The Money Mondays - 'The $150,000 Coach' Shannon Graham & Four Loko Founder, Chris Hunter 💸 E61

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Shannon Graham, founder of Astranaut, has dedicated himself to empowering individuals to lead fulfilling lives for over 20 years. He has started projects to help with video game addiction and to empower Hispanic immigrants financially. Shannon's teamed up with leaders all over the world to make big changes. He wants to make the world a better place and believes in a future where technology and human consciousness come together. As the mind behind Astranaut, Shannon combines cryptocurrency, NFTs, and space exploration to nurture galactic visionaries and unite humanity towards a better future. -- Christopher Hunter is the Co-Founder and CEO of Koia, the 100 percent plant-based protein drink that is naturally craveable and uses simple ingredients to deliver unparalleled nutrition. He shares his journey in "Blackout Punch: From Chaos to Clarity." Hunter's book inspires readers to embrace life's challenges and turn adversity into opportunity. After seeing the huge popularity in combining caffeine and alcohol, Chris and his partners created Four Loko, a high-profile flavored malt beverage that grew to be the eight largest brewer in the country at its peak. He later created Not Your Father’s Rootbeer which was sold to Pabst brewing company in 2015 and most recently created Solset Elevated Hard Seltzer. -- Like this episode? Watch more like it 👇 Shaun Neff's Rise from Dollar Store Hats to Building Multiple $100M Brands 🧢: https://youtu.be/YUKutqC6jUc Dean Graziosi + Joel Marion Share Their Secrets to Success: https://youtu.be/7gn0rNubXbg How Jesse Itzler Started and Sold 6 Companies for Millions 💰: https://youtu.be/L0eJWPAMnRM Watch ALL Full Episodes Here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs0D-M5aH-0IOUKtQPKts-VZfO55mfH6k --- 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, the youngest founder of a publicly traded company in history, 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. If you want to learn more business and investing while you work to improve your financial life, you're in the right place! Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneymondays?sub_confirmation=1 Dan Fleyshman, The Money Mondays Learn more here: https://themoneymondays.com Watch all the podcast episodes: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs0D-M5aH-0IOUKtQPKts-VZfO55mfH6k Let’s Connect... Website: https://themoneymondays.com Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-money-mondays/id1663564091 Twitter: https://twitter.com/themoneymondays LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-money-mondays/about/ TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@themoneymondays FB: https://www.facebook.com/The-Money-Mondays-110233585203220/

How much will it cost to go outer space now? And do you think it'll be affordable in the future? You can you can pay as little as 50,000 for what's called an atmospheric balloon ride. And that'll take you 100,000 feet up. You can pay all the way up to 110 million for a week long stay on the International Space Station. 50 grand. How long do you go up for? It's a 12 hour trip trip six up and six down Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the money Mondays

We are sitting in an RV motorhome out on the streets in front of Hubble studio where for the last 10 years I've been throwing charity events with Trinus kids foundation. So we're gonna be talking about charity today Obviously, I also throw my elevator nights here, my free event. We've thrown it 53 times. I think about 10 to 15 times we've thrown elevator nights here for free. But why are we parked in front of elevator studio, Hubble studio right this second? Because Shannon Graham is here.

He has traveled all the way into town. And so I decided to drive the motor home. We left the ranch, we left the wild jungle. We came over here to Hubble studio to find him here. So we're gonna dive right in There are three main topics that we cover here on the money Mondays how to make money and invest money how to give it away to charity Shannon is gonna be one of those best answers you've ever heard for all three of those categories because He's been teaching and coaching for years and years people pay him

$150,000 for one-on-one coaching. And so you're going to get inside of the mind of someone that normally charges a lot of freaking money to figure out what's inside of his brain and what you can do to better your life. So please give a warm round of applause to Shana Crown. Thanks, Stan. All right. So dive right in. If you could, give us a quick two-minute bio so we can get straight to the money. Yeah, well I have been coaching this year will be 20 years. Whoa. And I started when I was 21 and I've done a lot of entrepreneurial things in my day. I started my first business when I was in my early teens and my latest venture astronaut is a space company focused on sending entrepreneurs to space. Okay, let's just dive right there.

Say that again. Astronaut sends entrepreneurs into outer space. Correct. Okay, walk us through that. Let's not talk about money for a second, just talk about space. Well it's two-part. So I'm a closet space nerd. I have been for a long time.

And in 2020, it was a big year for space. Bezos went to space, Branson went to space, William Shatner went to space, and four civilians for the first time ever went to space. So it was a monumental year for space. And crypto was booming, I mean, everything was just like, the abundance was flowing. And we live in an interesting time as far as being visionary

and making the world a better place, as far as like, as long as you can communicate an idea to people that they can get excited about and wanna get behind, you don't have to be the one that knows everything, you can just be the leader of it. And so the closet space nerd in me was like, okay, man, it's your time. And I kind of had this idea of, you know, there's, there's problems and challenges in

the world right now that many visionaries are on a path to solve for. And it's kind of like using Einstein said, you can't solve your problems with the same level of thinking that created them. And so what's required is an elevation of perspective. And there's this amazing experience that happens when you go to space and you see the earth from space. it's called the overview effect and every single person all 600 and some odd people who have been to space all have this experience where they see the earth from from space and they're they're changed they have a deeper desire to make the world a better place so my thought was well what if you sent people to space who already have a desire to make the world a better place and you elevate their perspective?

What would happen and that's how astronaut was born? Okay So a lot to unpack there How much will it cost to go outer space now and do you think it'll be affordable in the future five years ten years 20 years? 30 years, etc. Yeah, so right now it's a range of price points depending on what you consider space you can you can pay as little as 50,000 for what's called an atmospheric balloon ride and that'll take you a hundred thousand feet up and that's that's not quite space by most people in the space industry's definition.

But you can see the majority of the world at that point. And you're certainly what I would consider at the edge of space. So that's 50,000. You can pay all the way up to 110 million for a week long stay on the International Space Station. You can just fly up there for 110 million dollars and hang out for a week long stay on the International Space Station. You can just fly up there for 110 million dollars and hang out for a week. Yeah. 110 million, no problem. Yeah. Okay. So for 50 grand, how long do you go up for? Is it? It's a 12 hour trip, six up and six down. That's great. Yeah. Okay. It's a nice date night. Yeah. Okay. And so when you plan to take entrepreneurs outer space, what's the ballpark

it'll cost now and what do you think it'll be in the future? Well, the I'm likely going to do something either in the 50,000 range, probably up to like 250,000. I got a lot of clients for you in that range. Yeah. Like a lot. A lot of people want to go to space. How long would they go with astronaut? How long would they go with you? How long would the trip take?

12 hours. For the atmospheric ride, for the 250,000, that's a much shorter ride because that's actually a rocket. So it goes up, 0G comes back down, it's a much shorter experience. I know we're not talking about money right now, this is too fascinating. So if I go up 0G, I have to go through training first yes yes so that that would be more like a SpaceX ride there's training involved with that the atmospheric balloon ride no training you just get in go up come down you'll feel fine you won't feel weird no problem yeah so cool yeah okay all right let's go actual topic yeah all right on the how to make money side yeah there's different

aspects of your life one is obviously you have a whole freaking space company. Yeah. But two, for two decades you've been dealing on the coaching side. Talk to us about why people at any stage of the game, whether a beginner, amateur, experienced or have a huge company, why should they hire a coach or a mentor? Yeah. The answer is because no matter how fast you run or no matter how good you get, you can never outrun your own blind spots. And so the advantage you have of hiring a coach is that those blind spots become available

to you. You can, you have someone that can show you those little things that make all the difference. You know, think about someone who's a professional athlete, for example, like Roger Federer, arguably one of the greatest tennis players of all time. The difference to him between winning and losing could just be the fraction of an inch that that if that racket is turned just a little bit too much up or down, that's the difference between winning and losing the game. So a coach can look over your shoulder and determine those little inches that can help make the big difference.

And so for years and years and years, people that are at a high level understand that in order to get to the next level, they have to have someone over their shoulder to help them see where those blind spots are. Now that could be in performance, it could be in mindset, but all of that translates to a massive ROI at the end of the day. So fascinating. Yeah. So like Tim Grover was the trainer for Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

And I always use that as the example because you're talking about two of the best of all time in basketball and in stubbornness, winningness and everything in between. Like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant are my two heroes and they did it and both of them hired Tim Grubber for many years. And he did it for Kevin Durant and a lot of other NBA players. But like, when you think about if the best in the world hired Tim, how dare you think you're so egotistical

that you can't go hire a coach. Even if you're a bazillionaire, you could be a household name legend and you still hire a coach. For sure. For at least a certain topic of your life, right? Of course. And I think now what's fascinating is there's so many different ways people look at mentors, coaches, masterminds, college, school, et cetera. Some people love it. Some people hate it. Some people promote it. Some people have whatever. To me, it's a fascinating subject and that's why I ask people especially yourself at the highest level. Yeah How do you decide? When it's time to bring on a coach or a mentor I

think the point when you decide it's time to take on a coach or a mentor is The moment you are clear that you want the next level and you know That what got you to where you are won't get you to where you want the next level and you know that what got you to where you are won't get you to where you wanna go. So the mindset, the drive, the skillset, the mindset, the whatever that got you to where you are is not what's gonna get you to where you wanna go. And so when that certainty of I desire

whatever the next level looks like for that person and the clarity of like and I can't get there on my own. That's the moment. Okay. Switching to space. You're taking on a big project by wanting to put entrepreneurs in outer space. Yeah. So very expensive. It takes a lot of capital research, approvals, permits, licenses and everything between how do you decide like when you have something? I don't call it cushy but like you lived and breathe something for 20 years doing coaching that makes you millions of millions of dollars a year Why take on such a big undertaking? That's not just expensive

It's you know, because I know there's to do what you're talking about Yeah, why take that on in your life when you could just keep making millions dollars coaching and helping the world that way That's a great question It's similar to you could probably ask Elon the same thing, like why, when Elon sold PayPal, did he not just like cash out and just sail off into the sunset? And he literally risked it all to do the next one?

Yeah, he literally put it all into Tesla and SpaceX. And the answer for me is, A, because I just have a passion for space and I love to be involved in that world, but also because space is going to democratize. So this answer is, I didn't quite answer this part of your question earlier, which is the price of going to space is going to democratize tremendously over time.

So right now it's kind of like a billionaire boys club kind of thing. But that's rapidly changing. I mean, 50,000 to have an atmospheric experience. That's not bad. And that price is only going to continue to come down as things improve over time. So going to space is going to be very normalized. It's crazy. It's going to be wild. It's wild. It's going to be like, I'll call you up one day and be like, so, the moon this weekend?

And you'll be like, yeah, fuck it. Yeah, and a double date. And so, it's 10k each for a double date. So because that's true, there's currently two aspects of space. There's the commercial side, which is like NASA exploration, how far out can we go, what can we learn about these different planets and things like that. And then there's the tourism side. I've done everything in life.

I've made all the money. I have all the toys. I've had every experience. I guess the only thing left to do is go to space. That's cool, but that's more of the fun side. I want to get right in between those two and pioneer a sector in the space industry that I'm calling space transformation. And so I want to get in early so that as it grows

and as it becomes more normalized and a thing, then I'm already there and in the game. Do you think it'll be like at Universal Studios, like people just wait in line and go on rides? Like they end up having 20 or 30 rockets that are just kind of- For sure. As the technology, you know, like propulsion technology

and things like that, as that advances and innovates and democratizes, then it becomes even easier to do multiple trips a day. So fascinating. Yeah. Okay, so I'm just thinking about going outer space. Yeah. All right, at what point do you believe that humans can actually live or stay long periods of time on like a Mars or a moon or another planet? How long until we can do that? Yeah, ballpark. Will it be in our lifetime? Oh for sure, for sure. With the speed at which technology is advancing, this is how I like to

think about it. Think about the last hundred years of technological advancement. Pretty, pretty wild. And then think about the last 10. The last 10 compared to the last 90 is where you've seen the most amount of growth So if that's true about the last 10 then think about the next 10 You and I'll be around 10 more easy damn right and and with longevity the way that it's going 150 easy I would put money on it No question 150 you and me no problem, and we'll look and feel like we do now and so we will without a doubt be on Mars in our lifetime and be able to sustainably live there

Okay on the making money side, yeah, I am very passionate about this very core topic The reason I have a money Monday's, the reason I do speeches about money, the reason I'm preaching about my 40-40-20 investment theories is you, listening at home, have to figure out ways to get wealthy, not just rich. And it can't be rude to talk about it. And here's why. What Shannon just said is people are going to live to over a hundred years old. Let me give you a realistic example. Technically, people pass away currently between 73 and 77 years old. 73 for a man, 77 for a woman. That was for our parents, our age group. Now it's 83 for a man, 85.5 for a woman. So if you retire at 65 to 75 years old, you really only need like 4 to 15 years of money, right, saved up to cover your life.

Your children, if you're listening at home right now, your children are likely to live to over 100 years old because when we grew up, there was 64-pound Slurpees at 7-Eleven everywhere. There was no Equinox, there was no Whole Foods, there was no health food stores on every corner, there was no gyms everywhere, there was no fitness apps, first-form supplements, none of that stuff was around. We had Jack in the Box and Burger King and McDonald's and we had the food pyramid. Remember the food pyramid?

That's what we grew up on and cereal was healthy, right? Now we've learned so much in society and we have so much access to fitness, medicine, health, and everything between. But wait, there's more. Hospitals are everywhere now. Medical clinics, technology, a lot of the things that killed families, members, and parents in our past, those same exact diseases won't even exist in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, and 30 years. They will figure out a way to eradicate Alzheimer's, leukemia, and a lot of forms of cancer. Not everything, but a lot of these major diseases that killed billions of people over the course of our generations of our world will not even be here soon.

And so why does all that matter? Why did I go down the rabbit hole? Because you listen at home, your children, when they lived over 100 years old, but they retire at 65 to 75, if they live to 104, they need 30 years of money saved up. Let's not talk about inflation or medical expenses or anything crazy. What if they just want to get by on 60 grand a year for 30 years? That's $1.8 million. You know how much the average American has saved up right now? $1,200.

Yeah. You have $5,500 in savings, $1,200 saved up in a cash account on average right now. That's a long way away from $1.8 million to just get by. Yeah. Not counting if you have a family of two or three or four or five, et cetera. See where I'm going with this? And so while a lot of people think it's rude to talk about money, I think it's insane not to talk about it.

We have to talk about getting rich and we have to talk about getting wealthy. The only way to get wealthy is through investing. And that's why this podcast exists. That's why it's important for us to have a discussion with guys like Shannon, that I've actually lived and breathed this space for so many years. So you can live at home and think about the things that make sense to you. Low risk investing, medium risk investing, high risk investing, etc. building your career, dealing with taxes, IRS, savings, loans, everything in between. You have to have these

discussions. It is not like, oh I can get to it later. Later never comes when it comes to this stuff if you don't do it now. And so that's why I'm so passionate about this topic and I want to go into some more questions. All right. On the making money side, someone out there decides they want to be a coach in a certain niche. Right? There's some people that do life coaching, some people do business coaching, but most

of the time people want to be a coach in a niche. Fitness, health, how to help single moms, how to help business owners do XYZ. A lot of times it's in a niche. When someone wants to first get into coaching, I have a very blunt answer for it. What do you say to people when they want to get into that space? I say, do it. Make my my caveat is always this. I believe it's beautiful to help people.

So if someone has a desire to be a coach, it's great. And the one thing that you have to make certain of is there's a difference between having a good intention and having an ability to actually produce a result. There we go. So you gotta have the chops. You gotta be able to produce whatever niche it is that you wanna get into for the right

reason, which is to actually be able to help people. So you have to have certainty that you can actually make a difference. All right. This is a PSA to everybody that wants to be a coach. You cannot be a 19-year-old life coach. You have not lived enough life. You cannot be a personal trainer unless you are certified and gone through years of actual studying,

certifications about food, health, and fitness. Please. You wanna be a business coach? That's fantastic if you built a business or you have an MBA and you really understand what you're trying to teach. I love the idea of you becoming a speaker or a coach if you're an actual expert. And I'm not saying that you can't become an expert, you got to put in the time,

energy, and really the experience to become an expert before you go to try to coach other people. Before you got to speak on stage, you need to really understand everything. You live in a day in society when you can learn a lot, if not everything and more, on the internet. If you want to become a coach, a mentor, if not everything and more, on the internet. If you wanna become a coach, a mentor, or a speaker on stage, go get as smart as possible about every single angle and every single little detail about the niche that you wanna teach. That's all I ask.

Please don't try to be a life coach when you're 19. Please don't be a fitness coach if you're not certified. Please, please, please don't be a business coach if you've never done millions of dollars in sales. Yeah. I think- And a PSA. Yeah. I think it's, I think the allure is that

there's so much money to be made. Sure. And it's sexy and it's relatively easy to get started. There's very low barrier to entry. So that's cool because the opportunity is there for everybody. And there's people who do make a lot of money in that world. So it's like, oh, you know, I can jump into it as well. And for those of you at home listening to what Dan is saying, he's completely right.

If you slow down and do the work first, put in the time to develop mastery and expertise. You actually do yourself a huge favor because no one else is doing that. Everyone else is just trying to get in the game as quickly as possible and look like they got it all figured out. If you take the time to actually figure it out and be an expert in whatever it is niche you want to get into, you will be so far ahead of the game you'll set yourself up for massive success. Difficult question.

How does someone choose, okay they're an expert now, how do they choose the ballpark of what they should be charging for their time? I'll give you guys a quick example. Shannon charges $150,000. So that's as high as it gets, right? I charge $100,000, but 100% of what I do is for charity. I only pick 12 people a year. I had 171 applications this year. Those 12 people then donate to charity, either to the toy drive, model system fund, or the wild jungle, etc.

Years went by before I decided on doing that, right? And I have five levels of masterminds and I have free events. Let me walk you through the world of, you know, coaching and speaking, etc. I have elevator nights that's totally free. I've thrown it 53 times, a lot of it right here at Hubbo Studio, as we talked about. Around the time this episode comes out, I think, actually the exact same week, we will then be having our 54th event, the LA Convention Center elevator nights for all women speaking. And we've got a huge response for that. exact same week, we will then be having our 54th event, the LA Convention Center, elevator nights for all women speaking. And we've got a huge response for that. So there's a free event, right? Free teaching, free mentoring, free coaching, free networking. Then I have

for 200 bucks a month, people can actually do the money mondays.com. We donate all that to the wild jungle. Money mondays.com every Monday at four o'clock. You can have interactions on Zoom with me, guys like Shannon, et cetera. Then it jumps, there's live events, Aspire Tour. $100 tickets, $300 tickets, $500 tickets, and there's also VIPs, $1,000, $1,500 tickets for Aspire Tour. We've got 12 events every year,

3,000, 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 people at every single event. So free, 200 bucks a month, and then live events, 100 bucks to 500 bucks on average. Then we have our master classes. These are two to 300 bucks for one weekend. Learn about money, learn about finances, et cetera. Jump to the next level, $15,000. This is called the Money Is Mastermind.

We have 706 members, and we grow around 100 members per month at the 15k part. $20,000, Operation Blacksite. We do that at the ranch with Bezos, Koulian, Tim Kennedy, Ray Cashcare, Michael Chandler, etc. where you learn about shooting, fighting, how to get a handcuffs, etc. So that's 20k. We have $50,000 for what's called the Chairman's Club. Chairman's Club is where you learn about investments, you get to interact with other people that

are doing millions of dollars revenue. Then the top of the funnel, the top tier one is called the 100 million mastermind experience. It's $100,000 per person. I started in 2019. It's only a hundred people, a hundred K each. You have to be doing at least 5 million revenue, mostly doing 10 to 50 million revenue. All that being said, all those years of events I've been throwing, all those years of free events, paid events and everything in between, I then just after all that started doing one-on-one coaching last year. So you hear my frustration when people say I'm a 19 year old life coach?

Yeah. I did a decade of free events. Yeah. Half a decade of these big events like before I even considered doing one-on-one coaching. So just keep that in mind when you're thinking about you becoming a coach, get really smart about your topic. Go experience it. And by the way, hire coaches so that you can become the most elite version of yourself.

You go hire Shannon, guess what's going to happen to you? You're going to level up. You go hire guys like Beydros Koulion, you're going to level up. You go learn from Ed Milet, you go learn from the best of the best, you will level up. Okay, end of my best. Yeah, you will level up Alright end of my speech go, please Well pricing is an interesting thing, but I think that it comes down to a few aspects the first is goes back to what you and I are talking about as far as What is the return on investment that you can provide?

That's one of the most important parts because the return on investment that you can provide That's one of the most important parts because the return on investment that you can provide will dictate how much you can charge. You know you can provide a really amazing return on investment. I know the same thing simply because I've been doing it for so long. And so I can justify that price tag. No problem. It's sexy to charge that much. And so a lot of people are inspired to do that. But a lot of people don't have the chops to be able to really produce that kind of ROI. So you have to be really real with yourself. What is the return on investment I truly feel like I can get and kind of work the numbers backwards from there to figure out a price tag. That's part one. Part two is what kind of income do you want to create from this coaching business? How much, what's the ideal, either annual or monthly income?

And then you kind of say, okay, well, what's my capacity? How many people can I work with? And then you kind of work the numbers from there. So you reverse engineer the income side and then the actual deliverability. And that's kind of the magic equation. All right, so let's talk about the investing side. When you

start to make money, you have your businesses, you do your coaching, all this income's coming in. How do you decide what you invest into when you have all these options? Real estate, private equity, stock market, cryptocurrency, there's so many different options for you. How do you decide what types of investments you want to do or do you split it up or what do you like to think about? Yeah, my approach is very similar to yours. You know, high risk stuff, medium, low. Very similar. The only, there's not much of a difference really. The only difference is that I put a very large emphasis on investing in myself. emphasis on investing in myself. You are always your greatest investment. And as I like to say,

investing in yourself is the only investment out of all the investments you could make where you get to choose the ROI. That's wild. What if I said, Dan, I got an opportunity for you. It's 150 grand. Oh, and by the way, you can choose what the ROI is going to be. I don't know a single person who wouldn't do that. Because think about just investing in general. Many people could do it, but they don't. Why? Because they have stories about it. Well, I did it that one time and I lost a bunch of money and I don't want to do that again. Well, what if you could pay somebody to help you unwind all of that so that you could get back into investing? What would that mean for your family?

What would that mean for the charities that you want to contribute to, right? What if you could invest in your skill set so that you can produce a higher amount of value in the marketplace? Well, now you can charge more money. Now you can make more money. Do you see what I mean? It's always the best investment to invest in yourself. I'm a coach, obviously that sounds self-serving, but that's not as a coach, that's as a person who has spent a lot

of money investing in myself in lots of different ways. Spiritually, from a nutrition standpoint, fitness, I mean just all the different categories you can imagine that you can invest into. 40 years of Zen, Dave Asprey's intensive neurofeedback training program. Easily one of the greatest amounts of money I've ever spent. One of the largest ROIs I've ever experienced. So that's where I start, because that's going to dictate my ability to be able to produce more value and to be able to have a quality of life that is what I really want at the end of the day. So my approach is a combination of yours, high risk, medium, low, combined with myself.

So someone out there is listening and they realize that they need to invest in themselves and they just don't know who to trust or what organization to go to or what school to go to or what mastermind to join. How can someone go down the rabbit hole to figure out who can really help them and what they want to do? Yeah. I mean, it's tricky these days. The internet is tricky.

Yeah. Lots of glam, lots of glitter. Everyone wants to seem like they're something. Which is not wrong necessarily. I think really look for, it's one thing for me to say that I'm something. It's another thing to look at the people that I've worked with and see what type of results they've experienced. Like the testimonials.

Testimonials. And again, that is something that could be faked or whatever, but I like to believe that most people in the business of helping other people genuinely want to help other people. So I like to look for, well, this is the result that I want to get. Has this person helped other people like me get a similar result? And usually that's a good place to start. So someone's at their career, they're making money, they hit 80 grand, now they're doing 110 grand and 150 grand, they start saving up some money, right? And now they're like, whoa, my house went up at 200k in value, my

stock market went up, boom, that all went up another 100 grand, like they start to have some real money. Yeah. When is it time for someone to start really deploying capital back into investing? When is it time? I think there's any time is a good time. How would you answer that? I don't know. So the famous answer is the best time is 10 years ago and the second best time is today.

Is now, yeah. And so I talk about Bitcoin all the time in 2014, but I still bought Bitcoin this week. Yeah, for sure. Like, so quick story. So Bitcoin was $ hundred and forty dollars. And I was going around Las Vegas explaining to the mayor, the governor, the casino owner

named Derek Stevens at the D Hotel, the casino about why they should put a Bitcoin ATM in 2014 into one of the most financially regulated buildings in the world, which is the casino. Yeah, they are way stricter than a bank. After six months of back and forth we did it, got approved all over the news, you can look it up and we placed this Bitcoin ATM at 340 bucks. Bitcoin is over 70,000 dollars now. It's a 200 to 1 return. 200 times like if you can look at my Coinbase right now you can see the date and time

when I bought it for 340 bucks in my Coinbase sitting in my phone right this second. Now you can also look this week where I bought Bitcoin at 68,000, 69,000. If I believed in it back then at $340, why the heck would I believe in it 10 years later when there's finally market adoption? When people are finally listening to my craziness for the last decade? So if you have a conviction in something, again, I didn't go sell a kidney and buy a adoption. Yeah. When people finally listening to my craziness for the last decade. Yeah. So if you have a conviction in something, again, I didn't go sell a kidney and buy a zillion Bitcoin. I bought some Bitcoin and I bought some more and I bought some more

and I bought some more. I bought some more. Ethereum was 19 bucks. I did the very first interviews about Ethereum and Inc and Forbes magazine in 2017. People thought it was crazy. It was 19 bucks. Now it's almost four thousand dollars. Yeah 200 times what it was. Yeah, I'm still a buyer of aetherium this week. Yeah If I believe in a 19 bucks, I believe in it 4,000. Yeah, I think you're making a good point What I'm hearing you say is what you did is you established a habit? I'm gonna make a habit of investing. So I think the answer to your question is when is the best time to like get into investing?

Right now. Right now. Right now. And it's not, I'm gonna, this might sound a little like out there, but I really believe this is true. It's not about figuring out what the best investment is per se.

Obviously you wanna be smart and things like that. But to your point it's more about starting the habit. If you start the habit everyone's gonna make some mistakes, I've made mistakes, you've made mistakes. But that's not the point. The point is getting into the habit of doing it so that five years from now, 10 years from now, that habit is going strong. That's the point, is to develop that muscle. I preach to people, go buy $50 of Bitcoin. Go buy $100 of Apple stock. Go buy 80 bucks.

If you can afford 80,000, great. If you can afford 80 bucks, great. The concept is the same. Go buy little bits and pieces over and over and over and over and over of the things that you believe in. Okay, if you're listening at home, you've probably heard me say this before if you listen to the podcast, raise your hand if you believe that Apple will be here in five years. Okay, why would I not buy stock? If you believe Apple will be here in 10 years, why would I not keep buying stock? Walmart, Google, Netflix, like if you can spend 20 bucks a month on Netflix,

and they have 240 million users, and they're gonna only have more users, because who the hell cancels Netflix? Yeah, nobody. Never. And more and more and more people are adding on Netflix. Yeah. They're gonna go from 240 million,

to 340 million, to 440 million, and their overhead's pretty much gonna stay the same. Yeah. They're not shipping a product. No. You guys get me? So why wouldn't I wanna invest in Netflix in Netflix when the best performing stocks in history? Yeah, do you believe in Elon Musk?

Okay, that's the only human in history to have four multi-billion dollar companies at the same damn time. Yeah, I want to bet on that guy Yeah, regardless of what you think in the media. What do you think about him with weed? In the news or him on Twitter who cares? He has four different, at the same exact time, multi-billion dollar companies. It's never happened before, it's hard to happen anytime soon. And so I wanna invest in that stock. I'm investing in that person.

You might not like Zuckerberg, I do. His stock went up 122% this year. So you might not like him, I love him. And you're like, I don't know if I like Facebook. Okay, well what about Instagram? He bought Instagram for one billion, and now Instagram does one billion I love him. Yeah. Right? And you're like, I don't know if I like Facebook. Okay. Well, what about Instagram? Right. He bought Instagram for one billion and now Instagram does one billion every three weeks

in revenue. Yeah. Hey, the guy I don't really care about Facebook or Instagram, I don't care about social media. What about WhatsApp? He bought WhatsApp for $18 billion. Yeah. And so that's why his stock does so well and why it's going to keep doing well year after year after year.

Will there be ups and downs in roller coasters? I don't care. Why? Because I'm not going to sell. Why would I sell my Apple stock? Why would I sell my Facebook stock? Why would I sell my Tesla stock, my Google stock, my Netflix stock? If I believe in it now and it's going from a $1 trillion to a $2 trillion to a $3 trillion size company, why would I sell it then? Yeah, never. And the reason that you don't have to sell and the reason I don't sell is I buy small,

medium, small, medium type size accounts over and over and over and over and over and over rather than going and buying everything in one shot. No matter how much I believe in Apple, I wouldn't sell the RV motor home and go buy Apple stock. Yeah. Right? I wouldn't go sell my house or sell these microphones

to go buy Apple stock. I would buy small, medium amounts of Apple over and over and over. And that will remove what's called a visceral reaction. Visceral reaction is you buy Apple stock for 200 bucks, it goes to 220, you're like, I'm a genius, I'm going to sell. You buy Apple stock for 200, it drops to 160, you're like, oh no, I'm an idiot, I'm going to go sell.

I don't care about the price going up and down. I just want to own Apple. Does that make sense? I just want to own Bitcoin. I just want to own Google and Netflix. I just want to own the. Does that make sense? I just want to own Bitcoin. I just want to own Google and Netflix. I just want to own the things that I believe in. And so if you are out there listening and you like Ford, buy a little Ford stock.

You like Tesla, you like Netflix, you like an iPhone. When you spend $1,500 on iPhone, go buy $1,500 on Apple stock. All right, the third and final chapter. We're talking about how to make money, how to invest money, how to give away to charity. Why do you think it's important for entrepreneurs specifically, for their business or for their household,

to be adding philanthropy into their life? Well, because I think one of the best things you can do with money is give it away. And I think that there are people that when, I think when people that are genuinely good get money, then they can do good things with it. And you're a great example of that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the largest toy drive in history.

That's amazing. And as a kid that grew up in a household with a single mom that made 12,000 a year, we were the recipient of some charity. And I can still remember to this day what that meant to our family meant the difference between getting toys on Christmas and not. I mean, that's a big deal. And so, you know, for guys like you and I, it might not be a big deal from a financial standpoint, but what that ends up meaning to somebody

changes everything. For me, most of my charity work is with children. And the reason is because children are 20% of the population and 100% of the future. It's the greatest investment you could ever make. Because they're going to be steering the boat. And if you can install young early on into a child's mind that someone cares,

it's one of the best things you could ever do for them. Someone that they don't know that doesn't have any interest in their life or whatever as far as like being connected to them. Someone that's completely outside of their world can care. Makes a huge difference. And again, I say that with such conviction because I know it was true for me. And so what a gift we have to be able to give those families. And so as an entrepreneur, I think that it's great to get money, it's great to invest money, and the best thing that you can do with it is give it away.

So here we're parked right in front of Hubbell Studio. We're literally up on the sidewalk where normally 400 family members stand in line to get toys for our toy drive. This started 10 years ago. We literally just had our 10 year anniversary, and there was 8 of us sitting on the floor wrapping toys. And then year 2 there was like 19 of us, then there was 50 of us, etc. and the toy drive grew. On year 8 we took over SoFi Stadium, 118,000 toys and broke the world record. And then we did it again and then we did it again. 118,000 toys and broke the world record. Yeah.

And then we did it again and then we did it again. For the 10 year anniversary we went to 10 cities in freaking 15 days to do the toy drive and we ended up doing 11 cities just to put a cherry on top. The toy drive to me is very similar to you. When my parents got divorced at 8 years old, I was with a single mom living in San Diego in an extra room of an old lady, she was like at eight years old. I was with a single mom living in San Diego in an extra room of an old lady, she was like 90 something years old. Her apartment, she had two bedrooms in the extra room.

I would sleep on the floor and my mom would sleep in the bed and how am I gonna afford toys? How am my mom gonna do that? And so all of that was instilled in me and because of that, I started selling baseball cards, I started selling candy at school, I started doing all my hustles because of those moments of not being able to afford it.

So for me, there's an emotional attachment to helping with Thanksgiving food drives and back to school days and toy drives, homeless backpacks, you know, backpacks with homeless, et cetera, is because of the way I grew up and the way I watched people around me. I sincerely don't remember, and I don't know now,

any of my entrepreneurial friends that grew up rich. Yeah. My friends that have big companies, I don't know one of them with the story of growing up upper middle class and rich. But the difference will be interesting in society, this will be my last question is, there's gonna be millions and millions and millions

and millions and tens of millions of kids that do grow up rich. Because the real estate market happened, investing happened, crypto happened, a bunch of exits happen of companies Yeah, people became wealthy and millions of companies were formed And so now there's a lot of people that are rich and they have two three four kids that are growing up rich What do you think is from a society perspective?

When parents have you know start making serious money and their kids are growing up rich What do you think happens to our future as so many millions of children are gonna grow up in a different type of household? Yeah, it's a good question. I think the important component to the answer of that question has mostly to do with parenting because many of the parents of those kids

that grew up wealthy did not grow up wealthy. And so ideally they're going to pass on what they learned when they were younger, as far as not being entitled to anything and not treating people differently just because you have money and et cetera, et cetera. So if they can really instill some of those values into their kids,

then I think it's going to be very positive because then those kids will grow up and be able to start companies and do cool things. And yet they'll still have that grounded sense of like, it's important to treat people right and to not think I'm better than anybody else. All right, guys, I want you to make sure to check out Shannon Graham across social media, especially on Instagram. It's important to have these discussions.

We all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. We here at the Money Mondays think it's rude to not talk about it because we need to have conversations about your taxes, your accounting, should I get a loan, should I rent something, should I buy something, what happens if my friend borrows money and they don't pay me back. We need to have these blunt discussions because this is real life. You really have to pay your electricity bill. You really have to pay for your car note. You really have friends dealing with money situations. There's just a lot of money things that happen on

our daily lives because that's how the world rotates. And so when people think that money is the root of all evil, I just think money is a tool. It's a utility for life. And we have to have these discussions. So check us out on the moneymondays.com. Make sure to like, share, subscribe, comment, all those things to help us. As you see, we don't run ads here. We check us out on the moneymondays.com. Make sure to like, share, subscribe, comment, all those things to help us. As you see, we don't run ads here. We've been doing this for over a year. You guys have helped us stay number one on the entrepreneur charts and then top five

on the business charts for over a year now. And it's really important to us, but we are not doing this for ads. We're doing this for you guys. And we really want you guys to share this content, get people talking about it. And we will see you guys next Monday. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays. We are sitting in an RV motorhome right outside of Hubbo Studio right this second. We are moments away from having the LA Convention

Center, a big event there for elevator nights, the All Women's event, the Aspire Tour, there's a lot of action happening. We're doing a big networking event here at Hubbell Studio right around the time that this podcast is coming out. There's a lot of moving parts, a lot of action coming. And so I'm really excited because our guest just landed fresh off the airplanes, came straight over to us. This is a very, very, very busy entrepreneur.

He has built a company that many of you at home, when I say the name we're like oof and have stories and memories right away. It was called 4 Loco. He also built a brand called Drink Koya, which is one of the fastest growing drinks in the healthy category right this second. You've probably seen Drink Koya at all your health food stores, your Gelson's, your Whole Foods type locations. And this brand has been blowing up because there's a lot of investors, a lot of interesting athletes, influencers involved in the brand, which is what you really need to stand out and only

certain brands can do it. And he's going to talk about those topics. So right now we're going to get right into it. Chris Hunter, please give us a quick two minute bio so we can get straight to the money. Yeah. Thanks for having me. So let's see. I grew up in Ohio, not from an entrepreneurial family. So blue collar kind of just, we didn't have a lot of money. So something that I always aspired to have, right? Um, uh, when I moved to Chicago, had no clue what I was going to do and, uh, just tested the waters and learned a lot of the things I didn't want to do.

And at the age of 25, I was selling vodka for a startup company. And I was selling a lot of it mixed in with Red Bull. So I figured, shit, I know just as good as these guys, I'll give it a shot. And myself and two partners started Fusion projects which is the parent company of 4Loco. So we started that back in in 2005, grew that to what many people know or may have experienced, rode that roller coaster, got a PhD in crisis management as I like to say, launched a few other brands under that and then I transitioned out of that company into the better for you space,

really for personal alignment. My life was very different than what it was when I started Four Loco. So health and wellness was a core component and that's where I am today. So on the Money Mondays, we talk about three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money,

how to give away to charity. How do people make money in the beverage game when it's so dang expensive to build a brand? Yeah, the beverage game is not for the faint of heart It's a super competitive as you know industry really cutthroat really expensive You know my my perspective is kind of jaded. I mean, when we launched 4 in its original format, it did OK. We didn't raise much money. But two years into it, when we iterated,

we launched 4Loco and it just took off. And so we were very nontraditional. We didn't do a lot of marketing. We didn't spend a lot of money. So my take on how do you make money in the beverage industry is you just iterate till you find something that hits and then go all in on it. So I always say people vote with their wallets, right?

It's easy to get your grandma and your friends to try your drink and try the Four Loko. Oh yeah, it's good. It's very different for someone to buy it out in the wild, meaning buy in a grocery store, 7-Eleven, Costco, et cetera. But then you gotta back it up. It's gotta be good or interesting or functional or make you go crazy like Four Loko did.

Like it has to do something. Yep. And for people to come it has to do something. Yep. And for people to come back and to stand out. And so let's talk through a couple of things in the beverage game. There's one thing in the cooler space. I say, I level is by level. If I took a hundred dollar bill and wrapped it around drink Koya or Four Loko, and I put it at the bottom shelf, nobody would pay four bucks for a hundred dollar bill. Cause they can't see it.

Right. But in order to get the eye level is by level to the eye levels of the shelf, you gotta pay for it. Can you talk us through what are slotting fees and what does it mean to like deal with these chain stores to get that eye level space or really be on the major shelves and major chain stores? Yeah, so it's a little bit different in the alcohol game

versus the non-out game. And so in alcohol, you actually can't pay slotting fees, illegal to do. So you have this massive distribution network that kind of works with the retailers versus the non-out game. And so in alcohol, you actually can't pay slotting fees, illegal to do. So you have this massive distribution network that kind of works with the retailers and puts their highest priority and most profitable items eye level.

In the non-out game, it's a completely different world. It's money talks. And a lot of times you're paying what you called slotting fees, which can be in the form of free product. So we want our first case free, we wanna fill the shelf, we'll see how it goes. Sometimes it's hard money. You've got to hand over the cash. Absolutely. And that's just the beginning, as you mentioned. Like getting it on the shelf is a nice like feel-good win,

but it doesn't matter if it doesn't pull off. And getting one person to try it one time is great, but if they don't buy it again, you've lost, right? So it really is like that velocity is that key metric. You gotta keep turning. So you go meet with the grocery store and it's day one, and we're gonna have two very similar answers. And you're like, I got Drink Koya. I know it's a good drink, it's a good brand. I got all these things that are going on.

When you first interact with a grocery store, how do you convince them to take you when there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other brands in the similar category? So the first one is really just passion, right? People just have to believe in you and you have to sell a story and you have to believe in the product and someone has to be willing to take a chance on you, right? That's the first one.

Then you have to make that store work. So I can get data or a selling story, even if it's one location, saying how well it's selling, comparing it to other products. And that gives me the ammunition to go pitch other retailers and continue to grow. That one story is key. So I'm going to tell you guys an old story. So back in the days, I trademarked the catch phrase, who's your daddy, for over 300 products. I was mostly doing clothing at the beginning. Did a million dollars our first year, 9.5 million our second year with Starter Apparel. I had a big licensing deal with them.

But it being, bada boom, now I'm 23 years old, six years later, and I go public on the stock market with this Hoosier Daddy clothing brand, Ender's Drinks, and I raise the money for the Ender's Drink division. April 1st, 2005. I didn't know there was 900 other drinks on the market when I was doing this, and I'm 23 years old. I'm a baby, right?

And so I went out and my goal was to get into some stores first So I went and gave it to some 7-elevens. I gave it to the Budweiser distributor in Orange County I gave it to some local distributors in San Diego We jumped in the back of our trucks and drove it around just to get our drinks into the stores originally But then it was time to sell Now when I walked in to meet with the chain store, I'd be like, hey, we're in those 7-elevens. We've been selling at four cans a day, three cans a day, whatever the numbers were. Right. We already have Budweiser distributor

in Orange County. How many would you like to order? So I never, literally never asked them for a sale. I asked them for how many that they wanted. And in those meetings, I'd also say, yeah, we're going to meet with Costco today. We have a meeting with 7-Eleven today. I wasn't in those stores. Yeah, I was explaining who I'm meeting with, which was true. I wasn't lying. Who I'm meeting with.

Yep. And then when I get to Costco and 7-Eleven, I'm like, yeah, we met with Budweiser earlier. We already got into 1,100 of these local department stores, local independent stores. And I would just walk them through the process, and I'd say, how much do you want to order? And out of the 55,000 stores we're in, 43 distributors, I don't remember anyone saying no. And I know why, because I never asked. I love that. I have a similar story. I mean, it's about changing the narrative and having confidence, right? And so I remember our first distributor, they called me and they said, well, it sounds like you know some people, we're going to order in some product. They ordered in one pallet.

It costs us more to ship that pallet than, than it we made. Right. I flew in and I changed the narrative from asking for the sale to saying, Hey, this is on allocation. I can only give you five cases max. And it, it changed the discussion. Like, well, why can't I have more if I want it? And I think, you know, 80% of those customers ordered the max,

ordered the five cases, but everybody ordered something and we sold it out in one day. So creating that momentum, then the distributor had to reorder, you know, it was super imperative. Was there like one main story that started Fort Loco? Was there one main situation or one main news article or TV thing? Like, was there one main thing that like started the fire? Well, I'll tell you the moment we put it out. So we had four, our original version, it was six percent alcohol, it wasn't really working,

right? We had this false confidence that it was selling because distributors were buying it, putting on shelves, but it wasn't turning. Once we had that realization, we said, shit, we better innovate and figure out what does work. And so we looked at the shelf, we saw higher alcohol products, so we came out with a product called 4 Max. It did okay. Didn't set the world on fire.

My partner Jeff was talking about a 24 ounce can and my take was there's no way that somebody, it's too much, right? It's sweet. It's a lot of alcohol. And we were only talking about 9% at that time, but we got a flavor house to make it. And the first flavor we made was fruit punch and I got the sample bottle and I tasted it and my partner Jeff called me right after and he said, hey, what did you think of that product? And I said, man, this stuff tastes like liquid gold. I knew we had something there because it was so strong and the flavor covered the alcohol.

So that was my first reaction to Four Loco. The first time I knew what it was going to do was when we sent it to a distributor in in In Charlotte, North Carolina and what normally would happen is we'd send product in I'd call them a few weeks later Hey, how you guys doing? You need more? We're fine. We're fine, right this time. I called me They said hey, we need another truckload of that stuff never had happened before so within two weeks without anyone on the ground there They sold all of it out. We knew we were on. Yeah, now it's showtime. Yeah. All right, so someone has a beverage company out there or any type of consumer product, here's what you don't know.

You get a big chain store that says, hey, I wanna order $1 million of product. You need to come up with $300,000 to $500,000 to make that product. Let's just walk through a real life example. Chain store says, I wanna buy $1 million and it's January 1st. You're not going to ship it until March 1st to April 1st, somewhere in that 3 month range. When they get it 3 to 4 months later, they now want net 30, net 60, or net 90.

That means they're not going to pay you on terms for either 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days. What if your product is like ForLoco or or a drink coin and it sells through really well? So you shipped it around March 1st. They start to sell through it around March 15th, March 20th. By April 1st, like shoot, we need a new order because we sold through a third of it or half of it. And they got to place another order.

But this time we want it from more stores. We want $3.5 million. You got to come up with another 1.5 to $2 million to make $3.5 million a product. But you haven't been paid for the first million. Yeah. You see the problem here? It's a good problem to have, still a problem.

So there are things like factoring where you can do what's called PO financing or factoring of your orders. Pretty expensive, you can sometimes pay 2% to 4% for that money. Doesn't sound like a lot, that's a lot when you start to think about your margins on beverage products. Or you gotta go raise capital. So walk us through what did you do as you started

scaling chain stores so quickly. How do you scale and how do you have the capital to handle production in a fast growing market? So with Four Loko is a little bit different than Koya. So one, in alcohol, the AR is golden. Every distributor is going to pay you for that product because they put their license at risk if they don't. So you will get paid if it's 30, 60 days, whatever it may be. Our terms were all 30 days. So we did have to get some financing at the beginning. That was not my strong suit.

It was one of my partners. So he handled all those relationships to put in our line of credit and our rotating line of credit essentially. What happened when we launched Four Loco is that it was selling so fast that it was unbelievable. Luckily we get paid by the distributors, not by the retailers, which is a little bit different in Onok, so that's a different situation.

With Koya, it required us to raise money almost day one. We went out and raised $7.5 million in a three-chanch deal, so $2.5 million, two and a out and raised seven and a half million dollars in a three tranche deal. So two and a half million dollars, two and a half later, two and a half later. It gave us the money to grow exponentially because it's really hard to say no to those customers. When Whole Foods calls you and says, we're gonna launch you nationally,

that's really hard to say no to. Yeah, seriously. That's like the, literally. Because once you do that, by the way, keep this in mind, similar to what I was saying earlier about like, I'm already in 7-Eleven or I'm already in Costco or I'm already in Ralph's or whatever, that makes it easier to get other chain stores. If Whole Foods takes you nationally, it's over, right? Yeah.

You go talk to any other chain store and you're like, oh yeah, we got a Whole Foods national, you're in. That's not a question of whether they're going to take you at Ralph's, Vaughn's, Albertson's, Smith's, et cetera. All of them want you because Whole Foods took you nationally. So why does that matter to you guys listening? You might have a consumer product. Do whatever you have to do to get into that first chain store.

Even if you're only getting into one location or three locations or five locations, a favor or a friend or finding someone on LinkedIn or Twitter, get into those first few locations and use that to get the data and use that to get the leverage to talk to the other chain stores about why you can actually sell through at a major store. Okay, so you're building this crazy brand, you're flying by the seat of your pants because holy smokes, you guys were all over the news, everyone was talking about it. How do you build a plane while you're flying? What happens as you're trying to scale a business from employees, financing, dealing with the orders, dealing with the media, hiring sales ups, national sales managers, going to conventions.

There's a lot that goes on with the beverage brand or any consumer product. How do you figure out what to do when you're building the plane while you're flying? So again, I'll tell you two different stories. So with Four Loco, we were lucky that there were three of us. My partners, Jason, Jeff, and I were all active in the business. And so we kind of divided and conquered. Jason was a finance guy, he was also handling a region for sales.

Jeff was an ops guy, so he was handling production, also handling a region for sales. I was a sales and marketing guy, or M. And so we kind of divided and conquered, because in alcohol, you have to have a distributor that's exclusive to a region. So we had to set up 325 distributors across the country, mixed between the Anheuser-Busch network,

the Miller Coors network, and then the all other, like the Heineken network. So my life for a year or two was on a plane Sunday night, launch meeting Monday morning, work the streets until Friday, come home and do it again, right? Rattle-longs are super important. So that was that.

So we really like built it on the go. We'd go launch a market, we'd hire somebody to backfill ourselves, and literally all you had to really like built it on the go. We'd go launch a market. We'd hire somebody to backfill ourselves. And literally all you had to do was put it on the shelf and it would sell. With Coya, we intentionally built the company different. We started with a little bit more of infrastructure, back office support. Again, finance wasn't my strong suit. Operations is not where I want to spend my time.

So we built that on right away. And then I was going to be in every sales meeting anyways, because it's what I do. So we hired sales a little bit later. So I think it just depends on where you are, what kind of beverage that you have. One thing we didn't do, we never built goodwill in the marketing from a PR perspective with Four Loco. And so when shit hit the fan, as you said, like we didn't have anything to fall back on. The narrative was being created in the market real time. And that's really difficult to overcome from a mainstream press perspective. So, you know, maybe I would have done that different.

So when you're building a brand, you're building a company, whether it's Four Loco, Drink Quay, etc. How do you decide when the right, whether it's for Loco, Drink Koi, etc. How do you decide when the right moments are to take in capital or more importantly when to exit? Well, the exit question is really driven by the options, right? So I think a lot of people build it really early and have this plan that I'm going to build it for this ideal acquirer. But that acquirer may not be ready for a multitude of reasons or may never want to acquire you. So I think really what you have to do is look at building

just the best fundamental business, right? So the exit, I think, will really just depend on the options and the offers, right? In terms of what was the other one? When do you need to raise more money? How do you decide? Raising money. So I took the approach with Koya to only raise money when we absolutely needed it. And a lot of investors told us we should take more money, give ourselves more runway. But in my experience, more money and bigger budgets isn't always a good thing because you can spend money on things that are not productive, right? Again, when we started Fusion, we were told you got to have t-shirts, you got to have

tchotchkes, all these things that people told us we had to have to have an alcohol brand. We spent a bunch of money and did nothing. So I think budget constraint is a good way to launch a product and then raise more money when you want to pour fuel on the fire of what you know is working. So now you're building up your brand, you're building up your product, and now it's time to invest, right? You start to make some money from your career and you're building up your brand, you're building up your product, and now it's time to invest, right? You start to make some money from your career and you're doing millions and millions of dollars. How do you decide when it's time to diversify and to do some personal investments from what you're building as your business?

Well, I think I started doing some investments when we had taken a little money off the table with Fusion and did the typical thing which was go into all the wrong things. I invested in what I knew that was bars and restaurants. None of them were great. There was actually one that was a great investment, but I learned my lesson through some losses. And I said, let me leave this to the professionals. And so I really went to financial advisors

to start investing in safer bets, safer than restaurants and bars, right? I wouldn't say it was until late Infusion when I had a decent amount of disposable income and my safe investments were Were relatively big that I started investing in more risky startup, you know food and beverage Investments, so I think it depends on what your comfort level is for everybody for, I wanted to have that nest egg that was pretty certain before I started doing really high risk but high reward investments in startups. So on the making money side, we talked a little bit about that part.

On the investing money side, people have decisions to make as they're building within their career. At some point, you have to decide whether you want to keep investing into your own business or start to invest outside capital capital outside and to diversify. How about investing into your team and scaling, especially when you're scaling that fast with your businesses, how do you go out there and find the right sales managers, the right executives, the right director of marketing

and head of sales and agencies? How do you find all these different types of people to help you scale such a big business? Well, I think we made a lot of mistakes hiring as many do. The game changing thing for me was we found an advisor who brought in these personality or behavioral assessment tests and they and we use them on ourselves. Me and my partners did first and it was eye opening how how on point they were and what it really helped us do was interview better. So we would use typical recruiting agencies,

and then we'd have the candidate, but interviewing them and really understanding them is tough. So this was another tool that helped us assess if they were exactly what we were looking for. It's not good or bad, it might just not be a fit for the way we do things or what we're trying to accomplish. So I would say that that's the biggest tool that we unlocked. I really just, my mentality is we're gonna stretch ourselves beyond our

bandwidth and we're gonna backfill to relieve ourselves, right? We're not gonna we're not gonna hire ahead. That's just the way I like to do it. So because of your career, because you've had some very successful aspects of your business, especially in the beverage industry. How do you decide what you put your name, time, money, energy into when you could do a water, a juice, an alcohol, whatever? Like, I'm sure Prime would say, hey, come work for us and we'll give you a zillion dollars.

Come here, because you helped scale these multiple brands. How do you decide what you put your name, time, and energy into? I mean, for me, it's really about what I believe in, right? It's really important that I'm actually identified with and aligned with whatever I'm selling right and so so Prime's a great example the the brand is on fire no doubt fastest brand to a billion ever phenomenal it's not allowed in our house it has sucralose in it my wife is the gatekeeper and that would just not fly I'm not going to go launch a brand or run a brand that that doesn't isn't aligned right from an investing

standpoint it's really a little bit of gut and and a lot of team right so who are the people behind a brand or run a brand that doesn't isn't aligned right from an investing standpoint it's really a little bit of gut and a lot of team right so who are the people behind it what's their plan and then just do i understand what this is so i'll give you an example i invested in a brand called drippy which is the thc beverage right emerging category they recently took advantage of the uh farm act bill and use some, what is it, D9 that can be shipped nationally, right? But I understood it, even though I'm not a huge THC consumer, I understood that this is the alternative to alcohol and this could be considered the for loco of the THC beverage.

It makes perfect sense, right? For me to be involved, invest and support it. Very cool. So someone wants to get a job in the consumer product food and beverage space. What would you say to them about how they can decide to choose a brand that they can potentially go work for? I mean, if you like the product, go shop the aisles. If you find something that you taste and you like, reach out to them. You know, be aggressive. I think supporting a brand, even through your social media, it will

get you on their radar, right? There are a ton of recruiters in the space, some great ones like force brands who have deep ties in the industry who can put you in touch. But, you know, sometimes interning for free isn't such a bad thing, right? Especially if you're just starting your career out. So we mentioned ride-alongs. I want to talk about what ride-alongs are. You have to literally go on the streets. And in my example, in 2005, six, seven, eight, nine, I was out there at Southern Wine Spirits. We had 21 Budweiser's, we had a bunch of Coors Miller Pepsi's

out of the 43 distributors. And I would literally fly in and at five, six, seven in the morning, I was going in the trucks with them. So you see a Budweiser truck, little Dan was on the truck, 23 years old, like, let's go meeting with stores and like, you know, helping place my drinks on their shelves. And because they had around 18 to 22 sales reps in a, in a region, like a county, we could get on almost 500 locations in a week because we'd go see 10 to 20 stores each for per truck.

There was around 18 to 22 trucks. You can do the math. We'd go see three, four locations. Not all of them fit for an energy drink. Some of them were what's called on premise, which is a restaurant or a bar and nightclub. Not all of them would take us because Red Bull Monster and Rockstar would pay to be an exclusive for that restaurant or bar or nightclub. So sometimes we get in, sometimes we wouldn't.

And so we'd go visit. Let's call it 18 locations in a day. There's 18 to 20 trucks, and that's a couple hundred locations a day. Over the course of five days, boom, you've seen a thousand locations, and around 500 might pick us up. We would then leave that mark and I'd go do it again,

and I'd go do it again. And I always talk about like from 23 to 27, it was like Groundhog Day to me. I don't remember anything else. I don't remember a party, I don't remember a girlfriend. I don't remember life. Like I, those things happened. I had a girlfriend and I had life and I had food and, but I don't remember any of it. Right. I went to car washes. I went to gas stations. I went to liquor stores. I went to grocery stores and all I cared about was making sure my can was facing the right

way. Absolutely. For four years. Right. Right. So talk us through having, having to have an obsession when you're in this, by the way, it's not healthy for Right. So talk us through having having to have an obsession when you're in this. By the way, it's not healthy for everyone. So I want to be clear. You have to have an obsession when you want to scale a brand product or service. If you really want it to grow and beat out the hundreds of other brands, products and services on the same shelves, you have to be obsessed. Absolutely. Talk to us about that part of the entrepreneur mentality that people may not understand that you can't just be like sitting in your office and scaling a beverage brand. Yeah, the absolute key to success in the

beverage industry is feet on the street. You have to do store visits. There's just no way to really impact the business from behind a computer, right? So you go in, you do the meeting, as you mentioned, you get the approval, but you have to be in those stores and your team have to be in those stores. And often, which you may have experienced It's like the last man in wins, right? Whoever went in there last moves the shelf around gains the space they want hides the competitors product It's a it's a street level game. Yeah, and It's it's kind of funny now because my wife and kids will laugh will drive down the street

I will peek into a 7-eleven and from the road. I'll say oh they have oh, they have three flavors of Koi. And they say, how the hell do you see? Because that's all I'm doing all day, right? So you cannot underestimate the value of feet on the street and presence in store. We launched nationally with Starbucks back in October. And I was in a meeting, a finance meeting. Me and the guy said, let's go grab some coffee. I walked into the Starbucks.

I didn't notice Koi on the shelf. I asked the woman behind the register. She said, I think we have something back. I said, I'll go get it. Grabbed it, brought it out, stocked a shelf right there. And the guy that I was with was so amazed by that, but that's what it takes to be successful in beverage. Absolutely.

Yeah. Okay. Why is it important for brands to align themselves with charity nowadays? Well, from a brand perspective, we have not aligned ourselves with a charity. I do see why people do it and there's cause-based marketing around it. And then there's just things that you should do from a personal perspective. We like to support things that, again again are aligned with us and meaningful. But I can't speak to why a brand should do it because we haven't done it.

Do you want to? I would love to. I think if they were the right, you know, I think it has to, it has to fit. If there's the right cause, I'll give you an example. There's a, there's a brand that's in our space, I won't name them, that has a partnership with a human trafficking cause. Great cause, no doubt about that. It just for me doesn't click on what is the connection between the brand and the cause. So if I were to ever do it, I think it would just have to really be aligned with the brand and what the brand stands for. Absolutely. So in your personal life, a lot of things

happen in a career, right? People make money, they lose money, they go through ups and downs. And as they hit a certain pinnacle, they start to have what's called generational wealth. One of the questions I ask a lot of celebrities, athletes, and business people is a pretty emotional one. And I've never had the same answer once.

As you scale through all these businesses and Chris Hunter passes away, 100 years from now, 200 years from now, modern medicine, you're gonna live a long time. At some point when you finally pass away, and let's say you've got tens of millions, hundreds of millions, God willing, maybe you have billions of dollars,

what do you leave to your children? So my wife and I have had a lot of conversations around this topic We don't leave them a big bucket of money to go make all kinds of mistakes with What we do is try to find ways to support them doing what makes an impact for them And I'll give you an example. I only want my kids to do what makes them happy, not what makes money. For me it was very different. Growing up, all I wanted to do was make money. I would figure out a way to do that.

That was first and foremost. Fortunately my kids aren't going to have to do that. I would love it if one of my sons says, I want to be a teacher. Teacher isn't a high paying job and we can subsidize his income so he can live a certain lifestyle and do what really drives him from a passion perspective. So I'm not gonna say numbers, but like will we leave our kids something that I think they could do damage with

to themselves or the world? Probably not. We will make sure that they have a nice life. And I also think there's real value in accomplishing things on your own. And I also think there's real value in accomplishing things on your own. And I would be, I would be robbing them of that opportunity if we gave them everything on a silver platter. Absolutely. All right, guys, the money Mondays is very important to me because we need to

have these discussions. We have to have these topics because we all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. And I think it's rude to not talk about it. We have to have these topics because we all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. And I think it's rude to not talk about it. We have to have discussions about real life stuff. If you die with zillion dollars, what do you leave to your children? If you're hiring staff, should you pay them 60 grand or 80 grand, 100 grand? People need to be paid salary, we need to talk about it.

People need to get commissions, they need to understand, should I ask for 1% or 2%, 3%, they don't know, because it's rude to talk about it. So it's important to have these discussions, share it with your friends, check out Chris Hunter on social media, check out Drink Koi, obviously as they're scaling their brand. Make sure when you go to the grocery store to taste it because it's freaking good and it's healthy for you, so that's a good combination and it's rare to have that good combination. And really, as I mentioned,

like we don't do this, there's no ads on this show. We've been around for a year now. We've been number one for 43 weeks because of you guys number five to number three in the business category I like I just I need you guys to have these discussions to so share this with your friends talk with your employees about it talk with your family about it and then ask the right questions and bring it up to your friends and family and co-workers because We're in a very interesting time in our world, especially during election years where there's a lot of chaos And these are the times you really get closer to people around you and really buckle down and really figure out what's going to go on in your world. Any last words?

No, I love what you're doing. I mean, I think it is important to talk about money and not only as a family, but as a broader group and share the information and knowledge. So great job doing what you're doing. All right, guys, we'll guys on money money's comm and right here on the money money's podcast next week