Latest / The American Capitalist Show / Charles Payne: How to Take Back America & Win Again | Episode #1

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Charles Payne: How to Take Back America & Win Again | Episode #1 · The American Capitalist Show

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: There's something I read about a briefcase story.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: She said, I believe you.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: She says, yeah, you will.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's all I needed.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to keep making me cry, man.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's without her, man.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: From the streets of Harlem to the television studio, Charles Payne has led the way on Fox Business for over a decade with his hit show, Making Money with Charles Payne.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: There is nobody, and I'm not just saying this to blow smoke, there's a reason you're number one, that cares as much about the average person as you do and tells it like it is.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you put yourself at risk for doing this.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: I was 13.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I came home from school one day and my mom said we're leaving.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: So me and my mom and my two younger brothers got on the bus.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Leaving your dad.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then it hit me.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: The energy.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: So every car blasted.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: When I heard Harold Melvin and the Blue Nuts, oh, man, what the hell is this?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: I never heard nothing like this.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Bad luck.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, snap.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Then, of course, the boom boxes.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, my God, the boom boxes.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Here I go, my dumb ass, man.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like a little white kid.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, guys! Oh, shit.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Ping!
• 1:04
  UNKNOWN: Ping!
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Ping! Woo! The ass whoopings.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: One thing I didn't really even truly understand is, like, when I moved to Harlem, is everything that was good was white.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if you got good grades, oh, you think you white.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a self-fulfilling thing when you put yourself down as a race.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was so good at bagging groceries.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you right now, if they ever had an Olympics for that shit, I'd have been like the Mark Spitz of that shit, man.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I had a fight with a guy who had to last at least an hour, you know, and he covered two blocks.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how that happened.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: We started like 143rd Street, now I'm 145th Street.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how the hell that happened.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry that your OnlyFans account and your Grubhub and your Uber.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, but...
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of the class, the instructor said, listen, the test is Saturday, so you're not going to be able to pass it.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm nodding at him at the same time.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: I said, my man, you don't know me.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't say it out loud.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just looking at him like, champ, you do not know me.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: You do not know me.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: He said something that changed my life.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: He said, you read real well, but what do you want?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: After I hung up, I tore up the script.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Charles Payne, man.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm...
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Dude, I'm so excited that you're here.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: I've been thinking about doing a podcast now for about a year and a half.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone's saying there's too many podcasts out there, too many YouTube shows.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: But I was just talking, being on your show, three-minute clips...
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's tough, man, to get it across.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: I get all these questions from people.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: So my hope is, in long-form content, we're going to get to break things down, give people the actionable stuff that could really change their life.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm worried about the country right now, man.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm worried about things like AI.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm worried about the school system.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I've been telling people, I think the wealth gap, unfortunately, is going to get worse in our country, man.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been thinking about, okay, who do I bring on as the first guest?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is a big thing.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: I've got my heart and soul, my wife, my team into this.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: We really want to make an impact with this.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I reached out to you and I'm like, guys, this is going to be a long shot, man.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if he's going to do it.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: He's busy.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: I can barely even get him to return a text.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's because I'm old.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: I told Savita, man, I got an email that Charles landed.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Charles sent out an email.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's It's better than smoke signals, man.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: But look, man, today, everyone knows the Fox business, Charles.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: They know that side of you.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I was talking about you before you came here.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, I know you, but I don't really know you, right?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: I've done your show numerous times.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: You've even been to my house, but I think it's been more of a business level.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: And this show, I want to really break down who's Charles Payne because your success, I mean, it's crazy, man.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: 11 years now, I think, running Fox Business, Making Money, your own show.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: You're on every other show over there.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Wall Street Strategy, you started in 91.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: We got a lot of comedy.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: You started out of your bedroom.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: I started out of my bedroom.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: You're blowing up over there now.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Air Force Veteran, which the military community, for me, man, I owe everything to them.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Another reason I'm doing this show is we're so grateful for everything we're giving.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I thank you for your service.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I've been doing media now.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: all these news networks for maybe 15, 16 years.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: There is nobody, and I'm not just saying this to blow smoke, there's a reason you're number one, that cares as much about the average person as you do and tells it like it is.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I know, man, you put yourself at risk for doing that sometimes.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for being here.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much, man.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's a beautiful introduction.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate it.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And all the things you just mentioned are the things that I'm worried about, I have been worried about, I'm concerned about.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's interesting, the American capitalist, right, it's, you know, you talk about getting in trouble for speaking your mind or saying different things.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: And this, I feel like we get wedded to capitalism.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: to either being a Democrat or a Republican or being a this or that.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're always affixed to being certain things.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then we kind of defend ourselves to be those things.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know what?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Life is much more complicated.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have people I agree with on 90% of things, but I disagree with on 10%.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the way life is.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then the question is, how do you communicate that in a respectful way, in a way that maybe both sides listen and learn?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think of all these issues you're talking about, the inability to do that is one of the reasons those things are getting worse.
• 5:41
  UNKNOWN: Mm-hmm.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you said that, man, because every situation I'm looking at right now, I look at the riots that are going on in L.A., I look at what's going on across the border.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: The thing that really irritates me, I think people are going to look at you and say, OK, he's on Fox, super conservative, right wing.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: He's just going to follow that no matter what.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think people tend to think I'm that way also.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not the truth, man.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I voted for Trump.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: I like a lot of what he's doing.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's some things I don't like what he's doing.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, the problem is.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: And not to bash Trump, because I think he's been put into this political structure where if you want to get elected, here are the things you have to do.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: I might be wrong, but I think there's things he has to do that he doesn't agree with, things he has to say or else he wouldn't be there.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I think he's kind of playing, if I can get 80% of what I want across, that's going to be good enough for this country, which is kind of sad, man.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know how you feel about it.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: 80% is a lot.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: 80% would be a lot.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: No, really, it would be a lot.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, take, for instance, one thing that I've been getting a lot of pushback for in tariffs.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's something I've talked about for a long time.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Ten years ago, I was talking about it, and I have the guys from the Wall Street Journal shoot me down.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a couple things.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know...
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, I'm a student of history.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: I love history.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Everything I read is a history book.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Even if it's a thriller, it's based on history.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's certain writers who intertwine history with that kind of stuff.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like when the terrorists first came up and everyone was going on TV and it's going to be inflationary, it's going to do that.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Then they would mention Smoot-Hawley.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: It blew my mind because, and it's pretty, you know, it's right there.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's in the history books.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Smoot-Hawley was the greatest deflationary period in American history.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Not inflationary.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you think there are going to be issues with it, yes.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't look at it.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: I look at it as, for instance, you have these purists who will say, well, Ricardo and Adam Smith and comparative advantage.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know that people are connecting all the dots.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: All the dots get back to what you just talked about, the wealth gap, especially since 2009.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Something's gone wrong.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's called the financialization of America.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: And people need to think, if you could pull up corporate profits from the last 100 years, they go steadily like this.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden, since 2009, they've gone like this.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when I say parabolic...
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Parabolic.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's been amazing.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Great for the stock market.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing for the stock market.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, I think S&P operating margins are around 13.5%.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: They've been there for a long time.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a video of Warren Buffett saying years ago that any company that can do 6% operating margins for maybe three or four years in a row It's lucky.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got a brand new standard out there.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: But this has come at the expense of the average American.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you look at these things.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: You look at assets and labor and their share of GDP.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Labor, if you worked hard, you got most of it.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: But all of a sudden, it's gone this way.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's dangerous.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's very, very, very dangerous because at some point, the people are going to revolt.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: And the Trump vote is a sort of a revolt vote.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's why, particularly amongst men, young men, might have normally voted Democrat.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Young blacks, Hispanics, it's a revolt vote.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Something is wrong.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: They don't know exactly what it is.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to understand it because it is a complicated system.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm studying it.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have all the answers.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: But we know something is wrong.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so I feel like I got to speak out.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so people say, well, you're not a capitalist.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a capitalist.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I also believe in human beings.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Something is wrong in this country.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And somehow they have gotten everyone to wake up every morning.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: And their number one mission is to make sure Wall Street gets fed.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what, I mean, I don't know how they pulled it off.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how they pulled it off, but they have pulled it off.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so when people say comparative advantage, Well, the way Ricardo worked is if you were better at making shoes and I was better at making shirts, I'd make the shirts, you'd make the shoes, and we'd buy them from each other.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: But it would equal out.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'd buy the shoes from you for$10.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: You'd buy the shirts from me for$10.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is not comparative advantage, what's happening with our relationships.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason I back the tariffs, what's happened is you had China, which was smart enough to subsidize particularly critical industries.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so it wasn't a level competition.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's like someone taking steroids and someone not taking steroids.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: And the country that took the steroids looked like they had better comparative advantage than we did.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so Wall Street said, fine, let them have it.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because Wall Street is the middleman.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: They get paid no matter what.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: They get paid a fee, right?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: They make the money, especially those fat corporate profits.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: In the meantime, we have hollowed out this nation.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's just one area.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: More recently, where I've Think about this for a moment.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And if China, I'm going to go back a little bit because I think it's important for people to understand.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: I have some knowledge of China's history and how China was amazing.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: They were headed to the West big time.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: China and India had once were together 50% of the world's GDP for a long time.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Then they started trading.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the West showed up, said, we want to trade with you.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Initially, the emperor said no.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: But then they said, OK, fine.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: We'll sell them jade, porcelain, silk, these things.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: So now around the world, everyone knows China is amazing.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: That stuff starts to go into Europe.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what comes out of Europe?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Silver.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: You got to pay for it.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden, so much silver came out.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, they're looking for ways to mine silver.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: They discover a new world.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: So now.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: 45% to 50% of all the silver from Peru, from Mexico, ended up in China.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: So Europe is panicking now.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Panicking.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: A sidebar to that was that the workers there couldn't keep up.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: And they were dying.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: And a bishop out in Portugal, Spain, said, hey, maybe we could replace them with the Africans.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that was to spark the African slave trade.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: But In Europe, they were saying, okay, what the heck do we do?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: How do we fix this?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: What do we?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: So they, opium.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: They introduced opium to China as a miracle drug.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so opium gets widespread, wide used.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then the British show up, late 1700s, say, you know what?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: We need you to open five ports.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: And Emperor's like, what are you talking about?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Open five ports?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not opening five ports.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: We're not asking.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: So they went to war.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, remember, China had the greatest military ever.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: They were so far advanced.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: They had gunpowder and all this stuff.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: They were just ahead.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: And they probably thought they still were, but they didn't realize that Europe had a war every week.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's got to be a book this big with all the wars.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you can name all the wars that Europe has had.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: But every skirmish, what got better?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: The fighting technique, the metals, the cannons, the ships.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: So they're getting better because they're fighting.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's other stuff, you know, sitting in the port.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was great.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, 1408, you were bad.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: You were no joke, right?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, they lose the first opium war.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the emperor calls into the barracks.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Half the people are high.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: They couldn't even fight.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: No, they were smoking opium.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: They were on the opium.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then the ships were raggedy.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, so they lost.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, a few years later, they come to British again.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: We need you to open up five more ports.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Emperor's like, no.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Opium war number two.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Crush them.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Crush them.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: So now all the silver is leaving China.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: As opium comes in, they've lost two wars.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: They're destitute and the peasants rise up.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's called the Boxer Revolution.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: They were so beaten down they couldn't even fight that.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: So China has to ask the West and Japan for help.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: So imagine you got Japan, Russia, France, America, all of these nations.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we'll give you money and some of them send troops.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: But the VIG, oh my goodness.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, John Gotti would bless you.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Would they charge China interest?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think they still owe interest payments now.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: So that created the 100 years of humiliation.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's what drives China.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: The irony of all of this, the reason I say this story, is it's the exact opposite.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: The same thing is happening but to us.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: And sadly, you know what our opium is?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Cheap crap from China.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: A cheap beach ball from Walmart.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's our opium.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: We have to go out and buy this stuff.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so guess what?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: Our silver is going to China in return for cheap crap that ends up in a landfill six months later.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: So people say, well, yeah, but it's cheap, right?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: And a comparative advantage.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Is it really a comparative advantage?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: If China owns, let's say, 25% of our bonds, and we pay a trillion dollars a year, China is getting$250 billion a year in interest from America.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't it ironic that poor Americans and all Americans who pay taxes are actually subsidizing the company that makes the beach ball?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: So now their owners, they own our assets, they own treasuries, they own farmland.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: And all we got was a beach ball that's going to end up in a garbage can.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I fight against it.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Something is wrong with the system.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Why does a house in New York City with a certain amount of square footage go for$5 million, but the same square footage in Mississippi is$150,000?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: All I'm saying is there's certain things that are embedded in our system that's wrong.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the short-termism with the captains of capitalism...
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's all it really is, is short-termism.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: If we were smart and just say, okay, let's bring back manufacturing, even if it means instead of 14% profit margins, for a couple of years, you got 12%.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: But now you've created...
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: More workers here.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: So now you've created more organic demand here.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, if you create more factories, the prices are going to come down, supply and demand.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: So the rents won't cost so much money.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: The things that give them any kind of, we'll never have slave labor, but we look at it the wrong way.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's a race to the bottom.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: We want things to be cheaper.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think wages go up, then that's inconsequential.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: More Americans are working, it's inconsequential.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: But it's the political will.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's no real political will.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: If both parties, if the leaders of both parties right now came out and said, we're going to back tariffs to a degree, no matter who wins the next election, they're going to be 10% for the world and 30% for China.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: We would have a manufacturing boom in this country because now businesses know they have to do it.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: They can't game the system, right?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, some are playing cute.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Trump's only going to be in another three years.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: The next person comes in could be a Republican that doesn't want to do this, and certainly a Democrat won't do it.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: So they can kind of play it off, but bluff their way.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: But if we ever took this seriously and understood that China went through this already, China knows the blueprint already.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: It has been used against them.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: They were the greatest, the most wealthy nation in the world, and they gave all of their wealth away.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: all of their wealth away because of an addiction.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: And now we are addicted to looking good materialism, all this kind of crap.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, during all of it, we've gotten lazier.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: So when they went to the barracks to get those troops, they were high.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Our folks are just lazy.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: You can do everything, right?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I know people in the projects.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: that we use Grubhub to order McDonald's.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like what the hell, get on the elevator, go outside and walk three blocks.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we're in a predicament and I'm seeing it and I'm screaming and I'm yelling because it's, at some point you can't return from it.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you, I mean look, Here's what I'm concerned about with that, though.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I agree.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Look, we're addicted to cheap shit.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: The only thing we're exporting is entertainment.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: We're not doing anything at all to subsidize ourselves.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And like you said, they can pull the plug.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: They have us by the strings right now.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And the problem is to get these factories up and running and do all these things, there's going to be this long transition period.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so the policy to subsidize that, the will on both sides aren't going to be there because obviously the Democrats don't want terrorists, the Republicans don't.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not going to be able to get any medium to get us through this.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: The other challenge that I'm worried about is how do we, get people to want to go and work in factories.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like you said, especially not to beat up on this new generation, and I blame a lot of it for COVID, where people were stuck at home, they were getting paychecks, PPP loans.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: We had two years of everyone loving not working anymore, and now it's hard to get them out there.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: You've got people that are taking, we're talking about this,$20,000 vacations, and they go back home and crash on mom's couch for a while.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: How do we change that?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: How do we educate these people?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: How do we tool them to be able to do that?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think education is a big part of it, but I think no alternatives.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think America public would be shocked at the number of assistance programs that are out there.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: I do know people who are 50 years old, never had a job.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: Never.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: This is before COVID.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Never.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: They're alive.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: They're healthy.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: They're overweight.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about that a little bit.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: What are they doing?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because I grew up that way too.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the challenge, Charles.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: You're black.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Hispanic.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up in those neighborhoods.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: You got these people.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: I call it the...
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: the white guilt, and not to put it out there, where they get to this point, I look at some of these people, they've never been there, they've never experienced, they have no idea, they're so far removed from it, they're here to save the world, and they don't understand about the people that are getting food stamps, selling drugs, selling the food stamps, they're playing the system, like you said, they're using people's dead social security number, like there is so much fraud that's going on out there right now, but if you call it what it is, you're racist, you don't care about people, you can't say anything in this country anymore, and you just said it.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: How do you solve for it?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: No alternative.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have any alternative, man.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: If I didn't go out there and work at 13 years
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: old,
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: my mom was so strung out.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: She had to apply for food stamps.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: She wasn't doing that.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: If I wasn't out there working, washing cars, doing what I was doing, I wouldn't have eaten.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's been that way my whole life.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: I knew there was no safety net.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: You either work, you pay for an apartment, or you're homeless.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the other problem with some of these parents out there that are enabling that.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, at the end of the day, not everybody wins.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: You got to fail.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have that fear of failure, you're not going to put in the work to win.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: You're not.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and there's no fear of failure because.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that's another reason why the trade thing is intriguing, because this cheap stuff allows.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: people that don't work still to feel like they're participating.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: So you have the same things that wealthy people have, not the same quality per se.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: You don't live a destitute life.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: You go to the beach with that cheap beach ball.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's all part of the system.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so why does it exist?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Power.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the people who allow it to exist, I don't know that, I think it's less white guilt and more white power, liberal power.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, look, it's called liberal guilt.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing is, I don't know that they feel guilty.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think they understand the power of keeping people in a certain position.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a Faustian deal.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm going to find a way for you to never have to work.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: In return, you'll always vote for me.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: And they'll have the power because...
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: We're such a large enough economy that even our poorest, like if Mississippi was a country, it'd still be one of the top countries in the world, the poorest state.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: And if Canada was a state, it'd be 51st state in terms of wealth.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that's just how rich we are as a nation.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Our poorest state would be rich anywhere else.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it's...
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I'm still seeking all of these answers.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a student of everything.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: I watch things.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: I listen.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: I've traveled a lot.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: I read a lot.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: I try to pay attention.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: I do think, though, that having all of these alternatives, though, again, and these are programs.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: I see people, you know, I'm in this program, I'm in that program, and one lasts six months, one lasts three years.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: The next thing you know, you're 40 years old and you've never worked, but you eat.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it should be like at a certain point, if you don't work, you don't eat.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because then you will look for work.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we have 7.2 million jobs out there, right?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: People, you know, either on one end of the spectrum Well, I went to school for this.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: I want this class, this job.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And on the other end, people could afford to turn down certain jobs.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think the education part about the knowledge, like going to work at McDonald's.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: There are people, I think it's been studies that would show in maybe 30 states, 40 states, you actually take a pay hit.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: An income hit, not pay.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: If you go working at McDonald's versus subsidies.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right, rather than keep getting your subsidies.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: So you take an income hit.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: So the thing is you have to explain to people, yes, but if you get on the ladder of success, even if you start, even if the second rung is here, even if you have where you are now, even if you have to go down to the first rung, you are now on the ladder.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great point.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: And you can start climbing that ladder.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: You can start climbing that ladder.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: The problem, though, is people have to believe they can do it.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's the other part of this equation.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: They don't believe they can do it.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: They've been told they can't do it.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: They don't believe they can do it.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so they've settled.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: They've settled.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: And again, our poor people would be relatively well off in 95% of the world.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: So now we see generational poverty, generational folks living...
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: paycheck to paycheck or program to program for generation after generation.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really gone into overdrive.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, I think since Lyndon Johnson, since the 60s, this has been one of these things.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you who wrote something really great about him.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember verbatim.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Arthur Burns.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Arthur Burns, for folks who don't know Arthur Burns, was a Federal Reserve Chairman.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: during the Nixon years.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: And he's become infamous for not being tough with policy.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: He raised rates, and then he brought them down too quickly.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: And we had two recessions, the double-dip recession.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, he's synonymous with being a poor.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: He's considered the worst Federal Reserve chairman in history, at least modern history.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: He wrote a paper soon after you got out that is so amazing.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: And he talked about all of this in that paper, how there were sort of three stages that we went through as a nation.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: We were always this country that prided ourselves from pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: Rugged individualism.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's what made America.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's true.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: The 1800s, we had a civil war.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: We had four...
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: four panics, which are the equivalent of the Great Depression.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, they were so severe, everyone agreed, next time we get something like this, let's not call it a panic.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: They said, well, what should we call it?
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: They said, how about a depression?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: So hence the Great Depression.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: We had four massive panics.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: We came out of the Civil War.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we did, during all of that, especially in the second industrial revolution, we just, rugged individualism.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: We just did it.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: We just did it.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: We introduced the world to consumer discretionary, right?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: That Chicago World's Fair, I think it was 1893, we introduced consumer discretionary.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: You could buy Wrigley's Spearmint Gum.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: You could take your girlfriend on a fair as well.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: First time any of this stuff had been seen, right?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: All of this stuff wasn't, before we were living, Year to year, hoping that the crop would come in okay.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: If the crop didn't come in okay, you had to have good neighbors or you were in trouble, right?
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: And now all of a sudden, people are moving to cities.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: We're urbanizing the nation.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: We have extra money.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, my goodness.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: It was on full display there.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: But all of that was done through rugged individualism.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: And we were that way until 1929, until the Great Depression.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when we had all of these programs that came in, right?
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: The New Deal.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: And we changed as a nation, right?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: from that I can do it to we need the government to help.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: That was a massive blow to who we are as a nation.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then Arthur Burns explains again in the 60s how this became even more perverse.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: And we wanted to help every little niche out there, every niche.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so every niche was helped, but helped too much.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's one thing to give someone a helping hand, a hand up, but this is like, no, we will hold your hand forever.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: From birth to death.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it may sound good, but guess what?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: You never get up there.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is your Faustian deal.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so I got it.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's called The Anguish of a Central Banker.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: The word anguish is in there.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: If anyone Googles it, it's so amazing to read.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's been a process, and we've lost it.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we have remnants of it because we're such a big country.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a great country to get rich in.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: There are individuals who rise above it all like you, right?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: But before it was ingrained in every American.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was ingrained.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it didn't matter.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't matter, you know, what race, nationality.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: It did not matter, you know.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a beautiful thing.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's how we got to the top of the world in a short period of time.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, it's...
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: And to be honest, I didn't know all this history.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's why what, and you were a student of history.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's probably leads to a lot of your success because you're able to look at what's going on today and it's not shocking you.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like this, this whole process where you're saying it started a long, long time ago, the weakening of America, essentially the reliance on cheap goods, the reliance on handouts and not having to, like you said, you know, back in the day, you didn't hear this.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: You got to go out, farm your own crop.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: If it's not there, you're not going to eat.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: And, but I guess the, You know, my problem today is, though, it's like people are running out of time, man.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know what you think.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think artificial intelligence is only going to expedite this problem.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to make it worse.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like you said, I think the companies are going to be fine.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: They're going to do good.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually going to probably increase their profitability.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: But you know who I care about is the people I work with, the small businesses, because, you know, let's just be honest, tariffs.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: Intel is going to be fine.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Apple is going to be fine.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: Cummins is going to be fine.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: One of my clients, though, imports flooring from China, a distributor in L.A.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: He's getting crushed.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: So this is my reply to that because everyone has done those stories.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: We're hurting small businesses, and they've gone and interviewed the business.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Take one of the biggest industries hurt by China and the textile, the furniture.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I can show you a chart in 2000.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: There were 500,000 workers in textile.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now there's less than 50,000.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Here's my point.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: No one has interviewed any of these people, the 450,000.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I know we feel bad for these 50,000, but look where the chart is going.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: If we don't change something now, come back in a few years and they're going to be gone.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I know it hurts people now.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: And this gets to the point.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: about what are we willing to sacrifice?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: What are we willing to do?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is a war.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: In war, there are casualties.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: In wars, there's uncomfortable periods of time.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: And if we had the leadership that could articulate that on both sides and say, okay, and we'll try to find ways to scramble and make sure those things are better, right?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: But we know that if we, the sob story, and we all are susceptible to it, The problem, though, is we have 450,000 of these people lost their jobs already.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: And these people aren't going to keep theirs.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: They're going to lose their jobs.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: It just happens we stop at the here.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: We just started this war back 15 years ago.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Then we would have said we've lost 50,000.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: instead of now losing$450,000.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I understand that, but the status quo is not going to save their jobs.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's my argument.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's the situation now is not going to save their job or not going to save their industry.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it's certainly not going to turn the tide, right?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so I want to say Friday or Thursday, Restoration Hardware reported their earnings.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the first time they reported was this year.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: The tariffs had just come out.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the CEO is very, very flamboyant.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: We're sitting on restoration hardware chairs.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: I love restoration hardware.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I follow him.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: So the CEO, he's really a real shit-talking dude, right?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: So he was going off on the tariffs.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: He went fucking crazy, lost his mind.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: So Thursday, they come out.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: Stock was up huge.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I saw it.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: So they took...
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: They were doing about 16% of their sourcing out of China.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's down to 2%.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: In one quarter, they brought 51% back to America.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: In one quarter! In one quarter! We keep saying we can't do it, but we haven't tried.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: We keep saying it's impossible, but we haven't tried.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: We keep saying it would take two years.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's a short-term investment for a long-term gain if you want to change the tide.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because the way the tide is going right now, we are going to lose.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: We have lost already.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to keep losing.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: But again, it gets back to short-termism.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: And we all think like Wall Street.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: How does Wall Street think?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: In three-month increments, quarterly earnings reports.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's how it's short-term thinking instead of long-term thinking.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: And people are like, well, China's going to win because they played a long game.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, why the hell don't we play the long game?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:54
  UNKNOWN: Yeah.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's not, you know, this year, a couple weeks ago, they said, okay, the push-tush or the tush-push, whatever the hell the Eagles do, it's legal.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, guess what?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: Every team's going to have to learn how to do it.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's the rules of the game.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, but every team, like the Eagles, they got unfair advantage.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: They keep doing this push-tush thing.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, get yourself, you know, a strong-ass quarterback, even if he only comes in at fourth and one.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: Push the tush.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: And push the tush.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's the game.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: Don't hate the player, hate the game, right?
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's the game.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: You can't change the game.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: You can't change the game right now.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: We have to play within this.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it drives me nuts when we say we can't.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: We never were a country of can't.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to take time, but it must be done.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: We should be right now drilling for rare earth.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how long it will take.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that rare earth is really rare.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: With the problem with rare earths is that it's just usually hard to get to, dangerous.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: Where it's
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: located
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: is going to create political problems.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: China doesn't mind.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: They'll put 10,000 people in the mine.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: They kick off, bring another 1,000.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we have rules and stuff, and we don't want people to die.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, they're getting most of this stuff from Malaysia and places like that.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: But isn't that the problem, Charles?
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: You talk about the tush push, right?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the rules of the game.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: If we're a global economy, right, and the rules are way different for the Chinese, labor law, all these things, how do we compete with that?
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we have no choice if we don't want to stop the silver from leaving our country.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: We don't necessarily have to treat people the way they treat people.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: We don't indoctrinate people.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have them in camps.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: But if we go back to Ricardo, what is their true comparative advantage?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: They're not better than us.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Tim Cook tried to suggest that, and I debunked him pretty good.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I found this piece on Twitter.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: Foxconn.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the average worker there, you know, I could go to a local McDonald's and they have the same brainpower.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not that they're brilliant, you know.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: They're sleeping there, though.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: They're working 20 hours a day.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, the thing is, though, it's, you know, what they're trying to do is, the folks who make all the money, is change the argument.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: That, well, it's not really that they work cheap, it's that they're smart.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I will give them this.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: They probably do work harder.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's no doubt in my mind they probably work harder than we do.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I had a friend.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually a friend of my wife.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: She must be 100 now if she's alive.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: But she used to talk about what they had to do in school and the rigors of school.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, physical and mental.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: They would swim every day.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: They had to learn English, and they had to go to school on Saturdays.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the rigors, our parents are like, oh, Bobby,
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: it's
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: too much homework.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: Are you, okay.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, that's the kind of stuff that if we acknowledge that we're in this battle, that we have been in a war a long time, but we just, most Americans don't realize that this trade war has gone on now for a few decades.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: We're only the first time we're fighting back.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: They said, well, Trump's trade war.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's been a trade war for a long time.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's a great book called Golly, it was a little nation that could.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, it's a great, great book.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's this little tiny country.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: It was a duchy.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: And they declared war on America.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't even know it existed.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so they sent their navy, which is like a ship of four or five people.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: So...
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: They just happened to land in America.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: Something big was going on.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot what it was.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: So they get to Manhattan, and they're walking around Manhattan, and there's no one around.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think everyone was at a parade or something.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: And they just happened to walk in a building where they just created this amazing bomb.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: It was better than a nuclear bomb.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: And they took it back on their ship, and they went back to their country.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: So all of a sudden, they had this bomb, and the world had to negotiate with them.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: The point is that we've been at this war.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: They were at war with us, but we didn't know.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: China's been at war with us.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't known.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: We're at the football game.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: We're at the hockey game.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're at the club.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: They've been able to roam our streets and take all our things and grab our knowledge.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: And we've just been sleepwalking through the whole thing.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: All right, well...
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is a great history lesson, I think, of why we're here.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it helps me because I look at all these things and it's just so frustrating.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: But like I said, there's people like you, people like me, you're just going to pull yourself out by the bootstraps and you're going to figure it out.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: But the point is, that's how all Americans used to be.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we've taken that away from them.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I agree with you.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: I've been vocally a little bit outspoken in terms of the terrorists because I see people...
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: that are hardworking people, Charles.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: These are people that are me and you.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: And they don't have bank accounts with 20 million.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: They're doing okay.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: They're doing well.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: But these are the people that are getting crushed, man, because everyone at the top is doing well.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: The people at the bottom, they're just happy living there and whatever I can hand to them.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's the guy who's out there busting his ass making 200, 250 grand a year, which, by the way, people say those are the rich and wealthy.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: Those guys, if you live in California, you're barely getting by there.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the guys that get screwed at every turn.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're the guys that have student loans, but they're making too much money to qualify for this forgiveness, so they're paying off other people's student loans.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: And when you talk about this whole transition, my client, I'm telling you, who's got this flooring company, He could survive if you give him just a little bit of a bridge.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: Give him a bridge loan.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Low interest rate.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: Help him out.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: Get to the next side.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: He can do it.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: But we're not focused on there.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: Those are decisions that are not being made.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: Look how we bailed out Wall Street.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: After Wall Street created the crash, they changed the rules for them.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: We bailed them out.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: We bail out all of these large industries.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: They have no reason not to take risk because when the shit hits the fan, it's the American taxpayer money.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: And since that bailout, that's when it got worse.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: That was the beginning of the financialization where everything we do is focused on one thing, corporate profits.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: Our whole society now is centered on corporate profits.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, I mean, we need to find a way to help these folks or try to help them as best we can But it's also got to be a sort of situation where we have to all be in.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: When I think about Martin Luther King and the Montgomery bus boycott, that was hard.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: There were people, like you said, who said, well, if I don't make it to my job, I'm going to lose my job.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the only person making money in my family.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: That person could have took the bus.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: That person didn't.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now a neighbor gave him a ride, they walked, they biked, whatever it was.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: The only reason that was successful is individual sacrifices, but others rallied around them to make it happen.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then they were able to turn the tide.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we've been in this situation before as a nation.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's just that we just, it's just not, the folks who are, who are, most comfortable with the status quo on everything in terms of communication, all the TV shows, all the major media publications.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're against it.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: But you just got to go outside sometime and see what's happening and see how the middle class has shrunk.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: And again, the gulf between the haves and have-nots is so bad.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it's masked, right?
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what frustrates me too, particularly economists.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think almost every Every economist comes on, I have a fight with them.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got 10% of the population who do 50% of the buying.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: So the Fed looks at that and say, we're OK.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now, my whole thing, this is why I tell people they need to look at this.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine that there's a bus depot.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: And across the street, there's a bar.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: And almost every night, nine bus drivers go and say, before we go home, knock back a couple of brews.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got these nine guys in there knocking back the brews.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: Elon Musk comes in.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: So economists who look inside the bar, you know what the economists will say?
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: There are 10 billionaires in there.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how they look at our economy.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so skewed.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the irony is that their policies were going to be restrictive.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to strangle this economy.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, these money markets...
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: $7 trillion in there, rich people are getting richer.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: Their dividend checks, you're strangling the people that have already said no mas a long time ago.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: You got me, Fed.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: Pal, you killed me, baby.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm done.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: Why do you keep strangling?
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing left to strangle.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how our system is built.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Even the Federal Reserve thinks if wages go up too much, they want to raise rates.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: They see Main Street Prosperity as inflationary as this and that, everyone's conspiring to keep people down to a certain level, keep them happy at a certain level.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: They go out because you know what?
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: All of the money eventually goes into the pockets of the 1%.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, Trump's been pretty vocal about what he thinks of Powell and interest rates.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, there's a case to be made.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you can lower interest rates right now.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: There's also a case to be made based on looking at the economic data.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we don't need it.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: The data is bad.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: The data is awful.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: The data is awful.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: You think we need to cut rates?
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it's for the reason I said.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, well, people are going to go out and spend money.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, I think people, if they had a break, would probably pay some of their credit cards off and save a little bit right now.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: But the idea that Main Street would have any breathing room, it scares the shit out of the powers that be.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: You're not hurting rich people.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: If we have to wait for rich people to stop spending, we'll be annihilated.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: Rates are too high.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: Credit card rates at 23%.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: You can't buy a house.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: Look what they've done to the housing market.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: How can this small person buy a
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_02: house?
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: First time home buyer.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know how old the average first time home buyer is now?
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: I don't.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: 56.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: Used to be 30.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: Used to be less than that.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: The first time home buyer, because those are only people with cash.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: And they're usually buying cash, right?
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because who's going to pay a 1% to 7% mortgage?
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I think they have to cut rates.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: But the narrative
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: is it's the wealthy that are
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: going to benefit from the rates, right?
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: They benefit from the higher rates.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's my point.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: No matter what the Fed does, the wealthy benefits.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's the problem, Charles.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: People don't get that simple concept.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's ironic.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: The stock market's at 1% from the all-time high.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: And we've had restrictive rates, right?
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: We have the most restrictive rate hike in history So that didn't stop rich people from getting rich.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, Warren Buffett, why is Warren Buffett sitting at$360 billion in cash?
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: Why doesn't he have to invest it?
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because he's making more.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: He owns more than half a percent.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: He owns T-bills.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: So if he could buy T-bills because rates are so high and you can get money markets.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to take no risk now.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to invest in a small
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: business.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm very wealthy, I don't have to invest my money.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have to spread it around.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: This is worse for Main Street.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have to take any risk.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: I agree.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, you know what?
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: The way the Fed is set up, low rates help them, high rates help them.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: But I know high rates hurt people who want to buy a house, they can't.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: The mortgages are out.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: Whose credit card bill just went from 16% to 23%.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: I know they're the ones who can't make it.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to see them lower rates.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's important, man.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like you said, if you look at the credit card debt numbers, they're rising and rising and rising back to the point where people aren't going to cut their lifestyle, they're going to take on more debt.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look at that expenditure of surplus income where that's going.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to Citibank.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to JP Morgan.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to Wells Fargo.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the thing.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you can get that backed in the pockets of people, then maybe that's one of the offsets of these tariffs that you're talking about, right?
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of ways to sort of offset it, to be honest with you.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: One, it's just not to buy this crap.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think what I liked about this last earnings season that I saw is that people are saying, you know, we're going to wait.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: yeah.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: The last four personal income and spending numbers, Incomes came in better than expected.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that could be a lot of things.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's just transfer payments.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: But incomes have come in substantially better than Wall Street anticipated all year long.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: Spending has actually gone down.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: So our savings rate, which was like at four, is at five, near five.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so people are sort of doing this on their own.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: Households are smart, man.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: People are smart.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: They have bad habits.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: But when the shit's about to hit the fan, they will buckle down.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: They'll figure it out.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so they've been buckling down.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: So our savings rate has gone.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: up wall street hates that oh they hate it don't save money you know uh and so our savings rates are going up i think just keep you know buy local remember there's no tariffs on local shit buy local if you can you know don't spend your money don't send any more of our silver to china You know, we need to make sure that there's pain on China.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: And they've got their own pain.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: I know the media tries to play them up as unstoppable.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: They've got the fertility crisis.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: They've got a housing crisis.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: They've got a lot of issues going on.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, the fertility crisis is really acute because where the areas that make the most money, there's no babies.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's none.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's just there's no one to replace their engineers.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's just really dead.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they have some kids out in the rural areas.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we can win this waiting game.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: We can win this waiting game big time.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: But the media has been scaring the shit out of people, and mostly because they hate Trump.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: But also, a lot of people just benefit from the status quo.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm really thrilled that we've seen now three months in a row where the worst case scenario didn't pan out this week.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: So in March, everyone did these stories about running to the car dealer before car prices go up.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: I hate to say it, Fox Business did one.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was cringing.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: So used cars have gone down three months in a row.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen that.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, three months in a row.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that used car that you paid 25 grand for is probably 20 grand now.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: The media scared the shit out of people in a way that's never happened before.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: University of Michigan, People just mention tariffs or they're afraid of government policies.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: Higher, three months ago, it was the highest ever.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it dwarfed COVID, a once-in-a-century pandemic.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: Tariffs, which is imports of 14% of our GDP, 14%, it dwarfed COVID.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: It dwarfed the great financial crisis.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: It dwarfed 9-11.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: It dwarfed all of that, the fear.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: We've never been this afraid.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: They did this.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm glad to see those numbers are coming down.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: And there'll be a time when the CPI number will come in a little bit higher.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: It goes up and down.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't just go straight up or straight down.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: And they'll jump on it and say it's the end of the world.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: But we started the year, I think, CPI.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot where we started, but we're 3.0.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we're 2.3, 2.4 now.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think we'll get past that number we started the year.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: We won't have Biden's 9.3%.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that was from a lot of money.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you the secret there, too, since I brought it up.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: But here's another thing that we got to understand.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I mentioned earlier, all the money is going to go to the top 1%.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: Sanford did an amazing piece.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably two years old now.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: February, I think it was 2023 maybe.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it shows you exactly the Biden 1.9 trillion, how it goes to the top 1%, how they end up with all of this money.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, it's by design.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's the most beautiful thing you can do as a politician if you don't give a fuck about the country.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: Give out$2 trillion and say, I care about you.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: People spend it and your GDP numbers are huge.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: Look at what I did for the economy.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: But one thing, unfortunately, that we do is, and the thing is called propensity to consume.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: We all have certain levels of propensity to consume.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: The bottom 40%, because they never had a nickel, spend as soon as they get it.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: When those STEMI checks used to hit, I used to go to the mall and check it out.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Louis Vuitton had the velvet rope, you know, outside, you know, everyone's Ferragamo.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't just Louis, right?
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: Lines and lines that people couldn't go in, couldn't wait to go in.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so you see, like, I remember one time being in Neiman Marcus, so someone, I saw him, they bought two sneakers and they came out to$1,400.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: But then they bought one more thing because this was free money.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: So they were only spending$700 of their own money, right?
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what happened.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it's called propensity to consume.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: Immediately, That money, all that free money is immediately spent.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: Then over another period of time, the middle class will spend theirs too.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: All of this money makes its way to places, bottom line, corporate bottom lines, and then dividend checks, and then ultimately the top 1%.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: But it's done on purpose.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's done...
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: Biden, it was a brilliant move because Biden could say...
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: Pumps the economy.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: I had a strong GDP...
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: But what he was really doing was he was rewarding his benefactors, his donors, the top 1%.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you look at people who didn't have to pay rent.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: When they had to pay rent, they didn't have any money.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because the money they would have spent on rent, they spent it somewhere else.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: All these people who didn't pay college loans, how come their debt levels went up?
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: Should have gone down.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: They understand the psychology of this.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: They really do.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: And they use it against us all the time.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: Nancy Pelosi called it the multiplier effect when she argued for higher food stamps.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: And she even admitted out loud what they're trying to achieve.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: So our system is designed in a certain way.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it benefits certain people.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: But it's not just on the money side.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: They really have framed it in a way that anyone who tries to attack it is seen as a bad person.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: Heartless person.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: Mean-spirited.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: Losing careers sometimes.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: But the people who actually...
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: Perpetrating this are the ones who don't give a fuck about you, but they've insulated themselves beautifully.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so let's talk a little bit about this, because I'm one of these believers where I think long-term, the reason I'm even doing this show, if I think people speak up, they educate people, they get them to change minds, it changes votes, it changes the outcome, and it does all those things, but it's a long-term game plan.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: And in the interim, people got to survive.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: People got to be able to navigate what's going on right now.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: They got to be able to take care of their family.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to talk a little bit about you.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: A little bit, your upbringing, I know a little bit about it.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me a little bit about Charles.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: Where did Charles start?
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: I want to hear a little bit about your path of how did you become this success in the face of a lot of adversity.
• 50:49
  UNKNOWN: Right.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I had two childhoods.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: And the first childhood was growing up on Army bases.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: My father was in the Army, career Army guy, loved the Army.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was born in New York.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: Then we moved to Pittsburgh.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: Then we moved to Texas.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: Then we moved to Germany.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: Then we moved, I think, back to Pittsburgh.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: Then Japan, Texas.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: I lived in Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: My high school was the only school I went to two years in a row.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I loved it.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, I loved it.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: We moved around a lot.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think it did give me the skill set of being able to make friends quick, you know, and that kind of stuff.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, we lived in Fort Lee, Virginia, two-story house, beautiful house, never locked the doors, played all the time, you know, just rode our bikes, played football.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was just a beautiful life.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: Really, it was sort of, though, it was very misleading in the sense that 60s and 70s, or late 60s, early 70s, were so...
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: rough in this country, right, from a social point of view.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I was kind of shielded from all of that.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know any of that was going on, right?
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: None of us did.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's a pretty good experiment, though, because one of my best friends, my first best friend was white, and I had a white girlfriend, black girl.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, just, it was like this, nobody, no one was beaming messages at us, so we were allowed to live, and it was just kind of a beautiful thing, you know what I mean?
• 52:15
  UNKNOWN: Yeah.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I came home from school one day and my mom said we're leaving.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: So me and my mom and my two younger brothers got on the bus.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: Leaving your dad.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_01: We got on the bus and we left Fort Lee, Virginia and we went to New York.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: How old were you?
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: I was 13.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that was it, man.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_01: That was the transition.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was so amazing.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the first day, I remember the first day we got here and getting off the bus and taking the train.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: The Iron Horse, that bad boy, man.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: And back then, they used to have some old-ass trains that still ran.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: They were rust.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they were like, making all this damn noise.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: They even had a few real strap hangers.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: They called them strap hangers.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: Really, they were straps.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: They were leather straps, canvas straps.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we take the train.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: This is exciting as hell.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: We get out in the train platforms.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: Back then, the train platforms had all kinds of newsstands.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: This one had a food You know, and they had a knish.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: I've never seen a knish, right?
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then all this kind of stuff, you know, and it smells good, right?
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hot dogs, like, oh, man, golly.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we walk up the steps, and these buildings, these are tall buildings, right?
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I lived in a lot of places, but mostly military bases.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I didn't see any skyscrapers, right?
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then it hit me, the energy.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: Rob, the energy is amazing.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: I just...
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: You immediately liked it?
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I just...
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was like you couldn't avoid it, right?
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was like so powerful, right?
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, first of all, all these people, you know, and then the music.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, my God.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: So every car blasting.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: Every window.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: What year was this?
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: 70...
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to say 73, 74.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's some good music, though.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, my goodness.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: So...
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's so funny because, like, you know, listen, I was like...
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: Elton John, right?
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: Philadelphia Freedom.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: I dig it.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: But...
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: When I heard Harold Melvin and the Blue Nuts, oh, man, what the hell is this?
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: I never heard nothing like this.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm saying?
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: They were like, bad luck.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, snap.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: So the music and then, of course, the boom boxes.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, my God, the boom boxes.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: So the energy.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we walked down the hill.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then I look over and I see these girls double dutch and jump rope.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: I've never seen that before.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God, this is amazing.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: So then we get in the elevator, like this is the coolest thing ever.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody lives in a building.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: Your house has an elevator?
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: And we got in there.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: It smelled funny.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: It smelled weird in there.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, so we get upstairs and all four of us lived in a room, the same room.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: Brothers, sisters, how many?
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_01: Two younger brothers, me and my mom.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: So all four of us lived in a room.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, so then, you know, you go outside, and here I go, my dumb ass, man.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like a little white kid.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, guys! Oh, shit.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: Ping, ping, ping, ping.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_01: Woo! The ass whoopings.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, the ass whoopings, Rob.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: And what was it?
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was just you weren't in the...
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: I wore the wrong clothes.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: I spoke the wrong way.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: I sounded like a white kid.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: I just, oh, my God.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: You got indoctrinated pretty quick.
• 55:24
  UNKNOWN: Whew.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: My God.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_01: So the violence, I'd never really seen anything like that.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I had a couple of fights growing up, but they were so fast.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: You'd be finished, you'd play football or whatever.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_01: But these are fights, you have to fight to the death.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: Me and this one kid fought for like...
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: I had a fight with a guy who had to last at least an hour.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: And he covered two blocks.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how the hell...
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: We started like 143rd Street, now it's 145th Street.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how the hell that happened.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 55:52
  UNKNOWN: Yeah.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I never saw anything like that in terms of violence.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, the poverty, you know, winos are bad.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_01: Where were you living in the city at this point?
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: In Harlem, central Harlem.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so, again, I never seen that kind of violence, man.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's like this shit was crazy.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: So between the violence and then the poverty, I never thought about money a day in my life.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: What was your mom doing for money at the time?
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we just got there.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, you know, she wasn't doing anything initially.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_01: First thing everyone said, you got to go up to Dyckman Street and get on welfare.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_01: That was the first thing.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: You got to do that.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, she was a housewife.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it was amazing to me how quickly she just started working.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_02: Figured it
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: out.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, and she never made a lot of money.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_01: But she was amazing, you know.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the anniversary of her death wasn't long ago.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the...
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: This one girl sent me a text, and she was like, man, your mother was so good to everybody.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because she ended up getting everybody, all the people on my block jobs.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because she worked for a big microfiche company, and they landed this huge contract.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was Metropolitan Hospital.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we're just talking warehouses and warehouses and medical records that they had to film.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the guy asked, you know, so she got everyone on my block a job.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: They loved my mom, man.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: She was beautiful.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, we're poor, right?
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I...
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: Never.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: So a couple months later, you know, we got an apartment.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, again, everywhere we lived, you go and you turn on the faucets.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, the one with the H, you turn it, hot water came out.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_01: Not this time.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: So our first winter, we had no heat or hot water.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, nah, I got to help.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm the oldest.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_01: I got to step up.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: So my first gig was the paper towels and the windex, stoplights and stuff like that.
• 57:45
  UNKNOWN: Yeah.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_01: I shoveled snow.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: I did different things.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_01: I bagged groceries, man.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was so good at bagging groceries.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you right now, if they ever had an Olympics for that shit, I would have been like the Mark Spitz of that shit, man.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I was so good.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's an art form, man.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you, we just came back from Japan.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: And all the stuff that, it would take eight bags here to get into one bag.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: So there is an art form.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you, man, I was so good.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I was so good.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember my best day ever.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: I made$13.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: I tell you, I mean, I felt rich.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's a lot of money.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: It was a lot of money.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: It was rough, though.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: One lady, I took her bags home with her, and she lived on the top floor.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, God.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_01: But she gave me a dollar.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you got to remember, some people throw a penny in there.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, nickel.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: Quarter was huge.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: Quarter was huge.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: A dollar?
• 58:31
  UNKNOWN: Woo-hoo-hoo!
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, I said, I got to make some money.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_01: So like everybody, you think about Wall Street, you think about money.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so I started getting the Wall Street Journal.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_01: How old was that?
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_01: 13, that same year.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, same year.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I was trying to read it.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: Bunch of weird lines on there.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it was different than the journal now.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was all lines and numbers.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was like probably no commentary, right?
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was just all lines and numbers, all lines and numbers.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I was lucky because I would go to the newsstand.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd go to the part of the newsstand with the candy bars.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: About four people were like...
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_01: Watching every move.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: I walk away by the Wall Street Journal.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: No one.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I was able to steal it.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: I had no problem stealing the Wall Street Journal.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: It was so easy.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: They never thought.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: Not the candy, the Wall Street Journal.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: They were watching me like a hawk.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they thought you were going to do.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_01: What do you want?
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_01: What do you want?
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: What do you want?
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_01: What do you want?
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_01: You walk away.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_01: They're not even bothered watching.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: That kid ain't going to steal the Wall Street Journal.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: Come on.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I had no problem getting it.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_01: I had a problem learning it, though, reading this bad boy.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I started to get it, started to learn it, started to like it.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: So when I was 14, I said, you know, I'm going to work on Wall Street.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I told my mom, I called my father up.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Daddy, I'm going to work on Wall Street.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: He said, man, I saw it on TV.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: A bunch of white dudes throwing paper in there.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_01: Ain't no black people down there.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I saw it on TV.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: Ain't no black people down there.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have a shot.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone said I didn't have a shot except my mom.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to ask you, because I think that's where it stops for a lot of people, this limited mindset and belief.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it was your mom that told you you had a shot.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_01: What did she say?
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: She said, I believe you.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: She says, yeah, you will.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's all I needed.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's without her, man.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's all it takes sometimes, man.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: For me, it was a police officer.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_01: I said, what are you doing around these guys, man?
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: You're better than that.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's that little thing.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: You need one person at least.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: I always say you're lucky if you have at least one parent and maybe one or two school teachers.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because I did have a couple of teachers, too, who kind of made me feel special.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_01: In third grade...
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot her name, that's why I regret so much, but I had a math teacher, and she used to make two students stand up at the same time, and she would ask a question.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: Whoever got it right, the other one had to sit down, and another one would stand up.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_01: I wiped the whole damn class out.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: Wipe them out.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: And what was good about that is, one thing I didn't really even truly understand, it's like when I moved to Harlem, is everything that was good was white.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if you got good grades, oh, you think you white.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right,
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_02: right.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I never had that self-defeating psychology because 95% of my class was white that I just wiped out.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: I just wiped them out.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_01: Just people.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_01: I never thought they were better than me.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a self-fulfilling thing where you put yourself down as a race.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then people who do succeed, you hurt them.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, well, you think you white.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's still pervasive right now in the black community, big time.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it's bad.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so...
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_01: So at 14, I said, I'm going to work on Wall Street.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I just, again, I just kept, in my block, we call it, they didn't call it hustling.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: They called it scrambling.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I just, I was always scrambling.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_01: And let me tell you, I admired scramblers, man.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like the lady who worked at like a factory, but used to sell French fries out of first floor window.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_01: Or the person who was like the mail, the postman, but also took the numbers.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like I always admired people that had two or three gigs, you know.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you scrambled, I was like, oh, that's my man, you know.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I used to do that.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I used to gamble a lot.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_01: Craps?
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_01: No, we used to play silo with three dice.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, silo.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: I was like...
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: Head crack! That was so good, man.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_01: That was so good.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_01: And we also have this game called Chuckaluck.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I've heard of it.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: So Chuckaluck is an interesting game because you have a guy who, the way back then, the salt container, the cylinder, cut the top off, you pour all the, I mean, you cut the top off, right?
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: The cardboard Morton's type.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you put three dice in there and you have a board.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: One, two, three, four, five, six.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: And he shakes it up, he puts it down, and while it's down and covered, people place their bets.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_01: So let's say you bet on a one, and two ones, you get paid double, right?
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so he used to play Chuck Luck all the time, right?
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_01: So one day I'm kind of chilling, you know, right next to the dude doing it, and I caught him cheating.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_01: Almost by accident.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was a smooth-ass move, so when he would put the dice back into the cup, he kept one in his pinky.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so while everyone was putting the...
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_01: things down, like say no one had a two, no one put anything on two, he would make it a two.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: So your odds were down dramatically.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: I saw that shit, I was like, holy shit.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: Hello.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_01: So right before you pull the cup, wait, hold on a second.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_01: $10 and two.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_01: So first I started with a buck, right?
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm making money.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of, that's the start of insider trading, Charles.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: But this is how you learn, right?
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_01: That the world is crooked.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is a firsthand acknowledgement that, hey, you know, something ain't, you know, I tell people, people say, man, the market is crooked.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_01: It is, right.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_01: But you still got to play it.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, so, First, I started like, you know, buck, buck, I started making money and shit.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm bumping my thing up, right?
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mess around, put a 20 down, which would be like, that was a lot of damn money, right?
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_01: He gave me a look.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_01: Rob.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: This look was like, I will fucking take you behind a building and kill you.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_01: No, no.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_01: The look.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: He gave me that look.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_01: I went back to betting a buck.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, okay, you can make money.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but you're not going to do it that size.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, because I will have to hunt your ass down.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he gave me that look.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: He would have.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was pretty clear to me.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I was a little kid.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_01: I was like maybe 14, 15.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_01: But again, you learn lessons from that.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, man.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_01: I went upstairs and gave my mom all that money.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it was like Christmas.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_01: My family, my brothers were like, where did you get all this money?
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_01: I put it on the bed like, oh, shit.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_01: That was a hero, man.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_01: That was a good day.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_01: That was a hero.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_01: So what happens at 18?
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_01: How do you get into Wall Street?
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_01: How does your career start?
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I bought my first mutual fund when I was 17.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_01: I had to co-sign.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_01: And this is how life is interesting.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I played football.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I And one year there was this woman who was a photographer.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_01: She took pictures of the team.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_01: And she also worked on Wall Street.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_01: So she helped me get through the thing, you know, with the mutual fund.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_01: My mom had to co-sign.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_01: To open the account up.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think I put a grand in.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember what fund it was?
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: Nah.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_01: I signed up for the Air Force.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_01: I went to the Air Force, and I went to college while I was in the Air Force.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_01: So first, Minot State College in North Dakota.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_01: And again, man, none of my friends took any classes.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_01: None.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: None.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you were
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_02: getting it paid for
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: through the military.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was essentially free.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think I paid$10,$5.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was essentially free.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_01: They just didn't see it.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_01: What was nuts about it is I'd be heading to class and they're grilling and shit, drinking beers, talking shit.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_01: I caught up with them by midnight.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was in the same spot.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_01: By midnight, I'm fired up too.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I just couldn't talk any of them into it.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_01: I just could not.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_01: Same thing.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was stationed in Guam for two and a half years.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_01: I went to Central Texas College there through a program.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where I had a great teacher.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_01: This guy was in charge of...
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_01: What's the name of this entity?
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_01: It covered more than just Guam.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think Steve Austin from Bionic Man, he worked for them.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, he was huge.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_01: He had a huge job, a huge title.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_01: I know you're retiring in Florida.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_01: I always wish I could find this guy or he would reach out to me if he's alive.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I sometimes in the military, you know, you have these maneuvers and stuff.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, you have to be you never know.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_01: You can always make the class on a particular day.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I know we were doing some kind of training and I couldn't make it.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_01: So he graded on a curve system.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so I came in and they had already taken a test.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_01: He says, well, here's the curve.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, right now, if you got an 87, you'll get an A.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_01: Then he looked around and said, but once Ace takes the test, it's going up.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_01: Once Ace takes it, it's going up.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I got 100 on it.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it just feels good to have those kind of people in your life.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so I got out the Air Force.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_01: I was married.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_01: My daughter was like one and a half months old.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the same thing.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_01: We got a room in an apartment in Harlem.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_01: A room.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_01: A room.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_01: And this was a small-ass room.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_01: I had a pull-out sofa that almost touched the wall.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_01: Where was this at?
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_01: Lenox Avenue in Harlem.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_01: So back to Harlem.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, back to Harlem.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_01: Your mom was there.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_01: She's on Broadway.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was a little nicer on Broadway where Lenox was rough.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_01: Lenox was central Harlem.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_01: There was a place on...
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was like 146th Street in Lenox, where more black people have been murdered than any place outside of Vietnam.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it was crazy.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_01: Lenox, rough.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_01: Rough.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_01: Rough.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_01: That was like the last area they just defined.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_01: They're still a little worried about that one.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're like drawing straws for the white folks going, that one.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know, Bob.
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_01: Rough.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_01: OK?
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I got out.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she got me a job, you know, because she had the microfiche on.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_01: I signed up for Baruch College.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_01: I had another part-time thing I was doing.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I went down to Wall Street to try to get a job.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I didn't have a degree.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I went to school.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't know anybody.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so I went to this one agency, and the guy was like, you know, you're really not what they're looking for in terms of pedigree, but I'm going to send you over there.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I interviewed.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so...
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'll never forget.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, the guy whose apartment it was, the phone rings, you know, like the same day or the next day, that night.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, Charles, the phone.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I go down and pick up the phone and I got the job.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_01: Rob, I can't believe, I can't begin to tell you how happy I was.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_01: How old was your daughter at the time?
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_01: She was about, at this time, about six months, three months, six months.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_01: She was a baby.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, I mean, again, I was...
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: through the roof,$13,000 a year before taxes, you couldn't tell me nothing.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_01: You couldn't tell me nothing.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_01: And listen, I tell people, I used to make my lunch Or sometimes Burger King would have two breakfasts for a dollar, that kind of thing.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_01: I had to be in, I think I had to be in at eight or nine.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_01: I always got in at least 30 minutes to an hour early.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_01: I never took full lunch, and I always made sure I left after my boss.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's what helped me a lot, too, asking a lot of questions.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I always tell people, very successful people love...
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_01: You can say brag, but they love to tell you.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, just, hey, how does that?
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_01: Come here, kid.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_01: Let me show you.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's this thing called M1.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, like every this, you know, like, oh.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just soaking it all in.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_01: Just soaking it all in.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so one day I'm out for lunch and I bump into the woman from the mutual funds, the photographer.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And she's working down there for a small firm.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_01: And she says, you know, I say, you know, she says, you always wanted to be a broker.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_01: She says, you want to meet my manager?
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because I was working at A.F.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Hutton.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_01: And they weren't going to sponsor me when I had a college degree.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so I went and met this guy.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_01: He said, man, I kind of like you.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_01: He says, I tell you what, we'll sponsor you for the test.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_01: But you have to study it on your own.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Is it Series 7?
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_01: So he says, all right.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, they sent me the materials and I'm studying this.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a guy.
• 1:10:37
  SPEAKER_01: What did you think when you first saw those materials?
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_01: I was scared when I first heard about it.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_01: When I saw options, I was like, I better figure out a second career.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_01: No, it was a lot.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was a lot, man.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_01: It was a lot.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, there was a guy who was taking a test.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_01: EF Hutton was sponsoring another guy in the building.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_01: And we kind of became friends.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a program, like, prepping them.
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so he said, you should come to my thing.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_01: I said, let me in.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_01: He said, yeah, yeah, come.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I went with him.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was a Wednesday.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_01: And...
• 1:11:09
  SPEAKER_01: I met the instructor.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_01: He said, yeah, sit in, sit in.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_01: So they gave a bunch of practice tests and whatever.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_01: And for the most part, I was getting 75s and 76s.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_01: So at the end of the class, the instructor said, listen, the test is Saturday.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you're not going to be able to pass it.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_01: He's looking at my thing.
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_01: He says, well, you should take our full course.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, so I'm nodding at him at the same time.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_01: I said, my man, you don't know me.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't say it out loud.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just looking at him like, champ, you do not know me.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_01: You do not know me.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_01: I called in sick the next two days.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_01: I went from I went to my mother's apartment because, you know, she had a big glass kitchen table, spread all the materials out, study my ass off Thursday, Friday.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_01: The test is always on Saturdays, six hour test, finish it in less than four hours.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Only one person finished before me and my the manager and then they would work on Saturday.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_01: So this is that Murray Burcham High School wasn't too far.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's in the Wall Street area.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I walked over to the office and I went upstairs and said, well, I passed.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_01: He says, well, let's wait for the results.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_01: I said, no, I passed.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_01: You knew it.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_01: I passed.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_01: So On my way from Murray Burcham to the office, I was singing this song called Overjoyed by Stevie Wonder.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's a line in this song that's my life.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_01: And though the odds say improbable, what do they know?
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_01: And though the odds say improbable, what do they know?
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I live everything.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I feel the way, that's why I question everything.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I question tariffs.
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I question everything.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because things that everyone tells you are improbable, who are they to tell you it's improbable?
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_01: You allow that to your mom?
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's something I read about a briefcase story.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_01: I do my research.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me a little bit about that.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God, the briefcase story, man.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to keep making me cry, man, talking about my mom.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the goal, but I want to know who you are because there's other people out here listening.
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_01: They need to hear this.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_01: So my mom, man.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_01: So my mom, it's, she, it was our first Christmas in Harlem.
• 1:13:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I was struggling, right?
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean.
• 1:13:23
  SPEAKER_01: I was a weird kid.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_01: So the year before that, I got a desk for Christmas.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_01: You're still in the Wall Street Journal, and you got a desk for Christmas.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_01: I had a desk for Christmas, and we were all together, and I lived with my pops, right?
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_01: I used to sit in my bedroom.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was so cute, right?
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I had my desk.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_01: The year before that, I got a microscope and a chemistry set.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_01: I used to like stuff like that.
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I always wanted to be a businessman.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I told my mom, I want a briefcase.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I said, don't worry about it this year.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't really even ask.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, I didn't.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is when you were in Harlem?
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, our first year.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we just got the apartment.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_01: We fucking went cold.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh.
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, I just can't.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_01: She's working.
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_01: She's working her ass off.
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_01: I just really didn't expect anything, honestly.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_01: But Christmas came, and she handed me the briefcase.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then I opened it, and there was a bonus gift inside of a calculator.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, man.
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it was one of those old school plastic briefcases.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, so the Christmas holiday was over.
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Went to my class, and again, here I am.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is the white kid in me.
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus! Everyone's looking at you, what the hell is this?
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_01: What is she so happy about?
• 1:14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, God.
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_01: I messed around and left that briefcase in my homeroom class and we went and we did something.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_01: I came back.
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_01: They tore that bad boy up.
• 1:14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Done.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_01: They cracked it.
• 1:14:54
  SPEAKER_01: They beat it with something.
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_01: They cracked it open.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_01: They destroyed it.
• 1:14:57
  SPEAKER_02: Kids are
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_01: bad, man.
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Broke my heart, man.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_01: Broke my heart.
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_01: It broke my heart because my mom, I don't know how she even afforded it.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to tell you right now, Rob, real quick, because this is one thing about me, too, like with my mom.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_01: She was very generous, right?
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_01: One time my mother hit the number.
• 1:15:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the illegal numbers for folks who don't know used to be before lottery in New York.
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you play three digit number.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_01: If you get it all right, you win like six or 700 bucks.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_01: You could play two numbers.
• 1:15:30
  SPEAKER_01: You could play single numbers, right?
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_01: I was amazing at the numbers.
• 1:15:33
  SPEAKER_01: I used to be in a number hole.
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, I was so good at picking numbers, man.
• 1:15:37
  SPEAKER_01: So good.
• 1:15:38
  SPEAKER_01: That was not sorry.
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_01: My first charting too.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_01: They said this thing called the chicken Chong and the newspaper.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then another thing, this blue book.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_01: And they had all these different formulas in there that you can kind of figure out what the number would be.
• 1:15:48
  SPEAKER_01: That was my first time charting, I guess, or whatever.
• 1:15:52
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, my mom hit the number.
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_01: I walk in the house with a buddy of mine, and she says, I hit the number.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, snap.
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_01: So she gave me$20, and she gave my friend$20.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, me and my boy, we're in the back of the planet or whatever.
• 1:16:03
  SPEAKER_01: He leaves, and I'm like, why'd you give him$20?
• 1:16:07
  SPEAKER_01: And she says, God wants us to share our gifts.
• 1:16:10
  SPEAKER_01: So she taught me all of this stuff, man.
• 1:16:12
  UNKNOWN: Yeah.
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_02: I never asked you, I never really heard you talk about it, but where do you stand in terms of faith?
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, man, I'm a strong believer in God.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so-so on church.
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think a lot of people are.
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_01: But in terms of God, I cannot tell you how much I feel God has blessed me, but mostly to bless other people.
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I've always been a vessel for God.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Not that I've done anything to earn anything, anything special, but I do believe that God has used me during my lifetime to help others.
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have so much faith in God.
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I never get down.
• 1:16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Never truly.
• 1:16:53
  SPEAKER_01: I could lose a job.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Anything could happen to me, but I just believed in God so much.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_01: I agree, man.
• 1:16:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're doing a pretty good job with that gift that you've been blessed with, man.
• 1:17:02
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so...
• 1:17:05
  SPEAKER_01: This is who you are.
• 1:17:06
  SPEAKER_01: You get into Wall Street.
• 1:17:08
  SPEAKER_01: You start crushing it.
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_01: When does the transition come to Wall Street Strategies, Fox?
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_01: What does the timeline look like between those two?
• 1:17:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I became a broker.
• 1:17:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the disillusionment began almost immediately, right?
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because I had sort of romanticized being a broker.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_01: As you know, you go, you do all this research and you find these amazing investments for your clients.
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:17:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was I found this company called Burrell's Welcome.
• 1:17:38
  SPEAKER_01: They had a new drug called AZT for a new disease called AIDS.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, you know what?
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I was getting people to sign up and buy that stock.
• 1:17:46
  SPEAKER_01: But it wasn't a house stock.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I wasn't, I was signing up.
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_02: wasn't one you're really supposed to be pitching.
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_01: The ones you can make money on that they had an inventory, right?
• 1:17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like the crap, the crappy stuff, you know, like the penny stock stuff, right?
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_01: The real stuff they want
• 1:17:59
  SPEAKER_02: you pitching.
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I was opening up accounts on Burroughs Welcome.
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so payday comes around.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Now, my first full month in the business, I opened more new accounts than anybody else in my office.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was killing it.
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and real quick, I'll tell you one of the reasons I was killing it.
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_01: This is how intervention is so amazing, man.
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_01: My very first week in there.
• 1:18:16
  SPEAKER_01: So they give you a script.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_01: And they say, good luck.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you go in the back and you grab phone books.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_01: These old-ass phone books that everybody's used.
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_01: They're dusty as hell.
• 1:18:24
  SPEAKER_01: I remember those.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm calling these people on their phone book, and I'm looking for lawyers and doctors.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I get on the phone.
• 1:18:31
  SPEAKER_01: The guy picks up.
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_01: I read the spiel to him.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_01: And he said something that changed my life.
• 1:18:37
  SPEAKER_01: He said, you read real well, but what do you want?
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_01: So he opened a new account.
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_01: After I hung up, I tore up the script.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Never used the script again.
• 1:18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Just talk to these people.
• 1:18:54
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a hell of a revelation.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I opened more new accounts in my first month.
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Payday comes around.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_01: They're handing out the checks.
• 1:19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God, these people, the checks.
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_01: They had me my check.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, it was so small.
• 1:19:10
  SPEAKER_01: It was so tiny.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's because you weren't pitching the stuff they wanted you to pitch.
• 1:19:14
  SPEAKER_01: And these guys, they ordered the limo.
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_01: They ordered the Coke.
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_01: They went to the strip club.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, yo, you just got to drop me off in front of my apartment building in a limo.
• 1:19:22
  SPEAKER_01: I just want the people to see me getting out the limo.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I hate to say it, man, but I went back to work that next Monday and I was selling the crap.
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_01: I was selling that crappy stuff like crazy.
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so my disillusionment began there.
• 1:19:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I was able to take eventually my passion for research and knowing that people were selling crap.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I started Wall Street Strategies initially to sell research to brokers.
• 1:19:53
  SPEAKER_01: It was a big directory.
• 1:19:54
  SPEAKER_01: I called it the Red Book.
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know the official name of it, but it has essentially almost every broker in America is in there.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Or at least the firm.
• 1:20:01
  SPEAKER_01: If you didn't have a broker, you called the firm and asked for a broker today.
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so at night, I would write the research at night.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_01: and call the people in the daytime.
• 1:20:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just me working by myself doing that.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_01: Then I started doing a little okay and I hired one guy.
• 1:20:18
  SPEAKER_01: This was during the crack epidemic.
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I got an apartment in Harlem.
• 1:20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, got me an apartment in Harlem.
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_01: And like I was in a brownstone.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I got a little brownstone apartment that was like, the brownstone's probably worth six million now.
• 1:20:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you could have bought the whole thing for maybe 50 grand.
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was the crack epidemic, it was bad.
• 1:20:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so I hired my first person, doing it, doing it.
• 1:20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Next thing I know, I get an office in Broadway.
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm broad, 50 broad.
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I'm doing it, I'm doing it, I'm growing, you know.
• 1:20:53
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I remember once it's so weird because people come into your life at the right time.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_01: And this one guy helped me out, man.
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_01: He got a he had a big, bigger firm, a big firm.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_01: They had an old phone system because I had I had started hiring enough people.
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_01: I had people sharing a phone.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like when someone was off and working, like after they spoke to someone, filling out the notes, I had someone else pick up the phone and call.
• 1:21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you were grinding it up.
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, I come from a scrambling background, baby.
• 1:21:18
  SPEAKER_01: You're scrambling.
• 1:21:18
  SPEAKER_01: We're scrambling, baby.
• 1:21:19
  SPEAKER_01: We're scrambling.
• 1:21:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so it's just starting to grow, right?
• 1:21:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's starting to grow.
• 1:21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And all my clients initially were mostly brokers.
• 1:21:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm building this reputation amongst brokers, the brokers community.
• 1:21:32
  SPEAKER_01: One thing that also started happening is I would get like certain good tips on things, right?
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think people were using me.
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like, let's just say, for instance, you were a broker and you had a client who owned a mobile home company that was publicly traded.
• 1:21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And he got an offer.
• 1:21:46
  SPEAKER_01: He was thinking about taking it, you know, but not sure.
• 1:21:49
  SPEAKER_01: And you're the broker, like, how the fuck, how can I buy this stock?
• 1:21:51
  SPEAKER_01: But you couldn't.
• 1:21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Unless somebody wrote about it in a newsletter somewhere.
• 1:21:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, now it's public knowledge.
• 1:21:57
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, so anyway, all kinds of things are happening.
• 1:22:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the business is growing.
• 1:22:03
  SPEAKER_01: And we're grinding our ass off.
• 1:22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then I get a phone call one day from CNBC.
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, snap.
• 1:22:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how to, you know, some broker told him about me, whatever.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so you want to come on.
• 1:22:15
  SPEAKER_01: I left the office.
• 1:22:17
  SPEAKER_01: I went to where I was buying my clothes.
• 1:22:18
  SPEAKER_01: There's a place called Shabanata.
• 1:22:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I get to Shabanata and there's like 200 people outside of Shabanata.
• 1:22:25
  SPEAKER_01: I weave my way in and I look as, you know, glass.
• 1:22:28
  SPEAKER_01: I look through and there's Mike Tyson.
• 1:22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:22:31
  SPEAKER_01: He bought all his clothes from there.
• 1:22:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so I knock on the thing.
• 1:22:35
  SPEAKER_01: My man lets me in.
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_01: I said, yo, I'm going on TV.
• 1:22:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going on CNBC.
• 1:22:38
  SPEAKER_01: I need a new shirt and a new tie.
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_01: He says, all right, I got you.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_01: So now Tyson's a little curious.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, who's this?
• 1:22:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because no one else was in the store.
• 1:22:45
  SPEAKER_01: They kicked everyone else out.
• 1:22:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I ended up rapping to Mike Tyson for about 25 minutes, 25, 30 minutes.
• 1:22:52
  SPEAKER_01: I used to root against Mike Tyson because I thought he was a bully.
• 1:22:55
  SPEAKER_01: Man, I fell in love with him.
• 1:22:57
  SPEAKER_01: He was a nice guy.
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like he was getting used.
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_01: But what really was amazing to me, so it was a big store.
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I was in the back trying on shirts and stuff.
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so he was leaving.
• 1:23:06
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Mike, take it easy.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_01: So he leaves the front.
• 1:23:09
  SPEAKER_01: He walks all the way to the back.
• 1:23:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, went to go give him a pound and he hugged me.
• 1:23:14
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like, man, this guy, like, it felt like he was really lonely, even though he had all this fame.
• 1:23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Turns out, like, even that store, everybody was stealing from him.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_01: That store, they made millions off of him.
• 1:23:25
  SPEAKER_01: His boys would come in and all the stuff, you know, the Gators and all that stuff, you know.
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I went down, I did the show, you know.
• 1:23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just amazing.
• 1:23:36
  SPEAKER_01: They started asking me to come back.
• 1:23:39
  SPEAKER_01: What show was it?
• 1:23:40
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot.
• 1:23:41
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot, yeah.
• 1:23:44
  SPEAKER_01: I remember Sue Herrera, but I don't know if it was her.
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, and then CNN-effing called me up, said, hey, you know, and CNN-effing, they loved me a lot.
• 1:23:54
  SPEAKER_01: You obviously crushed it, that first appearance on CBC.
• 1:23:56
  SPEAKER_01: I crushed it.
• 1:23:57
  SPEAKER_01: I crushed it.
• 1:23:57
  SPEAKER_01: And they were having me back.
• 1:23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like at CNN-effing, they asked me to come.
• 1:24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Then they had this thing where...
• 1:24:03
  SPEAKER_01: They would have you co-host on Fridays.
• 1:24:06
  SPEAKER_01: And what they loved about it is they did a call-in thing, and I would know every stock.
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, they used to, producers said, you know this one?
• 1:24:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, put him through.
• 1:24:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know this one?
• 1:24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, put him through.
• 1:24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, so you had callers calling in to ask you an
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_02: opinion on that.
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:24:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the guy, the producer was like, what the fuck?
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_01: How does he know all this shit?
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know this?
• 1:24:22
  SPEAKER_01: I said, yeah, yeah, put him through.
• 1:24:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I would know all that.
• 1:24:24
  SPEAKER_01: I knew all that shit.
• 1:24:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I knew it.
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the camera guys said, man, you could do this.
• 1:24:28
  SPEAKER_01: You could really do this for a living.
• 1:24:29
  SPEAKER_01: I said, yeah.
• 1:24:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I didn't even, you know, whatever.
• 1:24:31
  SPEAKER_02: You
• 1:24:32
  SPEAKER_01: weren't thinking, but.
• 1:24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Not really.
• 1:24:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so then, again, the business has gone well.
• 1:24:37
  SPEAKER_01: I ended up getting a, moving my office to, yeah.
• 1:24:40
  SPEAKER_01: of a building that was built by shipping giants.
• 1:24:43
  SPEAKER_01: Is this helping the business getting your name out?
• 1:24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, God, this actually changed my business model.
• 1:24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because when I would go back to the office, the phones are ringing off the hook.
• 1:24:51
  SPEAKER_01: And now it's all these retail clients.
• 1:24:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had to retool the product a little bit, you know, from a broker-centric product to retail.
• 1:24:59
  SPEAKER_01: To
• 1:24:59
  SPEAKER_02: retail, okay.
• 1:24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:25:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, just ringing off the hook, you know?
• 1:25:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, and you know, we, and back in the day, whenever we, our credit card machine had the tape that would come out, you know?
• 1:25:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that bad boy was all the way.
• 1:25:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:25:10
  SPEAKER_01: That bad boy was like, you know, you don't make much money in TV.
• 1:25:17
  SPEAKER_01: You're monetizing it through this business.
• 1:25:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:25:19
  SPEAKER_01: I was a guest.
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't making any, you know, it was just like, yeah, you know, and just like, just off the hook, man.
• 1:25:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I got, you know, I ended up getting, um, an office, the whole entire floor of an office.
• 1:25:32
  SPEAKER_01: This thing was amazing.
• 1:25:33
  SPEAKER_01: It was on one side of the building, had an angle of the New York Stock Exchange.
• 1:25:37
  SPEAKER_01: On the other side, it had...
• 1:25:39
  SPEAKER_01: You made it at this point.
• 1:25:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the other side.
• 1:25:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean...
• 1:25:41
  SPEAKER_01: We're at Harlem.
• 1:25:42
  SPEAKER_01: We came all the way down.
• 1:25:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, now I got the entire floor.
• 1:25:44
  SPEAKER_01: I got 50 employees, you know?
• 1:25:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is Yahoo Finance that started.
• 1:25:52
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:25:52
  SPEAKER_01: And same thing.
• 1:25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like they'd say, you know, can you come on like, you know, once a week?
• 1:25:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:25:56
  SPEAKER_01: Then they say, hey, can you, you know...
• 1:25:58
  SPEAKER_01: It got to the point where eventually they said, hey, can you just do a show?
• 1:26:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I ended up doing a show at 4 o'clock.
• 1:26:04
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as the market closed, we put the green screen down.
• 1:26:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I had three cameras pivoting all different areas.
• 1:26:11
  SPEAKER_01: I could get you the Statue of Liberty on one side.
• 1:26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Shipping giants, shipping magnets built this building.
• 1:26:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I had a view of the harbor.
• 1:26:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it also viewed as New York Stock Exchange.
• 1:26:19
  SPEAKER_01: It was beautiful.
• 1:26:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I was doing that.
• 1:26:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then the crash came.
• 1:26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:26:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I even, I even, my company.
• 1:26:29
  SPEAKER_01: 2000.
• 1:26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:26:30
  SPEAKER_01: My company, I went, I did a reverse takeover.
• 1:26:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I was a publicly traded company.
• 1:26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:26:34
  SPEAKER_01: On, on paper, I was like, oh, forget it.
• 1:26:37
  SPEAKER_01: And my peak, back then, my peak, I hit 275, 275 million.
• 1:26:41
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:26:41
  SPEAKER_01: I was invited to all kinds of shit.
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they were inviting me to stuff like, huh?
• 1:26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:26:47
  SPEAKER_01: You sure you want me?
• 1:26:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they saw my cash.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_01: They invited me to so much stuff.
• 1:26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, my man, I remember going to this house, the CEO from Citi.
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, golly.
• 1:27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, I got a mental block.
• 1:27:03
  SPEAKER_01: He had a big fundraiser.
• 1:27:05
  SPEAKER_01: He had a big fundraiser for the Albany School, dance school, because his wife, she loved it.
• 1:27:11
  SPEAKER_01: And they had Judith Jameson, who was the main dancer at the time, the architect.
• 1:27:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm up there with my wife, and he's like, hors d'oeuvres.
• 1:27:19
  SPEAKER_01: This is at his penthouse, right?
• 1:27:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's like chilling.
• 1:27:23
  SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden, this is when they start putting the arm in everyone.
• 1:27:26
  SPEAKER_01: So now they're going around the room, right?
• 1:27:28
  SPEAKER_01: All right, and the Rosenbergs?
• 1:27:30
  SPEAKER_01: We'll put in two million.
• 1:27:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and the Smiths?
• 1:27:34
  SPEAKER_01: Put us down for five million.
• 1:27:36
  SPEAKER_01: And they're going around the room.
• 1:27:37
  SPEAKER_01: I look at my wife.
• 1:27:37
  SPEAKER_01: We got to get this.
• 1:27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Follow me.
• 1:27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get in the dumbwaiter and get down in this one.
• 1:27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Time to go.
• 1:27:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because they got to me.
• 1:27:49
  SPEAKER_01: I've been like, hold on one second.
• 1:27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Put me down for, wait a minute.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Put me down for 3G.
• 1:27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, put me down for 3G.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was nervous as hell.
• 1:28:03
  SPEAKER_01: They were moving quick around that room.
• 1:28:05
  SPEAKER_01: That reputation was about to get a ding to it.
• 1:28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Paper wealth is amazing.
• 1:28:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's worth$270 on papers.
• 1:28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, I'm like, okay.
• 1:28:17
  SPEAKER_01: We have to go.
• 1:28:19
  SPEAKER_01: So we dipped out of that bad boy.
• 1:28:23
  SPEAKER_01: But then...
• 1:28:23
  SPEAKER_01: I got, I honestly, this is, I just, it was got things.
• 1:28:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was just too much money.
• 1:28:27
  SPEAKER_01: I was making a lot of money.
• 1:28:28
  SPEAKER_01: I was really, I drifted away from the person I was.
• 1:28:31
  SPEAKER_01: And of course we had the market crash.
• 1:28:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was a hell of a crash.
• 1:28:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we, we years of
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_02: it.
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Three, we, three years we were on the, um, I invented work from home.
• 1:28:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:28:44
  SPEAKER_01: We, we lost our office.
• 1:28:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now let me tell you.
• 1:28:49
  SPEAKER_01: So, um, I don't know why I didn't get along with whoever was running the building.
• 1:28:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we weren't paying the rent.
• 1:28:56
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, they came up to kick us out.
• 1:28:58
  SPEAKER_01: We had that one day.
• 1:29:00
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't get to check that day.
• 1:29:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm scrambling, trying to negotiate, get some money in, raise some cash.
• 1:29:07
  SPEAKER_01: So they come up with the guys in the buildings with drills.
• 1:29:10
  SPEAKER_01: And they're drilling my locks.
• 1:29:12
  SPEAKER_01: They're changing the locks.
• 1:29:13
  SPEAKER_01: And there's two marshals with them with the guns on the hoster on the hip.
• 1:29:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sending out emails to everyone in office, keep working.
• 1:29:20
  SPEAKER_01: Don't fucking stop.
• 1:29:21
  SPEAKER_01: Keep working.
• 1:29:21
  SPEAKER_01: Keep fucking working.
• 1:29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Keep working.
• 1:29:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the marshal says, you got to leave.
• 1:29:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're not leaving.
• 1:29:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, the marshal reads, you got to leave.
• 1:29:28
  SPEAKER_01: I said, give me a second, man.
• 1:29:29
  SPEAKER_01: Give me a second.
• 1:29:30
  SPEAKER_01: Don't fucking stop.
• 1:29:30
  SPEAKER_01: But people are scared.
• 1:29:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's a marshal out there, Charles.
• 1:29:35
  SPEAKER_01: You got a dude with a gun.
• 1:29:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, keep working.
• 1:29:38
  SPEAKER_01: How many people do you have in there?
• 1:29:40
  SPEAKER_01: We have about 30 people.
• 1:29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, OK.
• 1:29:42
  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking like eight or 10.
• 1:29:43
  SPEAKER_01: 30 people.
• 1:29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:45
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:29:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah.
• 1:29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Then Marshall, he came over.
• 1:29:48
  SPEAKER_01: The third time he came over, he was pissed.
• 1:29:50
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I'm not going to ask you again.
• 1:29:51
  SPEAKER_01: You have to leave now.
• 1:29:54
  SPEAKER_01: And at that moment, my COO ran in a building with the check.
• 1:29:57
  SPEAKER_01: The wire came.
• 1:29:58
  SPEAKER_02: What?
• 1:29:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:30:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was almost inconsequential because we were out of that fucker about two months later.
• 1:30:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:05
  SPEAKER_01: But we dodged the bullet that day, literally.
• 1:30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, we invented work from home.
• 1:30:10
  SPEAKER_01: I had people working from home.
• 1:30:12
  SPEAKER_01: So you kept going.
• 1:30:13
  SPEAKER_01: You just downsized it a bit.
• 1:30:15
  SPEAKER_01: We had no office.
• 1:30:15
  SPEAKER_01: I said, take the leads home.
• 1:30:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we actually invented that years ago.
• 1:30:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah.
• 1:30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:30:20
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, then things got better and better.
• 1:30:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:30:23
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 1:30:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I always thank God for that crash.
• 1:30:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because I was just, I was crazy.
• 1:30:28
  SPEAKER_01: I was losing it.
• 1:30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Changed the
• 1:30:30
  SPEAKER_02: person who you were headed
• 1:30:31
  SPEAKER_01: towards being.
• 1:30:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was too arrogant.
• 1:30:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was just, I just wasn't the person my mom raised.
• 1:30:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:30:36
  SPEAKER_01: I needed to come up and it's real bad.
• 1:30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Really bad.
• 1:30:40
  SPEAKER_01: So when did you transition full-time into over five?
• 1:30:43
  SPEAKER_01: I assume it was Fox where you went full-time into it.
• 1:30:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:30:48
  SPEAKER_01: So...
• 1:30:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think when Neil came, Neil Cabuto came over from CNBC.
• 1:30:52
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, when he went from CNBC to this thing called Fox, I thought he was crazy.
• 1:30:56
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, I'm like, my man, what is wrong with you?
• 1:30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you leaving CNBC?
• 1:31:00
  SPEAKER_01: Every bar, every restaurant you went into, everyone was in a market, cab drivers.
• 1:31:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, are you nuts?
• 1:31:09
  SPEAKER_01: He went to this thing called Fox.
• 1:31:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, okay, bless him.
• 1:31:12
  SPEAKER_01: Did you know Neil?
• 1:31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:31:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I get a call.
• 1:31:14
  SPEAKER_01: Neil wants you to do a show at that Fox thing.
• 1:31:18
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I was doing him a favor.
• 1:31:20
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:31:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 1:31:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I get there.
• 1:31:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know the building.
• 1:31:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the escalators, the first two deals were downstairs.
• 1:31:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I take the escalator downstairs.
• 1:31:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in the studio.
• 1:31:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is lit better than that was lit.
• 1:31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:31:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, oh, it was like, I'm looking at Neil.
• 1:31:33
  SPEAKER_01: The table was like missing a leg.
• 1:31:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm holding part of this shit up with my knee.
• 1:31:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I'm like trying to help.
• 1:31:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:31:39
  SPEAKER_01: The whole time I'm looking at Neil, my man, you know, you're in a mess.
• 1:31:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're in a mess up.
• 1:31:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's this movie, like this real famous scene.
• 1:31:46
  SPEAKER_01: This guy's getting interrogated.
• 1:31:47
  SPEAKER_01: This one kid said, You know you're fucked up now, right?
• 1:31:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I was looking at Neil.
• 1:31:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know you're fucked up, right?
• 1:31:52
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, you know you're fucked up.
• 1:31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Neil, you know you're fucked up.
• 1:31:57
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, we do this show.
• 1:31:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh my God, Neil blew it.
• 1:32:01
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, it didn't blow it, right?
• 1:32:02
  SPEAKER_01: But Fox started to grow.
• 1:32:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I was doing all of these networks at one point.
• 1:32:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then Fox, when they offered me a contributorship.
• 1:32:11
  SPEAKER_01: So you get paid per appearance.
• 1:32:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, so...
• 1:32:15
  SPEAKER_01: But what's really interesting about it, though, and this is a good lesson for a lot of people, even though I was good or whatever, one of the deciding factors, one of the top producers there, she said, I want to show you something.
• 1:32:30
  SPEAKER_01: So she played a recording.
• 1:32:31
  SPEAKER_01: There was one day I was supposed to be on the show.
• 1:32:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was very sick, and I called in.
• 1:32:35
  SPEAKER_01: I told them I'm feeling like crap, but I'm still going to make it.
• 1:32:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I did.
• 1:32:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that meant so much to them.
• 1:32:42
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:32:42
  SPEAKER_01: that I was reliable.
• 1:32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't matter how smart I was, that they knew no matter what I would show up.
• 1:32:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that was one of the deciding factors in making me a contributor.
• 1:32:52
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:32:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:32:53
  SPEAKER_01: So when did you get offered the full-time position?
• 1:32:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it just kept growing and growing.
• 1:32:58
  SPEAKER_01: They were like, man, it's this because I'm scrambling.
• 1:33:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, you know, I'm doing four or five hits a day.
• 1:33:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm submitting that, you know, the thing.
• 1:33:05
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, damn, my man.
• 1:33:07
  SPEAKER_01: So let's get him on a flat fee.
• 1:33:08
  SPEAKER_01: Scrambling again.
• 1:33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:33:09
  SPEAKER_01: So they gave me a flat fee and then, you know.
• 1:33:11
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't want to pay for appearance.
• 1:33:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they got rid of that paper appearance thing, man.
• 1:33:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, just whatever.
• 1:33:18
  SPEAKER_01: Just kind of negotiate it and negotiate it, whatever, you know.
• 1:33:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it just kind of, you know, kept drifting a little bit higher, a little bit higher.
• 1:33:25
  SPEAKER_01: Became a little bit more than a stipend, you know.
• 1:33:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:33:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then they launched the business network.
• 1:33:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I didn't have a show initially.
• 1:33:33
  SPEAKER_01: It was very frustrating, you know?
• 1:33:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:33:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was very frustrating.
• 1:33:37
  SPEAKER_01: Even to this day, there's still people there in the top of our management who don't appreciate what I bring to the table fully, fully.
• 1:33:43
  SPEAKER_01: They just don't, you know.
• 1:33:44
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think it is, man?
• 1:33:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:33:46
  SPEAKER_01: I see some of the people they're enamored with sometimes, and it's a look.
• 1:33:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what it is.
• 1:33:50
  SPEAKER_01: But, I mean...
• 1:33:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if you watch my show, I'm telling you, and I try to be humble, there's no show like my show on any financial channel.
• 1:33:59
  SPEAKER_01: The thought process that goes in there, connecting the dots, having fun, just the creativity.
• 1:34:06
  SPEAKER_01: The creativity is so, it's an amazing show.
• 1:34:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, I do the clips in the A block.
• 1:34:14
  SPEAKER_01: I like doing the clips.
• 1:34:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll give you an example.
• 1:34:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I was talking about small caps recently.
• 1:34:19
  SPEAKER_01: So what I love about this year is, is that the retail investor was buying when institutions were selling.
• 1:34:24
  SPEAKER_01: So they bought the lot, bought them, the dumb money bought.
• 1:34:27
  SPEAKER_01: And now I'm seeing little signs that may be small caps, the under love stocks.
• 1:34:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the small investors and small caps.
• 1:34:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a long time.
• 1:34:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know.
• 1:34:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I did this thing and I did my little spiel and I talked about, and I use underdog as my clip.
• 1:34:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:34:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:34:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason I use cartoon.
• 1:34:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:34:46
  SPEAKER_01: Old cartoon.
• 1:34:47
  SPEAKER_01: But underdog was a shoeshine.
• 1:34:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:34:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:34:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:34:49
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:34:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's true.
• 1:34:50
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the great stories on Wall Street is the legend of the shoeshine boy and Joe Kennedy.
• 1:34:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:34:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Joe Kennedy is a captain of finance.
• 1:34:58
  SPEAKER_01: He's killing it.
• 1:34:59
  SPEAKER_01: He's getting a shoeshine and a shoeshine boy looks up and starts talking about the market.
• 1:35:02
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, what do you think about so-and-so?
• 1:35:05
  SPEAKER_01: So Joe Kennedy looks down at this kid like the riffraff is in this shit now, goes upstairs, sells everything.
• 1:35:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the market crashes the next day.
• 1:35:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's the lore.
• 1:35:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's the myth.
• 1:35:17
  SPEAKER_01: That was the dumb money.
• 1:35:18
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as the dumb money wanted to buy, smart money got out and the market crashed.
• 1:35:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how long the myth has lasted.
• 1:35:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like 2008 when the waiter became the realtor.
• 1:35:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:35:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so it goes that far.
• 1:35:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so Underdog was a shoeshine boy.
• 1:35:34
  SPEAKER_01: But he ended up being a superhero too.
• 1:35:36
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why I use it.
• 1:35:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I put this work into it.
• 1:35:39
  SPEAKER_01: Man, it's so good.
• 1:35:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's so creative.
• 1:35:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I just, you know, there's a lot of things that just I try to get that I just don't get.
• 1:35:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I put my hat in the ring for stuff.
• 1:35:49
  SPEAKER_01: Just don't get it.
• 1:35:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it's very frustrating.
• 1:35:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, recently, I think you were looking for a different spot.
• 1:35:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:35:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, not different.
• 1:35:56
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to do both.
• 1:35:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, it's like I can do it.
• 1:36:00
  SPEAKER_01: I can do it.
• 1:36:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just and what's crazy about is the audience loves me.
• 1:36:04
  SPEAKER_01: They love you.
• 1:36:04
  SPEAKER_01: The audience loves me.
• 1:36:05
  SPEAKER_01: I was on a plane with a bunch of Fox talent.
• 1:36:08
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone came over to me.
• 1:36:09
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone, you know.
• 1:36:11
  SPEAKER_01: gave me, you know, five high love, you know, let's take a picture, like walk past everyone.
• 1:36:15
  SPEAKER_01: They, people do.
• 1:36:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, it's just, just somebody at the very top.
• 1:36:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was just like, you know, but it's, and it's, so it's, it's tough.
• 1:36:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's tough.
• 1:36:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's been tough to be there.
• 1:36:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, because on one hand I love doing the show.
• 1:36:30
  SPEAKER_01: The show itself, I love helping people.
• 1:36:34
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, it's really tough, though, to think maybe you just can't break through to where I think I've earned.
• 1:36:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is reverse DEI.
• 1:36:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is something, I'm killing it.
• 1:36:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm amazing.
• 1:36:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm great.
• 1:36:48
  SPEAKER_01: Treat me that way.
• 1:36:51
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about, I mean, there's man, why am I doing this?
• 1:36:54
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I'm never doing a podcast.
• 1:36:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm never doing YouTube.
• 1:36:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm never doing any of that stuff.
• 1:36:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then I started seeing what was going on, the transition, the Tucker Carlson's, the Megyn Kelly's that are leaving.
• 1:37:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know exactly what they're making, but I pretty much understand what's going on.
• 1:37:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think they're doing pretty damn well.
• 1:37:11
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of funny though.
• 1:37:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think they got picked up by Red Seat Ventures.
• 1:37:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm getting picked up by Fox again anyway.
• 1:37:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's good.
• 1:37:17
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think about this transition though of media?
• 1:37:20
  SPEAKER_01: And let me just tell you this.
• 1:37:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think, you know, the reason I started, I started with CNBC too, and I've been doing this for 15, 16 years.
• 1:37:28
  SPEAKER_01: The whole idea is let me get on there.
• 1:37:31
  SPEAKER_01: It gives you some third party validation.
• 1:37:32
  SPEAKER_01: It helps you monetize some of the things that you're, you're doing outside of there.
• 1:37:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I built a wealth management firm and I benefited a lot from that, similar to what you did.
• 1:37:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then I sold that firm.
• 1:37:41
  SPEAKER_01: When I sold that firm, someone said, you got to try this social media stuff.
• 1:37:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing Fox.
• 1:37:47
  SPEAKER_01: Let's see.
• 1:37:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not doing Instagram or any of that stuff, but I'll tell you, man, I monetized my businesses more in 12 months than I did with social media than 14 years that I did.
• 1:37:58
  SPEAKER_01: I made way more money.
• 1:38:00
  SPEAKER_01: So the proof's in the pudding, man.
• 1:38:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's where everything's going.
• 1:38:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, my daughter doesn't watch, 17 years old, she doesn't watch Fox or see, she's watching YouTube and TikTok and all the advertising dollars are going there, man.
• 1:38:13
  SPEAKER_01: If you see where these deals are going, the podcast and everything, Who's Your Daddy, Mayan, Tucker, I mean, these are big deals, man.
• 1:38:21
  SPEAKER_01: What's your thoughts about all this?
• 1:38:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll be honest with you, man.
• 1:38:24
  SPEAKER_01: I've thought about it for a long time.
• 1:38:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, two contracts ago, I was ready to go and do the podcast.
• 1:38:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then the last contract, I was this close to saying, in part because, you know, one thing about me, man, is like, you know, they wouldn't sponsor me.
• 1:38:40
  SPEAKER_01: I went somewhere.
• 1:38:41
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I don't dwell on, you know, there's something, a barrier there.
• 1:38:46
  SPEAKER_01: Go around the barrier or find a different way, right?
• 1:38:48
  SPEAKER_01: Don't sit there
• 1:38:48
  SPEAKER_02: and bitch and whine
• 1:38:49
  SPEAKER_01: about it.
• 1:38:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 1:38:49
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, and I've done enough bitching and whining that at some point, like, that door opens or, you know.
• 1:38:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've looked at this for the last two cycles of my contract.
• 1:38:59
  SPEAKER_01: I look really hard at the podcast or the YouTube thing.
• 1:39:04
  SPEAKER_01: And, again, because I'm so creative, man.
• 1:39:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I already have ways in my mind I know I want to do it.
• 1:39:10
  SPEAKER_01: I had some buddies of mine who did a thing, but they were just too early, called Jag Notes.
• 1:39:14
  SPEAKER_01: There was a company called Jag Notes.
• 1:39:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:39:16
  SPEAKER_01: And they had their own show.
• 1:39:18
  SPEAKER_01: The whole network, the whole bit on YouTube, on whatever, online.
• 1:39:22
  SPEAKER_01: I just think they were a little bit too early.
• 1:39:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that the pipes were built out fast enough.
• 1:39:27
  SPEAKER_01: Even when I was doing Yahoo Finance, I got a lot of clients from other countries because they had better fiber optics and all that stuff.
• 1:39:36
  SPEAKER_01: Americans, they couldn't get it.
• 1:39:39
  SPEAKER_01: So they were early, but what they did was amazing.
• 1:39:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was beautiful.
• 1:39:44
  SPEAKER_01: It was beautiful.
• 1:39:45
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, Fox Business took one of their anchors.
• 1:39:48
  SPEAKER_01: It was one of their first anchors, right?
• 1:39:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:39:51
  SPEAKER_01: No, from the Dag Notes.
• 1:39:52
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
• 1:39:52
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:39:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:39:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:39:54
  SPEAKER_01: Barnes.
• 1:39:55
  SPEAKER_01: Peter Barnes.
• 1:39:55
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:39:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:39:56
  SPEAKER_01: He was an anchor on their thing.
• 1:39:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it was interesting, right?
• 1:40:00
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I have ideas.
• 1:40:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I write every single night.
• 1:40:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:40:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a prodigious note taker.
• 1:40:06
  SPEAKER_01: I write to my subscribers every night, every day.
• 1:40:08
  SPEAKER_01: I study everything.
• 1:40:10
  SPEAKER_01: You should see all the things.
• 1:40:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I read everything.
• 1:40:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like I'm very creative.
• 1:40:15
  SPEAKER_01: And my goal is I'm the Pied Piper of the stock market.
• 1:40:18
  SPEAKER_01: I want retail.
• 1:40:19
  SPEAKER_01: I want individual investors to own stocks.
• 1:40:21
  SPEAKER_02: And
• 1:40:22
  SPEAKER_01: there's a way that I think they should do it.
• 1:40:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not what's being taught to them.
• 1:40:26
  SPEAKER_01: What's being taught to them keeps it wealthy.
• 1:40:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the old book, where are the customers' yachts?
• 1:40:30
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 1:40:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's got phenomenal potential.
• 1:40:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, just phenomenal potential.
• 1:40:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just I wear a lot of hats already.
• 1:40:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:40:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the one thing.
• 1:40:42
  SPEAKER_01: But it's appealing.
• 1:40:44
  SPEAKER_01: It gets more appealing every single day.
• 1:40:45
  SPEAKER_01: It does.
• 1:40:46
  SPEAKER_01: It does.
• 1:40:46
  SPEAKER_01: Every single day it gets more appealing.
• 1:40:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you say your daughter's 17.
• 1:40:49
  SPEAKER_01: My son's 27.
• 1:40:50
  SPEAKER_01: He was really the one to turn me on to it when he was like 10 years ago maybe watching Joe Button or something.
• 1:40:57
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right.
• 1:40:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, he's saying, yeah, I'm watching it with him.
• 1:40:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the first thing that really– caught my eye was just no time limit.
• 1:41:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right.
• 1:41:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I had a radio show.
• 1:41:06
  SPEAKER_01: I had a radio show at KFI.
• 1:41:08
  SPEAKER_01: And let me tell you, it was the number one station in America at the time.
• 1:41:12
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, biggest audience.
• 1:41:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so I used to go on as a guest and they offered me a show on Saturdays, a two hour show.
• 1:41:19
  SPEAKER_01: But because I've been doing so much TV, man, I was done in three minutes, five minutes.
• 1:41:23
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, all right.
• 1:41:24
  SPEAKER_01: So because that TV, you know, one minute, two minutes.
• 1:41:28
  SPEAKER_01: I
• 1:41:28
  SPEAKER_02: get
• 1:41:29
  SPEAKER_01: it, man.
• 1:41:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard.
• 1:41:29
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:41:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, they're
• 1:41:30
  SPEAKER_02: talking to my ears.
• 1:41:31
  SPEAKER_02: Shut up.
• 1:41:31
  SPEAKER_02: Hurry
• 1:41:32
  SPEAKER_01: up, bro.
• 1:41:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, OK.
• 1:41:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what do we talk about now?
• 1:41:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's a different.
• 1:41:37
  SPEAKER_01: Different skill set.
• 1:41:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's a different skill set.
• 1:41:40
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 1:41:40
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a beautiful skill set.
• 1:41:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's like.
• 1:41:43
  SPEAKER_01: But that's you though, man.
• 1:41:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think, look.
• 1:41:45
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone's reading teleprompters.
• 1:41:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think the best you is this Charles.
• 1:41:49
  SPEAKER_01: You've done the research.
• 1:41:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know the history.
• 1:41:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know what it takes.
• 1:41:53
  SPEAKER_01: You've done it yourself.
• 1:41:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's so hard to get that across in the clip.
• 1:41:57
  SPEAKER_01: Even you, it's your own show.
• 1:41:58
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have an hour.
• 1:42:00
  SPEAKER_01: You have five minutes of your own?
• 1:42:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard, man.
• 1:42:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to articulate it all.
• 1:42:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to get the right guest because I don't want the bullshitters.
• 1:42:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry.
• 1:42:11
  SPEAKER_01: I like accountability and I like people who know.
• 1:42:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't care if you agree with me or not, but you got to know, you have some sort of basis.
• 1:42:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:42:20
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, like the bookers, like, well, so-and-so is bullish.
• 1:42:23
  SPEAKER_01: The cab driver was bullish this morning.
• 1:42:25
  SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
• 1:42:27
  SPEAKER_01: You should see.
• 1:42:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I hate to say it, but I get the, you know, a lot of people, they send in their POVs.
• 1:42:32
  SPEAKER_01: We call them POVs, point of views.
• 1:42:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:42:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like they're a reporter.
• 1:42:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the market's going through a turbulent time.
• 1:42:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:42:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, no.
• 1:42:39
  SPEAKER_01: What's your opinion?
• 1:42:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 1:42:40
  SPEAKER_01: We know that.
• 1:42:41
  SPEAKER_01: How do we navigate it?
• 1:42:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like that part we got.
• 1:42:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:42:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's like...
• 1:42:45
  SPEAKER_01: But no one wants to go out on a limb, man.
• 1:42:47
  SPEAKER_01: No one wants to.
• 1:42:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't want to say nobody, but half them don't.
• 1:42:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but the thing is, though, we're not doing right by the viewer.
• 1:42:55
  SPEAKER_01: You're not helping people.
• 1:42:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 1:42:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's like put out your thoughts.
• 1:42:59
  SPEAKER_01: Put out a little bit of your thesis behind it.
• 1:43:02
  SPEAKER_01: And people will respect it because they don't expect everyone to be right.
• 1:43:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think like a Jim Cramer blew his credibility because he tries to be right.
• 1:43:09
  SPEAKER_01: Every time.
• 1:43:10
  SPEAKER_01: On Monday, he hates technology.
• 1:43:11
  SPEAKER_01: Friday, he wants to, how come you're not long technology?
• 1:43:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, didn't you tell me you hated it?
• 1:43:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:43:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I have guests like that.
• 1:43:17
  SPEAKER_01: And they want the fucking barbell.
• 1:43:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to barbell.
• 1:43:20
  SPEAKER_01: What exactly is that?
• 1:43:22
  SPEAKER_01: I like risky stocks and non-risky stocks.
• 1:43:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'll play it at all.
• 1:43:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:43:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be right or right.
• 1:43:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:43:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then you come back.
• 1:43:28
  SPEAKER_01: I told you.
• 1:43:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:43:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:43:30
  SPEAKER_01: You were half right.
• 1:43:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:43:32
  SPEAKER_01: Or some of them get a little slick.
• 1:43:34
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I get angry at the anchors for letting them get away with this one.
• 1:43:39
  SPEAKER_01: Two things they do.
• 1:43:41
  SPEAKER_01: Would you buy the dip or some shit like that?
• 1:43:44
  SPEAKER_01: Would you buy it down here?
• 1:43:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:43:46
  SPEAKER_01: Or they say sell.
• 1:43:48
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times people say, well, you should probably be selling your tech names in the strength.
• 1:43:52
  SPEAKER_01: Sell the Mag 7 at the strength.
• 1:43:53
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have a right to really say that unless you bought it.
• 1:43:56
  SPEAKER_01: Were you buying it?
• 1:43:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, you didn't like Mag 7 at$2 million.
• 1:43:59
  SPEAKER_01: telling me to sell it at 200, but you insinuate that you had it.
• 1:44:03
  SPEAKER_01: We would take profit.
• 1:44:03
  SPEAKER_01: We would, but we didn't have it.
• 1:44:05
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have any profit.
• 1:44:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:44:06
  SPEAKER_01: So you really shouldn't, you know, like they do the slick stuff.
• 1:44:09
  SPEAKER_01: I hate that slick stuff.
• 1:44:10
  SPEAKER_01: Don't get slick and act like you were, you know, like you were doing something for, and like you were right.
• 1:44:14
  SPEAKER_01: You were wrong.
• 1:44:15
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, you admit that you told people not to buy it, you know?
• 1:44:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so you were telling them to sell it since 20, it's 200.
• 1:44:22
  SPEAKER_01: Keep telling them at some point, you'll be able to come back and say, I told you it went from 2000 to 1800.
• 1:44:27
  SPEAKER_01: I was right.
• 1:44:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but so there's all those games, right?
• 1:44:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not just what I have to say.
• 1:44:32
  SPEAKER_01: I got to try to make sure I protect the viewers and get the best out of them.
• 1:44:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a grind.
• 1:44:37
  SPEAKER_01: How much control do you have over that guests that come on your show?
• 1:44:40
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is I, you know, I, I, you know, I don't let anybody on if I think they're BS or, but I can't, I try and I can't wear every hat.
• 1:44:47
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:44:47
  SPEAKER_01: So,
• 1:44:48
  SPEAKER_02: you
• 1:44:48
  SPEAKER_01: know, it's hard because people who are my bookers, they don't know anything about the market.
• 1:44:52
  SPEAKER_01: So they're working hard.
• 1:44:54
  SPEAKER_01: They're nice people.
• 1:44:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to, you know, I'm asking for more help.
• 1:44:57
  SPEAKER_01: I just need some people.
• 1:44:58
  SPEAKER_01: who love the market.
• 1:45:00
  SPEAKER_01: Just give me a couple that love, and I say love it like, You know, like...
• 1:45:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like how you felt when you first got...
• 1:45:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like if Broadcom was reporting after the close, let's book one guest on the show that day who has an opinion on it.
• 1:45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:45:12
  SPEAKER_01: To have no guests on a trillion dollar stock that's reporting after the bell, that's what we've booked.
• 1:45:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy, right?
• 1:45:18
  SPEAKER_01: Or if I'm talking about something on Monday and there's no one to...
• 1:45:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like, you know, I was really kind of passionate about that.
• 1:45:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:45:26
  SPEAKER_01: How come we don't have at least one guest to follow up?
• 1:45:28
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know, we just have to...
• 1:45:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's just bad.
• 1:45:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just bad.
• 1:45:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so it's...
• 1:45:33
  SPEAKER_01: But you can't do all...
• 1:45:34
  SPEAKER_01: You can't do all of it.
• 1:45:35
  SPEAKER_01: You can't do it all.
• 1:45:36
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:45:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I can't have you on here without asking you, okay?
• 1:45:43
  SPEAKER_01: Young, old, wherever it is.
• 1:45:44
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I'm making 60 grand a year right now.
• 1:45:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm 30 years old.
• 1:45:51
  SPEAKER_01: What do I do?
• 1:45:52
  SPEAKER_01: What's the career to have right now?
• 1:45:53
  SPEAKER_01: How am I saving?
• 1:45:54
  SPEAKER_01: What am I investing?
• 1:45:55
  SPEAKER_01: What are you telling your son right now?
• 1:45:56
  SPEAKER_01: Your son, you said, is 27 years old.
• 1:45:58
  SPEAKER_01: What's the advice for these guys?
• 1:46:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he's not making any money.
• 1:46:02
  SPEAKER_01: He's trying.
• 1:46:04
  SPEAKER_01: My son's trying to hit a grand slam.
• 1:46:06
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to discourage him, but I did the grind.
• 1:46:12
  SPEAKER_01: He wants to come out the gate hitting a grand slam.
• 1:46:16
  SPEAKER_01: So he's got some things, irons in a fire, you know.
• 1:46:19
  SPEAKER_01: He hits one of these things, it's gonna be like, you know, It will be a grand slam.
• 1:46:25
  SPEAKER_01: He's in the art world right now.
• 1:46:27
  SPEAKER_01: He understands a lot of things.
• 1:46:31
  SPEAKER_01: He's very smart.
• 1:46:32
  SPEAKER_01: Smarter than me than I was at his age.
• 1:46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Tim Symes is smarter than me.
• 1:46:37
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't have my grind though.
• 1:46:39
  SPEAKER_01: I hear most parents at my age say that about their kid.
• 1:46:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's not unique.
• 1:46:46
  SPEAKER_01: Especially people who had to come up grind their way up.
• 1:46:50
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't have that grind but He's so much more intelligent than I was at that age.
• 1:46:55
  SPEAKER_01: And even now, he speaks.
• 1:46:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I used to do when he was a kid?
• 1:46:59
  SPEAKER_01: I used to get The Economist magazine.
• 1:47:03
  SPEAKER_01: So The Economist has lost its way.
• 1:47:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's an awful magazine.
• 1:47:06
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they have some good factual stuff, and you could just ignore the author's opinion.
• 1:47:10
  SPEAKER_01: But their obituary page is amazing.
• 1:47:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 1:47:14
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever read that?
• 1:47:15
  SPEAKER_01: I
• 1:47:15
  SPEAKER_02: have.
• 1:47:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
• 1:47:16
  SPEAKER_01: yeah, yeah.
• 1:47:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I cut out the obituaries.
• 1:47:17
  SPEAKER_01: I used to cut out the obituary page and have him read it out loud.
• 1:47:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was so beautiful.
• 1:47:22
  SPEAKER_01: He speaks so...
• 1:47:24
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard him speak.
• 1:47:26
  SPEAKER_01: I have a little bit of a speech impediment to begin with, and I just don't have a great education.
• 1:47:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, he's...
• 1:47:33
  SPEAKER_01: And plus, it was good.
• 1:47:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I love history.
• 1:47:35
  SPEAKER_01: And one thing I do like about the economy is they have these guys 94 years old and they did something that really like saved humanity.
• 1:47:41
  SPEAKER_01: If they'd only died that year, they'd be famous.
• 1:47:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:47:44
  SPEAKER_01: But they lived another 40 years and no one knows who the hell they are.
• 1:47:48
  SPEAKER_01: So.
• 1:47:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, he's he's in a great position.
• 1:47:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:47:51
  SPEAKER_01: He's a nice person.
• 1:47:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he doesn't have I have a much bigger chip on my shoulder than he does.
• 1:47:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:47:56
  SPEAKER_01: He has no chip on his shoulder.
• 1:47:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that helps him.
• 1:47:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he doesn't he never sees anything in color.
• 1:48:02
  SPEAKER_01: He never thinks anything is racist or that.
• 1:48:05
  SPEAKER_01: Some parts of it I think are a little naive, but I don't want to mess with
• 1:48:11
  SPEAKER_02: them.
• 1:48:11
  SPEAKER_01: One of the great gifts my mother gave me was she grew up in Alabama.
• 1:48:17
  SPEAKER_01: They were lynching black people.
• 1:48:19
  SPEAKER_01: They grew up with no indoor plumbing.
• 1:48:23
  SPEAKER_01: I heard some pretty bad stories.
• 1:48:28
  SPEAKER_01: Just to give you an example, my grandmother...
• 1:48:30
  SPEAKER_01: Used to sleep.
• 1:48:31
  SPEAKER_01: She didn't never use the pillow.
• 1:48:32
  SPEAKER_01: She slept with her arms crossed.
• 1:48:34
  SPEAKER_01: So she could hear the Knight Riders.
• 1:48:36
  SPEAKER_01: So they grew up with some tough shit.
• 1:48:38
  SPEAKER_01: And she never ever.
• 1:48:39
  SPEAKER_01: Knight Riders
• 1:48:39
  SPEAKER_02: are people that are coming to lynch people.
• 1:48:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:48:42
  SPEAKER_01: So she.
• 1:48:43
  SPEAKER_01: My mother never talked about any of that.
• 1:48:45
  SPEAKER_01: Although on Sundays she would clean the house.
• 1:48:48
  SPEAKER_01: And play gospel music.
• 1:48:50
  SPEAKER_01: And tears would just come out of her eyes.
• 1:48:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you just had to imagine the pain.
• 1:48:54
  SPEAKER_01: But she didn't make me feel that pain.
• 1:48:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because she didn't want me to think that the world hated me.
• 1:48:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:49:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so I try my best not to mess with where my son is.
• 1:49:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like he's so optimistic.
• 1:49:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:49:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:49:08
  SPEAKER_01: He's so he believes so much.
• 1:49:10
  SPEAKER_01: And he knows that if he just, he knows, like he knows his stuff.
• 1:49:13
  SPEAKER_01: He is brilliant.
• 1:49:15
  SPEAKER_01: He's brilliant.
• 1:49:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he grew up, I took him to all the museums, but he knows, he knows these artists.
• 1:49:20
  SPEAKER_01: He knows that he, oh, he knows everything about it.
• 1:49:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm telling you, he is like a historian already.
• 1:49:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't mess with him.
• 1:49:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:49:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I just want him to come through with it.
• 1:49:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, career wise, it's so tough, right?
• 1:49:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because this AI thing, and I've read where in a few years, maybe five years or so, 60% of the jobs don't exist right now.
• 1:49:40
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't know what the hell they're doing, right?
• 1:49:42
  SPEAKER_01: We spent 10 years telling girls to code, which was almost a waste of time, except no skill is a waste, right?
• 1:49:49
  SPEAKER_01: But the job may not be any coding jobs for you.
• 1:49:53
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to be, I think the most important thing is to learn to love learning.
• 1:49:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's my advantage.
• 1:49:59
  SPEAKER_01: I love learning.
• 1:50:00
  SPEAKER_01: learning when people say he's a stock market expert i always say no
• 1:50:04
  SPEAKER_02: yeah
• 1:50:05
  SPEAKER_01: i'm a student of the market i'm a student of life i'm a i'm a student forever i am a student forever there's so much stuff out there to learn even ai can't learn at all right so um but if you love to learn then you always you'll always be positioned you'll always be positioned when the opportunity comes You know, I've had friends who said, man, you were lucky.
• 1:50:29
  SPEAKER_01: We know luck, the definition of luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
• 1:50:32
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're just always learning, always thinking, always curious, curiosity, and just, and then when these things come, either you're already prepared or you can adapt quickly, right?
• 1:50:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm, of course, a lifelong proponent of investing.
• 1:50:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't have to be the stock market.
• 1:50:53
  SPEAKER_01: I just find a way to make your money work for you.
• 1:50:56
  SPEAKER_01: Find a way to make your money work for you.
• 1:50:57
  SPEAKER_01: And just budget.
• 1:50:59
  SPEAKER_01: you know particularly young you don't have to be at every party you don't have to you know you don't need Grubhub you don't need OnlyFans you know I mean really you just they whine and complain and I just you know I just talked about my mom she grew up with no indoor plumbing whenever they tell me a bitch about how expensive it is to have kids I just and then her grandmother my grandmother was harder than that I just can't I'm sorry but it's hitting deaf
• 1:51:23
  SPEAKER_02: ears
• 1:51:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry that your OnlyFans account and your Grubhub and your Uber I'm sorry but I don't care because you don't understand how coddled you are.
• 1:51:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's the problem.
• 1:51:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's getting worse.
• 1:51:35
  SPEAKER_01: My first full year back when we lived in that apartment, every night we ate ramen noodles.
• 1:51:39
  SPEAKER_01: Every single night.
• 1:51:39
  SPEAKER_01: You buy three for a dollar.
• 1:51:41
  SPEAKER_01: Three or four for a dollar.
• 1:51:43
  SPEAKER_01: I remember 10 for a dollar, 10 cents each, 12 cents each.
• 1:51:46
  SPEAKER_01: Woolworths, whatever.
• 1:51:48
  SPEAKER_01: The whole first year I got out of Air Force, that's what we ate.
• 1:51:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's what it takes.
• 1:51:55
  SPEAKER_01: What you said, you've got to love learning.
• 1:51:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that just goes by people or whatever you tell them.
• 1:52:01
  SPEAKER_01: But you got to love learning, man.
• 1:52:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think today you've got to be excellent at something.
• 1:52:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because information is free, man.
• 1:52:09
  SPEAKER_01: You can Google it.
• 1:52:10
  SPEAKER_01: But until you're excellent like you are at something, you're not going to impact people's lives in the way that Google won't.
• 1:52:15
  SPEAKER_01: And definitely not the way AI will.
• 1:52:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's scary how good AI is getting.
• 1:52:20
  SPEAKER_01: But unless you do that, unless you learn, unless you grind, and you set it to adapt...
• 1:52:25
  SPEAKER_01: You're not going to get there.
• 1:52:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think enough kids hear that.
• 1:52:28
  SPEAKER_01: Or they'll hear the stock market.
• 1:52:30
  SPEAKER_01: The thinking has even gotten lazy, man.
• 1:52:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to get that.
• 1:52:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to understand that.
• 1:52:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's like me when I saw options.
• 1:52:36
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I had no options, though, but I'm like, shit, okay, I'm going to learn options or I'm not going to eat.
• 1:52:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to learn options.
• 1:52:43
  SPEAKER_01: Then you know what?
• 1:52:44
  SPEAKER_01: Two years later, I was an option principal for that firm.
• 1:52:46
  SPEAKER_01: I got my Series 24 because I became so damn good at options because that was my only way out.
• 1:52:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I learned, and that led to the next thing and the next thing.
• 1:52:54
  SPEAKER_01: Investing.
• 1:52:57
  SPEAKER_01: You talk a lot about stocks.
• 1:52:59
  SPEAKER_01: I talk a lot about stocks.
• 1:53:00
  SPEAKER_01: And Warren Buffett has a concentrated portfolio of eight stocks, but he tells everyone to buy the S&P.
• 1:53:05
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think about that?
• 1:53:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because Warren Buffett, what he's essentially saying is what you just said, that they're not going to put the work in to know these companies.
• 1:53:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's the
• 1:53:15
  SPEAKER_02: sad part.
• 1:53:15
  SPEAKER_01: When people work for me, my analysts, I say one thing you have to do is learn about whenever we see a stock that we like, we go back and we research the founders.
• 1:53:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because often the ethos of the founders live on with the company.
• 1:53:27
  SPEAKER_01: Warren Buffett, two papers ago, his annual letter, said that Berkshire Hathaway is going to be run the same way 100 years from now that it's run right now.
• 1:53:37
  SPEAKER_01: And these companies that sort of follow that, the ethos of their founders, find a way and they do very well.
• 1:53:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I always love to learn the founder story.
• 1:53:47
  SPEAKER_01: And those stories, I could do a movie every month, a movie on these guys that would be, people will go see.
• 1:53:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, we've had so many unsung heroes in this world, in this country.
• 1:53:59
  SPEAKER_01: Just beautiful, just amazing stories, Rob.
• 1:54:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness, right?
• 1:54:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, and then, You know, do the work into the company, find out what they do, whatever.
• 1:54:08
  SPEAKER_01: And people don't want to do that.
• 1:54:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and that's why he says by the S&P.
• 1:54:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because he knows that people don't want to do the work.
• 1:54:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why there's this thing, one of these hypotheses, the efficient market hypotheses.
• 1:54:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 1:54:22
  SPEAKER_02: yeah,
• 1:54:23
  SPEAKER_01: yeah.
• 1:54:23
  SPEAKER_01: I say it can't be.
• 1:54:24
  SPEAKER_01: It can't be efficient.
• 1:54:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I used to argue with Ben Stein about this all the time.
• 1:54:28
  SPEAKER_01: And his thing was like, well, all the information that's out there that you need to know is publicly available.
• 1:54:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 1:54:34
  SPEAKER_01: But who's read it?
• 1:54:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you think about the efficient market hypothesis, which kind of created modern portfolio theory.
• 1:54:40
  SPEAKER_01: It assumes people are rational.
• 1:54:42
  SPEAKER_01: And they're always going to make the rational decision.
• 1:54:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think we see that's not the case.
• 1:54:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:54:46
  SPEAKER_01: And part of it, though, is because they don't know.
• 1:54:47
  SPEAKER_01: They don't know.
• 1:54:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:54:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you know, if you if you if Michael Jordan in his prime and his in his prime.
• 1:54:56
  SPEAKER_01: If Chicago Bulls are losing by 12 points with two minutes left in the game and they were playing in Chicago and you had a chance to bet$1,000 to get back five, to get back even 2,000, you would do it.
• 1:55:07
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 1:55:08
  SPEAKER_02: Michael Jordan.
• 1:55:09
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:55:09
  SPEAKER_01: So you understood the fundamentals of the team.
• 1:55:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so you weren't afraid.
• 1:55:15
  SPEAKER_01: Stock goes down a few points.
• 1:55:17
  SPEAKER_01: You don't know what the hell you own.
• 1:55:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly it.
• 1:55:20
  SPEAKER_01: So you cut bait.
• 1:55:21
  SPEAKER_01: Why is it down?
• 1:55:22
  SPEAKER_01: You sell it.
• 1:55:24
  SPEAKER_01: You don't know if it's good or bad.
• 1:55:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a symbol.
• 1:55:26
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone's talking about it.
• 1:55:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's been hot.
• 1:55:27
  SPEAKER_01: It broke out.
• 1:55:29
  SPEAKER_01: I saw the chart.
• 1:55:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what Warren Buffett's talking about.
• 1:55:32
  SPEAKER_01: If people would only take the time to learn, and you only have to learn a few of these companies.
• 1:55:37
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 1:55:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then the people.
• 1:55:39
  SPEAKER_01: I always believe in people.
• 1:55:40
  SPEAKER_01: One of my best stocks in the last four years has been GE.
• 1:55:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it got hammered.
• 1:55:47
  SPEAKER_01: It got crushed.
• 1:55:49
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone wrote it off.
• 1:55:51
  SPEAKER_01: Larry Culp came over.
• 1:55:52
  SPEAKER_01: I read Larry Culp's biography.
• 1:55:55
  SPEAKER_01: I kicked myself in the ass and bought the stock.
• 1:55:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:55:59
  SPEAKER_01: Loaded up.
• 1:56:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know how much I'm up because it's three stocks now.
• 1:56:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, you know.
• 1:56:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's an important point though, man, because I do the same thing in investing.
• 1:56:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking at the CEOs.
• 1:56:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking at leadership.
• 1:56:09
  SPEAKER_01: I've got CFAs that work for me.
• 1:56:10
  SPEAKER_01: They give me all the data, right?
• 1:56:11
  SPEAKER_01: These guys are really good data people.
• 1:56:13
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, the strategy that they're putting out there, if they don't have the people to execute on it, the data doesn't mean anything.
• 1:56:18
  SPEAKER_01: The pitch deck doesn't mean anything.
• 1:56:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's the people.
• 1:56:21
  SPEAKER_01: When I started this business, I left, sold the firm.
• 1:56:24
  SPEAKER_01: My first investor, man, in this business said, you're starting something?
• 1:56:28
  SPEAKER_01: Here's a million dollars.
• 1:56:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm investing in you.
• 1:56:30
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't even know what I was going to do, man.
• 1:56:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 1:56:32
  SPEAKER_01: But that's such an important part.
• 1:56:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I'm trying to tell people.
• 1:56:35
  SPEAKER_01: Back to your point of learning.
• 1:56:36
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to become excellent.
• 1:56:37
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to become passionate.
• 1:56:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you're that person who's excellent and passionate, people are going to believe in you, invest in you.
• 1:56:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's all I did, man.
• 1:56:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not that smart of a person.
• 1:56:44
  SPEAKER_01: I just grinded.
• 1:56:45
  SPEAKER_01: I learned.
• 1:56:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I was honest with people.
• 1:56:47
  SPEAKER_01: I under-promised, over-delivered.
• 1:56:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're doing the same thing all the time.
• 1:56:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's a culture.
• 1:56:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's a culture.
• 1:56:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was Michael Lewis.
• 1:56:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was Michael Lewis who wrote the new, new thing.
• 1:57:00
  SPEAKER_01: So Michael Lewis...
• 1:57:02
  SPEAKER_01: Or who's the other?
• 1:57:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's another guy.
• 1:57:03
  SPEAKER_01: It might be him, though.
• 1:57:05
  SPEAKER_01: They both write these books, Wall Street books or whatever.
• 1:57:08
  SPEAKER_01: So he was doing a book on, I hate that I'm having all these mental blocks.
• 1:57:13
  SPEAKER_01: This guy started three separate billion dollar companies.
• 1:57:17
  SPEAKER_01: Three separate billion dollar companies.
• 1:57:18
  SPEAKER_01: So he's writing a book and he's following them around.
• 1:57:21
  SPEAKER_01: So he created three businesses that turned into a billion dollar ride, which is almost unheard of.
• 1:57:25
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:57:25
  SPEAKER_01: So he's following them around.
• 1:57:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so one place, there's this guy from India with him.
• 1:57:31
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, you know, sort of like a right hand man.
• 1:57:34
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, you know, can I have permission?
• 1:57:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, do you mind if I interviewed him?
• 1:57:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the guy said no.
• 1:57:39
  SPEAKER_01: So so he's talking and he's telling a story about being from this is in the new new thing.
• 1:57:46
  SPEAKER_01: OK, this is he's telling a story about he lived in rural India, rural India.
• 1:57:51
  SPEAKER_01: His city, his cousin was from the big city, a little bit older than him.
• 1:57:54
  SPEAKER_01: So she came to visit.
• 1:57:56
  SPEAKER_01: He came home one day, and she's getting all dolled up, right?
• 1:57:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now, she's beautiful.
• 1:58:00
  SPEAKER_01: She's the finest babe in the whole joint, right?
• 1:58:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know.
• 1:58:03
  SPEAKER_01: So she's getting all dolled up.
• 1:58:04
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, oh, what's going on?
• 1:58:05
  SPEAKER_01: She says, I have a date.
• 1:58:07
  SPEAKER_01: So he says, well, who?
• 1:58:08
  SPEAKER_01: And when she told him, he's like, man, he's like the ugliest guy in the village.
• 1:58:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know what she said?
• 1:58:13
  SPEAKER_01: He's the smartest.
• 1:58:14
  SPEAKER_01: He's also the smartest.
• 1:58:17
  SPEAKER_01: Look it around.
• 1:58:18
  SPEAKER_01: Look how many Indians are CEOs.
• 1:58:20
  SPEAKER_01: First it was tech companies.
• 1:58:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's Pepsi.
• 1:58:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's FedEx.
• 1:58:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:58:26
  SPEAKER_01: A culture.
• 1:58:27
  SPEAKER_01: A culture.
• 1:58:29
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have it.
• 1:58:31
  SPEAKER_01: A culture of excellence.
• 1:58:33
  SPEAKER_01: A culture of the smartest guy getting the prettiest girl.
• 1:58:37
  SPEAKER_01: Not the guy who can dunk the basketball.
• 1:58:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's a cultural thing.
• 1:58:42
  SPEAKER_01: We could pick that up.
• 1:58:43
  SPEAKER_01: We need to find ways to pick that kind of stuff up.
• 1:58:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so all of that begins at the very beginning, expectations.
• 1:58:51
  SPEAKER_01: But we live in a society where expectations are lower and lower and lower.
• 1:58:55
  SPEAKER_01: I agree, man.
• 1:58:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think at the end of the day, like this is the greatest country in the world, man.
• 1:59:00
  SPEAKER_01: I've studied in India.
• 1:59:01
  SPEAKER_01: I've studied in China.
• 1:59:03
  SPEAKER_01: You get to see what poverty really is.
• 1:59:05
  SPEAKER_01: You get to see if you're born poor, you stay poor.
• 1:59:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:59:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like that has no bearing on who you're going to be now in life.
• 1:59:11
  SPEAKER_01: But like you said, the culture, the mindset, man, people like your mom stepping up, people like a police officer for me, telling people they can't believe in my game.
• 1:59:17
  SPEAKER_01: But then importantly, you believe in that.
• 1:59:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:59:20
  SPEAKER_01: So what's next for Charles, man?
• 1:59:21
  SPEAKER_01: Where's Charles?
• 1:59:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, man.
• 1:59:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:59:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I feel good, though.
• 1:59:27
  SPEAKER_01: I feel good.
• 1:59:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm working out.
• 1:59:29
  SPEAKER_01: You look good.
• 1:59:30
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to say, man.
• 1:59:31
  SPEAKER_01: I feel good.
• 1:59:32
  SPEAKER_01: I never get on the scale, but my tailor.
• 1:59:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's all.
• 1:59:35
  SPEAKER_01: The scale doesn't mean anything.
• 1:59:37
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, oh, man, he's blown away.
• 1:59:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I bought a thing two Februaries ago.
• 1:59:41
  SPEAKER_01: And there's also all the free crap at Fox.
• 1:59:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's been that same year.
• 1:59:45
  SPEAKER_01: All the crap food?
• 1:59:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:59:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't touch that.
• 1:59:47
  SPEAKER_01: I can't.
• 1:59:48
  SPEAKER_01: My diet's still a little so-so.
• 1:59:49
  SPEAKER_01: But, I mean, I'm in there, man.
• 1:59:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm pumping my ass off, man.
• 1:59:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:59:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm hitting the weights four or five days a week.
• 1:59:55
  SPEAKER_01: I feel good.
• 1:59:58
  SPEAKER_01: I feel good.
• 1:59:59
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, I want to find a way to help people and education.
• 2:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I was on the board of a charter school in the South Bronx for a while.
• 2:00:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that's now this one area is now the poorest congressional district.
• 2:00:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this part of the South Bronx.
• 2:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: And over half the kids are first-time immigrants.
• 2:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of them from Africa.
• 2:00:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was hell the first day, man.
• 2:00:23
  SPEAKER_01: I go out there to help.
• 2:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to read these names.
• 2:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: So boom-ba-bop.
• 2:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: Huh?
• 2:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then the thing would bug me up.
• 2:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: They'd be like, no, that's Fred.
• 2:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, how the hell did you get Fred?
• 2:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: Ain't an F in no word.
• 2:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Fred, come on in, babe.
• 2:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like, what the hell?
• 2:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:00:37
  SPEAKER_01: What's going on here?
• 2:00:37
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, and I loved it, but too many liberals.
• 2:00:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah,
• 2:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: yeah.
• 2:00:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you, their expectations for these black kids are so low.
• 2:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm saying?
• 2:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: When you say that, it's not a political statement, man.
• 2:00:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's just people...
• 2:00:51
  SPEAKER_01: When you're saying, look, you just don't believe in the power of these kids.
• 2:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: They don't.
• 2:00:54
  SPEAKER_01: They did not believe in these kids.
• 2:00:55
  SPEAKER_01: They did not believe in these kids.
• 2:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: And everything was watered down.
• 2:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: And like, you know, no, they have to have the toughest curriculum out the gate.
• 2:01:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, you just, you don't think they can do it.
• 2:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's the truth.
• 2:01:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:01:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so I stopped doing that.
• 2:01:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on a board of the Harlem Boys and Girls Club now.
• 2:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's, I don't know.
• 2:01:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always going to help them, you know, because when I got to New York, they helped me.
• 2:01:18
  SPEAKER_01: They were
• 2:01:19
  SPEAKER_02: there for you.
• 2:01:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I played on their football team.
• 2:01:21
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, long story short, somehow someone sent me an email a few years ago, about four years, five years ago.
• 2:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they were raising money and I sent some money in.
• 2:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so some woman called me up and she was crying.
• 2:01:33
  SPEAKER_01: She said it was the biggest check they ever got.
• 2:01:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so then I guess the people who were running it didn't realize I actually used to go there and used to be on the football team.
• 2:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: And they found these pictures of me and my brothers and all that.
• 2:01:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm on the board, but it's tough.
• 2:01:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's a tough one, man.
• 2:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: Anything in New York City is going to be tough.
• 2:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 2:01:53
  SPEAKER_02: politics
• 2:01:54
  SPEAKER_01: are tough there.
• 2:01:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's just, again, just...
• 2:01:56
  SPEAKER_02: So
• 2:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: I got ideas.
• 2:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: So eventually I want to do something educational-wise.
• 2:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: I have some ideas that I want to do educational-wise.
• 2:02:06
  SPEAKER_01: A few years ago I went to lunch at one of the Koch brothers, and I pitched them because I wanted to raise money for it, but they didn't help me out.
• 2:02:14
  SPEAKER_01: But I got some ideas that I think are going to be quasi-revolutionary on that front because that's my ultimate.
• 2:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to help these kids, man.
• 2:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it's all about just I was lucky enough.
• 2:02:26
  SPEAKER_01: that by the time we moved to Harlem, I knew enough about who I was.
• 2:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I never thought being smart was being white.
• 2:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: I never thought reading was a waste of time.
• 2:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: My favorite topic was social studies.
• 2:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I had enough in me by 13 that I couldn't be deterred.
• 2:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: I got to find a way to help these kids so that at some point they could go on their own and not be deterred.
• 2:02:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, look, man, I think you're doing an amazing job.
• 2:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: And again, look, as a kid who grew up in the streets, same thing, man, no running water, electricity turned out.
• 2:03:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I was ever in more than one school one year in a row, eviction to eviction.
• 2:03:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sitting here now, man, like you grew up, I'm sitting here now with Charles Payne and just...
• 2:03:16
  SPEAKER_01: By the grace of God, man, one relationship led to another, to another, to another.
• 2:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I'm here right now.
• 2:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know why you agreed.
• 2:03:23
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know each other that well.
• 2:03:25
  SPEAKER_01: Why you flew out here on a Saturday.
• 2:03:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was going to launch on July 4th because I think it's a pretty impressive day.
• 2:03:31
  SPEAKER_01: But this is the day before Father's Day.
• 2:03:33
  SPEAKER_01: You got kids.
• 2:03:35
  SPEAKER_01: You took time to come out here and invest in me, man.
• 2:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate that.
• 2:03:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's something special about you, man.
• 2:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate that, man.
• 2:03:41
  SPEAKER_01: I see something in you.
• 2:03:43
  SPEAKER_01: I really do.
• 2:03:44
  SPEAKER_01: You're a good man.
• 2:03:46
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate it, man.
• 2:03:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're going to end it there.
• 2:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 2:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 2:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:03:52
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, man.
• 2:03:52
  SPEAKER_01: You got it.