#224 - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Dyrdek from 0 to $405M in Exits

i'm i am human optimization and optimize to to be what though to just be happy yeah i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to from at all in and like a day's off on a less travel never looking back alright you're sorry we were late we we're we're we were recording another episode and and yeah look i got the context i thought it was fascinating i love the idea of like your digital media company being acquired and then you have to do a a podcast with the guy who acquired it no longer works there or no longer ceo is fascinated well he told a story that was i think good because i think most people don't wanna hear necessarily from oh you're the ceo of some marketing companies a public companies it's not the the sexiest story but he he just gotten a crazy snowmobile accident and broke like every boat in his body and was sort of like lying there on a mountain for an hour thinking that might die or you know maybe hopefully and his cell phone had like one bar and he was able to call the police get get get a firefighter to come save him wow and so he told that story and i was like okay this is good this is good content never happy with how this turned out wow that's that is fascinating scary yeah it was good he was like it it was like a movie we're like you know brian this is like a movie you like billionaire tech guy almost dies quits and starts meditating and yeah he became like a at philanthropist afterwards he reevaluate his life while he was lying there that sort of thing alright sam you wanna do a quick intro no you do it you do it i i've i've enjoyed you doing it lately okay i'll give the i'll give the like the brief context of this okay so rob i don't know if you know this but your your show on mtv there's a there's a kind of a meme about it on reddit do ever go to reddit i do not okay so do you know over read it it's like a popular kinda works out of whatever course yeah so me and sam both watched the the show the challenge on mtv and and the challenge been around for like fifteen years it's kinda like our our you know not even a guilty pleasure frank i'm not guilty about it i i feel great about it it's a great thanks this is great this is great and and so me zen both watch the challenge and we're probably the only kinda like tech investor dude it's openly life my wife watches is it i behind his wife i love i i'm i'm i'm not afraid to say it i came out the closet i said i love the challenge so on on reddit there's a big suburb about the challenge and the running joke is that mtv plays twenty three hours of of of ridiculous ridiculous and then one hour of the challenge on wednesdays and so because your show is your show is always on tv i don't know if you know this but it's kinda like constantly on mtv and so there's a running joke that that's that that's all the channel is basically is ridiculous yep i don't know if you know about that or if you have any thoughts but i wanted to to start there well i mean yeah i mean it's sixty percent of the total programming you know is it really yeah and it's it's fascinating because it's like you know as i have evolved the program in my relationship with the network and ultimately sort of the business that i have with the network it evolved into creating more content and airing more shows and so they began to air more shows and the ratings went up higher and higher so then now people are watching it in blocks of you know two and three hours at a time so it you know in linear cable as a whole kind of faded to appointment television and you had hero content that pushed up to the ford on almost all the networks and i just happened to be lucky you know i mean if like finding that sort of resurgence but i was also because i control and own the the the the production i have negotiated on the unit economics of the show and what the network needed as the cable advertising world was evolving so i i was able to control to a higher level than traditional talent which took me from getting thirty episode orders to a hundred and sixty eight episode orders which then eventually became five hundred episode orders right it's a and were you were you plugged into that like i know with for example athletes like floyd may weather right starts off as a boxer but then the promotion the the production company base it takes all the economics and he's out here the talent the one that's drawn in all the viewers but didn't own that piece and then over time now he owns it all because he he kind of like got screwed for a few years or or know i'm sort of wise up and said oh i i need to own more of this stack in order for me to like benefit the way that for the value i'm bringing were you did you get it from day one or did it take some time for you to figure that part out look i think you guys know the complexity of making a successful business right so at at the at the end of the day there's arbitrage for talent and different aspects of business and it relates to entertainment but the ability to actually monetize it create value and then in my case sell it for a significant amount of money is extraordinarily difficult unless you really understand business at a really high level so it's it's way beyond you know i started my first company at eighteen years old i went through basically years and years of of making millions and losing millions through ventures where i ultimately created a a system to to grow into being a great entrepreneur and then i capitalized on this unfair advantage that i had in the entertainment space to be able to look at the opportunity and maximize it both from a talent perspective and create a business that i was able to have acquired through that platform you know what i it's i think it's more rare than it is common for an athlete to to have that mindset yeah and let me give him background here and this is what i'm about to say is with no research it's just as a fan so i don't you don't know this but i i i still skate so i've been a fan of yours forever and so here we i i have here look here here it is can you see that there's my tray flip talking about a full tray slip right here fully caught yeah yeah totally tray slip look tray i could still i still have it in me a little bit my camera will come back in a second but so you you you started skate very young and i think you were sponsored by alien workshop and you were like thirteen fourteen fifteen something like that right to give you more context like i got sponsored it at eleven years old but i i connected with the group and and when they founded the alien workshop and i turned pro four when i was sixteen and you but now i think you you own alien works workshop right or your your part owner no i i acquired it for four million dollars and then i gave it back to the original founder that was free and clear on top of buying a bunker in ohio so they could run the company out of it and gave that to them free clear no was the worst mistake i've ever done in my life was why would you require a skateboarding business look i you know i i i did it more if they were acquired by burton and i i every adviser around me was like this company does not make money it has terrible margins like it burns cash like this is a terrible investment i didn't care i didn't understand business well enough i just wanted it for the story the hometown kid buys back you know the alien workshop that he sat in the room and helped choose the name and create the brand when he was sixteen years old and finds great success and comes back and acquire the business and when i i acquired it i felt like i acquired a hornet nest and i i learned so much about the operational side of business and culture and and the dynamics of what i'd consider a a a toxic culture and i just realized that that my passion was to create build and and create an roi and irr for the stuff that i created and that's that doesn't align with skateboarding very much right like they're really like misery loves company let's all be broke let's all barely survive let's all like keep your artist everything starving artist syndrome and i i literally like was on another call and was like man i even wanna be on it i don't wanna put another bit of my energy in here and i'm like you wanna know what the real hero story will be i'm going to give back the original founders who built the company and sold it i'm going to just give the entire thing back to them and that's what i did so we have to talk about that in a second that's crazy to me not in a bad way but it's crazy and so you're you're you're a skater you know i used to watch you in a lot of trans roll videos that's a kid and a and a bunch of other stuff and then you were early ish at i think very early at dc shoes before dc shoes was even named dc right that ended up becoming a pretty monster success and so you've seen a bunch of stuff then you started some of the early shows which crushed it and now you're telling you're sitting here talking about ridiculous and the way that you're describing things i'm like the it's just the evolution is crazy right from skateboard to like talking about how you own the sixty percent of the programming on mtv and so i wanted to give like context there because it's it's it's amazing and it's inspirational but at this point you've got your hands and everything it seems like you've gotten you do you dabble you do a bunch of stuff i remember correctly years ago you have like a food truck is that right i might have wrote in episode around a food truck but it was probably fake doctor you you had like a bunch of difference you you you know you had a bunch of different stuff get your hands and everything i think you even did i read that you were you do horse racing you own race horses i did i did i when i got into horse racing i jo you a horse for a race at hollywood park and won the race went on to own twelve or thirteen race horses including a horse that i that got third place in the breeder cup that i sold for two million dollars that i paid two hundred grand for that's crazy to me is is owning a horse a good good investment in general like that's a commodity that's a great flip but it's it's not but i for me i got out unscathed you know what i mean like for a lot of people i know that are in it's just really for the enjoyment of it it's a lot of fun to go watch your horse race you know i had a lot of respect in the racing community because they know i jo you a horse they know how saying that is right did you do that as a skid or did you take it seriously no i mean i it as a skid i mean it's like the don't it's a scariest thing i've ever done you're talking to a guy broke the world record for jumping a car backwards a barrel roll a car i've been attacked by a shark a tiger it's like i've done you know broken twenty five world records on a skateboard but the scariest thing i'd ever done in my life is jo a horse at hollywood park because it's just you on the back of this horse you're you got a hold of its main you break the gate you're going fifty miles an hour on the back of this giant beef stuff how do you how is your current your your entities set up right now as well as your focus because if you have all well that's the reason i'm listing all these crazy stuff it's crazy things that you do and all these projects that you've got going on which are very substantial how are you balancing all this and what's your current business structure i mean you have like a rob d media which only does the mtv stuff and you get some type of fee from them and then you have you know i've in i would let me let me let me tell you let me if we hey hey if you wanna talk structure let's talk some structure basically we operate as a very probably like a hybrid entertainment family office right slash venture creation studio right so i have a single entity the du machine llc that owns everything including rob dear inc which is the the entertainment side of rob dear business so all of that capital flows into this single llc and then i distribute that capital into real estate holdings right the cash flowing real estate holdings or i distribute it into ventures that i c find and create right so i c find and create almost every single company that i build and i i do i c find with common shares and then i do the initial funding usually in the eight hundred to a million and a half a million dollar sort of pre money and then i put two two fifty to five hundred into every venture i try to own between twenty five and seventy percent of every single venture that i have at maturity i have built seventeen companies sold six for and netted four hundred and fifty million since i launched the company in two thousand and sixteen one of those is the production company but all of these entities sit under the umbrella of the venture side of the deer machine business including rob deer the television business so my production company that was acquired my earn out goes into the llc that i own a hundred percent of right and then my talent money lives in that same same thing then i pay myself a salary that goes through that and then i invest all of that in in basically non correlated cash flowing real estate investments whether that's manufactured housing multi family units storage units like i've been investing a lot of rv parts lately dude this is music to my ears yeah it's a very sophisticated it's a very sophisticated you know hybrid family office that i built for for myself right now and keep in mind every venture that i create has a has a time structure we call it the unified theory we at the very beginning we lay out the entire capital path and growth path and and when we wanna sell it how much we wanna sell it for and that's our target everything is built to sell from the very beginning whether that's pig out chips and outstanding foods or mind dry bars or lu comfort where any of the build builds that i've done over the last five years but all of it is connected to this idea of the capital that you've earned the tax efficiencies on how you earn it and then ultimately the irr on every dollar wherever it goes inside the system and what do you do then you keep your expenses within the range of your dividends that come from your real estate so you basically play the entire game for free and then as you scale and have big exits and big big liquidity events you just pump more money into the overall system and you basically live this extraordinary free life now to that point i do all of this with thirty percent of my time right because i i manage i've mastered time energy and capacity right so i live this extraordinarily balanced life by design where i only dedicate thirty percent of my time to podcast in my shooting television and building my businesses i spend thirty percent sleeping ten percent on my health never compromised than thirty percent with my family you know how much is thirty percent for you like how many are are you looking at thirty percent of a forty hour work week or thirty percent of yours like he's saying my entire life all hours eight hours right no all life of the twenty four hours in a day i i sleep thirty percent so seven hours right yeah like work seven hours i'm with my family seven hours and i spend three hours on my health on average right when you look at the the overall balance and then i could show you this because i track it every day and it pumps all of it into this beautiful dashboard because what i've done over time because to give you an idea i shot two hundred fifty episode the television this year it's exactly four percent of my total time that's how highly optimized it's become right because you basically have a certain level of human capacity and in order to scale it you either hire or automated so i live this deeply automated life that that hires people in into add capacity and at the end of the day i just lived super balanced and happy so get what example what software are you using to track all that time yeah that created i i created i i had a i had a a programmer write me a script that goes inside google the google calendar it's an app on your phone or it's just on like a spreadsheet basis in it's inside google calendar and then it pops it populates a google spreadsheet right and then the beauty of it is is i qualitative data and quantitative data is what i live my life off of right so every day for the last five years i asked i wrote down how i feel about my life work in health z to ten and so i could show you by the qualitative numbers how i'm living a higher quality and happier life and and the result of that is based off the optimization that i've done on my quantitative stuff my quantitative stuff is did i get up before five did i brain trained did i get in the gym did i meditate did i have a clean diet did i not drink i could show you by my quantitative numbers that i have done all of those almost every single day of this entire year about eighty seven percent of those quantitative things that have just driven those qualitative numbers how i feel about my life my work and my health higher and higher so by the numbers i could tell you what a high quality life that i'm living compared to just five years ago know you're saying somebody amazing things i gotta yeah i to each one alright so you just said something did i brain train what's that mean i use a lu app right like where it's just adding flexibility and just letting your mind do all of these things that are different than just getting in and read your emails and you know it's just going through your rhythm it's really what i i do that for it and would you wake up at five what's the morning routine like sounds like you're pretty i'll get up i i i get i have to get up before five but depending on what time i go to bed i'll get up at four four thirty two right and then to me you know i always have that that coffee pre made so i can get up and get cooking and then i track all my numbers from the previous day fill in all my time if i missed any time to make sure that that all my data's is there on your phone or or on your computer on the computer right and then and then i try to just like organize and knock out sort of my more execution work before the kids get up and all that then at six o'clock i brain train six thirty i meditate when i jump out of meditation i sent actually at five fifteen i bring my wife a coffee and i sent her an email of every single thing that i'm doing that day what it means to me and with a love quote on top right again this is what it means to me like each thing you're doing just like you know just like what they're doing you know yeah in in my in my one of the one of the pulls of our relationship was like i do so much stuff that she would be it'd be i just be talking to someone to be the first time she ever heard of it and so she would just like i would do so much stuff in a day she just would would feel disconnected so i just started giving her an email every day of like what i'm doing what it means with a nice love quote right and and that then settled down the energy of feeling disconnected from everything that i'm doing bring her a coffee at five fifteen god bless she started doing five thirty calls for her business which means she's gonna be tired earlier that means we can go to bed by nine thirty right which is a another sort of blessing this what happening in la right you're this zero yeah yeah and then but you know i i pop out of meditation at seven wake the kids up get them both down to breakfast to seven thirty my trainer doctor comes to the house seven thirty to eight thirty training and then take the kids to school at eight thirty right and then the day depending on what the week is you know sometimes i go to breakfast dates with my wife sometimes it's you know on mondays you know i basically run a flat organization right so i have you know ten core divisions that are ran by an executive and i just spend monday fully organizing from when i get up four o'clock into my keep of staff for an hour into my president ceo for an hour and then half hours for every single person that runs that the vision so that we can just be highly organized and then plan the rest of the week which of course is inside thursday night date night nights and friday night sushi night with my wife and picking my kids up and all of you know i design balance and then i only work within the structure of balance and then depending on how i feel depending on how my wife feels then i don't even adjust that to lean in to making sure that my family is feeling priority above business always you like yeah you're you're you're like you know the like people make fun of silicon valley people because it'll like just like here's my calendar i've got adjust like this this is this but i'm sitting here at looking at you i think it looks like you're wearing a black blazer with a black sweater and you got these slick air airpods in you are more people silicon valley tech tune with this that like the stereotypes of it and i i love it i think this is i mean look i'm i am human optimization and optimize to to be what though to just be happy you know what i mean like at the end of the day that's why you're playing the game and you gotta figure out yourself to understand what truly makes you happy because your goal is to not be happy in pockets your goal is to be happy every single hour of every single day of your life right and and that's really what i've accomplished and i'll tell you something if you think about how you live right you you can live in two places that'll get you nowhere it's dwelling and being negative right or it's being hopeful and like wishing right either of get you nowhere but real where life is lived is you're either problem solving you're either creating the future or you're experiencing the present right and the truth is whatever you're experiencing the present is based off of the decisions you've made in the past and it's your choice to create whatever you your reality is that you're going to eventually experience or god forbid something hits you rather than dwelling on it or hoping it didn't happen if you problem solve and handle it you're not going to you can basically live a life with no negative thoughts if you learn to live in a state of either experiencing creating or problem solving in your entire life right but it's on you to understand what that is to be able to live in that state i'm fl acid sean rob is is just here's what i'm wanted me here's what i'm wondering we share a lot of philosophies by the way the things you're saying there's a lot of philosophies i i live by san by as well but i'm wondering this in my life because i live by a similar philosophy i've encountered a bunch of people and what i found maybe i'm wrong here with you but what i found is it's kind of two two groups there's the group people who kind of were this way from day one they were sort of like optimize from day one they really cared about they sort of recognize recognized the importance of time early on they recognize the importance of how their mood and how they're feeling early on and they said cool i'm gonna design systems to make this work for me by default so i'm not swinging from highs to lows i'm not pissing away time i'm actually making imagine so some people get it early i don't know if that's nature or nurture but they they were this way from day one then there's other people who sort of live life in the exact opposite way for a while and then it comes sort of screeching to a halt and they say i gotta make a change i gotta get some order into its some organization i gotta like i gotta actually like take control of this not just have it be so loose goose and i'm looking at you and i'm thinking is skater early how does the skater guy become human optimization body the way you are were you always this way or was this i lived a certain way and then i had a realization in a moment where i decided to kind of shift my path so that i could design my life a little bit differently yeah i was not this way you're talking to a guy getting attacked by sharks who start company after a company brick world records jumping cars doing cartoons television shows doing doing all these things there's as you alluded to in the beginning like you you were pulling into i would say you were pulling energy from like who i used to be and what you know me as right just just like yeah right so so the way that you were viewing was in fact really how i was kinda living where i was bay i i always refer to myself as going in so many directions at at once i was i was like pulled tight and so what happened you swing from side to side in order to for there to be some sort of give and whatever you were ultimately doing and for me i was i'm had had built my league my professional skateboarding league and took it to market to raise capital and and these groups were like oh we wanna we won a piece of everything that you do look at all that you do they offered me a three sixty deal i thought this is it you know i've just thought you know done this whole thing by the seat of my pants and like finally like these people are gonna recognize me and turned me into the billionaire meant to be and when they did the diligence on how i ran my finances how i ran my life all aspects of it they were like you're not even invest you're just like you spend all the money that you have like you're not creating any value like all this stuff and it was this this deep awakening of like you're not who you think you are like you you've attached yourself this this identity that you've created for yourself is actually false and the success that you've had by being so driven and so ambitious like as you know despite all these other things you're doing that are failing you're making up for it by other things working like it you aren't actually what you think you are and and i went on this journey to begin the discovery of like how can i begin to put a system around myself to be first it was like how do i learn business i don't know business and i hired a consultant to teach me how to build a company beginning to end and and in that process i found this book called start at the end that was a business book about decide what you want out of a business before you ever started it and then it was like this sort of like like you know insane sort of moment that where i was like man like i need to start treating my life like that what life do i want yeah and how that would have been in two thousand and thirteen you know what i mean so it wasn't you gotta understand i this the evolution and the growth that i have gone through over the last six years is is four or five lifetimes of growth you know you're you're talking about from from saying you're uni to creating generational wealth in a five year period okay more and and now transitioning beyond you know self preservation to generational preservation what is my five hundred year plan how am i gonna affect du for the next five hundred years and i couldn't even in two thousand and thirteen you know i was single partying in and like part of like when i looked at like what's my ideal life i wanna have balance and love and marriage and kids and these things so i had to begin to change the way that i was living to ultimately create the energy to attract the person the people the knowledge everything that i would need to grow into the person that i that i had designed for myself in two thousand fourteen and fifteen and was the you you said your production company was acquired was that the biggest win for you financially you know i mean there's no doubt you know what i mean but you gotta understand like even you know it's it's such a significant amount of capital and i own seventy percent of it right so it's just a it's a much it's a it's a big acquisition you know you know the final numbers aren't we're still in the middle of the earn out but it's it's oh it'll it could be close to you know you know a hundred and twenty five hundred and thirty million for just me now right and so that that unto itself is a really significant single transaction that is that very few people ever experienced you know what i mean so again it's a in it to me it's the first company that i built that was in the bill to sell structure right of when i just taught myself business completely built a system for how i would create businesses it was the very first one that i built to sell and built it and sold it in three years right and went first to the investment banker said i'm gonna build a production sell it the people that only sell production companies they're like okay here's how you gotta do it if you want to build it and sell it yeah then i went and hired a person who just went through a build an acquisition who was the number two at the company to help me build it then i went out and began to build it now what happened a whole lot of magical shit happened you know what i mean like because like like all of these different things like occurred that allowed me to go from zero revenue to fifty million in the first year that allowed like the trajectory of the growth and the the eb and the company to scale based off of ridiculous having a second resurgence and media know to negotiate the value of the company based off of now understanding the production and the unit economics of what the network would need these unpredictable things that that in the beginning but i said it where i would build it and sell it in three years and then took it to market went back to those bankers three years later here's the numbers let's take it out and see if see who would be interested now as fate would have it the group that acquired it was the same group that offered me the three sixty deal that said i had no value in two thousand and thirteen and when they acquired it part of the acquisition i made them also acquire my professional skateboarding league as part the roll up that they create right so it was a very poetic justice and beautiful sort of three sixty moment as it relates to they as the single sort of private equity group that drove me to like reevaluate and and really it pushed myself to like design my life and then they come around and also provide the opportunity that sets me up for the future instead of owning half of me for the rest of my life they acquired the only two assets i kept from that era and you don't know this wrong but sam is kind of a nut like you he i think at the age of he showed me the spreadsheet and he's like i made this i think he's was twenty three twenty four maybe and basically what he did was he said okay i wanna have i i forgot what was i wanna be a millionaire self that i wanted to make i wanted to make twenty million dollars by the age of thirty by the age of thirty i wanna i wanna have twenty million dollars by the age of thirty liquid cash that i actually you know i i own liquid liquid net worth and so he then created a list of all the rich people he could find in tech because we're in the tech world right and he's like okay from jack do who created twitter and square to like whoever and he mapped out how many years did it take them to make their first like their first nut of like a million bucks and then like how long how long before they got their big win he's like he's like okay the median time in seven years the the at you know the average person is getting this i need to be on this trajectory at this and so he's like mapping it all out well so i like i i need my business to be at this revenue with this eb inside four years because that means the growth rate is this and then if i own this percentage that means i'm gonna make this after tax as long as i've been this state yeah everything and then it you know when sam doing yeah he did he did he pulled it off just sold thirty one i so i sold the car i was thirty one you're late yeah good for you man so and you wanna know why you did it because you started at the end and then know you know hey hey and you know hey like it wasn't about how the path actually went you could have never predicted you're like whoa i would never expected it to be in this one whatever it may be but your mentality was there on what it is and you're very young because you gotta think the way i'm talking i didn't do this till i was forty ten years from now for you guys you know what i'm saying but go ahead so i didn't mean to cut off i just wanted to get out of the payout no you had you you know you had a point for me on that or no i just i just jammed you yeah no no you're good the other things i was gonna say is that we you know one of the first messages sam ever sent me i met the guy you know kind of in passing and then you know two days later on facebook he's like so how much do you pay yourself out of your company and you started talking money in a way that most people don't most people are very afraid to talk money and i thought i first was taking it i like who the hell is this guy and then i was like actually it's pretty powerful if i could have some friends like this where we could openly share what are we making how you know what are what do we sell for what are we investing it in share what how what are we spending and it is is spending that much money each month actually making you happy yeah that sort of thing and so what alright think it's amazing go ahead go and so we got to know each other that way created a friend group that way do you have like a set of peers like that in your world where you kinda learned the game together you came up together no and but let me tell you what who i do have is a peer group that i think you'll find fascinating have you ever heard of tiger twenty one yes we've we've broke down that business a ton i actually think that you can build a new tiger twenty one because it's pretty old school it's like all old rich guys right so like it's tell tiger yep so i'll tell you what my tiger twenty one experience right so to me it's not about the business model tiger twenty one is about the peer group yeah twenty one and so this is what you do in tiger twenty one so in my group you know they've really expanded it since they took on private equity and they're really trying to grow it so it's probably a little bit different whenever whenever you had looked at it in my group there's fifteen people varying age ages right really young guys that have made hundreds of millions really young guys that have billion couple billion dollars in net worth right really interesting group of of guys now this is what you do in tiger twenty one you each month one person has to show all of their assets and it's called portfolio defense right so each person has to like lay out this is every single that i'm doing so what are we doing as a group not only do we understand each other's philosophies what they're spending their life philosophies all these things but understanding seeing how they manage their wealth their wealth not not not making money but managing wealth right all all of the latest things through their own advisors that we share and all this stuff but at at the core of it you're the realist of the real because you have to be very real in order to open up and show everybody what you actually have and and to me when i first heard about like oh my god this is the group for me like this is what i need like i know that only like the real people would be willing to share all of their their their investment strategy season all of their assets and so for me i actually have been in it now for two years and it was life changing for me right because part of that very first portfolio defense it was like what was your hundred year plan and it was like in an instant i've i shifted from pre self preservation to generational preservation right but of course i had created enough wealth to be in that mindset to that point right and now over these last couple years it is just it it is a a depth of knowledge of wealth building that i've like that's so personal that that i've just never experienced on that i could never experience through just people that were my friends that weren't like open to this being part of the structure of a club if you will so you know look i would even say for for for you know you guys to even consider it know what i mean just because it is a an extraordinarily eye opening and you just learn and learn and learn so at the end of the day you're you're you grow like this right you your at your entire life as you grow and evolve you you you expand and what you wanna do is be expanding in one direction because that's where exponential growth and greatness and mastery in all these things lie when you grow into a single direction so you know i i think that that it's something like that as a peer group has been massive for me that i didn't have before that because i just don't i don't have anybody that that because i come from a sort of a different world i just didn't have any relationships with people that that were thinking like that were you doing i know that you i mean you've been famous for forever it seems and you've always been doing cool shit but you mentioned earlier that when you're going through due diligence at the the the buyers for like dude you're running you're like you're spending too much money or you're maybe you're you're buying things incorrectly and you're not you know you're mixing personal and work maybe i don't know but were you were you making a significant income leading up to your big exit and also we're i mean judging just off purely off tv so who knows if it's real where you it seems like you spend a lot and you like to and you and you like to ball out and you like to do fun stuff were you spending a significant amount and so like where you actually financially successful prior to the the the deal and you're saying when they offered me the three sixty deal when they win your like like like you you sold your production company recently although that's still kind of mid mid it's not entirely done right but prior to like your you said you read the book in two thousand thirteen or or where whenever it was were you actually doing well or was it like you're still getting by but you're you're you're you're making debt i was not crushing i was making a significant amount of income right the the problem was i was spending so much and not managing it properly not not looking at what i was doing it i would like you know i put two million dollar four million cash to buy the distribution company i put two million into building the first ever street dreams skateboard movie i put two million into building my league i was just making millions and investing in building any any which way but loose on top of having you know a five million dollar a year overhead and bodies in my and running the fantasy factory and then all the people that that were underneath me as it as part of the management team so fantasy factory costs five million a year to maintain and and run like like having the building itself was like you know seven fifty right and now you you put all the bodies in there you know what i'm saying i had you know president ceo of like like full time like general counsel like ceos like i had like you know a thirty person team i was like running like a an agency almost the way that it was built in that era you know what i mean but also were you let me get were you making on any profit at all or or was it breakeven and you're just spending else you're gonna i was like i was i was breaking even because yeah was i was making profit and paying taxes but after taxes i wasn't saving any money i kept and reinvest in new project and bigger ideas because i thought that's how you do it you know what i mean you just keep taking shots in my back then i used to say ugh like our money's fearless scared money doesn't make money and it's like you wanna know dumb money doesn't make money you know what i mean like that's like the reality of how i was running and again it was because i was still i revolutionized skateboarding and built street league skateboarding i i launched and built a cartoon on nickelodeon and i had multiple shows on mtv i i owned my integration right so i was doing chevy deals and microsoft deals and making millions of dollars so i was having extraordinary success only like i wasn't the way i was vest in it i was still essentially make rather than creating value i was i was really almost like a created services agent just kinda sloppy just you weren't tight was not not only not tight but didn't wasn't wasn't creating value with intention wasn't looking at markets and market sizes and and trends and how could i create a business that could be acquired one day i'd never even heard of a venture i didn't know what an investment banker was in two thousand and thirteen i thought it was someone that dealt with high net worth individuals and when i when they told me my league was worth thirty million dollars and we did seven million in revenue i said hal they're like oh it trades at like you know four to five times revenue and i'm like how the how does business even that how does i work i that's how little i knew about business in two thousand and thirteen when when the three sixty deal was offered to me i had i knew nothing of the capital markets capital staging private equity venture it didn't know anything of the first time i've ever even heard about it and and compared to who i am today and how i look at creating value and managing capital staging and treating myself like family office not that many years later it's an exponential amount of like unprecedented growth you know what that almost doesn't even seem real you're like transferring through universes you know what i mean do you have you've been you know pretty phenomenally successful i'm very impressed by the way but i almost feel like you were too early i feel like if you were twelve years old now because you didn't have you know tiktok and youtube where you you would have been the you know the the the health boys you would have been bigger than the paul brothers right like because you didn't have social media when you were doing all these stunt you you did it in tv you you know you you did it before tv and then it on tv but it kinda helped them in a way right but like yeah i bet i think you would have gone viral like nobody's business i think you had tv for the amount of views that they get tv pays more than a you than you of course of course of course it's you monetized as well but i think fame wise if you were a team today with the tools they have and you had the same kinda guns mentality of like doing stunt to attract attention attract viewers and challenge yourself and half on have a blast in public that model works today with people who i feel like have done like a fraction of the level of stunt that you've done do you think you're already look your early don't know no look i'll tell you what it makes me tired just even see having you say that it's just like god think about being on youtube you know what i'm saying and and like look if if i even when i look at the world right forget about sort of being earlier or whatever it is like an extraordinary exists i've lived in an extraordinary life a handful of lifetimes but i've never been happier than i am today talking to because at the end of the day there was so much like like an ambition and like i wanna do something so big and i just kept trying and trying it in my will to execute in my ambition and drive kept just breaking me down highs and lows highs and lows highs and lows were now i am just in this like perpetual strip state of like high growth in a clear direction right and and inside that is complete happiness right and not saying that i didn't enjoy what i i went through but it was too much highs and lows and chaos and for for for what it's worth right like it's and it's all experience and i really love my life way more at forty seven than i did at twenty seven or thirty seven right i and that's really what your human mission is right at the end of the day you wanna live this peaceful happy effortless like fulfilling life that's really what you're chasing right you want a a a a life of infinite abundance and love right and and the only way you can actually get to that is through learning mastery of self and that is mastery of your energy and all the things that give and take from it your time and ultimately your capacity right and and the only way you can master all those is to really learn yourself at a high level and what you really love to do and the differences is back then i was i had to do so many things that i didn't enjoy to feed that least right and and continue to find the next thing and constantly struggling with like i gotta do another show and it's gotta be bigger you know it's like it's like that sort of thing we're now everything's so much more controlled and done with purpose inside balance that you just enjoy every moment of the process right but yeah could could i have done that on youtube no because i also had you know eight hundred thousand dollar budget that allowed me to like you know go and do a deal that could you know rent out you know six flags so that i could flip a car ramp to ramp over the world's biggest skateboard that i designed the world that's how much that stunt cost was eight hundred oh no offs shoot i don't that stunt probably cost like altogether all of those were a few million dollars you know what i'm that's crazy that's like stunt teams and groups and like test cars and like i'm i was like you know then then the day comes and what do you gotta do you gotta flip a car and you wanna know what you wanna know what happens on the day that you gotta flip a car you're like this is the dumbest idea ever why am i even here i have so much going on in my life like why would i even put myself in this position to like flip this car and then you flip the car and it actually works and now it's a super bowl commercial and it's part of the the the season premiere of season five a fantasy factory in this giant chevy partnership and you made millions of dollars and now you're a legend and and you're gonna all this stuff it was genius and the best idea but the the the day of when you gotta do it it's like it's crazy like cool this is so dumb you know what i mean that's basically all of those all the stunt that i did in that era it would always be like this is the worst idea it's not funny and then when it was over i'll be like i'm i'm the legend i'm the legend earlier you said that you track trends now and you and you start at the end and you work backwards what trends interest you at the moment what what business opportunities are are intriguing to you if you had a little bit more like even if you aren't going to do it but you wish you had more time and it's just kinda on the side and you're like this is this this interests me i think someone should pounce on this opportunity maybe i will maybe i won't but it i'm i'm interested to to for clarity purposes here now now i have a business that builds businesses right so i build you know five to six businesses a year right and although i've i've you know i've kind of like really pushed into all the builds i'm doing at the end of the year here are all in the beauty beauty industry adapt genetic topical water filter system sole real opportunity and and sort of in the beauty space of like how important like water is and how how many chemicals there are and and when you shower but then you go and spend all this money on your hair and makeup up and care but you wash yourself in chlorine so found a real opportunity to develop a a real innovative sort of shower purification system and and and water filter system for beauty and you know eat really looking at super foods and plant based the sustainable beauty products as a big opportunity in in in that sort of space you know we launched a nut t footwear or a nut in an adapt antigen plant based bar and drink mix and coffee mix line this year that's been really successful we looked at you know the the three billion dollars in market share between ugg cro and be stocks and created what we consider the more the the sleek or ugly ugly shoe the pretty ugly shoe and lu cloud that we launched this year that's that or last year that that really has ridden this wave of sort of comfort this comfort wave and casual wave in the comfort footwear a world that we think is gonna be on track to do really be really big too for because to me at the end of the day like what's happening in a market is important and it's it's going to be where you live and die right you you too early or you know in the case of ultra cast you know i launched this company that was a a a live three sixty live three sixty and vr video platform that put three sixty videos all over the world and where you could jump on your phone and travel all over the world and be and in different bars and and clubs and all these different things like right on the conversions of live instagram and and live content and live streaming and sort of vr coming in together and then what happened to vr like just died nothing right and it's like i was like and what did it end up being like the new three d tv right and so three sixty video became like the new like the three d tv right and so even though i built i got it right on the wave and like it was super innovative with an amazing ceo who once the company went out of business built and took a come public in like nine months but i'm that that fails right so you're you're trying to time markets and look at trends and all of that but at the end of the day like you you gotta get a little bit lucky so you wanna be in the right place white space and an opportunity that's in invest there's so many nuance to a white space and where opportunity is i can tell you from someone that's built seventeen companies in the last five years that the the greatest lesson i had in years two and three was founder market fit you know what i mean like where it's like when the the the the the biggest red flag you will ever hear is when somebody comes from you know one industry and wants to be in another because this one's so much easier right this one's it's the margins over here it's the shelf stability over here it's there's not sides it's like they all have a position based off of how hard their particular industries sort of structure is and they're all hard they're all hard and you don't wanna invest it build companies with people that have to learn the industry as they go right and i think that's that's i would get caught and seeing great opportunities and ideas and build with really relentless well experienced founders who get crushed in the learning curve of trying to learn and understand a new industry something that i've really very hard for me to build a company with somebody that's getting into a an industry for the very first time rob we've we've had like billionaires on we typically don't do do guess we to it's typically just sean and night but we've had billionaires we've had you know gary van vaynerchuk was on recently he was he was really fascinating we've had some famous people we've had all types of people on here you might be the most interesting that we've ever had you're definitely the most surprising you know and hopefully this isn't you don't take this the wrong way but i i judged you based off of just as a skateboarding fan and what i knew about you on tv obviously i knew you were the slick ass business fan and you always had some cool shit going on but you are way more dialed than than i ever would have imagined and you might be one of the most interesting people i've ever spoken to ed yeah i i i think you're my new hero yeah i i this this has been amazing look i i i could tell about the questions you asked me that that it was coming from that sort of lens and i talked to myself man let me let me feed this guy kind of the the angle and the evolution of where i'm operating at right you it's also a motherfucker is what you know and it's and and think about it too it's extraordinarily concise and clear right because it's like i constantly am seeking clarity so i'm always operating from a place of intention and then i'm i'm considering myself to have an evolutionary mindset where it's like how how how can i purposely keep evolving and evolving and evolving with purpose in a in a singular direction and one of those is like literally human optimization and being happy as could be you know what i mean at the end of the day but no i i thank you and i appreciate it because you guys also had me do work right you guys said hey can you write an agenda of what you wanna talk about on today's show and like these guys are like having me right an agenda to be a guest on their show and i wrote out an agenda and we never even cut covered any of the subjects okay can you come back we didn't cover it yeah because you blew our mind early on in the yeah you i could've have took the first three things you said and said okay i i have two hours here we're all i need to do is just let you expand on that because if i'm listening to this and somebody says something interesting there's nothing more annoying in the world than the guests going back to their pre preset agenda and not asking about the really interesting thing that guy just said and so we had to do it you know it is and look it goes back to what you said about building at the end yes we had you plan just like i planned my exit but like what you said was you don't really know what's gonna happen in between yeah yeah and look even with all this this this planning and structure i'm i don't let it i'm not controlled by that calendar you know what i'm saying like i still allow myself to like but the beauty of the system is i could just shut down three days and everything continues to move and then picks back right up when i get there you know even as i operate my life i with the same group that helped me develop my system for the du machine and my my business creation system like i had them develop my life system right and and i have this this fifty page document called the rhythm of existence that's managed by my two assistants and my chief staff and it's basically the operating system for my entire life right and so that that allows all aspects whether it's from my food to my haircuts to to like how i deal with birthdays and how i deal with all these different things is put into this system that's managed that does what it's automated and gives me back more capacity to be able to do more be more present with my wife and kids be more present when i'm working be more focused be able to get more done because i keep adding more and more automation and optimization to my life that allows me to just live and do the things i love to do which then gives me more energy to be more successful more clear have more intention and push things further and further along you know would would you be willing to come on again and and talk more about like pretty much everything you've discussed and also the things that we've planned because this is i this is gonna be a home run yeah look you know what i'd like to do i'd probably like to like send you all of my send you all the stuff that i do so you could read it and see it and have like okay here's a life conversation of how rob lives and runs his life optimization then send you all of my business stuff including my machine method and how i i run my businesses through a discovery diligence build scale a launch and scale phase yeah and my seven core capabilities of business and brand products so media marketing sales like you have a new product coming out yeah this is this this is the this is your deck program no it's not it's just so i can build businesses efficiently and consistently you know this morning i told my you know my my head of media i said look i think i'm gonna come up with a drake equation for business and are you guys familiar with the drake equation you know the drake equation is essentially the probability of intelligent life inside the unit right and to me i do believe that there's an equation that i'm i can put through market through founder experience founder age like all these different things that add up to a probability number on this company that i'm about to create with this person's potential successes and and it's because i've pointed my master towards i want to master c individuals and ideas and building them into sustainable profitable acquire businesses and i just get better and better at every single one that i build because that mask breeze is going in a single direction so my depth of knowledge and building company is is getting so wide which in turn is doing what it's making me more intuitive i can have a five minute conversation with the potential founder and fill all their holes know that they're a a more operated minded like product person like not a brand person doesn't understand marketing doesn't understand media oh it's a financial mind that understands product oh it's a brand mind and product person that doesn't understands operations or marketing our finances for sure like you become you're driving yourself if you wanna save energy you become extraordinarily intuitive right like that's where your mass three shows itself so i digress where i would we we we could we could do a life show in a business show you know i mean they're very similar dude this is so good so thankful that you came on thank you so much we're gonna do this again i hope i hopefully you'll do it but we're do it yeah yeah have this middle our pleasure thank you so much for coming on okay all the best now cool yeah i feel like i could rule to word i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a day's off on a travel never looking back like