From Football to Franchises: John Cerasani on Social Media Fame and Business Success
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65-year-old dude wearing a Lacoste sweater. It's 120 degrees outside. He's wearing a Lacoste sweater, has this thick Italian accent. I'm walking by and he goes, hey, hey, TikTok. You guys from TikTok. And he wanted a picture with me. You're the TikTok guy. Yeah, he wanted a picture with me. So it is pretty cool, man. So I do know that's real. The engagement's real.

And now escaping the drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm John Gafford and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again for another episode of the podcast, man. Like I said in the intro, gets you from where you're at to where you want to be. And today, man, in the studio,

This dude is blowing up everywhere. If you're on the gram, if you follow Vegas, you follow business, you follow gambling, you follow, I mean, whatever it may is you're following, you're seeing this dude. Cause I saw him and it's to the point where I was in an event last Friday and I looked across the room and I was like,

I need to go shake that dude's hand because he's been on my feed way too much lately. He is a master of all trades and an overall pretty cool dude. I got a lot of insight that I know is going to help you out today. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the studio. This is John Sarasani. John. Hey, man. What's up, dude? Happy to be here, brother. Newport Beach and now Vegas. It's like.

I'm just some dude from Schaumburg and I'm at all these cool places now, buddy. I got to pinch myself. I know. We're trying to kill each other with the sun. War more as it goes along. Well, John, for those of you who don't know, hey, first of all, follow this dude on Instagram because the gram is blowing up. I mean, there's a lot of dudes out there.

you know, that have the bot machines that are chasing them all over the place. This dude is legit blowing up right now. And honestly, because this stuff is entertaining and it is educational. It's a good blend of how you do that. Thank you. So let's talk about, before we get into the backstory of how you got to where you are, let's just talk right about the social, man. Okay. Because...

When did you get serious about saying like, I want to build a follow? I mean, was it, was it a goal to build a following or you just started putting out funny shit? You thought entertain yourself, brother. I'm gonna tell you what, man, we're about almost at a half a million Instagram followers right now. And if you would have told me a year and a half ago, this is possible.

I wouldn't have believed you. And I got to tell you, I thought people that have a half million followers are all full of shit, but no one actually really had a half million like real people following them. You know what I mean? Unless you were like a mainstream celebrity or something. And even as it grew, I started asking myself,

are these people even real or someone's with me and it wasn't until john the last probably 14 months i started getting recognized in public so now there's real people coming up to you especially this weekend in vegas man left and right like every 10 feet at arias someone's taking a picture with me oh it's awesome that's when you know this shit's real some 65 year old dude wearing a lacoste sweater it's 120 degrees outside he's wearing a lacoste sweater has this thick italian uh accent i'm walking by he goes hey hey

Tick tock. You got it from tick tock. And he wanted a picture from the tick tock guy. Yeah. He wanted a picture with me. So that it is pretty cool, man. So, so I do know that's real. The engagement's real. And I started, um, you know, I jumped into this, uh, not really knowing what to expect, buddy, but, um, I, I thought I had something, I thought I had a cool story to tell. Yeah. I just didn't really know it would kind of be this popular. Well, let's get back to that, dude. Let's, let's talk about, let's go origin story. What,

We're going to go deep here, like the superhero origin story. So obviously you grew up in Chicago, dude. You from there your whole life? Schaumburg, yep. So is that North Chicago? Are you Sox or Cubs? I guess that's a good question. Well, based on where Schaumburg is located, it should be Cubs. Okay. Schaumburg is actually a northwest suburb of Chicago. Okay. Yeah.

All right. So not a South guy. Exactly. That's a nice, that's a polite question I'm asking. Like how hard was the upbringing? Well, me and my brother actually grew up as Sox fans for some reason. I think it had something to do with.

with my grandpa was from pittsburgh and he was a pirates fan so we would cheer against the cubs when the pirates were in town back then they didn't go it was all ale and i know they didn't play each other yeah that's the other kind of pick one anyway who knows i'm a cubs fan now because i want to buy right outside of the stadium so i'm cubs fan now yeah yeah i love old crow smokehouse so great dude i love reggaeville so you grew up there your kid obviously you're a big dude you're a large human uh do you play sports growing up

Football. Yeah. I was football, basketball, and track. Okay, cool. So the road, what was your first hustle as a kid growing up? Oh shit, man. I mean, I was, are we allowed to swear? I'm sorry. Absolutely. Do it. Yeah. Dude, I was selling fricking lemonade, lemonade stands. I was a fricking little kid, man, but I think I really started making money.

In high school, I would host poker tournaments. Take a little, like, pull the money there. There you go, kids. There's your path forward. Just host illegal poker tournaments. But, dude, I was always doing, like, interesting shit. And in college, I started a company called Star 69 Events. Now, see, back then, college football players...

weren't allowed to make money. Okay. Yeah. We weren't even allowed. So you were playing, but you got a scholarship to play ball. I played division one tight end at Notre Dame and Northwestern. Wow. Yeah. Okay. It was pretty good. So I'm in, I'm six, five to 80. Now it was like six, five to 60 back then. It's a big dude. Yeah. But yeah,

Yeah, man. So I would host events at these nightclubs and get all the whole college kids to come in, but I couldn't put my name on it. So I had to name it something else. You're doing everything kind of undercover. It's all legal on the up and up, but just football players weren't allowed to get paid. We weren't allowed to... What do you mean? This has nothing to do with football. We weren't allowed to have jobs. Understand how fucked up the NCAA was back then. We weren't allowed to actually make...

money unless it was during summer break or Christmas break. How crazy is that? When you got a kid like me that's from a super middle class family that if it wasn't for a football scholarship, has no business getting into Notre Dame academically, but definitely even if he could get in academically, his parents wouldn't have been able to afford for him to go there. So you're with all these damn freaking rich kids that are privileged and

and we're not allowed to make any freaking money you know what the hell we supposed to do you know i'm saying um and can i stop you for a second yeah because that's something you just said yeah is really interesting because me growing up as a kid right like my father was a very wealthy attorney my mother broke the car rule never get divorced from a southern attorney in a small southern town where he's from bad my dad murdered my mom in the fucking in the divorce so like we were living in the ritziest neighborhood right yep fucking broke

Like super broke. Did you find that that experience shaped a lot of who you are or that quest that you have for success? A little bit, man. A little bit. I always have the love of money. I knew I wanted to be rich or famous. I don't know if I wanted to be rich and famous. I think I always just wanted to be rich because that felt like it was more of a

more realistic thing. You know what I mean? I was never like an actor or anything like that. So how am I going to be famous? Right. Unless it was from football and that, that ended when I was 23 years old. Um, so I always had the, I had the damn love of money. And I think part of that was from that though. Um, not, not just from my experience in Notre Dame and Northwest that I just growing up middle-class in the first place. Like I'll give you a for instance. Okay. Um,

December 3rd is my birthday. Basketball season would start like mid-November, okay? For the first few weeks of basketball season each year, I had the basketball shoes that were a size too small from the year before because my parents would wait until my birthday to give me that $90 gift. You know what I mean? Oh, granted. I'm still getting a $90 pair of basketball shoes. Yeah.

but they were waiting until that birthday. You know what I mean? So we were by, we were, we were not poor by any stretch of the imagination, bro. I know. I get it though, because here's the, see, here's the problem with this story, right? Because man,

man, I'm so similar in that. Yeah. And you tell that to people that had like real fucking struggle and they're like, what are you talking about? And you're like, no, no, you didn't have shoes. What are you talking about? Exactly. You don't understand what it's like to be the one kid with the, it's the have not around a bunch of kids that are half. That's true. It's incredibly difficult. Like I, I'm telling you, I think it's almost easier to be a habit.

not around a bunch of have nots. Well, I'll put another layer on that for you. Once you got to college at Notre Dame, the kids that are from the areas that were really poverty and stuff, which was a lot of kids that play college football. This is their ticket out. You know what I mean? And, but those kids are different though, because they qualify for government subsidies called, I think they're called Pell grants where they get a fricking money given to them. And I, back then, I don't know what it is. I want to say like three grand a quarter or semester, whatever it is.

whatever it is there's three grand more than my parents were giving me i'll tell you that you know what i mean so he even felt a little bit poor poor from that standpoint but listen man i i'm super privileged to to uh to have the experiences i had in life and um you know illinois public school teachers my dad was a high school gym teacher and a high school football coach my grandpa was a carpenter my dad was the first person to go to college in our family and um you know

we were not poor by any stretch of the imagination. Illinois high school teachers are very similar to Nevada and California. Our public's teachers are paid pretty damn well. They're not getting rich by any stretch of the imagination, but they're not making 30 grand a year either. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then those pensions and stuff, they get it that are good. So I think I took a lot of principles. I just learned from my dad. Was your dad, your coach in high school? Yeah. Yeah. So if you had to pick one lesson that your dad instilled in you,

What would it be if you had to narrow it down to one lesson that dad instilled? Um, I told you, I don't ask the kid questions, man. I told you, you know, my, it's funny cause my, it's not funny, but I, my dad passed away just a few years ago. So when I think about it, yeah, mine too. Um,

I would say that he was really big on, well, I'll give you two answers, all right? To never put yourself down. He never, like, wanted you to self-deprecate. And, you know, I just remember telling our football team my senior year in high school, there's a couple of kids on the team that would, like, brag about getting Ds on a test or something else. And he'd make a big, don't pride yourself on being stupid. You know what I mean? Don't pride yourself on being an idiot, all right?

And the other thing he would always instill in me, which definitely carried over, you see glimpses of it on my social media, is the people that are weak,

because they can't do anything about being weak where they have some kind of disability usually is the case behind that go out of your way to help those kinds of people yeah you know what i mean so those are probably the two there's a bunch though well i think that you know they always say the best judge of character on anybody is is how they treat people that can do nothing for them there you go there you go all right so you're playing football let's talk about that for a

What year was this? - '98, well, '95 through '99. - So Lou Holtz is your coach? - Lou Holtz, yep. - Lou Holtz is your coach. So '95, no, that's after the Convex versus the Catholics, right? - Yeah, that was, well, it was in the wake of it. It was right after. - Yeah, it was right after. Okay, got it. So you were playing ball for Lou Holtz. - Yep. - Did he spit on you when he talked to you?

He always mispronounced my last name. There was guys. Oh my God. Your last name would have been a disaster for him. He'd call me Saraceni all the time. All right. Yeah. Oh boy. Yeah. So you're playing football. And back then, even,

even then, I mean, now it's a whole nother level. I think of what they asked these guys to do, but even then what's the time commitment to play football at Notre Dame back then? It's tough, man. It's tough. And it's another thing, man, you're going in there competing against kids in classrooms that are smarter than you, but come from a background that really prepared them more for this. And you're supposed to compete with them in the classroom.

and spending 30 hours a week playing football. You know what I mean? Think about that. Those kids don't have to play football. They're smarter than you in the first place, and they use all their time to study. Well, we've got to balance in football. Yeah, yeah. And you come up with the nightclub hustle. Yeah, exactly. Trust me. That has come up on this show. You have no idea how many successful entrepreneurs at one point in their early college life were club promoters. Really? Oh, dude. It comes up in here all the time.

the time brother i kept doing it all through my damn 20s the reason i stopped doing it is because freaking social media screwed it up for everybody because all these damn promoters all of a sudden we're doing it for free bottles and drink tickets just to be cool to try to like bang chicks and i'm like dude no i'm like trying to make four grand this weekend yeah but the club start cutting deals with all these younger generation guys right around 208 09 and everything changed dude and i'm like you know what

everyone all of a sudden is a promoter now. It's kind of lame. I'm not even going to do it anymore. I tell the story. I was, I was in the nightclub business years and years ago. Okay. And, uh, my last club was, uh, was Cobalt lounge in Atlanta where, where Ray Lewis made famous after the Superbowl, after the Superbowl. Okay. And, uh,

with his murder trial. Yeah, that fucking sunk that business like it was. But dude, Jermaine Dupri used to throw a party there every Sunday and we would write his promoters a check for like 50 grand every Sunday. Whoa, those hip hop promoters, that's a different game, dude. Dude, wild. What year is this? 99, 2000. Okay, so in Chicago, at least at that time,

that crowd, the higher end African American crowd were the only people that were spending money like that. Dude. I mean, it was, I'll never forget. Cause Buckhead at the time was, was like a bunch of little, you know, beer bars, whatever, college kids walking around is what Buckhead wasn't. We were the only big, nice nightclub. Yep.

And I'll never forget, we were open on Sundays with Jermaine's thing and all these other bar owners came in and they were just watching that Moet fly over, watching that $16 Hennessy. And this is years ago, watching that $16 Hennessy fly around. They just, their jaws were just dropping. And then like two weeks later, half the bars in Buckhead were hip hop.

they're all doing it yeah they're all trying to get trying to get a piece of that business yeah because dude they spend so they just it was such a great crowd see atlanta could support it though where there's actually staying power in chicago when a club would flip to that um they would only maybe do it on sundays if they did it at all and then ones that went full that way it means the last legs only because like chicago doesn't have like they'd have that but

there's not enough, like you'd mix in the bad elements with it too often. And unfortunately they'd just go away. Well, that was the problem. It was never, it was never, it was never the crowd inside the club. It was the crowd outside the club. Yeah. That's what we always had. It's the same shit. And I think that's with any, the

people outside of the ones of the issues. Yeah. Well, dude, we were doing the same shit, bro. We were like, this is the exact same era, dude. I mean, there was a club in Chicago called dragon room back then that I would do the Friday and Saturday parties at. And then I'd see flyers for the Sunday night would be the night that they would do that shit. And Kanye West was throwing the fucking parties back then.

but he wasn't Kanye West like we know now. It was just some guy named Kanye West. No Kardashians with him at that point. I fucking could have fucking made buddies with him. Everybody just stuck around and came to an event on a Sunday, but anyway. So when you first started, it was Star 69 Promotions?

It's star 69 events. Events. How are you getting the word? I mean, were you, were you doing, were you doing the standard university thing where you go to the pools at the apartment complexes? We knew the girls were just hammered out pretty much. And I had flyers. I was dating a pretty cute girl at DePaul university, which is another school in the city. I had her tell everyone on DePaul's campus. I had the whole football. Introducing Instagram teen accounts, automatic protections for teens with built-in limits for who can contact them and the content they can see.

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Game going. The football team was cool. It was at Northwestern, not at Notre Dame. It was when I was 21. And had all the frats and sororities. And we were good at football back then. So people kind of just like followed our lead. And it was cool. And dude, what was cool back then is no one hesitated by paying a cover charge. $10. It didn't matter if you're the hottest chick on the planet. Yeah. No problems. No questions asked. You can't get away with that shit now. No one's going to pay cover anymore because everyone's VIP. Well, dude. Well, my thing is, like I know, I think bottle service is on its way out.

dude bro it's ruined the game dude like dude i was at i don't even go to clubs anymore i was at uh but a few weeks back i won a bunch of money we ended up at hakla san inside mgm and we had a blast dude but i get that bill and i was like what would we spend that night three grand

Yeah, it was like 2,800. Dude, we had two fucking bottles. We're like, what the hell? I don't have these two bottles, $2,800. This is where I knew it's gone too far. So Friday night after I left you, I said I had to go to dinner. And that dinner was at a place in Costa Mesa. No, I'm sorry, Anaheim, called The Ranch. Okay. This is the wildest place. This is wild. Yeah. It's a straight up...

eight-story office building okay the bottom floor and obviously the guy that owns the building built it out this way because the bottom floor is is doesn't look like a club in an office building it had like 30 foot ceilings it was built out this way but it has a really good restaurant okay and then there's a straight like honky-tonk bar next to it okay not really my scene but whatever we were with these people they're like oh let's go to the bar blah blah we walk into this place it's dead there's nobody there it's like seven it's like eight o'clock i just had to get done eating yeah

And every table, like when you walk in there, like if you want a table, it's $150 minimum. I'm like in here for this? Right. Like what are you doing? Like what are you doing? Like it's just gotten out of control. But the thing about Vegas is. $150 minimum is probably fucking four drinks there. No, the drinks were super cheap actually. Oh really? But the stupid thing about Vegas is as soon as, like I remember that the Palms had just flipped over that new nightclub when they were doing the big remodel. It's right about the same time the dispensaries opened.

Okay. And they were paying fucking whoever it was a million dollars a night to spend there. And then they opened chaos. Chaos. Exactly. And they're like, and the guys that I knew that were running that place were like, we're screwed. I'm like, why? They're like, nobody's drinking. They're all coming here with edibles. Yeah. Well, that was a convenient excuse for them. Dude, that place was that, I don't know, whatever. What are the last seven months when they pulled plug on it? If that, well, they pulled plug on everything because of the side deals that were happening. Is that right? Oh, bro.

So the guy, I think I'm pretty sure the guy that was the entertainment director is still on the lam. Is that right? Because, dude, he was giving these guys like these million dollar deals and they were breaking them off like 250 out the back door. Oh, my God. It was like a straight embezzlement game. Well, it fucked up, dude, because I knew a guy that actually from Schaumburg that...

it's been in the nightclub industry out here for a minute. And he was at Encore Beach Club, left Encore Beach Club and Excess for that job over there. And then it unfolded how it did. And then, you know, and he had with Encore for like 10 years prior, pretty high up there. You know what I mean? That's fucked up. And then let that go. Yeah. All right. So,

you finally graduate. Well, real quick back to this one thing. What was, what was the decision to move from, from Notre Dame to Northwestern? What was the decision? A little off the field altercation with another teammate on the team. I punched a guy in the nose and you would think like, and, but Notre Dame is a Catholic institution. They put academics first and academic integrity first. And I broke the rule. The school shouldn't even have known about it. The problem is,

Lou Holtz, the head coach at the time, had just got fired. A coach named Bob Davey had just taken over. And we're going into spring ball. Me and this kid get into a fight with each other. And it wasn't during practice. It was off campus at like 4 in the morning. Stupid. It was dumb. We're friends, by the way. Stupid. Well, the kid's dad... So Bob Davey doesn't kick me off the team, doesn't really do anything about it. Okay, dumbasses, don't do this shit. Well...

Lou Holtz would have kicked me out of spring ball, maybe really punished me or something. Bob Davey doesn't do shit. Well, I thought this was okay. That's kind of cool. Yeah, moving on. I'm the starting tight end. Bob Davey. Yeah, fuck yeah. That's cool, man.

But it ended up being the worst because the kid's dad now gets pissed about it, that I didn't get in any fucking trouble, calls the school directly, makes sure the administration knows about it. And the administration is very specific. It's called Notre Dame Duloc. It's this rule book they got. And every student gets it on campus. And it's very clear. You assault another student and you break a bone in their body.

One of two things happen. You're either expelled or you're suspended. So they really had no fricking choice. Now what's messed up about it. And I got ended up getting suspended the lesser of two, two things. Um, and what's, what's funny about it is then that kid ends up getting picked on and run off the damn team. So we ended up, it's ended up being a lose, lose Notre Dame's worse off because they never started. They're starting tight ends gone. Um,

I had to transfer and that kid's not even playing football anymore because this whole dad did this shit. It's truly a lose, lose, lose situation. But you know, you're 19 and you think you know everything and no, no, exactly. Well, but well, the thing is I never should have left. Bob Davey said to me, okay, don't leave here. Like you're going to be telling this fucking story when you're in your forties, if you leave here and here I am telling it.

Two points, Bob Davies. Exactly. Good job, coach. But I will tell you this, though, John. One of the things Bob Davies was wrong about is that he was implying that I'd be embarrassed to tell this story. And I got to tell you, man, as a 40-something-year-old, okay, I tell people I played football at Notre Dame. Notre Dame's a great academic institution. But the football is so popular there, it overrides everyone's perception. So I played football at Notre Dame.

They say, oh, shit, you must have been a good football player. I go tell people right now I played football at Northwestern. They only hear Northwestern in the academics, even though Northwestern's good at football, too. I think you must be pretty smart. You must be pretty smart, which would you rather be as a 40-something? Smart. Yeah, exactly. So I kind of got the best of both worlds on that. And, you know, due to Facebook and social media kind of emerging, you know, about –

Five or six years after I was out of college, got to reconnect with everybody. Well, I was going to say, you also probably got the best of both worlds because you got all the connects that you got from Notre Dame, which I'm sure is still in the Rolodex. Yep. And then, you know, you got to graduate from Northwestern knowing that you were probably going to, you wanted to move back to Chicago. Yeah. Yeah. And Notre Dame is really close to Chicago as well, though. But so there's, they're both are pretty tight there, but, but yeah, that's exactly what happened. And, you know, I, the, the, the,

I always look at this here. This is the intangible, okay? If I would have stayed at Notre Dame, all right, the reason I didn't play in the NFL is because I got hurt senior year because I had to play fullback, and that never would have happened at Notre Dame, and I ended up hurting my back, and I probably would have played in the NFL.

But if I would have played in the NFL and stayed at Notre Dame, you're getting your ass kissed at Notre Dame. When you transfer from Notre Dame to Northwestern, even though Northwestern had just won the Big Ten back-to-back years, the stadium's still half full. People aren't freaking fans of Northwestern football. Northwestern had just beaten Notre Dame, but no one cares. NBC's not giving them their own channel. Exactly, brother. And so you felt that

difference when you're transferred and it's a little bit humbling you know what i mean and um and plus they're in chicago so it's like the chicago bars and stuff aren't catering to them like the south bend bars were catering to notre dame there's no competition in south bend there's all the competitions exactly so so it's a little bit humbling so so my theory is if i would have stayed at notre dame i would have been my got my ass kissed for four years by everybody as a notre dame football player you then hopefully played in the nfl for a couple years

And now I'm 26, 27. It's not like I was going to be, you know, Peyton Manning or something. And now I'm done at 27. Okay, what are you going to do now? You just got your ass kissed for the last eight years of your damn life. You're going to go get a job as some lower level salesperson and work your way up? Because that's exactly what I did when I left Northwestern. And I generated all my energy that I had for football into sales.

and knew I was on the bottom. - You know, it's so interesting, 'cause at the event we were just at, when Eric Red was up there talking, he goes, "Dude, my advice to anybody getting out of any league, "the very first thing you need is a fucking therapist." Because however old you were when you got good, that is mentally how old you are today, regardless of how long you played. - Good point. - That's what he said. - That's a really good point. - I was like, "Whoa, man, that's wild."

And I almost think, and I thought to myself, the NFL, instead of the rookie symposium, they almost need the, okay, you're going out of the league symposium. Let's try to help you now. Well, some of the people in that room we were in, man, I mean, look at those guys that were in there. Ron, our test was in there. These guys made a hundred million fucking dollars. So it's like, you know, some of those guys, it doesn't fucking matter.

You know what I mean? But, but, but the situation I would have been minimum salary in the NFL back then was 225 grand, dude. I was making that three years after college work, selling insurance without, without, without getting concussions every day. So you got, you got the corporate job selling insurance, right? What kind of PNC? What was this? I did employee benefits, employee benefits. Okay, cool. What made you great? Yeah. What made you great?

dude i think the competitive nature that i had and it's it's like the chicken or the egg man like like literally dude it's december of my senior year in college and i found out that i'm hurt and can't keep playing uh football that my whole plan was play football so now i'm watching my friends on tv going to the colts and the bears oh dude i want to talk about that in detail okay you get hurt you know you're not playing was there a depression time there like how long time

Tell me about that. So what happened is during the course of my senior year, again, our starting fullback got hurt and me and the other tight end were both pretty good. And,

And we started playing this double tight offense, but they decided that I'm going to also play fullback because we didn't have another fullback. So our double tight offense became also our regular offense. And I was a better blocker than the other tight end. So they put me a fullback in there and I'd run ISO plays. If you don't know what an ISO play is, the fullbacks running three yards this way, linebackers three yards on the other side of the line, six yards apart. You just run in each other as fast as you can.

And I'm six foot five. In football, leverage wins. These linebackers in the Big Ten, for the most part, are between 5'11 and 6'2. And they've been playing this since they were eight years old. I'm six foot five playing it for the last month. They get under your pads and take you backwards. Or straight up either. Well, and I'm a big boy, so I'm able to do it. But to get lower than them, eventually I started dropping my head, which is a huge no-no in football. You never hit someone off the top of your head.

So throughout the course of the year, I start getting these stingers down my arm, which is typical, but I started getting them in my legs too. So I'd hit someone and my legs would vibrate after the play. I don't say anything about it because I know you get stingers in the arms and that's a normal thing. Let's move on.

Well, at the end of my senior year, I get invited to play in what's called the Blue-Gray All-Star Game. It's Christmas Day in Mobile, Alabama. They don't do that anymore. No, I went away. It's a little bowl now. What's it called? It's a little bowl now. So it was in Mobile, Alabama. And at that point, I knew I was getting drafted. Probably middle rounds. Like, hoping for the fourth round, maybe fifth or sixth. Again, I was not going to be some kind of, you know, I wasn't going to be like Mark Pavaro or Ron Gronkowski. But I was going to be good enough to play in the NFL. Yeah. Okay.

And they made you get a physical for that game. I had never told anyone about this. They asked me, okay, well, in general. Anything bother you? Well, I've been getting this weird. I'm blind. Does that count? Exactly. Jesus. So I go, when you touch me here, if you poked my shoulder here, I'd feel it in my fucking ankle.

And they go, well, that's not normal. That's not good, buddy. So the guy goes, so right now you're feeling me. He goes, close your eyes. He goes, where do you feel that? And anyway, long story short, they end up saying you're going to be fine. You did a lot. You have a big contusion to your spinal cord. It's weakening. It's eventually going to snap. No one's going to take you. We wouldn't recommend ever playing again anyway. So the decision was easy. Yeah.

um i didn't i didn't get depressed because i was so beat up at that point bro as a fifth year senior i was like all right let's move on to other things it was a sad day but but

Let's move on. Just reorganized all that energy into working in corporate America, interviewed with every company coming on the campus at Northwestern, ended up picking this job in insurance sales. Which company? It was called Great West Life and Annuity. They're owned now by Cigna. But back then they weren't, they were their own. And it was great, man, because it was a sales organization, bro. They actually taught you professional sales skills. Like we had to read fucking books and role play in front of each other and a lot

of people, a lot of organizations don't bother to teach these kids that anymore. And I don't blame them for not because we're going to teach you how to fucking sell. Then you're going to go work for someone else three years later. Why would we invest that money? I'll go take the 27 year olds that someone else taught. You know what I mean? So I really can't blame them. Um, but I was blessed to have done it, dude. And, uh,

worked there for a couple of years. Then I switched to a company called Arthur J. Gallagher. And when I got to Gallagher, I realized pretty quickly all these 40 and 50 year olds were sitting on their books of business, just enjoying life. They never learned how to sell. They're out, you know how they're selling saying we're Gallagher, come work with us. They didn't have that drive. So when I got that job at Gallagher, it was a company I had really looked up to and they're very well respected. And then I realized that I'm,

Better than a lot of people working there. And I'm like, well, the fuck am I working here, dude? And I transitioned and became my own boss and competed in the middle market. So you opened a broker. Correct. Doing still employee benefits, the same thing? And just started brokering independent. So I came out of my house. I worked out of my house. Got me a PO box at the UPS store. Picked number 300. So I could say I'm in suite 300. So clients would think I have the whole third floor of some office building. Right.

had an 800 number. And if you called the 800 number to find me, you would have had to press the first five letters of my last name. Cause we're such a big organization. Yeah. I love that though. Didn't name it John Sarasani insurance. Like a lot of assholes do in my industry. I named it Northwest comprehensive just to had a ring to it. And,

you know, I remember a prospective client I called on once telling me that they worked with us back in the nineties. I'm like, Oh yeah, exactly. We're at that. That's what people think. You got to sit down for a minute. Cause what you just dropped, there was so much value in what you just said. So first of all,

appear bigger than you are. Like do whatever you can. And right now, dude, this is such a weird time in real estate, right? Because we are officially eight days away from commissions getting dropped in the MLS, which means if you're a buyer's agent, you're going to have to build your value on a presentation to get that thing signed.

Luckily, that is the process we've been teaching here for 14 fucking years. So I'm not worried about it that much. But there's a lot of agents freaking out because they don't have a period to build value. And I taught a class not too long ago in an organization. I was talking about...

you need to learn how to build value. And part of that is realized and part of that is perception. So if you are a one-man band or look like a one-man band, you do not have a lot of perceived value. So you need to do whatever you can to create perceived value. Build a team of people. If you've got somebody that...

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PNC Bank, National Association, member FDIC. Today, we'll be exploring the sounds of comfort. Listen closely. That's the sound of you getting a complimentary hand massage at the nail salon. And that's the sound of your favorite bedroom fan still spinning after five years. Now listen to the sound of a cold, creamy Starbucks mocha frappuccino drink. Ffff!

With deliciously satisfying flavors, Starbucks Frappuccino drinks are comfort in a bottle. Does something for you, put them in your marketing materials. But ask everybody that is involved with your business if you can put them in your marketing materials to make you look bigger than you were. Have a dial by number. Whatever you can do to make yourself look bigger. I think that's incredibly valuable. Number two, the thing you said that I loved is...

People are so obsessed with their own names. - Yep.

businesses are built to be sold. And if you build it with your own name, it makes it harder for you to get away from it. - True that. - I don't have one business that is my name, right? Every brand that I build is built to be sold or handed off somewhere else. - Yep, and I wasn't even thinking of it from that standpoint, to be honest with you, 'cause I've heard other people say that you're building it to sell, no one's gonna buy you if it's your name. I wasn't even thinking about that, which is accurate.

I was thinking of more for Strat note, but two things, the client. Okay. The client, I don't want to draw attention. I'm competing with Gallagher and a on billion dollar organizations. I don't want to do anything that draws attention. How small we are. Okay. I name it. Sir, Sonny insurance. Okay.

how long you been in business for buddy? How many employees do you have? How many offices do you have? All shit. I don't want to talk about as a new company. Northwestern mutual. What was it? Northwest comprehensive. Nobody's asking those. Exactly. Oh, definitely. And especially the business to business sales environment. Um,

there's more than one decision maker. Okay. So, so for me, I was always calling the human resources director and the CFO. Okay. Well, there was people above them, including the board of trustees at these universities, as well as the president. I sold the colleges. Okay. I had a niche doing that. All right. I tell them, okay, they go tell us their new broker or consultant is John Sarasani, the president of Sarasani insurances, either.

even though i built rapport with that hr director yeah now i need that person to go stick up why aren't you guys working with marsh or aeon you know these are hub those are my competitors dude billion dollar organizations i'm at my freaking kitchen table you know what i'm saying so i didn't even tell people i own the place i had like seriously they fucking that's john working there they're gonna polish sales guy holy shit they're pretty good you know but i wasn't lying because i believed it and when it would cut when shit would come down where they'd

get into that shit, it was okay. So I said, "Hey guys, I worked at Gaylord. "I worked at one of those organizations. "I'm doing this and this is why we're doing it this way "and this is why it's better." A lot of people make the mistake of just cutting their fees, which I'm sure you've talked to your agents about. You start to cut your fees,

And that's your fucking value proposition. I got news for you. You don't have a value proposition. Yeah. If that's it. You have an unvalued proposition. Brother, I just fucking canceled my lawn treatment service at my house about seven months ago because they fucked something up. And there are other people calling me now to try to get the accounts back. And they're defaulting to beating the prices of...

of who I'm working with. You're not listening. That's not why I fired you. Drop it to zero. You know what I mean? You're still going to do a crappy job. Exactly. They can't see it. You know what I mean? And that's the people's default. And some industries are so commoditized, including real estate, probably that, that you have to fight to uncommoditize it. You know, with me, like how I treat commissions, right? Like how my group does it. We take listings.

like, yeah, you really have two choices of what you can do in real estate or forever. You got this guy over here that says, I've been doing this forever. I charge X percent, whatever it is, it's a high percent. Then you got this person over here that says like, Oh, I can do the same job. And because the internet, blah, blah, I'll do it for cheap. I'll do it for almost nothing. Percent right over here.

Well, what we've managed to do pretty successfully is position ourselves somewhere in the middle of that. And what we do is we build an incredible amount of value on the front end. But I tell a story because when Blackstone and Goldman Sachs bought their portfolios here in Vegas, I bought a large portion of their portfolios for them. And it was kind of cool working for a big fund like that because they treated us

essentially in a certain ways like fund managers, which is the better that we did, they would pay us bonuses. If I can get them better equity positions on harder negotiations, then I would get bonus on that, which I love. So it wasn't just about the commissions. So I kind of brought this pay for performance idea into real estate with the way we list houses. I'm like, look, I'm not doing it for cheap and I fully expect you to pay me the max amount, but here's the deal. If I sell your house from this point to that point, you're going to pay me this.

If for some reason your neighbor gets up, drinks a fifth of Jack Daniels and gives his house away and fucks the comps up and it drops us down to here, well, then you're going to pay me this. And then let's say there's a Black Swan event and the wheels fall off the real estate market and it's no control of mine, but we sell it down here, then you're going to pay me this. But it's a hedge against them because they're paying for the job we...

actually do. And that's in your listing contract with a client? 100%. I've never heard that before. That's why it works. Because you've never fucking heard it before. And the reason you've never heard it is because most people don't have the balls to do that. Because...

I still got to spend max amount on all of his listings because I'm chasing that top number. And if I don't spend them, if I don't spend the max amount to do a perfect job, we're not going to get max. So what's standard in Vegas? Three, 3%. No such thing as standardized commission. That's what just got a suit. And I just, I just got out of that national. I was named in that lawsuit. So yeah. Yeah. What do most people do? Three and three or two and a half, two and a half in Vegas. Yeah.

There's no set thing as a set amount. Okay. You see a lot of 3%. You see a lot of- On both sides? On both sides. You see a lot of that. Okay. So what you- We have in the past. Gotcha. So I see why you're answering that way. So in Chicago, it's two and a half and two and a half. You don't really see three and three. And I've been told, I think, who cares? But so in your example, though, what you just gave-

What is, where does that 3% fall in the benchmark? Like what I would say is this, right? Like I would say. So I expect to sell my house for 800 grand. I can tell you how I do it. Yeah. I do it. I do it three to two, two to one.

Or I do three, two, one. And three is a higher number? Three is the highest. So you win-win on that. No, no, no. So here's the deal. We're going to establish, if anything, if they want to pay the buyer's agent. We're going to establish that separate. I'm talking about just listing side commission. Gotcha. So if I smash it, you're paying me 3%. Okay. If something bad happens- And where does that number come where you define smashing it?

break a record put down to probably where i think it is a great deal for the highest the highest comp or above the highest comp or above or they're really happy okay right and then below that is two percent is pretty much normally below that to where i think that you know they would be struggling to probably accept the deal and then one percent is okay is the bottom of that so it's not like 90 of comp it's more just kind of no it is straight but if you look at this way right like look at this way let's say that you're selling a four million dollar house

and you've listed it at hype. I'm just again, throwing the number out there at 3%, right? And the agent calls you and says, Hey man, I got an offer for 3.8. It's the best we're going to get. You need to take it. How much did you just lose? So what was your benchmark? 4 million, 4 million. I'm telling you, I got three eights. The best I got. You're losing 200 grand, right? Who? Right. How much is the agent losing?

They're losing 3% of $200,000, which is $6,000. So they're giving up $6,000 to still make $114,000. Is that an easy phone call to make? Right. I'll make that call right now. Here's your $6,000, I can still make $114,000? Fuck you, that's an easy call to make. But with me, in that same scenario, let's say it drops it now from $3,000 to $1,000. I'm giving up $80,000 to now make $40,000.

Well, so 3%, so four to 3.8. So let's say you went from three to two. Yeah, you would just lose 40 grand right there. Right, but it's still, but it's a lot different than the set percentages, which are taking a portion of loss. No, it's a huge difference. So it's incenting you guys to work harder. It incentivizes us to work harder and it protects our client from market variances and blackout events. Have you ever, what?

what about if it could have hurt the client the other way where you guys, so you walk away from the deal because of that? No, they never do. No, no, no. They don't know. I know because I listen, we're always negotiating the best interest for our client. But again, if the house doesn't sell at all, we make zero. So we still do. That is such a smart thing, man. Yeah. I'm surprised. That's not like everywhere. I would have thought like maybe there was a law against it or something. I'm hoping it doesn't go everywhere. Yeah.

because it serves us well yeah but people even if it does go over dude you could have every realtor in the country listening to this right now they're gonna be too big of pussies to actually implement that well i mean you know and they're not going to tell their brokers the leader of the broker is not going to go tell their agents hey this is how we're doing it now they're gonna do it my wife says all the time she goes you know how can you just you know get in front of these rooms there's 2 000 people and you just give them everything yeah i'm like maybe the 2 000 people there's two people in the room that'll actually actually do it yeah i can

It doesn't matter because everybody likes to hear a good idea, but nobody wants to actually do the work. Let me ask you, do you know how to get abs? Get abs? Yeah. So do I. I don't fucking have them because I don't want to do the work, right? I don't want to do the work to get the abs. I know how to do that. All right. Well, back to you. So we're kicking ass selling insurance. I can keep interviewing you if you want. No, that's what we're doing. But you're kicking ass selling insurance. That's obviously going to amazing well your own company. How long from...

So obviously you were quick, because insurance is a get-rich-slow business normally. It's not a get-rich-fast business. So my biggest thing was when I left, everyone's telling you, you ain't going to work, it ain't going to happen for you, buddy. And I'm just doing the math. I'm making $140,000 a year working at Gallagher. Each of these clients are worth $40,000 or $50,000. So the first reaction is...

Yeah, but you ain't going to get those kinds of clients on your own. You're going to have to go downstream, deal with shitty fucking accounts, get your feet wet. My feet are already wet, man. I already got what I call my paid training working here right now, pal. Okay? So you want to go fucking sell barbershops that have two employees? Go right ahead. I ain't. We're staying in the middle fucking market with 400 and 500 level accounts.

So if I'm going to do that, I only need a few accounts to break even from what I was making at Gallagher. And that was my damn goal. All right. Well, how am I going to do that? I started knocking on doors, handing out flyers, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, wait a minute. What am I really fucking good at? I'm good at colleges and universities. That's what I worked on at Gallagher. But I worked on big ones. We'd go after the big like equivalent out here with like a UNLV or a California Irvine or something like that. That's who Gallagher was right in. Yeah.

But these smaller private colleges, dude, well, why don't we call on them? Well, they only have a few hundred employees. They're just little clients. Okay, but in our sales meeting, the guy that wrote a 300-employee manufacturing company is getting high fives from everybody for writing a 300-employee account, but we don't want the 300-employee private college. Why? Okay?

Now, when I was still at Gallagher, I went and told them this. This is fucking stupid. I could go kill it with all these private colleges. They go, no, John, thanks, but no thanks. Keep going after the big dogs because they knew I was a big sales rep or good sales rep. They knew that's where the money's at. But I'm like-

fuck this they're overlooking something here big time and it's not my job as a 27 year old to teach the 50 year olds what they're fucking doing wrong right so i said okay you know what i'm gonna go out on my own and do this so i developed this niche selling to small private universities hit up all the ones in illinois first and then started expanding expanding and um nine and a half years later before i sold the company i was the largest provider of employee benefits for colleges and universities in the in the small private sector market that's awesome yeah so

Were you looking to exit or did somebody just come knocking on the door and walk me? I never would have. And that's why, that's why when you said the thing about companies being built to sell and not name it after yourself, that was a foreign concept to me. You were like, I'm going to die. Well, I thought I'd hand off my kids or something because I,

The thing is, I looked at selling when I first got in. I went to a mergers and acquisitions meeting for insurance. And the rule of thumb at these mergers and acquisition meetings was two times, one and a half to two times gross revenue of your organization is what they'd buy you for. That's multiple, yeah. Yeah. Now, here's the damn thing. This is 06-ish when I went to that meeting, okay? 2006. Well, everyone's margins in the industry are 17% to 25%.

So you sell it for one and a half to two times gross and you have a 17 to 25% margin. That's a decent payday for that, for that owner. Okay. Well, Dick had here fucking didn't have 17% margins. I had an 80% profit margin because you didn't have an office. Well, that was part. Now, by that point later, I had an office, but the real, the real reason was I had this niche with colleges where,

The reason the margins are so low for everyone else in the industry is because just like what you guys have to do, you have to give your agents a huge percentage of the commissions that they bring in. So most brokerage firms grow in insurance by hiring agents underneath and all the good agents are going to demand a bigger piece of it. High contract. Exactly. So I avoided all that because I have this niche with colleges. So I just had support people going to trade shows and like supporting me as I grew this thing. So we didn't... So you were the only broker, right?

I had high level people in the six figures that I'd hire, like senior account executives, that kind of shit. But dude, we should have had 35 employees and we had like six.

guy like for that revenue you know something i heard over on friday that stuck in my head i don't remember if you were standing we were talking about this other but somebody made the comment i think it might have been josh that said um so i'm at a company and he said yeah he goes you know they hired b minus talent they pay him c plus wages so i can't keep anybody yeah that makes sense how so when you were looking to grow like talk to me about your your talent acquisition talking about how you found people

Well, so I, you know, you, you, you swing and miss a couple of times. Right. So, so at first I was like, well, I should be hiring sales people. You know what I mean? But then I'm thinking to myself, if it works out, what's going to keep them here, what's going to keep me there to do it. Same thing to me that I just did with Gallagher. And it's like, I'm trained, like what we're talking about in the beginning, you're training a person to leave. Um, so I just do it honestly, bro. I had people from outside of the industry come in that this was their first job in insurance. Um,

I'd hire a few like younger girls that were just kind of like administrative people. It was, it wasn't until about five years in where I was making a couple million dollars, like personally a year that I started bringing in actual talent. So, but you, so, so you just said something I love too, which is that I mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make, which is they look for people with industry specific experience instead of task specific experience. Like here's the deal. If,

if there's somebody in your industry that's available, they're available for a fucking reason. Cause they're probably not very good, but you can teach a smart person how to do anything. Like that was a real, that was a revelation for me. Like stop trying to hire people that do this already. Hire the smartest people you can find. Teach them how to do it. That's right, man. And we had, we had a good thing going, man. I had,

dude there was like this this time i just never forget it was like 2013 2014 and it was like there's five of us in our office dude and like a few other people were like my a couple of us were our age and then with these younger girls that were like 25 and we'd have like old school rap fridays versus new age rap and like argue like like like that and it was just a fun fun time man and um i ended up uh the only reason i sold a brother

was because then private equity entered the insurance space. So to loop in what we were talking about, your original question was that two times gross revenue model would never make sense for a guy with an 80% profit margin. I'll make that in a year and a half or two and a half years, whatever the math is. But then private equity now enters the space. They're buying companies. I can't be super specific, but let's just call it 10 times multiple of EBITDA. Exactly. Exactly.

Now, I don't know why everyone else in the industry

While we're in the darkest months of the year, your headlights are working overtime and dimming overtime and can lose up to 50 feet of visibility before burnout. That's roughly the length of a tractor trailer. Before they burn out, switch to easy-to-install Sylvania Silver Star Ultra headlights, designed to improve your driving visibility by directing brighter light where needed. If you're wanting better visibility, look to Sylvania, the experts in lighting with 100-plus years of expertise.

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Whether you're scouring business financial sites or listening to economics podcasts like this one, you'll find there's no secret to successfully managing your company's finances for the future. You just need PNC Corporate and Institutional Banking, whose team of dedicated relationship managers bring 160 years of experience, advice, and an array of tools and tech to scale to any size business. PNC Bank. Brilliantly boring since 1865.

PNC Bank, National Association, member FDIC. Today, we'll be exploring the sounds of comfort. Listen closely. That's the sound of you getting a complimentary hand massage at the nail salon. And that's the sound of your favorite bedroom fan still spinning after five years. Now listen to the sound of a cold, creamy Starbucks mocha frappuccino drink.

With deliciously satisfying flavors, Starbucks Frappuccino drinks are comfort in a bottle. Isn't going nuts right now. Why am I not hearing about this? Why isn't everyone going nuts? Well, it's because they're not going nuts because they're all at 20% margins. 20% margin on a two times gross purchase is the same as 10 times EBITDA if you have a 20% margin. Follow me on that if you do the math on that. Yeah, dude.

So for everyone else, this is not big news. For my fucking ass, this was huge news. You're the hot girl in the bar, my friend. Exactly. It's closing time and who's buying me a drink? Brother, so I get a phone call from this company. I'm shutting it down. I'm not even trying to sell the damn company.

I agree to this damn meeting. The only reason I agree to this meeting is the guy called me like three fucking times and he says to me, hey, bro, you got to eat sometime. Let me fucking buy you dinner. And I used that same fricking closing line to get meetings with prospective clients. And the guy had called three times. I go, all right, if we go to Mastro's and I could get you to fucking rib eye. What are we doing? So we go there. He explains to me what I just explained on the purchases. And I think the guy's got two heads. There's no fucking way they're buying me for this much money. This is wrong. Well, sure enough, it ended up happening that way.

I end up then taking 35% of the deal in stock because I had to work there for five years. The stock ends up having two different liquidation events, which means the transfer of one private equity firm to another twice during the five years I worked there. One of them happened two months after I closed. When each of those events happened, the stock price tripled. So my 35% equity that I took in their stock April 30th of 2015 tripled.

tripled July 8th of 2015. Everyone's high-fiving each other, pulling all their fucking money out. They had been waiting seven years for this to happen. I just waited two months. Well, I'm not taking any of the money out because I would have to pay short-term capital gains taxes on it. And I still got to work here for five years, so I want to have a little bit of excitement. Let it ride. Yeah, so I left it all in. Everyone told me I was crazy again. Now remember, 10 years earlier, dude, I was being called a fool twice.

for leaving my $140,000 as area vice president. Yay. You know what I mean? And now here I am, all this shit's happening for me. All right. Life changed. Okay. So that money all stays in. We're right at the end of my employment contract at this point, story for another day, but everything's going sideways in the organization with, for me personally, I'm like, dude, I gotta get the fuck out here. Like it's too many egos. We grew too fast. And most people weren't in a position that I was in financially and,

and they were part of other acquisitions, but they had lower margins. They had five partners. They didn't have the shit I had and people are starting to realize it because they're, they're in there saying, well, our shit doesn't stink. We have 50 employees. Yeah, dude, but you're going to be working until you're 70 because you also had six partners and,

That pie is going to get chopped up pretty good. People start to fucking realize that they see my condo at the Trump Tower. They start to just realize it, and now there becomes animosity. Well, John, you got all rich from this. You should be on this committee. You should do that. I'm like, you know what? Finally, the rubber hit the road. We're going to get the fuck out of here. Well, right as I'm literally walking out the door, within two weeks, all right? They announced that the fucking private equity firm...

switched to another one again, another liquidation event. That stock that I left in there fully tripled. Again. So if you try to do the math at this point. So you're 10X times 3X, 30X times that is now 90X. Brother. On EBITDA from five years prior. Oh, yeah. If you look at it that way, I wasn't even looking at that. Yeah. Quick math, buddy. Yeah. Well, because I looked at it as like,

That 35%... Well, no, because that would have been 100% of that. So the 35% of the stock, I'd look at it as... You know what I mean? So the 35% of the stock turned into 315% of the whole deal. And by the way, if that stock did nothing...

this brother was planning on retiring for the rest of his life yeah and that stock just you know did that so i had to talk about leaving chips on the table at the right time brother it was a great experience man and sometimes ignorance is bliss because everyone told me i'm a fucking idiot let me ask you let me ask you this did you did you negotiate your own acquisition that's

That's what I was going to say. So ignorance is bliss, right? So everyone else is using investment bankers. I never shopped it around because I thought these guys were making a mistake when I went and had that meeting at Mastro's. I'm like, dude, if they really pay me, I suppose they're fucking morons. So my research later said, dude, everyone would have paid you, you fucking idiot. And that's why you did a five-year workout, too. I guess the five-year part, well, maybe. But it worked out. It's such a relationship business there, though, bro. I think the five years is kind of standard, actually, for that.

but there's other things that I probably could have gotten better on for sure. But,

how the stock's going to perform isn't one of the negotiable issues. You know what I mean? I can't see myself of having a better deal than that part of it. You know what I mean? And who knows, maybe things wouldn't have went up perfectly and I would have got bought by Aon or something. Yeah. Or, but maybe I'm still working there right now because they have me on some senior executive level. And I think this is fucking awesome. Not knowing this little Instagram world and podcast world ever would have existed. I never would have fucking known.

You know what I mean? What am I doing now? Hanging out with fucking celebrities in Newport Beach meeting guys like you. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? But I would have been over there making a million dollars a year thinking I'm awesome.

Well, let's talk about that. So you exited the company and you just get in. I know you get into a lot of investment with a lot of different things. I mean, you've got your hands on all kinds of stuff now. One of the things that I happened to see that I thought was really interesting that I want to talk to you about was you have an affiliate link on one of your pages for a bunch of home services businesses. I wanted to talk about that. Yeah. Because.

I mean, if you look at like, you know, Cody Sanchez and, you know, all these other folks that are really, the acquisition of home services business is getting so hot right now. So tell me about your affiliation with that. What are your thoughts on it? Let's talk about that. Yeah. So I haven't really done much to monetize my Instagram at all, really. And, you know, a lot of it's because the messaging is just so like, hey, I'm already rich. Yep.

You guys could be rich too. Let me follow this path. And I'm not selling anyone anything. So I've been really careful on shit I put out there. I got reached out to by a franchise broker that wanted to do this influencer deal with me. For those of the people that don't, if you've ever looked into franchises, the franchise fee is set.

So wherever that money is going of that franchise fee, it's the same fee. You don't get to negotiate that. You know what I mean? It's filed. So if you use a broker, a lot of times, like let's say you got ABC Vacuum Company over here as the franchise. Here's the broker and here's you. If you go directly to them and it's 50 grand franchise fee, it's 50 grand. You stop through this broker and the broker brought to you, it's still 50 grand.

This guy might, no, not plus. This guy might be making 20 or 30 grand off of that 50. Yeah, it's still 50 grand. These guys are cutting a deal with this guy to bring them business. So one of these guys right here, that's one of the larger ones in the country, asked me if I'd like to be part of that formula. And the only reason I'm doing it, dude, is because a lot of the other shit I put out there is so gambling related. I get a lot of people that'll message me, hey man, I want to be my own boss.

I don't really know where to start. Can you recommend anything? What can I do? Yeah. And for me, it was easy because I worked in an industry. It was paid training to then turn around and go do something in the exact same job. But not everybody has that luxury. You know, you might be working somewhere where it's just not feasible. Dude, I mean, I've got multiple friends, multiple friends that are getting ready to have exited or getting ready to exit their home services businesses for hundreds of millions of dollars. Hundreds. I mean, dude,

Hundreds of millions of dollars. So I love that space. You know, here we're completely vertically integrated with the financial side of the transaction. And one of my goals for next year is to get more involved with some of the more home services stuff so we can continue to facilitate our clients with that stuff. Because I love because that's business doesn't go away. Yeah.

It doesn't go away. I mean, yes, they can be hard to staff sometimes, but it's just, it's businesses of need that people need. Yeah. Yeah. Going away. Well, do it. And I mean, you're looking at it from a macro perspective, but even on a micro perspective, you know, you got people listening to this show right now. I got people that follow me on Instagram, uh,

that are like interested in this financial shit but they're not millionaires and don't necessarily have the means to become one right now oh here's a franchise i could buy into and start my own shop and it's a painting business i know how to fucking paint and then i could scale it open up a second location now i bring people underneath me they might not have the

business acumen to do that otherwise but now you're a franchisee where you have that training guiding you along I mean that's everything man you gotta start somewhere I tell people all the time I don't have the business acumen like bro read Tom Sawyer all you gotta do is figure out how to paint the fence and they get somebody else to paint it for you that's all you gotta do get in the middle of that transaction exactly dude and I'm not a big like you know

you know, I was, I was blessed, right. To get a job where I learned how to sell in an industry insurance that is an industry that, that has money. Um, but, but again, a lot of people aren't. And if you, if you're a,

a franchisee and you're with the right organization, you literally kind of have a bit, you're the owner, but you have a business part of that's holding your hand. Yeah. Just showing you what to do. Yeah. Got to do your research though, to make sure you like that organization. Well, let's talk about your brand, man. Let's talk about, let's talk about your brand, what it stands for. I know you wrote the book. Yep. Um, which, uh, which we didn't talk a whole lot about. Uh, but the general, you talk about it. Yeah, man. So I wrote a book called 2000% raise and it was really just a function, dude. Um,

off of me doing podcasts and people just asking me my background and my story is that I left corporate America to be my own boss. And, you know, I asked my job, my, my, my boss at Gallagher to take me from one 40 to one 80, which is, and he told me, Hey, we just don't do 30% raises. It's, you know, you'd be making more than people that have been here too long. And I'm like, okay, well, he's telling a 27 year old that he can't fucking make that, you know what I mean? Well, I'm bringing in more business.

Um, they've changed their ways since then I've been told, but, but back then they were of the model, high base salary, small bonus. We're a team. You're going to come work with us cause we're Arthur J Gallagher. And you know, I'm like, uh, okay. So I ended up quitting my job and ultimately I gave myself a 2000% raise, right? Like literally that one for take that one for his salary times up by 20. That's what I was making an annual income each year. And it's hard, you know what I mean? So that's the message. And, um,

my social media and my podcast is called that. And, or my social media is called John Sarasani, but it was supposed to just be to promote my book. The social media has become more popular than really. It's a great brand for that reason. That's a great, that's a great story around that. Let me ask you, we're going to finish up with this question, which is what I always ask because this is my biggest fear in life. And I got one in there. I got, I got him in there grinding right now in the other room. One of my biggest fears is as someone that has,

wealth, raising worthless kids because hard times make hard times make great men and easy times make weak men. And so tell me what you're doing with your kids to raise a

to raise people that aren't just don't expect things brother i'm gonna tell you right now i just got mad at my son about a damn week ago there's like a 20 bill like on his dresser in the open or something and i freaking took it and waited a few days to see if he noticed it was gone and he didn't and i want to like beat his ass dude i want to beat his ass bro um

You know, I think I'm doing the right thing with the kids, but, but what I, what I can't duplicate, unfortunately, or I haven't figured out how to do it yet is, is the stories like what I was telling you about getting my basketball shoes two weeks into the season. You know what I mean? I'm not going to do that for purposes of making a point to my kids. And, you know, I, I, I do worry that they're not going to have that same ship on their shoulder. Well, I think, I think,

what I try to do is manufactured adversity as much as I can. Okay. I mean, which I love sports for that. Yeah. Um, you know, my son just had to, had to retire from playing lacrosse because of, uh, some, some, some injuries that he has to his ankles. My daughter is, is fucking vicious cheerleader, right? She is all about it. She is just, she's all in it.

And in putting them in situations where as much as I can pushing them to the max of they're going to fail. Yeah. I like that is what I try to do. And I like that. I always know that, but I just never forget when I was like, Oh man, I'm screwing this up. Yeah. We were getting on an airplane. Uh, Hayden was eight years old, getting on an airplane, going somewhere. And it was like, it was like a fucking Southwest flight. Okay.

and he looks at me at eight years old and he goes did delta not have any flights bro you're eight like when i was eight years old to get an airplane it was like the wonderment of flight the in-flight entertainment is not to my liking i don't like their snacks what are you talking about dude so i just took my kids to maui um june and uh

because I was dating someone where I wasn't sure if I was going to bring her or not. And I thought I went and bought these tickets in fucking January. Okay. I thought I went and bought the fucking tickets. All right. And I bought everyone fucking first class. Well, because me and that girl were maybe going to break up. We ended up breaking up anyways. It's like fucking may. And I go to look at what flight I did, the book, the time. Cause I got to get the limo ready and all that shit.

I don't have any fucking things in my United Airlines app that show that I bought tickets. All right. So I have to go in now within the, we're leaving like two fucking weeks and buy fucking tickets to Maui from Chicago. All right. And, and,

I'm claustrophobic. I got to be in first class. But the idea was that all three of us were going to be in first class. Now, those tickets, those tickets, when I was going to get them was twenty two hundred dollars each for the three of us. That's fine. Each, you know, that's fine. It's a lot. But, you know, whatever. It's a long ass fucking flight. And they went up to fucking nine grand each, dude.

So I told the fucking kids, we ain't spending 27 grand on fucking flights. Now the sad part about it was the coach tickets were right around that 2200 still. I just screwed that up, brother. I just screwed that one up big time. Dude, we just got back from Europe and, uh, and you know, you want, you, I'm a travel hacker. Like I'm, I'm expert travel hackers. So we suit, we flew Emirates business class, uh, to Spain, uh,

I got that first class, our business class for 33,000 a seat, which is nothing. Okay. Plus like 150 bucks on the way back. We flew, uh, from, from L from London, uh, Heathrow to LAX British airways, first class for six,

77,000 miles a seat plus 200 bucks. Holy shit. So, but here's what I did. So here's what it did. Every hotel we stayed in was like five stars. I'm just, everything was paid for points. Right. But everywhere we went, right. I'm like, cause my wife's like, I'm like,

Babe, they're just old enough now. This is the wrong message. I just don't feel about this. So here's what I did, like literally to the point where they were so fucking annoyed with me. Everything we did, I told them how much it cost. Like you realize this seat would have been $9,000 if you bought it. Just so you, that's a car. It's a shitty car, but it's a car. And I'm like, so every little thing we did, I'm constantly talking about it.

Yeah. Well, your kids are in Vegas or Newport. They're here. They're here. Okay. Dude, I'm in, I'm in this suburb. It's called, it's called Barrington, Illinois. And it's, there's a lot of money there. And, uh, my son just turned 16. Now he got straight A's. So he gets a car at 16. My daughter did not get sick straight A's and she had to wait to get her car. Okay. But like, I got a lot, Alexis, I asked three 50 or 400 for whatever. It's, it was new. Um,

I, you can't find cars for like much less than 50 grand nowadays, but I'm thinking to myself, dude, where I grew up in Schaumburg, like the rich kid was getting a fucking five-year-old Mustang, bro. Yeah. You know, no, dude, I bought, I bought my son, my son, I bought him a 2017 Ford.

uh jeep wrangler it's a jeep right yep kid but but it's like but it's so funny because the dude that had it before has like smaller wheels on it like the hardcover case so it kind of looks like a ghetto g wagon but it was like dude i got like 20 grand it has like 50 000 miles on it i'm like this is a good enough car this is a great car yeah he paid for half of it so that was okay there you go and and there we go my daughter is already announcing you know a much different aspirations okay

dude my daughter's a hustler bro yeah she is uh she's a gangster she is and uh it's good like dude for example people like you know because i because i'm always stuffed up or whatever it's why are you stuffed up like i'm terribly allergic to cats yep like you have cats i go yeah we have two white persian cats i go you're allergic to cats and you have two white persian cats i go dude my daughter is really she makes really good powerpoints like when she wants something even as a little kid she would make a powerpoint and present it it'd be so compelling i'm like fuck you these cats but i love my daughter man what

am I going to close the deal? She's a closer dude. She is. She is a closer. Well, brother, how can they find you if they want to? I mean, obviously you've been kind of everywhere. What's the easiest way for them to find you connect with you? So it's at John Sarasani on Instagram, C E R A S A N I Instagram and tick tock and Instagram. I should have the blue check mark. Don't go to one of the imposter accounts. Tick tock.

look at the spelling as well. YouTube is at John Sarasani TV. You could go to just John Sarasani on YouTube, but you're going to see videos of my kids and shit. Go to John Sarasani TV for some good business acumen. Brother, I love it, man. You're welcome back anytime you want, my man. Awesome. Thanks, brother. So guys, there it is, man. John Sarasani live. And if you did, I hope you took a lot away from that, but if you didn't take this one thing away, you should have.

Don't ever let anybody in life tell you how much you're worth. We'll see you next week.

What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully, you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.

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