Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - High Stakes and Comebacks: A Wall Street Saga with Ross Mandell

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

Get ready for an electrifying conversation with the legendary Ross Mandell, famously known as the "bad boy of Wall Street." Ross takes us on a wild ride through his career, from building successful companies and taking them public to facing significant legal challenges and his inspiring comeback. With candid anecdotes, Ross shares the highs and lows of his journey, including his role as the star of the reality show "Facing Life." This is a raw and riveting tale of resilience, mistakes, and triumphs that you won't want to miss.   In this episode, we also tackle the age-old debate of nature versus nurture, exploring transformative life events that shape our drive to succeed. Hear personal stories of overcoming adversity, whether it's the guest’s own time in prison, battling substance abuse, or the loss of a parent at a young age. These powerful narratives reveal how faith, sobriety, and resilience play crucial roles in personal and professional growth. Our conversation is filled with heartfelt reflections and unflinching honesty, offering invaluable insights for anyone grappling with life's challenges.   Finally, we transport you back to the high-octane world of Wall Street, where we recount the competitive energy, cutthroat sales tactics, and strategic maneuvers that define the finance industry. From the creation of Sky Capital to the dramatic impact of regulatory oversight, we delve into the intricacies of establishing successful businesses under pressure. Ross Mendell’s mentorship program and his innovative approaches provide a masterclass in persistence and ingenuity. Join us for a profound exploration of ambition, fear, and the relentless pursuit of excellence.   CHAPTERS    (00:00) Escaping the Drift With Ross Mandell (03:42) Nature vs Nurture in Life's Journey (10:11) Life on Wall Street (17:28) Navigating Fear in Sales Industry (27:49) Business Challenges and Successes (39:06) Building Sky Capital (44:04) Business Impact of Regulatory Oversight (56:44) Business Mentorship Program (01:07:43) Facing Adversity   💬 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 #rossmandell #wallstreet #realityshow #facinglife #naturevsnurture #transformativelifeevents #adversity #resilience #sobriety #financeindustry #skycapital #regulatoryoversight #mentorshipprogram #insidertrading #businesseducation #startupprocesses #scaling #marketing #legalentityformation

And basically, I had a bong next to my bed, and I was hitting the bong every morning. Wake and bake. That's wake and bake. And the rest of the day was just, I don't know what happened really. I had a lot of girlfriends, and I had a lot of sex, and I did a lot of drugs, and it was freezing cold, and I said, this is terrible. And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm Jon 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 like the opening says, man, get you from where you are to where you want to be and today in the studio ladies and gentlemen i got somebody that's uh got a pretty wild story man this is a guy dubbed the bad boy of wall street at one point and no it's not that wolfy dude it's another guy a better guy that built phenomenal companies, took them public on the London Stock Exchange, had a little bit of a problem with the government, but is back bigger than ever, star of his own reality show, Facing Life. And when you talk about facing life, this is a dude that's got some life lessons we're going to learn of today. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the program. This is Ross Mandel. Ross. What's shaking, Big John? How are you, buddy? What's going on?

You know, I just got to say, before I came here today, I'm staying at the Wynn Hotel in obviously Las Vegas. And Donnie, who booked me here today, made the introduction. He said, why don't you watch an episode of John's podcast? And I was tired. I've been very busy. I've been filming. I did three days filming yesterday and one day. And I lay on the bed. I put you on.

And I got jazzed up. I got energized. Oh, I thought you were going to say you fell right asleep. I got freaking energized, bro. Knocked you out like a Valium. I said to Steve, I said, I got energized, bro. I said, this guy's got real energy. I loved it.

Well, thank you so much, man. I appreciate that. And, you know, now that I'm here, you know, I was listening to you. You're interviewing this guy, this dude. I'm 6'5". I'm 280. I play Titan for Notre Dame. Oh, John Zarasani.

Yeah, John Zarasani. And, you know, so I'm thinking, you know, wow, big dude. I mean, you know, you must have been there. Now, you're just as big. Well, I'm not as heavy. I'm as tall, but I'm not as heavy. You're much leaner. I mean, you probably look like you're in shape.

Yeah, I try. I do what I can. Like I told you when you came in, like I'm not winning the battle anymore, but I don't feel like I'm losing any ground currently. I like that. I like, you know, all we could do is, you know, hold our position. That's it. You just dig in and hold the foxhole.

That's what we're doing. I said to him, father time is undefeated still. I'm still going to, I mean, I'm still going to make a run at him. I live my life by the motto of Ricky Bobby from Talladega Nights. And he says with the advancements in modern science and technology, I don't see any reason I can't live to be 137, 157 years old. So that's what I'm banking on as we go he looks at ladies and gentlemen if you haven't seen this man in person you owe it to yourself

i'm a ravishing adonis that's how it works supermodel i'm not i'm not just saying that you know i speak my mind see that it's getting we're gonna start hugging and then people are gonna have to watch this online it's gonna get weird yes we're bromancing right now we are for sure so let's get to you dude so obviously man you don't you don't just wake up one day and become the bad boy of uh of wall street's but it's true so i want to talk about this man because obviously you don't reach those heights of early success without some sort of catalyst to move you forward and i'm always a real big i have a huge interest

in the kind of the nature versus nurture idea, right? So do you think that the way you were raised, your upbringing, your experience as a smaller human led to your desire to build something great? Or do you think it was just innately born within you? You know, it's a good question. I question that myself a lot. I will credit my mom who just recently passed away. She passed away in July. And we had a pretty rocky relationship over the course of our lives. And one thing she did, I give her credit. She used to say to me, you could be anything.

You could be anything in this world. And you could be the president. Like. And you could be the president. Like, who would want to be the president? I'm just saying. But, you know, I had that in my upbringing. I never really thought about it until recently. My wife, Stephanie, was brought up in the Bronx. She was the youngest of four kids.

She was the princess of the family. Stunning gorgeous her whole life. She was born beautiful and she's always been the prettiest and nicest or whatever. Everywhere she's gone. But her father was like, you better get married. You're going to work in a deli. Don't go to college. He was a real Bronx Italian, like off the boat type of guy. Girls got married young and they took care of the house, and they had babies.

And that was that. Don't waste your time trying to be something. And, you know, she ended up, I went to prison for nine years and four months. I was in federal custody. And the day I left for prison, I left her and my two daughters, 14 and 11. And when I got out, they're both in their 20s, women.

And my wife had to face life. And she ended up building a tremendous little business. She became the Florida Sea Turtle lady, floridaseaturtles.com. Okay, A little plug for the wife. I like that. Correct. She's in about 65 stores. She's got a big online shop. And she does this eco-warrior kind of thing where they clean the beaches and they make sure the turtles are okay. And it's really like a marvelous, wonderful

thing. And They say that necessity is the mother of invention. That's the truth. When we're faced with life or death, eat or go hungry, find a way to eat. I was a good kid, very competitive, but not super competitive. I was an athlete, but I wasn't, you know, a six-foot-four Don is from North Florida like my friend Johnny over here. And my father dropped dead suddenly when I was 16 years old. Oh, man. I went from being number six academically in my high school class to barely graduating.

They only let me graduate because they knew my father died. I basically stopped going to school, started doing a lot of drugs, smoking weed, taking a lot of pills, the Wolf of Wall Street glamorized a little bit. It was every bit

the truth. Drinking and just drugging and and and using women and and abusing cars and abusing myself and uh uh i just just was very angry for some reason well your father died i think that's pretty right but a 16 year old kid that probably idolized idolized his father at that was my best friend and it was a good man to this day he's probably the most honest man that I ever knew in my life. Yeah, I think being mad at the world is probably an appropriate response. I was made a god.

I like to say, when I tell my story, I was a god-fearing kid. And when my father was taken away like that and my family was just fucked, I just said, you know what? Fuck God, there's no God. I get to be a god. And that's a big argument I get from people that I have friends who we get into these discussions and I was in prison. Well, you know, I was framed. I didn't do anything wrong. I'm in jail. How could there be a God?

Or I had a baby and she's autistic and has to live in a home. She never did a thing wrong in her life. Why is she, why is my wife, why are we punished? So, you know, stuff, there's all kinds of questions. So God died when my father died. And 17 years later, when I got sober in rehab, I found God again through the program,

the 12-step programs. Well, let's talk about this. So were you just, when did you get into the Wall Street game? Okay, so I go to college. So you were still drinking, drugging, partying like crazy.

I don't remember college. I don't remember a day. How did you, so be honest. They let you graduate. You somehow got into college. I got into college. And just so you know,

the way I graduated high school, I had to take a summer, I wasn't allowed to graduate with my class. So I couldn't go to graduation. I had to take a course and read a couple of books and write a big paper

about world war ii and the use of the atomic bomb on irish human i guess i'm like an expert in that field that's the only thing i really remember from from last year in high school but uh i'm drinking i'm drunk you know what's funny about that is technically technically speaking i've never said this on this show but i'm gonna going to say it now. Technically speaking, I did not have enough credits to graduate from high school. I love it. Because my senior year of high school, I played on our golf team and the coach of our golf team was also the guidance counselor. So my senior year of high school, if you took team sports, if you played a team sport with high school, you could go practice. So I took my schedule in my senior year, which team sports had no credits. My senior schedule was team sports, team sports, team sports, team sports, AP English, lunch, AP calculus,

team sports. That was my schedule. So I would just go play golf all day and then come take two classes go to lunch go play golf again and then practice with a team and i was just doing that constantly and at the end of the year my counselor calls me down he says hey you don't have enough credits to graduate and i was like well dude what that's your fault you let me you you saw me do this you let me do this you helped me do this whatever and let me do this. You helped me do this. Whatever. And I don't know what he did, but I got to graduate. I love it.

With 23 and a half credits from high school. Gaming the system all these years later. I'm happy the statute of limitations has probably passed. Yes. But you're safe. We're getting honest here, and I love it. Well, I'm keeping it. I keep it real because my father also did not graduate from high school. Wow.

Later became a judge. I mean, went to law school, did everything else. And well, he went, yeah, because back then you could just, you know, he never took the GED, but he just, with the credits, he just, he went right into college, right? They didn't require him to have a high school degree. And what was funny is years later when he was judge,

like his 50th class reunion or some shit, our small hometown, he wanted to go. So he's like, would you guys give me an honorary degree? And they're like, sure, just take the GED. Well, you're the judge. They said, take the GED. Really? Yes, they wanted to take a GED to get an high school diploma. He didn't do it.

It's good to be the judge, right? Yeah, it was so fun. He's like, I have two college degrees and I'm an attorney. I a judge like what's going on anyway enough about that that's very funny yeah it is funny sorry i'm entertaining myself right now and i should be being entertained by you ross i'm sorry let's go no no i love it this is fantastic let's get back to you so you know i go to i go to uh uh suny at albany because i had a full scholarship because my academics from grades 9 10 and 11 was spectacular sure i was like number six in the class at a 6 scholarship because my academics from grades 9, 10, and 11 were spectacular. I was like number 6 in the class at a 624.

And my senior year was just basically I got a pass because I wrote that paper. Yeah. So my transcript, I had already applied to like a bunch of schools, early application, and I was accepted. I went to the University of Albany. And basically, I had a bong next to my bed, and I was hitting the bong every morning. Wake and bake.

That's wake and bake. And the rest of the day was just, I don't know what happened really. I had a lot of girlfriends and a lot of sex and I did a lot of drugs and it was freezing cold. And I said, this is terrible. What year is this? This is 1975.

Okay. September 75, that semester. All right. And myself and a bunch of kids, like sort of a Long Island high school kids that wish to hang out on Long Island, go to the city and all that, we all decided to transfer

to University of Maryland College Park. Okay. Which I later, believe it or not, endowed, gave him half a million dollars. And that's a legacy I left there before I went to prison, 2004. Okay. You know.

So you became a terrapin. So I became a terp. Lefty Drizel was the coach. And, you know, we had some really famous athletes there. And Randy White, the old bro from the Texas Dallas Cowboys. Big Ten now. Yeah. Yeah.

But it was pretty cool. And the drugging and drinking continued. And I was like a cool kid. I like a Camaro. I had a wrestler's body. I used to wrestle in high school, and I played football and all that. And I was lean, and I just didn't give a fuck attitude. And something about that makes you attractive to young people.

When you're older, you're a bum you know but when you're a kid and you're not bad looking and you have this attitude you're doing drugs you're drinking you become popular somehow i don't know and uh i ran with like a group of guys that were basically not really interested in in school interested in throwing parties in the college. And I heard you share about that with the kid from Notre Dame. Oh, yeah. You know, and I was also one of those kids that, you know, we used to throw parties at the hot clubs.

That's the way to do it. If you're getting $20 to get in, then we would sell them Quaaludes. Not the way to do it. That part's not the way to do it. We're very enterprising. Don't do that, kids. People say to me, I was basically drinking and drugging all the time, and it's expensive.

It's really an expensive hobby. And the older you get and the fancier, you talked about bottle surfs and clubs, and I was one of those guys sitting with him, $10,000 on the floor at Marrakesh in the Hamptons. We're talking 1980. And one of those guys, best table VIP.

So I'm using and every dime I'm earning, hustling, I'm spending. And I hooked up with a group of men. Went to graduate college. We all just went to sell something. That's what guys like us do. It doesn't

didn't pass me that you're selling real estate. Because guys like us sell stuff. That's what we do. And I was pretty good at selling because I love people. I get it. You know, I can hang pretty much with any crowd. And but I need money. And so

one day one of my friends calls and says, listen, I want you to buy this stock. I get a tip from my broker. I didn't even know what he was talking about. And we bought some stock for three and it went to eight. We sold it and made money. We said, fuck this, I'm going to Wall Street. Yeah, best job in the world.

Right. And so, you know, we're also going out in those days of Studio 54 and the disco eras and all that kind of thing. Magique, the Underground, the Limelight, all these great clubs. Peter Cajun. Xenon and, you know, disco and Quaaludes and Hollywood. It was like a golden age at some point, some time. I don't think it's like that anymore,

but what do I know? I'm old as fuck now. That's how I look at it. So, you know, we would go to the studio 54. There'd be 10,000 people on 54 Street and they let 100 people play in the game with the velvet ropes. Sure. And, you know, finally we'd get in

and we'd say, you know, how did you get in? How come you pulled up in a Lamborghini or a Rolls Royce and you have this hot chick and you get the best table? Like, if you don't mind me asking, who are you? How do you get this? It wasn't a movie star. It wasn't a face.

I recognize. I work on wall street. I'm a trader. I'm a broker. You know, I do arbitrage. You do leverage buyouts. So you went to, wait, you went to the EF Hutton training program. I did.

I did. So if you had to take, cause, cause that was probably back then, that was almost a gold standard. It was, they went Merrill Lynch. Yeah. He had fun. My good friend over here went to the Merrill Lynch training program. Yeah.

But you look at training programs for sales and that was probably a gold standard. I mean, I think- I think even today there's a couple that I would say, I advise people to do this. It was the advice I got years ago when I got out of the bar and restaurant business and got into sales. My buddy said, look, dude, at this point, point the easiest fastest way to get a phd in sales is to go sell kirby vacuum cleaners door to door correct or go or go sell highline cars aluminum siding either one of those things oh yeah now i now i'd probably also say solar would

probably be a good thing to get into right because some of those solar companies have amazing training programs but yeah it was it was a great way but back then that ef hutton uh you know gold standard training program what was the if you had to pick one thing that was the best thing that you learned out of that training program what would it have been so they're trying to teach you a certain way to sell you want to sound educated you're talking about securities you're calling people cold on the phone you're asking for you know you know, orders of a hundred, $250,000 and you have $1,500 to your name. And so, you know,

I learned humility. I learned humility. There were guys next to me that looked like you six, four gorgeous. It doesn't matter on the phone, baby. Well, that's true.

But you know, many of you, many of you guys sounded great. You sounded slick. So I'll never forget. I started out in this training program, 130 people. And we all, they had a big boardroom, and they put us all on the phone. And when you got a guy on the phone, a lead, to pitch, you had to raise your hand. And everyone was at a desk, a numbered desk.

I was number eight. And I go like this, and the guy at the front of the dais was senior brokers, like 20 of them. They'd see I raised my hand. They would go to the break break and they would listen in. So the first time I made a cold call and the guy answered, my hands were shaking so bad I hung up. And I'm looking around and all these people are raising their hands and they're pitching and all this.

And so then I dialed, I dialed, and then I got a guy answers the phone and I hung up the second time. My hands are shaking. But meanwhile, everyone around me seems to be like on the phone and everybody's attacking and feeling good. I'm like, I mean, get your shit together, bro. Get my self-talk. I mean, come on, just do it. Right.

I was scared as shit. And a lot of people say, well, it's Mandel. Scared, what? And I was. I confess it's the truth and it's something everybody should know. Nobody just has the balls to get on the truth and it's something everybody should know nobody just has the balls to get on the phone and be a star and all these different things you gotta go through it yeah it's a callous you gotta go through it bro you play golf i've never played i wanted to

play golf one year i went to golf school and i go out there and i'm playing golf i'm playing 1836 you know 54 my hands are sore i got blisters and calluses, right? There's no way around it, right? I mean, he'd buy golf gloves. But this is if you want to play. You play football, you're going to have those aches and pains and the soreness and all that good stuff. So, okay, so I go to this program, and I'm doing my thing,

and I understand there's no one way to be great at sales. It's very stylistic, but there are certain basic tenets and techniques that everybody should know. You could buy books and you can listen to tapes and video and the Wolf of Wall Street, Jordy Belfort, teaches a straight line method, which is called the Lehman Method. But the only way to be great at anything is repetition. Repetition, repetition, repetition.

I see morons that have no business picking up a phone, making half a million, $750,000 a year just because they don't quit. Stick-to-itiveness, it's a great quality. You don't get down. You eat rejection and you just keep going. The only way to lose is to quit well what we teach our people here that is for me the ultimate cure for that for that ailment of terrified of of the no right is we value the no in everything we do and every business that i have that involves

outbound reach you know outbound to this, whatever it is. Anything that follows outbound, we value the no, which I say, okay, look, your closing probability on these is about three to 5%, whatever it is, which means that three people out of a hundred are going to say yes. So when they say yes, you make five grand. So now you take 3%. So now you say 15 grand is what you're going to make per 100 calls so everybody tells you to go fuck yourself you're really making about 150 bucks kind of makes it go down a little smoother when you're looking at that way you see i found you put blinders on and you don't calculate you don't analyze you don't think no you just do so i'll

tell you this story but you have huttonF Hutton. Yeah. And finally, I raise my hand, I get a guy on the phone and I make my pitch. And at the end of this week, they rate every one of the salespeople. Out of 133 people,

I was like 80. I was like, you know, barely in the top 70% or whatever it was. That went many people better than me. And that was very humbling.

And I thought I, I didn't think I was very good, but you know what? That doesn't matter. All that matters is that you keep going. And so what happened was at the end of the first year, we got a series sevens and then we went on business for real. It was February of 1984. I started. By the end of the year, I was number one in opening accounts. By a mile, by the way. By a mile. And what do you attribute that to?

And then I was second in gross production, dollars generated commissions. The only one that was ahead of me was Marge Schott's son, Steven Schott, who had a $500 million trust fund and was just trading his own money to make commissions. Yeah, right. He had one account himself and his mom, you know what I mean?

So I, and so I was shocked by this because if you just heard me in a room of 100 people selling, you would think I'm okay, but you know, you walk by nothing. That's what made you great.

Just psychology, just stick-to-itiveness and learning to manage fear. Everybody's afraid. I never understood that. When I was a kid and you know, the first day of school, I don't know if you had a school bus where you grew up, you had to go in a corner and wait for a school bus to Long Island. I'd be like, Daddy, I'm scared. I'm so scared. And like when I had to go away to sleep away camp, I was like 10 years old or 8 years old.

I was leaving. Parents drop you off and then you don't see it for two months. And I'd say, Daddy, I'm so scared. And my father would say, Son, you're not scared. You just have anxiety. You anxiety nervous and he taught me the word of anxiety of anxiety just don't worry everybody feels anxious and that was like a to a young boy because i i would go through life looking at you and say look at this guy so tall he's handsome he's got a great rap. He's not scared. But I'm scared.

And once I learned, they figured that everybody's scared. So not just picking up the phone, not just me. The guy that's answering the phone is scared. He's got fear. He's got anxiety. And so all of it just went away. It went away when I realized that I was sort of normal that way. And you just got to keep going.

You have to learn every technique there is, but then adopt it and create your own style. And I quickly learned that I can't sound as slick as some of these sort of Harvard educated, Ivy League educated guys. A guy like you, father was a big attorney. You're well-spoken. You know, you're very well manicured. We're going to start dating. You keep giving me these you keep giving me these people seeing this head of hair my wife's gonna get jealous ross he's got no hair out of place i'm gonna have to understand my wife i'm gonna have to explain this episode to

my wife you keep it up uh you know your wife is that good looking i should explain it to her so what i'm saying really is that I adopted my own style. And people are just people. We're all the same. We all feel the same kind of things. You know, a lot of people go through life and they say, oh, look at that guy. Look at that. This guy's a garbage man.

This guy's a lawyer. This guy's a judge. This guy's a waiter. But we're all the same. If you stop looking for the differences and you focus on the realities, the blessings, the common threads we all have, it allows you to move through the world in a much cleaner and more effective way. Well, the best thing I think I've ever heard about sales, I was watching, there's a show on HBO, which is almost unwatchable. It's called called industry the reason it's unwatchable especially if you got kids because it's essentially

really great trading floor dialogue then drugs then sex then really great trading floor dialogue then drugs and sex and it just repeats every episode yeah it's just like that can't watch kids walking around but but they were it's there's a trading floor in London at a company. And the guy's explaining to the new, the first year people on the teams. He says, listen, because you have to understand what our job is. Our job is to talk people into making a decision that we know is right for

them much faster than they want to make that decision. I like it. And I thought, man, that is such a good way to explain really what sales is on an intimate level. Well, it's about identifying a need. Yeah. You like to make money?

Sure. You sure? I wouldn't be here if I didn't. Okay. What if I could show you a way that you can make some money? You'd be interested in chatting with me? You've talked about how attractive I am. I think you're going to turn me out, Ross.

I think this could be a problem. So you understand. It's like it's about understanding we're all the same and we all have certain needs. And, you know, when you go to Wall Street, they teach you to tap into fear and greed. I have an opportunity for you. Okay, so you can't take advantage of this opportunity.

Don't worry, I'm sure there'll be another opportunity down the road. I just hate to see you miss out on the old, the takeaway sale. I mean, there's just so many methods and effective techniques that are taught by geniuses, experts. I mean, they have analyzed this freaking field and there's so much information available. But again, until you do it over and over and over again, you don't have an edge. I i used to make 300 dials a day for 20 years i used to pitch a minimum of 10 people every day i'm qualifying i walk around through life and i qualify everybody i want to know everything about everybody i don't do it i don't do it consciously

anymore it's just uh you know when i went to prison and i was in a few places i know everybody i knew what their worth was. I know what, you know, what they were doing. I understand where they are in life. I understand details about their lives, so forth and so on. And, uh, you know, I have an advantage in the fact that I genuinely like people. It's not an act. Yeah. You can't, I don't think you can be great in a sales job if you, if you don't like people. I don't think you can. Well, I have, I have, I have some examples of guys that make millions and really hate people. Really?

Yeah, but I think it's because they have low self-esteem and they hate themselves. Yeah. I haven't really analyzed it that carefully, but I know that they really think that they're very superior and they don't like anybody and they don't care for people, but they're great sales guys because they're practiced at it. They're practiced at it. But the best thing I can tell you with sales is most salesmen are nervous so you talk at you talk at the person and the idea in sales is to talk with somebody yeah you're doing something together yeah nobody wants to buy anything but everybody wants to own something it's like we always say if you're talking more than the person you're talking to

you're doing it wrong well you know i don't think there are any absolutes there are stylistic differences you know so let's so let's get back to ef hutton so so you when do you leave ef hutton and start your own deal well i go to ef hutton and i leave in 1986 to go to oppenheimer company what was the offer that your boss put on the table at that kind of production dfo and what was the offer your boss put on the table as you're walking out the door well i had uh i'll give you an example. Right in 1987, I was lured away from a place called D.H. Blair. This is where I started making millions of dollars. I went there and I had, you know, a few thousand dollars.

And I ended up having $30 million in my account on my 29th birthday. And I left and they, you know, I was routinely offered $300,000, $350,000 up front, which in those and they you know i was routinely offered 300 350 000 up front which in those days you know that's good money pretty decent money up front doing very little just changing my desk and uh you know well i can just i can just imagine the powers that be at these companies when you're walking out the door just doing throwing just ridiculous at you trying to get you they do they do and they And they threaten too. I was threatened quite often for leaving. First they try the carrot, then they go with the stick. That's a big play because these men are lesser than you and they don't know really how to sort of outsell you and their propositions are not working. So

then they go with the stick. That's something that small people are very good at doing. And so a lot of the problems that I had on my record were from me saying, listen, I'm out of here, bro. I wish you good luck. And then they would just write me up on my form, U5 it's called, within the industry. It's like industry talk. I would get U5'd in a negative way because I left.

But if I stayed, I was getting a 300, half a million to put in our office, in our partnership. But because I decided to leave, they would write me up like I'm a bad guy and all these different things. Trying to damage that future deal. That's gross. And that happens a lot in this business. It's just really, it's cutthroat. That's gross. Then everybody tries to steal everybody's clients. You know, it's a very different kind of game

than let's say real estate. Dude, no, it is not. I mean, we're a completely vertically integrated company here,

right? So we own our own mortgage company, we own our own title and escrow company, we own everything. If there's a nickel spent around real estate,

we own part of that company that's doing that. And we have had, because, you know, like, look, if you, when you're a real estate company and you all of a sudden start opening a title company and you're competing with the big giant national powers that have always had full reign of being able to walk in. I mean, this, just so you know,

this real estate company that you're in, this is the number two highest grossing company for real estate in Nevada. Love it. Nevada's one of the best markets. Yeah, yeah. We do, we'll do $2 billion plus in sales this year. We'll do 4,000 plus transactions.

We've got just under 600 agents that work here, which is great for the number. Like the number one company has like 1,800 agents. The number three company has like 1,100 agents. So we- 1100 agents so we have 600 we have six just under 600 so we're doing extremely well what we do so you know we're big we're six percent of the market is this company and when you shut the door in the bottom market yeah and when you shut the door on the big national title companies because you opened your own they don't like that shit they do not like that shit and uh and over the years we've had them come in and and poach

some of our bigger some of our bigger sales people um from the company and uh and yeah with with the with the the walking papers of they were going to try to come in and steal our business and that none of them have been successful doing it um we've been able to kind of, you know, outflank that in our own way through, through good quality relationships. And we continue to have to do that. So that's a, that's a battle we always have to fight. That's not, that is not singular to that any one industry. If you, if you're making money and there's a bigger company that's making more,

you're going to have a problem. You know, there's a, there's a common thread that runs through all business. I get that. And then there are the differences, but the common threads remain the common threads. So I was speaking on a different level, but you know, when I went on my own and I built my own broker dealer, that's when things are really interesting. so let's talk about that yeah so in uh 1990 the end of 94 beginning in 1995 i i bought a uh a broker dealer on uh it was the nasd broker deal today the term is finra from a guy named jerry roth who was a partner at spear leads kellogg that tried owning his own place and he just just wasn't cut out for that kind of thing. He was a very successful trader, huge house, 18 horses, stables, the whole thing,

Bedford, New York. So I paid him $2 million and I signed an amazing real estate deal. It's the best real estate deal anyone knows in the middle of Manhattan on Madison Avenue, 52nd Street. On the corner of Madison Avenue, 52nd Street. And I paid $23 a square foot for the $250,000 build-out. 12,000 square feet. And eventually when I sold the firm, Blackstone took my office space, paying about $175 a square foot. Oh, man. I was paid $23 a square foot.

That is a good deal. It's a great story, but I had to make the deal within two hours. Take it or leave it. Bank of America was being acquired by Nations Bank, and they kept the name Bank of America, but the deal was they had a divest of like 10 million square feet of real estate all around the country, and they'd do it in one day. So they had a fire sale.

My lawyer said, you can go take a look. It's going to be the deal of your life, but you have to make a decision in two hours. I said, what? I don't like being rushed or hurried, but it was legit. And so I made the deal,

and I got a build out, and it was amazing. We had an amazing run. But when you go on your own, when you work for somebody, you don't really understand the totality of the game. Once you open up your own place,

people say, ah, fuck him. I could do this. I could do this on my own. But you never really understand what it's like because if you're the captain of the ship, you don't always show to the staff, the underlings oh what it is you're going to you got to be the duck

man you got to be you got to smooth and smooth and cool on top of the surface of water but paddling like a mother trucker below to keep up you're an actor yeah and that's part of the game and basically a problem solver and uh I put together a group of young men, gave them a piece of the firm. And before you know it, I had like 150 guys working for me, doing tons of business. I sold out in about 18 or 19 months

and I made close to $40 million. Yeah, it's a good clip. It was just boom, bing, bang, boom. And then I found my wife there. I sort of just took it easy for a while. I just was trading the market. It was the end of the 90s.

And it was the beginning of the dot-com boom. And everything I bought just went wild. Every company I put some money in just went crazy. And I was getting in, getting out, getting in, getting out. And then the dot-com crash came, March of 2000. To give you an idea, Amazon went from $300, the Amazon we know today, to three in like three weeks. The market was the end of the world, part one. Enron, fourth biggest company in the United States, biggest energy trading company in the world,

fraud, zero. WorldCom. WorldCom. Bernie Ebers, fraud. That's the biggest company in the world. The phone company, for God's sake, zero. Fraud. I got burned because of WorldCom,

another business I was doing. Yeah, one of the guys that was a partner in a business that I was in that we were about to launch was a VP at worldcom and lost everything and like one day i just lost everything lost it all but he had his entire because because worldcom stock was scorching and he just so he moved his entire 401k everything into it everything everything was worldcom and dude he lost everything in a day and he went in a very dark place and it killed that business that i was starting to run that i already invested with with him so lucent technologies lu a bell darling an a plus rated

company went from 82 to zero to whatever it was you know it was crazy yeah and i'm sitting at the beach i had nice beach house on long island and i'm looking at these idiots they're parading on cnbc with their thoughts about what's happening and i said what are these people stupid Nice beach house on Long Island. And I'm looking at these idiots that are parading on CNBC with their thoughts about what's happening. And I said, what are these people, stupid? This is a fucking, this is a bear market. This is a real correction. And I've made, in 1987, I sat in front of the screen

and I watched, I had about $110 million on my money line. And I watched it go down to about $20 million. I watched my own $30 million go down to $2 million in the crash of 87 in less than a year. I went from having $30 million to $2 million. Some people say, well, you still had $2 million. It's pretty good, but it doesn't work like that. Everything's relative.

It doesn't work like that. When you're living on $30, it's pretty good but it doesn't work like that everything's relative it doesn't work like that when you're living on 30 it's what yeah and i was like i you couldn't believe because it hadn't been a crash since 1929 yeah we were just flying i mean it was so easy to make money i'd go in two three days a week i'd make 100 grand you know i buy a new mercedes i go next week two three two three days a week make another 100 grand it was. It was sick. And, uh, I learned a lot. And I, and again, the market, the market stock market, like golf, the game, it's humbling. It was a humility that, that even the best have, but once you sort of understand the game, it's much easier to play the game and to succeed. So in 2000, when the markets cracked, I was sitting with a load of cash and a new baby and a beautiful wife, apartment in Manhattan, we're at the beach,

sort of semi-retired. And I said, you know what? I called up my lawyer. I said, listen, I'm going to start a company. I sketched out on a pad what I want it to look like. It's not going to be like my last stockbrokerage firm. This is going to be an international firm. I want to take it public on a foreign stock exchange, preferably in London. My lawyer's like, what, what, what? Where is this coming from? He says, this is going to cost a lot of money.

I said, what do you think? He's like, it's going to be at least $4.5 million, $5 million, just to get started. So I want to raise nine. I always raise double what I think I need. So I raised $9 million quickly, put together 9 million really, and started to approach people that I'd worked with over the years. Name the company Sky Capital because my older daughter was Sky. She was three months old at

the time. And so I wrote a proposition out and created a document around the proposition was that this correction was going to lead to a prolonged bear market and the financial services industry was going to be particularly hard hit because there's less trading, less transactions, less customers, lawsuits, just everything is, you know, you lose your income, you lose your portfolio value. It's terrible for people in the industry. I said, I'll be able to buy assets for five, 10 cents on the dollar. And I bought out nine firms and put this together,

went to England to try to go public. So wait, so everything you bought, obviously you vulture funded it, but everything you bought was, they were all trading firms. They were stock brokered firms trading firms market making firms firms with black box technology all these different things they were all in tatters a lot of guys said listen just take my guys because if i don't they're on the contract yeah they're gonna sue me to death so i just i just took a lot of stripped assets i paid off some debts you know i did the right thing yeah uh and i built sky capital

and then i went over to england and i had a meeting with the top law firm in the city of london because one of the most famous lords in england was a personal client of mine for many years developed with i'm very well together and um he set up this meeting and i go up to the top of tower 42 i did a it's part of the story in the Wealth Formula, which is a new curriculum that I'm launching literally in three weeks. Bradley and Lightspeed. It's going to be, I believe,

the most groundbreaking, unbelievable business. We'll get to that. I tell this story on the camera at the beginning of this Wealth Formula. The guys at Tower 42, I told them what I want to do. And they told me, young man, you should just get in the taxi and go right back to the airport and go home. It's impossible. I said, what do you mean impossible? I said, is it impossible or is

it never been done? Is it improbable or is it impossible? And they looked at each other like, it's impossible. I said, listen, they said the four-minute mile was impossible until somebody did it. And then what, 57 more people did it the first year after? Yeah, crazy numbers. Now everybody does it. I'm the only one that can't run a mile on four-minute miles. Depends on who's chasing me.

I'll say that so quickly I can run. exactly you know when the feds came after me but uh so you know the bottom line is uh a lot of stuff is up here to the mind if you believe you can well you believe you can't you're probably right yeah henry ford and um if you believe you can you know impossible is really I'm possible. Break it down. I'm possible. So it had never been done. And I asked these guys a bunch of questions.

They said, well, if somebody was going to even try this, here's what you would need, a member of parliament, a parliamentary appointee, probably a member of the American Congress, this, that, the other. Within two hours, I put together the whole package. A United States senator, a former United States congressman, a member of parliament, and then a parliamentary appointee,

all on board. I had the money, and I was just running around England finding an underwriter. That was quite a challenge, I admit, but I got it done. I got it done fairly quickly, and we had a momentous stock offering, what you call an IPO. Yeah. And the reason it was momentous, people probably don't remember,

but you might. You're still a little young. We had this dot-com crash in March of 2000. Just when things were starting to heal, the bear market was starting to move into a more positive direction, we had 9-11. 9-11, they whacked out the World Trade Center

and the markets closed for a week. In two world wars, we didn't have that. But the stock market, the exchange was almost destroyed. They only had one pipe left. They knew what they were doing when uh these arabs and um it was destroyed really you know our whole capital yeah sure it came very close and uh there were no ipos for almost two years in england zero and in j of 2002, I took my company, Public Sky Capital.

It was priced at £1.85. It opened up at £2.25 and stayed there for months. And the Brits put me on national television. And they used me to say, look, see? American guy comes here, does this. Everybody 40% on day one. Everything's okay. And everything's okay.

So it's safe to come back into the markets. They literally put me on national television for nine minutes. And they put this whole thing behind me. Like my stock went, the chart went like this because it was one day. Yeah. Got all of the hockey sticks. And I went to jail, right? Yeah.

And to make a long story short, I really had to run. And I bought a firm two days later that had done half a billion dollars in revenue the year before. Wildly profitable. $100 million deal. And I was off to the races. And I started raising money and I built a fund. And I took that fund public in 2004. So life was pretty good.

So when did the Fed show up? In November of 06, I'm having a board meeting. I'm running two public companies. I had offended everybody by doing that. Especially some cats in Washington and lower Manhattan, which I didn't understand. I thought I was doing a good thing. I created a way for US companies

to go public for a fraction of the cost, a fraction of the regulatory hassle, and for triple the liquidity. I created that footprint. After I did it the second time, Goldman Sachs came at me, asked me how I did it. I spoke there very graciously at Goldman Sachs. 200 companies followed my footprint, including KKR, Blackstone, all the big boys. They just tweaked what I did a little bit here and there, but

you go public over there, they have only bi-annual reporting. You know what, Corley? You're a wealthy guy. You're a smart guy. You understand Corley reporting, right? You have money in the stock market? Yeah, of course. You have a portfolio? I do. Okay quarterly reporting. You understand quarterly reporting, right? Of course. You have money in the stock market? Yeah, of course. You have a portfolio? I do.

Okay. Do you own any foreign stocks by any chance? I do not. Okay. Now, most people would say the same thing as you. Even if you did own them, you'd say you own them in America because there were different ways to get their paper, to trade their paper from the United States. But what you don't know is, so you buy American stocks that trade in America

because it's quarterly reporting it's a level of transparency every three months they have to sit down with their accountants and report everything that's going on in the company the whole rest of the world

doesn't do that what a shock you know nobody knows that if you listen to this amazing podcast Escaping the Drift with handsome Big John over here, I promise you're going to learn something right now. There you go.

They only have what you call biannual reporting. The whole rest of the world, you report twice a year, and after six months, you just do a review. It's not even audited financials. You only get audited financials once a year at the end of the year. It saves the companies zillions of dollars in accounting fees. The PCOAB, I hope they don't come after me, the PCO is a professional accounting board in America.

They became like the Vatican. They have powers like the Pope in business here in America because you need them to sign off on your financials, on their comments, on the audits, et cetera. And they see how much money you're making. And they say, your little old accountant, all of a sudden, he's like a wolf in sheep's clothing. All of a sudden, he's like, I want some of that and you need my signature. So they break balls, just business. They have the leverage, right? So they're going

to squeeze you as much as they can, squeeze the companies as much as they can. They don't have that kind of power when they only have one audit a year, the rest of the world. So companies that are not prompted to have to perform every three months and put up real, these crazy growth numbers with stocks going to lose billions of dollars in value. It's crazy. It's crazy. You have a, it's like running a marathon, but you know, every quarter mile, half mile, you have someone regulating you. Yeah. Very hard to, you know, execute a real strategy, a long-term strategy, right. When, when you're working off every three months at a time. And that's, that's what that's polluted the American, uh, well, that's why it's so hard for these guys to take a step back to do the right thing long term because

you're going to get smashed right your money if you're taking a company public and you're part of a growth company like that i mean you know this is this is your future right here and every 90 days you're being evaluated which is quite unfair in my opinion it's a lot right especially and so who gets up getting screwed? The public. So I create a wonderful way. You go public over there. You have all your stuff sorted out. You're already regulated in public.

You have audited financials. All you got to do, you bring it back to the United States. You can trade in a number of ways or you go right to NASDAQ. All you got to do now is become reporting every quarter. You've just eliminated tons of fees. You already have a shareholder base.

I mean, I created something brilliant, and I thought that it was amazing. I learned later on that, according to certain people in government and the private sector. That was the air quotes for those of you listening in our live stream. Exactly. Certain people, air quotes. Lower Manhattan lost about $100 billion in fees because of the footprint I created.

I don't like that. Well, you know, it's like when you're in prison, they say, don't fuck with my money. Yeah. That's what a guy will say to you. Don't fuck with my money. In the business world, they don't say that. They just stick the DOJ on you.

So November 6th or so, November 5th, I'm having a board meeting up at Sky Capital with a parliamentary appointee, a former congressman, a former United States senator, and 40 SWAT FBI agents come in in jackets, like in SWAT style, guns raised, everybody frees, nobody move. Well, what the fuck?

What's going on? Guy, Kurt Dengler throws me up against the wall and tells me to shut the fuck up. And he says that I better give him all the guns. Tell him where all the guns and drugs are and he'll go easy on me. I'm like, what?

Why would I have guns and drugs? Guns and drugs, investment bank. I'm running two public companies. You stupid fuck. I mean, of course, we didn't get along too well for the next five years. Yeah, there you go. But, you know, he's coming at me like, what?

Now, he had some, someone fed him information. Understand, they were fed information. It was a bad raid. It was a bad,. It was a bad... They had called all the New York press were down in the lobby of 110 Wall Street. You got perp walked out.

When? No, not that. I didn't get arrested for three years after that. That was just a search and seizure agent. No, they just had to execute a search warrant. Is that how you execute a search warrant today? Guns drawn, 40 agents locking down a floor, calling on the whole New York media downstairs. I'm sure they thought there were guns and drugs.

Someone had fed them some information, and they were going to take me away in handcuffs. Guess what? So, a couple hours later, they're like, they got 300 boxes. They said, nobody's getting arrested, nobody's in trouble, and we went back to trading. You know, I'm in the front page of every newspaper in 130 countries. Literally.

And what does that do to your client base? Well, you tell me if you want to do trades the next day, you want to do trades with Sky Capital? No. So they, they admit, they admit Southern District of New York today admits that they acted as judge, jury, and executioner. They should go to jail for what they did to me. Remember, I had hundreds of shells on public companies.

The next day, the stock exchange calls the Department of Justice. It says, what the hell? Are you guys going to shut them down? We need to know. These are public companies. We have an obligation to the public. They refused to comment. But when they came to Sky Capital, they said, nobody's getting arrested.

Nobody's in trouble. But the fact they didn't bother to comment to them. They refused to comment. The stock exchange froze our stocks at that moment. And so literally hundreds, if not thousands of people got hit. And still nobody sued me. Because what did I do? I'm running a clean business.

I'm being audited by the SEC, by the NASD, FINRA, by the London Stock Exchange, by the FSA. Those are the authorities in London. I was being regulated by everybody, and I had clean reports every year, you know, little teeny little things. My trader didn't punch a time clock, you know, stupid stuff. So when did they actually charge you?

So this is in 06, November of 06. Now behind the scenes, they had arrested one or two of my guys for doing scheming with customers, stealing some money, selling cocaine to an FBI agent. And July 2nd of 09, so you're talking about three years.

Yeah. Government calls. So hold on. In the meantime, 18 months, it became very difficult for me to run this business, the brokerage business. Very difficult. The markets were a wreck,

and March 31st of 2008, I sold the companies. But before they bought the companies, the institutions and some very wealthy people went to the DOJ and said, look, we're about to buy this company for tens of millions of dollars. If you're going to indict it, we need to know.

We need to know. And these were big guys out of the UK. I mean, big names, royalty, et cetera. And the DOJ said, we have three questions for ross mandel if you can answer these three questions satisfactorily he's free to go and you're free to do it uh uh buy the company there'll be no problems march 31st of 08 now you're a real estate guy you remember 0809 oh yeah sure remember what's coming yeah 0809 right, 09, right? Yep. Mortgage implosion. So when I entered the letter of intent to sell in October of 07, Dow Jones hit 14,000 plus.

It was an all-time high. The day I signed the papers, it was an all-time high. Nobody knew, but that's what happened. By the time we closed five months later, March 31st, because a lot of due diligence, public company, always shareholders, the government, everything else, the Dow was down to 10,000 and dipping every day. And I was like, my wife kept saying,

you're so smart, you're so smart. I get all this money and I get tens of millions of dollars. I had done very well, whatever. And she goes, you're so smart, you're so smart. Every day I'm sitting home on the couch watching CNBC and I'm watching the market go down to the 300 points and the 400 points and the 300 points. She's points, to the 400 points, to the 300 points. She's going, oh, my God, you sold at the top.

And I'm thinking, uh-oh. Because by now I've got a lot of experience in the market, a lot of experience in life, a very bad feeling. I sold March 31st of 08, and then the mortgage crisis and the mortgage-backed securities, they're too big to fail, and everybody's failing. AIG, we need $120 billion by Monday, and we're-backed securities. They're too big to fail and everybody's failing. AIG, we need 120 billion by Monday and we're going out of business. Meanwhile, it's A-plus rated by all the rating agencies. Companies A-plus rated. And if it doesn't get $120 billion in four days,

it goes to zero. And they indict me. My companies were well-funded. They didn't need money or anything else. The guys that bought the company for me put $10 million good capital in it. And within a year, they were broke and they were closing it down.

That's how bad things were. And July 2nd of 2009, they get a call from my attorney who had originally told me it's over. He answered those three questions satisfactorily. You're done. No fuss, no must have provided evidence. The government said,

Mr. Mandel is free to go. 18 months later, I'm being indicted on two counts, securities fraud and conspiracy to commit secrets for it. The same month, the SEC had a press conference and talked about how many people,

they indicted more people up till now than they've ever done in their lives, in the history of the SEC, because they wanted the investing public to know that they're on top of it, even though everything's going to shit. 08, 09, too big to fail because all the banks failed. And here's a great thing that I can explain to everybody.

On a Friday, Citibank received a $50 billion cash injection from the government. $50 billion on Friday. On Monday morning, all the rating agencies put a rating on it. You know what the net worth of Citibank was? $20 billion. On Friday, they got $50 billion cash. They were covering with $20 billion. monday night they were rated a plus with a 20 billion dollar net worth so they were short 30 billion covering those calls right and

they came after me so just so you understand the corruption in government well dude i got well i got one i'm gonna ask you an off-the-cuff question because i'm just curious so the fact that you did have to go to jail for this stuff, what is your feeling about Nancy Pelosi being the best stock trader in the history of the world? Well, I'm going to say this to you. I had a number of congressmen and senators as clients over the years, and they would literally call me up

or call my brokers up and say, I've just got out of a session in the Senate. Get out or buy. And here's what we need to do. I need to sell everything I can and buy this. And they were always right. Yep. And so the firm would say,

Senator Pressler just called. And then everybody buy, you know, buy Pfizer. And it would run. And next, you know, Pfizer would get some contracts or some announcement would come out and they're making another $25 billion and everybody would make money. But here's the thing.

They're allowed to trade on inside information. They've allowed themselves that. And you know when they approve it every year, there were efforts to curb it. Yeah, yeah. And they have these meetings in the Senate and in Congress at midnight on a Friday. And then they show up at Friday and they put in their little chits, and they turn it down. There's still a lot to trade legally. I think you're going to see some change there soon.

I think there's enough noise in the marketplace. There's enough noise. You have to get the peanut gallery shaking its head no. There's not a chance they're going to do that. Why would they get this benefit? Why would they give it up? I think, look at AOC aoc was a waitress when she got elected and now she's worth what 23 million dollars yes i mean you know she's very

clever she's very she's very attractive so gross so you know it's really uh it's really unfortunate you know with transparency today connectivity the internet everybody knows everything yeah and so to me you got to start getting honest if you're in if you're in government so you still you still transparency today, connectivity, the internet, everybody knows everything. Yeah. And so to me, you got to start getting honest if, if you're in, if you're in government. So you still, you still,

you, even though you did nine and a half years, you still maintain your innocence, innocence over any of these charges. Okay. I learned that you can't use the word innocence in the, in the term. Okay.

In terms of what I'm not guilty of the charges that were brought against me. And I can tell you, I can tell you on my children, I'm not guilty on the charges that were brought against me. Okay. In tell you on my children, I'm not guilty on the charges that were brought against me. Innocent, I don't think anybody would say Ross Mandel's innocent. I'm not that type of guy. I'm guilty of so much in my life. But not that.

But no, no. I never stole from anybody ever in my life. I never shoplifted. I've cheated anybody. It's just not who I am. Okay. But I've done plenty of things wrong. So after the nine and a half years in prison,

now I do want to spend some time talking about the new program that you have coming out. Oh, it's incredible. I got to say. So let's- If you're in the business world or if you want to be in the business world, I have provided means to do that for a kid that comes from the burial, from uneducated and to even guys like you. If you bought this course, it would be a business Bible for you.

You will be stunned at how comprehensive, so far, the feedback. It's incredibly comprehensive. It's a 108-page written text with 300 hyperlinks to source material, online text, downloadable PDFs and worksheets. And then 13 extremely entertaining modules, uh, narrated by myself personally edited by the best in the world. I mean, award-winning award-winning editors, producers, and the whole thing. And now Brad is making interactive. So it's like a training video. We teach you how to go from all my life. People come to me, it's Mandel. You're so successful. You're in the stock market, blah, blah, blah. Will you mentor me? Will you mentor me? Yeah. Well, will you mentor me? That's a big

one. You get that, I'm sure. But you know, I have an idea. How do I turn it to a business? Well, my wife's got this product and my sister-in-law is doing this thing. It's amazing. How do we turn this into a business? Can you please help me? We do it in a step-by-step comprehensive way, but it's really like a business Bible. Okay. Everybody needs it. So you're covering startup, you're covering scale, you're covering marketing, you're covering everything.

Documentation, vision board, vision plan, business plan, how to raise money, pitch deck. You know, this is for guys like yourself. What sort of legal entity have you wrapped your business around? LLC, master limited partnerships, you know, C Corp, S Corp. Where's your jurisdiction? yourself uh what sort of legal entity have you wrapped your business around llc mass limited partnerships you know c corp s corp where's your jurisdiction did you incorporate in delaware as elon musk recently found out is fuck all terrible and you know nevada is actually great nevada guess where all my companies are incorporated nevada the great state of nevada yeah i was in new york

or florida the great state of nevada see i'm gonna i'm gonna help you out with something else i'm gonna get you to something because it when i first moved here from florida i did the same thing it's nevada not nevada if you say nevada people look at you like you're crazy nevada it's nevada i love that it is nevada that which is funny because you know when i'm from florida depending on which which section of florida you're in it's pronounced a very different way. You've got scary South Baja rednecks like I grew up with, or you've got people from all over the world that live in Miami. So there's different pronunciations.

But here it is Nevada, because literally I was on The Apprentice saying we were going to buy tickets to Las Vegas, Nevada, or Nevada. And I got slaughtered for it when I moved down here yeah nevada i guess yeah you know what nevada is it's nevada i love that nevada so there you go but you know we talk and people ask me why and we explain it because you know the uh we explain in in plain speak i'm a plain speaking type of guy and we explain everything and break it down and you know what we did was we went out and bought every single online course that's available on social media and the internet. And there's not even, if you put them all together, it doesn't make half of what we were offering.

Right now you could, there's a pre-sale for $300 and it's really a $5,200 value. That's not me. That's what the market would price it at. But it's something that I want to do. So I'm 67 years old. I've been there and done that. I've been a taker my whole life and I'm good at it. And I just want to give back a little bit and I want to be an educator and I want to leave a legacy for my children. I've got two daughters and daddy went to prison when they were 11 and 14 two young girls growing up in boca raton florida like the show me city you know and i was very public i was in the newspapers i was on television all that shit and everybody knew me i was a big they seized all your assets i mean when you went to prison they seized they didn't seize anything because they didn't have the

grounds i didn't know this this but in order to get bail my lawyer said look I'm going to put a 5 million dollars cash no bond and they say he says there were 40 million dollars or so sitting in a Bank of America

he said you'll have to segregate that money you can't touch it otherwise they're going to seize it they don't make it if they can seize your money they don't tell you segregate it yeah they fucking but to seize it. They don't make it. If they could seize your money, they don't tell you a segregated. Yeah.

They fucking, but he sucked a suck at me in a very bad guy. Jeffrey Hoffman, lawyer, New York city, bad dude. And, uh,

Steven Altman, bad dude, the bad guys. And they had their own troubles with the government. And they basically sacrificed me, uh, took a board, pulled off the table and they got what Altman got to disbarred for 18 months. Bad guys,

guilty as fucking sin, uh, uh, conflicts of interest. I had just said I got screwed by lawyers. What a shock. I could be the first guy, right?

I don't think so. I don't think that ever happens in this, this country. I don't think so. But don't think that ever happens in this country. I don't think so. But I want to give back. I want to educate. I want to create a legacy. So my daughters come to prison for the first visit.

Like, Daddy, Daddy, the kids are making fun of us. Daddy, people are asking me, where's my father? You know, I go on a show for dancing events and all these different things. You have children? Yeah, two of them. Boys, girls? One of each. Right.

So you understand being a dad and the kids. Of course. And there's all kinds of nonsense, social media and all that. So we had to teach my kids how to respond to other kids and other grownups. I'm teaching them from the prison visiting room. And over the years, they went to high school and they went to college. There's no daddy. Mommy had to move them in. Mommy had to move them out. college. There was no daddy. Mommy had to move him in.

Mommy had to move him out. Mommy had to show up here. Mommy had to show up there, and they became very adept and very clever at avoiding, where's your dad? Where's your dad to? How come your dad's not here? And so I was, anytime the name dad came up,

he changed the subject very cleverly. Both gorgeous, smart, very successful young women today. And I want my daughters to be proud of me. When somebody says, is that your dad? Yeah, that's my dad. I wasn't allowed to, they unfriended me in social media, my ex-wife and my kids. And I'm not allowed to mention them, not allowed to comment on their stuff. But now all of a sudden, now I've been out for about seven months and we're doing some really good things. I'm really giving back. I'm an educator. I'm helping a lot of different things. And the kids now take pictures with me. It's a big deal.

I think the lesson there is it doesn't matter how old you are. You know, you can always change the story. You can always flip the script. You can always write another chapter. You know, you don't have to sit. You know, your biggest failure doesn't have to become your legacy. Correct. I want my prison years to be an asterisk when they tell my story. You know, when I was away, I took the time to do something I had been putting off my whole life,

which is to read scripture, really study it, the Old Testament, the New Testament. I read the Koran page by page with real Muslim guys, and I read Hindi. What prison were you in? muslim guys and i read hindi what prison you were young i was at uh the federal fci miami okay which was uh considered low security but was really it wasn't a country club no no no yeah that doesn't sound like that doesn't really exist anymore just so you know okay i don't know it was revealed uh you know uh years ago in a famous book and so the feds quickly did away with that it's hell bro it's prison is hell i lived in a room book. And so the feds quickly did away with that. It's fucking hell, bro. It's prison as hell.

I lived in a room smaller than this with three grown men. A three-level bunk bed for two, two and a half years. It's pretty tough. Prison sucks. Prison sucks because it's punishment. That's what they tell you. And it's supposed to be. And it's brutal.

But I also went to a couple of camps. I was locked in a detention center in a room smaller than this for 19 months at the federal detention center in miami horrible places nobody should know about them it's just horrible but i got a chance to read the classics i read shakespeare and i listened to mozart and i read Chaucer and I read every biography on jobs and Einstein, all these meaningful people. And I developed a lot of things. And one of the things in that, I read Kabbalah, 24 books of the Zohar. I learned the Kabbalah and Zohar teaches you something.

It says you can change your past. It's an incredible thing. You can change your past. It's an incredible thing. You can change. It's not just about changing your future. But by doing certain things in your life, you can actually go back and change your past. That's another conversation that goes on and on. But it's just an amazing thing.

And if I use all the lessons I've learned and all the pain that I've been through. To help others. And I can help others. I can literally change my past. Yeah. Well, if they want to find you going forward, how do they find you, Ross?

RossMandel.com. Two S's, two L's. Two S's, two L's? I'm on Instagram. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on TikTok. I'm everywhere. So find Ross.

Yeah, Ross Mandel. I'm in Boca Raton, Florida. I love that. Well, thanks for coming in, brother. You're always welcome back whenever you want. Big John, I got to say, if you guys don't know here it comes again this guy is good looking he's smart he's got the see now when i was a young salesman i would have been intimidated by you you're so good now i mean it's frightening your energy is just amazing and i thank you so much

for having me today i appreciate it let's let's wrap this up today. And I think today is, you know, I saw something the other day, man, that I thought was so apropos for the conversation that we had today with Ross, which is I was watching a clip from Alex Ramosi and he was talking about in life when you see adversity, he looks at it away and he says, man, this is a story that I will eventually tell. And I want the adversity to be as big as possible because the bigger the adversity, the bigger the dragon, the bigger the hero. And I want to be as big of a hero as I can. So go out, face your dragons, be a hero. I'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.