If you want something, you have to work for it. And most people that think that the world is based off of luck have never truly worked for something. I call it a game of possibilities. The more you try something, the more refined you become.
And the more refined you become, the better you become. Everybody eventually will capitulate into crypto because it is an asset class that will exist. And we go into a digital world, you need digital money. So from a logical standpoint, it makes sense. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Lodgenote podcast.
My name is Koen. Next to me is Jaro. And in opposite of us, we have a special guest this week.
This, actually tonight. Normally, we do recordings during the daytime. But you just came out of a flight. Just arrived from Albania, brother. So it's good to be here.
Man, straight to the studio. From one studio to the other, brother. Great to have you here, man. Thank you for having me, gentlemen.
Welcome. How was your day today? Day was good. Last night I sat down with the former governor of the Central Bank of Albania, talked about monetary policy, Bitcoin, crypto, Central Bank digital currencies. And of course, as you guys know, I'm here in Amsterdam now going to sit down with a couple entrepreneurs.
And the opportunity arose to sit down with you gentlemen. I was like, let's talk money. So from Albania to Amsterdam, 24 hours. That's great, man. We love to talk about money.
We talk a lot about money. And I know that you know a lot of things. You have been doing a lot of things, you have been in the e-com space, you have been in a crypto space, you are the owner of a capital club, a networking space, doing a lot of stuff. But for the people that don't know you yet, the Dutch people that are listening right now, maybe some other people from foreign countries, who is Luc Belmar? Well, Luke Belmar is an immigrant from Argentina.
Went to the United States at the age of 16 with $200 in a suitcase. With a lot of ambitions, a lot of goals, a lot of dreams, but with a very clear purpose and a very clear mission to make it out. To make it out of this thing that we call the system. And as I drive through Amsterdam coming here, you notice the system, it's very prevalent. How people live, how people move.
I always knew deep down that that wasn't what I wanted for my life. I come from a small town, 12,000 to 15,000 people on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. I don't know how much Dutch people like Argentine since we keep schooling your guys'ass in football every World Cup. But it's good.
But our king is piping down one of the hottest Argentine women. Hey, bro. You give and you take. You give and you take. You know what I mean?
But yeah, at the age of 16. Moved to the United States with $200 in a suitcase. Went from pressure washing basketball courts, cleaning toilets, flipping wings at a Buffalo Wild Wings, sleeping in my car for a time being. It was about like four or five months to eventually getting exposed to Bitcoin. I heard of Bitcoin in 2015 for the first time. And when I often tell this story, people are like, well, Luke got lucky.
I'm like, hmm. I don't think I got lucky. I was exposed to information, but that doesn't mean that you need to necessarily act on that information. I remember watching a documentary on Netflix. I forget exactly what the name, I think it's called Banking on Bitcoin.
And the gentleman, they would actually go out on the streets. I think it was Wall Street. And it would tell people, hey, would you have a Bitcoin or would you take this $5 bill?
And everybody was like, well, I'll take the $5 bill because it's real and I can see it and I can touch it. So a lot of people were exposed to the opportunity, but not everybody capitalized on the opportunity. I remember being in a situation whereby in the United States, I don't know how it works in the Netherlands, but if you wait tables or if you work in a restaurant, you get your cash tips. So in the United States, it's a tip system. But every day, the restaurant gives you those tips.
That is your payday, basically. So I would get that cash tip. I would drive to the ATM, and I would deposit that money.
I had a 1998 Buick. It was an old Buick. It was like a mafia car.
I fucking love that car. I crashed it, but eventually I had to upgrade. But it was a nice vehicle nonetheless.
I remember depositing the money. It was a Wells Fargo bank account. And since it's a cash deposit, you see the money instantly displayed in your bank account. So I would instantly get on my computer and I would go to an exchange called Bitstamp.
And Bitstamp was an OG exchange, you know, it doesn't have a lot of liquidity or popularity right now But back in the day you could use your debit card to actually purchase Bitcoin on that exchange So I would every single day use 50% of my money that I would make that day to buy Bitcoin at that time It was a couple hundred dollars 500 600 bucks. This is the end of like 2015 2016. So pre the bull run of 2017 2016 I got exposed to e-commerce through a couple of buddies, through the internet, which it was pre-popularity, if you may call it. It was pre-guru season.
Pre-YouTube, all over dropshipping, this, that, and all the other. So there wasn't a lot of information. There wasn't a lot of infrastructure. And people on that side will be like, well, you got lucky about that as well. You got access to e-commerce when it was fairly easy.
And once again, what I say to that is, Just because it was accessible doesn't mean it was easy. Why? Because the infrastructure wasn't set in place whereby fulfillment centers were easy to access, payment processing, they screwed any sort of e-commerce or dropshipping because it was seen as high risk. So there was a lot of uphill battles, but there are different uphill battles. Today, the uphill battles are you have, you know, your advertisers like...
Your advertising platforms like Meadow or Snapchat, they don't like dropshippers because they have a bad reputation. They're high risk. So you get a lot of bans on that side. You still have issues with payment processing.
And then you have competition when it comes to the barrier of entry because the barrier of entry is quite easy. All you have to do is open up a store with Shopify. Back in the day, Shopify didn't have all these crazy plugins. I remember the app store was very new on Shopify. And I remember I would have to learn the basics of coding to like...
code in my own, the own size of my checkout button, the color of my checkout button. It's pretty OG. Did quite well in e-commerce. I wrote the wave of crypto in 2017 up and down.
I wrote it down. I didn't make a ton of money. Why? Because I didn't understand market cycles, but I was like, you know what?
I think I did 140X, 140 to 160X on my portfolio. I forget, but I lost it all. I lost it all.
And a very simple number to evaluate whether that's true or not, is look at Cardano, right? Cardano went from half a penny to $1.60. I rode that entire thing. It was like two to three weeks.
Same thing with Tron. Tron, I think, went from like a penny to like 30 cents or something like that. And then XRP went from 13 cents all the way to $3.50. So I rode all of those tokens.
I remember buying Bitcoin again. I think I have some videos of it, buying Bitcoin when it crashed at like $4,000. And then a couple of weeks later, it was... Up at 15. So it was a great season. But the issue was I didn't understand market cycles.
I was left holding the bag because everybody was, back in the day in 2017, it wasn't diamond hands. Like in 2020, that chant, it was the hodl, right? Yeah.
The hold on for dear life. And I held on for dear life and I got fucked. So I sat down there.
I'm like, okay, what did I do wrong? What did I do right? What I did right was I allocated my money in an investment vehicle or.
what a lot of people like to call a high risk investment vehicle. And it played out. Why?
Because money moves from different markets at different times. And Bitcoin has its cycles. After the Bitcoin halving, one, one and a half years later, the market tends to have a really good season. So I was like, it's going to happen again. And it did.
But this time I was prepared. And in 2020, after doing $16 million in e-commerce, did quite well there, had some money already saved up. I put all of my money into crypto except $10,000. Now, my entire thesis from that, it's not that I'm a genius, but I was connected with really good people.
I was in the DeFi boom of 2019. So I saw Uniswap do extremely well. I was like, you know, there's something interesting with DeFi. This was pre-YouTube videos of DeFi and everybody telling you how to open up a MetaMask account.
It wasn't very popular. But that which is not popular is often a good idea. And the reason it's a good idea is because you don't have the normies and the average individual as a part of the mix. When the average individual is in the mix, it's usually the end of the season.
When the taxi driver is talking about crypto, when your grandmother is talking about crypto, who else is left to buy? Truly. Because those are usually the most uneducated, most uninformed. Usually the people that are getting the information the last, the hedge funds are positioned, the market makers are positioned, the venture capitalists are positioned.
Smart money is already in the game. And then what they do is very simple. They'll go to CNBC, they'll go to Fox News, they'll go to Forbes, and they'll pay. the journalists to write articles on their behalf to do what? Increase eyeballs because the newbies, they read these things and then the information gets dispersed, gets disseminated.
And that information then leads to what? Liquidity. Yes. And the liquidity is where the smart people get out.
They get out on the liquidity of the noobs. So in 2020, I think it was March of 2020. I remember using an exchange, it was Kraken and Binance before they were cracking down super heavy on it. And I had my orders already placed. So I had orders placed for Ethereum sub $100. I had Cardano at half a penny, XRP at 13 cents again.
And it was the COVID crash, you know, it was the big black swan event and all of these tokens and all of these orders got filled. Right. So I remember I was playing Call of Duty and I see my phone going off like the little vibration thing.
And you see the notifications, all the shit's getting filled. I'm like, oh, fuck. At that time, I was kind of scared, too, in the sense of, OK, is this actually going to zero?
Because mind you, bro, Bitcoin went from twenty thousand all the way to three thousand five hundred. That was scary. Right.
But it's usually in the fear that you have to buy into it. And it's in the fear of missing out that you have to sell. Mm hmm.
And. the markets are quite psychological. And when you understand that the psychology is actually manipulated by people, you can in some way, shape or form understand the cycle.
Now, by no means am I perfect, but it worked out pretty well. I remember being on Clubhouse in 2020, and that's when the app was really popular and popping. And CZ from Binance hopped on there, and he was giving a kind of like a Clubhouse meeting with other crypto people I had tuned in. And I got the opportunity to ask him a question because I remember buying BNB in 2017 for two bucks. So the BNB token, which went to 600 plus dollars, I was one of the first people that was actually buying BNB for two dollars when the exchange was extremely new.
I was a big fan of Binance. I still am. I think they're fucking dope.
And that's no, no, no advice to put your money there because you never know how exchanges are. But I was a big fan of it. They've done a lot of good for the space and helping. helping it grow. But I said, okay, BNB, it's correlated to what?
The exchange. So there needs to be more growth factors and more kind of coal to the fire to keep the engines running. So at that point, I asked CZ, hey, you know, Uniswap has a competitor.
They need a competitor. They're on the Ethereum chain. And I just saw that you launched the Binance Smart Chain.
Extremely new. There was no YouTube videos on it. I think. when I went to type on YouTube, the Binance Smart Chain, there was one guy talking about it from India and then one guy from China.
There was like two or three videos. So it was super small, right? It had just gotten started, just launched.
And then there was an old guy, some European guy that made a video about it on how to connect it with your MetaMask wallet. Because you look at MetaMask, the default is Ethereum and you have to increase different chains. You have to do this whole nonsense, right?
So... He said, well, you know, we're trying to compete because the Binance Smart Chain is going to increase the demand for what? For BNB, which is the native token of the platform, therefore driving up the price.
Most of the employees, most of CZ's wealth is attached to the BNB token. This is just how it works. So to increase demand, you need to create demand.
So he was like, yeah, well, there's other DeFi projects, one of them being PancakeSwap. And I'm like, well, what do you know about PancakeSwap? And he stuttered a little bit. And then he was like, well, I don't know.
I think they're a team from Turkey. And he started giving me information. I'm like, well, if you don't know this anonymous team, how is it that you know where they're from, you know how much, like, how they're doing, you know that they're safe, that they're a well-put-together team, that they're professionals, and they are.
These guys absolutely crushed it. So I went back, and I was like, dude, like, maybe I shouldn't be betting on projects. Maybe I should be betting on people.
And I bet on CZ. So I... purchased at that time, PancakeSwap was $25 million market cap, very small. I purchased 1% of the supply for a quarter million bucks. And from 25 million, it went up to a $2.6 billion market cap.
I sold, I think at about $36, but my selling point was one of the co-founders of FaZe Clan, the gaming org. He texted me and he said, Hey, should I buy SafeMoon? And this was the week that...
a safe moon had migrated from the ethereum chain to the binance smart chain and i said i'm out i'm out because this guy he's a gamer he's not a crypto guy yeah and that's that's during the shit coin season you guys remember when people are creating tokens out of thin air the ding doink coin and all the bullshit so i was like okay this is the end because people are just making shit up at that point i remember sitting in mexico 36 bucks cashed out and it went up to i think 42 43 and i felt like i'd missed out but thankfully i rode that wave pretty well. I did quite well with that investment, made some good money. And the reason I got into crypto was in fact, I had a buddy come and visit me at the time when I was making still money with e-commerce.
And we went to a restaurant, well, a fast food restaurant at the time. I don't endorse seed oils anymore, but it was called Chipotle. I don't know. It's like a Mexican fast food place. And the bowls there are like $12.
So I'm here with this crypto multimillionaire who's made a fuck ton of money with crypto. And he's like, hey, Luke, like he like whispers in my ears like, hey, can you pay for my for my lunch? And I'm like, what do you mean? I thought you were like rich.
I thought you were inviting me to lunch. You know what I mean? And he's like, no, well, I don't have any money.
I'm like, what do you mean you don't have any money? He's like, yeah, all my money's in crypto. And I'm like, what the fuck, bro? Like this guy knows something that I don't.
This guy like understands the game. This guy plays well. So I went back home, put all my money in crypto and it worked out.
Cashed out of Bitcoin at fifty five thousand. cashed out of Ethereum at 2,950 or something quite high. And it worked.
So you listened to the crypto millionaire. But do you think, like we talked about it before, like it wasn't luck that you met up with a crypto millionaire and that he said that thing and that you listened and then think like, okay, now I have to go all in on that. But with Bitcoin, like, okay, when it's on like 55,000, right?
What did you make? How did you make the choice to get out on that moment? Not later on or earlier?
There was three reasons. One is it was enough money that based on my expenses, I would never have to work again. So it was like, okay, yeah, I can make more money. It was in the multiple eight figures, over $40 million in crypto. And I was like, okay.
Like maybe it goes to 60, maybe it goes to 70 Bitcoin each, but like, is it going to actually exponentially change my life? But if this shit crashes, right, it's going to hurt. So at this point, it's not a multiples game.
It's a preservation game. And I did not want to repeat the cycle of 2017, but like that shit fucking hurt. That shit hurt. In 2017, I became a millionaire on paper and lost it. And I was like, okay, like shit, I don't want to do this again.
So in 2018, made my money with crypto. became a millionaire again. Right.
And then eventually I was like, I got to just multiply, but then I have to preserve, which is the motto and the premise of Capital Club to create, multiply and preserve wealth. Because in every facet, the ideology and the processing has to change of how you think about information. But the markets are completely tied to the policy of the Fed. Right. So when the Fed decides to print money or they decide to buy assets, that's when the market pumps.
And when they say, hey. We're no longer buying assets. The market dumps. And you need to correlate the people that work at the Fed. They put out, it was a big announcement.
They said, hey, we are selling all of our assets because it is a conflict of interest for us to be in the markets while the markets still exist. Within 30 days, that was the top. I sold when they put out that announcement.
It only made sense. And people can call it luck. I call it a game of possibilities.
The more you try something, the more refined you become. And the more refined you become, the better you become. I could have easily been in a situation where somebody could have told me about Bitcoin. I remember telling a buddy, multi-millionaire stock trader, in 2017, buy Bitcoin, buy Bitcoin, buy Bitcoin, get into crypto. No, it's a scam.
It's a Ponzi. No, I'm going to trade my penny stocks. I'm going to do my own thing. And... He ended up buying the top in 2021. You know what I mean?
So everybody eventually will capitulate into crypto because it is an asset class that will exist. And we go into a digital world, you need digital money. So from a logical standpoint, it makes sense.
Crypto makes sense. And what we need to understand is that there's ebbs and flows of the market. There's demand. And at the end of the day, there's also saturation. At some point, there is no more money for it to continue going.
And I saw that with crypto. Maybe I got lucky selling at $55,000. but does it really matter?
Yeah, that's true. Also, do you notice that not hesitating when you make choices is a really big part of the game? So even though you know you made a wrong choice, you did it without hesitation.
Because if you keep doing things without hesitation and start making better choices, you start making the right choices while being sure. Because what I notice sometimes is you try to do something and even though you get better, because you know there's more possibilities, you start to hesitate about the choices you make and you don't fully commit. Did you have to go through the journey of not hesitating about the choices or have you always been completely sure about all the choices you made?
I think it's about the information that you have and about the level of conviction because you have to be convicted about something, right? You have to put your chips on the table about something. And the last thing you want to do is live the what if game.
I can always make more money, right? And by no means am I advocating, hey, if you have $5,000 in the bank, go put all of your money in crypto. No, go learn how to make money. go learn how to develop cash flow, go learn how to build a business. I had enough money whereby if I lost that money in crypto, I knew I was going to make it again.
But it was a bet I was willing to take. And I took the bet and it worked. And I realized that if I lost that bet, I was okay too.
Why? Because I developed the skills to build and scale digital businesses. So it wasn't a confidence on the decision.
It was a confidence in my ability to make decisions based off of the skills that I had developed. And if the decision doesn't play out, that's okay. Because I have developed the skills and I have trust in who?
Myself. I'm going to fuck up. But it's all a game of probabilities.
It's not a game of luck. And you have to increase your probabilities by increasing your skill set. And that's what a lot of people don't do.
They don't work and they don't increase their skill set. Leonardo da Vinci famously said, God will sell you anything at the price of labor. And that is true.
So what you have to do is if you want something, you have to work for it. And most people that think that the world is based off of luck have never truly worked for something. Not enough to understand that luck does not exist. It's merely a game of probabilities. You work hard, you work more, you work longer, and eventually you can increase your odds of success.
Kun, I wonder, do you still drink tap water? I do. Yeah.
You do. Every day. There's a lot to do about tap water these days.
I know. And I drink like two liters a day. Yeah, me too. I drink quite a lot of tap water.
But more and more people are turning on tap water because it would be very bad for you. And I think all the people that listen to this, that are, for example, from America, they've got a pretty good case to make about not drinking the tap water because there's a lot of fluoride in some of the waters and other shit. And in the Netherlands, more people are turning on tap water as well.
But the funny thing is, that one of the biggest problems about the water but the food as well it's not about the fluoride or those it's about something completely different do you know what i'm hinting at i'm thinking that you are talking about the pfess if i pronounce it good which is short for endocrine disruptive chemicals like microplastics right yeah it's it's usually microplastics are a big part of them uh bpa as well which used to be in a lot of plastic bottles you leave them out in your car after you drink the water you're drinking almost pure cancer is what they say but these endocrine disruptive chemicals let's just call them edcs nowadays they're in most of our food most of our water and they're a very big problem they're even this big that over the last 50 years the male testosterone levels dropped over 50 percent over 50 exactly over 50 even better there was a recent study as well which looked at 21 years old in the year of 2019 so it's a few years back and they looked at their testosterone level and if you look at the testosterone level in 2019 of the 21 year old male and you look at the average testosterone level of the same 21 year old male 15 years back so when you were 21 15 years earlier so in 2004 they used to have a 36% higher testosterone levels on average. So we are less masculine than... We're fucked. We're actually fucked.
Yeah, we're fucked. It's not getting better, right? No, man. So it's dropping by about 2% a year. So if you're looking at a couple of decades down the line, there's a chance that we're nearing 0% male testosterone.
Is that even possible? I mean 0% is probably not possible because then you would be all out of whack and I don't think it's possible but levels are going to be very fucking low yeah and the results are going to be uh of course not being able to reproduce so this uh what do you call it overpopulation problem well it's going to be fixed in a couple of decades yeah we don't have to do anything about it just keep eating the plastics and drinking and eating the shitty food and let your testosterone levels go to but we recently started started using a supplement to upgrade our own testosterone levels which is pine pollen and pine pollen um we use on a daily basis we just add it to our supplement stack and it's very interesting because i've got it here because i've been using it but there are so many different good things about pine pollen that i had to write them down because i don't all know him but the main thing is uh being an entrepreneur your vitality and energy levels are very important because you're vital and you have a lot of energy you're able to focus you're able to put in a lot of deep work and get shit done so it's crucial for successful days and Since taking the pine pollen, because we've done it a couple of months now to perform our health, it doesn't only boost your testosterone, but it also boosts your focus, reduces stress levels. And I can read here because I don't know all this shit out of my head.
It's 100% natural. I figured it's much because it's just pine pollen. And it contains over 200 active compounds. Okay. It's very readily absorbed by your body, so it's very easy.
Then there's a big question. Is it a miracle cure? No, fuck no.
Your sleep needs to be good. Your nutrition needs to be right. You need to exercise regularly because that's the fucking baseline. If you're not doing that, yeah, of course your testosterone levels are going to be shit.
But just like taking creatine, there are extra things you can do and pine pollen is one of those things. And what do a lot of people, because we've been using it, but there are hundreds of listeners that are using it as well. And what have you been hearing from them? Higher energy levels throughout the day, increased focus, reduced brain fog.
and improved sexual health with natural testosterone, which is very nice. But what makes the pine pollen so powerful? Do you know?
I don't, actually. No, because I was looking into this a bit further because I've been using it for quite a while, but I don't always take the time to go really deep in certain supplements, but for this one I did because, of course, it's a partner of ours as well, and I've been using it for quite some time. Tell me.
It's packed with a lot of nutrients, including amino acids, vitamins, A, B-complex, C, E. a lot of minerals antioxidants enzymes plant sterols nucleol acids and healthy fatty acids so it provides everything that your body needs for growth recovery and optimal function there's a lot of d-h-a-e in it as well from the top of my head whatever it's very good for you and i've been seeing a lot of improvement in my focus energy whatever and a lot of our listeners as well so what did we get we got a code lotgenote10 you will see it in the screen here somewhere you can try it for less than one euro per day so that's a dollar 20 or something per day you can use the link down below use the code lotgenote10 to get 10 off and get it for less than a euro a day test it out for a month see what it does for you it's been doing wonders for me and just start using offense as your best defense so click the link down below and the beautiful thing is as well you can use the code as many times as you want on every repeat order. Then I really wonder how you look at like, for example, we've spoken to some entrepreneurs that tried their whole life and had maybe a bit of success or touched their first million, then all lost it and then never got to the point of the success where they can die happy or die satisfied. Where do you think those types of people go wrong? Because they seem to be working hard, or at least they think.
What is the thing that they're not doing correct or what's going wrong in them not succeeding in what they want to reach? Just because you're busy doesn't mean you're productive. True. And a lot of people think that because they're busy, they're actually productive.
I can see a lot of entrepreneurs, see how they conduct their daily life, look at their daily habits and realize if they're going to be successful or not. Why? Because the allocation of time, which is one of the resources that you have, the allocation of energy. another resource that you have, and the allocation of attention, another resource that you have, are dispersed and they are dispersed everywhere.
There is no sort of focused attention towards an objective. So everybody that says, oh no, I'm working hard. I keep trying. I'm always educating myself. I'm investing my time wisely.
If you actually evaluate these people's lives, you would realize that it's bullshit because most people waste time. They waste energy and they waste attention. But if you could focus energy, time, and attention in the development of your character. in the development of your relationships, in the development of money-making skills.
There's skills that help you make money. Money, making money is a skill. If you don't make money, you have not developed the skill of making money.
And for you to consider that you have is a lie. So if you look at your bank account and your bank account reflects X amount of balance, it's a direct correlation on your level of skill when it comes to making money. If it's low. Well, my friend, you don't know how to make money.
If it's high, my friend, you know how to make money. And there's different proportions and different levels to that. Now, there are instances of luck.
I'm not saying that luck doesn't exist. But I also understand that I can create my own luck by increasing my odds of success. Who I surround myself with.
What I listen to. How I educate myself. Who I listen to.
What I do with my daily habits. And eventually... I can turn this unlucky beginning or the cards that I've been dealt of being an immigrant, having $200, flying from Argentina in the flight attendant chair because I couldn't even get a coach seat to becoming a multimillionaire.
I'm pretty curious then. A lot of people are talking these days about the energy that you have during the day. You have 24 hours, the time.
It's obviously very clear, but your energy, how do you give something your energy? Like on what places and what things, how do you spend your energy? Well, first you need to know what your goal is.
Most people walk around with no goals, no ambition. They don't know where they're going. It's like a ship with no destination.
If you don't know where you're going, you'll never get there. Once you know where you want to go, then you direct your time. your energy and your attention to what?
To the execution and the achievement of that goal. If you want to make money, you will make money. If you want a good network, you will have a good network.
If you want to build a great podcast with great hosts and great guests, you will build a podcast in that way. It's all about intention. But most people walk around in life thinking that life is just a big fat lottery.
And it's just not that case. Those that live by the lottery of life most likely end up losing because you're just gambling. I don't want to gamble with my life. So what I do is I set a goal and then I focus my time, energy, and attention, which truly are the only assets that you have. So when a lot of people come to me, they're like, Luke, I have nothing.
Brother, you and I have the same exact thing, time, energy, and attention. But what you use your time for, it doesn't yield a return. What I use my time for yields a return.
You get paid in proportion to the difficulty of the problems that you solve. Elon Musk said that once. You get paid in proportion to the difficulty of the problems that you solve.
Most people that don't make money, they don't solve problems. They don't spot problems. They don't capitalize on problems.
If you solve small problems, you'll get paid very little. The guy flipping the patties, like Tate says, somebody's got to flip the fucking burgers. It's true.
But they solve very small problems. They get paid in proportion to what? Solving that problem.
You put a man on Mars, you'll get paid in proportion to solving that problem. So you need to focus your time, your energy, and attention to solving big problems. And hopefully your goal is to serve humanity.
So you align your goal with a servant's heart of providing for humanity. And of course, there's scammers out there. There's people that aren't good.
But I'm not talking about those. I'm not talking to those people. I'm talking about people I want to build real, sustainable, and... scalable businesses.
That is going to require time, energy, and attention, but you need to know where you're going. What were the goals that you had when you came over to the States with the $200? And did you have the big goals or did you have to figure them out yet? Or did you have a very clear goal as you have right now?
My goal was freedom. That's it. And I had freedom when I was living in my brother's apartment, spending $200 a month in rent, sleeping on his bed. on his couch.
I had freedom. Now, freedom needs to be earned, but it also needs to be maintained. Naval Ravikant famously said, people that live beyond their means do not experience peace.
Then he says, people that live below their means will experience a level of peace that those above their means will never experience. So freedom can be experienced. You don't have to be making a ton So my objective was freedom, right?
And I achieved that by sleeping $200 a month on a couch to then focus what? My time. energy and attention to making more money but a lot of motherfuckers live beyond their means their time and energy and focus is what spent on paying their bills they're in a relationship that's toxic that is not supporting their endeavors and their goals so they spend their time energy and attention supplying that person their friends right they're not good friends so they spend their time energy and attention with people that are not roi positive and their daily actions and their habits right they spend their time energy and attention on those things that yield no result i had good relationships good friendships good networking good habits and i lived below my means so that i could focus my time energy and attention on making money how should one go about finding out for themselves if they're on the right path or no because if you say it like that it's very easy but i can imagine that there are people listening and thinking i really love my girl we fight sometimes but then she makes me happy sometimes as well Do I need to skip her or do I need to stay with her? So how do you go about finding out for yourself if you're allocating your time right? If you're with the right person, how do you figure it out?
You need to know your goal. You need to establish your goal. And then you need to ask yourself if what you're doing is purposeful and beneficial to the achievement of your goal.
A good thing at the wrong time can become a bad thing. It's like giving a razor to a baby. and expecting the baby not to cut himself.
But when you give the razor to a man, the man knows how to use it. So the issue may not be the relationship. The issue may not be the girl. The issue may be your inability to establish goals, to establish boundaries, and therefore to be in an environment where you can still pursue your goals effectively.
A good thing at the wrong time may be a bad thing. The relationship may not be a bad thing. It may just not be the right time. So how does one go about setting goals? Because sometimes you hear about these things like set a date, set a number, make it, conceive it, see it every day.
How do you go about making goals that really give you a goal to work towards? I often talk about the symphony of success. What does success sound like to you? Not what success means to me, not what success means to your parents, to your friends, to the system. What does success sound like to you?
What is your symphony of success? When you hear successful, living a successful life, what comes to mind? For a musician, it may be be really good at playing an instrument.
For me, it may be developing a phenomenal business. For an athlete, it may be developing a great athletic career. What is your symphony of success? It really depends on the individual. That's why there's no one spectrum of success.
There isn't one number to achieve that defines success. That is my definition of success, but that is for me. Why? Because every person beautifully has been created to have their own specificity. So you have your own dreams.
You have your own ambitions. You have your own symphony of success. You need to find that.
And how do you find it? From deprogramming from the bullshit that everybody else has told you of what it means to be successful. You need to stop listening to others and start listening to yourself. But the problem is nobody knows how to listen to themselves.
They're scrolling on TikTok, music on loud every day, when they're driving, fucking radio turned on, when they're home, scrolling on their phones, when they ask for opinions, they ask for opinions from other people, they ain't even asking opinions from themselves. they're going to a fucking psychologist asking a psychologist for wisdom and advice on how to live their lives and they're paying this motherfucker money and all you are is a client so might as well keep this person sick as long as possible or deranged or in the loop of coming and sitting on the chair why because they're paying for the fucking mortgage when's the last time you sat down and defined your symphony of success what does success look like to you to me it's not having a ton of properties and living in a big fat box and having a ton of supercars. No, to me, it's freedom.
And I found that early on. Now I just am able to experience a different level of freedom with more toys and more things. And I can bring people along that journey with me to enjoy it. That is my symphony of success.
And if I was to cater or falter to what other people told me what success was, then I have gone from successful to unsuccessful. Okay. But you say freedom. When you come to America, you actually experience that freedom, right?
But then you already achieved your goal, and then you want to maintain it. But it's like a happy person that wants to stay happy, right? He's gonna do everything to keep his happiness, but that actually makes him more sad. Because you cannot always stay happy all the time. How does that go with freedom?
Because sometimes you have to maybe work, like you said, like you're sleeping on the couch and you have to work, you have to do door-to-door sales, you have to do other stuff. That's not actually really freedom, right? So what was your purpose then when you came to the US?
Like you experienced freedom, but what goal was next for you then? Well, you defined two different things. The first thing you mentioned...
was happiness. Happiness is an emotion. So it comes and goes.
So anybody that's pursuing something that's fleeting will not be able to hold on to it. Why? Because you cannot be a happy person all the time. So to pursue happiness is an unachievable goal. But to pursue freedom, freedom is a state of mind, right?
Freedom is a state of being. It's not an emotion. I can still be sad and be free.
I can still be happy and be free. So if somebody that's like, well, I want to be a happy person. Well, good luck, bro. Good luck.
Good luck being free, right? Good luck being happy. It's two different things.
This idea of being happy is this concept that people have been sold, right? That life is about happiness. But what if life wasn't about happiness?
What if life is about experiencing every aspect and every emotion that life has? Wouldn't you want to experience? The full sudden range of emotions that life has to offer you, the sadness, the heartbreaks, the joy, right? You can't have happiness without sorrow. You can't have pleasure without pain.
And to neglect one thing is to neglect life. So why would you neglect these things? And in order for you to achieve freedom, you need to be able to understand that you need to be unwaveringly decided to enjoy every aspect of...
of the experience of life. And the problem is most of the aspects of experiencing life fully are haltered or deterred or slowed down by the busyness of life, the unproductive things of life, the nine to five. The only reason you have a nine to five, people are like, well, I have responsibilities. You establish these responsibilities on yourself. You decided how much you were going to pay for rent.
You decided how much you were going to pay for that car. You have a kid. You decide to fuck that bitch. It's your responsibility.
Every aspect of your life, every responsibility that you have is self-imposed for the most part. There are exceptions. So your question is, how much responsibility do you want? Look at a fucking dog, bro.
Zero responsibilities. Lives happy as hell. There's an ancient proverb.
That says, walk like a turtle, sleep like a dog, and you'll be happy. So I wonder, it seems to me that you've... on the one hand taken a lot of time to develop yourself on the business side you've made money you've had some very successful businesses which takes up quite a lot of time but you also seem to me to have a lot of knowledge or at least have a lot of have done a lot of self-reflection to understand more about the world as you see it and the world as you think it works did you have time in the time when you came to the us you started the grind as most people call it.
Did you have time to reflect as well in that time to really get to know yourself or did this come at a later time when you had some money and took time to reflect on yourself? Because what I noticed is even though I'm an entrepreneur and I try to be free as we all want to be, freedom is the name of the game, I end up getting into my own rat race which is even though I'm not working nine to five, the rat race I created for myself which is working five to nine, flipped it around. And I end up not having time to reflect on what I really want or really want to do.
And things slowly start to become business goals instead of living out of purpose. Did you always have the time to live from purpose and reflect? Or how did you position your time to be able to do that? You're wearing a nice suit today. Thank you.
Your hair looks good. Thank you. Did you look in the mirror?
I think I did, yeah. Reflect comes from the reflection of the mirror. You had time for the outer canvas. You have time for the inner canvas. It's all what you deem a priority, my friend.
True. How did you go about that when you were, for example, doing e-commerce, which I can imagine is quite a busy job? or a busy business to be engaged in. How did you position your time? Did you put in an hour every day to reflect on yourself or was it just a conscious thing which you did whenever it came to you?
There's two types of ways of meditating. You can say, hey, I'm going to go sit on this yoga mat, close my eyes and try to clear my mind. Or you can be in a state of meditation. What this means is that you're consciously aware.
You're always reflecting. neglecting you talk bad to an employee you yell at the employee hmm why did i do that where did that come from oh i lost money on a trade why do i feel anxious why did i feel like i had to place that trade you see somebody driving in a nice car you get a little bit jealous why am i jealous where is where is this feeling coming from so you can either meditate upon things Or you can live in a state of meditation whereby you are always reflecting on who you are and what is being displayed. Because the world shows you who you are if you watch and pay attention. Why? Because you are a reflection of it.
So what you see in the exterior is a reflection of what's happening inside. But you can change what's inside. So this idea of not having any time, it's most likely a time allocation thing.
of time, energy, and attention. If you have time, energy, and attention to reflect on the internal, then you'll look extremely nice. We interrupt this episode because you are wasting time.
And if you're not wasting time, then you're probably wasting money. These days, if you quickly want to find something on YouTube, you're probably spending one to two or three minutes just watching non-skippable ads because I guess YouTube has got to get their ad rates up. So a lot of people... started using YouTube Premium.
But YouTube Premium these days is expensive as hell because you're in the Netherlands paying 12 euros a month and in the States, I think $12 or $13 a month. So quite expensive. I recently found out that in Turkey, YouTube Premium is one-tenth of the price. In Turkey, you pay about 1,50 euro a month. But how do I get my YouTube Premium from Turkey?
Do I have to move there? Do I have to speak Turkish? No. None of that is needed because of the sponsor of this episode, NordVPN. With NordVPN, you can change your IP location to different places around the world.
And Turkey is one of those places. So what are we going to do? We're going to set our IP location to Turkey, set up a YouTube account, and get a YouTube Premium subscription. This subscription will be in lira and will be way cheaper than if you set it up in the Netherlands, the States, or in Canada. You will be paying only €1.50 a month.
Just change your location back to wherever you're at and you will be able to use your YouTube account just as normal. No changes. The only changes are the price. So stop being a thief of your own wallet and set up your cheap YouTube premium account.
And the best thing is if you get a NordVPN subscription through the link in our description, you can get it for just a cup of coffee a month. And with your NordVPN subscription. and the new turkish youtube premium subscription you will still be about 50 cheaper off than if you were to get a youtube's premium account in your own country so get nordvpn get all the other benefits so you can safely use the internet you can watch movies on netflix or hbo from all the countries around the world because you can change your ip location get it now click the link in the description we've got a 30-day money-back guarantee so if it's not working or you're not satisfied you can get your money back click the link in the description and we're going to get back to the episode also said like earlier in this conversation that someone has to look at him or herself and ask what or who they want to become like what is the person in three years and who do how do you want to look who want you to be um And I'm really curious, like when you were like 16 or 18, now you are like, how old are you?
20? 28. So 10 years ago, when you were like 18, who do you want to be? Like what kind of person? The best version of myself.
And who was that for you? I have yet to tell you, brother. I'll let you know when I die. It's a work in progress. I can't tell you whether I'm successful or not now.
I'll tell you on my deathbed. Why? Because it's a progressive realization of yourself. You're consistently realizing that you can become better and better and better.
It's like going to one skyscraper and being able to see the surroundings. versus seeing something from the floor level. You can't see what you can't see. So my goal is just to become better and better and better, not self-sabotage, not be a liar, not be a hypocrite, be authentic.
And in the authenticity, I can climb levels, become better. And the more I can see, right, the clearer life becomes. So maybe in 10 years, my definition of success completely changes. Who knows, bro?
That's the beauty of life. Yeah. Everything changes consistently as you garner more information.
So 10 years ago, I was like, dude, I just want to be free today. I'll tell you the same thing. I'm a free man, right?
But I get to enjoy things pretty nicely. I get to build my character. I get to spend time reading. I get to spend time hanging out with you guys, hanging out with friends. I get to build businesses that are no longer based off of just money.
I was talking with a buddy who drove me here. uh alexander and he was basically telling me hey like what have you been working on the last two years i'm like the same thing i've been i've been working on capital club and to a lot of entrepreneurs that's a shock because it's like well how's capital club making money i don't have to make money every day i've already made money if all my life is built around making money then i'm just like you mentioned a rat in my own race i do not want to be a fat rat in the race of life it doesn't matter because i'm still a fucking rat You know what I mean? So sometimes you do things for money. Sometimes you do them to get paid. Sometimes you do them for pleasure.
Sometimes you do them for profit. Sometimes you do them for passion. And it's in the beauty of doing these things and evolving and experiencing different things of life that you get to become well-rounded. And my objective is to become the best version of myself.
I don't know what the best version of myself is. I just know the sky's the limit. And when you ask... Those questions, right? Like you're reflecting on yourself and you ask the questions, why I'm doing this?
Or why am I getting mad? Or why am I feeling these emotions? A lot of times we have a lot of conversations about this.
You can ask the question why? And you can't have the answer. But then you have to do something with that answer.
And when you have like a busy life, you have a lot of, not a lot of energy left. not a lot of attention or time left. And to then like change your character because you ask a lot of why questions. So you know that you can become better, right?
Maybe you want to quit smoking. Maybe you want to exercise more. Maybe you want to eat more healthier.
But it's not always the time to do that, right? Or do you think that when you have the realization that you can do better, you have to do better? How do you think about that? I think that there's a season in life for everything. There's a season for money.
There's a season for fun. There's a season for hard work. You have to determine that season based on your goals, right?
So for me, at some point, right, I realized that my health was more important than the money. Why? Because I began to understand what wealth was by definition.
Wealth, people are like, oh, this person's wealthy. Well, what does it mean to be wealthy? What does it mean? Is it just money? That's what everybody's told us.
Oh, this person's wealthy. You know, they're a billionaire. They're wealthy.
But are they really wealthy? Or are they just a person that has money? Wealth by definition, my friend, is not money.
It's abundance. Abundance. Do you live an abundant life? Are you healthy?
Do people love you? Do you love people? Do you walk around with joy and gratitude?
Are you financially stable? Are you free? Do you have the ability to do what you want, wherever you want, however you want? This is wealth. Wealth is abundance.
So if you're lacking in an area of your life to create true wealth, you should focus on those things, right? So at some point, it's okay to make less money so you can spend more time developing your health. At some point, I was talking with a guy out of Singapore.
We had a conversation for Capital Club. It's coming this summer. And he's done over $700 million in real estate development and has sold that, right?
Like a fuck ton of money. And he said, people spend 20,000 hours developing their business skills, but they don't spend a single hour developing their family skills. And he's like, isn't that important? And I'm like, yeah, bro, it's fucking important.
He's like, yeah, so I already put in my 20,000 hours in business. I'm going to spend 20,000 hours with my family to develop how to be a good husband and how to be a good father and how to be a good man. Why?
Because he understands what wealth means. Abundance. And it's in understanding these conversations and in speaking with different people that your goals begin to be realigned.
Right? That's the entire premise of playing the game. But if you're in the rat race, it's the same loop and the same shit time and time again, day and day again. No wonder you live a life of misery.
Because you're not living your fullest potential. You're not living and being and having a life of abundance. You're merely a cog in the machine of life because you have surrendered to the dreams and ambitions of other men.
Through social media pushed upon you, probably. The system, brother. So who's the person you look at saying they're truly wealthy in the way you describe it?
I don't know because I don't know the intricacies of people's lives. True. All I can ask myself is, am I living authentically? And am I pursuing a life of well-rounded, balanced wealth? And right now I think I am.
There's always areas to work on. But when we do a second podcast, I think you guys will be able to see some improvements on my end as well. Cool. So what's your focus right now? Because you said everything is in a season usually.
What season are you in at the moment? I'm in the season of building Capital Club. In 2019, I had gotten scammed. pretty big scam uh in an investment it was almost a million dollars nine hundred thousand and i was like dang you know i'm a poor person with money that's what i said i was like i got money but i'm kind of stupid yeah okay you know you know the you've seen those crypto guys you know they make they make some money but they're dumb we've been to dubai they're all over brother they're in miami as well they're in la haven't been there yet but so find out so there's a saying if you If you make a million dollars, you best become a millionaire. If not, you will lose it.
Yeah. So I realized in 2019, I was a poor person with money. I had no network. I had no connections.
I didn't really have much more than just money. And I said, if money is all I have, then I don't have much. And I know that may sound difficult for people that don't have money, because money is such an important thing.
But once you have money, you need to be able to develop the skills to what? Maintain money. So in my bedroom 2019, I launched Capital Club Y because I wanted to create a network and an environment for me.
What did I need as an entrepreneur? I haven't created Capital Club for other people. I created Capital Club knowing what I needed as an entrepreneur.
And it just happens to resonate with everybody else because guess what? We're all human. So maybe we need all similar things. We need good relationships, good networks, trusted mentors.
trusted mentees trusted peers right that you can be authentic with i mean alexander's here watching from backstage he's been to every capital club event and the reason members continue coming back and back again is because there's an environment of authenticity giving without expecting and my entire premise was to create that so i created that in 2019 and that's kind of what i've been working on for the last couple years but i was working on it from the elite perspective right it was the membership was fifteen thousand dollars a very famous gamer just messaged me today to join capital club his name's i think it's pronounced mongrel and uh he's a big guy from faze clan and he actually has made millions of dollars gaming and he messaged me he's like hey can i join capital club that guy has fifteen thousand dollars to join a yearly membership and that make that guy makes a fuck ton of money but on the other hand What could I do for the person that's making $5,000 a month? That's making $10,000 a month. That's an aspiring entrepreneur.
So I decided to create the Capital Club membership. And that is a dollar a day, right? A dollar a day. And the reason was very simple. When I was waiting tables, I had the opportunity once to wait tables for Jeff Bezos.
He left me 15% tip. I still remember. He didn't interact with me. I didn't interact with him.
But I was working in an environment where a lot of entrepreneurs came, a lot of businessmen came. a lot of people that work for the government. There's a lot of important people.
And once, you know, I caught the attention of this one guy and I said, hey, can I take you out for coffee? And he said, yes. Why?
Because we had a background, you know, he used to do sales. I love sales, things of this nature. So he was like, hey, yeah, let's sit down and talk. And I paid for that coffee because that's all I could afford.
So my entire premise of building this membership for entrepreneurs to join that are aspiring entrepreneurs, developing entrepreneurs was I want people to have a network, mentors, relationship, an academy and experience to develop for less than the price of a fucking cup of coffee. Great. And that's the entire premise for a dollar a day. Nice. And how big is it?
Well, right now... It's not open. It's not open. And that's because we, well, by the time this podcast releases, it'll probably be open. But our wait list is about 40,000 people.
40,000? 40,000 people is the wait list. And the wait list has been building for a long time. Our high-tier membership, my wait list is about 400 people. There's only 150 that actually are part of the network because quality matters more than quantity.
It does. I learned this from Leonidas. leonidas and the 300 they yeah they lost to persia but they put one hell of a battle and sometimes you just need 300 bad motherfuckers in your circle that are all about protecting the circle and are all about integrity and unity and authenticity and vulnerability and really care about each other to do big things but if i can translate this to tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people potentially we can change the world Part of the side quest. Pretty cool. That's crazy, man.
Okay. That's insane. So how do you go about helping that many people?
Because they've got, I think, pretty different goals maybe. So what are a couple of the things that you think entrepreneurs should know or should develop in that all those thousands of people got in common that they need to develop to become their wealthy self? I often tell people that every man needs three relationships in their life.
In order for you to have balanced life as a man, you need three relationships. First, you need a mentor. Somebody that has gone the path that you want to go, that can instruct you and take you down the road, avoiding the pitfalls and avoiding the mistakes and avoiding the troubles that come that way.
You need a peer. Somebody that is at your level, at your equal, that you can mastermind with, that you can build a think tank, that you can go back and forth and discuss and argue and develop business. And then you need a mentee, whether it's your young brother or somebody that you bring into your business or an employee, somebody that you pour yourself into. Why? Because those people keep you accountable.
Those people are the ones that check you. You know, you often have your little sibling. He'll ask you questions and he'll check you with authenticity and honesty and ask you shit.
You're like, oh, whoa, like this kid's paying attention, right? So every man in his life needs three relationships. And under those three relationships, Capital Club's been built.
Mentors, peers. and mentees that's why we have different tiers of capital club because the goal isn't just to receive but it's to give right who you give to who you network with and who do you listen to and you can have these three relationship in check which i believe every man needs your goals will be pursuable regardless of how different they are can you take us back to your first event that you did with capital club my first event was actually in two 2000, my first physical event, whoa, 2019. It was a free event in Los Angeles, California with a good buddy of mine, a business partner. His name is Luca Nets.
He's a very successful entrepreneur, good friend. And we just did a free e-commerce event for entrepreneurs to come and learn. No charge, anything.
it was the concept of the pop-ups that i've built worldwide that are attracting literally thousands of people it's fucking crazy it's giving with no expectation just creating an environment of authenticity teaching people allowing people to hang out free food free environment come and chill so that was the first kind of experience then 2020 had my first elite mastermind in mexico and that's when we had about you 30 entrepreneurs come out, paid a multi-thousand dollar ticket to come. And that was the first physical kind of paid event. But ever since then, I do pop-ups all over the world. Amsterdam, Paris, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Bali, Singapore, Dubai. And I create an environment where entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs can come and hang out, right?
No strings attached. Just come and chill. These events cost me tens of thousands of dollars, but at the sake of what? At the exchange of what?
People having a great time, people networking, people connecting. Like I mentioned before, at some point when you have money, money is not the most important thing. Yeah, I would like to have a private jet.
Yeah, I could buy a private jet, but do I need a private jet? No. Do I need 10 supercars?
They'd be cool. Do I need them? No.
Do I need a bigger box? I just got done selling my home. It was a $4 million house. Why? Because I don't need that shit.
I had people in my house all day. I had a gardener. I had the fucking cleaners. I had the pool guy.
I had the maintenance guy. I had the air conditioning people that would come when the AC was leaking because I live in Puerto Rico, so it's a mess. So I had all these people. I'm like, whoa, where's my freedom to walk around in my boxers in my own home? You know what I mean?
Just like normal things. So my entire premise was to create an environment for entrepreneurs to level up, to ask questions, to be themselves. I'll ask a person when they come up to me. First thing, hey, how much money do you make? You know, what do you do for a living?
Where are you currently at in your stage? And I'll tell them, don't lie to me. Why? Because I'm creating this environment for people to be themselves.
Because once you know who you are and you're authentic with yourself and you don't lie and you don't try to impress people, then you can work on becoming better. So I think Capital Club is a net positive for the world. And I think it's going to do great things.
That's cool. Very cool. We talked about wealth. I'm very curious. I think you maybe later in life want to have children.
How do you look at generational wealth? Do you want to build that? And if the answer is yes, how are you going to do that?
Finance is the language of the elite. I mentioned this in a podcast previously. Back in the day, the...
Peasants, they were educated with the language of the peasants. They didn't know how to read or write or speak. They just worked in the fields.
The kings, the people that ran society, the feudal lords, they spoke Latin. Why? Because Latin was the language of the elite at the time. The peasants, they would go to the priest to... Have the priest read them the Bible.
Why? Because, well, the Bible was written in Latin up until it was translated in English. So the source of information came from what?
The elite. Today, we no longer have Latin as the language of the elite. We have finances. So more instructing people instead of this transfer of wealth is this transfer of knowledge of how the world works. And whether I have children or not, it's more so I'm passionate about orphans.
you know there's a lot of children with no parents uh that have no opportunity so once i take care of i i sponsor 38 orphans right now it's it's a great endeavor it's really nice i one of my capital club events uh i'm gonna take my members to um to thailand where i actually have a uh a lot of orphans that i take care of to see if they sponsor a couple orphans themselves do some good shit with their money And whether I have kids or not, it's about teaching people how to go from peasant to king, how to go from zero to hero, how to level up, how to break the cycle of poverty and mental poverty and these frameworks of limitation of how the world works. And you don't need to become a multimillionaire in order to understand these things, in order to learn these truths, right? As long as you are honest with yourself, as long as your life is well-balanced.
I have met... people that are more joyful and enjoying life with very little you know they go out and they fish for their food every day i remember in bali the guy didn't know anything about money but the guy would go fish his own stuff on his little boat come back smile have a good time time went time passed slow would hang out in the hammock some people be like oh this guy's a bum he's enjoying himself so if he's enjoying himself and the guy at the mansion the skyscraper is out here scrolling on twitter feeling anxious and bitter and upset who's living a better life honestly speaking because at some point you have a roof over your head you have food in your mouth you have shelter you have people that love you everything else is a commodity and an extra so i'll let you know when i have children brother hopefully we're at a place where they can hang out together yours and mine man yeah it'll be great so i wondered what i notice in a lot of entrepreneurs and you people across the board is if they strive for something bigger it may be money or maybe in sports there's something there's a part of them that's not content with the place they're at right now so i don't have money right now and i want to be a millionaire or i'm not the number one in the world right now but i want to be and you start working and you have to find the balance between being content with the things you do and achieve all the well staying not content to keep the fuel to keep working and developing do you think there is a way for people to be content but all the while be working to something greater and if yes how do you go about that because of a lot of my goals come from some sort of not being content with where i'm at right now may it be the money i have the body i have a lot of things and if i would be content i would be like well fuck it it's fine i'm good like this just like the fisher i'm happy why should i do it contentment and satisfaction are two different things you can be you satisfied with your achievements but content at the same time you could be unsatisfied with your achievements still content right content is a state of being or you could be unsatisfied with your achievements and look at the future what you haven't accomplished and be uncontent with your current situations or your achievements instead of looking at the future right what you haven't been able to achieve looking into a future that you haven't created look into the past and realize how much progress you've made how much better you are today than you were before and let that progress fuel you to continue working towards becoming the next version of yourself brother it's the fucking journey of life because it's the it's the journey the process is the prize the prize isn't the destination it's the process it's who you become you want to achieve that perfect you achieve it Pull the silver thread. Have you heard the story of the silver thread?
There's this tale about the silver thread, this small boy. He's about to go to school and he's not content. He doesn't want to go to school. As he goes to school, he encounters an old lady, right?
And the old lady says, well, if you pull from this ball of yarn that's silver, you can pull it and time will pass. He's like, well, I'm going to pull it because, you know, I don't want to go to summer. I just...
I don't want to be in school. I just want to go to summer. So the little boy says, okay, I'm going to take this. And the old lady says, hey, but there's a catch, right? Once you pull the thread, you can never go back.
You can never go back. You can only go forward. But you can pull the thread as many times or as little times as you want.
So the little boy pulls the thread. Boom. Summertime. He says, oh, well, this is a great thing.
You know, I was able to skip the entire year of school. He's like, well, what if I skip all of the years of school? So he tugs again. Boom. University.
Oh, well, university's tough, you know, and maybe university isn't for me. What if I can just get straight to work? Boom. Tugs the little ball of yarn, slowly turning from silver to copper, decaying in color because it represents time.
He says, you know what? I'm in the workforce, but I'm unhappy because I'm alone. Let me pull this thread eventually to be in a relationship.
Pulls the thread, boom, married. What happened? I'm married?
I missed my wedding day? Oh, well, it's okay. It's not a big deal. Let me just never pull this thread again. So a little time goes by.
Eventually, his wife gets pregnant. The wife gets pregnant, has the baby, but then the baby begins to yell and scream. Oh man, I have to deal with this baby. Let me pull the thread till the baby's grown up a little bit.
Pulls the thread, the child grew up. Eventually, he realizes at an old age that what happened, that he wanted to fast forward all of his life, that he wasn't able to experience it. Now the story continues, but the premise is very simple.
To live in the future is your inability to live in the present. And people that live in the future are often unhappy. Why?
Because they want to be something that they're not. Look at the past. Look at who you've become, the progress that you've made. And if you haven't made a lot of progress, just be happy at the fact that you're fucking alive because you have the chance to make progress.
And live in the present moment, here, now, and use your time, energy, and attention, my friend, to pursue your goal. interesting great answer man great advice like the story yeah i'm wondering as well listening to you recite some of these stories and have some i think very great quotes how do you go about having these stories or quotes stored somewhere in your mind do you go about writing them down and remembering them or how do you have all these this knowledge just to scoop up and tell when you're in a podcast just i think you're a great storyteller did you train that Or have you always been a great storyteller? The more you know, the more you know. True. So just spend time focusing on knowing more things.
An idle mind is the devil's workshop. That means that an empty mind is open for mischief and doing bad things. When you occupy your time in developing your mind, your spirit, your soul, then that is what reflects.
There's a verse in the Bible that says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So when you see people talking, it's a reflection of what's inside. So the question is, how do you change your heart? How do you change your mind?
Well, it's the sources of information that you listen to, the truth that you believe, what you spend your time, energy, and attention focused on learning and leveling up and discovering. So focus on developing self and self will develop. If you want to be the best podcast host, do many podcasts. It's the only way. If I want to be a great podcast guest, well, I have to be in many podcasts.
I remember doing Instagram lives, you know, back in the day with people that would listen to me. There was 14 people, right? Now I'll turn on my Instagram. I do an Instagram live. I'll have 3,000, 2,500, 5,000 at times.
But like I mentioned before, the destination, everybody looks at, right? Nobody looks at the process. But when you look at the process, that's the prize.
And the truth is, the price of progress is pain. The price of progress is pain. Most people do not want to experience pain. They like comfort. So if you want progress, you must be willing to, in the process, experience pain so that you may achieve your goal.
What is pain for you then? Because this is like mental pain, right? Most of the time. Of course, you can have like physical pain, but if we talk about mental pain, can you give some examples for you? Like, what are some mental pains that you have now during the days that you are here or when you're working?
I mean, they're human things, you know. You can live in the future. You can compare yourself to other people. You know, I was walking in Dubai and there was a guy that was walking and he goes to a bench, right?
And he starts doing push-ups, you know, arms against the bench. And he does four and he gets up and he walks past me. I'm like, bro, you only did four. You're super weak.
And he's like, and he started giving me a reason. No, I only did four. The bench was broken. I'm like, and I looked at my assistant. You see, I said, even people that are strangers, they're always trying to justify their actions to others.
So you always have the pain of comparison. It's easy to compare yourself in the age of the internet to other people. I'm human. The pain of living in the future, right? The pain of, we talked about this.
speaking down on your past achievements and what you could be you should be but you aren't there are many pains that i experience but i think you can liberate yourself from a lot of these things by living in the present moment by being here right now because when you were a kid you didn't experience like yeah there's people that have bad childhoods i'm talking in general let's say you live a decent childhood most children they live in the present moment right whatever they're doing at that time that's what they're doing this idea of living in your head right doesn't exist you know i have my team sometimes they're like oh well they see me like looking out into the into the into the sky or whatever looking like blank and they're like well you're thinking about everything aren't you like yeah bro i'm fucking thinking about everything right so sometimes i have to catch myself living in a state of pain but often like the buddha says being in a state of pain or living in a state of anxiety or in a state of suffering comes from attachment, right? So when you're attached to things, attached to people, attached to identities, attached to philosophies, attached to all these things, then you end up being in a situation where you experience pain. But you don't have to experience suffering if you live in a state of what? No expectation, where you're just living life, taking it day by day.
step by step and enjoying yourself the buddha taught this so it's his wisdom not mine yeah it's it's quite a lot of stoic thoughts as well right a bit of the interesting so have you ever been into stuff like uh mushrooms or stuff so psychedelics because a lot of people that are have found themselves have done so through using some psychedelics as well as meditating whatever have you done such things many many Yeah, if you have a sober mind and you're clinically well. I recommend everybody go through a journey of the medicine of mushrooms. Mushrooms?
Yes. Have you also tried like LSD? I haven't tried anything synthetic.
Everything that I've tried comes from the earth. And the reason I'll explain it why may sound a little pseudoscience or crazy, but the mycelium network, right, the network of the mushrooms, it carries data and information. It carries information and data on the earth, the history of the earth, the people that have interacted and walked on the earth.
It carries data. That's why I use the word data sets. You download data sets from the universe.
It comes from the mycelium network because sometimes you get an idea. But how do you know when people are like, I'm a genius? Well, how do you know that that idea is yours?
Maybe you're not a genius. Maybe you were in the right place at the right time to capture that idea and that thought. So what the mycelium network does when you consume mushrooms is it gives you access to a different frequency to tap into what? the data sets and you get downloads of information right like software into your brain that radically change your life they give you a perspective of reality that you have not experienced they reroute your neural networks they teach you how to think differently this has been proven in science this has been proven a lot recently right uh huberman dr huberman he did a podcast on psilocybin and and the issue is you know there's a lot of religion attached to not using these things and I talk to Muslim friends or I talk to Christian friends and I'm like, Hey, but you should try it too.
I'm like, well, I don't, I can't get high. I'm like, okay, perfect. I completely understand.
Maybe you can micro dose, right? Micro dose, because you don't have to be out here blasted, seeing aliens and living in the metaverse to still experience the benefits of medicine. Right.
Yeah. Because once again, a, this idea of abusing things can often happen. Right. But you can't be afraid of. not experiencing life right and that's what it goes back to experiencing life that doesn't mean go out here and do crack cocaine and do all this crazy shit right what it means is you still have to be intelligent and you still have to be sober-minded and you can microdose why because psilocybin is known to increase neuroplasticity right which is the creation of new neurons in your brain which we've we've heard this thing back in the day if you got hit in the head your neurons would die and they would never regrow, right?
You would never get more neurons. You would always get stupid. Well, psilocybin has proven that you can actually create neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, and finally, creating new neural networks in your pathway on how your brain processes information.
When you're on mushrooms, you process information completely different than when you're in this state of mind. So... i recommend them i've done that i haven't done them in in a couple years but i've had a good time with them yeah they've been cool cool with did you have like a certain kind of purpose with it a goal uh to when you are like the first time no the first time no the first time well the first time it was my brother my brother mr belmar nate he was like bro like you have to try this and i was like okay like sounds good and my epiphany i'll share this is the first time i shared my epiphany i started crying on my first mushroom trip and i cried because i felt sorry for people i felt sorry that people were living sad lives and that was the entire mushroom trip that was eight hours but i was in that mental loop of sorry for people i'm like dude like most people are sad most people are unhappy like this sucks and i could feel for people right because when you're on your phone you're you're so self-absorbed you're so focused on you I did this mushroom challenge.
Like, dude, I feel sorry for people. I feel empathetic. And ever since then, I actually have it recorded on my phone.
You know, I record that entire trip. I record every single one of my psychedelic trips. Like just audio or also?
Audio. I'm not going to record the visual. I'm probably doing some crazy shit.
It would be great. Yeah. Facts, bro.
Damn. But yeah, bro. It's a good time. You're just experiencing life.
But to talk on the other side of the coin, you know, you see a lot of mushroom heads or people that spend too much time doing these things. And it's like Alan Watts used to say. Alan Watts said, to look through the microscope is important, but sometimes you have to stop looking through the microscope and realize and spend time thinking about what you saw, right?
And people live in a psychedelic state. They have no time to sober up and really... and spend time meditating upon that which they've seen yeah that's great man Interesting.
I've never done like mushrooms or anything. Well, you're in Amsterdam, brother, so... Yeah, man. It might be a good city for that. I mean, yeah, there's enough opportunities to do so.
I've had some bad experiences with smoking weed, or actually one, and after that I just quit everything. But hearing these things, we've got another friend as well who used to have a company in mushrooms as well, so he really got into it, and he had some of the same very interesting stories as well, just opening up. windows or clearing out windows with visions that he had never had before so got some great insights yeah i think it's uh i think it's all about how you position yourself who you're with the environment your age your knowledge you know i i did mushrooms one time with one kid that peed his pants and uh like he was throwing shit around the house and things of this nature and i was like okay clearly this person's immature they weren't prepared for this experience right so you have to be in a state of maturity Because it's medicine, it's not a toy.
It's powerful and it should be treated that way. Yeah. You also talked about frequency. Can you describe that for us?
How can it affect your life when you have a low frequency or a high frequency? So everything is in motion. Everything vibrates. Everything is constantly moving.
The only reason why I can sit on this couch is because my atoms are interacting with the couch in a certain vibration whereby I'm not going to go right through it. The reason you can interact with the air and it doesn't feel dense, right, or you can kind of go through it, my atoms are interacting with it because they're vibrating at a different frequency. Vibrational frequency is real.
And you have to start studying, in my opinion, without going too deep down the rabbit hole. on how vibrational frequency impacts reality. Energy is frequency, and frequency is vibration, because everything vibrates.
So to increase your vibrational state, you need to do things that increase your vibration. So who you spend your time with, who you share your energy with. You can have low vibrational frequency habits.
You look at the... the yoga or the buddhist spectrum of vibrational frequency and on the lower side you have lust and you have ungratitude or you have self-pity or shame this is on the lower spectrum of the vibration so if you're feeling these states you are vibrating at a lower frequency on the higher frequency you have love gratitude isn't that the best time you feel yourself to be right So you're vibrating at a higher frequency. So people would say, oh, the vibes are right.
What does that mean? And how can you control the vibes? How can you control the vibration in the room? So without going super sciencey into that, it's important.
As you're telling that, I just realized you're saying that and I'm just trying to like wrap my hand around it or find examples in my own life. Sometimes when I choose to sleep in, even though I know I should get out, be active, have things to do. You're very well rested, but you feel very shitty. So your frequency seems to be low.
And sometimes I get done with, for example, kickbox training, and I'm completely exhausted, but I feel very good. So I seem to be on a high frequency. So sometimes I think people think the frequency has to do with the amount of energy you have, but it's not the energy as we know it, right? Like, it's not that I'm exhausted energy. It's more of the, how do I feel connected with everything around me?
Is that right or am I understanding it wrong? I'll answer this as the last question because it's already 10 o'clock. That's fine. No problem.
Energy input is extremely important. So what you input as the energy source or as the fuel for your body. right, will dictate the output of that energy.
So if you're feeling lethargic, slow, tired, not after a kickboxing workout, but in the morning when you should in fact be feeling rested, there's something in the energy input that is causing that malfunction. Maybe it's the foods that you eat. Maybe it's what you're watching before you go to sleep.
Maybe it's the fact that you're on your phone before you go to sleep. Maybe it's the fact that you had a terrible argument before you went to bed. Maybe it's the fact that you went to bed out of schedule, right? So all these things, they are bad energy inputs, low vibrational energy inputs. So the output will be in direct proportion, what?
To the input. Newton, right? Sir Isaac Newton said it best. He said, for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.
So you get to control the input. You have to pay the consequences of the output. And that's the beauty of life. You control what you sow, but what you reap will inevitably happen. So if you wake up tired, well, it's most likely something in your life that you can control.
If you have a bad relationship, there's most likely something there that you can control. If you don't have money, well, my friend, there's most likely something there that you can control. What you sow, you will reap.
For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction, gentlemen. amazing Luke let's end it on that thank you so much thank you for having me yeah man I've thoroughly enjoyed the listening to you talk and uh would love to have you back sometime uh if you've developed even further and for everybody watching uh the capital club just check it out if it's open already we'll just put a link down below and they can check it out themselves thank you boys thanks for having me thank you thank you man ciao