$50M Business Expert: The Fastest Way to Level Up

The best time to build Your network was 10 years ago. The second best time is right this.

Second, literally four years ago. No one knew who I was, and all I did was like, hey, I'm gonna take Dan's advice. I'm start micro event. And this is something I implemented, and it literally made my brand and allowed me to connect with so many people.

You can host small events without any money involved, and you can do them more like meetups. Once you get those first three or four friends to show up and they pull their phones out and now you've got some video content and pictures, you're gonna have 20 or 30 next time, I promise.

You don't need to be the most skilled. You don't need to have the most money. You just need to be cool and you need to add value. And adding value can literally be just connecting people with people. You know, you're at 100k right now and you want to get to seven figures. You want to get to a million dollars. How would you make a million dollars from 100k?

If you can do 100k, you can do a million. Now.

Becoming wealthy requires a bunch of different skills. One of those skills is building a powerful network and then using that to grow your business, build your brand, make more money, do all these cool things. So today I wanted to bring in one of the most connected people I know, Mr. Dan Fleischman. He is. He owns and operates seven businesses. He's also an investor in over 40 companies. Got probably the top business podcast in the world still. If you guys don't know Monday, Money Mondays, you definitely need to check out that pod. And I just think about this. Dan is a super entrepreneur. He's got his hands in a lot of different things, but he's one of the skills I think is probably your top skill is just the amount of people you have connections with and how you leverage those connections to create win, win opportunities. It's not just for you, it's for. And you've done it with me and so many other people. So I thought that would be the thing we could talk about on today's episode. Thanks for being here, man.

My pleasure. It's fun.

Yeah, man. So I think about this Dan, probably one of the highest valued skills. You always say it, and people think it's cliche now, but your network is your net worth. But I think that's a. It's a huge skill for anybody. But the pushback I always get, bro, is people will tell me, as somebody who's coming up, how can I build a network. Easy for Dan to say, because he's done this. And I remember listening to you four years ago talking about this, and I just did the things, like, I just. Yeah, so I'm like. I tell people, I'm like, yo, you can do it. You know, just do execute the same playbook. So in 2024, is this still one of your top strategies? And then is it too late for people who are just starting out?

So the best time to buy real estate was 10 years ago. The second best time is today. The best time to build Your network was 10 years ago. The second best time is right this second. The difference is you can do it way faster and easier because of social media. You can collapse time with how many people you can interact with through social and then try to meet them in person to build more, deeper relationships. So the reason I say it is my network can either help me get a restaurant reservation or buy a whole restaurant because of the people I know on my phone. And everything in between happens from the interactions that I have. A lot of people try to be like, oh, I just want to make friends with Ed Mylett and Annie Frisella and Russell Brunson. And you can. You can interact with them, but they're also very busy. They have hundreds of employees each, and big, huge companies. And so what about the person that's working at the nightclub, working at the restaurant, working at the clothing store, working at the concert arena, working at the charity, working at the thing that you like or the thing that might be useful to other people in your world? And so building up a network, building up people, building up access and connections takes time. It compounds by you just being active, being active on social media, being active at live events, but by going to so many events is how I build my network. I go to a lot of events. I throw small events. I throw medium events. I throw big events. You don't have to throw huge events. You could literally have it at hotels in the lobby. You can do it at restaurant meetups. You can go to a real estate conference or a fitness conference or have workouts with your buddies or have a basketball game every Sunday morning with real estate executives or business executives. You can do so many things for free to build up your network. And what happens is you throw a basketball game every Sunday morning. It goes from six people to 20 to 40 to 100. You do a running club like Roger has. It goes from 12 people running to 26 to 100 people. Holy smokes. Hundreds of people start showing up for your Running club. Guess how much a running club cost. $00 cents.

Yeah. We just did a chat with Pace Morby and he talked about, hey, meet me in this parking lot and we'll go look at deals.

Yes.

He said like nobody showed up or one or two people showed up. And now there's mobs of people.

500, 800 people show up to Every time I was with Pace two days ago and literally he was like, oh yeah, tomorrow morning I've got a meetup. I was like, oh, really? Cool. And I. He had 600 people show up.

Yeah.

And the day before he had like 800 people show up, like just randomly, for free. It cost him nothing. But he's building community. Most people that show up to come hang out with him, they will remember that moment for years.

Yeah, it's wild. So I think about this a lot. Like, you know, whether if you're selling services, whether you're a real estate agent, you know, a mortgage person. I know you just recently got in the mortgage business. As if you didn't have enough things on your plate, bro, like so. Or coaches, you know, people listen. So pretty much people on this who watch and listen to these shows are people selling a service of some sort themselves or a service. And so if you think about what are the practical ways, they're like, okay, I understand, I need to meet more people and then. But do you need to be skilled? Like do what do you like? I knew a lot of people say they need, you need skills to bring to the network in order to be valued by that network.

So here's the thing. I started doing this when I was 17 years old, 18 years old, 19 years old. I was there interacting and you just got to be cool. And when I say cool, I didn't have a car. I wasn't showing up with something fancy. Like, I was just being very active. I wanted to learn, I wanted to listen. Like, you don't have to go there and try to big time people. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like a lot of people try to show off and flex and like I'm gonna there to provide value. You may not be able to provide value right now. You're going there to learn to be around people, to network, to interact, make friends, make relationships, be a sponge. And as you start to do that, you're like, by the way, I met Neil over here and Neil's got this big event, the forward event. He's in the real estate game, he's in the social media game. And then you meet some Other person that's busy and business person, like, hey, Neil, you should actually meet this person, Russell Brunson. He'd be a good speaker at your event. You're not making money from me. You just happen to meet Russell and you happen to know Neil. You connect them and next thing you know, Russell's on Neil's stage in front of a thousand people. Well, Russell remembers you for life and so does Neil.

Yeah.

First simple introduction. You didn't make any money from it, but you got some brownie points.

Yeah, that's huge. And I think that's also how. When you do need something, I feel like the people who. When you do get texts and calls from people, it's from people who have done those types of things, then those are the people who you want to help in the future.

Of course.

So either you'll get it back without even asking, or when you do ask for something, people are glad to help you because you've been that person for them.

Absolutely.

So that's huge. I think about, you know, when you build your connections and things like this, you're trying to. That's just a great way of providing values. Think about, okay, what does this person need? And then how could I connect them? Maybe I know somebody. You know, it could be as simple as. I remember going to an event and Jesse Lee, she was speaking at the event and she's no longer with us. Really sad story. But she was just, like, lighting up the room speaking on all this stuff. I was like, man, this lady's great. She's awesome. And so I just. I remember it was in a mastermind that I was in. It was Cole's mastermind. And so there was nobody filming it in, like, high def so that she could use it for her social, right?

So.

So I grabbed my camera and just set it up and filmed her talk, like with the. With the shotgun mic. And then afterwards I was like, hey, I filmed everything in 4K. If you want to use it for social, like, here you go. We became friends just off that, right? Just me giving her something. And it was just something I was thinking in the moment, hey, this lady's really big on social. She's not filming this talk. Let me see if I can help. So I think of, like, practical ways people can just do things. And she was happy, like, and you would think, oh, they're not going to talk to me. No, they will. Like, you can just walk right up to people and talk to them.

They're going to repost your content and shout you out. Yeah, and all of a sudden Jesse Lee's got a million followers and shouting out Neo. Because you could have done it from a cell phone and she would have been happy.

Yeah.

Even if there was cameras there. You went, made some cool clips for her and just chopped it up into 15 to 30 seconds and airdropped it to her or posted it and tagged her. Like, that's cool no matter how. Listen, household names legends, Gary Vee, Ed Mylett, etc, they like to see that stuff. 15 second video that you did from your phone, they'd like to see that stuff. Even though they have fancy camera people.

Yeah, it's huge. And that's a great point. Like, even if it was just on the phone, I've done this with people where, hey, you're talking with Roger. You're talking with somebody at an event. I grabbed footage of you guys chatting.

Right.

Hey, dude, I just got this clip for your social. Let me airdrop it to you. Yeah, that's value.

Like, it's cool and we remember it.

Yeah.

Like, you can group chat it to us, you can airdrop it to us, you can tag us on social. Like, those are just basic things that Neil's talking about that are like real life stuff. Yeah, that. It's whether we're an event, we're in a business thing. But it all boils down to this. If you know someone needs something, I need a food vendor, a caterer, a taco truck, and you know, someone with a taco truck. I will always remember you. You just hook me up with someone that has a taco truck for my charity event. I will always remember you. Just that simple. It might be your buddy from school that has a taco truck or their uncle has one. And that simple thing. I need flowers for this, or I need catering for that, or I need a speaker for this. I need lighting system or security cameras. A vendor for everything I have in my phone. So you know how people post on social. I'm looking for a new security system. Friend of margaritas got robbed in Texas and he's like, I need a new security system. I immediately group DM'd him and group chatted him with a guy that builds security systems who's part of my mastermind. That guy is a Super bowl champion. So now the guy that has security camera system is like, holy smokes, I'm gonna go do a security system for this guy that has a Super bowl champion and big offices and vice versa. The guy, that super bowl champ was like, oh, my gosh. I have a trusted vendor coming From Dan. Yeah, that's instead of just a random person that has security cameras. I know this person because Dan sent them over. Everybody won. And they both said. They both started sending me pictures when it. When it was done of them together. I don't make any money from that, but I sure got brownie points.

That's huge. Hey, quick question for you. How much have you been loving these podcast episodes? I've been getting so much great feedback from you guys. And right here is where I would typically put in the ad read for these episodes. But you know what? I was thinking about it. The only thing I really want to promote right now, the only thing I want you to do is just hit that subscribe button trying to grow this thing out. And so many of you are watching and listening and sharing, but you're not subscribed to the channel. So whether you're watching, listening, hit the follow button, hit subscribe. And that's going to allow me to grow this thing. Let's get back to the episode. And so when you think about all these companies you've invested in, and has a lot of this come from people in your network that just present you with options or, like, how does it. How do you actually find these opportunities?

So I get around 300 pitch decks per year, but I only invest in 8 to 12 companies per year. So it's really only 2 to 3% out of all these pitch decks that are coming in, maybe 4% at most that I'm actually investing into. From there, I think about the people, Right? So if Neil recommends it right away, it goes to the top of the list. Okay, Neil knows this person, or Neil's. Neil put in 100 grand into this company. This Ding, ding. That, like, that's some serious points in my, in my mind that I'm more likely to invest. Oh, Neil knows this person for eight years. Ding, ding. Another point happens there. Oh, yeah. This person's company is already doing 4 million. Ding, ding. Like, the things that come from it are from events, relationships, the people who's behind it. But all of it stems from I have to trust this person. Do I believe that this person's going to work their butts off year two, year three, year four? Because entrepreneurship is hard. So I believe that this person, if they have to pivot or change or things get tough, they're going to fight through it and not just give up. Because entrepreneurship is hard. And I will feel much better if it gets recommended by Neil because I know that that person needs either a friend of yours, one of Your mastermind members, a coaching client, someone that you know in your atmosphere that. That makes it way more comfortable for me to want to put a check in.

Yeah. And I think it's also the. It's like, signal, like, hey, this. There's all these boxes you're checking. And then it becomes less risky.

Yes.

Because people are just trying to manage risk at some point. And when I think about, like, people who are sharing contacts and things like this, at a certain level, they won't recommend people unless it's trusted. You know, like in the beginning, people are just recommending everybody, but nowadays, like, if you say somebody, you're putting your name on that.

Right, right.

So you're not just going to recommend.

Picky about that.

Yeah.

And I've even post sometimes I like, randomly put it in my stories or on social or like in my captions. If I introduce you to someone, you better follow up. Yeah. Because if I do that and you don't follow up, you're off my introduction list.

Yeah.

Whether you're the receiver or the vendor that I'm introducing.

Yeah. And every time you've connected somebody in with me, it's been like, somebody that would actually help in terms of an affiliate opportunity or an opportunity for my audience or for events. So it's usually like someone that would help that person's business, essentially. And it always ends up working out that way. Whether or not you do business together or not. It's worth getting into. So you talk about. Okay, this is a really great point for everyone watching or listening to this is you don't need to be the most skilled, you don't need to have the most money. You just need to be cool and you need to add value. And adding value can literally be just connecting people with people, you know? So just become a Rolodex. Like become a master connector.

Yes.

That's a skill in and of itself that's super valuable. Along the way, you'll probably find your thing. So for me, it was like, I didn't have a podcast to invite someone on in the beginning. Then I have shit to talk about. Right. So I'm doing business first, then I have things to talk about. Now I start a podcast. I remember trying one in the beginning and it failed because it was just boring, bro. Like, you know, not. I guess the world doesn't need every. Everyone to start a podcast.

No, not everybody, but there are. Listen, 18 years old, Casey Adams. Yeah, that's true. Remember, his first interviews were Gary V. Me, Larry King. Like, just think about. He was 18, 19. He was an actual baby. And now he's got podcast network. He's at Nexit. Like he sold mediakits.com. like he's done a lot of stuff stemming from being an 18 year old, 19 year old, you know, and he didn't have all the information. He was just asking the questions. Yeah, but he studied every single speaker.

Yeah, I love that. So here's one thing that I think would be really helpful for people. You talk about this a lot and this is something I implemented and it literally made my brand and allowed me to connect with so many people is, you know, events. Right. But instead of, you know, trying to be involved with events and speaking at events, if you're not there yet, host your own event for sure. So I remember when I hosted my first event, I didn't even know what I would teach or speak on. I had done well in business, but I was not a good presenter. But just me hosting the thing, right, got me friends with all the people there. I got credit for doing it by hosting it. But can you talk about like hosting small events? Because I think that's a huge strategy that everyone can use.

So you can host small events without any money involved and you can do them more like meetups. I remember 2017 at the W Hotel, over and over, like five, six, seven times. I had a meetup in their lobby by the bar. And it was for Ethereum or cryptocurrency because I just liked Ethereum at the time. 2017, and then it went from like 36 people to 70 something people. Then it got to be like 150 to 200. Well, the hotel loved me. I'm bringing in 100 people, 150 people to buy drinks and food and snacks like out of nowhere. And they all have some money because they're in the cryptocurrency space. They loved it. I didn't have to rent anything. I didn't have any. Like, it was great for them. I also do my events on a Monday through Thursday. Way less competition. If you try to throw an event on Friday, Saturday night, people are busy. No one's busy on a Tuesday. Right. And so I can throw a meetup on a Tuesday. You can do it for real estate, you can do it for fitness, you can do it for fashion, you can do it for doctors, you could do it for crypto, you could do it for whatever industry that you like and people will show up. I prefer to do niches. By doing a niche gets really interesting because you start to get all These connections in a niche or I do it in something that has a cool hobby or passion. Let's say you are 18 years old and you start throwing a car meetup for luxury cars every Sunday at 8am Think about your Rolodex on month six. Just a once a month, Sunday morning meetup or once a week, Sunday morning meetup and four cars show up. Then nine, then a hundred. And there's Ferraris and Porsches and Bentleys and whatever cool cars are showing up. You don't even own one of those cars. You can't even afford to rent one for 400 bucks or 800 bucks or 1500 bucks that it costs to do it. But guess what, you're the host of the event. It costs you nothing to meet up in a parking lot or at a park or wherever. And now your phone is filled with people who have Porsches, Ferraris, Bentleys and Lambos.

Yes. Yeah. It's huge because. And you get credit for just being the host.

Absolutely. They're all posting you.

Yeah.

They're all introducing you.

Yeah. So I remember that being a huge lift for my personal brand just by putting that thing together. And then it kept growing from there. But I think this is the hard part, Dan, is like people starting off, they're afraid of only the three, four people showing up. But I mean that's just the way it is.

That's why I'd be happy if three or four people show up today and I throw 3,000, 4,000 person events. But if I started something new and I was like, I'm going to do a car meetup because it got me excited talking about it, I'm going to do a car meet up on Sunday. I might only have three or four friends show up. But you know what's going to happen the next Sunday? 21, 200 people that their friends know because it compounds. It's bigger than me at that point. Once you get those first three or four friends to show up and they pull their phones out and now you've got some video content and pictures of those three or four cool cars, you're gonna have 20 or 30 next time, I promise. Yeah, and I can pinky swear you're gonna have a hundred after that because everyone's gonna pull their phones out. They're gonna want to go to your Porsche club or your Ferrari club or your cool cars club or whatever it's called. Cars and Coffee. Like there's so many fun names to that meetup. Cost you nothing. And guess what? When that Lambo pulls up and he's like, hey, can I bring my four friends that have Lambos too? He's gonna introduce you. The 18 year, 19 year old, like we're just talking about. He's literally gonna introduce you and pump you up. The guy that's 56 years old, a Lamborghini, he's pumping you up to his four friends that are in the hedge fund space that have Lambos too.

Yeah.

Cost you nothing.

The other part that's really cool is when you have something like this, I found it gives you some purpose to like posting, Right. You got something to talk about. Like I've got a webinar coming up or I've got an event coming up, there's something to talk about, there's leading into it. Then there's all the content you create while you're there. Then there's a bunch of content afterwards.

Exactly. So you have like during and after you get all this, you can do this with pickleball.

Yeah.

Football, basketball, golf, running, whatever.

Yeah.

Cost you nothing.

And in the business world, I seen people do real estate niches, not just real estate sales in general. There's, you know, how to uncover deals or distress deals or people that are really experts at certain things. You could bring in one person to come talk and then use that person as a magnet to get everyone else to show up.

Absolutely. That's what I did with elevator nights. I've thrown elevator nights 56 times for free. Yeah. My first time I thought I was gonna have like 30 people show up. I had 100 and something people show up and the next one was hundreds. Because the football players want to invite business people, business people want to invite girls, the girls want to invite other business people. Bada bing, bada boom. I have this big event out of nowhere and the next one was huge because people are inviting people. It becomes bigger than you just got to get started and not worry about if it's three or four people.

Yeah. And the other part that is is really big. I think about this as a long term strategy is somebody's watching this, bro, and they're like, yo, I get it, guys. But like how do I get paid on this?

And.

And you're thinking about how to get money right now. But what this is a strategy is how to get something really big down the road.

Listen to this. You start your car club or your pickleball club for free. And then after two or three of those Sundays, you can charge 50 bucks.

Yeah.

You don't think you can charge 50 bucks for a running club? Or 50 bucks for a pickleball thing. Or 50 bucks for a car meetup. Of course you can. You might like. Oh, 50 bucks. That's not much. You have 300 cars show up. That's $15,000. And you have zero overhead. Oh, and by the way, you've got six food trucks that pay you a thousand bucks each. You've got clothing sponsors that set up boots. You're making 20, 30 grand on a Sunday morning. That costs you nothing in a parking lot. Yeah, that's real life. You can do a pickleball thing, and 60 teams show up times 50 bucks each. Holy smokes. You're making all this money, $3,000 on a Sunday to have people play pickleball. You didn't pay for the pickleball courts. You didn't buy pickleball equipment. You might not even be able to spell pickleball. But you can make three grand every Sunday doing this thing.

Yeah.

So you can monetize it. I throw elevator nights for free 56 times. I still do it to this day, however. Aspire Tour masterminds, coaching. I monetize other things. So you can have your free event in real estate or fashion or medical space or whatever crypto, whatever category you're in, and then either monetize that or monetize other things in your life because of that.

Yeah, that's a huge point. So I was in mortgage business. Still amazing. But my goal was not to monetize the event, but to get more opportunities for my mortgage business. So I'll give you guys an example. I remember doing something with Bradley.

Yeah, right.

Bradley has a great podcast here in Vegas. So we did something together. I hosted an event at his office and got to become friends with him. Then Bradley's really good friends with this guy, John Gafford. Well, John Gafford owns Simply Vegas and in here. So they have, I don't know, a couple hundred, maybe even more. One of the top real estate companies in Vegas. I get most of my business from real estate agents.

Right.

Connect right there. Like, so that's not just like, hey, how do I get my next deal? That's how to get my next hundred deals.

Exactly.

From one connection.

Right, right.

So it's like, I want people to start thinking bigger with some of this stuff. Yeah. It doesn't matter. If that doesn't happen on your first one, it might happen on your fourth event, and there'll be a connection that pays you not just a little bit of money, but a lot of money.

Absolutely.

And this is. This is the Part I think people miss. This is why people ignore it. But going back to events and then we'll move on to something else but for events. Tell me your opinion on this. I've noticed I've been speaking a lot more events in the last two years. I've noticed there's a few that are run well and they do well. There's a lot now that are struggling. They can't get people to show up. So do you think it's because I have a theory on this? I think it's because information is everywhere. People are overloaded with information now. YouTube, you know, all social media, everything. And it's I think like celebrity in their mind. The value of it's come down because celebrities have become so accessible through content and stuff. I still think they're super valuable in person, but I just don't think it's as valuable as it was a few years ago. A few years ago you could just throw up a billboard of like, here's all my speakers and people just buy the tickets. Now you do that and it might be crickets. Nobody shows up. So you have to be really good at marketing it. What do you think about this?

So there's a lot more events than there was before. There's a lot more social media than there was before. There's a lot more podcasts than there was before, and some people that do have a lot more access to information. But you don't need that many people to show up to fill up an event. When I'm throwing events, I want 300, 2000 people. My large format events are 1000, 2000, 3000 people. You're talking about a whole city like Los angeles that has 18 million humans. I'm not looking for a hundred thousand people show up. I'm looking for one. One or two or three thousand. Really not that big. And most business conferences are really 200 to 500 people. Anything forward is an anomaly. There's not that many thousand person events. Like you throw 1500 people. I mean, I know you could have thousands if you wanted to. That thousand 1500 range. I can name them. There's not that many that are consistent. Like forward is like, there's not outside of like, you know, our circle of friends that are throwing it on a consistent basis. And so the number is just not that big when you really think about it. So you have to think about who's in that town that's compelling. The reason for Aspire Tour in Dallas, we had 4,300. When we had Mark Cuban, Dallas legend You get guys like Emmett Smith in Dallas, you're going to crush it. You get someone that's Deion Sanders in a certain city, like Colorado, you're going to crush it.

Yeah.

So getting characters that are city specific helps a lot too. People don't do that enough. You get a guy or girl that's repping that city where they have a strong audience in that city, that's going to help a lot. Other thing is picking some characters that are not part of the normal speaker tour. There's a lot of speakers that you see on all the flyers you and I included that in certain sectors are going to pull an audience or our audiences are going to come there because we're going to their city. However, there's plenty of people to go get that are just legends in that city. The old college quarterback from that city, the TV newscaster that's been on TV for 17 years in that city. You'd be surprised what happens in San Diego, California, if you get the newscaster from there, like the radio station hosts from there. And so I think the biggest thing is most flyers are not hitting different emotional things. They need to have a diversity of speakers that cover different categories and make it compelling to want to go see that person.

Yeah. And then I think about you doing this when you don't have like a connection to one of these people in the city. I think about maybe just looking at who's coming through. So, for example, like say Dan's going to be in Vegas this week because he's speaking at an event. You could, you might find out if you DM him that he's going to be here for three, four days. That's what I just did. I was like, hey, when are you going to be in Vegas next? He was actually flying here at the time.

Yeah.

But like he might have said next week, whatever. If I was trying to throw a meetup and I wanted Dan to be there. If I said to Dan, I said, hey, I have a hundred person meetup and would love to have you there. 20 minutes, 30 minutes. He would probably say yes. Like, even if you didn't even know him that well, he'd probably say, because that's solving a problem. It's like, Dan would love to talk to a hundred people. It's a content creation opportunity. You're doing all the work. He just has to show up, speak and leave. That's easy. So make it easy for the person to say yes. I've done this with several people and I bullshit them. I mean, make sure you can cash the check, but, like, write a check that you don't know. Like, say, hey, I've got this thing happening. There's going to be this many people there at the time. You may not know that that many people are going to show up. But what will happen is because you made that commitment to somebody, you'll be forced to come through.

Then you're going to work your butt off to make it happen.

You'll send a thousand DMs, you'll send calls, you'll do whatever you need to do. Because you're like, dude, I told Dan that there's going to be a hundred people here.

Yes.

There's going to be a hundred people here.

Yes.

The other thing I found is a lot of people get stuck on the number, bro. I've been to somewhere, it's supposed to be a couple hundred. They only get like 80 people or 100 people, depending on how the room is set up. 80 is fine, bro. It looks great. It looks like it looks full to me.

I just spent the last three days for Tony Robbins mastermind. Yeah. There's 24 people. 24. But they paid a quarter of a million dollars each.

Dang.

I don't need hundreds of people to be there. I need 24 people that are that caliber to be in the room. There are plenty of events that I have gone to speak at, literally in living rooms that are 10 people. But the 10 people were interesting ballers in a certain category, Right?

Yeah.

They're hedge fund guys or they're real estate guys, or they're crypto guys, or these ladies built up all this multifamily apartments. Like, I would go speak to 10 people. I would. Yeah, I have and I just did. I literally just spent three days with 24 people. Now Tony's Mastermind will get much bigger. Become a 50, then it caps out at 100. But the concept is, like you mentioned, it does not have to be a big room. The numbers thing is so irrelevant. You could throw a cool event with 12 of your friends, make video content there, and I promise you, next time it'll be 30 and then 60 and then 100. It will just. Because now you've proven it. Yeah. You can showcase videos and photos of your real life event. Now you've proven that you're actually going to come through.

Yeah. And it becomes a memorable thing that people know you for. So people are like, oh, yeah, Neil's the dude who does those events. Dan's the guy who does those events. And then that connects you to more Opportunity. So I think about this. If you're listening to this show, watching this, and you're like, dude, I make 80k, I make a hundred k. And in one of these services, could be anything. Real estate, maybe they own a marketing agency, they want to service more people. Is this the strategy or what would you recommend? Like, what would be your thing? If you're at a hundred K right now and you want to get to seven figures, you want to get to a million dollars, which is like, I don't know why people want that number, but they want it. Right. What would be, how would you make a million dollars from 100k?

So it's gasoline on the fire. When I think about when someone says, I'm doing $100,000 in sales, if you can do 100k, you can do a million, there's no question of it because you've already proven that people will pay for it. Yeah, there's no question wondering, can. Can I build from 100k to a million? A trillion percent? Yes. There's no way that you can't because you already got people to spend $100,000 with you. Now how do you do it more efficiently? How do you get more clients? Who is your avatar? Who is your client? And how can you get them to refer you people or get their competitors or get people in the industry now that you've proven it and you can showcase that you've already spent, got $100,000 worth of clients, there's literally no reason you can't get a million. Nothing outside of time and energy of you putting forth the effort. Yeah, because you've already proven it now. Going from 0 to 100k, super hard. Yeah, super hard. I would go work for people for free. When I started Elevator Studios 14 years ago, 2010, 11, like, I was doing the first. Some first campaigns, no commission. Or let me just go give this to Khloe Kardashian and she'll post about it. But then I got to have screenshots of it and prove that I did it. And they would wire me 25 grand to give to her. And now she's 500,000. Right. But by doing that, I can now say, hey, I worked for this clothing brand and I got Khloe Kardashian and I went and did it for Tyga and then I went, did it for this person. I did those things for free at first. Like, my events were free, my first deals were free. But guess what? Right after that, started getting events got bigger, clients got bigger. They were wire transferring and because I had those first initial clients, I did the same thing. My energy drink. I gave cases away to liquor stores and grocery stores and local grocery stores and Asian stores, in Mexican restaurants, in the local country bars. And guess what happened? I went to the retailers and said, hey, I'm in those country bars. I'm in those Mexican restaurants. I'm in those Asian grocery markets. Of course they bought for me. Yeah, of course they bought for me because the local community of every culture was buying my drinks. They didn't know. They weren't paying for it at first. And guess what? Once they sold through those drinks, I didn't give them the next round for free. They paid for it. And so I do a lot of things for free at first to build up my brand and to showcase that my drinks will sell. And then I could show the numbers. Hey, I sold six cans per day at that Asian market. I was selling a case a day at the country place. And guess what? The Mexican restaurant was crushing it. Every Taco Tuesday, it had to go through eight cases. You don't think I can now go get every Mexican restaurant in town and every other Asian market and every other cowboy saloon or bar? Of course I can. I got proof now.

Yeah. Proof over promise. That's it. So you think about any service. Doesn't matter what it is. If you have some reputable clients that people recommend or that people would know, you can continue to leverage those to get more clients for sure, and more relationships. But some of those initial people, you might have to just do whatever you got to do for free.

For free. I would lose money over it.

Yeah, I remember. I remember I wanted to speak more. The first few times I get to speak at a big event, I had to pay. So I was like, I'm a sponsor at the event. And they're like, okay, you can have 10 minutes to talk. But then now I have the proof of the video of me on stage. So then I applied to the next event. I'm like, here's footage of me. I just spoke to 500 people.

Yep. You've got the content now.

Yes. So it's just like, if you know how to leverage things, I think it's. It's definitely a strategy to invest in. And a lot of these things, like, you can do them for free or close to free, but sometimes you do have to put up some money. I remember doing the first Forward event for 7, 75 people, and I had to pay some people, you know, 10k, 20k fee to make it all work and maybe Cover lunch. But then I didn't even sell anything at the event, but I got a bunch of relationships for business from it. So I think that was the footage that I was able to use to do the next one. So it goes from 75 to 200 to 500 to a thousand.

Right.

And then. But you need the footage along the way and all the proof, and you need all the people there telling their friends about it too, which I noticed. So now, okay, this is kind of the. The end of this circle, closing this gap. You're making more money. You're doing the things, and you need to invest this money. So I have this thing now where after losing money in some, you know, risky deals and things like this, I think about it this way, and I know you have a strategy on investing that you can talk about, but I take a lot of risk in business. So, like, I have to put up a bunch of money for event. Like, we just spent 800 grand for an event. I might lose my tail on that.

Yep.

But it's a lot of risk. But I get the reward. Once I've made money, I feel like taking risk off, you know, and I don't know if that's the right way of thinking about it, but I work so hard to get all this money. I don't want to take a risk all over again. So I want to put it into, like, the S&P 500, or I remember putting money in bitcoin and forgetting about it, or, you know, real estate because it just feels like you can sleep at night. What's your strategy on, like, okay, you've got a couple hundred grand. What should you allocate that money to?

So the way I describe it is called 40, 40, 20. I do 40% low risk. I want to make between 5 and 9% for the year. I do 40% medium risk. I want to make between 10 and 30% for the year, and I do 20% high risk. This is my shot at glory. This is cryptocurrency. This is angel investing, things like that. I'm hoping that this works. And I get like, a 5x, a 12x20x, something crazy happens. But if it doesn't, the low risk and the medium risk will cover this high risk. On the low risk side, S&P 500 is perfect.

Yeah.

People hear the S&P 500. Like, oh, it's a stock market. It's risky. Well, of course you can have ups and downs. However, over the last 92 years, the S&P 500 has averaged over 11% a year. That's better than most financial planners, financial managers, wealth managers, blah blah blah. And you're betting on the top 500 companies on the planet on the stock market. Okay, I'm in. This year it's up 24 before the whole stock market going through the roof, which is gonna make it go even higher. But before that 24, are you kidding me? Like that's crazy. And so S&P 500 is a great example. CDs at your bank are paying over 5% right now. You know ludicrous that is at your own Wells Fargo, bank of America Chase will give you 5% at your own bank. That's effectively 0% risk. By the way, bank of America goes bankrupt, you got more things to worry about. Right? And it's not like it's going to happen overnight. And it's unlike it's not going to happen. But the point is it's basically 0% risk to earn 5% on your own money inside your own bank. So if you do nothing, at least get 5%.

Yeah, right.

You got 100k, 200k set up at least compound make 5, 10k a year in your own bank account. In the middle there's three main things. Real estate, stock market, cash flowing businesses. Real estate is safe and secure. If you have good people around you or you co invest with someone that's good at it. If you co invest and Neil gives you some advice or you're in his mastermind. Okay, well it's much safer than you going and trying to do it by yourself. Right. If you go try to do it by yourself, it becomes a high risk category. The stock market. I just look at the main stocks, Amazon, Tesla, Facebook, companies that I buy from Walmart, like things like that. I buy from them all the time anyways. Why wouldn't I buy Apple if I have an iPhone? Why wouldn't you buy Apple stock if you have an iPhone? If you'll spend fifteen hundred dollars on a phone, why won't you spend fifteen hundred bucks on Apple stock? So I'm not a rocket scientist on stocks. I buy from the companies that we all buy from in the cash flowing businesses. That would take a long time but you can listen to like the Cody Sanchez is and the muscle and Alex Hermosi, that type of audience will, they'll teach you about those type of things. But cash flow and businesses are very interesting because of how many are becoming available. And you can do some pretty creative deals nowadays, take over and so that's my flow. I do 40% low risk, 40% meaning risk 20% high risk. You can adjust it based on your own type of character. Like what parts excite you. Did you get excited when I just said 5% is for sure. Did you get excited about the stock market or 11% or. Oh, yeah, I should buy Apple stock. Like, think about who you are as an investor.

Yeah. Think about Tesla, like, for sure. People did this stat on, like, whether they would have bought a Model S or a Model 3 or instead just put the money into Tesla stock. Oh my God, it's wild. I think, I think it's like one of the top performers other than like Nvidia or something like that. It's insane.

And it's never going to stop now. Can it have roller coasters and go down tonight? For sure. They can have 5, 10, 20% drop. But over the long run, the guy Elon's going to keep selling a million cars at 60 grand a car. Well, holy smokes, that's more than all the other car companies combined.

Yeah.

So I'm just going to bet on Elon Musk.

Yeah. I think about you, you know, like you would, you would understand this. So you do some gambling when you're in Vegas. You're a big poker guy from years ago, play blackjack. I think you've even told me about some strategies on like, how you'd hit the casino and leave. But I'm just noticing that when I do trading, I kind of start becoming a degenerate gambler. Like, I don't trade and I just, like, I realize it's almost like it's stacked against you in terms of you're up against these people who know everything.

Yeah.

And it's like, I don't know. For me, anytime I've done short term trading, I've lost. Just. I'd rather just play if I'm going to gamble. Let's just go to the casino.

I have an easy answer for you. Yeah. Why would you ever sell your Apple stock?

Because you think like, oh, it just ripped and it went on this rally. I want to sell it and then buy it back lower.

Who can time the market like that? Who has time to time the market like that? And why, like, just buy more Apple stock. If you bought it at 200 and it goes to 220, you can just keep buying more. I know it sounds counterintuitive. Like, wait, we're from 200, 220, it's Apple. It's going to go from 220 to 250. It might have some drops along the way it's going to end the year 300, it might have some drops along the way. It's going to end at 340 and then 400 and then 450. Then it's going to stock split and do it again. And do it again. Like it's done for 20 fricking years.

Yeah.

And over and over and over.

I remember you told me the same thing with crypto. So I was thinking about, hey, should I invest in crypto? You know, Dan, do you think I should put money in bitcoin? You're like, yeah, just put it. Put in bitcoin. Just buy a little bit every year. We actually posted a video about this last year. And you're like, just put in a little bit of money in bitcoin every year because it's. It's becoming scarce. Yeah, there's only so much and people are going to want more of it. And it's.

How much was it then? 25,000.

It was 25k, so I started buying.

85,000.

Yeah, I think it hit almost 90k today.

Oh, my God.

So I remember buying this for like 8k during COVID or something like that.

Yeah.

And then I remember it, you know, bought some ETH and some bitcoin. But if I would have traded this, bro, I would have lost. There's no way. Because it went up to like 60k, then it went all the way back to 20.

Yes.

And I remember you were at a Mastermind in Miami. I think it was like, Rick Ross was there and all these people were there and you were talking about bitcoin to all these rich guys and you're like, put some money in bitcoin. I remember, like a month or two later it crashed. And I'm sure you get DMs from people of like, yo, dude, you told me about bitcoin Buy More.

That's what I said.

Yeah, yeah.

Everyone just forget it. Yeah.

And so I. This happened to me by accident, but I had a bunch of money with Coinbase. I almost got hacked. So they froze my account and then I got locked out of it, so I couldn't touch it. And I kept emailing them and I was so busy with work.

That's so good for you.

Yeah, I was so busy, like, I couldn't, like, follow up and I would, hey, whatever happened to my crypto? And then I'd email them and then they would send me a bunch of requirements to send my ID and all of a. And I wouldn't do it. And then like four Months. Hey, whatever happened to my crypto? So finally I got my shit back.

Yeah.

But then when I opened it, it was way up. So I was like, just. It just taught me that, like, hey, I would have messed all this up because I would have been a gambling. And if you just set it and forget it, you'll be all right as.

Long as it's a quality listen to this podcast. I know we can't see you. Raise your hand if you think that the Apple iPhone will still be here in five years.

Yeah.

Who thinks Walmart will be here in five years? Who thinks Tesla will be here in five years? And why the hell would you sell your Tesla stock? Why would you ever sell your Apple stock? Why? Why would you sell Walmart stock? They're gonna go from 3,000 stores to 3,200 stores to 3,400 stores. You don't close Walmart. Right. IPhone has not had a bad year. It can have swings. But if Apple, if you believe it's going to go from 1 trillion to 2 trillion, and 2 trillion, 3 trillion, why the hell would you ever sell it? Why? There is no reason at all. You can hear the emotion in my voice. There's no reason to sell Apple, Tesla, Meta. These companies are not going anywhere. Their founders are too young, too cool. They've been through too many things. They have. They acquire all these other companies. When you buy Meta stock, you're not just betting on Zuckerberg and Facebook. He bought Instagram for $1 billion. Guess what Instagram does a billion dollars a week now. Less a billion every five days or four days now. And by the time we leave here, it's going to do a billion every three days.

Yeah.

And then two days and then one day. Why? They bought WhatsApp. You're not just betting on these companies. When you invest in Google, they have Google Ventures. What does Google Ventures own? A whole bunch of other stuff. So when you really think about these companies, they are foregone conclusions. When you're talking about the household names now you want to go buy penny stocks and try to trade and gamble the whole different world. I'm talking about household name companies that you like. If you like a company and you buy from that company, you see all your friends buying Netflix. Why the heck would you ever sell your Netflix stock?

Yeah, I think if you want to do the trading short term, like Tim Sykes can teach you that. Like he makes a lot of money doing that.

But there's people that are full time traders.

Yeah, but not if you're not full Time and you got a job or you got a business, don't trade, you'll mess it all up because you just be too busy. And it one thing on just last thing on investing. If you own a bunch of bitcoin like I do now, and I have Solana and Ethereum and it's up a bunch, should you take profits and things like what? What's your advice to someone? Like when something's up a ridiculous amount and you bought it for 10k, now it's 90k like what do you do?

So you can take your original investment back if you don't want to have a tax implication and then it's free money right now you're just free. It's called free rolling. So let's say you put in 10,000, right? Bitcoin was 10,000 and you had $10,000 and you bought it and now it's insane, right? 85,000 or whatever the heck it's at now along the way when it got to 20, 30, 40k, you could have taken your 10 grand back and then now you're free rolling. There's no tax implication. You just went back to what's called a zero dollar basis. There's no, nothing happened. Right. From a taxes perspective, but you still have X amount of bitcoin left to. It's a free roll. That is fun. However, if you had 100 grand or 200 grand or 300 grand to your name and you put 10 grand in, you really need to pull the 10,000 out. No, not really. Could you? Sure. Just from a gambling, a gambler's theory perspective you can, but ultimately if I did it with Apple, I'm not pulling my 10 grand back. If I did the 10 grand with Tesla or Walmart or Meta or Amazon, I'm just not pulling my ten grand back unless I really needed it or as part of my and I only had 40 grand in my name, sure, I for sure want my 10 grand back. But if I had 200 grand, you have to think of it from a gambler's perspective, mathematically, should I take this money off? Will it change my life? Is it important to me? And then if I take the ten grand out, where am I going to put it? Yeah, am I just going to go buy Nikes with it? I should leave it in? Am I just going to go gamble on a different stock? What's better than Amazon or Google or Facebook or Tesla, Right. Like why would I go sell it for anything else? So if you find something that you're gambling on, right? You bought a crazy stock or a crazy crypto coin, blah, blah, blah. For sure. Take your chips back, you put up 10 grand and something goes up to 20 or 30, 40, they'll get your 10 grand back immediately. That's a roller coaster. We've seen it happen to all these crazy stocks and all these crazy cryptocurrencies. Take your money off and God bless you that it happened. Right. But when you talk about household names, Bitcoin, Facebook, Netflix, et cetera, I just don't really see the reasons when these are household names that go from 1 trillion to. To 2 trillion to 3 trillion.

Yeah. And when you get to huge numbers, you can even borrow against it if you want.

For sure you can.

I've seen rich people do that. And then they don't have any taxes.

Yes.

So they just use their investments as. And they take debt against it to avoid taxes. So. Okay, just wrapping up now, Dan. And you got into mortgage business recently. You're in all these different service businesses and all these different companies. And what is your strategy there, like, in terms of. Because that's a tough business. I'm in it right now. It's been down for. We've seen the worst two years I've ever seen in that business. It's still profitable, but it's not like it was years ago. And so what's your, like, strategy there? What do you think would be the opportunity in some of these industries where real estate's down right now, mortgage is down right now, you know, there's other things that are down. What's your. Why would you invest in that area?

So to me, there's a couple of things. I try to partner with big people in certain categories or niches. In this case, I partnered with a top five company, $4 billion in mortgages, mortgage loans last year, $575 million just last month. I am partnering and piggybacking off of their system and their. Their world of the number one buyer of leads. Cool. I put my brand Elevator, attach it to that. Now I have the company that I can trust in it. I do business loans. Well, that company does $250 million a year in business loans. They've done $8 billion. The guys I introduced it to.

Yep.

They've done $8 billion over the years. I just put the elevator name on it. And now I can loan money to small businesses, 5k to 250k. And they're the ones backing it. They're the ones that have 20 years experience, 18 years experience, et cetera. And so when you see me launch a new company, these are joint ventures. I'm going to launch a credit repair company soon. They've been around for 17 or 18 years. They do lots and lots of credit repair. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. I've built my personal brand and my company brand elevator to partner with these different types of companies to offer business loans, mortgages, credit repair. I'll end up doing insurance at some point because I'm partnering with someone that's really big in the game. I want to make sure that they're going to fulfill. So for me, from a personal brand perspective, I know that the company I partner with can fulfill whatever the category is for them. There's no risk. The name is on me to bring in business. If I bring in business, they make money. If I don't, doesn't actually hurt them. I'm the one. I hired a CEO for the mortgage company. I'm hiring a director of sales. I hired a CEO. I'm hiring. I hired loan officers. I got an office. Like I'm spending the money. If I bring in a bunch of mortgage leads, great. They're going to make money if I don't. Dan spent the money, Elevator spent the money. So I look for niches that are doing that are never going away. Right. Mortgages will never go away. Insurance will never go away. People's credit is always going to be screwed up. And so I'm just finding these different niches. Maybe I'll do a health company at some point just like Gary bracker did with 10x health. I'll find things like that. My name behind elevators, name behind. And I'll do joint ventures but with someone big that I know they can fulfill.

This is a huge strategy for anyone building a brand too is there's going to be opportunities that come your way that for you to partner for.

Sure.

Like I wasn't thinking about getting into business loans, but that can actually be a great side revenue for me now.

Right.

And I don't have to do anything but just promote.

It's the same leads that you're talking to that are looking at mortgages that you'd be like, hey, by the way, I can loan you 50k, 100k, 500k, 200k towards your business. Yeah.

And even if you have a small audience, this would work.

Absolutely.

It doesn't matter what size. Obviously it gets bigger, the bigger audience you have.

But for those people, they can just be an affiliate. They don't need to create a whole brand. You can be an affiliate for someone that has a big company or a medium sized company, you can send them deals. You could do this with a local car repair guy.

Yeah.

Hey, car repair guy. If I send you four cars, can you give me 200 bucks a car, 500 bucks a car? Sure, John. It's just free business for the guy that does car repairs. Hey, somebody that's in this category, if I send you business and they spend 3,000, will you give me 300 bucks? Of course, yeah. You ask for 5 or 10% commissions from business owners and you send them business. It's free business for them. They never would have got. They will happily pay you 10% for you. There's no fulfillment. It's a group chat or a group email. Hey, introduce them to that person. Hey, PR firm, you do great pr. Hey, web designer, you do great web designs. You spent, you charge $5,000 for web design. If I bring you a client, will you give me a thousand bucks? Of course they will. Yeah, of course they will.

Think about every product you use. So I just think about like software we use. One day I was like, oh, shit. What's affiliate marketing? I learned about on a podcast site. Just look up the company, whichever software which you were going to recommend for free anyways, for sure to your friends because you use it.

Yeah. Click funnels. Go high level.

Like just sign up as an affiliate. There's nothing required. It's just like a form.

Yes.

And you give, you get a link. Now you get paid every single time someone signs up, which you were going to do anyway. So I think of that as a great, just a side hustle for anyone, for anybody. And doesn't matter which audience size you have. And honestly, people just ignore this. They just kind of recommend stuff. You can be paid for each recommendation.

Yes, that adds up. You send 10 people over to go high level or click funnels for that example, and you get like 20 bucks a month. Great.

I think they pay you in perpetuity.

Yeah. You make a couple thousand dollars a year for what? Yeah, talking on a podcast or posting on social media. I like this platform. Sweet. People go sign up. I used to do that with lifelock.com back in the days. And I was, it was like, I think I got like nine bucks a month or something in commission. But I would send them these like influencers, TV stars. This is way back in the days. There was times I was getting $40,000 a month in commissions because some random actor went on a TV interview, started talking about how LifeLock.com helped him and they put in the code, blah, blah, blah, the actor's name. And I went from, like, getting 2 grand a month to, like 40, 000amonth.

They put your link in there.

No, I'm the one that brought him to lifelong.

Oh, okay. Okay.

So I just got a 10 of his. He was getting, like, $400,000 a month. It was nuts. That is nuts. I remember that. It was going on for years. I was just getting all these random. I make money from merchant accounts with deposit.com. like, there's just so many deals that I still do. And mutual friends of ours that are very wealthy do the same thing.

Yes.

It's nice to get random checks. I don't care how rich you are. Yeah, it's nice to get two grand a month, 800 bucks a month, five grand a month. You could be a gazillionaire. And we know some gazillionaire friends, and they do it. They push deposit.com. they push these software platforms. They push all this stuff. They're happy to get a couple thousand dollars a month. Yeah.

And you could invest that in other things. It allows you to provide opportunities to people around you. You can give it to charity. Like, you talk about charity on everything on all your episodes. So this is just. I want everyone who watches this to just think bigger in terms of building your network. You could do a lot more. They're doing events, micro events. You can even do these virtually. We do webinars all the time, and people attend. Like, think about things where you could be connecting with and doing bigger on a bigger level. Because if you're saying no, like, you're just disqualifying yourself. That's what everyone does. I think they just disqualify themselves for these things. But I'm telling you, like, literally four years ago, no one knew who I was, and all I did was like, hey, I'm gonna take Dan's advice. I'm start micro event, and I'm starting this. I'm gonna start it. It works like it's proof.

You proved it.

Yeah.

So how big forward is. Look how big you are.

So if you need. If you want to learn more about coming to our events, you know where to find me. But how could they find about elevator nights and all the other stu.

Just on my personal social. Just Dan Fleishman on every single platform. Okay.

And then people can DM you. And that's.

Yeah, I post about every event that we do. Spire Tour, Money Mondays, elevator nights. All these things are all there.

So follow Dan on Instagram, shoot him a DM and, man, we'll see you on the next episode. And thanks for being here, Dan.

Absolutely.