Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - From Football to Franchises: John Cerasani on Social Media Fame and Business Success

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

Get ready for an engaging ride with John Cerasani, a social media sensation who's taking platforms like Instagram by storm. We kick off with an amusing fan encounter that underscores the powerful reach of social media. From his early days in Schaumburg, Illinois, to the glamorous locales of Newport Beach and Vegas, John offers a fascinating glimpse into his life journey, blending humor with invaluable insights into business and personal growth.   John's path hasn't always been easy. He shares the trials and tribulations of playing Division 1 football at Notre Dame and Northwestern, navigating the tricky world of NCAA restrictions, and transitioning to entrepreneurship and insurance sales. His stories about promoting nightclubs in the late '90s and early 2000s offer a behind-the-scenes look at the evolving landscape of marketing and the rise of social media. Through his experiences, John reveals the importance of resilience and adaptability in both personal and professional arenas.   We also dive into John's innovative approaches in the real estate and insurance industries, offering listeners practical strategies on how to stand out in commoditized markets. From his success in building and selling a niche company to exploring franchise opportunities and imparting life lessons on parenting, wealth, and ethics, John leaves no stone unturned. This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom and entertainment that promises to inspire anyone aiming to break free from the ordinary and achieve their dreams.   Highlights:   (02:41 - 03:27) Unexpected Fame (14:40 - 15:25) Promoting Events With Cover Charge (19:05 - 20:00) Consequences of School Suspension (27:05 - 27:50) Sales Skills Training in Corporate America (30:02 - 30:58) Building a Brand for Sale (34:11 - 35:05) Innovative Pay for Performance Real Estate (45:09 - 46:00) Private Equity's Impact on Profit Margins (50:10 - 50:46) Navigating the Business Relationship World (54:07 - 56:00) Discussing Brand Identity and Entrepreneurship (58:21 - 59:35) Last Minute Ticket Fiasco   CHAPTERS    (00:00) - TikTok Guy Rising in Popularity (01:54) - Journey From Humble Beginnings to Success (09:40) - Nightclub Hustles and VIP Culture (18:10) - Transitioning From Notre Dame to Northwestern (24:25) - Transitioning to Entrepreneurship and Sales (33:10) - Revolutionizing Real Estate Commissions (36:03) - Commission Structure and Sales Strategy (41:07) - Building a Niche Empire and Exit (51:32) - Franchising, Entrepreneurship, and Parenting (56:59) - Parenting, Wealth, and Life Philosophies   💬 Did you enjoy this podcast episode? Tell us all about it in the comment section below!    ☑️  If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford  ************* 💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space.   ➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full-service title and escrow company.   ➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers. The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages.   *************   ✅ Follow John Gafford on social media:   Instagram ▶️ / thejohngafford   Facebook ▶️ / gafford2   🎧 Stream The Escaping The Drift Podcast with John Gafford Episode here: Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80gtZ4m4wl3DqQoJmK?si=2d60fd72329d44a9 Listen On Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/escaping-the-drift-with-john-gafford/id1582927283    *************   #EscapingTheDrift #JohnCerasani #SocialMedia, #Instagram, #Business, #PersonalGrowth, #Division1Football, #NotreDame, #Northwestern, #Entrepreneurship, #InsuranceSales, #NightclubPromotion, #Marketing, #SocialMediaEngagement, #Resilience, #Adaptability, #RealEstate, #Commissions, #Franchising, #Parenting, #Wealth, #Ethics, #TikTok, #Popularity, #Journey, #Success, #HumbleBeginnings, #NewportBeach, #Vegas, #Schaumburg, #Illinois, #FanEncounter, #NCAARestrictions, #Gambling, #NightclubHustles, #VIPCulture, #LouHoltz, #Hip-HopParties, #SocialMediaImpact, #Transfer, #Chicago, #CorporateAmerica, #GreatWestLifeandAnnuity, #ArthurJGallagher, #IndependentBroker, #NorthwestComprehensive, #RealEstateCommissions, #EquityPositions, #Lawsuit, #InsuranceIndustry, #NicheMarkets, #PrivateColleges, #Exit, #PrivateEquity, #FranchiseOpportunities, #Entrepreneur, #ParentingStrategies, #WorkEthic, #Adversity, #Resilience, #FinancialRealities, #ParentingStyles, #ManagingExpectations

65 year old dude wearing a Lacoste sweater. It's 120 degrees outside. He's wearing a Lacoste sweater, has this thick Italian accent. I'm walking by and he goes, hey, hey, TikTok, you guys from TikTok. And he wanted a picture with me. You're the TikTok guy. Yeah, he wanted a picture with me. So it is pretty cool, man. So I do know that's real. The engagement's real. And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm John Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again for another episode of the podcast, man. Like I said in the intro, gets you from where you're at to where you want to be and today man in the studio this dude is blowing up everywhere if

you're on the gram if you follow vegas you follow business you follow gambling you follow i mean whatever it may is you're following you're seeing this dude because i saw him and it's to the point where i was in an event last fr, and I looked across the room, and I was like, I need to go shake that dude's hand because he's been in my feed way too much lately. He is a master of all trades and an overall pretty cool dude. He got a lot of insight that I know is going to help you out today. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the studio.

This is John Sarasani. John. Hey, man. What's up, dude? Happy to be here, brother. Newport Beach and now vegas it's like just some dude from schaumburg and i'm out of these cool places now buddy i gotta pinch myself i know we're trying to kill each other with the sun warmer as it goes along well john

for those of you don't know hey first of all follow this dude on instagram because the gram is blowing up i mean there's a lot of dudes out there you know that have the bot machines that are chasing them all over the place this dude is legit blowing up right now and it honestly because this stuff is entertaining and it is educational it's pretty it's it's a good blend of how you do that thank you so let's talk about before we get into the backstory of how you got to where you are let's just talk right about the social man okay because when did you get serious about saying like i want to build a follow i mean was it was it a goal to build a following or you just started putting out funny shit you thought

entertain yourself brother i'm gonna tell you what man we're about almost at a half a million instagram followers right now and if you would have told me a year and a half ago this is possible i wouldn't have believed you and i gotta tell you i thought people that have a half million followers are all full of shit but no one actually really had a half million like real people you know what i mean unless you're like a mainstream celebrity or something and um even as it grew i started asking myself are these people even real or someone's fucking with me and it wasn't until john the last probably 14 months i started getting recognized in public so now there's real people coming up to you especially this weekend in vegas man left and right like you're over 10 feet at arias i'm sticking a picture with me oh it's awesome that's when you know this shit's real some 65 year old dude

wearing a lacoste sweater it's 120 degrees outside he's wearing a lacoste sweater has this thick italian uh accent i'm walking by he goes hey hey tiktok you guys from tiktok and he wanted a picture from the tiktok guy yeah he wanted a picture with me so that it is pretty cool man so i do know that's real the engagement's real and i i started um you know i jumped into this uh not really knowing what to expect buddy but um i thought i had something i thought i had a cool story to tell yeah i just didn't really know it would kind of be this popular well let's get back to that dude let's let's talk about let's go origin story we're gonna go deep, like the superhero origin story. So obviously you grew up in Chicago, dude.

You from there your whole life? Schaumburg, yep. So is that, are you Sox or Cubs? I guess that's a good question. Well, we should be, based on where Schaumburg is located, it should be Cubs. Okay. Schaumburg is actually a northwest suburb of Chicago. Okay, all right.

So not a Southie guy. Exactly, exactly. That's a nice. So not a South guy. Exactly. That's a nice, that's a polite question I'm asking. Like, how hard was the upbringing? Well, me and my brother actually grew up as Sox fans for some reason. I think it had something to do with my grandpa was from Pittsburgh, and he was a Pirates fan, so we would cheer against the Cubs when the Pirates were in town.

Back then, they didn't go. It was all ale, and I know they didn't play each other. You had to kind of pick one. Anyway, who knows? I'm a Cubs fan now because I own a bar right outside of the stadium. So I'm a Cubs fan now. In Wrigleyville? Yeah.

Yeah. I love Wrigleyville. Old Crow Smokehouse. So great, dude. I love Wrigleyville. So you grew up there. You're a kid. Obviously, you're a big dude.

You're a large human. Did you play sports growing up? Football, yeah. Played football. I was football, basketball, and track. Okay, cool. So the road, what was your first hustle as a kid growing up? Oh yeah well i was football basketball and track okay cool so the road what was your first hustle as a kid growing up oh shit man i mean i was we allowed to swear

i'm sorry absolutely do it yeah um dude i was selling freaking lemonade lemonade stands when i was a freaking little kid man but i think i really started making money in high school i would host poker tournaments you know take take a, like, I'll pull the money there. There you go, kids. There's your path forward. Just host illegal poker tournaments. But, dude, I was always doing, like, interesting shit. And in college, I started a company called Star 69 Events. Now, see, back then, college football players weren't allowed to make money.

Okay? We weren't even allowed. So you were playing, but you got a scholarship to play ball i played division one tight end at notre dame and northwestern wow yeah okay it was pretty good so i mean i'm 65 to 80 now it was like 65 to 60 back then it's a big dude uh but uh yeah man so i would host events at these like nightclubs and get all the whole college kids to come in but i couldn't put my name on it so i had to name it something else you're doing everything kind of undercover it's all legal on the up and up but just football players weren't allowed to get paid we weren't allowed what do you mean this has nothing to do with football

we weren't allowed to have jobs understand how fucked up the ncaa was back then yeah we weren't allowed to actually make money unless it was during summer break or christmas break how crazy is that when you got a kid like me that's from a super middle class family that it wasn't for a football scholarship has no business getting into notre dame academically but definitely even if he could get in academically his parents wouldn't have been able to afford for him to go there yeah so you're with all these damn freaking rich kids that are privileged and we're not allowed to make any freaking money you know what the hell we're supposed to do you know i'm saying um and can i stop you for a second because that's something you just said yeah is really interesting

because me growing up as a kid right like my father was a very wealthy attorney my mother broke the carnal never get divorced from a southern attorney in a small southern town where he's from bad my dad murdered my mom in the fucking in the divorce so like we were living in the ritziest neighborhood right yeah fucking broke like super broke did you find that that experience shaped a lot of who you are or that quest that you have for success a little bit man a little bit i i always had the love of money i knew i wanted to be rich or famous i'd ever i don't know if i wanted to be rich and famous i think i always just wanted to be rich because that felt like it was more of a more realistic thing you know what i mean i was never like an actor or anything like that so how am i going to be famous right unless it was from

football and that that ended when i was 23 years old um so i always had the damn love of money and i think part of that was from that though um not not just from my experience in notre dame and northwest and i just growing up middle class in the first place. I'll give you a for instance. December 3rd is my birthday. Basketball season would start like mid-November. For the first few weeks of basketball season each year, I had the basketball shoes that were a size too small from the year before because my parents would wait until my birthday to give me that $90 gift.

You know what I mean? Granted, I'd still get that $90 gift. You know what I mean? Oh, granted. I'm still getting a $90 pair of basketball shoes. But they were waiting until that birthday. You know what I mean? So we were not poor by any stretch of the imagination. Bro, no, I get it, though. Because here's the problem with this story, right?

Because, man, I'm so similar in that. And you tell that to people that had real fucking struggle. And they're like, what are you talking about? And you're like no you didn't have shoes what are you talking about exactly you don't understand what it's like to be the one kid with the it's the have not around a bunch of kids that are half that's true it's incredibly difficult like i i'm telling you i think it's almost easier to be a have not around a bunch of have nots. It's fucking easy. Well, I'll put another layer on that for you. Once you got to college at Notre Dame, the kids that are from the areas that were really

poverty and stuff, which a lot of kids that play college football, this is their ticket out. You know what I mean? But those kids are different, though, because they qualify for government subsidies called, I think they're called Pell Grants, where they get a fricking money given to them each year. And I, back then, I don't know what it is. I want to say like three grand a quarter or semester, whatever it is, whatever it is, there's three grand more than my parents were giving me. I'll tell you that, you know what I mean? So he even felt a little bit poor, poor from that standpoint. But listen,

man, I, I'm super privileged to, to, uh privileged to have the experiences I had in life. And, you know, Illinois public school teachers, my dad was a high school gym teacher and a high school football coach. My grandpa was a carpenter. My dad was the first person to go to college in our family. And, you know, we were not poor by any stretch of the imagination. Illinois high school teachers are very similar to Nevada and California. Our public teachers are paid pretty damn well. They're not getting rich by any stretch of the imagination but but they're not making 30 grand a year either yeah and then those pensions and stuff they get it that are good um so i think i took a lot of

principles i just learned from my dad was your dad your coach in high school yeah yeah so if you had to pick one lesson that your dad instilled in you what would would it be? If you had to narrow it down to one lesson that dad instilled. I told you I don't ask the kid questions, man. I told you. You know, it's funny because it's not funny, but my dad passed away just a few years ago. So I want to think about it a little. Yeah, mine too.

I would say that he was really big on, well, I'll give you two answers, all right? To never put yourself down. He never like wanted you to self-deprecate. And, you know, I just remember telling our football team, my senior year in high school, there's a couple of kids on the team that would like brag about getting D's on a test or something else. And he'd make a big, don't pride yourself on being stupid. You know what I mean? Don't pride yourself on being an idiot.

All right. And the other thing he would always instill in me, which definitely carried over, you see glimpses of it on my social media, is he the people that are weak because they can't do anything about being weak where they have some kind of disability usually is the case behind that. Go out of your way to help those kinds of people. Yeah. You know what I mean? So those are probably the two. There's a bunch, though. Well, I think that, you know, they always say the best judge character on anybody is is how they treat people that can do nothing for them

there you go there you go all right so you're playing football let's talk about that for a little bit so you're playing d1 football as you as you get to side hustle what year was this 98 well 95 through 99 so lou holtz is your coach lou holtz yep lou holtz is your coach 95 not no that's that's after the convex versus the catholics yeah that was well it was in the wake of it was right after yeah that's right after okay got it so you're playing ball for lou holtz yep did he did he did he spit on you when he talked yeah he always mispronounced my last name he did there was guys oh my god your last name would have been a disaster for him he'd call me saraceni all the time all right yeah oh boy yeah so you're playing football and

and back then even then i mean now it's a whole nother level i think of what they asked these guys to do but even then what's the time commitment to play football at notre dame back then it's tough man it's tough and it's another thing man you're going in there competing against kids in classrooms that are smarter than you but come from a background that really prepared them more for this and you're supposed to compete with them in the classroom and spend you know 30 hours a week playing football yeah you know what i mean think about that like those kids don't have to play football they're they're smarter than you in the first place and they use all their time to study well we got a balance in football yeah yeah so and you

come up with and you come up with the nightclub hustle which yeah exactly trust me i that has come up on this show you don't you have no idea how many successful entrepreneurs at one point in their early college life we're called we're club promoters really oh dude yeah it comes up in here all the time brother i kept doing it all through my damn 20s the reason i stopped doing it is because freaking social media screwed it up for everybody because all these damn promoters all of a sudden we're doing it for free bottles and drink tickets just to be cool to try to like bang chicks and i'm like dude no i'm like trying to make four grand this weekend yeah but the club start cutting deals with all these younger generation guys right around 208 09 and everything changed dude and i'm like you know what everyone all of a sudden

is a promoter now it's kind of lame I'm not even going to do it anymore. Dude, I tell the story. I was in the nightclub business years and years ago. Okay. And my last club was Cobalt Lounge in Atlanta, where Ray Lewis made famous after the Super Bowl in Atlanta with his murder trial. Yeah, that fucking sunk that business like it was.

But, dude, Jermaine Dupri used to throw a party there every Sunday, and we would write his promoters a check for like 50 grand every Sunday. Whoa, those hip-hop promoters, that's a different game, dude. Dude, wild. What year is this? 99-2000. Okay, so in Chicago, at least at that time, that crowd, the higher-end African-American crowd,

were the only people that were spending money like that, too. Dude, I mean, it was, I'll never forget, because Buckhead at the time was was like a bunch of little you know beer bars whatever college kids walking around is what buckhead wasn't we were the only big nice nightclub yep and i'll never forget we were open on sundays with jermaine's thing and all these other bar owners came in and they were just watching that moette fly over watching that 16 hennessy and this is years ago watching that six-16 Hennessy. And this is two fucking years ago. Watching that $16 Hennessy fly around. Their jaws were just dropping.

And then like two weeks later, half the bars in Buckhead were hip hop clubs. They're all doing it, yeah. They're all trying to get a piece of that business. Because dude, they spend so much. It was such a great crowd. See, Atlanta could support it though, where there's actually staying power in Chicago

when a club would flip to that. They would only maybe do it on Sundays if they did it at all. And then ones that went full that way, it means the last legs only because like Chicago doesn't have like, they'd have that, but there's not enough, like you'd mix in the bad elements with it too often. And unfortunately they'd just go away.

Well, that was the problem. It was never, it was never, it was never the crowd inside the club. It was the crowd outside the club. It was that caused problems yeah that's what we always had the same shit and i think that's with any yeah the people outside of the ones of the issues yeah always well dude we were doing the same shit bro we were like this is the exact same era dude i

mean there's a club in um chicago called dragon room back then that i would do the friday and saturday parties at and then i'd see flyers for the sunday night would be the night that they would do that shit and kanye west was throwing the fucking parties back then but he wasn't kanye west like we know now it was just there's just some guy named kanye no kardashian i fucking could have fucking uh made buddies with him everybody just stuck around and came came to an event on a sunday but uh anyway so so when you first started that it was star 69 promotions it's star 69 events events how are you getting the word i mean were you were you doing so i built it were you doing the standard university thing where you go to the pools at the apartment complexes we knew the girls were

just hammered out pretty much and i had flyers i was dating a pretty cute girl at depaul university which is another school in the city uh had her tell everyone on depaul's campus i had the whole football team going the football team was cool there was that northwestern out of notre dame's when i was 21 and uh had all the frats and sororities and we were good at football back then so people kind of just like followed our lead and it was cool and dude and but what was cool back then is no one hesitated by paying a cover charge 10 dollars didn't matter if you're the hottest chick on the planet yeah everyone's paying time bucks no problems no questions asked you can't get away with that shit now no one's gonna pay cover anymore because everyone's everyone's vip well dude well my thing is like i know i think bottle

service is on its way out dude bro it's ruined the game dude like dude i was at i don't even go to clubs anymore i was at uh but a few weeks back i won a bunch of money we ended up at hockless on inside mgm and we had a fucking blast dude but i get that bill and i was like fucking what would we spend that night three grand yeah it's like 2800 dude we had two fucking bottles we're like what these two bottles $2,800 this is this is where this is where i knew it it's gone too far so friday night after i left you i said i had to go to dinner and that dinner was at a place in uh in costa mesa no i'm sorry anaheim called the ranch okay this is the wildest place you've this is wild yeah it's a it's a straight up eight-story office building okay

bottom floor and obviously the guy that owns the building built it out this way because the bottom floor is doesn't look like a club in an office building it had like 30 foot ceilings it was built out this way but it has a really good restaurant okay and then there's a straight like honky-tonk bar next to it okay not really my scene but whatever we were with these people they're like oh let's go to the bar blah blah we walk into this place it's dead there's nobody there it's like seven it's like eight o'clock i just had to get done eating yeah and every table like when you walk in there like if you want a table it's 150 minimum i'm like in here yeah for this right like what are you doing like what are you doing

like yeah it's just gotten out of control but yeah about vegas 150 minimum is probably fucking four drinks it's no the drinks were super cheap oh really but the stupid thing about vegas is as soon as like i remember that the palms had just flipped over that new nightclub when they were doing the big remodel it's right about the same time the dispensaries opened okay and they were paying fucking whoever it was a million dollars a night to spend there and then they opened chaos chaos exactly open and they're like and the guys that i knew that were running that place were like we're screwed yeah why they're like nobody's drinking they're all coming here with edibles yeah well that was a convenient excuse for them dude that place was that i don't

whatever what the last seven months when they pulled plug on it if that well they pulled plug on everything because of the side deals that were happening is that right oh bro the guy i think i'm pretty sure the guy that was the entertainment director yeah is still on the lam is that right because dude he was he was giving these guys like his million dollar deals and they were breaking them off like 250 out the back oh my god it was like a straight embezzlement game well it's fucked up dude because i knew a guy that actually fromaumburg, that has been in the nightclub industry out here for a minute, and he was at Encore Beach Club, left Encore Beach Club and Excess for that job over there,

and then it unfolded how it did. And then he was with Encore for like 10 years prior, pretty high up there. You know what I mean? It's fucked up. And then let that go. Yeah. All right.

So you finally graduate. Real quick, back to this one thing. What was the decision to move from from notre dame to northwestern what was the decision a little off the field altercation with a another teammate on the team i punched a guy in the nose and um you would think like this and but uh notre dame is a catholic institution they put academics first and academic integrity first, and I broke the rule. The school shouldn't even have known about it. The problem is Lou Holtz, the head coach at the time, had just got fired. A coach named Bob Davey had just taken over,

and we're going into spring ball. Me and this kid get into a fight with each other, and it wasn't during practice. It was off campus at like 4 in the morning. Stupid. dumb we're friends by the way yeah stupid well the kid's dad so bob davy doesn't kick me off the team doesn't really do anything about it okay dumb asses don't do this shit well lou holtz should have kicked me out of would have kicked me out of spring ball maybe really punished me or something bob davy doesn't do shit well i thought this was okay that's kind of cool yeah moving on i'm the starting tight end bob davy yeah fuck yeah that's

cool man but ended up being the worst because the kid's dad now gets pissed about it that i didn't get any fucking trouble calls the school directly make sure the administration knows about it and the administration is very specific they have it's called notre dame du lac it's this rule book they got and every student gets it on campus. And it's very clear. You assault another student and you break a bone in their body, one of two things happen. You're either expelled or you're suspended.

So they really had no freaking choice. Now, what's messed up about it, and I ended up getting suspended, the lesser of two things. And what's funny about it is then that kid ends up getting picked on and run off the damn team so we ended up it's ended up being a lose-lose notre dame's worse off because they never started tight ends gone i had to transfer and that kid's not even playing football anymore because this whole dad did this shit it's truly a lose-lose-lose situation um but you know you're 19 and you think you know everything and you know no yeah exactly but well

the thing is i never should have left bob davey said to me okay don't leave here like you're gonna be telling this fucking story when you're in your 40s if you leave here and here i am telling it two points bob davey's exactly good job coach but but i will tell you this though john one of the things bob davey was wrong about is that he was implying that I'd be embarrassed to tell this story. And I got to tell you, man, as a 40-something-year-old, okay, I tell people I played football at Notre Dame. Notre Dame's a great academic institution. But the football is so popular there, it overrides everyone's perception. So I played football at Notre Dame.

They say, oh, shit, you must have been a good football player. I go tell people right now I played football at Notre Dame. They say, oh, shit, you must have been a good football player. I go tell people right now I played football at Northwestern. They only hear Northwestern in the academics, even though Northwestern's good at football too. I think you must be pretty smart. You must be pretty smart, which would you rather be as a 40-something? Smart. Yeah, exactly.

So I kind of got the best of both worlds on that. And due to Facebook and social media kind of emerging about five or six years after i was out of college got to reconnect with everybody i was gonna say you also probably got the best of both worlds because you got all the connects that you got from notardame which i'm sure is still in the rolodex yep and then you know you got to graduate from northwestern knowing that you were probably gonna you wanted to move back to chicago yeah yeah and notardame's really close to chicago as well though but so there's they're both are pretty tight there but but um yeah that's exactly what happened and you know i i the the i always look at this here this is the the intangible okay if i would have stayed at notre dame all right the reason i didn't play in the nfl is

because i got hurt senior year because i had to play fullback and that never would have happened at notre dame and i ended up hurting my back and I probably would have played in the NFL but if I would have played in the NFL stayed at Notre Dame you're getting your ass kissed at Notre Dame when you transfer from Notre Dame to Northwestern even though Northwestern had just won the big 10 back-to-back years the stadium's still half full people aren't freaking fans of Northwestern football Northwestern had just beaten Notre Dame but no one cares yeah you know nbc's not giving them their own channel exactly brother and so you felt that difference when you transferred and it's a little bit humbling you know what i mean and um and plus they're in chicago so it's

like the chicago bars and stuff aren't catering to them like the south bend bars were catering to notre dame there's no competition in south bend there's all the competition exactly so so it's a little bit humbling so so my theory is if I would have stayed at Notre Dame, I would have been my, got my ass kissed for four years by, by everybody else in Notre Dame football player. You then hopefully played in the NFL for a couple of years. And now I'm 26,

27. It's not like I was going to be, you know, Peyton Manning or something. And now I'm done at 27. Okay. What are you going to do now? You just got your ass kissed for the last eight years of your damn life.

You're going to go get a job as some lower level salesperson and work your way up because that's exactly what i did when i left northwestern and i i generated all my energy that i had for football into sales and knew i was on the bottom well you know it's so interesting because at the event we were just at when eric red was up there talking he goes dude my advice to anybody getting out of any league the very first thing you need is a fucking therapist. Yeah. Because however old you were when you got good, that is mentally how old you are today, regardless of how long you played. Good point.

That's what he said. It's a really good point. I was like, whoa, man, that's wild. And I almost think, and I thought to myself, the NFL, instead of the rookie symposium, they almost need the, okay, you're going out of the league symposium. Let's try to help you now. Well, some of the people in that room we were in, man, I mean, look at those guys that were in there. Ron, our test was in there. These guys made $100 million fucking dollars.

So it's like some of those guys, it doesn't fucking matter. You know what I mean? But the situation I would have been, minimum salary in the NFL back then was $225,000, dude. I was making that three years after college selling insurance without getting concussions every day. All right,, you got the corporate job selling insurance, right? Yeah. What kind of PNC, what was this? I did employee benefits, employee benefits. Okay, cool. What made you great? Yeah. What made you great? Dude, I think the competitive nature that

I had and it's, it's like the chicken or the egg, man. Like, like literally dude it's december of my senior year in college and i found out that i'm hurt and can't keep playing fucking uh football that my whole plan was to play football so now i'm watching my friends on tv going to the colts and the bears i want to talk about that in detail okay you get hurt you know you're not playing was there a depression time there like how long tell me about that so what happened is during the course of my senior year um again the our starting fullback got hurt and me and the other tight end were both pretty good and we started playing this double tight offense but they decided that i'm gonna also play fullback because we didn't have another fullback

so our double tight offense became also our regular offense, and I was a better blocker than the other tight end. So they put me a fullback in there, and I'd run iso plays. If you don't run iso plays, the fullback's running three yards this way. Linebacker's three yards on the other side of the line, six yards apart. You're just running each other as fast as you can. And I'm 6'5". In football, leverage wins. These linebackers in the Big Ten for the most part between 5 11 and

6 foot 2 okay and they've been playing this since they were eight years old i'm six foot five playing it for the last month they get out of your pads and take you backwards well straight up either one i'm a big big boy so i'm able to do it but to get lower than them eventually i started dropping my head which is a huge no-no in football you never hit someone off the top of your head so throughout the course of the year i start getting these stingers down my arm which is typical but i started getting them in my legs too so i'd hit someone and my legs would vibrate after the play i don't say anything about it because i know you get stingers in the arms and that's a normal thing let's move on at the end of my senior year, I get invited to play in what's called

the Blue-Gray All-Star Game. It's Christmas Day in Mobile, Alabama. They don't do that anymore. It's a little bowl now. What's it called? The Blue Bowl. It's a little bowl now. So it was in Mobile, Alabama, and at that point, I knew I was getting drafted,

probably middle rounds, like hoping for the fourth round, maybe fifth or sixth. Again, I was not going to be some kind of, you know, I wasn't going to be like Mark Pavaro or Ron Gronkowski, but I was going to be good enough to play in the NFL. And they made you get a physical for that game. I had never told anyone about this. They asked me, okay, well, in general. Anything bothering you?

Well, I've been getting this weird thing. I go, I've been getting this. I'm blind. Does that count? Exactly. Jesus. So I go, when you touch me here, if you poked my shoulder here, I'd feel it in my fucking ankle. And they go, well, that's not normal.

That's not good, buddy. So the guy goes, so right now, you're feeling me? He goes, close your eyes. He goes, where do you feel that? And anyway, long story short, they end up saying, you're going to be fine. You have a big contusion to your spinal cord. It's weakening. It's eventually going to snap.

No one's going to take you. We wouldn't recommend ever playing again anyway. So the decision was easy. I didn't get depressed because I was so fucking beat up at that point, bro. I was a fifth-year senior. I was like, all right, let's move on to other things. It was a sad day, but let's move on. other things. It was a sad day, but, but let's move on. Just re reorganized all that energy into working in corporate America,

interviewed with every company coming on the campus at Northwestern, ended up picking this job in insurance sales. Which company? It was called great West life and annuity. They're owned now by Cigna. But back then they weren't, they were their own. And it was great,

man. Cause it was a sales organization, bro. taught you professional sales skills like we had to read fucking books and role play in front of each other and a lot of people a lot of organizations don't bother to teach these kids that anymore and i don't blame them for not because we're going to teach you how to fucking sell then you're going to go work for someone else three years later why would we invest that money i'll go take the 27 year olds that someone else taught you know what i mean i really can't blame them um but I was blessed to have done it, dude, and worked there for a couple of years. Then I switched to a company called Arthur J. Gallagher.

And when I got to Gallagher, I realized pretty quickly all these 40 and 50-year-olds were sitting on their books of business, just enjoying life. They never learned how to sell. They're out, you know how they're selling, saying, we're Gall come work with us they didn't have that drive um so when i got that job at gallagher it was a company i had really looked up to and they're very well respected and then i realized that i'm better than a lot of people working there and like well the fuck am i working here dude and i transitioned and became my own boss and competed in the middle market. So you opened a broker, you were a broker. Correct.

Doing still employee benefits, the same thing? Yes. And just started brokering independent. So I came out of my house. I worked out of my house, got me a PO box at the UPS store, picked number 300. So I could say I'm in suite 300. So clients would think I have the whole third floor of some office building. Had an 800 number. And if you called the 800 number to find me, you would have had to press the first five letters of my last name. Cause we're such a big organization. I love that though. Didn't name it John Sarasani insurance. Like a lot of assholes do in my industry. I named it Northwest comprehensive just to had a ring to it. And

you know, I remember a prospective client I called on once telling me that they worked with us back in the 90s. I'm like, oh, yeah. Exactly. We're right. That was what people think. All right. You got to slow down for a minute because you just dropped.

There was so much value in what you just said. So first of all, appear bigger than you are. Do whatever you can. And right now, dude, this is such a weird time in real estate right because we are officially eight days away from commissions getting dropped in the mls which means if you're a buyer's agent you're going to have to build your value on a presentation to get that thing signed luckily that's that that is the process we've been teaching here for 14 fucking years so i'm not worried about it that much but there's a lot of agents freaking out because they

don't have a period to build value and i taught I taught a class not too long ago in an organization. I was talking about, you need to learn how to build value. And part of that is realized and part of that is perception. So if you are a one-man band or look like a one-man band, you do not have a lot of perceived value. So you need to do whatever you can to create perceived value. Build a team of people. If you've got somebody that does something for you, put them in your marketing materials. Ask everybody that is involved with your business if you can put them in your marketing materials to make you look bigger than you were. Have a dial by number. Whatever you can do to make yourself look bigger. I think that's incredibly

valuable. Number two, the thing you said that I loved that I loved is people are so obsessed with their own names. Yep. Businesses are built to be sold. And if you, and if you build it with your own name, it makes it harder for you to get away from it. It's, it's, I don't have one business that is my name, right? Every brand that I build is built to be handed, to be sold or handed off somewhere else. Yep. And I wasn't even thinking of from that standpoint, to be honest with you,

because I've heard other people say that you're building it to sell. I guess no one's going to buy you if it's your name. I wasn't even thinking about that, which is accurate. I was thinking of more for. Strat note, but. Two things. The client, okay? The client, I don't want to draw attention. I'm competing with

Gallagher and a on billion dollar organizations. I don't want to do anything that draws attention. How small we are. Okay. I name it. Sir, Sonny insurance. How long you been in business for buddy? How many employees do you have? How many offices do you have? All shit. I don't want to talk about as a new company, Northwestern what was it northwest comprehensive nobody's asking those exactly oh definitely and especially the business to business sales environment um there's more than one decision maker okay so so for me i was always calling the human resources director and the cfo okay well there was people above them including the board of trustees of these universities as well as the president i sold the colleges okay i had a niche doing that all right i tell them okay they go tell us their new broker or consultant is john sarasani the president of sarasani insurances even though i built rapport with that hr director yeah now i

need that person to go stick up why aren't you guys working with marsh or aeon you know these are hub those are my competitors dude billion organizations. I'm at my freaking kitchen table. You know what I'm saying? So I didn't even tell people I own the place. I'm like, seriously. That's John working there. They're going to polish sales guy. Holy shit. They're pretty good. You know, but I wasn't lying because I believed it. And when shit would

come down where they'd get into that shit, it was okay. So I was like, hey guys, I worked at Gaylord. I worked at one of those organizations. I'm doing this and this is why we're doing it this way and this is why it's better okay a lot of people make the mistake just cutting their fees which i'm sure you've talked to your agents about you start to cut your fees and that's your fucking value proposition i got news for you you don't have a value proposition yeah if that's it you have a you have an unvalued proposition brother i just fucking canceled my um um camelon sir my lawn treatment service at my house about seven months

ago because they fucked something up and there's if there were other people calling me now to try to get the accounts back and they're defaulting to beating the prices of who i'm working with you're not listening that's not why i fired you drop it to zero you know what i mean you're still gonna do a crappy job exactly they can't see it you know what i mean and that's the people's default and some industries are so commoditized including real estate probably that that you have to fight to uncommoditize it you know with me like how i treat commissions right like how my group does it we take listings like yeah you really have two choices of what you can do in real estate forever. You got this guy over here that says, I've been doing this forever.

I charge X percent, whatever it is. It's a high percent. Then you got this person over here that says, oh, I can do the same job. And because of the internet, blah, blah, I'll do it for cheap. I'll do it for almost nothing percent. Right? Over here. Well, what we've managed to do pretty successfully is position ourselves somewhere in the middle

of that. And what we do is we build an incredible amount of value on the front end. But I tell a story because when, when Blackstone and Goldman Sachs bought their portfolios here in Vegas, I bought a large portion of their portfolios for them. And it was kind of cool working for a big fund like that because they treated us essentially in a certain ways like fund managers, which is the better that we did, they would pay us bonuses. If I could get them better equity positions on harder negotiations, then I would get bonused on that, which I love. So it wasn't just about the commissions. So I kind of brought this pay for performance idea into real estate with the way we list houses. I'm like, look,

I'm not doing it for cheap. And I fully expect you to pay me the max amount, but here's the deal. If I sell your house from this point to that point, you're going to pay me this. If for some reason your neighbor gets up, drinks a fifth of Jack. If I sell your house from this point to that point, you're going to pay me this. Yep. If for some reason your neighbor gets up, drinks a fifth of Jack Daniels and gives his house away and fucks the comps up and it drops us down to here, well, then you're going to pay me this. And then let's say there's a black swan event

and the wheels fall off the real estate market and it's no control of mine, but we sell it down here, then you're going to pay me this. But it's a hedge against them because they're paying for the, what would the job we actually do? And that's in your listing contract with a client 100 i've never heard that before that's why it works because you've never fucking heard of it and the reason you never heard it

because most people have the balls to do that yeah because i still got to spend max amount on all of these listings because i'm chasing that top number yeah and if i don't spend them if i don't spend the max amount to do a job, we're not going to get mad. So what's standard in Vegas? Three, 3%. No such thing as standardized commission. That's what just got a suit.

And I just, I just got out of that national. I was named in that lawsuit. So yeah. Yeah. What do most people do? Three and three or two and a half and two and a half in Vegas. There's no set thing is a set amount.

Okay. You see a lot of 3%. You see a lot on both sides, on. Okay. You see a lot of 3%. You see a lot of both sides on both sides. You see a lot of that. Okay. So what you have in the past. Gotcha. So,

so, so I see what you're answering that way. So in Chicago, it's two and a half and two and a half. You don't really see three, three and three. And I've been told, I think who cares,

but, but, but so in your example though, what you just gave, what is, where does that 3% fall? Like, like, like what I would say is this, right? Like, in your example, though, what you just gave, where does that 3% fall in that benchmark? Like what I would say is this, right? I would say-

So I expect to sell my house for 800 grand. I can tell you how I do it. Yeah. I do it three to two, two to one. Or I do three to one. And three is the higher number? Three is the higher. So you win-win on that.

No, no, no. So here's the deal. We're going to establish, if anything, if they want to pay the buyer's agent we're gonna establish that separate i'm talking about just listing side commission got you so if i if i smash it you're paying me three percent okay if something bad happens and where does that number come where you define smashing it break a record put down to probably where i think it is a great deal for the highest the highest comp or above the highest comp or above where they're really happy okay right and then below that is two percent is pretty much normally below that to where i think that you know they would be struggling to probably accept the deal and then one percent is okay it's

the bottom of that so it's not like 90 of comp it's more just kind of no it is straight but if you look at this way right like look at this way let's say that you're selling a four million dollar house and you've listed it at hype i'm just again throwing the number out there at three percent right and the agent calls you and says hey man i got an offer for 3.8 it's the best we're gonna get you need to take it yeah how much did you just lose so what was your benchmark four million four million i'm telling you i got three eights the best i got you're losing 200 grand right who the seller right how much is the agent losing they're losing three percent of two of two hundred thousand 120 which is six grand so they're giving

up six grand to still make 114 is that an easy phone call to make right i'll make that call right now here's your six grand stomach 114 grand fuck you that's an easy call to make yep but with me in that same scenario let's say it drops it now from three to one yeah i'm so i'm giving up 80 grand yeah to now make 40 well so three percent so four to three point eight so let's say you went from three to two yeah you would just lose 40 grand right there right but it's still but it's a lot different than the than that set percentages which are taking. Right, but it's a lot different than the set percentages, which are taking a portion of the loss. No, it's a huge difference.

So it's incenting you guys to work harder for the client. It incentivizes us to work harder, and it protects our client from market variances and blackout events. Have you ever, what about if it could have hurt the client the other way, where you guys, so you walk away from the deal because of that? No, they never do. No, no, no. They don't.

No, because I, listen, we're always negotiating the best interest for our client but again if the house doesn't sell at all we make zero so we still do that is such a smart thing man yeah i'm surprised that's not like everywhere i would have thought like maybe there was a law against it or something i'm hoping it doesn't go everywhere because it serves us well yeah but people even if it does go over dude you could have every realtor in the country listening to this right now they're gonna be too big of pussies to actually implement that well i mean you know and they're not going to tell their brokers the leader of the broker is

not going to go tell their agents hey this is how we're doing it now they're going to do it my wife says all the time she goes you know how can you just you know get in front of these rooms and there's 2 000 people and you just give them everything yeah i'm like maybe the 2 000 people there's two people in the room that'll actually actually do it yeah it's like it doesn't matter because everybody likes to hear a good idea but nobody wants to actually do the work yeah right but also let me ask you do you know how to get abs get abs yeah yeah so do i i don't have a fucking house i don't want to do the work right i don't want to do the work to get the abs yeah i gotta do that all right well back to you so we're kicking ass i can keep interviewing you if you want no no that's what we're doing but you're kicking ass selling insurance that's that's obviously going amazing while you're in

company how long from so obviously you were you were quick as insurance is a get rich slow business normally yeah it's not a get rich fast business so my biggest thing was when i left everyone's telling you you ain't gonna work it ain't gonna happen for you buddy and i'm just doing the math i'm making 140 grand a year working at Gallagher. Each of these clients are worth $40,000 or $50,000. So the first reaction is, yeah, but you ain't going to get those kinds of clients on your own. You're going to have to go downstream, deal with shitty fucking accounts, get your feet wet. My feet are already wet, man.

I already got what I call my paid training working here right now, pal. Okay? So you want to go fucking sell barbershops that have two employees? Go right ahead. I ain't. what man i already got what i call my paid training working here right now pal okay so you want to go fucking sell barbershops that have two employees go right ahead i ain't we're staying in the middle fucking market with 400 to 500 level accounts so if i'm going to do that i only need a few accounts to break even from what i was making at gallagher and that was my damn goal all right well how am i going to do that i started knocking on doors handing out flyers blah blah blah and i'm, wait a minute.

What am I really fucking good at? I'm good at colleges and universities. That's what I worked on at Gallagher. But I worked on big ones. We'd go after the big equivalent out here with a UNLV or a California Irvine or something like that. That's who Gallagher was right in. But these smaller private colleges, dude, well, why don't we call on them well they only have a few hundred employees they're just little clients okay but in our sales meeting the

guy that wrote a 300 employee manufacturing company is getting high fives from everybody for writing a 300 employee yeah but we don't want the 300 employee private cows why okay now when i was still at gallagher i went and told them this this is stupid i could go kill it with all these private colleges they go no john thanks but no thanks keep going after the big dogs because they knew i was a big sales rep or good sales rep they knew you know that's where the money's at but i'm like this they're overlooking something here big time and it's not my job as a 27 year old to teach the 50 year olds what they're doing wrong right so i said okay you know what i'm gonna go out on my own and do this so i developed this

niche selling to small private universities hit up all the ones in illinois first and then started expanding expanding and um nine and a half years later before i sold the company i was the largest provider of employee benefits for colleges and universities in the in the small private sector market that's awesome yeah so were you looking to exit or did somebody just come knocking on the door and walk me that i never would have exited i know that's why that's why when you said the thing about companies being built to sell and not name it after yourself that was a foreign concept to me you were like i'm gonna die here well i thought i'd hand off my kids or something because the thing is um i looked at selling when i first got in just i went to an

mergers and acquisitions meeting for insurance and the rule of thumb at these mergers and acquisition meetings was two times one and a half to two times gross revenue of your organization is what they'd buy you for that's multiple yeah yeah now here's the damn thing this is oh six ish when i went to that meeting okay 2006 well everyone's margins in the industry are 17 to 25 percent so you sell it for one and a half to two times gross and you have a 17 to 25 percent margin that's a decent payday for that for that owner okay well dickhead here fucking didn't have 17 percent margins i had an 80 profit margin because you didn't have an office well that was part now by that point later i had an office but the real the Because you didn't have an office instead. Well, by that point later, I had an office.

But the real reason was I had this niche with colleges. The reason the margins are so low for everyone else in the industry is because just like what you guys have to do, you have to give your agents a huge percentage of the commissions that they bring in. So most brokerage firms grow in insurance by hiring agents underneath, and all the good agents are going to demand a bigger piece of contract exactly so i avoided all that because i had this niche with colleges so i just had support people going to trade shows and like supporting me as i grew this thing so we

didn't you you were the only broker pretty much i had i had high level people in the six figures that i'd hire like a senior account executives that kind of shit but dude like we should have had 35 employees and we had like six okay like for that revenue you know something i heard over on friday that stuck in my head i don't remember if you were standing we were talking about this other but somebody made the comment i think it might have been josh that said um start about a company and he said yeah he goes you know they hired b minus talent they pay him c plus wages so i can't keep anybody yeah that makes sense how so when you were looking to grow like talk to me about your your talent acquisition talking about how you found people well so i you know you you swing and miss a couple times right so so at first i was like well i should be hiring sales people you know what i mean but then i'm thinking to

myself if it works out what's going to keep them here what's going to keep me they're doing same thing to me that i just did with gallagher and it's like i'm trained like what we're talking about in the beginning you're training person to leave um so i just do it honestly bro i had people from outside of the industry come in that this is their first job in insurance i'd hire a few like younger girls that were just kind of like administrative people um it was it wasn't until about five years in where i was making a couple million dollars like personally a year that I started bringing in that actual talent. So you just said something I love too, which is a mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make, which is they look for people with industry-specific experience instead of task-specific experience. Here's the deal.

If there's somebody in your industry that's available, they're available for a fucking reason because they're probably not very good. Exactly. But you can teach a smart person how to do anything. Yeah. Like, that was a revelation for me. Yeah. Like, stop trying to hire people that do this already. Hire the smartest people you can find and teach them how to do it.

That's right, man. And we had a good thing going, man. I had, dude, there was like this time, I just never forget, it was like 2013, 2014. And it was like, there's five just never forget it was like 2013 2014 and it was like there's five of us in our office dude and like a few other people were like my a couple of us were our age and we had these younger girls that were like 25 and we'd have like old school rap fridays versus new age rap and like argue like like shit like that and it was just a fun fun time man and um i ended up uh the only reason i sold it, brother, was because then private equity

entered the insurance space. So to loop in where we were talking, where your original question was, that two times gross revenue model would never make sense for a guy with an 80% profit margin. I'll make that in a year and a half or two and a half years, whatever the math is. But then private equity now enters the space.'re buying companies let's i can't be super specific but let's just call it 10 times yeah multiple of ebita exactly now i don't know why everyone else in the industry isn't going nuts right now why am i not hearing about this why isn't everyone going nuts well it's because they're not going they're not going nuts because they're all at 20% margins. 20% margin on a two times gross purchase is the same as 10 times EBITDA. Yeah.

If you have a 20% margin. Follow me on that if you do the math on that. Yeah, dude. So for everyone else, this is not big news. For my fucking ass, this was huge news. You're the hot girl in the bar, my friend. Exactly. It's closing time and who's

buying a drink brother so i get a phone call from this company i'm shutting it down i'm not even trying to sell the damn company i agree to this damn meeting the only reason i agree to this meeting is the guy called me like three fucking times and he says to me hey bro you got to eat sometime let me fucking buy you dinner and i used that same freaking closing line to get meetings with prospective clients and the guy had called three times. I go, all right, if we go to Mastro's and I could get you to fucking rib eye. So we go there. He explains to me what I just explained on the purchases. And I think the guy's got two heads.

There's no fucking way they're buying me for this much money. This is wrong. Well, sure enough, it ended up happening that way. End up then taking 35% of the deal in stock because I had to work there for five years. The stock ends up having two different liquidation events, which means the transfer of one private equity firm to

another twice during the five years I worked there. One of them happened two months after I closed. When each of those events happened, the stock price tripled. So my 35% equity that I took in their stock April 30th of 2015 tripled July 8th of 2015. Everyone's high-fiving each other, pulling all their fucking money out. They had been waiting seven years for this to happen. I just waited two months. Well, I'm not taking any of the money out because I would have had to pay short-term capital gains taxes on it.

And I still got to work here for five years, so I want to have a little bit of excitement. Let it ride. Yeah. So I left it all in. Everyone told me I was crazy again. Now remember 10 years earlier, dude, I was being called a fool for leaving my $140,000 as area vice president. Yay. You know what I mean? And now here I am, all this shit's happening for me. All right. Life changed. Okay. So that money all stays in. We're right at the end of my employment contract at this point, story for another day, but everything's going sideways in the organization for me personally. I'm like, dude, I got to get the fuck out here. Like it's too many egos. We grew too fast. And most people weren't in a position that I was in

financially and they were part of other acquisitions, but they had lower margins. They had five partners. They didn't have the shit shit i had and people are starting to realize it because they're they're in there saying well our shit doesn't stink we have 50 employees yeah dude but you're going to be working until you're 70 because you also had six partners and you know it's the pie is going to get chopped up pretty good people start to fucking realize that they see my condo at the trump tower they start to just realize and now there becomes animosity well john you got all rich from this you should be on this committee you should do that and like you know what finally the rubber hit they're like we get the fuck out here well right as i'm literally walking out the door within two weeks all right they announced that the fucking private

equity firm um switched to another one again another liquidation event that stock that i left in there fully tripled again so if you try to do the math at this point so you're 10x times 3x 30x times that is now 90x brother on ebita from five years prior oh yeah if you look at it that way i wasn't even looking at that yeah yeah yeah well and because i looked i looked at it as like that 35 percent well no because that would have been 100 of that so the 35 of the stock i i'd look at it as like that 35%. Well, no, cause that would've been a hundred percent of that. So the 35% of the stock I'd look at it as right. You know what I mean? So the 35% of the stock turned into 315% of the whole deal. Right.

And by the way, if that stock did nothing, this brother was planning on retiring for the rest of his life. Yeah. And that stock just, you know, did that. So leaving chips on the table at the right time,

brother, it was a great experience, man. And sometimes ignorance is bliss because everyone told me I'm a fucking idiot. Let me ask you this. Did you negotiate your own acquisition? That's what I was going to say. So ignorance is bliss, right? So everyone else is using investment bankers. I never shopped it around because I thought these guys were making a mistake

when I went and had that meeting at Mastro's. I'm like, dude, if they really pay me, I suppose they're fucking morons. So my research later said, dude, everyone would have paid you, you fucking idiot. That's why you did a five-year workout, too. I guess the five-year probably, well, maybe. But it worked out. Shit, you split the toy. It's such a relationship business there, though, bro.

I think the five years is kind of standard, actually, for that. But there's other things that I probably could have gotten better on for sure. how the stock's gonna perform isn't one of the negotiable issues no you know what i mean i can't see myself of having a better deal than that part of it you know what i mean and and who knows maybe things wouldn't work perfectly and i would have got bought by aeon or something and it doesn't split yeah or but maybe i'm still working there right now because they have me on some senior executive level and i think this is fucking awesome not knowing this little instagram world and podcast world ever would have existed i never would have fucking known you know what i mean what am i doing now hanging out with fucking celebrities in newport beach meeting guys like you yeah you know

what i'm saying but i would have been over there making a million dollars a year thinking i'm awesome well let's talk let's talk about that so you exited the company and you just get it i know you get into a lot of investment with a lot of different things i mean you've got your hands on all kinds of stuff now right one of the things that i happen to see that i thought was really interesting that i want to talk to you about was you have an affiliate link on one of your pages for a bunch of home services businesses i wanted to talk about that yeah because i i mean if you if you look at like you know cody sanchez and you know all these other folks that are really the acquisition of home services business is getting so hot right now

so tell me about your affiliation with that what are your thoughts on it let's talk about that yeah so i haven't really done much to monetize my instagram at all really and um you know a lot a lot of it's because the messaging is just so like, hey, I'm already rich. You guys could be rich, too. Let me follow this path. And I'm not selling anyone anything. So I've been really careful on shit I put out there. I got reached out to by a franchise broker that wanted to do this, like, influencer deal with me.

For those of the people that don't, like, if you've ever looked into franchises, the franchise fee is set. So wherever that money is going of that franchise fee, it's the same fee. You don't get to negotiate that. You know what I mean? It's filed. So if you use a broker, a lot of times, like let's say you got ABC Vacuum Company over here as the franchise. Here's the broker and here is you. If you go directly to them and it's 50 grand, franchise fee, it's 50 grand.

You stop through this broker and the broker brought to you, it's still 50 grand. This guy, this guy might, no, not plus this guy might be making 20 or 30 grand off of that 50. Yeah. It's still 50 grand. These guys are cutting a deal with this guy because to bring them business. So one of these guys right here, that's one of the larger ones in the country, asked me if I'd like to be part of that formula. And the only reason I'm doing it, dude, is because a lot of the other shit I put out there is so gambling related. I get a lot of people that will message me, hey, man, I want to be my own boss. I don't really know where to start. Can you recommend anything?

What can I do? Yeah. And for me, it was easy because I worked in an industry as paid training to then turn around and go do something in the exact same job. But not everybody has that luxury. You might be working somewhere where it's just not feasible. Dude, I mean, I've got multiple friends, multiple friends that are getting ready to have exited or getting ready to exit their home services businesses for hundreds of millions of dollars yeah hundreds i mean hundreds of millions of dollars so i love that space um

you know here we're completely vertically integrated with the financial side of the transaction and and one of my goals for next year is to get more involved with some of the more home services stuff um so we can continue to facilitate our clients with that stuff because i look because that's business doesn't go away yeah it doesn't go away. I mean, yes, they can be hard to staff sometimes, but it's just, it's businesses of need that people need. Yeah. Yeah. Well do it. And I mean, you're looking at it from a macro perspective, but even on a micro perspective, you know,

you got people listening to this show right now. I got people that follow me on Instagram that are like interested in this financial shit, but they're not millionaires and don't necessarily have the means to become one right now oh here's a franchise i could buy into and start my own shop and it's a painting business i know how to fucking paint and then i could scale it open up a second location now i bring people underneath me they might not have the business acumen to do that otherwise but now you're you're a franchisee

where you have that training guiding you along i I mean, that's everything that you got to start somewhere. I tell people all the time, they're like, well, I don't have the, I don't have the business acumen. Like, bro, read Tom Sawyer. All you gotta do is figure out how to paint the fence and they get somebody else to paint it for you. That's all you gotta do. Get in the middle of that transaction. Exactly, dude. And I'm not a big, I'm not a big, like, you know, you know, I was, I was blessed, right. To get a job where I learned how to sell in an industry insurance that is industry that, that has money. But, but again, a lot of people aren't.

And if you, if you're a franchisee and you're with the right organization, you literally kind of have a bit, you're the owner, but you have a business part of that's holding your hand. Yeah. To show you what to do. Yeah. Got to do your research though, to make sure you like that organization that organization well let's talk about your brand man let's talk about

let's talk about your brand what it stands for i know you wrote the book yep um which uh which we didn't talk a whole lot about uh but the general you talk about it yeah man so i wrote a book called two thousand percent raise and it was really just a function dude off of me doing podcasts and uh people just asking me my background. And my story is that I left corporate America to be my own boss. And, you know, I asked my job, my boss at Gallagher, to take me from 140 to 180. And he told me, hey, we just don't do 30% raises. It's, you know, you've been making more than people that have been here too long.

And I'm like, okay. Well, he's telling a 27-year-old that he can't fucking make that you know what i mean well i'm bringing in more business um they've changed their ways since then i've been told but but back then they were of the model high base salary small bonus we're a team you're gonna come work with us because we're arthur j gallagher and you know i'm like uh okay So I ended up quitting my job. And ultimately I gave myself a 2000% raise, right? Like literally that 140, take that 140 salary times it by 20. That's what I was making an annual income each year. You know what I mean?

So that's the message. And my social media and my podcast is called that. And, or my social media is called John Sarasani, but it was supposed to just be to promote my book. The social media has become more popular than really it's a great brand for that reason that's a great that's a great story around that yeah man let me ask you we're going to finish up with this question which is what i always ask because this is my biggest fear in life okay and i got one in there i got i got him in there grinding right now in the other room all right one of my biggest fears is as someone that has wealth raising

worthless kids because hard times make hard times make great men and easy times make weak men yeah and uh so tell me what you're doing with your kids to raise to raise people that aren't just don't expect things brother i'm gonna tell you right now i just got mad at my son about a damn week ago there's like a 20 bill like on his dresser in the open or something and i freaking took it and waited a few days to see if he noticed it was gone and he didn't and i want to like beat his ass dude i want to beat his ass bro um you know i think i'm doing the right thing with the kids but but what i what I, what I can't duplicate, unfortunately, or I haven't figured out how to do it yet is, is the stories like what I was telling you about getting my basketball shoes

two weeks into the season. You know what I mean? I'm not going to do that for purposes of making a point to my kids. And, you know, I, I do worry that they're not going to have that same ship on their shoulder. Well,

I think, I think what I try to do is manufacture adversity as much as I can, which I love sports for that. My son just had to retire from playing lacrosse because of some injuries that he has to his ankles. My daughter is a fucking vicious cheerleader, right? She is all about it. She's all in it.

And putting them in situations where as much as i can pushing them to the max that they're going to fail yeah i like that is what i try to do and i like that i always know that but i just never forget when i was like oh man i'm screwing this up yeah we were getting on an airplane uh hayden was eight years old we're getting on an airplane going somewhere and it was like it was like a fucking southwest flight okay and he looks at me at eight years old and he goes did delta not have any flights bro you're eight like if when i was eight years old to get an airplane it was like the wonderment of flight right yeah like the in-flight entertainment is not to my liking i don't like their snacks what are you talking about dude brother so i just took my kids to maui um

june and uh because i was dating someone i wasn't sure if i was going to bring her or not and i thought i went and bought these tickets in fucking january okay i thought i went and bought the fucking tickets all right and i bought everyone fucking first class well because me and that girl were maybe gonna break up we ended up breaking up anyways it's like fucking may and i go to look at what flight i did the book the time because i gotta get the limo ready and all that shit i don't have any fucking things in my united airlines app that show that i bought tickets all right so i have to go in now within we're leaving like two fucking weeks and buy fucking tickets to maui from chicago all right and i'm claustrophobic i gotta

be in first class but the idea was that all three of us were going to be in first class now those tickets when i did this those tickets when i was going to get them was 2200 each for the three of us that's fine each you know that's fine that's a lot but you know whatever it's a long ass fucking flight and uh they went up to fucking nine grand each dude so i told the fucking kids we ain't spending 27 grand on fucking flights. The sad part about it was the coach tickets were right around that 2200 still. I just screwed that up, brother. I just screwed that one up big time.

Dude, we just got back from Europe. And, you know, I'm a travel hacker. I'm an expert travel hacker. So we flew Emirates business class okay uh to spain i got that first class under business class for 33 000 a seat which is nothing okay plus like 150 bucks on the way back we flew uh from from l from london uh heathrow to lax british airways first class for 77 000 miles a seat plus 200 bucks holy shit so but here's what i did so here's what dude every hotel we stayed in was like five stars i'm just everything was

paid for yeah points right but everywhere we went right i'm like because my wife's like i'm like babe they're just old enough now this is the wrong message i feel about this so here's what i did like literally to the point where they were so fucking annoyed with me yeah everything we did i told them how much it cost like every every like you realize yeah this seat would have been nine thousand dollars if you bought it yeah just see that's a car like it's a shitty car yeah but it's a car yeah and i'm like so every little thing we did i'm constantly talking yeah well your kids are in vegas or newport they're here they're here okay dude i'm in i'm in this suburb it's called it's called barrington illinois and it's there's a lot of money there and uh my son just turned 16 now he got straight a's so he gets a car at 16 my daughter did not get sick straight a's and she had to wait to get her car car okay but like i've got a lexus is 350 or 450 or whatever it's it was new i you can't find cars

for like much less than 50 grand nowadays but i'm thinking to myself dude where i grew up in schaumburg like the rich kid was getting a fucking five-year-old mustang bro yeah you know no dude i bought i bought my son my son i bought him bought him a 2017 Jeep Wrangler. It's a Jeep, right? Yep. Kid. But, but it's like, but it's so funny because the dude that had it before I was like smaller wheels on it and like the hard cover case.

So it kind of looks like a ghetto G wagon, but it was like, dude, I got like 20 grand. It has like 50,000 miles on it. I'm like, this is a good enough car. This is a great car. He paid for half of it. So that was great. There you go. And, and there we go. my daughter is already announcing you know a

much different aspirations okay dude my daughter's a hustler bro yeah she is uh she's a gangster she is and uh it's good like dude for example people like you know because i because i'm always stuffed up or whatever it's why are you stuffed up like i'm terribly allergic to cats yep like you have cats i go yeah we have two white persian cats i go you're allergic to cats and you have two white persian cats i go dude my daughter is really she makes really good powerpoints yeah like when she wants something even as a little kid she would make a powerpoint and present it it'll be so compelling i'm like fucking these cats i love my daughter man what am i gonna close the deal she's a closer dude she is she is a closer well brother how can they find you if they want to? I mean, obviously, you've been kind of everywhere.

What's the easiest way for them to find you, connect with you? So it's at John Sarasani on Instagram, C-E-R-A-S-A-N-I. Instagram and TikTok. And Instagram, I should have the blue checkmark. Don't go to one of the imposter accounts. TikTok, look at the spelling as well. YouTube is at John Sarasani TV. You could go to just John Sarasani on YouTube,

but you're going to see videos of my kids and shit. Go to John Sarasani TV. You could go to just John Sarasani on YouTube, but you're going to see videos of my kids and shit. Go to John Sarasani TV for some good business acumen. Brother, I love it, man. You're welcome back anytime you want, my man. Awesome, thanks, brother. So guys, there it is, man. John Sarasani live. And if you did, I hope you took a lot away from that.

But if you didn't take this one thing away, you should have. Don't ever let anybody in life tell you how much you're worth. We'll see you next week. What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list, but do me a favor. If you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us.

But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.