# The 23-year-old That Made $2.4M with His FIRST App

Channel: Brett Malinowski
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGMDyPTR7QU
Duration: 1 hr 47 min
Language: English
Words: 20939
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/mGMDyPTR7QU

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[0:00] In the past year, I've made about 5 million in revenue. It really was as simple as asking Chat GPT, "How do I build a mobile app?" There have been a lot of people that are like, "You can't just build an app with like 95% Chat GPT." And I'm like, "No, you actually can." Those two videos generated almost 200,000 downloads in less than a week and shot us to $80,000 in monthly revenue off the jump. When you build something with a very clear use case, solving a very clear problem that people have, it can be the simplest product of

[0:31] all time, there's massive upside. Dude, how much money do you make? Um, in the past year, I've made about 5 million in revenue. Over the course of the next 12 months, I will make at least 10 million in revenue. Uh, but the majority of the profits are being reinvested into my next big vision,

[0:52] which is Apex. You're quite young. How old are you? I'm 23 years old. Okay. And what do you do? I build consumer mobile apps. Okay. So like apps on my phone. Yes. Exactly. Okay. Then you say consumer that means like what does that mean? This is for the average person, right? We're not building for businesses. We're not doing B2B SAS, right? We're building

[1:11] apps for the average individual. So do you want can we let's go ahead and talk about your first app because you're a non-technical person and this was your first app and you saw pretty quick success with it. So talk to me about RZGPT. Yeah, so I had done a little bit of coding mostly just like Python writing basic for loops, some data analytics, but I had never built software. Chat GPT came out uh popularized in December of 2022. And as soon as I started using it, I was hooked. I was like, this is incredible. I wasn't immediately thinking about ways to capitalize on it, more so just like this is an

[1:49] unbelievable technology. Fast forward about six months and I'm getting ready to graduate college and I don't really want to go the path of getting a full-time job. So I'm like what can I do to make money? I have a roommate at the time who was always using dating apps, right? And he would sometimes ask me like, "Dude, what should I say to this girl?" And I was like, "I wonder if Chad GPT could just generate these responses." And so I took his transcript. I manually wrote it out. I threw it into chat GPT and I was like, "Give me suggestions." And they were decent, but they were very robotic in

[2:27] nature, but I'd done a little bit of prompt engineering, right? Figuring out how to hack the sort of responses that chat GPT gives. So, I fiddle around with the prompt. I'm giving it all these instructions on ways to manufacture its output so that that it actually sounds like a human and has Riz, right? And this is what led to the advent of Riz GPT. So this was the first

[2:51] mobile app that I built. And what did it do? It enabled you to upload a screenshot of your messages with a girl and then it would take the text using OCR or optical character recognition, send that through chat GPT with one of our prompts, and then it would produce responses and would send those back to you. So they could see basically the OCR could see the text message from the girl on

[3:17] Tinder. Yes. And then it would generate responses for you to send. Exactly. So the optical character recognition scans through your screenshot. If it's on the left side the message, then that's probably from the girl. If it's on the right, it's probably from you. And so it pulls out this transcript and then it gives examples of what you could

[3:34] say in the context of that conversation. Okay. So it gives you options basically. Yeah. So you could press generate response and you get one. And then you go, I don't really like that. Generate another. Go, you know, these these are, you know, maybe not flirty enough. You can pull up the spice meter, make it spicier, and it'll give you a more flirtatious me

[3:53] message. Was it was it in the app? Like was it in Tinder's app or were you just copying? You would screenshot the message. Screenshot upload to RZ GPT and we've produced the response and then they just copy paste it. Exactly. Ah, it's so simple. Very simple. incredibly simple. How much money did this app make? So, we first launched just over a year ago. The first couple of weeks, we didn't really have the formula down. We did like a couple hundred downloads and then I found this niche uh on social

[4:21] media. It was Riz content, essentially guys showing off how good their RZ is. We paid $50 for two separate promos. They just made their normal content and put our app in the middle. M. And those two videos did a few million views each, generated almost 200,000 downloads in less than a week, and shot us to $80,000 in monthly revenue off the jump from 50 bucks, $100, two $50 promos. But yeah, holy [ __ ] Um, and then over the course of the next few months, we scaled up to a little bit over 200,000 in monthly revenue

[5:00] and Mr. MRR and we've been steadily there for like 10 months. So, I think that we're about to hit two and a half million in total revenue. What was their normal content? You said that was their normal content. They're literally just like showing off conversations between girls. It's like imagine you, you know, you have your Tinder messages with a bunch of different girls, right? Uh they would go through and they would show like look at how good my RZ is. And it would just be screenshots of their conversations with the girls with maybe little edits in the middle like let bro cook and it's like a little meme. Yeah. Um, and so

[5:32] they would be like 10 image long slideshows and we would reach out to them and we're like, "Dude, we love your content. Want to use our app to show off your RZ and like put it in the middle?" Be like, "This is where I get my RZ from." And so it was like the perfect hook. People are watching this content because they're impressed by the guy's Riz or game or their ability to flirt with girls. And then this guy's like, "Hey, I'm using this app actually." And everyone thinks like, "Oh, all I need to do is download this app." and now I'll

[6:01] be able to attract more women. And so they're seeing it work because he in the video he's showing him using or talking to these girls, seeing him get the girl, and then he just credits. Exactly. It's not him just saying like, "Hey guys, by the way, this happens." He's showing he's like, "This is what I

[6:16] do. This is what I use." Right? It's a piece of the puzzle to get that outcome of getting a girl. It's the same way as an athlete being like, you know, "Wear my Jordans, right?" Like Michael Jordan has his shoes. He's like, "You want to play like me? Wear my shoes." Right? It makes these uh like larger than life figures feel as if you can kind of replicate

[6:34] their success in whatever domain. Just need to do what they do. Exactly. That's so interesting. Okay. And then how many uh followers did these people have? So what's interesting is they weren't I think people often get this wrong about social media marketing. They look to followers. Followers aren't actually what matters. It's views, right? And engagement. And so these guys maybe had like 50,000 followers, 100,000 followers max, but they're doing millions and millions of views each video, right? Whereas on the flip side, you have maybe washed up creators or influencers that have millions of followers that generate 20,000 views a video. And a lot of big brands and agencies will pay on a

[7:18] follower basis. But that's just I mean it's very clearly not the correct strategy. Hey, the algorithm changed this year especially and so anyone can get massive views and it's about consistency and compounding. So I'm curious, how come it's only 50 bucks if they're getting millions of views? Yeah. Um you often see it with new uh niches, new spaces, new content, uh when they're capitalizing on a vi viral trend. one uh you can get, you know, you can do cheaper promos, but two is like who else is going to do a promo in this space, right? It's like who else is able to monetize people just showing

[7:59] off their game in Tinder messages? What maybe like a dating coach, but it's less high converting, right? I think that an important part about running uh even targeted ads or your own in-house content or whatever it may be is like find the sort of audience that is going to convert best and where you have the highest comparative advantage for your application um and then double down on

[8:22] that. Did you go after how much is the app? Sorry, how much is the app? How much is it to use? Yeah. So, uh originally it was free to use and then after you used number of credits we would charge $7 a week. Now it's just $7 a week flat. Okay. So, did you not ever offer these people like affiliate deals? It was just

[8:40] solely flat. Yeah, attribution is very difficult with mobile applications. It's like very easy to do an affiliate deal when you're a streetear brand, for example, and people just use the code at checkout. Attribution is like really messy when it comes to these mobile apps. And so this How much did you scale this influencer outreach, too? It's a numbers game, right? It's like it's weird. You're playing both for quantity and quality, right? It's like you simultaneously need to be reaching

[9:07] out to like hundreds of people a day. But I think something that we did pretty well is if there was an influencer where I'm like, I need to work with this guy, I wouldn't just shoot them a message on TikTok or Instagram, right? I would go join their Discord. I would spam [ __ ] every hour. I would spam trying to get in contact with the guy. I would message their mom. I would message their girlfriend, whatever. like get me in contact with with Malik or whoever it

[9:34] may be. Um that was one guy that I specifically did it with. Um and you know obviously you don't want to go too far, right? I'm not like messaging weird things. I'm just like, "Hey, would love to pay your son to do some work for me. Let me know if you can get me in contact." Um, so I think you simultaneously need to play the numbers game while also recognizing like when there is, and I think this applies to business in general, when there's something you can do that will really lever lever up your efforts, you need to do everything in your power to make that happen. Um, so

[10:08] in this case, DMing their mom. And I love that though, like being intentional with like if you find a quality person, like going out of your way to make sure you get that person, still do the mass outreach to everyone you can to systemize that, but like go extra effort. Exactly. Like you can't do this with every single person, right? It's just going to take too much time. Um, but yeah, I mean, people really overcomplicate. They're like, I've DM'd

[10:31] 20 influencers and no one has responded. And I'm like, how long did that take you? Like 20 minutes maximum. Um, so it's like, yeah, I don't know. You just got to be willing to put in the time, I guess. And I think that's what most people skip past. So, I'm curious then, how much, like, what was the message that you were offering these people? Like, are you literally showing them the results of how these like first few people, how much money they made, be like, "Hey, these people made like 20 grand in the first month with a video like this." I g

[11:00] them an example video. This is where I don't think that there's a one-sizefits-all universal answer. It's really dependent on the niche. So for RZ GPT, we had one method. For UMAX, which we'll get into later, we had a different method. Now for my most recent application, Cali, there's a totally different method. So I think it's like it's it's a process of split testing, right? Split testing is obvious to

[11:25] people when you're running paid ads. Meta does it for you, right? Split testing is obvious when there's like a clear it's very easy to quantify the inputs and outputs. though split testing can also be done in a qualitative sense, right? You kind of split test what sort of messaging you want to you want to uh push onto somebody when you're trying to get them to do a deal, right? I think people who do sales, they really

[11:48] understand this. Um they they test different sort of strategies, different uh you know, whether or not they're a little bit more direct and aggressive with their offer, whether or not they slow play it, that sort of thing. I think that it really applies here to um you know working with creators and whatnot. What were a few different like angles

[12:06] you took? So there's like the there's some cases in which you just want to outright like maybe in an industry where there's a lot of [ __ ] right? You're getting a lot of DMs, there's a lot to filter through, which albeit it's probably the majority of industries on this on social media. Be more direct. to be like, "Hey, love your content. Looking to pay you X dollars for a promo. Let me know if

[12:32] you're interested." Right? Like a lot of these people have their time wasted not just by people trying to do promos with them, but by people trying to offer some high ticket sale or management or whatever it may be. Um, so I think cutting through that is very val I think that that is probably a

[12:50] pretty universal. So just like two liners like that. Yeah. Just be direct. I think just for the first reply, and I'm sure you've noticed this too, like when people are reaching out, I have so many people that are like, "Hey man, like I think I could really really improve what you're doing. Hop on a quick call. Here's my calendar link. I'm available in 6 days." I'm like, "No, I'm not going to do that." But then some people reach out and they're like, "Hey dude, love what you're doing. This uh X maybe should actually be Y. Here's an example of how I would do it differently. maybe here's a new design

[13:22] for your logo or here's a new strategy for whatever it may be and they're like providing value upfront or showing exactly what they can do. I'm like, okay, this person's legit. They're not going to waste my time. This was your first app, you said that you've ever built and you're not technical person. So, a getting on the Apple App Store seems like a hurdle that you might not have seen coming, but also even just the technical build of

[13:45] it. So, how did you build the app if you weren't technical? Yeah. So like I said, I had like a very high level kind of understanding of technology, but I was certainly no software developer. So it really was as simple as asking chat GPT, how do I build a mobile app, right? And it had said you can either build in Swift UI for iOS or Cotlin for Android or React Native if you want to deploy

[14:13] hybrid, etc. And I just I chose Swift UI. There wasn't much uh method to it. I was just kind of like this makes sense. So I downloaded Xcode and you get hit with the hello world in the little globe sign on the screen and okay, we need to figure out what the designs are going to look like here. So we hop in Figma. One of my

[14:35] co-founders kind of led that charge. We're both working on it. We get the general designs what we want it to look like. And I'm like, "Okay, chat GPT. I need a blue gradient background for the homepage." And it tells me background parenthesis linear gradient from blah blah blah to blah blah. So now I have my background. I want a button in the middle. I go chat GPT. I need a button. Uh I need two buttons actually. And then I need a logo at the top. It gives me the UI for that. I say okay now after I press this button I need to go to my camera roll to upload

[15:10] an image. And it was it was this simple. It was I need to do this chatb explain it to me then I implement. I need to do this explain to me implement. And now obviously there were times where I had to do debugging. Uh but anytime that that came up I just asked chat GPT I'm like hey you gave me this code why

[15:25] doesn't this work? And the reason that I'm getting kind of specific here is there have been a lot of people that are like you can't just build an app with like 95% chat GPT. And I'm like no you actually can. Like I know for a fact I did it myself. Um, and over time, Chad GBT essentially became my tutor, right? As I started to get a little bit more familiar. Um, it didn't have to write all of the code. I would still have it write the majority, but I started to learn, too. I was like, "Hey, can you explain the difference between an observable object and a state

[15:59] variable, right?" Um, and yeah, this took a little bit over a month. Ris GPT relatively simple like two function app. Um, now I could probably build it in a day or two, right? But getting off the ground was uh, it really wasn't that complicated. It wasn't easy, but it was not complicated. Building a website just got a lot easier thanks to Durable. Durable is an AI website builder that allows you to build your website within 30 seconds. Created specifically for entrepreneurs and small business owners, Durable is the ideal solution for those seeking to create a polished website and make every aspect of running a business 10x more

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[17:20] wgmi30 to get 30% off any plan for 3 months. That's durable.co/wgmi. Thank you durable for sponsoring today's episode. So you had the set goal, then you're like, "All right, I need to get this built." Naturally, you're asking chat GPT, and it's giving you piece by piece as you're solving the problem one by one. And then really the product is just a GPT API. Exactly. At the end of the day, we had no backend. We didn't we didn't have user authentication. The app was named RZGPT- production. So when you downloaded it, that's what displayed on your home screen. Um, yeah, our APIs were totally insecure. We were

[17:57] originally making the API calls from the front end, which anyone who's listening that's a developer knows how dangerous that is. The API key was like if you would just opened up the app, which is pretty you could just steal our API key and everyone charged you. Exactly. For all the tokens. That's funny. That shows that I I I think it's action focused. If you just sat there trying to think through everything, try to solve everything in your head first, trying to look up videos on how to code, you would have like psyched yourself out. Yeah, there were there were probably there were things that reasonably now I could

[18:27] do in three minutes that took me 20 hours just because I would mess up some little uh part of the code that would just make the system completely unfunctional or setting up the backend. I did it through Heroku which like in retrospect I would have just done AWS. M um but yeah, I think that the big lesson here is I know a lot of people that have ventured to build apps and then they get stuck on like some really small maybe like compiling error and it takes them 20 hours and they just can't seem to solve it and they just

[19:01] kind of give up. But just keep pushing through. Yeah. Um now this especially applies to an app like chat GPT. I don't think that someone without previous software experience could go build a social app, right, in which you have like interactivity amongst users. That's a different ballgame. Start small, right? Yeah. But it's still insane that you built this first app without any technical experience just using Chat GPT. In a month, and then you launch for

[19:31] 100 bucks, you get $80,000 in MR. That's right. That's nuts, dude. Congrats, by the way. That's a [ __ ] awesome. It's the action that uh that shows and gets you the reward. So, um was getting on the app store difficulty? Uh no, it really wasn't that bad. You just kind of have to set up an LLC, create a developer account. Now, albeit my co-founder handled the majority of it for RZ GPT, but then I did it for UMAX um and Cali, so well Cali did it with one of their co-founders. But no, no, it's it's

[20:06] really not much of an issue. Okay. Interesting. I mean, I think at the end of the day, that really is how simple the story is. Like, I think a lot of people like to complicate software, think you need to be a tech, super technical developer, has to be some refined app. You're like, there's a new trend right now with AI, new product available to the market. I see a problem that I can solve with it. I see content that's working right now. And so, you kind of had like this like distribution that was like very clearly strategically seen and then you just launched

[20:33] something and people liked it. Yeah. So, now I don't think this applies to, you know, actual large scale software. Yeah. But when it comes to these sort of like indie applications, people often overco complicate it. They try to build something with like this somewhat convoluted use case. They're like, not to call this person out, but somebody hit me up and they're like, "Dude, I just built this app. I want your opinion on it." And it's like a water drinking reminder application and it like just enables you to track how much water you're drinking. And I'm like, "Okay, listen. like can this provide some value to people that maybe

[21:10] aren't drinking enough water. Yeah. And like often times these applications can work but there's no guarantee right whereas when you build something with a very clear use case solving a very clear problem that people have it can be the simplest product of all time but if you just solve it in a better way than currently exists on the market or you distribute in a better way than is currently done on the market um there's massive upside. RZ GPT is as simple as guys don't know how to text girls. The the clear example of this is people any guy that's been in a group chat with multiple guys probably knows that that

[21:47] they'll send these sort of screenshots in the group chat, right? Okay. Now, let's build a product to solve this. Instead of sending in group chat, send through app, produce response, give to the user. Um, and so yeah, that's kind of been my thesis for the past three apps that I've built and they've all scaled very well. Yeah, he's not a one hit wonder. So I

[22:11] want to I want to get into the next one. But I guess last question I have on Ris GBT is how did because you were probably pretty early. It was probably like right when the GPT API came out. You took action really quickly and so you saw a lot of early success. You got to like 200k MR. Did a lot of competition come into the market? This is like a huge market. clarify here. I set off to build it having no understanding of what the consumer mobile app space looked like. I had no idea that there actually was a formidable competitor on the market who's now actually bigger than

[22:38] I should also clarify here. Uh RZ GBT is now named Plug AI. So there was a competitor on the market. I was completely unaware of them. Uh also this is over 6 months after the GBT API came out. So it wasn't that new. Um the competitor being the Riz app. That's why we changed our name. They uh threatened lawsuit. You know how it

[23:01] goes. Um so yeah, what I had said earlier like sometimes you don't have to uh build something super novel or solve a new. Sometimes there can be competition, but if they're not distributing well, it's as if they don't exist. Right? They had done less than 200,000 downloads at this point. We did that in our first week, right? Um, so yeah, I really want to harp on that point. I don't think people say this often. I think a lot of people actually disagree, but if your competition is not

[23:34] known, it's as if they do not exist. Right? If I've never heard of a product, if the average individual has never heard of it, then it doesn't exist in in the the uh, you know, in society, right? It only really exists once people know about it. Did you Okay, so that's interesting because it's like the brand name has to be established, especially on social media in this day and age and their

[23:57] brand name wasn't established. Do you I love that you just had like kind of horse blinders on and blind ignorance here and you just went forward, solve the problem, got an influencer and it's working without even looking at the market, without looking and seeing how complicated it would be. Like you literally just did it.

[24:12] Yeah, it's awesome. Big believer in like shoot from the hip, right? Like I think people spend too much time trying to optimize everything that they do. And now this is important. For example, if you're building consumer social where first impression really matters and if you get a ton of people on your application and it's not built well from the start that they're churned and

[24:30] they're never coming back, right? But when it comes to consumer utility app, it's like sure it's probably better to be slightly optimized from the start. Um but yeah, I like to shoot from the hip. I don't do like super in-depth market research in regards to like I I try to understand the market, but I'm not doing like focus groups and I'm not having like a fivemon beta testing period. Like I build the [ __ ] app and I put it on

[24:56] the market and I hope that it works. Yeah, it's pretty simple. Guys need help talking to girls. Everybody's trying to get girls. Huge market. This is a new ability to do it and I can probably find a way to market it. Yeah. So, okay, let's go on to UMAX because UMAX is even bigger than this one. So you took those lessons and then you kind of made a bigger and better app. But I love your approach to how you chose UMAX. So if you could kind of

[25:17] start there. Yeah. So um I split up with my co-founders from uh RZ GPT. It was amicable. Kept my equity. Still getting paid from it. And so I spent the month of November hopping from couch to couch, right? We hadn't gotten paid out from RZGPT yet. The way the Apple payout cycle works. And then there's this big thing, but I have no money. And I'm kind of I stand on my friend's couch for a couple weeks, then my brother's couch, and I'm like, "All right, what should I build?" And I'm kind of scrolling through social media, and I'm like, "Okay, what's interesting? What are

[25:54] people what's really popping right now?" And I come across Looks Maxing. To me, it's super fascinating because it seemed like the gym niche, weightlifting, was kind of slowly declining and Looks Maxing was taking its place. What looks maxing solved um that I think the weightlifting niche was one step away from is the majority of guys want to you know for example lift weights because they

[26:20] want to be more attractive to girls. Looks maxing cuts right through that. Looks maxing like okay you want to be more attractive to girls let's improve your facial aesthetics. let's improve how you look. And we can do this a lot quicker than spending five years lifting weights to try to get jacked. And so I start to do more research. Okay, I need to put myself in the mind of a looks maxer. Like what would I want? And I find that on Reddit, on Tik Tok, on Instagram, there are two common things that people are looking for. They're looking for how can I become more attractive, right? Like can you rate or

[26:55] or give me suggestions, right? What skin care should I do? what hair care should I do or hair styling, what have you. And any advice that they're getting through social media is not personalized to them, right? Like an influencer can create a video saying if you have wavy hair, do this. If you have this skin care, this skin type, do this. But it's

[27:16] not all just laid out in front of you. Now, on the flip side, or I guess second, people want to know how attractive they are, right? And people want to be able to quantify their progress over time. M we see these like sort of glow up videos like I used to look like this and now I look like this like now I'm really hot right but it's not quantified and people don't know where they stand at the time GPT vision API was about to be released and I started playing around with it in the uh you know web app and I was like I think that I can build

[27:50] an app to solve both of these problems. So, I'm uploading pictures of myself and friends and playing around figuring out how to make it work. Similar to what you were saying about like when the chat GPT original API came out that there was so much opportunity. I posted on Twitter. I was like GPT vision. This was actually

[28:09] at the demo day before the API came out. I was like, somebody is going to make millions of dollars or there there will be people that make millions of dollars off of an opportunity that they identify as a result of this new technology, GPT vision. Um, and for those listening who don't know what it is, GPT Vision is essentially chat GPT, but you can upload

[28:32] images and get an analysis. So, I set off to build this app. Um, I had seen that Sam Zia was really popping off on social media and I was like, I think because this community is so tight-knit, I think that having someone who's really at the forefront is going to confer a lot of value here. And I'd seen Sam in one of Lucas Ptor's podcast. I was like, I think that this kid's smart. He's a hustler. I think that he would be a great partner. So I brought on him and my older brother and that was kind of

[29:10] the start of UMAX. Is is he like an influencer or something? Yeah, Sam Sam is a Looks magazine influencer. There's kind of like the big three in the looks maxing space. It's like K Shami, Dylan Leam, and Sam Zia. How many followers do they have typically? Um I think all those guys each have a few million across each video they're posting is getting

[29:29] how many views you think? Yeah. So Sam at the time only had like 200,000 on Tik Tok, but he was getting like million plus views a video and he's teaching people like me or like how to like Yeah. put your face in ice water. Exactly. It's like here's how to tighten your facial skin or like sharpen your

[29:45] jawline. Um that's so interesting. So you saw that that was like a popular it was a trending topic on social media. the content was getting a lot of views and so you saw that this was like a new upand cominging thing that hadn't been there's nothing no infrastructure to be built for this yet but it was getting really popular and then simultaneously you saw a new chat GBT vision which you could upload a picture of your face and it could analyze your face yeah it was like market X new technology timing was perfect chat or looks maxing was just starting to really become popular look at like the Google trends

[30:19] it's like steadily increasing at this point like November December nomber of 2023. Um, GPT Vision had just came out. There's nothing like it on the market. Uh, Llama 3 just wasn't as good. And in order to build something like this, in the past, you would have to like you can use facial landmark detection, but that can only get you so far. To get the real in-depth analysis, you would have to train a custom ML vision model that could cost anywhere from 50 to $100,000 with no guarantee of having a high quality output. Whereas we could test this in real time for less than a cent

[30:55] an image. Gotcha. And so that is so fascinating. So that's how you chose to make this app. Yes. What is the revenue for UMAX right now? Yeah. So first month we did about $100,000 in revenue. That's insane. Second month we did about 200,000 in revenue and then that's when we went viral and since then we've been doing like over 500,000 a month. So I think now we're at a little bit over like 5

[31:20] million. Oh my god. Or excuse me, sorry. We're at a little bit over three million. Yeah. But 5 million for your career, I think. And it'll be over 5 million in 2024 for UMAX. That's insane. Okay. So, you had the idea. That's how you built it. That's why you wanted to build it. How did you approach building this differently than Yeah. So, this one UMAX was a little bit more complicated. Um, you know, we

[31:40] actually built it decent from the start. We had a user table. We had some level of authentication. That's crazy. Crazy you didn't have a user table. Yeah. Yeah. GPT. Um pretty similar honestly this time. Yeah. Swift UI AWS backend. Um I was passing the images through an REST API as like B 64 encoded which like definitely is not best practice. Moved

[32:05] to pre-signed URLs after that. Did you build it? Yeah. Yeah, I built it. Um, so whereas chat GPT wrote like 95% of the code for RZ GPT, maybe it wrote like 90% for EMAC. Um, yeah, it maybe took about a month again to build. Could you break down like what your thought process was for like what features you're building? Can you explain what the features are and like

[32:30] what the user flow is right now? Yeah. Yeah. So, I originally had started a series when I first started building it where I was going to document my like building in public and then very shortly thereafter I was like this is a waste of time. Now, I do have some of the videos. I think one of them is on my Twitter if you want to like scroll down to a few months ago you could find it. I think that

[32:50] disconnecting early on is very valuable. I spent a pretty unbelievable amount of time just walking in the woods like no phone and nothing just thinking through like all the different ways that I can actualize the sort of vision that I have. And so this is where I think like really tuning in to to to your own conscious and subconscious um and your thoughts about the space is extremely valuable, right? Kind of set your general trajectory and then build fast, right? So, I figured out I'm like,

[33:24] "Okay, we're going to do the ratings. We're going to give the recommendations and I'm thinking about how I want the flow to look, general UX." And I'm just doing this all in my head, right? And then once it starts to come together and the vision becomes clear, um, I think another important thing here is like any project that I've worked on that has had real success, as I think through it, I become more and more confident about the probability of success. Anytime that I've become less and less confident, it generally doesn't work out. If as you start to think through it becomes you become more confident, um I think that

[33:57] that's an indication that you're on to something. So it starts to become clear. I start to mock up the designs in Figma. Uh playing around, getting some advice from friends, input, and the big thing here is like I want to make it as simple as possible. Give people what they're looking for as quickly as I can.

[34:12] What are they looking for? They're looking for their ratings and their recommendations. So they'd post a photo and you'd get like a rating out of 10, like how attractive you are. Yeah. Yeah. And then it would give you recommendations on what you can do to become more attractive. So, and a big thing that we focus on is like traits that you can adjust as an individual or things that you can change. For example, skin care, hair styling, grooming, right? Uh strengthening your jawline, right? We're not focused on things like, well, you don't have strong cheekbones, which you can't really change. Like, you're [ __ ] You're ugly, right? Um, so I'm a

[34:46] big believer of like an internal locus of control and that's something that we really feel strongly about empowering people. So in addition to like the overall score, we also have the potential score. Like what would you be rated if you were to improve these malleable characteristics? What do you mean by internal locus of

[35:00] control? I think an internal locus of control in psychology there's like internal external. Internal is if something happens in your life, you attribute it to kind of your decisions and your actions. an external locus of control. You're going to attribute things that happen to, you know, well, uh, just an unlucky day or maybe the weather was this or this person did this to me as opposed to I should have checked the weather in advance or I should have, you know, uh, uh, thought about what I was going to do before I did it, right? As opposed to saying like things happen to me like I create things or or I create the things

[35:37] that happen. Interesting. So then how are you coming up with a person's rating? Yeah. So we're essentially assessing for these various characteristics. Do you have present acne? Is your skin somewhat discolored? Right. Um are you wellgroomed? Is your hair styled well according to your face shape? Um do you have bags under your eyes? Right? And then so we're assessing for like 20 plus characteristics and then using these uh for different features. For example, with jawline, it if we notice a strong jaw contour, which is as simple as saying to chat GPT like, does the individual have a strong jawline? And then you give a little bit more

[36:16] explanation to improve accuracy. Um, so if you don't have a strong jawline, that'll decrease your jawline score, right? So is it like so you can like tell chatb to identify these set variables in someone's facial like if they have acne, if they have a strong jawline, whatever it is, contour lines. And then are you just basically saying if they have one of these deduct a point

[36:36] or something like that? Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. We're we're it's like and you're setting a baseline. That's it's primarily classification. Yeah. Uh because it doesn't do a very good job at quantification. If you tell it give me a jawline score, it'll be like 70, someone else 70, someone else like you know. Uh whereas if you classify and then use that to adjust the you know quantified output. saying that like the highest if they have none of these high score be a

[37:04] 10 basically. Yeah, exactly. That makes a lot of sense. Then deduct points. Exactly. That's so interesting. And then you're basically what does the app do from there once they have that score. So it's basically setting that baseline. So and then you're trying to get them to a goal. Yeah. Exactly. And then along with these classifications, for example, if the jawline isn't strong, we'll give some recommendations. Eat food that is chewier or use these jawline trainers, right? Because your jaw is essentially a muscle, right? or you have muscles along your jawline that are going to make it sharper um or lose weight, right? If the individual appears to be overweight,

[37:36] that sort of thing. And the recommendations that we give are very straightforward. Like the majority of the recommendations, if you look at it for any individual uh uh component is like eat healthier, work out, wash your face, right? We are not giving things that are like really out there, but we feel strongly about um helping teach people to take care of themselves better. I think as a young man in society, you know, I think that girls are taught this kind of early on about like how to uh groom themselves well, take care of themselves. I don't think

[38:10] that it's as prevalent for young men. Like I have two brothers. I was never told anything about skincare. I never washed my face until after college. Yeah. Literally. Literally. Um, and so just making these simple recommendations more popular and uh well-known I think is a good thing. So it's more like you're like telling them how much how good they look and if they did these three things this is how good they could look and you're basically just bringing awareness that hey facial care is a thing. You could also strengthen your jaw which is a thing that people probably don't even know exists. So you're kind of just

[38:42] pointing them in the right direction instead of giving them a fullon like eat this today, eat this tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I think that society would be better off if everyone took the time to take care of themselves, right? Simple. And so I think uh to me it feels like a good thing. And so that's what the app is just

[38:58] essentially doing. It's pretty simple. It's just giving them baseline, telling them their goals, here's how you can reach that goal. Is there continuity? Like why would they continue using the app? There's not too much. You can get your updated recommendations, but it's largely not going to change all that much. Um I guess progression pictures or something like

[39:14] Yeah. Yeah. You get progress pictures. you can kind of track how your score changes over time. Um, it was certainly something that we considered building into. However, it is not something that I'm super passionate about in like the actual way that it manifests. Like, if we were to really double down and spend years on this thing, I think that we could get it to a point where we're

[39:35] providing a lot more prolonged value. Though, as we'll get into later, I have a vision that I'm more passionate about building. So it was some somewhat opportunistic in nature like there's a a lot of opportunity to provide value here and do well in this space. So let's capitalize on that and sort of the success here will enable me to pursue the bigger visions uh with a higher

[39:59] probability of success. Yeah, this was just kind of seemed like there's a lot of value in the market to capture and it was like speed that you kind of took advantage of and you saw the trend, you took the action and you captured that value. But longterm I could see how that wouldn't be like your billion dollar business. And so it's kind of like a launchpad business to get your first set of capital and you can have like a more mission focused approach. I'm

[40:18] sure pretty much exactly the plan. So this seems to be like the new approach to at least consumer apps and SAS in general is that you saw the trend and you partnered with an influencer to launch it. So you had that baked in distribution. Is that something that just tell me about that approach? Is

[40:33] that like was that really intentional? Yes. Like you called it social media businesses or entrepreneurship or something? Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. So I think that this space is kind of like the intersection of tech and social media, right? Um but the approach to partner with an influencer to me I think is really dependent on the space that you work in. For example, Looks Maxing was a very tight-knit um like ride or die community, right? The

[41:00] people that were in it, they loved it. And there were small number of influencers that were re really leading all the messaging, all of the the looks maxing zeitgeist, right? Um Sam was one of those guys. So partnering made sense. He's also a great dude, like super good to work with. I don't think that's true

[41:16] for all influencers. Um and so there it made sense though, for example, with Cali, which we'll get into in a moment, calorie tracking is like it's [ __ ] massive, right? There's no one individual who's leading this entire the entire community or culture. So in that sense partnering with an influencer right if if your goal is to achieve true market penetration and like even dominance then no influencer will be able to provide their keep if you get there right maybe they can if if they're a good entrepreneur right if them being an influencer is just like cherry on top they're good entrepreneur they have connections they know how to run a

[41:59] business beautiful do it right but when it comes to primarily partnering with someone on the basis of their influence uence I think that it is relative to your time horizon expectations for the business as well as um the state of the niche in which they exist. What was your approach to Cali? Yeah, so I had the idea for Cali while UMAX was really blowing up. I was like I can't really justify going all in on this. Meanwhile, I'd been in contact with these two uh entrepreneurial 17-year-olds. They are unbelievably cracked for their age. just so smart, so mature, uh technical skills, what have you. They hadn't had like major

[42:40] successes. One of them, Zach, had had for his age a major success, right? He had sold a website that he got like millions of users on for like $100,000, right? But they were new to the app space and they were really interested in it. And so I hit them up and I'm like, "Yo, I think that we can run this playbook that I have for mobile apps um for calorie tracking app." That said, I just need you guys to understand that my number one priority right now is UMAX. I'm going to give you guys the playbook capital um and to some extent take y'all under my wing. Um and we'll go even

[43:13] split on this. You guys are running it. I'll essentially serve as a a resource for y'all. And they were like, "Bet, let's do it." So, I had the initial idea, the designs, um and the playbook, and then they built it. They get got the social media train running, what have you. Um, and Cali has been doing so well. I think in large part due to how well these kids have executed where we've done over $300,000 in the past month, so we're at uh I think like three million ARR right now because not all of that is recurring, right? Um and now the play here is within this kind of

[43:54] like team we're building out new applications leveraging the infrastructure that we have through designers, social media marketers, etc. And over the course of the next couple of months, I'm really hoping to kind of ensure that we have a welloiled machine here and going to continue to push the ball forward on this as I gear up for my next big play or I guess my biggest play now, which will be Apex. I know that I could continue building apps and I think I could do like 20 million in revenue minimum next year if I'm all in on just

[44:28] building these sort of consumer apps. Now, I don't want to be someone who maximizes for money, right? That I don't view that as a fun way to live life, right? I think that that to me seems like actually really depressing where it's just all about how can I make more money, more money, more money. Um, as opposed to doing things that you care about. And the vision behind Apex is something I

[44:55] really do care about. I agree 100%. But I think you have to make your first taste of money to like make it has to be a conscious choice after you make the money to then be taken seriously. It's a lot easier to pursue the grand visions when you have the safety net, right? Um I didn't have the safety net

[45:12] before. Now I did. Yeah. It's like the launchpad business. You need money to make take the bigger swings too. So Elon Musk did Zip 2 before he did PayPal, right? And did PayPal before he did Tesla and SpaceX. So I want to I want to ask one more question on Cali first off. So for anyone listening, they're going to think you're crazy for switching from a company that's making 500k a month, but I assume there's a problem with like retaining people, getting people to like the LTVs probably isn't like years down

[45:37] the line. I assume there's there was kind of a trend that you hopped on and so like the market's not growing at the same there's other competitors, so there's maturity and it's going to cash flow and it'll exist, but for you to take bigger swings where you want to be, like I sure I'm sure you want to be like an Elon Musk

[45:51] level entrepreneur essentially, right? And build a mission, that app is not going to get you there. And so when you have a bigger vision with a mission, it makes sense to just you're still contributing what you contribute. You kind of built the machine so it's running itself. It's a business and so and you've kind of tapped out the market and there's potential flaws in the long run. So does it make sense for you to commit and double down? Is that kind of

[46:11] Yeah. the right assessment? I think another important note here for me specifically is I'm not the sort of person who can just will myself to do the thing that I don't want to do. M if I don't want to do something, I wholly like cannot [ __ ] do it. Self-awareness. Yeah. So, I definitely optimize for doing things that I'm interested in. Um, and with UMAX, it was similar to what I said earlier. It was like, okay, let's let's get this thing on autopilot so that it can continue to sustain itself sustain itself and make a good amount of capital that I can use for future projects. Um

[46:49] but like yeah there were ways in which I think could have grown UMAX and still can. Um the biggest issue is like I just don't find myself inspired when I work on it. And as a result I'm going to get way less out of my time that I put into it. And so with Cali I was like this will be a really fun thing to do and kind of build a studio here. I can help these two 17-year-olds, Zach and Henry, who like I said, are fantastic. Um, can get them a massive win early on. Um, and I

[47:23] can still see some upside from this. Meanwhile, I pursue the things that I care about. I think that should be like a way more accepted answer by people, by the way. Like, I think that's 100% the right way to think about it. Like, if you're not excited about it, you don't feel like it's something that you want to be doing,

[47:38] don't do it. Don't do it. And then that should be the right answer. And then you make the next approach better. I know so many people that try to force themselves to do something because they identify it as their highest ROI activity. Yeah. Perput. But as a result, they their inputs are just like in if they put in eight hours, they're only really getting three hours of productive work done versus when you're really passionate about something, you can put in eight hours and you can get like 16 hours of

[48:04] productive work out of it, right? And then your next four hours just learning about it in general because it's fun for you. It makes a lot of sense. Give me a little more context on Cali though. What do you mean by you created a studio and could you just explain like how you're building these

[48:15] so they're on autopilot? Yeah. So I don't want to go too in depth into like these but high level it's we have ideas for apps, right? Any good app dev knows that you always have like 20 ideas in your back pocket and you're just working on the best one. With the studio model, we're bringing in engineers who maybe are interested in entrepreneurship or want to work in a small startup and having them really lead the charge on an individual app

[48:44] that we have an idea on, right? Uh we'll do the designs, we'll uh provide the infrastructure, anything that they need uh we help them with and then they just get to build, right? And and obviously participate on the product side of things, what have you. Then we have also the social media infrastructure. We're running all the paid ads. We're doing the in-house content generation. We're working with various influencers and kind of scaling

[49:10] it up on the distribution side as well. Interesting. This is what we do. We do like venture-led or creator le SAS. Basically, we partner with creators and then build them software. Yeah. So, we're not looking to like do the sort of like influencer partnerships for the majority of these. It's the dev side. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Do you see with consumer apps there's like a ceiling that you've been hitting or is that what you mean? like it's I think that it depends on the application like different applications are going to have higher and lower ceilings the amount of effort that you put into it on a prolonged period. Um so

[49:42] yeah I think that often times it's very difficult to estimate ceilings. So once you just start to see yourself plateau and you know that you're still doing all the right things and nothing seems to be working, that's usually an indication that like you've hit a ceiling or that it's just going to be super hard to penetrate through that.

[50:01] Uh maybe that's like a local ceiling. It's not like the universal ceiling. Um so you have to add new features, change the product. Yeah, exactly. Like and with UMAX for example, like I know that we're not at the universal maximum. We're at a local maximum given the state of the current product. Now, in order to break beyond that, it's just going to take time, effort, attention that I don't want to

[50:21] put into it. Passion. Exactly. It will take passion and I don't have the necessary passion. That's good. That's great self-awareness though to be honest. Okay. So, one last thing on this. You said that you got Cali to a really good start really quickly. Could you just explain like what that what the process is because you're kind of so refined now like just like objectively like step one, step two, step three like okay have app idea, see trending in the market, have developer. you said social media manager or something like that. Could you just explain from your perspective like how you like break down the roles and pieces

[50:52] you need to scale like that? Yeah. Um I think that there are a lot of people in the sort of like utility app space as I describe it tool apps uh that are doing it all themsel. M I think a distribution of responsibility across team members is very valuable. I think that generally you'll see like greater than 2x outcome when you have two highly skilled people working on the same thing so long as the ceiling isn't like super low. Um and so that I think is a key component of success here. It's like someone takes lead of engineering, someone takes lead

[51:33] on design, product, app store, etc. Someone takes the lead on marketing. Um and then from there within the context of each individual role I think that the consumer app space probably more so than any space is just like rapid iteration. You iterate on your distribution strategy you iterate on different designs on different engineering styles etc. Um and because you can do it so fast and in real time like if you an ecom product for example you have to wait for the new samples and then like there's just a few week change a lot of waiting few weeks go by before you can change anything at all um whereas with uh

[52:12] software you can just and so I think you apply that to every uh you know sector of your business and yeah that's really what it's worth for us. So, it's literally just like have an idea, get the design, have a developer, everyone owns their role, have a marketer, and the marketer is just pounding outreach, cutting deals. It's like some apps it's going to be paid platform ads. Some apps it's going to be influencer, some apps it's going to be in internal UGC, right? I know people that succeed with

[52:39] each of the above strategies. Influencer, I think influencer strategy is the hardest to crack from what I've seen to be honest. Um, but that's the one that has worked for me. There's so much subjectivity to which creator you work with, right? And like the density of their audience. Majority of people are not going to be able to run like they're going to run influencer promos and they're just going

[52:59] to be unprofitable. They're going to take the first person that says yes. They're going to say 5,000 followers, 10,000 views, this should work without really understanding how loyal their audience is. Yeah. Yeah. It's uh and there's like there's so much complexity to it. Like I'm trying to give like the universal transferable lessons here, but in regards to like people all the time ask me like by the way like how do I do influencer marketing? I'm like

[53:21] so much nuance. Yeah. So much nuance. It's why like anyone that sells a [ __ ] course on it. I'm like highly skeptical. I'm like DM people. Yeah. To think that there's some universal strategy is to it's just like it's it's not how it works. It's it's you have to iterate. All right. Now let's talk about the big vision. Okay. because you're young in your early 20s still had multiple million-dollar consumer apps in the last two years and now you seem to be taking

[53:47] the big swing. Yep. Explain your thought process behind this. So I describe Apex as an all-in-one self-actualization ecosystem. Um self-improvement, self-actualization similar but kind of came to this realization that we're more focused on actualization. So I think to provide the proper context here, we can go all the way back to kind of ancient philosophy. Um, a lot of ancient philosophy was very focused on practical wisdom. Stoics were uh really big on this. Philosophy is valuable to the extent with which it is

[54:27] applicable in your own life. Stoics focused a lot on developing your internal character, virtue, and what it meant to live a good life. Nowadays, when we hear the term philosophy, we think of this sort of like study of the metaphysical abstract. I think, therefore, I am. I think that was Decart. Um, and it's like that this just doesn't mean anything to the average person, right? Right. So we hear philosophy and we're like this is very academic in

[55:00] nature. No application to me. I think that ancient philosophy is more similar to self-improvement as we know the term now um than modern philosophy. Now if we look at how self-improvement is characterized uh it's almost like this weird voodoo term where it's like self-improvement. What does that really mean? Because on social media, we see people lifting weights just so that they can get jacked and impress girls and guys and be high status, right? And we see people talking about entrepreneurship of like, you just need to make 10K a month, bro, to escape the matrix and now you can buy your Roly, right? Or live in Miami. Um, and I

[55:44] think that we see this across uh a lot of different domains of self-improvement on social media. I think a better alternative world is like let's work out and eat well so that we can be healthy, feel good, think more clearly, live a better life. Let's pursue entrepreneurship or or um learning or whatever it may be so that we can contribute to the world and orient our own life um in a way that we can live uh by our own terms and not fall into these like mimetic desires we

[56:16] see on social media. You want to explain what mimedic desire is? That's pretty core. Yeah, a mimemetic desire is essentially you're mimicking the desires of other people, right? We do it all the time. I think more so than we realize. Um, but instead of thinking things through through like first principles or getting to the ground truth and then deciding what you want to do, you look to what do other people want and that's probably a pretty good indicator that that's a valuable

[56:41] thing, right? It's like the social norm. If there's a fire, it's like survival. there's a fire in here, you see people running, it's probably better to start running instead of trying to see if there's a fire. So, it's like in us to behave that way. And I think a lot of the times, the majority of the time, it's a valuable thing for humans, right? Kind of offloads the responsibility of like thinking through things um and taking the time, what have you. But on social media, it's like you see everyone has a role, you want one. You see everyone's selling courses, selling courses, you want to you want to

[57:09] achieve this sort of uh life that they paint that you can. So, the vision for Apex is kind of fighting against this. Um, it's to focus on doing things that are going to help you self-actualize to improve your uh the meaning that you're able to create in your life and your virtue as an individual. Um, and so we're going to be getting a house in between San Diego and LA. Uh, hopefully a nice fun property where we can create content. So, this is one side. This is kind of pushing against the social media angle. And then two is a place that I really think I have domain experience is

[57:47] creating applications and tools to help people achieve their various goals. And one of the issues with the consumer app space um is that the majority of developers and companies are just optimizing for LTV otherwise known as lifetime value. So how much will your customers pay you multiplied by the number of customers that you have. It's

[58:09] purely a game of maximization of profit. And now the reason I say I have specific experience in this is because it's a space that I've worked in, right? Like I I've done the consumer app subscription game. Um but it's not about like how much value can we provide to people and how can we improve as many people's lives as possible. So, being that we can do development in-house for free, we know how to code, we're going to be building these tools 100% free to use. We're going to have communities 100% free to join. We're going to put out content and help uh inform people of what we think

[58:47] can improve their lives, 100% free. And so, the goal here is not to make money. You know, obviously in the future we will have to figure out how to generate revenue. Maybe it's we uh produce physical products that help people, right? right? And we take a small profit on that. Um, but rather how can we improve as many people's lives as possible. And so the majority of the money that I've made from uh the apps that I've worked on up to this point, as I had mentioned earlier, uh it's all going to be going into Apex. So if you're like me, you have a software idea and you want to get it started, but

[59:24] you're just intimidated. You don't know how to hire developers. You don't know how to manage a project, getting it designed, you're just unfamiliar with the process. So that's why I actually had my partner start our agency, WGMI Labs, so we could help you bring your software to life. It's a development agency where you get a full team dedicated to your project. So you'll get a designer, a developer, and a project manager. So all you have to do is list the features you want and kind of tell us how you want it laid out and then watch it get built week after week. So, if you have a software idea and you're

[59:52] ready to get started on it, go to wgilabs.com and we're happy to help. Interesting. So, this is going to cost a lot of money though. Like, I know you've made a few million bucks. You probably have a few million bucks in your bank account, but are you going to raise money for this? And if you do, how are you going to convince people if there's not a clear-cut maximize shareholder

[1:00:11] value? Yeah, it's a great question. Um, so at this point, we don't intend to raise in the short term. I, as I mentioned, I will be putting at least a couple of million into it, my own money. Um, I should also specify some of my money is also going to my parents. Uh, and then like a little bit for myself, you know,

[1:00:29] because I still need to eat. Um, I view it as like what Faze Clan is to gaming, what Bar Stool is to like degeneracy, entertainment, sports, drinking, gambling. We will be to self-improvement like a brand. Exactly. Um and then yeah like I want to file as a BC corp which is uh CC corp you have a you need to maximize shareholder value right BC corp you are so if we were to raise investors and we have obligations to them uh we can actually act in the interest of the public good rather than just maximization of profit and

[1:01:07] shareholder value. It's like a not for-p profofit is that different or Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. to me. I when I a little bit over a year ago got into this space, I was like, I just need to make a lot of money and then I can decide what to do. And I think in the process of making a good amount, I've kind of realized that it doesn't like really move the needle internally

[1:01:29] or does it move the needle society? Um, it definitely I think it's a safety net. Safety nets are really important, but I think a lot of people fall into the trap of money then becomes your only indicator and that's all that you optimize for in life. And I think that that's a very shallow existence. I agree. So, you're trying to build like this bigger brand of like culture and media around self-improvement, self-actualization, and then create like not create influencers, but like the way FaZe Clan is, it's like there are like you said

[1:02:05] FaZe Rain, FaZe Bank. I will be Apex Blake. My uh co-founders will be Apex Jesse, Apex WY, etc. Interesting. So, those are centered around like a specific type of content. Yours will be centered around self-improvement. So you just like kind of create self you might become like a self-improvement like creator influencer. Yeah. Essentially um and I think another important note here is I think that in the self-improvement space something that can be somewhat isolating is that you have all these creators like Brian Johnson for example and like to be clear I always respect people that are pushing the extreme of anything. I think that's actually really

[1:02:43] cool. Um but it's isolating. It's like you can never drink alcohol and never have fun and you need to do your or like Andrew Hubman like your three-hour routine when you wake up to optimize and biohack for the day and it's like okay it's cool I think that we should all engage in healthy

[1:03:02] habits. Um but it can make you neurotic. Like I had gotten pretty deep into biohacking. Um, I actually had a company that I started that was kind of in line with the original Apex vision very briefly a couple years ago called Opticize, Optimize Science, right? Uh, like optimizing using science-based tools and whatnot. And I found that in the process I became like neurotic about health to the point where it like stressed me out so much if I I was getting bad sleep because I was

[1:03:33] so focused on getting the perfect sleep. Yeah. Um, and so I think the ability to find this balance of like caring about health and prioritizing living a disciplined life is very important. Caring about your career and what you do is very important, but it shouldn't all be like it shouldn't be all or nothing. You should be able to live a balanced lifestyle. Um, so okay, I'm very curious now I'm observing this

[1:04:00] from since you're telling me firsthand. It seems like your first app was like you partner with influencers like you pay them like 50 bucks for a plug. Then your second app you actually partner with partner like equity partner with the top creator. And now it seems like you're going for a much bigger vision and so you're trying to create the

[1:04:16] creator trying to be the creator. Yeah. You're trying to build like a whole media engine over time. Yeah. First and then you'll figure out the monetization second. Yeah. Exactly. Um I think FaZe Clan for example here people might be like, "Okay, you referenced FaZe Clan. They blew up. Yeah, great to like $2 billion valuation and then they just got acquired for like 40 million or whatever it was recently. Like they they crashed because they weren't able to build a business behind it. Um somewhat similar to Bar Stool. They got acquired by Pen Gambling or whatever it is uh for this big valuation and then Dave Portoy

[1:04:49] bought it back for a penny, right? Um and so this is where I you know I think that they're very good counterpoints. This is where I have conviction that it won't happen to us because I believe that we are businessmen first, creators second, and we're going to learn the creator side and that I don't think that I think that we will be able to figure out the business model such that it

[1:05:12] enables us to continue to provide value. I think that'll be the easy part for you guys. Yeah. Yeah. You guys have that part down. The problem with FaZe, I'm like I was like in that community, so I've seen the come up from the start. My whole goal is to buy a Counter-Strike team. So, I love esports, but they just basically were so focused on the content and

[1:05:28] trickshotting, building the community. They were the first like vloggers and and of the time, but they just let the wrong people in. And those people just followed maximize shareholder value, get a biggest valuation and exit. And Barcel was a little different. They were just like a uh what a funnel for a gambling company at

[1:05:44] the end of the day. It's true. So, you just got to nail the business model on the back end this time. But you guys seem to have that no problem. Yeah. Yeah. I think that we'll be able to do it. The biggest thing is that I never want to be a company like I want anyone who's listening to this to hold me accountable in the future. I never want to be a company that's just like how do we extort the sort of trust that in people have in us to make as much money as possible. I think that is like

[1:06:10] so morally corrupt and abhorentt. Um and so I don't think that that will happen although you know absolute power corrupts absolutely. So, uh, it it's not impossible, but how I know myself, I don't think that that will happen. I believe in you. I think you're business-minded. I think the Face Clan people were just so focused on the media, so focused on the content, and they loved their audience, and it was special, and then they let the wrong people in who came in, and they trusted them, got screwed. Same with Bartool. 20 years, newspaper, sports content, building it up. Then sports gambling comes legal. Shiny object. Nothing wrong

[1:06:44] with it, but that's what happened. Tarnishes the brand, you know. Yeah, I'm gonna I think that there is something wrong with I think something I think there's something wrong with the Faze Clan side. I definitely think that sports gambling is a meth ethical moral dilemma for sure, but I don't know if it necessarily affected I don't know. Who knows? Their brand still seems to be doing fine from a

[1:07:01] business perspective, but I'm curious. Uh this is a total side question. Did you feel some type of guilt for the type of businesses you're running? No. Like how you made money? Yeah, people often ask me this. Um, I don't because I mean I think that there were a lot of opportunities to engage in the immoral action. Like we had found with pretty much all of the apps that I've worked on that you get like the highest LTV. Um, just charging like an inordinate amount for subscriptions, the most you could charge and like not responding to people when they ask how to cancel subscriptions, this sort of thing. I think I've always

[1:07:34] acted in a pretty moral and ethical way when it comes to the amount that we're charging, that sort of thing. Um, and then I think like with UMAX for example, we were always very like I always felt very strongly about not doing unethical things within it. And so there were a lot of practices that we could have engaged in that would have increased retention or had people coming back more and more um charging more money as well as I think big thing would have been

[1:08:03] going really hard in the female niche. There's a lot of stigma surrounding female beauty. we really could have capitalized on that. I was like, I I feel strongly about not doing this. Um, I think some people would say, well, you're creating insecurities in men. I think that insecurities drive change. I think that the recognition that you should work on yourself and improve

[1:08:22] yourself is a good thing uh for society. So my feeling is that the business I've built up to this point, I think if anything, I moved the needle slightly in the positive, but holistically probably haven't really moved the needle much. Um, so this is why you want to go deeper on the UMAX like practical self-improvements, selfactualization. That's the whole vision here. It's like these have not really moved the needle much. I wouldn't I've never done anything that I think moves the needle in a negative direction. Right? Uh now it's obviously subjective and there will be people that disagree with me. I think that the vision for Apex is pretty clearly only

[1:09:01] moving in the positive. Um and also yeah I mean like there's a question like do the ends justify the means right? I don't think I've moved the needle much. If you think that I've moved the needle slightly in the negative I think that at least to some extent the majority of the money that I've made will be invested into something that is

[1:09:17] only moving in the positive. Right. Um, so yeah, I don't know. Like it's it's there's an argument to be made that this is how I justify and rationalize it to myself. I don't think that that's the case. Um, but I want to can I can I say something here? Because it's kind of what I talked about when you first walked in. I'm curious that the thing that made you money was the vanity of looking good or trying to get girls at

[1:09:45] the end of the day, like those things. And that was a far end of the spectrum, right? the same not the same category but like for example here on the internet nuance is hard to portray on the internet. So you have people on both extremes. You have Brian Johnson screaming no alcohol, you have to live perfectly. And then you have the flexers, get make 10K a month, you know, looks, get jacked, have a Rolex, look good. And those are what captures attention on the internet because the nuance is like the truth, but it's not as entertaining. And so I'm curious how you think about Apex as a media engine

[1:10:16] because I love content. This is my game. As a media engine where you're in the middle. Yeah. Do you think that's going to resonate because there's like a pendulum swinging back? Uh, I think so. I'm a big believer in like reversion to the mean. I do think you bring up a great point. I think that I've always been kind of passionate about this general vision for for Apex, right? I built the brand Opticide that was somewhat similar in nature, maybe a little bit more to the scientific end of the spectrum. Um, but I think that the time that I've spent in this space has really enlightened me and

[1:10:43] opened my eyes um to the fact that I don't think that a lot of this is like extremely bad for society, the messaging that exists, but I know that it's not good, right? So, the sort of apps that I've worked on, the messaging that currently exists on social media. Um, and I do think that there's some that's worse, some that's better, what have

[1:11:01] you. Talking about yours, uh, well, I'm talking about the messaging of like just make as much money as possible, right? I think that like that is a little bit worse than like what we do with UMAX, which is like you're doing nothing wrong. You're doing great stuff. I I don't think I don't think you should feel guilt there at

[1:11:14] all. Yeah. So, anyways, now that said, um, yeah, I'm a big believer in reversion to the mean. I think that the mean here is actually how like the majority of people that I know that are living good disciplined lives live, right? They go out on occasion, right? They're not afraid to have a beer, right? Like the

[1:11:35] scientific end would say that you can't. They also don't only prioritize the maximization of money. They do things that they care about. Um they enjoy their work. They prioritize giving back, right? And I think that social media often sensationalizes stuff, right? And so there's the argument that like maybe we're not going to do that as well in social media because we're not pushing a

[1:11:54] sensational narrative. However, um I think that the truth at least should win out here and I think that pushing this narrative will resonate with a lot of people that are kind of sick of the of the allin on one end. What will your content look like? Because I feel like the benefit of Andrew Huberman and Brian Johnson is like at least you know where the north star is and so you know like okay this is the right way to do it. I'm going to not do it every day only, but I will

[1:12:20] implement this every once in a while. So, it kind of cuts out the like so, you know, does that make sense? Yeah. I think that often times uh you can build a really strong community just taking an opposition to a very prevalent or popular antithesis. Yeah. Yeah. The antithesis. So, I mean, not that I'm trying to replicate these people individually, but just as some examples like uh Jordan Peterson, right? he is going against the sort of like liberal woke agenda, what have you. Donald Trump is

[1:12:49] like drain the swamp, right? Um, and I think here we're like, cut the [ __ ] on social media, right? Like let's actually uh let's do things that are going to make us feel and live a more meaningful life rather than just doing the uh like I mentioned, sensationalized thing. Just make money just because money's [ __ ] sick and get jacked because getting jacked is sick, right? let's uh let's prioritize self-actualization because this matters more than any sort of like quantitative materialistic

[1:13:21] metric that that we're currently seeing. And so your plan here is to build the biggest media engine you can possible by spreading the right message to attract the right people. And so you're buying this big house or renting this big house in California to basically make it a content house like the old Faze house in

[1:13:38] a way. Yes. Exactly. And the the sort of person that we're looking for is the sort of person who maybe feels lost and feels like they haven't been super disciplined or maybe social media has led them astray and they're feeling like maybe they're not all that they can be. And I think that we can provide a message and sort of uh philosophical framework to help them achieve what they want to achieve and have that internal feeling that they're doing the right thing. I have a number of friends that are working like pretty normal jobs and maybe they're doing like really good things for the world, right? And but

[1:14:11] they just feel like so insignificant because they see this [ __ ] online about kids their age that are making so much money and and I'm like I promise you life is not that much [ __ ] better on this other side. Especially when all you're prioritizing is money. You're looking up at these guys be like they've got it made. But then these guys are just looking up and like they've got it made right and there's no peace anywhere. Um and instead of looking at people being like this is a very virtuous person who does good by their community and lives a fulfilling life. It's like we just have

[1:14:47] this shiny object syndrome uh where where we're just like just one more [ __ ] you know doubling my income then I'll be happy and it's it's just not the case. Yeah. I think at least in my friend group out here everyone has reverted back to the mean. We all made our first million at 23 24 maybe a little earlier lived out all those in social media projections very insecure. It was a deep driver of that then went through like a dark phase of like spirituality of like feeling empty and then completely reverting back on our own. It's like an internal path. I I can't tell if that's

[1:15:21] like naturally baked into us or if that's just the circumstances we're being put in because of social media. Reversion to the mean. Yeah. We all revert back to the mean of how you're actually supposed to live. But you have to you were my medic doing mymetic desire once you had that money. You were just doing what you saw you're

[1:15:33] supposed to do once you make money. And the danger here is that like I don't think like the reality is that the majority of people that would want to try to like make the millions aren't going to be able to. And as a result, they're going to there will be a tendency to go through life like feeling as if they didn't achieve all that they could, not knowing that like even making like a bunch of money when you're just looking for the pursuit of money isn't going to provide a fulfilling life, right? Like if if you could just push this message of like it's not as cool as you think it

[1:16:05] is. Do the things that are going to make you happy on a day-to-day basis. Do the things that are going to help you provide for your community. Be a good friend. be a good family member, work out to feel healthy and feel empowered. Like that is a good life, at least to me. Um, I am so torn on this advice. So, I would love to hear your perspective because you're in it, too. Cuz it's like it's so hard cuz I made a lot of money, but not doing something that I was like deeply passionate about. It's what drove me. And then that money gave me the

[1:16:32] ability to not have to work to self-reflect and then now be like more like spiritual in what I pursue. And that has directly affected how much money I make. Like I'm like scared to make money. not scared, but like I don't like push hard. And so it's like did I get complacent because I made the money and then I went on a also a spiritual journey and now is that a new excuse to not like be a savage business guy? It's

[1:16:53] like a whole mind [ __ ] at both sides. And so it's like then do you give the advice but now I'm happy and I'm working on a business. I make a lot of money and I'm happy with what I do. I'm passionate about it. But then do I give that advice to the

[1:17:04] 21-year-old version of myself? So yeah, I think it's a great point. Um I think about things from like the macro perspective, not just you as an individual, right? Because you are not the same as the next person without a doubt. Right? Um now I like the idea that like we should do things where even if we fail, we come out on top, right? So for example, it's like if you work on something, let's say you try to do Only Fans management, right? You're trying to manage Only Fans creators and you spend a year grinding at it. If you succeed, great. You come out with money, but it's like at what

[1:17:40] cost? You're not going to feel good about the money that you made. You're not gonna have gained like really valuable skills, right? Whereas, if you fail, you come out with [ __ ] nothing. It was a complete waste of time. Uh, and you still feel like [ __ ] right? Now, flip this. If you pursue something that you care about, maybe you want to figure out how to, maybe it's in the uh STEM field, right? Maybe you want to

[1:18:01] develop some new open source software. Maybe you just want to build a software that's really valuable for people. or you want to uh figure out how to produce a novel chemical. I don't know much about chemistry. Um or it doesn't have to be STEM. It could be anything. Maybe you really care about pets, right? And you want to be a vet. Now, these are pursuits where like if you succeed, great. Maybe you make money, maybe fame, maybe notoriety, maybe you just feel really good about what you did. In addition to the fact that it will have been a valuable pursuit because you're p it's something that you care about,

[1:18:35] right? As opposed to the only fan side, you succeed and you now hold on real quick. Go ahead. If you fail in that pursuit, you will at least know that you spent your time pushing for something that that you cared about to begin with, right? And so that's kind of how I view Apex, too. I'm like, there are other things that could

[1:18:52] make me more money. Um, or other things where I may might have a higher probability of success, but even if I fail here, it will have been worth it because it's something that I really cared about to begin with. But there is the upside of this being a multi-ight figure, nine figure potential play. Like that is on the plate.

[1:19:08] Oh yeah. Yeah. Like that like obviously that's not the clear intent of like this is why I'm doing it, but it is a variable that is in the mix for Yeah. I'd rather pursue a big play where I care about what I'm doing in the process than there are other 8 n figure plays I could pursue where I don't give

[1:19:23] a [ __ ] right? Yeah, 100%. Even though this one has a lower probability to sex or to success on paper to investors and if I were to just 100% prioritize building consumer apps, juicing cash, that's just like I don't know uninteresting to me. This is a personal question that just came up as you were saying it. Do you think there are people that only fans management could be their thing, could

[1:19:44] be their genuine passion? Or do you think that's a literal moral ethical like written in the universe? I think I think that they're I would wager that there probably exist people, but I don't think that that's their most evolved form of self, right? Like it might be their passion at this point in time. I think that Do you think someone could rationalize

[1:20:06] it as being like good for the world? You can rationalize anything. Um, my opinion is that it's not good for the world and kind of goes against like Yeah, I don't know. There there are a ton of ways to rationalize it. We're actually providing guys that otherwise wouldn't be able to talk to girls. They get to now speak to girls and I'm helping facilitate this and now they're

[1:20:24] not going to kill themselves. Yeah. Right. Um, so there's a way to rationalize pretty much anything. I personally disagree with it. I I agree with you. I'm on the same page as you. But I'm curious. Do you think that there's like a universal or ethical like uh karmic like I'm so this is like a super deep thought but like is there like a karmic consequence to doing that objectively even if you but if or is it simply based on how you feel about it like if you genuinely think you're doing a service you're helping these guys talk to girls like this is like nobody thinks this way

[1:20:53] but I've never lived any in anybody else's shoes right however what I have experienced and what I think other people experienced too is that when you do something that you know is not good You feel that in your soul. Exactly. Right. And maybe there are people that don't feel that in their soul and maybe there are

[1:21:12] people that like truly believe right. And there but in terms of like universally I'd like to think that like there is a universal good and that they are not in line with it. But who knows like I haven't I haven't lived their life in their body. Right. That's very interesting. Like is it the subconscious way you feel about yourself doing it that affects your karma or is it there is there a universal set of bad yeah that is a very interesting I like I like to believe the latter I agree I would also say that is not the best way to make money and there will be

[1:21:43] karmic results to it but besides the point okay so I'm curious then you're trying to build like this media conglomerate or group of people like a cultural brand of people with creators in there are you like going to like recruit specific specific influencers and like are they going to come out and live with you? Yeah. Yeah, it's a great question. So, the original co-founding team is going to be myself, my older brother who would work with me on UMAX, my uh like very tight friend for a while, Jesse Abed, coming out from New York. He's absolutely killing it in his B2B sales job. Um like I don't want to speak on

[1:22:21] his behalf, but like high high six figures. Um and he's leaving to work on this. And then we've got another person in the pipeline to be determined. Um, so we're all going to live out there, create content together. Um, we'll make content on like, you know, working out, like various, not just like weightlifting, but like running and doing cardio and doing uh, you know, stretching, flexibility, etc. Things that are going to make your body feel good and you feel high energy, eating food that empowers you, while also balancing this with like it's okay to have a [ __ ] sandwich sometimes, right? Um, and then yeah, we've got I've got

[1:22:59] connection to a number of influencers I think that exist in the realm of this self-improvement space. So hopefully going to have a good number of them come out on occasion um kind of create content with us like a we get the Apex House, that sort of thing. Um, so yeah, I think that that'll it'll be a lot of

[1:23:19] fun. Do you see people being like each person like just making their own style of content? like everyone will be slightly different like this is the this is the podcast guy this is the vlog guy this is the similar to like in stoicism how there's like the um or even in religion right um there's like the overarching highle philosophy right and then in regards to our own I guess practice of it everyone's going to have their own form right maybe I really like to run and lift whereas someone else might be really into swimming Right. But like the core principle here is like we all like

[1:23:56] exercise. Maybe I'm really into studying physics whereas someone else wants to uh like I mentioned maybe they care a lot about pets. They want to become a vet veterinarian, right? Like different people have their own professions, interests, etc. And so uh I'm a believer in all of it. Like I think everyone should be able to practice however they like. Um, so long as it's I guess you know you but it's not just like anyone do whatever they want sort of thing. It's not like someone if someone on the team was like dude I feel really strongly that managing only fans creators is sick. I'd be like I feel like this is kind of not

[1:24:31] in the health self-improvement. Yeah. It's like it's how religions philosophies work in general. You have the high level uh that everyone kind of believes in. Uh but then practice how you like. So it's like the self-expression of their own. Exactly. So long as like everyone is kind of in line with like self-actualization and trying to live the best life that they can uh mind,

[1:24:52] body, spirit, right? Uh I encourage everyone to do whatever whatever they like. And so it's interesting how you're saying you're blending media with free apps. What is the thought process behind the free apps? Yeah. So I think that one of the issues with a lot of communities is that and similar to like kind of the what I was talking about earlier with UMAX is you don't get personalization. It's very difficult to get uh personalization, right? For example, let's say that we have a a thousand people. Let's just take some system where there's a thousand people in a community and you have one person who's kind of the head

[1:25:23] of it. I can't really provide the customized knowledge or uh you know recommendations whatever based on every individual's circumstances. But what you can do is you can build applications that can help the individual customize their training. For example, right? We could have a fitness app where it's not just optimize workout for hypertrophy, but maybe you say, "Okay, I really want to prioritize my cardio, but I also want to do some

[1:25:49] strength training and what have you." And you take in all these different variables, and then we can produce a custom fitness plan that's about making you feel better, right? Most fitness apps right now are pretty fragmented in it's like there's a running app, there's a weightlifting app, there's a yoga app, right? Not a holistic exercise application. M and we can provide these custom

[1:26:09] routines. I can build this, right? Um or nutrition, right? Uh it's not just about calorie tracking or like not just about the health of the or the quality of the individual food, right? But given what you are looking to improve in your life, how can we help you build a custom nutrition plan? Um maybe you want to improve your skills or knowledge in some uh occupational domain, right? we can have you input what you're looking to improve and we can build this kind of custom

[1:26:38] formulation. So, it's not only obviously it's a good app that helps people, but also it's a way for you to like build up the media empire, then capture their contact info and like have them as users and Yeah. I mean, it's less like strategic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's more like just like I just think about apps that I would want to use. So many of these I mean all of

[1:26:57] these [ __ ] apps cost money nowadays. Everyone knows it. You download any app and you're like, "All right, I'm gonna have to pay to use this. This sucks. uh people understand like Instagram, social media and whatnot is free, but any tool app it's like you got to pay. Um so I'm like it'll be cool to build this and just like give it to the people and then if they want to consume Apex content and engage with us, engage with the community, great. If they don't,

[1:27:21] that's okay. The thing about I've noticed is one, you're really intentional. Like you like know why you're doing things, but then you don't overthink it and you think very differently. like you like like it's like this is like the mainstream way of thinking. You take like a two two degree like different angle to it and that gives you like over time a big gap between people. Is that something you like intentionally

[1:27:42] developed? Yeah. I don't know. I think that I've always been pretty curious. I read a decent amount. Um I think thinking from like first principles is good. I don't view myself as some like crazy visionary. Um, but I do think that I'm a fairly like uh fairly good at deductive reasoning, beginning with the end in mind. Um, I think that I I think a lot about mimemetic desire and how that applies to not just like what we want, but what we think, right? And and how we view the world. And I think that if you go about your life taking like no uh nothing for absolutely right anything

[1:28:29] that you're told like don't take it at face value. You need to uh kind of figure out how to come to these conclusions yourself. Guess when I was young I asked why a lot. I was very rebellious. Like teachers did not like me. Um, and I think early on that was pretty difficult, chaotic, but I think over time uh was very valuable in I think informing the way that I think about Was it taught to you or has it always

[1:28:59] been in you? Yeah, it's interesting. Um, I don't know. I feel like it's kind of always been in me. It was definitely taught to some extent and my father did a good job with that. Um, but like even with my parents like they were, you know, I was difficult as a kid. You're an independent thinker.

[1:29:19] Yeah. You think PE that's so interesting because that's like it's almost like that's something that people that are I don't want to say lesser evolved, but like you're mentally less aware of your surroundings since like you have like this light bulb moment because you're taught by school to conform. The whole point of the school system is to teach conformity, to be here on this time, to listen, be quiet when you're sitting, raise your hand when you want to speak. And you're a bad student if you don't follow that. But all of the exceptional top performing people are like you in my opinion that I've met here on this podcast. And it's

[1:29:47] like that. Yeah. And so it's like if you don't do well in school, it could be an indicator of a different way of thinking. I don't want to say it's an indicator of success because that's just bad grades, but it is like that type of getting in trouble can be positive for your outcome in life. And to trust that and to lean into that if you're a kid, I think being intentional with everything that you do and having, as I'd mentioned earlier, an internal locus of control. um believing that like you really do have the power to do whatever it is that you want and to figure things

[1:30:18] out and to be willing to sacrifice and maybe um sacrifice in that like after I graduated school I didn't have any income at all. I was getting loans from my brother for groceries but that's what produced uh positive long long-term returns or long-term returns. Uh now flip side, I think thinking differently too. It's like often times especially like in school is a great example of this. When you think in line with everybody else, uh you're going to get rewarded for that. You get the good grades, right? Whereas if you kind of won't accept what the teacher has to say or you try to uh think differently, you

[1:30:57] might sacrifice in the short term grades for example here. But then in the long term um it'll enable you to I think think more logically and rationally uh rather than just accepting everything that you hear as a foreground conclusion. Yeah. I think the thing that helped me most was saying if you uh if you accept what everybody else accepts or you do whatever they do, you'll get the same

[1:31:17] results as Right. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas if you think the same way as everyone else, you will have the same ideas, right, when you decide what to build. But if you try to think differently, then you can get the different ideas which produce the different results, right? Didn't you write like a book when you

[1:31:35] were seven or something? Yeah. So when I was seven years old, I wrote an ebook titled How to Make Money as a seven-year-old. Um, from a very young age, uh, I've always been fascinated by entrepreneurship. I've always been fascinated by systems, right? I really like figuring out how things work and then figuring out how to produce uh, positive returns. And so, I started like investing in the stock market when I was seven years old. Every day I would bring the Wall Street Journal. I would uh they had like the stock prices. This is when I didn't know how to use like technology really um or like I didn't have like a phone with

[1:32:20] them to search up stock market. And so I would bring the little uh newspaper on the bus and I would just go through my favorite stocks. It was like MSFT, Microsoft, and INTC, Intel. Um and I would track them every single day. And I was like, I wanna I want to make money to invest in the stock market. So my dad would pay me like 10 cents a rock to pick up these rocks that we had in the yard and I would mow lawns and I started doing all these different little things

[1:32:47] and I'm like what about the internet? And so I uh I was watching I was consuming like the kind of like course guru style content from the age of seven just like figuring out all the different ways the internet works and I was like I stumbled upon ebooks and I was like how can I learn about how to make money? So I start to find how to make money as a seven-year-old. I search it up try to

[1:33:13] find this ebook and it doesn't exist. And I'm like, "Seveny need to know this. We need to popularize this information." So, I write a book, How to Make Money as a Seven-Year. And I never ended up publishing it, unfortunately. But I'm like, you can sell candy in school and you can mow lawns. Like, most seven-year-olds probably aren't allowed to operate a lawn mower. Um, but yeah, that was that was really the start. The reason I ask is because when you're seven, this isn't like I feel like when you're in high school or college, it could be there's greater there's like you want to get girls, you

[1:33:47] want to look cool, you want status, but when you're seven, you're not really thinking about status by any means. So, what was the driver? Is this like where because this like this is a form of at that age, it feels like that purity is like a form of self-improvement. Yeah, 100%. Um, I think the world has always been really fascinating to me figuring out how things work. And although I didn't know exactly why at the time, I knew that the world was run by money. And that when we would go purchase things from the store, we paid

[1:34:21] money. And I would hear online they talk about the economy and the stock market. And I always hear the term money, money, money. And I'm like, okay. And it's mimedic in nature, but I'm like, okay, if if money is so important, um, then if I get money, I can do the things that I want to do and I can, uh, live whatever life I want to live and I can have, uh, whatever I want. And so, very early on, it became clear to me that money was important. And over the years, I started to realize that it was really just a

[1:34:56] tool and an abstraction of resources. and that if you acquire some of it, then it enables you to kind of shift the world in the direction that you want it to. Um, so yeah, I mean from the age of seven, it took me a little while to start making my first real amount of money. Um, but thankfully it's kind of

[1:35:16] all worked out. I'm interested where the self-improvement, Have you ever read the book Mastery by Robert Green? Yeah, I'm familiar with it. Where did the self-improvement natural interest? Because I feel like that is self-improvement. Yes, money is a tool, but at that age it's like unless money was like a problem at your house was when you were a kid. Was it something your dad was bringing up a lot like to your mom or something that you

[1:35:34] like observed? My dad was obsessed with self-improvement. He would run five miles every day. He worked out every day like lifting weights. He went to Princeton undergrad and then Harvard MBA. Damn. He was an entrepreneur. Probably the the hardest working person that I know. He was dealt a bad hand. He uh has a neurodeenerative condition, SPMS, secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. He's uh barely able to walk now. It impacts it's neurodeenerative. He also has some other stuff going on that I'd rather not get into. Um around the age of 12 I kind of this is when the condition really started to take hold. Um and it was

[1:36:28] for the past 11 years it's it's neurodeenerative and kind of um and so I saw that the self-improvement mindset embodied in him from a very young age and I also saw what being dealt about bad hand does like he still gets to the gym every day even though it's very hard Um, and so yeah, this really I think really opened my eyes what it means to to be able to live and what it means to be able to

[1:37:03] improve yourself. And I think that we all have an obligation not just to the world but to ourselves to do everything that we can to live the most fulfilling life that we can and to become the best version of ourselves. I think it's Socrates has the quote it's like along the lines of um it's a shame for a man to not be able to experience the strength and beauty of which his body is capable something along those lines. And I really believe that and I think that's what makes me so passionate about uh living it and also attempting to prophesize it or preach it to the world. So you saw it so

[1:37:46] early and how important it was and even now his resilience to be able to keep going. Exactly. Incredibly resil incredibly hardworking. Um and so yeah like financially we had done pretty well up until I was 12 but then uh due to a number of factors kind of uh but then pretty good timing like right as I started right as we had to sell the house whatever. Um that is when the businesses started working. So like when I moved home after college, house on the market, older

[1:38:22] brother giving me loans for groceries. Um that's interesting timing. Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty. Someone religious right there. Yeah. So So you you kind of came up in a not necessarily like a privileged environment, but like like save like taken care of financially. Yeah. Exactly. But then due to like physical health issues, it was pretty wild.

[1:38:44] You couldn't work, couldn't whatever. And so then you kind of have like this like not culture shock but like financial like storm in a way. Your life is changing. Perfect timing honestly. So now I'm able to, you know, give back to my parents. Um, is that what you said you're doing with the money that you made? Yeah. So, uh, decent proportions is going to Apex. Another proportion is

[1:39:03] going to my parents. It's probably like two- fifths, maybe a little bit over two- fifths Apex. Uh, two-fifths parents. one fifth me. So you kind of like stepped in as like the main financial provider for your family. Yeah. Damn, bro. Do you think that that contributed towards your It's interesting that you were trying to make money when you were seven, but do you think that contributed towards your like do you feel did you feel a sense of responsibility when you were starting in

[1:39:27] college? Like did you see that coming? Yeah, it was like I said it was from when I was like an early teenager. Um, yeah, I saw it coming, but yeah, like I remember having conversations with my brothers being like, "All right, we're going to have to like figure this out." Now, that said, my grandparents are like they have

[1:39:49] enough to be able to help as well. Uh, so I I don't want to push the message that like we were like really poor or like had it really bad because that's not the case. Um, but definitely a period of struggle. Interesting. It's very fascinating from a psychology perspective. Yeah. Yeah, it is. But that is like the main driver of Apex now in kind of like the It's interesting that all your apps

[1:40:09] were still self-improvement based too. Oh, 100%. All of them. Even talking to girls is still self-improvement like how to talk in some sense. It's uh I think that it's all along the lines of I think it's just something that I understand pretty fundamentally and uh so as a result I'm going to think through different ideas to build in the space as well as I think I'm going to have success. Uh seeing as I like to think of myself as somewhat of

[1:40:34] an expert on the topic. Yeah. What's exciting you the most about this? Uh about what? Apex. Apex. Um I think what's exciting me the most is that I success is not guaranteed, right? But as I mentioned earlier, I've had the best results on on projects that I work on where I become increasingly confident as I think about it, as I begin to work on it. Apex is this like to the max. I I uh I like to say like if we can change a million lives and make zero dollars, that's a much more preferable outcome to making millions of dollars and changing zero lives. So, I think that we have a

[1:41:19] really good opportunity to do the former. Um, and maybe it's somewhat egotistical, but I like to think that I have like a that that my view on self-improvement and what I think that it should be, I think that it is better than the majority of what we see on social media right now. And I think I've seen the context of my own life that any conversations I have with friends and whatnot, I like to think that I'm able to offer valuable advice to help them improve. And now doing this on a mass scale, I think just enables uh outcomes of a magnitudes greater than what I've

[1:41:57] been able to achieve as a friend or family member. You said that you uh were building in public for a little bit. You had a Minecraft channel back in the day. So, is creating content something you've always wanted to do? I think yeah, I I think that it's uh like I said, like I've always liked to like help those around me in whatever way I can, like trying to help them start businesses or like giving advice

[1:42:20] for weightlifting or whatever it may be. And to me, like creating content is just the ability to influence on a mass scale um to be able to help people on a mass scale. now doing like Minecraft and whatnot. I think that that was like a little bit more fun in nature. Um, but yeah, and that's why I say like it is I think just the idea of creating content as a whole is like somewhat narcissistic, egotistical in nature. I don't think that is necessarily negative if you're pushing out a positive message, but it is like my message is really valuable and therefore everyone needs to hear it,

[1:42:55] right? So, um I guess yeah, I definitely don't have like a like no ego at all. Uh and I'm like willing to accept that so long as I think I'm pushing out something that will help people and help society. Yeah. That's like the checklist you have to hit first. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Like you like that's a I know people that are passionate about helping society, whatever, but they have no interest in content. They're like that's just like I don't really care about putting myself out there like that. So, what type of content do you plan on

[1:43:23] making for yourself at least? Yeah. So I think a lot of content about there's like the basics which is I think I view health as a pillar. So I think this is exercising, this can be running, weightlifting, whatever, giving recommendations. This is nutrition. And I think a really um something that doesn't really exist as much in this self-improvement niche, but I think is

[1:43:42] incredibly important is time in nature. Um like I had said when I was working on UMX, when I work on any of my projects, I spend a lot of time going on walks and forests and whatnot just thinking. And I think that this is incredible for not only cognitive stimulation but mental health as well. And so this is one of the reasons that we're getting a house like in between LA and San Diego on the middle of nowhere is I think it can be very

[1:44:05] uh very valuable to thinking clearly. And I think that it can improve health significantly. Is this from like a subconscious perspective like not taking in inputs and just like trusting your inner in the book deep work Cal Newport speaks about this study that was done. Take two groups. One of them, you have them walk through a city while they're thinking through some difficult problem. This could be mathematic, this could be uh literature, whatever it may be. You have them walk through a city while they think about it. The other group, you have them walk through a forest. The people that and then you have the control group that does nothing. The

[1:44:39] people that go on the walk in the city outperform the control group by a little bit, but the people that walk through nature significantly outperform both groups in their results. I think that nature is healing. It's destimulating. It gives us an opportunity to kind of reflect and our subconscious to uh expand and um it gives our subconscious opportunity to expand in its ability uh that we don't get from just going on a walk in the middle of the city where we have all the

[1:45:13] stimulus, lights, people, cars, noises. Um, so yeah, I think that that is something that I want to want to preach a lot. I I think it's like probably the number one belief I've come to now. And it's something that you don't it doesn't do well on the internet if you teach people. It doesn't like it's not popular

[1:45:30] amongst like the everyday person. It's not flashy. They think it's all about like they need more. They need to take more in. When really it's like you just need to give like one command or two like ideas to your subconscious and then just let it sit and then let it process and then reflect on it and then work towards it. everything else is like noise and confusing your subconscious at

[1:45:47] the end of the day. This is why I also think that working on things that you're passionate about is very valuable because your subconscious never lies to you, right? If you try to force yourself to work on something you don't care about, like you might be able to consciously work on it, but your subconscious doesn't give a [ __ ] Whereas when you work on the things that

[1:46:03] you care about, it's always spinning. It's like give me more of this. It loves it. It's soulfilling and you're not jumping around looking for anything else to do. You're like only focused on that. Everyone's felt that way with homework. Like subject. It's like it's mind-numbing, right? It's mind-numbing. Not in that consciously you can still do it, but like your true mind, like your subconscious is just

[1:46:23] tapped out. You can almost feel like your body just wants to like push away from the page. It's interesting. Exactly. Well, dude, you're one of the brightest minds I've ever talked to. So, I appreciate you coming out here. I don't think I'm deserving of that compliment, but it's been a pleasure speaking to you, too. You're a clear thinker. You articulate it well, and I think that is like the sign of intelligence. So, I appreciate

[1:46:39] you coming on here sharing everything. You didn't really hold anything back. Where can people find you, brother? Blake AndersonW on Instagram, Twitter. Um, yeah, that's probably the best place to contact me. If you want to send me an email, uh, blakeex.inc. This is the new company. Um, and then if you want to check out Apex on Instagram,

[1:47:01] it's apex.improve. We do not have any content. It just says coming soon, but if you follow, you'll be able to see what comes soon. Guys, if you align with self-improvement, self-actualization, you want to be a content creator, seems like a cool opportunity, you're ambitious, you're smart, good on camera, hit him up, guys. Follow Blake on Twitter. Super

[1:47:22] interesting, dude. Thank you so much. Hell yeah.

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