Graham Stephan?

  What's the most difficult customer experience you've had?

• 1:29:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just had like, I think there was like a table that was like full of, uh, and by the way, I have no problem if somebody has a specific dietary need. I completely understand, but when they make requests for dishes that like literally are almost impossible to make, like literally a pescatarian ordering a fish dish. I've had tables where they'll, you know, you've got a table full of pescetarians or vegetarians where they order a bunch of things that are inherently not vegetarian or pescatarian. So it's like, well, we don't have an alternative for that, but we do have pescatarian and vegetarian options, but they don't want that.

• 1:29:37Graham Stephan?

  So how bad is it? Because I go to some steak places and I say, I want my steak medium rare plus. Half the time they either say, we don't do that, or what is that? The other half, they say, oh, that's fine. Is that a bad thing? Cause sometimes they give me that look where I'm like, should I not even ask?

• 1:29:59Jack Selby?

  I don't know what that is.

• 1:29:59Speaker 02

  I think that makes sense. I, I don't think that's a bad mod. I think that's totally a fair ask. I think that it will confuse people who don't have the knowledge, like, uh, how trained is your staff? And also does your staff cook? Like if you have a, if you have a, if you have a waiter or waitress that maybe cooks at home and they're super, super well trained. They've worked there for a while. They know how steaks work. I think if you said that to that kind of a waiter or waitress, they probably go like, oh, okay. So like take it to medium rare and just a little more. Correct. That makes sense to me.

• 1:30:25Graham Stephan?

  What was interesting though, I started going in a back and forth with the server who said, that's, there's no such thing. And I said, there was, and they go, we have never been asked for that. And I said, that's impossible because I go here at least every other week.

• 1:30:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:39Graham Stephan?

  And I gotta get it all the time. I've never seen you here before. They don't know, I've been here for, you know, a long time. We've never gotten that. It's, it's impossible because that's all I get here.

• 1:30:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:48Graham Stephan?

  And we went back and forth and I had to pull up on my phone that like, this is a thing, but I didn't want to, I felt like at that point now I'm the, but.

• 1:30:56Speaker 02

  It's not the craziest request. I think it's fair for you to ask, but you also shouldn't be surprised if people are confused about it, right? Like.

• 1:31:02Jack Selby?

  Yeah, I wouldn't say that's impossible.

• 1:31:05Graham Stephan?

  I explained.

• 1:31:05Speaker 02

  It's not impossible.

• 1:31:06Graham Stephan?

  I, I just, I.

• 1:31:07Jack Selby?

  No, I know. Yeah.

• 1:31:08Graham Stephan?

  I explained, I explained exactly what it was. And they say, no, we don't do that. But I said, that, that was factually incorrect. So I feel like at that point, if so, if someone's saying something.

• 1:31:18Speaker 02

  I feel like you probably annoyed her.

• 1:31:19Graham Stephan?

  Jack calls me out all the time. When I say something that's factually incorrect, Jack makes it very well known that I'm incorrect. And listen, I will give it to Jack. When he is correct, I say, you know what? You're right. Shouldn't be that way, but it is what it is.

• 1:31:33Speaker 02

  I mean, you, you know what you could say next time? Honestly, is you probably just go like, you know, whenever the chef tempts it, can he just like temp it five degrees over medium rare?

• 1:31:41Graham Stephan?

  I, I try to.

• 1:31:42Speaker 02

  That's like the simplest way to put it, right? Cause that's essentially what you're asking for, right? Like five to eight degrees above medium rare. But why are you doing that though, in the first place?

• 1:31:48Graham Stephan?

  Because a lot of times they get medium rare and it is like, it's closer to rare and it's so chewy.

• 1:31:53Speaker 02

  You're trying to preempt improper cooking by asking for medium rare plus. Is that right?

• 1:31:58Graham Stephan?

  No, I like it closer to medium, but medium to me is overcooked.

• 1:32:02Speaker 02

  God dude, I don't know if I ever want to cook for you. You're.

• 1:32:05Jack Selby?

  And this is a dude, by the way, that eats lean cuisine. Okay. So like.

• 1:32:09Graham Stephan?

  I used to.

• 1:32:10Speaker 02

  I like, I mean, I kind of liked that he's super specific about how he eats though. I respect that. I am too, but like, that's crazy though.

• 1:32:15Jack Selby?

  So how often are you satisfied with the way the meat comes out?

• 1:32:18Graham Stephan?

  90% of the time. It's only.

• 1:32:20Speaker 02

  Because of how you order it?

• 1:32:21Graham Stephan?

  Yes, because I, yeah, the medium rare plus, I would say 90 plus, it is perfect.

• 1:32:25Speaker 02

  I actually have this issue with my.

• 1:32:27Graham Stephan?

  10%. It's like, that could go either way, but I'm like, I would never complain about it. It's good.

• 1:32:31Speaker 02

  I have this issue with my coffee order. Cause my coffee order is kind of weird. So quad shot iced latte, right?

• 1:32:41Speaker 02

  Seems simple enough.

• 1:32:41Graham Stephan?

  Yes.

• 1:32:43Speaker 02

  Completely different, depending on where you order it from. Have you ever gone to one place and you get a really milky iced latte and you go to another place that's not really milky?

• 1:32:49Graham Stephan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:32:50Speaker 02

  But you just ordered an iced latte. So it has to do with like the cup size. How big is, how big is the cup, right? How much volume? Because the, the shot of espresso will almost always be the same.

• 1:33:00Graham Stephan?

  Correct.

• 1:33:01Speaker 02

  So if, if the cup is larger, you're going to get more milk. It also depends on how much ice they put in it. So now it's how big is the cup and how much are they diffusing it? This sounds so dumb now that I'm breaking, breaking this down, but I think about this so much because I'll go to one place and ask for a quad shot and it's way too milky. I want it stronger. So my order now to get to do what you do, my medium rare plus is quad shot iced latte in a 12 ounce, I, in a 12 ounce cup, if they have it. And if they don't, my first question is, what's your cup size? And if they go, oh, it's 14 ounces or it's 16 ounces, then I'll go, can I get a quad shot iced latte? Extra ice, short. So when you do that, you now have enough ice that it, you're, you'll be able to fit less liquid in it. So that means less milk.

• 1:33:46Speaker 02

  And if you ask for it short, they'll put in, uh, like 20 to 20% less milk.

• 1:33:51Jack Selby?

  I want to challenge this for a second. I think that part of going to a restaurant is getting something a little bit different. And like for me, if I go to a steakhouse, I always order my steaks medium well.

• 1:34:04Jack Selby?

  I'm kidding. I always order them medium rare.

• 1:34:07Speaker 02

  Well done.

• 1:34:07Jack Selby?

  Every, every, every place I go to, I order a medium rare. And some places it's a little bit more on the rare side and some places it's a little bit more on the medium side. But I think that this is like part of the experience of going to a restaurant is that every time it's going to be a little different. I know how I like my coffee, but I still don't go to the same coffee spot every single day. Like I'll go around and try to get a coffee from here and try something different over here.

• 1:34:29Speaker 02

  But that's why people have their favorite restaurants, though. People have their favorite restaurants because they like how that restaurant makes that thing. People have their favorite coffee shops because they like the way they make their coffee. That's how I go when I, when I go to the same coffee shops, because I know they're gonna make it exactly how I want it.

• 1:34:41Jack Selby?

  That's true, but if you're going to a new spot, are you still gonna order with the same criteria that you apply on your favorite place?

• 1:34:47Speaker 02

  I think it depends on how addicted you are to getting the final product. Like for me with coffee, I, I really don't want a different coffee. I drink the same coffee every morning and I have for the past 10 years. So I don't want my coffee to change, but like with food, though, I'm open to it.

• 1:34:59Jack Selby?

  What are three dishes that every single person should know how to make?

• 1:35:02Speaker 02

  I would say an omelet is a great dish to know how to make because it's easy. It's low stakes, it's fast, but as you get better making it, you can do so many things with an omelet. It's also good for, healthy for you, right? Eggs and whatnot. A steak, because again, you, you'll learn a lot of different techniques in one thing. You'll learn a lot about how product and how a specific ingredient can affect the cooking process, right? The steak, the thickness, the, the quality of the steak, how, what temperature it was. Like there's a lot of detail in a simple dish like that. So steak, this one might be a weird one, a little bit of a curve ball, but like a really good salad. Not because, not if you, whether you like salad or not, it's, is, is a different conversation.

• 1:35:42Speaker 02

  But salad will teach you a lot about a really important component of cooking, which is emulsification. You'll learn how to properly emulsify a dressing, which applies to so many different avenues in cooking. It's like not even funny. So emulsification, it'll learn how to, it'll, it'll teach you how to properly season things that are inherently difficult to season. Because vegetables have a lot of water in them and if you don't season it enough, it's under-seasoned. And also like vegetables are hard to make taste good. So you really have to force yourself to really think about the flavor that you're adding to this.

• 1:36:14Jack Selby?

  What's the best meal to impress a first date?

• 1:36:17Speaker 02

  Hey, by the way, really quick, if you want extra content, just like this, as well as early access and a bonus post show posted every single week, feel free to join as a channel member to get immediate access to all of that, as well as early access to everything else that we post, along with priority responses to all of your comments. So if that sounds cool, feel free to join. Would love to have you on board. Thanks so much. We'll get back to the podcast now.

• 1:36:40Jack Selby?

  What's the best meal to impress a first date?

• 1:36:43Speaker 02

  Oh, I mean, everybody knows this. It's a steak dinner. Always a steak dinner. Always a steak dinner.

• 1:36:49Jack Selby?

  How do you cook a perfect steak?

• 1:36:50Speaker 02

  Simply, you don't overdo it. You don't overthink it. Salt, pepper, if you want to base it with butter, you can. I, I like to go the easier route, like less prep, more so I can spend time with, you know, my date and my case, my wife. But it would be like a nice one and a half inch steak. Whatever your preferred cut is, but I would recommend either a ribeye or a New York strip. Look for something with a lot of high intramuscular fat. It's like nice marbling, basically. Not wagyu. I think like prime is fine. If you can find an Australian wagyu or an American wagyu, you'll, you'll get the right quantity of fat. That's not overwhelming, but will make it juicy. And super simple, you bring it out, you let it come to room temp for like 20 minutes so that the surface is nice and warm. Sear it two to three minutes per side. So you could get a nice medium rare.

• 1:37:33Speaker 02

  And then base it in butter. You can throw herbs, thyme, garlic, whatever. Base it with a little bit of butter for like 30 seconds to a minute, let it rest, slice and serve with whatever you want. It's like, always delivers. Unless you find out they're vegan, then that would, that would be sad.

• 1:37:49Jack Selby?

  Does it matter how expensive the knife is? Like I've seen some of these like $300 knives. Does that make a difference at all?

• 1:37:55Speaker 02

  No. I, I have, I have like $2,000 knives that are not any better than my $50 knives. If you, if you like, if you're, if you like a craftsman and you like collecting art, then you may enjoy collecting a nice knife. But no, the amount of money you spend on a knife will not improve your cooking, in my opinion. I think that everyone should have one good knife. One. You don't need three, you don't need four, you don't need a paring knife, you don't need, no. You need, if, if someone's like, hey, I have a hundred bucks I want to spend ever on, on, on cutlery. Get a 10 inch chef's knife. The nicest one you can find, the nicest one you can afford. It could be $20. I don't care, but a 10 inch chef's knife can do absolutely everything that any knife can do.

• 1:38:39Speaker 02

  It can even cut crusty bread. It's not as good as a bread, it's not as good as a bread knife, but it's still a piece of steel with an edge. And it can cut bread, not, not perfectly, but it can still do it.

• 1:38:48Jack Selby?

  Why don't you have a knife that you sell? I feel like that's such a great product for you.

• 1:38:53Speaker 02

  I don't know, man. I, I thought about doing it, but I'm just so particular on how I like my knives. I just don't want to create a product that like is too expensive for people. And I just feel like my knife is going to end up being really expensive and people will have a problem with that. So I just haven't done it. Like, that's kind of it. It's also like hard to repeat purchase those, you know, like.

• 1:39:14Jack Selby?

  Yeah, because a good knife is supposed to last you like 10 plus years, right?

• 1:39:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, a lifetime. A good knife could last you theoretically a lifetime, right? Depends on how well you take care of it. Also, the knife that I would make might be something that not everybody wants to deal with. Like I'm, I love carbon steel knives, but they're so nightmarish to take care of and most people don't want to deal with that.

• 1:39:33Jack Selby?

  Well, you do sell books. How many books at this point do you have?

• 1:39:37Speaker 02

  Two.

• 1:39:37Jack Selby?

  Two books?

• 1:39:38Speaker 02

  Well, actually three, but like one I published when I was 17. So that, that's, that was out of print by the time I was like 18.

• 1:39:44Jack Selby?

  How many books have you sold?

• 1:39:46Speaker 02

  My first book, I think it's over a million. The second book, I haven't checked in on it for a minute.

• 1:39:54Speaker 02

  In the hundreds of thousands for the second book.

• 1:39:56Jack Selby?

  And how does it work? Do you just get royalties at this point where every book that's sold, they just like send you a check?

• 1:40:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's usually like two checks a year.

• 1:40:06Jack Selby?

  Is it lucrative to sell books?

• 1:40:08Speaker 02

  If you sell a lot of them, it is.

• 1:40:09Jack Selby?

  And the first book, you had a publisher, correct?

• 1:40:12Speaker 02

  Both.

• 1:40:12Jack Selby?

  What went behind the decision of having a publisher for the second book? Because if I remember correctly, on the first podcast, we had discussed you getting a publisher for your first book and you sold a ton of copies. But you, I mean, you made a fraction of the amount of money that you could have made had you just self-published.

• 1:40:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's crazy. I look back at that and I'm like, if I had self-published that book, oh my God, would have been so different.

• 1:40:35Speaker 02

  I wasn't like, well, first of all, I didn't even want to write my first book. I, I was kind of like, I already make recipes online for free. I don't know if I want to sell them or not. And like, I was kind of like pushed to do, to put it, but there's like, you know, my, not in a bad way, but my team was like, come on, like, it's one book, like you're, you're chef, like do a cookbook. And I'm like, okay, fair play. And I did a, did a cookbook. That's, that's literally all the thought that went into it. So I didn't know it would do that well. The second time around, I was like, I don't know if I want to do another one. This is a lot of work. And they, you know, they gave me, they gave me like a, a big bonus as like a incentive to do it. And I, you know, I was like, all right, fine. I'm not gonna say no to that. So, you know, yeah.

• 1:41:13Jack Selby?

  What's something that the average person doesn't understand about writing and selling a book?

• 1:41:17Speaker 02

  If someone's gonna go into writing a cookbook, the first thing that they're gonna realize is it is significantly more work than you can imagine. And it's usually under an unnecessary time crunch. That's what I really don't like about the publishing world is, and I'm not, I'm not outing publishers. Like I enjoyed working with my publisher, but it's just like, hey, you have a year to write this thing, which sounds like plenty of time, right? No, it's not, dude. It's so much work. First of all, all the writing, right? But then there's all the editing and then you gotta get into the photography. I mean, you're, you're taking photos of a hundred, a hundred plus recipes, right? But they usually only give you a couple of weeks to shoot a hundred plus recipes. I think I shot my first book's recipes in like five days.

• 1:41:57Jack Selby?

  How does that work? Do you have like a team behind the scenes making some of the dishes? And then you're just like, you show up to take a photo with them?

• 1:42:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. So basically I have all the rest, all the recipes are written, they're all proofread and tested and they're good to go and they're locked in on the book. You would bring, you would hire a photographer to take the photos, like a professional, proper photographer. You, they, they wanted me to have food stylists for the first book. I was like, no, I'll style it myself. Holy, that was a terrible decision. Because what ended up happening was I had a bunch of culinary people from restaurants that I knew that came in and helped me cook it. I was like, here's all the recipes, right? I would, I would check to make sure everything was being cooked properly so that nothing was wrong. They would do all the cooking and then I would be waiting. We had three sets set up and, you know, one dish would be delivered over here. I would assemble it and I would food style it. They would take the photo, then I'd run over to the next set, assemble it, food style, next set, food, food style.

• 1:42:49Speaker 02

  14 hours every day for like four or five days where I would like run over to this set, run over the next set. And I did that for, for 14 hours straight. And then I would run back to the kitchen. Mind you, sometimes things would get, would get fucked up, right? Something would get overcooked or didn't look quite right and I'd, I'd have to have them remake it, which that's okay, that happens, but like slows down the day.

• 1:43:09Jack Selby?

  This sounds dumb, but why can't you eventually just AI the thing? And it looks perfect.

• 1:43:16Speaker 02

  I would never do that. I, I just, I guess it depends on the use of the AI, you know? I mean, like, I don't know, this is a hot topic right now. I feel really weird about making my food. Like if I was doing a cookbook, another cookbook, right? And I need to take a photo of food, I just don't feel emotionally right.

• 1:43:37Speaker 02

  Putting this image out there that isn't the actual dish. And part of like a recipe to me is proving to people what they're going to get when they make the dish. And if I didn't make it or assemble it on camera and take a real photo of the actual recipe that was executed, it feels a little smoke and mirrors and I don't, I don't like that. I want to be transparent with people. And I also like want to be able to say, hey, if you make this recipe, that picture in that book is the recipe. It's not doctored up to, you know, with like spray paint, you know, I'm sure you've seen some of these crazy food.

• 1:44:13Graham Stephan?

  McDonald's one, yeah.

• 1:44:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, like we don't do that. We use real food. Like they, by the way, some, there were times with photographers where they wanted to use like imitation mashed potatoes to make it look like ice cream. And I was like, no, we're using the ice cream. Uh, and, and, um, I, I believe that if you can at least do that, and I think it's, it's honoring the audience and the people that are buying your book. And saying to them that, you know, this is a legit recipe.

• 1:44:42Graham Stephan?

  How big is your team?

• 1:44:43Speaker 02

  We have on staff full time, probably about 12 people, um, you know, from like editors to head of production to director to, you know, maybe like, um, assistant creative head, you know, like I, I'm technically creative lead for the, for everything that we do, but we, we're, we need to bring in a head of creative probably because it's getting pretty hard for me to do it by myself with all the other stuff I have going on.

• 1:45:07Speaker 02

  So 12 people full time. And then we've got about three or four freelance editors that we kind of dip into their well when we need them. And then everybody else is kind of freelance, aside from the restaurant, obviously, which, which is like a totally different business.

• 1:45:18Graham Stephan?

  Are you ever worried about the Mr. Beastification of YouTube? That things are maybe a little too optimized?

• 1:45:24Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, yeah, a little bit. I just don't know what, where it's going right now. And it feels like a lot of people are doing the same thing. As somebody who came from like what I would call, and you guys did too, actually, what I would call like the last of OG YouTube. Do you know what I mean? Where like it was a little less hyper optimized. I think optimization is great, by the way. I love optimizing, but it just feels like a lot of people are doing the same thing. And anytime somebody does something cool and unique, 500 other people do the exact same thing. So then now that cool and unique thing can never blossom into a greater thing. It just is immediately like gobbled up by a bunch of like, you know, money hungry people who want to make money on YouTube.

• 1:46:06Speaker 02

  And then now the concept's dead and nobody can extrapolate on it ever again, because they literally shot that horse like 600 times.

• 1:46:13Graham Stephan?

  But then if you don't do it, then it's just, your videos don't get recommended.

• 1:46:17Speaker 02

  I think what people don't realize about YouTube is there is, there is a threshold where you, you can like completely dissolve your business. If you don't like pay attention to what works, like you can't control the market. No one can control the market in any business. If the real estate market shifts tremendously, you're going to have to deal with it. You don't have a choice. You can't like call the government and be like, fix interest rates, please, you know? And so the way I look at it is like, the market on YouTube has just aggressively shifted so much. If you operate in that space and you're not optimizing your thumbnails and titles, you're probably just not going to see much of a result. And I think it's unfair for people to look at that and be like, well, don't do it because I don't like it. It's like, guys, like these are people's livelihoods here. Like people have been building businesses.

• 1:47:00Speaker 02

  Oftentimes what I've found is like, there are still great shows being made. But it's just going to take time for people to get past the optimization of the title and the thumbnail.

• 1:47:10Graham Stephan?

  We were just talking to someone who was telling us about the anti thumbnail. And it's just, it's like, kind of like a still shot frame that is made to look like an iPhone shot. And now because so many thumbnails are optimized that when you have the one thumbnail that looks like just a still.

• 1:47:27Jack Selby?

  They stand out.

• 1:47:28Graham Stephan?

  It stands out. So now it's just swung in the opposite direction.

• 1:47:30Speaker 02

  Everything's a pendulum.

• 1:47:31Graham Stephan?

  It is.

• 1:47:32Speaker 02

  That's the other thing. That's the other part of this conversation, right? It's like, oh, well, aren't you guys sad about the, the hyper optimization of YouTube? Just like anything else, the pendulum swings, man. It'll go back the other way. Like just like in politics and just like in, in culture, like things will swing really aggressively in one direction. And then it'll swing really aggressively in the opposite direction, even with AI. Like I think there's going to be a huge boom, which I'm really excited about in analog stuff. Like not just like watches and, and stuff like that, but like just things that are analog, getting together at a restaurant, getting together with your friends instead of cooking on like a hyper fancy stove. People are going to be cooking on like OG gas without any LEDs on it, no computer cooking, like cooking on a campfire.

• 1:48:16Speaker 02

  Not just in cooking, I think across all things in life.

• 1:48:18Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:18Speaker 02

  Like the hyper optimization of life is going to create a pendulum swing for analog stuff.

• 1:48:25Jack Selby?

  I totally agree with you. What are some of your financial goals?

• 1:48:28Speaker 02

  Well, I have a family now, you know, I have, I, we, I have a nine month old son, um, and we plan to have more kids. And so I look at like my finances super differently now. I'm not just like, let me, you know, build the biggest building in the world or like, you know what I mean? Like from a metaphorically speaking, I'm not like, let me build the biggest building. Of course I want to do that. And that's, that's a goal of mine, but I don't know, man, I just want to make sure that my family's set up and taken care of. Aside from my kids going to college, like I already have my son's college funded, you know? So what, what, what's my goal? My goal is to make sure that, you know, they're safe for their lives, that they're taken care of, um, no matter what, in any situation for the rest of their lives. I'm not necessarily saying that I'm going to fund their life, but you know, in an emergency that there's something there for them.

• 1:49:13Speaker 02

  Um, you know, long after I'm gone, long after we're gone, um, that would be my ultimate goal. I don't know if I have like a specific number in mind. Um, I think it's more so just when that feels right, having the freedom to be able to make more creative decisions would be big for me. Like I think to your point about the optimization of YouTube, I think a big achievement for me would be to get to a point financially where we can just from a production standpoint, go, you know what? We're going to upload once every three months. And just really dive deep on really, really, really cool stuff.

• 1:49:46Speaker 02

  That to me is really interesting because I think being under the gun of constantly having to create content can sometimes put you in a position where you feel like you're putting ideas out that you like, but like you know, could be a little better or could be a little bit more optimized. Like I'm sure you guys feel that too, right? Every creative person feels that. People, even the people who make movies, uh, like, you know, a hundred million dollar budget movies feel that way, right? Cause they're under a time crunch and it's got a hundred million dollars cranking down on them. But I'm sure that they wish that they had more time.

• 1:50:12Graham Stephan?

  How is your income broken down these days?

• 1:50:15Speaker 02

  So my margins for my business are like primarily made off of YouTube adsense, like almost entirely. So because that's, if you think about it, that's like the only consistent number that you can monitor that like comes in every month guaranteed. Brand deals, I want to be able to say no. Like a lot of, a lot of people don't know this, but like I, I leave tremendous amounts of money on the table with brand deals on purpose. Cause I don't want to say yes to every brand.

• 1:50:38Jack Selby?

  What's the biggest brand deal you ever turned down?

• 1:50:40Speaker 02

  There's, there was a, a brand deal that came in last minute, right? And I'm sure you guys get these, right? Where they're like, hey, can you guys do this in a week or two weeks or whatever? It's like a crazy turnaround time. It was a crazy turnaround time. They wanted a long, they wanted quite a bit. They wanted two long forms, one short form and like three stories. And that was it. It was quite a, quite a big ask. Um, and they wanted all turnaround in two weeks. And I think it was like,

• 1:51:05Speaker 02

  I think it was like half a mil.

• 1:51:07Graham Stephan?

  Whoa.

• 1:51:08Speaker 02

  And so I was like, I was considering it. And so I went to them and I was like, well, can we just do a long form for half a mil? And they said, yes, for one video.

• 1:51:18Graham Stephan?

  Holy crap.

• 1:51:19Speaker 02

  That's when I was like, oh, okay. That changes things. Maybe we should do this. But the problem was like, the brand was just like, not my, like, I just wanted to see if they would say yes, to be honest with you. But the brand, I just didn't really, I didn't use. I was not a huge fan of them. They kind of had some, some issues with them as a company, like public, public PR issues.

• 1:51:43Speaker 02

  And I really thought about it, but ultimately like, even after they said, I wish I hadn't asked if they would do that. Cause that, that, that was when I was like, why did I ask that? Cause I, I was trying to make them go away. And when they said yes, I like sat there for a day thinking like, should I do this? And I had ultimately decided no, because it didn't align with my, my, my values. So I said no to half, a half a mil for a 30 second talking point. That was a hard one.

• 1:52:08Graham Stephan?

  Wow.

• 1:52:09Speaker 02

  That was a hard one, but you know, you gotta stick to your guns, man. Like at the end of the day, I care way more about like not, I, I can't. Once you crush that threshold, you can't go back.

• 1:52:18Jack Selby?

  Yeah. So what do you spend your money on and how are you saving and investing?

• 1:52:21Speaker 02

  Nowadays I mostly invest my money. I don't really spend that much anymore. Like, uh, I, I like, aside from like my, um, I mean, the majority of what we spend is obviously on the business. That's like the majority of our money. But like any money that I make, uh, like right now, we're not as like cash positive from a content standpoint. Cause I'm really focused on just making the best stuff that we can. A lot of people think like, oh, the channel makes, you know, tons of money and Josh is pocketing it all. That's not true. Like I have tons of people that I pay. It costs a lot of money to, to, if you want to really gun it and make big content to grow, like you gotta spend a lot of money to do it. Like we, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to make our production happen.

• 1:53:02Graham Stephan?

  A month?

• 1:53:03Speaker 02

  A month. And so like,

• 1:53:04Graham Stephan?

  Holy crap.

• 1:53:05Jack Selby?

  What costs that much money?

• 1:53:06Speaker 02

  It's just like all the production people, the cost of the flights, the cost of like, uh, equipment, the cost of hotel bookings. Like we did a video where I was like, oh, this is a great metric. We did a video where I was like, what can I get to eat for a dollar around the world? And we traveled the entire circumference of the earth and went to like eight to 10 countries with a dollar and ate all over the country and then came back. I mean, that video, how much do you think that video cost me?

• 1:53:31Jack Selby?

  Probably like 50 grand.

• 1:53:32Graham Stephan?

  I was gonna say $50,000. No, actually more because you're traveling also with staff.

• 1:53:37Speaker 02

  It was a good, it's a good guess. It costs us, costs us like around, almost $90,000 to shoot that. The irony of spending that much to, to see what I could get for a dollar.

• 1:53:46Jack Selby?

  $90,000 and like $8.

• 1:53:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's not a good business model, by the way, but I just wanted to try it, right? And so like, we're, we're like, we're like shooting for the moon here, right? So anyway, my point is like, when, when, when like good deals come in or whatever, like I'll usually just invest it, right? I have, like I said, I have a family, like I'm trying to be responsible. Um, so I don't really like spend on a lot of frivolous stuff.

• 1:54:06Jack Selby?

  What's the best investment you've ever made?

• 1:54:08Speaker 02

  The S and P 500, honestly, it's been great. S and P 500 has been great.

• 1:54:12Jack Selby?

  Is that just where you invest most of your money?

• 1:54:13Speaker 02

  That and Nvidia. When Nvidia dropped to $78, I threw a pretty big chunk.

• 1:54:17Graham Stephan?

  No way.

• 1:54:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:18Graham Stephan?

  So you gotta be up like 5X on that then?

• 1:54:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:20Jack Selby?

  Are you making more money from investing than you are from your business?

• 1:54:24Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:54:24Jack Selby?

  Like in terms of what is net to you at the end of the year? You think that your net worth grows more from your business profits?

• 1:54:31Speaker 02

  Not yet. No, no. I think, I think.

• 1:54:35Speaker 02

  I it's probably close, but not yet. No, I haven't quite crossed that threshold yet.

• 1:54:41Jack Selby?

  That's so impressive because we talked to so many YouTubers very often and virtually none of them invest. And the few that do are stoked that they do and they end up building good net worths and they can afford the things they want to afford. The other people, they never invest and all of their income is from their active income. But if something were to happen to their YouTube channel or their social media accounts, like they would completely lose out on all of this financial growth. So like you're one of the very few people we we talked to that like actively invest, which is which is insane to hear that probably 50% of your net worth growth comes actually from your investments as opposed to your active income.

• 1:55:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it's definitely, it's definitely getting to a point where I could see the tipping, the scales tipping over in the next couple of years for sure. Like, but it depends, right? Like, because at the same rate, like as my investments have grown, like some of my income has grown too. So it's like they're like almost like escaping each other, but like it's getting closer though. Like it's, there have been times where I've looked at some of my returns and I've gone, ooh, that month was a little bigger than last month, you know, like I've had months where my investments have done far more than than what I've made in a month personally, but from an annual standpoint, not quite yet.

• 1:55:54Jack Selby?

  What's the worst investment you've ever made?

• 1:55:56Speaker 02

  Bitcoin.

• 1:55:57Jack Selby?

  Oh, no. How much did you lose in Bitcoin?

• 1:56:00Speaker 02

  I cannot say. It's not good.

• 1:56:03Jack Selby?

  Like hundreds of thousands?

• 1:56:05Speaker 02

  Did you tax loss? No, I I'm pretty honestly, like, guys, I'm pretty, uh, what's the word?

• 1:56:10Jack Selby?

  Conservative?

• 1:56:11Speaker 02

  I'm pretty conservative, you know, I don't, I don't.

• 1:56:13Graham Stephan?

  Are you holding or did you just sell? Did you just sell out of it?

• 1:56:16Speaker 02

  No, I'm still holding.

• 1:56:18Graham Stephan?

  You know what's so funny? So this is really bullish for Bitcoin. In fact, today it was up three per second.

• 1:56:23Speaker 02

  I saw that.

• 1:56:24Graham Stephan?

  The reason why, I just found out yesterday that Jack sold his Bitcoin.

• 1:56:30Jack Selby?

  I sold all my Bitcoin basis.

• 1:56:31Speaker 02

  At what? At what cost basis?

• 1:56:33Jack Selby?

  I don't even know, honestly, maybe like, maybe like 65, 70.

• 1:56:38Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 1:56:39Graham Stephan?

  Let's go.

• 1:56:40Speaker 02

  My cost basis is 90, so I'll tell you.

• 1:56:42Jack Selby?

  No, oh, sorry. My cost, I was down for sure. Like my cost basis was a lot higher. I sold it probably right around 65 to 70.

• 1:56:50Graham Stephan?

  Bullish.

• 1:56:51Jack Selby?

  My cost, but my cost base, I mean, I think I lost like 40 grand or 30 grand.

• 1:56:55Speaker 02

  Oh, really? Oh, that's actually, wait, so then your cost basis was higher then, wasn't it?

• 1:56:59Jack Selby?

  Yeah, it was. Yeah.

• 1:57:00Speaker 02

  You don't remember what it was?

• 1:57:00Jack Selby?

  I do not because it was the IBIT ETF.

• 1:57:03Speaker 02

  Oh, you didn't.

• 1:57:03Jack Selby?

  So I don't know what Bitcoin was at when I, yeah. Well, I have that, but I also, I still do have a little bit of Bitcoin, but not that much.

• 1:57:09Speaker 02

  By the way, I've never purchased Bitcoin in my entire life, ever. I've always just, I'm, like I said, I've always been a conservative investor. So like I'll put money in, you know, the S and P 500 companies that I believe in and I'm very much of like a, I'm not trying to make money quick. I'm just like, you know, put my money somewhere where it will grow through the nature of attrition and call it a day. I don't want to look at it. I don't have time to day trade. I'm not like, let me make as much money as I can on the stock market. But when Bitcoin started going down, I was like, well, maybe this is an opportunity for, opportunity for me to give it a taste test. So I didn't put a ton of money in there, but I, you know, I put, I put enough to make it worth it if it went up. And yeah, I mean, I went in at 90 and.

• 1:57:46Graham Stephan?

  So I'll tell you, the, the best thing you could do is tax loss harvest. So you'll sell it and you could buy it right back. You actually own the Bitcoin itself.

• 1:57:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:57:55Graham Stephan?

  You could sell and buy back the same day. There's no wash sale. Claim the loss and then use that loss to offset other capital gains.

• 1:58:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you can't use that unless you like sell, let's say another stock or a, uh, an asset.

• 1:58:10Jack Selby?

  Yeah, that you realize a gain.

• 1:58:11Speaker 02

  But get hit with capital gains.

• 1:58:13Graham Stephan?

  But it does carry forward and then.

• 1:58:15Speaker 02

  Perpetuity, right?

• 1:58:16Graham Stephan?

  Yes.

• 1:58:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:16Graham Stephan?

  So you may as well just take the loss. And then what you could also do is sell enough to realize that gain, it raises your tax basis and that way at least you get to realize that, you know, it's, it is going to work in your favor by realizing the loss.

• 1:58:33Speaker 02

  So are you suggesting, are you suggesting someone should take their Bitcoin, sell it at a, at a loss, buy it back? And then possibly sell another thing that's profitable and receive.

• 1:58:43Graham Stephan?

  Yes. So I'll give you an example. I sold a property and I have a big capital gain. I used my loss on Bitcoin to offset the entire capital gain. But I buy back the Bitcoin immediately and now I'm good.

• 1:58:57Speaker 02

  So you get to keep the cash from the thing that you sold.

• 1:58:59Graham Stephan?

  Correct.

• 1:59:00Speaker 02

  To keep the profit without getting taxed on.

• 1:59:02Graham Stephan?

  Correct. And my exposure.

• 1:59:03Speaker 02

  Still hold the Bitcoin and it has the ability to.

• 1:59:05Graham Stephan?

  Correct. And my exposure to that remains the same, but now my cost basis is lower. So theoretically now, let's just say Bitcoin now goes up to 300,000. I will have a bigger capital gain, but I get to utilize the benefit today by having more money left over today that I could then reinvest.

• 1:59:22Speaker 02

  So like theoretically, if you had like a stock that was like crazy up and likely not to go up for another decade or something, you could theoretically let that go and.

• 1:59:30Graham Stephan?

  Correct.

• 1:59:31Speaker 02

  Jump in.

• 1:59:31Graham Stephan?

  I do this every year. Every year in November, I look at my accounts and I say, what, what base, what lots do I have at a loss? How big is that loss? And then I might have a loss of, uh, you know, X amount. And I'll sell that and you just want to make sure you're not going to do like the wash sale. So you have to wait, you know, a certain amount of time. You can't buy in the previous 30 days. You gotta wait 30 days. But on some of these lots, I just dump a chunk of money in there and then I just wait and it's fine.

• 2:00:02Speaker 02

  It's fascinating. Wow. And what do you do with the, with the, so what about the money that you, you're getting capital gains on? What are you doing with that? Are you just holding it in cash?

• 2:00:09Graham Stephan?

  No. So what I did.

• 2:00:10Speaker 02

  Or reinvesting it?

• 2:00:11Graham Stephan?

  I bought a tax-free muni bond. So this is real estate that I just sold in LA. And I did the calculation that I earn a little more in a tax-free muni bond than in the property. So I just basically put it in a tax-free muni bond.

• 2:00:25Speaker 02

  So you reinvested it?

• 2:00:26Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, it's all reinvested, but I took a chunk of that and I just bought today an international index fund, an emerging market index fund and a little bit in the S and P 500.

• 2:00:36Speaker 02

  That's interesting.

• 2:00:37Graham Stephan?

  Chunk of that is in tax-free muni bonds.

• 2:00:39Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 2:00:39Graham Stephan?

  So now I make more money tax-free without any of the hassle of real estate.

• 2:00:43Speaker 02

  That's a crazy leveraging hack. That's wild.

• 2:00:46Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:46Speaker 02

  So you're, you, you basically get free leverage. That's basically what you get. If you're going to reinvest that money, you basically get extra leverage for no capital gains tax. Yeah, that's sick.

• 2:00:55Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. So you could utilize a few little things, but also if you have a good accountant or someone looking over your portfolio, they're going to identify these things.

• 2:01:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:01:04Graham Stephan?

  And they might just say, listen, right now you don't have any gains to, to offset this. Let's just leave it and see what happens.

• 2:01:09Speaker 02

  How do you feel about that? How do you feel about accountants and like wealth advisors and things like that? If somebody's a long-term investor, right? Let's say somebody, it just feels a bit like, what are they doing if you just put.

• 2:01:20Graham Stephan?

  I think certain people, it benefits them a lot. I think, um, we know some people who are really good with money who use financial advisors because it's not worth their time to even think about. Like having someone optimize and do these little strategies, like one little strategy could pay for their service for the whole year. And then they're free. So there are all these little things and like, uh, I'll give you an example, actually, of why even a financial advisor would benefit me. I'm not using a Roth 401K. And we had the money guys on the podcast and they're like, dude, you could save so much money by, by basically, you know, doing a Roth 401K.

• 2:02:02Graham Stephan?

  It, you're just leaving money on the table. You could save X amount. You contribute like 60 something thousand a year. Compound it over that, like, that's a service that would pay for itself. I'm just not doing it because I'm busy with other things. I'm like, I just don't want to think about it.

• 2:02:16Speaker 02

  There's so many things with kids too, like doing a 529 account, which is like the education investment account. There's so many cool things out there with kids too.

• 2:02:22Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. Getting back to this, I'm curious. What is the biggest criticism about you that you think is correct?

• 2:02:30Speaker 02

  I guess the biggest criticism is more of like a blanket thought rather than a specific criticism, but that people think that like, I have this like one-track mind way of thinking about everything in terms of food or like my opinion. Like I think my opinion's always right. I definitely don't feel that way at all. I mean, I, I project that a lot on screen because oftentimes like, it's like, we, we have a challenge in the video. So we're building towards something. There's like a story we're building and so I'm adding emphasis and intensity. And I think sometimes it comes across as like, you know, I only think about things one way, but like honestly, I'm pretty, I'm pretty like fluid when it comes to stuff like that. One thing that I think is, is correct, honestly, it's not that, it's not that crazy.

• 2:03:10Speaker 02

  Like the only thing people have really gotten right about me is that, um, that I'm extremely, that I'm extremely anal about how things are made, like specifically with little small details like salt, like people are like Josh is over-obsessed about salt and blah, blah. That's probably right. Like, I'm probably a little, almost like I harp on that a little too much. But to me, this is more of a personal preference. I just feel like it's the one thing that everybody can leverage to make their food taste as good as possible. And if you don't, you're kind of missing out. It's the only thing that enhances flavor if you think about it, besides MSG.

• 2:03:46Jack Selby?

  Yeah. You have a really extensive watch collection. What was your first piece and what are all of your watches?

• 2:03:53Speaker 02

  Hmm. Oh, first piece, Milgaus. Great watch.

• 2:03:56Graham Stephan?

  Love that watch.

• 2:03:56Speaker 02

  Great watch. It's, it might be honestly the most underrated Rolex I can think of.

• 2:04:01Jack Selby?

  I agree with you.

• 2:04:02Speaker 02

  The Rolex Milgaus, uh, it's a really cool watch because it's like, A, you have, uh, an Oyster Perpetual that's unlike any Oyster Perpetual I can think of. The second hand is a, a lightning bolt.

• 2:04:12Jack Selby?

  Yep.

• 2:04:12Speaker 02

  Just crazy. Like what, what Rolex has done that? That feels like so off-kilter for them. The blue dial plus the green glass. It's just like a wacky watch.

• 2:04:20Graham Stephan?

  It's thick.

• 2:04:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. I also like that it never took off.

• 2:04:23Graham Stephan?

  Me too.

• 2:04:24Speaker 02

  I like that nobody really loved it because I love it. And I'm like, you know what? This, this watch deserves love. Um, so that's one. I still have it, uh, very first watch. Actually, you know who I bought it from?

• 2:04:33Jack Selby?

  Rolex itself.

• 2:04:34Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:04:35Graham Stephan?

  Nico.

• 2:04:35Speaker 02

  Nico.

• 2:04:36Jack Selby?

  No way.

• 2:04:37Graham Stephan?

  Cool.

• 2:04:38Jack Selby?

  That's awesome.

• 2:04:39Speaker 02

  Nico Leonard. Nico Leonard sold me my first watch ever. Yeah. He's a good, he's a good friend of mine. Like before he was even huge on YouTube, I bought it from him.

• 2:04:48Graham Stephan?

  Really?

• 2:04:48Speaker 02

  And I'm not going to claim anything here, but like, I see you have a new watch.

• 2:04:53Jack Selby?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:04:55Speaker 02

  You didn't even tell Graham.

• 2:04:55Graham Stephan?

  Holy Jack.

• 2:04:57Jack Selby?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:04:57Graham Stephan?

  I've never, I've never seen that.

• 2:05:00Jack Selby?

  Yeah, I got a new watch.

• 2:05:01Graham Stephan?

  Is, is this, no, is this yours?

• 2:05:03Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:05Graham Stephan?

  What?

• 2:05:05Jack Selby?

  Wimbledon, fluted, Jubilee.

• 2:05:07Graham Stephan?

  Did you buy this in Japan? Let me see it.

• 2:05:09Jack Selby?

  I did. Yeah, yeah.

• 2:05:10Graham Stephan?

  Let me see it. I want to see if it's real. I'll be able to tell if it's real.

• 2:05:16Speaker 02

  Will you though?

• 2:05:17Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. Yeah. Oh, wait, wait a second. Still got the things on it.

• 2:05:21Jack Selby?

  I know.

• 2:05:25Speaker 00

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• 2:06:20Speaker 02

  Wow, it's that new.

• 2:06:22Graham Stephan?

  Oh my gosh.

• 2:06:23Speaker 02

  He didn't even, he didn't even bother to take the stickers off. He did that for you.

• 2:06:26Jack Selby?

  I leave the stickers on.

• 2:06:27Speaker 02

  Really? Oh, you should take them off.

• 2:06:29Jack Selby?

  I have one, you think it'll mess the watch up?

• 2:06:31Speaker 02

  It is, they'll get, they'll be, they're just hard to get off. They get kind of gluey and then when you try to take them off, they like, won't really come off. It's better to, because you're gonna wear it and the oils from your skin are gonna get in that and it up. It's fine if you don't, you can get them off, but you'll.

• 2:06:43Graham Stephan?

  This is a really good fake.

• 2:06:45Jack Selby?

  Thank you. Yeah, it was $25. No, you know what, Graham?

• 2:06:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:52Jack Selby?

  So we have an inside joke about selling options. Okay, Graham doesn't believe in it. I believe in it.

• 2:06:58Graham Stephan?

  Gosh, I'm so tired of this conversation.

• 2:06:59Jack Selby?

  And so what I did, what I did to prove Graham wrong, was put $100,000 into an account and then just sell options. And however much money I made doing that, I was gonna buy a watch. And so I bought this one and this is my options Rolex.

• 2:07:15Graham Stephan?

  I will tell you, I will tell you, the counter to that is that Jack got very lucky with the options, that his stocks didn't drop, because the market's been on a tear. But he could have just as easily put a hundred grand in the account, bought stocks. His stocks dropped 30%, he loses $30,000 and sells some options here and there and makes four grand.

• 2:07:36Speaker 02

  Mmm.

• 2:07:37Graham Stephan?

  It's a beautiful looking watch.

• 2:07:38Jack Selby?

  Where is your new Rolex that you got for free, basically? I'm just curious.

• 2:07:42Graham Stephan?

  See, the thing is, is when you get to a certain.

• 2:07:44Jack Selby?

  What color is your new Rolex, bud?

• 2:07:46Graham Stephan?

  When you get to a certain point, you don't need to flex anymore, because you have nothing to prove. Meanwhile, it's, it's like.

• 2:07:51Speaker 02

  He's got an Omega on.

• 2:07:53Graham Stephan?

  Zenith.

• 2:07:53Speaker 02

  Zenith, okay.

• 2:07:54Graham Stephan?

  Zenith, yeah. See, when you have something to prove like this, it signals to the world.

• 2:07:59Jack Selby?

  I have nothing to prove, actually. In fact, when I was in Japan, I was gonna buy Milgauss.

• 2:08:03Speaker 02

  Anytime somebody flexes on you, the first thing you do is you just, you just point out that they're single.

• 2:08:07Jack Selby?

  I didn't even realize.

• 2:08:08Speaker 02

  You're married and you have a warm bed.

• 2:08:09Jack Selby?

  I didn't even realize that I was wearing this watch. I just kinda, you know, threw it on or.

• 2:08:14Graham Stephan?

  Oh, yeah, sure.

• 2:08:15Jack Selby?

  This, this old guy?

• 2:08:16Graham Stephan?

  I'm happy for you, but how about this?

• 2:08:17Speaker 02

  It literally looks brand new.

• 2:08:18Graham Stephan?

  But if your stocks, if your stocks drop, you have to sell it.

• 2:08:22Jack Selby?

  Is that how that works?

• 2:08:23Graham Stephan?

  Yes.

• 2:08:24Speaker 02

  I don't think he's gonna sell it.

• 2:08:25Jack Selby?

  Anyways, I got this in Japan. I like it, thanks.

• 2:08:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I love watches. Watches are great. Uh, but yeah, the Milgauss is such an underrated watch. I think it's so great. And I love that they, that they discontinued it. I'll never sell that watch. That's like my favorite watch of all time. Um, and I also think of Nico every time I wear it.

• 2:08:42Graham Stephan?

  I can't help but feel like eventually they will bring that watch back.

• 2:08:45Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 2:08:45Graham Stephan?

  Because I think it's, it's becoming popular now that it was never popular.

• 2:08:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:08:51Graham Stephan?

  And I could, I could see Rolex in a few years just being like, oh, it's the new watch. Because after the Land Dweller, I think they're looking for like new hype pieces. And I feel like the Milgauss is gonna come out. And here's my prediction, it's gonna be something crazy. They're gonna do a precious metals Milgauss.

• 2:09:06Speaker 02

  That would be incredible.

• 2:09:07Graham Stephan?

  They're gonna do a rose gold. With, with the blue dot, like the, oh, I'm telling you.

• 2:09:12Speaker 02

  That would, that would be a killer.

• 2:09:14Graham Stephan?

  That would sell.

• 2:09:14Speaker 02

  And also, the stainless steel original Milgauss probably go up because of that, too.

• 2:09:18Graham Stephan?

  Yes.

• 2:09:18Speaker 02

  Because if they release a precious metal one, it'll drive the, the core price of it to get one so high that the low-cost ones that don't exist anymore will probably naturally go up.

• 2:09:28Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:28Speaker 02

  That's crazy, wow. Well, I will say like for, for me, like with watch purchasing, like I try, I try to purchase more, if not equal, to the same watches that I purchased for myself, for other people. You know, like my family, my mom, my dad, my wife, um, like people that I'm close to. Like I get watches for pretty much everybody. Like I've gotten a Rolex for a lot, almost all the close people in my life. Um, so I try to, try to, try to not just reward myself here, you know?

• 2:09:56Jack Selby?

  And so the Milgauss and then anything else? Like what, what speaks to you most out of your watch collection?

• 2:10:00Speaker 02

  I can't, I'm not gonna reveal my full collection, but um, the, the more recent one that I got, which is like super, super special piece, uh, is like to celebrate the birth of my son. Uh, I got like an insane allocation from AP. I got a open work, the white gold 37mm open work with the blue flange or flange. I don't know how it's pronounced. Um, that's like probably my like most, um, prized piece. Not because of like how rare it is, but because it's, I got it to celebrate the birth of my son. So I mean, it's like, kind of like a reminder of him every time I wear it. Um, but that's a special piece to me. That's a really special one. But it's not, again, like because of my son.

• 2:10:38Graham Stephan?

  One thing I will say, dude, is that you've been looking very just like buff. Like very in shape lately.

• 2:10:45Speaker 02

  Graham really has been looking me up and down since I got here and noticed that.

• 2:10:48Jack Selby?

  He's got eyes for you.

• 2:10:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, he does, he does. Sultry.

• 2:10:50Graham Stephan?

  Well, I'm curious, what is something that people misunderstand about getting in shape and losing weight?

• 2:10:54Speaker 02

  Oh man, there's so many things. I, I feel like I could really simplify this. Cardio is great, guys. You really, I really, it's like the one thing that really changed it for me. But I mean, it's unfortunately, it's just super simple. Like you have, like if you really wanna get exact results, right? You want like a specific result, which is usually like, oh, somebody wants to lose X amount of pounds. Like sure, you can like hop on a diet, you can hop on a paleo this, you could do keto, right? But if you want a guaranteed result, all you have to do is beat a calorie deficit and count your macros that are going in your food. So you know what you're eating, that way that you're not guessing and hoping that it happens. You know what you're ingesting every day and do the same workout every day

• 2:11:38Speaker 02

  that will put you in a deficit. So like for me, it's like I do an hour of weight training, 30 minutes of cardio, every day, six days a week, and just do that.

• 2:11:46Jack Selby?

  Do you think that being fat is a choice?

• 2:11:48Speaker 02

  I don't know enough about science to say whether or not like there's, I don't know, if somebody has like a high thyroid issue, like does that, does that mean it's a choice? I don't, I don't know, like, but I think that if you are in a position where you don't, or you're not happy with the way that you look, I think the important thing to remember is that it is possible to, to make a change. Like even if it's small. And I think a lot of people get stuck in the idea that they think it's not for them, or they think that they can't do it, or, you know, they don't have the money or whatever. Like there's always something you can do, even if it's small and it's worth trying and it's worth committing to for a long period of time, whether that's three, four, five, six months.

• 2:12:25Jack Selby?

  How difficult was it to get in shape? Was like one of the hardest things you've had to do?

• 2:12:30Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:12:31Jack Selby?

  So it wasn't that hard for you?

• 2:12:32Speaker 02

  It wasn't, it wasn't like impossibly hard, but there are a lot of challenges that come with it, right? I travel a lot, I, I have to shoot food every day. Uh, and I'm like in front of food every day. I have like a, a slice of pizza that I have to take a bite of and then put it down and then not take another bite, because I had to do it for camera. But I have to do that 20 times in a day, three to five days a week, and still be on a diet, you know?

• 2:12:53Jack Selby?

  Does unhealthy food almost always taste better than healthy food?

• 2:12:57Speaker 02

  Honestly, oftentimes. Well, define unhealthy. High calorie food?

• 2:13:02Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:02Speaker 02

  Higher calorie, calorie food tastes good, because it's higher calorie. Probably has more fat in it, fat tastes good. It probably has more carbohydrates in it. Carbohydrates taste good, sugar tastes, it tastes good. Like it tastes good, but things that have, that, that provide a lot of energy to us typically have high caloric density.

• 2:13:18Jack Selby?

  So what's your go-to meal to get shredded?

• 2:13:20Speaker 02

  I did a burger a while back that people loved, that like went crazy online. That's literally just like 96% lean ground beef. It's, every time I posted, it does well.

• 2:13:28Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:29Speaker 02

  But it's super simple. It's literally just 96% ground beef, two, three ounce patties smashed, salt and pepper on both sides, a slice of American cheese. Uh, you can make like a yogurt mustard sriracha sauce. It's really low calorie on both buns, pickles, eat it. It has all of the flavor components that taste like a great smash burger without all the calories. It's like 400, 450 calories.

• 2:13:48Graham Stephan?

  Would you shave your goatee for $100,000?

• 2:13:51Speaker 02

  Untaxed?

• 2:13:52Graham Stephan?

  Sure.

• 2:13:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Why not?

• 2:13:56Graham Stephan?

  How much to shave your head?

• 2:13:58Speaker 02

  Half a mil.

• 2:13:59Graham Stephan?

  So theoretically.

• 2:14:00Speaker 02

  Because it grows back. Like if it was like, it'll, if it's like you have to go bald for the rest of your life, well, that would be a different conversation. But it's like, oh, you have to shave your head and it'll take like a year to grow back. Okay, so I made half a mil for the year for shaving my head?

• 2:14:11Graham Stephan?

  It's not bad for $600,000. You shave your goatee and your, your head.

• 2:14:16Speaker 02

  Uh, both?

• 2:14:17Graham Stephan?

  Yes.

• 2:14:17Speaker 02

  I need a mil for that.

• 2:14:19Jack Selby?

  So like, it's unacceptable.

• 2:14:21Graham Stephan?

  Okay, okay, what, would you do a million though? Goatee, hair and eyebrows?

• 2:14:26Speaker 02

  Two million.

• 2:14:28Jack Selby?

  Eyebrows are a million dollars.

• 2:14:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:14:30Graham Stephan?

  Holy.

• 2:14:31Speaker 02

  Because you just upped the whole look. Now I can't even market myself anymore.

• 2:14:35Jack Selby?

  You'll probably end up making more than that, because your videos would just go crazy.

• 2:14:38Speaker 02

  Or they wouldn't, because nobody would wanna look at my egg head. You know, like, like that's gonna look crazy.

• 2:14:44Jack Selby?

  Okay, so we now have some rapid fire questions for you.

• 2:14:47Speaker 02

  Hit me. How much for you to shave your head, actually?

• 2:14:49Graham Stephan?

  Like bald bald?

• 2:14:50Speaker 02

  Bald.

• 2:14:52Graham Stephan?

  Man, I feel like if someone really offered me.

• 2:14:55Speaker 02

  Like untaxed, you're wired the day of, once you're complete with the task.

• 2:14:59Graham Stephan?

  I'd have a hard time saying a hundred grand, probably. Because it's, it's kinda short the way it is. I know in three months it would grow back and I'd just wear a hat.

• 2:15:08Speaker 02

  You made a hundred K in three months, it's great.

• 2:15:10Jack Selby?

  Yeah, I would do it. All right. So these are rapid fire, give us quick answers. How much should a hamburger cost?

• 2:15:17Speaker 02

  $10.

• 2:15:18Jack Selby?

  How much should a steak cost?

• 2:15:21Speaker 02

  50.

• 2:15:22Jack Selby?

  Cream cheese on sushi, yes or no?

• 2:15:24Speaker 02

  Why not?

• 2:15:25Jack Selby?

  Does buying organic matter?

• 2:15:27Speaker 02

  According to what I've read, apparently not.

• 2:15:29Jack Selby?

  How much to quit YouTube?

• 2:15:31Speaker 02

  People are not gonna like my answer. I love it.

• 2:15:33Jack Selby?

  Like a hundred million?

• 2:15:34Speaker 02

  I love it too much. What would I do? I mean, like, it's not even about money, but I, I, you'd have to like give me enough money that I could do whatever the hell I want for the rest of my life, including do dumb businesses that fulfill my, my needs. It'd be like, it'd be like a, probably like 150, 200 million.

• 2:15:55Jack Selby?

  Would you never cook again for a billion dollars?

• 2:15:58Speaker 02

  A billion, untaxed?

• 2:16:00Jack Selby?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:16:00Speaker 02

  I'd probably take the billion, let's be real guys. Like, let's be real here. I mean, like. I think, you know what's funny about that question though? I think I would be unhappy for the rest of my life if I did that though. But I know that like my family would be taken care of forever. You know, literally forever. Like what's, what's more worth it? Me feeling like creatively fulfilled or like my whole family being taken care of forever? I mean, come on.

• 2:16:24Jack Selby?

  What's the best fast food?

• 2:16:26Speaker 02

  Jolly Bee.

• 2:16:27Jack Selby?

  What's the worst?

• 2:16:28Speaker 02

  Actually, no, let me, let me change that. In-N-Out for me, for the burger.

• 2:16:31Jack Selby?

  What's the worst fast food?

• 2:16:32Speaker 02

  Whataburger.

• 2:16:34Jack Selby?

  Really?

• 2:16:35Speaker 02

  I hate Whataburger.

• 2:16:37Jack Selby?

  What's the best restaurant?

• 2:16:38Speaker 02

  This changes, this answer changes all the time. I'm going to say Ando Jack Thai.

• 2:16:42Jack Selby?

  And the best dish?

• 2:16:43Speaker 02

  Uh, uh, uh, these, these, these Sichuan chili noodles that I had in China, like a few, like six months ago.

• 2:16:49Jack Selby?

  Most overrated restaurant?

• 2:16:51Speaker 02

  Most steak houses.

• 2:16:52Jack Selby?

  Most overrated food?

• 2:16:54Speaker 02

  A5 Wagyu.

• 2:16:55Jack Selby?

  Which country has the best food?

• 2:16:57Speaker 02

  China.

• 2:16:58Jack Selby?

  What are your thoughts on airport sushi?

• 2:17:01Speaker 02

  Never had it.

• 2:17:02Jack Selby?

  Gas station sushi?

• 2:17:03Speaker 02

  I will never have that. That sounds horrible.

• 2:17:06Jack Selby?

  Okay, before we close out the podcast, we have one last thing for you. We have a basic tier list here and we just want you to rank. It's a few foods and a few ways of preparing foods. And you just let me know what you think.

• 2:17:17Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Air fryer. You know, in the past I would have given this maybe a D, but nowadays they're pretty, they're pretty dope. I'm, I'm going to give it an S.

• 2:17:28Jack Selby?

  There we go. I love air fryers. All right. Love air fryer.

• 2:17:30Speaker 02

  Blackstone, uh, they're, you know, an A. They're really useful, but they're, they take up so much space. Carbon steel, they're great, but there's so many other types of materials that are less cumbersome to clean. I'm going to give them a B tier. Cast iron, same thing, same reason. B tier. Green egg.

• 2:17:52Speaker 02

  Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. A lot of people love these, you know? Honestly, you can do so much with a green egg and they actually don't take up a ton of space and they look cool. A tier. Hex clad pans.

• 2:18:05Jack Selby?

  What is that?

• 2:18:06Speaker 02

  I, I, I don't, you know?

• 2:18:11Jack Selby?

  What are hex clad? It's Gordon Ramsay's.

• 2:18:16Speaker 02

  I've used them, but they, they don't, they don't do what they've been advertised to do for me personally. So I'm going to give them. They work well until they get messed up and dirty. So I'm going to give them a B tier. Microwave. A tier.

• 2:18:32Jack Selby?

  Told you, Jack.

• 2:18:32Speaker 02

  There's a lot of uses for a microwave.

• 2:18:34Jack Selby?

  Do everything with that.

• 2:18:35Speaker 02

  Nonstick pan, S tier. You know, they're not good for you, but there's so many things to do and you cannot make, uh, I mean, you can make it almond and stainless steel, but there's so many, so many things that a nonstick sauce or you makes life easier. Oven, S tier, absolute necessity item for so many reasons. Pellet smoker is a great to have, but it's not as good as your traditional smoker. I think a traditional smoker, I would give an S and a pellet smoker, and a pellet smoker, I would give an A. Cause it's easy. Sous vide, which you misspelled by the way.

• 2:19:07Speaker 02

  That's very funny. I'm going to give a sous vide an A tier. It's a little overrated, but they work, it works really well. Stainless steel, S tier immediately. They do so many different things, multipurpose. It can do almost anything. It's the pan that I use for almost everything.

• 2:19:20Jack Selby?

  What brand stainless steel do I buy?

• 2:19:21Speaker 02

  Made in. Easy. Not a sponsorship.

• 2:19:26Jack Selby?

  Done.

• 2:19:26Speaker 02

  I have been sponsored by them in the past though. Weber, Weber kettle, big fan, S tier. It's affordable. You don't, you don't need a lot of fuss to use it and they work very well and they last a long time. As long as you clean them properly.

• 2:19:39Jack Selby?

  What about a George Foreman grill? Is that on there?

• 2:19:43Speaker 02

  It's not.

• 2:19:43Jack Selby?

  Where would you put that? S tier.

• 2:19:45Speaker 02

  C or D. It's, it's a single use item.

• 2:19:48Jack Selby?

  Dangerous, burn your feet.

• 2:19:50Speaker 02

  Spam, I'm going to give an A tier. It's amazing. Not an S tier, because I mean, it's, it doesn't apply to everything, but it's tasty. Chicken.

• 2:19:57Speaker 02

  I'm going to give it an S tier only because, mm, you know, actually A tier, A tier, A tier chicken. A tier chicken because, you know, it's hard to cook really, really nicely. But when you do it right, it can, it can teeter into S tier territory. I'm in between, but I'm going to land it on A tier. Fish, S tier. When, to me, it's the most underrated food on the planet. Actually, to me, it's like the second most underrated food on the planet. And when done right, it's impeccable. Pork, S tier immediately. The most underrated meat, period, end of story. Think about it. Some of the greatest things that people love universally. Ham, bacon, pork belly. I mean, cultures all over the world and yet nobody talks about pork? Snails, uh, C.

• 2:20:42Speaker 02

  It's not a fan. Steak, S, come on. Do I need to explain why that's an S? Turkey.

• 2:20:49Speaker 02

  I give it a B tier. It's all right. It, it, it, when it hits, it hits, but it's not that great. Caviar, I'm going to give an. Ooh.

• 2:21:00Speaker 02

  Would be crazy if I gave caviar an F. I'm going to give caviar an.

• 2:21:05Speaker 02

  I'm going to give caviar an A tier. It's nice to have, you really don't need it. If you lived your whole life never having caviar, you're not missing out on the essentials of life. Head cheese, B tier. It's good, but it doesn't, it just doesn't apply to everything for me. I don't really seek it out that much, but it is good. Sweet bread. What do you mean by sweet bread? Like breads that are sweet, like banana bread?

• 2:21:29Speaker 02

  Sweet breads or sweet bread? Like, like lamb sweetbreads? Cause there's an image of bread on this.

• 2:21:38Jack Selby?

  The organ meat.

• 2:21:39Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm going to give that a D tier. I, I really don't like sweet bread, uh, sweetbreads. I've had them before and they, they're all right. Bubble gum, C. I hate the, the like weird, I'm not a huge fan of the weird aftertaste it gives me. And, um, spearmint maybe, but like hubba bubba, not a fan. Foie gras. This is going to throw some people off. I'm going to give foie gras a D tier.

• 2:22:05Jack Selby?

  Thank you. I'm not a fan.

• 2:22:07Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't seek it out. There have been times I've had incredible foie gras. 10% of the time I've enjoyed it. Most of the time I just, it, it's, I just don't want it. It's not that great. The texture throws me off and the gaminess is not always that great. It needs to be perfectly made to be good to me. Truffle, I'm going to give an, a B tier. It's nice, it's great to have. Sometimes it really pops, but most of the time it's not really worth it. I don't think people should spend, uh, their budget for the week on it.

• 2:22:36Speaker 02

  Barbecue, S tier. Immediate S tier. Barbecuing is an instant way to make almost anything taste incredible from vegetables to meat. You can even use it as a smoker to smoke something like a sauce.

• 2:22:47Jack Selby?

  Josh, thank you so much for coming on. We're going to link all your info down below in the description, including your restaurant.

• 2:22:53Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah. If you guys want the best fried chicken sandwich for a reasonable price, uh, it's at our restaurant and it's, it's very good.

• 2:23:00Jack Selby?

  And you're, and you're taking on investors, right? So we'll.

• 2:23:03Speaker 02

  I'm not.

• 2:23:04Jack Selby?

  Throw a little money your way. Well, Jack and I will own 5% of it. A measly 10%.

• 2:23:09Speaker 02

  If you want to pay for an entire set of five stores, then yes.

• 2:23:13Jack Selby?

  We'll discuss, guys. Thank you so much for watching. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you to everyone for listening. Yeah. And thank you all to the channel members as well. We post the whole episode without all like the retention edits. Edited, unedited. So enjoy that, just like Josh likes it. Thank you so much.

• 2:23:31Speaker 02

  Wait, I missed that part.

• 2:23:32Jack Selby?

  The last time.

• 2:23:32Speaker 02

  Thank you guys.

• 2:23:33Jack Selby?

  What is something that the left is fundamentally right about that the right does not want to acknowledge?

• 2:23:38Speaker 03

  Nothing.

• 2:23:40Speaker 03

  Get the fuck out of my face.

• 2:23:42Jack Selby?

  And who the hell lets you back on this TV? Good luck because they don't give a fuck. How difficult is it to change someone's mind?

• 2:23:51Speaker 03

  Depends. You fuck ass, fuck you. I have plenty of friends. I'm fine having a few enemies. They're all in the same room. They're all going to the same parties. And when they all share the same worldview, it's a blind spot.

• 2:24:03Jack Selby?

  How much money have you lost by not being PC?

• 2:24:08Speaker 03

  Many tens of millions of dollars. I've had people say that I was a hate speaker because I said soccer was. I do, I think so.

• 2:24:15Jack Selby?

  What political beliefs have you changed your mind on?

• 2:24:17Speaker 03

  I don't know that anyone has ever actually convinced me to take a more left position.

• 2:24:21Jack Selby?

  Who's been the most intelligent person you've debated?

• 2:24:23Speaker 03

  People aren't going to like this answer.

• 2:24:44Speaker 04

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