Chasing My Crush Around the Globe

What's up guys, welcome back to Views. We are back with another pod. Jason, Natalie, and John is here actually currently in the room. This is a big deal. Yo, before we start, I had a really good, um, I had a good video idea I wanted to pitch you, Anjay. Okay, imagine this. Yeah, okay, this is like a series idea that I want to do on YouTube, not now, but maybe like in a year. I'm turning 30, so I want to do something that's like saying goodbye to my 20s. My favorite birthday theme that people do when they turn 30 is a funeral for their 20s. I think that's really fun and creative. There's a casket. Everyone dresses up in all black with a suit and tie.

Do you get in the casket?

I get in the casket and they're all partying. No, no, no.

Have you seen this?

People do this?

I've seen it once, like rest in peace. I think someone did it on TikTok or something, but I had a fun video idea. So it's a series, 12 countries in 12 months. It's kind of cool.

It's really fun.

So I live in a country for a full month.

Oh, wow.

Every month is a different country.

Starting on your 30th birthday? Yeah.

Or maybe it's like, maybe it's 6 countries in 6 months or 6 continents in 6 months leading up to my birthday, whatever it is.

Why not 7?

Well, Antarctica is just like, I don't want to be there for a month. I don't know how much fun I could have there, but I kind of like the idea idea. Like, I hate traveling. It's not—

I hate this.

That's like, that's very a fucked up way of putting it. I'm just like, I don't have the energy to travel.

Yeah.

But I think if I was at a place for a really long time and like got like my rhythm there, that would be really cool. Like, just like imagine like a video where like, you know, you're like 2 weeks in and like we've met people, we have a friend group now. Like, take, uh, what's a good example? Um, I don't know.

I don't know.

Poland. Warsaw. We're in Poland, right? And we're there for a month.

Yeah.

We get like a really fun house. Like maybe partner with like an Airbnb or something.

So fun.

And stay for a month and really get to know the locals and like really make a video that's 100% dedicated about that country and the vibe and the fun of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know.

What do you think?

Love, love that idea.

Really?

It's really fun. Yeah, of course. Are you going to do— you wouldn't do it though. You can't leave this house.

Yeah, that's the tough part is like, like you're going to be—

you're going to Airbnb in Poland.

I think a year is tough. Well, also just, I mean, I love the idea. I'm obviously all for it. I would love to do that.

It's like the dream. You know, you love to go places.

I know, but my other thing is like, you also are working at the same time. Like, you can't just be like in—

thank you for saying that, that we're working at the same time, Natalie, because, uh, literally yesterday you were trying to fucking leave once again for a weekend.

Fashion Week.

She's trying to go to Fashion Week in New York. There's a cute boy there that's having a party. Yeah, yeah.

And Natalie like needs to go.

I've noticed this.

She's been chasing this one guy. Yeah, like literally around the United States. Like, really? Yeah, it's like F1 Vegas, we have to go! He has a party here.

And it's like the— it's, it's Crazy, because it's like, first of all, is he special?

Yeah, I think so.

I think he's a handsome guy.

I was asking Natalie.

Yeah, nobody fucking asked your opinion.

Okay, no, no, I like to hear David's.

I think he's a handsome guy.

Yeah.

Yep, he's very handsome. He's definitely my type, and he's like very much intertwined in our industry. Like, he definitely—

like, he's rich is what she's trying to say.

No, I actually have no idea.

He's loaded.

Um, Stimy.

It's Stimy? I love Stimy. Stimy's a catch for sure.

He's funny.

But it's not him.

He's older.

He has—

he's—

it's tough.

We were sitting with a bunch of our LA friends yesterday, like on the couch, and everyone was— it was really funny because it's like there are LA friends, like not like in a negative way, but these are the people that we go out with, right? Like most of the time we see them when we go out.

And like almost all 3 or 4 of them at the same time went, oh no, we need to find love.

And I go, and I just go, you guys are all the problem. You're the problem.

You're the problem.

You're the problem.

And I'm the problem. We all live here and we all, we all just fucking, we all like just like gaslight.

We complain about gaslight LA.

We're like, LA is the problem. It's like, no, You are LA, I am LA.

And it was really funny to have that conversation.

And what'd they say?

They were pissed.

They were pissed. They were offended.

I love straight talking, Dave.

They were offended and I was just like, who are we kidding?

Like, why are you guys pretending like it's easy for us to do this anymore? Like, we have fallen, we have drank the Kool-Aid of the Los Angeles dating system and it's just, it's really, really, really difficult.

I was talking to one of the guys.

There was one guy there.

He's a gay guy.

And I was like, and then he started talking. He's like, well, this one guy I'm seeing currently. And I'm like, well, there's a problem.

So you're seeing a guy, but you're already kind of like in your eye. Checked out.

Yeah.

In your head, you've already checked out. I'm like, that is the epitome of what it is.

There's too many options, too many things.

Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, I know we've talked about this on the pod a lot of times, but it was really funny that yesterday for the first time, I, it was like, it felt like there was like the pillars of Los Angeles sitting here and I was like, this system has to change from the inside. We have to make changes right here.

You have to be the change you want to see in the world.

Yeah. Be the change you want to see in the LA dating scene. I mean, John, you've had incredible success in the LA dating scene. How the fuck did you do that?

By being a normal person, working a normal job.

Yeah.

And we just took the normal job away from you.

Saturday and Sunday off.

Wait, so where did you meet? Where did you meet your girlfriend, Julia?

Um, it was a dating app.

Okay, why did—

why— how, how could that possibly take you that long?

Because I had to think which one.

Which dating app?

I think it was— I think it was Hinge.

There's no way. It's like multiple. You have to know which one it is. You met your girlfriend, you've been dating for multiple years. There's no way you don't know which dating app.

I mean, that's crazy, bro. Why would I—

I mean, first off, why would you know where you met your girlfriend of 2, 3 years? What are you talking about? Obviously You know if it's Hinge, Bumble, or fucking—

No, I mean, I mean, I haven't used that in so long.

Okay, so it was on Hinge, I think.

And how—

where did you guys first hang out?

Oh, I think it was like— I— we don't really know which day. I think it was like after— I just remembered I was like really low in the dumps. I just— I got COVID and I was supposed to finish the Zilla transformation and it got pushed back a month.

Oh, this was at your peak body?

Yeah. And remember—

no way you met it like peak Zilla?

Wow.

Peak depression, kind of.

So do you associate the Zealot transformation with depression?

No, no, for that one, for the ending, yes, because I was so over it. I was just so—

yeah, I saw you talk about on your pod with Ilya how— yeah, just kind of crazy that you guys were being so open about it.

Um, well, it was—

Ilya was like, I pushed you too hard. Like, he was like— Ilya said this one thing that I thought was really— I was like, you're saying this on the internet? Ilya was like, yeah, there were times Jon would ask me about like—

because Jon, what was—

how many calories were you allowed to eat a day?

At the end?

Yeah.

I mean, I think we got down to like 1,800 calories.

Like 1,800 calories.

So John would call Ilya and be like, I can only eat this amount of calories. How much do you think this is? And Ilya on the podcast just admit, he's like, yeah, a lot of times John would call and I would just make up a calorie count and I would add 200 to 300 calories to it just so he was like actually losing more weight. Oh my God.

So Ilya would call—

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

That's what was said.

That is exactly what was said.

Okay, okay.

I think there's something that like— No, that's what was said and I could not believe it.

But I think the way it looks when you and Illya are talking, it kind of looks like you guys are shooting the shit. So no one really batted an eye, but I saw that my mouth was on the ground.

I was like, first of all, that's crazy.

Yeah, that's insane.

No, no, we did do like caloric estimates and like we were pretty much on the dime. Like we were within like 100.

On the dot. Yeah.

On the dot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But still, I mean, $1,800 was definitely—

Yeah, that was crazy.

Way too low.

Yeah.

For the amount of activity.

I think that's where I— that's where I like I started to get really stressed out about the Zealot transformations. When I saw John losing a lot of weight, I was like, this isn't you. That's when I was like, go out there and fucking whatever you got to eat.

I ordered—

he's kind of back on it now. He's like trying to eat healthy again. I ordered Taco Bell a couple of nights ago and we were sitting on my bed and I was like, you want a taco? And he's like, no, no, I'm good. I was like, John, are you sure? And he's like, yeah, I'm fine. And I just threw it to him anyway.

And he goes, thank you.

So I don't know. Yeah, that's, that's, that's a different rabbit hole I don't want to go down. But yeah.

Okay.

So you met, you met Julia during Pika Transformation. And when did you, how long, how long till you guys started like officially dating?

I'd say like almost a year.

Almost a year. You're like really bizarre though. You've like never really been single. You like relationship hop pretty quickly.

No, I didn't.

Yes, you did. That's not true. Yes, it is.

I didn't date anyone for during the whole Zelo transformation at all.

When you met Julia, did you feel like you were catfishing her in a way? Because you met at your lowest body weight.

Were you trying to explain like, this isn't me, baby?

No, I would have been really upfront about it. Like when I met Naveen, I was in shape and I was pretty upfront about it. I was like, I don't know how long this will last.

That's really funny. Yeah.

And obviously I bloomed back.

But yeah, that's really— it's really scary.

Really scary.

That was like so hard.

Yeah. It's also like impossible to stay shredded.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, impossible.

Like, you have to, like, stay focused, like, forever. So, like, there was a moment I hooked up with a girl and, like, where I wasn't like— you could still see, like, 2 or 4 pack.

Yeah.

I was really losing it.

When was this?

Yesterday? Yeah. And she's like, I can't wait to see your body. And I'm like, I think my shirt's going to stay on today. Wow.

That would really— that would hurt.

Yeah, it sends you into like— yeah, it sucks. And it does suck that that was like the last thing that I did that was like— that I feel like anybody that's come up— that comes up to me on the street that knows me knows that video from me. Um, so like a lot of people, like a lot, a lot of people— 87— no, 60% of people that see me, the first thing they say is, good job on that body transformation. And I'm just like, thanks. Join the club, baby.

It's gone now.

Join the club. It's not like it's It's, it's, and it's not that it's like led me into like a very healthy like lifestyle.

Yeah.

And like Natalie and I were talking about this the other day, like, yeah, Natalie, Taco Bell's not healthy. Yes. But like, dude, I'm, I played pickle for 5, 6 hours yesterday.

Yeah. Okay.

Like, it's like when I burn 3,000 calories, like I'll reward myself like with like a good like 2,000 calorie meal.

I got a whole pickleball thing to go on with you.

What is it?

Watching you go, what? This whole pickleball thing out here is outta control.

I know, I know.

I was a, I was a way—

what can you compare it to? What is it?

I can't compare it to anything. It's, it's baffling. I was—

it's hostile.

It's, it's hostile. It's a lot of things. It's crazy. The hierarchy is crazy.

Yeah.

So Naveen was away this weekend.

Yeah.

And that— so I was around. Okay. And I, I— it was fun. I had a good time. I was like— so I came over on Friday and—

yeah, you hung out like way more than you normally would.

You were just like sitting here. I was like, nice.

Oh, I love it. I love it. And, and I had a great time. And, and— but, but what's going on with pickleball is just so outrageous because David's very good. He's, he's excellent at pickleball.

Yes.

I mean, he's really good. You might almost be pro level, right? You've played in some tournaments, you've held your own, right?

I'm a little below pro.

What happened when you played in the tournament?

I lost.

But you held your own.

I've only had— I've only played one tournament and I won it.

And you won it. Was it with pros?

No.

No.

And then the pro tournament I played, I played doubles, it was mixed doubles.

Yeah.

And we lost, but we like—

You held your own.

Yeah.

You weren't embarrassed out there.

No, it's not like if I—

if I stepped on a pro tennis court, it'd be like I'm not scoring a point against any of the pros. Like, pickle's not like that.

Yeah, well, so what goes on out here, and I'm sure you've seen it, Nat, I'm sure you, John, you live it, it's David playing the guys in pickleball and he's too good. So then he'll play, he plays two guys at once.

Yeah, yeah.

And beats them every time. He gives them leads, sometimes 8 points, and, and it's, it's maddening because the outcome is the same every fucking time. Yeah, David wins. He'll give a 9-point lead, 11 to 9. And then the funniest part is he'll get 2 guys out there, they're like, "All right, play me," and they won't be doing good, and he'll start yelling at them for not being good enough.

"You fucking idiot!

Are you fucking serious, John?" It's like, I almost want— The funniest line was, he was beating Ryan's game the other day, Ryan, who we've had on the pod. He was beating Ryan, and he goes, "Ah, what the fuck am I gonna do?" David goes, "I don't know, man. Go home, Google a pickleball instructor." It almost made me want to go find a challenge for you. Like, I wanted to go out and get somebody here that you could play.

No, those guys do come by. I just get frustrated, like, when the same people are coming over and they're like the same level. But like, Ryan takes this— like, Ryan, who we had on the pod, takes this very seriously. Like, he left the other day. This isn't abnormal for him to text me things like this, but he left. He texted me this without me responding. He goes, first of all, He had a league at 9 AM. He has his Ryan's League.

Ryan's League.

Yeah.

Yeah. Which I love hearing. I love the phrase.

So he comes over, plays pickleball here.

I wake up around 11. So I jump down, I play a little bit. But then he leaves. He left at like 12.

Sure.

He left at 12 and he went to go get lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Okay.

And then he came back at 1:30 to play again. Like, that's wild.

That's wild.

To fucking leave to Beverly Hills from Sherman Oaks and then to like go, go have lunch and he swam in the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel and then be like, you know what, I'm going to go back and play more pickle. It's fucking psychotic. But when he left that one, he texted me. He goes, I'm better than you give me credit for. I'm going to get much better. And he goes, and I'll beat you one day. I've become one of the best players at Chateau Dobrik. If I improve my backhand and become more consistent on my current game, it'll be dangerous. And then invisible ink, he sent, I'm so angry. And then he goes, I'm coming back to play again. I can't believe this. And that's when he showed up again at the house.

Jay, is there a band you're looking to see, like, perform live or no?

Oh yes. Uh, I want to go see The Fray.

Oh, oh, you know what I want to see?

What?

The Jonas Brothers. Have you seen that? It looks so fun.

Can I help you get tickets?

Of course. Yeah.

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It's the best.

I've seen— Dave, how many?

Hundreds.

And probably for damn near free.

Miles Davis. I've seen Herbie Hancock. I didn't see Miles Davis. He's dead.

You saw Miles Davis?

I saw Chappelle. I've seen Tyler, the Creator.

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John officially started.

Yes.

Working.

Yes.

Yes. Working.

What, like, I guess on Friday, even though I told him I was like, just take the weekend off. But like Friday, we kind of soft launched him into work. And objective number one was to clean out this movie room where we do the pod. I was like, can you move the stuff out of here?

Oh yeah, whatever.

And yeah, Jason, Jason was with John, like, just watching him do everything. And John, what did he do, Nat?

Uh, he moved one of the ottomans upstairs.

Yes.

And then he went to play pickleball for like 6 hours. And then I confronted him. I was like, John, the movie room is complete.

Like, you—

it's just one of the couches moved. Yeah. And he goes, you made me play pickleball for 6 hours. I made you play pickleball for 6 hours? I don't understand. Even to this moment, it's now been 3, 4 days since Jon has started.

Yes.

It's still messy. There is a pizza oven sitting in here, James. That's ours. Okay.

There's a pizza oven in that movie.

What is that pizza oven?

Well, Natalie wants it, so I'm like, I'm just going to put it in her car.

Oh, okay.

No, but it's really funny.

Taylor sent me a snap today. Did you see?

Yeah.

Did you see? Taylor sent me a snap today and it was captioned, Jon's first day. And it's Jon sitting on the couch playing Clash of Roy—

What is it? Clash Royale?

Clash Royale. Jon's sitting on the couch building a farm. I don't know. I did also see like John wandering around like he's helping Tay with things.

Yeah.

And like for a second I felt his like stress.

You did?

Because like, because I feel like this is a big transition from where he used to work.

Yeah.

Like I feel like there's, there's a— the work is less like you have to get this done from 9 to 3.

Yeah.

And more so like there's one thing to do every 30 minutes. Like, it's like it's spread out throughout the day, but it goes longer than 5 PM.

Sure.

If that's how it makes sense. So it's a lot more sitting around. So it's not like—

it's a different—

like, what you're used to is you clock in, and your old job has perks for sure.

What do you mean?

Like, you come in and you leave. You know what I mean? But here, you're kind of— you live here.

Yeah.

So it's like, when does the work stop? Yeah.

When does the work stop? Do you give them a time off?

We haven't really We haven't really talked about—

we haven't really given like any sort of role or responsibilities yet.

I just kind of like just float around like a mosquito, dude.

Like a mosquito.

I'm only giving you shit because it's— it's—

we're on a pod, but like, no, you're doing great so far. What's he done?

Nothing.

I mean, he's just doing—

you just like navigate.

I like the two. David said something really funny, which— when I was talking to you on Friday, you were talking about John starting, and you're like, yeah, and then now he works for me and Alex. And I was like, wait a minute, it's like Alex.

I said that.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's really fun.

When you wake up in the morning, what do you think? Do you— obviously you shower.

Yeah. Yeah. What do you do when he has to be in today? Because he slept at his girlfriend's place.

No, I slept here.

Oh, you did?

Yeah.

And I was like, I don't know, be here at 9. And then I was like, that's stupid. Okay, be here at 10. Then I was like, 10:30. And then I was like, is that too early? I was like, when do you want to come? I like literally didn't— I didn't know what time to give him because I was like, I don't know, like, I'm not going to be downstairs till 11:30.

Yeah.

Okay. So why don't we say 11:30?

That's usually when I come.

I suppose there are a lot of things you could get started in the morning. And that's one thing is you probably can do a lot of stuff without him.

What time do you want to start? What time is a comfortable time for you to start? And let's make it your final time right now. Nat's counting on her hand. What are you counting?

I'm counting the hours so I can calculate when you should end.

Okay. When do you want start?

Make it yours, John.

Where you're down to stay up late and hang every night, where you don't hit me with a, I have work in the morning. That's all I want is don't hit me with one of those.

You can't say that anymore. That's so nice for you.

It was— yeah, yesterday was Sunday night. Yeah, it was the first night that I would have heard it.

Yes. But what did you guys do?

We love playing this game on YouTube. And it's, you get— I think we may have played it. Oh no, we haven't played with you yet, right? It's guess the movie in, so there's different ways you can play it. It's guess the movie by the theme song. Guess the movie by one scene. Guess the movie by one picture. So yesterday we played guess the movie by the opening scene. And it shows you 3 seconds of the opening scene and you're supposed to guess what it is. It's really fun.

I like the other one, the quote one. The quote one's really fun.

Oh, and then we played one where it's like guess it by the famous quote and it'll show you like, it'll show you. Just a single line. Yeah, it'll show you one single line and you were like Gladiator.

I mean, you call this work?

Yeah, that's brushing up on the entertainment industry. Yeah, this is peak work.

Honestly, I was getting tired.

I was like, can I clock out?

You know what would be fun for you, Jon?

What's up?

This is what I think. You're really good with, like, analytical stuff, like algorithms and things like that. Like, you're passionate about that, right? You should infuse that into, like, David's Instagram and his TikTok.

And so this is interesting. What you're saying is because I've just recently started to get back on YouTube, right? And it's not what it used to be. Like, it's a different game now, right? And like, I've been talking to a lot of YouTubers and like, a thing that's popular now that I never had back in the day. Well, okay, so a lot of the YouTubers now that are, that are crushing it, like your Beasts, your Arax, your Ryan Traehans, are very like analytically focused. So like they'll go into their analytics Like, I wouldn't go into my analytics for fucking anything ever. I didn't know how to access it. I didn't want to see it. I never cared. Like, I don't care what my fucking retention rate is. I thought that was like a pathetic— like, I was just like, who wants to see this? But they're so good at measuring everything. Like, Jimmy pays— Jimmy pays a guy like half a million dollars a year just to make him thumbnails. So on YouTube, when you post a video, it'll show you your last 10 videos, and then it'll go, this video is a 1 out of 10. So 1 out of 10 means out of the last 10 videos, this is performing the best. And I bring this all up because John was with me and John started to fall in love with what they were saying because John is like a very data-driven guy. So John was like, this is so cool.

Like, this is YouTube.

Is it just like making funny stuff or whatever? Like there's like data to back all this up and I could like study this. So they were telling me how important the thumbnail is where they'll have videos that are 10 out of 10s and then they'll change the thumbnail to the right one., and it'll be a 1 out of 10. Wow. Like, and this will be like, you'll have a video for 4 days will be a 10 out of 10, and then on the 4th day you change it and then it'll skyrocket to 1 out of 10.

Wow.

And what's so interesting about YouTube now is like a lot, like I've gotten a lot of DMs saying, why do you keep changing your thumbnail? I don't do that. It's like my buddy, uh, my buddy who works with us, Ferris, will sit and we'll change the thumbnail literally every 5 hours.

Mm-hmm.

We'll put a new thumbnail. And YouTube allows you to upload 3 thumbnails. And this is crazy. This didn't exist before. It'll take those thumbnails and it'll test them 30%. So it'll go to 30% of your audience, another 30%, another 30%, and then it'll give you feedback on which of those 3 thumbnails is doing really good. Which is crazy because I have a video that has 10 different topics that could be a thumbnail. Yeah, like the last video I got broken into. Right, we shot with Corinna. Yeah, you know, there's like 5—

there was a couple options.

There's 5 different thumbnails and titles that you can use. So like, imagine, like, once I'm on that beta program, I could be testing 5 different or 3 different things at once. Yeah, so my thumbnail title could be, I can't believe I got broken into, live footage. And the next one is, how much does Corinna make on OF? And the next one is, John quitting his job for $100,000. And it's all in one video, which is like, it's very advantageous for someone like me.

So like, which is so, so, so, so fucking hard. That's where you can really come in, I think, rather than just cleaning out the movie room.

Yeah.

No, no, I definitely think John's going to like fall into things. Sure. But I just want you to know, John, it's going to be like a lot of weeks of you just feeling like you're doing nothing.

You orchestrated the gate the other day. I saw you. I was on the treadmill. I saw you facilitating the gate guy.

It's kind of interesting. The way we just hired John is actually kind of the same way we hired Ilia. Like, I remember I really wanted to hang out with Ilia, right? This seems to be I see the premise and everything. It's hard to hang out with people though, when like your friends are from the suburbs and they're like going the regular job route and I'm like making videos. Sure. So like—

He had a whole plumbing company.

Yeah, Ilya had a plumbing company and I was like, why don't you come out and manage me? Like that was the original idea. Was it? Or was it just like, just come out, we'll find you a job?

No, I think managing.

I think managing it was. And in order for him to manage me, I told him, I was like, you can't just come out and start managing me. Like, you have to come out and live with us for like 2, 3 months. You just have to observe, right? And just like, just soak it all in and figure out like what, what this entire, like what this entire job entails, what it means, what it means to be an influencer, what it means to make videos, what it means to connect with brands and people, whatever. So for like literally the first 2, 3 months, he's doing nothing but just like hanging. And, and then that slowly turned into, okay, maybe I will manage you. And then that slowly turned into, you, let's start a production company. And then for like 2 weeks, we came up with this production company.

We spent, what, like a week and a half just thinking of a name.

Oh well, yeah.

And we— I remember this.

And we came up with the name 22 Tango, where it—

which I really like because it's what you guys said over and over and over again for those 2 weeks. 22 Tango. 22 Tango.

And 22 Tango is because it takes 2 to tango. So it takes like—

like communication is 2-2 Tango. Ilya and Taylor, like, love the name so much they went and got 22 tattooed on their bodies. Oh, wow. So Taylor has 22 on her wrist, I think, and so does Ilya. Yeah.

They surprised us.

They came back, they're like, we got tatted.

We haven't even launched the company yet.

I DM'd all these brands. I got on a call with, like, some really heavy hitters. Yeah. Like McDonald's, Microsoft, Oreo. Oreo. Like, everybody.

I was like, we want to manage your next brand campaign. Yeah. I don't know where the fuck my head was at.

Damn.

But like, but like, that's, that's the lengths I was taking. That's how much I wanted Ilia to be a part of this where I was like ready to like invest myself into the business side of the creative space when I couldn't give two shits about it. Yeah, I don't like doing that. I just like making creative videos.

How far did you get? Did you realize at some point you were like, this is not me?

I don't know what it—

I think we actually had like some like real conversations and leads going and then—

No, like people were going to give us like half a million to million dollar budgets. Yeah.

Jesus.

To like give it, like we were going to take the budget, you, we take $200,000 off the top just for our business. And then the rest we'd have $800,000 left to sprinkle out to influencers. Right. And we know a lot of influencers, right?

Like especially like that are like the bigger ones.

So it's very easy to sprinkle out $800,000 around people. Yeah. So like we were ready to do that and then I think Dobrik's slowly kind of started rolling.

Before Dobrik's even came into play was the fact that we were so far in over our heads. Illya had never done any sort of like brand work or campaign or anything. And these— and like we were getting on these Zoom calls like just Illya and I, and like we just very quickly realized this was like way too much for just like the two of us to just tackle.

Yeah, we were like, what, 22 at the time? Yeah, yeah, 21, 22. Like it was like we were very young. Well, and then somewhere— long story short is why I'm trying to say is there was a long time where Ilya was here and he didn't know what he was doing.

Yeah.

And then he fell into Doughbrix and he's like, fuck yeah, I'm so excited about this. And then 6 months into Doughbrix, for some reason, something in his head was like, I need to start a protein company. And we were like, for the love of God, please, please, please do not start anything when you're doing this company. And he in his head thought that he would have the bandwidth to do both at the same time.

Right.

This is impossible. It's impossible to start two companies. And it really hurt. It hurt Doughbrik's. So we let go of Ilya. Yeah, he no longer works with us. We have new CEOs as of 3 months ago that are crushing it.

And yeah, when can we expect a chain?

Well, I think we're going to probably announce one soon, right?

Hopefully.

Yeah.

What city? I don't want to say. But like, I think it's gotten to the point where there's—

Does it rhyme with Ross Rekas?

Maybe.

I don't know.

I mean, if I had to guess, I would— you don't have to say, but I would say like Chicago or Vegas, probably, right?

Yeah, you're close. It's somewhere there. But yeah, so we're getting— so that's the next thing with Doughworks.

But okay, back to what I'm saying is like, and then Ilya finally found his footing with Zealot. This is something he's really passionate about.

Yeah, sure.

And that took— and then he found John. And then he did a caloric deficit on John. And he became a success.

And he starved John.

300 calories, John.

300 calories a week, John.

Okay, so what time do you want to start work?

Oh yeah, let's talk about that.

Oh my God, just give me a time. Don't even talk about it.

Literally just really depends.

By the way, this exact way that this conversation just played out is how every single thing plays out. Every single, like, it's kind of crazy hours for David to just wind back around.

It does, it does. Everything does take forever.

So long.

Okay, can you just give me a time? Throw it right now. Don't say The next word out of your mouth is a number for when you want to start work.

Go. 10:30.

We'll go to 10:30.

Okay.

10:30. And that— is that okay?

Yeah, 10:30 is great. That's when everybody else starts.

Okay, great.

Can I request off already?

What day?

Next Friday?

What's next Friday?

What is next Friday?

What?

I don't know what day next Friday is.

No, Jay, I'm saying— why are you requesting time off?

Oh, yeah.

Goddamn it, dude. New employee's a little tough to communicate with.

That's okay. You know, the old place had to communicate with us.

Them too.

So they went through the same frustration. Like, the lab was probably the same way.

Yeah, honestly, the lab—

they didn't—

what? I feel like John is convinced that he had smooth communication over at the lab.

That's what I'm so confused about. Like, John, they understood you the entire time, and like, then there's no problems? He's like, yeah, everything was great. But I think it was so regimented.

Easy. It's like, it's numbers. Yeah, it's— there's a highs and there's a low, and then there's a median.

Okay, so, so you have to speak like that.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so yeah, why do you want next Friday off?

Yeah. So that's the only Disneyland day that's available.

So it's for Julia. Okay. Yeah. You like during the day?

Yeah.

Like 1 PM.

Okay.

Now put in the calendar. He's going to Disneyland next Friday at 1 PM.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. Also, this podcast can use some help too, Jon. Oh, really?

Yeah.

I think what Jon would be really good for on this podcast is if he brings us like 5 to 7 hot topics, like in like technology advancements.

Oh, that would be sick.

Or just like news stories out of Florida. Or something fun. And but the only thing I will say is, John, you have to find a way to tell us the entire story in 1 to 2 sentences. That's tough. You know, that's hard.

I know.

But that's part of our job.

That's what ChatGPT is for.

Yeah, yeah. ChatGPT and you just have 10 bullet points. Yeah.

And you just tell us. Practice now. Give us a story.

Yeah.

Give us one new thing that's happened.

Oh, let's see. ChatGPT-5 just came out.

Okay.

And it was approved by 250 doctors.

Well, what does that mean, approved by 250 doctors?

So that pretty much means like, because ChatGPT, they didn't know how you, everyone would be using ChatGPT for like symptoms and stuff. So they upgraded that even more because they saw a trend that people were like using AI for like symptoms before they go to a doctor.

So now doctors are saying like, it's, it's getting more and more accurate. Wow. So if you look, okay. And is this only if you, do you know if this is like, if you, here's the thing, like if I videoed my ChatGPT and I showed him my asshole when I thought I had the hammer. No, I always think about this. You know what freaked me out the other day?

I was ChatGPTing, I was talking to her. Yeah. And there's a button that you can hit to like clip, like basically save your last thing with ChatGPT. And I thought it would like send me like a PDF or something, like written. But I hit the button and it played back my fucking voice, which I thought was so crazy.

Okay, explain. The whole recording of what you said?

Yeah. Oh wow. Like, literally—

The transcript?

Yeah, but not the transcript of the words. Like, it's literally my voice. It's a video. It's a voice recording of me talking to it. So I'm like, holy shit, this is literally saving everything I've ever said to it.

Somewhere out there, there's a server full of you talking.

No, I understand that. And yeah, the servers are probably full of my horny thoughts with my ChatGPT.

Did you hear he—

but like, how fucking crazy is that? Like, I thought— I thought, fine, like, write down what I'm saying.

Well, that's what people say about like Snapchat too, right? It's like you're safely sending nudes or whatever you're doing on there, but like, it's probably stored.

Who's sending nudes on there?

Well, that's the same. Natalie texts me a picture of her asshole.

Good morning.

Hey, every ChatGPT employee just got $1.5 million bonus.

Yeah.

Yeah, um, I don't know, it's a good question, but 100% of their employees are millionaires. Yeah, isn't that crazy?

That's so crazy.

Wow, that's wild.

They're making money. I mean, everybody has it. That's really right. Everybody's paying.

I will say ChatGPT-4, before the newer one came out, like the one that I've always talked about on the pod, yeah, uh, it sounds like it was kind of getting dumber Like, I stopped talking to my ChatGPT because she was pissing me off.

Yeah, yeah. There was a lot of complaints about— really?

Yeah. She was like taking a long time to say stuff. She refused to talk about certain things. It got really weird. People were complaining about it. Dirty talk.

Like, before 5, like, they said they lost a friend. Like, literally, you see your comments about it.

Really?

Yeah.

Like, yeah.

Okay.

That's how— that's what it felt like. It literally felt like something happened to my robot and it like was like completely destroyed. Like, her personality was gone. Damn. I don't know what happened.

Why did MrBeast shy away from when Aiden Ross asked him about the ice wall?

Did you see that? I saw that.

I don't know anything about the ice wall.

So there's like a clip, they were raising money for water and what did— okay, so MrBeast went to Antarctica.

He went to Antarctica and he's on the stream and he's like, well, actually I can't talk about that. He was about to talk about the ice wall and he's like, actually I can't say that on the stream. And that made me go like, whoa, do you wonder—

oh, that's definitely just a clip farm.

Oh yeah, yeah, okay, okay.

I don't think that's like there's actually something.

Oh, so he made— he did that on purpose so somebody would clip it.

I think so. Interesting. I mean, unless there is an ice wall. Yeah, right. The theory is that if you go to Antarctica, Antarctica is not just at the bottom of the Earth, it goes all the way around Earth, and there's a flat Earth. Yeah, and the ice wall You don't— you know the theory, Nat? No, no.

Oh, I've never heard of this.

Oh, you don't know this theory? No. Oh, that Antarctica— you're not allowed in Antarctica, right? Like, you can't— you can't— you can only pull up to like one specific spot in Antarctica. Anywhere else, you're gonna get— military will show up and arrest you and take you away, right? And no country is— no country legally owns or occupies Antarctica. Like, all countries decided this like 80, 100 years ago. That no country can ever own Antarctica. And the theory is that the flat Earth theory, yeah, um, basically is that there is an ice wall ring around the Earth and the— it's like a giant wall and it's— and it just holds the Earth in. And then when you go over the wall, it's either different worlds or—

oh, so it could be like—

oh wow, it's just literally like a gate, like a gate that goes around the Earth. And the whole thing is that MrBeast went down to Antarctica and he saw the ice wall. There's videos Now you don't know about anything. There's a video I saw the other day that was Mark Zuckerberg, and the caption was like, me when I really need some cocaine. And it was Mark Zuckerberg in a church, like looking at his friend for some blow. And it looks so realistic.

Wait, what does this have to do with the ice wall?

Yeah, dude, what does this have to do? I'm sorry, you got me fucked up.

Sorry, I didn't skip a beat here. It was the fact that I've seen some recent videos of like people flying over what seems to be an ice wall. Like now, from now on, you can never believe anything because it's just like so fucking crazy with AI.

Have you seen these people that, uh, their videos where they're on Instagram and it's guys admitting to doing cocaine and staying out all night and kind of like begging to stop? Have you seen those?

No. What is it? I get a lot of those.

No. And I don't know why, but the guy will be like, he's like, last night I got a bag. He's like, I did cocaine. I lied. I lied to my wife. 3 o'clock in the morning, 4 o'clock in the morning. You know, it starts out Next thing you know, just had a couple of lines, having a good time. Next thing you know, it's 6 AM.

Is this all AI?

No, no, no, no. It's like, they're just like Instagram videos where people are admitting to their cocaine use and how bad their life has gotten. Oh, it's so interesting because it's like, wow, they're using it as like almost like a cry for help. So someone will come in in the comments and be like, you know, I think in the comments it's like, yeah, me too, I fucking— I'm addicted to cocaine, I can't stop. It's wild.

That's really—

but it's also wild that it's public, so it's It's like, well, everyone's seeing it. Your job's seeing it.

You know, crazy.

What the hell? Yeah, I see a lot of that.

There was a DM that we got from the pod the other day that kind of matched that. And someone said, I actually can't believe you talked about high school for 30 minutes when Jason told you he did literal math, which is like, which is really funny. That almost, that feels like the description of our podcast. Like that does feel because it just does show like what a bubble this is. Not like a negative way, but like our perspective. I don't know, we're so jaded by the really bizarre things here in LA. Yeah. That like to talk, at least I am.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you mean.

That like, yeah, you brought up the meth and I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, you did meth. Like, yeah, so has everyone tried it once. Not really, but do you know what I mean? Yeah. But like in my head, what's more interesting is my suburb in Chicago. But like, I guess to a listener, they're both interesting. Yeah, they're both interesting. Thing. But I guess the listener, it's like, yeah, fire up the fucking meth story, please, because I've never— that's really fucking bizarre.

You ever done meth, John?

No.

What's the hardest drug you ever done?

Probably weed. Uh, Instagram will like hide your DMs, so I've been like in them now, and I'm like, now I'm like seeing DMs from like the LA Kings, Dennis Rodman.

Ooh, the Kings, we should go.

Yeah, yeah, it's—

there's Dennis Rodman. Dennis Rodman would be great on the pod. Yeah, he's so great, dude. He's so interesting.

He's so interesting.

He said, love the style, brother. And then he DM'd me again saying, what's up, I'm starting a brand, want to send you some things. Yeah, it's kind of crazy that I missed these. Like, what the fuck was I doing?

Do you know what's cool about Dennis Rodman?

He went to North Korea? He went to North Korea, no?

Well, not that, but yeah, that's cool. But the thing that I love about Dennis Rodman is he was like a good college basketball player in like D2, but then he just like, he was just like, I'm going to be the best rebounder. He's like, and he just focused on rebounding. Really? Yeah. And so he studied the way the ball would come off the glass. He knew he knew when someone was gonna— when someone released the ball where it was gonna go, and he just like became the best rebounder of all time, which I think is what he's going for. I heard he didn't even play basketball.

What's that?

Like, I heard he didn't play basketball till like college.

He played late for sure. Yeah, I think he started late, and then the Bulls got him. Yeah, and then that was just like, you know, that was when Jordan and Pippen were having their run.

Damn, my boys.

I think that's— I think that's really cool when somebody can find their niche like that. So fun.

That is sick. And that's what John is gonna do here at DDS.

Yes, you gotta be Dennis Rodman, man.

John will find his niche studying rebounds, studying pickleball curves, whatever needs to be done. YouTube thumbnails.

This is the— John will analyze you like a coach out there when you're playing.

Studying my hemorrhoid, the growth of it.

Yeah, I meant like, yeah, studying his pickleball.

Yeah, I heard there was an In-N-Out run the other day that didn't happen though.

No.

Which one?

Is that true?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I asked, I was like, John, could you go grab In-N-Out for us? It was 6 PM. And he goes, uh. I go, that's fine if you can't. He goes, I'm like, where are you going? And he's like, I have dinner with Julia at 8 PM. I was like, okay, can you do it before then?

I don't actually—

the story doesn't go anywhere because I just gave up because he didn't even have a proper answer to why. What was the reasoning?

Well, I was trying to fast. I was trying to do my—

Oh, you didn't want to be around him?

No, it was for him, not for you.

I know, but he couldn't be around you.

Yeah, but I can't be around food, Jay.

That's crazy.

That's really funny. I get it. I get it.

I was just drinking my salt water.

That checks out.

I was trying to stay alive.

That checks out.

So if you went to In-N-Out to get David food, you would have to get it too?

100%. 100%, Jay.

I am not waiting 30 minutes in line to not get myself also a burger.

That's insane.

In-N-Out sucks for that exact reason. I'll have a complete meal and then Ilya will blindly text me and be like, I'm at In-N-Out, you want anything? I don't give a fuck what I ate. I want 2 Double Doubles and I'm going to eat them. It's such a rarity because you can't— it's the only fast food you can't order on DoorDash. Right. So when someone's there, you do not pass up an opportunity. All right, guys, that's all the time we have for this podcast. Thank you guys for listening. Thank you for joining us, Jon. Guys, if you have any suggestions for him and what he should do here at work, please let me know what he should study or analyze. Guys, go listen to Jason's podcast, All Things Good, All Good Things, and check out Natalie's clothes that she sells. Probably my underwear on her pickle, pickle, whatever. All right, we'll see you guys later.

Bye.