Ep. 1: Tarek Saab – President & Co-founder of Texas Precious Metals

Tarek: Here I am in Paraguay. We had rented a house on a cobblestone road in what was considered one of the nicer neighborhoods in a town called Luque, outside of Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay. And, you know, the first day there's guys on horse-drawn buggies, like hawking bananas, like three houses down. They are living like on a dirt floor. It feels like it's a hundred and fifty degrees every single day. It's so hot. You know, we're losing electricity every single night. There's brown water coming out of the taps. You can't drink the water. And we go from this paradise in Argentina to, you know, this very difficult third-world country. And our stuff still hasn't arrived yet. So we're now in this completely empty house. I have no cell phone. I have no internet. I don't speak Spanish, which is an important piece in this whole story.

Evan: Okay, okay.

Tarek: And my, like, one source of income now has completely dried up. And it was the first time that I really started thinking, oh boy, you know, this this could get, this could get a little bit difficult.

Evan: Welcome to Y'all Street. Today, we visit with Tarek Saab, the president and co-founder of Texas Precious Metals and the creator of Y'all Street. So, Tarek, you want a cup of coffee?

Tarek: Love one.

Evan: Let's go.

Tarek: Get the caffeine rolling.

Evan: I need it. I need it. So, you obviously are my boss's, boss's, boss's cup more in their boss. And I've got to learn a little bit about you. You are now creating Y'all Street. You are the co-founder and president of Texas Precious Metals. You're on Trump's Celebrity Apprentice.

Tarek: Not Celebrity Apprentice.

Evan: Oh, Trump's Apprentice.

Tarek: Apprentice, yeah.

Evan: Which made you a celebrity.

Tarek: Which was before you were born, around the time that you were born?

Evan: Yeah, probably about 20 years before I was born. What was that? 1800s? No? Okay. No, I think it was before I was born, 2002.

Tarek: Okay, so I filmed in 2005.

Evan: So you were- Okay, okay. Yeah, I wasn't quite, wasn't quite watching Trump at that point. But fascinating life. Lived in Argentina. Where else overseas have you lived?

Tarek: I lived in Paraguay.

Evan: Paraguay.

Tarek: Yeah, traveled a lot of different places.

Evan: So quite the storied backstory. And so, you know, today I just kind of want to give people an opportunity to meet you. They're gonna get a chance to see a lot of you over the coming weeks and months and kind of want to give you just a platform to tell your story, tell people what we have going on at Texas Precious Metals. What is Y'all Street? Why are we doing it? Who are we doing it for? But I would love to kind of just start with you. I mean, from everything I've learned, fascinating human being. Like, pretty crazy fascinating human being. You know, from starting young, you know, grew up in Massachusetts, not a bunch of money, made a lot of yourself and, you know, had started at Texas Instruments.

Tarek: Yes, I mean, I guess we could start there. I mean, grew up in a lower income household in in Massachusetts with my dad as an immigrant from Lebanon. My mom is Portuguese and worked, they worked extremely hard to put me in good schools. And yeah, just had had the good fortune of good family, good role models. And my dad was always focused on making sure that I, if I go to college, that I either need to be, you know, an engineer, a doctor, you know, one of the STEM disciplines to be able to make some money and, you know, not work in the factory kind of thing. And so, yeah, I got my degree in electrical engineering and in in liberal arts. And I would say that I was never really passionate about electrical engineering. That wasn't my my thing, but I had the opportunity to have an internship with a company called Analog Devices in Boston, which led me to their competitor, Texas Instruments. And got into this elite program called the TSA program and was with 25 other engineers from around the country. And it was hyper competitive and these were the smartest people I'd ever been around. And we spent a year in Dallas. We rotated through various sections of TI, various divisions.

Evan: This is when you started at TI, this TSA program?

Tarek: Yeah, this was the TSA program. And and then after a year in Dallas, they deployed they deployed each of us to, you know, various sales offices that they have throughout the United States. So the way that they did it, at least at the time, was, you know, they would hire these engineers and some engineers would go into technical sales so they could speak the language and, you know, break into new categories, new businesses. You would have field sales engineers who tended to be a little bit more technical and then you had the engineers that were in the factory. And and so I went out into technical sales and I cut my teeth early in my career in Silicon Valley. So I had the mass market, 4,000 customers. This was, this would have been 2002. You know, we were coming out of the big tech boom and bust. This was right after 9-11. Things were really hard in Silicon Valley. But yeah, worked 80 hours a week and and, you know, learned how to be a professional, learned the ropes. We were really successful. The group of guys that I worked with, I'm still friends to this day, they've gone off to start, you know, VC firms and get MBAs and start companies. It was, yeah, just a really great group of guys. And so I did that for a couple years and then I got promoted to be a worldwide marketing manager. So they relocated me back to Dallas and this was a period of my life where I was able to travel all over the world.

Evan: So you're 24, 25-ish?

Tarek: Yeah, I guess I'm about 24 at the time, which was just really wild. I mean, I described that period of my life kind of like being a boy in a business suit.

Evan: That's how I feel right now.

Tarek: Yeah, you're caught in that vortex between, you know, still experience a bit of a delayed adolescence, but thrust into work situations that are, you know, very meaningful and impactful and could be multi-million dollar deals that you're working on. And so by day you're putting on, you know, the starched button-down shirt, by night you're playing video games or going to the bars or doing whatever you're doing when you're 24. So it was, we always sort of described it as like the quarter-life crisis, this struggle, you know, between, yeah, that transition between boyhood and manhood. And I would say that actually this period of my life when I took the position as a worldwide marketing manager, I ended up spending about half of the year overseas. So we had an office in Europe, in Freising, Germany. We had an office in Osaka, an office in Tokyo, and I was literally over there probably, you know, 50% of the time. And when I was over there, I was alone for about 50% of the year. So here I am, I'm on these 14-hour flights and, you know, the technology on the planes wasn't great back then. There was no Wi-Fi. I'm reading books. I'm in foreign countries where I don't speak the language. Just taking a lot of downtime, a lot of alone time to kind of figure things out in my life. And from an experience standpoint, to be in Japan, to do deals in Japan with Samsung, or Samsung was in Korea, but, you know, with Mitsubishi and with all of the high-tech, you know, electronic companies, we would spend time there. We'd go to South Korea. We were in China. We were in Taiwan. We had a big, big team there. And in Freising, we also had, you know, a big team in Milan in northern Italy. I was working on semiconductor chips that controlled LED large form factor video displays, but also this was the onset of using LEDs for backlighting televisions. So we went from those cathode ray tubes, those gigantic TVs, into these like really thin monitors.

Evan: Those big boxes.

Tarek: Yeah, big boxes down to small boxes.

Evan: I remember them very slightly from when I was little. So what was your specific role in that point? I mean, you're saying you're going alone. Are you the closer? Are you the technical guy explaining, you know, all the ins and outs? I mean, what got you successful in that role? What specifically was your role in that?

Tarek: So in product marketing, your job is to not only help promote the products that you've created and to work very high level deals with large organizations, but it's also to listen and to gather feedback on the technologies that are coming and the type of engineering that we needed to create to support those technologies. So my job was really being a liaison between these large customers who were doing huge volumes with us and the factory who is creating this roadmap of new products that are coming down the pike. And the learning curve of being thrust into these situations and these different cultures and these different environments and hosting dinners and understanding all of the nuances of sitting at a table in Japan and how to hand a business card to somebody and to adapt to these different cultural milieus, I think was really eye-opening for a young kid from the projects in New Bedford, Massachusetts. So it was an important part of my life and it's ultimately kind of what led me to The Apprentice.

Evan: Yeah. So, you know, you talked a little bit about being young and all this learning. I am about as fresh fish out of college as you can get. Have had amazing opportunities here so far, but completely understand. I mean, just it's a different world, you know, I mean, went to the University of Texas and it, you know, they did amazing job preparing us, but there's some things you get in and you just, you don't realize, I mean, what to pack when you travel has been difficult for me. I mean, everything. So I can only imagine how much even more coming from where you came from to such a large company like TI and then going all over the world.

Tarek: Everybody's journey is a little different and I think the transition out of college was especially tough for some because you spend the first 22 years of your life largely being taken care of, even when you're in college.

Evan: Yeah, absolutely.

Tarek: You know, your food, the cafeteria is there for you. You're not necessarily, you know, making your own meals or in some cases doing your own laundry, you know, and then you get out of the working world and you're by yourself and you have bills for the first time. You might have a car for the first time. I had never owned a car until I graduated from college.

Evan: Wow.

Tarek: Never had a cell phone until I graduated from college. Never really did very much banking. I had like a simple checking account, but, you know, the idea of setting up 401ks and just all of the life skills required to survive as a young man, you know, some of us just, you know, aren't necessarily really prepared for. So you're weaving that into learning how to be a professional and going into the workforce. And for the first time, for many of us working with people that are multi-generational, working with guys who are in their 70s and 60s and 50s and having to connect and adapt. Then you're weaving in new cultures into it. So I talk a lot about the importance of communication and the ability to communicate well and to connect with people. And, you know, it's really a life skill that I think is one of the most underappreciated.

Evan: So TI sounds pretty amazing though. I mean, you're working on brand new technology all over the world. You have a job that so many people would love. Why leave? Why go to The Apprentice? Why change up if you had something going for you? What was that experience like?

Tarek: Yeah. Well, I won't say that it was necessarily intentional. So I'll talk about how The Apprentice came to be. But for all of the benefits of TI, we internally used to joke that TI stood for training institute. And that's ultimately what it was. The five years I was at TI, I got the best professional education I could have possibly hoped for. I had great mentorship. We took a lot of, you know, training and classes and was thrust into situations that would help me develop over my career, you know, well, I mean, decades into the future. What The Apprentice would do, the producers of The Apprentice, Mark Burnett Productions, they would go around to Fortune 500 companies, you know, all over the U.S. They would hold these open casting calls and they partnered with TI and they said, hey, can we come in, hold an open casting call and have your employees come and interview for The Apprentice? And TI was all about it because it would create, you know, a lot of positive publicity if one of the employees of TI got on the show. I had never seen the show. I didn't even own a television. As I mentioned before, I was like overseas all the time.

Evan: You barely use this phone now. I mean, you've come a long way.

Tarek: So my buddy, you know, came to me and was like, hey, let's throw on the suits and let's go try out for The Apprentice. And I'm like, I don't even know what The Apprentice is. And so they bring us into this room and there are 10 employees. I mean, they're just lines out the door, right, for this open casting call. And they bring 10 employees in and, you know, they're creating these debates and, you know, trying to see how people react in group environments and how well they can take a position and argue that position. And at the end of this, you know, maybe 30-minute interview group interview session, they go around the room and they say, well, if there's one person in this room besides you that you think should be on The Apprentice, who should it be? The other nine people pointed to me. So then they send me to round two where I have a one-on-one interview with a producer. And then from there, they say, you have to go and make this at-home video, which nowadays people make at-home videos all day, every day with their phone. At the time, you know, I had to track down a kid in college who had a camera. So we make this at-home video. I don't hear anything for eight months. I don't think much of it. I just go about my business, traveling all over. And then I get a call in August of 2015, hey, you're one of the final 50. So they then fly me to LA. We're sequestered for a week. They do medical testing, IQ testing, psychological testing. We go through this whole round of interview after interview after interview after interview. It was just like totally exhausting. You couldn't talk to any of the other people that were one of the final 50. From there, I'm skipping over a lot, but, you know, from there, I get pulled in on the very last day. You know, all the producers are in the room, clap their hands, congratulations, you're on The Apprentice, season five. You need to be in New York in three weeks. And in the midst of all of this, what I come to find out is we actually can't tell anybody that I'm going to be on The Apprentice. So at the time, this is like the apex of broadcast media. Everybody's watching shows. There was a time before you were born where you would like schedule your week around like what shows or what programs are going to be on on like Thursday night or Friday night.

Evan: You can't just like pull it up on Netflix on demand at any and all times of the day.

Tarek: It was a different era. Let's just say that.

Evan: I believe it. I do remember a little bit watching like Disney Channel when I was little. And you had to watch it at this specific time because it wasn't coming back on.

Tarek: Yeah. And you know, this is all pre-social media. This is pre-YouTube. This is like, you know, Google has barely, you know, been around for maybe like four years. This is 2005.

Evan: 2005. And you're, so what, you're 26, 27?

Tarek: Yeah, I'm about, I was 26 when I started the filming.

Evan: Okay.

Tarek: And The Apprentice was a phenomenon. I mean, this was like a massive show, right? And this was like part of the huge comeback of Trump. I mean, The Apprentice is actually ultimately what helped launch Trump on his political career.

Evan: Absolutely.

Tarek: So, so we go, so we have to like sign all these non-disclosure agreements. At Texas Instruments, there were only like three or four people that knew that I was even going on the show. And even in my life, like, I think my mom had to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Evan: Wow.

Tarek: My future wife, Kate, had to sign a non-disclosure agreement, but nobody really knew where I was. So a lot of people at TI actually thought I was away on medical leave, thought that I had like leukemia or something.

Evan: Oh my gosh.

Tarek: And the, the, my, my friends and family just assumed that I was on a business trip in China or wherever, because that wasn't particularly uncommon.

Evan: How long was the filming?

Tarek: It was 49 days.

Evan: Oh my goodness gracious.

Tarek: Yeah, so it was, we started filming September 24th. We ended it November 11th. And it, like all of the episodes were filmed one right after the other, right after the other. And I, like I said, I had never seen the show. So I'm going on the show. I'm thinking that it's...

Evan: You didn't watch it before? You didn't find a way to see it at all?

Tarek: I had seen a couple of clips and I had a vague idea of what the show was about. And, you know, even, even when I got selected for the show, I'm thinking in my head, you know, is this even something that I want? Like, do I want to be on national television? Like all of a sudden you're thinking, I'm going to have all the spotlight on me. And yeah, so I go in, I think it's a job interview and like, like I've done, you know, throughout my career, I'm like type A kind of guy. I'm like, let me take charge. Let's go.

Evan: I don't know if, if you know this, I actually, I don't think that you do.

Tarek: But when I heard that you were on The Apprentice, I did go find it.

Evan: And I watched probably the first half of the season.

Tarek: Oh, that's scary.

Evan: And there's, there's a, there's a lot of Tarek that is, is true. You have a very man in the arena kind of mindset, right? Like I would rather go out swinging, right? That, you know, the respect belongs to the man in the arena rather than the guy who sits, sits outside and watches, watches the gladiators fight.

Tarek: That's a good point though. Right.

Evan: Totally.

Tarek: Because I, when I, when I got on the show, I was thinking, you know, I want to put my best foot forward, but originally I was, I was thinking, well, not the first task. Like, let me just figure out what the first task is, is about. So very first episode, Trump lands on the tarmac on his, you know, in his jumbo jet.

Evan: Yeah.

Tarek: Walks down the steps and he says, I'm going to do something unconventional this season. I'm going to pick the first two.

Clip: I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I have a great respect for Mensa because Tariq has an IQ that's higher than anybody here other than myself. So I'm going to ask Tarek to step forward. He's going to be one of your project managers.

Tarek: Uh, candidates are the first two project managers and Tariq, you're going to be the first project.

Evan: Cause you were like, I have a very high IQ, right? Right.

Tarek: That whole, that whole deal. So it became kind of a running meme that, um, you know, Trump was obsessed about the fact that, you know, I'm, I'm in Mensa. None of my family knew that, you know, my friends didn't know that until they watched the show and the producers were harping on it over and over and over again. Cause they wanted the whole purpose of the bruises to create a storyline. Yeah. And you know, the, the fact that, you know, they could pull something from me that was unique and turn that into your whole personality, right?

Evan: That's the goal. And I, I can attest to that is in no way, shape or form. Your whole personality is absolutely not a look at me kind of person at all.

Tarek: And I will tell you, um, you know, as we've kind of fast forward down the road in the story, what was the hardest thing for me is again, rewind the tape, it's pre-social media. So when you left high school or you left college, you had no connection hardly at all with any of your friends anymore that, you know, you would get together, you would go home and you'd say, Hey, how's Billy doing? What's Johnny up to these days? Oh, I heard this, or this one's going to do that. It was all kind of word of mouth. You know, we had emails, so we'd catch up a little bit via email, but it wasn't like you had Facebook or Instagram stories where you're constantly monitoring every single thing that, that your buddy's doing.

Evan: Yeah.

Tarek: So it was hard because I had friends that, or, or people I had gone to school with that hadn't seen me in 20 years that we're now seeing a version of me on national television. That was this curated produced version of who I had become. That wasn't really the true me, right? I often say if I had a, if I have a camera on you for 24 hours, I can go into the editing room and I can make you look like a saint, or I can make you look like a killer.

Evan: Let's not do the camera for 24 hours.

Tarek: So that's, that's essentially what it's like. It's not scripted. Everything was unscripted, but the way that they would, you know, produce the shows is they would find out who Trump was going to fire and they would wait. And then the producers would then go back and create story arcs to make it kind of make sense that, you know, this particular person was fired. So going back to that first episode, you know, I get selected. I don't know what the heck I'm doing. And there are all of these production challenges associated with these tasks, because you can't split up into more than two groups because there's only two camera crews. And then you'll be in the middle of a task and you got to get pulled out to do these side interviews. What's, you know, the narration of reality TV. So what's happening now? And what do you think about this person and dah, dah, dah. So it was, it was really kind of crazy because this first episode, you know, it's Sam's club. And we, they're like, okay, Tarek, you got to get, you know, as many business memberships as you can in 24 hours. And you have these people and oh, we're going to give you a blimp that you can run in the air and you can do whatever you want with the blimp, but you got to have two people in the blimp and, you know, you have a budget of like $500 and go. And, you know, they, they create these scenarios where it's, it's impossible to, you know, do a task without something failing or something going wrong because, you know, it's, it's kind of set up for drama. And, and so, you know, this is not long after 9-11. And so I, you know, I, I tell the guys in the blimp, I'm like, just fly it as low as you possibly can, which I think is like a thousand feet. Right. And, and just circle the Sam's club. And of course, you know, all the neighbors are like calling the cops. They think there's like another terrorist attack. The cops show up. We have the paparazzi out there because they think that the apprentice is being filmed. And like all of this kind of craziness was happening. We ended up losing the first task 43 to 40, which, you know, according to Trump means I'm the dumbest guy in the world.

Evan: That means, that means that people voted, right?

Tarek: It just meant how many business memberships we were able to capture in 24 hours. So we lost 43 to 40. I almost get fired. Like I'm literally episode one, the apprentice, I am like five seconds away from getting fired. And you know, the, the other girl that's in the final boardroom with me, she's like, well, you know, Trump, I need to defend Tariq here. And Trump's like, you're so dumb. So he ends up firing her. I almost get fired three out of the first five weeks. And then you talk about like man in the arena. I figured out I'm like, man, this is, this is kind of a game show. Like I am not playing this right. So the next few episodes, I'm just like laying low. I'm like, who do you need to sweep the floors?

Clip: You know Tarek, these people are laughing at you. I mean, I'm sorry.

Evan: You know what?

Clip: Let me just say something really quick. Why should you interrupt me when I'm knocking him? What are you doing to yourself? Because I'm being truthful and always be truthful. It's not stupid. I'm getting ready to almost fire this guy for being a horrible leader. And you interrupt me and you were no great shakes yourself. You did a lousy job. Here I am. I'm getting ready practically to fire this guy and you keep interrupting me and stopping me from doing it. And in the end, what Carolyn said to you is true. She said, what have you done? And you couldn't answer it. You know what? Summer, you're fired.

Evan: I found that so interesting, you know, just from people have this perception of Trump, right? And you have this perception of him as, you know, go, go, go all the time. And I found myself watching the season and I was like, he actually tried or she actually tried. And this person, that person, you know, sat and twiddled their thumbs all episode and they're safe and this guy's getting fired. Like, yeah, you're going to mess up. Like I, if you took that approach with me and my young career, I'll be out of here in a couple of weeks.

Tarek: You, I will tell you, you would have had the personality that would have put you on the chopping block, right? It's, it's just the way it's the way that it's true. And when you're type a look, I don't know this with certainty. I, this is my, my speculation. But when, when we were in California and we were doing the, like the, the, the final 50, as they're selecting, who's going to be on the show, it's really a sociology experiment where we're doing like the Myers Briggs and, and all the psychological testing. So they know that they're like, they're putting this type, a guy with this, you know, they're mixing and matching psychologists working.

Evan: Yeah.

Tarek: So where you're, you're mixing oil and water together and you know that it's not going to mix and I know that people are going to get frustrated and the type of guys are going to get frustrated with the, the, you know, the surfers. So yeah, it's, it was, it was, it was designed for volatility, but I ended up, you know, I, once I kind of figured it out, I ended up lasting until episode 10, I was the 12th person fired. And then I came back and was selected by the guy who won my season to help him on the final task, which is the final two episodes. So, you know, at the end of the, the whole experience, I ended up having more airtime than anybody. I had this character arc where I was a villain for a while. Then I kind of had this redemption story at the end.

Clip: Tarek, the women love you for some reason. He's a member of Mensa, but sometimes I don't know about that IQ thing, but you're pretty smart. So what did you think of Sean?

Tarek: And, um, you know, it's, it was an experience. I say I would do again the first time I wouldn't do it again a second time. Yeah. But I came off of the show and it's like, well, here I am. It's goes back to the TI stuff. I've I've been with TI for five years and as great as TI was, I always felt boxed in by the large monolithic corporation where you, you have these great opportunities for mentorship and learning, but you don't have the latitude and the breadth for creativity. And so I had often been thinking about, okay, well, what's the next step in my career? So when I, we, we finished filming in November, the show didn't air until February. So we had some, some time there to, um, kind of go back to TI and just sort of do the natural routine. But I realized that this juggernaut of a show is going to help me if I wanted to launch a business.

Evan: Publicity, right?

Tarek: Yeah. So I said, well, let me, let me scramble together a business and try to get this business launched at the same time that the show is out because I'm going to have all this free marketing that comes from the show. So the show comes out in 2006 and I launched a company with my best friend, uh, called Lionheart Apparel. And the concept behind it was, it was just, um, it was a Christian clothing line and it was just Christian symbols on t-shirts and hats. And it was a very like subtle kind of understated, um, you know, at the time, you know, if there was any Christian clothing, it was like really cheesy stuff, you know, and we just wanted something that was like a little bit cooler. And, um, and it worked well. I mean, we, we, so we launched Lionheart Apparel and, um, we, we were selling in a lot of different stores and we were, we were doing the e-com thing, going, going direct to consumer. And, you know, it was really rolling and, and the, the echo effect of The Apprentice, you know, coming off of The Apprentice in, in oh six, you know, I was in tabloid magazines and Us Weekly and TV Guide. And, um, you know, I, I was famous basically for one of the bigger stars of the season.

Evan: Yeah. Right.

Tarek: And it was one of those where you always wonder like, Oh, what's it like being Tom Cruise or, or, you know, Brad Pitt or some, some famous athlete where you're, where you're walking out into a restaurant and that's, that's what it was for me. Like I'd, I'd go into a restaurant and you're signing autographs and you're taking pictures. And then of course that fades over time because, you know, you, if you're not consistently in the public eye, then, then, you know, the, the star power wanes as it were. Um, but, but that was, it was great timing to launch this Lionheart Apparel. And I was traveling around the country and I was speaking and I wrote a book and, um, things were going really well until the great financial crisis. So great financial crisis hits in 2008 and everybody loses their shirts. Right. And the real estate market is horrible. I mean, and, and, you know, people were losing their jobs. There was concerns about the currency, the, um, you know, the, the country itself was, you know, trying to sustain and withstand this, this, um, you know, terrible, terrible economic effects of the big short, right.

Evan: That, that was one of the first financial, really one of the first like major memories other than going to Disney world when I was little, but I was six and I, I, I remember it. Like I remember, um, I remember my parents talking about finances and I remember, you know, my dad talking to his friends after like my baseball practices or whatever. And I don't think that it's something that I ever realized until looking back just how serious the great financial crisis was. I mean, I always thought of it of, Oh, you know, people are having a rough time, but it wasn't until I got into high school and I started studying and I started studying kind of financial history a little bit that it shocked me.

Tarek: Great financial crisis was a big wake up call for, for a lot of people. And, um, for me, you know, growing up in a lower income household, doing engineering and liberal arts, I had no finance background at all. Even when I was working at TI, I wasn't, no, I wasn't involved with, you know, the balance sheet of our vertical.

Evan: Yeah.

Tarek: I had to submit like expense reports, but that's about it. And so here I am, I'm coming off of the apprentice. I have this company I'm, I'm learning. I'm learning a lot about what it to start a company, everything from how do I create an LLC and, you know, how do I, you know, build a financial statement and how much inventory should I have? And, um, you know, you're, you're taking small business loans and, you know, interest and all these kinds of things. It's like, it really was an, an educational process just to, to understand what it means to start a business. And, uh, yeah. And then, so when the great financial crisis hit, it made me start asking some very rudimentary questions that, um, you know, I had never really thought about it's like, why, why does the paper dollar have value?

Evan: That's a good one.

Tarek: It's a piece of paper. Why, why, why does it have value? And, you know, can it be exchanged for, you know, precious metals or like, how is it created?

Evan: So tell me this, you, your team name, because you were the first team captain, the apprentice was gold rush. Did you have some kind of the, cause you didn't start a precious metals company after the apprentice started an apparel company. Was that coincidence or did you have a little love? Did you have a little love in there?

Tarek: You know, it's total coincidence. What's funny. I've had these moments in my life where, you know, um, almost like little foreshadowing. I, so growing up, uh, you know, in elementary school, we w we would have these, these, uh, uh, art projects and, and we would have to learn about the 50 States, for example, and everybody would get assigned a state. And of course the state I was assigned was Texas. And so I had to learn everything about Texas and the I still have some of these in, in, you know, in my attic or whatever. And then, uh, I played little league baseball and a little, the baseball team I'm assigned to is the Texas rangers. So, and then I, you know, I, I get this, uh, this job out of college is Texas instruments. It's like, it was almost like this foreshadowing that I needed to be in Texas pushing you over to the greatest state.

Evan: Yeah, right. Exactly.

Tarek: And, uh, and the same thing happened with, with gold rush. It was weird. Like, I think that the origin of that name was the show was launching during the 2006 winter Olympics. Okay. So we have to select the team name. And I think I'm thinking, well, we're going to go for the gold, right? It's gold rush. And what was funny about that is after the show, we created a, a website and, and at the time flash based websites were all the rage.

Evan: So there's like, I don't know what that is, honestly.

Tarek: Yeah.

Evan: I have no clue.

Tarek: Terrible for SEO, but so we had this flash based website and I'm sitting there and, and it was the coolest website where, you know, I had this briefcase and the briefcase would open. It was just gold bars all in the briefcase, but I had, I had no exposure to go. I knew nothing about gold. It was just like these little, little, uh, yeah, unique foreshadowing. And, um, so I go down this journey and I just, I'm, I'm now working from home cause I'm, I'm starting this company and I'm, I'm just starting to read and I'm reading like G Edward Griffin's a creature from Jekyll Island and reading a history of finance in America. And, um, you know, started reading about Warren Buffett and start learning about economics in a very kind of like a homeschooler in a sense.

Evan: Right.

Tarek: And, uh, so I start getting interested in precious metals and I start buying precious metals and I'm going through this experience and it's really difficult actually. Right. This is, this is early stage precious metal. So the whole economy of the United States transitions from being brick and mortar to e-comm in the late nineties. And so by the time you get to the mid two thousands, people are already buying a lot of stuff online, but I'm not buying gold online in 2009.

Evan: I mean, I, I might be nervous buying some Haynes t-shirts. You know, what if that gets to me or not? I mean, that's a different level. I mean, I feel like even today, we're just starting to get to that threshold of people saying, okay, very normal, reputable company could buy me gold or, you know, anything online.

Tarek: You would be shocked. You would be shocked.

Evan: Even in 2009, people were, would buy.

Tarek: Yeah. 2008, 2009. And at the time, the biggest constraint, the biggest constraint was how do you ship this stuff in an insured way? So really there was only one, one method. It was the U S postal service registered mail. It was slow. It was untrackable. And there was an insurance limit of $25,000. And I remember my first transaction in 2008, I'm writing a check. I'm mailing a check to this company in Washington. There were delays on, on buying metals because it's the great financial crisis. A lot of people were buying metals. I waited six months for the product. It comes registered mail. I couldn't track it. You know, your fingers are crossed the whole time. And I realized, I'm like, wow, this is like very archaic. This is not, this is a, a, an industry that has not really caught up, not figured out the infrastructure to, to be an e-commerce business. Just kind of filed that away. Didn't, didn't take any action on it. And, you know, there are those few kind of sliding doors moments in your life. And, and, you know, this then becomes one of those sliding doors moments where I meet this German guy that I befriend and I start talking to him and I say, what do you do for a living? He's like, I'm an investor. And I said, okay, well, what do you invest? And he's like, precious metals.

Evan: Are you living in the United States at this point? I'm in Texas. Yeah.

Tarek: So I had just to, for, for context, I had lived in, in Dallas, then went to Silicon Valley, then moved back to Dallas. I ended up meeting my wife who's from Fort Worth and we're, we're just living in Texas. Okay. So this is, this is 2008. And so I meet the, meet this German guy, gets it, gets to know him really well, brilliant investor, big into precious metals, has a lot of precious metals, but he's going to relocate his entire family to Paraguay. And it's like, why are you going to Paraguay? He loved the demographics of Paraguay. He thought Paraguay was about to experience a huge economic boom. He loved forestation and Paraguayan forestation was becoming a bigger and bigger part of their economy. And they have a huge German population in Paraguay. So he felt at home a little bit. Yeah. He felt at home and come to find out, I mean, he was right about all of those things. Paraguay has had this huge boom and big in forestation, all that kind of stuff. But he had, he had a lot of precious metals and he was trying to sell them, but the bids that he was getting were, were terrible. And so he said, can you help me sell some of this stuff? Now my, my, you know, clothing company was kind of on the decline and I was looking for like the next phase of my career. And I said, sure. So I, I whip up a $12 GoDaddy website. Don't know how to make websites, but just like $12, send out a press release. Trump alum fired up about gold and silver. Now it's picked up everywhere. We sell out of all of his, he had millions of metal, but sell out all of his metal in like 24 hours. And I was like, wow, I guess I'm in the metals business. And now I just needed to figure out how to get more of it. Yeah. And so I start, you know, reaching out, reaching out to mints, finding other private dealers. And it was very crude in the business at the time. I wasn't even really a dealer. I was kind of like the eBay of precious metals. I was matching up buyers and sellers and kind of taking a cut that eventually morphed into really developing like a gold brokering company. And a gold broker is somebody that doesn't actually have the metal and inventory. They're just, you know, facilitating the transaction. And I was, you know, taking money and drop shipping it from, you know, a distributor or another dealer that, that had the metal. And I started thinking, I'm like, wow, this is amazing. Like this is, I can build a career off of this. And at the time, everything was done on Skype. And I realized I could live anywhere in the world. The U.S. was going through this financial crisis. Obama had just been elected, which I wasn't thrilled about. And I'm now, I now have this company that I can do from pretty much anywhere in the world. And, you know, this, this investor friend of mine, he was going to Paraguay. I'm like, why don't I go to South America too? I loved, I loved traveling. And I always, I had never been to South America. I'd been, I'd been, you know, everywhere in the northern hemisphere, but never to South America. And I said, let's go on this adventure. I, so this was a period of my life where, um, I, I was on The Apprentice. I left my career at, at TI. I get married. I start my own company. You know, I sold one house. I bought another little bit of change, a little bit of change happening all at the same time. And then I basically, you know, say to my wife, why don't we just pick up and move it to South America?

Evan: And how, what did she say to that? She was all on board.

Tarek: Yeah. I think we were still in the honeymoon phase. So those are easier conversations to have. She was like, absolutely. She's like, wherever you go, I will follow. No, she's, she's, uh, she actually factors in, into the story in terms of just, I think, lessons because, you know, having that, that stable support system and that rock during the highs and lows is, is just incredibly valuable.

Evan: Yeah. I've had the chance to meet her. I mean, super sweet. I mean, so kind, so hospitable. And I mean, just being able to see how, how she has helped you and kind of given you a platform in order to work as hard as you do to travel as much as you do to have the success that, that you've had. I mean, I think is, is a Testament. I think it's amazing.

Tarek: Yeah. Of all the decisions that you make in your entire life, the person that you choose to marry is hands down the most important decision. It's the biggest life decision. And I've been so fortunate in that. And yeah, so I went to Kate and I said, let's, uh, let's pick up and, and move to Paraguay. I can run the precious metals business from down there. Um, we'll, we'll learn about all the business opportunities that exist in, in Paraguay and, um, and, and we'll do that. So we, we put all of our stuff onto a container and the container was going to take a lot longer to get to Paraguay than, than, um, then, uh, we were hoping. So instead of going directly to Paraguay without our stuff, I said, why don't we go on an adventure to Argentina? And at the time I said, well, maybe we'll go to Tierra del Fuego, the Southern most city in the world. And my wife's like, I don't know how I want to go that close to Antarctica. So we picked a town called Bariloche and Bariloche is, um, well known to people in South America, not as well known to people in North America, but it's one of the most beautiful towns in the world. And, uh, it's a population about a hundred thousand people. It's a big tourist destination. It's like the Aspen of South America. You have skiing, you have glacial lakes, mountains, hiking, you know, rainbows, butterflies, you know, it's the chocolate capital of South America. It's the micro brewery capital.

Evan: That's awesome.

Tarek: So we go down there. Um, we, we take this adventure. We have, um, my, my oldest daughter was, um, I think eight months old at the time. And, and here we are, uh, the first night that we get into Bariloche, uh, we rented this cabin. We open up, uh, the next morning we, we open up the shutters and we see this huge rainbow going across the mountains. And you just think that this is the place you're in the garden of Eden, right?

Evan: Yeah. So yeah, there you go.

Tarek: We're there for two and a half months. You know, I'm working on the gold company. Things are going really well. And, uh, the time has come for us to move to Paraguay. So we pack everything up, we go to Paraguay. And just as we're getting into Paraguay in mid 2009, things in the U S start tapering a little bit economically. And the demand for precious metals now completely falls off a cliff. So here I am in Paraguay. We had rented a house on a cobblestone road in what was considered one of the nicer neighborhoods, um, in a town called outside of Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay. And, you know, the, the first day there's guys on, on horse-drawn buggies, like Hawk and bananas, like three houses down, they are living like on a dirt floor. Um, it feels like it's 150 degrees every single day. It's so hot. You know, we're losing electricity every single night. There's Brown water coming out of the taps. You can't, you can't drink the water. And we go from this paradise in Argentina to, you know, the, this very difficult third world country and our stuff still hasn't arrived yet. So we're now in this completely empty house. I have no cell phone. I have no internet. I don't speak Spanish, which is an important piece in this whole story.

Evan: Okay.

Tarek: Okay. Um, and my, like one source of income now has completely dried up and it was the first time that I really started thinking, Oh boy, you know, this, this could get, this could get a little bit difficult.

Evan: You have one kid at that.

Tarek: I have one child at the time.

Evan: You have a wife that you just brought down to South America and she was happily like, let's go.

Tarek: And now married a guy on the apprentice. And now we're living in Paraguay with guys hawking bananas and the floor kind of starts coming out from under you.

Evan: And I mean, I can only imagine the amount of stress, tons of stress.

Tarek: You know, uh, I had had a little bit of money when I went down there, but I had student loans and it, you know, it costs money to travel and we're renting these places. And, you know, uh, when, when you go rent a house in Paraguay, you're going to pay, you know, for the whole entire year. And now, you know, money is drying up and it's drying up and it's drying up and you're trying to get settled and get your paperwork and residency and it's the money's drying up and it's drying up and now the money isn't coming in anymore. And, you know, I, I have this moment where I woke up in this empty house with, with no belongings. And I had just, I had grabbed like a cardboard box from this grocery store, Los Hardines. And my laptop is sitting on this cardboard box. I'm in like this, like makeshift fold-out chair doing what I can to see if I can drum up any metals business. And I had just gotten at the time I had just gotten WIFI. And the, the thought occurred to me that the average worker in Paraguay makes $2,000 per year.

Evan: Wow.

Tarek: And I don't speak the language. And if this doesn't work out, like, what am I going to do?

Evan: Yeah.

Tarek: Well, like, and I started thinking, man, I'm like, I have two college degrees. I work for a major fortune 500 company. I was on the apprentice. I started a company, but when you distill all of that activity down to this cardboard box, I realized I really don't have any skills. Like what skills do I actually have? I can't speak a foreign language. I don't know how to run an excavator, not a plumber. The only real skill that I had ever had was I was a good communicator. And that's been ripped away from me because I don't even speak the language.

Evan: Wow.

Tarek: What am I going to do? And I opened up my bank account and I have $14 in my bank account.

Evan: I remember those days. I just got out of college.

Tarek: And I'm in Paraguay on a cardboard box. Yeah. And it's like, I have this, like, real panic, this panic that I'm, I'm, I'm feeling. And then I go into the other room and my wife's like, I'm pregnant.

Evan: Oh my gosh. And you have, I can only imagine like all of the different emotions. Cause of course you're happy that you're being blessed with a child, but the stress and the stress. Oh my gosh.

Tarek: Stress.

Evan: I cannot imagine. $14 in the bank account.

Tarek: The, the idea of going back to the United States was just not on the table. Like just why not work and the cost. And you know, even if I called up my friends and family and borrowed money to try to, you know, get all of our stuff, but all of our belongings were still in transit to Paraguay, you know? So it's, it was just like, what am I going to do? And I think I look back on that moment and I see that as one of my greatest professional achievements was to work out of that hole. And the way that I did it is you know, my brother-in-law at the time had a small marketing company and he was building websites. And he said, look man, if, if you can learn how to build websites, then you know, I can fish you some work, especially the websites that are lower end that I don't want to mess with. And so at the time there was Joomla and there was WordPress and I start researching and learning how to do HTML. And little did I realize how important that would later become because Texas Precious Metals is a technology company. And to learn the inner workings of how all of these sites work and APIs and cron jobs and all the connectivity necessary to kind of build these websites. I, so I started doing that and I started doing copywriting for M&A companies and you know, taking on any odd job that I could. And to go from the absolute highs of the apprentice to now I'm like this contract laborer in Paraguay was really humbling. I think you know, as, as a man of faith, it brought me so close to God, my relationship with God and this reliance on him and the sense of detachment from the world. We had no stuff, we had no money. And it was, it was an important, it was an important time for me to really understand who I was and who I wanted to be as a man, as a husband, as a father, as a businessman. And I really embraced it. It was almost like a cold plunge. It's like get in the cold plunge, own it. We're going to go through this, you know, period of difficulty. And we're going to come out better. And it was I have anybody who knows me knows that I'm an optimist, a world class optimist. So it's always we'll figure it out. We'll, we'll make it happen. We'll do it. So eventually, you know, I start getting a little bit of money coming in. And, you know, we're able to buy the groceries.

Evan: And this is from really the more of the website stuff?

Tarek: Or are we still trading over where we can? I was still trading where we could, but it was yeah, the market had dried up. I didn't, you know, not many people knew who I was. So that was just like fits and starts a little bit here and there. But the consistent income was coming with all this contract work. And I started building my own websites and try to try to create as many income streams as I could. And finally, all of our belongings arrive. I know I set up the house and we're getting somewhat settled. But I, I determined that Paraguay is not the right long term location for me. I really wanted to get back to Bariloche. And it was, it was a struggle. And we knew that the baby was coming. And getting residency in Argentina was harder than in Paraguay. And so I thought, well, let's just have the baby in Argentina. And they have birthright citizenship there. And then we would be permanent residents and we can really start our, our journey from there. And, and so that's what we did, but we didn't have the money. So my wife had met these Baptist missionaries in Paraguay, and befriended the wife of a minister. And they were they were talking and Kate just said, Look, we have all this furniture and all this stuff, and it was not going to be possible to bring it all down to Argentina, we're going to pack, you know, as much as we can fit into like a Hyundai h2.

Evan: Yeah.

Tarek: And anything that doesn't fit in there, we have to sell that's couches, that's, think about, think about a wedding registry, you know, prison art mixers, and the, you know, all the kitchen stuff and the knickknacks. And these Baptist missionaries were like, Oh, wow, you have all of this, like brand new stuff from the States, like we'll buy it. And that was amazing. For me, it was it was a blessing, because, like, what kind of garage sale are you going to have on a cobblestone road in Paraguay, where half like the whole population makes like $2,000 a year? Like what are you going to get in return for it? So we actually got probably, you know, 50 cents on the dollar, which is just enough money to get us to Argentina. We have the baby, my son, my second child, which that that story is a whole other story, because the midwife didn't show up.

Evan: Oh, no. So did you deliver it?

Tarek: Yeah, me delivered him into doulas, two little Argentine girls who were there to help, you know, massage my wife.

Evan: My goodness.

Tarek: So it was wild west. Well, I did not know that. Wild West. So, um, yeah, so I get there. And through this process of building websites, I connect with some other guys who are in precious metals. And I start working with this gentleman out of Ohio on his precious metals company website. And then we develop together a website called gold shark, which factors into the TPM journey later down the road. So gold shark was just an aggregator of all of the different precious metals websites, and would price compare different coins and take in all that data and information. And so I was doing that I was doing some consulting work for a franchise of like Mexican restaurants in South America, I was doing copywriting, I was doing anything that I could to kind of build this business. So I ended up renting an office in downtown Bariloche, I meet these expats, these engineers who were sent from the states, and then they end up, you know, meeting an Argentine girlfriend staying down in Argentina, and they were they're working on the websites. And we start actually building a little bit of like, like a marketing and web development agency. For three years, I had no car, I finally could afford to buy a car and like things. We're seeing the progress. And then, and then the Puget Bay volcano erupts in Chile, and it dumps, in some places, eight to 12 inches of ash on Bariloche. So I have my little this is a whole other story. But I have my daughter with me, I'm walking down the road with a friend of mine. And all of a sudden, the sky turns black, and it's apocalyptic. And then it's just like lightning everywhere. And you're thinking, Oh, my God, this feels like the end of the world.

Evan: Yeah, yeah.

Tarek: Come to find out this volcano erupts. And there's just ash pouring down like snow. It's like being in a in a Massachusetts blizzard. But instead of instead of the snow melting, when it hits you, it's just like all pumice that's falling down on, you know, you're like covering your mouth and your eyes. And it shuts down the whole tourism industry, you can't get flights in and out of Bariloche. So there end up being a lot of my buddies who are now out of work. And so I hire them, and they're doing, you know, little things for me. And it was at this time, again, it's sort of a sliding doors moment where when, when I right before I left the United States, I had gone to like a housewarming party. And I had met a guy and the guy asked, Hey, what do you do for a living? And I said, I'm in the precious metals business. I've been in the metal business, gold merchant, international gold, international gold merchant for two weeks, right? I had been, I had been doing it for two weeks. And, and so I left my name and never talked to the guy again. Two years later, I get, I get contacted by this guy, Jason Casper. He's like, yeah, I had reached out to a bunch of my friends to see if anybody knew anybody in the gold business, because my grandfather was buying gold. And I think he was paying too much money for the gold. And I, so I ended up meeting Jason Kaspar. And this is, this is like the big fork in the road in my career. And Jason's 28 at the time, he's just a complete finance geek, you know, Buffett aficionado, you know, he's, he's, he's the kind of kid that was like calling a stockbroker at 13 from high school, like, you know, yeah, 100%.

Evan: I bet he did pretty well, too.

Tarek: He did, he did do well, actually, I know for a fact, well, and we end up hitting it off with this like Skype relationship, just talking business and talking finance and talking, you know, what's happening in the economy. And we're very aligned on so many things. And Jason, at the time had a hedge fund, and he wanted to roll that into a new hedge fund he was building called arc fund, which was going to have some gold in the art and in the hedge fund, but he wanted to have it in physical, he didn't want to have it in synthetic and like GLD, smart, smart guy, right? Exactly. So, so I said, Oh, I can help you with this. So we start the hedge fund together. And I, you know, I tell them that, you know, on the physical side, you know, we, Jason, I end up having this discussion about how do we take gold, which is has a negative carry cost. So you buy it, it's, it's, you know, shiny rock, and you got to insure it, you got to store it has a negative carry cost, you know, month in and month out, is there a way that we can earn a dividend on that physical gold position? And we came to the conclusion, like, why don't we just start a precious metals company, tuck it into this hedge fund, use the physical metal, instead of being a broker, we can be a dealer, sell the gold and rebuy it.

Evan: Explain the difference on that for people.

Tarek: Yeah, so just a broker, somebody that doesn't actually have the metal, they're, they're conducting the transaction, but they're typically buying it from somewhere else.

Evan: There's drop shipping.

Tarek: Yeah. Yeah, dealer actually owns metal and is dealing out the metal from their own inventory. I don't know if those are like official definitions, but it's kind of how we think about it in our industry. So we, we knew that there was going to be golden in the hedge fund, there wasn't going to be silver. So Kaspar's had this like other pool of capital that was available to buy silver. And I remember having this conversation with, you know, Jason's dad. And here I am in Argentina, they've never met me in person. Well, Jason is part of an old family company, right? Yeah, so Kaspar companies is now 125 year old family conglomerate, fifth generation. They invented the shopping cart, they built their whole business in like the 1960s, 70s, 80s, doing newspaper racks, 90% of all newspaper racks. Newspaper Evan is a daily journal that would...

Evan: I've learning about newspapers and faxes and all this kind of stuff.

Tarek: So, so yeah, and then when that business died, they, they bought a company called Ranch Hand, which they built up. And if you're in Texas, you know, Ranch Hand, they make the grill guards in the front of pickup trucks. It's a business that we later sold, but they're, they're, they're, they're just a very entrepreneurial family.

Evan: Yeah.

Tarek: And so they had this pool of capital. And I remember having this conversation, I'm in Argentina, they're in Texas, you know, convincing Jason's dad that, you know, he needs to wire me $1.5 million so we can go out and buy 50,000 silver maples to have some silver.

Evan: He's never met you.

Tarek: Some random dude in Argentina. Hey, just send the wire over. And if you know anything about the Kaspars who are super conservative, this is just not what they do. I can't, I honestly cannot believe that you got them to do that. Yeah. I mean, we just, I just hit it off with his dad. Like we were, you know, again, it's, it's like what we were talking yesterday with Tom Power. It's, you know, you do, do you do business with the right people with the right values, the right morals, and you, you can tell pretty quickly.

Evan: Things align.

Tarek: Yeah. Who's, who's, um, yeah, who, who's legit and who isn't. And so, uh, we buy the silver and I say, oftentimes it's better to be lucky than good. Um, we decided to name the company, Texas precious metals. And people ask me that all the time. Like, why did you name the company, Texas precious metals? And my, my thinking at the time was the biggest challenge in the metals business is to build credibility. And Texas has a brand unto itself and people, people understand Texas values. And there was a little piece of me that I think kind of modeled the, the name of the company off of Texas instruments. So if you look at our logo, the logo of Texas precious metals is not that dissimilar to Texas instruments.

Evan: Yeah.

Tarek: And, uh, and so that's, you know, that's what we launched. We launched February 4th, 2011. I say, it's better to be lucky than good. That was the moment when gold and silver skyrocketed in price. And we were kind of the only game in town. Why were we the only game in town? Because we were the only precious metals company that had metal and no customers. So, so we leveraged this platform gold shark that I had built to get the brand out there. We started generating customers and then we find ourselves in 2012 in the middle of the Eagleford shale, the big fracking boom. And all of these South Texans were getting mailbox money, looking to, you know, put mailbox money into metals. And that slowly started building the brand and building the credibility.

Evan: You're selling all this online, almost like e-commerce wise.

Tarek: It's all e-commerce and Jason and his mom are doing the packing and the shipping out of Texas.

Evan: Physically in Shiner, Texas.

Tarek: And I'm with my crew of, my motley crew of expats in Bariloche doing all of the digital stuff behind the scenes. And, and so by 2012, the casters were like, listen, man, this thing is taken off. You need to, you need to move back to Texas. And this was again, a big fork in the road for me. I'm like, I'm in my paradise. I got rainbows and butterflies and flowers, you know, I'm finally learning Spanish. I feel like I can, you know, have dinner and speak Spanish for four hours. Right. And horribly broken, broken Spanish. Um, but I, I prayed about it. I thought about it and it was the right time. It was the right company. And, um, I thought, I always thought that I was going to move back to Argentina. So we ended up leaving a lot of our stuff down there and just, you know, again, put all of our stuff into a suitcase and moved to Shiner, Texas.

Evan: Yeah.

Tarek: Town of 2000 people.

Evan: Shiner Bach.

Tarek: You could not pick two geographic locations more different than the mountains and glacial lakes of Bariloche, Argentina to the flat south central south central Texas, where everything wants to kill you. You know, the sand burrs and the, the Brown recluses and the copper heads, the rattlesnakes and you know, the fire ants. And again, it was crazy hot. It actually reminded me a lot of Paraguay. Um, and so we moved back to Shiner, Texas and, um, the company just, you know, builds on itself. We keep growing, growing and everything that we focus on is about brand reputation. And I had told you about all the shipping issues that we had. So we partner with UPS, uh, to like reinvent shipping in our industry where we could start overnighting heavy packages of silver 40 pound packages that cost $30,000 to Maine and be able to do that affordably and a ship for free. So we're, we're helping, we're, we're part of a group of companies, the, the JM bullions, the SD bullions, the, um, you know, at the time, Provident metals, the, this online crew of young guys are coming into the space to, um, really bring it into the 21st century. And, uh, so yeah, so, so now we're able to ensure packages up to $75,000 and get packages to people on time. And I, we, we had, we, we really came to market and said, look, if we don't have a product in stock, we're not going to sell it. We never forward sell sold product. We said we do business the Texas way. We were focused on customer service. Everything was about taking care of the customer and trying to recalibrate or reposition people's expectations of, of what they were experiencing with a precious metals company. And, you know, we kept growing and growing, but we were a little bit under the radar. We were, we were geographically heavy in Texas. So half of our client base was, was in Texas and half was in the rest of the U S we were not like SEO Kings. So, you know, when you Googled us, you didn't find us, but our, our customer service and our reputation was second to none. And our brand equity was, was, um, what was outstanding. And we, we were one of those companies that just kind of kept building year over year over year. And I'll get, I'll get into the TPM story a little bit more, but I think the shift into, um, into Shiner for me was, um, also a big life change because I told you when I was in paragraph, like I had no skills. And then I moved to Shiner and you got all of these country boys and these country boys, man, they could go out. They could shoot a deer, skin it, eat it for dinner. They were fishing, you know, they can dance too. They can dance and they can throw back some beer, you know, but, but these guys all had all of the life skills that I actually didn't have. They could plumb the, they're like, Oh yeah, I'm going to go fix the truck. You know, I never had a riding lawnmower in my life. I bought a lot of riding lawnmower. I'm like reading the manual. How do you change the oil on a, you know, on a riding lawnmower?

Evan: They all feel about me. They all went to A&M. I went to UT, you know, they all think that, that I'm, I'm exactly like that, which I a hundred percent am, but I'm learning slowly but surely. You know, going to be able to change the oil soon.

Tarek: I, I bought a hammer, you know, a screwdriver. And it's really kind of funny because over the seven years I lived in China, it was, you know, I was learning woodworking and getting really into a lot. I joke like the man skills, right? Riding horses and getting, going hunting and buying guns. I'd never shot a gun, you know, in my life.

Evan: Really? At that point you'd never shot a gun in your life?

Tarek: The only people in Massachusetts that have guns are the criminals. So, you know, it's, it's like, you know, coming to Texas, everybody has a gun. Your grandma has three guns, you know, it's, I mean, it was, she's going on a walk, you know, she's got one on her. Exactly. So, um, so yeah, so we, we keep building the brand. The thing that really changed our business was the depository. We were in the running for the Texas state depository. So the state said, we're going to go and we're going to, you know, uh, commission this depository to relocate our gold from New York, which I, which was never going to happen. Um, but we, we did not win that bid, but I spent two and a half years building a whole business plan on how to build a world-class depository. And just like the e-commerce business and, and, um, and metals, there were a lot of gaps that needed to get fixed and corrected in this problem solving and critical thinking. And like, how do we, how do we take this experience in the 21st century? The same is true with precious metals depositories. I mean, you know, the Brinks and the Loomis's of the world, they, they're great at what they do. They're great at transport. They're good with sort of like commercial deposits, but for large quantity, retail, IRAs, things of that nature, they're not really well-suited or adapted to handling a large constituency of clients. And so, um, in 2018, we, we launched the depository in, um, it, I mean, it grew way faster than we expected. Um, we, we integrated a lot of technology with RFID and, um, Bluetooth and, uh, you know, barcoding and facial recognition, all these different things, the, the reporting that we could automatically feed to all of our institutional clients. And with the depository, the business grew from, you know, about 10 employees to today, it's, we have 77 employees in the organization, not counting all of the other people at Casper companies that, that touch our stuff. And, you know, as the, the depository continued to grow, we built this, you know, purpose built facility in China and, you know, it's an infrastructure. It's, uh, it's been quite the journey. So, yeah.

Evan: And so, you know, when we're talking about that, about the depository, I mean, trust, I mean, kind of going back to, you know, you did it slow, you did it methodical search engine optimization was, was not, you know, key point number one, but it was the, you know, the, the personable relationships. It was the partnerships thinking kind of in that, um, you know, slow man kind of wins the race in the long run.

Tarek: Um, but yeah, just on that, what we talk a lot about and we even, I know that you're new to the company here as, as we have these internal discussions, it's, it's outside in thinking a lot of times companies fall into this trap of this is the way that we want to do business. And we're going to force the, the customer to do it our way, instead of saying, instead of this outside in thinking, what is the easiest for the customer? And then let's adapt how we do business to make it as appealing for them as possible. It's the, you've heard of the golden rule, you know, treat others how they want to, how you would want to be treated. And we have the platinum role, which is treat others how they want to be treated. And that was always the, the prevailing focus for us is let's just focus on customer experience and the rest will follow. The word of mouth will follow the, the, the marketing will follow from there.

Evan: And so let's go to today. I mean, I, I know for me when I was recruiting full-time Shiner, Texas was not on the list of, of where I thought I was going to go, but I was able to tour the depository kind of, you know, on a whim. I met Jason Kaspar through a professor at the University of Texas. And, you know, he invited me out and they showed me around and they were so hospitable to me. And in no way did I ever think I was going to work there, but the infrastructure and the technology and the care, I mean, the, the way that y'all handle metals was, I remember saying it at the time. I was like, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen. And I get to go to work there now, and it's still probably is the coolest thing I've ever, I've ever seen. And we get to take people on tours and the sparkle in their eye of the organization, how much it makes sense, just the size of the depository. And so today you have the infrastructure, right? You built slowly, you have the infrastructure, you have the team, but it's not corporate in a sense of, you know, now we're standing still, we've done it. Let's pat ourselves on the back and, and go sit down. I mean, you're running full steam ahead. I mean, spending the last couple of days with you, a visionary of all visionaries and have so many different ideas. So now that you kind of have this backing, now that you have this foundation, I mean, where is, is TPM going?

Tarek: Yeah. So, I mean, I think it starts obviously with the people and just thinking about Shiner, Texas and the advantages and disadvantages of being in Shiner. What are the advantages? The employees that we hire are of the highest caliber, salt of the earth, great people, amazing people. Their families have lived in Shiner for generations and unbelievably hard workers. They are passionate about the community. Just very moral and good and quality folks. So we have that as the stable. And once they work for you, they tend to work for you for a long time because there's not a lot of other companies in Shiner, Texas. The challenge is when you spend your whole time, your whole life in Shiner, you don't necessarily see what is happening out in the rest of the world. And bridging the gap between what is traditionally a very blue collar town and we are a white collar business. Trying to merge those two together. And you're right, it's hard to recruit. So like our whole digital products team is in College Station because we are able to hire there and bring some of the great young talent that's coming out of school to build the digital infrastructure.

Evan: Get the next satellite office in Austin. Yeah, there you go.

Tarek: Everything is on the table. But I think as we look out into the future, it is number one, building a bench, building a high quality stable of employees that understand our culture, because one of the biggest challenges of going from 10 people to 77 is ensuring that you don't lose the culture that got you to where you are. I don't want to be AT&T where you're punching numbers into a phone and you got to wait on hold for half an hour and you're lucky if you can get a person in the United States who cares at all about what's going on in your life. Yeah, like we want to maintain the small town touch and the client relationship no matter how big we get. So, you know, I think that's the foundation. And we are focused. Everything that we do down the road is built on the customer. What can we do to improve the customer experience? And the customer is very different. So we might have retail customers, little grandma that's buying five coins for Johnny at Christmas. And we have large institutional clients, RIAs, IRA custodians, retirement funds, hedge funds, family offices. All of those customers have different needs. And so, again, this kind of goes back to this theme of rather than forcing them to hook into the way that we do things, we want to try to create as many bespoke services to adapt to these clients to allow them to do what they want to do to be innovative and forward thinking. So that flexibility and that adaptability is native to the infrastructure that we're building. We don't want to be rigid. We want to be as flexible as we can to move into all of these different verticals.

Evan: Yeah. And I think in that the one thing that I've experienced is with kind of you're not an expense sparing person. Right. When it comes to insurance, when it comes to not having an AI or a computer answer the phone, I mean, you want to invest in the insurance. Right. You're begging them, give me more insurance.

Tarek: Right.

Evan: I want, you know, my customers to feel comfortable in the depository. I want people to have somebody who's kind answer the phone, an actual human being. And you know, you're not looking to save 10 cents here and save 10 cents there. And it's something that I admire.

Tarek: And I think it's has been this is the part of the podcast where we don't want to Kaspars listening. No, no, it's it's sort of a running joke in that, you know, I I stand by the model that price is what you pay value is what you get.

Evan: Yeah.

Tarek: And so. I never want to spend wastefully.

Evan: Yeah, absolutely.

Tarek: It's about putting money to the highest and best use. And AI is a great example of this. We are using AI at our company. We are using it to improve the quality of our customer service. Just analysis. We're using it to help us determine better and more efficient ways of handling metal in the depository. We're using it to help write content and to improve our Web site. But AI is a tool, and it reminds me of sort of the transition from, you know, the old school hand saws to chainsaws, chainsaws, revolutionized the four station business.

Evan: Yeah.

Tarek: But it still requires a human being to run the chainsaw and to be smart about how how it's being used. And, you know, those are the kind of things where, you know, I feel like the personal touch and investing in the people and maybe not cutting corners here, but allowing our customers to have that bespoke service in the long run is the wisest use of capital and not throwing money away into areas that are not enhancing the customer experience.

Evan: Yeah.

Tarek: So that's I think when you ask that question, what you're saying is, how do I determine capital allocation in the organization? And in capital allocation follows the same philosophy as our roadmap or our strategic initiative, which capital allocation starts with the customer and then it works its way backwards. What money am I spending? The money that I'm spending, is this going to enhance the customer experience?

Evan: If not, why am I spending it?

Tarek: If not, why am I spending it?

Evan: And so you have the infrastructure, you have the security and the technology and the vaults, the depository and the trading desk. Where are we going? What are we doing?

Tarek: Yeah.

Evan: I mean, we have Y'all Street too. I mean, you know, what is the future?

Tarek: I think for the first time in a long time, we've had very explosive growth. Our industry, let's rewind the tape a little bit. So we launched the company in 2011. In hindsight, we look back, if you're looking at a chart, precious metals went into this like 10 year bottoming pattern. Call it a consolidation, call it a pullback, a depression, whatever you want to call it. Gold and silver from 2001 to 2011 went on this meteoric exponential rise. And then you had a decade of basically flat growth in price. And for a lot of precious metals companies, particularly during the first term of when Trump was elected the first time in 2017, 2018, 2019, it was dead. Precious metals money was flowing into Bitcoin, it was flowing into real estate, it was flowing into equities. And it was it was tough to survive. And then COVID hit. And then it was like we just started a whole new super cycle in precious metals. And our growth in, gosh, in 2023, I think we grew 500 percent. And in the challenge of hiring and sustaining quality service during explosive growth and the change management associated with that. Plus, we were building the new depository. Plus, we were opening up new verticals within the organization. It was a real challenge. And so we we expended all of our energy inwardly to make sure that our operations and our foundation and our infrastructure was exactly where we wanted it to be. So now I think as we go forward, we're we're at a point where we're going to start bringing the brand to the market. And we've just done a big partnership with Pro Rodeo. And people say, well, why? Why are you doing Pro Rodeo? What is Texas Precious Metals have to do with the rodeo market? Well, first of all, our brand identity is quintessentially Texan. You know, we've always focused on the cowboy. Our Texas mint products are very, very much cowboy themed. Our people, our employees, a lot of our employees are involved in rodeo.

Evan: A hundred percent.

Tarek: And. There's been no precious metals company connected to rodeo in 40 years. So for us, it's blue ocean. It's it's communicating to a new demographic or a new constituency that we're here. And if you're interested, you know, take a look at our business.

Evan: Plus, rodeo is really cool.

Tarek: And it's really, really cool. And and it's actually besides the Yellowstone effect of of rodeo, social media has completely transformed rodeo because it's bringing rodeo to the mass market, whereas before it was very rare that you would have the opportunity to actually watch rodeo on television. So, you know, that's an area that we're exploring. We're going to start generating a lot more content like this podcast. What is Y'all Street? Y'all Street is not a term that we came up with. It refers sort of to the Texas Triangle that Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston Triangle, which is now I think it's the eighth largest economy in the world's getting big. And you have technology in Austin. You have the oil and gas in Houston. You have all the hedge funds in Dallas. We're sitting there at the kind of the bottom of the triangle, this unique precious metals business. And we love the name. And I think why I embrace the term Y'all Street is because one of the things that I think has been really unique about living in Texas is that, you know, you'll have this this Houston executive who's wearing a suit jacket Monday through Friday and on the weekends he's going to the ranch and he's hunting and he's fishing. And, you know, if he's running cattle, this happens all the time. A lot of our customers are businessmen by day, you know, rancher by night and exploring the delta between those two lifestyles and everything in between from athletes and those in entertainment business and manufacturing business, exploring the world of finance. You know, it's it's all interesting to me. And I think that's those are the themes that we're going to explore on Y'all Street and try to understand what motivates people, you know, lessons for success in life and in business. And yeah, I think that's where we're going. We want to bring this to our client base. We're going to continue growing the depository. We're in the process now of really working more closely with larger and larger institutional clients. When you think about the strata of the precious metals world, you know, you start at the very bottom. You have local mom and pop coin shops and then you have like the retail guys and then you start getting into the IRAs and then, you know, there are distributors and depositories and you start getting into the banking world where you're starting to trade and large form factor bank bars and the institutional clients that instead of having a transaction for $5,000, it's now $50 million and we continue to grow and elevate and we're becoming more of a creating more of a domestic footprint and now worldwide footprint. We're opening up a satellite depository in Switzerland, one in Cayman Islands. You know, we have on the road map facility in Singapore to allow for some geographic diversification. So I see us continuing to expand our product offering and make it so that we can be a one stop shop for people, whether they're looking for collectibles, retirement, speculation, you name it. We become the place to go.

Evan: And you really have done a good job of representing Texas, I think, in a lot of ways too. And I think people outside of Texas respect Texas in a lot of ways.

Tarek: Oh, you see that when you travel all over Europe.

Evan: Absolutely.

Tarek: And again, Texas is a brand unto itself. I think Texas Precious Metals is more impactful than Iowa Precious Metals, you know, or with all due respect to Iowa, we love Iowa, we have a lot of customers in Iowa, we love Iowa. But just the brand equity of Texas and how closely it is aligned with Americana, how closely the American cowboy and we're talking to Cody Webster about just the the emblem of the American cowboy and what that represents and who that represents as it relates to manhood, as it relates to loving God, country, family, rugged independence, you know, a general sense of doing business in a certain way. You know, the American values. I still think it's fascinating when we go to national finals rodeo, you have 18,000 people in the stadium for 10 consecutive nights and then they open up the entire event with a prayer.

Evan: It's amazing.

Tarek: You know, that is quintessentially cowboy.

Evan: Yeah.

Tarek: And it's a an ethos that basically says we don't we don't care what you think about us. This is who we are and embracing that culture. And, you know, I've always said, you know, I don't want our name is Texas Precious Metals. I don't want to sell the precious metals. I want to sell the Texas.

Evan: Yeah.

Tarek: Why? Because I don't want to be in the decision making process of trying to convince someone to buy precious metals. What I want to convince them to do is once they know they want to buy precious metals, I want to convince them to buy from us because we're reputable. We have great prices, we're transparent and we do business the Texas way. Absolutely. And Y'all Street, I mean, you talked about a little bit, but it's not all Texas precious metals themed. I mean, you have something bigger for Y'all Street.

Evan: You have a bigger view for Y'all Street. The content and the podcast that's coming out for Y'all Street. Yes. Yes.

Tarek: Certainly there's an overlap where, you know, precious metals is going to factor in heavily in any finance conversation that we have.

Evan: And especially today.

Tarek: And you just recorded some videos on like an introduction of precious metals and things of that nature. So there'll be some of that content on there, no doubt. But it's going to be a small part of that Venn diagram. I'm just more interested in having great conversations with great people that provide value to our customer base and give them a reason to keep kind of coming back and developing more of a relationship with us as a company that is maybe disconnected from the just the transactional portion. Right. It's tough when you're a business, because oftentimes the relationship that you're building is transactional only. Like it's call me when you need me. You know, let's we'll sell the metals and you buy it from us and then we won't talk to you again. And I want to get away from that. I want people to know us, to develop this relationship, to feel like they can communicate with us, to to feel like we're in this journey of life together. You know, we've spent this whole podcast talking about my journey and I'm interested in other people's journeys.

Evan: Yeah. Yeah. And you have a lot of cool people coming on like Cody Webster. Very cool guy.

Tarek: I mean, does we have a great lineup of guests coming in?

Evan: Amazing lineup. So I wrote we are very excited.

Tarek: So and I'm going to try to get you on some of these podcasts as well. And, you know, bring your perspective, being a little bit younger and a little bit, just a little bit significantly younger. And, you know, they'll come a time where you'll be doing probably more of this. So I appreciate this very much.

Evan: Host of Y'all Street, Tarek Saab.

Tarek: Thank you, Evan.