Nick Santonastasso & Adam Weitsman on Money & Mindset | E10
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Why do you think people are scared to ask for the check? Yeah, I think most people are scared to ask for the check or talk about money because most of their model of the world and their beliefs were cultivated between zero and seven years old when your brain was in theta state. And when you were a little boy, a little girl, you heard we can't afford that and money doesn't grow on trees and rich people are evil and they probably screwed someone over for that Lamborghini. And so at a little boy, a little girl, you believe that money was hard to make. You believe that you couldn't afford it. Or in my household in specific, money was a hush hush topic.

We don't talk about money. Don't let anyone know how much money you have or how little money you have. Right. And so then money becomes taboo. And I love why you're the mission of this podcast is to make it a common a common conversation. Right. And so oftentimes your relationship with money isn't yours. It got thrown onto you. You picked it up along the way. It's not yours. And so I tell people most of your elevation in personal development is going to be coming from unlearning the BS that you've been taught by the Matrix and by the world and by your parents.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a very, very, very special edition of the Money Mondays. This is going to be my easiest interview ever because the question I'm going to ask, I want to know. You guys are going to like to hear about it, but I actually have these questions because this is one of the few humans in the world that I look up to. I deal with a lot of influencers, celebrities, athletes, business people, etc. But Adam Weitzman, deep in his soul, is one of the best humans I've ever met in my life. And so I've got some serious questions. Please welcome Mr. Adam Weitzman. Good morning, guys.

And the crowd goes wild. We are co-hosted by the real Tarzan. I got to make animal noises again. So,

So as you guys know, The Real Tarzan gets over 200 million views a month doing animal content and helping with animal preservation. We've created the wild jungle together out there in Temecula, California. 26 acre ranch. If you ever want to come visit, we'll be ready soon. But our first guest is going to be Adam Weitzman. He's going to be there with his kids. No, I can't wait to come out. The place looks crazy. I can't wait to see it.

So the way the money Monday's works as you guys know is we keep it very short and effective to 40 minutes We do three topics how to make money and invest money and how to give it away to charity Adam is one of the most philanthropic people that I know as well So it's gonna be a really good segment But let's start off with a quick two or three minute bio and we'll get straight to the money I'm in the scrap metal recycling business. That's the core business and

I've sort of diversified in the last couple of years. So I sit on the board of directors of 40 different companies. I'm partners in 41 different companies of just all, you know, various things from bio to tech, just to try to, you know, diversify as things go forward in the future. So it's been a pretty interesting ride and, you know, learning things every day. And it's more just investing in people than just the idea. So if I find somebody that I really believe in,

I'll basically fund any idea as long as I have trust and faith in the person. Very cool.

So how did you get into that business? The recycling scrap metal in the steel business I've been doing for like 30 something years. Wow. It was an offshoot. My family was in like auto parts. And then I sort of, you know, when I got into it, I sort of morphed it into something different based on market conditions. You know, there's some hard times along the way. So definitely, you know, had to pivot and, you know, I liked recycling, you know, I liked, you know, sustainability and things like that. So.

So for the listeners out there, they're from all different categories of entrepreneurs and also wantrepreneurs, people that are working a job that want to be an entrepreneur. When they're thinking about their decision of how to make money or how to get a job or how to pick a career or brand to work with, what do you think it takes for someone to decide and make the decision of, I want to work for this company or start my company or work with this brand? I don't know if you have to decide that fast because things with me sort of change as it goes. But I think the key is do what you really like. But you have to go full on.

You know, you can't really half-ass anything these days. The competition is so tough. There's never been, you know, the people that I'm going up against are smarter, faster, you know, better educated. So you have to really try to be on your A game, you know, at all times. And that's why I never really like kind of drinking drugs or anything, just because I always wanted to be on my, you know, A game as much as I could. So when you have...

40 different companies to think about as an advisor and investor, and then you have your core business. How do you decide from a time management perspective? What are you going to work on? Is it ebbs and flows at times or do you have like, this is my strict regimen? No, I'm very big into time management. So I'll have an itinerary broken down for the whole day. So I know

pretty much, you know, I had some assistants, of course, that thank God to help me out. I couldn't do it. But with the time management and stuff, it's, um, I just know what the flow is. Um, so I try not to waste much time cause there isn't much time in the day to waste. Yeah.

you know, I'm down in Miami for five days, probably have like 25 to 30 meetings. So he said going one to another, to another, and, you know, just trying to see really good people and learn as I go, you know, I've learned a lot from you guys. You know, we went to Africa together, which was, I learned so much there. And, uh, so I try to take away a little something from every single meeting. Tarzan, how do you decide you got so many things going on? You have 85 animals to feed. You got the world to showcase your content to like, how do you decide on your time? Well, that's a good thing. Um, I,

i'm always around you guys and other people and i always ask you know what makes you guys get to that next level and you guys always tell me time management discipline so spreading your time towards animals you got to see who's high maintenance who's low maintenance you know some animals i can feed once a week once a month like a snake or a lizard you know and some animals like our baby zebras and you know small giraffes they got to eat they got to be on the bottle every couple of hours

"Food, you got more food!" - You're like, "It's been 20 minutes." - Yeah, so you have your little small niche of animals. I try to keep it at a minimum, you know? And when I have like a lot of babies or something like that, my travel is to a minimum. When I, like I said, winter time, I have a lot of free time, you know? So I could travel around the world. Winter time, like, you know, we're in Africa on December, you know, we can go for three weeks or a month at a time. So it's good, man. I love it. But time management is very, very key. - So Adam, I'm gonna ask you an emotional question.

is there a number age or a goal that you would just stop you would retire and that's it not work anymore i don't really think so because i'd be bored i don't have too many hobbies so like you know doing investing in new businesses is kind of like a hobby so it is kind of my retirement i'm getting up there like i'm 54 you guys are like kids you know so like um but i don't think there's like a retirement age but definitely um

Now I'm just funding other people's ideas, which I'm on their board of directors and things like that. But they're putting a lot of the work into it. So in a way, I'm slowing up that way. But the core business is still the one that funds everything. So I still have to be all in on that. I've never worked more hours in my life. Wow. I thought it was going to be different as I got older, but the plan went the opposite. So...

all of us here have a lot of mutual friends from entertainers athletes influencers everybody tween some of them go on to become very wealthy and like control their money like a jake paul that actually you see him building up wealth building up fame but it doesn't look like he's one of those kids that's going to go broke compared to other athletes and influencers we watch make a lot of money spend a lot of money and then fade away into oblivion what do you think the difference is between someone that's

financially sound and that's going to waste away their money like a lot of athletes that go broke. Like using Jake Paul, like Jake Paul...

I invested as one of his original investors in his fund. Anti-fund. Anti-fund with Jeff Wu, like the best guys. And in the beginning, I was just like, you know, this is not going to be good. You know, I didn't know Jake at that time very well, but, you know, I thought he was really smart. You know, he's a little crazy on camera, but off camera, the guy's methodical. He's very smart. Jeffrey's brilliant. Sure. That ended up to be dollar for dollar, probably my best investment of that year. Wow. For sure. That's awesome. They crushed it. Yeah.

So it's just, I think the difference with him is, you know, his persona is there's two different Jake Pauls. The Jake Paul, you know, you and I have seen behind the scenes, is generous, caring, smart. And then you have the... The character. The character, Jake Paul, which is...

you know, kind of crazy and everything. But as a friend, there is no better friend than him. That guy reaches out, he checks in, never asked me for anything. That guy's never asked for a thing, you know, and I was the one that said I'd like to invest in their fund. They didn't like pitch me or anything like that, you know, so I just, I'm big fans of Jake, big fans of his family. And Jeff Wu is just, you know,

Brilliant Stanford guy. Crazy, wicked smart. That's what you want, running a fund. So let's actually walk through investment funds. That's one of the things and topics I've wanted to talk about on these episodes, but you and I have invested into different funds. So I created a fund a couple years ago called the Elevator Rolling Funds. I created a rolling fund structure, which is backed by a company called AngelList. AngelList does billions of dollars in transactions. AngelList is the biggest when it comes to syndications and funds. So let's walk through a syndication and a fund.

So I created elevator syndicate. I have 846 investors in elevator syndicate. They don't invest into the syndicate. They invest optionally into deals that I invest into. So what happens is I send out a text or an email to the elevator syndicate. So let's say Adam and Tarzan, you get a text thing. Dan is investing $200,000 into this food brand. And then you decide if you want to respond, I'll put in 25 K 50 K a hundred K 500 K or zero. If you're gonna put in zero, you don't respond to anything. And so syndication deals,

Last year we did $44 million of investments through syndication deals, food and beverage brands, consumer products, a lot of things that Jake and Jeffrey will invest into as well. Things that we can help food and beverage consumer products. So for those of you listening, there are syndicate groups that are out there that Jason Calacanis has. He's his is the largest group out there. I think there's like 6,000 members where you can invest optionally into deals. So let's say Adam's like, yeah, I'm going to throw in 200 K Travis or

Tarzan's going to throw in $100K, Travis is going to throw in $200K, our friends are going to throw in $100K, $200K. You can fund a deal through a syndication. Outside of that, a fund. There are different types of funds. A rolling fund structure that AngelList created is where people can invest quarterly over the course of time and they can go up or down after 12 months. It's a really interesting structure. If you are a solo entrepreneur, so let's say you have one to three people that work with you and you want to start a fund, a rolling fund structure through AngelList is the easiest way for you to do it because they cover the legal, they cover the headache, etc.,

A traditional fund, which is what most people do, where you hear about like Sequoia Capital and those type of huge VCs, those are where you have to lock it up for 10 years. You have to have a minimum net worth of XYZ and you have to be able to get away to get in because usually those funds are like their seventh fund. It's hard to get in and they want you to put in $5 million, $10 million, $20 million, $50 million.

So when you guys are out there considering as you're going through the stages of life, you start to make 50 grand a year, then 100 grand a year, then 500 grand a year, $2 million or some big exit happens. And you want to look at syndications or funds. Do your research about it. AngelList is one of the best companies to look at to do research about it and then make decisions like Adam just said about the person. Jake was the marketing figure behind Antifund, but then he had Jeffrey Wu to back it up because this guy is a real...

Ivy League guy that's going to actually run the operation. So make sure you guys do your research when deciding between a fund, a syndication or any type of investment. But look at the people that are running it and look at their background and track record. Adam, how do you decide what funds to invest into, like a real estate fund, a tech fund, an anti-fund, et cetera? How do you make those decisions about where to deploy capital? Well, I'm just trying to diversify. So I'm not trying to put more than 10 percent in any fund.

Any one thing. Any one thing for sure. And another thing today with the internet and social media, you see these things are like home run returns. I'll put a little into something like that, but that's not the real life. Right, that's not real life. It's really not. And you have to be conservative. Conservative is the key. The slow and steady is really what's built it up today. It was never the... Sure, there's a couple of small home runs along the way, but there was a couple of disasters along the way. So I think a lot of it is...

You know, you want to you want to you don't want people promise you returns that are too good to be true. Probably it is. And I've seen, you know, crypto and stuff. There was so many scams during that time, like so many people got NFTs. So many people got destroyed, literally destroyed. Yeah. And I try to guide people away from that stuff. You know, you can put your fund money in that stuff. Sure. And it's you might get good. You've done some really good ones along the way. Yeah. But

a lot of people that don't have the inside knowledge of some of these things are going to get really crushed for sure so i always say buyer beware so my speech about investing which is the main speech that i do throughout the year is called 40 40 20.

40 low risk 40 medium risk 20 shot at glory high risk and even from that 20 it's not to put all 20 into one high risk project someone's like i'm doing the new orange t-shirt nft don't put all 20 of your capital into that one thing because who knows if it works out and sometimes even when things work out the people that invest it are too late so you hear the hype or you hear the new thing that's happening and

this rapper is promoting it and this athlete's promoting it it goes from one dollar to twelve dollars and yeah oh my god it's amazing they invested the twelve dollar mark and then bad stuff happens and so as adam just mentioned buyer beware keep in mind when you're investing the things think about the stage of where it's at sometimes you're coming in a bit too late if you're hearing about it everywhere you're probably too late because everyone's talking about it and a lot of the huge nft returns happen for people who came in early or midway through

the people that lost a lot of money came in towards the end and they're investing at the peak or at the downfall timeframe. Great.

And so keep in mind, as you're listening to the people that are out there, you're seeing marketing for NFTs, cryptocurrencies, et cetera. Those are your shot at glory. Those are your biggest chances. But if you're going to do that, put in a small amount of money, throw in $100, $1,000, $2,000, some small affordable amount for you. If it works out, fantastic. If it doesn't, you're not going to miss out on rent the next month. At least by NFT that you actually like the picture too. If it goes to zero, then you have at least something. You have something cool.

uh what's interesting about the nft market is there are some that have function like gary vaynerchuk when gary v created his uh

V friends, there's function to it. You can buy tickets to VCon only through having NFT. You can buy FaceTimes with him. You can buy Zooms with him. You can play basketball with him in New York City. That has function. The NFT from that perspective, I don't think will ever go away because people will always have functional NFTs. But buying something just has a cool parrot on it. You're not going to get 12 grand for a parrot anymore. That's what I think is going to be different about our market. OK, so we talked a bit about making money, a little bit about investing.

Sometimes there's investments that you make that are for personal relationship. Like with Jake Paul, maybe that was for at first we were doing it for fun to be part of it. If it worked out great, if it didn't, it wasn't going to hurt you.

How do you make that decision of I'm into this for just making like a base hit. I want to make a small return. This one, I want a home run or this one, I'm going to invest deeper. This is my grand slam. Yeah. I try not to overthink it. You know, I just take it based on just the fundamentals mostly, but sometimes at times you're investing in something, it's a cost of entry. So if you want to get into a group, you know, that you want to access, sometimes you might go in and the investment might go south, but yeah,

what you're going to gain on connections and things like that could go the opposite way. So you just have to judge everything based on your own personal, you know, personal situation. I just like to do things also with my friends. I've done some things with you, done some things with Travis. It's been a lot of fun and I just like to do it. It's also a good communal thing to do together. It's a fun thing, good or bad. It's still fun to, you know, to do it with people you care about. Right.

So let's change the topic for a minute. You've been spending a lot of time in the college scene supporting a team out there. Why do you spend so much time

supporting the team, bringing characters, bringing celebrities and athlete friends of yours to the team. And what's the concept behind it? Well, it's my home. It's my home. We live in a small area in upstate New York. And, you know, we have the worst weather up there. There's not a lot of excitement up there. The economy is tough up there for people. So I just like to bring things that, you know, make people happy. That area has allowed me

to make a good living and to be able to do some great things. And I just try to bring some things back. I didn't go to that school, the school that, you know, I do a lot of this stuff with, I, I couldn't get in. So like, um, but it's, it's just a place that a lot of people go and congregate and it's fun bringing people in so everybody can enjoy it. Do you believe in work life balance? Yeah, I think I got that going now. I don't think I always had it, you know? Um,

you know, it's been, again, you know, life is pretty crazy. I was in prison for a while. So when you go from prison, then you have your highs, you have your lows. As long as you have, you're happy and around good people. I'm okay with it. You know what I mean? Sometimes I'm grinding, like lately I'm grinding it out so much. I'm like beat up all the time.

I mean, as long as you're happy and you're on good, like I'm happy to be here. I haven't seen you guys in a while, so it's good. So you've built up millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of followers and you get bombarded with requests. You know, people message you to invest in things for meetings. Can I pick your brain? All those type of things. How do you deal with it when there's hundreds of requests or thousands of requests that are coming in of people wanting your time, energy or money? Well,

It's spread out, but I have a good team of assistants. I answer every DM every day. They all have my password. In the morning, we start early in the morning. They'll read me the question. I'll answer. We just keep going around in circles. We do it for about four hours a day, six days a week. Wow, come on. Yeah, it's tough. Beautiful. Come on. Yeah, every single thing. Some people will message, how do I know this is you? Then I'll screenshot. No, I'll do a picture. I'll send a picture like this or something stupid.

Hi, Johnny444. But most people have really... A lot of people just... There's a lot of people right now. I don't know if it's COVID or what happened. A lot of people... The economy is tough. A lot of people just need a little boost. You're really motivational. That's your whole thing is you're always pushing people. So I just give a little one-liner boost to someone. If they really know it's you, can really...

You know, people just want to be heard. And who's going to believe your bullshit if you don't take the time for other people? You can sit and you can spew and spew it away. But if you're not going to let other people be heard, I don't think they're ever going to take you serious. Tarzan, you have thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of comments on your post.

I can't even imagine your DMs. I don't even want to, I don't understand it. Like when you have that many millions of followers on every different platform, how do you deal with the interactions and wanting to do what Adam was talking about? But it takes time. It takes hours in a day. How do you decide how you're going to sit there and respond to comments, good or bad?

Well, most of the time I can't really reply to all comments and DMs, but I do like to put the little questions thing up in my story. People can ask me questions and I'll spend about twice a month answering tons of questions. So some days I post like five little posts on my story and then some days I have like 40 posts answering questions all day. I do a Q&A on Instagram Live sometimes.

um mainly when i'm out of the country you know it's like flip-flop so i'll be you know 10 o'clock in the morning somewhere and it's like 10 p.m over here but it's like where you at you know you're just answering questions you know like who got any questions let's

Let's talk. So on and so forth. So that's how I like to reach out. And also in person. I love in-person conversations because I used to be a real introverted for a long time with animals, you know? So I had just a lot of solitary time with little creatures that didn't talk to me, you know? So when I had public interactions, I was like really shy at first. So one thing I wanted to do was like, you know, reach out more and talk more to people so I can be more, you know, verbal and just,

you know more more friendly he's really accessible to people people who were in africa like you think in africa people are coming up to him for sure it was the craziest thing but what i like about him is he's so accessible me i'm more of a hermit you know i'm saying like the aviator guy in my own room by myself but what i like about him is he takes the time for everybody and you can see like

the fans. Yes. Just like he makes it changes their whole day. Yeah. See their smile. They're walking away, pointing back with their parents. Yeah. So I love that. Yeah. We're at the airport yesterday and 37 different people stopped him and he stopped to take a picture with every single person. It's hard to walk anywhere. Yes, it is hard to walk. It's an hour walk wherever you go. The only time we had free time was in the jungle looking at gorillas and stuff. That's the only time. You're in this nature like, come here, come here. Let's take a picture with you. You guys are crazy, man.

I love you guys. Okay. So Adam, let's talk about real estate. You've got some of the coolest condos ever. You've also invested in digital real estate. We did a million dollar investment into big time to buy metaverse real estate, to buy land all over big time in the real life world in Miami, New York, et cetera. How do you decide some of these marquee properties that you bought as investments? And why do you like real estate market? Oh,

I don't know if I ever really did it for an investment. You know, I love Miami. I love here. My parents live here, so I wanted to be close to them. So I just took my time and found something that, you know, resonated with me. And, you know, there's some like really great things down here. Yeah. I just took the time and just was patient and get emotional. And then, you know, you can find the things that really, really click with you. I love I love real estate. Are there other cities that you'd like to get real estate in?

There's not like a big plan. My friend, Tyler, and I, we're opening a hospitality group in Paris. That's very fancy. Yeah, I'd like to get a place in Paris to go. So when that goes, we should be open in about eight months, the first restaurant. Very cool. Yeah, so that's going to be a really big deal. So when thinking about the diverse investments, 41 different investments and board advisor, et cetera, how do you decide on a hospitality group?

Again, I just wanted to be in that space. Right now, I have six restaurants right now that are all non-profit. This is different. This is a profit-based. Hold on. You've got to explain this to people. You have six restaurants that are non-profit. What on earth does that mean? Yeah, all the money goes to women's and children's charities for all the restaurants. They're actually pretty cool. There's Sushi Mexican, Farm to Table. It's Italian. Where are these restaurants at? I want people to go there. They're in upstate New York. Yeah.

So if people go to these restaurants, the profits are going to go to charity. So we give all the money away. So it's good because you're feeding people. People are coming and eating, but with that money, you're feeding people in return. So it's pretty cool. And the area has been really great. The restaurants are really crazy busy there. So the people that come,

It's part tourist, part local, so it's a good mix of the two. Can you say a couple of names? I want people to go there. We get millions of listeners here. I want people to go to upstate New York, go to these restaurants, support this. This is amazing. I don't want to hype anything up. It's just one's Elephant and Dove, which is Krebs, which has been there 100 years. 100 years? Yeah. Come on. Yeah, I think we're the second family that's owned it. Yeah, so they passed away, so we have to get over it.

Hidden Fish, which is sushi. Clover's Diner, named after my daughter. She works there. That's so cool, man. Her first job was at her own restaurant. It's not so glamorous as you think. Hard work. It was glamorous for like one day. I can know. All right, so let's go to the charity side. So we talked a bit about making money, investing money. Now let's talk about giving money away.

you have a lot of options. There are so many tens of thousands of charities that are out there. How do you decide what charities to get behind financially or personal brand wise? A lot of them are like smaller charities, food kitchens, churches, food pantries.

battered women's shelter it's like a you know it's just a huge cross variation but what we do is one of the things we do my daughter started as a southern tier tuesday central new york tuesdays so she gets a grant every week to two geographic areas people vote on which charity but it it gives a lot to some of the smaller charities but on top of that because i do it on my social media it gives a lot of um needed exposure sure you know you have great chairs like the red cross and you know

american cancer society those are all great but they have billions of dollars they have a lot so these are a lot of the ones we do are on the local scale you know a church might need a handicapped access you know this synagogue might need a library things like that but we just you know it's just spread across to try to directly help as many people as possible without incurring the administrative costs that a lot of the donations to some of the larger charities you know the administration costs eat up

and then 10% go to the people. And I try to stay away from that. I try to circumvent that. And social media helps you because you can really dive in. Animal rescue is a huge one that we do. Major donations and charitable work in Africa when we went.

I mean, this man was just, you know, it was beautiful seeing you. You know, it's one thing to go to like Giraffe Manor and let's go see gorillas. But we went to that real rough part of Kenya. And, you know, you gave all of, you know, it was like two years worth of food and running water to the kids and their books. And we did their schooling. It was great, man. That was an eye opener. You know, when I walked there, like Kenya, it was rough. It was rough. I've never seen anything that was rough, like dangerous, rough.

like surprisingly dangerous and rough. And there's no like electricity. So it's like dark. It's not like there's like streetlights and everything is dark. But we went to, he and I found this school, this crazy school. And it was funny because they were, they let us in the school and I used to sit in the back. I'm a little shy. So I was talking to one of the teachers there and I'm like, Oh, how much does it, what do you make? Like, what does the teacher make here? He's like, she's like, it was during COVID. And they're like, Oh, we haven't been paid in nine months.

But there in Africa, they still the teachers still show up every day. There's no like strikes or anything that is like work. And the kids look so happy. They go, what's the budget of this school? And they're like, she goes, 50,000, like 50,000 a week. How many kids you got? She goes, no, no, 50,000 for the whole year.

There's like a couple hundred kids in that school. I go, $50,000 for the whole? And then I'm thinking like so guilty because I just bought a car or something. I'm like, that's five years of this school. And then we did something where we gave $250,000 to keep the school for five years. And you just think like, I'm not knocking $250,000 because it's a lot, but we spend, you know.

We spend money on things that, you know, don't matter like that, that don't matter at all. Like it's stupid. You buy a car, they hardly drive, you know, you know, stuff like that. So it was just really inspirational because he and I were talking to the kids and the kids are also happy and they have nothing, nothing like nothing. And they're drinking there like for lunch is this big vat of like porridge, like

And they're like happy and smiling and they all love him. And it was just, it was just a great, it was like a great moment. Everybody was touched. And we were like with some girls that were friends of ours from there. And even some of those girls were like tough and they were all crying. Everybody was just like, you know, the toughest people broke at that place.

So one third of the money Mondays is about charity because of this, because we want people to do more charity. And even your initial reaction when I mentioned talking about the restaurants and the charity, you didn't want to promote it. We have this thing where we grew up thinking that it's rude to talk about money. That's the concept of this podcast. We think it's rude to talk about charity like it takes it away if we talk about it.

The reason that I want to promote it is I want people to do more of it. And very unabashedly, I want people to do more charity. I think that they have to do more charity. I think that people make a lot of money and they don't realize how much a little bit of money would help

this earth. And if we all collectively put in a little bit of money, it becomes a massive scale. And so I'm not going to be shy asking people to donate and not to my charity. I don't want, I don't, I literally don't even ever raise money for my charity last 10 years. I always tell people, I self fund my charity. I want you to replicate my charity and yourself. My charity makes backpacks for the homeless. You don't need me. You can make backpacks for the homeless. You can fill up Ziploc bags for the homeless. You can make supplies for the homeless.

We do. That toy thing you did was the craziest thing of all time. That was the craziest philanthropic thing I've ever done. No, that was just like because I remember when you first started talking about it, like, oh, cool, he's going to get like a like a truckload of stuff. I was like, oh, maybe he's going to get like a Vans. No, but I was like, that's cool. Get a whole Vans. And then all of a sudden he's like, he said the word stadium. I'm like, huh? Sofi Stadium. He said something different.

Nine years ago that charity started where we were on the floor with eight of us just wrapping toys and 300 families would show up the next day and we'd give out toys that we wrapped. The next year there was 20 of us, the next year 30, 40, etc. Now this will be our 10th year. We literally have hundreds and hundreds of volunteers that if I show up it doesn't even matter. I don't need to be there because there's so many volunteers and it just comes from time, math, that compounds. If you just rally the community, that didn't take a bunch of money. The biggest thing we talk about on the Money Mondays for the charity element, it's not about the money part.

the time energy and passion rallying your community together is what can help you do charity i'll give you guys some quick examples we do a report card day with what's called trina's kids foundation trina's kids foundation is 300 families downtown los angeles report card day is the kids bring the report card based on the a's b's or c's they get cooler presents we get an a kind of good presence with a b with a c you're gonna get some some shoes and a haircut but we want you to go get their b's and a's so we can give you laptops and ipads and cool stuff then there's back to school day

It's not a bunch of money involved in this. The community gets together, we get hundreds of donations, and we give them backpacks, school supplies, etc. Things that you think, oh, anybody can afford school supplies. No, they can't. Just like you just said, they're drinking out of porridge. Same concept. Downtown LA, they can't afford pencils, pens, basic supplies. Thanksgiving food drive. Anyone listening can do a Thanksgiving food drive without $1.

You need to find a warehouse, an art gallery, a car studio, car showroom, someone's office building, the back parking lot. And just say, everyone come to this parking lot Saturday, November 20th, right before the Thursday Thanksgiving. And bring cranberry sauce, Thanksgiving stuffing, bread, cranberry juice, etc. And people will love you for it. It won't take you $1. Toy drive. You do not need money to throw a toy drive if you are listening to me.

all you need is location flyers social media and rally say hey tarzan will you bring some toys sure i will hey adam weitzman can you bring some toys of course i will hey adam could you actually put a flyer up in your office and as your employees to bring one toy each sure i'll put up a flyer for you did any of that cost any money yeah it takes time energy and rallying people together that's why we have such a segment about money mondays is for people to give things to charity even if it doesn't have money yet all right last part

When you're doing these charity things, when you're rallying the friends together, why do you think it's important for humans or for businesses to add charity elements to their personal life or their business life?

I just think it's like morally what you're supposed to do. I don't think there's like a big plan for it. I just think, you know, all of us in this room, we have probably more than we really should have. You know, look at now you're going to be opening up this huge place, you know, just five years ago, you would never, you had your smaller place in Florida. Now there's like this crazy, like Disney of animals coming up. And it's just like, it's kind of like our obligation, sadly enough, that we should just,

we should automatically be doing it. It shouldn't take too much thought. It should be already in here. I was greedy when I was younger. So this was a, this was like a morphing process because when I was younger, all I cared about was myself. I didn't care about charity. It's only about whatever, like just enrich me. That's all I cared about. But as you get older, you know, you sort of change and you know, stuff in life makes you a little more humble and stuff like that.

So for the people listening, how do we also get our family, friends, or community to get behind charity? Not necessarily the charities that we throw, but how do we get them to rally the troops? I don't know. I think people want to. Our inside has got to get out of them. I remember one day, like I said,

Dan Balzerian called me and he was, Dan was just like, Oh, I want to do something for kids. Let's, let's put something together for like make a wish or something like that. And like, people always ask me, Oh, what's Dan Balzerian like when you're talking to him? They're like, is he talking about girls? Is he talking about like whatever? And you know, a lot of times the guy's just talking about people don't see that side of him. He doesn't show it. I don't see that side. He's very like quiet about it. He's not out hyping it up, you know?

But the guy's like talking to me, Adam, let's do something. I saw you did this thing for Make-A-Wish. You want to do something like crazy? Let's buy somebody a truck of toys. Yeah. Or like maybe we can. He literally did it. I watched him do the monster truck or whatever, those crazy trucks he had. Maybe we can bring some kids out here and fly them in on the jet and everything like that. And like no one would ever see that side. Yep.

And that's what I always thought. That's why we saw Dan was extra cool. That kind of stuff is like legendary stuff that he doesn't tell anybody. Yep. That was one of the questions I asked him was we were there and this was before he was Dan Bilzerian, but he wasn't like Dan Bilzerian, right? With hundreds of millions of views type. And he did a post where he said, I'm going to donate $10,000 to 10 different families. Comment below your best stories.

There was like 17,000 comments in the first hour. And then you're like heart wrenching stories like, oh my God, single mom, this with three kids. This lady had her husband passed away. This happened here. He never talked about the fact he had ended up hiring a whole team to go through it. And he donated $10,000 to so many people. It wasn't 10. It wasn't 100. It was a lot more than that. Never talked about it. And even when I brought up to him, he didn't want to talk about it because inside he wanted to do it. And my goal was,

is to have these discussions where people go out there and whether they do it publicly, quietly, et cetera. Just do it. Just do it. Jake Paul's like that too, though. Oh, yeah. Do you think for the bullies saying he's out there doing charities, like, I'll be at the fair and some kid will come up to me and they...

you know, be some kid that's like really sick. Like for one of the things I'm doing, like, Oh, you know, Jake Paul, can I talk to him? You FaceTime, you FaceTime me. He answers every single time. He can be in the gym. He can be with his girl. I give you whatever he, that guy, he'd be training. He answers every single time. And there's some people just, there's this people just like that. You know what I mean? So,

all right ladies and gentlemen you've just listened to adam weitzman the real tarzan we do have a favor request at the end of each episode because we grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money is why we think there's a lot of financial hurt and a lot of uh misinformation that's out there because we don't get to talk about what salary to ask for should i rent an apartment should i lease an apartment should i rent a car should i lease a car should i finance get a mortgage fico score i can't spell fico we don't know these things because we don't have these discussions so i think it's really important for us if you like this episode or any episode please share with your friends

make sure to go follow adam weitzman and follow his fun journey through life as he helps people and creates restaurants no profit just donates the money out there follow tarzan for all this great animal content and we'll see you guys soon

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another edition of the Money Mondays. Today, we have a guest that I've known for many, many, many, many years. Every time I see him, I smile. And every time I see him, he is smiling because this is one of the happiest humans I know. I've watched him grow himself from being an influencer, speaker, to all of a sudden working out with The Rock, getting on stage with Tony Robbins and everything in between. He's going to blow your mind. Please welcome Mr. Nick Santanastasso. Nice.

Thanks for having me. All right. We are co-hosted here by the real Tarzan. All right, Nick. So the way it works is we talk about three main things. We do exactly 40 minutes because people work out for around 45 minutes. They drive around 45 minutes to work. And so we made a 40 minute podcast to make it nice and easy. People to listen to. We only talk about three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give some away to charity. Perfect.

Before that, give us a two minute bio about Nick and then we'll get straight to the money. - Great, so 26 years old in 1996, I was born with a super rare genetic disorder called Hanhart syndrome, which either leaves the babies with undeveloped limbs or undeveloped organs.

I had about a 30% chance to live and when I was born the only thing that was affected were my limbs. So I'm beautiful, I have no legs, one arm and one finger and all my organs were 100% healthy and you know, had to figure out how to survive with no legs, one arm. I got beat up by my siblings just like everybody else, became a wrestler, became a prankster, there was a lot of identity hats. You probably see me running around either scaring people

or inspiring people, but I've elevated my identity, wore a bunch of hats and figured out a lot of ways to make money and make an impact. And so I'm glad to dive into it. How was that two minutes? - That was the most effective bio so far. Okay, so Nick, on the making money side, you have different verticals, right? You've done the influencer side of things, you've done the speaking side of things, you've authored a book, et cetera. How can people decide what they're gonna make money in?

when they start to build their personal brand? Because now you've got multiple streams of income. How do you decide which ones you're going to do and which ones you're going to spend your time on? Yeah, that's great. I'm a big believer that you can only lead people as far as you're willing to be led. You can also only heal people as deep as you can heal yourself. Wow.

And so I think one of the greatest ways that you can turn around and condense time for other people is on your own journey. And so for me, I think it's very similar to a lot of human beings, whether they have all their legs and all their arms, is I struggle with confidence, I struggle with depression or feeling suicidal or not being able to fit in, self-worth, all these different things. And so I feel like whatever path that you've walked, life has already qualified you to turn around and condense time for others.

And I think oftentimes there's a misconception of leading and coaching others. You think you have to be like a million steps ahead to be an authority when in reality you just need to be a few steps or a few hops in front of someone in order to turn around and condense time for them. And so I think if people want to understand who they can serve and how they can make an impact and how they can make income, that your who is you a few years ago.

Right. So where were you five years ago? Where were you three years ago? What were you struggling with? What was the path that you walked? What were the things that you had to overcome? And because of you, because you went through those things, you can turn around and then help people get there from A to Z very quickly. And so I think everybody needs a little baby Yoda in their life because when you're in the game, you can only see what you can see and you can only hear what you can hear. So you need a little baby Yoda flying 30,000 feet above the air so they can see things that you can't.

When did you decide it was time to get on stage? I'm going to speak. I'm going to tell my story. I'm going to inspire people. I'm going to teach them to be better. When was that turning point? Yeah, this is a great question. Well, I think there's many different stages, which by the stages changed my life. But I think oftentimes people think when they think stages, they think of like getting on stage in an actual room. And so for me, Internet was my first stage. And I think that's one of the greatest stages that everybody has in their pocket or on their laptop. You have a stage that is accessible to you.

And so I was on the news here and there, like being 13 and they brought me on today's show. And that was really amazing. But I think my big, my biggest and my first stage was the app vine.

and Vine was an app that was released in 2014 where you can post six second videos. Y'all remember Vine? - Oh yeah. - And you had to be as creative as you can in six seconds and I was coming out of, at this point I was 17, 18 years old. I just became a wrestler. I was just starting to get confidence and I was like, I wanna create something that has never been done before that no one can replicate so I'm immediately the king of it.

and it can make people laugh and it can inspire them at the same time. And so I sat with my friends and I was like, hey, I got an idea. They're like, well, what is it? And I'm like, well, what if I dress up as a Legolas zombie and I crawl around Walmart scaring people? Do you think it would work? And they're like, oh, I've never seen it done. I'm like, great.

This is exactly what the internet needs. And so I was a senior in high school. I put fake blood on my face and I put fake blood on my clothes and I set out to my local Walmart in New Jersey, which Nick's not allowed at Walmart anymore. And we're going down the aisles looking for the first victim. And I see this guy is heavily invested in the paper towels. And I told my camera guy I was going to try to scare this guy. And I crawled around the corner going, rah!

And he threw the paper towels on my face and he got really scared and I captured this all in six seconds and my goal was to post this on vine the stage and have 500 people see it and I posted that video I went to sleep and for school the next morning and I woke up and it was the number one video on vine Logan Paul texted me like it was it was crazy. Logan had no idea who I was. I didn't really know who Logan was this was back in the day and

that year I was like, oh, I'm onto something because I think we can all agree in life and in business. One of the first things that I look for is proof of concept. My first yes, my first like my first engagement, because if I can do it once I could do it a million times. And so I was like, okay, I'm gonna do some pranks here without like trying to get, I don't want to get shot or anything or kicked in the head or anything. Right. And so I did these pranks in my senior year of high school and gained 1 million followers and created my own stage, which

led me to the walking dead hiring me to scare norman reedus in tokyo japan as uh the zombie and that was my first gig they paid me 10 grand that's how i got started scaring people in walmart tarzan now you're getting 200 million views a month when did you first get the first 200 views man just like nick you know i had these crazy ideas of you know doing odd stuff and i was like man

Let me actually post it and see what happens. So I had a chameleon in my hand and I put a cricket in my mouth and they have these long tongues. I put it up and I stuck his tongue out and grabbed the cricket. And I posted it. It's got like 700 views. And then someone else reposted it and it got like 700,000 views in a day. And I was like...

what this is like this is this is like five six seven years ago you know and i'm like man so i started going viral and after that i had the bug you know and then i sent the picture uh i sent the video i'm on my page i had this big huge same giant anaconda and i was taking a bath with it and he's like he's in a bathtub and i had like a rubber ducky in there and i'm like

kicking the anaconda over. I'm like, dude, scoot over it. You're hogging up all the space. And I pan the camera and there's this giant snake in the tub. And I had subs on my head and stuff like that. I'm like, he's always hogging all the space out. People are like, bro, you're in the bathtub. Or the anaconda. And then Worldstar posted it. And then the rest is history, man. So your first viral video was kissing a chameleon. Yeah. Let's go. Kissing a chameleon.

That's inspiring though, man. I love it. Thank you, brother. When did you go from speaking at an event for free to actually asking to charge for speaking? Because I think a lot of people are nervous. Oh, yeah. That's a great question. I'll start off with this. You'll never make more than you think you're worth.

And for a lot of us, for a lot of us that are successful, a lot of our success and what we built comes from trying to fill a void of love me. Am I enough? Can you accept me? Am I good enough in the world? And so I love this answer because, you know, Wes was talking about a perception is projection. However you perceive yourself, you're going to project into the world. And so if you don't think you're worth a keynote fee, you're not going to get a keynote fee. And I always tell people, what's the difference between selling a thousand dollar product between selling a ten thousand dollar product?

It's adding a comma and adding a zero and get someone to say yes, it's all fake. It's all this illusion. And so I would do free speaking engagements, which by the way, I never wanted to be a speaker. I didn't know that speaking was on this

this industry and people are doing it and actually saw a guy, his name is Nick Voyagic and a lot of people get us mixed up. I'm the more handsome one, sorry. And he's an Australian pastor and my dad showed me to him one time and I saw him speak in a church in New York when I was 13 and it was proof of concept that wow, someone who has no arms and no legs is a speaker.

And so I didn't know anything about speaking. And when I moved to Tampa from Jersey to become a bodybuilder, I was in a small mastermind. It was like eight people. And I started sharing my story. And after I was done sharing my story, there was a guy on the couch and said, you're going to be on stage with Tony Robbins one day.

And I was like, who's Tony Robbins? I had no idea anything about personal development. And that was Ratmir, who's here behind the scenes. And he saw a gift in me that I didn't see myself. And he said, I'm going to work for you for free. And maybe one day we'll start a company together. And that was five years later, two seven-figure companies and a world tour of Tony Robbins. But we start just to give some context here. So just to give some context. And so I spoke a lot for free.

And this is a very good skill because oftentimes the ego gets in the way. It's like, no, I need to be paid for my time. I need to get paid for my work. Especially the ego gets in the way even when you didn't get your stripes or you don't even have enough reps under your belt. And so I spoke a lot for free. And actually my first paid speaking engagement was a car dealership in Tampa, Florida. And I got paid $1,500 for an hour. And I'm like, I'm rich. I'm rich. Done. Yeah.

Mom, retire. We're going to Disney World. Like, whatever. I looked at Ratmir. I'm like, bro, we ain't never going broke. Right? I just opened my mouth and I breathed and I talked.

and they pay me 1500 bucks I was like this is amazing we have a picture I was like holding up the check we were so proud and they were like our sales team had a record record month the next month I'm like this is amazing I don't know if they were just hyping me up I don't even know if it was real or not but I was like this is amazing and so from there we started modeling or learning from those that had massive success in the industry like learning from Tony's learning from the Ed Milet's like anyone who is prevalent and dominant in the speaking world we started to study everything about them and so

Went from a free speaker to a paid speaker when I got the the the moxie or I got the confidence to say hey This is the fee and this is what it is and just hope they would say yes And so that was the transition but for everyone listening out there like if you want to make a jump in your impact and you want to make a jump in your income all it takes is someone on the other side of that phone call to say yes and your life will never be the same Wow, okay, so

Speaking, we talked a bit about making money there. Coaching. When do people go from giving free advice, coaching a little bit to being an expert enough or being qualified enough to actually charge for coaching? Yeah, I think there's a few variables. I think you start charging when you realize you're doing your clients a disservice by giving them information for free.

People don't pay, they don't pay attention. So you can lay down the, the inflation could lay down the playbook to make a hundred million dollars. And if they don't pay for it, they ain't going to take action on it. And so a lot of coaches out here are actually falling short or they're doing their people a disservice because they're not charging enough. And so I think first you have to just start charging. But also I think one of the greatest skills that I developed and

from going to speaking and coaching is digging my well deep on my specific expertise or a specific niche right and my mentor told me he said you should know 50 times more than anyone could ever ask you in the moment you should never be able to run out of content and if you never run out of content and answers you will always be positioned as the expert in the authority and because you're the expert in the authority people pay you as much money as you want and so I think

Oftentimes this we talk about imposter syndrome right that fear imposter syndrome. I don't fit in oftentimes imposter syndrome is you not being competent enough and

you don't know enough about your subject, so you feel like a fraud, and you don't want someone to ask you a question that you don't have the answer for. And so if you want to start coaching, and if you want to start getting paid, go really deep on a specific subject where no one can out-debate you, and no one can out-talk you in that. And I think when it comes to overcoming adversity, and unwiring and rewiring the mind, I'm top five. And that's because I have a unique...

body that I've had to live life with and have a unique perspective. But I've also dedicated the past five to six years of my life learning from the greatest minds in the world. And so I got into I was forced into coaching. And what I mean by that is before COVID, my only business model was getting paid for speaking engagements and selling books.

And I was like, this is amazing. I'm 20, 22. I'm traveling 85% of the year. I never see my family. I never see my friends. But I'm making cash and I'm making income. I'm like, I'm never going to stop. This is amazing. I'll never get burnt out. And I got to the point where I realized, wow, I either learned how to clone myself or I figured out a new business model because this isn't scalable. I'm still trading time for money. We'll talk about that.

And so I was like, okay, what if we moved to Vegas and we build relationships with all the, the hotels, I won't have to travel and all the events come to me. And so February of 2020, I moved my company to Vegas, not knowing that everything was going to get shit on. Everything was going to fall down. Right. And so in, in two weeks, right, two weeks to flatten the curve. Uh, in two weeks I saw hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars fall.

And that was money that we probably already celebrated, rookie move, right? Never celebrate money and steal the bank account. I'm like, dude, we got all these contracts. This is amazing. We could chill, right? And then all the money's gone. And so there were two types of people during that phase of COVID. The first person was like, I'm going to wait until the world comes back to normal. Right.

and they got screwed. And then the other person was like, I need to pivot, I need to adapt, and I need to see what the world's doing so I can pick up on this. And so there was probably like a week or two weeks of like, oh shit, like there was like fear, like what are we gonna do? About to go bankrupt, wasn't prepared for that, just moved all the expenses and all the company to Vegas, and we were in a very scary spot.

And what did I do? I looked at Tony, looked to the best in the world. I said, what is this guy doing? He's got his whole event company is based off of events. What is he doing? And he started doing these challenges and these four hour workshops. And that was enough leverage and enough pain for me to say, okay, I need to figure out this digital marketing, click funnel, all this different type of stuff. I need to figure out funnels and coaching or else I'm going to not be able to impact lives and I'm going to go broke. And so the pain of COVID pushed me to create an online education company.

wow i was forced but now it's the greatest gift i was given so some of the most impactful people in history the biggest views the biggest names are the rock and tony robbins how do you go and work out with the rock or actually he asked you to work out with him and how do you go tour with freaking tony robbins that that stage is priceless and he's on the stage most of the time so he doesn't actually need that many speakers like how do you get into that elite group that he chooses

That's a great question. I think a few things. The first thing is dropping your ego and realizing you only know what you know. One of the biggest wealth traps that you can fall into is the know-it-all syndrome. And the moment you think you've mastered something is the very belief that's holding you back from the next level of life. And so I'm always trying to learn. The other thing that Ratmir taught me, Ratmir is like the yin to my yang, right? My ego gets really big and I got a big head sometimes and everybody claps for me and Ratmir kind of, you know, brings me back down. And

not many people know this, but I worked for Tony's foundation for two years without ever getting any compensation or any spotlight. And,

when we got into the speaking industry, Ratmir was like, hey, if we get Tony to endorse us and give us the nod, like we have everyone in the speaking, we have all the credibility. And so at our first Tony event, we couldn't afford three tickets. It was me and my two business partners, Ratmir included. And so they all pitched in for my ticket, got it upgraded to VIP, and then they volunteered. And we planted seeds and Tony knew who I was and I got to meet him and he invited me to other events. And we kept

emailing them like hey Nick just climbed a mountain hey Nick just filmed a podcast hey Nick just did a book and nothing nothing nothing and then finally a year goes by and they're like hey Tony has a youth leadership program he's not in it but kids come to San Diego and they do youth exercises would you come speak and I'm like absolutely and they're like there's a catch though we can't pay you we can't fly you out and we can't compensate you and at first I was like

oh hell no right you know who i am you know like i'm next answer to sasso and right was like yo humble yourself like this is for the the greater cause and so i did that i burned it down i made a name for myself and i and i worked under the under radar for two years until tony was like hey we want to test you out on upw and then i spoke once on upw he's like i want you to go on all my upws wow and so the lesson behind that one is to give without any expectation

I think oftentimes people fall into their we were talking about a very transactional relationships and it's very like tit for tat like you do this and I do that and it's got to be even but I think the person that really invests in people and gives the most value wins in the end and builds meaningful relationships but also the the lesson of getting in the room which Dan did a great job of talking about that in in the event that we were at today is like

You've got to pay to get in rooms and you've got to get in rooms that are richer and smarter than you because they're going to allow you to condense time. But you're one handshake away, one piece of information away from changing the trajectory of your life and talking about the law of exposure. Once you're exposed, you cannot be unexposed. So the truth is the only reason why most people aren't successful is because they didn't have the right support system. They didn't have the right stages and they weren't exposed to the information. They never knew it. You only know what you know.

And so I would say get in the room, give without any expectation, and be a student of the game and learn as much as you can. How and why did The Rock ask you to work out with him? Because I have bigger legs than him. So like when someone like The Rock, when I have bigger legs than The Rock. Yeah, exactly, 100%. Ego. No, so I – another person on the radar, right? It's like I kind of have like a –

I wouldn't say hit list, but a dream 100 that you want to collaborate with. And I'll throw content at them on every platform. I'll DM them with my blue check in every way and blow up their DMs until I get some attention. And for The Rock, I think he had seen me just through my bodybuilding videos because bodybuilding was a massive stage for me. You know, people never seen a man with no legs but arm be better in better shape than people with other limbs. And so I knew I would gain attention for that.

And so I was in Vegas for Mr. Olympia and there was a famous gym. It's a shame it's no longer there, but it was a city athletic club and it was famous because the lighting makes you look way better than what you look like. It was perfect lighting. And I go into the gym and there was like a few legends in there. There was The Rock, there was Kai Greene, and there was CT Fletcher. And if you're in the fitness industry, those are all legends. And, um...

I think one of my greatest skills and people that are networking with high-level individuals, and I think you guys would attest for this, is the moment you make a celebrity just feel like a regular human being...

they start to mess with you they like in a good way like they start to connect with you like you don't put them on this high pedestal and because they want to feel like a human being and so i saw the rock in the gym i was like i'm not going to bother him i was like the truth is i stick out like a sore thumb if this man knows who i am he'll come up to me and long behold we were lifting you know next to each other doing curls paying each other no mind i didn't want to mess with his set and uh his flow and he had like security guards and it was craziest thing i've ever seen

And his security guard comes up to me and goes, you're Nick, right? And I was like, well, not many people look like this, bro. I'm this handsome. I got no legs, one arm. Like, I'm Nick. And he's like, Dwayne wants to meet you. He's like, can I bring him over? I'm like, yeah, sure. Give me a couple minutes. No, no, no. Bring him over.

And he comes over and he's like, can I have a picture with you? And I'm like, you're so good with people. I know what you're doing. You're so good with people. And he's like, I want to take a picture with you. You're amazing. And so we took a picture and he posted that picture and it blew me up. It blew me up big. I gained a couple hundred thousand followers and social proof, you know, immediately blow up. So I was in the right place at the right time. But also I made someone who everybody fangirls over felt like a human being. And I think that's the greatest tool that you can give.

Love that. Investing. Instead of talking about investing money, let's talk about investing time and energy and passion. Why should people invest into themselves? Why should they get coaches? Why should they go into masterminds? Why should they invest in themselves?

Oh, this is a great question. I think people should invest in themselves because it's the one thing that the government can't take from you. There you go. Make that a clip. They can take your house. I'm saying the world matrix, whatever you want to call it. They can take your house. They can take your family. They can take your cars. They can take your business, but they can't take the knowledge that you have inside your brain. And so it's an invaluable investment and you will always hold that knowledge and you'd always rebuild as long as you have the knowledge. Most people can't build because they don't have the knowledge. And so it's,

It's information that will go with you for the rest of your life. But also, the more that you invest in yourself, you start to step into the identity of someone who values himself, someone who pays for information, someone who's only focused on the ROI and not what they have to invest initially. And that goes a long way. And so not only is the investment for the coach, I get the money's great, right? But also for you investing, you're going to

you're going to retain more information, but also you're going to step into the identity of someone who pays to be a big player. And when you pay to be a big player, you get in big rooms, you have big conversations and you get big networks. And so I think oftentimes one of the greatest things that's holding people back from the next level of life is their self, but also it's their identity. And so if you want to do things that are going to expand your identity, get a little bit uncomfortable, pay to get in rooms and upgrade your habits and rituals. And one of them should be investing in yourself.

and necessarily you don't even need money these days to invest in yourself. I mean, now we have a computer in our pocket and you can go on Google and you learn some amazing things. And so I'll give the audience one of the greatest habits that changed my life and elevated my identity was taking at least 30 to 45 minutes every single day to acquire a new skill or to expand on a skill that I already have because competence breeds confidence. And if I'm confident, I can make as much money as I want in the world and I can transfer that confidence to my students and they can make as much money as they want.

So when it's time for someone to invest in themselves, how do they decide who to believe? Like who would they choose? Yeah. Great. So first things first, if you want a leg workout, don't come to me because I don't have the results that you desire right now. Go to, go to Tarzan, right? If you want to learn how to get, uh, you know,

nurture animals and build amazing things around animals, go to you, you're the expert in that. If you wanna learn with money and investing, you go to Dan. And so the first thing that you need to do, and again, Wes said, is be very judgmental. Is the person that I'm listening to have the life and have the results that I want? If they don't, I deflect it. 'Cause the truth is, most of you are trying to get business advice from your mom who's never built a business.

Or grandma who's never taken any financial risk or she didn't know how. And so the first things first is like, does this person have the life and the results that I want? And the second thing is, do I align with their core values?

Do I align with their beliefs? Do I align with the way that they do business? Do they have integrity? Are they meaningful? Are they in their heart? And so those are the things that I look for. And the moment that my core values and my beliefs and the way that I view the world and my impact aligns with that person, I'll pay whatever it is to get in their presence. I mean, Dan knows. I'll text you. I was like, bro, I will meet you anywhere in the world, wherever you are, because I know the proximity to Dan is just invaluable. Yeah.

It allows me to condense time. I've learned so much from you. So that's what I would say is make sure people have the life and the results that you want so you can pay them so they can condense time. So Tarzan, on the animal side, how do people know who is the real deal or not when it comes to animal content? Numbers don't lie. A lot of people try to do a lot of things in the animal space, but one of the animals –

They'll weed out who's real and who's not. And the numbers show a lot as well, too. There's a lot of copy and paste out there. But I encourage it because a lot of people need

We need a thousand more Tarzans. We need a thousand more people that want to care about animals, whether they have a lot of numbers or they don't. So in my opinion, I look at everybody as real in the animal space. Numbers are not. I know it's kind of contradicting from what I just said, but it's not about the numbers. It's about the animals. And if you look at the numbers and people are still doing animal content and trying to help animals,

I don't have any numbers and they're still going. I say, these people are for the animals. You know, people like myself that have, you know, all the numbers to back it up and I'm still doing the animals. You know, I was doing before the numbers. I do it after the numbers. I do it whether you can see the numbers or not. You know, it's like you got to really want what you're doing. And sometimes and most of the time in this space with animals, you don't get anything in return. You know, so.

Nick, how do you decide as a speaker, author, DJ, whatever it is that you're doing, how do you decide what to charge? Low price, medium price, or high price, or crazy price? How do you decide how much is it to charge? That's a great question. I think there's a balance to this answer here. I think oftentimes as entrepreneurs, we try to create things based off what we think people need.

rather than asking our people what they need and where they're at. And so one of the greatest things that I've done is just survey my audience and identify like what income levels are they at? What are they struggling with? What is feasible to them? Because the truth is, if I'm going to pitch someone a $50,000 VIP day with me on stages to someone who only makes 40K, like that's not the right fit. They would be more for my mindset, my inner circle program. And so I think the first thing is getting the lay of the land and really understanding who your target audience is, who you're serving.

And then I think the other thing is,

Find like find other people that have similar products, you know You were giving me price points on recurring models and everything because you've done it and so find people who've already had This ascension ladder of digital products and see what price points work because they've already been tested like you're a smart person You've already tested price points So I would go and see people that are in the same industry and see what they're what they're offering and what their price points are but also sometimes you're afraid to throw out the 50 K's and the 100 K's and I

I think there is an elevation in your identity when you spit that number out, even if they say no. It's just like, hey, I offered a $50,000 program and I've never done it before. But I want everybody to look at their value ladder as an ice cream shop. You like ice cream? I love ice cream. You like potatoes. He loves potatoes. I know that about you. But say we go into an ice cream shop. I love ice cream. And I'm a go big or go home guy. So I'm always going to go for a large and I'm going to get a pint. That's what I do. And so if I went into Dan's ice cream shop and I was like, hey, I want a pint. He's like, we don't sell pints.

He just missed out on a high ticket customer. Now you may come in and say, Dan, I want a small. He's like, here, I got a small. Right. But I would suggest that every single person has a low offer, a medium offer, and then this big whale offer, because there's always going to be a person that's going to buy it.

But you don't want the scenario where someone says, hey, I'll pay you 50 grand. You're like, I don't even have anything to offer you for 50 grand. So I say have price points for all different things and really start surveying your audience and identifying their demographic, what their income level is, where they're trying to go, where they want to be to see how you can best serve their needs. Yeah, I have elevator night, which is free. I've thrown that 51 times and it's always going to be free for 200 bucks a month. We have the moneymondays.com so people can do like a virtual Zoom with us every Monday at four o'clock.

We have a $20,000 mastermind, which is Operation Blacksite to learn how to shoot with Navy SEALs or fight with Michael Chandler and Tim Kennedy. We have a $35,000 mastermind, which is Avengers. That's the real estate mastermind. And then we have a $100,000 mastermind, which is called the $100 million mastermind experience. You have to have all these different price points because there's different audiences that you have. You don't know if someone can afford free. I mean, they can't afford anything or they have the money. They just don't want to pay it with you. It's fine.

You don't know if 200 bucks a month is like the perfect price point. Or does this person want to learn about shooting guns, real estate, or overarching business? And so in our own world, we created all different levels of products so that people could buy whatever they wanted. I never did the...

one-on-one coaching due to time. Everyone always hits me up like, oh, I'll pay you 50 grand, 100 grand for one-on-one coaching. I'm like, I physically can't do it because there's so many moving parts to my world. Maybe that'll change one day or they'll say a number that's bigger and I'll donate it all to charity. I'll do something. But you have to decide for yourself what levels you want to be at and also make sure you can back it up. What I'm concerned about is the amount of coaches, I call them the 19-year-old life coach,

They haven't lived life yet. You're 19 years old, bro. Like you're not, you haven't lived life yet. And we see a lot of 19 year old life coaches coming out and charging $10,000 for coaching when they literally can't get it. They can't buy alcohol, you know? And so when you're out there thinking about either getting into coaching or speaking on stage, et cetera, researching is very important. Like Nick said, research what the other speakers are charging, what other coaches are charging, make sure you can back it up, whether it's on stage through a coaching program, their online course, et cetera.

And then make sure you really follow through. When someone makes the leap to pay you 500 bucks, a thousand bucks, 10,000, et cetera, make sure you back it up and give them what they're asking for and over-deliver. Because if you over-deliver, they'll reorder from you and they'll recommend you to their friends. 100%. So as people are progressing through their life,

Why do you think people are scared to ask for any money at all? Why do you think that they're scared? What's holding them back from saying I'm worth a thousand bucks to DJ. I'm worth $5,000 to speak I want a $10,000 sign fee for my book blah blah blah. Why do you think people are scared to ask for the check?

Yeah, I think most people are scared to ask for the check or talk about money because most of their model of the world and their beliefs were cultivated between zero and seven years old when your brain was in theta state. And when you were a little boy, a little girl, you heard we can't afford that and money doesn't grow on trees and rich people are evil and they probably screwed someone over for that Lamborghini. And so at a little boy, a little girl, you believe that money was hard to make. You believe that you couldn't afford it. Or in my household in specific, money was a hush hush topic.

yeah we don't talk about money don't let anyone know how much money you have or how little money you have right and so then money becomes taboo and i love why you're the mission of this podcast is to make it a common a common conversation right and so oftentimes

Your relationship with money isn't yours. It got thrown onto you. You picked it up along the way. It's not yours. And so I tell people most of your elevation and personal development is going to be coming from unlearning the BS that you've been taught by the Matrix and by the world and by your parents. And in no way, shape or form am I throwing stones at those who raise you because the truth is our parents did the best they could with what they knew in their conditioning. Right. And so that's

That's why people are scared to ask for the money you're scared to ask for the check because they've been they have a specific relationship with money and they never challenged it or Growing up. They never had evidence that money was an important thing because no one in the family's ever made money and so the truth is

oftentimes people just don't have a standard. The standard hasn't been set or the standard is very average or it's below average, which it's all around you. And so they don't know. They only know what they know. And so that's why I think it's a beautiful thing about this podcast is educating people on the one tool that makes the world go round, but also makes a massive impact, but also a thing that people are very uncomfortable to talk about. And the truth is, if you right now, if you're uncomfortable talking about money, you probably struggle with making money.

You probably struggle with saving money. And those things probably were trickled down generations and generations. And it's your goal and your duty to be the one to break that. And that's what Dan's done. That's what you've done. And that's what you're doing with the podcast is like being the one to say, hey, money is great. It's a magnifier. If you're a dick, you're going to be a bigger dick. And if you're amazing, you're going to be more amazing. But let's talk about this more so you can have a better relationship with it.

Absolutely. So for the last segment, we always talk about, you know, making money, investing money, and then giving away to charity. When we talk about giving away to charity, we don't necessarily always talk about the money part. We talk about the time, energy, passion, and building a community around a charity. Why is it that people are scared to talk about charity? Do you think it's the same thing from the money relation? And how do you choose charities that you would put your money, time, energy, or personal brand behind? I think people don't talk about charities because

Maybe because this world is a very interesting place. I mean, I think Jeff Bezos, he donated like $900, $800 million and the first headline was, it wasn't a billion. Exactly. Right? So people get shit on regardless of what they do. So some people just want to be private with their philanthropy or the things that they do. So I think it's a very sensitive world. So sometimes people are tiptoeing. And then maybe some people aren't talking about charity because they ain't got the cash to give the charity. Right? So they feel uncomfortable about it.

When I pick charities, it goes back to business partners and relationships as well. I look for things that align. I think I want to align with their values. I want to align with their mission and it probably hits home. And so, for example, there's a few charities that I donate to and that I'm a part of. The first one is I sit on the board of a nonprofit called Roar. And this is a foundation that built my adaptive snowboard that gave me the gift of independence and mobility on a

on a mountain, I get the run. I got no legs. I get to shred down the slope. And so they gave me the gift of mobility. And now we have a nonprofit where we put limb different people on snowboards and we raise the money, we get investors and sponsors, and then we go do a trip. I just got back from Colorado. So that's one of them. And then the other one is, um, I got to go to Mexico with my buddy Brad and we gave out that we built a hundred wheelchairs and gave them to, um, you know,

People that can't afford they've never seen wheelchair in a 60 years, right? It's been 60 years They were carrying around by their family member and we get to give them the gift of mobility and independence and you see their face and so that hits home for me because When I was born there was a lot of medical expenses and wheelchairs and there was a group of people who raised money to help my family And so I want to give that back and so I look for things that are close to home and I look for things that align and I think I look for and by the way those that are wondering about philanthropy and charity like I

That impact is for them, but it makes a whole bigger impact on you. It actually heals you way deeper than you think. And so there's two things that every single human being needs to do in order to live a fulfilled life. The first one is growth. You're either growing or you're dying. And the second one is contribution. And I think that with money, the reason why we make so much money, we want to make so much money is so we can give it back and do amazing things in the world.

Ladies and gentlemen, you have listened to Nick Santana Salsa. We're going to bring him back multiple times because he's one of the best humans in history. We are co-hosted here with The Real Tarzan. Make sure you follow them both on social media. And we have one request at the end of each episode.

The MoneyMondays.com to us is very important because, as Nick mentioned, we grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. It's taboo. And the whole point of this podcast is to realize it's not. Money is not the root of all evil. Money is important to talk about. People need to hear about salaries, apartments, rent, mortgages, loans, FICO scores, debt, equity, and everything in between. And that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to keep talking about.

And so if you guys can help us keep sharing this podcast, like comment, review forwarded to your friends that also want to talk about money, have discussions, your home, household and offices about money. It's very important for our country. It's very important for your life. Thank you. My name is Dan Fleischman. We'll see you next Monday.