Transcription
[Music] Thank you. [Music] Welcome to the Digital Social Hour. I'm your host, Sean Kelly. I'm here with my co-host, Wayne Lewis.
What up? What up?
Our guest today, Dan Fleischman.
Hello, hello.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks for coming in. I'm excited for this one.
I'm ready to go.
Let's go. Let's go.
We even need an intro?
Uh, I don't think so. I mean, they they should know who you are, right?
I think people know me for different things, Dan, a man, you know. Like some people know me for sports cards, or acai bowls, or masterminds, or events, or speaking, or books. Like, who's your daddy? Energy Drinks, like yeah, poker. They know me for different things, so I don't know that you know. And some people don't know me at all, obviously. I don't have an ego to it; there's plenty billions of people who have no idea who I am. So I think it's just interesting, different categories of how they know me.
Yeah, the people that do, you wear a lot of hats.
Yeah, yeah. Life is short, and I, you know, we're gonna die pretty quickly. How do you want to be known? Like, what do you want to be known for ultimately?
My charity. Yeah, we broke the record for the world's largest toy drive last year.
Damn.
Um, we're gonna break the Guinness Book World Records again.
What was the record? What was the original?
We had to do 160,000 toys. We took over SoFi stadium and like filled a whole field up with toys. Crazy. But the record that we broke for Guinness was the most toys in one hour. It was like, I think we did eight thousand.
Wow. 8,000 toys you gave away?
Yeah. Roger filmed it. It was a nuts. It was the craziest hour of my life, watching them like process. Anyways, um, so people had to come in and get the toys quick, so we had to take it off the pallets, rip off the plastic, manually count each one in front of a Guinness Book World Record official authority.
Wow. And now we know how to get, how to break it again, but we want to break different records for this year. It could start, 10-year anniversary of the toy drive. I think the main thing I want people to remember me for is charity, because I want people to replicate my charity, not donate to my charities. I want them to do their own toy drives. Do your own Thanksgiving food drive. You give out backpacks to the homeless. You don't need my backpacks; you give out backpacks. So I want people to replicate my charities in different versions that they like.
Why are you so big on charity? You donate millions of charity. What makes you so passionate?
It's so solvable. Like, if you really think about the three things that humans need—this food, water, and shelter—there are gazillion-dollar companies that can help fix food, right? Think about how many food companies could fix food. There is infinite capital that could fix water. Water is really fixable; it's really solvable. In shelter, that's like the easiest thing. If you really think about curing homelessness, and so I feel like my job on Earth is to show people how to fix these things, how to donate to these things, because it's so solvable, and it frustrates me because there's so much bureaucratic red tape and so many hard things to get through from the government that we could solve it as private citizens. And so that's why I'm always preaching about how to do charity, how to do it efficiently, how to do it easily, how you don't need a bunch of money to do it; you just gotta like use your social media power and use your cell phone, and you can do charity too.
Do you think they're paying attention to what you're doing so that they can replicate it, or even shine light on it? Because really, I found out about your charity by just, you know, paying attention to you, and you know, most people kind of, you know, want to turn the blind side when it comes to giving, giving back.
Yep. That's why I talk about the ways to give to charities without using money. So I think that's what holds a lot of people back is either greed or nervousness or thinking, "I don't have enough money to donate to charity," or, "My hundred bucks or a thousand bucks or two grand or five grand is not going to do enough." Right? I walk people through showing them how you don't need any money at all. You could do a toy drive—Philadelphia, Mexico, anywhere you are in the world—with your cell phone, just getting people together, meeting at a building, telling them to date when to meet there, asking people to donate toys or food or homeless supplies or whatever. You don't need capital; you just need a cell phone and to rally people together. And so I'm trying to remove that fear that people have, like, "I don't do charity," or, "I don't want to donate to that because I don't like this, or I don't like that, or I don't have the money." I remove all those fears by showing them you don't need money to do charity; you need energy, time, and passion.
Right, right. You're also big on animals. You started an animal sanctuary.
Yeah. Can you tell everyone what animals you have and why you started it?
So we have 26 acres; it's in Temecula, right above San Diego. Um, we have, there's a guy named the real Tarzan.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know.
Yeah. So I convinced him to—
There, oh, he lives there. He lives there full time. He lives 30 yards from my house. He's right there.
Oh, I always thought he lived in Miami.
He did live in Miami.
—convincing to move there, and I said, "Hey, I'm building this 26-acre place. Half the place, so basically like nine to 12 acres will be yours for an animal sanctuary, and you can build what's called the Wild Jungle Wyld." So you go to Instagram, look at Wild Jungle, and you'll see Tarzan there—ostriches, camels, zebras, everything in between. We have over 85 animals that we've either rescued or helped acquire to protect, and we keep getting more and more animals each week, and we're building Wild Jungling to be like a full-fledged brand where we can then donate millions of dollars to animal preservation rescues. And so it started first, my wife really likes animals, so I wanted to have a ranch that had animals. Then when I realized the ranch that we were getting had a lot of like topography, like space, like mountains and cool areas, whatever, and it was zoned to allowed to have animals, that's when I was like, "Well, I know Tarzan for six or seven years. Yeah, what if I can convince him to move there, and then I can take it to a whole nother level." And now you guys can see it on social media; it's like, it's wild.
Wow, that's sick. I never knew that. That's awesome.
Yeah, I thought that was, I swear I thought Tarzan stayed in Miami.
12:30 a.m. last night, we were outside; my wife's out there; we all had to get out of bed because one of the goats had a baby. And so I got Tarzan, you know, like waking up, giving birth to her, freaking helping her go give birth, cleaning it off. It's, it's messy. I don't want to describe it, you know. And then six in the morning, he's making content, getting like 50 million views on a video, going to clean up poop, going to fly to India tonight to go make content, like India.
Yeah. He's literally in India to go make content with king cobras. And anyways, like he's the perfect brand for, for like my world, and so I'm really excited to have him living with us and making this content because he's helping animals; we're making all this content together.
What's the most dangerous animal you have there?
The only animal I'm scared of is humans.
Whoa, that's a quote right there.
Yeah, wow. I learned that one from Tarzan, because it's the only animal on this planet that you don't know their intentions. I know what a snake wants to do; I know what a tiger wants to do; I know what a bear wants to do when it sees me. I don't know what humans want to do.
Wow. What's your favorite animal on the ranch?
There's a camel named Habibi. Habibi was the very first camera, very first animal that we got, and like when I see him, he sees me; we're just like, oh. So he, he knows exactly who you are.
Yeah. Well, I'm gonna bring him carrots, so that's why he gets excited. And then we got him a girlfriend; uh, her name's Naomi Campbell. This is my favorite name; it's my favorite name on the property. That's fine. Um, so yeah, that's, that's my favorite animal.
You're also the networking king. You started the most expensive mastermind in the world—$100,000 a year to join. How did you get such a big network?
So I was throwing free events for years, and I still throw them, uh, called Elevator Night. I've thrown it 51 times for free—no tickets, no sponsors, no sales on stage, just free—and it was my excuse to get a lot of people together, and then I could invite really good name speakers. It's a free event. I'd still get Russell Simmons, Jake Paul, all these guys that normally get paid a lot of money to speak, we're coming to speak for free because they knew I was getting 300 to a thousand entrepreneurs for free, like a lot of your networking events, same concept. And so I did that for years, and then I started speaking at a bunch of people's masterminds, and it felt like people were paying 25 grand, 30 grand, 35 grand to be at like the Radisson ballroom. There was no experience to it, right? I feel like I was like in Groundhog Day, just going through the same thing over and over and over, and there was very few masterminds that had like experience to it. So I came up with $100 Million Mastermind Experience. 2019, I had not thrown a mastermind before; I just spoke at masterminds, and I just showed people, like, "Sean, you're one of the first people to join. I'm gonna make the most experiential mastermind ever. It's very expensive; it's a hundred thousand dollars per person, but I'm not doing it for profit. I'm gonna go spend millions of dollars per event." So I would spend one to two million dollars per weekend to throw these masterminds. The first event you came to, I spent $3.2 million, three days.
How was that, dude? The people he had, I believe it. It was amazing; changed my life.
I rented Dan Bilzerian's mansion here in Vegas, the LA one.
Oh, the other one? The crazy, looks like a compound's not even a house; it looks like a palace. Uh, we rented an 80-million-dollar house on Sunset, rinsed out the Porsche experience. We had Mark Wahlberg as our first speaker, Bruce Buffer introducing everybody, uh, we had Kris Jenner, Magic Johnson, Dennis Rodman, Tyga performed, uh, Matt Barnes—Matt Barnes was training—we had freaking, what's his name? Chris Rock there. Not Chris Rock, the other, another comedian, Chris Tucker; he was hosting the poker tournament.
Yeah. I mean, like there were just so many, you know.
Yeah, that is an experience for sure, especially I haven't been around that, bro. It opened my eyes.
Yeah. And so that was our opening weekend, and then from there, I'm like, "Okay, well, I can't go backwards," right?
Yeah. No, you got, you got to go up; you got to go up.
Yeah. And so we've been doing that since 2019, um, and I'll be doing that mastermind, I'll be 70 or 80 years old. If I'm in a wheelchair, I'll still be throwing that mastermind. Like, I'm, I'm obsessed with networking and that experience.
What is your goal of the mastermind? What are you trying to accomplish with people like?
So there's three parts to it. One part is networking, so I want to bring in 100 entrepreneurs that are all doing between 5 and 50 million bucks in sales. So the next networking part is the business part. Saturday nights, I do a charity event every time, so I can raise six figures or more for charity every single time I throw a mastermind event. That starts to add up when it's been four years now and growing, right? Six figure, six figure, six figures, you know, dozens of times. And then Sunday's the experience part. I'll rent out a stadium. There's only 100 of us. I rented out Diamondbacks Stadium, the Dallas Cowboys Stadium. I rent out the stadiums and arenas for 100 people. The other part for me, selfishly, is I get to interview my heroes. I'm interviewing Hulk Hogan, Mark Wahlberg, Floyd Mayweather, Mike Tyson, like the people I grew up with, we all grew up with watching, right? I now have a bankroll or budget to work with to go book my favorite people in history. Hulk Hogan, come sit next to me. And so that part is super fun for me, and so that's why I overspend. I could throw the same mastermind for two or three hundred grand a weekend and still knock people's socks off; it would still be awesome, right? But if I spend one or two million dollars a weekend and make it ridiculous, I can bring, I'll build a legacy brand. People will go to these, people will be willing to show up too because they know it's going to be an experience unlike anything else I've seen.
Yeah. You also started a business podcast.
Yeah. It's already number one in three months. How do you pull that off?
That was in three months?
Yeah, yeah. So we just launched it; this today was episode 18.
Wow. So we've been number one for 29 days in a row, number one entrepreneur podcast for 29 days in a row, number three in the whole business category for 29 days in a row.
Nice. It's really hard to stay in that because I'm up against 800-pound gorillas, right?
Like, yeah, for sure, as you guys know, there's a lot—
Oh yeah, absolutely. We're top 20; we're hanging.
Yeah, yeah, about what? 20, 29?
Yeah, yeah. Top 20 is huge, by the way.
Yeah, think about it; there's almost five million podcasts. There's really only like a millionaires that are active, a couple hundred thousand are like really active, and then like five to ten thousand that are like consistently every week. So to be in the top 20 or 30 is nuts. Just be really clear. Thank you. I mean, you guys have a lot of viral clips; that's why I want to be so blunt today. All right, you guys have the most viral clips I've seen in podcasts. So I created the Money Mondays podcast because we grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money.
I think it's rude to not talk about money.
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the reason that we have financial illiteracy. I think that's the reason people are in credit card debt. I think it's the reason that people have so many fights—over half of marriages end over financially—financial, because people don't know how to have open discussions. But a lot of times, and arguments happen between friends over like 200 at a restaurant or 500 bucks at a nightclub, and they didn't like talk about who was going to split it. Well, let's all get bottles and like, I was gonna pay for everything. You're like, "Wait, should I pay for it? Should I pay for it? Do I owe him now?" Like that could have been settled with a very simple discussion or a text beforehand, like, "Hey guys, I'll put up three grand; you guys put up 500 bucks each," and you know, like, for sure, if I didn't say that and I expected 500 bucks each, you guys could get mad at me, or vice versa. And so the whole concept of the podcast is to have very blunt discussions about money, and I ask people during the podcast to spread the word about having these discussions with your friends, family, and followers. We need people to talk about money—about loans, rents, salary, leases, taxes, FICO score, what the hell's FICO—like, talk through these things. And that, that's why I think the podcast is doing so well; we're having very blunt discussions with boxers, athletes, business moguls, from a Dan Bilzerian to a cannabis guy and everybody in between. You're going to learn from people today is all about real estate, for example, like you're going to learn from people that just have really blunt discussion about money, right?
Do you think a lot of pro athletes go broke because they're not open about discussing money?
So it's a really scary stat: over 80 percent of NFL players and NBA players go bankrupt—not just broke, bankrupt—within five years of leaving the league.
Wow, think about that. Crazy.
I'm around them, so I, I see how it happens.
Yeah, it's scary.
Yeah, yeah. And it's unnecessary. Yeah, I understand buying one or two cool cars, buying one cool watch, buying something. I'm not saying don't buy a watch, yeah, etc. We have a balance, but bro, you don't need six cars here; you don't need a 19-person entourage. Yeah, you don't need your cousin's friends' sister's friend doesn't need to get eight grand a month to work with you and fly around with you and like pick up your clothes. It just doesn't. And so it's sad and refreshing to see guys we all look up to making 12 million dollars and 30 million dollars, and then they got to borrow 10 grand from us a few years later. That's scary. It's sad because they're not going to have another bite at the Apple. Like that NFL player is probably not going to go make a million dollars a year anywhere else ever again. So when they go blow through six million in the league, what are they going to do? I had one guy—I want to say his name, but he, uh, he went, he went about 10, 10 grand in exchange for his championship ring. He was already outside; he was putting that up for collateral.
Wow, think about that. For two decades, that player was from eight years old to like 20-something years old; they were fighting through high school, middle school, get into college, being the tiniest percentage to get into the league, going to get a championship in whatever sport they got. Think about that; how rare that is, and now they got to borrow 10 grand.
Yeah, you know how sad that is.
Yeah, I mean, but it, like you said, it goes back to, you know, not having that financial literacy and not being taught what to do with your money, not planting the right seeds, not having a balance when it comes to your spending, when having a million dollars in jewelry on, and for what, right? I mean, don't get me wrong; I think it's good to have fun and, you know, do things in moderation, but it's moderation. But there's a big difference between the first watch and the fourth watch, right? You got become numb into it.
Yeah, when you get your third Lamborghini, it's, you're gonna become numb to it. I'm serious.
Yeah, no, no, absolutely. Like, and then when you go to 19 nightclubs in a row, it feels the same; you're going to be numb to it. And so that's why I don't preach about like, "Hey, don't buy, don't buy your Starbucks coffee." Get your Starbucks coffee. "Hey, don't buy a Rolex." Go, go ahead, buy a Rolex, buy a paddock, go buy that one thing, but I promise you the fourth car is not going to change anything; you won't even feel it.
Wow. Buying the fourth watch, you will not even feel it; you won't care at all, not even one iota, not even the next morning.
I mean, you're right. I have five, and I only cared about the first one, to be honest. I don't even wear those—wear them.
Yeah, you wear them every now and then. I don't even wear the one—
Where to watch right now?
Yeah, I've had the same watch, 2008. Yeah, because I want to buy, uh, to buy a watch company; I want to invest in a watch company; I don't want to buy more watches.
Yeah, the same watch from Jason of Beverly Hills. We always joke about it for 15 years without the same watch.
Yeah, I didn't have a car for the last seven years; I Ubered everywhere for seven years. Think about that. So I want to invest in car companies.
So what's your advice then? Like, what do you spend money on?
Charity, experiences, and charity, experiences, and charity, mostly experiences. The charity part to me, remember, I donate a couple million a year to charity, but I'm raised a lot more. It's not like Dan's like handing out 10 million, like, not like I'm just making it rain to every charity. I'm specific about the main charities that are I'm involved in. I donate to some of my friends' charities, like Steve Aoki's charity, things like, like people that I love and respect, I donate to their charities. I know that the money is going to be used wisely, but outside of that, I'm helping raise money for other people's charities. But the experience is what I spend money on. Experience is what I care about because those are the things that like we are going to reflect on because, like again, life is really short, right? We're going to reflect on those moments. So I want to go to these rare countries. I
Want to go to these rare events? I want to go to these experiences, like, because those are things that we're going to remember. And those are things we're going to remember with our friends and family, right? What? What are what are some things that you actually struggle with? Like, what do you what do you battle with internally? Or whether it's an insecurity or some things that you have to continuously overcome, or prep yourself and talk to yourself?
And so the main thing is execution. Execution. I've taken on a lot of different projects, and that's a constant juggle of which one do I work on at what time of the day? And if something is slacking, I'm I overdo it. And if I overcompensate for the one that's lacking, then what happens to the one over here? And so I'm in a constant battle with myself. Of, I threw the world's largest toy drive; I'm gonna do it bigger next time. Well, if I do that, it means I'm gonna spend a ton of hours and months preparing for that, which will take away from acai bowl restaurants, or sports cards, or masterminds, or social media agency. Like, I have a lot of things going on. And so I've been really fighting with, like, don't do anything new, just scale the things that I have. And so it's a constant struggle I live every morning. And sometimes I wake up at 6 a.m., or 5 a.m. Lately, I've been waking up before 5 a.m. because I'm like, I gotta do this, I gotta do this, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. Wow. And I don't need to do any of it, but wait, I need to do all of it, right? Right. I need to. Yeah, like, I, you couldn't pay me 10 billion—this is an actual fact, you could lie detector test—you could not pay me 10 billion dollars to stop everything. Wow.
So you're not doing it for money? I couldn't care less about the money. He's addicted. I am addicted. I'm physically addicted. Hello, my name is Daniel; I'm addicted to working. Like, I'm addicted to it, and I'm okay with that, and I've accepted it. My, luckily, my wife has accepted it. She lets me be me, lets me be a crazy freaking bastard working on all these different things and supports me in it. But like, I'm addicted. So when you do mental health checks, like, what do you do to like having that balance? Like, when you know things aren't going your way or you're frustrated? Like, because mental health is big. So what do you do? Do you work out? Like, I mean, what what's what's your thing?
So my only true escape is poker. That's the only time. Wow. And that's a stressful game. So you still work? I enjoy it. I enjoy the good and the bad of poker. And I know also what's interesting is I enjoy the good and the bad of business. I know people are going to screw me over. I know I'm gonna have lawsuits. I know employees are gonna leave me. I know people are going to compete with me. No people are going to talk about me. How people are going to lie about me. People are gonna—I'm gonna have all these situations. The reason I don't feel like I have the mental health problems that come up a lot is I'm aware of it in advance, and I expect it. Um, let me give you a quick example. If you're dating a girl for three years, right, and every single week you guys go to dinner at eight o'clock, and every single week she shows up at 8:40 because she's late, at some point it's your fault to get mad at her at 8:40. You know she's going to be late because she did it over and over and over. I expect her to be late, so I make the reservation for nine o'clock, and I tell her it's eight o'clock, and she's gonna show up at 8:40, we're gonna get there at nine, everybody's gonna be okay. I do that in every aspect of my life. I know people are gonna screw up. I know things aren't going to happen on time. I know this person's gonna fail. I know this person's gonna—I know a few things are bad are gonna happen because I've been through so many people dying, screw me over, etc., over the years that I don't say I'm numb to it, but I'm expecting those things to happen. And so what happens is, for a lot of people, is they go through bad mental health situations because they don't think that the bad things are going to happen, or when the bad things happen they overreact to them and think it's their fault. It is not your fault that that girl shows up at 8:40 each time. It's not—that's part of who she is. It's part of how she grows up; takes her a long time to get ready, and there's nothing wrong—by the way, when I say a girl, it could be the guy, it could be a kid, it could be a parent—it's just an example. Is it an example of like, if you know someone's doing something over and over and over, you're gonna get mad at them? It's actually within yourself; you really have to look at those things in the situations. And I think that's why, from a mental health perspective, I'm calm in the chaos because I'm expecting—when I play poker, I've got pocket aces, Sean's got pocket kings, and a king comes out and we're playing for a hundred thousand dollars, and he hits the king, I don't get upset. My heart rate doesn't change because sometimes that's supposed to happen. It doesn't change the fact that I should play Aces. What am I supposed to do? Fold? No, I can't play pocket aces. Sometimes Sean's gonna have Kings, sometimes he's gonna hit a king, sometimes Sean's gonna have Aces, I'm gonna have Kings, and I don't hit a king, and Sean's gonna win again, and in one night he might beat me for all his hundreds of thousands of dollars. I am perfectly calm throughout the whole process because as long as I know that what I'm doing is right and I'm studying what I'm doing, I don't get upset with the results. The only thing I can do in my life is to be prepared for the situation. And if he gets lucky, or I get lucky, or this happens, or the whole building falls down, like something happens, I stay calm in the chaos. Wow. I've never met anybody who played poker when they're stressed out. That's fire. Yeah, that's a first. That is the first. But I I get it. What's the biggest poker hand you've played in? I get it. Um, so I've been playing it recently, a lot of hands that are over a million dollars. Holy. Oh my God. That's no heart rate change? No. I've never said that. No sweaty hands. I've never talked about this at all, by the way. I'm sweating hands? No, like, no. I've had some hands against some household name celebrities, some big business guys, some people that very interesting characters where we're playing in the handles for 1.4 million dollars. So we're in for 700,000 each. That's a house. That's crazy. And then 20 minutes later, the same thing happens versus another player at the table for another 1.2 million dollars. Like, so you've lost those hands? Some some. For sure. And it doesn't affect you at all? Not even a little bit? Not even for a second. Wow. My job is to study as much as I can, be in the right situation. If I made a mistake, then I'm gonna analyze it over and over and over. I won't be mad at the table, but shoot, when you get home you're gonna go—I still can think about it, right? When you're talking to people, I'm actually seeing hands right now. I remember situations right this year. Photographic memory. Very visual only of the hands that I lost. Um, I can tell you with extreme detail the hands that I lost. Wow. Not the hands that I won. Right now, I literally as I'm looking at both of you guys, I'm I'm seeing hands of like, I had Aces, they had Queens, they hit a Queen for 800,000. I can see it right the second. The hands that I won, I can't see. Wow. So you focused on the L's? Yes. I can't I can't improve the wins. No, not at all. I did what I was supposed to do. I got I either got lucky or didn't get like or didn't get unlucky, whatever the situation was. But the ones that I lost, if I played something wrong, or I I didn't do this right, or I didn't read Sean, like I could have known Sean had Ace, like if I would have done something wrong, I'd might have said the table, but man, that drive home that night I'm analyzing everything about it. Yeah. How good is the networking in poker? Uh, that's actually where I've met some of the biggest people in my life. Yeah, because you get to sit with household name athletes. There's a lot of household name NBA players that play poker, household name celebrities and actors, like the biggest of the biggest. Yeah. And so these are moments where—where else am I going to sit with that person for eight hours, ten hours, 12 hours, 14 hours? And there's only eight other people at the table, right? And most of them are like quiet because they're poker guys or business guys. Like, so if I can speak and talk, I can to network with household name NBA player, household name celebrity, big business guy, 900 million dollars of apartments, this guy is on the biggest selling blah blah—like I get to sit there with them for eight hours, ten hours, 12 hours. Yeah, and have real dialogue. You get to build real relationships. The only other place you could do that is like on a golf course, and even then I don't golf, though. Yeah, I mean, it's different. I've never, you know, I don't do that. Yeah. And so like, to me, poker is my my golf where I get to sit and spend time with someone, but there's people that are like the biggest names on the planet that I've got to just sit there and play with them for hundreds of hours. Like, we'll play eight hours, eight hours, eight hours every single week for years. Wow. And so from a networking perspective, it's great. That's also why I throw so many charity poker tournaments. I throw charity poker tournaments. Like, you've been to at almost every one of our masterminds; we throw a charity poker tournament on Saturday nights with Steve Aoki. We throw a charity poker event lots of times, and Dan Bilzerian's house will throw charity poker events. Like, over the years I've thrown so many charity poker bands because it's a really good way to raise six figures really easily without having like—everyone could just pitch in 500 bucks, thousand bucks, two grand, three grand, times that by a hundred, you got a quarter million dollars, right? Charity is ecstatic, the players are happy, everyone has a good experience, they get to play with a bunch of football players and basketball players and musicians and rappers, like everyone gets to have a good time, and they're not having to donate ten thousand dollars. All right. Yeah, with 500 bucks, thousand bucks, two grand—career is a lot of money for charity. So poker is one of my biggest networking tips.
We'd love to—God, were you always uh fearless? Like, when did you develop like all these skill sets? And how are you as a as a kid? Were you just like always a risk taker, jumping off of fences, or it's just like, were you just one day like, okay, well, I'm that guy? Like, how were you as a kid, personality wise?
So when I was in high school, I worked three jobs simultaneously, and I lived outside. Like, my mom, we had a one-bedroom, so like I was outside as soon as morning came, or I was out of school, I would be outside until it got dark at all times for my whole life. That's why I also I've never been sick. My wife always jokes about it; literally, I've never been to hospital in my life. Wow. After high school. And so and just being outside at all times, you just get immune to a lot of things anyways. And so I started my company; I was 17, and immediately we're like battling with the biggest clothing brands in the world. Did a million our first year, 9.5 million when we were 19, go public when we're 23. So I just got thrown in with the wolves and dealing with a lot of crazy business stuff. And from a personal level, I had some household name NFL players, Ricky Williams and then Daryl Russell, and I watched two different situations. Ricky Williams, one of the best running backs of all time, who would have broke every NFL record in history, just like he broke every college record in history, well after what happened with the cannabis, he lost, you know, this crazy career, this amazing career that he was going to have. My other roommate, Daryl Russell, he gets into a bad situation, he gets falsely accused of something, he's got loses his uh situation with the Raiders and the Buccaneers, etc., and then tragically dies, just runs into a bus on Santa Monica Boulevard at six in the morning. And so losing my roommate, one, losing a roommate to watch their career fall apart due to something that's now perfectly legal, which is cannabis, and then two, my dearest friend just crashed in the back of a car, and you know, this huge football player that's won the best of all time, just gone. I just I had that feeling of like, man, life is really short, right? And then another friend passed away, another friend passes away, another friend passed away, family member passed away. And so like after 10, 15, 20 people start passing away, and some of them that are—I had to re-watch it for years because they're well-known people, and then watching it all over the news—do you ever cry? I have cried. Yeah, it's really rare. I did cry when that when the football player passed away, when Daryl passed away. I cried. When did you stop crying? Um, when it starts happening a lot, there's less emotion to it because again it's this weird thing, like you start to like feel like it's going to happen. And so I've had some people pass away, they're like—I had three business friends passed away in the last two months. Whoa. Damn. It's like saying you're young, too. And so like and I didn't cry for any of those, which I wish I would have, but I don't I don't have that for a lot of people. But like, wait, wait, what do you mean you wish you would have, but you don't have that for a lot of people? I wish I would have. I wish I still had that emotion. Oh gosh. I wish I had that—buttons. Yeah. However, if my if my puppy passed away, I would cry. And I say that not to say like I would like to cry for more people, um, but it's happened so often that I can think of two dozen off top of my head that are close to me, not just like this—the kind of know them, or like you know of them, or you've met them occasionally—like these are actual like friend friends or people that have, you know, travel with me, live with me, go to dinner with me, like close people that are passed away. When you start to get to a number like 20 plus, it starts again—I don't say numb to it, but like it it's—no, that's what you have. So that's a lot. You come down. Yeah. And so there are situations where I'm I I wish I would, and I think the only ones that I have cried over is my grandfather, um, not my grandmother, even though I'm super closer. I like think about the fact of how how rare I cry. Yeah, I don't cry often, to be honest. Yeah, I think you kind of get numb to it. Quite a lot of the kids just—I have nothing against crying. No, I know, but if you trigger something now, I would cry right now, and you wouldn't feel bad about crying on camera. I have nothing against crying. I think it's very healthy for people to cry, right? And again, some of my closest family and friends call me like a robot because I don't have the emotions that—I'm aware of the emotions, but I don't really have them because I've had so many tragedies, from business friends screwing me over, people passing away, situations that go wild, like I just had so many of them happen that there's just not very many things that could make me cry outside of like, you know, my dogs. I don't think a lot of guys would admit it either. Um, no, because crying is something that again as as a man, we all—some some people just don't cry. They deal with it in different ways. Yeah, so I'm sure you deal with your emotions in different ways. I think it's powerful. Now, the last few years we've watched during championship games or boxing matches, etc., UFC fights, watching they show them crying. I think it's very powerful, people to see big burly men crying. I think it's important for them to see it. There's nothing wrong with it at all. I need a little bit—it is a powerful emotion that's releasing something inside of them, whether it's a past trauma, a tragedy, or they just worked for a decade to get to that moment, and then they lose the World Series of Poker and they get second, they lose Boston versus Miami, they lose game seven to blah blah—like they fought their whole lives to be in that moment, and then they lose. I think it's important for us to see LeBron James or Steph Curry or Conor McGregor, like seeing them cry, things important for our society for men. Absolutely to see it, that is perfectly okay to cry. Yeah, man, it's been a blast, Dan. What's—over—it's been 30 minutes. Oh my God, man. Damn. What's next for you? What are you trying to promote? Um, the Money Mondays is obviously I'm passionate about that. Um, the world's largest toy drive is coming up, and this December I'm gonna try to do 10 cities. Wow. Um, oh, you're doing 10 cities? Yeah. It's Vegas, one of them? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 10 cities because our 10-year anniversary. Yeah, you know, definitely want to be involved in that. Yeah, so yeah, podcast, charity, um, those are the main things, you know, people, sports cards, obviously, Cards and Coffee. Yeah, we didn't even talk about that. Yeah, we opened up here at the Mandalay Bay; that's our ninth store with Marshawn Lynch. That's a fun one. Yeah. Um, I'm sure I'll just come back, you know, this 30 minutes went by so fast. Yes, for sure. Um, thank you guys for watching. Make sure you follow me on Instagram at The Creator. Pop up around here somewhere. Thanks for tuning in, guys. Digital Social Hour. I'll see you next time.