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were you nervous coming here today I didn't know how in depth we were going
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to go if I knew the questions I don't think go to slept last night but you were pathological liar Billy McFarland
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he is the band behind the infamous fire Festival Island Getaway turned disaster for fire Festival is the subject of two
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documentaries I will never forget when did you realize so wrong we were at the point where the
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timeline I had come up with was just so off I'd wake up some days it's like we need four million dollars by 2PM did no
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one say to you this is [ __ ] craziness I just didn't have the ability to like okay like what's actually happening how can we prevent this and like almost like
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as if On Cue a storm rolls in Billy McFarland pleaded
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guilty to fraud charges sentenced to six years in prison you come back to a shitstorm yeah the criminality doesn't
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stop though does it but I couldn't like really understand the magnitude and the gravity of the crime they did commit your lawyers tried to get you off the
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20-year prison sentence by saying that you suffered from untreated bipolar disorder do you have bipolar disorder
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um I did two cents in solitary the seven month stint was because I tried to do a
00:01:08
podcast over at the Payphone they put the paperwork in to send me to like a terrorist facility when you're rendered
00:01:13
useless and Powerless bat just kind of kills your Humanity that's [ __ ] scary that keeps me up at night
00:01:21
Andy King did you ask him to suck a penis here's what actually happened
00:01:30
before this episode starts I have a small favor to ask from you two months ago 74 of people that watch this channel
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didn't subscribe we're now down to 69 my goal is 50 so if you've ever liked any
00:01:43
of the videos we've posted if you like this channel can you do me a quick favor and hit the Subscribe button it helps this channel more than you know and the
00:01:49
bigger the channel gets as you've seen the bigger the guests get thank you and enjoy this episode
00:01:56
foreign [Music]
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how are you doing it's been crazy uh a little less than three and a half months since my sentence ended
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and really just been a whirlwind of finding the right people finding the
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right opportunities and really just dealing with this overhang of Probation and the constant
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fear that there's someone out there who could send me back at any time by taking a wrong turn so
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trying to avoid paying people back in every sense of that word and emotion while dealing with this fear that I can
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wake up one more into a phone call saying ha like joke's over you're going back so take me back um one of the things I'm
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so curious about everybody that I sit here and talk to is their earliest
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context in the early start bringing and how that's like ultimately shaped who they are today so take me way way back
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to New Jersey when you were you know under the age of 10 what was that what was your context your parents the the
00:03:02
situation in which you grew up yeah I grew up in a pretty normal suburban American household and I think the
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defining moment was when I was 10 years old were I got a
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cable internet line into my house and this was the really early days of the
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internet and it was pretty much like the Wild Wild West era where a lot of like the framework and Regulation and mature
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social platforms that we have now just didn't exist then we were in the emphasis of like HTML and CSS and the
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practicality and accessibility of some 10 year old putting a website online and I really found the internet to be
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this Outlet where I could push the boundaries of everything that I thought was possible as this young Suburban
00:03:46
child and really as a way to start getting in trouble and seeing what it was like to get in trouble and see where I could go
00:03:52
talk to me about your parents I've not heard um much about them in your interviews but I'd love to know the
00:03:58
influence they had on you and how that shaped you I think they're great you know super loving super supportive and I
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think I've been asked this question you know so many times but whether it's like the jail therapists like or the information department and
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I think it's interesting that you know there isn't like a defining moment I think that kind of set me down like the
00:04:16
entrepreneurial Journey um I think I was just like really weird in this desire to make my own path
00:04:24
and to really test what was possible and so it's always kind of looking for Journeys to start businesses and really
00:04:30
like test the bounds of you know of reality and of the constraints placed on
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me at various times in life and obviously like the constraints of a ten-year-old are much different than
00:04:41
they were when I was 24 in the midst of the fire festival and much different at 27 in solitary confinement but I think
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the reoccurring theme was trying to find ways to test those restraints and that
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took me to the very best times but also the very worst times in doing four years in prison and you know owing the world
00:05:00
whether that's time money friendship and apology uh so yeah it's been been quite
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the journey my question still becomes like why though so testing the restraints of like what was possible why
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does a kid want to do that like what was it about about you when you were that age and your childhood or the circumstances you found yourself in or
00:05:19
you know what Behavior was being reinforced and what Behavior was being punished that made you go off on that Journey you referenced a sort of a
00:05:26
jailhouse therapist and then probably asking you these kind of questions as well yeah did you learn anything about
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yourself from that those conversations totally and I I think there's always been this
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desire to prove that I was different and I don't think I really understood like what different
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meant I don't think it meant trying to be like the smartest or the most interesting I was like trying to prove
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that I could create my own path and I think that's always why been the desire why did you want to create your empath
00:05:54
and prove that I hear this word proving a lot throughout your story like a desire to prove yourself right and prove
00:06:00
yourself to others it comes up over and over again in the conversations you've had where did that desire to prove
00:06:05
yourself come from I think yeah I remember back to like getting an alpha Smart in you know early
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grammar school and I was so desperate to like hack the teachers like admin password for the alpha smart to change
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the settings on it and just wanted to show or I think is really proving to myself that I could do something
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different and I never really did well in terms of like a structured like learning environment I
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was always either like super disinterested or very very passionate about something whether it's technology or computers the Internet and just like
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want to dive in and just like almost testing against myself that I was possible and what wasn't possible
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did those around you like teachers and your parents have high hopes for you in your opinion
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I think so but they were also you know I don't want to I don't like the word
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like realistic I think they're very like realistic and structured hopes and my path was certainly frowned upon by
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teachers you know friends uh Etc throughout the years even when you were younger people even when I was younger
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yeah I think like teachers were always concerned that like why is he starting a business and not focusing on his you
00:07:12
know math test so it was it was a problem since a young age do you remember getting sort of like critical
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or pessimistic feedback at a young age about your Ambitions and what was possible for you yeah absolutely and
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give me some examples yeah so it's like uh I had started a social network a couple
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of years later when I was 12 years old and this is early days in my space before
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Facebook had really gone outside of like Harvard in the initial Ivy League schools I created a private Social Network for my middle school and like
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out of nowhere like the site blew up and you know it was like the talk in middle school for a few days and the teachers basically called me in and said like the
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internet is not safe you know you have to stop this right now you have to get rid of the website and how did that make you feel
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it made me feel like I thought I was creating something of value but I felt like that what I viewed as value wasn't
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you know agreed upon by everybody else they'd almost create this like reinforcement we're like no I know this
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is tangible I know this is real and I know people like are enjoying something I made and I felt it was just so cool to
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have at the time it was hundreds of people whatever but having hundreds or a couple thousand people using something I made as a 12 year old was just really
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really interesting to me and I think it kind of created this deeper desele and like desire to prove
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whether it was to those teachers or to the friends who like weren't supportive that there is a different way than you
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know the way that we're all taught what did your parents want you to be you know like I think my mom wanted me to be I
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actually remember my mom's from from Nigeria she didn't get an education like uh we do I was born in Botswana in
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Africa as well and my mum I think wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer okay I think she was set actually on Doctor
00:08:48
what did your parents want you to be in your own opinion I don't think they really cared as long as I followed the
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traditional path of like super studying hard school doing well going to a good college having a good college experience
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I think beyond that um didn't really care too much I went to school to study Computer Engineering didn't last very long so didn't really
00:09:07
you know study Computer Engineering but that was the uh that was the intent what's the defining difference between
00:09:13
both of them you know like my mother is x in terms of characteristics my father is why what other if you had to describe
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them in a couple of words each what words would you use I think entrepreneurial uh you know quick like
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in terms of like you know quick minds are sharp they're smart and like honest I think like Integrity is like the big
00:09:31
thing they're very honest good people and like that's you know has been part of the hardest part to me is them and
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not just them it's like other family members and friends trying to understand how it could go down this path where I
00:09:45
was just lying and you know lying to investors and partners and employees and whatever it may have been it's like understanding how I got there
00:09:53
from you know the the path I had taken have you had that conversation with them I have and
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it comes down to I think you've you've nailed it super early on it was just his desire and I think more than a desire
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probably a need to prove myself and fast forward many many years later with like
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fire in the fire Festival that need was to these these investors who basically took a chance at me when I first dropped
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out of school and had been backing me for five six seven years before the fire Festival came to be like
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my life I felt and it sounds so silly to me now but my life I felt to me at that
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time was making them happy and making them money and obviously like the initial investors if fire didn't work
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and didn't work honestly they probably would have been okay and they would have been far more understanding than the fact that I ended up lying at the end to
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get their support but it's like need to prove that I could do it and the ones
00:10:47
who did believe in me the need to prove that they were right to believe in me really led me down this terrible
00:10:53
terrible path of however long it was where I was lying that need to prove myself
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um it can it can go on some fantastic results in life because you end up striving and being ambitious and it acts
00:11:04
as a source of motivation but then it can also um because I can relate to it it can also get ugly at some point when that
00:11:12
need overshadows the need to be like ethical or to even have work-life balance whatever it might be
00:11:18
have you ever managed in all the time you've had to reflect on it have you figured out why you of all people had
00:11:24
that and used the word need not not desire you you refer to it as a need to
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prove yourself like where did that come from do you do you know I don't know um and as I said I've been asked so many
00:11:36
times by people obviously not as smart as you but I've been asked by a lot of people and I don't think I've given a good enough answer and that's probably
00:11:43
something that I need to think about because it's dangerous if you you know I'm thinking about self-awareness here and if that's
00:11:49
still driving you from the back room of your subconscious um where that might take you again in the future right
00:11:55
agree and I think it's more about where I can find fulfillment and making people
00:12:02
happy because they've made money or invest in a success probably is most likely the wrong
00:12:08
formula in a lot of different situations and I think like especially prison has
00:12:13
made me very very relationship focused and I feel a stronger need to be trusted
00:12:19
by someone more than to make them happy and I think that's the furthest area that I've improved in over the past five
00:12:25
years I've never had you talk about the um the conversations with your parents in the wake of everything that happened
00:12:31
and what what have been those conversations
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if I was privy to some of those conversations in person what would I have seen yeah I think I've just
00:12:44
tried to find a way to apologize and it's been to everybody it's been to close friends who I think were hurt
00:12:51
emotionally as well other family members other supporters and it's like trying to explain to them like why and finding the
00:12:58
real words to apologize and it was just so crazy as I've had all
00:13:05
this time to obviously reflect about it how I thought I was trying to make people happy but I was really just like burning
00:13:12
down these relationships and hurting them along the way and it's just how messed up that pursuant path really was
00:13:18
have you actually apologized to your parents oh absolutely yes
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and what's their stance been throughout jail and before and even now how what's
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their perspective been it's been like close family is different because
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obviously we're in touch and you know everybody families your family and I think for
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like childhood friends who I was probably closer with like on an emotional level it's been a little weird
00:13:45
when I essentially was on the sideline in a way for four years or whatever the time frame was and then during that time
00:13:52
I'm kind of sheltered from like the media and the comments and everything like I don't necessarily hear or even
00:13:57
see everything that's happening and so like the bulk of that is directed towards other people like whether it's
00:14:02
family or friends so after so long of like being The Target just because I'm not there to be the target they start to
00:14:08
like you know form different opinions and their minds start to wander and then I think when I've seen people for the
00:14:14
first time like since jail and then I can kind of see like a switch flip in their head after like four or five
00:14:20
minutes like oh okay he's the old Billy that I used to know and they start like acting normal again which like really
00:14:25
crazy to me that when I was in jail I just didn't really understand or appreciate the terrible [ __ ] basically
00:14:31
that close people to me had to go through just because I wasn't like available to
00:14:37
be at the receiving end of everything that's happened what did they go through
00:14:43
I think like the the emotional trauma right and people are looking to blame someone and to you know throw shade and
00:14:49
hate and I deservedly say I want someone and if I'm not there like to be able to take that hake some physically locked
00:14:55
away somewhere people need a target for it and you know unfortunately I think for a lot of people who and I learned
00:15:00
this in jail too A lot of people in jail the ones that take it the hardest are the friends and family is because they're not the one they're not the
00:15:06
reason why you're there but they suffer almost the most from it it's just it's not fair did they tell you that they had
00:15:11
been on the receiving end of that that abuse yeah and a lot of friends too you know what what kind of abuse do they
00:15:18
tell you explicitly what kind of abuse they'd been on the receiving end of I think it's just like the mental and
00:15:24
it's like emotional anguish um I've had like friends even who didn't
00:15:30
work with me but you know who were super close and around for a lot of the build up of the events and whether it's from
00:15:35
like their family or their friends or their employers like how could you not know how could you have been with him and
00:15:41
people are looking for I think the public looks for someone to blame and if I wasn't there to receive that blame or
00:15:46
wasn't responding to it that blame they just look for other targets and like I think that's what crushed me the most
00:15:52
is on this limited contact with friends or family whatever from jail like hearing
00:15:58
the sadness and abuse they were taking and being able to do absolutely nothing
00:16:04
about it just like totally powerless going back into a story it's you know I
00:16:10
was reading through all of the sort of entrepreneurial endeavors you you did as a as a young man even
00:16:15
before the age of like 15 years old you'd started companies you'd sold companies
00:16:20
um just just a long long list of continually starting another business starting at like nine years old you started programming 13 you start this um
00:16:28
this this Outsourcing startup which eventually gets sold on an auction site
00:16:33
called um your hot site I believe and then at 15 years old you create a company called 24 scene which is
00:16:39
eventually sold to Buddy TV when you were 15 years old you go off to you graduate at 18 from I guess high school
00:16:45
high school yeah we call it different things in the UK um you go to university and in your freshman year you drop out and start a
00:16:51
company called spling and you raise four hundred thousand dollars in a series a round for this company called spling at
00:16:57
18 years old right the financing around today are a little different so this is this is like 2010 but yeah crazy how the
00:17:03
world's change right yeah yeah so you raised that Capital at 18 years old yes is that your first sort of window into
00:17:11
the fact or point of awareness we think [ __ ] I can raise capital for things that I have ideas for I think the biggest
00:17:16
thing there was having someone so much smarter and older
00:17:23
and like more successful than me actually like believe in me and back it up
00:17:28
the idea to like any friend in any family that I'm taking time off school or dropping out of school was like
00:17:33
totally not okay but the fact that I can point to like a small group of these early investors who were clearly like
00:17:40
established and you know like amazing almost like icons in their own fields
00:17:47
that was when I was like look I have this real group who is supporting me beyond their words and I need to show
00:17:54
not just them but I need to show the world that these people were right and everybody else who was saying like what
00:17:59
I'm doing is wrong is incorrect who was saying you were wrong at that age 18. he was betting against you I think like
00:18:05
every peer you know all your friends all the friends all your family members I think all your family members
00:18:11
at all I think the majority um and I think that the big thing was like my friends at that age who especially
00:18:18
like the ones who like did better in school and you know probably a little bit smarter it's just really as much as like they
00:18:24
can't admit it and I know I do this to other people too so I think I see it as much as they can't do it like they don't
00:18:29
want to see someone and obviously we're super young at that age but succeed Beyond them and it's like hey I'm
00:18:35
studying 70 hours a week you know I know I'm smarter than he is and I'm working just as hard or harder than him you know
00:18:41
why can he go and do this and I can't so I think that's kind of like a a mantra that you know I've noticed a lot amongst
00:18:48
like close friends and obviously I see that same behavior in myself so yeah I think that that bar just sucks on spling
00:18:53
yeah it was an Avenue for you to eventually move to New York yes what happened to that company eventually
00:18:58
failed yeah so uh moved to New York actually in the second ever we work space in New York uh this is 2011 I
00:19:06
think yeah it's a second ever we work space in New York and spling starter is a social network and I was kind of like
00:19:11
parlaying off of what I had built in you know middle school and high school and you know had this really small you know websites that ended up selling which is
00:19:17
great um the social networking aspect display never really took off and ended up making software and started to sell it
00:19:24
to like these record labels and TV networks and I was like the Suburban kid who was already weird for programming
00:19:31
and now I'm the Suburban kid who's weird for programming crazy for dropping out of school and now I'm sitting in the
00:19:37
office with you know the heads of these like massive media companies that we've all heard of that like I didn't even
00:19:42
know really like existed like to go meet with like the boss at Def Jam or Hearst or like Discovery or Disney like all
00:19:49
these companies that were just like a logo on TV for me as a young kid I was now like tangibly there and they were
00:19:54
like paying for something I was building it was just a wild experience to go from you know being in a dorm room in the
00:20:01
middle of nowhere to in the midst of the entertainment World in New York and so at some point you make the decision to close spling down
00:20:07
so spring was going and I just got super distracted by these entertainment companies that I
00:20:14
was going to and like I kept trying to tell back like these childhood friends I kept trying to explain to them like what was happening they didn't really believe
00:20:21
me and now it's really the Genesis of magnesis was that I wanted to take like the 19 year old me who wasn't working at
00:20:28
spling and give him access to this world of like entertainment and fashion and like media that I was like finding
00:20:34
myself stumbling into in New York and so I'm trying to get to the point of like there comes a day where you go
00:20:40
I mean I've had this in my life my first startup yeah as well when I was literally 18 and then I left it at 20 inside my next business but there's a
00:20:47
day where you go [ __ ] that I'm gonna do magnesis instead so I basically said [ __ ] that I'm gonna
00:20:53
do magnesis but like still keeps playing going so okay yeah so spring now is like my biggest mistake so explain kept
00:20:59
operating for you know a few years with let's say 10 to 15 hours of a week of attention Okay whereas like you know the
00:21:05
vast majority of my time was focused on magnesis I think like one of the reoccurring themes is just not seeing
00:21:10
things through and like it happened again with my nieces into fire but like jumping ship when
00:21:16
spring would not have been as big as magnesium or fire could have been but it still could have it still was okay and
00:21:21
like I could have had a successful exit for people who were involved and just like not seeing that through it was just
00:21:27
wrong reoccurring theme yeah um I mean I see that throughout your
00:21:32
childhood and then internally into early sort of twenties yeah that that um that
00:21:38
I guess ambition and that sort of constant inspiration you have leads you to kind of abandon
00:21:43
the last thing and and an entrepreneur's currency is their time and attention so as you as you cited there it's finite it
00:21:51
means that the old thing gets a fraction of your time when really if it's going to succeed in that market it needs more
00:21:56
than all of your time yes um this leads you on to magnesis in 2013 yeah we launched 15 2014 eventually yeah
00:22:02
magnesis was a tell me tell me what it was and why you chose to switch your attention to this yeah so magnesis was
00:22:10
a network that was seeking to give young people living in major cities access to
00:22:17
better benefits events and networking than their like credit card would give them so like literally this is 2012 I just I
00:22:25
started doing the magnesis card before it launched I went in Alibaba this is like 10 years ago before Alibaba is
00:22:31
Alibaba bought this like blank black sheet of metal and a Credit Card Copier
00:22:36
and literally went and copied my like really crappy debit card with 20 onto it onto this like black metal card and just
00:22:44
like went to the pizza parlor across the street and the guy just made a total scene when I went to pay and went and
00:22:49
showed the card off around wework and started selling cards to like interesting entrepreneurs at wework and
00:22:55
that was like literally the Genesis of magnesis and the cool of the proposition was that it was kind of elite and
00:23:00
exclusive yeah so it was definitely trying to cater towards this like upwardly mobile
00:23:06
entrepreneur style crowd that feels like a through line across many of your businesses that went on
00:23:12
which was like appealing to people's desire for status and clout because when I was
00:23:20
reading about magnesis at the end of the day it felt like it was a a black metal card which was again appealing to
00:23:26
people's egos because everybody wants that American Express black card but they can't get it because you need to spend you need to spend like a quarter
00:23:31
of a million to get it yeah so it makes people feel amazing and then you're promising them the application process was only a few
00:23:38
people could apply it was all appealing to that people's desire to be that's what it started out when I was
00:23:44
like 19 or 20 whatever the time was and then it ended up growing and the real benefit was in network and there were
00:23:51
certain members or card holders who were meeting other members and kind of giving them value and I think like the first
00:23:57
concept of magnesis was one I wanted the black card for sure now it was like the fun novelty like more of the marketing
00:24:03
aspect of it but two is I wanted like a vehicle to share and really invite my
00:24:08
friends to all these like Entertainment Properties where I was starting to experience and explore because they
00:24:14
didn't believe me so it was almost like show them what I was telling them was actually happening and have an excuse to
00:24:19
bring people along through this club or Community built around magnesis and you raised capital for magnesium 1.5 million
00:24:26
before you launched and then three point something off yeah I think that the total was in like the mid mid threes yeah so nothing crazy like but okay and
00:24:34
um jar rule comes into the picture sometime around the magnesis yeah so it started basically like once again magnesium is all about One fulfilling
00:24:41
like my fantasies of places I wanted to go and can get to and then once I was there having all of my friends come too
00:24:48
and I just like loved hip-hop as a kid so throughout magnesis we booked probably close to a dozen and a half or
00:24:54
even like 20 rappers to come perform these small concerts for magnesis and
00:24:59
that's what started the whole ball rolling towards like the fire app and that concept so when did you meet Ja Rule uh during one of these magnesis
00:25:07
member events and the thing that's really struck me at the time was how hard it was to book him
00:25:14
and when he finally like received the offer he said yes and like almost like instantly right and the problem was this
00:25:21
like web of quasi-agents and middle management managers who all kind of claimed like represent another talent but in reality
00:25:28
they knew someone who knew like a sister who knew a brother who knew a cousin and it's like this terrible really like opaque nasty world and
00:25:36
coming from like a technology background it made no sense to me I knew there were other like kids like me right who would you know pay something reasonable to get
00:25:42
access to this kind of like music Talent so we started talking about building an app which ended up becoming the fire app
00:25:48
to provide like a window into like entertainers pockets for anybody to give them offers directly and because of that
00:25:55
experience with Ja Rule and just general General artist booking that's what that was the Genesis of this fire app that
00:26:00
was a complete Genesis was like booking a lot of these rappers through magnesis realizing that almost every single time
00:26:07
we were going through middlemen who like weren't really like the the manager of the agent and then realizing okay I now
00:26:13
had this network of you know 20 artists and their real managers so I can give like access to other people through
00:26:18
technology and from what I was reading um this is the when one of the first big
00:26:25
lies was told which was around the success of fire mobile app I read this I
00:26:30
think I can't remember where I saw it might have been the Hulu documentary or something it said that an internship to investors it was claimed to be worth 90
00:26:36
million dollars but was actually doing 60k in business what is the truth around
00:26:41
that where was the where was the LIE told here yeah so the fire app and the fire Festival really all come together
00:26:47
at the same time um it's crazy to think back like how how
00:26:53
quick I went down a bad path but how quick everything happened as well during that time period
00:26:58
this is all 2016. um the fire app was launched at some point mid-2016 and the
00:27:04
fire Festival was you know conceived in September October of 2016. so it was all
00:27:09
kind of around the same time Wi-Fi Festival how did that come to be that because the fire app came first fire out
00:27:15
came first how did you get from there to fire Festival so we had a townhouse space basically this Clubhouse if you
00:27:21
will for magnesis members and one of the people working at the front desk I lived a handful of blocks away calls me one
00:27:26
night and says there's this guy here who is building some crazy things at Google but he says he flies planes and wants to
00:27:33
fly you I think he's telling the truth you have to come and meet him so I ran over the townhouse and met this guy and like absolute genius like one of the
00:27:40
best like developers of AI I've ever met in my life and you know he's going to go on
00:27:46
to I think change your world in very many ways but he's like listen like I Fly for Fun I have a bunch of friends who do the same thing we should take a
00:27:53
few planes and do a trip to the outer islands of the Bahamas for your magnesium members so we've been running these trips for years
00:27:59
and I found these outer Islands to essentially be this like welcoming playground where there might be 10
00:28:05
people who live on the island who are just like so amazing and kind-hearted and warm and once you bring 18 20 24
00:28:11
people there from New York everybody kind of drops like their pretense and if you connect them around these like
00:28:18
almost like life-defying experiences and Adventures they really really come together so it was running these trips
00:28:25
for a number of years when I literally brought like one of these childhood friends that I mentioned and fire app
00:28:30
had just launched he said hey man you should totally do a music festival here for all magnesis members so that was the
00:28:36
real person who came up with the idea and that's how the fire Festival happened and when was where was the the
00:28:41
first light holding yeah in the fundraising process was it on raising capital for the app was it capsule for
00:28:47
the magnesis yeah so the the fire um the fire Festival app didn't raise much
00:28:56
money prior to like the festival announcement we came up with a festival idea in
00:29:02
September of 2016. shot and released at promotional video I
00:29:07
think a lot of people saw in December of 2016 and announced a April of 2017 like
00:29:12
launch date so the period was super super short so somewhere in like the weeks leading up to that December
00:29:18
promotional video I started lying and that was lying to Fire apps investors lying to fire festivals investors lying
00:29:25
about magnesius's numbers it all kind of hit when oh [ __ ] fire Festival is real we're
00:29:33
announcing a festival we have X number of months to build a city in the middle of nowhere how the [ __ ] are we gonna do
00:29:38
this that's just like set me off down that that path from
00:29:44
I think from what I recall there was four months between you announcing the festival and the festival happening so
00:29:50
you're going to the middle of nowhere you've got to build sewage yeah infrastructure basically a city from
00:29:57
scratch at 25 years old with
00:30:02
out the capital to do it and without the experience in doing it in
00:30:08
four months in 120 days so stupid so bad
00:30:14
I think I I got my 25th birthday we launched the trailer for The Fire Festival
00:30:20
and I still didn't think it was real at that time like we had these great trips with a few dozen people and those we
00:30:26
could totally handle we launched a trailer then I remember waking up like you know quasi hung over five or six
00:30:32
hours later and we'd sold like a half million dollars to tickets if I said that to people now in my team and you
00:30:38
know I've you know I'm I'm 30 now same age as you yeah um you know I've got huge amounts of resources in terms of
00:30:45
like contacts and capital everyone in my team would turn around to me and give me that look and say this is not possible
00:30:51
Stephen did people say that to you did no one say to you this is [ __ ]
00:30:57
craziness absolutely and I think that part of the curse and and part of the
00:31:02
gift at the time was a lot of their reasons that were being given to me by things were impossible
00:31:09
we're all solved with these short-term Miracles and of course everybody said hey the end goal is impossible you're a
00:31:14
[ __ ] like you don't understand like what this takes and then they would give three or four reasons about like smaller problems
00:31:20
right and then I would go and like create Magic and solve these three or four problems and be like look we've
00:31:26
proved that like we can handle the bigger stuff too and I think it just took so many random like rolls of the dice to
00:31:34
go our way to be able to create a failure so large because if we found
00:31:40
like a stumbling block or a roadblock earlier on it would have stopped the whole thing but it was like this weird combination of
00:31:46
smart crazy people all kind of coming together for this wild idea and solving
00:31:52
things we should never been able to solve until we couldn't lying plays a big role in that though 100 I think you have to add line to the
00:31:59
mix because I don't think he would have gotten those people to that Island on that plane without a series of
00:32:05
almost like nuns stop lying there's no way that you would have well in my view um if people knew the reality of my view
00:32:12
if people knew the reality of the numbers and the situation on the ground and I remember watching the documentaries which I know you haven't
00:32:17
seen yeah still no yeah we're going to talk about that but I remember seeing the there were moments where you were
00:32:22
saying to team members don't don't tell this investor the nature of the situation and had you been honest I
00:32:28
think investors from my experience of building companies would not have backed this the reality of the situation if if
00:32:34
they knew the truth they wouldn't have backed that agree I always think that like lying hurt
00:32:39
things the most they lying really pushed away the help that I
00:32:46
needed and I think that how we just announced the festival with our trailer video
00:32:52
we had already proven our ability to you know create hype to bring a manageable
00:32:57
number of people to these islands to give them like an amazing experience if I just like threw my like hands up
00:33:03
the next day and said okay I didn't expect to sell this many tickets and I don't have the resources or or like
00:33:08
wherewithal to actually execute this now I think the professionals would have flocked to me and said okay like we are
00:33:14
experts in doing this like let us take over and you do what you're good at but like let us you know be the adults in
00:33:19
the room and make this thing actually happen and why didn't you put your hands up and say that I I that's like a type
00:33:25
of lawsuit over the past five years but that's where we're like Beyond lying like breaking all the ethics and morals
00:33:30
which like totally didn't totally wrong it pushed away to help are you a pathological liar
00:33:37
this is a claim that I've I've heard leveled at you by the judge in your case by other people that were working on
00:33:42
fire Festival um people in the documentaries yeah I think like my entire
00:33:49
Mantra and drive right now is to form like super super close relationships and
00:33:55
I want those six or eight people to never question my integrity and I
00:34:01
think like getting on a microphone and telling the world hey guys like I'm not a pathological liar he's like yeah shut the [ __ ] up but it's like I want to feel
00:34:08
Pride where I can like go home tonight and I know like these six to eight people that I can call or they can call me you know we will have our backs and I
00:34:15
really don't have the answer in terms of like how I adjust it to the world but it's like the six to eight people and you guys know who you are like
00:34:22
let's build that trust because that's one of the even when I was thinking about doing this interview obviously you know the foundation of the Diary of SEO
00:34:27
is honesty yeah and I'm thinking after all this stuff I've seen in these documentaries how do I know that he's not just going to come here and [ __ ]
00:34:33
me yeah how do I know that I'm not going to be one of the investors or one of the other people that was was lied to how do I know he's going to give me the truth
00:34:39
yeah how do you receive that it's just so hard to hear like it's it's
00:34:46
super hard to hear and I think like natural reaction is to always like fight
00:34:51
back and argue oh I'm not a lie of then you just like and it's just like digs you down
00:34:56
a further hole so I think it's just finding pride in a
00:35:01
different area and it's like I am highly flawed and like any claims made to the contrary are just are wrong and for
00:35:07
whatever good ideas I've had I've had you know 10 times many bad ones and like clearly I Allied to an extent that
00:35:14
I would really hope that the vast majority of the population like would never be comfortable doing so yeah I
00:35:20
highly highly flawed and I think like the next 30 years of my life will be defined by can I focus on my skill set
00:35:27
can I be honest with a small number of people around me and like can I get help in those areas where I clearly need it
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00:36:32
details in the description box for many years people have been asking for a coffee flavored Hill and quite
00:36:39
recently he'll release the iced coffee caramel flavor of their um ready to drink Hills and I've just
00:36:45
become hooked on it over the last couple of weeks I've been on a really interesting Journey with huel which I've described and talked about a little bit
00:36:51
on this podcast I started with the berry ready to drinks then I moved over to the protein salted caramel because it's 100
00:36:57
calories and it gives you all of your essential vitamins and minerals but also gives you the 20 odd grams of protein you need and now I'm balanced between
00:37:04
them both I drink mostly the banana flavor ready to drink I've got really into the iced coffee caramel flavor of
00:37:11
heels ready to drink and now I'm drinking that as well as the protein make sure you try the new ready to drink
00:37:16
flavors that the caramel flavor is amazing the new banana flavor as well is amazing and obviously as I said the iced
00:37:23
coffee caramel flavor has been a real Smash Hit so check it out let me know what you think on social media I see all
00:37:29
of your tags and Instagram posts and tweets about your you haven't watched the documentaries no
00:37:37
the first prison I was at or like when they appeared when they came out the uh the guys got like a USB stick with both
00:37:44
the documentaries and watched them and I was like I literally went outside I think I was like one of two people who wasn't in the TV room watching the
00:37:50
documentary but couldn't do it why I think at that time I was still like this is early 2019 so I
00:37:58
was less than a year into my sentence I think I was still like in the combative phase where I just hadn't like come to
00:38:05
reality with everything that happened and I was too scared to hear allegations
00:38:10
or comments by other people and not be able to respond and I like realized like being locked up
00:38:16
and then having someone say something where it's probably like 70 true and 30 false I wouldn't have like focused on or
00:38:23
internalized the part that was true even though that was probably most of it I just would have gotten enraged by the false part but I wouldn't be able to do
00:38:30
anything about it so I felt like if I was not like stable enough or mature enough at that time to to watch it and I
00:38:36
probably still I'm not but really yeah because I was gonna ask you to follow up was why haven't you watched them now
00:38:41
then if that was 2019 in 2022 now so why haven't you watched them still so I caught myself the other day someone
00:38:47
asked me the same question and I said and I think this show is like I'm not like mature enough to watch it yet I
00:38:52
said no one in this is probably slightly true but exaggerated I said no one real interviewed for the documentary like why
00:38:59
would any business person who has anything going on in their life you know attach themselves to the event that's
00:39:04
mostly true obviously but but still some of the people who did interview I'm sure were you know sharing real stories of
00:39:10
real things that happened so I'm just I'm not ready there's no way I don't know why but I'm not ready
00:39:17
because of how it might make you it might trigger you in some type of way or I think so and yeah I just I did ask
00:39:23
myself I said would you if that happened to me when I watched the documentaries and I'm gonna be honest I don't know
00:39:29
yeah I don't know but you must everywhere you go now have piece together those documentaries
00:39:35
because people like me ask you seven questions for sure unfortunately I think I've heard more
00:39:41
than than I wanted to but I think I understand how do you feel about the fact that like
00:39:47
probably for at least some time now the center point of conversations you have and interviews you do is going to Center
00:39:53
on that that's gonna like that's gonna be a real defining thing for for many that
00:39:58
meet you I think it's super interesting like think about personally and it's almost
00:40:05
like weird because a lot of the people who have watched documentary whether they're friends or family members other people
00:40:11
their advice is like you are incompetent you can't do anything going forward like
00:40:16
you know go work some entry level like desk job for 70 hours a week for the rest of your life and and shut up and I
00:40:23
think it's kind of like ironic right because then you're stuck living with the remorse the guilt the failure of
00:40:31
what you did before and I think the other option is can I go about it but go for it and go
00:40:37
for it honestly and if I fail it's okay but you know at least take the swing and like which path would you know make you
00:40:44
prouder and I've chosen the latter which might be right it might be wrong but I just think it's really weird to me how a
00:40:50
lot of like the close friends who have watched a documentary almost all their advice have just been like you can't do
00:40:56
anything now and maybe they're right but it's like that's been like I think that's the hardest thing to internalize from the whole
00:41:01
like after effect process where we currently stand well you've clearly got a
00:41:07
internal bias to just prove everybody wrong which doesn't seem to have left you right so when you hear that the
00:41:13
Billy that I mean I've come to learn in the last you know couple of minutes speaking together with just 100 use that
00:41:19
as fuel right I think like I find Pride differently now and when you're locked away for four years and
00:41:26
ten months like when you're alone or with a cellmate but like in solitary confinement you can't leave you have to
00:41:31
find pride in like the littlest and weirdest things and you know once you leave 95 of it it's just like irrelevant
00:41:37
and gets out the window but I think like finding pride is where it stands and do I want to be the the guy who's honest
00:41:44
but quit or the guy who's honest but went for it and then whatever the outcome is the outcome is and like to me
00:41:49
I can find more pride in that path fire Festival you raise more than 20
00:41:55
million dollars now that alone is not an easy thing to
00:42:00
do you know lying yeah definitely aided that for 100 but even if people were
00:42:08
lying even if someone was just purely lying there's still an element of salesmanship that goes into
00:42:15
accomplishing such a big investment raise for a first-time Music Festival
00:42:21
when you're 25 years old what are your skill sets that that made
00:42:26
that happen let's just lying it we put that on the table you lied yeah but what are the other skill sets that
00:42:32
enabled that massive failure so I think it's like taking a second to
00:42:37
like dive into the lies and why it was so bad I think there's like a misconception at least from what I've
00:42:43
heard that I woke up one day made a fake spreadsheet which is totally true and then with that spreadsheet you know went
00:42:49
and raised a bunch of money I think the reality is it's like not that simple you know I can make a bad spreadsheet
00:42:55
tomorrow without my background and you're just not going to go and raise 20 million dollars straight it's like it doesn't go like that
00:43:01
I think the hardest part is a trust is that the majority of the people who are backing me had either invested in me since I was 19
00:43:08
years old or I'd see me work since I was 19 or were you know referred or trusted
00:43:14
someone like who fell into one of those camps so it was like six years of
00:43:19
trust and failure and struggle that I had to go through to get to the position where I could even ask for that kind of
00:43:26
money so more than the lie but the revenue at the time which I almost think is not as bad as betraying the trust of
00:43:34
the years it took to get to that point where I was even in the position to lie about the revenue
00:43:40
so there's that trust building which again the jury's probably out on whether that trust was built honestly yeah
00:43:45
because you talked about magnesis also being inflated in terms of the numbers they're being lies there but
00:43:52
then your personal skill like what is it in hindsight you think why did these people
00:43:57
back me as an individual what are your skill sets like Charisma or is it your ability to talk your communication
00:44:02
skills what was it I almost think that you could find similarities in these early trips that
00:44:09
led to the fire Festival in some of the magnesis experiences which is taking people who wouldn't usually
00:44:16
meet bringing them together and then taking them to a place they've never been before whether that's
00:44:23
like a jet ski race at midnight around these like uninhabited islands or like spear
00:44:28
fishing for your own Lobster with someone you've always wanted to meet it's about just like connecting interesting people with like a tinge of
00:44:36
crazy around these adventures and like those Adventures could be physical it could be virtual but that's kind of
00:44:41
always been I think what is intrigued backer someone that's a friend a partner
00:44:47
a sponsor an investor is to be part of that you know tornado of activity and
00:44:53
connection and excitement interesting so the people so what I got from that is the people that invested in you wanted the same thing as the people that bought
00:44:59
tickets to fire Festival they wanted to be part of something really really cool themselves they wanted to meet interesting people and do interesting
00:45:07
crazy [ __ ] like that's like that's the ammo and you ended up selling some 8 000 tickets for two weekends at fire
00:45:13
Festival yeah I mean everyone remembers the orange tile campaign and the use of influencers
00:45:19
and we had Kendall Jenner Bella Hadid Haley Baldwin Emily ratatowski and you shot this in this promo video
00:45:26
um in the Bahamas which became pretty viral because no one had ever seen that
00:45:31
group of influences together before yeah um at that point you know you know you know
00:45:38
two months three months out from the festival you've sold these [ __ ] tickets this is when the lies get really
00:45:44
bad out there like in one of the documentaries it says that you put a villa up on the site for a quarter of a million to try and raise some money that
00:45:51
you didn't have um and then I read further and further and I was trying to understand the world you were in that was causing you to
00:45:56
continually lie and lie and lie and I heard about this urgent payment sheet what was this urgent payment shame how
00:46:02
is that driving you we were at the point where the timeline that I had come up with it was just so off
00:46:09
and ridiculous it just like made all the payments and vendors just kind of go through the roof
00:46:16
in terms like the cost to make something happen so quickly and like we just had no money right we were just trying to get money from any Source whether it was
00:46:22
investors or sponsors or customers or ticket sales consulting jobs I was like you know wearing 10 hats to trying to
00:46:29
get the income we needed to fund the fire Festival and the money crunch was so bad I'd
00:46:35
literally wake up every day you know at 9am to a sheet where we had a list of every payment we had to make before the
00:46:41
bank wire cut off at four o'clock that day so I knew that by 2 pm I'd have that money come into our account is the team
00:46:48
had enough time to wire it out before the four o'clock wire deadline and so I'd wake up some days it's like we need
00:46:53
four million dollars by 2PM so I'd have five hours to go out Source the investors
00:46:58
come to terms with them and actually get the money in the account or else people are dead in the water four million yeah
00:47:04
we managed to survive like this for almost 60 days and some days it was 100 Grand and some days it was four million
00:47:10
dollars but like it was it was Wild on that day that it was four million dollars you got till 2PM
00:47:16
what'd you do start started calling investors and saying well I think like
00:47:23
I was telling them we were [ __ ] unless we had this money and I think that like a lot of the investors almost adapted
00:47:29
a similar mindset to me that we're in so far that hey we've already spent X
00:47:35
what's an extra couple million dollars at this point because if this thing works we're all going to make money
00:47:40
and that was the that was the mindset that I was trying to build and I truly believed obviously it was so silly now
00:47:46
to look back on because one of the in one of the documentaries they paid they paint the opposite picture they say that
00:47:52
you were calling investors and not telling them the extent of how bad things were because yeah there was one
00:47:58
particular moment where you'd sent an email telling someone not to tell the investor the true nature of the situation with the accommodation because
00:48:04
they wouldn't give more money so the documentary tells a completely different story about being opaque yeah
00:48:11
untransparent to investors in those crunch moments I think like one of the bad thing is is I definitely sheltered
00:48:19
information like not every investor would have the same information not every team member of the same
00:48:24
information so I certainly kept a lot of the logistical problems in the dark
00:48:29
but if I knew like one investor could solve this problem you know I would tell them about the logistics problem
00:48:34
but then say don't tell anybody else but we need your help here so I was picking and choosing people who I thought would
00:48:39
be sympathetic or capable of handling certain situations so I mean terrible approach but it was like a mix of hey
00:48:45
we're in this far we need a little bit more so give it to us and also a mix of well we can't tell everybody this because if people realize you know we
00:48:53
need four million dollars by two o'clock today we sound crazy and we're dead
00:48:58
people hearing that situation where you have this urgent payment sheet and you're waking up in the morning and it says 100K on it 250k yeah um four
00:49:06
million yeah um one of the things in the documentary showed that you were popping up like fake Villas and stuff
00:49:13
like that to meet the debt owed on that payment sheet so if you owed if you needed 50k that day pop a villa online
00:49:20
call it the Dolphin Villa sell it for 50k and that would cover the decision is
00:49:25
that true I don't think it was as one to one as that right um we certainly were trying to sell as many
00:49:31
expensive ticket packages possible that didn't exist that whether it was like boats or Yachts that like you know we
00:49:37
would go in Charter or whether it was like high-end Villas that we were trying to rent but they didn't have them at the
00:49:43
time so I think our numbers were not like one to one at the end of the day however we did rent a couple hundred Villas so I
00:49:49
know I've heard so many conflicting like stories from this but you know we did rent a couple hundred Villas and uh I'm
00:49:55
sure we were off by a number but it wasn't like hey we had no Villas on the island there was a quarter million
00:50:00
dollar package for like a villa or a yacht or something yeah did that sell um I think we sold a couple couple boats
00:50:07
for like in that range quarter million dollars and then we had there was a couple houses in the island which were like these like 10 bedroom you know like
00:50:13
private estate type things we sold a number of them I don't think it was like it wasn't tons but we sold a couple well
00:50:19
the boats did the boats exist yeah on the day we partnered with like basically like this like yacht brokerage company
00:50:25
so we would just like ride it through there and as the so going back to my point about that urgent payment sheet you just
00:50:31
said that you'd wake up like yeah wake up on days look at the Urgent payment sheet that you should you'd be like oh
00:50:36
[ __ ] now I've I've sat here with um the CEO of one of the disruptor banks out in
00:50:43
Europe called Tom monzo and he talked about the like mental torment he had a a red phone by his bed he's running a bank
00:50:49
here yeah so he'd wake up every day and he'd have a moment of like Dread waking up because
00:50:55
the stress and the pressure of you know having to run a bank when you're waking up one of those days yeah what is the
00:51:01
like the mental health implication what did you feel it was awful and I think
00:51:06
the one benefit and detriment that I had was an end date like this is all going
00:51:12
to end on whether right or wrong like on the Festival date right where they're going to succeed and like be Champions
00:51:18
or we're gonna drastically fail and either way like let's go all in to try to make that happen
00:51:24
and what was the you say the word awful take me into the world's word awful give me a description of what that actually means in reality what are the symptoms
00:51:29
of that I mean I was fat as [ __ ] like my heart was out of rhythm you know your heart was out of rhythm yeah like I
00:51:35
think like lost interest in sexual relationships lost interest in
00:51:41
like friendship relationships that weren't transactional and it became like all work and nothing else mattered I'm
00:51:48
like look terrible felt terrible and I could just it sucks and I can't imagine like the red phone at the bank because
00:51:53
like that's never ending right like maybe you can say Hey you know I'll sell or hire a new CEO in seven years but I
00:51:59
can't imagine like that kind of window I would yeah well he ultimately quit after seven years building out of business I think it was valued a billion billions
00:52:06
when he quit and when he did a piece in one of the newspapers he cited his mental health
00:52:11
um yeah did you experience anxiety for sure um
00:52:18
I was I was afraid to show weakness right so it's like I didn't acknowledge it to myself I
00:52:23
certainly didn't acknowledge it to anybody else but like I knew something was wrong I shouldn't be 24 and my heart's skipping beats like you know
00:52:29
that's not not normal there's no reason why that should be happening but um yeah I just refuse to acknowledge it and like
00:52:34
would tell myself you're just soft like plenty of people have had to live with like much worse stress in this
00:52:41
figure it out suck it up do you know that feeling of anxiety the one I'm talking about where it's it's like constant state for sure and you
00:52:47
experience you were experiencing that in the lead-up to the festival absolutely how badly it was bad
00:52:53
and yeah I mean like looking back it's crazy like no one wants to live right with a dread to wake up every morning
00:52:58
not knowing like what that Excel document's gonna be and then who I have to beg or call or plead or sell to to
00:53:04
solve that problem it just a shitty life but you you thought you were in too deep
00:53:09
and you couldn't turn back yeah I thought that like I wrongly convinced myself that there was an end goal and there was a solution
00:53:16
like if the event worked and it went well we'd have a great brand and everybody's happy everybody makes money everybody's gonna want to come next year
00:53:22
and obviously it was so stupid silly but that was a pure I had to finish line in sight
00:53:30
when did you realize it had all gone wrong yeah the night
00:53:35
before the so the festival was scheduled to be Friday Saturday and Sunday for two weekends
00:53:40
um we had a charter to 737 planes and open up like a temporary terminal in Miami to basically fly everybody to the
00:53:47
island and given we only had two planes we started to fly guests in early on a Thursday morning before like before the
00:53:53
festival started on Friday and late that Wednesday night we were like rushing to get everything ready in time
00:53:59
and it's like walked into the room around midnight and like the entire team was like slumped over on their chairs
00:54:05
like asleep on the couch like heads like leaning on the kitchen table and it seemed like all the energy at the
00:54:12
same time but it's like left the entire team and like almost like as if On Cue as
00:54:18
I've written by a movie a storm rolls in like late that Wednesday and then it's like oh [ __ ] like I've lost a team
00:54:25
you can't beat the weather like or we're not in a good spot
00:54:30
thinking back to the promo um video that you made and comment you made on the full send podcast about how the guy that
00:54:37
buys the yachts and gets all the girls to come and then pays for it subsidizes it is never a happy man yep
00:54:44
um are you this was the question I was putting as I was reading about your story is like what are your insecurities
00:54:51
because a lot of this seems to be driven by some kind of like deep insecurity to like prove the prove others right to be
00:54:56
the man to be the guy to throw the best party and the validation on a psychological level that must be giving some kind of insecurity some whole it
00:55:03
must be filling for sure yeah what are your insecurities and what were they
00:55:10
good question yeah yeah this I think the need it always
00:55:15
kind of came back the need to prove this path right of like I don't need school I don't need the path that we
00:55:22
were all taught as a right path like my path is better and it leads to more interesting and more exciting life and
00:55:28
like I think I always knew that but I was so insecure and I wanted to have
00:55:34
everybody else believe it and I would get frustrated when people didn't share those same beliefs as me
00:55:39
so I think it's been part of the learning process as well is to understand that everybody can't believe
00:55:44
and like the same thing and that's okay and like not taking it personally when that happens have you got any insecurities around
00:55:51
women I don't know yeah yeah it just seems to be centered on this
00:55:56
desire to like prove everybody wrong and like [ __ ] the system yeah um
00:56:01
I still I'm still not quite clear in my mind where that where that came from I'm like was he bullied in school was it was there a teacher that said some [ __ ] to
00:56:07
him that he couldn't do it was his parents told him he couldn't do it I think part of it is like the curse of
00:56:14
of things never being enough right and I guess I don't know what the derivation of that is but
00:56:19
you know whether it's business success or friendship success where you live your home your
00:56:25
possessions like your the love that someone has for you especially during that time of my life I
00:56:32
was almost like jaded into always thinking that it wasn't enough like if someone loved me they didn't love me enough or if like I had a great like day
00:56:39
at work the day wasn't good enough and I think it all kind of come back to like maybe I'm thinking out loud here maybe
00:56:45
it was like the early exposure at like 18 and 19 to like Titans of industry and
00:56:51
then me comparing to them where it's like not feasible to get there without you know 20 30 40 years of work that
00:56:56
they had put in but it's like I wanted everything at that level and I wanted it now so if you gave me this much but it
00:57:02
wasn't like where they were I wasn't satisfied with it so I think it was like the early exposure combined with like the impatience and
00:57:10
need to have it there's this really um well publicized scene where you're stood
00:57:18
on a crate on the day of the festival you've got all of these party goers around you kind of screaming and asking
00:57:24
questions and some of them a little bit drunk because they've been off yeah sent to a bar on the other side of the island when you're trying to sort of buy
00:57:30
yourself time what was going on when you were still in that crate and what were you thinking and feeling were you [ __ ] yourself I
00:57:36
mean right now I realized like how bad my management skills were at the time like where the [ __ ] is everybody like we
00:57:43
had they weren't all full-time employees a lot of them were like local contractors or whatever we had almost 800 people you know the day of the
00:57:49
festival like working there I just felt like I was surrounded by these people I couldn't find any of my team members
00:57:56
and I had I'm not going to name the publication I had a publication on the phone with me saying you know we heard
00:58:02
you ran off on your yacht with like cocaine and hookers like I don't have a yacht never done cocaine like there were no hookers and but they're also live
00:58:09
streaming on the on the cover of their web page so I'm like yelling at them I'm getting yelled at by like you know the
00:58:14
50 or 100 concert goers right there I just couldn't find anybody but just goes to show I just like didn't have the systems in place to or the knowledge to
00:58:21
manage everything but that was my first reaction is like where the hell is everybody I heard you made the decision to cancel
00:58:27
the festival when someone incorrectly told you that people had died yeah I was told
00:58:32
shortly after that moment maybe an hour or two later that three people had died and thankfully no one was physically
00:58:38
hurt like at all to my knowledge but I was told these elaborate stories who told you that uh team members and place
00:58:45
and I think the reality was looking back now is that concert goers were like reading things on Twitter and then
00:58:52
coming running to employees and telling them this but like verified Twitter accounts is back in what 17 were like
00:58:58
nothing like gunshots fire like people hit like it was going all over Twitter and people were getting shot and things like that and like none of this was true
00:59:05
but by the time it got to me the details were so vivid I just didn't have like
00:59:11
the ability to like step back take a deep breath recalibrate and try to like think
00:59:16
through the information I was like oh [ __ ] people are dead okay cancel this turn the planes around get everybody home how did that feel when you heard
00:59:22
that if someone in my team came to me and said that I was putting on an event and three people were dead already I
00:59:27
mean I just freaked out and said get everybody out of here get everybody back to Miami I know it's like that was your response but
00:59:34
yeah I was just I just didn't have the ability to like
00:59:39
okay like what's actually happening how can we prevent this it was more of it's like a quick knee-jerk all right send everybody home it's over
00:59:46
one of the I think legendary moments from the documentary which I know you've been asked about and heard about before
00:59:52
is when Andy King says that he you called him and asked
00:59:59
him to suck a dick suck literally suck a penis to have the water imported because
01:00:04
the Border agents had held it up what's the truth in that situation like did you ask him to suck a penis I've
01:00:12
heard so many variations of this story and no he was never ordered to go suck a guy's dick I literally put mouthwash in
01:00:18
he was gonna suck suck some dick he was yeah that's news to me or I mean I probably heard the story many times but
01:00:24
I think the the comment was ingest like go suck this guy's dick get this water like whatever it takes more of like you
01:00:30
know go suck up to him and get the water released like do anything beyond paying this guy right like you can't you can't
01:00:35
pay the Customs people so like go do whatever it takes and just convince him that our Festival is going to fail if
01:00:40
people can't drink water there's he's obviously a gay man and the Border agent was gay right I think so yeah so the assertion of the
01:00:47
documentary was because he was gay you had asked him to suck suck a dick if he had to and he he took that literally so
01:00:53
he says he he went and put mouthwash in and he headed down there fully prepared
01:00:59
to suck a dick I think that makes for a good TV but yeah I certainly don't recall it happening like that unfortunately
01:01:06
crazy do you still speak to him um I've heard from him recently yeah so
01:01:12
are you in good terms I think it's a good guy I think he tried his best to um to help and unfortunately he was brought
01:01:19
on pretty late in like the process so he wasn't there from the beginning but I think obviously if he was willing to do
01:01:24
that he went above and beyond to you listen if I try to make the festival happen I'm sure yeah I wish him all the
01:01:30
best if I had a friend that was willing to go to those links for me and I have no friend that would do that for me
01:01:35
um I certainly would would stay in touch and keep them on side yeah um in the wake of fire Festival what happens you
01:01:41
eventually fly back to New York one of the scenes that really did get me in the documentary on an emotional level was watching that wonderful Bohemian lady
01:01:47
talk about how she lost her life savings um you know who I'm referring to right uh I do know yeah yeah
01:01:54
um how do you feel about that when you hear that that some that locals you worked on
01:02:01
that hadn't been paid and then you know they're in they're not living privileged lives necessarily yeah
01:02:07
I mean it's terrible and the reality is there are people who are owed there and they're over for the last two weeks
01:02:13
of work before the festival I think everybody's a little bit different but getting them paid back
01:02:18
super important to me and trying to find ways to start that process now
01:02:23
um I never met that lady before but no her story is obviously super sad and you know um
01:02:29
I have heard from her through friends recently and you know hope we can figure out you know what is owed to everybody and start making those steps there but
01:02:36
yeah unfortunately never met her but hope to make right by her when you when you leave the Bahamas off to that event
01:02:42
you come back to New York you come back to a shitstorm yeah I mean the people
01:02:48
that have given you what 26 27 million dollars in cash yeah must be pretty mad for sure I I land
01:02:55
back on like the Sunday night after the festival around midnight and then that morning early the FBI is at my door
01:03:04
and I think like the initial investors who got really mad thought that the whole festival was a hoax and then I had
01:03:10
stolen the money and had it hidden somewhere and it was like lying about the entire thing and so just like enter this Whirlwind of
01:03:16
of Hell your investors but basically went to the FBI Yeah Yeah from from what
01:03:22
I understand yes what makes you what gives you the understanding basically I was called until it was going to happen it's like you [ __ ] up
01:03:29
it's too late like here's what's gonna happen now and and like I was totally totally guilty and I would have gone to
01:03:35
jail like if no one made that phone call I just made the process happen like the process kicked off faster but once it kicks off you know it's out of the out
01:03:42
of the hands of the investors and into the justice system and I was black and white guilty there was no gray area there and you're one of your investors
01:03:48
called you and told you that if you didn't give them X dollar yeah cash they would the exact lines were like we need this
01:03:57
amount of money or else you're going to be on hanging handcuffs from the front page of the Wall Street Journal and I
01:04:02
just like didn't have the money first of all how much was it uh I don't want to say because people will know the
01:04:08
investor probably is but seven figures yeah yeah yeah more than a million dollars more than one less than 10. so
01:04:16
um I didn't have it and then I was also kind of like certainly naive in my response at the time I just couldn't
01:04:22
fathom like that I was lying to investors right like I knew I was trying my best to make the festival work and
01:04:27
the media's initial like a line of questioning and the guess line of questioning as was all falling apart was like this is a scam you didn't try to do
01:04:34
this so my reaction was like no I tried I'm trying my best but I couldn't like really understand the magnitude and the
01:04:40
gravity of the crimes I did commit so I was still kind of fighting back I go ahead and do anything wrong I tried my best and then of course like I get
01:04:47
back and realize oh [ __ ] I mean it didn't happen overnight but here's what actually happened
01:04:53
and yeah when you get when you get back um the criminality doesn't stop though
01:04:58
does it no this is the bit honestly yeah that really got me in the doctor because
01:05:04
I was like oh man you know some could say young kid negligent inexperienced
01:05:09
his ambition was greater than his execution told loads of Lies at that point he learns his lesson but
01:05:16
then for the criminality and lying to continue beyond that point with this NYC VIP access where you start selling fake
01:05:22
tickets give me the context why did that happen yeah I've
01:05:27
many smart people officers have said the same thing as you and I was just caught in this process where
01:05:35
okay this investor he didn't threaten me but the investor kind of gave me an ultimatum I blew him off and he was right he got
01:05:42
me arrested it's all about the money I have to pay everybody back now all right I'm gonna I'm gonna get him his money and I wasn't like communicating with him
01:05:49
at this point but I'm gonna get him his money I'm gonna pay everybody else back and then this is all gonna go away and I can solve this and I thought that the
01:05:56
proper response to a criminal process was to solve the problem when the proper response to criminal process is to sit
01:06:01
down shut the [ __ ] up and like accept your punishment just just take it and any other response just like the wrong
01:06:07
way to do it so you were on bail I was on bail and like
01:06:13
it was all about this desire like okay now it's about the money let me pay people back and back in the Magnesium
01:06:20
days like in the early fire days Brands would essentially pay us to like host these events for our members or to
01:06:26
invite members to random things and I would always get invited to these like charity events and the charity Gallows
01:06:31
and concerts and you know award shows and whatever it may be I can get plus one or plus two depending on it and I
01:06:37
thought like oh this is a great way to make money I can just like you know call these Brands back and ask for a favor and get a few spots and sell these
01:06:43
tickets I just like was so stupid and still wrong and obviously couldn't fulfill what I was selling I'm like
01:06:48
[ __ ] up and it's kept me awake at night just as much if not more in the festival so we're on the same page there
01:06:54
so so you would Hamilton the Super Bowl you would you would email people Coco and tell them you had tickets take the
01:07:00
money and then when the event happened I would scramble and try to get it and sometimes I could but many times I
01:07:07
couldn't and you would keep that keep that money I would refund it if the event didn't happen but the problem was I was just so sold out for events in the
01:07:14
future that I had no chance at actually fulfilling that you know when my bell got revoked and I got arrested it was just like they lost their money and you
01:07:20
were doing were you doing this in the magnesis day so I had a story about Hamilton you said you had 200 tickets to Hamilton
01:07:26
um and then when the event came near you just like randomly scrambled on like Ticket Hub or StubHub whatever it is and
01:07:31
bought the tickets last minute would go and hand them out yeah so when in the lying period leading up to the festival
01:07:38
I was trying to get money from everywhere and definitely was trying to get more money from Magnus to help pay
01:07:43
the bills as well um I was so stupid like was certainly overselling access to magnesis events
01:07:50
but we ended up either buying the tickets like at an inflated rate or refunding everybody so I lost money
01:07:56
every single time you know it was crazy like just so stupid
01:08:02
um your your ability to be so comfortable with lying at that point in
01:08:07
your life is terrifying yeah it's one could almost say it's like
01:08:15
it's kind of it's kind of I don't even say this but kind of lucky that like
01:08:21
it was wasn't on an even bigger scale and it wasn't like life or death stuff that you were doing in terms of you know
01:08:27
what I mean because if you're that comfortable lying to people that could have been and you have the sales ability clearly that could have
01:08:35
been a lot like how is your your relationship with lying evolved in the last couple of years since you've been in jail and you've come out like
01:08:40
honestly how has it changed yeah
01:08:46
the lies at the time I think just the craziest part was
01:08:52
how stupid it was from every level like you know you work hard to build relationships with friends with loved
01:08:59
ones with supporters and obviously as soon as you allow them it's going to get found out whether it's the next day or
01:09:04
in a year and five years they're gonna believe that but you didn't seem to have a belief I didn't be found out I always knew in the back of my mind they're
01:09:10
going to find out but I convinced myself that if I had made them if I gave them what they want which I thought was
01:09:15
happiness and success it wouldn't have mattered like that's where I went wrong and it's like okay they're gonna know
01:09:21
that our Revenue wasn't this but I'm gonna make the money and they're gonna have fun so they're gonna love me still
01:09:26
I'm like it's so crazy to think about now but like that was the thought process and
01:09:31
that's like even like for the magnesium stick it's like I If we oversold a ticket for an event I was literally like
01:09:37
running around when I came back to New York for a weekend like I'd go outside Madison Square Garden and pay like four times the price and make sure that
01:09:44
person was like happy in the moment not realizing I just like lost a ton of money in the deal and actually hurt everybody else because we're losing
01:09:50
money on it so I was like so focused in this like long-term goal or short-term goal of happiness and success for
01:09:57
everybody around me and that's obviously German due to insecurity and whatever these desires are but yeah like that was
01:10:04
like my personal justification and crazy but that's what it was
01:10:09
that day when the FBI come knocking yeah you know this is before you put on bail
01:10:14
what is it like tell me because I'm [ __ ] terrified of the FBI I've never met him you know I'm just so scared of
01:10:20
them just from movies so tell me what that's like scary as hell I think like
01:10:25
I wasn't defiant I was more like I tried my best like that was my own like internal like mentality like everybody
01:10:32
at that time was accusing me in the Festival of all being fake and like while I obviously made a million
01:10:39
management decisions the crime was like in lying to investors right but I just didn't comprehend yet like what
01:10:44
I'd really done and I didn't realize that I was doing all these crimes for this end goal making people successful
01:10:50
and even if it worked I still would have gone to jail but it didn't work and I was [ __ ] at least I couldn't
01:10:56
understand at that point what was happening when did remorse show up and and that realization of like guilt and
01:11:02
what you'd done when did that show up it's hard to figure that out in your story yeah I think like
01:11:10
the first day where I was like something is really wrong was ad sentencing when
01:11:17
the judge said six years and I kind of like looked back at the
01:11:22
faces of you know the friends and family that were there
01:11:27
that was hard and it's like I legitimately just hurt when it was 30 people
01:11:35
in a way that's going to affect them not just for four or five six years but for 20 years 30 years and it's never going
01:11:40
to go away and I don't like that wasn't all the lessons I learned in one day but that I
01:11:46
think was the start of what would take another 18 months of being in jail to really reflect on of like
01:11:52
wow like this is [ __ ] bad genre was your co-founder um
01:12:02
did he throw you under the bus I think he did what most people would have done in that
01:12:07
situation so which was well yeah I think he certainly uh
01:12:12
I mean he's got a lot of talents right but I don't think going going back to jail was on his agenda and I was a
01:12:18
guilty one like he should not if all if all things shook out fairly at the end I don't think he should have gone to jail
01:12:24
he I don't think he committed any crimes but like I think like most people they quickly made it known like what I did
01:12:30
wrong and how I did it but yeah I mean I feel bad for him I feel bad for everybody else who was
01:12:36
who was trying their best they're trying hard to to make things happen do you
01:12:41
still speak to him do you have a relationship uh no if you spoke to him since you've been to jail or during jail or um
01:12:48
shortly after um straight after getting arrested I spoke with him like one time so this is
01:12:53
you know right when Bell started and then didn't speak with him again and so your your bell was revoked because while
01:13:00
you're on bail you started this NYC VIP access correct and that violated your bill conditions correct because you
01:13:07
weren't allowed to start a company or you weren't allowed to all because I wasn't allowed to keep lying right so
01:13:12
they found out you were lying there as well and yeah that was it so you go to jail yeah there's this
01:13:19
lawsuit where you were sued for 100 million dollars but you go to jail you get six years in jail yes and you'll a
01:13:25
few things in in your sort of um your sentencing you're not allowed to start another company again what's the the actual terminology there so I have an
01:13:32
SEC role the Securities Commission of the US where I can't be an officer or
01:13:37
director of a public company for a life public company yeah public company but you can for private club private yeah
01:13:43
okay but for life which is you know obviously if I'm in that position that's a good problem to have but yeah people
01:13:49
are probably paid back at that point but yeah you get found guilty of two counts of wire fraud but then you also get charged again for selling fake tickets
01:13:55
to events like the Met Gala Burning Man and Coachella on top of that which makes the sentence even worse
01:14:03
um for sure so stupid
01:14:08
crazy so it's almost like it's ridiculous
01:14:15
just didn't know how to didn't know how to say that I was wrong and accept
01:14:21
that admission you also got you have to pay restitution yeah what is
01:14:27
restitution for anybody that doesn't know so it's basically wage garnishment
01:14:32
forever uh until I die or until the people who are defrauded are paid
01:14:38
back you have to so on all the money you make for the rest of your life you have to pay the investors who you lied to and
01:14:46
you raised 26 million from yes back a percentage of the money exactly yes do you know what that percentage is yeah uh
01:14:52
I think it changes based on your income level and so it's been like three months for me so far so I'm just like not
01:14:58
making a ton of money right now I've I've made literally made like eight restitution payments so far in the first three and a
01:15:04
half months but I think the percentage just kind of goes up and down based on what you're earning so it's something I
01:15:09
guess I'll continue to learn about or hopefully I learned about more uh asking people to earn more
01:15:15
jail yeah I said to you before we started recording that one of my recurring nightmares is going to yeah I like we're
01:15:21
able to voice it though because I had the same one but I could never have told anybody about that you know 10 years ago of course yeah yeah
01:15:29
tell me about jail I hope I never I hope I never find out yeah
01:15:35
I mean so much of me just want to like put it in the past and never think about it again but
01:15:40
it'll always be there and the hardest part is the distance it's like you're in timeout and you
01:15:45
can't like get consoled or can't like love anybody can't talk to your family and friends
01:15:51
and any Partners whatever else it may be it's the forced distance
01:15:57
that is the hardest part what does that do to you
01:16:06
I think like when you're rendered useless and Powerless for an extended period of time
01:16:13
it really messes with your psyche and I feel it every day now but I can only
01:16:19
imagine for the people who are there for 20 years 30 years you know significant periods of time longer
01:16:24
than me like what it does I think this system is designed to break down
01:16:30
ambition and creativity and too like institutionalize you is the word that is commonly used
01:16:37
and I think like that just kind of kills your Humanity and it kills your psyche and it just
01:16:43
makes you feel worthless how has it changed you
01:16:50
and I I will go to the the positive stuff but in a negative way can you see
01:16:55
symptoms of How It's had an adverse impact on you yeah I think like and I don't know no disrespected people who
01:17:02
have been through like way way worse and there's many of them out there but like having the I think from solitary
01:17:07
confinement having this weird like almost like a PTSD paranoia
01:17:13
where I now know that there's someone out there who can snap their fingers and
01:17:18
like shut my lights out right and there's someone who could like wake up and say we want him in a concrete box
01:17:23
for four years ten years and they can do it and I can't stop it that's [ __ ] scary I'm like that keeps me up at night
01:17:31
that's because you're on probation probation yeah yeah exactly yep so it's like you know you jaywalk and that's
01:17:37
enough where they send you back to jail and they know you get to jail we're gonna put you in solitary confinement now I'm like
01:17:42
someone can snap their fingers and do it and like that's not mess with your message with your
01:17:48
head I think I'm just like I I'm before I was very quick to pull
01:17:54
the trigger but in both good and bad ways and now I think I'm a little trigger shy in a lot of aspects of life and I worry that I won't get that like I
01:18:02
won't get that back in the good ways because like every time I think like am I going to make a decision where someone's gonna construe this as me like
01:18:09
breaking a rule whether my tensions are aren't and it's just scary and like
01:18:14
just knowing that I was so guilty in the first place and deserved like everything that happened but then also knowing that
01:18:21
it doesn't have to be that way and there are people who you know weren't as guilty as me who suffered as bad or worse than me I think that fear has
01:18:28
always been there like when I was told my release date from jail the two months I had to wait after receiving the date
01:18:34
were the hardest time in jail like every morning I'd like be shaking in bed like waiting for him to call my name on the
01:18:40
last speaker to tell me it was a joke and like I'm not going home and I didn't believe I was going to go home so for those 60 days it was like
01:18:45
I'm unbearable and then like when the day comes I'm waiting in like the cage like you're already locked in a cage for him to
01:18:51
process you out I'm like okay the FBI is going to show up and tell me it's all a joke like I'm not getting out of here and like it's just like the constant
01:18:57
like disbelief that anything ever is gonna happen again was the hardest part
01:19:03
and how long is your probation how long have you got to live with that fear that any decision you make concerns you three years three years yeah
01:19:11
it's pretty long um four years is a long time in jail yeah you know it's it's a relatively small
01:19:18
number but if I think about what's happened if I just go back four years in my own life yeah to when I was 25 26.
01:19:25
better than me I was a different person yeah crazy crazy
01:19:30
and those are key years you went to jail at 25 years old right yeah six years old yeah now I'm 30. so it's like I'm missing the latter half of your 20s is
01:19:37
definitely I mean deservedly obviously but definitely development years right I'm sure for
01:19:43
for most people in terms of lasting memories that Joe had on you and lasting impact take me to
01:19:48
what is the what are the what is the worst thing that happened in jail
01:19:54
that will stay with you for life the worst thing you observed or so um
01:20:00
I did two cents in solitary the first one was three months second one was seven months why the seven month stint
01:20:05
was because I tried to do a podcast over the pay phone which is a terrible idea to anybody listening well I didn't want
01:20:10
the competition so yeah shut that down wait till Stephen invites you on but um
01:20:16
they tried to send me to a terrorist jail and basically in retaliation for that podcast
01:20:22
and they they put me in officially put the paperwork in to send me to like a terrorist facility and I've since gotten
01:20:28
out and like looked the facility up and they're like there's like a list of the inmates on like Wikipedia who are in that jail and you know I'd be one of
01:20:35
like three non-terrorists there like it's [ __ ] scary it's like I wanted a podcast I was super boring of vanilla so
01:20:42
stupid to do it should not have done it you can't do a podcast from jail it doesn't make any sense but like it all kind of feeds this concept where
01:20:49
there's like and I'm not a conspiracy theorist believer at all but there's someone who can snap their fingers and your life is done and thankfully like
01:20:55
somewhere in the higher up chain outside of the facility I was in like rejected that and just sent me somewhere else but
01:21:01
that was a very real possibility how are you trying to record a book Austin Joe they have pay phones
01:21:08
um that you're able to make I think like 20 15-minute calls every
01:21:13
month but you can do them all in like one day so we have to wait 30 minutes if you need to call so I had like a podcast
01:21:19
company set a podcast up where over the course of two days I would call in every half hour for a few hours a day and
01:21:25
record the podcast and they found out when the episode was published the trailer came out in like an hour or two
01:21:30
later they came and grabbed me and yeah so that's it so that you can find them yeah 10 months in total in solitary
01:21:36
component the worst part is not knowing when it's going to end and they were like [ __ ] with me like hey here's where we're gonna send you and they
01:21:42
would like send me a program statement it's called the CM the communication management unit I like Marion Illinois now here's where we're gonna send you
01:21:48
and I thought they were bluffing but then they like two weeks later oh McFarland they actually put your paperwork in for they're like you're
01:21:54
[ __ ] like it's like the whole time and no one's gonna tell me how long it was gonna be or when it was going to end and that was the hardest part like a
01:22:00
never-ending Saga they were taking enjoyment out of [ __ ] with you oh of course yeah I mean deserveably so if
01:22:06
your job is to you know work inside a concrete bunker and like this [ __ ] kid comes in I'm sure you know I don't
01:22:12
blame them for their actions I heard you tell a story on the full sign podcast about a young guy arriving
01:22:18
in jail yeah overhearing his right yeah in Brooklyn yep
01:22:25
tell me about that that was really really early on in my
01:22:31
jail stint when I had my bell revoked I went to the Brooklyn Detention Center here which ended up being there for seven months net bus is certainly like
01:22:37
violent they have all kind of crimes and levels of security people there it's like all kind of mixed into one big like
01:22:43
fish tanky you know cell block at that point I think I was like so
01:22:49
wide-eyed as to what was happening I just couldn't really process everybody's pain yeah at that point
01:22:55
because I was trying to like understand my own pain but yeah you see and hear things that
01:23:00
you don't think are real right and just like didn't have the exposure to those to that thankfully in my life before
01:23:06
that point what did you see in here in that instance
01:23:12
expert people with nothing to lose who are looking for attention or looking for an outlet
01:23:17
taking advantage of others and it's it's rough it's just it's bad do you feel uncomfortable talking about that
01:23:24
a little bit why I think like there are obviously some great people in
01:23:29
prison who I met but there's just as many bad people and it's like bad people surrounded by other bad people just kind
01:23:36
of creates it doesn't create anything good a story that I that I'm referring to is
01:23:42
I had you talk about quite recently was that young man had come to the jail and um you'd you'd heard him at night being
01:23:49
raped by another more dominant inmate and you had to sit
01:23:54
in your cell and overhear that rain when you saw him the next day he didn't tell the police police guards because he didn't want to
01:24:00
get hurt um so we're so like weird about that
01:24:05
situation was he was scared to tell the police guards like what happened but he had to move cells because like he
01:24:10
couldn't deal with it again so he found a reason to move to a different cell like in the same in the same building
01:24:16
that we were all in but the word got around between the other inmates what happened so the other inmates pressured
01:24:22
the guy who raped him to do something about it basically and he went and like took a razor blade and slashed the guy
01:24:27
the next day so it's like you're damned if you do damn if you don't and like how does that kid handle that situation like
01:24:32
if you tell on the guy in your entire prison experience is going to be terrible if you don't tell it I'm gonna get raped
01:24:37
if you quasi-telling him you'll get moved and then stabbed so it's like what do you do and that's like it's just like
01:24:43
a wild terrible situation how old was that young young guy I think he was like a year or two younger than me so this is
01:24:49
my first seven months so I was 25 or 26 so early to mid 20s
01:24:55
do those things I mean do you have any like reoccurring like nightmares about about that time is there like almost a jail PTSD I think
01:25:02
from solitary like I was I was kind of sheltered at that point because it was so early I was the first that was the
01:25:08
first and only time I saw someone get raped obviously had hurt stories later on but never actually like I didn't see
01:25:14
it but like heard and like heard the what was happening there and heard like his blood like help me like
01:25:20
Scream the next morning when he was getting slashed so that was that was wild but I think I was it was so much
01:25:26
happening at that time I didn't fully like take stock into like what had happened so that happened a year or two
01:25:31
later I think it would have been more like difficult to comprehend but to the fact that so much was going on at that point
01:25:37
it's like an overwhelming like emotions like if you have a thousand loud sounds blasting in your face and like one more
01:25:43
like horn plays in the corner you're not gonna really register the horn as much as if it was the only sound hitting you at that time and you had therapy Joe uh
01:25:50
yeah they had like jail therapists yeah did that help you at all in any way I think so and I think it's all like it's
01:25:55
a journey right and you need to be the one who kind of drives that car yourself but
01:26:01
I think like you know experienced people can push you to start thinking about the right things
01:26:07
really while you've been inside over the last five years the topic around mental health is has really emerged in culture
01:26:14
what has your journey been like with your own mental health have you experienced we talked about anxiety earlier at any point did you experience
01:26:21
what people call depression and the symptoms of depression I don't know I think like my the mental health Journey
01:26:28
started more out of angst I was in solitary for it was my first stint there
01:26:33
and had a Wall Street Journal newspaper come in and it was around the holiday times like getting ready to do Christmas
01:26:38
like alone in the cell like you know obviously super stressful and there was like a whole back page spread in the
01:26:44
Wall Street Journal about dealing with your anxiety in the wine store because there are so many options and I'm like
01:26:50
these [ __ ] like do you know what I would give to like be able to go to a wine store like right now and like
01:26:55
how is this real so I think like my initial like intro to like the invoke mental health was like a bit of like
01:27:01
this is [ __ ] and then I think it took a period of a couple years to start like opening up
01:27:07
to the topic and the concept have you opened up to the topic not fully like I guess Like
01:27:14
For Better or Worse you know I'm of the belief that
01:27:20
I committed the crime and like I could have and should have stopped myself and
01:27:25
getting mental health like wouldn't have stopped me from committing the crime and I also believe that like I'm like
01:27:31
present to the point that I certainly believe I know right from wrong moving forward and if I commit a
01:27:36
crime in the future it's not going to be because of like a mental health issue it's because like I'm taking a shortcut and you know copping out
01:27:44
you'll always try to get you off the 20-year prison sentence by saying that you suffered from untreated bipolar
01:27:49
disorder the success reinforced his grandiose and distorted sense that there
01:27:55
were no boundaries bipolar disorder that's the defense that
01:28:01
your lawyers gave is that true I think like I am extremely flawed in a
01:28:07
lot of ways and I'm embarrassed about a lot of things but I'm very embarrassed about using like mental health as part
01:28:14
of my defense and I just don't believe that that's an excuse for what I did so I think that was that was a wrong
01:28:19
approach that I took there and like but is it true do you have bipolar disorder I don't
01:28:24
think I'm bipolar I'm sure I have mental health like concerns as many people do but yeah I
01:28:30
don't think I'm bipolar so do you think that was your defense and you using that as a way to try and load the sentence I
01:28:36
I yeah and I think I was stupid it was wrong there's a quote from the the prosecutor as well where they said that
01:28:43
the defendant is a Serial fraudster and today is fraud like a circle has no end Mr McFarland has been dishonest most of
01:28:50
the time do you agree with that statement from the judge
01:28:55
I think the magnitude of the lies that led to that point
01:29:02
we're just so large and so bad that it like it erased any good and so I
01:29:08
I think that was accurate at the time that time inside you know you're getting out
01:29:13
what's the plan you start writing books in jail I had all of these things what's the plan when you're looking forward at
01:29:19
your life with your ambition what are you thinking I'm gonna get out and I'm gonna do what the craziest thing
01:29:24
is that I never thought I would get out and I'd spend the time like planning things
01:29:30
and thinking about what I wanted to do more as like a mental Escape but I was just so convinced that it was never
01:29:35
going to end and obviously it sounds silly that's really been like the this like aha moment like I am out of prison right
01:29:42
now and I just like truly didn't think I would be here crazy I know but it was like the paranoia of the situation really really
01:29:49
like convinced me that this was not going to be over and you've started a new company yeah
01:29:55
so I am out so I guess I have to do something now so yeah you could have done a lot of things yeah right you could have gone in as you said people
01:30:01
told you to go get a job you could have played it safe you've started a company called pirate
01:30:06
yeah interesting name there's a little bit of humor in there yeah a little bit of a pun hopefully
01:30:11
people understand the self-deprecating nature but yeah and even the way that you're marketing
01:30:17
pirate we'll talk about what it is ETC but even the mate you're very much embracing what's happened and you'll I
01:30:23
remember seeing a video of the marketing collateral and you say at the start of it listen I've got a lot of people to pay back here you're embracing yeah
01:30:30
what's happened was that a is that strategy yeah I think like
01:30:35
beating around the bush and hiding from the truth just makes no sense right and like people are owed
01:30:42
their own money their own trust their own an apology and not doing it and
01:30:48
avoiding it I think is worse than saying it is what it is and here's my step to make it right I'm like I
01:30:54
can't promise that pirate is going to be worth anything one day I can't promise it'll work or not work but I can promise
01:31:00
I'm gonna try are you are you really are you sorry I'm super sorry who are you sorry to
01:31:07
family friends first supporters second and then goes goes down the list from
01:31:13
there and what's the plan with pirate yeah so is it Festival not yet
01:31:20
um for all like the really bad stuff I think the one crazy positive takeaway of solitary was
01:31:29
that it gave me time to think past tomorrow and if you kind of go back
01:31:35
to like those fire days with the Urgent payment shoot I couldn't afford to think past two o'clock you know let alone like
01:31:40
three years from now it's the benefit of solitary was like read a lot of books and really just like thought about
01:31:46
technology in a way that I didn't have the luxury of due to my own mistakes of doing before
01:31:52
plus like the reflection about like what I suck at and what I'm good at so Pirates like the combination of the time
01:31:58
to think seven years ahead and the time to reflect on the areas that I need help and the areas that I think I can succeed
01:32:04
at would you suck up I went way too fast
01:32:09
I turned down experts in certain areas like thinking I knew more than them
01:32:15
I'm terrible managing finances I'm terrible with Logistics but I'm good at Building Products quickly and I'm good
01:32:21
at marketing I think most of all I'm good at taking people and allowing them
01:32:26
to find Value in others that they might have not found without me and then inviting them and convincing them to go
01:32:32
try some experience they would never have done without me and finding like joy and success and ideas from those
01:32:38
experiences and connections and that's what Pirate's really trying to do right that's a parrot about tell me about pirate if I'm if I've never heard of it
01:32:44
before and I'm a potential customer what's what's the sales pitch so working to partner with a really small like
01:32:49
Boutique Hotel in an adventurous Island somewhere where we can host the content
01:32:55
creator from London like the entrepreneur from New York the music artist from LA on a permanent basis
01:33:01
connect them around all these Adventures to go night diving to go Spearfish for their own lobsters to make music you
01:33:07
know buy the bonfire at night as many weekends out of the year as we can but this time instead of trying to
01:33:14
bring like thousands of people there we're rigging the area with these 360 cameras we're going to be live streaming
01:33:19
it to the rest of the world so all of their fans no matter where they are can watch what's actually happening and then
01:33:25
take advantage of these emerging Technologies to own and even affect the experience so for example people online could chip
01:33:31
in a dollar and build a Beachside bar and sell drinks their favorite artists or like once I'm allowed to travel I can
01:33:38
be swimming at the reef and they can decide to Chum the water and like the local Captain who's like an amazing character like
01:33:44
dump bait in the water and I think given all the crazy sharks in the area people would love to see the uh the results alive of that but it's all about taking
01:33:51
people on a manageable scale physically to different places and then virtually
01:33:56
allowing them to connect with people they never thought were possible and partaking these experiences so for me I
01:34:01
would go out to some islands somewhere yeah and then I'd be on the island chilling and then my audience watching
01:34:07
can [ __ ] with me exactly or or like impact your creative experience even as well too so you could be like hosting a
01:34:14
bonfire chat or you can do a podcast from a different Ireland location and they can say hey we want you to do the
01:34:20
podcast from this island today with this guest and ask these questions and they can kind of get involved and help own that experience
01:34:26
how are you gonna fund this yeah so like right now it's doing everything and anything like have a TV deal I've been
01:34:32
signing baseball cards I'm on Cameo like literally like doing marketing for other small startups and I think like things
01:34:40
have to grow and it's super super early on but just trying to find any way to you know get the revenue to do all this you're gonna raise investment again I
01:34:46
don't know uh not tomorrow not this week but you know in 6 12 18 months like I
01:34:52
have to kind of see what I'm allowed to do and what I'm not allowed to do so taking it step by step do you have this kind of like because it's been such a
01:34:58
public failure and it's it's tarnished by this like this subject of Lies liar
01:35:04
do every interaction you must have now is there a party that knows that they don't trust you
01:35:10
I think what's really like interesting especially from the team standpoint is I'm having an easier time finding like
01:35:16
team members and partners and like employees whatever it is now and like with having no money and having the
01:35:23
tarnish they did before I think for like the 90 out of 100 people who just like want to hate and like distance
01:35:29
themselves that almost inspires like the 10 of the people to really want to fight for it and make something happen so I
01:35:35
almost have like deeper I think more trusting relationships with my small circle than I did before but obviously
01:35:42
I'm going to encounter you know millions of people who are just gonna like say no at first pass so
01:35:47
yeah when I heard you talk about pirate recently a couple of weeks ago you referenced the Bahamas now when you just
01:35:53
told me about pirate then yeah you said some Island yeah I saw you on
01:35:59
full sense say you wanted to go back to the Bahamas yeah I I'd love to the Bahamas um we had
01:36:05
been working with a small local development an island called Black Point and we had a Super Connect connected
01:36:12
tight like local team that I had known there for years that I called my dear friends
01:36:17
um a few weeks ago the Bahamas basically announced that I wasn't allowed back which was
01:36:23
super hard for me to hear I think the reality of the situation is that there are people in the Bahamas who are still
01:36:28
owed for their work and they need to be paid back so before like any talks of returning there happen like they need to
01:36:34
be paid back and I'd love to readdress your relationship once that happens but in the meantime pirate is the technology
01:36:40
we've built it is these experiences so just like it's early I don't have the answers yet but looking for other
01:36:45
locations to start testing what we've been building who said who said in the Bahamas you weren't allowed back the government made a statement saying that
01:36:51
I'm not allowed back I think like some media announced that I was doing a festival there again which it was not
01:36:57
the situation and and I don't think I ever announced that I hope I didn't but I think that narrative was taken with and run with to like this overall ban
01:37:04
which came out of left field for me what did the statement say that I'm a fugitive at the Bahamas
01:37:11
so if you go to the Bahamas they would arrest you it sounds like it
01:37:16
uh I'm not aware of any charges that I anytime or the past five years but once
01:37:22
again I think the reality is people who worked hard for the fire Festival there vendors uh contractors whatever it may
01:37:29
be are still owed and you know if I can pay start paying 100 a week whatever the number is like let's
01:37:35
figure that out and get that done how are you doing the stress is there
01:37:42
and it's literally been three and a half months right and it's like
01:37:48
how do I deal with this I think one of the toughest things for me when I first got out of jail I was in like a halfway
01:37:53
house program for a number of months and the first people that kind of came to me were people who I'd met in prison and
01:37:59
they were trying to essentially like you know partner with me and get in close and as I like learn more about those
01:38:05
people over time it's been more of like separating myself with from them and it's like building
01:38:10
and rebuilding with old friends and new friends as well so the human aspect took me some time and I
01:38:16
think I kind of like viewed the end of my sentence as like a fresh start it's like August 30th came I kind of like had to separate from the people I'd been
01:38:22
around for just over four years at that point and start reconnecting with old friends and new people that's been a
01:38:29
challenge I think I've got a really great small group right now but it's a struggle to survive like I have no money
01:38:34
you know I'm trying to earn whoever I can and just like get Consulting marketing you know media jobs and just
01:38:40
doing my best but it's not going to happen in six months or nine months it's gonna take time are you happy
01:38:45
I think I'm excited but also super paranoid and nervous so it's a mix and I feel like
01:38:51
I have like a good four to five years to rebuild the foundation before
01:38:57
life is like copacetic again and obviously coming in coming and doing
01:39:02
podcasts like this it can't be easy to do this every [ __ ] day no you know what I mean people like me calling you a pathological life yeah yeah just reading
01:39:08
off all this stuff that you've done in the past to be fair even harder than every other one I've done so good for you though we'll let you know what it is
01:39:15
um it's not just that I feel like I have a responsibility to it it's like
01:39:22
on this process you're on now there's questions people want to ask and until those questions are answered like
01:39:29
they're gonna remain yeah and in fact for me I think Liberation for you is like facing those tough questions and
01:39:34
answering them because eventually like the truth is people are going to stop asking them yeah like if they have those answers so
01:39:40
um and you know I think it's worth me saying as well I believe you should have a chance I'm very much of the opinion
01:39:45
that like people like you that have done wrong and that [ __ ] up and have held their hands up and said I [ __ ] up I'm
01:39:51
wrong whether you're telling the truth or not I don't know you you know I I take you on your word but I believe that
01:39:56
if we have a society where people don't get a second chance that is a worse Society I spend a couple of two weeks
01:40:03
ago I went to a prison and spent pretty much all day there really meeting inmates and speaking to them and the
01:40:09
potential you know what I mean it really did open my eyes because as you've described I saw such unbelievable
01:40:14
potential crazy right I saw mistakes that people had made in their lives and then I saw a desperation to fix them and
01:40:20
to to get back out and be productive so I think a society that has open up Open Arms to to ex-offenders who have
01:40:27
committed certain lower level crimes I think is a good site I'm not saying yours is a low-level crime I'm not passing judgment in your in your case I
01:40:33
think that's a better Society to live in or else it's a waste of talent and you know so that's my stance on it now
01:40:42
do I do I believe everything you've said in terms of like you'll never do it
01:40:47
again I don't know the scary part was you made a massive
01:40:53
mistake and then made another one you know the fire Festival was a [ __ ] very public [ __ ] show and then to then
01:40:58
scam people with the tickets I'm like damn I hope everything you've told me told me is is the truth what message
01:41:05
would you want to send to the world like all the people listening to this around the world
01:41:10
what message do you want to send to them I think the beauty that we all have in some capacity is time right and it's a
01:41:18
patience too like I don't need anything from anybody listening to this I just hope that in 20 or 30 years we can look
01:41:23
back upon this conversation or snip it to this conversation and said oh yeah like oh this came true oh there's where
01:41:29
you messed up or there's where you did a good job I think it's just like documenting the journey and allowing time to run its course and time Reveals
01:41:37
All Right pirate where can we find pirate if you want to go check it out we want to be part of it where's where do we go to
01:41:43
check it out uh pirate.com p-y-r-t orient.com yeah at piratebilly on social
01:41:49
great domain name yeah thank you cool domain name yeah he paid for that oh my God thanks to the
01:41:56
TV contract TV what's that just doing a small like follow-on docu series about
01:42:02
like the attempt to build pirate nice yeah you're ex I can tell you're excited yeah are you are you nervous coming here
01:42:08
today uh not really I didn't know like I didn't know how in depth we were going to go if
01:42:15
I'm glad I didn't really know because if I knew the structure and the the questions I don't think I could have slept last night so like
01:42:22
glad I came in a little blind um I've done three podcasts so far I did the first one like maybe two weeks ago and
01:42:29
then I filmed the second one this morning uh which is fun and then like I guess I kind of came in thinking this
01:42:34
would be more jovial so I'm really really glad I didn't know the depth of this because I would have been super nervous in the definitely not have slept
01:42:41
yesterday so of all the things I've asked you what was the most uncomfortable thing the thing where you go ah insecurities drive like like the
01:42:49
why I think it's the most uncomfortable because I don't have the answer
01:42:54
you're good and because you don't have the answers yeah it still might be running the show in the back room a little bit right sure of course I'm
01:43:00
speaking from my own experience like I talk I talk a lot about this podcast whether I'm driven or whether I'm being dragged by something and I've I've only
01:43:07
in the last couple of years started to realize that I was being dragged by my insecurities a lot of the time you know
01:43:13
my goals reflected that on Lamborghini Ranger of a six pack yeah you know we have a closing tradition on this
01:43:19
podcast everywhere the last guest yeah asks a question for the next guest without knowing who they're leaving it
01:43:24
for so they didn't realize that they were leaving it for you okay interesting question and I feel like I feel like I
01:43:30
might know the answer based on what we've discussed okay I'm gonna make a rule you can't repeat something you've already said
01:43:36
here okay make a little more difficult the question left for you not knowing it's for you is what scares you the most
01:43:44
today can't talk about probation
01:43:55
taking a shortcut I think I have a propensity to go fast
01:44:00
and it's good in like Tech ways but it's bad in life ways and there will be
01:44:06
opportunities that come from from the media from podcasts from you know being out of jail and it's not taking a
01:44:12
shortcut it's like don't get distracted by the glittery lights and some
01:44:17
opportunity that ultimately represents a shortcut
01:44:22
thank you Billy yeah thank you for being thank you thank you for taking the questions and thank you for being so open and this is tough but I'm super
01:44:29
glad I did this and the line of your questioning is amazing so respect where it comes from and uh
01:44:35
yeah you're a master at this so thank you thank you Billy hope you pay all the restitution back hope you hope pirate
01:44:41
becomes a huge success I hope all the lessons that you've learned over the last 10 years God you've learned lessons
01:44:46
um all learned and they're replied and I hope we can sit here someday five years from now 10 years from now and talk
01:44:51
about the opposite the success um which is usually the conversation I have with CEOs here okay the success
01:44:58
what you've built how you've done it um and share all of those insights and lessons quick word from one of our sponsors I've
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got a tip for all of you that will make your virtual meeting experiences I think 10 times better
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as some of you may know by now Blue Jeans by Verizon offers seamless high quality video conferencing but the
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reason why I use blue jeans versus other video conferencing tools is because of immersion their tools make you feel more
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connected to the employees or customers you're trying to engage with and now they're launching one of their biggest feature enhancements to impact virtual
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events so far called Blue Jean Studio I actually used it the other day I did a virtual event using the studio which I
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think about 700 of you came to TV level production quality all done by one
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person with very little technical experience on a laptop so if you've got an event coming up and you're thinking about doing it virtually check out blue
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jean studio now let me know what you think because I genuinely believe I know this is an advert and I'm supposed to
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say this but I genuinely believe it's the best tool I've seen for doing really immersive simple but high quality
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production virtual events quick one as you might know crafted are one of the sponsors of this podcast and they make
01:46:03
really meaningful pieces of jewelry this lion piece they've made I wear all the
01:46:08
time along with the little timepiece the sand timer that I wear often and the lion piece you might have seen Conor McGregor has a similar piece which was
01:46:15
custom made for him for me it represents courage and if you walk through my house
01:46:20
the house that I'm in right now if you walk six feet in that direction you'll see a huge lion portrait if you go
01:46:27
upstairs you'll see a lion portrait if you look behind me on the Shelf near the top there you'll see a line as well the
01:46:32
reason my house and my life is surrounded by lions is because they represent courage calmness and that
01:46:38
tenacity that I've applied to my business success to my professional life into everything in between for me the
01:46:43
line has always been an animal that can be almost a bit of a contradiction they are so loving and so caring of their own
01:46:49
and can be powerful and courageous when necessary in order to achieve what they want to achieve so if you like me are a
01:46:56
big fan of Courage bravery and ambition while also being calm and composed check
01:47:01
out this line piece and let me know if you get it [Music]
