0:00 [Music] welcome back to another great episode of careful boys somehow we got lucky enough to get mr bobby kim aka bobby hundreds on the show today wow what a legend he used to be bobby thousands before crypto crashed but after crypto did you crash hard on crypto because i know you're heavily involved of course i think anyone who had crypto if you had it harder than us [Laughter] uh i mean i guess if you no matter if you slice it and dice it straight away yeah for sure i've definitely what about us combined it's over over two guess how much fun we had not that much fun
0:50 and you know what's even better this is the second time we did it that's right because we said the first time we're gonna cash out right what was it like are you saying 2017 first time no first time yeah yeah yeah around that time this is a part of it what were you that death is a part of life that's true what were you holding that now you what were you like really pridefully holding that you now regret nfg wise anything in this room oh see he went to nft first that's so that's scary that's a scary answer well because i've been into crypto since 2017 but i think because of nfts i went much deeper but um i actually don't i mean there are some really s█████ jpegs you know bad nfg projects that i and i don't want to are there any good jpegs i guess is my whole thing i think so okay i think so
1:40 and i guess i guess it also depends on how you want to look in are they art to you are they collectibles and they're fun novelty things or were they actually investments like stocks and there were bad investments but most of my nfts i never looked at as investments it was more like i just like having them in my wallet because either they have a utility or it's a membership to some community or club usually that's the utility or yeah the remember just the dow it's just like vibes also yeah or it's just like cool art there's some of it that i just like there's like an uh an artist named jujeban he's a south korean artist and i collect some of his nfts just because i like his art what do you think about that i think my son can draw better than that uh i think that's very valid and it has you know when you actually get into art and you realize much of it doesn't actually have to do with technical
2:31 prowess or skills this problem is his son will draw it on his ████ computer screen and bar will cry because it's so beautiful i'm sure it is permanent marker that means something you know and so when you start trying to quantify and put money value financial value on art it's complicated because now you're mixing emotions with and sentimental value with and there's a tax tax hiding aspect of it that rich people play like that like the art community in general that's always been a big part of heart so it's like is it really worth that much or is it because their friend said it's that much and now they need to write it off yep that's definitely part of the game as well what's your favorite nft project do you have a favorite there's a project called lit that i think is really smart and all you could have said was pretty lit i thought you're good i mean it is very lit they i think they named it the entire project
3:21 ironically just to throw people off the trail a bit but when you get into the different projects they do they're really smart and and they're intelligent there's um what's hard about that what do they do yeah they just uh there's a project they did with robert de niro where uh the nft changes his face facial expression he makes different faces every time you check it depending on where ethereum is in the marketplace so if ethereum's falling off a crash like it's been doing the last couple of days so he's like he's like he's literally he just went down a little bit it went down a little bit yeah a little bit does he ever smile i've never seen him smiling anything yeah he does he does do a smile every now and then in his later films i don't think i remember zac efron once every four years according to the graph yeah yeah yeah exactly so before people think that bobby is a crypto god i'm not i'm
4:12 definitely not we should don't listen to me crypto gods have fallen bro yes we should go into a little bit of a history of why people know about like bobby because like um i know you uh from clothing in the in the fashion world clothing clothing clothing how did they drop that g is that how you came up i came up in clothing in fashion yeah and i'm wearing his brand wow i think the hundreds wow you should be our lookbook model thank you i wish i will that was joking i won't even charge i won't even charge it yeah i know i've been discovered today i got a big laugh out there actually we do get a lot of those messages from kids saying i will model for you for free and i'm like why would we want you to model for us it's gonna cost you yeah that actually costs us
5:03 that's enough do you guys get this i'll come work for you for free yeah and i'm like do you know i'm giving you i'm training you for free that's what it sounds like you know like why would i do that that's like the thing now they're they're like um it's like it's like when they watch those hustler videos they're like you know what you gotta do is you gotta learn how to work for free man and then when you work for free then you just ████ learn honesty or new thing too though is that they'll do that first thing where they're like hey i want to work for you from ████ hustle and then they'll watch like uh some tick tock video like like two days into working for you where it's like if you're working for free you're getting ripped off and like yeah i'm getting ████ scared it's a two-day turnaround so much conflicting con you know i need to get a paycheck man i'm not respecting myself but you get a good two days of free work
5:53 yeah yeah yeah yeah the best wardrobe that's hilarious dude um yeah i mean but i got into fashion and speaking of arts i think i was an artist first as early as i remember i was drawing i was attracted to the arts and i never thought i could make a living doing that just because i was conditioned from my parents and my korean immigrant parents and my teachers and people in my neighborhood that were like you're never going to make a living being an artist even my school counselor i remember she's just like no you should definitely not go down this path it's hopeless and i think that was kind of the logic at that time i grew up in the 80s and the 90s and there just weren't a lot of inspirational role model stories of kids making it being an artist and like building successful careers and being entrepreneurial but our generation did that right like we figured out how to make businesses and thriving economies work around uh your passions and like being creative
6:43 and artistic and that just that wasn't the case yeah i would you have a did you have korean parents that whipped your ass what my ass almost every other day yeah do you pass on that that lovely korean tradition i do not it was so traumatic and i've been unearthing so much trauma for the last 30 40 years through deep therapy just to get out of that mess did your parents ever rip up your illustrations when you were kids i didn't they didn't rip them up because they didn't know i was doing it because i had a high drawing you have to hide the drawings yeah most a lot of kids childhoods at that time where you were hiding under your covers reading playboys or you know like under your bed and your parents were like where are you and you're like looking at hustlers you just got it with charcoal pencils i literally was disappearing ink i would have drawing
7:33 naked women that's what good you'd have i'd have to like listen you know like like like you're watching porn you have to be like really like sensitive to like is someone coming down the hall you know but i was doing that for drawing like i was just like someone coming down the looking at the door every two years exactly just like he's like a prisoner that can't have couldn't draw you can't so wrong think that's how much it meant to me when i was finally able to draw for a living and it was liberating it was i was actually making money drawing and then at that that was people asked me what was the moment that i knew i made it and i'm like that was probably the happiest day of my career and i was like just starting i was we were making enough money to pay them rent and then i was like i can draw forever and that's all about that so all your first designs yes for for many years actually the first several seasons of the hundreds i
8:23 designed almost everything head to toe all the cut and so to graphic t-shirts beanies and headwear everything yeah and it fit in a fit of irony have you ever drawn your parents and then given it to them and then signed that ████ in the bottom right no no i haven't but i don't know if that would go over well and it just i don't think i'd be able to capture them right people don't like when i draw them this is also something that do you do that often experience well you know when you're an artist everyone always says like draw me draw me you know you do a character from me wearing this only this you know like kate winslet yeah that happens all the time it happens all the time and then you're like immediately are you sure and then you do it and they're like i don't look like and you're like you asked me to draw you this is how i see you yeah this is how i see you and it's the same with a lot of designers like um a lot of graphic designers get asked to design
9:13 their friends logos for brands and stuff do my logo and you're like you sure you want me to do your yeah i want you to do my logo however you think it looks best and then you design it and then all of a sudden they have input because everyone's a designer these days right you never tell them you told me to do this shut the ████ up that's what happens so it's a very tortured relationship for an artist when you were when when you were like collabing with all those early brands that were getting office space in your guys's headquarters yeah were you also doing illustrations for those brands um if there were certain no no uh if we're partnering with certain brands or we're working alongside them we want them to do what they do best and we do the same thing in terms of when we have freelancers or outside artists that are contributing artwork for collaborations or clothing a lot of times they're like tell us what you want us to do and i'm like no we came to you because we want
10:04 you to do what you do what brands are in your headquarters i can't really say but we do partner yeah it's all like confidential but we do can you say who you've worked with in the past i mean there are a lot of brands that we've collaborated with in the past and that we support right and we have nothing to do with zhang but like hujungu is like a really popular young uh korean american run brand right now coming up in streetwear so jung's popular which i would definitely check out wjw in the timeline of the stuff you accomplished did you finish law school yeah four we graduated yes we graduated law school we started uh the hundreds in our after our first year of law school law school is three years both him and his partners both my partner ben and i and uh yeah we
10:54 met each other in the midst of that first year by the end of the first year we're like let's try doing this over the summer and i had no intentions of turning this into an actual company i just was i just i felt really i guess uncreative like i wasn't you know i was restricted from pursuing any kind of passion because of law school and i'd put myself in that position more or less but it's just a very dry place it's you know it's it's you're trying to be a good asian yeah i was trying to be good asian i was also like i had good intentions going to law school i was coming off of being an artist and a writer for many years and just wasn't working 9 11 had happened and you know a lot of that kind of some of us disagree [Laughter] oh right with the 9 11 thing sure that's fine i don't even think it happened bro is all cg huh i don't think it happened
11:46 the date september 11th actually happened i don't i don't i don't think that it did yeah i remember happening again in a few days i'm actually flying on that day me too yeah to commemorate she's not going anywhere if you had to sit down and pitch somebody like what your company exactly is for new people who don't know you like oh gosh that's that's yeah that question has become so impossible to answer don't you all find that question just difficult to answer is it because the more you've expanded the more things you do or what is it yeah there's just and there's more curious and interest and you know it depends on also where my money is it's like where's my money coming from i don't know that's like in investments and like property and credit if you have to describe the hundreds then and three animals yes in three animals three animals um it would be soft like a bengal tiger
12:38 because of apparel i guess i mean at its core where a streetwear brand yeah like this kind of tiger uh yeah i had a question if that was real or not what do you think it's a real white tiger the universe is fake anyway dude trust me it's really fake yeah yeah um no it looks it doesn't matter actually it looks sick right is it real to you everything everything is a myth and a narrative so if that's what you're saying then i believe it i don't care either way that's that's our street right here he's our influence he went from full american to eastern european yeah i'm an icon he's russian for sure if i ran to you on the street i would think that you're eastern european i thought you're gonna say i throw hands immediately and that was the second part why would i do that have you had that man i caught myself in the mirror this
13:29 morning and i wanted to throw hands and i was like whoa whoa that's us that's like okay okay oh my god no do people often say that to you it's a new rebrand for me and uh i'm honestly not used to it and i want to constantly punch myself in the face the last couple months he's been coming in with like crazy outfits it's a rebrand a rebrand yeah do you usually look like a 48 year old dad yeah are you 48 years old i'm not okay yes okay well i would never guess no i'm not a dad no it was a 48 year old dad on his first vacation to the grand canyon that was his style yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah he's a 25 year old eastern european guy exactly that works i'm getting that that message is coming through loud and clear this is a new flavor though today eastern europe well there's so many zippers i don't even know what the ████ going on just more pockets really yeah did you
14:20 see my keys in my wallet that's utility what do you search to find these things online uh punchable faces what was it about uh art that your parents didn't like you doing it i i just think that was the narrative speaking of narratives that was the narrative at the time you know your parents for those of us who had immigrant parents especially for second generation that were coming here they sacrificed everything so that their kids could pursue this career of becoming a professional or a doctor to you know government person or whatever it is and then you're like no i'm gonna sit in the corner of the room and draw pictures there really weren't not many examples of that in the in that period of time you just thought it was like a waste of time like i came all the way over here for you to do this yeah you know the entrepreneurial spirit definitely wasn't that deeply rooted back then i was watching forrest gump this is kind of a
15:11 dumb story but this it makes it'll make sense in the end i was watching forrest gump this weekend with my son first of all i didn't realize how i didn't remember how much of that movie was a love story it's like every five seconds it defaults back to the jenny jenny thing and my kids were just like rolling their eyes like what is this wrong but i was trying to explain them i'm like this does that matter well i think apparently you guys are located next to a dentist they're coming for our gold bars that that movie is a cross-section of american history right so i was explaining every decade i'm like the 50s were about 60s there was war and like political turmoil and then like the 70s hippie movement right and i was like the 80s i would fall asleep if i heard all that too right exactly and like half of them i think watching a movie with my dad sucks but then in the eight the 80s was about like american exceptionalism and
16:02 capitalism right where people and so like that was the chapter of the movie where they talk about nike and then he makes like the have a nice day shirt and it's all about these like starting up brands and then he builds bubba gupp right and so that was like to me i think that's what they're saying like they're like this is what the 80s are about and so but before that you didn't have that as a part of american history it was just like here's your career path and this is what you follow right like you're a gm guy you work at gm for 80 years you get a gold watch like that's what you do and you just you shut your mouth about it so all our immigrant parents coming here were like we're just grateful to be here keep our head down so nobody notices us let's just lock in a profession and just like just keep our mouths shut you know and then i'm coming around like no i want to be this i want to be you know i want to be an artist or i want to start a skateboard company which is what i wanted to do when i was
16:52 growing up and my parents were like no no that's never been done before thankfully like we all did that over the last two decades where our kids are like i can do anything now right they're watching bart being like i want to be just like bart no way fitness influencer fitness guru strong and handsome so now that you're is there like uh anything that you want your kid to be or even hope that he does anything he wants to do uh you know i hope that we can all figure out how to make it work together um he'll figure it out they'll figure it out on their own there's two boys but i've always told them do whatever you want to do as long as you're happy and passionate about doing it we'll figure out a way what if their goal in life was to be lazy well i even that i feel like we can somehow turn into because i think my children are very lazy i'm incredibly lazy and i
17:42 think most of us who work really hard are actually lazy like i work so much just so that i can lay down as much as possible right just like how much time can i lock can i build into my day to lay down and so it's just like if i hire more people to do that job then i can lay down a little bit longer and then you have more inspiration to do more dream ████ yeah and you're like wait it's gonna take work to achieve these dreams and then so i gotta get up and like right it forces me so there is i think an exchange there because a lot of the hard-working people i know they don't actually get that far they they do good working for other people right they like are good as staff and employees and like they have like a really successful career like that but i think a lot of founders and owners and like startup people are actually pretty lazy they aren't good working for other like i was the worst employee at every job that i had before i started the
18:33 hundreds i just was like literally falling asleep on my desk and all my internships and i worked for the city attorney for a whole summer and literally my boss would come out funny like literally sleeping on the desk and i was just like i gotta figure it out away i was just sitting there drawing one time and i was like i gotta figure out a way to work for myself so that i can sleep all the time wow that's the secret of business that's the secret but isn't that kind of like working for other people it kind of does make you feel lazy because it's like you don't get to necessarily reap the rewards unless they're here somewhere that's structured really nice right like usually usually it's like yeah i'm working for somebody else so i can get to where the point where i can make my own thing if that's what your mindset is yeah that's a conversation i have a lot especially the last couple of years as more and more people are going through this crisis or just having these breakthrough moments of do i want to work at a company or do
19:23 i want to work for myself do you want to work from home do i want to go to an office and i've been having this a lot with staff that have been coming in and out too because i think the pandemic just forced a lot of people to reckon to to reckon with do i want to stay in the same building for the rest of my life and work for somebody else do i want to pursue my dreams and i think there's actually a beauty to both a lot of people who are employees or work for someone else they want to be founders because they look at that as freedom and i'm always just like are you kidding me like i wish i could be like you i wish that i had the wherewithal and the passion to be able to work for a company and a team and like i've just never been a good team player growing up i couldn't do any team sports were not for me i had to do individual sports and the same thing with companies i didn't know how to work with other people that's why i became a founder but for me when i'm looking at my staff leaving every day at 5 5 30 p.m and they go home they have they can pursue their own lives and
20:13 their own interests and they have side hustles whatever i'm like man that's freedom like i'll never be able to do that right they can turn it off we know this as entrepreneurs is that you're 25 hours a day dedicated one thing you can't do things that you really want to do right everyone's like oh you can you're following your dreams i'm like all i these are my dreams i'll never be able to pursue them because i'm so committed to this i have overhead and i have my staff that i have responsibilities and you know duties and like i can't go off and just explore whatever i want to do all the time which is a skateboarding company let's just make it right now she just started we'll incorporate it online get get the laptop i'll show you how to do it okay you got your models over there the fashion icons yeah pull up legals in your mind [Laughter] oh we gotta buy a bunch of wheels and wood this is probably the easiest business ever what's a two by four i love
21:04 diminishing that it's hilarious i don't know if uh how sustainable skateboard company with six owners is gonna be no we'll figure it out thin slice of pie now that we're getting one six of the board yeah he just wants to chill all day so we know he's not going to be too involved now that uh a lot of people look to you for like the blueprint of how to do this yeah and there there could be people out there that are like you know what i'm not going to be a dealer i'm not going to be a lawyer i want to do what you do right how do you what's your best way of explaining hey man this isn't easy either you know like because people i think if you read my book yeah yeah when i wrote what's your book called it's called this is not a t-shirt it's my memoir and it's the story of my life and how we built the brand but when i wrote it everyone expected it to be oh it's your success story and all your wins and victories and i was like it's actually a failure story it's just like all about hardships
21:55 and how we kept messing up over and over and over again and how to pick ourselves up adapt and pivot which is every day in this game especially every type of business now you have to reinvent yourself every single day just to keep your head above water just to stay relevant and things are moving so fast and so when you read that book i think it's a pretty honest depiction of what it's like it's not this massive corporation we're still a mom and pop shop every single day like i still run the business like it's day one like we don't have any backers or investors in the in the company we've never had and so um i think it might be helpful to read that and also just talk to other people who are founders and understand how hard it is the grass is always greener on the other side i would love to be a staff person somewhere at a company be a part of a team that's you know like i think there's something really noble in that in everyone working together to build something and if
22:45 something ever goes wrong with that company or brand you can perish you can rip cord and pull right out of that and start your other dream right i'll never be able to do that and forever tethered to my company no matter what it does i could sell my company today in 30 years people are still gonna be like you're the guy from the hundreds right that failed it and that failed it or even if it's you'll never make a skateboarding company you're a loser even if it's successful like that will always eclipse whatever else i do all right i can start like the world's best coffee company tomorrow and people are still gonna be like marky mark i remember when you were dancing around in your underwear and this was like yeah i'm a very successful actor now and it's like i'm mark wahlberg no for me you're calvin klein modeled marky mark forever right and so these are things that you always have to think about it's just it's not always what it seems to be to be like a founder owner everyone wants that i understand they think and they also think there's
23:35 more money in it that's also the other myth and mirage of the whole things people always like because when i say this i always say like you don't you can also always not start a brand you can also always not start your own company you know you get your dream can be also working with some other people but they're like oh you're just trying to like keep all the money for yourself and you're trying to hold others down i'm like i make less money than some of my employees right and in the long run like i lose a lot more money than people like people can save and invest in like i'm constantly pouring all my life savings back into this work there are months where i have to skip paying myself just to pay the rent and like keep the lights on and people don't see that part dang this guy's not a very good businessman [Music]
24:33 here [Music]
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