SHARRAN SRIVATSAA | Buying Businesses, the Future of Twitter, and Why He Hired a 6-year-old CEO

um Elon and Twitter what what's your what's your take all his strange alien intentions like elon's not human right like you can do what you do zero wealthy people I know are just sitting on a bunch of like piles and piles of cash like Scrooge McDuck access to cash is the flex yeah cash is not the flex sure I am not joking Travis everything that we own has a rainbow or a unicorn on it everything last week we closed on a business we installed a six-year-old CEO so the lesson is go buy weed in California what's everybody welcome back to Travis makes friends today I'm sitting down with a long time friend of the show Mr Sharon srivata Sharon what's up dude welcome super excited to be back with you yeah so if you're watching this you're listening to this right now um and you want to hear a little bit more about Sean's background because it's a fascinating background um dumpster diving as a kid uh crazy kind of rags to riches story all the way through exiting a company for over three billion dollars um just crazy crazy stuff Insurance background so if you want to go check that out episode 252 of the podcast remember if you're a new listener to the show the old show was called build your network so when you go back there don't let that don't let that throw you off it was a build Network episode 252 but it's on the same RSS feed so head back in time and check that episode out hear a little bit more about Sharon's story but dude I'm excited to catch up about everything that's been happening because last time we talked I think you were still doing stuff in the real estate space yep um and now you're with Highland yep right so uh can you can you kind of just catch us up on what happened in the last couple of years and what you're up to right now yeah so after we so we've had uh five exits in the last 19 years and once you have a bunch of exits people realize they only talk about the positive stuff but you don't realize all the things that you did wrong and I actually would tell you you and I've had offline conversations about the things that we did wrong actually fueled a lot of the other growth and it's sad that the failures um are not showcased in the most positive light so what I realized was when I used to see other companies do doing things I would tell them I'm like hey I did this yeah I'm I would highly recommend doing not going down that path and I saw a few companies that actually took the advice and they were like hey Sharon so what would it take for you to coach or consult and I didn't want the coach or Consulting route so we decided to build a private Equity Firm where we would not be majority Partners but only be minority Partners so our goal was to say hey can we help businesses triple in size yeah get ready for an exit like we did but only be minority partners and so over the last five years we have invested and helped operate as minority partners of close to two dozen companies right now okay and all in the services field and so getting them to connected to the successes that we have but also to avoid all the failures that we had but staying in the minority partner role has been a super cool thing for me because that way the founder gets to still drive it it's their Vision yeah but instead of the culture Consulting route being a partner the energy is completely changed totally yeah and it as as a founder like that type of structure is something that I think a lot of people a lot of people discount it man because like you you you in your mind you're like this is my baby I don't want to give up this big chunk of you know whatever whatever and you tell yourself all these negative stories about it but at the end of the day it's like I would way rather have somebody that's gonna be shoulder to shoulder with me in the trenches yeah and and be there for like if we're going on this rocket ship you're with me but if we crash and burn you're also with me yeah and there's something about that energy that's totally different than just like here's money now give me advice totally um from from both from both angles so um yeah I can I can definitely something super interesting right early on that was the plan then I realized that several Founders I would talk to saying well I built this so far I'm kind of reluctant to give you a piece of this business even though I know that you can bring a lot of value so I changed my model early on I said I don't get the equity even though I write the check I earn it and so meaning we set up very simple benchmarks over a three year period as to what we need to hit and at a cruise invest but until I hit that Benchmark I don't even earn the equity so I'm completely in all the way so I still it allows me to know that I have risk capital in the game sure but the founders don't feel like Sean's getting a free ride right and that's been super helpful what are you doing in terms of like top of funnel like awareness around something like this existing because like literally bro like if you if you if you told me this when I was starting a service based business I would have been like uh yeah where do I sign up you know what I mean like how do you how are you getting spreading the word and are you conscious or mindful about like the sheer volume of companies that you bring on because you obviously can't say yes to everybody that's right so we're um we've continued to build the team to support the growth of the business however it's shocking I have not sent one message one email one tweet one video not one thing promoting this at all not one the only way people actually find out about this is one of two ways one way which you taught me second way which I just started doing the way you taught me was hey you should mention something on your podcast about it so when I somewhere in the podcast I will tell a story hey I'm working with Travis one of our partner companies let me tell you the story and by the way if you're interested in what we're doing go to highlandprime.com and it'll tell you stories literally there is a if you're interested go check this out and the second is there's just a link and buy on Instagram and so when someone watches content and they find their way to the bio and they actually click on it we are getting at this time it's not a lot but we're getting a dozen to two dozen inbound fully filled out applications per week wow per week that's crazy yeah with no promotion no no ad spend just pure like organic content yeah that's helping people yeah they see it they're like hey let's do it yeah wow that's crazy man uh what type of content are you guys putting out like what what is your what is your output schedule look like yeah it's actually super simple our goal is to get uh three to five pieces a day okay on Tick Tock as a testing ground so we do the same video with four different hooks on Tick Tock same video same video with just four different hooks intros first five seconds on Tick Tock whichever performs the best it goes on reels so that's one to two videos Max a day on reels the same goes on YouTube short so one to two videos a day max but it's all hey here's what I'm doing with the partners here's what we're doing with our Founders just telling the story of kind of documenting what we're doing with them if you could snap your fingers and have a million engaged followers on one one single platform but it meant that every other platform went to zero yeah which one would you pick I would love to go to YouTube shorts I would love for YouTube to just because I think that I'm amazed at the power of the YouTube search engine yeah and Instagram has also gotten to the point the other platform that gotten to the point where it's very scrolly sure and very swipey but uh as far as even like well I'm a big fan of Mr Beast and who isn't it it is so I went to this Mr Beast um it was like a 30 person Mastermind yeah maybe like four years ago and Mr Beast was going to be there so I was like I have to go to this to see what he says for 90 minutes he talked about thumbnails wow the whole presentation was 90 minutes on thumbnails wow and he goes I could tell you various ways in which you can build and grow your channel but you're missing the point he goes we obsess he's like we build 20 30 40 thumbnails and once we like a thumbnail we go build the video and the idea around it I was like that is crazy Wow and his so there's a lot of people in the room that said well I'm thinking about starting my channel he goes don't start your channel your goal is to build a hundred thumbnails wow and he goes until you build 100 thumbnails don't make one video and like for someone like that what you know who just got offered a billion dollars for his channel to be able to give that advice it's it's insane who just got offered and turned down turned down a billion dollars yeah and he's what 23 24 something like that yeah that's ridiculous 100 thumbnails before you even create a single video that's I mean that's the whole thing that people don't see yeah right they see like this young kid YouTuber and just you you immediately you immediately go to all the reasons why you haven't done anything big you know what I mean and so like you have to justify why this kid just got lucky yeah at the end of the day it's just like no it's just before anybody else was even aware that YouTube was going to be a thing this kid was 13 years old obsessing about how to build the perfect thumbnail yeah you know what I mean like not paying attention in school just thinking about thumbnails and then video content and then ideas and that's it and then every time he made money he just dumped it directly back into the growth of the channel instead of like oh I made 12 Grand this month let me go buy a car or like you know what I mean like let me let me go get a fat payment on something and he even said uh he was on Joe Rogan uh recently now listen to that episode and um and he was even saying that like because Joe Joe basically was in the position that all of us are in which is basically like as a 20 20 year old kid you know I think he's 23 24 now but when he started making good money he was 18 19 20. like a young kid he's like Joe was amazed that he didn't get sucked into the traps of being a 20 year old kid with a ton of money and influence he was just like how did you escape that basically and he was like I just figured out it didn't really matter to me you know like I did get a car and I did get this and that and then and then I uh uh he said like someone broke into his house and stole a bunch of his stuff and then he was just like I just never replaced it after that it made me realize how much I didn't care for it and didn't want it and that I just want to keep making awesome videos so then he just puts like you know that freaking uh squid games video it's like seven and a half eight million dollars to produce a single video or something like that it was like a full production yeah but he's got 200 million subscribers plus across all of his channels now you know so like how do you know the crazy part there is when we are listening to something a story like this how do we how do we learn from that right yeah and I always think about two things the easiest two ways to upgrade Our Lives is control your environment and control the people in your environment literally if you if they're the easiest way so if something if if you and I can't get ideas on building a new show I'm like hey let's let's Pop Let's Take a Walk let's change the environment let's recontroll the environment or let's add Eric to this conversation because now you're controlling the people in the environment so as soon as you upgrade the environment or upgrade the people in the environment all the stuff that does not matter falls off the wagon very quickly because what people are doing now is they stuck they go to social they stuck they watch more videos they're like they keep swiping and that does not change your environment or the people in your environment in any way so if you can do if anyone's stuck right now just say hey can I upgrade my environment or can I upgrade the people in my mouth yeah so how does funny funny bring that up because uh there's one there's one like productivity hack that you gave me a while back that I frankly still not have still have not done it yet um but I feel like at any given time and it's just talking about it right now reminded me of it and I probably should do it but you said like anytime I'm stuck and I can't like I'm stuck on this idea or this concept you're like I've actually physically bought a plane ticket from here in Laguna with you know where you live and I've I've bought a plane ticket to go to Phoenix just because I like moving and that gets my brain moving and I like writing well the only way to really move and write at the same time effectively for me is to be in an airplane so you literally buy a plane ticket just a one like a one day round-trip flight to Phoenix and back just to like write ideas down and get stuff out of your head and like remove mental blocks and I thought that was something yeah you would be shocked I do that so often really because it's a one day I fly I fly back just a backpack I don't have to change my schedule in any way right right which is good most people don't know this but um even when I record my podcast I've gone to solo shows now okay and because now I just tell the stories of working with our partner companies yeah I only record the shows when I'm driving oh really so I have a really good headset yeah and I think about the podcast episode and I just get a cup of coffee and I drive until I record finish recording the episode and I turn around and record the second one back and so I all my episodes are recorded on the move on the road yeah that's so good too um so listen I want to talk a little bit about parenting with you because I know this has been one of the most difficult I think things for me to tackle in the last couple of years is that you know my son's three and a half now my daughter will be two in a couple of days and that by itself is a very difficult thing yeah alone on an island just being a parent is really difficult but then you couple that with like having a startup which is basically a more needy version of a baby you know what I mean that like affects more people's lives because we have you know a 10 employees and a few contractors and it's like well we we have people to take care of and like this baby has to be fed so it feeds all the other people that are associated with that one but I also have these two over here and then I have my wife and then we have like there's so many things I got the podcast we have another podcast for fun it's like how do you how do you go do how do you tie in passion entrepreneurship parenting and actually be able to still be there for your kid and not miss everything so um I think the first thing is one having the awareness like you have because that's until you stated in and understand that it's it's it's work it's a skill yeah that you need to learn a lot of a lot of us learn the skill of parenting and then our kids are gone right so it's like I just got good at this and then and they're gone right um so with my coach I talked to my coach two to three times a month but with my coach we have uh one session dedicated to family essentially parenting one session dedicated to me and my wife and one session dedicated to the business okay so this is like a life coach yeah so she's she's a life business coach and she's great and the reason is that what we ended up talking about before was whatever was top of mind we would talk about before and say I worked with you but now we've just themed our calls realizing that the domains are important and each of the domains always need upgrades yeah and when I have and I know my next upcoming call is the parenting call which is great so I know that I know I'm going to level up in that area so one thing that she so that alone uh just having the accountability just just knowing that I've got this dedicated time and that next call I'm actually gonna forcefully think of and talk about that which is it which is really powerful she gave me this idea last year and she said hey so my son Neil is 11 my daughter Laura is six okay and she said you should have each your wife and uh Sharon you and your wife should have separate individual projects with each of the kids so you have individual relationships that you can talk with them about that the rest of the family is not a part of yeah and I was like well does that feel like it is uniting or segregating the family she's like try it so uh the project that I have going on with my son right now my son is he loves Rubik's Cubes okay he's solved there are 14 different types of cubes and he solved every different type of cube by himself wow and by himself by himself watching YouTube videos he solved him so he is teaching me how to solve a cube over the next 90 days and so all we do every single day at night before he goes to bed we spent five minutes and he teaches me an algorithm and we have that little Bond yeah but with my six-year-old daughter I didn't have anything like to sink my teeth into sure so I was talking to one of my best friends about it and he was like hey my daughter is similar too we should do something together with our daughters I said okay like what and so we started talking about it and my daughter Laura who's six loves rainbows and unicorns you're gonna get there but like like I mean I am not joking Travis everything that we own has a rainbow or a unicorn on it everything right and so I said wouldn't it be great to do something where which involved rainbows and unicorn because I know I can immediately grab her attention yeah and as we were talking I was like well what if there was a business we could invest in or buy that was unicorns related so we did a bunch of research and last week we closed down a business called hundredunicorns.com it's a online e-commerce store that just sells unicorns products that's fantastic and we installed a six year old CEO so my daughter Laura is a six-year-old CEO a six-year-old CEO yeah there's a YouTube channel right there it is she loves it so much because the first day when we closed on the business she we pulled up the inventory it's so I can give you the business plan right now it's a straight up Shopify store with Drop Shipping we hired an operator to bolt on Amazon FBA and Walmart and that process is happening right now all that Lara and her now my my friend's daughter do together is they just pick what products they like so I'm going through the inventory and she's like I would never buy that I wouldn't I like that can we do more of that she's like can I get that one so when you know that she says I want that lamp or I want that sticker you know that it's a powerful thing she's the ideal customer 100 right and so now uh last week I actually sent out the first email where it was Laura writing the email hey everybody this is me Lara parentheses my dad's writing this because I don't know how to type like it was so cool and we sent that email out to a small database and we got purchases like wow it is so cool so now my conversations with my daughter is all about 100 unicorns and we get to talk about it we have a completely different relationship about it and she's like Hey Now whatever she sees she's like can I get that on the store so back into the parenting thing I think having something where you're working on a project with somebody I think gets you deeper in relationship and rapport with them yeah and now the rest of the family my wife and my son are not weirded out by it at all because they're like oh Sharon and Laura are working on that cool let them work on that yeah and they feel like it's a part of the overall conversation so uh it's no different than me and my wife talking about some plans I mean it's not talking about something else so they I think the individual relationships dramatically increases like love transparency Rapport and working on something together yeah so the big lesson for me is one could we think about parenting constantly in some in some regular schedule and two if the by doing work on it having a project related to it feels like you can develop it some more yeah so if you're a parent and you want to Foster entrepreneurship with your kid then just rewind and go back and listen to that clip a couple of times um you said you did research to find this unicorn business for somebody who is not in private equity and constantly looking at deals and buying businesses and taking equity in companies and Advising and they're listening to this and they're like that's an awesome idea but I have no idea how to even find a business like that or negotiate terms like what would your recommendation to them be was this like a Marketplace deal did you like how did where did you find it and how did it come up yeah it came across uh very randomly through a friend so it came across very randomly but if someone knows exactly what they're looking for my favorite thing is to just ask your network I mean you're the build your network I like literally post on Facebook and say hey I'm looking to buy or invest in a Pancake House business does anybody know any pancake houses around the country yeah like you'd be shocked as to how many people can connect the dots for you and when the ask is so unique and specific people will share it and want to help you Etc we are we have no idea the depth of Connections in our Network that can find the most the strangest of things so that's number one there are a couple of websites like flippa.com and things like that that are out there if you just Google how to you know buying an e-commerce Business Online there's a lot of sites out there my suggestion is if we're if you're thinking about buying a business you have two options number one is at least find an attorney that has done a deal like that that can at least guide you through the guidepost around it an m a attorney and those deals are generally smaller so you don't need someone you know fancy but they just need to have had experience buying the business size that you've had but but I actually like talking to business brokers about this stuff because while business brokers in various niches have gotten weird kind of wraps they know how to find a business terms of negotiating a business yeah just you need I think having an advisor on things like this is really good because otherwise you're writing a check on something that you can't find et cetera right but I will tell you man we are overlooking the fact that many businesses sell today for zero money down that's what I was gonna that's what I was gonna ask about next yeah so explain explain that why is that because that I like I think you just blew a bunch of people's minds right now because they're listening to this and they're like I can't afford to buy a business yeah companies he's got money to play with I like I'm working at you know whatever yeah the the Walgreens Warehouse down the street sure like you know loading boxes like what do I do with this yeah so explain that so the interesting part is most businesses in the US are jobs for people yeah and the sooner we understand that the sooner we can understand that buying a business for no money down is just a mindset there are tons of people out there the first thought that they have running a HVAC business or a stone masonry business is they're thinking okay I am getting to my 50s I'm making up numbers yeah I'm tired I'm done I'm just gonna shut it down yeah that's what they think they're just going to shut it down no the average business owner does not think that they're going to sell their business in any way right so in fact and if they do they probably can't they don't they can't and they don't know how yeah right I have real estate agents who are they'll work their entire careers in their real estate business and then say I'm done I'm just going to move to Napa I go wait like your income just stopped right so you have to work twice as hard in your last 10 years to save up and then you don't you don't have this big Network database that you build most businesses can and will are very open to selling for zero money down but it's all about terms if you get zero money down you're just telling at some point someone is financing the business either cash is financing the business a bank is financing the business or Travis the owner is financing the business yeah all we need to think about is at some point someone is financing the business it doesn't have to be cash it doesn't have to be the bank it can be Travis the seller and we call it seller financing yeah most of the times what sellers want is they'll say hey Sean I've been doing this business for a while like 100 unicorns.com I've not put a lot of effort into it you guys are going to Market it you guys are going to write emails you're going to get at Amazon FBA and all of that awesome how about uh for the next 24 months pay me five grand a month and if they do that and they're out yeah so we and a lot of times the business will be making the amount that they're asking for correct so it's like you just pay them out of cash flow yeah right right and and people will ask well why would they walk away from the cash flow well very simply is there delivering their time to right now and we take over that but we're committed to paying them that yeah I'll give you a great story Jason capital and I who you know Jason capital and I uh wanted to uh wanted to buy he is a marketing agency and he wanted a front-facing Instagram page to drive more traffic to the marketing agency and I was like well let's go buy a page and he goes I have four pages picked out that I would really like I go okay so I just DM the page owners directly and I said hey would you be open to something like this like I've never thought about this let's talk about it Travis we didn't even get on the phone we did this whole conversation on Telegram right we and then the the don't know who this person is this person was in the UK we bought we did the whole transaction in 37 minutes using Bitcoin we've bought the business with like 30 40 Grand of Bitcoin down and uh we had a third party escrow the guy came into that telegram chat actually negotiated the contract for us which I didn't know that you had third party telegram escrow yeah we never even met the seller handed over the credentials to us released the Monies to him or her I don't even know if it's a girl or boy release device to him or her and then we pay them over time as the page generates Revenue so we bought a business for in 37 minutes using Bitcoin like so I just wired from wall to wallet like I did a wall to wall transfer so you can buy stuff I would actually say ask just assume that almost all businesses are available for sale for zero money down yeah I feel like I was talking to talking to somebody about this recently I was like in the next few years I really want to increase the number of like businesses that I that I bring on the that are just they're just producers yeah there's so many like people think at least I used to think this way I used to think that like if I'm gonna be a successful business owner I have to invent the next Facebook like I have to come up with Angry Birds I have to do something like I have to be in a like an inventor an innovator I got to do Tesla I have to I have to build something huge and amazing it's like you don't realize that like in your town wherever you live there's a bunch of Boomers that are getting ready to retire yep and this recession is going to hit a lot of people really hard and the people who've been working with these this chain of three laundromats for the last 25 30 years in their local area and have been busting their tail for that long working on these laundromats they want to be done yes and if they're the only one running it then there's no structure in place they're not going to be able to have a big exit or acquisition they're just looking at it like you said it's like well I guess we're just gonna shut down it actually costs the money to close the business so they keep it running and be resentful about it yeah right right yeah and then they have to keep working it right because no somebody else is going to so I I think in the next like to your point the next two to three years as the recession gets worse and worse over the like really the next like eight quarters I think there's going to be it's going to be ripe with opportunity with people who are just like look I'm done please take this off of my hands and whatever I'm open to whatever you want to talk about dude I will tell you the crazy story My my friend is a real estate agent in Chicago he was he helped this fam this Korean family sell their family home and a normal real estate transaction in the transaction that the the family the husband and wife older couple took such a liking to my friend they said hey I'd love for you to show you our business and our warehouse and so he's like of course so he goes and shows them so they are in their uh they import t-shirts and the couple is telling him the story saying we've been looking for somebody to give this business to we will give this to you we will give you this business we have hundreds of thousands of dollars of inventory we will give you the inventory as in you don't have to pay for it as in when you sell it you can pay us back for the inventory we will stay on for the next 12 months and teach you how to run this wow for zero money out of pocket yeah right and so that was just because this couple saw something they loved about like a son in in my friend yeah and they offered him the business the money they and the education and the education to do it so like what a riskery this is like and and my friend was like does this happen often I go when you put yourself in situations and you're open to this yeah it totally does yeah so there's um uh so much M A activity going on right now and I think it's gonna like I said I think there's gonna be a ton of consolidation that happens over the next couple of years and I think that's historically proven in recessions um people that shouldn't be in business get out of business and they're look for other opportunities and they just want to be done or there's a lot of potential for aqua hires and bringing people into the company but there's also been a couple of um really big things happening in that space recently that I'm curious to hear your thoughts on as a private Equity guy um Elon and Twitter what what's your what's your take dude someone had to do something right uh if you take politics aside whether it's Elon or not he has shown from a track record perspective that he can he can build a great business yeah simultaneously doing other things so you know he and and the the funny part is like there's a recent memo about hey you guys need to step into high gear to build Twitter 2.0 what else do you expect right right like now it's now it's a bad it's demonized yeah right I'm like he's showing up and saying hey I bought this business I have a different vision for it right like we're going to we're going to bust it get on board or don't yeah either way fine but if you're staying stay right and let's build something and he said and it was very generous he's like for those are in those they're in and those are out I'll happily pay you whatever Severance you want to go we're building a new business yeah and it was higher than average like higher than normal sucks or something of severance right which he does not have to offer anybody right and so um I have two kind of big questions about kind of thoughts around this number one is I don't know his his strange alien intentions like elon's not human right like is you you can't do what you do but I don't know his kind of broader intentions but I do appreciate the fact that he sees that he can do different things yeah even the whole uh like even the whole blue check and pay for it Etc yeah as a business person I don't mind it because he's experimenting right and and suddenly now that caused a lot of pain where it it it backfired yeah okay great you put it out there you learn do something different with it as opposed to the opposite of not doing anything with it so it was immediate action exactly and then that's the thing about guys like him that people don't understand is like you can sit there and criticize him all day long but people like that don't wait for a panel of experts to give them their opinion because the only real feedback they're gonna get is the real-time feedback of taking action and seeing a result getting that feedback and then going let's alter course and change direction but if you just sit there going like I wonder what we should do for six months and you're losing three million dollars a day or whatever they were losing it's like that's how you you know go bankrupt well I think that's I think you mentioned some of those so cool the best entrepreneurs that I know and so the the one of the three um criteria that we look for in the founders that we invest in are you know impeccable character from an Integrity perspective we call it reflective awareness they're coachable and the third is this one is supercharged ambition if I can see supercharged ambition I'm out because I'm a minority partner plugging and supporting someone's supercharged ambition and I think the the resulting force of someone's supercharged ambition is their ability to obsess over getting something done so fast Elon had an idea he said we're going to do it three days after they did it they actually built like that is crazy from an execution perspective especially in a company of that size totally to be able to move that quickly is and president and it's not adding a different like button right this is a fundamental product change of the business model it's crazy right so I respect the fact that um he's moving fast and and I think we when you do that you will get a better platform right you know you get you go from not doing great to more regulation to Something in the middle which is better the second thing that I'm ultra curious about which other a lot of people had thoughts around is well how did he buy it yeah and there was so much poo pooing around like hey he he pledges Tesla stock to do this and he borrowed money I'm like yes like which action are we demonizing that's how deals get done right and so I always go back to financing okay somebody has to finance something right you either use cash to finance something some form of bank loan and some way to finance something or the seller takes a note and you finance it another way right zero money down some form of it well what all that Elon did was instead of writing a check with cash he said I have all this Tesla stock mayor Lynch or whoever was willing to lend him money on it and he did it in fact he is on the hook for all the stock movement right he has to pay a fee on all of that like he if you and I had the stock we would do the same thing but I actually think you and I can do the same thing which is that's what we call a home equity line of credit right right so if you had another twenty thousand dollars available you can borrow it they don't know and ask you what it is right and then you take loans against your IRA you can take loans against 401K you can take loans against your stock portfolio that is exactly as a regular person you don't have to have you know 200 billion dollar net worth to take loans against your stock it happens all the time and and that's the flip that I want to kind of I've been sharing with our Founders is it is not about cash for a rainy day it is about always knowing you have access to cash and I think that's a big difference several of my friends I'm a big fan of this idea of infinite banking which is using life insurance policies as a container for holding on to wealth and transferring wealth but the idea there is you shove more money into your life into insurance policy but it is your bank it is your bank you're your own Banker now you can borrow from your policy when I borrow from my policy I just tell the insurance company how much to send and when yeah there's no question around anything I can just borrow from my policy let me see your income statement there's none of that right and so if we can flip our mindsets to I don't need to be sitting on cash and I always tell a lot of our Founders you're sitting on pick a number 500 000 of cash that is lazy cash you're doing that just because you have this feeling of security that you need 500 Grand it may not solve any reason but it's lazy cash it's not the cash that's the problem it's the access to cash and I think what Elon solved was he goes yes I could write a check I could go take my Tesla stock liquidate it pay taxes on all of that right and then write the check to buy Twitter or I can just borrow against it in a completely tax efficient transaction so he flipped the difference between having cash and access to cash and I think that's what I want people to learn is access to cash is the flux yeah cash is not the flex sure sure right I mean zero zero wealthy people I know are just sitting on a bunch of like piles and piles of cash like Scrooge McDuck you know what I'm saying like they're like that's not happening it's they all have it invested uh let's find a buddy of mine um I don't know if you know Chris noggle his whole business is preaching the whole life infinite baking concept and uh that was one thing that he that he brought up was about the whole FTX crash that happened and he was talking about that and was just like if and if if these investors had their money in FTX but had not actually had their money in FTX but had it in a whole life policy and took the loan against it and put it in FTX they'd be sitting in a much different position um and on that note I'm curious to hear from from like there's a lot of people that are hearing a bunch of stuff about you know Sam big mcfried and FTX in this whole crash and this you know fraud investigation and you know the mini made-off as they're called as they're calling them and stuff can you like break it down so a Layman that doesn't understand any stuff that doesn't really uh you know has not dabbled in this world can you break down what happened with FTX yeah so the interesting part if you actually completely zoom out instead of thinking about FDX anything crypto related the easiest way is to think about it as the NASDAQ or the stock market okay so thing that we already know my favorite way of trying to understand a concept is hey what is this like and in a lot of ways it's just like a stock market exchange there what does the stock market do the stock market is a like a NASDAQ is a market maker they bring buyers and sellers together now it generally works because there are some buyers and some Sellers and the stock market kind of brings the match together and their job is to Bridge and make the market sometimes if there's crazy news in the economy there's terrorist attack et cetera they stop trading in all all exchanges there's a reason for that because you can't make the market anymore the there's a there's a mismatch between the number of sellers of the stock or the market and the number of buyers so there's what they call there's not enough liquidity to manage the transaction when the markets in Balance everyone's okay and crazy events put things out of bounds and when you don't have but our stock markets are so mature that they know how to Halt trading they know how to pause things they know they have regulatory stuff while I'm a free market capitalist some form of Regulation is good for things like this because you don't see stuff just breaking right and the reason why a FDX is like in the Bahamas or in the Caymans or wherever it was I can't remember exactly but uh they're not able to Short Circuit the the buys and the sells and so it starts to break down right and for me it's like well why why did that happen because there's not enough like Baseline borderline regulation around it and it's just not mature enough yeah so in a very base level we have to allow like this crypto economy even though it's been around for a little bit I'm sorry it's young it is so it is so young the average person doesn't even know what pancake swap is right and I can't believe I know what it is because you know but it's but most people are like I'm gonna go buy Bitcoin on coinbase like that is their their kind of exposure to all of this yeah but knowing that as these as the exposure to this asset class grows we need a little bit of Regulation to ensure that markets work and stay in Balance otherwise you're going to have crashes and exchanges yeah and to me that's when I I don't have I don't know all the details around what happened to him or whether he did the mini-made off Etc but what I am concerned about is how can we use the learning of this to saying hey this happened yeah a bunch of people got affected can we put mini regulation in place so that this doesn't happen again but I think the the next iteration of this I I feel terrible that some people really struggle financially on this one but that's a big learning because if that did not happen we would not have the courage to build the next better FDX yeah yeah definitely I think a lot of people learned a lesson the hard way and unfortunately and on without the the hard part about it is like there's probably a lot of really really smart people that lost a lot of money on it too of course you know I mean including all the people that invested in the last round I mean they raised a massive massive round you know what I mean and then it turns out he was just spending the money himself and doing whatever he wanted to do donating to political campaigns and um and not actually using the money to even fundamentally like like a you know like a Google can't do that right right right and so the the built-in there's a board there's yeah even inside of the company there's there's company governance and there's like there's checks and balances in the company not even in like the industry right so like this was a weird situation where the industry is not regulated very well correct and the company was also not regulated very well there's like three people controlling a company that's worth what 20 billion or something like that I know this is this is a this could be a strange conversation this whenever I think of stuff like this I immediately think of what else is it like yeah so um several of I have several content attacks in here in the state of California where cannabis is legal right just just uh the the recreational cannabis and there was a huge cannabis industry and how it started off originally was the whole marijuana trade was the fact that it's can we talk about this is this yeah is this okay of course the it was it was all black market it was not allowed it was completely illegal so buyers and sellers of the the they call it flower buyers and sellers of flower if they ever reneged on a trade they'd get shocked right like they would die there's some regulation for you yeah that's exactly right and then when this halfway regulation came in they call it the gray market so it's not completely you know white but it's the gray market now what's happening is there's no like now it's somewhat regulated yeah and they have one governing body they have taxes Etc but now I actually have buyers and sellers of cannabis that I talk to they're like no one cares anymore because lead as in the gun was the regulatory governance tool now it's not so in the last six to 12 months cannabis pricing has plummeted in California because everyone's like what are you gonna do shoot me and what's interesting is that market around the country from a state-by-state perspective or whatever is going through some structural changes until we get those structural changes we're not going to be able to do see that business flourish in some way because the average public person utilizing the service or investing in it has no confidence right yeah and that's that's the big issue so um so the lesson is go buy weed in California but what I had no idea but what I learned was that when he told me he goes governance was by the gun I was like now I get it makes total sense yeah right well listen dude I don't want to keep you here forever I know you got a family you got businesses to run and everything like that before we take off where do you want people to go connect with you a little bit more so if um I started this private podcast which is I'm a subscriber yeah it's been plug away it's been super cool because I didn't know how to get quick ideas and lessons from my head out to our partner companies yeah and so it's called 10K wisdom and the idea is how do I get 10 minutes worth of knowledge out everything under 10 minutes no intro no outro just 10 minutes worth of raw real knowledge out to folks and I originally built it for our partner companies only because I would say I would come out of a meeting with Travis and I say I have this idea I would record it really quick I would upload on the podcast and would be super simple and private and one of my um partner said to me he goes dude you're already recording this why don't you just give this to the world this makes no sense that you're holding this back so uh recently we opened it up it is still private but you can get the access to the fetus 10K wisdom.com take your wisdom.com totally free so if you like this show with Travis I know you'll you'll like that too absolutely yeah if there's if there's anybody there's a few people that I tell people in my circles bro I was just like there's a few like super underrated entrepreneurs that everybody should follow and Sharon is definitely one of them if you're listening to this and you don't know who this guy is and you are in business you're doing yourself a disservice by not listening to some of stuff that he's putting out there especially especially if you're an operator or a CEO like I've I was not a CEO before I started this company you know what I mean I was just like a solopreneur I was just a hustler a sales guy a podcaster I wasn't I wasn't any of that so there was a steep learning curve for me and one of the number one resources that I always linked back to was was 10K wisdom so um I appreciate you for coming on if you're listening to this right now go 10kwisdom.com And subscribe over to to Sharon's private podcast over there and I know that you'll come away with some some awesome lessons so dude always a pleasure thanks so much for coming on appreciate you man thanks for having me