Eric Okon_mixdown.mp3-from OneDrive

Harpreet: [00:00:12] What's up, everybody, welcome to the artists of data science. Today we've got a conversations episode where we get to hear from people who are doing interesting work, pursuing their dreams and adding value to their fields with the hope that we can get inside their heads. See what makes them tick and walk away with a new perspective that'll help us in our journeys. But these episodes are far less structured and formal than what I normally do and what you normally hear on the show. They're going to be raw, unedited and produced for the most part. But thank you for tuning in, and I'd love to hear what you guys think about these episodes. Feel free to shoot me an email at dsdj.co/artists of data science at gmail.com with your thoughts.

Harpreet: [00:00:53] 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.

Harpreet: [00:01:31] Eric, thank you so much for coming on the show, am really happy to have you here!

Eric: [00:01:34] Thank you, sir. That was an amazing intro. I really appreciate that.

Harpreet: [00:01:38] Oh, absolutely, man. It's my pleasure. So Eric, where did you grow up and what was it like there?

Eric: [00:01:43] Sure. So I grew up in Long Island,

Harpreet: [00:01:45] New York, and it's

Eric: [00:01:47] 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 [00:02:00] it's it's a wonderful place to live. I grew up

Harpreet: [00:02:03] A mile away

Eric: [00:02:04] 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: [00:02:36] Stuff like that. So, you know,

Eric: [00:02:38] When I say that I

Harpreet: [00:02:39] Really grew up in the

Eric: [00:02:41] Car service

Harpreet: [00:02:42] Business and

Eric: [00:02:43] For everyone's frame of reference, we're an executive car service,

Harpreet: [00:02:46] So we have about

Eric: [00:02:48] 11 locate. We have 11 locations across the United States. Pre-covid, we had to right around seven hundred and fifty employees.

Harpreet: [00:02:56] Currently, we have right around

Eric: [00:02:57] 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 [00:04:00] because they their knee hurts. So that's the type of transportation that we manage.

Harpreet: [00:04:05] 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: [00:04:24] It was always pretty large. I would say when I was in high

Harpreet: [00:04:29] School, it was probably

Eric: [00:04:31] 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: [00:04:47] Focused because of the

Eric: [00:04:48] 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: [00:05:04] And then we would, you know, go to the

Eric: [00:05:06] 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: [00:05:14] And it was a blast.

Eric: [00:05:16] 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: [00:05:27] But it's it's always been.

Eric: [00:05:29] 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: [00:05:46] It starts, when you make them feel

Eric: [00:05:48] 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: [00:05:53] So what kind of jobs did you have coming up in the family business?

Harpreet: [00:05:56] Everything. Yeah, everything.

Eric: [00:05:58] Cleaning, bathrooms, mechanics.

Harpreet: [00:06:00] Washing [00:06:00] cars sweeping the floors, you know, errand boy going to the

Eric: [00:06:05] 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: [00:06:16] Those jobs, but you know, of course, I

Eric: [00:06:18] 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: [00:06:22] I love working out

Eric: [00:06:24] Processes and creating new technologies. You know, there's a lot of things that are taken for granted now.

Harpreet: [00:06:29] But in 2004, I graduated high school

Eric: [00:06:33] 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: [00:06:59] I kind of hacked it a little bit where I used

Eric: [00:07:01] Forgot what service that I used,

Harpreet: [00:07:03] But basically I would grab

Eric: [00:07:05] A number and back then you would have to know whether it

Harpreet: [00:07:07] Was Sprint, Verizon,

Eric: [00:07:08] At&t and

Harpreet: [00:07:09] It would go the number at

Eric: [00:07:10] The domain.

Harpreet: [00:07:11] So what I would do was I would have the dispatcher

Eric: [00:07:14] Just enter in the number and then it

Harpreet: [00:07:16] Would send to all

Eric: [00:07:18] Of the domains at the same time. And it would

Harpreet: [00:07:21] It would hit one because it would be sending to all

Eric: [00:07:24] 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: [00:07:31] It's always been. It's always been part of me.

Harpreet: [00:07:34] 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,

Harpreet: [00:07:56] You know, to

Harpreet: [00:07:57] Middle school with $5 like, you know, write [00:08:00] up some candies, you know, but

Eric: [00:08:02] You know, honestly, back then, I never got paid. I never, I

Harpreet: [00:08:05] Never I never even needed to,

Eric: [00:08:07] 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: [00:08:13] Hmm. So like,

Eric: [00:08:14] 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: [00:08:32] It's not always just

Eric: [00:08:33] 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: [00:08:50] So, yeah, the thing with the family business

Harpreet: [00:08:53] With me, I would honestly

Harpreet: [00:08:54] Say that if it wasn't for working at the pizza

Harpreet: [00:08:57] 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: [00:09:24] Or where did you grow up?

Harpreet: [00:09:25] 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: [00:09:47] And you're there now?

Harpreet: [00:09:48] No. So actually, I'm in Winnipeg, Canada now. So. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Harpreet: [00:09:51] My wife is from from Canada,

Harpreet: [00:09:53] So I moved here about in 2014, so six over six years ago. How do you like it? Oh, I absolutely love it. [00:10:00] I actually love cold weather.

Eric: [00:10:01] So, so are you a Canadian citizen now?

Harpreet: [00:10:03] Not yet working on it. A permanent resident of Canada.

Eric: [00:10:07] Okay, that's awesome. Never been. Never been there.

Harpreet: [00:10:11] I do. Canada's awesome.

Harpreet: [00:10:12] I love it. Yeah, we sent some. We sent

Eric: [00:10:14] A few of our salespeople to do kind of a road

Harpreet: [00:10:18] Trip in Vancouver.

Eric: [00:10:20] 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: [00:10:35] Just picture, you know,

Eric: [00:10:37] 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: [00:10:45] Only experience,

Eric: [00:10:47] Like directly with Vancouver. I mean, we do rides there, right? Because we're

Harpreet: [00:10:52] We're

Eric: [00:10:52] 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: [00:11:04] But I want to look into Winnipeg because, believe it or not, there's a lot of stuff that gets filmed here.

Eric: [00:11:08] Oh yeah, know for sure.

Harpreet: [00:11:09] 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: [00:11:20] I mean, we do. We do rides in Winnipeg. So we yeah, yeah, we do rides

Harpreet: [00:11:24] All over Canada, not nearly

Eric: [00:11:26] As much as we would do in, let's say, New

Harpreet: [00:11:27] York or New York

Eric: [00:11:29] 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: [00:11:48] 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: [00:11:57] So my father started Beals [00:12:00] 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: [00:12:09] To Israel and then immigrated to

Eric: [00:12:11] 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: [00:12:24] The office because she was a social studies

Eric: [00:12:27] 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: [00:12:36] That type of stuff. So they built the

Eric: [00:12:38] 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: [00:12:53] His whole life and

Eric: [00:12:54] Didn't want to give it up. And he had

Harpreet: [00:12:57] Cancer six years ago,

Eric: [00:12:59] 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: [00:13:11] Eventually got him so his his

Eric: [00:13:13] Lungs just deteriorated too much.

Harpreet: [00:13:15] So he passed away and my

Eric: [00:13:17] Brother and my mom, we sat down and we're like, OK, what are we doing?

Harpreet: [00:13:21] Are we going to coast because everything was basically fine?

Eric: [00:13:25] Or do we want to become the

Harpreet: [00:13:27] Biggest and best car service in the world?

Eric: [00:13:29] 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: [00:13:47] So, you know, we were

Eric: [00:13:48] Never big into social media

Harpreet: [00:13:50] And we started. I started out by

Eric: [00:13:53] Taking a picture of a car and posting it or, you know, taking an

Harpreet: [00:13:57] Inspirational quote and putting it up, and I was getting [00:14:00] decent traction. And then I realized I'm like, I got to amp this up.

Eric: [00:14:04] And I started posting up a lot of content, a ton of content I started connecting with basically everybody I knew

Harpreet: [00:14:10] And their mother on LinkedIn everybody.

Eric: [00:14:13] Connect, Connect, Connect, Connect, Connect. You know, if you were a travel agent anywhere in the United States, you are my connection.

Harpreet: [00:14:20] And that's who I started connecting to.

Eric: [00:14:22] And then I realized that we would go out. I was always more behind the scenes.

Harpreet: [00:14:27] My brother and my mother were the

Eric: [00:14:29] 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: [00:14:49] Another level, I had to get out there too.

Eric: [00:14:52] 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: [00:15:12] And I put it on and we start

Eric: [00:15:14] 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: [00:15:31] Was born, where my brother and

Eric: [00:15:33] I just started talking, and it's a very unrehearsed

Harpreet: [00:15:36] Show.

Eric: [00:15:37] We we do very little research on

Harpreet: [00:15:39] The person that we're

Eric: [00:15:40] Interviewing

Harpreet: [00:15:41] Beforehand, just like you're kind of starting to do now where you didn't.

Eric: [00:15:45] I don't think you knew anything about me before we really started other than my LinkedIn title.

Harpreet: [00:15:50] Not a half hour before I started looking you up.

Eric: [00:15:52] 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: [00:15:59] Was [00:16:00] just us getting used

Eric: [00:16:01] 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: [00:16:13] And the real

Eric: [00:16:14] 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: [00:16:24] You cherry pick the best part. You edit it down,

Eric: [00:16:27] 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: [00:17:12] For a year. Solid where OK.

Eric: [00:17:14] Ambrose was launched basically last August,

Harpreet: [00:17:17] And we're right around one hundred episodes in and it's

Eric: [00:17:21] 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: [00:17:52] Yeah, it's interesting because the internet really is just it. It connects everyone

Harpreet: [00:17:56] To everyone, right? So these these

Harpreet: [00:17:58] They call it the long tail, right? [00:18:00] You think about these little niches are actually quite large once you have no

Harpreet: [00:18:05] Geographic boundary and there's

Harpreet: [00:18:07] 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

Harpreet: [00:18:32] Jobs, right? Like, we can't even

Harpreet: [00:18:34] 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

Harpreet: [00:18:47] Of just being

Harpreet: [00:18:48] Yourself on the line. Yes. Which before would it just sounded absurd?

Eric: [00:18:55] Like, Are you on TikTok?

Harpreet: [00:18:57] I'm not on TikTok now, but do you? Do you watch it? I've never interacted with it.

Eric: [00:19:02] 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: [00:19:11] An addicting platform

Eric: [00:19:13] 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: [00:19:32] That follows him, right?

Harpreet: [00:19:34] You know, like,

Eric: [00:19:35] That's that's literally living

Harpreet: [00:19:37] The dream. But yeah, our

Eric: [00:19:39] The the

Harpreet: [00:19:41] The future holds of

Eric: [00:19:43] 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 [00:20:00] couldn't retain this type of information. And for the longest time, it made

Harpreet: [00:20:03] Me feel like shit that, you know, you know,

Eric: [00:20:06] 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: [00:20:32] That stuff is it's

Eric: [00:20:34] Only you holding yourself back if you feel you can't succeed because you didn't have the proper education.

Harpreet: [00:20:41] 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

Harpreet: [00:20:54] If I just put in enough

Harpreet: [00:20:55] 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: [00:21:10] Yeah, no, it's it's a grind. No matter what you're going to do, it's not easy.

Harpreet: [00:21:14] Yeah, it's not easy to

Eric: [00:21:15] 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: [00:21:26] 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

Harpreet: [00:21:38] Huge deficit in

Harpreet: [00:21:40] 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 [00:22:00] completely backwards. And I would told, Yeah, sorry.

Eric: [00:22:03] No, go ahead. Go ahead.

Harpreet: [00:22:04] I can see now this whole COVID thing going on right.

Harpreet: [00:22:07] These institutions,

Harpreet: [00:22:09] 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

Harpreet: [00:22:17] Just pick up the skills

Harpreet: [00:22:19] That they need kind of in like a apprenticeship artisan type of program. You know what I mean, like, like they did

Harpreet: [00:22:25] Back in the days they were going to see

Harpreet: [00:22:26] That kind of stuff happen more.

Eric: [00:22:28] 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: [00:22:52] Or a plumber or an electrician. You know, getting

Eric: [00:22:55] 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: [00:23:06] 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

Harpreet: [00:23:25] In the first place.

Harpreet: [00:23:26] 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

Harpreet: [00:23:35] That is unique because

Harpreet: [00:23:36] Eventually you want to become the type of individual

Harpreet: [00:23:39] Naval Ravikant cause this

Harpreet: [00:23:41] Specific

Harpreet: [00:23:41] Knowledge, right?

Harpreet: [00:23:43] 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

Harpreet: [00:23:55] Math, but

Harpreet: [00:23:56] You can't fucking go to school and learn how to be Harpreet Sahota. You can't learn [00:24:00]

Harpreet: [00:24:00] To be me. Right? And that's the

Harpreet: [00:24:02] Type of individual you want to become if by just developing a unique mix of talent, that unique skill skillset. I love that

Eric: [00:24:10] And I feel like, you know, I feel like I didn't come into my own

Harpreet: [00:24:13] Until I hit my 30s.

Eric: [00:24:15] And I feel

Harpreet: [00:24:16] I feel like I had my 20s were a cloud

Eric: [00:24:19] 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: [00:24:32] And I feel like, I don't

Eric: [00:24:33] Know, maybe it was my father passing. Or maybe it was something like that

Harpreet: [00:24:36] Where you just become,

Eric: [00:24:39] You become a man. And I feel like there is definitely a bad light switch for me.

Harpreet: [00:24:43] 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

Harpreet: [00:25:19] Buy yourself, put in the work.

Eric: [00:25:21] 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: [00:25:44] It's never going to work.

Harpreet: [00:25:47] It's interesting. What was your diet?

Eric: [00:25:49] 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: [00:25:57] So diet wise.

Eric: [00:25:59] I [00:26:00] 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: [00:26:18] And it didn't.

Eric: [00:26:19] 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: [00:26:29] Disease, so I'm

Eric: [00:26:30] 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: [00:26:49] Basically never looked back. Eventually, I I went a little bit deeper and

Eric: [00:26:54] 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: [00:27:03] On what

Eric: [00:27:04] Food is and how it affects your gut

Harpreet: [00:27:07] And your gut, your gut microbiome

Eric: [00:27:11] And allergies and food sensitivities. That, yes, you can 100 percent live

Harpreet: [00:27:16] Fine without eating plants

Eric: [00:27:18] 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: [00:27:26] I would have a chocolate, if I would have

Eric: [00:27:27] A piece of chocolate cake so I would

Harpreet: [00:27:30] Just eat meat and drink water.

Eric: [00:27:32] Occasionally, I would have some dairy. Occasionally I would have some eggs and I felt great. But eventually

Harpreet: [00:27:36] It's something

Eric: [00:27:37] Switched in my gut and it stopped being OK.

Harpreet: [00:27:40] And so I started

Eric: [00:27:42] Eating sweet potato

Harpreet: [00:27:43] And I I

Eric: [00:27:44] I gritted myself the longest time where I was like, But if I do that, you know, it's like I was.

Harpreet: [00:27:51] I was basically like a militant

Eric: [00:27:53] Vegan, but I was eating meat. That's how crazy I was about it. And you're a vegetarian, right? Yeah, yeah. So [00:28:00] do you eat? Do you eat eggs and cheese?

Harpreet: [00:28:02] 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

Harpreet: [00:28:15] It just became hard for my body to

Harpreet: [00:28:17] 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: [00:28:26] 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: [00:28:41] Go ahead. No, no,

Harpreet: [00:28:42] No disagreeing with you there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eric: [00:28:44] You know, eating sweet potato and eating Brazil nuts and even avocado.

Harpreet: [00:28:48] Not the worst thing in the world. And what I was

Eric: [00:28:50] 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: [00:29:01] I did it

Eric: [00:29:02] 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: [00:29:09] And it was it was the right time

Eric: [00:29:11] For me to move on to something else.

Harpreet: [00:29:13] And I feel like that's in

Eric: [00:29:14] 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: [00:29:42] Because, you know,

Eric: [00:29:43] 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 [00:30:00] do that and

Harpreet: [00:30:01] Cove, it happens

Eric: [00:30:03] 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: [00:30:20] And we'll be able

Eric: [00:30:22] To survive. And that was the core of our philosophy as as

Harpreet: [00:30:27] Business people to make it

Eric: [00:30:29] 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: [00:30:40] I absolutely agree with you. It's because when you have these routines, these habits,

Harpreet: [00:30:47] It becomes easy. Things become easy for you to do.

Harpreet: [00:30:50] 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.

Harpreet: [00:31:20] And once you get into that

Harpreet: [00:31:22] Point where you have like no aspirations to change, no hope or vision for the future, it becomes very, very, very scary.

Harpreet: [00:31:31] I think it does.

Eric: [00:31:32] So I have a question for you. Are you a believer in the law of attraction?

Harpreet: [00:31:36] You know, I've read the book The Secret.

Harpreet: [00:31:38] 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.

Harpreet: [00:31:56] Yes, but it just the kind of

Harpreet: [00:31:58] Biology behind [00:32:00] 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,

Harpreet: [00:32:13] Let's say you purchased

Harpreet: [00:32:14] A new car and now all of a sudden you see that new car everywhere. Right? Yes. Reticular activating system at work.

Harpreet: [00:32:21] So thoughts becoming things.

Harpreet: [00:32:23] I think that's like the big thing about law of attraction.

Harpreet: [00:32:26] What it is is when you're constantly thinking about

Harpreet: [00:32:28] Something, you will constantly see opportunities to make that something happen. Yes. So to that extent,

Harpreet: [00:32:33] I believe in it, but I believe that

Harpreet: [00:32:35] There needs to be an element of action on your part.

Eric: [00:32:38] 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: [00:33:02] Scientists, so it's a

Eric: [00:33:04] 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: [00:33:14] And it's not science at all.

Eric: [00:33:17] 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: [00:33:35] And that is, I believe in that where where

Eric: [00:33:39] Thoughts one hundred percent do

Harpreet: [00:33:42] Create things, but without action,

Eric: [00:33:44] It's never going to

Harpreet: [00:33:45] Happen. I think that

Eric: [00:33:46] There are smaller things that you can will into existence via thought.

Harpreet: [00:33:51] But the big

Eric: [00:33:52] 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 [00:34:00] 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: [00:34:25] So it was really interesting that

Eric: [00:34:28] 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: [00:34:35] 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: [00:34:45] 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: [00:35:01] I grew up in a very, very spiritual religion is called Sikhism. I'm not sure if you've heard of it.

Eric: [00:35:05] 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: [00:35:09] Yeah, it's it's really interesting.

Harpreet: [00:35:11] Religion, very spiritual. It's monotheistic. But the God we

Harpreet: [00:35:16] Believe in is shapeless,

Harpreet: [00:35:17] Formless, unknowable, really interesting. That makes it

Eric: [00:35:21] That makes sense. Yeah. I mean, honestly, it does.

Harpreet: [00:35:24] 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: [00:35:34] 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: [00:35:53] You know, can you still have a

Eric: [00:35:55] Spiritual side where you believe that you don't die, you know?

Harpreet: [00:35:59] Lights out when [00:36:00]

Eric: [00:36:00] You're buried in the ground,

Harpreet: [00:36:01] So I can give you my perspective on that using science right, there's the law of conservation

Harpreet: [00:36:07] Of energy, right?

Harpreet: [00:36:08] So energy can either be created nor destroyed, only transferred. So if you think about energy that

Harpreet: [00:36:14] Is powering this

Harpreet: [00:36:16] Human body, this human

Harpreet: [00:36:17] System, our brain,

Harpreet: [00:36:19] 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

Harpreet: [00:36:35] Your energy powers, which is Daisy's up right or in the case

Harpreet: [00:36:39] Of our religion. We burn you after you die, so your energy goes into flames.

Harpreet: [00:36:44] But the soul part of man.

Harpreet: [00:36:46] 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: [00:36:53] Have you ever have you ever been to mediums or anything like that?

Harpreet: [00:36:56] Never been. No, no.

Eric: [00:36:58] Some amazing experiences,

Harpreet: [00:36:59] But I will say this like having, you know, I've got a graduate degree in statistics and having studied

Harpreet: [00:37:04] Randomness for the better part of my career, I do

Harpreet: [00:37:08] 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.

Harpreet: [00:37:18] I'm not religious. Grew up Jewish,

Eric: [00:37:20] 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 [00:38:00] and whatnot, and my mom actually became a medium where she got medium lessons and

Harpreet: [00:38:05] Sorry my kids and

Eric: [00:38:07] She actually became medium

Harpreet: [00:38:08] Lessons. And just as a

Eric: [00:38:09] 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: [00:38:22] And, you know, right away, you

Eric: [00:38:24] 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: [00:38:51] And my mom was

Eric: [00:38:52] Telling her this. And my mom comes and says their names were Maurice Henry, and I forgot I

Harpreet: [00:39:00] Forgot the third name.

Eric: [00:39:01] But how could you explain that?

Harpreet: [00:39:04] 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

Harpreet: [00:39:11] You just appreciate

Harpreet: [00:39:12] 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

Harpreet: [00:39:32] Should act, what makes

Harpreet: [00:39:34] A good person. But I found myself turning more to philosophy than very interesting.

Eric: [00:39:40] Very interesting. I think it's all connected. I think science, philosophy, spirituality

Harpreet: [00:39:45] Are all

Eric: [00:39:46] Interconnected. Could one? Can one exist without the other, you know? Mm hmm. I don't think so.

Harpreet: [00:39:53] Yeah, I'm actually going to be talking to a cognitive scientist philosopher of mind [00:40:00] 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: [00:40:16] That you don't need an education to be successful

Harpreet: [00:40:20] And that if you

Eric: [00:40:22] Are, if you're in a family business because this is just for

Harpreet: [00:40:25] My own frame of reference,

Eric: [00:40:27] 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: [00:40:39] Business, a life diet,

Eric: [00:40:41] And you don't need an education to be successful in this world.

Harpreet: [00:40:45] 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.

Harpreet: [00:40:58] What do they usually want?

Harpreet: [00:41:00] Help with Eric wi fi? For me, it's easy, man. How do I become a data scientist?

Harpreet: [00:41:05] Like, that's that's good. I like that.

Eric: [00:41:07] 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: [00:41:16] So would you rather be stuck on a broken ski lift or a broken elevator?

Eric: [00:41:21] Oh gosh, that's like a nightmare. Yeah, I would say ski lift

Harpreet: [00:41:26] 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

Harpreet: [00:41:34] Ski lift is broken but it's

Harpreet: [00:41:36] Only 20 feet from the ground, then I'll

Harpreet: [00:41:38] Take the ski lift.

Eric: [00:41:40] I mean, a broken elevator is terrifying.

Harpreet: [00:41:43] 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: [00:41:58] I mean, not that I would I would probably never get [00:42:00] 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: [00:42:12] What are you interested in that most people haven't heard of? Hmm.

Eric: [00:42:17] 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: [00:42:23] Of people know that

Eric: [00:42:25] 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: [00:42:35] I think for me, it's just stoic philosophy,

Harpreet: [00:42:37] Stoicism that's

Harpreet: [00:42:39] I think people know what philosophy is,

Harpreet: [00:42:40] And I think people know

Harpreet: [00:42:41] What lowercase

Harpreet: [00:42:42] S stoic means.

Harpreet: [00:42:43] But I mean, I have no idea what it means. Yeah.

Harpreet: [00:42:47] So stoicism, the philosophical.

Harpreet: [00:42:50] 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: [00:42:56] I love this random question generator. Yeah, this is awesome. I may have. I may have

Harpreet: [00:42:59] 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,

Harpreet: [00:43:06] And he makes these albums with

Harpreet: [00:43:09] Motivational talks from people. He did an entire album of Just Gary Vee talks, which

Harpreet: [00:43:13] I think you'll really, really love

Harpreet: [00:43:15] 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: [00:43:21] 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: [00:43:28] Oh man, we can. We can really

Eric: [00:43:29] Grill you on on. You can educate us on Data science, which I'm sure you could talk about ad nauseum.

Harpreet: [00:43:35] Yeah, yeah, I can do that. So that'd be

Eric: [00:43:38] 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.