Skills For The 21st Century | Alexander Cortes

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (wind blowing) Alex, how are…

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      (wind blowing) Alex, how are you today? Welcome to Modern Wisdom.

   2. ACAlexander Cortes0:10

      I'm very good. How about yourself, my man?

   3. CWChris Williamson0:12

      Yeah, I'm fantastic, thanks. It looks an awful lot nicer wherever you are. I can see there's a reflection-

   4. ACAlexander Cortes0:18

      Oh. (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson0:18

      ... of some, some good, some good sunlight outside, which we haven't seen in the UK for a long time.

   6. ACAlexander Cortes0:23

      I mean, well, I, I live right on the beach in Venice, so I'm in a pretty opportune spot for weather.

   7. CWChris Williamson0:27

      Oh, man. That is, uh, jealousy inducing, to say the least.

   8. ACAlexander Cortes0:32

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson0:33

      So we haven't got an agenda to today. We're just gonna talk about whatever's, whatever's on our minds. So what have you been-

   10. ACAlexander Cortes0:38

       Yes.

   11. CWChris Williamson0:38

       ... what have you been learning about or reading about or thinking about recently?

   12. ACAlexander Cortes0:43

       Uh, recently? So I, I, I got a few things I'm working on. Um, I don't, I don't have any real structure to my day at all. I mean, like I do, but I don't. I basically just write an email every day and then tweet a lot and then just talk about stuff. So it's sort of like this personal brand influencer strange position-

   13. CWChris Williamson1:01

       Yeah.

   14. ACAlexander Cortes1:01

       ... uh, that you can't really qualify what you do, yet people pay attention to you all the time.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:04

       (laughs)

   16. ACAlexander Cortes1:05

       But, uh, I mean, the bi- the big project I'm actually working on right now that's been constructive is I developed, um, an online website learning portal with a business partner of mine called Sovereign University to teach people how to become sovereign individuals, uh, within, like, the modern sort of digital virtual economy, physical world as they've merged with each other. You know, my- myself, I've been working online for myself about going on three years. And before that, I'd worked with other people. And I've also been a personal trainer for 10 years, training people in person. Um, but I always found myself attracted to surface political conflict. I, I like, I like knowing what's going on, you know, on the sense of like, on a meta- on a meta level, not just on the level of petty politics. But it wa- it's been fascinating to me the last six, seven years to watch the dialogue and discourse devolve into this politicized rhetoric where everything's political and everything you say can and will be used against you. And you see people lose their jobs for what they said. You see people, you know, g- go under fire for every kind of comment. Everything is taken out of context, put into a different context. Yeah, and I realized for someone like myself where I... because I've gone through that... because I've gone through that myself and I know what the consequences are, uh, three years ago, I wanted to be in a position where I never had to worry about backlash of any kind. I didn't want to have to worry about an online mob. I did not want to have to worry about being doxed. Uh, I wanted to be immune to all of that. And I realized if you work for yourself, if you're a sovereign individual in the sense that you are self-made, self-paid, self-employed, you own your own businesses, and especially in a digital world where things really can't be taken from you that way, um, and then you have physical basis, you're very untouchable in a certain sensibility. So Sovereign University is sort of built around that concept. But then, and it's also teaching people the fundamental skills they need and the mindsets to learn how to do this stuff and create high value skills and create leverage. So it's an ambitious project.

   17. CWChris Williamson2:54

       That's cool. Uh, you're liberating people from the, the monotony of a, a, a world where they might not be that happy at work. I was recently reading a, a study that said over 80% of Americans are either indifferent or actively unhappy with their jobs.

   18. ACAlexander Cortes3:11

       Mm-hmm.

   19. CWChris Williamson3:11

       And there's only, I think, between 18 and 20% who are, uh, actively engaged with their, with their work.

   20. ACAlexander Cortes3:17

       Yeah. I mean, so- society isn't happy as a whole. I mean, I would say Western society as an... like, a- as a whole is in a big cultural malaise that way, uh, where everyone senses it that something has gone wrong or things are not going well, you know, whatever well means.

   21. CWChris Williamson3:31

       (laughs)

   22. ACAlexander Cortes3:32

       But, you know, we, we all feel it. Like, we all feel it. We all see it, you know, within, like, the media itself where every- everything's an outrage every day. But, you know, at the same time, the world is a good place and there's abundant opportunity if you know how to use it, capitalize on it, identify it.

   23. CWChris Williamson3:46

       Mm-hmm.

   24. ACAlexander Cortes3:47

       Uh, but, you know, I mean, the job unhappiness, like, the nature of work has changed over the course of 50, 60 years. You know, a, a job used to be something, uh, that you were. Now a job is just something that you do and oftentimes temporarily. There's a whole gig economy now where, you know, how many careers are there anymore where it's a reliable path and you just do the same thing for four years? Th- th- that's almost nonexistent at this point. Um, I, I don't know if that exists at all, honestly. Every- everything has changed. So you have to be, you know, hyper adaptive that way. And for most people, what they want, a set vision of the future and this is how things are gonna go, you don't have that anymore. You know, that... again, that does not exist. Uh, so you have to be perceptive, you have to be self-aware.

   25. CWChris Williamson4:27

       What do you think are the important skills then if we're moving into this very changeable time, which I completely agree that we are, and the, the old bastions of a job for life, uh, just don't seem to be there? What, what would be the skills if someone was thinking, uh, if you were able to design a human now that was-

   26. ACAlexander Cortes4:45

       Mm-hmm.

   27. CWChris Williamson4:45

       ... gonna start at 18 years old or 21 years old, what would you... what skills would you give them and, and what values would you give them?

   28. ACAlexander Cortes4:52

       S- skill wise, I would almost approach it from a, like, a classical, classical liberal arts education, um, where... and the, the big skill that's been lost in the modern era is people's ability to think. You know, that, that's been the biggest one. People's ability to think, people's ability to express themselves. Um, you know, but how is that a skill? It's, it's a soft skill. But soft skills have hard consequences and hard capitalization within the modern economy. So if a... you know, if I had an 18-year-old and I want to make them as capable as possible in the job market, or a teenager, let's say, 12, I... three things, rhetoric, logic, ability to argue, ability to speak, ability to write. If you can communicate very effectively in any environment that you're in, you're always going to be near the top. I, I've seen that so many times in so many different fields that I've worked with and consulted in where the people that can talk best are the ones that get ahead. It is. Be... wha- what, what does talking do for you? What does communication do for you? It means you pay attention to people and you can assess what their needs are. And if you're creating a product or even if you're writing code or whether you're even writing an article or, or if you're just doing customer service and you're receptive to people-... that is, you know, it's, uh, I mean, I'm being very cliché but that has been lost by a lot of people because digitization has removed human communication. You know, we're so used to talking through text now or, or showing an image but then you get people face-to-face and you see how awkward they are.

   29. CWChris Williamson6:15

       They crumble, yeah.

   30. ACAlexander Cortes6:17

       Yeah, so, so those people that can speak on camera, those people that can talk at length, those people where they can... and those people where they can have a conversation with someone and they know how to listen.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Yeah. …

   1. ACAlexander Cortes15:00

      (paper rustling) where I was just... You know, I had days, like, I've had days where I just am in my room the entire day just reading the whole book-

   2. CWChris Williamson15:05

      Yeah.

   3. ACAlexander Cortes15:05

      ... you know, for four, five, six hours, like, reading a whole book just, "Well, okay. Done. On to the next one."

   4. CWChris Williamson15:09

      Yeah.

   5. ACAlexander Cortes15:10

      S- it's strange because it feels good and, like, the r- the process of reading it is actually very relaxing. There's an, there's a mental nourishment to it.

   6. CWChris Williamson15:17

      Mm-hmm.

   7. ACAlexander Cortes15:17

      And when I do get back on the device now, or the computer, th- there's a harshness to it and there's sort of this, like, this, uh, farcical rapidity where you're just going through everything scrol- you're scrolling the feed over and over and over again, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, and you're trying to, you know, you're responding to everything at once. And it's not overwhelming in the sense like, "Oh, I'm so overwhelmed by it," but it feels fake.

   8. CWChris Williamson15:37

      Yeah.

   9. ACAlexander Cortes15:37

      Um, and there's this substantive... I realize there's this lack of thought to it. There's sort of, there's this lack of deep thought, deep focus to it where you're like-

   10. CWChris Williamson15:46

       100%.

   11. ACAlexander Cortes15:46

       ... it's ta- uh, it just it's training you to think on such a superficial level. And you see that with how people communicate with each other, where all arguments now, all headlines, all, all articles, everything, it's all written in emotional sound bites. You know, there's, there's very little of facts, reason, context. It's just written to get your attention, fire up your emotions, um, get you pissed off or confirm your biases, and then you move on to the next thing, and you can do that 1,000 times a day.

   12. CWChris Williamson16:10

       Mm-hmm. We're not built to have this level of stimulus go through us, I don't think. Not at all. And there was a, uh, an article that I read not so long ago that said something to do with the amount of stimulus that a typical human encounters now in a single day is the equivalent to the level of stimulus that a... Our Paleolithic ancestors would have done in a month.

   13. ACAlexander Cortes16:31

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CWChris Williamson16:31

       And you're like, "Right, okay, so that's the level to which my dopamine is being hacked by devices." And you, you're totally correct. So the listeners will know that we are, uh, evangelists of a good morning routine on this show, uh, and mine is, uh, is beautiful. It's my favorite part of the day, by, by an absolute country mile. If I've not had to work... I run g- I run nightclubs. If I've not had to work the night before and I've been able to go to bed at the time I want, which is 10:00, and get up at the time I want, which is 6:00-

   15. ACAlexander Cortes16:58

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CWChris Williamson16:58

       ... my morning is j- is beautiful. It's, uh, uh, a smoothie, some meditation, some reading, some journaling, some gratitude, some deep work, then some ROMWOD, so some yoga. Then I'm, uh... You know, and I'm ju- I finish that and I'm like, "That is..." If I could choose a day I would just... I'd have an entire day that was a morning routine. And it almost feels-

   17. ACAlexander Cortes17:18

       Mm-hmm.

   18. CWChris Williamson17:18

       ... laborious to think I, as soon as I step out of that door, that bedroom door, I now need to enter what I feel like the, the real world and start playing the game of, "Here we go." And I'm like... Sometimes I work myself up to checking my phone, and I think my-

   19. ACAlexander Cortes17:36

       (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson17:36

       ... my particular device, given the industry I'm in and, uh, and the way that we work. We have a lot of staff and there's a lot of group chats on WhatsApp and there's a lot of social media going on. So maybe I have a, a super normal level of super normal stimulus. But, um, yeah, I... There's some days where I... Like, this is the equivalent of working up to a one-rep max. I need to prep myself before I pick the phone up.

   21. ACAlexander Cortes17:59

       Uh, uh, it's f- I... My, my girlfriend, I, I tell her this sometimes now since I'll be looking at my phone. I get... I just ha- I... Because the Twitter following I have and then, like, the email list and, you know, all, all social media accounts, it's just a constant, um, you know, torrent of notifications and-

   22. CWChris Williamson18:13

       Just a barrage.

   23. ACAlexander Cortes18:15

       ... messages. Yeah, and I, I... You know, I'll look and be like, "Oh," like someone else wants a piece of my time. And I, I think-I read, I read an article recently, I think it might have been on BuzzFeed or maybe it was not, but it was about millennial burnout and i- the article was quite insightful and there, there were people, of course, commenting that this is, this is bullshit, this article, millennials are just weak. I'm like ... but there was something very real to it to the effect that millennials, um, the writer elucidated this very clearly, millennials deal with this environment of such overwhelming stimulation, like we just said, all the time and there's so many things grabbing our attention and every task takes another piece of it. Every task takes another piece of it and at the same time, we have the socioeconomic pressure of trying to just survive and people have the socioeconomic pressure of will they ever be able to get ahead? And then you have, you know, you have all these factors that you're dealing with that doing simple things like getting back to somebody on the phone or having to respond to an email or having to go send a package, you know, is, is it laziness or is it just that you cannot do another thing?

   24. CWChris Williamson19:10

       Mm-hmm.

   25. ACAlexander Cortes19:11

       You know, like we are so driven now towards this god of efficiency where everything has to be efficient and optimized and fast and speed, but then we do all that, but does it make our lives better in the sense that we actually get more done?

   26. CWChris Williamson19:24

       Mm.

   27. ACAlexander Cortes19:24

       Or are we actually just having to serve these death by 1,000 cuts or pinpricks (overlapping) -

   28. CWChris Williamson19:29

       Totally, tot- totally correct, yeah. Like is it-

   29. ACAlexander Cortes19:31

       And then you have to drop something off and you're like, "I don't feel like doing this at all."

   30. CWChris Williamson19:35

       "I can't, I can't, yeah, I can't go to the post office. It's too much today."
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   She's got the balance…

   1. ACAlexander Cortes30:00

      Um, she- she works in the tech. She actually works in tech and she has a company. Um, but yeah, she's sort of like ... she manages to sort of stay out of the loop of the s- the- the daily whatever Twitter cycle.

   2. CWChris Williamson30:09

      She's got the balance right. We need to- we need to get her.

   3. ACAlexander Cortes30:12

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson30:12

      We need to get her to prescribe us the digital-

   5. ACAlexander Cortes30:14

      That's po-

   6. CWChris Williamson30:14

      ... the digital, uh, reduction method.

   7. ACAlexander Cortes30:17

      I'll ask her. But, uh, so yeah. So that's why we watched the Fyre Festival documentary. And I watched it and it was actually quite fascinating because, you know, I just assumed it was gonna be this music festival that went down and, "Oh, went down playing, ha ha."But it, it started actually as this idea for an app, which was a very legitimate idea where, uh, Billy McFarland, the guy who was the entrepreneur, uh, he had this idea that what if you could book talent directly through, like, one network and you didn't have to go through middlemen? So it was very similar actually to what Jerry Weintraub did in the 1970s. Jerry Weintraub, for background context, he was an American, um, band talent manager in the 1970s, and he was known for changing the music industry where he signed up a gazillion acts under his management company. Um, he had, like, Led Zeppelin, Frank Sinatra, very big names. And then rather than when he would go and do tours with his talent, rather than have to negotiate with, like, the middlemen promoters in different areas across the United States, he would go directly to the theater where the show would be held. And this was a big idea back in the 1970s.

   8. CWChris Williamson31:16

      Mm-hmm.

   9. ACAlexander Cortes31:17

      And he'd negotiate with whoever owned the venue. So he was taking... You know, he was still a middleman but he's like, "Rather than have to add another step, I got the talent-"

   10. CWChris Williamson31:24

       Yeah.

   11. ACAlexander Cortes31:24

       "... let's just go talk to where we're going to perform." And that was it. So the idea for the Fyre Festival, it was actually supposed to be promotion for an app where if you wanted to book a, a, I don't know-

   12. CWChris Williamson31:35

       Ja Rule.

   13. ACAlexander Cortes31:36

       If you wanted to book Ja Ru- If you wanted to book Rihanna for your birthday party, you could just open up the app. Her booking fee was right there. You, it'd take you directly to her agent. Um, you'd have to, like, put down the money, like, you know, a deposit and, you know, it was supposed to-

   14. CWChris Williamson31:49

       Done.

   15. ACAlexander Cortes31:50

       ... take steps transaction. So the Fyre Festival started this idea like, "We'll use this to promote the app." And then the guys, Billy McFarland and Ja Rule was the other one who was sort of the hype man for this project, they got to the Bahamas and then they just had this idea to just fly in, like, the top 20 models in the world, and, you know, spent a lot of money doing this, and, "Let's just film ourselves partying for a bunch of days and then we'll try and make, like, some sort of sizzle reel out of it." And that became the Fyre Festival documentary. And they never expected it to work at all, but then when it became popular and they realized, "Okay, we got something, let's just launch this festival."

   16. CWChris Williamson32:22

       Mm-hmm.

   17. ACAlexander Cortes32:22

       So, I mean, you know, talk about getting in way over your head. Uh, so seeing that happen and seeing, like, every human misstep along the way of trying to do this grand project that was... Like, never got off the ground and it was, like, doomed from the start. But then you also sort of saw the power of personality where the guy, Billy, despite everything breaking down every single day, despite being behind on money and, like, defrauding, defrauding people and not paying people and just, like, every- everything that could go wrong did go wrong, you know, was like Brown's, you know, sort of, um, law that way, uh, he still managed to make it happen because he just was so... Like, and this is where sociopathy is a good thing. He was so determined that, "No, this will work, I swear to God," that everybody just kind of went along with his personality because, like, you know, "Billy says it's gonna work so, I know it's not and it's failing, we haven't paid in four months, but screw it-"

   18. CWChris Williamson33:10

       Yeah.

   19. ACAlexander Cortes33:10

       "... let's just do it anyway."

   20. CWChris Williamson33:12

       It's, there's something... I'm so conflicted about him, right? And my, my appreciation of this, and for the club promoters that are listening as well, they will, they'll know it's rare that we have something that's talked, that talks about our industry, and this was one. And it is a club-

   21. ACAlexander Cortes33:29

       Ah.

   22. CWChris Williamson33:29

       ... a club promoter's worst nightmare. Like, and we've all, you know, we run weekly club nights. We've had, I've done a thousand events probably over my career and, you know, there's times we've opened a club in Newcastle, um, where the painters were still painting the toilets while customers were going in and we were hoping, because it had just opened, and we were, we were hoping no one would need the toilet for, like, the first 15 minutes because then that means-

   23. ACAlexander Cortes33:51

       (laughs)

   24. CWChris Williamson33:51

       ... that the painters could have finished and, like-

   25. ACAlexander Cortes33:53

       Uh-huh.

   26. CWChris Williamson33:53

       ... we've, we've done ones where we've had to get, like, a generator in because the power had been cut off because the bill hadn't been paid and stuff. And you're like, "Right, okay, like this is..." Yeah, I know. This is-

   27. ACAlexander Cortes34:03

       Yeah, you can relate. You can relate.

   28. CWChris Williamson34:04

       Yeah. I can relate on a slightly deeper level. I've got that, that degree of anxiety. But you're totally right, the Billy McFarland character I'm so conflicted about because there is, there's something so, um, seductive and, and romantic and, and admirable about someone who has this single-minded purpose and is able to, to follow something through like that. The difference is he wasn't doing it from a place of passion, he was doing it from a place where he wanted the status and he wanted the money and he wanted all the stuff that's associated with it. But because naturally, especially in this world, we're so drawn to success, like success is this, it is the zenith on the hill of, of what everybody wants in this world. And here's the thing that, uh, a friend said to me a few weeks ago and I can't get it out of my head, that Billy McFarland, his virtue and his integrity was basically nonexistent throughout the whole festival, the whole project. All he wanted to do was look cool on as grand of a scale as possible. And-

   29. ACAlexander Cortes35:11

       Mm-hmm. For sure.

   30. CWChris Williamson35:12

       ... the only reason that anybody on the planet is slating him or that the vast majority of people are slating him is because it didn't work. Now, if all of the stars had aligned and that guy, his operations director or whatever had sucked the cock of the customs guy and got the water out and then... (laughs) And then, you know, somehow they'd managed to get some villas and maybe it hadn't been that weekend where, um, the, uh, population doubled for, like, basically yacht week and maybe the food had arrived and maybe the catering had worked and blah, blah, blah. Let's say that in a different set of random circumstances, another iteration of this particular festival, everything had come together correctly, but none of it had been due to preparation, it was just a more luck upon luck upon luck and somehow maybe they'd petered out like a six out of ten, seven out of ten festival. We would be hailing this guy as the new festival creator on the planet.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Oh, constantly. Constantly. Um,…

   1. CWChris Williamson45:00

      effects of that. Like, you would have an awful lot more festivals and startups in terms of events going on, the artists... You know, how many more times would Blink-182 get booked if people knew how easy it was to book Blink-182? Like, you know they'd be getting deposits all the time.

   2. ACAlexander Cortes45:17

      Oh, constantly. Constantly. Um, like, that's ca... I ge- I k- I know I've been thinking about that. Like, that was just a very legitimately good idea. And so I- I've- I've had some proximity there in the industry being in Los Angeles and working in Hollywood and that's just, it's this very constant old nightmare of, okay, let's try to get ahold of this person. How do we get ahold of this person?

   3. CWChris Williamson45:35

      (laughs)

   4. ACAlexander Cortes45:35

      All right, we'll contact this person first and sweet talk them, go maybe talk to this person second, and then you gotta sweet talk, maybe pay them, and then maybe they'll pass on a message to, like, a third person, and then maybe that third person might have, like, some direct line of access to the talent who maybe will get back to them who maybe will call you.

   5. CWChris Williamson45:52

      Yeah.

   6. ACAlexander Cortes45:53

      But only if you talk, like... It, like, it's just this multitude of people-

   7. CWChris Williamson45:55

      The stars need to align so well, right?

   8. ACAlexander Cortes45:58

      Yeah. And so, I mean, so much of it comes down to almost just luck where it's like, okay, hopefully, like, I'm hoping this works out, I'm hoping this works out. Uh, (laughs) yeah. Like, I- I- I wonder if that will happen at some point since it seems like... Especially for, especially for talent, let's say the people that are up and coming-

   9. CWChris Williamson46:12

      Mm-hmm.

   10. ACAlexander Cortes46:13

       ... that are trying to sort of, like, you know, become known, be seen, um, you know, develop, like, their own, you know, develop their presence that way. You know, for like lower level, mid-level acts, that could be very revitalizing for their career on a certain level because, like, I- I wonder how much of... I don't want to say success. It- it makes you question how much of its success is not just from, like, a- a talent's lack of hustle, but from just like a l- this- this poor management.

   11. CWChris Williamson46:35

       Accessibility.

   12. ACAlexander Cortes46:36

       Yeah, accessibility. I mean, that's a very common thing in Hollywood too. Like if you have a bad manager, uh, you know, a bad agent, you might be missing opportunities all the time and you have no idea.

   13. CWChris Williamson46:45

       Mm-hmm. Yeah. I get that. Um, I didn't know that most of the people didn't get refunded. Is that the case?

   14. ACAlexander Cortes46:52

       There are... Some people got their... I- I think that there were... Like the people that lower level tickets, they got their money back, but th- there... What... Like so one of the things that came out was like, like the wrist, like the wristband.

   15. CWChris Williamson47:01

       Yep. The RSID payment bracelets.

   16. ACAlexander Cortes47:04

       Yeah. I don't know if that was refunded actually, since they... He still... Like he got sued for something like $25 million.

   17. CWChris Williamson47:10

       Yeah.

   18. ACAlexander Cortes47:10

       So I don't... Like that, some of that money was not refunded at all. Um, yeah, I mean even that wristband was a cash grab because they had to pay off other stuff from other loans he'd taken out, so. (laughs)

   19. CWChris Williamson47:20

       Yeah, 'cause that was the... Apparently the- there's that guy on the Netflix documentary who says that there was a woman who rang him aggressively saying that he hadn't loaded up his wristband yet.

   20. ACAlexander Cortes47:28

       (laughs)

   21. CWChris Williamson47:29

       And it would appear that the- the tickets were maybe like 3 to 5000 pounds and then they were being suggested to put almost that amount again on the wristband-

   22. ACAlexander Cortes47:40

       Yes.

   23. CWChris Williamson47:40

       ... so they could do jet ski hire and alcohol, this, and all the rest of it. So what- what happened? 'Cause he didn't have, he- he didn't have festival insurance.

   24. ACAlexander Cortes47:49

       No.

   25. CWChris Williamson47:50

       What is the- the situation moving forward with getting that money out? But I mean, you know, he's in jail, which is... I mean, like do not pass go, do not collect 200 pounds. Like that is... Jail is the... Like no one's getting debt out of you in jail. I'm going to presume that they will have gone through... They'll have done his forensic accounts and they'll have gone through every asset he has with a fine tooth comb, and once you've sold off like a couple of bottles of Ciroc and probably some shit pairs of Louboutins, like what's left?

   26. ACAlexander Cortes48:19

       Yeah. Well, yeah. That- that was... So I- I mean, act- after watching the second one I did a bit of research, but essentially like nobody got paid. Like I mean like no- almost nobody got paid. Like a lot of people, a lot of people, like the Bahamian workers, no one got their money back.

   27. CWChris Williamson48:31

       Mm-hmm.

   28. ACAlexander Cortes48:32

       Yeah, simply for the reason being that when they... Even w- before the festival ever was like an idea and they were just on the island filming, he basically ran a Ponzi scheme of just debt.

   29. CWChris Williamson48:41

       Mm-hmm.

   30. ACAlexander Cortes48:41

       ... where he got capital from one person, you know, or short-term loans, and then the next round of, of funding would pay off the first round, and then the next round would pay off the second round. So, like, when it w- everything was accounted for, um, with forensic analysis, th- there was no money anywhere because, like, it doesn't, it didn't exist. Y- he got $500,000, spent all of it, and then got a loan for $500,000, you know, telling the other guy, "Don't worry, you'll get the money back eventually," like it's going towards something. So like, there, there was nothing to, you know, even, um ... oh, what's the term I'm looking for? There was nothing to liquidate.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:00:15

   (outro music)…

   1. ACAlexander Cortes1:00:01

   2. NANarrator1:00:01

      (outro music)

Episode duration: 1:00:15