Think Freedom

He Went Homeless for Crypto... The Bet That Changed His Life! | Ken Van Vorhis

• Will J Copp • Episode 1

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0:00 | 51:13

Ken Van Vorhis has been homeless for over 249 days by choice, living out of his Tesla, showering at a gym, bulking without a kitchen, and working full-time in sales, all to pour every spare dollar into crypto before the next bull run. In this raw interview, he breaks down the mindset behind going all-in, how he caught XRP before its massive run, and why he believes the next few years will create life-changing wealth for anyone willing to act. But beyond the crypto strategy, this is a conversation about sacrifice, discipline, debt, and what financial freedom actually costs and whether most people have the courage to pay the price.

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SPEAKER_00

I believe you've become homeless to put all your money into crypto.

SPEAKER_01

This day one hundred and sixty-four going homeless to buy cryptocurrency. Yeah, so on the first of the year, um January first of twenty twenty five, I was in a tough spot financially and I was not happy with the amount of money that I was able to put into crypto. I wanted to put a lot more in. We've officially upgraded. And so I was like, well, the only way that I can really do that in my current circumstances is to cut a major expense. And rent was the only one that I could think of where I'm like, well, I'll have a thousand dollars left over every single month if I just get out of this. And I had two cars at the time. I was like, well, if I go homeless in two cars, I can just sleep in one and just drive the other. And it should work. And so I was just like, fuck it. Let's do it. Let's put the money in. We're not gonna get another shot like this. It was right before the bull run. And so I I just started doing it.

SPEAKER_00

So what gave you the courage to actually do that when everyone else around will clearly be judging and have something to say about it? What what made you actually make the jump?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I've never really cared about what other people thought because I'm not trying to live a life like everyone else. I mean, Alex Ramosy has one thing says he's like, if you want to live an exceptional life, you need to understand you're going to be the exception. And so, yeah, mindset, I only ever take advice and listen to the opinions of people who have achieved what I want to achieve in my life. And it pretty much allows me to put blinders on and just focus on doing what needs to be done and forgetting about the hate from everyone else. Going homeless was kind of it was kind of scary at first, I'm not gonna lie, because I didn't know what to expect. And so I was like, well, is it gonna be tough? Is it gonna be difficult? Is it gonna be uncomfortable? The first month was the hardest because the first month I had to get a routine and I had to figure out how everything worked. Okay, where am I gonna shower? Like, how how am I gonna use the bathroom? Like, how how is this gonna work? But after I kind of ironed out some of the details, it got a lot easier. And I feel like the last six months of the journey have been just a loop. I've done the exact same thing every single day, and that consistency has yielded me amazing results.

SPEAKER_00

So, where are you currently right now? Where do you keep your cars? Where do you do you go to the gym? What gym do you go to? What does your routine look like at the moment?

SPEAKER_01

So my routine is is pretty strict. Um, I still work at nine to five, and so I'll wake up every single morning, I'll go to the gas station, I'll get an energy drink and a protein shake, then I'll drive over to my job, I'll be at my job until about 4 30 p.m. in the afternoon, and then I'll get off work. I'll normally come back to my to my cars, I'll change, and then I'll hit the gym. I go to Lifetime Fitness and I'll just drive down the street, hit the lifetime, do my workout, I'll finish my workout, I'll go get Chipotle, and then I'll go home and sleep. And I literally do the exact same thing to the point where everybody at the Chipotle knows who I am because I'm at the Chipotle every single day. Everybody at lifetime knows who I am because I'm there every single day. The people at the gas station know who I am because I'm there every single day. Um I literally am living in a loop. My life is just groundhog gay. Like every single day I do the same. Um and I'm in Orange County, California, so we're fortunately we don't have to worry about crime. I don't have to worry about like people like breaking into my cars or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00

Nice man. Um, so that gym membership is not it's not cheap, as far as I'm aware. So, how do you justify having a gym membership from Lifetime Fitness when you're homeless?

SPEAKER_01

Because I prioritize mindset above everything else. And something that I have noticed with myself is when I put myself in an environment where I'm surrounded by people who are doing better than I am, it inspires me to be more competitive and I'm more motivated to take action because I'm behind. And it kind of forces me into this state of like, well, everybody's above me. Like, I need to at least be average. You need to I need to at least be average with everyone. I don't want to be below everyone. I want to at least be the average. And so the I the motivation that I get and the benefits that I'm getting in my life from that membership far exceed any of the gains that I've made in cryptocurrency or any other area of my life. I would I would stick by the fact that that gym membership is probably the highest return on investment that I have gotten out of any money that I've spent in the last nine months.

SPEAKER_00

What are some of the benefits? Well, what are the top three benefits you've had from the membership?

SPEAKER_01

So one of them is going to be connecting with people in industries that I want to be involved in. So I love supercars. That's like my thing, right? Like I love McLaren's, I love Lamborghinis. I uh and I love them for me. I don't love them for like the clout, right? I just I enjoy driving. I'm a driver, I love driving. And so I knew that whatever business I started, I wanted to be in an environment where I could be around these cars every single day, and I could be driving every single day. And so I wanted to start an exotic rental car company. To do that, I'm like, okay, well, I need it, I don't have any experience in that area. I I need some connections in the local um Orange County car community. And Lifetime Fitness, the the valet parking is filled with supercars every single day. They're they're everywhere. I saw a three and a half million dollar suit hypercar just chilling in the parking lot at Lifetime Fitness last week. What was that? No, it was a Penin Farina Batista. Only 160 pounds. So, do you know what a Rimak a Rimak Navera is? Yeah, it's the exact same drivetrain, it's just a different body. So it's it's like a 2,000 horsepower electric hypercar. And it was full carbon, it was bright blue, it was just sitting in the parking structure. I thought it was a McLaren until I walked up to it and I was like, holy fuck, this is not a McLaren. This is this is much more than that. But just things like that, it adds to the motivation, and I want to be in environments where I'm hanging out with people like that. Those are the kind of people that I want to be hanging out with. And so it has helped me drastically with building connections in that area. I've already met a lot of people who actually own exotic rental car companies in Orange County who go to that gym. Um and then on top of that, I would say a benefit is I'm also in the best shape of my life because I'm forced to be in a competitive environment. I hate when I walk up to a machine and I have to tick the weight down because I'm too weight to lift at the same weight that the person before me was lifting at. That hurts me a little bit. And so it's motivated me to try to lift heavier, and I'm I'm in the best shape of my life right now because of that. And I would also say it's in it's motivated my my discipline and kind of my my ability to be uncomfortable as well. Um, and this is a side quest, right? Like I have little side quests that I do on my journey because I can't be locked in on homeless for crypto 24-7, right? That's kind of a passive grind. But the side quest that I'm doing right now is I'm trying to beat this one guy at my gym in the sauna. We're competing for how long we can last in the sauna.

SPEAKER_00

And so right now tell him you're at 45 minutes.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, my record is is 45 minutes right now, and he just did 60 minutes like last week. His record, I think, is like 90. It's 180 degrees. So we do like it's a hot sauna. It's it's hotter than most. I'm I almost pass out. Like every every single time that I'm in there competing with him, like I'm starting to see stars before I'm like, okay, I gotta I gotta leave. I gotta I gotta get out.

SPEAKER_00

I think my personal is like uh roughly 30 minutes, maybe 40, I think, in in the sauna. But that was only about 140, 140 degrees. Do you do any of the uh some people put like hats on their heads, some people put ice cubes on the on the balls and stuff like that? Do you do anything like that?

SPEAKER_01

Or ice cubes on balls. I that I don't know.

SPEAKER_00

That might work.

SPEAKER_01

I I I know why they do it. It's for the it's to protect the testosterone, but I don't know. I don't I don't do that. I just I just go in there with a towel and I have my AirPods on. And then normally the the first so like I do 30 minutes every day. That's the training. The training is 30 minutes a day, and then I push for a record once a week. And so on the normal 30-minute days, I can last like the first 20 minutes just talking to people, just having a conversation in the sauna. Great for just meeting people and like building some relationships too. You meet some really cool people just talking in the sauna, but then the last 10 minutes, the 20 to 30 minute mark, I gotta put the AirPods in and I gotta blast some EDM or I gotta blast some music really, really loud to distract me from the pain that I'm feeling. Because my my oh man, like you're getting hot and you're getting sweaty and you're feeling it, you're feeling it in your chest. You feel the cortisol, the stress, you feel it literally building up inside of you, like making you want to get out, and you just gotta fight that.

SPEAKER_00

That's the hardest part. And that's where you learn how to deal with it, bro. And that's how it translates into real life. And people don't do it, people don't do it, and that's why, like living in a car, for example, as well, taking that jump to do it. If you didn't carry on doing saunas or whatever, you might stop doing this. And people don't actually step out of their comfort zones. The best way to do that, in my opinion, is exactly what you're doing. Surround yourself with people who challenge you, bring you up to their level, even if it's an average, and just continuous challenge and just learning as well through osmosis. What did life look like before you went homeless? Like, what did you do before and what actually led you to this position now?

SPEAKER_01

So I was stuck in a job right before I went homeless. I worked at a tax resolution company, I was a salesperson, and I was only making about four to five thousand dollars a month, and I could not crack past that because the commission tier that they had it wasn't scalable. You needed to get promoted in order to actually access the the higher tiers of commission where you could like control your income essentially. That's what I was trying to fight for. I was trying to fight to get promoted. And nine months it just wasn't happening. It wasn't happening. I I kept I was slaving away. I was closing the deals, I wasn't getting a commission, but I was getting better at sales. The reason that I held that dead end job for so long was because I was getting skills there that I could not get anywhere else. I was struggling, and I wanted to kind of stay in that environment where I'm struggling and I'm learning and I'm getting better at sales, and I would give up a higher paying commission job for that time grinding, that time building the skill. And in those nine months, I was eating rice to survive. I had an apartment, but it was never filled with much food, and I was never there much in the first place because I was always at work, and then I would come home from work and I would be exhausted and I would just go straight to bed. I didn't go to the gym too much. I mean, I lifted a little bit, but not consistently. And it was just overall not a good situation. I was kind of stuck. I wasn't able to put any money into cryptocurrency because every time that I had a little bit of money available at the end of the month, and I'd be like, perfect, this is my chance to put $200 in. Something would come up. I my car registration would be due. I need new tires on my cars, or um, I would have an emergency expense that came up, or my friend needed help and I needed to send him money, or something would always come up. And then I I was beginning to realize I'm like, I'm running out of time. Like previously, I had a year before the bull run to stack my bags. Now I got like a couple months. Uh, and I I was like, I need to make a big change. Something needs to happen. I need to free up a couple thousand dollars of available income every single month. The only way that I saw being able to do that was through giving up my apartment and sleeping in my car. How many days are you at right now? I'm at 249, I think. Okay. So I've been doing this for for uh about eight months now, coming up on nine months.

SPEAKER_00

Damn, bro. That's crazy. Do you regret anything from it? Do you regret any of those choices to do that?

SPEAKER_01

I mean, do I regret it now or do it's so that's a difficult question to ask because I I am very much on board with my decision to do this because I know for a fact that it's going to put me in a better position financially and just skill set-wise. I mean, what what if I've been homeless for basically a year by the time I'm done with this, what what else can the world throw at me? Like what what can really go wrong? I mean, this is this is kind of like my default state is I just do this again if I get screwed over. But there were definitely things that I had to sacrifice to do this. Um, one of the biggest ones that I haven't really talked about, actually, is that I was there was this one girl, bro, and she was she was she was really bad, dude. She was brunette. I have a thing for brunettes, and I was like, giving up that apartment, I basically killed my chances, essentially. If I would have had that, if I would have had that apartment, I probably would have had a chance. But giving up that apartment killed my chances, and I haven't talked to her in months. Yeah, but I mean there'll be more, there'll be more girls, you know. But that was that was a big sacrifice. And then another sacrifice was the diet because I was trying to bulk. Bulking while homeless is definitely a challenge. Like trying to find trying to get all of the calories in and trying to get all of the protein in while also not being able to store anything in a fridge and not being able to meal prep in a kitchen is so difficult. Like I've taken over the fridge at my work, but I can only use that while I'm at work, and like I can't store too much stuff in there, right? Um, so I pretty much had to figure out okay, what can I just buy off the shelf and eat that has the protein I need, that has the calories I need, and like what can I do without meal prep? How can I bulk like 3,500 calories a day without meal prep? And that's a huge challenge in on like my fitness journey because I I mean I I gained like 20 pounds, and I'm pretty sure most of it's muscle because I don't have anything on me except muscle. I'm like super low body fat. But even then, it was such a challenge. Like I had to eat until I felt like I was throwing up every single day just to get to where I am, and and now I'm stalling and I gotta add more. And I'm like, oh my god, my my monthly expenses for food have gone through the roof. I was probably spending like $800 a month. I was supposed to probably spend like $800 to $1,000 a month on food to bulk before I went homeless. After I went homeless, I think I'm at like $1,500 to closer to $2,000 now in just food. So that's that's a whole different part of the journey that no one talks about. Like going homeless is one thing. Going homeless and bulking is another thing.

SPEAKER_00

It's insane, bro. I actually went homeless myself as well, three months in Europe, and I drove from London to St. Maritz, all through Germany, Luxembourg, etc. I I converted my car to a camper. So I've done I can relate in a lot of ways, but at the back of it, I actually had a cooker which dropped down, a gas cooker, and I could cook, I could store my food, I have a little fridge in it as well. And even with all of that, bro, you can, you can, but like it's even with all that, it was fucking difficult. It was so difficult to keep the food, to store the food, to make the food, and eat enough food which of of variation. It's almost insane. It's almost like it's impossible. I know.

SPEAKER_01

It's it's so like people tell me that. People tell me that I should get a like a little camping stove and have a camping stove to set up. And I'm like, I'm not, but I'm not camping. I'm homeless. Like, where am I where do I set it up? Do I just do I just cook in the back of the Tesla? Like, I feel like that's not a smart move to be cooking in my bed. And then on top of that, like I can I I can't set it up outside. I'm parked outside of a McDonald's. Like like people are gonna see me. Like, I'm low-key right now because like no one assumes that you're homeless in the Tesla, right? But like if I start cooking outside my Tesla, I'm gonna draw some attention I'd rather not draw.

SPEAKER_00

Sure, man, definitely. Yeah, it's a difficult one. Um, for people who are sort of like struggling in a similar situation to where you used to be, um, where you couldn't really pay the bills every time you want to invest in the crypto, for example, it doesn't have to be crypto, it can be anything, could be the SP, could be even hard assets like gold and stuff like that. So people are struggling to even invest, let alone live and buy their own food and afford apartments in California and stuff like that. What would you say to people in that situation? What would you say if someone's looking for freedom of their own where they can buy food, they can get their gym membership, they can afford their lifestyle, but they can't right now?

SPEAKER_01

I think that more people should focus strictly on making money for a certain period of their life. A certain chapter of your life should be spent on obsessing over how to make money. Because it's gonna pay off later on. And a lot of people are not willing to sacrifice the things that they need to sacrifice in order to get that freedom that they want. There, it's not, you're never just going to have a handout. No one's ever gonna come along and hand you back three hours of your day or hand you five hundred dollars a month to spend on the healthy food that you want to buy. You need to get it yourself. And for me, I was willing to sacrifice my apartment to do that just because of the fact that I felt like I didn't need it. There wasn't the only thing that I was really sacrificing by giving up my apartment that was like necess necessary in my my eyes was video games. I used to play a lot of video games. I don't play video games anymore because I don't have an apartment. I sacrificed girls because no girls want to get laid in the back of a Tesla. And then the third thing was the kitchen, it was just like having an area where I could meal prep and like do my own food. I gave up those things for a chapter of my life so that later on I can have all of those things and more. And it doesn't have to be going homeless. You don't like going homeless isn't the only option, right? You for a lot of people, you can give up going out. The amount of people that hit me up on Instagram, right? And they tell me, like, dude, I would love to do what you're doing, like I respect what you're doing. And then I actually go and audit their Instagram page. A lot of times they don't know that I do this, but I go and I look at the Instagram pages of most of the people who DM me. And then I see them posting trips and going on vacations and like going to the bars and going to the clubs and chasing girls. And all I can think of is if you were to stop doing that, you'd save a lot more money than I'm saving going homeless. I mean, I got $150,000 of debt and about $3,000 in installment payments that I have to make every single month. That's where a majority of my money goes. So if you don't have that burden, the majority of your money is going somewhere else. Most of the time it's gonna be to going out. So if you truly want to have the life that you're looking for, you need to give up something so you can have it more later. That's that's the that's the best advice that I can give to anyone who was in a situation like I was. I looked at everything that I could possibly give up, and my decision was, well, the only thing I can cut out of my expenses is my rent, so I'm gonna do it. But for a lot of other people, I bet there's other things in your di in your budget every month that you could cut back on and save just as much, if not more, money than I am.

SPEAKER_00

Bro, I see a lot of people don't even audit their lives as well. They don't go, how much is this costing me? Like, what can I do here? And uh Hormosy, you mentioned him a minute ago as well about the exceptional life to be an exception. He mentions living in seasons as well. So for me, I work seven days a week, have done for about a year now. And I'm traveling at the moment, I'm in Norway, but I'm working seven-day weeks here, Saturday right now, it's nearly midnight here as well. But like, you have to do stuff like this. I may have bags below my eyes, you know, and stuff like that. But you do it and you just you push through it for a few months and you realize a few months in and you're like, fuck, the like compound effect works. Have a season of doing whatever it may be finance, life, fitness, whatever. Live in your car homeless, invest in crypto for the last three, four months of the bull run. Whatever it is, and you want to do it, just ignore everyone else and just do it. But hormosey just speaks to me like that, and uh yeah, I love that you said that.

SPEAKER_01

Alex Hormozy is one of the best people that I have seen on the internet at articulating life advice in a way that makes it easy to understand. That is his biggest strength, is he can take what he's learned in his head and his knowledge and speak it into a way where it's easy for me to understand it and apply it. And so I watch a lot of his videos, and a lot of his life advice is just it hits hard because it applies to so many different aspects of life. And so I really respect him, and he's definitely one of my biggest role models as far as mindset goes. I mean, he speaks a lot to business owners. I'm not a business owner yet, technically, unless you want to count my personal brand. But even though I can't apply the advice that he's giving to business, I can apply the advice that he's giving on mindset to my life, and I've seen astronomical returns on some of the advice that he's given that I've applied and taken.

SPEAKER_00

For sure, man, for sure. Okay, crypto. When are you selling? When did you start buying, and what's the plan, strategy?

SPEAKER_01

So I first started buying cryptocurrency in like 2021. I was shooting a commercial for Sonic Drive-in because at the time I was one of the rollerblading guys who like skate your food out to you on the tray. And I was filming a commercial and I met a guy there who was into crypto, and he told me to buy Cardano. I had no idea what the fuck Cardano was. I had no idea what cryptocurrency was. But he told me I should buy it. And at the time I didn't have any expense. I was living with my parents, and I I worked at I made $2,000 a month at Sonic, but I got to keep 100% of that because I didn't have any payments. And so I just was like, okay, sure. I put like $500 in Cardano and it went up. And I made money. And I'm like, oh, what is this? This is crazy. This is free money. Still had no idea what crypto was. And I'm like, you know what, I'm just gonna buy Ethereum. And then I bought Ethereum and I made money on Ethereum, and I'm like, I'm gonna buy Doge. And I bought Doge and I made some money on Doge. And then I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna buy Ethereum 2, I'm gonna buy sandbox, I'm gonna wrap my Ethereum 2. What does it mean to wrap it? I accidentally locked up my fucking Ethereum 2 for two years and had no idea that I even did that. Like I was I was just like messing around and just throwing money around, just wasting money left and right, made no money off of anything. But it was it was a good experience to kind of get into crypto, and I lost everything, obviously. At that the the bear run, I didn't know I was about to sell, I thought it was going up forever, so I just held it. But this cycle I came into it a little bit more strategic. I came into it understanding there's a bull run, understanding there's a bear cycle, and kind of knowing that I gotta get in, make money, and get out, and knowing that if I get in before everybody talks about it, that's when I make the money. So I first started talking about crypto on my page. Trying I was telling people to buy it, and I was trying to get my friends to buy it in October of 2023. I was trying desperately hard to get people to buy. It in October of 2023, and I begged people because I knew what was gonna happen. I told my friend, my friend had 50 grand, and I told him, dude, take the 50 grand, put it in XRP, thank me next year. He didn't listen to me. No one listened to me. No one, no one except for like one person bought crypto based off my advice. Well, then again, I didn't have any credibility. There was no reason why anyone should listen to me. And then I was trying to buy crypto for a year from October of 2023 all the way until like October of 2024. I kept putting money into crypto, unable to keep it in there. I kept having to withdraw it to pay for some random expense that came up or spend the money on something. And I was unable to invest. And then around the end of 2024, like November of 2024, I caught XRP at 50 cents and I wrote it to like $3.26 or whatever it got to on that on that run. And that built most of the portfolio that I have today. I made a lot of money on that. And so that was kind of what started it. And then I was like, okay, well, this was just the first little peak. This is gonna happen again. I need to put more money in. And then that's when I decided to go homeless to buy cryptocurrency. And that's uh started around the first of January, like I said. Um, as far as the coins that I'm holding XRP, HBAR, XLM, and then I sold a lot of my other coins. I had XDC, um, and I had Casper, and I sold those, and I now I only hold Casper and Brett. Brett is my only meme coin. That's the only meme coin I hold. I don't like meme coins, but I had too many people who I respect tell me that I should buy Brett. And so I was like, all right, I'll put a couple hundred dollars in it and we'll see what happens.

SPEAKER_00

You don't go for you go for more DJ and stuff, not really in the top 10 so much, like Solana, Ethereum, Bitcoin. You go more down the down the curve. Is there a reason for that?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, because the further you go down the curve, the more risk you take, but also the more reward you can get. And so, for example, I view Bitcoin as like a 401k or a Roth IRA. You put your money in there, you don't worry about it, you forget that that exists until 10 years down the road and you're rich, right? That's how I see Bitcoin. And then Ethereum and Solana, I see it as like slightly riskier, but like you're still gonna make money. It's pretty much guaranteed at this point that if you buy Ethereum now or if you buy Solana now in 10 years, you're gonna make a lot of money. But I was looking for money specifically in this cycle. I'm like, how can I make the most amount of money in this specific cycle? Because I have a lot of debt, right? I mentioned I have $150,000 of debt. I want to pay some of that down. And so I was like, okay, I want to make as much as I can in this cycle to pay my debts off so I can get my credit report under control, free up a lot more of my available income, and then I'll set myself up for the 2028 to 2029 cycle. I'm already thinking about not this cycle, but the next cycle. And so I plan on hoarding cryptocurrency this bear market, but I need to make as much as I can in this bull cycle that we're in right now.

SPEAKER_00

Institutional adoption when it comes to it. Do you think crypto is gonna go high enough, quick enough, even in the L2s and the lower down coins, to make enough return? Or do you think it's more plateauing out?

SPEAKER_01

I think it's definitely going to make some crazy returns once we see institutional adoption, because right now there's a whole demographic of people who do not understand or trust cryptocurrency. They see it as a scam, they don't see it as a legitimate asset, and so they're not buying it, right? But now let's say that JP Morgan, Chase, and Bank of America add a cryptocurrency wallet underneath their checking account. So now you have checking, savings, crypto wallet, right? They're staking their reputation and the trust that the American people have in those industries on the crypto market. So mom and pop who think crypto's a scam, now all of a sudden it's showing up in their checking account or underneath their checking account in their banking app, they're like, you know what? Why don't I buy some crypto? Then they buy cryptocurrency, then they see the returns, and then they're like, oh, well, maybe I'll put a little bit more into this. Now a whole demographic of people that did not buy this coin are now buying cryptocurrency. And so I think there's going to be a huge push once that starts to happen. I mean, we've already seen it when Venmo and Cash App added cryptocurrency as a part of like you could buy it through their little electronic banking platform. Where people who never would have bought cryptocurrency are now buying cryptocurrency and seeing returns. And so I think it's only a matter of time before the banks put their brand behind it. And the power that these institutions have, when they stake their reputation on cryptocurrency, I think we're gonna see trillions of dollars flow into the market.

SPEAKER_00

Trillions. Rao Powell, I think he's looking for that 10 trillion, I believe. It's currently three or four trillion. So that's already in the next five, ten years, which is crazy. Um, and I stand by that point as well. But also, someone mentioned something to me the other day. Um, with institutions and JP Morgan, etc., BlackRock, with them being in crypto and being in the market with Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc., they like markets that go up and to the right. So something like SP, whatever it is. So the likelihood of a bear market in crypto now institutional adoption has already begun, is quite limited in my opinion. Like I don't know how much lower it can actually go, or they will let it go. So for me, man, it just feels like a if you don't get in now and then you sell out and you try and buy back in, where do you buy back in? And it's like it's gonna be a difficult one to call. Um but that's very fucking interesting.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's part of the that's part of the risk of cryptocurrency right now is we've been in a predictable cycle for the last 15 years where it's so easy to make money because it's predictable. You just buy in the bear market and you hold to the bull market. It's it's that easy. Um, but there's going to come a time when that cycle breaks, and it's hard to tell when that's going to be. I don't know when that's gonna be. It could be this cycle. I feel like we have one more bear run and one more bull run. I feel like it's gonna take until 2030 before we get the real institutional adoption that everyone's been talking about. And so I think that we have one more shot in the next five years to make as much money as we possibly can in crypto before it becomes highly regulated, and the gains are not gonna be what they are right now. I still think it's gonna outperform a lot of other asset classes, but at the same time, I also think that someone's gonna come come in and put their foot down. I think it's probably gonna be the government. So right now is the chance to do that. Like we don't have a lot of other chances right now. Is the last chance that you're really gonna get.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so with the last chance, someone who's watching this, someone who's heard about crypto, maybe thinks it's a scam, maybe they don't trust it, they're scared of losing money, they've already lost money in their first cycle. What would you suggest the first steps they would take to just dip their toe in, or should they go all in? How can they get into crypto now? They see it on PayPal, they see it on Venmo, they see it on these cash apps and stuff like that. How would you suggest they get into it finally? Again, maybe they've been hurt, they got some trauma in the past from it. How would they get in?

SPEAKER_01

So the first thing you need to understand is that if you go all in, you will have the best chance at making money. It is like that in every aspect of life. If you go all in and you take that risk, that is where the profit is. That is where these people get rich. No one got rich by half assing something. But if you do want to dip your toes in the water, I would recommend. I mean, depending on what part of the world you're in. I know I'm in the United States, and so we all use Coinbase over here. I would download Coinbase, I would set up a $100 a month auto draft for Bitcoin or however much you feel comfortable with. Let that auto draft take the money out of your account every single month and completely forget that that exists. That's that's the way to dip your toes in the water. You're not gonna notice returns right away because crypto is volatile, it goes up and down. But if you look at crypto over a 10-year time horizon, it outcompetes everything else. There is no other asset that gives returns like Bitcoin does. So if you keep that auto draft and you forget about it, then five years down the road, you're gonna have 10 tenant. I don't want to give a number. I don't want to give like a I don't want to guarantee people a number or like promise people a number, but you're gonna see some massive returns. You're gonna see some returns way better than your four-wood carrier IRA, that's for sure. And you're you're gonna realize this is a better asset. You're gonna you're gonna believe. You're gonna you're gonna believe. And then after you believe, you can choose to up it, choose to go in a little bit more. I mean, the people who are really gonna make the most money off of it are the people who are just gonna say, fuck it. I don't understand cryptocurrency, but I know that it's gonna be a part of the future world order, and so I'm just gonna put everything I can into it. I surprisingly, I mean, I know a little bit about cryptocurrency on surface level. I cannot talk to you about like L2s, L3s, or how how it like how a DEX works. I I don't I don't know all of the details of cryptocurrency. I'm actually a lot less educated in that than a lot of people think. But you don't need to be educated on the technology of cryptocurrency, you need to be educated on the potential of cryptocurrency. And then once you see how it is going to be used and what its utility is in the real world and how high the demand is in the world that we're in today for something like this, a software like cryptocurrency, then it's a no-brainer. It's like buying Nvidia like five years ago. If you knew, okay, well, like Nvidia is gonna become essential for AI technology, right? You could see that five years ago, you're rich today. The same way where you can see, okay, cryptocurrency is gonna be essential for the financial markets five years down the road, ten years down the road, just buy cryptocurrency and hold on for dear life, and you're gonna you're gonna do pretty good. You can buy almost any coin and it'll go up like in the bull the bull market.

SPEAKER_00

It's it's crazy. What's your idea of freedom once this crypto thing plays out? What once you've finished being homeless and you decide to maybe buy an apartment again, sell your cars, pay off the 150k debt. What's your idea of freedom once you've done those steps?

SPEAKER_01

My idea of freedom is being able to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it. And it's a lot harder to achieve that than just financial freedom. But I think after I finish going homeless, I'm still not going to be there yet. I think it's gonna take a lot more work to get there. Um, one is I need to give up my nine to five. So currently I work a sales job, it's W-2, right? I work for another company, and I am stuck on those company hours like for my source of income until I can establish a secondary source of income that is my own. In my mind, it doesn't matter if I'm making three hundred thousand dollars a year through my sales job because it's not my job. It's not my business. I don't have control over it. I need to be making three hundred thousand dollars a year through my own business in order to be financially free because then I'm the one who can decide if I want to take days off or not. And then even then, if the business, if the business relies on myself and my abilities to keep it running, then I'm also not financially free. I'm a slave to my own business. So I need to not only create my own business, but I need to create my own business and have other people run my own business. And it's gonna take a lot of years to get there. It's not it's not gonna be a simple journey. And so I plan on documenting the whole thing on my social media, on my personal brand as I'm going, just kind of showing people like what it really takes to get to financial freedom. And the going homeless for crypto, it's that's just one step of the journey. After I get an apartment, it's not over, it's going to keep going. And then eventually I do see myself in a place where I have enough passive income that I can work if I want to. My businesses operate on their own without my oversight. And then I want to take some time to see the world, and I want to take some time to travel. But I made a promise to myself that I was not going to travel and I was not going to go out and party or do anything like that unless I could do it at the highest echelon. Because why would I want to go to the bar if I have to be in the mosh pit when I could go to the bar and I could buy a section and I could get champagne and I could just buy whatever I want and not have to worry about what the bill is when it comes to me. That sounds a lot more fun than standing in a dance floor full of people hot and sweaty and just like everyone else. I don't want to be like everyone else. And when I go on vacation, I don't want to stay at the Hilton and and go to some nice restaurants and just do some activities. No, I want to pull up in a rented Ferrari. I want to stay at the nicest five-star restaurant that there is or rent a mansion off Airbnb or something. And I want to experience traveling that way. I don't want and I want to fly private wherever I go, and I'm willing to sacrifice everything to get there. And I'll have years of my life to be able to travel like that. That's where I see financial freedom being, and that's part of the reason why I'm willing to sacrifice now is because I can always do that later.

SPEAKER_00

This fire behind me, I'm sweating buckets, it's like a sauna in there. Um, but yeah, we we have like a lot of similarities with um just our mindset and financial freedom and things that we want and stuff like that. Like I very much want that. I don't even want to rent a Ferrari, I want a Ferrari, I want a Ferrari in Lithuania if I want to, you know, I want stuff like that, and I want to be have a cabin in the mountains, like, and uh just have the ability to just drive my Lambo out of the garage, down the mountain, to the shop, snowboard back up, whatever. Stuff of that nature, right? But people don't speak that and people aren't bold enough to say that a lot of the times. And uh I'm wondering what gave you that? What made you so for me it was like seeing people like Dan Martell who flashes off his cars, and uh he'll do it in a good way, and he'll he'll just he'll show kids the car on the street so let them rev it and stuff like that. Like so for me, like when I was younger, 12 years old, whatever, I've always wanted like a Lamborghini Hurricane, just a basic four-wheel drive, and uh yeah, like to give that car to my 12-year-old self, that's for me. So, for you, what what makes you want all of those?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I've always been very into cars and driving. Um, I've I figured out like the second I got my license, I was like, oh, this is it. Like this is this is what I enjoy doing because when I'm driving, my mind turns off. There's not a lot of things that can kind of turn my mind off. But when I'm driving, and when I'm driving really fast, especially when I like if I'm in my BMW or if if I'm if I'm oh if I'm over a hundred miles an hour, essentially, there's like a part of my mind that turns off, and all of my problems and all my everything that I'm dealing with just kind of fades into the background, and it's just I'm looking at the road, and I'm just feeling the car. And I love that I love that feeling, and I love racing. Oh, I just I just love driving. I'm I'm into the experience of driving more than I am the cars themselves with or the clout that comes with it. For me, I just always wanted it. I always wanted it, and then I was always told I couldn't have it. Like growing up, like my parents were like, if you work really hard, you can have that car, but like it was always like it was it was weird. Like it people just don't ever dream for it. People just give up on what they want, and they just settle for the fact that they're never gonna have that car, and so they'd rather just take a like a BMW M3 or something. Like it's like you why settle? Why settle? I want a BMW M3, but I also want a McLaren 765 LT. So why why settle when you could have both? And I honestly I I don't see it as unattainable. A lot of people for them, it's just they see it as unattainable because it's just so far away. Um, but the it lies the the unattainableness, like that feeling of it being unattainable, it lies in the vague because you don't know how to get and if you can break things down as Alex Ramosi says, the more that you break things down, the more clear they become. And so if you can break down, okay, well, how much does a McLaren 720S cost to own, right? Let's say you finance it. You need $50,000 down and you need $4,500 a month, essentially. How much money do you have to be making a year to afford that? Okay, well, if you're making $10,000 a year in the state of California, it's sixteen thousand dollars a month after taxes, you're probably looking at ten to twelve thousand dollars a month. That car payment is gonna be a third of your budget, which is a lot. But if you really want the car, you can make that work and a bank will approve you with those numbers. Now you got to think, okay, what jobs can I get that make $200,000 a year? And then you you realize, okay, well, there's a lot of jobs that require you to go to college and four years and all this stuff, and then you might make that much if you get a good job. The only jobs that I really know of where you can make that much money right off the bat with no college degree are gonna be sales or marketing. So then it really just comes down to sales or marketing. And I see them as okay, do you want to be Iron Man or Batman? Iron Man's flashy, right? He's flashy, he's in front, everyone knows his name, right? No one knows who Batman is, he's behind the scenes. Batman's marketing, Tony Stark is sales, right? So if you're a person who doesn't want to have this the limelight on you, you just go and you just turn into Batman. You just go do marketing, figure out how to do back end automation for social media pages. You can easily make $200,000 a year with a couple clients, right? Or you get sales, right? You just take a sales job, you learn how to sell, and then you can pretty much start making $200,000 a year within a year or two of training, of just like kind of getting the hang of how sales works. That's what I did. And and so once you break it down into those steps, suddenly a McLaren doesn't seem that far away. Because now you know exactly how to get there. And that's where the disconnect is with most people is they don't know how to break down and plan their way to their goals. So they just say it's unattainable and they just forget about it.

SPEAKER_00

They just settle for something less. Right. Exactly what you've just said, and exactly what we're talking about right now, is exactly why I've made this podcast. So for me, you might resonate with this, but growing up, everyone around you tells you things aren't possible. You say stuff and you'll be 12 years old, you'll be 15 years old, whatever. And you'll say, I want this, I want that, I want to do that when I'm older. Um, I think I can be this, I think I can do that. And everyone around you like laughs or says, No, you can't do that, whatever. And uh you just continuously prove them wrong, and you do it over and over and over, and you compound it, and you do whatever it is, and you you reach for whatever it is you want to do. And that's exactly why this podcast exists. It's that's why it's called Think Freedom, and that's why I want this to be a platform where it can show people and it can bridge that gap between impossible to possible. People just they don't filter their lives, they don't go, okay, how much is this car, how much is this Lamborghini Hurricane? Is it 140k? How much do I need per month for the down payments, etc.? They don't filter that, they don't go, what can I do, which I will enjoy maybe, or which will lead to enjoyment and financial freedom, or is enjoyment right now even a thing that should exist? And if I want something this badly, am I willing to ex you know, accept pain and just sacrifice and stuff like that? People are scared of doing that because they know how much pain, or they don't even know that. They just think it's gonna be so painful, they put a blinder to it or they settle. And the settling is where I hate to see people at. So for me, I just want to sort of spread that and be like, you don't have to settle, and that's why this podcast is what it is. Exactly. Exactly. I a hundred percent agree.

SPEAKER_01

Will you venture into YouTube and stuff like that for longer form? 100%. I plan on venturing into YouTube for long form content. I just don't have a lot of long form content right now. It's kind of hard to film it in my Tesla. And so I do these podcasts. I just started um doing more podcasts recently, and so I'm gonna do a bunch of little podcasts, and then I'll I'll be able to clip the content, repost the raw footage on my YouTube if I need to. And um Yeah, it's the plan.

SPEAKER_00

But what's the plan with that? So, like the long form, what's stopping you from putting on YouTube already? So, like I feel a car mount or whatever it is you need to set it up in the in the uh Tesla, it's uh it's achievable, and uh the content will definitely, for example, your short form content, right? You've got roughly averaging 1.5 to 3k views on all of the very top 10 that I saw. They're not the top 10, but they're the top first 10. So if you did those as long form and then crop them into shorts as well, but put the long form on there for like one to five minute videos or whatever, if you do that as well and then do shorts as well, you're still filming one piece of content, landscape, cropped into a short, and you've got multiple pieces of content, and long form might do better. So what like would you do that? Could you do that? Well, why why don't you do that?

SPEAKER_01

Because because in long form, it requires a lot more time on my end. Okay. Like right now, my day is pretty much already booked. Like, weekends are the only time that I that I really have off, and I'm normally even booked on weekends. I just happen to not have um anything going on today, so I scheduled some podcasts. But normally between my nine to five, going to lifetime fitness, my I get home and I just go straight to bed. Like I get into my my car and I just cack out. But I plan on doing long form once I'm back in an apartment or once I have more time in my day to do long form. Or if I can find a way to do long form passively. If someone could, if I get a like hire someone, like once I'm self-employed, I can hire someone to just follow me around all day and film the whole thing. Just film the day-to-day life, and then just hire an editor to edit that up into videos and and post it. Similar to like Danny Duncan. I don't know if you know who he is. Uh he used to do vlogs, and I remember watching some of his vlogs, and I'm like, you know what? I could I could do content like that, like my with my like kind of like business touch on it. And so I might be doing that at some point, but right now the the short form that I do is it works, it gets my point across, it builds my brand. I wasn't even planning on on getting I don't want to say famous, but I wasn't planning on getting followers until after I'd hit. I thought I would I would have to be rich before I got the followers. I didn't know that people were gonna follow me while I was broke, and so now I I've just kind of it just kind of happened and I'm just I'm just rolling with the punches as as it's going and I'm I'm trying to take advantage of it the best that I can. But it's very I also have an issue where I don't feel like I'm credible enough to be able to speak on on certain topics and really give advice because I haven't proved my model yet. I mean, going homeless to buy cryptocurrency, it's working. We have great results, but I'm still homeless and I still haven't achieved my goals. So if I'm able to successfully roll over the equity in my BMW and I'm able to successfully exit my vehicles, get back into an apartment, pay off a large chunk of my debt through cryptocurrency and make the gains that I want, I'd be a lot more comfortable doing long-form content teaching about it. Um but right now in my stage of my journey, I just kind of like want people to see what's going on. I want people to be able to see the journey and know that this is what happens.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know if you've intentionally done it, but I think what you've done is um it's genius in a way. You're the fact that you've gone homeless to buy crypto and you live in your car. It's so simple, it's extremely bold, it's controversial, it's got crypto in there, and you're doing something which just excites people. And uh not only that, it was one of your goals. So like I think the the imposter syndrome of not doing long-form content, um, for the reason of thinking you don't have anything where you can speak about with uh experience and just like you've proven your models and stuff yet. I think you already have proven things. So like you've already taken steps which no one like 99% of people never even take in their life. Most people would not go homeless to buy crypto to achieve their goals and take those steps up and up to where they want to achieve to. Like, so you've already taken the step, you just don't have the financial aspect of it yet to the level you want, but you've done stuff which most people won't do. So that's why it relates so heavily with people. That's why your following is growing so quickly, and it's so simple, it's it's very good.

SPEAKER_01

I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I I know that I'm I'm I'm passing everyone else as far as like the risk that I'm taking. And I know I know that I'm I'm I know that I'm getting ahead of like the average person, but I still I I want there to be a bigger gap, right? Like I don't like I don't feel like I can really teach about cryptocurrency or that I can really teach about going homeless to achieve your goals when I haven't really achieved what I want to achieve yet. It's more it's more personal. It's like my I set a goal for myself, I have not achieved that goal yet, and I told myself that I would never teach anything that I have not been through myself. So pretty much the only thing that I feel comfortable teaching people about right now is going to be honestly being an Uber driver, which is a huge pivot from everything we've talked about so far today. But when I was an Uber driver in Orange County, California, I was making $10,000 a month. I don't know anyone else who's done that. As far as I know, I'm I'm one of the only ones that's been able to do that. And I did it through sheer optimization and learning of these little tips and tricks to do in Uber to make more money and learning the right vehicles and learning the right setups and learning where to drive, when to drive. I feel like I could teach on that, and I actually have enough knowledge in that area where I could genuinely help people, and I do have the expertise in that area. But as far as with crypto goes, my biggest gain is XRP. I mean, I can I really claim that I know what I'm talking about with cryptocurrency if my biggest return is XRP. So yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, man. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing some long-form stuff. Um it's been a pleasure, bro. Really appreciate you coming on. And um, I think we will I'd be excited to jump on a pod in a few months ahead from now and uh see where this podcast has come, see where you've come, maybe do a little update of where where you've gone in that time, if you're still in the cars, if you're in a new role, if you've you know, employed and stuff for that. Um I just want to ask one last thing before we go as well. What was your uh thought process around going on the was it daily social? I saw the podcast, sorry, I forgot what it was called. Um the digital social hour podcast. That's the one. What was your thought process around that?

SPEAKER_01

Um, so they had reached out to me originally, and I was I decided I was like, this is great opportunity, right? He has 12 million followers on Instagram, huge audience, and um there was a lot of people that I respected that were following him. And so I was like, you know what, it's worth it. And then they came out with the 10 grand price tag, and I was like, you know, to get a professional podcast like that this early on in my career and to be able to tell people I was on digital social with Sean Mike Kelly, it's probably gonna be a good marking tool. It's probably gonna be something that I could use. And so I paid for it, and even though I did not get the reach that I was expecting, um, a lot of the the shorts didn't get very much reach. And uh the podcast itself, I pushed most of the traffic myself. So it has more views than a lot of his recent stuff, but that's just because I pushed it through my channel. Um but even though I didn't get the reach that I wanted through that podcast, everyone's like, you wasted 10 grand. Like everyone's getting triggered about it in my comment section. They're like, You wasted 10 grand on that podcast. I'm like, I really didn't because I'm in a WhatsApp group with a lot of very respectable people, including Donald Trump Jr. That's one of the perks that you get from going on that show is you're in a pod you're in a group chat with everyone else who's previously been on that pod. Oh, that's big. I'm very I'm very hyped to be in that chat. On top of that, I get warm introductions to any previous guest that has ever been on the show. So Sean will reach out to that guest and say, Hey, Ken wants to meet you or Ken wants to do business with you. That's a great thing right there. And on top of that, he's very connected with a bunch of other podcast hosts. So, like I'm already talking with Caleb Hammer, um, who does Financial Audit. I might go on Financial Audit. And then I'm hoping to get on some other podcasts in Los Angeles, um Las Vegas, and um in San Diego sometime in uh the next year. And so I don't I would not have been able to access those podcasts if not through him. Most likely it wouldn't have given me a second glance when I applied, or they would charge me a large fee. But because I've already been on his podcast, I'm not gonna get charged another fee, most likely. So there's a lot of there's a lot of thought that went into it, but I think I think it's gonna be worth it in the long run. But it's one of those investments where you're not going to see the returns for a very long time. So it's it was a long-term play on my personal brand, and I think it was worth taking out the loan for. I think so. I think so. I think that was a very good move. Where can people find you? Um my Instagram is pretty much where my brand presence is. I have it I'm on other platforms, but I don't post too much on um on the other platforms. I don't have a lot of long form content yet. Um so right now I'm pretty much on Instagram. The it's the life of a Ken, because the life of Ken was taken by some girl named Kendall. And so then I was like, okay, the life of A Ken will work. And then it it's stuck and it's too late to change it.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, bro, I'm gonna let you go. I'm I'm dying from the heat of the uh the fireplace here. Um but yeah, man, honestly, it's been a pleasure.