Transcript of Joe Wallace | Former Von Dutch CEO, Pro Athlete & Entrepreneur | Coffeez Ep. 303

1, 2, 3! Hi, Joe Wallace! Welcome, welcome to Coffees with Joe Shalaby.

Thank you.

How are you today? I'm well, thank you.

Good.

My name is Alyssa and I'll be your barista. Pleasure. Can I please take your drink order? Mocha latte. Mocha latte, you got it. Okay, first I want you, because it's tradition, I want you to choose a chocolate of your choice to enjoy while I get your coffee ready. All right, I'm gonna go right here. Beautiful. Now let me guess, did you play basketball? I'm an ex-basketball player. Amazing, I love that. We're excited to have you on the show, Joe. Likewise. Let me bring you over here to Joe Chalabi House.

Let's do it.

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Welcome to another episode of Coffees with Joe Chalabi. Today I'm sitting here with Joe Joe Wallace, former NBA player, serial entrepreneur, and a very active investor and VC. He was also the former CEO of Von Dutch. Please welcome the one, the only Joe Wallace.

Thanks, Joe. Thank you so much.

Thanks for having me. All right, Joe, we're gonna dive right into it. I like to ask everybody the same question. What's your morning routine?

4:00 AM, check emails, um, go through my text messages, 'cause I turn my phone off at about 8:30 at night, 'cause I go to bed about 9 o'clock. And really start the day, depends, probably 3 days out of the week I'm at Equinox at about 5:00 AM, like I was today, swimming and steam and sauna and just try to, you know.

Keep fighting, right?

Try, brother, try, just try to stay afloat. That's it.

4:00 AM, that's an early wake-up call.

Well, I go to bed early. So I can't.

That's the way to roll. It is. So you're a former pro basketball player. All your kids are collegiate-level athletes. What was life like when you transitioned from being a pro basketball player into the real world?

So I mean, it was extremely difficult. First of all, I've been an entrepreneur my whole life in my head. I've always thought about doing businesses and always I always looked up and admired business guys, probably even more than I did basketball, right? Basketball players growing up in Oxnard. My mother bring me down to LA and I'd see limos and I got caught up in all that and was like, man, how do they do that, right? And it's just always been fascinating to me to see that. So after playing, Los Angeles is brutal. I stopped playing in an era when LA was really fun and people were going out. So you just would, you just kind of got caught up in that lifestyle of going out and really didn't know know where to, you know, uh, hitch my wagon, right? There's just so many different opportunities, you really got to try to pick one and stay with it, right? So I've never really done anything in movies, which would have been the obvious. I remember one time I went to a, um, Nike had a basketball— like, in that era, it was the Michael Jordan era, all these athletes were, they were really staying afloat by doing these commercials, like Nike commercials and all these different commercials.

And I went to a commercial one time, and I sat there, a couple of my buddies that played basketball, they said, hey man, come, you know, come do this Nike commercial with us. And they were making money, right? And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna come check it out. And I'll never forget. So I was sitting in this, they had like these bleacher stands outside and I was sitting there and I'll never forget. I had my shoes off and all my buddies are sitting there and they're laughing. And this little guy comes out and he goes, quiet. And I looked at him and I looked at everybody else and I grabbed my shoes and I left. And I said right then and there, it was the tone and manner in which he said that to me that I just went, It's not for me. So I left movies alone, right? So I just felt like Hollywood is a place that you gotta, you know, you either gotta know somebody. It's gonna be really tricky and they treat you, you know, they don't really respect you like I, you know, they do in other circles.

So when I seen that, I said, you know what, movies isn't for me. Then I tried my hand in real estate, bought 1,000, uh, foreclosed homes. You could buy 'em from the bank in a big, big tranche, you know, back in the day. Do you remember that? Hell, that was— I bought that in, uh, it was, uh, '98, something.

Oh no, I wasn't around.

They were— it's like the mortgage thing had crashed or something like that, and the banks just had all of these— they had all this property. And so what we were doing was buying them, and then we were renting them, and we were going to try to, you know, either renegotiate with the bank and sell them. Tried that. That didn't work, right? So I just kept trying my hand in stuff. I also was bringing in athletes and having them invest money with other people's deals, and I seen that didn't work, right? So I really had to just buckle up and figure it out for myself, and I had to learn business on the fly, right? Not the greatest student in the world, but one of those kind of guys that really can, you know, I'm a sponge. I can sit down and really learn and, you know, figure things out relatively quickly, and that's what I did, right? So I got and just started getting around people. I'd go to business meetings, and I just sat down. I met a gentleman You know, this is a crazy story. It's probably my craziest thing that's ever happened to me in my life.

I met— had a buddy out of Seattle call me one day and I was with my, you know, fighting with my ex-wife and I was staying in a hotel and he calls me and he says, "Joe, I gotta get you on the phone with somebody. I'm in Seattle. I met this guy at a car wash and he's got a bunch of money, man. And he wants to start a sport. He wants to do something in sports." Right? So he puts this guy on the phone. He's out of Seattle. And I start talking to this guy and he goes, you know what, man, I want you to come up here to LA. And at that time, where was I working at? I think I was at Johnny Cochran's. Me and Johnny had started a sports agency. And I, so I fly up to Seattle. This guy's about 32, about 20 years ago. He raised about $90, $100 million, right? And you could read about it. It's a company called Zenetix. So I fly up there, he hires me. At that time I was making $125,000, I just started, right? He flies me up, likes what he hears, and immediately the next day he moves me into the Four Seasons in Ondohini, puts me in a $1,500 a night room, right?

Wow. Bring my family. He gives me a $2 million contract, right? And then he, uh, this is all You could read all about it because it goes bad. I'll tell you about that right now. But he, um, guy was— he was rolling, right? So I was in LA. He was based out of Seattle. And, um, he would, uh, I, you know, I kind of ran his stuff. And what he was doing, he was raising money, but he bought Nautilus. Do you remember Nautilus workout equipment? Yeah, back in the day. Nautilus was probably still around. Yeah, I think maybe he bought it. And what he was going to do was he was going to do something similar to Equinox, but it was going to be more of a, um where you would go and there would be doctors in there and chiropractors. So it would be like a workout facility, like an Equinox, but you'd also have all these physicians in there. You know, they take your blood and the machines would know who you are. And it just had all this stuff. So anyway, so he hires me. I'm living in the Four Seasons and I put a bunch of people on his board.

So I put Shaq on his board. I put Danny Sullivan on his board, who's the number one race driver back in the day. Eric Dickerson on his board, Vita Blue on his board, Muhammad Ali on his board. Forgot the senator. Jack Kemp. Jack Kemp on his board. So I blew his board up, right? He, you know, he wasn't doing right. He wasn't doing right. So at about, you know, after about a year and a half of just me just hustling and getting his company to the point where I thought I was, you know, I thought I was going to be able to retire off that deal. I get a call, FBI, he got arrested. Everything just kind of blew up in my face. And that's when I really just said, you know what? You gotta do it yourself. You just gotta do it yourself. Just, you know, I literally sat on the, you know, edge of my bed and started crying. It was like, are you kidding me, right? And that's when I knew I just had to figure it out for myself. And that's when I just started really delving into what people were doing, industries, what industry I liked or what I thought I would like.

And I really just, you know, what I really understood was try to find what's hot. I'm one of those guys that takes every meeting. I go to all meetings. I tell people that all the time. I've had things derived from meetings that— and I go to meetings with people that people don't think you should go to meetings with. You know what I mean? Like an Uber guy, I'll say, I got a cousin that he's got this idea. We want to meet. You know what I'm saying? Like, all right, what's up? Tell me. And listen, 8 times out of 10, it's nothing. But I've met somebody that's in my Rolodex and, you know, I've had some things come from them that I never expected. So, and you know, you know, I try to tell people this too. And I tell my kids this all the time. You never know who knows who. You really don't, man. And don't judge a book by the COVID I swear I've had some things happen and seen that, you know, and it's true to the reverse, right? People can look really, really super rich and be, you know, you live in Newport.

Yeah. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? It goes both ways. So you just don't know what you're getting regardless. You really gotta go feel it out and see what's what.

That's a good point. There's a place called the Elks Lodge here in Newport Beach, and it's a private members only club, but to get into the club, it's like $200 a year. It's the cheapest club ever. But the members there are all like 60 plus, and they're all wearing beach shorts and t-shirts, and they're all just a bunch of retired dudes just drinking during the day. But the guy who introduced me to it, it's a 90-year-old guy, he's the founder of a company called Chrome Hearts Eyewear. You know, Chrome Hearts. Of course. So he's like, Joe, if you want to meet people like me, go to Oxlodge. You walk in there, you're like, dude, this place is dingy and it's a bunch of old people. Like, but these guys are all just, right, you know, they're all balling like crazy. You're like, you never judge, but you look at these like a bunch of retirees.

Like, of course, of course. Yeah, no, man, I mean, listen, more times than not, the guy that has money, that's how he looks. That's how he looks every time.

The guy that doesn't have money is dressed to the nines.

I'm just saying, you know, I mean, listen, you can find guys that have money that like the designer stuff, but also, man, more times than not You know, they're comfortable. They're, well, they're, they're, they're comfortable. Yeah, they are. They're comfortable with who they are and they're comfortable in life and they really don't care what you think, to be honest with you. And that's kind of the best place to be, man.

Well, I've got two questions. One, what happened in that situation? What was that fraud? Like what happened? Oh, with the— 'Cause you had a pretty stacked board. I mean, what was Shaq involved?

Shaq got mad at me. It wasn't good between me and Shaq for a minute. FBI called Shaq up. I gave him a sword that we paid $12,000 for and they took the sword back. Shaq, and he wasn't happy with me.

A sword?

Yeah, it was just a gift. It was a little small sword like that that we had engraved with Shaq's name on it, and we did some stuff, and FBI took the sword. They called him, and yeah, he wasn't happy with me. I seen him about, I don't know, 6 months after that. He goes, there goes—

he's like, don't ever put me on a board.

He goes, yeah, but I— to his credit, he— I called him and he came to see that he got into the big box. I got a video of it, that big proto box, and he's been cool ever since. But yeah, he wasn't too happy with that. You know, he went He was in jail for 20 years. I think he's out now. You know, the funny thing about—

So the master hustler, huh?

But you know what the funny thing about it is? You couldn't catch that if you know him because he didn't drink. So like when he came to the Four Seasons off Bilhine, you know, they'd have 8 people. He sent $250,000 for me every month to spend to recruit and do my business. Like, so the Four Seasons loved him, right? So when he'd come, they had 8 people outside when he'd get out of his car and wait for him. He'd sit and talk to me for hours, but he didn't drink. It wasn't like, you know, he'd be up in a hotel suite and be a bunch of women and he's having a bunch of— he did buy a lot of cars. He did. You know what I mean? But it wasn't this obvious— car money. —misappropriation of funds. Yeah, it wasn't that. No, it wasn't that at all. It wasn't that at all. But he just misappropriated. You know, it was at a point in time in Seattle where if you lived in Seattle and you missed Amazon, Or you missed Microsoft, or you met— what was the other one? I think it's Amazon, Microsoft. And so if you miss those, he— everyone was portraying him as the next best thing.

So people were— they were sending checks without him pitching. They were just sending checks to the office because he rented out a billboard in their stadium, in Mariner Stadium. And he was smart, man. He's a smart guy. I'm not going to sit here and lie. I don't— I don't consider people— too many people smart, but he was a smart man. He was. I mean, when I talked to him, I was like, this dude's on a different— he's on a different level. But he just— they got him. And it was sad because I brought in my buddies. I was at, you know, we're, we're at the bar toasting as if we're billionaires. And the next thing you know, boom, FBI, boom. They listen. They called me and they were like, listen, Mr. Wallace, you got to come up to Seattle and you got to bring, you know, you should probably bring your lawyer. And I said, I'm not bringing my lawyer. What day I need to be there? There. Stop all that silly— you've been listening to calls for the last 6 months. You know I have nothing to do with any of this goofy stuff.

I flew up there by myself. I had a Mercedes they tried to take from me, and I'll tell you the story real quick. I negotiate everything, right? So I'm up there like, you know, Joe, you got to give that Mercedes back you bought. You paid cash for— we know you paid cash for— and you got to give— I said, no, I'm not giving that car back. I'm not giving the car. I worked. I don't— I don't know about him. That's his deal. You guys deal with him. But me, shit, I busted my ass for that car. I'm telling you. You know what I mean? So at the end of the day, you got to keep the car. No, but you know what I got? Got them to auction it and give me half. So they sent me a check for $75,000. Everybody was like, are you kidding me? Master negotiator. Master negotiator. They did. They sent me a check for $75,000 because they could have just took it. Come on. What am I going to do about it? Get my car back? They already had the car. So that was fun. It was a, it was a unique experience, man.

So you realized, man, I can't, I can't put my life in someone else's hands anymore. I'm gonna go out and do this on my own. So did you immediately pivot into being a financial entrepreneur? Like, you know, because now you're in this like VC world, right? And, uh, and that's number one, that's a really risky place to be, right? Because you don't, you don't know how to underwrite deals when you're brand new to the VC world.

Well, you gotta learn quick.

Yeah, you got to learn quick. Otherwise you're placing your money as a VC. You're like, you know, well, I learned 9 times out of 10. Yeah, I learned those deals don't go anywhere.

Well, I learned quick by primarily just taking some of my money and, you know, not doing well and just trying. Right. I mean, I'm a firm believer, man, that listen, I'm the guy that is the eternal optimist. I love people. I want everybody to do well. I've got that in me. My mother's instilled in me. I got the greatest mother in the world. Love her to death. God bless her. And I just You know, I just really try and find things that are obvious or, um, that I see have potential, right? And so a lot of my stuff, even in the initial beginnings, I'll be the CEO, but I'll go find a CEO. I'm not like— I don't have an ego, right, that, you know, it's got to be me, you know, I'm the CEO who's, you know, this is my thing. This— I'll create stuff all the time, put, put people in it that know what they're doing. I don't know these industries. I'm about to, I am owning, there's a company called Wing Riot and Wing Riot is probably going to be the hottest, it's going to kill, what's that, Wingstop. Von Miller, you ever heard of Von Miller?

Von Miller's a linebacker, he played with Denver, Von Miller, Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and Drew Brees. So Von Miller owns a, he owns a chicken ranch, chicken farm in Texas, but it's an organic chicken farm. So it's the best chicken in the world. So he started a, he's starting a fast food wings, wings and tenders, called Wing Riot. But the concept is this, which is just crazy dope, right? He, uh, he's taking containers, you know, old shipping containers, right? He's refurbishing them and he's putting in, um, robots, right, that do all the cooking, do everything. Only 2 people work. They take the container and they set the container like in a, um, like in a, uh, like a Home Depot parking lot. Have you seen those like Dutch Brothers Coffees? And you guys seen Dutch Brothers Coffee? You really got the thing out there. So there's no inside seating, so it's just drive-through, but it's the best fresh organic chicken on the planet, right? No seed oils.

Kind of like a Cane's but better.

But way better. It's all super organic, and it's the only thing from, you know, feed to the— from seed to plate, right? So they take the chickens, they see it, they distribute it, so you know what you're getting. Right. There's no hormones. And right now, the way that people are, you know, ingesting and looking at their food and for, you know, health and wellness purposes, I think that it's got a lot of legs to it. It's doing extremely well. Extremely well. And, you know, you got some— you got some major stars in it and they're going to start popping up in stadiums. And so I'm going to do about 10 of those. Right. And they, you know, they net around $400,000. You only got 2 employees.

And the robots are capable because you got humanoid robots doing this.

Well, these are, these are just, you know, they're just, they're mixing the sauces and doing the chicken and doing things you want to do. And you just got a cashier and maybe somebody doing a little bit of maintenance. So it lowers the, you know, obviously your costs. Right. But, uh, and then the chicken's phenomenal. And then, you know, you got that star power behind it. So it's got some legs to it.

I'm excited.

The star power is a big deal. I'm excited about it. You know, you could have Taylor Swift in there running around, you know. Taylor Swift's on that deal too? Well, Travis Kelce is her husband.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. I mean, a couple— So of course he's going to get her in there. I mean, you know, we'll get to parlay that a little bit.

That'll be a cool deal. I mean, you immediately pivoted into these financial sectors. I got to— you know, it's so funny, Joe, you mentioned you're like, I'm an eternal optimist and I am too. Yeah. And just like you, I'm the same way. Like, I always see the good in people. And sometimes it works against me because I, I also am the most scammed guy, you know. Like, I always get scammed, like, all the time. Like, I'm just a sucker for getting scammed. And I look at it, you know, like, kind of like a blessing in disguise, you know. Like, they— I've been scammed, brother.

You know, it is what it is. I, you know, I always look at scamming like this. This is how I always, always look at when they do me, you know. I always say, you know, I, I always say there's no amount of money I would want to go— that would want to end my friendship if I had a friend like Joe, right? So why would you want to scam me out of $50,000 or $20,000, whatever that number is, and it'd be $200, right, instead of a long-term relationship? I just never understood that when people done did that kind of stuff. I just was like, it was such a low amount. Like, they're not scamming me for— they're not getting a million dollars or something ridiculous, you know, but I just never understood it, why the people's mentalities. And I tell you, man, LA's, you know, LA's got a lot of that, got a lot of that. Are you— have you lived here your whole life?

Yeah, Orange County. I, I lived in LA when I moved from Egypt initially. So I moved— you Egyptian?

Yeah, I'm Egyptian. No, okay. I do some stuff with— what's the guy's name? Um, what's the richest man in Egypt? Um, telecom guy.

Yeah, yeah, I don't know, I forget his name, but yeah, me too.

God, I was supposed to— um, do you go—

do you go back? I haven't been since I was 15.

Ah, okay. I want to go. It's on my bucket list.

Yeah, I want to go back. I just got back from the country of Georgia. That's the furthest. You went to Georgia? Yeah, that's an amazing country. Silk Road? I went to Tbilisi.

Okay.

Yeah, there you go. But I want to get a place in Batumi. Are you kidding me? It's amazing there. It's an amazing country. You married? No, no, divorced. I got 4 kids, but I got to try. I always got to think about where I'm—

you're a Newport brother, you got girlfriends. You wear a Rolex? Gold one?

Not a gold one.

Go to Joey's? That's you.

That's you. Yeah, stereotypical Newport guy. Okay, yeah, that's right. No, I don't go to Newport. I drive like no crazy cars. I got 4 kids. You got a bunch of kids.

That's right. Listen, bro, I get it. I understand. I understand. I get it. I get it. No need to show off anymore.

Yeah, yeah, the show-off part is way Real estate, I'll splurge. There you go. But, but the, but the cars never. So what are you getting?

Are you just, are you building your portfolio as you sell these mortgages? I always ask people that for real estate. Like, it's kind of hard. You look at all these great deals like you have a, you have a real estate person come to you and say, Joe, I got an unbelievable deal right here. It's a corner.

It's— we do.

But I'm like, well, why won't you get it? Yeah. So he's thinking like, why would you give it to me?

Yeah, I get proposed deals all the time, like real estate transactions, build You know, I'm looking at a property. I'm supposed to be there today for a brand new build in San Clemente Ocean View, $5 million house, buy the lot, build it up. Oh, flip it. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll do ground-up construction deals with like a developer. Okay. That way I'm not like— because if a contractor does it with me, I don't have to worry about the contractor, like their workers not showing up to the job.

Understood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All that stuff. We need a lot of the pressure.

Yeah, exactly. Okay. So that's what I'm going to start doing. A couple of those deals. Are you?

Orange County's hot, you know, it's hot. So, I mean, you, you know, to find those deals is a gem. Hell yeah.

I get to propose them. It's nice to be kind of in the weeds, but, you know, I'm rebuilding my net worth after divorce. After divorce, you basically, you go from 100%, you're down to 25% of your net worth. There you go. My goal is to get back to that 100% initially this year.

I love the comeback, brother.

And then I'm doing it, you know, I'm going to come back. So it was just my own personal goal, just like, hey, post-divorce.

Yeah, I'm going to get back to my pre-divorce net worth.

That's it.

And then, you know, listen, Joe, uh, you know, you know, I, I've been down a bunch of times, right? And that's honestly, you know, and I tell my son just kind of when he plays basketball, I say, listen, I'm not coming out here to watch you score 30 points. I'm actually coming out here to watch you make 20 mistakes, right? Because if you're making mistakes, you're trying, right? So don't think that I'm coming out here and you got to have this perfect game or you got to do all this stuff to impress me. What I want to see is just aggression. Right, and you trying to do the things that you're supposed to do to get better, then we can have discussions on how you need to be playing once we get past that point, right? So yeah, man, I'm, you know, I wish I had gotten into real estate. I tried that one particular time and just, you know, I got ADHD, so I just can't. Real estate moves like a snail.

It's a 3-year deal.

It just moves like a snail.

For me, it's a nice, you know, I like to have— yeah, it's I, I have this piece of property, but yeah, you know, I, I'm teaching my kids entrepreneurship lately through, uh, sports cards. So that moves really quick. There you go. You know, like, there you go, sports cards. We're buying, flipping, trading. There you go. The grading process also moves like a snail now. Yeah, but it's funny to see my kids, you know, moving big money cards. Okay.

All right, there you go. I mean, they got to start somewhere.

Yeah, well, it's the same, uh There's multimillionaires, billionaires moving cards now.

100%. A lot of people do that. It's fun. I mean, listen, I just, you know, I've never— like crypto, my son, you know, he's big in crypto. He makes some decent money in crypto. I mean, he makes good money for his age too, but he— 16, the 16-year-old? No, I've got— he's— JoJo's 26. He went to— he's down in San Francisco now. He just got a new job. But I remember he came up to me. Smart kid, man. You know, 6'4", really good looking, just math, got a math degree. He came up to me when we were at the house one day, it's probably about 10 years ago, and he goes, Dad, you know what? Just take a look at this coin, Bitcoin, right? I'll never forget because it haunts me to this day. He told you about Bitcoin? Yeah, he told me about Bitcoin. He goes, he goes, you know, I had to outsmart him, you know, instead of listening to him. Son, son, son, listen. You're talking about a decentralized coin that doesn't have any backing by any government or gold or silver or any— how could that— it's impossible. I literally looked at him and said, it's impossible, son, that that could be successful.

How? What's it backed by? What if it just goes poof? I just couldn't get my arms around it, right? But that's logic. It is logic. And I just said it's impossible for that to be a coin or a Tinder that people use around the world and you can't track it and you can't— how do you— I was just like, well, what if somebody prints more or just makes more on a computer? So anyway, obviously, you know, it turned into what he's doing now and he's been doing great at it. But, you know, you miss those kind of things. I missed out on a couple really good ones that I just— I wish I could, uh, I could take back, you know. But it's been a fun ride, man. I love it. I still take all kinds of deals. I'm doing some stuff today that I, you know, I'm getting into credit repair, I'm getting into CRMs and, you know, I'm doing all kind of stuff and, you know, all AI-based.

All AI-based. So they're going to be AI-based credit repair.

You're like, I'm going to do AI-based credit repair. I'm doing Galaxy, which is a marketplace which is going to, you know, it's going to replace like a Shopify and an Amazon. So it's a completely AI autonomous marketplace that allows creators and influencers to create their own store without any inventory. So I've got 30 vendors that I've signed up. So you come and you can create your own, uh, shop. Let's say you want to sell peptides or you want to sell pet food or you want to sell hoodies or you want to sell bikinis or whatever. I've got 18,000 vendors. You come on there, you don't need any inventory. You pay $500. We take 10%. You pick your vendors, you upload your logo. Everything's 3PO through all of the vendors. So you don't touch anything. You don't do anything. And they ship your products, right?

Kind of like Printify. Shopify. Printify.

Well, Printify. Well, it's white label. But see, that's why I did it, because when I was with Von Dutch, I wanted to do bespoke products. Right. And it was fractured. Right. So there was— you had to get the hats here, the leggings here, and the jeans here. And then what I realized was that, you know, everybody's all over the map, even Amazon and Shopify. Because they, you know, they didn't, um, when I filed my patents, they were really for— they were really designed to be a reseller model, right? So Amazon and Shopify are for like you to go off and get something from like, um, Alibaba, right? Yeah. You find a little gold ducky, just 32 cents, you put it on your Amazon shop for $3.99, you know, and people were making money doing that. And but there was— where the world is going now is everyone's becoming their own brand. You even see brands now doing products designed after influencers, right? Like Alex Earl and all these people, they're gonna be the brands of the future.

Yeah. That's why you see—

Everything is personal brand. Everything is personal brand. So what I did was, and I seen that coming down the pike, is I went and I spent about 3 months and I filed a patent with D.L.A. Piper. Now, it doesn't protect me a whole lot fully, but it gives me a leg up. And now I'm building out the tech to make Galaxy 8. You know, I want to be the TikTok of like home, like online shopping, right? There's no cool online shop. You go on Amazon and you go on Shopify right now, you see a bottle of lotion with just a number under it, right? There's just no vibe to it. There's no, you know, you just, you just, like you don't have any pride, right? If I walked around and I said, you know, check out my Amazon store and I go to your Amazon store, it's just going to be some— just nothing, right? Ours is going to be like more of a cool hip version. You know, Galaxy's going to have influencer houses. We'll be at Coachella. We'll be, you know, we're going to be the place where people that want to— that have a vibe and are cool want to have their pride.

You want to do bongs, you want to sell this, you want to sell— where you're selling really cool dope stuff. Right? Where you've got Paris Hilton has a store on there with Lady Gaga and Alex Earle and all these other influencers as people are going to have their— selling their products, not pushing someone else's products, but selling their products, right? So you create your own brand. And the reason you do that is because if you're selling on Amazon, right? Let's say you're selling on Amazon, you're doing $3 million a year on Amazon, right? But guess what? That's not your brand. You're doing $3 million on us for the last 3 years. You've done $12 million. All of that data, goes with you. Now you can sell yours. You could sell it. You could sell your business. You can't do that on any of these others. You can't build it and sell it. You can sell your business. You can come out of Galaxy and be like, made it out of here, right? Somebody purchased your brand because it's your brand. And that's where we're, you know, I think that's where e-commerce is heading. I think that's where everyone is heading as far as trying to get a new job.

I mean, you know, it's probably going to cost me $60 to drive up here today. You know what I mean? And not if you had an EV. Hey, I wish I did. I swear I'm going to get a Tesla. My, my business partner, it's a girl. She's got a Tesla. And I'm like, what did you spend right now to do that? She's like, $22. I said, what?

Is that what you spent? I spend nothing on filling up 3 cars every week, you know, because I got solar.

If you can catch a trend or you can see where the world is going and you get in there first, that's how you become a disruptor and you make some real money, Joe.

You're raising a lot of money for a lot of projects. What project are you the most excited about right now?

Galaxy. But I think the CRM and the credit repair, they're both really cool and I just kind of fell in love.

There's so many CRMs now, like how's it going to compete with like a Salesforce?

Let me tell you how. So ours is fully— and it's already developed, by the way— it's fully AI automated. It has a webinar function in it. It has a built-in LinkedIn, so it can actually make you money. It'll go out and send out— yep, requests, everything. Not just requests, no, it's going to communicate. It's going to reach out to you because I built it for an insurance MLM. Okay, so it's going to reach out to you and say, hey Joe, how you doing? My name's Joe Wallace and I'm, you know, senior profile, whatever, you know, that goofy stuff.

Yeah, but there's a lot of these big social platforms are very hip to AI doing that and they block it. Now there's ways to get around it.

There's ways to get around it. We haven't had any of ours blocked. No, I get stuff every day, all day on LinkedIn. I don't know about you, but I get all kinds of stuff on LinkedIn right in your inbox every day. Yeah, a lot, a lot of them every day, every day. And they can't, they can't stop that. I mean, because, because eventually you're going to be sending out stuff via AI regardless, even if it's not spam. I'm going to have AI dictating all my stuff. Why would I want to sit there and I'm going to talk into a microphone and have AI knows how I speak? I mean, one of the things that I put inside my CRM is a— and you need to check this out if you do stuff with AI— is a company called Million Ways. So Million Ways is a behavioral AI. They've taken over 10 years to learn and through a bunch of subjects and people, data that their AI talks to you in a manner, in a way which it knows you. And I know people think that AI does and it doesn't, but this one knows you because it's, it obviously, it's empathetic.

It has empathy. It'll reach out to you and you definitely need to talk to them because you're doing mortgages. And if you want to send me an email via your AI, that AI remembers our conversation, right? And then it responds to me after analyzing how me and you have been speaking through our emails, right? So if you've been angry with me or I've been angry with you or I'm indecisive, It analyzes all of that. Wow. And then it comes back to me and says, hey, Joe, this is Joe. I, you know, I hope everything's doing well. You know, it talks to me in a manner which I'm going to appreciate it because it knows my behavioral pattern. And that's different, right? So I put that in my CRM too, right? So as you're trying to recruit and you're trying to do insurance and any of this, this stuff that these guys are trying to sell, the communication is key. And you can't just have a, you know, regular AI that's communicating. You need to have something that touches on people's emotions when you're trying to get people to spend money. And it's something you should take a look at too, because they're great salespeople.

Anyway, I took that baseline of a CRM, which is fully AI automated, AI receptionist, does everything for you, emails, all that stuff. And then I added in the webinar component, which there's very few CRMs that have that. I think only one. I think it was HubSpot. HubSpot. Yep. And then I added in the behavioral, the behavioral, um, AI, right? So made it different. Then I added in the LinkedIn. So now you have an A— you have a CRM that can make you money, speak to your people with a behavioral AI that no one else on the planet has, and is fully automated, right? I'm not trying to be a billionaire off of the CRM, you know. I just— I got into it accidentally because the guy I know from him— I went to Napa Valley last weekend, and the guy has, you know, he's got a $60,000—

it's a brand new project in the last week?

It's taken me 3 weeks to put this together. I'm fast. I get up early. I get up early and I get to working, baby. And yeah, I did it. I'm going to call my girl. You can hear right now. I'll call my girl right now that works for me, Natasha. You can hear where we're at with it. You got to hear it. And because I'm super excited about this, I'm launching it on Tuesday. And I named it DLIQ. So I'm really quick, right? So I named it DLIQ, Downline Intelligence. Right. I added in all of those different features, and now I'm just going to run some stuff on TikTok that they're going to move over. My guy's going to move over 1,000 salespeople because he's an MLM at $199 a month.

Joe. Yeah, that's great money.

I mean, that's just— that's huge.

That's one deal. I own it. The actual software that— yeah, no, no.

So here's what I'm doing. I licensed it first, then I got all of these different add-ons and put them in there. I am developing something similar now that's going to be native.

Just API everything in, man.

API it. And that's another thing that I'm learning to do right now is I look at all these fractional industries and I go, why hasn't— when I was looking for a CRM, I'm just like, well, I don't understand.

Well, you could do all that through Salesforce, just API everything in. And Salesforce, Salesforce is doing—

this is another thing where people make a misconception. Salesforce is doing, I don't know, $30 billion or $20 billion, right? Create an ERM, make $20 million a year. I don't need to hit— I don't care about Salesforce. There's some people out there that want mine. No, there's some people out there that want mine. I'm not trying to— I don't need— I don't need— go ahead, Salesforce. I'm just— listen, I'm just trying to get from Calabasas to Paris. You know what I mean? Just have a good time. I'm not trying to buy big mansions off it, but it took me 2 weeks, Joe. It took me 2 weeks to get all those licenses. I had been on timeout. Now, I did have to call and negotiate pricing and all this other stuff. It wasn't just, you know, I had to do some work. It wasn't just, you know, I got a platform and just started adding CDP. I had to get the guy, had to negotiate it down and get them all down and have them believe that I'm going to have a volume and numbers. I had to show them that, you know, so it wasn't just as simple as I make it seem.

But the moral of the story is I try. Yeah, that's the moral of the story. And I tell everybody, whoever's listening, and I keep trying, man. And listen, I'll have a lot of failures and I have no problem with that because, you know, I don't know what's going to fail and what isn't. But I do know that everything I don't do is going to fail.

So do you think that your sports history allowed you to have that mindset where, like, failure is just part of the journey. Absolutely. Because entrepreneurship is a lot like being a great athlete.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, my daughter is horrified of failure. I can't really get my son to be too entrepreneurial. He doesn't want to. I got a brother that sells insurance. He never wanted to own his own insurance company. I would say, you know, you got me as your brother and you don't want to just— I don't mean you for him. And I just have always been of the mindset that you don't want to work for nobody. Well, that, and you could do whatever you set your mind to do. I just, I've just, I've never looked at another man's success and said, damn, he just is just outsmarting. I mean, he put in the work, he took the chance. You know how many people you'll meet, Joe, and you ask them, always ask people, how did you get started? How'd you get started? What made you start? There's always something. Yeah, you know what I mean? Well, my buddy called me and he took me to Tahoe and I You know, yeah, I get, I get asked that question every day.

How'd you get started?

How'd you get started? And, and there's always, there's always a thing.

But here's, it's nothing crazy. No one ever started some crazy story like, oh, you know, no, no.

But you got to be open to getting started. Yeah. And that's always the key.

Zero to one is the hardest number to get to.

It is, it's the hardest. But you gotta give it a shot. And I, you know, listen, I don't I'm not going to sit here and act like I'm some big, you know, guy that just got the touch of gold. You know, I don't, I don't have that. But what I do have is effort. And I try and I've had some really good ones and I've had some really bad ones. But, you know, at the end of the day, I'm happy with myself because I give it an effort. I don't know if this CRM is going to do anything. I do know that I'm going to try and I do know that it has a chance.

And you do know this, that it makes sense. For the current climate.

That's exactly it. So it makes sense. It's affordable. I've already got users that are going to be on it, so I'll make some money regardless whether it is, you know.

And, you know, now it's just adoption. How can you make it?

And marketing. And just marketing. Everything is marketing. Marketing, Joe. So I just, I don't know. I just feel like, I mean, listen, when I got that job and I lived at the Four Seasons, I didn't know Shaq at that time. I didn't know any of those. I didn't know Muhammad Ali. You know, I don't know anything about chicken wings right now. I don't know anything about that. And people always think that they have to be comfortable and know something in a space to do it. And I think the opposite. I just like, listen, man, you know, I, you know, Joe, do you know anything? They'll ask me, do you know anything about this? I don't know anything about that.

But you know fundamentals of business.

I'll figure it out. Yeah. You know what I mean, Joe? You know, I'll drive up to Newport Beach and take you over to the Pendry and we'll have a second time.

I heard the fenji today.

We'll have a couple drinky drinks. We'll have a couple drinky drinks. And you won't, you know what?

The power of doing that, right? You know, taking someone out and getting them a cocktail for $15, right? You'll get $100 million worth of secrets. 100%. I do it all the time. People don't understand the power of networking. And one thing about you and myself, Joe, and maybe it's because we're both Joe and just God's hands upon us, it's like We're just good networkers. 100%. And that's the value. Your net worth is your network.

It is. I had a conversation with Magic Johnson. These are true stories. I don't— just so you know, when I say tell you stuff, I don't boost it up to make it some great story. This is just how it goes. So I've known Magic for about 30 years. I played on his team with him, but he's also at Equinox and he's there at about 5 a.m. like I am. Not every day, but when he's there, he's there, right? So I see him. I seen him, I don't know, about 3 weeks ago. Yeah, about 3 weeks ago when I was talking to him, because the one thing I talked to him about that me and him was kind of similar is his personality allows him— is what has made him successful. Right? We talked about that. And there's a big disparity between the relationship between Magic and Kareem. If you look at their 2 careers and business paths and life paths, it's 1,000% due to personality. Okay. So Magic is the kind of guy that— Charismatic as hell. I mean, and you could— but approachable.

Yeah.

Yeah, he is. Okay.

Shaq is the same way. Kareem is—

he lives right by me. And he's horrible. Yeah.

He's a nut. And he's horrible.

Yeah. He's horrible. And I'm going to give you an example. And so what me and Magic were talking about, Magic, I was telling— I was saying that to Magic. I was like, man, you know, Irv, you just— you know, you're killing it. And I just said— and I told him, I said, man, you know your gift, right? And I just was like, you know, your gift is that you let— you're approachable. And he told me a story. He goes, Joe, We were playing at the Forum and I walk out and you remember, I don't know if you remember the Forum. So the Forum had a club in it. It was like a bar.

Yeah, I saw it in the TV show. Yeah, the remake on HBO.

There you go. There you go. So you had to, you know, you had to go. That's where everybody would go, right? So the players would go there. You know, they got the girls in there and everybody's in there doing their thing. Jack Nicholson's in there and everybody's in there, right? So this guy had his son there and I guess Kareem came out and they were crazy about Kareem. The son was crazy about him. 10-year-old boy, he's crazy about Kareem, right? And he's like, goes up to Kareem and he's just like, yeah, you know, can I get a picture? Nah. So Magic's walking up. So Magic goes, I'll take a picture, right? So Magic takes a picture with the son and the father. And Magic said he was buying a building downtown, and he comes to the building early, and he's sitting there, and, you know, he's just sitting there. He said, he said, Joe, just sitting in the conference room, and this man walked in. The man And the man goes, "Oh, it's you," right? Magic looks, Magic said, "I looked at him." He says, "Well, you know, what's up?" It's the owner of the building, right?

And he said, the man looked at him and says, "You got it. It's yours." Magic was like, "We ain't even talked yet." You know what I'm saying? And the man says, "When my son was 10, he asked Kareem for a picture and you took a picture and he's one of the biggest attorneys in LA and that picture's in his office." And I was like, That's why I tell people to treat people with respect. You know, not that Magic would have died if he didn't get the building, but that's a prime example of how it comes back around. Now Kareem is dying. You don't hear anything about it. He's isolated, right? And it's all because of his personality. I went on a trip with Magic and Kareem to the Philippines to play basketball, and I'll never forget, I was in line And Kareem was in front of me. And I remember these two businessmen came up to Kareem. And I, you know, I wasn't— I just got done playing overseas. So I mean, I just got my little thing and I'm trying to get some food. Magic's there and Kareem and Mark Aguirre and all these people.

And I'll never forget their faces when they asked him for an autograph. The way he looked at them and what he said to them and the disdain he said it in. And the way that they felt defeated. I said, God dang, that was brutal. You see, I'm trying to get some fucking food. I said, God, Kareem, man. Two dudes, suits on, just looked at him and looked at each other, and I just was like, God, why? Yeah, you know, I just was like, God, you couldn't even said it just politely? You had to just degrade him anyway, you know, and it's just a reflection about the opportunity. Magic's the guy that, you know, you lose to Boston Celtics, you'll see him at Fatburger by himself, you know, in the corner eating a Fatburger.

Magic's always doing autographs. Yeah, of course. He was the sweetest guy. I met him a couple of times.

Listen, Floyd Mayweather walks around with 6 bodyguards for no reason. Magic's in the damn gym by himself. He ain't got nobody with him. It's working out, you know what I mean? So it's just personality is such a key fact. Floyd's lost all his money. Yeah. You think anyone's going to come to help him? No, not a person. Why? Personality. He's still doing—

now he's got to do all these exhibitions. Just nobody's going to watch that garbage.

Nobody's going to watch that garbage. Nobody wants that garbage. Nobody's going to help him put more money in his pocket. He was lighting— he was lighting cigars with $100 bills. African-American community is suffering beyond suffering. And that's what he would do. I can't— I can't stand athletes that don't give back. I can't flaunt your wealth like that on planes, lighting $100 cigars. God's watching. God's watching, bro. He's watching. And, you know, that's, you know, that's a reflection of the universe. The universe has a way, bro. You know, you want to flaunt money like that. First of all, I don't know of anyone that's ever flaunted money like that. I don't know of anyone that's ever just been blatantly million dollars sitting on your kitchen table for what? And all of those guys that do that, they end up having big problems for some reason. Universe doesn't like it. Yeah, it doesn't like it. It's not blessed. No, it's not. It's not blessed. And you want to stay blessed, man. And you want to help people. And I tell people all the day, man, this little stupid game we play in life, this— if you you really look at life, man, you're born and you die, bro.

And what you do in between is all up to you and how you want to live this shit. But you ain't doing anything with your life just being normal and selfish and doing stuff that can give you anything good when you pass. You know what I'm saying? And I just really truly believe that. I just like, you know, we all get one shot at this thing and how do you live it? I have fun, man. I love my life. I just, you know what, the good and the bad times, bro. You know, I try to wake up every day the same, you know, the same personality, the same upbeat, no matter how things are. You know, I just, I try to help people as much as I can. I'm the guy that if you ever needed anything, you know, I'm not the, oh, Joe, you want me to introduce you to Dan Gilbert? You know, but I want 5% of whatever you do, right? I'm not that guy either. So I just, you know, I try to help people, man. I try to, and I've been blessed, man. I've had, so I had my share of ups and downs.

But, you know, I can look back on my life and at least just say, you know, I gave it a good shot, right? And that's really what everybody can do. And I try to tell people all the time, and I even tell my kids, traveling to me is the key to life. It really is. It's the one thing that if there's anything you do, anything outside of have kids, you got to have kids, is traveling, man. Seeing the world, bro.

Nothing more magical than that. So much truth to that. When I went to Europe, I was like, what am I doing? Why was I stuck in Newport Beach so long? Like, I gotta get out.

For what? What's your story?

You've seen Newport Beach, right? Yeah, yeah, I love Newport Beach.

So what you gonna do? You wanna just keep seeing it?

See it forever? But also it's like you're locked in working, work is just so part of your routine.

I know, it's a mistake. It's a mistake, bro. Listen, that's when I tell you to go to Newport, it's when I can't travel and I just go do a staycation. I do it. I just go do a staycation. I'll go check in for 2 days and just go and see and meet and do.

When I go out. Go to the Pantry, go to Joey's.

Well, um, what's the new steakhouse? Uh, the place right across from Red— Red— uh, no, it's from Red O. It's right across from Red O.

Uh, uh, Ocean's 48.

Yeah, I go to Ocean's 48. Um, but what I was going to say is, you know, I sit at the bar when I go out. That's the best place. I sit at the bar. I don't know, say hello to everybody. Some people, you know, let's get a— get a— sit with you every day. Trying to meet some people. Damn, you know, I'm just gonna sit across from you again. Hi, how's the day? I know how your day is because I've been with your ass all day. Okay, I want it's a new day. I want a new day. So no, I gotta, you know, I try to— I sit at the bar and I try to meet people and do my thing and learn and just, uh, you know, I've had a lot, you know. I've lived— listen, I lived in Turkey. Yeah, I was in Paris. I've lived in Argentina. China. I've lived in Japan and I've lived in Spain and I lived in Turkey. I'll tell you one little story. I lived in Turkey. It was right after the little Clipper stint. Got a job in Turkey. I love dogs. I'm a dog guy.

I had a little pit bull in college named Klecko. So I take him, take him to Turkey. Turkey's like, God damn, who is this idiot? He didn't bring a dog, right? It was in my contract. Okay, so my agent— no, I'm not going anywhere without my dog. So don't call me without my dog. I gotta go with my dog. So I take my dog, and nobody tells me in Turkey, right, they've got packs of dogs that run the street at night. Packs, packs, right? But I got a pit bull, so I'm kind of cool, right? Not that I want my dog fighting. He's never fought, but he, you know, he will. He'll get down. Well, I take that back. He got beat up one time. I'll tell you this story, but when he was a baby. He went and got revenge 3 years later. It was hilarious. So I, I mean, I'm in Turkey and I'm walking my dog at night and I'm seeing these packs of dogs and, you know, I got them on thing and they're just everywhere, right? And so I let them off the leash when the dogs leave. And I'll never forget, in the morning I went to go play, I went to go to my practice, and I, you know, I'm crazy about my dog.

I open up my door and he's walking towards me and he's staring at me, and I open my door and he's just looking directly at me, just staring at— he's He's in the doorway, but he's just looking directly at me. And I'm like, "Becca!" Like, "Are you all right? Like, what's happening?" And he starts moving like this. He can't walk. So I grab him. I said, "Oh, God." I grab him. He starts foaming at the mouth. So I put him in my car. He's leaning up against the window. I'll never forget. It was very traumatic for me. And he's foaming at the mouth. Mouth, and I don't speak Turkish. So, and it's a stick shift. They don't have any stop signs in Turkey. So I backed the car up, my dog's dying, and I'm going to these Turkish dudes as I'm going down the street, and I'm running, I'm stopping when I see somebody in a— hey, like, you know, come on, man, where, where, where, you know, he 1, 2, and, uh, you know, I was doing that whole thing. Get to another guy, uh, one more, uh, you know, to the right. Cause they seen him and that kind of knew.

So what happens in Turkey is they poison meat and they throw it out there on the street to kill the dogs. I was like, you could have told me that, man. And they throw it out. And so make a long story short, I get him into the vet. And they give him a shot, and I can't communicate with the vet, but he's going, doing this thing, and I don't know, my dog still looks bad. So I put him in a room, just closed the door. I said, I can't stick— I don't— I'm not gonna watch him die. And I opened the door in the morning, he was back to hell, you know, tails wagging. And I just started crying like a baby. I was like, dear Jesus, because I would have left Turkey. I would have left. I'd have been like, you know, I'm out of here. You know, you're my dog. You guys killed my dog. I'm out of here. But just all of those experiences came from just traveling, traveling, you know what I mean? Like, Paris was a blast. Japan was a blast. I just, just so many different— and I tell my kids all the time, listen, when I lay down for the last time and I go through my memory banks, it's gonna be some great memories that I have that I've I've gotten from just being out and meeting and doing and meeting people, right?

That you just can't do unless you're out there doing it. I have, my son has a friend, he's from Orange County. He was his roommate in college. So he never, never, never knew the guy. This guy lives a life and I'll tell you this real quick. He, uh, his grandmother died. No, his mother committed suicide. Right before he went to UCLA. Didn't have a relationship with his father. Just a bad situation. Nice kid, nice kid. Um, but one of those kind of guys, you know, just really, you know, the really cool white guys. There's just really just no— just had no— not presumptuous, didn't care who you were, just one of those free-loving just a good dude, right? His whole motto in life right now is all he does is travel. You look on his Instagram, he'll be riding a bike in Nairobi. He'll be on the side of a place in Mexico where they just slaughtered a cow, eating fresh tacos. I mean, his life experiences. I remember he came over to our house, you know, we got our house and I'll never forget he brought his girlfriend. And he's just one of those guys that has zero care about material things.

And I love that about people that are like that. I'm not, but I wish I was. And I admire the hell out of him. And I'll never forget, I go, where are you guys going? And he goes, yeah, uh, Mr. Wallace, we're going to go up to Utah. Me and my girl driving to Utah. And I go outside and it's this old Volkswagen Bug. He's sitting there, you know, the old surf type. Yeah. And I looked at him and his girl getting that car and drive away, and I looked at my son and I said, that motherfucker got it right. He's gonna go have a great time, gonna be in a, you know, sleeping bag, enjoying the weather, fishing. I said, and while we're sitting here trying to figure out how we can get to a Rolls-Royce, you know what I mean? Not figuratively, but you know what I mean. That's the whole fight with the world is material objects, right? And I just said to my son, I said, man, that, that's it. That dude's got it right, Joe. He could care less. Yeah. And if you could have that kind of a mentality in today's life, man, which is so hard to do because you just figure everybody's materialistic and everybody wants the best things.

But really the best things are like that picture behind you, right? Yeah. Those are really the best things. And I live with that philosophy. I don't just talk about it. I really do.

I love it. Yeah, I mean, I do too. I do too. You know, that's why I try to like keep, you know, low pro.

I don't do anything. Would you skydive? Give me the bucket list.

What's the bucket list? So we're gonna skydive. It's funny you mentioned Utah. I'm going to Utah with my kids. I have a place in Utah, so. See, there you go. And they have indoor skydiving, but you're just like basically like flying, you know? That ain't no damn skydiving. Yeah. Stop all that.

You're basically like flying. Well, you're flying, y'all.

It's kind of like skydiving.

Okay. It's indoor. But you can't get hurt. Okay, then he's got an argument, Joe. But go ahead.

Yeah, I do have, you know, my bucket list stuff isn't very big because I— Why? Come on, man. But now it's getting bigger after I got to travel.

I'm gonna give you some bucket list items I bet you don't have. Let's see, been in a shark cage? No. See?

That's a crazy bucket list item.

Okay. Rode in a hot air balloon?

No, I'm too scared for that.

So you got some bucket list stuff, Joe. You got some stuff to do, baby boy. Have you done that? Nope. Yeah. And I'm not going to. I'm going to do the shark cage. I am going to do the shark cage. I've done the shark cage actually in Hawaii, but yeah. Well, um, I want to do it in South Africa. I want to go to Africa. Africa is my number one thing on my bucket list. Africa. Africa by far is, is, is it for me.

I'm from Africa, so I do want to hit a couple of those countries.

I know, you are. Yeah. But I'm, you know, I, I'm an animal guy. Yeah. You know, I'm the guy that cries if the dog gets killed. I'm one of them dudes, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I love animals. I love seeing them in nature. I think it's the most majestic thing in the world is, you know, and I don't even know if I could, you know, a lion or a gorilla or I would just lose my mind, you know, if I could see those things. I don't know if you've been watching, like, you go on social media, you see, you can go to, I think it's Kenya, where you can go into the forest and you got the guides and you're in the jungle and the gorillas walk by. Have you seen that yet? No. You see it? Man, that, let me tell you something right now, man, that thing pushed this white lady the other day. I was like, God. He just went, "Get out my way, bitch." The gorilla? Yeah. He didn't try to hurt her, but it was just the power. I was just like, "God, I want to see that." He didn't try to hurt her.

He was just being funny. Because they're used to you being there, so every once in a while they'll pick one to mess with. Like, they grabbed one lady. She was sitting there like this. And yeah, he dragged her for about 5 feet.

Then he let her go.

Like, "Get yo ass outta here." They went and left. I was like, that— how dope is that? Yeah, I know she's saying to herself, what a great— like, she'll never forget it, right? Yeah. Then the other day, scared as hell. The other day I was watching, um, I was on either Facebook or one of those, and this girl was kayaking. She's kayaking, 8 orcas surround her. When I say surround her, I'm talking about poking their head up right here by her and going down. And I said to myself, wow, I think I would have— I would have died. I would have had a heart attack. I was like, but that— but those are the kind of things that you get when you're, you know, when you're out there in it and you get to see it. I don't know, I just, I just, I think that anything, any kind of interaction with nature is such a blessing. Yeah, I love that stuff.

No, going back to the Pyramids of Egypt is a bucket list thing for me.

Have you seen Egypt, obviously. Cairo.

I saw them as a kid, but I want to go back now as an adult. I'm gonna have a different appreciation. I mean, I went as a teenager, but I barely remember, and I wasn't super into it. Well, there's two things.

Obviously, Egypt's Africa, so I want to definitely go see that.

But listen, there's only country in Africa, it's the motherland. It's the motherland.

There's only a few, there's only a few things that you look at in the world that— and I don't know if there's even a few. Yeah, I guess there's a few that can't be explained, and the pyramids are one of them.

Yeah, they are.

And as smart as we are, we still can't do it. So explain that to me, you know what I mean?

I just think Egyptians are just super smart.

You can't— oh, somebody get a 23andMe DNA test in here. Yeah, make sure the boys are gyps. So, uh, so that You know, you can't explain it, you know, and I think that those kind of things that just make you boggle your mind are just so cool to see.

I mean, I want to see them. So I'm going to ask you a couple quick questions of viral moments. Okay, what's harder, making the league or surviving business? Surviving business. Why?

Uh, you know, if you play basketball, you know how to play basketball. You don't know how to do business, you don't know how to do business. And it's just hard to get it. It's not like you could just go practice, you know. So it's just, it's tough.

What hits harder, losing the championship or losing your money?

And why? Money, because money's hard to make. All right.

Did you ever cross paths with Jordan? And what's the story behind it?

Yes and no, really. Real story. I asked him for a picture and he said no. Kind of like Cream. Yeah, exactly. Hey, you got a good one.

Well, he's got, he's got a, he's got a contract with Upper Deck.

He's not allowed to. Oh, okay. Well, that's it. That's not what he said to me.

But anyway, uh, what's the single biggest financial mistake you've watched athletes make?

Um, bad businesses. And then what I mean by that is back in the day, they would all do either record labels or clothing. Clothing companies. It'll be one of the two.

Yeah, so trendy for them. Yeah. Corporate boardroom versus locker room.

Yeah, which one's more cutthroat? Yeah, boardroom. I was like, yeah, corporate boardroom.

Corporate boardroom. All right, what do you now know in business that you wish you knew when you were 22 with the ball in your hands?

That people aren't as smart as you think they are. Probably be one of my biggest things. Ain't that the truth? It is. I mean, I've sat across people that make millions of dollars, and I always look across and I say, how? How? You know what? Now I don't get it. How? Have you ever done that? Like, you, you're in the mortgage business, people making all this money, and you talk to them and they're dumb as hell and you just go, how?

How do you do it? Hustle. Hustle culture. That's true. What's one thing fans completely misunderstand about athletes and money? Nothing. They don't misunderstand it.

Athletes spend it like crazy. Yeah. And there's very few that are really entrepreneurial that are starting to be like Shaq. So I think the perception's a reality for a lot of the guys. That's why, you know, you see a lot of necklaces and goofy stuff with big old panda bears on them, with, you know, with eyes, you know, gems for eyes, and just goofy stuff that athletes just— it's all about the impression, baby. When you grow up with nothing, you want to show people you have something. And that's been the back— that's the biggest downfall of an athlete, really, to be honest.

What's one lesson every man should learn from sports that applies to life and money?

You know what, I would say that, uh, it— to be honest with you, I think that's a good question. I think it's consistency, right? I think that you need to be consistent in your sports, and I think you need to be consistent in the way that you invest, in the way that approach business. And I think that consistency would probably be it. I mean, I sit down with guys all the time that I try to get to do, like, you know, I got a guy, Fred Lees, right? Big, you know, Fred Lees by any chance? He's a big, big real estate guy. I go to his office the other day and I'm like, Fred, listen, I got a deal, man. I got a deal, Fred. You gotta hear this deal, right? Listen, we're gonna make some money on this deal. I got that paper and I said, he said, Joe, is it real estate? I said, no, man, but check this out. It's AI and you're going to love— pass.

He didn't let me pitch.

He didn't let me pitch. Pass. I don't do anything I don't know. So that's consistency.

Now what's one mistake people make when they try to reinvent themselves?

One mistake people make when they try to reinvent themselves? I don't, you know, that's obviously to each and every individual, but the one thing I would say is that you can't reinvent yourself until you know yourself. I think you better know yourself before you try to reinvent yourself. And I think the hardest thing that people do and lesson in life for people is that they don't, uh, they don't accept who they are. That's right. And you gotta accept who you are to change, baby.

If you could put one piece of advice on a billboard for every 22-year-old pro athlete, what would it say? Be humble. Yeah. Yeah, man. That would save every one of 'em. Yeah. Yeah. Now we like to end the show with this interactive game segment. It's like, uh, we call it Full Court Press. Okay. All right. So round 1, it's called Corporate or Locker Room. We need stronger leadership. Corporate or locker room? Locker room. That guy isn't pulling his weight. Corporate or locker room? Locker room. Chemistry matters.

Corporate or locker room? That's both, honestly. All right.

We need better execution. I'm going to say boardroom. So that's corporate too. All right. We've got to trust the system. Corporate or locker room? Locker room. It's a results business. Corporate or locker room? Corporate. Yeah. All right, segment 2, Million Dollar Decisions. $1 million, but you can never watch sports again. Take it? No. Courtside seats for life or a private jet for a year? Courtside seats. Let's go. Yeah. Lose your phone or lose your wallet? Phone. Be 25 again or know everything you know now? 25. Play in today's NBA or own a team? Own a team. Of course. Floor seats at the NBA Finals in a Game 7 or a closed-door meeting with Warren Buffett?

Closed-door meeting with Warren Buffett.

All right, Joe, you've been a pleasure to have. Anything you want to plug into the audience? Any projects, any big things you want to plug in?

No, no, thank you. Uh, truly appreciate you guys having me on. It's been a blast, and, uh, good luck with everything.

Look forward to seeing you at Pendry. All right, let's go, Joe. Thanks, Joe Wos. Make sure you guys check him out.