Latest / Low to Grow / Billion-Dollar Mogul Ari Rastegar on Real Estate, Immigrant Hustle and Language as Power

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Billion-Dollar Mogul Ari Rastegar on Real Estate, Immigrant Hustle and Language as Power · Low to Grow

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Ari Rastaga is one of the most influential voices in Texas real
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estate. The dividends that are paid are
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so exponential, are so mind blowing that it'll enhance every
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single part of this experience of being a human being.
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His work has been featured everywhere from Forbes to the
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Wall Street Journal. Through bunch of dumb stuff, I
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lost the money. I had it in cash and I lost it.
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Well that was 100% of my net worth.
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So I went to 0. Measuring low state or someone's
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trauma against someone else's. I think it's.
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Quick note before we start, if you have enjoyed this podcast
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and want to support our incredible guests, please follow
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Low to grow podcast on Instagram and TikTok.
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Welcome to Low to grow, the podcast transforming life's
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toughest moments into opportunity for growth.
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I'm Annie, a folks on the 30 technology founder who's
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entrepreneurship journey brand parallel to a mental health
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awakening. In every episode, I sit down
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with inspiring individuals and delve into how they manage to
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turn their personal or professional challenges into
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opportunities for growth. If you're facing uncertainty in
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your life, feeling down, or simply need a kick of
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inspiration to keep moving forward, this is your space over
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honest and uplifting conversations that you will want
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to hear. It follows so you never miss an
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episode and let's dive in. Today I have the pleasure of
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sitting down with someone that many called the Oracle of
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Austin. Ari Rastika is one of the most
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influential voices in Texas real estate.
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He is a visionary known for turning resilience into a true
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competitive edge. Ari is a Texas native with a law
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degree from Saint Mary's and he founded Rastaga Property Company
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in 2015 and has since built a remarkably diverse portfolio
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from multifamily and self storage to a 600,000 square foot
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industrial space near Tesla's Giga factory.
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Ari is the author of The Gift of Failure and his work has been
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featured everywhere from Forbes to the Wall Street Journal.
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Ari, welcome to Lloydroy. Who do you want to be listening
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to our conversation today? I would like anybody that has a
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dream, that has a goal, that is looking to grow, that is looking
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to evolve, that's looking to stay curious and looking to do
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something that is going to make some kind of impact in the world
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in a positive way. Wonderful, Ari, where does your
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story start? Well, my, my story, I guess
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started on April 6th, 1982 at 9:27 AM when I was born in
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Austin, TX. And my journey has taken me
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through various places across the United States and for
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education for a couple different community colleges,
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undergraduate university, a study abroad in Mexico, law
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school in San Antonio, many, many years in New York City
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after law school and made this kind of, you know, this journey
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of this little squiggly path all the way back here to Austin, TX
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where I own and operate our real estate private equity firm.
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You described just there the squiggly path.
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What actually took you from someone who was at law school to
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someone who runs a real estate empire?
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Well, it, I, I wish I could tell you it was completely, it was
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completely planned and it was, it was my objective all.
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I don't think it really was. But I can tell you while I was
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in law school, I borrowed about 3500 bucks to buy a single
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family lot to build a house while I was in law school.
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And that really gave me the, gave me something tangible to
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understand what it could be like to be a real estate investor.
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I had a $80,000 interim construction loan to build the
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house. And we ended up selling it, you
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know, for $115,000 around 2007, right before the, the great
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financial crisis kind of, you know, shook the fibers of the
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financial world. And all of the types of loans
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and the types of pricing and the, the demand that existed
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during that area came to a screeching halt.
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And so I practiced law for, for a couple years and that took me
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on a journey into the entertainment business and very
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quickly running a very large entertainment business doing
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very large events for both the David Guetta, the Black Eyed
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Peas, Snoop Dogg, you know, very, very large companies
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working with corporate sponsors like Sports Illustrated.
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All of a sudden ice Storm and Legionnaires Disease through the
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unthinkable into that into that business, which immediately kind
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of brought me back into the real estate side of the business, but
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this time at the commercial real estate level this time and with
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operators that were investing all across the United States.
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And I went to my network that I built through blocking and
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tackling by sitting up at the bar at A, at an Italian
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restaurant in New York City, getting to know the bartender,
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getting to know wealthy people, sitting at the bar and offering
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them access to the types of projects that I knew through
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various operators that were experts in multifamily, experts
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in self storage, various repositionings and, and through
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those relationships, I was able to provide my growing investor
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base to access to deals that they didn't have an opportunity
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to be a part of, which gave me the ability to not take as much
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risk, which AI didn't really know how to run a real estate
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company or investment company at the time.
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But I knew the people that were running these deals and I
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trusted them. I was able to do my homework and
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kind of take the money from this hand into an LLC and then put it
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in these deals. And once those deals started to
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monetize, I started to think that, oh, maybe I could, I could
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be a developer also. I could start to find these
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deals on my own. And one thing led to another.
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And now we've invested in 38 cities, 13 states, seven
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different asset classes. Our investors are public pension
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plans, insurance companies, firefighters.
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We have a very large book of accredited investors.
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And it's very exciting to see something go from just a piece
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of land to now in elementary school and, you know, kids
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coming back and forth out of it and seeing lots developed and
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seeing industrial facilities be built.
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It's a, it's really an invigorating feeling to know
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that you can, you know, take a part in having something that
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starts in your mind that ends up on a blueprint and then ends up
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being something that you can actually walk into and touch and
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feel. So that's an incredible story
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and you're evidently someone who is amazingly successful.
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When I was doing some research and listening to some of your
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previous podcasts, I noticed that you mentioned 2 words,
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success versus fulfillment. How are they different for you?
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And also, do you feel fulfilled at the moment?
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Thank you for asking. Success and fulfillment in my
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experience, and I think the only thing I've gotten really good at
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at this point in my life is failing and, and failing
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properly. I think it's also very much a
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art and a science, not unlike success and fulfillment.
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So success, I've come to realize is really a scientific method.
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And I'll give you an example. So when you, when you went to
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Oxford, I know one of the, you know, most prestigious
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universities in the world, you know, you started out, it was
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your first year, you got a syllabus and you looked at that,
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you saw this major, it was, you know, four years, five years in
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the future. And they gave you a syllabus,
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they gave you an outline and said, OK, here's the
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prerequisites that you need to take.
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Here's the courses you'll take in your first year, and you pass
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those courses. Here's the courses you would
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take in your second year. Here's the courses you would
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take in your 3rd, 4th, and then by the end of that, you would
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then have your first degree, so to speak, and you would have
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been very successful. Quite frankly, having this first
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degree and having a finishing your college education.
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I think just about anybody in the world would agree that that
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would be a very successful attribute to add to your CV or
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add to your to your resume. I give that example because
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that's a scientific approach. You selected something, you had
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a desire, they laid out a curriculum, it was 1 + 2 + 3,
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and then you received this degree at the end of it.
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That to me is a sign of success. Fulfillment is very much an art.
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Fulfillment is how you feel about that success.
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Your level of maybe your worthiness, your level of
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empathy, your level of love, your level of gratitude.
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And a lot of times these emotional sensations that you
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feel can be the journey to get there.
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You don't have a syllabus. You know, there is certain core
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tools maybe you can use. I've used meditation in my life
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and I very often said that my work is my worship and is my way
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of contributing back to something.
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But ultimately, I think a lot of people that go after wealth or
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go after massive success are actually in search of
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fulfillment. They run 2 parallel paths and
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can definitely be intertwined. But you know, one of my mentors
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for many years, Mr. Tony Robbins, you know, said
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something that resonated with me so deeply.
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I've done so many of his seminars, whether Unleash the
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Power Within or Date with Destiny.
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I did 1A virtual seminar, you know, about a month ago.
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So the path to learning never stops.
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But he said something that really shook me to my core.
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And that is success without fulfillment is the ultimate
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failure. And it kind of hit me to think,
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wow, it's almost a cliche to see very wealthy people that have
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broken families or they're just miserable.
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They have health problems. And you think, Oh my gosh, you
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have all this money, you have all this notoriety, you have all
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this respect from your peers, but you're miserable.
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And that didn't seem very fun to me.
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That didn't seem like the life that I wanted to live.
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So I, I started on a quest about 10 years ago, not only to build
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something successful, something that I could be, you know, very
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proud of, to do something for our investors that could build
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their retirements and create the means or the resources that
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would allow them to hopefully follow their dreams in
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retirement and, and be able to have these meaningful,
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fulfilling moments with their families or whatever the things
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that they really love to do. Putting them side by side and
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figuring out, OK, what could be successful?
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What can that look like? What can I measure?
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And then what are the acts and behaviors I can do that would
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create a beautiful life, create a meaningful life.
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And I find that they go one in the same.
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Because in my experience, one of the words that encapsulates
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fulfillment is progress. And if you're making progress
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and you can look back at your journey, whether it's an inch,
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whether it's a mile, and you are doing somewhere that's
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forward-looking, progress tends to insinuate purpose.
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And when you have purpose, purpose, something that is
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beyond you, something beyond just something that is about you
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personally, I think that creates a field or that creates an
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outlook that creates a perspective that can house more
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of those positive, elevated emotions.
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And by pairing work with progress and something that
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you're doing for your customers, having an insatiable,
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insatiable, relentless drive to serve your customer, to serve
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your community, to create something very meaningful.
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And useful and you pair that with empathy, with gratitude and
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these elevated emotions it creates almost like a tapestry,
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so to speak, of both blending success and fulfillment.
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And I think those together start to create a very meaningful
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life. And I'm very much early in my
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journey on that process. Definitely fall out of that into
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some of those lower base emotions and go back into some
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of the higher elevated ones. And I find for me, it's like a
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seesaw, you know, back and forth.
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But it's definitely a practice and it's definitely something
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that needs to be worked on every day.
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And when you pair it, as I said, with something that's really
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going to serve millions and millions of people, I think that
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starts to at least get us closer to what the formula could be.
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And can I ask, when was the last time that you felt really
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fulfilled? Yesterday.
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And what were you doing then? I was doing a meditation that I
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learned from Doctor Joe Dispenza and anybody that's watching
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this, certainly entrepreneurs that are so riddled with stress,
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and I've been there. Anybody that knows me knows I
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have a relentless work ethic. It's in my DNAI mean, there's
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been weeks that I didn't leave my office.
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I slept under my desk. There was times that, you know,
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I was making $2.86 an hour delivering pizzas to try to get
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through school, even after law school, trying to play student
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loans. I had an apartment and I was
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literally sleeping on the floor because I had no furniture.
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I've been through those places. A very high stress moments and
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cortisol can be very physiological as well as it can
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be emotional. And I found that meditation work
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has been one of the greatest, greatest tools, for lack of a
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better term, to make stress more coherent and be able to make you
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more productive, more efficient, creating more equanimity so that
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you can be more clear headed, that you can make better
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decisions, not only more strategic and intelligent, but
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also more ethical in the way that you, you know, you go about
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life. There's no way for me to
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recommend meditation more to any of your listeners.
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Anything that you're doing in this life with all these
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different stimuluses that are flying at your head, meditation
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will find a way for you to to calm your mind in such a way.
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Because meditation is preparation for activity.
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It's not about just zoning out and bumming out on the couch.
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I think of it as like an arrow that you're pulling back before
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you fire off. So you it's preparing your
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nervous system, preparing your mind to go in there with that
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incredible laser focus work ethic that all entrepreneurs
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need to have to become successful.
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And yesterday I spent many, many hours doing very particular
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meditations around the energy centers of my body.
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The Indian tradition is called it chakras.
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Doctor Joe has called them energy centers.
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This is we've known about this for 10,000 years.
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Every major culture in the world has talked about them in some
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capacity. Your 3 lower energy centers have
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to do with survival. Then you move into your heart,
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you move into your throat, you move into your mind.
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And now what Doctor Joe has done that's so beautiful is he
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started to measure them with modern tools.
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So it's not just some woo woo concept where Oh my energy
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centers, I'm going to go on some go out to the Himalayas.
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And this is something that we can truly see the field.
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Every living Organism has a field.
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And now we know with our thoughts and our mind, we can
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start to impact those things. There's been thousands and
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thousands and thousands of testimonials of people that have
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used this type of meditation work to create the life of their
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dreams, to heal illnesses. And now science has become the
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language of mysticism. And yesterday I found myself
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falling into some stress, worrying about certain things,
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looking too much in the future, trying to control the
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uncontrollable. And I spent some time working on
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those lower energy centers, keeping my eyes closed, bringing
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awareness to them, drawing up elevated emotions of gratitude
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and love and optimism. And I physically felt it
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changed. I felt my state changed.
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I came out of it, I felt great. I went back to the work that I
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had to do. I spent several hours working as
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well and it became much, much more enjoyable and more
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productive and I started to see the pieces fall into place.
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I really like how you brought that up actually.
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And to me, as someone who is just building in the current
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climate, I do see an increasing conversions of mind and body and
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spirit in popular culture. And also what you were
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describing there about using meditation as a tool to calm
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you, to prepare you, to give you the energy to then tackle other
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challenges. Completely appreciate that.
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I think when I was at university, I could not do yoga
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or meditate and I found it super boring.
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Then after a few years of creating the startup, I relished
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it and I realized that it strengthened me as well.
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So now it's something that I do as part of my daily practice.
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I think from the way that you were talking, Ari, you're
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obviously someone who is a successful entrepreneur and
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entrepreneurship is similar to doing an extreme sport.
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There's a lot of bodily needs that's needed and as a mental
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energy and strength and barriers that's needed in the work that
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you do and how you can talk about failure, you also talk
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about resilience. Would you be able to share what
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the lowest point in your life has been and how you were able
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to get yourself out of that dark mental situation?
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Yeah, I find that the more that you grow, the more your
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challenges grow. And so in various low points in
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my life, I'll give you an example.
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You know, one time when I was delivering pizzas in college, I
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had $300 and threw a bunch of dumb stuff.
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I lost the money. I had it in cash and I lost it.
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Well, that was 100% of my net worth, so I went to 0.
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That was a pretty low moment. But in hindsight, as I've gotten
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bigger and there's more zeros and more commas, $300, losing
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$300 today might not impact my net worth as as dramatically as
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it did that time. But the point is measuring low
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states or measuring someone's sadness or someone's trauma
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against someone else's, I think it's cruelty, I think and also
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measuring your own low point, your own, you know, your own
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dark times against the dark times of that other person that
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you were. That's evolved.
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The college student, then the law student, then the
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entrepreneur in the first startup versus this, this person
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today. I think measuring them or
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comparing them is not as productive as talking about just
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the nature of what it means to be at a dark point and have that
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dark night of the soul. And what I've come to believe at
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this point in my life is that problems are the gifts that we
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grow from. And I'm not saying that's
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necessarily an enjoyable process per SE, but my perspective about
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the dark times has changed dramatically where I have an
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ability now to be more introspective, which only took
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me, you know, 40 years art to figure out what that means.
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So it's certainly not an overnight path, but I can tell
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you from an investment standpoint, from a real estate
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standpoint, the past several years have been very difficult.
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I mean, you had a global pandemic, which shuttered so
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much of the real estate business, shuttered a lot of the
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global markets. Then you have interest rates
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spike 500 basis points, which is, you know, 5% overnight on a
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floating rate loan. And you know, cities like Austin
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that are obviously incredible, incredible cities for growth,
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have this massive influx of people during COVID and then
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people started to leave. And so these types of stresses
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that come and the cycles of real estate, which we've experienced
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the last few years posed a lot of challenges.
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We had to work out different loans.
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We had to talk with investors, we had to postpone developments.
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And all of these things together start to impact your own
18:50
identity, your own self-image, as well as having very
18:53
uncomfortable conversations where you talk to people and
18:56
said, hey, we're going to have this thing built.
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This thing is going to happen here, but it's going to take a
19:00
little longer than we thought. And those types of things, when
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you're an entrepreneur, your identity, your own self worth is
19:07
so tied to your business because your business is an extension of
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you. And I think the greatest
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businesses in the world started with so much heart center and so
19:15
much of A desire to grow and give something to the world.
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That piece of Walt Disney lives in every Disney movie still to
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this day. I think he's frozen in a cryo
19:24
chamber somewhere. But arguably he's dead, but his
19:28
heart still, you know, still lives in all the joy and
19:31
happiness we see on young kids that have no idea, you know, who
19:34
Walt Disney is or you pair wear a pair of Jordan tennis shoes
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the way that you feel like you can still, you know, you can
19:39
still fly through the air. I talked to young kids that are,
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you know, friends with my oldest daughter and you know, my, you
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know, my son who's 10 years old and they don't even know who
19:48
Michael Jordan is. They just think Jordans are cool
19:50
shoes, which is which is a funny change where that heart ends up
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staying, staying in those products.
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So I think that coming to terms with these stressors and coming
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to terms with the world feeling like it's falling on you.
20:03
And you see this with every great entrepreneur.
20:05
Tesla was almost bankrupt that they hadn't got a government
20:08
contract literally at 4:00 PM on a Friday was going to zero.
20:11
And then all of a sudden it. Turns the other way.
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And as entrepreneurs, the more zeros, the more commas.
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You know, it's like the old biggie, you know, Biggie Smalls.
20:20
More money, more problems. And I've come to realize one
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thing about doing billions of dollars worth of deals or being
20:27
involved in billions of dollars worth of deals is billions
20:30
starts with bills. And until you start to manage
20:34
and synthesize those things, you start to let stress govern your
20:39
decisions. And know when stress is
20:41
governing your decisions, that means fear is governing your
20:43
most of your decisions. And I've come to find that fear
20:46
in some instances is actually good.
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You know, when I'm scared, my senses are heightened.
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I can make snap decisions, I can react very, very quickly.
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But no Organism can operate and live long when they're at a high
21:00
stress state. None Organism on this earth,
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they're in a stress state for too long, they die.
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And humans are no different. We're just, you know, we are an
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Organism at our very core. So learning how to use stress
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and using survival to react very quickly and using those cortisol
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spikes to do something if there's an imminent danger.
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But we need to come to learn that a text message doesn't mean
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a lion is attacking us or, you know, a bad comment about you on
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a social media post doesn't mean that somebody's trying to stab
21:27
you in the throat, literally. And coming to weigh those things
21:32
and learned how to develop the tools to deal with those
21:34
stressors so we can make even better decisions.
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I'm curious, how are you teaching your kids about
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failure? I'm glad you asked that
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question. My father, when I was about 13
21:46
or 14 years old, gave me the book Think and Grow Rich, and it
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was one of the most impactful moments of my entire life.
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And last night actually, I started reading Think and Grow
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Rich, the kids version with my 10 year old son.
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And I will remember that moment for the rest of my life.
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We were, we got on FaceTime and you know, he read about 10 or 15
22:06
pages on his own. He's an excellent reader.
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He's absolutely brilliant, way smarter than I was at that age,
22:10
which was not saying much, but but he read it.
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And then we went through and read the preface together, read
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the, the, the biography on the short biography about Napoleon
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Hill. We started to read the table of
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contents. And it's a very impactful moment
22:24
where I can start to teach them some of these things because
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with children all so I'm not an expert in in kids by any stretch
22:31
of the imagination. Being a parent is probably the
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most difficult thing I've ever endeavored to do in my life.
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Starting to read the introduction with my son and
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think and grow rich and starting to talk with him and be able to
22:42
pass down with my father that great gift my father gave to me
22:45
a little bit older than he was. But I think Kingston is much
22:48
more mature than I was at that age and is able to digest it
22:52
better. But they have seen me have
22:55
vision boards on my walls since their youngest ages.
22:58
You've seen me do the emotional primary exercises with Tony
23:01
Robbins. They've heard me seen my goals
23:04
being written out. So they've, you know, they've
23:06
seen this type of behavior, this emotional fitness behavior for
23:11
most of their lives. And when the book came out, you
23:13
know, my kids read it. They saw it.
23:14
And in fact, I wrote it at a 7th or 8th grade reading level with
23:18
the hope that they could read it at the ages when it came out and
23:21
be able to. I can share some of that
23:23
experience with them. And my oldest daughter,
23:25
Victoria, she's 13 years old now.
23:27
And, you know, being a 13 year old is, you know, is is is not
23:31
easy stuff. You know, coming to terms of all
23:34
the different things, all the implications that means.
23:36
And I think a lot of times in this social media era, being a
23:39
young lady is especially difficult, not undermining the
23:43
the journey of the gentleman out there, but there's a lot out
23:46
there that that requires navigating, requires
23:49
sensitivity, and I think requires this, this practice to
23:52
figure out how to way to deal with these tools to deal with
23:55
the stressors and that come along in our lives.
23:57
So, and I think the basics are always applicable no matter
24:00
what's happening or what's changing in this world.
24:03
You know, fundamentals win championships, you know, when
24:05
we're looking at deals, other certain metrics that we look at
24:08
in terms of the location of it, the population growth, the, the
24:12
financial metrics, the leverage, the debt you use, the interest
24:15
rates that you use, the way that you calculate the exit
24:18
opportunities. So many of these fundamental
24:21
things are applicable in any type of thing.
24:24
But the end of the day, I'm sure there's a lot of people that
24:27
went to certain business schools or have expertise in finance
24:30
and, and things that can explain to you the particulars of maybe
24:33
the, the, the, the formal business side of what it means
24:37
to be an entrepreneur. But for me, my focus, my life
24:40
work has been around around the other intangibles that go into
24:44
building resilience, that go into building grit, that go to
24:47
build the emotional fortitude that it takes to actually show
24:51
up every day. And your best self to create a
24:53
product that's so meaningful that you can touch millions or
24:56
hopefully billions of lives. How did you come to value the
25:00
importance of that of all the intangibles if their emotional
25:03
health and the emotional resilience and how important
25:06
matters to business success? Desperation, being miserable,
25:11
feeling awful, feeling angry, feeling sad, feeling entitled,
25:16
feeling inadequate, and at one point those feelings, you have
25:19
to either take accountability, take total responsibility for
25:22
your life because you realize that one day no one's coming to
25:25
save you. As Michael Jackson would say,
25:27
it's starting with the man in the mirror or starting with the,
25:30
you know, with the lady in the mirror.
25:32
You know it's you versus you. You know, this is A1V1V1 game.
25:35
This is an inward game. So much of life is about
25:38
psychology more than anything. Marketing is about psychology.
25:42
Sales is about psychology. Understand your customers about
25:45
psychology. Most importantly is getting to
25:47
know the demons that are in your head by their first name.
25:50
So you know your own triggers, you know your own insecurities.
25:54
And once you start to learn how to manage those things, you can
25:57
become so wildly efficient in all of your in depth.
26:01
And for me, it was going through that stuff and I could give you
26:03
a sob story about my childhood, my upbringing, and which we all
26:07
have. And there's always somebody that
26:08
has a harder story. And I was very blessed because I
26:11
was born in America. You know, I was very blessed to
26:14
have all four of my limbs, to have my faculties, to have my
26:18
health. And in seeing that I had those
26:21
things and recognizing that I was, you know, given these
26:24
incredible blessings and from nothing that I did myself, they
26:27
were a gift starting to take those blessings and grow on them
26:30
and then go out and find different tools to, you know, to
26:34
better myself. And the more that I built
26:36
myself, the more that I worked on myself, the more that
26:40
opportunities presented themselves, the more the
26:42
business grew. And at this point in my life as
26:45
a 43 year old CEO, I'm just getting warmed up like this is
26:48
the best I've ever felt in my entire life.
26:50
And, and I feel like I have so much more to give.
26:52
And that's an exciting feeling. Amazing place to be in, Ari.
26:56
At what stage were you in life when you realized that no one
26:59
was coming to save you? College, I, I went to two
27:03
community colleges. I was a terrible student in, in
27:06
high school. There's a bunch of labels that
27:09
people gave me that I don't think they meant any harm by it.
27:13
I think that's the education that they had around ADD and
27:17
anxiety and whatever stuff they came up with.
27:20
I tell my daughter now, I don't call it ADD or ADHD.
27:24
I call it ADA, which is attention deficit advantage.
27:29
And I could then alchemize those labels or those negatives into
27:33
something positive at a very bad speech impediment, growing up at
27:36
a stutter and a lisp. And I went to seven years of
27:39
speech therapy to effectively learn how to talk.
27:42
And I think the moment that I realized that I could make
27:45
progress, the moment that I realized that I can improve on
27:47
some of these things if I worked on them consistently.
27:50
Because in the short term, when you work on something, any type
27:53
of skill, progress seems like it's daunting, doesn't seem like
27:58
you're ever going to get there. But then over time, over weeks,
28:01
months, forget about years or decades, you know, the progress
28:03
becomes absolutely exponential. In college is when I started to
28:06
really start to work on myself, started to really write some
28:09
goals out, revisiting that book think and grow rich, and then
28:12
realizing that thoughts could be things.
28:14
And then, you know, getting through law school and then
28:17
learning how to meditate and then just adding on and
28:19
compounding these, these life skills that that somehow work to
28:25
invigorate and power and fuel, you know, the drive that I had
28:30
to go be successful. And ultimately I started to see
28:33
those drive to be successful had underlying emotions.
28:36
The desire to be very wealthy came from a desire to feel free
28:39
to feel safe, to feel secure, to feel seen.
28:43
And once things started to become evident, I started to be
28:46
able to take myself out of the equation and started to think
28:50
instead of me, started to think of we.
28:52
And when I started to have that mentality of the business just
28:56
started to go to a place that's interesting to say the least.
29:01
Ari, I think you hinted at it a bit earlier, but I know that you
29:05
have Iranian or so German heritage.
29:08
I'm curious, what language do you think in?
29:11
You asked such wonderful questions, by the way, I can
29:14
tell why you're successful. Annie, one of my old mentors,
29:17
used to say questions are the answer.
29:20
If you want a better answer, ask a better question.
29:22
Amateurs want answers. Professionals ask great
29:25
questions. So compliments.
29:27
Thank you for that feedback. I do think in English now, but I
29:30
think culturally I think in Farsi.
29:33
Farsi was actually my first language.
29:35
My first few words were in Farsi.
29:37
I didn't speak English until I was a couple years old.
29:40
I spoke started to speak very, very early, very influenced by
29:43
Iranian culture. But now I'm, I'm trilingual.
29:46
I speak Spanish, Farsi and English fluently and you know,
29:49
understand a little bit the Latin rooted languages.
29:52
You can kind of, you know, it can pick up a couple things here
29:55
or there. I haven't learned German yet,
29:57
but it's certainly on on my list.
29:59
Mandarin Chinese is above that at the moment in terms of my
30:02
priority. But I think culturally in Farsi
30:06
and that from a linguistic standpoint now in English.
30:10
But I dream in Spanish, I dream in Farsi, and I dream in other
30:13
languages that I don't even know what the hell they are.
30:14
So maybe I can demystify those one day too.
30:18
OK, interesting. How do you think that you
30:21
thinking in Farsi has given you an advantage or a disadvantage
30:25
in how you're able to operate in corporate America?
30:29
Giving me an enormous advantage, enormous advantage because you
30:32
know, Farsi is a, is an ancient language.
30:34
You know, there's words in Farsi that they're just don't exist in
30:37
English. And if you look at Sanskrit as
30:40
an example, there's more letters in Sanskrit, there's more
30:42
letters in Aramaic that there is an English.
30:45
English is in fact a more base language.
30:48
And then some of the others, a lot of the Asian languages have,
30:51
they have more characters, they have more ways of expression.
30:53
I wrote my thesis, my thesis about William Shakespeare.
30:57
I've studied Shakespeare and read Shakespeare my entire life.
31:00
And you know, when you look at the what he's been able to do
31:02
with iambic pentameter and what he's been able to express, if
31:06
you look at some of the other poetic works of Rumi or of Hafez
31:10
and Farsi, the expansion of what they've been able to express
31:14
with having so much more phonetic latitude is, is really
31:17
incredible to see. I think the greatest writing
31:20
ever in the English language, certainly greatest playwright
31:23
is, is with Shakespeare and I guess in an American English,
31:26
probably Mark Twain. But there's a limit to this
31:28
language. I think that it's given me a
31:30
much more expansive look at the world.
31:32
It's given me a more worldly, global, ancient take on how
31:37
things are done from an etiquette standpoint, from from
31:41
a forward-looking standpoint, from a time horizon standpoint.
31:45
And I feel extremely fortunate to have that as MyHeritage.
31:48
That's fantastic. Well, thank you so much for
31:51
sharing your experience, Ari. Let me close by asking you our
31:55
podcast table, which is what do you think is one thing that will
31:58
allow more people to have better mental health?
32:01
Meditation hands down. And I, and I've said this many,
32:05
many times and I try not to lose the opportunity to say it,
32:08
Meditation. Now there's such a baggage
32:11
around that. It's, it's some activity that's
32:13
esoteric and it's some woo woo stuff that you have to go to the
32:17
Himalayas and you chant or need to take ayahuasca or whatever
32:22
people do. And that's just so far from the
32:23
truth. You know, this is something that
32:25
you do with you. It's about your own journey.
32:28
But there is a technique, there is a practice to do it.
32:31
And I would recommend anybody listening to this, do yourself
32:34
the favor, give yourself the gift of going to see Doctor Joe
32:38
Dispenza at a seven day retreat or doing the online course,
32:42
which I've done many times, or going to learn Transcendental
32:46
Meditation. Go learn a practice of how to
32:49
keep your eyes is closed, find some equanimity.
32:52
And the dividends that are paid are so exponential, are so mind
32:57
blowing, that it will enhance every single part of this
33:00
experience of being a human being.
33:03
That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that, Ari.
33:05
Let me just ask you one more question because I think will be
33:08
a missed opportunity if I don't. Where do you see AI having the
33:12
most impact in your life in the next three years?
33:16
We're in the fourth industrial revolution and I I think of AI
33:20
the same way that we would have thought of electricity, the
33:23
underpinning, the enablement tool of everything else that's
33:28
coming. I mean, there was a time that,
33:29
you know, I would Google everything now use chat GPTA 100
33:32
times a day as this assistant to get better information.
33:36
But I think that it's one of the greatest blessings in the
33:38
history of mankind. Just like anything you could use
33:41
electricity for an electrical chair, but it's a tool just like
33:45
anything else. And I'm very be confident that
33:47
the custodians of AI and will treat it in the best use
33:51
possible where there be some downside to it.
33:53
Absolutely. You know, there are car
33:55
accidents as well, but you can also take your car to drive your
33:57
children to school. Encapsulating it is one thing
34:00
that's necessarily good or bad. It's back to a tool.
34:02
A gun can be used to protect someone.
34:04
A gun could be used to hunt and food or can be used for some
34:08
nefarious behavior to cause harm.
34:09
I think AI is no different, and I think it is the single
34:12
greatest tool for enhancement to enhance humanity's ability to be
34:19
more human that's ever existed, and I can't wait for it to
34:21
continue to evolve. Fantastic.
34:24
I definitely also agree about AI enhancing humanity, and I'm
34:28
super excited about what it can bring.
34:30
Ari, it's been a pleasure to have you on the Lotto Row
34:31
podcast. Thank you so much.
34:33
Thank you, Andy. Thank you for listening you
34:37
excited for the next episode. Follow Lotto Row Podcast on
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34:46
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34:49
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