Cody Sperber & Rene Rodriguez TRANSFORMED The Real Estate Game | E38
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- He won't let me have an elephant. - Why not? - We don't have enough real estate yet. - We gotta buy the ranch across the street. - And across the street, yeah. - I could get behind that. We could raise some money for that. - Yes, there we go. - I love that. I could get behind that. - Mission accomplished. - Yeah, it could be the green elephant development compound. - Oh, sorry, it's the ranch across the street. - Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays. This is gonna be a really easy episode. I have one of my dearest friends here, more like a brother to me, on the stage with us at Money Mondays, here with

in between the real Tarzan. This guy gets over 200 million views on Instagram. I'm going to start changing that number soon. I really am. I'm going to do some research. What was the month of August? Let's figure that out because I think your numbers are much higher because I saw a video get like 92 million views last week. So we're going to adjust that number soon. Okay.

So Tarzan's here. And obviously, as you guys know, we talk about three topics. How do you make money? How do you invest money? How do you give it away to charity? Our episodes are between 30 and 40 minutes because the average workout, 45 minutes, and the average commute is 45 minutes. So we try to stay 30 to 40 minutes to make it easy for you guys. And that's why we've been able to stay number one for five months in a row. Thanks to you guys. Make sure to keep sharing, liking, and commenting on the Money Mondays podcast.

And especially for today's, you are going to share it because we're going to have a lot of micro content because we have someone that is the king of social media, emails, content. His clips have been viral before people could spell viral because he's been doing this for over a decade, making really amazing content. Please give a warm round of applause to the Clever Investor. Thanks for having me on, guys.

Damn, 92 million views on a single. Are you getting bit by a snake again? Or what are you doing? We got a little bit of a crazy formula going on, you know, between Instagram, TikTok. I can't not watch your content, by the way.

the way you want to look away but you can't oh yeah every single time I'm like he's definitely gonna get that's the key all right so legally his name's Cody Sperber I only call him clever investor because out of love you gotta call your friends by their nicknames I've never called him Michael before I don't know if that's actually his name the real Tarzan is the real Tarzan to me I'm probably I would say that a TSA like this is clever investor

I think you accidentally called me Cody one time. Yeah. The whole time I've known you. Yeah. He's never called me Cody. I must have had too much sugar. Maybe I was in trouble or something. Cody. All right. So the way it works is we do two minute.

Bios so we can get straight to the money. Tell us okay, I'm investor two minutes. Yeah out of Phoenix, Arizona I've been investing in real estate for 20 plus years. Do it did pretty much every type of real estate under the Sun Started off wholesaling and then worked into rehabbing and then owning rentals and creative finance and now we're building We've been developers for the last six years building from the ground up lots of luxury

development in Scottsdale, Phoenix, that kind of area. And now we're really focused for the last three years on commercial development. Own a lot of multifamily Airbnbs, that kind of thing. And yeah, two beautiful kids.

what else do you need to know about me, man? I love to make money. I love to multiply my money and I love to give it away. So I, I feel like I was made for your podcast. How do you have millions and millions of followers before anybody else? I just, uh, marketing, marketing. I was a good marketer, you know, and I understood very early on the power of, of certain platforms and how to gamify the platforms and, and kind of crack the code on it. So I saw, I, I got, I got lucky. I was watching on Instagram very early on this, like 20,

maybe 13 or something like that. Like very early on, I met a guy named Jason Stone. He goes by millionaire mentor here in three hours. Yeah. Yeah. He'll be here. And, um, and, uh, anyways, he had like 150,000 followers. And I thought, how in the hell does somebody have 150,000? No, I've never heard of you. Like you're not a celebrity. Um,

I realized that they gamified the platform and they were all sharing each other's content there was like a round-robin going on and like they were they called it shout for shouts but you had to be part of the click and so I was like how do I get into the click and so I fought my way in and they wouldn't let me in so then I just bought my way in because I have a lot of real estate money so I'm like I'm just gonna buy

my way in. And so I started developing content that I felt would do good on other people's pages that would pull viewers off of their page and onto mine. So phase one is always get your own house in order. I had to, when they landed on my page, it had to look good and it had to have enjoyable content that they would engage with. So that's always step one. And then step two was creating a really good piece of content that I can hand to other people and pay them to post on their pages. And then they would

Post it and all their followers would come over and check me out and then I would razzle dazzle them with lifestyle and Entrepreneur tips and all that other stuff and is there an ROI in that is there worth? Oh my god get more followers if you so here's the full circle if

I also own an education company called clever investor. And so the full circle is as a marketer, I was creating lead magnets and I'm, I'm really good at email marketing. I'm really good at selling courses and conversions on video. It's probably one of my core competencies. And so, uh,

they would come over, check out my stuff. And like, I would never really promote anything. I would just add value, add value, add value, and then do like a really aggressive promotion. And I would put it by promotion. I mean, like give stuff away for free, pull them off the social platform into my world. And it was always attached. The free gift was always attached to a free online class. That class sold something which fulfilled the loop. And so,

I gave away from probably maybe like around 20, the year 2015, I probably gave away 65, 70,000 eBooks. And I was making about three and a half, $4 million a year from the class that was attached to that eBook. Interesting. Yeah. It was a great model and it still works today. It's a little bit harder, a little bit more expensive than it was back then because obviously Instagram changes the algorithm, but same thing. I see people doing it today. And as long as you have a good monetization strategy on the back end, you could do it.

Partnerships.

Partnerships. I am definitely not the guy you want out trying to like do construction. You know, that's not my core competency. I find really talented people and I enroll them and get in alignment with their vision, with my vision.

And that's really what our job is as an entrepreneur is to really just be really clear. Like this is where we're going. This is what we do. This is how we do it. Plus having a brand really helps because people see, oh, this guy's really out there. He could drive a lot of traffic. And it's like, hey, if you want to do this, let's just take houses, for instance.

I was able to enroll my two best friends who are very talented in their own right. And I said, listen, if the three of us get together, we can do this really great business. I'll drive tons of traffic to raise a lot of capital. We'll do whatever we need to do. You go to real estate school, you go to construction school and we'll form this amazing partnership. And it's just by having so much clarity and certainty in my vision that I was able to enroll their their big visions of their lives and get in alignment with mine. So you also have the Clever Summit.

I mean, you've had this for years. You've done 1,500-person, 1,800-person, 2,000-person. Why throw these large format events? Why should people go to events like the Clever Summit? Yeah, impact. Impact. It's a spectacle. And in the real estate space, it's so freaking boring. There's a bunch of boring-ass adults talking about boring topics that aren't really exciting. And then they come to our events. And we got fire. And we got dancers. And we run out clubs. And we make it.

an experience for them. So by the time they leave, they form new partnerships. They really connected to the content because we gamified the content, made it really fun, very interactive, brought in all these celebrities, all this, like we brought the show. And I honestly, Dan, I learned a lot of this from you, you know, being around you for as long as I have, like I've never seen you do anything. That's not a spectacle.

Like everything is like bigger than life. The PR and the branding that comes from just being in your, at one of your parties is worth more than the cost of the party. Right. And I, once I understood that, I was like, Oh, this is a no brainer. And so our last summit was,

decided to go big. Oh, by the way, one other thing. I serve really hard to all of my friends because when it's time to throw the big boy event, I can ask for the favors back and say, hey man, will you come speak? Will you come, will you promote? Will you whatever? So I could not have thrown a big event without the help of all my friends. That's part one. Part two is,

Once we had 3,000 people in the audience, 7,000 people watching, and because we had a good monetization strategy, we made almost $9 million from that one event. So these big events do pay off in a major way. And guess what? We didn't have a single refund.

Because what was on the backside of what did we sell? We sold Avengers and everybody came to our mastermind and they loved the masterminds because we took that experience model and we applied it towards our masterminds. So it was like all in alignment. Why should people go to masterminds or get mentors or get coaches? Yeah, I think first off, that's where people that are focused on success go.

Right. Like I can't always talk to my friends and my family about the things that I'm doing in business. But if everybody. Yeah. If everybody cuts the check to be in that room, we're all there for a reason. We're there. We're serious about being there. This is why I like expensive masterminds.

It's not awkward to talk about money and taxes and I know if you cut $100,000 check to be in that room and I cut $100,000 check to be in that room. We're both there to really take this serious and we're going to get an ROI because we know the game. Right. And I've never I have never done something like that. Not at least 10x my and got a return on my investment by 10.

Never. I formed new partnerships. I get, I raised tons of capital, uh, lots of lead flow and just everything good comes from putting yourself in that room. And trust me, it is scary to do it. My first one I ever did was 10 grand. Then I worked up to 30 grand, then a hundred grand. And it's every time it was scary. It never was comfortable, but it always pays off.

So you have Green Elephant Development, which you buy and sell and flip houses, luxury houses, luxury Airbnbs, etc. Walk us through a mass scenario. Let's say Tarzan's like, you know what? Here's a quarter million dollars or 100K or 500K. Let's just pick a number. A quarter million dollars. I want to invest in Green Elephant Development. Walk us through what does a real life deal look like? Yeah. So there's a way to invest in debt and there's a way to invest in equity.

Obviously, equity is a little bit more risky, right? And the good news with us is we've lost money on two deals ever, but our partners never lost a dollar. We always take the brunt of...

So how many deals? Hundreds and hundreds. Yeah, yeah. We've lost a ton too. And that's only because the market really shifted very hard last June and we over rehabbed the property. And in order to sell it and get out of it, we lost like 40K. It wasn't a ton of money, but our partners never lost a dollar. The three partners that own the business, we took the loss.

So Tarzan walks in and hands money. I would ask him, what is your goal? Are you just looking for some cash flow or are you looking to really play with this money? Because if he just wants to be like a safe, steady, eddy type of return, I could say, look, you give me your money and it's a simple opportunity. If you give me your money for one year, I'll give you 10% on your money. You give me it for two years, I'll give you 11% on your money. You give it to me for three years, I'll give you 12% on your money. It's a debt play.

right per year so if you give you 250 grand you'll pay him 12 a year for three years simple interest yes 12 yes so it's it's just a he's not taking on any risk it's basically he is my private lender right now if he says i want to put a quarter million in but i want to do a project with you yeah i want to take the risk i'll say okay

Maybe I give him 30% of the 33% of the returns of whatever that project makes, but I don't make them any payments during the entire project. We'll go buy a house for 800. We'll buy a house for 850 grand. I'll tear it down. I'll use his money to get into a hard money construction loan. We'll then build a brand new property from the ground up. It'll take us between 12 and 14, maybe 16 months at the worst case scenario. These are two and a half to three and a half million dollar spec homes. Very nice homes for, for Arizona. Um,

A lot of times we pre-sell them. So we de-risk as we get far enough along in the construction process. And he'll get 33% of, on average, we make between 300 to 450K a house.

So that's on average. And I have at some times... If he has a third of that, that's like 100 grand. Yeah. So he would give us 250 grand. We'd give him maybe 350 back, something like that. So he'd earn a really great return. All right. Yeah. Yeah. He'd earn a great return. But I might, if he was one of the two, I would call him up and say, dude, you didn't make a single dollar for your investment. You didn't lose any money. I lost 40 grand, but I'm giving you your 250 back. Sure. And you gave it to me for 14 months. So there is risk.

But we're pretty good at what we do. So it's it's calculated risk. Yeah. Yeah. And then most people, when they make that, they just run it back. Right. They just say, hey, do it again. They don't really want the money back for the most part. Yeah, I've never really. We've had especially now that the markets change. We've had some private lenders pull things back just because of their personal worlds have changed. The toughest one is we had somebody call a million dollars back.

And we had 91 days to get them their million bucks, which was our agreement with races. And we did it. We did it. It sucked, man. It really sucked. Um, cause we closed a couple of deals and we were all excited cause you work for a year, year and a half to build these houses and you're all excited to get paid at the end. And then some lender goes, I want my money back. And you're like, okay, there goes all our profit. We'll have to wait another like two months to get paid, but whatever.

Okay, so Clever Summit is one side of your life. You have these live events once a year, then obviously you have your micro events and masterminds at your place and you have conferences and pop-ups and you speak at a zillion events also, et cetera. How do you decide when you get asked to speak so many places who you're going to speak for and how do you decide if you're gonna charge 25K, 50K, et cetera for speaking? How do you make those decisions?

I almost only predominantly speak at this point with friends, for friends, with friends, and for free. I don't charge for speaking. I've been offered 50K, 75K to do different things.

Um, I'm really protective of my time, especially last year. I went through a divorce. My mom died. I'm really focused on being the greatest dad I can be at this moment. And so anything that takes away time from me spending time with my kids and my, my calendar is already pretty book. I actually am just, uh, I just had my assistant order, um, Jesse Itzler's big, huge calendar thing because I want a visual of like my time. But, um,

I love how he does that where he like maps out all his vacation time first and then fills in the work stuff Yeah, that's kind of where my mindset is at now at this point in my life. So the short answer is You got to be my homie Yeah, if we're serving each other like that Then I'll stop everything to come speak for you for sure and I'll promote hard for your event Why should people be considering investing into real estate real estate is future proof. I

Think about it. Uber disrupted the taxi cab industry, but even Uber's drivers are going to get disrupted by driverless cars. It's not future-proof, but real estate, everybody's always going to need a place to live. Plus, it's one of the best vehicles to ever be in if you're trying to break free of the rat race because...

There's tax benefits, there's cash flow benefits, there's future appreciation benefits. There's all these things that make it, and because the demand is always going to be there, even if people have flying cars, they're going to park it in a garage. So it's really important for people to take the time to educate themselves and increase their skills and capabilities when it comes to real estate.

This is why hedge funds are buying up one third of every house in America, one fourth of every house in America. What do they know that you don't? Because they're focused on it, but you're not. Like, think about it. And they understand as inflation goes up, we're about to get schooled real fast. As inflation goes up, good cheap debt erodes. So these hedge funds, they borrow all this money, they take their money and they put it into some bank and then they buy, the banker normally buys a bunch of stock with it and then they take a loan against their stock and then they go and buy real estate.

And they're borrowing at 1% or 2%, right? But inflation's at 6%, 7%, 8%. So 2%, they bought the house with 2% money, but they pay it back with 6%, 7%, 8% money. So the money that they borrowed today is worth more than the money they pay back later. So over time, as they're making their payments, the dollar's worth less and less. So what ends up happening is...

That 2% loan goes into negative interest rate territory over a long period of time. It's really kind of hard to understand because I was never good at math, but I understand money. And so the concept is they bought all this real estate, took the supply out of the market. They bought it with good, cheap debt. Now the inflation goes up. It erodes their debt into negative interest. They're being paid to own this real estate. And of course,

at some point in the future, they're going to sell all this real estate and just make an absolute fortune. And so here we are, all these

poor commoners were watching Wall Street just totally rip all the middle class to pieces right now. And whoever controls the food and whoever controls the real estate controls vote. And so they're smart and we're stupid. So I just study them and go, OK, if they're buying up all this, all these houses on good, cheap debt, we need to go do that. And here's the good news is right now it's not too late.

55% of every home loan in America refinanced between 2020 and 2023 into a 4.5% mortgage or less, okay? Or 4% mortgage or less.

This is a gold rush right now. There's so many homes out there with good debt on them. And we can go to them. Did you have Pace Morby on here? Did he talk about creative finance? Twice. Oh, dude. So go listen to that episode. Pace is the king at creative finance. I've been doing creative finance for 20 years now. We are buying houses where the sellers are literally leaving their loans in place.

How fun is that business where you get to walk in, take over a house that heavily cash flows with the mortgage already in place. You don't have to go to a bank. You don't have to sign, use your credit. You don't have to sign a bunch of paperwork. And there's sellers all across the country right now that are willing to do this. So that's what we're focused on at one of our companies is just calling up homeowners saying, will you leave your mortgage in place? I'll pay top dollar for your house because it's not about price. It's about terms. So you see a guy like Tarzan.

hundreds of millions of views getting paid by brand deals getting you just got a new tequila deal got energy drink deal coming out obviously we have all of our wild jungle products how do you convince someone as an influencer whether it's tarzan or someone that you don't know to want to shift their mindset to deploy capital into real estate um because they're used to fast money easy money money coming in from internet yeah i mean

Well, I mean, I don't know how I would convince somebody. I don't think you are going to convince anybody, I think. Or change their mindset. Yeah. Buy some zoos. Yeah, yeah. Maybe if I buy something in alignment with what you're trying to do. I don't know. Like, why would you not want to do real estate? Why would you not want to invest your money?

I would love to do real estate. I just don't have the time to do real estate. Okay, but your money, if you have money, you can put your money to work, right? So there's active and passive, right? Active real estate is like a guy like me. I'm in the trenches every single day. I'm house hustling. I'm building things. I'm buying apartment buildings.

Take the apartment building that we just closed on. We bought a $131 million apartment building in one of the best areas in Phoenix, Arizona. We were able to assume a 2.95% blended average interest rate loan. A group of us, my mentor, Veena Jetty, led the charge and a bunch of us piled in on that and we bought this apartment building. We're all just putting money towards it.

right? And we can expect about a 1.85 multiple on our money, right? Plus a 6% prep. And what that means is if you gave me $250,000, you just put your money to work, you'd get 6% on your money during the three to five year hold period while we went in and renovated all the units and increased the value of the property. In three to five years from now, when we sell it and we make a bunch of money, there's this big chunk of money that comes back, right? And based on how much you invest, you'll get a huge return.

probably, so if you gave a hundred grand, you probably get somewhere right around, we're expecting about 185 grand to come back to you. So that's passive, right? You're not actively doing anything. You're just putting your money to work and you want to do it. So my pitch to you would be don't buy single family, get into commercial or multifamily because the tax benefits are better for you and you're already making too much earned income. We need to offset some of that earned income with some real estate investment income.

Love that. Yeah. Why should people or companies or people in the real estate space do more charity? I mean, why should everybody do more charity? It's our obligation. It's our, it's, I just feel like, look, making money is great and it's a game and it's fun. And it's, especially when you get around other successful people that are really good at it, you find all the different ways to do it. But there's, there's a huge missing component of the joy of,

in making that kind of money. And it's especially coming from nothing. It's your obligation to turn around and help the next person up. This is why I teach. It's your obligation to turn around and go upstream and help the young kids right now. They're being bombarded from all these different directions by all these things. It's if we, if you have the means, it's your obligation to go upstream and help young kids. It's our obligation to help animals, right? So my company, Green Elephant Development, we build for-purpose businesses, right?

All of our companies have a charitable component built into the business. So even though I'm wealthy and I invest, I give a lot to charity, my company is built in to give to charity. And so ours is Green Elephant Development. We give a portion of every house proceed towards elephant conservation. See?

So that's because I love elephants and I love animals. And I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was young. So I was like, how do we build something in to help animals? One of our other companies helps kids. And we build bottle schools in third world countries, mainly Guatemala. We've raised millions of dollars to build these schools out of trash. And the charity is called Hug It Forward.

My good friend Zach Bolley runs the charity and I've been funding him. I actually bought him an RV to travel around the country so he can raise money. And I pay his expenses so he doesn't have to use any of the money he raises.

to live off of. So I'm the funder behind the scenes that funds his lifestyle. So that way he can raise money and it all goes to kids. And then with Chandler compadres, we raise about $1.3 million a year. It's all local. So I pick a local one, a kid one and an animal one to get involved in our local one. We're the number one funder of the boys and girls club. We,

give about a million three a year to the Boys and Girls Club. And it's a men's group in my local area called the Chandler Compadres. We have a golf tournament and then a party that we throw once a year. And we raise this money and we donate it to kids. You said something, a four-purpose company. Can you walk us through what does that mean? Yeah, so this is something that my good friend and one of my business partners, Cole Hatter, taught me about many years ago. And I just loved it because I was always the one that would make money. And then at the end of the year or whenever, I would donate as a person.

And then he was like, dude, don't do that. Build it into the model of the business. And since I heard it, I was like, this is brilliant. It's like Tom's shoes, right? Buy a pair of shoes, one gets donated. I love that. But then applying it towards real estate was kind of tough until I sat there and I was thinking about what are we going to name our company?

And I wanted it to do so because elephants are the coolest. Like they're, you, you could probably school me all day long. I'm like all the fun stuff about elephants, but I just, I look at them and I just won't let me have an elephant. Why not? We don't have enough real estate yet. We got to buy, we got to buy the ranch across the street and across the street. I like where your head's at. Maybe I could get behind that. We can raise some money for that. Yes, there we go. I love that. I could get behind that. Yeah, it could be the, it could be the green elephant development compound. Uh, but we, uh,

Oh, sorry, it's the ranch across the street. It's calling right now. You have the escrow ducks ready? Maybe they'll take terms. See if they'll take terms. They would. They want $10 million. What was the question? They'll take terms. They will. They want $8 million? They wanted $10 million a week ago. All right. What's your goal? You're not going to say on this? No, if we were in the $8 million range, I'd probably do it, yeah. Okay. I love that. 175 acres.

I saw it. I saw it when I was over there. It's got the mountains all the way to the freeway. It's an unbelievable ranch that you guys have right now. Add that on and it's just going to be over the top. Keep going, keep going, keep going. We put tree houses there and elephants. I like that. Airbnb. We need 3D renderings. We'll put luxury Airbnbs around the lake there. Okay, all right, I'm buying in. I'm buying in. The one they have, the giraffe one, is sold out for like two years in advance at like three grand a night. Yeah.

Wouldn't you like three grand a night? You guys are starting to speak my language here. I don't even know what the question was. Something about elephants. Yeah, he's going to docu-sign in a minute. One second. Okay.

Last thing. Where do people find that? We're going to have you on multiple times. Obviously we're going to come back to the money. Where do people find a clever investor? How do they get into your world? What's going on with you? Like how do they find you? Yeah. So I got a podcast called the clever investor show, which, uh, I'm like number 97 in some foreign, foreign Island somewhere compared to this show that somehow magically has been number one since the day five months ago. Really unbelievable. Um, uh, yeah. And just, uh, you know, Instagram at clever investor. I'm pretty active on that. Uh,

Answer my own DMs. Try to help out as many people as I can. Turn them on. I go live in the morning, just talk about financial literacy and just different thoughts that I have. YouTube channel. All the same shit everybody else has.

I'm trying, honestly, dude, you know what I want to do? I want to make so much money in the next 36 months that I shut down all my social and I disappear. So if in 36 months and one day I go off the airwaves, it's because I hit my financial targets and I am a ghost. Like, I don't care about social. I don't want anything to do with anybody. Like, I want to just go off into my world with my kids and my family and just disappear. And your elephants. Yeah, and some elephants. Oh, dude, that would be the best. Across the street.

Okay. Yeah. I'll be. And in other words, I'll be at the tent. Hey Siri, pull up DocuSign. Airbnb. All right, guys, you're watching the Money Mondays. Make sure to visit themoneymondays.com. If you want to register with us, we do our weekly coaching every Monday at four o'clock and we give you all that money away to charity for the world's largest toy drive. 10 cities in 15 days. Don't ask us how, but we're going to do it. You can watch us on social to break the Guinness Book of World Records for the toy drive. We'll be doing that in Phoenix with the clever investor with his staff there.

Have these discussions with your friends, family, and followers. We all group thinking it's rude to talk about money. We think it's rude to not talk about money. That's why there's a lot of credit card debt in our country. Finance, people can't spell the FICO scores and IRS. They don't know how to spell these things because we don't have these discussions in school or with our friends because it's rude to do that. It is not rude. You need to have these discussions. Share the Money Mondays podcast. Talk to your friends. Follow the Clever Investor and we'll see you guys next Monday.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays. I am co-hosted here with the real Tarzan. Tarzan gets over 200 million views a month on social media, dealing with animal-related content, charity content, cobras, snakes...

Giraffes. Gorillas. Zebras. Ants. It'll take us the whole podcast to talk about what animals he interacts with. But we have a very special guest today. We're here parked at the Muscle's house in his driveway in the RV motorhome. We are going to talk to someone who is...

Way too smart. It's going to be a very interesting podcast today. I'm going to just kind of lay up some questions for him and just let him talk for the next half an hour so you guys can learn from this guy. Make sure whatever you do, no matter what, I'm going to put it. Normally I put out people's socials at the end. I want to make sure you learn from Learn With Rene. Go on social media. Go to Learn With Rene. Follow him. Listen to Rene Rodriguez.

No pressure, right? You better do it. You better do it. I'm in. There's only a couple million people listening. Yeah. All right, Rene. So the way it works is we talk about three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity. However, with you being here and you're so freaking smart that I want to ask you a couple different questions, a little bit different topics in the same general genre. But first, if you could give us a quick two-minute bio so we can get straight to the money. Sure. So my background is behavioral neuroscience. I played basketball in college for two years. I got cut.

Went to sell cookware door-to-door, so I got a chance, sort of my first feel for what it meant to be in a persuasive environment to get out there and actually go from being a janitor the previous year, making $900 a summer, to making $9,000 that next summer selling cookware. I'm thinking, okay, this extra zero was really kind of cool. Sure, very helpful. Because $900 was, I mean, I kept that $900 all in ones, too, so I was like, you know, smelling every once in a while. And so did that and realized that selling was important

something that nobody could cut me from that. If I sold something, I could be part of the team. And so I went to school for behavioral neuroscience, went to work for a change management firm right out of college that used brain research to help deal with massive scale culture change and hostile work environments. And just that whole journey brought me through working with leadership teams and change environments and led me to this world of influence, which to me is a convergence of all of it, selling, persuasion, leadership, and

I mean, it's at the core of everybody. It's what we're all here for, trying to create more influence. Not being an influencer, but the outcome of influence is really the core focus. So your book is sitting on our table for people on YouTube that can see it. If you're listening on iTunes or Spotify, it's called Amplify Your Influence. Can you explain what the book's about? Tell us. Yeah. So I did a course probably about 17 years ago. Somebody asked me, you know, Rene, can you teach me how to be a better speaker? And I was like, well,

I've never done that before, but I guess. And I worked with them and I said, well, this is what I would do. This is the journey I went on. And I'd put people through sort of a rigorous journey. And a lot of people will try to intellectualize the speaking process and, and,

It's like trying to almost intellectualize how do you grab a snake? And I could read about it, you could teach me, you could write a pamphlet, but until you're actually there and see those nuances, there's nothing that real experience won't teach you. Is that right? Right? And so speaking is kind of the same way. You have to learn speaking, influence, body language, persuasion, sequence of timing, micro-expression. You have to learn all of that stuff.

actually doing it with an audience so that pressure has to match delivery. Same way you're getting ready for war, I took that approach to teaching people speaking. But the interesting part about this is that influence is typically an offensive strategy. Here's what I'm structuring in my mind to deliver to you to persuade you to do something, which is a big part of it.

But a lot of what we're doing is how do you prepare the person internally? Because influence and body language and that congruency that happens happens automatically when you already believe in something. You know, for your passions, your passions, I wouldn't have to say, hey, I need you to act more passionate. You just are because you're completely congruently aligned. But when we get into a persuasive environment or like a guy hitting on a girl, they change up and all of a sudden there's this hidden agenda and their body language doesn't match and they're awkward and

and that the person that can just be themselves, what that means is they're congruent. All of a sudden, it's just perceived with much more trust. And so we start with influence on the inside. What's your story? Who are you? What are you about? What do you believe? What's your ethos? And then we build upon that, create a massive amount of stress so that we can reveal their attributes, meaning like who are they under stress? Yeah. And so stress is sort of this almost like a crucible that kind of reveals all of their quirks. And then we train them in that moment. So there's a lot of biofeedback. And then

Then we teach them sequence and timing and all that stuff, and then it all sort of comes together. Why do you think that public speaking is the number one fear even more than snakes? You know, I think that it's because public speaking is like looking in a mirror to a group of people that have been asked to judge you.

Right? And there's different environments. One, you could make a fool of yourself, which is completely embarrassing. There's humiliation. There's all sorts of deep things. But what if I don't do well? What if I'm fake? What if I'm a fraud? What if I'm just not good at this? If I bomb, then I'm going to bomb in front of people.

And it's also a very tangible fear. I think people fear death and snakes and things because it's very intangible and so they can go into denial about it. But I guarantee you if you gave somebody that King Cobra you're talking about or speak in front of the room, they'll choose speaking because it's in front of them. But they can conceptualize humiliation much more than they can conceptualize being bit by a snake. Fascinating. Yeah.

So, as someone is considering getting into the speaking world, you speak non-stop all over the country like 100 times, 150 times, 200 times a year. It's insane. And you throw your own events that are sold out around the country.

How do you, one, decide when you're going to speak, let's say someone's paying you 25 grand, 50 grand, et cetera, to speak at their events, versus throwing your own events, working at home, traveling. There's just so many moving parts. How do you make decisions about when you're going to go speak, throw events, et cetera? I used to think that the bureau route was the way to do it. This is actually a great conversation of how you're making me shift how I think about our business.

As a speaker, you think, okay, the amount of speaking gigs a year is one of the metrics, and then the speaker fee is a metric. So those are kind of the two things you're trying to get at. And you go after that, and you think bureaus are the way. And I don't know, I could never penetrate sort of the network of bureaus. Like I knew, I'm on all the bureaus, but really never got any business. And so we said, you know, and I watched a lot of my buddies that have that, and the moment that the market would shift, their business would drop. And we started creating our own events, and we're like, okay, well,

It's almost bureau-proof or session-proof in the sense of saying, okay, I've got this offering. I never wanted to do public events because I didn't want to get into the event business. But then I found somebody who, Jenny, who does this already and did it for a big company. And so she's like, I can handle that piece of it. And then my wife comes on board and she's a driver. And she's like, well, let's just book out the year. I'm like, but we haven't sold any. She's an executor, yeah.

yeah she's like i don't care get dates on the calendar i'm like but what if they don't show up she goes we'll make them show up i'm like yeah and that's that's not how i think that's how i think she's like okay let's just book and that's when everything shifted they will come i never believed it and all of a sudden we did i did like four one year and that was like my big goal the next year we did 34. oh my god sold out 34 34 at 6 000 a person sold out and the next year another 34 and i'm going we're like we're rocking then i meet you and you're like you're doing it wrong i'm like

It does feel like I'm doing it wrong. It's like we maxed out. 34 is a lot. Well, we maxed out the wrong model, though, right? And so, I mean, I'm transparent about my journey and how I learn about this stuff. That's what we'd like here. That's exactly what we do is we talk through the real details. Yeah, and so it's like, you know, you maximize. I think it's 239 days I spoke last year. What? It was either virtual or in person, most of which were in person.

And we go, okay, so let's just keep writing this and keep pushing it. The book really was something we wanted to keep pushing. And then we go, okay, that's not the actual goal because now all of a sudden I'm speaking nonstop and everything is going like this but I'm also never home. And so, yeah, the money was good but then the balance wasn't there and so my wife and I was like, okay, there's gotta be a better way. - Right, okay, so when you see someone and it's time to reframe them, right?

How do you have that blunt discussion with someone that has an ego, is a boss, is a CEO, et cetera, an athlete? How do you reframe someone that thinks they know everything?

So there's a few things. One, you have to be asked to do it. Like you can't come to them and be like, hey, this is what I think about you. Why? Because they'll be defensive? Yeah, they'll be immediately defensive. I mean, one, they've earned that boss mentality or that influence for a reason, right? They've earned it. So one, you know, I'll tell people, they go, well, Renee's in the room. I'm a little nervous. I'm like, trust me, I'm not judging you at all. I'm not on the clock. You haven't asked me. I think, you guys swear on this podcast? Mm-hmm.

No? No. Okay, good. So I'll use the word jerk, right? It kind of makes you a jerk. If you'd start saying, here's feedback you didn't ask for. I'm not that guy. But you get somebody who is really good at what they do. There's usually an agreement up front. I said, look, you're asking me for your help. I said, do you really want it, number one? I said, two, I'm going to tell you things that most people won't tell you. I said, but I'm coming from a place of I already respect what you're doing. This is not about me making you better or you doing something wrong. This is about maybe there's another level to this for you.

And everybody has that next level. So we try to reframe the idea of saying, okay, there's, you know, because three of the speakers here at the event I'm working with, they're talking. These guys are already pros. But it's what's that next level, right? And so at that point, sometimes it becomes a bouncing off or, you know, maybe if because I'm entrusted, I can say things that others maybe can't say to them. So, and you have to care enough to say those things. So,

i try to one make it their idea and two make them want to be the one sometimes if it's not their idea so what i mean by that is we have four levels of masterminds 10k 15k 30k and 100k

Getting someone to pay $100,000 or invest $100,000 on themselves, I need them to be fully bought in. It can't be fear-based because it's too much money for them to be like, okay, I'll take a shot. No, it's $100,000. It's not like a gamble or like throw it out. You don't just throw it on a credit card. That's not how it works. It's a big investment themselves. So the way I explain it is, well, you have to do at least $10 million in revenue. Do you think that the 22 other instructors and the 100 members in the room can help you save or make 1%?

If the answer is yes, then it's free. And that's how I sell out every year since 2019, 100 people, 100 grand each. Because I'm making it so simplistic to them that they can see it visually like, well, I did 18 million last year. If this saves me 1%, I'm in, right? And so from there, I then need them to be bought in that they show up to every event. They're on the Zoom calls. They want to be coached. Same concept with one-on-one coaching.

I do 100K coaching, but 100K is all 100% donated to our toy drive, to the world's largest toy drive. It's 100% donation. That's a lot of freaking money. It's a big investment in themselves. It is a write-off for them, so it's a little bit different. But they have to be someone that can afford $100,000. Typically, he's not usually getting a mentor or advice, even though they all should be. And I'm really blunt about it. I would still listen to everyone. The reason I sit front row at the events I speak at.

listening oh there's tim grover there's andy forsella there's ed mylett you think i'm leaving yeah right these are guys that are doing 400 million and 700 bazillion and training michael jordan and kobe bryant like i'm sitting front row listening absolutely no matter what how big famous whatever i get in my course of my career i'm sitting front row when i'm 82. i don't care if i've got 19 billion dollars i'm sitting front row yeah because i want to listen and learn because

What if I do have a billion dollars and I learn 1%? The same pitch I'm doing to other people, what if I do it myself? And Tim Grover tells me something. Renee Rodriguez tells me something. Tarzan teaches me something. I want people that are listening to forever be a student. No matter how rich you are, how famous you are, how much you think you know it all, you always want to be learning. Because if you are that thing that you think you are, which you're probably not, but if you are, God bless you, you need it the most. You're doing 100 million? What if I can make you 3% from one little thing?

Love that. And it's not a theory. It's true. If someone teaches you how to save 1% of your taxes or Renee teaches you how to like reframe this with your employees and now your employees sell a little bit more at each day. Well, if you've got 40 sales reps, they sell a little bit more each day times 300 days a year. Holy smokes. Renee just made you an extra gazillion dollars from one little thing of how they just do their introduction on a sales call or how they frame their sales call. That one little thing.

So no matter how rich you are, how big you are, you should always be wanting to learn. Okay, so on the investing side, why should people invest into themselves? Why should they hire a mentor or hire a coach, go to a mastermind, go spend $6,000 for your event? Why should people invest in themselves? - You know, what's fascinating, and I love how you framed the it's a 1% return.

we're spending that $100,000 already. We're spending it in other ways. You can misspend $100,000 in a business. For sure. On a Wednesday. Yeah, just doing stupid stuff. But when you have a focused, intentional investment in that, now all of a sudden you can hire a $100,000 employee, but that's one person, one skill set. Those masterminds, you're paying $100,000 and you get access to all of it.

And a network. And I mean, just even being here, walking around, like what Charles is here, he's like, I'm in just to be around. And when you understand the knowledge of proximity or the value of proximity and the value of being able just to be next to somebody, rubbing elbows with somebody, the ideas and the deal flow and just concepts of overhearing something that you can then implement, it's incredible. And the investment in yourself, and I...

What's funny is it's become a cliche. And so when we say we got to invest yourself and we all hear it so often that we almost build a callous to that idea. But you have to think about you're the one executing every single day. You're the one that has to get up. You're the one that has to do all these things. Like I had to invest in myself very differently this last year in health wise to get myself physically there. So if I'm 239 days speaking, I better be...

High energy. I better be sleeping good. I better watch my salt intake, which actually had to increase it, which was fascinating. I had to get rid of bread, you know, so I didn't look like puffy on camera. I mean, there's like so many things that I had to think, and that all costs money, like all of it. And it's an investment in me. And then just one idea, one person, one proximity to be around someone else.

You just have to do it. You have to do it. And why? Because everyone, and here's the thing I was going to say about you. You said I'm a learner and I'm a student. But we say, well, when I get to his success, I'll do it. No, no, no. He was a student first. Yes.

And it's because of that. It never stopped. Yeah, it was there first. Even when you weren't making money, you were in that front row. So, yeah, I think it's whatever you have to do, if you have to take out a student loan, do that. I mean, think about it. Don't go to college. If you don't like college, then think about that $250,000 as a budget that you can go. If you want the debt, go take that debt and invest in stuff like this. And watch that come back to you in droves. So this is a fascinating topic. So...

Mass America and all over the world consider college the normal thing to do. You graduate high school, you go to college, you get married, white picket fence and two kids, 2.4 kids, right? That's the progress of the perfect life. American dream. Yeah, you retire at 65 and you've got, that's it. There's a lot of changes that have happened. One, people realize that having college debt for most industries doesn't make sense. Yeah. Does it make sense to do that for doctor, lawyer, et cetera? Of course it does. Totally.

For most people, they don't actually end up using what they go to college for. So then it doesn't make sense to spend 30, 40, 50, 60 grand a year to go to college. The difference also is what we talk about on this podcast. You literally have to get rich because you're going to live a lot longer than your parents. Yes. So this is a rabbit hole that people don't go down. Outliving wealth. So here's the thing.

We grew up, if you're between 30, 40, 50 years old, there wasn't a Whole Foods. What the hell is Whole Foods? There wasn't a gym on every corner. What's a gym? There might be a gym like 17 miles away and there's one of them. There wasn't a gym on every corner like there is now.

What's vegan? When you talked about veganism, nobody had the things you were talking about. Nobody could do mental health. Nobody had cryo. Nobody had cold plunges. There was nobody talking about saunas and why you needed it. There was no nutrition programs and peptides. There was no Gary Brekka's telling us about analysis and deep breathing. Breathwork? What the hell is that? None of it existed even 10 years ago, let alone 20, 30 years ago when we were kids.

So anybody that has children that's listening, your kids are going to live a lot longer than you. But boy, oh boy, their kids are going to be 100, 110, 120, 130. And this is not like a theory or like down the rabbit hole. This is reality because they're growing up healthier. They're eating healthier. They're understanding about going to work out. They're understanding about their bodies and their minds, etc. Really early.

When I was growing up and you were growing up, we were having Slurpees at 7-Eleven. And we put a quarter on the arcade game and we'd have Slurpees all day long. And 64 ounce. The good old days. Yes. And refill 64 ounces of sodas. Right. And we would go to Jack in the Box because that was the only meal we had. Right. Because it was a dollar. And so why I say that is we have to have this blunt discussion and you might hear my voice. You literally have to get richer. Yeah. Because what if you want to retire at 65 to 75? Yeah.

Well, we used to pass away at around 82 years old. We met at 84. So you only needed about 15 to 20 years, which means you still had to have 50 to 100K a year. Let's just call it 100K times 15 years is $1.5 million. It's a lot of money. People don't have that saved up. Most people don't have $1,200 saved up, let alone $1.5 million. What if you lived to 102 and you want to retire at 65? You need 37 years of money.

Not counting inflation not counting medical expenses not counting anything bad happens to someone in your family if everything goes smooth for 37 years and you want 100k a year if you only want 50k a year that means you need two to four million dollars Saved up. I don't know but you guys I don't have a lot of friends that have two to four million bucks saved up I got a lot of rich friends and very few of them have two to four million bucks sitting in cash anywhere and

So we have to have these discussions that it is okay to talk about money and you should talk about money. We should talk about investing. You have to build up assets because you are not going to have two, three, $4 million saved up from your job. That is not going to happen. You have to take money that's coming in from your job and invest it into things, whether it's real estate or S and P 500, et cetera, things that you can just lock up money away so that when you do retire, you've got way more money saved up because otherwise you're

you're going to be working when you're 83. Okay, third topic. So we talked about making money, a bit about investing money, investing to yourself. Talking about the charity side of things. Why do you think that it's important for businesses or people to do more things with philanthropy and charity? Well, so I think that there's...

There's a whole spiritual faith side to these things. I think that there's a humanity side to these things. I think that there's a greater good. I mean, you can make a philosophical argument for it. I think you can make a spiritual argument for it. I think you can just make a pragmatic argument for it. The world gets better, everything improves. And some of us have more access to things than others. Like for me, I grew up,

being Cuban, money was not an okay conversation. We didn't talk about it. For sure. Right? It just wasn't it. In fact, I kind of looked up to people who thought they were cool, they had money, and, you know, just having this whole poverty mentality is what I had. And, you know, if I'm not careful, I still have it. Like, I don't like throwing old boxers away. You know, like my wife will just throw shit away. Let's just throw it away. And whatever it is, a shirt. I'm like, well, I could use that. Well,

Well, we have this fridge, the drawer's broken. What's it gonna do? No, this fridge we can put in the garage. Well, somebody can eat it. I mean, I still have all of this stuff. She doesn't have that. She's like, no, we're gonna get rid of it and make room for other new things in life. And so, but I think that, you know, you're looking at, for me,

There are a lot of people that I don't talk about. This will probably be the first, maybe the only time I'll talk about this. I will scholarship two people sometimes through our Amplify courses per course. So I reserve one to two spots where I'll take a student, I'll take somebody who is from another country, I'll take somebody from inner city. Single mom, yeah. Yeah, somebody, they'll come to me like, and nobody knows, a single person knows. They'll come to me like, you know, one of these days I want to go through your course. And I'll look at them and say, well, why are you waiting? Well, I can't afford $6,000.

I said, where are you from? And I hear their story. What's going on? I said, why do you want to go? And I said, well, what if it wasn't $6,000? I said, here's the thing. The $6,000 is arbitrary to me.

That represents an investment in you. It represents a way of saying whoever's in that room is serious. And that's a number. I said, but a 6,000 to a lot of my clients doesn't mean anything. I had one guy that came 11 times in one year. Wow. 11. I said, but I need you to choose a number. And my answer is already yes. And I want you to choose a number of what you can afford. And then I want you just to push yourself a little further. Not because I want the money.

But just a little further. And I've had people come back and they go, okay, are you serious? I'm like, the answer is yes. And I go, I don't want to offend you. You won't offend me. This isn't about money. This is about you getting your skin in the game. I'm going to have my skin in the game. I need you to have your skin in the game. And I learned in a long time ago when you give somebody something free, too free. Right. You don't value it. You don't pay for it. So one person comes and goes, all I have is 500 bucks. I said, great, you're in. Now it costs me 1,500 per person to put them in. I said, you're in. Are you serious? I'm like, yeah, absolutely.

Perfect. I flew a guy who was the youngest inmate to ever enter San Quentin prison for murder. I got a call from the president or CEO of the Vikings at the time. He said, Renee, I got somebody I want you to work with. I'm like, well, tell me about it. He was like, well, he was in jail for murder. Youngest inmate in San Quentin. I'm like, San Quentin at 15 years old? No way. Yeah, 15. I'm like, I want to meet this guy. His name is Ignacio Paisano.

And looks like the Mexican mafia, just the locs and the tats everywhere. How else is he going to get through? Bench is like 600 pounds. I was at an event in San Francisco. He drives out to meet me and this guy's got a heart of gold, just as big as could be. Spent the last 20, 30 years, 25 years getting kids off the streets of basketball. And I'm like, you got a story? I said, I flew him in, put him in a hotel, put him through the whole piece. And his story, man, I can't even talk about it without getting emotional because of the change. And kids from other, so my point to all that is,

If I have access to something, then it's my obligation to at least provide access to those who can't in some way, shape or form. And if I can at least provide that access, that will always, I mean, I can say that there's a selfish component that always comes back to me from a karmic energy, if you want to say that. But I also think that it's something that's my obligation to say, okay, it's not just about that, but there's something that just feels inherently really good about doing that and keeping it private.

Okay, so someone that's out there listening and they want to and they know they need to have a change. What is their first step of learning, whether it's watching your content? How do they start their learning process and then make that jump where they actually go to an event, hire you, go to one of the tour events, etc.? What are the initial steps to say, I'm going to make a change today? What are the first thing they can do? Read your book? What do they do?

Well, I think one, if you've identified that you need to make a change, that's the first step. And then two, you got to lose your ego. You have to lose your ego. To be able to look in the mirror and say, am I a good person? Am I doing the best I can without ego is a really hard conversation, but I think it's one of the most beautiful because it's the essence of who you are. I was talking to my kid. I said, you know, it's okay for me to tell you you're not okay right now. You could be way better.

And I'm not saying that I don't love you, not saying that you're not a great person. I said, but if you have all of this in front of you and me saying, ah, you're fine, I'm doing you a disservice. I said, let's learn to have this real conversation around improvement and that there's more to this.

But it's got to come from a place of love. So one, can you look at yourself in the mirror and say, I need help? And you do that without an ego. The moment you lose your ego, the world of mentors opens up. Because I believe there is mentors everywhere, even from people that you don't like. You can learn something from. But it's our ego that gets in the way of us learning. You can lose the ego and go out there and ask and make that intention. Now all of a sudden you can say, am I willing to invest?

And then I tell people, well, what book should I read? I said, well, what are you trying to learn? I mean, there's a million books out there. What do you want to learn? What do you want to get better at? Find the best place that you can and invest as much as you can into that and start that process. For me, my podcast is free. Some people say this is one of my best contents on my podcast. What's the podcast name? It's the Amplify podcast.

And the book is chalked with information. It's $20, right? I've got online coaching. We do coaching for $99 a month. And that, to me, people are saying, Renny, you should be charging $2,000 a month. It's $99, right? It's $99. And then we've got our Amplify course. We've got our AmpCon event coming up on October 26 in Dallas. It's $500. And so then we've got our Mastermind, which is $15. We've got all sorts of ways for people to be able to engage with the content, with the ideas, no matter what walk of life you're in.

Alright guys, so we're going to have Rene multiple times a year, so we're going to obviously have much more deeper discussions about different aspects of what he's doing. He probably has another book or two or three or four coming out, I'm sure. So make sure to check him out at Learn With Rene and have these important discussions with your friends, family, and followers. Yes, there's helicopters. We're in an RV motorhome. It's perfectly fine. There's a sound check going on. We're about to have a freaking 200 person party here. Everything's fine, guys. So make sure to go have these deep discussions with your friends, family, and followers about money.

Why? We all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money and we think it's rude to not talk about money. So go to themoneymondays.com. Make sure to follow at Learn With Rene, The Real Tarzan, and we'll see you guys next Monday.