The Rebellion: Episode 17 | W/Austin Rabin

Welcome everybody to episode 17 of The Rebellion. I'm your host, Tyson Smith, and today we have on Austin Rabin, e-com legend. And my first question to you, Austin, is what is the key to success in e-com and why is it waking up at 4 a.m. and listening to dropshipping podcasts for 12 hours straight?

Yeah, it's the 4 a.m., meditate, cold shower, then a cold plunge right after the shower.

Of course.

Naturally.

You got to shock the body.

Yeah, of course. Wake it up. And then e-com books from 6:00 AM to 3:00 PM, and that's when you start on your store.

Yeah.

From 3:00 to 4:00, that's it. You're done. It's all about the shower.

Yeah, you should build 3 stores between 3:00 and 4:00.

Yeah, crank them out. Uh-huh.

But the real heavy lifting is done in the shower.

Yeah, done in the shower thinking, ideation. It's crazy. Dude, everyone on TikTok— ecom, like, I'm just gonna straight, like, start off with this. Ecom comes off so bad sometimes because there's so many, like, 16-year-olds that have had, like, one store and made, like, $30,000. Well, hey bro, once you get that Shopify screenshot and just in every video, yeah, you're golden. Uh-huh. It's just annoying. But that's why I'm like, I didn't even want to post about anything until, like, 2 years into ecom. First making it like sustainable and being like, you know, know that it's actually going to continue and yeah, money for me, right?

You didn't want to jinx it.

I don't want to just go on and be like, yeah, like I know everything I'm doing. It's like I had to learn myself first before posting a single TikTok or anything.

Well, so give everybody an idea, you know, what, where are you at right now in your, in your e-com journey? Yeah, what have you done so far?

I can, I guess, talk about maybe like the beginning. Yeah, and how I got started. I just filmed a video about this on, on YouTube. It's coming out later, but or an updated version. But so I started funny enough in college, I was like flipping shit on the side. Okay.

So on like Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, kind of.

So we started as me and my fiancée Miranda, and she was like, hey, like, you know, Last Chance, like right around the corner here, that store. So we'd go there in college, drive over, buy like shoes that are used. And if you guys don't know what Last Chance is, it's like basically like where Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack, I guess, like returns get sent to. And sometimes they're in like perfect condition, like the shoes or whatever.

Yeah, it's— but they got really nice stuff. Yeah, they do. Like you can buy like Balmain and Balenciaga. It's probably filled with Balenciaga.

Yeah, probably right now, right? Jackets everywhere.

Right.

They have like really good stuff and really like okay stuff and everywhere in between. So we'd like go over there, buy stuff, buy shoes mainly, go home, list them all on like Poshmark, eBay, and Mercari. And we did like, I think in a year and like 2 months, I think $87,000.

Holy shit, while you were in college?

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh my God.

So we were like, great idea, Miranda, thank you. But that like kind of introduced me more into e-com and like online selling.

Making money online.

But it wasn't sustainable, right? I had to physically go there and get the product. Right. And I knew about like dropshipping, but I was not like super interested in it because this was like a shiny object. Plus I was going to school. Internships and all that. And then after that, I did an internship in Minnesota. I started learning about e-com a little bit. And I was like, I can build a store. I'm an analytical guy. I'm going to school for supply chain. I work in all these softwares all the time. So I learned about dropshipping online and started my first store in 2018. I was like, this is going to be so much easier because I don't have to have the product. So I built up that store. And I ran it up like, I mean, like $10K I think is what it was right away. And I only did influencer posts. So like I'd reach out to YouTubers and I was like, hey, you want to review these products? You can pick whatever you want. And I got someone that had like 750K subs. He did a review of it and got some sales from that, whatever. And this is the worst part about it. It was like my cop-out because I sold replica AirPods. Okay, right. That's a big no-no. Like, you can't do that, you know? Like, you can't just do that. So I learned that the hard way. I got a cease and desist from Shopify as as well as Apple, like they had their third-party lawyers send some shit over and they're like, if you post whatever again, like we're following you and like you'll, or watching you, I guess, and we'll sue you. Shut down that store.

Yeah, don't want those guys. Don't want those guys.

No, yeah.

You don't wanna be on their shit list.

No, right? So I guess 10K was like the limit for them, but whatever. So shut that down and I was like, I can't sell anything, obviously, copyright, you know? So moved on to beauty and cosmetics, mainly like beauty tools. And I didn't like— I'm not— I don't know how—

so the beauty tools, that like ice rollers and shit?

Yeah, like, yeah, stuff like that. Like lower ticket. I love lower ticket.

Yeah.

Higher conversion rate.

Well, it's a lot easier to convince somebody to buy some shit like that.

So much easier. Everyone's like, oh, I want to sell like a $300 dropshipping product. It's like, they're going to shop around first. I think it's harder. But you can do it with a lot of good branding and stuff. But it's easier. I like the high conversion rate. Okay. So we started that and she was like my consultant for it because she's like, oh, this would be a good product, right? I'm talking about Miranda. You know, I didn't know what to sell on the beauty cosmetic thing. So, so you're kind of just—

you're going through like product lists, like on Alibaba or whatnot, like with her and just like, oh, would you use that?

And she's like, yeah, yeah, my friends like that pretty much. Yeah. And it made it hard a little bit because it's like, I don't know anything about it, but she did at least, which was good. So I started that store. And that was like a full dropshipping store. And I broke even for like 2 and a half, 3 months or something like that. I was like, you know, I'm making sales. Like, it's— something's working, right? Like, there's the concept of proven because like of ad—

ad spend, right?

Yeah. So I couldn't like nail the ads.

Were you just running like Facebook, Instagram ads?

Yeah, Facebook, Instagram. And still do. It's the best. No matter what anyone says about TikTok. All right, that's a hot take in the e-com space.

Oh, are they saying that like TikTok ads are taking over?

Yeah, there's like— it's a— it's like every e-com guy just needs to come up with the 'I have the new strategy, yeah, follow me.' Facebook and Instagram are still king. Yeah, just get over it.

Well, I feel like that's been the thing for the longest time is that's where people buy. Like, I know for me on TikTok, if I like— I can immediately sense when it's an ad and I'm skipping past that, right?

Exactly.

Unless it's like some UGC kind of—

Right. There's a different strategy. It does work. It's way different strategy.

It's not paid ads.

It's got to be very native to the platform. Yeah. But so yeah, I was doing that. It broke even for x amount of time, 2 or 3 months, something like that. And then I was going to bed. I set up this new ad strategy. I was following this guy, and he was like, oh, you should try this, this, and this. So I tried it, but tweaked it to work better with my product, I guess. So I set that up. I made nothing at the time. And then I was like, all right, set this up for 12:00 AM. And if I'm not profitable the next day, I'm shutting down the store. I'm going to try a different one. I wasn't going to give up, but I was like, I'm going to switch it up, maybe different product, blah, blah, blah. Went to bed, woke up the next morning, sales were pretty good. I was like, damn, all right, OK. And I ended that day, I think, with $50 net profit. I was like, that's a day. And so I was like, if I do that every day, I can pay my car payment. Pay my car payment and pay like some of my rent. I was like, that's great. Little side hustle while I was working at Abbott. Um, and then within 3 weeks I hit my first net $1,000 profit day. So I was like, oh, okay, well that changed. Like, oh shit, I just scaled it really aggressively. So I was like, that's, you know, I'm like, fuck, like, that's so much money.

So scale really aggressively, you mean what, you just start pumping more money in ads, or?

Yeah, I mean, people are like hesitant to like scale because when you scale on Facebook or paid traffic, you got to spend more money, right? You need a credit card most of the time unless you got cash, which I did. But you're a little riskier to spend the money. You don't know if it's going to work. You might flop one day or whatever. But I just scaled it super aggressively, and it paid off.

Can you give me an idea of what your ad spend went from and what you adjusted to?

I was spending— I think I started that test with $25 a day. And then I— the most I've spent on Facebook in one day at full scale of a store is $5,000.

Oh, shit.

A day in ad spend.

Wow.

We can talk about the free points.

Yeah, I was going to say, I was going to say, bro, your credit card points got to be amazing.

I was paying like $100,000 bills and like, it was crazy. But I didn't like— my bank called too and they were like, yo, like, hey, we just had like a couple of questions for you because they know where I work, obviously. They see my regular paycheck. I was doing both at the time and they're like, we have a couple of questions for you. Like, you know, there's a lot of money moving in and out of your account, like $10K a day going in, $10K a day going out, whatever. Or I guess less. But like, you— what are you— what are you doing? It's like, you're like, yeah, we got like a notification from the IRS. They just want to monitor it. And I was like, okay. I mean, like, you can look at my store. Like, I don't know what you need, but like, this is what I'm doing on the side. And like, okay, okay. Like, whatever. Never call me back. So I guess I'm okay for now.

Good deal.

Knock on wood. I just paid my taxes, so.

Yeah, brutal.

Biden, you're set.

Brutal, dude. What's up with those guys? I mean, my first time, like, really having to pay taxes because, like, you know, it's not like anything comes out of my paycheck as like a W-2 or anything like that. Yeah, it was really last year. It was like the first time I had to, like, write them a large check and I was like, holy fuck, dude, this sucks dick.

Yeah.

What's going on with all that?

Dude, I don't know. Do you have a good accountant?

I mean, yeah, it's something that I'm going to be having to work towards. But here's the thing is, I mean, with wholesaling, it's strictly active income, man. So, right. I'm going to be, you know, basically taking some advantage of the real estate offers us, you know, once we start buying real estate, some of the depreciation benefits and things like that.

But yeah, you get a lot more than like an e-com store would. Typically. But yeah, it sucks. Um, what I just do now and have done for the last couple years is just every month I'll, you know, net out my income or whatever and then just put away a certain percentage.

Yeah.

At the end of the year, I'm like, I already expected this.

That's what we do.

Yeah. Otherwise it kind of hits you, or people will see a fat number in their bank account and forget about taxes and go buy that Lambo, and they're like, oh, wait a minute.

Right.

I owe $200,000, which is—

I mean, that's how I can see a lot of people. And that's something that, like, I'm thinking is that I need to be able to instruct people that I'm teaching how to wholesale is I need to be like, hey, all right, look, you're going to start making a shitload of money, so that's great and all, but you got to save some of that because Uncle Sam is going to come want his cut.

Yeah. Yeah. It's something that a lot of people think about, but I'm like, you got to start thinking about once that first $10,000 comes in.

Yeah, right.

Because it's like the concept is proven, then just be ready. Yeah, but it's tough. I mean, I have a good accountant, thankfully.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of different write-offs and capabilities. I can't give tax advice, but, you know, when you start doing stuff on like YouTube and getting revenue from other sources, then other things become write-offs and, you know, content type of stuff.

Yeah.

You know, you can— well, like this entire thing, this entire thing.

Right. We're sitting in right now.

Yeah, exactly.

It's one big giant write-off.

Yeah. We'll take this next.

You know what I want to figure out is, are people writing off their Lambos? Like, these people who are like selling courses, are they writing off their fucking McLarens and their Lambos somehow as like marketing expenses?

So not tax advice, but you know, when you look at it and people are like, oh, Section 179 or whatever it is, right? If it weighs over X amount of dollars or X amount of pounds, you get this 100% depreciation in the first year. So I'm gonna go buy that new G-Wagon. Okay, but you have to use it 100% for business. Yeah, right. 100%. So like, they don't say that for one. No one uses 100% of your G-Wagon for business.

So what is— but what— I don't even understand what that means. I get— again, I get that you're not an accountant, but like, I drive to work every day.

Yeah, that's for sure. Write off whatever percentage. I mean, this is what I think. It's whatever percentage, you know, you use it for business is kind of the percentage that you can write off of the car and the cost of it plus gas, you know, and depreciation or whatever. Um, but you can't just buy a Lambo and write it off. But there's a spin that I think you could possibly do. This is not advice again, but I'm thinking like for people that their whole income could be like selling courses or something, is that marketing then? Like, if you get a million views because you have a Lamborghini, like maybe. I don't know, that's not something I write off.

I need to find an accountant that I can have that I can ask him that question.

Well, I've got a good one.

All right. Well, you're going to put me in touch with him. So that's a question I want to ask is how can I make it so that I can buy this fucking badass car and have it be a part of my personal brand?

Right. I think, you know, probably at some point I feel like if you can show revenue and increase in revenue from social, you know, media in general, if you're making money from it, I think you can probably argue some stuff.

Yeah.

As long as you're like, I should just stop giving advice. I mean, in theory, it's like if they ever audit you, it's like prove to me that you're using it for business. Okay, well, here you go. I drive to work every day. It's in 15 of my last 20 videos. I got X amount of views because it's a cool car. I don't know. Yeah, right. Maybe that's an argument. I'll have to ask.

It should be.

It should be. Yeah, to some extent.

So back to what you were saying, this store pops off, make your first $1,000 in a day, and you start to— what happens then?

Well, I worked Well, I'm really conservative in terms of finances and stuff. I grew up pretty poor, really poor, actually. I don't really talk about it too much because everyone's like, oh, it's Daddy's money or whatever. It's like, no, you don't understand. Yeah, but so I'm very conservative money-wise, don't spend too much money. And so that took off, and I was like, is this sustainable? Can I do this for long term, like as e-com or dropshipping specifically, something I could do in the future? Where I wouldn't need a job. So I kind of double-dipped for a long time. So I worked at Abbott making— I was up to $98,000 a year after I was promoted, but started at $70,000 there. And then also doing e-com on the side. And the e-com was obviously making more money, right? So I started doing things like working on it during lunch and all that stuff. And I did it for like 6 months, maybe, both of them, just to kind of prove to myself, like, if it's consistent for 6 months, it's probably going to be consistent for the next year. The next 2 years, next 3. So I did that. And then I finally was like, okay, the amount of time I'm spending at Abbott is taking up my earning opportunity, which is straight up opportunity cost of running more stores, opening more stores, testing more products, all that stuff. So I quit. That was super scary, to be honest with you. Yeah, it was.

Oh, I bet.

Yeah. Yeah. Never like had much stable income or anything growing up. So it was, it was really scary. I was like shaking. Yeah, because it was like a big commitment.

Well, what would you say to somebody who's listening who's kind of feeling the same way that they're like, dude, I mean, I have this job, whatever, and maybe I don't like it, but I mean, at least I know that it's going to pay my bills, right? But I'm interested in doing this other thing. What advice would you give them?

Yeah, so my advice would be don't quit anything. I get people ask me that all the time. Should I drop out of college? Like, no. What do you— what income do you have? He's like, I want to start dropshipping. It's like, well, you don't. No, you probably have a bad mindset, first of all. So no. My advice is to work on it. Everyone's like, I don't have any time. I don't have time to go to the gym. I don't have time to do whatever. You have time. You have time. So work on your e-com store during lunch, during your lunch break at your work. Work on it for 1 to 3 hours a day after work, maybe 3 times a week. And just grind. Turn off Netflix for a little bit and prove that income first.

When people say that they don't have time, what they really mean is I don't want to.

It's— they're lazy.

Not worth it.

100% lazy.

Because they don't want to give up exactly what you said. They don't want to give up that time they have after work or whatever their obligation is after school where instead of— yeah, it's— you don't get to sit there and watch Netflix or go party or whatever the fuck. You gotta do this.

No, and if you can't do that, that's a problem.

Absolutely.

You need to be working for someone else, probably. Yeah, honestly. Um, and if you can't— if you don't have like the drive, and I feel like the drive is like even when you see like a small win and you love it, like then I think, you know, you got it right. Because like some people make $30 or $50 their first day dropshipping or something. They're like, it's not enough money. A win's a win. Like if that doesn't make you hungry and want to get more and more and more, then, then you also have a problem. So I feel like you realize that drive early on if it's for you. Yeah, you can work for yourself because that's time management and working for yourself go hand in hand. You're your own boss, right? And if you have an Xbox next to you and you just pick that up at like 11 a.m. every day, but you're working for yourself, it's just not a good mix, right? And you really have to figure out that time management.

Well, that's something that I definitely had to learn myself because even like, you know, some people say like, you go to college and that like teaches you to be an adult. No, not for me. So it was like really like, you know, especially when I started doing my own thing and it's like I started wholesaling during the COVID thing and everything shut down and like none of my friends are working or anything like that, but I'm still just going to the office every single day and doing this shit and, you know, eventually it works out. Yeah, but it's like you have to do that stuff and you have to be able to get yourself to work. Yeah. And I think the way you're able to do that is by seeing the end vision in mind, which for me it was very helpful to see people on Instagram like these other wholesalers who are balling out and driving the Lambos because I was like, Fuck, dude, if they're doing it, like, it's got to be possible. Yeah. Whereas like, same thing, people for you, they got to be seen. Well, hey, shit, sort of. Raven can do it.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I try to like be a little bit different on social media.

Yeah.

Because e-com got really quickly flooded, like I was saying earlier, with people that just made.

Yeah.

$20K and they now rent a Lamborghini and post videos and sell a course. It's like they don't know what the hell they're going to teach you. Yeah, they're just trying to make money off that now. And e-com got really saturated with that. It's a little different for real estate, I think, because I don't know, uh, I just feel like it's more believable today. There's so many— there was just a wave of fakes.

Oh, like, do you feel like because of the, like, the saturation of the e-com gurus that it's made everybody skeptical, are you saying?

Or— yeah, I think definitely that. And I also think that, like, I don't know, like e-com, you can get lucky maybe, like, I like being like a 17-year-old kid, get lucky on your laptop for a month and then you don't know anything about it. You didn't learn anything. But if you're like successful in real estate, you can like, it's like almost public information. You can kind of like look that up or see what they're doing or what deals they've done in the past or whatever. There's more proof to it too, in a way. And it's not like something you just stumble upon when you're like 16. So you come like, you come as like a lower, lower barrier to entry, I'd say, but also like generated people like that.

Yeah.

Gurus and all that stuff. Yeah, I can see that weird space, but it's, it's really good to be in because it teaches you like so many high income skills, like every single one.

Well, that's why I mean, when I, when I look at it, that's why I would always tell people that I think that if you really want to get started doing this, I think there are 3 really good routes to go. I'm obviously biased and I'm going to say go wholesale. But I think that e-com and copywriting, like a copywriting agency, are like the 3 ways that that's what you should go do to make money if you're not sure what. Because like what you're saying, all the high-value skills you'd learn, like the high-value marketing skills. Like one thing that I don't know how to do that I wish I knew how to do was make and run Facebook, Instagram, and Google pay-per-click ads.

Right. I know a guy.

Yeah, well, I mean, me too. I pay him a shitload of money, but oh, they're doing them.

Yeah, no, I'm kidding. I agree though. That's why I like e-com and specifically the things that I teach. I mean, my program is titled Ecom Remastered and I'm bringing this up because it's e-com remastered, not dropshipping remastered, right? So everything in e-com in general, which is the sale of online goods and services. So agencies are a great way to get into e-com, selling stuff as a service or whatever, ad agency, copywriting agency, all that stuff. A lot of great students having a lot of success with that as well. Um, but there's just so many high-income skills even when you just start a dropshipping store because you're the one-man team. You're learning about marketing, you know, advertising, ad creatives, ad copy, uh, website design, um, supply chain management. Like, so many different high-income skills right now. Can you— can get your kind of like— even ad creatives too. You can kind of figure out which one you like the most and say you don't even like dropshipping because that's a lot of hats to wear. Yeah, and some people don't like it. I'm thinking of someone specifically that I'm actually meeting up with in New York in like 2 days and kind of doing a similar thing to this. But he started off dropshipping and I met him when he joined my program maybe a year ago. And then he was like, he had some success with dropshipping, but he was like, I'm really good at creatives. I'm going to start an ad creative agency. And it just took off this entire year. I don't know, man. I'm not going to speak for him, but it's doing really, really well.

Yeah. Well, I like that. But it gives you the chance to surround yourself in all of these different things. Then you can pick the one that you enjoy the most and really run with it.

Right. Yeah, if you don't like dropshipping, it's like— or it's too much, too overwhelming, you can either outsource the things you're bad at or don't like doing, or you can just be like, dang, I really like running Google Ads. I'm really good at it. I'm going to offer this to you. And then you're going to be like, well, show me your results. Look what I've done. Okay, well, I'll give you a try. Then he picks up a client, monthly recurring revenue right there.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So that's pretty cool.

Well, and I think the same thing can kind of be said about wholesaling is when you get into it is like anybody who's interested in real estate, that is, I believe it's the best way to go any other direction. Whereas like if somebody tells me they want to be a realtor, they want to be a landlord, they want to own a bunch of long-term rentals, they want to own Airbnbs. Yeah, they want to flip houses. They want to actually fix and flip them. I say you should start with wholesaling because it's going to give you so much transactional knowledge of how like a real estate deal works.

Yeah.

You know, how to find the buyer, find the seller, how the whole title process works and all of that. Not to mention everything you learn as far as the marketing and the sales, but just getting to see the transaction is going to make everything else easier. Plus, when you're wholesaling, you learn how to market direct to seller, right? Where for all those other things, it's going to benefit you if you can get the property for the very cheapest price. When you can go direct to seller, that's how you're going to get the cheapest price.

Yeah. One thing that you have that I don't have as well, and a lot of people don't in the e-com space, is just talking to people. Oh. Right? Sales in general.

Social interaction.

Yeah, dude. I mean, you can do everything from your little laptop in Peru, right?

Yeah.

With an e-com store, but you don't talk to people unless you're selling a service and trying to close a client.

Wow.

That's one thing that I've missed. And it's funny that I was even bringing this up because I would like to do another YouTube video with you. I kind of want to do this idea that we can maybe run when I get back. We switch jobs for the day. I got a cold call. I have to cold call. I'll set you up with like a store and you try to like create some ads and like run it for a day.

Oh my God.

Just see who does better.

Let's do it.

I know. I think that'd be cool. Sick. Yeah.

Yeah, dude. I'll set you up with like everything. Like, we'll give you a list of people and like, you know, good stuff. And then I'll show you real quick and I'll give you like a tutorial on, on like the underwriting and make you some offers. You'll go get a deal, bro.

Maybe. Maybe don't give me the best leads right off the bat.

It's all good, bro. We're generating by the boatload every single day.

I think that'd be a cool video, though.

I really like that idea. That'd be sick.

Yeah, a little crossover.

Yeah. You guys got to drop a comment if you want to see the video of me and Austin switching jobs. I'm going to go— I'm going to run a dropshipping store for the day, and then Austin is going to be a wholesaler for the day. Yeah.

And your goal would be to like maybe get one sale, like from like organic TikTok or something like that, right? That'd be a win.

Dude, that'd be fun. I really like that.

Yeah.

And because it's stuff I'm like really interested in too, dude. I love the idea of dropshipping for like somebody getting into it. Like I can just so see like, hey dude, you know, you get a product, you order it. Like just so if I— let me run through, let me run you through the way I think that this happens. And I'm sure I want you to let me know if I'm right. Find a product that has a good margin, right? And you're going to order one for yourself. And then I'm going to make some TikTok videos about it, some sort of like user-generated content. So I'm thinking like, I really like the idea of like women's beauty.

Yeah.

So some kind of like ice roller or something, right? And I'm going to go and I'm going to give it to my girlfriend and we're going to make a fucking video about it, right? Why I love doing this every single night and make like 10 of those videos. And then I'm going to make the, the website and it's going to be pretty like almost like a landing page or just like pretty much they go there buy the product, right? Maybe we got a couple of colors, I don't know. And that's it. And then we get it up and running and then I'm going to do the organic. I'm going to just post those videos maybe on a bunch of different accounts because I know that TikTok's shit is weird and sometimes it'll blow up or whatever, but then I'm going to go, okay, and then I'm sure that there's some ads and stuff I could run, some paid stuff. But that's where I would start.

That's— yeah, that's where I pretty much recommend everyone to start. Pretty much everything that you just said. Starting off with organic is great, especially for a beginner, because there's low upfront cost. You really just have to have the product and a phone, which pretty much everyone has that's starting dropshipping. And it teaches you how to make ad creatives, right? You have to film them yourself. And if you film 10 different marketing angles or 10 different just first clips or the hooks of the ad creative, and you figure out, wow, that one did really well. I wonder why. It was probably more engaging, right? I'm going to repeat that but do it even better. Make it even more engaging. So you learn what actually resonates with the audience and what they engage with. And then it just teaches you all that. And then while that's going on, hopefully if you get a viral video or something, you get the revenue coming in. You fulfill the orders through your supplier, which you forgot to mention, but that can be tough sometimes finding a good supplier. But you got to do that. And then let's just say you generated $3,000 in revenue in the first month and you profited $2,000 because it's organic traffic. Something like that. Now you take all those best ad creatives, repurpose them, kind of reorganize them and make them native to whatever platform you want to advertise on and move them into paid traffic and reinvest back into the business.

Gotcha.

Because organic's great. And if you can just get a video on TikTok that has like 10 million views every day, good for you. You're going to make a lot of money. But it's really hard. Like you said, TikTok's really random.

Yeah.

So people have a really good month organic and they're like, I made $50K profit this month from my organic TikTok videos. Okay, but next month they update their algorithm and your videos went to zero, right? So now you got to move into paid. Like, you almost have to move into paid. But sustainable.

But I love the idea of you test— you test how engaging it is using their algorithm. You just use TikTok's algorithm as a test to see if it's engaging. And then once you know it is, that's when you start pumping money into it and you force the virility of it for sure.

It's the thing that I didn't have back in 2018. I had to go straight into paid. You pretty much had to do that for everything. Yeah, for the most part. And now it's such an advantage because, like you said, it's low cost. You post as many times a day as you want and try to get viral video and learn. And you get some sales. So hopefully you get a little revenue to support your business even further. And it basically tells you what is the best ad that you had. You just keep learning. It's the most engaging. And then it's like, OK, great. This is the best ad. Let's move it into paid. And you're way more likely to succeed now with that ad.

I see.

And I didn't have that back then because there was no TikTok.

Free testing.

Yeah, free testing.

Um, have I told you that I, I, uh, had a dropshipping store in college?

No, I think you always hop on your lives. I feel like you've mentioned it sometimes, but I didn't really— I don't know the story.

Um, so me, me and some of my buddies were, were sitting around like having dinner in college and we were talking about, um, shirts that— I'm not gonna say it because— but the C word.

Oh, okay.

And, um, we were like, what if we had shirts that like said that, like people bought that stuff like that. And I was like, I don't know, let's fucking see. And I had— yeah, well, and I had met with somebody. It was, um, my— like, this girl's boyfriend came in and I met him and he was telling me about dropshipping and he kind of explained the process to me. He's like, yeah, like, you don't actually— like, the people pay you and you use that money to pay for the things. You don't actually need any inventory. And one of my first questions was, well, how do you find people? And he had this, this software called SalesBrain. And what it would do is you could set it up for certain hashtags you wanted to target and it would automatically comment on any posts that use those hashtags and say, hey, and then you could customize whatever the comment was. So we made a store, a bunch of black shirts with box logos like knocking off Supreme that said things like the C-word blacked out. So no head was the most popular one, like tripping, like things like that. I don't know, just some offensive things. And we targeted like #skateboarding and #streetwear. And so then we bought some, we made some Instagram accounts, we bought some followers on them. I learned that you could buy followers. And so we just bought some accounts, loaded them up with like 50,000 followers each. It was like all the same name is called Raw Fits.

Raw Fits.

Yes, we had Raw Fits, we had Raw Fits underscore, we had Raw underscore Fits, right? We had like 10 accounts because there was only a certain amount of comments you could post today.

Okay.

And it would automatically comment on these pictures and it'd be like, hey, I love your, I love your stuff. We would actually love to sponsor you. Send us a DM. Then, then when they sent a DM, it didn't matter. It was just like the way that the automation worked is just if any response came in, you could set the sequence of messages. So we had to like tailor them down a specific path. So it was like Yeah, I do love the content you're doing. We'd absolutely love the chance to sponsor you. Let me give you a discount code so you can get some of our merchandise. And then if you post some pictures and we like it, we'll sponsor you. We'll send you some stuff for free.

Mm.

Ended up doing that, ran it, and then we're getting sales every day. Like, I think we were doing like $100 a day or something like that in sales. And like, at the time in college, I don't even think we were making any money because of like the— basically the software took 25%.

Wow.

So that eats like— I feel like most e-com stores, like, your profit margin is probably around 25 to 35%.

So yeah, it depends.

But, but ate everything. And then that plus the, you know, the COGS and everything like that, we actually weren't making any money. But it was the first time I was seeing like, all of a sudden I, I was really— because I was broke college student, and all of a sudden I see some kid in Japan just like made a $600 order and bought everything from rawfits.com. And I was like, holy shit.

Yeah.

It made me realize what's possible with the scale of the internet.

For sure.

You can get your shit out to everybody everywhere.

It's insane. Yeah. And like, that's a win. Like, you got a taste of it too.

Yeah.

You know, you're like, this is possible.

It definitely opened my eyes to making money online. Yeah. And like, even though, like, with the wholesaling, what we do now, it's all virtual. Like, you know, before you were here, I don't know if you went and looked at our deal board, but we have all of these deals all over the country, places I've never been before, a place I've never even heard of before. We actually don't have a single one here in Arizona. Actually, that's not true. We locked up one in Surprise like yesterday, but all over. And it's like never seen the property, never met the seller, never met the buyer. Just all being done.

Yeah.

You know, on the phone. Yeah.

Would you consider what you're doing like an online business?

Absolutely. I mean, it's something that can be done from anywhere. Yeah. Like there's— there are people— I don't think it's as common as it is in your industry, but there are people who are, you know, they're like the digital nomads, right? Just ride around and do whatever they want, and then they manage a team. And especially with the accessibility to like virtual assistants, right? And how many of them are geared already in the real estate space towards that?

Oh, for sure. Yeah. But the thing is, like, you guys have to call more people than I do during the day. Well, if I'm out and like—

that's the thing is I feel like that's the hardest, like, barrier with wholesaling is like the sales skills that are necessary because, you know, you can have the best— you can get the best leads generated for you, anything like that. And If you can't close them, you can't close.

You can't do anything, right?

You know?

Yeah. It's like I was saying, with the skill that I don't have that you have is closing. Talking in general. Yeah, just closing mainly. I've never sold anything in my life really besides online, you know?

Yeah. Well, that's the thing is I'm jealous of— it's just like, it's just copy that sells and like a nice experience and telling a story.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a little different, but it's still something that like you should work on, especially if I'm wanting to get into more of a service base. Company starting later down the road or something like SaaS or something, I'm going to have to talk to people. I'm going to have to close people and convince them why they should be doing it.

Well, I feel like it's the same thing, just it's in a conversation rather than something they're reading, where it makes it a little bit easier that way if you see it. Because now some people will overcomplicate it, and they talk themselves in circles, and they ruin sales for themselves. When I see it, I, it's just, I'm just speaking copy, right?

Right.

All we're doing is, you know, we're making deals that are easy to say yes to, hard to say no to, and we make it look like it's their idea.

Right. That's a skill, though. Yeah. Yeah, it is.

Well, I mean, I would agree. I mean, I think that sales is like, it's definitely a skill that everybody should learn. It helps in everything.

For sure.

All it is is communication.

It's going to help you in every aspect of your life.

Yeah.

Talking in general. It's like a muscle though.

Yes.

Right? Like I'd say it was like, for me it was better, just conversational talking in general, better in college. Yeah. And then after college we traveled for like 2 years straight and talked to anyone, slowed down a little bit. And then it's like when I started getting back into like posting on YouTube and talking with people and having meetings and all that stuff, it comes right back. It's like a muscle. But yeah, for a time during COVID and stuff, it was like, I don't even know how to speak anymore, dude.

That's funny because that's something I've never thought about. Like you can seriously like put in your headphones and just get going. You don't have to talk to a single person. You can make fucking hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Yeah, yeah. And then on top of that, traveling. Like, so when we did the— we traveled in the RV for 6 months.

Yeah.

And then went to Hawaii for, uh, 3 and a half, almost 4 months. And then we went to Europe. Um, sorry, actually in reverse order. Hawaii, RV, and then Europe. And, uh, I mean, we go to Europe too. They don't speak that much English.

Yeah.

I was like, for those 2 years, pretty much I'm like, just me and Miranda.

Is that just all— was that just all credit card points?

Yeah, a lot of it. A lot of it was. Yeah. So we did a full month. Not so— we did 2 months in Europe where we rented an Airbnb because it wouldn't— like, you need to be, like, livable, you know? And then we did a full month of traveling throughout Europe, all on credit card points. Wow. Like Santorini, you know, Cinque Terre, Germany, Paris, I guess France. Where else do we go? Greece, uh, Belgium, like all these places. Spain.

That's so sick.

All on points.

Yeah, it's something that I really— I've never been to Europe. Yeah, I'm like, dude, I need to go see that shit.

Come visit. Yeah, we'll be there, uh, starting tomorrow pretty much.

Oh, no shit.

Well, I'm leaving, um, yeah, I'm leaving tomorrow to go to New York for 2 days. I'm doing a little bit of filming there and just hanging out, have a little layover, and then we're gonna go directly to Milan after that for 2 months for sure, and then we'll probably be in Europe for like anywhere from like 3 to 6 months total.

No shit. Yeah, dude, that's so awesome. Um, for those of you guys, um, who don't know, which is gonna be everybody, um, Austin is like the only person in my, like, I don't even know how to explain it, like people that like I knew from here in Arizona that actually like make content and are doing like running online businesses and stuff. And so I've been trying to get him to— we've been trying to make some content to get him to do an interview for a time, but you're always fucking— I know, flying around the world.

I'm flaky and I go places on a whim, which sucks. It's fun. But I agree. I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to say that too. Like, there's no one really in Arizona— there are people, but that we kind of knew, or even like childhood friends and stuff like that, or people went to college with that really does like anything like this.

Yeah.

Not even just posting online, but working for themselves. Right. Rare. I could name less than 5 that I personally know. Well, you know, it's different.

Well, I mean, like, it's not for everybody, but it's crazy because I look at— and whenever I'm talking to somebody, like, I'm just like to a point now where, like, I just see people's, like, strengths or talents or something. And I'm always like telling them, like, oh my God, like, you need to start a channel doing this or you need to start a TikTok account.

That's what I do.

Like, yeah, because I've just seen how, like, all the benefits it has.

I know, I know. But no one wants to take that advice.

Well, it's because it's scary. It's, it's like, like, I remember when I first started making videos, I'm like, dude, people from like my high school are gonna see this, they're gonna make fun of me.

That's kind of like the hardest hump to get over almost.

It is. I think it's weird. I think once you cross that and you just get to a point, like for me, you don't care. Yeah, like, well, now at the point, I'll throw— I'll post fucking anything on the internet, it doesn't matter. But I think that one thing that was really helpful for me to get over that fear of like posting was I just had to realize why I was doing it. It's like, I know what this can give me. I know the benefits can be there, and I'm willing to look like an idiot if that's what it takes for a certain amount of period before I'm able to realize anything.

Yeah.

And then I realized that it was like nonexistent. Right.

I kind of thought that too. I had like a struggle a little bit posting on like Instagram and stuff because that's where like all my family and like friends mainly follow you, you know? And then I was like, why do I care? Like what? Like if they judge me for whatever, 2 months before anything like pops off in any regard, like I'm like, why does it matter? They're the ones— this is when I was still doing dropshipping and stuff, but not posting anything about anything that I do. I'm like, they're the ones texting me after work saying I hate my job. Like, can you help me out with e-com?

Yeah.

So it's like, I'm posting stuff that they're interested in anyway. Right. So like, why would they even care?

Yeah.

And if they do care, I don't talk to this person anyway or whatever.

There you go. Well, I started to realize now, because now it's gotten to the point where like so much of like, my life is online and I post so much stuff and then I kind of have to like reel back because it was like, like I was, I was meeting my girlfriend's, like a lot of her extended family over Christmas and they're like telling me, they're like, oh yeah, I've seen you, I've seen your TikToks or stuff like that. It's like, oh shit, I get that randomly too, especially in Arizona.

Like for someone that like, I don't know, I was in like a fraternity or something that I knew that I don't really talk to or whatever. And they're like, hey, like, been seeing you online.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So you don't even need to say like, how you been? Like, you know already, right? Like, it's funny. It's kind of weird, but it's a good time. And I feel like, uh, it's kind of weird too though, because like in the beginning, you know, if you're posting, you're small, people are like— there are those people that are like, oh, like, why is he doing that? Like, that's stupid, whatever. And then when you get to like a certain point or something, people are like, hey man, like, how's it going? Like, that's so cool. Yeah. I was like, all right, dude.

And here's the thing is everybody has something, like whatever it may be, something they're interested in, some kind of talent that they can go where they will attract other people.

Yeah.

All that matters is the time between, like, your execution of you actually staying consistent within doing it, where you will become successful doing it as long as you stay consistent. It doesn't matter who you are, and pretty much anything too.

Yeah, not even like a specific— not even like posting or anything, it's just consistency in every aspect.

That's true.

Everything. Working out, eating healthy, working in general, social media, everything.

Yeah.

You—

what is it? You show me your habits and I'll show you the kind of person you are. Like, you know, anything you do every single day, it's going to write the story of who you end up being.

Yeah. And you're never going to not improve.

Yeah.

On that scale.

That's a really good point.

Is possible.

Yeah. And that's another thing is in the beginning you just have to accept that your shit's going to suck.

Yeah. Like, yeah, you're going to fail. It's going to suck. You're going to fail. You're going to fall on your face 100 times.

And you know what the best thing is? If it sucks, nobody's going to see it.

No. Yeah, that is kind of the best thing, right? It's like, yeah, even if you're posting or something social media specific, like it's going to suck in the beginning. You're going to look nervous or whatever, bad camera, whatever it is, right? But no one's watching it.

Exactly.

And the video that did pop or like something that did move, I mean, it's your best quality content at the time. That's what they saw.

Yeah. You know?

Yeah, so it doesn't really matter.

Yeah, I mean, it's just, you gotta just get over a little bit of stuff like that. But I'm telling you guys right now, everybody— well, yes, for sure. But I— it's the 100% the best thing I've ever started to do for myself.

I agree.

Was to talk about what I was doing.

Yeah.

You know, on the internet.

I agree, I agree. I look back and I think quitting is the best thing that I ever did.

Yeah, yeah. Well, so that's something that I, I never had. Like, I never have had like a stable job like that. But you're making, you know, $100 grand a year and having to walk away from that and be like, oh no, there's— you gotta let that go. I, I see more out here, but it's fucking, uh, very cloudy, you know. You don't— you can't see the exact way.

Yeah, you're walking in with a blindfold.

Yeah, yeah.

But that's also the trap. I kind of knew, um, that I kind of had to quit at that point after getting a promotion. I quit like 3 weeks after I got a promotion, which is like a slap in the face. He did. No way. But I was like, I had to do it because I realized, like, it's a trap, right? They're going to pay you more. And the more they pay you, you're probably going to get a new car, right? Or bigger apartment or whatever it is, right? Now you got this debt and, you know, you have to pay for it somehow, pay your bills. And they're trapping you with that salary because when you go on your own, if you just straight up quit, like, the salary is gone. Who's going to pay for that apartment? Who's going to do all this? So, you know, that's the scariest thing. So I was like, I had to quit then because, you know, I was on a good track, um, the corporate ladder. But, um, once you get to a certain point, you can't really start your own thing. It's really hard. You might have kids at that point too.

There you go. And it's like, yeah, yeah, I've got people who depend on you. And I mean, that's why it's definitely good that like started doing this as like a young buck.

I don't have a family or anything like that you don't have to, but you should take the risk from 18 to 30.

Right.

Take a risk.

When you can fuck up, you can start from zero as many times you want. Doesn't really matter.

There's a lot of time, right? Yeah. But once you get to that 35, 40, 50, you can still do it. It's just going to be a lot more challenging and you better have a little bit of money saved up if you're going to quit. Yeah.

You know, so I'm, I'm building a community right now similar to what you have, I believe.

Yeah.

We're kind of talking a little bit about it. You know, I want to build a community where I can show people how to do what I do and how to start flipping houses all over the country. And so they can exit out of these jobs that maybe they don't really enjoy doing or aren't paying them enough. And right, so it's going to be like a, you know, a classroom where they can come in and they can learn this stuff. And then also I want to have a place where they can ask questions and then do some like weekly calls where I can talk to them, you know, face to face and figure out exactly what challenges they're going through and help work through it.

Mm-hmm.

Can you tell me a little bit about how you've built your community and what it's focused on?

Yeah, so we really restructured it, actually brought on a partner who has equity in it. Because it's tough to do alone, I'll be honest with you, when you're the one-man face of something. So brought him on in December, I think, of last— 2 years ago now, I guess. And in January, it was kind of fully revamped, ready to roll. That's when we really relaunched it, I guess.

You got to tell me more about this person. What's their responsibilities? Why'd you make decision to do all that?

Yeah, um, he, uh, that's a good question. So this person was actually at a Discord group before, like, my program. It was kind of like more just like a community base. It was like $5 to enter a month or something. I just posted on TikTok and just kind of like for networking mainly or whatever. Um, and he was like one of the first members to join. I think he was like the fourth. This was like 2 years ago or something. And he started like, uh, really contributing, really helping out. Smart guy. Knew a lot about e-com, was running a really successful store. We became friends. Then he became a moderator. And I was like, let's relaunch a real program. He was the first person I wanted to call. So I called Bobby. Shout out, Bobby. And I was like, I want to revamp this. I want to bring you on as a head coach/partner. So we negotiated, obviously, equity and stuff like that and what his responsibilities were in helping restructure the program. He's a lot better than me at restructuring things. And he's part of a lot of other communities of what looks good, what works really well. Has a lot better communication skills with people than I do. I'm a little, a little bit shorter. Like, why are you not just Googling this? He's a little nicer. So, you know what I mean? Like, I get a little snappy and like, come on, bro. Stuff like that. He does a lot of the backend work and scheduling and training people and stuff like that too. More organizational.

Okay, so this was from the very beginning of when you were like, hey, I'm really going to make this program, right? You brought him on in the beginning.

Yeah, right in the beginning. He kind of laid out, you know, all the structure of what we want it to look like and all these plans and all this stuff, what we need, what we don't need. And then we kind of launched it like soft, I guess, launched, but it was soft launch in terms of because it's not where it's at today. It always kind of evolves, you know. So it's on Discord. That's like the communication main platform. There's some resources in there too. And we do our meetings in there as well. They have like the video chat and all that. Okay. That's communication also with us and like private DMs and certain channels for web design and all that stuff where you talk about it, get your questions answered, all that.

Gotcha.

And then we have our supplemental— I call them supplemental videos because a lot of people buy courses and stuff like that or programs, and they're like, I'm paying for these videos. I think it's totally supplemental. That's like— it's an extra, right? Just for a view and get your idea of how we think about e-com and our theories behind it and what you have to do. And there's like 50 videos in there probably. Which we keep updating as well because it's always changing, the platforms and social media marketing and all that, right? But they're supplemental. Don't buy a course for just videos, is my advice. You buy a course or a program to work with someone and learn from someone as they're learning themselves as well. So the biggest, like, selling point is, like, the coaching. So we do—

I think that's phenomenal advice.

Yeah, you can't— like, if you're gonna buy just videos, don't expect too much, and then also don't pay that much for them.

Right.

My advice, you want to be like working with someone.

It's working with a community, dude. For the vast majority, like I've said this about like the videos that I'm coming out with, look, they are tailored and they're in order and they're exactly— and they're all that stuff's there and you can learn it all. But I'm telling you right now, all that shit is on YouTube. You can go find it for free. Now it's not put together nicely for you, but it's out there.

Yeah.

So I really like the point of what you're really paying for is the access and like the— to get to when you do have questions, to be able to reach out. And then also the— I love what you said about learn with them as they're learning, because as I change and adapt in my business, people who are in that proximity are going to be the first to know.

Right. Right. And that's another thing where it's like, you know, there's some probably good coaches out there that don't really do what they're coaching for anymore themselves. They're probably good. But when you have like your feet wet in whatever you're doing too, you're up to date with the latest trends, what's going on, because it's your business too, right? You're invested. So it's easy to relay that information. And like you said, you could find a lot of information on YouTube, but it's laid out really nicely. But also a big portion of it is you run your business different than someone else on the internet, right?

Yeah.

And when you start going onto YouTube and you can find all those pieces, but everyone has a little bit different strategy that might not coincide together.

I see.

But especially in e-com, the theories and the ideas of how things work, if you do it all yourself and watch all the videos from one person, it's what worked for that one person altogether. Like, my ad strategy would be different than someone else's right now.

Gotcha.

But if they pull the ad strategy from someone else and do the web design for me, it might not click together.

They start to build this like Mr. Potato Head. Yeah, just doesn't fucking fit.

Frankenstein machine. Yeah. So that's also a benefit to the videos, but I still think they're like supplemental. It's all about the coaching and the face-to-face, which a lot of people don't really do in the e-com space anymore. From what I've noticed, they kind of like have coaches do coaching calls. But I do my coaching calls once a week and Bobby does his once a week as well.

Yeah. Yeah.

Face to face.

And so on those calls, is it kind of like an open office hours sort of thing where people can just like ask you questions or you have a certain topic you talk about?

No, I want to start implementing more topics because some people get a little shy.

Yeah.

Talking to your dad about it. Some people just, you know, like especially in e-com because it's not a super outgoing thing or doesn't have to be. You can just be behind your laptop. So some people get a little bit more shy and don't want to ask questions and will just text it to me after. Oh, OK. Like, you should have just asked it on the call.

And more people are going to want to—

It sparks them to be like, oh, I can ask that too. Or that made me think of something else. Yes. But it's been good lately. There's been a lot of engagement. But it's freeform right now. I do want to start bringing on guests and stuff. I think that'd be really cool, like special lessons. But yeah, it's freeform. It's like, ask whatever is going on for the week, what you're struggling with. You're stuck at $1K revenue. How can we get you there? To $2K revenue per day, stuff like that. Or if no one's talking, I'm like, all right, someone give me your website. Let's review it. Oh, this sucks. This sucks. Change this. Change this. All right, next person. Let's go. And do stuff like that. So it's really freeform, though.

I like it. Yeah. That's something that I'm wanting to do that I feel like would be similar to what you're saying of looking at people's websites is what I want to do is I want to have people take calls live while they're in front of everybody. And then so then afterwards, we, me included, and everybody else can just rip them apart so that they're able to get better.

Yeah, you know, that's a good idea. Yeah.

But I think that it's so important to be able to have that. Like, that is exactly what you're paying for. It's the— it's those meetings. Everything else is supplemental. I really like that idea.

I know, I know. And like I was saying, like, not too many people in e-com do it. They kind of outsource like some of the coaching calls and stuff. But I love like, you know, I've made some really good friends.

Yeah, my community.

The guy I'm filming with in New York.

Yeah, the community.

Good friend now.

Well, I mean, it's like fulfilling to me too as well. Like, I really like— I've learned that I like teaching and I like helping somebody and being able to get them reach a breakthrough and whatever that may be. But also you mentioned like it's really hard to do all by yourself. That's why I'm very lucky that I have my dad and Mitchell that like everything in the business is being taken care of, that I'm able to focus my time over here. And then I also have them to lean on for different things within it.

Totally, totally. That's what's hard too, especially when you start posting more and like on social media, this takes up more time than people think, you know.

I don't think people realize that like full time, like, like the majority of my day is spent making content. Yeah, yeah.

That's how my whole focus of 2022 is kind of like get behind the camera more, start to like delegate some other stuff. Get behind the camera because it's time-consuming, especially in the e-com space. There are just some talking head videos that you can do and crank out pretty easily, but there's also some, like, I take a store from scratch to X amount of dollars in the month. That requires me to literally go build out that store and film my journey along the way with a little vlog camera or whatever. I went to the beach and filmed an ad with my neighbor's dog. That takes time, man. So it's hard. But so there's a lot more work than you think on the back end of content creation.

And that's something like I always— I encourage people, go make content, do that, tell people about what you're doing. Yeah, but you need to be careful if you're not spending too much time doing that shit that you're not focused on the thing over here of why you're doing it.

Oh, totally.

You know, so go talk about wholesaling real estate and whatever you're doing and talk about your journey and how you're getting your first deal and whatever that may be. You can't be spending too much time doing that. You lose sight of all of this.

Totally. You have to have it under control first. That's what I've been like. I'd say arguably slower than some of my peers that I look up to, but I make sure everything's aligned first, like you're saying. So before I start a new business or something that I want to spend more time on, I have to make sure the previous thing that I was just working on is set. And if I walk away or spend less time doing it, it's not going to fall apart.

I see.

Because that's the worst. And that's when you get in trouble too with, I don't know, overpromising certain people, especially in a service industry. And you don't set up things properly and you start focusing on something else. And they're like, hey, you said you were going to do this. Where are you? And then you get in trouble. And then it's just a headache for everything. So I really make sure that everything is set first before moving on.

I think that as people who naturally gravitate to this entrepreneurial entrep— entrepreneurial-spirited people. Yeah, that it's really easy to like get excited by different things and start going and then leaving these unfinished projects, you know, behind.

Yeah, I always think of so many like random good ideas right before I go to bed. I'm like, I need to do that tomorrow. And then it's like, well, I don't have 40 more hours in the week. Like, what am I doing? Like, fix this thing first. And also I have this problem too where I have a little bit of success, or I'd say like I get to like medium to high level success in something that I do pretty quickly and then I lose interest. I don't know why, because it was like ADD.

Yeah. Yeah. It just came too easy or something like that.

I think I like the challenge. Like, I like— I really started like— I mean, I'm not like huge on YouTube or anything, but it's picking up and I really like the challenge of like, okay, how can I make that? Like, my watch time went up a little bit in this video. What was it like? Did I say something great in the beginning? Like, blah, blah, blah. And I just like figuring out what's actually moving the needle. And then once I like master it, I get a little bored. I don't know why.

Yeah, I just do. I'm really enjoying exactly what you're talking about. You know, me and Jonathan will go over and we'll look at the analytics and everything and, and he's really good to the point. It'll be like, okay, like we're having like a good retention or where's this dropout point? Like what happened that caused that? And then making the adjustments. But YouTube is so much more fun to me than the, like the short form TikToks and the Instagram.

Totally. Yeah, I've outsourced a lot of my TikToks now.

Yeah. So something I'm thinking about doing, I want to ask your opinion on this, is in order to help, you know, spur some growth on my, my channel, I've heard some other guy did this, can't remember who it was, but I'm thinking once I get to 1,000 subscribers, I'm going to celebrate by giving away something like I'm going to do like a giveaway and the winner of it will be whoever is able to generate the most viral video from clips on my YouTube so they can take my YouTube and they can make clips and they can— whoever can do the most viral video, whether it's Instagram or TikTok or whatever it may be, I'll give away like $1,000 or something like that.

Yeah, I'm going to steal that idea. Yeah, that's a great idea.

So I heard from somebody I sent the TikTok to, John, then it was like, it was this guy. He was like, yeah. So once I got to 1,000 subscribers, I did that. And he said then he got to like 5,000.

Yeah.

And the thing was, I can't even remember what he gave away. It was like It wasn't even like anything monetary value or something like that. Do you remember what it was?

Like his old t-shirt?

A what? Cart?

Cart? Yeah.

Like, oh, well, no kidding. All right, so it was a cart. Yeah, but, um, uh, doing something like that. And then he said it got him from 1,000 to 5,000.

Wow.

And then, um, he did another one that like got him— I can't even remember what it got to, but then he said like that's how he got noticed by like Aiden Ross and some of these other people and and it just blew up.

That's a great idea. It's kind of like what, like, Iman Gadzhi and Andrew Tate did and all that. Okay, so I don't even say that name anymore on YouTube.

Yeah, I guess.

Yeah, right, dude.

That's the crazy thing is he just popped off. Like, all of a sudden he's not showing up on my For You page anymore.

No, no, I'll tell you, um, I, I was posting some TikToks saying his name and saying, um, I do like a lot of clickbaity TikToks sometimes. It depends on the channel, um, and it was saying his name and I was saying, now that he's gone, we need like a new leader in like the e-com space or something. There's like a video of me or whatever, and they're all getting taken down.

Really?

It says, I think, what's the notification? It says like the person you're referencing, like, says like hate speech or something.

No way.

So that's— they're like removing them completely from TikTok. Damn. You know, you can't even say his name.

That's crazy. Well, it's interesting because used to saying his name was like a good hook. Like he's saying this is going to increase engagement. We actually made a video and it was like I'm giving, um, like advice to people who went through a breakup. And my hook for that video was like, I heard Andrew Tate say something and then like went into the advice. And I thought that video was like really good.

Yeah.

And but it didn't like perform that well. I think I need to go back. I need to adjust that.

Yeah, dude. And shadow banning is real too. Yeah. So sometimes they'll just let a video go, but like they were maybe gonna ban it or something and it won't go. Like, you know, it's a great engagement. Yeah, really tricky. TikTok is weird.

It really is. It changes like every day almost, it seems like. Dude, I mean, I'll go through like little seasons where it feels like going viral is super easy, and then someone, it's just like, holy fuck. Yeah, I'm making bad shit.

I know, dude. Yeah, real— I feel the exact same way. I think everyone kind of does, man. It's like normal for that app, but And then it sucks because if it's in like that downward trend and you put a lot of heart and soul into a video, you're like, this one's going to bang. And then it's like 1,000 views.

It's never— it's never the videos that I think are going to bang that end up taking off. It's always like some—

like, it's so weird.

Yeah, it's like one of like the videos I thought was like mid and then it takes off.

It's so random.

Well, have you heard about what they're doing? Like, have you heard about the warming?

No.

So apparently, yeah, apparently like going viral is not some act of, uh, randomness or anything like that. Like all, like TikTok employees have the ability to, they call it warm a video where they will make it go viral. Oh, so like, like especially in the beginning and they're trying to get like influencers to come over and make TikTok videos, they'd be like, just come over and make a few videos, see how it goes. And then they go crazy fucking viral and they're like, oh, I like this, I like this TikTok. But the same thing happens nowadays where they'll get to like choose what's taking off.

I believe it. I think it's super random. I've went as far and still do. This is like very like superstitious of me, but I'll literally like if I have like a low point in TikTok where like nothing's taken off, I'll start saying to my phone like, I'm going to stop posting on TikTok. Like I used to get all these views. I was getting millions of views. I was getting so many followers. People loved me on the app. And I'm not getting more views. I'm going to stop and move over to Reels and YouTube Shorts. I'll just do that sometimes. I'm psycho.

But well, dude, I— at this point, I'm believing in— these phones are listening to us.

I know, it's crazy. But you know, if it works, it works.

Yeah, shit.

So I hope they watch this. Yeah, I'm about to leave TikTok, so you better make some shit happen. Yeah, well, Shorts is, um, they just, uh, updated their revenue share for it. Yeah, did you see that?

I heard Jonathan was telling me about it. Yeah.

So starting February 1st, I think is when it launches fully. You get 45%, I think, of the ad revenue on Shorts now, as opposed to, I think before it was like, you know, like a percent. It was really low. But that's going to be a— that's good. That's a direct battle with TikTok now.

Yeah.

Well, TikTok doesn't pay you anything, really.

Yeah, I know. People ask me money all the time in my life. So like, how much money you get paid from TikTok? I'm like, What? I'm losing money every month doing this shit.

Literally.

Yeah, but I want to— I think that because I know that they've talked like 3 or 4, maybe 5 times that they're going to ban TikTok in the United States.

I know.

I feel like it's almost becoming a question of not if, but when.

I agree.

And from what I've been hearing about the company and everything, it's probably a good thing. Yeah, no, I get it. Yeah. Pretty terrible thing to be having running around.

Yeah.

But I agree either way. I mean, with the focus being on YouTube, it's probably just a better idea for me to figure out Shorts instead.

I think YouTube is gonna make a huge push with Shorts, and I also think YouTube is going to— you know, there's like some competitors right now based on like free speech, like Rumble and all that. Um, I think those will die out as well. I think, uh, something with YouTube is gonna happen like what it Okay, I'm talking like, uh, similar to Twitter. I don't know if it's gonna be like a CEO change or anything, but I think they're gonna have to start updating their policies a little bit more lenient. Yeah, um, because otherwise Rumble is going to pick up too much traction, right? But the second that YouTube says, you know, Donald Trump can come back on, or Andrew Tate, or whoever, Rumble's gone. Yeah, same with Twitter. I mean, like, Twitter, Elon bought it and more people are coming back on. I know, I think like Donald Trump is leaving his platform they had like a contract with and coming back to Twitter. Yeah, so it's like if YouTube does that, you know, I think there's gonna be no worry. It's gonna be the top performing video platform.

Well, that's the best thing I think for society in general, right? Yeah, and I'm cool with YouTube. Let's keep you guys around, but definitely stop fucking moderating what the hell people can or can't.

I get it too. Like, it's— I have mixed feelings. Like, at some point there are things that should not be on YouTube, of course. Yes, there are some things when it comes like ideology As long as it's not directly hateful.

Yeah.

Who cares that this guy said, you know, I don't let women drive my car or whatever.

Yeah, right.

I don't— there's a lot of things I disagree with with Andrew Tate. I think he has some good points on certain things, but there's a lot I don't like. But with all people, he should be able to— yeah, with— that's with everyone.

Exactly.

But he should be able to say that. It's not like he's saying like, well, I don't even know what he's charged with or anything now, but this won't age well. But yeah, I don't know. But my point is something minor like that.

Yeah.

Women driving the car thing, um, you know, you can say that, you don't have to believe them. Yeah, you don't have to take them off the internet for it, dude.

I, I think that, that, you know, people are gonna analyze what Andrew Tate did in like 2022 for a long time, like marketing-wise, or like— yeah.

Oh yeah. Oh, it's insane.

Just like the, the genius of having other people promote your stuff and giving them a piece of it, and how quickly that blew him up, and to where the point where like even he's saying he's like there's a war happening in Ukraine and Russia and Andrew Tate is still the most like Googled guy or whatever.

Yeah, that's an insane marketing strategy. And you see people like Iman Gadzhi, I think I'm saying that right, and some other people that have bigger kind of YouTube followings in like e-commerce slash kind of like mentoring kind of.

That's their—

you know him, right? Or like—

oh, so when I started going in on YouTube, which I decided like the end of last year, I was like, yeah, I'm gonna really focus on YouTube. Um, he was one of the channels that I really like went through and watched to kind of get an idea of what is, you know, what is it that people want, right? Because he clearly has given it to them.

Yeah, I mean, I think he grew. I've been kind of watching him, see him post on short form a lot more, kind of same like Tate strategy. And, uh, he went from like, I don't even know, this is rough estimates, maybe like 700,000 to like 1.6 million on give in like a couple months or something. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, it's insane. So it's a great strategy, um, and I don't think that it's too saturated or anything because there's not a lot of people at that level that can do that and produce enough clips. Yeah, you got to be grinding to get that, like, a ton of clips like that.

Definitely. Well, and you have to have, like, you have to have something behind you, you know? Like, um, Imad had whatever that agency or whatever thing he had, and now as I understand, he's going Owen to the SaaS?

Probably. I don't know. I don't like follow him too much. I just see him a lot and know what he's about, I guess. Yeah, I don't, I don't even watch that much YouTube.

Me neither.

Like hardly ever.

Me neither.

So it's kind of like, like, what do you think of this guy? I'm like, I don't know.

The only reason I watch it is for like research purposes of like I'm looking at other wholesalers, what videos they're making, or I'm looking at people in, you know, side-by-side niches to see what they're doing, what I can implement, things of that nature.

I have a couple select few that I'll watch pretty regularly. But then the rest is like you're saying, research.

I already knew this. I know that you don't consume anything but dropshipping podcasts and audiobooks.

Yeah, well, yeah. Well, after my shower and the cold plunge. Yeah. Cold plunge first, cold shower, sometimes back in, and then dropshipping podcasts and books. Yeah. That's all you got to do.

It really comes down to just that. I mean, you know, if you, if you aren't listening to two different books at once, both on 2x speed, yeah, you're fucked. How are you going to keep up with the competition?

Can't keep up with me, that's for sure. No, there's no way.

Fuck no, dude. I'm going to, I'm going to have way more knowledge than you.

Insane.

It's done deal. Yeah.

And then I got someone like writing notes on the side about the books, any comments that I made.

And it's while I'm working out as well.

Yeah, usually. Yeah.

So I just have the mobile desk set up and I'm coming through and it's—

And the videographer's there.

Yes.

Yeah. It's a full setup. Yeah.

And also I only fast.

I don't eat. Oh yeah.

I don't eat. Why are you eating?

Yeah. I haven't had anything today.

Me neither. Well, actually, I take that back. I'm on a very intense cut right now. And so I have had 500 calories, which is like a lot. It's 1/3 of my daily calories almost, but I'm fucking starving. Wow.

That's not that many calories. I'd fast unintentionally.

Really? Yeah. You're one of those guys.

Yeah. And I got, like, stuff wrong with my stomach and all that, so I can't gain weight or anything. Yeah, but the biggest I've ever been was 185, and I was on creatine. I think we were talking about that, um, golfing or something. Yeah, it's tough, man, but I'm cut. I got, like, skinny abs, man.

Dude, I'll take it. I'll take it. Me and Mitch were having this conversation. I— that is a million times better to have that than be like, like a hard loser. Like, like hard loser. Like hard to lose weight, you know?

Yeah, I agree. I was gonna show you this photo. You're going to hate me. Maybe not. Depends on your different goals. Where is it? It's hilarious. So lately, over the last, like, 2 months, I've been working out like max 3 times a week, like sometimes 2, sometimes 1. So it's like 2 weeks of no, like, off. And my Miranda's like, how the hell do you still look like that? I took this the other day and she's like, oh my God. I know. It's like, I don't know. Like, I just apparently can't process anything. Like, granted, I only weigh like 165, 170, but still, like, shredded.

Yeah, that looks good. That's, that's, that's, that's like, that's peak male performance right there.

That's the beach swimsuit attire.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's hilarious, but I'm over here, I'm fucking starving myself every single day.

Yeah, well, I'm allergic to a lot of stuff, so yeah, yeah, it doesn't help.

But one day I'll get back up to 185.

What do you weigh now?

Probably 165, 170.

And how tall are you?

6'1".

Gotcha.

Yeah, pretty skinny.

I'm, uh, 195. I'm cutting down to— I've got my last 5 pounds right now.

Once I'm like 190, 191, I'm gonna be I'd love to see that number one day.

Yeah, yeah. Well, once I get there, I mean, then I'm gonna end up, uh, I'll probably be able to like bulk up to where like my normal sitting weight is 200. And, uh, that'll be—

that's a good weight. Yeah, that's a good way. I think at 200, I'd— I don't even know what I'd look like.

You'd look like a fucking beast.

Yeah, I'd be— I'll probably be scary. Yeah, a little bit.

Yeah, you would probably have— you gotta juice up to get there.

At least creatine.

Yeah.

That gained me like 10 pounds in like a month.

I bet. Drink enough water?

Yeah. Oh yeah. I was in college though. I was bigger then.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. Traveling sucks with working out and stuff.

Absolutely. And that's one of the biggest things that like my dietitian focuses on is he's like, we need to be building sustainable habits that it doesn't matter if you're here or you're traveling over here or whatever you're doing, that you can still stick with this. Because where people get fucked up is it's— people don't like fail on their diets when things are like normal, you know, Monday through Friday. It's these external things. It's when it's the weekend or when all of a sudden they have to go on this trip or whatever it is like that.

Yeah, 100%. I make pretty good decisions eating-wise. Like, I eat pretty healthy. Yeah, I mean, for the most part. So that's not too hard because a lot of it upsets my stomach if I don't. Yeah, so that's nice. And it's just like the working out. It's like, I fly to New York tomorrow, it's like there's no way I'm working out tomorrow. I'm going to be exhausted. Yeah, I just got to get up and do it because every time I do it, I always feel better. I always feel way more energetic every single time. I don't know why I don't.

Dude, I have to work out now. It's just—

how many days a week do you work out?

6.

That's a lot.

Well, I mean, I'm in the gym pretty much every day. Like, even if I don't work out, then I'm still doing some kind of active rest of like doing some sort of, you know, walking on the treadmill. One thing I've been doing is stretching. You stretch?

Yeah, I just started this year.

Some pretty gnarly shit.

Yeah, it's no joke.

It's no joke.

It's hard. Yeah, I used to not be able to touch my toes.

Yeah, fucking hurts. Yeah, like I'll start sweating.

Mhm. Yeah, it's like, holy shit, uncomfortable. You cramp up if you didn't have enough water too. It's over.

Like, I mean, I played soccer growing up, and so I remember doing the stretches, whatever, and it was like, bro, I don't need to do this. But now that I'm doing the stretches, it's like, holy shit, I can feel this.

That's like the best thing for you. If you're not going to work out, like, stretch at least. Yeah, and that's easy. You can just sit on your floor, right?

Well, it's just making it the habit of figuring out whatever works for you. But I feel like you're absolutely right. Like, out of the things you can do for your health, stretching is probably— I mean, now look, I'm no doctor, I'm no scientist here, but I just— the way it feels, it's like, this got to be good.

Yeah. Yeah. And you're going to go into your later years too, like, without injury.

Yeah.

Right. If you don't— a lot of people like that play sports, like maybe in college or high school or whatever, and they don't really work out that much, or they do sometimes, but they don't do any stretching. And then they go you know, they're 35, 40 now and they're like, I'm gonna play some pickup with my friends. Boom. ACL is gone. Yeah, that's me.

Yeah, that's me. Because the thing, I mean, I'm just like, I'm tight, you know? It's just like all I'm used to is my, my body does like these, these movements and that's it. And then it's like I've actually sworn off all like contact sports. Like I won't go play pickup or like flag football or even like soccer anymore because we did a turkey bowl So me and like, you know, the guys, you know, we would, we'd go and like Thanksgiving, we'd play like a flag football game. And I played in this last one, not, not this Thanksgiving, but the one before that. And afterwards, bro, I thought my fucking hamstring was fucked up, like my knee, like all these different things. I was like, holy shit, like, I can't do it anymore.

I know.

Like, I was playing wiffle ball. That was actually the last time I was playing wiffle ball. And I damn near pulled my hamstring running in a straight line. And I was like, holy shit, I'm washed up. Yeah, I'm 24 years old. Yeah, it's a little bit too early to be doing that.

I'm older than you. I'm 26. Yeah, getting up there. Yeah, it's crazy.

Well, it is crazy because it puts me in perspective of how much time's left, you know? Yeah, it's like, fucking a dude, and I can still double my life and I'm not going to— I'm still going to be running 100 miles an hour.

Yeah, 100%.

You know, I made a video about that too. I was talking about like retiring.

Yeah.

Like, I don't have plans to retire.

Yeah, I think there's like a soft retire. Like, I feel like for me, like, I like chilling a lot. I like chilling, like relaxing and going cool places. Yeah, I think it'd be like a soft retire, which I'd like to achieve earlier. Um, but like a soft retire is like, uh, you know, kind of exit some businesses, maybe sell them, and then, you know, still do something like open up a couple coffee shops or something. That would do something chill. Yeah, still keep your mind going and have fix problems and grow a business, but not, you know, as stressful or—

I see—

labor-intensive, I guess.

I like that.

Soft retire.

I like that. I actually really like the idea. You know what's something I would like to do is, uh, you know, in like Hawaii, like the guided like snorkeling or like shit, like the scuba tours. That's some shit I'd like.

That would be sweet, right?

You get your own little, you know, boat and your crew and shit, then just every day you just spend fucking scuba diving.

Yeah. You'd be tan as hell.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, dude.

And getting tan is dope. You know, I got a celebrity tanning around the corner over here.

Yeah, you just pop in there.

Oh, I pop in the tanning beds. I love it.

So white right now. It's crazy.

Well, you know, they say you— they say the tanning beds are pretty bad for you, though. Yeah, but I've been— I've been hitting them and I feel really good. Like, I have like a burst of energy afterwards.

Oh, really?

So like after, after, you know, after this is over and I eat some lunch, that'll be my next move is I'll go hit the tanning bed. And especially after you eat, you know, you start to get a little bit sluggish.

Yeah.

I mean, not right now because my body's fucking fighting and wants those calories so bad, but pop in the fucking little bed and you get some whatever the fucking vitamin, the sun shit and.

Yeah, golden. Yeah, I need to start doing that.

But well, but also I hear it's pretty terrible for you, for your skin.

Yeah.

You know what? But you know what is mine got this, this red light therapy. Now I'm pretty skeptical about all shit like that, right? And but I was talking to my dietitian, Matt Hoodie, and he was saying that the red light therapy is the real deal.

I don't know, but I've heard a lot of people like it.

I heard it's the real deal for helping your skin, like tightening your skin.

Yeah.

So, so my— this guy, Matt Hoodie, he told me, he said he's noticeably different, like in like the tightness of his abs.

Really?

If he goes a week without doing the red light therapy.

Wow.

And I was like, dude, I mean, because I don't know, man. You tell me that like having a light on you is doing some shit like that.

That's what I think.

I'm pretty skeptical.

I don't know. But I mean, it might work. Yeah, I don't know. Well, same thing with tanning, I guess. You put light on you, you're getting different.

Yeah, but here's the thing is that makes you— it makes you look better, right? And when you look good, you feel good. Yeah, good. You know?

Yeah, for sure. I like being tan. When I was living in Hawaii, I was pretty tan.

Yeah, I bet.

But now it's It's ghost season.

You know what, I think it's like people think that, oh, you're from Arizona, you should be super tan. It's like, you don't understand, man. Like, during the summer here, we gotta, we gotta stay the fuck away from outside.

Yeah, no, yeah, you're not gonna just go out there and sit. Yeah, you will cook, you'll overheat. Like, when your iPhone like says like it's too hot, that's really just your body outside.

Yeah, that's how it feels. And people don't realize you could be outside and your phone will get that like, oh, instantly almost.

It's crazy.

It literally feels like an oven sometimes. Yeah, but I love it.

Yeah. I mean, that being said, I want to move back, man.

Well, yeah, well, you're over in— and still nice. What, Venice?

Not anymore. Our lease ended up on the 21st.

Oh, really?

Yeah. We've just been here and then leaving, you know, tomorrow and then coming back in X amount of months.

Do you don't have a lease or anything, right?

Yeah. I've been floating around. Suitcases.

There you go.

Yeah, that's all I need.

Airbnb it or what?

Airbnb, um, at least in Italy for sure. And then we'll do a month of traveling, like, I don't know when. Yeah, because we might go over to Greece and then Germany as well for a couple months. But, um, then probably do another month all on points traveling and hitting some other locations, and then coming back here and probably gonna buy a place here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How many points do you need to travel around Europe for a month? Um, okay, some points.

All right. So if you're using an American Express and you're getting points through that, you can transfer American Express to Hilton, which is like one of the better deals. If you're going to go for like medium quality of hotel, you can transfer it. There's 2 times in the year where the transfer bonus is 2.8 times. So for every 1 point, you get 2.8 Hilton. And I'd say like a Hilton that's like $250 a night, maybe. Is about 40— depends where, what country, of course, but anywhere from, I guess, really 20,000 to 60,000 Hilton points, right? So if you're doing that for a month, let's just say your average is what? I don't know. Let's say the average is 40,000 Hilton points for each night for the whole month. You need 1.2 million Hilton divided by 2.8, like 400,000-ish American Express for the whole month of traveling. And these are probably 3 to 4-star hotels. I'd say that ain't bad. That's not bad.

That's sounding real realistic.

Yeah, it's not bad. I mean, a welcome bonus from American Express is like $120,000.

Yeah, right. So, well, me and Mitch were— we're trying to plan a trip to Europe with our girlfriends. Like I said, I've never been. I really want to go. You know, I watch this— watch the show The White Lotus. Mm-hmm.

I saw— I saw both seasons.

So I haven't seen season 1, but my girlfriend made me watch season 2. It's better, you know. You know that Jennifer Coolidge?

Uh-huh.

She's a bad bitch.

Yeah, yeah.

But there's a lot of people I fucking hated in that show. I hated the, the son, you know, the son, the—

oh, like, like, uh, Albie. Yeah, that guy. That was just a sad thing to watch sometimes, man.

Yeah, well, I'm really glad that it ended the way it did with him. With him?

Oh, he just got screwed up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Glad. Yeah, that guy. Yeah, but anyway, watching that I don't know what it was about like that, but I was like, damn, dude, I really want to go. I really want to go to Europe. Yeah, I've seen that.

Yeah, you should. I just think— did you think— when would you go?

Um, I think we're—

the summer might be there. Might fly over wherever you're at and just meet up. Yeah, for a day or two.

Well, um, well, definitely, because I know that you're fucking spontaneous and it's not like it's worth the shit to make a plan specifically for it, but we'll let you know once we get some more things. But, um, I was planning on going for like 6 to 8 days, something like that. But I feel like now that I'm really thinking about it, that might be too short.

It might be too short. Yeah, flying takes a long time.

Well, I mean, I'm just assuming that's a day, right? Um, maybe like 16 days, so then that's a full like 2 weeks.

Went from 6 to 16. Oh, big jump. But yeah, I agree. I think you should go like— depends how many places you want to visit, but probably like Yeah, at least 2 weeks.

Where do you think is the best place to go visit?

Yeah, I'd go to Italy.

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

I think Greece is really cool too.

That's really high up on my list.

There's a lot of cool stuff there. It depends on what you're looking for too. Because you can go in Greece, you can go to Santorini, where it's more like an island vibe, hotter weather. Or there's some people that love going up to Belgium, where it's a little bit colder, Gothic styles, stuff like that. So it's kind of whatever you want. Yeah.

I just like chilling, man. Yeah, that's what I want to do is just go see it. And I just want to expand sort of my worldview of things, you know, like I always think it's so interesting. Like, just like give you an example. Like, I had a friend in college who was German and, you know, grew up in Germany and just like knowing him gave me like such a different perspective of seeing how Germans are different than Americans for sure. And I want to go and I want to see how that's different everywhere.

Yeah, it's really helpful. Yeah. Yeah.

Because you have an idea. I mean, especially like in your industry, bro, your audience is not just Americans, right? You're selling to fucking everybody. Yeah, yeah, it helps to know, you know, it does. How these people are different and everything.

Yeah, even— yeah, like everything's different there, like the marketing angles and stuff that they use. Yeah, pretty different than here.

So with, I mean, all of your ads and stuff, you probably have to do slightly different things for the different regions of the world.

Uh, sometimes, not too much though, to be honest with you. Yeah, yeah, a lot of people now with the internet, maybe like, you know, 30 years ago it'd be more targeted. But with the internet, um, people in Germany can see and follow Ariana Grande or whoever is a big trendsetter or whatever in the United States, right? So a lot of like the cultures, at least online and buying products and stuff like that, kind of get like meshed together now because everyone kind of knows, like, you can just look up what people are doing in America. I see. You know, so it's not as bad as you might think. Um, mainly the biggest thing is like language barrier.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I think that's just also an interesting thing to go out and get a part of.

Yeah. Yeah.

Be around some people that don't speak your language.

Yeah. It's kind of nice sometimes. Yeah.

Well, I mean, I love like I took like 3 years of Spanish in middle school and high school and then going to like Mexico. Yeah, right here. And I like loved like being able to see that even though I talk some broken-ass Spanish, but But it's fun. Yeah, it is. It's different. Yeah, different perspective.

Totally. And you, you know, connect with them better. You know, you can speak a little bit. Yeah, it's just kind of nice.

You know what I think is so interesting is like how in different cultures we have different languages and how it's every single word that there is in English. There is not an exact word for that in Spanish. Like they are just completely missing some words or they have new words that we don't even have. And because of the absence or addition of these different words, it changes the way these people think, right? I think that that's like a really cool thing. I can't remember the example. Like, it was something like, um, like for how, um, I believe it's like Asian people, they say like years young instead of years old. Yeah, it's like to promote that side of like a mindset. Yeah, almost right where I think there's a lot of truth into it, you know. I think that whatever the way your mindset is, you know, your thoughts become your words, become your actions, things of that nature.

So totally with example specifically, I could say I'm 26 years old and I think about, you know, the word old. That's the last word in the sentence and it trails in my mind. Old, right?

Yeah.

You're saying young. I mean, your perspective is different. Totally. I 100% agree with that. It is.

Changes things. Well, listen, Austin, I really appreciate you making the time to come out here and jump on.

Yeah.

I think that whenever you're in town, whenever you find yourself here in Arizona, you need to make a stop on over here.

For sure.

But next time we're for sure going to record that, that video. Yeah, we're going to switch jobs for a day.

Yeah, we should definitely do that. I think that'd be a banger.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So guys, if you guys haven't already, Austin has a ton of phenomenal content out there. Where can they find you?

Instagram, YouTube mainly. Don't even need to promote TikTok. Austin Rabin on YouTube, Austin.Rabin on Instagram. A lot of fakes on there and on the Instagram.

So I get the, I get the new Austin Rabin followers. Yeah.

Hey man, like, have you heard about Bitcoin?

Do you think it's worth— do you think it's worth, um, like paying for the verification?

Yeah, I think it would be worth it, but the— I just have this like mindset thing of I want to like earn stuff. I don't know, it's weird.

Yeah, no, I'm with you. It seems a little like cheap.

Yeah, I don't know, even though I'm doing it for a purpose, but I just feel that way for some reason.

Well, right, because you got to jump through all these hoops to become like a public figure, but it's like fucking $15,000, $20,000 or some shit like that.

Yeah. I know it would help for sure with, you know, just being credible for people, like the fake accounts and all that. That's a huge problem. But I just would like to get it on my own.

Yeah.

See though, I mean, it's— if it's getting harder and harder, then I have to come to a point to do that.

But yeah, it's kind of fucking bullshit. I know, even is.

Just let me send you my ID. Well, I should like hit— once you hit like 100K followers or something on whatever platform, they should be like, send me your ID, send me your passport. Boom, verified. Yeah, it's you. That's what the point is.

Well, and also, like, with all these fake accounts and stuff, you know that they just actually came out with— when you go and like report them, you can like put like, this person is pretending to be me, or this person is pretending to be someone I know. You can actually put the person of who it is.

Yeah, that's a problem though. I've been doing that, or having my friends do that, for the last couple days because there's so many that pop up of me lately. And look at a notification back from Instagram. It says, sorry, we were unable to review your submission. We just don't have the bandwidth. They ignore it. They just ignore it. It's like, why are you even like reporting it?

Why do you even have this?

I even have the option.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's like, what? They got to figure that out.

Well, dude, they're doing a good job. I mean, there's a reason that people are making all these fake accounts because I mean, I've had some people like in my camp that all of a sudden they're like, yo, I'm really excited. And it's like, what? I sent fucking $500 to you. It's like, what are you doing?

Yeah, I know. Come on. Check tagged photos. If I don't follow my family, like, do a little research, you know?

Well, also, I mean, you know, I don't have any mutuals, right? That's always the biggest thing for me.

I know, it's crazy. Even my friends, like, fall for it. Or like distant friends. Yeah, it's like, come on, man, you can't be doing that.

And also, why do you think I'm asking you for money for Bitcoin? Are you kidding me?

Yeah, no. And there are people— it works with people, unfortunately. I've seen a lot of Reddit posts about me and I'm like, that's not me. Like, stop spreading this, like, misinformation. I'm not taking $150 and your Social Security on WhatsApp, my guy.

Like, it's crazy, bro. It's just been around since like the dawn of time, though, is just like scammers.

I know, sucks.

Whether it was, you know, cold calling or the email.

Yeah.

And then they were doing it in the DMs and now it's just they're pretty advanced now. It's crazy. They whip up these profiles, they get all the same posts and they're quick with it.

I know.

It's impressive. Yeah. I wonder if they spend that much time into— I thought into building a dropshipping store.

If they would just take all the money they scammed and reinvest it into my program, I'd be good to go, man.

They need to do that. Message to all of those guys.

Yeah, for real.

Jesus.

Cool.

All right, man. Well, hey, look, dude, I really appreciate you coming. Guys, this has been episode 17 of The Rebellion. Um, go check out Austin's stuff. It's amazing. And, um, we will see you guys on the next episode.