2024's Winning Strategies & Boss Moves With Ron 'Boss' Everline & Nicole Behnam 🤑 E53
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- What would you say to someone out there that's thinking about considering jumping into the personal training game? - Man, you know, social media is a powerful tool in itself, right? So I think if you're jumping into it, you have to have a true passion for helping people first and foremost. I don't want them to say this and man, I look like this and I...

Man, you better do your thing because people are going to talk no matter what. Good or bad. Good or bad. They're going to find something to say. So you better stay grounded in what you want and just go. Overanalysis creates paralysis, right? I think people overthink. It needs to be perfect. It needs to be perfect. I got to put out the perfect content. It needs to be this. And it needs to look like this. And it needs to look like this. And it's like, dog, just put out the content and just go. This is where money happens. Let me repeat that.

you can build an emotional attachment that leads to top of mind awareness.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays. We are here in the RV Motorhome. I'm here with the real Tarzan, the co-host with the most. So normally, I say he gets 200 million views a month, but as I mentioned to you in the podcast last week, he got 200 million views in the last 10 days. So we got to figure out what is the number he's going to have by January 31st. This podcast is probably coming out around 18th to 20th, right around there, in about two weeks. So

Guess in the comment section, DM us, how many views is The Real Tarzan going to have by January 31st, 2024? We're going to push it. We're going to push it. We're going to push it. A lot of content. A lot of content. You're out there wrestling with ostriches. Yeah. So on the Money Mondays, we talk about three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity. Our guest today has been a dear friend for many years. We've been watching him grow his social media, grow his business, grow his clients, grow his brands.

He's doing product deals and celebrity deals, investment deals and going partnerships and going overseas and everything between working with celebrities and household names. Very excited to ask him questions about business, about health and everything between. Please welcome the boss. Just trade. I'm happy to be here, man. I'm proud of everything you've been doing. He's been dropping gems on me for a long time.

Literally. I came out with this thing of the G-E-M's within the G-Y-M, the gems within the gem. I like that. But you've been giving me gems, man. And I'm a big fan of you, man. Thank you, sir. You've been doing amazing work and young, too. You know what I mean? Doing something. I appreciate it. Now the gems and the RV. Yeah. Yes. All right. So the way it works here is we want to do a quick two-minute bio so we can get straight to the money. Tell us about yourself.

man, ex football player that didn't make it, you know what I mean? But made it in life. NFL ended up calling me back. I was the first person to come back to the combine. In the fitness industry, you know, I consider myself the gamification of movement. I just wanted to make people move and have fun and, you know, take it outside of the rigmarole of just stress of like, man, I got to go work out, but how do I gamify the mind? So, you know, I put things in buckets. There's mental weakness and mental illness. And so, yeah,

Um, you know, I like to, you know, you know, go at that approach. So just train the mind, the body to follow. Um, I'm a guy of, you know, my mom had nine kids and, uh, you know, very fortunate to grow up in that, that, that tough environment, six boys, three girls, uh, you know, man didn't, you know, I was always passionate about business. Um, that was my, my, my

my goal in life, but, you know, didn't have the right people around me. So, you know, fitness has been my anchor. And so that's really the long and short about me. There's more to go into detail. But more importantly, right now, man, I'm a dad, I'm a husband, and I'm enjoying that part of this journey of life and, you know, and so many other things and hats that you wear. But, you know, a lot of those are rented titles, right? We'll get into that. But I'm just excited to be able to be here and start to share the mindset behind,

overcoming or living up to the standard that you have set for yourself or not understanding a lot of things on that journey. So on the making money side, personal trainers out there or someone that wants to be a personal trainer out there, fitness trainer, they really want to get into the space, but they're either nervous, they're overwhelmed, they don't know how much money they're going to make, what they're going to do, how to get certified, where should they go, who should they listen to? There's so many different pieces of advice. What would you say to someone out there that's thinking about considering jumping into the personal training game? Man, you know,

social media is a powerful tool in itself. Right. So I think if you're jumping into it, you have to have a true passion for helping people first and foremost. Um,

um, when you find the passion of helping people in, in personal training, you will find success in anything that you're trying to do because it's, it's gutted, right? I tell people, if it's not in your stomach, you won't have success in it because you're not willing to go through the struggle in order to, uh, see the success win. So, um, if you're getting into personal training industry, for me, it's really the mentor who you're surrounding yourself around principles, um, making sure that your core principles are dialed into who you are, what you want people to see you as, um,

You know, social media has created a wave of, you know, no disrespect, but shirt off and, you know, these, you know, less clothes. But really, the moment is really to teach people how to be better human beings and understanding that you got to give more of yourself and more.

less of yourself and more for the people. That's what it is to me in personal training. You become really a certified therapist. There's so much money to be made, but it has to be done the right way. And there's so many different people that you can seek, but you just got to seek. It's so much around. You just got to have a vessel of pick some here, take some there, and add it up to be your ultimate self. I don't think that there's one way that you should jump into the industry

because it's so much information out there, but you have to stick to a plan, find that plan, jump in the industry, stick to the plan. Um, I, you know, I, I think everybody wants to be an entrepreneur today, but I do think that the traditional gym, um, opens opportunity for you to work under someone, learn a lot of business. So I would, I would suggest do that. Um,

and go in and understand that major into minors, that that's one of the things I'm really preaching right now is like, everybody wants to be a science teacher, but everybody just doesn't understand that the minors are the things that work. Some of the most successful businesses in the world, some of the most successful trainers in the world, um, uh, major into minors, right? How do we get people to success? Right. It's not about this, uh,

One size fits all. It's about understanding the human, meeting people where they are. And so that's been my approach. And some of my success has been every person that I've approached is not about my level of discipline is where they are, where they're trying to go and then meeting them. And then as we go, tighten that up and we redefine those focuses. So that's been that's what I would give to a young up and coming trainer or anybody in the industry just trying to find their new way of discipline.

So let's say they did it. They listened to you. They went through the game. It's been two, three years. And they attract their first celebrity or athlete to come work with them. And it's that moment.

Some of them want them to do it for free. Some of them want to charge them. What do you take in the very beginning if someone, a household named celebrity athlete, comes to them? How do they decide when is it okay to charge them? Should they do it for free to help gain their clout, their personal brand? What are your thoughts about getting that first client? You know, man, I think...

personally it's so different different in each individual situation I don't want to give somebody the piece of advice I would say you have to understand opportunity cost where you are in your life you know when I first started it wasn't I

I don't, it wasn't about celebrity trainer to me. It was same way. When you play sports, it was like, you play good on the field that the right team will find you, you know what I mean? And so, um, you want to attract the right people. Um, so I would give that advice to these, anybody that's looking, it's the opportunity cost, being able to understand that where you are and,

you know, don't work yourself out of a job. Kind of, you know, the number one, I tell trainers all the time is you're supposed to work yourself out of a job. You want them to need you in the beginning and want you later. You know what I mean? And that's the truth. And so I've always wanted people to need me and then want me to say, because I give you so much value. And so, um,

you know, early on, I didn't know what to charge, right? I'm traveling the world. You don't know what this charge somebody. So, but the opportunity cost and it was, was so great that it wasn't about the money. The money was not the driver. It was like, man, I'm, I'm, I'm getting able, I'm able to gain so much knowledge and so much opportunity, um, within this. And so I knew what I was going to do in it. It,

I needed the money, but what I had and what I was getting paid was a survival thing. And, you know, being an entrepreneur, I was fortunate enough to have a few little things going on at the time, nothing as it is today. But you got to know, I don't want to speak to

I think it's just understanding what a person's at and that opportunity cost. I think if you just know where you are and that opportunity cost is, hey, you know your bare minimum. Don't go in saying, oh, this person's this. Don't do anything for so much money where nobody wants to work with you. And don't devalue yourself so early where somebody just takes you for granted. You just got to understand where you are and set those parameters.

So they got the NBA player and the NBA player starts posting them and they go from having 10,000 followers to 50,000 to 100,000, 200,000 followers. And now they're becoming like a bit of an influencer. How does someone decide which supplement brands and clothing brands like you're wearing Young LA, you work with C4, like the brands are coming to you. How does someone decide what type of brand deals to do?

You know, man, it's so different based on who you are and what you know, for me, it was all about alignment. It was all about the consistency of who I wanted people to see me as. And I didn't want to jump around. I didn't want to be the guy with one brand this year and the next year, another brand. And I think it's just really trying to figure out and map out the partners that you think you want to align with. And those things change. Right. Based on the company, based on, you know, you.

But for me, talking about C4, I've been with them for eight years now. Right. I'm a C-suite executive. They're not just an influencer, an ambassador. You know, you know, I help them build a lot of different things. And, you know, the company has been valued and we were where I'm a partner in the company. So, you know, Kev is now a part of the company. And so being able to forge new opportunities is what I saw with them.

The company was growing. I was growing and I wanted to grow with him. So I spoke my value. I told him, hey, if you trust me, I'll trust you. I'll go to bat for you. And I executed on that plan. You know, a lot of times you got to be committed to the work for the things that are the unknown, though.

Um, that's what it was for me with the brands. And, and so now I've been fortunate enough to be able to be at, to go sit with Phil Knight with Nike when we did our Nike deal all the way to now we're with Fabletics and, you know, we're partners with Fabletics and Don and Adam and those guys. And Kevin brought me a part of that in forging that. Right. And so, um,

You know, these opportunities are just you just got to it's timing, but you got to make sure that it's aligning with your ultimate vision to where you're where you're trying to go. So the brands will come the opportunity. You know, once we get there, I'll tell you about, you know, something that happened with Toyota. I was assigned to Toyota, overvalued myself too soon. I was making great money. I was a draw, you know, and all of a sudden I went my my team went back and was like,

He needs this much money and they were like

Yeah, no, no, no, it's okay. And it was overvalued too soon. And it was humbling. And it was, it was the best thing that ever happened to me because you have to know the right timing. You have to know the right place. And, um, and I'm very thankful for that moment today. I don't look at that as a shortcoming. So you just got to know where you're on the road. Um, got to take those bumps in the roads as they come. Um, but when you start to get influenced, don't focus on just influence, focus on being influential, right? I think there's a big difference, right? The,

this culture of just like followers is one thing, but if people aren't buying into something that who you are and how you're showing up and being influential versus just having being popular, those are two different things to me. Influential and popular,

don't coexist to me in the same thing because people want to, you know, you want people to follow and trust and believe in you. So when you're jumping all over based on the next best opportunity because someone offered you more money versus growing with something, that's what it is for me. And that's what it's always been. And any partner that I've partnered with will tell you that.

So you have supplement deal brands with something like C4 with the beverage. You have Fabletics and the partnership there. But outside of fitness apparel, things that are obvious, you also then did this big deal with Chase Bank with you and Kev also. How does a deal like that work for someone who's considered in the health and fitness space to now transcend into Chase Financial? You know, man, it was probably...

It was the most interesting, cool thing ever. Kev said no originally and not in a knowing that way. When we were approached, my friend Alvin called me and said, hey, JP Morgan wants to do a deal with you and how do we do this? And Kev was like, man, people don't want to hear me just talk about money.

And so I came up with financial fitness and we talked about the financial fitness journey and the parallel that coexists. But then that was the philanthropic arm that was tied to kind of how we do it when you look at heart of it all. And we started to tell those stories about the wealth gap in black and brown communities. And so that was our thing while I was also building value on the front end when we were talking about.

commercials and you know, who else, what should we be doing and what is people want to do and how is Kev voice going to be seen and really giving my time to the partnership, you know, and not just saying, oh man, we did a good deal. It was like, okay, how do we keep the deal? How do we, you know, build value in a deal or how do we make this more of a substance than just saying, hey, there's JP Morgan, there's Chase.

how do we really make this a thing? And Kev dove deep and Ariel and all the people involved. And I'm, I've been very thankful because we have whiteboard sessions and they may last 12 hours, you know what I mean? But you've got to be committed to that. And that's just a one day thing, right? Those 12 hour sessions, but that's really what it took. And that idea came from no one merely become successful.

Right. And all I know in the gym was and when you just think about the gym, this is like the byproduct of everything in life. You want to you want gains in a gym where there's a sacrifice, you want gains in your bank account, you can't buy those clothes. So that was the that was the approach. It was like, OK, well, that's everybody just if they can just hear it from Kevin that way. And Kev has his own approach of money and credit and so on and so forth. And in telling those authentic stories, nobody wants to talk about money. Nobody wants to tell you about money. But when you start to open up that

Pandora's box of opportunity and money. I think that's where we found our golden nugget. And we were some of the first people in the industry to really start talking about money in that way and opening up that box. And I've been, you know, been fortunate enough to be able to be at that position. And, you know, now being an executive

producer and a heart of it all on Peacock and coming up with you know the concepts and you know those are things are exciting beyond I love being the trainer right because it's it's who I am it's who I'm anchored in versus what the things I'm working on every day that build value for people that don't even know what we're actually working on so over the last few years in particular you start to get really famous you start to build up millions of followers but also you're getting tens of millions hundreds of millions of views and

How do you know when people approach you or trying to get into your circle, into your world, and figure out who to trust? You know what I mean?

Trust is more of a compliment than love. I tell people that all the time. You know, your eyes are wide open. It's really, really difficult. It takes a lot of time. You know, you can you can build associates and people know how to have the right cadence for a long period of time. You actually never really know. You're just really trying to figure it out as much as you know.

As long as you're on this journey, I don't think that, you know, we're really, you know, I don't believe in a no new friends thing because then you're blocking opportunities and so on and so forth. But I would say to you that, you know, we're very particular. I'm not very, you know, I'm not very friendly. I'm the most friendly person, but I'm also not very like in the most friendly way of like inviting you into my territory just because, you know, you have followers or that doesn't that's not that's.

That's not on the checklist, right? Are you a good human? Right. I checklist good human and there's things that show up. I'll go back to that earlier statement of gut, right? You know, are you a good person in your stomach? And people are like, what do you mean in your stomach? Like when all else fails, what is in your gut? We, is that gut feeling? Are you going to stand on principle no matter what? And it, you know, I, that, those are, that's one of those things where you just never know because people can,

put on for a really long time. And, and, uh, you know, so I would, I would be, I don't want to say the word, but I, you know, I would be naive to say that there was a formula. There is no formula. Um, I don't, I don't have a formula to how you dissect people. People, they're great humans that I love to interact with. Um, it just takes time and it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of,

you know, people start making money, things do change. This is a real thing. You know what I mean? And, um, so you just gotta be careful. And I think, um, but you can't guard yourself all the time because you, you need good people around you. You need to, you want to, you want to let people experience opportunity. So how do you bring them in is, is, is so unique and there's fillers through different gaps, you know, um, with,

with now people on our teams and things like that, that I've allowed, Hey, you go hang out with them and then, you know, we'll figure it out. And if you're around,

Okay, if not, okay, you know some people you start hearing people go to parties can't handle alcohol like I knew I figured got it All right cool liability, right? Because you know early on you were no different, right? You got drink too much. Oh, man, you know, oh man I was wild and you know, so you just want to make sure you're protecting yourself at all times Especially when you you have other people to protect to you know, I pride myself not only protecting myself but

But I want to protect my friends. I want to protect who I bring around because people trust me. So if I bring somebody on my immediate side, well, you're good. You know what I mean? You're good. Right. So, yeah. So similar question for Tarzan. Over the last few years in particular, you start to get to crazy numbers, two billion views in 2023.

Who knows how many in 2024. Everywhere we go together, whether it's an airport, a mall, a Chipotle, it doesn't matter where we are in Dubai, LA, Atlanta, Miami, in the randomest places where nobody's there, there's like four people and all four come say hi to you. How do you start to deal with the extreme numbers of fame where everyone's approaching or staring at you? In the beginning, it was definitely weird, you know, because I'm a real...

in the shadow type of person. You know, at the party, I'm the one, the guy on the wall just chilling. I don't dance. I don't fucking get sloppy drunk. I'm always in the cut, you know? So when people are like staring you out or coming up to you in like public places in the beginning, you know, my, uh,

instinctual mentality is like, fucking, you get close to him, give you something. And after, it took a while. I still have some days where I'm super up early in the morning, I'm not really awake, I'm at the gas station pumping gas.

And the guy's beelining behind me at, you know, 4 o'clock in the morning. I'm like, hey, is Brooke going to get a selfie? I'm like, bro, you almost... You almost got more than a selfie. Absolutely. You know, but I take it all in. I love it because it's helped change my life. You know, it's helped amplify my passion. It's brought me money. It's brought my family money. I get to see the world. I get to see animals and natural habitat. So...

It goes from me having to rewire my brain from being on defense to being more susceptible and acceptable of the random people that come up because without them I wouldn't have what I have. So I really appreciate it. I love it. Again, it gets weird sometimes because we'll be anywhere in the bathroom any time of day.

I remember my first time ever having it happen. I was hiking a mountain in Hawaii for like three hours and some random small Asian lady's coming down the mountain. She just drops my first name and my last name to me and I'm like, and she's coming down the mountain that we were going up. She's like, oh yeah, I watched your, you know, your two videos, Disporter and My Grandson. I was like, what are you doing in Hawaii? I'm like, bro, this is nuts. Didn't call me Tars and I was like, Michael Holston, how are you? I'm like,

do is you know it's odd it's odd feeling you know all right so we talked a bit about the making money side and the things I'll say about the investing side you have so many options and access because you have a lot of friends a lot of network a big social following you have these business friends and they you've accumulated over the years you're consulting advising like you got a lot of options of what you could invest money into or put your personal brand behind how do you choose when there's so many different options will you put your money or face behind yeah

Yeah, man, it's become so unique. You know, I'm a managing partner of Heartbeat Ventures where we have a full institutional team now where it's not just me. And I've been fortunate enough to be able to be surrounded by great financial guys in the institution where we get to, you know, deals are coming to us for some of the biggest VCs in the world. And they're asking us for our expertise to kind of lean in and, you know,

I love guys like RX3 Ventures, Ram Rogers Fund, where we get to pick similar talking about names. You get to be able to go out and go, what are you guys looking at? What are you guys looking at? I don't want to say any companies because I don't want to move too fast. But yeah, man, it's passion. It's something aligned. I'll say Pathwater, for example. I knew I wanted to do a water deal. It aligns with...

what my life is. We all need water. So when you see a path, Path Water, I'm like, all right, great. It's sustainable. It stands for good. It's culture focused. You know, it looks cool. We can do customizable bottles. You know, they're on tour with Travis Scott right now. We're partners with the Spear. And so you're like, oh, but it really flows with my lifestyle. It flows with how we travel. And it's like, oh, we need water in every green room. Why not? You

you know, invest in that company. Water's not proprietary, but it's like, man, like, and it's a good water and it's sustainable, you know, and it's, you know, and so those are, that's how we're looking at deals. How do they flow with our ecosystem? You know, I, you know, I learned early that investing isn't, it's an art, it's not a science. There's no one way. You got to really just paint your picture and figure it out. And, um, we're really just trying to, you know,

Look at things that we use every day, you know that we love and you know companies like their body or things like that are just kind of like Man, this is exciting. We use it why you know, those are things that I love to invest in that are already things that are We're using you know to me not just like oh, it's popular like can we really use it? Can we integrate it and that's why I love my gym because my gym can be an incubation people can tell you like I

we don't like it or we love it you know what I mean and everybody comes through from the biggest celebrity to the guy that's trying to figure out life right and everybody opinion in the gym matters because we're all got one common goal get better you know what I mean and so that's what I love the most about the gym and when they see a product they're looking at it as can this add value to my life and if it can add value to each person no matter the financial demographic cool I like that and so that's how I like to look at things and when people get excited those things are fun

So the main thing for you guys to consider when you want to do your first angel investment or maybe you're doing your second or third is what matters to you? As you mentioned a couple of times, like it has to be a product of service and app and agency, something that you care about or that you want to stand behind. First thing I look at is the person. Do I trust this person to take the ball to the finish line? Now, what's interesting is it's not a straight path. There's a lot of people trying to tackle them just like a football field. They got to go left. They got to go right. Zigzag. A lot of things happen along the course of

to get to an actual exit or to go public, which is really rare. There's a lot of people in the way. There's a lot of obstacles in the way. A lot of people trying to tackle you. There's a lot of referees, which could be considered the laws, the permits, the restrictions. There's a lot of frustration that happened along the way to get to the goal line. Do I believe that this quarterback is going to make it? And do I believe that if things go wrong, they're going to fight through it? It's really easy to fall down the floor or

You get sacked, you get tackled, then you just lay down or you quit the game or you walk off the field. We've seen it happen in 9 out of 10 deals. People just quit. And so I want to first bet on the person. Do I believe in this person? I've done 43 angel investments. Some of those angel investments have nothing to do with what I've originally invested into. It would be like, let's call it a podcast, Mike. And now they're selling blueberries. I still would invest in the person because I believe in them and they're going to figure it out. And so you have to first decide on the person. Second,

Does what they say about their company happen when they're not there? Meaning, would somebody go buy their product or service, consumer product, fitness brand, supplement, whatever it is, would someone buy it when that CEO or founder is not in the room? So can it sell on its own out in the wild, in a store, online, et cetera, without someone explaining what it is or why will someone buy it? Third, do the financials mean that it can be really big or be a base hit?

Sometimes I invest in things that I just want to make six figures on or I want to be a seven figure company, maybe an eight figure company. I'm not looking for it to be nine figures or a billion dollar unicorn. I just want it to be a base hit. Sometimes like a restaurant chain, it's not going to become a billion dollar restaurant chain, right? Hoping it sells for eight figures, maybe nine figures. You might invest into a sports brand and you're hoping that it does 5 million, 10 million, 20 million sales and maybe it's never going to do hundreds of millions. So we have to decide, do the financials match up with what the CEO is saying?

Because if the CEO is saying, "Hey, I'm going to open up four pizza shops. We're going to be worth a billion dollars." He's a crackhead. That's not possible. It's not physically possible for that to happen, right? Your four pizza restaurants are never going to be worth a billion dollars. Or he says, "Hey, I'm going to build four pizza restaurants and I'm hoping to sell it for four million bucks one day." Great. I'm happy to put a check into knowing that he's realistic with some optimism on top of that. Fourth, do the actual financials, do the actual accounting, do the actual paperwork, does that back up everything that just happened?

so this is where your legal and accounting come in so i as the investor can first say hey i like this the ceo let's say i want to bet on tarzan tarzan i want to invest into the wild jungle great i like tarzan i trust him i've known him for years i believe in the person boom he says wild jungle wild jungles gets hundreds of millions of views cool i like that part people are buying it it's a great product now how big can it be well this actually is a big category because it's kids products and pet products this has a good shot of being a really big one this could be a grand slam

and then number four i take myself out of the equation because you can't see the picture when you're inside the frame i need someone else my ceo my accounting team i need them to look at it without me leading the witness meaning they talk to tarzan they see the financials they look at the business plan they look at the market without me saying i'm blessing it i'm just saying that i like this one will you research it and by going through that process i weed out

so many companies that I might have wanted to invest into because I liked the guy but it didn't back up or have all four things. If you have any one thing out of these four missing, there's a very strong likelihood it's not going to work out.

No, I was going to say, I think a lot of times in an influence space, we're approached from product first. So we don't get a chance to look at things from, you know, you have a big influence, right? But a lot of times it's product first, it's not people first, right? So yes, I agree with you that on the front end, we

you know, when you're being approached, it's like, hey, what do you think about this? It's tough to get to know people because it's, you know, you don't understand that. I'm fortunate enough to be able to, you know, to your point, it is getting to know the CEO. Is the founder going to drive this to the right place? Do we really believe in him? But early on, when we're talking about influencing culture,

they're coming to you for that because they need it, right? So the first thing we see is product. You know what I mean? We don't get the, we don't know the person behind the product. I mean, the person that started it, they're coming to us and they're saying, here's a product. And then, you know, we set up calls and then institutional and then you go, oh, I believe in this guy and the numbers have to match. So I agree with you, but I'm just saying the first thing for us is when we have to like a product, we have to see something. And I think that's been the differentiator is like,

'Cause traditional money with no influence, they're like, "Hey, product or like this guy, we can invest because I believe in him and he comes from a world that I trust or he knows someone that I trust and I believe in this guy because this guy said back him." Versus we don't always get that opportunity. You know what I mean? And so we wanna change that landscape because we wanna invest in up and coming founders and people that have great ideas and

in different community, but I totally agree with everything you're saying, but I think there's just that little twist from when you have influence and people are beating down your door because they got the new best fucking product for snakes. And they're like, oh my God, it's the, and you're like, hey, I've never seen this before. This is actually cool. You don't know the founder. You know what I mean? You're like, it's a cool product. So we're product first sometimes. We don't get a chance to know the founder. And I'm not saying that you didn't, you know, yeah, so that was my thought on everything you were saying. It's like,

Shit, I love what you're saying because it is great. The founders are important, but a lot of times when you're early on, you don't get a chance to meet the founder. The only thing you see is product.

And then we got to finagle our way to figure it out. And, you know, I've been fortunate enough to have a strong team, but most people don't have a team. Most people don't have someone to look at financials, to look at these different things. They're getting themselves in bad deals. So I tell people all the time to everything that you said, which is so valuable, have general meetings. Build an ecosystem of people that, hey, man, you're in the finance? All right, man, I'm going to use you one day. I'm going to need you to help me one day. Because a lot of times it's not...

People don't have access to the things that we're talking about for people to dive deep into their first angel. They don't even know what that even looks like. So how do we start to bridge that gap? And moments like today are moments which you guys are doing are building that bridge of opportunity to say, hey, talk to someone that is a little bit smarter than you. Surround yourself around someone else. Don't be so intimidated. Don't let your

ego push that person away. That person may be a vessel to be able to win that angel deal comes in. Hey man, these numbers don't look right. Hey, something's a little fishy because we seem to want to do everything by ourselves, right? We want to want to be a success alone. And so,

I love everything you said. I just think that as we talk to these people that are building influence and culture and so on and so forth, that it's important that people are going to approach you with product first. You know what I mean? And then you have to make sure you have a good surrounding circle around you to do due diligence over a deal because...

shit, I didn't know what I was doing. I just believed in C4, you know, and then as, you know, as they believed in me, I went and met that person. I met the CMO. I met this person. Then me and Doss, you know, became really close friends. He's the founder. And it's like, you don't know that, but obviously the success and trajectory of that company was far beyond. But at the same time, early on, I just was a believer. You don't, you don't have that wherewithal until you have a surrounding group, you know, um,

You start making money, people, you start doing things and all of a sudden you're like, I gotta do something with this. People say you gotta invest. You know, I know rich people that don't invest, you know what I mean? Because they're like, oh, that's a scheme versus, you know what I mean? So just, it's kind of tough, especially when you have influence. Why do you, I don't know if you understand, if you agree or disagree, but yeah. Why do you think that people, whether it's personal trainers or people in general are scared to post on social media?

man, there's so many reasons why people are afraid to post on social media.

First, I mean, their own, you know, insecurities. Insecurity is a big thing. I embrace my birthmark on my face is red. It is what it is. I ain't running from it. It's who I am. You know, and I think that people just don't understand that criticism is going to come no matter what. Mother is going to talk shit. People will say something when you're doing good. They're going to say something when you're doing bad. You just got to do you. You just got to stay locked in. And so people consume themselves with criticism.

Man, I don't want them to say this and man, I look like this and I, man, you better do your thing because people are going to talk no matter what, like good or bad, they're going to find something to say. So you better stay grounded in what you want and just go. And I think that's why people are a little, you know, afraid and, you know, it's a free resource. But I think the insecurity is just overwhelming people. And I also think over analysis creates paralysis, right? I think people overthink it needs to be, it needs to be perfect.

It needs to be perfect. I gotta put out the perfect content. It needs to be this and it needs to look like this and it needs to look like this. And it's like, dog, just put out the content and just go. You know what I mean? And I think a lot of times that slows people down, not just in fitness in general. People are overthinking because they think they're competing. Listen, I compete to uplift. I don't compete to destroy. I'm competing with you.

I love hearing your numbers. I ain't there, but I want to compete with you, but I'm not trying to compete with you to destroy you. I'm not trying to compete with you and destroy you. I'm trying to compete with you to uplift you. So you just gave me a milestone to go for. You know, people are like, man, I'm going to go get him. He just made her. He just was like, man, I'm glad you told me that. Thank you for telling me what you did in sales. Got it. You

You know, it's an opportunity for me to get better. I'm not a hater. You know what I mean? I've never been a hater, won't be a hater. I'm inspired. You know what I mean? Like, that's my motor. You know what I mean? Because it's so much opportunity. And so that's me. You know what I mean? And I just love that. Yeah. I'm sorry. I get passionate about that shit. I always tell people all the time, like, don't be a hater. Be a congratulator. Yeah, man. For real. Yeah. So there's something you mentioned there, the word perfect. Perfect is not relatable.

When you see these perfectly photoshopped photos and perfectly photoshop this and that and then you look at the number one performing influencers on social media and the highest paid influencers on social media at an 800% higher average is makeup artists Why because they made content with bare face in their rawest moment and then for two hours are building their face whether it's a guy or girl during that time

their viewers, their audience are watching them in their rawest moment. The second highest paid influencers is fitness because you're watching them sweat. You're watching them eat. You're watching them be vulnerable. They're shaking. It's hard. They're not making it like everything's easy, right? Most fitness content outside of like funny content, it's

it's hard and they're sweating and they're raw and they're real and you can tell it's not photoshopped because it's hard to photoshop when you're sweating and working out and doing burpees and pull-ups etc and so number one and number two are proving that perfect is not relatable so as you guys are making your content as the boss just said do not wait for the perfect moment there is no perfect moment

put out the content and the next day happens and the next day happens and the next day happens and some of your videos won't hit some of your photos won't do much and some will and it doesn't matter when you're like oh I only got 14 likes the person you think is worried about your 14 likes they got 7 likes who cares

And then the next day you get 300 likes whatever you just keep posting the content over and over and over by staying consistent in the game math and time Compounds if you just post once or twice a day 365 days a year. Well a couple years goes by and you've got thousands of posts. You're gonna have following

as long as you're not boring as dirt you're gonna have some following and if you just stay consistent and showcase how your fitness journey or your health journey or how you became a makeup artist or built up a clothing brand or started a supplement company or working as a real estate agent whatever it is that you're doing math and time compounds and if you post that content and you showcase your world and showcase your behind the scenes people will have what's called an emotional attachment that leads to top of mind awareness this is where money happens let me repeat that

you can build an emotional attachment that leads to top of mind awareness so that in those moments that someone says the word personal trainer you think of that person they think of you you say real estate agent they think of you they say makeup artist they think of you

how does that happen you showcase your actual life when you're traveling when you're working when you're moving around when you're with your friends when you're playing basketball or you're playing pickleball you're playing chess and you're back to you're hanging out with your boyfriend or girlfriend you showcase your aspects of your life people start to build an emotional attachment they know your dog's name they know your boyfriend or girlfriend's name they know your friends you guys go out to dinner on Friday nights they know you go to church on Sundays and you're at mosaic church and there's Irwin like they feel a part of your life

someone says real estate agent they think of you not the other 18,000 agents that all say they're the number one agent in the world not the other agents that are on billboards or bus stops you the one that they know their dog name and they know your freaking parents name they know about your church they know about date night they know what you got to go play chess like they know about your world that's an emotional attachment and people buy from people that they know like and trust and

So if they know, like, and trust you because they know about your family or your friends or your church or whatever it is that you're up to and they feel part of your world, they are much more likely to buy from you compared to the thousands and thousands and thousands of other options of personal trainers, real estate agents, et cetera. All right. Last topic, charity side. Why do you think it's important for people or for their companies and brands to be involved in philanthropy, whether it's writing a check or actually getting involved and getting their hands dirty and supporting?

You know, man, this is like it's so important to me because it's like it's why you do everything. You have to have something driving you for greater good. I hope. Right. It's like for me, childhood obesity and bullying. Right. It's like I feel like it just brings home the good feeling of exactly why you're doing what you're doing. I don't know why other people do it. I know why, you know, you're supposed to do it. But the philanthropic side for me is really driven by passion.

of helping under, you know, serve kids and people that don't have, and, you know,

kids being bullied for their weight or you know kids just being bullied in general and so um i will tell you like you know i know what i know i don't i know what i don't know i know there are some things aligned with charitable donations that are necessary for taxes and things like that but i'm grounded in the purpose of why i do it right it's like it's in being able to not only just from a

from a 501c3, but from a how do you help your family, right? You know, you hear people say money is all evil, but if you don't have no money, you can't help nobody, right? And so if you use your money for the good to help the people around you, not to say that you're gonna just give people money, absolutely not, don't ask me for no money, right?

It's like, you know what I mean? It's like, not to say that, it's like you work hard so that you can be a vessel of good. And I think that's where it comes from. It's not always just to a company. It's being able to fuel your ecosystem the right way and being able to help people

you know, need a little guidance along the way. Um, that, that angel investment going back to say, Hey, I believe in you. I trust in you. I don't know what this is, but you're just a good person. I think that's a philanthropic side of how you feel in your heart. Um, I think that's deeply rooted for me, not the business side so much. Um,

It's really finding that way to really help to your ultimate point of humans that you believe in and that it goes back to that I don't really care what you're doing. I just believe in what you're doing and then the super passion product Projects for me are just kids and just helping you know these people that I'm just really are less fortunate and just kind of how do we continue to bless on Tarzan there's a there's a ranch like an animal sanctuary that's been around for 30 years you've been helping tell us about that. Yeah, we have

just moved our facility from florida to the west coast california and uh there's a um a ranch uh we'll call it actually legit legit sanctuary um they've been around 30 years they have hyenas leopards bears tigers lions eagles alligators crocodiles all types of stuff in california in california you know and um unfortunately being around for 30 years

You know, they're a part of the old society of animal caretakers. They have, you know, great, great care for the animals they have, but they don't have the social media aspect of it. They don't have the online aspect of it. You know, and in this day and age, you know, especially compounded with COVID, you lose all those donations, you lose all those people, you have no...

Facebook, Instagram, none of that following going on. It just gets expensive. And when you can partner up with a company like ours, like Wild Jungle,

That's when we're going to be able to help. Because with moving to California, you kind of lose permitting and certain restrictions and stuff like that. But these people have been grandfathered in for 30 years. So they have something that we can help them with, and they have something we can help us with. I can keep learning about different animals I have never worked with in captivity or in the wild. And they can keep their business rolling by us shining a big platform on all the good they've done for 30 years and more. That's cool, man.

all right guys you're watching this special edition of the money mondays make sure to follow boss his instagram is at just train across all social media platforms the real tarzan you're probably already following him this guy got 100 000 followers in the last three days and 8.6 million on instagram alone 15 million in total across platforms so make sure to check him out on social media if you want to see him get bit by snakes wrestle with ostriches and tigers just in the last three days um

And it's important to have these discussions. The reason that the Money Mondays has been number one for 41 weeks in a row, thanks to you guys in the entrepreneur category, is we need to have these discussions about money.

We have to. You've got to learn, talk about it with your friends, your family, your coworkers. You're going to have to understand taxes and accounting and the IRS and a FICO score. Most people can't spell FICO. Like, why? We just grew up not talking about it because it was rude. You've got to talk about it. And that's why I'm happy that this podcast is working. I want you guys to go out there and share it. Talk with your friends about it. Have these real discussions.

Visit us on themoneymondays.com. Like, comment, subscribe, all those things to help us keep this thing growing and growing because we need these discussions happening around the world to make our planet better. We will see you guys next Monday on The Money Mondays.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays. We are here in the RV motorhome sitting in a parking lot and you're going to hear some cars going by because we're in a motorhome. That's the whole concept behind this. The reason that we started the Money Mondays is to talk about three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give away to charity. Now, we try to keep the podcast to around 40 minutes or less because the average workout, 45 minutes, is about 40 minutes.

Except for you, you take like two, three hours. The average commute to work is 45 minutes. So that's why we do these 35 to 40 minute podcasts. Thank you guys for supporting us. We have been the number one entrepreneur podcast for 41 weeks in a row because of you guys. So keep liking, commenting, subscribing, sharing with your friends.

And it's important to have discussion about money because we all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. And we here at the Money Mondays think it's rude to not talk about money. You got to talk about finances, credit, salaries, loans, how to pay rent. Should I buy, lease? Like you got to have this discussion because it's real life. Money is related to real life. There is no more of this thing that we grew up on that it's rude to talk about it. You have to have discussion about it. And I think that's why or part of why the podcast is doing so well. Why you guys are sharing this content. Okay.

I'm very excited about our guest today. I've been friends with her for years. She might actually turn around the podcast a little bit today because she actually has her own podcast, her own events called Beyond the Interview. She's been throwing live events for years with some household name legends that she interviews at these events. It's magical what she's done. I love watching the content. I like watching your podcast and everything between. So we need a quick two minute bio from our special guest, Miss Nicole Benham.

Thank you, Dan. I love the concept for this podcast. Yeah, I love talking about money. I have so many questions. I grew up thinking it was a little taboo to talk about it. But to give you my bio.

I started as a journalist and I was doing red carpet hosting for a little bit until I realized that the conversations on those carpets were limited to whatever event I was at. And I was like, you know what? I need to start my own thing. And I want to interview authors and entrepreneurs and people with significant insight who have really thought about whatever their message is.

And so I started this thing called Beyond the Interview, which I later turned into a podcast. And then I started doing events and, you know, bringing on people a lot the same way you do. Not as big of a scale. We'll get there. But yeah, so that's what I do. And I'm so excited to be here. So the events, tell me about the events. Is it all under the same brand Beyond the Interview or is it different? Yeah, I mean, it's all under the brand. I just call it Beyond. And

And so what I do is I throw, I throw nights with like themes. So for example, you could, you, I don't think you could make it, but we had a clubhouse theme event a few years ago where like, remember they had those like moderator badges. So I had them printed out as pins. I had like the hand raising thing. It was just basically clubhouse theme. And then I brought some of the people that were just big voices on there to come on. And then after that,

This is what really changed the game for me because I was never taken that seriously in like the tech and entrepreneur world mostly because I was unknown and so once I did that and I had people of that caliber come speak at my event the photos got distributed mostly because of I think Naval and Chris Voss they got distributed at a lot of different firms that invested in Clubhouse and

And so a lot of people started adding me on Twitter and reaching out to me and being like, hey, yeah, I didn't know that you did these events, like would love to come speak, blah, blah, blah. But the one thing that I did differently with my events, yours are super cool. But, you know, sometimes these people are in Silicon Valley. It's a little nerdier.

Mine was hot. I made it pop in. I made everything Instagrammable. I made everything fun. You know, we funneled in influencers. So that was my whole thing that I realized where it's like, you know what? I really want to make learning sexy. And as I've started doing that, I'm like, what's my real mission? Is it that I want to make learning sexy or is it something else? And that's part of it. But the second thing that I want to do is I want to make it sexy.

I want to change the way people consume because we spend half of our days on our cell phones, like literally. And so if we're doing that, what are we consuming? Are we conscious of what we're consuming? Most of the time, not really. An algorithm is feeding me what I should watch. So we should be actively muting certain accounts and also actively following certain accounts.

The cool thing about what you do is people go to your events, they go to your conferences, and there's discovery in person. What I want is I want people to discover people not just in person but online because whatever problem you have, and we're all dealing with our own problems, there's someone out there with a solution who's written a book, who's done something that's transformed their life that can transform yours. So that's my whole thing. But let's get into money. Okay.

So, as always, we are co-hosted by TheRealTarzan. Normally I say that Tarzan gets 200 million views a month on social media, but we are only 10 days into the month of January and he's already surpassed 200 million views in the first 10 days. So we have to come up with a new moniker, a new slogan for you. We'll figure that out on day 31 of January to see what number you get to. That is TheRealTarzan. Focusing on animal-related content and travel content, we just got back from Dubai a few days ago.

It's amazing content. I actually never extend trips. I have this rule. Like if I say I'm going to go for four days, I go for four days. I don't miss flights. I'm obsessed with it. But when a sheik and a multi-bazillion, I don't even know how many bazillions the guy has, says he needs to stay longer and wants to do some animal content and has an orangutan at his palace for Tarzan to meet, you extend your trip. So we ended up staying for nine or ten days because of an orangutan and a bazillionaire. So... Nicole.

On the making money side, when someone wants to throw their first event, sometimes they throw for free, sometimes they charge for tickets, sometimes they're not sure if they can get sponsors. Just talk us through the main idea. Can an event make money or is it just good for personal brand and for making deals? For me, it was for personal brand and making deals, but I also, I got sponsors for all of them. I don't know if this is how you do it. Mine, it's like in its infancy.

I just put all the money back into the event because I want everyone to have a good time. I want everyone to talk about it. I want the brand to stand out. So, but it did help me with deals because you know, when you throw a lot of events, you get invited to a lot of events. And when you have quality people who are there, I'll tell you a story of one thing that really worked out for me. So Naval spoke at that first event.

When I first invited him to it, he called me. He said, don't tell anyone I'm coming because I have stalkers. And two, I don't speak at events. And I'm like, okay. And then he comes to the event. You could tell he's like, oh, wow, this is like a party. And then I had told Chris Voss at the time, like, we need to be friends with Naval. Like, he's super cool. You know, he knows a lot of people. Like, he'll get us into deals, blah, blah, blah. And what's funny is Naval was like,

a fan of Chris and that made that super cool. So I guess he looked around and he realized like, oh, so this guy's probably going to speak and there's some other people that are probably going to speak. So he walked up to me and he goes,

what's happening again and i was like it's just like a mixer fireside chat and then back to the mixer and he goes put me at the beginning and i'm like really and he's like yeah put me at the beginning let's do this and so once he spoke there like i said before that got out right and it gave a credibility exactly it gave me credibility but what was really cool about that was after that there were some events that he invited me to which changed the game for me

So in my 20s, I lived at my parents' house the whole time. I saved all the money I had, which was, you know, a different way of doing things. That's what I did. And so he invites me to an event with like Chris Dixon and Brian Armstrong and, you know, the founder of Coinbase and all these people. Silicon Valley legends. Yeah, all the Silicon Valley legends. And I get there and I took like a couple of friends with me.

And I noticed everyone's trying to talk to like the big dogs in the house. And that was cool. You know, I met some people, but then I noticed there were some younger people there who looked like they were in their early twenties. And I'm like, what are they doing? Let's go find out. Let's be curious. So I went up to some of them. I introduced myself. One of them happened to be the founder of a company called hashflow.

which I, you know, him and I became friends and I found out a ton of these guys had invested in their company. And so I asked him, can I invest? And that turned out to be a really lucrative investment for me. And so... The butterfly effect of getting invited to this event. Yeah. And so for me, I was just like, oh, wow, this really worked out for me. No, I didn't make a ton of money off of that one event, you know, but...

I made a ton of money off an investment. Right. Because of who you met through that. Yeah. And then who knows who else you meet through that from the people that you met through that. Bam, bam, bam. It just compounds over the course of time. Yeah. Tarzan, quick question. Sure. An orangutan fell in love with you last week in Dubai. Yes. Some of those videos got tens and tens and tens of millions of views. And then as soon as you came home, you were wrestling with an ostrich. Yes. Where was that at? In the backyard. At our house. At the ranch? Yeah, at the ranch.

So when you're interacting with these animals, how do you know which ones are going to love you and hug you like the orangutan did for hours at a time? Or an ostrich is going to want to wrestle with you and kick you and fight with you? Well, it just depends on time of year, the day.

What's happening? You know, we have an ostrich. He had three brothers. He was a young little pup. We've been best friends for a long time. Yeah. We probably had about 200 or more positive interactions. And then two days ago...

He decided to finally kick me in front of some guests, which is fine. I'm used to getting kicked by the birds. By the way, an ostrich kick can kill a lion. That's what those feet are designed for. Just want to give you a little context. I've had one of his goats like bump his head. Just ram you, huh? Yeah. A somewhat similar feeling, just a little more torque on the end of it. But yeah, he kicked me in front of the guests.

And I kind of got out of the habitat pretty quickly, you know, just keep moving through the tours and be able to survive the rest of the day because we had like 15 or 20 more animals interact with. So I had to make sure my chi was right, you know. But yesterday I woke up about, you know, 4 a.m. and I just could not stop thinking about that ostrich kick.

I'm like, why'd he kick me? You know, so I went to go and make my peace and then war started again. Have a conversation with him? Yeah, we started having a full-on tussling match for about five minutes. And that went on for five minutes? How strong are they? Very strong.

Tarzan's very strong. Yeah, he's very strong. I work out just to hang out with the animals. That's why those three hours, you know, it's needed. But sometimes, again, I don't take it personal. I'm always the person in the wrong with the animals because I'm in their space or they're in captivity or even in the wild. It's never their fault. It's my fault. And he's just, you know, I'm collecting ostrich eggs. He's beating up the employees. So I have to go talk and make sure he was okay with the employees. But he wasn't.

he wasn't trying to really hear what i had to say so he let me have it just chose violence yeah he chose violence but but what about the orangutan orangutan she chose love yeah she held on to me with all of her might all her might and she would not try like it was really hard to like five guys yeah five guys to remove the ring of things what did it feel like when it was on you it's like a very

tight hug, but their hands are the same as their feet. So their feet also grab you as if, you know, like that forehand is grabbing you. And like each limb is like six grown men strength. So I'll take a six foot grown man.

And you take six arms. That's one equivalent to one orangutan. Okay, but did you feel embraced or suffocated? A little bit of both. The embrace was really good because it felt, you know, she chose me out of a big group of people.

I felt really good. Yeah. And it was all suffocating because there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. Even if I felt uncomfortable or I wanted it to get off me or even if stuff went really south, there's nothing I could have done to stop her from hugging me or holding me because she was just absolutely too strong. Oh, my God. Yeah. It was like literally six men holding one arm down. You can't move it. Damn. Yeah. It's pretty. It's pretty hectic. And then a tiger walked by.

Yes. You guys spend a lot of time with animals. Yeah, every day, all day. Well, you too. You're living on a ranch. Yeah. I want to spend more time, but Tarzan, that's all he's done his entire career. I got to watch in real life in Dubai because that's where they can have lions and tigers and bears. And it was interesting to see, like, he was wrestling with tigers and then bigger tigers and then he's going to go feed a bear and put honey in a bear's mouth, like...

I stayed outside the cage. It gets pretty serious. But it's fun. It's fun. I'm not afraid of the concept of it. I'm afraid that I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I don't want to overreact to fighting a bear or fighting a tiger. Obviously, they're going to beat me, but I'm saying I don't want to react just because they might do something that's not even attacking me, so I just don't want to put myself in that position. I relate to that. Anyways. I just want to love them, and I want to watch them. I want to feed them and save them all.

Would you ever do anything in Dubai? Would you ever do something like Wild Jungle? Oh, absolutely. Me and you have talked about doing different hubs of Wild Jungle, even around the states. We talked about Texas, talked about Vegas, we talked about Florida, and we also talked about doing international hubs. But what would be the greatest first point of international Wild Jungle headquarters in Dubai?

That is like you can get to almost anywhere around the world from there. We was looking up nonstop flights, Malaysia, Philippines, Africa, London, you know, so that would be a great headquarters to start there. They have unlimited funds. They all have lots of animals. We went to one of their safari park zoos that was basically funded by the entire country. And it was ridiculous. Were you guys, did you guys plan this trip to hang out with the animals there? Yeah.

Because that's what it sounds like. Yeah. And that's not what everyone's thinking when they're like, okay, let's go to Dubai. But you guys straight up... I had one business meeting in nine days. I went there to see Mohammed. I've been friends with him for many, many years. He owns a 5.5 million square foot mall called the Dubai Outlet Mall. And he's been building convention centers and movie theaters and...

arena and all these things and so I went there and talked about a spire tour like hey we can maybe bring a spire tour here once a year and throw a big conference in Dubai you already own a 5.5 million square foot mall and then we started talking about wild jungle and all these things and I was like I guess we're gonna stay longer and then the sheik out there he has his own private zoo and so we stayed there for a couple days and then that orangutan was there and

there's a true love story yeah you know we couldn't we couldn't break it up you guys facetimed you in there wearing a tank since yeah you should in the morning wake up you should probably wake already yeah especially they have lions there that are roaring like five six in the morning all right nicole

So we talked a little bit about the making money side on the investing side How do you make decisions since you're around a lot of cool people you're not around interesting zillionaires and Silicon Valley legends You're also going out in Hollywood in Los Angeles and traveling and going to crypto conferences of business conferences and V con with Gary Vee like you're out and about and networking which is fantastic and meeting these people but because of that

There's a lot of deal flow options. There's only so much of you that you can invest. Like I can put 10K here, 25K here, 100K here, 10K here, 5K here. The numbers are relevant. The concept is how do you choose what you put your money into and your personal brand into?

Okay. So what I put my money into, I'm going to be real 100 over here because I haven't done it enough. I sort of defer to the people who have. Great. I love that. I think that's what I do. Yeah. I think that's, that's the best. If you told me that Naval and this guy and that guy and Brian Armstrong are all investors. Okay. I'm in. Yeah. Their team's vetted it. Their lawyers vetted it. Exactly. They all put it in. Those are called the lead investor guys. Let me break it down real quick and I'll let Nicole finish. When I look at deals, I've done 43 angel investments.

some of the time i'm the lead investor and so people are now having to trust me that i researched it enough my lawyers my accounting my intuition my interviews with the ceos and executives i'm now the lead investor

after doing a dozen or two dozen those I switched to not wanting to be the lead investor very rarely am I delete investor because I'm only investing in companies doing 2 million or 20 million 2 million to 20 million in sales so I can't be the lead investor because there's probably someone earlier now what is the lead investor it's someone typically a fund a VC firm

an incubator that finds a company or knows the company and they're going to put in the first 100k 500k 1 million 2 million 5 million again the number is kind of irrelevant but to put their stamp of approval on that company now if a household name like kleiner perkins or some of the people that nicole's mentioned that have that credibility put a check into a company well

two three four five six other investors might feel more comfortable and have their teams still research it but after a while once you know that there's five or six investors that are good names or good vcs or good funds into it you can feel pretty comfortable can that company fail of course it can we've seen it happen lots of times however as a betting man or a betting woman if someone said household name vc household name legend the guy that started coinbase the guy that started angel list are all investing

i'm going to take that gamble right and i'm going to be what's called a positive ev positive expected value is going to happen that if a bunch of people that are good at investing invest into a company i can feel more comfortable then someone else pitching me the same exact business and nobody's invested into it yet that's scary right yeah doesn't mean you can't do it but it's obviously much more comfortable much more interesting to do what nicole just mentioned hey if a bunch of my friends that i trust respect

are investing into it, then she's going to put in X amount of dollars. Again, the amount she puts in is irrelevant. She now feels comfortable that her friends that she respects invest in that deal. Please continue. - The only time, I love what you just said, the only time that I feel like that doesn't work, well, sometimes that doesn't work out is what I wanted to say. So like, I don't know if you invested in Clubhouse. - I did not. - I did.

Oh, you did? But the thing was, all of these people, yeah, we had such a good experience on there and we thought that was the next hottest app. It was supposed to be. Yeah, it was supposed to be. Everyone thought that. Because it could have been very easily. It could have been. I know. Don't get me started, Dan. That's a whole podcast. We could do a whole Clubhouse podcast. Yeah, we'll do a whole Clubhouse podcast. Could have, should have, would have. Yeah.

But yeah, in some cases, even that doesn't work. So it's risky. Investing is risky. And I don't think everyone should do it the second they start making money. You know, a lot of people I know just put their money into like an index fund and call it a day. Make 5%, 8% a year and just compound it. Yeah. But I agree with everything that you said. And that's what I do. I just see...

what the good investors are investing in. And I've had a lot of conversations with friends who are like, you know, I went out and I invested in all these founders that I personally believed in. And I lost all this money because most businesses fail. Most businesses fail. I didn't even know this until I got in this game.

And I had a friend recently tell me, you know, Nicole, I think we should start throwing events with investors who are really good at investing and we should actually start giving our money to them, let them take 20% and call it a day because it's been that hard investing in founders that you might believe in, but you just don't know what's going to happen. So investing, I feel like can be really scary. That's why. So we created the Elevator Syndicate. We raised $44 million in

Or you invested, sorry, I didn't raise it. I invested $44 million with my group, the Elevator Syndicate, into companies the last two years that do between $2 and $20 million in revenue. We, Elevator Syndicate, put in $3 to $6 million per deal, but we asked for a discount.

The reason for the discount is it's going to be a bunch of characters like the real Tarzan, Nicole Benham, and this person, that person, business person, business person. And so from a company's perspective, let's say they're selling a snack. I'm like, hey, snack company, I know you want to raise $4 million out of $20. What if you take $4 million out of $12 or $16? And I'm going to bring you Nicole, Tarzan, all these people that have big networks, big social media followings. They have a lot of connection. We'll help you with your company.

snack company's like, yeah, I'm going to get $4 million and I get a bunch of interesting investors. Cool. Yeah. And when you do a syndication deal, syndication deal meaning like elevator syndicate, we go get 10, 20, 30, 40 people. That's a syndication. That's a group syndication. Elevator syndicate wires the money. All the people wire to elevator syndicate. We then wire the money to the snack company in this example.

the snack company only has one name on the cap table the cap table is all the names of the investors and how much equity that they have and so now Nicole Tars and all our friends invest in the elevator syndicate they have their equity here with a company called Angel list I use Angel list for everything for years and it all happens to be the founder of Angel list Angel this is who I've used for years and they manage the elevator syndicate and I pay them a fee to manage it for all of us all the investors into that syndication

from a company perspective, we're able to fund them really quickly because I'm getting a bunch of 25K, 50K, 100K, 200K checks from 20, 30, 40, 50 different people. Bam, bam, bam, 40 people at 100K each, raise $4 million. And you can do that much quicker than going out there and trying to find a VC or a fund to say, hey, give me $4 million.

yeah going to get a VC or fund to hand you four million bucks you're gonna meet ten twenty thirty forty fifty them if you're lucky for one of them to give you four million dollars and most times like yeah well I'll give you 1 million or 500k or 200k because they don't want to give you the whole four million dollars

so syndication deals are an interesting way that you can either syndicate around if you own the snack company in this example or you want to co-invest with other people you can find a syndicate like ours that you trust and you can get your friends together or get a syndication together or you can actually go on angel list and look up syndications there are some amazing people like there's a guy in las vegas named kamal kamal he's had a syndicate for years peter pham peter pham like there's

legends in the game. Oh yeah, Peter Pham crushes. These are people that are so connected that you can then co-invest with them through their syndication or what's called a rolling fund. Rolling fund, do your research about this, is you can put in smaller checks and you can put the money in quarterly. $10K a quarter, $5K, $25K, $100K, whatever you can afford per quarter. And then that rolling fund manager, like a Kamal, they then go invest into companies like the snack company in this example that we're using.

So you have a lot of options out there as investors. You have to just research what is comfortable for you

maybe you don't want to just write a check directly into a company put in 25k let's say tarzan's raising money for the wild jungle he's like hey i got wild jungle i want to raise 5 million bucks you could do it through a syndication you could wire directly to tarzan or you might find a fund that's investing into tarzan with the wild jungle you can make a decision and have options on how you invest into something into a company but the important part for you is to research for yourself what do you feel comfortable with and how you feel comfortable with doing it

The next question. There's a helicopter going by, but again, we're in a motorhome. That's the whole point of this podcast, is to make it real and raw. Okay, so the next question is,

how do you decide what you put your personal brand behind because if you say hey nicole you we're going to give you sure let's say wild jungle is going to give you a hundred thousand dollars of shares for free to be an advisor to the company or personal brand related to the company that makes other people feel comfortable about either investing or partnering or other relationships that you have how do you decide when you feel comfortable putting your name behind a crypto company the wild jungle a snack company etc

Okay, so for this I'd say, and I've made mistakes and I'll get into it in a second, I think I really have to understand something to the point where I can explain it and other people are like, oh wow, that makes sense. If I can't explain it simply to the point that other people understand it,

then I don't want to really touch it anymore because I got into crypto. I was like the NFT girl. And then when crypto came crashing down, right as that was happening, I got involved in this deal that went south

And it slightly damaged my reputation within that arena. Sure. And for me, I thought it was the end of the world. I thought it was... It's happened to so many of us. So many of us. Everybody. Yeah. And so for me, I was like, damn, I can't just like...

put my name on everything and you really do have to vet and talk to other people like Dan you and I know so many of the same people like I know Dan is legit like I can name 20 people off the top of my head who know Dan have worked with Dan have spoken at his conferences and have not had a bad experience so already yeah already right there I'm like all right he's good but there's some other people like you know I've met on over the internet and they have a big following and I I see my

my friends are following them. I assume they're good because they're good, but I never went and asked and I never, I never went and asked like, you know, what's it like doing business with this guy or what, you know, what's it like working for this guy? And so that's a big deal to me. When I first got into crypto, uh, I did, I was in the Twitter commercial and,

I did a deal with Chipotle. Those are companies that I felt really good doing stuff with. Of course. I want to go to Chipotle right now. I love Chipotle. I love Chipotle. But then there were other people that came and were like, hey, we're starting this NFT project. And they offered me so much money. And it was really hard to turn it down because it was actually more money than what I was being offered for commercial work and stuff.

Because, you know, not everyone there is honest. So, you know, you got to determine what's this going to look like for me long term. If this goes south, what is this going to do to me? How do you guys decide? Whatever you put your name on, if you can't explain it, you probably shouldn't be doing it. Yeah. If it's not congruent with your brand or what you are or who you are or what your future is, there's probably no point in doing it. Unless you need some, like, emergency cash. Then you're playing a pretty risky game. Yeah. Because then you're losing your fan base.

They think you're a sellout or a salesman. All that hard work over all those years has just gone within one little small paycheck. So what about for you for consumer products? Like you went to see Young LA today. You went to their warehouse. Well, yeah. Perfect example. I worked with this company. This was the first clothing brand company I ever worked with when I first started social media six years ago. They were tiny. We both grew. We were actually parted ways in a good way. We're just actually friends. And they helped first drop ship my first...

So I was one of their drop shippers. Now they've grown so much, they don't drop ship anymore. And they were like, hey, we got a new fund. We haven't talked in like five years. It's the beginning of the year. You want to do month to month?

new drops onto merch. I'm like, absolutely. There's like no strings attached. Uh, you're not like bound and tied. Uh, I like young LA. I now moved to L, you know, California. So it's like, why not do it? You know, why not bring some extra dough in? It's a good company. Um, my favorite fighter signed to them. So it's a good, you know, the being a favorite fighter, John Jones. Yeah. So Ryan, Ryan Garcia signed to them. Ryan Garcia. Um, see, uh, Chris Bumstead. Uh, it's just a plethora of good quality, uh,

legit people. So I'm like, I can get down. I love it. You did that tequila deal a few months ago? Yes, a coffee tequila. Another thing, I get offered all types of deals every day to do different things from energy drinks to tequila to clothes to pillows to...

airplane rides I mean you name it it's uh it comes and goes um but tequila it's uh a cost of tequila that's what I'm working with now I have to actually working for about five years through Skylar Skylar brought me um a guy and said hey someone wants to do tequila and I'm like I'm a pass didn't even think about it you know it's like another another alcohol spirits person trying to hit me up the guy sent me a picture of the bottle which is an Aztec temple

And in the middle of the bottle is a jaguar, my favorite cat. And I'm like, I can get behind that. I'm back in. I'm back in. That's how you get to him, the animals. Yes. If it's congruent, if it's like a big, huge, fluorescent, neon blue bottle, it probably ain't going to fit well in the jungle. But if you've got some cool temple-looking artifact with...

That's dope. I knew exactly what I was wearing on this podcast. I knew what was up. What about you, Dan? How do you decide what you put your personal brand behind? Or how do you decide who you want to speak at your conferences? Because there are a ton of people who are out there speaking, selling things, selling their books, and you have to vet them. Yeah. So I'm bombarded by speakers trying to get onto the stage. Yeah.

The hard part is for me, especially with Aspire Tours, we only have a nine hour event.

Andrew Kordel talks for 90 minutes. Eddie Wilson's 45 minutes. I do 25 minutes and then I host all the panels. So that's like four or five hours out of nine. Then there's breaks. Then there's a 90 minute lunch. I got like two hours to work with out of nine to be able to actually fill up spots. Right. And I have to have celebrity. I need to have some badass women. I need to have a business person. I need to have an athlete or something. Like I need to have my checklist of like my game. So I only have like zero to two spots.

But then I have 94 people messaging me asking me to be on there that I'm friends with, I go to dinner with, I sleep at their house, they come to the Wild Jungle, like, I'm close to them and I have to tell them no. -Yeah. -And it's not easy and it's getting worse, obviously, because it's-- Aspire Tour keeps getting bigger and bigger. The Limitless Arena is coming April 27th. We're gonna have 12,000 people there. -Wow. -Do you know how many people messaged me the day I put that flyer out? All of the people. My freaking inbox went ballistic. -My text went ballistic. -I think I've even messaged you but I have to say this.

I don't remember you saying no in a way that was offensive. You're just like, hey, let's do something else together. Yeah, let's pick it. I want it. It's not that I don't want. And the people that I'm not going to have on stage, I tell them, though.

like i don't lead the monks i don't want them messing me for years oh yeah yeah and i don't want them to make it an awkward thing um because a lot of times they'll say like hey if you need more value or if you need another speaker why do you think i need another speaker yeah i'm throwing a 12 000 person event i don't want to be rude or cocky but like why do you think i need another speaker like and so they frame in a way that is not appealing to me if they said hey i could think i could bring like 400 people to your event

and I would love to speak about this topic for 25 minutes. That's a much different than like, "Hey, you're doing me a favor by coming on stage." -You know what I want to talk about with you actually? -Yeah. And you too because I feel like you guys have a similar network. You guys do a lot of stuff together. Because people always ask me, "How do you know so-and-so? How did you become friends with so-and-so? How did you get Chris Voss as a mentor?"

And so, yeah, I'll answer the question too. But I want to know from you because your network is like 10 times what I've seen out there. It's insane. It is insane. And it's like everyone that I discover who's a good speaker, sometimes I'll go to their following section. Sometimes they follow like 30 people like Tim Grover and you're one of them. And it could be almost anybody and they follow Dan.

And so how do you build relationships with these people who have so much access, so many people in their inbox, in their emails, coming up to them? What is the thing? So one, I throw smaller events and I throw charity events. And so I can't get an Ed Milad or a Tim Grover or a Zillionaire or a huge name speaker to come to a business event often.

But if I say, hey, I'm doing a toy drive. Hey, I'm doing a charity poker tournament with Steve Aoki. Hey, I'm throwing this charity event for the homeless. I'm doing Thanksgiving food drive. They're often going to show up, even if it's like Gary Brekker, Ed Milad, or Andy Priscilla, or whatever, right? Jamie Lima, Sarah Blakely. These characters, they're bombarded with options of where to go. They're unlikely to come to my business event. So my charity event is oftentimes where I can build more relationship and more time with them to hang out.

I'm also really, really focused on when I go to a city to text people in that city. "Hey, I'm going to be staying at the W Hotel for the next two days. If you want to come over for dinner tomorrow night or brunch on Saturday morning, let's hang out." If they don't show up because people are busy, I still have brownie points. I invited them to a dinner and a brunch. I gave them two different options. Yeah. Two different time spots because some people have families, some people are single, some people, whatever it is. Yeah.

and I make the location where I'm staying so that whatever time they want to come, I'm going to be there. Because the hard part is you're like, even here right now, I told you guys to meet me at the hotel and then we parked the RV across the street from the hotel. The hotel is the hub, right? Where I can be there all day and night. Yeah. And the people that I need to meet, the guest we just had has a $5 billion fund right before you. We're going to go now see boss, just train who, who trains Kevin hard and you know, all these big name athletes. Right. We're going to go see him right now. Like,

I use the hotel as the hub for my meetings and networking. And I've done this for 15 years.

Every city I go to, I tell people in that city and I have them saved in my phone as Nicole Benham, LA. Real Tarzan, Miami. Wherever that person lives, I have them as that city so that I know to remind myself, hey, I'm going to Boston. Make sure to text this person, this person, this person. Hey, I'm going to be in Dallas, Texas. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We were in Dubai. I had a notes list of all the main characters, of their 16 main characters that I know in Dubai.

And then there's like five of them I followed up with every day. Hey, come by the hotel. Hey, we're at this hotel. And how many did they kill? All of them. Because I gave them options. It's surgical. And I'm building relationships with them and time because people are busy. And because of that, I'm following up. I'm networking with them and I'm inviting them to things. Hey, come with us to an animal sanctuary. That's different. Hey, come with us to a charity event. That's cool. Hey, come with us to this fancy seven star resort. Like I'm inviting them to something that's unique, not just like, hey, let's have coffee. Let me pick your brain.

No one wants to hear that. Never. Right. And so from that perspective, that's how I'm always trying to interact is charity events, dinners, lunches, et cetera. But then here's the next thing. People always say you got to provide value, but nobody's ever told you what that means. I'm going to tell you. If someone has something they care about, support it. If they have a charity, if they have a book launch, they have something going on, a business,

something in their world or their kid has that right their kid has a cupcake company or their wife has a new scarf company support them

you are going to cut through all the noise if you post about that person's wife's scarf company or their kid's cupcake company. So true. Because that is emotionally attached to them and the person that's in their household is now like, daddy, daddy, or mom, or sister, or husband, like, you see this nice post that Nicole did? Can you believe the real times I posted about my scarf company? Like, now you've gotten to their hearts, right? And whether using it as a tactic or because you really care, either is fine, but it works. And some people...

just don't realize like value is what does someone care about support them next thing is invite them to things or do things with them or show them something that matters to them other last thing is i do introductions every day hey nicole you should meet tarzan you should have him on your podcast this guy gets 200 million views a month tarzan's like cool i get to go on a really cool podcast nicole's like holy this guy's right and for me i'm just earning brownie point brownie point

took me 29 seconds we have that in common right that's yeah i'm just introducing you guys yeah whatever happens you guys do the podcast bam bam like all the things happen because of an introduction that took me 29 seconds and if i do those throughout the day uh like i can change people's lives and now nine months from now tarz is like hey bro there's my friend has a podcast you should come on that or nicole's like hey i'm throwing this event you want to co-host i'm gonna have christmas

And subconsciously you don't even realize it's because I introduced you guys nine months ago. You know what's crazy? I was on the phone with Chris Voss on the way here. Yeah. And he like could tell I was in the car and he's like, where are you headed? And I'm like, I'm actually going on my friend Dan Fleischman's podcast. And by the way, I need to introduce you. And by the way, you need to start speaking. I'm going to book him all the time. Yeah. I've always wanted to book him. Yeah. He's great. Okay. So that's my answer of how I do networking and building relationships is I'm constantly trying to provide value and introduce them, invite them to cool stuff.

I love that. For our last bit and segment, I want to talk about charity. Okay. Why do you think it's important for people or for them for their business and their employees to involve themselves in some type of charity, whether it's money-related or time and energy-related? Why should people involve themselves with charity? I mean, so many reasons. I think, for one, everyone needs help with something.

whether it's they need money or they actually need time. People don't see that as like charity sometimes, but giving your time is actually such, it's such a meaningful thing. And two, it actually does make you feel better and gives you a sense of purpose. You know, people who are, who are in service, uh,

are a lot happier statistically. So the fact that one, you're helping people, but two, as a strategy, I'm sure as well. So I want to hear from you about that. So from a personal perspective, the strategy part is really just for yourself. It actually makes you feel good by doing charity work. Yeah. And,

If you involve your family, you will then instill that as part of the culture within your family. That's a good thing. That's why you'll see more and more kids going with their parents to go do trade-related things. A lot of our friends post about it, and it's really nice to see them take their kids to go do something for the homeless or go do something for a school organization or a children's hospital, etc. So there is some tactical part to that.

And you can also, as I mentioned earlier, that's an excuse for me to call business friends, people that I can't normally invite to something. I can actually invite Oprah to a charity event where I would never invite her to a business conference, right? Ever. Doesn't matter how big or cool Aspire Tour is, I would have to pay her to go to that event.

But I can invite her to a charity event and possibly she might show up because she cares about XYZ charity. Like, hey, Tarzan's doing this big charity for the animals. And she's like, oh, now she might go. We're never in a trillion years when I get her to come to a business event, a business conference. Does that make sense? Yeah. So sometimes charity can also be used in a tactical version from that. And by the way,

People might be listening like, whoa, I mean, you're doing that to make an introduction to Oprah. Do you know how excited the charity is going to be if Oprah walks in? What you're going to do for that charity and how big it's going to be. The charity, I'll say this, they care about the end result. So when there was a really frustrating thing that happened a couple of years ago, there's big fires in Australia. Jeff Bezos donates 98 million dollars, 97 million dollars.

And every press article says, pfft, that's so small for Jeff Bezos. It's barely like this much money compared to everybody else. I can't believe he only donated $97 million. Do you know how many billionaires there are in the world? 3,000. Guess how many of them donated $97 million? None. And if you guys in the media are going to go rip him apart for donating $97 million, guess what? He's not going to do it next time. And you know what? The people in Australia that had their houses burned...

Like, they should hate you deep in their soul because you pushed away someone that donated $97 million while you, the publicist or the media people that are being mean, donated $0. And none of the other billionaires donated anything. And it's very frustrating. So sometimes there is tactical parts to charity and I'm adamant about people posting about charity because I want more charity to happen around the world because of the butterfly effect. If I can inspire people to do toy drives, food shelters, Thanksgiving food drives,

The tipping dinner thing we do where people put in $100 each for tipping dinners. Thousands of people replicate it. I came up with that thing in December, the two years too long about giving away clothes. Yeah. I got tagged 4,700 times in that. Wow. I don't have the biggest social to have 4,700 tags. It's the ripple effect, the compounding effect of people doing it. The people that are receiving the clothes, which is probably tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of pieces of clothing items, they don't have to know it's me.

the end result is all the charity people care about and so i say it with passion because we as a society can do a lot more for charity and again like you mentioned it's not about money there's so much you can do with your time your energy your social media power and just showing up for these charities that's so beautiful so going into year 2024 we are an election year there's gonna be a lot of chaos out there people are gonna get bombarded by division and politics and

everything that you could imagine. There'll be a lot of noise that goes on and with that, stock market goes up and down, crypto market goes up and down. Obviously, we're in a really good time with the crypto market since we just had the huge Bitcoin ETF announcement that happened which changes our entire future for cryptocurrency. What would you say to the people that are out there that are being bombarded by noise? How can they stay calm in the chaos? I would honestly say ignore it. I think...

If you read any biography, autobiography, listen to anyone at any of these conferences and you hear them talk or write about what made them successful, it's never a politician. It's never a politician. So sitting there getting mad about what they want you to get mad about and who you should vote for and blah, blah, blah. Like do it on your free time. Very minimal. Don't spend too much time on it.

I would say pay attention to entrepreneurs and what people are building and how AI is going to affect your life and what you want to build and what you want to contribute and what you want your purpose to be because if you don't figure that out and you spend all this time

you know, mad about politics or whatever side you're on, you're mad at Democrats, you're mad at Republicans, you're gonna wake up one day and you're gonna be so fucked, you won't even know what to do. I don't know any, I don't know any entrepreneur, successful person or happy person, maybe besides like, I don't know, Bill Maher who's doing great or a couple of others, I don't know anybody who devotes their time to politics

and has drastically changed their life. Focus on family. Focus on your own personal success. Help others and ignore politics. That's it. Chopping the mic. All right, guys.

So you can follow Nicole across social media platforms. I like to watch her on Instagram, but she's across all social media platforms. And obviously with her podcast called Beyond the Interview, and you can see her events. She'll be posting about it on social media. The Real Tarzan, you probably already follow him because he just gained another 100,000 followers the last 60 hours. I think the last three days. From the orangutan? Yeah. He just hit 8.6 million on Instagram. I'm sure it'll be 8.7 by the time this podcast comes out next week or two. But main thing here.

The reason that the podcast has been doing consistently so well is you guys liking, commenting, subscribing, sharing with your friends. So when you see clips here or see the whole podcast link, share with your friends, share with your coworkers, et cetera. And it's not for us. It's for you. We want you to have the discussion. If you notice,

There's no ads. I've not read a single ad in a year of this freaking podcast, and I'm trying to avoid that at all costs. I'd rather just pay for it. Keep bringing this to you. We may do some endorsement deals and things like that, but we have not done any ads here because we're not doing this part for the money. We're doing it because we need you to have discussions. Not want you to. We need you as a society to have discussions about money with your friends, your family,

your family, your coworkers, et cetera, so that we can make our society better. We can make our society stronger. Go to themoneymondays.com. We have a weekly coaching call every week on Monday at 4 p.m. We do live interviews via Zoom and we actually answer questions with you guys via Zoom. So you can go to themoneymondays.com for that. And again, follow Nicole, follow Tarzan, and we will see you guys next Monday on The Money Mondays.