0:00 but that's why I love your point sometimes it's not about what's going to make in most profit it's what makes you alive to motivate you enough to be like I I have to try something different and I see other people doing this yeah if it wasn't for some challenges like that I don't think I'd be fired up to grow [Music] more welcome back to another amazing episode of careful boys today we have with us Mr Eric White thank you thank you I'll never get tired of this the Creator the creator of dumbbell gang we were talking earlier about uh you had a really great uh question I think it was when did you realize that you were not going to do a regular job something like that I go first um I think the question was or the way I received it was more so like I think most people like you're you're kind of like
0:50 indoctrinated into have to get this job that's 9 to5 and it's stable and you're always looking for stability and when you see entrepreneurship it feels very unstable and then you're like like uh but when can this become like the viable thing there's a part of me after doing entrepreneurship with JK with uh with barbell which is like the past from since 2007 till now what is that 17 years yeah it still feels like this could all end at any time that's how it feels like it feels like it's just like it can yeah somehow theing train just keeps moving yeah and I don't know if it's because I've been indoctrinated for I don't know like the past 18 years of my life where you're like you know what you got you got to go work out a post office man those things never go out of business and then so like you it feels
1:40 like like when you clock in and clock out somewhere that's the most stable and then when you need to do things yourself you're like anything can ████ happen there's markets there's Trends there's whatever even though you have technically have way more control of your destiny so I'm still I just go after it cuz I maybe because I'm stupid or whatever and I'm just like cuz you're cool I'm like ████ it whatever dude and I just been saying ████ it for like 17 years it just keeps going somehow pretty sweet honestly I feel the same way like right everything can just go to ████ I know people that have like our nine figures in the bank and they're like dude I ran this brand for 30 years and the whole time I was like I don't know I because it's a scary thing you see a
2:31 lot of stories and cases like this where you see people build up Brands and businesses and then one day you find out the books weren't as good as everyone thought and they go under and then you know as an entrepreneur I always look at those cases and I I never ████ on them because I'm like oh I get it like it's hard I think to your point I think honestly being stupid and being cool the two are tied together no really because think about it the conventional smart guy thing is oh let let me go get the stable job let me go work at the IV leag the post office the post office post office never going out of business yeah because there's a certain stability since someone else has the responsibility someone else is calling the shots in a way you have to be stupid or very someone came out and hurt you
3:21 one day to go out and say no no I'm going to do this on my own because now to your point you take on all the responsibility if it doesn't work yeah so that's the real question like when did you realize you were stupid whole life my boy whole life like I feel like I didn't really even go into like the dance Journey like for real for real it was always just a hobby until I got laid off so like I was working for uh one of my homies actually and he was running a clothing company and the company ended up going under because of some it wasn't like poor decision- making but like uh basically there was like a larger retailer that had like 80 plus% of like the the sales that were happening for that company so they were a major retailer and they fought chapter 11 and they owed that our company hella of money but they couldn't
4:12 pay so everything had to just go under and that meant I got laid off and it was amicable and stuff but at the end of day I still got laid off I was just the marketing you know um department manager if you will and it wasn't until I lost everything and didn't know like what to do next and also hated the feeling of like trying to put my resume together again like years after college thinking that you hadn't done ████ that I was like man I also have this example of people like my best friend like Mike who's ████ traveling and dancing all over the world now off of ABDC and I was like oh ████ this thing can work so I had both like no hope and I guess just like being at the bottom in one sense but then I also had like an example so close to me of like oh ████ people can do this and I think that was like the perfect kind of like Melting Pot of like a a situation for me to get stupid
5:04 enough to be like maybe I should try it myself too did you guys have parents that were reinforcing this fear and telling you you have to do this and that dude yeah that was the hardest the first year and a half of me trying to dance for a living like my mom got so on my case that I stopped calling and then my mom and my dad would argue with each other about your future yeah because my my dad didn't like it but what he hated was my mom getting on me so much that he's like this is why he's not coming home cuz you keep ████ ragging on him weren't they entrepreneurial too and maybe that's why maybe they they know how hard it is like don't do this go clock into some maybe they don't think that dance is as legitimate as having a physical like laundr plus they're looking at my sister who ████ went to UCLA and got like a regular job and been
5:54 at her like finance company for like 12 years you know what I mean at that time it's like she's ████ killing it like you're now picking up a sushi waiting job in order to figure out this dance thing you know what I'm saying so it was just of course it was like I get it yeah well I didn't get it at the time cuz I was like believe in me but that is the stupidity that you also do need right like in a like you kind of need that like like ████ everything tunnel vision it's not stupidity it's Faith you know what I know one of the one of the stupidest like business models I had this is how stupid it is cuz like so me and we come from the internet YouTube AdSense world right so the first brick and mortar I set up was our gym and this is how looking back on this the stupidest thing um I found out cuz my brain is like literally like that of a second grader I was like okay what the
6:46 leaf the leaf is going to be 2500 a month and then I was like okay and then I go I need four employees to run the dim and I did all the numbers so I I realized my first bar gay G the expense was going to be 5500 okay right yeah 5,500 I'll I'll cover my expenses so when we did our first crowd Ving uh crowdsourcing video to get people to join yeah you know what number I said 55 I was like 55 bucks 100 members that's all I need that means if I lose one member I'm in the negative if any ████ thing happens I'm in the ████ negative you know someone damn you said the bar bare minimum if a pullup bar breaks I have to fund it now it was
7:37 literally like I need 5500 I just need 5500 that's pretty sick man dude you're a man of people that's why and it wasn't until later I was like dude that's a literally zero margin zero profit zero profit that's not how we saved the community center man wait when did you when did you realize you wanted to make profit well I realized also I calculated me and my wife's hours into the gym so I'm like ████ if I clock out now it's not 5500 anymore it's 6,000 ████ I only have 100 members but now I need to get more people to cover my shift and you know so just so it's just like from that stupid ass zero margin model I slowly like overtime like so
8:29 ████ dumb dude oh man what was it like running that YouTube business though because that also you have to track profit and loss right but it's the margins are way crazy so we were running we bootstrapped from a house yeah it was out of my house we didn't take a paycheck for like 7 years yeah we paid everybody out we had people that ran with us for over two years with no pay and then we just paid them out fat once we got paid yeah yeah we were giving out six figure bonuses all that sorry you guys weren't a part of that era sounds great though yeah it was a fun time I'm having fun we have Oreos here but you know that's after getting into business the thing that was told to me would be risky actually be became the safest most reliable thing which is YouTube 17 years still pays all of my bills as at a with
9:19 the part-time work that we do yeah and I'm just like the margins are so crazy that it kind of like you just don't understand what's really out there like owning a restaurant restur you're lucky if you get a 10% margin YouTube it's like 90 well depending on what you do right yeah if you're like a bedroom vlogger raner or whatever talking on a webcam come on dude naked that means you make a million you keep like 999,000 you know what the ████ D and cuz you spent 1,000 bucks on your laptop whatever it is like I didn't know this right and you know you don't know these things until after you grow your company Build It Up do all these things and then you go out and you go maybe I can do this in other things and then you go why the ████ damn so this fool he owns a farm and he only makes 5% and this guy has a restaurant these things that are
10:11 look it's tangible looking right there's a building there's people coming in and out there's staff and you think like these things are more stable cuz it's physical and it's been around the concept's been around for a long time and you go no wonder ████ n out of 10 restaurants fail every year this is hard ████ yeah it is hard I'm only saying restaurant because I'm realizing like I thought that was the more stable safer thing so I was like what's what's what's how we going to diversify from digital we need to get into other projects right so we start dumping into different games and then once you dump you start learning about it and you're like holy crap this is not what I thought they make money on the exit they make money on the scale they make you know it's like Cheesecake Factory will make 30 mil but how much do they take home maybe a mil 3 mil I don't know right so you're just like what the ████ it's a different
11:03 game I remember you saying that about Farms yeah their margins are ████ tiny bro that's why farmers are always broke unless they poor Farmers D they farmers howse can we rip on Farmers like let's say their Farm might be making like $5 million but they might be on subsidies you know like to cover my 5 million yeah yeah yeah cuz the cost is so high and then there's seasons and it's like it's just crazy since you open June is did did you have that realization as well of like what things were you are you now like wow that wasn't what I thought well I think one is um a small restaurant there's different um cultures depending on industry right like like what you said about Wall Street and the machismo old white dudes are hella aggressive when they talk to you and in entertainment
11:53 it's different like the old white dudes in entertainment it's a different kind of they're smoing you up everybody's trying to be be best friends everyone's fake ass ████ and they're friendly cuz you don't know who's going to be successful jph baby how you been when you're when you're in the world of commercial real estate Finance uh when you're negotiating something when you're dealing with lawyers like it's a completely different world like in my world I'm like I come from a world of if you raise your voice like that we're throwing ████ fists but in their world they scream at each other ████ say crazy ████ no one's fighting and that's what shocked me it's like you know what I'm talking about right they'll be redac ████ saying the most aggressive ████ up ████ and then I'm just here like it's not personal at all no it's just a tactic it's like you know
12:44 before a fight right in a professional UFC fight you you try to get the other guy all ████ up in the head so then they don't perform well that that's what it was the first time I experienced it I was like oh are we ████ killing ████ today or what like like they mess with the wrong guy I was like all right let's ████ do this ████ and then he's like no no no no no like this is like shut up like I was about to scream back and take it seriously but it's it's not real like what's happening is not the you know what I'm talking about right it's like every subculture there's a certain type of code right like the jargon how you learn to speak with each other and then I didn't know that ████ so when I came in I was like holy ████ these guys are mad at us that's what what do we do yeah and then I like oh wait okay I get the game now but then at the end of the
13:35 discussion are you and everyone settled down is it like amicable again well depends on their strategy if their strategy is to appear upset then you know what I mean they're playing with you it's a game it's a game and then for me I took it like for face value I was gullible I thought I thought they were screaming at me I ████ up I did something wrong I took it as like what's happening is reality versus like like it's a game of poker it's a game of Mafia you know what I mean like it's a they're just they're just this is a this is a negotiation thing I think I remember when you were on the phone like cuz I think you had your your thing in and you had the phone there and you were just like this oh ████ I think I remember when Dude I had this one time I was I was just talking about um how you know we couldn't get a certain permit done because the state uh the the permitting
14:27 department so every time you want to do construction on a building um you know the state has to approve that right so we're delayed on a project and then um on top of that you know the FBI came and they raided the city of Honolulu and basically fired off like all the employees in dep department so the conversation was the landlord wanted us to finish this project cuz you need to start paying rent yada yada Y and then for me I'm like well it's not our fault and out of nowhere this guy chimes in he goes I don't know you and you don't know me but it's all your fault your fault get it done right and I was like what the ████ ████ if I see you a person I'll choke the ████ out of you I didn't say that who is this guy but I already knew at this point that some guys react this
15:18 way to try to intimidate and be a gangster but they're not real gangsters they're just ████ aggressive for no reason right so then I Ed that as an opportunity cuz by this time I understood like um well I did want to call him a punk ass ████ but my friend chimed in and then he kind of got me to think and this whole time I've been wanting to put my buddy on the project he's a contractor so I was like oh ████ I didn't know you were on page with me and you wanted to be elite you wanted to do this illegal thing I didn't know that I thought you guys were a legitimate company if you guys are okay with this and you want to be illegal buddies then how about this none of your guys' contracts contractors will allow me to get this done without permitting but I have a friend that will so put my friend on the project approve that and we'll get it done how about that let's go to jail together right he
16:08 shut the ████ up after and so that were that was like oh ████ I won the fight cuz then like I didn't get mad but I got what I wanted I got my buddy on the project so it was like those are the kind of things that I feel like is the business stuff that you don't learn right like you there's just all these weird things that happen I don't like it I just want to build businesses but yeah so it sounds like everything outside the YouTube stuff has been way more stressful less profitable why the ████ you doing it oh ████ ████ I love a fight and I love novelty so there's that passion to learn I've been doing this for 17 years and it got boring so like sorry yeah thought we
16:59 were enough for you Joe no no let me for this is the fun part I'm joking I'm joking I'm joking but there's a formula to everything right and it I just need a break like so I could do some other ████ and come back so so I think that's the thing is like it not boring is the wrong word I think it got um lame lame yeah yeah wow no no it I'm you know when you're so in it yeah that you can't break out of your routine so like I needed to do something different to look out it from outside in I love that yeah because I think people forget business it's not always about how much can I make it's also what makes you feel alive yeah yeah for me that moment you talked through how you got laid off and you saw your friend was dancing in there killing it and like that's the moment you de said I'm going to be stupid now yeah I something similar I was in a Consulting project I came out to Pal Alto I met
17:49 this guy he was 20 years old he was living out of his car and he was like I'm going to make it big I have this gigantic passion idea he told me about he's like I'm going to get someone going to give me money I was like good luck guy in a car and then a month later he's like yeah I got the co-founder of PayPal to give me a million dollars what the heck I was like wow how and he tells me the story he goes to this conference finds the co-founder of PayPal guy there goes up to him like talks about him his idea and you know yeah just a cold pitch guy was like whatever he disappears and he goes to the conference organizer my friend and he says hey you know that guy the co-founder of PayPal he left his laptop with me I got to make sure he gets it the conference organiz here calls did he really leave the laptop no he there was no laptop mying ████ that would funny he like oh yeah I have it no my my friend is just
18:40 making ████ up but the Comforts organization know he calls and he's like this this guy says he has your laptop and of course the PayPal guy's like what what the ████ are you talking about put me in the phone and he's like look I don't have your laptop but this is how passionate I am and how hard I need to get I will lie to talk to you no actually I get what I want actually and then he's like by the way this other entrepreneur that you don't like is interested in putting in money into me so he like played on that adversarial thing was that true wow oh man kind of kind of right like these things are never you can't say something that's not true it could be true it's hard to say he's int yeah he's intrigued he's like you know what come by and let's me and you know what my friend does he says nah actually him only time I'm free is this one time when
19:30 he knew the guy wouldn't be free he's like I want to get to you but I'm flying out like this time if you can't make it we can't do it and the guy's like oh let me let me get back to you and then my friend just hangs up and then he knows which hotel the co-founder of PayPal is staying at so he goes to that hotel lobby at 700 a.m. so he can sit there with his laptop pretend he's working cuz he knows eventually the guy's going to come out the guy comes out he's like oh he's like oh oh okay fine you know we can talk now and that's how he ra that million when I heard this I was my I'm like I am stupid I'm doing like you the same ████ thing every day working as a cog in the machine and there are people out there so much of it it's the Huts pod the risk tolerance now the big thing of course you have to back it up raising money step one step two you actually have to ask you but he did he actually went and built a crypto company
20:20 that's now worth millions wow but people forget it's not enough this is why I learned from Asian parents just work hard work hard everything will be okay but they didn't teach is you have to be able to go and play that game to know the culture use that to your advantage yeah that's gangster but that's why I love your point sometimes it's not about what's going to make you profit it's what makes you alive to motivate you enough to be like I I have to try something different and I see other people doing this yeah if it wasn't for some challenges like that I don't think I'd be fired up to grow more you're you're right cuz after a while you you get comfortable I think that's the word comfortable like you have all this money now if money is usually most people's motivator right they want to get to a certain point of comfort but once you get there then you kind of lose the purpose because you hit that goal it's kind of like you got into Harvard and
21:10 you go it's not all that cracked up to be you have numbers in your bank account you feel safe so what what I did was I dumped it all into Luna and it crashed and I'm I have zero and I now have a fire under my ass how much did you lose 1.6 mil that's a lot of conviction that's a lot of uh but that's 1.6 mil with liquid left over for me ████ so that's not not I didn't have a safety net bro wait how did you how did you feel when it happened ████ like what did you do next is that for part three part three run it up dude
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