Brad Lea & Alex Neist on What It Really Takes to Grow 8-Figure Brands | EP48
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the easiest podcast I'm ever going to do because we have such a dear friend here who also has a humongous podcast of his own. This guy's built businesses. His main core business he's focused on for 20 years in a row. No outside financing. Built this company up to do tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue. Throws his own live events. Speaks at events all over the planet. So that's why I think this is going to be the easiest podcast I've ever done. Please give a warm round of applause to Mr. Bradley. Woo!

I don't speak as many as you do. Everywhere you go, you see Dan. Everywhere. It's called Omnipresence, which we're going to talk about today. We are co-hosted with The Real Tarzan. The Real Tarzan gets over 200 million views a month on social media. Just in the last 10 days, he also got 225 million views in 10 days because he went on this really fun trip to Venezuela. Yep. Catching an anacondas. How much do you like Venezuela? How much do you like anacondas? More than Venezuela.

On that main video, how many views did you get on that video? I did, well, it was a 12-minute video, but I broke it up into three different videos. One video did 65 million, one did 45 million, and one did 50 million. All from the same video. What would happen if you had 50 million views on a video? How much money would you make? Probably none. You know, people always tell me afterwards, why didn't you do this? I'm like, damn. So you got 50 million views on a set, and what'd you do? Nothing.

But no, that's incredible. Thanks, man. I don't know why you would mess around with anacondas, though. Because nobody else is doing it. I know. It's a great market. What about a big-ass boa? Oh, for sure. Oh, anacondas are boa. What if they get around you and don't want to let go? Most people don't know that anacondas are actually boas. Really? Yeah. Well, what if they squeeze you and it's not a joke anymore?

well, he better not be joking around. Have you ever had that happen? Yeah, all the time. I saw a video the other day which made me say that, where the guy's got it around his neck and he's showing everybody and all of a sudden he goes... He just passes out. No, he goes...

and then he just fell yeah and they were trying to get it off and apparently eight seconds yeah eight seconds that thing just went what eight seconds you have it's like a rear naked choke exactly but imagine like you tap and he's not letting you go yeah and like after like i think it's like a minute and a half you're dead so 90 seconds see i stay away from that shit you don't just go brain dead

Let me bring it all the way back here. On the Money Mondays, we talk about three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity. Brad has done all of those things. He's made lots of money. He's freaking fancy Ferraris right outside this RV motorhome. We're actually outside of the Dragon's Lair gym for our 10-city toy drive. We're inside there. We got a ton of toys. So we're going to talk about the charity concept.

and he's invested a lot into his personal brand, into his business, and everything between. Brad, let's talk about the making money side. Actually, wait, let's do the quick two-minute bio. Let's get a two-minute bio, and then we can get straight to the money. Brad, tell us all about you. I'm an entrepreneur, I guess, by the truest sense of the word, which means I take a lot of financial risk.

Bigger than normal. That's really the definition of entrepreneur. So I've been doing that my whole life. But really, I'm just a sales guy with a lot of relationships. And I like to solve problems. They're almost like puzzles. So when you can solve problems, you can make money. So making money part's easy. And that's really it. Sales guy. Got a couple companies. Built a little bit of a brand on social media or a little following, I would say.

That's about it. I'm not wrestling anacondas in Brazil. I don't recommend it. So, Lightspeed VT, walk us through that company. That's been your main focus for the last two decades. Talk to us about Lightspeed VT. Why is it important? What does it do, etc.? Well, Lightspeed VT is a web-based interactive training and communication technology. Now, a lot of people will say, well, is it for online courses?

technically people use it for that, but really what it's for is the, to get someone to actually learn. So there's hosting solutions that are out there like Kajabi and thinkable and all the ones that you might hear of. I train you will maybe. Um, but those are hosting solutions. They will host your videos. Ours is a technology that allows you to create interactive content. And that interactive content allows you to ask questions and, um,

say things differently. So when you apply that to like, for example, online course creation, it allows you to have a much higher conversion, make more money, help people better because of the system itself is designed to learn. So that's,

That's really what the thing was for. And I started it literally for myself to solve a problem for myself. And then I realized that it actually solved anyone who was training people's problem. And then I realized, man, it solved people that were wanting trained problem. So I started licensing it to the big name people that were running around taking my business. You know, we use so-and-so. I'm like, bro, I'm better than so-and-so. And they're like, no, we've been using them for years. So I said, well, what if I had so-and-so?

Would you buy it then? And they're like, well, yeah, we'd have it if it was his. I said, give me a minute. And I started closing the people that were teaching people to close. So I became the guy that closes the guy that teaches you to close. So I just started closing all the subject matter experts and then showed them where the business was, helped them build their brands and their businesses. This was kind of before social media, by the way.

And then after a while, you know, I worked with one guy I'm sure everybody's heard of, Grant Cardone. He kind of, you know, leveraged that and we blew it up pretty big. And then I watched him take that social media influence that he had and build Cardone Capital, which is... $4 billion of capital now. It's a ridiculous amount of money. And I thought, hmm, I better quit hiding behind the stages. Yeah.

playing humble and maybe I better start building my own brand. So I started posting, posting, posting, which is crazy too, because it took 20 some years to turn Lightspeed into an eight figure company. But I've built like two, well, two for sure, but almost three more in the last two years with the brand. Oh, interesting. So a personal brand on social media, a following on social media turns into a ridiculous amount of money.

Everyone watching this should have a personal brand. You don't need to wrestle boas and anacondas and leopards and shit. You don't. You don't. Look at me. I don't do anything. I sit on my balcony and smoke cigars and give my opinion on things. And you've seen crazier things. But everybody should be building a personal brand. If they don't build a personal brand, it's because I think they're worried about everyone's opinion. But anyway, back to what that's kind of what Lightspeed was for.

It was to get the knowledge from the people who had it to the people who need it. Because I think my dad, when I was younger, good, hardworking dude, you know, taught me all the good blue collar, you know, beliefs, but he never made it. And, and, you know, I had to question it, you know, like hard work, just all you gotta do is hard work, hard work. I pay people to do the hard work. That's not the people making the money, right?

am i right agree with me you guys are like hey but no to me i built that so i could help people get information because in my mind the reason you're not succeeding or making the money you want is because you don't have the right information or you don't have the right relationships because if you know the right people you have everything you want if you have the right information and you know the right people it's powerful so you often have this line i hear you say

The more hands you shake, the more money you make. Can you explain that concept? Well, I think it's, you know, self-evident. Money comes from relationships, if you think about it. Every dollar you will ever receive came from a relationship of some kind. You know, people have come in to do Lightspeed. How'd you hear about Lightspeed? Oh, Dan told me. Well, that's because I have a relationship with Dan. And, you know, the more relationships you have, the more resources you have.

So when people are trying to find money or make money, they don't understand that that comes from relationships. So if you really want more money, you got to get more relationships. So I tell people, get out there and introduce yourself, meet people, you know, which led to the more hands you shake, the more money you make, because it's, you know, it widens your network and your ability to leverage those relationships. The whole concept of the Money Mondays was we grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money.

I think it's rude to not talk about money because I think that's why our society is the way it is right now where people have no financial literacy. So many athletes go bankrupt. Kids don't know how to spell FICO scores or IRS or taxes. They don't know what to do in life and how to do loans or how to get a salary and how to ask for a raise or just the basic things because it's rude to talk about salaries. It's rude to talk about your bills. It's rude to talk about budgets and overheads and things like that. Why do you think it's important for people to talk about money within their households?

Well, you know, when you talk about something, it's obvious that you're thinking about it. And I think it's more important to focus on money than necessarily talk about it. But by talking, you're thinking and you're focusing. So the important thing is to focus on it, focus on making it. To me, there's all kinds of information we've received as kids that wasn't correct, like fly under the radar.

Why would you want to fly under the radar? You need to get on the radar, right? So, you know, don't talk to strangers. What are you talking about? Strangers have the dough, right? You know, everything that we've learned, you look and it's like, wait a minute, why were they teaching us these things? And it's not because they didn't love us. It's because they were trying to protect us. Someone taught them that, you know what I mean? So at the end of the day, you know,

You want to take what you learn with a grain of salt. Especially, don't talk about money. Don't focus on money. Don't worry about money. Money's not important. What's important is people, which I agree. If you had to list out the importance of things, number one would be health. Because without that, you'll give all your money to get that back. Number two is relationships, because that's where the money comes from. And if those die, there is no money. And then money.

Now, someone will say, well, what about God? Well, that's a relationship, isn't it? So it's in the top, obviously. It's in the top. It's not more important than money. I mean, it is more important than money, but you got your health so you can stay alive, your relationships, more importantly, the one you have with yourself. Because a lot of people, they don't have the right relationship with themselves, which causes them to fear the judgment of others, which causes them to not speak, not act.

So when you tell me, Brad, you shouldn't be thinking about money, I'd be like, oh, okay. I don't want to offend anybody. So now I go through my life following those instructions and I end up nowhere. You want to focus on money. Money's important. You should talk about it. So it requires thought and you need to think about it and learn about it. Go out and learn about it and that'll cause you to focus on it. And if you focus on it consistently, man, you get paid. It's hard not to. If you focus on anything, it really grows.

We also grew up with this line, money is the root of all evil. When I say money is the root of all evil, what do you think about? Well, I would say they didn't read the Bible very closely because it's the love of money that they claim is the root of all evil. And that just means that you're putting money above God. So it's the love of money that's supposedly the root of all evil. And it's not money itself. Money itself is obviously just a tool if you think about it. If I gave somebody $10 million and they couldn't touch it, you couldn't spend it, you couldn't use it at all, right?

what's it worth? It's nothing. You'd be like, come get this trash out of my house. So money is a tool. And if people realize that money is a tool, they wouldn't necessarily need to save it so much. Because there's a lot of people that start out broke, like I did, like a lot of people did. And then they start making a little money and then they start being afraid to lose the money. Right? Well, that's called scarcity.

So they went from, I'll do whatever it takes, go out in there and risk it all because they didn't have anything to lose. And then they started making because that's kind of the formula, man. You got to be able to risk it. I remember sometimes, you know, the office I have, is it nice? So nice. 30,000 square feet. People walk in there and they're like, dude, what the hell? Yeah. I wrote a check for that office that wouldn't clear when I wrote it.

That's some risky stuff. That's as risky as it gets. But I knew I could sell. I knew I could close. I knew I could produce. I knew I could build relationships that would get me the money. So I wasn't too worried, but that is a risk. I was willing to risk the money. And then that money was not in my bank account anymore. But more money came because of that. Most people wouldn't do that, man. Go find a lot of these guys. They're working out of their house. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But to me, I always tell people, because a lot of people for some reason ask me who all the legit gurus are. I'm like, you know, just tell them you want to visit their office. If they don't have an office, I'd question it. You know, there's got to be some sort of home-based office where people are working and walking around and doing things. Because if they don't have an office, you know, it's not that they, like Tony Robbins, he's got an office. Oh, yeah. Grant Cardone, they've got offices. Like Grant Cardone's got offices. All the real ones that I know, they all have offices. Yeah.

I know a few that don't, but it's because they're done. They're not doing business. And they will mentor a few people. But it's very rare that I see someone legit that doesn't have an office. Claiming that they're business experts and they're out there hustling. I always feel like guys like you and I are like the Yelp for other entrepreneurs. Because I get asked every day, is this guy real? Should I do this? What do you think about this? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's fascinating.

from society the way that people portray themselves online. Maybe that could actually be a question. What do you think about the fake it till you make it? There's a lot of guys that are out there that are full-fledged fake it till you make it where they're portraying lifestyle like

I can see your Ferrari outside. It's a real Ferrari. A lot of times people are going to post with that exact same Ferrari in front of your Ferrari and make a video about it. And all of a sudden they're going to try to sell people on the fact that they have a Ferrari, even though it's Brad's Ferrari that they're standing in front of. What are your thoughts about the people that are out there when it comes to, especially in the entrepreneur community, the fake it till you make it?

Well, again, I mean, I don't the example you gave, I think, somewhat fraudulent. You know, I don't endorse that. However, because if you make someone believe something to do business with you and that's not true, well, then I don't I wouldn't agree. Yeah. My my ethics and integrity levels have shot through the roof in the last 10 years. They weren't always like that. But now they're, you know, to the highest level.

So fake it till you make it. I agree with in a certain sense, meaning you have to be before you become.

So instead of like, you know, like I tell people all the time that ask me, you know, should I buy this car? You know, should I buy this car? I really can't afford it. And I said, listen, I bought a car I couldn't afford and it made me work longer. It made me, you know, get the money because now you have to. So that urgency and I never missed a payment on the thing. So there's always, you know, two sides to every story. But to me, fake it till you make it isn't scamming people unless you're scamming people.

Fake it till you make it is you putting yourself in the position you want to be in. And if people, like for example, if I couldn't afford that Ferrari, I'd still buy it as long as they approved me. Now, if someone wants to make an assumption that I'm a billionaire because I got a Ferrari, well, then again, you need to study money because you can buy a Ferrari without being a billionaire. You technically don't even have to be a millionaire. So,

The question really is, what do I think about fake it till you make it? I like it in some sense because I want you to be before you become. And when you fake it till you make it, it means you're acting like it. And I had I acted like it. You know, I walked around acting rich my whole life.

And I just, and I just, I'm just getting there now. So, so it worked, but I wasn't scamming people. So if you're faking it so you can get money, that is not what I hear when I hear fake it till you make it fake it till you make it is like act as if, you know, believe that you are so you, so you will become. And I agree with that.

And don't edit this to make it sound any different. Because that to me is like very important. Because then there'll be, well, he said fake it till you make it. I'm gonna go buy shit I can't afford and show everybody I'm rich when I'm not. First of all, if you're worried about everybody else's opinion, you're already doing it wrong. I didn't buy that so I could show everybody else. Like that's always been my dream car. So to me, what I'm saying is I think you have to literally almost buy

- Act as if. - Before you become. And that's what I hear when I hear fake it till you make it, is go out there and act like it so you'll get there. So I agree with that. - So when it comes to material things,

Fancy car, fancy watch, getting those type of things. Tell us about the process. So some people say, oh, don't buy the fancy thing, don't have that gold, etc. Some people like Andy Fursella is very passionate about. He's like, that's what drove him is that I wanted to get the fancy car like your dream car outside. He needed that gold to get there. Talk us through your thoughts about material possessions, material items, flashy items and things like that.

Well, it depends on who I'm giving the advice to. If I give it to my children, I'm going to tell them, take your earned money and invest it. Don't spend it. Don't spend it on that. And by the way, you spend on things that don't return. So if it goes down in value, you spent your money. I would say take your earned income and invest your money until your investments produce passive income and then take the passive income and you can spend that as much as you want. Because that's like a sound thing.

But for myself and for people that are willing to roll the dice and take risks and they're not too scared, I would say, you know, get out of your comfort zone. Not to mention, guys, unfortunately, Ferraris and private jets and all the nonsense you see on social media, it helps you build a brand. It makes people want to be you. And really, that's kind of, you know, an accelerator for,

You know, we both know somebody in Los Angeles, Albert, where when he coaches people, he'll literally tell them to go buy a Ferrari and then post it on social media. And I'm like, dude, is that what you told him after he paid you to coach him? Like, oh, my God. I was thinking, dude, this is like, come on, bro.

And the dude went and bought a Ferrari. You know, you know, the alpha slice story. Yeah. Well, I don't know the whole story about it. Well, he went in there, he's making chump change and he, and he, he hears me on social media. So I'm speaking at driven. So, so he likes me. So he shows up and then Albert pitches him, you know, let me coach you for, for let's say 5k out. Yeah. I think it was 5k. He gives Albert 5k. And literally all Albert said was you need to get a Ferrari.

If you get a Ferrari, everyone will think you're cool. Like what happened for me. I was working in real estate. Nobody talked to me. Nobody wanted to give me their loans. So I bought a Ferrari. Then everybody started wanting to talk to me and give me loans. So go buy a Ferrari. Now this guy trains nurses. He was a nurse. And so he went and bought a Ferrari. And I thought, man, dude, you need to get your money back, bro.

And sure enough, man, he bought that Ferrari and bam, all of a sudden his shit exploded. He went to like a million a month selling nurse training. So I think Tarzan's going to be buying a Ferrari later today. Well, you got animals, dude. That is a Ferrari. I said buy elephant. Yeah, like if you can buy elephants and leopards and lions and have the balls to play with them, that'll work too. Aren't you ever worried about getting attacked? No.

Fuck it. I do it all the time. He gets bit all the time. That's his best videos. Yeah, they're the best. I get worried for him because obviously we've got a podcast together, we've got a ranch together, we've got a lot of stuff going on. You've heard of Siegfried and Roy? Yeah. They love their animals too. They're awesome. Then one day their animals love them a little too much. Crazy story. Hey, I'm just praying for you, brother. Safety. Always.

When you hit the financial goal or the asset goal, meaning you're like, once I get to 200 grand a year, I'm going to be set. Once I get my Ferrari, I'm happy. Once I get that Rolex, that Breitling, that Patek, that fancy watch, then I've made it. What happens when you get that Ferrari, that watch, or that first 200K, a million bucks? Well, for me, it gave me temporary gratitude, temporary happiness, if you want to call it that.

It's always now what, now what, now what, now what? My advice to people would be, you know, nothing, nothing really happens. You should be happy along the way. You should be happy before you get it. Thankful that you got it. Again, reward yourself.

But I've never really found anything that has achieved what I expected. - The goal post just moves, right? - Yeah, like when I said, man, when I make a million dollars a frickin' year, I'm gonna be, dude, it's unbelievable. I can't wait. This is gonna be the craziest thing. I don't even care. I'll just probably chill, play a little golf.

get to a million a year and you realize it's not as much as you thought. Number one. And then number two, you know, I can get to three. So you start to think bigger and you start to realize, man, there's more out there. And so then you hit that goal and you're like, dude, I could have went to 30 and then you hit that goal and you're like, man, I, what do I do next? So it's always like we're chasing. I don't, I don't understand it. Um, I understand though, you need to, I think pick a spot. That's, uh, uh, you know,

Feasible, number one. But to a point where you are somewhat. Because, dude, bills and shit are real. It's hard to focus and be positive when your kids don't have much food, your bill's constantly behind, your car's constantly out for repo. It's way more difficult to operate, to look on the bright side. So I would say, listen, pick somewhere up here, but enjoy yourself on the way.

Is there a number that if I went to Bradley and I said, here's $500 million worth

No more business, no more podcasts, no more Instagram. Delete it all and you've got to disappear. Is there a number that Brad just... That'll work. 500 million, is that it? Sure. It's over? That's it. 500 million is more money than people think, number one. That's for sure. Number one. Because all you'd have to do is just set it aside, don't touch it. You've got $50 million a year coming from your 500 million, which means you can't even blow through 50 million. People think they can blow through 50 million, but if you're a normal...

person, you can't. Unless you're Mike Tyson or Floyd Mayweather. That's not a normal person. MC Hammer. Yeah, like, no. A realistic life, you know. I'm married with kids, you know. I go on vacations. If I'm just living a nice life, I couldn't blow through it. Now, someone could say, well, you could buy a jet and it'd be gone. But I wouldn't buy a jet. Why? You still have the asset of the jet. Not only that, you know, the next one, boom, 50 more million. It's not going away. So, 500 million...

I'd be, you know, if that was the trade-off, I'd say, okay, see ya. You expect me to say no because I want to continue to help people. That's funny when people do that. Like, tell the truth. $500 million, dude, click. Delete. What happened to Bradley? Fleischman game, $500 million. He's gone. He's done.

Personal brand side. This last couple years in particular, you've gone skyrocketing. The podcast, the social media content, the clips, the reels, the TikToks, everything in between. You've had a lot of videos get 5 million, 10 million, 20 million, 50 million, 5 million, 1 million, 5 million. Bam, bam, bam, bam. A lot of people hope to do that once or twice. You've done it over and over and over and over. Why is the personal brand part important? And why are you putting so much time and energy into it?

Well, the personal brand is important because of the deal flow and the attention and the relationships that you can acquire from it. You know, a lot of people call me with opportunities that they wouldn't have called me about. I can draw attention to things, you know, like my business or my businesses. So, yeah.

And again, it's almost like, oh, I must be telling them because I don't need to tell you guys this. These questions, I'm acting like I'm telling you guys. I'm just teeing it up. I'm telling you guys because they already know this. But at the end of the day, man, because it's power and it's influence and it's leverage and you can use it to blow up your business, your charity, anything that you want to. So it's important. But when you say, like, my stuff blew up, people always think I'm being humble. I'm not being humble, okay?

i just don't think i've blown up yet but i'm going to and now that i've seen andrew tate okay that's blowing up like even though you love him or hate him dude the dude murdered the algorithm like the whole world knows who that dude is that's blowing up i haven't really blown up i do i do start getting you know recognized here and there and people wanting pictures and stuff

But I literally could walk around all day and not be recognized. So I don't think I've blown up. I have had some videos, though, that people watch. Yes, you have. Only because I think they're controversial in a way. And they're not controversial in a bad way. They're just...

Thought-provoking. Like I believe men should provide and protect for women. Well, there's some dudes out there that don't think that. So they start bickering back and forth. Next thing you know, the algorithm catches it, and they're like, hey, people care about this. And they start showing it to everybody. And all of a sudden, bam, 2 million views, 10,000 comments, and none of them are mine. They're all just fighting over what I said. So there's a formula for it, I believe, building a personal brand.

Like we were talking about earlier, transformational videos. If you just go take a hoarder's house and put a GoPro and clean it out and then take that video and speed it up and drop it, make a nice headline, that'll go viral. So the third topic we'd like to go over is charity. Why do you think it's important for business owners, entrepreneurs to either do charity within their household with their family and kids or do charity within their business with their staff?

Well, because I think at the end of the day, when you look back, that's what it's all about, you know, and, and you can't die a Scrooge McDuck. You know what I mean? It's good for the heart. Good for the soul. Besides that, man, if you believe in any kind of afterlife, that's where the rewards should be measured. And that's how you get the rewards there, you know? And not only that is crazy. The older I get, the more I realize it's giving that literally allows you to receive, right?

So a long time, man, I wasn't giving anybody anything. It was all about me, me, me, me, me. And then when I started giving without the need of a return, it seems like it flooded in. It's almost like a trick. You know, you want more. You have to give more. What? Well, if I give more, then I won't have more because I gave more. Yeah, but you'll get more. You know what I mean? It's almost like, wait a minute, this is tricky. I don't know why it's so tricky. Just like food.

What if healthy food got your fat and fat food got your ripped? Wouldn't that be nice? People would be happier because they can lean on their excuses more. That's correct. But I think you should give only because it's good for the soul. And man, you should try to help people, especially if you like money. Money is help. You solve problems. See, the problem with most people is they try to avoid problems. They...

avoid risk. So risk and problems are what most people want to avoid. And that's where the opportunities are. So opportunities are problems and problems are opportunities. And if you're trying to avoid problems your whole life, you're not going to get many opportunities. Someone said, yeah, but an economy like this, when the economy is bad, which I don't think it's bad at all, by the way, but

When the economy and the problems start mounting, that means there's more problems. And if you believe that the problems are opportunities, what's that tell you? So problems like, or times like this, there's more opportunity. And that's true. And if you listen to all the, you know, Warren Buffetts and people like that, what will they tell you? Same thing. I'm just talking to you guys now.

These guys, they're not telling me nothing. We're just listening. Would you agree, though? Well, the money lies in the opportunity when there's chaos. When we opened Everbulls during the shutdown, me and some friends bought all the Everbulls. There was 25 locations at the time. Me and some friends bought 23 besides the two stadium ones. And they became a franchise company. They went and signed 300 leases during the shutdown because...

who the hell else was going to go sign restaurant leases when the whole world was shut down for two weeks, right? Two weeks until we figured it out. That two-year period, nobody else was signing restaurant leases. So Everbow went and raised $15 million, $15 million,

signed 300 leases, sold 150 locations to Drew Brees. All that happened during the shutdown. So when there's bad times, when there's chaos, if you've got the balls to go out there and do what Jeff Fenster did, you can go sign 300 leases. You can go raise a ton of capital because everyone else is scared sitting on the sidelines. So I firmly believe that opportunity is in the chaos, especially when things are scary or bad or sometimes right now kind of fake bad where everyone says we're in this crazy recession, but like I was walking around the fountain blue and

every single restaurant sold out every single room was sold out the nightclub sold out every table is ten thousand dollars every rest like it's only two thousand dollar steaks a poppy steak we might be in a recession in theory but like the airport when I came here every single freaking seat was sold out you have to bump through people in the airport so like I look at the reality of the recession and people are still spending money sure like good luck going to any fancy restaurants fancy nightclubs like

the airports during the holiday season was insane, but so was a Wednesday. It was insane. And so the reality is set in of like, we might be in a recession in the media, but like spending habits are at scale. Agree. That's a good thing. Yes. So Tarzan,

When you see things in the animals world, charity related, like you've been wanting to help recently Forever Wild, which is another animal sanctuary similar to your animal sanctuary where we live. When you see things that stand out like that, why do you care? How do you pick when you've got so many hundreds of situations? Thank you for asking me this question today. So right now, I've been a part of this charity for a long time called Coral Gardeners. They're from French Polynesia. And it's these guys that live on like,

oyster atolls where they like farm oysters and sell lobsters or stuff like that, right? And it's a good group of kids that are now men. They've been doing this project for a long time and they've been literally snorkeling and scuba diving and replanting coral and dead coral habitats, which is mainly our main oxygen source, more than trees.

So now apparently they're doing the Olympics somewhere around their area. And they got all these new people coming over on these big, thick, huge boats with these big propellers and they're smashing the coral beds. And they're just beating the coral beds up. And today actually they sent me another video of spots where they have replanted coral 10 years ago and it's growing back. There's fish growing. There's the ecosystem coming back to normal.

People are, you know, making Airbnbs on the beach. There's fish, there's all types of stuff. And now these Olympic, you know, stuff is coming around and they're just tearing up the corals. So that like, when I see stuff like that happen and I see people spend, you know, decades and years of, you know, doing environmental work and someone comes in and says, oh, there's going to be the Olympics for rafting or this or that or kite surfing. Let's go put pillars in there and destroy coral. That's wrong.

It's not cool. I don't support stuff like that. And it breaks my heart that these people don't have the capital or a big platform to talk about it or raise the roof or raise the ruckus or create chaos. Because right now, for them, it's chaos. It's all they know. So if I got any advice for them, sink the boats. You guys know who you are. It's probably not the best advice to give them. But if they don't care about destroying your corals, don't care about destroying their boats.

So, Brad, as we go into 2024. Controversial. Bradley, Bradley, no. He said, destroy their boats. As we go into 2024, this big election year, there's a lot of chaos. A lot of our countries are divided and the world is divided. A lot of things that are going out there in the media with wars and everything between. How would you say to someone to stay calm in the chaos? Well, I mean, you know, I would say that if you personally can't change it, then don't worry about it.

Because you're not changing these things. Collectively, we could change, but there's no way to unite, unfortunately. You know the Constitution says, we the people. Well, it's still in effect, technically, but there is no we. People say, yeah, it's all of us. Yeah, but we don't communicate. We can't prove that we all communicated.

So if we could all come together and agree on something, or at least by majority, and prove that the we said this, the we said that, like we, and I'm hoping everybody here is part of this, we would like Biden to sit down.

Wouldn't we? Wouldn't we? Well, I mean, come on, dude. Even if you voted for him. Good. You tried. Okay, thank you. Now he is not fit to be the president of the United States of America. Period. Sit down. Like, where are we? There is no we. We all agree. And nothing's happening. Why? Because we can't.

Unite and say, we've decided you're done. Well, you need a special election for this. No, we don't need anything. We, the people, have decided you're done. Right? So, unfortunately, unless you can do that, which we can't because there's no we anymore, then you really can't do much. So I always just tell people, you know, hey, if you can control it, then be concerned. If you can't control it, then be calm. You know, everyone's going to die.

Some just faster than others. Yeah, but I mean, sometimes when I start to freak out or panic or, you know, get a little freaking anxiety, I just think to myself, dude, listen, we're all going to die. So like I ain't dying today, thankfully. So let me enjoy today. Let me just relax a little bit. Let me pay attention. Let me focus on the things that truly matter. You know, if I want to be successful, I want to make some money, not just Mondays, but every day. Well, then I need to focus on money and I need to learn about money.

And I need to realize that there's very simple things you can do. Number one, get your mindset right. Get your skill set right. Get your habits right. Because those three areas, man, mindset, skill set, habits, are literally what determine whether you're successful or not. You show me somebody with bad habits, it's easy to tell. You show me somebody that literally is kind of not very good at anything, it's easy to tell. You show me somebody that's negative and pessimistic and scarcity mindset.

So if you have a great mindset, right, you can still suck, right? You can run positively in the wrong direction. Agree? So it's not just your mindset. You got to get your skill set down. Everybody can practice, get better, pick something that you're good at, pick something that you like doing, whatever, but just get really, really, really, really good at something. And then, you know, form the right habits and break the bad ones. And you guys will be successful. It's almost a guarantee, right?

People always say, Brad, you can't guarantee. I'd guarantee that if you have the right mindset, the right skill set, the right habits, you're guaranteed to have success. But I'm talking about financial. You have to figure out what success looks like. Most people don't take the time to figure out what they actually want. So they go out, bust their ass, takes 10 years, they finally achieve it, and then they're not happy. That's because they didn't spend enough time figuring out what did they want. So...

There's another formula. This is how you get anything you want in life. Number one, you figure out what it is. Number two, you find someone who's already got it. And then number three, you do what they did. Everyone's like, well, that ain't going to work. Okay, you're over here with the mindset issue. You got to fix your mindset. Well, that's not that easy, Brad. Mindset. I can literally pinpoint everything as I talk to people. So mindset, skill set, habits. Go focus on those things. And then take the time, figure out what you want.

truly want. Find someone who's already been there. They know the way. Pay them if you have to. And then do the work. You know why they call it work? Because it works. That's why they decided to call it that. Last question. This is a question that's the actual only question that I repeat over and over because I think it's fascinating because I've never gotten the same answer and I'm not going to get the same answer when I ask Bradley right now. 100 years from now, 150 years from now, when Bradley passes away and you've got your children,

and you've amassed hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of dollars. How much of that do you leave to your children? - All of it. - Every last dollar? - Yeah. - See, didn't get that answer. - Simple. Well, I mean, dude, come on. Why wouldn't I? Who am I working for? Well, why wouldn't you leave it to a charity? 'Cause dude, a lot of charities are scams, number one. All they're doing is filling their pockets. The actual help doesn't go to the people, believe it or not. So I'm not leaving it to a charity. I'm gonna make my kids charitable.

and leave it to them. You know what I mean? I want to create a good steward of my money in my children. So when I die, they get it. Now, could that change? Yeah, they grow up to be jerk-offs and drug addicts and they're problematic and their mindset's incorrect and they're evil. Then I wouldn't. But right now, my goal is to leave every single penny and asset to my kids. And by the way, my wife, if she's listening,

You're included. I mean, because because because listen, when I die, it obviously goes to her. But I've got it set up to where a certain portion will go get distributed to them because four of them aren't hers. And I want to make sure that like it's not up to her either, whether they get it. Yeah, they're getting it.

So, but when I die, you know, bam, my wife obviously is going to have some. So I don't want to sound like a liar because you didn't say your wife, my wife and children, and maybe even my brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles, my family, you know, and by the way, you don't have to be related to be considered family either.

Love to mix your family. Yeah, exactly. Believe me, I've got family that everyone says, that's your family. That ain't my family, dog. That ain't my family. Matter of fact, I hope they don't pop up someday and even say that they're my family because when someone says, hey, that is his cousin. You know, why are you letting your cousin live like that? Well, um,

Because that ain't my family. I haven't seen him in 17 years. Yeah. Well, anyway. Right now all my cousins are going, is he talking about me? I just use cousin as an example. Bottom line, though, is all that money is going to my family for damn sure. Ladies and gentlemen. And if you want to be my family, go to my website. Fill out the form. What's the website? What is it? I'm joking.

swipe up all right guys make sure to follow the real bradley across instagram and all social media platforms check out his podcast dropping bombs follow along with the real tarzan obviously he's getting hundreds of millions of views a month for really fun interesting content when it comes to animals bradley's teaching about business life having some controversial content some fun content along the way in between make sure to check them out go visit us at themoneymondays.com you can join us for our zoom calls you can listen to all of our previous podcasts

Keep it going. Have discussion with your friends, family, and followers about money. It's an important topic. We need you to have it. We'll see you guys next Monday. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a very special edition of the Money Mondays. We talk about three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity.

You may have noticed I started off with some tape on my mouth. That is because the founder of Hostage Tape is here. In the first year, he did $2 million in sales. In the second year, he did $18 million in sales. In the third year, he did this many in sales. I'm going to leave it up to him to explain to you guys how he scaled this company without any outside funding. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm round of applause to Alex Neist. Thanks for having me, guys. I appreciate it. It's great to be on the show. Absolutely. Okay. We also have our co-host here, the real Tarzan.

Tarzan just got back from how many where'd you go? Venezuela Venezuela so out of all the places in the world what's your favorite place? Venezuela the next one that's it that's the answer the next place the next one

Because you just make them special. Tim Grover. Shout out to Tim Grover. Okay. Tim Grover is one of our best episodes ever. All right, guys. In this episode, we're going to ask about these core topics. How did he scale his business? What was the business he exited before? And what are the plans to build up a tape company? Tape that goes over your mouth. Why do you use it? Why does it matter? Why are so many household name celebrities and athletes utilizing this? Why is...

Literally guys like Joe Rogan, Dana White, all these types of characters. Why do they care? Why are they talking about it? Why is it important to us to cover our mouths? Is it for snoring? Is it for health? Is it for working out? What is it for? We're gonna ask all those questions and dive right in. So please give us quick the two minute behind the scenes of how you got here and then we're gonna go straight to the money. So the two minute quick is football was my first love. I grew up wanting to be a football player. I wanted to be the next Joe Montana.

And so I played arena football for a number of years. And then when I realized I wasn't gonna make it to the NFL, I decided to become an entrepreneur. So I started a sports video analytics company, right? Taking sports, football, how do we analyze it? How do we use it, right, as coaches? And then I bootstrapped that. I did that for about 16 years. - Whoa. - 16 years we bootstrapped that. In fact, I did it with my brother. So it was a family business. I broke one of the cardinal rules in business,

Going in business with your family. Don't do it. My brother runs my whole life. I wouldn't exist without him So I bootstrapped that for about 16 years and then I I sold it I sold it to a company out of Tel Aviv in Israel and then I spent my time there I Vested the the equity and then I used the capital from that exit to start my next business and so when I was at that company I

I knew that I'm an entrepreneur by trade, right? I love being able to create things and I love being able to control my destiny. So I knew that I wanted to create something, but I wanted to get into e-commerce because I knew that when you're doing SaaS, right, you're doing software, it's really hard to scale, really hard because you've got to actually have a sales team, right, pay a lot of money, scale that.

But in e-commerce, I can spend a bunch of money on Facebook and I can scale it really, really easily. So that to me was where I wanted to spend the next quarter of my life. And at the time, I was actually going through a personal journey. I was actually going through a divorce. So snoring ripped my family apart and led to divorce.

But now, years later, we're actually back together. Interesting. So we are. Oh, interesting. Totally. So we launched this then March of last year, and then we scaled it to, like you said, now two years later, we're already doing eight figures, and then we'll be doing nine figures here in another year or two. Wow. So...

No outside funding? No outside funding. Completely bootstrapped. I've never raised any funding for any of my... Either company? None. Oh, interesting. Completely bootstrapped. Which is ironic because my family, my sister, she's part of Venture Capital. So she's been in venture for 30 years. And I just didn't do it. But her advice was always, if you don't need to raise any capital, don't do it. So we just never did.

Alright, let me talk you guys through what we're saying about outside funding and venture capital. Most companies, when I say most I mean like really most, like 99% of these companies that you see that become 100 million, 200 million, billion dollar companies need to take outside funding. There's no way for them to scale, and here's why. Let's say you're starting a company like Hostage Tape. Well, you do 2 million bucks in sales, you can put together the 500k to a million bucks it takes to manufacture Hostage Tape and sell it for a 2, 3, 4x margin.

But what about when you get to 5 million sales and 10 million sales and 20 million sales? Someone has to put up the money to manufacture the product to then sell it. There's a one month to three month gap of time where your money's out. And so let's say you're doing 5 million. That means let's call it $2 million out. You're waiting for that money to come in because you need the product to come in, sell it to refill the coffers, if you will.

But what if you go into retail and a chain store wants to buy 2 million bucks or 4 million bucks and 6 million bucks? You've got to come up with 1 million, 2 million, 3 million dollars to afford to make that product. It's called hostage tape in this scenario. And then wait not just for the manufacturing time, then the shipping time, and then it takes 30, 60, or 90 days for the retailer to pay you. So let's say it was January 1st and hostage tape gets an order from a big sports chain, right? And they want to order 5 million dollars of product and he needs to put up 2 million dollars for that product.

It's January 1st. He gets the order. He's not gonna ship it till March 1st. March 1st, when they get it, well, it's now 30 to 60 days from then they're gonna pay him. You're now at April 1st or May 1st from a January 1st order. What if this product sells really good because Hasha's Tape sells really well? And they do a reorder before they even paid him for the first order. And they're like, hey Alex, we want $12 million this time. He's gotta come with another $4 million and he hasn't got paid for the first one. You see why most companies need outside funding?

So most companies have venture capital, loans, or what's called angel investors. Guys like me and Tarzan that'll put in 25K, 50K, 100K, 500K, million bucks into a business. It's a very rare scenario when we talk about the topic today where someone self-funds it because they're essentially gambling. They're gambling on themselves.

luckily this worked out he believed in the product that's we're gonna talk about so that's outside funding and why you should be considering and listening to what is outside funding or if you believe in your product and you have a little bit of money saved up you might want to gamble on yourself there's one other quick topic sometimes if you can put together that first 25k 50k 100k to start a company it'll actually get you a much better valuation here's why let's say you come pitch Tarzan Alex and Daniel okay I want to start this new company it's a new ball right that's a light-up ball for sports

If you come to us and it's just an idea, your valuation's gonna be very low because me, Alex, and Tarzan can just kind of pick a number, the same way you picked a number about what you think you're worth. But what if you put up your first 40 grand of your own money that you saved up from working, get that company to do $130,000 in sales? Well now, you have a bit of valuation. You've proved the concept, you showed that people have bought your product, you showed you have a working website, you showed that people want to buy from you,

Now, Alex and Tarzan and Dan want to invest in you even more and you can pick your valuation at a much better rate than if you come to us with zero, which is an idea. So sometimes you might want to put up a little bit of money to get the thing going. All right, Alex, on the making money side, you have this exit.

That's a lot of money, right? Whether you got two million, five million, 10 million, 20 million, 50 million, we don't even know the number. You got this money that comes in from an exit. Why not just hang out? Why not relax? Call it a day, buy a house, go get a beach house. - It's not the way I'm wired. I'm wired. One thing that I learned when I built my business and then I sold it was I knew that I didn't wanna go work for the man, but I knew that I didn't wanna retire

Because I wanted to keep playing the game. I wanted to keep building so I know that I'm gonna go to my grave Continually building companies. I just know that justice is the way I am right so For and when I build things I like to build things that are personal to me, right? So the first company I built was sports video analytics. It was around something that my life was sports I was an athlete. I was a coach my whole life and

And so now I was closing that chapter of my life. Now what? Right? So it's kind of like this, you had this existential crisis of who am I, what am I going to be? Where am I going to go in this next quarter of my life? And when I was doing a lot of self work on who do I need to be as a man, as a father and as a husband, all that stuff, I said, all right, my sleep. This is something that I've always been. It's been really poor snoring.

how do I fix it? Like, what do I need to do? So I went on Amazon and you start looking for all the different things, right? Of what can I do? What can I buy? What kind of mouth guards, all this stuff that you would look for. None of it worked. So then I went down to even more of a rabbit hole and I discovered this article written by James Nestor. James Nestor is a bestselling author. He wrote a book called breath. And in this book he talks about an experiment where they went to Stanford medical center and they plugged their nose for 10 days.

And then they were going to record both anecdotally and what the doctors said, right? Like what happened? So through that 10 days, they started snoring really bad, developed sleep apnea and dangerously low levels of blood oxygen. So then when they pulled the plugs out and then they mouth taped, everything went away. So for me, the light bulb went off and I went,

You mean mouth breathing? It was that simple. It was just mouth breathing was the issue. And I couldn't believe that, especially in this culture, that I'm a 40-year-old guy at the time, and none of my coaches, nobody had ever taught me that mouth breathing was an issue, that we should be focusing on nasal breathing. We should not be mouth breathing, except if you're talking or eating. Otherwise, nose breathing all the time. And so...

I then went, okay, alright. So I went on Amazon and I just bought some regular tape. If you're doing this for the first time, you don't know what to get. You don't know how much to use. So I went on, bought some stuff, and when you mouth tape for the first time, if you've ever done it, you're anxious.

You feel like, wait a minute, am I going to wake up? Am I going to be able to breathe? What if my nose gets stuffy? Like, am I going to die? That's everybody. It's a perfectly normal reaction. So I'm like, I'll be fine. So I did it. And when I woke up the next day, I felt like a kid. Like when you have poor sleep for that many years, it stacks. It gets bad, worse and worse and worse. And then when you finally get good sleep, it's jolting. So when that happened, the businessman in me went,

this is an idea, this is a business here. And I'll never forget, I think it was, if you've ever heard the story of Moiz Ali who started Native, right? He talks about this concept where you can go into Target and you can walk down the aisle and if you see just a sea of products that look the same, there's an opportunity because you can take any commodity and create a really cool brand around it and you can do something with it. Because most people would say, how the hell are you going to sell

eight figures, nine figures of tape. Right? How are you going to do that? That's a question I was going to ask you, by the way. And most people would not, they would have stopped and go, it's tape. How the hell am I going to sell that? People would see through it. Like, why wouldn't you just go get some tape? Right. So, but I knew that, so for this concept of the mouth taping, we needed to create this brand, this story that would actually inspire men to want to do it.

So I knew that there was a story behind it, something that was interesting,

then we had something. And so you might be looking like hostage tape. Most people, they go, why the hell would you call it hostage tape? Like why? Right? Exactly. So I'll tell you why we call it hostage tape. So there's a couple of reasons. One is, yes, you kind of look like a hostage when you're wearing it. But the flip side of the coin was we're tapping into this core emotion that people feel. People feel held hostage by poor sleep or their partner and they don't know what to do.

I was really into Liquid Death at the time and I loved Liquid Death's branding. They flipped marketing on its head and said-- - Murder your thirst. - Right, we're gonna murder your thirst plus we're just gonna get people's attention and go the other way with it. So I said that's it too because people are gonna scroll through Instagram and Facebook and they're gonna see Hotch's tape and they're gonna go-- - What is that? - What the hell is this? And so it's gonna start a conversation

right about what is this mouth taping it's going to inspire men and their partners to actually have a conversation about mouth taping is this really for real is this a joke and uh from there then it just it my partner ben my business partner ben um he was he's phenomenal at just taking this idea then and creating this this this identity around it right this hero

And then the rest is history, right? So we launched it and then it was really about like, okay, don't get me wrong.

There is a science behind what we did with the tape. Like, this is a very specific... We do have product market fit. This isn't just like regular tape you can go buy. But I spent about six months actually formulating the tape, the adhesive to make sure it was... It was easy to take off. Right, yeah. It had to be just right. It had to be just strong enough, but also not too crazy, right? And the other thing that you noticed about it was is it's flexible, right? It's this flexible, breathable tape that...

had to be strong and comfortable. I knew that if you're going to put tape on your mouth, you have to, it's got to feel comfortable because that's kind of a, right. Well, and you have this, like, if you're going to cover your mouth, you're going to have a fight or flight response to like wanting to rip that away and, and get away. So I knew it had to be comfortable, but it also had to work with facial hair. You guys have a lot more facial hair than I do. And most men,

They're like, well, I can't wear a mouth tape because I've got a beard, I've got all this stuff going on. And so that was where then we said, all right, we're gonna target men with facial hair from like 30 to 50. And so that's another important thing there that we did is most people starting a business

they think that they need to be too broad. And if there's anything I've learned in the 20 years of being an entrepreneur is you actually need to do the opposite, niche down and get very specific, assuming the market is big enough. It's not like a thousand people, but I knew that our TAM, Total Adjustable Market, I knew our TAM was hundreds of millions of people and that we had something. How much is this?

So a pouch is $25, but then when you bundle and you buy like a year's supply, it's about $15, $16 a pouch. So a pouch is how many? There's 30 pieces in here. Oh, so it's $25 for the month? Yeah, yeah, right. So you're basically spending, if you bought like a year's supply of it, you're spending like $0.50 a day for like life-changing sleep. That's actually a good ad right there. $0.50 a day for life-changing sleep.

Write that one down. So let's say you're talking to someone like Tarzan. This guy gets 200 million views a month on social media. And you want to approach him. That's a lot of views. Thanks, man. You want to approach him about your product. Tarzan, when someone comes to you and says, I have a new product like this that's doing X amount of millions of dollars in sales, do you want to get paid cash?

Do you do it for free because you like it? Do you want to do equity deal? Do you want to do a hybrid, a bit of cash, a bit of equity? When someone approaches you with a company like Hoster's Tape, what are you looking for that makes you say, yes, I will put my name on it, literally my face behind it because it's going to be taped on your face? And what does it have to be to make you say yes? Something like this is awesome, by the way. I'm a big...

I'm big on sleep. I sleep a lot. Traveling to these different countries. And believe it or not, if you snore in the jungle, you'll die. You'll die. So something like this, I would do. I mean, cash is always king in deals like this. But a brand that can ship this easily, you can bring it somewhere easily, it's easy to sell. It's easy to pack in my bag.

and sell it. I don't have to bring a big giant sweater or a big this or big that. This is like something you buy. - It's hard for you to carry this bottle of water, but this you can have in the jungle. - Exactly, exactly. - You can make content easily. - Exactly, you know. So if I'm sleeping in a tent or in a hammock in the middle of the rainforest and there's jaguars below me or, you know, crocodiles over there and I wanna be silently sleeping, I'm throwing my mouth tape on, I'm zipping myself up and I'm going to sleep. You know, that's a cool commercial. I love it, I love the concept, I love the idea.

I'm down. Awesome. I'm told. Do you prefer when an agency approaches you, the brand approaches you, a friend approaches you? It depends. It depends on the friend approaching me about it. If you come to me and say, yo, check this out, it's like, all right. But I definitely like when the top dogs come and say, hey, I think our brands align. Let's do something. There's some type of chemistry here. And that's what I like.

And on the other side of the coin, being the product owner, the brand owner, when you are interacting with an influencer, a celebrity, an athlete, et cetera, what are you looking for for that to be the right person, like the right avatar of who you want to represent the brand? And then once you figure that person out, how do you go about making up an offer? Right. So what we do is we do a lot of product seeding, right? Product seeding is when some of the best marketing you can do for anybody out there is giving your product away to

people, right? And we actually have these samples. So these have actually five strips of tape and also this other product that you see on my nose, which we can talk about. So there's samples of both that we give this out by the thousands of people. So those are care packages? I mean, sort of, but yeah, we just, so they're just samples that we were giving out to people. And so what we do is I've got a team of guys who they're DMing

50 to 100 people on Instagram a day. Right. Getting addresses to seed it. So first we're seeding product to get people interested. Then what I'm looking for is, is there authenticity in that they're using it and they love it. So almost all the people that we work with are people that have said, dude, I would buy this. This is amazing. I love it. Yours is, this is the best mouth tape I've, I've ever had. And so I think that was a,

our early success was seeding product with the shout out to Mark Bell, Mark Bell power project. Um, right. He's probably the first person who he DM me. It was like, dude, this stuff, this is the best mouth tape I've ever used. Right. And so then he started talking about it on the power project. And then we became a sponsor of the power project. And then from there, uh,

All the guests that he had on his show, they give hostage tapes. So then he starts ceding it to all these other big name people. So I think that was a huge, just a huge strategic move that really worked well. We definitely, we got lucky, but we created that luck. And then now as a result, more and more people start to see it. And it's been going good.

So the second core topic is talking about investing money. So outside of you investing into real estate, stocks, things like that, let's talk about investing into your own business, into your own world. How do you know how much to invest? Let's say you're doing

Let's call it 20 million bucks in sales. Let's just use a broad number. 20 million bucks in sales. How do you know how much you should spend on ads, marketing, influencers, celebrities, TV, radio, podcast marketing? There's so many options. How do you know approximately how much to spend as your scaling business? This is a great question. So I'm a bit of a math nerd. You maybe wouldn't look at me and think I'm a nerd when it comes to that stuff. So all the businesses that I start, I create a working P&L.

Profit and loss statement. But I use an Excel sheet. So before I even have started the business, I've created a two-year forecast of everything. All of my projected revenue, projected expenses, overhead, all of it. So I completely understand every unit economics of the product, what it's costing me, my COGS, all of it, as well as what it's going to look like when I spend money on Facebook and all of it.

right so cogs are just the cost of goods sold right so what does it cost to make this pouch right to make the tape that's in it the packaging and then to have it shipped landed right then going into my 3pl right all of that so i've got a two-year plan already set and i'm looking at that going and for this particular product i did not take a retail play i i knew that in order

to really test this out. Like I needed to start slow and say, like, all right, let's just do DTC, right? E-commerce. And then maybe in a year or two, then maybe retail is a play. But so from that, from that angle, I knew that, okay, if I start scaling Facebook,

then I could start, you can easily predict what your sales are gonna be with Facebook. And also too, I learned Facebook ads myself. I didn't hire an agency. So here's another thing for entrepreneurs is you gotta focus on what's the biggest thing that's gonna move the needle? And for me, I knew that I was gonna spend the most money on inventory and Facebook ads. And so I learned, for six months I learned how to do Facebook ads myself 'cause it's such a valuable skill.

Facebook ads are not dead. They're always going to be amazing. And when we say Facebook, we mean Facebook and Instagram meta ads. They're not dead. It's a phenomenal skill to have. So I learned it for six months. And really that was, I think, the biggest predictor of understanding that P&L and how things were going to grow was how much am I going to spend on Facebook? How much am I going to get in return from that? And then how does that...

and cascade six months, eight months, a year from now. Because I also knew that the difference between a product like this and maybe a one-off is...

this isn't an EBITDA product. This isn't a, I'm selling one then I'm making a profit on it. So I knew that I didn't need to be first order profitable on this thing. I could lose money acquiring the first customer because this was an LTV game, right? This was a lifetime value. I knew that this person was going to come to us and be with us for two, three, four, five years, maybe even 10 years. I know for most of us who mount tape, I'll never not mount tape. I will always mount tape, right? Especially the older we get.

our muscles just don't work as well and our jaw just doesn't want to stay shut. So most of our people will be with us for a lifetime. So that was the game we were playing. Understanding that as long as my LTV was bigger than what it cost to acquire the customer, we're good. So a friend of mine who was a partner with me and my masterminds in the past, he had a huge email list, 21 million person email list. And his name is Joel Marion. And he said the sentence that's been stuck in my mind

for four years now. He said, I effectively lose money better than anybody. I effectively lose money better than anybody. And what Joel meant by that was he knew that he could lose $40, $50, $60 up front because the LTV, the lifetime value of his customer was $300. So he's willing to gamble losing $40, $50, $60 up front knowing that that customer is worth $300, $400, $500, $600, etc.,

So some of those customers would fade away. But ultimately, the customer stuck with him, he would make 300 bucks on. And that's a big enough return that he would gamble. And most people are scared to do that because it looks bad up front. If you're losing 60 bucks a head and you go get a thousand customers,

There's 60,000. What if you had 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000 times 60? You better put your big boy pants on to go that deep, right? But knowing in yourself and your product that over the course of time, the lifetime value of that customer will pay off in that example of $300. When you're scaling this,

and you get to that 18 million, 30 million, 50 million, et cetera, how do you determine, because the last company took you 16 or 17 years before you decided finally, like, I'm going to sell it. How do you determine when it's time to either take in a round of financing or sell the company? Yeah, that's a good question. So my CFO keeps reminding me that

Someday, we're going to have a nine-figure offer. This is going to be a billion-dollar brand. That's where I'm taking this brand. We will be a billion-dollar company.

And I don't want to get rid of that because this is amazing cash flow. This is a really cool business that's so unique that, you know, if you've got a great cash flow business, you don't want to get rid of that thing. You want to keep it because it's continuing to create cash flow. And then I want to be able to take that and roll that into building. Are there products? Well, the parent company is our Holdco. So Nice Media is my parent Holdco company. So hostage tape is our first brand. And then we have a second brand that we're...

No. So this is just a, so when the second, one of the most common questions we get when mouth taping is, what about my nose? It gets stuffier. I've got a deviated septum. We said, well, let's take a BreatheRite and actually make it look cool. And so then now this product allows us to increase AOV, right? So those additional funnels, those additional upsells, right, as they go through the checkout, right?

we'll ask you, "Hey, do you want to throw in some no-strips?" So now it's allowing us to increase AOV while adding value. That's something that's related to what we're doing. So it was an easy win. Let me break down some of the things you just said. So upsell and AOV. An upsell is something that's important. So let's say your product is $30? $25. $25. So $25 here. So let's say that Trevor, who's right here, you can't see him on the screen, he's right there. Let's say Trevor wants to buy this for $25 plus shipping.

If Trevor buys it for $25 plus shipping, that's a set amount of margin, there's a set amount of net profit that he can make, that Alex can make. What if the same customer, Trevor, bought this and then also bought an upsell, a secondary product that's only like $10 or $15? That $10 or $15 jump can change the entire scope of the business. So let's say you have a company doing $25 million, but you start selling these for $15, boom, you're a $40 million company because of an upsell.

Upsells help a lot. Here's why. Getting a new customer is expensive, hard, research, gambling effectively, trying to find the right person. The best customer that you can have is already your customer. So Trevor in this example is already shown what's called intent. He's already shown intent to purchase a $25 product.

when someone's wallet is already open, it's easy to get more money from that wallet. So in this case, Trevor going from 25 to 40 is an easy jump. Going to get Tarzan to go from zero to 25, which is the first order, very hard. Going from 25 to 40 on someone that already has their credit card open, not hard at all. And so finding people to have an upsell, finding products to have an upsell that fits into with them is life-changing for your company. Now, your upsell should not be more expensive than the core product. Some people do that.

I don't recommend it whatsoever because you will often times not get recurring orders from those people. They will feel like you are overselling to them. They will not feel like you're overselling when you add a small jump or a bump in the cart. The other thing is average order value. Average order value is the same concept of $25 versus $40. If a customer comes into your restaurant and they typically spend $14, but you can sell them water or snacks on the way out,

a 14 customer becoming 19 is life-changing for a company 14 million sales 19 million sales the same person's coming in to buy a sandwich a salad whatever at your restaurant but now they buy a water a snack etc it's the same concept when you go to like a fast food restaurant when you go through a fast food restaurant i don't want to name them because i don't want you guys going these faster restaurants you go to a faster restaurant and they say would you like fries with that that's because they make way more money selling french fries and sodas

because the soda costs nothing it's syrup and water they make way more money selling you fries and soda than they do the actual burger or chicken nuggets etc so average order value is something for you guys to really research for what people spend on your website in your store in your restaurant etc what's the average that they spend and then find the upsell to make the average order value bigger the other the other important part of that that we learned too was when you're trying to upsell somebody we found that

We actually start with a, if you buy one pouch, we say here, add on another two pouches of Hosta tape, the same product. People are more likely to upsell of what they've already got in the cart rather than something completely different.

And so we actually, the first upsell that we have on our list is always, do you want two more pouches for like half the price? Yeah, of course. Right? And then once they do that, then we say, hey, we've got some nose strips. We've got some bedside tins. We've got all sorts of stuff. Right. All right. Last topic. Give any way to charity. So why do you think it's important for people, entrepreneurs, business owners to have some aspect of charity or philanthropy in their lives?

Oh man, I think what I love about what you do is that it's not about saying, hey, look at me, I am doing charity work, but it's actually setting an example for other people. So other people are seeing, wow, look what Dan's doing. That's amazing. Man, I should be doing that too. Because when I see what you do, I think to myself, man, I should be doing this too, right? So I think that's why it's important. You should accomplish that.

So my goal in all this, when you guys see me post about toy drives, Thanksgiving food drives, backpacks for the homeless, et cetera, Tarzan posting about animal charities, et cetera, is for you guys to go do it.

For you guys to go through a toy drive in Philadelphia, for you guys to want to help the manatees and the otters and the elephants and the zebras and the dogs and the cats in your local town. It's not like, hey, donate to me. I barely ever raise money for any of my charities. I want people to replicate the charities. When we do the tipping dinners, you don't donate to me. You do a tipping dinner. You get your friends together, chip in 50 bucks, 100 bucks each, and you go surprise a waitress or waiter. And it's working. Recently, we did the...

Two years too long, which is a concept of clothing's been in your closet for more than two years. You're not going to wear it. It's too long. No matter what you say, I promise you're not going to wear it. So two years is too long. I did that post. 3,700 people have tagged me since then. Literally videos of them or pictures of them going to give away that clothing. Beyond that, now lots more people, I have no idea what the count is, have gone on to do that from one or two posts from me. What happens when 3,700 people post about it?

and all of a sudden tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands are out there giving away their clothes and their shoes to people that are less fortunate. The butterfly effect is what I care about. The butterfly effect of the tipping dinner is the same thing. During the shutdown, me and Jimmy Rex started posting about tipping $100 each with your friends and chipping in $800, $1,200, $2,000 to surprise a waiter or waitress or the restaurant staff. Thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people in the last three years

have tagged Jimmy Rex and myself about these tipping dinners all over the country, all over the world. One removed, all those tens of thousands of people that have done it have no idea who I am.

What the heck do I care? I care about the idea that tens of thousands of waiters and waitresses are getting tips right now. Right? I care about tens of thousands of people are getting clothes right now because of me doing one post about two years too long. And so the whole goal of me posting about toy drives and Tarzan posts about animals and things like that is for you guys to do it. You're never going to see me ask for a pat on the back or I don't need that at all. I want you guys to do charity work yourselves and pick and choose if you want to save the dogs. If you want to save

the homeless, if you want to save the children, that's what we care about. I want you to find that thing that you like, that you see from what me, Tarzan, and our friends are doing out there in the world.

Okay, where can people find you? Why should they buy it? Why is it important to have Hacha tape for themselves, significant others, people in their households? So at the end of the day, mouth breathing. We should not be mouth breathing, right? And a couple of really quick reasons why it's important because there's a lot of people out there going, what does it matter? Like, why is mouth breathing actually a bad thing? And so there's a couple of like scientific reasons I'll keep really simple. So number one is our body has this relationship with CO2 and oxygen, right?

Our body needs CO2 in order to absorb oxygen. The less CO2, the less our body can use oxygen. Sounds kind of counterintuitive, right? And so when we mouth breathe, we're exhaling more CO2, so then our body is less of it. When we keep it shut,

And we breathe through our nose. Now our body has more CO2. So now there's more oxygen that's able to be absorbed into our body. In fact, up to almost 20% more when we nasal breathe. Secondly is our nose is a filter. Like, would you drink dirty water? No. You know, dirty water is not something you'd want. The same is with air. Our nose filters the air, filters out all the crap, the bacteria with all the hairs, and it warms it and humidifies it.

and our lungs like warm, humid air, right? And again, helps pull that oxygen into our body. Also, when the air comes to our nose through our sinuses, it triggers the release of nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is a vasodilator. It helps get all the blood moving through our body much better, again, for that oxygen, right? And then lastly, another one is our teeth.

So when you mouth breathe, all the saliva in your mouth dries up and that good bacteria protects your enamel and your teeth. So when it dries up, now you're much more prone to cavities. So people who mouth breathe, like I grew up mouth breathing, all the teeth in the back of my mouth are just, they were eroded away and I had a ton of cavities growing up and my dentist never understood why. And that was why. Guys,

test it out for yourselves try it out obviously it's working they're selling tens of millions dollars with this product by the way this is not a sponsored show i'm just friends with alex i'm fascinated by the business that they didn't take any funding they built up this big brand as you guys have noticed in all the episodes of tarzan i've done we've been number one for 39 weeks in a row maybe 40 or 41 by the time you guys listen to this we haven't taken a dollar in ad revenue we're doing this because we care we want you guys to talk about money in your households talk with your friends and family about money

We all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. Obviously, here at the Money Mondays, we think it's rude to not talk about it. We need you to talk about credit and FICO scores and loans and businesses and salaries and have real-life discussions about your overhead and budget and everything in between because we need you to have...

financial freedom and we need you to have financial awareness for your own households especially as we go into an election year there's going to be a lot of chaos you have to get your financial house in order it's really important you guys can visit us at themoneymondays.com moneymondays.com we actually do every single week when the podcast comes out Monday mornings

Mondays at 4 p.m. PST, we do a live Zoom call. So you can go to themoneymondays.com and sign up for the live Zoom call where you can actually come on there and we bring on guys like Alex that are business owners to do discussions. I teach on there. Guys like Alex will teach on there. Tarzan will teach on there. We'll do live Q&A sessions on themoneymondays.com via those Zoom calls. You can sign up for that.

Make sure to follow Alex. Follow the hostage tape. Check it out. Buy it for your friends. If you know people that snore, buy it for them. The athletes in your life, buy it for them. This is a really interesting product for you guys to watch and learn. And we're going to see him build this into a billion dollar brand. You got it. We'll see you guys next Monday on the Money Mondays.