"A Private Jet WILL PAY FOR ITSELF" - Jas Mathur & Randall Kaplan | E22
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Why is it a good investment to buy a jet? Listen, it's one of the best investments I've ever made. I mean, the time, the convenience that you have and, you know, the type of deals you get done in the air, 42,000 feet high in the air in your own plane is something that you just you can't get done anywhere else. Yeah.

So when people are thinking about and they look at private jets, they're thinking about $5 million, $10 million, $50 million, $20 million. They hear all these crazy numbers for private jets. You look at it as an investment and saving yourself time. Well, it's a tax write off. I mean, when I got it, it was 100% tax deductible. 100%. 100%. Right now, I think it's 90 or 95. It was 100% tax deductible. So you're either going to pay tax or you're going to get yourself a plane. I mean, that's what it is. Sounds like an easy decision.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this edition of the Money Mondays. We have a very special guest I've known for many years. His Instagram is at Limitless. And so today's episode is going to be Limitless. When we're going to talk about money, how to build relationships, how to build brands, how to build supplement companies and everything between how to go public on the stock market. You're going to learn a lot today. Please welcome our guest, Mr. Jaz Mather. How you doing? What's up, dog? Amazing. I can't complain.

Co-hosted here by The Real Tarzan. So what we'd like to do is go over three main topics. How do people make money? How do they invest money? How do they give away to charity? But first, give us the quick two-minute bio so we can get straight to the money. My two-minute bio. Where do I start? Might need more than two minutes. Might need more than two minutes. I mean, I started young. I made a lot of mistakes. I was focused, disciplined.

Made a lot of money from an early age, precisely 13 is when I started to make a good amount of money. From there on, went into doing a lot of different things, got involved in wrong things, made mistakes, had an ego, didn't know when to stop certain things, was impatient, learned it the hard way, went up and down two times in my life, zero top, zero top.

And I eventually learned that slow and steady always wins the race. So, and you need a team. Without a team, you're only going to go so far. You know, teamwork makes the dream work. Very true, man. So background wise, I mean, tech, I'm a, you know, tech guy. I started in tech, but I've obviously transitioned into many different industries from there. And today we're doing direct to consumer products, dietary supplements, skin care, beauty.

Tons of different things, but the core of every industry today is tech. So if you don't have a tech background, then you'll end up paying two, three, four, five times more than you would if you did. So that's the beauty of things today that, you know, what was in '96, '97, '98 before the whole dot-com thing and everything started is now today the key to success ultimately, right? Everything revolves around technology, social media, digital advertising. There's no more print. There's no more print media. It's all digital.

So walk us through, what are some of the main brands that you're focused on now? I mean, the current company, the umbrella that we have is Limitless. So Limitless is an agency. And then underneath Limitless, we have a lot of different brands. And it's not one being more focused on than the others. It's just, you know, I kind of wanted to launch everything at the same time at once and realize that that's not the best way because each brand needs its own time and time.

you know, resources and whatnot in order to be successful. You can only put so much energy in so many places. But the way I'm looking at it is, you know, Limitless is the main focus of getting that brand out. And then through that, the other brands will get, you know, ultimately their own awareness. And what we do is we tie, you know, from one brand, you sell a product, eventually offer a product from a different brand, and then just create a whole ecosystem of what the person needs to look good and feel great.

So let's say that there's an influencer out there or an athlete or a personal trainer and they're like, I want to start a supplement company. There's thousands and thousands of brands. What would you say to someone that's like, you know what? I'm going to start an influencer. I'm going to be a –

I'm going to start a supplement company. I mean, we offer that. I mean, sure, we'll do it for you. I own my own manufacturing. I mean, we have a large manufacturing facility in California. We do everything from A to Z, from the design to doing your branding to doing your label to formulations to developing the product.

and even help with distribution and marketing and so on and so forth, direct to consumer, influencers, celebrities, pairing it with the right person. But the first thing I would say is, hey, who's your target audience? Because it's such a competitive and such a broad industry. I mean, think about it. Everybody takes some kind of vitamin.

Right. So when you talk about supplements, you're talking about there's so many different types of supplements. Right. You can have like supplements for bodybuilding. You can go for supplements for just somebody who is like, let's say, a cyclist or a golfer. I mean, you know, it's the same type of product.

But one will have 18 grams of protein per serving. The other one will have 40 or 45 grams, right? So it just depends on what your audience is, your target audience. I would say, hey, pick two or three SKUs. Start slow. No, two or three products because you can have multiple flavors. Start slow. You've got to have a budget. And you have to work with...

some very talented and good media buyers, right? Because ultimately you can have influencers post all day on their account. That don't work anymore. I mean, that's dead. You know it. I know it. I mean, those days are done and over. It's very, very small. But the key is to having a budget to spend on the platforms like Facebook, Google, Bing, TikTok. That's where you're really going to monetize if you know what you're doing, if you have the right media buyers working with you.

How much money should they have saved up before they start something like this? If they actually want to start a product, how much do they have saved up or how much do they need to raise to really have any type of chance? It depends on their relationship. It depends on who the person is, right? If it's someone like you, I mean, I'm pretty sure you could do it with $150,000 to $200,000 at the most. If it's someone that has no relationships, they probably need a million dollars. Wow.

You know, because you want to put at least 20% of that money aside. But if you have the relationships and you know the formula and you, I mean, again, it comes down to who you know, right, in life. Because everything you're trying to achieve in life, it's no matter what you're trying to get, even if it's like make, build your brand, generate sales, you're ultimately looking for introductions. You're looking for introductions to certain people that have that level of experience. And then those people will turn around and say, hey, look, I can do this for you.

But I might not be able to do this, but I'll introduce you to somebody that can do this. So you're investing your time daily into meeting more people that can help you achieve your goal and then obviously learning new things and then working to implement those in your product or brand and then kind of go forward. So it just depends on how connected you are. When I first, you know,

When I had no contacts, it cost me so much more. But I built my contacts. So today, if I have to do it a second, third, fourth, fifth brand, or if I have to do this all over again with a totally different type of business, whether it be private or public markets, I could do it for a fraction, maybe one-tenth of what I spent. Just because during the course of the journey, it doesn't matter how much money I spend marketing my brands.

I also built those relationships. So now I know the formula. And once you know the formula, you can repeat it over and over again. But yeah, only start something like that unless you have a sizable amount of money that's saved up. If you're looking to do something really big. Now, if you're looking to do a supplement line where you only want to make, you know,

up to let's say $10,000 a month which for some people is a lot and they only want they're not looking you know they don't have they're not crazy dreams or whatever they want to live a good life and they're happy with what they have and you know they want to enjoy their time and they just need something based to sell to people and they're trainers hypothetically and that's what

They do. I mean, look, then it's very easy. They go to a gym. They're trainers. They have maybe 10, 15 clients. They're going to sell to their clients. Then those clients are going to offer it to other clients. So they can just do like a small two to three level MLM type thing and boom, they're set. So it just depends on how big you want to go. How big do you want to scale?

So let's say someone's got a... They're ready. They started manufacturing, but they don't know how much they should charge. Should I be cheap? Should I be affordable? Should I be high price? How do you determine what type of level of price you should be? So you have to go by market, right? I mean, today, you know, I mean, the first thing is...

It depends, again, on the type of product you have. If you have an innovative product that no one else in the industry has, that's something very, very unique, then you could charge whatever you really want, right? If you have some kind of liquid, like today, for instance, like NAD is very hot, you know? That's like the big thing right now. So any NAD supplement is automatically very high. You know, if you have something that is like a regular protein powder or regular BCAA or pre-workout, you have to be at an affordable price. Because if you're...

if you're at a price that's like, if you're charging, if the average price for BCA is $25 for a tub and you're charging 50, nobody's going to buy your BCA. It doesn't matter what you say is in it. Because really, the industry is such that there's only about 30 different types of products. There's just 3,000 different people that make them.

So the only thing different is that the formulations are a little different. It might have a little bit more of this, a little bit less of that, a little bit more beta-alanine, a little less arginine. These are the factors. So it comes down to your brand. It comes down to your level of marketing. But even when you go plus minus, it's a $10 to $20 game. You can't sell...

Um, uh, the same product, like you can't sell a protein tub for $250. Right. And, and, and like, I mean, that's, that's just not going to happen, you know? So I would say don't be the cheapest, but don't be the highest, you know, be in the middle, but you can always increase later. If you have a great tasting product that works, you can slowly, you know, increase your pricing. But in the beginning, when you're not known, you have to offer the best price. You have to have both service and best, the best service and best price.

So Tarzan, you have around 200 million views per month on your social media. Tarzan wants to do pet vitamins, pet products. That's much bigger than human stuff. I mean, that's what we're getting into next now. Pet supplements, vitamins for pets, with CBD, without CBD. That's the next thing that we're starting now. And then after that, we're going to go for children, children's products. That's a totally different ballgame. That's way bigger. People will spend first on their pets and their children than they will on themselves. Absolutely.

Yeah, guys, if you are watching at home, would you like to watch a live negotiation between Tarzan? I do have a question for you. Yeah. You mentioned how you went down and up and down and up again. Yeah. What kept you down the first time? What brought you up the second time? And what's keeping you up now? So I'll tell you something. When you've made...

millions of dollars and then you say you lose it. You've already made it once, you've seen it, you know you're gonna do it, you can do it again. Because there's something you did along the way that you learned how to do. Whatever that formula is, you can duplicate it and then you know you want it again. So what made me lose it the first time is just the first, first time was just blowing all the money.

whatever money was coming in every day, just find a way to just spend, spend, spend, spend. You know, just go out, have fun, just blow the money constantly, right?

And the second time, what made me lose it was just being impatient and wanting to build Rome overnight and not realize that my plan was great. I had a great business model. It just needed to be done over a course of five years and not five months. Right. Right. And I just wanted to go big because I was like, in my opinion, was like, hey, what are other people going to think if?

I build something that just looks like this, right? And that's not super grandiose and dah, dah, dah, dah. You know, it's not, it has all the bells and whistles, you know, rather than do it slowly and then scale. So again, that's learning curves. You know, you learn that patience is the most important thing.

Patience is the key to everything. You know, if you just, you don't know, you can't predict what will happen tomorrow. Your life could change tomorrow. Tomorrow, something could happen. Boom, you have 180 degree change in your life. Everything that you've been wanting times 100 comes to you overnight, you know, and you don't know. So you just have to be patient and just keep grinding every single day. And that's what keeps me going today is I have one goal.

And I know that to get to that goal, I'm going to have to go through ups and downs and loops and whatever and tie this thing to this thing and attach it. But ultimately, my goal is one. And no matter which way we go in the end, it's going to turn to one thing. So I just keep pushing forward with that vision. And that vision, every day, says, hey, I like to meet like-minded people and people that are going to relate to the goal that I have. If it's not connecting to what I'm doing, I have no time for it. I don't even make time for it.

Love that, man. Yeah. So someone that's thinking about launching it, let's say, let's just use Tarzan as an example. Let's say he's going to launch pet vitamins. Maybe you're the manufacturer of it. Does someone start off with a few SKUs or do they go out with the whole line? That's a tricky one. That's a tricky one. So if they have the money to do it, I'll tell you, I'll tell you. Okay. So I'll tell you in two scenarios. So in our case, we're going to do the whole thing. The

The reason why is because we have about seven, seven and a half million customers in our database right now in the last two and a half years. So we're going to start with the whole thing at once because we have that audience already to reach out to and offer it to. And we can just take that same audience, retarget and just go. Right. We have the formula at this point. It doesn't make sense for us to start two things.

But if it was the first time and I had zero customers, we would handpick the top SKUs based off keyword research, based off competitive analysis, looking into Google, looking at the Facebook, the metrics, what's converting best, what kind of click-through rates are there, and go with those. For dogs, cats, handpick select things and go. Start with the base and then slowly scale up, up, up.

All right. So here we talked a lot about making money. Now let's talk about the investing money side. You've invested a lot of time, money and energy into going public. Yes. Spending the last couple of years, as people might not know, it takes around two years and a couple of million dollars of legal and accounting fees to go public. That's why there's such a few amount of companies out of the tens of millions, hundreds of millions of companies in the world. There's a couple of thousand that ever go public. So when you think about how minuscule that is, why do you decide to take on the public markets? I'll tell you something. It's, you know what? Um,

It's been a goal of mine to do. It's more so a lot of people that I met along the way between 2012 and 2018 that have been saying, hey, you should go public. And the more I started to learn and understand, like a lot of people go, there's two reasons people go public. A, if they're looking to raise money, if they need money and they're looking to raise money quick and that's their way to do it is outlet to go public.

because ultimately investors feel more comfortable investing in a publicly traded company than they do just giving money to a private company, right? Because they can exit whenever they want, really. The second reason is if they're looking to scale their business and they have something that's really, really good, which if brought into the public markets and exposed the right way and awareness has been made and people see it, that can really go viral in a certain sense and people will relate to it.

And, you know, it'll help in going, you know, help in building that empire that you want, right? So for me, it was the latter. It was the second point, right? So number one, it was the story. So my, you know, starting with my background in business, how I started, the sacrifices I made when I was young, the weight that I gained, which, you know, at one point I was over 450 pounds.

Because I sacrificed my personal life into working, working, working, sitting behind a computer and learning different things to make more money. You know, I sacrificed the health part, then understanding the health part, then getting into the health industry, then wanting to be one of the leaders in the health industry and turning, you know, my passion into my, you know, my day-to-day business and eventually like building a life I didn't need a vacation from and doing it in a way where

I'm a regular person just going and having met a lot of people that, you know, people are just in awe by or, you know, just they watch and they say, oh, my God, like and having those type of relationships today and building it from scratch zero. It's relatable. Right. And it's it's a story and everything knows about public markets. It's.

all about the story. You have to have a story. That's step one to the markets, right? Step two is revenue, you know? So we have revenue, substantial revenue. We have...

You know, we have the story that's there and we understand all the other components to the whole thing. So it was like, why not? Why not give it a shot? I mean, you have one life. Yeah.

you know, take another brand. And once that brand is successful, we could spin it off into its own entity and keep it going. Right. So, um, and of course, if you look at the United States, that most billionaires that are done are from the U S most people have become billionaires and they do it through public markets.

They either do it through their own public companies that they take public or they take a bunch of companies public or they're involved in these crazy pre-IPO deals and massive amounts of like, you know, seed capital raising and stuff like that where their money is like 20, 40, 60x. Right. So that's that was the reason.

It's a hard shortcut. It's a hard shortcut. It's not an easy shortcut, but it's a path to the next level. But you really have to have all your ducks in a row. And also another thing, last thing is when people know you're public, they know you have your shit together. For sure. That's another thing. Because you can't go public if you don't have your shit together. Yeah.

Everything is black and white. Everything is transparent. Your books, your numbers, there's no BS. So you say you're public and that too when you're in the process of uplisting to the major exchanges, you have your shit together. So it's like a walking, talking business card. You don't need to give a business card. It's done. Hey, we're on such and such exchange. Right. Right.

So that's what it is. Extreme discipline in that area of your life. I mean, in every aspect is discipline, right? I mean, for whether it's training, same thing with training, right? So like for me, like if I don't get up, so my day, just so you understand, my day starts when I'm in L.A. So I'm always traveling. So when I'm in L.A., my day starts at 3 a.m. Why? Because...

6 a.m. Eastern already, right? I feel I'm already late. When I'm in the East Coast, my day starts at 5 a.m. Eastern. It'll be 2 a.m. over here, but that'll be insane for me to wake up at 2 a.m. here. So I start at 3 a.m. over here. I get some work done. By 5.30 a.m., I'm in the gym until about 7 a.m., and then from there, I continue on with my work, right? But the gym is the key for me to continue on my work because it gives me that daily morning energy.

like kick that I need. And from there, it's what you put in your body, the food that you eat, because you can eat the wrong thing in the morning and your brain will be all fogged up and then you'll be distracted in your work. So same thing, what it takes to stay fit requires in business, requires in every aspect of your life is discipline.

So, as we talked about, we go through three topics: how to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity. What are some of the things you like to invest into? Do you like real estate? Do you like other companies? What do you like to invest into? So, I invest in different businesses. I like to invest in people. So, because ultimately if one business fails, they're going to make another business successful. Right. Right? So, and it's the same thing within most investors. They always, they always, they don't care to read your 80-page business plan. They just want to know if you know the format to put it together.

what's in your head if you know how to put it on paper and if everything, if all the chapters and everything are correct in there and that's all they really care about. Nobody's sitting there looking through the whole thing.

And same thing with the person. I like to invest in the person. I like to invest in businesses. I like to invest in things that are hard assets. A lot of real estate, select automobiles, like specific select automobiles because cars are from what 90% of people would say depreciating asset. And that's true. But there's a small percentage of cars that aren't a depreciating asset. You just have to be able to get them, source them, get them and know to keep them for a

And then there's many other things. There's businesses, there's diamonds, there's things that go up in value and that you know ultimately if you need to liquidate, you can sell them and you'll be able to.

You have some cool cars. Are we allowed to talk about some of your cars? Sure. I mean, there's some cars I can't even spell the name of. Can you just talk about some? I mean, you got like 15 or 16 supercars in the driveway. Like, what are some of the cars? Do you even drive them? Are they just, are you just investing? No, you know what? I drive them here and there. I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't think, I can't count. I don't think any of my cars, maybe one or two have over a thousand miles on them. You know, I just, I just, I love cars. I've loved cars. I mean, car, it's kind of like,

Some of those cars are three or four million dollars. Yeah, when I was young, when I was young, I was, you know, with my friends would be in the high school in the library and we'd be looking at these auto trader, these books, these magazines and stuff, right? The car directories that would come out. We're like, hey, I want to get this car, I want to get this car, I want to get this car. So what I did with cars, I tied it to certain goals. Hey, if I achieve this, I'll buy myself this.

If I achieve that goal, I'll buy myself this. So it's like a milestone, right? You set milestones. For every milestone, there was a car. And that's what I did. I ultimately ended up getting so many cars. Every die-cast model I had of a certain car, I ended up getting in real life. So those are, you know, and it just, I love cars because it just, you know, that's my vice. You know, everybody has a certain, cars is my thing. You know, I just love having cars. I feel you. Yeah.

So we watch some cars, like people say there's a one year waiting list and a two year waiting list, or you got to pay this much over sticker. Like that market is so competitive. How do people, is it relationships also? Like how do people fight in that? Yeah, it's all relationships. I mean, those things, like when you're talking about those kinds of cars, like you have to, it's the same thing with watches. I mean, I have a lot of watches too. That's another thing that I collect that.

Collecting as an investment or collecting because you like them? Investment. Both. I like them and investment. It's similar, right? If you want to get a certain model of a watch, you have to buy all these other ones before in order to get eligible to get that certain model, which

Otherwise, it would sell for, let's say, $2 million and the sticker price is $400,000. You have to have bought so many things. It's the same way it is with all these other exotic car brands. If you have the contacts, you can get-- there's always people that sell them. You'll pay over a sticker for sure. Cars go upwards of even millions of dollars over a sticker. You'll pay. Yeah, they sell. There's no other way to get them.

And the people that are paying a million dollars over sticker price, do they know that they're just – that's it? They're not going to be able to make money on that? Well, they will make money because those cars go even higher. Think about it. Yeah, those cars end up going higher. Like I'll give you an example. A Ferrari today is worth $4 million, right? It's worth between $3.7 and $4 million today. I mean, now the market's like –

came down a bit on everything, real estate, cars, everything started to come down. But six months ago, when the market was hot, six, eight months ago, it was going for over $4 million. And when did it come out at? It came out at 1.4. Oh my God. So my sticker, the sticker of the one I have is 1.4. It was around, well, maybe 1.1 it came out. My sticker was 1.4. Sure. Right?

I bought the car for $2.8 million. You paid double the price. I paid double. Now, there's people before me that were buying a car for, I refused the car when it was first offered to me, even the same car, I refused at $2 million. I refused it. A year later, I bought the same car for $2.8 million something. Closer to $2.9 million. I was offered for the car even. I was offered right now, like recently, $3.4 million. I still didn't sell it.

I sell and sell it. Now I understand why you don't drive them. They just appreciate in value over time. They appreciate over time. Yeah, they appreciate. They have a stability point too, you know, but eventually they go up. Like the cars, it's at a point now where it's going to stay at that range. It'll be at that 3.5, 3.7 range.

So when you get uplisted, is that another goal? Is that another car? I mean, there's a different goal for that. It's not a car, but yeah, it was a different goal for me. It was a different goal. You only need jets. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. I have a G4 SP car.

cars jets that's amazing man yeah it's probably one of the best investments i made why is it a good investment to buy a jet listen the time that well first of all it doubled since i bought it so it's literally worth double so i already have equity in there and that's even with new miles that's even with new miles do everything right so plane is different a plane works yeah it works based on the hours and the landings and stuff but also works off of the programs the engine programs that you have

the, you know, like all these other variables, when the last servicing was done, when the next big service is due. There's a lot of other variables in the plane. It's not just like a car because it's just a shell. And then you have all the other pieces, the motors, this, that, you know, so it's really it's about the engines and the other components more than it is about the frame, you know.

But yeah, like it was one of the best investments I ever made. I mean, the time, the convenience that you have and you know, the type of deals you get done in the air, 42,000 feet high in the air in your own plane is something that you just, you can't get done anywhere else. - Yeah. So when people are thinking about it and they look at private jets, they're thinking about it, $5 million, $10 million, $50 million, $20 million. They hear all these crazy numbers for private jets. You look at it as an investment and saving yourself time. - Well, it's a tax write-off.

I mean, when I got it, it was 100% tax deductible. 100%. 100%. Right now, I think it's 90 or 95. It was 100% tax deductible. So you're either going to pay tax or you're going to get yourself a plane. Sounds like an easy decision. There's other businesses, too, that are like that. I don't know if people know this or not. I mean, there's cars that are over 6,000 pounds. That's why you think there's so many G-wagons on the road. Cars that are over 6,000 pounds, same thing. 100% tax write-off.

So it's like free. It's like free. That's crazy. You buy a gas station. Same thing. 100% tax deductible. I want to buy a gas station. You can have a business selling toys and you'd be paying tax. Like, shit, buy yourself a gas station. It's 100% tax deductible. There's so many things that are like that. This is fascinating. I love that.

All right. So we've talked about some of the making money side. We talked a little bit about investing money side. Let's talk about the charity side about giving money away. How do you decide what things you'd like to donate to or what charity efforts you'd like to be involved in? So, you know, my thing is about helping people change lives. You know, um, the,

charities that are like a well-recognized B that are, you know, towards helping towards kids, towards kids growing up that ultimately are, you know, they stay on the right path that they don't get derailed. Cause I mean, that kind of happened to me when I was young, but I was, you know, making a lot of money and it kind of steered me in the wrong direction and had to kind of like find myself and come back on the right direction. So, you know, um, like one of the organizations that I'm heavily involved with that I like to always, uh,

you know, offer and contribute to and help out any way I can is Health Corps, which is Dr. Oz, right? His organization. So yeah, it has to just make sense with the same message that I'm putting out and projecting and same thing as a company is, which is, you know, stay on the right path, the discipline, the focus, the importance of being around the right people, you know, like all those kind of things.

Do you think it's important for entrepreneurs or companies and corporations to get involved with charity? Yeah, for sure. For sure. For many reasons. I mean, from a business standpoint, again,

100% tax write-off. You're either going to pay it in tax or you're going to... If you donate $50,000 or $100,000, that's coming off your tax bill. So why not give it to a charity where it can actually help people than to give it away? You're going to give it away regardless. Right. So 100%. From a business standpoint, it makes sense because you're going to have to do something with it. Right? And then also from a contribution standpoint, it just makes sense overall. So let's say...

You go public or you're already public, but you go public on Uplift, the big exchange. And then the next day Gatorade says, you know what? Here's $1 billion. Go walk away. What do you do on Monday morning? Do you start over again? Do you chill out for a year? Like what happens to jazz the next day after you get 1 billion, 2 billion, whatever the number is?

So I have another plan, another goal after this that I want to hit. Obviously, I don't want to be doing this day-to-day stuff like I am right now as much. This is where I have to use my own brainpower and a lot of my experience that I've built over the last 20 plus years of being in online marketing and all that. But the next business that I want to have is something where I'm doing investments. And I also want to have a leasing company.

So I love cars so much, but I don't want to deal with the cars because I'm going to end up buying every damn car just to stare at it. Get high on your own supply. Right. And I know that. So I would rather be the lender. I would rather be the guy that basically says, okay, here's X amount of $200 million, $300 million, boom, up front, then work with a bigger, get another bank involved, increase that number, and then start a leasing company and start doing the deals. Yeah.

the money business basically where the money is your inventory and you're just earning interest off of that you know same thing i'm building a real estate portfolio i have some very interesting plans of what i want to do in real estate space as well combined with digital marketing and and uh combined with digital marketing and and some kind of like new wave stuff that people are starting to do so um yeah it's going to be mainly if you get a billion dollars on sunday you're going to start working on monday

No, I'll probably take a week. Two weeks. Two weeks is enough. Two weeks is enough. Okay. Is there a number? If I said, you know what? Here's $5 billion or $8 billion or $10 billion. Is there a number that you just stop? Stop everything? Stop everything. I'll get bored to death. What am I going to do? Because it's not about the money. I like the thrill and the challenge. It's the game. It's not about the money.

It's the game. It's just the game. I'm addicted to the fucking game. It's not about the money. I say every single time. I was like, you couldn't hand me $10 billion. People are like, are you crazy? I'm like, I literally couldn't sit on a beach for a week. No, I'm going to lose my mind. I'll lose my mind. I'll go crazy.

It's not about, that's what people don't understand. It's not about the money. That's why if you chase the money, the money will never come to you. And that's the reason people don't know, shit, you're lucky. It's not luck. 20 years. It's not luck. People see it when it's done. They don't see the grind before. They don't see the sacrifices. But anything you want in life, you have to make sacrifices. You have to sacrifice something in order to get something else. Yeah.

There's something you're letting go. Like you're here in this place right now, you're missing out on something else. Like you chose to be here instead of not be somewhere else or somewhere else something else could be going on, right? - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah Tarzan, you get bit 4,000 times by a snake and then you make one video that gets a bunch of views. Like, oh, you're so lucky you got all those views. - Every time man, every time. I've been plucking teeth out my hand and my face all the time. You're lucky. No, I'm not. - It's 20 years. - I've been doing 20 years, 20 plus years.

Okay. So we talked about making money. We talked about investing money. We talked about giving away to charity. Talk to us about what is the game plan? You go public, a bunch of capital comes in. You've got all these different SKUs. What is the game plan for Limitless? So we expand. So we take...

You know, we take some of these products, international distribution. I want to focus more. My goal after this year is to focus more on international markets. I feel that, you know, this DTC thing in the U.S. is we've, you know, we've cornered it in a very big way. And we're obviously going to keep doing it, keep scaling it, scaling, scaling, scaling. It's never end. It never ends. So expand operations here. Expand the number of people here. Yeah.

And then set up overseas, set up in some areas, you know, do our own distribution. Some areas work with local distributors there and just take the brands global individually, different brands, different market segments, things like that, and just expand and eventually start doing acquisitions of other companies. So we want to, you know, get into like I have other private businesses right now that eventually I want to roll up into this.

So those are in other companies. Some are in financial services, some are in IT technology services. So there's different things. And when we rope them in into Limitless, start doing acquisitions, what'll happen is it'll increase our multiple. And now we're not just a direct-to-consumer products company. Now we're into

health, medical tech, hypothetically, financial services, and all these different things. So the valuation now is going to be significantly greater than what it is just by being a direct-to-consumer products company. So let's walk through some real-life examples. So when you acquire a company, oftentimes I say you can acquire them for free or get paid to do it. Let me give you an example. Spotify signs Joe Rogan to a $100 million or $200 million deal, right?

Everybody's like, I cannot believe they gave Joe Rogan $100 or $200 million. That's insane. Their stock went up $2.1 billion that day. Right. So did they give him $200 million or did they go up $2 billion? And that's the reason I went public. See, you answered that right there. Because if you know how to build a good audience and you know how to build...

you know, at the same time, build a good audience and tie them back to the pub co because it's two different businesses altogether. That's what a lot of people don't know either. A public company has nothing to do with your private business. They're totally unrelated up until the point that they are related when it takes time

tens of thousands of people to come from the private company onto the public side or vice versa. Or the investors, shareholders, I would say, on the public company side, start buying your products and become customers. So that's when the real connection happens. Otherwise, they're totally unrelated. Like somebody can buy and sell your stock all day. He doesn't have to buy your product.

Right. They're totally unrelated. So and then you need a different team running the public side versus the private side because there's different level of skill set that's required for each one. So the only common denominator between a private company and a public company is the is one department marketing. That's the only common denominator.

So if you are able to present yourself in that way and just get out there and your company is that big and has that many shareholders and the market cap is huge and you make one press release and boom, your stock flies, then obviously what you're doing is you're basically – and even when they get Joe Rogan and stuff like that, see, they do stock deals. And the reason for going public is that you can –

It's the only way that you can turn shares into a currency. You're turning paper into real money. And how you're doing it is you have to create more of a demand for it than there's a supply. So the more of a demand that's there, the more value of your stock goes up. And if you have to release more currency slash shares into the market, then they're still going to have a value unless you have too many outstanding shares. So in this case, in their case, they basically just

They profited like crazy. They didn't give out anything. They profited because their stock went up significantly. Their market cap, their shares, everything went up. Shareholders, investors.

So nearly every week we see an acquisition happen from food and beverage brands and supplement companies in particular because for a large corporation takes them an average of $75 million to get a brand set up in around one and a half to two years. So they'd rather go spend 140 million, 220 million. You see a lot of nine figure exits, not billion dollar exits, a lot of hundred million to $300 million exits, but

really fast. You're like, how did that company start four years ago and they just got per for 140 million? Because the guy that bought them would have to spend 75 million two years and cross their fingers instead of just paying 140 ready to go and then plug it into their distribution network. You'll often see companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi go buy up all these other beverages and just shelve them just because they know that they're going to get that distribution and be able to increase their sales for them.

So last question, as you're deciding, how do you think about what type of companies you want to acquire and why? So first of all, I look at a few different things. I look at spaces that are

not just like that are going to be evolving and that are going to keep growing right not not a like I'm not interested in buying a gardening company right and it has to be something that ties back into some level of experience that I have because I you know it has it has to make sense you know I want to be in a similar space that I want that I like and I enjoy also and some business that I understand right and of course companies industries that have high multiples so

Medical, medical technology, financial services, tech platforms, these are all the ones, you know, these all have high multiples.

So those are what we look at. And then obviously other products, other nutrition brands are going to come of interest where we can say, okay, you're doing X amount of revenue a year. The company's great. The product's great. You're doing good. But your management, we see the problem is with management. There's too much money going out. So since we're already doing nutrition and we do it right, we say, okay, if we buy this company for this amount, we kill the management. We're automatically going to make 20% more because we're going to loop it into our system. So if we have one...

core, you know, umbrella management that can manage brand A, brand B, brand C, brand D. Now we can start doing acquisitions and that same management can now manage brand E, F, G, H, right? And we can kill, cut the costs and increase profitability for us.

And that would be the same thing for the different verticals. But the different verticals would have to be lucrative verticals on a multiple level. They don't have to be lucrative on a revenue level, just a multiple level. And they have to be evolving like, you know, that there's no, whether, like recession proof, that no matter what happens, people are always going to need it, need a product or service from there. Yeah.

All right, guys, you've listened to this episode of the Money Mondays. Make sure to follow at Limitless. He's got millions of followers and showed really cool content, teaching, showcasing cars, lifestyle, traveling around the planet. Follow the real Tarzan.

If you want to watch animal content, watch him get bit by a snake, watch him wrestle with ostriches and everything in between. If you can, please spread the word about the Money Mondays. We think it's rude to not talk about money. A lot of us grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. The whole concept of this is we believe it's rude to not talk about it. That's why there's a lot of financial situations and problems in our society. We want you to spread the word about it. If you want to spend more time with us, go to themoneymondays.com, message us there, and we'll see you guys next week.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays where we talk about three topics, how to make money, how to invest money, and how to give some away to charity. We have a fantastic guest to go over all three topics because we have a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, investor, all things in between, and he's even creating a whole new company with a whole humongous, humongous, humongous use case that all of you are going to care about. Please welcome Mr. Randall Kaplan. Thanks for having me, Dan. Super excited to be here.

So the way this works is we do about 35 to 40 minutes at the max. That way it's easier for people to listen because, you know, the normal drive is around 45 minutes back and forth to work. The normal workout is around 45 minutes. So we like to do these 40 minute episodes. So it's clean cut straight to the point. And our users and our listeners can get all the things they need to learn about money because money is a very important topic, as you know. So if you can give a quick two minute bio so we can get straight to the money.

great my name is randall kaplan i'm a serial entrepreneur venture capitalist podcast host and also i have a best-selling beach drone photography book of my drone beach photography is from my own world i'm also the ceo of sandy s-a-n-d-e-e we've created a yelp for beaches we've created a yelp for beaches we've cataloged over 100 categories of data for more than 100 000 beaches in 212 countries for the five trillion dollar year beach tourism business

Wow. Okay. So let's break some of these things down. So how does it feel and tell us through going from entrepreneur to VC and also back to entrepreneur while still doing the VC world? Like why take on Sandy as this mega project?

Well, I think you're born with the drive to create new companies. I had my first t-shirt company in college where I went door to door, taught me a lot about business and margins. I took $400 of my Bar Mitzvah money, made 100 t-shirts with the Nike logo and the Michigan Just Do It. And it was really great because I had cash for the first time. I bought the t-shirts for $5, sold them for $12. And then the long sleeve was $6 and I sold them for $18.

And the cold calling skills that you learn from that, going door to door, knocking on doors. I think there's 12 dorms at Michigan. I got kicked out of all 12 floor by floor. I get kicked off of one floor, I go around the back, I go on another floor. So I think you just have the drive. And then when you have capital and you create a well-known company, you have the opportunity to get into some very good deals. So I did that after...

our first tech company went public, Akamai Technologies. We invented a new way to serve web content around the world better, faster, cheaper, more reliably than companies could do it themselves.

When I was in high school, I had made a hundred t-shirts and we sold them for 15 bucks each. And I thought I was a millionaire. I had $1,500. I sold them out in a couple of lunches. That's like literally selling. And it just, it was big. Just like W Y D. Who's your daddy? I printed it like a local place in San Diego, like literally got overcharged for it, but I didn't care. I made 15 bucks a shirt. I was like, I'm a millionaire. That's it. Okay. And it's a cash business. Yeah. And when you're 15 years old. All right. So let's walk through some of these things.

on the how to make money side talk us through like the hustle part when people are first starting to get into their entrepreneurial journey why should they either continue to keep their day job or jump into the entrepreneurial journey why should they take on that role right well at some point there's a fulcrum right so either you are going to take all the risks you want you're going to graduate from college or not graduate from college you're going to say i'm going to create a company that's very risky to do and you can only do that if you don't have capital saved up

you have to save money, I think, to take on a risk where you're not going to be receiving money, no salary. So I think at some point, I mean, we hear all the stories about people working full-time jobs and,

We have full-time second jobs when we have our first job when we're trying to create a company. There's a lot of work that needs to be done behind the scenes. I don't advise people to quit their day job unless they have the savings and they have a concept that is working already or they can get funding to the point where they're not going to leave without making any money. Right.

So when you meet entrepreneurs and let's say whether it's for you angel investing or as a VC working with your firm, talk us through when someone is coming to you, whether when they have zero dollars in revenue and they're an idea versus they've got one, two million, five million, et cetera. Like talk us through what you're thinking from an investment decision for you guys. Right. Well, first of all, they're all pre-qualified before they come. So we've never taken a cold pitch where we said, OK, we're going to put money in that. So there's some qualifier that goes in.

And number two, we look at things like founders, barriers to entry, competitors, intellectual property. But ultimately for us, it comes down to investing in the founder, him or herself. We have a very wide spectrum of portfolio companies, AI to consumer product companies, to make up companies for women. But for us, the most important factor is always

the founders. And we go through a series of questions, Dan, where, you know, you're, you're talking about the softballs, right? Tell me how you started. Tell me what you were doing.

People say, "What's your main job?" And a lot of what I do and what you do is you're a bullshit detector at the end of the day. People come in and say, "I ran this at Fox," or "I ran that at Fox." Well, what was your title? - Right. - Right? And I said, "Don't remember, you're out." And I mean, we also talk about, I mean, then you throw in these softballs and then you come in with the zinger. - Yeah.

how much are you planning to pay yourself? And it has to be within a range, you know, depending on their age. And I think for founders, I think 60 to 100,000 is normal, depending on when you're living. New York City, probably 100, Los Angeles, San Fran. But if you're living in Topeka, Kansas, and you're coming in with $100,000, we're not going to do that. You're not going to do it. And if you want to do it, you're not going to do it with us. When there's so many options of categories to invest into, how do you guys narrow down the topics that you guys like to invest into?

We don't narrow it down, frankly. I tell my friends, send us whatever deals that you have and we'll look at them. But like I said, they're all pre-qualified. We invested in a recyclable energy company, Inspires, called probably nine years ago. And it came to us through the then chairman of Kulahan Loki. And he said, you should meet this guy. I remember I was at a

tasting, lunch tasting for my wedding. I was getting married three months later and I got the call, you should meet with this guy. He came into the office. I know nothing about that business. But after two minutes I said, in. And I'm sure you've met people like that, right? They come in, they have the it factor. That company sold a year and a half ago for $187 million. And we had a 3.4 times return on that deal. - That's awesome. - AI as well.

This is going to sound crazy, but I've met some interesting people in the hot tub. So you're on a nice vacation. People there are, it's expensive. You're there during spring break or Christmas, New Year's because you have kids. And

What do you do? You know, I'm sitting there with my wife. There's a guy in there, the guy created a company called Kensho, brilliant guy, sold it for $500 million. We got talking, my background, your background, if you have another deal, send me the deal. You know, we'd love to see it. And he did. Started the company with 14 AI graduates at Harvard. - Oh, okay. - And so right away, right away, I mean, there's no way for me to do due diligence on that deal, no matter how much time I spent on that deal, right?

Something good is going on the guy just founded a company and sold it within two and a half years for five hundred million dollars And now here's another company the exact same thing in a different vertical no not compete in that space just Done. I have no idea. I mean they're doing well. Yeah Doing very well. So how does a founder stand out because you guys get hundreds of different pitches sent to you the referrals decks

somebody says it with a carrier pigeon, like, can I try to get you a deal in every different fashion? How do you, how does some of that wouldn't stand out whether it's the entrepreneur or the deal itself, what stands out? Well, first of all, there's so many things that can knock you out right out of the gate. Right? So the first thing is you got a PowerPoint and I've seen PowerPoints from great people that look like they were created 20 years ago by five-year-olds they're out. Right? I mean, if they don't know what's on the PowerPoint and then you have the founders who are referred to you and their PowerPoint is terrible.

It's basically a brochure, nothing about the company. - Right, no meat. - No meat, and I've had people come in, I take the meeting because of the referral source. - All sizzle, no steak. - All sizzle, no steak, and then I said, "Explain it to me in one sentence."

we talk about the grandmother standard my grandmother passed away last year at 104 and that's what i tell our team when we present uh something i want every single person to be able to hear a pitch comprehend everything with respect to that pitch and it's the same way in return as well if you can't explain to me in one sentence right my grandma doesn't understand it right

So I try to do that with every company in advance so that before I even bring it up to anyone like Cars and Coffee, I'm building the first national sports cars chain. Yeah. You know what that is? Yeah. National sports cars chain. That's it. It's one sentence. Acai for Ever Bowl. We're building the biggest and best chain of Acai Ever Bowl locations.

You understand what it is? Yeah. Elevator Studio, number one social media agency in the world. Everything in my life is a one sentence thing, four or five words really to be straight to the points that are very descriptive. And so I love that you said that it's really important for you guys are listening.

When you're thinking about your company, you need to be able to explain it in one sentence. You know when people hear the elevator pitch? Some elevator rides are real short. 30 seconds. Exactly. So you've got to be able to say what it is and people understand what you're talking about. And I think a lot of companies right now are trying to be like so cool that nobody understands it. Have you ever been on the freeway and you see a billboard and you can't read the logo?

and they're spending 40 grand a month for that billboard 12 grand a month with billboard you can't even read the logo and it has some cool words we don't even know what the website is there's no call to action guys when you have your company make it really easy to read make it really easy to understand and stay away from the favorite words with respect to that moment synergy there's so much synergy here between this and that i mean these new words that make things complicated we don't want complicated we want simple complicated and if you can't even take this very hard

complex or subject matter, you better be able to translate that. If you can't translate it to me and I know a little bit of something about your business, how are you going to sell the companies? Right. Right. How can you possibly sell your product? So communication is so underrated as a founder. And if you can't do it, you need to learn to do it. You need a mentor to tell you to do it.

So communication is a really important word when it comes to dealing with investors. I think a big reason that a lot of company entrepreneurs fail is that they don't tell their investors soon enough when things are going bad.

And it's horrendous when that happens because we could have helped you. Like I've had and I've had founders that tell me like, oh, we're not going to afford payroll in two weeks. Why don't you tell me two months ago? Right. I'd help you raise the money. I'm in. I'm right behind you. And my 43 investments, they're all still kicking. Like they're still fighting through it. Some of it exits, some gone public, et cetera. None of them are gone. And because I'm really blind because of this one time it happened where the founder told me in two weeks we can't make payroll.

And you just told me about your $2 million in sales, your big order, but you didn't mention that. Oh, we're not getting that for 90 days and we can't make payroll on the way. If you have a $2 million order from a big chain store, I mean, right, I'll finance. It's called factoring. Factoring is where you take something called the paper, which is purchase order financing. So let's say that that order was from Walmart.

for $2 million. The company is not going to get it. Let's say the order came in January 1st. They're not going to get paid really till like April 1st on average. Well, in between there, they need to factor the paper, meaning that $2 million they know that's coming in. They're going to make around a million dollars on that 2 million. I'll loan you 800,000 on that 2 million. That covers more than your payroll, your production, et cetera.

As long as that money comes from Walmart, I get my $800,000 plus a little bit of interest. Everybody's happy. Right. But if you don't tell me and now it's March and you're like a month away from getting paid by Walmart, I will help you get through payroll. Right. And all that stems back from the key word that Randall mentioned is communication. If you are a founder, talk to your investors. They're there to help you. They're there to protect their money. They want to protect you, too, but they also want to protect their money.

and treat people like you wanted to be treated on the back end. Right? So in our deals where we take money from limited partners, constant communication details are critical. Not only when things go bad, when things go good, you should have regular communication

four times a year, twice a year, minimum one time a year because we want to know how things are going. Yes. So with each of my companies, I do a quarterly email myself. So for Cards and Coffee, for example, I do a quarterly email that goes out to all shareholders.

In between there, I do what I call a highlight email. Highlight email means something good or something bad happened. Something bad happened, I want to tell them like, "Hey, this happened with blah, blah, blah." I tell them, "Hey, in the sports card industry, a big funding round happened or we just opened our ninth store in Las Vegas or something happened." I send what's called a highlight email or highlight text just to keep them excited and interested and so they know. And if something bad, I want them to know in advance because before the quarterly email comes out, I don't want it to be a surprise.

That simple thing has changed everything with my shareholders and vice versa. I learned it because I want to hear from my companies that I invest into. Right. And I have friends like you that we co-invested. Let's say I asked Randall, Hey, Randall, let's invest into this phone case company. And then Randall doesn't hear from them for nine months. He's upset with me, too. I'm the one that brought him into this phone case deal. Right. So he's like, Hey, Dan, what the heck? You had me put in 500K into this phone case company. I haven't even heard from these knuckleheads. What's going on? Right.

that all can be prevented with some communication. And a common mistake too, is they're afraid to tell you the bad news, right? So I, when things bad happen to our portfolio companies and I'm either a board member or a founder and they do no matter what, I mean, the companies that go well, I mean, you may have two or three near deaths, maybe 10 or deaths tell the bad news first, absolutely. As soon as it happens. Right. And, and I think, um,

having a good, having great communication with shareholders, even if the company fails. And it goes back to what I said, treat people like you would want to be treated seven and 10 companies fail right in the VC space. We have back numerous second term, second time founders because we liked the way they treated us on the way down the first one from start to finish. And a lot of times,

the founders just think that they're scared to say something as if their investor will be mad. This is when we're the most useful because most strategic investors or accredited investors, they've been in the game. Yeah. Right. You take money from a 20 year old kid that has an inheritance. He probably can't help you. Right. You take money from Randall Kaplan or Dan Fleischman.

yeah i'm going to help you fix whether it's your merchant account your po financing your credit situation oh you need a new warehouse you need a new lawyer you need an accountant you need a designer you need to see if let's go like i'm ready to help you fast like i'm ready to put on my helmet and jump in the field with you like i always say i invest in quarterbacks and i'll be the coach right in each of my companies i look at them as the quarterback in those moments when bad things happen i'm not mad at the quarterback

He's communicating. He's telling what's going on in the field. He's talking to his players. He's got to talk to the coach. You got to let us know what's going on. And if you don't do that, we can't help you. And you're going to be alone on that field. It's real scary when it's alone. In our business as VCs,

I learned more from the bad deals that fail than the ones that succeed. You get really lucky on the ones that succeed. It has nothing to do with the founder of the product, whatever. Just things are going bad. Someone swoops in and maybe there's one little change in the product. Talk about the quarterback. We want...

leaders to stand tall in that pocket. So when there's craziness coming around and, and you know, people are trying to sack you, you hang in there, you don't run. And if you need to run, you scramble and you make it work. Yeah. I call that staying calm in the chaos. Staying calm in the chaos. All right. So as you've grown in the venture capital world and angel investing world, it becomes, I don't wanna say easy, but you can kind of spot a deal whether you like it or not pretty quickly.

Are there certain things that make someone for yourself more appealing? Are you always looking for a grand slam or do you like home runs? Meaning you want to put in a million bucks into a deal. Does it always have to become worth five, ten million dollars to you one day that one million? Are you happy to put one million and get back two or three million? I think it depends on what it is.

We're not a billion dollar fund. So those funds are looking for 10 X's, right? Because seven of 10 fail. I mean, it's the same thing with us, right? You need a 10 bagger, you need a two or three bagger, and you need a couple to break even possibly to make that.

weighted average return. So there are some deals that I funded knowing, okay, this is not going to be a hundred million dollar company. I mean, we do shoot for that minimum, right? We all want a billion. And I think that's a standard that people want to create a billion dollar company, a unicorn, a unicorn. I mean, at Sandy, that's our goal as well. And I think we can get there, but I think at the, at the, when you start and you have a portfolio, I think you really need to look at

weighted average return. You have a certain amount of money you're going to put into the space and you have to look at how much capital you have spent and have are going to continue to spend within a certain period of time. So I think it just all depends on the deal, industry, founder. Sometimes we put money in the companies. It's a friend of a friend and it's not a whole lot of money. So we'll do some of those. I mean, it's not

common, it's rare and we don't do it because we think we're going to lose money. It's certainly not a gift. We have to like the founder, we have to like the business. But I think most of the time, two to three X is not exciting, but you do need some of those in your portfolio. Sure. And sometimes those two to three X can be 10 X or 50 X in one case within our portfolio.

All right. So I need you to unveil behind the curtains. We've all watched the show Billions. Yeah. Everyone's obsessed with the show. It's one of my top five favorite shows ever. If you guys haven't seen Billions, it's really fun, really entertaining show about the VC hedge fund world. Yeah. And this guy, Bobby Axelrod, has multi bazillions of dollars, this huge fund, et cetera, which has made him very wealthy.

VCs, hedge fund managers on average make something called a two in 20. Can you explain what a two in 20 is and how that works? - Sure, so it's a crazy fee structure that makes no sense whatsoever. So let's just start right there. And the way it's taxed, it's taxed as long-term gain, which is ridiculous as well, it's earned income. So you're talking about a yearly fee as a 2%. - So 2%, okay, so let's say you've got a $100 million fund, 2% would be $2 million, okay?

I mean, it gets interesting when you hear $10 billion funds, because that's $200 million of fees. - $200 million of fees. - Just to keep the lights on, right? So you're paying salaries. - Whoa! - I mean, it's a lot of money. So you hear about these managers and you talk about even bigger funds like this, Canyon Capital, Oak Tree, Blackstone, all those firms, BlackRock, when you're managing $100 billion,

It's $2 billion in fees. - Oh my God. - So people really love the business. - That's why they have mega yachts. - Right, but Dan, that's just the beginning, right? The 20% is you also get to keep 20% of the gains from that portfolio. So let's say that billion dollars gets a 10% return, right? So that's $100 million.

and then you get 20% of the $100 million. So you get another 20 million dollars more. Yeah, you get another 20 million. So. All right, guys, so I'm starting a venture capital firm today. Well, it's actually one better because you get that 2% whether the firm is doing well or not. The firm could be down 50% and you're still getting fees as one of the VC founders. Got it. It's a great model. It makes no sense.

Hedge funds are supposed to be a non-correlated class to the stock market. Most of them are the same type of fund as the stock market. They're buying stocks. If the market is up, hedge funds are up. If the market's down, a lot of them are down. So it's no longer and hasn't been for a while. Some are very, very few, but they're very much correlated to the market. So it really does make no sense.

So I created something called elevator rolling funds like two years ago, just kind of like a fund, but a rolling fund was created by AngelList. AngelList, you know, multi-billion dollar company. They do, might be the number one when it comes to being able to angel invest into deals.

So elevator rolling funds essentially was people can contribute quarterly. So instead of me doing a roadshow for two years, which is typically a roadshow, it means I would go visit with Randall and like 60 other investor types and say, hey, I'm starting $100 million fund. Will you put in $2 million? Will you put in $5 million, $10 million, et cetera? I spent around a year going to do that. And then the next year I got to go actually, hey, Randall, send me the money. I have to do what's called a capital call.

and a rolling fund structure that angel has created it's really good for solo entrepreneurs so if you're a solo entrepreneur listening uh rolling fund you can go to angel.com and look it up

is a really simple structure where they handle all the legal and accounting, everything in the back end. It sounds like a commercial for AngelList. I just love AngelList, it's not a commercial. And so I started this about two years ago and you can contribute as little as 40 grand, which is 10 grand a quarter. - Right. - You still have to be a credit investor, which is important. - Which many people are not, they lie about it, but they wanna get into the field. - Yeah, we can talk about that. That'll be the next question. - Okay. - I'm glad you said that. And so let's say it's 40 grand. So they can put in 10 grand a quarter.

And each quarter is its own fund. That's what's interesting about the structure. That's how they got created with this. And so let's say Dan is running Elevator Rolling Fund or you as a solo entrepreneur are rolling your rolling fund. I make two or three investments during that quarter. And let's say Randy is the one that put in 40 grand or 40 million. The number doesn't really matter. It's just math.

The next quarter is a whole new fund. And so I make one investment that quarter, that investment's there. The next third quarter, I do seven investments. Then Randy's part of all those. At the end of 12 months, Randy can say, instead of 40 grand, I want to put in 4 million or 800 grand or go to zero. You can go any up or down, which is a really interesting concept because as a sole entrepreneur listening, if you create a rolling fund, again, only do this when you're really ready. You're a seasoned veteran. You know what you're going to invest into. You know what your thesis is and why you're investing into it.

Now I can decide or Randy can decide to go up or down in his investment.

the rolling fund structure is really interesting because it saves me the one or two years of going around, schlepping around the country, trying to pitch everyone. Which is very difficult. Yes. And it's hard to stay fresh every single pitch because you're doing the pitch a hundred times. The exact same pitch a hundred times. Got to be fresh every single one. Doesn't matter if you're fifth pitch of the day. And even when they like it, let's say Randall and I are friends. He likes it. And he says, yes, I'm in for 2 million out of your a hundred. Great. A year from now, I got to almost re-pitch him.

Right. Because now I've gotten to say, hey, I've collect I've got everyone to say yes to 100 million capital costs. Send me two million. I now got to follow up with Randall three or four or five times because even though we're close, he's busy, he's got 40 other deals going on. And so this allowed me as a solo entrepreneur to be able to go create a rolling fund structure where people can invest through elevated rolling fund. I don't even know them. And they could just contribute 100 grand, 200 grand, 500, which they have. And I've got people on the I don't want to call it a cap table, but people on the cap table

that are investing 10 grand, 50 grand, 100 grand a quarter. I literally don't know who they are. I like Google them like, hey, who's this guy? That's nice. I've got great women and men that are investors. And so the concept is a typical fund or a typical VC. This is where the question leads to. How does someone who is a credit investor, they had an exit or they got millions of dollars saved up, but they did great on real estate, et cetera. They're listening and then they want to invest into a fund. Right. How do they do it? It's hard.

I mean, it's very, very hard. The question is, how do you get access to good deals from trusted people? Because there's a lot of shit out there, as you know, a lot of hoxsters, promoters, self-promoters look at my deal and there actually is no possible way to verify track record. We do not invest in funds even. So, you know, we'll talk about funds because you're talking about funds basically, right? And I'm going to go back and modify my two and 20 for a second here.

we will never put money into a first time fund. We want a track record because I don't want to be the guinea pig for that fund. - You don't want egg on your face. - And at some point, if the fund is five years old and they're on their third or fourth fund and they're putting out 15% net returns after the two and 20,

I will pay the two and 20 by the way. And I'm not, the fee structure is completely crazy. I mean, it makes no sense at all. Having said that I care about my net return. Right. And so I've had funds, uh, some of the best funds out there charge 30% now and it's the returns go up. Right. They, some of the funds say I want to charge 40%. If you make 25%, I mean, it's kind of crazy. The real estate deals, by the way, it's more common when you do these one-offs,

I've seen 50%. Once you have a hurdle of 25% net return, there's a makeup in a lot of these deals, you know, these solo deals, syndicators of 50%. Now you may say that's crazy, but if you weren't a 30% on that deal, do you really care? When you care? Yeah. I mean, it, it hits you wrong when you're getting the pitch, but if you look at the track record and the track record is they've had 30% returns over some long period of time, we'll consider doing that even though I hate it.

Yeah. Bobby Oxenrod on billions. He charges three and 30. Yeah. Three and 30. Right. And the guy's got what? 10 or 20 billion. He's worth 10 billion. Must be like a $50 billion fund. Right. You can only do that by the way, if you're one of the best of the best, right? You're putting up those returns. Over and over and over. Over and over. Yeah. Not one year. Right. Renaissance and some of these other. Yeah. You can't have one investment. Like, Hey, I did Twitter 17 years ago. You can't like, that doesn't work. It needs to be a track record. Okay. So we said, we're going to ask that question. So,

when someone is coming up with that fee structure and they're an accredited investor, how do we know what a credit investor is? The typical concept of what a credit investor is, if you're listening, if you want to know if you're a credit investor, is you make $250,000 a year as your household income, or you have a net worth of $1 million, not counting your house. Okay. Keep that in mind. A lot of people will say, oh, I've got 400K in equity and they think that's part of it. It's not part of it. So you have to make a quarter million a year

or have a net worth of $1 million, not counting your house. However, there are new rules that have come up over the last few years where you can become an accredited investor with an asterisk by studying and passing something similar to a series seven where you're learning about the stock market, you're learning about investing, you're learning about these things. And similar to a series seven, what a stockbroker needs to be able to get a license, you can actually take that test. And they did that because accredited investor laws are very tough.

Most people in the country are not accredited investors, so they can't invest it. They can't co-invest in the deals with me and Randall, even if they have money saved up. They might have three, four or 500 grand saved up and they don't apply and they want to put in 25 grand into a deal they're not legally allowed to.

That prohibits a lot of people from creating wealth because that same person could walk into the Bellagio or the Wynn Casino today and go blow 25 grand, 500 grand on blackjack, slot machines, roulette, lottery tickets, horse racing, but they're not legally allowed to invest into the next clothing line, social media agency, cool tech company, etc.

Walk us through, and credit investors, what you think is good and bad about the concept. Well, the concept behind it is good. You don't want people who are not sophisticated losing their money. Never invest in a deal where you don't understand the company, the deal, the deal terms, and the prospects. The SEC regulates these deals, and theoretically, if you violate a deal,

like this, something bad could happen to you. - Take me away. - Well, I mean, no one's doing, I mean, this is civil problems. You have a right as a limited partner, if the deal fails, basically to say, give me my money back because the principal- - I wasn't sophisticated. - Didn't do it. I mean, he didn't regulate and check this out.

There's no way for any fund manager to ever know if someone actually is or not. Right, we're not asking for tax returns. Right, I mean, you could lie all day long and put money into 150 deals and there's no way to know. I've never heard of a case where the federal government has come after somebody because they lied on a due diligence questionnaire. Sure. Right, it's never happened as far as I know. So I don't think this is a...

- I mean, it's, I've seen tons of deals where, you know, someone has a new restaurant. I mean, they don't even have the,

questionnaire, you know, making people verify it. That new way to become one is also a little ridiculous because getting a series seven is a lot of work. For sure. So I don't think people are going to study for the series seven, which allows them to become basically a broker and trade at a financial firm and work for a Goldman Sachs. Maybe you need a series 63 as well, some other things, but that's just a shitload of work to put a hundred thousand dollars into a deal when you have a

$200,000 in the bank when you're not satisfying these rules.

All right. One, one other quick thing. There's a lot of favors that go on as well. Right. We've, there've been family members in my deals. You know, my mom put money into our first tech company and she really didn't qualify, but you know, she's my mom. I was the founder of the company and you know, I was assigned to, I'm going to invest in my son, you know, no matter what, you know, Jewish mother, my mom's same thing. And, and, you know, she did now she had, you know, she had some,

savings assets. And she was, I don't know, gosh, this was 22 years ago. So maybe 55 years old, 60, you know, we didn't really look at it. I mean, she kind of was through my umbrella for lack of a better term, but yeah, we had family members in that deal as well, who not my family, but people who, who, who weren't, you know, this was not a lot of money and these kinds of deals, these favors go on regularly. My mom was working at century 21, making 24 grand a year. She was my very first investor.

She was the only reason I survived. She was my first investor in high school. She was buying my candy at Costco so I could sell candy inside. And the t-shirts I told you about were on her credit card, the first 500 bucks to buy t-shirts.

But when we were going, we were 17, 18, 19 years old. We'd done our first million dollars in sales. I wouldn't have even got that if she didn't pay for the booth on her credit card. - Right. So as founders, people say, where do you get your money? Most people, friends and family. - Yep. - Right. And that's how you get your seed capital. And I don't know, 90% of deals, 98% of deals, whatever.

not accredited investors, you know, 98% of these deals, but, but that's, that's the path. Yep. And, and you need it. I mean, you need people to believe in you without a track record. And those people are always your parents, your uncle, right. You know, you're, but you know, you could be 25 as well and leave your company or whatever and graduate college. I have this concept, mom, dad, will you give me $25,000? It could be a loan. So that satisfies the rules, but usually it's not. I mean, I don't,

Sometimes your mom and dad are going to give you $10,000, $25,000, $100,000 to let you start your company. Yep. All right. Last segment. We talk about how to make money, how to invest money. Now let's talk about how to give it away to charity. Why do you think that charity is important for some of the companies that you're investing into for personal brands or for corporations? Why should they get involved in some philanthropy? Well, most companies don't. So let's start there. So they should fix that. What's that? Fix it. Yeah, let's fix that. Companies should get involved helping

companies should get involved helping people who need it yeah and many many don't i mean i've been on 50 boards of some kind throughout the years i'm trying to think of one company where

They had some kind of philanthropic program. - We gotta fix it. - Just haven't seen it. I mean, as founders and people, I think you have a responsibility to give back even before you have money. You can volunteer, you can pick an organization that you're passionate about. Foster care for me was something important to me. My grandmother was raised in foster care and had a very, very difficult life. So I've given a lot of money to foster care,

created something called the Justice Ball, a nonprofit legal firm. Yeah, talk about that. Yeah, so when I was 27 years old, I went to a black tie fundraiser. I joined Sun

South America, and I went to this black tie dinner that raises $3 million a year. - Whoa. - Free legal services for the 12,000 poor, sick, homeless residents of Los Angeles each year. And I'm sitting around in this room, Dan, it's a rubber chicken dinner, black tie. And I mean, it was kind of cool. I was young and there's all kinds of interesting people there. Lawyers, by the way, so not that interesting. I'm a former lawyer, as you know. - Recovering lawyer? - What's that? - Recovering lawyer? - Well, fully recovered, I think.

And I looked around the room and I said, you know, there's gotta be a way to create something like this that's fun. And even while I was sitting there, I thought, let's do a charity concert. And that concept of course is not new, but it's new for a 27 year old who really had no money or no savings to create something like this. People told me you can't do it.

So I went to the head of Bedzetic Legal Services, the nonprofit, and said, I want to do this. I want to do it at the House of Blues, which used to be a super cool venue in Los Angeles, holds 1,100 people. And I said, OK, you know, really? I said, yeah. I said, let me get a meeting with the CEO, Greg Trojan.

It took me 12 phone calls down for Greg to return my call. I said, let me just come to lunch with you. I brought the head of Bed Static. We went to lunch and I said, here's what we want to do. And he said, never going to happen. Why not? Because I've seen this playbook. 27 year olds cannot create a large scale charity event and you're never going to sell out the House of Blues. Wow. And so Greg, of course, I like, dude, you're talking to the wrong guy. So we created this

amazing charity event now. This is we started in 1996 and it's still going on. I think they raised around eight million dollars. They've had

40,000 people come through the doors. - Wow. - Introducing a nonprofit to a very cool demographic. I think people are inherently, they do wanna help out. They do give back. - They do. - They're very busy, but they need to be introduced to something. - Right, if you make it easy for them, they will. - Make it easy. - Yep. - Make it super easy. So that was my first nonprofit.

charity event. We do one for the homeless right now in Los Angeles. Imagine Ball. I have a very cool partner in that event, John Terzi. And he owns nightclubs, cool restaurants. So he can bring in people like Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock and Magic and Kendall Jenner. And it's been it's been really great to see that take off. What's the website for that? Imagineball.org. All right, guys, you're listening to the Monday Mondays. Make sure to check out Randall Kaplan on social media and tell them what the podcast name is and what your social media.

I'm in search of excellence and Instagram handle at Randall Kaplan. So check out in search of excellence that podcast. He just had Mike Tyson on there. He's at Mark Cuban and everybody. It's a really great podcast. Check him out on social media. Follow along with his journey as he's building his podcast, investing in cool companies, helping beaches all over the planet. Go visit Sandy S and D E dot com and have these discussions about money. As you guys know, the whole concept of the money Monday's is we have these open discussions. We all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. I think it's rude to not talk about it.

We need to have these discussions about salaries and accounting and taxes. And what's a FICO score? How do you spell FICO? What the heck is that thing? How do I get my job? Should I rent or lease an apartment? We need to have these discussions with our friends, family and followers. So it's important to share this podcast, have these discussions, and we're going to see you guys. Oh, let me say one more thing. One more thing. Do not invest in the latest fats.

Years ago, people were investing in pet rocks. This was a thing, hundreds of million dollars in pet rocks. How does that investment make sense to anybody to have a return on that investment?

the crypto craze was the craziest thing then i mean you had all these people i was on a lunch panel uh in 2018 when the crypto thing was going crazy there were four of us on stage as a tech guy yeah our company went public in 1998 we saw 90 of companies go public and go bankrupt so i told the crowd these are young

uneducated non-investment professionals who are now investment professionals and i said on stage this is going to end very badly 98 of companies are going to go fail and people are going to lose lots of money class action suits everywhere and that happened but i'm going to tell you what happened down i was almost booed off the stage it was one of the loudest boos that i don't want to hear it and you know look what happened there's been a wipeout so do not invest in anything you don't understand in the latest trends and fads

So that's called D-Y-O-R. Do your own research. Make sure you understand these companies. Make sure the founders, not just the fancy sizzle, no steak. You guys got to understand what these companies are and invest responsibly. Take a small amount of capital, invest in research, study, learn everything about the industry, about the company, about the founders before you make those decisions. We are The Money Mondays. We'll see you guys next Monday.