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My First Million · YouTube

How Rob Dyrdek Went From $15M to $350M in 5 Years

A 90-minute deep dive into the venture studio, real estate compounding, and time-optimization system that turned a millionaire skateboarder into a near-billionaire operator.

Posted
3 years ago
Duration
Format
Interview
sincere
Views
218.8K
4.6K likes
Big Idea

The argument in one line.

The gap between $15M and $350M is not more deals -- it is a system that evaluates every opportunity on IRR, personal leverage, and scale, then does fewer of them better.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…
  • An entrepreneur who has had early financial success but has not yet built a structured system for compounding that wealth.
  • Anyone who wants a concrete mental model for evaluating venture creation versus passive real estate versus active operating roles.
  • A founder curious how someone goes from millionaire to near-billionaire without a fund, outside capital, or conventional investing.
  • Someone who thinks about time as a resource the way most people think about money, and wants to see that applied at scale.
SKIP IF…
  • You want early-stage startup tactics -- this is post-success portfolio optimization thinking from someone already at $350M.
  • You are looking for a step-by-step framework; this is philosophy-meets-practice from a highly idiosyncratic operator.
TL;DR

The full version, fast.

In 2016, Rob Dyrdek had $15-20M and considered himself big broke. By 2023 he is at approximately $350M. The mechanism: he built the Dyrdek Machine venture studio to create and sell companies, stacked commercial real estate producing 15-40% IRRs, and kept liquid cash in high-yield instruments. He evaluates everything through a dollars-per-hour lens with a goal of $1M/hour, does fewer but larger deals, and deliberately underwrites risk using leverage he already controls -- like reinvesting $10M of his media company exit into the acquirer while simultaneously signing the TV deal that made that equity valuable. The episode also covers his Momentous Supplements co-founding postmortem, Jolie shower filters as the model modern DTC bet, his longevity obsession, and why production companies are terrible businesses unless you own the vertical.

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Voices

Who's talking.

02:42guestRob Dyrdek
00:00cohostSam Parr
00:00hostShaan Puri
Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 08:52

01 · Intro and pre-episode hype

Sam and Shaan pre-brief the episode, calling it the best MFM ever; tease net worth reveal, investing philosophy, longevity, and Forever Estates.

08:53 – 25:20

02 · Momentous Supplements

Co-founded in 2016 with 18-yr-old Matt Wan; years of no sales despite best product in market; Huberman endorsement caused 20x overnight growth; honest postmortem on dilution from 30% to ~4%.

25:21 – 33:48

03 · How Rob plays the game of venture creation

Fewer, bigger deals; IRR as primary filter; multi-dimensional opportunity view; Jolie shower filter as the model DTC subscription hardware bet with experienced CEO.

33:49 – 41:29

04 · Selling Thrill One Media for $300M

Merged skateboarding league and production company, sold for $300M. Invested $10M back into acquirer, negotiated 12% extra equity tied to TV deal he then signed -- making his $10M worth ~$60M overnight.

41:30 – 50:35

05 · Net worth and the modern cash flow portfolio

Net worth ~$350M. Goal: $1M per hour. Commercial real estate at 15-40% IRRs, money markets at 5%, Nuveen high-yield at ~10% cash yield. 1031 exchanges for perpetual compounding.

50:36 – 59:29

06 · Forever Estates and the $10M land mistake

Paid $10M cash for 4 acres of Beverly Hills promontory in 2015 -- self-declared worst financial decision. Designing the house ever since (now in final permit stage). Building into family trust for generational permanence.

59:30 – 1:19:59

07 · Longevity, health, and the peak top moment

5AM daily, gym, meditation, zero alcohol/sugar for 9+ months at recording. Blood optimization since 2012. Peak top as psychological inflection analogous to rock bottom. Remaining bugs: anger triggers. Goal: 1M hours of life.

1:20:00 – 1:30:44

08 · Production company economics

Worst business to be in: shoot-what-you-kill, distributors control value, canceled show equals zero company value. Ridiculousness was rare exception through vertical integration and 1,680-episode order.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

  • Starting at $15-20M in 2016, Dyrdek reached $350M by 2023 -- the majority built between 2018 and 2022.
  • His primary mental filter: how much am I actually making post-tax per hour of effort?
  • Momentous Supplements had zero traction for years, then 20x growth happened overnight the moment Huberman endorsed it -- years of failure erased by one authentic media match.
  • He put $10M of his $200M exit back into the acquiring company in exchange for 12% more equity, then underwrote it with the TV deal he already knew he could sign.
  • Jolie (filtered showerheads) hit $4M year one and is tracking $40M by year two; valued at $200M+ in under 18 months; built by 3 people, never raised another dime.
  • The showerhead is hardware; the real business is the subscription filter replacement -- low-churn, recurring revenue locked in by the friction of physically removing a plumbed-in device.
  • His $10M Beverly Hills land purchase in 2015 was his worst financial decision -- the same capital in cash-flowing buildings would have compounded to generational wealth at 40% IRR.
  • Real passive income is giving money to a world-class operator and reading quarterly statements -- not managing a building yourself.
  • Production companies trade at 5-6x EBITDA and are hostage to distributors; a canceled show makes your company worth zero overnight.
  • He tracks time, energy, health, and work quality as daily 0-10 data points; his discipline numbers are 100% across an entire year at time of recording.
  • Longevity goal: 1,000,000 hours of life (114 years and 54 days).
  • Peak top is the inflection point where extreme success forces the same psychological shift as hitting rock bottom -- you cannot be that person anymore.
  • Eliminating alcohol, sugar, and processed food removes the most common source of impaired decision-making -- a performance variable that compounds the same way capital does.
  • Fewer, larger deals beat many small bets once you have proven you can create $150M+ outcomes -- spreading effort across dozens of small deals becomes actively inefficient.
Takeaway

The system behind compounding from broke to near-billionaire

WEALTH SYSTEMS

The distance between $15M and $350M is not luck or more deals -- it is a structured system for evaluating IRR, underwriting personal leverage, and stacking compounding assets that work while you sleep.

02Momentous Supplements
  • A world-class product can fail for years and then explode overnight when it finds the right media channel -- the product quality does not change, just the audience trust in whoever endorses it.
  • Getting diluted from 30% to 4% over eight years while a co-founder learns business is the real cost of backing an 18-year-old; business school fundamentals have value precisely because you do not have to learn them by burning capital.
  • Before launching a premium-priced product, identify whether a media voice already commands the trust of the audience willing to pay the premium -- if that voice does not exist yet, the product is stranded regardless of quality.
03How Rob plays the game of venture creation
  • Fewer, larger deals beat many small bets once you can create $150M+ outcomes -- spreading effort across dozens of small deals becomes actively inefficient at that scale.
  • The real filter for any deal is not will this work but how much time it requires, what it pays post-tax per hour, and whether you can underwrite the risk using leverage you already control.
  • Multi-dimensional deal thinking means being compensated from multiple angles in the same transaction: selling the company, reinvesting in the buyer, and signing the contract that makes your new equity valuable, all at once.
05Net worth and the modern cash flow portfolio
  • A modern cash flow portfolio -- commercial real estate with tax-sheltered cash yield plus equity growth, money markets, and high-yield bond funds -- generates enough passive income to fund lifestyle without touching principal.
  • 1031 exchanges let you roll real estate gains perpetually into new properties tax-deferred, so compounding never gets interrupted by a tax event.
  • Paying $10M cash for bare land while having only $12M total is the single biggest financial mistake Dyrdek admits to -- the same capital in cash-flowing buildings at 40% IRR would have been generational wealth from one decision.
07Longevity, health, and the peak top moment
  • Eliminating alcohol, sugar, and processed food removes the most common source of impaired decision-making -- a performance variable that compounds the same way financial capital does.
  • Peak top is the inflection point where accumulated discipline becomes self-sustaining -- you no longer choose to be healthy, you just are, because the alternative has become psychologically foreign.
  • Tracking health and life quality daily as quantitative 0-10 data points creates the same feedback loop as tracking IRR -- you cannot optimize what you do not measure.
08Production company economics
  • A production company is worth nothing the moment its hit show is canceled; the only durable value is in vertical integration that lets you squeeze margin out of every production budget.
  • Distributors are the gatekeepers to your production company valuation -- you do not control your own asset value the way you do in a product business, no matter how successful your show is.
Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Dyrdek Machine
Rob Dyrdek built venture studio: a system for creating companies from scratch, building them to a sellable state, and exiting -- not investing in others companies but building and owning equity from inception.
IRR (Internal Rate of Return)
A metric for measuring investment efficiency: the annualized rate of return on capital deployed, accounting for timing of cash flows. Dyrdek uses it to compare deals across asset classes.
1031 Exchange
A US tax provision allowing proceeds from a real estate sale to be reinvested into a like-kind property without triggering capital gains tax, enabling perpetual compounding without tax interruption.
Thrill One Media
The company formed by merging Dyrdek professional skateboarding league and production company with Nitro Circus; sold for approximately $300M.
Momentous Supplements
A premium supplement brand Dyrdek co-founded in 2016; failed to find a market for years until Andrew Huberman endorsement triggered rapid growth.
Forever Estates
Dyrdek name for a four-acre promontory property in Beverly Hills he purchased for $10M in 2015 and has been designing a permanent family home on for nearly a decade.
Modern Cash Flow Portfolio
Dyrdek term for his asset allocation strategy combining commercial real estate cash yield and equity growth with money market funds and high-yield bond funds to generate enough passive income to fund all lifestyle expenses.
Peak Top
The psychological inflection point Dyrdek uses to describe reaching extreme success -- analogous to hitting rock bottom, it forces an identity shift where you cannot continue operating the old way.
Rhythm of Existence
Dyrdek personal time-tracking and life-quality measurement system, covering health, work, family, and energy in daily data points -- the philosophy behind the software product he is building.
Resources

Things they pointed at.

08:53productMomentous Supplements ↗
25:21productJolie Skin Co (filtered showerhead) ↗
33:49productThrill One Media
00:00productDyrdek Machine ↗
00:00productHubSpot CRM ↗
59:30channelAndrew Huberman / Huberman Lab
1:18:00productCoop chicken coop startup (Peter Thiel backed)
33:49productGREATS footwear brand
Quotables

Lines you could clip.

00:18
“To a future billionaire, a millionaire is broke.”
Standalone punchline -- no context needed, instantly provocative→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
1:04:00
“I am looking at a million dollars an hour as the goal.”
Specific, visceral, immediately raises questions -- perfect clip opener→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
1:29:10
“It is the worst business you could ever get in your life. You have a hit show and the show gets canceled, and your company is worth zero.”
Counterintuitive take from someone who sold a production company for $200M→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
1:24:20
“I want to be the proof that you can get to a place where you never get angry, you never have a negative thought, where you are completely harmonious.”
Ambitious and earnest -- lands differently from someone who sounds like they might actually mean it→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
1:22:10
“You are like a BlackBerry. You are just covered in buttons.”
Sam best line of the episode, instantly memorable→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
Topic Map

Where the conversation goes.

25:21 – 33:48denseVenture studio philosophy and deal evaluation
08:53 – 25:20denseMomentous Supplements case study
33:49 – 41:29denseMedia company exit and reinvestment structure
41:30 – 50:35denseWealth compounding and asset allocation
50:36 – 59:29steadyReal estate and the $10M land mistake
59:30 – 1:19:59denseHealth optimization and longevity systems
1:20:00 – 1:30:44denseProduction company economics
The Script

Word for word.

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00:00So does that mean that, like, the vast majority of your real wealth creation has been in, like, the ten last ten years?
00:06No. In the last, like, few years. But you were you you you were broke.
00:12I was I would consider myself broke. I would say I started from zero almost in 2016 when I launched the machine.
00:20I wouldn't say dead broke. I mean, you're a millionaire. You you would you were you worth at least 10?
00:24I would say I was probably worth, like, you know, 15 or 20 in that zone, so not broke. But to me, was like Big broke. To to a future billionaire, a millionaire is broke.
00:42Sean, say exactly what you just said to me when we finished our recording with Rod Bierdick. I said I think that was the best episode of MFM we've ever done.
00:50I I don't know. I don't know if I'm just on a high right off of it, but I believe so. People can tell in the YouTube comments, they should tell us.
00:57I to me, this was the best episode. We've done 400 something episodes. How many have done, Jonathan?
01:01Something something like 400 episodes.
01:04That was the number one, my favorite, the best episode we've ever done. From beginning to end, I'm shocked. So, like, you asked him we we started getting along really well, and you said, Rob, what's your net worth?
01:15And I was like, damn. Is he gonna answer that? And he gave the full answer.
01:20We're not gonna say it now, but it's somewhere in the middle somewhere. But he gave the entire answer where he broke it down. He talked about his I'm just actually shocked that he said most of the things that he said, and it was amazing.
01:32In a great way. In a great way. Stories of two companies that he's built, and the stories were phenomenal.
01:38We talked about net worth, what he does with his money, how he thinks about investing. We talked about, like, how he kind of went from beginner at business and making all the mistakes to now being really sophisticated and how that all happened in a really short amount of time.
01:52We talked about his house, the forever estate, the dream that he's been building around, and how he does it was we we touched it hit all the the buttons. It had the inspirational, the tactical, the entertaining,
02:04the humorous. It had everything that I like in an episode but in one. So I'm I'm I couldn't be happier right now.
02:10So if you use YouTube, whether you're listening on on podcasts or you're actually watching us right now, let us know in the comments what you think. Or if you're not a YouTuber, just tweet at Sean and I. It's Sean VP, like vice president, Sean VP, and then the Sam Par.
02:26And add Rob to it and let us know in Twitter on Twitter, or if you're a YouTuber, let us know there. I'm very curious what you guys think. And tag Rob if you can.
02:35Give us a wave of feedback. I'm gonna send it all to Rob after after the pod to to show him the the love because I know people are gonna love this. Alright.
02:43Without any further buildup, here's the episode with Rob Dierdick.
02:48Alright. We're live. Rob, we Sean, you missed it because you're late.
02:52You're always late and that's dear day, that's his whole thing is timeliness,
02:57and he was talking mad shit about you because you're using his face and his time template that he talked about in the last pod. I am human optimization was the big the the line from his last time he was on. That's been I think it's like in our trailer now.
03:12And Rob, if you are human optimization, I am human on optimization.
03:18I am the opposite.
03:20Yeah. And, hey, look, the beauty of, you know, time mastery is you don't you're also it's time flexibility and and understanding that life is this living experience.
03:32But nothing brings me greater joy than to know a man that was using my time data for customer acquisition and knowing that how much I collect my data and how how specific I am with mastering my time would be seven minutes have me waiting for seven minutes.
03:50It just makes it even more makes life more grand to me to know that for you knowing how much I respect and use my time so thoughtfully that you would steal a little bit from me even as fun for me.
04:03You know what I mean? It's very fun.
04:05Okay. Alright. That is well played.
04:07I appreciate that. Dude, we were talking about a bunch of stuff before you hotbed. Rob, I wanna talk about that in a second.
04:13But you came on, I think, two years ago or a year and a half ago. I don't remember. That was, like, your first every I just reread the comments a minute ago.
04:22Everyone said the same shit, which is the exact same thing I thought, which was Rob's just a skater. He's he's smart and does good TV shit and all that stuff, but we didn't realize that he was just profound.
04:35And that pod, I felt like one is your well, it was like you're coming out as, like, this, like, human optimization thing. Now I've watched you with so many other people, and you've I've gone more in-depth on some of your stuff. Is that true?
04:48Was that, like, your first time? Like, was that, like, the the artist formerly known as Prince moment?
04:53You guys get all the credit.
04:55Thank you. That's what I was looking for.
04:57Hey. Because because because let me give you this. You led with trying to talk to me about you did you did no depth of research into seeing what I was up to.
05:06You led out with some skate talk and TV talk, and then I went on, like, a twenty minute rant to so that you could understand the depth of how I operate. Yeah.
05:15Then the entire conversation changed for an hour. You know what I mean? And that that that to me is, like, the funniest part of the experience was I said, okay.
05:25They didn't even they have no idea who they're talking to. Let me let me lay this out real quick. And and but, again, I I'm so thankful that you guys the conversation turned to because it was also, like, I had been collecting the data using my rhythm of existence, but I'd never shared it before.
05:45So even then sharing it with you and then you guys reposting it, it really began to, like, create the wave. And then you guys put out a a little thing that was about what if Rob how would Rob monetize his data?
06:01And so you put out this entire thing about, like, how to build an app and and what I would need to charge in order to create a business out of it, and it really started the wheels in me of, like like, realizing that, man, I need to turn this philosophy first into then a usable digital product that's more intuitive, that's deeper than an app, that's actually a software that allows people to realize this level of harmony and overall happiness that I've created through this system and which has led to where I'm at today of continually pushing the philosophy forward and ultimately creating a software was inspired by you guys.
06:48We get all the credit. That's nice. There's actually a couple listeners who, after they heard that, made their version.
06:54They were like, dude, he was talking about this. It sounded so awesome. He said he might share it, but we haven't seen it yet.
06:59So I just went ahead and I made my own version. It's it's linked to Google Sheets. It was kind of a janky version, but I definitely inspired several people to I mean, many people to to look inward and be like, you know, how am I treating my time?
07:11And it it seems like you had the kind of the complete balance. You were like, I have my time that's with my wife and my kids, and then I have my work time, and then I have my body. You know?
07:20You had it all. So I think that definitely inspired a lot of people to look at it, but it also inspired some people to try to build their own version of that tracker so that they could have the kind of the, you know, the what what gets measured gets managed, that type of attitude around around their time.
07:33Yeah. And and again, I think it's it's so much more complex than that. Right?
07:38Because time's alive, and your time and experience, your present basically, whole life leads to this present moment in time, and then the energy that you feel at this present moment in time is ultimately the quality of your reality that you're in.
07:53Right? So time ends up being this much more important aspect of learning to manage, and then you're changing all the time.
08:01The world's changing. You're selling companies. You're starting new companies.
08:05Your kids are growing. All these things. So, like, managing your time and how you stay balanced is constantly changing as well as you change.
08:15So it's this ongoing focus in my life that it's this constant assessment and and adjustment to lead me towards a better probability of a better future experience, and that's what's difficult when somebody makes their own app.
08:32There's sort of a philosophy and a rhythm and a process that I think I need to that I'm creating in the software that makes it much more intuitive based off of the type of personality you have and the way your life rolls to get it to actually work. Because otherwise, it just feels like you're making checklists and and making data, and then it gets too difficult and it's over.
08:53You know? Before you joined, Sean, we were talking about Andrew Huberman. And the reason why we're talking about him is because
08:59both I like to skate. Rob is a skater, hardcore, obviously, professional skateboarder, and Heberman loves it.
09:07And we were talking about that. And I don't know if you know what Momentous is, Sean, but it's like they're they're one of the main advertisers on the Heberman pod. And they're and it's Andrew Heberman says, like, this is the only protein that I like.
09:20So obviously, I bought a ton. That's what I drink every day. And Rob was like and I is it Jeff?
09:26Is he the CEO? I I'm supposed to talk to Jeff. Jeff was the CEO.
09:29Yeah. Yep. Yeah.
09:30I'm supposed to talk to Jeff because Ken Rideout introduced us who was also on the pod. And, anyway, Rob was like, yeah.
09:36Yeah. You know, that's cool. It's amazing to see what how fast that business grew because of Huberman's, you know, promotion.
09:44You know you know, I cofounded that company not too long ago, and it's just crazy how fast it's grown. And we are like, wait. What?
09:51Rob, you cofounded Momentous Protein?
09:53Yeah. And look. And and and here's the thing with Momentous Protein.
09:57I cofounded it with Matt Wan in 2016. The when they brought it to me, he had a vision for creating basically the most premium supplements that the market had ever seen, the Ferrari of supplements.
10:13It was called project one at the time. And Mats was foregoing his first year of Harvard to build this company.
10:24He was 18 years old. And his father, Mark Wan, had been one of the big investors in my professional skateboarding league.
10:33So I had a a relationship with him who said, you know, I would do this project with his son. First thing we had to do is rebrand it, right, and really, like, create a name and and a soul into what is the absolute pinnacle of supplements, Momentus.
10:49Right? And all the way down to where I even, you know, went through the whole process of even making that logo.
10:55You know? Like, to me, that m is, like, this timeless, extraordinary logo.
11:00And And, Rob, that that's you in Photoshop, or this is, like, a creative agency pitching you guys? How does that happen? You take make a tackle.
11:07Me literally an illustrator
11:09of the agency sent some logos and me cutting up the agency's logo and being like, no. Get rid of there was a circle in the middle. I'm like, no.
11:16This is like look at this. It forms like an m and a mountain. Like like, get rid like, I literally cut and pasting in my illustrator the Momentous logo.
11:26Love it. And so we launched that company, and what happens? We don't sell a thing.
11:32We don't sell a thing. What do we got? We got the most overpriced, like, protein in the entire industry.
11:40It's like it's like 35% above, like, every other protein.
11:44Like, it's like, literally, nobody buys it. Nobody buys Now you what do you got?
11:50You got a 18 year old CEO. This kid doesn't even every single day is another thing of, like, oh, that's what happens in business. You're you're if you wanna talk about the headwinds of no man's land and the pain of launching a business with an 18 year old genius, right, because he's brilliant, but he was 18 and didn't even understand anything about a company, you can't advise somebody into running a company.
12:18You know what I'm saying? You have to fight the fire, learn the battles to ever learn how to operate a company. Long story short, this this business never got off the ground for years.
12:31And I finally now he's older, and, like, I'm like, look, man. You've got to make a decision.
12:37Like, you've tried everything. You've done all different types of partnerships. You've made all different types of verticals of product.
12:44It is the Ferrari of supplements. It is absolutely the purest and best. You kept it real, but you just can't find a market for it.
12:53Like, you either have to sell it or you have to find somebody to merge with, but you gotta move on. Like, you can't, like, spend you're you're now 23. Like, you learned everything.
13:04Go fig take this skill set that you learned and apply it to a business that has a a more
13:12relatively faster growing opportunity. What were the sales? What what what were the annual sales when you when you had that conversation?
13:18Oh, I wanna say a few million. And just losing money year over year and And how much did you put in yeah. How how much did you put into it to start?
13:26I put in
13:31shoot. I wanna say not much. Like, 200,000 in the first like like, at the beginning to get it off the ground, then another 100,000, 300,000 maybe.
13:42Do you split equity when you do that? Like a And I 30% of the business. Okay.
13:46Okay. So so now, man, raised so much capital any which way but loose.
13:54You know? Now I'm on the board. I'm in board meetings, like and there's I'll tell you what.
13:58Nothing nothing as painful as board meeting after board meeting when there's no revenue growth, and you're just burning capital trying to figure out how you're gonna tell a story to raise more capital to keep the dream alive. That went on for a significant amount of time.
14:14We got incredibly diluted. And then the it was just like, hey, man.
14:20You've gotta make a decision here on, like, what you what your life looks like. Forget about forget about this company.
14:28Forget about this investment. Like, you now like, are you you forego going to Harvard to build this company.
14:36So you essentially, like, stepped away from from this big education, which always like, in the beginning, I was like, this kid's too smart to go to school.
14:46Why? He should just go start a company. He doesn't need to go to school.
14:49Like, as I have kids and I'm older, you know what I mean? You know? Like, seven, eight years later, I'm like, man, I I was like the bad uncle by advising him to not go to Harvard.
14:58And I'll do this company with you. Gassed him up. Right?
15:01Like, I I think he should have went to Harvard in hindsight. But, again, like, diluted all the way down, he went out and found AMP, the business that Jeff was running at the time that I actually man, I I looked at in 2015 and almost did a deal to own half of PR, lotion, and and the AMP product because of how much I believed in the IP of of what they developed because it was built through this biopharma group that I was doing deals with back in '15 in my early days of hustling.
15:41And they merged, and in that merger, then they did a deal.
15:47Now they're joint companies that the whole company becomes momentous, and then they they lock in that Humorbind deal. And then the business exploded overnight.
15:59Overnight. Wow. Overnight.
16:01Do know do you know how how much did it grow by? Like,
16:05man, like, 20 times.
16:09Right? Like, it, like, it went like, it is it is now, like, poised to, like, now make a real run.
16:19And I would attribute it to the one for one, like, media to consumer that Anders Huberman was to the product.
16:30Right? So we could never find an audience. It didn't matter how much, like, ad spends we did, where we spend it.
16:36We had deals with NFL teams and MLB teams and all these athletes and all this stuff. But it was when it finally landed with someone whose core media is their authenticity in the science side of human optimization, then he's saying, hey.
16:56Andy's has this massive platform. Then he's saying, this is the very best supplements because they are, in fact, the very best supplements.
17:04When you tie those together, boom, that thing goes. You know what I mean?
17:10That's a amazing story. But what do I have now? I don't know.
17:14What do I have now? Like, 4%? You know what I mean?
17:17Like, I've been delivered. So now, you know, call it nine years later or seven years later, I already gave up on the brand.
17:24Don't even, like, claim it. Like, looked at it when they merged as an exit, and now it's just, like, completely exploded. But you know?
17:32And, yes, I'll get, like, a return on my 300,000 that would be significant to, you know, probably a regular investor.
17:42But, you know, for me, in the cofounding game It could have been. Yeah. I looked at selling that business for 100,000,000 in under five years and having 20% of it when I when I measured that out in '16 versus, you know, selling it eight years later and making a million dollars wherever I end up getting diluted on the end.
18:02And, like, okay. Cool. You got, like, two and a half times your money, but that's, like, that's not why you play the game of venture creation.
18:11That was I think that was my perfect that might be my the favorite story that's ever been shared on this pod for a couple reasons. One, you told it great. Two, it had it had all of the the drama, the elements, uh, to it.
18:23And three, you're very honest. Like, most people that come on this pod were like, how much did you put in?
18:30They're like, ah, hand wave. We're we're like, oh, it's doing well now. Then they're like, yeah.
18:34It's doing well. But they won't say that last part, which is like, yeah. But, you know, it's been eight years.
18:37I got diluted. And, honestly, I'll make kinda fuck all on this. And and I really, the game I'm in you know, that's good, but the game I'm in is to create to create x.
18:45Very honest, I I want people to appreciate that because that is we do we've done a 100 plus guests of people that are from all walks of life. People that are post economic, they already made it.
18:55They have no incentive to kind of, like, to to not fully be honest with with the situations, and, uh, it it is very rare to hear that. So I I really, really like that.
19:04I got two follow ups for you on things you said there. The first is you said, you kinda think maybe you should've gone to Harvard. And I I think this is an interesting question that applies to a lot of people, which is like, should I go to college?
19:15I kinda feel like, you know, people who make it, they're like, ah, you don't that's not where you learn it. You learn it in the real world. It sounds like you were kind of in that boat, but you said maybe you changed your mind as you've maybe matured or with your own kids.
19:25What what's the thinking there? What is it you should've gone to Harvard because the company wasn't working, or you came to appreciate something else about the value of college? I think I've come to appreciate the value of college above all.
19:36And as someone who quit high school and started his first company at 17. You know what I mean?
19:42Like, I'm I think about the But but do you appreciate college or Harvard and top 20 colleges? Well, Harvard obviously has a higher level of, like, prestige, but but what I never understood even back then was the looking at business in a multidimensional way.
20:05Learning everything about business, understanding product and and supply chain, understanding brand and marketing and customer acquisition, understanding sort of management and hiring and teams, like all of this diff and understanding sales and then understanding operational side, really understanding the financial side, knowing that all of those have to integrate into a financial model that you've got to believe you can execute because that's how a business actually becomes successful is when you project what you're going to do when you actually do it, not project a fantasy so you can raise money.
20:48Right? And I think that going to business school, you at least leave with the fundamentals of that and and have a general knowledge that when you step out into the real world and really try to build a company, you're you're at least going to have a foundation of what you're launching off of versus what he did, what I did when I was launching all these companies when I was young all the way into my thirties or what he did at 18.
21:17You're you have such little general knowledge of how it all works because you're such an optimist, especially when you're really smart. You can figure things out fast, but there's just too many things that you don't know when it comes to, like, the complexities of building something like a business.
21:35Right.
21:37And then, uh, my second question was, do you, uh, this is a little nerdy on the protein side, but how did you actually go about creating the cleanest supplement? Because I've thought about this many times, which is, uh, there is definitely a market for people who want this the highest quality, purest grade, best best for you products, and they'll pay the extra $20 per bag to get it.
21:58And when you when you look I think the supplement industry is notoriously dirty. Like, uh, you know, the the places where they make stuff, the you know, you it's if you test these things, they don't turn out very well. So did you guys do anything radical to actually achieve that result, or was it just finding the right partner and then that was it?
22:13It it was it was first, like, the people who helped develop it. Right? We're all, like, trainers and for the 49ers and the Celtics.
22:22Right? Then
22:23it's all the certifications that make the, um, I can't think of their exact name, like GRAS and Infosport, whatever these Introsport or whatever they may be, but these certifications that are very expensive.
22:37Right? So now, like, the layer of ad in what does that do? Man, it just keeps putting pressure on price and margin.
22:43Right? Because there's just a certain point where it's like, man, it's so expend more expensive. Do even the people that really care is it making enough of a difference Right.
22:55For the absolute premium? The and to me, absolutely, we'd find a consumer, and that consumer never showed up until Huberman said to that audience, which converted Sam and now has Sam talking to Jeff.
23:09Like, you it's like that level of authenticity. The product backed that up, but it we never found that level of media that could validate it to reach a large enough consumer base that would be willing to pay that extra amount of money.
23:25It's a dice roll when you when you launch a business to do it like that. You know? Uh, we need to get in the certification business, I think.
23:32Yeah. That sounds like the real business opportunity in there.
23:36This is cruelty free certified ink. Yeah. We we will we will certify everything for y'all for for the low, low price.
23:43By the way, it's funny that, like, Joe Rogan is like bro Oprah, but now Tuberman is like doctor Phil or or doctor Oz or something, like, of the of this kinda, like, the guy media game where it's the the the doc if the doc says this is the way to go, if he says this is clean, you know, he can move a lot of product, like, an unbelievable amount of product in a short amount of time.
24:01But look. You think about it's like when you think about the depth of him and how he approaches it, like, you know how deep it is.
24:09So it's like you he's earned that respect from you. And and so it's like you don't have to you don't question whether or not Nike's going to put as much effort and innovation as they possibly can into a running shoe. You don't even look into the technology.
24:23You pick the color and which one feels the good. You know that they're gonna do all the work to get it there. Developing that level of authenticity is incredibly difficult, you know, because there's a lot of other people that are that do not have his depth, which in turn does not allow or his process that you believe in, which in turn doesn't allow them to carry the same weight that he does.
24:49And that was probably just a straight cash deal when you guys bought that ad spot, I would imagine. Right? Yeah.
24:56I'm not entirely sure. I was involved in the company at that point. I'm not I'm not entirely sure what the what his deal is.
25:02Uh, but whatever it is, he he got underpaid. Whatever it is.
25:10Hey. Whatever it it was too little.
25:14Look. I am not privy to what it is, but whatever it is, they got a deal. You know what I mean?
25:20Like, just know that one. What are some other, uh, venture creation that you've been up to?
25:24That was one amazing venture creation story. You got me hungry for another. Do you got any other interesting things you've been cooking?
25:31And how many have how many have you even done? Have you done you've done dozens of these. Yeah.
25:36I've done a bunch. I've done a bunch. You know what I mean?
25:38And and that's and here's the beauty of it too. It's like, I've made so much money,
25:43right, that I'm you can play the game more honest, right, but in your you're not really you're judging yourself off of your IRR, but you are not like, once you get to a certain point, like, you're playing the game for the speed of the IRR and the scale of the IRR and its potential.
26:03Because when I started the game, I wanted to build 50 to 70 companies and make you know, own 25 to 35 and sell them for between, you know, 50,000,000 and 150,000,000 and make 20 to 30 each.
26:20But when, you know, you sell a company for 200,000,000 and get, you know, a 150,000,000, you you're like, well, that's way more fun.
26:30Like, how do I how do I move this number from, like, making, you know, fifteen to thirty million a deal to, like, you know, 50 to 200,000,000 a deal.
26:41Right? You just begin to change as you're sort of evolving.
26:45And what? Do less deals?
26:46You wanna do less deals. Right? And then you you wanna be much more focused on the opportunity and then, like, focused on all the lessons learned.
26:57Would I start a supplement brand with a 18 year old ever again? I would not. You know what I mean?
27:02Like and and so let me give you an example of an an opposite version. Right? So I was approached by a really, really seasoned CEO who had just built a company and sold it.
27:19It was a footwear brand called GREATS. Okay?
27:22So
27:23I also owned a pair of those, man. Right. So so you understand him as a brand and hit him as a brand builder and as a CEO, like you know?
27:32And he had an idea he wanted to share with us, and it was in the beauty space. And he essentially presented to us this concept of filtered shower water is this overlooked cornerstone of creating your beauty routine.
27:51Like, your water is filled with all this garbage that dries out your hair and dries out your skin. It does all this stuff, yet for some reason, there's no no one's approached beauty and filtering the water.
28:05Right? So we do all the and and again, so, okay. Wow.
28:07This is super interesting. Then now you look at it from a business model. Right?
28:11Then it's like, oh, wow. Now it's reoccurring revenue. So it's a single bit of hardware that now the filters have to be replaced.
28:18So now you've got this reoccurring revenue. Now it's a super experienced CEO that has has a depth of knowledge in in DTC. So it's not like you know, a lot of times you'll find a a an experienced CEO that came from retail who just, oh, it's I wanna build an Amazon business.
28:36Right? Because retail is so hard. Like, anytime you find people trying to transition to what they think is an easier way to create sales, uh, is always a red flag.
28:46But it but again, now he has the the understanding, the knowledge, and now it's like, is this space valid? So we do the research.
28:55What do we do? We go and look at the entire space of all of the filtered showerheads, the entire market.
29:01It is tiny, tiny, tiny, under a billion dollars. Right?
29:06And he wants to charge a $135 for the unit, $35 for the filters.
29:12You know, you can go to Home Depot and get a shower filter for, like, $19. You know, there's, one premier premium one that's sold by a beauty company that's, you know, kinda chrome y or whatever that's up, like, $99, a $100, but, like, no movement.
29:30And so when you look at that opportunity, you look at it like it it's as clear as can be where it's like, man, this is either pure white space, and there is a real opportunity to, like, make this matter in beauty and make a massive business.
29:46And or it will, like, literally just not work.
29:51It is, like, so pure, but then the the tantalizing side is, well, boy, if it works, man, it's like think of the friction it takes to get a shower head in.
30:03But, man, think of how low the churn will be on the subscription because it'll be way more friction to to take it completely out to stop your reoccurring, like, subscription every two months than it will and put back your old showerhead.
30:19Like, that made it this incredibly compelling concept.
30:25And and by the way, for the listener, this is basically your showerhead. I don't even I don't even think most people know this, but the showerhead, it's not that hard to remove. You can kinda do it yourself.
30:34And what you're and it's Jolie. Is this Jolie? Is that how you say it?
30:37Jolie. Yep. Jolie.
30:39And you basically, they give you or because I've seen this company. They killed it in year one. Think they did 4,000,000 in sales in the first year.
30:44You basically, they send you a thing, a new showerhead. You they send you a wrench. You put it on there, and then you put little, like, filters and packets.
30:52And I think they smell nice or something like that. And they might have some type of other good stuff in there.
30:58But the premise is is that for all the really hardcore health nerds, they're afraid of some of the chemicals and minerals that are in city water, and so they want this to be better. And I have friends that have like what's that one charcoal water filter that's made out of metal that every they do that for their home.
31:19Like, they do these really, like, $10,000 projects for their home. And what this product is is that for a showerhead.
31:25Did I summarize that? Right? Think of that's correct.
31:28And it's the efficacy of it. Right? And then how did they launch the company?
31:32How were they able to go to 4,000,000? And now this year, you know, they'll do close to 40,000,000 is that they they opened it up by, like, putting in your ad your your ZIP code so you could see all the contaminants in your water.
31:49Nice. So how they did all their initial customer acquisition is they got all the data of what it because the sit the the water departments have to report all the contaminants in the water.
32:01And so they scraped all that data, You put in your ZIP code, and then you got, um, a complete report of all the stuff in your water. That's how they did customer acquisition for months before they even had the product out.
32:15You know what I mean? Then they did preorders before it launched. Right?
32:18Then what were we all hanging on for? What's that first quarter of churn? The churn was at, like, you know, 1.2%, like, of the subscription.
32:29It's like everything about it. And then it was just growth month over month over month. Then, like, they just keep evolving.
32:37Like, they launched an Airwand in the grocery store. They have a giant display, and you can buy them an Airwon. Right?
32:44The it's like the entire process of how they did it overnight because you gotta think, how do you value a business like that? That that that business is valued at at 200,000,000 plus in a year and a half because how are you how do you really look at that where it's like, yes, it's selling hardware month over month, but then it is stacking subscription dollars.
33:09Like so it is it is this extraordinary hardware subscription service that is incredibly rare that has made it so valuable overnight.
33:19He built the company with three people. We're the primary investor. It's profitable and never raised another dime ever again.
33:28Chef's kiss. What size check you do on that one? Yeah.
33:32I did 800 in that one. So that's I mean, that's that's that's substantial, right, for an early stage startup?
33:39I mean, you know, I will I'll go I go I'm I'm all over the place, but I'll go up to 10,000,000. You know what I mean? So when I think 800, I think it's like kind of small.
33:49What's been the biggest bet? Like, where where have you plowed in something like 10,000,000 into? What what type of bet was that?
33:54I did
33:55you know, when I my professional skateboarding league, my production company merged in with Nitro Surface and created Thrill One Media.
34:07And then we sold Thrill One Media for 300,000,000, right, of which we got 200,000,000.
34:17Right? And this was sort of, like, the the layering in of my production deal. And then the group that bought Thrill One, I invested 10,000,000 with them to buy me as and then did a separate deal as it relates to having a bigger stake in the production company that I sold and my league and the overall sports property.
34:48Because I knew during that that transaction, I knew I was gonna negotiate for a bigger television deal.
34:56So I basically leveraged, you know, my ability to go and get a lot of value for the company. So I got all this equity back.
35:06They just paid me, you know, close to 200,000,000. So I used 10 of it and to invest in buying me so that I could, you know, turn around and hopefully make another, you know you know, not not nearly as much, but hopefully, like, another, like, 100 to a 150 off of it a couple years down the line.
35:25And and when you say we, is that like Dierdich family office, or is that Right. You don't have a fund. Right?
35:31Yeah. It's just your family office. Just my money.
35:33Yeah. Like, no. This is all my money.
35:34So I and I just run it like a family office, and I just look at that as where I would deploy venture capital. Right? So if I just deploy capital into real estate and ventures that I have a much more control over and or I have a higher leverage or position, But it was amazing.
35:53Think about this. Like, in the closing of the deal, I had to not it was the most money I made in one shot, right, and the most like, I had invested at one shot in a venture.
36:05So with the, like, here on my, you know, closing that deal in the Zoom call, it was the most I made and the most I invested in in one one one here here with, you know, whatever, like, I whatever my, like, final check off on was it.
36:23But, what are the stakes of it? It's whatever. You know what I mean?
36:26I look at it as it's fun and, like, I'm underwriting the business because I went and signed a massive television deal. So I'm underwriting that entire roll up, like and it's amazing partners.
36:39It's Dana White and the the Fertitta family who own the UFC. So it's like even being close to them and knowing them for so long just makes the joy of of even partnering with them fun and exciting.
36:54And I dedicate very little time to it. Right? Like, I I still and help help sort of adding the vision and how to continue to evolve and then grow it, but I, you know, continue to shoot television at an even much higher scale.
37:11Like, now I'm shooting 336 episodes a year, up from 252. That's still at 4% of my time.
37:21That's, you know, essentially five hours a day, four times a month for ten months, right, like, is essentially what it is.
37:30But it's underwritten the entire roll up. It is, you know, a billion dollar television deal over a seven year period with the production and everything involved. I get all my talent money, but then I'm also leveraged into the roll up in the production company again to sell it again.
37:49And it's it's it's just squeezing water out of a rock.
37:54You know what I'm saying? It's like you're looking at opportunities inside every deal.
38:00You know? There just isn't a world where I'm just looking at, like, where are the ways for me to add leverage, create opportunity in each one of the ways that I look at every one of these deals each and every time.
38:15Who are some of your business, uh, advisers, mentors, friends that are helping you develop this muscle?
38:22Because, you know, you go from and anything you wanna do, you go from a white belt to blue belt. Eventually, you're you you can become a black belt. And it sounds like, you know, when you started, you were more of a white belt like everybody.
38:31And now, you know, looking at structures, looking at ways to double dip, looking at ways to, you know, measure, okay.
38:39I want IRR, but, also, I should be thinking about the gross dollar amounts and maybe fewer deals, but bigger deals. Who have you learned a ton from that that you you you respect either as a friend or mentor on the business side? Man, I you know, I don't think anybody plays the game like this that I know that's in my circle.
38:56You know? I think it's a it's that experience,
39:00and it's that, like, continually looking at every deal multidimensionally. Right?
39:06And I think, like, the gift that I actually had early on is I used to look at media and marketing multidimensional. Right? So, like, in the early days, I would, you know, be able to look at, a television show and how are all these ways that I can monitor monitor, uh, monetize it.
39:21Right? Like, how do I own the rights of media and then I could sell that to different people? Like, I always looked at opportunity multidimensionally, but I didn't understand how to build and create value in business.
39:35So I never looked at business multidimensionally. And I just think I'm at once, I taught myself really how to look at business holistically and how to create and build businesses to sell, creating value that then I began to look at, you know, how can I see all of the opportunity in these different angles in order to, you know, create the most value for myself, and a lot of times, underwrite risk?
40:00You know what I mean? Like, if I didn't know I was gonna go and sign that mega television deal, I wouldn't have put into 10,000,000. But I but then I said, well, what if I go and sign this deal?
40:10How much additional equity will you give me for my 10,000,000? Right? Then they're like, oh, if you go and get that deal, then we'll give you 12 extra percent.
40:18You know what I mean? Like, then it's like, okay. Now I'm like, you know, I just made my literally overnight made my 10,000,000 worth, like, 60,000,000 and and underwritten it off of a deal that I'm going and making hundreds of millions of dollars to just do.
40:35You know? So it's like you're and at the end of it and keep in mind, through all of this, I work less now than I've ever worked. You know what I mean?
40:44Through optimizing my time and getting more and more efficient of how I use it, I work at at about a forty hour week to manage my family office, all of my venture portfolios, and shoot television and a podcast.
40:58You know what I'm saying? All of that is without a forty hour week. You know?
41:04This data is wrong every freaking time.
41:06Have you heard of HubSpot?
41:09HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Woah. I can see the client's whole history, calls, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from three days ago I totally missed.
41:21HubSpot, grow better. What do you think you're worth at this point? Um, so you have you have liquid, and you have obviously illiquid.
41:29Um, what do what do you think the the kind of the old the n word, the net worth is at?
41:34Um, and do you do you have a goal with that? And last podcast, you go, I need to be a billionaire like I deserve. So, like, yeah, where are we at?
41:42Remember that line? It was a beautiful line. No.
41:44No. I don't, but that's really funny. It's like I'm you know, I was doing because you gotta think, like, you know, I have this I I in between our last call, I I had this I hired an amazing CEO that came from a family office structure.
41:56I needed somebody that understood business, understood sort of the dynamics of a family office, but was also young and and excited to go on, like, a a journey to a billion dollars. Right? And so I have modeling for just my cash flowing assets that take me to a billion.
42:13Like, forget about, like, any of your venture stuff and building out sort of your pathway through the business side. Like, I have modeling out to the year 2050, like, that I have fully integrated on all asset classes that I'm even investing in.
42:32Now where do you make the billion dollars? You make it either slowly over time at compounding or in big chunks.
42:41Right? So if today, I'm my net worth of all of my assets is a little just under 350,000,000.
42:50Right? That the the pathway there's the slow long pathway to a billion that's easy through compounding.
42:58Right? Because because
42:59the majority of assume just, like, seven or 8%?
43:02Correct. Right? And with the the the buildings now.
43:05You gotta think about the way the buildings work and the real estate work is I'm getting five to 6% cash like, tax free cash, but I'm still getting seven to 10 equity growth over the long term.
43:19And and some of those are you know? So, you know, call it with the cash 16% IRRs, but a lot of the buildings that I've sold, I ended up with, like, 3542% IRRs.
43:33And what do you do with that? You ten thirty one exchange it, and and you get new buildings on an ongoing basis.
43:39So, like, that real estate even side of it is compounding in a unique way. And then with my cash, you know, money markets are giving you 5% right now, close to 5%, and then I keep a significant amount of liquid dollars in in sort of Nuveen high yield funds that kick off around a blended 10% that aren't gonna grow, but you get cash for your cash.
44:07You're making so much cash off of your cash, then you're making so much cash, tax depreciated cash off of your off of your real estate portfolio that you, you know, when you look at all of I look at that, I call it the modern cash flow portfolio where it's just that cash is underwriting the expense of my life in the family office.
44:31Right? And so I don't even like, when I have these big exits and when, you know, all the money I get made from TV, I look at all of it through the lens of how much am I actually making post tax per hour.
44:45So, okay, it seems like I'm making a lot shooting television so efficiently, but um, and how much time I actually work on the Dirich machine and the actual, uh, venture side of the business when you look at long term capital gains versus ordinary income.
45:01But, boy, when you look at the amount of time I spend on that cash flowing portfolio in real estate, it's a couple hours a year.
45:09And so What do you have as a as a dollar per hour goal? Like, what do you what is good for you? What is bad for you?
45:15Right? So, like, everybody has a a like, you know, if I do something that that saves me a $100, I go return a blender to the store, that wasn't a saving of a $100.
45:24It was it was a loss.
45:25I'm looking at 1,000,000 an hour as the goal. You know what mean? That's your goal.
45:29Like, as it relates to energy and effort that's put into it. Right? And and, you know, because I I it's fascinating when you look at how much money I make from television and then what that ends up being, like, post tax and fees, even though it seems like a limited amount of time because I and it's only 4% of my time, but seeing all of them through that lens, it's a way more interesting way to view it all.
45:57You know what I mean? Because since it and again, it goes back to time. It's like when you because what life do you wanna live?
46:05Right? And and where do you get time? Where can you buy time back?
46:08But ultimately, where are the places where you make the most money? And people don't believe in them.
46:14Like, this idea of passive income. Uh, passive income is not buying a building that you've gotta operate and you're constantly dealing with, like, trying to keep it rented and things breaking and trying to make decisions.
46:28That's not passive income in real estate. Passive income is when you give money to an operator and they give you cash back for your money.
46:37That's when you're doing nothing. Now you're you're you what you have to get good at is evaluating rules and and and creating principles for the type of operators you'd be willing to deploy capital with so that you know that they're world class and that you what they say they're gonna do that they do, which in turn, all you're doing is reading statements and putting a little money together or putting a little bit of time to think through strategy, future strategy a few times a year.
47:07That's the the difference on the way you choose to get into an asset class. You know? And based off of the last pod, you you were saying how, like I I think you said I think you're 47 now.
47:19Right?
47:20You said on the last pod that basically I think you said into your late thirties, you'd screwed a whole bunch of shit up. I think when you were trying to raise money from I forget the the the VC or PE company, but you're raising money for something and you're like, dude, my business sucks.
47:34I'm losing money. Turns out I was wrong. So does that mean that like the vast majority of your real wealth creation has been in like the 10 last ten years?
47:43No. In the last like few years.
47:47But you were you you you were broke. I was I would consider myself broke. I would say I started from zero almost in 2016 when I launched the machine.
47:57I wouldn't say dead broke. I mean, you're a millionaire. You you would you were you worth at least 10?
48:01I would say I was probably worth like, know, 15 or 20 in that sense. So not broke. But to me, I was like Big broke.
48:06To a future billionaire, a millionaire is broke. Well,
48:11yeah. But but he he described it. He was like, in my thirties, he's like, I I spent this and this.
48:16You you said phrases like I had nothing. And I was and and I But
48:21I would tell you that the majority of this wealth was all created between 2018 and 2022 over that four year period.
48:32Right? And now it's exponentially scaled.
48:34Right? I don't even know you know, when I think about sort of how I've I I'm I kind of I very conservatively value the ventures that get me up to the three twenty five zone.
48:48I could easily push those to I could easily say those are are you know, push me closer to four. Right? And but it's also like then, okay.
48:57What is how do I wanna continue to create, like, bigger opportunities in the future? Because I'm always, like, five years into the future the same way I understood in 2016.
49:09Here's the strategy. The strategy worked. Only it was bigger than I had anticipated.
49:13Then all these other additional things had happened. I had the clarity of, like, this is what I was going to do, but then that clarity, the universe conspired to create more opportunity that I capitalized off of and got to this scale that I could have never imagined in such a shorter amount of time.
49:30And all it does is make me see further and clearer on how I can get the scale even bigger, which leads me to believe compounding, I become a billionaire over time.
49:41But I I believe I can create some ventures including the software that I create that and the platform that I wanna build to speak to that core audience that I believe I will be able to monetize it at a much higher scale and a shorter amount of time with my existing portfolio of assets. And
50:02if you Google your name, you'll see, like, you went on a little bit of a buying spree where you're buying, like, I think four really, really nice homes in LA.
50:11But I thought it said that you I thought there was a quote saying you're not gonna live there. That's rentals.
50:17Um, a, is that true? And b, what type of real estate are you actually buying that you consider cash flowing real estate versus just personal?
50:24Yeah. So I would never buy a house with rent. That's like Yeah.
50:28I didn't think so. I I thought it said I I I thought it said that you maybe it was like on the what's it called? Like, the dirt or like the real something something like that.
50:36Yeah. Really, what I did and this look. This is gonna like, this will this this will give you this is this will give you an ex like, clarity on how much money I had and how dumb I was in 2015.
50:51Okay? I, like, had met, like, my wife.
50:56Like, all I wanted to find was a forever home. I had, like, realized in '14, like, I had begun to develop, like like like, learning everything about business and everything.
51:08Because you gotta think, in 2013, I was dumb as dirt. I was at the bottom.
51:14I didn't understand business. I didn't understand anything. I hired all the consultants and all the groups and began to formulate everything I needed to learn to speak the way I'm speaking today and and the strategies of what money is, where do I want to invest it.
51:29Never even heard of multifamily units in 2014. Right? Like, all of this, I I then took all of my money at the time I had all the money I had to my name in 2015, it was $12,000,000 in cash.
51:47Moved it all to cash, like, because I had money in all these different brokers that didn't know what it was. Here I am in 2015 with a vision for, like, how I'm gonna create a venture studio, the Dierdeck machine, and the whole thing, and I'm looking for you know, I just got married, and I'm looking for a a forever home or a place to buy, and I find the most heaven sent piece of land that God has ever created in a gated community in Beverly Hills that is a like, this gated community to a private road to a four acre promontory with unobstructed views of the entire LA Basin, Hollywood Sign, the most extraordinary property I have ever stepped on in my life, and paid 10,000,000 cash for it.
52:49And then took launched this dream with 2,000,000. You know?
52:54Because I was like, oh, man. This is my destiny to build a house and live on this land forever.
53:01So it just land? It was just land. Just land.
53:04Call it Forever Estates. And I I have sensed and so in that neighborhood, like, where it is, I have bought multiple houses and remodeled them in the neighborhood while I continue to design Forever Estates, as it's called, and and kept it all these years, carried the cost, you know, $200 a year just to carry it, spending mill like, built a whole designed a whole house as an architecture team, fired them, hired Sayota, the best architects in the world out of South Africa, and we have just been designing and designing and designing.
53:39It was part of the vision of, like, I'm going to spend the rest of my life in forever estates. Like, that's where I'm going to live.
53:46There is no better piece of land in the city of Los Angeles. It's the most extraordinary home.
53:52I rented a house for three and a half years, bought a house for 6.5, sold it for, like, $9.05. Two years later, after remodeling it, bought another house for for 8, put 2,000,000 into it.
54:05This house that I'm in now is two doors down from the entrance to Forever Estates. So when I begin to build it
54:13at the in the fall that I can be there every step of the way. But what happened? Hold on.
54:18Begin to build it in the fall? What how long are we timeline are we talking? This has been eight years and we're we're on begin to build it?
54:24This is the Forever. Take Forever estates.
54:26Yeah. Hey. And so and what did world the say to me?
54:30They're like, this is crazy. And I'm like, man, I'm going to live there forever. And when I build it, I don't even wanna think about the cost.
54:37It's gonna cost me 20,000,000 to build. I don't even wanna think about it. I needed to get to generational level wealth to even, like I didn't want it to be a burden.
54:46That's why I kept buying houses and kept working on the design. And then now you've gotten to such a scale. What's the strategy now?
54:54Well, I'm putting it into a trust. I'm paying cash for the house to build it, and then I'm going to pay rent to the trust, and then it's going to build an endowment so that this home can be in my family forever but run it be self operational that is so it doesn't have to be tied to the estate that it will be ran and then there can be family meetings in forever estates for hundreds and hundreds of years into the future.
55:23Right? And you can't even get to that way of thinking unless you have kids, unless you create generational wealth, and unless you get to that time. But that all happened over a five year period.
55:37You know what I mean? That is an extraordinary transition
55:40to go and start It started with a horrible decision. I mean, 10 Tenth. It's terrible.
55:45Terrible. You took
55:47look. I put I could've put 10 think I'm gonna say, you know how many build how much money I had invested in buildings in 2015?
55:56100,000. 100,000. I had invested 100,000 and was making, you know, seven g's from that one.
56:06And and, like, I put instead of putting 10,000,000 into a cash flow, which would I would have been set for life. If I were to put that 10,000,000 into the buildings that I put back in 2015 that got, like, 40% IRRs, like, and we're kicking off, like, 9% cash, I would have been, like, set for life from the compounding in the cash flow of that one thing.
56:28Oh, no. Oh, no. I took 10, put it straight into a liability.
56:33You know what I'm saying? That now I'm carrying the cost of paying the taxes and double homeowners fee because it's a double lot. So I'm just carrying $200 a year of and and then I'm paying all these architects on an ongoing basis to continue to design and develop it.
56:51Absolutely
56:53ludicrous. You're you're amazing.
56:57Are you taking adoption? I I think you're fifteen years older than me. You know, I could be your your teenage
57:02You're taking up your patience?
57:04Yeah. I wanna go to forever estates, man. Forever estates for you is gonna be more like a decade estate, sounds like, the way it's taken.
57:12But oh, that is like Hey. And look. Even
57:15I'm Hey. If it lasts forever, what's a decade, man? That's that's a drop in the bucket.
57:20But but think about it. It seems to me
57:23I don't even it's just another part of seeing my life completely in multidimensional. Because it's like, it's my relationship with my wife and kids in time. It's the health that I have.
57:35It's how every part of my existence has continued to expand and get better. I didn't get better in just business.
57:43I didn't get better in just I got better in, like, all aspects of my existence on an ongoing basis. So that house, if I would have built the house I designed five years ago, I would have been so bummed because I got every six months, I would get a completely new design, get it in VR.
58:03And as I changed and thought about and got clear on what I wanted the future to look like and how I would want family meetings here in two hundred years, like, it allowed me to keep evolving and keep evolving to where when I finally got to this point where I'm just about to get the final permits, it feels right on time to me.
58:22I love that. Right? And and it's like, I'm healthier, happier, wealthier, wiser, and I know that I'm just going to get healthier, happier, wealthier, and wiser till the day that I die.
58:34And right now, what's my goal? 1,000,000 hours of life, one hundred and fourteen years and fifty four days. So where am I spending a significant amount of my wealth?
58:45Understanding every single aspect of my body and having a very deep longevity plan that allows me to to enjoy life and live it at a high level at the ripe old age of one twelve. Someone get to one fourteen, just fall off a cliff.
59:00I
59:03Oh my god. Rob, you're amazing. So I was gonna ask you about longevity.
59:07Like, per perfect segue. Right?
59:10Yeah. I wanna ask about that too. And what I was gonna say is very similar to that, which is, like, you know, a lot of people when I sold my first business and had my first bite of financial success, I was able to get physically fit.
59:24It was definitely a little bit easier. I could hire some people, but also I felt a little bit more calm and I had more time. Is this new focus on longevity and focus on all this stuff, is that because you now are financially successful and have more time, or do you think that you always had this this bug?
59:40And what are you doing now health wise?
59:43I have been doing it nonstop for as long for for twenty years.
59:49I got my first blood panel and started optimizing into my blood work in 2012. So for me, the what where a big transition was in 2015 around the same time, I had made the decision that, like, I was in the best shape of my life, but my body was always achy.
1:00:08And I had made this decision that I started having a doctor come to my house five days a week, and all I wanted to do was build a perfectly structured physical system.
1:00:21And there was no timeline to it. And and, really, what it led to is triangulating a ton of different therapies, which in but in the process, allowed me to learn every muscle in my body, how the fascia system works, what are my neurological deficiencies, what are all of the things that I need to re retrain in my overall system internally as it relates to leaky gut and and blood brain barrier?
1:00:46All of these sort of things that lead to inflammation, that lead to to heart disease, and all these different things that that reduce your quality and length of life, I had been doing over a decade.
1:00:58So now the way I approach it is so sophisticated because I know every single aspect of my entire function holistically of my body, my mind, my time, my energy.
1:01:12So it's a different level. So what happened when I got to this scale of success? I refer to it as peak top.
1:01:20It's the same psychological, uh, chaos that happens to a drug addict at rock bottom, where, like, you finally make a shift in you, where, like, you don't you can't be a drug addict anymore and something shifts in you mentally.
1:01:35I finally got to I'm I it happened to me on the other side where, like, you started getting more and more disciplined and healthy that you all of a sudden were like, why would I ever not just be extraordinarily healthy for the rest of my life?
1:01:50And what happened from that point? I have not missed the day of getting up at 5AM. I have not missed the day in the gym.
1:01:57I have not missed one day meditating. I have not missed one day eating supplements, eating clean.
1:02:03I have not had a drink. I haven't had any sugar, I haven't had a snack, any of that for since I hit that like nine months ago.
1:02:13The data that I shared with you guys as it relates to the quality of my life numbers, how I feel about my life, work and health zero to 10, And then my discipline numbers, what percentage did I get up at five, brain train, meditate, get in the gym, eat clean, and not drink and take my supplements? It is 100% across this entire year.
1:02:33And then my qualitative numbers are at the highest they've ever been. So every single day, I wake up feeling extraordinary.
1:02:44Right? And I grew into that. And then the more success I had, it I didn't have to then decide I wanna be healthy.
1:02:53I had been working when I in 2016, when I designed my vision for my business and my financial success, I designed a vision for my life success and my health success.
1:03:06So what happened over the last seven years is I got better and better and better at all of it, which led to this euphoric state of where you have an incredible depth of knowledge of your entire reality and your current state and your future state.
1:03:26So you're just continuously predicting the future and creating higher probabilities of being healthier, happier, and wealthier in the future while living extraordinary
1:03:38in the present. What's been like the the 8020 of that? Like, the the the things that have made the biggest change on your health?
1:03:45I mean, look. You I you not drinking, not eating sugar, and intermittent fasting, and eating a lean protein and vegetable meal to me is everything.
1:03:57Is everything. Because you're just your body begins to clean itself. You feel better about yourself.
1:04:02You make sharper decisions. You go two layers deeper. Your emotions are more in check.
1:04:07Like, things happen inside the family, different things that are uncontrollable. You're able to, like like, control all of those better. That just pure diet alone in avoiding all of these, like like, processed foods and and alcohol, like, and being committed to that will absolutely change your life because it gives your mind more depth to to be able to execute at a higher amount at a higher level in the limited amount of time that you have to execute.
1:04:38Sorry. Have you seen this guy, Brian Johnson, what he's doing? Look.
1:04:41I look at Brian Johnson as this guy's outrageous.
1:04:44It's too much, but I withhold my judgment because I'm if I would've told myself five years ago, hey. This is what you're gonna be doing.
1:04:53I'd be like, that guy's crazy. So I look at man, I I feel like Brian Johnson's crazy, but I'll probably turn into Brian Johnson in, like, seven or eight years. You know?
1:05:02He's wild, man. He's wild. Yeah.
1:05:05Brian Johnson just has that look. You know what I mean? He looks like a futuristic,
1:05:09like, amoeba. You know what I mean? Like what I was thinking.
1:05:12I looked at him the other day. I'll go, all he needed all he needs to do is tan. If he tans, everybody be like, this guy is amazing.
1:05:17Of course. He does a tan, and they're like, you're you're a vampire, bro. No.
1:05:20Just he looks like AI. All, like, the new AI versions of people, like, coming out, he looks like an AI person. He might not even be real.
1:05:28He might not even be real. He's a he's a mid journey.
1:05:31But I do look at, like, that aspect because you've gotta think about anything. Think about the way that I talk about business. It's knowledge and experience and an understanding and then a continual evolution and growth of understanding the whole.
1:05:46Like, applying that to my relationship with my wife and family, applying that to my health, applying that to business, applying that to investment, applying that to building my my family office. Like, all of that way of thinking, like, is is based off of gaining knowledge to take something from not understanding it and it feeling difficult to then making it easier than continually optimizing.
1:06:11Right? You're just incrementally making it all better.
1:06:15What what are I love the way you think, and I love the kind of pursuit of greatness and pursuit of excellence for yourself and and having a vision for yourself. I also know that it's inspiring, but also hard to relate to perfection. And so I'm curious, what are the current flaws or bugs in your software that you're still debugging?
1:06:34We all have some bugs in our software that's running. We we're we're we're hunting them down, we're trying to squash them one at a time. What are some that are still still in your your system?
1:06:42It might be in business. It might be in health. It might be in you know, for me, I'll you know, a nice bag of chips is still a bug in my software.
1:06:50You know? Maybe something oh, sometimes when I'm with my wife, I'm not as present as I should be. I'm on my phone, but I know that's not really me and who I'm gonna be.
1:06:56But I'm I'm still catching up to myself in that way. What are some of those for you?
1:07:01I you know, I and this is gonna sound, like, extraordinarily
1:07:06Don't say it. I tried to help you, man. I I've tried to serve you up a way of being vulnerable here.
1:07:11No. No. I'm not I'm not no.
1:07:15Again, I'm not there is no
1:07:18there is nothing This is the I'm not I'm not racist,
1:07:21but this is like you're you're teeing this up. Yeah. No.
1:07:24No. I'm not there is no like, to me, it is like, I still get triggered, like, and will get angry.
1:07:32Right? Like, I will get like, when my expectations are mismanaged at a high level, I'll I'll get mad and get, like, in snap.
1:07:40Right? Like, I have I'm not even kidding you. Like, I am trying to, like like even when I get triggered, I'm trying to stop the triggers to avoid, like, saying some like, letting it come out.
1:07:54Right? Like, I'm really but I still feel the trigger. My goal is to get to, like, don't even let things trigger you.
1:08:00Like, when you let people get angry, but you gotta think part of, like, the evolution is, like, there's certain people in your life that do that to me that I had to let go of, right, and continually optimize for those people. And this is the this is embedded in my soul.
1:08:16This is embedded in my soul. When I feel stuck when I feel stuck, when I'm working on like, trying to do deep work or do I feel stuck, all I want is pizza and wine.
1:08:32All I want is pizza and wine. It's not even, like, a matter of, like like, acting on it.
1:08:38It's like my soul feels like it needs it needs a glass of, like, wine, and it it's like because whenever I get stuck, it's this this psychological thing of, like, just fuck.
1:08:51Let it all go. Let it all go. So even though I don't act on it because I've just evolved beyond it, I still when I get stuck, I the feelings are are exist in there.
1:09:02But but I'm telling you, it's the, you know, the commitment of where it went a 100% health and no alcohol and no sugar in that level, it it eliminated so many things.
1:09:14It eliminated me being, like, you know, short with people. It eliminated me, like, making rash decisions, right, not thinking through stuff and just, like, shooting from the hip, you know, which is a a recovery.
1:09:27You know, I used to say, like, you know, Durdek Enterprises, our money's fearless. Right? Because I would, like, invest so recklessly when it was really our money's dumb.
1:09:37But that reckless, like, let's just push it forward. Like, let's just let's just start it and go for it is still something that I fight on an ongoing basis because I'll get excited and energized and see it and be like, let's do it, and I've gotta control that impulse just to that I've that I've learned to control in this state at a much higher level.
1:09:56But there are very little. And here's the thing. I I look at it as, like, how Kobe was never, like, was relatable to me because it was too much discipline and how Tom Brady, like, man, why would you not take the off season off?
1:10:09Like like, I used to look at that as this impossible level. And to me, like, I know that I'm I'm reaching this unrelatable, unattainable place.
1:10:21It's why I put out a podcast earlier this year that was the most unrelatable podcast part one and part two because I just laid out the depth of, like, actually how I'm operating and what I've learned along the way to get to this level because I do want to I want to be the proof that you can get to a place where you never get angry, you never have a negative thought, where you are completely harmonious and balanced in all your relationships and time and health and happiness, where you are happy and filled with gratitude seven days a week every single day, even under unexpected duress.
1:11:04I I'm living it and I know it's possible. I wanna continue to be proof that it is, then I wanna build the products, services, and tools that other people can use to get to this level and this feeling because to me, it is heaven on earth. It is true happiness is really the output of this existence that I've created in a relatively short amount of time.
1:11:30Let me let me run this trend by you guys that I'm seeing and it's related to this. So I live part of the time in New York, part of most of the time in Austin, Texas. And I also own a ranch out in Texas.
1:11:42And what I'm noticing is that in Austin, it's almost like LA a little bit where we have all types of health freaks. It's really cool to be around those types of people, and I eat really healthy as well. And I'm noticing that my extreme health friends, they're doing something like that like a redneck family, like where I grew up, what they used to do, which is they buy a cow.
1:12:01So, like, you, like, go in with either you or your neighbor and you go and purchase a cow and someone slaughters it and then you get, like, the whole cow for the year. And I noticed that Zuckerberg, I think two years ago, he made this commitment that he was only gonna eat what he killed or I think even grew. And I'm noticing that my health friends are doing this now.
1:12:20And I've seen a lot of tweets recently where people saying, you know, I'm eating healthy, but I still feel bad. But when I go to Europe, I feel good. And I I did some research.
1:12:28There's the FDA and the European the EU, how they, like, measure food. It's a little bit differently, like the the preservatives and things. Anyway, have you I know you're into health now, and I know you invest in a lot of health and wellness stuff.
1:12:40My prediction is that in the next five or ten years, I think we're gonna see a couple brands where you can buy meat online. I'm even seeing people, like, revolt against, like, Whole Foods meat. Have you are you eating and so it's, something I've been thinking about is meat.
1:12:54Have you been do you eat just meat off the shelf from Whole Foods, or do you get it from somewhere special? Because I think there's gonna be an interesting brand that does this in the next five or ten years. Yeah.
1:13:04Look. Like,
1:13:06I my meat is not so special to me.
1:13:12You know what mean? I when I and so how I do it how do I do it?
1:13:18I get meal delivery seven days a week. Right?
1:13:23And I get From which brand? It's just a local chef here. So I get that's all organic.
1:13:29Right? Grass fed. And so I get a salad Grass fed beef?
1:13:34Yeah. Yeah. So That's it tastes so bad, man.
1:13:38Yeah. And and so look. So so to me, I'm that's my baseline.
1:13:43And then I have breakfast Wednesdays with my wife. I have Friday night pasta with my wife, Sunday night sushi. Like, I have sort of the rhythm of dates that I take my wife on.
1:13:55And so when I look at that particular protein, if you will, at this stage, like, I'm I look at that as as as as much as I'm willing to dedicate into what's in my body until I can get to a point where the data shows me the impact of having Daisy in the backyard and me cutting Daisy up and slicing off a rib is going to deliver more nutrients that's going to add to a a longer, uh, um, higher quality of life, I would need the data to take me there one day as opposed to getting that nuanced in the delivery of the quality of that protein where at this point for me, that's enough as it relates to what I'm capable and my personal capacity can dedicate
1:14:47to the quality of the food. You know? I think this is gonna be a thing, Sean.
1:14:51If you do not know, there's a company that just raised money from Peter Thiel. It's called Coop, and they're making the Tesla of chicken coops.
1:14:59So normal people could have a chicken coop in their backyard. Have you guys that Sean, have you not, like believe any trend. Yeah.
1:15:06The the cat coop guy, he's the eye crack guy. Right? Same guy?
1:15:08Yeah. AJ. Dude, I'm so fascinated with this.
1:15:11Look. Listen. Listen.
1:15:13Right now, fundamentally,
1:15:15would you have your own chickens that you slaughtered and ate chickens if it was No. It's for the eggs. It's it's it's for the eggs.
1:15:22Yeah. It's for the eggs. Eggs make sense.
1:15:24Bro, you just you you just told me that a shower head company is gonna be worth billions. Okay? And you just bought a $10,000,000 piece of land when so look.
1:15:34We you might have an air in your judgment. Things happen.
1:15:40Yeah. Like, I know your biggest weakness is you sink in the shower, but come on. Yeah.
1:15:44Look. For eggs, maybe. But beef, I you know, I but but I don't know.
1:15:50I'm not I don't I'm not you guys, when you look at trends on an ongoing basis, you you refine your lens of, like, the things that were improbable that ended up working when they're harder to see.
1:16:04You know what I mean? Yeah. I I think my even lens is is always ties back to the probability of unit economics and the reoccurring revenue aspect of it.
1:16:15You know? Like, I look at it so much more through that lens. Because even when I think about the coupe, right, if you're selling a single unit hardware, now you've got this incredibly small, like like, customer base in the very beginning that are the ultra healthy, and then they're they're they're it's like a a mattress, like, in the direct to consumer mattress game.
1:16:38As soon as they buy one, they don't need another one for for, you know, fifteen years. Right? Like, it's it's would suffer that same sort of consequence versus five years ago, coupe would get, you know, a $100,000,000 valuation based off of, like, there's gonna be coupes in every house in the world.
1:16:56It's innovation. It's like the Tesla of eggs. You know?
1:16:59So Right. My lens isn't as refined, and I always go back to, like like, how much revenue the idea could create from a long term value perspective versus those those tough hardware businesses that are minimal margin
1:17:20and you sell one. You know that. So what what trends interest you now?
1:17:24Where what do you think is gonna be popular in the next five years, and where are you invest investing your money for what interesting trends are you looking to invest in? Yeah.
1:17:33Look. I don't invest in anything.
1:17:35I invest in real estate and and businesses that I create. And right now, I haven't even invested in a new venture since Jolie. You know?
1:17:44Because to me, I'm I do think when I look out into the future, like like, as it relates to the type of stuff that I would do, it'd still be related to biofeedback, you know, health customization, all of these things that that help lead you to optimizing your overall health and well-being.
1:18:07You know, I do think, you know, like, you know, you gotta think those those glucose monitors that have that sort of come out to kinda give you an indication of, what your blood sugar's doing when you're eating food, that they're going to evolve that to eventually become dopamine and cortisol, and it's gonna end up being a cornerstone of, like, how you even your life is actually feeling based off of what your your blood is saying in real time, I think that's going to be something that really makes a big impact on the world.
1:18:39And and to me, I wanna I wanna time into creating the existence management system that helps you manage how all of it fits together to lead to your present moment in time and help you optimize for guiding your life to creating higher energy present moments that you use with purpose.
1:19:00And whether that's to to be on your phone and watch TV with your wife because you're tired or it's for you to be ultra present with your kids so that you can actually experience it or you wanna be able to design use the present to design a better future for yourself. Like, it's really about how do you become this healthy, develop healthy and understanding in the knowledge of yourself, develop the ultra awareness of everything about you so that you can continually live a consistent state of joy because feeling joy over long periods of time is what it creates the feeling of happiness.
1:19:40Sean, we could wrap up with whatever you want to, but I know that people in the comments are gonna be like, why is that douchebag bringing up meat? What the fuck? They're already gonna I already know they're gonna flame me in the YouTube comments or that sorry.
1:19:51One. Hey. I was just curious.
1:19:54Rob, uh, I wanted you to can you can you finish with a two minute crash course on something I've been I look interested in and you know very well, which is production companies. So I noticed, uh, I don't know anything about Hollywood or TV production, but I I my ears perked up when I forgot who it was. They bought Reese Witherspoon's production company for some hundreds of millions of dollars.
1:20:15Then I I saw that Peter Chernan from the Chernan Group, he's doing a roll up of production companies. He's putting a billion dollars to work rolling up production companies. And I thought, oh, that's interesting.
1:20:25I read some interviews, and he's talking about why he thinks there's a, you know, growing and sort of insatiable demand for content. And then, you know, I just look at people who create Netflix shows.
1:20:35I go look at you know, oh, love is blind is ranked number one on Netflix. Who created this? I was a small production company.
1:20:41Like, is this like the startup game where you you create the next hit show and you become a billionaire, or is it a a ruthless business? Could you just describe what creating a show or creating a a production company is like and if that's a good business to be in or not?
1:20:56As someone who sold their production company for 200,000,000 and who, like, had an offer on the table that fell apart for 400,000,000 recently, It is the worst business that you could ever get in in your life.
1:21:18It is like and and I'll explain to you why. It is a shoot what you kill game, and the distributors control all of the money.
1:21:27So, like, in your you have a hit show and you have this flourishing production company, and then the show gets canceled, and your company's worth zero. Mhmm.
1:21:38Right? It is and then the problem with shows is, like, they don't pick them up for long periods of time.
1:21:45I have a five year, 1,680 episode order of television. It is unprecedented in all of production.
1:21:53It does not exist. But why is it hard for me to turn around and sell that? Because it's one single show.
1:22:00And now they look at the and it's so expensive because it's made the the production company so profitable. But let's just say that didn't push you away. A production company is built like this.
1:22:11Right? You you've got to build the infrastructure that allows you to have your camera equipment, your finishing equipment, your licensing for your music.
1:22:22You've got to basically then go and and give a budget to a network who's gonna give you $500 for an episode, and now you have got to figure out how to pull 20 to 30% of that in margin.
1:22:37Right? So it gets an incredibly difficult to do. And the only way that you can do that is look at all of the different ways that you can scrape margin out of that budget by owning vertically integrated.
1:22:50So a lot of times, there'll be people that that, you know, have, you know, television shows, and they just get paid an executive producer fee.
1:23:00Right? So they will make a lot of money. Like, Jeff Tremaine, who is one of the executive producers on my show, you know, makes millions off of ridiculousness and does it just off his executive producer fee, nothing.
1:23:14Where we rolled in our executive producer fees, then built out the entire post and finishing and music division to push our margins up to be able to to create a sellable asset. Then we had multiple shows and then the, you know, the call it the long term sustainability of ridiculousness created the value that allowed us to sell it.
1:23:41Right? And so even if you you launch an a production company and you have Love Is Blind and it's a hit show, you're not making that much money off of that show.
1:23:53You are now hoping to stack shows and then end up pulling off of that margin that you get to split. Right?
1:24:01And then then you trade on EBITDA. Right? So when you sell the business, you're trading at, like, you know, six times EBITDA, five, six times EBITDA.
1:24:11And then a lot of times now, they won't even buy you outright. They will partner with you, incentivize your long term earn out because they don't wanna just, like, pay you, you know, five times, six times your EBITDA, and then all of a sudden, like, the show goes away.
1:24:27Right? They and and you were the creative force behind getting new shows. Right?
1:24:32So it it's a lot more, like, complex. And and when you think about, like, the big dogs doing it, they're looking at it more from they're buying the creative minds that are making the new content all the time.
1:24:47So when you if they believe long term in content, they're just and when you look at that aggregate, you can have a couple of them slip and have a couple heroes in there. And when you see all those together, you can bet that that thing's gonna generate a ton of cash because the industry itself is built around being incredibly lean and then being being profitable because they're only worth their profitability, and then they can accordion.
1:25:16You got a big show and all this staff and the show goes away, boom. You bring it all the way back down because you you put so many people under under the show itself.
1:25:25So that's where the bigger vision is for them to look at. And is there an opportunity for creatives and people in the space in this day?
1:25:36Yes. Because Endeavor's doing it. Chernan's doing it.
1:25:39A lot of people are doing it, but it's extraordinarily difficult. And and the gatekeepers are the distributors, the Netflix, the Paramounts, the you know, you can attempt to create your own platform and distribute it yourself, YouTube, digitally, whatever it is, but it's expensive and difficult to build audiences.
1:25:59And then you're really looking at those distributors as the gatekeepers to the quality of the asset that you're creating, and whether or not someone will make it to decide that you're worth the purchase. All of that, incredibly difficult in my opinion to to make happen.
1:26:18Perfect answer. Exactly what was looking for. Rob, this has been amazing.
1:26:21Better than prop one somehow. Where should people follow-up? Where do you want them?
1:26:27You want them on your pod, your Twitter, email list? How can people get more Rob?
1:26:31You know, Rob's just at Rob Dyrdek across social, you know, on a.com and just you know, I got billed with Rob, but, really, I'm not out pitching nothing.
1:26:40I'm just out trying to figure it out, keep evolving. But one day, I'm a come back on with my software.
1:26:47When it's done well, first, I'm a send it to you guys first, and and then when the book and the philosophy are out and the software is out, then it's gonna be like, how do we convert the listeners into changing their lives from being erratic into harmonious, high quality existences with the existence operating system.
1:27:09You know? But that's off in the future. Now I'm just glad to reconnect because I'm thankful for you guys for kinda starting the spark of the whole thing.
1:27:19And and, really, I'm even thankful for you posting all the data and using the customer acquisition from the stuff that I sent you. You know, I sent you all the new stuff
1:27:28to to use that. Do know what happened? Same man.
1:27:30I know. So, basically, he came on. He did the rhythm of existence.
1:27:32He sent us the the Excel PDF. We post on Twitter, and it was kind of over. And then, like, a year later, I was like, alright.
1:27:37I'm gonna start building my email list. And I was like, how do I get fans of the show, the the the like minded people? How do I get my type of people to subscribe?
1:27:45I don't just want any subscriber. I want the right type of person. I was like, what would the right type of person be into?
1:27:49And I was like, oh, dude. The Rob the Rob Deirdrecht, the that that rhythm of existence sheet, the time tracker, I think they would be nerding out about that. Like, that's my type of nerd.
1:27:59And so we put it up as a lead magnet, which was like, hey. Come, you know, put your email in and get the he'll share his, uh, thing with you. And, uh, we started spending a bunch of money.
1:28:08Rob emails me, like, don't know, six months ago. He's like, bro, you're blowing me up with this sheet. You know, it's all good, but you gotta update the photo.
1:28:15You're using the wrong photo from from over here. And so we updated the photo, and I was like, oh, man. I feel bad.
1:28:20We take the whole ad down. We start putting putting something else up, but it was a it was a a moment of embarrassment. Don't feel bad because it it, to me, just perpetuates,
1:28:31like like, for me, it just continues to push the narrative of, like, level of discipline and commit and data driven.
1:28:38So And, Rob, you you said you said you subscribed. Was good in that we Yeah. We we're preaching your gospel and makes you look like a badass.
1:28:46So there's nothing bad there. I just should've asked you first, and I'd forgotten to do that or I didn't do that. And that's why I felt embarrassed.
1:28:52I was like, oh, my bad. Yeah. Don't hey.
1:28:54I appreciate it and thought it was funny, but I was also like
1:28:59like, this is great. Then I was, like, interested in the data from your perspective of, like, okay. Well, I wonder how many it converted just to kinda understand, like How many?
1:29:07Well, there was nothing to convert to. Right? Like, since you had the DocuSign, it was just the views of the the the PDF was, like, what I was interested in.
1:29:16Right? And so I don't I don't think it ran for too long. I think it had maybe 5,000, 10,000 hits, something like that.
1:29:22So, you know, a good a good amount for sure, but not not be the I love that as just another data point from my perspective. That's why I was like, hey. Use the new stuff.
1:29:30Make it feel more inviting.
1:29:32Like Right. Make it feel more exciting for people to see to because I wanna, you know, continually to perpetuate it. But again, I am And Rob's getting triggered now, by the way.
1:29:42This is him working on that trigger of not getting angry. You know, I was talking to somebody yesterday about triggers. They were like they're like, Man, he just pushes my buttons.
1:29:49I was like, Dude, you're like a Blackberry. You're just covered in buttons. I was like, The problem is not that he pushed a button.
1:29:55You got so many buttons to push. You want to be an iPhone. No buttons.
1:29:59Nothing to push. Can someone do to you? Now you're unstoppable.
1:30:02Right. And it's possible for everybody to get there. Awesome.
1:30:06Well, we we appreciate this, dude.
1:30:08Last time, maybe video and audio had, like, half a million views. I have a feeling this is gonna crush it, so we appreciate you. Okay.
1:30:17Till we meet again. Till
1:30:19we meet again. See you guys. Thank you.
The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

The open is a cold cut to the punchline: Rob Dyrdek, mid-answer, being pressed on when exactly the real money got made. His answer collapses the timeline down to a few years and reframes $15M as big broke -- a line that sets the intellectual tone for everything that follows.

CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

MENTIONED ON CAMERA
08:53productMomentous Supplements ↗
25:21productJolie Skin Co (filtered showerhead) ↗
00:00productDyrdek Machine ↗
00:00productHubSpot CRM ↗
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
AFFILIATECommission earned if you click.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Frame Gallery

Visual moments.

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