Playing to Win - 055 - Brutal Divorce Turns Grateful

00:00:00.000 all right guys welcome to another episode of the plane to win podcast series i'm joined today

00:00:04.160 with a very interesting guest i'm i'm actually super stoked to talk to you duane because uh

00:00:09.520 i've mentioned a few times on my channel um my interest in about eight to ten years down the

00:00:15.000 road just packing up most of my life and living on a yacht down in the caribbean or somewhere nice

00:00:20.340 i mean the mediterranean sounds nice to me you're in the mediterranean right now um we met through

00:00:25.800 uh instagram so you know lo and behold these social media platforms can be great for stuff

00:00:30.360 like this and you've messaged me and you said uh hey rich love your talks good stuff don't know if

00:00:34.440 you're interested but i'm a survivor of the california divorce process at 53 walked out with

00:00:39.520 zero just before was a thriving multi-millionaire i rebuilt over five years and then sold out bought

00:00:45.020 a one-way ticket to turkey and bought a beautiful sailboat which i've been touring the eu on for

00:00:49.840 last three years learned so much and then you offered to have a conversation so here we are

00:00:54.740 today duane welcome man how you doing wow rich thanks i really appreciate you uh having me on

00:01:02.040 your show because i i see your a lot of your videos and i've gleaned so much from uh how you approach

00:01:10.660 the whole uh the new attitude of being male and um and also just surviving in this crazy world

00:01:19.920 and um so thank you and um let me let me get you to kind of like frame the frame the backstory because

00:01:27.440 i've had the opportunity to listen to a few of the podcasts that you linked for me which sounded

00:01:31.360 basically like your audio recordings telling a story almost like a journal uh i've watched a few

00:01:36.360 of the videos on your youtube channel it's a small channel um but nonetheless you know i wanted to see

00:01:40.760 you know what what you're all about and i always want to you know check out potential guests to make

00:01:44.660 sure that they're legit um so can you give the guys a background on what i mean lead up to what

00:01:51.800 got you to the sailboat in the mediterranean right now because you were quite successful you lived in

00:01:57.380 california in a nice area of yeah you know town sort of thing had a family a wife what all happened

00:02:03.340 i well okay i i i had a very definite plan growing up and i i was raised in a very strong family in

00:02:11.720 southern california builders and and um and i learned these trades very young from the time i

00:02:19.760 was 12 i was 15 i built my first house of course there was a lot of supervision to my dad and my

00:02:24.200 uncles it was very family oriented and um and then i went uh i went to college and and way back then i

00:02:34.200 had an interest in surfing and sailing i just was maniacal over water and so that's what i got through

00:02:39.580 high schools doing fun stuff like that and then i uh when i got out of college as engineer in my

00:02:46.540 mid-20s i traveled to asia i had a job for a bit in indonesia as an engineer and then i traveled around

00:02:55.500 australia and i got to cruise for a little while i jumped on other people's boats yeah yeah i heard

00:03:01.840 that part where you basically were pacing like the marina and just looking for somebody that was

00:03:07.980 looking for crew how old were you at that time i was 25 20 24 25 26 i was gone for three years

00:03:14.780 and you would just randomly like chat up people with sailboats and say hey you know i'm in the

00:03:18.320 area you know do you need crew yeah and that was that was par for the course back then and now

00:03:22.820 it's so different because there's all kinds of websites that you could connect you know crewing

00:03:27.280 uh and and boats connect so it's called crew bay and there's find a crew oh yeah there's a lot of

00:03:32.880 crew i use them all the time i'm gonna move just a little bit because i'm shifting around

00:03:37.080 so sorry about that and so if you're on a passage where you need crew you can actually go to a

00:03:41.920 website and say hey look yo i've got room for two guys i'm traveling from here to here and then you

00:03:47.200 can basically source them out that way yeah in fact it's too bad this thing's not more live i know

00:03:52.840 it's probably people are going to be seeing this a little bit after but well i'm actually going to

00:03:56.460 have this as a premiere so i'll be in the live chat when people are watching this being able to

00:04:00.520 answer the questions i'll give you the time and date in case you're available and you're not on

00:04:03.840 a passage so that maybe you can join okay well like tomorrow today is whatever the 15th 14th

00:04:09.300 14th of december yeah and tomorrow i hope i get a couple waiting on a couple more repair items for

00:04:16.000 the boat but as soon as i get those i've taken off of the canary it's about a 10 day seven to 10 day

00:04:20.760 passage and i don't have any crew at the moment okay and i so i put an ad on crew bay is the one i use

00:04:28.000 and it's free for other people to sign up or you can pay five bucks a month or something and get

00:04:33.140 the premium version it's real it's very cheap and it's very value i mean it's it's a great platform

00:04:38.520 and i got a lot of crew from that so that's one thing and um sorry i just want to take you back to

00:04:46.220 the australia thing when you're in your 20s yeah so so basically i'm 24 and i'm walking up down

00:04:51.300 uh pontoons and i get on boats and i ended up on one guy's boat and we cruised uh the another

00:05:00.500 the uh great barrier reef and i'd met this girl in a um in a uh hostile ingrid and we i asked her

00:05:10.500 hey you want to hitchhike with me up the coast to do this she said yeah let's go so go and we ended up

00:05:15.180 on this boat for months some guy serge sokolovsky was his name from uh russian defector and he had

00:05:21.800 to try him around we pay him 10 bucks a day or something plus food and uh just float around and

00:05:28.140 i'd skin dive and i was like i said sir yeah how long can you do this and he said long as you want

00:05:33.780 he said what's the cost it's nothing and you just own the boat and you can anchor it he goes yeah

00:05:38.480 like you can do this all over the world it's amazing now you go into i go into marinas a lot

00:05:44.440 like maybe four days a month five days a month just for repairs for waters i i do have a water maker but

00:05:52.880 it takes a lot of energy to make water so if i can get it from there but like starting next week i'm

00:06:00.260 going to be anchored for months off of an island in the eastern atlantic and i just surf a couple times

00:06:08.000 a day and there's no services there because there's nothing it's just a big volcano rocky island and

00:06:13.880 there's breaks all around it and so i'll be making water when i'm there anyway it's uh uh

00:06:21.740 so back to 24 i decide wow this is an amazing lifestyle and i realized it wasn't easy to make

00:06:34.140 money in this business it's like you know you i was a builder i was an engineer and i was getting

00:06:41.000 figured i was going to be a contractor and i came back and i said okay you ended up building custom

00:06:45.440 homes was it i did yeah and i so i made a very cognizant decision after roaming the planet for

00:06:51.240 three years and i did all kinds of odd jobs when i was traveling you know 24 25 26 and i was a waiter

00:06:57.380 busboy i rode a bicycle and delivered mail as a courier i poured concrete for people whatever

00:07:03.960 just to make enough money to get by but then i wanted to come back and get some real money

00:07:08.480 so i came back to southern california and i got my contractor's license and i just got down and i

00:07:14.360 started uh borrowing uh using other people's money to buy properties and and then i would build on

00:07:21.360 them and i put the package together and i was some i would keep and some i'd sell and i got married

00:07:26.720 when i was about 30 and i married this woman who was an architect and and she we were a pretty

00:07:32.680 dynamic team together but she was the same age as you yeah she was a year younger than me and she

00:07:37.540 was but i didn't realize at the time because i went to san francisco this was

00:07:42.100 right after most of your listeners probably wouldn't know this but right after there was a

00:07:49.340 event called the oakland hills firestorm happened in 1991 uh october 1991 and 3 000 houses burned down

00:08:01.600 in one day in the oakland hills it's just across the bridge from san francisco and i was living in

00:08:08.900 southern california at the time and a friend of mine said hey did you hear about this and at the time

00:08:15.460 there was a huge uh recession occurring and so well all over the country and i had built another

00:08:22.600 spec house i couldn't sell it it was sitting there empty and all my cash was stuck in that and i was

00:08:28.820 like i'm gonna go check this out so i bought a ticket on southwest airlines i went up and and

00:08:35.000 um a friend of mine and said oh you know my my sister-in-law just got uh her architecture degree up

00:08:40.960 there and she lives right by i'll have her pick her have her pick you up at the airport okay great

00:08:45.940 so she did we drove around and that wasn't some amount of time we got married and she was my

00:08:54.580 partner we built a lot of houses and that was an amazing time because there was all these empty

00:09:00.360 lots and we were killing it i mean we just we bought and sold uh i'm having to hide from the sun

00:09:09.540 just piercing in my eyes no you're good man just just move to wherever you need to on the boat

00:09:13.940 yeah if you go inside then just go inside if the light's too too bright or throw on some shades

00:09:19.180 okay uh so um that when i met her i said look

00:09:27.600 i'm a sailor and a surfer and i'm gonna get down and we're gonna make some serious dough

00:09:36.880 and in after we make this chunk of money i want to go sail the earth sail the planet and she was like

00:09:49.140 oh that sounds so exciting that's so amazing and you know when you're don't have kids um you know

00:09:57.660 like you say the the women's perception of world and everything it just changes radical

00:10:04.020 spinning around here so by the time i was 40 i had made a lot of money i think i i was i was a

00:10:14.600 multi multi-millionaire and so this was like 10 years later and we had done a lot of houses

00:10:19.380 very successful we had a great reputation and i was like look i had three kids they were young

00:10:26.040 at that time they were like four six and eight i said let's go and she's like no i don't want to go

00:10:32.840 anymore and i was like oh my god and it was there was a lot of discussion about it but she just changed

00:10:40.620 her mind and so why did she say no when she previously said yes before because i always have

00:10:46.200 to remind guys like women always reserve the right to change their mind in a given time

00:10:49.880 this is a this is a classic example of it she was just comfortable because we were i i was a victim

00:10:56.960 of my own success yeah i really was i was a victim of my own success i lived in a beautiful house i had

00:11:03.020 a second house in the mountains i we had a ski house right i had my own airplane i had a beechcraft

00:11:08.120 baron i would fly the play family around in the plane my kids uh we had a beach house down in

00:11:15.540 san clementi near my parents i didn't share with the family but still it was right on the water

00:11:19.900 we had so like you guys were the envy of of of like your social network right that's right you

00:11:24.960 had a beautiful family multiple residences lots of money a plane yeah yes yeah yeah yeah i was i was

00:11:31.160 killing it and i worked my ass off i i would venture to say i would work 16 hours a day and i would uh

00:11:38.960 you know i would have to say also that um as far as a exercise regimen and keeping fit

00:11:45.540 even though i kept all these jobs going i would work every day on the jobs i would make sure i would

00:11:51.120 pick up a couple two by 12s and run up and down the hills i was actually doing work at the time but

00:11:56.040 and i've run up and down stairs on these hillside lots and it kept me very very very fit the payoff of

00:12:03.520 that today i'm 59 generally people guess me to be about 45 it happened today with some guy another

00:12:11.620 sailor it's like i can't believe you're 59 but over the years keeping your weight i'm i'm the same

00:12:21.120 weight and size almost as when i was 21 or 18 and um so i was here listening to you talk about all your

00:12:28.800 fitness and that is i never went to a gym huge payoff anyway i uh she changed her mind because

00:12:37.760 she was comfortable and she didn't want to travel and uh she wanted to go for a couple of weeks you

00:12:46.180 know or maybe a weekend or maybe even a month but she didn't want to like stop and actually

00:12:51.700 tour the world live with the locals live as you would i my idea was to take the kids and okay we're

00:13:00.980 going to go to italy we're spending a semester in italy they're just going to go in to get in italian

00:13:05.660 schools it sounds like you had everything but the boat at that time that's right okay yeah that's right

00:13:11.640 and i and i knew how much work boats were and i didn't really have the time to take care of one

00:13:19.280 because i was in this work mode and then we started looking at boats and then she went down

00:13:25.220 looked at me with them a little bit with me and then she said nah not into it and so i was like

00:13:33.680 okay now at the time i was living in oakland if you know anything about oakland it's a pretty rough

00:13:41.500 place and i and and i have the in my in my career between growing up in la and growing up in oakland

00:13:50.420 i've had a gun pulled in my head three times just random shit you know guys thugs walking down the

00:13:57.920 street they'll stop and pull out a piece and i run i see it come in and i floor it and get out of there

00:14:03.440 and gotta know how to run and i did that in la as being a gopher for my dad's company you make the

00:14:08.620 wrong turn down some alleyways and trying to take a shortcut in the afternoon through east la and

00:14:13.380 you know you're fodder for them so i know the routine i wanted to get the hell out of there

00:14:19.140 it's like okay enough i don't want to have to die just for this how old were the kids when you

00:14:24.520 had to untie the knot oh they were 14 16 and 18 okay so they were almost adults then yeah so what

00:14:32.900 happened when you had to go through that process with family law in the state of california

00:14:36.800 so we'd had this business together for uh basically 20 years and uh i had also made a second company

00:14:49.180 that was manufacturing you guys could look it up if you want it's called vitruvian built it's on

00:14:55.540 there's a youtube there's a bunch of youtube something about it i got it there's a guy uh john

00:15:00.480 fanier made a documentary if you look him up he's uh made like i think he made rocky he was the

00:15:07.400 camera and producer guy hollywood dude but he happened to be my neighbor at the time and he

00:15:12.720 watched what i was making he said hey can i make a documentary about you on this i just think it's

00:15:17.640 interesting so he did so the results of that is on youtube and i made a machine

00:15:24.000 that automated the production of houses in a net zero fashion there's almost no way like a like

00:15:31.560 3d house printed houses where it prints that yeah but it didn't well it's what we did is it took large

00:15:38.360 chunks of foam and we cut them up and then we machined them and milled them but the software we made

00:15:43.880 would image you could anything you could draw in 3d in autocad it would read it and then make a g

00:15:50.620 code to cut it out and then we wrote algorithms in order to optimize how to use all the materials

00:15:55.280 and so we wasted very little and it was very cheap and efficient way to build really straight square

00:16:00.640 efficient houses because your walls are eight inch solid foam and then you add cement or drywall on

00:16:06.840 the outside that it looks like a regular house so that's where you'd get those spanish looking houses

00:16:10.940 in california right well i mean anyhow you could do modern you could do uh um you could do gingerbread

00:16:19.920 you could do spanish you could any any any house or any building that had walls or roots i could build

00:16:26.060 how much were both these businesses doing by the way like if you don't mind like like what was your

00:16:30.120 net worth approximately when you went into the divorce versus after well at my peak i think my net worth

00:16:35.480 that was about 19 uh or maybe about 2000 one or two i was probably worth 10 million and then uh

00:16:43.000 by the end of it i was probably worth we were we were just suffering the uh uh the wrath of 2008

00:16:51.780 and everything declined a lot because i had most of my assets in uh real estate i think i owned about

00:16:59.000 37 properties but the net of that i would get a pretty good income every year but the gross value

00:17:04.700 was about 6 million okay because it went down but i'd start i stopped working so much i kind of

00:17:10.680 semi-retired after i was 42 and then that's when i built this this uh house manufacturing system and um

00:17:19.340 and so i uh um the manufacturing process never really made any money because i didn't charge

00:17:34.540 i mean i it we're we only did it it took me i guess i worked on it about three years

00:17:38.960 and to go through the beta testing it gives a lot of failures i had to build it rebuild it three or

00:17:44.560 four times this machine and i had to get approvals all over california i had to go through destructive

00:17:49.180 testing i had to get uh you know ubc codes and and but i built 40 structures with it so i built a

00:17:57.240 couple hundred thousand square feet of walls and roofs um and it was uh now this was 10 years ago

00:18:05.140 so money today if i if i would have kept it all together i sometimes do the math i don't know it

00:18:12.020 might be worth 30 million today if i would have gone up on the trajectory so i've done okay and i was

00:18:18.100 very happy i was more than happy and then one day uh my ex-wife who had i realized she'd been

00:18:25.800 planning this for about three years how did you know she was planning for three years because she

00:18:31.040 was in charge of the books ah so the books that's that's where the truth came out yeah so she was

00:18:38.000 very clever and we had debt of course to other people you know when you have i have bank loans and

00:18:46.620 then i had private loans from other investors all of that happened to be in my name or theoretically it

00:18:53.980 wasn't you know we didn't have to pay it back because it was a property recorded against

00:18:57.440 properties now they trusted us and i trusted my ex-wife that was my mistake and i even you know

00:19:04.200 threw myself to the judge i said hey this isn't fair he goes there

00:19:08.880 dude you you know what is fair there is no fair and you know you should have been more careful

00:19:18.040 you shouldn't have trusted her i was like okay so a family judge said don't trust your wife

00:19:26.020 yeah basically yeah totally totally like like counterintuitive to what you've been told your

00:19:33.360 entire life right it's just you know put your trust in your partner yeah and here's the other thing

00:19:37.920 it's when when i went to the court i i i really haven't spent any time in courts i mean i've been in a

00:19:45.840 few lawsuits over the years over disputes over properties and little things like that uh and

00:19:53.200 and just being in the course of business but you barely you know it's not like you're in front of a

00:19:58.620 jury it's not like perry mason with a jury and everything that's just business law well when i went to

00:20:05.660 uh divorce law into the divorce court there's one guy just the judge

00:20:13.260 and he makes all the calls he makes all the calls he can do whatever he wants and my ex-wife was a

00:20:20.100 pro she wore a cute dress right up over her knee and some shoes that would you know she was talking

00:20:26.860 to the judge the guy was like 65 good looking guy you could see he was a coxman in his day

00:20:32.040 you know he's like he's retired from being a lawyer and they put him on the stand and in my town

00:20:39.460 in san luis obispo there was three judges three that's it so you really can't change you know

00:20:46.540 there's no there's no latitude there's nowhere else to go just get what you get

00:20:50.020 and when she would go to walk up on the stand she would stand up he would almost come out of his chair

00:20:56.740 like oh sit down you know like point at the chair like he was pulling up basically what you're saying

00:21:02.140 he was simping hard he was simping for your for your wife oh yeah he liked her and she was like

00:21:07.460 working it man you know dress because i looked at her i said i didn't say it but i just saw her

00:21:12.260 i go you never dress like that it's like sexy conservative oh yeah yeah and uh and so she'd

00:21:19.480 been coached and i was like oh my god i'm such a city duck here and when i came up he just kind

00:21:25.300 laid back like whatever let's hear your side of the story right and she asked from the first day

00:21:31.520 for full control now before that when she first she sprung it on me one morning just said oh i want

00:21:38.180 a divorce and i remember it was november 7 2012 and i was in certain morning laying in bed

00:21:45.300 gave me a big old elbow and i said what's that about i want a divorce and i was like

00:21:49.520 what what are you talking about i mean it's totally surprising we had three kids in the house

00:21:55.280 this beautiful estate down in san luis obispo we had moved the whole family down there eight

00:21:59.920 years before and built out a beautiful gentleman's ranch had a vineyard fruit trees and i built a

00:22:07.280 sports field for my kid and like to play baseball why do you think she pulled the trigger on on that

00:22:12.340 particular date on november the 7th like was it was it like you know she had cooked the books long

00:22:16.700 enough you know we had an argument we had an argument a few days before okay and it was about the uh the

00:22:22.280 election and i and obama had won again and i was angry because what he had done to me it just happened

00:22:32.160 to be in my case guys like me he had given a lot of money to banks and the banks bought the local banks

00:22:39.120 and the local banks had to were now owned by outsider banks and they started foreclosing processes and all

00:22:45.480 kinds of properties and they tried to foreclose on me they just they did illegal stuff i won't get too

00:22:51.380 into it they were bastards i actually took one of them to court and i won and uh that was another

00:22:57.520 court case i had but i didn't lose anything to foreclosure because i'd kept up my bills but they

00:23:02.640 tried to trick me into a lot of nasty stuff these were big boys from new york and they bought the

00:23:06.480 little local bank and found those obispo and i said how come we're in the situation where our

00:23:12.640 government is taking our money and printing and giving to the big big banks and coming in and just

00:23:17.180 stealing from us i don't want to vote for this guy again and she said i don't even care about that

00:23:24.220 she goes all i care about is that the liberal agenda is that my daughters will be free to have

00:23:33.340 an abortion if they want wow so okay so let me just frame this right you know because of what i'm hearing

00:23:40.460 so i'm just going to say this you know so if i understand you correctly duane your wife was more

00:23:45.620 interested in her daughters being able to have abortions than protecting the family wealth

00:23:51.220 that's right right the government you know the the uh bureaucratic uh policy makers that you know

00:23:59.440 set up these new you know laws and stuff that are basically stealing wealth from your business and

00:24:05.180 making it hard hard for you to run your business she gets mad at you because you wanted the other guy

00:24:10.660 and she got the guy that protects abortion rights yeah i think dole was running against him at the time

00:24:16.620 sorry about that just just just needed to clarify but carry on yeah because a lot of these guys i'm

00:24:23.980 watching he's watching this so i won't get the the timing of all this but yeah that happened

00:24:30.120 that can happen i remember sitting there like and then so we got an argument like the day after

00:24:35.780 and she said i remember walking out she's have a nice day going to work honey and i was like

00:24:40.040 have a nice day i could do you realize this is what happened like this is insanity okay i gotta

00:24:51.160 put up with this crap for four more years i go we just we were this close to getting our house

00:24:56.400 foreclosed on and i'm just killing myself i had actually took jobs out of town

00:25:03.500 so everybody could keep eating and i wouldn't lose my main house and my you know some other jobs

00:25:09.920 and i had a lot of jobs going at the time i had like three i was building a nine unit department

00:25:15.160 complex and in the commercial building and a custom home and some other little things and you know

00:25:21.840 just business as usual and i i was using my building system and then being a contractor and i was

00:25:27.400 running around i owned a fleet of tractors i had an excavator and a backhoe and a

00:25:33.280 bulldozer and all the big contractor toys and um yeah and it just making ends meet keep and you

00:25:41.880 know kids were in private schools and she said yeah but i don't care and i was like wow and i heard

00:25:48.740 that and i and i turned around i i i i got mad at her i yelled i never hit her never got even close

00:25:57.860 you know three or four feet away nobody else around to hear us but i i got pissed off i yelled

00:26:03.620 and then two days later she said i want a divorce and i was like what okay oh you wanted that for that

00:26:11.100 so so what was the outcome of the divorce when the dust settled right like when the process was done

00:26:16.340 like what were you left with what was she left with how are you treated how was she treated okay so

00:26:20.600 during the so after like this happens in november so i begged her for six weeks because we were

00:26:29.920 together for thanksgiving and christmas and she was faking it the whole time not to let the kids know

00:26:34.560 that we were getting a divorce nobody knew we were sleeping in the same bed but i was negotiating with

00:26:39.740 her the whole time like oh let's you know let's go to counseling let's do something else because neither

00:26:43.760 one of us were cheating we didn't have any significant others and i had no idea the depth that she had

00:26:48.760 already studied this out and yeah i always tell guys like women plan this out well in advance i mean

00:26:55.160 three years you know you might be hearing this right now and thinking guys wow three years that's

00:26:59.180 you know it's pretty it's it's not that uncommon and um thanks for saying that uh rich it's uh keeping

00:27:08.260 that that perspective so i up until around christmas and i remember just i couldn't even sleep i couldn't

00:27:16.140 figure out a way do any way to bring any new business in because then all the numbers start

00:27:20.760 going through my head it's like i'm a small family construction business if i i know i i talked to

00:27:28.060 my accountant by the way and i said hey if i go to half do i have the leverage to go borrow like i used

00:27:36.600 to he said no i said so that means it's going to severely limit the size and the amount of jobs i can get

00:27:42.760 goes yeah that's right not only you're being set back the money you have but you're being set back

00:27:48.740 the money you could possibly make and i'm sweating in bed and i'm i'm going well how do i bring in new

00:27:56.960 business right now i'm assuming you didn't care about that though right oh no yeah and and in fact

00:28:03.300 she just at one point we had one empty lot left back up in oakland now we lived in san los obispo

00:28:11.260 people don't know where those are geographically it's about four hour car drive and oakland's in

00:28:16.260 the middle city san francisco and san los obispo it's this beautiful bucolic coastal town it's like

00:28:23.260 oprah winfrey one day said it's the best place to live in the world the happiest place in the world

00:28:27.740 so it's just gorgeous you know rolling hills it looks like something out of fairy tale and

00:28:35.580 i um i was having to go back and forth between these two places to to keep up enough income because

00:28:47.360 it was after the 2008 recession just barely keeping ends meet keeping them together and and then

00:28:56.220 so this was like yeah three four years later after that economy was just starting to sputter back up

00:29:01.920 and i negotiated with her for about two months and then one day i said hey you realize

00:29:13.500 if you take all these properties i'm not going to be able to make a living like i used to

00:29:20.960 so we should just split the assets and i put together a package that i thought was fair

00:29:29.380 where actually she ended up with about 60 percent i then ended up with 40 percent she would end up with

00:29:34.760 the income properties that i ended up with the properties that maybe had a little more equity that

00:29:39.160 the potential to make more and we call it even she was like oh no no no no you owe me i said but

00:29:47.440 she'd been my partner all these years she goes no i don't i here's and here's a big thing even though

00:29:55.600 she would work with me and advise me and which was true she wasn't on the payroll she would claim

00:30:03.860 housewife on our taxes okay that was a big deal she wasn't architect and we would hire other architects

00:30:14.900 to sign them so it was theoretically true now she was huge in and you know we would we look at a

00:30:22.060 piece of property hey you think we should buy that lot yeah i think so okay then what are we going to

00:30:26.780 put on so i think she put nine apartments on it okay why didn't you put her on payroll though for

00:30:31.280 tax savings reasons to lower your tax brackets no it's it's the other way around you get a bigger

00:30:35.320 write-off on a housewife okay in california yeah and uh state laws incentivize yeah but part of it is

00:30:44.160 that then i think i think it's uh she's not you know she did for the first while but then for the

00:30:50.280 last the pre then for the next day the previous eight years housewife the first 10 years she was

00:30:56.500 on payroll and you guys were married for more than 10 years right oh yeah 20 okay we were together

00:31:02.140 22 i call it 22 because from the time i met her which was just boom all the way through

00:31:07.700 in california i think it's after 10 years you're you're on the hook for alimony you're on forever

00:31:12.460 forever yeah forever so she said at that moment she goes no you owe me and i was like i owe you

00:31:20.740 well we've been sleeping in the same position on this one oh yeah we've been sleeping in the same bed

00:31:25.340 for all this time we've been we've been you know we go to the same we do everything together we're in

00:31:31.060 the same room we're in the same house we don't how could i one person owe another we've had the

00:31:35.880 same experience you know let's take the assets split them and move forward i said you you're a

00:31:40.460 smart lady you're a hardcore feminist you know and i said strong independent woman right yeah strong

00:31:48.420 independent woman i don't need no man but i need his money baby yeah so true and i was and she said

00:31:56.100 well look if it's going to be a problem it may be a you may have a hard time getting to know your kid

00:32:04.940 wow i was like oh you have to bleep that out i'm sorry but but i was lord and i had been talking

00:32:17.880 to other guys i talked to lawyers i talked to you know people by that time and they were very clear

00:32:25.200 that said look if those kind of threats start coming up she's got way bigger plans and don't

00:32:33.720 get caught you're gonna you're gonna she wants you in jail and she knew my buttons to push you know i

00:32:43.040 had a i'd never i'd never been arrested i don't have any tickets i'd never been in jail i'd never been

00:32:48.060 you know i barely even had a speeding ticket um but i had you know i would i i'd get mad i and when

00:32:57.900 i was a kid you know you talk about fighting and stuff when we're in high school i'd fight

00:33:01.060 but i'd never hit anybody after that but she had this that i realized then she had this dialogue

00:33:10.160 that somehow i was scary later it would come up in depositions she kept claiming i she was scared

00:33:19.580 and i was scary did this lead up to a false dv yeah okay so those of you that don't know what a

00:33:27.800 false dv is and i talk about it in my book in the chapter on why smart men don't marry did you read my

00:33:32.560 book by the way i did yeah i just got done with it yeah go ahead would you would you uh co-sign that

00:33:38.680 oh absolutely so i i was sitting there i had to like stop the car you're just nodding your head

00:33:45.380 going yeah there it is and i've heard it i've studied enough about this i've heard it in other

00:33:49.360 places but you you you portray it perfectly so go for it dude you wrote it then so women use this as

00:33:55.640 a trump card often um terrible women so let me just be clear on that because it doesn't require

00:34:02.500 any proof and what they'll so i'll tell you a story so this one guy was telling me that you know

00:34:09.140 he had come home from work he's expecting to see his you know his family and his kids

00:34:12.480 and as he walks in the front door um his wife is basically on the phone with the police saying

00:34:20.940 we're really scared you know he's threatening to hurt us he has guns and all this sort of stuff and

00:34:26.040 it's like 15 minutes later two cruisers ripped down the street one of them parks on his front lawn

00:34:32.080 tearing up like shrubs and stuff another one of the driveway sirens going and he basically gets

00:34:36.660 hauled away in handcuffs um they change the lock locks on the house and he doesn't have access to

00:34:42.000 the house his kids when the house sells nothing because she claimed he was a bad scary man he was

00:34:47.880 a boogeyman and bad things you know were happening um they don't require any proof it's just the

00:34:55.180 allegation is plenty in most places in the world um duane went through that so what happened with

00:35:01.880 the false dv charge like what did she do so here's how it went down i realized when she said that

00:35:09.000 that i was like okay wait a minute those are not her normal words because i've been living with this

00:35:15.020 person for 22 years so i'm very aware when she's saying something threatening because i've seen her deal

00:35:20.140 with a lot of people she she handled a lot of our legal work or at least set the strategy for our

00:35:24.980 if we had issues or whatever you know but as you do in business just in business

00:35:30.580 and very crafty very clever and by the way she came from a family very broken family where her father

00:35:40.200 destroyed her mother and divorce in the late 70s in california so her mother went from being the happy

00:35:48.260 housewife like leave it to beaver to having to become an oncology nurse changing bedpans in the

00:35:54.660 middle of the night over a two-year period and she was 17 at the time when this happened her dad was

00:36:02.180 the ceo of a fortune 500 company known as western microwave and they make bombs for the military

00:36:14.040 so now consider a man's you know state of mind a guy who last year your bomb killed 400 people at a

00:36:22.860 whack got to do better this year you got to kill 500 so this uh to to continue to keep him

00:36:31.940 peeking at this he would read books his standard fare that he would talk about was the art of war

00:36:38.300 and his daughters he had three daughters i married one of them this is what they would talk around

00:36:43.460 about around the coffee table and i didn't know anything about this i was a deer in woods man i i

00:36:50.840 grew up just being a simple damn builder guy and i wanted to surf and sail and have a good time

00:36:57.420 yeah you're a surfing hippie right yeah i was and oh when you see my video if you look at my video

00:37:03.760 on vitruvia built you're going to see a guy who looks nothing like me now i even look older than

00:37:08.800 we're going to get hopefully get to that okay so all right so

00:37:12.740 she when she started talking about this about me not seeing the kids i was like this is a huge red

00:37:21.480 flag now i have it's been three months now i haven't you didn't know why at the time but like

00:37:26.280 the spidey senses were tingling like hang on what's coming down the pipes here and i said

00:37:30.180 hang on a second the kids weren't home i walked in the house i packed a bag i came back out i got in the

00:37:36.760 car and i left okay we and and and i and a month before i'd even asked her because as soon as as

00:37:48.480 soon as she told me about this divorce thing weird mail starts showing up i mean like within the next

00:37:52.920 couple days she started signing up for like singles not singles dating stuff but things that

00:37:58.180 that women who are single would get in the mail like you know special bank accounts and you know

00:38:04.440 bust tax strategy planning and and of these things that we would never look at if we were a married

00:38:11.960 couple and i started noticing this mail i said wait a minute you had to plan this for a while

00:38:15.780 like this didn't just happen yesterday it got hit the road running right i mean there's only

00:38:20.040 sand left in the hourglass you know she's only got to look for so long yeah oh oh and then as soon as

00:38:27.800 even during the divorce process man she went out she got full work over from forehead

00:38:31.760 to to pussy just the whole thing worked over i saw her later in court her face a little bit deformed

00:38:38.140 she landed herself a wealthy guy now it's another story but she worked at heart yeah it's spent some

00:38:44.040 money there and she's a good looking lady too she always was and she never lost it really so

00:38:48.060 but i at one point i was like i said we we haven't touched each other in months i go what are we doing

00:38:56.400 i go are we dating others i mean do you go out all the time and i'm separate she goes i don't care

00:39:02.220 what you do i said really she goes yeah she goes i don't get shit we're done we're now we just have

00:39:08.080 to exercise this out as efficiently as we can to retain as much of the wealth as we can and not fuck

00:39:13.160 this up i was like okay so i didn't start dating but i was like in my mind that's like oh okay so we're

00:39:20.860 done just we can date others and um so i left and there was a woman who i knew and i called her up

00:39:29.520 asked her for a ride from where i flew to in the airport i really just wanted to get away and she

00:39:33.700 picked me up and i'd never touched her before and i asked her i said can we hang out like you know

00:39:39.120 she's single woman she's like yeah for sure so we started hanging out we had a good time and she

00:39:44.280 knew i was just coming out of this divorce and and and uh well my ex ended up having a guy follow us

00:39:51.980 take pictures and she gave that to my kids later even after nice yeah to juice them up a little more

00:40:01.680 yeah so anyway that happened but so what happened with the dv charge okay so dv so okay so i'm out of

00:40:08.060 the house she puts a big pile of shit in a uh she puts it in my hanger my airplane hanger she she

00:40:17.920 purges everything out of the house that she thinks is mine which is just my clothes some skis some sports

00:40:23.660 gear and she dumps it in the hanger so i'm looking at all the stuff okay and there was a pair of my

00:40:31.860 daughters skis in there so one day i drove by the house i was going to put the skis not even on the

00:40:40.020 property but at the front uh mailbox well she happened to be out there and i live on this big

00:40:46.520 estate 10 acres out in the country the kids were kind of up the driveway and i said here i ended up

00:40:53.060 abuse these are mad she says maddie was 18 by this time we're just turning 18 and she says

00:41:00.840 you're not you know get the hell out of here i don't want to see you and yelling at me and i yelled

00:41:05.000 at her back and just had words i never i didn't even step on the property i was on the street and i

00:41:12.300 got in the car and i was huffed and i was pissed off and i drove away she went to the judge the next day

00:41:18.280 and said he came at me and i was scared to death and boom restraining order

00:41:23.820 now i can't be near my kids i can't be near the house i can't now and then and then was finally

00:41:32.400 we got to the first day of hearing okay so now now she wants to ask for a decisional hearing by the

00:41:39.520 judge i don't know what you call it exactly but so we end up in front of the judge and i have a lawyer

00:41:43.880 by this time she walks in and makes takes spends about three hours on the stand telling the judge

00:41:52.180 why she should have 100 management control of the company that we've had together for 22 years

00:42:00.140 and i was just sitting there like shell shocked i was listening to her did you ever think for a

00:42:08.440 minute that he would give it to her or you're like oh this isn't going to happen just let her

00:42:11.840 no fucking way yeah no way i kept looking at my lawyer like what now it came to half that and

00:42:18.360 she threw all kinds of allegations out and she even said oh by the way if i get control of this company

00:42:24.660 i have every qualification to run it i am you know i have a degree in architecture and i've been

00:42:30.900 this partner for 22 years and i've i've you know i used to be pound nails and i know how to order the

00:42:38.400 concrete a truck and by the way yeah i have three guys who have agreed to put their license up if he

00:42:45.700 leaves and he she named him and one of the guys i mean i knew of all three of them um and one was

00:42:56.200 friends of the dad another guy was some random dude and another guy was a friend of like the family

00:43:00.360 and um and i just sat there and i was like really those guys could do my job i mean i i by this time

00:43:08.620 i'd even gotten a patent and i've gotten i was start i was lecturing on the college level

00:43:13.320 about um building technology i'm i would consider it a building technologist that's my name

00:43:18.760 so i would talk to architecture students and uh engineering students and i would talk to uh green

00:43:27.960 um um you know uh what's the word college um but the greenies and so uh i had you know i was like

00:43:41.860 really this is all going to replace me okay and then i went to lunch they broke for lunch and i called

00:43:49.400 my accountant and i can he had just been through a gnarly divorce that took him four years and he had

00:43:57.820 finished yes and he was my partner for 25 years because we owned a lot of um income properties

00:44:03.780 together we had another part of what i did is i had put together syndications and raised money and we

00:44:12.760 uh bought apartment buildings all over california it was very successful we did really well with that

00:44:18.060 and so my accountant was my partner in that and i told him hey this is what's going on he goes don't

00:44:23.680 worry this is just d-day it's going to get better from here and and um i said well do

00:44:30.560 i want this company and he was like well just go in there and give it your best shot

00:44:36.700 okay so i go back

00:44:39.380 yeah i go back and i said look your honor so you marched back into the slaughterhouse

00:44:45.640 yeah uh-huh and my and my lawyer actually looked at me and said the same thing he goes because you

00:44:50.480 know i don't really know you that well because we're just starting this process like i've maybe

00:44:53.780 known him a couple weeks and he'd seen my numbers i thought it was just going to be a matter of just

00:44:57.660 like saying okay here's the here's the asset who gets what and let's go from there i said i thought

00:45:04.780 it was going to be uh-uh she turns it into she wants full management control and i was like

00:45:12.340 well how is that going to work and so i told the judge i said look your honor i don't

00:45:20.020 understand how this can even be a thing because we've been partners for 22 years

00:45:25.320 and we've made every decision together and now we're going to be at odds with each other

00:45:30.720 and one guy is going to tell the other guy what to do i go that sounds like a recipe for disaster

00:45:35.280 so so he hands over control and then in two days he writes a letter so she's got all control

00:45:42.820 so then first thing so she's got the kids she's got the assets she's got the house which you've

00:45:47.760 moved out of now she's got the business yep and so now i was in the middle of building out

00:45:54.660 a handful of projects which i really wanted to finish um and i um actually one of the houses

00:46:06.780 was for a guy named dr cherry and he what now okay i'm going to take you back 10 years and this

00:46:14.220 is kind of interesting especially for a lot of guys in america and california

00:46:19.000 around the 10 year mark of marriage she and i were arguing a lot about where we should live

00:46:27.420 she wanted to stay in the city she wanted to be the cool city girl and i wanted you think that's a

00:46:31.340 coincidence that at the 10 year mark where she knows that you're on the hook for lifelong alimony

00:46:35.460 that she became a little more disagreeable oh it's no question she knew what she had i knew what

00:46:41.860 she had i i'm no dummy you know i i knew it was at stake but you know we had a great life we even

00:46:48.700 we were living in oakland we you know we were i wasn't super rich but i did good you know and i

00:46:57.360 wake up every morning and have jobs to do and very well respected and we would help build the

00:47:02.720 little elementary school in our town and all the good stuff you know and kids all running around all

00:47:08.960 the time and and um so oh i kind of lost my train of thought we were um you're you're talking about

00:47:18.940 10 years back with this guy that you had to build oh yeah okay so so because we're arguing she wants

00:47:26.060 to go see a shrink go couples counseling okay so we go and turns in she she kisses them that i have

00:47:37.240 the problem and i'm sorry i'm not laughing at you i'm just it's like see i was right again but

00:47:44.660 yeah go ahead yeah i have the problem i have the problem because i'm angry because i was like look

00:47:50.400 we got 10 million bucks how much more can we you know just let's just put that in a freaking simple

00:47:55.700 six percent thing or even 10 or we don't have to put in anything we own properties i mean they're

00:48:01.260 spitting out cash and it's like we can we don't need to have a second and third house if we just have

00:48:07.460 our one house and i'm there all the time and i always was going to put my moniker of success to

00:48:13.580 myself was that i get to see my house in the daytime because i work from before sunrise to

00:48:20.900 after sunset every morning i'd wake up at six i'd be first one down at the lumber yard make sure

00:48:26.640 everybody's going to have enough materials to do what they need to do yeah and then when i come home

00:48:31.020 at night and once in a while we have a little fun at sneak home because i live very close to all my

00:48:36.380 jobs you know get a little nooky in the afternoon that was fun it was great you know and and uh and

00:48:41.520 then we get to go um on three-day vacations to the mountain house and once in a while we take

00:48:47.200 off for two weeks and go to things it was great you know it's like but but at 10 years i was like

00:48:54.760 how much more do we need and let's do some different things let's go explore the world i

00:49:01.360 haven't i haven't seen the rest of the world i haven't seen europe i want to do this when my kids

00:49:05.020 are small and that's when the resistance started and i was like what is going on so she said we got

00:49:12.380 to you you're not happy you we got to go see a shrink so we went together and then after a while

00:49:18.520 she was like you know i'm just frustrated trying to explain to this guy and her why we should do

00:49:23.820 this now and i probably wasn't the best communicator whatever they convinced me i should go on prozac

00:49:30.580 oh they put you on antidepressants yeah yeah and i did not want to i was like i'm not depressed

00:49:36.700 yeah i'm pissed i did i just i just want to go on a sailboat from time to time man that's my

00:49:44.520 medicine i don't need these pills well yeah well i wanted to park all the jobs we have and take the

00:49:49.560 kids and introduce them oh got it man yeah totally but but instead you got put on like antidepressants

00:49:55.020 right because you're you know yeah you know imagine that you're married you know you've done the

00:49:59.180 right thing your entire life you've raised a family you've built a business you're loaded you've

00:50:02.840 got a plane you've got multiple houses you got vacation houses and it's like you just want to

00:50:07.300 sail a boat and and you go to a therapist and the guy's like here take these pills and shut up

00:50:11.700 dude i wasn't even asking for life i was asking for a year yeah one year i said let's just go for a

00:50:19.140 year and we'll find a boat somewhere i don't know i'll figure it out i figure everything else out

00:50:24.020 i mean my god i've i've you know i've done all this stuff and build houses on hillsides in the

00:50:30.520 middle of winter i'm starting to get some wind from your mic i don't know if you can move closer

00:50:33.980 to the cabin okay so um so i have that yeah yeah that's better sit on my sit on my toolbox is better

00:50:45.600 so i um i realized okay so this is classic 10 years more go eight years more go by oh we moved

00:50:59.540 by the way after that 10 that was part of the deal i said all right you want me to go tell you what

00:51:04.820 i'll make a deal i'll take your prozac but we're moving to central california that's the deal because

00:51:13.360 that'll be like a halfway and i'm going to call it my boat so i bought 10 acres 1331 tiffany ranch

00:51:21.560 road look it up and see how beautiful that property is it's on you know realtor.com or whatever 1331

00:51:29.580 tiffany ranch yeah and uh just it's gorgeous place i've built so many beautiful places from beginning

00:51:37.600 to end by the way my my my production flow of my life over 30 years on an average of every 120 days

00:51:46.520 so think where you were four months ago what are we now we're december 14th so that'd be august

00:51:53.280 september october november december so from august 14th where were you middle of summer and now it's

00:51:59.100 december 14th august september october november december yeah in that time every 120 days for 30

00:52:08.080 years i would produce a property like that and put it on the market is that it there

00:52:13.940 that yeah you can see it from the sky and if you go on like the realtor.com thing you can see it

00:52:19.660 there's probably beautiful pictures of it all built out yeah you know tiffany ranch road in san

00:52:24.800 louis obispo yeah it's ranch yeah and anyway so you know it's uh but that's what i did and um

00:52:34.700 so i i said look let's move down here because then i can call this i agree to that yeah she agreed yeah

00:52:45.380 so we went so i mean you're all spaced out on these antidepressants yeah and they're kind of a joke

00:52:52.960 because here's the thing for me anyway when i took prozac it slows you down it slows you down

00:53:00.260 it makes you fat it takes away your sexual desire it does a lot of things to you yeah and and and

00:53:04.700 actually i was still having a you know we'd still sex was fine it didn't really slow that down for me

00:53:10.480 but it definitely like if a bomb went off behind me you need to turn around and go in the pocket and

00:53:15.080 you know let's fight back you give a shit and i was like why is this good and so i i uh i was like

00:53:25.400 yeah whatever and i tried to go off of them sometimes and it's horrible in your brain anyway

00:53:31.380 this guy dr cherry is a renowned uh shrink in the bay area and he actually runs a place called the

00:53:44.880 thunder road clinic in um oakland it's where a lot of wayward kids end up and so he he uh kind of sets

00:53:55.820 policy on that so his name is you know he's a upstanding guide so of course we go to him

00:54:02.260 and um all right so we take drugs and then we move away i do want to talk about the boat duane and i've

00:54:12.220 got like 25 minutes left because i gotta hop on another call so i just wanted to make sure we have

00:54:16.040 enough time to talk about the boat and the new lifestyle too so i'll get you there so i end up

00:54:21.420 uh eight years later i get this phone call and i get hey somebody i know needs to build a house up

00:54:27.540 in oakland and i needed to work because the middle of the recession and so i get these plans and i bid

00:54:35.080 them i don't even know who it's for it's this beautiful house uh in oakland or in orinda modern

00:54:41.980 and the guy finally gets the bid and then he calls me and he says hey i got your bid it's amazing it's

00:54:49.540 like a million and a half bucks and and he says and i start i go hey man i recognize your voice

00:54:56.800 i go wait a minute this your plans say schwinn cherry okay you're david you're my old shrink

00:55:03.260 he goes he goes yeah i was like oh that's your wife's name schwinn he goes yeah so we hyphenated

00:55:10.100 schwinn cherry i'm like okay and i said well wait a minute is this okay i build your house because yeah

00:55:15.280 you know you want i mean are you okay with it i said yeah you know whatever so it's a good house

00:55:22.000 and i need the money and so we let's do this so we do yeah 18 months goes by one day i walk into his

00:55:29.680 house it's like 80 done and i just look like hell and he goes what's the matter i said i'm getting a

00:55:35.420 board he goes oh my gosh now the thing is when you build someone's home you get to know them better

00:55:42.140 than anybody else like better better than their shrink would because they people confide things

00:55:49.180 in you when you build their home that they wouldn't even confide would you learn well how he treats his

00:55:54.520 wife how he thought about marriage how he perceives himself to his kids his relationship to other people

00:56:01.320 because people present themselves that way through their homes how they want their car to be seen in

00:56:07.620 the driveway how they um and you know even pitting themselves against their spouse like

00:56:13.660 wait don't you think the fork knife would be better on this side than that side even though his wife

00:56:17.820 wants it on the other side it's like oh you're going to use me for your battles fight your own battles

00:56:23.620 okay it's quite the lesson yeah so this happens all the time in custom as i say not as i do sort of

00:56:31.480 thing yeah yeah so then i started looking at this guy going you're the one who was counseling us

00:56:36.300 yeah okay that day i walked in i said what's up i said i'm getting a divorce he's like oh my god

00:56:42.400 that's horrible i'm so sorry you know well can you finish my house yeah i'll get your house finished

00:56:48.220 so after i finished it last day he gives me my final payoff check and i said hey come here

00:56:57.060 i want to step off your property walk over and i said all right this is the property line right i go

00:57:02.800 i'm done with your house right because yeah it's beautiful i love it everything's perfect okay

00:57:06.580 and i said and and you and i have no more business after this yeah i said all right so you hand me the

00:57:13.240 money so he gives it to me off the property and i said okay i want to ask you something now that

00:57:16.640 we're on we're neutral man standing on neutral property do you think you did the right thing

00:57:21.880 eight years ago prescribing me that after you know me now and he said no i said thank you

00:57:29.540 so basically he had the wool poles over his eyes because now he got to know me mano a mano building his

00:57:38.620 house right and how i managed stuff and sure i'd yell at the drywall hanger someday say what the fuck

00:57:45.440 you're doing you know you're upside down but he knew some people just don't respond in the other

00:57:51.280 way and then he saw the stresses of spending a couple million bucks you know it's the hardest thing

00:57:56.260 you'll ever do in your life probably the biggest asset you'll ever own and he got nervous too and many

00:58:02.120 times i had to calm him down so so then he was like oh i got it he realized he'd been juked by the system

00:58:10.620 so these guys know what they're doing it's you know it's about it's about their priorities and i

00:58:17.360 always tell guys to be very cautious when it comes to therapists because like like even today it's worse

00:58:22.120 than what it was back when you were dealing with it because now even the apa has guidelines basically

00:58:26.420 telling therapists and counselors to treat men as if they're toxically masculine right that that it's

00:58:33.960 always going to be you as a problem so even back then they still treated you as a problem

00:58:37.820 okay so here's the thing that i didn't realize then that was a setup oh because now she's got

00:58:45.580 this thing that says oh he was on drugs oh that's why she wanted you on the yeah that's why she jumped

00:58:52.100 up and down and pointed the finger and i was like gotcha that's what's going on well let's switch gears

00:58:57.940 and let's talk about today because i mean okay that's that's everything that led you up to where you

00:59:02.300 are right now so now you're in your late 50s uh i believe you're 53 okay so i i get out i walk you're

00:59:09.300 50 you're 53 and you head out to turkey to buy this no bad boy over here i yeah no i didn't leave until

00:59:16.780 i was 57 56 oh 56 okay because i got out of the the divorce the it ended up being a two-year

00:59:26.940 divorce of of um um she sued me then for a fiduciary breach to not show up to work

00:59:36.700 that was the part i never got to oh my god right so that it's two years of course how how long did

00:59:42.260 this all go on for with the whole divorce two years it was two years to untie the knot yeah and i walked

00:59:48.580 to zero and you walked out of it was zero so she got everything she got the kids she got the business

00:59:53.880 she got the houses she got everything uh-huh and you basically had to like walk away from all of it

00:59:59.360 just to get away from it all right so the deal i cut is called a global settlement and i said all right

01:00:06.020 i can see the system it could drag me back into court any day they want and for just make something up

01:00:15.340 so you had to terminate any access to that so you did a global settlement so you actually walked

01:00:21.280 away with zero zero you gave her everything how did you how did you make the money to to buy the

01:00:27.100 sailboat because i'm like okay something like so i had a lot of debt cost like 400 grand right that's

01:00:31.180 right yeah so i got uh i had we had debt in the company about million and a half bucks and all the

01:00:41.680 investors wanted it back well she had it worked out to where either i had to pay it back or i

01:00:45.840 didn't have to pay it back at all because it was four years old i didn't have to and i said well

01:00:51.320 that's not right and she just walked away from it so i told the guys i said look if you extend my

01:00:57.900 line to credit i'm gonna go make it back and i'm gonna pay you back but you gotta let me make money

01:01:03.320 at the same time okay so you built a few more houses to raise the money exactly got it okay so i did

01:01:09.220 that so three three four years and then i start looking and i and i i searched everywhere i bought

01:01:15.120 a boat in the meantime lived on it in the in san francisco i bought a hunter 42 but that wasn't big

01:01:19.960 enough and it wasn't strong enough and then strong enough for blue water sailing is what you're saying

01:01:24.620 well you can blue water sail it but it's just uh i wanted something heavier okay because when you're

01:01:30.700 sitting like right now at anchor like i am those little swells come in and throws you around

01:01:36.100 the difference a paradigm jump once you get to 50 feet that's about as big as a single-handed guy

01:01:43.680 would want to handle okay we have bow thrusters which is a motor in the front to push the nose

01:01:49.460 back and forth when it gets windier and you're going in and out of docks and stuff but if if it's

01:01:55.260 a small you know if it's like 45 feet the weight of a 45 footer is maybe 12 times the weight of my boat

01:02:01.160 is 18 times so it's a huge because you get it doesn't just get longer it gets wider and deeper

01:02:07.400 you know kind of grows at the cube right and now you get over 18 tons and it gets really unmanageable

01:02:13.720 and for one for one person you have to have a crew and i wanted the ability to single hand if i need to

01:02:19.340 okay so and i mean like this is a boat uh wait hang on a second let me add it to this so this is

01:02:24.840 the boat here right yep i mean that's not your boat obviously but that's a model of veneto 50 yeah

01:02:30.860 okay yeah and um it can just give us like a quick tour as you're oh yeah as you're talking about it

01:02:36.980 because i've got maybe 20 minutes left so maybe just walk us around do i want to turn the screen

01:02:42.320 around or do i want to keep yeah yeah yeah you just turn the screen around and just you know kind of

01:02:45.960 give us a quick tour of it and i got some questions for you about boating too because

01:02:49.600 it'd be like okay leave my calm how do i turn a mic calm uh you should have like on your screen

01:02:55.840 or if you can't then just hold it up and sort of turn it around the other way i'm not without

01:02:59.980 losing it maybe okay so you might lose here's the the dual wheel yeah and uh all of the instruments

01:03:08.480 you could ever want you could have and it's got autopilot and oh my god yeah too so yeah autopilot

01:03:14.200 kick-ass like you can sleep and it'll just kind of steer itself and avoid like shipping lanes and

01:03:18.440 everything well well you can yeah you could program it to go to sail any way you want and okay but we

01:03:25.060 have a thing called ais which is pretty common in in um boats now just basically it shows up on the

01:03:32.040 screen where the boats are and it tells you where you know tells them where you are as well let me walk

01:03:37.740 you up on the bow and show you around so this that's the actual cathedral of uh the palma cathedral

01:03:47.600 not a beautiful building amazing right okay another guy anchored here that's uh majorca right yeah this

01:03:55.220 is palma de mallorca palma of mallorca so this is an extra bag is a jenniker it's got a single jib it's

01:04:03.400 a sloop design it's about uh 65 foot tall mass what does it cruise at in like you know decent winds like

01:04:12.920 i notice a lot of sailing videos that i watch like they're usually doing like six or seven knots they

01:04:17.180 seem to be pretty happy yeah yeah if i got it tooled up and the wind is perfect and it's nice long

01:04:23.820 reaches like this summer my son came and we sailed from uh rome to sardinia together just me and him

01:04:30.900 and the dog and we had the jenniker up the whole day and we were averaged eight and a half knots

01:04:38.980 that was an amazing run so generally if you're getting six all the time you're really happy if

01:04:46.800 you get eight all the time you're really happy for this size of a boat boats go at the square root of

01:04:53.060 the length and heat and and a boat like you're on i mean it's basically a house on the water so it's

01:04:58.820 like you see the racing boats where it comes up on a hydrofoil and it's like blasting across the waves

01:05:03.840 doing like 70 knots sometimes not even close like this is not really designed to comfortably plow through

01:05:09.400 the ocean and well because you got so much shit you need to bring right i mean just for example

01:05:13.940 look at the size of the thing well you can't see the anchor because the anchor is in the water

01:05:17.540 but in this compartment it's a bunch of chain i have 150 meters of chain right that's like weighs so

01:05:27.180 much and and uh it's just it's a tank right now you can get it like living on a boat what's it like

01:05:34.280 living on a boat like is it is it like a dream or it's a yeah it's beautiful it's like what's the best

01:05:39.560 part my bed is always there and people everybody especially in the mediterranean well everywhere

01:05:48.600 you're going to sail is the sailing community right you would not believe how many people here

01:05:55.600 dream of doing this and but they don't do it so i'm like almost rare there's in the world

01:06:08.640 i think there's only maybe 10 000 cruisers i don't mean people who sail on the weekend that's

01:06:13.660 nice too it's all good but to actually what's a cruiser if you can define it is that somebody that's

01:06:18.680 like pretty much always living on their boat yeah you're full-time you're living on your boat full

01:06:22.340 time that's your home and you're working your way around the world are you single now or do you have

01:06:26.420 like you know like a woman in your life women in your life or yeah what's that like i mean you just

01:06:30.220 kind of like go into port and you just you know go for a drink and you see who's there and you

01:06:33.440 chat them up and take it from there well that happens and i've i had a girlfriend on here for a

01:06:37.660 while for about a year and a half and she that was the english one the yogi uh-huh yeah okay exactly

01:06:42.580 and she was awesome and uh uh but she wanted to run her business from land so i see her uh sometimes

01:06:50.500 and and we're still friends uh we have a great relationship but she's definitely not wanted she

01:06:56.080 doesn't want to sail around the rest of the world she doesn't own a piece in your business she's not

01:06:59.840 going to stop it from you it's it's comfortable yeah yeah nothing like that and i've had other you

01:07:05.500 know i meet girls and some of them stay for a week some for a month um and uh there's you meet

01:07:12.180 people on there are dating kind of websites where you talk about where you might go and and people

01:07:18.860 reach out for sailors yeah kind of yeah there's it's actually uh yeah kind of um but uh they really

01:07:29.200 want to sail you know so it's so i mean if you got a boat then then you're in a good position to say

01:07:36.200 hey you know i'm gonna do a passage from right here to here so yeah let me ask you this question

01:07:39.860 because i've i don't know if you're familiar with this channel it's called sailing doodles

01:07:43.340 i haven't seen that one so so this guy bobby was a pilot and he had a i think he had a heart

01:07:50.000 condition or a stroke or something like that so he wasn't able to fly so he's like fuck it i'm just

01:07:52.980 gonna buy a boat and i've been watching his channel for the last couple years and all he does

01:07:57.860 is he basically does these passages with women and he's got this rotation of different women that

01:08:04.000 show up on the boat he never indicates in the videos whether or not he's intimate with them but

01:08:08.260 yeah but i mean like you get the gist that something's going on but yeah he's got this

01:08:12.800 constant rotation and i've reached out to him i said hey dude you know i've been watching your

01:08:16.400 channel you know i do this podcast i'd love to have you on to sort of talk about this life

01:08:19.740 but he won't confirm a conversation because i'm guessing he wants to keep it on the down low

01:08:24.240 right or maybe it's because of stuff that i talk about but like what is what is sailing lifestyle

01:08:29.240 like you know in that sort of environment like are they basically just like dealing with different

01:08:34.880 women from port to port and they're just having like a smash fest and they go through another

01:08:38.360 rotation or what's that like some guys can't yeah that yeah that that can definitely happen um

01:08:45.820 that's a nice boat you're on man you know but that's a really nice interior yeah i was

01:08:49.480 going to show you the inside i'll just answer that a little bit so this is uh my camera gear

01:08:54.040 i have a big old uh long range lens because everything's far away on the boat um there this

01:09:02.840 thing is really cool it's an entertainment center yeah i'll pull this out of the way it's my dog

01:09:07.660 that's athena and um you push this up this is a lot of fun it's got oh it pops up out of the

01:09:16.320 center yeah okay the tv and and then it's got a nice galley too yeah till a galley and you know all

01:09:23.180 the food you could ever want to keep you can keep cases of beer in there like under the floors it's

01:09:28.280 the water makers under here and i got how many um how many staterooms oh there's three so uh this

01:09:36.100 is uh a set of bunk beds which i just keep it you know put your crap in there sometimes i have five

01:09:43.740 or six people on board and that's fine and then we use it as a regular bunk room and uh this is

01:09:49.920 bathroom this is a nice stand-up shower lots of hot water almost never run out

01:09:55.620 and then this is a double bed

01:10:00.300 and mirrors everywhere they're very clever the way they've designed everything

01:10:07.000 is that a french boat by the way yeah it is you can tell yep and then this is master

01:10:12.440 and that's at the bow yep i love my bed the best part about being on here is this bed is always

01:10:19.760 there waiting for you i go out and party or i'm sleeping or i surf or

01:10:25.240 you just take everything you have with you everywhere you go and see the whole world

01:10:29.060 and you're in your um like your boat's basically your house and your dinghy is essentially your car

01:10:35.500 right yep that's right and you can stay in okay um you can stay in marinas which i just did for the

01:10:43.120 last week in fact because i had to do some work on the boat um and it costs in the this is a really

01:10:52.400 expensive place this is probably one of the more expensive marinas and all of the what does it cost

01:10:57.360 the night europe during the winter time they were charging me 60 euros a night so a couple thousand a

01:11:04.360 month but that's really anything to anchor no you don't i so i mean if you have an anchorage you just

01:11:09.580 drop anchor yeah you're good but storms come man you better find a good anchorage now but most of the

01:11:15.960 time it's not an issue and uh and the other thing is like this lifestyle there's always like where i'm

01:11:23.960 going to go next week i'll be down in the canaries and i'll drop anchor and because i have this this

01:11:32.640 setup where it's easy for people to hang out and be outside and be part of the do you have like curtains

01:11:38.620 where you can seal it to keep the weather out oh yeah yeah yeah and and uh so people come over to my

01:11:44.900 boat it's a very social place like you know you might think oh yeah i get that vibe it's it's like

01:11:51.360 you might think it's isolated but it's not isolated at all it's it's very a community

01:11:58.080 community oriented people will grow up and they'll tie off their boat other dinghies and

01:12:03.820 and we'll have a party and i cook all the time and i make dinners and and we have the the sound system

01:12:09.720 on this thing is off the charts i wish i had like another half hour to an hour to talk to you about

01:12:14.100 this but i but i've got to wrap up because i got to get ready for this new next one i want to ask you this

01:12:18.360 maintenance on a boat because one of the things that really strikes me about the cruising lifestyle

01:12:23.860 is whenever i'm watching videos on youtube shit always seems to be breaking it's like every

01:12:30.160 frick it's like the motors broke like i noticed in one of your videos you had to pull out the motor

01:12:33.960 and get it rebuilt that cost 20 grand put it back in like you basically have water makers you have

01:12:38.560 refrigeration you're making up electricity you have to store electricity you have to you have sewage

01:12:42.880 it's a house on the water yeah how much like within the course of a month how much time do you spend

01:12:49.540 every month maintaining the boat because i'm really curious about that because probably about three or

01:12:52.900 four days three or four days straight yeah just over not straight but but but does that include

01:12:59.180 raising sales lowering sales you know oh no no no no no no no no no this is just fixing stuff that

01:13:05.000 has to be fixed so you've got three or four days in a month that you're fixing shit yeah yeah yeah

01:13:09.740 you're always fixing something and some shit breaks all the time okay yeah oh fuck yeah so that's

01:13:14.940 about 13 of your month you're spending oh yeah yeah you got to know how to fix stuff and this keeps a

01:13:20.280 lot of boats so you got to be a plumber an electrician general handyman or you pay people

01:13:26.440 oh there's plenty of guys will do it for a fee it's not hard to find people to work on a boat if

01:13:30.300 you're in these mars right but but it's going to cost you man if you got a lot of money i mean hey

01:13:34.680 these big super yachts guys just pay people to do it yeah but i mean a 50 footer i mean is is

01:13:40.840 is basically a one-man job if you're on it three to four days a week let me ask you one more question

01:13:44.920 yeah um are you familiar with solar powered yachts like uh companies like solar yachts and aquion and

01:13:50.000 all sort of stuff yeah what do you think of those like does that solve much of the problem of

01:13:54.420 maintenance plus you know raising lowering sales and waiting for weather no no in fact

01:14:00.020 because i mean the only downside is this it's hard to store enough energy to sit to motor a long way

01:14:07.700 yeah that's what i understand because as i'm doing the research like it seems like

01:14:10.780 if you want to cruise constantly you're doing it at like less than five knots maybe three or four knots

01:14:15.860 which is which is kind of pointless right it's scary it is pointless and it's scary because

01:14:21.080 if you get close to the shore there's been a handful of times when i am so glad i have an engine i was

01:14:28.720 down in morocco man and i was swinging into rocks and i was gonna hit the rocks and god damn it you

01:14:33.300 better have a great engine right right now now if you what if your batteries are low right like no

01:14:40.240 well those boats have a generator on like you have a generator okay you can turn on you you can recharge

01:14:45.860 the batteries if the sun's not giving you enough juice if it's a cloudy day i love electric it's that

01:14:50.560 you know nobody wants to carry diesel it stinks it gets wet you have to filter it and the water filters

01:14:55.440 all the problems with diesel and they have you know we've had them forever and we still haven't

01:15:00.500 solved all the problems with them so electric i would say double thumbs up i would not poopoo it i

01:15:06.520 i think they're probably still in the learning phases i mean of your purist i'd say go for it

01:15:13.140 how much of your um maintenance days would be cut off with a solar power you know like electric yacht

01:15:20.900 would it would it go from three or four days down to one to two or one day no no no the engine isn't

01:15:25.360 the issue no no no the engine's not the problem but the i never think about my engine except when i

01:15:29.840 replace it i never think about it now it's all the little shit water maker refrigerator washer dryer

01:15:35.440 refrigerator motor stops the the the this this um uh stereo i've replaced it three times the speakers

01:15:43.620 corrode out the the wires get corroded there's motors these are motorized winches to pull

01:15:50.220 those motors fail the gearbox fails they uh hinges the uh that you know the under the water

01:15:57.220 the barnacles grow you got to go and scrape the bottom you got to repaint it i spent an hour under

01:16:03.260 the water two days ago scraping the bottom do you do that with scuba gear or do you have yeah yeah yeah

01:16:08.480 i got no i mean you could but and it takes an hour to scrub the bottom do you do it by hand or

01:16:14.240 do you have that like uh by hand device that spins around and no no no i was well actually i detailed

01:16:19.760 the prop is what i did okay because i've been sitting for a while so little barnacles and you

01:16:24.240 lose about a knot yeah yeah yeah so i scrub it and i take a i take a bright pad scotch bright you know

01:16:30.040 just get it detailed and stuff like that so so so here's a big question that is it all worth it

01:16:35.740 oh fuck yeah

01:16:36.940 and that's one of my things mark manson have you read mark manson stuff yeah yeah okay so he has

01:16:46.460 it a chapter in there about fuck yeah okay if it ain't fuck yeah i ain't doing it yeah and so that's

01:16:51.360 that's that's my dating profile now by the way too and so does crazy shit and does answer your

01:16:56.780 question about this crazy shit happen more with women on boats than anywhere else i don't think any

01:17:00.620 more than anyone else because it's it's uh you know it people one one side of it is people are

01:17:08.560 a little bit freaked out you really have to have a good honest trusting relationship but the girl's

01:17:15.100 got to really really really trust you to come on to a boat because she's got nowhere to run so you

01:17:18.900 can't come on to him in a weird way you know because then you don't want him to get so uncomfortable

01:17:24.540 yeah i mean like you really got to vet him too because if you're gonna do like a 10-day passage you

01:17:28.260 don't want to be stuck in a boat with a whack job exactly exactly and i interview the shit out of

01:17:32.640 people and that's something i've learned over the last few years i don't think anything's gotten me

01:17:36.280 better at learning about people than than doing this um because of of being yeah but it is

01:17:44.220 bitches you are gonna love it and and i would absolutely positively suggest you do it so uh oh i

01:17:52.120 don't know if i can give myself a plug yeah i was just gonna say you know before we sign off um

01:17:56.060 follow dwayne's instagram it's grateful underscore travel um he also has a youtube channel was which

01:18:02.380 is linked in his link tree and and some interviews or not interviews but like some podcast recordings

01:18:07.840 that he's done for himself is there anything else that you want to shout out to before yeah okay so

01:18:12.100 i do i i would love to have people on in the summer um and well actually all during the year

01:18:18.380 and uh you can uh i can i can take you or a group up to five people and i'm gonna be doing the canaries

01:18:29.900 this summer i'm going back to greece so if a bunch of guys or a couple of couples want to come on

01:18:36.500 give me a shout i can give you the tour of a lifetime for a week how much that costs for a week roughly

01:18:41.860 a couple grand a week i'm gonna take you up on that man yeah yeah it's a bargain relative you

01:18:49.000 go buy a boat and do it you realize but i just love doing it right i just this is not a retirement

01:18:54.660 program for me i mean i'm retired but cool uh you will not make money doing this on a boat

01:18:59.900 but i just love having people on the right people i bet them out so and the best way for them to find

01:19:04.820 you is uh just to dm you through instagram yeah okay guys there you go dwayne i really want to thank

01:19:10.100 you for uh carving out some time and sharing your own personal story and you know getting vulnerable

01:19:14.500 on some of that shit because that was some weird shit by the way yeah thanks and i mean like the

01:19:18.320 light's fading so it's not going to work for very long for us here anyway but uh great great story

01:19:22.780 you know loved hearing about the sailing lifestyle i will definitely stay in touch if anybody wants to

01:19:27.440 connect with you um find him on instagram and uh hey if you want to sail the mediterranean

01:19:32.240 um he seems like a good guy i'll you know i'm certainly going to be open to it if i can travel soon

01:19:37.260 thanks brother thanks a lot

Playing to Win - March 02, 2022

055 - Brutal Divorce Turns Grateful - The Duane Heil Story

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