Jason Crossman, Custom Quix: Balancing ambition, business, spirituality, and personal values in life

[Music] everyone welcome to another edition of founder wisdom podcast today we have jason grossman uh cross man should i say so sorry for the the mispronunciation here uh it happens sometimes he's he's a ceo chief executive officer of custom quicks he's a podcaster co-host and creator of entertainment dudes podcast we've been talking already for 15 minutes i think i could talk with jason for years uh jason

can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit more about your your businesses i mean that was a pretty great introduction as it is so um yeah i just started when i was in uh college it was either the choice of working at like a starbucks or something or i decided to start a business while i was in school so i went out and bought a little cheap film camera and i went out and started getting clients and i all i had was a camera and a and a microphone and the knowledge that i had so i started just knocking on doors and when i was in school i i realized that i needed more people to do the job that i was doing because i started growing i kept getting new customers new clients

and i remember the first meeting i ever went into for my first client they said we want to design this space where everyone who comes into town comes in this building we want screens everywhere we want videos we want touch screens we want them to be able to interact and i was like and this is before touch screens and everything and they would only just come out

and i said yeah yeah i could do that no problem and she's like you can us absolutely and uh as soon as we left the meeting i thought oh my gosh i have no idea how to do this so i immediately started building a network of independent contractors i had people from everywhere from dubai to you know it's the pakistan it was in the early 2000s so that there was only a few sites that were really starting to work with together and then i had people there here in the states and so we ended up developing you had this whole touch screen place i did like 20 20 videos with them and then they had a huge opening night where all the cities people came and they saw and it worked flawlessly thankfully and i

think it was just the thing i learned from the very beginning because of a guy that i work with is he just always said yes and he said you say yes and figure it out so um i learned also you do need to say no and have good boundaries but i like the attitude behind it that sentimentality of yes i'll make it happen what do you need let me make it happen so i started doing that and i think even in the company then it just it started growing because the people came they saw what it was there i started getting new clients and customers and and that was all while i was in school to become getting my master's in directing and because i want to direct features in television that's what i wanted

to do so that was kind of like grew parallel with my my career so i often tell a lot of you know my film students and different people i work with it's important to have another job while you're pursuing your dream or your passion something that can help at least put food on the table while you are getting to a place where you become stable in the industry that you care about the most but and why not why not have it be in something that you are already enjoying or in a skill that you'll need in order to run your business well so yeah i think that's that's a really cool part so yeah when i was in university it was the same uh on my site so i was studying i dropped out long

story short but that was because i was building my own startups when i was uh in the classroom i was also working for a company that let me uh be myself and be very entrepreneurial we called that entrepreneurship back in days probably still like that but yeah like it's cool to do that because um on my side well i was still housed by my parents you know

i didn't have any rent to pay which is probably that yeah it's the biggest expense any human can face at pretty much all time whether you rent or you buy it's probably 50 to 60 of your expenses so yeah while you have that that financial safety um can be cool to to build that and yeah obviously you can stack up you know because especially if you live

your parents you don't either pay for food and having another source of income can build you up and eventually can make the jump and i'm not sure like if there's a time if that jump is painful or not you know when when did came the the final moment uh to to make the jump from uh being employed to having your own business on your side uh i was never employed i started my own business from the beginning i worked for a lot of companies growing up like i did lobstering and i worked at resorts and i did a lot of i worked at camps and things and i worked for publishing companies all the way until i was in my uh my master's class and once i hit the masters then i literally started working

for myself i did end up working for a couple of companies every now and then for a few years i generally would get hired on in in the development phase of a new product that they're trying to launch or one job i got hired on to develop the post-production studio they didn't have any facilities so i ended up joining them to build three editing suites bays uh

and all of the you know the the server that went along with it plus all the workflow how does the editing work and then start established a workflow and then brought on new team members and then after a point i if if it does not continue to change and progress and challenge me i get bored i have you know there's other people who are much better at doing the the work part like coming and doing the same thing every day for however long they they like that i don't i can't stand it and the moment it becomes stagnant or starts to stop it's that but i just i can't i gotta go so um i got brought on for dave ramsey they have a dave ramsey has a podcast a radio show he's you know

a talk show if everyone doesn't know him he does uh financing and stuff and helps people get out of debt and um he's got entre leadership which is a fantastic series and um he has a radio show and they wanted to transition to a youtube channel we made a web show um on an app and everything like this and uh they wanted to do the live show but the live show has 51 minutes commercials and so we had to figure out shows that we could use to put in place of those commercials so that i got brought on to help correct uh write that you know develop that whole system the program what the shows will look like how the live show works the integration of everything i work with uh laura and blake and

the whole team that's there uh plus you know i think we had a team of about seven or eight to develop and build that whole thing and then um they'd wanted to continue to expand at least how it was pitched to me to begin with to reach a new white space new demographics people who didn't want to just watch a radio show they wanted to see more so i think i developed a number of series maybe 10 or 15 shows and then i think the focus was still just on doing the radio show and doing that and doing it well and since it wasn't growing at the time it was already built and i think i really like that process i like building it figuring out what it is solving the problems building the teams

together that entrepreneur part that you talked about and then getting to it until it's successful and then i like to go do something else so i ended up leaving there to go um to work on another production company with my friends that we developed to do a bunch of commercials for a series of uh a number of our clients that we had together to serve those so

we did that for a couple years and then i did some pilots for some tv shows and once those were launched then i ended up moving out to la uh to help a friend out here in some other production so i like i like the change i like the challenge i love the creative aspects of it i like some problem problem solving and that's exciting for me so um stability sometimes not so stable like i think there's a huge there's a fear thing i think that keeps a lot of people from doing what we do and because you know where does the next check come from how does my insurance get paid how does my house pay i mean there's been times i didn't know how i was going to get paid and so that's

it's really stressful and then there's other times when it's doing really well like when it's going good it's really really good and when it's bad it's really bad so i think that's that's kind of my how i approached uh my original you know getting into production and when i was going to leave the work environment to go work for myself i started from the beginning because i

just couldn't see it any other way lots to unfold here so first thing first you know my some question that popped to my mind is why do we get stressed um for financial issues um and one solution for that i found um and i've seen my my fair share of hipsters here in in oaxaca mexico but i've seen a lot of people trying to live a life with almost zero expenses you know like almost living in tents on beaches and sometimes i think first you need to ask yourself do you really need that i mean you've been on things dave ramsey so that could be a topic you're familiar with but i think us humans we have a drama dramatic conception of of what it is to be penniless well uh it's not painful at

all so i'd encourage um myself and a lot of people to try to go live a lifestyle where where your costs are almost zero so for example on my side i want to buy this van you know and and try to go really hardcore on the minimalist um aspects of living i've always visited that aspect in my life even digital nomadism for example it's not as as costly as people think but the question is like why do we stress so much thinking that you know hey if we don't have a check like what will happen um if there's like other potential solutions out there which are not by the way going homeless in the los angeles street but what do you think about this this type of philosophy um i think the philosophy is in

a way very very privileged and blessed by being where we are and in the world that we live in uh in the past you wouldn't without community without certain systems in place you wouldn't be able to do that because you'd either be conscripted into a military you would have been taken into a slave camp you would have been sold somewhere you would have been part of an

eat cog somewhere you wouldn't have had that choice i think the very fact today that you can actually have that choice and still survive without you don't have to grow all your own vegetables i mean you can but you don't have to like you can live in a van and you know there's certain systems that have to exist and there's certain people who have to maintain those

systems in order for that lifestyle to even exist unless you're completely self-sufficient you're literally living off of whatever happens but if there's a storm there the crops don't grow you know you have the same question that the early settlers and other people where's our food come from do we migrate do we know mad what happens if you can come up to a bunch of other guys that

are on a beach and they say this is our beach and we're taking your resources you know it kind of it's a deterioration of the simplistic idea that i think if you devolve it it goes back to where we were originally and that's warring tribes that are fighting for resources in whatever area you live in and then they would commune to small cities and then those cities

would grow to bigger cities and then they would need laws and rules and it would repeat itself so i think it's exciting to be in a place where we can actually make that decision you can still go to the grocery store and buy stuff when you're in your van you can still you know use your internet if you're at a coffee shop so there's certain tools that

are resources that you can use i think it's fantastic so i think the ability to be able to choose that is a wonderful benefit of all the hard work that people like us entrepreneurs who are creating things creating tools that enable people to do that successfully and actually have a life out of it the second one i think is also it's a lot easier to make that

kind of decision when you're a single guy or a single gal or if it's the two of you together but the moment you start adding children to this it becomes almost impossible uh you could technically do it but i think they eventually call it child abuse if you if you don't give them a certain you know sort of system if they're not eating on the regular basis

if they don't have the things that they need if they're not getting an education so i think it's a wonderful fantastic thing and i encourage people to even do it and try it because if you can understand what you ultimately need then it makes it easier to realize what is a want versus what is a need sure and you know in that way as you're building and

creating you're making decisions you have the ability to from that sort of knowledge i think make more wise decisions concerning the assets that you do have and whether or not you need to indulge in something or maybe you can give that money away because you're able to you know so that's just kind of my thoughts yeah they're good thoughts um i mean the beach example is quite

extreme i mean if you're like 19 and very adventurous uh bear grylls style you know yes do it do it do it go do it i think i'll do some kind of it you know or like survivalism um build my own hut and stuff and just challenge myself i've been watching a lot of um off-the-grid property building from a mega mansion to something that were built by you know people with low incomes and that that has kind of been fascinating to me i think that most hipsters that i was referring to and oddly enough i kind of get frustrated sometimes around these people because i i consider myself more of a luxurious voyager whatever that means is if you have like children's for example you you buy a property and then you live like on

very low costs you know and you try to be self-sustainable and i think that can be a nice experiment too but um i then i i tend to see more value in um being near the civilization and with the the money system which is a tool you know like anything it's energy it's a tool yeah you trade it for other things and then you can have a more diverse um diet for example you can go and buy sports massage you know and participate in iron man's for example and yeah that's that's a benefit of of society but i think also some people they get caught up in um the undertoles of that society which is like you said that insurance that mortgage you know uh that car payment you really need that car you know

can't you bike um to to some place you know and um when when the fear aspect because money there's a lot of fear related um to to money you know like hey will will i get enough money to to feed my kids you know and there's always this fear oh do i have a question because in my my own humble opinion having a cushion of money is is a mental well-being thing it's it's a mindset thing it's a psychology thing you know that you have money if there if a crisis hits health uh hence uh when you have that you don't stress much when you know that you don't have contracts uh handy for example do you agree yeah i think there's uh i think the the the trick is is is a lot of

the lifestyle you're talking about is a rejection of extreme i'm not even say capitalism because capitalism in and of itself is it's a tool like anything else i i don't know why people bash about it's literally lifted more people out of poverty than anything in history but but the part is materialism can control the individual and define who you are based upon what you have and that

in and of itself is a rejection of where i think the value of human humanity comes from and it's in just being human and i think sometimes if you'll notice the conversations you have with people that are feeling this way there's two two two things two two lines of thought one i think is an extreme rejection of materialism itself and the pendulum like everything swings instead of

finding balance it generally swings the as far away as it can possibly go and leave their break or it will swing back and eventually find some modicum of balance right and so i think a balance between a type of understanding that money is a tool that is useful for creating new ideas if you do not have money you do not build a business you need some sort

of investment right if you do not have capital you cannot hire new people if you do not have capital you cannot advance certain ideas like how are you supposed to research a cure for cancer if you have no capital and you're living on a beach you can't so what are you providing to the world if you do withdraw yourself and your ideas from it so i think

finding a good balance between the understanding and idea of materials are necessary tools but they do not define who we are they are useful to i think like a magnifying glass they should enhance what we are and i think money is often a good indicator of of like it's going to bring out more of what's already inside you you give a guy who's who's selfish greedy i've

met tons of poor people who are selfish extremely selfish and extremely greedy if you give them money it's not going to change they're just going to be selfish greedy people with more money i've also met the kindest most generous people who have tons of money who are extremely generous with what they have so i think money is a magnifying glass an amplifier of what is already existing

in the heart of an individual in a society and the idea about where that pendulum lies is it evil to have money is it evil to not have money is it evil you know and the idea that in in poverty is where in in poorness and in poverty is where we are really truly humans and where you know where we want to be or is that we all want to achieve wealth so i think finding that balance between those things and recognizing is it sort of a religion for us because sometimes when you hear those people talk it's like capitalism is evil well evil is a theological term okay are we defining evil as capitalism then what is the opposite of the evil the antithesis so a lot of times that conversation won't just be

a practical conversation about hey is should we use this money for this or this it becomes a sort of spiritual modicum for them an incantation almost and a rejection of what they deem to be evil and then the moment you start to try to make money they will imprint you as well that you know they project that onto you so i think you yeah you know and i think that's what is that rejection you feel when you're talking to certain hipsters i think it's because a lot of the language that they're using is in a way a self-righteous expression of a faith that they have and what their understanding of the good and evil is and they're expressing it in a way that that you know often judges you leaving you feeling judged just like

any a religion would so it's an interesting conversation yeah yeah and it's well first i think uh if you cannot bring value to a society with capital and you're against it and your other option is just you know polluting the whole society with your crappy ideas then yes retire to the beach and be a hipster yes please go yeah go have a good time yeah that's that's

fine we are like fully aligned uh on the the capitalist society that doesn't mean that i don't want to try it you know like i want to experiment and see what it's like so that i can get smarter which leads to my next point which is most people that have um these um prejudices slash traumas with money first i think it's the lack of education it's a very animalistic uh reaction to it like uh okay yeah i i don't know about money and hence you know this guy is probably bad or you know it's not it's level one thinking it's not level two thinking and this the second point is pretty much related to it i think that us humans were wired for competition and me being better than you for example and thus i

will always try to justify my situation if i see someone that has something that i would like and i even see that in myself you know like in and in my whole life my best friends are people that i initially hated you know um and stuff like that i was jealous of them although i do not consider myself a jazz person but sometimes i see these seeds you know and i think we need to be conscious about how we react to that and even that when we start hating on people you know yesterday i was listening to joe rogan with uh like screen men and they talk about hate and trolls online which is a an interesting topic because i've had my my lots of um hey that one period of my life and i

think that every famous person that is going to deal with that every successful person is going to have to deal with that more and more and i think that they should i think sometimes while i is it that i push the diana's analysis a bit deeper but when people hate on you it's a sign that they are mostly jealous of something and most of the most of the time it's a good sign it's a sign that you're on a good track because if people digging themselves um enough you know and if they self-analyze enough they will find that very seeds do you agree with that yeah i think it's also tied i like that i think i would agree with that for the most part unless that person is you are the antithesis to their

ideology so i think they might disagree like if they see you succeeding like you said that's one thing and it could be a good thing so if i put out a project and nobody talks about it which is worse me putting on a project that there's good and bad oh we hate it we love it and there's dialogue there's conversation there's people bashing it and it's living

on in the psyche of of the audience or they talk about it it's gone forever and no one says anything oh it's good it was decent and then it disappears i think i'd rather have that story that divides people in a way that's positive like a positive division that they can debate about and talk about it's more exciting right so i think in that way you're absolutely

right in terms of like wow i must be doing something right because if i've got haters that are opposed i'm giving something a message out there that's impacting and resonating one way or the other it's creating dialogue it's creating conversation those are powerful tools and if you look most most uh literature and stories paintings and anything that's been appraised throughout society has done that to the society

it's in there's people who love it there's people that hate it um you know and there's always that dialogue in that conversation that goes on long after that person's dead you know and that's exciting story making that's timeless it's the timeless story and that's what you're looking for when you're telling that story so i'd agree with that and then also i i think there are two main

thoughts of logic i've noticed uh throughout society one is that people believe that man is basically good and the only reason why people are good uh evil is because there's greed there's people who want resources and only this society drives people to do evil or evil otherwise people will just be good and then there's the other side that says no good people are good or evil inside

individually and it's their choices that generate the positive and negative outcomes so can you have a good person who's a mega millionaire can you have a good person who's poor can you have a bad person that's a vegan billionaire can you have a bad person that's poor or are only people who are poor good and there's the idea in society that that's the rich people that have

to do this the rich people the rich people they're bad they're evil this this this and if they would just give to the good poor people then the world would bring balance and i think what you're going to find out in most cases when they do this it often does the opposite so like in russia there's you know when the soviet union fell and they chose to adopt communism i think they've killed about 70 to 80 you know maybe 50 to 60 million people china killed about 100 billion pol pots they killed about four or five so the results of the idea that the masses will know what's best and if you just give them something then they will produce good things is has been i think consistently disproven throughout history but there's still that

idea about where where good and evil comes from and then its impact in society every choice that you make whether you go to the store and you buy a can of red bull or whether you choose to go to church what school you put your person what people you marry is all based upon several principles one of them what our purpose and what you feel your purpose

is in life the second would be what things you value if you died today and you could say three things that the world would remember forever what would those three things be i guarantee your life is going to be based upon living on those principles now where do they come from are they self-generated are they societally generated or they generated from from you know like a god

or or do they come down from our heritage so i think that's why it's so complicated when you ask capitalism versus not the beach versus not it comes down to those issues the core principles of what defines what is appropriate behavior versus not and is it a system or is it the individuals and the people who choose to adopt them so that's just why i think i

like this conversation because it is so complex it's exactly like the type of conversation that i like to have it's like yeah it's top top priority actually to have these conversations i've always been the philosopher type you know like what i've studied first before business in university was um as political science and they had us read all the classics in philosophy whether that's plato um alexey tug

ville aristotle and um all these uh interesting thinker niche nietzsche as well which resembles the word niche um regarding to that you know i think there's no black and white in life it's always gray to some degree is it like grave a lighter gray or darker gray um that's that's the real question and i feel you know like if if you'd have to to ask a good

question like is there such a thing as a a human that's not greedy because if you don't treat yourself right first how can you even help others so that's why we see uh in my opinion the greediest of people rising to the top and then have them stopping in their tracks and asking themselves okay i've achieved that game that competition which is what we're wired for again

and then they ask themselves or they get to talk to people to like important people for example i don't know the dalai lama and that changes their their whole mind you know or they realize that they have power and influence in this world which is also my goal which is why i want to accumulate a ton of money because money is part of it it's energy and

and then they want to do good with that that's a new game that's a new level i feel do you think that's the way it is also yeah i i would have yeah i would agree with that i think the cool part is is that i think life gives us challenges and challenges are the things that that will reveal our inner character and nature and we can either as individuals choose to ignore or reject the lessons that are being taught to us in that time and continue on the same path that we have already been following or i think those challenges will reveal something deep within our character a flaw or something positive that we like or something we don't like and then you and i self-respected for self-reflective people will say we're back great

yeah i think it's it's being self-reflective people whether you're poor or not whatever whatever you're going through if we're willing to allow the experiences that we have to i guess to give us pause and have us reflect on is this who i want to be is this what i want to add to my character is this what i want to my life i think those more those people are more apt to change they're more apt to be the millionaire that's tried everything realized it was empty has built or not maybe he decided it was amazing and then there's something in him that said this has been my goal i want to give back i think that it's again to me that goes all back to the personal choices that you make every single day as

you get when you get up you have a series of choices that you can make that determine the outcome of your life you do you can't determine what happens to you tomorrow and the only power you do have is the choice that you make right now about what you choose to do i think and then that process you have the dream that compels you to leave the safety and comfort of where you are to risk becoming something subjects you to challenges and trials along the way and then the choices that you make will inform who you become as an individual and so i think it is absolutely possible for people to change especially if they are uh are open to the possibilities that the way that they do things isn't necessarily the best way and

if they're open to that you're more apt to be able to change i think do you believe the best framework to be like first hustle hustle hustle get money and power and then go charitable or the modern movement we've been seeing in the startup world which is to go social from day one and build on that um i know that just people are going to disagree with

me on this but i i think i i like the modicum of do unto others as you would have them to do to you from the very beginning and i think it's just applying those principles to the people i'm working with and the way that i'm starting off my companies is i recognize that the people that are working with me and for me are my greatest assets and those individuals that i'm pouring into as i grow and encouraging and building up i want to create an environment that rewards them as i grow so um when i'm working with people and individuals like for example i have a show that i'm working on right now and the people that i had the actors that i had helped me do the pilots and the people i had

to help me develop it when the show gets picked up i'm giving them a percentage of everything that i made on the sale of the show so i want to reward the people that are working with me i understand it's not a charity i'm not creating a charity i'm creating a business that i want to grow and i want to multiply but i want to create opportunities for people inside of my organization and i like to think of that as my charity the people that work with me are the people that i want to invest in and give they have families they have children they have dreams they have education and if i can pour into them and i help them build whether they choose to go off and create something magical and magnificent outside

of my organization or if they stay with me i want to leave those people better off when they when than when i found them essentially sure and i like that i'm a mentor i'm a mentor owner and i like to teach and i like to give and impart the things that i learned for the people that are that are in my organization and helping empowering me to do uh to do what i what i want to achieve sure i want to answer my own question because i believe it's a fascinating one social start-ups okay well um reaching the the money and power goal initially can be a very good path because it's it's a clear competition you know you've got metrics and um we're wired to do that as humans very selfish and then once

you achieve that that can facilitate your social goal vs someone that would go um you know like social from from day one and you know not going all hard on the the money uh and power goals and you know it's too soft too peaceful because business is like war um but there's a trap to going um to the the money and power phase only for example donald trump you know like he he never came back out of the mindset of like money and power you know he got stuck there uh vs you know like because most of these billionaires once they they reach that phase you know they're still in the very much business and aggressive mindset and they're more or less you know on social so it's kind of a trap in which you

can uh never come back as a charitable person that will help this this planet earth and you get stuck in the money mindset so uh that that's my two cents on it yeah well if it's interesting to think about the dynamic of wealth there are different layers of wealth and people that generally operate in a different system in those layers and why is it so hard for

someone in poverty extreme poverty to break out of poverty into the middle class because there's literally a barrier that is a mental psychological physical and and even family barrier so generations of family it's very difficult to break those cycles to enter the next level when you're in the middle class same thing a certain income i work for someone else i get a paycheck i invest my paycheck i get wealth i retire you know when i'm 60.

okay then we have like white collar doctors they're still operating from the principle of i get a paycheck i get paid 150 an hour this payment goes to do this and i can make so much money um that's still a mental block because it doesn't it says you're judging your life and your worth based upon a dollar amount for per hour as opposed to like an impact

fee one of the guys that i i work with a lot his name is bruce wright he's an author he's a he's done a ton of books he says i like to charge by an impact fee i determine what my work is going to do and how much income it's going to generate for the company that i'm working that's hiring me and i charge a percentage of whatever i think that's going to be so and then you have the next level where you have people who have literally billions and trillions of dollars there are trillionaires that have money in banks money is no longer the issue it is a conversation of power power is when the money dynamic shifts from money not being valuable to power yes money still has power but ultimately you when

you have that much money every at that level it's a different kind of game a different kind of thinking and you can't do status quo thinking to stay in that level and operate there you can't and the competition is is is fierce and it's about control for world systems world banks world militaries and it's a completely different game from the game that most most people play yeah

so power would be like i'd say social dynamics and the connections that you have who are your friends you know yes who do you know what can you obtain from this person in a clap of a finger uh just by having worked with them gain their trust you know that's kind of my definition of power yeah and i think that's that's i think this is the key in order to elevate to that next socio-economic standard you have to have friends that operate in that sphere stratosphere if you do not know people there the chances of you getting to that sphere are slim to none it's very small so one of the things you work on let's say you have a great idea you're an incredible person you're from a low socio-economic status in order to

get to that next level what does it look like you need to begin to find out where do those people hang out what do they do and then you need to bring something to them that is of value to them if you do not bring and that could be relationships maybe i know someone else i can be a heroic connector and i can say hey you need to meet so and so i think they have a fantastic idea i know that you were talking about this you two have to meet let's arrange a meeting you know so you begin to develop relationships in the next socio economic sess and you begin to provide value to them that they say hey i have a meeting i want you to come to i'd like to introduce you

to my friend jack however that is and you slowly begin to move into that next sphere and then you're gonna hit it you're gonna hit a ceiling eventually you're gonna get the same ceiling and there's another ceiling and so it's like okay i've reached as high as i can go here no matter what i'm trying i'm not hitting more i'm not reaching my targets i'm not reaching

these people i'm getting the door shut in my face for xyz you're at the top of that level you've topped out your game now it's like who's in the next level what are they doing what are they looking for what kind of conversations are they having what are they writing read their books read their literature find out where they're going and spending time i guarantee you're going

to begin to find what they're interested in the people that they're interested in the way they think and it's the same way it goes all the way up to the top and you can go as far as as your brain can take you i mean you are literally the limiter on what you can accomplish i think oh yeah i have a mastermind well multiple masterminds i run a mastermind company and yeah that's definitely one reason i have a beautiful story to share something that i listened yesterday uh regarding changing your environment and hanging out with the right people it's about the heavyweight champion of the ufc francis and gano i listened to him uh yesterday in a podcast with mike tyson which is surprisingly very amazing yeah hot boxing it's called it's very funny um

and basically he told his story um which he was 22 years old in africa from at 17 years old he wanted to become the the best boxer in the world and from five years to 22 years old he was driving a motorcab you know in africa he he still had his dream and he was like yeah last five years i've done nothing in my life his parents were wanted him to follow the comment pat you know drive your taxi and so forth and one day he sold this taxi and illegally immigrated to france you know from morocco which is hardcore man like no food and sleeping in the streets uh he dropped in a french gym and they they coached him for free for four months he gained his first uh championship uh title gained

uh 2 000 euros after that a couple months after that he had um a ufc contract and he get get his first purse of half a million not so long ago and that was six years ago his reality in in africa that was six years ago imagine in six years going from the streets of of africa dirt poor literally you cannot get poor than that and and from ufc champion of the world i was like holy [ __ ] man that that is amazing i i met a guy who was actually the uber driver he was from he's from kenya like the dirt poor part of nairobi yeah he grew up with nothing they literally strapped together like cardboard boxes and slats and that's the two million people live there uh they pee in the

street there's no there's no running water and he was playing soccer and he wanted to play soccer and he never got really a chance to to go anywhere but one day a guy came from a local high school in the city and saw him and saw how tall he was and was like dude you need to play basketball he's like well i'm a soccer player i don't even know what basketball is and he's like no you need to play so he said he took him to this gym he started playing basketball he said i i got it easy i i got it i it clicked with me so he ended up getting drafted into that high school played he was the first person in his entire village to graduate from high school while he was

there there was a guy that was over there visiting one of his friends he just happened to come to the game he's from he's from a university here he's a coach for one of the nashville teams saw him play basketball and said dude you have to come play for our school drafted him into it he just finished master's degree he's doing his master's degree right now and

he's playing basketball and so you know and he's and and uh they're he's up for potential draft picks i think he's a junior right now so um so yeah i mean is this the best path for you know like someone living in a crappy country is it to immigrate in another country and study or get into sports with it because i have various employees uh in not so cool parts of the world you know and my path to them and it's maybe it's not the best recommendation but it's to yeah get capital get their independence from their parents right leave that that crappy environment of your parents telling you should do this and you do that because this is so toxic like they they put ideas in their children's head and they're like yeah follow

this path you know go to university get that diploma and this is so outdated and i feel they they put most of their stories on to you so that's a step one uh aka financial independence and then hopefully start um your own thing so get into entrepreneurship is that uh the best advice to most or is that like too hardcore and well should just try to go

for the immigration pat first no i i think to me it's like uh you know how who could have predicted french guys i mean that guy's path to go to france and he couldn't have known it um the same thing with this guy he could have known it so i think sometimes it's like the desire that burns in you for something else something more beginning to just follow that and take steps part of life is a surprise i think the beauty of life is the surprise so if you're pursuing and pushing how often have you set a goal honestly in your life think back to the time that you were 10 years old to the day today how much of your life is exactly how you pictured it versus how much was beautiful circumstance because

you were pursuing something you cared about my life is completely different and what do we know as kids when you're 10 12 years old you have no clue about the world it's through that process of becoming who we're supposed to be that the beautiful opportunities open i think is the combination of luck combination of relate being good at relationships and caring about people being talented in something

and being unafraid and willing to do whatever it takes to push through you have to have a combination of those things in order to become successful or at least have a shot at becoming successful so in africa i think you literally a place like africa where there is no socioeconomic moving within the nation so like in ethiopia for example i worked in a dump that was there

we spent times with the kids in the dump they literally cannot get out of there socioeconomically they cannot leave they're not allowed by their country so unless they have a sponsor from the outside who will say i will sponsor this child they were able to do it thankfully that entire dump has been destroyed the children have been moved out all because one of the guys there was

sponsored he ended up going on to get college degree he went back to that community started teaching the guys how to drive trucks it changed everything one person because he went back so the same guy and your nation those nations are not going to change unless the people who are getting educated outside of the country choose to go back and change the nation you know to go

back to where they're from so because how i see it you know like it's it's pretty much the same startup unifying theory that i'm trying to build it's about testing a bunch of things you know and seeing what fits and their ancestors probably tested uh tested a hundred a thousand things and found out that uh doing this dump work was the best way to get them income

and since they found that gem you know it took them so long and so much effort you know the elders are like no dude that's what you need to do i tried everything i've suffered a lot and in the process in trying to avoid the suffering uh to their progenitors they kind of continue that cycle of suffering so i think that more more things need to be tried you know but the question really becomes uh in terms of energy because most of uh these kids don't eat a lot you know they're always tired they have the sun burning their face the whole freaking day you know so they don't even have energy to think you know they only have energy to do and coming back to some of my thesis and the funny funny while

i was listening to you like well according to myself like seven years ago i was supposed to be a billionaire today um that i'm still working on that let's say but um small comment here because one of my thesis is that if i would have to start um life again or for my children i think i would uh have them pursue the the athletics path um why is that if you look at the world trend and you know like generally african have great uh athletic body and in terms of genes uh some of them are are very um high in in in in height and the the muscular the muscle is there you know so they're very athletic and they live in obviously tougher environment they don't have shitty food to pollute their um nutrition

yet and in our world obesity is keeps skyrocketing so what i'm i'm saying is that there's less and less athletic competition and can be a market that can feel natural and uh may have them um give them a better shot and also when you grow up you're not allowed to have a bank account right because the path b would be entrepreneurship or to be very good at

something another would be video games in in the world that we live but in that part of the world they don't have electricity and connectivity sometimes so if i would have to do it again and i think what i would promote in my own children's would be athletics and try to get good at that them compete that could possibly generate financial opportunities and also yeah try the

entrepreneurship game and possibly the the video game path to give them financial independence as quick as possible which is the the first um step to achieve in my opinion what do you think i i like it you know if if you don't adapt and change with the way the expectations are of the world you can't be successful entrepreneurially because if you're not in tune with what the

world what demand is or if you don't understand ahead of time if you do not have the foresight to see the world's next desire they're going to need this then i think you're going to get lost and right now like you said entertainment is king like i know kids that i was working on um a contest for mortal kombat and the kid who won he was like 17 years old and he won 250 000 you know it's like and that was his third competition he'd won this year so uh it was one of those situations that there are new opportunities to make money income i know people in africa in nigeria that are doing reaction video channels that have tens of thousands and some even hundreds of thousands of followers youtube's incredible it's amazing yes

streaming is incredible so and there are places now can someone in nairo in in um in um kenya kenya make it to nairobi where they have internet connection yes that's a doable thing so i think it's a good path and i think it's exciting and it also depends on the talent of the individual but um i think it's my cultural icons as well for example the the

one hour 59 minute uh marathon has been uh achieved by kipchoge and i watch various documentaries of kenyan runners and the the cultural the culture is just going crazy there i saw their annual marathon and i've never seen that much humans in a marathon it's really a running culture uh people are in good shape so but obviously you know again coming back to the competition thing it

seems like a saturated market yes at least they have an icon to motivate them but if that could lead them to another sport uh in which there there's less competition and they can excel that would be cool as well um one of the major problems one of the major problems that's faced by a lot of developing nations my mom actually worked in education and she worked in

sudan she's worked in egypt they're in there in moldova right now um she's noticed she she worked with the southern sudan she stayed in sudan for a little while and she was working with them to help develop a new educational system for southern sudan and one of the major problems with education there is that it's taught in a stamp it's stamp formula you memorize you spit back

what you've memorized and then that's degraded and so there's no expansion of that knowledge base there's not the idea of like how do i take this knowledge apply it to something different so she's been working with a number of teachers in kenya and sudan to actually help the teachers reconsider how they're teaching to help expand the knowledge base of the children that they're teaching using the resources

that they have so in southern sudan and like kaya and yay they're literally four hours from any village from the next local village they're connected by dirt roads that are often flooded they have no contact so they don't have a lot of resources so she's like what can you do she she's helped develop and like they take a little creak and then they say based upon using

the tools that you have you have to build a bridge across them and then enable something you know roll a stone across it or whatever puts it so how do you do that and so they're really focusing more on problem solving and how to take the knowledge that they learn to apply it to the application of problem solving and so and then she's also developing a huge

way in and microeconomics so the whole goal is they said a lot of times like there's a number of books that have been written one of them is called when helping hertz when we've spent billions and billions of dollars in these countries and nothing has happened from it it's just gone where versus taking a system like this where you can actually train somebody find somebody in the

village who is trustworthy that's looked up to by all the elders uh that is notably a man or a woman of integrity you can invest in that person and then that person takes the first fruits of what they have and then they teach and equip and inspire other people so you're if the idea is to expand the knowledge base and the profitability of that area but also

at the same time maintaining their collective culture of uh in south africa they use the word umbuntu which is the concept that whatever happens to you happens to me if something positive happens to you it happens to me right so that african culture permeates most of african families and if we try to impose a more individualistic western idea about what profitability looks like on a society like

that it can be detrimental to the structure of the society so if you take something like the the substrata of how they believe families work the interrelationship with the two of them you find somebody in the community that's an elder respected individual you empower that individual and then they in turn will be able to empower other individuals in their community you can actually in exchange life long

lasting change where those places become self-sustaining and that's the ultimate goal once you create that you can create an environment in which the other people in that community can thrive so some of the people i've talked to have left africa who have got an education over here like the guy that i met he wants to go back and take his education there and use it to help

transform the community he came from if africa can do that africa has resources they have incredible people they've got talent they have everything that they need to be able to succeed and i think respecting their culture the heritage the way that they operate using the principles of success that we've discovered through you know centuries of practice there's a real opportunity for africa to see some incredible development

but it takes breaking years of cycles of repair repetitive cycle and that's what you keep running into you see it in mexico you see it in you know and in africa you're going to see it everywhere is those those same things that's that's what you do because that's how you do it and you can't do anything else why because it doesn't work have you tried no we

just know it doesn't work yeah it's a mentality looping back to a point here um a danger of following that the path to become a billionaire and then going social is that sometimes uh billionaires think that capital fixes most problems well it doesn't you know uh it's it's more the implementation and the energy that you invest in building smart systems uh to fix recurring problems checking the

data and modifying your approaches to to that problem that you're trying to solve um i've seen it you know with my very own eyes here in mexico that the mindsets and not only in mexico but you know up here in canada a bunch of people that don't want to change old um mindsets and a human will only help himself if if he made it his idea and if he had to put some blood sweat and tears themselves uh and build these actually this neural connection in his brain these pathways so that she deeply understands physically and mentally how to solve that problem i think a lot of people as well in these parts of the world uh they just adapt to that reality you know it's like yeah [ __ ] it i'm gonna die

at 47 and that's it or [ __ ] i'm gonna have two children and one out of two is gonna die maybe that's not the stats but or having malaria as normal and yeah um we might we might die if we have it you know so they just adapt to that side of reality and they need to not only have education technical education but also motivation that hey this type of life is also possible you can have something better you can expect you need to have them experience and feel also what what it feels like to have that life to have a light bulb in your house to have light at night or to have this um this oven that will cook faster you know and you don't need to heat the whole house or

even risk burning it down or that having a toilet is more hygiene it doesn't smell bad and and so forth so yeah education is is a huge part of it and another question we need to ask yourself is in the first place do they need or help you know do they ask for help if they did not ask for a sell for help if they if it didn't come from them then yeah they're just gonna look at the money and uh it's gonna wash away and the they're gonna come back to their old ways you know needs to come from themselves yeah absolutely if you don't have an inspiration inside of you a fire that burns inside of you to do something or achieve something or create something literally then all you're doing is is

willing to subject yourself to uh all the fears and failures and things that come if you step outside of your safety and comfort like that dream has to be strong enough to get you to leave what you're used to the status quo and you have to want it bad enough and either a you have to show somebody that there is something out there that they didn't know

that's better or b you have to try to convince them that this thing that they can achieve is better than the safety or whatever they feel where they are it's the same thing like abusive relationships why do you stay because there's a certain level of comfort and safety and understanding and knowing what's predictable you're willing to get beat the snot out of you but you like you

leave well if i leave what if i don't have a home where do i go who i'm with at least i know this guy sometimes is good to me and sometimes he gives me stuff and i at least i'm not i'm under a roof so it's that same thing especially a you don't know about it but b or b um it seems unattainable uh i think it's the more the way is to say here's the possibilities are you interested in this opportunity then those individuals that say oh my gosh i want that what do i have to do those are the people that we need to invest in because those are the ones who are willing to take the journey to become to try something you know to risk failing you know struggling um i

i like the word passion you know your passion what is your passion it means in its means to suffer uh is what it mean you know so you're willing to choose to suffer for your dream and i think that's what we've been talking about with like with bruce wright he's written a book he's called apples of your genius and he wrote the last book was called transcendental

thought leadership and it's the idea of taking how do you find those individuals who want to transcend the common thought and status quo and elevate their thinking to a place in which they can change their families their lives for generations to come and those individuals are often the people who when presented with an idea the light bulb comes on they want to do it they have the

energy to do it they have the desire to do it and then those are the people that we target and invest with your ideas you know why do you throw pearls to a pig you know they're saying like this you wouldn't if the pig's not gonna appreciate the pearls why give it to them but if you have an individual that's like oh my gosh i want this more than anything what do i have to do those are people you invest in those are people worth pouring in because they're the ones that can ultimately enact change in their lives their families their relationships their communities and i think that's where when you're creating a business when i'm working on a business and i'm looking at somebody i want to invest in i want to see that

i want to see the spark in that individual that desires to achieve or to be a part of something bigger those people i invest my even if they're not trained specifically for a task as long as it's not a you know a niche task that i have to have like a program or i'm not going to have a cashier i found program but there's a cashier that i met i'm like hey she's so good with people i'm like why don't you come work for me you can come please come be my guest services person you're phenomenal so because there's certain things you can't teach you can't teach that desire that drive that excitement that passion that desire for more but you can discover it and you can invest in it and you can elevate it

and you can use it to help grow your business and ultimately reward that person along the way that's how i see business yeah it's always a good pick energy is my first factor that i look in people when interviewing them uh just brought me a lot of lots of questions listening to you like regarding um regarding ambition so like i'm i was pondering to myself you know

did i get this ambition um going uh to this this place called uh when i was younger and and checking these uh cars magazines you know with the red corvette in front or listening to 50 cent uh talking about being in the club with his ladies and with his ferrari you know did i get my ambition from there was the seed planted from obviously there's the genetics

questions but i think that can be created you know to want more and also to have that that ambitious that ambition which sometimes can happen to be a very selfish gene um to always want to have more and i think lots of billionaires have this gene but what what are your thoughts about ambition and also i'm curious to see if that kind of energy can be created

that excitement you know uh yeah if you hit some topics when you talk to some people but or or just someone that loves talking to other humans do they also lack something internally to always being bored by themselves and they want to talk to other humans and that's why they overcompensate there these are all questions that that came up to my mind uh well if i think

ambition is a beautiful thing there are certain characteristics and qualities that we as men and and definitely women possess that i think that are highly beneficial and highly destructive simultaneously the the most important tool in all of these things is self-control it's that balance it's finding balance and being able to self-control i i'd much rather if i'm fighting a war with my friends next to me i

want them to be monsters i want them to be terrifying i want them to be the most lethal people on the planet but when it comes to serving children protecting women when it becomes to caring for each other i want them to be able to control that anger and that animosity that power to be able to serve something good so that ambition inside of us is what

drives us to achieve one woman wants to be married to a guy who doesn't want to achieve anything i just want to sit on the couch i don't even want well can you win with your video games no i just like to play them i don't i really do but i don't but i maybe i want music maybe i don't and you don't ever you don't ever do anything that that person is life correct so that person needs to want something i want you to want something i want you to be so savage in your desire about what you want to achieve that you're willing to bust through anything because if we're creating a company together i want to know that the moment i turn around if something happens to me i go to the

hospital i can't get to that meeting i call you and i know that you're going to do whatever it takes to try to push that thing but then i also want you to temper that with wisdom and with balance because if you enact self-control those impulses that say i want to have this great impulse why well because i i really just kind of want money is that inappropriate who's going to pay the cost for that right now well i might have to you know i'm going to hurt this person this person this person it's not worth it then hold it is there another way to serve this how can i benefit those three people and achieve this at the same time is it possible so that kind of drive i think is fantastic it's what

takes like an elon musk to be able to you know sleep on the couch and then keep working 40 hours a day you know to be able to achieve something so uh yeah this is quite this special case you know but begs the question with the typical hedge fund billionaire um did does this guy try to help the planet for what he [ __ ] up before did he take so much that he's he has a conscious uh check-in 101 and he's like [ __ ] i stole this money from for well stealing is a big word but a market there's a winner there's a loser right so you literally win on other people other people's back that are less educated less powerful than you're you're really much of a shark and that like you

said that's cool in some situation in probably 60 70 or even 80 of your sum total but you need to have some kind of angel on the other shoulder and do good you know so do people that reach this level of of uh financial success and power are they going in just to um rebuild what they destroyed um no i think again there's rarely ever person that goes into something that says i want to suck as an individual and be a horrible human being and i want to cause pain and anguish with everyone that i meet it's rare right there are those sociopaths that do this i think a lot of times people go into a situation hoping they can create something make something do something and ultimately inside you kind of want like see

an old lady across the street you want to help i see my friend who needs some money of course elon's like bro my car broke down i'm stuck here man is there any way sure i can give you some money you know they're going to do those bits so i don't know i think it'd be really hard i think it's in donald trump that's what you're saying in the up there there's less donald's than there are elons i um no no no no i would say the other way around for sure i would say there's less elon's than there are donald's i just think because what what is the thing that drove people to get there ultimately okay money and power uh hope edition right just be competition as a male yeah winning it's fun

and i think it's like i've won so the question that happens with most billionaires is i've won and now what and so that's the answer what happens in the now what so elon's like i won now what well okay i got here to this point and now i can really do anything i want to there's something that bruce also says i'm just going to keep referring to he says an ideal calendar a lot of people never even think especially millionaires and billionaires never even think about stopping they're just working they're like when are you going to stop but he's like i don't know when this is what i did like why are you working right and so he said helping him develop an ideal calendar literally sits down and figures out what do you want

in life what do you want to achieve what do you want to make do you want more time with your family what's most important to you prioritizing those things and once that process begins to happen he finds out that most millionaires and billionaires begin to say i'm actually not doing anything that i want to be doing with my life right now i really want to be doing

something different and those people are empowered individuals who have been set free from just following blind ambition if you follow it without the tempered balance then you are a slave to your ambition just like everyone else is you leave a trail of destruction behind you but those people who can be enlightened who can realize the purpose behind what they're doing who can balance and temper that drive

can end up using that power to serve other people and i think you find those rare instances in which you see an individual who has come to that realization and found the benefit of being selfless giving and helping other people and that's that's again with capitalism and the money trauma i'm gonna call it it's that making money sustainably and being very wealthy is so freaking hard that

most people are traumatized to put this switch off you know i could think of myself um i think two or three years down in the game in which i'd be pulling yeah 60 80 hours a week uh all the time didn't know my wife back then you know and i was just hustling hustling hustling and in my mind if i um if i'd outsource or if i'd sleep a bit more or take more care of myself or go more on the lifestyle side of things i'd lose out you know and i never make money again so i feel yeah capitalism is great but i feel that most of us um never you know pulled back out this path you know and we we keep on digging and digging and digging and next thing you know

comes the dangerous um that the dangerous path in which you're you're like 100 conditioned for money and you don't know about helping others it's just money money money and that's where like monsters are created i feel yeah well i think the thing that you can go back to primarily that what drives that is is fear so what is the fear of fear of not having control if

you're a failure feel of not having enough fear of you know and even in the guy where do we drive a lot of our value from um you know it's just mattering do i make enough money to provide for my family does what i do matter do i have what it takes to overcome the challenges that i face what do i need in order to do that money do i have enough and some of us who have lost big we've lost tremendous sums of money on a certain whatever we've invested in and you lose it you know how quickly it can disappear and so no matter how much you have it's like that can go away like that one bad choice it's toast so i need to make sure i have enough just in case

i get sued or just in case that i spend 80 grand in this 100 million whatever it's just you know it and it fails you know i need to make sure i have enough that i can keep going so i think that's it and in my mind money for for guys like that they're ambitious it's just a score card it's not even once you get a certain amount of money it's a score keeping card am i winning am i losing and for each individual what does winning look like some people compare themselves to the next guy i got 100 million dollars but he has 250 million dollars therefore i'm losing on the scorecard i need to keep going uh one thing i think kovid taught me really really well was the fact that the world

keeps spinning even if i stop and then i i'm still okay after three months i didn't do anything or whatever and the world was still there and i didn't fall apart and my life was like i was a challenge i didn't know how i was gonna you know i had to figure some stuff out my wife got stuck in ukraine for eight months and that that really sucked and i lost some people but um at the same time i was like you know what i can take a break it's okay if i take this weekend to spend time with my family yes i need to take my wife on a date instead of going this no i don't need to take this meeting i'm busy uh i'm more intentional with my time so then that

way i can i recognize that it's okay to stop for a minute the world is going to keep going it will be okay i can't stop forever i can't stop forever but i can stop enough to take care of myself to make sure that i put those things those priorities in order my family my wife my friends my relationships those things are okay now i can focus on back on my business because i want to keep going so yeah it's i don't want to get like conspiracy theorists here but like it's almost if we were conditioned to fear to not have money and if that fear comes from abs there that if we don't generate money for the system then it's it's gone it's over it's like it's a cold hard step while yes kovit

i mean like how how wimpy are we in 2022 to fear economic declines you know when 50 to 100 years ago we didn't even have electricity wi-fi uh heck even food you know we still needed to hunt for food we've got so comfortable nowadays and it's like always go go go um jason i could talk to you for ages you're a very interesting person but yeah podcasts

coming to an end uh yeah that would be uh the the round two of round one uh we need to make an official round two later on uh thank you so much for your time where can people find out more about you in a couple seconds um well actually just probably entertainmentdudes.com and you can check out the podcast entertainment dudes we interview all kinds of people in

film and television and music marketing voice over and really just dig into the insights of what makes a successful person not just as successful in your craft but successful people so check me out on there um you can follow us on entertainment news on instagram and on uh there and so that would probably be it yeah thank you so much it's uh last few seconds thank you jason talk soon talk soon [Music] you