The REAL Estate & Investment Show

THEREANDISHOW 010 - Interviewing CEO of Oumere and Cellular Biologist, Wendy Ouriel!

• Daniel Clavijo

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In this episode of the Real Estate and Investment Show, our guest is Wendy Ouriel – cellular biologist, founder and formulator of her own skincare brand, and accomplished equestrian! Wendy shares her remarkable journey from conducting master's research on black widow spiders to founding Oumere - a research-driven, boutique skincare line. Discover how her background in biology and her personal struggle with acne led her to reject mass-produced, factory-made products in favor of creating high-quality, natural solutions from scratch in her own lab.

Key Highlights:

  • From the Garage to Worth Avenue: Learn how Wendy’s indie beauty brand went viral after a full-page feature in the New York Times, allowing her to move from a garage lab to a flagship boutique on Palm Beach’s prestigious Worth Avenue.
  • The Science of Skincare: Wendy discusses the pitfalls of "junk science" in the beauty industry, the importance of pH balance (maintaining acidic rather than alkaline skin), and why she exclusively uses glass packaging to avoid plastic leaching.
  • Beyond Biology: An avid equestrian, polo player, and racehorse owner, Wendy dives into the dark side of the polo world, recounting her investigation into a massive "polo Ponzi scheme" involving animal abuse and financial fraud.
  • Calculated Risks: Hear how Wendy funded her early business ventures through high-stakes horse racing and poker.
  • The Value of Education: Wendy reflects on why her formal scientific training remains her most important professional investment.

 Read Wendy’s Articles on Exposing the “Polo Ponzi Scheme” Parts I through VI

https://medium.com/@wendy_ouriel

 

Connect with Wendy Ouriel:

 

Wendy in the News:

 

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SPEAKER_06

Alright, hello, and thank you for tuning in to the real estate and investment show with Daniel Clavijo. I am Daniel Clavijo, coming to you from Beautiful, Sunny, Palm Beach, Florida. What is the Real Estate and Investment Show, and who am I, you may ask? Well, our show wants to focus on the experience of amazing people in the real estate and investment space and share their knowledge with you, our wonderful audience. I truly hope that together we spark some ideas and inspiration for you wherever that may be. And who am I? Well, I'm an architect grad from the University of Miami, MBA grad from NYU Stern, and I've been designing homes in Palm Beach and the surrounding areas for over a decade. I now also get to share the stories of such talented individuals with you. Questions or suggestions about our show, write to us at infotheryandyshow.com. That also spells thereandishow.com, the abbreviated name, for our show. Find us on YouTube, Spotify, and wherever you enjoy your podcast, we'd appreciate your help. Like, comment, follow, subscribe, and above all, share with your friends and family. It is thanks to you that we will be able to continue to bring you high quality content and guests in the real estate and investment space. Speaking of which, we have an amazing guest with us today. She is a cellular biologist, founder and formulator of her own research-driven skincare company. A California native, her master's degree research in arachnid biology led her to develop her own products, first from her garage, to now her own boutique on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach. Featured in Forbes, The New York Times, Vogue, and the Palm Beach Daily News. She is also a talented equestrian, polar, polo player, and racehorse owner, plus a poker player. She is the woman, the wonder, the legend, the one and only Wendy Orriel.

SPEAKER_05

I love the applause. Great.

SPEAKER_06

We tried to depress. Thank you so much for being on the show.

SPEAKER_05

Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_06

Awesome. And thank you. Maybe she pops up, but we also have her her dog here, Gigi, which is very fun to play around and look.

SPEAKER_05

She's a rare beauty. Yes, indeed.

SPEAKER_06

Well, your story as a founder is quite impressive. And as they say, necessity becomes the mother of all invention. And I think you took that to heart when you started to found your company. So you developed a product, a system, and a brand from scratch, taking from your own personal experience. But let's go back and see how it all began. So, as we say, cheers. Cheers to you.

SPEAKER_04

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_06

Please tell the audience a little bit about your background, your bio, and please take it away.

SPEAKER_05

Sure. So I started with um my company, Umera, pretty much when I was doing um my research, my master's research, which was ovarian development and the black widow spider. Um it it appealed to me because I well, I had an option. I wanted to do research on the Black Widows because that was really the only interesting laboratory in the university that I found. I didn't want to do stem cell research. I didn't want to do research on other fields in biology that that like protein research. It was just too boring for me. And I felt like the Black Widow research was something that was more real and tangible. Like you can see spiders, and you know, it's like, okay, yeah, it's a little bit more of a macro field. So I I joined the lab and my professor said, Well, you can either join in my research, which is determining the mechanisms of silk production in the Black Widow, or if you wanted to just find something we don't know and figure it out, do that. I was like, Well, obviously I want to, you know, take the challenge. Take the challenge and do something unknown. I want to go into the unknown. So she said, okay, we don't know how they reproduce at the cellular level. I'm like, well, how hard could it be? You know, how hard well, okay. It's very strange biology. I I'm not gonna go too deep into it, but essentially what it is is their eggs go from floating in their abdomen after they fully develop yolk to somehow going inside what's called an oviduct and out the body. And it's it's a really strange mechanism because it's like it's almost like you're in a hallway or you're outside a hallway, then somehow you find yourself in through and you permeate through a solid wall to go out of a building. Interesting. And we don't know what so that was what I spent four years doing. But the thing is, is that when you're doing this sort of research, between your experiments, sometimes you have five minutes, sometimes you have five months between different parts. So there's a lot of downtime. And I was the only one in the university doing um electron microscopy. So um it was just me and this lab tech in the basement of the university, and it was it was a really cool lab. Um, but um I had a lot of time to do other things, and also during this time I got acne for the first time in my life, and I wasn't 19, I think I was 27 or 28. Yeah, something like that. I must have been 20, yeah, 27, 28. And um I didn't know how I got it.

SPEAKER_01

Sure.

SPEAKER_05

And so, and then what do you do when you have acne? I guess you go and you buy the anti-acne products, you're like, oh, good, there's a product for me. I guess it'll solve it. No, it didn't. It made it worse. And then you're like, well, there's people whose whole lives are dedicated to curing acne, right? You got dermatologists, aestheticians, people who work with the skin lasers. So they should be able to help. No, they all made it worse. So they just they gave you a cream or something. And after doing this for six months, I was like, why is there nothing that can help when everyone says that they have the solution? So I said, okay, well, let me take some time to figure out why I have acne in the first place. And so I researched into um things that are cytotoxic, things that break down the skin barrier, destroy the microbiome, just disruption of homeostasis. And I was like, oh my God, all of these things are in the products that I'm using or in the methodology that these so-called professionals were doing to my face. So I threw it all away, stopped going to them, and then automatically the acne started to get a little better. So then what I did was I I went more into the research and I said, okay, let me make something that's going to solve this problem because my skin was now alkaline when it should be acidic. It didn't have anything for anti-inflammation, it didn't have anything to balance out my skin's oil levels. It all the oils that I was applying were inflammatory. The plant extracts were inflammatory, breaking the skin down. So I made products to make my skin acidic and to balance out the skin oil levels. And so, and there's a little Gigi. And so, Gigi, stay out of the camera. Okay, right there. There you go. There she is. Um, and so um after you know, it took me a little bit of time to make the very rudimentary version of what Umira is today. And I noticed that after using what I made, the the basic products, for after two weeks, the acne was gone. Wow. Completely. So I got really fascinated by what I did. And I got really fascinated by discovering natural ingredients because everything that I did was natural. Plant extracts, plant oils, natural acids. So it became this fascinating um exploration into what nature could do for my skin. And so after I graduated um in 2016, I I went into my garage, I cleared out everything, and I made a lab. And I spent two years researching and developing and creating the Umare Line. And then in 2018, I opened up this little online store and I I didn't get any sales. And it was a little discouraging, but people in the LA community started to take note of what I was doing. Um, because in LA, this was the other good thing, is that I was doing this in LA in the 2010s when there was a really there was a a beginning of a uh interest in indie beauty and natural beauty and rejecting the department store brands and all that stuff. So a bunch of people that were very influential in the LA scene became interested in what I was doing. And they started telling their high society friends in elite circles, and then they started passing around my products because also in LA, it becomes a big deal if you discover somebody. That that's like a badge of honor. Oh, yeah, I discovered her before she was great, you know. So I think they wanted to do that with me. And so what happened was um it got in the hands of some people that were actresses and uh you know models and people in the entertainment industry, and then eventually got into the hands of the people in the New York Times and they liked it. And so they ended up doing a interview with me, and they said, Oh, this will be and then um this will be just in the the T magazine and it'll be online. And that I did the interview in October 20 uh 2018. And then um they published the article in T Magazine in uh like like around the second week in or third week in December, and it I got some sales from it, and it was really exciting.

SPEAKER_06

Now I had a Everybody wanted a Christmas game.

SPEAKER_05

It was fun, yeah. And and I was like, okay, that's cool. You know, I I'm I made you know a little bit of money off of it. And then three days later, I wake up to six figures in sales.

SPEAKER_06

Wow.

SPEAKER_05

You went viral, and I didn't know why.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And I was freaking out. I made it, you know, I made more in 30 minutes than I had in all my whole life combined. And I and I was I I I didn't know what was going on. So me and some friends went to LA for the day and and we were just going about as normal. And um I saw someone posted an Instagram photo of me in a full page spread full color in the Sunday New York Times. And so we were near Fairfax. I said, go to Fairfax right now. And we went and um we bought all the newspaper all the New York Times that they had. And so it was the full page thing about me. And that was what allowed me to have the funds to then get out of the garage and go and I got a I gutted a old warehouse, an office in Irvine in a business park, and I turned it into a biology lab. And then I was doing that for four to five years, and I was running Umir out of this biology lab that I created, and um eventually, you know, with things that I was like, I wanted to do, I wanted to expand Umir more. So a friend of mine lived out here in uh Palm Beach area, and he said, Why don't you open up a store on Worth Avenue? And I remember going to Worth Avenue. I went there when I in 2019 just to wander around and hang out, and I was like, Yeah. So I go there and there's no availability. Right. And I I was kind of bummed out about it because I I kind of felt like this was the next thing that I needed for Umer because indie beauty and the interest in indie beauty had started to decline. The the hype was over, there was a new thing out, and so and even though my research into skin biology was getting more interesting, I was able to discover things in that lab like vitamin C serums. People always said, Oh yeah, vitamin C serums increase collagen. I was able to do studies in my lab that said, no, they don't, they actually decrease collagen. Or that retinols, um, people say, Oh, yeah, they increase collagen. Yeah, they do, but it increases disorganized collagen secretion into your skin, which will actually make your skin more aged over time. Or microneedling, you know, that's another one. And I showed the damage. So I was doing a lot of interesting research, but the interest just wasn't there anymore. So I said, I have to do something new, and I felt like this was it. So I had my heart set on getting an umir flagship in Palm Beach, seemed perfect for that. Exclusive luxury, you know, I love the weather here. So I was bummed out. So I said, okay, well, I want to go here. I want to be here. I flew to Palm Beach every month for seven months, looking in windows, calling landlords, please, can I get anything? And I kept getting the doors shut in my face. Or, you know, you would call someone whose number was on a uh on the building and I'd be like, hey, you know, I'm interested in uh getting a I'm interested in getting a uh space here. Who are you? Why are you calling me? That the the unprofessionalism of Florida and I was like, Don't you realize that your number is on the side of the building? It was things like that. But I didn't let it get me discouraged, but I said, you know what, I just need to come out here. So I packed up my car in June with Gigi, and we drove from California to Florida. I had a friend keep fulfilling the orders in California. I said, I'm just gonna move out here, and I'm just gonna figure it out. And so I moved out in June and just kind of got settled into an apartment in Delray Beach and just started kind of figuring out how to get Umir over here.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_05

And uh I was here for two months, still nothing. I said, I'm gonna take Gigi and we're gonna go to Saratoga, we're gonna go bet on the horses and have some fun with our friends up there. And as I was uh as I was putting a bet down at the window, I got a call from one of the landlords, the one that I really wanted. Because uh she actually had a store for me earlier, but someone else had taken it. There was like a so I was like, oh and she said, One day I have a store for you. And it was better than the one I originally wanted. It was this beautiful store in Via Morey, and so we finally got it. So then I spent the next six months moving everything from shutting down the biology lab and coming out here to Florida, and that's how Umer got the boutique.

SPEAKER_06

That's amazing, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And so we're doing it's almost been three years now.

SPEAKER_06

Congratulations. That is such a terrific story. We gotta unpack some of that and just to make sure there was there was no spider bite that gave you like super web slinging abilities.

SPEAKER_05

I dig a bit a lot. Um I had to because one of the things was that I had to figure out where are the eggs going in how do they get from outside to in. And I thought, well, maybe the tube that they travel is like an open-ended tube on both sides, like a pipe. Right. So I said, uh how do I figure that out? How do I um how do we visualize that? Well, you can inject red dye into her, you know, the spirus privates, and if it goes into her abdomen, then you know that the it's like a pipe. If it doesn't, if it stays there, it's closed. But the problem is that you have to make sure you didn't just blow out her insides, right? Right. So she's gotta be alive. So I had to anesthetize a spider. So she was, you know, and the anesthesia only works for about 45 seconds. I had to create a needle out of glass. So what I did was I took a glass pipette, I heated it up, and I stretched it. And then I took this red dye and I injected it into her. And one time when I was doing it, and I had my little forceps and it, you know, I was doing like microscopic surgery, she woke up and she went like that. Oh, yeah, and like wrapped her legs around my uh finger, and uh and I freaked out and and she did bite me. Or th there were multiple times. Um there were some times where I had to get them while they were laying eggs and anesthetized them, but you know, they'll yeah. But I I didn't tell the university they got bit, I just wrote it out because that's that's a myth that if you that you'll die from a black widow bite, you're you're just gonna have a bad couple of days, you'll get like a fever and stuff.

SPEAKER_06

Maybe you could have been like Spider-Woman.

SPEAKER_05

It's called elactrodectism.

SPEAKER_06

Okay. Well, that's interesting. Now, when you were working here as for creating your product, what were some of the key takeaways that you were able to take from your biology research? Was there anything, or was it just kind of that inspiration that led to the process?

SPEAKER_05

Well, there was a lot of things. Like for one thing, one of the big things that we learned in school, and we spent years studying, was how can you determine which scientific papers actually have merit and which ones are bogus? Because there's a lot of junk science out there.

SPEAKER_06

Unfortunately.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, pe scientists lie, they fabricate results, they fabricate their methods, they've they so you have to be able to figure out is this scientific work real or not? So when I'm researching a skincare study that says, oh, this ingredient did this, or this result, as a biologist, someone that's actually educated in this field, I'm able to look at that paper and say, there's no way that's true. Or your sample size is too small for this to have any real-world application. Or you didn't give this particular method enough time, or you used the wrong dye. Now, when you have influencers or these pseudoscientists out in the beauty world, they said, Well, I love vitamin C and this paper shows that I'm right. It's like, well, for one thing, you didn't read that paper. And two, if you did, you would have known that that there's no way they could have gotten those results from those methods. So you know that this is bogus. Oh yeah, it's sponsored by L'Oreal. You know, something like that.

SPEAKER_06

Always a hidden agenda.

SPEAKER_05

Always. So that's another big thing. But also with having the biology background, I'm able to um create my own experiments. Right. I'm able to figure out, oh, okay, well, your skin is an organ, and this organ needs this kind of environment to thrive, and so if you put this on there, it's gonna break it down. So it a lot of it's things like that too. Um and but for I would say the most important thing from being a biologist and creating the skincare is one that I know how to read a scientific paper, and two, I know how to create my own experiments.

SPEAKER_00

Awesome.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, it's not me just going to Whole Foods and picking out a bunch of oils and putting it together. There was a reason why it took me two years to create something that from an ingredient deck looks very simple.

SPEAKER_06

You were perfecting it.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, because what happened was I couldn't trust anything in skincare. So I couldn't go and say this works and this doesn't, this ingredient's good and this one's not, because all of it was wrong to me. So I had to start with zero and then work my way up to water, and then work my way up to an oil and all of that because I couldn't trust anything. It what it was to me was kind of like Rene Descartes when he said, I I can't even assume that I exist. So I have to ex first start with nothing and assume I don't exist, and then oh well, I must exist because I'm thinking about not existing. So, like that Cartesian method of thinking was kind of how you have to be skeptical of everything first, and then you start the basics and work your way up. Because even a cream isn't a safe skincare product, because a cream, whether it's the thousand dollar cream de la mer or the dollar store cream, all the ingredients are pretty much the same because that's what's required to make that cream. You have to have your emulsifiers, your solvents, your pH stabilizers, and all of that stuff. If it has that affinity for water that it creates that cream, that means it pulls water, which means that it's gonna pull water from your skin. And then if it sits on top like an occlusive like that, you're not allowing your skin to do what it does naturally, which is create a water resistant barrier. So you're weakening your skin over time. So things like that. So you you something as ubiquitous and as standardized as a cream, I had to say, I don't think that that's a good thing to put on your face.

SPEAKER_06

And you created your own. It was a very customized, very personalized method. First, you were doing it for yourself. How did that then translate to working for other clients? Was it something, because I understand that in your current location, you do these personalized uh one-on-one consultations. Does everybody get a personalized version of the skincare, or is there something that you found has general, broad applications that almost everybody can use?

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, if that's one of the things that I've been saying staying from the very beginning with Umere is that skin is skin. And whether you're very oily or very dry, what your skin needs to bring it to a healthy balance is the same. Anti-inflammatory products, oil, um things that will balance out your oil levels. It's kind of like if you have someone that's overweight and someone that's very underweight, what gets them to a healthy weight is the same thing. Exercise and proper eating. They just one person just needs more, the other person just needs less. And so I said, okay, whether your skin is dry or oily, the routine is the same. It's just maybe you use a little bit less serum, a little more. Or you or if you're really sensitive, you do the exfoliation just two days a week. But it's all the same thing. And so when people come to me for consultations, it's always from the same starting point. They always say the same thing. I've tried everything and nothing works. And I say, Okay, well tell me what you tried. And they'll say they'll list off a litany of products. And I'm like, you've just done the same thing in a different package over and over again. Just a different cream. But it's all got fragrance in it, a different serum. Oh, but it's all got flour extracts in it. Oh, it's all in plastic packaging. It was all made five years ago and stored in a warehouse. You know, all those things that'll break it down. So all you've been doing is just stuff that's gonna be damaging your skin. You've never actually done something that's good for it. And so with Umiram, uh it's really more of a new way of doing skincare because the products look really different. Um, it's all liquid-based skincare and it's all mostly oil-based. Um and it's natural, but it's the right kind of natural. Not just, you know, picking anything out from a shelf, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_06

Driven by your expertise and your research as being a biologist, and you've taken the time to do this. You've some of the other differences that will break down your packaging, your um method of creating this. What are some of the things that people should should know about uh the other these other differences with your product?

SPEAKER_05

Well, one thing is that I package everything in glass because plastic will leach into everything, and if you store your Products for monster years, plastic is going in there.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And it's it's more a concern because the skincare that you buy, whether it's in a department store, in a drug store, wherever, that skincare was probably made two to three years ago from ingredients that were purchased probably five years ago. And it was stored in a dusty hot warehouse just because they ha they produce in volume. I don't produce in volume, I make everything in an exclusive amount because I only I make my products once a month and then it sells out because I sell everything on the first of the month.

SPEAKER_00

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_05

And it's a a drop model. Um but it's not it's not something where um scarcity is built in. It's just I can only make so much at one time. Right. Because I don't pr outsource to a factory.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

I think I'm the only mainstream skincare brand that doesn't. I make everything myself. Right. Yeah. Because I actually I'm making this for myself more than another person's. You know, it's a selfish thing. And so I wouldn't ever put anything on my skin that came from a factory. So I'm making it for me, and then the rest is for everybody else more than anything else.

SPEAKER_02

Sure.

SPEAKER_05

So if I wouldn't put it on my skin, I'm not gonna have anybody else do it. So um that's that's how Umir operates. Um, and I really think there's an important part to moving away from factory production if you want good skin. Right. If you're just looking for cheap skincare, then you can go and buy that anywhere. But if you want something that's actually good for your skin and it's gonna get you a result, it can't be made in a factory. The mass produced because it's all coming from China. All the ingredients are super cheap. That's one of the reasons why all the skincare out there looks the same too. It's kind of clear, there's no color to it. It's because there's really all the natural ingredients have been diluted.

SPEAKER_06

Wow. It goes to that point as well. Do you want a freshly picked organic apple or something that's been stored for all that time? It it that's kind of the same idea, right? Fresh, unique, and good for you. That's that's the important thing.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, yeah, you're right. It's do you want the apple that was just picked, or do you want the one that was picked two years ago kept in a freezer and then sprayed with chemicals to induce ripening? Oh god. Yeah, and that's how all of them are because it's a cost-effective model. Yep. I don't run on cost effectiveness. If my products aren't cheap, I don't want them to be chipped because I I don't want um I don't want I'm not putting bad ingredients on my skin. So, and this all the products that I sell are the ones that I'm using.

SPEAKER_06

Right. Yeah. What are we talking about cost-wise for for somebody who might want to be interested in that?

SPEAKER_05

It's not cheap, but it's not I I still think that I underprice given how much work goes into it, because it's all individually made, it's all individually bottled by me. So the the number nine exfoliant, which is the foundation for the line, is 90. And then the basic serums are between 170 and um 550. I have one product that's a thousand. Um, but the basic line, the average order for my company, you know, is about five hundred dollars.

SPEAKER_00

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_05

And that lasts about three months. And if you think about it, my customers are always saying how they don't need to go to an esthetician anymore.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah. Think of all the money they're saving there for appointments, driving, this is tailor-made to them and it's an investment in themselves. You want to do use a high quality product that has, you know, the research and backing to it.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. It's kind of like if you uh study baking and you want to r uh make a really good cake, why would you cheap out on the ingredients? Yeah. Something like that. Or l in our in the horse world, you have a horse that you spent a lot of money and time training, why would you give it the cheapest hay possible? It's not gonna come out the same. The horse isn't gonna perform the same way. So you can't use cheap ingredients and I don't believe in cheap production either. Yep. Oh, and it's oh, I already said it's all in glass, yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Yes, that's that's uh a a nice thing to highlight. That's different as you're saying the classics will get into it no matter where it is. Um one of the other things that I saw on your website, which I found was interesting, is the importance of transparency. You have like an open source thing for the production. How does that more or less work?

SPEAKER_05

I'm just I just really talk about the scientific research that I'm conducting. I don't think that anyone should hide scientific research. I'm a I'm a big opponent of the paywall behind primary literature. Right. Um, so I believe that any research that a company is doing should be open sourced and available to the public. And so that's what I've been doing. I need to work out I need to work more on it though. I need um I have some research out there, but not everything that I've conducted. But that's just something that I've been working on too, is just open sourcing it. Um for people that don't know, when you have research that's behind a paywall, they think, oh, if I pay $30 to see this paper, that $30 goes towards the researcher. No. The researcher might get five cents from that, and the rest goes towards El Sevier or whoever is the host for that paper. So you're better off just you know stealing it. I'd rather someone steal my research. I'm fine with that.

SPEAKER_06

There you go. Well, it's important to be transparent, yeah, and we appreciate that. Um another difference which uh goes into these other products that you were touching upon, um uh these mega companies, they will put fragrances and how does that work? What does it because uh what's the difference with yours?

SPEAKER_05

Uh well, I mean, why would you have a fragrance in a skincare product unless you're hiding something? You're trying to entice the consumer because you don't have any merit to the product. Um because how does how something smells affect how it behaves in your skin? It's like Tylenol is now you know in a prettier pill. You know, they spent all this money making the pill look like a flower or something. Like I don't care, I just wanted to get rid of my headache. Why why you because these skincare companies know that they can't actually perform. So they need the customer to buy it based on a smell. Because if you were to sit and have a uh a trade show with a bunch of skincare products, what's the first thing the person does? They open it, they smell it. Because a good skincare product, you don't see the results right away. And they know that. And you also don't see the bad results right away either. So you they have to entice them another way, and so they do that with fragrance. And fragrance can be expensive too. So when you're buying a very expensive Chanel product or any or creme de la mer, you're paying for the fragrance more than anything else. So what they have to do is that it's like the equivalent of a big budget cinematic production with a lot of special effects because they know the story is going nowhere.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_05

They know that they don't have a story to write. So, like in Hollywood nowadays, they don't have any ideas because it's no longer Repackaging. Yeah, because they're cowards now. They're afraid of offending anybody with a legitimate story. So they go uh for the safe bet, which are the superhero, Marvel, and all of that is with really bad actors and great costumes and a big budget for special effects.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And and that's completely distracting to everybody. And then you watch this movie, and you're two hours and you're like, wait a minute, I have no idea what the plot of this movie is.

SPEAKER_06

Yep. Yeah, that's very repetitive plot. Yeah. Big space like coming down from Earth.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. End of the world. And it's like, what is the plot? What's going on here? And so I feel like that's the fragrance, that that's the cosmetic industry equivalent to it.

SPEAKER_06

Now, of course, right now, we've had a big, I think, trend that's been going on recently about looks maxing and all these peptides and stuff. Has that come into your business a little bit? Have people been reaching out about any of that information? Or I mean I know that it's a little bit different because, like, supposedly with looks maxing, it's like different techniques.

SPEAKER_05

What is looks maxing? Is that like a new incel community?

SPEAKER_06

I don't know. But it's supposed to be um it is mainly t geared towards the nanosphere, as they say. But uh people who but I think it also goes, I mean I mean, I think women are involved with it as well.

SPEAKER_05

It's mainly they just want to get a better facial appearance and other things, but it's just beautifying yourself, so that's just under a different name.

SPEAKER_06

But there's exactly. But the the reason that I bring it up is because, for example, there's been a lot of stuff with this about, you know, people who will order peptides essentially from China or India. They're not FDA regulated or anything, and then influencers will just spew their story and make it like it's the best thing in the world and it's not regulated, it may actually, you know, end up hurting you in the long run. So it's just one of those things that I don't know if you've run into it at all yet with your that, you know, people have been asking in in terms of something similar or well, I've been doing peptides, I think, before that the whole fad start.

SPEAKER_05

Because I s I released my first peptide serum um five years ago. Right. Before people were really talking about it. So I never had the question of, oh, can you add this? But it's interesting what you say about the danger of actually ingesting peptides. Because I think if you're looking to improve your skin, ingesting the peptides when you're not deficient in a protein won't help you. Because your body can only do so much.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_05

But it can hurt you because if you're getting these unregulated peptides from China or India, how are they synthesized? That's what I'm concerned about. Or what's what's the other filler material in there? And so I don't think it's a good idea. I think if I think dietary peptides are good, but you have to be very careful of your sourcing. If you get them sourced from Switzerland or the United States, it'll be good for you. But I I don't uh but they're very expensive. Like my peptides that I use are come from Switzerland and they're really expensive. Like a little vial like this is hundreds of dollars. That's why my my products are priced the way they are. So I know that no one is spending that.

SPEAKER_06

And so that's the concern.

SPEAKER_05

It's a huge concern. And the problem is that you have people, these influencers, they have no idea what they're talking about. They've done no research of their own. Um, they have no scientific credentials, but they're really just making stuff up as they go, or they're just repeating what somebody else said. And so you um uh I think they're giving dangerous advice.

SPEAKER_06

Yes.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Now, not to necessarily promote or condone it with gambling, you know, but one hundred one-eight hundred admitted and all that stuff. But tell us about your poker playing experience and how that has kind of like lit. And you know, you were mentioning about the horse track racing, how that played into a factor in developing your company. Um, of course, sometimes gambling can be just a calculated risk. It's not necessarily, you know, spending money foolishly. So tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_05

I've always been a gambler. And um when I was first starting Umere, um I didn't want to really get any help from my family. I wanted I didn't want your own. I wanted to do it on my own. So even though I was in college well, because I was in college, I wasn't I didn't have a whole lot of extra spending money. So I was going to the racetrack at Santa Anita in California uh a few times a week and just betting on the horses. And that's what that was what allowed me to get the funding to start umir and allow me to do that for two years without a real income.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, so I was really just gambling. And while I was at Santa Anita, I made friends with the guys who work at the starting gate. Those are the guys that hook pushed the horses into the gate. And one of the guys uh said, Hey, why don't you come to so and so's place after the races today? We're gonna play poker. And I was like, I don't know, I don't know how to play that. But they like forced me to play, and then I started going, and then um they taught me how to play. And sometimes I would win money with them, but they were these guys were really good. Like I learned from the best. So I wasn't making too much money from them, but what I did do was I would go to the card rooms and then I would make money there. But I'm a I'm the most boring poker player that you will ever see because um I will sit at a table and for the first hour I won't usually play a hand. Gotcha. Because I want to see who are the idiots that I'm playing right now. Is this because you'll see, you'll see there in the the first 20 minutes, like a guy will go all in on uh you know, on trips, which is when you have three of three of a kind. But if there's a flush draw on the table, I want to see that. So this guy's gonna go all in when there's something better out there. Okay, this guy's a moron. So that's that I wanna I would like to pick out the marks.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And uh because I'll sit on a table. I've sat on a table for 12 hours before.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. I remember one time I went to the card rooms with my friends from the track, and um they left after four hours and I still stayed there, and then around midnight they came back to the table and I was still there, and they're like, Did you come back to? I said, No, I never left. And I was like, maybe I should go. So I ended up staying for like another three hours and then left. But that that's that's how much I like it. And and with horse racing, I am a little bit more of an action player because I like to play the multi-leg wager bets. So that is not I'm not betting on trifectos or you know, win bets, which is a single leg race bet. It's I'm betting over multiple races, so I'm betting over six races. So I like to do the pick six, which is you have to pick the winner for six consecutive races in a row, starting with the six to last race. And that's where you make the big money. But the problem is that you have to lose a lot before you make a lot. Like you might have to lose ten thousand dollars before you make seventy thousand dollars. Wow, yeah. So you have to be patient, but it pays off.

SPEAKER_06

Not for the faint of heart.

SPEAKER_05

No, but also you know what days to bet, and also some days not to bet. I never make money on big days, so like Kentucky Derby Day. I mean, once in a while I'll make money on that or Breeders' Cup, but the best days to bet are like Wednesdays and Thursdays, again, because dumb people go to the track and bet on those days. And so you you can make money off of that. There we go. So that yeah, that that's the best day to go, is when you know that the people who are gambling. Um, because on big days like Kentucky Derby Day and Breeders' Cup Day, you have people that pull their money together and pull their knowledge, and you also have you know betting groups that go. So it's it's hard to beat them. But on a on a Wednesday when you know people go to the track who have gambling problems, that's when you go. And that and that's that's always when I've worn the most.

SPEAKER_06

Very interesting. And as I understand, you also or own horse, like racing horses, right?

SPEAKER_05

Or I used to. Once I started playing polo, I got out of um horse racing um because horse racing used to be really fun. It used to be really it used to be a great thing for a single owner like me to do. Right. And but the rules have gotten so stringent and uh bureaucratic over the last few years that you can really only succeed if you are a extremely rich person or part of some sort of syndicate or corporation. Because my vet bills used to be a few hundred or maybe a thousand, two thousand a month, and it went to being over ten thousand in a month for vet bills. And that was because they um the the government got involved in horse racing uh a few years ago with something called HISA. And although it made racing safer for the horses, which is great, yes, it um made it so uh everything it just got very expensive because of the regulations. So a vet used to be able to go down the shed row with like six syringes of LASIKs, which is uh it's a it's a legal medication to help with the bleeding. And they used to just do all of them. Now they have to do one, catalog it in five different databases. It takes you know all that time, and then they do so you're paying now for all of those hours of work, and I was like, I can't do this anymore. And so I just I just didn't I got out, and then I started playing polo, and I like that way more, and I got really addicted to it, and so that's what I've been doing for the last two years is playing polo.

SPEAKER_06

Very cool.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Now you had some interesting articles about exposing a polo Ponzi scheme. It uh it's it you're a very excellent writer. I I'd say it's very an engaging read. Um definitely seems like it could be a Netflix miniseries or American Greed episode, but tell us about it. It should be a movie.

SPEAKER_05

It should because you have everything in it. You have greed, cr uh crime, sex, everything is in it, and it's all true. And I didn't even include like some of the really juicier bits because it's just I mean, just it's just too crazy some of the stuff. Yeah. But what happened was uh two years ago, I was dating a guy because he looked just like Tom Ford.

SPEAKER_01

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, I have a big crush on Tom Ford, but obviously I can't have him because and so um he told me that he was a polo player and he wanted to get back into it. And he found this these two guys that were starting their own club called Polo United over in Wellington, and he asked me to go and watch him take a lesson. And I said, Well, I don't really know what polo is, but okay. And so I see them out there, they're riding fast on these horses, they're swinging that mallet, hitting the ball, going for the goal. I'm like, This is polo, this looks awesome. I dumped him like two weeks later because he was being really annoying, and I ended up calling the guy that I met running the club, this guy named Ciro Dessenzani. And I said, Hey, I don't know if you remember me, but my name is Wendy. Um, if you offer something for a beginner, because I've never ridden a horse before, right? I would love to join. He said, Oh yeah, come on out, come on out. So I ended up taking a lesson and I um I rode this little mare called Maggie, and I I was terrified. I like I freaked out when she moved. I was like, Oh my god, I can't do this. But you know, we walked and they they talked to me, and you know, they kind of said, you know, we'll make you better. I'm like, well, let's do it, you know. So I ended up buying Maggie like um a month later, and I was uh playing polo with these guys. Yeah, and everything from the beginning to me, I knew that they they were scamming, but it I thought it was just overcharging.

SPEAKER_06

Right.

SPEAKER_05

What I thought so they were charging me like $500 for a lesson, and I'm like, well, I think it really should probably be less.

SPEAKER_01

But you know, it's an expensive sport.

SPEAKER_05

No one's forcing me to do this. I'm I'm and I liked it. I was having fun. So I'm like, okay, I'm paying a premium. They were they, you know, they're they had parties and and all of that, and it was it was more of an experience that they were selling. So it's like whatever. Um, but I noticed over time things started to get really strange. Like um uh it it's you know, the the story is just so dense, it's just uh but but like for example, um I noticed that they were trying to sell a horse to one of the members named Karen, and they said that the horse was much younger than it really was, and they were trying to sell it to her as a premium. And um that was one thing. I also noticed that the um the main guy Ciro, he kept trying to get me to do sponsorships for this polo club, and it it it was almost like if I came to you for architecture and you were trying to, you know, get me to sponsor you through Umir. It's it's one of those weird things.

SPEAKER_06

It's like you you you're going to them for lessons, but you want sponsorship?

SPEAKER_05

It's like Yeah, and I and they were saying, Oh, well, well, we're you can put Umir's brand on all of this stuff while we play a game, but I'm like, but the only people who are at the game are the customers in the club. And I noticed that there was kind of like an endless pursuit to find a rich sap to um be their patron, which is weird too, because when I researched polo, I mean I know this now, but polo is kind of weird because the owner of the team also plays on the team. It's kind of like in football, can you imagine if Robert Kraft played on the New England Patriots? You know, it would be exactly but it's funny, and it's terrifying in polo too, because you can actually die. Right, but that this is how these guys, this is how polo is actually able to be played. Right, right. Is because some rich guy needs to bask in the glory of athletic, uh, you know, this big athletic achievement and have a bunch of Argentines around him. And and so that's how it is. Uh, and so I also figured out that they were trying to kind of poach rich people in the community. They found some uh rich idiot um from Miami to kind of pull, and and he was totally falling for it. And I and I he would bring prostitutes to the field. Oh geez. Yeah, and he would pull up an evently that was clearly leased or financed, in my opinion. Right. And uh, and I was like, oh yeah, you know, they're they're pulling one over on this guy. But I I just I thought it was funny, you know, because you know, who cares if you s if you overcharge a a person that needs everyone to think that they're rich? You know, it's like you know, who's really getting harmed here? Well, someone did start to get harmed.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Um I was talking to an employee that they had a groom. A groom is like the lowest tier in the totem pole. In the equestrian sports. They're the ones that clean up after the horses and care for the horses and all that. And they're and I remember one of the grooms told me, you know, they haven't been paying me because they told me I would get a work visa. I'm like, what do you mean you're you're you don't have a work visa to be here with? He's like, no, I'm just here on a visitor's visa. Right. And I said, And you haven't been getting paid? And he said, No, they're gonna give me a work visa in lieu of a payment. And then one day he was warming up Maggie for me, and Ciro said, He's a terrible rider. He actually thinks that I'm gonna give him a work visa. I'm never gonna do that. And I was like, okay, so this guy's being trafficked. And then a few days later he disappeared. And then um I, you know, all of those things together, I was like, you know, something's very strange here. And so they took my horse Maggie up to Greenwich with them for the summer because they said, Oh, come up to with us to Greenwich and we'll take Maggie up there. I'm like, Well, they got my horse and now someone's missing. I think I should I really need to get up there.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And then when I went up there, you know, I you know it's a long story, but eventually I found out that these guys were running a massive Ponzi scheme in California before they came to Florida. And they put people on dangerous horses that ended up uh permanently disabling them. Um they were um keeping horses knee deep in mud and forcing the owners to pay to get them out. They were um selling memberships um for a club that uh didn't exist and then they fled the state. Um what else did they do? They they stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from people. They were um they were abusing the horses like um one of the broad to the extreme. Yeah, it's it's it's endless what they were doing over there. Um they were selling investment shares in property they didn't own. They claimed that they owned the land and they didn't own the land and they were selling investment shares in it.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_05

You know, it um they were not filing their taxes. Um, they were taking money for the club and using it uh for personal ventures or to pay off old debts, things like that. And when the members started all catching on, which they should have caught on right away, but these people were not particularly smart, and they were, you know, these people were also um the more I learned about these club members in California, the less I liked them. Right. Like one woman said that she drained her kids' college fund of three hundred thousand dollars just so she could play polo. You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

So I mean, these aren't good people either. The the you know, people in polo are are not the the best people in the world, and I that's why I just play and I go home. Um, but yeah, so these guys were running this all in California, and then when everything started to hit the fan, the other guy, Michelle, tried to sell the business to his cousin who barely speaks English. And when that didn't work, they f packed up and fled and started everything over in California under a new uh name. And then they packed up everything um in Florida and went up to Greenwich. And uh and so when I went up there, all I, you know, started to investigate and all that stuff, and I found out that they were abusing the horses. Like they tried to hurt Maggie because they wanted me to buy another horse. And so when all this went, you know, I found all this out, I confronted them, I told them everything I knew, and then they they pretty much fled. They left the country, they went to Morocco for a bit, then they went to Argentina. Um, do you want me to spoil the ending with what happens to Ciro?

SPEAKER_06

If you would like to, we can definitely give it. I I I read the articles. We we we're still missing a part seven, which you're gonna give us an update on.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, the part seven's really good, but um pretty much what happens with Ciro. Um he when um well I I'll leave that up, but because it how it gets to that point is really interesting. I would love people to read the article.

SPEAKER_06

But let's just say that link in the show notes everybody has access.

SPEAKER_05

We'll just say that um Ciro can't ever hurt another horse ever again or another person. Yeah, well, he got what he deserved.

SPEAKER_06

Now, and you raised all of these concerns to the United States Polo Association, and they seem to have just turned a blind eye.

SPEAKER_05

They didn't do anything about it. Um pretty much I contacted them multiple times and I said, you know, uh a human being is being trafficked here. Oh well, we can't do anything about human trafficking. And I said, Okay. Well, do you want to know how he came to work for these people? It was because the polo club that he was at before fired him because he witnessed child prostitutes get locked into the bathroom on the property of the polo club. Yeah, that's how he came to work for these other guys. Do you want to know about all the animal abuse? And I had pictures. We we can't do anything about that, Wendy, and we don't really want to bother. I mean, I've heard so many and after my article got out, so many polo players and owners came to me and said, I had my horse um uh you know drugged by this guy and they didn't do anything about it. Um there was a polo player that beat a horse to death with a hammer. Wow, and he didn't get any consequences for it. This polo player named uh Valentino Echizaretta beat a horse to death with a hammer in its stall and left it there to die, and he and they didn't do anything about it. Um back a few years ago, the Argentines were doping the horses so badly that during a polo match, I think a hundred dropped dead all within 20 minutes of each other. A hundred horses. Uh-huh. At the National Polo Center. And they didn't do no one s yeah had had any consequences for any of this stuff. Because the United States Polo Association at its core is a trademark association. They do not care about polo players or animals, all they care about is protecting their own selfish interests and their uh profit-generating machine. They, in my opinion, they are a very evil company. Um, and the thing that people don't realize is that you don't need the United States Polo Association to play polo. I play polo, I have never stopped playing. I do not have a handicap because I do not need a handicap. If I want to play a tournament, you know what I can do? I can call up all my friends and say, hey, we're playing a tournament here. And I can call up any Argentine player I want, any American player I want, and say, hey, you're playing today. And guess what? We don't need the U.S. Polo Association for that. They convinced everyone that you need, you don't. No one needs them. And eventually they need to go away because they're evil.

SPEAKER_06

Maybe you can create a replacement for them.

SPEAKER_05

I will. There we go. Sell Umir first, and then I will.

SPEAKER_06

And so Well, we can't wait to see that and get the update from part eight, which will eventually come from your upcoming travel, right?

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, yeah, I I know. I have to write um part part seven and part eight are coming. There was a very strategic reason why I've held off on them, but they are coming, and um, and uh it it gets even crazier, but I I truly believe that part six was the masterpiece. Yeah. But part seven is fascinating. Very and uh I have to go into a CD underworld. Oh my god. Yeah, yeah. I was living a night life for many months, and it was very exciting and very dark, and it was a truly fascinating time. And sometimes I lie in bed at night and wish I could still live that life because it was just so exciting, but I had to do what I had to do because you know these people were evil. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy, it sounds like no, you won't.

SPEAKER_05

You won't find more evil people than people in in the polo world I've I've found. And I I just I don't understand it.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Because um Cypher, who was the groom in the story, he said it best. He said, polo is a beautiful sport that's played with noble animals, and these people absolutely destroy it.

SPEAKER_06

That's terrible.

SPEAKER_05

It's true.

SPEAKER_06

Well, thank you for putting it out there, and we can't wait to see it get turned into a movie.

SPEAKER_05

It should. It should.

SPEAKER_06

Now here's a question I ask all the guests to date. What has been your best investment personally and professionally?

SPEAKER_04

Um let's see. I gotta think about that. Personally and professionally. Um I I think I gotta think about that.

SPEAKER_05

You know, I think I think it was my education. I don't think I would be able to have done any of this without having a true college education. And I know that there's a lot of you know talk right now about how you don't need college and all that. And that and that might be true if but for me, I always wanted to be a scientist. And to be a scientist, you have to go to a university, you have to have a free exchange of ideas, you have to go to a lab, you have to see an experiment fail a thousand times before you get that one time when it works. And you have to know when you're being told a lie and when you're seeing something that's real. And so I would say that the best investment for me was was uh getting an education.

SPEAKER_06

Awesome. Now I've asked you a lot of questions, but now you gotta ask yourself one. Do you know how that works?

SPEAKER_05

Uh I'm I'm I will.

SPEAKER_06

Gigi, can you move your tail a little bit?

SPEAKER_05

Gigi, you gotta move your butt.

SPEAKER_06

Thank you, Gigi. You get to pick a question out of the fishbowl. Oh, great. It looks like Gigi wants it to pick one.

SPEAKER_05

No, she's not getting one. She can't read yet.

unknown

There you go.

SPEAKER_06

All right, read it into the microphone, please.

SPEAKER_05

Okay.

SPEAKER_06

Gotta put this away, Gigi.

SPEAKER_05

If you had to ban one modern trend, what would it be? Oh, I know. Um, I would get rid of TikTok. I'm sorry. I wouldn't.

SPEAKER_06

Well, I can't blame you.

SPEAKER_05

Um, although I think it's fine for young kids to see a fun video and dance to it or learn a new idea. I think that young people are having their minds warped by propaganda on TikTok and they don't even realize it. Yeah. Um there's you can clearly see a lot of anti-American, anti-Israel sentiment that is flooding through these channels, and um, and it's put out there in such a way that's very insidious and very veiled, and you don't and they don't understand that they're being fed this by most likely a foreign entity. Um I'll give you a a good example. A friend of mine, he sent me a video that he saw on TikTok of a dam or some sort of water reservoir being flushed into the ocean. And this was used to say that California is wasting water. We had this perfectly good water and they could have dispersed it throughout the state to help with the um drought efforts, but they're just wasting it. And you had this, and it was there was like a narrative on the screen, and there was just some, you know, white punk kid just you know nodding his head to it like this was his reaction video. And I said, I said, dude, how do you know that water is not contaminated? How do you know when that water was collected? How do you know that it would take more energy and worsen the drought to disperse it than to just put it back in the ocean? Or how do you know any of that's true? And so that was my that's kind of my understanding is that you know a video is put out there to incite rage in a very impressionable audience, and um it's used to create anti-American sentiment or sentiment against the Western world. And the thing that people don't realize is the reason why you're able to even watch that video is because you live in a free country.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_05

You know, the reason why I'm able to dress like this and not in a hijab is because we live in a a country that is free from religious dictatorship. We're in a country that is safe, we're in a country where it's egalitarian. And and I love America, and this is the greatest country of I think of all time. We created the modern world. You wouldn't have your cell phone if it wasn't for America, you wouldn't have electricity if it wasn't for America, you wouldn't have the right to say these ridiculous thoughts if it wasn't for America. And so if you really dislike this country, then go to Afghanistan. Yeah, you know, talk about how much you love uh being, you know, l tell them how you know, go to Afghanistan or go to Gaza and say, I love being a homosexual, and see how long that's gonna um how long it'll be before you get hung from a tree.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

So I just I don't like um that. And I think that it's not going to breed a population that will create a robust economy, a safe border, or have children that are educated. Um we're just cre uh we're j we're gonna have a regressive society. And if you don't believe me, look at the way Afghanistan looks now compared to 40 years ago or Iran or Malaysia, and this is exactly what happens when you allow propaganda to infiltrate society from a hateful source.

SPEAKER_06

Dissemination of false information to the extreme and just short attention spans.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, that's the other thing. Is that they don't want to um actually sit down and think about the source of the information. Why why am I being shown this? Yep. Yeah. Is it out of context?

SPEAKER_06

To to your point of your earlier part with the Cartesian method, you're like thinking about it. Go go back to the sword and question everything. It's important.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, it's like why am I being shown this? Why is Instagram showing this? Or why is why is TikTok showing this? Maybe because they know that it's gonna anger me and I'm gonna watch it and I'm gonna use the app a little bit more.

SPEAKER_06

And you're not gonna do anything productive.

SPEAKER_05

No, and I'm not gonna do any pr anything productive. I mean, how productive could I possibly be over, you know, being hateful over wasted groundwater or you know, um something like that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Because it it it almost kind of reminds me of our generation's version of that back with the Occupy Wall Street thing. Occupy Wall Street was this movement that was a reaction to the financial crisis of 2008. But what our generation thought was instead of, you know, maybe lobbying for laws to prevent this or, you know, creating, you know, some sort of environment where this isn't allowed anymore. No, what we're gonna do is we're gonna go to Wall Street, we're gonna have a drum circle, and we're just gonna uh waste a bunch of time instead of going to work and just making a big performative effort about how much we care about this issue when we're really not doing anything. It's all it's it's all for show, it's all pageantry.

SPEAKER_06

And so um I And sometimes people are just paid to go and and protest.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, there's paid protesters. I mean, what I would have done if I wasn't in college and I really thought strongly about it, I would have just gone to a bank and just wasted their time filling out bogus paperworks, asking for, you know, coffee, and oh yeah, you know, can you know, show me around the bank a little bit. I'm gonna fill out this loan form. You know, that's how you prevent the banks from screwing people over, is just wasting their time, you know? No, you know, you gotta create a we had to do a drum circle. It's just it was so pointless. And so now I think the the new generation is just, you know, let's just get angry on on a social media platform but not actually lobby for any laws to create any actual change. Because that's just too boring, and there's no glory in that.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_05

You know, they all just want their little 15 minutes of fame. Yeah, and so I think that's that's the big problem nowadays.

SPEAKER_06

Well, we'll see how that goes.

SPEAKER_05

I know. Everything has to be a hot take.

SPEAKER_06

Yes. Clickbait.

SPEAKER_05

Yes.

SPEAKER_06

Now, just about to wrap up, but let me ask, do you have a suggestion for a future guest on our show on the real estate and investment show?

SPEAKER_05

Oh, you should get Lawrence Moins on. He's such an asset to our community. And he he came to my store once. He's a uh a character. I think you should get him on. He's like the top realtor on the island here. Yeah, I think you should get Lawrence on.

SPEAKER_06

Second time that I've heard his name as a recommendation.

SPEAKER_05

You have to. He's a character, yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Although I understand he doesn't like cameras, so who knows? Oh, really? I understand. I don't know. That's what I've heard. Oh.

SPEAKER_05

We'll find out. Oh, I don't know. I think he would like the camera. Okay. Maybe. I don't know. Or maybe Christian Engel.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, that's another good thing to have for real estate. All right. Shameless plug time. What is something you're working on right now that everybody ought to know, and where can they find slash follow you?

SPEAKER_05

Well, right now I'm working on my um April edition, so I release my products on the first of every month. So I'm just finishing that up. And um, you can just find it on www.umir.com. Yep. And and if you want the products, just make sure to go to the website around the first of the month.

SPEAKER_06

Perfect. Yeah, this episode might air in in May or a little bit later, but first of the month for everybody who who's interested. That way you can always know and and follow Wendy and her great products because it's a great story and had a pleasure learning more about it. Wendy, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_05

Well, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_06

I want to thank you so much for your time. We're gonna give you another round of applause. Thank you for sharing your journey, your experience, and being such a wonderful guest. Thank you, too, Gigi. And thank you so much for being here with us. Join me again next time with another amazing guest on the real State and Investment Show with Daniel Clavijo. I'm Daniel Clavijo. Till then, stay awesome, everyone, and God bless America.