Dan Fleyshman "Who's Your Daddy"

Hey everyone. Welcome to the what now Audio Experience. These episodes are my way of giving you that real, raw, authentic look into business and what it actually sounds like. Some of these conversations are recorded in the studio, some are on the red carpet, and some are with my friends over at dinner. So the audio may be a little rough, but what really stands out to me are some of the behind the scenes conversations that take place when the camera is turned off because they provide so much value from people who are living and breathing business every single day. That's what I wanted to do. Bring you something that represents what business actually is, not just what you see on social media. No fake gurus. And by the way, if you need more help with your business, please visit the what Now Academy at www.wharnow.academy. there you'll learn what to do now and what's coming next to build a great business. Be sure to connect with me on social media at Scott Duffy Media across all channels or visit my website@www.scottduffy.com. let's do this.

On today's episode of the what Now Audio Experience, my guest is Dan Fleischman. And I love Dan Fleischman. Dan is the youngest founder of a publicly traded company in history. And when he was a kid, I believe he was still in high school, he trademarked the catchphrase who's your Daddy? Of all things, who's yous Daddy? He licensed the who's yous Daddy's an Apparel brand for $9.5 million. At the age of 19, he launched an energy drink, a who's yous Daddy energy drink, and put it into 55,000 retail stores. And that was all before he launched Victory Poker and built the third largest team of professional poker players out of the 550 poker sites in the world. Dan is absolutely incredible. And he's one of the founders, one of the entrepreneurs that I really, I really respect the most. And this conversation that we're going to have is kind of a behind the scenes that he and I had at Yankee Stadium of all places. So I was throwing an event for my mastermind group and we were the only two people in the entire stadium. We were there early, sitting in the stands and we started to have a conversation about entrepreneurship and the most effective ways, the smartest ways that he's seen to launch a successful company. And he's just so amazing. I said, do you mind if I just start recording? And that's what you guys are going to get to hear. Kind of this behind the scenes conversation that we had empty alone in the stands of Yankee Stadium. I hope you guys enjoy it. And until next time, have an amazing day.

Hey, you guys, it's Scott Duffy. I'm here with my buddy Dan Fleischman. We are at Yankee Stadium right now watching the Yankees Orioles, and we were just talking about entrepreneurs and some of the things that hold them back from, like, living their dream, launching a great company. And one of the biggest issues that I hear come up is money. I need a bunch of money in order to do it. And so they fail to get started. And what would you tell those people?

Well, my first words are, actually, every time I sign my book, I write just get started. That's all I write because people are so scared of just getting started. In 2018, 2019, you have so many apps, websites, and platforms that are free or cheap to get started. Ten years ago, back in my day, yeah, you needed $100,000. Six to 12 months, you needed all those things because things were slow. Now all those things you can do for under 1000 bucks because you can use legal, Zoom, DocuSign, you can get your corporation set up your bank account, set up all your websites, all your social media, everything for zero to a few hundred bucks. It's just such a rare time in our lives. And it's not going away. It's only getting better. So I just say get, get started.

What do you think the biggest mistake is that you see entrepreneurs make when getting started?

They're over planning from the beginning instead of actually going through the process of getting started. They're. It's like when they are pitching me to invest in their company, they're coming to me without a business plan, without their corporation, without their social media. All those things take a few days. Really, they take a few hours. And people aren't just going through the process of like the check marks, like a checklist. Get your website, get your social media, get your trademarks, research your competitors, see what's out there in the market. Doing a lot of those simple steps that you can do on Google for free, they're just not doing. And instead they're just overthinking instead of taking actions.

When it comes to social media, I mean, one of the things I always say is crowdsource your salesforce, leverage social media, leverage the crowd. Because I think that, you know, people are far more likely to trust a friend than anything you or your brand is gonna say about you. What are some tips you give to people to help them leverage social media?

Well, it's just so easy now because Even if you have a small social media following, your three or 400 friends have three or 400 friends each. And that, that happens really fast when you start doing the math. And if you have somebody with 20,000 followers or 100,000 followers, then the math gets even crazier. And all of it's free. They're just asking your friends, like, hey, Uncle Scott, will you post about my new tanning salon in Wichita, Kansas? Of course Uncle Scott's going to say yes, Uncle Scott has 8,000 followers and stuff happens. But it cost me nothing except for asking you for a very basic favor. And people just don't understand that your social media is your best platform and outlet. It costs you nothing.

Is it smarter on a limited budget to build a website or a social media presence?

Well, I would rather you build your website for free. Use WordPress.com, build a free site later. If you want to spend a couple of grand and get a fancy developer, go ahead, God bless you. But to start off, you need a WordPress.com site. Or you can use ClickFunnels.com if you really want to make like a fancier version, but ultimately spend the money to build your social media presence because that's where you get your actual customers from.

So I know a lot of people are pitching you their ideas, like, you're constantly being hit up with vision. And I remember talking one time to a friend who's a VC in the Bay Area and his firm used to get 10,000 business plans sent every single year. And one of the things he used to tell me was, when you've got these huge plans and you've got 10,000 of them, it can be so intimidating that if you try and tell somebody everything up front, you actually get nothing across because they just throw it out. So if somebody is putting together a pitch for someone like yourself, what do they need? Like, what are the basics they need?

So I prefer instead of a business plan, I prefer an overview. And in that overview, I want it to be under 20 pages. Really, anything from 12 to 18 is perfect for me. I need your overview at the beginning of, like, who you are and why you are. Tell me about the market, tell me about who your partners are, investors are, your staff. Tell me about why you stand out. I just want to understand the things that, you know, the things that are interesting in the industry to see if I even care before I'm going to go read a 50 page or 100 page plan. Because your business financials are BS to me. You're just picking Numbers, because you haven't started yet. You think you know what's gonna happen with your tanning salon, and then you're gonna open 20 in the next three years. You hope so, but you don't actually know that. You might open up one, and then you open a second one and maybe a fourth one. And you still did good. But instead of trying to pitch me that you're gonna open 20 tanning salons over the next three years, which is complete BS. I want to know the truth, and I want to know really quickly to make my decision if I want to dive even deeper.

I remember you said something. I'm gonna get this wrong, but you're gonna know where I'm going. You said something one time, like, when I have no problem giving people my phone number after they pitch me. And the reason is because nobody ever calls back.

So a lot of times I'm on stage and I'll put my email address and my phone number up there, and I tell the crowd, I always do this because I know none of you guys are gonna actually email me or call me with your business plan. And then the whole crowd laughs. And then I say, and then the whole crowd laughs, and I tell them that they're gonna do that. And then I leave there. And then nobody ever messaged me.

It's so amazing. Like, you get in front of the person that you want to be in front of, and all you have to do is send them a text, make a phone call, send an email, follow up. It's not hard, but I wonder why people don't do it. Is it fear? Is it fear? Is it? They don't think they're ready. Because one of the things that I see is a lot of people fail to get started because they think they need to have every single thing in place before they jump in. The perfect plan, the perfect team, the perfect execution, all the capital lined up. And what I've learned is that the difference between people that are super high achievers and everyone else is they know the difference between having resources and being resourceful. And they've learned how to acquire what it is they need each and every step of the way. They're sensitive is more like, hey, the purpose of being in business today is to be in business tomorrow. Let's figure it out. So when you take a look at super achievers out there, and I know you work with so many, what's a common trait that you see amongst them?

They're just not scared. They're not scared to fail because you're all gonna fail. I fail, you fail, he fails, Everybody involved fails. And the thing.

So is it that they're not scared or they're just not as scared of failure because they can write that off?

Like, I'm not scared of failure whatsoever because it's a part of the business, and I learned so much from it. And I brush my shoulder off and I keep moving, and that's it. So many people are scared to fail because they're like, oh, Auntie Susan is gonna be so disappointed in me. Or my uncle's best friend's uncle's friend. Friend. Friend from college. He's gonna make fun of me on Facebook. Who cares? That guy's doing the same thing for the last 36 years. While. While you're out there trying to build a tanning salon or a real estate business or whatever you're trying to build, just so many people are afraid of failure that they don't do anything.

So you and I just had a chance to meet with Brian Cashman, the GM of the Yankees, and that was really cool, right? Being in his war room and all the stuff and the scouts and the analytics guys and stuff. What was one thing that you took away from that meeting?

I mean, he just kept saying something that I fully agreed with. He said, if somebody's gonna ask me something, I'm gonna tell them the truth.

Yeah.

And too many people, especially 2018, was kind of the big turning point where everybody got soft and they were so scared to talk because they think they're gonna get ripped apart for any one of the different movements out there on social media. And it's silly to me if you feel something and it's true. I'm not saying to talk about racism or sexism or any of those type of things. I'm saying talk about the truth. If somebody asks you, does my pizza taste good? And they own a restaurant and it doesn't taste good, if you lie to them, you're hurting their business. If you say, hey, is my web designing good? And they're a bad web designer, you are hurting their business by not being truthful with them. And so many people are so soft, and everything. Everyone is to sugarcoat everything. It is not. We need to be truthful with each other. It's massively critical.

If somebody wanted to increase their. Let's say they want to increase their Instagram following. They don't have a big budget to do it. Right. They're trying to. They want a bigger presence. What are, like, one or two tips that you would give them so Posting.

Good content is the most important part. Telling people to tag their friends or be a part of your social media is really critical because if you have 20,000 followers and you want to get to 30. Well, if you have 20,000 followers and YOU tell them, hey, tag a friend that loves pizza or tag a friend that never ties their shoelaces. Simple little things that people can relate to. All of a sudden, 321 of them go out there and tag their friends. You gain 321 followers on a random Wednesday just from making a caption. So a lot of times people don't just ask for something, like on their Facebook that has 4,000 followers, hey, go follow me on Instagram. You might only get 300 more. But hey, 300 more here, 400 more from tying the shoelaces joke. Like, all these little things are free, and people just don't take the action to ask for more following.

Can we talk about crypto for a minute? Okay, so first of all, can you just describe, like, in a nutshell, what is cryptocurrency?

A roller coaster.

So cryptocurrency is the most fascinating thing that's ever happened in our history. It is the perfect version of banking. It's the perfect version of A to B, me sending you money right now. If I want to send you 500 bucks, I have to do it through Wells Fargo or Bank of America or PayPal type thing. And it takes days. It never takes hours. It takes days for me to wire you money, which is insanity, because technically, if I wired you money, you should get it in moments, right? Wells Fargo to Bank of America should get the wire instantly. Well, even with PayPal and they have these very high fees in between. If I want to wire you 500 bucks, I pay $30 for a wiring fee. If I want to PayPal you 500 bucks, I pay a percentage of $500 with cryptocurrency. If I want to send you bitcoin, I can send you $50,000 or $500,000, and it would cost me, like, 82 cents.

Is Bitcoin all like. So that's the currency?

Yes.

And is. Is like our dollar. Is the bit. Is a bitcoin a physical thing or is it all digital?

Everything about cryptocurrency is all digital. If anybody tries to sell you a physical thing, like a Chuck E. Cheese token, that's not real. Everything about cryptocurrency is.

Damn.

And it's important because electronic money is the future. It's not going away, no matter what happens. To the prices of bitcoin and all the other coins. It's irrelevant to the fact that. Fact that hundreds of the Fortune 500 companies are now utilizing cryptocurrencies. And the blockchain, they're slow, so it's going to take a couple more years before it's populated. But when you have Motorola, Sprint, Microsoft, Dell, Morgan Stanley, all these different companies preparing for blockchain, getting patents for blockchain. Bank of America, Wells Fargo have like 30 patents each for blockchain. It is absolutely puzzled, not going anywhere. We haven't even seen the beginning of the future yet.

Okay, so cryptocurrency, crypto is the currency.

Blockchain is the blockchain is the actual backbone. Blockchain is how A to B happens.

Could you call the system a record? Is it where everything is logged? It's almost like. It's almost like your account in a way.

Yeah. It's kind of like being here at Yankee Stadium. So I want to send you 500 bucks. 84 people here are gonna say, yep, Dan sent Scott 500 bucks. And then that lady says, yep, dan sent Scott 500 bucks. Those 84 people, they're all gonna get, like, a penny each for doing that, for saying, yep, dan sent Scott 500 bucks. And then because of that ledger, it can never go back. That's always provable for the rest of eternity. That dan sent Scott 500 bucks.

Interesting. And how do the banks feel about this?

They hate it, but they have to react to it. They have to adapt to it. It's kind of like Blockbuster, Netflix. Blockbuster could have bought Netflix. And not only did they not buy them, they didn't even do a similar competitor to them, which is insanity if you can't buy them, if you can't beat them, join them right in cryptocurrency. Wells Fargo, bank of America, et cetera, were all Fighting It 2017, and all of a sudden, it went up. Hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap. Then they started realizing, wait, we're not going to beat them. Let's join them. So they started patenting everything so they could be on the forefront of it.

So crypto is a currency. Are there several different kinds of cryptocurrency? Like there's dollars and yens and franks.

Yeah, there's over 1700 cryptocurrencies. Probably 1800 by the time we stop filming this. Lots and lots of people are making new cryptocurrencies, but really only the top 10 really matter. Like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero, some of the EOs, some of these bigger coins, those are the ones that have true value and actually do something. Hundreds of the coins don't really do anything yet or they're hoping they can do something. The ones that have true value are mostly bitcoin.

Interesting. So if you are going to. And can you invest? So you've got, you've got the cryptocurrency, that's the monetary, that's what you exchange. You've got the blockchain and that's really your central system of record.

That's a.

The crowd is getting involved and they are participating and saying, yes, that transaction did happen and we basically vouch for it.

Right.

What do you invest in? Do you invest in the blockchain? Do you invest in different currencies? How does that work?

So you invest in a currency. You could invest in a blockchain related company through what's called an ico. Those are.

What is an ico?

That's an initial coin offering, similar to an ipo, an initial public offering, an initial coin offering. There's very few that I would safely tell you to invest in because most of them are just trying to raise a bunch of money and pray that they can build what they say they're going to build. So I would steer clear of that. If you're a starter or an amateur, really, you should be investing directly into a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Ethereum or Litecoin, Monero or Eos. Those are kind of the top five or six coins, Bitcoin being the safest in the sense that long term bitcoin is never going away and there's a finite amount. So I like the whole supply and demand of it. So if I said something we're going to invest in something, I can't give you specific financial advice. But bitcoins are the main coins are the ones that are safer to invest in long term.

So earlier when I said what is cryptocurrency? You said a roller coaster. Why is it a roller coaster?

Because while we've been sitting here the last 10 minutes, it's gone up or down 2%. If the stock market changed 2% in one day, it would be international headlines. If the s and P500 or the NASDAQ or New York Stock Exchange Chained by 2% in one day, it would be like the newspaper covers, headlines in cryptocurrency. It's boring. 2% is boring in one day. Normally it's like 5% up, 7% down, 22% up 8% down.

It's like, why is that?

Because it's a 24 hour market and it doesn't take a lot of money to change the market. So somebody could have like 8 million bucks. And 8 million bucks can change an entire market cap by hundreds of millions.

Where it's such a small piece of like that what's invested in stocks of the Dow Jones or in the S and P, right?

You put 8 million bucks in Apple and it's lunch money. Who cares? It doesn't do anything. But you spend 8 million bucks trying to buy.

I want to be at that lunch.

Right? You spend 8 million bucks trying to buy bitcoin, you can really affect the market because there's just not enough people that are willing to sell it to you. What with Apple, there's millions and millions of people willing to sell you Apple at any given moment because they're day trading. With bitcoin, there's a finite amount of humans that are willing to sell it because most people are holding onto it.

So we both live in Hollywood and we're around a ton of influencers. And so, you know, I've heard everything. You know, I saw something, I think, I think it was an ad age earlier in the year, like at the beginning of the year that this is like the year of the influencer. And then what the hell is an influencer?

So an influencer really could be anybody. You don't have to have a million followers to be an influencer. You could have 18,000 followers in Illinois and you're like the college quarterback. And those 18,000 people, they idolize you. So if you say, hey, I love Nike, or hey, I love this bracelet, or hey, I drink first form protein, well, people are gonna listen to you. Those 18,000 people are passionately behind you. You don't have to have a million followers doing makeup or fitness or beauty or whatever to be considered an influencer. There's levels to it. There's a micro influencer that has less than 100,000 followers. There's niche influencers that are makeup, beauty, fitness, cooking, etc. And then you have overall influencers that are kind of a celebrity that just have 2.8 million followers for being funny.

I want to be funny.

I think you're funny.

So, okay, let's give out one final piece of advice for those entrepreneurs out there. And how about not the entrepreneurs that are just getting started. Let's talk to the people that have companies that are out there that are, you know, they take the product to market. They have product market Fit and validation, right? They're selling, they're selling, they're selling. They want to scale. What's one piece of advice you give to a company that is growing quickly and wants to scale?

Spend one hour a day, every single day when you get to the office or from home. And all you do for that hour, preferably more, is all you do is you try to sell your product. Too many people are spending the time around their business dealing with the secretary and the office manager and HR and this and that, and they're wondering why their sales are plateaued. Because who the heck is selling if you're so busy dealing with the secretary and hr? And Becky has this issue and John has an issue. Spend at least an hour a day where all you dudes don't look at social media, don't answer texts, don't answer emails, and you just sell for that hour. It'll change your life because all of a sudden you have an extra 300 hours a year of sales. Put two hours a day, six. How many more sales would you do if you spent 600 hours a year extra just selling? Wow.

So amazing when you chunk it down like that. That is so amazing.

Wow.

Everybody, this is Dan Fleischer. Dan, where can we find you on.

Every social media platform? Just look up danfleischman F L E.

Y S H M I M A N Dan. F L E Y S H M A N. You guys. Dan Fleischman, Scott Duffy, you have an amazing day.

Hey, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the what Now Audio Experience. If you need more help with your business, please be sure to visit the what NOW Academy at www.wharnow.academy. we have an incredible community of entrepreneurs and experts that are absolutely committed to seeing you win. There. You'll learn what to do now and what's coming next to build a great business. Also, be sure to connect with me on social media, Scott Duffy, Media across all channels or visit my website@www.scottduffy.com. again, thank you so much for joining. Have an amazing day.