Subliminal Motives | Eric Okon

Harpreet

Today's guest was born in the car service business and has never known life without it. He's been in the game since the early 2000 and now leads a Worldwide operations and technology initiatives at his family run company VLS Limo. He also co-hosts the Oak and Burrows podcast, where he talks about running a family business, the Law of Attraction, Technology, Content Creation, LinkedIn strategy and more. Ladies and gentlemen, help me in welcoming Eric Okan.

Eric, thank you so much for coming on the show, am really happy to have you here!

Eric 01:34

Thank you, sir. That was an amazing intro. I really appreciate that.

Harpreet 01:38

Oh, absolutely, man. It's my pleasure. So Eric, where did you grow up and what was it like there?

Eric 01:43

Sure. So I grew up in Long Island,

Harpreet 01:45

New York, and it's

Eric 01:47

Suburbia. As suburbia gets like we're in the country, basically, we're about 30 miles outside of New York City, and it's it's a great place to raise a family. You know, high taxes, a lot of trees, and it's it's a wonderful place to live. I grew up

Harpreet 02:03

A mile away

Eric 02:04

From where I'm living right now. So, yeah, yeah. And actually growing up, my parents used to have the company inside their house, which is funny that it's kind of come full circle now with COVID because everyone's working from home. Yeah. So yeah, I grew up basically with my mom, dispatching my dad, fixing cars and driving cars, drivers in and out of the house. You know, my mom would hire a nanny and then shortly after she'd help that she would have that nanny start answering the phones and taking reservations and handing out keys and

Harpreet 02:36

Stuff like that. So, you know,

Eric 02:38

When I say that I

Harpreet 02:39

Really grew up in the

Eric 02:41

Car service

Harpreet 02:42

Business and

Eric 02:43

For everyone's frame of reference, we're an executive car service,

Harpreet 02:46

So we have about

Eric 02:48

11 locate. We have 11 locations across the United States. Pre-covid, we had to right around seven hundred and fifty employees.

Harpreet 02:56

Currently, we have right around

Eric 02:57

One hundred and thirty employees. So unfortunately, you know, COVID hit our business very hard, but we are rebuilding. We deal mainly with the entertainment industry. So we we deal with film production, TV production, finance, people, lawyers, the whole, the whole deal and corporations pick us with for their ground transportation because they have to transport their employees safely and with the proper insurance. So that's why companies like us exist. And it's a very nuanced business. A question I get asked a lot is how has uber affected you? And I always say it hasn't really affected us whatsoever because the type of travel and transportation that we do can't be done by pressing a button. It's extremely nuanced. It's Matt. It's chemistry in the car. It's matching the correct driver with the correct passenger. It's making sure that John Smith has his bottle of water in the car and making sure that, you know, we know that no SUV could be sent on this passenger because they their knee hurts. So that's the type of transportation that we manage.

Harpreet 04:05

It's pretty interesting. Like there's a whole world of these little niche markets that if you're not in the game, you don't necessarily know that they exist or understand or appreciate the importance of them. Doesn't say when you're when you're coming up in high school, like, was this kind of expected of you to go into the family business? Was it that big at that time?

Eric 04:24

It was always pretty large. I would say when I was in high

Harpreet 04:29

School, it was probably

Eric 04:31

About 30 percent of the size that we are now. Mm hmm. It was always a very large business, my in high school. I want to say I started. I was I would always work there. During the summers when my parents were building the company. We were very New York and Los Angeles

Harpreet 04:47

Focused because of the

Eric 04:48

Entertainment industry. So during the summers, instead of going to camp, our parents would pack us up and we would go out west and we would live at the Sheraton Universal in Los Angeles. Well, my parents would go and build the business, go see clients. My brother and I would hang out in the hotel room

Harpreet 05:04

And then we would, you know, go to the

Eric 05:06

Dinners when my parents would host dinners for all the travel agents and the production people and stuff like that. And you know, it's it's a very hands on relationship based business.

Harpreet 05:14

And it was a blast.

Eric 05:16

It was an absolute blast. So there was never any question of that. This is what I was going to do with my life. Not saying that I never had any side gigs, not saying that I didn't try other things.

Harpreet 05:27

But it's it's always been.

Eric 05:29

It's been a passion for me, and I'm trying to do the same thing for my kids too. I make them feel included. Like, for instance, I have a nephew. He's 12 years old and he's vice president of food and beverage. That's awesome. So he stocked all the vending machines. He has a spreadsheet and, you know, he takes it seriously. But that's when

Harpreet 05:46

It starts, when you make them feel

Eric 05:48

Important, when you make kids feel important and you make them feel part of what you're doing. They're going to want to do it with you.

Harpreet 05:53

So what kind of jobs did you have coming up in the family business? Everything. Yeah, everything.

Eric 05:58

Cleaning, bathrooms, mechanics.

Harpreet 06:00

Washing cars sweeping the floors, you know, errand boy going to the

Eric 06:05

Dmv, going to the TLC, you know, and then that was all before I was even allowed inside the office. So, you know, you kind of have to eat it a little bit not saying there's anything wrong with

Harpreet 06:16

Those jobs, but you know, of course, I

Eric 06:18

Want to go into the office and go work on computers. And, you know, because that's what I was really into. I love

Harpreet 06:22

I love working out

Eric 06:24

Processes and creating new technologies. You know, there's a lot of things that are taken for granted now.

Harpreet 06:29

But in 2004, I graduated high school

Eric 06:33

In two thousand and in 2004, when I was still in college and I was working at my parents place. Text messages really started just coming into their own, and I realized that there was an opportunity that we can send out text messages to our clients when their car is on location. And this was before APIs. This was really before that. It wasn't easy to do this. So we actually built a manual process where it would.

Harpreet 06:59

I kind of hacked it a little bit where I used

Eric 07:01

Forgot what service that I used,

Harpreet 07:03

But basically I would grab

Eric 07:05

A number and back then you would have to know whether it

Harpreet 07:07

Was Sprint, Verizon,

Eric 07:08

At&t and

Harpreet 07:09

It would go the number at

Eric 07:10

The domain.

Harpreet 07:11

So what I would do was I would have the dispatcher

Eric 07:14

Just enter in the number and then it

Harpreet 07:16

Would send to all

Eric 07:18

Of the domains at the same time. And it would

Harpreet 07:21

It would hit one because it would be sending to all

Eric 07:24

The domains. So but I was in a program or anything like that, but that was just how, you know, my brain thought with that type of thing. But yeah, it was.

Harpreet 07:31

It's always been. It's always been part of me. It's interesting. So we're about the same age. I graduated high school in 2001 as well. And so in terms of family business, my uncles actually owned a pizza restaurant, three brothers owned a pizza restaurant. I started working in there when I was 12 years old. Ok. I'd come in and they like I would work like seven or eight hours and they give me $5, which is cool because I'd go to. I'd go back,

You know, to Middle school with $5 like, you know, write up some candies, you know, but

Eric 08:02

You know, honestly, back then, I never got paid. I never, I

Harpreet 08:05

Never I never even needed to,

Eric 08:07

You know, like I didn't. I didn't need to get paid until I moved out and I moved out when I got engaged.

Harpreet 08:13

Hmm. So like,

Eric 08:14

I lived home, then I lived with my wife and like, that was it. So that's when I started getting a paycheck because I needed money. So, you know, it was I mean, I worked at Starbucks, I worked at, you know, at a hair cutting places because obviously my parents wanted me to see the real world a little bit where, you know, it's not.

Harpreet 08:32

It's not always just

Eric 08:33

Working for your family. So, you know, I had those types of jobs and that was that that was good learning experiences. And it definitely made me say, OK, yeah, I definitely want to come work with you guys. And I wasn't I wasn't great in school. I wasn't. I wasn't very good in school. So as soon as I could get out of there, I wanted to.

Harpreet 08:50

So, yeah, the thing with the family business With me, I would honestly Say that if it wasn't for working at the pizza Restaurant, I think my life would have turned out much more differently than it has now. Why? Mostly because it kept me off the streets. It kept me away from doing other bad things. I look at like the people I had grown up with or the people from where I'm from now. And the direction that their life is headed compared to where were me and my small group of friends who all worked at the pizza restaurant where we are now? Things could have been horrible.

Eric 09:24

Or where did you grow up?

Harpreet 09:25

So I'm from Sacramento, California. Ok, specifically South Sacramento. Not like the best part of Sacramento. I mean, I absolutely loved it. It's probably one of the most diverse areas in the country, but there's definitely a lot of bad influences in the area that could have easily swept me under if I did not have that pizza restaurant.

Eric 09:47

And you're there now?

Harpreet 09:48

No. So actually, I'm in Winnipeg, Canada now. So. Oh, wow. Yeah. My wife is from from Canada, So I moved here about in 2014, so six over six years ago. How do you like it? Oh, I absolutely love it. I actually love cold weather.

Eric 10:01

So, so are you a Canadian citizen now?

Harpreet 10:03

Not yet working on it. A permanent resident of Canada.

Eric 10:07

Okay, that's awesome. Never been. Never been there.

Harpreet 10:11

I do. Canada's awesome. I love it. Yeah, we sent some. We sent

Eric 10:14

A few of our salespeople to do kind of a road

Harpreet 10:18

Trip in Vancouver.

Eric 10:20

And because it's a big production hub, Toronto and Vancouver is very, very large with movie productions. So we sent them there and they got caught in a snowstorm. And they couldn't leave. And we said it was what my aunt Marilyn, my aunt Marilyn, she's from the Bronx.

Harpreet 10:35

Just picture, you know,

Eric 10:37

Marge Simpson sisters. Yeah, that's her. And she's like, Eric, don't ever send me there again. It was too cold. It was funny, but that's like my

Harpreet 10:45

Only experience,

Eric 10:47

Like directly with Vancouver. I mean, we do rides there, right? Because we're

Harpreet 10:52

We're

Eric 10:52

A global service and will offer service to companies that are traveling through affiliates. So. Well, we'll do right, we do rise there daily through our affiliated partners.

Harpreet 11:04

But I want to look into Winnipeg because, believe it or not, there's a lot of stuff that gets filmed here.

Eric 11:08

Oh yeah, know for sure.

Harpreet 11:09

Yeah, there's there's a movie, right? When all this COVID stuff hit that was being filmed here featuring Liam Neeson and Laurence Fishburne. Pretty big action.

Eric 11:20

I mean, we do. We do rides in Winnipeg. So we yeah, yeah, we do rides

Harpreet 11:24

All over Canada, not nearly

Eric 11:26

As much as we would do in, let's say, New

Harpreet 11:27

York or New York

Eric 11:29

Or Los Angeles. But we'll do a fair amount of transportation in those cities because the the studios are looking for the same duty of care standards that we have in New York, L.A. and other states that we that we open up in. We make the affiliates that we use follow those same standards.

Harpreet 11:48

It's pretty awesome, man. So. So how did you go from from working in the family business to eventually getting into the podcast game? What was the most that transition?

Eric 11:57

So my father started Beals and and along with my mother, he was. He started by hustling the Empire State Building, and he didn't speak the language very well. He was an immigrant from Poland

Harpreet 12:09

To Israel and then immigrated to

Eric 12:11

The United States, and he started. He started driving a car. You know, what can you do when you can't speak the language very well? You start driving a car, started fixing cars. He was in the army, the whole nine yards. And he asked my mother, You know, would you come into

Harpreet 12:24

The office because she was a social studies

Eric 12:27

Teacher? And she's like, sure, under one condition, I have to have a baby. And my brother. Mm-hmm. So that's how she, you know, she stayed home and she began dispatching cars and doing all

Harpreet 12:36

That type of stuff. So they built the

Eric 12:38

Company into a very private, specialized word of mouth type of operation. And unfortunately, my dad passed away two years ago in February of 2018. Smoked his whole. It's OK, smoked

Harpreet 12:53

His whole life and

Eric 12:54

Didn't want to give it up. And he had

Harpreet 12:57

Cancer six years ago,

Eric 12:59

And he eventually he beat it. And he was actually the longest living lung cancer survivor in Sloan-Kettering, who to his date. And he actually COPD

Harpreet 13:11

Eventually got him so his his

Eric 13:13

Lungs just deteriorated too much.

Harpreet 13:15

So he passed away and my

Eric 13:17

Brother and my mom, we sat down and we're like, OK, what are we doing?

Harpreet 13:21

Are we going to coast because everything was basically fine?

Eric 13:25

Or do we want to become the

Harpreet 13:27

Biggest and best car service in the world?

Eric 13:29

And we decided that that's what we want to do. And I was never on any social media prior to twenty nineteen. Nothing. You know, I think I joined LinkedIn in probably mid twenty eighteen. I actually joined Facebook for the first time two Sundays ago enough.

Harpreet 13:47

So, you know, we were

Eric 13:48

Never big into social media

Harpreet 13:50

And we started. I started out by

Eric 13:53

Taking a picture of a car and posting it or, you know, taking an

Harpreet 13:57

Inspirational quote and putting it up, and I was getting decent traction. And then I realized I'm like, I got to amp this up.

Eric 14:04

And I started posting up a lot of content, a ton of content I started connecting with basically everybody I knew

Harpreet 14:10

And their mother on LinkedIn everybody.

Eric 14:13

Connect, Connect, Connect, Connect, Connect. You know, if you were a travel agent anywhere in the United States, you are my connection.

Harpreet 14:20

And that's who I started connecting to.

Eric 14:22

And then I realized that we would go out. I was always more behind the scenes.

Harpreet 14:27

My brother and my mother were the

Eric 14:29

People that would go and sell and their master salespeople because they don't sell. They connect. They make relationships. And that's the key to selling. And I would I was always behind the scenes and I would always kind of hang back with my dad doing operations and my mom and brother would go out and they would go and sell. And I realized that if we want to take this to

Harpreet 14:49

Another level, I had to get out there too.

Eric 14:52

So I watched what they did. I created my own shtick and I started going for it. I'm like, Man, let me get this straight. We can say we can have what we do and we can do our shtick and we can reach 20 people at a dinner. I'm like, But if I say this online and I start promoting how amazing we are and all of our amazing stories,

Harpreet 15:12

And I put it on and we start

Eric 15:14

Recording it and we start posting on LinkedIn. I'm like, I can reach 2000 people. And that's exactly what we did. So I sat down in front of a camera and I tried to do it, and I was having a lot of issues trying to make that happen. So my brother sat down beside me and he's like, All right, let's just talk. And then that's basically how Oak Ambrose

Harpreet 15:31

Was born, where my brother and

Eric 15:33

I just started talking, and it's a very unrehearsed

Harpreet 15:36

Show.

Eric 15:37

We we do very little research on

Harpreet 15:39

The person that we're

Eric 15:40

Interviewing

Harpreet 15:41

Beforehand, just like you're kind of starting to do now where you didn't.

Eric 15:45

I don't think you knew anything about me before we really started other than my LinkedIn title.

Harpreet 15:50

Not a half hour before I started looking you up.

Eric 15:52

Yeah, that's that's that's how I like to do it. And and that's how it was born. And then, you know, the first, I would say, gosh, 30 episodes.

Harpreet 15:59

Was just us getting used

Eric 16:01

To talking on camera, talking on a microphone, and then we started upgrading the studio, we got better microphones, we got better headphones. And then I eventually found Gary Vaynerchuk.

Harpreet 16:13

And the real

Eric 16:14

Power behind that is that you create a pillar piece of content. You create this podcast and it's going to be forty five minutes or an hour long. And then you go and you take many clips of it and

Harpreet 16:24

You cherry pick the best part. You edit it down,

Eric 16:27

You make it palatable, you make it visually nice and then you go and you post it online and everybody gets to see all of these things. Now, you know, we we talk to death, the family business aspect and how amazing we run a car service and stuff like that. And then we eventually moved on to interviewing people and we're like, you know, we can probably make this a real business where we can be interviewing important people, interesting people. And I bet you we can make a living on this. Not right now. You know, we're not interested in the short term of making a couple of hundred dollars on an episode. We want to take this larger and have an audience of a million people. And I think we can do it. I'm pretty confident that we can. It just takes time. We've been doing this

Harpreet 17:12

For a year. Solid where OK.

Eric 17:14

Ambrose was launched basically last August,

Harpreet 17:17

And we're right around one hundred episodes in and it's

Eric 17:21

It's a drag when you're, you know, when we were only getting 10 10 views an episode, you know, now now it's getting better. And just the more you do it, the more you figure it out. And we have literally gotten million dollar accounts based on the content that we create and whether that's a repost from something else or you post something that really relates to that travel community or that travel manager. They like it. And then that's when you're going to go on, contact them and tell them, Hey, I saw that you like this post? Are there any opportunities at your place?

Harpreet 17:52

Yeah, it's interesting because the internet really is just it. It connects everyone To everyone, right? So these these They call it the long tail, right? You think about these little niches are actually quite large once you have no Geographic boundary and there's A way for you to connect with your audience. I think it's really, really interesting what the internet has actually done for this space of careers in the future. So like what we consider careers growing up like for me was the lawyer, doctor engineer. Yes, one of those big four careers accountant, maybe. Mm hmm. Those options, like I would never force them on my son because who knows what it is that the internet is going to create in terms of

Jobs, right? Like, we can't even Imagine, like there's a market for a woman to come around to your house and tidy it up. Right? And it's becoming super interesting what is happening because now you can make a living Of just being Yourself on the line. Yes. Which before would it just sounded absurd?

Eric 18:55

Like, Are you on TikTok?

Harpreet 18:57

I'm not on TikTok now, but do you? Do you watch it? I've never interacted with it.

Eric 19:02

Oh my God, that it is addicting. Be careful because it's going to take you away from your kid and it's going to take you away from editing your show. It is

Harpreet 19:11

An addicting platform

Eric 19:13

And to your to your point, you have people making a living off of Tik Tok, not even not even YouTube. Not even, you know, all these other places, but you have a guy who's an amazing chef. He's got a great personality. And it took one steak video to get eight million views, and he's being sponsored by bounty.

Harpreet 19:32

That follows him, right? You know, like,

Eric 19:35

That's that's literally living

Harpreet 19:37

The dream. But yeah, our

Eric 19:39

The the

Harpreet 19:41

The future holds of

Eric 19:43

You don't necessarily need to go to college. Not saying that you shouldn't or that you should, but you don't. You don't need to go to college. You don't need to be good in school to be successful in life. And I feel like for the longest time, I wasn't good in school. I was a learning center who didn't get math. I couldn't retain this type of information. And for the longest time, it made

Harpreet 20:03

Me feel like shit that, you know, you know,

Eric 20:06

If I can't succeed here, how can I succeed in business? And it really took me till my 30s to realize that you don't need you don't need a third or fourth education to be successful in the world. And my father would always tell me that because he barely graduated high school. Right. You know, he was from Israel. And, you know, he he he never was able to read and write the English language great. And he built this big, beautiful business.

Harpreet 20:32

That stuff is it's

Eric 20:34

Only you holding yourself back if you feel you can't succeed because you didn't have the proper education.

Harpreet 20:41

It comes down to a mindset thing, right? Like whatever it's like. If once you shut your mind down to the possibility that anything could be achieved, there's no way it's going to happen, right? You have to keep in mind open that actually, I can make this thing work. I could If I just put in enough Time, enough effort. If I pick up the skills I need to pick up, I can make. This thing where whatever it is, you can. And I think people tend to cut themselves short just before it picks up and takes off right now.

Eric 21:10

Yeah, no, it's it's a grind. No matter what you're going to do, it's not easy.

Harpreet 21:14

Yeah, it's not easy to

Eric 21:15

Become an a lawyer or accountant. It's not easy to become an online influencer. It's going to take work and dedication no matter what you do. Listen, these the podcasts that we both have, it's a long road ahead.

Harpreet 21:26

Oh, definitely, man. And it's speaking of school. Like just nowadays, there's all this new research out, like when you were in school, nobody ever taught you how to learn. I think that's a Huge deficit in The educational system. There should be a class in grade one that teaches you how to learn things, right? Hmm. Mm hmm. And luckily, there's been a lot of books coming out lately, but it still remains the responsibility of the student to learn how to learn. But we can send them to school, and they don't teach you how to learn in school, which I think is completely backwards. And I would told, Yeah, sorry.

Eric 22:03

No, go ahead. Go ahead.

Harpreet 22:04

I can see now this whole COVID thing going on right. These institutions, I think, will start to become smaller in these self-education pads. I think we'll see them bubble up and we're going to see a lot more people who don't go through any formal education, but still Just pick up the skills That they need kind of in like a apprenticeship artisan type of program. You know what I mean, like, like they did

Back in the days they were going to see That kind of stuff happen more.

Eric 22:28

That would be amazing. That would bring me nothing more than joy because bring me bring me tons of joy to see that type of situation because I feel like people are wasting their time getting a bachelor's degree in something that is not going to get them a license for something or, you know, give them a leg up in teaching them a really marketable skill, like becoming a welder

Harpreet 22:52

Or a plumber or an electrician. You know, getting

Eric 22:55

A bachelor's degree in in life in art. I mean, not saying there's not there's nothing wrong with that. But what how are you going to monetize that? How are you going to make money on that?

Harpreet 23:06

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm all for higher education. Like, sure, I'm just listening to this in the future. I hope you go and educate yourself. But it doesn't just stop at the bachelor's degree. You have to have the mindset that you need to continue learning. You need to continue building new skills and not even necessarily skills in the area that you pursued In the first place. You should pick up skills that are very diverse and maybe even polar opposite to the skill that you're trained in in school and just develop a talent stack

That is unique because Eventually you want to become the type of individual Naval Ravikant cause this Specific Knowledge, right? Where your unique combination of skills that you've acquired over your career, like nobody else has that. Mm hmm. And it makes you invaluable because kind of motherfuckers can go to school and learn Math, but You can't fucking go to school and learn how to be Harpreet Sahota. You can't learn

To be me. Right? And that's the Type of individual you want to become if by just developing a unique mix of talent, that unique skill skillset. I love that

Eric 24:10

And I feel like, you know, I feel like I didn't come into my own

Harpreet 24:13

Until I hit my 30s.

Eric 24:15

And I feel

Harpreet 24:16

I feel like I had my 20s were a cloud

Eric 24:19

And I'm a kid. I have a ten year old and a six year old. I'm thirty seven. And like, you know, gosh, I don't remember 10 years ago it was it was like it was like a fluffy cloud and it's like a haze.

Harpreet 24:32

And I feel like, I don't

Eric 24:33

Know, maybe it was my father passing. Or maybe it was something like that

Harpreet 24:36

Where you just become,

Eric 24:39

You become a man. And I feel like there is definitely a bad light switch for me.

Harpreet 24:43

Yeah, for me, that happened a couple of years ago, man, like two to three years ago. I'm just not the same person, yes, as I was before. And it's confidence. It's confidence and just the mindset. Like, I literally read the book mindset and that book changed my life. Like I had what was called like, that fixed mindset thinking that whatever skills that I had at birth, they were fixed. Like it was like my shoe. Shoe size or my height. Like, it's never going to change nothing. I can influence that aspect. But then it's like, you know, the brain is plastic, the brain can change and you can pick up new things, new skills. If you just

Buy yourself, put in the work.

Eric 25:21

You know what's funny? I had the realization it happened like six months, basically where I thought I was on a specific diet and I thought that I was never going to change that diet. But I realized that I had to because of things that were happening to me. And then I applied that to everything else in my life that if you're going to be so dogmatic about your approach where you say, this is it, this is how I'm going to live till I die.

Harpreet 25:44

It's never going to work. It's interesting. What was your diet?

Eric 25:49

I was a complete opposite of you. I was a carnivore. I know you hear the carnivore diet. I've heard of that. Yeah, yeah, we're basically four four.

Harpreet 25:57

So diet wise.

Eric 25:59

I used to be about 280 pounds. Wow. Right now, I'm about I was about 180, between 175 and 180, so I kept I kept that weight off and I did that via Quito. Before that, I was, you know, Mr. Pasta Boy, you know, I would just eat a ton of carbs

Harpreet 26:18

And it didn't.

Eric 26:19

It obviously didn't do good for me. And what really made me switch my diet was that I had a thyroid issue and my mother had thyroid cancer. She has Hashimoto's

Harpreet 26:29

Disease, so I'm

Eric 26:30

Like, OK, they want to put me on medication. I'm like, Stop the clock. I'm like, I'm not ready to do that. And that was in 2012, and I'm like, I have to make a change. When I was when I was 18, I had some success with Atkins in the past, and so I applied that. I went down the rabbit hole and I found keto, and I

Harpreet 26:49

Basically never looked back. Eventually, I I went a little bit deeper and

Eric 26:54

I found the carnivore diet, which for those of you who don't know, basically meat only you don't eat any plants besides maybe some seasoning. It was a great education

Harpreet 27:03

On what

Eric 27:04

Food is and how it affects your gut

Harpreet 27:07

And your gut, your gut microbiome

Eric 27:11

And allergies and food sensitivities. That, yes, you can 100 percent live

Harpreet 27:16

Fine without eating plants

Eric 27:18

A hundred percent fine. But eventually, from doing that for four years, mind, you know, cheat meals because I would feel like shit if

Harpreet 27:26

I would have a chocolate, if I would have

Eric 27:27

A piece of chocolate cake so I would

Harpreet 27:30

Just eat meat and drink water.

Eric 27:32

Occasionally, I would have some dairy. Occasionally I would have some eggs and I felt great. But eventually

Harpreet 27:36

It's something

Eric 27:37

Switched in my gut and it stopped being OK.

Harpreet 27:40

And so I started

Eric 27:42

Eating sweet potato

Harpreet 27:43

And I I

Eric 27:44

I gritted myself the longest time where I was like, But if I do that, you know, it's like I was.

Harpreet 27:51

I was basically like a militant

Eric 27:53

Vegan, but I was eating meat. That's how crazy I was about it. And you're a vegetarian, right? Yeah, yeah. So do you eat? Do you eat eggs and cheese?

Harpreet 28:02

Yeah, I still eat eggs and cheese. Actually, I wasn't a vegetarian my entire life. I started just was on and off with vegetarianism. But the time preceding this time I just ate a lot of chicken and It just became hard for my body to Process. I would feel sick afterwards. You just didn't feel right. I just stopped eating meat altogether. And you feel better. Yeah, I do feel a lot better, you know?

Eric 28:26

And that's my point that nothing is static. Yeah, not nothing. Nothing is. I was so sure that I was going to be a carnivore for the rest of my life. And here I'm not. Maybe I'll go back there one day. I don't know. But right now I feel great eating sweet potato.

Harpreet 28:41

Go ahead. No, no, No disagreeing with you there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eric 28:44

You know, eating sweet potato and eating Brazil nuts and even avocado.

Harpreet 28:48

Not the worst thing in the world. And what I was

Eric 28:50

Really the most terrified about was that I was going to gain weight, right? Because once you're 280 pounds, you don't want to go back there. Yeah. And that was terrifying to me and I.

Harpreet 29:01

I did it

Eric 29:02

And I didn't gain weight. So I guess whatever was the problem that I was having with carbohydrates and sugar, I fix myself with it.

Harpreet 29:09

And it was it was the right time

Eric 29:11

For me to move on to something else.

Harpreet 29:13

And I feel like that's in

Eric 29:14

Business, that's in life, that's in mentality, that's in all of those types of things where you cannot be dogmatic about your approach, where you know, I have a podcast and maybe what I'm doing is not working, maybe I'm going to have to switch it up. Maybe we're going to have to do something else to try and make it work. I mean, God bless this was the toughest year of our lives. With with COVID, and we had the lay off so many people and we had to borrow so much money to stay afloat. We're confident that we're going to come out

Harpreet 29:42

Because, you know,

Eric 29:43

We we we planned for this. We're preppers by nature where just as a, for instance, in every single location that we are physically open up in, it's always our goal to buy the building in that location. And the reason why we do that is because it creates equity. And if you do that and

Harpreet 30:01

Cove, it happens

Eric 30:03

And you have to go and borrow money, but you have no revenue. What can you go borrow against? And it's a house of cards within our industry now because not everybody did that and we feel we're strong that we have. We have plenty of assets that we can go and borrow against and take a 30 year note on,

Harpreet 30:20

And we'll be able

Eric 30:22

To survive. And that was the core of our philosophy as as

Harpreet 30:27

Business people to make it

Eric 30:29

Through COVID. Not saying that that strategy may change in the future. I don't know, but can't be dogmatic about your approach to anything in life. That was the biggest thing that I learned this year.

Harpreet 30:40

I absolutely agree with you. It's because when you have these routines, these habits, It becomes easy. Things become easy for you to do. So you get that momentum of having lived your life in this particular way. And I think the worst when it comes to, like you mentioned, career like the time before. Or I became a data scientist, I was stuck in this job for five years, and there is point during that five years was like, I'd be happy working here forever. Like they're never going to fire me here and I can just dig around on the internet all day and just get paid for this great like that complacency. That momentum was really heavy, really strong.

And once you get into that Point where you have like no aspirations to change, no hope or vision for the future, it becomes very, very, very scary. I think it does.

Eric 31:32

So I have a question for you. Are you a believer in the law of attraction?

Harpreet 31:36

You know, I've read the book The Secret. I think that's the name of the book and I saw the movie, and I guess there's parts of it I vehemently disagree with. Sure. And it's mostly the part we're just thinking about. Something will make it happen because there still needs to be action like you still need to take action on what it is you're thinking about. Yes, but it just the kind of Biology behind thinking thoughts into stuff, right? If you're constantly thinking about something, it activates a part of your brain, that reticular activating system. Mm hmm. And this is pretty much the mechanism that allows you or doesn't allow but causes you to always,

Let's say you purchased A new car and now all of a sudden you see that new car everywhere. Right? Yes. Reticular activating system at work. So thoughts becoming things. I think that's like the big thing about law of attraction. What it is is when you're constantly thinking about Something, you will constantly see opportunities to make that something happen. Yes. So to that extent, I believe in it, but I believe that

There needs to be an element of action on your part.

Eric 32:38

Hundred percent hundred percent you can't beat. We're big believers in law of attraction. My brother wrote a book called Just Ask the Universe by his pen name was Michael Samuels. For that book sold thousands and hundreds of thousands of copies. It's for sale for ninety nine cents on Amazon, and it's helped a lot of people. One book that I would really love for you to check out and hear what your opinion is on it, because I don't really talk to many

Harpreet 33:02

Scientists, so it's a

Eric 33:04

Treat for me to talk to somebody with that frame or with that with that viewpoint. It's called the science of Getting Rich by Wallace Waddles. Ok? It's pretty cool title, I think, for you.

Harpreet 33:14

And it's not science at all.

Eric 33:17

It was written in nineteen twenty and it was basically the secret before the secret ever existed. And it's what Tony Robbins is based off of. It's what the power of your subconscious mind is based off of, where there's a line in it that says there is a thinking stuff that permeates and penetrates and fills the inner spaces of the universe.

Harpreet 33:35

And that is, I believe in that where where

Eric 33:39

Thoughts one hundred percent do

Harpreet 33:42

Create things, but without action,

Eric 33:44

It's never going to

Harpreet 33:45

Happen. I think that

Eric 33:46

There are smaller things that you can will into existence via thought.

Harpreet 33:51

But the big

Eric 33:52

Things are going to take action. I can say I want to podcast, I want to podcast, I want a podcast, but if I never record it, not going to have a podcast? Yeah, right. But I think if if I say that I want to have, I want to have big time guests, right? Like I, we interviewed Thomas the Lowery. He has two point two million subscribers on YouTube. Yes, my brother wrote that email to ask him, but we thought about it beforehand, and after our conversation was over, he's like, You know, I don't know why I said yes to your conversation. He's like, because it wasn't about the money, because I don't need that money.

Harpreet 34:25

So it was really interesting that

Eric 34:28

He didn't have a reason why he would come on a channel on YouTube that has two hundred and thirty seven subscribers. It's two point two million subscribers.

Harpreet 34:35

But the energy putting out right, if he went to show got a glimpse of the content, is that what you guys are all about? And it resonated with him? Yes. That's awesome. Yeah.

Eric 34:45

So we're big believers in the law of attraction and creating creating what's what am I? What am I trying to say? Visuals of what you're trying to attract into your world? So I have another question for you because you're a scientist is are you spiritual?

Harpreet 35:01

I grew up in a very, very spiritual religion is called Sikhism. I'm not sure if you've heard of it.

Eric 35:05

I don't know much about it. No. I've heard of it, but I don't. I don't know anything about it.

Harpreet 35:09

Yeah, it's it's really interesting. Religion, very spiritual. It's monotheistic. But the God we Believe in is shapeless, Formless, unknowable, really interesting. That makes it

Eric 35:21

That makes sense. Yeah. I mean, honestly, it does.

Harpreet 35:24

Yeah, it's really like it's just a cool religion. Do I follow it? No, I don't. I'm not really religious and my spiritual. Maybe I would say, yeah,

Eric 35:34

But isn't it hard for scientists to be like religious and spiritual and like, do you believe in life after death? I mean, like because like you were talking about the brain and how the brain, you know, like was thinking about what? I don't even remember what you said, but whatever you're talking about the brain, how that works,

Harpreet 35:53

You know, can you still have a

Eric 35:55

Spiritual side where you believe that you don't die, you know?

Harpreet 35:59

Lights out when

Eric 36:00

You're buried in the ground,

Harpreet 36:01

So I can give you my perspective on that using science right, there's the law of conservation Of energy, right? So energy can either be created nor destroyed, only transferred. So if you think about energy that Is powering this Human body, this human System, our brain, Our thoughts, our electrical impulses. Right. If you imagine the universe is a closed system, right, then by definition, when that energy dissipates, it transfers into something, right? What is that something? I mean, it depends. If you really want to be literal about it, it could be

Your energy powers, which is Daisy's up right or in the case Of our religion. We burn you after you die, so your energy goes into flames. But the soul part of man. I mean, yeah. Do I believe in life after death? I don't know. Like, I genuinely do not know what I believe in that.

Eric 36:53

Have you ever have you ever been to mediums or anything like that?

Harpreet 36:56

Never been. No, no.

Eric 36:58

Some amazing experiences,

Harpreet 36:59

But I will say this like having, you know, I've got a graduate degree in statistics and having studied Randomness for the better part of my career, I do Have an appreciation like it can't all be random. Right, right, right. You just can't, right? Because my perspective, at least I'm spiritual. I'm not religious. Grew up Jewish,

Eric 37:20

And I couldn't tell you the details of Judaism. My mom could, and I think I should know so I can tell my children and I can probably make that a point to learn. But I I believe in life after death. I believe in mediumship. I don't believe necessarily in psychics. I don't think you can predict the future. But I do believe that that we are where souls in a meat suit and when when your body no longer exists, you go to you become you go back to where your real home is. And I've had experiences in my life, especially when my father has passed. We've seen mediums and whatnot, and my mom actually became a medium where she got medium lessons and

Harpreet 38:05

Sorry my kids and

Eric 38:07

She actually became medium

Harpreet 38:08

Lessons. And just as a

Eric 38:09

For instance, OK, we were having a call today with a potential client. You know, my day job and my brother and I got on the phone with her and she's from the Bronx and we're connecting. She's a New Yorker

Harpreet 38:22

And, you know, right away, you

Eric 38:24

Know, we're seeing a connection here. My brother goes, you know, do you believe in mediums? And she's like, I do. I do this. I we didn't know this woman from a hole in the wall, but you know, you get that feeling from people and she's like, I do call her mother. She comes on and she just starts reading her. She starts reading her. My mother has never met this woman in her entire life. And my mom is talking to her grandmother and her grandmother was married three times,

Harpreet 38:51

And my mom was

Eric 38:52

Telling her this. And my mom comes and says their names were Maurice Henry, and I forgot I

Harpreet 39:00

Forgot the third name.

Eric 39:01

But how could you explain that?

Harpreet 39:04

Yeah, that is really interesting, right? There's definitely elements of the universe that just can't be known or can't be explained, and You just appreciate It for its inexplicable ability, I guess. I definitely appreciate all that stuff. What do I believe in? I mean, when it comes to that stuff, man, like that's why it kind of turned a philosophy like, that's right. Spirituality is great, but spirituality doesn't tell you what to do while you're here, while you're alive, how you

Should act, what makes A good person. But I found myself turning more to philosophy than very interesting.

Eric 39:40

Very interesting. I think it's all connected. I think science, philosophy, spirituality

Harpreet 39:45

Are all

Eric 39:46

Interconnected. Could one? Can one exist without the other, you know? Mm hmm. I don't think so.

Harpreet 39:53

Yeah, I'm actually going to be talking to a cognitive scientist philosopher of mind next week in a couple of weeks. Really interesting that discussion. Hey, so let's I got to ask my last formal question. Then we'll do a random round where we're going to talk to a random question generator. I know you're short on time here, so we'll make it quick. What's the one thing you want people to learn from your story? I think

Eric 40:16

That you don't need an education to be successful

Harpreet 40:20

And that if you

Eric 40:22

Are, if you're in a family business because this is just for

Harpreet 40:25

My own frame of reference,

Eric 40:27

Right where this is my life, this is who I am. Like you said, nobody can go to the school and become you. Nobody can go to school and become me. And from what I've learned in my life is that do not be dogmatic about your approach to

Harpreet 40:39

Business, a life diet,

Eric 40:41

And you don't need an education to be successful in this world.

Harpreet 40:45

Absolutely love it. Let's jump into a random round here. So I've got the random question generator up. Cool. Yeah, we'll we'll do three questions and we'll both take turns answering them. All right. Let's see what comes up when people come to you for help. What do they usually want? Help with Eric wi fi? For me, it's easy, man. How do I become a data scientist? Like, that's that's good. I like that.

Eric 41:07

The only thing people or I would say that some people will say, Where's my car? You know why? Why? Why isn't the car where it needs to be?

Harpreet 41:16

So would you rather be stuck on a broken ski lift or a broken elevator?

Eric 41:21

Oh gosh, that's like a nightmare. Yeah, I would say ski lift

Harpreet 41:26

Shit, man. Like, I'm having an anxiety thing about a ski lift right now. Like, I don't do very well with heights. So if the caveat is that the Ski lift is broken but it's Only 20 feet from the ground, then I'll Take the ski lift.

Eric 41:40

I mean, a broken elevator is terrifying.

Harpreet 41:43

Like, we were in a whistler last year in August, and we had to take the ski lift and it was just going straight up, man. I'm just like, like, I couldn't could not. Palms are sweaty. I'm just like, It's yeah.

Eric 41:58

I mean, not that I would I would probably never get on a ski lift like how you got on one, that's great, but I don't think I would ever be in a situation where I would ever be on a ski lift. I would definitely be in an elevator. Gosh, if I had the pick, it would be a ski lift. And that crazy. Yeah.

Harpreet 42:12

What are you interested in that most people haven't heard of? Hmm.

Eric 42:17

I don't know if I'm that unique. I would say the limousine business. You know, I don't I don't think a lot

Harpreet 42:23

Of people know that

Eric 42:25

Business. And, you know, they think it's I think they they think it's either Uber or they think that it's weddings and proms. But we definitely exist without those two mediums in our world.

Harpreet 42:35

I think for me, it's just stoic philosophy, Stoicism that's I think people know what philosophy is, And I think people know What lowercase S stoic means. But I mean, I have no idea what it means. Yeah. So stoicism, the philosophical. Uh-huh. Who have thought like, that's probably the adage, Stephanie, the one thing that I'm interested in that people haven't heard of.

Eric 42:56

I love this random question generator. Yeah, this is awesome. I may have. I may have

Harpreet 42:59

To steal this. Yeah, I'll definitely link you to this. And also, I want to link you to something else. There's this artist called Akira the Dawn, And he makes these albums with Motivational talks from people. He did an entire album of Just Gary Vee talks, which I think you'll really, really love A good link to that. But Eric, thank you so much, man, for taking time out of your schedule to come on the show. Thank you. Great talking with you.

Eric 43:21

Thank you for having me. It was an absolute pleasure and I would love to do it again. And likewise, you got to come on our show.

Harpreet 43:28

Oh man, we can. We can really

Eric 43:29

Grill you on on. You can educate us on Data science, which I'm sure you could talk about ad nauseum.

Harpreet 43:35

Yeah, yeah, I can do that. So that'd be

Eric 43:38

Good. We definitely be willing to learn and we can link spirituality in science, and I think that would be a ton of fun. Absolutely, man. Thanks for having me.