Make "A Couple Million" Without Ruining Your Life (with Steve Chou)

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So I've got the imaginary. I got the Wonder Woman airplane glass. Uh, here's two. The men and women in our armed forces keeping us safe. On behalf of the men and women working at Navy Federal Credit Union, you hear a military appreciation month, though, gee, military appreciation month, isn't it? It should be. It should be military appreciation year. Minute. On behalf of the Navy Federal Credit Union and the men and women making podcast mom's basement, salute to our troops. Let's go stack some Benjamin, shall we? You heard of this thing, the eight minute abs? Yeah, sure. Eight minute abs. Yeah, the exercise video. Yeah. Well, this is going to blow that right out of the water. Listen to this. Seven minute abs. Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the stacking Benjamin show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and ever thinking about starting that little side business? What if you could turn it into your own money-making machine? Today, we'll chat with a guy who did just that from my wife, quit her job, Steve Chu. Plus in our headline segment, chat GPT, yeah, you know me and how to do everything for me. Or does it? The FTC has some concerns and maybe you should too. And in our TikTok minute, not feeling happy? We'll share a new motivational approach to perk up your day. Of course, we'll throw out the haven lifeline to a lucky listener. And if that's not enough, I'll share some absolutely shareable trivia. And now, two guys who have seatbelts on and tray tables locked, Joe and oh, j-j-j-j-j-j-j-j-j. Happy morning, stackers. It is the stacking Benjamin show and I am Joe Salci. Hi, average of money on Twitter and across the card table from me ready to bring it today. Like he showed up today and said, I am ready to bring it America and the rest of the world. Well, little spicy on Monday. What happened? I can't talk about it, but I'm spicy. Well, we got a great show. Something we can talk about Steve Chu is Doug so eloquently just said is here. Steve, by the way, not only built this incredible business from home with his spouse because they wanted to build this thing together, he will tell you he did it the wrong way and he will caution you on doing it the way he did it and he'll show us the way that maybe you should do it. So if you're thinking about bringing in a few extra dollars, Steve's here to help, but we got a lot to do before that. Doug, man, after the weird weekend you must have had, after all the false stars we had starting this thing, I think it's time for an intervention. You ready? Sit down. Here we go. Hey, stackers with Memorial Day around the corner, time to think about throwing that perfect party. And if you've got some discerning wine guests, well, I always get my favorite Italian red from Total Wine, but this year I want to mix things up and try something new and get this arriving straight from Tuscany. 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At first I read this and I thought, what's the big deal? And then I read on and I went, oh, this could potentially be a huge deal. FTC chair, Lena Kahn says she's on alert for abusive AI use. And I thought, oh, gee, why not automate your stuff? Like the more stuff we dominate the AI is way different than what she's talking about. Have you seen X machina? That's my idea of AI. Machine GPT, I love you. It's machina. I love you. No, it's machina. It's machina. It's machina. It's machina. It's machina. Yeah. Anywho, as I read through this, I realized, oh, gee, there is a big issue here. And I think that as we all start automating more stuff with chat GPT, first of all, you're using chat GPT, right? You're using automation in your practice. We use automation, but we're not using chat GPT presently. No, there's a major issue with it. The major issue is copyright. That's the major issue for creators. And I think a lot of people don't really recognize that. Any content generated by AI is not copyrightable. Did you know that? So be careful. Meaning, I mean, meaning your blog post that you put up that's written by a chat GPT, somebody else can do that exact same thing. And there's no issue. If you wrote a book like you're hearing all these things about a book, right, where chat GPT writes most of the book, can't copyright that. Imagine all the James Patterson ghost writers who just got laid off. I just yeah, but by the same token, they shouldn't have because like if you generate content from AI, in fact, they're talking about like different rules around how you have to like segregate it out. There's a big story the other day, a couple weeks ago about somebody who took like two famous artists and put them together to make a song. But neither of those people had made that song. Head, did you hear about this? I don't know. It was like the weekend and somebody else or something they made. They made them make a song AI wise. And it was the number one song on on Spotify and on Apple until they realized it was fake and then took it down. They're determining there's still a lot to go on intellectual property here, but they're determining that that's not illegal. That's not a copyright infringement to use somebody else's. It's weird. So there's a lot of weird stuff going. Well, I think this gets to a deeper problem, O.G. The FTC's on alert for the ways that rapidly advancing artificial intelligence could be used to violate antitrust and consumer protection laws is charged with enforcing. Chair Lena Conrad wrote in New York Times Up Ed last Wednesday. She also compared the current inflection point around AI to the earlier mid-2000s era in tech when companies like Facebook and Google came to forever change communications, but with substantial implications on data privacy that weren't fully realized until years later. And what she's diving into, and this is the important thing, you know, if I go to AI and I say, hey, make me the best asset allocation that I could have, or make me a financial plan that works wonders for me. Her question is, while you don't need to question the AI, you need to question the brains behind who created the AI. So in other words, if we get AI creating financial plans out of Northwest Mutual, and right now AI driven stuff is the hot button. And I'm, you know, talking to you and I go, hey, man, this is what AI says is the best thing. Like this has gone through hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of iterations and look at it says that permanent life insurance is phenomenal for you, a 27 year old, single person, no, no dependence, hardly any assets, that this is a big thing for you. Her question is not the AI. Her question is, who's programming the AI? And what's behind it? And frankly, when I got through this, I'm like, we're not asking that question. Like nobody's asking that question right now. I disagree. Disagree. A lot of people have been asking that question about AI for quite some time. Probably the last eight to 10 years, there's been a big push in the IT community for creating. I'm talking about Doug, and I think you're right. I mean, I think you're absolutely right. But not enough of these regular people that just heard about chat GPT six months ago, who are turning in their term paper, right? They're like, Oh, look at chat GPT is creating everything for me now. I got all this stuff. I mean, all I'm seeing on TikTok is, look, AI will do everything for you. Here's how you program all your AI to do stuff. But the brains that are just coming to this discussion are not at all thinking, what's behind this? Yeah, the users, the technical talent is wondering about it. Maybe like you're talking about Doug. There's actually been a big push, and I apologize. It was a rough weekend, but there's been a big push on the behind the scenes that people haven't realized long before CHAP GPT came out about. There are actually roles, defined roles in organizations that are trying to make AI more equitable, more balanced and inclusive, so that the logic behind the AI is not so middle-aged, male-oriented, just to call it out. So that has been an effort for a while. Not sure how successful it's been, but it's something people behind the scenes are thinking about. But now it's got a lot more exposure. It certainly appears with the government beginning to ask that question that this has got to be based on some pushback, that they're afraid, oh gee, that there might be, there's always nefarious people out there trying to take our money. I don't know if it was you that told me or if it was Lissa who mentioned it, but it was the woman who got the phone call. Did you hear about this? The woman who got the phone call about her daughter being kidnapped? Maybe Doug, you were saying that? I told you. Yeah, a couple of different places, but basically criminals had used a voice sample that she had on Instagram or something if we're talking, turned it into a plea for help basically, and set it up, called her mom, and said, we've got your daughter, why are this money? Otherwise, we're going to harm her in some way. It was 100% this woman's kid because it was. She was getting ready to give him money. They tracked her down at another place. There's wherever there's one thing, there's going to be somebody who tries to figure out how to do something awful on the other side of it. If you just blindly ask questions into the system, we do that with Google now. When you type a search into Google and you get your search list, you look at the source to see whether or not you decide that that source is credible or not. Just because it ranks number one in Google doesn't mean that you believe that it's the best source, because you can game the system. I think what you're saying, Joe, is that too many people are just going, well, the computer said that this is the right way to do it. This is what I'm going to do. Hey, let's jump up. This is just Google without you having input on what the source is. This is the same as those commercials that were out a few years ago with the guy who was in the suit and they had him meet with some people, and then they asked him how they felt about his advice and he was a DJ. He's like, I don't know. Nothing about finance. I know zero. Now we're doing, I feel like a lot of us are doing the same thing with the computer. We're like, oh, computer says it's right. Not only will we link to this, we'll also have some deep dives on questions you should ask about your financial advice and where it comes from in our newsletter, the 201, that comes out the day after every show, every Tuesday and Thursday, stachybitchments.com slash 201 to subscribe to our newsletter comes hot into your mailbox every Tuesday and Thursday. Time for our TikTok minute. This is the part of the show where we shine a light on a TikTok creator doing something either amazing or maybe hashtag amazing. Doug, which one you think we got today? I think Doug's on mute because he doesn't know how to use the microphone still. It muted me again. It muted me. Look at this. It muted me. I'm in the AI chat GPT muted me. The AI as it should as they turn enough of middle age white guys. So it's like we heard silence. Do and you're done. No, this is this one's legit. Oh, well, this guy, Dan Hancell has a great way to make sure that you kickstart your morning, kickstart your week. I thought on a Monday we would play this. This is what they call a hack, Doug. They call it a hack to do things better during your week. The cab driver? Yeah. All the kids call it a hack. Here we go. This is how I trick my brain into being happy. Every morning before I leave for work, I zip tie my hands and feet together in my own bathroom. This is very scary and stressful. Once I get out, my ordinary depressing life feels incredible because I'm just happy I'm not still tied up in the bathroom. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. This guy figured it out. This is so amazing. Just zip tie yourself in your bathroom. Get out of that and the rest your week is phenomenal. The rest of the day is easy. Coming up next Steve Chu is the brains behind a brand that man, I remember, oh, Gee, when you and I were starting, Steve already was doing amazing stuff. His brand is my wife quit her job because she decided, you know what, I want to quit my job. I don't want to do this anymore. So let's start working from home and Steve and his spouse, dove into creating a business together. However, Steve realized that things weren't maybe that great. I'm sure he'll tell us that story today. He's got a brand new book about this topic, the family first entrepreneur, how to achieve financial freedom without sacrificing what matters most. We'll ask him about his process of creating and maybe help some stackers out there do this the right way. But first to get there, we've got a great trivia question today. I think Doug. Sure do Joe. Hey, there stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And what a wild day in history today is let's take you back. It's 2007. You're watching movies on your beta max machine while playing your Apple II. What? That's that's 1982. All right. Okay, how about this? It's 2007. You're sitting at home watching Friday night videos and defowering pop rocks. 1984. Seriously, that was pop rocks. All right. Okay, let's do this again. Steve rewind it, clean it up. Hey, there stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And imagine it's 2007. You're on your iPod jammin to Rihanna's hit umbrella and scroll on YouTube when you see that 19 year old Sean Cutter has uploaded what he said was the trailer for a new grand theft auto four. But instead, when they pressed play got a song which became an international phenomenon. Not the song, but the surprise playing of this song. Here's my question. What song was it? I'll be back with the answer right after I surprise Joe's mom by actually taking the garbage out. We're all juggling life, a career and trying to build a little bit of wealth. The Brown ambition podcast with host Mandy and Tiffany, the budget needs to can help. How can I protect myself from identity theft? I think the first thing is to be aware of what phishing attempts look like. So check that email address. But now it's like coming to your text. You get phishing texts now? Girl, yes. Talking about this virus. I'm like girl. So you texting now with your lack of funding. Brown ambition wherever you listen. Stackers, this is so funny. If you're somebody who likes intelligent conversations like stacking vegiments, but you have kids and you want to get them interested in the world around them, who's who's smarted? Which is by the way, the best name for a podcast for kids. And this is great. Who smart is the world's funniest educational podcast for families? From history to science to pop culture, they make learning fun for the whole family. It's beloved by homeschool families and classroom teachers for its ability to spark conversations and natural curiosity is the perfect length for car rides or fun educational breaks during the day. They have more than 300 original episodes. Everyone under 20 minutes impact with great stories and real facts from get with their amazing voice. They're trusty narrator. You've got to listen to this guy and what it is. Such a great show. I've been addicted myself and here's the deal. My kids are 28 now. So I can't make the excuse that I'm listening for other people. I'm listening for me. So listen to the most recent episode, just the titles. What's the biggest fish in the ocean? Our chickens, third cousins to T-Rex. By the way, of course, the answer is going to be different than you might think it is. How do invasive species invade? It's a Pacific garbage patch of floating island of trash. How do countries pick their national symbol? It's all over the place. And by the way, how did Loosen Clark become famous American explorers? My favorite board games, Loosen Clark, and they cover all of this with intelligence, but very fun and very appropriate for the whole family. So if you want to be a smart parent, look cool for your kids. Make sure your kids have fun learning who's smarted, available wherever you're listening to us now. Just search for who's smarted. Where are we listening to us now? Hey there, stackers. I'm Ultimate Pranks Duren, GTA 4 lover, Joe's mom's neighbor dug. It's true. I love Grand Theft Auto. I get to drive slightly better than Joe's mom, but the good news, she helps you remember how glad you are to be alive every time you drive to the grocery store. Well, we're all happy to be in a world where pranks happen and spread like the one that's the topic of today's trivia question. On today's date in 2007, 19-year-old Sean Cottor uploaded a video to YouTube that he said was a trailer for the much anticipated Grand Theft Auto 4. It turns out that viewers saw a video for a song setting off a viral trend that you might have taken part in. What song was it? If you said that the answer was never going to give you a... Sorry, Joe, I had to say. Oh boy. By Rick Astley, you Rick rolled this question just like everyone got Rick rolled way back 16 years ago. But forget Rick roll. Now, let's say hello to a guy who's here to help you bank roll more money from your side gig, Steve Choo. I'm super happy he's here with me, mom's basement by the card table. Steve Choo is here. How are you, man? I am good, Joe. Thank you so much for having me. I never realized before I read your book what a professional gambler you are. You're a big time gambler, man. You take all the money from the businesses and just pile it on the... I've never heard of this game before, by the way, the pie-gau table. You've never played pie-gau poker before? No, I play almost exclusively craps when I play. I don't gamble much, but when I do I'll play craps. Okay, so before your audience thinks that I'm an inveterate gambler, let me just explain pie-gau real quick. It is the slowest game in Vegas. You could play for hours and not lose any money, but you won't make that much money either. It's... I'll just explain the rules real quick, just because we're going to be talking about it. So you're dealt seven cards, you put together two poker hands. Basically, if you win both hands, you beat the dealer. If the dealer wins both hands, the dealer wins, and if you just push, meaning you win one, you lose one, no money changes hands. And that is why you can play forever. Now, what does this have to do with what we're talking about today, Joe? Well, wait a minute, even before we get to that, because I'm all confused. So, do you got like six people sitting around and the dealer's playing one hand against all six players, or is it just you and a dealer in one-on-one? No, no, no, no. It's the dealer against six players, if the whole table's full. Gotcha. Is there a way to make money faster? Well, okay. So, I don't want to get into the get-rich quick. There's a way to make money. Okay, so can we just tie all this to... Before everyone thinks I'm a gambler. I use this analogy in the book because playing the regular game is like your day job. You're not going to make lots of money. You'll make enough to get by, but you're getting by, essentially. What I didn't talk about with Pygao is this fortune side bet, where if you get a real hand, like three of a kind, a flush, a straighter, whatnot, you got to get this slot machine-like payout. So, the way I describe in the book, thanks for portraying me as a gambler, by the way, is that your day job is the regular game, and this fortune side bet is like your business that could potentially make you outside his money. So, the way I always teach it is, if you want to start a business, or if you want to achieve financial freedom, just start a side hustle on the side while you're still working. Don't just quit cold turkey to start a business, or whatever you want to do. But I think that makes a big point though. There's a lot of people thinking that, you know, maybe I will make a lot of money not going into business for myself. Most of our stackers work for other people. And yet, you look at that ladder, Steve. It's difficult to climb. It takes forever. You've worked as an engineer. There's a lot of people fighting for very few spaces. And even when you get there, the disillusionment among those people, when they reach the quote top, doesn't feel as great as they thought it would. It does. But it does feel good for a little bit. No. Yeah. Yeah. I will say this. And maybe you can just kind of describe the audience to me, Joe. But I would say most people who have a job and they're happy there, they want to achieve financial freedom, or they might not necessarily want to spend all their time working. And that's why it's important to have that side hustle. It doesn't have to be big, and you don't have to have high expectations. You just need to be able to maintain something for a long time, and eventually good things will happen. This is the way that I've started all of my businesses. I don't know if you guys know my background, but I sell handkerchiefs online, which is very masculine. Joe, did you tell everyone that I sell handkerchiefs? I did in the open. I did in the open. I told them I'm like, he's the best hanky salesman I ever met. Random. But seriously, this is all around. Well, let's go ahead and start there. And actually, before we do that, Steve, because I do want to hear the story, it's a great place to start, because what we're going to talk about today is how really not to start a business in a lot of ways, the way that you did. I think you tell a very cautionary tale that I'd love you to tell that gets into some of the levers that we need to pull for going to do a business correctly. But you are somebody who initially, you guys were just interested in getting married. We were interested in starting a family, actually, which marriage, of course, comes first for most people. And in our case, we live in the Silicon Valley. Joe, I forgot where you live. Texarkana, Arkansas is 800 yards from my house. I'm in Texarkana, Texas, barely, barely. I live in California, Silicon Valley. Pretty sure it's more expensive. Slightly, maybe slightly. In order to get in a good house in a good school district, we're talking two incomes, two good incomes. We started this because my wife went up to me and she said she wanted to quit her job. And we started a hankerchief store, as I mentioned earlier. The only reason we decided to sell hankerchiefs was because when my wife and I got married, I mean, the woman is a crier. She cries all the time at a happiness, not sadness. I love the line, by the way. I love the line, Steve, in your book where you're like, I'd be balling if I were married to me too. I laughed hard when I read that line. She wanted a hankerchief, basically. We couldn't find anywhere, except for this factory in China. And then so we imported a bunch, used a handful and then sold the rest. And that's why the idea for the hankerchiefs came. In case anyone's wondering why I decided to sell such a random product. And that business ended up taking off, replaced my wife's salary in the first year. During that time, I want to slow down on that story just a little bit because you did look at that time for some other opportunities. Like a lot of people, if they're going to go start a business, you're like, OK, let's dig in. The first couple of businesses, it sounds like you looked at were franchises, where maybe it was going to cost you a fair amount of money. Do you like franchising at all? Do you recommend your listeners, if they start a business or your readers that they look at franchising? I mean, the benefit of franchising is you're taking their proven formula and applying it. It just costs a lot of money. And I'll run some numbers here. So one of the franchises we were thinking about starting was a Kumon's. Do you know what a Kumon's is? I did. My kids went. Yeah. Kumon's is great. And it's in line with our values, right? It's a touring center, basically. The minimum cost to start that thing was $350,000. Just quick, you just write a check. I mean, you got to get a loan, you got to write a check, and then it takes time to start up. You got to get clientele. It just sounded really risky. Contrast that to hankies. We only spent $630 to start that thing. I was amazed. How did you spend so little money on starting that business? Okay. So first off, Joe, I have to just tell you that we grossly overpay for everything in the United States. Grossly. So something that we sell for like 25 bucks might cost us like 20 cents or 25 cents. So that's how you can start a business with very little money. So that first order of hankerchus, I want to say was 200 bucks. And that was the bulk of the cost. The rest of the cost in that 630 really was a website hosting. And I think I started on Bluehost, actually. It was $7 a month back then. And then I got a beta computer. And then back then, when I started, which was 2007, I actually had to go out and buy a digital camera because we didn't have phones. Now I'm dating myself, Joe. Tell us like in the old days, Uncle Steve. Hey, Joe, are you older than me? I can't remember. I am 55. Okay, you're older than me. I'm 48. Okay. So why don't you tell us back in the old days? Did we have phones back then? No, no, no, no, no. No, I want to continue the story. So you start this business with very little money. You decide not to do the franchising, the Kumaan Centers and some of these other opportunities cost you a lot less to get started. You are more successful than you ever thought that you would have been. But your story doesn't open. This book doesn't open with your success. This book opened Steve with your wife crying on the floor with all these like half filled orders around her. Paint that scene for me and tell me how the hell did you get there? It was just my fault, really. So you know, if you've never had a lot of money coming before, you kind of get carried away. So that first year, we did 100,000. And all of a sudden I started getting these crazy eyes. Every year, we'd start setting the goals higher and higher every year. So the next year, I was like, okay, let's try to double our sales. And then next year, let's try to double again, try to double again. And I was just going all out and driving my wife crazy. She wasn't nearly as excited as you were even then. She was not because we're, I mean, I'm Asian. I'm pretty frugal, Joe. We don't spend that much money. We started the business so we could spend more time with family. But what ended up happening is we just started trying to make as much money as possible, even though we weren't even spending like, you know, 10% of it. That's just a funny thing that happens to entrepreneurs. We kind of get carried away. And I was driving my wife so crazy and just pushing real hard, like, you know, both of us to make more money that one day she just broke down. And she said, Hey, I don't want to do this anymore. This isn't fun. We don't even spend the money. And we're actually not even spending as much time with our family because we're trying to make all this money. And that's what ended up happening. You would think that this huge success that you're having along the way would make you exactly the opposite. I mean, it's, it's really sad. And what's amazing to me, as I was reading your story, is that the thing that you would think would have been the best moment ever was the straw that broke the camel's back. You, you find out that you're going to be on the Today show. Like, yeah, that if, if, if I found out that Stacking Bedjamins was going to be on the Today show, I'd be ecstatic. And you were ecstatic. But tell me, tell me that story. What happened when you went on the Today show? Man, I was so thrilled when that happened. And what ended up happening is we were only on that show for 12 seconds. 12 seconds. So I don't even know if that qualifies for being on the show, Joe. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. But our sales seven X, and it wasn't just for that day because that show aired in different times and different time zones. And we were getting seven X the sales for, I want to say like almost two weeks. And that almost destroyed us. You ever see that, maybe I'm dating myself again, you ever see that pets.com commercial back in the early internet days where they're like cheering because they got their first sales and all of a sudden it, you know, they get like, yes, a million sales and they're like flipping out. That was, Oh crap. Oh crap. Yeah. Well, most people don't realize, and Joe, I know you interview a lot of entrepreneurs as I do on my podcast. You never hear about this stuff. You always hear about like the, the glory stories of, you know, how they grew their business to whatever. What you don't realize is that when I hit the stop button on the record, a lot of these guys that are interview who are really successful and they are successful, they're miserable, they're stressed out, they have these goals. They don't actually see their family much. They're estranged from their wives. And that's the story that is untold that I kind of want to tell in that book as well. Well, what about this idea though, Steve, of the hustle culture, right? We see Gary Vee talks about, he doesn't say you can sleep when you die, but it's kind of the same message, right? That, Hey, we got a hustle, you got to put out more, you got to put out more, you got to put out more. What's the lie there? Most of us start a business just to hang out with family or to do stuff that we want to do. You don't have to hustle your butt off. If all you want to do is make a couple million bucks, seriously. So hustle culture, I think, is way overrated because it actually takes you away from the goals that most people start their businesses in the first place. I don't want to pick on Gary Vee, but I know he just got a divorce recently. And I can't imagine that that hustle mentality that he's portrayed for so long was good for his family because realistically, you can't hustle that hard and still have the time to, or have the mind share, so to speak, to be with your family. You've got an analogy that your friend and a guy who's been on the show a couple times, James Clear shared with you about the four burners. And I think this is an important idea for it. No matter whether you work for somebody else or for yourself, Steve, I thought this was a very powerful analogy. Can you walk us through the four burners and how you kind of work your burners? Yeah. So the four burners theory states that your life is composed of four burners. So there's a health, work, family, and friends. And in order to excel at any one area of those four areas, you have to turn off one of your other burners. If you want to be really good at something, you have to turn off two burners. And if you're Elon Musk, you probably turn off three burners and your work burner is like way up high. Yeah. Basically, the theory is about trade-offs, right? So if you want to have a really strong family, well, you're going to have to sacrifice one of the other burners. If you want your business to really take off, you're going to have to turn something off. There's always some sort of sacrifice. And the sooner you realize that, that you can't have it all is when you can actually make some fundamental decisions on what your priorities are in life. Most people don't think about their priorities. Most people don't revisit their priorities once they start something. As I'm hearing you talk, I remember back when I was a financial planner, and I haven't been one in a long time, but when I would encounter an entrepreneur, I would ask him a very simple question, which was, is your business working for you or are you working for your business? And that very simple question, Steve, to your point, 99.9% of the people I met were like, nope, I am now working for my business. My business has taken off, and I'm just kind of trying to take the tiger by the tail, and I can't do anything with it. How do I get out of this mess that I created for myself? So you take a completely different approach, and your approach, it sounds like starts off partly with outsourcing. When I say outsourcing, I'm always very careful with that term. I prefer to outsource to robots and computers, as opposed to humans. I actually hate when I go to an event of entrepreneurs, and the first thing that I get asked is how big is your team? Because I don't think that the size of your team is reflective of how successful you are. Like my wife, quitter job.com makes a million dollars in profit. I literally have one VA in the Philippines. It's about putting together systems and automation, if you can. We just happen to be living in the era of artificial intelligence, which is going to make things a hell of a lot easier. It's about automation, documenting stuff, and there's a bunch of principles. I don't know how in-depth you want to go into this. Yeah, just slightly to get people an idea about how different you run your day versus this hustle culture that we were just talking about. Let me just give you an example that I think everyone can understand very clearly. I'm actually not heavy on social media. My friends who do social media well, like I have a friend who does Instagram, she posts seven times a day. I have a friend who does really well on Facebook. She posts 21 times a day. And guess what? When they stop posting, the traffic stops. So the reason why I don't focus on social media is because I feel like it's a hamster wheel. Instead, what I do is I focus my time on things where I can just do once, and it has lasting value. So for example, search engine optimization. Once you start ranking in Google, you get traffic for a long time. I have articles that I wrote 10 years ago that still generate me traffic. On YouTube, I have videos that I produced three years ago, still get a ton of views and leads. So it's all about prioritizing your activities so that you get the biggest bang for the buck. So that's one example. Another example that I like, by the way, is the way that you focus on the burners. I want to go back briefly to the burner because you also spend a lot of time, and this is something that a lot of entrepreneurs like, oh, you spend a lot of time on your health. Talk about that. Health is such a huge thing because before I was paying attention to health, I would have lunch and then I'd be done for the rest of the day. I'd have no energy to do anything. And when you focus on your health, all your other burners actually get stronger because you have the energy to follow through. I started this health journey in 2014. Actually, I was going for the six pack at the time. I just wanted that once in my life. That's a different story. I feel like I'm going for the protective coating over the six pack. That's what I'm going for. I ended up losing 35 pounds, I think, in two months by cutting out carbs. And I just found that I had so much energy. My brain was never in a fog. And I could actually work continuously in a stretch without getting tired. And that just boosted my productivity all around. How do you keep the family burner on and juggle the career? Yeah, honestly, the career part, it's all about ego, really, and controlling the ego. Because the problem is I'm in these mastermind groups with very successful people, such as yourself, Joe. And everyone's telling me how much money they're making, millions of dollars here. I belong to this group at Stanford. It's called the Mayfield Fellows Group. And Kevin Sistrum is in that group. Every year we have this retreat. Everyone's starting these multi-million dollar companies and telling me about their exits. And I go up and I say, hey, yeah, I'm still selling handkerchiefs, right? So I have this ego issue. And the way I fight it is every single year, I just work on one thing. And I just focus on it. And whatever happens happens. So this year, it's launching my book. Last year was YouTube and I managed to hit 200K subscribers. The year before that, it was TikTok. The year before that, it was ads. So I just pick one thing. And as long as I'm interested, I'm okay on the ego front. Now, to prevent yourself from getting carried away, I must say that my wife contributed a lot to that, especially when she broke down. But today, we actually have this document where, you know, if there's an opportunity that comes, let's say, let's say I had to fly somewhere to Asia for some amazing opportunity. Well, we now kind of quantify that opportunity. And if I'm going to miss any of my family's activities, we just have a discussion on what's that going to actually do and whether and how that compares and whether it's worth it really. And I would say in a lot of cases, it's not worth it, especially since we don't spend that much money. So, I mean, ideally, and I don't know if having you guys have read profit first, you find out how much you spend in a year, you pay yourself that money, everything else is gravy, and that really helps the mentality. That's so funny. I was just about to ask you about profit first, because it sounded like you were singing off the profit first song sheet right there. You call Gary Keller in your book, of course, the real estate billionaire. You write, when you know what matters most, everything makes sense, when you don't know what matters most, anything makes sense. What does that mean? That means you got to have your priorities straight, because if you're just always off fighting fires and stuff, you're always going to get overwhelmed. I think it also means to me, as you're saying that, it means you're going to go to these mastermind sessions, you're going to hear the badass stuff that everybody else is doing. Stephen, you're going to start biting off all these other things and the family burner turns off almost automatically. It does. It has that effect. I'm not going to say this happened overnight, Joe. I learned all this stuff just through hardship, really, and driving my wife crazy. She's very patient woman. She caught me on the Dumbo Ride once, sending out an email blast. She literally snapped a photo. Just because you're present with your kids doesn't mean you're actually present. You want to be mentally present with your kids and your family. You could have easily done that on the... What's the one next? The teacups. The teacups are kind of boring. The Dumbo Ride's badass. Why would you do that on the Dumbo Ride versus the teacups? This is the hard hitting interview right here, Steve. For the whole book tour, this is the question that you're going to have to remember. No, I actually want to get on to something else, which is... I've got an entrepreneur that's really frustrating me right now, frankly. It's because every time he sees something to the Gary Keller point we just talked about a second ago, he sees a sale opportunity chases it. He's always chasing 8,000 different things, thinking this is the path to success. You talk about, with your wife especially, working in your zone of genius. I get coaching from strategic coach and we talk all the time about this same thing, zone of genius. I want to talk about this because I feel like this is such a powerful concept. I want to entrepreneurs realize that. I think the outsourcing comes more naturally. Your ego gets a little bit more in check. Talk about your wife and working in her zone of genius. Yeah, and I think this is something that a lot of entrepreneurs face. In the beginning, you're trying to do everything because you're trying to save money. You're trying to do everything. But realistically, we're not good at everything. There are certain things that we all hate doing. There are certain things that just come really quickly to us. Early on, this happened to my wife. She was doing all the day to day, packing orders. We were all packing orders. She was sewing and doing all this stuff. That's not our strength. I mean, we can do it. But it's not where our time is best spent. It wasn't until we started outsourcing mainly the stuff that we didn't want to be doing first. Did we realize that our time was just so much more efficiently spent doing other things, higher level things, like growing the business, higher level things like how to market our products or how to portray our products and that sort of thing. That did not happen until like year two or three. I want to give everybody an idea of your days as well. You write for you week days or your work days from nine to one. That's a nice schedule. I rarely talk to anyone during those times. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons or health days. I'll either play ultimate Frisbee. You write or tennis or go for run weekends and nights or serve for family and friends. You got that all carved out. But you say it doesn't have to be like that. You have a friend who runs ecommercefield.com, Andrew Yoderin. Is that how you do it? Andrew devotes an entire year to going hard. And then he relaxes. He takes monster time offs and you say you can separate that however you want. But it seems to me if you've got a mind of an entrepreneur, Steve, you write somewhere in your book at an entrepreneur, somebody that will work 80 hours to avoid working 40 hours for somebody else. I've heard that a lot too. How do you turn it off? How do you actually click that mind fence so that now I am not sending out emails on the Dumbo Ride? As I mentioned earlier, I only do one thing a year now. That's it. I don't try to do like five things all at once because when you try to do too many things, that's when you run into problems. So that Eudarian story that you just told was just kind of a way to cheat the burners because you can turn them on and off at any time. So he chooses to go all out and then he relaxes. That's not my style. So I run two seven figure businesses in 20 hours a week. And the only reason I'm able to do that is because I do drop a lot of things on the floor. Like this year is the year of my book launch and everything else is kind of in coasting mode. The other things that I'm working on probably aren't going to grow really heavily because I'm focusing on the book and that's all I'm doing this year. But at the same time, you're able to keep the family burger going because of that. The family burner always goes. In fact, my whole afternoon, I'm a glorified Uber driver. That's the best way to play it. I've been there. People always tell me, hey, Steve, why don't you just hire a driver or something, right? And I'm like, dude, this is where I get all the good stuff because when you're driving the car, your kids forget you're driving and they start talking about all the juicy stuff with your friends. Like boys who they like and I'm just like, I'm just kind of like listening in. So I wouldn't miss being a driver for the world. I miss those days fondly, except when it was 5 a.m. take him to swim practice. That was the one I didn't like. The 5 a.m. swim practice run was not my favorite. Yeah, that's brutal. There's a lot of people listening to this now. They're like, whoa, wait a minute. I can do this in a healthy way. I can build a business where I don't have to have the hustle culture. It is possible. What business do I start? Let's say that I'm interested in cupcakes. We had Austin Kleon on. I think you know, Austin Kleon, a steal like an artist. Austin talked about cupcakes and somebody loves cupcakes. And you know, Steve, the first thing anybody says when you love cupcakes is you should start a cupcake business. And the second you start this cupcake business, you effed it all up because you just took all the joy out of the cupcake business, right? Out of making cupcakes. It's no fun anymore. It's like your wife was sewing. She's on the floor because she's way over her head and sewing and sewing and sewing and it's so boring at that point. So how do you not get into that predicament? Where do you begin when you're choosing the right business to go into? One thing that I always consider is how I'm going to grow this business without me being in it upfront. In the cupcake business, if you're the one baking the cupcakes, that's not going to last. So the only way are we using cupcakes as an example here? Let's do it, man. Let's lean into it. So the only way that I would personally consider doing cupcakes is if I could somehow license the recipe to someone else and take a royalty, if you guys watch Shark Tank, that's like Mr. Wonderful's like, ML right there. Or if I could contact a copacker to create a mix that I would sell in stores. But I probably wouldn't go off and just try to sell already made cupcakes unless I had a plan in place. Because even if you contract the baking and all that stuff out, it's still a lot of labor and quality control, I think. Well, but let's back away from cupcakes then. Okay. Go back to a question of if it's not cupcakes, then how do I explore it? You say passion is BS. Don't follow your passion. Correct. I would say you should always do something where you have knowledge. Joe, in your case, you're a master podcaster. So I would try to leverage that maybe into a service or content. I would say content is probably the most scalable type of business that you can have because it's digital. You produce it once, you can sell it as many times you want and make the same amount of money. The only downside for content and maybe you can share your side here is that it takes a long time for it to get established. Like my blog, I didn't make any money until after two years. I didn't start making significant money until after three years. My YouTube channel, same thing. I didn't start making money until after two and a half or three years. It takes a while. If you want to make money sooner, then you have to actually sell something. And I personally like e-commerce. If you want to make money within a year, you get a physical good and you can sell that and you have the supplier that's giving you a constant supply of this stuff and you find customers. In the long run, if you have the runway, like if you're willing to do this for at least three years, I think content is probably the best play. If you want to make money sooner within a year, sell something, whether it be a service or a physical product. The good news is you tell people, and this is another question I know you get all the time, Steve, do I quit my job right away? And your answer is, oh, hell no. The answer is to play pie cow poker. Nice. It's the circle of life. Don't quit the job. You know what ends up happening? You end up starting making decisions based on the money because you're in a pinch. You don't have the income anymore and you can't really run a business that way. So keep the job, do it on the side. Everyone has time. Like I waste so much time even still and I think I'm pretty efficient. Cut out TV or cut out something that doesn't really directly benefit you and you'll find the time. Everybody knows that thing. Like anybody who's hanging out here with us listening, they know the thing where they're wasting time. Like it's there. Your book is the family first entrepreneur, how to achieve financial freedom without sacrificing what matters most available everywhere, Mr. Chew. It's available everywhere and I over deliver. When you preorder the book, you will get a three-day workshop on how to start a print on demand business. There's a reason why I start with print on demand. If you guys don't know what print on demand is, this is where you design your stuff and you can sell merchandise where the supplier takes care of fulfillment. You don't have to touch any inventory. I consider that a gateway drug into other e-commerce businesses. You probably won't make life-changing money with it but it'll get you started and you can start with very little money. I'm also giving out a two-day workshop on how to make money with content. I make money blogging, podcasting in with YouTube and you'll learn how to do that there. And I'm also doing a six-week, what I call a family first challenge, where I will walk you through in a Facebook group how to choose your next side hustle. Those are the bonuses. Awesome. And we get them. How do we get there? Immediately. So you go over to the family first entrepreneur, you preorder the book, fill out a form and then you'll get a login to a private membership site that has all the bonuses that are just described. Awesome. And you know what Steve, if people are walking the dog or they're commuting to work while they're dreaming about being a family first entrepreneur, we'll have a link in the show notes at stachybendgments.com. Great talking to you again my friend. I feel like you're a guy. I don't get to talk to enough and I always learn so much every time I do and I even learn about poker. Thanks for having me Joe. I really appreciate it. I'm Liz, the Chief Mom Officer and when I'm not busy being the breadwinner of my family of five, I'm stacking Benjamin's. Thanks again to Steve. What a great story about doing that the right way OG. Do you work for your business or does your business work for you? I just have a job where I have to, I have more stuff to do and I get paid less. Yeah. I created a job for myself. I didn't create a business. Steve's got a great reminder there. Make sure the business works for you. Hey, let's throw out the even lifeline and tackle some of the most important questions. Our friends at Haven Life Insurance Agency, Doug, they put what you value first. Maybe oh my God full night's sleep. Yeah, my own bed full night's sleep in my own bed. But your loved ones in your time but how fun to be in your own bed with your loved ones on your time. It's why they made buying quality turbo life insurance. Actually, simple, you go to stackabedgments.com slash Haven Life now for a free quote. Love what they're doing over there because their application is simple. It's online. You get an instant coverage decision, affordable prices and all policies issued by their parent company Mass Mutual, more than 160 year old insurer. Today we're going to throw out the lifeline to Mr. Daniel. Hey, Daniel. Hey, Joe and OG had a question. I recently left my employer and had a pension for which I was vested. I had about 90k that I contributed and I have the option to roll that over into my Roth IRA. Or I can keep the money in the pension. And at 65, it would pay out about 30k for what it is inflation adjusted. I'm not sure which one to do. And I'm not sure why I'm asking you this because I haven't really learned that much from your show but I really want to free t-shirt. Thanks. Bye. He almost made it through without insulting us. But thanks, Daniel, for the question. Oh, gee, this is a great question. A few and fewer people have pensions. But man, for people out there that do, I got this pension. I can take it as a lump sum or I can take it later. What does he do? How does he think through that? I don't think his math is right. Did he say he gets 30,000 a year on 90,000 today? The 90,000 is only his contribution. So the company must have been putting him money as well. Yeah. So obviously there's some more money there. I missed that part. And to be clear, if he moves it into his Roth IRA, he'll have to pay taxes on that. Yeah. Right. Because that money that goes in your pension is going to be pre-tax. So you can move it into an IRA. But if you take it out and move it to a Roth IRA, that's going to be ordinary income that year. And technically, isn't that still a two-step move? Yeah, absolutely. Move it to the IRA first. You can't go pension directly to Roth. Has to go pension IRA, flip over to the Roth, pay the tax. Yeah. I think some of this just is dependent on how much your employer contributed and how long it is from now between, or how long it is between now and 65. Because really, what you're trying to decide is 30 grand in the future worth this money today. And even if you're vested in your pension and they're offering a lump sum, the employer contribution should be available to you also to zero out. That's your money that you've accumulated by, if it's vested, that's the employer contribution that's yours. So maybe we don't have all the data here. But really, what you're trying to decide is, can I take this bucket of money and can I turn it into a higher bucket of money than they're going to turn it into? The difference between a pension and your own pot of cash is that the pension is going to be paid to you based on your lifetime. And when you stop existing, then they will stop paying. So if your retirement is two months long, you're going to get two months worth of checks and nobody gets anything else. Or if you live to be 140, you'll bankrupt the pension system. They keep paying forever, right? And so that's good too, if you live on that side. So it's really the gamble of, am I going to live a long time in retirement or not? The fact that it's inflation adjusted suggest to me that it might be some sort of government or teacher type pension or something like that, because you don't see a lot of inflation adjusted pensions. Because that's a big deal too. Obviously, if it's not, getting 30 grand at 65 is a whole heck of a lot different than 30 grand at 85, and you'd want to be able to offset that too. So I think really, your calculation is, what's the big bucket of money? And you might have to just call somebody and have them run this for you. How much can I take today? What can it grow into if I invest this on my own? And can I turn that into a higher stream of income than the pension people can? Yeah. And the question is, for me too, if he can only take out the part that he put in, will there still be some pension? Anyway, right? Like, is there a middle ground? If the employer contribution needs to stay there, maybe he gets a smaller amount that's the guaranteed pension part, and he takes his out to be more flexible. Yeah. Because there's got to be... It's another part of the question, yeah. Yeah, because there's got to be more money in there. Like, if he takes his out, that can't sink the entire pension. Well, that's my point. I think I don't think that you would be able to take out part of it. Yeah. You know what I mean? You got to close the thing and roll it over or keep it intact. Never heard of that before. And if the company isn't contributing, oh, gee, I'm with you. The math is wrong. Yeah, it doesn't check. And if you did put in 90, and that's all there is, and they're going to give you 30 a year out, that's a way better deal. Yeah, take the 30 a year. Take the 30 a year. Just live three years. Stay in a bubble for three years. And then it's gravy trained from that point forward. But there's got to be a little bit more to that in there. Daniel, why can't you come out of your house? I got a year and a half left on this this pinch of crossover. I got to make sure I make it. Thanks for the question, Daniel. If you've got a question and would like us to send you the Haven Life Greatest Money Show on Earth shirt, head to stachybitchman.com slash voicemail, ask OG your question, and we will get that on the air. We'll answer your question. Help out a lot of stackers when you do that, by the way. So jump in the water's warm stachybitchman.com slash voicemail. All right, that is just about it for today. Let's look at the community calendar. I am going to be on Instagram on Thursday with a guy who is real, really amazing dude. He weighed OG over 300 pounds. When he decided he was going to run a marathon and he had people, he had people tell him not not that it might not be the world's smartest thing or healthy thing. They just told him he couldn't do it. And he said, no, I can do it. I can do it. Good for him. We're going to record live and interview on Instagram on Thursday with Martinez Evans. So if you want to hang out with us as Martinez, he's got a huge group of people that follow him on running and how he got started and what he does. We're going to actually play that interview here on the show on Memorial Day. We always try to do something a little special, a little different on Memorial Day and OG talk about goal setting, you know, goal setting and perseverance and getting it done. It's funny because people don't think that that has much to do with your financial life has everything to do with your financial life. So happy to talk to Martinez Evans on Instagram on Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific. That's what's going on here this week coming up on Wednesday show. Aaron Lowry, the broke millennial herself is back. And I'm super excited that we get to talk to Aaron again on Wednesday. She's always so great, has fantastic advice and has helped a lot of people. So Wednesday, she's going to be helping us. But if you're not here because Aaron Lowry is going to be on, you're not here to talk about running when you weigh over 300 pounds, you're here because you keep hearing all of this mixed messages about what's going on in the economy, what's going on with the financial markets. And you might be feeling anxious to make some moves with your finances. What I'd like you to do instead is this check out this free guide OG and his team put together that'll help you plan more and panic less no matter what the market does. It's got some great insights on what you should be doing and smart questions to ask yourself. So you make financial decisions your future self. Well, thank you for head to stacking, Benjamin's dot com slash guide that's stacking, Benjamin's dot com slash guide to get that free guide from OG. All right, that is our community calendar for this week. Doug, between Steve, our headline, amazing tick tock minute lots of takeaways. But what do you think of the top three? Yeah, tons of takeaways, Joe. But here's my top three. First, take some advice from Steve Choo. Working harder isn't working smarter. Begin your plan by thinking, how can I do more inside the time box instead of expanding the time I work? And you'll be much, much happier. Second, if you find that time yourself up makes you feel better about your day, well, then maybe listen into shows like this isn't your thing. But the big lesson. 2007 was 16 years ago. I think father time just Rick rolled all of us. This has got to be some kind of joke. Thanks to Steve Choo for joining us today. You'll find his book, The Family First Entrepreneur, wherever books are sold. We'll also include links in our show notes at stacking Benjamin's dot com. This show is the property of SB podcasts LLC copyright 2023 and is created by Joe Salciha. Our producer is Karen Reibine. This show was written by Lacey Langford, who's also the host of the military money show with help from me, Joe and Doc G from the Earn and Invest Podcast. Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter called the 201. You'll find the 411 on all things money at the 201. Just visit stackingbenjamins.com slash 201. Tina Eichenberg makes the video version of this show. Once we bottle up all this goodness, we ship it to our engineer, the amazing Steve Stewart. Steve helps the rest of our team sound nearly as good as I do right now. Why don't you out with friends about the show later? Mom's friend Gertrude and Kate Yunken are our social media coordinators and Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group called the basement. So say hello when you see us posting online. To join all the basement fun with other stackers, type stackingbenjamins.com slash basement. Not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only before making any financial decisions speak with a real financial advisor. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and we'll see you next time back here at the stacking Benjamin Show. you you You You You You You You You You the or gene i want to wait to cause we know how much you want to hear about my trip to spain oh thank god i didn't miss it so so we waited for you oh god i thought with all of that fumbling and i was late to get sit down and record like no it's like i gotta get there please please please get that done before i get here either pictures are you going to show pictures i want there will be a seventy five minute slide presentation yes um where we show about a quarter of the pictures or we could do the extended version with with even more actually i do have some pretty good pictures but i'll just share one story it was a road trip and i'll tell the story about getting the car because i messed that up another day but we the funniest thing that happened to us we're in cordova which at one time it was the center of the morish empire it is beautiful beautiful mosque that when the christians retook the land in uh 14 what's the your columbus sale of the ocean blue because it's the same year 1482 14 something like that around there 14 15 a dug dug your immune are you serious you're kidding definitely something in the 14s in the 1982 yeah exactly nailed it okay move on with the story oh this is fantastic i'm not even going to correct you because i know all of our listeners are screaming at their devices right now and you've also lost all of your credibility it's 14 something too i used to say this i look at it yeah you got it totally nailed it well 1462 one of those sometime during the 14th uh huh sometime during the 15th century 16 i think 16 16 16 16 42 yes oh my god right right right and the whole after show just being about this being sacked 1682 something anyway 1682 at james town was being sacked clumba sailed the ocean blue there was there there there was a might have been before that there was a castle that they built in cordova and initially it is this beautiful castle but when the morris left spain the agreement was just like when they had ruled that the christians could live there and the jews could live there and the christians were like yeah that's cool and that lasted eight years before before the spanish inquisition began and then it was get out or we're going to make sure you convert and if you don't convert we're just going to kill you so this castle went from being a castle to being a jail and torture house in a place where they would execute heretics and it was that way for a couple hundred years the interesting part of this story is we're hearing this horrific stuff from our guide and we pop out of the castle into this gorgeous little garden like there there is this there's this beautiful fountain that's been there apparently forever there's orange trees full of oranges it smells great there's beautiful flowers and the guy says beautiful garden isn't it we're like oh yeah this is amazing he says this is the place where the tortures and executioners took their breaks which which all the sudden of course our family we start thinking of all of this gallows humor like can you imagine these guys like they're going out there with their cigarettes on the smoke break oh they're bitching today lu oh these people oh they just they won't quit crying it just it gets on your nerves i go home at night and i just think man but you know it was horrible it's beautiful beautiful back there just Joe just just fantastic i thought you're gonna say that's where they had all the bodies that was the fertilizer i didn't know that's exactly what i thought to oh oh yeah yeah yeah no but i'm seeing this are are you kidding me i didn't make up the fact that it was the break room that this was the break garden like when you're you're bringing the book room it was you think do you think they had those little packets of uh hot chocolate in their break room back then one guy hangs out there the whole time never does any torturing every time you walk in there he's just sitting there okay he's always on break yeah you're like what the heck man don't you have anybody to maim today i just got i know i just you know ladies been on my ass the whole week you know it is it's hard to get motivated some days hard to get motivated i know it's like the four chapters just conveyor belts of okay you know you just weren't sure that have to happen that there was a line everybody else listening is like dude that line was about four minutes ago and we're like no we just got to try to crossed it this past weekend we uh power washed our deck back patio it might have my voice help what about my story made you think this reminds me of torturing his kids as i'm torturing my no i tortured myself i was very particular i was like guys listen the water that comes i get it it's super fun you know you have don't don't spray this at one another don't don't spray it at something don't don't point it at the fence it's going to take off you know they'll take all the varnish off of it it'll take it'll take layers of wood off and it was a big project i think we probably all three of us did probably about a third of it and then one of the power washer hoses got a leak in it so i'd go get another one like more of a handheld one and so i'm finishing up i'm doing like the the bar area and like getting all the grease off it from the barbecue and so and i'm doing it and and i i'm holding this thing in my hand this power washer and i'm like and then i reach across to grab something else and power wash the right out of my arm took several layers of skin right off my kids are all playing in the pool and i'm like yeah so hey guys remember when i said not to power wash yourself this is what i meant there's like this big streak that goes down my arm of like like from four inches away i just want to try to cross the air that's how i tortured myself this weekend it was great that's why i'd be in the break room dissecting politics with exclusive interviews commentary and humor useful idiots with katie helper and erin mattee i really don't like sharks and i think we live in a very shark agandistic world well one thing to keep in mind is sharks are not out there trying to eat surfers and swimmers they'd much rather eat fish but in many cases they mistake us for their actual prey when they do bite they usually move on that's supposed to make us feel better useful idiots wherever you listen