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Most people will say, "Well, you're not going to win or get contracts until you're professional." I didn't have that mentality. I was like, "I'm here. I have nothing to lose, everything to gain. I came here with a glass half full. I came here with an immigrant's mentality and truly chased all these contracts down."
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays. I'm here with my co-host, The Real Tarzan, and we have a very special guest. They have been waiting to see each other for years, so I'm really excited for this moment to happen. We have seven-time champion Mr. Olympia, one of my favorite humans in the world to listen to, talk to, watch him as he's built one of the nicest gyms I've ever seen in my life, Mr. Flex Lewis. Thank you, guys.
And the crowd goes, wow. Crowd as well. People outside and everything. All right. So here on the Money Mondays, we talk about three main topics. How do people make money? How do they invest money? How do they give it away to charity? But first, we want to get the quick two-minute bio from Mr. Flex Lewis, and we can get straight to the money. Well, firstly, thank you very much. It's an honor to be here. It's been great to watch you guys start this, get some incredible guests on, and get some insight also. So,
For myself, quick bio, which is going to be hard to do. Flex Lewis from Wales, United Kingdom. Obviously, real name Stephen James Lewis, but nickname got picked up at six years old. Nothing to do with bodybuilding. I played rugby. Come from a steel town, mining town. Father was a steel man. Grandfather was a coal man. Mother was a nurse who was made, unfortunately, disabled. So I grew up in a very...
Loving household, I want to preface that, but definitely one that wasn't filled with the extra things that some people obviously have the luxury to have. So money was hard to come by, but very well and very hard worked for.
um for me i got into bodybuilding um after seeing a book at 12 years old on tom platts my auntie had been a nurse she'd gone to london brought this book back i seen it opened it up blew my mind wanted legs like this guy and i was on my path to building legs which also coincided with my rugby
My rugby career kind of went into a great run. I had the opportunity to play rugby professionally, but from a free gym membership, I decided to do this bodybuilding thing. Not my full-time profession in my head. I ended up doing my first show, winning my first show, getting my free gym membership. And then next thing I know, I'm on a plane to the United States and this amazing world of bodybuilding opens up.
So in that period of time, I've invested hard into the brand, invested into the bodybuilding. I've been able to win and leave the amateur ranks undefeated.
went into the professional ranks, just retired after doing, oh my gosh, over two decades in the sport and retired now and defeated as a 212, same time champion. And in that time, been able to invest in businesses, scale businesses and sell businesses while still as a champion and now into other realms, including the podcast with you guys. Awesome.
I love it. So we are actually sitting in the parking lot right this second in our RV motorhome in the back of the Dragon's Lair. This is a really large gym. Tell us the concept behind Dragon's Lair. Why is it so successful? Just tell us the whole thing about Dragon's Lair. So the Dragon's Lair started actually in Boca Raton. I was actually trying to get the real Tarzan to my gym, but he'd rather train in Miami. But it's another story for another time. Yeah.
So how the drags started was I was actually training in different gyms in Boca Raton. And as the Olympia got closer to the show,
There was more and more fans turning up at the gyms, obviously, to meet myself, which is fine and well and guest passes, whatever. But then they started to capitalize on the fact that I was training at the gym. Come and meet Flex tomorrow. Flash posts. So I turn up and there's like 50 kids there with school uniforms on with their moms and dads clapping when I walked in. I'm like, what is going on here? So long story short,
I ended up saying to the gym, let me just pay. Let me just be a member here. And then it eliminates all this. It won't happen again. It happened again. Went to another gym. Guess what? It happened again to me in a different format. But nonetheless, I became a marketable sort of element at that gym to bring people in, guests, whatever. And I just sat back one day and I realized like I have a roller index of people I know in the used gym equipment space.
And I said, I'm just going for it. So for me to just focus on my brand, on me winning the Olympia, I found a warehouse in Boca Raton, which you know isn't cheap. And I kitted it out with hand-picked equipment, which kind of took about six to eight weeks to get together.
um and i created this gym now it had no name it was just for me to get in there focus train without distraction and for the other 22 hours of the day it was closed it was just me for me to just focus for two hours and i seen that as an investment for filming and everything else and it evolved and evolved now um i have a rolling index of friends that we have mutually have friend friendships with too that either film in florida coming into film or they were
or they were wrestling or they were doing whatever they were. They found out about the gym. They knew it was closed off to the public. No windows, no doors. They started training in there when they were in town. They started putting pins in the gym location. And what can we call it? What's the name of the gym? That's the Dragon's Lair. It formed, again, a long straight shot into an element of this being a gym that was the gym of VIPs, the gym of athletes, athletes,
And really, I had no business plan for that other than me winning and defending my title. It took on its own form. We would have come close to the Olympia, fans sleeping in their cars, waiting for athletes to turn up. It became much bigger than I ever imagined. So then I started putting more into it. So I got out the old equipment, Arsenal Strength, which is a company I'm a partner in. Started a...
obviously growing and growing. So then I decided to invest into the gym. Um, even though I was never going to be open to the public, create a showroom in a sense and create this gym, which kind of looks like the gym I have now, um, where the arsenal strength pieces and it looked like a fully functioning gym. Uh,
We would record in there. We would do all our content in there. And I would fly in athletes for my prep. So like fighters bring in different athletes to sharpen their tools, I had the same mentality for bodybuilding. I would fly in guys from Brazil, the new up-and-comers, the champions of old, to be in and around me during camp, which no other bodybuilder was doing, just so I could win and defend that title and stay sharp.
So again, I used that gym for seven years for its successes. And we realized then that we truly have something here. We truly do. During COVID, myself and my wife had a lot of reflection to be like, where are we going to take this gym next? We know that
it's being in demand of a public location. So we looked around Florida, no offense, we couldn't find anything. I moved to, don't worry. I know you moved to. And we couldn't, you know, these places we walked into, it was just not in my heart. I just was like, this is not it. As soon as I drove up to the place, this is not it. So one of my best friends was back and forth here in Vegas and Florida. And he does all the big screens for the,
for a lot of the casinos um he's got a lot of um connected business here and he was like just just just come out nobody knows nobody knows nothing jump on a plane it's covered times me and my wife jumped on a plane of course masks on not expecting anybody to know me as soon as we got off hey flex what are you doing here in vegas i was like ah do me a favor please don't post this for a month nobody knows i'm here of course 15 seconds later tagged in
So we found, we came out the first time for Vegas, found a couple of locations, nothing that I was kind of set in stone with, full circle. We came out again, found this building along with next door, and then we found the place we were going to live. But we knew as soon as we came out here that this was going to be the next evolution of the Dragons' Lair and where we were going to be.
So Tarzan, you get hundreds of millions of views on your social media. People want you to come to their gyms, their retail stores, their supplement companies everywhere. How do you decide what type of a gym or what type of a location that you're willing to put your brand onto? Because when you walk in, just like Flex, people are going to be posting about it. And now you're a brand association, whether you like it or not, obviously, because people are now tagging you. It's a good question. I mean, yeah.
When I first started working out like in Florida, it was like whatever was close to my house and I had the same problem I couldn't work out as so many people coming up, you know So I did the same investment you did I just went to the best used gym equipment store I bought all about a whole gym for my wholesale in my house. I
Just stopped going to the gym and just worked out at home, which made it all better, you know? So, but if the gym is lit, like the dragon's lair, my man's got dragon scales on every single piece. Like the details like that, I'll be at that gym, you know? I love stuff like that. I love quality, passion projects, you know? So any gym that has a real like real dungeon, dragon,
dragging, you know, no freaking windows. It's like, it's, I love it. So I also love bodybuilding as well too. So you got a great physique too. Trying to get like y'all, man. I'm trying to get the other way. I'm trying to lose this muscle now, but you can catch up on, take over. For sure. Yeah. Sometimes I'm at the airport. People are like, wait,
You're the guy that won the Mr. Olympia, right? That's why he's got the long sleeves on. I don't want to embarrass anybody here. So let's walk through the money part. How do you decide what to charge for membership, for day passes? Let's walk through the real life stuff. If someone wants to open a gym, how do they decide if they want to be a high-end gym, affordable gym? There's $10 a month gyms, there's $300 a month gyms. How do you decide price points for a gym? Good question. So when I came to Vegas, I looked at what was here.
And obviously there's a demographic, there's a draw. For us, we're kind of a bougie niche gym.
I realized that there's no bodybuilding fitness per se gym here in Las Vegas that were targeting our world. Yes, there's a lot of great gyms, there's no question. But for me, I was coming in with this new blank slate, this energy of post-COVID. A lot of people were, you know, just excited to get back to the gym. So I wanted to bring something that was, hey, listen, this is something that was lacking pre-COVID.
Yes, there's a price point that comes to it. But like anything, you know, we're on the money podcast here. We're not, you know, trying to be peachy. We know that with a $9.99 member, you're going to get a $10 member. You're going to get anything that...
is incredibly respectful of the gym or somebody that if it's not bolted down will be in their pockets. So we have a price point at the gym that kind of weeds out, I would say the lower dollar people. And listen, I come from a different world too. I didn't come from money. I also found it hard at first
to get my head and respectfully again i'm still walk on that that was that that humble line um of charging the price i did originally but then when i started speaking to you know people around me that were listen this this is a price point that will get you everything and more allow us to do this and more i kind of got it you know because i think sometimes i still fall into the into the mentality of i'm stealing wheels you know i still got them pennies in my pocket
But that being said, too, what I do in the gym for the members kind of,
far exceeds the price point what they see and what they get from being around the athletes that come in the celebrities that come in i mean you guys walk into the gym now you see how many heads were turned in they were like oh my god is that but nobody disrespectfully came up and jumped in the middle of our conversations there they are so used to seeing celebrities walking through the gym and that's what they really love here too so that element is brought to this gym i've invested a lot into the
infrastructure as well as all the small details to the big details that are seen the big details being the you know the the massive graffiti dragon that's on the wall all the way to the smaller details which kind of are big details in in some skis senses uh the uh details are on the pieces as you know you mentioned where we've spray painted
dragon scale on every single piece. So gangster. Yeah. And even with Roger, your videographer was talking about the lighting. We put a lot into the lighting too. You know, we just didn't turn lights on in that place. We made sure that there's certain color lighting as well as strategic lifting areas for athletes to be
We don't just have bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts here too. We've brought in, because of that like-mindedness, UFC fighters, boxers, football players. We have a lot of football players that live here in the off-season that love bodybuilding workouts and unfortunately cannot do them when they're in season because they're on camera. So we've done, again, a lot to make ourselves better.
the niche within a niche. But in that time period, because we focus so much into the smaller details, when I've taken a step back now, we've now become a global brand and recognized globally to the point now we're the number one destination in the entire country, number one day pass in the entire country. And if we look at the amount of people that have come here from all over the world,
It's humbling. It's incredible. But again, there's never a mourn about a day pass. There's never a mourn about a week pass. And there's never a mourn about a membership because we provide that service along with a membership that, again, is like no other here in Las Vegas.
So let's say someone's opening a gym or currently has a gym. What are the other ancillary revenues that they can make? Obviously, you can have supplements there. You can have clothing there. You can have beverages there, a water cooler. You can have mega fit meals. What are the different things that people could do? I saw you had massage therapy. What are different things that someone that's thinking about investing into a gym or has a gym, what are the other things they could be considering to make their gym make more money?
So outside of the things you've already mentioned, I'm just off the top of my head. There's, you know, we have vacant rooms that we created that we've been able to rent out to various different massage therapists, chiropractors. Again, for us, we try to be a gym that is a one stop shop.
where if somebody's coming in, they don't have to go anywhere else elsewhere to, to seek out the best. And that's what we've done. You've noticed them. People will say about our gym is we have the best, the best all in one roof, um, to the things you've already mentioned. Um, I'm trying to think of off the top of my head and, um,
with everything we have there, you know, we've got the cliche stuff with the store, the supplement side of things. Are those things important to a business when you have a gym? Is it important to have other things for people? Oh, most definitely. There's so much secondary sale that comes in, especially if you're looking at it just a tourist perspective. A tourist comes in for our gym, they're so excited. They're walking in, it's their Disneyland. So, we're kind of unique in a sense. So, if a gym owner was just about to open up a gym, they kind of got a different business model to me. So, I'm not
as really this is my first gym i'm not the expert gym guy that is going to give you all the the tips and tricks i can tell you from my perspective what went right what went wrong and as i never went in with this as a as a gym never been wanting to be a gym owner i've gone in this what i would love to see if i was designed the perfect gym so with that said um
If I was looking at, again, the tourist aspect of things, the tourist comes in, whatever it is around the world, they are so excited. From first point of contact, my staff should be just like Disneyland. Hey guys, where are you from? It's amazing to see you. And they're coming in with a suitcase, it's fresh off the plane, they're coming in on the, whatever it would be, they need to have that energy matched. If not, you know, a lot of people also coming in a little timid, it's like, oh, I can't believe I'm here and my staff will get the best out of that. So,
The whole experience comes and goes. They've done their workout. They've taken pictures. They've Snapchat, they've Instagram, they've done everything. They then will go into the store and that secondary sale is massive. That small little hole in the wall store for us has been a massive lucrative business in itself. Just that hole in the wall.
All right. So let's go from take off the gym hat and put on the seven-time Mr. Olympia hat. How does a bodybuilder make money? Is it endorsement deals, sponsorships? It's expensive to be a bodybuilder. Obviously, you got to eat a lot, take a lot of supplements, and there's a lot that goes on to building the perfect physique. Like walk us through how does a bodybuilder make money and what does it cost to be a bodybuilder? It's a champ win, you know, outside of the trophy and the aura, you know, like –
Financial wise. So again, if there's any fans that are watching this trying to be a sparing bodybuilder, I'm going to tell them right now that if you are trying to be an absolute millionaire in the sport of bodybuilding, you're not. You have to use your mind and your business tax carefully from the get-go. So
For me, and I'll take it a little bit back further, I had an entrepreneurial mindset from a very young age. Going back to what I was saying, I come from humble beginnings. At 12 years old, I had my first business. At 15, I was making decent money for a young kid. I was actually buying and selling boots.
Breeding, buying, selling. I got in from finches, and you and I can talk about this. Got in from the zebra finches to then I went into- Orange beaks, right? Yeah, that's right. I was going to make the noise, but this sounds like a little clump. Then I got into Bengalis finches. I got into parakeets, and I'm cutting a long street short here. Then I got into conyas, and then parrots.
And that was a moneymaker right there for me. Of course, you know, I would buy and start it from the pet shop and I would sell back to the pet shop. So using that mentality I had from a very young age, I then put it into my other endeavors later on in life. At 18 years old, I started up my first real, real business, man business, I would call it. And it was fantastic.
One man in a van. And I grew that to 13 employees, won Young Businessman of the Year three times, an award of Prince Charles, who's now King Charles, won Keff scholarships, and then got into bodybuilding. I had this crossroads of me going into bodybuilding and coming to the United States and going down this road of pursuing and chasing down three, two or three moves a day, continue playing rugby, and
and I decided, you know, I'm still young and foolish enough to give this a go if shit hit the fan. I knew it was never, and I came to the United States with the same business mentality. So as an amateur, I chased these contracts. Now, most people will say, well, you're not going to win or get contracts until you're professional. I didn't have that mentality. I was like, I'm here. I have nothing to lose, everything to gain. I came here with a glass half full. I came here with an immigrant's mentality.
and truly chased all these contracts down. I got in the faces of the photographers. I found out, okay, they're shooting in this gym here. Let me move from LA to full, from Santa Monica to Fullerton, which as you know, is an industrial area. And I slept on a friend's sofa for a year and a half, turned up every single day in shape, put myself in front of photographers until I was like, oh, you're on that kid. You got a contract. You got a supplement contract. You got whatever it was, fill in the gaps.
And that's how I chased my first contract down was making myself available, putting myself as a presentable face in front of these owners. And then I was able to get my first contract as an amateur. I got signed by Weeda Publications, which was massive, by Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, by Joe Weeda, the founder of bodybuilding. And I started making my first kind of contract before I even went pro.
So I can continue. So when I look at professional athletes and looking at endorsement deals, obviously my social media agency, we spend around $60 million with influencers for brands, products, mobile apps. I've never actually broken this down before, but this is what an influencer or an athlete should consider of how to figure out what they can monetize. Take a picture of yourself and put it onto a whiteboard or put it up on the wall.
On that picture of yourself, start from the top down. Your hat. You're wearing a Monster Energy hat. Boom, there's a sponsorship. You can wear sunglasses. You can wear headphones. You can do something here. You have a necklace. You can wear an earring company. Like, you start to look at whether you're male or female. From the top down, what brand products could you work with for each category? Are you going to get an endorsement deal or make it yourself? Meaning, do you want to make your own hats? Do you want to make your own earrings? Do you want to make your own headphones? Do you want to make your own sunglasses? If not, what companies do you like?
for headphones sunglasses hats etc go down the path of your clothing your everything that you do in your body your shoes your socks everything that you wear like or use do you use makeup do you like food does it go into your like whatever it is that you're using that should be what you consider and you're looking at your picture and then you start to think about what do you wear do you like watches do you like bracelets do you work out do you take supplements do you like cbd what is it that you like and that's how you can figure out what type of endorsement deals to go get tarzan
So sick. It's crazy. I do the same principle, by the way, without the whiteboard. I just learned something new. We're going to make a picture of Tarzan right now. How do you decide what brands that you work with?
Well, going back to the quality thing, you know, I really, really, I used to have actually a Monster Energy tattoo on my bicep. I love the extreme sports, my little brother, stuff like that. But, I mean, anything that really, like, resonates with what I like, you know, so if it's extreme sports, animals, bodybuilding, if I win a Roku, something will come to me. One, it's got to sound cool, you know, like...
Like cool sounded like there's another one called like animal pack back in the day or and universal Yeah, and I was like man never at that point. I was skinny I was like I want to work with that company You know I want to buy that stuff you know so if I want to buy it I'm most likely I want to work with it you know so when I got to a point of being able to be marketable for different products it's like
who do i like what actually tastes good you know what's dope i'm gonna reach out and then that's where it started at so so i'm picky man so the second part of what i was saying about taking the photo and figuring out what it is that you wear what is that you use is actually going inside of your house
opening up your refrigerator what brands do you buy do you like first form supplements do you like skin tea the beverage do you like ever bowl acai what is it that you eat what is it that you drink what is it you snack on you like that snack call that snack company email that snack company direct message that snack company whether you have 4 000 followers or 4 million followers
Most brands want to work with you whether they send you free product or actually pay you that depends on what you are as an influencer But for the most part if you just look at your life, we're like wow I go to this gym I go to this car dealership. I like to use this mobile app I use Spotify you start to think about which brands can you reach out to and say hey send me your snacks or hey Let me do a trade for gym membership like you did like I want to work with you or I like to eat your stuff and
I want to do a trade with you based on my influencer. Now, again, you might only have 4,000 followers. You'd be shocked at how many people actually do trades with you based on having a small following. You don't have to have a mega following like these guys do. Okay, we've talked about how to make money. Let's talk about investing. There's two things that we talk about when we talk about investing is investing into businesses, real estate, or investing into yourself.
This is expensive. Yes. Building you, building the superhuman is expensive. Walk us through investing into yourself. Let's not talk about investing into businesses right now. Okay. How do you invest into building a Flex Lewis? Well, first and foremost, the food aspect of things is off the charts, you know? So going back a little bit to what you were saying earlier so I can tell you something in...
For me as a brand, I looked at what I was consuming also, what I was wearing, what I was walking, talking about. And if I didn't or couldn't make it, I wanted to own it. So me, the brand being that carrier for all of the above,
I had to walk, talk and act correctly at all points in time. You know, that was when I won a show, when I lost the show, which is still rare. But nonetheless, how I reacted in that your brand is on at all times. People think, oh, this little silly tweet I'm going to make right now won't come back and haunt me. Oh, yes, it will. Yeah.
And trust me, these sponsors will go on search anything backdated to make sure that you align with the brand as much as they align with you. So I've always walked, talked and acted and respectfully said,
shook everybody's hands, no matter if I'm running to a gate at an airport or if I have a tour, which I'm blessed to have a two to three hour line at an expo, I will make sure that the first person in line and the last person in line all gets the same attention. So then I make my mark. And that 10 years ago, eight years ago, seven years ago, has gone full circle now because some of these people stood in line for me. I'm actually doing business with.
They remember the first encounter. They remember the first time that they met. That's awesome, man. Myself. And I love to make an impression just like the first time you and I met. You know, first time myself and Dan met and going off the question was, I was like, man, look at this guy's kicks. And obviously I knew the name, but then when the name and the person got put together, I was like, oh, wow.
But again, I didn't treat you no differently. I hope not anyway, until, you know, when I, when I met, I felt it was just, you wouldn't have known different. I think there's a difference between when people meet me for the first time and then they realize, Oh, you have a social media fall in the second time is a different experience. I'm like, you just found out I have a big social media fall. Didn't you? No, they're treating people different now. And I know that though. So brand awareness is key. Um,
I'm leaning into the things that you love and are passionate about. If I was to lean into something like helicopters and get in my own jet, that's not aligned with my brand. You know, that's just off the hip right now. But I'm bodybuilding. I'm passionate about people. I'm passionate about animals. I'm passionate about things that I've leaned into over the years. And then...
I think it's just organic when things start flowing into a business as well, throwing into one another. That's another thing. In terms of sponsors, same thing again. And same thing what you said, Taz, and it was the fact that I...
Align myself with brands that I was passionate about brands that were doing great things I never thought followed the monetary thing and trust me I was offered much bigger contracts But I took less because I align myself more with one brand for example I was offered a six-figure contract to go with one brand that didn't last two years but and I would have been one athlete of ten and
I decided to go with one with a company that was with a legend in the sport of bodybuilding, it was Gaspard Nutrition. I was there for seven years. I started off with $2,500 a month and that I'd pay for rent, bodybuilding, cars, all of the above. But the experience I had from that was incredible. I truly felt I had the apprenticeship that nobody else had. I flew around the world with Rich.
I was asked to become part of the company, sit in on meetings. I listened to the lingo that was going around with the supplement deals and whatnot. And I truly feel like, listen, I had an experience that Northern Athlete at 20-something years old would have, which now has segued me and allowed me to do into other endeavors. Additionally to that, obviously I'm not going to go into the investment side of things, but there's things that I've true to form stayed in.
consistent with that no one ever can look back on and say it's like oh you've always been talking about this but now there's a monetarial issue you flip now and now you're into this no I've been consistent from the first time I was ever on camera to the last I think it answers your question Dan I'm great at talking myself out of it what does it take what does it cost to make Flex Lewis oh my gosh well
I'll say this. The gym. Yes, the gym. But I'll say first, and this is kind of a highlight that just happened this week. I just got my citizenship after 15 years of going down that road. After millions of dollars in taxes and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent in getting the citizenship, it was earned, not given. And the same thing I can say about my physique.
It's probably cost millions of dollars. I wouldn't even want to know how much in chicken breast. I should have had an endorsement chicken deal if not owned the poultry farm already. The amount of money I've spent in chickens. I don't want Peter or after me. It was a commitment both sides. But yeah, it's cost a lot of money. Millions, I would say, to get to that brand. I would say millions before I even touched my first Mr. Olympia title. Wow. Yeah.
Wow. That's crazy. But again, you think about the expense that it takes to eat one solid good meal a day. It's very expensive to eat healthy. It's easy to eat crappy food. It truly is. So to eat healthy is a commitment. It should be the other way around. The government should help find ways to... Subsidize? Yes. Healthy eating. But of course, it doesn't work like that.
So when I committed myself to this, this path of becoming the best in the world, I realized that I have chosen a sport that costs more money than anything I've ever stepped foot in or tried in my life. Rugby was eat whatever you want, perform on the field. Bodybuilding, you are what you eat. And that means to say that
If you cheat, it will be shown up on stage, no matter if you've done it in the darkness of the nights, the locked doors. Yeah, no, you will be, it will be seen. It will be seen. So I can tell you, and I look you both in the eyes when I say this periodically, I'm
I have never cheated in my life. I have never missed a cardio session. I have never missed a gym session. I have never missed a meal. I have never deviated from the plan because I know my body better, which a lot of these athletes do to their coaches. I know my body better, coach. I have a coach that has been with me since I was 19 years old.
And he's the only man I allow in my life to talk to me the way he does. But I need a coach, not a cheerleader. And that element in my life has allowed me to become a better fill in the gaps. That's a non-compromise in my life.
I have a coach that truly wants the best version of me every time I step on stage. Does it better him? Of course. We both have come up together. But nonetheless, if I'm cheating myself, I'm cheating him and I'm cheating everybody that's believed in me from a very young age. And that goes for my mother, my friends, and all these people who have come to shows that don't have money to be there. I've never cheated once. So again, that mentality I put into life in general. I don't cheat myself in anything I do in business. I don't, you know, try to...
get a little point extra if I'm doing a business deal over a friend or whatever else. This is an equal playing field. If you give me something, I'm going to give it that much back and then we all
you know, what's the saying? A rising tide raise all ships. I truly believe in that. You know, if you are performing at a high altitude with high expectation and high performance and high results, then the people around you on the day-to-day will be motivated and stimulated to do the same.
Tarzan, you have 85 animals and growing how expensive is it to feed all these different snakes and zebras and horses and camels? You don't want to know how much I spend on rats and chicken breasts and beef and pigs. I mean I got to a point man where I had a lot of carnivores. I said man feeding these carnivores is expensive. You know so I had to give some of my animals to some of my good friends.
And then I started getting all frugivores and vegetarians. It was like iguanas. And I would just eat fruit with them. I was like, I can't even afford to feed myself at one point because I was just... You want to make food. My animals come first, you know? So wait, you, sorry, don't interrupt you, but you sacrificed eating to put your animals first? Yeah, for sure. I was homeless at a point maybe like eight years ago. And I had a choice. Feed my dog.
you know, dog food at the time was like, you know, 60 bucks a bag. It's like, bro, I had to feed my dog, you know? So I went homeless and I was hungry for a lot of time feeding my dog. And I mean, even now, you know, everybody eats good, you know, and even, you know, we, you know, we're buying these big bags of Purina horse chow. It's expensive, man. 75 bag, 75 pounds, uh,
$75 per bag, 50 bags of pallet, two pallets once a month. At least. At least. I got some hungry animals. $3,000 in hay every week. Yikes. I mean, every month. It's no joke, man. Sounds like a vacation I need to take. Yeah.
You guys are eating well over there and sleeping well. Yeah, man. All right. So for the last segment, we always talk about how to make money, how to invest money. And this time we talked about how to invest into yourself and your body. Now we're talking about how to give away money or do charity work. Not all charity takes money. That's a lot of people don't seem to realize. They think they hear the word charity. They think, oh, I got to donate a thousand dollars or five thousand or five hundred bucks or whatever. Does not always take money. It takes your passion.
social media power and really your energy and effort to rally the troops together every year we throw a Thanksgiving food drive it doesn't cost you money to throw Thanksgiving food drive you can say hey everybody come to the Dragon's Lair parking lot let's all meet up in the parking lot and everybody in the community brings food flex doesn't have to pay for the Thanksgiving food drive he wants to buy stuff that's nice but really it's rallying the community we do a back to school day and a report card day we have 300 to 400 kids it's called Trina's Kids Foundation three to four hundred kids have been coming for the last nine years
And the community comes over and brings backpacks and supplies and gives the kids haircuts and foods and vans, sneakers. That doesn't take money from us. We happen to buy stuff too, but it's not really necessary. It's about the community. My goal in talking about charity so often is for people to replicate and pick and choose what types of charities that they like. Do they like that we do a Thanksgiving food drive? Do they like the report card day? Do they like the toy drives that we do? We just broke the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest toy drive in history.
Crazy man. Nine years ago, it was me and four friends sitting on the floor wrapping toys for hundreds of kids to show up until three in the morning. Then the next year there was 12 of us. Then there was 22 of us. Nine years later, we're renting out stadiums, you know, SoFi Stadium to do toy drives. It just takes time and energy and effort. It doesn't take money. So I asked that because I want to ask both of you the same question. What charity related things are you passionate about and how can people do more charity?
Do you want to go first? You go first. Oh, thank you. So first you mentioned the keyword, that community. So I came to Las Vegas, didn't know really anybody in the community. First thing we'd done was link in with the local police authority and the community police. We wanted to see what they were doing for charity drives and whatnot. That first Christmas, we aligned ourselves with an angel, I think it's the Christmas Angel Charity.
and we were able to raise 48,000 and we had I think 40 bikes that were donated to the community
We've done the same thing this past year. And again, we were able to raise not just as much, but still high and up there in the low 40s, I believe. Same thing with the bikes, same thing for toys. We had a massive toy giveaway here, toy sort of collection here at the gym. And I'm very involved with every community I've ever lived in and been a part of, even from...
the very young age, I've aligned myself with a lot of disabled charities. Me as a young kid, I was very fortunate to grow up with a teacher that was down the street to me that brought in kids during summer holidays for respites. Them kids had everything from Asperger's to Down syndrome to various different disabilities. And if you ask them, that's not a disability. It's their life. And this is what they are now living and striving to do with
something that they don't class as a disability. So for me, I'm very fortunate to align myself with a school in Wales called Hale Goffa. I want to give a shout out to them. I've done some stuff with them in the past and I will continue to do some things with them in the future. That school is predominantly with kids with, you know, as I said, disabilities. And I went in there just to say a quick little story. I
Brought all my trophies in the kids loved it. They thought I was the world's strongest man, you know and Some of these kids wanted me to pick them up not gonna like you I attempted they were Stronger than me and pick me up after but there was one kid that was in a wheelchair and he had two carers and You know me I'm not that guy you're never in a tank top. I'm never you know, you know, I mean shorts and a t-shirt That's the me but that type of that day I thought you know
non-judgment zone you i'm gonna go in and attack top and i hit it hit some bodybuilding shots and this kid in the front row was going you know he's very stimulated and i look at the carers and they're crying and i'm like what the heck's going on did i offend somebody i was like i'm so sorry she's like no this is the most reaction he's had in years i get goosebumps because um i guess he loves wrestling and that was kind of a stimulus to him so i leaned into that and um
I've really truly seen a future with my brand and the stuff like that going on. There's also a few things that I respectfully don't want to mention. I think that on my deathbed, I want things to be told about me. And I'm working hard on that just as much as I'm working on the vocal stuff too. I've got a lot of respect for a lot of the celebrities that people find out about things that they've aligned themselves to and nobody knew they were working on these projects.
And I've taken a little bit of a leaf in that and I'm working on a few silent things. Probably people watching this podcast are like, okay, Flex, there's nothing going on. That's a Flex. Yeah. And then there's other things that we've done here at the gym with the homeless. We do blanket drives. One thing I don't do, and I don't know if this is something you might stop me on,
But I find it weird that, you know, with these toy drives and banquet drives and homeless, you know, support stuff, I don't bring a camera out. I don't mind showcasing we've done it.
Hey guys, I'm going to go in today. We're going to go and support. We're going to go in and we're going to do this, this, and this. But I don't do the whole, hey, here's me giving a meal to a person who has nothing. I'm giving something to something. And that person can be like, thank you very much. I have nothing. Don't do that. I don't like that. So I'll walk you through that right this second because this is a very important topic to me.
So it's we don't showcase the actual homeless person or the children are optional the children like it because it's fun for the kids are different. Yeah Here's why I am so vocal about charity and why I make videos about it and why I'm obsessively talking about it There's a stigma that is rude to showcase charity. Like the feeling that you have is you're like I don't want to showcase the charity I don't want to showcase me feeding the person because that's self gratification That's why some people think you're giving the food because you're getting the pat on the back. I
I post about charity and why I want so many other people to post about charity is because I want people to replicate charity. So during COVID, we did what's called the $100 tipping club. Great. We made videos of us going to restaurants because waiters and waitresses were broke. They weren't making any money because people weren't at the restaurants. $100 tipping club. We started making videos and photos of like, here's us giving $1,800 to the waiter, waitress. She starts crying. Here's us giving $2,400 to the waiter, waitress. He or Steve starts crying. Way more important than that is
hundreds of tipping clubs started around the planet. Hundreds that I know of, there's probably more. And I get tagged every single week, two and a half years later after COVID, I still get tagged over and over and over. And we did, people are doing thousand dollar tipping clubs, giving out 12 grand, 20 grand, changing people's lives. Same thing applies to our toy drives. You know, we never ask people to donate to our toy drive. I make videos talking about my toy drive so you can do a toy drive in Philadelphia and Boca Raton and Alabama, where the heck you are. - We've done it too, thanks to you.
And so the concept of it is if you're doing it for self-gratification, of course, that is rude. If you're doing it to showcase what other people can do for charity and the fact that you're doing charity and that we flip the script, the whole point of the Money Mondays is literally make it not rude to talk about money because we all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. We feel like it's rude to talk about us giving out to charity.
If we don't talk about it, people won't do it. If we don't talk about giving out to charity, less people are going to do it. If we showcase you feeding the homeless and you helping save the animals and me giving out toys, all of a sudden, people are going to replicate us all over the country and all over the world whether we know about it or not. The butterfly effect of us showcasing charity is that it changes people's lives that we don't even know about. Last question. Flex. So as people are considering to make themselves into a better person,
And they think that they're going to go out there and compete in whatever sport they're in. You're competing in one of the most difficult, highly sought after slots of Mr. Olympia. You're up against legends, like household name guys with big followings, big, small, tall, every version body. And you beat them over and over and over and over. And it's nothing to take away from them because there's some freaking amazing people that we're mutual friends with. But you won seven times.
In any sport, when you think about that, there's the Tom Brady's of the world, the Michael Jordan's of the world. There's very few humans that can do it a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh time. Five, six, and seven, I mean, there's like six people I can name besides Tiger Woods and Brady.
What do you think from a mentality perspective, because I don't think it's the body part. No offense. You're up against other people that have amazing bodies too. The mentality part is what I believe is what makes you stand out. What is it that makes you go up against other people that are legends also to win over and over and over? Well, as I was in a weight class and I was capped out to that weight class, I had to really struggle to make that weight class every single year. So I had to recreate my weight.
every year and every title has a way the first was winning the second was chasing it to defend so there was no question the first was a fluke the third was um the 50th year which is a big prestigious year and i wanted to be in the mix every type of celebrity was there at the olympia i wanted to be there and i want to be in the mix um the third was we found out my wife was pregnant wow
The fourth, sorry, the fourth was. The fifth was having this image, which I have on my phone right now. Nice. On my, I know we're not allowed phones, but sorry. I want to prove a point here. That I seen an iconic shot years ago of Sergio Olivier and Sergio Olivier Jr. on stage holding a baby. And that has been installed in my head from the moment I slept on stage. I was like, if that ever happens, I want to do that. I was able to do it.
And number six was truly going to be my last one. I didn't say anything. I wanted to kind of progress on, put more emphasis into my businesses, Arsenal Strength and other things I invested into. But during that process, three weeks out, my training partner passed away. Wow. So I truly had to find every way possible to stay zoned in.
I have an incredible people around me that were able to kind of just get me to the show. And that was probably most difficult prep for me because I have, again, an incredible line two or three hours long. And from front to back, everybody was crying and I was their outlet.
And I just had to be focused the day before my show and hug everybody and be as emotional as I could to show them that I was upset, but not let that deteriorate my physique because this is such a powerful tool in what this looks like. So I was able to go through that and that truly taught me so much that the mind is such a powerful tool. And although I was on autopilot, I didn't really get it hit hard and have the time to...
to process the death until months later and then months later the season starts again the fans like hey are you doing another seven i'm doing a number seven yeah and that was the best look i ever had i wanted to end on top i told the world i was going to end
And again, there's been many ups and downs, but I truly say that this journey of mine in bodybuilding was earned, not given. And there's not been one easy path. Like I said, I came to this country, knew one person, dreamed about being the best, was able to achieve that, win and defend, recreate my way and end on top with the best look I've ever had on stage, winning number seven.
Ladies and gentlemen, you've been watching the Money Mondays. We have a couple of requests. Please talk about money more often. Share this podcast with your friends, family, staff, people around you on social media. We want the conversation to be about money. It is rude to not talk about money. We grew up thinking it was rude to talk about money. I'm here with my co-host, The Real Tarzan. Make sure to follow Flex Lewis on all social media accounts. And we will see you guys soon.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays. I have my co-host here, the real Tarzan. And we have a very, very special guest. This is a dear friend of mine. This is the founder of Fit Body Bootcamp. He has over 700
locations being opened all over the country, maybe even international. We'll ask him that in a moment. On the Money Mondays, we talk about three things. How do you make money? How do you invest money? And how do you give it away? People pay him $25,000, $50,000. Some people pay him $100,000 for coaching. So who better to ask about money than Bezos Kulian? Thank you for the opportunity, guys. Appreciate it.
So, Bezos, give us the quick two-minute bio so we can get right to the money. Yeah, man. I'm the immigrant edge and the American dream. It's the fastest way to say it, which is I'm an immigrant to this country from the Soviet Union. I came here when I was six and understood that as long as we serve humanity and respect
give value we can exchange that for money and so through a good series of mentors and people who cared for me I was able to understand how business works and I've built Fit Body Boot Camp and Trulene and multiple brands and businesses and today I invest not only with you but with others in different brands from software to apparel to the cauliflower crust and here we are now I get to live the American dream and pay it forward to others.
All right. So we're going to go through all three topics. The first topic is how do you make money? How does Badgers Coolion make money?
I believe in money that is reoccurring. So the seven companies that I own, six of them make money on a recurring basis. Think subscription, right? Netflix is the easiest description. So Fit Body Bootcamp, people pay $49,600 to buy a Fit Body Bootcamp franchise, and then they pay $997 a month in royalties or 6%, whichever is greater. So I like the idea of pay once and then keep adding value
And as long as I'm adding value, you're paying over and over again. Same with my coaching business. Same with my supplement business. In fact, we are now actively going away from one off transactions. We created the Trulene Tribe and we say, hey, buy the first bundle for half off, which we actually lose money on the first order. And if you like the product, great. Stay on board and get 25% off when we drop ship to your house. And we've got over 2000 people in the last six months to sign up to the Trulene Tribe.
with the average lifetime value right now at five and a half months with the average order value at $179. And so we are going away from transactional because it is unpredictable. I like recurring income in exchange for a recurring value that I add. And then same with the businesses that I invest in. If I can get recurring cash flow, awesome. If not, I might reconsider.
There are a lot of gym options out there. There are a lot of franchise options out there. Why has there been hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of franchises come to you with Fit Body Boot Camp? I think it's really simple. The numbers, the mathematical numbers work out with Fit Body Boot Camp. The traditional model used to be that you open up a gym and you charge people $49, $29, $9 a month, right, like Planet Fitness, and you hope that you can get volumes of people in there.
The reality is those people are going to stay for 90 days, maybe six months if you're lucky, and you're always churning and burning through people. We realized the reason people will pay $169 a month at a Fit Body Bootcamp is we give them the value of personal training, but in a group environment. So instead of paying $500 to $1,000 a month to get the personal training experience, you are getting fitness coaching, nutrition coaching, accountability, and support all for $169 a month. And we train 30 clients monthly.
One coach. And so it's personal training made affordable and convenient for the general population. And as long as they're getting results, they pay, stay and refer, which makes it a beautiful business model for our franchisees.
So a guy like Tarzan, hundreds of millions of views on social media. He's building his entrepreneurial career. Why does someone like Tarzan come to you and pay you $50,000, $100,000? Why does someone want to hire a coach of your caliber? Yeah, I think you and I both know that coaches, especially the right coaches, not all coaches, but the right coaches who, one, have a track record themselves,
Always asked myself what I want to trade places with that coach in life if the answer is yes I'm going to give them money if I don't want to trade places I'm not gonna take advice right because the only thing worse than no advice is bad advice Because you it will put you back in life or in business and so let's say Tarzan's like hey, man I've got millions of views. Here's how I make my money. Here's how many subscribers I have and all Tarzan sees is what's in his view
view lens, right? A good coach says, look, I've got experience 22 years in my case across seven different businesses and then hundreds of businesses that I coach across software, supplements, you name it, Shopify stores to brick and mortars. Well, I've got outside eyes. So he might be seeing trees everywhere. And I'm saying, bro, it's because you're in a forest and there's a path between those trees that will get you a faster outcome. So coach is going to do one thing. They're going to give you outside eyes.
They're going to expose you to new ways of making money with the same followers that you have. And the third thing they're going to do is they're going to time collapse. They're going to help you create the outcome with less friction, frustration and time wasted, which is what a good coach should do. Why did you invest into the clothing brand Fuel Hunt?
Good question. You talk about this all the time. You say if you buy the product, you use the product, you believe in the product, you might want to consider investing it. And to me, it was a no-brainer. I didn't even know they started off in 2017. But by 2018, I saw them on social media. I was like, wow, everybody wants to eat, but fuel hunt. Like, I love that message. Right? Love it. Everybody wants to be a gangster and tell it's time to do gangster shit. Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur unless you can tell it's time to grind. And so that spoke to me, and I started buying the clothes.
I started buying the shirts and hats and wearing it. And apparently each time I would wear it on my podcast, their sales would go up. Each time I would wear it on stage, their sales would go up. So they reached out to me and said, hey, instead of buying it, can we just send you stuff? And my brain goes, wait a minute. Well, wait, there's more. Yeah. Can we get on the phone? Yeah. Right. Can we get on the phone? And I got on the phone with them. Drew and Joey, great guys, two cousins in Philadelphia, gritty as fuck.
And I love their work ethic, same work ethic as we have in here. And they're doing it out of this guy's basement. I'm like, dude, I don't need free clothes. How about I take equity, put in money, because one of them had a job still, and one of them didn't. The company was only making enough to support one guy. I go, tell me what your salary is. He goes, $65,000 a year. Great. I'm going to buy it for $65,000. Here's the equity that I want. Now I'm going to wear it, and I'm going to have all my friends wear it. Right.
And my rule for investing is, do I use the product? Yes.
Do I have the audience to promote the product? Yes. Do I like the people I'm about to go into business with? And immediately, I flew them out, had dinner with them, fell in love with them. I was like, I'm in. Here's your money. Took equity and just skyrocketed the brand. Wow. Tarzan, you're in the room with a coach that's hyper-focused on growing businesses. What is it that you want to ask? Man, like I saw Fuel Hunt. What did I say yesterday when I saw you? Oh, you're like, how do I get this? And I'm like,
Give me your size. It's in the mail already. You know, and that's going back to you're passionate about a brand like that. Yeah. Passionate about your gyms. You have 720 gyms. Were you working out before you had a gym? Do you have a personal training before that changed your mind? Like, man, I wonder how I can fix this. Tell us about that. Yeah. Yeah. So in fact, I was a fat kid throughout high school and fitness changed my life. I wanted to ask this girl Nakia to the prom. So I was like, man, if I can lose weight, put on some muscle, I'm going to ask Nakia to the prom senior year.
I never had the balls to ask Nakia to the prom, so I never made it to the prom. But when I lost like 35 pounds the summer of senior year, I came back and people treated me different. It was like all of a sudden I went from being invisible to visible to everybody. Everyone was like, dude, you're different. You look different. And I felt different. My confidence, my self-esteem. Yeah, right? And so I was like, never mind the physical change. When I graduate high school, I want to be a certified personal trainer and help people achieve this. And so-
You know, people always ask me, like, how do I know what my purpose is? I mean, I go find what you would do for free and then be so good at it that people will pay for it. Right. And so for me, I would do personal training for free back then. And so I was training clients for free. I had a couple of clients who were paying me maybe 17 to 20 dollars an hour, which is nothing, you know, that even back in the late 90s.
However, I had a job at Disneyland. I was a bouncer at a bar just so I can have that career as a personal trainer. And then as I got better and better and better and better and learned and understood sales and marketing, I got so good that people were starting to pay me an obscene amount of money to coach them and trainer. I was never the best trainer.
I knew how to get a client to come back. My philosophy was they're a female client. I'm going to be like your, like the boyfriend that you've always wanted. You're going to want to come back to your next session because you're just like going to be wanting to be with your boyfriend. If you're a guy, I'm the best friend that you're never had. And you're going to want to come to the gym to hang out with your best friend while I train you. And that philosophy and all the other trainers would be like, bro, that's bad form for that client. That's bad. I go, but my clients keep coming back and they keep getting results.
When the economy crashed in 2008, I knew that one-on-one training wasn't going to happen anymore. People aren't going to pay $600 to $800 a month. So I go, all right, how do we take that outdoor boot camp, bring it indoors, add equipment, and now go one-on-many, lower the price, make it more affordable and convenient? And that's how Fit Body Boot Camp was born. So whenever there's a...
negative thing that happens with economic downturn, while everyone else is panicking, folks like us are going, how can we turn this into an opportunity? So Fit Body Bootcamp was born during the economic crash and it continues to thrive. - Wow, man, amazing. Why do you think that fitness and health helps people make more money? - I think it's pretty simple once I explain it this way. If you work out so that you can be lean, fit, and athletic,
One, that tells me that you love and respect yourself, right? Let's face it, if I told you I'm only gonna give you one car for the rest of your life, I'm gonna pay for it, you have to take care of it, it's the only car you could ever have the rest of your life, you would maintain it, you would wash it, you would change the oils and fluids and everything, there's a dent in it, you'd get it fixed. This is the only vehicle we have. And a person who respects their body
takes care of their body. Well, to take care of your body, you got to eat right. You got to go to the gym. One good workout's not going to do it. You guys know this. One week of good workouts isn't going to do it. One month of good workouts, it's months of good workouts, months of great eating. And what does that take? Well, it takes focus. It takes consistency. It takes delayed gratification. It takes discipline. All of those things, the traits that I just described, you also need to launch a successful business.
Everybody thinks that they can make millions of dollars within the first year and they underestimate how much they can make in the next five years. Right. And so if they take that focus, commitment, discipline, delayed gratification that they used in the gym to maintain their health and fitness and apply it, the same traits to the business, they will hockey stick it. But I've never seen a fat out of shape person maintain a successful business for the long run. I haven't.
So we talked about different ways about making money. Now let's talk about the investing side. Outside of your own investments, why do you think it's important that people and entrepreneurs, as they start making money in their careers, why should they be considering investing into things?
To me, the way I see it is money in the bank is useless. And you talked about this yesterday with our group. If you have money in the bank right now, it's eroding at about 9%, right? Every single month. And so, like you said, you put a million dollars in the bank. Next year, it's worth $910,000. Well, how about if I take that money and I go, you know what? I like Tarzan. He's got work ethic. I see he's got a big following. And I've got a following that would love what he does. And so what if I invest into his business and now I'm helping someone I like
I get to create value for humanity. And then, oh, by the way, I get cash flow from the business that he has. So I'm not only diversifying because, okay, I've got a fitness franchise. I've got a supplement company. I've got an apparel line. I've got software. But I also want to get into the wild animal business. And who better than
Tarzan, right? Wild jungle. Wild jungle. And so it just makes sense that I invest in people and services that I like that I would use anyway that I could promote. And the way I look at it is if you could do this with everyone needs a place to live.
People go, I can't afford to invest in an apartment complex. Can you get in a syndicate that invests in apartment complexes? Maybe you can start with $30,000. You don't have to have $2.5 million to put a down payment. Can you start with just one condo that you can buy and then put a tenant in? When you start investing, you now are putting your money to work for you instead of parking your money in the bank account where it feels good. You have peace of mind at night going, I have money in the bank. But
The bankers are using your money to do exactly what I just described. They're investing in things that create cash flow for them, and you ought to be doing that yourself. So let's say I'm a high-level CEO. My name is TheRealTarzan. I did $8 million last year. Why should I invest in myself? Let's say I'm Tarzan. Why should he invest into himself on a personal level to become better through coaches, development, masterminds? Why is it important to level up with other people? Yeah, I think no matter...
how much money you make, we all sense that we have greater purpose and meaning. Like a person who's connected with source, God, the higher power, you know that, and I think Ed Milet says this, he goes, when I die, I don't want to go to heaven. And then, you know, God says, hey, here's what the fully potential Ed Milet would look like. And he goes, man, I don't recognize that guy. When I heard him say that, I was like, oh, shoot, I got to be like twinsies with that guy when I go to heaven, right? Well, with that in mind, then,
If we know that, man, I'm making $8 million, but I've got the potential to make $80 million, which means I can serve more of humanity. I could do more for charity. I can give more to my church. I can help more of the causes that I believe in. Then I believe you've got a duty and an obligation to go, who and what are the people that can help me time collapse? Coaches, mentors, masterminds. Because if you don't, you're always going to feel the gnawing of regret in the future. And if you do it, then...
Then what you're doing is you're putting your money to work. You're making connections. Like look at the connections and the deals that took place this weekend as we're running Operation Blacksite. Like business deals are going to come about from this place. Opportunities are going to be created. So masterminds, mentorships, coaching programs, seminars, everything.
That is literally investing in yourself and your future self so that you can break the seal because everybody has an upper limit in how much money you can make, you think you can make, how much love you can accept, how valuable you think you are. Coaches, mentors, therapists, all those people help you break through those seals through the glass ceiling and get to that next level because you can't see the road, but they can.
Wow. So we talked about making money. We talked about investing money. We talked about investing into yourself. Now let's talk about a really emotional topic, giving away. Why is charity important to entrepreneurs? Why should they consider adding charity to their personal life and to their business careers? Okay, that's a good question. I love giving credit to quotes that I've heard. I don't know who said this. If you guys know it, please tell me. But I read somewhere and it said, if you don't believe...
Money can make you happy then you haven't given enough of it away And I thought that was so powerful and I wish I knew who said that quote so we can give them credit But that is so powerful money can make you happy if you learn to give a lot of it away In my case and I'll be very open and honest with you guys. You guys are like family to me I escaped the Soviet Union came to the United States had to learn the language lived in section 8 housing had my hair washed with gasoline because we couldn't afford lice treatment and
And so my mom had my dad siphon out gasoline because that's all we could do to kill the lice. I was molested by two older boys when we lived in Armenia for two years straight. And so coming here saved me from that. Like, I've got a lot of trauma that I dealt with. Right. And I and I've completely rewritten my story. I'm not looking for any sympathy or compassion.
However, you look at the charities that I invest in and donate to, Shriners Children's Hospital, Toys for Tots, 97 kids adopted through Compassion International. And one, that is very healing for me to see that these kids whose families can't afford medical services get those services through Shriners. Every Christmas, thousands, hundreds of thousands of kids who won't get a Christmas gift, we make sure we shut down the Target in Chino Hills Saturday morning, three weeks before Christmas.
And we spend a quarter million dollars and buy toys and take it to the local Toys for Tots barracks where the Marines will walk in these kids and let them pick a toy that they want. The parents wait outside because parents always want you to pick the most expensive toy. The kid gets whatever the fuck he wants. And to me, I didn't have a Christmas the first three years coming to this country, right? And so it's healing, number one. Number two, it makes you happy. The more money you give away, the more generous you are with it. And finally...
To not do it, I believe, is the most selfish thing on the planet. And if you don't want to be selfish, you want to be selfless, then you want to serve with your money. And I believe it's a great vehicle to serve. So Tarzan, on the charity front, why do you like to promote animal-related charities? Same thing. It's emotional for me, you know.
i feel animals saved my life in a sense you know growing up i lost my father a long time ago and uh animals brought me back from that that edge you know so after a while i was like man i owe them my life you know so anyway i can help animals with natural disasters anti-poaching you know and we talked about on all the podcasts but man i live and die for animals you know and more importantly live so i can also give back you know one of my dreams you know before i pass away 100 years from now we'll have like an animal army you know where
It's like a militant group to protect different countries and different borders. I want to protect different jungles and different species, you know, like shoot first, ask questions later. Don't touch the zebras. Don't touch these camels. Don't touch these elephants. But there's not many left, you know, so going back on that emotional standpoint.
Yeah, man. There's a healing component. No doubt about it. Makes you feel good. Right. It makes you feel good. And people go, man, what you do is so selfless, Bedros. And I'm like, you know what? It's actually kind of the most selfish thing I do, giving to those charities that help children because I can't go back and be a child, but I see those kids being helped with my money. And there's a sense that little baby Bedros in me gets healed. And that young Tarzan in you gets healed. And those little healing moments are necessary if we aspire to become our higher self.
Last question. What do you think most business owners and entrepreneurs are doing wrong with their money? I think probably the biggest thing most entrepreneurs, business owners are doing wrong with their money is...
They are constantly focused on the one way that they make money and they don't think about how they can add a reoccurring income stream. They don't think of how they can add a second tier like the Rolls Royce level, the Cadillac level. They don't think about how they can add a lower tier service and get more mass amount of people paying. So I believe every business
Like any one business should have a higher tier program, should have a lower tier program, and should have a continuity program, a recurring program built in. And if you're not using your money to hire coaches, experts who can help you set that up, you're literally crippling your business. I think so many founders, entrepreneurs, and business owners have such high overheads, that's what crushes them. Agreed. They go get a 5,000 square foot office when they've got 16 employees.
They've got to get the fanciest couches and the fanciest tables when you do meetings in that room once a week at best. And nobody cares. Literally nobody, by the way. When I say nobody, I mean nobody cares. And they go buy a $7,000 desk and then they wonder why they can't make payroll. That's around $7,000 coming up next week. And I've seen it over and over and over and over of these companies and just people.
They go rent, they're 23 years old and they go get a four bedroom house. You live by yourself. You don't need a four bedroom house. You don't really even need a two bedroom, but let's say you get a two bedroom. People don't realize the extra 1200 bucks a month you're spending on that cool house or that cool apartment or that cool desk or table. That's 1200 times 12 months. That's 15 grand a year. What could your business do with 15 grand a year? And then next year and the next year, next year, all of a sudden five years, like you wasted $100,000 on a bedroom you've never been in.
Or a table that you never cared about. Just to flex. Just to flex. Yeah. And you're flexing on people that don't care. Don't care. We don't care. I don't care that you have a four bedroom. I'm probably not coming to your house, bro. And I don't care if you have a fancy table because we're going to sit there for 45 minutes. Anyways. All right.
What should entrepreneurs be thinking about in 2023 amongst all the chaos, all the media, all the craziness going on? What should entrepreneurs be focused on to get them through 2023? Good question. So I'm going to reframe that by saying here's what they should not be thinking about. Entrepreneurs should not be thinking about the talking heads on CNN or Fox. Entrepreneurs should not be thinking about who our president is now and who our next president is going to be because they can affect their personal economy more than entrepreneurs.
Whoever the next president is going to be in whatever tax brackets they're going to put them in whether it's Trump or Biden It doesn't really matter you have greater control over your own economy your own thoughts your own peace of mind your own personal security I think entrepreneurs need to stop listening to the outside noise Because the outside noise is telling them sell your businesses sell your homes expect for a great financial disaster And if I keep hearing that over and over again guess what I am gonna manifest and look for evidence to prove
to produce that. But if I'm constantly around people like us who are telling me like opportunity, you and I are talking about buying the ranch across the street, buying the ranch on the right. And everyone's like, Bedros, how's the recession going to affect you? What recession? I don't see a recession. I see land and I see opportunity on that land. And I see fun things we're going to do with that land to monetize it, grow it and impact lives. And so it's like the, the,
And literally, there's a folklore, a story that goes like this. A dude goes into a, he's a shoe salesman. They send him to some remote island in the boondocks. And he goes there. He's like, holy crap, no one wears shoes. These are all like savages. They don't wear shoes. He finds a telephone. He says, hey, fly me back. No one here has shoes. They go, fair enough.
the same shoe company sends another salesperson there. He lands in the same remote jungle in this island and he's like, holy crap, send every shoe you guys have. No one's wearing shoes here. I'm going to make a killing. So your lens that you listen and hear things through matter, right? And as long as I'm filtering what goes in here, the outcome is going to be positive. Ladies and gentlemen, you've just listened to the Money Mondays podcast with Bejrus Koulian and my guest host, The Real Tarzan.
Now, we do have one favor to ask of you. Share this content with your friends because Tarzan and I think it's rude to not talk about money.