The Youngest Founder Of A Publicly Traded Company Ever

Speaker A: So charity is my main passion. I'll be doing forever. Um, and my goal is really to make charity easier for people to do it themselves. I don't really raise money for my charities. I want people to replicate charity and their own version, whatever city they're in. So I'll walk you through some examples. So a little over 10 years ago, I started Model Citizen Fund. I make backpacks for the homeless. The 150 emergency supply items inside. Half of it's food and drinks, the other half is cleaning supplies, a watch, poncho, sleeping bag, all these different accessories. Sunglasses, a whistle, um, duct tape, socks.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Accredited Investor podcast, where you'll learn from the world's most successful entrepreneurs, business leaders, innovators, industry titans in commercial real estate, business marketing, sales, tech blockchain, crypto, and emerging trends. I'm your host, Jonathan Tuttle, founder of a private equity firm focused on acquisitions of, uh, niche commercial real estate along with traditional businesses. Also, I founded a digital growth consulting agency for business owners, helping them with digital marketing, web3, and, um, crypto solutions.

Speaker A: Hey, guys.

Speaker B: Welcome back to the Accredited Investor podcast. And today I have a fantastic guest. You've probably seen them online everywhere. Been a huge influencer slash business person for the last long as I've known. Welcome to the show. Dan Fleischman.

Speaker A: Thanks for having me.

Speaker B: Well, let's first start your background, because I think it's. You have one of the fascinating backgrounds because it's so diverse. We could even start with you being the founder of the youngest publicly traded company ever to what you're doing today. You want to start with what, uh, your background?

Speaker A: Yep. Uh, so started in high school, I was working three jobs, saved up money to start to pay for college. Instead, I used that money to start my company when I was 17 and a half. I trademarked the catchphrase, who's your daddy? Uh, a couple hundred products. So, uh, we started with clothing, did a couple million bucks in sales, then did 9.5 million when I was 19. Um, so then I had something to work with. Now I had some capital coming in to cover my ups and downs of being an entrepreneur, being so young. When we were 23 years old, uh, we took it public on the stock market. Um, that changed everything because now we had real capital to work with. And that's when we launched our energy drink. Um, from 23 to 27 years old, I didn't sleep. All I did was sell them drinks. I don't remember anything from 23 to 27 besides selling beverages. Got into 55,000 stores in America through 43 distributors on the 10 year anniversary from when I started my company at 17, um, May 22, 2009. Ten years later I resigned on that date, uh, so I could put another feather in my cap and do something else. So I got with Dan Bilzerian, DJ Steve Aoki, Playboy Playmates, and we made this poker site, online poker site, um, within 10 weeks we were live. Within 10 months, top five poker brand in the world. And then online poker gets shut down in America. So I lose my $65 million company overnight. I decided, you know what, never going to have all my eggs in one basket again. I started becoming an angel investor. Since then I've angel invested in 43 companies, started my social media agency. We spend around 60 million bucks with influencers. And that's kind of how the whole story, that was my fast version of this whole story.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love it. And that's so, so crazy to get like uh, being a teenager and you know, moving forward to get a publicly traded company, which is wild. But you learned so fast. One thing I've noticed about you because I've followed you for About a good 10, 12 years now is you're always really ahead of the trends. You're always really innovative and seeing the technology. I remember you back in probably 2016, 17, you know, advocate of like Bitcoin, having a small percentage just to, just the leverage because. And that's when it was, man, I don't know what it was at that time. Probably a thousand. Even today it's like 28, 29,000. Uh, but yeah, just having a little, allocate a little portion into, you know, emerging trends and new technologies. What are some of the trends you're looking forward or investing in or looking at in the future?

Speaker A: Right now obviously you know what Chat GPT is doing and what AI is doing is a lot of times when things like this happen, you're going to see dozens and dozens and dozens of other versions that are even better than Chat GBT that are going to come out. That's what's shocking is that Chat BGBT is worth, I don't know, 20 or $30 billion already, which is insane. Um, but more importantly the new versions of that company, even their own new version that came out two weeks ago is 400 times better. That's an actual number. That's insane. And so when dealing with AI, um, it's going to change the world. I don't think it's going to change the world. That's already changing the world. Um, so finding things that you could invest in alongside that is not that simple because most of the times you have to take a big bet and invest into the company or the software. They're not publicly traded so they're not easy to invest into. And I wouldn't invest in ChatGPT at a 20 billion valuation or a 10 billion or even a 1 billion valuation because it's so new. I don't know if they're the ones that are going to be the winners long term. I feel like they are, but I don't know that for sure and I definitely wouldn't pay a uh, 20 something billion. But anyways, as far as emergency emerging trends, nothing is more emerging than that. Um, it's all people can think about, talk about some of the smartest money in the world is focusing their attention there. You're going to see billionaires and maybe even trillionaires come from that space. But more importantly, you're going to see a lot of people that don't have money or a little bit of money start making thousands of dollars and hundreds of thousand dollars. That's way more important to me than what happens to the masses to start using that. And it's going to lower the overhead for a lot of small businesses where there's certain employees, sad to say, certain employees are not going to be as needed when you can use AI to take care of that job. And so that's going to get really interesting, um, where you're going to see a lot of talent, um, mid level talent lose uh, their jobs or low level talent not have a way to get jobs because of ChatGPT. Um, and so I see you're going to see a big shift this next couple of years as people start to learn it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I totally agree with your center on that. And I just had a guy who invests in AI technology just alluded to exactly your point. He said that for every chat GTP there's a thousand new iterations and variations are coming out and it's going to be fascinating to see. And some of the beyond your imagination what you could do. It's just crazy. Like you said, do you want to Invest at a 20 billion evaluation or you want to find the next one that's going to be a 20 billion evaluation? Yeah, it's crazy. And then, uh, speaking like you said of the trailing, going also to your point, trillion dollar, uh, trillionaires from it, you got Dr. Henry, uh, Klor, which you talked about has uh, beyond imagination. He's on next episode and he wants to have a trillion dollar company from his AI robots. He thinks it could do that. And so yeah, to your point, like it's. Which is so crazy to say because there's only five other trillion dollar companies we all know, like you know, Apple, Google, uh, I think Facebook is, um, and some company in Saudi Arabia. Let's talk about, um, let's talk about your Elevator studio, which is pretty fascinating. I think you won the first the curve to kind of push and manage and create influencers as a business model.

Speaker A: Yep. Um, so last year we paid we W9, 3, 500 influencers to give you an idea of how many people we work with. But um, we don't, we don't manage any talent. What happens is brands give us the budget, we then deploy that budget, that capital with influencers small, medium and large. So whether it's Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian or it's a small micro influencer with 7,000 followers, we're paying everyone small, medium and large with that budget. And that budget comes from supplement companies, CBD brands, beverage companies, female fashion brands, uh, BET television, movie studios, etc. Um, we will spend their money for them really quickly and effectively. And the reason people use an agency like mine or my competitors, we just, we're large, we're one of the largest ones in the space. Um, but what we do, anyone can do. So let me explain what we do. And the reason people use us is when they want us to do it at scale and we can save them money. So what we do is we're able to contact influencers and get them to post products, brands, mobile apps, movies, um, technology, cryptocurrency, whatever that thing is, a new book, a new podcast, et cetera, really, really quickly, really, really effectively. And there's no chance that they don't post because if they don't post for me, then they're going to lose their water deal, their fashion deal, their beverage. You know, they're going to lose other deals. So that's why they always follow through, kind of. Cause we're not just one brand where we represent a lot of different money to them. The other reason that it's better when we do it when the agency does it or a competitor does it, is we're going to get a better rate because I pay them for their fashion posts, I pay them for their supplement company posts. I got the money from a movie studio, got the money for a pod like, uh, I get the money from so many different things that when someone says, hey, will you get us a post. If you contact them, they're going to charge you a thousand. I contact them, I'll get it for 300, 400, 500, 600 bucks. Which is not a little difference. It's a big difference because I'm, um, buying so many posts from them. And so that adds up at scale. Doesn't matter. If you're going to go do three or four influencers, you can pay an extra couple hundred bucks so you can have the relationship and contact them directly, pay the thousand bucks. But you're going to go pay 20 influencers or 50 influencers. Saving 400 bucks times 50 is 20 grand. And you're usually going to do more than one post. So now you're talking about saving 40 grand or 60 grand or 80 grand. And it compounds really quickly. Um, and so that's why, you know, so many brands work with us, even household name brands, even brands that work with influencers already have us take a portion of their budget, you know, 500k a month portion of their budget. Just because we can deploy it better.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love it. Yeah. I mean, it totally makes sense. And typically, how is it structured? You do some. Is it mostly like a fee or do you do sometimes equity deals?

Speaker A: 20% flat fee? So we don't arbitrage. A lot of times, um, agencies will arbitrage. We don't do that. Meaning influencer says a thousand bucks, we negotiate down to 600. We don't keep 400 bucks. We just now have 400 bucks more to work with with more influencers for you. And so we work off of a flat 20%. So let's say the budget's 50 grand. We'll keep 10. The way we spend our 40 is way better than the brand can spend their 40. Right. Because we're going to buy at, uh, usually 30 to 60% off discounts, sometimes more. And if we get free posts, you get a free post. So if we can do trades and you can get a free post, you get free posts. We don't arbitrage. And that's what's important and why we can get, and say we promise someone 50 influencers, we get them 72 and they give them 22 influencers for free. Most agencies would charge for that or wouldn't do it. They'll just cap it at 50. We do it because we want reorders. I don't care about getting 50 grand once. I want you to spend 50 grand a month forever. I don't want you spend 50 grand once. It doesn't do Anything for me to make 10k once I gotta pay staff, overhead, lawyers, taxes. Like you're 50k. Me making 10 grand means I make like 1 or 2 grand. But if you spend 50 grand every single month, economies of scale make sense for me as an agency. And so we try to overdo it on every single campaign.

Speaker B: Love it. Love it. Yeah, that makes sense. And you mentioned or alluded to your podcast. Let's talk about that. Congratulations. Which is highly unheard of to be a brand new podcast. And then, as you said, it's as of today, number five in Apple podcast. And I, like, literally looked on it and I shared it on my, on my, uh, LinkedIn yesterday. Let's talk about, uh, Money Mondays.

Speaker A: Yeah, Um, I did not expect it to be this big, this fast, um, because I've had a couple big guests, but they didn't even post. So it's not like I had Dan Bilzerian post me to 50 million people yet. I'm hoping that he does, but that hasn't happened yet, which would obviously jump us to, I'm assuming, number one, if that ever happens. But, um, I haven't forced any of my guests to post. I want them to feel a part of it. I want them to want to post. And so hopefully guys like him will post. Um, however, the reaction is much better than I expected. I waited four years to do a podcast. I really wanted to wait until I had something that was different and would stand out. The main reason I made it different was we record out of an RV motorhome. And so the RV motorhome makes it, like, a fun thing to like, um, the influencers, the athletes, the celebrities. I pull up to their house or I pull up to their office. And so that removes a lot of the timing. Like, hard part of like, hey, Kevin Hart, can we do a podcast? And like, sure, Dan. Two months from now. And then you get agencies and PR publicists, and like, all of a sudden, even though you might be friends with them now, it's all of a sudden, like, okay, five months from now, we're gonna do it. You know, when I say, hey, Kevin Hart, I'll be at your house tonight, I'll be parked in front of your driveway. It makes it an easier situation. Um, and so the RV motorhome is one part that stood out of why we did the Money Mondays that way. And the other thing is I, uh, keep them short and sweet. They're only 40 minutes. And that's because the average workout is 45 minutes. And the average commute to Work back and forth is 45 minutes. And so I figured by doing 40 minutes, it gives people time to either put on their headphones, get their gym equipment, or get in the car, put on their seatbelt, you know what I mean? And so the 40 minute thing is what I'm sticking with. Even if I have a household name, I stick with 40 minutes. Um, because I think that's what helps us with the listen through rate. And then lastly, I only talk about one thing and one thing only. It's about money. How do people make money, how do they invest money, how do they give it away to charity? And by keeping it focused on that topic, uh, it takes away the 17 minute bios. Just like when I did my bio today with you, my bio was like 90 seconds. Because people don't need to hear a 17 minute bio. That doesn't give them any value. It just gives them context about me. It doesn't give them any actual value. And so I do the same thing on our podcast. I say give us a quick 2 minute bio so we can get straight to the money and uh, it frames it so those guests can make a quick one or two minute bio and then we can start providing value and teaching people right away.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love it. And to your point, I always tell people if you could do that same thing you mentioned, uh, I would just say listen to a podcast while you're working out because if you're working out four or five days a week, you're going to be exponentially way more advanced and have a lot more knowledge than the average person who's listening to music. Even though I love music, but easily get it and at the same time you have the blood flow so you're actually, they have studies behind you actually retain more for sure. It's just a great way to easily get it without effortlessly get in a workout and the same autonomously. Also get some brain, uh, knowledge at the same time. Yep. And let's talk about, you mentioned some investments. What are some investors? I think you said 43 companies. What are some investments that you're looking at currently or what are you kind of looking to go going forward? What are you kind of looking to invest in?

Speaker A: Yep. So last year we focused mostly on consumer products and food and beverage. I have a syndicate group called elevator syndicate. There's 846 members in my syndicate group and we invested $44 million last year into food and beverage brands. Our average deal size, our average check into those companies is between 3 and 6 million. And we only look at companies doing 2 million to 20 million in sales. So that reduces risk for me, since I own the syndicate, reduces risk for me to have egg on my face of like a failure. By having companies doing at least 2, 3, 4 million bucks, it reduces the risk rate of them going broke or them going bankrupt or failing because there's some success already and we can then pour gasoline on their fire. Um, we look for companies that already have some traction, but we catch them before the big turning point. Meaning they're a beverage brand in 4300 stores, they're a snack company and 9000 stores. That sounds like a lot. Well, there's 400,000 stores they could get into. So they're actually only in 1 or 2% of the market. So that means we can pour gasoline on that fire. Right. Because we caught them early, but we proved, or they proved that they already have traction. 4300 stores, 9000 stores, et cetera. It's a good barometer for success. And so we focus, and I focus highly on finding companies that are doing that 4 million, 7 million, 11 million type range that can catch them early enough to have a big win and then also only finding companies that we can help. So if you're doing heart, uh, surgeries, God bless you, I can't help you do more heart surgeries. If you're selling sweaters with hearts on them, I can help you sell a lot of sweaters. Right. And so I look at companies that we can help with their success, whether it's myself or the other people that are co investing. Love it.

Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. You have the product market fit and you're just basically laughing on the scale. Let's talk about, um, your sports card shop because you're pretty fascinating because we mentioned before you're talking about Chicago when we met with Gary Vee. Maybe you want to go over that story a little bit.

Speaker A: Yep. So Gary Vee, he was at a sports card convention called the national, which is in Chicago. There's like almost a hundred thousand people at this convention. And I was supposed to go to Chicago and he texted me. He's like, hey, why don't you come by the card show so you can see it? Of course I'm going to go see Gary Vaynerchuk. Let's go. I don't get to see him, that we talk all the time, but I don't get to see him that much because he's busy flying around the planet. So, so I go over the card show. I figure I'm Gonna stay for a couple hours. I end up staying for a few days, and I become like Uncle Dan. I'm walking his kid around. We're going to buy sports cars together for a few days around the show while Gary's at his booth. And I just watched how much enjoyment he had from, like, buying a card for $90, negotiating for an hour to sell it for 140 bucks to someone else. So $90 to $140. He made a $50 spread. It's a really good profit margin. That's a really good percentage. Except the guy has 900 employees back home. He doesn't actually care about the $50. Right. From the financial part of it. He cares about the game of making $90 into 140. He was obsessed with it. And then at dinner, he talked about it for an hour straight, like, talking about this transaction how I already knew I had the guy for 140, and I found this over here for 90. Both of them were happy, and everyone wins in the deal. Like the enjoyment he had from making 50 bucks, you know, I'm saying, while giving his kid thousand dollars to go buy more sports cards. So the 50 bucks was irrelevant. And I watched that part of the game for him was really interesting, exciting for me. I get back from the card show a few days later. I had bought, like a LeBron James rookie card there. I bought a Michael Jordan rookie card there. I didn't even have that much money with me to buy cards because I didn't even plan on going to a card show. And I noticed that after a few weeks, my LeBron James was worth more. My Michael Jordan was worth a lot more. And we started a group chat together, Gary and I, with a bunch of guys. And then Gary's like, why don't you invite a bunch of interesting characters that don't have any sports cards? Let's tell them why we like Sports Card Market and just talk to them for an hour about sports cards. So I put together a Zoom call the next day with Logan Paul, Lewis Howes, Steve Aoki, cannabis guys, real estate guys, all these different interesting characters. Like 40 of us on a Zoom call, and we're not pitching them anything. They're not asking, um, them to buy sports cards from us. We're just telling them why we like sports cards and Pokemon. That Zoom call of 40ish people has now collectively bought over $80 million of sports cards and Pokemon. I think about it all the time. I think about how many brands Steve Aoki is involved in the sports card space. And he became the co founder with me of, uh, the sports cards business. Logan Paul bought a $5 million sports card.

Speaker B: Yep, I remember that.

Speaker A: Me and my friend Travis bought. We bought $1 million of the $5 million card. We bought 20% of Logan Paul's Pokemon card. He didn't have any sports cards or Pokemon before that Zoom call. So the butterfly effect of one call, one decision is fascinating. All right, so anyway, so let me go walk through the cards and coffee story. So we have these group chats. We end up having four group chats of a bunch of guys buying sports cards, Pokemon, et cetera, me and Gary. He then says, someone should do cards and coffee. Think about, like, Netflix versus Blockbuster Video. Something cooler. Because most of the stores for the last 30 years have been the same. It's been a father and son running a store together. And there's no innovation. They don't have an ebay account, they don't do live streaming, they don't have social media. Something cool. It's in the middle of COVID I'm bored. You know, the stores are closed. It's, it's, it's the summer of 2020. Like, so I said, I'll do it. And you know when you're like, with your buddies at the bar and you're having a beer, like, yeah, we should open a sports car store.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And then nothing ever happens. Well, I went out there and tried to make it happen. So about seven weeks later, I send the group chat a photo of me in front of the card store on Hollywood boulevard inside of Dash Radio, like in the middle of LA. October 2020, mind you, the whole city shut down. There was riots. People's doors are boarded up. Like, we're in a crazy time, especially to open a retail business. So I opened the store, I self funded it. I put up 1.6 million of inventory to make this like a real card store. Within seven weeks, we're at a million bucks in sales. I was like, whoa, okay, this is not just a hobby. This is actually getting interesting. On month eight, we did $10 million in sales. I was like, okay, now we're getting somewhere. I have two stores now, just LA and Salt Lake City. And our online sales are going. We're 24 hours a day, live streaming, selling sports cards. This is serious now. So since then, um, we've taken it very serious. We're opening our ninth store Right now. Number nine will be at the Mandalay Bay Casino. Um, and we're really building the first national chain store, all because Gary, nicknamed Cards and coffee and said we should open up some card stores. Love it.

Speaker B: Yeah. I'm so disappointed myself because I used to collect so many cars when I was a kid that I know, I mean I was obsessed. I would collect any collectible and all this stuff, I'm like, I know some of those are like worth a ton of money now. I'm so disappointed. I probably saw them at like an auction back in the 90s, like a garage sale. Go talking about Gary Vee in garage sales. I literally placed open a garage sale. So crazy how that's, you know, how things come back around. Uh, we're talking, you mentioned kind of selling a share of the card. So I'm just, and I know you're speaking, I don't know if this will be coming out right after this or right about the same time. But, uh, NFT Miami. Um, what's kind of your thoughts on the NFT space going forward and what do you see like that the value. A lot of people don't really mostly get it. Gary is obviously a big proponent of it. I'm big proponent. I'm assuming you are too. Just a lot of people don't understand what the real value and what the technology is going to be going forward. You want to just give a little your thoughts on that.

Speaker A: Yep. So what's interesting now is now that the hype and the phase has gone away where people can just post anything and influencers can post anything and just it has a picture of a cat, a monkey and a giraffe, you know, all of a sudden sell out, that phase is gone. And I don't think that phase comes back because people realize that was silly, um, how much hype went into those things. Um, and the influencers did it wrong because they would pump something up and then not keep the value up after the, after the fact. And it was bad for the people that bought it, it was bad for themselves, bad for their followers, it was bad for everyone, um, that they didn't keep it up. And a lot of times they would move on to Project 2347 and all of a sudden the first one and two were failing. And that's just because they weren't keeping up the value and the branding. So that phase has gone away, um, and I'm glad it has by the way, because there was too much chaos, too many bad things were happening due to that. Now what's interesting though is NFT for what it is, a non fungible token and providing value to people that own that NFT and actually having Things like Gary Vee built the first and best one of actually having value of when someone buys it, that will never go away, that will scale. And now that the people that all the riffraff are going to be gone, now it gets really interesting because now when you think about what Gary Vee did, you had to have NFT to go to VCon. So there's one part, just having that lets you go to a live event that he's only throw once a year in a fricking stadium. I was there, I had my sports card booth there. I'm sponsoring it again this summer. I'm always going to sponsor VCon. But the concept that you have to own NFT to go to a rare event, that's interesting. Next, he has different versions of nft. One of them could be to go play basketball with him. That's awesome. One of them could be to go to dinner with him. You know how much it would cost to pay to go to dinner with him? You can't. But if you have the nft, you can. That's interesting. You want to be able to go do something with him. There's one called Hangout Hawk where you can do zoom, um, calls with him. Like that has actual functional value that people would pay for because the guy's got tens of millions of followers now. You can have what I call touch the cloth, one on one access where you can actually touch the cloth, play basketball with him, go to dinner with him, go on zoom with him, et cetera, go to his events. So the concept of nft, the reality of NFT now is, is that people that make one with actual function, that delivers actual value, that will continue to win and that will continue to, that will never go away. But the hype versions of, hey, I just made a giraffe nft that's not coming back.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it was pretty crazy. Some of the projects, I mean, Bored Ape's been the one that's kind of been the one that's stood the test of time. Business partners in, uh, Dubai, and they're doing like crazy events, like just, just

Speaker A: some of the most constant marketing. That's why.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, they're the ones actually maintaining it, uh, just growing that. Um, you mentioned one thing I know you're really passionate about is charity. I do a homeless dog charity events in Chicago for the last one day, for the last five years. My dog just passed away recently, but, uh, kind of sucks. Definitely sucks, but. Yeah, thank you. But, um, you've done some pretty amazing charity works. You want to stop talking about that.

Speaker A: So charity is my main passion. I'll be doing forever. Um, and my goal is really to make charity easier for people to do it themselves. I don't really raise money for my charities. I want people to replicate charity and their own version, whatever city they're in. So I'll walk you through some examples. So a little over 10 years ago, I started model citizen fund. I make backpacks for the homeless with 150 emergency supply items inside. Half of its food and drinks. The other half is cleaning supplies, A watch, poncho, sleeping bag, all these different accessories. Sunglasses, a whistle, duct tape, socks. And so that charity, it's a hundred dollars for a backpack with 150 items. And it's about 13, 14 pounds of supplies that these people get. But the concept of it is that anyone can replicate it. You don't need to buy my backpacks. You can make a backpack with homeless items with supply items inside. You can make a ziploc bag with 10 items or 20 items. Doesn't need to be 150. The concept of the backpack was for me to help market giving things away to the homeless, giving things away to teen abuse shelters, women abuse shelters, military veterans, etc. The other charities that we do is called Trina's kids Foundation. We've been doing that for nine years and we do four events a year. We do a report, uh, card day right before, um, right in June, where kids can bring in the report card for the year. And boom, we'll get them prizes based on A's, B, C's and these. Then we do back to school day, which is obviously in August, and that's where we get them shoes, backpacks, supplies, things like that that they need for school. It's about 400 Latin families that come and then we over raise. So we get a lot extra items and we take that to the city of Watts through the Watts Foundation. We take that to other charities around town to give them all the extras. November, we do the Thanksgiving food drive. Same thing. I'm really pushing other people to replicate. A, uh, Thanksgiving food drive. Doesn't really take money. It takes you getting the community together to do Thanksgiving food drives. And then the toy drive is our biggest. So the toy drive, our first year there was like eight of us on the floor wrapping up hundreds of toys. Second year there was 20 of us. And then this December, we just passed, we just broke the, uh, Guinness broker world records for largest toy drive in history.

Speaker B: Wow, congrats.

Speaker A: It compounds, right? Every year it went from 8 people, then 20, then 37 people, then 55 people, then 100 people. And then you have all these volunteers and all these people donating toys from all over the country. And all of a sudden now you become the largest toy drive in history. And so I say that because charity does not have to be about the money part. It's more about the community, the energy. If you can find a location, you can get them for free. A warehouse, an office building, a showroom, an art gallery, uh, a car dealership somewhere that has some space. And rally the community on Facebook, on social media, texting, calling, driving over to corporate offices, just asking people to support. You would be shocked how much you can raise for the homeless for food drives, report card days, Thanksgiving toys, etc. Just by getting the people in your community to help.

Speaker B: Yeah, I totally agree with that because I did a lot of different charity boards. And I think the biggest thing is a lot of people share on social media. But just like, like I said, it doesn't come in. That doesn't necessarily have to be money. If you allocate your time a Saturday and it's so rewarding and then you get said you get build momentum. And my first year, I did it, and then I kept more momentum, more and more momentum. And then people are like, instead of being on the news in Chicago, like this guy still homeless dog events. But the whole point is you could pick a passion, you know, you care about. It's going to be rewarding. And it doesn't take money. You can get people. Businesses have allocations toward marketing budgets. They could, you could say, hey, by the way, you could just put your banner on here. It makes you look good. Reach out to your local, you know, use social media to your advantage. Reach out to local press. All that, you know, makes a huge impact, a big difference. You know, community.

Speaker A: Talk about your, uh.

Speaker B: Because you like to give back in other ways. This Elevator Studio, and I think I read that, uh, correct me if I'm wrong that you funded this all yourself. Like, it's basically. Let's talk about. I, uh, don't want to miss anything wrong with it. But let's talk about your Elevator Studio events.

Speaker A: Um, am I saying Elevator Studio has different divisions? There's the live events is called Elevator Nights.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: Syndicate Group is called Elevator Syndicate. My investment fund is elevator rolling fund. And so Elevator is the studio as an agency acts as a bunch of different verticals. Elevator Nights is completely free. I've thrown it 51 times, totally for free. Um, where I get 300 to 1,000 entrepreneurs to attend and there's no tickets for sale, there's no sponsors, there's no sales on stage. It's just my free event. Um, and it's expensive for me, obviously. It cost me six figures a year to throw these events, but it's my way to get the local communities in different cities to show up and interact with each other. And so we'll go from everywhere, from Phoenix, Arizona, Las Vegas, Miami, wherever, uh, to get communities together of entrepreneurs to meet each other in a one night experience. And then I bring in the guests to speak during those events. Same type of guests that would speak at a big event that you'd pay 25 grand, 50 grand to speak. I get them to come for free because they want to be part of the community. They know I don't charge anything and so they'll show up for that.

Speaker B: Yeah, and I think that's a, uh, great way to get back and a lot of things, you know. But nowadays we're realizing what the, you know, innovation and technology and how world, how move, how fast it's moving forward. The traditional degree is looking less and less valuable and you can learn some really high level skill sets that do listen to podcasts, YouTube that's actually actionable nowadays. You know, it's so crazy how we evolved in the last like 20 years with the technology innovations and how fast entrepreneur ship's moving. And speaking of that, you have uh, a couple books on entrepreneurship. You want to talk about that?

Speaker A: I happen to sit right next to him.

Speaker B: Nice.

Speaker A: My first book was called how to set up your business for under $1,000. Um, that one is mostly like a checklist. It's really easy. I keep my books thin so people can actually read them. Uh, how to set up your business for under $1,000 talks about how to get a corporation, a bank account, website, social media, make yourself look like. I call it setting up shop. Get all the things that you need, a business plan and everything about your company so that if someone says yes, let's say that we want you to invest in the two of us to invest into the company. You've got a corporation, you've got an investment agreement, you've got all the basic things you need for. If we said yes, then what? Well, we got to have your wiring info. If you don't have a bank account, I'm not going to invest, I can't invest. If you don't have investment documents, we can't invest. And so it walks you through all of those things. And then the second book is how to set up your personal brand for under $1,000. And that one is because all of us have a personal brand whether we like it or not. And so I walk through all the basic steps of teaching people what they need for their personal brand. So from the reputation, live events, a, uh, blog, how to get press, get in the media, television, podcasts, how to build what's called omnipresence is what the point of the book is. And I just show people how to do social media, how to make video content, how to make photo content where it doesn't feel overwhelming and there's no real cost to it. And so ultimately I walk through and explain, you already carry your cell phone, so you got a fancy camera, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube. Free, free, free, free, free and free. So there's no excuse there.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: You're already going to be a real estate agent or a personal trainer or a chef or an accountant, whatever it is that you already do. So I'm not asking you to do anything different than what you do. Just want you to talk about it on your phone.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love it. And um, yeah, those are great advice because a lot of people don't know where to start. And if you get the wrong information, you have the frameworks, proper frameworks from the get go because you're missing like you said, somebody sends you a wire. A lot of people don't have the business bank account. Like as some of us are seasoned, we, we had to, you know, go through learning curve to learn that stuff. But to give that out there and help people learn the foundation, it's fantastic. Who's one of the, probably your favorite entrepreneur that you've worked with or been in front of before?

Speaker A: Andy Frisella. Um, watching him build first form over the years, I mean we've been friends since 2016. Like when we got close and just watching what first form has become, where he took a company that was doing maybe 100 ish million back then, I don't know the exact number, around 100ish million back then to now doing 4,500plus million. I don't know the exact numbers but 4 or $500 million range. Now I know they do over a million bucks a day and quarter of a million square foot warehouse. Now next door to it is building another quarter million square feet like with no investors. Yeah, it doesn't happen. And so watch someone for 20 years just build this brand, make people feel part of it, make the highest quality version so that the Customer retention is super high. Be passionate about who's involved in every little detail. And now they've got clothing and nutrition bars and energy drinks. Just watching the evolution of what Andy Vercell has done at the same time, having the top five podcasts every single week, no matter what, for years and years and years and years and years, that's really hard to do. And so just watching what he's built and then on top of that, creating 75 hard. 75 hard has had almost 2 billion views across TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. Think about that for a second. Not just views, sorry, not views, hashtags. It's just mind boggling how much it's been, how many people's lives he's impacted and ultimately doesn't even think about it like that. He thinks he's just getting started. And so I think out of all the entrepreneurs I've watched and worked with, that what Andy For Sale has done with first form and 75 hard and his podcast has been the most impressive.

Speaker B: Yeah, I've heard his backstory. And to your point, I see. That's all I saw anyways. And anybody's like, I'm doing 75 hard like the last, like, year plus it'd be like 75 hours. 75 hours. So obviously just a normal person like me sees it's obviously making a huge impact. Let's talk about kind, um, of like, what's your best advice you've been given or that you've learned along your entrepreneur journey?

Speaker A: So the main piece of advice I tell people is one, is to just get started. That's actually the only way I sign my books is just those three words. I say, just get started. Um, because people overthink, they wait months and months and months. And really, when you just get started and jump in the pool, you start to swim and you start to figure things out. Um, and the other big thing is sign contracts with everyone, including your mom. What that means is it's not that you're going to sue your mom. The concept behind it is having a scope of work. Sow, a scope of work, or an mou, a memorandum of understanding, having one of those two things. Essentially what that does is, hey, mom, I'm going to clean my room every day for the next five days if we don't have that in agreement. And she says, okay, great, honey. And at the end of five days, I'm like, hey, pay me. And she's like, what are you talking about? Here's five bucks. Fine. And I was thinking the whole Time. I'm going to get 50 bucks. I'm going to get 10 bucks a day. We are now going to have resentment. I'm going to have real resentment towards my mom, right? So I thought I was going to get 50 bucks. I cleaned my room every day for five days. And in her mind, she thought I was going to do it for free. And she thinks she was being nice by giving me five bucks. So she's actually resentful towards me. She had to pay five bucks. Yeah, right. That would have been all cleared up if I said, hey, mom, if I do, here's my scope of work. If I do clean my room for the next five days, will you give me 50 bucks? She can say no. Yes, or I'll give you five bucks. 10 bucks, 20 bucks, 30 bucks. There's a clear understanding with my mom. What happens is the reason that most relationships have contention, whether that's husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, jobs, you know, employees, coworkers, et cetera, investors relations. The main reason that people have frustrations or contention is miscommunication or lack of communication. And so by having a, uh, scope of work, having a memorandum, um, understanding, having these basic things that just say, I'm going to do this and you're going to do this, it takes away the miscommunication part because you might think. I'll, uh, give you a quick story. Let's say the two of us start eliminate stand together. And it's in Chicago in our lemonade stand. We do a big grand opening. We crush it. Okay? Lemonade stand does two grand. The first day, starts doing like 500 bucks a day. After that, we're like, you know what, we should open up another lemonade stand in Chicago an hour away. Let's do it. We open up a second one and the third one. And then all of a sudden you get a deal to travel the world with Gary Vee on a speaking tour for the next two years. I'm proud of you. Right? You go get multimillion dollar deal, you're in, you're getting 20 grand a night for the next two years to go speak all over the planet. And you leave me. I don't even live in Chicago. You do. There's three locations in Chicago. I go back to LA, I open up location 4, 5, 6. I go to Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Diego, San Francisco. I open up 19 locations of lemonade stands. You get back after two years, there's 19 location lemonade stands. Do you still own 50%?

Speaker B: Because we don't have anything Outlined. So, yeah. And then it becomes chaos.

Speaker A: I could argue both sides, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: It might even be named after you. Who knows? But do you own 50% of three locations or 19 locations?

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: I don't know. I can argue like, what are you talking about? You've been gone for two years. I just opened up 16 locations without you. My name's on it. My money's involved. I did the accounting, the paperwork, the blood, sweat and tears. You weren't even around. You were off making millions of dollars. And you could be like, it's my brand. I started the first locations in Chicago. There's three of them in Chicago. You wouldn't exist, Dan, without me. Right. I could argue both sides of it. If we just had a simple piece of paper from the beginning, it just said, when we do these locations, this is will be 50, 50. If someone's not involved, they get 10% or 0%. That would be it. Or when you got your deal with Gary Vee to go speaker on the planet, we just said, hey, I'm going to open up more locations. I'm going to give you 10% just because we're going to keep the same brand, blah, blah, blah. And so I think it's extremely important. I've never gone to that detail of it. It's extremely important to have that communication with people, to have a memorandum of understanding.

Speaker B: Yeah. Clear, articulate, goals, desires, and have that legal. Because at the end of the day, it's not going to come down to hiring lawyers who are the only ones going to win. Maybe lawyers that drag it out for years and for nothing. So where do you see yourself, uh, in the next few years? What are some of your goals?

Speaker A: Um, so I'm in full scale mode now. I'm not trying to take on new companies or new businesses. I'll do more investments, but I'm not starting anything new. I'm in scale mode now that I have the ninth sports car store. I already have location for number 10, 11 and 12. I already have leases with my Acai bowl chain that I invested a lot into. We have 60 locations. We've already got funding to open up hundreds more. We've got franchises all over the country. Um, so that I'm scaling that, but I'm not taking on a bunch of new restaurants. I'm not opening more different sports car stores. I'm sticking with the same things that I have. My masterminds are the same. I have 100k mastermind, a 35k mastermind, a 20k mastermind for three different types of categories. I'm not going to start a bunch of new masterminds. I m just want to keep expanding on the same ones that I have. Um, I'm really focused on that. And then obviously the ranch here, um, we built an animal sanctuary here. Spending millions of dollars and decking it out to make this ultimate animal sanctuary. We have 85 animals now, uh, but creating a real experience here for the next few years. It's very time consuming. There's about four construction crews at the same time here, building nonstop. Um, and when I say here I actually live at the ranch, um, most of the time. And so that to me is going to be really important over the next few years is to get this place rocking and rolling. I'm building like a 700 person venue here for live events. Um, and just really making experience. People can come here and have events, um, experience the animals in a, in a very personal setting. But it's a, ah, private. I'm not open to the public. So yeah, those are my main thing. And obviously the charity, uh, this year will be our 10th anniversary of the toy drive. And so we're gonna try to do 10 cities to crush our own Guinnessbroke world record to make it like ridiculous for the toy drive and get a lot of people involved in that.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. And uh, I didn't know it was actually a sanctuary. I didn't, we didn't go over that. I was in, I was recently. I stayed in Mexico for three months last year and I went, visited uh, an animal sanctuary outside of Playa. I can't remember the. It's a small town but it's like 30 minutes, 20 minutes outside of Playa. And they did uh, the monkey, the monkey sanctuary is really cool but like the stories behind it which they basically. Mexico. They banned uh, monkeys uh, for being you know, entertainment at hotels and resorts. And so I didn't know you actually had a sanctuary which are uh, what are some of the animals you have? They're just curious.

Speaker A: We have camels, zebras, ostriches, um, we have a source which is a zebra and horse combined.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: But for the most part it's you know, goats and pigs and llamas and alpacas and things like that.

Speaker B: That's ah, cool. Yeah, that'd be, that'd be amazing. That'd be so cool. I talked to you before. I was like I'd love to have that like a dog version of it with like a bunch of homeless dogs. It's one of my passions. But that's really cool. What is? Um, you know, you mentioned your books. Is there any other books? Like people you have a lot of the main, uh, you, uh, know thought leaders and speakers at your events or what are some books that you recommend to people that you think are some high value.

Speaker A: Both the Tim Grover's books, um, relentless. And like Tim Grover just to me is his mindset is so important. You know, this is a guy that trained both Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. If you really think about the depth of that. Um, I like Ed Mylett's book, uh, both of them. But Ed Mylett obviously is. When you just think about who he is as a person, um, what life he's built, you know, being worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. But also like the super family man, religious, clean cut, business guy. Like he's got all the things if you look at a checklist. So I like when you think about the books you want to read, either it's they have something part of their life that you want or they have something part of their career that you're trying to learn about or aspire to or it's just something fascinating to you. It doesn't always have to be about money, business, life or passion. It might just be you want to learn about space or science, you're never going to be an astronaut or a scientist. So I look for books or uh, I look for podcasts that are things that are fascinating to me. Um, Bedros made a book called man up, uh, which is really powerful. Um, it's very blunt. It just explains things you can do. Sean, um, Whalen wrote a really good book as well. It's along the same lines. And then I like the old school classics, um, Never, uh, Eat Alone, um, and uh, what's it called? Think and Grow Rich. I read every couple years just because to timeless classic. And uh, the last one is um, about how to influence people. I just forgot the name of it.

Speaker B: How to Find how. How to Influence People. I can't get any of it either.

Speaker A: How to Find Friends and Influence People.

Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker A: Yeah, those are the, you know, the main character books. But again, you just look at the people that you like a lot. You know, Jay, Shetty, Lewis Howes, uh, those type of characters. They all have one or two books that are, that they've created and it may not be their first book. Right. Gary Vee's got a whole bunch of books. Might not be the first book, but you start to look at book number two, three and four. That's where it gets really, you know, they got into their swing of things.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think uh, Tim Grover, yeah, he's uh, like when I see some of his photos from his Instagram, I'm like, I'm like a couple buildings away, I don't know which building is that in the city? Chicago. I don't know if he still lives there but in the last year he always looked like he's like real close. But yeah, I've seen him at 10x conference a couple years ago. It's probably four or five years ago at this point. And he was just like cleaners, the sweepers. I forgot the exact what he called it. But yeah, he's pretty fascinating. Just like his uh, intensity. Um, and then Indy, just any of those guests upcoming on your podcast in the Money Mondays?

Speaker A: Um, all of them actually. Yeah, every single one of them.

Speaker B: I love it. Yeah. So guys, gotta download the Money Mondays, get to number one, share it to get it up there. It's number one. Well, where can people find you? Dan? This has been really fascinating because we've covered a wide range of things and uh, you're obviously well versed a lot of different things because you started so young and we're always creative and you know, like you said, take action, get started. But where can people find out more about you?

Speaker A: Um, so my social is all the same, it's just at Danflation. It's also important for you guys. It's easier if you have one screen name, one main bio photo, one name bio that's the same on every platform. Because you don't know if people like Twitter, they like Facebook or they like Instagram. You want to be on all the major platforms even if you don't use them that much. You want to have your profile like uh, a digital real estate on every single platform.

Speaker B: Yep. One quick question. I forgot to mention this. What do you. I know by the time this airs, but what's your thoughts on TikTok? Do you think it's going to be a ban or what do you think is going to happen with it?

Speaker A: So it's tough. I would more likely see them forcing a sale, or at least a 51% sale or forcing them to domain it in America, like move their actual servers over here. Uh, I think that's not going to really fix the ultimate problem, that the data is still going to go back to China. Um, I don't know that they can necessarily ban it. I think that um, there's a lot of movement towards that and a lot of government agencies have already done it. And a lot of colleges have done it, so it's possible. Uh, but ultimately I would expect more because it's such a big commerce and so many tens of millions of kids love it so much. I think there'd be some resentment from most of the country that doesn't care about their data. Now you think a 14 year old cares about their data? Like the majority of the platform doesn't care about the data. What does it matter to them? They're 14 years old doing dance videos. Like, who cares? Right. Um, so ultimately, I expect something, one of two things are going to happen. It's not going to be the same. See, they're going to be they re domicile here, which is not that easy to do. Maybe they sell off to Facebook, which would be the most smartest play, um, from the government's perspective because they control Facebook and so that they like to have it under their domain. Otherwise you, you could see a ban there, which would be pretty shocking and it would change a lot. It would, it would actually be the best thing that ever happened to Instagram because everyone would come crawling back.

Speaker B: Yeah, that. There's a meme. I just. It was, uh, it was, uh, Zuckerberg with like, uh, goggles on. He was like, in the Congress, he's like, they should ban. They should ban.

Speaker A: Tick tock.

Speaker B: Yeah, it was kind of like, he's like. And I love brisket because I don't know people know this. He had like, used to do zoom or live streams of him cooking brisket in his backyard. It's like, funny. But yeah, there's got to be. My opinion is, I think that they do ban the news. There's always a new iteration because there's musically and there's vine before there's going to be, you know, they've pulled back so much reach on, you know, Facebook and Instagram. We had a pay to play, obviously, but. And then Snap doesn't have that ability to find people. So there's going to be. If they do ban, there's going to be some iteration that's going to come out. And hopefully the influencers like you mentioned have the same handle across different platforms, so they could easily find you on, you know, the different platforms. So, Dan, it's been fantastic having on you guys. Download the Money Mondays. Let's get to number one, check out, uh, you know, just his socials and connect with them and I'll put all the links in the bio. Thanks again for being here, Dan.

Speaker A: Awesome.

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