The Money Mondays - "A Private Jet WILL PAY FOR ITSELF" - Jas Mathur & Randall Kaplan | E22

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

Jaspreet "Jas" Mathur is an accomplished Canadian Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist and Innovator who launched his first business at age 12, creating and developing high traffic wrestling news websites. At 16, Mathur sold his first business to a media company and over the years he has founded and reinvented a series of successful companies in various industries, including, Satellite TV, Digital Surveillance, Downloadable Media, Online Dating And Online Gambling. As the CEO of Emblaze ONE Inc. and Limitless Performance, Inc., Mathur is responsible for running all facets of the businesses with over 20 years of proven Executive Management experience. Once weighing 450 pounds with a 68-inch waist, Mathur transformed his life based on healthy habits, a positive attitude and serious spiritual and physical dedication to self-improvement. Mathur went on to lose more than 250 pounds, and has devoted his life to health and wellness. Mathur has become a coveted expert to high-profile entrepreneurs and investors. He brings his deep-seated experience in entrepreneurship and spiritual and physical health to others. His work has helped them improve their business performance, turning risk and originality into opportunities, developing strategies and enhancing their organization's value. Jas has been featured as on MSN, TMZ, Inquisitr, HipHopDX, The Independent and RadarOnline, and in publications including Forbes, Men's Journal, Muscle and Fitness, Entrepreneur, Life & Style, Star, US Weekly, In Touch Weekly, and OK Magazine. --- Randall Kaplan is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist with a passion for working with and mentoring talented, hungry entrepreneurs who have a great work ethic and want to create long-lasting companies. Randall is the founder and CEO of JUMP Investors, a venture capital firm that also functions as his family office. Since its formation in 1999, JUMP has invested in more than 60 early-to-late-stage technology companies. JUMP is also an active investor in real estate, private equity, hedge funds, and public equities. Randall is also the founder and CEO of Sandee, a travel company focused on the promotion of beaches and beach tourism around the world whose mission is to create the world’s first beach brand; the co-founder and Co-CEO of Thrive Properties, a real estate investment firm specializing in the ownership, management, leasing, and redevelopment of properties in primary markets throughout Southern California; and the owner and CEO of CollarCard, LLC, a fast-growing promotional products company that makes patented men’s collar stays that are sold throughout the world. Randall is a co-founder of Akamai Technologies, the global leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, making the Internet fast, reliable and secure for its customers. The company’s advanced web performance, mobile performance, cloud security, and media delivery solutions are revolutionizing how businesses optimize consumer, enterprise, and entertainment experiences for any device anywhere. Akamai serves nearly 30% of the world’s web traffic, is a member of the S&P 500, employs nearly 8,000 people with 64 offices in 28 countries, and had $2.9 billion in 2019 revenues. Over the past 20 years, Randall has been an advisor to more than 50 companies, has served on the board of directors of many companies, has been an active public speaker, and has mentored more than 100 students through JUMP’s annual internship program on top of his millions in charity work. - The Money Mondays is a business podcast here to teach you how to make money, invest money, and donate money by showcasing some of the world's most successful people and how they do the same. Hosted by serial entrepreneur Dan Fleyshman, this money podcast gives you an exclusive behind the scenes look at how the wealthiest celebrities, entrepreneurs, athletes and influencers make, invest and donate money.

Why is it a good investment to buy a jet? Listen, the other is one of the best investments I've ever made. I mean, you're the time, the convenience that you have, and the type of deals you get done in the air, 42,000 feet high in the air, and your own plane is something that you just, you can't get done anywhere else. Yeah.

So when people are thinking about, and they look at private jets, they're thinking about it, $5 million, $10 million, $50 million, $20 million, they hear all these crazy numbers for private jets. You look at us and investment and saving you self time. Well, it's a tax right off. I mean, when I got it, it was 100% tax deductible. A hundred percent.

A hundred percent. Right now, I think it's 90 or 95. It was 100% tax deductible. So you're either gonna pay tax or you're gonna get yourself a plane. I mean, that's what it is. Sounds like an any decision. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this edition of The Money Mondays.

We have a very special guest I've known for many years. His Instagram is at limitless. And so today's episode is going to be limitless. When we're going to talk about money, how to build relationships, how to build brands, how to build supplement companies and everything between how to go public on the stock market, you're gonna learn a lot today. Please welcome our guest, Mr. Jazz Mathur.

How you doing? What's up, Doc? Amazing. And complain. All right. Co-hosted here by the real Tarzan. Ah, that's good. So what we'd like to do is go over three main topics.

How do people make money? How do they invest money? How do they give away the charity? But first, give us the quick two-minute bio so we can get straight to the money. My two-minute bio, where do I start? My need more than two minutes. My need more than two minutes.

I mean, I started young. I made a lot of mistakes. I was focused, disciplined. I made a lot of money from an early age. Precisely 13 is when I start to make a good lot of mistakes. I was focused, disciplined, made a lot of money from an early age. Precisely 13 is when I start to make a good amount of money. From there on, I went into doing a lot of different things, got involved in wrong things, made mistakes, had an ego, didn't know when to stop certain things, was impatient,

learned it the hard way, went up and down two times in my life, zero top, zero top, and eventually learned that slowing study always wins the race. So, and you need a team. Without a team, you're only gonna go so far. Yeah. Teamwork makes the dream work. Very true, man.

So, background wise, I mean tech, I'm a tech guy, started in tech, but I've obviously transitioned into many different industries from there. And today we're doing direct consumer products, dietary supplements, skin care, tons of different things, but the core of every industry today is tech.

So if you don't have a tech background, then you'll end up paying two, three, four, five times more than you would if you did. So that's the beauty of things today that, you know, what was in 96, 97, 98 before the whole dot com thing and everything started is now today the the key to success Ultimately, right everything revolves around technology social media digital advertising. There's no more print. There's yeah, there's no more print media. It's all digital For walk us through what are some of the main brands that you're focused on now? I mean the current company are umbrella that we have is limitless.

So limitless is an agency and an underneath limitless, we have a lot of different brands. And it's not one being more focused on than the others. It's just, you know, I kind of want to launch everything at the same time as once and realize that that's not the best way because each brand needs its own time and resources and whatnot in order to be successful. You can only put so much energy in so many places, but the way I'm looking at it is limitless

is the main focus of getting that brand out. And then through that, the other brands will get ultimately their own awareness. What we do is we tie from one brand, you sell a product, they eventually offer a product from a different brand and then just create a whole ecosystem of what the person needs to look good and feel great. So let's say that there's an influencer out there or an athlete or a personal trainer that like, I want to start a supplement company.

There's thousands and thousands of brands. What would you say to someone that's like, you know what, I'm going to start an influencer. I'm going to be, I'm going to be, I'm going to start a supplement company. I mean, we offer that. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be a, I'm gonna, you know what? I'm gonna start a supplement company. I mean, we offer that. I mean, we, I'm sure we'll,

you'll do it. We'll do it for you. There you go. I own my own manufacturing. I mean, we have, we have a large manufacturing facility in California. We do everything from A to Z, from the design to doing your branding,

to doing your label, to formulations, to developing the product, and even help with distribution and marketing and so on and so forth, direct the consumer, influencers, celebrities, pairing it with the right person. But the first thing I would say is, hey, who's your target audience? Because it's such a competitive and such a broad industry. I mean, think about it. Everybody takes some kind of vitamin, right?

So when you talk about supplements, you're talking about it. Everybody takes some kind of vitamin, right? So when you talk about supplements, you're talking about there's so many different types of supplements, right? You can have like supplements for bodybuilding, you can go for supplements for just somebody who's like, let's say a cyclist or a golfer, I mean, you know, it's the same type of product, but one will have 18 grams of protein per serving,

the other one will have 40 or 45 grams, right? So it just depends on what your, what your audience is, your target audience. I would say, hey, pick two or three, excuse, start slow. No, two or three products is you can have multiple flavors. Start slow. You've got to have a budget and you have to work with some very talented and good media buyers, right? Because ultimately you can have influencers post all day on their account, that don't work anymore.

I mean, that's dead, you know it, I know it. I mean, those days are done and over. It's very, very small, but the key is to having a budget to spend on the platforms like Facebook, Google, being TikTok, that's where you're really gonna monetize. If you know what you're doing, if you have the right media buyers working with you. How much money should they have saved up before they start something like this?

They actually want to start a product. How much do they have saved up or how much do they need to raise to really have any type of chance? It depends on their relationship. It depends on who the person is, right? If it's someone like you, I mean, I'm pretty sure you could do it with 150 to 200 grand at the most. If it's someone that has no relationships, they probably need a million dollars. You know, because you want to put at least 20% of money aside. But if you have the relationships and you know the formula and you, you, I mean, again,

it comes down to who you know, right? In life, because everything you're trying to achieve in life, it's no matter what you're trying to get, even if it's like, make, build your brand, generate sales, you're ultimately looking for introductions. You're looking for introductions to certain people that have that level of experience. And then those people will turn around and say, hey, look, I can do this for you. And then, but I might not be able to do this,

but I'll introduce you to somebody that can do this. So you're investing your time daily into meeting more people that can help you achieve your goal and then obviously learning new things and then working to implement those in your product or brand and then kind of go forward. So it just depends on how connected you are. When I first, you know, when I had no contacts,

it cost me so much more. But I built my contacts. So today, if I have to do it a second, third, fourth, fifth brand or if I have to do this all over again, with a totally different type of business and you know, whether it be private or public markets, I could do it for fraction, maybe one tenth of what I spent, just because during the course of the journey, it doesn't matter how much money I spent marketing my brands, I also built

those relationships. So now I know the formula, and once you know the formula, you can repeat it over and over again. But yeah, only start some of that unless you have a sizable amount of money that's saved up. If you're looking to do something really big, now, if you're looking to do a supplement line where you only want to make, you know, up to, let's say, $10,000 a month, which for some people is a lot and they're only one.

They're not looking, you know, they don't have, they're not crazy dreams or whatever. They want to have, live a good life and they're happy with what they have and, you know, they want to enjoy their time and they just need something based to sell to people and their trainers hypothetically and that's what they do. I mean, look, then it's very easy. They go to a gym, their trainers, they have maybe 10, 15 clients. They're going to sell to their clients. Then those clients are going to offer it to other clients so they can just do like a small

two to three level MLM type thing and boom, they're set. So it just depends on how big you want to go, how big do you want to scale? You know? So let's say someone's got a, they're like, they're ready. They started manufacturing. Yeah. But they don't know how much they should charge.

So should I be cheap? Should I be affordable? Should I be high price? How do you determine what type of level of price you should be? So you have to go by market, right? I mean, today, you know, I mean, the first thing is it depends, again, on the type of product you have. If you have an innovative product that no one else in the industry has, that's something very, very unique, then you could

charge whatever you really want, right? If you have some kind of liquid, like today, for instance, like NAD is very hot, you know, that's's the big thing right now. So any NAD supplement is automatically very high. If you have something that is a regular protein powder or regular BCAA or pre-workout, you have to be out of affordable price. Because if you're at a price that's, if you're charging, if an average price for BCAA is $25 for a top and you're charging 50,

nobody's gonna buy your BCAA. It doesn't matter what you say, isn't it? Because really, the industry is such that there's only about 30 different types of products, there's just 3,000 different people that make them. So the only thing, the only thing different is that the formulations are a little different. It might have a little bit more of this,

a little bit less of that, a little bit more pedaling, they're less arginine. These are the factors. So it comes down to your brand. It comes down to your level of marketing, but even when you go plus, minus, it's a 10 to 20 dollar game. You can't sell the same product.

Like you can't sell a protein ton for $250. And that's just not gonna happen. So I would say don't be the cheapest, but don't be the highest. Be in the middle, but you can always increase later. If you have a great tasting product that works, you can slowly increase your pricing. But in the beginning, when you're not known, you have to offer the best price. You have to have both. Service and best service and best price. So Tarzan, you have around 200 million views per month on your social media. Tarzan

wants to do pet vitamins, pet products. That's much bigger than human stuff. I mean, that's what we're getting into next now. Pet supplements, vitamins per pets, with CBD, without CBD. That's the next thing that we're starting now. And then after that, we're going to go for children's products. That's a totally different ball game. That's way bigger than the people will spend first on their pets and

Their children and they will on themselves. Absolutely. Yeah guys. If you are watching at home Would you like to watch a live negotiation between Tarzan? I do have a question for you. Yeah, you mentioned how you went down and up and down and up again Yeah, um, what kept you down the first time? What brought you up the second time and what's keeping you up now? So I'll tell you something. When you've made millions of dollars, and then you see you lose it, you've already made it once,

you've seen it, you know you're gonna do it, you can do it again. Because there's something you did along the way that you learned how to do. Whatever that formula is, you can duplicate it, and then you know you want it again. So what made me lose it the first time is just the first first time was just blowing all the money.

Whatever money was coming in every day, just find a way to just stand, stand, stand, stand. You know, just go out, have fun, just blow the money constantly, right? And the second time what made me lose it was just being impatient and wanting to build Rome overnight and not realize that my plan was great. I had a great business model. It just needed to be done over a course of five years and not five months, right? And I just wanted to go big because it was like in my opinion,

it was like, hey, what are other people going to think if I build something that just looks like this, right? And that's not super grandiose and, you know, it's not, it has all the bells and whistles, you know, rather than do it slowly and then scale. So again, that's learning curves, you know, you learn that patience is the most important thing. Patience is the key to everything, you know, if you just, you don't know, you can't predict what will happen tomorrow.

Your life could change tomorrow. Tomorrow, something can happen, boom, you don't know, you can't predict, well, happen tomorrow. Your life could change tomorrow. Tomorrow, something can happen. Boom, you have 180 degree change in your life. Everything that you've been wanting times 100 comes, comes to you overnight, you know, and you have no, and you don't know. So you just have to be patient and just keep grinding every single day. And that's what keeps me going today is I, I have one goal. And I know that to get to that goal, I'm going to have to go through ups and downs and loops and whatever and tie this thing to this thing and attach it but ultimately my goal is one. And

every no matter which way we go in the end it's gonna turn to one thing. So I just keep pushing forward with that vision and that vision all out every day says hey, I like to meet like-minded people and people that are gonna relate to the the goal that I have if it's not Connecting to what I'm doing. I have no time for it. I don't even make time for it Love that man. Yeah, so someone that's thinking about launching it Let's say let's just use Tarzan example. Let's say he's gonna launch pet vitamins Maybe you're the manufacturer of it does someone start off with the few skews or do they go out with the whole line? That's a tricky one. That's a tricky one.

So if they have the money to do all... I'll tell you, I'll tell you, okay, so I'll tell you in two scenarios. So in our case, we're gonna do the whole thing. Reason-wise, because we have about seven, seven and a half million customers in our database right now in the last two and a half years. So we're gonna start with the whole thing at once

because we have that audience already to reach out to and offer it to and we can just take that same audience, retarget, and just go, right? We have the formula at this point, it doesn't make sense versus our two things. But if it was the first time and I had zero customers, we would hand pick the top skews

based off keyword research, based off competitive analysis, looking into Google, looking at the Facebook, the metrics, what's converting best. We'll kind of click through rates are there and go with those for dogs, cats, handpicks like things and go start with the base and then slowly scale up up up. All right, so here we talked a lot about making money. Now let's talk about the investing money side. You've invested a lot of time, money and energy into going public. Yes. You've spent the last couple of years, as people might not know. It takes around two years and a couple of million dollars of legal and accounting fees to

go public. That's why there's such a few amount of companies out of the tens of millions, hundreds of millions of companies in the world. There's a couple thousand that ever go public. See what you think about how the minuscule that is. Why do you decide to take on the public markets? I'll tell you something. It's, you know what? It's been a goal of mine to do.

It's more so a lot of people that I met along the way between 2012 and 2018 that have been saying, hey, you should go public. And the more I started to learn and understand, like a lot of people, there's two reasons people go public. A, if they're looking to raise money, if they need money and they're looking to raise money quick, and that's their way to do it is outlet to go public,

because ultimately investors feel more comfortable investing in a publicly traded company than they do just giving money to a private company, right? Because they can exit whenever they want, really. The second reason is if they're looking to scale their business, and they have something that's really, really good, which if brought into the public markets and expose the right way and awareness has been made and people see it, that can really go viral in a certain sense and people will relate to it.

It'll help in building that empire that you want, it'll help, it'll help in, in going, you know, help in building that empire that you want, right? So for me, it was a ladder. It was, it was a second point, right? So number one, it was the story. So my, you know, starting with my background in business, how I started, the sacrifices I made when I was young,

the weight that I gained, which, you know, at one point I was over 450 pounds, because I sacrificed my personal life into working, working, working, sitting behind a computer and learning different things to make more money, I sacrificed the health part, then understanding the health part, then getting into the health industry,

then wanting to be one of the leaders in the health industry and turning my passion into my day-to-day business and eventually building a life I didn't even vacation from. And doing it in a way where a regular person just going and having met a lot of people that people are just in all by or just watch and they say, oh my God, and having those type of relationships today

and building it from scratch is zero. It's relatable, right? And it's a story. And everything knows about public markets. It's all about the story. You have to have a story. That's the step one to the markets, right? Step two is revenue, you know?

So we have revenue, substantial revenue. We have, you know, we have the story that's there and we understand all the other components to the whole thing. So it was like, why not? Why not give it a shot? I mean, you have one life. They said, look, what can possibly go wrong? Why not give it a shot? Do it right and build something that, you know, like we can then create and it'll be easier to scale down the road. And from there, we can take another brand and once that brand is successful, we could spin it off into its own entity and keep it going, right?

So, and of course, if you look at the United States, the most billionaires that are done from the US, most people have become billionaires and they do it through public markets. They either do it through their own public companies that they take public or they take a bunch of companies public, or they're involved in these crazy pre-IPO deals and massive amounts of like, you know,

seed capital raising and stuff like that, where their money is like 20, 40, 60X, right? So that was the reason. It's a hard shortcut. It's a hard shortcut. It's not an easy shortcut, but it's a path to the next level. If you,

but you really have to have all your ducks in a row. And also another thing, the last thing is when people know your public, they know you have your shit together. That's another thing. Because you can't go public if you don't have your shit together, right? Everything is black and white,

everything is transparent, your books, your numbers, like there's no BS. So when you say your public and that too, when you're in the process of uplifting to the major exchanges, you have your shit together. So it's like a walking, talking business card. You don't need to give a business card.

It's done, hey, we're on such and such exchange, right? So that's what it is. Stream discipline in that area of your life. I mean, in every aspect, there's discipline, right? I mean, for whether it's training, same thing with training, right? So that's what it is. Just extreme discipline in that area of your life. In every aspect, there's discipline, right? I mean, for whether it's training, same thing with training, right? So, like, for me, like, if I don't get it, so my day just so you understand, my day starts when I'm in LA, so I'm always traveling.

So when I'm in LA, my day starts at 3 a.m. Why? Because 6 a.m. Eastern already, right? I feel I'm already late. When I'm in the East Coast, my day starts at 5 a.m. Eastern. And we 2 a.m. over here, but that'll be insane from the way we got the 2 a.m. Eastern already, right? I feel I'm already late. When I'm in the East Coast, my day starts at 5 a.m. Eastern. There'll be 2 a.m. over here, but that'll be insane for me to wake up at 2 a.m. here. So I start at 3 a.m. over here, I get some work done by 5.30 a.m.

I'm in the gym until about 7 a.m. And then from there, I continue on with my work, right? But the gym is the key for me to continue on my work, because it gives me that daily morning kick that I need. And from there, it's what you put in your body, the food that you eat. Because you can eat the wrong thing in the morning and your brain will be all fogged up.

And then you'll be distracted in your work. So same thing, what it takes to stay fit, requires in business, requires an every aspect of your life, discipline. So as we talked about, we go through three topics, how to make money, and invest money, how to give it away to charity. What are some of the things you like to invest in to? Do you like real estate? Do you like other companies? Like, what do you

like to invest in to it? So I invest in different businesses. I like to invest in people. So because ultimately, if one business fails, they're going to make another business successful. Right. So in the same thing, within most investors, they always, they always, they don't care to read your 80 your 80 page business plan. They just want to know if you know the format to put it together. What's in your head, if you know how to put it on paper, and if everything, if all the chapters and everything

are correct in there, and that's all they really care about, nobody's saying they're looking through the whole thing. And same thing with the person, I like to invest in the person, I like to invest in businesses, I like to invest in things that are hard assets, a lot of real estate, select automobiles, like specific select automobiles, because cars are from what 90% of people would say depreciating asset, and that's true, but there's a small percentage of cars that aren't at depreciating assets, you just have to be able to get them, source them, get them, and know to keep them for certain length of time. And then there's many other things.

There's businesses, there's diamonds, there's things that go up in value, and that you know ultimately if you need to liquidate, you can, you know, you could sell them, and you'll be able to. You have some cool cars. We like to talk about some of your cars, sure. I mean, there's some cars that can't even spell the name of, can you just talk about something?

I mean, you got like 15 or 16 super cars in the driveway. Like, what are some of the cars? Do you even drive them? Are they just, are you just investing in? No, you know what? I drive them here and there. I mean, I don't, I don't think, I can count. I don't think any of my cars, maybe one or two

have over a thousand miles on them. Wow. You know, I just, I just, I love cars. I've loved cars. I mean, it's kind of like Some of those cars are three or four million dollars. I mean, yeah, yeah, when I was young When I was when I was young, I was you know, my friends would be in this in the high school in the in the library We'd be looking at these auto trader these these books these magazines and stuff, right the car the car

Car directors I would come out. I mean like like, hey, I want to get this car, I want to get this car, I want to get this car. So I, when I did with cars, I tied it to certain goals. Hey, if I achieved this, I'll buy myself this. If I achieved that goal, I'll buy myself this. So it's like a milestone, right? You set milestones for every milestone, it was a car. And that's what I did.

I ultimately ended up getting so many cars, every, every die cast model I had of a certain car and getting in real life. So those are, you know, and it just, I love cars because that's my, that's my vice. Everybody has a certain, that cars is my thing. I just love having cars. So I feel you.

So we watch some cars, like people say there's a one year waiting list, and a two year waiting list, or you gotta pay this much over sticker, like that market is so competitive how do people is it relationships also like how do people fight in that it's all relationships I mean those things like when you're talking about those kind of cars like you have to it's the same thing with watches I mean I have a lot of watches too that's another thing that that that I collect that

collecting as an investment or collecting because you like them investment yeah both I like him and investment um I it's it, right? If you want to get a certain model of a watch, you have to buy all these other ones before in order to get eligible to get that certain model, which otherwise would sell for, let's say, $2 million and the sticker price is $400,000, right? So you have to be have bought so many things. The same way it is with all these other exotic car brands. But if you have the contacts, you can get, you know, there's always people that sell them, you'll pay over sticker for sure. You'll pay, you know, cars go upwards of even millions of dollars

over sticker, you know, you'll pay. But yeah, they sell. They sell. I mean, there's no other way to get them. And the people that are paying a million dollars over sticker price, do they know that they're just, that's it, they're not going to be able to make money on that? Well, it's not, they will make money because those cars go even higher. Think about it. Yeah, those cars end up going higher. Like, I'll give you an example. LaFerrari today is worth $4 million, right? It's worth, it's worth between $3.7 and $4 million today. I mean, a few, and they now, the markets, like, came down a bit on everything. Real estate, cars, everything started to come down.

But six months ago, when the market was hot, six, eight months ago, it was going for over four million dollars, you know? And what did it come out of? It came out at 1.4. Oh my God. So my sticker, so my sticker, the sticker of the one I have is 1.4, right? It was around, well, maybe 1.1. It came out and my sticker is 1.4.

Sure. Right? I bought the car for 2.8 2.8 something. It paid double the price. I paid double double. Now there's people before me that were buying a car for I refused the car when it was first offered to me even the same car. I refused a two million. Right. I refused it.

Right. A year later, I bought the same car for 2.8 something. Okay. Like closer to 2.9. I was offered for the car even. I was offered right now like recently, 3.4. I still didn't sell it. I still didn't sell it.

Now I understand why you don't drive them. You get it. They just appreciate and value over time. They appreciate over time, yeah, they appreciate. They have a stability point too, you know? But eventually they go up. Like the cars, it's not a point now where it's gonna to stay at that

range. You'll be at that 3.5 3.7 range. So stable. When you get up listed, is that another goal? Is that another car? I mean, there's a different goal for that. It's not a car, but yeah, it's a different goal for yeah. Yeah, it's a different goal for you. You only get nice. Yeah, I have a G4 SP cars. Jets. That's amazing man. Yeah, it's probably one of the best investments, I mean. Why is that a good investment to buy a Jets? Listen, the time, well, first of all, it doubles since I bought it. So it's literally worth double.

So I already have equity in there. And that's even with new miles. That's even with new miles, new everything, right? So playing is different. A playing works based on the hours and the landings and stuff, but also works off of the programs. The engine programs that you have, the, other variables, when the last service thing was done, when the next big services do, there's a lot of other variables in the plane, it's not just like a car,

because it's just a shell. And then you have all the other pieces, the motors, this, that. So it's really, it's about the engines and the other components more than it is about the frame. it's about the engines and the other components more than it is about the frame, you know. But yeah, like, it's one of the best investments I've ever made. I mean, the time, the convenience that you have, and the type of deals you get done in the air, $42,000 feet high in the air, and your own plane is something that you just, you can't get done anywhere else. Yeah. So when people are thinking about, and they look at private jets, they're thinking about it, $5,, $10 million, $50 million, $20 million, they hear all these crazy numbers for private jets.

You look at it as an investment and saving yourself time. Well, it's a tax right off. I mean, when I got it, it was 100% tax deductible. 100%? 100% right now, I think it's 90 or 95. It was 100% tax deductible. So you're either gonna pay tax

or you're gonna get yourself a plane. I mean, that's a good decision. There's other businesses too, they're like that. Like you can, I don't know, people know this or not. I mean, there's like cars that are over 6,000 pounds. Like that's why I think there's so many GWACs on the road. You know, cars that are over 6,000 pounds, same thing. 100% tax right off.

So it's like free. It's like free. That's crazy. You buy a gas station, same thing. 100% tax deductible. I wanna buy a gas. It's like free. That's crazy. You buy a gas station, same thing. 100% tax deductible. I want to buy a gas station. You can have a business selling toys, and you'll be paying tax, like shit,

buy yourself a gas station. 100% tax deductible. There's so many things that are like that. This is fascinating. I'm okay. I'll help you. I'm on this. All right, so we've talked about some of the making money side.

We talked a little bit about investing money side. Let's talk about the charity side about giving money away. How do you decide what things you'd like to donate to or what charity efforts you'd like to be involved in? So my thing is about helping people change lives. Charities that are like a well-recognized, b, that are towards helping towards kids, towards kids growing up, that ultimately are, you know,

they stay on the right path, that they don't get derailed, because I mean, that kind of happened to me when I was young, but I was, you know, making a lot of money and it kind of steered me in a wrong direction and had to kind of like find myself and come back on the right direction. So, you know, like one of the organizations that I'm heavily involved with with that I like to always,

you know, offer and contribute to and help out anyway I can is Health Corps, which is Dr. Os, right, his organization. So yeah, it has to, it has to just make sense with the same message that that I'm putting out and projecting and same as a company is, which is, you know, stay on the right path, discipline, the focus, the importance of being around the right people, you know, like all those kind of things. Do you think it's important for entrepreneurs or companies and corporations to get involved with charity? Yeah, for sure. For many reasons. I mean, from a business standpoint, again, 100% tax right off. You're either going to pay the tax or you're going to, you know, if you donate 50,000 or 100,000,

that's coming off your tax bill. So why not give it to a charity where it can actually help people then to give it away, just, you know, you're going to give it away regardless. Right. So 100% from a business standpoint, it makes sense because you're going to have to do something with it, right? From, and then also from a contribution standpoint, from, you know, it just makes sense overall.

So let's say you go public, you're already public, but you go public up with the big exchange, and then the next day, Gatorade says, you know what, here's $1 billion, go walk away. What do you do on Monday morning? Do you start over again? Do you chill out for a year? Like what happens to jazz the next day? After you get one billion, two billion, whatever the number is.

So I have another plan, another goal after this that I want to hit. Obviously, I don't want to be doing this day-to-day stuff like I am right now as much. This is where I have to use my own brain power and a lot of my experience that I've built over the last 20 plus years of being in like online marketing and all that. But you know, the next business that I want to have is something where I'm doing investments. And I also want to have a lease in company. So I love cars so much, but I don't want, I don't want to deal with the cars because I'm going to end up buying every damn car just to stare at it. Get high on your own spot. Right. And I know that.

So I would rather be the lender. I would rather be the guy that basically says, okay, here's X amount of 200, 300 million, boom, up front, and work with a bigger, get another bank involved, increase that number, and then start a leasing company, and start doing the deals, like the money business, basically, like the money business basically,

where the money is your inventory and you're just earning interest off of that. You know, same thing. I'm building a real estate portfolio. I have some very interesting plans of what I wanna do in real estate space as well, combined with digital marketing and combined with digital marketing

and some kind of like new wave stuff that people are starting to do. So yeah, it's gonna be mainly. So if you get a billion dollars on Sunday, you're gonna start working on Monday. combined with digital marketing and and some kind of like new wave stuff that people are starting to do so Yeah, it's gonna be mainly you get a billion dollars on Sunday. You're gonna start working on Monday No, I'll probably take a week Is there okay? Is there a number if I said you know what here's five billion or eight billion or ten is there a number That you just stop stop everything stop everything I'll get board to death what am I gonna because it's not about the money I like that I like to thrill in the

challenge it's the game yeah it's not about the money it's the game it's just the game I'm addicted to the fucking game yeah it's not about the money that's I say every single time I was like you couldn't hand me ten billion dollar people like you're you crazy I'm like I literally couldn't sit on a beach for a week no No, I'm gonna lose my mind. I'll lose my mind. I'll go crazy. It's not about pissing people on the side. It's not about the money.

That's why if you chase the money, the money will never come to you. And that's the reason people want to shit your lucky. Mine only could live in the country. It's not a lot. 20 years. It's not a lot. It's 20 years.

He loves one tier. People see it when it's done. They don't see the grind before. They don't see the sacrifices. But anything you want in life, you have to make sacrifices. You have to sacrifice something in order to get something else. Yeah. There's something you're letting go. Like you're here in this place right now,

you're missing out on something else. Like you chose to be here instead of not be somewhere else where somewhere else something else could be going on, right? Yeah. Yeah. And Tarzan, you get a bit 4, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it's hard. And you get a bit 4,000 times by a snake, and then you make one video that gets a bunch of views.

Like, oh, you're so lucky. You got all those views. Every time, every time. I've been plucking teeth out my hand and my face all the time. You're lucky. No, I'm not. It's 20 years. 20 years.

20 plus years. OK, so we talked about making money. We talked about investing money. We talked about giving away the charity. Talk to us about what is the game plan? You go public, a bunch of capital comes in, you got all these different skews, what is the game plan for limitless? So we expand, so we take, you know, we take some of these products, international distribution. I want to focus more my goal after this year is to focus more on international markets. I feel that, you know, this DTC thing in the US is we've cornered it in a very big way.

And we're obviously going to keep doing it, keep scaling it, scaling, scaling, it's never end, it never ends. So expand operations here, expand the number of people here, and then set up overseas, set up in some areas, do our own distribution, some areas work with local distributors there and just take the brand's global individually, different brands, different market segments, things like that and just expand

and eventually start doing acquisitions of other companies. So we wanna get into, I have other private businesses right now that eventually I wanna roll up into this. So those are in other companies. Some are in financial services, some are in IT technology services. So there's different things. And when we rope them in into limitless, start doing acquisitions, well, it'll increase our multiple.

Now we're not just a direct consumer products company. Now we're into health, the medical, tech, hypothetically, financial services, and all these different things. So the valuation now is gonna be significantly greater than what it is just by being a direct consumer like product company. So let's walk through some real life examples. So when you acquire a company,

oftentimes I say you can acquire them for free or get the page to do it. Let me give you an example. Spotify, signs signs Joe Rogan So a hundred million or two hundred million dollar deal, right? Everybody I cannot believe they gave Joe Rogan a hundred or two hundred million dollars. That's insane There's stock went up to point one billion dollars that day, right? So did they give him two hundred million dollars or did they go up two billion?

And that's the reason I went public see that that you answered that right there because if you know how to, if you know how to build a good audience and you know how to build you know at the same time build a good audience and tie them back to the pub co because it's two different businesses altogether. That's where a lot of people don't know either. Right. A public company has nothing to do with your private business. They're totally unrelated up until the point that they are related when it takes tens of thousands of people to come from the private company onto the public side or vice versa. Or the investors, shareholders, I would say, on the public company side start buying your products and become customers.

So that's when the real connection happens. Otherwise, they're totally unrelated. Like somebody can buy and sell your stock all day. He doesn't have to buy your product. Right. They're totally unrelated. And then you need a different team running the public side versus the private side because there's different level of skill set that's required for each one. So the only common denominator between a private company and a public company is the one department marketing. That's the only common denominator. So if you are able to present yourself in that way

and just get out there and your company is that big and has that many shareholders and the market cap is huge and you make one press release and boom, you stock flies, then obviously what you're doing is you're basically and even when they get your organ and stuff like that, see, they do stock deals. And the reason for going public is that you can, it's the only way that you can turn shares into a currency. You're turning paper into real money. And how you're doing it is you have to create more of a demand for it than there's a supply.

So the more of a demand that's there, the more value your stock goes up, and if you have to release more currency slash shares into the market, then they're still going to have a value unless you have too many outstanding shares. So in this case, in their case, they basically just, they profit it. Like crazy, they didn't give out anything, they profit it because their stock went up, significantly. Their market cap, their shares, everything went up significantly their market cap there shares everything went up shareholders So nearly every week we see an acquisition happen from food and beverage brands and supplement companies in particular because For a large corporation takes them an average of $75 million to get a brand set up in around one and a half to two years

So they'd rather go spend 140 million 220 million you see a see a lot of nine figure exits, not billion other exits. A lot of 100 million to 300 million other exits, really fast. You're like, how did that company start four years ago and they just got perfor 140 million? Because the guy that bought them would have to spend 75 million, two years in cross their fingers, instead of just paying 140, ready to go,

and then plug it into their distribution network. You'll often see companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi go buy up all these other beverages and just show them just because they know that they're going to get that distribution and be able to increase their sales for them. So last question, as you're deciding, how do you think about what type of companies you want to acquire and why? So first of all, I look at a few different things. I look at spaces that are not,

like that are gonna be evolving and that are gonna keep growing, right? Not a, like, I'm not interested in buying a gardening company, right? It has to be something that ties back into some level of experience that I have. Because I, you know, it has, it has to make sense, you know,

I wanna be in a similar space that I want, that I like and I enjoy also and some business that I understand, right? And of course, companies and industries that have high multiples. So medical, medical technology, financial services, tech platforms, these are all the ones, these all have high multiples. So those

are those are what we look at. And then off all we see other products, other nutrition brands are going to come up interest where we can say, okay, you know, you're doing X amount of revenue a year, the company's great, the products great, you're doing good, but your management, we see the problem is with management, there's too much money going out. So we're since we're already doing nutrition and we do it right, we say, okay, we buy this company for this amount, we kill the problem is with management, there's too much money going out. So, since we're already doing nutrition and we do it right, we say, okay, if we buy this company, for this amount, we kill the management, we're automatically going to make 20% more because we're going to loop it into our system. So, if we have one core umbrella management that can manage brand A, brand B, brand C,

brand D, now we can start doing our positions, and that same management can now manage brand EFGH. And we can kill, cut the costs and increase profitability for us. And that would be the same thing for the different verticals. But the different verticals would have to be a lucrative verticals on a multiple level. They don't have to be lucrative on a revenue level, just a multiple level. And they have to be evolving like, you know, that there's no whether whether like the recession proof that no matter what happens, people are always going to need it. Need a product or service from there.

Yeah. All right, guys, you've listened to this episode of the Money Monday's. Make sure to follow at limitless. He's got millions of followers and showed really cool content teaching, showcasing cars, lifestyle, traveling around the planet, follow the real tar real tires in if you want to watch animal content Watch them get bit by a snake watch him wrestle with othoges and everything between If you can please spread the word about the money Mondays We think it's rude to not talk about money a lot of us grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money The whole concept of this is we believe it's rude to not talk about it. That's why there's a lot of financial

Situation the problems in our society. We want you to spread the word about it If you want to spend more time with us, go to themoneymundays.com message us there. And we'll see you guys next week. Peace. three topics, how to make money, how to invest money, and how to give some of the way to charity. We have a fantastic guest to go over all three topics because we have a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, investor, all things in between, and he's even creating a whole new company

with a humongous, humongous, humongous use case that all of you are going to care about. Please welcome Mr. Randall Kaplan. Thanks for having me, Dan. Super excited to be here. So the way this works is we do about 35 to 40 minutes at the max. That way it's easier for people to listen because, you know,

the normal drive is around 45 minutes back and forth to work. The normal workout is around 45 minutes. So we like to do these 40 minute episodes. So it's clean cut straight to the point. And our listeners can get all the things they need to learn about money, because money is a very important topic, as you know. So if you can, give a quick two minute bio so we can get straight to the money.

Great. My name is Randall Kaplan. I'm a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist podcast host, and also I have a best-selling beach drone photography book of my drone beach photography is from all over the world. And I'm also the CEO of Sandy, S-A-N-D-E-E. We've created a Yelp for beaches. We've created Yelp for beaches. We've cataloged over a hundred categories of data from more than a hundred thousand beaches in Two hundred twelve countries for the five trillion dollar year beach tours in business Wow, okay, so let's break some of these things down so when how does it feel and tell us through going from Entrepreneur to VC and also backed entrepreneur while still doing the VC world?

Like why take on Sandy as this mega project? Well, I think you're born with a drive to create new companies. I had my first t-shirt company in college where I went door to door, taught me a lot about business and margins. I took $400 of my bar misfit money, made a hundred t-shirts with the Nike logo and the Michigan just do it and it

was really great because I had cash for the first time I bought the T-shirts for $5 selling for $12 and then the long sleeve with $6 and I sold them for $18 and the cold calling feels that you learn from that going door-to-door and knock-and-doors I think there's 12 dorms at Michigan I got kicked out of all 12 floor by floor I got kicked off a one floor I go around the back, I go on another floor. So I think you just have the drive. And then when you have capital and you create a well-known company, you have the opportunity to get into some very good deals.

So I did that after our first tech company went public, Akamai technology. We invented a new way to serve web content around the world, better, faster, cheaper, more reliably than companies could do with themselves. Akamai technology. We invented any way to serve web content around the world better faster cheaper More reliably than companies could do with themselves. Huh When I was in high school I had made a hundred T-shirts and we sold for 15 bucks each and I thought I was a millionaire at $1500 I sold them out in a couple lunches. That's like literally selling and it's just it was big just like W.Y.D Who's your daddy?

I printed like a local place in San Diego, like literally got over charged for it, but I didn't care. I mean, 15 bucks a shirt. I was like, I'm a millionaire. That's it. OK. And it's a cash business. Yeah.

And when you're 15 years old, all right. All right. So let's walk through some of these things. On the how to make money side, talk us through the hustle part. When people are first starting to get into their entrepreneur journey, why should they either continue to keep their day job

or jump into the entrepreneurial journey? Why should they take on that role? Right. Well, at some point there's a full-crum, right? So either you are going to take all the risk you want, you're going to graduate from college or not. Gradually from college, you're going to say, I'm going to create a company. That's very risky to do.

And you can only do that if you don't have capital saved up. You have to save money, I think, to take on risk where you're not going to be receiving money, no salary. So I think at some point, I mean, we hear all the stories about people working full-time jobs and we have full-time second jobs when we have our first job when we're trying to create a company. There's a lot of work that needs to be done behind the scenes. I don't advise people to quit their day job, unless they have the savings, and they have a concept that is working already, or they can get funding to the point where they're not going to leave

without making any money. Right. So when you meet entrepreneurs, and let's say for this, for you angel investing, or as a VC working with your firm Talk us through when someone is coming to you when they have zero dollars in revenue and they're an idea versus they've got One two million five million etc Like talk us through the what you're thinking from an investment decision firm for you guys right?

Well, first of all, they're all pre qualified before they come so we've never Taken a cold pitch where you said okay, we're gonna money in that. So there's some qualifier that goes in. And number two, we look at things like founders, barriers to injury, competitors, intellectual property. But ultimately for us, it comes down to investing in the founder and him or herself. We have a very wide spectrum of portfolio companies, AI to consumer product companies

to make up companies for women. But for us, the most important factor is always the founders. And we go through a series of questions, Dan, where you're talking about the softballs, right? Tell me how you started, tell me what you were doing. People say, what's your main job? And a lot of what I do and what you do is you're a bullshit detector. At the end of the day, people come in and say, I ran this at Fox, I ran

that at Fox. Well, what was your title? Right? And I said, I'm a, you know, don't remember you're out. And we also talk about, I mean, then you fill any softballs and then you come in with the Zinger. How much are you planning to pay yourself? And it has to be within a range, depending on their age. And I think for founders, I think 60 to 100,000 is normal depending on your living, New York City, probably 100, Los Angeles, San Fran. But if you're living in Topeka, Kansas,

and you're coming in with $100, dollars, we're not gonna do that. You're not gonna do it, and if you want to do it, you're not gonna do it with us. When there's so many options of categories to invest in to, how do you guys narrow down the topics that you guys like to invest in too? We don't narrow it down, frankly. I tell my friends, send us whatever deals that you have, and we'll look at them. But like I said, they're all pre-qualified. We invested in a recyclable energy company, Inspire is called probably nine years ago. And it came to us through the then chairman of Pula Handloki and he said, you should meet this guy. I remember I was at a tasting, lunch tasting for my wedding.

I was getting married three months later and I got the call you should meet with this guy. He came into the office. I know nothing about that business. But after two minutes, I said in. And I'm sure you've met people like that. Right, they come in, they have the it factor. That company sold year and a half ago for $187 million.

They're the lead of 3.4 times return on that deal. That's awesome. AI as well. This is going to sound crazy, but I've met some interesting people in the hot tub. So you're going on a nice vacation. People there are, it's expensive. You're there during spring break or Christmas New Year's because you have kids and

What do you do? You know, I'm seeing there with my wife. There's a guy in there the guy created a company called Ken show Brilliant guy sold it for $500 million. We got talking my back on your back. If you have another deal Send me the deal. You know, we love to see it and any dead deal send me the deal. You know, we'd love to see it. And he did start to come with 14 AI graduates at Harvard. Oh, and so right away, right away, I mean, there's there's no way for me to do due diligence on that deal. No matter how much time I spend on that deal, right? Something good is going on. The guy just founded a company and sold it within two and a half years for 500 million dollars. And now here's another company, the exact same thing a company and sold it within two and a half years for $500 million. And now here's another company, the exact same thing in a different vertical.

No, not compete in that space, just done. I have no idea. I mean, they're doing well. Doing very well. So how does a founder stand out? Because you guys get hundreds of different pitches sent to you, the referrals, decks, somebody sent it with a carrier pigeon like, can they try to get you a deal in every different fashion?

How does some of them even stand out? Whether it's the entrepreneur or the deal itself, what stands out? Well, first of all, there's so many things that can knock you out right out of the gate. So the first thing is you've got a PowerPoint. And I've seen PowerPoints from great people that looked like they were created 20 years ago.

Right, by five year olds. They're out, right? I mean, if they don't know what's on the PowerPoint, then you have the founders who are a Furdue some great people that looked like they were created 20 years ago. Right, by five year olds. They're out, right? I mean, if they don't know what's on the PowerPoint, and then you have the founders who are referred to you and the PowerPoint is terrible. It's basically a brochure, you know, nothing about the company. No meat.

No meat. And I've had people come in, I take the meeting because of the referral source. All sizzle, no steak. All sizzle steak. And then I said, explain it to me in one sentence. We talk about the grandmother standard. My grandmother passed away last year at 104. And that's what I tell our team.

When we present something, I want every single person to be able to hear a pitch, comprehend everything with respect to that pitch. And it's the same way in return as well. If you can't explain it to me in one sentence. My grandma does understand it. Right. So I try to do that with every company in advance

so that before I even bring it up to anyone, like cards and copy, I'm building the first national sports cards chain. Yeah. You know what that is? Yeah, national sports cards chain. That's it. It's one sentence.

Asahi forever bull. We're building the biggest and best chain of Asahi ever bull locations. You understand what it is? Yeah. Elbator studio, number one social media in the world. the biggest and best chain of OssiE ever bull locations. You understand what it is? Yeah. Elvator Studio, number one social media in the world. Everything in my life is a one sentence thing.

Four or five words really to be straight to the point that are very descriptive. And so I love that you said that. It's really important for you guys who are listening. When you're thinking about your company, you need to be able to explain it in one sentence. You know when people hear the elevator pitch, some elevator rides are real short.

And so it's 30 seconds. Exactly. So you gotta be able to say what it is and people understand what you're talking about. in one sentence. You know when people hear the elevator pitch, some elevator rides are real short. And so it's 30 seconds. Exactly. So you've got to be able to say what it is and people understand what you're talking about. And I think a lot of companies right now are trying to be like, so cool that nobody understands it. They've already been on the freeway and you see a billboard and you can't read the logo. And they're spending 40 grand a month for that billboard. 12 grand a month for the billboard and you can't even read the logo. And it has some cool words. We don't even know what the website is. There's no call to action.

Guys, when you have your company, make it really easy to read. Make it really easy to understand. And say away from the favorite words with respect to that moment, synergy. There's so much synergy here between this and that. I mean, these new words that make things complicated, we don't want complicated. We want simple, and if you can't even take this very hard complex or subject matter, you better be able to translate that. If you can't translate it to me,

and I know a little bit of something about your business, how are you gonna sell the companies? Right. How can you possibly sell your product? So communication is so underrated as a founder, and if you can't do it it you need to learn to do it You need a mentor to to tell you to do it So communications are really important word when it comes dealing with investors

I think a big reason that a lot of company entrepreneurs fail is that they don't tell their investors soon enough when things are going bad and It's horrendous when that happens because we could have helped you like I've had and I've had founders that tell me like Oh, we're not gonna afford payroll in two weeks. Why don't you tell me two months ago? Right I'd help you raise the money. I'm I'm in I'm right behind you at my 43 investments They're there's all still kicking like they're still fighting through it some of the exit some gone public etc None of them are gone and because I'm really blind because of this one time it happened where the founder told me in two weeks We can't make payroll and you just told me about your two million dollars in sales your big order but you didn't mention that oh

well we're not getting that for 90 days and we can't make payroll on the way. If you have a two-million dollar order from a big chain store I'm in right I'll finance it's called factoring. Factoring is where you take something called the paper which is purchase order financing. So let's say that that order was from Walmart for two million dollars. The company is not going to get it. Let's say the order came in January 1st. They're not going to get paid really to like April 1st on average. Well in between there, they need a factor of the paper, meaning that $2 million they know it's coming in. They're going to make around a million dollars on that $2 million. I'll loan you 800,000 on that $2 million. That covers more than your payroll, your production, et cetera.

As long as that money comes from Walmart, I get my 800,000 plus a little bit of interest. Everybody's happy. Right. But if you don't tell me, and now it's March, and you're like a month away from getting paid by Walmart, I will help you get through payroll, right? And all that stems back from the key word

that Randall mentioned is communication. If you are a founder, talk to your investors. They're there to help you. They're there to protect their money. They want to protect you too, but they also want to protect their money. And treat people like you wanted to be treated on the back end, right? So, and our deals are we take money from women of partners, constant communication, details are critical. Not only when things go bad, when things go good, you should have regular communication four times a year,

twice a year at minimum, one time a year, because we don't know how things are going. Yes. So with each of my companies, I do a quarterly email myself. So for cars and copy, for example, I do a quarterly email that goes out to all shareholders And between there I do what I call a highlight email highlight email means something good or something bad happen Something bad happened. I want to tell them like hey this happened blah blah blah. I tell them right hey

This in the sports card industry a big funding round happened or we just open our ninth store in Las Vegas or something happened I said what's called a highlight email or highlight text just just to keep them excited and interested and so they know. And if something bad, I want them to know in advance because before the quarterly email comes out, I don't want to be surprised. That simple thing has changed everything with my shareholders. And vice versa, I learned it because I want to hear

from my company that I invest into. And I have friends like you that we co-invested, let's say I asked Randall, hey Randall, let's invest into this phone case company. And then have friends like you that we co-invested. Let's say I asked Randall, hey Randall, let's invest into this phone case company. And then Randall doesn't hear from them for nine months. He's upside with me too. I'm the one that brought him into this phone case deal, right? So he's like, hey Dan, what the heck?

You had me put in 500K into this phone case company. I haven't even heard from these knuckleheads. What's going on? Right. That all can be prevented with some communication. And a common mistake too is they're afraid to tell you the bad news. Right? So I, when things bad happens to our portfolio companies and I'm either a board member

or a founder and they do no matter what. Of course. I mean, the company is like, go well and you may have two or three near deaths, maybe tenor deaths. Tell the bad news first. Absolutely. As soon as it happens. Right.

And I think having a good, having great communication with shareholders, even if the company fails, and it goes back to what I said, treat people like you would want to be treated. Seven and 10 companies fail, right? In the VC space, we aback numerous second-term,

second-time founders because we like the way they treated us on the way down the first one from start to finish. Right. And a lot of times, the founders just think that they're scared to say something as if their investor will be mad. This is when we're the most useful, because most strategic investors or accredited investors, they've been in the game. Yeah. You take money from a 20-year-old kid

that has an inheritance, he probably can't help you. You take money from Randall Kaplan or Damplishman. I'm going to help you fix whether it's your merchant account, your PO financing, your credit situation. Or you need a new warehouse, you need a new lawyer, you need an accountant, you need a designer, you need a new CEO. Let's go.

I'm ready to help you fast. I'm ready to put on my helmet and jump in the field with you. I always say I invest in quarterbacks and I'll be the coach, right? And each of my companies, I look at them as the quarterback. In those moments when bad things happen, I'm not mad at the quarterback, he's communicating, he's telling what's going on the field,

he's talking to his players, he's gonna talk to the coach. He gotta let us know what's going on. And if you don't do that, we can't help you. And you're gonna be at a loan on that field. It's real scary when it's a loan. In our business, as VCs, I learned more from the bad deals that fail than the ones that succeed.

You get really lucky on the ones that succeed. It has nothing to do with the founder, the product, whatever, just things are going bad. Someone swoops in and maybe there's one little change in the product. Talk about the quarterback. We want leaders to stand tall in that pocket. That's when there's craziness coming around and people are trying to sack you.

You hang in there, you don't run. If you need to run, you scramble and you make it work. I call that staying calm in the chaos. Staying calm in the chaos. Stay calm in the chaos. All right. So as you've grown in the venture capital world and an angel investing world, it becomes, I don't say easy, but you can kind of spot a deal whether you like it or not pretty quickly. Are there certain things that make someone for yourself more appealing? Are you always looking for a grand slam or do you like home runs like meaning you you wanna put in a million bucks into a deal,

there's always have to become worth $5, $10 million to you one day that one million, are you happy to put one million and get back two or three million? I think it depends on what it is, right? We're not a billion dollar fund, so those funds are looking for 10 X's, right? Because seven of 10 fail,

I mean, it's the same thing with us, right? You need a 10-bagger You need a you know two or three-bagger and you need a couple to break even possibly to make of that Weighted average return. So there are some deals that I funded knowing okay This is not gonna be a hundred million dollar company. I mean we do shoot for that minimum Right, we all want a billion and I think that's a Standard people want to create a billion dollar company. Unicorn.

Unicorn. I mean, Sandy, that's our goal as well and I think we can get there. But I think at the, when you start and you have a portfolio, I think you really need to look at the weighted average return. You have a certain amount of money you're going to put into the space and you have to look at how much capital you have spent and have are going to continue to spend within a certain period of time. So I think it just all depends on the deal, industry, founder. Sometimes we put money in a company, it's a friend of a friend, and it's not a whole lot of money, so we'll do some of those.

I mean, it's not common, it's rare, and we don't do it because we think we're gonna lose money. It's certainly not a gift. We have to like the founder, we have to like the business. But I think most of the time, two to three acts is not exciting, but you do need some of those in your portfolio. Sure. And sometimes those two to three acts can be 10X or 50X in one case within our portfolio. All right, so I need you to unveil behind the curtains. We've all watched the show Billions.

Yeah. Everyone's obsessed with the show. It's one of my top five favorite shows ever. If you guys haven't seen billions, it's really fun really entertaining a show about the VC hedge fund world. Yeah. And this guy Bobby Axelrod has multi-bizillions of dollars,

this huge fund, et cetera, which has made him very wealthy. VC's hedge fund managers on average make something called a two and 20. Can you explain what a two and 20 is and how that works? Sure. So it's a crazy fee structure that makes no sense whatsoever. So let's just start right there. Okay. And the way it's tax is taxes, long-term gain, which is ridiculous as well. It's earning income. So you're talking about a yearly fee is a 2%. So two percent is okay. So let's say you've

got a hundred million dollar fund. Right. Two percent would be two million dollars. Right. Okay. I mean, it gets interesting when you hear ten billion dollar funds because that's two hundred million dollars a fee. Just to keep the lights on. Right. So you're paying salaries. Whoa. I mean, it's a lot of money. So you hear about these managers and you talk about even bigger funds like this. Canyon Capital, Oak Tree, Blackstone, all those firms, BlackRock, when you're managing $100 billion, it's $2 billion in fees. So people really love the business. That's what they have in the Gats. Right, but again, that's just the beginning.

Right, the 20% is you also get to keep 20% of the gains from that portfolio. So let's say that $1 dollars gets a 10% return, right? So that's a hundred million dollars. And then you get 20% of the hundred million dollars. So you get another 20 million dollars more? Yeah, you get another 20 million. So all right guys, so I'm starting to eventually come up with a firm to. Well, it's actually one better because you got that 2% whether the firm is doing well or not. The firm could be down 50%. You're still getting fees as one of the VC founders.

It's a great model. It makes no sense. Hedge funds are supposed to be a non-correlated class to the stock market. Most of them are the same type of fund as the stock market. The mic stocks. If the market is up, hedge funds are up. If the market is down, a lot of them are down. So it's no longer and it hasn't been for a while. Some are very, very few, but they're very much correlated to the market. So it really does make no sense. So I created something called elevator rolling funds

like two years ago, which is kind of like a fund, but a rolling fund was created by angelists. Angelists, you know, multi-billion dollar company, they do, it might be the number one if it comes to being able to angel vest into deals. So elevator rolling funds essentially was, people could contribute quarterly. So instead of me doing a road show for two years, which is typically a road show, it means I would go visit with Randall and like 60 other investor types and say hey, I'm starting a hundred million dollar fund

Will you put in two million will you put it five million ten million etc I spent around a year going to do that and then the next year I got to go actually hey Randall it sent me the money I accept to do what's called a capital call and a rolling fund structure that angel is created It's really good for so launch printers. So if you're a solo entrepreneur listening Rolling fund you could go to angel.co and look it up The Rolling Fund structure that Angelis created, it's really good for solo entrepreneur. So if you're a solo entrepreneur listening, Rolling Fund, you can go to angel.co and look it up, is a really simple structure. Would they handle all the legal and accounting

and everything in the back end? It sounds like a commercial for Angelis. I just love Angelis, this is not a commercial. And so I started this about two years ago, and you could contribute as little as 40 grand, which is 10 grand a quarter. You said to be a credit investor, which is important. Which many people are not, they lie about it, but they want to get to the field. That would 10 grand a quarter. Right. You said to be a credit investor, which is important. Which many people are not.

They lie about it, but they want to get to the field. That would be a next question. OK. I'm going to set that. And so let's say it's 40 grand. So they can put in 10 grand a quarter. And each quarter is its own fund. That's what's interesting.

The structure, that's how they got created with this. And so let's say Dan is running a little bit of rolling fund, or you as a solo entrepreneur, or rolling your run, or really fun. I make two or three investments during that quarter. And let's say Randy's the one to put in 40 grand or 40 million The number doesn't really matters just math The next quarter is a whole new fund and so I make one investment that quarter that investments there the next Third quarter I do seven investments then Randy's part of all those at the end of 12 months

Randy could say instead of 40 grand I want to put in 4,800 grand, or go to zero. You can go any up or down, which is really interesting concept, because as a sole entrepreneur listening, if you create a rolling fund, again, only do this when you're really ready. You're a seasoned veteran.

You know what you're going to invest into. You know what your thesis is and why you're investing into it. Now, I can decide, or Randy can decide to go up or down his investment. The rolling fund structure is really interesting because it saves me the one or two years of going around just slipping around the country trying to pitch everyone, which is very difficult. Yes. And it's hard to stay fresh every single pitch because you're doing the pitch a hundred times. The exact same pitch. A hundred times. Gotta be fresh every single one doesn't matter

for your fifth pitch of the day. And even even when they like it let's say Randall and our friends he likes it and he says yes I'm in for two million out of your hundred great a year from now I got to almost repitch him right because now I've gotten said hey I've collect I've got everyone to say yes to 100 million capital cost that mean two million I now got to follow up with Randall three or four five times because even though we're close he's busy he's got 40 other deals going on. And so this allowed me as a solo entrepreneur to be able to go create a rolling fund structure

where people can invest through elevated rolling fund. I don't even know them. And they could just contribute a hundred grand to an hour and five minutes which they have. And I've got people on the, I don't want to call it a cap table, but people on the cap table that are investing 10 grand, 50 grand, a hundred grand a quarter. I literally don't know who they are. I like Google them. I'm like, hey, who's this guy? That's nice. I have that great women and men that are investors and so the the concept is

a typical fund or a typical VC. This is where the question leads to how does someone who is a credit investor? They had an accent or they got millions of dollars saved up, but they did great on real estate, etc They're listening and then they want to invest into a fund. Right. How do they do it? It's hard. I mean, it's very, very hard. The question is, how do you get access to good deals from trusted people? Because there's a lot of shit out there. As you know, a lot of hoxsters, promoters, self promoters, look at my

deal. And there actually is no possible way to verify track record. We do not invest in funds even so so you know we'll talk about funds because you're talking about funds basically right and I'm gonna go back and modify my two and twenty first second here. We will never put money into a first-time fund right. We want to track record because I don't want to be the guinea pig for that fund. And at some point if the fund is five years old and on their third or fourth fund, and they're putting up 15% net returns after the two and 20, I will pay the two and 20,

by the way. And I'm not the fee structures completely crazy. I mean, it makes no sense at all. Having said that, I care about my net return. And so I've had funds, some of the best funds out there charge 30% now. And it's the returns go up. Some of the funds say I want to charge 40%. If you make 25%, I mean, it's kind of crazy. The real estate deals, by the way, it's more commonly to do these one-off deals. I've seen 50%.

Once you have a hurdle of 25% net return, there's a makeup in a lot of these deals. These solo deals, syndicateers of 50% now, you may say that's crazy, but if you were in a 30% on that deal, do you really care? When you care, yeah. I mean, it hits you wrong. Right. When you're getting a pitch, but if you look at the track record and the track record is, they've had 30% returns over some long period of time. We'll consider doing that even though I hate it.

Yeah, Bobby Axe run on billions, he charges three in 30. Yeah. Three in 30, all right. And the guy's got what, 10 or 20 billion, he's worth 10 billion, must be like a $50 billion fund. Right, you can only do that by the way, if you're one of the best of the best, right? You're putting up those returns.

Over and over and over. Over and over. Yeah, not one year. Right, not one. Not a chance and he's something's other. Yeah, you can have one investment. Like, hey, I did Twitter 17 years ago. Right.

You can't like, that doesn't work. Yeah. It needs to be a track record. OK, so we said we're going to ask that question. So when someone is coming up with that fee structure and they're an accredited investor, how do we know what a credit investor is? The typical concept of what an accredited investor is for listening, if you want to know if

you're a credit investor, is you make $250,000 a year as your household income, or you have a net worth of $1 million not counting your house. Okay, keep that in mind. A lot of people will say, oh, I've got 400 KN equity and they think that's part of it. It's not part of it. So you have to make a quarter million a year, or have a net worth of $1 million not counting your house. However, there are new rules that have come up over the last few years where you can become an credit

investor with an asterisk by studying and passing something similar to a series seven where you're learning about stock market, you're learning about investing, you're learning about these things, and similar to a series seven and what a stock market needs to be able to get a license, you can actually take that test and they did that because the credit investor laws are very tough. Most people in the country are not credit investors,

so they can't co-invest into deals with me and Randall, even if they have money saved up. They might have three, four, five hundred grand saved up and they don't apply, and they want to put in 25 grand into a deal they're not legally allowed to. That prohibits a lot of people to creating wealth because that same person could walk into the Belagio or the Wayne Casino today and go blow a 25 grand, 500 grand on blackjack slot machines,

roulette lottery tickets, horse racing. They're not legally allowed to invest into the next clothing line, social media agency, cool tech company, etc. Walk us through and credit investors, what you agency, cool tech company, et cetera. Walk us through, and credit investors, and what you think is good and bad about the concept. Well, the concept behind it is good. You don't want people who are not sophisticated losing their money.

Absolutely. Never invest in a deal where you don't understand the company, the deal, the deal terms, and the prospects. The SEC regulates these deals. And theoretically, if you violate a deal like this, something bad could happen. Take me away. Well, I mean, no one do. I mean, this is civil problems. You have a right as a limited partner if the deal fails basically to say, give me my money back because the principal

I wasn't sophisticated didn, didn't do it. I mean, he didn't regulate and check this out now. There's no way for any fund manager to ever know if someone actually is or not. Right, that's a tax return. So, right, I mean, you could lie all day long and put money into 150 deals and there's no way to know. I've never heard of a case where the federal government

has come after somebody because they lied on the due diligence question there. Right, it just never happens as far as I know. So I don't think this is a problem. Problem. I mean, it's, I've seen tons of deals where, you know, someone has a new restaurant. I mean, they don't even have the question there.

Right. Making people verify it. That new way to become one is also a little ridiculous because getting a Series 7 is a lot of work. So I don't think people are going to study for the Series 7, which allows them to become basically a broker and trade at a financial firm and work for a Goldman Sachs, maybe into a Series 63 as well, some other things.

But that's just a shitload of work to put $100,000 into a deal when you have $200,000 in the bank and you're not satisfying these rules. All right, one other quick thing. There's a lot of favors that go on as well. We've been family members in my deals, you know, my mom put money into our first tech company and she really didn't qualify, but you know, she's my mom,

I was the founder of the company. She's nice to you and, you know, I was a size, I'm gonna invest in my son, you know, no matter what, you know, Jewish mother, my mom's something. Yep, and, you know, she did. Now, she had, you know, she had some savings assets and she was, I don't know, gosh, this was 22 years ago.

So maybe 55 years old, 60. You know, we didn't really look at it. I mean, she kind of was through my umbrella for lack of a better term, but, you know, we had family members in that deal as well, who, not my family, but people who weren't. This was not a lot of money.

These kind of deals, these favors go on regularly. My mom was working at Century 21, making 24 grand a year. She was my very first semester. She was all the reason I survived. She was my first semester in high school. She was buying my candy at Costco so I could sell candy inside. I'm the T-shirts I told you about. We're on her credit card

The you know the first 500 bucks to buy t-shirts But when we were going we're 17 18 19 years old We'd done our first million dollars in sales. I wouldn't have even got that if she didn't pay for the booth on her credit card Right so as founders people say where you get your money most people friends and family Yeah, right and and that's how you get your seed capital and I don't know, 90% of the deals, 98% of deals, whatever, not a credit investor. So, 98% of these deals, but that's the past. And you need it.

I mean, you need people to believe in you without a track record. And those people are always your parents, your uncle, right? But you know, you could be 25 as well and leave your company or whatever and graduate college. I have this concept, mom, dad,

will you give me $25,000? It could be alone. So that satisfies the rules, but usually it's not. I mean, I don't, sometimes your mom and dad are gonna give you $10,000, $25,000, $100,000 to let you start your company. Yep. All right, last segment.

We talked about how to make money, how to invest money. Now let's talk about how to give it away to charity. Why do you think that charity is important for some of the companies that you're investing into, for personal brands or for corporations? Why should they get involved in some philanthropy? Well, most companies don't, so let's start there. So they should-

What's that? What's that? Fix it. Yeah, let's fix that. Companies should get involved helping, companies should get involved helping people who need it. And many, many don't. I mean, I've been on 50 boards of some kind

throughout the years. I'm trying to think of one company where they have some kind of philanthropy, philanthropic program. I, we gotta fix it. We got to fix it. Just haven't seen it. I mean, as founders and people, I think you have a responsibility to give back.

Even before you have money, you can volunteer, you can pick an organization that you're passionate about. Foster Care for me was something I'm important to me. My grandmother was raising foster care and had a very, very difficult life. So I've given a lot of money to foster care. I created something called the Justice Ball Nonprofit. I talked about legal firm. Yeah, so when I was 27 years old, I went to a Black Thai fundraiser. I joined South America and I went to this Black Thai dinner that raises

$3 million a year. Well, free legal services for the 12,000 poor sick, homeless residents of Los Angeles each year on them sitting around in this room. Dan, it's a rubber chicken and dinner, black tie, and I mean, it's kind of cool. I was young and there's all kinds of interesting people. There are lawyers, by the way. So not that interesting. I'm a former lawyer is, is you know, I like Dr. O'Rourke. What's that? Recovery lawyer. Recovery lawyer. Well, fully recovered, I think. And I looked around the room and I said, there's got to be a way to create something like this.

That's fun. And even while I was sitting there, I thought, let's do a charity concert. And in that concept, of course, is not new, but it's new for a 27-year-old who really had no money or no savings to create something like this. People told me you can't do it. So I went to the head of the Zetic Legal Services, the nonprofit and said, I want to do this. I want to do

it at the House of Blues, which usually be a super cool venue in Los Angeles, hold 1100 people. And I said, okay, you know, really I said, yeah, I said, let me get a meeting with the CEO, Greg Trojan. It took me 12 phone calls down for Greg to return my call. I said, let me just come to lunch with you. I brought the head of bedsideically, went to lunch. I said, here's what we want to do. And he said, never going to happen. Why not? Because I've seen this playbook, 27-year-olds cannot create a large-scale, churried event. And you're never going to sell out the house of loose. Wow. And so Greg, of course, I like, dude, you're tired of the wrong guy.

So we created this amazing charity event now. This is, we started in 1996 and it's still going on. I think it raised around $8 million. It had 40,000 people come through the doors introducing a nonprofit to a very cool demographic. I think people are inherently, they do want to help out. They do give back. They're very busy, but they need to be introduced

to something. Make it easy. Make it super easy. So that was my first nonprofit charity event. We do one for the homeless right now in Los Angeles. I'm Imagine Ball. I have a very cool partner in that event. John Turzian, you know, his night clubs, cool restaurants. So he can bring in people like Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock and Magic and Kendall Jenner. It's been really great to see that take off.

What's the website for that? Imagineball.org. All right, guys. You're listening to the money Mondays make sure to check out Randall Kaplan on social media Tell them what the podcast name is and search of excellence and Instagram handle at Randall Kaplan so check out in search of excellence that podcast He just had Mike Tyson on there is at Mark Cuban. Everybody. It's a really great podcast Check him out on social media follow along with his journey as he's building his podcast, investing in cool companies, helping beaches all over the planet. Go visit sandysnd.edu.com.

And have these discussions about money. As you guys know, the whole concept of the money Monday is we have these open discussions. We all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. I think it's rude to not talk about it. We need to have these discussions about salaries and accounting and taxes and what's a FICO score? How do you spell FICO? What the heck is that thing?

How do I get my job? Should I rent or lease an apartment? We need to have these discussions with our friends, family and followers. So it's important. Share this podcast, have these discussions and we're gonna see you guys. Oh, let me say one more.

I'm just gonna see this buddy. Hold on one more thing. One more thing. Do not invest in the latest fats. Years ago people were investing in pet rocks. This was a thing, hundreds of million dollars in pet rocks. How does that investment make sense to anybody to have a return on that investment? The crypto craze was the craziest thing then. I mean, you had all these people, I was on a lunch panel in 2018 when the crypto thing was going crazy, there were four of us on stage.

As a tech guy, our coming around public in 1998, we saw 98% of companies go public and go bankrupt. So I told the crowd, these are young, uneducated, non-investment professionals who are now investment professionals, and I set on stage, this is gonna end very badly. 98% of companies are gonna go fell. And people are gonna lose lots of money

to be class action suits everywhere. And that happened. But I'm gonna tell you what happened down. I was almost boot off the state. They were one of the loudest booze that I don't hear. And you know, look what happened. There's been a wipeout. So do not invest in anything you don't understand.

And the latest trends and fads. So that's called dyoron research. Make sure you understand these companies, make sure the founders, not just the fancy sizzle, no steak. You guys got to understand what these companies are and invest responsibly. Take a small amount of capital, invest in research, study, learn everything about the industry, about the company, about the founders before you make those decisions. We are the Money Monday's, we'll see you guys next Monday.

about the company, about the founders before you make those decisions. We are the Money Monday's, we'll see you guys next Monday.