#2 How to Beast - Building High-Value Relationships

We know that women find financial success attractive, and it's not only because you can buy them the Gucci bag or whatever. It's also because, like, it's a sign of a guy who's, like, grinding, who has ambition, who's working hard on his goals. It's definitely important. It's one of those things that the same way, like, being in shape is going to help, having money is going to help. Being in shape and having money is really going to help. As soon as I'm out of that cold shower, I'm like, boom, like, what do I got next? I walk over to the desk, get some work done. Small fluctuations is like, fuck, I just lost 50K.

Guys, welcome back to The Game Plan. I'm your host with Rob Lipsett. Episode 2, we have none other than HowToBeast, the man himself, David. Thanks so much for coming on, Marbella local.

Excited to be here, bro. So the house is looking great, by the way.

Thank you. Thank you.

I've been seeing it since you put some of the finishings in.

Yeah, it's like a little studio now with this area. Obviously the couch is over there, but I've built it so that it would be great for recording and podcasts.

No, No, it's perfect. I can naturally, I got some comfy seats.

So there we go. But so far, and what I'm going to do going forward, I give each one of my guests a thoughtful present.

Okay.

So I've got a little gift for you to kick the podcast off. I want you to wait there.

Okay. A little bit nervous.

Yeah. I see you. You're giving out that you're not able to get good breakfast tacos in Marbella.

Well, yeah, it's true.

So we got you your very own taco kit.

There we go, guys. This is perfect.

There we— that's going to be the next full day of eating video.

This will be perfect. Yes, thank you. It's a very thoughtful gift. We'll put it right here.

Santa Maria, Santa Maria, guys, sponsoring today's podcast. So you do similar vlogs too, you know, me, Christian, Max. There's some great fitness content in there, day in the life, all that good stuff. But There's a little bit of a difference to it. There's a little bit of spice. There's a little bit of something more. So if I'm an Uber driver and you're telling me what you do for a living, tell me what it is.

Man, that's always, that's the tough question, right? It's changed though. It's changed. At this point, I think it's easier to explain and say, oh, you know, we have a few different brands. Usually I'm wearing EDGE, so I'm like, oh, you know, we have the clothing brand, we have like a fitness application and some things like that. And if they dig deeper, they're like, oh, what's the story? Then I'll say, oh, well, like, my job was as a software engineer, then I started this YouTube channel on the side, and then it grew to the point where I was like, I'm just going to do this instead of, instead of the actual job. And then that was obviously used as like the marketing vehicle to, to launch the brands. But with you, I can, I can say it differently because you understand the whole grind. Yeah. But Uber driver, he's not going to know what's going on.

Yeah. So in simple terms, you're a fitness YouTuber, but you own many companies as well. And also some dating stuff.

Some dating stuff as well. Yeah, that's, I guess that was, that's what differentiates me the most from like the, the names you mentioned, Max and Christian and those guys. I also do the, a little bit of spice, a little, a little bit.

Yeah, there we go. Oh, we're gonna get into that. That's why I'm pumped for today's episode. I'm pumped. So how did you go from software engineer to doing what you do now? Because they're just so different to even say that sentence. It's, it's a crazy stark contrast.

Yeah.

Yeah. So tell me what made you leave the software engineering job and go to what you're doing now.

So it's funny because in high school I played basketball and I played video games and I built the computers that I played the video games on. So I was like, ah, I just love computers. When I had to pick a discipline in college, I was like, I'll do software engineering because it's kind of related. And it was tough. I'm not going to lie because I was in Boston and a lot of the kids were from out of the country and in other countries, for example, some countries in Asia, they study computer science even in the lower levels. So I got in there and I felt So stupid because they all were like, they knew everything. They knew how to program already and write code. And I knew nothing, but I mean, I saw it through. I got that first job, but then I kind of hated sitting at a desk, which is, I mean, a lot of people I think can relate with.

Yeah. What were your hours?

It was, it was like get in at 8:00 AM, leave at 5:00 PM. And the best part of my day was, was I was starting to get into the gym. So the best part of my day was I'd be like, it'd be 5:00 PM, you know, I'd get in the car, I'd put in that pre-workout, drink the pre-workout and just be like driving to the gym, blasting music. And that was the best part of my day. And then my cousin at the time, he, he quit the job he was working, got his personal training certificate, certification, and started training. So I was like, you know what, I'm gonna try and do the same thing. And then it was like one, there's like one domino led to the next. First I was quitting that job, starting the personal training. Then on the side, I started like trying to do like a blog online. Cause I was like the back in the days before, before vlogs, vlogs before it was vlogs.

And then I— Like when people used to write. Exactly.

And then I experimented with podcasting a little bit, never stuck with it. And then YouTube was the last kind of thing that I was like, I was intimidated by it, and I'm curious for you as well, because it seemed— I would watch, like, I don't know, at the time, maybe it was a Christian video, or maybe it was like a Casey Neistat video, and I'd be like, man, these are so fun. Like, I wish I could make these, but it's not realistic. Like, I can't talk like that on camera. I can't buy an expensive camera. So I kind of like stumbled into YouTube eventually, and I was like, you know what, I'm gonna fucking do YouTube this year. Let's see what happens.

Yeah. And now you upload so, so much. Like, how many videos have you done in total?

Well, twice a week since January 2017. Twice a week. I haven't missed a video. So I don't know. I don't know what that total is.

Does someone do the math here? That's an insane amount. But you're still kind of new to the game. Like 2017.

Yeah.

Like, you know, that's pretty quick. Your channel's on well over a million subscribers now. And so you started off with fitness videos, correct?

It was a— I guess there was some fitness and some dating from the beginning. The mixture was there from the beginning.

Okay, okay, nice. And so what made you choose like dating? Okay, a lot of people fitness, you know, everyone goes to the gym and they get results. They said, I'm going to talk about them. Why dating for you? Was it something that you struggled with and you wanted to help other guys?

Yeah, right. I sucked. I couldn't— I had no confidence with women, man. I was scared to talk to girls in college. Like, I lost— I lost my virginity when I was 21, which is later than most in this day and age.

15 over here.

There you go.

No, that's not cool. Well, hey, at 15, I don't—

yeah, I didn't even know I didn't even know anything, you know, but, um, I struggled a lot with it and then I kind of became something that I had to like consciously— because I graduated from college, in my last year of college I had some like drunken hookups here and there because I just like started just trying. I didn't know what I was doing, but I just started like just trying, drunkenly trying.

Yeah.

So it works every once in a while. And, uh, but then I left, I left university, there was not like a bunch of girls around me anymore and I was like, man, I gotta have to figure out how to like actually turn this into a skill or I'm gonna be lonely forever. And I was like, there's a lot of pain associated there, right? So, so little by little, I started like challenging myself to do these social challenges. And then when I started on YouTube, was like, part of it was just like sharing that journey of like, hey, these are some things that have helped me boost my confidence, get over my social anxiety. And then some of the first videos I uploaded were like approaching girls on the streets in Boston.

Yeah.

And those are the ones that like went viral when I had no subscribers. And that's what I built like probably my first 100K subscribers on, was like these approaching videos.

Okay, nice. And so what are your tips for guys who have no confidence, they need to learn how to approach girls, They don't want to make a YouTube video approaching them. They want to start small. What's your tips for guys who need to build up their confidence?

I think like the simplest thing you can do is just approach one girl every single day. Yeah. And like, it doesn't— maybe you don't have to ask her out. Maybe it's at the girl working at like— or not, maybe not working, but a girl at the grocery store. Maybe it's at the gym. Maybe it's just walking down the sidewalk. Maybe it's at the cafe. But just like, even if you're just saying like, hey, what, you know, that drink looks cool. I'm trying to figure out the Starbucks menu. You know, what was that drink?

Like, just like get yourself in wraps.

Yeah, reps. No, exactly. Get yourself in the habit of starting conversations with girls you find attractive, because if you do that for like even a few weeks now, like, it starts to feel natural because it's like a natural part of your day. And then maybe you start saying, well, you know what, you seem like a cool girl, you hang out sometime. Like, you know, you work up to that.

Yeah, yeah. And then you get a little bit more daring with what you say and a little bit more ballsy with your approach. And so now there's so many terms in the dating and fitness world.

What is a cold approach, and what's the, what's the opposite of a cold approach?

Because I hear that a lot.

So a A cold approach is when you're in Boston and it's cold out.

You gotta wear two jackets. Ireland's the same.

Yes, below, below, uh, zero Celsius. No, a cold approach is when you deal— there's no— it's random, right? It's random. There's no connection. You don't know the girl.

You don't—

it's not a friend of a friend. It's just a random person. So a random girl you see at the gym, a random girl you see at the bar, a random girl at the grocery store. That's a cold approach. A warm approach would be when there's some, like, some familiarity. So usually that might be a friend of a friend or something like that. Yeah.

Yeah. And so the social proof is something that I hear a lot as well. So do you think having a good social media presence, does that add to your social proof?

Well, yeah, bro, I think in 2023, like, social proof almost equals social media. Before, I think it would be more like how you presented yourself. You know, if you walked into the bar, did you know the bouncer? If you walked into the gym, you kind of friends with everyone. And that still works. That still gives like a appearance of, oh, this guy knows people, people know this guy, he must be a cool guy. But like, for the better, for the worst, probably for the worst, like, so society has become like succumbed to this like social media presence. So I think that at the very least, if you're a Gabs, I tell guys who go through my coaching program this, we help them optimize their photos that they can use for online dating. But also just like, I'm like, bro, just post them on your Instagram. I don't care if you don't have any followers, but like when you meet a girl, she's gonna find your Instagram, she's gonna look at it, and at bare minimum have photos that make you look attractive, like bare, bare minimum.

Okay, so do Do you think social media has improved the dating world or improved the world of relationships, or do you think it's made it worse?

I think it's made it worse. Maybe it's made it— if you're like, if you can build a social media following, it's gonna be easier for you, at least for like casual hookups and quickly meeting girls. But I think, I think dating apps, I think social media, I think OnlyFans, I think— I mean, those are probably the main ones. Yeah, even like the smartphone, right? I think like all these things have made it harder to find real connections because you feel like at any moment, especially if you're a guy who status or as an attractive girl, you know, you don't even feel, you know, at any minute, like, bro, I got so many options if I'll pick up my phone. So like, why am I going to like really invest that much time into this one person? So I think it's harder to find connections. Everyone kind of feels that way.

Yeah. It's like you go into a hot girl's DMs and like Drake is in the DMs.

Like, they're not even exaggerating. Yeah. Yeah.

Seriously. Yeah. Like there's NFL players, there's basketball players, and it's like these aren't even girls with like a million followers. They're girls like 10K followers who are just super hot. And so that's what you're competing against. Yeah. So, so it's tough and it's made things a lot more transactional, you know, like girls will easily just drop, you know, drop ship and go off to the next guy. Yes, it's definitely made it more difficult. And so do you think that, is there anything, any ways that a guy can really improve his social media presence or his dating profile? What's your like foundational, your top tips? For a guy to improve his online presence?

Yeah, so of course, like, you guys got to get— you just have to get good photos of yourself. But for a lot of guys, I think that actually starts with, like, optimizing their appearance, because most men don't prioritize too much, like, their exact style, how they're choosing their outfits, even their haircut or their facial hair, like, because maybe it feels a bit feminine, maybe is a bit feminine to, like, to be, like, to think about it, analyze it like that. But it's also like the reality of the world we live in. So like when guys come into our coaching program, for example, we'll start just like doing like almost like a visual audit of them and be like, all right, man, like, you know, for sure you have to like throw away your whole wardrobe and like start with these basics because like, no, it was like, you know, the stuff you're wearing makes you look like you're back in high school or like you have like that type of like dad style that's not going to show you in an attractive way. But I think once you get like some solid outfits, once you at least get like a fresh haircut that matches your face shape, you know, facial hair if you can, you rock the— but if you're gonna— I say if you're clean shaven though, you gotta be low body fat. Because if you're clean shaven and not low body fat, you start to look like the gamer in like the basement, you know what I mean?

The Cheetos caught up in your beard.

Yeah, yeah.

So we have sort the wardrobe, we have get in shape. And then, so give us one more tip.

So I mean, once you've like— most people, you probably don't— because getting in shape can take like some months, right? And you should do it for a lot of reasons. But at first, at least if you sort the wardrobe, sort the facial hair, sort the haircut, Now you find like a local photographer, get some photos on your Instagram, scroll through, find some guys you follow, maybe like Rob, you do really great photos. Yeah, thank you. I used to, but then when Reels started becoming a thing, I just stopped posting photos, man.

Killing it on the Reels.

But find some inspiration photos, take some screenshots. If you have a couple hours with a photographer, be like, I got these 4 outfits, I want to recreate these like 5 or 6 photos, because otherwise you might have a guy who's like, trying to shoot like headshots for like a wedding or like the college yearbook, you know? And then now maybe you at least have 5 or 6 solid photos. Put that on a dating profile and you're gonna start getting matches because you're gonna be levels above like the average dude.

Yeah, when I ever see a girl's profile and it's just the head, I'm like, there's something going on here.

No, there is though. No, there is, there is. That's a red flag.

Yeah, that's a red flag. That brings us on perfectly. Okay, I've got so much to cover here. Okay, so when you're looking at a girl, be it online or in person, what are some of the main, the biggest red flags that you see?

So I think the first one is— I can, I can list a lot of them.

Oh well, we've got time. And I think this is like the most important thing.

No, it is, because of what we're talking about. And the more like, at least the more obviously toxic dating environment, I think part of it is being able to identify red flags and not necessarily just run, but at least when you see a red flag And that's a lot of times you need to like set a boundary with the girl. Hey, like, you know, that's not, that's not going to slide with me. Because I think some girls are so used to walking over so many of the simpy guys out here, because that's what most guys have become, that that's like, they're— you can't even— you almost can't fault the girl for it. Because like, if guys are just gonna let her do whatever she wants and still be there to hang out with her and still bring her flowers and just doing whatever, it's like normal that she's gonna behave in a little bit of a entitled way, right?

Yeah.

So you need to also be able to like calmly set the boundary, you know, that's not cool with me. And then I think a lot of girls will then be like, oh, this guy's different, I need to actually behave around this guy. And that actually make you more attractive too because you'll stand out. But the biggest red flag, I think, is when girls have a very like entitled attitude.

Yeah.

And it's just like a vibe that comes across. You meet a girl and she's almost like you're trying to have a normal conversation and she's trying to like manipulated. So you're like competing for attention. Maybe she's looking at her phone. Maybe she's only talking about herself. She's not asking any questions about you. And with that one, that's not really a boundary you can set. Usually that's like probably too far gone. You just move on.

Exactly. Yeah, cut your losses. Yeah. And I've also seen one as well, daddy issues. Yeah, explain that.

Well, I think that we all have like, we inherit a lot of things psychologically from our parents, right? I think we tend to model our lives after our parents just because when we're in our like developmental stages, I think We think, oh, our parents' relationship, that's what a normal relationship is. Uh, oh, my dad is kind of abusive towards my mom, or vice versa. Oh, that's kind of like the normal thing. So I think that issues coming from our parents like affect all of us in different ways. I mean, daddy issues in particular usually would be if a girl like always felt like maybe she— there could be one thing or another. She could be always feel like she was trying to prove herself to her dad, she's always trying to prove herself to guys. Maybe that leads her to sleeping around more because that's how she feels that she gets the validation. Yeah. There can be a lot of things, but I think like it's important when you get to know— A, it's important to kind of analyze your own, I think your own family life and your own parents and maybe see, oh, like this is a strength my parents had. My dad was very hardworking, but maybe he was a bit of like a pushover or something. So maybe I need to be better in that way because otherwise I think our default path is just to like copy and paste our parents' life. But also when you meet a girl, like not right away, but little by little, you'll start to see like what's her relationship like with her family? What's her parents' relationship like? And if she has no relationship with her family, she's talking trash about her parents. Not that she can't break the chain and overcome it, but it's going to be tough.

It's going to be much more difficult. They say like the relationship a girl has with her father is the relationship she has with all men.

Yeah.

So yeah, it's definitely something to look out for. And so now on a more positive note, what are some green flags that you look for in a girl?

Well, I think the biggest green flag is like the opposite of the biggest red flag. So like when you meet her, she's showing interest in your life. She's asking you, she's actually trying to get to know you. When you're trying to set up a date, you're still probably gonna have to be the one the first few days who like actually arranges the plans. But like, she makes it easy. Oh yeah, I can hang out this week. Oh, you know, 8 PM sounds great, like I'll be there. Not like, I'm busy this week, but like, but no, she's not also like suggesting a plan, you know. So when girls make it difficult.

Yeah, and some loyalty as well. I think also if she's got long-term friends, like I know some girls that they jump around from friend group to friend group. Yeah, this is, this is a good one. They jump around to friend group to friend group and they have no long-term friends. And so that says a lot.

What do you think that says?

I think it says that they're, they're like borderline sociopathic, psychopathic. And you know, they're having constant fallouts with their friends, never mind with guys. Like, if she's got about 10, 20 boyfriends, you know, and it's like, oh, they're all, they're all the problem. Maybe it was you. Yeah, you know what I mean? So that, that's one I look for a lot. But if she's got her friends, like, since, you know, she's really young and she's got all long-term friends That's one that I look for.

That's a good one. I haven't thought about that.

Yeah, yeah, there you go. And so let's say you are taking on a client for dating coaching. Now with me, I do fitness coaching, right? So the first thing that I do when someone comes on board, I look at their routine, I look at their training, their nutrition, and their overall lifestyle. So these are all pretty straightforward. You look at macros, calories, training plan.

Yeah.

What do you give a guy when he comes into your program? Because it's What training program do you give him? You have 10 reps of go up and talk to the girl in the cashier. Like, so run it through it as if you just onboarded a client, because I think this is all like super interesting, and I think there's a lot of like misconception behind it that people think it's kind of like, you know, um, RSD, Real Social Dynamics, or Mystery. Yeah, remember him back in the day? I think people think there's like this, um, this like kind of creepy thing with guys trying to get better with dating, and I think that's, that's such BS. It's You can get a business coach, you can get a fitness coach, a relationship coach. Like, don't even call dating coaching, call relationship coaching. That's one of the biggest parts of your life.

Well, a lot of the guys are like really successful guys is the thing. The funny thing, like a lot of them are very successful in other aspects of their life, you know, especially in their career. They just have— they've kind of just like put it off, you know. They've always felt kind of intimidated by it, or they had one relationship that So a lot of it is just— what a lot of it's working with them on the calls, like when they're taught, when they're in a situation with a specific girl, because that's when the insecurities creep in, even if they kind of understand what they should do. And you can kind of be their blind spot in those times and help them relearn, like, you know, how do you bring a girl through the first few stages? And then after the first date, you know, that's, that's when a lot of guys mess up as well, because like the date went well, this girl's awesome, and then they just start trying to text her every day, trying to hang out with her every day. Yeah, but what we do first, the first thing is kind of that visual audit we talked about, because the, the fact is that even though ideally you have the confidence to approach girls in person and you're always doing this, in the reality we live in, like, if you can optimize your dating profile, that's just going to allow you to get like a lot of experience very quick because you're gonna be able to set up 2, 3 dates a week. Yeah, even if you're not that attractive a guy, even if you— once you've optimized the profile And now you can get a lot of like quick experience and actually build confidence like on dates with girls. Um, but a lot of it is also like supplying them with like a system, and it's not like a mystery method thing where there's like these like the 12 steps to like— there's a lot of— oh, I don't know how familiar you are with the old like PUA, pickup artist terms, like, like negging, DHV. It's not that type of thing. It's a more like normal system, but showing guys that, hey, there is like a repeatable process from the approach to asking her out to how to text to set up the first date, to how to run the first date, to what to do after the first date, so that they don't feel that, you know, because a lot of times I think guys who— and I'm talking personal experience in the past when I was really shy and nervous around girls, I just, once I was there with a girl, my mind would go blank and I feel like I just didn't know like what was going on in the world was going on. So like allowing them to have like a simple system that they always know what the next step is so they're not like freaking out, you know.

Yeah, I remember I— this is how I got into this whole world, and that's why Because I know all the terms you said, right? So something that a lot of people don't know about me, yeah, they see the fitness content I put out, but I actually went down a PUA rabbit hole. So I was in like a 6-year relationship at the very start of YouTube before any of that. We broke up, you know, we're still really young. And then I noticed that like for most of my teen years and early 20s, I'd never been single and I'd no idea how to talk to girls. I mean, I was absolutely terrible. I would just run out of things to say. I'd feel really awkward. And so of course, like everything in life, I learned from YouTube. YouTube is the— it's got your answer to everything. Learn how to edit, go on YouTube. Learn how to get challenged, DMV, Jack, everything is on YouTube. You're probably watching this right now on YouTube. So I went on YouTube and I actually found RSD, Tyler.

Yeah, yeah.

So he's hilarious.

He's one of the Godfathers.

He is hilarious. Like, and so I was like, oh, this isn't actually creepy, it's all just about like improving your confidence. And most of it was so funny. Like, he's actually hilarious.

Yeah, yeah.

I was like, this is like watching stand-up comedy.

Well, a lot of it's like— well, first of all, I think every— and because you've mentioned this earlier, like, it's not something to be ashamed about. Most guys don't admit that they've done this, but pretty much every guy I know, once I'm like— especially because people know I make this content— once I was talking to a guy, maybe we've had like a beer, like it always comes, it always comes out to like, oh, bro, by the way, like, you know, I've been through all that. I think most guys, if it makes anyone feel better, like most guys have gone down that rabbit hole because, I mean, there's some very, very few, I think, gifted men where everything that maybe just made sense for them. But for the most part, even people who are confident with girls, they go through a tough breakup and then they feel like they lost their game and things like that.

So yeah, definitely. No, I was, I was so awkward. And again, you know, I just, I've watched some stuff and I learned a lot and applied it. And then, you know, you go out, you're dating, you're having fun, and now I'm in a great relationship. Yeah. So what do you think is the long-term goal of a guy? So let's say you take him into your coaching program, he does great, he kills it, you know, he starts dating and everything. What's the long-term goal? Is it to like be in a solid relationship?

Well, I mean, it's each person. Everyone has a different, right? Yeah. We don't—

some people want to just go smash everything.

No, exactly. We have different guys who come in. I think most guys who come in do want to work towards having like a I like the end, whatever. This is almost controversial now because I think people are so down on, uh, relationships and marriage because of divorce rates and things that are real. Yeah, but I think, uh, most guys deep down still do want a relationship with a cool girl. They can, they can like level up together and have like a crazy experience of life together, even though I think on the surface some guys are like, man, I just want to like slay, you know, spin plates. Yeah, but then once you do that, there's some people who want to do that forever, and that's fine. I don't think anything wrong with that, right? Like George Clooney was doing that. He was doing that late in his life, but, um, he's still doing it.

Yeah, probably still doing Silver Fox.

Uh, I think for most guys, like, from my experience, once I proved to myself that I was able to do that, then I— my mindset changed a bit because it was always myself. At first it was like my friends I was trying to prove it to, but then even once I proved it to them, they saw me going on dates all the time, I still hadn't really proved it to myself. I still felt like maybe I was getting lucky even after several years of like, you know, going on many, many, many dates.

Yeah.

But then it got to a point where I was actually comfortable with myself, like, hey, like, obviously I understand how to talk to girls and meet different girls than the past I thought were too attractive or whatnot. And then at that point, my mindset shifted a little bit, I think. Not that I was immediately trying to lock down the next girl, but that as I was dating girls casually— and I still think that's the best thing, is to kind of like at first date casually, otherwise you put pressure on it, you start to like tell yourself the story, she's gonna be this awesome girlfriend, and then you sometimes enter the relationship just because you're feeling like lonely or because you want it to work out. But as I was dating girls casually, I was starting to more like, I think, more screen things over the— after a few weeks. Ah, this is a girl I'm just gonna keep it casual with, or maybe do we like keep hanging out with this girl a bit longer and see what happens?

Yeah, I remember when— so I broke up from that relationship when I was about 24 or even younger, and I went on like for 3 years, even like even to the point where I went on Love Island, like turbo single. Yeah. And I was, yeah, but a lot of failed miserably.

We got to go there a lot of times. You got to go like overboard of the single life.

Exactly. And you get everything out of your system. And, but then it got to a stage where DMing and like spinning plates and everything, it was just so chaotic, you know? Like I think the amount of time—

It distracts you.

Yeah, it distracts you. The amount of time and effort effort that it takes to be single and to, you know, be actively dating and spinning plates and talking to different girls is like my screen time. Yeah, way up.

Sometimes you and I, you, I developed like a system in like Excel one time to keep track of everything.

No way.

This is the beginning. This is the beginning, bro. Um, but it wasn't, it wasn't necessary really. I was overcomplicating things. Yeah, but there's a lot of guys in our program also, they start to get like multiple dates, but they're getting new matches on online dating. And the simple fix for this is that I learned and I tell them is like, well, if you're like, if you already set up a few dates this week, just don't message any of your new matches. Like, leave them in the queue and then deal with them like, deal with them next week. Because the problem is you get like big eyes and you're like, oh my God, I have this ability. And you just, you spend almost too much time sometimes spinning the plates and setting up the dates.

But yeah, yeah, this is a good rhyme there. But I remember, so I know my, my answer to this, but if you were to jump in a time machine and you are going to be, you jump out of time machine, you're 20 years old. What advice would you give yourself, or what would you do differently, um, with approaching girls and dating, and also just life in general?

I mean, it's tough because like everything I did led me to where I am now. I'm very happy with things now, so I might not, I might not tinker with anything. Yeah, I might not put any, like, put a wrench in the plan. Yeah, if anything, it would just be like just have started doing the things that I did just a bit earlier. Yeah, like I put off the dating thing for a while. For a while I was watching the RSD videos or reading the Rules of the Game, Neil Strauss and these other books, but not actually putting it into practice. But perhaps that's also part of the process is slowly trying to understand things and build up the confidence. But yeah, to do it sooner, if anything. Yeah.

So I remember, so I, it's always a controversial statement when I say this, but someone goes, Rob, do you have any regrets in life? And I say going to college for 2 years because if I just dropped out earlier, I would be 2 years ahead of where I am now.

Yeah. Yeah.

So that, that's the only one that I can think of. And in terms of dating, so what I learned the most was when I went from in a relationship to single. And again, I didn't have a clue what to do. The biggest thing for me, so I went from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. Because when you are desperate and needy, that is what I found is the most unattractive thing a man can be.

Yeah, when you're in that mindset, sometimes you can't break yourself out of it. When I was in that mindset, I you almost know that you're gonna mess up. Every girl that you're like in communication with, you just know deep down you're gonna mess it up and you can't help yourself. You're just like sabotaging yourself. Because I used to do the same thing and I'd be like, I'm just— I would be trying to like text her every day even though I knew it wasn't the right thing to do. But like, you're right, it's because I was in a scarcity mindset and I was afraid that this might be the last attractive girl who gives me a chance.

Yeah. And so would you consider yourself in the red pill community or the manosphere? For the content that you put out?

I mean, it's tough because people get so like, people are so aggressive about everything online these days, man. I mean, I'd say yes, but everyone has a bit of a different definition what the red pill and the manosphere means. But, uh, yeah, I'd say yes. Yeah.

And what are your thoughts on MGTOW?

Look, people can do what they want in life. I'm always all for people having their personal freedom to choose which path they want to take in life, and that's all good. If you want spin plates, that's great. If you want to find a wife, that's great. If you want to be in an open relationship, that's great. Just like actually set that boundary with the other person. Don't just cheat on them, right? Like, yeah, let that be a conversation. If you want to go MGTOW, that, that's fine. My worry is a lot of men go MGTOW out of pain rather than trying to optimize their life.

Yeah, yeah.

The example I like to use here, the parallel is like, and you know, you've started businesses, you've had to make those investments. When you make an investment, whether it's in stocks, crypto, a new business, there's always a risk that you're going to lose that investment. Yeah. And for a lot of people, they don't invest because of that, right? Yeah. To me, that's the same as someone going MGTOW is like, well, like, I could put my trust in the girl and she could take advantage of me and cheat on me, so I'm just not going to date at all. And that's fine if that's your life philosophy. For me, I'd prefer to make investments, try and build businesses, take risks, you know, learn my lessons, grow financially, grow in my career. And the same thing in dating. I'm married now to Julia. I love Julia, absolutely adore her. But when you get into a relationship with a girl, you also have to accept that it might not be her cheating on you, but you also have to accept there's always the possibility that something could go awry weeks, months, years down into the line. The same way when you make a business investment, something could go wrong. But that's, for me, is not going to be a reason personally to be like, well, I'm just going to stay away from girls, or I'm just going to stay away from business. I think you take the risk and you actually try and live a fulfilling life rather than just avoiding something because it's uncomfortable. Very nice. And so you mentioned business.

Investments there. You've got a lot of things going on. Run us through them because there are quite a few. So run through them there and what they are and any tips and advice as well of starting these types of businesses.

Yeah. So first would be, I guess, Edge. So everything I'm wearing is usually Edge. Clothing's a pain in the ass. If I was to go back in time, I don't know that I would've started a clothing business because not only do you have physical inventory, Do you have long lead times for production? Not the best, like most favorable payment terms in terms of like pay up front and then like turning a profit months later. You have different sizing. So it's not like with supplements, like someone, they don't return a pre-workout because like it didn't fit me, right? Like when that happens with clothing. So there's a lot of kind of like waste that goes into it. And it's also very like ultra competitive. Now that we've been doing it for so many years, we've figured out like scalable marketing strategies. It's worked so that I would say don't get in clothing unless you have like an absolute passion and you're ready to like to go through the ups and the downs for some years before you figure it out. But that being said, we also started as very small. The first launch was like 200 tank tops and 200 t-shirts. And then I went from there to like double that. Oh, we can sell that out? All right, let's double that. Oh, we can sell that out? And eventually one time I doubled it and we didn't, you know, sell it out. It's like, okay, now we have to kind of like optimize a little bit more how we're doing things, find the right products. Like for us, for example, joggers, like I never thought like this, but if you release a bunch of different products, you should be analyzing, hey, which of these is bringing in the most new customers? Which of these leads to more like returning customer revenue? And for us, like our joggers joggers are that product. So now we put like almost all of our advertising spin towards joggers. Almost all of our inventory is joggers. Whereas before I'd be like, man, these tank tops are always still in stock, but then I would just still order a bunch of tank tops and it's like, well, I gotta, you have to like analyze that.

So, so double down on your strengths in a way. Yeah. Yeah.

Be able to analyze that.

Yeah. And what was the biggest mistakes you've made when you were starting Edge? Because I know there's so many guys and girls out there who want to start a clothing brand now. They're going to do it regardless, even though it's a bad idea. So just give them some— yeah, I, I've like, I've even done like some merch drops as well. Even that's stressful.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So what are you gonna do? Yeah, yeah, they're still gonna do it. So what are you— what's your advice for someone who, you know, wants to start a clothing brand? What was the biggest mistake you made?

I would say aside from that, like once you're starting to get a little bit of scale, not analyzing which of your products are are the best for bringing in new revenue. When you're— eventually, okay, so at first I fulfilled orders out of my apartment. A lot of people do that at first, right? They get the label printer and we did that for a few launches, but then, you know, once we doubled the inventory 3 times, it took up the whole apartment and we're like, this is stupid. We can't live in our— like now we're just paying for like a warehouse. Yeah. It's way too expensive because it's downtown Austin. But, um, I would say when you choose a fulfillment center, they call it 3PL. Unless you're going to, you know, rent out your own warehouse, pay your own employees, I think it's more efficient just to find like a fulfillment warehouse. Try and like find one that you can get some like references from other people who've used it and talk to them about it. Because at first we chose one, we actually bought from a couple, but one of them, they just kept losing our stuff. Like they, it would be marked as delivered to them. They'd be like, oh, like half the boxes, like we don't know where they are. And then that led to a lot of like lost money, honestly, at a time when we couldn't afford to lose that much money. And there's always going to be shipping mistakes at scale. Like, yeah, there's hundreds and hundreds of orders going out. There's always going to be ones that get messed up and that's okay. But, um, when you pick the fulfillment warehouse, just like ask them for— if you don't know anyone who personally referenced you to them, which would be more ideal, find someone who can give you like a personal reference. But if not, like ask them, hey, do you have some people I can talk to, some of your clients? Because we messed that up pretty big.

And how would you go about finding a manufacturer as well? That's what I found extremely difficult. Yeah.

I mean, just go Alibaba.com. That's gonna— you go on there and it's gonna basically look like a catalog. It's a bunch of images that they've ripped off from like popular clothing brands.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You'll find some— you'll see some Edge on there.

Yeah. That's how you know you're doing well.

They're just using those usually as like placement images, but you're going to want to like go on there, talk to— if you find one you can actually communicate with, sometimes the language barriers to find one, but these are essentially they're not matching you right with the, with like the warehouse that manufactures the things. They're matching you with like a, like a broker who then knows, like, that has connections to do it. Yeah. And we also had used a few of those that were very bad. They had— they wouldn't negotiate at all if the clothing were not on point. They wouldn't take the responsibility for it. So like, find one you can communicate with well and then get samples done. Even if it's the same sample, get samples done from like 4 or 5 of them and then kind of like try and choose the one that did the best job at that.

Yeah. Okay. So we have the dating coaching. We have the clothing. We also have the supplements.

So that's newer. Yeah.

Yeah. This man does it all. Seriously.

So with the supplements, it's in a, that's one. All the other businesses, I kind of like would say I bootstrapped them. Meaning that like, I just like, rather than paying people to do anything with all those, I grinded up everything. Even a lot of the graphic design work, the web design. Like I did it all myself. With this one, We took a different strategy where we kind of like paid people to come up with the visual identity of the brand, pay people to develop the website, put a bunch of money into paid ads right away. And I probably should have like gone halfway there instead of going all the way there because it is profitable. But we had one good launch to my audience. It was this pre-workout in two flavors, protein in one flavor. Yeah. But it didn't move after that initial launch with as much velocity as we had hoped. We haven't had a lot of luck with paid advertising being profitable. I think the margins have gotten a bit worse since like the pandemic and supply chain stuff, which should be done. But I guess it's still an issue with like raw ingredients for supplements. So now we're trying to find like, we're trying to find our joggers, right? We're trying to find what the product is that is differentiated enough that we can put some paid ad spend behind and that can bring people in and then open them up to the other supplements. Because I mean, they truly are like top tier. But that's another problem is I thought just formulating them and making them like clearly better if you read the label than other competitors would be enough. But if every brand is advertising, we have the top-tier formula, it's the most premium formula, the best dose of everything. It almost doesn't matter that ours is the best because it's just like who's screaming it the loudest. It doesn't really matter.

That's so true.

Yeah.

That's a good one. And so we're on business number 3.

Yeah.

Number 4, you got the Beefs Me Up as well.

That's the silent killer.

Yes, the silent killer. That's the silent killer. You told me an interesting way how that came about. Like there was— it wasn't your typical— you got some email. Yeah, yeah. There was an interesting story behind you developing that.

So I was selling like PDF programs, then I did like an online course website where there's some videos, you know, the programs listed below, and then like it links you to like an Excel spreadsheet. We keep track of your sets and reps. And then I was like, look, I want to be able to build like a platform that can not just like— you don't have to go over the Excel spreadsheet and click over here. It's all together. Not only does it keep track of your weight, it actually implements progressive overload for you based on how your body weight adjusts. It automatically adjusts your macros. You keep losing or keep gaining, and it's all built into one thing. And there's a lot of different brands that white label them, right? And they kind of do them for a lot of influencers. And I was thinking about going that way with them. I think you've had some experience with that.

Yeah, yeah.

They'll build it for free. They'll do a profit share with you. The problem is they didn't want to build this extra functionality until we tested it and they'd already made some money, basically. Then at that point, we can cross that bridge. And I was I was kind of working with a couple of them to see which would get me a little bit closer to where I was at. But I was also talking about in the YouTube videos, and that's where like, that's one of those like side benefits of having a YouTube channel you don't really think about. Yeah. Because I got an email from a guy in Germany whose dad owns like a top development company. They work with like Audi and a bunch of these big German brands. And I got on a FaceTime call with them and the dad was all like confused. He didn't know, but he was like, he's the head of the software company. He had no idea who I was. It was kind of like, kind of a confusing thing, but they ended up working with me from like ground one, working with like UI developers to build out like the visual interface and then from there develop the actual app. And then with them every few months we'll release like an update that adds some functionality based on what people want. So that was a big, relatively big investment up front. I think I paid $50K up front for the initial development and then like each time beyond that it's kind of just based on whatever hours the developers implement. But that is, I mean, a subscription-based, so it's monthly or yearly subscriptions, at least to a lot of recurring revenue because luckily it's a good app and we have good retention rates because once people start using it in the gym, they want to keep being able to track their weights on there and whatnot. And we also add new programs all the time so that if you're part of the app, it doesn't feel like it's getting stale. There's always a new program available. You can also customize. You can choose the program, then any exercise you don't want to do, you can swap it out. If you're doing deadlift, my back's not that good, you can click the button to swap it out. It'll give you a list of options to replace it with that still target the posterior chain. But, that's been great because it's almost no cost when you compare it to something like Edger Supplements.

Man, digital. So, of course, I'm similar, I do online coaching app and everything. And then, I've had Fuel Cakes relaunch at the moment. Again, it actually looks like a box, the original box. Fuel tacos. And yeah, I've done some merch as well and physical stuff compared to digital stuff.

I like it because I love being able to like, to like rep the brand. And then when you see someone wearing it, you're like, oh shit, bro, man, what's going on? But yeah, bro, this digital stuff, that'd be actually maybe the biggest advice, especially if people are following the influencer path and they're not just doing pure, even if you're doing pure business though, like if you can find a digital and then maybe it's not a product, maybe it's a service. Maybe you get really good running Facebook ads for people or building websites. That is— you're going to be a lot more profitable than if you go the physical product, at least up front. At least up front.

That's my advice as well for people who, first of all, want to live a kind of nomad lifestyle. You want to be able to travel the world. You want to be able to set up in Marbella is find a digital product. And people think like, oh, it just has to be online coaching. No, there's like ads, there's that consulting, there's so much stuff. There's actually more digital stuff than physical stuff.

No, and you can experiment with different things, right? You might not be the first thing that you try, but yeah, I would agree. Digital things is a lot easier. It's also easier from like a tax and paperwork standpoint because you're not— the amount of expense is going to be so much less than when you're dealing with physical products. And you don't— and you're when you pay a warehouse, for example, to fulfill orders, you're not only paying them a few dollars to ship out each order, you're also paying them to the inventory storage. And when you have a bigger brand, you start to hold more inventory. That turns into thousands of dollars per week just for the whole— now granted, you're not paying a warehouse lease on a warehouse, but still it's a significant expense.

Storage.

Yeah. And you can do a big— you can do a huge top line number for some companies. You probably hear their top line numbers, so many million. but their profit margin, it's almost always going to be definitely less than 50%. But the bigger the brand, a lot of times the smaller the profit margin, because now they're paying ads, they're paying influencers, they're paying a bunch of employees, a bunch of agencies they're working with, they're paying for the warehouse. So not that you can't do that, but the digital stuff is like, it's clean. Save yourself some anxiety.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You see them notifications coming in. It's pure. So we've You've got a lot of different sources of income there. What is your bread and butter? What's your top earner?

Well, Edge is the top, top line number in terms of overall revenue.

Yeah.

In terms of pure profit, it's the Beastly app because there's almost no cost associated with it. Yeah.

And so on that topic, right, you're pretty hardcore entrepreneur. You know, like that is the definition of an entrepreneur. Everything you just said, you're not only just doing one thing, you're doing money. Like, that's fucking baller. Do you think that is attractive to women? How important do you think money is for getting women?

I mean, it's definitely important. It's one of those things that the same way, like, being in shape is going to help. Yeah, having money is going to help. Being in shape and having money is really going to help.

You're going to have a great time then.

Regardless though, you have to be able to, like, when you see the opportunity, you have to capitalize on. Because I see all these comments online that are like, just focus on yourself, King. And it's like, I know, I get it, and that is the right— but are they saying King in the comment? I don't know. But it is the, uh, it is the right idea, right? Focus on your money, focus on your body, focus on your habits. But also, like, with the opportunities there, it's on you to make it happen.

It's not—

it's the girls. Doesn't matter how much money you have or how good looking you are, like, girls aren't just going to throw themselves on you. Maybe they'll slide in your DMs and say hey, but it's still going to be on you to, like, set up the logistics and set up the date. You still gotta know what you're doing. Yeah.

And so I'm, I'm dating, right? I'm the— set up the date. Okay, I did a video, I dipped into your world. I saw a little bit. I dipped in. I saw, and I— it was a thumbnail in the, uh, me and Linda in the G-Wagon. Everyone's like, click! Views are, views are nice and high on that. I'm like, maybe I should ditch the fitness stuff. So in that video, I was talking about who should pay for the first date. So who do you think should pay for the first date?

I mean, I think the man should pay for several reasons.

I can't believe people disagreed when I said that. Go on.

No, I know, I know, a lot of people are like, no, but I want women to equally invest. And look, you look— no, it's, it's, it depends, right? Here's the thing, if you don't want to pay on the first date, you're going to attract like the boss babe type of girl that every guy says they don't want. So I think if you want to not pay on the first date and you're the girl to equally contribute financially, that's fine, but also be prepared that that's the type of girl it's going to work with, right? Yeah. Okay, a few reasons. Reason 1, usually almost always is the man who's inviting the girl out, setting up the date. Yeah, you invite someone out for plans and you set plans it's kind of like on you to, uh, to pay for it. Yeah. Also, go grab a coffee or drinks. Don't take a girl out to dinner on the first date. Not because you're trying to save money— that's a side benefit— but also it creates like an awkward, like, interview mode type thing. It's less casual.

Yeah, especially when you're sitting directly across from each other.

When you could drink, sit next to each other at the bar so you can playfully kind of touch her, tease her a little bit. It's much better.

It's very good tip. Yeah.

So first of all, like, you invited her out, you pay. Second, we know that women find find financial success attractive. And it's not only because you can buy them the Gucci bag or whatever, it's also because like it's a sign of a guy who's like grinding, who has ambition, who's working hard on his goals. And all of those are traits that are attractive to women. So, and the third one is just like avoid the awkwardness. And like on the first date, the last thing you want is to have like, like a weird awkward confrontation. Um, I've had some of those, but I took one girl out, man, this is in Boston, I had no money and we had two drinks at this really expensive And that's my fault. So I'm going to go back and say I should have taken responsibility after the first drink and ended it. And the bill came out, it was like a couple hundred dollars. And I was like, we're splitting this. I didn't care. I wasn't trying to— I knew I was going home after that. I wasn't even trying to bring her home. Yeah. But not my brightest hour. But again, what I should have done there is after one drink, had the balls to be like, hey, it was nice meeting you tonight. I don't think really at the same spot in our life right now. I wish you the best. And then I should have got the bill then and moved on. On. But yeah, the third reason is because you just want to avoid like a moment of awkwardness on the first date. Usually you're trying to get to know her, maybe you're trying to bring her back to your place after that, maybe you just want to have a, you know, clean transition to the second date. Like, why turn it into a thing about, about paying for it? But yeah, this is— it's obvious, just you should pay for the first date.

I know, like, I can't believe— you know, see, my, my audience is like 95% men, so 95% of the comments were like, oh yeah, definitely, you know, old school, pay it. If you ask someone Hey, then there's a few people like, oh, I think your advice was too harsh because I said if a guy isn't in position to pay for the girl's date, then I'm like, he needs to go off and do some work. Yeah, instead of chasing around women. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, I can't believe someone actually disagreed with my opinion. No, but I'm joking, everyone. I hadn't even— like, I replied to the comment, I was like, hey, yeah, I respect your opinion. I never—

but it's true, if you can't afford $20 for drinks to invite a girl out, like, there's some priorities that need to be shifted there. But also, I would say, just because I know some people like, oh, so she used to just pay for everything and she has no responsibilities. No, I wouldn't say that. I would say if, if on the first date it is what it is, pay for it. But if on like the second and third date she doesn't like offer to contribute, oh, can I get this one, or if we split this, even if you're still financially set up and you're just like, no, you know, I appreciate that, I'm still gonna pay for it. Yeah. That would be a red flag because now it's like maybe the girl's like taking advantage of you. It's a little bit of that vibe of like, I'm entitled and you need to like keep trying to win me over. It's like, no, you should also at least be offering, even if I'm gonna be like, no, put your card away, I got this. Yeah.

Okay. And so now you moved out to Marbella this year and there's definitely some interesting women around the scene. And on the topic of money as well, how would you spot a gold digger?

I think a lot of it's a vibe, to be honest. If they have that entitled vibe, they probably might be super high maintenance. They're always expecting a gift or something. I don't know if there's any way just upfront to spot a gold digger, unless maybe you look on her social media and all of her photos are with some designer bag or with a really— you scroll back, it's definitely some— she's on a private jet or some wealthy guy. Or she makes frequent trips to Dubai and Miami.

That's it. She's got Dubai, Miami, London in the bio. Just focus on yourself. Okay, that's actually such a funny one. Okay, and the best way— when you look at a girl's page and she's on private jet, multi-million dollar yachts, she is eating in the best locations, her stories are always a photo of like a Louis Vuitton bag, a story is her on her own. Yeah, then that is, you know, she's a pro, as you would say, an escort. And it's so crazy in in today's day of social media, it's like, it's so common now. And also all you have to do to spot a gold digger or an escort or whatever it is, all you have to do is do the maths. Okay, you don't have a job, you travel year round, and you don't have a boyfriend. That's like, where is the income? How are you paying for the yachts and the private jets? Probably like 50 grand.

Yeah, I would say if you're single and you're meeting single girls and they don't have a job, even if it's not like a serious career, but they don't have like some type of job, maybe if we're trying to really simplify it to the basic, maybe that's it.

Yeah, yeah, of course. No, then that's what you see. And, um, there's actually— I, I know my friends sent this WhatsApp group I'm in to these girls. They'll have like 3 million followers, okay? Like, I'm not joking. You know, they're from like Brazil or whatever, they're living in Dubai. And you say 3 million followers, maybe she's doing brand deals, maybe she's getting paid that, and they're actually escorts. Yeah, like legit. Like, I've seen them my own two eyes.

I'd love to sit down with those girls, but hey, Like, this is a serious business opportunity for you to capitalize. I know.

You don't need to be escorting anymore. Would you be interested? You could be flying men out. Yeah. Would you be interested in some fuel cakes? They sell like one box. Yeah, probably.

They probably don't have any buyers.

On the topic of Marbella, you moved here from the great USA. Pros and cons. How do you find it?

I'm happy to be here. Yeah. This is going to be your home base for the, maybe forever, but for the foreseeable future.

You're Spanish for people that don't know. My father's Spanish. I'm half Spanish, American. So I'm so good looking.

Thank you. So pros and cons. The main pro of the US is like the convenience factor of everything. You open up DoorDash, there's 18 million restaurants. You know, you go in Houston, you go down any street and there's like a Target, a Whole Foods, a Home Depot, like these massive stores everywhere. You can't get away from it.

America's greatest creation, Home Depot.

Maybe.

Mrs. Home Depot.

It's also good for like business stuff because a lot of times, like for example, if you're in the States, you probably get a lot of podcast guests like really, really quickly if you were there. The time zone as well, because most business happens there. Sometimes you have to work late here because we're on the European time zone. So these are all like convenience things though. I would say the main benefits of Spain, well, Marbella, the weather is just, it's like LA weather year round without the homeless people and the woke people as well.

Yeah, exactly.

LA, so you got that climate. You have the ocean here, you have the palm trees everywhere, you have the best gyms in the world. Yeah, not— that's not Spain, that's not even Europe, that's just Marbella.

That's actually like— people don't get it like until they come here. Like, it's absolutely wild. I'm actually trying out a new gym on Monday if you guys want to come. Max Beach, Max Fitness. Yeah, yeah, they just renovated.

I want to try that Oxygen one you've been going to.

It seems like a little— it's absolutely sick. It's nuts. But yeah, people don't understand the gyms here.

But Paddle is still my favorite one. But now I've been going to Elements a lot that you go to just because Paddle gets a a bit wild, a bit too much sometimes. Yeah, yeah, you can't like get in and out, you get stuck, you get caught up there.

Yeah, you know who I want to get on the pod actually? Because so quick one as well, you know that you mentioned you'd have Infinity Podcasts in America. Yeah, you know, so I'm trying to think who could I get in Marbella. Oh, I should get the owner of Paddle! I, I know him, you know, like we follow each other. That'd be an interesting—

yeah, to see that few other guys in March and then this summer here, I'm sure you've got a lot.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, they're putting So you haven't even been here during the summer.

September, the very end.

Yeah, we had that one pool party. Yeah, that was the quietest I've ever seen it. Like, you have no idea what's coming for you.

So I can't even give the full judgment. But the weather, the climate, the gyms, because of, okay, padel, which is a funny thing. You have to start playing.

I know. You have to start playing. It's actually ridiculous. We keep meaning, we're like, Monday, we're going to go play padel. We keep needing to get Ryan to do it.

I've played every day this week. I'm playing today too. Anyway, it's like a mixture of like a tennis and a pickleball. Like tennis on a smaller court, but there's glass. The point is that it's like a social thing that everyone does here and it's easy to get into and it's kind of addicting. So it's like a side thing, but it adds like a cool element to the life here that it's not just like, oh, once in a while I play. I'm trying to play all the time now. But then the party scene for me, I'm not someone who likes nighttime partying. So being somewhere like here where I know in the summer it seems like a lot of cool day clubs and beach clubs and things like that, pool parties. I'm a fan of that. And I've just noticed a lower level of anxiety and a bit happier level of happiness here. Taking the dogs to the beach, you know, just working out at the gym outside, being able to take a cruise all year round with the windows down.

Yeah.

Also like the style of houses here is unmatched. We can't wait for ours to be ready. I'm jealous. Yours is looking amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Still a bit to go.

You can't find this style of art, maybe in LA again, but it's, but then you pay 4 million for this house or something. It's 8 million, who knows? Yeah, it's like, it becomes ridiculous.

Yeah. Yeah. And so talk us through, so for anyone who doesn't know, David has joined the villa gang in Marbella. So talk us through what was the process as an international buyer of buying a villa? Because a lot of guys from the UK ask me and a lot of people from Ireland as well. So I'm from the EU, I have an EU passport. I didn't even need a Spanish bank account. It was like super easy for me. So what's it like for someone outside of the EU?

Well, I'm a Spanish citizen. Oh yeah. Yeah.

So you got two passports.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm entertained over here. Mr. International living off the grid.

So that part wasn't difficult because I have like my Spanish DNI number, it's called, but it's like—

I have that. Yeah, I got one. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So that was easy. We bought into, I think, a project of 6 villas they're building. And we bought in early enough, so we've been able to make different changes to like, we've worked with the architects to make some changes. We're trying to do like, they had like a hanging fireplace, but we want to do like a cool built-in one with like marble and wood. So like we're able to, I hope it doesn't delay it too much, but we're able to make some change. They're still like giving me the quotes for some of these things and they're always, you know, significantly more than you'd expect for something small. But we'll see. Yeah. Piece by piece.

Yeah.

Well, what's the budget on so far off the build or just Yeah, yeah, yeah. The budget so far. Well, here the thing is, when you buy a house, there's a 10% sales tax on it, at least with a new house. Maybe it's not the same as you bought a used house.

Yeah.

But we had to pay a 10% sales tax. In the States, it's different. You have a property tax each year. Here, the property tax is like, it's almost nothing, right?

Yeah. I don't even remember. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So the house was about 1.2, but then you put 10% on top of that. That makes it about about 1.35. I imagine we'll do about 100 in upgrades, so 1.45. But then, because all my businesses and most of my money's in US dollars, right? And the euro, it went way down and I transferred some, but now it's gone back up. And like small fluctuations is like, fuck, I just lost 50K.

Like Bitcoin.

So I'm hoping like, I'm kind of dollar cost averaging it now buying the dip with the euro dip, not the crypto dip, but that'll determine the final price in dollars. But yeah.

Yeah. When do you think it's going to be done?

They were saying June, but then we're trying to get our household goods and our furniture shipped here and we're like, oh, so we're good to arrange it for June because it takes like 3 months from Houston. And they were like, probably not June. So I'm waiting for them to give me a confirmation. I'm hoping July. I root for that. We want to be in there in the summer, man.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, if not, we can all just chill right here. Mi casa su casa. And so on On the kind of real estate investment fronts, I'm pretty sure you've done a full video on all the different investments you have. So run us through them because that's something that I got massively interested in the last 2 years. So what are your investments and what do you, what would you recommend getting started in?

So I always have to start with like the biggest investment is just like investing back into the businesses, right?

Okay.

That's one thing that I don't, I don't care what the cost is going to be if there's like, I mean, obviously I'm not like on something stupid, like I'm not just going to like pay I paid some escort $2 million to promote Edge, but just have one for one pair of joggers. Maybe they might return it after. Yeah. But like smart investments and like finding— anyway, first is the business. Just keep it simple. Second is, I mean, I'm kind of like old school stocks and I invest into like, that's biggest amount of, that's a lot more than crypto, I guess I would say. Right. So I'm most just into like index funds that kind of track like the S&P 500. Yeah. I have a lot in that, which has not been great the last year. Also, I invested a bunch in January 2022, which is like the worst time, but like, hey, that's, you live and you learn, man.

Nah, you just gotta hold.

You just like lick the wounds and just, yeah, hold.

Yeah. Whatever.

The money I put in there is, it's not technically retirement fund, but I treat it like like, this is money. Yeah, wait till it comes back. Yeah. Crypto, I have a little bit in, man. I've always been like kind of a crypto skeptic, which I have a lot of friends who like are diehard crypto. So you guys can leave the hate comments on me hating on crypto. The YouTube comments love crypto.

I know. Yeah, yeah, they love it.

Yeah. But I have a lot of friends who are big into crypto. So I understand the benefits. Obviously crypto's done quite poorly the past year. And then with FTX and Terra Luna, like, who knows if and when it will bounce back. I mean, I know Bitcoin's— I think it was up like 25% or something. Yeah, it came back a little bit. Um, I think my average cost basis on Bitcoin's like $33,000, so I'm still down, but yeah, that's not too bad in the grand scheme of things.

Yeah, no, I'm into Bitcoin as well. I got in at around like $11K or something.

Well, I first put money in like in 2012— no, 20— when was the first time it crashed big? 2014 or 2017 maybe? I don't remember. Yeah, Those are really far away dates, but like the first time it came, it went up to like 18 and crashed back to 2, and I got into like 15 that time, bro. So I lost money that time and I left it there. So technically that helped because I think I got in around like 15, but then this time it was actually around when we were in Saloum, like back the previous January. I put some more in, I think it was at like 35-ish. But so that's much less though. That's probably, On a percentage basis, if we're saying stocks and crypto together equal 100%, stocks is probably about 95%. Okay.

Significantly. Yeah.

Yeah. It may be less than 5%, but around there, around there. Then real estate would be— so the house we're building here, which we're planning to live there, but I think real estate in Marbella is a relatively safe bet if we did need to sell it. We're building a house in Texas now too. So with that, we bought the land, we hired an architect. That's that house we were planning to live in at first, but now it's kind of an investment. The real estate market in the US is not so great. So that may be more of a, hopefully a small profit still. But even if we break even, I'm all good because that money probably otherwise would have gone into the stock market at a bad time. So like I look at that, even if I break even, it's all good. And then those are the, I guess those are the main ones. It's the stocks, crypto, real estate, and then into the businesses.

Nice. Yeah. I've got a funny, I've never even spoke about it, a funny kind of crypto story. So I, I, I've actually made quite a lot on crypto. Yeah, definitely helped with buying the villa.

Yeah. And so I, I met a guy in the gym, right?

And so it was in a private gym that my friend owns and we were all just training away and I was like, I don't know, this guy's about, you know, he's an older guy, he's in his 40s at least.

Yeah.

And I was like, what do you do? And he was like, oh, I'm into crypto. This is like early 2019.

Yeah.

And I was like, I didn't even know what it was.

Was.

So he's telling me about it, shows me his account, it's €2 million just sitting there. And I was like, all right, I'm going to listen to you. And he was like, just, I was like, I'm going to just invest in something. What should I do? And he goes, buy SXP, Swipe, some random coin. He goes, put like whatever you can into it. So I put 2K into it. That went up to like, that 5x went up to 10K. Then I put that all into Bitcoin at like, you know, low tens. And then it went from there. So that's just a shout out, SXP. Me. I don't even have any anymore. Yeah, it's like time. Yeah, but that's it. So that's how I got into crypto, dude, in the gym.

Now crypto's all— it's, I mean, it's all timing, I guess, right? Because I know so many people who are like, bro, I made, you know, half a mil last week in crypto. I'm like, oh, that's awesome. Yeah. But a lot of times I talk to those same guys, like, bro, I lost half a mil last week.

Yeah, I'm like, man, I'm just gonna focus on my businesses. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

Yeah.

So the biggest return, you'll— another thing that I did fired off a good few thousand euros. I won't say the exact figure, just to get packaging for the Fuel Cakes relaunch. Just not the product, just packaging. Yeah, but that's another cost that comes in.

Well, no, even with the clothes. Yeah, the packaging, the hang tag that goes on the packaging, everything, everything costs money.

Yeah, yeah, but you'll get a return on it. Yeah, hopefully, hopefully.

Yeah, yeah.

And so that's awesome. And so what's your, uh, your typical day in the life, your routine looking for right now? Out, especially your morning routine, because I think the morning sets the whole pace for the whole day. So what's your morning routine looking like?

It's basically a cold shower, if I'm being honest.

No way. Yeah, yeah.

I'll make some greens, hop in a cold shower, which me and Max are talking about this. You know, Max, he's like, you don't take a cold shower, bro.

But I love cold showers. I just got an ice bath.

Yeah, yeah, I saw. I know.

I got to get an ice bath every time though, because it's not—

It's one of those things that every morning, it's a way of being like, you don't have to do it, but it's a way of like, because I'll turn on the cold water and sometimes I'll go there, I'll just get there and stare at it for like, for like a couple minutes, you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So what I'll usually do now is I'll turn on the cold water, I'll walk over, look in the mirror and be like, don't be a fucking bitch. And then I'll walk back and get in there and it just kind of sets the tone for the day, right? Like we're just going to like, rather sometimes I don't take the cold shower, maybe take a warm shower, you sit in there for 15 minutes, maybe you don't do either, you're just kind of on your phone for a little bit. Like, as soon as I'm out of that cold shower, I'm like, boom, like, what do I got next? I walk over to the desk, get some work done. Maybe we take the dogs to the beach, hit the gym, come back. And I'll usually, because of the US hour, have to work a bit in the afternoon, maybe try and fit a paddle game in there somewhere.

But nice. Yeah. What I love the most as well, I have similar, I do cold shower as well. And a lot of people, like, they're kind of, you know, the biohackers, bro sciencey people. Very cool. Shower will burn fat and, you know, all this. No, I'm doing it. No, no, I just do it to wake me up.

Yeah, but you don't drink coffee either.

Yeah, I took a cold shower right before this. Yeah, like literally just to wake me up. Yeah, like there's nothing that can make— wake you up more than it also on a coffee as well. It's a good stack.

Coffee's not gonna hurt. Yeah, but it is shown clinically to also boost, uh, dopamine levels like significantly. So you actually feel a lot happier when you come out.

Yeah, yeah, that, that's actually not bro science.

Yeah, that's not bro science.

Yeah.

And also the water here in the Mediterranean is quite cold in the, uh, in the, in the winter that I've been— some days instead of taking a cold shower, if we take the dogs down there, I've probably got a couple more months before it like warms up to a point where it's not really worth doing it as me. I mean, it'll be nice to do it, but it's not like a cold, a cold plunge. Yeah, at that point it's just like a nice relaxing—

yeah, actually it's like, it's like a hot—

at that point I'm just gonna stay in there.

Yeah, yeah. And so, so you wake up in morning, you do cold shower and then what after that?

I'll take a look at my like ongoing list of like items I have to get done and just tackle whatever like the most like high priority items are. If it's a day I have to film YouTube, then I'll hop into that earlier rather than later. If it's day in the life video, obviously that kind of just goes on. But now I'm doing some more of these like sit down videos that people are liking them. I think this is tough because I'm curious your thoughts on this too, because, uh, we're very much of like the, the, the day in the life vlog type style, and I feel like it's a bit out of like out of fashion.

We're getting old.

Yeah, yeah, I don't think it holds like the audience retention like it used to. I think like, and I, I love doing like the drone shots of those things. I think those things used to have a really like wow factor that would keep people watching, and then people become desensitized, and shorts have all shortened people's attention spans even more. So I think that now I'm, I think I'm working more towards like a 50-50 split of like the sit-down video. Also, those are great because you can cut a lot of shorts from them. I've seen, so it's like, yeah, yeah. So you can also, it's easy to do. Yeah. For those, I'll actually hire an editor to do them because if it's a day in the life, I'm like, nah, I just gotta put these drone shots here, then I'm gonna do this like thing here. But if it's one of those, I can hire someone else to do it. They're going to put more effort into the graphics and stuff on screen anyway.

Yeah.

But then after, anyway, after like I do like some morning work or maybe film like a sit-down video, again, that's once a week, usually the gym, then back to more work really at the end of the day. I'm big on like relaxing, like watching some TV at the end of the day though.

Yeah, yeah, you're mine for a beer. You like a beer.

I like like one beer a day, one beer a night.

So I'm not drinking at the moment because I'm prepping for a show and you can obviously handle it quite well. I find if if I go out mad on Saturday, I'm fucked until Thursday. You know what?

I had 2 beers last night. I slept like shit last night.

Yeah, I'm not—

if I have 1, I'm okay. If I have 2, they say it kills your REM sleep for the first half of the night when you drink. Yeah. And you'll notice you don't dream much. You're tossing and turning, or I feel like warm. But then, like, you sleep like a baby the second half because your body's, like, trying to catch— this is like an Andrew Huberman thing I was watching.

I love the Hoobs.

Your body's trying to catch up, so you get a little bit more REM sleep into the morning, but it's still like I don't feel as good if I— I don't know, it's tough. Yeah, I do like the one beer and I think that's okay. But if I even if I move it to a second beer, then I'm already like—

See, it's because you're Spanish. You're like the one guy's drinking at 11 AM, drinking the can. I'm going for my morning walk and there's literally Spanish fellas drinking small beers. No, they love it. Yeah. As if the Irish are any better.

But no, any day of the week, bro. Yeah, yeah, that's gas.

But so on the YouTube one, so me and Joe Delaney, who was the first guest on this. We talked about this at detail. And so he was like turbo raw unedited vlogs when he was really young. Like he's been on YouTube like me for 8 years. And so he started off doing Tinder vlogs, like getting a girl from Tinder to the bedroom. That was one of his most viewed videos. And now his channel's blown up and he's done a complete—

They're just sitting down videos. I mean, he splices in a lot of— because they're fitness, right? I see he splices a lot of B-roll, but they're sit it down.

Yeah, but they're really well edited and he does them himself, but he made a good point. So like what you said, 50/50 is great because one, 50% is like super informative, you're really giving something, and then the other 50% vlogs, you're letting someone into your life and you're building that relationship.

Yeah, another way to think of it is the other, yeah, the other 50% are usually video titles that are going to bring in a new audience. Yeah. And then the vlog like solidifies a bond with those people.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And he made another good point. If you're just purely vlogging and not giving off any information, it's just a vanity metric. It's just like, hey, look how sick my life is. Yeah.

You know what I mean?

So I thought that was, that's a harsh truth that sometimes, you know, if you're a vlogger and you're like, look at all this, then you gotta say, what am I giving back?

It doesn't work that well anymore anyway.

Yeah, I know. That's what I'm thinking. And that's why I want to go more towards the sit-down videos. And they're so much easier to do. But now, so on that note, okay, you have some of the most outrageous thumbnails and titles I have ever seen. And they work, they work. So what is your process?

They used to work better.

You just gotta give them some, give them some more time. That's another thing. You're looking at a video that's being like, let's say you look at a video from 3 years ago. Yeah. It's been on YouTube racking up views for 3 years.

Yeah, it's true.

So like sometimes I notice like, I'm like, oh, my videos, they're getting shitty views. And then I'll look back from 3 months, like on 100K.

Yeah.

And I was like, oh, I didn't at the time, it's on like 10K. Yeah. So that's one thing that we always look at. But so what's your creative process? Process behind making video. This is a topic that I'm going to try and include in pretty much every podcast because I love YouTube and a lot of people that watch this want to start YouTube or be a content creator. So what's your creative process start to finish if you want to make a really good video?

Yeah, well, it starts with the video idea, right? And that could come from multiple places. That could come because I see somebody else do it and I'm like, that's a cool idea. And I'm not— when I like that, I won't even watch the video because I don't want my video to be tainted by their actual video. I'm just like, that's a cool concept for a video. Video. So I'm also going to do something like that because people are very creative. And I think if you steal someone's idea, don't steal their content, but kind of use their idea and you can ride that wave a little bit. Sometimes that turns into trends too. Everyone who does a men's self-improvement channel, they'll all kind of do the same video, but each person has their own flavor to it. Or the other thing is an idea just comes into your head where A lot of times, so I like getting massages and a lot of times when I'm getting a massage, video ideas come to me. Really?

Man, there's an unbelievable place in Portobello. It's called Zen Massage. Okay, I'll have to check it out. There's one beside it that looks like a brass house. Don't go in there. That's not it. Yeah. But a good approach and I always like, I say I'm going to do it and I forget to do it because you really have to think far ahead. Make the title first. First, then make the thumbnail, and then start recording. Like, literally completely backwards than most people do it.

I'll usually want to start with a title and an idea for a thumbnail. If I have, like, a rough title idea and an idea for a thumbnail, then from there, I don't script out videos. I'll just write, like, okay, if it's a day in the life video or a travel video, I'll write bullet points, like, you know, show cold shower, sit down outside, talk a long 1, drone shots, you know, outside gym, talk 2, maybe sponsorship, gym workout walkthrough, you know, like I'll have like a brief, I don't like to script it out because then I just want to like kind of naturally be able to talk for a couple of minutes and then go from there. But if it's a, anyway, so then after that, usually I'll have an idea for the thumbnail, right? So usually during the day of shooting, I'll try and quickly grab a thumbnail. Image. I would say tips for thumbnails, obviously you need it to be eye-catching. A lot of times I hear people say you wanted to give it the tiny test where if you put it down to like a 12% little like thing here on your screen, it's still like you still get the concept because usually the YouTube placement of thumbnails is pretty small around videos.

Damn, that's a good one.

The tiny test.

Holy shit. Yeah, yeah. The tiny test. Sansa, I meant to make an inappropriate joke. We can, we can trip that down. The tiny desk. I'm so tiny.

That's a good one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So tiny. Yeah. And then obviously like, uh, you want it to be catchy. Obviously like there's like a whole color science some people will get into, but like having, I'll usually have yellow in every thumbnail because I feel like it pops a lot. If I'm gonna have a secondary color, it'll be red. Uh, but obviously like well lit, like, you know, a lot of times when I'm filming, I like to be backlit with like the sun behind me because I think it looks cinematic, but for a thumbnail, you almost want it the opposite. You want to be lit up very well. You want— if it's you and a girl, you want both of you to be extremely well lit up. Yeah, girls always help on thumbnails, especially if they're attractive. Yeah, that's— you can't do— you don't want to do— like, I don't want to do one in every video because I don't want, like, people to be desensitized to it.

Um, that's good.

That's a good point for transformation videos. Like, whether it's fitness transformation or just like, uh, like today the video I'm uploading is like 7 awful habits that make a man look low status. And then I'm going to use almost like a before and after of me. It's not about my body, but it's more about like the comparison of you at a lower point in life to where you are now. Those also tend to work well with like the big arrow across the screen.

Oh, so another—

John Delaney, big time on that.

He just said, right, he made a thumbnail and like he said he put an arrow on it that had nothing to do with anything. Like it was just an arrow pointing to him. And it's like his most viewed video.

Oh, I'll do that.

Red arrow. Why do people like red arrows?

No, if it's just me and Julia a lot of times, because if there's like unused space somewhere in the thumbnail, like an awkward amount of unused space, at least that's maybe other people don't see that way. But if I see like a lot of space, there's nothing there. I'm like, I'm going to try and put an arrow or an emoji or something there, or, you know what I mean? Or the text, or the text that goes there. But that's another thing thing is to not having like a bunch of dead space unless it's intentional and it's a video about, I don't know, severe social anxiety and usually have like a lot of empty space around you and it kind of creates like more of like the mood or something.

Yeah. Yeah. Me and Mike were talking as well about thumbnails and so he's gone through some experiments. It's so funny how we can literally chat for 10 minutes about thumbnails.

Yeah.

It's so important. But he was doing, he, for a while and it really worked, he'll just put a screenshot from the video. Yeah. No Next.

Yeah, nothing.

Yeah, just like— and like sometimes people will click it. Casey Neistat used to do that as well. I, I think that one's harder and to pull off.

You also have to know your audience and your content. There's someone like Mike Thurston. I think people watch his content because he has a very, uh, like lavish life where he's— yeah, he's fucking the most shredded guy ever. He's usually got some beautiful women around him in some beautiful location in Greece or something, or Dubai. And I think a lot of times for him, that it makes sense that it could just be a screenshot showing that, because it's kind of giving the vibe of this lifestyle.

Yeah.

If I'm doing a video, that's not going to work for like my audience the same way. You know, you also have to kind of like experiment because what works for other— that's one thing I learned is you can't just copy other people's thumbnails or titles.

Yeah.

Um, even though I know sometimes I said I'll take someone's video, I like the concept.

You have to put your own—

but you need to know, because even if I take the concept, the title might actually look completely different on my channel. It might have just sparked something in my head. You have to kind of learn learn like what does my audience connect with in terms of titles and thumbnails, or what do they think they want at least, and then you can at least put that inside of thumbnails.

And so you upload like a lot, like very regularly. And so for the days you're not uploading, you're recording, how does that affect your relationship with Julia? Like, does it ever get in the way?

Yeah, I mean, sometimes it does, but she helps me film a lot. We've got— I've gotten more— as the businesses have grown and I've not been able to— YouTube used to be the only thing for a few years. It was just everything was YouTube. Right? So at that point, I prioritized it over everything. We were filming more often. Whenever we— anything that we slightly interesting, like, we're going to film this, we're going to make it cinematic, super dope. Now I've become a lot more efficient and I don't take as much time to film videos. So now I think it's not much of a factor as much as it used to be. Sometimes, though, if we have a tight time at the gym and I need Julia to film my workout, she'd be like, but I'm trying to work out too.

Yeah.

I'm like, yeah, but we're filming this one today. Yeah.

Linda's the exact same.

Honestly, shout out Julia and Linda.

Like we put them through a lot.

No, she's, she's, she filmed some of those early videos in Boston of me approaching women. She's been on, you know, on the team for since, since day one almost. I used to— green flag, green flag, green flag.

On the team since day one. And how did you and Julia meet? I've actually never really asked you that.

So we went to the same gym in Boston. We lived quite close and we'd seen each other. Then we matched on, I think it was like Bumble or something, and then set up the date.

Okay, nice. And then what was your first Hey, it was just grabbing a drink.

That's, that's, that was always my go-to first. Yeah, it's easy, it's expected, it's less likely to be flaked on. Just a drink at a local spot. I'm big on like, if you're in a spot where there's places nearby you, just always invite the girl close to the place.

Yeah, logistics.

Yeah, logistically you could better chance bringing her back to your place, but also like, it's, you don't end up driving across town and the girl like doesn't show up or something. Like, it happened to me maybe like once where the girl didn't show up, I was at the bar around the corner from my house, had a drink, went back home. Not a big deal.

Yeah, yeah, def. And did you pay the bill? I paid the bill. Aye, there you go. And so for anyone watching or listening, you recently got married. That's one of the biggest life events a man can go through. What are some things like checklists that you have to have before you pop the question? So like, for example, for me, I would say like, I need to be in that relationship for at least 3 years. I'd probably be in the right place financially. I would need to be— I know people want to get married earlier, but I would say like, you know, late 20s is probably a good time. Is there anything that, you know, you recommend or just go by feel?

Just go by how it feels.

But no, I'm just kidding.

Don't do that.

Ruining lives here.

I promise, if it feels right, bro, just do it.

No, some stripper in Vegas.

I like your list, actually. 3 years by the research. There's a lot of different indicators and studies that have been done on divorce rates, but the one that's the, at least from all of my knowledge, the one that is the most significant impact is couples that get married within 1 year of knowing each other have sky-high divorce rates. Like sky-high.

Number, what percentage?

It's over 50%, I believe.

Yeah, I was going to say, I thought it'd be 80%.

No, maybe, maybe, maybe about 70%. I don't remember. I don't want to misquote it. From 1 to 2 years, it drops, but it's still quite high. From 2 to 3 years, drops, still higher than you'd like it to be. After 3 years is when like statistically significantly like it, it's, it's—

marriage thing goes off.

Well, the chance of divorce.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So 3 years I think is a key number. Just, and also like why do you need to get married before 3 years anyway? I think just, just put it off a little bit. Um, and then I think late 20s is the earliest, and earliest time as a man at least. I know for women it's different. Yeah, for and there's different biological clocks for children and whatnot. But as a man, I'd say wait till you're 30, let's just say, as a simple rule, just because we change a lot. And as men, I think in our late 20s, a lot of us hit our stride. You know, we've maybe experimented, failed at some things, tried different things. In our late 20s is when like the success starts coming. So you wouldn't want to like do something that could alter it, like compromise your like potential in life and your trajectory in life. So I think that those are probably two of the most important ones. Also like have had some options. Maybe you don't have to go through like a deep player phase, but at least have casually dated. Don't be the guy who just jumps from one relationship to the next or who just gets in one relationship and marries that girl. Like, have had some options. Because if I hadn't dated the different women I dated, I may have ended up marrying a different type of girl because growing up, that's what I thought I wanted. So it helps to have some experience as well.

Yeah. And so I actually saw, speaking of studies and research, just recently, and I saw Jordan Peterson talk about how marriages are more likely to jail if you move in with the girl before getting married. So, like, apparently traditional values, well, so any of the best.

Yeah, I think. But there's— I mean, I'm not saying that— that's the—

oh, well, we both done it.

No, no, no, I'm not saying this defensively. I'm saying that because when they do a study about sexual partners, the— how many sexual partners people have had and its impact on divorce, it's actually quite murky where each study shows something different, but always virgins of lowest level of divorce. Wow. After that, there's some weird studies that show like 2 sexual partners is the biggest like red flag or the biggest predictor of divorce. Others say it's a higher number. Uh, you— everyone can like theorize what it might be, but I would say when you look at like people who don't move in before marriage and people who are virgins before marriage, you also have to— there's a confounding factor here that these are people who are probably very, very religious and who probably wouldn't get divorced even if they wanted to. And I— in the sense that correlation is not always causation. Yes.

Yeah, they're tough.

Like, yeah, that's a tough thing to Yeah, but the sample size is always like 500 or something. We're like, it's big, but is it big enough to, you know, that's why the one of like the years waited until marriage is the only one that I've seen. Well, there's some other ones too that are very clear, like financial. If you're poor, you have a much higher chance of divorce because then money issues become a problem. I think there's another one, like the bigger the size of the wedding, the less size of divorce. But again, that's more, I think that's more like there was more of a plan to getting married. It wasn't like a random thing that just happened, you know what I mean?

True. That's good. That's a clever note. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your wedding was awesome.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad y'all were able to make it.

Yeah. And so now I know you're still like very pretty much in the new relationship, a new marriage, but what are some of your tips for keeping a relationship alive, keeping things spicy when you're just in a relationship and also when you're married?

Yeah, I I think there's a lot of different things. One is, I think, continuing to challenge yourself to evolve, because otherwise you see some couples that they're very comfortable all the time. They don't try anything new ever. They don't travel at all. They don't go to the gym together. And then they just can get very resentful of each other, I think, because everything's the same. It's very monotonous at all times. And so I think being able to spice things up in a way of like, you know, challenging yourself to grow, travel together, have cool, like, experiences together, try different things together. Like, for me and Julia, and that might have been different, like, we were snowboarding together, we're playing paddle together. Like, I like kind of like trying to learn new things with her. But I think also as a man, maintaining priorities of like, I'm going to keep growing in my career, I'm going to keep my body on point. Like, I think that's going to maintain the attraction. That's kind of a cliché one, but like, if you let yourself go or you go broke look like, your partner might lose attraction for you, right?

Yeah, I, I think that's my biggest one. I mean, Linda, we're speaking about this, and stay in shape. Yeah, that's, that's literally it for me. Like, if I looked in the mirror and I just looked like complete mess, I wouldn't want to have sex with me.

Yeah, no, I think you're right.

And you know what, right, so thankfully this is going to be the most non-woke podcast you'll ever watch. Like, hey, he was old, it was really fatphobic. No way, I'm I think just hitting the gym, both of you, you feel better. You're both feeling confident, you're both feeling sexy, so you're both attracted to each other.

I don't know about you, but my sex drive is highest just after a workout. I think it's the same for most people. For Julie, it's the same. It was the first, my first date in a while, we'd always wait and hook up at night. And then at some point we started, hey, let's just start hooking up after the gym because we will feel like you're in peak mood.

That's what me and listen to. I go, if it's after 6:00 PM, it was right there, by the way. Is there not? It was after 6 PM. We ain't doing it. No, it's always post-hurricane.

You've been lazy at that point.

Yeah, yeah. I remember we had a massive dinner. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, no, it's clocking off. Yeah, yeah.

I think, and then I think also being okay, like, I don't know, being able to discuss things that have maybe been hard to discuss. Just communicating when things are actually a problem. And sometimes when things are a deeper issue, it may not be just one conversation, but being able to have an ongoing conversation about a thing you guys don't see eye to eye on. On without being hostile, but being able to kind of continually discuss it. Yeah, I don't know, there's some different things.

That's awesome.

I think being in shape though, maybe the hack, it may be the easiest.

No, I'm telling you, I think the gym is the answer to everything. Of course, I'm very biased. Fitness is my whole life, but I actually do. I think 90% of your problems will disappear if you get in killer shape, you work out regularly, and you sleep well, you're hydrated, that's it.

It's a gateway drug to self-improvement.

Exactly. I think that's like just the— if you do that, like 90% of your problems will go away. Like, you will be more productive, you will make more money. It would— just going to the gym, staying in shape, eating right, that will just have— that's the biggest ROI I think anyone can make, man or woman.

Yeah, yeah.

And so you're newly married, what's the next plan? Kids? Kids, how's that looking?

I think—

You get a David Jr.?

I mean, I think next year something may happen, and it's not, it's not like next week or next month, but I think next year something might happen.

Yeah, yeah. How many kids you want?

I've always said 2, and Julie's always said 3, but for me it's like me and my brother, and for her it's— she has her brother and her sister. So I think we're just like, like it's what we talked about earlier. I feel like we model our lives about based off of like our family life. I'd be cool with 2 or 3. We agree, hey, let's take it one at a time. We don't need to like plan too far ahead. Yeah, ideally a boy. I think if we get a boy and a girl for the first 2, then maybe we just like, yeah, we, you know, let's keep But if it's both boys or both girls, I mean, it's both boys, I'm cool with it. But if it's both girls, I'd be like, hey, we probably just, you know, try one more time. If I get 3 girls, then I get 3 girls, bro.

I have 3 sisters. And there's like a, there's a 7-year age gap between me and my younger sister. So my dad obviously had like 3 girls and he was like, we gotta keep going one more time. So yeah, that's my plan as well. But look, what is the game plan for the next couple of months? What are they looking like?

Well, just got back from this, the longer trip to the States. So it's just to be locked in, honestly. We got an Edge Drop next week. We're preparing the one after that. We're going, it's trying to dive deeper on really nailing down like the more of a formula for these sit-down style videos for YouTube and being able to extract shorts from there. We've just kind of locked out. I'm pretty consistent now with the short form content on different platforms. So it's keeping these things going. And just that my, when you ask me this at any time, my answer is usually the same. It's like, keep things going. Try and level up a little bit.

Yeah. Nice.

Nice.

And so what is your advice for somebody who just wants to kill it for the next coming year?

Well, get their fitness routine down. Yeah. If they're watching your channel, I'm assuming that's already a priority. Yeah. And then give yourself like— I'm a big fan of like a 3-month goal instead of like a 5-year goal. Like, because 3 months is like, it's attainable. Instead of saying I'm going to get a million subscribers on YouTube, maybe you I say, well, you know, over the next few months I'll have uploaded 2 videos a week and the quality of them will have gotten better each week. You tend to focus more on things you have control over. So I say set like every 3 months, set another set of goals for yourself.

Boom. Smash it today. And big year ahead for both of us in Marbella.

I'm pumped, man.