0:00 risk and reward are two sides of the same coin and so that's what I'm really curious though because you hooked that hit yeah but it seems like you're back on your feet is the second time it happened my well okay part [Music] four welcome back to another episode of careful boys where uh Joe is about to get into his million dooll loss and we're going to hear from Eric whale when he thinks about it all right so the context here is like we were talking about earlier that even though you think this is what you want you achieve that point and then you get there and you're like well actually it's not really fulfilling like in in Eric's example he went to Harvard and then he was like
0:51 well actually I think there's more and then he got into Wall Street and all that stuff right and I think um there's been several moments in my life where I feel like I hit that Pinnacle of wow this is great right and then um we were just getting to the story of like how much I lost in 2022 I think that's when the crash happened yeah with Luna right so it was I was in on a high like uh like I was I was in the new like marriage I I just bought my new house like I had over you know 2 mil just like sitting there and then like I remember telling Bart at that that time like or or feeling that I was lacking something there was a void and I was waking up with like crazy anxiety just just these weird I don't know if
1:43 you call them panic attacks but I would wake up in the middle of the night and my heart's racing like a tiger just chased me and there's nothing to worry about and it went on for probably about a good uh I recognized it was happening in 2021 and um I started realizing that maybe I've been living with this all my life I just don't know right but um around that time 2022 Luna crashed in 48 hours we lost in the circle of our friends just F mil like like just in in thin air like it's not a crash of the market where you wait it out and then when it goes back up you you you can probably like come out alive that's just money that we just threw into a fire and you're not getting that back so what was
2:33 crazy is at that time I was also building uh Juni ke mhm so and then we were um you know we got the news that we're we're uh going to be now 200k like over budget for the build for the build we got to get cuz you know during Co a lot of people like that's in construction they know there was a lumber shortage and on top of that Hawaii you got to ship things over there was also a shortage from containers coming from China to the us all of these things jacked up the cost for construction there was a lot of issues worker shortages all this stuff right so there were just layers of layers of all of a sudden I'm on this like I have everything I should be happy I have nothing out of in 48 hours boom so I I
3:25 lost 1.6 mil I had to get a loan out like 100K to Finish the build so I was overleveraged and then my income wasn't meaning my monthly right and then so I was in a position of all right how much do I have in the bank account it was depleting I probably had like 20K left and I'm like what the ████ am I going to do at this point but I had to just figure it out and so at this point too we're living in like three cities we're just hopping back and forth right so the weirdest thing happened is when I got to Hawaii and we just started to finish up the build every morning I would wake up at 5:00 a.m. and then start working on how to get this finished and then the next thing was get
4:17 the store open after the store is open start making sales and it was like now there was a uphill battle I started getting happier and happier and happier and it was a weird kind of okay like moment cuz I thought I wanted a lot of money and freedom but I just love slavery is what I realized pretty tight so I had to enslave myself cool no and then I I remember I mean telling my wife this one of the happiest moments was um so my two nephews joined me on the project yeah when they came in you know they they were kind of timid and shy and whatever yeah but by the time they came out of it they were giving people instructions they were making friends they're like they had leadership they had leadership qualities and this all happened in less
5:08 than a year wow and I remember one Christmas it was me my wife and my nephew all three of us running the shop from open the clothes right and we were dead tired and they probably hated it but I was alive like I was like dude this is crazy like I'm making drinks and I'm doing it with my family and I'm spending time with my family on Christmas day uh serving customers and we have the store open and this is fun and I don't I don't know like to me I'm like maybe maybe you know it's the imagination of what I wanted didn't connect with the reality the reality is I love to work toward projects with people that I care about so whether it be in a little pizza shop or we're doing Mega deals like negotiating commercial real estate or a YouTube channel I don't
6:00 care I just don't like doing it alone I like to do it with people yeah but yeah hey hey I I should be hugging you cuz you were in that mess with me bro yeah I I also lost 1.6 million I just don't like to talk about it you lost 1.6 million too yeah ████ how the ████ was it exactly the same holy ████ the difference was you probably lost 1.6 money uh million of just your own money yes I lost 1.6 million that was a combination of mine and like my company's money oh that must have been like horrible yeah way worse yeah but that's why I don't talk about it so what do you think yeah what what did you think about what was going through your mind during the whole like Luna everything so two three thoughts just on that and then a few thoughts on tarot and Luna and crypto but my first thought is what you share that constant
6:51 anxiety I feel that too and this goes back to my earlier point when you go and do something of your own you're stupid or it's like someone hurts you because for me I almost feel like there's this hole in me that's always going to be there I don't know where it comes from maybe it's Asian parents maybe it's desire for external validation but I've realized nothing ever really fills it up and if I weren't working I don't know what I would do and I think so much of it is because I'm used to working I'm used to having problems and I I think about it I work it through in my head when I go to bed each night I play through what could I have done better that night before what can I do better the coming day the issue is then when things are fine I'm useless like I don't know what to do I'm so used to feeling like I'm always under battle and turmoil that
7:43 what you describe that feeling of ████ who we are that's how I feel all the time and that's also why I thought this to myself why am I doing this company carot with my co-founder because I could have stayed in Tech I could have stayed in Finance on a risk adjusted basis probably would have made more money and had way easier of a lifestyle but I would have been bored and I describe it always as from a stress level from a day-to-day basis higher than if I had stayed in the conventional life but from an existential basis I feel better exactly that's what it is yeah I believe there's no inherent meaning in life but you get to choose what that meaning for you is going to be and that's how you stay sane for me my meaning is kind of like what you describe I want to do cool ████ that I like with friends that I
8:34 like and it reminded me you said that you did the YouTube channel what was a seven years no paycheck yeah something something something like that and you said people actually stuck with you through and eventually you know you gave them big six figer bonus whatever but for years they didn't to me I hear that I think number one that is ████ beautiful yeah and number two you have built real relationships because that means it's not just you believing in the journey it's that you had other people believing in they're with you that's that's incredible so that that's my first thought just hearing you describe that state of I felt really empty and then weirdly when this big setback happens in your life you rally together you feel fulfilled again you're doing it I identify with that really really strongly to be honest this something I'm trying to work out in therapy am I ever going to just be content am I ever going to be happy you know my girlfriend the other day she was like you're never
9:24 grateful and I'm like no I'm grateful grateful to be here to be alive to have you to have my friends still be getting to do what I'm getting to do and I thought about it I'm like but there's always this edge of impatience that it could all go away that I need a problem to solve right yeah yeah so yeah it's a it's I think it's it's kind of something that drives entrepreneurs it's like it's like a little bit of sadistic like paranoia but at the same time self-inflicted pain but at the same time you need a challenge to like run uphill towards something why I don't know but if you really boil it down it's like it's non-consequential like really how much do we need to survive my bar is so low that like I don't even know why I'm getting into something that requires so much like high pay when I don't even live on that and then at the same time I
10:16 don't even care about it right so like material things come and go but then it's almost like points in a game and it's almost like Warfare without violence so I don't know it's like a high stakes game to me and and some people want to be a cog in the machine and like they're cool with that and like you need that if you want the machine to work but some people want to build the machine you know me and I just think that like if you're a builder then you're a builder I think most people want to be a ████ cuz there's so much responsibility causes so much anxiety and you need them Builders need them so it's it's just like who are you is all you know there's nothing wrong with it just some people are meant to be certain things you know but can we get that fulfillment like working for someone cuz I don't some people do what I'm saying like like it's I honestly think you can I think you just have to find the right
11:06 boss so I think that's what happened with me I think my first uh Taste of Entrepreneurship actually wasn't even entrepreneurship it was actually in the military and through my boss shout us to the bill the first lesson he taught me was like you need to try to take my job when I try to take my my boss's job so because of that I was like okay cool so like as soon as I understood my duties what of his duties could I do and then so through um that kind of mindset I unintentionally became his coo I created efficiencies we were done all the tasks we needed to do we finished by 1: p.m. every single day things were way faster I was ahead of schedule like if we had to do like a like let's say a wall to--all inventory once a year and I know it's going to come around in October I already finished it in August like all the books everything was already pre-done so I was already in this
11:56 entrepreneurial like mindset and had I stayed in the military I think I would have been content just moving up with him but then it was because I was I left I had other goals I was trying to do the whole Asian Prem thing or whatever that every other boss I was like dude I could outthink you I don't think I'm going stick with you for very long but I think if you meet someone like let's say you meet like Elon or whatever there that's probably why like uh Steve wnc and Steve Jobs just stuck together because they just had such a good pairing and they can keep working together like that but I think you have to find the right person yeah yeah cuz it's to me maybe that's the thing is I find F like the fun in with Partnerships and I haven't yet found a company or maybe no one would hire me yeah that's true I I always wanted I think throughout life when I was growing up I wanted to be a cog so badly like I
12:46 wanted to just have a job like a normal job but I couldn't get a job I couldn't even get hired at Sunglass Hut Dam why they just look at you and goe yeah I mean I was stuck in that when I was working at the mall like when I was like 17 or 18 and it was like it was the whole thing of like where have you worked before like nowhere okay well then we can't use you and it was just that over and over and over how do I get a job if I need to have a job already I was almost forced into entrepreneurialship because I couldn't get a job and then I always was like so bad at school that like I couldn't I could never envision myself Landing a career like that as much as I wanted it did you guys see it different like like a job is here an entrepreneur is here yeah because I saw it as kind of well maybe it's because my parents had a music school so it was a big blend of
13:37 like he had it was like unorthodox labor right like he would go to different homes teach music I would just Trail along or or people come to our house or he would go to different choirs and then he would perform and make money that way my mom had a regular job and then they never really said one was dangerous or the other and it was it was like I just saw all of it as a way to make money yeah I never I never even defined it as like entrepreneurial like aspects I just saw it as I can't get a job so I'm kind of good at dancing if I get better maybe that can float me until I get a job and then my background of dance and music just kept getting better and better because I never got a job and then I just started doing that and then before I knew it it was like oh this is now
14:27 sustaining me enough and I actually enjoy it but it was done out of not done out of like I wasn't that like hot shot guy that's like I'm going to make it and dance there was no vision for that so for you was necessity like I need money these guys won't hire me I got to figure it out it was just coincidence it really was it was like I did that side for fun but the whole time I was trying to get a job yeah I think the best thing that happened to us was the economy crashing in ' 08 cuz we graduated in ' 09 and we couldn't find a job that was decent yeah I went back to working in shipping that I left to go to college for and then Bart was going to what were you tutoring kids or something I was a math tutor yeah and he's like ████ this ████ you saying that hey he added up 50,000 and 50,000 makes makes sense even but imagine if we ride out of college you
15:18 know how they call it golden handcuffs well ours would have been silver [Laughter] but but imagine if immediately we got jobs that were stable that were paying the bills it would have been even much harder to take a chance at YouTube for sure but because we were like this is a ████ option might as well try YouTube that actually worked in our benefit yeah yeah I'm glad you guys did that what was your second point on the whole Luna like yeah I mean it sort of it sort of ties to there's something when you're working for someone else that's labor you're putting in and you get salary out and if you find somethingone that's inspirational where you feel you get to grow that's really good but a lot of people don't feel that because you also don't get to build something of your own you don't get to build capital of your own and there's this famous economist
16:08 named Thomas ████ he wrote a book where he said Returns on Capital exceed Returns on labor and all that means is if you're someone who really owns an asset like your own company you've built or like real estate like a house the rent you earn on that is higher than people just working if you own a stock you earn more of that over that than someone who's just literally making a salary and over the past few years people have realized that that's why there's this wealth Gap that's why there's so much rage around the state of the economy one of the reasons why crypto popped up so much is suddenly there's a brand new asset class that the traditional moneyed privileged folks they're like this isn't going to work they don't get into it but it's doing well mhm you for the first time a lot of
16:59 us can get in on something early and own something that can appreciate like you bought $1,000 worth of bitcoin and 2010 that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and you get to feel for the first time what it's like to be a capital owner who sees gains in what you have because the decisions you made rather than just working for it and because crypto was so early people were able to get into it even if they didn't really have that privileged background now to bring this all back one of the fun of crypto is actually just that speculation wealth appreciation there's other benefits right people talk about hey how crypto is going to increase access because you can make payments better there's smart contracts so you can do cool things like you know split up real world assets like we can all invest in a treasury bond together through crypto there's nfts but a lot of it people just get into crypto because like hey I can see the price rise what's
17:50 really scary is because this ecosystem is so new there are a lot of rug PS there are a lot of times where it doesn't go well and so when I hear your story I'm hearing like I said two three things number one you are driven by a need to excel to combat problems you feel fulfilled when you're doing that number two hey you made a bet in crypto this one didn't pay off but from a more macro perspective that's why crypto is so popular right now because all of us finally see something that we can take advantage of and be an asset owner and number three crypto is ████ terrifying like that's what makes it fun yeah yeah it's in a weird it's weird perverse way right like Risk and reward are two sides of the same coin and so that's what I'm really curious though because you hook that hit yeah but it seems like you're back on your feet this
18:40 is the second time it happened my well okay part four so the the first thing my buddy got me into this cuz he was early on bitcoin he's not here today Steve Steve Green is is he on a yacht right now is that no no he he he died with all us oh okay okay he got ethereum super early on it was like eight bucks or something made like 3 400 Grand right that's around the time we met him and he was telling me what when was this like 201 12 I don't know 14 but every every end of the year like gold usually goes down so like in December I would have this thing where whatever I I would buy gold coins and he goes you should get Bitcoin I barely knew this guy and I'm like man that sounds like a scam right during that time Bitcoin was the same
19:31 exact price as an ounce of gold it was like a th000 bucks so I'm like dude in in that year I bought 20 grand worth of gold so imagine I would have had 20 Bitcoin from that point on when ethereum went up I said all right I'm listening to you so we got into a bunch of alts we flipped it up we went into this coin called um omo and when the crash happened we got it up to like I got it up I got my stack up to like 800k and then um it crashed and then everything dipped so during the bear everything just like went down so bear meaning like when the market crashed like I still can hold my coins and so I just waited it out until 2021 um and and my dollar value was around 100 grand um I think my principal I put in was about 300
20:21 $300,000 so uh when it started to pick back up Steve called me up he said Joe I'm getting out of this coin um it's probably going to be like the peak of what it is they're transitioning the crew they're restructuring I think they're out so he got all of us to start moving it into projects that he thought were good and so what we all did is uh we flipped whatever stack we had at the time through different coins all the way up until seven figures so we traded that whole year we got to that point and then we dumped the rest in teruna like 90% of our stack and I wish I knew fundamentals of like investing like I would have siphoned off certain amounts I wouldn't have like put all my eggs in one basket I learned after the fact right but like I was just
21:13 gambling and my gamble paid off at the time but then when the CRA when it wasn't even a crash it was an attack and then the whole thing lost its value when that happened that's when the total wipe out happened yeah but that was that was just a crazy time um it was fun though it was really fun but at the end of the day I think they're a alive I I had a good time I didn't lose as much but had a good time it's fun to watch yeah yeah and and you know the thing is earning potential right so like if I was working at a grocery store that's my cap yep but for me I know that there's things I can do to probably make that back in some so I use that as motivation to go back out there and learn more about business learn more about Finance like you know um maybe be more calculated and cautious
22:04 so that was just a good learning experience where I'm like yeah I I lost but technically I'm only down 150k my principal wow so it's yeah I lost a 1.6 but I mean come on like think about it it's just it's just pretend error numbers right it's not paper money yeah unless I cashed out I don't realize it so it's like whatever this boy maath boy maath yeah but like see I think that's why crypto is so interesting it's like this really weird mix of holy ████ I can actually buy an asset and own something that's going to make me money when I'm sleeping which a lot of people don't get access to the crazy speculation and there is a lot of beliefs around there's going to be real underlying utility around this other than pictures of monkey gifs and so like you have this like really weird mix of like true
22:55 believers who like this will change the world and then you have people are like I don't actually really care and don't know if this is going to work but I'm just going to like write it and see and then what makes it even harder is let's talk about utility perspective no one today really knows there are really smart people who fundamentally believe it's going to change everything and there are people like Warren Buffett who think it's like a giant ████ scam and then you're kind of sitting there and you're like well I have to decide exactly I have to decide for myself yep yeah but in a way like when else has there been a chance to make that decision on such a scale where you can make and lose hundreds of thousands yeah with uh regarding Luna like when that crashed was that something that you foresaw at all no dude if I did I'd be in a yacht I think you bet against it like when I when I think how do I invest how do I bet in crypto I believe in the fundamental ecosystem that as I said
23:47 this concept of you should have a decentralized ledger that is valuable because then money can move around without needing a centralized authority to gate access and charge fees that is helpful from from an access POV second oh the fact that it's a hedge against inflation there's like a limited number of Bitcoins like around 21 million that's ever going to be there there's like 18 million that's been mentioned already it's presumably going to be able to store its value is which is like another core function of like why money is important in the first place third of all like the fact that there is this Ledger everyone can see that's actually good from transparency po which unlocks a whole bunch of other things like nfts the whole reason why nft even gives a ████ is because I can see I'm the only one who owns this on this globally distributed database I can prove I have this like interesting com come out of that from a verification POV number four as I said smart contracts the fact that hey we can code in a contract like I'm
24:39 now going to give you X and I don't know I'm going to make this up if the weather in zomb hits like 15 degrees you're going to pay that back to me and have the in code that's really powerful I hear all of these potential use cases I'm like I believe in this now today none of those use cases are really better than conventional money moving around which is why no one from a mainstream perspective is really using crypto because like everything I just said guess what you're distributed like your globally decentralized Ledger it's slow as ████ to move things around sometimes it's more expensive oh guess what to have a decentralized ledger and network it's really confusing for normal people to know how to use it you know when you go and log into coinbase and you make an account coinbase has your private key like they're holding on to access of your funds you are now participating in a decentral network via a centralized
25:30 institution yeah if coinbase goes down you will also lose your money and you sit there and you're like well that seems dumb as ████ and then you realize how many people are actually going to learn how to use hot wallets cold wallets you know memorize and know what a private key is know the underlying of this ecosystem so the network is slow sometimes it costs money there's such a barrier for people to understand what's going on oh yeah and a lot of these use cases they're still speculative like the nft case it's great that I can have social proof that hey I have this thing and it's really cool like what does it actually do for you not not really clear yet and so I don't think we figured it out I think it will be decades until those actual us describe come to promise but in the meantime there's going to be crazy speculation in the markets like we're in a bull run in crypto right now like why like you know people say oh because you know bitcoin's jaing or like
26:20 the Bitcoin ETFs are out or like the S&P 500 is doing well it really comes down to there's this economist named John canes the 1920s when the Great Recession was happening all the ECS lost their ████ minds because they thought all this is temporary it will correct itself and then it was it and that's because Kan said a lot of the economy is driven by what he calls Animal Spirits all that means is people are emotional ████ monkeys and we lose their minds and stupid ████ and the economy doesn't really work the way that animal spirits and what that means is maybe long term I believe crypto is going to succeed in this you know who the ████ knows on time in the meantime it's just speculation who the ████ Knows Why bitcoin's doing well and so when you make investments you have to go into it with the mind like easy come easy go like I don't know but underlying if you hold on to long enough there could be
27:11 something that's why technical analysis is ████ yeah like yeah no it's I'm it went up here it's going to go down I'm looking the candles you're looking at a graph you're not thinking about the humans in the news and how they're affected I don't believe in technical crer says no dude Kramer is the truth oh you know someone made in next fund that's the antier fund they anything he says they're like we're going to go the other way boys they're up right I'm more just like here's someone and this goes to the point on like brand and what you said the margins on content we're in a very world world where your actual competency at something Kramer case in point is sometimes less valuable and important than just people think that you know what you're talking about that's true yeah but that's why it also ties back to crypto because it's so new and there's so much speculative value so much of whether a crypto token does well
28:01 is driven by how much can you Cramer people just be like this will be a thing he works better as a verb we're going to make it a verb yeah he's better as a verb for sure
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