Ladies and gentlemen, I hope your day is going beautiful. I hope the birds are singing. I hope that the sun is shining and the wind is at your back. I got a great show for you today. The one and only Brian Esposito I got with me today. And I want to welcome everybody to an exploration of entrepreneurial excellence and visionary leadership. Today, we're honored to introduce a remarkable guest who exemplifies the essence of innovation and connectivity in the modern business world. Brian Esposito is more than a name in the global entrepreneurial landscape. He is a force of nature. At just 42, this incredible US citizen has meticulously crafted an empire that reflects his relentless drive and unparalleled ability to forge powerful connections across a myriad of industries. As the founder and CEO of Esposito Intellectual Enterprises, EIE, Brian's story is a testament to the power of vision and perseverance. Over the past two decades, Brian has not only founded numerous startups, but has also made strategic investments that have influenced sectors ranging from manufacturing and media to technology and real estate. His vast and varied experience combined with his exceptional networking skills has made him a sought-after leader and advisor worldwide. In reflecting on Brian's journey, one is prompted to consider the deeper implications of entrepreneurship in today's interconnected world. How does one harness such diverse experience and apply it with precision across different fields? What does it mean to be a connector of executives and ideas in an era defined by rapid technological advancement and global challenges? Brian Esposito's life work invites us to ponder these questions and more, encouraging us to think about the transformative potential of strategic vision and the human connections that drive it. Brian, thank you for being here today. How are you? I'm doing well, my man. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm stoked you're here, man. Me too. It's an interesting time to be alive. And I thought maybe I could, I know I kind of fleshed out a little bit on the background right there, but maybe you could give us, just flesh out a little bit more about where you find yourself today and how you're envisioning the future. Yeah, well, I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks again for having me on your great show. I'm always an entrepreneur since a teenager going out there and earning, not relying on anybody. If I It's all an opportunity that went out there and gone after it. I love creating opportunities for people that believe in me. I love creating teams and hiring people. So I'm just an old soul in my way. I believe we're on this earth to help one another. So anything else that doesn't make sense to me. Definitely a great time to be alive as far as so many advancements across everything, which is good and bad because if you're not keeping up with it, the old adapt or die, highly hits you quicker now than ever because you can just be obsolete within a second or you can be canceled within a second if you say the wrong thing or do the right thing. So a lot of people are afraid to do anything right now, but that's not me. I'm out there. I'm a risk taker, more of a controlled risk taker now, but I'll never not work. That's the problem. I'm a worker. I'll go out and I see the world differently than others. I fill a need, find the need, I'll do that. do that till I'm dead. And I'll probably on my deathbed, I'll think, oh, there's a better way to do this. And I'll probably come up with a, with an idea. So that's me honored to lead the way on, you know, the tokenization world. I've been, focused on this for the last decade but in a regulated environment not meme coins or nfts or crypto it's security tokens and the framework around them and how they can be applied to businesses and help businesses grow and build communities so I'm really excited to be a an advocate of that and experienced and leading that for what we're building at our public company That sounds amazing. The idea of tokenization to me almost seems like a different sense of awareness. You know what I mean by that? Like it puts another dimension on a product or a service. And maybe for some of my listeners who may not thoroughly understand what tokenization is, maybe you can give a little background on that. There's a lot of different thoughts on this and how you may hear it from different people. But for me, I look at everything in the eyes of the law and regulation. So as a security. So if you look at a real world asset, how do you... how do you facilitate fractional ownership into that asset? Unreliant of the traditional ways. If it's a building, you have your GP, your LP, your bank debt, you got all kinds of other mechanisms to bring in liquidity. But now because everybody's got a smartphone and digital wallets are growing, pretty quickly amongst the people that are comfortable with that and know how to use that. There's the ability now to tokenize an asset or a precious metal or some business model where you can put an offering out into the world and invite people to buy into that asset. Now, one of the things I love about a security token, and this is, look at it like a stock or a security, but it sits in a digital format. It sits in a ledger, a ledger blockchain environment. We have proof of ownership, transfer of ownership, But now you can go out to the world and invite people to buy into something. And they're not necessarily buying into the equity, depending upon what you're offering and how you're raising capital. They could be buying into a revenue share of that business or that building. They can be buying into a profit share. So that's where it gets really exciting for me when you look at equity. And I've always looked at equity like if you're a scuba diver, there's only X amount of oxygen in that tank. The equity should be looked at the same way. Who's getting that? Who's earning that? Who's buying that? So if you have your equity stack, but you have this way to also bring in liquidity or capital from a global audience where they can participate in your business, but your equity is still secure, well, that's pretty interesting to me. And that's one of the reasons why I got really obsessed over, not only is this a way where the world on a global scale can actually participate in creating some kind of wealth, that they've never been invited into before. And then the one percentage of the world always got the IPO moments. They always got blessed with certain things. Other people didn't. Now things have changed a lot. And if you think of, I have a business, I have a building, I have some sort of asset, trying to go to a handful of people to bring in a lot of money to get liquidity for that asset. Well, I think it's a lot more successful to go to millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people and have them throwing in quarter a dollar five dollars ten dollars that adds up pretty fast once you've built this machine and now you give those people ownership into something that they never had before so there's a sense of pride and they have the ability to earn from that asset if the principals are actually creating a good business behind it and hopefully they have the opportunity if they ever wish to sell it in the secondary market where they can make some money now in third world countries and second world countries the money that they can make is life-changing in first world countries maybe not so much but There's a lot of people out there that walk around with a smartphone that have the ability to now buy fractional ownership into things and maybe create a better life for them. It's well said. It's interesting to see like the fractal nature of what's happening. On some level, I talk to a lot of people who find themselves as fractional CEOs or they come in with a fractional team to businesses and help it. And now we're talking about tokenization, which is also sort of a fractal thing there. You know what I mean? And maybe you could speak to this idea. Is this just a pattern that's going to like a wave that washes over the world we live in? Is this sort of like this tokenization and this fractional work together? Is this a new way of making our way in the world? Uh, yeah. I mean, I feel like it's the way that it always should have been. Right. But then, then you have. wrong leadership, or I should say wrong leadership, misguided leadership that sees the opportunity to exploit and to maybe isolate opportunities to their friends, or the used to be the good old boys network, right? So many businesses are still run or industries are still run by the good old boys. And that's, that's starting to quickly fall apart. And that's, that's why people are scrambling. That's why government's trying to keep the status quo in place in certain countries around the world, but the people have spoken and the people are empowered because they have a, again, they have this access to things that they never had access to before. So what usually happens is technology and advancements like this are usually stifled for a little bit until the grandfathered in leadership find a way to make money with it. And then they roll it out. But things are a little bit different now. There's a much different movement happening, like you said, that's forcing a lot of stress, right? And how do you keep things the way they are? Because the people that had the money are very happy about having the money, but now it's becoming a little bit of a different landscape. Yeah, I love it. I heard a good quote one time that was something along the lines of, the best predictor of future behavior is past relevant behavior, right? That's a good quote. It's a great quote, man. Timeless. Yeah. How do we... If we look at that and we see the way in which the grandfather class has always found a way to be in the front door or get their foot in first before they allow people to come to the front of the line, why wouldn't that happen again? Because they're... There's other ways to have access to your to I want to say fiat currencies, but there's other ways now to have a barter system that's unreliant of banks. and I'm not going to call crypto a barter system but it kind of is you have the ability to trade in this decentralized environment where you're you're giving value for value that's not that's outside of the traditional banking and merchant processing systems um that's what's causing a little bit of a lot of chaos like I just referenced before the U S I wish the U S would have went all in on properly supporting this movement. And I, I think regulation is so important to protect people. I'll always think that we always operate in that framework, but they got so, you know, maybe it's certain lobbyists. I definitely, you said conspiracy before I'm the big, I'm the biggest conspiracy theorist in the world. I like to say Noah was a conspiracy theorist until it rained. That's one of my other favorite quotes. Um, But they there was the Silvergate Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, expenditure bank. And, you know, because of this rapid movement, I personally believe that assets were coming off other banks balance sheets and moving over into these innovative banks that had the ability to provide solutions and support to digital assets or digital asset companies. Nobody likes their Tonka truck taken from them at the sandbox. So when they see the assets moving from one balance sheet to another bank that they don't have any control over or they don't have any interest in, oh, we got to shut that bank down. That can't do that. And then that led to mass movements into regions like the Middle East and Southeast Asia and China where they're adopting this innovation on they know tokenization is the future. Now you got Larry Fink and BlackRock saying tokenize everything. I've been saying this for over a decade. This is where we're going. He's saying it now, which is great. Yeah. Fidelity and JP Morgan, all these people are saying it now when they didn't say that not that long ago, but now they're all in because they know it's happening and you adapt or die. You know, unfortunately I think, I hope we can reverse it. I feel like the United States is, is looking at the collapse of like the Roman empire. I feel like we had our moment, we had our glory. It's still, I travel over the world. I work all over the world. It's still an amazing place. It's just, there's so, there's so fractionalized and it's so, there's all these silos of all these different ideas. There's, there's no organization within our own country. So it's like, it's just a mess. So when you have really good, brilliant people and visionaries that know where the future is going and U.S. regulation won't support that or U.S. banks won't support that or U.S. compliances won't support that, then they're going elsewhere and they're going to build these massive things in different countries where it should have been a U.S., a proudly supported U.S. opportunity. Yeah, it's well said. It reminds me of another awesome quote is the generals are always fighting the last wars. It seems like the top economists on some level of the old boys network are trading last year's trades, man. It's like, what are you guys doing? It's right there. What are we talking about? Do you think this trickles down? The idea of tokenization, I have this interesting idea. It's going to trickle down into the individual creative marketplace. Give me your thoughts on that, man. Maybe you can expand on that. Absolutely. Empower passionate people that have whatever they want to do in life. That's amazing. And if they can create a community around their output, whatever it is, if they're a musician, if they're an artist, if they're a singer, whatever they are, they're an HVAC guy. It's their passion and their skill set. They can now invite people to support their journey by tokenization. They can have friends and family buy into them. It's definitely in the future. know what's great about where I see the future of public companies I think we've I think we've created the what the future public companies look like at dlmi it's a hybrid approach with traditional stocks and securities and I know we have a security token component and we build and grow companies that's our goal that's our vision that's what we anticipate to do and execute on but You go into a Macy's. Macy's doesn't know if you're a Macy's investor. You go into an AMC movie theater, they don't know if you're an AMC investor. You go into Chili's or any other type of company or you go into a Hilton Hotel, they just know if you're a rewards member and they base your... perks on your spend. But now if tokenization applies to tokenizing securities and stocks, well, that changes the game. Not only are you an investor into that company or that product, you're buying that product, you're staying in that hotel, you're going to that movie theater. So as an investor and a token holder, i anticipate the perks and the rewards and the benefit that you'll receive from that is a much greater experience as someone that's fully supporting the companies and now they're part of the company's revenue share they're part of the company's profit share so I'm excited to see that continue to progress and I'm excited to see regulation when it happens adopt some new guidelines into digital ownership digital assets into these types of tokens that again are backed by real companies they're backed by real assets and you hope they're backed by real professionals that are probably leading these companies forward Yeah. I love it, man. I never thought about that until you said it. But when you think about the legacy rewards programs, tokenization is like that times a million. Imagine if you and I hold a token. Let's say you and I are working together. I come to EIE and George, here's this opportunity to tokenize here. That token can come with so many rewards. That token can come with... free meetings with different individuals on the team or that can come with like, there's so much potential that one token holder can get just from buying in. It's far more meaningful than just a dollar amount, man. It's pretty magical. I agree. Yeah. And that's, that's where we're going. You know, some bad actors will use it wrongfully, but, The efficiency in tokenization, the proof of ownership in tokenization, it's the right next evolution of what we're doing. There was a long time where people were not comfortable buying a stock online in the early 2000s. They liked calling their broker. They liked that comfort. They did the transaction that way. Now, people don't even blink twice. They don't want to call their broker. They want to just go on their... wherever online or on their app and buy and sell as they please. So the same thing is going to apply here as this continues to evolve and people start to feel more comfortable about digital assets, how to get involved in them and how to trade them. It's fascinating to see how fast the world is changing. And when we start looking at digital assets, tokenization, or even, I think that there's a really unique relationship it has with copyright. And I'll give you an example. In today's world, if you're a content creator, you can use other people's music that used to be a complete violation of copyright. But now you can just take music, put it in your video. You might not get monetized from that video, but you can still use it. If you just picture that out going forward and we're a tokenized company, I'm going to use your music in my video. It's like this circular parallel economy that's beginning to rise up. It's going to eat everything else. People can't compete, man. That's beautiful. I'm listening to you now. The whole interview just flopped. It's on you. I'm going to ask you questions. What do you got, man? Hit me up. I think that you have an incredible vision on personal growth, and that's probably one reason why you're successful. So if I shift gears into philosophical mode here, maybe you could speak to that idea of what is your philosophical principle approach to entrepreneurship? It's the golden rule. It's just do unto others as you have done unto you. I hate saying this. I love people. I love working with people. But unfortunately, I got to meet hundreds of people to find one decent one. I got to meet thousands of people to find one good one. And it's not me judging them. Maybe their life situations, desperate time, call for desperation. That's on them. What's on me is my ability to filter through who is the worthy one that I'm going to be blessed to work with. Who is the one that makes sense for us to go out and do good business? And it boils down to good people doing good work. there's good business that comes out of that. When you have egos and greed and pride and all this other seven deadly sins attached to somebody, I can't do anything with that. I cannot do anything good with that type of mentality or that type of behavior. So I just walk away. If there's somebody that we could do a billion bucks together, but my soul and my gut is like, no, this is not good. I get up and leave. I always had this in me, except when you're, a teenager building companies, you're in your twenties building companies in your thirties building companies. You don't have that voice because usually in the room with a much more elder person that doesn't even give you any credibility, whether you know more than them or not is irrelevant. They've earned their moment, right? They've gone decades in the business world. So you have to know when you should speak and when you shouldn't speak. But, where I'm at now in my life is I have, I've been to hell and back multiple times. I, I know what I want to do. I know who I want around me. And if you don't fit that, uh, recipe, then you gotta go. I'm not, I don't have any time to waste with anybody. So, I'll get up and leave meetings. I'll get up and leave boardrooms. If there's somebody there that either just loves the sound of their voice, they keep showing their stupid watch. They're talking about their fancy car or their trophy wives and their girlfriend and their fancy vacations. I'm out. I go deaf. I get the hell up and I leave because that's not me. And I'm not, again, I'm not judging them. God bless you. That's what you want to do. I don't think you really understand life from my opinion. I don't think you really understand what's important. i feel like I'm gonna have to come back a few more times until you get it so for me I'm at a good place with my age what I've been through and my voice it's all lining up like a solar eclipse everything is just lining up and and I'm going with it I'm not questioning it I'm confident and comfortable in what I want and what do I want and what I want to accomplish man I love it I sometimes I read about there's this new subject I've been studying called semiotics and it's about the language of life but it sounds to me It's almost like life is speaking to us. You know, when you talk about going to hell, right? And you burn away all the fat and you come back strong. But maybe you could talk about this other sort of language that you can kind of see in other people. What is that? I mean, I, I reference one of my favorite movies is devil's advocate without, and I can, I sense evil. I sense it. It's like screaming at me. And there's scenes from that movie. Like I've been in offices and penthouse where I could see like the walls moving and shit. And like, I feel that, um, as crazy as that sounds. And I used to just be like, Brian, you're crazy. Just go with the flow. And then, and then you look back a day, a week or a month. You're like, I should have left that room because these people are no good. And now, Not that I'm embedded there, but I do believe birds of a feather. You are who you associate yourself with. And my brand and my integrity is key to what I'm able to do. And I'm flawed like the rest of us. There's nobody perfect out there. So my job is to be a little bit better each day and evolve and learn. make mistakes and our biggest important role is just not to make the same mistake again, right? Or, and hopefully be alive not to make the same mistake again. So you have to, you gotta go out there and touch the stove and get your hand burnt because that's life. And then you know what not to do. And I feel like this chapter in my life too, I find that more valuable than knowing what to do. You know what to do. That's easy. It's kind of boring. But knowing what not to do, that's when the excitement comes in. Oh, I know not to do that, because I did that before. And I got my ass kicked. So I'm not doing that again. That's, that's the powerful position we are as humans of knowing what not to do. And And everybody says, it's who you know, it's who you know. Yes, it's who you know because they open up doors for you. But I'd rather know who not to know because those are the people that can set you back decades. Those are the people that could destroy you. So tell me who not to know. I'll figure out who to know on my own, but give me a list of who I should not know. That's so much more valuable to me. Man, as well said. There's another great quote from Mike Tyson that talks about, everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face. Please do it with his... in his voice if you're gonna do it that's ludicrous that's ludicrous I take this all off so I don't kill you favorite lines ever that kind of like know maybe more people should get punched in the face and I don't mean that as a violent way but that's where the learning comes from right always always I tell entrepreneurs all the time go out and make as many mistakes as you can as young as you can because if you don't and you get this false sense of pride or this false sense of you're invincible then you make a mistake later on it costs you a hell of a lot more money maybe you're at an age where you can't even recoup it So get out there and learn. And the only way to learn is, is some things in school. If you're going to go for some specialized stuff, but the only way I think you can learn is go out in the street, get your ass kicked and get street smart as best as you can know what to look for, know what to look out for because people are recycled. I meet the same people with different names and different clothes that I met previously. They have same motivators, same, um, evil ways or the same manipulative manipulative tactics to just try to get what they need from me. And I think in life, we're all using people because there's there's some good side of that we're all using each other to be better and to do better. Hey, what can you do that I can do and we can be and do peanut butter and jelly together. So when I hear the word use, I don't look at it in a negative way, but I look at somebody using somebody and not providing equal or greater value back. That's the negative way. If you're just going to use me and it's one-sided, no. But if we can use each other and both benefit from it and all the ancillary stakeholders or the domino effect that everybody elevates from that, Yeah. Use me all day long and I'll use you all day long and let's create something great. But it's the, it's the one side of the approach or, you know, the cashless sponsors of the world that say they have all this shit, but then when you, when they come to the table, they have nothing. And all they're trying to do is attach themselves to you or your good name or your momentum. And they're just trying to leech. It's just a, It's just siphoning your energy, your soul, your money, and your resources. And it's not like they even take that and provide good elsewhere. They just take that and use it all up and burn it. And then they go and try to siphon out from somebody else. I mean, there's a lot of people out there like that, that that's their only motivator is to get what you have because they feel entitled and they feel like they deserve it for no reason. I mean, there's zero reason that they deserve it. Parasites, man. Yeah. You know, I'm curious from where you sit and what we're talking about now. The world of education seems to be just rapidly changing, especially maybe where you are in business. And what is a business degree worth these days versus someone that's going out and maybe starting their own token or that maybe they paid the tuition in the last run up of the Bitcoin or whatever? You know what I mean? But what's your take on education today and how that might be changing in the world we're living in? Case by case. I always give examples in real life. So I went to Monmouth University. First, I went to St. Joe's for a little bit to play baseball. Then I transferred to Monmouth in New Jersey. And I went for a business degree, marketing, psychology, all this looped in. And I had a marketing at this school at that time. A really nice guy. I loved him. Really nice guy. I bought my $9,000 books, whatever crazy expensive it is. I can't even imagine what it is now. And I went to the class first day and night again, nice guy talking about what we're going to do, going through the syllabus. So me being, I guess the SLM, I'm like, Oh, where did you, where did you work? Like what firm did you work? And so I can kind of wrap my head around, where did you apply marketing? Oh no, I just went to school to be a teacher. And then I got my degree to be a teacher. And then I guess he had his master's in marketing. And I'm like, so you never actually were out in the world. And he said, No. And I said, Okay, I just grab my expensive books. And I got the hell out of the class. And then I went, I left that class. And I went to the guidance counselor said, Can you just give me a list of people, whether they're adjuncts, and this was what led me to go to school early in the morning, late at night, I went to Saturday classes, I said, I'm paying a lot of money for this. I'm paying a lot of money for these stupid books. I need someone that was in the field that they're teaching. So when you talk about education, if you give me a classroom setting, but I'm learning from somebody that was out there that did what they're teaching, not just the words on the book, but they did what they're teaching because they know it's not as simple as this book is telling you. There's so many other variables. And if you look at One of my favorite movies is Old School. I mean, Back to School. Back to School. Rodney Dangerfield. When he lights up the professor about building the widget company, that's true. Because he was out in the world. And that professor that had all the doctrines in the world to teach business, he had no idea what Thornton Mellon was talking about. And not that I was referencing that movie in that time when I was in that classroom, but I'm like, this is ridiculous. This makes no sense. What am I going to learn from you? I'll just read the book. You provide no value to me. I might as well just be a freaking robot up there that's just programmed to read the book to me. That doesn't do anything for me. So I hope that answers your question. Educational system can be great if you're going to be a doctor, a lawyer, some specialized skill that you need to have licenses for. And also going to be great if you're learning from professors or adjuncts that actually were in the field that they're teaching. Yeah, I love Rodney Dangerfield. I love that movie. And I think that maybe what we're beginning to see is maybe it's been like that for quite some time. Maybe that's the old guard changing and we're looking at tokenization. We're looking at these new ways of doing business. Do you see a shift change? And I've spoken to many people who share a similar point of view. Do you think in the world of... entrepreneurship, people that are building companies that they are letting go of the idea of this person must have a master's or this person has a bachelor's versus this guy's been in the game for 25 years, man. This guy knows something. Bring him in. Yeah. Well, smart money will invest in the, in the management team above the, The business model. If you got, if you got a suite of experienced members of your executive team that are there that are dedicated and then that are providing their experiences and resources and time, smart money will back that all day long because they know, not only do they know what to do, they know what not to do, but there's certain people don't understand it. The fact that who, you know, is multiplied by a million. The industries that those people may have been in, the relationships that those people have in those industries, that's what allows business to happen. When you can call somebody – yeah, call somebody. Call. Remember when you used to call people? When you can call somebody and ask them for a favor to do something because now you're leading this new company or you need some help opening up this distributor or this dealer or this whatever – When you can make that call and somebody picks up that call and says, of course, I'd do anything for you. No problem. That's business. That's relationships. That's nurturing relationships and understanding communication, like all these things that freaks me out going forward. And I know every generation has all of This whole idea freaks me out with the younger generation, but nobody has communication skills anymore. Nobody understands how to build relationships. Everybody wants instant gratification, and I shouldn't say everybody, but majority of people. Instant gratification, want it now, won't work for it, won't build a relationship, doesn't understand. There's no social skills, even though they might have a billion followers on social media, zero social skills. how did how we're meant to engage and interact with one another these screens have connected the world but built this wall of insecurities like people shut down when there's a problem if you can if you shut down when there's a problem and I'm sorry your problem is a kindergarten rated problem compared to the shit that I've been through if you shut down over that you were you you cannot survive in in life you can't I want a big rant there but um I don't know what the hell we're talking about. I kind of just blacked out. No, you know what? It is because the world is changing. And even though we're connected, I think there's a big problem with the smell test. You know what I mean by that? Like when my wife and I were dating, she'd be like, where you been? Like she could smell the trouble on me. All the glitter on you and everything. That is hilarious. There's actually a conversation about that, but I'm not gonna get into that today. Yeah, but the smell test, you know what I mean? It's a real thing. I heard another cool story where this guy was talking about whenever you go into a meeting, take a deep breath. As soon as you walk in, Just take a deep breath and then look around and see where your eyes land on. Cause that smell test is telling you something. And when we, when those skills begin to atrophy on some level, when we can do all our business through a curated Instagram feed, it's all bullshit. You know what I mean? Like at least it's, it's this illusion of perfection. It's this illusion of knowing, but you start drilling past that and it's just the, the, the wizard of the Oz, man. Yeah. Yeah. Well said. The glitter, I still can't get past that. Yeah. Oh, good times. Great times. You know, Brian, we talk a little bit about we've been talking a little bit about failures and lessons. And I got a guest that comes in right now and they say that is where Georgia's sparkle comes from. We knew it. We got to the bottom of it. That's what I do. what I do. Can you, can you share a story with us, Brian? Like one of the trips to hell and back, it doesn't have to be personal or something like that, but maybe I think so many people learn from mistakes. And if you could, I was wondering if you'd be kind enough to maybe share something that happened to you that you learned a lesson from. Oh, there's, there's a lot. I mean, the biggest one happened on anybody that may have heard my old stuff. That's listening to your show. It's a, I got a drunk driver hit me head on in 2016 in Nashville. And, At that time, what I was building, I had about 30 or so companies in my holdings. Now there's over 110 plus this public entity that I'm honored to lead on. And that moment, I walked away physically without a scratch on me, which was freaking amazing. There was a lot of angels around me that day, but whacked my head hard. So I had this Anyway, it's never had a concussion. You can't explain it. It's the most bizarre feeling in the world. And my mind works fast. I can connect dots within milliseconds, whatever that's called. And I can remember things that I met from people 20 years ago. And I meet somebody today and I could just, oh, I got to connect those two. That's just how my brain works. So I was keeping all my things moving because of how I work. I'm the deal maker. I'm the rain maker. I'm the drizzle maker. Whatever the word you want to use is. I'm the one also leveraging all my assets and just keeping this thing that I was building going. But when you rip me out of that equation, I quickly learned that there was nobody of value around me. I was it. I was the engine. I was the engine. I was the steering wheel. I was the tires. I was the door and the seat. I was every aspect of that vehicle. And I was surrounded by expensive legal that provided nothing expensive accounting that provided nothing executives that I put there that providing no value, but they got paid very well. And my world fell apart, and never filed for bankruptcy, but deep, deep in the red, millions in the red and, and so everything just collapsed at that point, talking 18 years of building just poof disappeared over that year. So I, I was conscious enough, even though I was pissed at people in humanity. I mean, there was executives I signed for homes for, for cars, for like, there was people that very well paid, very well taken care of. I was lenient with them on if they needed to go and spend time with their kids. And they're like, I was just to just try to be a good guy. And when they realized I often referenced me at that time, like the cow and the cow had no more milk, therefore they just disappeared and provided no help. And I had glimpses of anger and bitterness, but I was smart enough to say, I can't be angry and bitter. There's just no way in hell. If I'm dealing with that, I'm going to come back. There's no way people like my life. People like my energy. I'm like, I just need to look at what the hell happened and find a way to be grateful for it. So I quickly became grateful with the first part, which was easy. Well, I'm glad that woman hit me because she could have killed somebody. So I'm here. So that was my first grateful moment. Like she hit me. I'm here. Great. She could have ruined the family. She could have killed a baby. Who knows? So then I took that energy and I said, okay, well, maybe my model was wrong. And maybe the only way to fix my model was to destroy it to the, under the ground and rebuild it, rebuild it smarter with the right people and the right focus and, So that was my next grateful moment. Yeah, it was wrong model. So whether I'm lying to myself or not, this was how I was fighting back. And then the hardest part for me was like, well, shit, how do I value myself? Because it's like a slave, right? I can price product. I can price IP. I can price music. I can anything. Anything I've done in my life, I can price it here. Cost this. Here's the margins we want. Here's what the consumer will hopefully or the business partner will hopefully pay for. And here's our spread. I need to go out and say, hey, look what I did in my career. Do you want me to be part of your company and help you? And here's what I can do. Now, what am I worth? That was the fun part. Not fun. That was the fun, not fun part because I had to go out and earn. And the other thing that was disheartening, there were companies and brands that I backed them from day one. There were products that then were being made in somebody's kitchen that were then making tens or hundreds of millions of dollars there were companies that sold out the big companies that made billions of dollars that I was their first distributor or their first dealer or their first supporter and everybody had business amnesia when it came to me when I was going to them and asking for help these are like talk about wanting to hate people talk about wanting to go into like I understand why people are walking around the street mumbling mumbling themselves because yeah people can suck but the right people can be a billion times more of a light in your life than, than the, a lot of wrong people. So it's just finding that it was, it got really fun for me to regroup and who am I bringing into this next chapter of my life? Who am I working with? Who do I believe in? Who do I trust? Here's my new criteria. Like there were so many companies because I love to connect people. And there's so many people that I made very wealthy because I just connected them. I'm like, Oh, you got to go talk to Larry over here. Larry's doing this. And they would connect and they would go and build something great. I love doing that. And I'll always love doing that. But now since that accident, oh, I'll do that. But you're damn straight. I'm part of that. And I'm going to be part of that upside. And I'm going to earn from that because as a connector, that's our value. We're the most important people in the world connectors because we bring opportunities together. Now, a lot of connectors will kill opportunities because they have the wrong personalities or the wrong Emotions attached to it. And there's a great scene from Tommy Boy when there's that chicken fingers, chicken wing scene. Watch that because as connectors and salespeople, we can kill something that we also that we tried to bring to life because we're not confident enough in the process. We get very nervous and very worked up. But if you know how to connect people. and you properly paper up the deal and you're part of the upside, then you just sit back and watch what you knew was going to happen. Just let it happen without your interference. And you come in when and if needed. So these are all the things I had to learn. And it took me a lot of years to come back and fight back and work with creditors and work with a lot of debt to just say, hey, listen, if I file for bankruptcy, which I never wanted that ding on my name, I'm still going to pay you back because that's just who I am. So just work with me and let's figure this out. And it was a mess. It was a freaking mess. Um, but I didn't turn to drugs. I didn't turn to any other vices, um, which is very easy to do too when times are dark. And I just focused on this happened for a reason and I'm going to fight back and figure it out. Man, that was a long damn story, man. I'm sorry. That was not at all, man. I'm thankful. I'm thankful you told that story. It was, it sounds to me like it was necessary for you to become the person you are today. Yeah, absolutely. And, and, am very grateful for everything I've been through in life I wouldn't people ask me what would you change about I wouldn't change anything because I like who I am today every moment in my life was key to who I am today um and if I change anything who the hell knows to good or bad where I'd be standing today and again I would I really wouldn't want to have to go through that 2016 day again but if I had to the I wouldn't I would have grown I wouldn't have grown and I wouldn't be proud that I didn't become just an awful asshole person because it was very easy to do that. And I'm glad that I didn't allow life to do that to me. Yeah. They say growth and comfort can't coexist, man. I'm sad that it happened to you, but I'm glad it happened to you too, man. You seem like an incredible individual, man. Hey, man, right back at you. It takes one to know one, right? I'm right. We got a couple more comments. One comment says, the earning bit isn't fun for most of humanity. Any thoughts on a currency alternative system? I know we only got a little bit of time coming, so I don't know if you want to take a moment just to address a potential... I guess tokenization is sort of like an alt currency. Yeah, I'm trying to understand the question correctly. So outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum, is that what I'm understanding? I think so, yeah. I mean, there's going to be so many of them. There's already so many of them. I think... See, this is why I love the public company I took over. The wealth of the world, and even not the wealth of the world, a lot of people don't understand digital assets. They don't understand tokens. They don't know how to get a digital wallet on their phone. A lot of friction points. And still, there's a lot of trust issues. So people just are intimidated by it. Not going to do it. So when you start to look at I love that Tommy boy scene too. I actually send that clip to people when they're being aggressive. Watch this for a minute and try to come back to me in a couple of minutes. So reversing that, I like to look at things, well, what are people used to? They're used to their Visa, their MasterCard, their credit card. They're used to PayPal. How do these things get adopted into those systems just to give people comfort in using it? Because that's the biggest thing. It's education and understanding people. I like to look at it, this is another medium for transacting. You have checks, if you still write them, you have fiat currencies, you have credit cards, you have now tokenization. So it's just another way to transact. It's another way to bring something into your portfolio and either keep it or you sell it or you trade it. Okay. But now look at all these different tokens. And that's why I like security tokens because they go through the right regulation. Look at these things like, is it a pink sheet company? Is it a word of the counter company? Is it a New York Stock Exchange company? Is it a NASDAQ company? Is it an S&P company? So when you start looking at these possible alternative currencies or these... tokens or meme coins. Do your due diligence. There's risk in everything, but you can probably look at these things like they're companies that you would maybe invest in, but they're also not only companies that you would invest in, but they're also tokens that you can use to exchange for other tokens. You can't do that with stocks. You can't say, I'm going to take my IBM stock and push it over into Tesla. have to sell it first you got to get cash and maybe it takes three days to get the cash and then you lose the opportunity because you just couldn't do it on within milliseconds but in this whole tokenization world and bartering type of system and alternative curtains currencies I think there needs to be a little bit more of an evolution where people can start to adopt it and feel comfortable for it to then go to the next next phase I mean obviously the early movers are the people that are the tech technologists that understand blockchain, just like when the internet was being built. There was the first movers that said, this is where everybody's going to be on. And there was people like, there's no way that's ever going to be anything. How is everybody going to have a computer in their house? Is everybody going to be a billionaire? Nobody thought that that was going to be a reality. And we're seeing that that's a reality now. But you have to help people progress in evolution. I mean, I always had to go and help my grandmother with her VCR. I mean, she was 87 years old, but I mean, I could do it within seconds. And now that's, that's, there's really no difference. You have to help people evolve. Or, or they, you know, adapt or die. I'll say that forever. Yeah, there's so many. I'm super thankful for your time. And I walked you right up here to this 45 minute mark. But you have to come back because I just feel like I'm just getting started on questions and we're just living in a relationship. But before I let you go, man, maybe you could just tell people where they could find you, what you got coming up and what you're excited about. Uh, yeah, I mean, I'm always accessible, which is how we got to meet and maybe on this great show. So thank you. So I use all social media, but mostly LinkedIn and X Brian J. Esposito. That's where I love to share my experiences and life lessons and try to help entrepreneurs and people survive because it's not easy out there. Uh, my corporate sites, EIE.rock. So that's EIE.R-O-C-K-S. And then, uh, Diamond Lake Minerals is a public company. It took over last August. That's diamondlakeminerals.com and the ticker is D-L-M-I. And again, Brian J. Esposito can kind of look me up and find me anywhere. And if you shoot me a message, I'm always honored and humbled and I get back to everybody. That's true. I would recommend everybody reach out. If you're curious, if you liked what you heard today, reach out to Brian. Amazing individual that's, I think, got his finger on the pulse of what's coming down the pike. So hang on briefly afterwards, Brian. I just want to talk to you real shortly afterwards. But to everybody else in the comments that hung out with us today, thank you so much for being here. If you're listening to this podcast tomorrow, I hope you realize that you're a miracle and a miracle is about to happen to you. That's all we got, ladies and gentlemen. Aloha. Aloha.