0:00:04 This was the biggest, greatest edge in the history of gambling edges, I can promise you.
0:00:07 But I’ve never uttered this in public to anyone ever before.
0:00:08 You want to nuke it?
0:00:09 Let’s nuke it.
0:00:23 All right, so we got to tell your story because your story is you basically did what me and
0:00:26 probably 50% of other young guys wanted to do in their life.
0:00:28 It’s like, oh, what if I could take a few thousand dollars?
0:00:34 Find an edge, beat the house in Vegas, and turn a few thousand dollars into millions of
0:00:38 dollars, tens of millions of dollars, and ultimately, I believe, over hundreds of millions of dollars.
0:00:45 If not by counting cards in blackjack, first by sports betting, and then you get recruited
0:00:49 by Mark Cuban to go work for an NBA team at one point, you now own your own soccer club.
0:00:52 So you’ve had this like really cool life and career.
0:00:53 You’re like a comic book character.
0:00:57 Yeah, you’re like your man cave came to life, you know, like it worked.
0:00:59 So that’s dope.
0:01:02 But, you know, of course, no story is perfect.
0:01:06 You know, there’s ups and downs, and it’s not all not like you planned it out this way.
0:01:09 But what we like most on this podcast, this podcast mostly a business podcast,
0:01:13 so somebody comes on and they tell us about their company or their investments or whatever.
0:01:17 And what we like most is people who play their own game.
0:01:19 What I like about you is you play your own game.
0:01:21 You’re a pretty independent thinker.
0:01:23 And so I want to kind of walk through the story.
0:01:31 So what I’ll call chapter one is stumbling into gambling and figuring out how to have that edge.
0:01:33 Can you tell a little bit about that story?
0:01:37 Because I think I know a little bit of it, but I know Sam, you don’t know any of that story, right?
0:01:40 Like how he first got and made a name for himself doing this.
0:01:41 No.
0:01:43 Yeah, I mean, I grew up around gambling.
0:01:47 My dad was, I use the term unsuccessful gambler.
0:01:48 Some people might refer to it as degenerate.
0:01:52 Hey, he was someone who gambled a lot unsuccessfully.
0:01:57 And, you know, had a lot of, caused a lot of problems in our family.
0:02:00 Not the sugarcoated was bad, but I grew up around the horse race track.
0:02:04 And I grew up around watching football and NFL football on Sunday,
0:02:06 basically trying to like help my dad make picks.
0:02:07 What city?
0:02:10 I grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
0:02:15 So I was at the Ascina Boy Downs race track from, I guess it was every Saturday, Sunday,
0:02:21 Wednesday for most of my teenage years, I would say 12 to 16, 17, 18.
0:02:24 And so, yeah, I just kind of was around.
0:02:27 That’s how I kind of, and I always thought it was rather interesting.
0:02:32 I also saw like, first thing I didn’t realize when I was younger was just how it was near
0:02:35 impossible to beat the horses just because of the takeout.
0:02:36 The big is so high.
0:02:37 It’s like 30 to 36 percent.
0:02:40 They got to pay for everything, the stables, the horse purples, you know, all of it.
0:02:44 But I just thought, well, these people don’t know what they’re doing.
0:02:47 Like they’re, you know, like they have no process.
0:02:48 They don’t know what’s happening.
0:02:50 There’s, they’re very emotional.
0:02:52 Like I grew up, I’m in a Greek family.
0:02:56 So you would hear these people, like they just were not in control of their emotions in any way.
0:02:57 They would be upset when they win.
0:02:58 They’d be upset when they lose.
0:02:59 They would be arguing with each other.
0:03:00 They’d having, I’m very low key.
0:03:03 So to me, it was very different for me.
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0:03:39 So that’s how I got started.
0:03:43 And then at some point, after I, after I graduated from high school,
0:03:47 I went to Vegas with my dad.
0:03:50 He was there and I went there for like a month or so.
0:03:51 He was there gambling?
0:03:52 Like, yeah.
0:03:57 My dad was, it was daylight hours and he had money in his pocket.
0:03:57 He was gambling.
0:04:01 What was his occupation?
0:04:03 He was, he came, he was a first generate.
0:04:06 He moved to Canada when he was, he’s got a great, you should have him on the show.
0:04:08 He’s got a great story.
0:04:11 He moved to Canada when he was like 20 years old.
0:04:12 Didn’t speak a lick of English.
0:04:17 Became a dishwasher, a Kentucky fried chicken and just worked his ass off.
0:04:21 And so he moved this way up from dishwasher to restaurant
0:04:24 to finally getting involved in real estate somehow,
0:04:25 by some way owning a commercial.
0:04:27 He was a, he had strip malls all over Winnipeg.
0:04:28 So he’s an entrepreneur?
0:04:30 Big time entrepreneur.
0:04:31 Yes.
0:04:31 Wow.
0:04:33 And when you go to Vegas, you’re not 21, right?
0:04:35 You just graduated from high school.
0:04:36 So what do you do with your dad?
0:04:37 You’re in a casino.
0:04:38 You can’t really do much.
0:04:41 I parked myself in the sports book and hope that nobody tells me.
0:04:43 Because they don’t ID you in the sports book.
0:04:44 Yeah, you just sit there.
0:04:45 Post you, but they don’t.
0:04:46 Like you’re just in the sports book.
0:04:48 So you’re just sitting there, you know, you’re,
0:04:49 and I just watched basketball.
0:04:52 It was like the first time I really ever watched NBA basketball to that extent.
0:04:55 I was previously, I was watching a lot of hockey and Canadian football.
0:04:59 And yeah, my dad would give me a little bit of money, not a lot.
0:05:04 And I would watch basketball and I would sit there from 4pm Pacific to 10pm,
0:05:07 11pm Pacific and just watch the games on these giant TVs.
0:05:12 And then I started to really enjoy the routine of watching the West Coast games.
0:05:15 So I started to like kind of pay attention more to the West Coast teams.
0:05:19 I was like, Chris Webbers worked a year when he played for Golden State.
0:05:24 And they had a run TMC, I think it was before that.
0:05:28 And so yeah, that’s what I did.
0:05:29 Were you losing money at first?
0:05:30 What was going on?
0:05:31 Yeah, I was just making money.
0:05:33 I didn’t, I didn’t really win.
0:05:34 I wasn’t losing a lot though.
0:05:38 Like, I wasn’t, I had an okay opinion by the end, but yeah, I was losing, of course.
0:05:40 Like I was probably flipping coins and paying big.
0:05:45 So I was like probably 50/50 roughly, but needed, you know, but was paying.
0:05:47 I needed to win 11 to 10, 11 out of every 10.
0:05:48 So it wasn’t bad.
0:05:51 It wasn’t like I was getting my ass handed to me or anything.
0:05:55 But then I realized I really liked this and I want to get good at it.
0:05:58 And then I just thought about what do I, what does that mean tale?
0:05:59 What do I have to do to get good at it?
0:06:03 And so I just went to work and just started taping games to start.
0:06:07 Reading a lot of newspaper articles on the internet.
0:06:09 When you’re, when you’re saying you’re learning to get good at it,
0:06:14 how much of it is a human side where you’re like learning human emotions of like the players
0:06:19 and leadership and things like that, like the story versus statistics?
0:06:21 Yeah, back then there was not a lot of good statistics.
0:06:24 There was just the, there’s just something called the box score,
0:06:27 which is just not very, it’s not very illustrative of the game.
0:06:31 So it was almost that and a little bit of database work in terms of like just getting
0:06:33 aggregates from teams in certain situations.
0:06:38 I also tried to like really also understand the market more, I think.
0:06:40 But in other words, the opening lines would go,
0:06:42 I, what I got to be really good when I was in Vegas around that time
0:06:46 was seeing the sharps that would line up at the Stardust Casino.
0:06:48 In the morning, they had something called the lottery.
0:06:50 So the lines would be posted in the morning.
0:06:54 And then every sharp would be able to get,
0:06:56 make a full limit bet down in the morning.
0:06:59 And they’d have to do a lottery to see who could go first.
0:07:01 And then they make a bet and then the book would decide to adjust.
0:07:04 So I started just like looking to see like, okay, who are the actual sharps?
0:07:06 Who are the guys who seem like they’re moving money for other people?
0:07:08 What are they betting?
0:07:09 So you’re treating it like a job.
0:07:10 You must have been getting there early then.
0:07:11 What time is that?
0:07:13 Yeah, I mean, I mean, it’s not a lot of work.
0:07:14 It’s not manual labor.
0:07:17 I’m not like laying bricks or like riding off the back of a Brontosaurus,
0:07:20 like Fred Flintstone, breaking rocks, but yeah, it worked.
0:07:24 And so did you go ask them to learn from them?
0:07:26 Or are you just watching them from afar and figuring it out yourself?
0:07:29 I just wanted to see like, okay, this guy made a bet, the line didn’t move.
0:07:30 That’s interesting.
0:07:33 Then you see him back like the next day and the next day.
0:07:36 And then, and then you see that, by the way, it wouldn’t just be one.
0:07:41 You’d see like it now at four o’clock post time, the lines had moved even more.
0:07:43 So it’s like, okay, this, this line moved a lot.
0:07:43 There was an injury.
0:07:45 That guy bet it early.
0:07:46 So it was just like little things, just pat.
0:07:49 Like I think if I have one skill in life aside from being
0:07:54 not really caring what other people who I don’t know think about me.
0:07:55 I think I’m just being confident in that.
0:07:57 I think it’s like maybe like a little bit of pattern recognition.
0:07:59 I think I’m decent at that.
0:08:01 I think I, I can see patterns.
0:08:04 And I’m also able to identify like, oh, was that an actual pattern?
0:08:07 Or was I just fooling myself with randomness there?
0:08:08 Did you have a role model?
0:08:14 Like was there, you know, as, as like, as like an 18 or 19 year old, are you thinking to yourself?
0:08:18 You know, there are other people who have gotten super rich doing this.
0:08:19 I think I can do it.
0:08:22 Or were you like, there’s some people who make an okay living doing this.
0:08:23 I think I can do it.
0:08:25 Or you’re like, I don’t think about next year.
0:08:27 Just this is what I’m enjoying today.
0:08:29 When you’re 19, you don’t really think like that.
0:08:31 I don’t like in terms of like, oh, I want to make a,
0:08:37 I’m always been someone who’s always like, been very confident that I was going to be successful.
0:08:41 I would recite things in my head when I was a kid, like I’m going to be a millionaire.
0:08:42 I’m just, I would just do that.
0:08:47 And so at that age, I think I was just kind of, I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it.
0:08:48 I just knew I was going to make it.
0:08:52 Like I kind of went through life with this like irrational confidence, I think.
0:08:53 Was there a definition of making it?
0:08:55 Was it like $10 million by the time I’m 25?
0:08:59 Yeah. I think when I was tree planting, I would had like,
0:09:02 I was listening to like Tony Robbins books and reading them,
0:09:03 like listening to them at night and then reading them in the morning.
0:09:05 And I think, yeah, I had like 10 things that I wanted.
0:09:09 And I, and yeah, I think it was 10 million before the age of 30, I think.
0:09:12 Back then there was a lot of money.
0:09:16 Now you can just spin up a meme coin and, and you’re making it by that by noon.
0:09:17 But back then it was a lot.
0:09:22 What was the first profitable pattern you figured out?
0:09:23 The one that really, really kind of worked.
0:09:25 Julian football was first profit.
0:09:27 My first, my first bit of money was Canadian football,
0:09:30 not like soccer, but actual like football, three down football.
0:09:34 There’s a lot of things going on.
0:09:39 Then there was, they expanded into America at that time.
0:09:42 And so you had some interest for whatever reason in Las Vegas
0:09:45 to book Canadian football league games or like offshore markets.
0:09:51 And so, and the Canadian teams had to abide by different rules in the American teams.
0:09:53 So that was part of it.
0:09:55 You had to have a certain amount of Canadians on your roster
0:09:58 that were starting American teams didn’t, didn’t have that.
0:10:02 The Canadian stadiums were all compliant to Canadian football league rules.
0:10:04 American stadiums did not.
0:10:09 So some of the end zones, like the Canadian rules are like the end zones are 20 yards deep.
0:10:13 But in some stadiums in America, they didn’t have that luxury.
0:10:15 So they were like squared off at the back.
0:10:17 And so those games are lower scoring.
0:10:20 That was a big part of it.
0:10:23 And I just got to be really good at knowing a lot about Canadian football
0:10:24 and which teams were sharp.
0:10:26 We’re doing innovative things.
0:10:29 So Canadian football.
0:10:33 So can you give us a sense of the kind of the journey?
0:10:35 So you start with a roughly what bankroll?
0:10:38 And then how long did it take you to get to your first million?
0:10:42 And then at one point, I think you were betting like a million dollars a day
0:10:43 or maybe even more than that.
0:10:44 Probably 10 million a day.
0:10:46 I mean, I was betting a lot.
0:10:50 I mean, I think like so it’s a long story.
0:10:51 So I think the most.
0:10:56 It got to be I was a sky cap at the Winnipeg International Airport.
0:10:57 That’s when things really took off for me.
0:10:59 And I don’t think anyone’s ever said that before in their life.
0:11:02 What is a sky cap?
0:11:05 The dudes are I was like the first white sky cap hired at the Winnipeg.
0:11:08 I was like the dudes who sit courts sit curbside and carry people’s luggage in
0:11:10 and check their luggage in in the U.S.
0:11:13 They check the luggage in but in Canada, that’s not allowed
0:11:14 because the transport count.
0:11:16 So you would just carry people’s luggage in.
0:11:18 So I would like carry a bag boy.
0:11:20 We don’t like being called bag boys.
0:11:23 But yeah, basically, yeah.
0:11:28 So you’re just carrying people’s luggage or like or in Canada, a big thing in the winter
0:11:32 was snowbirds who are fleeing Winnipeg to go move to Florida for the winter.
0:11:36 And they’re in wheelchairs and you’re just like wheeling them through customs
0:11:37 and immigration and making sure they’re bagged.
0:11:40 And you’re making what like what per hour roughly?
0:11:41 I was making a lot.
0:11:43 So I started out as a sky cap in the summertime.
0:11:47 I was printing money and I was making I started out as a sky cap.
0:11:50 I realized that the Saturday Sunday ships were very profitable
0:11:54 because we had American fishing travel that were people coming on these boats
0:11:58 and they’d have to take a charter plane to go fishing somewhere in northern Canada.
0:12:02 And those days you’re making four or five hundred dollars and an eight hour shift.
0:12:03 Easy.
0:12:03 Wow.
0:12:06 And so I basically went to the boss at the come is like,
0:12:07 I really want to work the Saturday and Sunday shifts.
0:12:09 What do I got to do to make it happen?
0:12:10 He’s like, no, we got to spread those around.
0:12:12 It’s not fair.
0:12:13 And the other dudes weren’t making any money.
0:12:15 They would make like eighty dollars.
0:12:16 So I just started paying them for their Saturday.
0:12:19 I started paying him like eighty bucks to work Sunday.
0:12:22 And then he got the owner got wind of that and he got upset.
0:12:24 And so then he started working the Saturdays and Sundays
0:12:26 and couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t making money that I was.
0:12:27 But what were you doing?
0:12:29 You’re like complimenting these folks and just getting tipped.
0:12:32 I was just like, you know, I was doing things like getting them
0:12:36 limos to go to the strip clubs when the four hours that they’re
0:12:39 they’re getting them Cuban cigars because Cuban cigars are legal.
0:12:42 I mean, when they land and like making sure they had like Cuban cigars
0:12:44 and charging them like three times the value for that.
0:12:45 There’s like little things like that.
0:12:48 I was being attentive.
0:12:51 I was like a concierge of the one to take international airport.
0:12:54 Um, but anyways, I ended up taking over the company from him.
0:12:56 I just undercut his contracts.
0:12:59 And so there was actually at the West Bank International Airport.
0:13:00 I was making so much money.
0:13:02 That’s a that’s a that’s an easy leap, right?
0:13:06 Bag boys and taking like walking in his office and you’re like,
0:13:07 Hey, guy, move.
0:13:11 You know, I was like, I was like, I went to him and I was like,
0:13:15 yo, like I’ve already got North, it was Northwest Airlines now Delta,
0:13:16 I guess, but it was Northwest.
0:13:18 I was like, Hey, I’ve already got them to agree to the contract.
0:13:19 Everyone wants to work for me.
0:13:24 Um, you can just, I can give you some money and you can just move on
0:13:27 or I can just undercut you the money I’m going to give you.
0:13:29 I’m going to say, you know, we can, it’s a win-win.
0:13:32 And he was like, Nope, don’t want to do that, whatever.
0:13:33 So I ended up doing that.
0:13:34 I ended up undercutting him.
0:13:36 So how old are you?
0:13:41 I was 22, 23.
0:13:42 Time.
0:13:44 There’s actually a crazy story.
0:13:47 So I was making so much money at the Winnipeg international airport
0:13:54 as a sky cap and gambling that mostly sky cap that, um, at the time,
0:13:57 Eric, there was actually like a bunch of there was some cocaine
0:13:58 that I was found in Air Canada.
0:14:01 I had like a pasta wherever as a sky cap.
0:14:04 And there was like a situation where some drugs were found,
0:14:06 like big amount of drugs from like,
0:14:11 and one of the US customs and immigration employees who I became friends with
0:14:13 said like, Hey, you got to, they think you’re like,
0:14:15 we know what you’re doing here as a sky cap and I know you,
0:14:18 but you’re like suspect number one.
0:14:19 So, you know, like, like you,
0:14:22 they don’t understand why you have us up like a brand new Cadillac,
0:14:25 whatever, not brand new, but like you’re driving a Cadillac,
0:14:29 like some gangster and you’re walking around with wads of cash.
0:14:31 Like I had like lots of cash from the salt tips.
0:14:33 And so I was like, what?
0:14:35 And he’s like, yeah, like it’s, they were laughing.
0:14:36 They thought it was funny.
0:14:38 They realized, of course, it had nothing to do with it,
0:14:38 but you can Google this.
0:14:40 So it’s, it actually happened.
0:14:42 There’s like some kind of thing that happened in Winnipeg at the time
0:14:43 where they found something.
0:14:48 So what was your, what was your income at the age of 22, 23, 24, doing all this?
0:14:52 Like 50 or 60,000 a summer easily.
0:14:56 I was, I was, I was living with my,
0:14:58 my mom and my brother, my older brother.
0:15:01 We were like paying my parents rent for a while after,
0:15:04 after my dad kind of had like a down slope on the, you know,
0:15:06 the, during the 1987 or whatever the interest rates went up,
0:15:08 strip mall business wasn’t so good anymore.
0:15:14 Especially when you’re borrowing money to, at, at, at floating rates to build these strip malls.
0:15:19 So yeah, that was about what I had, was making at the time.
0:15:22 So you’re, you’ve been rich since you were 23 years old.
0:15:23 Oh, I don’t think so.
0:15:26 Because I’ve been spending, you know, like I wasn’t exactly saving,
0:15:28 like money was going, I was like going out for dinner every night.
0:15:30 I was like spending the money, it was coming, taking trips to Vegas.
0:15:31 I was doing stuff.
0:15:33 But yeah, I was, I had to pay for my school also.
0:15:33 I had to pay for my university.
0:15:35 So I was paying for my university.
0:15:36 I was supporting my parents.
0:15:37 So I wasn’t rich.
0:15:38 I just worked hard.
0:15:40 I’ll also, I also, while I was working as a sky cop,
0:15:44 I also worked as a video store at Rogers video.
0:15:46 I was working 40 hours a week at Rogers video in the summer,
0:15:48 sky cap in the morning and Rogers video,
0:15:51 which is like a Canadian blockbuster in the end.
0:15:53 So I had to work ethic, I guess.
0:15:55 You’re more of a hustler than I thought.
0:15:57 Cause you, I guess like, I don’t know.
0:16:00 The public perception is you’re like kind of just a sharp,
0:16:02 you’re, it’s all, it’s all mental.
0:16:04 You sit in your room, you have your models,
0:16:06 and then you make bets and the money comes in.
0:16:08 I didn’t know at least some of these stories about
0:16:11 you kind of hustling as the, the sky cap
0:16:13 and figuring out how to like run your own operation down there.
0:16:14 So that’s pretty cool.
0:16:17 When did, like, I don’t know, Sam, if you’ve heard these stories,
0:16:21 but I guess a couple of your famous betting stories are,
0:16:24 I guess you went all in at one point on the Lakers
0:16:27 to win the championship and at like six to one odds.
0:16:29 Yeah, six and a half to one, roughly.
0:16:32 How much is all in and what, and what age and the timeline?
0:16:35 It was like 87,000 Canadian give or take.
0:16:36 And that was all your money?
0:16:37 Yeah.
0:16:40 But you could go by, I looked at it like,
0:16:41 okay, it was all my money now.
0:16:44 It’s like October fishing, you know,
0:16:47 fishing season just ended at Winnipeg International Airport.
0:16:50 I’ve already paid for my tuition at the University of Manitoba
0:16:53 to get my useless philosophy degree.
0:16:56 I’m living in my brother’s basement.
0:16:58 Worst case, I lose this bet and I just go back to skycapping
0:17:01 and just make half of that or two thirds of that back again.
0:17:03 So, yeah, I made the bet.
0:17:05 It wasn’t a sharp bet by any stretch.
0:17:06 Like I, looking back, it wasn’t sharp,
0:17:08 but it felt sharp to me at the time.
0:17:10 I’m, you know, your risk model hasn’t developed.
0:17:14 You’re a Miggler that hasn’t fully developed to that age
0:17:16 to really understand if you’re making good decisions.
0:17:17 So.
0:17:18 Did he win?
0:17:19 Yeah, he won, yeah.
0:17:23 Sam, have you heard the Bill Burr quote about risk?
0:17:23 No, what’s he say?
0:17:26 The comedian, here’s this great line about risk.
0:17:27 Because, you know, being a comedian is like,
0:17:29 it’s rusty in many levels, right?
0:17:31 You’re probably not going to be a successful, famous,
0:17:33 millionaire, traveling, touring comedian.
0:17:36 But on top of that, just stepping on the stage is a risk.
0:17:37 You’re going to get humiliated most of the time
0:17:39 when you’re not that funny.
0:17:42 And he goes, they were like, somebody asked him,
0:17:44 they were like, you know, how was it taking that risk?
0:17:47 They’re taking on that risk, taking that leap of faith.
0:17:49 And he goes, I didn’t see it as a risk.
0:17:50 He goes, the best thing that ever happened to me,
0:17:51 he was like, I’m kind of dumb.
0:17:54 But, you know, the one smart thing I realized early on was,
0:17:58 the risk was waking up in a king size bed
0:18:00 when I’m 40 years old, turning over to a woman
0:18:02 that I don’t love anymore, that I’m married,
0:18:04 because I thought it was the right thing to do.
0:18:07 Dreading this job I have to go to in six hours.
0:18:09 And he’s like, that became the risk in my head,
0:18:10 was waking up like that.
0:18:13 And in comparison, he goes, chasing your dream,
0:18:15 there’s no risk at all.
0:18:17 He goes, because there’s no risk in chasing your dream,
0:18:19 because you’re doing the thing you want to do,
0:18:22 and versus living this life that you don’t want to live,
0:18:23 just to play it safe.
0:18:24 That seemed like a bigger risk.
0:18:26 Definitely relate to that.
0:18:28 I mean, I don’t know if any of you guys had the pleasure
0:18:32 of spending a winter in Winnipeg, but it’s not pleasant.
0:18:33 So.
0:18:36 One of the other stories then, that’s pretty sweet,
0:18:39 is he, I guess at one point, like in Vegas,
0:18:42 you can bet on the full game, which is what most people do,
0:18:45 like me, I’m a casual, I go in, I just bet on the over under,
0:18:46 maybe on the final score.
0:18:48 And what he realized was like,
0:18:51 you could also bet on the first half only,
0:18:53 which was like, not as common of a bet.
0:18:56 But the way that Vegas is doing is it would take the full score,
0:18:57 which they’re pretty accurate at predicting.
0:18:59 And then for the halftime score,
0:19:01 they were just cut in half, divided by two.
0:19:03 Roughly, I think the first half a little bit higher scoring,
0:19:04 in general.
0:19:06 I could tell you guys, look, I haven’t told this,
0:19:10 I tell this story in a way that makes it so the edge still lives on
0:19:11 for the people that are still betting.
0:19:13 But I don’t know.
0:19:14 You want a new case?
0:19:14 You guys caught me on.
0:19:15 Let’s nuke it.
0:19:22 My friends, if you like MFM,
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0:19:29 And of course, it’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network,
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0:20:04 Again, billion dollar moves.
0:20:05 All right, back to the episode.
0:20:13 Okay, this is this little maybe go viral.
0:20:13 I don’t know.
0:20:15 Probably fuck up a lot of people’s money.
0:20:17 But I think that most people have figured it out by now.
0:20:20 But I’ve never uttered this in public to anyone ever before.
0:20:21 True story.
0:20:25 Okay, the away team gets to choose
0:20:28 which basket it wants to shoot on oriented.
0:20:32 So you have teams who play back then,
0:20:36 I would say 30 teams in the NDA, 28 of them, 27 of them.
0:20:39 When they’re on the road would always want their offense
0:20:43 shooting in front of their own bench.
0:20:45 And they would want their defense shooting
0:20:46 in front of their bench in the second half.
0:20:49 Therefore, the first half’s are higher scoring.
0:20:50 The second half’s are lower scoring.
0:20:51 You’ve got the bench in front of you.
0:20:54 You can bark out instructions, this and that.
0:20:54 Three coaches.
0:20:55 God bless them.
0:20:56 I wouldn’t be here without them.
0:20:59 Decided that they wanted to flip it.
0:21:04 And they wanted to have the defense in front of them
0:21:05 in the first half.
0:21:07 And the second half, they wanted to randomize the game
0:21:10 and make the second half’s higher scoring.
0:21:12 So you would literally like Eddie Jordan.
0:21:13 Jerry Sloan was the king of this.
0:21:15 He was the first original guy from Utah.
0:21:19 And so this was the biggest, greatest edge
0:21:21 in the history of gambling edges, I can promise you.
0:21:25 You would have situations where the total would be higher
0:21:28 in the first half, lower in the second half,
0:21:30 and the team would literally score, on average,
0:21:33 106 points in the first half and 87 or something like this
0:21:35 or 90, whatever it was back then in the second half.
0:21:38 You also have the advantage of fouling at the end of games,
0:21:40 which will also make the score in the second half
0:21:41 higher scoring.
0:21:43 And overtime, which is a nice little bonus too,
0:21:44 working in your favor.
0:21:46 So the second half over was like,
0:21:49 you would have teams playing doing this 41 times a year
0:21:52 and they would go nine overs in the first half,
0:21:58 30, whatever, 32, 33 with some pushes in the second half.
0:22:01 And you could just print money making this bet.
0:22:02 And that’s what I did.
0:22:04 And I figured that out very, very quickly.
0:22:05 I actually didn’t figure out that quickly.
0:22:07 To be honest, I’m not as bright as I think I am
0:22:08 because it took me a long time
0:22:09 to figure out what the fuck was happening.
0:22:11 I just knew these teams had situations where
0:22:14 on the road, their games were much lower scoring
0:22:16 in the first half than they were when they played at home.
0:22:19 And I thought, well, they’re trying to slow the game down.
0:22:20 It’s this and that.
0:22:23 But really, it’s just you’re more efficient
0:22:25 when your offense is in front of your bench
0:22:27 because the other team’s defense can’t get set.
0:22:28 And you can barcode and stuff.
0:22:30 But that seems like a clear pattern, right?
0:22:32 Like you don’t only need a season of games
0:22:33 to understand that pattern.
0:22:34 Well, you don’t know that teams are doing this.
0:22:36 Not like they say, hey, the Mavericks
0:22:38 are shooting in front of their, like they’re the one team.
0:22:39 Nobody’s paying attention to this.
0:22:43 Nobody knows that a team that back then,
0:22:45 it was a perfect situation
0:22:47 because it was three to four teams a year.
0:22:49 They were all shit teams.
0:22:52 It was, in my heyday, it was the Utah Jazz,
0:22:53 it was a shit team.
0:22:55 The Washington Wizards with Eddie Jordan,
0:22:56 shit team.
0:22:58 Byron Scott, New Jersey Nets, shit team.
0:23:01 And then you had a few teams like the Minnesota Timberalls,
0:23:03 did some games and not other games,
0:23:04 which is the dream scenario nowadays
0:23:06 that’s probably screwing these gamblers
0:23:07 because when that happens, you’ve, so.
0:23:09 So that was it.
0:23:09 That was the edge.
0:23:11 That’s why I made a lot of my money.
0:23:15 And you could, if I had a bankroll of,
0:23:19 this is not responsible, please don’t follow this.
0:23:21 But if I had a bankroll of like 250k
0:23:22 because I was betting on credit,
0:23:23 you settle at the end of the week,
0:23:26 I’d have a situation where if I somehow lost all my bets,
0:23:28 I’d be like two or three million dollars in debt.
0:23:31 But it didn’t matter because I knew my edge was so big
0:23:33 that I was betting and I somehow partnered up
0:23:37 with some big bookmaker/
0:23:41 a legend mafia guy in Montreal,
0:23:42 which is another story,
0:23:45 who was able to get me down for a lot of money.
0:23:47 And he just basically, I gave him the bets.
0:23:48 I told him what I wanted to bet.
0:23:48 He would go bet them for me.
0:23:50 He’d collect, he’d give me the money, I’d win.
0:23:51 And that was that.
0:23:52 So that’s the edge.
0:23:53 That’s the whole edge in a nutshell.
0:23:54 This is insane.
0:23:57 I have so many questions, but it, you know, I’m a new.
0:23:58 I don’t want all this.
0:23:59 I’ll have like friends who I’ve told this to
0:24:01 are like, oh, can you please share that on my podcast with me?
0:24:03 I’m like, I feel bad for the people
0:24:04 who are still grinding out a living doing this.
0:24:05 But you know what?
0:24:06 It’s a new day.
0:24:07 Terrorists are here.
0:24:09 This is my terror to the gambling community.
0:24:11 I’m, I’m, I’m a new fan of yours.
0:24:13 You know, Sean was like, we got to talk to this guy.
0:24:14 So I’m a new fan.
0:24:16 So I went and read everything I could in the past week.
0:24:19 Can you give some type of, can you,
0:24:22 can you give me a new some type of scale as to your winnings?
0:24:24 Like, are we talking like hundreds of millions of dollars
0:24:26 in winnings or whatever you’re comfortable with?
0:24:27 Yeah, I know.
0:24:33 I mean, look, I, I made between 10 to 12 million dollars a year,
0:24:37 gambling for 10 to 15 years minimum.
0:24:39 So we’re talking nine, nine figures.
0:24:40 And I spent a lot.
0:24:42 Like I didn’t just always, that was like my net win.
0:24:44 You know, I’m not talking about local, I won, but I lost.
0:24:46 I mean, like I lived a pretty good life.
0:24:47 Like I, my parents, I did other things.
0:24:50 But yeah, I profited a lot gambling on basketball for sure.
0:24:53 Like a bad year for me on the NPA, I think was like six or seven million.
0:24:54 Average year is probably eight.
0:25:00 And in the early heydays, I made more money than I, um, yeah.
0:25:03 Then I, but I was also, I made some mistakes afterwards.
0:25:04 But yeah, definitely your personal life.
0:25:09 Are you living a life of a 28 year old rich guy of like, I mean,
0:25:14 are you spending seven figures a year in personal like, no, no, no, no, no.
0:25:14 Not that crazy.
0:25:17 But I did other business, I tried like other business things.
0:25:19 I like, you know, I helped out some family.
0:25:21 I bought like a property in Montreal.
0:25:24 I bought, you know, some stuff from my, I, yeah.
0:25:26 So you’re not, you’re not, you kind of overplayed.
0:25:28 You’re, you’re, it doesn’t seem like you’re being irresponsible.
0:25:31 No, I was just like, I just think life is short.
0:25:31 And what’s the point?
0:25:32 Have money if you don’t spend it.
0:25:34 So, but I don’t spend it.
0:25:35 I spend it on experience.
0:25:36 I spend on experiences.
0:25:37 Like I’m not a flashy guy.
0:25:38 I don’t drive a fancy car.
0:25:39 I don’t wear jewelry.
0:25:40 I’ve never had a watch.
0:25:44 I’ve never had any expensive, you know, I’m pretty basic in my clothing.
0:25:47 Just like a lot of NBA players, like end up going broke, right?
0:25:49 NFL players end up going broke in their like later career.
0:25:52 One of the crazy things about like, I grew up idolizing Phil Ivey
0:25:54 and a lot of poker guys basically.
0:25:58 And once I got into the world of business and investing, it’s like,
0:26:00 okay, this was kind of like what real wealth looks like.
0:26:03 And I realized that a lot of the guys who were really great poker players,
0:26:06 really great gamblers that you thought were really great gamblers.
0:26:12 Like, I don’t think they were as successful like businessmen as I thought.
0:26:15 Like, you know, I don’t, I don’t think they made as much in their peak.
0:26:17 And I think they’ve lost a lot along the way, or they had a huge downswing
0:26:18 somewhere along the way.
0:26:22 As far as you know, are you the most sick?
0:26:23 Like, did you do the best?
0:26:25 Are you the most successful sports better that you know?
0:26:27 Or were there people better than you that made more than you?
0:26:32 Billy Walters is very, I mean, Billy Walters had the biggest,
0:26:35 like my edge was, I had to like scrap for my edge because
0:26:41 Billy Walters had the first computer program when like they were using giant,
0:26:45 like this old Westinghouse machines to feed the information on those giant cards
0:26:48 for computer programming till and they had like a computer program.
0:26:52 When the Vegas odds makers would just sit there and like sit around a tailor,
0:26:54 I think the line should be seven and a half.
0:26:55 What do you think, Jack?
0:26:56 And I think it should be around eight and a half.
0:26:59 And then like Billy Walters computer guys like, no, it’s like 4.3.
0:27:00 He’s the right price on this game.
0:27:02 So they had like the best edge ever.
0:27:05 He made a lot of money, super successful.
0:27:08 And Billy Walters, he, I think I saw a 60 minute special on him.
0:27:10 Is he the, he’s a, he’s a Southern guy.
0:27:15 Yeah, I, I read him, I read about him, uh, right.
0:27:18 You know, I saw the 60 minute and he was exactly like I thought he was going to be.
0:27:21 Like he seemed like a fast talking, wheeling and dealing.
0:27:22 No, no, no, not a fast talker.
0:27:23 He opposite.
0:27:26 The number one thing Billy Walters had going for him is he’s from the South.
0:27:30 And if you’re a gambler, one of the greatest things you can have going for him
0:27:31 is people thinking you’re not as intelligent.
0:27:33 I don’t mean, I guess I shouldn’t have said fast talking.
0:27:37 I guess I mean like, um, charming, charming.
0:27:41 Oh yes. Yeah. No, but he’d like, well, I like to bake a bed if I could.
0:27:43 I mean, I like to make a bonus game.
0:27:47 But the thing about Billy is like people underestimated how sharp he was early on,
0:27:48 but he’s as sharp as they come.
0:27:52 Did you have any, uh, you know, like in the movies where it’s like,
0:27:54 at some point the casino is like facial recognition.
0:27:56 They’re like, don’t let this guy bet anymore.
0:27:59 You know, take you in the back and bruise you up a little bit.
0:28:02 Like did you ever run into problems with winning too much?
0:28:06 So the way sports betting works, you’re not usually betting in the casino.
0:28:10 You’re betting with like back then when I was at my heyday,
0:28:13 you were betting with literal like street people.
0:28:15 So that had like corner bookmaking operations.
0:28:20 The casinos are for losers and people who can’t win.
0:28:22 And if you win, they’ll just not let you bet anymore.
0:28:26 And so, so you need to find a way to bet on credit through like,
0:28:29 you need to find someone who’s going to play a game of telephone with you,
0:28:33 who’s going to take your bets and then maybe bet more later or thinks you’re a loser.
0:28:35 Like, or, or you find a sock like my big business.
0:28:38 Like nobody, nobody knew who I was.
0:28:41 Nobody knew I was winning money betting because I was never the guy making the bets.
0:28:45 I’d always find what’s called a beard who would make my bets for me.
0:28:49 And so I’ve had numbers of like numerous beards throughout the years
0:28:50 who were making my bets for me.
0:28:54 And they were the, you know, either they were really successful business people
0:28:58 or degenerate gamblers or like Hollywood people or like Floyd Mayweather,
0:29:00 who’s a beard for like half an afternoon for me.
0:29:02 How did, how did that go?
0:29:08 Um, yeah, he just wasn’t, he wasn’t, it was too, he was too difficult to work with.
0:29:10 I mean, he’s got so much money and he’s just like impulsive.
0:29:13 No, I got, he’d been hitting the head for like most of his life.
0:29:14 Like, you know, he’s, how much, how much?
0:29:18 Yeah, he doesn’t just piggyback off your bets, right?
0:29:20 He’s a huge bankroll. Couldn’t he have just piggybacked off your bet?
0:29:21 You’re telling him, go bet.
0:29:25 I think Floyd was already moving for someone else,
0:29:29 whether it was Billy Walters or someone like for sure someone got into Floyd
0:29:32 and Floyd making those bets, like nobody posts their bets on Instagram
0:29:35 for millions and millions of dollars unless there’s an angle,
0:29:37 whether they’re sponsored by the casino or there.
0:29:41 So yeah, I think he was moving money for someone, but someone introduced,
0:29:46 I sat next to him at a Miami heat playoff game and he liked my friend
0:29:50 who was sitting next to me. He took a liking to her and so they became friends.
0:29:53 And so we somehow had a situation where for an afternoon,
0:29:57 him and the guy, his business guy and I were talking
0:30:00 and Floyd was going to make the bets, but it just didn’t work.
0:30:03 Like I told him I wanted to bet one game and they said, no, we like the other side.
0:30:06 And I was like, that’s cool, but can you please go bet this one for me?
0:30:07 And they’re like, no, we don’t want to do that.
0:30:09 Like, you know, we want to bet the other side.
0:30:11 And I was like, okay, well then just, we’ll just bet against each other.
0:30:12 You bet that side, I’ll bet this side.
0:30:14 And they’re like, no, but you always win. We can’t do that.
0:30:17 And I was just like, yeah, I’m out. I can’t deal with this anymore.
0:30:18 So that was it.
0:30:23 Is the motivation on all this getting rich or is it getting a rush?
0:30:29 Is it an intellectual challenge? What’s the motivation?
0:30:31 Not a rush. No, the rush is like, I’m not a rush guy.
0:30:35 It’s, I think it’s the intellectual challenge.
0:30:40 Also, I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older that I take pride in putting myself
0:30:45 in really, really stressful situations and seeing how well I perform.
0:30:47 Like that’s like my probably a weakness of mine is I’ll put myself in these
0:30:51 really stressful situations without knowing it, but I’ll do that.
0:30:52 What’s an example of that?
0:30:59 Like being all in Bitcoin since 2013, like for 160 to 170% of your net worth
0:31:00 at various different points in time.
0:31:02 160, so you borrowed?
0:31:09 Yeah. So betting on sports and making money was challenging.
0:31:13 And in terms of your winning money, like I was living in Canada at the time,
0:31:20 I was betting all over the world and having to receive money from people all over the world.
0:31:23 And so my bank accounts were constantly getting closed.
0:31:25 Even in Canada, I was like, I’m a professional gambler.
0:31:26 This is what I do.
0:31:28 I pay my taxes as a professional gambler.
0:31:29 It’s one of the few dummies in Canada who actually,
0:31:32 because in Canada, gambling is considered non-taxable.
0:31:35 So I was like one of the few people who actually paid tax on their gambling
0:31:37 winnings in Canada because I was considered an expert.
0:31:40 But I didn’t have to, but I did that.
0:31:42 Probably stupid on my part.
0:31:50 But yeah, so just that and then seeing how easy it was to move money with Bitcoin.
0:31:52 And then the other part of it was later on in life,
0:31:57 I left Canada after I got tired of paying taxes in Canada and I moved to Monaco.
0:32:03 And that entire principality is built on minimizing your tax exposure.
0:32:09 You’re looking at flats that are like the current places in Monaco now that just got built
0:32:14 are $85 million, $90 million for a 3,000 square foot condo.
0:32:16 It’s the most expensive real estate in the world.
0:32:19 And the only reason it’s that expensive is because
0:32:23 there’s a limited amount of land and everyone lives there because a tax is zero, zero tax.
0:32:28 And so my point is, is that that whole, that’s like a Swiss bank account
0:32:30 move people are willing.
0:32:33 But whereas there’s a lot of people, whether they’re,
0:32:34 whereas Bitcoin, you can, you can,
0:32:36 you don’t have to invest in Monaco real estate to hedge.
0:32:38 You can have your money in your pocket.
0:32:39 You don’t have to worry about a bank.
0:32:43 You can move money intermediate without any intermediates on your permission.
0:32:46 Even the bank accounts I had, whether they’d be in Monaco or Canada,
0:32:48 they’d always been like, why you send this money?
0:32:49 Where is it going?
0:32:49 Why did you get it?
0:32:50 And now it’s even worse.
0:32:52 So that was part of it.
0:32:55 I liked the, I liked the math behind it.
0:32:56 It made sense to me as a math guy.
0:33:00 Yeah, I just, and I’m an independent guy to begin with.
0:33:04 And so I didn’t really click for me until later on.
0:33:05 I heard about it maybe five or six times.
0:33:06 Support finally clicked.
0:33:09 It finally clicked because I was betting with someone in China
0:33:13 who had owned, who had had a really difficult time in paying me money.
0:33:16 Also, I was living in Vancouver before I moved to,
0:33:20 and my entire apartment building was owned by Chinese expats
0:33:23 who were literally laundering their money in Canadian real estate.
0:33:24 None of them lived in my building.
0:33:27 The entire building was empty except for six people,
0:33:28 but the entire building was sold.
0:33:31 At all of Vancouver, you’ve ever been to Vancouver, Canada.
0:33:35 It’s an, it’s an entire money laundering operation.
0:33:37 The real estate is all owned by foreign people
0:33:41 trying to escape regimes that are, you know, they’re just capital flight.
0:33:43 So Bitcoin just made sense.
0:33:46 Okay, I’m going to go buy a condo in Canada
0:33:49 or I’m going to buy some Bitcoin and put it in my wallet
0:33:51 to escape some total, some regime, some capital.
0:33:55 So were you taking the 10 million gross earnings
0:33:56 and just going straight to Bitcoin?
0:34:00 No, then I was, I was trying to get paid by people who owed me money.
0:34:02 And so this, the first person,
0:34:03 the first time I ever acquired Bitcoin,
0:34:07 I had a gentleman in, in a fellow that I met playing poker
0:34:10 who got me a bunch of accounts in China to bet on and be a basketball
0:34:13 or Asia, let’s say, I don’t know where it was exactly, but somewhere.
0:34:17 And he was like, it was 2013-ish.
0:34:19 And I was like, Hey, like, how are you going to send me money?
0:34:22 At some point we had like an H, an HSBC account in Hong Kong.
0:34:24 And he’s like, I can send you Bitcoin.
0:34:26 And I was like, Bitcoin, really?
0:34:27 You guys like Bitcoin?
0:34:30 I think the price was around $180 at the time.
0:34:32 He’s like, yeah, everyone in China loves Bitcoin.
0:34:35 And I was just like, well, everyone in China loves Bitcoin.
0:34:36 Maybe I should love Bitcoin too.
0:34:37 Like, what is, why do they love it in China?
0:34:40 And he’s like explaining to why everyone loves it and how great it is.
0:34:41 And so that was it.
0:34:42 So I bought it.
0:34:46 Then it very quickly went to 600, then 1000, like very after.
0:34:49 And then it slowly went down about 150 after.
0:34:52 I think Bitfinex got hacked after that the next summer.
0:34:54 But that’s when I got involved and it clicked for me instantly.
0:34:57 When I was all the situations moving to Monaco for taxes,
0:35:01 seeing all of the real estate in Canada being super expensive
0:35:03 for native Canadians, especially in Vancouver,
0:35:06 because of especially people from Asia buying real estate
0:35:09 and just holding it and not doing anything with it.
0:35:11 And I just like, why would you like,
0:35:14 Michael Saylor now has a really good view on it.
0:35:15 It’s like, why would you ever own real estate?
0:35:17 You’re at the mercy of the government who can change the rules
0:35:20 and change the taxes, or you could just buy Bitcoin.
0:35:21 So that was it.
0:35:22 Basically.
0:35:25 Well, when you’re dealing with, you know,
0:35:28 I’m not saying that you’re shady or you do ever do anything illegal,
0:35:31 but when gambling, as an outsider,
0:35:34 when I hear about gambling, I, you know,
0:35:36 I’ve watched the movie Casino and I like, I know,
0:35:38 like I think of Mafia and whatever.
0:35:41 When you’re owed money, and I had read stories,
0:35:43 how you’re, you’re owed money and you talked about it.
0:35:46 What’s up with the gambling culture?
0:35:47 Do people actually pay their debts?
0:35:49 I’ll just punish handshake agreement.
0:35:50 Yeah. Yeah.
0:35:52 I mean, I think I had an advantage.
0:35:54 I mean, just to be clear, like I lived in Canada,
0:35:54 gambling was legal.
0:35:55 I paid my taxes.
0:35:56 I wasn’t doing anything illegal.
0:36:01 Some of the people who I’m, my, my, my customers
0:36:03 are all breaking the law because they’re bookmakers.
0:36:04 So I’m not the customer.
0:36:06 I’m the shark.
0:36:06 They’re the sucker.
0:36:07 I’m winning the money.
0:36:09 They, you know, they would think they may think they’re,
0:36:11 they’re that I’m the customer, but really I’m not.
0:36:15 So, so, um, so for me, the hard part was like,
0:36:18 okay, revenue Canada wants 57% of my money as my partner,
0:36:21 but they’re putting all my customers out of business by
0:36:22 making it hard.
0:36:23 So that, that was part of it.
0:36:24 To answer your question, is it hard to get paid?
0:36:26 Yeah, people lose money.
0:36:29 Because I’m betting through intermediaries for the most part,
0:36:32 I think like part of the deal is you have to guarantee the money
0:36:34 when you’re making the bets.
0:36:37 And people would go out of their way to guarantee me,
0:36:38 not because they’re afraid of me,
0:36:39 because why would they be?
0:36:42 I’m not, I’ve never, ever done anything to get money
0:36:43 other than be like annoying.
0:36:46 But like, if you knew that I was always going to win,
0:36:49 and if you didn’t pay me, you knew you were not going
0:36:52 to get my bets anymore, you might go out of pocket
0:36:55 to make sure your relationship with me was good,
0:36:57 knowing that eventually you’re going to make the money back
0:36:58 if you’re smart enough.
0:36:59 If you’re smart enough, you’d realize,
0:37:00 why would I step for Albus?
0:37:01 Albus is going to win.
0:37:02 We’re going to win it back next year.
0:37:03 I’ll go out of pocket.
0:37:05 We’ll figure out a solution.
0:37:07 That’s generally what happened with me.
0:37:08 That’s a good threat though.
0:37:12 You look, I’m going to call you like at least five or six times
0:37:13 to get paid.
0:37:16 I didn’t even, I was pretty bad at it to be honest.
0:37:19 Like the way to get paid is to be the most annoying person
0:37:19 that person’s life.
0:37:24 So I had a, I had a famous poker player who’s like a really good dude,
0:37:26 but he was for sure a degenerate and he owed me money.
0:37:29 And not, not like this guy, Eric Lindgren.
0:37:30 And he talked like he, you know,
0:37:31 that’s what I was referring to.
0:37:31 Yeah.
0:37:33 Yeah.
0:37:35 And I would just like, I would just like, he was,
0:37:37 if he won a tournament, I would like get on a plane
0:37:39 and just like be there when they paid him.
0:37:42 I would just like hand out and just like, you just got to,
0:37:43 you know, but you also have to be like,
0:37:47 kind of like understanding that this guy needs to live his life
0:37:49 and also have some money to, but you know,
0:37:52 he was a guy who, who at the time owned a piece of full tilt.
0:37:54 So they had all this, all this imaginary money.
0:37:56 They thought they were all going to be so rich.
0:37:57 And so he didn’t really worry, you know,
0:37:59 you didn’t really worry about getting paid
0:38:00 because he thought eventually they’d get paid
0:38:02 by full tilt poker, but then full tilt poker got shut down.
0:38:04 So all these guys, yeah.
0:38:05 Anyway, so yeah, that’s what you do.
0:38:05 You just be annoying.
0:38:08 What inspired you to buy the soccer team?
0:38:10 So like where, like,
0:38:13 how long did you have that idea before you end up doing it?
0:38:14 I wanted to buy an NBA team.
0:38:16 And then I worked, I saw like the sausage was made.
0:38:18 And I was like, yeah, the NBA is not for me.
0:38:20 What do you mean by that?
0:38:21 Why not?
0:38:23 I mean, for one, the franchise valuations
0:38:25 are going up and up and up and up.
0:38:30 It’s a very, very, very difficult business to buy
0:38:33 because you’re competing with the richest people in the world
0:38:34 who want these assets.
0:38:35 So it’s very difficult.
0:38:38 And then I just found, I started finding the sport
0:38:40 not that interesting anymore after seeing
0:38:43 like how everything was, I didn’t, I didn’t, like,
0:38:46 I think the bubble for me kind of ended it
0:38:50 because it was during that time when the league
0:38:52 became like, which is cool because the league was primarily,
0:38:55 it became like almost like a social cause versus,
0:38:57 and I thought that’s good for society in some ways,
0:38:58 if you believe that.
0:38:59 And, but for me, it just became too much.
0:39:01 I just wanted, I just want to sport.
0:39:02 I just like sport.
0:39:03 So around that time, I didn’t want to, you know,
0:39:05 I didn’t want to, I think people,
0:39:07 I think where the NBA maybe missed things
0:39:08 is I think a lot of people wanted to escape
0:39:11 during coronavirus into sport.
0:39:14 I want, I, okay, forget about other people.
0:39:17 I want to escape the shitty, the whatever,
0:39:19 the riots, the burn, the whatever.
0:39:20 I wanted to escape all that into sport.
0:39:23 And I’m watching the NBA and it’s,
0:39:25 and maybe, maybe the answer isn’t,
0:39:26 maybe the answer isn’t escape for,
0:39:28 for people who are, I’m not American,
0:39:29 but maybe for Americans who are living through it
0:39:32 and they really believe that that, whatever, that’s cool.
0:39:33 But for me, I was just like, yeah, I don’t want to watch this.
0:39:35 Like I just want, I just want to,
0:39:36 I want to watch a basketball game.
0:39:37 I don’t want to have like a message.
0:39:39 And so yeah, it just became,
0:39:40 it could become too much, I think, in some ways,
0:39:41 became overwhelming.
0:39:43 And then also you’re,
0:39:45 I was working for the Mavericks at the same time,
0:39:47 and they were in the bubble and I’m hearing the stories
0:39:49 from them and you have like African American coaches
0:39:51 who are like really upset with what’s happening,
0:39:52 as they should be, the players are upset.
0:39:55 It just became like really draining emotionally
0:39:57 in a way that made me really kind of sad.
0:40:01 And I started watching football more
0:40:04 because soccer was the first sport to start up after COVID.
0:40:07 And so I just got really into it.
0:40:11 And we already building models to begin with before then.
0:40:14 I thought, you know what, I want to, this is new,
0:40:14 it’s exciting.
0:40:20 It’s more mathematical in the sense of it’s unsolved.
0:40:21 It’s a lot more, there’s a lot,
0:40:23 the game tree is bigger, it’s more nuanced.
0:40:24 Basketball is pretty simple.
0:40:28 You get a top five player, you put them on the court,
0:40:29 you surround them with other players,
0:40:32 but he’s the guy, like he looks called heliocentrism.
0:40:35 And then you profit and then you trade them for
0:40:36 Anthony Davis and one first.
0:40:40 But that’s it.
0:40:44 You just find a guy like Luca or LeBron or Jokic
0:40:48 or whatever and off you go.
0:40:50 But it’s not that difficult.
0:40:56 Hey, Sean here.
0:40:58 I want to tell you a little story about Winston Churchill.
0:40:59 So Churchill once said,
0:41:04 “First, we shape our buildings and thereafter, they shape us.”
0:41:07 And I think this is true not just for the buildings we see in cities,
0:41:09 but also for the building blocks you choose in your company.
0:41:10 For any company that I start,
0:41:13 I use Mercury for all of my banking needs.
0:41:15 Why? Well, it was built by a YC founder and you could tell.
0:41:18 This is built by a founder who understands the needs of other founders.
0:41:19 Second thing is this modern.
0:41:22 It’s clean, easy to use, the design is really nice.
0:41:24 You never have to drive somewhere, park,
0:41:27 put coins in the meter, get out just to do one simple task.
0:41:29 You could do everything in just a couple of clicks.
0:41:31 They got bill pay, checking account, savings account,
0:41:34 wire transfers, everything you need, they got it.
0:41:37 I use it for not one, but actually six of my companies right now
0:41:38 and actually even have a personal account with them.
0:41:39 It’s kind of amazing.
0:41:41 So if you’re ready to operate in the future,
0:41:43 head over to mercury.com, apply in minutes.
0:41:46 Disclaimer, Mercury is a financial technology company
0:41:49 out of bank banking services provided by Choice Financial Group
0:41:51 and Evolve Bank and Trust members, FDIC.
0:41:53 Thank you to Winston Churchill for that little ad segment.
0:41:54 All right, back to this episode.
0:41:59 You said we.
0:42:01 We are building models.
0:42:03 I think Sean and I were talking and he was like,
0:42:04 “This guy’s like a lone wolf.”
0:42:05 No.
0:42:11 I don’t know the truth and I want you to tell me the truth.
0:42:14 Do you, I think you don’t have a family.
0:42:18 I think you’re, and I think that like from an outside perspective,
0:42:20 it doesn’t seem like you have this massive company.
0:42:22 I’m a lone wolf.
0:42:22 Yeah.
0:42:23 Okay.
0:42:24 This now I am a lone wolf when you put it that way.
0:42:25 Yeah.
0:42:27 Like I’ve always been very, yeah.
0:42:29 So I, but I have people who work for me.
0:42:29 I have people.
0:42:31 Can you explain that?
0:42:33 What’s your, what’s the organization?
0:42:34 What’s your team look like?
0:42:38 It’s so I have, now my organization,
0:42:40 not kind of the football team,
0:42:41 which is completely separate.
0:42:43 Just like 250 people or something worked for me.
0:42:44 I don’t know how many it is.
0:42:44 It’s a lot.
0:42:46 Maybe less.
0:42:46 I don’t know.
0:42:47 Account Academy players.
0:42:49 Um, but no, I just have like,
0:42:51 I still do my basketball betting.
0:42:53 I spend zero time on it.
0:42:54 It’s an automated program.
0:42:55 But when I first started betting on basketball
0:42:57 programmatically with a model,
0:43:01 when I decided that my method works,
0:43:03 but it only works if my mindset is good.
0:43:08 If I want to have a life and have like emotional relationships
0:43:09 with females and have a partnership,
0:43:10 whatever, and I’m upset.
0:43:12 I’m making bad decisions when I’m gambling.
0:43:14 It’s harder to be like a perfect arbiter
0:43:15 of what’s right and what’s wrong
0:43:17 and what’s the right information
0:43:18 when you’re the input.
0:43:21 So I wanted to automate me basically.
0:43:27 And so, um, so yeah, I, I hired a couple different quants.
0:43:29 Unsuccessfully, they weren’t great.
0:43:32 Um, kept trying and then a friend of mine,
0:43:34 a poker player by the name of,
0:43:35 well, he played poker.
0:43:37 His guy named Brandon Adams was teaching at Harvard at the time.
0:43:41 And I was playing poker with him.
0:43:42 Really, really smart guy.
0:43:44 And he said, I have this student
0:43:45 that I think you need to talk to.
0:43:48 He’s a genius and he’d be perfect.
0:43:51 And I met him and that was the guy who basically together,
0:43:53 we built our simulation models
0:43:55 that really took me to the next level,
0:43:58 which was not the little, the halftime thing,
0:43:59 which I had made a lot of money on.
0:44:05 This was now full game bets on sides, totals, everything.
0:44:09 And so him and I together built and our operation was myself,
0:44:10 this individual.
0:44:15 And then one person who basically was two people
0:44:17 who were putting the bets in and also making the lineups.
0:44:22 And then me and my, the person, the, the, the,
0:44:23 we call them the whiz because he doesn’t want to be,
0:44:25 nobody wants to know who he is, but he’s out there.
0:44:26 What’s up?
0:44:29 And we had a, we had a following out.
0:44:30 He doesn’t run a following out,
0:44:32 but he, when I went to go work for the Mavs,
0:44:34 I basically turned over the business to them.
0:44:37 And he ran it for a while.
0:44:38 Didn’t enjoy it.
0:44:39 They didn’t do that well.
0:44:40 And he left.
0:44:44 And then when I quit the Mavs, we started back up again.
0:44:46 And that was it.
0:44:49 So I basically did the gambling again, not for myself,
0:44:54 but for the people who worked for me to allow them to make,
0:44:55 continue to make a lot of money.
0:44:57 Because I’ve had guys who’ve worked for me now
0:44:59 for over 12 or 13 years with a gap,
0:45:01 with a gap appeared in the Mavericks.
0:45:05 And so they run everything and they do everything.
0:45:06 Dude, you’re basically running it like a,
0:45:09 like a small little seed fund, Sean, you know what I mean?
0:45:10 Like a hedge fund.
0:45:14 I’ll get ready to make hedge fund like jump minus, you know.
0:45:17 So, you know, those guys, they measure their success on,
0:45:19 you know, IRR or, you know, annual returns.
0:45:23 And if they could get 20%, 30% returns,
0:45:26 what’s a good annual return for you?
0:45:28 What’s a bad annual return for you?
0:45:28 Where do you land?
0:45:30 You know, I know what multifamily can get you.
0:45:31 I know what private equity can get you.
0:45:32 I know what venture PDSU.
0:45:33 It’s hard to really quantify
0:45:36 because I’m never able to bet my entire network.
0:45:38 Like I can’t take an outside capital.
0:45:40 And so like we’re,
0:45:44 I don’t look at it as working annual IRR or,
0:45:46 it’s more of a return investment on every bet you’re making.
0:45:48 And so every bet we make,
0:45:53 a bad year for us was four and a half,
0:45:56 for four to four and a half percent on every bet we’re making.
0:45:59 A good year is like in the eights and nines.
0:46:02 And now of course you want to have as many bets as possible
0:46:04 and the most profit as possible.
0:46:07 So you’re, you want your ROI to go down a little bit
0:46:08 as your bets go up.
0:46:09 So it’s like you’re starting the needle.
0:46:13 But the game has changed so much now that
0:46:16 now we’ve got like two models that are,
0:46:18 that are going at all times.
0:46:20 And we use like a mixed, you know, two of them.
0:46:22 And it’s, but I say it’s automated.
0:46:23 It’s completely automated.
0:46:26 Like zero last four or five years since,
0:46:26 even before I, you know,
0:46:28 even when these guys are running it themselves,
0:46:31 like nobody’s saying, oh, I think the model’s wrong.
0:46:33 Like it gets teams wrong for sure.
0:46:34 And we have a guy who says like, yeah,
0:46:37 we’re really off on these Oklahoma City totals.
0:46:39 Like we think they should be higher scoring, but they’re not.
0:46:40 We think they’ll be lower score.
0:46:42 We think they’re higher scoring, but they’re going under.
0:46:43 And I’m just like, cool.
0:46:45 We’re not making any changes.
0:46:49 Like and has, you know, now, like we said this before,
0:46:51 I don’t pay attention to just too much of sports,
0:46:54 but I think it’s fucking insane though that like every sport
0:46:56 is basically a gambling thing now.
0:46:57 Like it’s like, it’s gross.
0:46:58 Like it’s, I think it’s weird.
0:47:00 But not weird.
0:47:01 It’s gross.
0:47:02 Yeah, it’s messed up.
0:47:03 I think it’s wrong.
0:47:05 And, but does that make you richer then?
0:47:08 Because you have more retail investors.
0:47:12 Yeah, this the amount of, I don’t even look like last night,
0:47:15 like I probably lost more money on fart coin yesterday.
0:47:22 My fart coin holding on paper that I would rate to make
0:47:24 in an entire year betting NBA.
0:47:26 So I don’t, I don’t care what we make in the NBA.
0:47:28 I just do it because it’s meaningful for the people
0:47:32 who work for me and they have a massive profit share in it.
0:47:33 So that’s why we do it.
0:47:35 So let me just recap a couple of things.
0:47:40 You said, if every bet, you know, low end, four or 5% good,
0:47:43 9, 10%, that means you need to bet like a hundred million dollars
0:47:46 of total betting volume, total dollars bet to make 10 million.
0:47:47 Is that right?
0:47:47 Yeah.
0:47:49 Well, you don’t need a hundred million to do that
0:47:51 because you’re doing it every day multiple times over.
0:47:52 And so yeah.
0:47:53 So yeah, like that’s exactly right.
0:47:54 Yeah.
0:47:59 So couldn’t you have just applied your brain to like buying HVAC companies
0:48:01 as like private equity and gotten better returns, right?
0:48:04 Like, you know, like I always think about this with like,
0:48:08 if I hear somebody’s a pro Blackjack player, I’m like, first of all,
0:48:09 I don’t even know if that’s technically a thing.
0:48:12 I don’t know if Blackjack is like a game you can get an edge in anymore.
0:48:15 But secondly, if you’re that good and that smart,
0:48:19 like couldn’t you just apply it to an easier game and made more money?
0:48:21 Like, don’t you think about that for yourself?
0:48:22 Yeah, if my dad was Ray Dalio,
0:48:23 I probably would have won a different path.
0:48:27 But unfortunately, my dad was my dad was a Greek gambler
0:48:28 who spent his time at the racetrack.
0:48:29 So this is what I knew.
0:48:31 You know, I don’t know what else to say.
0:48:32 But you have done it.
0:48:32 You have done it, right?
0:48:33 You’re buying a team.
0:48:35 That seems like it could be a great business move.
0:48:36 And you did crypto.
0:48:37 Yeah.
0:48:43 The crypto thing is really the part I think that is because I don’t have an edge in finance.
0:48:45 These people have bigger, they’re smarter.
0:48:48 Like maybe I could have honed in on one specific category that I knew very well.
0:48:54 But again, like I try to, like I’m a gambler in the sense that I like gambling games,
0:48:58 but like the number one edge in poker is playing with players who are worse than you.
0:48:59 That’s just it.
0:49:02 And so I try to apply that also to my businesses.
0:49:05 I try to stay away from people that are smarter than me,
0:49:08 where there’s plenty of them in terms of that I’m competing against.
0:49:13 And so, yeah, I mean, am I going to compete with like, no, I don’t think so.
0:49:16 I mean, maybe, but at this point, I think I’m good at what I’m doing.
0:49:17 I like my quality of life.
0:49:19 Well, what do you do with your money now?
0:49:21 Do you like your income or your investments?
0:49:23 Do you do any boring stuff?
0:49:25 I mean, I mostly do boring stuff, index funds.
0:49:27 I do super boring stuff.
0:49:29 Every dollar I earn goes directly into Bitcoin.
0:49:30 That’s my boring stuff.
0:49:33 So that’s still how you roll then?
0:49:34 Correct.
0:49:34 Yeah.
0:49:34 Wow.
0:49:37 Every dollar I make betting sports goes into Bitcoin.
0:49:37 Has forever.
0:49:40 So you’ve made more money off Bitcoin than you have sports betting.
0:49:42 Yeah, for sure.
0:49:43 Yeah, for sure.
0:49:44 I’ve done very well with Bitcoin.
0:49:45 I’ve done very well.
0:49:46 But, you know.
0:49:47 What’s your end game with Bitcoin?
0:49:49 Does it hold forever?
0:49:51 Is it Bitcoin becomes global reserve currency?
0:49:55 There’s no exit with Bitcoin, right, for you?
0:49:57 I don’t know.
0:49:59 I wish I could do better Michael Saylor impersonation.
0:49:59 But I don’t know.
0:50:00 This guy, I like this guy.
0:50:02 I feel like his end game is crazy as this guy is.
0:50:04 I feel like he’s kind of, he’s a savant.
0:50:06 Like he’s kind of figured, what is your end game?
0:50:07 I don’t know, dollars?
0:50:08 What am I going to do with dollars?
0:50:08 Like, sorry.
0:50:10 I’m not, they’re printing more of it.
0:50:11 Like, it’s not, it doesn’t seem like it works for me.
0:50:16 I remember, like, being in COVID, living in Malibu during COVID,
0:50:20 and the houses that I’ve rented had gone up in value.
0:50:22 Like triple, like rich people stuff was going,
0:50:24 becoming more and more expensive as more and more money
0:50:26 entered the system.
0:50:27 So what’s my end game?
0:50:28 I don’t know.
0:50:29 Protect my wealth, I guess.
0:50:32 Maintain my sovereignty.
0:50:34 That’s my end game.
0:50:34 I don’t know.
0:50:36 Like, just to be clear, I don’t have it in,
0:50:39 I like Bitcoin, but it’s, it’s still,
0:50:41 I’m not like the pure Bitcoin guys,
0:50:42 like the guys who are like have their own seed
0:50:44 and they have it memorized in their head.
0:50:44 Like, that’s not me.
0:50:45 My money’s in iBit.
0:50:47 It’s in the bank.
0:50:49 It’s with a third party.
0:50:52 It’s not smart, but I like my quality of life.
0:50:57 I, I don’t want to have, I don’t want to be my own bank.
0:50:59 Like, be my own bank was cool before.
0:51:00 People knew what crypto was.
0:51:02 Now being your own bank is not cool.
0:51:05 Like for me, just to be clear, like, I love Bitcoin.
0:51:06 I love the self sovereignty of it.
0:51:09 That’s the ethos, but my money is custodied
0:51:11 with institutions, unfortunately.
0:51:12 Do you own anything?
0:51:15 Like, do you own any real estate and cars and like items
0:51:16 or do you live light?
0:51:19 Yeah, dude, I feel like I love these guys.
0:51:21 Things I’m like, some kind of like, I’m like an alien
0:51:22 who just dropped into the world that has nothing.
0:51:25 Well, you love Bitcoin and watch sports all day.
0:51:27 Sean and I actually both rent homes.
0:51:29 And I don’t, I actually don’t own a lot of stuff.
0:51:31 I like living light.
0:51:31 Sean does too.
0:51:33 And we don’t actually own houses.
0:51:35 We, we like to own houses.
0:51:38 So recently I, I was with you guys and I didn’t own any real,
0:51:39 like I bought real estate when I was younger.
0:51:43 Um, yeah, I didn’t, I didn’t, before that I was,
0:51:45 I just thought like the better move is Bitcoin.
0:51:47 Then like, am I going to buy this house in Malibu
0:51:49 when I can rent and buy Bitcoin?
0:51:55 I sold, I also sold all of my assets during the 2017 dump.
0:52:00 I own property outside of my own property in Mexico.
0:52:02 I had some vacation property on some property in Europe.
0:52:04 I had a plane, sold it all.
0:52:07 Actually had some friends try to schedule an intervention
0:52:09 for me because they thought I’d lost my mind
0:52:12 when I sold everything to buy more Bitcoin at 3,300.
0:52:15 Uh, you, you sold all your shit to buy the dip.
0:52:16 That’s incredible.
0:52:19 That’s amazing.
0:52:20 I got to ask you a different question.
0:52:21 What are you into now?
0:52:22 Like we asked you a bunch about the past,
0:52:24 but like what’s the future shit you’re really,
0:52:25 like somebody said you’re into biohacking
0:52:26 or you’re, you’re into stuff.
0:52:28 Sam mentioned something interesting about like owning
0:52:30 things and, and, and I’m just kidding.
0:52:31 I’m just kidding.
0:52:31 Uh, what am I into now?
0:52:32 I’m into biohacking.
0:52:35 I’m into, um, yeah, I don’t know.
0:52:37 Like I think like I’m into, it’s interesting
0:52:40 because I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m really
0:52:45 into like analog things, like records, books.
0:52:50 Oh, I’m, I’m, you know, old games, old, like pinball machines.
0:52:51 Yeah.
0:52:53 Uh, begin, I’m into.
0:52:55 How are you like detoxing from phone?
0:52:56 Like are you, phone, phone goes away.
0:52:59 Yeah, I’m getting this new, oh, I forget what it’s called,
0:53:01 but this new thing that’s black and white.
0:53:01 I’m trying to.
0:53:02 What’s it called?
0:53:02 I’m into that.
0:53:05 Um, I think old boxes is the new one
0:53:07 that, that just came out.
0:53:09 Palma, Palma two, I think is what it is.
0:53:10 It’s supposed to be getting shipped.
0:53:12 Um, but that looks really cool.
0:53:13 We love those things.
0:53:15 I used to break all the time.
0:53:17 Um, and then there’s like daylight, which is like another
0:53:18 like dumb phones.
0:53:18 Daylights.
0:53:19 Nice.
0:53:20 I’ve used daylight.
0:53:20 Yeah.
0:53:20 Yeah.
0:53:21 I’m into that.
0:53:23 I’m into like, to be honest, like, uh, during COVID.
0:53:26 I, I started getting into like Western life.
0:53:28 Like this is going to sound crazy, but like I want a ranch.
0:53:29 Yeah.
0:53:30 Sam bought a ranch.
0:53:31 I bought a ranch, my friend.
0:53:33 Do you want to be, do you want to be buddies?
0:53:34 Like, I would love to.
0:53:35 I bought a yacht before.
0:53:37 I was like on the Mediterranean cruising.
0:53:38 And now I’m like, no, I want a ranch.
0:53:39 I want courses.
0:53:39 I want simple life.
0:53:42 Um, so that’s what I’m into.
0:53:43 What are you doing for biohacking?
0:53:46 Like what, what, what’s your kind of like, what’s what,
0:53:50 I guess maybe what are you finding valuable or helpful or,
0:53:52 or you’re seeing the best thing.
0:53:54 Yeah, I do, I do a lot of peptide stuff.
0:53:57 Um, I kind of grew up in like, I, I spent a lot of time,
0:54:00 I should say, in like rich guy LA circles for a minute,
0:54:04 playing poker and all these guys were on like TRT and HGH and all
0:54:07 this other stuff and they looked great,
0:54:10 but they weren’t necessarily optimizing for living longer.
0:54:12 So HGH is great.
0:54:13 You feel awesome on it,
0:54:16 but you’re definitely not living longer taking it.
0:54:17 TRT I think can be good for some people.
0:54:18 It didn’t work for me.
0:54:19 I tried it.
0:54:22 It made me, um, irritable.
0:54:24 So I do other things to raise my testosterone.
0:54:27 Like I take some Rhodesia or whatever and Fadocia are tests.
0:54:29 And I do a lot of squats and kettlebell stuff.
0:54:30 And so I do quite well with that.
0:54:32 Um, but what am I taking?
0:54:34 I’m taking peptides for the most part.
0:54:36 I think the best thing I’ve ever done,
0:54:39 I do a lot of sauna, um, red light therapy.
0:54:43 I would say the best thing that Brian Johnson regimen.
0:54:46 I mean, yeah, I, I, I admire what he’s doing.
0:54:48 It, I just think like what’s the,
0:54:49 I mean, he’s doing it for science, I guess,
0:54:51 but for me it’s, yeah, not for me.
0:54:54 I’m not that bad, but I do have, you know,
0:54:56 I do have to take about 20 supplements a day for sure.
0:55:00 I inject myself with some peptides when I’m diligent about it.
0:55:02 But I think the best thing I’ve ever done was stem cells.
0:55:04 Are you, are you doing peptides and stem cells
0:55:05 for injury recovery or you’re doing pep,
0:55:07 I thought peptides is like for injury recovery.
0:55:08 Do you use it for other stuff?
0:55:09 A peptide is like a protein.
0:55:11 Yeah. Or an amino acid, I guess that,
0:55:12 which is a precursor to proteins.
0:55:14 Yeah, it’s a precursor.
0:55:15 You can find a peptide, it’s a precursor
0:55:17 for whatever you want to solve for.
0:55:19 So like some is for injury recovery,
0:55:20 like DPC 157.
0:55:21 That’s what I took.
0:55:22 I took that from my Achilles.
0:55:22 It was great.
0:55:25 Yes, but it also, by the way,
0:55:26 that also helps with your gut,
0:55:28 which then your gut connects to your brain,
0:55:29 which helps your brain.
0:55:31 It helps you, there’s a lot of benefits to it.
0:55:33 I take Hesimorelin, Epimorelin, Hexarylin.
0:55:37 But with a doctor, I get tested very regularly.
0:55:39 My blood tested very, very regularly.
0:55:40 But the best thing I’ve ever done
0:55:41 and the thing I could recommend to anyone
0:55:44 who can afford it is,
0:55:46 aside from sauna, five times a day,
0:55:47 or five times a week, excuse me,
0:55:51 is stem cells, getting actual stem cells
0:55:52 that are mesenchymal,
0:55:53 which is through the umbilical cord.
0:55:56 Do you do that if you have an injury?
0:55:58 Or like, I feel great.
0:55:59 Like, do you, did you, were you in pain?
0:56:00 You look great.
0:56:01 So you’re probably, yeah.
0:56:03 I mean, I, I, yeah, no, you look great.
0:56:05 Both of you guys look like, I’m not sure how,
0:56:06 but you guys look like you’re,
0:56:07 you’re doing great stuff for your health.
0:56:08 But I think, yeah, do you do, you,
0:56:09 people do it for injury.
0:56:11 I did it because I wanted to feel better.
0:56:14 And I found this place in Panama
0:56:17 that I went to, Stem Cell Institute.
0:56:19 And they were kind of the,
0:56:22 one of the pioneers behind it, Dr. Riordan.
0:56:23 And I think that’s like, I think,
0:56:28 I think Mel Gibson’s dad may have talked about this
0:56:29 on the Joe Roganshride already gone there.
0:56:31 But I think there’s like an episode where Mel Gibson talks
0:56:33 about his dad going there to get stem cells.
0:56:34 I’ve seen similar things.
0:56:35 Like it’s unbelievable.
0:56:37 Is this the one where it’s like its own sovereign land?
0:56:39 No, I don’t know what that is.
0:56:40 But this is just Panama.
0:56:42 You’re at like, you stay at a Hilton last time.
0:56:43 I don’t think it was sovereign.
0:56:46 Um, oh, I know what you’re talking about.
0:56:47 I do know what you’re talking about.
0:56:48 No, it’s nothing like that.
0:56:51 Aren’t they doing genetic, uh, they’re doing genetic,
0:56:53 uh, what Chris, what’s it called?
0:56:56 Were you, uh, yeah, they’re doing that, right?
0:56:57 It’s like a Peter Teal thing.
0:56:58 Genome editing.
0:56:59 They’re doing genome editing.
0:57:01 Yeah. That’s, I don’t want none of that.
0:57:04 I just want, I want building blocks into my body
0:57:04 to make me young.
0:57:06 So if you can give me the stuff that little baby has
0:57:08 to grow a fucking actual human being.
0:57:09 Wait, but what are these guys doing?
0:57:11 It’s like their own little sovereign area
0:57:12 and they’re like building like the future
0:57:14 Yao Ming super baby or something.
0:57:16 You know, like the network state stuff, right?
0:57:17 Where it’s basically like, oh, if we can get like,
0:57:19 you know, I invest in practice.
0:57:21 It’s like, people want to create, create new land
0:57:23 where they can have like, you know, let’s say, uh, more,
0:57:25 they can have different rules, right?
0:57:26 For themselves.
0:57:29 Yeah. It’s like a land where like Ann Rand is the president.
0:57:33 You know, like it’s, it’s like libertarian land.
0:57:35 You got to watch the documentary.
0:57:37 It’s hilarious because Brian goes there.
0:57:40 I think he goes there for like a full plasma like swap
0:57:41 with his son and his dad or something like that.
0:57:43 I don’t remember exact procedure he did,
0:57:46 but he goes and it’s like the two scientists
0:57:48 who created this institute and they show the guy
0:57:51 and the guy’s clearly like 22 years old.
0:57:54 He’s so young and, but he has this mustache
0:57:56 that he has glasses with like a rope.
0:57:58 As if like, bro, we can see through the disguise.
0:58:01 You’re 22 years old and the narrator.
0:58:03 Was he standing on another kid’s shoulders
0:58:04 with a trench coat on?
0:58:07 Exactly. It literally looked like that.
0:58:08 And he’s like, you know, I think these guys
0:58:10 heart to the right place, but you know,
0:58:12 they’re not like 20 year PhDs, if you know what I mean.
0:58:13 It’s like, yeah, cause he’s 20.
0:58:15 It was, it was so funny.
0:58:17 You’re going to watch that part.
0:58:19 Yeah. And I actually did watch it.
0:58:20 And I know what you’re talking about now.
0:58:22 And I remember like, I had my finger.
0:58:24 This is where I need my digital, whatever.
0:58:26 But I had my finger on the fast forward the entire time.
0:58:28 Like, cause you can’t watch it all the way through.
0:58:30 It’s just like, what is, this is not that interesting.
0:58:32 Um, but yeah, I didn’t want to talk about it now.
0:58:33 Yeah. It’s nothing like that.
0:58:36 This is more for, you have a rotator tough injury.
0:58:40 Some parents were there with some kids who were,
0:58:43 were autistic and they were doing that therapy
0:58:43 with people at MS.
0:58:45 There’s a lot of different stuff that they were doing.
0:58:50 And I had the most, I’ve done it maybe seven times.
0:58:53 Um, the injuries you have will repair permanent.
0:58:54 That’s permanent.
0:58:58 The Superman feeling you have for three to four months
0:59:02 afterwards is fleeting, but it feels amazing
0:59:04 for that two or three months period.
0:59:06 And the, there’s a lot of physiological effects
0:59:08 that you know that you’ve got a good batch.
0:59:10 Sometimes you don’t get a good batch or it doesn’t take.
0:59:12 But if you had a good batch, you’ll know it.
0:59:13 And it’s, yeah, it’s great.
0:59:15 I haven’t done it in a while, but it is amazing.
0:59:17 Do you do any drugs or drink alcohol?
0:59:18 Do you get like fucked up at all?
0:59:19 No.
0:59:20 So you’re sober?
0:59:23 Yeah, I just never, I think the last time I ever got,
0:59:25 I mean, I was betting on NFL football and Canadian football
0:59:28 and university and waking up with a hangover.
0:59:29 And I was like, yeah, this doesn’t work.
0:59:32 So you’ve been in like this like vice for this world,
0:59:35 a world of vice, but not substances.
0:59:36 And like, you’re, you’re like a,
0:59:37 I’m a control.
0:59:38 I’m a control.
0:59:40 I like to be in control of myself.
0:59:41 I like to be in control of my emotions.
0:59:42 I like to be making good decisions.
0:59:46 I don’t like to be it not unable to think rationally.
0:59:48 So alcohol doesn’t do it for me.
0:59:49 Dude, this is great.
0:59:51 Thanks for, thanks for doing this, man.
0:59:52 Where should people follow you?
0:59:54 Is Twitter still the best place or X?
0:59:56 Yeah, I mean, follow the football club.
0:59:57 I’m not looking to promote myself,
1:00:00 but I would love for the football club to get more,
1:00:01 you know, we were doing some great things
1:00:02 this year at the football club.
1:00:03 And then you guys won, right?
1:00:05 You won the like,
1:00:06 we were recently promoted to La Liga two.
1:00:08 We had an amazing first start of the season.
1:00:10 And then we had a game.
1:00:13 We had a stretch where we played 22 games in six days.
1:00:17 And I failed the culture and that I wasn’t able to demand
1:00:19 that we do things that were proper for rest
1:00:21 and health for the players.
1:00:23 And we ran our players into the ground during that period,
1:00:24 because I didn’t have, you know,
1:00:27 that was something that the coaches wanted to do.
1:00:29 And then we suffered some injuries.
1:00:30 And we’ve been basically,
1:00:33 we were in the midst of a six game losing streak right now,
1:00:33 which is sad.
1:00:36 And we’re paying for it from what we did in November,
1:00:39 which was a cultural failure on my part.
1:00:42 So are you able to like apply the bio hacking shit
1:00:45 that you’re learning to your sports psychology?
1:00:47 Not in the medicine part of it,
1:00:50 but like there’s lots of studies on how to optimize health
1:00:54 and what the, your risk of muscle injury goes up 25%.
1:00:55 If you, if a football player plays more
1:00:57 than one game every six days,
1:00:58 there’s plenty of research
1:01:00 that can make you come to good decisions.
1:01:02 But like sleep and recovery.
1:01:05 Yeah, we’re going to do a better job.
1:01:05 When I bought the team,
1:01:07 we didn’t even have a training facility.
1:01:09 So we’re building a brand new training facility.
1:01:12 We hope to announce the land that we’ve acquired soon.
1:01:16 And yeah, we’ll do, we’ll do stuff like that.
1:01:17 Did you think that you were going to go
1:01:19 from like doing these bets
1:01:21 and hanging out with your dad in Vegas to owning a team
1:01:25 and implementing like whatever you want to implement?
1:01:25 That’s pretty wild, right?
1:01:28 That’s a good ending so far or it’s not the end,
1:01:30 but it’s a good part of the story.
1:01:30 You did think that.
1:01:31 You thought that?
1:01:34 I did. I was very delusional in mind when I was younger.
1:01:35 I was very like, I’m a very,
1:01:37 I’m really a big fan of that sort of stuff.
1:01:39 Like speaking things, not speaking to,
1:01:40 but just like having the belief.
1:01:41 And why not?
1:01:42 Why not?
1:01:44 I mean, I know the universe is kind of there.
1:01:46 If you do it, like you, you can craft your own path.
1:01:48 Just keep trying until you get there.
1:01:50 Dude, you’re insane.
1:01:50 You’re the man.
1:01:51 Awesome.
1:01:51 You’re the man.
1:01:52 You are.
1:01:53 Thanks for coming on, dude.
1:01:53 You are.
1:01:54 Yeah, you’re welcome.
1:01:55 Well, thank you, man.
1:01:55 That’s it.
1:01:56 That’s the pod.
1:01:58 I feel like I can rule the world.
1:02:00 I know I could be what I want to.
1:02:04 I put my all in it like no days off on a road.
1:02:06 Let’s travel never looking back.
1:02:06 ♪ Bye ♪