The Money Mondays - The Entrepreneur’s Playbook: From Living Room Startups to Billion-Dollar Brands 🏢 EP140

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

In this episode of Money Mondays, Dan Fleyshman sits down with powerhouse entrepreneurs Cameron Forni and Dan DaSilva to talk about building disruptive brands, scaling companies to billion-dollar valuations, and staying ahead in competitive industries.---Cameron Forni is an entrepreneur, investor, and brand builder best known for founding Select Cannabis, which sold to Curaleaf in a landmark $1.27 billion deal. He recently launched Adaptooria, a functional hemp beverage designed to help people manage stress, anxiety, and depression, with a mission to support mental health causes and inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs.---Dan Dasilva is an entrepreneur and early pioneer in online marketing. By 19, he made his first million through affiliate marketing and went on to scale ventures in dropshipping, financial publishing, and copywriting, his strongest skill. Known for creating high-performing funnels and campaigns in both the business and health niches, Dan now focuses on affiliate marketing and publishing at scale, while pursuing his passion for philanthropy and building an animal sanctuary.---Like this episode? Watch more like it 👇Meet the Man Who Did Over $4B in Acquisitions - Roland Frasier 💵: https://youtu.be/Ozb2GxLvo9ATravis Lubinsky & James Malinchak on Building PROFITABLE Brands 📈: https://youtu.be/Q6x_VQPFBuoDo This To Build A Profitable Investment Portfolio in 2024 💸 : https://youtu.be/lvgy6lSaCUMPeter Voogd & Dan Zrihen: Sales Strategies That Made Them Millions 💵: https://youtu.be/HlT3MVS1jigWatch 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=1Dan Fleyshman,The Money MondaysLearn more here: https://themoneymondays.comWatch all the podcast episodes: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs0D-M5aH-0IOUKtQPKts-VZfO55mfH6kLet’s Connect...Website: https://themoneymondays.comPodcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-money-mondays/id1663564091Twitter: https://twitter.com/themoneymondaysLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-money-mondays/about/TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@themoneymondaysFB: https://www.facebook.com/The-Money-Mondays-110233585203220/

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a very special edition of the Money Monday's podcast, where we cover three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give away a charity. Our guest today, I've known for many, many, many years. He's built a zillion dollar company. He's now building his next zillion dollar company. So we're going to have fun diving into all things about money and investing, but also about building the brand.

And why, going into his next venture, why did he choose this cash? category and why he's going to scale it. It's such a big, big, big business. Now, as you guys know, as we're covering those three core topics, this podcast will be under 40 minutes because the average commute to work is 45 minutes. The average workout is 45 minutes. This episode will be between 32 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure. I like to tell you that because we have a 92% listen to rate. That means that people actually listen to the whole podcast, unlike a lot of podcasts where people just kind of rants and rave for a long time, we keep this very streamlined, very focused. And also, this podcast,

it's not just about you. It could be for people from your past, present, and future. There might be people that are going to be very, very beneficial if you share this podcast with them because of what happens today from Cameron Forney. So without further ado, Cameron, give them the quick two-minute bio, so we get straight to the money. All right. Thank you, Dan, for having me.

Appreciate it. My name is Cameron Forney. My last company that I built, I'm a serial entrepreneur, my last company was Select Oil, Select Cannabis. That was also Cure Partners. I sold that to Cure Leaf. So if you know those vaporizers with a little less circle on it, that was kind of my creation and built that up.

I did start of my living room, $90,000, my first two months, $900,000 next year, $9 million next year, $40,000, $1.17 million. I said for $980 million U.S., 1.27 billion Canadian to Cureleaf, which is a publicly traded cannabis company. It's the largest cannabis company in the world. They do about $1.3 billion a year. I stayed on as the president of Selected Cureleaf, did that as long as possible. and then, you know, waived, you know, a non-compete to get back into the space and really, really, you know, batten down the hatches on what I wanted to do next.

So I spent about five years, you know, investing in companies, made 27 different investments and realized I really love building brands and I really love operating. So I've been at this for about two and a half years now. I've spent about $2 million just in formulation and taste and function. I started this because my mom was basically, you know, going through dementia and Alzheimer's. and so I think a lot of people's parents these days, your parents as well. Sugar brain is killing us. And, you know, thank God we have RFK in office now, right?

He's given him new motivation and inspiration of life. But sugar brain is killing us. So I want to make something that me and my monk could get along with, you know, three grams of sugar, sugars from McAve, monk fruit, anti-depressant, anti-anxiety beverage. It's a functional, high-functioning hemp seltzer. So I know you ask what I do, but this is what I do now.

So I just want to kind of bring it all together. So we have these products on the table for people that are watching on YouTube and other platforms, They can actually see that right now on this table, there's four packs of different drinks, there's different flavors. Talk us through, why did you dive into this category? Absolutely. So the functional space, and by the way, this brand is called Adaptiforia.

For all you watching at home, adaptiforia, helping you adapt to a new euphoric state. We have two functions. We have unwind and we have energized. And these are two different functions that you just need at night. One time you get home from a tough day at work, crack it, you need to unwind, right? You want to go back out and be socializing. We've actually trademarked the modern socializer. We've trademarked the hangout without the hangover.

So if you're a modern socializer and you're not drinking anymore, which you know the alcohol category is just getting decimated right now. If you look at Gen Z is drinking one-tenth of the amount of alcohol that any other generation is drink in history, that's a big swing. It's a $30 billion swing in that category. And you're seeing even a larger swing than that. Look at Anheuser-Busch. Look what's happening in that industry.

you're seeing that people are tired of sugar. They're tired of sugar brain, and they're trying to be tricked and lied to. And they were lied to with dextrose, sucralose, cyfrichs, corn, syrup, zygum. There's a million different trade names for sugar. And I think we've all just had enough. And I think Gen Z is really, really kind of bringing it home there that they say, I don't want to be hungover, I don't want to be dehydrated, I want to be happy. And, you know, what touched me a lot was, you look at my, I've got three kids now,

I've got a daughter that's five, and I was looking around the table going, by college, 20% of all college students are going to be on antidepressants. Wow. Like, why? Like, college was the most happy, exciting time in my life. Like, why is the world so bad now that you have to be on antidepressants at this age? And then you're actually reducing your dopamine receptors. So you're never actually going to be as happy as you were prior to these anti-depressants.

So I said, all right, stop it. A retired life is over. Investing life is over. I got to make a beverage. It's going to work. And we did a partnership with the University of Oregon, 10,000 surveys and studies. What is depressing people? What is going on in the world?

And depression was number one. Anxiety was number two. It's causing trillions of damage in our economy right now. We're seeing suicide rates at all the time high, divorce rates at all the time high, and addiction rates at all the time high. So we said, how do we do something about this in a low calorie, 15 calories, three grams of sugar? We have Oshuaganda, lowers your cortisol levels.

We have rodeola, anti-exiety, anti-depression. We used all ancient Chinese herbs. We're the first Envirocan certified beverage on the market, meaning we're OCal certified organic all the way through to the top. We can't say organic because it's still a hemp, but we are Envirocan clean. So I said, all right, how do we do this? How do we impact our community? You've been such a motivation and inspiration for our community and giving back.

So we give 2% of our revenue back to you, mental health and wellness, dealing with addiction, and encouraging and inspiring entrepreneurship. So our first check went to University of Oregon, helping kids that have dealt through their hardships, which we call it your time to adapt moment. What was your time to adapt moment where you had a hardship and you had to overcome it? So we're helping people adapt to the new world. So, yeah, it's a lot. So back in my days, I had an energy drink. I had 43 distributors, 55,000 retail stores. I took a public in 2005, so exactly 20 years ago.

And over the course of those four years, I don't remember anything but selling drinks. Nothing. I don't remember a date. I don't remember a birthday. Nothing. I drove around to every distributor. I did what's called ride-alongs, where I would literally get in the semi-truck with the drivers on a Budweiser truck.

How you do it? And I would go store to store, and I'd pitch them while they're putting Budweiser in the cooler, I'm pitching them buy my energy drink. You were up against thousands of brands. How do you stand out in the beverage category? Great question. I mean, shipping liquid is quite a challenge. Heavy.

Yeah, it's heavy. And, you know, luckily I've, you know, capital is obviously very important, right? We have incredible investors. I've capitalized a lot of this myself. But you're right. You have to go out door to door, store to store, and select it, which is 1,700 doors. But the difference is I was bringing a box, you know, one foot by one foot. and that was $20,000.

Now I'm shipping, you know, four pallets that it's $20,000. There's a big difference, right? So that is quite difficult. But, you know, I'm just so inspired by running out of options to drink. You know, Ollie Pop and Poppy, I love, right? Those came out of nowhere. I became instant fans. And then I'm like, you know, I still, I'm a cannabis person.

I love flour. And, you know, I've got three kids now. I can't smoke into the house. I can't smoke, you know, anywhere around them. And I want to be social. So how do we do that and how do we have fun, you know, at home with the kids, with the family, with your parents, at Thanksgiving? So really what we're doing is we're kind of creating these moments and these moments of family, these moments of togetherness. And that's really where we're marketing.

So we're doing everything from affiliate marketing where you can come in. My goal is to make a thousand millionaires in this company. I made several millionaires the last, but I want to make a thousand millionaires. And the only way to do that is to teach people how to make money, as you do in this podcast, and encourage and inspire entrepreneurs. So we do, you know, a referral program, which not only gives a discount on shipping, but it also gives 15% referral income to someone. So let's say you just got laid off. Oh, man, time to adapt, right?

If it's not, let's not stress, let's not go hit the bottle. Let's adapt and let's come out with a clear image of what we want to do and where we want to go in the future. So we teach people how to become an influencer, right? How to influence and talk to your peer groups about it and how to say, hey, you know, I had a great experience on this product. All of our beverages are five milligrams. I want everyone to have a great experience their first time no matter what.

I never want someone to be cross-fated or too high or too stoned. My goal is great experience, customer experience, every single time. And if you can do that, you can win customers. So where I set myself apart on the other beverages, not only the target of the high-functional

sales or market that we're going after, but also where we offer a unique product experience. We've won Best T. T.H.C. drink at 2025 by Didewater. Go ask chat, GBT. go out Lama, about adaptive for you. It'll tell you it's the best THC drink out there.

And that's because we're targeting this by anxiety, depression, give back, and it just had to make people happy. And I think that's really where we find our unique area. And our method is the monster method, which is liquid delips. Let people try it, and then they buy it. So we are sampling. We've got some big announcements. It's one of the largest alcohol retailers in Florida coming.

We've got one of the biggest announcements with, I'd probably get an announcement. at DoorDash, it's going to be very, very large and very broad. And then we have some other unique opportunities with some big boxers coming up that we're looking forward to. So we're looking at specific ways to, you know, get to the customer. We really love direct-to-consumer, but we also are ready to distribute, you know, when that time comes. So, you know, if you just go straight to the shelf, this has got to talk off the shelf. It's got to literally stand off the shelf and buy it. And it's such a mouthful, talking about all the, you know,

nutraceutical grade ancient Chinese herbs in here and, you know, all the functions that I really need to talk to people to sell the beverage. So I think the DTC is your best option for that. Very cool. So with your previous brand, you were also up against thousands, a thousand, thousands, thousands of brands that all, a lot of them came and wins.

But you built one of the only ones to actually go exit and have this huge impact and still out there, obviously, big in the market. Talk us through that experience, like going out there and fighting the good fight also at the same time, dealing with legislation, dealing with rules, what you're not allowed to spend money on marketing, you can't pay for commercials or meta, like, how did you scale that brand to be that big? I mean, it was a lot of work. You know, one quality product and consistency always wins and compliance wins. So what we've done with this product, for instance, is we've ensured that when all the cards fall,

this still remains under the USDA Farm Bill 2018 Act, saying it's only 10 milligrams maximum per 12-ounce can to be 0.03%, 0.3% by dry weight. And no one else is doing that. Everyone's doing 50 milligrams, 100 milligrams, right? They're doing that with edibles too. So our job has always been compliance. I was on regulatory advisory commission setting pesticide regulations and standards. So select set a standard that set itself apart from everyone else.

That's the same thing we're doing here. The second was the right people. You have to have the right people involved in your business. I was lucky enough to partner with one of the greatest entrepreneurs in Oregon. I was also honored to partner with people like, you know, Rich Paula. He was a good friend of ours who's an incredible master network, Jake Alsop and so many others that were great Sam Knav. And, you know, these guys helped us expand this brand so rapidly.

And now what we're seeing is, you know, you also need to be capitalized, right? And we have some incredible investors behind us. We just did a very, very small friends and family round. So we've taken in just over 3 million, 3.5 billion. And we are looking at now that we've generated about just under half a million dollars of revenue in just under four months, that now we'd be looking at roughly 10x round in a Q1. So, you know, I think that, you know, being capitalized is absolutely critical to your success and to stay alive. So, you know, I think as long as you're maintaining the, you know, appropriate products, quality standards,

you're showing sales growth, you know, you're not being greedy, and you're growing in a company that investors are happy to be a part of. You're going to be successful. So as the business starts to make more and more revenue, especially in beverages, that means you actually need way more capital. I'm going to give you guys a quick story. So my energy drink, it was called Who's Your Daddy? I had that slogan back in the days. And on year two, we're just crushing it. We're in all these distributors. We've got a bunch more Budweiser distributors to help us. And we get to finally, the phone call that we wanted was Costco.

And the way we got into Costco was I would send four packs of drinks to the security guards and the secretaries, never to the buyers, never to the executives, never to the staff. Security guards and secretaries, why? Because everyone interacts and sees them. You walk in, you walk out. What do you say by to? Security guards or secretaries. And so we finally got the phone call, and the guy was like, I know what you did.

He knew I was sending them over and over and over. But they liked it. It was cranberry pineapple and it was a green tea. And we had the zero sugar, zero calories, and zero carbs. So 41 stores was $2.4 million for an opening order. First we did one store, obviously. Sure, you got to test it. You got to make sure you sells through.

But then the first actual order, $2.4 million. Okay. Sounds cool. Let me give you guys an example. Let's say that they order on January 1st, okay? Let's say you got a phone call from Costco, it's January 1st. I want $2.4 million. You're giving PTSD right now, but keep going.

So to make $2.4 million, you've got to put up around a million dollars to manufacture. Let's call it anywhere from 30 to 50% is your cost to manufacture it, then factory and shipping, etc. So let's say you need a million dollars for that 2.4. That's January 1st. They want you to ship it usually 60 to 90 days later. So let's call that March 1st or April 1st. They then pay you net 3. or net 60 after delivery.

So now you're at May 1st or June 1st to get paid. But wait, what if your drink's really good? Time to adopt. What if your drink tastes like adapt? What if your drink's really good and you sell through? That's what happened for us. They reordered $5.5 million. Oh, no.

I didn't get paid for the first one. You're like, woo, but no. And so I had to scramble, call everyone, figure out $5.5 million order. I needed almost $2.5 million to make it. and ship it, plus merchandising fees, marketing fees, displays. They want to, like, different displays outside the stores. POP, which is point-of-purchase display, like all these things. So let's call it $2.5 million.

I didn't get paid on the first one yet. So I scrambled around to get the $2.5 million. We got it. Hold on. And then they're like, okay, we're ready for an all-star buy. Oh, no. I mean, yay. I mean, no.

This is what makes the CFO cringe, by the way. And we couldn't do it. We literally, they were too big. that we had to turn down all store by and for them like okay well we're going to call red bull monster rock star just like normal and that's what they'll do and so why is that important to you either have to be capitalized in advance you have to do what's called factoring factoring is where you'll pay sometimes 2% per month and a factor is someone will say I'll buy your paper I'll buy your order your invoice from Costco so let's say

the order was 5.5 million they'll pay you 5.1 million for example on the 5.5 so taking a haircut, you're losing out on money, but you're getting the money up front, or they're staggering the payments to penny. But then they're taking the risk that Costco's going to pay. Well, Costco is what's called a paper. Yeah. Right? They know they're going to pay.

It's Costco. So they know they're going to pay. The problem is you're at 10 to 12% interest already. Yes. By the time they pay. Five months at 2% is 10%. Uh-oh. That can get very expensive when your margins are only 20% to 40% depending on your shipping, etc.

So I want you guys to think about this. When you're making a brand, a product, or a service, think about the capital you need when things go well. People always talk about things when they're screwing up or sucking. What happens when things go right? As you scale, things can break. So you've got to have capital for that. All right, let's talk about the investing side. You had this exit, and you mentioned 27 different investments.

You get bombarded by offers. Real estate, stock market, cash-flying businesses, your friends opening a restaurant, a nightclub, a membership club, a golf course. your friends doing a high rise, a building, there's Bitcoin, there's Ethereum, there's so many things you could be investing into. How do you decide with all those different variables what to put your money into? I mean, it was quite difficult, especially as a cannabis entrepreneur. I wasn't allowed in UBS yet. I wasn't allowed a financial advisor. So that left me as my own financial advisor for quite some time there. And we know, I created $2.2 billion in value from my living room and, you know, made hundreds of millions of dollars.

hundreds of millions of dollars as well so you know it's part about being an entrepreneur you have to learn the playbook and learn how that works but you know it's okay so I mean when you get bombarded by deals how do you pick what you'd like to invest into it's got to be something you're passionate about and it's got to be something that that you are driven by or that you have done enough research in that market that you know that there's going to be an overall sector growth in and I really you know doubled down on cannabis you know I've done brands for like Jay Z, Post Malone, Birdman, Jim Belushi, Rohan Marley, Marley Naturals, we do

Ricky Williams. You know, I've done a lot of these celebrities brands, and we kind of got bombarded by a lot of that and, you know, wanted to look at it. And celebrity brands aren't a bad thing. It's just, you know, in cannabis, you can't really market and advertise. So to have that megaphone, it was a good thing. So I did several investments in those spaces. And then I did several investors in crypto.

I think, you know, as you know, crypto is going to be something's going to be around for a while and I've been very successful in that. But it was difficult. It was just, I had to do some things that I was very interested in. And honestly, you should invest in something you're knowledgeable in. So I invested in several things

I was not knowledgeable in, and those have turned out to be complete horse stores. So I think knowledge, passion, and analytics. Why do you think it's important for people to invest in to themselves? It's either study, read, go to courses, hire mentors, coaches. Why do you think people should invest

into their minds and to their bodies? That's number one. You got to invest in yourself. And that's how you invest in wealth. If you're not invested in yourself weekly, you know, like you've eight hours, right, for work, you've eight hours for sleep, you have eight hours to do something. And, you know, again, hopefully it's not doom scrolling, you know, for people say this. But I'm watching my kids do that as well.

So you have to really make time. I'm taking, you know, work and leadership, executive leadership courses right now during my free time. And as an entrepreneur startup where I'm focused on not only looking at my investments, but I'm also focused on operationally running this as CEO and founder and going store to store still, you almost think that there's no time in a day and it's not possible it's not possible for new opportunities but there is and it's really about time allocation learn where your time goes invested in yourself is investing in wealth and put yourself first you got to put yourself first in your education first and everything else will come so sacrifice to the time and it all pays off

yeah so as people are growing their businesses they're going to get pitched a lot of different things this is going to be sometimes an awkward or hard question for people How do you say no to deals? I mean, it depends. Are you an investment fund? Are you a family office? You know, because it could go with your thesis. Just a person.

Just a person. How do you say no? You know, it's not the right time. It's not the right sector for me. It's not the right business for me, you know. I think that's probably your best way to say now. But saying no is quite important. It really has to be something that you've done the research on and you've done your diligence on.

And, you know, the investor class has to be, you know, significant. and you have to know leverage and understand where your point of leverage is. I understand if you can add value and create accretive value to this business or if you're just going to be a blank check or, you know, dumb money. Dumb money, yeah. So I never want to be dumb money. I always want to be, you know, value-eyed and accreative value. So I always try to loop in some sort of advisory role as well and help guide and steer the

company. So you mentioned some really big names with the JZs and Post Malones. Talk about investing into talent. Like why have a face? a celebrity like a Ricky Williams, like, why invest into talent rather than just scale a generic brand? So, you know, Jay-Z is a big name, right? And I've lost $9 million with Jay-Z. But, you know, Jim Belushi is a much, much smaller name than Jay-Z. And Jim Volusci got the number one cannabis product in the state of Oregon. Come on. Jim Volusci, yeah. You know why? Because he cares. He cares about

people. He hustles. He goes to the stores. He plays his harmonica. He takes pictures with every butt tender. When he leaves, people are so electric with his brand and what he's done that they want more. And that's what I love. Ricky Williams is the same way. We have Ricky Williams here at Goldflower in Florida. And, you know, Ricky Williams draws an enormous cloud. Rohan Marley draws an enormous crowd, right? And we can't advertise in Florida. So there's no way to advertise or even talk about it. So I can just tell you that the partners of that goldflower or one of our companies are these two celebrities. And they can put it out on their Instagram, but they can't market it. So it's very unique. And state by state is different. There's

different rules and regulations. You have a different set. of rules in every single state. And the hemp beverage is one of the first that it's a little bit more even playing field, but there's still subtleties like Oregon. You can only, you can have a five milligram can, but it's got to be two servings of 2.5 milligrams each. Guess what? I've made one run of five milligram, one serving.

So now I can't, you know, actively, you know, go out for that market without stickering every can. You know, Georgia needed a special sticker on the back. It's only Georgia related, right? So, you know, there's all these different little nuances that you have to be ready to adapt. and that's why we own time to adapt.com, right? When things get hard when life throws your curveball,

how you change and how you accept that change is going to be what's going to make you succeed or fail in life. So we say time to adapt. And that actually brings me to my point of we want your biggest time to adapt moment where I'm actually doing a $10,000 giveaway to whoever has the best time to adapt moment. And what that means is, just lost my job.

Oh, time to adapt, right? Instead of hitting the bottle, I took a different offer. Or, oh, I just lost my girlfriend to OnlyFans, time to adapt. Mine was, you know, my car, my wife was driving a car and it had a suicide door on it. And she's taking the kids to school and she drove out with the door open and just chicken winged it. Instead of getting mad or upset. Yeah, it's a nice, very nice car.

Instead of getting mad or upset. And, you know, I just said, made it into a time to adapt moment, which I'll be posting later this week announcing the competition. And, you know, it was funny and we made a good play out of it. So I'm going to do a $10,000 giveaway to whoever gets the most. likes most shares by April 14th of 2026 so we're going to launch that campaign I think that could be something cool for people just remember when when times are hard and something goes down remember your time-to-adadap moment when life throws your curveball how are you going to overcome it time to adapt so so a lot

of products can get onto a shelf and they might sell once but they don't get reordered because of taste or quality or something about them why is it important to invest in so quality like you mentioned spending almost two million on the quality of the product. Taste is everything. At the end of the day, like, you know, there is a massive shift going on in our community with health and wellness, and we're all seeing that, right?

And we've had, if you look at Coke, Coke's got like 39 grams of sugar, right, in 12 ounces, right? And 150 calories. We're 15 calories, right, and 3 grams of sugar. And it's all, like, nutraceutical-grade, you know, ingredients. And, you know, what I'm basically seeing out there is, if you can overcome the taste of cannabis, you're going to win. Because everyone out in this market is making a weed soda pop.

I call it a weed soda. You're taking soda water. You're adding simple syrup or they're taking soda. They're adding juice concentrate. And then there are no other functions, you know? And we're, you know, not only rapid onset, which I think one of the biggest things that we've really achieved, you know, coming from my background is select oil. I owned 30% of the global oil supply at one point.

We did oil for every major brand. I gave wild their first oil, right? I gave Marley Natural's their first oil in Oregon. So I've been in the oil market for so long that I've learned nano-emulsions, micro-emulsions, and different onset times. And what we've created here is a five-minute onset, which is so unique. Because I've always said a cannabis beverage will never work until I can share someone drinking a beer, and then we can drink it, and we can both feel the effects together.

So we can feel the effects together. But typically you get a bitterness that runs down the middle of your tongue and that lingers in the back of your throat. And that's just something that if you want to be a mass market brand, you can't taste the cannabis. And that's why we were one of the first companies to put distal in edibles. And that started making our edibles go off the shelf because it didn't taste like cannabis. And I know there's a lot of people that, oh, I want to taste the indica, the sotiva, the hybrid. That's not the mass market. The mass market is how do we create something socially acceptable?

How do we create something that my mom can drink? It's a 65-year-old Southern Baptist who believes it was the devil's lettuce. And now she's going, oh, my gosh, I like this. This makes you feel good. It's better than a, you know, vodka or something. And how do we make something that, you know, every generation basically thinks tastes good?

And that's really what we've done here is we've absolutely nailed the taste. I'd love to get your reaction on it, too. I'd love for you to try one. Of course. So on the charity side, why do you think it's important for a household, for you as a father,

to have some type of charity involvement for those kids to see, not about the money part, but actually be a part of something. Why do you think it's important for kids to see charity? It's critical to building their character and who they are as a person.

You know, you've been so inspiring with that is, you know, we give back, you know, to motivate and encourage and inspire because so many people now are at their all-time lows and just like what you do with the world's largest toy drive, right? You bring so many smiles to people's faces. You're the real Santa Claus.

You're the real Santa Claus. You're the real Santa Claus. The amount of joy that you bring through, how many toys do you guys do? Oh, my God, hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands of toys during Christmas. Like, there's so many kids out there, and you know the numbers, of that aren't getting those toys, that aren't feeling gratified during these times.

And, you know, that's what it's about, is making people happy, leaving the world a better place than where we came. And, you know, I think that's what's so unique with RFK, you know, is, you know, he says you judge a civilization based on how they treat their, their weakest among the population. And that's really what we're doing is we're helping anxiety, we're having mental health.

You know, this is great for war veterans. people with PTSD and you know that's why we gave the 2% give-back components so my kids can be there with me as we're giving a check you know to encourage inspire entrepreneurship and help drive through addiction and mental health so I've been through mental health challenges myself so you know sold the company and thought I was on top of the world and you know had unlimited money and you know it's never been more lonely in my life than being at the very top you know lost friends lost resource lot lost a lot of things and to help kind of heal from that by also helping others is tremendous for me, for my family, and I think for the entire

entrepreneurial community. So I'd like to see more of that and like people to follow your lead, Dan. So someone out there listening, you know, there's been this kind of weird feeling about billionaires and people being wealthy this last few years in particular in the media. And it's frustrating because the amount of people that Amazon employs. So when people look at Jet Base is like, oh, I can't believe it has a $400 million yacht. that's nothing financially for Jeff Bezos. But then they look at him and they think, oh, well, he's too wealthy, too rich.

Well, he employs millions of people. That's almost a form of charity to me. When you're employing people, and you're giving them $60,000 a year, $80,000 a year, $200,000 a year, et cetera, times that by millions, he's literally changing the entire global economy from the inside out. And so I say that because there's this weird connotation that billionaires a bad word. So you have this exit. it for nearly a billion dollars, 1.27 Canadian billion. And you said you got lonely or quiet

or some of your friends went away. What do you think that is when someone hears that that's like, well, I make 60 grand of years, screw that. I want that problem. Talk about the reality of like what happens in life. Look, it's lonely at the top. The loneliest job in the world is the CEO position, as you know, right? You're everyone's best friend though when they get the paycheck. You're everyone's enemy when times are tough and there's budget cuts and crisis. And then the person you can really have a conversation with or depend on is, you know, yourself a lot of times or your wife. And that can make it very difficult. You don't want to tell her. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes you don't want to tell her because you don't want to stress her out because she's raising

the three kids. Right. So, so you're right, you know, I use Michael Phelps as a perfect example of this. The most awarded Olympian history. Right. Yeah. Dealt with massive mental health crisis. Right. Use cannabis, use cannabis products instead of alcohol and Loki got arrested in trouble with alcohol, and Phelps stayed at home, ate his 7,000 calories, and then pumped out American Olympic gold medal championships. He is an inspiration to me. Apollo Ono is an inspiration, a good friend, and I'm trying to get him on board with this. And, you know, it's, once you get to that top, it's amazing, you're celebrated, your pictures on all these magazines, and now you're the person paying for every single bill. You're the person that's always being mooched on.

You're the person that's always the enemy if something goes wrong in the company. And then if you're a really good company, you're under lawsuits. You're going to get sued. for sure. And it's just for people that want quick handouts and easy money. And, you know, it's just, it's very difficult, it gets very lonely. So you've got to have a good routine of, you know, getting sunlight, working out, talking to people. You know, when COVID, people lost, I mean, I sold my company in February 2020. Like, wow. Yeah. So imagine like, now I'm locked up with all this money. It's like, what do we do, you know? I got into poker, which is a really bad idea. Don't get into poker after you saw your company. Phil Helmuth, you know, and he joined the advisor board of one of my companies. Oh, did he? He was great at poker. He put me in the Dragonsden Poker game, and I lost a lot of money very rapidly. It was like, it was interesting people, Draymond Green, all these guys, I'm just getting smoked. But, you know, I think that people lost their community, lost their safety net.

They lost their community when COVID took place because everyone was locked down. People still haven't really rebuilt that. You know, the socializing and then marketing and the networking has gone down. I mean, you're a master. It's different for you. You're still probably pumping the same numbers as you were. But there's a lot of people that fell out of those relationships and got lonely and depressed. And, you know, why we say is for the modern socializers, because we want to create happy hours that are a non-alcoholic happy hours. So modern socializer hours. Where people are coming, they're ordering an adaptive for you at their favorite restaurant or Maison Mirat right here in Brickle in Miami. And you can sit with other entrepreneurs.

We do an entrepreneur meetup at Maison Murat once a month. And we sit and we talk and we have speakers come in, we have pro athletes come in, and we just find a new way to socialize, you know, with a different product than just alcohol. But you can't drink alcohol too. Nothing against it. Love alcohol. Love my champagne, love my tequila. But I just find myself drinking this at the end of the night. Two of these, two unwinds at the end of the night, made me sleep like a baby. I sit better than I've ever slept. And then an energizer two before I go out is lovely. So I try to have my balance. If I do a couple tequila, it's like, Dan, it's 12 o'clock. What do you do?

do you want to go out um so i've got to like learn how to how to balance myself for sure all right so there's only one question i ask at the end of every episode and i've never gotten the same answer in over 200 episodes you've already sold one company for a billion dollars you're going to sell this one for two billion dollars for example and you're probably going to do more companies because you got the itch right you love the game so billions and billions of dollars of revenue generated and exits etc at the end of the day when you pass away what percentage of your net worth, do you leave to those three kids? That's a great question.

But one thing that you should be clear on as an entrepreneur, like you were saying, to raise money, I only ended up with 8% of my company when I sold it, right? And then less than that after taxes. It sounds like you sold it for all this money, and then you own stock, and the company, and the stock does well or does not well when you leave. You know, there's a lot of variance.

But, you know, for your kids, that is like the most critical thing, is how are you leaving that next generation? How is that next generation going to bring up? And, you know, I've already planned all this out, luckily. And it's, you know, their college is funded. They're, you know, they're never going to have to worry about a home. They're never going to have to worry about college.

Never going to worry about health care. Those are already done and set forever. Now it's, you know, again, I drive my kids to be entrepreneurial. So my daughter has to work to make money to buy an iPhone or app on her tablet or she has to donate some toys. And then other toys that she just got bored with quick, she has to sell and then buy a new toy and capitalize. I love it. So we do do our donation. but we also are teaching and instilling commerce into our kids.

So I've set a fund together where they can invest money into businesses that they believe in, and then they can live off the income of those companies. But they do not get a check. They can get a check for their home to get that, but then they owe the trust money. So they have to work. They have to work. Totally guys weren't going to get the same answer. This is great.

They have to be entrepreneurial. They have to work. And nothing is given. They have to earn it. But I think health care is given, and I think education should be given. So those two I'm on, yeah. All right. So where can people find you on social media? Where can they find the brands, the products? Tell us everything. Time to adapt.com. Time to adapt or adaptiforia.com. And I would go even, you were so nice. If you do time to adapt forward slash money Mondays, we pay for your shipping. So we just wanted to do that for Dan and take care of it. So time to adapt.com forward slash money Mondays. We'll pay for your shipping. And you can find me at at Cameron Forney underscore.

You know, you'll see some stuff from, like, the University of Oregon. We're the first beverage on the history of the planet, hemp beverage on a university campus. That was with the University of Oregon last weekend. So we were in the dean's invitational suite on college campus. The dean said he'd rather have kids drinking college students drinking our beverage than he would alcohol. And as you know, you can't sell, you know, I don't sell this to under 21. Can't say alcohol to under 21.

But alcohol is just, you know, run a buck kind of on college campus. For sure. So this is a very unique trial with the University of Oregon Ducks who, you know, is my alma mater. I'm on the 40 to 40 advisory there, and I think it's very unique, and we'll be doing some stuff with the Rolling Stone Culture Council on this as well. That's so cool. Time to adapt.com, forward slash money Monday, Mondays, and money Monday, while both, and at Cameronforney.com.

All right, guys, as I mentioned, these podcasts are not just for you. It's for people from your past, present, and future. Your friends might bring up, they want to be in the beverage space, and you forward this podcast with Cameron. They might bring up, oh, I want to do something in a cannabis space. you could forward this podcast with Cameron. There's people that are going to be around you. It could be a dinner, a lunch, playing basketball or pick a ball,

and things like this come up. You share podcasts like this with them, and the butterfly effect can literally change their life. They might hear things because we got pretty granular here from factoring and financing and marketing and the shelf space and dealing with celebrities. These things could literally help save them a lot of money or make them a lot of money.

So keep these podcasts in mind. Visit us next Monday at the Money Mondays.com, and we'll see you guys very soon. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Monday Monday's podcast where we cover three core topics and to make money, I'd invest money, and to give someone away to charity. Here's what's really important. When you're listening to podcasts like this, it's not always just about you. It could be for people from your past, present, or future.

You might be able to forward an episode like this to someone that likes this topic or likes this person that's on that episode. So keep that in mind as you're listening because not every time you're going to be caring about real estate or stock market. or e-commerce or Facebook ads. Maybe it's not applying to you, but it could be to someone from your past, present, or future. The whole point in this podcast is we grew up thinking

that it's rude to talk about money. I think that's ridiculous. We've got to be able to talk about taxes and salary and should I rent, should I buy, should I lease? What happens if my friend borrowed $400? How do I get it back? Like, these are things that happen in your real life. We just don't talk about it because we think about it being rude.

It is not rude to be able to cover your mom's medical benefits. It is not rude to be able to buy toys for your kids. and not rude to be able to cover your travel and things that go on in your daily life because it's part of your daily life. So make sure to understand this with your friends, family, and followers, we have to be able to talk about money. That's part of why this podcast has stayed in the top 50 in the world. It's because of you liking, commenting, subscribing, and sharing, and talking with

your friends about money. So without further ado, as you guys know, these podcasts are under 40 minutes because the average workout is 45 minutes. The average commute to work is 45 minutes. This episode will be between 32 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure. So, Dan, if you can, give us a quick. Two-minute bio, so we get straight to the money. Perfect.

Okay. So my name is Dana Silva. I dropped out of high school, but it's kind of cliche to say these days, I guess. I started online when I was 15, like literally, I was learning at 15. 19 made my first million. And since then, just kind of like rode the wave. I started off buying traffic as an affiliate. And then I went into the e-com space.

I kind of had that leg up because I already knew, like, how to buy traffic. So, you know, drop shipping was this new thing. So I kind of just went into drop shipping. It was the first one on YouTube to talk about it. I had, like, major success in both realms doing and teachings. And then from there, just kind of everything just kind of grew from there, yeah. What's the main thing you're working on now? So I started my own Finn Pub, so financial publishing company a few years ago, four or five years ago.

It was a ride. I'm winding it down now, more so because of compliance more than anything. it is just a headache for that industry. So my main thing is winding that down and just heading back into affiliate like hardcore, just focusing all my attention on affiliate launching and publishing, but not necessarily in finance anymore. So fun fact, back in the days,

I had an online poker site. And I'd go to the gaming convention and be thousands and thousands and thousands of people there that own poker sites. And the richest people in the room were the affiliates. Because they were sending all the traffic to these poker sites So they're getting like $200 CPA, $300 CPA, which is cost per acquisition.

And so they were sending traffic to poker stars and full tilt and me, to my victory poker site. And we're paying them $200 a player before we ever got $1. And so it was fun to see at these events where you'd see the 21-year-old, the 28-year-old, zillionaires because they were sending traffic to these gambling sites. So there's certain affiliates. I mean, even now, you know, you get percentage of losses and all that. like, you know, those under-the-table type of deals where I know some guys over in Asia, like on sports betting sites.

Oh, yeah. I mean, just in general, like, those online casinos where, like, not only get a CPA, they get a percentage of First Depot, and then they also get a percentage of losses in perpetuity. And they're just, they're raking in cash, like crazy. So you've got a zillion offers that you could go through, right? You can pick from anything you want, from financial markets, stock trading, teaching people how to sell custom sneakers, you can teach people about anything, so you could showcase for your traffic any of these topics, Section 8, there's just so many, there's infinite options.

How the heck do you decide what you pick from? Is it just the financial part of it? Is there a marketing part of it? It's something that is exciting for you, or is it just a part of the game? Quite frank, that's a good question. It's a lot of, so it's a very small community of people that are super affiliates, if you will. And everybody talks there. So you know exactly what is working at that time.

So it's essentially just kind of like, hey, I heard X, Y, and Z is doing X, Y, and Z. And then I'll go to said a person, and they'll be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. And, like, you know, one of my good friends Carter, he's a huge affiliate, huge affiliate. And I ask him all the time, like, on things that are working. He's like, yeah, this was working. We were doing like $400,000 a day for a amount of weeks. And then I'm like, okay, he's like, yeah, but, We kind of like, you know, we moved on because of, you know, processing issues, whatever it is.

I'm like, okay, so, like, what's hot right now? Exactly. And then he's like, oh, well, we're on to this. I'm like, oh, well, I don't want to do this. So then I have to start shopping around because there's some things that I don't want to touch. And other things, because it's not in my circle of competence. Right. But, you know, I typically will go ahead and always focus on vanity driven or, aside from vanity, health.

So, and again, health, you've got to kind of figure out your line of ethics. and morals. Certain type of weight loss versus... Exactly. So, and more than anything, it's, the affiliate's job is to get somebody to the page, to the VSL, to the order form, whatever it is. But if it doesn't convert, you know, it's move on to the next offer. What is the VSL? Visual sales letter. So it's just a, you know, 45, 60 minute plus video selling. It's an emotional story that really pulls strings. that sells a supplement at the very end that's supposed to do X, Y, and Z, based on, you know,

whatever that story is. But, yeah, they sell very, very well, very well. So people will watch 45 to 60 minutes? Oh, yeah, they'll sit there for a really long time. It's funny because it was really, really, really good at a certain point, probably like 2019, 2020, even up until now as well, you can get away with it. You could run just the VSL alone on YouTube, like run it as a day. a YouTube ad. And then when they click, they go to the order form. So it's not even like

they have to go to another page and then go to the order form. Because if you think about it, people on YouTube are already accustomed to watching long form videos. So you just put like a 45 minute video. They don't know how long it is because it's an ad, right? So there's no timer. No, because of how long it is. Right. So they'll sit there and they'll watch it and then they'll click. And from there, you can do the same thing with Facebook. So there was, I think, I think Peter Kell did this. Actually, I know Peter Kell did this. He ran VSLs on Facebook so successfully and by the time

like I heard about it I never even thought to do that I was like it makes so much sense you know everyone was doing it at that point it still works but it's really about finding that VsLs are like

the thing right now like everybody's hyper-focusing on that so all right so let's talk about the make money side okay you can make your own products you can be an affiliate

you could try to work for another company you could consult you can take equity how do you decide on a personal level like you've got all the options because you've got so much experience and you're one of the best in the game like how do you decide what you actually spend your time on i'm gonna be totally honest with you i am extremely lazy and i think it's because of um just i'm complacent so i know if i want something how much it is and i'll work that exactly so that's a gift and a curse if you will um because it doesn't push me first than what I want. So once, and that's why, like, things now, like, I sold, like, all my cars and all that, like, because I stopped caring necessarily. The only thing I really like is watches. That's my thing.

But the make-money aspect to answer your question is, uh, I really don't know how to define that. Answer, ask me one more time so I can process it. When you have all these options where you can be a consistent, you know, consultant, you can be an affiliate, you can create your own product or brand or service. How do you decide what you spend your time on? What I know will pay me the most for the energy in, so energy in and the output that I get. So I already know what I'm really good at, and that's mainly more than anything, copy.

Funnels is relatively easy and whatnot. It's essentially getting somebody to read something and get them to take an action that they didn't otherwise think they wanted to do or you want them to do. So, and whatever that is, there's two realms that I play in. It's more so than anything bizop. So, you know, MMO, like make money online. And in the health space. So those are like the two that I absolutely know the pain points like right away. I can just spin something up. And that's what I'll, that's what I'll lean towards. But consulting, I don't do it. I don't like, just, I don't think that I know my time is worth, you know, a lot, but I just don't want to give up my time.

I'd rather be playing video games or doing something else, like just enjoying life, so. Did that come from complacency from money, I think? Yeah, yeah. It came from, it came from the fact that I had nothing really growing up. And then 18 to 19, literally, it was from nothing to, exactly. So my first car was an I-8 that I bought in cash. The insurance was $3,500 a month, okay? Okay, right.

We laugh at it now. Wow. But at 19, like, just turned 19. I thought $3,500 a month for insurance was normal. Like, okay. And everyone was like, what? And I thought a six-month insurance, you know, whatever it is. Creamium?

Exactly. Yeah. Because they wanted it all up front. Yeah, they're like $21, yeah. And I'm like, okay. So I just spent like 140,000 for an I8 that came from Idaho, exactly the specs that I wanted. And then I dropped, you know, 20-something thousand on insurance, only for six months. And everyone was like, what?

But what do I know? Because it does my first car. Like, I didn't have anything to correlate it to. So then, you know, the following year with, you know, Tanner J. Fox, all that stuff, I got rid of the I8, bought a Lambo cash. two weeks later, bought a G-wagon cash. And I was just like, again, this is the whole, like, money just kept coming. Right. And so it came to a point where the money didn't stop.

It's, it's, I think I, actually know, I know that 19-year-old me versus almost 30 in a few months of me, I realized that I was just everybody's piggy bank that they could just shake at any given time. and that was like one of the hardest pills to swallow and so I got rid of everything I left New York like all that and I just told people I'm broke just because I want to

I want to see who to stick around like oh I have nothing anymore so I just put my dogs in a car went to Canada into Rice Lake or Lake Rice whatever it's called and I just kind of like faded away exactly just I needed peace I needed to get away

and funny enough nobody ever like nobody was there and that's when I was like interesting and so um and so just over that time I kind of just like realigned and I stopped caring about the money which then also because I said the drive was always money sure and you know I'd had talks to like Jimmy um you know from selling and whatnot and I'm like Jimmy like I want to build so he's like I want to build something he's like you don't need to know right now what you want to build it'll come to you eventually I guess that's what I've been kind of like waiting for I guess but yeah it's just I realized everybody works so hard for money but at the end of

the day it's like to buy stuff that they don't actually care about not only that but to impress people that don't care about them exactly they're there for the good time and you can't blame those people either so like everybody inherently is for themselves if you well. So that's just human nature. So I can't blame, you know, my friends then. So I just look at it as I learned. I was going to do it regardless. So at that time, it is what it is. So you guys have heard me say this before. It's okay to have that materialistic goal of getting that one watch, getting that one car, getting that one thing. When you buy your second and third watch and your second and third car, you're going to have that feeling that Dan just described. Like,

you're not going to care about the Lamborghini and the G-wagon in this car that car at some point it fades away sometimes within weeks and some friends of ours go buy 510 20-30 cars looking for that that feeling and then it starts to go out within days because they've already had 10 15 20 different cars and so I'm not saying to not have a goal because by the way the goal can be really really useful for you to have that driving force like Dan described in his own life but at some point it will literally feel meaningless you it'll just be another car in the garage, collecting dust, it would just be another watch sitting in the drawer that you don't wire because you wear your main watch every single day, the other seven watches just kind of sit there. At some point, you start to realize, like, the things that you're buying don't have any actual meaning, and they don't give you what you want, which is happiness. You think you want it. Like, as soon as I get to a million dollars, I'm going to be happy.

When you get to a million, you're like, wait, it's just Wednesday. As soon as I get to 2.5 million, it's a daughter treadmill. Yep. And the goal line keeps moving. And the goal line keeps moving. And the goal line keeps moving and the thing that you're chasing is never actually there it's an enigma it's that's not real and so I say this because I want you to have that goal or the thing that you want that you're aspirational for whether it's taking that big travel trip maybe it's buying that fancy watch but I pinky swear that second third and fourth thing will not will not even one iota matter to you a few weeks later all right so you're making money buying the cars you're having fun you take this time you

you go disappear for a little bit, then you come back to one of the most coolest cities in the planet, which is Miami. Why do you reemerge? Well, I went to, I was moving around for a bit. Like, I went to Tampa, back home to see parents, Toronto, and then back to Miami. Why choose Miami? Here's the thing. I don't party anymore. Like, I don't like to go out in a club. I'll go get dinners. Like, that's it. why Miami? I can't answer that. I don't know.

To be honest, I came here with an intention to network. Then I realized the people that I wanted to network with weren't the people that I wanted to be around. And now I'm here. So I guess that really answers. To be totally honest, I was supposed to go this upcoming year, I'm supposed to head to Nashville.

But, yeah, Plans change. Yeah, plans change a little bit. So as you're making money, people start to bombard you with investments. Hey, bro, invest into my restaurant or my nightclub or my clothing line or my new thing, my new hat company, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. How do you decide, once you start making that type of cash what you might throw in 25K, 50K, 100K or whatever amount into as an investment?

I look at the person, more than anything. The person and then the idea, because everybody has ideas, right? It's the person behind the idea that can execute to the finish line. So, again, there's no necessarily unique idea, but there are extremely unique people. That's where I will decide whether or not I put my energy, time, resources, and capital behind you. So that's the end-all be all. It's who are you? And I want to know not necessarily what you have accomplished because maybe this is your first time trying to build something or whatever it is.

but who are you as a person? And if you have done something in the past, what have you done? And I'm not talking to college or anything. I'm talking way more beyond, like, hey, I built this. I just couldn't get it off the ground. And that's fine because people that are builders aren't necessarily marketers. So someone out there is listening and they're like, man, I want to sell a course or I want to sell something like a VSL? Like, how do I do that?

Where can people research to try to figure out how to actually do this stuff? That's such a good question. I wouldn't, I would, honestly, I wouldn't even know how to answer that because it is a very particular skill set. It's writing copy for a video that you have to either, you know, hire an actor for or now we can use AI to do it. But the skill set is copywriting. So BSL broken down is just long form, it's just a long form piece of paper or a document that sells something. whatever it is. And if somebody really wants to go ahead and learn how to do it, you just simply flat out

have to find VSLs out there, and they're everywhere. Like if you go on CNN, you click on these ads, and then there's like a video of some doctor talking for like an eternity, you could download that video, have it transcribed, read it and see exactly what's happening there. See what they're doing, the pain points, the NLP, the language. So that's the differentiating factor. between somebody successful selling something as an affiliate and not, is if you know how to sell it, right? So because we all have the same ability to look at the same product and sell the same way.

But the difference between me and you is that I might know how to find an angle from the current page, from the current video, and how to just kind of take that out and sell that part. While everyone else is just selling what's in the video, I sell something that he says in the video, and I just harp on that point and make it a bigger deal so people watch. So what about investing into themselves? Why do you think people should invest into their minds, their personal brand, into their world? The cliche answers, because, like, you're going to, there's no other better investment. It's cliche to say, there's no other better investment than you, no higher ROI, but it's true.

So, like, if you, what I figured out a long time ago is by accident, I think. I don't like networking. I'm not really, like, a big networker. people have and do come to me because of my skill set. So I see kids all the time, people all the time go on in a networking event. Networking does not equate to necessarily, in the long term, sure, can equate to, you know, a lot of money if you start networking a lot and know what you're doing. But the end of the day, I'd rather focus on a skill, like a skill set. And Becker thinks the same way, because I've talked to Becker about this as well, is that all I ever did was focus on my skill set, which was copy, et cetera, right?

And where that copy was deployed could have been e-commerce, you know, drop shipping or a VSL, an affiliate promo, whatever it is, right? But I just focused on that. That is my skill. You know, the funnels, the launches, and deploying copy into that, that's something that people have. come to and still come to me for on, hey, what do you think about this and that? Just like I'll go to somebody like Jason, like J-flat, right, about webinar stuff. Of course. So it's the same thing.

He's the best at what he does. People have to go to him. So it's not like he's out there at, you know, events and whatnot, saying, hey, I know how to do webinars. Like, well, we know. We know you know how to do webinars. So I kind of adopted that philosophy, really. is there a goal

if you got to a certain number you're like you know what I'm done I'm going to retire I'm going to give up the e-commerce and I'm going to give up being an affiliate like if someone has said

hey you know what here's $80 million that's it you can't work anymore ever again no no absolutely not absolutely not

that sounds there's no purpose what's I want it I need to do something you need to be stimulated like all right

maybe like is there a cap on this So, I mean, it'd have to be a wild number, like something, if I'd say, you'd be like, okay, be realistic. But, like, I just, the constant stimulation of needing to figure out new things and needing to build and wanting to build. And that's like, that's the, yeah, that's the thrill. So there's really no number. From, on the personal perspective, is there anything that you like in the charity space, philanthropy? Yeah.

I'm looking to build an animal sanctuary. Really? Yeah. yeah, yeah. So it's actually a reason that I came here. So, but I've said it's already for like two years to my parents and whatnot. It was either here or in Nashville and I was, well, Nashville area, somewhere in Tennessee, right? Because land is fairly affordable. Yeah. You know, so, and then I have to work with compliance, like regulatory. But, yeah, an animal sanctuary is, is my thing. I love animals, so. So I built an animal sanctuary 37 months ago.

Did you really? Yeah. That's where I came. That's where I came from. from this morning. So I just flew from. So we have 206 animals in Temecula, California. It's 26 acres. Oh, that's, so your ranch is actually like a sanctuary. I never knew that. I thought you just loved animals. I guess a personal sanctuary then. So, yeah, we're not open to the public. You can't, there's no website. You can't buy tickets. Obviously, our friends and everyone can go and feed the animals. But so the real tar is in, obviously, you know, it's getting, he did 2.2 billion views last month alone. Yeah, yeah. He lives there. He lives at the ranch. Oh, really? Yeah. That's how it evolved. At first, I was buying it because I wanted to,

I had like a checklist of things to build on a ranch to be able to host masterminds and events and my Operation Blackslide, the military training stuff, and I wanted some animals. And then I was going to do one with Tarzan here in Miami, and then COVID happened, the shutdown happened. And so like, we scrapped the idea for a while because we're like, well, I don't know if we can have tourism at, you know, at the ranch, at the animal sanctuary. And then like a year later, this ranch in California, I'm like, wow. And so when I messaged him, I had the keys. I waited until it was for sure that I had it.

And I was like, hey, you're moving to California. That's awesome. We're going to set up all these animals here. And then it just kind of evolved because he started getting everything from 16-foot snakes. So we rescued these two bulls from the FBI. The FBI was going to kill these two bulls. We rescued 900-pound pigs. We rescued horses.

We rescued so many things. And, you know, it's expensive. obviously to take care of 206 animals. It's 140,000 a month from staff and food and things to keep them alive and happy. But it's my favorite thing to do. It's my favorite thing to talk about. I can talk about it for ages. And like the difference of like when you're interacting with the animals versus humans is fascinating.

We can get into this. Okay. We'll get real emotional real quick. But I agree. It's just it's unconditional love. Like, yeah, so now I'm talking like dogs and whatnot, but even big cats. Like, you know what I found fascinating? I saw, I got really ingrained and infatuated with this story of a golden retriever mother raising five or four or five tiger cubs.

And then they became full-grown tigers. And, you know, the golden retriever, that mother was still a mother to them. Like, they could mall her, but they respected her like a, like, and I was just like, that's still it's just so amazing and there's one thing that I can't stand is like no animal should be put down

because of some some other humans mistakes or faults bad decisions yes exactly it's just not fair and then it like to me it's just like it's so unfair

I just don't it doesn't sit right with me so that's been the end goal of it all so there's one question I ask on every single episode, and I've never gotten the same answer ever before. Before I ask it, I'm going to ask you, do you have children or do you ever want to have children? I do want children. So the one question I ask on every episode is, Dan, over the course of time, you're going to build up tens of millions, hundreds of millions,

God willing, billions of dollars in your career from the brands, product, services that you create. But unfortunately, at some point, you do pass away. What percentage of that net worth do you leave to your children? Great question. I've heard 0% 100% everything in between. You'd have to be vested. If not, then it would be donated. But I wouldn't leave all 100%.

Probably 80% be donated to philanthropy. 20% would be left. But that 20% would have to be vested based on what they achieve and how many you know children right so so giving them milestones of things to do throughout the course of their life marriage at least five years to have probably like 60% of whatever's allocated to be unlocked if you will at least bare minimum um bonuses for children No, I would, because, again, not everybody's blessed to be able to. Yeah.

So, imagine, like, just having infertile wife and then, like, your money's locked because you can't get. That'd be terrible. Definitely something to do with marriage, building a family, building something sustainable. Carefully going to college? No, I don't. I want them to do something, though. I want to say do something. I mean, follow what they want to do, but not, it has to be progressive in the world, if that makes sense.

It has to help in some way. Like, I don't want you to be, I don't know if this is bad to say, but like I kind of like a hippie, if you will. It's like free roaming around doing ayahuasca and, like, Columbia. Like, I need you to be proactive and be a part of something or start building something and whatnot. But, yeah, it's such a good question. I don't, I would say, you broke it down. That was good. A lot of people can't even say with clarity, like the 80, 20 concept you just mentioned

or having parameters. Some people say very detailed of like the concept of what they want, but they can't say numbers or they say the number, but they don't know why. Like it's been very interesting. I've asked the same question 200 times, literally 200 times. And I'm always fascinated because some little pieces of it evolve how I think about it, right? How I want to do it, how I want to structure the course of time. And so I'm always fascinated to hear it because,

no one's going to have the same answer. And no one ever just says like, yeah, 100% or yeah, zero percent. There's a reason behind it because it's such a big decision. Right. It's part of our legacy. It's part of our, you know, when we have children. And the other reasoning is like some people think it spoils the child. Some people think it, you know, changes their, it steals from them, like their skills and their grit and things that come with it.

And most people that I know, and most people that I interviewed, didn't come for money. It's very rare You know I think about it like The tension it could create Like if I have four kids And again If we go with the vesting idea

What if one of them can't find love Or just doesn't isn't You know Has a hard time Like Then it creates animosity For the others So it's a really hard decision

To Exactly So Not everyone's created the same And you didn't have to punish somebody Because of something That they lack So

It's a hard question Are there any products, brand services that you have going on? Not to the public. I don't really sell anything to the public. Just exist. Just exist. Okay. Where can people find you on social?

What are the things, anything? At De Silva on Instagram. And some random YouTube channel I'll create again. So not my old one, just a new one. I'll be around. You go soon. All right, guys. I appreciate you listening here.

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