The Kevin Trudeau Show LIMITLESS - One-Man Shark Tank Reveals His Secret To Massive Money Success | Ep 101

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

Want to think like a millionaire—and win like one? "Millionaire Maker" Kevin Trudeau is joined by Dan Fleyshman, $100M serial entrepreneur and leading podcaster. Dan was a multi-millionaire at 17,  the youngest founder of a publicly traded company in history, and is now a one-man Shark Tank with investments in over 40 companies.  He also lost $65 million at one point and says "it's the best thing that ever happened to him!"  On the show, Dan reveals the REAL millionaire mindset, the insider story of going public, his private success secrets, and the MONEY CODE they never teach in school. Watch and discover how top 1% entrepreneurs really think.  This is your blueprint to wealth, freedom, and massive success.🔗 Learn the Truth about Kevin Trudeau : https://KevinTrudeau.com/Timestamps:00:00:00 Introduction00:06:09 Preparing for Future IPO & Auditing Requirements00:07:06 Advantages of Being Public00:09:57 IPO Then vs Now00:11:22 Crowdfunding and Expanding Investor Base00:12:34 Going Public Internationally00:16:32 Early Success & Associating with Winners00:25:31 Overcoming Adversity00:31:50 What Makes a Good Investment?00:38:16 Traits of Success and Failure#Entrepreneurship #MillionaireMindset #StartupSuccess #FinancialFreedom #BusinessGrowth #SuccessSecrets #WealthBuilding #AngelInvesting #OvercomingAdversity #DailyHabits #kevintrudeaushow #kevintrudeau #manifestation #sharktank #sharktankdeals *******************************************************************************"The Wealth Rules You Wish You Knew Sooner (LEARN NOW OR LOSE!)" - https://www.youtube.com/live/UXB_xE4g_MQ"You Can't Manifest Wealth {Until You Do THIS!}" - https://www.youtube.com/live/nZ_X711hDQg*******************************************************************************Remove the invisible barriers to wealth with the “Money Processes” : https://www.buymoneyprocesses.com/spotify Learn how to become a ‘Prosperity and Luck Attractor Field’ with the “Ultimate Success Course” :  https://www.claimyourwish.com/ *******************************************************************************FREE TRAINING:[https://gurukev.com][https://nuggetsofgold.com][https://t.me/TheKevinTrudeauFanClubChannel]#KevinTrudeau #KevinTrudeauShow #TheKevinTrudeauShow #TheKevinTrudeauShowLimitless

Dan Fleischman built a multi-million dollar empire before he was 21. He's the youngest founder of a public company in history. And now he's a one-man shock tank. Want the millionaire mentality? The millionaire mindset? The money-making masterclass starts right now. Dan, thanks for being with me. Thanks for having me.

Now, the big thing that has made you famous is you are the youngest person to take a company public. Yep, exactly 20 years ago. And how old were you then? I was 23. So 23. All right. Now, it sounds good. You took a company public at 23.

I know a lot of guys who were very impressed when they took their company public on the pink sheets or the penny stocks, never made a penny, never made a nickel. As a matter of fact, they paid to go public just to get the status and they didn't make any money and everything kind of fell apart because they didn't raise anything. But they could say, I'm public. I'm a public company. So what's the real deal here? Yep.

We raised $4.5 million on opening day. When you were 23 years old? Yes. Okay. And I was a fully reporting company, unlike the rest of the pink sheets. I was a fully reporting company in the entire half a decade. We never missed one. I was in 55,000 retail stores.

So I had a real business compared to a lot of the companies that were on there. I actually was able to pay everyone back that $4.5 million. We paid them back five weeks later because the way they structured the deal is called a death spiral. And I didn't know what that meant. And so they were actually, they were going to make money if I did good and make more money if I did bad. And so when I found out what that was, I maneuvered away.

I was the only companies in history to actually pay them back very, very quickly so that I wasn't going to be involved in that deal in that structure. And it allowed me that helped a lot because I had 1,400 shareholders come in and there was a lot of people involved in business. And anyways, it was an interesting time. the paperwork, the headaches, it cost around $2 million and two years illegal in the county to go public back then. And so I'm glad I did it for the concept of what you said of the notoriety of going public. Social media wasn't a really big thing back then, right?

This is 2005. But it allowed me to raise capital, do deals, do partnerships. We got 43 distributors with Budweiser, Coors, Miller, Pepsi. All those things happened because we're public. And when you went public, you went not on NASDAQ or the American Stock Exchange, which I think was still in business back 20 years ago or the New York Stock Exchange, you went what's called the Pinksheets, right? Yeah, well, pink sheets are typically non-reporting companies.

We went on the OTC board and we were a fully reporting company. So similar. OTC, over-the-counter. Exactly, yeah. Right. But you weren't fully on NASDAQ or any of the major exchanges. You were on the over-the-counter exchange, sometimes known as the pink sheets? Correct.

And is that sometimes known as a penny stock? Yes. But it's still hard to do, right? well it's a you gotta have a couple million bucks in a couple years and really have real accounting behind you to go on there a lot of pink sheets get delisted you know because they don't have all the the actual bells and whistles they don't have the actual meat and potatoes like they don't have those things again because we were in tens of thousands of stores we were able to be there for half a decade before I resigned after I was a we did the company for half a decade before that so I started one out of 17 and then I resigned on the 10 year anniversary and now is what what you did called an IPO, initial public offering? No, it's called a reverse merger. Okay, so you did a reverse merger with an existing company that was public? Correct.

So what happens is most people on the pink sheets or OTC board, a reverse merger you'll take on a public company and they either have a bunch of shareholders or a lot of debt or a lot of things that are going on there. We came in and paid off the entire debt. You changed the name of the company. The existing board members can decide whether they're coming on to the new co or not, meaning you can buy their shares or not and then it saves you a ton of money and time in the process

by doing the style by doing reverse merger now there's pros and cons to that right if you find a company that you acquire and there's debts that you don't know about later there's no one to go sue or call like it's on you now if there's like old lawsuits pending or old headaches or maybe there's even shareholders that you don't know about that's on you now so you got to make sure if you're going to go through reverse merger, because the people still do that now. There's a lot of intense research you have to do before you assume a company's liabilities. Yeah, you have to do that due diligence. As a matter of fact, I think truth social, Trump's deal, that was a reverse merger.

He basically took his company and took a, there was a shell that was public. Sometimes it's just a shell. It's not even an operating company, but it's a public. And you can buy them off the shelf, right? You know, you just, oh, there's a public shell. We're going to basically do a reverse merger. which means they're not really buying you. You're effectively buying them,

and you wind up with the majority of the company, right? Right. That's why they call the reverse part. They're not buying you. You're reversing into them. You can buy a public show from anywhere from 500K to $4 million. Depends on the debt involved, how long in the company was it public.

Was it good, bad, or ugly? Like, there's reasons for it. But typically $500K to $1 million is kind of like a normal okay show. But if you want like a fancy one that's like, had serious revenue and the shareholders are coming over and blah, blah, blah, you're talking about $3 million, $4 million range. Do you think that's something today that makes sense for certain companies to do? Oh, for sure, because they can't go through the normal process to go public.

Why? It's very difficult. You need to hire auditors that work with auditors, and then SEC audits your auditors that auditors. And I'm not exaggerating. That's exactly what happened. Yeah, because I mean, we launched the company called World's Best Interested. We have 100 shareholders. We're doing a public, I mean, a private placement now. I think it's a reg D or reg C, whatever it is. And we, you know, we're raising, you know, $8 million. But the, we have Grant Thornton as our auditors and we're planning on potentially at least setting ourselves up with audited financials right from day one to potentially go public in three years, you know, with a 200 million a year in revenue with, you know, 30 to 60 million to the bottom line. So.

So that's an option. And it's, as you said, it's ridiculous in terms of the numbers that have to be audited and then re-audited and then re-audited, right? Yes. But with those type of revenue, if you're going to go on to do $200 million range revenue, like, you would do a traditional IPO. You're too big to do what I did. Yeah, yeah.

We wouldn't do a reverse merger if we do go public because obviously there's going to be serious dividends without that profitability that, you know, we'll make a decision whether we private, which is very nice, or if we need the funds to go public. And what's the major reason why a person would want to go public? So it's access to capital and it's access to deals and it's access to the world for investments. Okay, so let's just talk about access to capital. So a company says in order from me to grow, I need cash. I need to build a factory.

I need inventory. I need to spend $100 million on marketing and I don't have the money. Yep. So if you're a private company and you're raising $8 million, you're having an implied valuation based on the business. When you're publicly traded, if you're trading at $7 a share, they know exactly how much you're worth in real time and can pay you that market value rate a little bit less, a little bit more. You can negotiate based on $7 a share. It's very simple. It's very clear. And they have a very tangible asset. Investing into a private company, they need to then privately try to sell it at some point or hope for an exit liquidity vendor merger. in a public, they can just sell at any moment, 100 shares, 1,000 shares, or all 7 million shares, they could sell it in real time. And so the public markets allows for liquidity events and capital moving around.

Everything is faster and easier and much more visible when you're publicly traded. Right. And the other advantage, too, is if you have equities in a legitimate publicly traded company, you can leverage against that. You can go and get financing on your equity. Right. Which is harder in a private company, right? I'm an investor in 43 private companies.

Many of them have chances at, you know, exits, liquidity events, mergers, blah, blah, blah. But I can't go take that paper and say, hey, Kevin, will you loan me 300K versus my 700K worth of stock? It's harder. You might, but it's a different process versus, hey, Kevin, I have 700,000 of publicly traded shares. I'll transfer them to you to hold an escrow.

Will you loan me 300K versus 700K? Kevin would wire me the money in six minutes because he's got such a big margin, a big spread. Right. And he knows he could sell them in any moment. Right. When we're raising money in our deal right now, we have a valuation of $100 million, and we're raising eight. We're getting close to that number.

But the reason people are investing is based on our representation that we may go public. So that's number one. They go, okay, we know the numbers. We see the projections, the performers. And that's a good exit strategy. But secondly, based on those performers, they also say, you don't have to go public. pay good dividends because that type of cash, the return I'm getting on my investment is like unbelievable. You don't have to go public. So that's why we're getting people to look at this and

invest because they say either A, it's going to go public and I'll probably still get dividends or B, it doesn't go public and I'm getting spectacular dividends. So either way I win. Right. So today, is it easier to go public than it was 20 years ago when you first went public? So there's gift and curse. Easier because way more information, lawyers are way smarter, people are smarter, technology is faster, accounting. Everything can be done faster preparation-wise. The curse part is the government is still so slow and still such headaches and lawyers talking to accounts, talking to auditors, talking to lawyers, talking to auditors, talking to lawyers, talking back to your accounts, talk. Like, that part of it is just the worst because you're at the mercy of lawyers.

accountants and auditors and multiple of each, not just yours, theirs, and the SECs. And so there's just a lot of moving parts from that perspective. That was similar 20 years ago as it is now. The difference now is technology is so much better now. And there's so much more access to information. And it's much easier to do things in a public environment. I would much rather be publicly traded now. I would have had tens of thousands investors, hundreds of thousand investors because I could make it famous.

Now, back then I had MySpace. right right and i was sponsoring i was sponsoring nascars and getting billboards in utah you know like i had to do ground you know and so being public now um it is much more visual much more visible and much there's a lot more smarter people that have more information yeah you know i sold 50 million copies of my books uh natural curesada i want you to know about was number one for 26 weeks in a row in the new york times list and that itself sold almost 50 million copies and all my other books sold almost 100 million. So that's one of the reasons why we're considering going public because we have a name and we're established. And so sure, well, you try to get institutional investors to put up a lot of money,

but if you get 100,000 small retail investors, that's pretty darn good too, right? For sure. Crowdfunding is amazing. They finally changed the rules a few years ago to allow crowdfunding at scale. Oh my gosh. I've been watching companies go raise 75 million, 5 million, 2 million, 10 million, And finally, they're allowed to put in $500, $500,000, $100,000, $100,000, $1,000, $1,000, $2,000, like, it's finally allowed the last couple years, and it's changing the entire market. And they can do that before the company goes public, right, during, like, an initial private, a private offer. Absolutely. Fantastic.

Now, what about other countries? We're talking about America. Are the rules different? Let's say the other exchanges around the world because there are companies that go public all over the world in 100 different countries, whether it's Switzerland or the UK or Georgia. Germany, Japan, et cetera, et cetera. Is it easier to go public in other countries on other exchanges versus America? Yes.

So a lot of times Americans will go public in Australia or they'll go public in like an Asian market because they can get listed quicker. There's a lot of ways that you can pay fees and do things faster in those countries where some countries are slower, obviously like just based on culture, but other countries are just ready to rock. Like they are ready to go. If you pay all their fees, you can go public and just pay their lawyer. They still have auditing.

I'm not saying you can just walk in and go public. But I have friends that I'm taking companies public in Australia, like much more fast and effective. It's a similar concept. You can go public in multiple countries in Asian market, Australia, etc., and then still go public in America. And you can be publicly traded in multiple countries if you want to. There's not much need for that outside of the fact that Australians may prefer just invest in Australian publicly traded company, right? In the Asian markets, they may prefer to invest there, even though they are obsessed with Americans, so you can still do it here and get Asian culture to invest.

Australians may not care, right? We don't have the same affinity. We don't do that. We don't play together that much, Australian America. So there's certain markets that going public is worth it for you to go public in that specific market. Other markets, you just go public in America and allow international investors to come in. All right. So you talked about going public, number one, the company needs cash.

It needs capital. needs money to make investments in the business so the business can grow, such as inventory, equipment, marketing, et cetera. Okay. What about the guy who wants to go public so that he can go to the pay window and simply get rich? Yep. Yes. No myth?

What? It's definitely not a myth. It is for sure the best liquidity event you can have is going public because of the valuation is dramatically higher than a private valuation. Right. When you see a company that gets acquired in the news, they're getting acquired for two X gross sales, four X gross sales, five times EBDA, nine times EBDA, et cetera. On the public markets, you're getting these crazy, like 16 times this and 21 times that. Like, it's just a very different how people perceive it on the public markets. And so you'll have a company that's doing like five million in sales have a $110 million valuation on a public market.

But a $5 million in sales business, which is netting like $1 million in a private. markets is worth like 10 million bucks, right, in ballpark, depending on the vertical, right? That's a very big difference, 10 million valuation and 110 million valuation. And so the public markets are interesting. So if a guy, for example, in our company, they invest $1,000 and their investment goes up and it's worth $10,000, if it was on the public market, it'd be worth $100,000. In theory, depending on the market of the product line, blah, blah, blah, but like the difference also is, if it's on the public market, you can actually sell it, right? After you're a hold on, you

know, sometimes there's a lockup period, a lockup period of six months or 12 months, depending on the type of deal. It's either zero months, six months or 12 months typically. Once that's out there, they could sell 2,000 of it, 5,000 of it, 100,000 of it. They don't have to sell all of it. In a private sale, it would be hard for you to just kind of like, so, hey, Kevin, buy like $42,000 worth of my shares. That's kind of a weird dynamic versus on the public market. I can sell $42,000 of shares in one minute and still have a quarter of million dollars sitting aside that I'm holding.

And I can also buy more in, by the way. That's the other thing. There's a lot of times I buy back into companies, right? I've invested in multiple rounds in private companies, but it's at a like tiered stage, right? Like liquid death water. Everyone's talking about liquid death water. They've done seven rounds of financing privately.

But if you wanted to buy in, if it was public, you could buy in anytime you want, sell whatever you want, buy back in, sell your house, buy some more stock, buy a new house. Like, there's just so much thing you can do on a public market versus private sales. Let's talk about your mindset. You obviously became very successful, very young. So we talked about the fact that you did go public. Now let's talk about the success.

Okay, so you have the sound good. You know, I went public. I'm really young. And again, I know a lot of guys who are waving around. You know, I went public just like, I have a number one bestseller on Amazon. How many books did you sell? 140. Okay, we didn't make any money. So you got a number one bestseller, international bestseller, but you still didn't make any cash. So you made a lot of cash. You actually made a lot of money

very young in your 20s. Yes. All right. What was the mindset? Is can you give me a distinction, a difference between the way you and your friends thought, because you had friends that also made a lot of money, right? Yes. Okay. Now that's another critical thing, because you're income is the average of your five best friends. So you and your friends thought differently than, let's say, the losers that you knew as well, right? Completely. And if you hang out with someone that likes to smoke weed, they're going to want you to smoke weed. You hang out with skateboarders, they want to go skateboarding. I was hanging out with business people and athletes and celebrities all the time, not because I ever cared about the athlete's celebrity part of it. I cared about the way

they moved, what they thought, what they bought, what they did. Like, I liked the concept of who they were, and I knew that they were the top point zero one percent of humanity, right? To be an NFL player, regardless of what you think of them, they spent 14, 15, 18, 19 years of their life to become an NFL player when so did 400,000 other kids that year, right? Or so did four million other kids that year. And they were, you know, one of the 120 that got signed. And so I liked the NBA players, NFL players, the celebrities,

because you look at singers like, oh, that singer's a dipshit. Okay, well, maybe, but there's still Justin Bieber Selena Gomez when there was 17 million people that tried to be Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, they became that. And so surrounding myself with people that were business people or athlete celebrities changed my mindset all the time because I was always listening to, what are they doing? The good, bad, and ugly. I want to hear the bad stuff too, right? Like, I like the way you talk. Like, I like talking about the good, bad, and ugly because it's important to save me paying the dummy tax later. They thought, and it got you thinking differently than the people that were unsuccessful.

What is the difference in those two? So when you're talking to someone that's working a nine to five job, there's nothing against working nine to five job, but it'll sound like I'm bragging talking to them about payroll, inventory, headaches, Costco owes me $2 million for three months. Well, that sounds like you're bragging, right? Even though I'm talking about a struggle in a situation of like my payroll and my cash flow and things like that.

But if I said that to Kevin, he would actually tell me, oh, you could get factoring, you could get financing, talk to my buddy over here at Chase Bank. He can actually help you with, like, it would be a different discussion versus my friend that's a skateboarder that would be like, whoa, bro, you know, like, sick brag. Like, they were just thinking I'm bragging when I'm like, no, no, I'm trying to fix the cost goes me $2 million. I need to fix it, right?

And so the difference in mindset is like, one, people are blocked, you know, people that are working that normal life. They can't even imagine or fathom going and having Costco owe you $2 million for 90 days. Like they can't even, what does that even mean? Why would you give, why would you give net terms to Costco? Like, the concept's insane. Doesn't even make sense. Versus the people that have been and lived and breathed it, the way they think about it is how do they fix it?

What can they do? What can they tell you? Who can they hook you up with and connect you with? All right. So it sounds here's two things here. Number one, it sounded like you said that people who are unsuccessful have an inability to think big or dream. Sure. They are completely complacent.

and where they are, and they're going to work for 38 years for those few companies. They will retire, and then they will die. So they have no drive. Correct. No motivation. They don't have goals. They don't have dreams. They don't have objectives.

And they can't think big. You just said they can't even fathom to think that big. They can't think big. They can't dream big. Correct. There was a great book called The Magic of Thinking Big, which talked specifically about that. That was the first thing you mentioned. And then the other thing you mentioned is the successful people are always thinking not about the problem, but the solution.

How to fix it and looking for ways to sort this out and win, even though it's a problem. They're not focused on the problem. They're focused on winning and figuring it out, right? Absolutely. Now, did you read any books on motivation or personal development? or how to make money like Think and Grow Rich or The Magic of Thinking Big or How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Did you read any of those things or listen to any audios from like Tony Robbins or Earl Nightingale or anything like that in the beginning? Yep. So, again, I started a long time. It was 1999. I was 17 years old. We did 9.5 million sales when I was 18 years old.

So it was really young. And there wasn't, again, social media wasn't a thing. It wasn't a long time ago, by the way. That wasn't a long time ago, just so you know, because I went on TV in 1989, and that wasn't a long time ago. Got it. Yeah, so I did, you know, Thinking Grow Rich was a book, one of the few books I've read multiple times because of just the concept, the way that he thinks in there is really compelling

to me. And there's very few books I read multiple times outside of that one. How to Win Friends Influence People, like you mentioned, that's a very powerful book. Like, I was reading books along the way, but most of the time I was in real world university. Most of the time I was living it. During the time I was public from 2005 to 2009, I literally cannot tell you one birthday party, one dinner, one girlfriend, one anything. I went and drove around to 43 distributors and I worked with those distributors and I got us in the 55,000 stores, and that was my life for four years. And I don't remember. I know I read books along the way. I don't remember anything for those four years. Okay. So it sounds like there's a couple other key elements here that we're dissecting success principles. So number one, the associating with winners. Yes?

For sure. And if you didn't associate with winners, if you associated with, we'll call them losers, and I don't mean that in derogatory fashion, but we're just using winners and losers here. But if you're associating with people that were not successful and not motivated, not inspired, do you think that would have negatively impacted you and prevented you for becoming successful? I don't think I wouldn't exist. I wouldn't be on your podcast right now. So number one, and by the way, Aristotle Onassis, the richest man in the world, said the number one critical component to success is associating with successful people, being in their presence, talking to them and having relationships with positive, motivated, inspired, goal-driven, successful people because success rubs off.

So you said that was number one. Number two, okay, reading books, but it was really more importantly associating. Number two was working your ass off. Yes. Right? Non-stop. Oh, people don't want to talk about that. I want a balanced life.

Did you live a balanced life? I sincerely can't tell you anything for that half a decade outside of work. The celebrities and sports superstars that you would associate with on their way up to stardom or the NFL or the NBA, did they? live a balanced life or did they have an unbalanced life on the way up they were completely all in with two-a-day workouts and x amount of meals and i had to have this many eggs and this many steaks like their life was some being great their life was that obsessed obsessed obsessed a magnificent obsession and work your ass off next you talked about being driven and focused on not the problem or the situation or the challenge you're facing,

but how to win the solution, how to fix it, how to sort it out, how to overcome it, right? I actually don't even let my staff or friends bring me a problem unless they have a solution to come with it. I may not pick their solution, I may not pick their solution,

but if you come to me and say, oh yeah, John and Vanessa are fighting in the background, okay, well, am I going to fire John or Vanessa? Is that what you're saying? Are we going to have a phone call with them? Are they doing a Zoom call? We're just going to what are you bringing this to me for without telling me how we're going to fix it? Again, I may not choose what you do suggest, but I need to understand why you're bringing this to me.

All right. Now, the next thing is in your background, like most successful people, and if you look at, pick, pick 10 super successful people. Honda, who started Honda Motors, Mr. Toyota, who started Toyota, Elon Musk. pick anybody a craft with craft foods Fred Smith with Federal Express pick the guy who founded UPS it doesn't matter

you can look at every single one of those people and they all faced not one but multiple catastrophes and major adversity where they were virtually on the brink of bankruptcy and out of that they figured out something that made them a gazillionaire

and the Napoleon Hill phrases in every adversity are the seeds of a greater benefit. You also had faced adversity. You were doing really well, and all of a sudden something happened. You lost $60 million. Tell us about that. So I had a company called Victory Poker, which was the company I started after I resigned from the public company. And I was super excited.

I moved to a place called Malta, never even heard of Malta, put on my backpack, went there. 10 weeks later, my online poker site was live. 10 months later, I'm the fifth biggest poker set in the world. I'm doing six figures a week, net, with five employees. And I'm just building this thing up. And a year and a half goes by, I'm about to reach the two-year mark. And April 19th, I'm supposed to get $3.5 million deposit on a $65 million valuation from one of my competitors to do a merger together to connect my poker players

with their poker players in the back end. that's going to be humongous. I'm going to go from 65 million to worth hundreds of millions dollars like this on April 19th. On April 15th, at 10, 10 in the morning, the FBI and the federal government seized the bank accounts of my three competitors above me. Full tilt, absolute poker and poker stars are seized by the government. It's called Black Friday. I go to my website. I'm not seized. My bank accounts are fine. Nothing happened. I never got a letter. I wasn't in trouble because what they were doing is called miscoding merchant. transactions. And so I'm perfectly fine, but I have a decision made. I can keep going and hope I

don't get the knock on the door from the federal government someday. Even if I'm not in trouble, they can still make me go through the ringer or do what I did. And I manually paid back 41,000 players in four days. And everyone else withdrew directly. And I manually paid it 41,000 people that didn't withdraw, gave them their money back. Because my competitors didn't. It took them half a decade, if not. And some of them never to pay the players back. I paid everybody back in four days. So I became the good guy in the space. And that tragedy of losing $65 million company literally overnight is what led me to where I am. It's the best thing that ever happened to me from a career.

So explain that. So obviously this must have been traumatic. Oh, yeah. And you would not only get disappointed or frustrated, were you a wreck? Were you scared? Were you nervous? I mean, the FBI, that could make anybody scared. Yeah.

So I have the saying, don't sit on the floor and cry about it. So I could have jumped off a building, cried, disappeared, done what some of the other competitors did. Literally, some of them did all those things. But instead, I just went to work. I did over 80 interviews and just explained everything and showed my world of why I was in the poker business. Literally my Wells Fargo bank accounts. I had KPMG accounting. I just showed everything very publicly all over the media, poker news, everywhere, and just said,

I am the transparent one out of these competitors, right? And luckily, once I figured out and found out, I didn't know right away what they had done. I didn't find that out until a few days later. Why were they getting in trouble from them? And so during those times, the first day I was confused, I was also, it's interesting, at 12 p.m., so two hours later, right, on Black Friday,

I was training 11 police officers how to play poker and blackjack at the Hard Rock Casino. And I was with this multibillionaire who, invented the slot machine loyalty card, you know, the thing you stick in. Yeah. And so my meeting was with him at 12 o'clock. The reason I was in America, I hadn't been American half a year, was for that meeting. And why he brought me there was to teach these police officers as a favor, how to play poker and black check while I think I'm like public enemy number one all of a sudden. Anyways. And so I just dove in head first to fix the problem. And I don't remember being scared or

in fear outside of like the first few hours of like what's going on. Once I realize that's it, I'm ripping the band-aid off and closing the company down, there was no fear. I think if I would have been in limbo, I'd be in fear. Would you say that you actually just confronted head-on the situation? Yes, in a very, very fast, dramatic version. I had two choices. Go be, stick around and wait it out and see what happens and be nervous every single morning that the federal government might get you in trouble, even if you don't do anything wrong.

Or shut the company down, pay everybody. everybody back, lick your wounds, and move on to the next thing. You know, there's a phrase that says, what you can confront, you can handle. So it sounds like you did that. The second thing is Earl Nightingale made the great phrase, and he said, successful people are not people without problems. They're simply people who overcome their problems. And it seems that you fall into both of those categories.

You confronted head on what your situation was, which immediately. eliminates the fear, by the way. And secondly, even though you got knocked down, you figured out a way to turn that to your advantage by showing to everybody you're the good guy and expressing everything and turning it and overcome that problem. So that led me because I became the good guy in the space,

I got hired by four land-based casinos to consult for them. I started consulting from Morgan Stanley, their entire gaming division. I got back on my feet, and I started angel investing a bunch of companies. companies, started my social media agency, started my charity all in the first few months after losing everything. So if that negative situation didn't happen, then all those good things wouldn't have happened either. Exactly. Out of every adversity of the seeds of a greater benefit. Perfect example. Now, you invest in other people's companies. So you're like the one-man shark tank,

right? You look at a company, they give you their business plan, they give you their pitch, I need X number. I think I'm valuing the company at this. Like if we were to come to you and say, we got the world's best nutritionals in organics. I'm the number one author of the best-selling health book of all time. I get millions of customers. They've already bought the products,

so they're going to buy it again. It's going to be a billion-dollar company in five years. So we give our pitch, and then we say invest. So if somebody comes to you and says invest, you probably say no to most of those people, right? Oh, my gosh. Yeah, 99%. All right.

So let's talk about the reasons. Give me like three or four reasons why you say no to a company. And this is going to be helpful to people out there who are delusional, who think they have some product that's going to sell and some business plan that's brilliant. And you and I would look at it and go, remember the boat in Jaws when they had like 20 guys in this little tiny rowboat? And he goes, they're all going to die. So what are the main things you look for when you say?

no chance. Yep. So there are four things that I look at when I decide if I'm going to invest into a company. Number one,

is the entrepreneur themselves. I need to believe that this person is ride or die. They'll be there at the convention booth at 12 at night

fixing things. They'll be there at six in the morning, bright eye, bushytailed ready to sell. They'll be there in the, you know, Saturday afternoons

when they're supposed to be with their kids, they're going to be, I need to know their ride or die, and it's not just a job, right? Number two,

does anyone care? Meaning, does anyone out there care to buy this product? That's why mostly invest in companies that are already doing at least $2 million in sales, because people vote with their wallets. And so if there's at least $2 million, $3 million, $4 million in sales, I know people care. They bought the products. So second is, do people care?

Is it scalable? Right? The next thing is, can this product sell out in the wild on a shelf somewhere where Kevin's not there to explain it? Well, his supplements, his product, will it sell online or in Amazon or on a shelf at a grocery store without him or without his team there? Will it sell in the wild? And the fourth thing is, can they back it up? The things that they told me, can they get what I call my four horsemen, my CEO, my lawyer, my accountant, my advisor? And so the entrepreneur is excited.

They're pitching me. And they're like, yeah, we're going to get, we got a order for Whole Foods. I'm really excited we're going to be in all the Whole Foods. And I say to my CEO, can you check on that? And then he says, oh, yeah, well, I met the buyer for Whole Foods at a party. We're supposed to have a meeting. And then he said it will get into some of their stores. Yeah.

That's not a purchase order. It's very different. And so my four things are entrepreneur, does anybody care? Can it sell in the wild? And can they back it up? When you bring that up to people, what do they say? I mean, they've got to be like giving you some. excuse or something, right?

Yes. So I'm able to keep my relationship with them by making my four horsemen the bad guys. Right? And so they can be a bright eye, bushy-tailed entrepreneur pitching me. And by the way, they might not be doing it in a fairously saying that they got into Whole Foods. They might actually believe they're going to get into Whole Foods. It's just not on paper. It's very different.

And so I get to keep my fun casual relationship with that person, but my four horsemen allowed me to say no. When I say I've done 43 angel investments, 43 sounds like a lot, that's over a day. decade. So I'm doing like three, four, five a year. But I'm seeing hundreds per year. So when I say 99%, I literally mean 99% and I say no to because they just don't have these four things. And you have to have all four of them. If you have any one thing missing. And when you say the fourth, the fourth thing is the CEO accountant, lawyer, and advisor. Is that yours who are doing the due diligence? You don't want to see who they have on their team. You're having your team do due

diligence. Yes. Number one, when I say the entrepreneur, that also means their team. So number one is who they have. Number four is, can who they have prove to who I have what they're doing? Like, I need to know that they can, my four guys are going to approve them. You can get approved by the four horsemen. Your four guys are verifying and documenting and substantiating the pitch. Yes. So it really then, it really then comes down to two major things. Number one, the entrepreneur or the team, look, certain people are winners. Michael Jordan was a winner. I don't bet against Michael Jordan. Give him the ball, right?

I'm wearing Michael Jordan's sweater right now. There you go. The guy was a winner. He knows how to win. Brady was a winner. Clearly not the best thrower of the football in the history of the National Football League. But he knows how to win. Certain guys know how to win. Other guys may be great players, but don't know how to win. So you're really looking for that intangible, that besides, I mean, not just being obsessed, willing to work and do whatever it takes to become successful, but also that he's a winner.

Yes or no? I just posted about a CEO that I invested into. So I put 500K, 2018, and it's a company called Everbull. And they had 13 locations and 17 locations. Then I raised them $5 million from my mastermind group. They had 23 locations, 27 locations. I just posted that they have 98 locations now, right? So in five years, I went from 13, 17 to now 98, one new one every six days.

But think about it. I raised money in 2019. What happened March of 2020? The whole world shut down. All other restaurants were closing down. This kid went and signed over 340 leases while everyone else was scared of the shutdown. He went and signed leases, got 12 months free rent, 50K and T. P.I. Tendant improvements. He was out there signing leases left and right. And now look at us four years later, we're the biggest chain that there is.

All right. Everybody who's listening to this has to understand the story. This is 1929. And look, you think 1999 was a long time ago. But 1929 was a long time ago. People don't even know what happened. The stock market crashed. It went down 25%, which today is not even a big deal with the swings that happened. But back then it was the end of the world because everybody was margined and they got margin called. Everybody went bankrupt. And what did the smart people do? They bought stock. Buy more. Because they go, this is a bargain. It's a bargain. So what you're saying is when COVID came and everything was being shut down, your guy, a winner, saw opportunity in adversity. Exactly.

And he went and got leases for next to nothing because everybody was operating out of fear. and he wasn't operating out of fear. And it's interesting. Aristotle Onassis did the same thing. After the Second World War, there was this big blood of ships. Nobody wanted to get into shipping because the war was over. There was all this excess of ships. And Onassis looked at the numbers and he said,

if shipping goes back to the same levels it was before the war, there aren't enough ships. And so he bought every ship he could. As a matter of fact, he got him for free. because people were willing to give him ships just to get it off their out of their port. And then within a year, there wasn't enough ships in the world, and he had them all. And he became the richest man of the world because he saw what everybody else was operating out of fear. And he saw something, and that's the same type of situation.

Let's talk about traits that you don't like in people that will keep them a failure. Is there any particular trait that you can think of that you say, don't do this if you want to become successful? And it may be common. Any ideas? Yeah. I mean, when they're just putting things off to later, you're not going to be a winner. Procrastination. If you procrastinate and you're a CEO, a president, if you're a C-level executive that procrastinates, you should find a new career.

You cannot procrastinate in business, especially as the entrepreneur. because the time is now. And things stack up and compound along the way. So if you don't get things done now and you're like, yeah, I'll do it next week, I'll do it next month. Oh my God. It just puts you in such a bad position. Are you familiar with the guy named Art Williams?

Do you remember the company called A.L. Williams? It was a multi-level marketing insurance company, which is now Primerica. Well, Art Williams became a billionaire with that company. And he wrote a book, and the name of the book was, Do It Now. The whole book is about what you just said. It's about you can't, you can't procrastinate.

Is there another trait that you can think of that we'll call it a loser mentality or a loser characteristic? Drama. Maybe like criticizing, complaining, bitching, whining, what was me being a victim? If they want drama or they like, when I remember I said John and Vanessa, arguing, like if they like that stuff or they're telling other staff about it or telling the executives about it or like if they like drama, that company, no matter how good it does, is going to have some major, major failures and lawsuits and headaches along the way. If they enjoy the bad stuff or the drama or they like talking bad about everybody else or everyone else

sucks, but they're the best, that just doesn't work. Then that's a very interesting point because if you're listening to this, really do some self-evaluation. There was an old phrase that said something to the effect of losers talk about people and winners talk about events. You know, there's like a difference, right? You're always talking, you know, gossip, right? So gossiping and getting involved in all the minutia of what's happening and what that person said to this person and what's going on,

that's loser mentality, right? Absolutely. And winners don't do that. No. It's like they're above it or like they don't care or they get bigger things, bigger fish to fry. Definitely bigger fish to fry. Like if we're sitting here talking about John and Vanessa's problems, when we should be talking about payroll, rent, manufacturing, shipping, marketing, paid ads,

email affiliates, like there's so many things we should be talking about, not about John and Vanessa's argument. Like, I don't, I literally cut people off. had someone call me this morning, they're like, oh, I heard about this thing. I'm like, I don't have time to talk about this. Even though it's Sunday morning and I technically have time, I don't have time to talk about it. My life is very short. I have X amount of years left, right? Whether I die at 80, 90, 100, 120, 140 with modern technology, I don't know, but all those numbers are very short. And I don't want to spend nine minutes talking about someone else's drama. I don't,

I literally won't do it. I've hung up on my friends. I just literally this morning told someone stop and I got the phone. I don't want to hear about it. What do you do to keep yourself motivated and inspired and positive? So motivated and inspires actually from people that are ahead of me, right, whether it's financially, emotionally, family-wise, whatever that thing is. And so I like watching the big players in the game, right? I like watching Elon Musk. That's the biggest visionary of all time, right? To have five multibillion-dollar companies at the same time, I love watching it. And there's going to be drama and chaos and whatever along the way. I like watching that part too.

I'm like understanding how does he deal with that, right, from that level. I like watching Zuckerberg's crazy vision. I like watching, you know, the different business people that we watch on social media, Tony Robbins. I like being around Tony Robbins because I like what he built, charity-wise, family-wise, life-wise, impact-wise. And so I like to surround myself in person or watch visually because that's what keeps me inspired. What's the famous thing?

Like once the mind is expanded, it can never. retract. And so kind of like what we talked about earlier, the 95 person that can't even fathom it, it's because their mind has never been expanded. They couldn't fathom the Costco owning the millions dollars thing because that sounds like craziness. But if they were reading books and watching and listening to someone that built a $600 million beverage business, they would know that that's normal and that's part of business. And so I get inspired and keeps me excited as watching the billion dollar, multi-billion dollar companies ahead of me. Do you do any dream building, like look at things that you could potentially buy in the future?

So, yes, but those things are other companies. Those things are investments and deals. Not a yacht, not a big mansion. Those things don't excite you, but it's buying other things, assets, other type of assets. Yeah, like I bought the ranch back in 2022 to build an animal sanctuary. But then I built like a military training on my ranch too. Like I built things from, but then when you see the house, I didn't build a big house. I just have a regular house.

I got a huge ranch with a regular house because the house part is the bed where I sleep in, I don't really care that much. What I wanted was 200 animals, military training, like all that fun stuff. It was my dream and then I built that thing. And so my dream now is I want to do it again. I want to do it in Las Vegas. I want to do another city. Like I want to build multiple ranches because it's fun to me.

So from that perspective, yes. but I've had the same watch since 2008. You know, like I don't buy stuff. Like, I don't have fancy cars. I have cars that are functional, but I don't buy Lamborghinis and things like that. I'd rather buy stock in Tesla than buy 10 Teslas. Are you an early riser?

I am a late sleeper early riser. So you get up early? Yeah. And you go to bed late? Yeah, I don't recommend it. I'm not recommended it. No, no, but I'm serious. I'm curious because people always want to know

what the successful people do. And they usually do something that is unusual. Like Winston Churchill never slept. He slept like an hour here, an hour there. Same thing with Edison, same thing with Einstein. They didn't go to bed at 10 or 11 o'clock

and sleep for six or seven or eight hours. They took little naps. They were up working all night, and they just took little naps. And I have a friend of mine who's a spiritual guru. She doesn't sleep at all. I was down at her home living with her. My gosh.

She was like, she just doesn't sleep. And it's like no big deal. So what time do you go to bed normally? Midnight-ish. Okay. And you're just watching television and watching some old movies before you go to bed, right?

I haven't turned on television in three years. Sorry, I did watch Yellowstone, but outside of that. Right. So you're not binge watching Netflix. No. So you don't engage in the time wasters that the average person does.

Right. Unless there was something, I would watch Shark Tank, right? I would watch something that like billions. I would watch some shows that are like in my realm, but am I going to watch a horror movie for two and a half hours? No, like I don't.

I'd rather be on the phone, researching, watching podcasts. Like, I just like to be consuming. The things you put in your mind are things like you put into your body. And so if you put a horror movie in your mind, it's like eating a horror movie inside your stomach. Like, I don't want that in my body. I don't want that in my mind. So I don't watch that stuff.

Did you ever do any spiritual practice like meditation? I have done meditation, yes. I wish I did it more often. Okay, because I know Stephen Jobs was a meditator. Seinfeld was a meditator. I think Stern was as well. But obviously most very successful people don't meditate and never did, especially in the West because meditation wasn't even something that was known.

But sometimes it can be effective. Eating, you fast food guy, you're a health nut. So I don't do fast food, but I do eat food fast. So the level of fast food has to be like Chipotle level. Like they have to be, yeah. I don't, I haven't been to McDonald's, Burger King, Jack and Box KFC in, I don't know, decades. Right. And so I'm not a, is there a reason?

Is there what your rationale? That's not food. So it's not going to fuel you. It's not going to help you succeed. It's manufactured oil and particles. And like, I don't know. It's just, it's not actually food. and that's why it's bad for your stomach,

it's bad for your life, it's bad for your everything. So like even if it's one in the morning and my only option is Jack the Boxer McDonald's, I still won't go there because that's just not, it's literally not food, like at all. But also at the same time, I'm not saying I'm like a health nut, I'll still eat a cheeseburger,

but I eat a cheeseburger from a place that actually makes cheeseburgers, not manufacturers, fake buns. Gotcha. That's all. What about exercise? Do you exercise at all or have? Yeah.

Yeah. So exercise. Do you think that's helpful for the average person? So exercise is very helpful because it's almost like a form of meditation. It allows you to be in the zone. It's definitely helpful for the body. I do much more cardio-based things than I do like, I can't get buff because I have a thin frame. And so, yes, well, I lift some weight, sure, but I'm not going to be, you know, some buff guy.

And so I'm doing it for my heart. I'm doing it for my mind. I'm doing it to be active. By the way, I do a lot of hotel room workouts because I stay in a, 150 hotel rooms a year. And so right now, I'm in a hotel room, right? And before I was on this call with you, I was doing push-ups, I was doing jumping jacks. And so I'm doing more active things like that. And if they happen to have a gym, then I'll hit the gym, yes. Okay, now think about this last question, because there's a lot of people watching, many of them are, they have a dream, perhaps,

of becoming successful. They probably have a job or something. Come on, maybe they've tried some home-based business. It may have worked to some, degree or failed, but they're not anywhere at the level of making millions of dollars a year. They want to become successful. If there's one thing that you would tell that person, and think about this for a second, if there's one thing you would tell that person who wants success, desire success, but it has alluded them up into this point, what would that be? very very simple go work for a successful person in the category you want to be in if i want to be

a best selling author i'm going to go work for kevin right if kevin sold 50 million books i want to be kevin's secretary i want to watch how he thinks how he moves what he eats where is it going how's he talks to people on the phone how's he talked to his family like i want to absorb kevin's world if i want to go sell even 500 000 copies compared to his 50 million right you want to be in clothing go work for Damon John, right? The guy's done $4 billion in clothing sales. Go be an assistant. Go be whatever. Like go work for someone that's in your category in that ecosystem and it'll change your entire trajectory for the rest of your life. You know, it's very interesting you said that because when I was in the Brotherhood, which was a secret society, one of the ways that we got trained to be successful

was we were given what was called fly on the wall training. We were plucked and put down in a billionaire's home and said, you're staying here for three days. You can't. You can't talk, you're a fly in the wall, but you can observe. And I lived with these guys, and I just observed them on the phone, talking to their staff, how they wrote things down, how they organized their day, what time they got up, what time they went to bed, what they ate, how they talked to colleagues, how they set up meetings, how they gave orders, how they delegated things, how they yelled and screamed, and how they did everything. And it was mind-boggling because I never knew that's how you do it day-to-day, all the little details. So what you just said is so right and significant. I hope everybody listening is paying attention to this man, Dan Fleischman. He knows what he's talking about.

You listen to people who have what you want and who have been where you are. And Dan has what you want, success, freedom, a great attitude, a great lifestyle. He has what you want, and he has been where you are. He started off with zero, correct? You didn't come from a wealthy family, right? Oh, no, definitely not. No. So he is somebody you can learn from, listen to what he has to say.

Dan, there's a million more questions. We're going to have you on again. Fascinating, loved talking to you. Great to meet you. I'm looking forward to meeting you in person. I like you, man. You're fantastic. Thanks for having me.

Hey, if you like that show, I did another show a while back on a subject similar to this, and I think you're going to love it. So click on the link and watch this other show that I picked out just for you. The Three Things. The Three, there's only three, the three, the three things that all billionaires know and do.