How To Pivot From Chaos To Calm in Business & Life: Dan Fleyshman's Journey of Resilience and Philanthropy

What does it take to rise from chaos and transform setbacks into opportunities? Join us as we uncover the incredible journey of Dan Fleyshman, a trailblazing entrepreneur known for being the youngest founder of a publicly traded company and for his extensive work as an angel investor. Dan shares his unique perspective on success, centered around the freedom to act autonomously and aid others. Listen to his compelling narrative about the dramatic rise and fall of Victory Poker, his online poker venture that soared to become a top contender globally, only to face Black Friday's unforeseen calamity. Learn how Dan's decision to refund all his players amidst the industry's collapse led him to pursue promising new ventures in philanthropy and social media.

In this episode, we explore resilience through Dan's lens, highlighting how he faced personal and professional adversities head-on. From overcoming business challenges to maneuvering through the grieving process, Dan's story is a testament to maintaining perspective on life's real priorities. Engage in an insightful conversation about the power of charitable actions, where Dan discusses his hands-on approach to philanthropy, alongside balancing personal commitments and professional aspirations. His dedication to meaningful work—whether through organizing large-scale toy drives or ensuring strong family ties—offers a blueprint for living life fully and positively impacting others.

The discussion shifts towards Dan's investment strategy, where he emphasizes the value of passion and commitment in business. Discover how his 'four horsemen' play a pivotal role in evaluating entrepreneurial opportunities, and why seasoned restaurant ventures often catch his eye as stable investments. Dan's experiences, coupled with insights from successful entrepreneurs, reveal the intricate dynamics of running a business and the importance of strategic planning. This episode paints a vivid picture of perseverance and grit, drawing inspiration from iconic figures like Michael Jordan and The Rock, and offering listeners a wealth of knowledge to fuel their own aspirations.

For more about Dan:

https://www.danfleyshman.com

Chapters

• 0:03 Rising From Chaos
• 8:42 Moving Forward Through Adversity
• 14:26 The Power of Charitable Action
• 23:39 Maintaining Composure Amid Chaos
• 30:02 Investing Strategy
• 34:50 Lessons From Successful Entrepreneurs

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Dan Fleischman is the youngest founder of a publicly traded company. He is also an angel investor in 43 different companies and has a consistently number one rated podcast for entrepreneurs called money Mondays. But the thing about Dan that is impressive is his heart, because all he wants to do with his impact is help other people. Dan Fletchman get up here.

Speaker 3: 0:55

We're going to have a conversation, my friend, thank you before dead. But perfection's just a game of make-believe. Hey, gotta break the pattern, find a new reprieve fire away.

Speaker 4: 1:15

Hi, dan, how's it going? Ask me anything.

Speaker 1: 1:24

Oh.

Speaker 4: 1:24

I will.

Speaker 1: 1:25

Good. How do you define?

Speaker 4: 1:31

success.

Speaker 1: 1:33

Freedom, say more.

Speaker 4: 1:39

You can go anywhere, do anything buy anything help anyone. Freedom when someone asks you for something, you can execute on it.

Speaker 1: 1:50

Someone asks you to go somewhere, someone asks you to help someone, you can say yes and there's no one else to ask about it, because you have full freedom when we think about control and access to power as you're building business after business. I imagine there have been times where you had a plan for how it was all going to go and a whole bunch of people who needed to follow the plan and one or many things went sideways.

Speaker 1: 2:20

Let's take the principle of accessing what we can control and apply it to one of your entrepreneurial endeavors. Take me back to a time when something went totally out of your control and tell me how you handled it.

Speaker 4: 2:36

So, after I had the energy drink company, I started an online poker company called Victory Poker, and I loved poker and I was really excited about it, and I just had ended a five-year relationship, and so I put on a backpack and I moved to a place called Malta. Never even heard of Malta before. I rented a hotel room for three days at a time until I found an apartment and I ended up living there for a couple years. Ten weeks later, my online poker site is live. Ten months later, we're the fifth biggest poker site in the world. There's 550 competitors. We're doing hundreds of thousands of dollars a week in net revenue with five employees. Sounds cool. Fast forward another year. And's April 15th 2011.

Speaker 4: 3:27

I had just flown from Malta for the first time back to America to have a meeting with this multi-billionaire. It's going to be at 12pm at the Hard Rock Hotel. This guy invented the slot machine loyalty card. You know we see senior citizens when they're kind of stuck to the slot machine.

Speaker 4: 3:43

He sold that for $440 million and he owned Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy slot machines. And so I go to his house over here in Malibu and after I get to meet him. But this first time meeting him was at 12 o'clock in the Hard Rock Hotel. At 10, 10 am, I get a phone call from Dan Bilzerian yelling at me when are you? I'm at the Bellagio, where are you?

Speaker 4: 4:09

And he tells me to turn on the television that online poker has just ended in America and that the FBI just seized the bank accounts and websites of all my competitors, so I get them to put it on the TV and there it is. It was on almost every channel and literally PokerStars, fulltiltpoker, etc. It said seized by the FBI. I go to my website. It's not seized by the FBI, which is confusing Because I don't know what's happening.

Speaker 4: 4:42

Why are they in trouble? Why am I in trouble? Am I in trouble? What's happening?

Speaker 4: 4:46

So I go to the 12 o'clock meeting, I go to the Hard Rock Hotel and I walk in to meet this multi-billionaire. I'm super excited and he says you look like somebody died. He didn't say hi. I said well, the entire industry just died, turn on the television. So he turns on the television and sees it immediately on ESPN and he calls Steve Wynn on speakerphone.

Speaker 4: 5:13

Steve Wynn is screaming super upset because he had just announced, 11 days prior, a huge deal partnership with one of those three companies that got seized by the FBI. That's not good for a casino. What I didn't know was he, the billionaire, actually invited me there to train 11 California sheriffs, the police officers, on how to play poker and blackjack. So I think I'm public enemy number one. I'm about to get arrested. I have to now train for the next four hours, the police on how to gamble. When gambling just got shut down in America, one of them kept messing with me, kept touching his handcuffs like, yeah, I got eyes on him, don't worry so fast forward the next four days. On April 19th, I'm supposed to get a down payment of $3.7 million on a $65 million valuation.

Speaker 4: 6:15

I rented a whole resort in Costa Rica. I was flying everyone in for this photo shoot. We're going to do this big campaign April 19th. Instead, april 15th is called Black Friday. Now the next four days I happen to shut down on April 19th. Instead of $65 million company, I manually paid back 41,000 players and then I had a decision to make April 20th, the next day. What do I do with my life? My competitors are all now deader and joe. We're fleeing the countries and I'm the only one that paid everybody back and there was a black eye on the market of poker, so I decided to shut down. It takes my competitors three years and four years afterwards to finally pay people back. Luckily that they did, and so that terrible moment, that course of history, was the best thing that ever happened in my career. Because starting.

Speaker 4: 7:12

April 20th I started my charity, which actually Marcella's here who runs the charity back there. We started the charity. Was that, like 13 years ago? 14 years ago, called model citizen fund, I Started my social media agency, which I still run today. 13, 14 years ago, called Model Citizen Fund, I started my social media agency, which I still run today. 13, 14 years later, I started my events. I started speaking.

Speaker 4: 7:30

Everything in my life, everything in my career, started from that moment, and the only reason I ever angel invested into the 43 companies you talked about is because I have PTSD. I don't want to have all my eggs in one basket ever again. I don't want to ever be invested in one company ever again, because it got taken away from me and I could sit and say, oh well, it's the government, or it's their fault, or they were bad, and blah blah. The scoreboard is a scoreboard, the company's gone, and so I never want to be in that situation again.

Speaker 1: 8:00

And so every aspect of my life happened from the chaos again, and so every aspect of my life happened from the chaos. Take me into the inner working of your mind, so you're literally watching the house of cards collapse around you. There are so many people who would have no idea how to dig themselves out of that literal and figurative hole. What is the emotional space that you go to and what are you saying to yourself? To pivot and go. Okay, that's completely out of my hands. Now I'm going to do this. What is the self-talk?

Speaker 4: 8:45

Don't sit on the floor and cry about it. It would be really easy for me to April 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th, to just cry or jump off a building or hide or cower or disappear, but by taking action, I did like 80 interviews, was posting all over social media doing live calls like this is what's going on. I'm paying everybody back. I wasn't even in trouble.

Speaker 6: 9:12

I never got a phone call, I never got a letter. I wasn't in trouble.

Speaker 4: 9:15

But by immersing myself into the steps to move forward. I didn't sit on the floor and cry about it.

Speaker 4: 9:20

The same concept applies when you're breaking up with someone, you could sit on the floor and you have every reason to sit in your bedroom, close the door and eat Cheetos and watch bad movies and cry for the next four days, or you can go, keep yourself active, go to the gym, go to work, go out, get back into the world, and you have a much different experience and you'll get over someone much faster than giving them what they want, which is your misery hiding that room for four days. And so my whole life has been this concept of don't sit on the floor and cry about it, because bad stuff happens all the time. Every morning I wake up, I'm dealing with drama, employee situations, partnerships. That person did this, the shipment didn't come here, that person owes you this, the vendor didn't do this. Like every morning is chaos and I stay calm in the chaos because I know that it's coming.

Speaker 4: 10:11

But I know it's all part of the process, and so my mentality is when the entire poker world shut down like literally tens of billions of dollars shut down I just moved forward. Was this the next step? And the logical next step is I don't trust the government. I don't know what they're going to do, I don't know how long it's going to take.

Speaker 1: 10:30

I'm just going to pay everybody back and shut down. How did you learn to have?

Speaker 4: 10:36

that mindset, I realized things that happen in business and personal life not everything really matters compared to, like I had a lot of friends and family pass away. And so when things happen where it's loss of money or time or energy, or does it really matter in comparison to friends and family and people that die? And so I don't take the financial losses or emotional hurt or business things that happen. I don't say don't take the financial losses or emotional hurt or business things that happen. I don't say don't take it that seriously, but it's just not that serious in relativity to my 24-year-old friend that's dead, the 27-year-old friend that's dead, the 30-year-old friend that's dead.

Speaker 4: 11:15

I have 39 different friends that have passed away. And so to me it's like right now, all of a sudden thunder struck down. I'm me. It's like right now, all of a sudden thunder struck down like, wow, we should clean this up, we should fix this and do this, like I would think about the process, how to fix it. Not, oh, my god, lightning just struck. I think it just came from the reality check of what's really important in life I can relate to that, I think.

Speaker 1: 11:40

I think death gives people an opportunity to have urgency over how they're living, but not always. Some people fall back into their trauma and they just relive whatever the next punch is as evidence that it's not going to work out. Did you have a mentor growing up? Did you have a mom or dad, a coach, that helped instill any of this in you when you were young?

Speaker 4: 12:11

No.

Speaker 4: 12:11

I was just outside From morning until nighttime. I was just running around and as soon as I was 17 and a half, I started my company, and it's kind of the concept of like, if get thrown into a pool, you got to swim or die, and so I've just been swimming my whole life. I just there is no other option, I'm not going to stop. And the reason, like from a time perspective, the reason I do so many different things and why I'm involved in so many different companies, events, and I just literally drove six hours to be here with you and I'm flying out like it's. I know how short my life is, and maybe 80 years or 100 years or 120 years sounds long, that's. That's short too, but it also could be done tonight, and so I just very, very, very, very actively live my life to the fullest and do as many things as I can, because I don't know when it's over so then, what's your relationship with stillness?

Speaker 1: 13:06

What's that so I?

Speaker 5: 13:12

guess you don't meditate. I like meditation, okay Does anything come up for you when you meditate.

Speaker 1: 13:18

That's frustrating or difficult or distracting.

Speaker 4: 13:22

No, because my phone's not there. I'm not thinking about my phone. The main thing with meditation. I used to do Kung Fu many, many years ago and we would meditate in every session, before or after class, and the whole main thing was focusing on the little white dot in front of you.

Speaker 6: 13:39

And if you could focus on the little white dot, things would get quieter.

Speaker 4: 13:42

So whenever I'm meditating, my eyes are closed and I'm trying to focus on a little white dot, and then I let my thoughts do what they do I have one more question for you.

Speaker 1: 13:52

I want to know, which might be hard to answer because you're doing so much what is something that you're working on right now that really matters to you?

Speaker 4: 14:04

I mean the charity work is what matters, watching the impact of the butterfly effect of it, because if I do charity, other people copy me or do their own version or make better versions or do it in their own cities far beyond that I'll ever see. And so when situations arise now I'm just getting bigger and better and more focused on the charity stuff. Like the fires happened, I had 3.3 million views on an Instagram post about the fires. The next day, half a million views. That's 10 or 20 times my normal, because charity is part of what I'm known for. But, more importantly, 11,000 people reposted it, and so that makes me hyper aggressive, like I need to do more, I need to get this bigger, I need to focus on this more, and so I posted about oh, let's go to rumble boxing and drop off supplies. We have like three semi trucks full of supplies now from one post, and so I take it very literal, very serious and very active the charity work, because the butterfly effect is I haven't even stopped by Rumble Boxing, but all that action happened.

Speaker 4: 15:13

Three semi-trucks happened. Does that make sense? And so my goal is just to keep doing the toy drives and the Thanksgiving food drives and when situations rise like the fires, I'm going to be as aggressively active as I can. It's working far beyond all ever know. That's what's important to me. I don't need a pat on the back. I don't need anybody to know I didn't. My name is not on the side of the semi truck. My name's not on the toy drive website, like I don't need my name on any of that stuff. I need it to happen. I need other people to do it all over the world and I need other people to do it all over the world.

Speaker 1: 15:46

First of all, do not leave. Give Dan a round of applause, please.

Speaker 1: 15:50

Oh, my God, and if it's okay with you, Dan, I want you to have a chance with the audience to answer some questions. I'm going to step off stage for a few minutes while you do that. Sound good? Okay, Please don't be shy, you guys. I wasn't shy. I asked Dan to come speak here. We became friends like three months ago. I'm like, hey, will you do me this favor? Here I am. You will never know if you do not ask. Okay, Can I turn?

Speaker 4: 16:25

that off? Yeah, any questions can. Yeah, any questions, mr Dave. The question was what are non-negotiables in daily life, family life and business? In daily life, my non-negotiables. I force myself to life and business. In daily life, my non-negotiables. I forced myself to eat and drink. I don't know if you guys saw when I got here I walked straight to the snack table and I just started eating and everyone came to buy to talk to me and I just kept eating because I was busy the last seven hours and so it took me six hours to get here. And so I make sure I force myself to eat and drink because otherwise it's very easy to have excuses of why you don't do it, and so I'm very forceful about that.

Speaker 4: 17:10

On the business side, I do what's called over-communicate. I make sure that everyone in my team, every staff, every group chat does over-communicating. If you're gonna be here at 6 pm for this event, say this, this and this. If you know that you have to deliver this box, mention that. Like, I make sure that I'm constantly communicating with the staff, with the team, etc. If a situation arises, I will text, I will call, I will be there to make sure that there's communication.

Speaker 4: 17:37

And on the family side. I've never missed one single day of texting my mom. Ever, not once, and I won't ever. And every time I get on a plane before I take off and when I land I text her. I'm not scared of planes whatsoever, she's not scared of planes whatsoever. It's just a fun game for me to have that type of excuse and attachment to reach out to her and for her it's fun that there's. And if I land and I don't text her right away because she kind of calculates when I'm going to land, it's like a fun game for her to try to catch when I'm landing. And so that little thing is our connection. Because it's hard. I travel so much I've gone 250 days a year. It's hard in between to be able to see her, and so that simple thing keeps the interaction. I have a question keeps the interaction.

Speaker 7: 18:24

I have a question Do you feel like you sacrificed?

Speaker 1: 18:27

something along the way? And if you do, do you feel any?

Speaker 4: 18:31

regrets. So the question was do I feel like I sacrificed anything along the way and do I have any regrets? So I sacrifice certain relationships and time with people because I do travel too much and there's often times where I can't be fully present because I'm inside of my phone putting out fires, working on companies. But I don't have any regrets about it because I feel like my mission is to save the world. And people talk about the theory of saving the world, but I have actual, actionable steps of how I'm going to do it before I die. Theory of saving the world, but I have actual, actionable steps of how I'm going to do it before I die. And in that, with that mentality or with that mission, I know I have to miss out on certain things in my life. I know I have to take a lot more flights than I don't have to do it, but it's part of my mission and so there's certain parts of my life that I will miss. There's certain parts of people's lives that I don't want to miss their things. But my greater good or my greater mission is that. And it's not me wanting to go hang out, it's not me wanting to go sit on the beach, it's not me wanting to do anything, but over and over and over, day after day after day, steps towards saving the world. And when I say saving the world steps towards saving the world. And when I say saving the world, it's food, water and shelter and me proving to the world that I can execute on large format charity. And if I can do that with the world's largest toy drive for 11 years, with doing six million supplies for the homeless over the years, doing those things over and over to prove to the world, I believe that I can get other people to do it at mass scale and with that mission.

Speaker 4: 20:09

That means that sometimes I can't go on date night. That means sometimes I can't make it to the certain birthday. That means that sometimes I can't make it to someone's second or third wedding, or sometimes I can't make it to certain. By the way, I've never gone to someone's third wedding. I'm not going. But the point is I don't have regrets about it. I'm making a willing decision to do it. I know that I'm doing it, I know what I'm sacrificing and I know sometimes I can hurt someone if I don't make it to their certain event or their certain party, etc. But I also know that I'm going to know them for decades and so I'm not planning to always miss their birthday or always miss that event or always miss that thing. But in general I know that if I have to go through an event or I have to go, be it in something, or I have to immerse myself in something, I won't have any regret about it. I made a willing, full decision for it.

Speaker 3: 21:01

you use to, or what mental tricks do you use to stay organized? And I mean, it sounds like you're insanely busy. So like, how do you, how do you keep from getting overwhelmed?

Speaker 4: 21:19

Yep. So the question is, what tools do I use to handle all the chaos? It's actually one main thing it's group chats. Every single thing I do in my life is a group chat. Every event, every charity, every party, every business, every investment, every deal, every partnership is literally a group chat and they're named, so it's easy for me to find them. It's not just like I put Bruce and Dave in a group chat and they're no. The group chat will be called Bruce and Dave so that I can find it.

Speaker 4: 21:55

The reason for it is people have like they can use ClickUp or Asana or all the fancy different platforms. Those are great for the team to use. I need to be on the group chats because I know there's a 99.9% chance that they saw it In email threads and Asana and ClickUps and all the other things. People have excuses, oh, I forgot to log in. They get back to it tomorrow or the next day. The next day, wednesday becomes Friday, friday becomes Monday, not in group chats.

Speaker 4: 22:24

In group chats people know and that's also why I like group chats is that it adds accountability. If it's just a one toto-one chat, things can, but if there's three or four or five of us and you don't perform, guess what? Marcella saw it and Hannah saw it and Ray saw it. They know you didn't do it and they can thumbs up or thumbs down and they interact in the chat. If I do that in an email thread, it doesn't really have the same emotion, and so my entire life is based on group chats and the follow-up is how do you keep from getting overwhelmed with all?

Speaker 4: 22:58

the stuff. So the question about how to keep from getting overwhelmed is I know what I'm signing up for. So how can I get mad at it, like if I know that I'm signing up to be a part of, like a restaurant and then the chef quits? I'm part of a restaurant. Sometimes chefs quit. If I'm part of a construction thing and it's in dallas, texas, I can't get mad when it snows, because sometimes it snows in dallas, texas, and so I know what I'm signing up for and so I think it'd be cuckoo of me to get mad at things that I signed up for like, and oftentimes people.

Speaker 4: 23:39

They let other people have control of them mentally and emotionally. They allow them to do that because they're expecting them to change and they're not going to change. Give you a real life example. If you're dating someone and dinner's at eight o'clock, and the last six times that you had Friday night date night, they showed up or were ready at 8.26, 8.42, 8.18, 8.52. At some point you gotta figure it out to lie to them and say it's 8 o'clock when it's really 9 o'clock and make the reservation for 9 o'clock. But if you let them upset you when they're late six times in a row. At some point you've got to realize they're going to be later every time.

Speaker 4: 24:25

I'm not saying to justify what they're doing, but at some point you got to realize that's who they are and hopefully you can change them, hopefully you can fix them, but you're not going to. And so because of that, I don't get mad when that happens over and over and over. I just know, without a shadow of a doubt, I'm not going to actually make the reservation for eight o'clock, I'm going to actually make it for nine o'clock. And I've seen it happen over and over and over and over, where people get upset with someone that does the same thing year after year after year after year. That's part of who they are and it's unlikely that they're going to change who they are. And so you have to take back the control. And again, I'm not saying to be okay with what they're doing, but be realistic with that's the fact that they're going to keep doing it.

Speaker 7: 25:16

You're very responsive, not reactive.

Speaker 1: 25:20

When you feel a reaction, come, because we all do. We're human. You know what you're getting yourself in for.

Speaker 7: 25:28

This idea that you're in a pool, you're either going to drown or swim, starting at 17,. So somehow you got this click.

Speaker 1: 25:36

When that happens now, when you find yourself reactive, not responsive, how do you stop that trigger?

Speaker 4: 25:45

So there are often times that people do things that would make you have a reaction. When I say calm in the chaos, that's exactly what I mean If there was a scenario right. This second I'm analyzing on how to fix the scenario rather than reacting to the scenario. If something happens where someone sends me a message that's like whoa, where did that come from? Or very rude, or they're cursing, or they lied, or they got caught or they did something wrong or they screwed up, I don't text back. One second later I'm reading, I'm analyzing and I'm processing, and it's almost like when Bruce teaches. There's like a training.

Speaker 4: 26:29

When you're in an environment and there's a shooting or there's an intense thing, they call it an OODA loop and you're basically observing the situation, making decisions and then taking action. I do that in my real life, whether it's a text message or in person. I'm observing the scenario and I'm not instantly reacting, because my instant reaction oftentimes won't be right. Instant reaction could be like no, screw you. No, you're bad. No, you did this. It's very easy to want to instantly react, comparing to why are they saying this, what do I do about it and how do I fix it, versus immediately attacking back or immediately doing this or immediately doing that, and that comes from experience, real life. Example you hear the famous quote about Mike Tyson everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Have you ever noticed when people are boxing and they get punched in the face over and over, they actually look pretty calm. You know why? Because for 26 years, since they were nine years old, they got punched in the face. So when that moment happens, they're not surprised about it.

Speaker 4: 27:35

They're not surprised about it in a street fight, they're not surprised about it in the ring. Now, if the same person had no training and never got punched in the face, and now they get punched in the face, what's going to happen? Extreme shock, extreme shock. They're going to fall to the floor. They're going to cry. They're going to fall to the floor, they're going to cry, they're going to scream, they're going to pass out. Who knows? Because they've never been in that experience.

Speaker 4: 27:56

The reason people go through gun training, the reason people go to fight training, the reason people play soccer, the reason that you do repetitions, is so that in that moment, you make a calm, focused decision. That's why Kobe Bryant's the best. That's why Kobe Bryant's the best. That's why Michael Jordan's the best. They practiced 10,000 times and they did it way more than anybody else, over and over and over.

Speaker 4: 28:17

Two weeks ago, we had dinner with Michael Phelps and he was talking and he said this line that was burning in my head and he said I never missed a practice once, and when any of my competitors missed even one or two days, that means they were two or three days behind me. And because I did the same thing for 25 years of my life, those days added up and that's why he's the most decorated athlete of all time, because in that pool, when he is swimming, he knows every action, every reaction, every water drop. He's calm and focused every moment throughout the entire process. The same way that Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan were a police officer in a shooting, they've been through the practice part of it, and so I've just immersed myself in studying everything I can about the business, the situation, the people. I try to understand those things in my life so that when something arises, I can be calm in the chaos. You must know that 10,000 hour Harvard study.

Speaker 4: 29:20

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 7: 29:20

Yeah, it's a great study. You would love that book.

Speaker 4: 29:24

Any other questions? How do you?

Speaker 1: 29:27

decide what companies you invest in. What are?

Speaker 4: 29:31

your criteria? Yep, the very, very first thing is people. I have to bet on the person because we're effectively getting married. Business-wise, most companies exit in five to seven years and so we're not like casually dating, we're in it, we're in a long-term relationship. If I invest into your company, so I have to want to invest in that person. I have to like that person enough to be able to go to lunch or dinner. I have to be able to feel comfortable that I can text them at 9 or 10 pm or 7 or8 in the morning when stuff happens.

Speaker 4: 30:02

And I have to believe they are what's called ride or die. They actually care about that thing. If it's just a product that's interchangeable, I won't invest in them, and if it's just a business of selling these chairs, they could easily be swayed. They don't really care if it goes bankrupt, if it doesn't work out, they'll go do something else. Now the difference is, if these chairs were biodegradable and save the planet and did something, you know, something magical and something that they cared about, that would be much different, because I know that they are ride or die. They care about these chairs and they care about what they do for the environment, et cetera. And so the person is the very first thing. I need to have someone that, when something goes right, something goes wrong, they are ride or die, because no matter what happens, no matter how good the company is, bad stuff's going to happen and I need to know that person's going to be in it for the long run.

Speaker 4: 31:00

The next thing is on the product, the product brand or service. Does anybody care? Here's the thing. People vote with their wallets. They will tell you if they care, if they would actually buy it. It's very different than your grandma supporting you or your Facebook friends saying, yeah, I'd buy, that, I'd buy. That is not the same thing as them buying it, swiping a credit card. And will someone buy it when you're not there, like out in the wild? Will your product brand or service sell when you're not pitching it? Because if you can't do that, it's not scalable. It's not scalable past you. So it has to be a product, brand or service that can be sold far beyond the person, far beyond the face of that business.

Speaker 4: 31:47

The next thing is how big is the market? And I don't need everything to be a grand slam or some huge thing. There's plenty of times I do small investments into something that's Never gonna be that big, just to be part of the game or because I like that business or that I like that person. But how big is the market for that thing? That will also determine what I'm investing and what I'm hoping to happen. And the last thing is Can they back it up? Can they get by what I call the four horsemen, my lawyer? And the last thing is can they back it up? Can they get by what I call the four horsemen my lawyer, my accountant, my CEO and an advisor? If they can get past those four people, I want to invest. Why those four people? The lawyer checks on what they said. They said oh yeah, I've got these microphones and I sold them into Walmart. And then the lawyer says okay, show me the purchase order. Well, I met the buyer at Walmart at a party and he said he was going to buy it Very different than actually being in a purchase order. The accountant because they can back up the financials. You said you did $1 million in sales. You did $600,000. Where's the disconnect? Oh well, we're going to get a purchase order. No, no, no, no, that's not real, that's not sales yet until they paid you. And so those people. My CEO is just to overlook and see what I don't see, and an advisor is someone that has no financial interest in it that can look at it completely different from me. There's a famous saying or at least it's famous to me because I say it all the time you can't see the picture when you're inside of the frame, and so if this entrepreneur is sitting here and I'm so in it and just I love this entrepreneur, she's amazing Blah. I need a different person, I need a different set of eyeballs to look at it, and they'd be like well, by the way, did you know that this, this and this? Or, by the way, like their competitors do this? I need someone else because I might love the entrepreneur, but I need other eyes on it. So those are the four things the person, the product, the market and can they back it up? Any other questions?

Speaker 6: 33:55

Can I ask a selfish piggyback question? Sure. When, in Atlanta, I heard you on stage say that you wouldn't invest in restaurants until the 18th restaurant, you want the 17th first because you want them to work out all the keys. Do you mind expanding on that a little bit? I'm a restaurant tour.

Speaker 4: 34:14

Sure. So restaurant number one is super, super high risk. Restaurant number five and eight and 12, et cetera, still have some risk to it. But it gets lower and lower and lower. And here's why the person opening restaurant number one let's say it was this building they're going to pay rent and their lease will be different than someone who has eight locations. They know how to negotiate different Tenant improvements, the terms, everything, because this is their first restaurant. That's their eighth. All the materials inside this restaurant, the kitchen, the refrigerator, the stove, the supplies, the utilities, every little detail that restaurant, the fabrication, the art, the design, where the countertops are, where, where the chairs are, this person, restaurant number one, is gonna pay full price. They don't know what to get.

Speaker 4: 35:10

They don't know how many chairs to get exactly, they don't know the layout, the structure, the flow of how to walk. There's an actual art form in science to designing a restaurant for walk flow and work flow, like where do people walk, where do people work, how does the waiters walk around, etc. Well, restaurant number eight has a down, maybe not perfect, but they kind of know the flow of where everybody moves, how they walk around, where's the hostess, where the waiters waitresses, where does the chef go, where's the cleaning crew walk? What we're like, what do I sit, the people that have family and kids where I sit, single people where I said, couples, like they have a flow.

Speaker 4: 35:51

Restaurant number one they might have read about it in a book but they don't know. They don't know where, how families sit, they don't know that sometimes people have strollers and they shouldn't. Actually, don't make your four top chair here, make your four top in the corner, like they don't know everything about. Restaurant number one is a learning experience outside of them, having an advisor and a consultant and what they read online, etc. Compared to someone that has restaurant number eight, eleven, thirteen, etc. Now does that mean that restaurant number?

Speaker 4: 36:18

one can't work Of course it can, but they're going to be paying more for things. It's going to take longer the hours of their restaurant, for example, they might run it from 12 pm to 10 pm and they might have the staff show up two hours early at 10 am all of them. And they don't realize that. Well, you actually don't need all your staff at 10 am. You can have some of them come at 11.30. Oh, who cares about? 90 minutes for seven people? Well, 90 minutes for 7 people at $20 an hour, times that by 7 is $140 an hour and it's an hour and a half, so it's actually $200. Do the math real quick You're saving $200 a day, $6,000 a month, $72,000 a year net just because you had your people come an hour, an hour and a half later, because you didn't need them for the first hour and a half, only two of them, not nine of them. And then at the end of the shift you have everyone staying and everyone doing cleanup and you're paying again 20 bucks an hour. Times that by those nine people, it's 180 bucks an hour, when you could have two people come for a cleaning crew and handle the whole situation and let those people go. Why does that matter the whole situation and let those people go. Why does that matter? $200 a day, $6,000 a month, $72,000 net. Most restaurants work off of 12% to 18% margins. Why just save you $145,000 by cutting off an hour or two? That's the difference between restaurant number one and restaurant number 12.

Speaker 4: 37:46

Any other questions who look up to a few characters? My favorite one is Michael Jordan, because of extreme excellence, not just for himself but for his team. He would get physically angry at his teammates for not trying as hard as him, even though he set the bar so high so they would never be as good as him or never try as hard as him. And I love that. I am relentlessly flying around the country doing a zillion meetings, a zillion phone calls, a zillion everything so that I can hopefully inspire my team whether it's sales, employees, design, everyone involved in my world that I will be out there relentlessly fighting for them. Right, hannah's here. She's my number one salesperson for our sales team. What do I say in the group chat all the time? I just had four meetings today. I'm on six stages. I'm on two podcasts. I'm not saying that to gloat. I'm saying that so that she and the team know that I'm out there hustling and working to help it make easier for them to sell. And so I love the Michael Jordan thing of like being relentlessly out there and relentlessly working your butt off so that the people around you and the teammates look up to you.

Speaker 4: 39:04

The other interesting character is the Rock, because of how he built up his career from literally nothing and you hear a lot of stories about you know, obviously, oprah Winfrey and other people that have been homeless or living in a car and built up these careers. I just think those are fascinating because it proves what can happen by being relentless. Obviously there's luck involved, there's timing involved, but you create your luck by being out there over and over and over. There's a huge difference of someone that wants to become famous or wants to become a tv star, wants to become like oprah, versus oprah and the rock, who literally the rock was, you know, out there wrestling for ten dollars, basically like doing whatever he had to do to get on where sylvester salone was, doing whatever he had to do to finally get the rocky movie and self be a part of it, like the stories of those type of characters are who I look up to because of the fact that they lived and breathed and died that thing and they, they created their own luck by sheer will and grit and a bit of insanity, if you really think about it, for some of them like for sylvester stallone to basically turn down deals to get his movie deal like it's crazy.

Speaker 4: 40:21

But look at him now, for what the rock did, what oprah did, and tyler perry and some of these people that built these stories from being homeless to billionaires. That's what I look up to and I Love studying Humans of what they do and what they build, the good, bad and ugly, even when things go bad. I'm studying why, who, what happened, because we've all watched it. We've seen the rise and fall of different characters and so and obviously the final one is elon musk there's no one in human history, in the past, present or future, that will do more for society, no matter what people say about him or think that he's quirky or he's doing weird things yeah, the guy's running five separate multi-billion dollar companies at the exact same time and still tweeting 80 times a day.

Speaker 4: 41:13

So he's gonna have some weird parts to him and that's okay. And no, he did not heil hitler, by the way, he was just saying that's his heart, like he's, and so, like people, look at him and to me, you're just never gonna have someone that is that audacious to go build five different multi-billion dollar companies at the same time. And he's not done yet, obviously. And what he's doing for our society with some of the companies like Starlink, is staggering, because Starlink is the only way that third world countries are getting internet. It's the only way that we're going to have internet around the globe. It's going to be what fixes airplanes, motorhomes, cars Everyone will have Starlink. That will be a multi-trillion dollar company. I wish Starlink was a publicly traded company itself because of what that's going to be and what it does for society. And with Twitter he literally saved America. He put up $44 billion to save our country and, by default, it helped save the world. He literally prevented wars, literally got the evil prime minister in whatever he was in canada to resign.

Speaker 4: 42:27

The guy that's millions of people were locked in their homes and losing their jobs and careers and lives over. That guy and now he's gone, you'll never hear from him again like elon musk is so audacious to go spend 44 billion dollars that he didn't have to go buy a company to help effectively save the world, and so that's an interesting character for me from that perspective, and with everybody I said they have drama. People hate Michael Jordan, people hate Elon Musk, people are so mad at Oprah. All of them have their things of why some people hate them, but think about the greater good of what they've all done for society.

Speaker 7: 43:07

Oh here.

Speaker 3: 43:09

So that was a wide range and I love that.

Speaker 2: 43:12

Thank you for sharing what is the most challenging or insane thing you have had to do to save a company, or what was the most risky thing that put you really, really, really in a huge pickle.

Speaker 4: 43:31

I mean the poker site was really crazy. I mean, manually paying back 41,000 people was really hard. Doing that now would be hard. But in 2011,. I mean, social media wasn't even really a thing we had like the Facebook, like it wasn't like you had a bunch of social media wasn't even really a thing we had like the Facebook, like it wasn't like you had a bunch of social media back then.

Speaker 4: 43:49

And so getting a hold of 41,000 people and manually trying to forcefully give them their 500 bucks 5,000 dollars, 8,000 dollars, 2,000 dollars times that by 41,000 humans and make sure they actually got it was, and I only had five employees, so that was all out of warfare, not like we weren't fighting anyone, but like the battle to do that was insane, like I still think about it all the time. And if we didn't do it, what would have happened? That would have been tens of millions of dollars of people's money. That was could have been taken by the government, because they took billions of dollars from my's money. That was could have been taken by the government Because they took billions of dollars from my competitors, locked it up for years, most people didn't get their money back, and so that was the craziest one that stuck in my head is that we were again not at war with anyone. We were at war with ourselves to try to physically do this, and it was utter chaos. Did I stall long enough? You good, you were epic.

Speaker 3: 44:54

Everybody give it up for Dan Woo. Thank you, thank you. Whipping my mistakes to jump over the grief. Breaking the circuit, making it worth it. Oh, sick and tired of the voice inside my head, never good enough. It's leaving me for dead. But perfection's just a game of make-believe. Hey, gotta break the pattern, find a new reprieve. Breaking the circuit.

Speaker 7: 45:58

Making it worth it. Oh, I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no deep inside.

Speaker 3: 46:16

I gotta live the life I can be brave and afraid at the same time. Practice self-compassionion, start to calm my mind, taking tiny steps to loving all of me. Just the process, cause it's gonna set me free, breaking the circuit making it worth it all.

Speaker 7: 46:47

I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no deep inside. I got the the life. Gotta gotta gotta break it or fake it till we make it. Gotta gotta gotta break it. Come on, one, two, three. I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no deep inside. I got this life.