Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Leverage & Legacy: Derik Fay’s Winning Formula

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's just the matter is most of the things I was doing and some of the things I'm doing now, there are a slew of people that can do them better. You're listening to The Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. What's up, guys? Welcome to the Radcast. We say if it's radical, we cover it. I'm Ryan Alford, your host.

Starting point is 00:00:30 I'm fucking radical. So that's why I like to have guests like my good friend, Derek Fay, founder and CEO of 3F Management. What's up, Derek? My man, how are you? Thanks for having me on. I got to tell you, you have the best podcast voice I think I've ever heard. I get excited just listening to you intro me. Hey, we like to kick it off with a bang. I say I don't have a lot of skills. I don't have a lot of talents, but God gave me at least a voice for radio. I got a face for radio too. My mom told me I had a face for radio, so we could have balanced it out.

Starting point is 00:01:06 But there you go. We'll be the radio guys today. But no, man, appreciate it. We talked pre-episode. Love the game balls behind you. That's good. Good backdrop. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:01:17 Everybody listening. We do film these episodes. So if you're not watching on YouTube, you're missing out. But you'll have to go check out the basketball collection behind Derek. He's got, I know you mentioned him. Let's drop, let's name drop for everybody before we'll talk a little later about maybe the guilty pleasure of collecting you got into in COVID, but let's name those balls. From left, we've got LeBron James, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, and Wilt Chamberlain. Boom.

Starting point is 00:01:48 Now, I'm a Boston guy, so I may be biased a little bit. Bird is one of my favorites. Obviously, Jordan is the best. I don't care what anybody says. I think he's better than LeBron and let the comments flow. I grew up. I'm 6'5", and grew up. I played basketball my whole life.

Starting point is 00:02:06 And literally growing up, my neighbor was five years older than me. It was a guy. And I didn't have a basketball goal, but they did. And so I had to go over with him and play. This is when I was probably like seven or eight until I was probably like 14. He was always five years older than me. And we would pretend, each one of us, we were players. And this is when Boston heyday, Bird, McHale, Parrish,

Starting point is 00:02:33 you had Dr. J playing, you had Michael playing. Obviously Jordan was young, like when Jordan first came around, like early years. And I was always Larry Bird. That was my guy. Larry legend. I guess I was a cross because every time I did a layup, I would stick my tongue out. So I guess I thought I was Jordan, but God knows I didn't play like him. And my neighbor, to this day, his name is David Bergen. And he made me better because he was older than me. And then my height finally started catching up.

Starting point is 00:03:08 And he was five years older, but he was of average to below average height overall. But being five years older, he was always taller than me, of course. Then I hit like the growth spurt, like 12, 13. And he didn't like it too much because he's 16, 17. Then he'd still play with me. I give him a lot of credit dealing with little shit like me. But I have a similar story. I have a similar story. My father, so I'm 45 and he's 64. So that's pretty close in age, which meant we played basketball every day after school, like from, I don't know, maybe 12 to like 16. So when'm 12 he is 31 still very much a young man just swatting the

Starting point is 00:03:50 shit out of every ball that i throw up at 12 years old no like today is probably considered child abuse going up the layups getting checked into the cement but i'm gonna tell you what i kept going and then down still to this day remember the first day I beat that son of a bitch? And then never looked back. But same thing, I got older and bigger. I love it. It's the rite of passage, one way or another. I'm passing it on to my kids.

Starting point is 00:04:16 I've beaten the shit out of them for a while. Now they're starting to catch up with me. I'm like, oh, here it comes in reverse. Now you get to feel the other side of it. I know. Derek, you're known as the deal structure guy. I know you close a lot of deals, venture capital, all those things. But let's set the table for everybody.

Starting point is 00:04:37 Who the fuck is Derek Fay? Exactly. Some people might know you. We've got a lot of movers and shakers that listen to this show. Hey, that's what happens when you're number one, baby. Number one on Apple and business and marketing. But no, man, who is Derek? Talk to me. So who I am is way different than what I do. So let's start with what I do. It's far more serious than actually who I am, which I think is a really important distinction. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:05:04 more serious than actually who I am, which I think is a really important distinction. Yeah. Listen, I started, we don't have to get into it, although we can certainly deep dive, but I come from single mom, welfare, section eight, abuse, poverty, blah, blah, blah. And I say that just to preface, some people say they were born with a golden or silver spoon. I like to joke that I was born with a spork, right? So I had to fight and claw in my even like pre-teen years. My biggest concern was how do I figure out a way so that my younger sister can eat this

Starting point is 00:05:34 evening? And so what that does is besides not ever really being a kid in the general regard, which is why I'm a child today at 45, It made me look at things in ways that most people don't. And I really honed that skill over time. And so I became very successful, very young for reasons that most people don't really ever understand. And so by 22, I had put myself in a position. I was a multimillionaire at 22. And I started my own firm and started building companies in between 22 and now 45. We're north of 30 companies of my own concept from the ground up. Built, sold, exited, invested in many more. I do CEO services.

Starting point is 00:06:18 I do leverage buyouts, mergers and acquisitions, real estate arbitrage. I like to say that if I find out tomorrow that hot dogs is the most profitable thing in the country, there will be a Derek's dogs on every corner in the US, trademark pending. So in a word, I'm a hustler from day one. I wear that term as a badge of honor. I love the art of the deal. Stopped being about money a long time ago, not to be disingenuous. I love making money, but I do it now for a different reason. Hey, I respect that. Hey, money's a tool. For me, it's a tool of freedom. Nobody gets to tell me what to do and to do it. We can all hate money. We can all talk bad about it, but it's a tool. And especially in today's world. So it's less about stacking it and looking at it and

Starting point is 00:07:02 faking it or whatever. It's more like what, allow, money's more about what it allows me not to have to do. Listen, I've been poor and I've been rich and I'll take rich every day. I like to say that money solves every problem except for the one inside of you. We can revisit that, right? But listen, we talked about a little bit just prior. I pursued money initially because I just wanted to be rich. That's all I ever told people when I was a kid coming up. What do you want to be? Rich. People would laugh at me and I didn't care, but it afforded me a lot of

Starting point is 00:07:34 bandwidth. As I got older and I realized what I really wanted was and why I pursue more money now is what it affords me is time. And then what I get to do with that time is what really, I think, makes me wealthy. 100%. Couldn't agree more. And I will say, we might be cut from the same cloth, brother, because I don't know, I haven't had maybe the success you have with 30 companies. A lot of closeouts. I want to get to those. But I use the joke all the time. People say, you got old money and you got new money are you from old money or new money i was from yeah i come from borrowed money yeah love refinanced money no man but talk about it wasn't that bad i'd say lower i could always say lower middle class i didn't want

Starting point is 00:08:22 i did not want for meals but it we were we did have a dodge dart in the driveway i'm talking about like a 1970 dodge dart not that new model they came out with in what like 2010 or something i don't know yeah but derrick so 30 30 of your own brands what kind of companies are we talking about here can Can we name drop or like vertical drop? Like what types of companies? So what's afforded me a lot of flexibility and bandwidth is I believe to my core that every business, at least from a foundational standpoint, is nearly identical. And so that's what I focus on. And then I hire around specificity. And so that's what I focus on. And then I hire around been necessarily by design, more by opportunity that I recognize as I've gone through the years.

Starting point is 00:09:30 And sometimes it's been fitness. Sometimes it's been fintech. Sometimes it's been an electric company. Sometimes it's been a sub shop. So it's been all over the place. And my personality, it feeds my personality. At least I tend to get very bored very quick, which is great in business, not so great in your personal life. But everything's a balance. And so everything I build with the intent to sell as quickly as possible. When no one else wants to sell, because I know what most people should recognize, that is exactly when you sell.

Starting point is 00:10:09 You don't wait until things level off or declining. And initially, I was selfish in the sense that I think it comes from my childhood. I wanted recognition of being the guy that owned everything. Who owns the company? I always say I own 100% equity. I just say that sentence every single time because I want everyone to know. Now, I lean. I don't lean. I prefer and search for really good JVs. Obviously, that affords me even greater bandwidth because I'm not the day-to-day guy. building these really fruitful relationships with young entrepreneurs, bridging that success gap and making more money than I ever have with less stress in more, this sound corny, but more fulfillment than I ever have. It's not corny, man. It's real. Like you get,

Starting point is 00:10:59 it's funny. It flipped for me. I was like the hotshot 20-year-old, 20 to 30-year-old ad executive, and it was all me. And at some point, you realize that's not as very fulfilling. And your family will do that too, having kids and having a wife and all those things, especially when you're happy. But it certainly, but in professional, when that switch flips, it gets, you get, you get more fulfilled, but you get real powerful too, because it turns two things on because you get some empathy and you get understanding and you get a lot of things, but then we can do more as a team than I could ever do. That's right. My first taste of that was with my COO, who's been with me now, geez, 12, 13 years, probably one of the best operators on the globe. I hired him 12 years ago and we're like a year or so in, and I'm still in that young phase of everything. I'm micromanaging everybody, including him.

Starting point is 00:12:06 I'm hiring really sophisticated, talented people, not letting them make any decisions. And he comes to me and he says, listen, D, I respect everything you do. You're super talented. I'll stay with you my entire career. But you have to recognize, based on what you're paying me that I might have some skills too. If you just let me show you, you might be surprised. And I remember feeling insulted, which I knew that meant that I was wrong. And so then I started to slowly let go and things got better and better until I finally became a true founder versus day-to-day CEO. And that's when my career just took off into

Starting point is 00:12:48 space. Yeah, exactly. And as well-rounded as you seem and the skills that you seem to have, we can't do it all. We can't be the best at everything, right? What we think we are in our twenties, some of us longer than we should, but we're dead wrong. It's just the matter is most of the things I was doing and some of the things I'm doing now, there are a slew of people that can do them better. Yeah. What do you think? I always go to this question with guys, successful guys like you, driven. I always go to this question with guys, successful guys like you, driven. Nature or nurture?

Starting point is 00:13:28 Were you born? You had the variables that probably made you want that because you didn't have it growing up. So I'm sure that's a nature thing. But were you just born to be this guy or did it like develop? No, I would tell you that I am. I was definitely not born. I don't think to be this guy. How could I say that I was right. I went through one of the most horrific childhoods you could ever imagine. And we can get into that if you want to hear it. It's not a great story, but I've told it before just to add some context. But with this question, it might be important. I've told it before just to add some context, but with this question, it might be important.

Starting point is 00:14:12 At a very young age, my innocence, my security, all of the things that make you a stable boy, and as you get older, stable man, were stripped from me. And I had to literally scotch tape that shit together. And I think I only was able to do it because I was so concerned about my younger sister. Because absent that, I don't know that I could have. And both of my siblings, one went to prison for 10 years. One is still in prison, a product of the same environment. So sometimes there's no explanation other than just who was born first, maybe some makeup of my father in me. There are a lot of things you never know, but it made me as resilient as hell. It made me the guy that when things are at their worst and everybody is panicking, I am at my best. I'm at my clearest.

Starting point is 00:14:53 And that's because I've been through some shit so that when there's like business stressors, the volume is so turned down on it, I'm able to really laser focus and cut through the fog. Yeah. Nah, man, it's hard to say we we all go through things but that's a few but the percentages of people that go through things that we don't have to beleaguer or nail like not having to go through what you went through to think about others so young versus yourself because think about most kids. You think you're so self-centered. Like we all are.

Starting point is 00:15:29 And we talked about that a little bit in early adulthood. But normally as a kid, you're only worried about numero uno, right? But having to think and concern yourself and be that concerned with someone else probably instilled something in you that's made you what you are today. Yeah. Listen, the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life made me the best man I think I ever could have ended up. And it's wild to think about that, right? Talk to me about how do you identify opportunities now? I think our listeners trying to give value to maybe some of the successful

Starting point is 00:16:06 people of the world, like what are, what are things that you look for? What are the triggers now? Maybe in the, either in the past or now for deals or things, or what do you keep your eye on? Boy, so the answer, I think that would be different on my 20s, 30s and now 40s. And so for me, I've I love the analogy. I'm going to use it as cliche as it is, because now you've heard it. If you go and buy a yellow car or prior to doing that, you're like, boy, I don't see many yellow cars. You buy yourself a yellow car. All of a sudden you see 35 yellow cars on the way home from the dealership. So I've always been a guy that's looking for the yellow car. And that yellow car for me was opportunity because I had to as a kid. And so what's a lethal trait in life in a good way, which I teach my children in a lot of

Starting point is 00:16:57 different unique ways is identifying opportunity. There's so much opportunity out there that people literally walk by every day that I think that's the core problem. And by the way, that doesn't matter if you're 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 80. Opportunity is opportunity. And I think the problem is that everybody thinks that opportunity is transactional, meaning I see a way that someone could make money. Can I do it? No. Done. Versus speed to opportunity is everything. If you're first to something, you win. Not sometimes, not most of the time, every goddamn time, because it's more about value, leverage and value. So if you're first to an opportunity, you have the leverage. If you have the leverage, you possess the value.

Starting point is 00:17:43 If you have the value, you can either execute on it or you can disperse it. And so can I execute on this opportunity? No. Okay. Can I partner with someone? No. Okay. Do I know someone that can partner with someone? And so I've always gone to the opportunity, backfilled to execution, and then either I can do one of these 14, 12 steps, or I'll find find someone that can or I'll find someone that no one that can. And then I'll arbitrage or I'll execute or I'll profit share. And that's how I built the foundation of my wealth. Yeah, I think I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's like self-limiting, like for people.

Starting point is 00:18:22 It's a combination like self-limiting, resourcefulness, grit. There's some combination of those things that go into what you just described. Sometimes there's like these things like, and I'll have this too. And I, I pray my kids have it and I want it for everyone where you just see obvious things. Like when I was in my twenties and grew a book of business from 3 million to 40 million for someone else in the ad business, it was just walking into the room. I'd be sitting there and something would get said over here and something would get on a boardroom of 20 people over here and over here. And it's, I would hear, yeah, cause we were like an ad agency and we did,

Starting point is 00:19:03 we had this vertical of things that we did. We did a lot of newspaper advertising, TV commercials, that kind of thing. I'd be sitting in the room and someone from the sponsorship team would be over there. We really need to think about sport sponsors. We haven't, and this is Verizon Wireless, by the way. And I'd go, you should hire us to do that. We do that. Do you think we did it?

Starting point is 00:19:23 Abso-fucking-lutely not. It didn't matter because i knew i had people that i could call or i call my agency owner who would say we'll put in a sport sponsorship division tomorrow and but it's those things are like and that's just an example for my own but i think those things are all around us sometimes if we're like listening and just paying attention of connecting dots right it's such a that's such a beautiful example. Cause I've used something similar to that. Say yes to everything because just because you can't do it doesn't mean you can't find

Starting point is 00:19:53 someone that can like something. If someone walks up and he's like, oh man, my website sucks. I wish I had a new one. I would say, oh, I can do that. This is a kid. I can do that. I don't know. I didn't even know anything about websites but i

Starting point is 00:20:05 went to a website company i said hey what if i bring you leads like there's money everywhere just say yes yes because they're not explaining it done today you have their people think get anxious because they think they've committed to something like it's there's certain yeah it's like you if they want their leaves done you got to go do that right this second and you don't have time okay fine but like most things like we're talking about you've got some runway to put it together listen i have a story i think that demonstrates recognizing opportunity if you want to hear it let's do it so i was 22 you away. So I was 22 years old. Let me preface it by saying it took me $70.

Starting point is 00:20:50 So 68, 69, 70, less than a hundred. And do you know this story? No. And I turned it into 5 million profit in 35 days at 22, just by recognizing opportunity. So here we go. I moved to Florida. First thing I do, I've just moved to Florida. I want to meet everybody that I can possibly meet. So I'm going all the high-end bars. I'm going to country clubs. I'm going to events just to shake hands and introduce myself. Listen, people. So I made the two top realtors from WCI at the time, largest real estate company in the U.S., now defunct, make friends with the husband and wife team. They asked me out to lunch a couple of days later. So in their car on the way to Naples to have lunch, they get a phone call and they ask if you mind if we stop somewhere.

Starting point is 00:21:49 stop somewhere. Sure. So they pull into a 450, 500 unit, low income housing apartments. And so we go in the room, I'm just in the back of the room listening, just like you would be at 22. Is there anything here for me? How can I take everything? And a REIT had just bought this from the original owner and they've gathered all the top realtors and said, we're converting these low income units to high end condominiums. We're going to have about 150,000 margin in each. Who do you want? How many do you want? So we leave. I say, do you have any interest? They say, we don't give a shit. We sell $10 million homes in Naples. We don't want it. Perfect. Go to lunch, come back. This is 2002. I do literally 10 minutes of research and I find that then, 2002, low-income tenants, if their unit is going to be converted to a high-end condo, first right of refusal. Okay? 2002, low income tenants, if their unit is going to be converted

Starting point is 00:22:25 to a high end condo, first right of refusal. Okay. Now, first of all, how many people would have gone this far? Almost none. So here's what I do. I draft letters. I say, dear tenant, great news. You may not know this, but your unit is going to be converted to a high end condo and you have first right of refusal. If you have the ability, I highly recommend you do it. If you don't and you assign your rights to me, I'll give you $1,000 to relocate. Now I wait. One day goes by, nothing. Damn it. I thought that was, like, I thought I was brilliant. I thought I was like Einstein discovering equals MC squared. equals mc squared a couple days go by phone starts ringing fast forward two weeks i have 252 assignments to me so now the reet is going batshit bananas we're gonna sue you you're doing nothing was illegal and so the more they pushed the more i pushed the other way and i said listen i'm ready

Starting point is 00:23:21 to close send me the wire instruction i'm gonna close. Now, all they had to do was call my bluff. I couldn't buy 250 units. If they had said buy it, I was done. So week goes by and they go, listen, what do you want here? And I said, I'm guessing you have about 150,000 per unit. They didn't know I was in the room. And I said, I'll tell you what, you give me 20,000 per unit. It's yours. They agreed, brought me a check for $5 million. Holy shit. The arbitrage of all time. That's awesome. Listen, opportunity is everywhere.

Starting point is 00:23:55 Yes, it is. And you worked hard, but you really just worked smart. Come on. I drafted one letter, hit print, paid $70 for a courier to knock on people's doors. And then I bullshitted and played poker for two weeks. And at worst, they call you on it and you go, oh, I don't have it.

Starting point is 00:24:16 And you pull up, you punt. But man, that taught me a really valuable lesson. I knew I had skills. I knew that there really weren't any rules in business. And then I did this and I said, everything I suspected was right. It doesn't matter how small you are, how big they are. If you make your moves and your timing is right,

Starting point is 00:24:37 you can outdo and beat anybody. It changed my life forever. It also, one thing I heard, and some people talk about this, I don't know if it's talked about enough, but you put yourself in the environment in the room with some movers and shakers. And you didn't know you might outfox them at some point. That probably wasn't necessarily an intent, but you just knew that you surround yourself with people that are a higher level than you. And that's right. And lo and behold, you're now at a higher level than them. I call that opportunity adjacent. I try to always put myself into that situation.

Starting point is 00:25:19 And listen, you can look at that and call it luck, but nothing about it was luck. It wasn't luck that I first thing I did when I got to Florida was I sought out connections. It wasn't luck that I went to lunch, all of these types of things. So anyway, you get the drill. But for listeners, it's super important. And really, I'm even ashamed to say this word platform now that I'm a social media guy. But my whole platform is really if I can do this, if I can be here today on your podcast at the Aspire stage last week, there's not a script that Hollywood could have written that puts a young Derek from where I started to here. In fact, if they made that movie, which Netflix is, you'd watch it and go, that's unbelievable. Like they've gone too far.

Starting point is 00:26:06 Yeah, it's just here Like they've, they've gone too far. Yeah. It's just, here we are opportunity. And here we are taking advantage of it. Talking with Derek Fay, founder and CEO of 3F management. I know we've danced around it. We've talked about it, but what is 3F management? What does 3F management do? do? So I say we're a startup. What we do today is we invest, partner, JV with mostly established companies. But if there's a special startup company, we'll do that too. And in a word, we help them scale and exit at far greater than they would. I would say one of my specialties is selling companies for more than they are worth. And that's not magical. It's not because I'm smarter than most. In fact, I'm really the smartest guy in the room. But I know how to position. And again, we get back to the dealer

Starting point is 00:26:57 situation. It's about timing. People buy the sizzle, not the steak. There are people that have really great companies. I sit down with them, reorganize their financials in a way better suited to sell, and they get two times more than they would have. And so we're a full service. We'll provide management services. We'll take equity in the company. We'll consult. We'll do all of those types of things. And that's 3F management. And then independently myself, I do things, I call them shadow CEO services. So I'll go into Fortune 500 companies or publicly traded companies and either consult or step in as an interim CEO, help with board deadlocks or take an advisory board position. And again, let's not miss the fact that I dropped out of college in 60 days, don't have a degree. This is street smarts

Starting point is 00:27:44 versus book smarts. And it's important for people to hear, and I'm not knocking a college degree. Maybe I would have done 10 times better if I'd had it. Maybe not. MIT grads work for me. And we're going back to, it's just a matter of perseverance. What makes you happy? Other than my daughters. Yeah. That's actually a really great question. And I didn't have the answer to that until after COVID. COVID saved my life. Up until COVID, we talked about a little bit. I just pursued money for more. I just wanted more. I thought it was going to make me, that I was going to fill the hole that my childhood made in me. I put my head down, put it away, didn't look at it. In 2019, I sold another really large company that I'd built, getting a divorce, in my massive home, garage filled with

Starting point is 00:28:35 cars. This doesn't feel bad for the rich guy, but just some context. And I'm alone. I've got nothing. and I'm alone. I've got nothing. I realized that everything, I felt more empty at 39, 40 with everything I thought I always wanted than I did as a little kid. And so that's why I say COVID saved my life. I had a year of reflection and really looking at what I thought would make me happy. And then that's when I transitioned to partnering with people, helping young entrepreneurs, not completely selfless. I make money when, helping young entrepreneurs, not completely selfless. I make money when I help young entrepreneurs. It's still about making money, but it's about making money for a different reason. And today, outside of my children, what makes me the happiest, and I've just stumbled into it, is now speaking on stages is really,

Starting point is 00:29:20 I like to, I'm a visual thinker. So I like to say before I started speaking on stages, I was filling that hole in me with a spoon. And now that I'm speaking on stages, it's a goddamn backhoe. And so speaking to these people about where I came from, how I've gotten here, stepping off stage and having three hours in a line of people just asking me questions, that's really feeding my soul. That's great, man. I love it. Yeah. and i respect the hell out of you didn't even like pause your daughters like you'd be surprised i've talked to a lot of people asking people that question i know they have kids they think a lot harder than you did longer than you did about family i respect you for that that's a miss my daughters are my life they've they grew up in

Starting point is 00:30:03 boardrooms with me i was the dad that you, you know, two, three years old with a pad and a crayon. They don't know what the hell they're writing and they're acting, but it was getting in. And I was the founder and CEO. And I've had instances where someone said, no, I don't think it's appropriate that you've got your children in this boardroom. And I said, great news. You no longer have to be here. So real easy solution, get the fuck out. And so they've tasted entrepreneurship their whole life and they have become just such a better glowing, shining example of myself and probably everything I could have been, but absent the stuff from my childhood. So it's so great to watch. And this is a father. Oh, I don't understand parents that compete with their children. All I've ever wanted was my

Starting point is 00:30:49 children to not be as good as me, but to be so much better than me. That's a success as a father, I think. And so they're both, they both have their independent passions. They both own their own company. They're both entrepreneurs, not because I pushed it because that's what they want. And so we've got a great relationship. I bring them all my deals. We talk about it. So it's, it's, it was a, it was an easy answer. I love it, man. What, where's the economy headed? I imagine, I don't know. That's not, maybe not your specialty, but I'm sure with your financial position and what you do, you can, you have at least your, I don't know, future vision cap. What do you think next year is looking like? I'm going to answer that in a way, and this isn't to avoid it because I can give you a technical

Starting point is 00:31:32 answer. But before I do that, I like to give answers that I think are helpful to people. Yeah. And there may be some nine figure people listening and we can talk about the best possible allocation, blah, blah, blah, who gives a shit, right? Those are rich people problems. possible allocation, blah, blah, blah, who gives a shit, right? Those are rich people problems. But I want to look at it more like in 2008, when I didn't have a fraction of what I had, how did I push through that? And I think the problem is that we all pay far too much attention to all the noise and all the things that are going on because good, bad, inflation high, inflation low, gas prices up, gas prices down. You still need to put your head down and get

Starting point is 00:32:04 shit done. And if you do that head down and get shit done and if you do that and only focus on your life and what you're doing you'll be amazed how little all that stuff actually matters dude yeah dude you're playing off the playbook brother like i'm just saying i don't i asked that because i got a business and marketing show and you're a smart guy and maybe there's some nugget that is worth it, but there's no more important nugget than that. Like it's so true. Like it, look, less inflation matters and like it has impact, but the opera, you can't control it. You hate it. And, and there's so many opportunities and things that you can control if you really want to stick your nose in it. You just have to do it, though. You may have picked up. I'm a bit of a smartass, sometimes good, sometimes bad.

Starting point is 00:32:52 But somebody the other day or other week, whatever, was going on and on about the Fed and the decisions he's going to make. And I do the same thing when people get like really juiced up about sports. I'm like, what position do you play? Oh, I'm sorry. Are you the one making the decision on inflation? Because if you are, then let's continue this conversation. Otherwise, why don't we talk about something we can control? Yeah. People get just swallowed up by it. Yeah, exactly. But is there anything that you're actually watching or worried about next year? Listen, I'm not a guy that worries for all the reasons that we just said. Yes.

Starting point is 00:33:28 Comma. I do have a lot of money in the market. It's funny. I didn't invest a dollar into the market until three months before COVID. I told everybody that ever met me, it's the casino of the world. Don't do it. And then, of course, sold a bunch of companies and did the opposite of what got me there because that's what we all do. Yes.

Starting point is 00:33:44 We're stupid sometimes. And promptly lost 40%. So there you go. We've rallied. I look in a sentence. I suspect something like the roaring twenties is going to happen. I don't think it's next year. I think 2025, I think next year, depending on what the Fed does, people think he's going to drop the rates Q1. I don't think that. I think he's going to hold as long as he can, maybe mid-year, end of year. And if that's the way it plays out, and he's dropping rates, the Fed's dropping rates through the end of next year into 2025, I think we're going to see a massive surge in the markets. I think we're going to see spending in unprecedented ways. And I compare it to the 1920s, where we're coming out of the Great Depression. Not that we're in a Great Depression, but there are a lot of similarities. And I think if you're heavy in the market, just

Starting point is 00:34:34 like you should always do, regardless of anything, if you hold on, I think 2025 could be a very exciting year. Outside of being in the market, I stand by my advice. Just do what you're doing. Double down on your successes and keep your head down. Bingo. I love it, brother. Where can everybody keep up with everything that Derek Fay is doing and call you if they need a good speaker? Yeah, I'm on all platforms. Very simple. It's just my name, at Derek Fay, D-E-R-I-K-F-A-Y. I do my very best to keep up with all the DMs and requests because as we mentioned, I think before we went on, I don't have anything to sell. I am looking for deal flow. I am away for free things that I've done very simply put how you can do this and make real money. And why not? Like other people's success doesn't affect me.

Starting point is 00:35:34 It makes me feel good. Hop on there. Take my ideas. I like to say that if you think they're bullshit and they could never be done, they weren't for you anyway. So just promptly ignore them. It's the people that want to try it that will see that it works. The wise Chinese proverb. The person saying it can't get done better get the fuck out of the way of the person doing it.

Starting point is 00:35:57 That's right. He's not going to do it. I added some conjecture to the Chinese proverb. I'm not sure the F-bomb was in there. I like it better that way. Hey, brother, I really enjoyed this. I'd like to pick your brain sometime on some deals. Anytime, brother.

Starting point is 00:36:14 Appreciate it. Hey, guys, you can find us at theradcast.com. Search for Derek Fay. You'll find the highlight clips, the links, and how to get in touch with Derek on social media. I'm at Ryan Alford on all the social media platforms. And hey, get on my newsletter, man. It's free. It's daily.

Starting point is 00:36:30 It's million dollar advice. RyanAlford.com backslash newsletter. We'll see you next time on the Radcast. To listen or watch full episodes, visit us on the web at theradcast.com or follow us on social media at our Instagram account, the.rad.cast or at Ryan Alford. Stay radical. you

Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Leverage & Legacy: Derik Fay’s Winning Formula

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