Chris Hansen

It went on about four or five years ago, brightly. It went on a little bit, maybe four or five years before that. Like right when it was coming out, I was like, hey, this is interesting. And man, there sure is a lot of people here, but I didn't put two and two together until I saw other people leveraging social media to get quite the notoriety. And with attention comes opportunity.

So I wanted more opportunity. So what better way than to get attention? And social media is the new television, man. Like, dude, literally, I was walking through the airport the other day, just getting back from a keynote. I land in Vegas. I'm walking through. Someone rolls up. They're like, dude, Bradley, dude, I listen to your podcast. I'm like, oh, thanks, man.

He said, hey, can I take your picture? Boom. I take a picture. I start walking off. Someone walks up, Bradley, the real Bradley, dude, I watch you on TV. And I said, what? I said, I watch you on TV all the time. I said, I'm not on TV, bro. He said, oh, I mean, like Instagram. And I'm like, dude, that guy said TV because that is TV. Now it is. So once I realized that, I'm glad I did what I did.

But if anybody wants to build a personal brand, in my opinion, you got to think about just content flow. I put content flow into certain categories. Number one is the source of your content. Where's the source of your content coming from? Like, for example, this podcast is a source. Coaching somebody is a source. We're

with people as a source, you know, things that happen to you on a daily basis, keynote speeches are sources. So you just figure out what your sources are. Then the sources lead to the creative. Someone has to chop up, drop, edit, you know, hashtag, et cetera. That's your creative. Then you got to figure out what your outlets are. Okay.

Well, my outlets are Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and used to be TikTok. But for some reason they banned my damn account when I reached a half a million in a month and a half. Those are your outlets. And then you have frequency, right? How often are you doing that? And then you have what I call boost, which means how much money are you investing into it?

Well, again, I think if you just focus on telling the truth and being the truth, the truth resonates higher frequency than anything else. So it's like, I keep it real. I just tell you the truth. I don't beat around the bush. I don't use big words to try and prove that I'm smart. You know, I just talk. So like, you know, I think with that simplicity comes... you know, better information.

A lot of times people just post, but they're not, they're not investing any money to be seen. Folks, that's the key is if you literally paid whatever it took to get everybody that logged into Facebook every day to see your face and For a month, you'd be famous. You may not be liked by everybody, but you'd be famous and you'd have a ton of opportunity coming your way.

So if you're taking notes, the source, the creative, the outlet, the frequency, and the boost, you figure those out, you're going to build yourself a big-ass personal brand.

Well, whenever I do the boost part and advertise, right now for every dollar I put in, I end up with $9 back. According to statistics, which is why I'm starting to put a whole lot more dollars in. So if you see me now, wait, you'll see me a lot more here pretty soon. But that's when I'm just advertising. But just the personal brand, you know, it's immeasurable.

I get deals all the time because people follow me. They like me. They trust me. They hear they hear me talking about something that has nothing to do with Lightspeed. And they sign up for Lightspeed because of who I am and what I said and what I think and what I believe and, you know, who I'm connected with. And, you know, they see that on social media. They see me hanging out with the big wigs.

You know, they see me on my podcast. They see me, you know, with employees. And again, it's social media, not anti-social media. You ever see these people with the private accounts? I don't understand. Why are you on social media with a private account? It's like, dude, that's the equivalent of flipping someone off when they say, how are you doing?

I think, I think like, you know, clarity in a world of chaos is gold, right? So like, I just need the light. Like someone just bring me the light so I can see. I bring the light.

That's scary.

That's powerful. That hit hard when I really think about it. When I think of a lot of my friends in corporate, they have zero control, and there's a lot of shit going down right now.

Just from a 30,000 foot view, I love what you're doing. I love the idea of it. I think... I think this is a natural shift happening. Like there's a,

Yeah. And I think it's exciting to watch. I think thankfully we have, you know, people like you that I think have good motives. Right. And it's more about let's bring people together because you could use this tech to just be greedier. Right. And perpetuate more consumerism and stuff like that. So.

As a whole, I just think it's a good feeling to know that collaboration essentially is the goal here, right? To get everybody working and everybody building in their own way.

Yeah. I'm waiting on the prices to go up.

collectible digital items. Right. I just looked at it as a way to make money. However, on the flip side, I have seen the community aspect of it, you know, at the Bitcoin conferences and whatnot, I've been to some NFT parties and, And it's like, I mean, it's a real deal culture. Like it's even with the prices being down, there's still strong communities of NFT holders.

I look at it just like the playing card community. I mean, we were talking about that earlier with baseball cards, but I know there's more utility than that, you know, when it comes to music and stuff. But I'm interested to hear more about it and kind of what got you into that. Because it's been rather quiet in the mainstream media this cycle.

Even if you could find a way in your business, right? In any of our businesses, and let's just use a small number, $200 a day would make a huge impact in 90% of businesses in America, right? I don't know what the math is, but what is that? 200 times 365? A lot of money. I don't know. 800,000 or 80,000? I don't know which one it is, but regardless. I'll take that. Say it's $80,000, right? Yeah.

That's a shitload.

That's two more employees for you.

That's some billion-dollar question, brother. I mean, I've talked to a lot of people over the weekend, a lot of my buddies that are pretty heavy in it. Yeah. It's definitely... Not following the usual trend as close as it typically does. Yep. But, you know, the assumption is you have a lot more institutional money moving into cryptocurrency now. Banks, countries, right? Yeah. I think...

I think our whole currency is going to change, whether that's our banks are just going to be on blockchain, which they probably already are. I think there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. And I know there is from a more corporate integration standpoint, credit card companies starting to integrate blockchain processing, stuff like that.

So you also had a lot of liquidity sucked out of the market from big events like FTX, that whole crash that sucked a ton of money out of daily day traders hands. So you got a lot of money that would usually be trading that's just not moving right now. And I think a lot of that money is supposed to get dispersed out from that settlement, sometimes the next few months. Yeah.

However, I'm still very confident in crypto. I mean, I think historically March is a really big month in the cycle. So, you know, like Ryan said, everybody's down a little bit right now. But if you zoom out of the picture, it's like the stock market, right? It's still looking good. And in my opinion, in the short term, it's looking like you're going to make some great gains. So I would not sell.

I would buy more.

Word is it's going to do pretty well. And I had a buddy yesterday that even said, he goes, I've never been an XRP fan, but he's like, I'm a believer now. And I think there's a lot of... Because of that, XRP has a lot of contracts with the government and there's a lot of stuff with the banks going on.

Allegedly, what XRP is really doing is trying to replace the SWIFT system in the banking system when you send international wire transfers and stuff like that.

I had no idea. I mean, I've got some here. I didn't know I was sitting on a freaking gold mine. Yeah. I got those bricks of the cordyceps in the trunk.

So it's natural Viagra. I think it's good for blood flow from what I recall.

No, I haven't been taking it lately because I was getting too amped up on it. Really? It was giving me too much energy. Yeah, it was a mushroom blend, like 12 different mushrooms. Also, I take other stuff that I think has mushrooms in it already. Even now, you can find energy drinks or pre-workouts that will have cordyceps in it and lion's mane typically. Yeah.

I think – What do you have at the house, Chris?

No, I've got some capsules. Like I tried – He's storing rails of cordyceps. Yeah, it's better than cocaine.

That Himalayan Viagra keeps me pumping all day, baby.

You don't need a pre-workout. You just need some cordyceps. I tried Alpha Brain. That's got cordyceps in it. There's a ton of stuff, but... I don't know. I tried to simplify a little bit on that because it was just too much blend. I think if I could find a cordyceps-only supplement, which I probably can, try it out, but it sounds pretty expensive.

I mean, I think a lot of it's grown hydroponically now, like in the U.S. So maybe it's probably like Wagyu beef versus normal beef, right? Like they got like the Wagyu of cordyceps mushrooms.

I agree. I mean, I think there's a lot being done. I think we've yet to see the ripples from what's being done. you can't turn around a ship on a dime. Right. So I'm extremely happy with the speed of how things are going. And I'm just happy that people are working because it felt like for four years, there was just kind of not much going on. And if there was anything, it was extremely negative.

Right. Yeah. Like our withdrawal from Afghanistan, for example, like that was the beginning of that presidency from what I remember early into it. Um, But, I mean, I'm stoked, man. Like, I can tell the sentiment amongst business owners is better. And as a business owner, I just feel like I'm seeing someone who knows how to run a business doing their job, right?

Like, I'm like, oh, this looks like what people should be doing. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, more will be revealed, and there's a lot of upset people. But I think... We've got a lot of talented people from a lot of different aspects and areas all coming together trying to overall, I think, trying to help the country out of genuine love for the country.

You know, I feel like all the evidence there, you know, these videos every day of, hey, this is more waste we found. Right. Like I saw a video of it was metal bushings. Right. For screwing in, you know, appliances. It was for airplanes. Right. And what usually would cost like $3 at Home Depot was $80,000 for a bag of bushings. And then there was another example of styrofoam cups at the Pentagon.

The contracted rate they were paying, it equated to $1,000 per styrofoam cup is what they were paying. I don't, I'm hearing real time tons of abuse, right? As a business guy, you're like, that makes no sense. Keep running it, keep going. And they're attacking these little like 22 year old hacker guys that are in there, you know, doing all this.

You want a 22 year old and it's like, all right, well you're cool. The 22 year old going and picking up a gun and fighting for our country. One, two, what you said, you think this kid can't get your social security number already? Like if the, if he's, if he's basically hacking for the white house, right? Give me a break. Like you're going to steal your credit. Come on. Yeah.

We have a bunch of lawyers that are really politicians. We need more business people in politics and less attorneys. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it's like metal washers, I think, essentially.

Just make something up for the expense sheet, guys.

I think Andrew Hamilton was like 23, like one of the founding fathers. Like they were in their early 20s when they basically wrote the Constitution.

Yeah, they were 81 year old president or did Pelosi's complaining about the hackers like Pelosi. Do you even know how to do an Excel spreadsheet? Maybe because maybe to track her stocks that she's insider trading. But outside of that.

There'll probably be a Netflix documentary in about three years about it. Yeah, exactly. The day NVIDIA crashed.

Not at all. A lot of creative writing when it comes to resumes nowadays. Yeah. A lot of fiction.

They can probably give you a personality profile based on someone's social media footprint nowadays, I'm sure.

Like the intelligence community, I'm sure.

Yeah.

I'm sure it does.

He's not. He's a lot of things, but he's not a dummy. Not that.

I never got into it and I just know it wasn't a can. I wanted to open up. I don't want to get hooked on another one.

Those poor folks.

It's a gain or a loss. Well, if you never took profit, where'd you get in at? You might still be in the green.

I mean, dude, it depends who you talk to. I've heard both sides. I've heard it's going to die, and then I've heard it's going to be the next best thing. But I forget, something came out this week that I think was not good for it. I forget what it was, but. I know XRP has a lot of very, like you, loyal members of that community. Yeah. But, I mean, it's still up, I believe, from what it was.

I think a lot of people believed XRP would be the U.S. dollar digital currency, or at least their software, essentially, right there. Yeah. Platform. Platform. And I don't know what's really happened with that. But I do think it's an interesting time in the market. I think a lot of people just thought Trump would get in and things would just start going up.

The news cycle flies. They're moving quick. We're not used to an administration moving this quickly. I know.

And it hasn't really been happening like that. There's been a lot of policy placements and good things, but the charts aren't really moving. And on the flip side, you have a lot of money getting drained out of projects like XRP or Solana or Bitcoin because there's now so many of these meme and alternate coins like Trump coin, for example,

you have every famous person, celebrity and every like 16 year old kid in their mom's basement trying to launch a coin. So you have a lot of more scamming and just money is not being congregated in as few places as it was maybe a previous cycle. So, um, but XRP, I mean, it's strong. You got a lot of holders, but I don't know if it's going to rip. Yep. Um,

It holds value as long as people hold it, you know?

I mean, like we always say, man, go to safe big boys, Bitcoin, Solana, Ethereum.

Even XRP, I think is.

Yeah, they are. But like, I don't know. We're going to lose a lot more money than make right now. And literally right before we got on, I was reading some guys I'm friends with saying like, it's, this isn't easy. Like it's hard work and it's very volatile. And, and essentially unless you're day trading all day, just put some money and forget about it.

Politically or in general?

Sorry, my boys and mortgages. Yeah. It's tough.

I mean, to be honest, I was surprised TikTok was back up in 24 hours. Yeah. I didn't think that would be that quick. But besides that, Trump's doing his thing. I mean, I expect him to come in guns a-blazin', and they're working. But like you, I have not been glued to the television by any means.

The people I know down here in real estate have been telling me it's been picking up.

When can we expect our refund checks for my last 36 years of being a taxpayer?

No income tax? No federal income tax. Yeah. I think you'll have state income tax. Where are they going to get the $4 trillion? Or what are they going to cut? They print it all anyways. Yeah. It's all make-believe. The Fed is really the problem.

But I think if you dive into the history and kind of Even Trump throughout the years has kind of discussed this. And then you had the treasury secretary even mentioned it this week as well. And I don't even know why he would even open that door if it wasn't a distinct possibility. So whether it be adjusting the tax rate, right? I know we've talked years about like a flat rate tax.

But I think we know that the way the system is set up and Trump said this right when in his debate with Hillary years ago is like, yeah, the system is broken because I benefit off those same loopholes that you guys use that are essentially for the billionaire class. So. I think there'll be some changes. I would love no federal income tax, but I'd be happy to meet somewhere in the middle.

I think a lot of people, at least what you said, I feel a lot of people are kind of ramping back up right now. People have been sick, and the weather's been kind of nasty from everyone all over the country, and it's been a lot to keep up with. California's still burnin'.

Just cut it in half and double it. Like what am I paying social security for? If it's going to be run out by the time I need it.

Like $7 million, I think, last year.

They know more than me. They're just smart, man.

It's like a lottery ticket.

Got to start investing in sports cards.

Yeah, that's my understanding is it, it is really good at what it does much rather than any other AI platform. And it's more efficient and less energy. Therefore, I guess requiring less Nvidia chips, which is supposedly why, uh, You saw this correction in the market.

Kick off your February right.

I mean, what my question is, is how did this just kind of show up on the scene and explode like this? Like nobody kind of knew how it worked or what they're working on. They just like, I feel like I woke up and all of a sudden everyone was talking about how awesome deep seek is for the, you know, utilizing it. And the next thing I saw was they were turning off access to anyone outside of China.

Yeah. So it was kind of like COVID showed up a little bit, right? Hey, someone said that they said last time a big event came out of China and actually it was good for the markets. I mean, right.

What makes you think was NVIDIA kind of knowing this and hoping it wouldn't come out, you know?

I bet Pelosi sold her stock before this.

See what your congressmen are trading and you'll know what's going to happen.

Like that's kind of their forte, isn't it? Yeah, it is everything.

You can get anything you want on Timu nowadays, brother.

We'll see.

Well, due to OpenSeek, Bitcoin did fall below 100,000 briefly. And as a whole, crypto has been a little slow the last week or two. It's down and down is, you know, I mean, let's be real. Six months ago, people were going nuts over Bitcoin crossing 100,000. And now everyone's like, oh, it went under 100,000. It's still strong.

I mean, everything's kind of quiet right now, but there has still been a lot of good news coming out of Washington. You've got the administration pushing through more ETFs for these cryptocurrencies. You've got a Solana ETF, I think an Ethereum ETF. So that your retail investors can now invest in crypto much easier.

So this administration is definitely laying the foundation for a future of cryptocurrency in this country. So not financial advice, but I always say it, get yourself started. a wallet opened up on one of these apps, crypto.com, Coinbase, and start doing some dollar cost average investing. Connect your bank account, put on like $20 a week from Bitcoin out of your bank account.

It'll sort in your wallet and just do that. Set it and forget it. Like I always say, you know, but it's no different than investing in the stock market now. So you should definitely be considering investing part of your income into cryptocurrencies.

And then there's, like you said, Chris, this sort of mockery almost that I'm so wealthy that I can do this and also the cachet and, yeah – He could say it's about the NFT certificate and it kind of is, but I feel like it's kind of like its own encapsulation of a metaverse that's not real because it's not normal or attainable for a lot of people.

Yeah, I could see that. And the reality that there are upshots in crypto that make... people that haven't had money have so much money that they devalue it in a way or, you know, who's to, it's not my job to tell you what you value or not value. But when someone that doesn't necessarily have a legacy of money, and I have no idea who this person is, but generally speaking,

can generate $100 million or something in six months, you know, which some of these crypto dudes have done. Hey, I give them credit. Not hating on them. It creates a false sense of money value concept. I think that's going on here as well. Would you agree, Chris?

Yeah, then I'm sure part of it's like ego, right? Like, I don't know who this guy is, but maybe he could probably, he might be one of these big Twitter crypto influencers, right?

Dude, you're living with four guys. I think that's just your product of the environment.

And it's like, I'm going to eat the banana. I think it's back to the ego. That's the like, I was going to eat this shit. I don't care because it's six million. No big deal. I'll make that tomorrow.

If he believes that, he's a fruitcake. And if he's what I'm thinking he is, he doesn't mean it. He's just fucking flaunting. This is the ultimate pulling up to your first date in a Ferrari.

Yeah, he's like trolling, I feel like.

Yeah, I can see it. This 6 mil right here. See this one side? That's at least $500,000. You know, back to the IOUs and dumb and dumber. You know, like, hey, that's a Ferrari. You might want to throw away that one, the piece of paper.

I mean, he should pay, like, a supermodel to eat it.

So that way it's, like, seductive or something.

Exactly. See? And start his own company behind it. See, now we're getting something. Like, this $6 million banana was eaten. High-end production. Like, Sawyer filming it. Like, he's filming it. It's a produced commercial and just super artistic. And she's eating the $6 million banana. But then they're called actions like... Crypto.com.

See, I totally should have done. Ah, there we go.

Yeah, there we go. It's Thanksgiving, people. I'm drunk on turkey early.

What we got next?

You guys have a lot of nutcracker jokes.

Every musician I know uses bots on their music. So I would be very careful I was Drake because someone could come back and do the same thing and prove he's doing the same thing.

But you also saw it going viral over the internet, right? Like people doing dances and TikTok and stuff. I think he's in his feelings.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Potty talk. Classic. Yeah. That never goes away. You just layer onto the potty talk. That's what it is. Uh, Yes, we are thankful for you if you're listening, wherever you are, whenever, however you are. First and foremost, we don't do this without you. So thank you for listening and watching on YouTube. If you're not watching, you need to go watch it.

These guys both have a lot of money, and it's just like – It's like, go figure this out in private. Yeah, why do you need a feud? Like, come on. I'm sorry.

I just don't have many – Because he keeps their name in the press. That's why.

Yeah. It's either just PR or stupid, and maybe both.

Yeah. And like, do I give a shit?

Yeah.

Like I either like music or I don't like the music. I don't give a shit if it's inflated or not.

No. I mean, I listened to Nicki Minaj all morning working out today. Like 2014 of you. I know. See. her re-released album, you know, like it's good shit, you know, at least it wasn't Taylor Swift. Absolutely not. Yes. Oh, good. All right. Our final topic today. Yeah, I'm not, I am not, this is not my topic. I'm staying out of this one other than like weighing in on my plans moving forward.

So I'll let you do that.

You get to see the sights and sounds of right about now, especially the sights. You get to see our wonderful sponsors here in the front, always of me. If it's a physical product, that is. And then you never know what... Fancy outfits Chris might have on. We had the Hollywood flare last week. Chris Vegas, as I call him. We're all a little more casual today here on the holiday.

Great analysis.

Yes.

I like it. I need to, I'm going to spend the next month. I've, I've made this cause I, you know, I do not want to be outside the trend box looking at, I, I refuse to be outside. So I'm going to go watch the Netflix special and see if I can get my arms. And look, I like fast cars. I just have never gotten and have owned probably almost every brand you can name, but I,

I just have never gotten into F1.

Hey, I like it. I need applause, you know, for. The F1 insights here. And I like that. That Maverick movie is good. Yeah.

I mean, look, as a business and marketing show, no one respects the fact that there isn't much more bigger as far as sponsorship goes than what this is. NASCAR was hot like 10 years ago. And before everybody rolls their eyes, they did have a moment like 10 or 15 years ago that is definitely past, by the way. You know, I don't I don't know how they're going to get that thunder back. Pun intended.

But F1 definitely feels like the more sophisticated, you know, version.

Yeah. I mean, driving Chris's Ferrari, I can attest.

Yeah. Down the freeway in Miami, the sound of those cars alone is kind of worth the price. The cars that drive, especially in South Carolina, you've got these kids that drive around with the Honda, with the bad muffler or whatever, and you're just like, oh, my God. And versus hearing, like, a real rumble. And my Audi has a pretty ballsy little rumble itself.

But I'm just saying, like, the difference when you hear those machines is there's a certain – I don't know. I don't know if it's a guy thing. I don't know if it's – but there's a sound that's like, yeah. Yeah.

I will say this. I see the new Cadillacs do look definitely more. Yeah. Like if you, one goes by you, even me, like used to always know the difference. Okay. There's a, there's a Cadillac versus a Ferrari or whatever. Now one goes, they, they have that exotic look and I give them credit for that. Cause it's, they're pretty bad-ass.

If, if you didn't, if you took all the emblems off of it, you wouldn't know. Yeah, especially, I mean, once you know the look, of course, but I'm just saying in general, like if you line them up like three or four years ago, you would not go, oh, there's, that's the, you know, definitive GM Chevy. So.

You don't notice the nuance? Come on.

At first I thought you meant like jumping, like flipping. I was like, wow, I haven't seen that yet. And now I'm like, oh, like flipping, like selling.

I was like, damn, I want to see some cars flipping.

Getting you... You're after turkey. You know, we're going to keep it pretty light today. I'll just go ahead and give you that. We're not going to... It's the day after Thanksgiving. We're thankful. You're hopefully out supporting the economy, spending way too much money in all the Black Friday sales. So... Brianna, that brings me to it.

My father-in-law fixes up he has like a 65 mustang that's like immaculate he has you you wouldn't believe what broncos anybody if you're priced an old ford bronco figures easy oh yeah he he's got one he has the original jeep stars like stars and stripes like the cj5 that's like got the stars on it there's a name yeah Yeah, but it's like stars and stripes. Something like that.

He had a guy, and he's owned it. It's all original paint, and it's not in perfect condition. I mean, it's in good condition, but it's not perfect. He was at a gas station, and what looked to be a well-to-do guy that was in a really nice car came up and told him and offered him 50 grand on the spot for that Jeep.

And he literally gave him the card and was like, I mean, yeah, until the money's in your hand, you don't know, but Pretty freaking legit offer. I'm like, for that Jeep? And, like, if you looked at his Jeep, you'd be like, maybe 15 grand, you know. But, I mean, it's crazy what some of these classic cars are worth and what people pay for them. I couldn't believe the Bronco's like 200 grand.

Old Bronco, Mustang, Jeeps, all that stuff. So, anyway, now F1 coming to America and 47-year-olds like me. I got to get in it. I could get into this. This is something that I could. I've always felt like I should be into this. But I'd watch a race and I'd kind of fall asleep.

I think that'll get you into it real quick. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, this feels like me. It's bougie.

It's... Just wait till you get one... When you get one episode in the Netflix series, you're going to be like... I do have some Ferrari gear, you know? You're going to be like, you know what? I think I'm going to trade an Audi and get something else now.

Ryan's going to show up with a new exhaust system, pull it up to the office.

I think maybe I've been protecting myself from myself, like not getting into this because my wallet gets protected for the gear and the going to it and then the cars and then the, you know, oh, we're going to helicopter in to... Our private island where F1's going on or whatever happens when you get into this whole shit. I don't even know what. I need to focus on business again.

Make some more money if we're going to get into this. Yes. I love it. All right. F1 it is. Any final thoughts, final thank yous? I do want to send a thank you out to all of our sponsors. Branded Bills, the best custom merch in the business. Brandedbills.com. Drink Exponent. Exponent. All the good stuff, none of the bad stuff. And ultimately, the energy I need to keep things moving.

And of course, Independence Center. They are leading the charge for giving you the news and information you need without the bias. IndependenceCenter.org. Final thoughts from the team here?

And I'll ask you next, Chris, because I think you and I have talked about this. But Brianna, I don't know that I've talked to you. Like, are you a Black Friday person?

There you go.

Officially Christmas. Now after Thanksgiving. Cheers. It's been Christmas with the offers for a month now. We got seven trees up. Everything else, hey, we're ready for the holiday party. Christine, you need to come up for the holiday party December 7th.

I would love to, but I cannot that weekend. Oh, come on. I got to go to Houston, remember?

Oh, yeah. That's right.

Yeah.

Well, we appreciate everyone out there for listening. More than anything, we're thankful for you. That's why we have the show. And you can find everything you want at riotisright.com. Highlight clips, full links to all the episodes, and more. Info on our sponsors and all the social media channels. We want to thank you. I thank the team. I'm thankful for everyone.

Brianna, Chris, Sawyer, thankful for you. We'll see you next time on Right About Now.

So are you going to get up at 5 a.m. then? No, absolutely not. All right.

Happy Thanksgiving and welcome to Right About Now. It is November 29th, 2024. Here closing out the holiday editions here of Right About Now. It's your weekly business and marketing news of the week. And we'll just say our thank yous, our thankful fours, all of the above. Joined, as always, by Brianna Hall here at studio.

Yeah. I will be at early Black Friday shopping, though, at a hopefully sponsored to be soon. Sawyer had this idea. You will be hearing from our producer, Sawyer, today. We talk about him a lot. I call him out a lot. So you're actually going to hear from him today because we're getting to one of his favorite subjects. And he's a way bigger expert than I am. But...

Harbor Freight will be getting, you know, we prerecord this. It's on Wednesday this week. It's typically on Wednesday, sometimes Thursdays for Friday's episode. And it's Wednesday for us. So I will be Black Friday shopping early to hopefully beat the crowd at Harbor Freight. One of my favorite stores. I'm not a big shopper. I mean, I'm online when I need stuff. I have my brands.

OK, T-shirt, black T-shirt, ordering time, my favorite pair of jeans, my my noble tennis shoes are no longer as white as they need to be. I'm pretty simple shopper, but I like some Harbor Freight. I am turning into my dad. Like I remember as a kid, like literally, you know, he'd go to the hardware store, do whatever. And I was like, God, this is so boring. And like, why does he like to do this?

And now I find myself at Harbor Freight three to four times a month. And I don't even need anything. I'm just there because there might be some zip ties or some kind of new, like...

Yes. Look, that 9,500-watt generator that you don't need... Is on sale. It's $500 off. It's usually like $2,200, which is really cheap anyway. $1,700 at Harbor Freight.

That's true. That's true. And, you know, like more random lights and... It's some random stuff in there.

Maybe some Bluetooth speakers, if you're lucky. Like, more construction-type Bluetooth speaker I could see.

Oh, yeah. Lots of rollable carts for your, like, garage. Like, little carts you can put stuff on and, like, little tables and chairs and, like, rollable toolboxes.

DeWalt rollable toolbox.

Oh, not DeWalt. This is Harbor Freight now. This is value. Yeah. This is all straight from China, I think. But it's the best quality cheap stuff you can find. Anyway, enough for a non-sponsor there. But that is my guilty pleasure now is Harbor Freight. So we'll be there. I'm thankful for them.

This is the strange life that I live now.

Only a man would have Harbor Freight as a guilty pleasure. I can promise you that.

Yes. Most purists, like my dad. My dad's a true master carpenter. They don't really like Harbor Freight because they think it's cheap shit. And it's but it does the job if you're a casual kind of workshop guy. And that's me. I'm a casual workshop guy. Like I do little projects and little things and I'm not completely helpless. Handy enough. That should be their tagline.

If you're handy enough, come to Harvard Freight. That's great. Oh, man. Chris, any big weekend plans for Thanksgiving?

Just hanging out with the family to be a nice, chill weekend with some family and friends. Nice. Go take Storm to get a little bath and get his paws trimmed. That's on the agenda.

That sounds great. Brianna, what are you guys up to?

Not? Oh, okay.

Okay, like around the house?

Oh, good. I like you already. I mean, I'll tell you what. I like these projects, you know? Yeah. All right, I'll have to buy you something better than I was going to get you. Oh, my gosh. Yes. Sawyer, what are your plans?

Hey.

There we go. And what's the recovery like up there?

Chris Hansen down in Miami. Hey. Chris is down at his parents' house, I think. Is that right, Chris?

It's hard to believe how long the recovery's been. The news cycle makes you forget stuff unless you're routed every day. But it's crazy. So be thankful for that. And, you know, just be thankful that for if you live where places where you don't have to deal with that stuff or haven't had to deal with it. You know, we forget to be thankful for like the simple things.

It sort of makes me sad, but it also, you know, reminds me of how well we have it living in this country and being American and, you know, some of our freedoms and some of, you know, the abilities to take care of ourselves and get after things. And, you know, I don't know. I think we lose sight of that sometimes.

Yeah, that's right. I'm at my folks' house for the holiday.

Amen to that. I mean, I had a wife that was diagnosed with cancer in January and she's cancer free now. So first and foremost, thankful for that. And then but but I do have four boys and we we seem to have a sprain every other day. But, you know, but but nothing serious to date. And so can't lose sight of it and definitely appreciative. Chris, what are you thankful for, my friend?

There it is.

Always thankful for my friends and family. Community, thankful for health. Thankful for myself for putting my health more importantly in my life.

So we've got a little makeshift studio going on here.

Yep. Part of, you know, the wellness journey, I think, you know, Chris and I do another show called Vibe Science where we're trying to empower people to take control of their own health. And I think, you know, when I think of... you know, things that you can control and things that are, you know, within your power.

I like it. I like the lamp and the bar. Oh, no, that's... Whatever that is in the back. It's a nutcracker. Yeah. It looked like a ball from the other angle. Yeah.

And I think that comes top of mind and doing what you can, because we always know like, and I've lived this this year firsthand when things are going to strike that are out of your control. So if you can mitigate that by doing what you can do, that's the best. And if I could stop eating gummy candy, I would really get on fire. Yeah. That's my weakness, man.

I had some good gummy candy bears last night. They're good.

They have anything in them or... You got to get the organic fruit snacks. That's my gummy replacement I've got with the organic fruit snacks to kind of fill the... The cravings.

I'm not that guy. There's a time and a place for it, but it's just not all the time. If you put the right kind of gummy candy in front of me right here, it would be all day, all night. Yeah. Yeah. There's never a time that wouldn't be okay for me.

Oh, no, no. I could, if I could kick that a mile away from like the 80% cacao.

Yeah. It's good for you.

My wife and I use this expression about certain things because we're both health conscious enough. and take care of ourselves for the most part. We're not perfect, but like both fairly in shape. And what we use is not worth the calories. That's kind of like what we'll say. Cause there's certain things that we both know that we, it's worth the calories, dark chocolate. That's bitter.

I got to give a shout out to Copenhagen Imports for your furniture needs.

I'd rather not have the calories, you know, like not worth the calories. Absolutely. Don't even count the calories. Just give them to me.

I know, it's totally subjective. Everybody, different strokes for different folks.

You know, before we go to the fact that he's going to eat it, it really shows, you know, is that a banana in your mouth? Anyway, sorry. The marketing and branding. This is a story of marketing and branding because this guy, the artist, had made his brand, you know, artist, brand. Maurizio Cattelan. Cattelan? Cattelan.

Hey, there. Yes. Give that again. We're the deets on that. Chris, give them some love.

An Italian artist. I just, I'm telling you, like, that you can sort of make people, it's back to the guy, the artist that does like the, like the most random, like drawings or something. And he did like, he shredded it. Like when someone bought it. Anyway, marketing and branding, when you can create this halo of, thought and belief in what you're creating and having this value, I respect.

Copenhagen Imports, Sarasota, Florida. Minimalist, modern Scandinavian design furniture. Tamiami Trail. Tap in.

Now, whether or not I personally would apply that value to it is a whole nother thing, but This is a lesson in marketing and branding more than anything. Now we can talk about the fact that the guy's going to eat it.

Says the banana's value parallels that of NFTs as the certificate holds the true value, not the physical object. So it's the fact that he bought it. It's kind of like the cred. You know, he bought the cred of the certificate that he bought Maurizio Catalan's art. Right. And I guess that has the value.

There you go. Get it. Get it. Get it. I might be a 12-year-old boy in a 47-year-old man's body, but even just today saying Nutcracker, it kind of makes me laugh. Am I so juvenile? I can't say those things without like... Oh, it's a nutcracker. And my boys do the same thing. I live with four juveniles.

Yeah, essentially the certificate because you're not paying $60 million for a roll of duct tape and instructions that had a duct tape have been in it for a while. No, but it's still... And dude, the crypto space has a lot of... You got a lot of guys making a lot of money and it's... I feel like they're almost making a joke in a way of the whole art scene in the old elite wealth society, right?

It's like... a mockery of it in a way.

But there is, it's kind of like anything, right? The NFTs, there's only value because there's a big group of people that believe there's value in it. And that's it.

Yeah. And I do think that crypto and even what happened like right around or during the, with all the money in the market with crypto, It's devalued some things and also made it almost like monopoly money in a way where – you're buying and spending it in a way that most people would never think about it.

You like this way, like the way that this guy, because he's rolling in money so much, thinks about $6 million is the equivalent of probably your average person's thinking about $60 or $6, maybe six, but, but like, Like, ah, you think about it, and it's not – but it's quick. I think it's more a sign of that.

I mean, even now when I'm in the mall now, I'm like, can I find the same thing online for less money? You know?

And price-wise.

Like I know for these T-Moon, Sheen, Shine, whatever you call it, it's definitely super cheap. Yeah. And it's not even like nowadays, most people I don't even think are necessarily always buying because they're looking. There's just ads going constantly as well.

Yep.

Probably a smart move.

That's where they're smart because gaming is combining with blockchain and all that. So they might be extremely forward thinking with this and pivoting.

They have such a cult following, you know? Yeah. From the Robinhood debacle.

Yeah. However, if you were holding GameStop when this news came out, you could have made 16% that day if you're a day trader, which I think a lot of the GameStop guys really that fall that are like the swing traders. Oh, yeah.

According to the feds, you're a pirate. Yeah.

I mean, it's here to a degree with all the metaverse stuff. You have people that don't leave their house and they just live online gaming, you know?

He's smart.

Heck, yeah.

Nice turnaround. 600% increase.

Consolidate it.

You know, it's like up, down, like, you know, like, you know, it's that's why I mean, like you, I just I don't pay attention to much of the market stuff right now.

but I would, but it's not moving, you know, and that's an indicator of everything. Like you said, you feel like it's just on pause. You're like, all right, everything. I guess I'll just go to the gym. Like not going to have any entertainment from this today.

I was not, but I do have a memory being on a school bus in fifth grade with a kid who had a Charizard card. And I remember those were like big money cards.

You'd have to send me a scouting list so I can go scour Miami for Pokemon cards.

It's a massive drop.

No, I feel like we're in a heavy contraction. And when I look at the numbers, right, down 22% from December 24, when I read that, I'm like, that feels right. Or... it feels like it's higher than 22%. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if it was the Christmas spirit that people were living in fantasy land, even though I do know a lot of people, I remember saying this year felt weird at Christmas.

Cause even then things were still tight, but I had a conversation with a friend of mine last week, two different friends, actually one launching a company, one, her company that she was working with is shutting down. And, it's kind of just seems to be, that's the rhythm right now is people are contracting. Even entrepreneurs I know are contracting. Right.

I know we've pulled in on some things we do. It's like, everyone's kind of huddling up a little bit. And obviously I always say this, I feel like the new administration, like the coaches made the calls on the play, but there's no action on the field yet. Yeah. Like, Or maybe there's some action on the field, but there's no points on the board.

And I mean, we all understand you can't turn a ship around overnight, but I think... the administration could do a better job and maybe some messaging and just informing people of what's going on. Right. It's great.

We know these executive orders and whatnot, but I mean, I think back, like put someone, I think back at Kaylee McEnany, like doing daily updates, you know, and the, when she was press secretary, like bring back that, you know, people just some more up-to-date stuff. And I would say,

because there's so much information overload, false information, misleading information, all the above, like get out there and tell us what's going on. Right. Because like you said, I got another buddy just got out of the mortgage business. Right. Can't deal with the pressure. I got a family commission only can't do it. Switch your W2 job.

So, and I don't necessarily want to see people doing that either. Right. I want to see people trying to build themselves and work for themselves, but Same with the job market. Another friend went to college with her. She told me last week I ran into her trying to put in resumes. No one's calling, getting no callbacks, smart girl, well-educated. So it's, we're in an odd time.

Yeah. Well, especially when, you know, the market takes a hit. Right. I think of the retirement generation. I don't doesn't matter what political class you are. If the market goes down and you look at that retirement account is down, you're not going to feel good. Right. Especially if you're on, you know, what do they call it? Like set payments. Right. You're on a lot of money.

Fixed income, right? Market goes down, then you look at the grocery store, right? And that still hasn't really eased up much pressure as far as inflation goes there. I have an example, but I can't remember it now.

What a short term. Yeah. An example today I did see, and I was digging, right? Because we do the show. I saw that India basically was kind of lighting up the, on the tariff for, and they had said they would drop a lot of the, the, the tax on imported American goods. So it looks like positive news there, right? Yeah. But we haven't seen that on any headlines, right? No. Talking about that.

And that's where, hey, if you're the administration, be shouting these wins from the rooftop because you know that everyone else is hating on you for the tariffs. And now when you've got everyone in America, right, even like you said, the Republicans with their expectations, that should be a signal like, all right, guys, we need to do a little PR, right?

Like you're a marketing guy, we do marketing. It's like, let's do some damage control. Let's get this sentiment up. Let's make people feel good again.

And I feel like we've just been getting the Trump Elon show since the election, the inauguration and the Doge stuff. And it's like, that's all great. And that is definitely part of, you know, balancing the budget is definitely an important part and cutting waste. But even when I go on Twitter, I'm like, all I see is, Elon arguing with people about government policy. Yeah. There's no game plan.

Right. And even if it's just, hey, we're doing the tariff war and we're holding firm and we're going to hold our hand.

Sell me on why I should keep tolerating this pain, right? Convince me. Soften it. Yeah.

Almost like in the election speeches, right? When you're campaigning, we're bringing jobs. Keep reiterating that. Where are the jobs going? Where are we doing mining? Where's the plans? I know personally that there's plans for these things. And I know guys working in those industries that tell me, yeah.

red tapes being cut, projects are being opened, but I don't think the general population knows that. And I think whether that's the mainstream media, obviously hates this administration as part of the problem, but I think the administration can play some offense a little better on just communications 101. Yeah, exactly.

Oh, no. I don't think anyone planned for anything that's going on, even in the stock market, guys, with NVIDIA, for example. You know, that big debacle.

Playing cards, apparently. Yeah.

I'm sitting here realizing today I've been in the wrong investments the whole time, you know?

You have to... Give us a narrative. You know, give us the roadmap. Yeah. It's like... A run, if you're going running, it sucks a lot less when you know I got one mile left as opposed to, hey, Chris, just keep running. I'll let you know when we're done, right?

I think spring cleaning is in the air, right? Like you said it, I mean, same with me. Like we all have to, there's times you have to pause, reflect and make changes, right? And like you said, I usually like those because, you know, you got a new mountain to climb. Exactly.

This is letting me run like a sales call.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, they're giving bonuses for how many million you cut this week. They're like, there's your SPF $1,000 bonus on your check this week.

Yeah.

Right. Crypto markets kind of like riding that buck and bronco right now.

Crazy, Chris. Yeah. Great question. I'd love to know. I mean, obviously, we've got some of the big events we know happen. I mean, as of right now, when I checked, Bitcoin was at like eighty six thousand, which is definitely crazy. Way lower than it's been in a few months. The biggest thing, there was a hack.

One of the large exchanges, kind of like Robinhood for stock people, was hacked for, let's see, what was it? $1.5 billion in the cryptocurrency Ethereum. So... That was hacked. That obviously creates a big level of fear in the market. However, they, and they had massive withdrawals after that and they covered all of them. They didn't, they weren't insolvent.

I mean, they actually, that company that had the hack actually made $420 million off of withdrawal exchange fees. So it goes to show you the amount of money that's, that's in this, but it did shake the market and it's definitely not doing so hot. I mean, you've got about a 30% pullback this month.

So don't sell, people. Don't let the fear get you. Ride the dip. The tide came out, and it's about to come in like a tsunami. But I'm not a financial analyst, so no promises. But what goes down must come up.

I'm going to ride it. Time to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. Exactly.

Yeah, man, this is a sale. Buy it on sale right now, everyone. Clearance time for Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Bitcoin was $104,000. Now it's $86,000. Get it while it's hot.

Did the cards get less volatile throughout the season?

And you've said that and I said it, right? I saw it in the airport. I saw like six, 12 year old boys huddled around a vending card machine, you know, for playing cards. Yes. I thought you were blowing smoke, but. I was pleasantly surprised.

We want good employees. Come to our team.

We'll give you 10% off if you listen to the podcast.

Hey, everyone, just have a solid start of your March entering springtime. Time to blossom.

I agree. I and I sadly earlier I read that 60 percent of Americans have under a sixth grade reading level. Oh, that tells me maybe we need to bring in some outside talent that has some resources and can help help help the other 60 percent.

They doubt its attractiveness, concerns over high costs and potential implications for participants. Well, I'm pretty sure the guy that can afford a $5 million investment probably is better at making financial decisions in the government. Yeah, exactly. And that's where I want to encourage people really read this shit and realize it's a bunch of nothing. This is just negativity for no reason.

You know, similar programs in other countries have shown minimal impact. Well, yeah, because it's not the United States of America.

I can go get a golden visa in Portugal if I go invest $200,000 over there. I don't really want to live in Portugal. I like America, you know? And there's a lot more people that want to come here than leave. Exactly. Bingo. Start writing those checks, baby. Come on over.

Literally. I was going to say, how is it already the end of February?

And let me give you an example. Dubai, they've been very open to outside investment money. They've encouraged outside investors to come build and look at what they've done in 50 years, right? It's one of the most innovative modern cities on the planet. So it's like, okay, if we can place some incentives here, Like that, people will come and people will do awesome things.

It sounds almost like we should have had them doing this to begin with. Yeah. American company, manufacturing in America, you know?

No, and if you dig a little deeper on this, I would almost... Say this is a good signal for the mining industry, too, because I would assume and I've heard we're getting deregulating some mining efforts. Right. A lot of this was done in China, from my understanding, because of the raw materials. Right. Yep. The batteries, the lithium. We have those same things in our ground, too.

We just haven't been able to drill. Yeah. So I'm wondering if this is an indicator that that. is kind of in the corner. Right.

Exactly. As simple, simply said, yeah. Yeah.

Or integrate it. Integrate the AI into your practices to make you more efficient. Exactly.

Yeah. Energy to the human potential in my mind. Right. Yes. You're offloading these meaningless, thoughtless things.

Yeah.

I was going to say it was snowing when I left there last week. A little change of weather. We get four seasons in two weeks. Yeah, literally, man. Now everything's great in Miami. It's beautiful. It's a sunny day and, you know, not a cloud in the sky. So we're thriving.

Yeah, I mean, I'm interested in this because obviously it's like, I'm just thinking my mind changes inevitable, no matter what, no matter what business you're in, you're always going to have to kind of Bob and weave, try new things. Right. Where I'm looking at this, you know, Starbucks cutting 30% of its menu. It's more complex drinks.

It's like, you know, as a business guy, these are very simple things that I would, I like, if we ran this business, we're like, okay, we want to reduce wait time. Let's reduce the amount of drinks. Let's do this. And I can tell you down here, there's a lot more competition with coffee houses than there used to be. So I think this is a good thing for Starbucks, but I agree as a whole.

I mean, I just think about some of our businesses and the little, the devils in the details, the little things that sometimes you can overlook. And that's exactly what comes to my mind is if I expect something to be done a certain way, then like you need to be involved in how you want it done. You can't just tell people, hey, do this and expect them to manifest your vision, right? Yep.

Yeah, for sure.

Do it. We've talked about it all year. If you would have invested a year ago right now, you would have been wealthier if you had followed my non-financial advice. Yeah, crypto... I mean, at this point, you should just know it's an asset class you need to be investing in, right?

I mean, there's definitely still parties I'm not. I don't go to big New Year's party events. Yeah. I had a friend text me, like, what are you doing for New Year's? I'm like, I don't know. I think I've been at home the last, like, four years.

If the largest banks in the world, the US government is holding Bitcoin, that should give you enough security that this isn't like some fly-by-night scam, right? And I always explain this to people, why Bitcoin has no value. Yeah, well, neither does the piece of paper that you hold in your pocket called the US dollar.

We just all collectively believe it has value, but that piece of paper actually intrinsically has no value.

It's not right. But yeah, I mean, there's still room for the market to grow. We talked about this recently. I look at crypto, especially the big the big ones, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, like your blue chip stocks. Ford, Pepsi, download Coinbase or crypto.com. You can have it auto-withdraw from your bank account, however much you want, a week or a month. Set it and forget it. That's it.

That's all I have to say about that.

I totally agree with it. Own you. There's no one else like you. The world needs you in your most authentic form. That's when you'll bring the right people to you.

Yeah, I've heard there was some quote, like, best way to get out of your head is to get into service to others, something like that. And that's always stuck with me. Like Ryan said, it's all about getting a perspective shift, you know, whether you're dealing with less fortunate people. I do a lot of mentoring with younger guys.

That's kind of my thing that I enjoy talking to, you know, guys in their early 20s trying to, you know, find themselves essentially. So that's something I always try to do. Like I have a couple of guys I talk to a couple of times a week that just call me to talk about life and their goals and what they're trying to accomplish and stuff like that.

I kind of want to do that right now, you know, being crowded in a restaurant or a nightclub.

And that, that to me, it was bringing me back, you know, say 10 years ago to when, you know, I didn't know much and I was trying to get into the business world and recenters me, makes me very grateful for I'm at now, even the challenges now it's like, okay, the challenges are, are, our trophies at this point.

There's something to complain about every day if you want. I agree. It's not a good look. Your words have power. Your mindset, if you're a complainer and you're negative all the time, no one's going to want to be around you. Just take your shit and alchemize it. Go to the gym. Convert it into something positive.

You don't want to go put on a diaper and stand there for eight hours like people do.

Yeah. Look at this. Like, in being the present moment, like don't think, Oh, when I have this and I can do this, or I have this much money, I can start the business, whatever it is. It's like, no dude, take action now, right where you are. That's most important. Don't keep putting it off to, if I lived here, I had this amount of money or this job. No.

Right?

If you're going to talk to me about it, you know, I mean, I know there's just speaking in business wise. I mean, I know a lot of guys that have great ideas, but they never want to take the action, right?

Whether it's their energy is their currency and putting action behind what they want to do, or even their, their real money, even that too, you know, either one of those things, bottom line is unless you're going to put energy into something, you're not going to get any output.

Standard, man. You and I both know that. Unfortunately, it's not super common. Yeah. You're not going to do something. Don't even commit to it. Just bow out. But if you're going to do it, fucking word is bond. Stand on your shit.

That's why I'm here.

See there?

Chris. Yeah. Merry Christmas. Belated everybody and happy, have a great new year and hit the ground running.

Yeah, I mean, I've talked about it before. Main thing I say is social media, personal branding, whether it's a business, it's yourself. I mean, that's something with the encouragement from Ryan, really, and some other friends I've kind of leaned into the last two years. I think this year, obviously, we have the podcast, Vibe Science, you know, our other podcast.

And then doing everything I do on Instagram, I can see the value it's brought in businesses, in my personal life, professional life.

So I think that's something, no matter what business you're into, what you're doing, I don't care if you're a lawyer, you're building houses, I think start to tip your toes in social media, get comfortable with it, try to really utilize it as a tool instead of a consumer. That would be the biggest thing that I think I've seen in my life I can see going forward is going to be a big thing.

And I think it'll give people a big advantage no matter what industry you're in. Just like Ryan always says, it pays to be known.

I don't know. I can't even put that. The way I look at it is it's just a snowball rolling down a hill. It's going to continue to grow and evolve and

It's a beautiful week out, honestly. It's nice. The weather's great. It's sunny, windy, kind of quiet after Easter weekend.

No, he's been a little... I think he's just been wrapped up with the administration. More focused on politics than the business.

I don't know. I'm not in the game enough to know. Of course, if you ask any realtor, they'll tell you it's not so hard to gauge. Yeah, exactly.

He's something.

No, there's none of that down here. Someone would probably get shot. So there's no crazies trying to keep Tesla's down here. Yeah. It's all friendly fire anyways.

It's the last two days it started to go back up again. I mean, I can't give you an exact reason why. It was probably tied to the general market, obviously. But yeah, Bitcoin's back up over $90,000 again. So that's a positive sign.

Yeah, and I think... obviously with what's going on with the overall global economy, like, like we see with the tariffs, right. We see some positive movement happening. So just positive signals throughout the entire market is getting some relief to everybody.

It's always good if you're a realtor.

It's always a good time to buy.

But I don't know if those days are coming back.

I can't tell you when, but it always comes back. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I downloaded it last night and it said something, how it tracks your analytics and whatnot. So I'd imagine there's some little, there's got to be some way they're going to try to motivate people to use that instead of CapCut. So I'm going to mess around with it over the next couple of days.

We'll try to throw something up, see if it is affected by the algorithm any differently, essentially.

Progress. Perfection. Yeah.

That sound fair? Threads is a little bit more positive. X is a little bit more gritty. Yeah. A little bit more news. The trolls. Yeah, more trolls for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Threads is like the healthier version of X. Yep.

No, but I can appreciate it. I appreciate what they've built.

I'm kind of intrigued by the resurgence of it, to be honest with you. And I wonder if it's a little bit of nostalgia. Do you think it's guys our age kind of getting their kids into it?

True, true.

I think the most exciting thing of all of it was all the designer luxury brands being exposed that they're marking up the handbags like a thousand percent markups.

Let's pop this seal. Yes. See if we got any winners in there. Yeah, we got to see.

This, I think, is relevant. So many people were talking about this over the weekend that amongst these tariff wars, all these manufacturers in China that manufacture Birkin handbags, Louis Vuitton, all these high-end luxury goods. were basically saying, hey, you can just buy direct from us. It's the same quality bag. Literally in the factory, they're showing the bags.

Chris, any final words today, my friend? Everybody have a great weekend.

He had the flu over the weekend.

They're saying you can buy it from us for $250 instead of Louis Vuitton for $5,000. So in a way, it was kind of, I mean, I think this is a bigger thing of people kind of the illusion of luxury buying. Because what these Italian handbags are doing, they're basically manufactured in China. And then in Italy, they'll put on the hardware, right?

Is that the men's products? I think so. Art is good for the flu. Whatever works. Hopefully you've been using that stuff. I haven't tapped in yet.

They'll put on just the metal clamp that says made in Italy. Exactly. So I think I did see a lot of the, especially the female influencer world going kind of wild about it. And people feeling that they've been duped for many years, paying these outrageous prices, which...

I know. Yeah.

Come on, man. This is Trump. It's all part of the plan.

I mean, as long as you're getting the outcomes that we want, I guess you can say it was all part of the plan, right?

I mean, nobody wants it, but I think he sees the bigger picture that you have to do this. The only other solution was literally just raise taxes on Americans. Right. Yeah.

It's like everything. You just got to zoom out, you know, because it's already feels less painful than it was.

What's up, Brian Alfred? How are you, bro?

I mean, I think of just computers growing up in general, right? It's like you get to a point where you're not as good as learning stuff on computers and like the younger people are. And that's where I think people need to be really active to try to learn some of this AI stuff. Like you said, whether, even if it's not for business, just for your personal use.

I mean, there's a ton of, even me being sick, I was using chat GPT over the weekend, right? Just trying to like diagnose myself. But to speak on kind of what you said, I saw, I can't remember if it was Tim Cook at Apple, but essentially someone saying like in the next 10 years, a lot of these white collar jobs are going to be gone. And I know for one, like think of lawyers, right? Like

you can draw a contract up relatively quickly on chat GPT.

Yeah. All of that. You know, you don't, you don't need a lawyer.

Yeah.

Yeah. You're going to have your personalized like robot. That's like your personalized chef slash lawyer slash accountant slash bodyguard.

I mean. I mean, look at dieticians and personal trainers. Like, I don't need that now.

It's kind of crazy. You're building a whole team of just automated robots, which I feel like major companies have been doing this and it's just giving people the ability now.

We talked about it. like probably seven months ago, you know? Yeah. And I know offline we had talked about even like TikTok shop. Is that something you should be getting involved in? And even I kind of, a lot of guys I know in it were like, no, nothing's going to happen. And I think people really have been just kind of, Oh, I decided out of mind. And then boom, the rug pulled out from under him.

Start posting on Instagram.

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely not going to spend a lot of energy in it until we find out what's going on with this.

And I believe we mentioned last week that the banks would be announcing that they would become custodians for crypto.

They're realizing money's changing and they still want to get their clip.

You don't need a bank. You can use your own wallet.

A lot of people get away with it. Yeah. I think for things like getting a mortgage, right. Right. So we've got to play that game for now. Yeah.

I'm feeling like I need a new setup here, like a desk, a little more professional, you know?

Welcome to the party.

Maybe one of those walking desks would be perfect.

We need to invest in America because outsourcing clearly hasn't worked for us. We've lost our power.

It's hot.

Damn. I was going to say, I've been in those, and those are loud and hot. Crypto mining operations, a lot of energy.

There you go. Celebrating some love. Old friends. Don't do it.

No, I'm just going with all my old friends.

Oh, for the new segment?

It comes for you.

I get both of those phone calls from my friends. I get the good ones and the bad ones. So I'm just sitting kind of.

Therapist at this point, it feels like.

Seas fire in Gaza. It's like, oh, a lot of changes very quickly happening.

It's interesting because up until this point, we've had a lot of, you know, kind of celebrities and musicians and stuff try to do their own coins and none of them really work or they're kind of, and I get it to a degree. Part of it's more of a community builder, like collector or something. Right. Trump is like the king of merch, dude.

And this is really just like another level of merchant away, you know?

Totally community in another way. And, Honestly, I'm shocked it took this long. There's been some coins related to him, but not directly.

I don't have a problem with it personally. Because as a crypto guy, I talked to some friends about this yesterday. Because we all kind of had the same conversation. Like, is this bad taste? And a lot of people got turned off more when... The Valania coin dropped the Baron coin where they're like, all right, Trump's one, but now you're kind of trying to just cash in on everyone. Right.

However, as a whole, I'll tell you, my dad called me last night. Well, Trump launched a coin. My dad doesn't know anything about crypto. So I'm happy with just the awareness it brought to crypto as a whole. And that's where I think Trump is smart. I think there's more to this than just, I don't think Trump's just trying to make a quick buck. Don't get me wrong. They made a lot of money.

But I think there's more to this than just the meme coin. I think this is a great marketing play to get a lot of people talking about crypto and looking into it.

It's trying to stay warm down here, brother. Warm? I know. I'm sitting thinking we're in like the southernmost part of the U.S. and it's like 50.

And put it this way, I'd rather have him do this than have our Congress and our people in the Senate insider trading him. that are voting and creating laws just to benefit their portfolios, right?

I think there's more foul play in that because Trump coin isn't related on government contracts or who gets this contract or where we're going to develop this, where those are the decisions made in the Congress and Senate on these committees, right? Where you're directly influencing based on your stock portfolio. Whether Trump owns Trump coin or I own it, it's irrelevant kind of

Cause it really is just a novelty in a way. Right.

Yeah. He's opened new hotels since he was president and no one kind of said anything about that. You know what I mean? And that would require more nefarious activity as far as using your influence to get into certain countries, into contracts, whatever.

Yeah. They didn't do this in the dark, right?

I'd rather have my president make his money off of a coin, a meme coin than doing backdoor handshake deals with China. Right.

Giving advantages to our adversaries.

This is just Trump's NIL play. It's like when you sold red ties and Macy's under the Trump brand, it was like, he's had his name on anything you can ever imagine just to.

Like, talk about personal branding. He... Oh, God.

And he gave people that ability. He let people use his name and likeness to make money.

Hey, all press is good press, right?

Market cap is $7.78 billion as of right now, FYI.

It's $7.78 billion right now is the market cap.

I saw eight inches in Pensacola, Florida today.

Yeah. What did it start at? Zero. But what was it like Monday? Put it this way. Okay, it went up 1,140% in the last week.

So it went from, as far as I can see, $7 to $38. But I think there's a part of the chart I can't see where it was probably like 0.01 cents. But it definitely ripped Inauguration Day. You know, obviously dipped out. Now it's kind of... Balancing out or between like the $35, $45 mark. So, but, and I heard people talking, is this going to crash? So I made a good point.

If you look at Trump's stock, right? A lot of that stock is also built on his brand, not necessarily assets.

Yeah, it is. It's crazy.

And literally, literally, you know?

Yeah, dude.

Yeah. He must've stopped to drink in the crack.

We don't record every 18 hours when it was down and back up.

You barely got to attack reaction videos before it was back up again.

Crying videos.

So, yeah.

I was worried about it because they had CapCut down too, the editing app. And that's like my bread and butter, baby.

I know. I was kind of like, you know, I don't care about TikTok that much. You and I aren't really huge on TikTok. No. And then when CapCut got pulled, I was like, oh, no. I'm going to have to learn a whole new software. And that got brought up. That launched again yesterday too. I guess that's tied in with TikTok somehow. Yeah.

I work out videos in my coaching promotion videos. They figured me out. They know how to get to this guy.

Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank.

I would even venture to say with the mainstream media, is it factual reporting? Because it's really a lot of opinion now. Exactly. Look at The View or CNN, even Fox, all of them. There's obviously bias in underlying messaging being pushed and opinion. But if anything, I think you have a lot of these independent journalists now

that are great researchers, like real journalists and getting these massive followings. Like there's one guy, I follow Ian Carroll, I think is his name, but you know, he's one of these guys that has dug super deep in, he was looking like political contribution campaign donations. Right.

But he puts it in a 90 second clip. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Shows the data shows the actual, you know, facts and, Where it's like, okay, we didn't have that four years ago.

But I do think... Facebook was definitely strong in 2016 election. But I think it was more advertising on Facebook. Where now I think you have, like this says, more independent kind of free thinking people that are just kind of going down the rabbit hole.

And I think a lot of it is urgency and access, right? Like a lot of these people aren't going to editors and having to do this and that. It's like. You have a cell phone and you're on scene. You can you're the news.

Chopper pilots like filming.

I'm so disappointed, Carol.

You know it.

That's a good segue into Bitcoin, eh?

I'm familiar with that one. Yeah.

I hate that sauna this morning, baby.

Yep, yep, yep. It's sitting steady above 94. It's holding.

This is not financial advice, but I would get into it now. You're too late to wait for it to drop. It may go down, you know, 87, 85, but there's no better time than the present. And here's a tip for the audience. There's usually a big pump with Thanksgiving, an average of a 10% climb over Thanksgiving holiday. So... 10% is more than you're making annually probably at your bank.

It's that blood flow going, your cardiovascular system.

So if you want to make 10% this month, jump in.

If you compare it to the stock market, blue chip stocks, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, those are your big boy blue chips. Safe. If you're looking more into meme coin, Dogecoin, that would be one I would feel really comfortable in right now.

Pepe, yes. I personally don't hold any Pepe. I have before, but You know, Pepe Bonk is another one that's very popular right now.

That's why you just invest in like a 401k just for like $100 a month.

Again, don't try to get rich quick. Just look at it as another investment, like a stock portfolio or an asset class. Even RFK put up a tweet about it. Bitcoin is the currency of freedom. The people coming into power support this. I would get in behind it now.

Yeah, if you want to get extra more rich, buy a big home.

Yeah, stop giving your bookie money.

See? I don't know. I'm not a big Vegas guy. I know. I mean, I know what you're saying.

If the podcast keeps popping the charts like this, I may just need to change my name and go Hollywood.

Ah, yes. That's a fact. And I literally get, someone reminds me of that probably once a week. Say it was me. Ryan can attest to that. I had a group chat two days ago.

Hey, Chris. The first reply getting introduced was... Yeah, there already was.

I was like, hey, did you bring the wine coolers and lubricant? You know?

Absolutely. Yeah.

You know what I mean?

I got no conspiracy. I think it was a win-win for them. Oh, yeah.

Well, and there was contract stipulations. Like, he couldn't knock him out, I think, in the first three rounds. Tyson couldn't knock Jake Paul out. Like, someone put up a real detailed breakdown of the contract of the fight.

Yeah, like... If you did, then you would lose the money or get penalized, something like that, right?

In Tyson after the fight. You know, said, oh, I had eight blood transfusions and was in the hospital. It's like he was in pretty poor health and had to bounce back quickly to even make this happen.

Dude, you know what it is? It's like that show that used to be an MTV celebrity death match. Yeah. Remember that? Yes.

I'll take it.

Where it's just random famous people and just fighting. Yeah, like Coliseum-style stuff.

I mean... Well, that was all... No, it was all...

Right? Like if you're a bomb in Ford F-150s, it would make sense to me, right? But it's no logic.

To be fair, there was a group called Patriot Front. Yeah. A red group. And basically people started following and found out there were a bunch of FBI agents getting hauled around in U-Hauls dressing up to look like civilian protesters. I mean, people need to understand that, you know, there's a form of control that goes along with the people in power. And like they say, the world is a stage.

Lost in space. That sounds like an absolute nightmare to me. And I'm sure they'll make a movie about it. I'm looking forward to it.

Well, if you're telling me that I can use maybe some AI to help me, then yeah, then I may fill out a bracket. But I don't think I've ever filled out a bracket, ever.

I mean, I had to do a double take when I saw that for a second, too. Also, like Tallahassee is not coastal at all.

I mean, obviously, according to Fox Business, it's Gulf of America.

Like they made it sound super suave.

Hey, we thought it was physically impossible 20 years ago, but here we are with reusable rockets.

I like to gamble if I know I'm going to win. It ain't my game, bro.

Yeah.

I have some of those.

I got those during hurricane season. So I got them in my closet here. No, Chris, you and my dad.

Yes, that's 99% of my friends, you know, that know the sports player's stats and they know the teams and I'm just in the corner like, you know, where's the chips and dip act, boys? Yes.

Hey, I'm 30 floors up. If the power goes out during a hurricane, I'm just going to be up here with my little heating pot and some dehydrated eggs and oatmeal. Yeah.

That's a total guy thing to do, you know. Hey, you want to go try the survival food? Yeah.

Yes. 40% of Ferrari's new clients are under 40, up from 30% just 18 months ago.

They're very strict on it. You can't buy a brand new one unless you've owned one previously.

You sacrifice quality. Like Lamborghini's quality is crap now.

If you disassemble a Lamborghini, it's Audi parts. Like if you open the center console of a Lamborghini truck, the Urus, it's got the Audi logos in it. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. It's all the same, man. That's why they're one of the few that's still kind of... isn't, you know, mass produced. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Like in the car world, Ferrari is definitely above like Lamborghini. I mean, and price wise, I mean, you can get a Lamborghini much less expensive for sure. And it's not as strict on the, I mean, Ferrari literally, if I wanted to put a wrap on the car. Yeah.

Corporate could literally have sent me a letter saying like, Hey, you need to remove that. Or they'll blacklist you, which happened to, it's happened to celebrities like Justin Bieber. They put like a pink color on it and Frye will literally blacklist them. So you have to have, you know, a string buyer going and get it.

Guys like that obviously have people doing that for them, but yeah, they're very big on maintaining the brand integrity and the image. They don't want to look, I think, Like look at all the YouTube guys. It's all Lamborghinis and purple cars and stuff. And I think they're really not trying to get into that world.

It's better to have friends with them than own one. Like a boat, right?

Oh, and publicly has had that happen?

We need a roadmap because we need cash moving. Cash is not moving. That's a problem for everybody.

Crypto is still, I mean, it's falling through with everything else. It's down. It's sticking down, even with the announcement of the strategic reserve, which then actually I then saw the IMF. international monetary fund was essentially telling the administration they needed to get rid of that, to get rid of the strategic Bitcoin reserve.

I'm sure some dude in Auburn got it right one year. Yeah, exactly.

So yeah, man, I mean, kind of like you said, the general sentiment is just very low right now. And that's, the market tells us that, but also in my circles and my big crypto buddies, everything is real quiet. Yeah. And even I can say that on the job market front, you know, I have a lot of friends actually that are switching careers, changing careers. It's pretty quiet on that front too.

Honestly, I'm not even looking at my stuff because I just know the market's down. I still want to buy.

I totally agree. I think now is definitely a time to buy.

If you got capital, I would put it in.

I mean, that's really, let's be real. I mean, that's what runs the world, money, right? The Federal Reserve and the control of money. So when you're introducing, you know, decentralized cryptocurrency, that doesn't appeal to the people that want to control. So I hope it continues and I hope people can, what we really need as a society is to adopt and to educate people.

You know, when you and me realize we can do a real estate transaction and not involve a bunch of banks and paperwork and all this stuff and everything's tracked on the blockchain, right? It's like, it's actually much more transparency for everybody.

It's not transparency for you and I. It's put a bunch of hands in the middle of you and I doing a negotiating or barter. If you want to really get down to it. Right. And and just as far as ease of use. When it comes to sending money, especially international money, you can do it in two minutes.

Obviously, that's not something everyone deals with, but I know you with the business, even wiring money, paying vendors, stuff like that, you don't have to wait three to five days for something to clear up. Clear in three minutes. You don't need to worry about the bank and the wire fees and they're holding this and that. It's just...

Which, I mean, we all pretty much are using digital money as it is right now, right? You're using Apple Pay and stuff. And that's where I think when people realize that sending crypto is as simple as using Apple Pay, that's where we get some real movement.

Even if you have your cash in there, they'll insure it up to 250K, right? Yeah. So it's like... Even that, when they talk about, oh, money laundering, that's what they usually go to with crypto, right? The cartels and money laundering. And it's like, you are the cartels. Like, you're not doing me any favors. Exactly. The bank helped me out. You know what I mean?

So that whole argument, when people start defending the banks, it's like people defending their insurance companies. That's right. They just make money off you. They're not fulfilling their part of the agreement for the most part. Yeah.

At what point do we, do we take responsibility as individuals? You know? Yeah. Yeah. Cause when it comes out, they're not protecting you.

You splitting profits with your boys? Maybe. Or you're like, oh, daddy, you find it. Here's your little commission. Daddy keeps the split.

Everyone, as always, have a great weekend. Enjoy springtime. Get some sun.

I don't want to live in a world where I can predict can predict that, you know, kind of want the randomness, right? which I hopefully will always have because we've got the human variability. But now that you mentioned, Hey, it might, maybe I can make a little money here, throw, but just tell Grok, give me a winning bracket.

What's up, Brian Alfred?

I was just wondering that. You know some dudes live for this. Oh, absolutely.

I'm down with it.

I'm just thinking of walking in and out of that stadium before and after. That's a lot of rubbing shoulders I don't want to do. Yeah. A lot of this for like 30 minutes.

That's literally what I was just thinking was like, who the hell is University of Ohio?

Hey, I'll give you credit. You guys got a good thing going up there. I'd like to see some spring flowers myself, but everything is gravy down here. It's beautiful. It's 75 and sunny.

Hey, but they bring the cash flow in, apparently.

Yeah. People like firebombing Tesla dealerships and lighting charging stations on fire. This is ridiculous.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you really look at a lot of these movements, there's someone financing them. And, you know, I made reference to the BLM movement, and I think it's pretty well known to the public now. There was a lot of money involved. moved through these type of movements, but there's a lot of paid agitators on both sides, right?

So, like we said before the show, how many people in their free time are just out like, you know, building pipe bombs and going to go risk it all because they want to piss off at Elon, right? So I think some of it's agitation or did you just piss off your base so much? But I like to think a lot of this is theater and paid agitation to create headlines and drama and controversy.

And they're trying to scare people.

He's being smeared in the same way that the media kind of tried to smear Trump for all those years, 2016. It's kind of the same playbook, it feels like, on Elon, where Yeah, they're auditing the government, but outside of that, besides drama and Twitter talk, right? Because he is kind of an instigator on Twitter. Elon does like to trash talk a little bit.

It seems like trying to blow up a Tesla dealership seems like kind of not an equal reaction to that.

Right. And I look at that, that's a way to scare people from purchasing more Teslas, trying to drive his stock price down. Like that's the tactic I see behind that.

Right. So what we have a militia now of pipe bombing, Tesla hunting vigilantes that. Yeah, this is ridiculous. And I hate to say this, but. Most Tesla owners are more left-leaning people. The people pissed off at Elon are left-leaning people. So you're attacking like the people that probably are kind of more in your camp than not, which seems rather foolish.

At the end of the day. That's what I mean when I talk about having business guys back in the building. Yeah, exactly. It's like just looking at basic costs.

Especially forward thinking. If you got guys with NIL licensing and stuff. Yeah. It's like, hey, we have a studio now as part of your package. So we need 20% of whatever revenue you bring.

And the NBA and hip-hop has always been very intertwined. Yes.

Yeah.

Pumping up.

Yeah.

Is he just going to become a bunch of players, like have a beef with other players with their own, like, team's rap label?

Biggie and Steph with NBA teams?

It's on par, too. Like, Mello, didn't he just release that song and went viral? He did. You got a lot of athletes that try to be artists. Antonio Brown, for example, is one, but...

This is a trend that's went on since the beginning of time. Yeah.

I like the old vintage, like Buccaneers and Dolphins stuff. Yeah.

It's great. I'm happy to be up here. We've been hanging out, knocking out some stuff. Yeah. Hit the cold plunge last night.

Going to start seeing these around a lot of it. Yeah. I just... Does that devalue?

And I will say this. I will never wear... I don't wear jerseys. I just am like a big weird thing of like, why am I rocking another dude's last name on my body? Now I'll wear a team shirt or something like that. But let's be real. I've never been a big enough fan to like follow players and even like go purchase a jersey. Like that's part of it. I get right.

But now I'll get one of those vintage with no name, get my own name on the back. Maybe.

And I didn't really care about it. Would you rock it with the T under or just tank style?

You're like, this is dope, but I just can't pull it off.

Hey, there's, hey, I respect you.

Yeah, you could get away with that.

Maybe for Halloween. Yeah. Like you could be Larry Bird.

Tall white guy.

Of course, because now you have it. I mean, it's a true security like that's that's where your parents are going to their stockbroker down the road. And they're saying, OK, Mr. and Mrs. Alford, we're going to put 10 percent in this XRP ETF. And they'll say, OK, that sounds safe and good. That's what I see happening.

37 degrees, two minutes for...

It got slammed this week. And from what I'm reading, again, I'm no freaking crypto expert or no financial advice, but... Crypto Chris.

I'm getting educated on crypto Twitter, which if you've been on that, it's like the trenches. If you don't even open it, it's like Reddit. But the big news this past week was involving Argentina in a project called Libra. And essentially...

This project was, you know, the president of Argentina tweeted out about it and kind of under the assumption people thought this was like Argentina's new cryptocurrency, their cryptocurrency, their stable coin. So obviously valuation shot up, ton of people invested, and then guys basically just drained it, sucked out. I think it was close to a billion, maybe.

Yeah.

I can't remember the exact number, but... Did not look good for Argentina. It was a big, bad thing reputation-wise for the industry. It makes it, because you have genuine people really trying to change their currencies, right? You have countries like El Salvador where they have a Bitcoin reserve.

And Argentina, I think for the first time in many years, had just gotten out of a deficit, I believe too. This new president was doing a good job economically, but this now drained a ton of liquidity. A lot of normal retail investors, normal Argentinian people lost a lot of money.

And, uh, but it does look like the guys behind it are addressing it or, you know, there'll be some consequences, but as a whole that shook everything up, scared a lot of people. Um, that was the biggest thing that I was kind of aware of going on that shook a lot of people.

You just block out the noise.

Um, cause really when you have news like XRP possibly getting an ETF approval, like that should, you know, signal the market to move up. Um, And that's kind of what everyone anticipated with this administration, with all these pro-crypto policies like this happening. But that doesn't mean it's still kind of the Wild West and you got bad players.

And anywhere there's big money, you're going to have bad people try to get their hand in, unfortunately.

Hey, you're looking good. I know you're an XRP guy. Yeah. That's good news for you.

Money rewards the patient.

268.

That's what I'm saying. You know, if you zoom out, be a little patient and that can apply to even the general news, right? We're just, you don't need to necessarily be in it every day. There's not always stuff that you need to know. Go read a book, take a walk.

I'm pretty sure 90% of the general population is not going to have an influence on tariffs, so we might as well stop reading about it every six hours.

Yeah, go up 300%, hopefully.

So we got any money to roll them in today?

You know what it is? It's scratch-offs for children. Yeah. Are you calling me a kid? No, I'm just saying they got you.

They're getting the same dopamine hit.

Yeah, no one can say we're posers. We're doing the deal, for sure.

I was a big MLB card guy.

I hope you put it in plastic.

All right. Ryan sitting in the corner, kind of just staring out in the abyss for a while.

Yeah.

And not the crypto.

Yeah, we'll get into it.

What's up?

I think we're in this weird in-between kind of where... You know, the plays have been made, the decisions have been made, and now we're kind of in that waiting period to see the impact. And I think, obviously, the press needs something to write about. It's almost like, let's just write and talk theories. What could, what couldn't. And, you know, I think that relates to everything.

I think we're at kind of an observation point right now of this administration where...

I know.

There's a bunch of things we could do, but we won't know until we know. Great. Thanks for the update, Scott.

I definitely didn't plan for a snow day here in South Carolina, but.

I think it's a hedge fund or something.

Yes.

Right. I think there's other information you could be absorbing on a daily basis that would serve you better than kind of, it's filler news, right? Like I don't. there's no big movement happening. No, they're just reporting on previous stuff that's happened and kind of speculating on the future, you know? So like you said, keep your head down and keep moving forward, whatever it is you're doing.

And just, there's a light coming. Yeah, exactly.

It looks good.

I like to, I've had some of the other brands of the prebiotic sodas and they're definitely, I can't speak on the actual nutrition health. I feel like I'm being healthier when I drink them. they taste good enough to where i'm like oh this is a healthy soda but honestly i think it's about time coke got there like they're losing revenue on traditional soda so

That looks like a little bit of a misleading marketing label, if you ask me.

Yeah.

Hmm. Hmm. We'll hear about it in six months on another show. Someone will tell us.

Oh no.

It's good for your digestive health.

Send us a few boxes. Let us taste it.

Yeah.

you've had it you've had like cbd drinks or neither have you had any of those or like the mushroom ones have you had any of the ones yeah like that nah you're not tripping or anything yeah there's one i think it's called odyssey yeah it's a those hit my facebook feed like yeah they're like a mushroom elixir it's like lion's mane it's an energy drink with mushrooms with mushrooms are really good for you know a lot of a lot of things but for your brain and your physical health but

I really did like those. I tried those. Those I thought were pretty awesome. And then non-energy, there's one called Mellow that's just watermelon juice. But they have some with like watermelon juice and ginger or watermelon passion fruit. Because watermelon juice has a lot of natural electrolytes, so it's very hydrating. So also good for your blood pressure, good for your libido too. FYI.

So that's another one that if you ask me like what I, I used to love soda, like one, two sodas a day. That's been my now substitute at night is, you know, a sparkling watermelon drinker. And we've talked about some of the CBD drinks, you know, there's a lot of these new THC CBD sparkling beverages that are getting a lot of popularity. I've seen a lot of my friends that are,

moving away from alcohol, like you mentioned, right? These low, kind of low dose THC, CBD drinks that are more social and chill. So, and that's, you don't get the hang of it.

I mean, I know in New York, we had, there was bars trying to do CBD elixirs and whatnot, and then just regulation kind of got in the way of it. So-

It is. I mean, I got friends, they like beer and you're one of those guys. Yeah. I like beer. You're a beer guy.

Yeah. People pick their poison. But I think having an alternative, like say the CBD drinks, where before we had nothing, right? It was alcohol or nothing. And even now you have some of these drinks. I forget the name of the company. Katy Perry is a partner in it. But they make these like champagne drinks that have mushrooms and L-theanine.

And I, it was a friend of mine was pregnant and she introduced me to it actually. So there's, you're right. It's going to 10 X, all these alternatives, all these alcohol alternatives, and some of them give you a buzz and they're good for you. So yeah,

Oh, I, I, we've got to approach some guys wanting to launch a drink last year and it was a great idea. Great. Yeah. Great branding, great formula, but it's a lot of time and energy.

Pun intended.

It sounds like IRS repayments to me. Yeah. In a roundabout way.

It's like watching online gambling. Yeah. I'll admit I wasn't a huge believer until I was at the airport in Miami on the way here. And I see a vending machine with like six teenage boys buying these exact sports cards. And I was like, all right. Yeah, exactly. There's something to this. There's money in this.

I mean, I'm enjoying watching the process, just seeing all the fraud and abuse get exposed because we've all known it's there. But seeing it, you know, in these updates with the receipts, they're showing of what was spent on what is really just like enraging to a degree. Right. As a taxpayer.

They do think you need to go check it. We know the listeners. Maybe you'd like class it up a bit if you go finish that tattoo final.

I've let it ride on the radio before. Yeah. I'm not seeking it out on my playlist, but yeah.

I'm not immune to a catchy tune.

Apparently they lied and faked some safety tests that they claim they passed on seven of their vehicle models, which I think is rather important considering Toyota is driven by probably like one in four Americans.

And Ryan was stressing pre-show about.

Like, hey, yeah.

I mean, the one I mentioned that's not on the list that's just bright out to me is just Diddy. Diddy and his Bad Boy. Oh, yes. Bad Boy Entertainment.

Yeah.

I still call him Puff Daddy. I feel like he just featured a bunch of songs. There's yelling in them.

He definitely needs a PR team if he gets out of it.

Yeah.

You can only keep stuff in the dark for so long. It sounds like now you have more and more victims coming out, more people kind of, you know, sharing their experiences. So...

I mean, I would want to assume it's like our government doing some military testing. Everyone's saying aliens and all this stuff. I don't know, man. I assume it's military. I assume it's government. Yeah. You know, there's a theory that it's, you know, they're protecting us from... Or looking for nuclear radiation or whatever. Right.

I mean, yeah.

It's right on par with that.

I saw videos of people shooting at them. I'm surprised no one's taken one down yet.

Everybody have a Merry Christmas.

And a Happy Holiday.

We're good. We're a little wet. A little wet this week. It's not exactly winter weather. A little humid. It's all good, though.

Yeah.

It's a little spicier, bro. You got Cubans and Colombians and, you know, you got a little Feliz Navidad. It's a good vibe. I love that. There's a lot going on. Very festive. What's the temp today? Today, we're probably like 77 right now. It rained earlier. That's nice.

Not much of a breeze. It's a beautiful day here.

What's up, brother?

You good? Back from Houston. Yeah. Back in the game, baby. Back in the studio.

Thoughts, Chris? Sorry, I was miked. I'm fighting a cold over here, everybody. I don't want to cough into the speakers. Yeah, this makes sense. Like you said, the aura, the vibe, there's momentum. There's momentum behind it. And I think in business, specifically, when you have momentum, that snowball starts rolling. It's almost like it's compounding. But yeah, I would agree.

I think anything Trump-related right now and will continue to probably

I don't know. One of the newest wealth generational wealth building tools.

Yeah, I think so. I hope so.

I'm going to have to take a little trip. The only thing I've ever bought at Walmart clothing was like Realtree camo and like Mossy Oak.

And it might be up 3% for six hours. Yeah. And then it drops back down. So it just depends how aggressive you want to be and how involved and active you are.

You know, just still getting back in that New Year's rhythm, but doing good.

What says you? It seems just doesn't make sense, right? Yeah. Interest rates were high. Everyone's kind of tight, running lean. And then it almost makes me think of that huge Chase scandal, remember, when everyone was hacking the ATMs or they could deposit a check for $100,000 and pull out $20,000 and they really had no money.

It's almost like, do they do stuff like that on purpose to write it off and claim losses on the earnings? Yeah, exactly. That really ran through my head, which is crazy, but-

That's, that's where I go. I just think in a society that we're in, we should all look at it in question. You know, does that make sense when, I mean, banks were, I don't know. I just, I don't like it. I'll say that. I'm not a fan of the banking system.

Shouldn't every policy do that? I mean, even as you keep going, it's like you can tell they're targeting a certain demographic.

Oh, when you started denying people the bathroom they've been using for the last 20 years?

I'm just picturing a bunch of homeless guys drinking beers. Sitting at the table. Yeah.

I mean, I'll be honest. There's a Starbucks in my neighborhood. There's homeless people in my neighborhood. And for the most part, it's the same people. I see them every day. They go in. But in my mind, when I read this, I'm thinking Portland, San Francisco, Starbucks, bread and butter, home locations, right? Because this isn't happening in the Starbucks that I go to.

You're a private business. You're allowed to refuse customer service.

And anyone who's owned a business with a bathroom knows no one wants to clean it anyways, and now you've got a bunch of non-paying customers using it. I mean, that is going to cause disruption to your business.

I know that at Nordstrom, bro, people would come back in the Ed Hardy t-shirt days, come in and buy like a $120 Ed Hardy t-shirt on a Friday and then come back Sunday with like literally makeup and like cologne. And I'm like, You're right. That's exactly what people are doing. And I think to be fair to Amazon, their sizing is all over the place. They need to improve the size charts.

I hope they did. And I know a lot of it was because you had products being manufactured in Asia and they're smaller than most Americans. Yep. You ever order like your normal size dress shirt on Amazon and it's for like a child? No. Oh, yeah. It's like a kid's XL.

I bet. Dude. Yeah, bro.

You got to really dig to find it out. You have to go to like their little click down link and then it'll tell you, you know, oh, our XL is men's whatever, but maybe they improve that. But I have to totally agree. I think the majority of it is people buy stuff and return it after they wear it. Yeah, they do.

And it ain't guaranteed two days anymore. I was literally reading about this like two days ago and a ton of people complaining about it. And exactly what you just said. And I don't know if it's... I don't know if they did. I think it was someone saying they were going to raise the price of Prime maybe.

And you know what's happening? People are realizing if I have to wait more than two days, like I don't really need this shit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, it's like- It's your choice. Marketing to buy one, right? It's kind of like, all right, dude, you guys want to play that game? Fine. But at least if you're going to play it, come through on the two-day shipping.

And they got you all the way. It's an emotional letdown every time for sure. And so it's frustrating.

We got problems at the Alfred house.

That's 100% when I use it. 9 p.m.

Then you get homeschooled. Like my case, my buddies.

And then you got to return the shit that's getting shipped to Amazon that's coming too late. Exactly. Exactly. Like I got back to Mexico and there was all this like, you know, beach clothing and shit I'd ordered that came too late. Same thing. It said, Oh yeah. And then it came, you know, like the day I flew out and I come home and it's like, Oh, this is just a pain in the ass.

Now I got to go ship all this back. Cause I'm not going to ever wear this.

Like are you barbing and refurbing?

That sounds like a good YouTube channel.

I'd watch it.

There's a whole series of pages dedicated to dudes flipping golf carts on golf.

Yeah, like a database of potential.

I don't know. Yeah. Make it seem like a growing exclusive company.

I get tired sometimes.

Fatigue hits.

Everyone have a great weekend. Get active. Get some sun. Move your body.

I dig it. I mean, Elon, I like what he's doing. Obviously, my whole thing, I was telling someone earlier today, we need people with business experience. And I think this is being talked about a lot more where... We have too many lawyers in politics, right? We got too many teachers or whatever. All I know is career politicians, right? No one's worked in the private sector and ran a business.

Therefore, why would you be in charge of handling a budget or any type of management if you've never managed anything in your life? So, I love all these business guys. Zuckerberg, I'm glad he's had an about face, supposedly. It doesn't matter if it's genuine or not. He's removing censorship. That's good. These are arguably the largest companies on the planet with the most influence and power.

I want them to be in alignment with our president, you know? Yeah. If anything for national security interests, right. We, we, like you said, yeah. The cohesiveness 2020 was very, you know, big tech versus Trump. It felt like, right. Or even censorship when it came to something like COVID, for example. So it wasn't necessarily just politics. Right. But yeah, I like seeing all these guys, man.

I think, you know, especially, you know, me being the time I spend Houston, someone like Tillman Fertitta, like I've seen what he's built there. You know, he's owner of the Rockets, hotel owner. He wants to do casinos. The guy's a business guy. He's experienced. He was big on TV shows. So it's like people have track records. These are the type of people that I want making decisions.

Everyone's playing a game. But at least now we're all playing the same game. Right. Yeah.

You know, it's called America winning, you know. And like you always say, high tide raises all ships. Right. So, yep.

No doubt, baby.

Yeah, that's one of their theme songs.

I know they tried to get him to stop playing it at rallies.

Yeah, crypto Chris in the house. I think the two biggest things probably that were mentioned is Trump's inauguration. Trump is vocally pro-crypto. The crypto community is a huge supporter of Trump. So just naturally the sentiment is very positive around that. And then you have Trump also basically firing, he's stepping down and resigning.

I think it's Gary Gensler, the SEC head, who is not a crypto guy, not a fan of crypto, very stringent policy. So he steps down the day of the inauguration. So that also is a good sign. So, you know, a lot of assumptions there, right? And then, you know, we talked a little bit before we were talking about XRP, right?

Word is XRP will be handing a lot of the digital payments for a lot of the major institutional banks here probably this year. And I think you were talking about that's went up quite a bit. I don't. hold any XRP anymore.