The Secret to Powerful Networking with David Gonzalez

I mean, think about it, Eric. If I was to call you and I was to say, hey, I'm doing a think tank for Eddie Maloof and I've got Eric Huberman coming in, I've got Tom Shipley coming in, would you fly in from San Diego for that? Just for that. So that's what I started doing. A lot of times people, I'll invite people to these think tanks and they'll be like, oh, I'm not in Austin anymore. Or no, man, I'm not going to be in Austin at that time. And I'm like, yeah, fuck off. You don't get it because it's very rare to be in a room where you're expert at something and you're in a room with 7 other experts and you're all competing for who's going to give one person the best— not advice, but the best question.

Welcome to the Speakeasy Mastermind Mastermind Podcast, where the real conversations happen behind closed doors with the boldest entrepreneurs, creators, and growth minds in the game. No fluff, no filters. Just the raw strategies, personal stories, and mental models that move the needle. I'm Eric Berman. Now let's get into it. Hello, everybody. I am so pumped and excited to bring on a longtime friend, one of the OGs in the world of internet marketing and somebody that really is— I've looked up to many, many years. And it's funny because we have a lot of commonalities in the world of building community. So I was like so pumped for you and I to do this call together. Especially for those that may not know, when we took Speakeasy Mastermind from just San Diego and said, hey, let's do a test and fire off other cities and see how it goes and take this model. First call I made was this guy right here. And I'm so excited to bring on today's guest, Mr. David Gonzalez. DG, welcome.

Hey, thank you so much, Eric, for having me. And hello to everyone watching. Appreciate you taking time. I'm going to do my best to entertain you, engage you, and make you wiser and smarter and richer. Let's go.

That's natural. Yeah. So I want to go way back, like for those that don't or have not heard of the Internet Marketing Party. First of all, how many years has that been going on for?

As of today, which is Tuesday, May 13th, 16 years. Like September of this year will be our 17th year anniversary. And that's every single month without missing, not even one month. During COVID we went virtual. And we were getting a ton of people there. But yeah, it's so much fun. People go, how are you so consistent? And I was like, I don't know. I mean, do you forget to eat or brush your teeth or pick up your kid from the school? You know, it's like certain things are just like fun or rewarding or important enough that you just do them.

And so let's talk about this. So first of all, I want to get into this for a minute. I don't want to spend all my time talking about internet marketing party, but it's just so fascinating. Let's talk. I'm going to kind of go present and past and then future a little bit here. The present, what exactly, for those that actually don't know or haven't been to an internet marketing party, what is it about? What's the idea here?

Yeah, I mean, I think just to make sure somebody's like doom scrolling or deciding whether or not they want to listen to this, my intention for this, you know, interview is to make it to where by the end of it, you have a better sense of how to build community, how to build true, long-lasting relationships with high-quality, high-caliber people. And so you know, Eric and I talked for a second before we hit record about kind of the structure and we decided, you know, talk a little bit about my past. So yeah, I grew up along the South Texas, along the Mexican border, down where Elon Musk is launching rockets now. And it was a lot of like poverty there. The main industries there are agriculture and the drug trade. My next door neighbor was a drug lord who was doing deals with Pablo Escobar, straight up for real. Like next door neighbor as in I was 816 South Indiana. He was 818 South Indiana. A lot of times people say next door and they meant like 2 blocks down. I'm like, no, he was literally like I could throw a rock. He ended up getting caught and going to prison for 10 years, but he was, he's an interesting cat. He used to always brag about how he could take all his money, take everything, and within a week he'd have it all back. 'Cause it was like what he had in here by way of, he was super charismatic, super engaging, super captivating. I actually learned a lot from him by way of like principles. So anyway, that's where I grew up. My mom was a kindergarten teacher. My dad was an educator as well. I always grew up like knowing that I was built and destined for more. Whenever we'd come to Texas for vacations or, you know, different thing activities up here, like it was 5-hour drive. I always felt like this was home. So yeah, this is where I decided to move after I left the house. And at the time I had I was deciding whether or not I wanted to, after I graduated college, whether I wanted to get my master's or my PhD or something. And I was really interested in neurolinguistic programming because I had gone through a really bad breakup and a friend of mine turned me on to Tony Robbins and Unlimited Power. And he was the real, the kind of guy that was like really academic. And he was like, studied where Tony Robbins got his stuff. And he turned me on to these guys named Bandler and Grinder that started this stuff called NLP, neurolinguistic programming. And he had these books that looked like magic books that were up in his shelf. And they were like, mysterious to me. And, and I was like, he wouldn't let me read those until I finished Unlimited Power. And then I got to read those and I was so interested in that, that instead of going to graduate school, I decided to go and study NLP with the guys that started it, mainly Richard Bandler. And I did that for a few years and started my own NLP training center. And that was real tough to do. Like getting clients was so hard. It was just like, they taught you how to work with clients, but not how to get them.

Oh yeah.

And you actually got to go out and sell and knock on doors.

Yeah. That's, that's not the easy part.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and that, and then I started hearing about these guys named Jay Abraham and, and Gary Halbert and Gary Eugene Schwartz and Gary Vincent, like, cuz it was all kind of like in this, like if you were into NLP, you were into like alternative knowledge. Like you weren't like, somehow came across this thing that talked about how to get 100 clients a month guaranteed. And it was this program called Positive Changes Hypnosis and it was kind of like a franchise and I looked it up. Immediately signed up for it, went and took the training, and that's where I met Rich Sheffrin. That's where I met Harlan Kilstein. That's where I met Thelma Knudsen. That's where I met a ton of other folks that ended up, you know, kind of staying. Yeah, it was. So that's an interesting background, a backdrop piece that not a lot of people know about, but I ended up running that business, turned it into a million-dollar-a-year business. I got into EO through that, built that to the point that it started— once the internet started coming on board and we'd run these big full-page ads in our local newspaper and a bunch of other people people started getting licensed as hypnotherapists and they started running smaller ads. And so we had all this competition and it started dwindling as a business model and I couldn't figure out how to keep it afloat. So I sold it by the skin of my teeth. And that's where I said I had money and I had time coming into the industry of internet marketing, which I didn't even know existed. 'Cause this is like 2007. Okay. You know, it was before Facebook existed. It was before YouTube existed. And my buddy Michael Lovitch had started this thing called The Hypnosis Network, and he had asked me for some pointers and stuff, and I was like, ah, that sounds stupid. And the next thing I know, I picked up this copy of Tim Ferriss's 4-Hour Workweek, and I read that from front to back. I didn't put it down once, and I read it all in one sitting, and that's unusual.

I want that. That's what I want. Yeah.

I was like, that is amazing. And I called Michael, and I was like, dude, you're doing this thing. He goes, oh yeah, I've met Tim. He came to one of the masterminds we were part of. And I'm like, You met Tim Ferriss? He was already a legend in my mind and I didn't even know what a mastermind was. Yeah, he was part of this like different cruise. He was hanging with Russell Brunson. He was hanging with Kevin Wilkie and Matt Gill. He was hanging with Stephen Pearce. He was hanging with Yanik Silver. He was like going to the undergrounds, all these things that didn't like were just sounded wow. Like he was going to Affiliate Summit. And so yeah, he introduced me to some folks. That were named Kevin Wilkie and Matt Gill that used to run a company called Nitro Marketing. And they were about to launch, they were super affiliates and they were about to launch their first info product. And they lived in Dallas and they asked me if I would be their affiliate manager, even though I didn't have any experience. They just said, your personality, I think will do a good job for us. And so Michael was like, don't get a job, just go and learn all the relationships. And so they gave me a spreadsheet with everybody's name on it. It had Frank Kern, Joe Polish, Yanik Silver, like everybody. Dan Kennedy. It was like I had their cell phone number, their email, but I didn't know who they were. So to me, they were just regular people. And so early on, I got this reputation as who is this guy? Because everybody else was like really insular. And here I come. I was driving a 7 Series. I had money. I had, you know, just great credit. Great.

You know, that's how you entered the world. So this affiliate manager from these guys, interesting. And then you got to know all the people.

Yeah, I got to know all the people and Ryan Dice and Perry. Ryan had just partnered with Perry Belcher and I took them to lunch and they were like, what do you do? And I'm like, oh, not much. And I think they thought that I was being secretive, that I didn't want them to know my stuff so they could come swipe it, you know. But I seriously was doing nothing. And so they kept inviting me to more and more cool parties, thinking that they would get me drunk enough and I would open up to what I was really up to.

And seems to be well connected. I want to know the secrets. All right.

Yeah, yeah. But I was well connected because I was, you know, just like making relationships with all the right people. In the industry, the biggest names. And then I found out that Kevin and Matt were doing this monthly meetup every month in Dallas for internet marketers. And there's Dallas, McKinney, Plano, there's all this big area there. And so me and George Rivera and Jordan Hall and Steve Gray would all get in a car. Oh, and sometimes Eric Louvier would get in a car and we'd drive up to Dallas and go to this mastermind, this afternoon mastermind, get shit-faced, and then drive back home. And one day after 4 or 5 months in, somebody was like, why are we going to Dallas? We should just do this in Austin. And I was like, yeah. And somebody was like, yeah, Dave, you should do it. You're not doing anything else. And I was like, okay, cool. And so somebody told Eric Louvier who hadn't made that trip. And he was really popular in the Warrior Forum. If anybody remembers that, it was the Warrior Forum was like the biggest user group of all in anything internet marketing. And Eric posted in there, he was really popular in that group. And he said, hey, David Gonzalez is hosting the first internet marketing meetup in Austin if anybody wants to come. And I was like, holy shit, I guess I'm doing it. And that was in September of 2008. And I did it and it was amazing. It was super fun. I met some of the coolest people there. People came in from all over the place.

So how many people show up now? Okay, so you do this, first post goes out. You didn't know what you were birthing quite. And how many people we got?

Uh, now?

No, in the first ones. The first one.

Oh, the first one was probably like 30 or 40 people.

Okay. Yeah. All right.

Yeah, it was great and it was so much fun and I met so many great people. I decided to do it another month. And then Michael was like, hey, I hear these things are really fun. I'm going to come down for one. Because he had moved to Fort Worth. He used to live here in Austin. He'd come down every single month and he had the idea of, why don't we build a list like Frank Kern and Jeff Walker and all these guys? Because at the time, if you had a list of 100,000 subscribers, that meant you were making $100,000 a month. It was pretty much a dollar per subscriber per month, right?

I wish that was the case today, but yeah, keep going.

Yeah, no. And so anyway, Michael was like, why don't we build a list by just, you know, bringing in cool speakers, getting them shit-faced drunk, not letting them pitch or sell anything on stage and just share some valuable. So it'd be like drunk TED Talk meets business happy hour networking thing. And that was his idea to brand it that way and have it be just cool. No VIP, everybody. There's no like, oh, I'm the king pooh bah and I'm the shitty newbie. It's everybody's drinking at the same watering hole. And I thought that was fun. So we started doing it and we like, I think our first speaker was Perry Belcher. Then we had Mike Dillard, then we had Ryan Dice. They were like, the speakers just kept being awesome. And then I started running out of names in the local, either Austin or Dallas, San Antonio area. So I started inviting people that were from either LA or Miami or New York, but they were like, well, are you going to pay me to come? And it was just a fricking hobby. So I was like, no, but I know what we can do. And they were like, what? Remember earlier I said I was an EO? So in EO, there's this thing called forum, which I'm sure you know about. And in forum, every month you get with your 12 forum members and everybody comes once a month. Everybody comes with their biggest challenge or biggest problem. And then they share it with, you know, like, hey, and everybody takes turns around the room and helps them. Well, that was really cool. But what I started realizing is You know, you're just stuck with whoever's in the forum. So like one guy was literally in the balloon industry, like he had the biggest, one of the biggest balloon manufacturing companies in the world. Another person was in like sweet leaf tea, you know, and another one. So there's all these random industries. Another one was in the life insurance business, another one. And so they're all helping each other the best they could on things that they might not have any experience with. And so when I had the idea of how to lure speakers that were not from Austin, that were A quality and that were used to being paid speaker fees or allowed to pitch or, you know, at least pay for their flight and their hotel. I was like, hey, why don't you let me curate a group of, you know, 7 to 10 experts that you're solving your biggest problem? Like not just smart people, but like if you want to build a YouTube channel with a million subscribers, I'll bring in only people that have 3 to 5 million YouTube subscribers and they can give you pointers on how to get what you want. And they're like, oh wow, that was cool.

So you're saying you bought, you're able to curate. I mean, what's interesting is, you know, and you and I have think very similar, you know, you and I both come from the world of curating people, bringing, building communities, masterminds, and also getting creative, like always thinking out of the box. And how do you create value for people in this way? You're sitting there saying, I want to get these people out there. How do I create enough value for people that are used to getting paid to come out to Austin? You're leveraging EO now and you're bringing them out there and saying, hey, I'm going to curate a bunch of people. Let's come out and I'll get you a gig in front of the right audience. Is that sort of what ended up happening?

No, no, no. What I said is, tell me what your biggest problem is, your biggest bottleneck, your biggest challenge in your business that if we solved it would generate like a 6 or 7-figure win for you? And then they'd go like, oh, you know what? I'm very affiliate-driven and I want to do paid traffic, or I'm all paid traffic and I've never figured out the affiliate game. So if it was the first, I would bring in only people in their niche that are spending over $1 million a month in paid traffic. If it was the latter, if I would say, okay, cool, I'm going to bring in 7 or 8 people that have super affiliates and affiliate programs that bring in over $1 million a month in affiliate traffic. And now those are just 2 examples, right? If somebody said, hey, I'm thinking about selling my company, I would bring in M&A experts. I would bring in people who—

you have a certain given of value you bring in because you have the talent curated in your city and you would just bring in the talent to help.

Yeah, but it got to a point where after the first few, I wasn't limited to the city. I mean, think about it, Eric, if I was to call you and I was to say, hey, I'm doing a think tank for Eddie Maloof and I've got Eric Huberman coming in, I've got Tom Shipley coming in, would you fly in from San Diego for that? Just for that. Even if it didn't land around Speakeasy Mastermind Mastermind, even if you didn't have any other meetings to meet with anybody in town, wouldn't you? Don't you think that would be worth a $300 airfare?

Yeah.

If you're in the right group.

Yeah. It's, I mean, that's great. I mean, that's in absolutely.

So that's what I started doing. And so, because a lot of times people, I'll invite people to these think tanks and they'll be like, oh, I'm not in Austin anymore. Or no, man, I'm not going to be in Austin at that time. And I'm like, yeah, fuck off. You don't get it. This isn't a variety. Like you're going to end a lot of times the people that when I invite them to this, they get end up getting more value than the, as much value as the person in the hot seat, because it's very rare to be in a room where you're, you're an expert at something and you're in a room with 7 other experts and you're all competing for who's going to give one person the best, not advice, but the best question. Because the first hour of these think tanks, there's no solutions, ideas, or resources allowed. All you can do is ask clarifying questions, as you probably remember from EO. Like, so what we do is just question. I'm really hardcore, really militant about it.

But just to make sure, so just for our guests listening, because I know you were kind of almost going from past, you were doing that, but that's actually what's happening today. That's where you're finding a lot of your current excitement at is you're bringing together these think tanks. And, you know, I want to weave in a little bit of how you were able to use— there's a learn there. I mean, you have a skill set that became so natural to you over the years based on the work you did with the training and the NLP. But you obviously are naturally gifted to be that people person and to build relationships. And, you know, you talked a little about, well, let's just find value. But tell me a little bit more about, you know, if you can weave into your strength on how to build relationships into a little bit like how you're leveraging that now to bring value to everybody. Create a win-win and really a business around it.

Yeah. Um, funny when you asked me at the beginning and, you know, what were some of the things we could share that would make it so that there's value for listeners beyond just being entertained by a cool historical story and, you know, just random cool tidbits. And that's, you know, I always hate when people are connectors and networkers and they talk about shit that you could just read and How to Win Friends and Influence People. 'Cause that's really, that would be my main tip. If you wanna get better at building relationships and Connections and just read that book. 'Cause any book, the only reason people have asked me for years, why don't you write a book on connecting and networking? And I was like, 'cause all you have to do is read How to Win Friends and Influence People. And it feels like a waste of time and energy to rewrite the same book, even though I know other people have done it. I'm not gonna say their names, but there's only one connector that I know that actually has really unique, interesting stuff. And you ought to talk to him if you're gonna start a Speakeasy Mastermind chapter in New York City. I would definitely talk about that later.

But yeah, so, so back to that.

Yeah. Yeah. So what I usually tell people is, you know, the simplest thing you can do in connection and like building relationship is to realize the phrase interested is interesting. So I was telling Eric before this, I was like, if we were to have a conversation for 3 hours on an airplane, on a long bus ride or something like that. And all I did was ask Eric questions. And Eric talked and talked and talked, especially if there were questions about him, about his family, about his hobbies, his interests, his business. By the end of that 3-hour trip, he'd go home and his wife would say, how was your trip? And she'd go, it was amazing. We had the best conversation, man. David's such a great conversationalist. He's so interesting. And I'd go home and I'd go, yeah, it was great. I learned all about Eric, which wouldn't be bad, right? Because now I've built relationship with you of now I'll probably know things about you that very few other people in the the world know. And one of the best people that I know that's good, that's really good at this, is a woman named Sam Horn. She comes to a lot of my 3-day think tanks. If you know Sam, you know she's just a world-class— she was actually just spoke at the last TED conference, not TEDx, but TED. And she works with like Fortune 50 companies. Yeah. And one of the things is we were talking about, we're going to do this at my next 3-day think tank, is my phone, when you call, you can set the background picture. And the background picture on my phone is this one. So when she goes, David, when you called, like, that picture of you is so awesome. Where are you? And I was like, you know, I think that's my favorite picture of myself. And she's really, tell me why. And I was like, well, orange is my favorite color. I'm literally on top of the world. I didn't think you remember when I went to, when I went to the Arctic Circle. I love my smile. And I was like, you know, and if I want to share something really vulnerable, because that's the way Like when you're talking to Sam Horn, there's no such thing as chit-chat or surface-level conversations. I just felt naturally inclined to share something really vulnerable with her. And I was like, you know, I have friends that are really photogenic. Like they cannot take a bad picture. But with me, I'd say 8 out of 10 times when we're someplace and somebody's like, let's take a picture. And I'm like, fuck, I know how I feel from the inside versus how I look in the picture never matches. and I was like, whereas in this picture, who I feel like matches. And she goes, wow, that's great. So at this next 3-day think tank, we're actually gonna have people bring their favorite picture, and then she's gonna guide them through an exercise of picking a partner and teaching them how to ask questions so that they can induce from people and evoke from people, you know, how to get people to feel really vulnerable. What makes that your favorite picture? So I'd be curious to know at some point. You know, what your favorite picture of yourself is and then ask you 4 or 5, 6 questions about it. And it's probably, you know, bring a lot of— isn't that cool? But that's the kind of stuff. Why I shared that though is what did that do? Was it what she said? Was it what she was wearing? Was it how she spoke to me? No, it was the questions she asked that made it to her, made me feel a certain way, that that's what I'll remember forever. I think Maya Angelou has that quote, it's not what people say, it's not what people do, it's not what people are wearing, That's how they make you feel that you'll remember forever. So that being said, I don't think enough people when they're at events, conferences, masterminds, or, you know, interacting with people even on a Zoom call, spend it, do enough really finding out who's the human behind the person who's in there. I'll ask questions like, hey, what do you do for fun? What do you do when you're not working? Who do you have any brothers and sisters? Like, what was it that you most dreamed of when you were a kid? Things like this that people are just like kind of taken aback by, but you don't have to spend a lot of time on it, just enough time that you can get somebody to tell you the real answer. Because a lot of times people will be like, oh, you know, I just hang out, do fun stuff, hobby stuff. If you ask somebody like what they do when they're not working, that's not enough. You gotta go a little layer deeper and go like, hey, I'm asking you these questions because I want to get to know you.

So it's interesting. So David, I mean, people know you as being obviously in the middle of mega community, being a relationship guy. And I love this tip and it really, it's so simple. What you're saying is cut the nonsense that 99% of the people, if you're saying, if you want to go to the next level in relationships, there's the typical question everybody asks, hey, what do you do? You know, where are you from? Yet you just spin that a little bit. You go a little bit deeper on a question that's not the norm. It almost breaks the pattern. You know, go to your NLP days. You're breaking the pattern in a sense, and you actually genuinely care. You're actually showing. Is that kind of what you're talking about here.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's funny that you say you genuinely care because I think that's one of the big pieces. You can't, if you ask it just because you're doing a pattern interrupt and you're doing what I said to do in this podcast, it's not going to work. You actually have to genuinely care. And if you're not the kind of person that genuinely cares, some hacks that I think you could use, because I do genuinely care, but I guess there's some people I don't really care that much about. In which case you shouldn't try and be building relationship with them. That's the other thing is there's enough of everything. I think there's too many blowhards. Out there that like they really want, you know, somebody to mail for them, you know, whether it's Tony Robbins or Grant Cardone or whatever, and they're going to go and be real nice to them and act like they really care about them. If you don't like that person, like just make, find some other way to make money or have your affiliate manager go be friends with them. But it's lame because people can feel it. And I think that's probably what the second one is. Be as much in alignment with who you, you know, deep down, like when you're in alignment with who you really are, like what would you do if nobody was watching? What would you do if you had all the money in the world and you didn't have to talk to this person? Would you be talking to them? Well, then don't talk to them. You know, there's a feeling inside of you that just feels like— like when you asked me if I would come on and do a podcast with you, I got excited about it. You know, I mean, I don't want to sound like a douchebag, but I get invited on a lot of podcasts and a lot of times I just basically have to come up with some awkward way of saying no, no thanks, just because it's It's like, it's for them, it's not for me, you know what I mean? And with you, you have a genuine interest in people, and I knew that it would come through in your questions, and then you, you were genuinely excited about inviting me on here. A lot of times people, I just feel like, are just going down their, like, checklist. And so if you're ever doing that, then stop it, because people can feel it, and it's a waste of your life, waste of energy. You're right.

I mean, and I appreciate those words. You're right, it's almost like that energy inside of you. If you feel like it's a forced thing or you just don't want to be there, then don't do it like you're saying. And you're so good at that. And then you and I were talking earlier too in the quote, you know, green room, if you will, about something else that was kind of interesting is I want to also go back. I mean, you and I share a lot in common. I mean, the way we've built communities and doing things. And it's funny. I mean, you and I could probably spend days and have a fun— we've had, I've had some fun nights and hanging out with you in Austin and just we can do story after story. But, you know, you have certain instincts and they're good. But I also want to go back to the beginning because some people also may have fear. You know, when you walked in that room for the first time, you talked a little bit about, you know, being in the rooms with the big names that you started to surround yourself with and the feelings you went through. Talk a little bit about that because others may feel the same. They're just trying to build community and how you kind of went and where you are today. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, what happened is Eric asked at the beginning, he was like, hey, I think these things always go best when there's some vulnerability, some, you know, some dark underbelly type stuff. And I was like, oh, I have, I have a few things. I would keep them business oriented. But like within the last 16 years of being in this industry, there's been many times, it wasn't until within the last 3 years. So the first 12 to 14 years, 12, 13 years of in this industry, I felt like I wasn't, and Eric was like, oh, did you feel like when I told him what I was feeling? I said, he said, was it like imposter syndrome? I said, no, it was worse because like to me, imposter syndrome is if somebody writes a New York Times bestseller, 3 New York Times bestselling books and they still don't feel like they're a good author. Shut the hell up. You're okay. You're fine. Have your imposter syndrome for dinner, breakfast, and lunch. But like if somebody hasn't written a New York Times bestseller and they're in a room with a bunch of New York Times bestsellers, that's not imposter syndrome. That's no, I really don't belong here, but I'm here and everybody thinks I'm cool enough that I'm here, but I'm not here for the same reason everyone else is. I'm here because I put the room together, but you know, I want it to feel like not. 'Cause there's other people who have done big things. You know, for example, like Dan Fleischman, he runs his big mastermind, but he's built, you know, he had a $100 million exit, you know, like he's had, he's done and continues to run really big, successful, multimillion, 8-figure businesses. And I had never done that. I still haven't. Most I've run is a million-dollar business. And so like many of the people in my community, in my mastermind, they have 150, 200 employees. I've never had more than 12 employees, you know. And so, but it wasn't until the last few years that I just stopped feeling like I didn't belong in that room. Because I think I've realized, come to realize that, A, you know, not everybody's Michael Jordan, period. If you make it into the NBA, you're still in the top percentile. And everybody has a different level of greatness. You know, I've been married for 26 years, been with my wife for 29 years. We have an amazing 23-year-old daughter who's the light of our lives. She's healthy, she's happy, she's thriving. She loves spending time with us. I have a network of friends that's second to none, like literally friends who other people would like, I don't know if they'd kill to hang out with them, but if I started listing off some of the people that are my close, deep, rich friends that I get invited to their like birthday parties with only 8 or 9 people, I get invited to go on vacation with them. I get like, I'm not talking about friends who like You know, they give you a long hug at a mastermind. And these are people that are sought after that—

I know what you're saying, but what switched in you?

You said 3 years ago, what mentally shifted in your mindset to feel like, you know, well, what shifted it was I structured some deals before COVID that made it to where my passive recurring revenue started exceeding my monthly living expenses. That was on autopilot. I would do work once and then I would continued getting paid. And that put me in a situation where I realized that I saw enough situations by being an affiliate manager and by being in enough think tank rooms where there's people running $30 million companies that were bringing home $300 grand, like straight up, you know, with really low margins and that's huge risk and really underleveraged. And they're just like, it's all vanity metrics and stuff. And then I also know people who have built really like big companies, but they're miserable and they're divorced or their friends are, you know, their friends are not really existent or they're boring people to be around if you're not talking about business. And I'm like, oh, cool. Like, it's kind of like when you're playing Dungeons and Dragons or those games where you pick a character, right? And this character can throw like lightning bolts, but it's got this, you know, Achilles heel where you can throw a dart at it and it'll explode or something. You know, it's like. Everything has its highs and lows. And I think I did in the last few years, I started like becoming financially independent in that way, made it to where I could then just kind of like rest on the deck instead of treading water all the time, keeping my head afloat, could rest on the pool deck and watch everything happening.

And almost saying, cause I could relate a lot to, again, I can relate so much to this, David, is that. Financial hurdle, overcame it. You're sitting there saying, well, wait a second, I'm watching my bank account. I'm talking to so many people who are sitting there stressing about their work, thinking that their vanity metrics are making them so powerful, yet they're not happy. They're not making money. And you're sitting there saying, I'm happy in all areas of my life now. I got amazing friends, family, all that stuff. I'm paying the bills. I love what I'm doing. And you're like, wait a second, I am successful here. What makes these people any better or different than me? And I think I want to go back because something you said earlier, because I felt the same way as you, Dave, and I don't normally want to share too much on my side, but because it's this hits me as well, is like even me curating the first Speakeasy Mastermind in San Diego, you know, I'm pulling in John Assaraf, Mike Keenigs, Darren Hardy, you know, all these big name people. And I'm sitting there saying, same as you, same feeling. These people are doing way more money. You know, I'm just, you know, Brian Tracy's right arm guy, but I'm not Brian Tracy in the room with all these other peers. So like I had to convince myself that the value— and I want to remind you what you said because it's actually the value we tend to not see sometimes, not only in this, but for others I talk to. Is the skill you're so good at. In this case, it was curating people, staying on top of them, organizing them is truly an art form. And that's what I realized for myself on that time is that the fact that I was organizing and curating these big people was an actual skill that nobody else really was great at or wanted to do. You happen to be naturally good at it, and ultimately that's where you're really successful at and you're able to leverage that into an exciting, awesome career. Yeah, I think some of the things you talked about is just building relationships and, you know, for the takeaways of this, this call. I mean, I think a lot of the things you talked about here is just how you were able to leverage that, how you're able to bring great people together, find value to get big names out there, be creative. You know, interesting enough is I know the way you're thinking— you didn't say it— is you put yourself in the mind of the other person and said, how can I get the speaker out there? Well, how do I figure out and solve their problem? Which is a skill that you're teaching here, is, you know, how to help people understand, you know, understand their issue and solve their problem. And that helps you build a relationship. Yeah, is a lot of what I heard you say, which is amazing. So I know we got to wrap in a couple of minutes, but I want to, you know, for the community and those listening, you're doing some exciting things. In fact, I saw an incredible post today on Facebook that you just did today about your next upcoming event. And wow, the level of people. You talked a little bit about Think Tank, but, you know, tell me a little bit more for those that want to kind of dig in, get to know or get to be in your circle now these days. Obviously, you have the Internet Marketing Party. I believe it's the second Thursday of every month in Austin. And then you used to do a roadshow back in Traffic Conversion. At some point we'll figure that out again and we could talk about that. But more importantly than now, what is the most, what's exciting you the most and how could others maybe play in your circle?

Interestingly enough, what drives my revenue isn't Internet Marketing Party or 3-Day Think Tank or Experts Council. It's something that I've started referring to as the escalator model that I have, which is 54 different points that I use to create win-win scenarios that make it a no-brainer for people to want to work with me and make it to where my passive recurring revenue that's more like annuity-based is— it's, it makes it to where I live a life that a life of kind of leisure and a life that would probably be reserved for someone who runs a much bigger company with many more employees. And that's something that I'm building out that most people know about that I'm excited about is this thing called 3-Day Think Tank, which remember earlier I was talking about how I curate these think tank sessions for a guest speaker. For the first 14 years, The only way you could get a think tank was if you spoke on our stage, which there's only 12 slots a year. And I have, for right now, we're booked all the way through January. So we're usually booked out 6, 7 months out. And so back in a couple months before September of 2023, I was coaching with Joe Stolti and he pulled me aside and he said, hey man, you really love hanging around with really smart, talented people, right? I was like, yeah. He goes, I did the math. He said, if you were to get 10 people to pay you $10,000 for a weekend, or 20 people, that'd be $100,000 to $200,000. And like, people, if people would want to be in that room, and all you'd have to do is just put the invite out, and then people would come, and then they'd, you could make the events just cooler. And I'd help you out with stuff. And I was like, Man, that's awesome. He goes, well, yeah, well, you've got the next internet marketing party anniversary coming up. You're going to have 500 people there. Why don't you make a list of the top 25 people who are most likely to say yes to a weekend like that? And so I made a list and he said, okay, now what I want you to do is ask each of them at the party, hey, I'm never going to bring this up again if the answer is no, but if you're interested, here's the thing. And I was sweetening the pot by talking about how Joe Stolti was a 5-time founder with a $600 million IPO and a $50 million exit, yada yada. And the people were being like, yeah. And so I called Joe and I was like, dude, everybody's saying yes. I've already talked to 6 people, talked to 6 people and they're like all in. I was like, I just need to set up a PayPal payment link. He goes, you haven't, don't have a, they haven't paid. And I was like, no. And he's like, well, first of all, if they haven't paid, they're not yeses. They're just like, so I was like, call them back up. And I was like, my coach said you're not a yes unless you paid. They're like, no, give me your credit card. Here's my credit card. And I was like, yo, they paid. What are we going to do with them now? And he's, what are we going to do with them? I'm going to be in Hawaii. You're like, I don't know what, like you're, he's like, my real coaching for you wasn't that you put on this mastermind. It was that you think you need a partner. You think you need Lovitch or you think you need Ron Lynch or you think you need me, but you're enough. You have all you need. And I was like, fuck you, Joe. But I see it. And I was like, okay, I'm going to do this. And that's when I had the idea of shit. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? I know I'll host think tanks for these people. They had already said that yes, they were just going to come hang out in a mansion with a bunch of other great talented people. So I started doing think tanks for them and it was just like the reviews we got were out of this world. And it's the only mastermind I know where there's no speakers, there's no content, and every single person there could be a speaker. And at that case, it's like people were talking about people that usually They're the people that when you're in a mastermind and there's somebody on stage, they pretend like they got a phone call so they can go out into the lobby because they're just, you know, they're like, man, I trained that guy or somebody on my team trained that guy that's up there on stage. And so they walk out in the lobby and as soon as they walk into the lobby, 3 or 4 people rush them and go, hey, can I get a selfie with you? Or, hey, can I pick your brain? And they're like, shit, no. Oh wait, no wonder they offered me a discount. I'm the product. Of this mastermind, you know? That's right. And so those are the people that are in my Experts Council Mastermind. They're like high 7-figure, 8-figure founders. And all we do is think tanks and hot seats with, by me curating people who are experts at their problem. So that's the difference between my hot seats and anyone else's that I know of is I don't just let everyone who's in the room talk. I only allow people who are experts at the thing.

So I know you gotta go, David.

I know.

I hate to cut you off. 'Cause you and I could go for hours talking about all sorts of things and Love what you're doing. I've heard nothing but amazing things. And I think anybody listening wants to learn more about David, check him out in the community, hit me up, hit him up, go to one of his think tanks. And yeah, thank you so much for your time today, David. Again, appreciate you. Thanks for all you've done. Thanks for our friendship. I feel an honor to be in your top circle there, or at least somewhere in your one of your, one of your tops. And you and I will be friends forever and watch you help each other in our careers. And, and I love you, brother. Thank you.

Love you too, man. Talk to you soon.

And that's a wrap from the Speakeasy Podcast. If something sparked for you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it, review it, and pass it to the one person who needs to hear this right now. Want in on the real mastermind? Tap the link in the show notes to apply. Until next time, keep scaling, stay sharp, and don't be the smartest one in the room.